The Champagne Standard

by Mrs. John Lane

A Plea for Women Architects

Now that it is the fashion, as well as the necessity, for women to earn their own living, and when they are crowding into all the employments hitherto sacred to men (and in some of which they are exceedingly out of place) one wonders that they so rarely take to a profession—or, rather, to one branch of it—which seems so distinctly adapted to their characteristic talents; and that is domestic architecture.

The longer I live in England the more I am struck by the singular inconvenience of the average English house; its supreme aim seems to be to make the occupier as uncomfortable as possible. I do not, of course, speak of palaces which rejoice in a majestic dreariness, nor of the homes of the brand-new rich, who, being unencumbered by ancestors or ancestral castles, can start fresh with all the newest improvements, so new, indeed, that they are still quite sticky with varnish. I speak of the average person, who has a moderate income, and who, without pretension, would yet like to get the most comfort out of life.

I am well aware that when it comes to a consideration of the defects of English architecture I shall be completely crushed by a reference to English cathedrals, to which the American makes adoring pilgrimages. It is true they are glorious. We do not live in cathedrals, however, but in houses, and the English houses are far, far behind the English cathedrals.

In America we are on the high road to perfection in domestic architecture, owing, possibly, to the acknowledged supremacy of our women. Where a woman reigns supreme, it is the end and aim of her men to make her comfortable and happy. Now the American architect, being a man, and belonging most likely to some woman, makes it his pride to provide for her—or her sex which she represents—the most comfortable, convenient and pretty house to adorn with her taste and her presence until she moves. We have no legacies of famous cathedrals; but, O! we do have absolute comfort in our houses!

A woman is not wasteful in small things, but a man is; who then is so adapted to utilise the small space which constitutes the average house? A house can be the visible expression of all her cleverness, her economy, her taste and her common sense; it will give her an opportunity to be great in the minor aspirations. Possibly she might fail if she tried to build a cathedral—as she has failed in the highest expression of any of the arts—but she is undoubtedly created to bring that into the world which stands for comfort and for happiness, and where can she so fully prove her homely genius as at her own fireside?

Ah me, the fireside reminds me of how one shivers through an English winter! A man does not realise how terribly cold a woman can be, a mere man architect who rushes about all day long with twice as much clothing on as the average woman wears, and who, besides, never undergoes the ordeal of a low-necked dress!

It really would seem as if the male architect of houses can only construct the obvious; his imagination declines to soar. If he is an Englishman he firmly believes in the methods of his ancestors more or less remote, and that explains why the Victorian house with all its bad taste, and inconvenience still remains the popular town dwelling-place. So common is it, that an enterprising burglar having "burgled" one, can find his way safely over half the houses of London, and be positively bored by their monotony! Now these houses are the creations of men architects, who have seen nothing else, and who lack that architectural intuition which can make them evolve what they have never seen, and enables them to immortalise in brick and mortar the vagaries of a dream.

Therefore it is high time for women to come to the front! A woman has intuitions, and when she really doesn't know it is her proud boast that she can guess, and, surely, that does quite as well. When she builds a house she will feel it, as a poet does his poem. She will put herself in the place of that other woman whose destiny it is to live there. She will create for her all the delightful things she wants herself. She will warm that house comfortably, because she herself hates to shiver. She will put in plenty of cupboards, because without cupboards life is not worth living (to a woman)! Her kitchen will be in just proportion to the size of the house, and not a kind of baronial hall in which even the beetles look lonely. Having pity on mere human legs she will cease to build Towers of Babel.

Then, her genius being for detail, she will see that the interior work of the house is well and delicately finished. What impresses me most in comparing the work of an English and an American workman is that the American is more careful and deft. He leaves no dabs of paint, or seams of coarse cement. The Englishman is distinctly clumsier in his methods and his results.