THE SARGENT HOUSE (COMMON, EAST), NEW HAVEN.
EAST FOURTH ST., NEW YORK.
The Richmond-Dow house at Warren, R. I., shown in [Plate L], is a typical example of Ruskin Gothic when the poet’s influence was at its height. For the romantically inclined individual of the Transitional period but one course was open, namely, to build himself a Ruskin Gothic cottage. The stone cottages like the Richmond-Dow cottage were the better sort, and if the narrow lancet windows tended to make them a little gloomy they were otherwise not half bad; but the wooden cottages with the perpendicular battens are execrable. Another very decent stone cottage in ecclesiastic Gothic is shown in [Plate LI]. It has a charming setting on High Street at Middletown, Ct., and again the interior, like Grace church rectory, is a disappointment. The delightful window overlooking the lawn is not nearly so nice from the inside. The fibre of quartered oak was generally too tough for the planes and chisels of the Transitional joiners, who always preferred to work in white pine, and leave to the makeshift grainer the responsibility of doing it up to simulate oak. We are, all of us, familiar with that forlorn art of graining.
Then, in order not to forego in the ecclesiastic Gothic cottages another indispensable makeshift—the American veranda—the Transitional architects desecrated rood-screens and chancel carvings. Happily, now-a-days, nobody would think of copying Ruskin in a dwelling-house. People may like to read a conventional gift-book occasionally, and take up “Sesame and Lilies” from the drawing-room table when they have time to kill, and want to get away from everyday life and practical things. Moreover, the most selfish and unscrupulous people in the world are apt to have a vein of sentimental efflorescence in their nature which will reveal itself, when they read Ruskin or Browning, with a zest that is Machiavelian.
But the Transitional period as we have come to know it best was not a Gothic revival, but a poverty-stricken application of Renaissance motive and detail out of the midst of which I have proposed to try to find something commendable—something to praise. Well, I think I shall have done so when I throw upon the imaginary screen I have so often suspended before my very patient audience, the picture of the doorway in East Fourth Street, New York City ([Plate XLVIII]). And were it a “truly” phantasmagoria I were conducting, I know it would be difficult for an audience to restrain itself—not to cry “Ah!” after the manner of the gallery, because I know how this picture affects me, and can discount the reader’s enthusiasm accordingly. The adjoining windows are out of proportion to the doorway, and badly spaced, but are faithful to the epoch. One must not expect too much of a Transitional house. The part of the window shown belonging to No. 23 Bond Street—([see Plate XLVIII]), has better proportions, though the doorway beside it is not half as beautiful as the one on Fourth Street. Still, we owe it to an uncommon episode that this doorway has been photographed at all, and to which my acknowledgment is given, though I do not altogether approve the sentiment of the episode.
No. 23 Bond Street was once the property of a great beau of the Transitional period named Harry Ward. He had money besides. Now, it is very easy and natural for a great beau of any epoch, with money besides to believe that because the Sabbath was made for man, the six other days were made for him, also. Alas! no mistake could be more unfortunate, and of this the doorway has long stood as mute evidence. In coming into possession of No. 23 Bond Street, in his time a fashionable neighborhood, Harry Ward decorated and refurnished the house in a way which may be said to have been the last word upon the subject of household art of the period; and, to recur to a Transitional colloquialism, “he had his girl picked out.” But there were inimical circumstances which precluded the nuptial celebration, so they could not live in the house. Then Mr. Ward died, and, I believe, bequeathed No. 23 Bond Street, in fee-simple, to his sweetheart. This sweetheart, like Edith Bartlett in “Looking Backward,” rode on the top of the coach, and consequently she also coveted the six days that were not made for man, very much. The dispensation seemed unnecessarily cruel. We may not judge of the motives that induced her to rebel, and to keep the house as long as she lived a sacred memorial to Mr. Ward and to have nothing moved or changed from the way he had ordered it during his lifetime; but we know that without
