Westminster Abbey on Fire.—Frequency of Fires in England.—Means devised for preventing and for extinguishing them; but not in Use.
I was fortunate enough this morning to witness a very grand and extraordinary sight. As D. and I were walking towards the west end of the town, we met an acquaintance who told us that Westminster Abbey was on fire. We lost no time in going to the spot; the roof was just smoking sufficiently to show us that the intelligence was true, but that the building was no longer in danger.
The crowd which had collected was by no means so great as we had expected.—Soldiers were placed at the doors to keep out idle intruders, and admit such only as might properly be admitted. The sight when we entered was truly striking. Engines were playing in the church, and the long leathern pipes which conveyed the water stretched along the pavement. The roof at the joint of the cross, immediately over the choir, had fallen in, and the huge timbers lay black and smoking, in heaps, upon the pews which they had crushed. A pulpit, of fine workmanship, stood close by unhurt. Smaller fragments, and sparks of fire, were from time to time falling down; and the water which was still spouted up in streams, fell in showers, and hissed upon the hot ruins below. We soon perceived that no real injury was done to the church, though considerable damage was inflicted upon the funds of the chapter.—The part which was thus consumed had not been finished like the rest of the building; instead of masonry, it had been from some paltry motives of parsimony made of wood, and lined on the inside with painted canvas, in a miserable style. All this patchwork was now destroyed, as it deserved to be; and the light coming in from above, slanted on the fretted roof, the arches and pillars, which stood unhurt and perfectly secure.
The Westminster boys were working an engine in the cloisters with hearty goodwill. D., who had been educated at Westminster himself, said they were glad at the fire; indeed, he confessed that he did not himself look without satisfaction upon the ruins of the pew, where he had formerly been compelled to sit so many hours in the cold.
The pavement in that part of the abbey which is called Poet's Corner sunk considerably in consequence of the water, the earth in the graves probably sinking when wet: so much so that the stones must be taken up and laid anew. What an opportunity of examining the skulls of so many celebrated men! If professor Blumenbach were but an Englishman, or if the dean and chapter were physiologists, these relics would now be collected and preserved.
One of the graves would exhibit curious contents, if any such curiosity should be indulged. An old countess, who died not long since after a very singular life, gave orders in her will that she should be buried in Poets' Corner, as near as possible to Shakspeare's monument, dressed in her wedding suit, and with a speaking trumpet in her coffin. These orders her executors were obliged to perform to the letter. Accordingly, a grave was solicited and granted for a due consideration in this holy ground; the old lady was equipped in her bridal array, packed up for the journey, and ready to set off, when it was discovered that the speaking-trumpet had been forgotten. What was to be done? This was in a remote part of the country; there was not such a thing to be purchased within a dozen leagues, and the will was not to be trifled with. Luckily some person there present recollected that a gentleman in the neighbourhood had a speaking-trumpet, which had been left him by a sea-captain as a memorial of an old friend, and which for that reason he particularly valued. A messenger was immediately dispatched to borrow this; of course he was careful not to say for what it was wanted: as soon as it was brought, it was put by her side in the coffin, the coffin was soldered down, off posted the funeral for London, and if the rightful owner does not look after his trumpet now, he will have no other opportunity till he hears the old lady flourish upon it at the resurrection, for which purpose it is to be presumed, she chose to have it at hand.
This mischief, which might have been in its consequences so deplorable, was occasioned by the carelessness of some plumbers, who were at work upon the roof. Old St Paul's was destroyed just in this way: it is surprising how many accidents of this kind have happened from the same cause, and provoking to think, that so great and venerable a work of piety and human genius, and human power, should have been so near destruction by the stupid negligence of a common labourer! They burn in the hand for accidental homicide in this country;[28] a little application of hot iron for accidental church-burning would be a punishment in kind for a neglect of duty, so dangerous, that it ought not to be unpunished. When carelessness endangers the life or welfare of another, it ought to be regarded as a crime.
A fire is the only ordinary spectacle in this great metropolis which I have not seen; for this cannot be called such, though in its effect finer than any conflagration.—Fires are so frequently happening, that I may consider myself as unfortunate. The traveller who is at London without seeing a fire, and at Naples without witnessing an eruption of Vesuvius, is out of luck. The danger of fire is one to which the Londoners are more exposed than any people in the world, except, perhaps, the inhabitants of Constantinople. Their earth-coal must be considered as one main cause—pieces of this are frequently exploded into the room. The carelessness of servants is another; for nothing but candles are used to give light for domestic purposes, and accidents happen from a candle which could not from a lamp. The accumulation of furniture in an English house is so much fuel in readiness; all the floors are boarded, all the bedsteads are of wood, all the beds have curtains. I have heard of a gentleman who set the tail of his shirt on fire as he was stepping into bed, the flames caught the curtains, and the house was consumed. You may easily suppose this adventure obtained for him the name of The Comet.
Means have been devised for preventing fires, for extinguishing them, and for escaping from them. David Hartley, son to a great English philosopher of the same name, proposed to line every room with plates of metal, and Lord Stanhope invented a kind of mortar for the same purpose. Both methods have been tried with complete success; but they will never be adopted unless a law be passed to compel the adoption. For houses in London, and indeed in all large towns, are built for sale, and the builder will not incur the expense of making them fire-proof, because, if they are burnt, he is not the person who is to be burnt in them. And if he who builds for himself in the country, were disposed to avail himself of these inventions, should he have heard of them, the difficulty of instructing labourers in the use of any thing which they have not been used to, is such, that rather than attempt it, he submits to the same hazard as his neighbours.
You would suppose, however, that there could be no objection to the use of any means for extinguishing fires. Balls for this purpose were invented by Mr Godfrey, son to the inventor of a famous quack-medicine; but the son's fire-balls did not succeed so well as the father's cordial.—Succeed, indeed, they did, in effecting what was intended; for, when one of them was thrown into a room which had been filled with combustibles and set on fire for the purpose of experiment, it exploded, and instantly quenched it. But there was an objection to the use of these balls which Mr Godfrey had not foreseen. It is a trade in England to put out fires, and the English have a proverb that "All trades must live;" which is so thoroughly admitted by all ranks and degrees, that if the elixir of life were actually to be discovered, the furnishers of funerals would present a petition to parliament, praying that it might be prohibited, in consideration of the injury they must otherwise sustain; and in all probability, parliament would permit their plea. The continuance of the slave trade, in consideration of the injury which the dealers in human flesh would sustain by its abolishment, would be a precedent. The firemen made a conspiracy against Godfrey; and when he or any of his friends attended at a fire, and mounted a ladder to throw the balls in, the ladder was always thrown down; so that, as the life of every person who attempted to use them was thus endangered, the thing was given up.
The machine for escaping is a sort of iron basket, or chair, fixed in a groove on the outside of the house. I have never seen one at any other place than at the inventor's warehouse. The poet, Gray, was notoriously fearful of fire, and kept a ladder of ropes in his bed-room. Some mischievous young men at Cambridge knew this, and roused him from below, in the middle of a dark night, with the cry of Fire! The staircase, they said, was in flames. Up went his window, and down he came by his rope-ladder, as fast as he could go, into a tub of water which they had placed to receive him.
