September 05, 2009
London Burning IV: The End (1666)
The fire was beginning to burn itself out. A drop in the wind gave enough breathing room for those battling the fire, led by the king's brother, the Duke of York, to get a handle on the blaze. On the east side of London, fearing for the safety of the Tower, the garrison, without orders, used its stock of gunpowder to blow up houses.With his house and offices safe, Pepys felt freer to walk about the town. With his feet burning from the heated cobblestones, he saw the vast park Moorfields covered with refugees "carrying their good there, and every body keeping his goods together by themselves."
Meanwhile, the king and his courtiers began the process of restoring order, establishing markets where food would be sold, resettling into the official residences and offices that were not burned down, and encouraging plans to be drawn up for the rebuilding of London, none of which were used. Instead, Londoners rebuilt their homes, substituting stone instead of wood, and making sure that the old, bad habits that caused the fire (such as building out over alleyways and roads) were not repeated.
By any measure, London was devastated: 13,500 houses, 87 churches, major buildings such as St. Paul's Cathedral, the Custom House, the Royal Exchange, a royal palace, the prison, the post office and three city gates. Nobody knows how many died. Some guess only a few, but who knows how many poor people perished, their bodies incinerated by the intense heat.
As for Pepys, apart from trouble sleeping ("much terrified in the nights nowadays, with dreams of fire and falling down of houses"), he was pretty much his usual self. Within days, his house and office were restored, although he was annoyed at having to be called away to work while strange workmen "going to and fro might take what they would almost." Within a week, in fact, he made up for lost time by visiting, in one day, with Betty Martin, the wife of a linendraper where he did "tout ce que je voudrais avec" her ("whatever I wanted with"), and William Bagwell's wife, where he tried "para aver demorado con ella toda la night" ("to delay it for the whole night") while her husband was away.
Born: Robert Fergusson, poet, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1750; Victorien Sardou, playwright, Paris, 1831; Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher, essayist, Tiruttan, India, 1888; Arthur Koestler, novelist, journalist, critic, Budapest, Hungary, 1905; Frank Yerby, novelist, Augusta, Ga., 1916; Cathy Guisewite, cartoonist, Dayton, Ohio, 1950; Edward Anderson, noir novelist, journalist, Texas, 1969.
Died: Charles Peguy, philosopher, poet, near Villeroy, France, 1914; Gustave Kahn, poet, literary theorist, Paris, 1936; Guy Bolton, playwright, librettist, London, 1979.
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