The opportunity was of course magnificent, but nothing he had been doing for years had in the least adapted him to take advantage of it.
"Although my occupation in the Wellington Palace is a very honourable one, and the study and exercise of invention in the course of it may be profitable, yet I cannot help wishing I had never been invited to give an idea for it, for I have spent a vast deal of time over it, and it will add nothing to my reputation, even if it does not detract from it. If such a design was difficult to everyone, you may imagine what it was to me who have never attempted anything original before. I consulted every architectural work of Europe (they are all in the library here), and I would have consulted every professional man I could get at if there had been any here whose opinion was worth having. Then I composed general ideas, and finally fixed on one which pleased Mr. North and several other persons to whom I showed it; but when I went into detail I found the difficulties increase immeasurably, and the notions which were plausible while they were vague could not be put into execution. Plan would not agree with elevation. Doors and windows would not come into their right places. I invented roundabout ways for simple ends. In fact I worked furiously, and for the first time realised the practical difficulties of the profession. At last, when I had filled a portfolio with sketches and schemes, I completed a set and showed them to Lord and Lady Burghersh, who said they were pleased with them.
I began to feel that I had too large an acquaintance in Florence—too many visits and invitations. My wound [?], of which I did not get the better, confined me, and that made me generally unwell and obliged me to go through a course of physic. Altogether I got out of heart with my work and determined to get away. I went to Pisa for the month of July, and except for visits from Pigou I was quite alone. There I undid all I had done before, and finding that to do the thing well I should need more time than I could possibly give, I determined to make some small sketches which, prettily finished, might attract attention and show that I was in some sort capable. Finally, I made some sketches and sent them with an explanation to Lady Burghersh and a request to forward them to the proper quarter."
The difficulties he had encountered over these drawings so disgusted him with architecture that he seems to have even proposed to his father to throw it up and become a painter, as that, he thought, was the profession for which he was best suited. But Mr. Cockerell, who was a steady business man, had no notion of his son becoming what he would have considered a bohemian, and refused to sanction any such change.
The only thing to do, then, was to continue his studies. The Wellington Palace drawings had at any rate weaned him of any idea that pure Greek architecture was applicable to modern architectural designing, and he had little knowledge of any other. He started for a tour of the north of Italy. His letters contain few criticisms. Palladio, probably as being most akin to what he had hitherto studied, pleased him more than any other architect. In Venice he fell in with Stackelberg, who had been home to Russia while his travels in Greece were still fresh enough to claim attention, and had been received with every sort of distinction. He was now on his way back to Rome to settle there and bring out the various books he subsequently published.
The two joined forces, and having run through all the principal towns, returned southwards to Florence.
Shortly after, in company with Lord and Lady Dillon, he went to Rome. He was now a recognised lion, everywhere fêted and made much of. Bartholdy writes of him: "Cockerell est gâté par les femmes." Nevertheless he worked hard. Amongst other things he finished the drawing of the Forum Romanum, the engraving of which is well known. The Duchess of Devonshire wished to insert a reduction of it in her "Virgil," and writes to thank him for "the beautiful drawing you was so good as to do for me."
He had left also in Rome the bulk of his, and Haller's, drawings for the intended book on Greek architecture. These he picked up, and having seen all the architecture Italy had to show him, he started in March for England. In Paris he remained some little time. A letter from his father during his stay there is worth transcribing in part.
"I send a few hints as to what you should observe in Paris; not things of that high order to which you have so long been used, but yet important to study in order to supply the luxurious indulgence so much coveted by the great here, by whom a complete knowledge of them in their professors of architecture is expected.
You have raised a name here so high that everything in perfection will be expected of you; at least in all that relates to taste in the arts, and in all the subordinate degrees of contrivances, as well as in decoration. The last is that which affords the most extensive employment, and you will be surprised to find more importance attached to the decorations of a salon than to the building of a temple. If, therefore, you can bend to the consideration of what is called the 'fittings up' of the interior of the best hotels and palaces of Paris, the graces of their meubles, and the harmony of their colours in hangings, painting, and gilding, you may be the general arbiter of taste here; and as there are very few persons who are real judges of compositions even classical, much less sublime, and there must be few opportunities of exercising those parts of your studies here, it will be really useful if you allow yourself to look at those minor objects at Paris which in truth they judge well of.