Originally published in Saint Pauls (Virtue and Co.) vol.2 #12 (Sep 1868).
To count the cost before beginning to build the house was probably as good advice long before Solomon's time as ever it has been since; and probably, too, it was quite as little regarded. The present moment, when we are about to build two houses, one for the national pictures and one for the lawyers, does indeed call for a careful counting of the cost: the cost, not in money only, nor indeed in national reputation for architectural taste, for that is not very high; but in the probable waste of great opportunities. And by a greater piece of good fortune than even a little while ago seemed possible, we find that in the case of the Law Courts a like decision to that previously come to touching the gallery, has been announced,—namely, that no one of the submitted designs will be chosen as it stands. Though the satisfaction which must be felt at this is tempered by the accompanying suggestions, yet any delay is gain, because it may be turned to good account in getting public notice directed to the subject, and so perhaps by good fortune arriving at a rational result. There is good hope that the suggestion of employing jointly two architects, being manifestly absurd, may be abandoned, notwithstanding the modest instancing, by one of the joint architects of the new Downing Street offices, of the manner in which a like combination of himself and his colleague has been found to work. However these gentlemen may have succeeded in making things pleasant, the result as at present seen in the building will hardly dispose the public to regard the arrangement with the like complacency.
That buildings to serve after a certain fashion tho purposes for which they are intended, could be designed, not only by any of the invited architects, separately or in combination, and by scores of others as well, but by perhaps nearly every draughtsman employed in the office of any one of them, is scarcely to be doubted. The art, if it can be called so, of the architect has become nearly as mechanical a process as the making of a pair of trews was in the hands of Fergus McIvor's tailor. But to make a building the visible expression of its purpose is the part of the true artist; and, though we have looked in vain for such a man, the present occasion may perhaps, if fair play be given, call one forth. But what, save failure, can be looked for whilst there is, as at all events is the case with the Law Courts, a foregone conclusion as to the style to be adopted? A conclusion sought to be justified by a fallacy which, though as transparent as it is absurd, is yet the main cause of the low state of architecture as a fine art; and this fallacy we propose to point out.
Mr. J. Beresford-Hope, who, it must be owned, was but repeating a common cry, said in the House in reply to a question, with the superfine air of omniscience characteristic of Saturday Reviewers, that the "only" reason for inviting the competition of such architects alone as are known to be devoted to the so-called Gothic style was, that as the design was to be for English Law Courts, so it ought to be in the English style of architecture. Now as this gentleman is one of the commissioners who are to decide upon a design for the new gallery, persons diffident of their own knowledge of the subject, and with an awful idea of a commissioner, may be led by that fact to think his opinion of great weight; and the more so, that in the House itself nobody thought proper to correct him. But at this little surprise need be felt, seeing that it is a house mainly composed of the same members who, with seeming satisfaction, heard Mr. Cowper, in defending the ridiculous and feeble Westminster Crimean memorial, describe it as a classical column.
There never has been any style with a just claim to be called English. Architecture, in middle-aged and modern Europe, has been a thing of periods, not of nations. There has undoubtedly been in each country a smack of the soil, giving to the buildings of each a character more or less distinctive: in the most widely differing examples in various countries showing difference enough to constitute, say, a variety, not a species; and in the most nearly alike, showing little or none. And this holds quite as good with so-called Classic as with so-called Gothic. If nationality is to be the ground of choice, the Elizabethan style has as strong a claim as any other; but it may be taken for granted that its claim will find no supporters. Though, vicious as this style is, it is doubtful whether its adoption would not, on grounds which will presently appear, involve a less absurdity than would that of any one of the lately exhibited designs. To try to beg the question by speaking of Gothic as English, is either ignorant or disingenuous; and indeed the attempt is particularly out of place, seeing that most of the designs have a good deal of Continental character.
A few general considerations will help us to the true bearings of the question. The merit of a style is in direct proportion to its fitness to current wants, manners, and customs. It ought to be the natural outgrowth of its period; and every style deserving of the name has been so. To say that the architecture of the fifteenth century is fit for the nineteenth is in effect to say that it was unfit for the fifteenth: to say that it was fit, as it undoubtedly was,—admirably fit,—for the fifteenth, is to prove that it is unfit for us. It could not be otherwise unless the social life had remained the same. The greater the reverence and admiration reasonably felt for the exquisite architecture of the Middle Ages, the greater will be the reluctance of any one who understands the first principles of art, to imitate that architecture in the buildings of to-day. In proportion to the resemblance of the men and manners of to-day to the men and manners of any by-gone time will be the fitness of the architecture of the latter to serve the purposes of the former. This age naturally differs in many important respects from any other, and it is much to be wished that a distinctive character should be stamped upon its buildings. Yet one feature of the present age is its want of individuality, and perhaps therefore the very want of distinctiveness may be looked upon as a distinction. "The individual," says Mr. Tennyson, "withers, and the world is more and more." Failing the power to produce an original style, the next best thing would be the adoption of one of time nearly assimilating in its usages to our own. Do we find this assimilation in any of the periods of Gothic? Certainly not. Beautifully adapted as Gothic forms were to the then conditions of life, they are as little so to those now existing as would be for a home for the full-fledged bird, the egg-shell from which it once issued. To an age which read little and wrote little, and which had but few indoor occupations; when public worship was almost wholly ceremonial, and which knew glass, either not at all, or as a rare and costly luxury, styles more fit cannot be conceived: but, as beforehand we should expect to find, so we do in fact know, that when the conditions of life altered, men abandoned the old forms, and endeavoured to create a style more fitted to their wants.
Our judgment may be assisted by a rapid glance at the steps by which the perfection of the Pointed style was reached. The first undoubtedly was a rude imitation of the architecture of Rome and Greece by the northern races. The influence of Greek-and Roman forms is plainly visible in the Norman or Romanesque style; but it is but an influence, not a reproduction. An individuality reflecting the wants and ways of the builders, and probably influenced by the materials in which they had been accustomed to work, shows itself in what is in effect an original style,—picturesque, if barbarous. The rude and stunted columns and the narrow window-openings are appropriate to an age of rough and hardy habits, little accustomed to indoor life, and unacquainted with the use of glass. The influence of classic forms is still seen, but more faintly and only in the ornaments, in the succeeding style, the Pointed, which was a natural, and probably in several countries simultaneous, evolvement from the Romanesque by a soundly artistic process on the part of the mediæval architects, who, eliminating by degrees the borrowed forms and making successive adaptations to the wants of an increasing, if still imperfect, civilisation,—and, in particular, by taking advantage of the more easy and cheaper production of glass,—produced a style which in its successive developments possessed perhaps more picturesque beauty than does any other that the world has yet seen.
Let us for a moment consider the influence which the single material, glass, would naturally have upon building. Anciently, in the beautiful climate of Southern Europe,—probably then even more genial than now, because the land was better cultivated, and where glass was as a building material practically unknown,—the light and air required were generally admitted freely from the top; but where openings in the walls were used they were in character like those of our modern houses. But in the North, to keep out the weather by a substantial roof was a first necessity; and for a like reason, and for security from violence, the window openings were made very small. When glass became more easily procurable, light could be admitted without the probable accompaniment of rain and wind, and the size of the openings was increased; but as glass was precious, and in the leaden frames in which it was mounted was liable to damage if the openings were large, the plan was invented of subdividing one large opening into several smaller ones, which, woven and interlaced in the upper part of the openings, became, under the name of tracery, one of the crowning glories of the Pointed styles. The mediæval artists, giving free play to their fancy in the devising of an endless variety of graceful forms, converted, by the means by which it was surmounted, what was really an obstacle into a source of beauty. But with the costliness of glass passed away for ever the necessity for tracery; and now, as ever since, its use is a mockery and a sham. Let any one consider whether in a building in which plenty of light is required,—and in what modern building is it not?—he would take away, as by the use of tracery he must, a great portion of the upper, and therefore the most light-affording part of his window-openings. There can be but one answer: except, perhaps, from a professed Gothicist.
The new civilisation resembled more the civilisation of antiquity than it did the barbarism of the Middle Ages, but was not identical with it. In casting aside mediæval usages it cast aside also its architecture, and sought new models in the classic remains. It did not, however, slavishly reproduce them,—that absurdity was reserved for a later day,—but it took them, as it were, for a motive; and though adopting certain of its forms,—not, however, without considerable modifications,—it used them but as factors in new combinations; so that the result was the creation of a style which, though it may not deserve to be called original, yet did possess much originality;—a style which, lacking alike the exquisite grace and delicate beauty of antiquity and the rich and overflowing fancy of the Middle Ages, is yet infinitely better adapted than the architecture of either to the wants of that particular period. The buildings of an age are, so to speak, the clothes in which its institutions are apparelled. Westminster Hall was a noble and appropriate banqueting-room for Richard the Second; but to build a like one for Queen Victoria would be as childish a sham as was the Eglinton tournament.
Wherever a modern Gothic building has proved convenient for its purpose, it has been by sinking all that gave character to the genuine Gothic. The new Manchester courts are said to be very successful; but, judging from prints, the Gothic is but skin-deep. The lines are mainly horizontal, and, so far at any rate as the outside of the building goes, a mere change of details would make it quite as good a specimen of Classic as it is at present of Gothic work. The paramount necessities of abundant light and ventilation, ease of access, and the ordinary appliances of modern comfort, are incompatible with the Gothic lines. Either we must sacrifice utility and convenience to our Gothic, or we must so modify our Gothic as to make it neither Gothic nor anything else. "Under which king, Bezonian? Speak, or die!"
The great experiment of our own times in that style,—the Palace of Westminster,—is, as might have been foretold, a wretched failure. The miserable building is absolutely smothered by its decorations,—decorations silly and unmeaning, lifeless imitations of the living work of by-gone days, imitations wholly wanting in the spirit and purpose which, notwithstanding their crude art, enabled the old carvers to endow their work with grandeur. Take, throughout the building, more particularly the human and other effigies in stone or glass in which it has been attempted to preserve the Gothic character. Through the stiff and ill-drawn forms of real mediæval work a vitality struggles to reveal itself, and shows that the carver's conception was in advance of his technical skill to give it form and substance. Here, on the contrary, the technical skill is all, and the conception nothing. The chaff is carefully garnered, the grain is wholly lost. The one is like the hesitating utterance of great and noble thoughts by an unready speaker; the other like the prattle of a foolish parasite who tries to give importance to his empty commonplaces by imitating the tone and manner of his master. Another, perhaps more than commonly striking, instance of this false taste is to be seen in the lions at the base of the Westminster Crimean memorial. The defence attempted for these and their like is that they are meant to be grotesque. But this is the very head and front of their offending. A story is told either by or of Ménage:—Some one produced an epigram to which it was objected that it was bad, that it had no point. "Oh," says the author, "you must not make that an objection; it is not meant to have any point; it is an epigram à la grecque." Presently at dinner some soup was served, which the epigrammatist complained was bad and insipid. "Oh," says the other, "you must not make that an objection. It is soup à la grecque."
The conditions of life among us to-day are no doubt different from those of the days of Wren and Jones, but not materially so. Indeed, in comparison with those of the Edwards and Henrys, they may be considered identical with our own. It seems, therefore, to follow that if, in the lack of architects worthy of their art, we must be content to repeat the art of others, we should choose that of the later date. To this it maybe said that on these grounds the plaster abominations of the later Georges should a fortiori be our models. The answer obviously is that the style is in most cases essentially the same, but debased and vulgarised; and where it is not the same, the same error in principle, against which protest is now made, was committed in the slavish and silly imitations of the buildings of other styles and other countries. For instance, the Colosseum in the Regent's Park, the Brighton Pavilion, and a host of others. Servile imitation of this kind, whether it be of the Parthenon and the Erechtheium, or of a fifteenth-century church, is humiliating in the last degree. The most "sweetly pretty" of the fashionable architect's designs, which are the admiration of enthusiastic girls and mild curates, are but the culmination of the false taste which had its beginning at Strawberry Hill and Fonthill Abbey. If we are to imitate any particular style, we may reasonably take the best period of it. But must we be for ever imitators only? Must we for ever limp with unequal steps in the foot-prints of the dead past? Must we for ever see Corinthian and Ionic, First-Pointed and Second-Pointed, Italian and Renaissance, Romanesque and Byzantine? Certainly it seems proved that if it depended upon an eleven of gentlemen in good practice, we should have to do so. But surely we may hope for better things. There are signs in this very city, in even some of the warehouses and like buildings, that a sounder knowledge of the principles of taste is growing up. A palace of justice, or a national gallery, is a higher flight, it is true; but if the intelligence of the kingdom be asked to essay its powers, it may well be expected that far worthier designs will be produced than any of those by the chosen few. All England against "The Eleven" is All the World to Nothing.
One of the first steps towards the production of a good design, be it for what purpose it may, is the full understanding that it must, by its character, express its purpose. At present it would seem as if designs were made beforehand, without reference to any purpose in particular; so that on a design being wanted for a picture gallery or a railway station, it may come in equally well for either, or for anything else. One architect having by him a design which happens to be rather like St. Paul's, and another having one rather like the Cannon Street Station, and several more architects having other designs which respectively have their resemblances, each and all may, with a little judicious cooking, fit their designs with plans to pass muster for the required purpose. And beyond doubt, in these limited competitions for the Courts and the Gallery, great ability has been shown in the planning. Of the kind of talent required for the, so to speak, mechanical part of a design, the arrangement of the plan, which is undoubtedly a highly important part, there is abundance; and there has seldom been a stronger call for its display than in the planning of these Courts, which is a most difficult task. The plan is not only very important, but in some respects far the most important part of all. To those who are to use the building it is so; but to the rest of London, of England, even of the world, the fine art part of the question is the chief. And there is no question of one or the other: it should be one and the other. There need be no sacrifice of usefulness to beauty, or of beauty to usefulness; on the contrary, to the true artist a high degree of the one would be a means in reaching an equal degree of the other.
With respect to the National Gallery, the commissioners have joined to their rejection of the submitted plans an expression of admiration for that particular design, the chief feature of which is an enormously large dome. The advantage of this dome internally as part of a picture gallery is not obvious; and in the climate of Rome and Florence an objection to it externally might have been made: but in London, with our bright sun, and clear, cloudless, and smokeless air, and our long bright winter days, we may well afford to have the horizontal rays of a three o'clock, p.m., December sun intercepted by its enormous and expensive bulk. It is gratifying to know that it is to the delicate sense of propriety of the author of this design that we owe the "happy thought" of the erection in the courtyard of a metropolitan railway station and hotel, and at a considerable distance from the site which the original is supposed to have occupied, a pretended copy of the cross which marked a resting-place of Queen Eleanor's bier.
That a form of building which should give free play to the modern ways of life should be originated is, especially at this moment, earnestly to be wished. Its full development must come by degrees. But surely no man with a brain can do other than know that this age wants a style as different from Classic or Gothic as are coat and waistcoat from doublet and hose, or toga and chlamys. Surely there must be brain enough somewhere in England to put us on the right track; some Columbus to show us how to balance the egg. If we cannot get something appropriate it would be better even to have something purely negative than to have a wretched masquerade in the garments of our ancestors.
The want of appreciation of true principles on the part of our modern Gothicists, shows itself in several differing degrees of bad taste, which may respectively be described in a technical manner as the First, Second, and Third Want-of-Point-ed styles. The first, and least objectionable, is seen in such buildings as the Martyrs' Cross at Oxford. This shows simply the pedantry of false taste. The second shows itself in the above-named Charing Cross Hotel Cross, in which to the above fault is added that of an outrage upon a sentiment, and a quasi forgery. The third, and worst, displays itself in what is facetiously called the restoration of mediæval buildings. In this case both the above sins are usually preceded by a large destruction of the remains of the genuine work which the new is to replace; and then, by a paring and re-chiselling and scouring of such old work as is allowed to remain, the vigorous work of the old artist-workmen is brought down to the level of that of our workmen-artists. It is from such a fate that Westminster Abbey had, as may be seen in Dean Stanley's just-published "Memorials," not long since a narrow escape: an escape which the present writer has the vanity to think he perhaps had the honour of helping to effect.
It is rather strange that the absurdity of this affectation of mediævalism, which would be patent enough if shown in other things, should in a building be quietly accepted. A man having a collection of antique armour will take care of it, as well he may; and, if his tastes that way lie, will study each suit, will know every joint and buckle, and the use of each part as well as the armourer who forged it, or the knight who wore it: but he never thinks of ordering a new pair of wrought-iron pantaloons on the old pattern, that he may wear them at the dinner-table or the opera. If he did it would, in case of an adverse will, be a lucky thing for the heir-at-law. Lord John Manners, if he were at the War Office, would probably not want to put the cavalry into plate armour cap-à-pied, even if it were starting for Abyssinia.
The fact is we have kept a very tight hold of the saddle, but we have completely lost the horse: so completely, indeed, that though he is certainly gone forward along the road, many of us are going back along it to look for him. It will, too, be rather hard upon the archæologists of a few hundred years hence. Pity the sorrows of a poor antiquary who shall discover, say far north in Scotland, a church, early Norman in style. How his eyes sparkle! Nothing was known of the Normans having penetrated here. He has made a discovery: he will throw new light upon history. The style is something feeble, it is true; but it is clearly of about 1100 a.d. Then the stone comes from a quarry many miles off, and in a spot which clearly must have been inaccessible to wheels before the present road was made. This proves that the road must have been in existence before 1100. Wonderful race, the Normans! Again, he finds in the work some characteristic previously supposed to have been introduced about the time of Victoria I., or Edward VII.; and he thinks, with Alphonse Karr, that, after all, inventions are only things that the world has had time to forget. So he muses and moralizes, and goes on peering among the mouldering stones until at last he comes to the foundation, where he finds a glass bottle which, more elated than ever, he pounces upon, and, opening it, learns that the first stone of this church was laid in the year 1868.