Although, as will be presently mentioned, he afterwards bought some property in Devonshire, the Duke Street house was always his home. He spent his life there, having his offices on the lower floors.
He had no wish to enter Parliament, although it had been more than once suggested to him to do so, and his work prevented his taking an active share, as an inhabitant of Westminster, in the concerns of his neighbourhood.
The only occasion on which he took a prominent part in local affairs was as a special constable in April 1848, when he acted as one of the two ‘leaders’ of the special constables in the district between Great George Street and Downing Street.
He was not without experience of the duties of a special constable, as he had been sworn in during the Bristol riots of 1830, and on that occasion saw active service. Happily, matters were better managed in London, and no actual collision took place between the constables, or the military, and the mob.
The extent to which Mr. Brunel kept his works in his own hands, and under his own superintendence, made it necessary for him to have a large amount of office accommodation; and the inconvenience of having branch offices in the streets near his house led him, in 1848, to enlarge his offices: with this object he added the adjoining house, 17 Duke Street, which he rebuilt. A large room on the ground floor, looking on the Park, was thenceforward his own office, and the room above was made the dining-room. It was decorated in the Elizabethan style, and was to have contained a collection of pictures illustrative of scenes in ‘Shakespeare,’ painted for him by the principal artists of the day. This project was never completely carried out, but several pictures (about ten in all) were painted and hung up, among them the ‘Titania’ of Sir Edwin Landseer. These subjects are again referred to in the following letter:—
February, 1870.
‘My dear Isambard,—You ask me to jot down for you any reminiscences I have of your father’s love and feeling for art.
‘I remember with singular distinctness the first time I ever saw him, when I was a lad of fourteen, and had just obtained my studentship at the Royal Academy. He criticised with great keenness and judgment a drawing which I had with me, and at the same time gave me a lesson on paper straining. From that time till his death he was my most intimate friend. Being naturally imbued with artistic taste and perception of a very high order, his critical remarks were always of great value, and were made with an amount of good humour which softened their occasionally somewhat trying pungency. He had a remarkably accurate eye for proportion, as well as taste for form. This is evinced in every line to be found in his sketch books, and in all the architectural features of his various works.
‘So small an incident as the choice of colour in the original carriages of the Great Western Railway, and any decorative work called for on the line, gave public evidence of his taste in colour; but those who remember the gradual arrangement and fitting up of his house in Duke Street will want no assurance from me of your father’s rare artistic feeling. He passed, I believe, the pleasantest of his leisure moments in decorating that house, and well do I remember our visits in search of rare furniture, china, bronzes, &c., with which he filled it, till it became one of the most remarkable and attractive houses in London. Its interest was greatly increased when he formed that magnificent dining-room, now, with the house of which it was a part, pulled down. This room, hung with pictures, with its richly carved fireplace, doorways, and ceiling, its silken hangings and Venetian mirrors, lighted up on one of the many festive gatherings frequent in that hospitable house, formed a scene which none will forget who had the privilege of taking part in it. When from time to time he went abroad, and especially in his visit to Venice in 1852, he added to his collection by purchases made with great judgment and skill. In buying pictures, your father evinced a taste often found in men of refined mind and feeling—viz. a repugnance to works, however excellent in themselves, where violent action was represented. He preferred pictures where the subject partook more of the suggestive than the positive, and where a considerable scope was left in which the imagination of the spectator might disport itself. This feeling was displayed in a great love of landscape art, and in the keenest appreciation of the beauties of nature. It is an interesting fact to record, and one which I often heard him mention, when his friends were admiring his beautiful grounds at Watcombe, that in the old posting days, when travelling on the cliff road between Teignmouth and Torquay, he constantly stopped the carriage to get out and admire the view which he had discovered from a field at Watcombe, little thinking then that it would ultimately be the site of his intended country home.
‘When your father and I went to Italy together in 1842, posting from Westminster to Rome and back again, I had ample opportunities of observing his love and enthusiasm for nature and art.