| HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, WESTMINSTER. | |||
 | |||
| Fig. 91. | |||
1. Reading Clerk. 2. Dressing Room. 3. Clerk of the Parliament. 4. Clerk Assistant’s Dressing Room. 5. Clerk Assistant. 6. Clerk, House of Lords. 7. Messengers. 8. Waiting Room. 9. Lord Chancellor’s Secretaries. 10. Lord Chancellor. 11. Lord Chancellor’s Dressing Room. 12 Permanent Secretary. 13. Sergeant-at-Arms. 14. Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod. 15. Private Bill Office. 16. Chairman’s Dressing 17. Chairman of Committees. 18. Clerk to Private Bill and Taxing Office. 19. Chairman of Committees Counsel. 20. Royal Staircase. 21. Clerk to Public Bills. 22. Minutes. | 23. Peers’ Staircase. 24. Inner Office. 25. Printed Papers Office. 26. Private Bills and Taxing Office. 27. Earl Marshal. 28. Strangers’ and Reporters’ Stairs. 29. Peers’ Standing Order Committee Room. 30. The Thrones. 31. Bar of the House. 32. Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords. 33. Premier. 34. Telegraph. 35. Solicitor-General. 36. Attorney-General. 37. Lord Advocate. 38. Resident Superintendent. 39. Archbishops. 40. Principal Stairs. 41. Residence of the Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod. 42. Sitting Room. 43. Residence of the Clerk of Parliament. 44. Members’ Entrance. | 45. Dining Room of the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms. 46. Turret Room. 47. Private Stairs of the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms. 48. Journal Office Stores. 49. Police. 50. Ministers. 51. Opposition Ministers. 52. Members’ Entrance Stairs. 53. Members’ Conference Room. 54. Members’ Private Secretaries 55. Members’ Small Conference Room. 56. Votes and Proceedings. 57. Accountant and Chief Public Bill Office. 58. Old Treasury Stairs. 59. Post Master. 60. Strangers’ Stairs. 61. Cistern Tower. 62. Irish Whips. 63 Government Whips. 64. Opposition Whips. 65. Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms. 66. Clerk to Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms. | 67. Speaker’s Counsel. 68. Speaker’s Counsel’s Clerk. 69. Vote Office. 70. Bar Lobby. 71. Speaker’s Lobby. 72. Ministers. 73. Clerk Assistant. 74. Train Bearers. 75. Speaker’s Retiring Room. 76. Old Prison Rooms Lobby. 77. Sergeant-at-Arms’ Smoking Room. 78. Clock Weight Shaft. 79. Air Shaft. 80. Smoking Room Lobby. 81. Butler. 82. Speaker’s Secretary. 83. Audience Room. 84. Times Reporters. 85. Strangers’ Gallery. 86. Waste Paper. 87. Mess. |
| Fig. 92.—Plan of the Parliament House, Budapest. (Steindl.) |
We may now turn to consider the Gothic Revival movement itself, of which Pugin was one of the most important pioneers. New ideas, however, as to the importance of Gothic architecture had been in the air before he came on the scene, and The Gothic Revival, England. quite early in the century John Britten’s Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain and Cathedral Antiquities, with their beautiful steel engravings by Le Keux, had done much to call attention to the neglected beauty of English medieval churches; and Thomas Rickman’s remarkable and (for its day) masterly analysis of the variations of style in Gothic architecture, which first appeared in 1817, and went through edition after edition in succeeding years, gave the first intelligent direction to the study of the subject. Pugin supplied to the movement not analysis, but passion. He had the merit of having perceived, when quite a youth, that one thing wanted was better craftsmanship, and that craftsmanship in the medieval period was something very different from what it was in the early Victorian period; he set up an atelier of craftsmen, and was the real pioneer of what may be called the Arts and Crafts movement in England. An enthusiast by nature, he flung his whole soul into the task of reviving, as he believed, the glory of English medieval architecture; nothing else in architecture was worth thinking of; Classic and Renaissance were only worth sarcasm. The result in his works was a curious inconsistency. Pugin was not in the true sense a great architect; his mind was not practical enough to grasp an architectural problem as a whole, plan and building combined; in fact, he was no master of plan, and does not seem to have troubled himself much about it. But he had a remarkable perception of interior effect; whenever you go into one of his churches you recognize the desire to realize the greatest effect of height, the most soaring effect of lines, possible within the actual vertical measurements. But in his passion for this soaring expression he seems to have entirely lost sight of the essential quality of solidity and genuineness of material in the medieval architecture which he was trying to emulate or to outvie. So long as he could get his effect of height, his poetic interior, he was content to have thin walls and plaster vaults and ornaments; or, in other words, he spent upon height what should first have been spent upon solid and monumental building. The result has been gently but effectively satirized by Browning in “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”:—
| “It’s different preaching in Basilicas To doing duty in some masterpiece Like this of brother Pugin’s, bless his heart. I doubt if they’re half-baked, those chalk rosettes, Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere; It’s just like breathing in a limekiln, eh?” |
It is too true; and there is something pathetic in Pugin’s career, in this passionate and sincere pursuit after a revival of the medieval spirit in life and in architecture—a pursuit which towards the close of his life he himself evidently more than half suspected to have been a fallacy.
The full tide of the Gothic revival is connected more especially with the name of Sir Gilbert Scott. He was hardly a pure enthusiast like Pugin; he was a shrewd man of the world, the commencement of whose professional career coincided with the rising tide of ecclesiological reform, and he had the ability to make the best of the opportunity. He appears to have had, even as a child, an inborn interest in church architecture and in Gothic detail (witness the description, in his Memoirs, of his astonishment and interest, at the age of eleven, at the first sight of capitals of the Early English type), and he acquired by unremitting study a knowledge of English Gothic architecture in its every detail which few architects have ever equalled. His numerous churches were, intentionally and confessedly, as close reproductions as possible of medieval architecture, generally that of the Early Decorated period; and if it were desirable that modern church architecture should consist in the reproduction of medieval churches, the task could not have been carried out with more learning and exactitude than it was by him. It was this minute and accurate knowledge of medieval church architecture which made him such a power when the idea of restoring English cathedrals became popular. He had an acquired instinct in tracing out the existence of details which had been overlaid by modern repairs or plasterwork; in going over a cathedral to decide on a scheme of restoration he seemed to know it as an anatomist knows the suggestions of a fossil skeleton; and in the course of his restorations he unearthed many points in the architectural history of the buildings which but for him would never have been elucidated. We now recognize that much of this “restoration” was a mistake, which destroyed the real interest of the cathedrals; and it is unhappily a mistake which cannot be undone. But the violent reproaches which have been heaped upon Scott’s memory on this account are rather unjust. It is forgotten that he was doing what at the time every one considered to be the right thing; cathedral bodies vied with each other in restoration, and were enthusiastic in the cause; there were few if any dissenting voices; and in regard to the interiors of the cathedrals which were in modern use as places of worship, much that he did really required to be done to put them into decent condition. His churches have ceased to be interesting now, as is usually the case with copied architecture; but when they were built they were exactly what every one wanted and was asking for. And he produced at all events one original work which is a great deal better than it is now the fashion to think—the Albert Memorial. It is injured by the statue, for which the commission went to the wrong sculptor; but Scott’s idea of producing, as he phrased it, “a shrine on a great scale,” was really a fine one, and finely carried out. The most important objection to it is one which popular criticism does not recognize, viz. that the vault is tied by concealed iron ties, and would hardly be safe without them. But apart from that it is a fine conception, and Scott was right in regarding it as his best work.
G.E. Street, who was a pupil of Scott, was a greater enthusiast for medieval architecture (which, with him, as with Pugin, included medieval religion) than even Scott, and an architect of greater force and individuality. He was especially devoted to the early Transitional type of Gothic, and in all his buildings there is apparent the feeling for the solidity and monumental character, and the reticence in the use of ornament, which is characteristic of the Transitional period. His churches are noteworthy for their monumental character; and he had a remarkable faculty for giving an appearance of scale and dignity to the interiors of comparatively small churches. Hence his modern-medieval churches retain their interest more than Scott’s, but in respect of secular architecture his taste was hopelessly medievalized, and his great building, the law courts in London, can only be regarded as a costly failure; it is not even beautiful except in regard to some good detail; it is badly planned; and the one fine interior feature, the great vaulted hall, is rendered useless by not being on the same floor with the courts, so that instead of being a salle des pas perdus it is a desert. Street’s career is a warning how real architectural talent and vigour may be stultified by a sentimental adherence to a past phase of architecture. No modern architect had more fully penetrated the spirit of Gothic architecture, and his nave of Bristol cathedral is as good as genuine medieval work, and might pass for such when time-worn; but that is rather archaeology than architecture.
The competition for the law courts was one of the great architectural events of the middle of the century, and made or raised the reputation even of some of the unsuccessful competitors. Edward Barry (the son of Sir Charles) gained the first place for “plan,” which the advisers of the government had foolishly separated from “design” (as if the plan of a building could be considered apart from the architectural conception!), giving first marks for plan, and second for design. E. Barry therefore had really gained the competition, “design,” which was awarded to Street, counting second; but Street managed to push him out, and it is a nemesis on him for this by no means loyal proceeding that the building he contrived to get entirely into his own hands has served to injure rather than benefit his reputation. William Burges (1827-1881), an ardent devotee of French early Gothic, produced a design in that style, which, though quite unsuitable practically, is a greater evidence of architectural power than is furnished by any of his executed buildings. J.P. Seddon (1828-1906), an old adherent of Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, an architect of genius who never got his opportunity, produced a design which was wildly picturesque in appearance but in reality more practical than might be thought at first sight, and his proposal for a great Record tower for housing official records was a really fine and original idea.
Among the ecclesiastical buildings of the Gothic revival those of William Butterfield (1814-1900), much less numerous than those of Scott and Street, have a special interest as the work of a revival architect who was something more than a mere archaeologist. All Saints, Margaret Street (1859), is the production of an architectural artist using medieval materials to carry out a conception of his own, and hence, like Babbacombe church and others by the same hand, it has an interest for the present day which Scott’s churches have not. His Keble College chapel rather failed from an exaggeration of the use of polychromatic materials, which in some of his other churches he had used with moderation and with good effect. J.L. Pearson was another distinguished architect of the later period of the Gothic revival who was able to put something of his own into modern Gothic churches. No one was more learned in medieval architecture than he was; and as of Street’s nave of Bristol, so we may say of Pearson’s nave of Truro, that it is as good as medieval Gothic; indeed Truro nave is finer in character than some of the ancient cathedral naves, and represents pure Gothic at its best. But in the exteriors of his churches, as at Truro and in the churches of Kilburn and Red Lion Square, Pearson evolved a Gothic of his own which is Pearsonesque and not merely archaeological. James Brooks (1825-1901) also deserves an honoured place in the chronicle of the Gothic revival for being the first to show how large town churches might be erected in brick (fig. 93), in which largeness of scale and a certain grandeur of effect could be obtained without extravagant cost, and in which it was practically demonstrated that architecture in the true Gothic spirit could be produced without depending on ornament.