The other wing, so called, of the palace had also three courts, the interior architecture of which we may judge of by looking at the back, or east, side of the Banqueting House, which was built to form part of the north-eastern court on one side, and to look on the street of Whitehall on the other. The Chapel was to have corresponded in the north-western corner. Jones left elaborate plans for this building, and a section in Kent is one of the most beautiful things in a beautiful book. It was a double cube, of course, but the roof was vaulted, or, at least, coved. Elaborate symbolical carving and angelic figures are on the wall. The chapel has a narrow gallery above, and the order, which is Ionic, fluted, below, is Corinthian above. Wide-arched openings are in the view in Kent, but he does not show us what the other, or chancel, end was to be like. It may be worth noting that, like Wren, Jones was very free in his use of the orders, and it is not always possible in the prints to distinguish Corinthian from Composite; but, of course, where the lower storey was Ionic, the upper would not be Composite.
As to the merits of this design for a palace, critics have been very well agreed—except, unfortunately, during the madness of the supposed Gothic revival. Had Barry been desired to use, or adapt, Jones’s design, or part of it, for the new Houses of Parliament, what a noble river-front we might have had! But it is useless to pursue such thoughts. The opportunity was lost, and, for certainly the past thirty years, there have been very few people in England who were really able to judge of the Houses of Parliament apart from their ornamentation. Inigo Jones’s design would have been the better of any ornament that could have been bestowed on it, but ornament was not necessary. Marble columns and gilt capitals would have looked well, but plain stone would have been enough.
First Design by Inigo Jones for the Rebuilding of Whitehall.
Bird’s-eye View. From Müller.
Fergusson well remarks that the greatest error in Jones’s design for Whitehall was the vastness of its scale. It was as far beyond the means as beyond the wants of James I. It is not, he continues, in a long passage from which I only take a few sentences, so much in dimensions as in beauty of design that this proposal surpassed other European palaces. Externally, it would have surpassed the Louvre, Versailles, or any other building of the kind, “by the happy manner in which the angles are accentuated, by the boldness of the centre masses in each façade, and by the play of light and shade, and the variety of sky-line, which is obtained without ever interfering with the simplicity of the design or the harmony of the whole.”
Sir William Chambers, the last of the Inigo Jones and Wren succession, speaks especially of the circular court described above. There are few nobler thoughts, he observes, in the remains of antiquity. The effect of the building, properly carried out, would have been surprising and great in the highest degree. The diameter of the court was to be 210 feet, the ground floor being an open arcade or cloister.
Jones wholly misapprehended the depth of the King’s purse when he made a design of so costly a character. Otherwise, we must conclude that he made these beautiful drawings for his own pleasure—a kind of vision which he knew could never be realised. That this is not a correct statement of the case seems to be proved by what followed. Let us take the Banqueting House as a unit. It cost, roughly speaking, 20,000l., of which sum 15,000l. was for the mere building. Three similar buildings in the same court would have cost at least 60,000l., the chapel more than the rest. This foots up at once to 80,000l. The Persian Court could not have cost less than 50,000l. Add to this the two magnificent halls, and we have 80,000l. more. Yet we have only accounted for two of the seven courts, and have said nothing of the four fronts. We feel tempted to think that Inigo, like the person mentioned by Tennyson, built his soul “a lordly pleasure-house, wherein at ease for aye to dwell,” and that he neither intended nor expected that King James should carry it out. That this is not the case we can judge by the design he made for Charles I. in 1639. It was to be of only half the dimensions, and was to be studiously plain. Whereas the Banqueting House was one of the plainest and least costly features of the 1619 design, it would appear in the new view as one of the most elaborately ornamented. But he misjudged the purse of the son, as he had misjudged that of the father. Not a stone was ever laid, and when, a few years later, the war broke out, it was hopeless to think that Charles, though sorely in need of a commodious and really royal residence, could ever build, even after the new and modified design presented to him by his Surveyor.
Part of the First Design by Inigo Jones