Still, however, he was working on without much success. The Gothic style, though as yet little understood in its real principles, was now asserting its claims, especially for ecclesiastical purposes; and some stimulus had been given to ecclesiastical architecture (such as it then was) by the erection of the “Commissioners’ Churches.”[28] To this style he had never paid sufficient attention; he had now to become a student; and he threw himself into the new study with characteristic diligence and perseverance. His first essays were not very successful, though certainly not below the average of the time; he used to think and speak of them afterwards with a humorous kind of indignation; he carefully destroyed every drawing relating to them, and would have still more gladly destroyed the originals. Up to the day of his death he felt that he was continually advancing in knowledge of Gothic, and was unsparing in the criticism of his own earlier work.
The event proved that he had judged rightly. His first works of any consequence were two churches built for the Commissioners, one at Prestwich, and the other at Campfield, Manchester.[29] His letters show the exultation with which he hailed the first success, and the complacency with which he regarded his first church designs, a complacency justified by the high opinion formed of them by others, but destined to undergo a woful change in after years, when these churches served as a continual subject of laughter to his friend Mr. Pugin and to himself.[30]
The first stone of the Prestwich Church was laid by Lord Wilton,[31] on the 3rd of August, 1822, and that of the Manchester Church (Campfield) by the Bishop of Chester, on the 12th of the same month. The designs seem to have been then well received, and to have given him his introduction to Manchester, where he found warm friends (especially the late Sir J. Potter), and afterwards did a good deal of work. They, of course, showed little acquaintance with the spirit of Gothic detail. But they were considered to have elegance of proportion, and some originality of design. The fronts of churches appeared to him deficient in extension, and he attempted to obtain this by means of an arcaded porch at Manchester, as afterwards at Brighton by spreading the lower part of the tower. In this, as in other points, he carried out principles fixed in his own mind, without shrinking from ecclesiological heresies. On the other hand, in spite of his admiration for the horizontal lines and regular forms of Egyptian and Greek architecture, he entered so thoroughly into the vertical principle of Gothic, that he felt unsatisfied in carrying out any Gothic building without a spire. In his first church at Prestwich, as afterwards at Brighton, he did his utmost to secure the erection of one, though in both cases economical considerations prevailed against the architect’s protest. In his last work at the New Palace at Westminster, as soon as he felt himself “master of the situation,” the castellated character of the original design faded away, and a forest of spires sprang up, which he at times longed to complete by some spire-like erection on the Victoria Tower itself.
His success with regard to these churches was the more welcome, inasmuch as it enabled him at last to conclude his marriage, on the 7th of December, 1822, and thus to enter on the domestic life which he so much desired and prized. The small house in Ely Place continued for a time to be his home. Economy was still a necessity, and in that economy he had a prudent and affectionate coadjutrix. But, indeed, except for his art, he was never lavish; and in spite of his enterprising and sanguine temperament, he had a horror of embarrassment and debt.
The work at Manchester seemed to be the first entrance on his long career of professional success. He was appointed, in March, 1823, architect for the erection of another church at Oldham, somewhat on the same scale and style as those already built. A commission was also given him to prepare drawings and plans for some alterations and enlargement of St. Martin’s, Outwich, which were afterwards carried out under his superintendence.
In the midst of it there came an alarm which would have overwhelmed a nervous architect, though it failed to disturb his equanimity to any serious extent. Soon after the opening of his church at Prestwich there came an express from Manchester, stating that one of the galleries had shown signs of falling during service, that the congregation had rushed out in panic, and that many were seriously hurt. By the time the then tedious journey to Manchester was over, the report had grown into “Stand Church fallen, 300 killed and wounded.” It turned out that a small hair crack had appeared in the plaster in consequence of too rapid drying. A man under the gallery perceived it, and fancied that it widened rapidly, whereupon he shouted out, “The church is falling!” The consequence of this sapient proceeding was a sudden rush to the doors, at one of which the steps had not yet been fixed. Down went the temporary steps, and the congregation over them. Happily but few were hurt, and those not seriously; so the architect’s reputation escaped.
Meanwhile he was constantly at work. In the year 1823 he entered into the competition for the new buildings at King’s College, Cambridge, his friend Mr. Wolfe being also a competitor. The building was to be either Grecian or Gothic. In spite of the genius loci, he proposed a Greek building, thinking that a classical style (for which the Fellows’ Building afforded a precedent) would be less likely to invite comparison with the overwhelming grandeur of the chapel. Besides, in Gothic he was still weak, and somewhat inclined, after the fashion of the day, to restrict its employment to ecclesiastical purposes. In this competition he experienced a failure, probably fortunate enough for his reputation; for he never looked back on his design with any satisfaction, and, in fact, his attachment to Greek was gradually giving way. He felt that, for modern purposes, the style was not sufficiently plastic. Except on a grand scale, and in a commanding position, with full command of polychromy and of sculpture, the Greek portico seemed to him to lose its original effect, and become flat and insipid.
He did not indeed suddenly relinquish the style which in his early days he had regarded as the perfection of beauty and truth, nor did he fail to show that he had really grasped the principles on which this truth and beauty depended. In 1824 he built the Royal Institution of Fine Arts at Manchester, an edifice of considerable size and importance. On this building it was remarked, in the ‘Builder’ of May 19th, 1860, shortly after his death,—“The building was of great importance, historically speaking, and in the results which it produced. By contrast with the pseudo-Greek, which was general in public buildings, and which in Manchester had even degenerated from the time of Harrison, it presented what was at once Greek derivatively, or Greco-Roman in details and impress, and yet was work new or original—work of art and mind. The portico, as a feature of architecture, was used and not spoiled; that feature and remainder of the building were grouped together, whereas in Greek of that day a portico was often tacked on to a many-windowed façade; the staircase hall, grand in proportions within, and culminating to a central feature of the exterior, was the forerunner of later efforts of the kind by the same architect and by others.” And even after he had given up the erection of buildings in the Greek style, it was remarked, with great truth, that “his feeling for the subtle beauty of Greek architecture never left him, and probably contributed in no slight degree to give that air of finish and refinement to his works which so greatly distinguished them.”
In 1831 he made a Greek design, of great massiveness and grandeur, for the Birmingham Town Hall—a building which had the needful advantages of scale and position.[32]
But with these exceptions, he did little in the style to which his early studies had been given. Practical experience confirmed the doubts which had already been suggested by theory; and he saw that Gothic and Italian had the mastery of the field.[33]