11Mar1871, Fire Disaster at Holker

LONDON, March 11th, 1871.
—My precious Fred sent me a full account [FN: There had been a fire at Holker.]. Something in his dressing-room chimney did the mischief, but he suspected nothing till he was woke about 5 by a loud crash, and looking into the dressing-room, was driven back by suffocating hot smoke. He groped as fast as he could (no possibility of putting any clothes on !) to the other wing, alarmed the house, and set everyone to work saving pictures and books from the rooms below. The Duke and Uncle Richard worked hard, but when F. came down again from an expedition (commanded by the Duke in the advancing dawn !) to get on some borrowed clothes, the drawing-room and library were ungetatable, and alas some good pictures were lost : the Vernet (calm sea), the large Ruysdael, the Van der Cappelle, the Canaletto, and the S. Christopher by either Memling or Albert Dürer ; engines came one after another and were efficacious in preventing the fire spreading to the old wing, which however was hardly to be averted except by the providential change of wind at the critical moment when the very doors of communication between the 2 wings were burnt. All is utter ruin of the new wing.