"If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had
been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces."
_Merchant of Venice_, Act i., Scene ii.
Of all the recognized styles of domestic architecture the position of
modern Queen Anne, or so-called Free Classic, is perhaps the most
difficult to determine. The nomenclature will assist us but little in
investigating its art-history and constructive laws,--the term Queen
Anne being as much too narrow as Free Classic is too broad. If we ask
the professors of architecture and the more learned practitioners of the
art for information on the subject, we shall get vague and
unsatisfactory replies. Many of the younger and more enthusiastic
architects, and the devotees of spinning-wheels, blue India teapots, and
green crown glass will, on the contrary, unhesitatingly tell us that
Queen Anne, is "high art;" forgetting that art had reached its lowest
ebb in England when William and Mary ascended the throne left vacant by
the Stuarts.
With such diversity of sentiment and reasoning, how shall we elucidate
the truth? When did Queen Anne architecture originate, who were its
great masters, under what influence did it spring up, what causes led to
its decline, and to what source may we trace its sudden and aggressive
renaissance? To the student who looks beneath the surface of fashionable
art-culture the Queen Anne and Georgian periods seem almost like a
mirage, where he sees dimly reflected vistas of city streets lined with
tall houses built of red brick, with tiled roofs, long and narrow
sash-windows painted white, and outside shutters painted green. If he
goes to the academies for information, he will be told that early Queen
Anne was a feeble application of Palladian rules designed for palatial
works in marble to smaller edifices built of brick, and that late Queen
Anne is simply a craze that must run its course and then sink into
obscurity, as did its prototype.
This lack of historical data is the more remarkable when we consider
that the style now known as that of Queen Anne is but of yesterday. We
can follow the gradual development of styles and systems of construction
and their transitions into other and later styles, from the Egyptian,
Syrian, Grecian, Roman, and Byzantine, and the wondrous science of the
Middle Ages, to the wealth of Continental Renaissance, but of the style
of Queen Anne we can find little more than the name. England gradually
remodelled her feudal castles into the noble and picturesque
manor-houses of the Tudor kings, and her architects during the reign of
Elizabeth carried this somewhat fanciful, but at the same time
dignified, system of construction to its utmost development. All this
will be clearly and logically explained by the professors of the
academies. They will further add that after the accession of the Stuarts
the building art gradually declined, with only a few flashes of
brilliant light in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth
was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of
revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of
Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left their impress upon the
buildings of their day, which were mostly of a domestic character. The
Free Classic of the Georgian reigns followed,--more refined in
sentiment, delicate but severe in outline, aristocratic, but lacking
strength and boldness in composition. With the advent of the Victorian
Gothicists the worn-out and debased Free Classic passed into obscurity,
there to remain until the passage by Parliament of the Elementary
Education Act in 1870 brought it once more into prominence.
So much for the teachings of the academies, hampered by conservatism
and constructive traditions. They see little that is good in
architecture which cannot be traced through a long line of precedents,
gradually developing, as did the Gothic from the slender lancets and
bold buttressing of the earlier examples to the delicate tracery and
wondrous carving of Lincoln and of York. But, for all this, Queen Anne
has a history, architectural as well as political. Her short reign
witnessed the erection of a class of manor-houses and city dwellings
which, gradually improved under the two succeeding monarchs, have formed
the basis for a revival of a remarkable character. The sudden
renaissance of Queen Anne or Free Classic architecture is the growth of
but fourteen years, and yet all classes of society have been alike
filled with aspirations for Queen An-tic houses, and for domestic
appliances, and even dresses and garniture, associated with that period.
The extremely low art of the last decade of the seventeenth century has
become the "high art" of to-day, and bids fair, after outgrowing the
eccentricities of plan and detail with which many designers have loaded
it down, to develop into an honest, home-like, and thoroughly domestic
style, in consonance with the requirements of nineteenth-century culture
and refinement. England and America alike have felt the pulse-beat of
the reformers, ready and longing for a change that will be radical and
honest in its workings. Let us, then, attempt to define the position of
Queen Anne architecture, historically, constructively, and aesthetically.
Let us endeavor to penetrate beyond the superficial investigations of
the "high-art" amateur and see what may be the real value of the Queen
Anne revival as a basis for the architecture of to-day, and wherein lies
the germ which may be utilized as a stepping-stone to greater
excellence.