This charred bit of wood is all that remains to us of the beam that
fell upon
Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester during the great fire that destroyed
Thornfield Hall,
in Yorkshire, England, in 1837. The beam, however, fell in
such a way as to
offer Rochester some protection from the general havoc created
by his
monomaniacal wife, and though he lost an eye and a hand in the catastrophe,
he was in fact taken alive from the burning ruin and eventually
recovered
something of his formerly robust health.
Back to the Museum