And this word “expression” is a very significant one, and a useful one too. The parts of a building may not be individually beautiful, and yet there may be a good “expression” in it. The details of Charles I.’s style are often grotesquely bad when viewed in piecemeal, and yet we recognise a good expression in the building of that period as we enter some old town. Early English foliage is extremely stiff, and taken by itself ludicrous, as far as any imitation of nature, which it is supposed to be intended to represent, is concerned; and yet who can be insensible to the general result? The capitals throw a fine shade on the turrets in the sunshine when there are angular shafts, and the tall slender columns (clustered perhaps), though they may have no feature that can be singled out as excellent, are very fine in general effect. Expression may therefore exist independently of detail, as beautiful detail may be lavished over a façade, and lost. To bring the comparison, as has been done, to the human countenance, a building may be
“Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more;”
and yet another may be pleasant, and bright without such advantages as these. We have often seen, to continue the simile of a human countenance, a face that has nothing regular or perfect about it, yet the features seemed in harmony, and there was a pleasant expression. Of course nothing here can apply to the grotesque designs in bosses and gurgoyles that so often appear in our buildings after the thirteenth century; they are inexpressibly tedious and useless, and never under any circumstances have they the slightest relevance or interest. They may be sometimes of trifling local curiosity, as illustrating some scandal or abuse that was in vogue at the time of their cutting, but even at that they are very dreary and out of place. Of course any one who tries to imitate them now in an ecclesiastical building is quite out of court, and the only excuse he can plead is that he has not skill to design anything better.
Expression in buildings cannot always be carried out to the extent of showing from their external appearance what they are, though some indication is possible under any circumstances. A general fitness may be shown, and that is enough. There is a costly bank in Montreal, where in a moment of inspiration the architect has conceived the idea of overturning cornucopias and allowing sovereigns of stone to appear as though they were falling into the street. If this is at all typical of the mode in which the business is conducted, a change of managers would be a rather palpable advantage to the shareholders. There is a bank at Altringham, built for Messrs. Cunliffe, Brooks, and Co., in the “post and petrel style” so common in Cheshire, and although there is no such demonstrative ornament about it as this, it is clearly a public building of some importance, and is certainly one of the best specimens of revival that have ever been produced in England.
Vitruvius specifies seven qualities on which the Greeks insisted—solidity, convenience, order, disposition, proportion, decorum, economy; but Barry is able to reduce these to three—permanence, convenience, and beauty, as he stated in a very interesting lecture to the Royal Academy; and it is not too much to say that the requirements of Vitruvius will be found to arrange themselves under these three heads.
Now, the typical architecture of the day, for example the Crystal Palace, can scarcely be called permanent. It may and probably will last for generations with very ordinary care, but “its root is ever in its grave.” Of course permanence is only a part of architecture. Dock gates or granite entrances to warehouses may easily possess all that, and show it too, but yet be sadly deficient in other qualities necessary for successful architecture. In engineering buildings there must be a nice calculation of strength. The materials, such as iron rods, and nuts, and screws, are costly, and if increased beyond necessity do not add to the strength of the fabric. A light iron truss spanning fifty feet might be able to bear enormous weights, while an iron scantling containing four times the amount of metal would break from its own weight; but in stone buildings there is no such reserve. The engineer who constructs a roof or shed too strongly, or he whose building is wanting in strength, are both deficient in skill. Stone, however, needs no such caution. It may be used so as to possess, and appear to possess, a surplussage of strength, and yet not seem excessive, and the same may fairly be claimed for brick and oak. The ends of beams that show their massive proportions to the street, and support an overhanging storey of some black-and-white building, proclaim their strength and sufficiency, and cannot appear excessive or overdone, from the nature of their material, which is so plentiful. Convenience more particularly applies to the interior of a building, and refers to the arrangement and size of the rooms. A properly proportioned room should neither be too low nor too high, though sometimes the latter is overlooked; especially in modern terrace houses, where a well-like appearance is given to a room of ordinary dimensions by too great height. Singularly enough, however, it is a fact that a well-contrived house may always be said to afford greater facilities for a good exterior than an ill-contrived one; the fitness inside shows itself in the exterior. And as to beauty, it is hard indeed if, when the building is successful in these two other requirements, the third does not follow. The same exterior may of course be ornamented in many ways, and may have either a Gothic or classic coat, or be left alone; but when once the necessary outline is secured decoration is simple. One great charm of old houses is that they do not conceal either their roofs or chimneys. Modern ones are apt to be shy of letting them appear, and contrive by parapets and other devices to hide them.
A staircase at the end of this chapter illustrates the comfortable easy landings and flights that characterise old house architecture, even when on an unpretending scale. The date is about 1600, and the comfort of ascent is far beyond any staircases that we should expect to find in a moderately-sized house in the present day.
An architect of some eminence, in reading a paper on Gloucester Cathedral, said (a few years ago), “I raise my voice against what I consider cankers in modern architecture, where art is so far forgotten in the desire of the architect to obtain for his works a so-called individuality. This individuality is enticing to very young men, who are attracted by the eccentricities of old buildings, or the architect who imports them, for nearly all modern individuality arises from too strongly emphasising and repeating ad nauseam some odd bit picked up in foreign travel. It so happens that many architects have no faith in good sound building, they have no trust in the grandeur of stability, they have no love for simplicity, no appreciation for breadth of treatment: they go in for quaintness.” So far as this is intelligible, it means to say that a broad row of houses without individuality is preferable to one where the individual tastes and requirements of the owner are conspicuous. The same writer proceeds to object to the early capitals that distinguish the Gothic of the twelfth century when clustered round a column, and, as he says, “wrap it round a shaft nearly as big as an Irish round tower.” He objects also to the “dog-tooth” and the undercut capitals that often appear in such profusion in France, and which he compares to “exaggerated sticks of rhubarb,” and warns his junior hearers against ornamenting spires with crockets like Salisbury, which he says in that building can only be called a “positive mania” on the part of the architect, and he proclaims loudly against the enrichments in Hereford and Gloucester. Regarding the latter, he says that a contemporaneous monk grumbled at the expense, and recorded his objections in some record that remains. Whether the monk who regretted the waste was the one that carried the bag or not seems not to be very clear; but in a word, the criticisms are quite unjust. And as for Salisbury, though some may consider that the spire is too thin, there can be no exception taken to its beautiful enrichments. The monk who is quoted with approval seems to have said that as much was spent in ornamenting the church as would have built another. Quite so; indeed the cost of any cathedral would build not one more but many, quite a colony of meeting-houses with 9-inch brick walls. “The basest beggars,” says Lear, “are in the poorest thing superfluous.” This paper is by a well-known architect, and was published some few years ago in the Building News, or else it would not be noticed.
The question continually must recur, what means the designers of old used to secure such almost universally satisfactory effects. It is clear that in many instances they worked from drawings. These are in some cases extant, but they must also have had many opportunities of testing the effect of their work from various points of view, and altering and amending as they proceeded. Many a carefully studied design that looks perfect on paper is a sad disappointment when executed. The chimney that stood so boldly forward is choked in the perspective as we look up. Perhaps, indeed, it disappears entirely from the view, and the gables have a more apoplectic appearance than we had fondly hoped, and little by little the day-dreams of the architect vanish.