Ellesmere. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when she came from abroad, remarked that all her friends seemed to have got into drawing-rooms which were like a grand piano, first a large square or oblong room, and then a small one. Quite Georgian, this style of architecture. But now I think we are improving immensely—at any rate in the outside of houses. By the way, Milverton, I want to ask you one thing: How is it that Governments and Committees, and the bodies that manage matters of taste, seem to be more tasteless than the average run of people? I will wager anything that the cabmen round Trafalgar Square would have made a better thing of it than it is. If you had put before them several prints of fountains, they would not have chosen those.
Milverton. I think with you, but I have no theory to account for it. I suppose that these committees are frequently hampered by other considerations than those which come before the public when they are looking at the work done; and this may be some excuse. There was a custom which I have heard prevailed in former days in some of the Italian cities, of making large models of the works of art that were to adorn the city, and putting them up in the places intended for the works when finished, and then inviting criticism. It would really be a very good plan in some cases.
Ellesmere. Now, Milverton, would you not forthwith pull down such things as Buckingham Palace and the National Gallery? Dunsford looks at me as if I were going to pull down the Constitution.
Milverton. I would pull them down to a certainty, or some parts of them at any rate; but whether “forthwith” is another question. There are greater things, perhaps, to be done first. We must consider, too,
“That eternal want of pence
Which vexes public men.”
Still, I think we ought always to look upon such buildings as temporary arrangements, and they vex one less then. The Palace ought to be in the higher part of the Park, perhaps on that slope opposite Piccadilly.
Dunsford. Well, it does amuse me the way in which you youngsters go on, pulling down, in your industrious imaginations, palaces and national galleries, building aqueducts and cloacæ maximæ, forming parks, destroying smoke (so large a part of every Londoner’s diet), and abridging plaster, without fear of Chancellors of the Exchequer, and the resistance of mankind in general.
Milverton. We must begin by thinking boldly about things. That is a larger part of any undertaking than it seems, perhaps.
Dunsford. We must, I am afraid, break off our pleasant employment of projecting public improvements, unless we mean to be dinnerless.
Ellesmere. A frequent fate of great projectors, I fear.