The funeral arrangements were such as to avoid all that could jar on the solemnity of the occasion—an occasion never to be forgotten by those who took part in it. It was impossible not to feel the sincere and generous sympathy, which had assembled all the representatives of the art and science of England to do honour to his memory, and the strong personal feelings of respect and friendship, which mingled with the public demonstration, and gave it warmth and substance. The foresight of it would often have been full of support and comfort to him; the reality was deeply felt by those who followed him to the grave.
The following resolutions from the Institute of British Architects, and the Architectural Society, were evidences of the kindly sympathy of his professional brethren:—
“The Royal Institute of British Architects, impressed with the loss which the profession and the country have sustained through the decease of Sir Charles Barry, whose genius has conferred great lustre upon this age, hereby record their profound sympathy with the affliction which has fallen (more immediately) upon the widow and family of their lamented friend.”
“The Committee of the Architectural Museum desire to express their sense of the severe loss which Art has sustained by the demise of Sir Charles Barry, an architect whose fame was the property of his country, and indeed of the world. They desire also to express their feeling of their own personal loss in him, who as one of their Trustees, and as a cordial supporter of the Museum, had conciliated the respect and regard of all who knew him. They beg in the last place to offer the expression of their most sincere sympathy and condolence to his family, and request the President to transmit the message to them.”
These resolutions were but the concentrated expressions of the warm and kindly feeling manifested at the meeting of the Institute on May 22nd. On that occasion a paper was read by M. Digby Wyatt, Esq., V.P., “On the Architectural Career of Sir Charles Barry,” remarkable alike for the accuracy and fulness of its sketch of events, and for the generous spirit of appreciation and respect which animates its thought. It may, perhaps, be permitted me to quote its conclusion here:—
“I know not how any moral, that the ablest rhetorician in the world could draw from Sir Charles Barry’s professional career, could be made to speak more strongly, or admonish us more stringently, than the facts of his life and the monuments which he has left behind him, do for us unerringly, if we will but open our hearts to apprehend and study them aright. His incessant labours, first to learn and then to practise, again to learn and again to practise, and again, and again, and again to learn and practise, so long as his physical energies could support the activity of his intellect, ought to convey to us all a lesson of profound humility, and a stimulus to exertion of the most active kind.
“If he, with all his natural genius and aptitude for art, could achieve success, in the measure in which he did achieve it, only by never-ending and still beginning toil and study, how can we emulate even an approximation to his excellence in our art, without an exercise of both? His life is surely another practical illustration of that which the lives of the greatest artists who ever lived—of Titian, of Michael Angelo, of Raffaelle, of Leonardo da Vinci, of Albert Durer—already bear witness to: that study and practice must in art ever go hand-in-hand. Study without practice will but make the pedant; practice without study can but multiply busy worthlessness.”
These tributes to his memory, coming as they did from those who could speak with authority, have a special value of their own; with all allowances for the kindly feelings of the moment, they may be accepted as a substantial and enduring testimony. At the time, perhaps, a tribute of respect, at least as much felt and appreciated, was marked by the voluntary attendance at his funeral of the workmen who had helped to carry out his works. His family felt themselves justified (in their letter of thanks to the workmen) “in recognising in that attendance, not only a kind and cordial sympathy with their own sorrow, but also a proof of the respect with which his memory was regarded, and of the pride and interest felt, in having aided to accomplish what his genius had conceived.” And what was true of the workmen was still more true of those who had been his subordinates in the work, and had laboured cordially and efficiently in the service. He had inspired the sympathy which always attends on enthusiasm and self-sacrificing labour in a great cause.
A kindly notice in the ‘Saturday Review’ (of May 19th, 1860) may be added appropriately here, as expressing the feeling of the educated public on the occasion:—
“The death of Sir Charles Barry, at a moment when he appeared in the full enjoyment of life and intellect, is a severe public, no less than an artistic loss. We are glad to learn that his claims as one of the worthies of the age are to be recognised by a public funeral, and a resting-place beneath the vault of Westminster Abbey.... It is undeniable that Sir C. Barry has not been for many years popular with officials; but we are not inclined to think the worse of him on that account. He was through life a man of large and expansive ideas, and of resolute determination to carry out those ideas; and, as might be supposed, he was continually in collision alike with red-tape officials, and the economic bullies of supply-nights. Season after season a raid at Sir C. Barry was a sure card for a little cheap popularity in the House of Commons.... His Prize design in its first conception embodied a great mistake, the adaptation of Tudor forms to an Italian mass. Time rolled on, and the great Gothic Renaissance came into existence, owing in a great degree to this very competition. Barry was not the man to cling to an inferior and antiquated design from false shame or blindness to the movement of the age. The world was learning its lesson, and he conned that lesson with the world.... His death at this time, when he was gradually retiring from the more active pursuit of his profession, was, in one respect, as great a loss as if he had been carried off in the height of his more youthful labours. At a moment when the battle of the styles is running the risk of creating an odium architectonicum, and when the pernicious heresy is blossoming in influential quarters, that the dignity, the ornament, and the convenience of a metropolis are no concern of a great nation and an imperial legislature, we cannot well afford to miss the man who, from his position, talents, and age, could speak upon architectural questions with somewhat of the authority of a Nestor.”