A book of bridges

by Walter Shaw Sparrow

Again, what are we as pontists to say about the fallen master of many Christian periods, the Roman genius, whose architecture and road-making were copied? The Roman baths were not copied, of course, for a clean body was not regarded as sacred in a Christian way; but the Roman bridges, roads, aqueducts, were favourite models for imitation. Many a ruler, from Charlemagne to the Moorish zealots in Spain, not only valued their service, but restored them carefully. Mediæval architects invented very little in bridge-building; their first work tried to recover the lost Roman art; and then, little by little, they added some ideas to their acquired knowledge. Here and there they equalled the Romans, as in the great bridges at Montauban and Cahors, which Brangwyn has painted with a vigorous enjoyment; but in most of their efforts the design was either too rustic or too lubberly, so ponderous was the technical inspiration. Far too often their ideal of strength was a mere man-at-arms, brave but underbred. Rivers were obstructed by immense piers, for instance, by which spates were turned into dangerous inundations; and footways along bridges were so narrow that safety recesses for pedestrians had to be built out from the parapets into the piers. Even in exceptions to this rule of ungainliness, as in much Spanish workmanship, architects were overapt to make the use of bridges a tiring penance that wayfarers could not avoid. Thus the bridge over the Sella at Cángas de Onis has a lofty footway shaped like a gable; to-day it is little used, for the climbing exercise that it offers to everybody is put out of vogue by a modern bridge, its neighbour and rival. In brief, many gabled bridges in Spain[6] were made narrow enough to be useless to wheeled traffic and friendly to pack mules; friendly in a mediæval manner, for a seasoning of peril was added to their inconvenience. Most of them are without parapets; and when their rivers flood into roaring spates, and across their giddy pathways a gale sweeps eagerly, an Alpinist can enjoy a mad crossing, after dark, between dinner and bedtime.

Frank Brangwyn has drawn for us, with as much fidelity as vigour, one of the finest gable bridges, the Puente de San Juan de las Abadesas at Gerona. This bridge has a great historic interest. The Moors left in Spain a peculiar grace of style which native architects often united to their own qualities—a haughty distinction and a lofty ambition. Consider the immense nave in Gerona Cathedral, a glorious pointed arch not less than seventy-three feet from side to side, almost double the width of Westminster nave. It belongs to the fifteenth century, yet in the magic of its youthful hope it proves that its architect, Guillermo Boffiy, was a child of the thirteenth. And the great central arch of the Gerona bridge has in it some of the soaring courage that transcends all expectation in the cathedral nave[7].

Yet this gabled bridge, though very spacious and attractive, has less charm than its rival at Orense, in Gallicia, a noble monument 1319 feet long, built in 1230 by Bishop Lorenzo, and repaired in 1449 by Bishop Pedro de Silva. The six arches differ in size, yet their combination is symmetrical; four are gracefully pointed, and the finest one rises above the Miño to a height of a hundred and thirty-five feet, and its brave span, a hundred and fifty-six feet from pier to pier, is the widest of any in Spain.[8]

PUENTE DE SAN JUAN DE LAS ABADESAS AT GERONA, SPAIN

It is commonly supposed that gable bridges were invented by the genius of Gothic architecture. Yet Marco Polo found them in China, [9] and the Roman bridge of two arches at Alcantarilla is hog-backed. Usually the Romans liked a flat road over a river, though it was easier and less expensive to build a steep bridge from low embankments. But the bridge at Alcantarilla, about twenty miles below Seville, is quite steep enough to be the forerunner of all the gable bridges erected in Spain.[10]

There is little in stone bridge building that the Romans did not discover. To this day their aqueducts and bridges are models of thoroughness, and apologise nobly for a civilization that rambled through wonderful achievements into a gradual suicide. While arenas for barbaric sports were being built at a great expense, and while most of the Roman roads circulated war, did many persons guess that their imperial genius in handicraft would outlive their statesmanship by hundreds of years? Who knows why Rome very often squandered her energy on the least fruitful phases of strife, neglecting those benign phases out of which intellectual vigour ought to have come, age after age, in a continuous zeal for research, and revision, and improvement? She neglected science, for instance, and her bad example was followed by the mediæval Church. Not a mind had any inkling of the fact that the brightest hopes for mankind would emerge from science, like medicinal plants from dry seeds. Innumerable millions died from ignorance because Pasteur and Lister were not evolved until the races of man were perhaps a million years old. In the creeping progress of humanity the dead have been mocked by every good discovery; there has been nothing so cruel as a healing success, for it has ever been too late by thousands of years.

To visualise this truth in the strife of man is a great trial to any mind; but yet it is the one thing that a pontist cannot evade without being disloyal to his honour as a student, since he knows that strife has ruled over the tremendous drama which has had for its theatres the highways and byways, and for its actors the races of man, continuously at odds with one another. If this truth had to be deleted from the drama, then I, for one, would not be a student of roads and bridges. As well read the Greek tragedians after deleting all the passions that make for contests and crises.

So let us try to get nearer and nearer to strife, the most active genius in the life of our subject. Why has it set tribe against tribe, nation against nation, class against class, tradesman against tradesman, intellect against intellect? Must we clear from our minds all the shibboleths of modern idealism? and feel pity for the supergood when they chatter to us about their isles of dreams, their unsubstantial fairy places, where “cosmic conscience” reigns with “the universal brotherhood of man,” and where “everlasting peace” promises never to be effete and sterile? When a Wellington of Finance erects a Peace Palace, at The Hague or elsewhere, are we to be glad that the pomp of irony did not leave the world when Gibbon died? Should we gain anything at all if we were bold enough to condemn the whole past life of the human race? Ought we to pass with Carlyle from democratic hopes into hero worship, and thence into a hot-brained conviction that faith in mankind is impossible? Are we to suppose that man has transformed into instincts the worst habits he has acquired, so that his ultimate destiny upon earth will be determined by his attitude to these instincts? Will he obey them or will he try to conquer them?