1844.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



among the ac ors in your piece, or else found upon trying to do It (lu,t 

 you could make j.otlung whatever of Pecksniff in his capacity of archi- 

 tect To "label ; him, therefore, so pointedly as a member of that 

 particular profession, when he might just as well have been of any 

 other, or of none-for there is not a single professional trait in the 

 portraituie,-looks not much unlike pitching upon that profession for 

 no other purpose than that of identifying with it a most thorough- 

 paced scoundrel and most clumsy hypocrite. It is true "Pecksniff" 

 has become both a name and an epithet of reproach, and is now fre- 

 quently used as synonymous with whatever is imbecile, contemptible 

 and absurd in architecture, but certainly not in consequence of the 

 clever and sinking manner in which you have shown up the foibles 

 peculiarly characteristic of its followers, and the artifices and charla- 

 tanery practised by those who disgrace it. In Pecksniff, you sink the 

 architect entirely, notwithstanding that as such he was quite a new 

 character, which might have been drawn out and coloured up verv 

 effectively. Ihat you should have left it a mere blank is the more sur- 

 prising, because you have touched and wrought up, con amove, the not 

 always particularly delicate professionalUm>, of Sairey Gamp-for- 

 getting, perhaps, at the time your Dedicatee. 



Most assuredly you showed no great tact in taking up— as it now 

 seems, quite unnecessarilv-what afforded a very fair opportunity for 

 the exercise of much wholesome satire and correction, because, bv 

 not so availing yourself of it. you have let it be seen that you at- 

 tempted what was so vvholly beyond your power to execute that you 

 felt compelled to abandon the idea almost as soon as it was fornied, 

 and to shirk the matter altogether, trusting that no one would call you 

 to account for a breach of literary promise. Either such is the real 

 state ot the case, or else you must have omitted— mislaid and for- 

 gotten sundry pleasant and instructive, if not exactly edifying, epi- 

 sodes and scenes illustrative of Mr. Pecksniff's professional career and 

 practice, his opinions on art, or what might pass for such, included. 

 \es, there must be severa chapters belonging to the history of that 

 worthy which you have either wilfully or carelessly put upon the same 

 shelf with the lost comedies of Menander and the lost decades of 

 Livy ; and in exchange for them, or even one of them, gladly would 

 we give up all the rest of your book, since they would have been most 

 valuable and serviceable in the way of enlightening the public as to 

 certain mysteries and arcana which it has not yet had an opportunity 

 ot peeping into. You, who show yourself so eagerlv disposed to 

 scourge and pillory humbug and quackery of all kind, w doubt set out 

 with the intention of giving us a full length delineation of the Quack 

 Architectural, and provided yourself with materials accordinelv 

 Rummage your desk again, and you will perhaps be able to find the' 

 notes and illustrations which you had collected for the purpose nav 

 the rough draughts of some of the chapters wherein you intended to 

 exhibit Pecksniff in his character of architect, and in so doing to dis- 

 close to the uninitiated certain professional doings more curious and 

 ingenious than altogether praiseworthy. Therefore that so much 

 which would have been perfectly new, and which vou would have 

 coloured up so piquantly, should have been accidentally omitted is 

 supremely tantalizing. Had you bnt lifted ever so little the mvste- 

 nous cunain wduch now hangs over Pecksniff the professional man, 

 you would doubtless have explained how he contrived to seem to in" 

 struct the pupils with whom he received such unusually hieh ore- 

 miums. Highly amusing would it have been to see Peck— himself 

 an Ignoramus of the first magnitude-peacock himself before those 

 raw recruits, bamboozling and mystifying them at the outset by what 

 were to them deep cabalistic terms and expressions, delivered in the 

 tone of an oracle, and freely interlarded with exclamations hintine at 

 the transcendental virtue and efficacy of "Proportions," with an occa- 

 siona flourish about "the age of Pericles," 'leaving 'them to wonder 

 what how the old Mr. Pericles was could have to do with the matter 



I am persuaded that had you not bestowed so much of your af- 

 fection upon Mother Gamp, or else, if that was not to be thought of 

 had extended your canvas accordingly, yo« would have drawn out the 

 projessionahsm of Pecksniff capitally. You would have fully revealed 

 many notable arcana -would have shown-what so far froin compre- 

 hending, the world does not seem to be aware of— how very possible 

 It IS for the emptiest pretender to art or what should be art to diss 

 for so very much more than he is, and to impose upon us'his own 

 base Brummagein for sterling coin. You would have exposed some 

 of those arfyices by which such persons make up-to themselves at 

 east-for the.r incapacity in art, and by dint of which, their ug'htess 

 being veiled by the name of business-hke shrewdness they coirfve 

 to maintain a "respectable" position; nay. if they are befriended by 

 particular good uck, or what is nearly the same, by particular interest 

 nay attain to eminence in their profession. That done, they may defy 

 public opinion, or rather, can lead it by the nose wherever thev list- 

 even to the adiairatigu of their own imbecillity and blunders. In- 



375 



aSI'ec.nrp' """^ ''r'"' ^!" ™™'"'^''o" "^ o'"- Sunder or abortion in 

 aruntectnre secures for the "eminent man" the opportunity of dis- 



awHo -L^eTlf '■ ^,«.'-SJ»,--"-. vi..-.he 'trie'„'t""foTfiingi g 

 away, not indeed from himself, but so far as art is concerned everv 



E r'tS ''\f ■'■'' I"'" "'' "'"'« P"'-P-^ -^' talen Se in -a -n 

 lor some tolerably adequate opportunity of showing what it could ac" 



asstL/ • <:■"'"',"' n^m*'. the public receive successive failures 



01 u, lew are not heard, or if beard and listened to at all, not until 

 after mischief irreparable has been committed. That the e "re v" v 



s :?s'::flim7tec f .''"n-''°"°/ r^' ^-^^"'^^ tbrocS^nstheZ 

 sen es ..le imited, as buildings of the Buckingham Palace '^enus ire 

 not erec ed every day ; but in proportion to the opportu Ure^aZded 



described as no better than hypocrites and impostofs in it. ^ ^ 

 In order to work out all this suitably, you must of course have in- 

 od iced o her characters and incidents into your piece. Why then 



aSearwlole " ""^''S"^^'' T'"''"' your vJcomica upol thZ 

 quite as wholesomely, and some degrees less preposterousl Ahaa vou 

 have done m those American ones, where it pleased you o repres^en 



te 11 ;fble"'"v'"'* ^":r'"^r'' '° '^ "^^ of'balderdLi utterl^un n- 

 telligible \ou might even have rendered a real service both to tl e 

 public and the profession, had you let us seen a little of the curious 

 s^ort onJ^ "'f -ts workings, employed for Competitions and by wha 



dete ?ion On ^ ^"^' '™'' 'f 'P" ^'"•°"' "'"'' ^han presumptive 

 detection. On some occasion of the kind you might have let us see 



manner,- n fact, suffered to walk quietly into a snu? iob. while the 

 duped re, re with the solitary satikctimr of getting the r pains fir 

 their trouble and the co.nmittee come off with the fred! of 1 lavio. 

 manifested their anxiety to obtain as excellent a desTgu as possZ^ 

 by liberally inviting all to an open competition, and as l!L .11^ llow- 

 ng perhaps, ten days for studying the slibject and preji , g .^.^ ° t 

 He e you could hardly have coloured up too higl ly : likelie il^hil 



Fiir'n:!'°''/°-r"' '°"'^'T ^^'^"'^^ ''^'^'= falIe„%hL of te ruth 



Fai opportunity, again, there was for having a hit at that strange 



obbyhorsical architectural mysticism which lias°ome up of late under 



adent' irr"°" °^ Ecclesiology, by making Pecksniff^affect to be an 



adept in its arcana, and descant with "unction" on the recondite 



of olden times, and which some would now fain make us believe con- 

 stitute by far the most important part of design in such edifices - 

 hat without which all beauty of style or immediate design s un- 

 availing : comfortable doctrine for the Pecksniffs, who can thus make 

 tlfefr '"' rindple::- ''^ "' ''''" '''''' '^ ''' ^trait-lacedrhodox/t? 

 I might continue to point a very great deal more of which you have 

 deprived us; but I forbear, choosing in turn to deprive yoirofson^' 

 yaluable hints. Nevertheless I don't" mean to let you off yet, having 

 a word or two to snv tm.rl,;.,™ „„.,. t n:._i-' ,,,, -r ■' 'V>""g 



a word or two to say touching vourTon/pincirVh/Man' you 

 e him an awant Tom Noodle! Upon him you 



1 1 y maae ...... „,, .,„aiii, xuni iNoouie; upon liim von 



have been particularly hard, by making him particularly'soft. A fine 

 specimen truly he of one who follows a lib' ral art! "Had he him! 

 self possessed the slightest feeling for architecture,-had he n^t been 

 a mere clod, worthy only to be a patient drudge, he must at m,y rate 

 TFeck niffi*''' ""f"^ shallowness and incaVcity of such a f^l ".^w 

 as Pecksniff, however he might have been duped by his hypocritical 



fr'r7- 1,-^"" ''"'" r' S'^'" y°'" Tom Pin'^h a single « pinch" o 

 the suft which an architect should be made off You mak'e him go 

 to Salisbury, and for wlmt?-not to gaze with raptured and explorif^ 

 eye on the noble fabric which is tlie%ride of that city, not to seizf 

 the precious opportunity of indulging any love of art by studyino- 1| at 

 edifice but to while away his time in staring at shop-windows, and 



his character. Even allowing that to have been a oversight.-that 

 you either forgot that Tom was at Salisbury, or that Salisbury had a 

 cathedral ; you might at least have redeemed it on some other occa! 

 sion Bu no, in no one instance have you bestowed on Tom a single 

 ouch of the character that marks the architect. When vou E 

 him up to London, he has neither eyes nor feelings for^w'th n. "e! 

 lating to us own profession: he has no soul at alfto be moved"tl a 

 way, or else moved it must have been at meeting wiih so many th gs 

 calculated to awaken the liveliest recollections of his forme, occupf! 



34* 



