We beg to introduce the Enthusiast to our readers, for such the world is
pleased now and then to call him; his real character, however, shall be
judged of by the reflecting and considerate; the name may stick to him
as a matter of small account, for a wiser man than ourselves has said
“there’s nothing in a name.”
When we speak of the reflecting and considerate, it is not to be implied
that all persons do not at times and in their way reflect and consider;
but it is hard to do so while we are involved in the business of ordinary
life; like players at cards, we are absorbed in the calculations that
affect them, and in the consideration of the “hand” we hold. We find
even the most skilful, straining to recollect himself of the past
progress, and speculating on the future chances of the game—so it is
with the mass of human beings. Could we look but on as cool spectators
of the games, and shifts, and moves of general life, we should pity,
smile, expostulate, reprove, where now at best we give a vacant look,
an unmeaning sigh, rage and burn, as in turns we feel the instinct of
weakness or passion, and are driven to act under their impulses—but
we are drawing the portrait of the multitude, and losing sight of the
Enthusiast.
How shall we catch his likeness and how present it to our readers? It
must be drawn with many lines and a patient hand. We are not limners,
or choose not to be, who cut out profiles in black, with a pair of
scissors; nor can we daguerrotype him at a glance. No! The Enthusiast
must be the subject of many sittings, though we may give a complete
feature or, sketch at each of his aspect for the day; and in doing so, we
promise ourselves what we hope will be largely shared in by our readers,
a fair amount of interest and gratification.
Enthusiast has some eccentricities, or to speak more plainly, has
his oddities. Tell him so however, tell him as a friend, and he is
enthusiastic to rid himself of his oddities. He has friends who now and
then tell him so; he has enemies who also take the same liberty; but
it is ten to one, if you examine it, that both friends and enemies,
in specifying some particular oddity, confront and contradict each
other, and leave the poor Enthusiast not wiser, but more perplexed,
between them. Indeed, so much do they themselves blunder, and so much of
guess-work is there in their opinions, that to give things their right
names, judging from effects, we should call the friend an enemy, and
the enemy a friend. The only conclusion we can come to is by canvassing
the motives of each, to decide that the well-meaning and evil-doing are
ranged on the one side, and the evil-meaning and well-doing on the other.
So odd are many things and many persons besides Enthusiast; but we are
again sketching from the crowd, and Enthusiast sits impatient, or rather
his friends are impatient, which with them is much the same thing.
Enthusiast is an architect! Upon my word, some one will exclaim, what
is coming to us now-a-days?—architects and architecture are obtruded
upon us at every turn; and a certain lady of a certain age (which means,
as everybody knows, no very large portion of a century) indignantly
expostulates against this attempt to engross the public mind and
attention with these “new fanglements” of a profession and an art which
her father and grandfather’s days could very well do without. “Formerly,”
she says (which means about the ancient period of her youth), “we hardly
heard the mention of such things. Architects, indeed! formerly the word
even was scarcely so much as known among us. I recollect,” says she,
“having my attention forced upon it somewhere in my school readings, in
some out of the way chapter or exercise, which poor Mrs. Cross-stitch
imposed on me at the ‘finishing’ of my education. I recollect reading
something about architecture, and how I mispronounced the word, and how
Mrs. Letterhead, our class mistress, told me to pronounce the ch like
k; and how she gave us a spelling task with that and several other hard
words to learn at home in the evening, and how my poor father, when he
_heard me_ my task at my bed-time, had a dispute with our neighbour,
Percy Fullpurse, as to which was the greater personage, the archdeacon
or the architect; for they both insisted that Miss Letterhead was wrong
in her _pronounciation_, as Percy had it; and how Percy, who was a great
authority with us, for we thought riches and wisdom went very much
together, decided that the archdeacon and the architect had nothing to
do with each other, but that the architect was something he could not
exactly tell what or how, but he believed had something to do with the
quarter of the Archipelago, with which also he had nothing to do. All
this I recollect, and certainly, though I may now smile at the ignorance
of my poor father and neighbour Percy, yet I am not bound to hold with
all that we are hearing and having dinned into our ears every day. Almost
every third person I meet with has some friend or friend’s friend who is
an architect, or is acquainted with an architect—and I meet with them at
parties; and there is Cousin Symmetry has placed his son by his first
wife as pupil to an architect; but what call can there be, or what to
do for so many architects? Architects, like Proctors, should keep their
places, and some two or three of them inhabit a cathedral town, to take
care of those fine old buildings and the churches, for the churchwardens,
they say, do not look to those things properly; but, Lord bless us, do
not let us be bored with architecture at every turn. Let them have a
bookseller specially to themselves, if they will—and now I think of it,
I recollect something of an old established shop in that way somewhere
in Holborn; but here I see Messrs. Longman are publishing works on
architecture, and Mr. Tilt pushing them before one’s noses, and Bell &
Wood, and others, as the advertisements tell us. Nay, to crown all! there
is that very Boz, in his new work, _Martin Chuzzlewit_, beginning with an
architect, which, by the way, proves what I have always said, that he is
wearing out his subjects—and mind what I say again, it will break down!
He should take popular characters and popular subjects; but an architect!
Why, not one in a thousand knows or cares any thing about architects.
Trash! and now just do look at this—a weekly paper, called THE BUILDER!
and another character to be drawn out—an Enthusiast, who is also an
architect! Well, upon my word, that is good! We have heard of castles
in the air; I suppose we are going to have a builder of them, and that
this Enthusiast is to be the architect. Well, that is as it should be—the
clouds for the architects, and the architects for the clouds.”
But when shall we sit down to our business?—Miss Fatima Five-and-forty
has had the turn of our pencil, and Enthusiast still awaits its return.
Enthusiast is an architect; that is, he is so for this limning; for
Enthusiast enters into most things, and is the life and soul of them.
We cannot go into his parentage, to shew how he is allied to, or of the
family of, the Geniuses; but really it is a difficult task this sketching
that we have undertaken, and reminds us of one of George Cruikshank’s
humours, under the head of “Ugly Customers;” not that we are so much out
of love with our subject as with the task we have undertaken.
Do excuse us, good readers, for a while longer, and we will tell you
a story about this same Enthusiast. It is a trick of some of our
contemporary painters, to beguile the sitter by a conversation on some
topic which throws him from the restraint of posture-making; perhaps
if we try it, Enthusiast may be caught in a more favourable attitude,
and we may close the day with some success for our hitherto failing and
disappointed pencil.
Enthusiast was one day engaged in a discussion with a lady friend, and
had, in the usual warmth of his manner, been descanting on the beauties
and properties of Church Architecture in connection with the proposed
erection of a suitable structure of this class in a wealthy manufacturing
town. “It should be a cathedral,” said he, “at least in dimension, in
aspect, in decorations and appointments.” He had dwelt on the peculiar
features it should possess, on the facilities that could be commanded, on
the energies that ought to be exerted, and so on, when he was cut short
in his rhapsody by the cruel observation of the lady,—and a common one it
is,—“There is no money for such things now-a-days.”
Casting his eyes around, as if in a reverie of thought, he scanned the
character of the various luxuries of the well-appointed drawing-room
in which they sat. Glancing from the broad mirror boldly superposed on
the massive carved chimney-piece of Carrara marble, which in its turn
enclosed the highly-polished steel and burnishings of a costly Sheffield
grate and its furniture, to the rich silk hangings of the windows—their
gilded cornices and single sheets of plate-glass—thence to the chairs of
rosewood and ivory inlaid, the seats of silken suit—the companion couch
and ottoman of most ample dress—the curious and costly cabinet, the
screens, the gold-mounted harp, the “grand piano.”—Pacing once the length
of the room on the gay velvet of the carpet, he turned again and rested
his view on the table, choicely decked with books, most expensive in all
the appliances of paper, type, illustration, and binding—having done all
this, with breath suppressed and stiflings of emotion, which fain had
broken out with a scornful repetition of the lady’s words, “there is no
money for such things now-a-days,” he quietly disengaged himself of his
passion, and by an apparently easy transition ran on thus:
“I have been calling to mind some of my early readings, and most
prominent just now is the recollection of the observations of Hope when
treating the subject of Egyptian Architecture and commenting on the
vastness of the Pyramids; he enters into a speculation as to the means
by which the people of that country under the Pharaohs were enabled
to find the leisure, or the time necessary for the construction of
such stupendous works, and he ventures to ascribe it to the natural
fertility of the soil caused by the annual over-flowings of the Nile,
thus demanding less from the Egyptians of the labour and care of
agriculture; and hence the drift of their exertions in the direction
of architecture. True, the bounty of nature would go a long way in
supplying to the cravings of art the leisure and opportunity for
gratification. True, those pyramids are evidence of the direction of
great means and great powers to an end which astounds more than it
edifies us, but what were the bounties of Egypt’s irrigating water,
what the greatness of their pyramids compared with that bounty which
Providence has given us in the mineral and the out-growing mechanical
characteristics of this favoured country, and the pyramids which we
erect as if in emulation of Egyptian vanity and inutility?” “Pyramids!”
interrupted the lady, “Ah, it is always so with you, to propound to us
first some extravagant project, and when driven from your ground by a
common sense and practical answer, to take shelter in some ambiguity
or paradox. Pyramids, Sir,—what is your meaning?” “Here,” said the
Enthusiast, “here, madam, are stones from some of the English pyramids,
of which your Scotts, and Byrons, and Bulwers, and Marryatts have
been the architects. Compare the labours, and the end of the labours
of these ingenious minds with those of the architects of the Egyptian
pyramids, and tell me then the difference in amount. See the glories and
untiring industry of him of Abbotsford, devoted to an incessant wearing
out of the energies of his mind in designing pyramids of fiction—look
on the ant-like bustle and activity of the thousands whom he brought
into requisition to be engaged in the building—look at the millions of
devotees who have prostrated and continue to prostrate themselves at
these great entombments of his genius.—The paper-makers—the printers—the
artists employed in illustration—the binders—the booksellers—the
advertizing—the correspondence—the carrying—volumes, pyramids of volumes
to advertize alone—an endless train of carriages and lines of road for
the conveyance—the Builders and makers employed on all these—and on
the establishments of printers, booksellers, &c.—and then the excited
million of expectants, the absorbed and half-entranced readers—the
hours, days, weeks, months, and years of reading—the impatience of
interruption till the whole delusion is swallowed—the readings again
and again—the contagion from the elders to the younger—children even
bewildered with the passion to peep into, to pore over, and last, to
read as rote-books these little better than idle fables—bootless in
their aim and object, and pointless in all but their rival obtuseness
of the mountain-mocking pyramids. The fertility, the leisure, and the
vanities of Egypt!—oh, madam, their country was sterility—their leisure,
incessant bustle compared with what we enjoy; and their vain direction of
labour and thought not to be named after this enumeration of vanities.
Pyramids!—where they had one we have ten. Where ages were required by
the Egyptians, we in as many years outvie them, and yet your answer to
my aspirations is, “We have no money for such things as these!”
Reader, we have beguiled ourselves and you, and not the Enthusiast, into
a sitting; and one feature is sketched of his likeness and his character.