IT is curious that most of the great London architects should have come from Scotland. Among these the most distinguished are Chambers, the designer of Somerset House, Campbell, Rennie, Gibbs, and the Brothers Adam. All these have left their mark upon the great city. The Barry family were Irish; Pugin and Vanbrugh of foreign extraction; while Inigo Jones was a Welshman. Wren, however, outweighs the rest, and he was an Englishman.
Vanbrugh was an interesting character, and his scattered works abound in London and its suburbs. This brilliant man has scarcely obtained the full credit he deserves for his numerous and versatile gifts, for he adorned no less than five professions. He was soldier, dramatist, and manager; an architect and a herald to boot: to say nothing of his being a wit and a poet. His plays, “The Relapse,” “The Confederacy,” “The Provok’d Wife,” and “The Provok’d Husband” are among the works that no theatrical gentleman’s library should be without. His great mansions at Blenheim and Castle Howard are monuments of his skill, and his fables were considered by Pope to be superior to those of La Fontaine. In soldiering and management he was not so successful, though he was persuasive enough to obtain from the nobility and gentry £30,000 with which to build an opera-house in the Haymarket on the exact spot where Her Majesty’s Theatre now stands. When this theatre was finished hardly a word could be heard, and the voices of the actors had the effect of low undulating murmurings. The object of the designer, however, was to furnish an interior for both music and Italian opera; and it would pass the wit of our Phippses and Emdens to supply a building which would be equally suited for acting and singing.
It seems to be the fate of every architect of eminence who is favoured with a “commission” for some vast public building to suffer hardship and sordid treatment at the hands of the authorities. It was so with Wren, Barry, Street, and above all with Vanbrugh, who had to go to law with the Marlboroughs to obtain his fees. He was himself sued by the contractors and workmen, who could obtain no money from either the family or Government. The story of this persecution is to be found in the curious Vanbrugh papers. More curious is it to discover, as the writer did lately, that there is still standing in London his old mansion, the very first attempt he made, which (though dilapidated enough) seems still hale, stout, and strong. When it became known, about the year 1702, that the wit and dramatist had turned architect and had actually built himself a mansion in Whitehall, it became the subject of much ridicule; and Dr. Swift was merry on the shape and peculiarity of the new building.
One asks the waterman hard by,
Where may the Poet’s palace lie?
At length they in the rubbish spy
A thing resembling a goose-pie—
A type of modern wit and style
The rubbish of an ancient pile.
STATUE OF GENERAL GORDON IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
It seemed unlikely that this “goose-pie,” amid all the vicissitudes of Whitehall, could have escaped demolition. But recently the writer of these notes came on a rather minute description of the place, drawn up in the year 1815. As it then appeared, it was a low, long building in three divisions, two stories high, with arched windows, three in each compartment. Further, the brothers Adam had taken it in hand, and added two wings or vestibules, projecting forward and decorated with their own peculiar “fan-like” ornamentation. This was satisfactory for identification; though no one of our generation was likely to recall such a structure in Whitehall. But almost at the first search it was revealed. There it stood flanking the Banqueting Hall in the shape of the dilapidated, gone-to-seed museum known as the United Service Institution. This was the original Vanbrugh “goose-pie” family mansion, answering in every point to the description, encumbered with the Adam additions, effective and not without merit. It is, however, in rather a squalid state; and it is safe to prophesy that in two or three years it will have disappeared. It is curious to think of the brilliant author of “The Relapse” living here nearly two hundred years ago.
Close as it is to Charing Cross, St. Martin’s Lane and the district about it still retain an old-fashioned air. At its very entrance we note one of the most effective and effectively placed buildings in London, the fine church, St. Martin’s, with its soaring and conspicuous steeple and stately portico. The levity of our time was never better illustrated than by the proposal to cut away the steps to gain a few feet of roadway, and it was actually gravely suggested and discussed whether it would not be the best course to remove the portico wholesale, and place it at the back of the church! From every direction, almost, the spire can be seen, and from every quarter the church forms a pleasing point of view. It was built by Gibbs, and its interior is in Wren’s peculiar favourite manner—a vaulted ceiling supported on columns, which, in their turn, support galleries, their bases being covered up by the massive pews.
St. Martin’s Lane is a far more interesting street than might be supposed, being full of strange Hogarthian memories. Bishop Horsley told the antiquary so oddly named “Rainy-day Smith,” that he had often heard his father describe the time when St. Martin’s Church was literally “In the fields,” and when there was a turnpike leading into St. Martin’s Lane. Mr. Smith wrote this over sixty years ago, and there have been enormous changes since then. There are two curious little lanes or passages turning out of it on the right hand as you go up, one of which bears the name of “May’s Buildings, 1739,” in faint characters. This was built by a gentleman of that name, whose house is still to be seen at No. 43, a sausage shop, a striking and elegant piece of brick-work, though unpretending. It was thus that it struck “Rainy-day Smith,” fifty years ago, who was much praised in his day for “his attention to old houses.” He says that Mr. May’s house “consisted of two pilasters supporting a cornice; and it is, in my opinion, one of the neatest specimens of architectural brick-work in London. The site of the White Horse livery stables was originally a tea-garden; and south of it was a hop-garden, which still retains that appellation. The extensive premises, No. 60, were formerly held by Chippendale, the most famous upholsterer and cabinet-maker of his day, to whose folio work on household furniture the trade formerly made constant reference. It contains in many instances specimens of the style of furniture so much in vogue in France in the reign of Louis XIV., but which for many years past has been discontinued in England. However, as most fashions come round again, I should not wonder if we were to see the unmeaning scroll and shell-work, with which the furniture of Louis’s reign was so profusely incumbered, revive; when Chippendale’s book will again be sought after with redoubled avidity, and, as many of the copies must have been sold as waste paper, the few remaining will probably bear rather a high price.”[1] Another house that always attracts attention is the one numbered 96, and which deserves notice for its artistic doorway—certainly one of the most effective in London for its flowing style of carving and elegant design. It is now a cloth shop, but Mr. Smith describes it as being in his day “one of the oldest colour-shops in London, and has one of the very few remaining shop-fronts where the shutters slide in grooves. The street-door frame is of the style of Queen Anne, with a spread-eagle, foliage, and flowers, curiously and deeply carved in wood, over the entrance, similar to those remaining in Carey Street and in Great Ormond Street. The late Mr. Powel, the colourman, and family inhabited it; and I have heard him say that his mother for many years made a pipe of wine from the grapes which grew in their garden, which at that time was nearly one hundred feet in length, before the smoke of so many surrounding buildings destroyed their growth. This house has a large staircase, curiously painted, of figures viewing a procession, which was executed for the famous Dr. Misaubin, about the year 1732, by a painter of the name of Clermont, a Frenchman, who boldly charged one thousand guineas for his labour; which charge, however, was contested, and the artist was obliged to take five hundred. Behind the house there is a large room, the inside of which Hogarth has given in his Rake’s Progress, where he has introduced portraits of the doctor and his Irish wife.”