The Hammock Papers: Fire.

03 September 2016

Fire.

de Loutherbourg, The Great Fire of London, 1799

This week marks the 350th anniversary of The Great Fire of London.

Peter Ackroyd chronicles London's relationship with fire ...

Samuel Pepys prepares ...

Disasters bring out both the best and worst in people. History is littered with stories of people performing both acts of great heroism and despicable deeds while the world collapses around them. Another thing disasters show about people is what they hold dear. Nowadays it is such a popular conundrum that it has become cliche: if the worst happened, what would you take with you?

Everyone would answer this differently, of course, depending on what they value. When the Great Fire of London struck in September of 1666, a wealthy man by the name of Samuel Pepys was confronted by just that question. As the fire burned within sight of his home, he and his servants rushed to save his belongings.

A typical response, no doubt. But one thing Pepys did might seem odd to modern eyes. He recorded in his diary that, as the fire approached, he buried his wine and Parmesan cheese in a hole he’d dug in the garden. Why would someone go to such great lengths to save cheese?

CONNECT

THE FIRE: How the Great Fire started, spread and was fought ... CONNECT

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL