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This
page contains a "lost chapter" of The Dante Club—a
chapter or section that didn't make it into the final version
of the novel. Some include plot elements and characters not
present in the printed edition.
"Epilogue to The Dante Club"
IN an
autumn evening of 1872, a fire raged in Boston. A stream of flames
engulfed an astounding sixty-five acres of the city's downtown business
districts, smothering the area bounded by Washington Street on the west
side, Sumner Street on the south, the bay, Oliver Street, and Liberty
Square on the east, and State Street on the north; afterwards, the
skyline was no more, the downtown landscape was a crater of red-hot
coals. When the yellow smoke first overtook the city, merchants
scrambled to save their wares. Thieves looted any building too far
gone to be guarded by the altered militia. Bystanders watched, too
shocked to move. "I saw the fire eating its way straight
toward my deposits," mourned the poet Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes in a letter to his friend Mr. James Russell Lowell, who
was stationed overseas as Ambassador to England. In fact, not
just individual investments but over seventy-five million dollars
worth of real and personal property was destroyed by the morning
of November 11, 1872, when pillars of ashy mists still clung to
the clouds over Boston. The warehouse district lost millions of
gloves, stacks of laces, piles of clothing, carpeting (enough,
it was imagined, to supply the whole city), thousands of top
hats, bowlers and imported silk; the promenade between Sumner
and Franklin Streets witnessed the demise of clothing factories,
jewelry stores, photographers' salons, cigar shops, confectioners'
stalls, eating-houses, barbers' shops, engravers' chambers,
wholesale apothecary-shops, and paper-stores; few buildings
were spared among Milk Street's clothing-houses, saddle-makers,
thread-dealers, stationers, plumbers, printers, boot, shoe,
and leather merchants, clock-makers, book-publishers,
plated-ware manufacturers, wholesale millinery
establishments, rubber-stores, wool-vendors, and
sales-rooms for crockery, hardware, chemicals, and
steam-engines.
For the twelve straight hours of
the fire, the din around the city was remarkable. Boulders
and windows from the eight-hundred destroyed buildings fell
incessantly. Granite sparkled and cracked as if it were chalk.
Walls crumbled into the streets, shaking the earth. Men
shouted, steam engines buzzed and whistled. Firemen in
rubber coats bellowed from behind barricades, where their
tangled hoses were trampled under the feet of the fleeing
and the curious. The wind shrieked through the broken towers left
standing. This wind, indeed, was perhaps the most astonishing aspect
of the event. The great heat of the unquenchable conflagration
created strong currents of air, causing the winds to whistle through
the corners and alleys, through the ragged towers, as fierce and
cold as a January night. So fiercely did the wind blow, in fact,
that it was difficult at times to stand up.
Boston looked very different by firelight. Deep
corners and low stones on buildings and in alleyways
were illuminated which had never before seen the light
of the sun or of gas. The faces of men and women
carried a ghastly incandescence. Flickering
semi-shadows trembled on the sidewalks, the buildings, the trees.
The day after the fire, Reverend J. R. Cushing of Auburndale
preached to his congregation in the Hanover Street
Methodist Church, invoking the text of Heb.
xiii. 14: "For here we have no continuing
city; but we seek one to come." The
preacher closed with the following practical
suggestions still heeded by the city of
Boston: "1. Build well. Put no Mansard roofs on
character. 2. God requires fruits (material as well as
spiritual) in their season. 3. He rebukes extravagant habits
of living. 4. Earth is an unwise place to put
treasure in. 5. 'Prepare to meet thy God.' It
is a poor time to pray in a fire."
After investigation, marshals concluded that the
fire began from a series of sparks around an empty warehouse
at 83 Sumner Street, at which point the flames had spread in
all directions. Contributing factors were considered
and criticized by the public and the city officials: the
narrow streets, the high buildings, the wooden Mansard
roofs. But these are mere conjectures. The origins of
our upheavals rarely reveal themselves.
Back
to Lost Chapters archive.
All
original materials © Matthew Pearl.
Website designed by Chris Costello www.costelloart.com
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