difficult to speak about it, for I admire it so much. Admiration is not
the right word. It overawes me. Yet that is not quite right either. I
feel a worm when I first enter the building, but I always come out of it
with a feeling of great happiness and exaltation. One cannot explain a
great work of art as I feel this interior to be. It must make its own
blow upon the mind. Such an interior as this must succeed or fail with
the first impression. One may find all kinds of additional beauties
later on, but an interior, however vast, must compose into one great
whole. There is no doubt this does. The exterior will when we see the
tower. This does so already. I do not mean that when the vistas are
lengthened and the great central space formed that the picture will not
be more wonderful and more complex. I doubt, however, whether it will be
more intense. As you look now towards the altar and see the great piers
rising majestically on either side and the dim spaces between them, so
deep and lofty that the atmosphere and the stone seem to take on a
bluish tone, when, too, you look at the vaulting growing out of the
great arches and piers, with no intricacies of a triforium gallery to
break the lines, you feel you are in some great organic structure that
has grown to its inevitable shape by some law of its own being. The old
cathedrals have endless beauties of construction, of craftsmanship, and,
one must add, of accident. Liverpool Cathedral has an intellectual
beauty of its own, due, I suppose, to its being the design of one man,
who has felt intensely and constructed fearlessly, and who all the while
has had a clear grip of his ultimate intentions, however much from time
to time he may have varied his approach to them. I do not want, however,
to suggest for a moment that there is any intellectual or logical
coldness about the Cathedral interior. It is austere and grand, on a
scale we have not seen before in England, but it is not cold. Look at
the east end. The reredos, with its multitude of figures, its filigree
work and gilding, seems to be bursting into flame, and the rich colours
of the great window carry on this effect. The spacious floor in front,
with its quiet harmonious colouring, makes this burst of glory all the
more impressive. Everywhere, indeed, in the chancel, but not affecting
the bones of the design, is a rich underpattern of carving in wood and
stone, admirably blended. One may cavil here and there at a detail—I do
not like all the figure-carving myself, I think some of it is too
pretty—but who ever read a great novel and did not find a word or
sentence here and there which one imagined might be improved?
The view along the vista of the transepts, is as fine as down the
chancel. It is almost as dramatic and more austere. The war memorial
altar and its reredos stand out as fine incidents, but do not interfere
with the repose. The same may be said of the organ fronts to the
transepts. Let the eye run up from the great strong mouldings of the
stone arch to the little perforated wooden valance below the organ
gallery and then to the gallery itself. It is one dramatic and romantic
contrast after another. Then, again, above are the great pipes and their
delicate pierced wooden cases. Indeed, there is a sense of drama
everywhere, not, of course, in any cheap theatrical sense. All life is
drama, and if this building had none it would be dead instead of the
living and vital thing it is. Notice how nobly, yet dramatically, the
bishop’s throne stands up out of the gloom behind it, or how the single
great central mullion in the transept windows dramatically closes the
vista, but notice most of all the play of light and shade in the chancel
from the hidden windows in the aisles.
As you enter you only see the three great terminal windows, but you feel
the effect of the others on the walls and piers, some lit, some dark.
The electric lighting of the chancel at night from behind the great
piers will have something of the same effect. It is a splendid and
mysterious effect. If one saw it in an old building one would say at
once that it was a great and splendid effect reached no doubt
subconsciously, almost, perhaps, by revelation. Let us not refrain,
then, because the architect lives amongst us and is of our
generation—indeed, younger than most of us—from giving him credit and
honour for having made all this mystery and beauty. It is not calculated
beauty like certain stage effects which can be reproduced at any time,
but is deeply felt beauty. More and more as one looks at the building
one realises the strength of the imagination and the nobility of the
mind which has conceived and made this great thing for Liverpool. If
Liverpool has shown faith by her enterprise she has been rewarded by her
architect beyond measure.
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XXIV.
DUBLIN IN 1924.
A CITY so beautiful as Dublin may survive a couple of wars within as
many years, but can it survive the peace which now possesses it? This is
the question that has haunted me since a visit recently paid of a few
hours duration. There were the same spacious squares of trees and grass
surrounded by broad-faced reticent houses, the same wide streets of
ample dignity, there was the same river with its fine stone bridges—a
river lined indeed with the ruins of the town’s two noblest buildings,
but hardly less picturesque because of that; you approached the city
from the sea through the same magnificent bay, with the same fine coast
line with its stately headlands on either side, and the mountains and
parklands behind. Yet the city itself was different. It wore a different
air, it carried itself with a different spirit. Superficially it seemed
down-at-heels, yet jaunty withal. One would not mind the down-at-heels
atmosphere, but jaunty self-complacency is another matter. One is
accustomed to decay in many a beautiful Italian town. The decay of
beautiful things has in itself an element of romance. Even artificial
decay sometimes possesses this quality. I found the battered Four Courts
interesting in a new way. They had the interest that the ruins of
ancient Rome had, before they were cleaned, garnished and labelled by
the archæologists—the interest they still have in Piranesi’s etchings.
You saw at the Four Courts pieces of magnificent carving, perhaps a
trophy of arms over a doorway, against a disorder of broken walls. The
carving seemed thereby to possess a new and more vivid life. It looked
as some French courtier might have looked in his brocaded clothes among
the debris of the Bastille. Besides the Four Courts can be repaired, and
I suppose even the lost dome can be restored to the Customs House. Till
the latter is done, however, the city is definitely the poorer. Its
absence is a gap that is felt acutely. The pierced dome of the Four
Courts is but a reveller whose fine clothes have been somewhat torn and
muddied, but who still keeps his feet and even adds a little ironic
gaiety to the scene. But the Customs House, as a whole, is laid low by
its loss. Without its dome—the envy of all non-metropolitan towns in
spite of their modern attempts—the great building is in the gutter. Its
massive walls and columns remain, but they have lost their meaning. The
long façade straggles on with nothing to hold it together. With its dome
it was the most powerful yet buoyant civic building in these islands.
Now it is not only prostrate but dull. But Irishmen will, I know, see
that these two buildings are restored to their pristine grandeur. The
uneasiness I feel about the town is not due to them nor to ruins of
whole sections to cellar level as at Ypres or Albert. It is due rather
to the innovations, to the new red Ruabon brick buildings in Sackville
Street, to the sixpenny stores in Grafton Street—the Bond Street of the
town—to the coarse granite Celtic Cross in front of the beautiful
Leinster House as a memorial to Michael Collins. Was any hero so badly
served by those who meant so well? I would have taken Nelson off his
column if I could have done no better, or I would have gone to America
for another Parnell monument. It is this acceptance of the second rate
which frightens me in a town too, which, till now, has possessed more
for its size that is first rate than either London or Edinburgh. It may
be a passing phase. The best architects of the town are desirous enough
to do well if they are employed. The republican spirit, which prevented
both the railway porter, who found me a seat in the mail train, and the
boots at my hotel from taking my modest tips, will in time find its due
expression. So far it has not done so, at any rate in material things.
Rather it has been content with a bourgeois vulgarity which even
Lancashire would scorn.
Perhaps it is waiting till the last of the Sassenach has disappeared. I
hope they came away on my boat—three women in monocles and a man dressed
as and with a face like a horse. But there was something too in the
remark of the jarvie who drove me on his car to Westland Row, “What’s
wrong with this town is that it has too many darned heroes.” Certainly
if all these heroes have monuments erected to them like poor Michael
Collins’s there will be no more Dublin. No town could stand such
treatment, least of all one whose charm is so finely gracious, and who
is at heart so truly aristocratic. Dubliners could at any rate no longer
gibe as pleasantly as they do now at that northern city with its one
book shop, if their own became but an expression of the rivalries of
petty commerce relieved with a multitude of barbaric monuments.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUTHOR’S NOTE.
The Author begs to thank the Editors of _Architecture_, _The Manchester
Guardian_, _The Observer_, _The Weekly Westminster_, _The Liverpool
Daily Post and Mercury_ and _Country Life_, for permission to reprint
articles which have appeared in their papers.
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).