THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD
The trick enigmatical nature sometimes plays the gentlest parents by an
offspring who, notwithstanding their constant solicitude--the constant
bending of the twig--turns out to be a disappointment, not to say a
positively black sheep, has its analogy in art. And of such curious
analogy no more picturesque example exists than that supplied by what
has come to be known as our “Transitional period”--a hopelessly ordinary
offspring of a civilization highly cultivated and refined.
To see the Transitional period in its popular aspect, which is its worst
aspect, no better spectacles may be borrowed than those once worn by
Charles Dickens, the novelist, to write his “American Notes” and “Martin
Chuzzlewit.” Only, it will not do to pass final judgment from a scathing
arraignment of crimes to the extent of burlesquing the subject, as
happens at times in Dickens’ books. There is the documentary evidence
to be sifted and examined which, I am very sure, will lessen and correct
the scandal materially. And if I have hitherto neglected to avail myself
of such evidence, permitting the scandal of the Transitional period to
appear as common gossip in these articles, it was for dramatic effect
and for contrast. In the present article I propose to make reparation,
and direct the magnifying power mainly upon that which is good.
It was somewhat unfair of Dickens to expect that we should have achieved
architectural grandeur in the brief time at our disposal; but I regret
that his uncomplimentary description of the City of Washington in the
forties is yet graphic in a degree of the present capital, though vast
appropriations by Congress have been frequently lavished upon it, and
misspent. We know that Dickens was not always prejudiced, by the
encomiums he bestowed upon the scenery of New England, for instance, and
the pretty girls he chanced to meet during his visit, who it seems
contrived to be born in America despite the banal times and hideous
fashions which, I am glad, could not wholly disguise them. However, as
complete sets of the works of Charles Dickens are to be found upon the
shelves of every public library, and secondhand copies of “American
Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit” may be picked up for a few pennies at the
bookstands, nobody need miss the salutary influence of many of the
criticisms. Not so easily may the American student provide himself with
a copy of the diary of Philip Hone, though it be a much more instructive
and faithful commentary upon the Transitional period than anything
Dickens ever wrote. For I think the two volumes sell for $7 net. There
are no pirated copies to be had, of course, no cheap editions, as is
usually the case with the more reliable sources of information it is
obligatory upon us to look up would we follow cause and effect in the
history of American art. Here indeed our own copyright law is a positive
hindrance to the acquisition of knowledge. Few architectural students
can afford $7 for a purely literary work devoted to the Transitional
period.
Mr. Hone wrote his journal from day to day as Samuel Pepys wrote his,
without idea of publication, and, consequently, without exaggeration,
praise or ridicule for effect. He wrote things down as he saw them. He
was not writing to correct popular abuses. He was, apparently, governed
in his avocation by no other desire than the simple one of keeping a
diary. And it is this unaffected form of diary that makes its contents
more and more valuable as time goes on.
When Dickens has “Martin Chuzzlewit” entertained in New York society he
constructs for our edification an amusing farce which we enjoy as a
farce, though the author himself pretends to be in very earnest; but
when Philip Hone relates of an assembly ball with great difficulty
arranged owing to the painful lack of homogeneity and even suitability
of the available personnel, another and serious phase of the case is
presented, because it is sadly true. Under the ingenuous pen of this
diarist, we may see James Gordon Bennett the elder wrangling with the
unliveried servants for admission which, we are told, the management
finally consented to extend upon the one condition that the account of
the ball which was to appear in the _Herald_ the following morning
should at least be “decent.” I believe that is the word Mr. Hone uses.
PLATE XLVII.
[Illustration: GRACE CHURCH RECTORY.]
At any rate, we realize as never before how disorganized the social
fabric must have been at the period, and how it had deteriorated from
that of the older régimes. It is all but ludicrous, that entry in the
diary where the connoisseurs gather in Barclay Street to pay their
respects to such mediocre art as was exemplified by the allegorical
series of paintings called “The Voyage of Life.” The reader remembers
the old engravings of them, I dare say, very well. But we know that the
connoisseurs did do this very silly thing, because Philip Hone’s diary
is indisputable and exact evidence uncolored. It is incredible,
nevertheless, that a political expediency should have caused the whole
nation to forget so readily the proficiency in art matters attained by
preceding generations, and, presto! resolved its most representative
spirits into an unpromising class of abecedarians.
There is a tone often noticeable throughout the memoirs of Philip Hone,
who sometimes made trips abroad in the sailing packets of his day,
thereby extending the scope of his own horizon, as though he were a bit
ashamed of the crude provincialism of his compatriots when it was the
custom to speak the English language incorrectly, and when the three
Rs--“Reading, Riting and Rithmetic”--were all the academic preparation
for a life of usefulness that was required. Indeed, if he were quick at
figures, could follow Webster’s spelling book, and make neat flourishes
with his pen, no young man of the Transitional period need ever have
despaired of positions and promotion.
The question often heard, now-a-days, “What chance has a man for
self-cultivation in a boom town?” applies very nearly to the metropolis
of the Transitional period.[5] What use more profitable could one have
found for his time than speculation in real estate, if one could buy a
house for $25,000, as did Philip Hone, and sell it within a few years
for $60,000? Certainly, there was little inducement to pursue art in
such a phenomenally active market for values. The best that could be
expected of the very busy man of the day was to send his son betimes to
college and to Europe, the liberal education, it is true, often
unfitting him again for business as it was transacted in America. There
was a manufacturer of Transitional furniture who sent his son to Paris
to learn cabinet-making of those most renowned of European artificers;
and I have it from the son himself that he was, afterwards, obliged to
unlearn and forget all his Parisian training in order to meet the home
demand for cheap and tawdry stuff. Fancy!
The art prophet which this bourgeois epoch produced corresponded exactly
to it--just such a one as might be naturally expected--John Ruskin, old
fogy with ideas of no practical value to communicate to the world, but,
like Browning and Emerson, full of words, rhymes and sentences. Ruskin
conceived a violent passion _à la_ Plato for the Gothic mode of
building. He affected to deplore the “foul flood of the Renaissance.”
And his great theory was that as the leaves of plants nearly always
terminate in a point, it was intended by nature that man should take
pattern therefrom for his architecture. To make a theory so point-device
consistent Ruskin went so far as to criticise those leaves of plants
which terminate in other ways. Imagine some classic writer tracing the
origin of the Roman arch to lily-pads which may have floated in the
Tiber!
The only really clever observation concerning architecture Ruskin
ever made was the metaphor he applied to the great mediæval
cathedrals--“frozen music.” But he was not a purist of Gothic
architecture in the truer sense. Had he been so, he would have defended
the Tudor castles of England against Renaissance obtrusion; for the
Tudor architecture was a true development of the home idea, legitimate
and historical, while that of the Gothic cathedrals was not intended to
serve for dwelling-houses by any possible contingency. Yet Ruskin
persisted in the feasibility of an anomalous adaptation, something, as a
matter of fact, that nobody has achieved with very great credit. For
rectories and parish houses the ecclesiastic Gothic may serve as far as
sentiment and harmony are desired; but for practical uses it is a
failure applied to dwelling-houses. Grace Church rectory is extremely
disappointing within if we consider all the disiderata of a modern home,
however suggestive of comfort it may be to the casual observer. (See
Plate XLVII).
PLATE XLVIII.
[Illustration: NO. 23 BOND ST., NEW YORK.]
[Illustration: THE SARGENT HOUSE (COMMON, EAST), NEW HAVEN.]
[Illustration: EAST FOURTH ST., NEW YORK.]
The Richmond-Dow house at Warren, R. I., shown in Plate L, is a typical
example of Ruskin Gothic when the poet’s influence was at its height.
For the romantically inclined individual of the Transitional period but
one course was open, namely, to build himself a Ruskin Gothic cottage.
The stone cottages like the Richmond-Dow cottage were the better sort,
and if the narrow lancet windows tended to make them a little gloomy
they were otherwise not half bad; but the wooden cottages with the
perpendicular battens are execrable. Another very decent stone cottage
in ecclesiastic Gothic is shown in Plate LI. It has a charming setting
on High Street at Middletown, Ct., and again the interior, like Grace
church rectory, is a disappointment. The delightful window overlooking
the lawn is not nearly so nice from the inside. The fibre of quartered
oak was generally too tough for the planes and chisels of the
Transitional joiners, who always preferred to work in white pine, and
leave to the makeshift grainer the responsibility of doing it up to
simulate oak. We are, all of us, familiar with that forlorn art of
graining.
Then, in order not to forego in the ecclesiastic Gothic cottages another
indispensable makeshift--the American veranda--the Transitional
architects desecrated rood-screens and chancel carvings. Happily,
now-a-days, nobody would think of copying Ruskin in a dwelling-house.
People may like to read a conventional gift-book occasionally, and take
up “Sesame and Lilies” from the drawing-room table when they have time
to kill, and want to get away from everyday life and practical things.
Moreover, the most selfish and unscrupulous people in the world are apt
to have a vein of sentimental efflorescence in their nature which will
reveal itself, when they read Ruskin or Browning, with a zest that is
Machiavelian.
But the Transitional period as we have come to know it best was not a
Gothic revival, but a poverty-stricken application of Renaissance motive
and detail out of the midst of which I have proposed to try to find
something commendable--something to praise. Well, I think I shall have
done so when I throw upon the imaginary screen I have so often suspended
before my very patient audience, the picture of the doorway in East
Fourth Street, New York City (Plate XLVIII). And were it a “truly”
phantasmagoria I were conducting, I know it would be difficult for an
audience to restrain itself--not to cry “Ah!” after the manner of the
gallery, because I know how this picture affects me, and can discount
the reader’s enthusiasm accordingly. The adjoining windows are out of
proportion to the doorway, and badly spaced, but are faithful to the
epoch. One must not expect too much of a Transitional house. The part of
the window shown belonging to No. 23 Bond Street--(see Plate XLVIII),
has better proportions, though the doorway beside it is not half as
beautiful as the one on Fourth Street. Still, we owe it to an uncommon
episode that this doorway has been photographed at all, and to which my
acknowledgment is given, though I do not altogether approve the
sentiment of the episode.
No. 23 Bond Street was once the property of a great beau of the
Transitional period named Harry Ward. He had money besides. Now, it is
very easy and natural for a great beau of any epoch, with money besides
to believe that because the Sabbath was made for man, the six other
days were made for him, also. Alas! no mistake could be more
unfortunate, and of this the doorway has long stood as mute evidence. In
coming into possession of No. 23 Bond Street, in his time a fashionable
neighborhood, Harry Ward decorated and refurnished the house in a way
which may be said to have been the last word upon the subject of
household art of the period; and, to recur to a Transitional
colloquialism, “he had his girl picked out.” But there were inimical
circumstances which precluded the nuptial celebration, so they could not
live in the house. Then Mr. Ward died, and, I believe, bequeathed No. 23
Bond Street, in fee-simple, to his sweetheart. This sweetheart, like
Edith Bartlett in “Looking Backward,” rode on the top of the coach, and
consequently she also coveted the six days that were not made for man,
very much. The dispensation seemed unnecessarily cruel. We may not judge
of the motives that induced her to rebel, and to keep the house as long
as she lived a sacred memorial to Mr. Ward and to have nothing moved or
changed from the way he had ordered it during his lifetime; but we know
that without
PLATE XLIX.
[Illustration: SUN-DIAL, GRACE CHURCH RECTORY, NEW YORK CITY.]
a superabundance of wealth, she could not have gratified a sentiment
wherein a sinister and selfish side out-weighs its virtue. You see, how
very few of us may be trusted with money! For it would have been a so
much finer monument to Mr. Ward had this house been bestowed by his
legatee upon some poorer though deserving couple whom the Lord had
destined to be of use to Him:--it would have been infinitely better
dedicated as a museum of the Transitional period for its didactic
benefit to art students; but I fear I am the only human being, excepting
the care-takers perhaps, who has derived any tangible satisfaction from
No. 23 Bond street since the sad dénouement which closed it so tightly
to the busy stream of life constantly passing.[6]
I suppose the finest specimen of Transitional domestic architecture
extant in the United States is the Bennett house on County Street in New
Bedford (see Plate LI, also Frontispiece), erected about 1840, for a
full description of which I would respectfully refer the reader to the
_Architectural Review_ (Boston) for July, 1901. There is nothing
disappointing about this Transitional exemplar; it was one of those
grateful notes of hope at a season of national melancholia. Wonderfully
imposing from its great size, it will grieve the reader to learn that
the magnificent pile is already crumbling from lack of appreciation, and
it will not be long before the dealer in second-hand building materials
carries it away, piece by piece, to his yard, so little do the people of
New Bedford care for the most interesting building by far that their
city possesses to-day. The Bennett house is the only successful
adaptation of the Greek-temple motive, _pur et simple_, to domestic
purposes that has come to my knowledge.
And here I want to say a single word about restoration. If by any chance
you live in a house of the Transitional period that illustrates as good
architecture
PLATE L.
[Illustration: HOUSE OF MRS. RICHMOND-DOW, WARREN, R. I.]
[Illustration: HOUSE OF MRS. RICHMOND-DOW, WARREN, R. I.
View from the Close.]
PLATE LI.
[Illustration: HOUSE ON HIGH STREET, MIDDLETOWN, CONN.]
[Illustration: THE BENNETT HOUSE, COUNTY ST., NEW BEDFORD, MASS.]
as that of the de Zeng house on High Street in Middletown (see Plate
LIII), don’t try to make it Colonial as I have seen a tendency among
ill-advised people to do of late. Let me say to you that you have
something already so much ahead of average modern Colonial--“as she is
spoke”--that it would be a sin against the decalogue of art to alter or,
indeed, do other with it than religiously to guard. Just keep your
Transitional exemplar in the same admirable state of repair in which you
see the de Zeng house at Middletown--and enjoy it. You will thereby have
fulfilled your duty to art and to the future generations who will rise
up and call you blessed.
The foregoing paragraph applies equally to the Roberts mansion at the
northeast corner of Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia (Plate LIII). For
the sake of goodness, don’t try to colonialize it! There are several
houses in Philadelphia that resemble the Roberts house--the
Dundas-Lippincott house and the Willstack house being two of them, but I
think neither so admirable.
I do not know that I should ever build myself a house to live in after
the manner of the Transitional period even after such delightful and
exceptional models as are supplied by the Bennett, Roberts or de Zeng
houses, but if I already possessed one, I should rest content that its
architecture could not be improved by any material alteration I could
suggest.
In the _Architectural Review_ for February, 1902, the reader may read
about the Transitional houses of lower Fifth Avenue, New York City, also
of that celebrated row facing Washington Square. The Waterbury house
(see Plate LIV) was demolished last winter, so that its entrancing attic
windows screened by the crosses of St. Andrew will no longer delight the
visitor who returns to the old neighborhood.
The venerable Colonnade on Lafayette Place (Plate LV) probably makes its
last public appearance in this review as among the remains of our
Transitional period. Half of it is already gone, while the other half is
in imminent danger. This row of dwelling-houses should not be confounded
in any way with that other row known as London Terrace of Chelsea
village (Twenty-third Street), because the Lafayette Place
PLATE LII.
[Illustration: DOORWAY, NEW YORK CITY.]
PLATE LIII.
[Illustration: THE DE ZENG HOUSE, MIDDLETOWN, CONN.]
[Illustration: THE ROBERTS HOUSE, RITTENHOUSE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA.]
houses were the “real stuff,” those of the London Terrace are sham in
comparison.
In the Colonnade there dwelt at different times many noted individuals.
When the first John Jacob Astor decided to devote some of his money to
art, the Astor library and other gracious projects, he looked about him
for some men of a gentler type than those with whom he had rubbed elbows
in the accumulation of his wealth--men of some literary and artistic
achievement who would be competent to direct the proposed outlay. Such
spirits were rare in the forties, and Mr. Astor had difficulty in
finding them. He induced the poet Halleck to become his protégé, and
Washington Irving to pay him extended visits. I am not sure that
Washington Irving was considered a guest of Mr. Astor when he lived in
apartments at the Colonnade, but as he was often entrusted with various
commissions in matters of literature and art, and the financing of same
for Mr. Astor, who lived just over the way, it was nearly the same
thing.
Washington Irving spoke and wrote the English language correctly, an
uncommon accomplishment in his time, and for which the American people
paid him nearly a quarter of a million dollars in royalties. He was the
dilettante par excellence of his epoch, who, without having anything in
particular to say, said it very gracefully. They did not pay according
to real genius in the Transitional period, for otherwise, Poe should
have made a fortune with two of his poems alone--namely, “The Raven” and
“The Bells,” which we know, as a matter of fact, he did not. However,
Washington Irving had his own mission to perform, though it must have
been with extreme reluctance that he quitted his snug bachelor quarters
at Wolfert’s Roost for the then palatial surroundings of the Colonnade
even to serve Mr. Astor. For if you accept the hospitality of very rich
people--and if you can do anything worth while you do not want for
invitations--you are generally expected to return every penny’s worth of
it in some way. Niecks in his “Life of Chopin” relates how when the
“grand artiste” was asked to play after dinner at the hôtel of an
opulent host, he begged off, pleading that he had eaten so very little,
which was true enough, for the malady from which he suffered sadly
PLATE LIV.
[Illustration: GOOD ARCHITECTURE OF THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD IN LOWER
FIFTH AVENUE. NO. 1 FIFTH AVENUE.]
[Illustration: WATERBURY HOME, FIFTH AVE. AND 11th ST.]
PLATE LV.
[Illustration: REMAINING HALF OF THE COLONNADE.
Its Positively Last Appearance]
[Illustration: TYPICAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD.]
impaired his appetite. But we are not all such consummate masters of our
art as was Chopin of his, and do not dare say such things, however well
merited they may be. Washington Irving saw that he could be of service
to his country by telling the “old gentleman,” as he alludes to his
patron in the “Life and Letters, etc.,” how to avoid banality and
vulgarisms, and the Astor library was the largest and most important
public charity that had yet been attempted.
In an age when the anatomy of charity is under the microscope of many a
millionaire as to-day, it seems discouraging that its secret is yet
likely to remain unrevealed. But let us acknowledge to ourselves, are we
not hindered to a very great extent by that awkward condition imposed
upon us by every religion that one hand is not to know what the other is
about? And of course, you know, that really takes all the fun out of
charity.