The architecture of this period corresponded with the richness and pomp of the costumes. A new style, partly from Italy, partly from dreamland, was introduced into England during the Tudor and early Jacobean times. There was lace, and knots and knobs and curious holes, pillars, and pilasters. The sincerest admirers of antiquity, such as Inigo Jones, who went to Italy with such good purpose, and there filled his albums with many exquisite sketches of antique and Renaissance masterpieces,[63] could not refrain from sometimes introducing Arcady and dreamland into their architecture. Inigo Jones died before finishing his Whitehall palace, and we know from his drawings that he intended to embellish the central circular court with a row of gigantic caryatides representing Persians, six or seven yards high.[64] A contriver of masks for the Court, Inigo Jones, was in this way tempted to build palaces, if one may say so, in mask-style. Such houses as Audley End, Hatfield, and especially Burghley, this last being mostly Elizabethan,[65] are excellent representations of the architectural tastes of the time; the thick windowless towers of a former age are replaced by palatial façades, where countless enormous windows occupy more space in the wall than the bricks and stones themselves. Not a few people of a conservative turn of mind were heard to grumble at these novelties: "And albeit," said Harrison, in 1577, at the very time when Lord Burghley was busy building his house in Northamptonshire, "that in these daies there be manie goodlie houses erected in the sundrie quarters of this Iland; yet they are rather curious to the eie, like paper worke than substantiall for continuance; whereas such as he [Henry VIII.] did set up, excel in both and therefore may justlie be preferred farre above all the rest." But notwithstanding such a threatening prophecy neither at Burghley nor at Hatfield has the "paper worke" put there been yet blown away by storm or time, and these houses continue to afford a safe residence to the descendants of the Cecils. According to Harrison's judgment the interior of the new houses, no less than the exterior, testified to a decadence: "Now have we manie chimnies; and yet our tenderlings complaine of rheumes, catarhs and poses. Then had we none but reredosses; and our heads did never ake. For as the smoke in those daies was supposed to be a sufficient hardening of the timber of the house, so it was reputed a far better medicine to keepe the goodman and his familie from the quacke or pose, wherewith, as then verie few were acquainted."[66]
inigo jones's persians standing as caryatides.
But Harrison's blame does not seem to have greatly affected the taste for chimneys, any more than his sinister prophecies concerning Elizabethan houses have been fulfilled; chimneys have continued, and paper-work houses remain still to help us if need be to understand the poetry, the drama, and the novel of the period.
virgo.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] "Là doncques, Françoys, marchez couraigeusement vers ceste superbe cité romaine; & des serves dépouilles d'elle, comme vous avez fait plus d'une fois, ornez vos temples & autelz.... Pillez moi sans conscience les sacrez thésors de ce temple Delphique ... Vous souvienne de vostre ancienne Marseille, secondes Athènes!" ("La Deffense et illustration de la langue Françoyse," 1549).
[31] "The Scholemaster," London, 1570, 4to, p. 26; Arber's reprint, 1870, 4to, pp. 83, et seq. Ascham had died in 1568; this work was published by his widow.
[32] Preface dated 1581 to "Civile Conversation," London, 1586, 4to.