SPECTACULAR EFFECT OF GREAT HOUSES 227 



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." 



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 manifesta- 

 tion 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 : 



