Balbus; or, the future of architecture

by Christian Augustus Barman

The prospect opened to us by aerial locomotion is limited, for no matter how high our winged vehicles may one moment soar, they cannot approach the earth without losing much of their glamour and strangeness. Let us turn instead to the far more considerable factor which came before us at the beginning of this essay. The emancipation of modern woman was there glanced at in only one of the three aspects of which the two others have still to be regarded. We saw how, as a consumer of wealth, she has been instrumental in withdrawing the art of building from the light of its central inspiration, and depriving it of the most highly treasured of its resources. As a producer of wealth, her influence has perhaps been less momentous, but it is by no means to be disregarded, for the modern dwelling-house exhibits the fruits of it in almost every detail of planning and equipment. So profound are the changes it has suffered that a medium-sized house, built, say, three generations ago, and left in its original state, presents almost insuperable difficulties to the housewife of to-day. Its cavernous succession of kitchens and larders, its monumental boiling ranges, its numberless stairs and endless dim passages, all of these things must fall into desuetude, unless a regiment of muscular girls and women is enlisted to maintain order among them. We all know how in the leisurely age of our great-grandmothers a house was much more loosely, more vaguely planned, with nothing resembling the meticulous precision that is brought to bear upon it to-day. It was not necessary in those days to measure the distance the housewife had to walk in order to put the dinner on the table, for the walk was one which she was never called upon to take. There was no need to place a roomy and well-ventilated linen-cupboard close to the principal bedrooms, for the bedroom linen might be kept anywhere and fetched from anywhere without inflicting appreciable hardship upon the housewife. But wide though the gulf may be that divides the modern house from that of the early nineteenth century, the novelty of the former would not be nearly so apparent were it not for the much broader gulf by which it is divided from that of a generation later. During the second half of the century the romantic revival was scattering over the country a number of houses whose unpracticalness was so gigantic that they could only strike the beholder completely dumb. The labyrinth at Knossos being at that time still undiscovered, these structures are generally presumed to derive from the cathedrals and dungeons of the Middle Ages. It is by comparison with these preposterous inventions that the post-war house stands out in a yet more appealing and more individual light. Instead of losing purpose and definition, like the typical city building, it has gained vastly in both these qualities, and it has gained because, from being the scene of the housewife’s activities, it has become her instrument and ally, and sometimes (it must be admitted) her accomplice even.

The next step, indeed, has already been taken. It is possible even now to watch the modern residence gradually assuming the properties of a machine. At the beginning of the last century nine-tenths of the cost of a house went into the structure, while the remaining tenth paid for its fixtures and equipment. Nowadays we spend almost as much on drains and plumbing, on baths and closets, on bedroom lavatory basins supplied with hot water, on central heating, electric light, telephones and suchlike, as we spend on the building of the house. So remarkable has been this development that an American writer has prophesied a period when houses will be given away free with the plumbing. It is doubtful whether such munificence will ever become a commercial possibility, but the prophecy contains more than a modicum of truth. We may reasonably expect to see all but the most indispensable furniture done away with in the small house of to-morrow, while its walls, ceilings, and doors will assume a blankness and roundedness that has hitherto been thought needful only in the operating chambers of our hospitals. In order still to reduce the housewife’s labours, the apartments will be brought together in those vast blocks that are meeting with such strenuous opposition from private householders in the United States, an opposition to which the zoning authorities have almost invariably given every support. What is the reason for this opposition? It is that a new apartment house will (in the words of a recent American Court pronouncement) “increase the fire hazard” of the district upon which it intrudes, and will be “creative of noises from autos, taxis, milk wagons, drays, etc., in a locality where peace and quiet now prevail; it will obstruct light and air, and sooner or later it will bring with it the immoralities which always attend the building of such structures.” The list of its potential misdeeds goes on, but I have quoted at sufficient length to show what are the conditions to be expected when the house is supplanted by large, noisy, and efficient machines, which none but the richest and the poorest may altogether elude.

Is it inevitable that they will be so supplanted? The displacement is steadily going on, and the scope and rapidity of the process must depend upon the eagerness with which modern woman sets herself to pluck the fruits of liberty that are now so compliantly brought within her reach. It should be borne in mind, however, that the mechanization of the house is inspired by a purpose diametrically opposite to that entertained by the pioneers of modern methods in industry. The triumph of the powerloom over the handloom was conditioned by its ability to produce so many more yards of material than the handloom could be made to yield. But while the machine was introduced into the industrial world in order to multiply the products of labour, the object of the modern house is to diminish the necessity for labour. By exchanging the handloom for the powerloom the weaver could, while still taking the same amount of trouble, produce a greater result, but when the modern housewife moves into a labour-saving flat her object is by taking considerably less trouble to produce the same result as before. How and where she spends the hours of leisure thus acquired is a question which does not bear upon our present argument, except in so far as this leisure has enabled her to raise the drapery store to the exalted place it occupies to-day, and by this means to divert the trend of modern architecture in the direction which we have just been following.

It is, then, largely by virtue of her new position as a producer that the woman of to-day has become able to exercise such a signal influence in her quality of consumer of wealth. But from both these points of view we may perceive her acting immediately upon the main architectural current, while, if we consider her from the conjugal point of view, her influence will show itself only in the flow of the tributary stream which is conveniently described as decoration. It is a regrettable fact that the decorative arts in England had, until they suddenly came within this influence, shown not the smallest sign of vitality since Soane and Nash translated the Attic enthusiasm of Shelley, Landor and Winckelmann into stone and stucco. Learned though he may have been, there can be no doubt that John Soane was as genuinely moved by the masterpieces of Greek decoration as Shelley by the large and authentic voices of Plato and Æschylus. The modern decorator, however, who ransacks the storehouse of history from Robert Adam to the caves of prehistoric man, is never animated by better instincts than those of the merchant adventurer, and often enough by worse. Of a creative impulse he is completely innocent. And what are we to say of the teaching of Ruskin, who followed upon the heels of these great men, except that it was calculated to impart a knowledge not so much of decoration as of botany, while its temper was wholly inimical to such pleasure as might yet be taken here and there in decorative skill? Stifled by the tedious pullulation of Ruskin’s “natural forms,” this pleasure appears to be awakening once more, and it is to modern woman that we must look for the cause of this awakening.

A convenient way of picturing the change of outlook that has led to this revival is to compare two familiar works of nineteenth-century fiction separated by a generation or two. Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin contains long passages redolent of that nature-worship which made Wordsworth a best-seller and which inspired our Ruskin to discard the principles of decorative design in favour of those derived from the study of plant growth. Innumerable landscapes are presented to us in this book, many of them bathed in moonlight of the most impeccable romantic quality. Country mansions, pleasure-pavilions, creeper-clad cottages, all these are concealed beneath a dense mass of verdure, their existence briefly hinted at, while the sinuous paths by which they may be approached are made the subject of the closest description, together with the trees, shrubs, creepers, herbs and mosses which form their setting. Such power of attention as remains in the reader is skilfully directed upon the subject of feminine apparel, to the treatment of which the author brings a sympathy and animation almost equal to those with which he approaches the vegetable kingdom. But the apartments through which his characters move, the walls and furniture against which their forms, so exquisitely clad, stand disclosed to the reader, receive as little thought as the exterior of the buildings, so that it is impossible for us to say what they are like. As soon as the men and women cross the threshold of a house, an impenetrable mist descends upon their surroundings. Alas, there was no one to take any interest in even the most delightful of the houses or rooms, and we are left to reconstruct them for ourselves, aided only by our knowledge of a few authentic remains.

In Zola’s Nana we have a complete antithesis to this fatigue, this chlorosis of the decorative faculty. The adornment of her immediate setting has with this famous character become a consuming passion. Her intuitive artistic knowledge, her manifold inventiveness, never cease to astonish the architects and decorators who work at her bidding. Nor, in her brief but triumphant career through the world of vice, does she once tire of devising fresh schemes of decoration, schemes which Zola himself appears to regard with an enthusiasm approaching that of his heroine. As she pauses at last on the brink of financial ruin, this passion for decoration flares up with an almost hysterical intensity. It is then that she dreams of “un prodige, un éblouissement ... un lit comme il n’en existait pas, un trône, un autel ... en or et en argent repoussés, pareil à un grand bijou.” To the end her preoccupation maintains its firm hold upon her, for through it alone it was that she could gain her mysterious ascendancy over the minds and the senses of men. “Jamais elle n’avait senti si profondément la force de son sexe,” remarks Zola as he shows her to us happily contemplating the scenes of prodigious elegance that she had established around her. Such is the change of attitude which nineteenth-century society must somehow have witnessed before it could be so brilliantly recorded in writing. It is a similar change that has infused new life into modern decoration.

The question may present itself whether to connect this movement with Zola’s unfortunate heroine is not to detract from its merit or importance. That must remain entirely a matter for individual judgment. I will here but remark that, in borrowing their light from the constellation of unhappy spirits in which Nana shone so vividly, the decorative arts are only imitating the example set throughout Europe and America by the art of feminine dress, and that whatever is said of one of these arts applies to the other also. But this superficial resemblance is not the only thing that unites decoration with dress, for the modern movement in decoration cannot be better described than as an enlargement of the old and more immediate business of personal adornment. Both currents spring from a common source, and if the younger of them will always remain in some respects apart from its sartorial companion, grown with the centuries into a venerable historic stream, we yet have reason to be thankful that the arid waste of decoration is being watered again, however fitfully.

What is it that has turned the decorator of to-day into a kind of transcendent costumier? I here have room to hint at a couple of reasons only. In the first place, it should be remembered that while the avowed ideal of masculine clothing is to render its wearers inconspicuous by causing them all to look alike, the ideal of feminine clothing is to give an appearance of strangeness and singularity. Now, nothing could accord more happily with our mechanical civilization than the masculine ideal; nothing, on the other hand, could come into more violent and more disappointing conflict with it than the feminine. Modern industry does not discriminate; it holds out to both sexes the same opportunities for acquisition, it heaps upon both the same monotonous profusion of manufactured goods. A hat, a mantle, a gown, is no sooner devised than a million others of the selfsame pattern pour in steady streams into every corner of the world. A startling colour cannot be affected by someone eager to achieve distinction of appearance without multiplying more rapidly than the budding green in Mr. Wells’ Time Machine. Provincial visitors to the West End of London are astonished at the number of well-dressed women they see about the streets, and profess themselves unable to distinguish between a duchess and a shop-assistant, while Londoners who tread for the first time the pavements of Paris or New York find themselves similarly baffled. Thanks to the ceaseless activities of the large drapers’ store (supported by the admirable enterprise of artificial silk manufacturers) no woman to-day, however penurious, need deny herself any of those elegant accessories that were the crowning luxury of her ancestors. But, pleasing as this facility may be to the multitude, is it to be imagined that the more fortunate or ambitious can look upon it with the same satisfaction? Assuredly not, for they have even invoked the law of copyright in their attempt to resist it.

In drawing our conclusions from this spectacle of unwelcome equality it is useful also to bear in mind the relation between the female and the male populations of Western Europe. During the last half century the excess of women in this country has, roughly speaking, doubled in proportion to the total number of inhabitants of both sexes. The effect of a fixed and constant inequality may be neutralized by a series of adjustments in the social structure, but when the inequality threatens to increase fourfold in the course of a century the pressure it engenders is not so easily relieved. One of the most distressing sights to be met with in Paris to-day is the large number of coloured and mostly negroid males that is gradually being assimilated by the white population. There are some even who predict that France will soon have become a bi-coloured republic. Should this unpleasant prophecy be realized, the present excess of white females will no doubt go a long way to account for the change. Whether or not this excess has done anything to stimulate the new movement in decoration it is, of course, impossible to say with certainty, but our surmise receives the strongest confirmation from the fact that in the United States of America, alone among modern countries in this respect, the modern decorative movement appears to be awakening no response at all. For in that country alone the male population exceeds the female by a surplus that is increasing at almost exactly the same rate as our own female surplus is increasing.