KATE COLQUHOUN
A THING IN DISGUISE
THE VISIONARY LIFE OF
JOSEPH PAXTON
For David
She did not have to be told … that glass is a thing in disguise, an actor, is not solid at all, but liquid, that an old sheet of glass will not only take on a royal and purplish tinge but will reveal its true liquid nature by having grown fatter at the bottom and thinner at the top, and that even while it is as frail as the ice on a Paramatta puddle, it is stronger under compression than Sydney sandstone, that it is invisible, solid, in short, a joyous and paradoxical thing, as good a material as any to build a life from.
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
CONTENTS
Part 1: Earth
Part 2: Air
Part 3: Fire
Praise for A Thing in Disguise
Just after 7 p.m. on Monday, 30 November 1936, a small fire started under the central transept of the Crystal Palace in south London, the greatest glasshouse ever built.
Preparations for The National Cat Show to begin the next day had just been finalised. A choir was rehearsing in the garden room, birds ruffled their feathers in the aviaries. Otherwise the Palace – with its nave of 1,608 feet and main transept larger than the dome of St Peter’s in Rome – was still. Its enormous frosty surface, made up of over 1,500,000 square feet of glass, glittered and, as the moon emerged occasionally from the cloud, it struck the statues in the formal, terraced gardens spreading out below the building. In the surrounding boroughs, families prepared their evening meals and planned their Christmases.
The two Palace nightwatchmen on duty that evening were rather slow on the uptake. Their first call was made to the Penge Fire Brigade just before eight o’clock, by which time the flames could be seen clearly from outside the building and street fire alarms were being activated all over the area. At 7.45 p.m. Police Constable Parkin, passing on a bus, was one of many who also called the brigade. They arrived at 8.03 p.m. with their one, slow fire engine. Beckenham Fire Brigade followed within a couple of minutes, and soon a call went out to all the brigades in London to join them. On the great