The House Is on Fire

The House Is On Fire deals with the Richmond Theatre Fire of 1811 and its immediate aftermath. It was the largest non-wartime loss of life that the United States had experienced to that point, and many important American political figures were in attendance. These included George William Smith, the Governor of Virginia; Abraham B. Venable, a former US Senator; Benjamin Botts, the lawyer who defended Aaron Burr in his trial for treason; and Louis Girardin, a local intellectual. Smith, Venable, and Botts died in the fire, while Girardin lost his wife and son. The theater was only a year old and was built after the previous theater on the site burned down (with no casualties). It was built with little regard for fire safety, and the lack of insulation and exits made the fire quick-spreading and difficult to escape.

As detailed in the novel, the Placide and Green Company did initially try to blame the fire on a supposed revolt started by enslaved people before the official story came out. The stratification of Richmond society between Black and white, enslaved and free, was extreme, and the context of the fire was that it happened in a society that could only exist due to the subjugation of an entire group of people. The misogyny discussed in the book was also at play—the large gap between the number of women and men who died is true to the historical record, with 54 women perishing compared to 18 men.

There are four main characters in The House Is On Fire, each (to varying degrees) inspired by a real person. Sally Henry Campbell was caught in the Richmond Theatre Fire and was rescued by Mr. Scott, whom she would go on to marry. Beanland intentionally reversed this narrative, having Sally save Mr. Scott to represent the heroic actions of women that night, which went unrecorded. Gilbert Hunt was also a real person. He was an enslaved blacksmith, and his actions with Dr. McCaw largely occurred as related in the novel. He did have a wife who was enslaved at the Mayo-Preston house, and Louisa Mayo did teach him to read. Beanland’s creative liberties are mainly in Gilbert’s thoughts and feelings, as well as the precise circumstances of his enslavement.

Cecily and Jack are more loosely based on their historical counterparts. Cecily was inspired by a listing for Nancy Patterson in the record of the dead. She, just as Cecily is in the novel, was listed as “presumed to have perished.” In the words of Beanland, she “followed that idea to its logical conclusion, imagining a world of such violent contradictions that even a devastating fire could mean radically different things to different people” (371). She made this odd wording an oblique reference to the possibility of an enslaved woman taking the opportunity to free herself during the fire. Jack was inspired by oblique mentions of a young stagehand in the primary sources surrounding the Placide and Green Company’s culpability. To quote Beanland, “In both newspaper articles and the inquest report [on the fire], a young stagehand is referenced, but for some reason—perhaps his own protection—he is never named” (368). Jack Gibson is Beanland’s fictionalized version of who that boy might have been and allows the text to explore concepts of culpability and truth-telling.