A Sun in the Heart of London

All London is out to watch the fire. The edge of the Thames heaves with them: young and old, clerk and costermonger, pauper and gentleman. Pickpockets too, no doubt. My fingers feel through my waistcoat for the security of my pocket watch.

Crossing Westminster Bridge to this vantage point was a slow affair, so thronged was it with onlookers. There are more of them now, if that is possible, and even at this distance their faces glow.

And there, across the river, is the conflagration: a growling, furious thing that curls its limbs round the buildings of parliament. St Stephen’s Chapel is a silhouette against the flames. The towers of Westminster Abbey, some distance from the fire, are rectangles of yellow. There is a kind of beauty in it.

Braidwood and his men are at the scene, but I fancy even their new steam fire engines will not be equal to this inferno.

I settle myself to watch, just another spectator among the many. It is a rare moment, when all Londoners are equal. But there is one man in the crowd who distracts me from my contemplation of the blaze. He sits upon a low wall, with a notebook and pencil in hand, sketching with jerks of the arm that seem too violent to convey with any accuracy the picture before us.

I approach, and recognise him from a lecture I attended at the Royal Academy, many years ago.

‘Upon my word! You are Mr Turner, if I don’t deceive myself.’

He grunts acknowledgement, but his eyes do not shift from the twin objects of his concern: the flames and his depiction thereof.

‘I have much admired your painting of the lake at Petworth.’

‘An early work,’ he says, ‘but I thank you for your interest.’

He turns the page and begins a fresh assault with his pencil.

I attempt to recapture his attention with a more jocular approach. ‘It seems that for once the focus of your work is not the sun, Mr Turner.’

He replies, in all seriousness: ‘There is a sun in the heart of London tonight, sir.’

It is as if he has loaned me his artist’s eyes. It is a sun, yes; it is the day come to night; a brightening where there was darkness.

‘It is like a new dawn, is it not?’ I say, under the spell of this perception.

‘To the untrained eye, perhaps.’

As quick as it was born, my insight dies. Mr Turner unfolds something and balances it upon his knees. From the squares of colour I discern that it is a portable palette. He spits onto it, mixes a reddish orange, and thrusts it into the page with a twist of his brush, an action reflected by the swelling of the flames across the river.

I attempt to engage him once more. ‘Parliament is beyond all hope now.’

‘I dare say.’

‘The tally sticks are the cause of it.’

‘Hmm?’

‘The ancient method of accounting. They have taken it upon themselves to embrace the modernity of paper. In consequence, they decided to burn the old tally sticks.’

‘You seem to know a great deal about it.’

I must be careful how much I say. And yet something compels me to continue. ‘I have heard a thing or two.’

‘As have many in this crowd, much of it pure fancy.’

‘It seems they had more sticks to burn than they reckoned.’ I glance at him sideways. ‘Many more.’

He smudges the paint with his fingers, but makes no reply.

‘They might have given the tally sticks away as firewood, to keep some fruit seller’s home warm. But such generosity seems beyond them. This is the government of the new Poor Law, the government that thinks the workhouse too comfortable. And here we see the harvest for their lack of charity. Fitting, do you not think?’

‘I will not be drawn into a debate.’

I have heard this about him, his reticence concerning politics. Perhaps that is why I press him.

‘You are not one of them, though, Mr Turner. That much I do know.’

‘One of whom? A politician? I am a painter, sir. I paint.’

It would delight me to discover in him some Reformist or Radical tendencies, but if other men have failed to ascertain his views on society, there is no reason why I should succeed.

I crane my neck, the better to see his sketch. While there is something of the blaze captured there, I find myself wanting more.

‘Something in oils to follow, Mr Turner?’

‘That is my intention, assuming that I am allowed sufficient concentration to complete the preliminary sketches.’

At this moment, the roof of parliament collapses with a crackle and crash that carries across the Thames like thunder. A huge cheer goes up from the crowd, more gratifying even than the fire itself.

‘It seems they approve of the night’s entertainment.’

Turner lowers his notebook and turns to face me for the first time. ‘Sir, I am attempting to record for posterity an example of nature at the height of her power and ferocity. This moment is both rare and fleeting. I therefore implore you: leave me to my work.’

I take a step back. It is difficult for me to understand how a man of such perception cannot see the change that is beginning here, before his eyes.

And yet, good might still come of it. In the future someone may gaze on Mr Turner’s completed painting and ponder the events of this night in their proper, political context, rather than simply appreciating his artistry, however accomplished. In spite of his protests, he is not just a painter. He is a journalist, a journalist whose medium happens to be not words, but light.

Alas, I can say nothing to make him see it, and so I take my leave of him.

© 2018 Richard Salsbury

Written as part of the ‘Turner and the Sun’ workshops, tutored by Judy Waite

Shortlisted for the Dorset Fiction Award 2018

Painting: The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons by JMW Turner