_THE CRITIC._
It was the end of November, and the weather had hitherto allowed our
builders to make use of every day. The autumn sun was favourable to the
enterprise, and at several points the house was reaching the height of
the window-heads of the ground floor. Nevertheless it required all M.
de Gandelau’s determination to prevent the works from being suspended.
By degrees the ground was deserted by the able-bodied workmen, who
were being called away to the army. Those who remained had their
attention distracted, and were not making the best use of their time.
It was becoming difficult to get the hauling done, all the horses and
carts being pressed into the service of the country. The province was
furrowed in every direction by the tracks of regiments making for the
Loire. Many hours were spent in talk; and every one was anxiously
expecting news of the war, which assumed an increasingly gloomy aspect.
However, Orleans had been re-occupied by the French troops, and all
hope did not seem lost. Paris was resisting. In the meantime an
addition was made to the circle at M. de Gandelau’s _château_ in the
person of a friend of the family, who, having had his property occupied
and injured by the Germans, had been obliged to abandon it for fear
of worse, and came to pay a visit to M. de Gandelau on his way to the
west of France, where he had relations. He was a man of about fifty
or sixty years of age, tall, and of frigid aspect, though a perpetual
smile seemed stereotyped on his face. He might have been taken for a
diplomatist of the old stamp.
The new-comer had read and travelled much, knew a little of everything,
was a member of several learned societies, and his opinion carried a
certain weight with it in his _département_. He had been a candidate
for the legislature; had embarked in manufacturing speculations,
in which he had lost a good deal of money; then in agricultural
enterprises, but as they threatened to ingulf the remainder of his
fortune, he ultimately rested content with the theoretical side of
things, and with publishing pamphlets on questions of all kinds,
printed at his own expense, and lavishly circulated. Every one of these
_brochures_ professed to give a simple solution of all the difficulties
in question, whether in the domain of politics, science, manufactures,
commerce, and even art. Building had been one of his hobbies; but as
architects appeared to him unpractical, extravagant, and imbued with
prejudices, he had taken the sole direction of his building operations,
making his own bargains, treating directly with the contractors, giving
the plans, and superintending the work. This whim had been a very
costly one, and one fine morning his building fell to pieces. As he had
no more faith in engineers than in architects, he had determined to lay
out roads on his estate, and have them made according to a system of
his own. His attempts in this line had not been more successful than
those in building. The roads persisted in being impracticable. But
M. Durosay (that was the gentleman’s name) was one of those persons
whom experience—even though acquired at their own expense—teaches but
little. In other respects he was a worthy man; he was extremely polite
and obliging—generous even—especially towards those who had the art of
flattering his whims, and who, through interest or conviction, gave
him credit for being an infallible judge in matters of all kinds.
If any one had come to consult him on any subject at the moment he was
about to step into a railway carriage, he would have let the train
go rather than not give a formal judgment, with reasons in full. It
must be observed, however, that he judged everything by an _à priori_
system, and would listen with only partial attention to the particular
reasons that tended to modify its application to the case in question.
On the other hand, he would allow his positions to be discussed, and
did not manifest the least impatience if his opinion was not shared by
others. He was fond of repeating this aphorism: “Light emanates from
the shock of conflicting ideas;”—but with the understanding that he
always played the part of the producer, never that of the recipient.
A short time after his arrival, and when the gloomy subjects of
conversation which were the order of the day had been exhausted, they
began to talk about Paul’s house (as it was the custom at the _château_
to call it). M. Durosay asked to see the designs. “Building and I are
old acquaintances; I know something about it,” said he.
Eugène could not repress a smile; but the speaker took no notice of it,
his mishaps as a builder having left no painful recollections in his
mind.
“Capital!” said M. Durosay, when they had explained the plans to him,
and he had examined them. “I have seen houses in Belgium something
like this. There are very good ideas here; it will be a very pleasant
habitation if our friends the Prussians let you finish it.... Will you
allow me to make one or two remarks about it?”
“Certainly.”
“Not that I presume for a moment to suggest any change in these plans,
which appear to me admirable.... But I have had the opportunity of
a wide field of observation and comparison.... Well, then, to tell
you frankly my first impression, this seems to me to have rather
the character of a town-house, what we call a _hôtel_, than a
country-house.... You will excuse my saying so, will you not?... I do
not understand a country-house thus shut in: I should like to see a
portico round it, or at least a wide veranda;—windows opening out—a
more decided reflex of exterior life.”
“But, my dear friend,” said M. de Gandelau, “I expect that my children
will come and spend a good part of the year here; it is no object with
them to have one of those habitations in which people reside only for
the two or three summer months, and where they entertain the idlers of
the city; they want a good house, which will perfectly exclude wind and
wet, where they can live comfortably at every season of the year.”
“Certainly—a very proper consideration; but what do you think of those
North Italian villas, where the climate is pretty severe in winter
and spring, but which are not the less charming with their porticos,
terraces, wide open entrance-halls, and their balconies looking out
over the country? All these habitations have a dignified aspect; they
ennoble life, we may say, and enlarge those narrow ideas to which
our age is only too prone.... And then, does it not seem to you that
there is a too manifest want of symmetry, at least in one of the
façades? Doesn’t this make the house look a little like those edifices
which have been built piecemeal, with a view to satisfy successive
requirements—in short, is there not a want of that unity which ought to
be found in every work of art?”
“But it is not a work of art that I wish to leave my daughter; it is a
good house—convenient and substantial.”
“Very good. But you will allow that if we can secure both kinds of
excellence, so much the better. For a person of such extreme refinement
and so charming in every respect as your daughter, it is but proper
that a habitation should be provided reflecting in its exterior the
charms and graces of its occupant. It would be a pleasure to you,
in visiting Madame Marie, to see in the distance her little family
grouped around her under a portico of delicate architecture, or under
a _loggia_.... But this seems to me more like the house of some grave
Flemish alderman. In these gables there is a kind of severity which——”
“Come, come, my dear friend, gables are not severe; they are
gables—that’s all.”
“But indeed these gables with their high roofs have a severe aspect,
which by no means agrees with the idea one forms of a house built for
pleasure.”
“But it is not a house built for pleasure; it is a house built for
people who are going to live in it, not for summer loungers—especially
as we never have such people in our neighbourhood.”
“Still, however, I should have liked to give a warmth to these fronts
(which have a somewhat frigid aspect) by light and airy projections,
and a covered gallery, with a terrace over it.”
“Warmth? warmth? Why instead of that, you would give us the rheumatism
with your galleries. They may do very well at Nice or Mentone, but
they are not to be thought of in our part of the country. We want the
sun upon the walls of our habitations, while your porticos are like
mushroom-houses.”
“I see, my dear friend,” resumed M. Durosay, after a pause, “that you
keep to your taste for what you call the practical side of things.
Yet see what a good opportunity you have of giving your daughter one
of those dwellings which, while satisfying the material requirements
of life, would possess that perfume of art which is too rarely found
in our country districts. A little exterior elegance is a powerful
charm which leaves an indelible trace in the mind. It is thus that
the Italians preserve the poetry of the brilliant eras of their
civilization. They are willing, at need, to sacrifice something of what
we call ‘comfort’—the material conveniences of life—to keep up among
them the noble traditions of high art.”
“I do not know what the traditions of high art are, or whether those
traditions preserve us from rain, wind, and sun; but I must confess
that your Italian villas in the environs of Verona and Venice appear
very dull and gloomy with their colonnades and closed shutters. I have
never had the wish to visit them, for I imagine one would be very
uncomfortable in them. If they build them so with a view to offer
tourists models of architecture, all well and good; but I make no
pretensions to amuse or interest tourists, and my daughter shares my
ideas in the matter.”
“Perhaps ... but just now your daughter is travelling in Italy; she is
going to sojourn on the shores of the Bosporus; who knows whether on
her return here she would not be charmed to meet a kind of _souvenir_
of the impressions she will not fail to have experienced there, and
whether the surprise you have in store for her would not be still more
delightful if you tried in some measure to revive those impressions?
What do you think of it, Mr. Architect?”
“As for myself,” said Eugène, “I am listening, and cannot but be
delighted to hear you discourse so ably on our art.”
“I may take it for granted, then, that you share my opinion, and that
you would be inclined to give this habitation, which you have so
skilfully arranged, some of those external charms in which perhaps it
is now deficient.”
“I cannot say that I should. M. de Gandelau, with his usual courtesy,
has left us quite at liberty, and has simply stated the limit of
expense to which he is prepared to go. As regards other considerations,
our programme having been agreed upon, we have not been restricted to
an excessive severity of style, nor forbidden the adoption of what you
consider the exterior charms of a dwelling-house.”
“Well; although my friend with his practical mind does not appear
sensible to these charms, do not you, as an artist, think it desirable
to add something to these fronts, which are perhaps a little severe
in aspect, and which certainly with the help of your talent you could
render less cold? You know Italy; you have visited Pompeii: do you not
find in the architecture of those countries abundant suggestions from
which inspiration may be drawn—charming models, in fact?”
“Yes; I have visited Italy and France, but I must confess that I have
never been struck by the architectural works of those countries, except
so far as they preserved the imprint of the manners and customs of
those whose genius produced them. You mention Pompeii. That which has
vividly affected me in the remains of this little provincial town of
Italy is precisely this characteristic. Its small dwellings exactly
suited the habits of antiquity, the time when they were erected, and
the climate of the district. But from the study of these habitations I
infer that since we do not live on the shores of the Gulf of Naples,
and have customs very different from those which suited the Pompeians,
our dwellings ought not in any way to suggest the peculiarities of
theirs; that while, for example, it may have been very agreeable
to them to sup in an open _triclinium_, sheltered from the wind by
a _velum_, we cannot arrange dining-rooms after this model in the
Département de l’Indre; and that though it might have been a luxury to
them to sleep in a room whose area was only five or six square yards
and the door of which, left open, introduced you to a court surrounded
by a portico, this would be very inconvenient here, as we should run
great risk of catching cold if we left the door open, or of being
suffocated if we shut it.”
“But as you have mentioned ancient dwellings, allow me to remark that
those of Pompeii, even the most luxurious, do not exhibit externally
any of those magnificent features which you seem to admire. The
ancients reserved for the interior such luxury as they affected, and
it does not appear that they troubled themselves to display anything
of it to the passers-by. I have not a very clear idea of what their
villas,—their country-houses,—may have been; but everything leads me
to believe, as far as we can judge from the remains preserved to us,
that in them nothing was sacrificed to that distinctively modern vanity
which aims to make an external display of architectural forms to strike
the vulgar.
“I believe that those country palaces of Northern Italy with which you
have been so deeply smitten, are rather products of vanity than abodes
adapted to the habits of those who have erected them; in fact, they
have scarcely been inhabited, and the dilapidated condition in which
you see them does not date from yesterday. Erected to satisfy vanity
and the desire to make a show, they lasted as habitations only as long
as works due to vanity are accustomed to last—that is, for a few years
of the life of an individual; after which they were abandoned.”
“You call vanity,” replied M. Durosay, “what I think to be love of
art—the desire to exhibit a work of art.”
“Probably we shall never agree upon that point,” answered Eugène. “I
think that art—in architecture at least—consists in being truthful and
simple. You see in it only a form that charms or repels you: I look for
something else; or rather I consider first whether this form is really
the expression of a requirement—whether a reason can be given for its
existence; and it charms me only so far as this condition is fulfilled,
according to my judgment.”
“You consider a barn, therefore, a work of art?”
“Certainly; if it is constructed so as to afford a suitable shelter
for what it is intended to hold, it is, in my view, more admirable than
an inconvenient palace, though decorated with colonnades and pediments.”
“You ought to go to America.”
“Perhaps it would be wise to do so, if I knew that its people tried
to build simply in accordance with the tastes and requirements of the
inmates. But in America, as everywhere else now-a-days, they make
pretensions to style, and copy what they believe to be the beautiful
_par excellence_; that is, they follow, without discrimination,
traditions whose origin and principle they do not care to investigate.”
“Come,” said M. de Gandelau, who found the discussion rather tedious,
“we have travelled a good way from Paul’s house; but to satisfy you,
when you come and see my daughter in her new dwelling, we will have a
pasteboard portico put up in front of one of the façades, and under the
shade some Berri maidens dressed up as Venetians, and some gentlemen
in scarlet robes playing on the guitar and the bassoon. It is getting
late, and time to go to bed.”