Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/209

 at Magdalen College, Oxford, was also the outcome of a limited competition, George Edmund Street [q.v.], Mr. Basil Champneys, and Wilkinson of Oxford being the rivals. With his partner, too, he built the tower at the S.E. angle of 'Tom quad' at Christ Church, and the master's lodge at University College, designing also the reredos at Christ Church. At Cambridge he had the rare distinction of adding to King's College a group of buildings to which his name has been attached, and he built the chapel at Queens' College. Bodley & Garner's ecclesiastical building and decoration also included the cathedral of Hobart Town, Tasmania; the churches of St. Germain and St. Saviour at Cardiff; All Saints', Danehill; All Saints', Leicester; the Wayside Chapel at Woodlands, Dorset, and churches at Eckenswell, Horbury, Skelmanthorpe, Norwood, Branksome, and Epping. The firm engaged at the same time in some domestic and official work, which included River House, Tite Street, Chelsea (1879), and the school board offices on the Thames Embankment (since added to).

The dissolution of partnership in 1898 was a perfectly friendly separation not perhaps unconnected with Garner's reception into the Roman church. Subsequently in 1906 Bodley, who held several advisory appointments to cathedral chapters at York from 1882, Peterborough from 1898, as well as at Exeter and Manchester and was also diocesan architect for Leicestershire, was invited to prepare in conjunction with Mr. Henry Vaughan of Boston (Mass.) plans for the episcopal cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, Washington, a monster church to seat 27,000 persons and to cost from ten to fifteen million dollars. Bodley was already well advanced in his scheme when his death took place.

In 1882 Bodley became A.R.A., and R.A. in 1902. For many years he held aloof from the Royal Institute of British Architects, but in 1899 he received the royal gold medal, was elected a fellow, and served for two years on its council. In the same year he was appointed British representative on a jury to adjudicate on designs for the Francis Joseph Jubilee Memorial Church at Vienna.

Bodley, who in early life was energetic, even athletic, a good walker, a keen angler, and a passable cricketer, was struck down in middle age by a serious illness, due to blood poisoning contracted in the professional examination of some infected vaults, with the result that through later life he was troubled with lameness. This disability had little effect on his energy.

From Hampstead he moved in 1885 to Park Crescent, thence (about 1890) to 41 Gloucester Place; about five years later he took as a country home Bridgefoot House, Ivor, Bucks, which he forsook in 1906 for the Manor House of Water Eaton on the banks of the Upper Thames, where on 21 Oct. 1907 he died. In 1872 Bodley married Minna Frances, daughter of Thomas Reaveley of Kinnersley Castle, Herefordshire, and had one son, George Hamilton Bodley, who survived him.

Bodley fills an important position in the history of English ecclesiastical architecture. If Pugin, Scott and Street were the pioneers whose work went hand in hand with the Oxford movement in its early days, Bodley is their counterpart in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Between 1870 and 1880 he and his partner stood alone as experts in the propriety of internal church decoration, and thence to the end of his life Bodley was justly looked upon as combining ecclesiological knowledge with sound taste (especially in colour decoration) to a degree which few rivals could approach. A friend of William Morris, Burne Jones, Madox Brown and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he secured their collaboration (as at St. Martin's, Scarborough) and imbibed their spirit. C. E. Kempe was started by Bodley in his career of glass staining, and the depot for the sale of fabrics and decorative materials opened in Baker Street under the name of 'Watts' was in great measure Bodley's own enterprise. Many a church designed by other architects gained its decorative completion from Bodley's taste. Even Butterfield's noble church, St. Alban's, Holborn, owes to him its font-cover and rood.

Among his pupils were Henry Skipworth, Prof. Frederick M. Simpson, and Messrs. Edward Warren, J. N. Comper, C. R. Ashbee, F. Inigo Thomas, and Walter Tapper. Sir Robert Lorimer was also for a time in the office.

Impatient of ceremonies, avoiding when possible even the stone-layings of his own buildings, he was yet a gracious prime warden (1901-2) of the Fishmongers Company. Singularly deficient in ordinary business habits, he nevertheless contrived to complete in the most intricate detail a large number of important buildings, and though he observed his engagements punctually, he never kept a written list of appointments. Stories, mostly true, are told of sketches pencilled on cheques, and even of architectural drawings in a bank pass-book. Some of his apparent negligences in correspondence