Fig. 29.
“Because,” said Eugène, “on the garden side our plan gives us rooms which are the counterparts of each other, of equal dimensions and corresponding purposes; while on the entrance side we have very diverse services in juxtaposition. The question you raise, Paul, is a very large one. Two methods may be followed. On the one hand, you may plan a symmetrical architectural casing, in which you try, as best you can, to accommodate the services required by a habitation. Or, on the other hand, you may arrange these services, in plan, according to their importance, their respective place, and the relations that are to be established between them, and erect the casing so as to suit these services, without troubling yourself to obtain a symmetrical appearance. When it is proposed to erect an edifice whose exterior aspect is destined to exhibit a grand unity of design, it is desirable to endeavour to satisfy the rules of symmetry, and to take care that the building shall not present the appearance of having been built piecemeal. In a private habitation it is imperative first to satisfy the requirements of its inhabitants, and not to incur needless expense. The habitations of the Ancients were not symmetrical, any more than those of the Middle Ages. Symmetry strictly applied to domestic architecture is a modern conceit—an affectation—a false interpretation of the rules observed during the best periods of art. The houses of Pompeii are not symmetrical: the country-house—the villa—of which Pliny has left us a complete description, did not present a symmetrical ensemble. The castles, manors, and houses built during the Middle Ages are anything but symmetrical. Lastly, in England, in Holland, in Sweden, in Hanover, and in a large part of Germany, you may see numbers of dwellings wonderfully appropriate to the needs of their inhabitants, which are constructed without regard to symmetry, but which are nevertheless very convenient and elegant in appearance, from the simple fact that they clearly indicate their purpose.
“I know that there are many persons quite disposed to put themselves to inconvenience every day, in order to have the vain pleasure of exhibiting regular and monumental façades outside; but I think your sister is not one of those persons, and therefore I have not hesitated to proceed according to what I conceive to be the law of common sense in making the designs for her habitation. I can fancy her asking me, with her quiet, and slightly ironical smile—
“‘Why, my dear cousin, did you make me so large a window in this small room? We shall have to stop up half of it.’... Or, ‘Why did you not give me a window on this side, where the view is so pretty?’
“If I replied that it was to satisfy the laws of symmetry, she would perhaps have laughed outright, and, in petto, might probably have thought that her respected cousin was after all a fool, with his ‘laws of symmetry.’”
“Alas!” said M. de Gandelau, “there are too many people in our country with whom considerations of vanity take precedence of everything else, and that is one of the causes of our misfortunes. Appearance is the great object. Every retired bourgeois who has a country-house built, wishes to have his turrets regularly disposed at the corners of a building, symmetrical, indeed, but in which he is very indifferently lodged—satisfied if this inconvenient erection is called the château, internal comfort being sacrificed to the gratification of exhibiting outside bad stucco carvings, zinc ornaments on the roof, and a quantity of nonsensical decorations which have to be renewed every spring. Build us then, cousin, a good house, well sheltered from the sun and rain, thoroughly dry within, and in which nothing is sacrificed to that debased luxury which is a thousand times more offensive in our country districts than it is in the city.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE BUILDING IN ELEVATION.
“It is decided that we are to build our exterior walls with dressed stone and range-work,” said Eugène, while they were levelling-up to the ground-floor.
