Dear Acland: I have been very anxious, since I last heard from you, respecting the progress of the works at the Museum, as I thought I could trace in your expressions some doubt of an entirely satisfactory issue.
Entirely satisfactory very few issues are, or can be; and when the enterprise, as in this instance, involves the development of many new and progressive principles, we must always be prepared for a due measure of disappointment,—due partly to human weakness, and partly to what the ancients would have called fate,—and we may, perhaps, most wisely call the law of trial, which forbids any great good being usually accomplished without various compensations and deductions, probably not a little humiliating.
Perhaps in writing to you what seems to me to be the bearing of matters respecting your Museum, I may be answering a few of the doubts of others, as well as fears of your own.
I am quite sure that when you first used your influence to advocate the claims of a Gothic design, you did so under the conviction, shared by all the seriously-purposed defenders of the Gothic style, that the essence and power of Gothic, properly so called, lay in its adaptability to all need; in that perfect and unlimited flexibility which would enable the architect to provide all that was required, in the simplest and most convenient way; and to give you the best offices, the best lecture-rooms, laboratories, and museums, which could be provided with the sum of money at his disposal.
So far as the architect has failed in doing this; so far as you find yourself, with the other professors, in anywise inconvenienced by forms of architecture; so far as pillars or piers come in your way, when you have to point, or vaults in the way of your voice, when you have to speak, or mullions in the way of your light, when you want to see—just so far the architect has failed in expressing his own principles, or those of pure Gothic art. I do not suppose that such failure has taken place to any considerable extent; but so far as it has taken place, it cannot in justice be laid to the score of the style, since precedent has shown sufficiently, that very uncomfortable and useless rooms may be provided in all other styles as well as in Gothic; and I think if, in a building arranged for many objects of various kinds, at a time when the practice of architecture has been somewhat confused by the inventions of modern science, and is hardly yet organized completely with respect to the new means at his disposal; if, under such circumstances, and with somewhat limited funds, you have yet obtained a building in all main points properly fulfilling its requirements, you have, I think, as much as could be hoped from the adoption of any style whatsoever.
But I am much more anxious about the decoration of the building; for I fear that it will be hurried in completion, and that, partly in haste and partly in mistimed economy, a great opportunity may be lost of advancing the best interest of architectural, and in that, of all other arts. For the principles of Gothic decoration, in themselves as simple and beautiful as those of Gothic construction, are far less understood, as yet, by the English public, and it is little likely that any effective measures can be taken to carry them out. You know as well as I, what those principles are; yet it may be convenient to you that I should here state them briefly as I accept them myself, and have reason to suppose they are accepted by the principal promoters of the Gothic revival.
I. The first principle of Gothic decoration is that a given quantity of good art will be more generally useful when exhibited on a large scale, and forming part of a connected system, than when it is small and separated. That is to say, a piece of sculpture or painting, of a certain allowed merit, will be more useful when seen on the front of a building, or at the end of a room, and therefore by many persons, than if it be so small as to be only capable of being seen by one or two at a time; and it will be more useful when so combined with other work as to produce that kind of impression usually termed “sublime,”—as it is felt on looking at any great series of fixed paintings, or at the front of a cathedral,—than if it be so separated as to excite only a special wonder or admiration, such as we feel for a jewel in a cabinet.
The paintings by Meissonier in the French Exhibition of this year were bought, I believe, before the Exhibition opened, for 250 guineas each. They each represented one figure, about six inches high—one, a student reading; the other, a courtier standing in a dress-coat. Neither of these paintings conveyed any information, or produced any emotion whatever, except that of surprise at their minute and dextrous execution. They will be placed by their possessors on the walls of small private apartments, where they will probably, once or twice a week, form the subject of five minutes’ conversation while people drink their coffee after dinner. The sum expended on these toys would have been amply sufficient to cover a large building with noble frescoes, appealing to every passer-by, and representing a large portion of the history of any given period. But the general tendency of the European patrons of art is to grudge all sums spent in a way thus calculated to confer benefit on the public, and to grudge none for minute treasures of which the principal advantage is that a lock and key can always render them invisible.
I have no hesitation in saying that an acquisitive selfishness, rejoicing somewhat even in the sensation of possessing what can NOT be seen by others, is at the root of this art-patronage. It is, of course, coupled with a sense of securer and more convenient investment in what may be easily protected and easily carried from place to place, than in large and immovable works; and also with a vulgar delight in the minute curiosities of productive art, rather than in the exercise of inventive genius, or the expression of great facts or emotions.
The first aim of the Gothic Revivalists is to counteract, as far as possible, this feeling on all its three grounds. We desire (A) to make art large and publicly beneficial, instead of small and privately engrossed or secluded; (B) to make art fixed instead of portable, associating it with local character and historical memory; (C) to make art expressive instead of curious, valuable for its suggestions and teachings, more than for the mode of its manufacture.