usual devices for producing his effects. This was Kimbolton Castle,
in Huntingdonshire, which, except on one front which has a great
columnar portico, is as gaunt and plain as anyone could desire; and
it was made so of set purpose, for Vanbrugh writes to his client, the
Earl of Manchester, in July 1707, “I thought it was absolutely best to
give it something of the castle air, though at the same time to make
it regular, ... so I hope your Lordship will not be discouraged
if any Italian you may shew it to, should find fault that it is not
Roman; for to have built a front with pilasters and what the orders
require, could never have been done with the rest of the castle. I am
sure this will make a very noble and masculine show.” And again in
the following September, “I shall be much deceived if people do not
see a manly beauty in it, when it is up, that they did not conceive
could be produced out of such rough materials; but it is certainly the
figure and proportions that make the most pleasing fabric, and not the
delicacy of the ornaments, a proof of which I am in great hopes to shew
your Lordship at Kimbolton.”
[Illustration: FIG. 154.--THE PALLADIAN BRIDGE, PRIOR PARK,
NEAR BATH.]
[Illustration: FIG. 155.--BLENHEIM VIEW.]
There is much sound sense in all this, and every architect will agree
that no amount of ornament can redeem a badly proportioned building;
but Vanbrugh’s reason for the omission of pilasters, and what the
orders require, would have had more point if there had been anything
preserved of the ancient castle beyond its name. So far as can be seen
there is nothing older than the house itself, and although it was built
of the old stones, as Vanbrugh says (and this may be the real reason
for so plain a treatment), there is no evidence of earlier working
visible upon them.
A casual remark in another letter is of interest, as showing what
people thought of some of these large houses. He is speaking of
Blenheim in a letter of July 1708. “He (Sir John Coniers) made mighty
fine speeches upon the building, and took it for granted no subject’s
house in Europe would approach it, which will be true if the Duke of
Shrewsbury judges right in saying, ‘There is not in Italy so fine a
house as Chatsworth,’ for this of Blenheim is, beyond all comparison,
more magnificent than that.” He is certainly right as to magnificence,
if not also as to the general pleasurable effect.
Vanbrugh’s houses may be taken as the highest manifestation of the
spirit of the age in house building; the exaltation of social grandeur,
the scenic magnificence of architecture. That they rather missed the
mark in respect of comfort and convenience, as we understand those
qualities, was not held to be a great drawback. Yet even contemporary
voices were raised in protest, as may be gathered from Pope’s verses
on “The Duke of Marlborough’s House at Woodstock,” wherein, after
listening to an admirer’s description of its splendour, he suddenly
interrupts him:--
“Thanks, Sir, I cried, ’tis very fine,
But where d’ye sleep, or where d’ye dine?
I find by all you have been telling,
That ’tis a house, but not a dwelling.”
[Illustration: FIG. 156.--STOWE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
VIEW OF QUEEN’S THEATRE, FROM THE ROTUNDA.
From an Engraving by Jean Rigaud.]
Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the thirteenth of his admirable Discourses,
remarks that Vanbrugh “was defrauded of the due reward of his merit by
the wits of the time”; and we can heartily concur in his opinion as a
painter, that Vanbrugh, “had originality of invention, he understood
light and shade, and had great skill in composition.”
In all these great houses the lay out helped the general effect; the
gardens and the groves were designed in the same spirit as the houses
which they surrounded. Those at Stowe were the most famous of their
time. There was but little formality about them, although they were
traversed by a few straight walks and vistas (Fig. 156). They embodied,
indeed, the new idea which eschewed formality, and sought to gain
the help of nature without apparent effort (Fig. 157). They covered
a considerable amount of space, and were diversified by undulations
of varied steepness, and by great masses of trees. The landscape thus
provided by nature was improved by art. A stream was made to fall
here, to wind there, to broaden out into a lake elsewhere. Paths were
contrived to pass through thickets, to descend a dell, to curve beneath
a lofty mound crowned with a “temple,” to undulate along the edge of
a copse and overlook meadows sloping down to the lake. The whole was
studded at intervals with buildings, each of which had a character of
its own. There were grottoes, temples, arches, rotundas, and columns,
designed by Vanbrugh, Leoni, Kent, and others. They were so placed amid
the trees, the meadows, and the water as to remind the spectator of
pictures of Italian scenery. Half Italy was squeezed into two hundred
acres of English countryside. A Corinthian arch admitted the principal
approach from Buckingham. There were many temples; among them one to
Venus, one to Bacchus, others to the Ancient Virtues, to the Modern
Virtues (in ruins--a costly piece of satire which must speedily have
palled), to British worthies, to Concord and Victory, to Friendship and
to other deities and abstractions. There was Dido’s cave in one place,
and St Augustine’s in another, a Fane of Pastoral Poetry elsewhere;
there were monuments to people of more or less eminence, archways
commemorative of royal visitors, artificial ruins, bridges over
artificial waters, a Gothic temple, and a large tablet to a dead dog.
[Illustration: FIG. 157.--STOWE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
A VIEW FROM CAPTAIN GRENVILLE’S MONUMENT TO THE GRECIAN TEMPLE.
From an Engraving by G. Bickham.]
Most of these buildings were furnished with inscriptions on which were
bestowed much ingenuity, scholarship, and neatness of versification.
For thirty or forty years monuments were added as occasion arose,
either to commemorate the death of a distinguished acquaintance, or the
visit of some royal personages. Horace Walpole was half repelled, yet
wholly attracted by this curious panorama. The modern visitor is filled
with much the same emotions. The mere catalogue sounds inane, yet the
whole idea is carried out with so much skill, the buildings themselves
are so charming that, once we accept the artificial atmosphere of
the place, we wander from point to point with unabated interest and
admiration. Nowhere else can we gain so vivid an insight into the
laborious elegance of the age.
Walpole’s lively account of his visit to meet the Princess Amelia, in
July 1770, gives an excellent idea of the impressions the place made
upon him. The view through the archway, erected in honour of her royal
highness, he describes as “a tall landscape framed by the arch and the
embowering trees, and comprehending more beauties of light, shade, and
buildings, than any picture of Albano I ever saw.”[68] “Twice a day we
made a pilgrimage to almost every heathen temple in that province that
they call a garden; and there is no sallying out of the house without
descending a flight of steps as high as St Paul’s.” He describes an
_al fresco_ supper, which they attended in state, in one of the
grottoes on a cold evening. It reduces to very human dimensions the
lordliness of the great scheme. A large concourse of people from
Buckingham and the district came to behold the distinguished company
at their revels. Before this crowd the house party descended the vast
flight of steps leading from the house. “I could not help laughing as
I surveyed our troop, which, instead of tripping lightly to such an
Arcadian entertainment, were hobbling down by the balustrades, wrapped
up in cloaks and great-coats for fear of catching cold. The earl, you
know, is bent double, the countess very lame; I am a miserable walker,
and the princess, though as strong as a Brunswick lion, makes no figure
in going down fifty stone stairs.”
Stowe, and Hagley in Worcestershire, which both owe much of their
character to the taste and judgment of Lord Chatham, are perhaps
the best examples of lay outs which are not so much gardens, as a
collection of landscape pictures to which interest was imparted by
the introduction of classic buildings, and from which symmetry and
formality were excluded.
[Illustration: FIG. 158.--In the Gardens of Wrest,
Bedfordshire.]
In contrast to the free treatment at Stowe, which brought a tract
of countryside into the curtilage of the house, is the formality at
Bramham Park, some ten miles from Leeds, which carried the ordered
symmetry of the house into the gardens. Of the two methods, the formal
was the earlier, but during the eighteenth century it gradually gave
way to the other.
The gardens at Bramham are among the most satisfactory of the large
lay outs of the period (Figs. 162, 163). They were devised for Robert
Benson, afterwards Lord Bingley, about the year 1710.[69] There are the
usual vistas converging upon the house; there are various buildings
in imitation of the antique, both classic and Gothic; there are
memorials to pet animals; but the number is reasonable, and the scheme
is more easily grasped than that of Stowe. The principal walk runs
parallel to the garden front of the house, near which it ends against
a “temple,” which is the chapel of the mansion. In the opposite
direction it merges into an avenue which leads the eye across the
park to a distant monument. Just before quitting the garden the vista
crosses an elaborate arrangement of ornamental water, comprising a
large basin flanked by subsidiary pools and cascades, all symmetrically
planned. The walk is led from one level to another by monumental steps,
producing picturesque groups of garden architecture, and the large
water basin is the starting-point of fresh vistas.
[Illustration: FIG. 159.--The Gardens at Drayton House,
Northamptonshire.]
[Illustration: FIG. 160.--Plan of the Gardens at Drayton
House, Northamptonshire.
H. Inigo Triggs, _del._]
[Illustration: FIG. 161.--Garden House at Croom’s Hill,
Greenwich.]
The garden buildings form an interesting commentary on the
architectural literature of the time, for whereas those in the classic
style are quite good, owing to the numerous examples in books, those in
the Gothic style are lamentable, since there was nothing to guide the
designer but his own study and observation; and nobody at that period
had any but the merest nodding acquaintance with Gothic work.
[Illustration: FIG. 162.--BRAMHAM PARK GARDENS,
YORKSHIRE.]
The adoption of a dignified lay out, large or small, to every house of
any pretensions at this period, is exemplified in many contemporary
prints and books, notably in Kip’s “Britannia Illustrata” and
Campbell’s “Vitruvius Britannicus.” Many of these formal gardens have
been destroyed, submerged by the wave of landscape gardening, on which
“Capability” Brown floated to fame; but there still remain admirable
examples besides those already mentioned. There are the placid canals
of Wrest, in Bedfordshire (Fig. 158); the sloping vistas of Melbourne,
in Derbyshire; the terraces of St Catherine’s Court, in Somerset; and
the pleached walks and broad parterres of Drayton, in Northamptonshire
(Fig. 159), where the forecourt with its beautiful gates and screen
of ironwork, the steps from one level to another, and the lead vases,
placed on the terrace walls, or raised on pedestals as a dominating
part of the scheme, all combine to render the lay out one of the most
fascinating of its kind (see plan, Fig. 160). Indeed, examples may
be found in every county, although not a tithe of what once existed;
and on their terraces, amid their canals and straight walks may be
found groups of figures, delightful temples, monuments, urns, and
garden houses, like that at Croom’s Hill, Greenwich (Fig. 161), which
are not only charming in themselves, but give point to the whole
conception. And those conceptions are the most satisfactory which are
on a scale moderate enough to enable the mind to grasp them on the
spot, without the aid of a plan.
[Illustration: FIG. 163.--Bramham Yew Hedge.]
IX
GEORGIAN HOUSES
Reference was made in the last chapter to the influence of
architectural books in stimulating the interest of wealthy amateurs
in the matter of building. The eighteenth century saw a considerable
increase in the number published, and of these two of the earliest
and most important were Lord Burlington’s, or rather Kent’s, “Designs
of Inigo Jones,” and Colin Campbell’s “Vitruvius Britannicus.” Kent
put his name to the former, and no doubt rightly, as being the
collector and editor of the materials comprised in the two volumes;
but Lord Burlington was the “only begetter” as well as the paymaster
of the venture. The first volume is devoted almost entirely to one
of the designs for the palace at Whitehall, which have already been
dealt with in Chapter IV. The second volume consists of designs for
houses of all sizes, nominally by Inigo Jones, but actually by Webb.
Plans, elevations, and some sections are given, but there is an air
of unreality about them, and, as a matter of fact, very few of them
were actually built. They are mostly exercises in design in which
the convenience of the plan is a secondary consideration. The Thorpe
collection is very different in this respect. There most of the plans
have the rooms named, a genuine effort being made to get a workable
design, with all its parts suitably related one to the other. In Kent’s
book none of the rooms are named; there appears to be no effort to
achieve a workable result. The space enclosed within the outside walls
is divided into rooms, and the rooms are carefully proportioned; but so
far as the designer is concerned any room might be put to any purpose
at the fancy of the occupant. The relation of the dining-room to the
kitchen, for instance, is held of no account: aspect and prospect
are alike neglected. Sanitary provision there is none. Bath-rooms,
of course, were unknown: indeed, from the few allusions to such
matters as occur in the literature of the time, it is evident that
our ancestors of the eighteenth century had deplorable ideas as to
cleanliness and sanitation; and the provisions now made in these
respects, which are one of the pivots upon which a modern plan turns,
were then undreamed of. When all practical considerations were left to
take care of themselves, planning a house was a very simple matter, and
one which an amateur could undertake with a light heart. The principal
aim of designers was to achieve a scenic success. The rooms were to be
well proportioned, and so arranged as to produce a stately effect, both
in themselves and in the passing from one to the other. They were also
so disposed as to result in a fine exterior, where the length should be
duly proportioned to the height, the windows should be regularly placed
and of a size agreeable to the eye. Every part was to be symmetrical,
and the whole was to be a neat piece of architecture. There seems, in
looking through these designs, to be no essential reason why one should
have differed from another, except for the sake of variety. Yet every
modern architect knows that a house properly planned to meet one set
of circumstances can never be utilised for another without drastic
alterations; that every fresh house presents a fresh problem. But this
springs from the modern way of looking at house designing, namely, that
a house ought to satisfy the wants and even the idiosyncrasies of the
owner, and that its disposition must be modified by considerations of
aspect, prospect, soil, surroundings, and a score of other things.
[Illustration: FIG. 164.--DESIGN FOR A HOUSE.
From Gibbs’s “Book of Architecture,” pl. 57.]
[Illustration: FIG. 165.--DESIGN FOR A HOUSE, BY
GIBBS.
From the Gibbs Collection in the Radcliffe Library, Oxford.]
But the outlook of the eighteenth century being what it was, the
designers were successful in compassing their object, and they produced
many charming houses, often stately and always dignified. This result
was owing in a large degree to a study of Kent’s “Designs of Inigo
Jones.”
Campbell’s “Vitruvius Britannicus” is an epitome of the more important
houses of the last twenty years of the seventeenth century and first
twenty of the eighteenth.[70] The ideas underlying it are those which
have already been mentioned. There is a short descriptive account of
each subject. In these, Campbell dwells on the proportions of his
rooms, on the truly classic treatment of the elevations; he explains
how one subject is treated in the “palatial” style, another in the
“temple” style; another in the “theatrical.” The principal rooms are
all stately, the family rooms in some cases are in the attics,
lighted from the leads. In one design he plumes himself on not having
his windows “crowded”; and indeed the amount of wall space between
the lower and upper windows is so ample that either the lower must be
far below the ceiling, or the upper far above the floor. It would be
tedious to multiply instances; anyone can find them for himself by
looking through his volumes. The point is that many important houses of
that time were built for state and show, rather than for comfort and
convenience; and they afford a striking commentary on the difference in
outlook on daily life between that period and our own among the wealthy
classes.
[Illustration: FIG. 166.--DESIGN FOR THE FOUR SIDES OF A ROOM.
From the Gibbs Collection in the Radcliffe Library.]
[Illustration: FIG. 167.--DESIGN FOR THE FOUR SIDES OF A ROOM.
From the Gibbs Collection in the Radcliffe Library.]
These particular manifestations were not merely a passing fashion;
they were too widespread and too lasting for that; yet that they were
in fact the outcome of fashion is proved by Pope’s Epistle to Lord
Burlington (the fourth of the “Moral Essays”) which is in effect a
vindication of common sense as opposed to extravagance in buildings,
gardens, and entertainments. Pope credits Lord Burlington with the
qualities he commends, yet in none of the buildings attributed to that
nobleman is common sense very conspicuous.
Another book on architecture was published by James Gibbs, a
contemporary of Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh, but somewhat younger, and who
was one of the numerous architects encouraged by Lord Burlington. He
deservedly enjoyed a large practice, and designed many churches and
houses. He was skilful and ingenious, and showed more originality than
most of his contemporaries, particularly in his churches; his houses go
very little outside the lines which were universally accepted as being
appropriate for gentlemen’s residences. Like several of his fellows he
commended himself to the public by publishing (in 1728) a large folio
volume of his designs. These are well worth study, for they were all
either actually built or were intended to be built, the erection of
some being prevented by the death of the client or by some other cause.
They have therefore a more vital interest than most of those in Kent’s
“Designs of Inigo Jones.”
His Introduction is interesting. The work was undertaken, he says,
at the instance of several Persons of Quality, who were of opinion
that it “would be of use to such Gentlemen as might be concerned in
Building, especially in remote parts of the Country, where little
or no assistance for Designs can be procured.” He suggests that,
furnished with his book, these remote gentlemen can employ any workman
who understands lines to build them a house, and even make alterations
in his designs if guided by a person of judgment. But he (very
rightly) warns his readers against employing only ignorant workmen in
the management of buildings of great expense, lest they undergo the
mortification of finding the result condemned by persons of taste,
entailing even the drastic remedy of pulling the building down. He also
warns them against extravagant and misapplied ornament, “for it is not
the Bulk of a Fabrick, the Richness and Quantity of the Materials, the
Multiplicity of Lines, nor the Gaudiness of the Finishing, that give
the Grace or Beauty and Grandeur to a Building; but the Proportion of
the Parts to one another and to the Whole, whether entirely plain, or
enriched with a few Ornaments properly disposed.” It is to be feared
that his readers must have felt that what he gave with one hand in
offering them his book, he took away with the other by showing how
hazardous it was to use it without training and experience.
He concludes by saying that his designs had been done in the best taste
he could form upon the instructions of the greatest masters in Italy,
supplemented by his own observations upon the ancient buildings there
during many years’ study; adding, as a sly dig at the amateurs, “for a
cursory View of those August Remains can no more qualify the Spectator,
or Admirer, than the Air of the Country can inspire him with the
knowledge of Architecture.”
It is a characteristic pronouncement, with its reliance on the
authority of the Italian masters, its insistence on proportion, its
omission of any reference to domestic comfort, its intention that
the book should help the unlearned, coupled with the warning that
unless the user had taste and judgment of his own, he must seek those
qualities in an expert.
[Illustration: FIG. 168.--DESIGN FOR A STAIRCASE.
From the Gibbs Collection in the Radcliffe Library.]
[Illustration: FIG. 169.--DESIGN FOR A STAIRCASE, WITH
PAINTED ARCHITECTURE.
From the Gibbs Collection in the Radcliffe Library.]
The illustrations give a good idea of what was expected in a country
house in those days. The plans are all symmetrical, and each front is
regular and intended to be seen; there was no thought of giving the
house a back for the use of servants and tradesmen. Indeed there were
hardly any tradesmen to be considered. Every house was self-sustaining
and provided its own bread, meat, and vegetables. This is an important
point to bear in mind; it accounts for the numerous outbuildings
which form part of old houses, inasmuch as places had to be provided
for storing most of the things which are now retained by the shopkeeper
until his carts take them to his customers. It also partly explains how
it was possible to have each side of the house a show-front, for there
was less outside traffic when there were no tradesmen’s carts, although
there was always a staff of servants going in and out. The servants are
placed either in a basement or in an outlying wing, never in proximity
to the principal rooms; at the same time, in order to gain their rooms
in the attics, they generally had to cross either the hall or one of
the rooms intended for the family. The effect of this was that they
were less conveniently placed for service than they are in the present
day, and yet they could not gain their bedrooms without the risk of
intruding on the family.