192 



KNOWLEDGE 



[August 1, 1890. 



LINCOLN',S INX GATEWAY. 



Sir, — As you are going to give us some more " exactly- 

 described " knowledge about this " interesting" ruin, and 

 profess your readiness to give it on both sides, I send a 

 few more remarks on your four manifestoes of July. 



In spite of a warning last month which would have 

 made any man pause who is not perfectly reckless, you 

 plunge on to back up your statement that " rebuilding 

 could not for a moment be defended from an investment 

 point of view," by making some financial assertions even 

 more demonstrably wrong than that was, and nothing to 

 the purpose if they were right. ISy some inferential con- 

 juring that I am not concerned with, you profess to prove 

 that our rebuilding of chambers hitherto has produced 

 " an actual loss of income." The sentence is rather 

 obscure, but if it does not mean people to understand that, 

 it means nothing ; and I know that it has made people 

 so understand. Your suggestion that I ought to com- 

 pare our new rents with what we might have got by turn- 

 ing the Chancery Lane front into shops is a nice specimen 

 of what antiquaries will turn round to say the moment 

 they want a pretext for vilifying tliose who will not listen 

 to their nonsense. Now for the facts. 



I happen to have (not made for this purpose, but when 

 I was objecting to further rebuilding a few years ago, be- 

 cause we should have had to borrow money for it) a return 

 of the results of all our rebuildings of chambers up to that 

 time, showing the cost of every successive block, including 

 all temporary loss of rent and interest, and the cost of all 

 single chambers that we had to buy, which increased the 

 cost of one block in a high proportion. Yet not even in 

 that case is your statement true ; and on the average of 

 the very large sum that we have spent, the " profit rental " 

 in that return was close on 3j per cent. From various 

 causes some chambers, both old and new, are vacant, and, 

 as you have such a passion for old ones, it is strange that 

 you prefer to live in the new ones, and quite out of sight 

 of your belo\"ed Old Square and the abode of Thurloe. 

 " Comment is superfluous," as newspapers say, on such 

 audacious inventions about a plain matter of figures 

 as you have chosen to publish ; obviously for mere 

 personal prejudice, and when you might easily have 

 asked beforehand whether such statements would be 

 safely true, as you have asked many other questions, I 

 know. 



For the same purpose (for it has nothing upon earth to 

 do with this question) you choose to talk of my " unne- 

 cessary additions to Inigo -Jones's chapel." I know that 

 you avow your indifference to architecture and churches, 

 except so far as they are food for antiquaries. But other 

 people do not, and there was not a word of objection by 

 anybody to our restoring the chapel as we did, which was 

 all but falling, especially the roof, and had no vestry but 

 a small closet with a candle, and no west wall but a mere 

 party-wall which had been cut to pieces. It had not 

 indeed the honour of harbouring a party of traitors and 

 would-be murderers, like your pet No. 2-t, but only of 

 having produced more archbishops, bishops, and other 

 eminent dignitaries than any other church in F^ngland as 

 its Preachers — far more than tlie Temple, with which of 

 course we cannot compete in some ways, and have only 

 spent about a seventh, I believe, of wliat that cost to 

 restore. 



After these specimens of your mode of controversy I 

 shall notice no more of your assertions and insinuations, 

 all made with the same object and motive, and only add a 

 few remarks on yom- own and your professional experts' 

 architectural engineering. I wonder that any man calling 

 himself a lawyer did not see the absurdity of citing to a 



body of lawyers the opinions of a set of witnesses of that 

 class, against those whom the Bench had consulted with 

 exactly the same object as yours, but who confessed tluit 

 they could not support it. 



Are you and your architects really so ignorant as to 

 suppose that large gas-pipes with corresponding nuts 

 are not as good as smaller rods for tying such walls 

 together ? Or to imagine that our Clerk of the Works 

 was such a fool as to think of screwing the leaning-out 

 walls "into the perpendicular," which would have broken 

 them to pieces m five mmutes, unless a vast deal of oilier 

 work was done to prepare for it ? I am continually finding 

 deeper depths than I had fathomed before in architectural 

 engineering ; and here is another. I suspect the pit is 

 bottomless. They do, however, leave you the monopoly 

 of folly, in mistaking the outside wooden slabs, which only 

 spread the hold of the ties over the wall, for props, as 

 mere pretences of danger. 



But they have overshot their mark, and yours, by their 

 elaborate descriptions of the mischief done to the building 

 by " many and careless cuttings" by successive owners, 

 and express their surprise at the building having stood 

 at all. Their " reports " are full of " cracks," in one case 

 " from top to bottom," " splits," " ugly fissures," " bulges," 

 bad modern lead flats, with the timbers under them ; 

 parapets which must be rebuilt, and at least one chimney, 

 and an indefinite quantity of " face brickwork," and part 

 of the south tower (which by the way is not a tower 

 at all, but only two fronts without an intervening wall) ; 

 and they point out that the south wall of the north tower 

 above the ground floor stands on nothing but a single 

 prop ; and the removal of the old waU there to make 

 the footway has caused " the most serious rents of all " 

 above ; and the windows have been mostly widened to 

 put in the mean sashes and panes which we see, and 

 you admire, and which " are generally fioor, or worn 

 out," and "the usual plank lintels" over them, "and 

 other poor building contrivances without proper conside- 

 ration,'' which, of course, have shrunk and bent, and 

 caused more cracks above, " due to want of care ui the in- 

 sertion of the windows"; and" a cellar has been dug out 

 much deeper than the foundations, and close to them ; and 

 here there is a slight settlement visible in Chancery Lane," 

 though j-ou " have verified the levels, and satisfied your- 

 self that the footings have not sunk an /)((/( " ; another 

 l)rilliant specimen of your ideas of an insignificant 

 siukage. And "other parts of the building require to be 

 taken out and rebuilt,'' and " the whole oUofrfrt/ to fi-om 

 the foundations to the chimneys." I do not remark on 

 the architects' omissions, but only on their admissions. 



When men of common sense, at all versed in the ways 

 of "experts," find three reports full of such statements as 

 these against the party that employed them, they can 

 thoroughly appreciate those expert attempts to override 

 their own admissions by a mere assertion that " there are 

 no serious difficulties to overcome," and that " the work 

 may be well done by a clerk of the works under the clear 

 instructions of a practical surveyor," which means that an 

 architect is to be turned in to do what he likes. 



And all what for"? Not even for the pretence that this 

 place can ever be made habitable again according to 

 modern wants, in such a sense that any gentleman will 

 live or practise there ; especially now that there are so 

 much better chambers to be had, besides other old ones 

 not quite so bad as these for those who, unlike you, have a 

 taste for using them ; or who being there, do not think it 

 worth while to move. At any rate, you and your friends 

 have been kind enough to prove that the place is a mere 

 ugly ruin. I wonder how many of your screamers have 



