There's only one image in my mind: the beautiful Notre Dame de Paris, wrapped in that gigantic cage of flame, and then the fall of that delicate spire. I visited the cathedral of Notre Dame a year or so ago, on a rare weekend away with my daughter, so the image of the cathedral and the Isle de France are mixed up, for me, with the pleasure of that trip. Like so many, I am feeling real sadness about such destruction and was pleased to hear the President, among others, declaring that the cathedral will be restored to glory.
Notre Dame has known neglected during her life. Begun in 1163 and completed in 1345, the church was damaged during the reign of Louis XIV, when the rood screen was torn down and some of the stained glass windows replaced by plain glass. After that, during the French Revolution, many of the statues were defaced and destroyed. The original spire fell down after a windstorm, the bells taken down and melted and the lead from the roof used to make bullets. Even when, in 1802, Notre Dame was returned to the Catholic Church, the ancient church was left to decay. However, Victor Hugo stepped forward. He was an architectural preservationist and, in 1825 , wrote an ardent pamphlet in praise of the art of Gothic architecture and promoting the restoration of Notre Dame. Hugo followed this by his great passionate novel, originally titled NOTRE DAME-DE PARIS, set in the fifteenth century and setting the language of ecclesiastical sculpture against the rise of the revolutionary printing press. Hugo's readers identified with the emotional bond between Quasimodo - a hunchbacked foundling based on the chimerical street - and the cathedral's over-arching. maternal protection. The novel soon became known as THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.
Hugo writes, of Quasimodo:
“His cathedral was sufficient for him. It was peopled with
marble figures—kings, saints, bishops—who at least did not burst
out laughing in his face, and who gazed upon him only with
tranquillity and kindliness. The other statues, those of the monsters
and demons, cherished no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He resembled them
too much for that. They seemed rather, to be scoffing at other men.
The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his
friends and guarded him. So he held long communion with them. He
sometimes passed whole hours crouching before one of these statues,
in solitary conversation with it. If any one came, he fled like a
lover surprised in his serenade.
And the cathedral was not only society for him,
but the universe, and all nature beside. He dreamed of no other
hedgerows than the painted windows, always in flower; no other shade
than that of the foliage of stone which spread out, loaded with
birds, in the tufts of the Saxon capitals; of no other mountains than
the colossal towers of the church; of no other ocean than Paris,
roaring at their bases.
What he loved above all else in the maternal
edifice, that which aroused his soul, and made it open its poor
wings, which it kept so miserably folded in its cavern, that which
What he loved above all else in the maternal edifice, that which
aroused his soul, and made it open its poor wings, which it kept so
miserably folded in its cavern, that which sometimes rendered him
even happy, was the bells. He loved them, fondled them, talked to
them, understood them. From the chime in the spire, over the
intersection of the aisles and nave, to the great bell of the front,
he cherished a tenderness for them all. The central spire and the two
towers were to him as three great cages, whose birds, reared by
himself, sang for him alone. “
Hugo's novel led, in 1841, to a significant period of restoration and right now, there seem to be rumours of the fire springing from underfunded restoration and the State's responsibility for the French cathedrals.
Yet there seems to be a wish for Notre Dame to be rebulit and restored. In the face of all the other world problems, recreating an ancient church seems almost a kind of folly but there is no doubt that her iconic and spiritual status matters in what had been seen as a secular, European age. I cannot help wondering if there is any piece of British architecture which, if caught in such a fiery inferno, would stir such strong emotions? Or, in a period when councils and companies are divesting themselves of bricks and mortar, no matter how venerable, could such a project reap financial support?
Historical novelists are generally a charitable bunch, but I suspect we each have our one pet subject that brings us out in
historical hives when we see somebody else GET IT WRONG. Mine, I’m afraid, is Fire.
Unfortunately it’s also the subject writers are
most likely to fudge. This particular
rant has been sparked by a scene in a Regency romance where the
protagonists were strolling happily along a country lane – and then the hero ruined everything by lighting a cigar.
'Regency Love' by Dylan Meconis
The poor lovers hadn’t a chance after that. They could flirt
as wittily as they liked, they could even thrash about madly in the bushes, but
I was seeing only the glowing red tip of that cigar and thinking – HOW? How did
he do that? Was he quietly rubbing two sticks together all the time they were
talking? Did he whip out a monocle and catch the rays of the dying sun on his
conveniently pre-charred handkerchief? Was the interesting bulge in his tight
fitting breeches really a tinderbox, and when he set the heroine ‘on fire’ was he doing it literally?
I'm afraid I suspect the writer had in mind something as deceptively simple as this picture by the scarily talented illustrator Dylan Meconis. And unless the lover also had an asbestos bottle filled with sulphuric acid in his pocket, that simply could not happen.
I'm possibly going into geek-overdrive here, but it’s still a worryingly common mistake, even with writers
whose research is otherwise impeccable. I’ve seen medieval heroes escape
captivity with only the clothes they stood up in – and start their life on the
run by making a fire in the woods. I’ve ‘critted’ a manuscript containing a
brilliant description of a seventeenth century bomb – which the villain then
lights by ‘striking’ a match. What is it about this one thing that shuts down
our usual historical instincts and replaces them with a mindset where ‘making fire’ is an easy,
even casual thing, about which nobody thinks twice?
Part of the problem may be that a ‘striking’ match is so ‘low-tech’
it’s hard to believe they weren’t invented until 1826. Another may be simply
linguistic, in that not everyone will realize that the 'match' Guy Fawkes was caught carrying would have been only a length of 'matchcord' - hempen
rope coated to make it ‘hold fire’ once it had been lit by something else.
17th century 'matchcord'
Some of the problem may be visual. Sulphur sticks look like modern matches, they go back
to the sixth century in China and do indeed ‘catch fire’ – but again, they
need to be lit first. Like rope match, these are merely ‘fire-carriers’ rather
than ‘fire-makers’, which is perhaps why even the first successful friction
match was called a ‘lucifer’.
So how did people actually make fire before that?
By a method that takes us right back to the dawn of time –
the friction between flint and steel. No-one knows when the first caveman discovered
sparks could be produced by rubbing flint against iron pyrites, but ‘flint and
steel’ immediately replaced the method of ‘rubbing two sticks together’, and created
a technique we still use to this day.
Honestly – we do. The fuel in this lighter is modern petrol, but the
spark is produced by the action of a little steel wheel on a tiny fragment of
flint. It’s effectively a modern tinderbox.
And the tinderbox is where it really started.
The
ingredients are simple: a ‘steel’ in a bow shape to fit round the knuckles, a
rugged piece of flint, some form of ‘tinder’ (amadou, dry hemp, ‘char-cloth’,
or any other material that will ‘catch’ a falling spark) and either kindling or
a sulphur ‘spunk’ to bring the spark to bloom.
How it works is fairly obvious. It’s deliberately dark, but this little video starts with
the striking of a spark by flint and steel, the catching of it in char-cloth,
and then the transfer by sulphur stick to a beeswax candle.
If you can endure
the whole 90 seconds, you’ll also see a musketeer using ‘slow match’ to ignite
his charge. I’m sorry the fire-making part is
speeded up, but we had to cut out the bits of my husband swearing when he
gashed his knuckles on the flint.
But perhaps I should have left them in – because in reality fire-making
is both slow and difficult. Even
experienced re-enactors can be nervous of making fire at a public demonstration
because it so rarely works first go. That’s what bothers me when historical fiction
gets it wrong – not the lack of technical detail, but the fact that fire-making
is tricky, that tinder could be expensive and hard to find, and that whatever different
technique is used it can’t ever be casual. If we miss that, we’re not slipping
up on a detail, we’re mistaking an entire way of life.
Fire has always been precious, and its original importance
is beautifully illustrated in William Golding’s The Inheritors, which follows
a band of Neanderthals on their summer migration. The ‘old woman’ of the group
carries what is only ever referred to as her ‘burden’, but is in fact a clay
pot containing the fire they need to keep them alive. The impression we have is
that none of them have fire-making skills, and if the fire ever went out they
could never relight it.
The advent of the tinderbox changed all that, but the value of fire persisted through to the 18th century. Once lit,
fires were kept burning forever. At night they would be ‘banked’ for safety,
using a metal hood drilled with tiny holes which the French called a ‘couvre-feu’
– and the English corrupted to a ‘curfew’.
The original ‘curfew call’ had
nothing to do with martial law, but was simply a night-watchman reminding the
citizens it was time to cover their fires for the night.
It sounds wasteful of fuel, but only one fire was needed for
a household, and from that single source would come all the hundred other
usages needed in the course of a day. Burning coals or timber from one fire
would be carried in a bucket to light another. A taper from the fire would light
a lamp or a candle, a spill from the candle would light a pipe or a cigar. That’s
why we never see Mr Darcy or the Scarlet Pimpernel hacking away with their tinderboxes
– the fire is already lit, and all they ever need to do is borrow a little from
an existing flame.
And how important it makes that one fire! For Golding’s
Neanderthals the location of the fire defined their home, and in many ways it still does today. The Romans used the word ‘hearth’ to define a home,
and it still forms the centrepiece for most houses built before 1970.
Central heating has mostly removed the physical need for a fire, but nothing
(for me) compensates for the spiritual loss. I can still remember when a family
sitting room wasn’t arranged around the position of a television, but around something
like this:
Fire transcends its physical properties, which is why our
attitudes to it remained unchanged for so long. The invention of cheap matches
should have done away with most of them, but am I the only one who remembers
seeing on her grandparents’ mantelpiece something that looked like this?
It’s a jar of spills. My grandmother used them to light the
candles, and my grandfather to light his cigars. In Agatha Christie’s The
Mysterious Affair at Styles, a key clue actually depends on the position of a jar of
spills on a mantelpiece. That seems ridiculous
in a novel set during the First World War, but fire was still precious, and
even a match wouldn’t be wasted if there was an existing fire source to be
used.
That’s the mindset we need to hold when we’re writing
historical fiction. I made a whopping great mistake in an early draft of Honour
and the Sword when I had a character light his pipe using a tinderbox – when there
was a fire already lit in the room. After much thought I actually left it in,
because it perfectly illustrated the character’s agitation at the time – but it
still originated in a mistake, and one I was determined not to make again. In
In the Name of the King I had an officer bring his volunteer musketeers a
handful of matches already lit, because it would have made more sense to light
them all from one flame than to hang about while a dozen women all got busy
with tinderboxes.
That’s what I love most about writing historical fiction – getting
inside the heads of long dead characters and seeing a problem as it was in their day. I’ve even learned from it, and when I ran out of matches and was
reduced to that hideously messy business of lighting a cigarette from the gas
cooker, I put on my ‘historical head’ and made a spill out of screwed paper instead.
I used that to light a slow-burning candle, which gave me a light whenever I needed
it for the rest of the night. One fire to light a dozen others.
Or a million. Few or none will remain of those fires that
were once kept burning day and night, but the idea remains and its spiritual
power is as strong as ever. Candles are still lit and kept burning to maintain
a vigil. A torch lit from the Olympic flame is carried hand to hand to keep the
same fire burning all over the world. Unlike ourselves, a fire that is fed will
never die.
Neither will its
history. History for most of us is a broken chain, a series of fragments
connected by gaps. Our landmarks might be those of 1066 And All That, lurching
from the Roman Occupation to the Memorable King Henry VIII with only minor
stops for Alfred to burn the cakes and John to lose his laundry in the Wash.
The landmarks of a specialist can be even wider spread, and my dad had
Victorian Church History at one end and Mediaeval Law at the other with only
the vaguest blur in between.
Fire is different, the universal element that has been with
us all the way. We can follow it through our steel-and-flint lighters to our
grandfather’s spills, through the lucifers of ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ to the
matchlock musket, through the sulphur matches and tinderboxes all the way back
to a caveman rubbing two sticks together and making a spark that would change
the world.
And when we can stand on the edge of that world and see right
back in time to its beginning, then that, for me, is when history itself
catches fire.
Today
I am living in hope. The men are installing our new central heating boiler. The
old one finally died more than a month ago, and although it may be May, the
Yorkshire spring has been more than brisk.
I
have had to get used to Being Cold. When I am cold something in me diminishes
and all I can think about is Not Wanting To Be Cold, which has given me my the
subject for this History Girls post.
One
afternoon I saw a ghost. Admittedly, it was a ghost in my mind. I found myself
wandering the house still wearing the coat from when I’d come back from
shopping three hours before. The ghost that appeared in my mind was my own
grandmother, who often wore her coat indoors. Suddenly, in my icy home, I
understood why. She’d been keeping in the warmth.
Being
comfortably warm is a modern experience, a luxury accomplished by merely the
flick of a switch. It isn’t a sensation shared by everyone or everywhere, even
now. Heat is, in truth, costly and hard to come by but Being Warm is central to
the idea of people and community.
Our
childhood images of early man – ignoring those “hunting a mammoth with spears
and fiery torches” scenes – is likely to be a group of skin-clad people
gathered around a blazing fire, both for safety and for heat.
The
remains of ancient homes show they were built around the hearth-stone and the
fire which would, if possible, be kept burning all the time. Fuel for the
flames, whether wood, peat, dung or coal, was always needed to be collected. A
possibly risky task when it took you away from your village alone.
The
Orange Tree, a favourite tale for telling, describes how the young girl, having
finished an unfair burden of tasks, sets off to gather firewood alone. She
arrives late so all the fallen branches have been collected by others and must
return to face her stepmother’s wrath. I find it hard to tell this section of
the tale without, at the back of my mind, remembering the girls and women
living in regions dominated by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
There
is always the matter of to whom the fuel belongs. In England, Magna Carta
records the right of estover, which gives a man the right to collect wood for
his personal needs. The lord of the land could also allow dead wood to be
collected on his land by, as the saying goes, hook or by crook, assumed to mean
the reapers bill-hook or by shepherd’s crook.
The
Roman centuries may have brought plumbing and heating, but an old way of
keeping warm was to staying close to other people. In the past it was usual for
several people to sleep together, whether in a round-house or a castle hall or
a cottage or the servant’s bed-chamber, sometimes with guests or extra people
hopping in alongside.
I
imagine that some people might welcome a favoured dog or two, especially if it
was a lord in his less-crowded bed, despite all its bedcovers and bed-curtains.
Further down the social scale, a cow and donkey stabled at the lower end of the
croft would give warmth to the humans, who slept at the higher end to protect
themselves from stable end seepage.
Cold
makes us value plenty of clothing, Although central heating now allows us to
wander around wearing very little, we are often amazed by the layers of
garments people wore in the past. I was certainly glad to pull on extra items.
My
house is quite a large old-fashioned stone house, built in the 1920’s and over
this last month it has sometimes been warmer outside than inside. There is, I
am informed by him who knows a word for this phenomena: hysteresis: the thick
stone makes the house hard to warm up when it is cold but also makes it slow to
cool down when it is warm. We had just ended up in the wrong part of the
equation. Was it one of the Mitford sisters who complained that English country
houses were always, always freezing?
If
so, no wonder we had centuries of night-clothes & night-caps, layers of
undergowns and overgowns, petticoats and padded jackets. No wonder poorer
people just slept in their already warm clothes. No wonder it was better to
sleep sitting up beside the fire than in a chilly bed.
The
hearth fires grew grander too. Once we were content with holes in the roof.
Then we had chimneys. There is an impressive chimney in the warming room at
Fountains Abbey, where you can stand in the fireplace and stare straight up
towards the sky. Alas for the monks, the warmth of the warming room was the
only hearth in the abbey and their brief time beside it was because it was
their turn to be bled. I am not sure that knowing the huge chimney also warmed
the important document room above would have felt consoling.
In
late Tudor and Jacobean times, brick replaced stone, enabling those wonderful
twisted creations outside, while inside the chimney-piece itself burgeoned into
a prestigious structure that included heraldic beasts and mythical characters
and coats of arms and so on: the chimney-piece as prestige.
No
matter how fine, the work of the home fires would never have let up. There was
always the dust and the soot to cope with, from the blackened roof-ceiling of
the hall-house to the invisible maids-of-all-drudgery who carried scuttles of
coal and laid the Victorian’s fires. Not to mention those who earned from it,
like the master-sweeps with their under-sized climbing boys.
Learning
how to light and keep a fire going has been an essential skill, seen as
important and manly enough for Baden Powell to want it taught to cub scouts. Is
it still, I wonder? Do children now know how to light fires – with the cub’s
allowance of two matches? – or does “health and safety” triumph?
I
will soon have a gently purring boiler but fire has always been a dangerous
friend. Hearths need damping down at night. You had to watch what you left
drying on fireguards. Women who sat too long and close to the fire ended up
with shins scorched and mottled by the flames and worse. There was also the
exciting trick of holding a large sheet of newspaper across the fireplace,
creating a kind of suction that would “bleaze up” the fire - and blaze up the
paper as well if held there a second too long.
Fire
is something we know we should not take for granted, but here in the west, many
of us take heat for granted. Heat gusts from open shop doorways, even in
winter. Adverts parade people in thin or minimal clothing. All we have to do is
flick a switch, and it’s instant.
Until,
like this last month - and maybe in times to come - it isn’t.
Penny
Dolan.
A
Boy Called M.O.U.S.E (Bloomsbury) out in paperback now.
