Chapter 72

Arlington Street, April 28, 1761. (page 122)

I am glad you will relish June for Strawberry; by that time I hope the weather will have recovered its temper. At present it is horridly cross and uncomfortable; I fear we shall have a cold season; we cannot eat our summer and have our summer.

There has been a terrible fire in the little traverse street, at the upper end of Sackville Street. Last Friday night, between eleven and twelve, I was sitting with Lord Digby in the coffee-room at Arthur's; they told us there was a great fire somewhere about Burlington Gardens. I, who am as constant at a fire as George Selwyn at an execution, proposed to Lord Digby to go and see where it was. We found it within two doors of that pretty house of Fairfax, now General Waldegrave's. I sent for the latter, who was at Arthur's; and for the guard, from St. James's. Four houses were in flames before they could find a drop of water; eight were burnt. I went to my Lady Suffolk, in Saville Row, and passed the whole night, till three in the morning, between her little hot bedchamber and the spot up to my ancles in water, without catching cold.(154) As the wind, which had sat towards Swallow Street, changed in the middle of the conflagration, I concluded the greater part of Saville Row would be consumed. I persuaded her to prepare to transport her most valuable effects--"portantur avari Pygmalionis opes miserae." She behaved with great composure, and observed to me herself how much worse her deafness grew with the alarm. Half the people of fashion in town were in the streets all night, as it happened in such a quarter of distinction. In the crowd, looking on with great tranquillity, I saw a Mr. Jackson, an Irish gentleman, with whom I had dined this winter, at Lord Hertford's. He seemed rather grave; I said, "Sir, I hope you do not live hereabouts." "Yes, Sir," said he, "I lodged in that house that is Just burnt."

Last night there was a mighty ball at Bedford-house; the royal Dukes and Princess Emily were there; your lord-lieutenant, the great lawyer, lords, and old Newcastle, whose teeth are tumbled out, and his mouth tumbled in; hazard very deep; loo, beauties, and the Wilton Bridge in sugar, almost as big as the life. I am glad all these joys are near going out of town. The Graftons go abroad for the Duchess's health; Another climate may mend that--I will not answer for more. Adieu! Yours ever.

(154) This accident was owing to a coachman carrying a lighted candle into the stable, and, agreeably to Dean Swift's Advice to Servants, sticking it against the rack; the straw being set in a flame in his absence, by the candle falling. Eight or nine horses perished, and fourteen houses were burnt to the ground. Walpole was, most probably, not an idle spectator for the newspapers relate, that the "gentlemen in the neighbourhood, together with their servants, formed a ring, kept off the mob, and handed the goods and movables from one another, till they secured them in a place of safety; a noble instance of neighbourly respect and kindness."-E.