3rd October 1826
This evening finds me in the great withdrawing-room of Carlton House, where the light from a thousand candles casts its trembling glow upon gilt and marble, and I am struck by how fire – that most ancient of servants – remains yet the handmaid of all our grandest pretensions. The chandeliers burn above like constellations brought low, and I cannot help but observe that for all our modern contrivances, our steam-engines and manufactories, our newly-paved streets lit by gas-flame, we are still creatures who gather about the hearth as our forefathers did when the world was young.
I came hither at the invitation of Lady C, who has need of silks from the Levant and certain fine goods which my late husband’s concern yet supplies to the discerning. It is a strange commerce, this – to stand amidst such splendour, speaking of bales and bills of lading, whilst titled persons discourse of art and politics in the adjoining salons. I am tolerated here because I provide what is wanted, yet I am not of this world, and the distinction is made plain in a thousand small cruelties of manner and address.
There was a moment this afternoon when I found myself quite alone in the great gallery, having been directed thither to await Her Ladyship’s pleasure. The portraits gazed down upon me – dead men in their armour and ermine, dead women with their pearls and their hauteur – and I felt myself an interloper in a temple where I had no right to worship. The very flames in the grate seemed to mock me, as though even the fire knew I did not belong amongst such magnificence. I thought then of the Israelites in Egypt, dwelling amongst splendours not their own, and I understood something of their longing for a simpler country where a woman might walk without the constant weight of others’ judgement upon her shoulders.
Yet am I not also a child of this new age? The vessels which carry my merchandise are driven now by steam as well as sail – those great iron leviathans that belch fire and smoke across the waters. I have seen the railway engines at Stockton, breathing flame like the dragons of old legend, and I confess they fill me with a strange mixture of wonder and dread. We are become sorcerers, conjuring power from coal and water, bending the very elements to our will. But to what end? That we might move goods more swiftly, accumulate wealth more rapidly, and still find ourselves strangers in rooms where we ought by rights of industry and capability to be welcome?
The ironworks I visited last month near Birmingham were temples of a different sort – cathedrals of the new faith we place in Progress. The furnaces roared like the very mouth of Gehenna, and the men who tended them moved through the heat and clamour like devotees at some ancient rite. I stood at the edge of that inferno and felt the heat upon my face, and I wondered: is this fire that of refinement, burning away the dross to reveal the pure metal beneath? Or is it the fire of destruction, consuming all that was good and established in our grandfathers’ time?
Scripture teaches us that the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush – fire that gave light without consuming. But the fires of our manufactories consume voraciously, and I am not certain what they illuminate beyond the ledgers of our merchants and the ambitions of our manufacturers. I have profited from these changes, to be sure. A woman alone in trade would have found the world far colder in my grandmother’s day. The new railways and steam-packets have expanded my reach from Bristol to the Baltic. Yet profit is a poor compass when one’s soul seeks true north.
I think often upon the question of displacement – of finding oneself in circumstances where one’s presence seems a solecism, a grammatical error in the sentence of society. Tonight, watching the Quality move through these gilded chambers with the ease of those born to such surroundings, I am reminded that I am forever between worlds. Too elevated by my commercial success to return to the simpler life of my girlhood, when my father kept a modest mercer’s shop in Bath and I knew my place with certainty. Too tainted by trade, by the necessity of labour and negotiation, to ever truly belong in salons such as these.
The fire in the grate here burns cleanly, fed by the finest coal, tended by silent servants. It does not smoke or spark as the fires of my childhood did. Even the flames, it seems, may be refined by station and wealth. I am reminded of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man – though I confess I know not whether I am Lazarus, gazing up at plenty, or the rich man, too comfortable in my modest prosperity to see those truly in want.
The news from London speaks of riots among the weavers, displaced by the new power-looms. Fire of another sort – the fire of hunger and desperation. I have read Mr. Malthus, though such reading is perhaps unbecoming in a woman, and I find his calculations cold as iron. Yet I cannot dismiss the truth that our engines of progress cast many into darkness even as they illuminate the few.
Lady C received me at last with civility if not warmth, and we concluded our business. The silks will arrive before Christmastide, God willing and the weather fair. As I departed, I passed again through halls lit by that multitude of flames, each one a small defiance against the gathering darkness outside. We are all of us, I think, burning against the night – some of us brightly in gilded sconces, others as tallow candles in garret rooms, but burning nonetheless.
The carriage awaits to return me to my lodgings in Jermyn Street, where my own modest fire will warm me, and my accounts require attention. I am grateful for the gift of industry, for the tools and engines that have given me independence where once I might have faced penury. Yet I cannot quite shake the feeling that we are stoking furnaces whose heat we do not fully comprehend, building a world of fire and iron whose ultimate shape remains hidden in the smoke.
The Lord instructs us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. I pray I might navigate these waters – these fires – with something approaching wisdom, though I am but a woman alone, making her way through a world that changes more swiftly than the heart can quite accommodate.
Tomorrow I meet with the factors from the East India concern. More business, more negotiation, more careful threading of the needle between capability and propriety. The fire burns on, and I with it, neither consumed nor fully illuminated, but somewhere in the uncertain space between.
Late Regency London saw the waning of Carlton House, long the Prince Regent’s opulent residence and a centre of alternative court life, as George IV shifted royal focus to rebuilding Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace and ordered Carlton House’s demolition in 1826-27. Carlton House stood on Pall Mall with enfilades of state rooms and lavish interiors, hosting major ceremonies before its materials and furnishings were dispersed to other royal sites. Its removal enabled the creation of Carlton House Terrace and financed palace works, while architectural elements were reused at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and the National Gallery, reshaping London’s ceremonial landscape.
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