The designers of old seemed to be free from such vexations, for though it would be saying too much to pretend that they never made mistakes, or that all they did is excellent, we must freely admit that our productions are less satisfactory than theirs.
It is by no means, however, a very easy task to point out wherein the secret of the difference lies, nor to say why old builders almost universally were guided to forms of beauty. Long and energetically the question was debated of whether some ancient code of rules that once regulated their operations has been lost,—recipes, as it were, to trust themselves to when they went to their work,—and indeed, some twenty years ago, a chapter in the Archæological Journal gave precise directions for the proportions of a pinnacle, found, as it was said, in some old monastic archives; but both sides were agreed that when worked out it was exceedingly shapeless and ugly. Every probability points in the other direction. The versatility of design, the adaptation to site, and the way in which a necessity of construction is often converted into a beauty, indicate individual taste and ingenuity. Again, there was no distinction between the office of architect and builder, as the following extract from an old agreement for building a chapel to St. Mary’s Church, Chester, illustrates:—“This indenture, made by twene William Troutbeck Esquire, on that p’tie, and Thomas Betes, mason, on that other p’tie, bares witnesse that the aforesaid Thomas has made covenant and granted to the said William that he shall make a chapell in the chirche yarde of Ste. Marie on the Hill, on the south side of the Chancell of the said Chirche there, that is to wete, the est ende, the south side, and the west ende, contayning the lengthe of the chauncell there, and xviii. fete wide withinne the walls, and as high as hit nedes resonably to be: with v. faire and clenely wroght windows full of light, that is to say, one gable window at the est ende with iiij. lights, iij. windowes on the south side, ich one of iij. lights, and on the west ende in the best way to be deviset; and iiij. botras on the south side, with a grete arche in the west ende; and the chapelle to be battlet above like to the little closet withinne the Castell of Chester, with a corbyl table longyng thereto; and at ayther end iij. honest fynials. And the said William shall pay the said Thomas xxli. like as the worke goes forwarde, and also give him a gowne. And also the said William shall find fre-stone, lyme, sond, watr, windelasse, and stuff for to scaffold with, and such manere necessaries as the foresaid Thomas nedes; and the foresaid Thomas shall, by ov’sight of Maester John Asser, make the chapell and all things that longen thereto (masoncraft) honestly.”[10]
There is almost a touching simplicity and confidence about this contract. All about the walls, with reference to the height they were to be carried, is that they must be as high as it “nedes resonably to be;” and the windows are not apparently to be encumbered with more tracery than the mason cares to give,—the “v.” of them were to be “faire and clenely wroght.” What a hopeless task an architect, or clerk of the works, as “Maester John Asser” seems to have been, would now have with such a specification in settling up a builder’s “extra account”! Yet it nowhere appears that the work was slighted. On the contrary, though this chapel is no more, there is abundant evidence that it was a noble piece of work. The contract is introduced here to show how completely the present state of things differs from that of the fifteenth century, when the chapel in question was built. Not that it would be possible or desirable in the nineteenth century to bring back such agreements; but it is evident from the specification that the artificers were a very superior set of men to those who now erect our buildings. The beautiful crockets and bosses that ornament ancient cathedrals were cut as the work proceeded by the mason whose place on the building they happened to fall to, and though they are now models of excellence, the great probability is they were cut without drawings to guide the workmen. One inestimable advantage in the kind of contract quoted is that, when such men as it may be supposed Betes and Asser were, were concerned, the “resonableness” of the height of the chancel or the “fairness” of the tracery could be judged of as the building proceeded. The picturesqueness of the sky-line, or the relative proportions of any part to the surroundings could be determined while the building progressed. Nor does this require a great amount of natural talent. If beauty in architecture had been encouraged during the last two centuries, instead of being frowned down, we should still have the class of men who were competent. Of course, as before remarked, it would be impossible, in the present nature of things, to re-introduce such a style of contract as that quoted; but one thing we can do,—we can try to arrive at some of the principles of design that influenced the old workmen. There is no code of rules, and to try to design with their pencils will be to many architects of the present day as hopeless a task as to write with Shakespeare’s pen; but if, beyond all other considerations, whether for town or country, the grand principle of picturesqueness is kept in view, the end will be surely gained. By picturesqueness is meant the contrasting of various simple forms in such a way as to be pleasing to the eye. It runs through all our intellectual life in every thing we do. A barrister may be ever so learned and industrious, and even in earnest, but if he lacks an appreciation of the picturesque he will fight at great odds with another who, with less application and perhaps a worse case, can arrange his facts—sometimes, alas! even his theories—in a pleasing form. This is well understood and successfully cultivated at the Bar, but in the Church it is sadly wanting, and so the most learned addresses from the pulpit are too often bald.
In another essay read by the architect whose paper was quoted from, an essay also which appeared in the Building News of the same year, that gentleman describes the picturesque as “anything which may be likened to a ‘pig with one ear’—an ancient similitude much admired by the scientific, and often used by them with great force and brilliancy. It is unfortunate, but none the less true, that a very large majority of those who follow after Gothic art, both as students and admirers, have somehow or other been led into the belief that the first principle, the essence of the soul of Gothic, is irregularity. These are the men who stick chimneys in odd corners where they are sure to smoke, put dormers on roofs where they are not wanted, throw out large oriels to small bath-rooms, and corbel out balconies to housemaids’ closets.” This is a heavy calendar indeed against the “very large majority” of the profession, but I rejoice to think it is not just. Nearly every one now understands that picturesqueness has nothing to do with irregularity, i.e. irregularity for itself; and as for an architect who could throw out a large oriel to a small bath-room, unless the proprietor spent a long time there, and especially ordered it, his occupation would soon go. So far from having an impression that picturesqueness and irregularity are synonymous, most architects admit the necessity of repose in their works. Take the nave of a Gothic church, with its row of windows; nobody now would say that it gained by having each window different. In the best examples regularity of form is observed; it is in such feeble late works as Merton College Chapel that the reverse prevails. In great Gothic buildings, especially on the Continent, the whole mass seems one mountain of confusion, and it is only when we examine it minutely, and carry down each feature to its starting-point, that we find the order which prevails. Just as in a peal of bells from a church-tower, the first impression they are apt to convey is that each ringer is pulling away promiscuously, the only condition being that they shall manage to pull only a single bell at a time; but they are, on the contrary, following a perfectly regular scale, contrived with profound order and symmetry.
Of course, unless an architect is also partly an artist he cannot be successful; no amount of learning can compensate for this. The two best expositors we ever had of Gothic architecture, Rickman and Britton, were indifferent architects. Perhaps they may be said to have known more than all who went before them or followed after; and both of them were endowed with a thorough love for their profession. There may be something to urge that they were not brought up to it, one being in a mercantile office in Liverpool, and the other a wine-bottler in London. Rickman had a number of opportunities of testing his architectural skill, but they are all dreary, and showed that his hand could not put into practice the principles of the architecture he understood and loved so well. Britton had fewer chances, and was even less successful with his few.
Perhaps it might be well to try to answer the question, “What would be the best way to improve the architecture of the most dreary of all classes of buildings, the humbler houses of the middle classes, the houses that are let for about £40 or £50 per annum?” and the best way to answer it is to suppose a case in which the conditions would be the most favourable. Suppose, for example, there were to be a number of gentlemen who were each prepared to spend £800 in a row of houses for their own residences. Well, let them all agree upon an artistic architect, and let them each arrange their own plans to suit their own convenience. This would give the architect not only data, but ideas to work upon. Well, let him then take all these plans, and fit to them an elevation which shall be as broad and uniform as the convenience admits. There will still be plenty of variety, the various requirements of the builders will secure that, or enable the architect to employ it. The Vicar’s Close at Wells, or the collegiate buildings in Oxford or Ely, would afford any number of examples of what he required. In one of the excellent Manuals published for the use of amateur artists by Winsor and Newton, the author has divided his subject into Atmosphere, Keeping, Contrast, and Variety, which, if rightly understood, is only another way of expressing the requirements of Barry in the former part of this chapter. A quotation from this Manual, though it relates to sketching in colour, may be as useful to an architect as to an artist. “First learn how to produce certain effects, and you will not then find it difficult to store them in your memory for use as you require them; you are learning nothing new in the art of painting—thousands have gone through this process before you; you are only seeking to chronicle your own experience. The scenes you commit to paper have, and will have, a peculiar charm for you, and perhaps to your friends if you represent them faithfully. They may be new scenes, but they are not seen under new effects. These have been already witnessed again and again; you yourself have seen the same effect produced in former pictures; but the charm lies in producing them yourself from nature. Aim then at facility in producing these effects in general, and you will easily apply and vary that knowledge as you require it. Aim at acquiring a kind of grammar of effect, just as in reading music, the habitué recognises a certain set of notes from their frequent recurrence, and which is even called by musical people a phrase, alluding to the similar recurrence of words in the composition of a sentence. It is knowledge that leads to decision, which is the secret of rapidity.”[11]
Of course, with an architect rapidity is not necessary, it only pertains to a sketcher in water-colours, whose materials dry up rapidly. A hundred lessons in architecture may be gained every time that we walk along a pleasant lane, and the village with a cheerful row of cottages grown over with creepers, and showing tall chimneys, is full of suggestions in light and shade and composition. In all importations of foreign architecture—and it is not pretended that there should be none—the first thing to consider is its fitness for the climate and surroundings. Dol, Morlaix, and other towns in the north of France, contain many suggestions for city architecture. Our own cathedrals and great churches were meant to stand alone, and can only be seen at some distance; the churches on the Continent were often designed for the effect they would have in a crowded town; but here again, the old chronic error has to be met, that Gothic buildings suit country scenes the best, and Classic a town, whereas the only place where a classic building can be employed, except by a man of absolute genius, is in the country among heavy foliage.
There is nothing so bald or unsatisfactory as a Grecian building, such as has been erected in England since the so-called “revival” of Classic architecture. The cold Doric façades, or Ionic as the case may be, give one a sensation of intense dreariness. The stuccoed front of a conventicle strictly copied from the Parthenon, or more probably from the Gate of the Agora, is a thing to wonder at; and too often we form our ideas of Grecian art from modern revivals. Surely we might have expected that the principal seat of classic learning in England might boast of a proper Greek building, if the Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy, who had made Greek design the study of his life, were employed; but no one can contemplate the Taylor and Randolph Institution at Oxford without feeling humiliated at the idea that it was erected under such circumstances. The Acropolis at Athens is an abrupt hill with a flat surface of perhaps ten acres on the top. The Eastern aspect rises in a kind of bluff, and is crowned by the Parthenon and the Propylæa. The Parthenon was an oblong temple surrounded by forty-six vast marble columns. These seen from below give at once the idea of lightness and strength, and it exhibits in the most perfect form the “entasis” or swelling that a cylinder requires; this alone would show the true eye for form of the ancient Greek architect. The Erechtheum is a vast building on the northern side of the Acropolis; and, according to Pausanias, the table-land of the Acropolis was absolutely crowded with works of art; indeed at the present time there are remains at every stride. Lamartine, in his Voyage en Orient, gives a vivid description of the impression the ruins of Athens made upon him, and concludes his rhapsody with reflections, of which the following is a translation:—“When again shall we find such a people and such an epoch? Nothing announces their coming. The Propylæa and the Temple of Erechtheus, or of the Caryatides, stand at the side of the Parthenon—masterpieces in themselves, but lost in the proximity of a grander masterpiece. The soul, overpowered by the sight of the latter, has no longer any power to admire the others—one must gaze and then depart!—lamenting not so much the devastation of this glorious handiwork of man, as the impossibility that man should ever equal its sublimity and harmony.” Chateaubriand eulogises Athens in a similar strain, and neither of them say one word too much perhaps; but let us fairly ask ourselves what we admire so in the classic architecture of Greece. I would say without hesitation that we fail to see the real excellence but too often. A Greek temple transported into England, yes the Parthenon itself, is barbarous and hideous. We pass it by as we would Demosthenes on a doorstep inveighing against Philip, relieved to be out of the way. There is no mysterious beauty in a column six or eight diameters high—a ruler is often of the same proportions, and we do not become enthusiastic over it; yet, so much are we influenced by prejudice, that the rude colouring of the Greek temples which the Turks plastered over the buildings they occupied during the seventeenth century, is supposed to be correct taste. Even yet it is commonly, very commonly, believed, that the colouring belongs to the Greek period, and the plaints of even so great an authority as Stuart are touching. I was astonished to find in his preface to the careful volume on Athens, the following:—“Yet there is one circumstance of comparatively recent discovery, and still more recently ascertained to its full extent, which gives a strange contradiction to our cherished notions concerning the purity of Grecian taste, and its antipathy to all coarseness and exaggeration. It should seem that the Greeks painted their temples, not merely in chiaroscuro, or in subdued tints, for the purpose of giving relief to projections or expressiveness to ornamental details, but with glaring colours,—reds, blues, and yellows, with violent contrasts; the columns one hue, and the entablature another. Nay,” he says, “there is shrewd suspicion that the sculptures were painted like the figure-head of a man-of-war, and that the pillars were striped, and unluckily the evidences of these incredibilities is most exasperatingly clear; the statements of the German architects employed by King Otho leave no doubt whatever,” etc. etc.; and I once saw a devout student of Greek art poring over one of those revived temples—the columns and entablature a bright coffee colour, and the triglyphs blue—trying to admire it; he humbly thought he must be wrong, and the Greeks must be right.’ Why, the Turks did all this during their possession. The colours here indicated would be about the Turkman’s idea of correct taste, savouring of the bazaar and booth. They trailed their cannon up the Propylæa, and broke down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers, and soon they set up their banners for tokens. Mnesthenes never coloured the Erechtheum, or Pausanias would have said so in the account of his ramble over it; and Phidias and Praxiteles may fairly be left alone—they never daubed the Parthenon with ochre. The architecture of the Acropolis, great as it is in its own merits, requires a Greek eye and Greek modes of thought to understand thoroughly and to appreciate. Its great and grand idea is calm and dignified repose. It is the repose of the Sphynx or an Egyptian pyramid refined into beauty; and among the rocks of Attica, which are rugged and rough, a Gothic building, such as Strasbourg or Cologne, would be out of place; the crockets and pinnacles would be dwarfed by the igneous rocks that are about, and the Greek well knew how a calm flat surface would harmonise and contrast with the country round.
Modern discoveries by Michaelis regarding the statue of Minerva would show that it was of stupendous dimensions, and covered with ivory and gold; the light coming from above, and relieving it from the dark shades of the portico behind.
We have nothing now to compare this with, or anything indeed to enable us to form a comparison by. The effect must not only have been striking, but in the refraction of light in the latitude of Athens, conditions would exist that differ essentially from any we could reproduce here.