REIGN OF TERROR--ITS NEGATIVE VALUE
Alison, Carlyle and all the great historiographers who have essayed the
French Revolution go into long preambles of the causes leading up to the
principal drama, antedating, by some years, the assembling of the
States-general. I am very fond of the opening chosen by Charles Dickens
for his “Tale of Two Cities,” namely, “It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times.” The contradictory statement is yet so graphic as to
suggest to my mind all the preamble I need for a chapter upon the Reign
of Terror in American domestic architecture, especially as I have
already touched upon the remote causes in preceding chapters.
If money was ever to be made without the impending shadow of nervous
prostration and heart failure--I mean a decent sum of money, a
competency--that opportunity presented itself with dazzling splendor in
PLATE LVI.
[Illustration: “And that house with the Coopilow’s his’n.”--BRET HARTE.]
[Illustration: A FIFTH AVENUE MANSION DURING THE REIGN OF TERROR.]
the loyal States of the Union during the latter years of the civil war
and those immediately succeeding. All kinds of property advanced in
value, no matter what the kind was. Anything--even cobblestones would
have been a good purchase. The great boom of the Transitional period was
entirely eclipsed, and people who never expected to be wealthy, people
with the humblest ambitions, people whose callings, ordinarily, would
not warrant any such hopes, had affluence literally forced upon them. I
am sorry that most of the fortunes thus made had to be lost again upon
the inevitable return of normal conditions--sorry as I am when I read a
story of Captain Kidd, that the treasure-box has always to sink out of
sight at the moment when the happy finders are rejoicing, and the future
seems assured.
I do not know of a political economist, not excepting Henry George, who
has had “the nerve,” shall I say, to attribute any of the blessings of
civilization to war, pestilence and catastrophes. Yet, as nearly as a
spectator may judge by effects, these direful things are all conducive
to the greatest amount of comfort and ease of those who do not dwell
too close to the points of friction. The swifter is dissolution, up to a
certain ratio, at least, with the number of births, the greater the
wealth, per capita, for the survivors. The survivors of the civil war
who lived in the undevastated territory of the Northern States were
largely a happy lot. It began to look for them as though God had decided
to abolish the odds in favor of the bank, so to speak, and that life
would be, henceforward, a square game affording everybody a chance to
nibble at the crust of prosperity, not each one subject to gain only as
another is bereft. Some inexorable condition appeared to have given way,
for, at last, there was enough to go ’round--yes, more than enough; and
with their surplus funds mounting higher and higher, these alarmingly
prosperous people were much addicted to the erection of houses with
“coopilows.”
In the books of published designs which circulated at the period,
dwelling-houses of this class were called “Italian villas,” although as
we have come to know the Italian villa, especially since the art of
photography has brought it to our intimate acquaintance, we fail to
PLATE LVII.
[Illustration: “I think that Dante’s more abstruse ecstatics meant to
personify the mathematics,”--DON JUAN.]
see any actual resemblance. The house with the cupola in America was, in
effect, a newly-invented style or architecture of its era, no doubt
suggested by the sumptuous villas of the Italian Renaissance, since they
have always suggested prodigious opulence, and would naturally attract a
people who had suddenly become rich. Besides, in no other style of
building that I have seen could a dollar be made to make more show than
in the cupola-house of our Reign of Terror. The art of pretentiousness
was never better understood, and no art has responded more quickly to a
popular demand.
The photograph of a house, which I have not the heart to publish,
recalls to memory the story of an old gentleman, now some years
deceased, who at the height of his career started out to build the most
fanciful house that anybody could possibly imagine. “Fanciful” was the
word he used, and appears to have been the favorite adjective of
Jacobinical builders. It seemed to me that he succeeded marvelously
well, as I cannot picture to myself a greater number of odd conceits in
a limited area than he achieved, nor do I see how the scroll-saw could
be made to perform greater wonders; but I knew not the resources of
those clever artificers. A still more fanciful house, he told me, which
he afterwards discovered, caused the ambitious builder of whom I write
to grow somewhat dissatisfied; for after all his pains his own house had
failed to capture the prize. He had not made it fanciful enough. His
property, however, advanced so rapidly in value upon his hands, and was
considered so beautiful withal by those of the ultra-Jacobin party, that
about the year 1869 he was enabled to dispose of his disappointment for
$50,000. And I do not want to leave you to suppose that in this sale
there were considerations of exchange or mortgages entailing a modicum
of equity as the only cash transaction happening so frequently in the
difficult real estate deals we effect to-day. No, the $50,000
represented all cash, which ample fortune, together with, perhaps, as
much again, this remarkable person managed to lose in the national
liquidation of the early seventies. Fancy $100,000 getting away very
easily from any one in his right senses now!
The only explanation that can be offered why so many of the snug
fortunes of those best and worst of
PLATE LVIII.
[Illustration: “There were the sincere Radicals.”]
PLATE LIX.
[Illustration: “And the scaramouches.”]
times miraculously disappeared is to be found in the hypothesis that the
majority of the people were utterly incompetent both by education and
experience to manage the vast amounts of money that had, as magic,
rolled up while they slept.
But there were two kinds of Jacobin houses, there were the sincere
Radicals (see Plate LVIII), and the Scaramouches (see Plate LIX). In
other words it was another struggle between the Girondists and the
Mountain--the moderately-minded folks and the ultra-revolutionists.
Examples of the Scaramouches are becoming difficult to obtain, they give
the present generation such indescribable pains in the head to be
continually seeing them that every year their owners cause them to be
altered or to disappear altogether one after another. A perfect
nightmare of a house upon which I relied for my _pièce de résistance_ in
this chapter was recently remodeled before I could make a picture of it
in all its pristine extravagance; and the next reviewer of Jacobin
architecture will find the Scaramouches still rarer acquisitions. But I
truly regret when I see a Jacobin house of the better sort (see the one
illustrated in Plate LVIII), losing its character to make conform to a
later fashion in architecture because of certain didactic purposes which
it would serve as originally designed.
This Jacobin house exhibits a very creditable composition after the
manner of the Reign of Terror; and if we accept the standard by which we
judge the newly invented architecture of our own day which I had the
honor to illustrate in the second chapter of this review (see Plate
VIII), the Jacobin house has but one fault--a fault, by the way, that
admits of argument, too--it is out of fashion. The two designs are
equally original, equally dauntless and equally successful from the
standpoint of harmony, good lines, balance, proportion and all the more
obscure terms artists invoke to impress the neophyte while often groping
in the dark, themselves for the touchstone whereby they may discern what
is good and what is bad in architecture.
Now, every well-trained mind has the sense of order developed to a very
high degree, and everything that tends toward order and harmony is,
naturally, grateful to it; while that which tends to disorder, want of
PLATE LX.
[Illustration: FRANCO-AMERICAN ROOF, TYPICAL EXAMPLE.]
[Illustration: “Jacobin architecture was, at least, symmetrical.”]
purpose and method is always repugnant. Hence, if we eliminate the
matter of fashion, I cannot see wherein newly invented architecture has
any material advantage over that less recently invented except that, in
some ways, we have in the former a much simpler design. The Jacobin
house is over-decorated; but we must give it odds as in a handicap to
make up for the progress in matters of taste the nation is supposed to
have made in thirty-five years. Strip it of its meretricious ornament,
if you please, and I prefer the lighter grace of the Jacobin exemplar.
Still, granted for the moment that these two antithetical schools of
design, both palpable products of the modern brain enfranchised from all
considerations of precedent, are equal measured by the laws of harmony
and logic alone, it does seem almost beyond belief that the newly
invented architecture of this epoch, for which such fine promises are
made in all good faith by representative architects, is destined to
acquire quite the discreditable reputation of the Reign of Terror, and
by the inconstancy of fashion. Yet, is it not inevitable?
The only attribute that perpetuates a style of architecture in the
resistless march of events is the historic atmosphere the said style may
be made to embody. For this and nothing else has posterity the slightest
use. Clever as were the architects of the Jacobin houses--and I consider
some of them to have been very clever--clever as are the inventors of
our newest type of building expression, there are no inherent qualities
in the work of either school of design that will serve historical
succession. Invented architecture has no more atmosphere than exists
upon the surface of the moon. It may divert popular fancy for a time. We
may discuss the subtleties of mass and moulding to satiety. To the human
heart by which we live, dependent upon personal associations, these
abstract discussions mean just about as much as love means in tennis.
Harmonious lines have merely a negative value, they do not grate upon
the nerves, they do not offend the eye; but unless the personal
reminiscence--the history of one’s antecedents--is discernable through
the academic integument, the lines, themselves, cannot long satisfy the
mind reaching out for companionship in all its concerns.
PLATE LXI.
[Illustration: “I never was so glad to get home, in my life.”]
Were it not for these psychological needs of ours, one might do much
worse, even now, than build himself a not too grotesque Scaramouch
house. Jacobin architecture was, at least, symmetrical (see Plate LX),
and in plan that it was eminently sensible cannot be denied. The rooms
were square, commodious and airy, amplified by numerous bay-windows,
besides being so arranged as to open en suite with either folding or
sliding doors. The windows were tall, generally extending from floor to
ceiling, affording the best of light and ventilation. The second story
enjoyed the relative advantages of the first, while every cubic inch of
the third story was available for bedrooms owing to the economy there is
in the Mansart roof. Then, piazza space was generous to a fault, a
porte-cochère went without the saying, and I must add that in all this
there was a gracious note. Indeed, there is no good reason that I can
see why we should not exploit Jacobin architecture to-day, save one, and
it is just _that_:--“Man cannot live by bread alone.”