Beauty through the world, hand in hand, undivorceable. All our science
is engaged in spelling out their story. Every spot of color on bird
or insect it finds to be the trace of a utility. What weary struggles
carried on through ages to mimic blossom and leaf, and so hide from
pursuing foes! The same force works on when the art of man enters the
arena for new creation. The thin and feeble blossom of the brier passes
through all the phases of culture until it becomes the full rose of
the horticulturist, like unto some little maiden’s face for size and
lustre, all by merest mercenary influence. Our fairest flowers have
migrated from East to West, cherished and preserved for highest use as
oracles and symbols of successive goddesses and saints, transplanted
from temple courts to flourish under the holier chrism of convent
gardens. Despite his proverb, man has painted the lily and adorned the
rose, until we may almost say with the Persian Nizámi, “Every flower
growing in the many-colored garden of the earth is a drop of blood
from the heart of a man.” Out of a dry and hard necessity comes still
the beauty of the world. Behind our tinted Salviati glass, our painted
Sèvres china and Minton majolica and shining silver plate, are the long
rows of pallid faces inhaling poison in stifling rooms, breathing death
that they may live. Sad experience is the prelude to each charming
symphony. The noblest statues and paintings which the world cherishes
were wrought in a “sad sincerity;” in the divine depths of sorrow were
found the quarries from which emerged the Apollo Belvidere and the
Laokoon; the blood of great hearts supplied the chief pigment of the
Dresden Madonna and the Transfiguration; and the magnificent frescoes
of Italian churches were born of the hopes and fears of millions, for
whom they meant not picturesque beauty, but a world’s redemption. Man
in his best epochs of art has thus carried on the ancient creative
power of Nature, giving her potential germs and forms a new blossoming
under the heat of his never-ending battle of life. And where it is not
thus impelled by nor surrendered to this utilitarian, this most real,
force, what does Art amount to? Mere copying of works which denote that
force in the past; mere Art Ritualism, crying to other ages, Give us of
your oil, for our lamps are gone out!
If Michael Angelo could to-day be set on a work of general demolition
in London, one may fear it would hardly require patriotism to encourage
his zeal. Would he, in what the London _Times_ once called “this our
ugly but not altogether uncomfortable metropolis,” have reached a
single building which would have made him pause? Here and there he
might meet one of those ancient mansions whose bricks have hardened
into one solid stone that will stand, as Carlyle once said, “till
Gabriel’s trump blows it down;” but of the miles of modern houses in
which--to remember the Chelsea sage again--“every brick is a lie,” one
may fancy that but few would be saved by any genius of Beauty.
And yet this is, after all, not so certain. That an artist filled with
iconoclastic rage might quickly despatch most of the mansions and many
of the churches of English suburbs, erected specially for beauty and
effect, is quite probable; but there are a number of buildings built
without reference to beauty which might perhaps have made Michael
Angelo pause with a feeling not unrelated to admiration. If any one
will stand beside the Thames River near Charing Cross and gaze for
a while on the tremendous sections of the railway bridge there, at
its huge iron supports and girders--if he will then go up on it and
realize its vast breadth, see four trains passing each other, with room
enough between, and room enough for the men and women moving to and
fro on their own side-path--he will surely bear away an impression of
grandeur. Nay, there will blend with it an impression of beauty also:
there is no arch, no slightest foliation or other prettiness, not even
a relief to the iron hue save the gilded heads of certain enormous
rivets and the gilded monograms of the railway company fixed on the
supports of the triple gas-lamps; the bridge is not even straight;
and yet beauty there is, and it arises from two sources. The first is
the beauty of adequacy for a purpose, involving at once strength and
proportion, suggesting what the Greeks may have meant when, in their
myth, they wedded Aphrodite to Hephaistos. The second is a beauty
almost indescribable in physical terms, but resembling the simplicity
which expresses character--the subtle charm playing unconsciously
through eye and voice of even a homely man, who in word and act is
content with the simple truth. In fact, the beauty of this Charing
Cross bridge, which has least aimed at architectural effect among
those spanning the Thames, is closely related to its ugliness. If any
one find this assertion paradoxical, he shall at least find it not
doubtful if he can and will do three things--read Oersted’s chapter
on “Ugliness in Nature,” observe carefully Turner’s “Rain, Wind, and
Speed” (a railway train thundering over a viaduct through English rain
and fog), and finally give twenty minutes to the bridge in question,
especially taking care to pass beneath it on one of the small iron
steamers (water omnibuses) that ply the river. When afterward he shall
see the many ornaments of the present copied from the utilities of the
past--the towers, steeples, cupolas, crenelles--and remember that they
were constructed originally for landmarks, cross-bows, and the watches
of war, he will acquire an imaginative respect for this unpretending
product of the Iron Age. The same simple grandeur invests old Newgate
Prison--perfect reality, entire adequacy for its purpose, a relation
of every part to the end for which it was built, like the harmonies
that make the lion. Did man forbear, it were by no means inconceivable
that when Macaulay’s artistic New Zealander came he might sit upon a
broken column of St. Paul’s to sketch the still strong, gray fortress
of Newgate!
He who explores the cities of England to discover that kind of beauty
in architecture which is familiar in other lands will not find it.
In a late satire on the royal family published in London, _The
Silliad_, the Queen is represented as reproaching her eldest son with
not taking more after his father, and interesting himself in the
industrial affairs of the country. The poor Prince of Wales can only
reply, “I’ve not a model-farming soul.” And a somewhat similar answer
is all that England can return to the immeasurable scoldings poured
out upon her because she cannot do the work of the old Italian and
Dutch masters. But the time was when England had a reputation such as
no other country possessed for just one thing--genuineness of work.
It was almost proverbial in Europe to say that you could get pretty
things in every capital on the Continent, but if you wanted a thing
which would do what it professed to do--the knife that would cut, the
carriage that would bear and wear--you must go to England for it. Nay,
I remember in my boyhood in Virginia that the belief in the solid
character of everything English was such, that even articles which
could by no possible means have come from England were yet called
“English” to enhance their value; not merely watches made in New
England, but I have known American fanciers commend a bird unknown
to England by calling it the “English mocking-bird!” All this was a
droll re-appearance of the reputation which Eastern gold once had in
England, the word “sterling” being a relic of “Easterling,” as applied
to the British pound of silver when represented in gold. But the most
enthusiastic Briton must admit that the virtue of the “English” label
has followed that of the “Easterling,” and is now a mere survival. The
absence of prettiness remains, but the old compensation of genuineness
can no longer be claimed, or certainly not in the same general way.
The genuine and thorough thing is now exceptional enough to strike one
as almost ornamental. But still the word “solidity” has a meaning in
Great Britain, and whenever Englishmen undertake to have anything done,
their first effort is to have it substantial and useful. They may not
get it, but that is what they pay for, and a real demand is likely in
the long-run to overtake its real supply. It has already to some extent
overtaken it, and that not alone in the great viaducts and railway
bridges which the age of steam has called about it.
[Illustration: ASSIZE COURT, MANCHESTER.]
An age of municipal and civic development has found for the buildings
it requires a representative architect in Mr. Waterhouse, who has
erected most of the magnificent town-halls and court-houses of the
great provincial cities. These vast, and in a certain sense beautiful,
buildings are the only ones that can compare with the old cathedrals
and castles of England, built with as serious a purpose as theirs,
and with as physiognomical a relation to the age that produced them.
Mr. Waterhouse takes the Gothic style for his basis, just as a
pomoculturist might take a russet as the basis of the apple he means to
produce, and, like him, modifies only in obedience to the fundamental
law of the style he has selected. His Gothic building has in it nothing
capricious or eccentric. So genuinely as, under change of conditions
and needs, the bent and bound boughs were copied in the first pointed
stone arch, even so, by lawful adaptation, may the window point become
more obtuse or the lancets more luminous; but the lesson of this
style, which, above all others, has no part or trait not traceable to
a use, is never lost, and the Gothic of Mr. Waterhouse is the natural
evolution of that found in Westminster Abbey. In one of his buildings,
and one of the best structures in the world, the Manchester Assize
Court, I could discover but two things which appeared to me without
special use or meaning. These were two small figures, a snail and a
frog, carved in granite, sitting in the angles of a wall on each side
of the main door-way. Of course these may not be mere _jeux_; they
may have some connection with a previous bit of eccentricity in an
older building (such as it is often desirable to copy and preserve
for archaeological reasons); but these two forms, each about as large
as one’s two fists, were the only things in the vast building which
appeared “not to the point.” In going over this building I speedily
found that it would not do to pass anything, as the most casual-seeming
bit of ornament was apt to possess a root in history. Thus the
superstructure of the great portico at the entrance is supported by
detached shafts of solid granite two feet in diameter, which stretch
out into foliage as they meet the low roof; but on examination it is
discovered that, framed in this foliage, are finely carved and most
appropriate representations of ancient modes of punishment--persons
undergoing the pillory or some ordeal, broken on the wheel, wearing
the mask, or bridle, for scolds, and the rest. On the outside wall
the decoration of the upper edge of a large corbel is twined about
the words, “He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy
poor with judgment.” Over a gate leading to the judges’ residence the
tympanum of the gable is adorned with a fine mezzo-relievo of the
Judgment of Solomon. On each side of the grand entrance are carved
two chained dogs, imposing enough to be mythologically descended from
Cerberus and Orthros themselves. There are but two figures on the
outer walls, one of “Justice,” another of “Mercy.” The building is a
parallelogram in form, with a frontage of 335 feet. Within is a grand
hall 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, 75 feet high, with an open timber
roof of eight carved bays, the principals having moulded brackets and
ribs forming pointed arches, and the spandrels filled in with elegant
tracery. Carved figures hold the chandeliers. Around this hall, which
is for state receptions and banquets, run in ancient letters the words
of the Great Charter: “Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur
aut disseisiatur de aliquo libero tenemento suo vel libertatibus vel
liberis consuetudinibus suis, aut utlagetur aut exulet aut aliquo modo
destruatur, nec super eum ibimus nec super eum mittemus, nisi per
legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terræ. Nulli vendemus nulli
negabimus aut differemus rectum vel judiciam.” This makes about as
beautiful a cornice edging as can well be imagined. The last sentence
is repeated on a stained window at the end of the hall:
To none will we sell
To none will we deny
To none will we delay
Right or Justice.
The subject of the window illustrates the history of the Great
Charter--King John in the centre, and Archbishop Langton and Chief
Baron Robert Fitzwalter on either side. There are three miles of
corridors, all with a dado of tiles more than a yard deep, of a rich
brown tint, and capped with a scroll made of lighter colors. On the
whole, I can hardly express adequately my admiration of this superb
building, the total cost of which was £130,000.
[Illustration: MINTON TILE.]
In the centre of Manchester the same architect has erected a larger
building, a Town-hall, which cost £1,000,000. Rich and admirable
as it is, it is not, on account of the crowding of houses around
it, and the irregularity of the ground upon which it is built, so
effective in appearance as the Assize Court. The interior decoration
is remarkable for the beautiful variety of colors secured by a careful
mingling of English, Scotch, and Irish granites grouped as double
stems in the balustrade of a spiral stairway. The Irish granite is a
bluish-gray, the Scotch has a faint red tint, and the English Shapfels
has salmon-colored spars, which are as large as raisins. They all take
a beautiful polish, and I think that for a large public building the
effect is better than if they were marble.
Manchester has shown good sense and good taste in having employed Mr.
Ford Madox Brown to paint six, at least, of the panels in the great
hall of this Town-hall. These mural paintings are not surpassed by
any recent work of the kind which I have seen. Mr. Madox Brown is
pre-eminent for his archæological knowledge and poetic conceptions,
and his genius has been at its best in these noble works. At the
time of this writing three panels have been finished. The first
represents the Romans building a fort at Mancenion (Manchester),
anno 60. Agricola, Governor of Britain, is represented with a
centurion beside him, examining a parchment plan of the Camp; a
standard-bearer holds the silken Dragon-standard--emblem borrowed from
the “barbarians”--which floats in the wind. The Legionaries are doing
mason-work; Britons bear the stones and cement. Agricola’s wife and
little boy are in the scene. The second panel represents the Baptism
of Edwin, at York, in the year 627. The artist follows the account of
Bede, who says that a small wooden church was hastily erected for this
purpose on the site where York Minster now stands, but has introduced a
Roman mosaic floor. In his noble picture of Edwin he has been inspired
by Wordsworth’s sonnet, “Paulinus:”
“Mark him, of shoulders curved, and stature tall,
Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek,
His prominent feature like an eagle’s beak;
A man whose aspect doth at once appall
And strike with reverence.”
The third panel is the Expulsion of the Danes from Manchester. One less
acquainted than this artist with ancient fact might be surprised at
the beardless, boyish appearance of the escaping Danes; but it is true
that the Vikings began their adventures early--at the age of fifteen,
it is said--and became respectable married men a few years later.
The town-folk are hurling missiles at the retreating party, one of
which--thrown by a young woman from a house--strikes down the “Raven”
standard. Mr. Madox Brown’s further designs include “The establishment
of Flemish Weavers in Manchester, 1330;” “William Crabtree (draper,
of Broughton, near Manchester) observing the transit of Venus, 1639;”
and “The Decree Court Leet that all weights and measures are to be
tested, 1566.” No man is better able to invest with beauty these events
connected with the history of Manchester. Mr. Madox Brown is using for
these mural paintings the “Gambier-Parry” process. The medium consists
of a mixture of wax, resin, and essential oil, with which the stucco of
the wall is coated and the colors ground. Every color ever used with
oil, water, or fresco is admissible with this medium; and the surface
when dry is without shine, while yet the utmost luminosity pertaining
to any other method is attainable with it. It seems likely to become
the general mode in this climate, and has given equal satisfaction to
Sir F. Leighton and Mr. Madox Brown.
One other of the immense buildings which have become so characteristic
of the populous centres of England I must mention, namely, the new
Midland Railway-station, at St. Pancras, in London. This is probably
the finest railway-station in the world, and it is the chief work of
Sir Gilbert Scott. It is a vast pile, of which every outward detail is
graceful and substantial, its turrets and great clock-tower superb.
This immense building conveys, however, an unpleasant impression of
being out of place. It implies a park, or at least a larger and more
picturesque space than the irregular and ugly one at King’s Cross,
to secure the perspective needed for any sight of it as a whole.
Entering, we find ourselves beneath a vast span of iron and glass,
almost like a sky. The front part of the building is a hotel. It has
been decorated by Robert Sang, and furnished by Gillow, in the most
expensive style, and certainly presents some rich interiors. The
reading-room has green cloth-paper, and a ceiling gay with huge leaf
frescoes; it is divided by a double arch with gilded architraves. The
mantel-pieces are of dark marble, with two small pillars of yellow
marble set on either side. The coffee-room has a general tone of
drab, with touches of gold in the paper, and a sort of sarcophagus
chimney-piece, surmounted by an antique mirror of bevelled glass. The
sitting-room has red floral paper, and an imitation mosaic ceiling.
One of the bedrooms which I visited had deep-green paper, with gold
lines and spots, and bed-curtains somewhat similar. The furniture was
of heavy oak, tastefully carved. The halls and corridors have a dado
of fine dark brown tiles, and bright fleur-de-lis paper above. All of
which was rich, costly, and, with slight exceptions, by no means gaudy.
Yet I could not altogether like it, or think the decorations entirely
appropriate for a hotel. It looked as if there had been more exercise
of ingenuity to find things costly than to find things beautiful. The
_salon_, the reading-room, may naturally be made gorgeous, but the
bedroom ought to be more quiet. One does not desire to sleep amid
purple and gold. The traveller who needs rest may well spare these
things--which, however, he knows will not spare him; for if there is
gold paper on the wall, there will be gold paper in the bill.
[Illustration: KIDDERMINSTER CARPET--FERN DESIGN.]
For its purpose it would be difficult to fancy, impossible to find, a
more complete structure than “The Criterion,” which the great London
caterers, Messrs. Spiers & Pond, have erected at Piccadilly Circus.
This building includes social and private dining-rooms, room for
_table d’hôte_, hall for public banquets and balls, restaurant, and
buffet; and beneath all these a theatre large enough to entertain a
thousand people. The architect, Mr. Thomas Verity, plainly had it in
his mind to raise a great gastronomic temple, and when one enters the
door, what he sees on every side is the apotheosis of eating. Through
an archway we enter, and find ourselves amid the French Renaissance.
The façade outside, and the door-way, with its glazed framing and
superb bronze columns, make one feel that he is about to dine superbly.
Really he does dine remarkably well, though the French Renaissance
hardly extends to the culinary art of the establishment, for that would
imply a revolution in the Briton’s constitution. Mr. Wyon has placed
some fair sculptures, the Seasons, etc., in the niches and on spandrels
of the wall outside, but the inside decorations of Mr. Simpson are
truly, in the words of Messrs. Spiers & Pond, “upon a scale which has
hitherto never been attempted.” The grand hall rises squarely through
three stories to a light Mansard-roof, from which sunburners blaze down
at night, and outside of which is a promenade commanding a fine view
of London. All of the sides of this grand and lofty hall are of tiles
made for this establishment, and combining to form large pictures, the
subjects of which were designed and painted by A. W. Coke. Over the
right-hand door, leading to the restaurant, is a semi-classical scene
of youth and maid by the sea-side gathering in fish; on the opposite
side, over the door opening into the buffet, is a picture of two girls
in a wheat field, where there is an apple-tree, the one attending to
the sheaves, the other to the apples; around the lower hall are--still
in tile mosaic--large figures of Euterpe and Terpsichore (for there
will be music and dancing above), Pomona, Flora, Bacchus, and, of
course, Diana, goddess of venison. The floor of the hall is as fine as
any mosaic in London, and is adorned at the edges with the monograms of
the firm. In the restaurant there are all manner of allegorical figures
on the walls, the Seasons, and the genii which dig and delve and hunt,
all with the object that humanity shall be fed. In the buffet there are
charming tile pictures representing chubby boys and girls; one party
up the tree gathering fruits, the other beneath catching the same and
putting them into baskets; in each picture a different tree and fruit.
On one side of the main stairway is the figure of a boy stealing up
to a bird’s nest, over which a bird hovers; opposite, the boy has the
nest, the bird flies away. This device is not immoral; it means that
plovers’ eggs are on the bill of fare. One of the finest things in this
staircase is an ebony hand-railing, three inches in diameter, with
plated silver mountings. Also a very fine effect has been produced by
framing the door-ways in white majolica, although greater simplicity in
the designs than human faces festooned with flowers would, I suspect,
have been better. I must not omit to mention that the cornice inside
the grand hall, at the top of the first and here floorless story, has
the unique ornament of sentences from Shakspeare running all around the
walls, with picturesque lettering:
“None here, he hopes,
In all this noble bevy, has brought with her
One care abroad: he would have all as merry
As first-good company, good wine, good welcome,
Can make good people.”
* * * * *
“A good digestion to you all: and, once more,
I shower a welcome on you;--Welcome all.”
[Illustration: MINTON TILES FOR MANTEL.]
So it is that money enough enables common folk now to dine in palaces
and enjoy banquets quite as royally served and surrounded as Bluff
Harry offered to Cardinal Wolsey and the lords and ladies at the
Presence Chamber in York Place. But even that monarch could not have
entertained his guests so luxuriously in one particular as Messrs.
Spiers & Pond theirs; for these, having dined, may pass through a door
and descend by a stairway adorned with Muses and mirrors, and rich with
floral clusters, to a theatre all glorious in blue and gold, cushioned
chairs, boxes with curtains of yellow satin and lace, and a good
drab background to set them off, and pass the rest of the evening in
enjoyment of well-acted comedies or operettas.
So far as most of the hotels and restaurants of London are concerned,
one may with satisfaction follow the advice of the Duke of Gloster to
Anne, in the first act of _Richard III._:
“Leave these sad designs
To him that hath more cause to be a mourner,
And presently repair to Crosby Place.”
For the old Gothic palace in the City, which Sir John Crosby built on
a piece of land with one hundred and ten feet frontage, for which he
paid a little over eleven pounds, which his widow sold to the duke
who afterward became Richard III., and which in Shakspeare’s time
had fallen to the richest of Lord Mayors (Sir John Spencer), has
now followed the course of so many royal buildings, and become the
banqueting-hall of the public.
[Illustration: ALBERT MEMORIAL, HYDE PARK.]
[Illustration: ALBERT MEMORIAL. EUROPE.]
[Illustration: ALBERT MEMORIAL--EAST FRONT. PAINTERS.]