negligence": whether it be graceful, or not, is a matter of taste; but
the uncomfortable and ruinous disorder and dilapidation of the Italian
cottage is one of observation. The splendor of the climate requires
nothing more than shade from the sun, and occasionally shelter from a
violent storm: the outer arcade affords them both; it becomes the
nightly lounge and daily dormitory of its inhabitant, and the interior
is abandoned to filth and decay. Indolence watches the tooth of Time
with careless eye and nerveless hand. Religion, or its abuse, reduces
every individual of the population to utter inactivity three days out of
the seven; and the habits formed in the three regulate the four. Abject
poverty takes away the power, while brutish sloth weakens the will; and
the filthy habits of the Italian prevent him from suffering from the
state to which he is reduced. The shattered roofs, the dark, confused,
ragged windows, the obscure chambers, the tattered and dirty draperies,
altogether present a picture which, seen too near, is sometimes
revolting to the eye, always melancholy to the mind. Yet even this many
would not wish to be otherwise. The prosperity of nations, as of
individuals, is cold and hard-hearted, and forgetful. The dead die,
indeed, trampled down by the crowd of the living; the place thereof
shall know them no more, for that place is not in the hearts of the
survivors for whose interests they have made way. But adversity and ruin
point to the sepulcher, and it is not trodden on; to the chronicle, and
it doth not decay. Who would substitute the rush of a new nation, the
struggle of an awakening power, for the dreamy sleep of Italy's
desolation, for her sweet silence of melancholy thought, her twilight
time of everlasting memories?
36. Such, we think, are the principal distinctive attributes of the
Italian cottage. Let it not be thought that we are wasting time in the
contemplation of its beauties; even though they are of a kind which the
architect can never imitate, because he has no command over time, and no
choice of situation; and which he ought not to imitate, if he could,
because they are only locally desirable or admirable. Our object, let it
always be remembered, is not the attainment of architectural data, but
the formation of taste.
_Oct. 12, 1837_
III.
THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE--SWITZERLAND.
37. In the three instances of the lowland cottage which have been
already considered, are included the chief peculiarities of style which
are interesting or important. I have not, it is true, spoken of the
carved oaken gable and shadowy roof of the Norman village; of the black
crossed rafters and fantastic proportions which delight the eyes of the
German; nor of the Moorish arches and confused galleries which mingle so
magnificently with the inimitable fretwork of the gray temples of the
Spaniard. But these are not peculiarities solely belonging to the
cottage: they are found in buildings of a higher order, and seldom,
unless where they are combined with other features. They are therefore
rather to be considered, in future, as elements of street effect, than,
now, as the peculiarities of independent buildings. My remarks on the
Italian cottage might, indeed, be applied, were it not for the constant
presence of Moorish feeling, to that of Spain. The architecture of the
two nations is intimately connected: modified, in Italy, by the taste of
the Roman; and, in Spain, by the fanciful creations of the Moor. When I
am considering the fortress and the palace,[4] I shall be compelled to
devote a very large share of my attention to Spain; but for
characteristic examples of the cottage, I turn rather to Switzerland and
England. Preparatory, therefore, to a few general remarks on modern
ornamental cottages, it will be instructive to observe the peculiarities
of two varieties of the mountain cottage, diametrically opposite to
each other in most of their features; one always beautiful, and the
other frequently so.
[Footnote 4: That part, however, was not written, as the "Architectural
Magazine" stopped running soon after the conclusion of Part II. "The
Villa."]
38. First, for Helvetia. Well do I remember the thrilling and exquisite
moment when first, first in my life (which had not been over long), I
encountered, in a calm and shadowy dingle, darkened with the thick
spreading of tall pines, and voiceful with the singing of a
rock-encumbered stream, and passing up towards the flank of a smooth
green mountain, whose swarded summit shone in the summer snow like an
emerald set in silver; when, I say, I first encountered in this calm
defile of the Jura, the unobtrusive, yet beautiful, front of the Swiss
cottage. I thought it the loveliest piece of architecture I had ever had
the felicity of contemplating; yet it was nothing in itself, nothing but
a few mossy fir trunks, loosely nailed together, with one or two gray
stones on the roof: but its power was the power of association; its
beauty, that of fitness and humility.
39. How different is this from what modern architects erect, when they
attempt to produce what is, by courtesy, called a Swiss cottage. The
modern building known in Britain by that name has very long chimneys,
covered with various exceedingly ingenious devices for the convenient
reception and hospitable entertainment of soot, supposed by the innocent
and deluded proprietor to be "meant for ornament." Its gable roof slopes
at an acute angle, and terminates in an interesting and romantic manner,
at each extremity, in a tooth-pick. Its walls are very precisely and
prettily plastered; and it is rendered quite complete by the addition of
two neat little bow windows, supported on neat little mahogany brackets,
full of neat little squares of red and yellow glass. Its door is
approached under a neat little veranda, "uncommon green," and is flanked
on each side by a neat little round table, with all its legs of
different lengths, and by a variety of neat little wooden chairs, all
very peculiarly uncomfortable, and amazingly full of earwigs: the whole
being surrounded by a garden full of flints, burnt bricks and cinders,
with some water in the middle, and a fountain in the middle of it,
which won't play; accompanied by some goldfish, which won't swim; and
by two or three ducks, which will splash. Now, I am excessively sorry to
inform the members of any respectable English family, who are making
themselves uncomfortable in one of these ingenious conceptions, under
the idea that they are living in a Swiss cottage, that they labor under
a melancholy deception; and shall now proceed to investigate the
peculiarities of the real building.
40. The life of a Swiss peasant is divided into two periods; that in
which he is watching his cattle at their summer pasture on the high
Alps,[5] and that in which he seeks shelter from the violence of the
winter storms in the most retired parts of the low valleys. During the
first period, he requires only occasional shelter from storms of
excessive violence; during the latter, a sufficient protection from
continued inclement weather. The Alpine or summer cottage, therefore, is
a rude log hut, formed of unsquared pine trunks, notched into each other
at the corners. The roof being excessively flat, so as to offer no
surface to the wind, is covered with fragments of any stone that will
split easily, held on by crossing logs; which are in their turn kept
down by masses of stone; the whole being generally sheltered behind some
protecting rock, or resting against the slope of the mountain, so that,
from one side, you may step upon the roof. That is the _châlet_. When
well grouped, running along a slope of mountain side, these huts produce
a very pleasing effect, being never obtrusive (owing to the prevailing
grayness of their tone), uniting well with surrounding objects, and
bestowing at once animation and character.
[Footnote 5: I use the word Alp here, and in future, in its proper
sense, of a high mountain pasture; not in its secondary sense, of a
snowy peak.]
41. But the winter residence, the Swiss cottage, properly so-called is a
much more elaborate piece of workmanship. The principal requisite is, of
course, strength: and this is always observable in the large size of the
timbers, and the ingenious manner in which they are joined, so as to
support and relieve each other, when any of them are severely tried.
The roof is always very flat, generally meeting at an angle of 155°, and
projecting from 5 ft. to 7 ft. over the cottage side, in order to
prevent the windows from being thoroughly clogged up with snow. That
this projection may not be crushed down by the enormous weight of snow
which it must sometimes sustain, it is assisted by strong wooden
supports (seen in Fig. 3), which sometimes extend half down the walls
for the sake of strength, divide the side into regular compartments, and
are rendered ornamental by grotesque carving. Every canton has its own
window. That of Uri, with its diamond wood-work at the bottom, is,
perhaps, one of the richest. (See Fig. 4.) The galleries are generally
rendered ornamental by a great deal of labor bestowed upon their
wood-work. This is best executed in the canton of Berne. The door is
always six or seven feet from the ground, and occasionally much more,
that it may be accessible in snow; and is reached by an oblique gallery,
leading up to a horizontal one, as shown in Figs. 3 and 4. The base of
the cottage is formed of stone, generally whitewashed. The chimneys
must have a chapter to themselves; they are splendid examples of utility
combined with ornament.
[Illustration: FIG. 3. Swiss Cottage. 1837.]
[Illustration: FIG. 4. Cottage near Altorf. 1835.]
Such are the chief characteristics of the Swiss cottage, separately
considered. I must now take notice of its effect in scenery.
42. When one has been wandering for a whole morning through a valley of
perfect silence, where everything around, which is motionless, is
colossal, and everything which has motion, resistless; where the
strength and the glory of nature are principally developed in the very
forces which feed upon her majesty; and where, in the midst of
mightiness which seems imperishable, all that is indeed eternal is the
influence of desolation; one is apt to be surprised, and by no means
agreeably, to find, crouched behind some projecting rock, a piece of
architecture which is neat in the extreme, though in the midst of
wildness, weak in the midst of strength, contemptible in the midst of
immensity. There is something offensive in its neatness: for the wood is
almost always perfectly clean, and looks as if it had just been cut; it
is consequently raw in its color, and destitute of all variety of tone.
This is especially disagreeable, when the eye has been previously
accustomed to, and finds, everywhere around, the exquisite mingling of
color, and confused, though perpetually graceful, forms, by which the
details of mountain scenery are peculiarly distinguished. Every fragment
of rock is finished in its effect, tinted with thousands of pale lichens
and fresh mosses; every pine tree is warm with the life of various
vegetation; every grassy bank glowing with mellowed color, and waving
with delicate leafage. How, then, can the contrast be otherwise than
painful, between this perfect loveliness, and the dead, raw, lifeless
surface of the deal boards of the cottage. Its weakness is pitiable;
for, though there is always evidence of considerable strength on close
examination, there is no _effect_ of strength: the real thickness of the
logs is concealed by the cutting and carving of their exposed surfaces;
and even what is seen is felt to be so utterly contemptible, when
opposed to the destructive forces which are in operation around, that
the feelings are irritated at the imagined audacity of the inanimate
object, with the self-conceit of its impotence; and, finally, the eye is
offended at its want of size. It does not, as might be at first
supposed, enhance the sublimity of surrounding scenery by its
littleness, for it provokes no comparison; and there must be proportion
between objects, or they cannot be compared. If the Parthenon, or the
Pyramid of Cheops, or St. Peter's, were placed in the same situation,
the mind would first form a just estimate of the magnificence of the
building, and then be trebly impressed with the size of the masses which
overwhelmed it. The architecture would not lose, and the crags would
gain, by the juxtaposition; but the cottage, which must be felt to be a
thing which the weakest stream of the Alps could toss down before it
like a foam-globe, is offensively contemptible: it is like a child's toy
let fall accidentally on the hillside; it does not unite with the scene;
it is not content to sink into a quiet corner, and personify humility
and peace; but it draws attention upon itself by its pretension to
decoration, while its decorations themselves cannot bear examination,
because they are useless, unmeaning and incongruous.
43. So much for its faults; and I have had no mercy upon them, the
rather, because I am always afraid of being biased in its favor by my
excessive love for its sweet nationality. Now for its beauties. Wherever
it is found, it always suggests ideas of a gentle, pure, and pastoral
life.[6] One feels that the peasants whose hands carved the planks so
neatly, and adorned their cottage so industriously, and still preserve
it so perfectly, and so neatly, can be no dull, drunken, lazy boors; one
feels, also, that it requires both firm resolution, and determined
industry, to maintain so successful a struggle against "the crush of
thunder, and the warring winds." Sweet ideas float over the imagination
of such passages of peasant life as the gentle Walton so loved; of the
full milk-pail, and the mantling cream-bowl; of the evening dance and
the matin song; of the herdsmen on the Alps, of the maidens by the
fountain; of all that is peculiarly and indisputably Swiss. For the
cottage is beautifully national; there is nothing to be found the least
like it in any other country. The moment a glimpse is caught of its
projecting galleries, one knows that it is the land of Tell and
Winkelried; and the traveler feels, that, were he indeed Swiss-born and
Alp-bred, a bit of that carved plank, meeting his eye in a foreign land,
would be as effectual as a note of the _Ranz des Vaches_ upon the ear.
[Footnote 6: Compare _Modern Painters_, vol. iv. chap. xi, and vol. v.
chap. ix.]
44. Again, when a number of these cottages are grouped together, they
break upon each other's formality, and form a mass of fantastic
proportion, of carved window and overhanging roof, full of character and
picturesque in the extreme. An excellent example of this is the Bernese
village of Unterseen. Again, when the ornament is not very elaborate,
yet enough to preserve the character, and the cottage is old, and not
very well kept (suppose in a Catholic canton), and a little rotten, the
effect is beautiful: the timber becomes weather-stained, and of a fine
warm brown, harmonizing delightfully with the gray stones on the roof,
and the dark green of surrounding pines. If it be fortunate enough to be
situated in some quiet glen, out of sight of the gigantic features of
the scene, and surrounded with cliffs to which it bears some proportion;
and if it be partially concealed, not intruding on the eye, but well
united with everything around, it becomes altogether perfect; humble,
beautiful, and interesting. Perhaps no cottage can then be found to
equal it; and none can be more finished in effect, graceful in detail,
and characteristic as a whole.
45. The ornaments employed in the decoration of the Swiss cottage do not
demand much attention; they are usually formed in a most simple manner,
by thin laths, which are carved into any fanciful form, or in which rows
of holes are cut, generally diamond shaped; and they are then nailed one
above another to give the carving depth. Pinnacles are never raised on
the roof, though carved spikes are occasionally suspended from it at
the angles. No ornamental work is ever employed to disguise the beams of
the projecting part of the roof, nor does any run along its edges. The
galleries, in the canton of Uri, are occasionally supported on arched
beams, as shown in Fig. 4, which have a very pleasing effect.
[Illustration: Swiss Châlet Balcony, 1842.]
46. Of the adaptation of the building to climate and character, little
can be said. When I called it "national," I meant only that it was quite
_sui generis_, and, therefore, being only found in Switzerland, might be
considered as a national building; though it has none of the mysterious
connection with the mind of its inhabitants which is evident in all
really fine edifices. But there is a reason for this; Switzerland has no
climate, properly speaking, but an assemblage of every climate, from
Italy to the Pole; the vine wild in its valleys, the ice eternal on its
crags. The Swiss themselves are what we might have expected in persons
dwelling in such a climate; they have no character. The sluggish nature
of the air of the valleys has a malignant operation on the mind; and
even the mountaineers, though generally shrewd and intellectual, have no
perceptible nationality: they have no language, except a mixture of
Italian and bad German; they have no peculiar turn of mind; they might
be taken as easily for Germans as for Swiss. No correspondence,
consequently, can exist between national architecture and national
character, where the latter is not distinguishable. Generally speaking,
then, the Swiss cottage cannot be said to be built in good taste; but it
is occasionally picturesque, frequently pleasing, and, under a favorable
concurrence of circumstances, beautiful. It is not, however, a thing to
be imitated; it is always, when out of its own country, incongruous; it
never harmonizes with anything around it, and can therefore be employed
only in mimicry of what does not exist, not in improvement of what does.
I mean, that any one who has on his estate a dingle shaded with larches
or pines, with a rapid stream, may manufacture a bit of Switzerland as a
toy; but such imitations are always contemptible, and he cannot use the
Swiss cottage in any other way. A modified form of it, however, as will
be hereafter shown, may be employed with advantage. I hope, in my next
paper, to derive more satisfaction from the contemplation of the
mountain cottage of Westmoreland, than I have been able to obtain from
that of the Swiss.
IV.
THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE--WESTMORELAND.
47. When I devoted so much time to the consideration of the
peculiarities of the Swiss cottage, I did not previously endeavor to
ascertain what the mind, influenced by the feelings excited by the
nature of its situation, would be induced to expect, or disposed to
admire. I thus deviated from the general rule which I hope to be able to
follow out; but I did so only because the subject for consideration was
incapable of fulfilling the expectation when excited, or corresponding
with the conception when formed. But now, in order to appreciate the
beauty of the Westmoreland cottage, it will be necessary to fix upon a
standard of excellence, with which it may be compared.
One of the principal charms of mountain scenery is its solitude. Now,
just as silence is never perfect or deep without motion, solitude is
never perfect without some vestige of life. Even desolation is not felt
to be utter, unless in some slight degree interrupted: unless the
cricket is chirping on the lonely hearth, or the vulture soaring over
the field of corpses, or the one mourner lamenting over the red ruins of
the devastated village, that devastation is not felt to be complete. The
anathema of the prophet does not wholly leave the curse of loneliness
upon the mighty city, until he tells us that "the satyr shall dance
there." And, if desolation, which is the destruction of life, cannot
leave its impression perfect without some interruption, much less can
solitude, which is only the absence of life, be felt without some
contrast. Accordingly, it is, perhaps, never so perfect as when a
populous and highly cultivated plain, immediately beneath, is visible
through the rugged ravines, or over the cloudy summits of some tall,
vast, and voiceless mountain.
48. When such a prospect is not attainable, one of the chief uses of the
mountain cottage, paradoxical as the idea may appear, is to increase
this sense of solitude. Now, as it will only do so when it is seen at a
considerable distance, it is necessary that it should be visible, or, at
least, that its presence should be indicated, over a considerable
portion of surrounding space. It must not, therefore, be too much shaded
by trees, or it will be useless; but if, on the contrary, it be too
conspicuous on the open hillside, it will be liable to most of the
objections which were advanced against the Swiss cottage, and to
another, which was not then noticed. Anything which, to the eye, is
split into parts, appears less as a whole than what is undivided. Now, a
considerable mass, of whatever tone or color it may consist, is as
easily divisible by dots as by lines; that is, a conspicuous point, on
any part of its surface, will divide it into two portions, each of which
will be individually measured by the eye, but which will never make the
impression which they would have made, had their unity not been
interrupted. A conspicuous cottage on a distant mountain side has this
effect in a fatal degree, and is, therefore, always intolerable.
49. It should accordingly, in order to reconcile the attainment of the
good, with the avoidance of the evil, be barely visible: it should not
tell as a cottage on the eye, though it should on the mind; for be it
observed that, if it is only by the closest investigation that we can
ascertain it to be a human habitation, it will answer the purpose of
increasing the solitude quite as well as if it were evidently so;
because this impression is produced by its appeal to the thoughts, not
by its effect on the eye. Its color, therefore, should be as nearly as
possible that of the hill on which, or the crag beneath which, it is
placed; its form, one that will incorporate well with the ground, and
approach that of a large stone more than of anything else. The color
will consequently, if this rule be followed, be subdued and grayish,
but rather warm; and the form simple, graceful, and unpretending. The
building should retain the same general character on a closer
examination. Everything about it should be natural, and should appear as
if the influences and forces which were in operation around it had been
too strong to be resisted, and had rendered all efforts of art to check
their power, or conceal the evidence of their action, entirely
unavailing. It cannot but be an alien child of the mountains; but it
must show that it has been adopted and cherished by them. This effect is
only attainable by great ease of outline and variety of color;
peculiarities which, as will be presently seen, the Westmoreland cottage
possesses in a supereminent degree.
50. Another feeling, with which one is impressed during a mountain
ramble, is humility. I found fault with the insignificance of the Swiss
cottage, because "it was not content to sink into a quiet corner, and
personify humility." Now, had it not been seen to be pretending, it
would not have been felt to be insignificant; for the feelings would
have been gratified with its submission to, and retirement from, the
majesty of the destructive influences which it rather seemed to rise up
against in mockery. Such pretension is especially to be avoided in the
mountain cottage: it can never lie too humbly in the pastures of the
valley, nor shrink too submissively into the hollows of the hills; it
should seem to be asking the storm for mercy, and the mountain for
protection: and should appear to owe to its weakness, rather than to its
strength, that it is neither overwhelmed by the one, nor crushed by the
other.