Let Us Never Speak Of This Again
Feb. 13th, 2011 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaMy father had a vague idea of a family story in which his uncle David, as a child, burned down the house, or at least set it seriously on fire. Numerous members of the family being notorious packrats (seriously, my father has a detailed order for nursery plants dating to maybe 1865, when a house was rebuilt), he has now turned up the documents that seem to support this:
1. An early-terminated lease, which was paid off in full (for $4000 in 1920, which must have been a lot), only 5 months after having been renewed for a 3-year term.
2. Notes in legalese from my great-grandfather about the limits of liability of a renter under conditions of fire.
So, maybe Great-Uncle David did burn down the house in October of 1920 (when he was 5). But apparently this was never spoken of again; they were that sort of family. (My father once told me he never saw his grandmother out of white gloves; she died in 1974.)
I have a lot of fascinating mixed thoughts about wealth and class and the importance of caring (financially) for spinster ladies that will have to wait until I feel less like the living dead (I spent most of yesterday with a fever and aches and nausea and much of last night actually sick.) One thing that interests me is that my great-grandparents apparently never owned a house, always renting, and at that renting in the swanky part of Pittsburgh (Shadyside) where they had grown up. I wonder why? He was a lawyer and the son of a federal judge; she was the daughter of a judge and her mother had inherited wealth - her grandfather was a banker and invested with James Laughlin, of Laughlin Steel, who was his brother in law, I know for a fact that my father inherited some of that wealth when my grandmother died, so it's not like they'd already spent it all. But they rented, and didn't buy.
1. An early-terminated lease, which was paid off in full (for $4000 in 1920, which must have been a lot), only 5 months after having been renewed for a 3-year term.
2. Notes in legalese from my great-grandfather about the limits of liability of a renter under conditions of fire.
So, maybe Great-Uncle David did burn down the house in October of 1920 (when he was 5). But apparently this was never spoken of again; they were that sort of family. (My father once told me he never saw his grandmother out of white gloves; she died in 1974.)
I have a lot of fascinating mixed thoughts about wealth and class and the importance of caring (financially) for spinster ladies that will have to wait until I feel less like the living dead (I spent most of yesterday with a fever and aches and nausea and much of last night actually sick.) One thing that interests me is that my great-grandparents apparently never owned a house, always renting, and at that renting in the swanky part of Pittsburgh (Shadyside) where they had grown up. I wonder why? He was a lawyer and the son of a federal judge; she was the daughter of a judge and her mother had inherited wealth - her grandfather was a banker and invested with James Laughlin, of Laughlin Steel, who was his brother in law, I know for a fact that my father inherited some of that wealth when my grandmother died, so it's not like they'd already spent it all. But they rented, and didn't buy.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 09:23 pm (UTC)Is it possible your ancestors didn't want to tie up capital in real estate? Mortgages before the (mumble-1930s-I think) had a 5-year balloon that had to be paid in full.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 02:08 am (UTC)Gloriosky -- but surely that's the one they built to replace it?Oops, never mind, construction date is 1904.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 12:31 am (UTC)"Indeed there was a fire. My father did burn the house down. When he was five years old, which would be 1920, he went into the drawing room, or perhaps the library, alone, and candles were burning. He decided to see what would happen if he took one of the candles and put the flame to the heavy draperies covering the windows. Well, whoosh, up they went, in flames. He ran out of the room to find the chauffeur (who I believe was his closest friend) and said "Come, look what I've done!" The chauffeur comes running, the fire is out of control, the house burns down.
My father said no one ever mentioned the event to him. No one got mad or talked to him or helped him understand anything about the event. Which is so weird. It stayed with him as a big problem for the rest of his life. As far as I could tell, it was never discussed even among the siblings. It was the elephant in the room for sure. He even retold the story to me the week he was dying.
When I asked Aunt Jane about it, she told me they were told as children never to mention the event. But she did say she had the measles and they carried her wrapped in covers downstairs and out of the burning house. And that it was winter. And that she was freezing. She must have been 12.
Interestingly, when my brother Day was five or six he and a friend burned down a barn, not knowing father had done a similar thing. Father told us about it after that event."
no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 02:39 am (UTC)Like beans up the nose, I suspect that one will be reserved in future generations for the over-arson set.