At any rate, we realize as never before how disorganized the social fabric must have been at the period, and how it had deteriorated from that of the older régimes. It is all but ludicrous, that entry in the diary where the connoisseurs gather in Barclay Street to pay their respects to such mediocre art as was exemplified by the allegorical series of paintings called “The Voyage of Life.” The reader remembers the old engravings of them, I dare say, very well. But we know that the connoisseurs did do this very silly thing, because Philip Hone’s diary is indisputable and exact evidence uncolored. It is incredible, nevertheless, that a political expediency should have caused the whole nation to forget so readily the proficiency in art matters attained by preceding generations, and, presto! resolved its most representative spirits into an unpromising class of abecedarians.
There is a tone often noticeable throughout the memoirs of Philip Hone, who sometimes made trips abroad in the sailing packets of his day, thereby extending the scope of his own horizon, as though he were a bit ashamed of the crude provincialism of his compatriots when it was the custom to speak the English language incorrectly, and when the three Rs—“Reading, Riting and Rithmetic”—were all the academic preparation for a life of usefulness that was required. Indeed, if he were quick at figures, could follow Webster’s spelling book, and make neat flourishes with his pen, no young man of the Transitional period need ever have despaired of positions and promotion.
The question often heard, now-a-days, “What chance has a man for self-cultivation in a boom town?” applies very nearly to the metropolis of the Transitional period.[5] What use more profitable could one have found for his time than speculation in real estate, if one could buy a house for $25,000, as did Philip Hone, and sell it within a few years for $60,000? Certainly, there was little inducement to pursue art in such a phenomenally active market for values. The best that could be expected of the very busy man of the day was to send his son betimes to college and to Europe, the liberal education, it is true, often unfitting him again for business as it was transacted in America. There was a manufacturer of Transitional furniture who sent his son to Paris to learn cabinet-making of those most renowned of European artificers; and I have it from the son himself that he was, afterwards, obliged to unlearn and forget all his Parisian training in order to meet the home demand for cheap and tawdry stuff. Fancy!
The art prophet which this bourgeois epoch produced corresponded exactly to it—just such a one as might be naturally expected—John Ruskin, old fogy with ideas of no practical value to communicate to the world, but, like Browning and Emerson, full of words, rhymes and sentences. Ruskin conceived a violent passion à la Plato for the Gothic mode of building. He affected to deplore the “foul flood of the Renaissance.” And his great theory was that as the leaves of plants nearly always terminate in a point, it was intended by nature that man should take pattern therefrom for his architecture. To make a theory so point-device consistent Ruskin went so far as to criticise those leaves of plants which terminate in other ways. Imagine some classic writer tracing the origin of the Roman arch to lily-pads which may have floated in the Tiber!
The only really clever observation concerning architecture Ruskin ever made was the metaphor he applied to the great mediæval cathedrals—“frozen music.” But he was not a purist of Gothic architecture in the truer sense. Had he been so, he would have defended the Tudor castles of England against Renaissance obtrusion; for the Tudor architecture was a true development of the home idea, legitimate and historical, while that of the Gothic cathedrals was not intended to serve for dwelling-houses by any possible contingency. Yet Ruskin persisted in the feasibility of an anomalous adaptation, something, as a matter of fact, that nobody has achieved with very great credit. For rectories and parish houses the ecclesiastic Gothic may serve as far as sentiment and harmony are desired; but for practical uses it is a failure applied to dwelling-houses. Grace Church rectory is extremely disappointing within if we consider all the disiderata of a modern home, however suggestive of comfort it may be to the casual observer. (See [Plate XLVII]).
NO. 23 BOND ST., NEW YORK.
