ISIS."] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



289 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK, 

 FASCICULUS XCVIIL 



" I must have liberty 

 Withal, as large a charter as the winds. 

 To blow on whom I please.'* 



I. Much mischief has been done by attempting — futile as such 

 attempt in itself is — to lay down express rules for almost every- 

 thing: in architectural design. Were mere rules all-sufficient, the 

 art would be converted into mere handicraft, and there would be 

 no occasion for architects at all, but only for builders and their 

 operatives. There has been by far too much of what, though it 

 may at first sight look very sagacious and profound in the specu- 

 lations or the reasonings of architectural writers, is very little 

 better than arrant quackery in point of practice, or mere verbose 

 vapouring in point of doctrine. He who trusts implicitly to rules, 

 or who adheres to them merely because he knows not how or when 

 they may be deviated from not only excusably but successfully, 

 can never be more than second-rate in Art, let the particular art 

 to which he applies himself be what it may. But the idol set up 

 for our worship at the present day is Precedent; and to that archi- 

 tects bow down and surrender up, if not always voluntarily yet 

 at the bidding of their task-masters, all energy of mind and all 

 inventive power, — rendering themselves little better than mere 

 automata which are moved by the clockwork of precedent and 

 rules. Vain is it to look for originality and imagination so long as 

 they continue to be tabooed and prohibited, if not formally and 

 expressly yet virtually, by a superstitious reverence for Prece- 

 dent. 



II. At a banquet lately given at the Mansion-House, some one — 

 I will not say who — observed that an architect ought to possess 

 universal talent in his art, he being one day called upon to design 

 a palace, and perhaps the next to erect a hovel! ^Ve all know 

 that after-dinner speechifving is sure to produce a good deal of 

 twaddle and nonsense, but my Lord Mayor's wine must have been 

 unusually potent to produce such an eflFusion as that. Now, it is 

 fairly to be presumed that those who build hovels are never 

 applied to when a palace or palatial edifice is required: indeed, it 

 may be questioned whether an architect is ever employed at all when 

 no more than a hovel is wanted. Whether it would not have been 

 more satisfactory to those who pay for palaces — at any rate for 

 royal ones — had the architects engaged been building hovels in- 

 stead, is another matter. — With regard to the sapient speech here 

 commented upon, it would be just as sensible to say that a poet 

 must be equally prepared to produce an epic or an epigram, just as 

 the one or the other may be demanded of him, — to produce, one 

 day, lofty Miltonic strains, and on another an advertisement in 

 rhyme for the Moses of the Minories. Surely, too, there are 

 different walks in architecture as well as in all other arts, in any 

 one of which he who follows that one in particular may excel, al- 

 though he might fail in others; for it is not every one who, like 

 Sir Robert Smirke, is equally great in all subjects alike, be they 



Post-Offices or British Aluseums but I will leave my readers 



to guess what it might not be exactly becoming to say of so 

 great an architect, and moreover a living one, although I pre- 

 sume now quite defunct — professionally. And at that I weep 

 not, but leave those to weep who can, and who have tears at 

 command— perhaps a thumb-phial would contain them all. 



III. It has been well said by Ruskin, that the young architect 

 should learn to think in shadow, — to which I add: and to think in 

 perspective also, and should study how to bring in piquant effects 

 arising out of it. Instead of which, study of that kind seems to 

 be quite neglected — or rather never thought of. I do not say that 

 architects are ignorant of perspective; — most of them, it may be 

 presumed, are fully capable of making perspective drawings from 

 their own designs; yet that is a very different matter from con- 

 sulting and providing for ultimate perspective appearance while 

 making the designs themselves. If there be any happy effect of 

 the kind, it comes of its own accord, unsought and unsolicited. 

 No wonder, therefore, that there is generally so much tameness 

 and insipidity in what, when looked at as mere "elevations" upon 

 paper, and with regard to their details and mere pattern-work, may 

 have promised well enough, yet afterwards fall very far short of 

 such promise. I would advise the young architect to think first of 

 all of his general composition — secure character and effect there; 

 and then, and not till then, begin to think of dressing it by work- 

 ing it up in detail; — whereas now, detail, and that alone, so as to 

 answer to some foregone if not bygone style, appears to be chiefly 



No. 145.— Vol. XII.— October, 1849. 



thought of. Here, to the seniors in the profession I would say: 

 my good Sirs, put on your spectacles; but to the juniors: open, 

 your eyes, and avail yourselves, while you can and as far as you 

 can, of the blessing of unimpaired vision — vision which is or 

 ought to be unobstructed, ought not to be blindfolded by routinier 

 methods, which tend to exclude all freshness of ideas, and to 

 prevent all diligent and well-considered study of the actual sub- 

 ject, 



IV. At the time of the competition for the Army and Navy 

 Clubhouse, it was remarked in one publication that the opportuni- 

 ties afforded by buildings of that class for introducing piquant 

 effects and combinations of plan, and ingeniously varied forms of 

 rooms, were not turned to account. Nor is it to be denied that 

 such is the case; for among those in all our clubhouses there is not 

 one circular, octagon, or hexagonal apartment to be found, much 

 less one which exhibits any of the countless variations which may 

 be obtained by those forms partially in combination with others. 

 However spacious and lofty the rooms may be, .they betray, in 

 point of architectural contrivance and design, only tlie most quo- 

 tidian, not to say humdrum, ideas. A couple of columns m antis 

 at the ends of a long room, with perhaps some pilasters on its 

 sides, are made the ne plus ultra of their architecture; and even 

 that is merely borrowed from the standard Orders, instead of being 

 made to display some well-devised difference of treatment between 

 orders so applied and those employed externally. As to mere 

 decoration and costly furniture, — as to gilding and painting, win- 

 dow draperies, mirrors, chandeliers, and candelabra, there may be 

 enough, and perhaps a great deal to spare also; yet, such parapher- 

 nalia, alias toggery, may, provided people choose to pay for it, be 

 bestowed on any large room — even a mere barn. "What do you 

 think of these hangings?" was a question once put to one who 

 replied: "Before you hung this room you should have hanged 

 your architect." — Professional men, that is architects, are apt to 

 turn up their noses at decorators and upholsterers, somewhat un- 

 graciously and ungratefully too, since, as matters now go, it is they 

 wlio clothe and cover the nakedness of an architect's ideas for his 

 interior. Were it not for such allies to architects, we should get 

 nothing more than four bare walls for each room, — quite enough in 

 ordinary houses, but infinitely too little in palatial mansions and 

 palatial clubhouses. 



V. It was but yesterday that I heard the entrance doors of the 

 British Museum compared to those of a gin-palace, with no other 

 difference than that of being magnified, — a very different matter, 

 by-the-bye, from being made magnificent; and in like manner, I 

 should say, that as far as interior architecture is concerned, many 

 of our clubliouses are no better than amplified and magnified 

 taverns. So far from showing anything like contrivance, or even 

 ordinary attention to the requirements of mere convenience, some 

 of them manifest the most unpardonable carelessness of plan. 

 There is, for instance, the "Athensum," nearly one-half of whose 

 PaU-Mall front is, on the ground-floor, devoted to that most un- 

 savoury of goddesses, Cloacina — in plain English, is given up to 

 water-closets! The "Union" is both Smirkish and sulky within and 

 without; the "Arthur" is most wretchedly planned; and the "Army 

 and Navy" will be humdrum in the extreme. From a published 

 plan of it may be seen, that instead of corresponding in its width 

 with the loggia, the vestibule takes in only the door and the window 

 on one side of it; the other window serving to light what, though 

 only a closet, 7 feet by 10, and which we at first supposed to be in- 

 tended for the porter, is dignified by the pompous name of the 

 Reception-room! Yet, although there is only a door and window 

 on that side of the vestibule by which we enter, the opposite one 

 is divided into three arches, ih such manner tliat the door is in a 

 line with one of the piers! Beyond those three openings is the 

 Inner Hall, in which is the staircase, placed not at its further end 

 so as to be seen directly in front on entering, but turned sideways, 

 whereby the first flight not only cuts up the space, but leaves no 

 more than barely room to pass by it. On the opposite side is the 

 door leading into the Coffee-room; but which, instead of directly 

 facing the first flight of the staircase, is put just a little on one 

 side, so as to be also out of the axis or centre of that wall. Nor 

 can that offensive architectural blunder be a mere error in the 

 drawing, because in tlie Coffee-room itself that door comes in a 

 line with one of the chimney-pieces on the opposite side of tha 

 room. Taken altogether, the plan is excessively poor; but such 

 exceedingly gross blundering as that just pointed out would be 

 unpardonable even in a Pecksniff. 



38 



