Interior at Petworth: From Turner

(Lord Egremont speaks) It was a way of punishing the house, setting it ablaze in ruddy, golden flames; smoke in billows up the front stairs; walls cringing like leaves. I say, I am afraid in my own house. Do not believe I started this, it was that man, who was to portray the park alone, mind you, but then became enamored of the music room. And now what have we: floods of fire rolling from room to room, furniture wrecked in seethe, my wife Lady Amelia turned wraith, God knows what fish and drowning slaves cast up in the tide along with pocket Bibles, snuffboxes, antimacassars, the familiar bric-a-brac of the well-kept house. Where are Edward, Lavinia, Jane? Why is no one crying, “Fire! Fire!”? Am I alone? The man has no sense of proportion. He had himself lashed to the mast, once, it is said, on a steamboat off the harbor mouth in full blizzard: sailors blinded by snow, the boat crippled, led by the lead, they damn near died to a man, and he— he was observing “the light at sea,” he said. The painting? “Soapsuds and whitewash,” the critics described it so. But here, in our house, it is catastrophe of flame, not weather, he loosed. He is a man in love with last things, clearly, the last things, but never understood the first, it seems to me, and certainly not the genial medias res of decorous, daily life. What tea-times we’ve known in these chambers, what sonatinas, lieder of an evening, whist, Emmeline embroidering, the hounds calm at the hearth, now all dissolved. Perhaps there are no flames. A bloody haze arises, it could be my own eyes that fail. I hear nothing, but fear the upstairs rooms, cramped rooms I have not entered in ages, only remember the draughts, creakings, grime in closet corners, windows too tight to lean from, the smell of antique damp. And now, who knows what acts unroll on narrow beds, on floorboards warped askew? As steam is rising, rising? As heat buoys the house up into an atmosphere all of its own creation? Who are the participants? Where has Amelia gone? Why, in this furnace, can I hear no sound, or feel my own skin begin to peel?