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Interior at Petworth: From Turner

By Rosanna Warren b. 1953 Rosanna Warren

(Lord Egremont speaks)

It was a way of punishing the house, setting it ablaze

in ruddy, golden flames; smoke

in billows up the front stairs; walls

cringing like leaves.

I say, I am afraid

in my own house. Do not believe

I started this, it was

that man, who was to portray the park alone, mind you,

but then became

enamored of the music room.

And now what have we: floods

of fire rolling from room to room, furniture wrecked

in seethe, my wife

Lady Amelia turned

wraith, God knows what fish

and drowning slaves cast up in the tide

along with pocket Bibles, snuffboxes, antimacassars, the

familiar bric-a-brac of the well-kept house.

Where are Edward, Lavinia, Jane? Why

is no one crying, “Fire! Fire!”? Am I

alone?

The man has no sense of proportion.

He had himself lashed to the mast, once, it is said,

on a steamboat off the harbor mouth

in full blizzard: sailors blinded by snow, the boat

crippled, led by the lead, they damn near died to a man, and he—

he was observing “the light at sea,” he said.

The painting? “Soapsuds and whitewash,”

the critics described it so.

But here, in our house, it is catastrophe

of flame, not weather, he loosed.

He is a man

in love with last things, clearly,

the last things, but

never understood the first, it seems to me,

and certainly not the genial medias res

of decorous, daily life.

What tea-times we’ve known in these chambers, what sonatinas,

lieder of an evening, whist,

Emmeline embroidering, the hounds calm at the hearth, now all

dissolved.

Perhaps there are no flames.

A bloody haze arises, it could be

my own eyes that fail.

I hear nothing, but fear

the upstairs rooms, cramped rooms

I have not entered in ages, only remember

the draughts, creakings, grime in closet corners,

windows too tight to lean from, the smell

of antique damp. And now, who knows

what acts unroll

on narrow beds, on floorboards warped askew?

As steam is rising, rising? As heat

buoys the house up into an atmosphere

all of its own creation?

Who are

the participants? Where has Amelia gone?

Why, in this furnace, can I hear no sound,

or feel my own skin begin to peel?

NOTES: Turner painted a series of paintings for his patron, Lord Egremont, between 1830 and 1837. Some were interiors from Lord Egremont’s own house, Petworth. I have taken liberties with the historical character of Lord Egremont.

Rosanna Warren, “Interior at Petworth: From Turner” from Each Leaf Shines Separate. Copyright © 1984 by Rosanna Warren. Reprinted with the permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Source: Each Leaf Shines Separate (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1984)

Biography

Rosanna Warren (1953--) was born in Fairfield, Connecticut to a pair of writers: Robert Penn Warren, a major poet and novelist, and Eleanor Clark, a prize-winning author of criticism, fiction, and travel books. A professor of comparative literature at Boston University, editor, and literary translator, she has published four books of poetry. Her work, which ranges between the rhapsodic and cerebral, shows a deep and abiding . . .

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