Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/33

 Jan. 5, 1872. THE BUILDING NEWS. ITs ee eS THE GOTHIC REVIVAL.* rps subject of Mr. Eastlake’s interesting and carefully-prepared volume may at rather to the first sight commend itself «My concern,” amateur than the architect. the latter may not improbably remark, ‘is with the present and the future, rather than the past, of the Gothic revival, and what I want is criticism and suggestion, not history.” Such a feeling is natural to those whose busi- ness it is not to meditate and philosophise, but to act. They are impatient of looking back, whether on their many failures or their few successes, and they have more pressing work to do than either to exult over the one or lament over the other. It is theirs to make history ; those who please may write and read it; they are in the thick of the battle, and have no leisure to review the story of the campaign. _ We must so far sympathise with this feeling as to give most of our attention to the later chapters of Mr. Eastlake’s book; but we also believe that something may be learned by glancing at the winding and uneven track by which the Gothic revival has reached its present position. This track, with its many unex- pected turns, the author brings clearly before us. Asto the right or wrong of its different bearings, he says comparatively little. It forms no part of his plan to pass judgment on the various phases of the revival, and still less on its leaders and their productions. The pseudo-Gothic of the day—the worst enemy which true art has to dread—esecapes withouta word, and the book is everywhere lenient in censure and moderate in praise. To the professional man this may be a source of regret. A writer who has made himself so well acquainted with the general current of modern architecture might be expected to have something worth saying about its present tendencies. Which school has the best future before it: the English, the French, the Southern, or the mixed Gothic? What are the faults, the merits, the dangers of each? Mr. Eastlake sticks to his title, and leaves us to decide for our- selves. He presents us with the history ; it is for us to draw our own lessons from it. This being understood, it is no slight praise to say that this book is not likely to mislead the public, If it will not help them greatly in distinguishing good from bad in modern architecture, it will not, at any rate, like too many reviews and descriptions of contemporary work, teach them to confound the two. The names mentioned, whatever may be theirrelative importance, are generally those of men to whom the title of architect is not misapplied, and though Mr. Eastlake does not condemn the trash which occupies so large a space in our streets, he shows his consciousness of its being trash by passing it by in absolute silence. The present history begins with Inigo Jones, whose first designs, at Oxford and elsewhere, were in a debased description of Gothic. Wren comes next, and after him the axthors of such works as Strawberry Hill and Fonthill Abbey. Nashand James Wyatt follow, while Blore and Savage (the architect of St. Luke's, Chelsea) bring down the dark age of Modern Gothic to recent times. It is in reality only the last thirty years of the revival that have any interest from an artistic point of view. It may be a curious question why, for nearly two centuries, the Late Perpendicular type was almost the only one to be imitated and admired, but the fashion has happily passed away, and we have more interesting subjects of inquiry than the causes of its prevalence. It did its worst, and departed ; and the Gothic revival has en- dured, eyen in spite of the Houses of Parlia- ment. Fron 1650 to 1840 we may term the how the taste for Medieval Architecture which lingered in England during the two last centuries has since been encouraged and developed. By CHARLES L. EASTLAKE, F.R.LB.A., architect. Author of “Hints on Household Taste.’ London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1872. bastard Perpendicular stage; from 1840 to 1850, or later, its ‘‘ precise” English period, since which it has branched out in various sections of the profession into several directions at once. The rigidly ‘‘correct” stage was doubtless a needful one; it was the school- time of the revival, whenits architects had to learn the alphabet of their art. Its literature was narrow and pedantic, its architecture too often lifeless and formal. We have not fully emerged from it yet, nor realised thatthe end of education is to make men think for them- selves. Having learned, to some extent, the language of Pointed art, the next step is to use itas a medium for our own ideas. The misfortune is that so few modern architects ever venture to have any ideas, except what they borrow from recognised authorities. Here is a whole world of subjects waiting to be dealt with; here are railway stations, museums, theatres, picture galleries, shops, warehouses, town residences, lecture-halls, exhibition buildings, bridges, viaducts, hospitals, club-houses, hotels, all forced to take up with any style or no style; and in the meantime we are busily employed in destroying our old churches and in putting up new ones as much like them as we can manage. The urgent need, both in church- building and all other building, is for more thought and invention in the main features of design. What common-sense and convenience call for are new plans and new types of con- struction ; what is actually provided, if it is new at all, is but some new and relatively unimportant variety of detail. We areas far as possible from undervaluing excellence in detail ; it is, in fact, the one point on which we can look with satisfaction in the later years of the revival. Its buildings, as to structure and arrangement, are too often mere anachronisms. ‘They seem the work of men out of sympathy with their age, regard- less of its purposes and careless about forward- ing them. To fit their work to its use, to make it express its aim and object, are things as towhich they have little concern. They plan according to precedent, if precedent can be found for or forced into the cause ; but they proportion and decorate as a labour of love. ‘Their architecture is often admirable, though their arrangement is absurd. This, then, seems to be the present stage in the Gothic revival: that there are many archi- tects with a competent knowledge of detail, and very few who dare to turn that know- ledge to its proper use. Its history, thus far, may easily be summed up ; it has given us a great many copies, some good and some bad, of ancient buildings; it has produced an immense number of churches on a plan which, “for a congregation assembled in common worship, and needing to look at a common object, is extremely inconvenient” (we quote from no more unfriendly censor than the Saturday Review of September 9th); and it has also repeated Medizval types in schools, colleges, and country houses all over the kingdom ; but it has not had a tithe of the power and influence which it might have had because of its reluctance to adapt itself to modern wants. It has produced little that is really new: the world at present is not greatly the richer for it. It has not reclaimed the semi-barbarous territory outside its narrow realm of church and school building: it has not cultivated the waste lands of art, nor dreamed what a glorious harvest may yet spring from that virgin soil. It has given all its labour to raise a second crop from half- exhausted fields, and, thanks to the long fallow, has not altogether failed. If we speak thus of the Gothic revival, it is from no want of love for Pointed art, and we may say further that it is from no despair about its future ; but if it isto have a future it must adapt itself to the whole circle of modern wants and aims. Correctness is not enough ; it must change and grow with the growth of the human race. Mere repetitions of what has been have no permanent value ; nothing long influences men but genuine earnest work, transfused with the spirit of the age which wrought it. The world has seen revivals—careful and punctiliously-accurate revivals—long before now, and who cares for their productions? Who now reads the Latin verses of Politian and his contem- poraries? Who stands thvilled before the quasi-temples of the Classie Renaissance? Who reveres the Frenchmen of the first revolution masquerading as ancient Greeks and Romans? All merely imitative fashions perish and their memory becomes contemp- tible ; the one chance for the future of Pointed art is that of its becoming modern. Who, in their own day, were more intensely modern than these middle-age builders? However noble the style they had inherited, each generation altered it and set its own mark upon it. It was their glory that it was new, fresh, of their own invention. Every chroni- cler, as another church, or abbey, or cathedral sprang up, puts forward, as the foremost fact, that of its being magnificent and new—a great advance on the old building which pre- ceded it. No one could have less sentimental regard for antiquity than these architects about whom we sentimentalise. Noone could follow their art in a spirit more diametrically opposed to that of their copyists. They were emphatically men of their time ; they thought it, in art matters, and probably in other matters, better than any time that had gone before. Hence halfthe interest of their work ; it shows us what the age was like which pro- duced it. It brings down a piece of the twelfth, or thirteenth, or fourteenth century still alive, and sets it before us. But what century will our work bring down to future times? Alas! art and life, art and business, art and earnest thought have become separated, and except as 1¢ can succeed in uniting them, there is no permanent hope for the Gothic or for any other revival. We have hitherto confined our attention to Mr. Eastlake’s subject. He has treated it in an easy and interesting style, and without going very deeply into the matter, has said, perhaps, as much as will be generally intel- lible to non-professional readers. ‘There are a number of good illustrations, many of them being views of buildings not previously published. We have the pleasure of pre- senting four of these to our readers, the Baptistry of S. Francis, Notting-hill, de- signed by Mr. J. F. Bentley in 1861; the east end of Balliol College Chapel, built by Mr. Butterfield in 1856; the doorway of the Digby Mortuary Chapel, Sherborne, by Mr. Slater, and that of the pro-Cathedral, Ken- sington, by Mr. Goldie. We must not omit to notice the very extended and useful list of Gothic buildings erected in this country from 1824 down to the present time. Such a cata- logue, which inclndes a short description or criticism of each example, must have taken no small amount of labour to prepare. It was, however, well worth the trouble, and might even have been amplified with advan- tage. Such buildings as the 5S. Giles’s National Schools, in Endell-street, and Mr. Somers Clarke’s Offices in Lothbury, might well have been included, and have probably been omitted by mere accident. Mr. Wood- ward’s Crown Life Office, in Bridge-street, Blackfriars (now occupied by the London School Board) is stated to have cost £60,000. As the building, back and front, might have been plated with gold for a smaller sum tham this, we presume there is an error in the figures. Mr. Pearson’s house at Quar Wood, Gloucestershire, is erroneously stated to be near Stour instead of Stow-on-the-Woid, and we have come on sundry other typo- graphical mistakes of a similar kind. We only refer to them in the hope that a second edition may furnish the opportunity for their correction ; and in this case we hope that Mr. Eastlake will not only extend his very useful list, but will state more frequently than he has done what was the cost of each work, and in what periodical a view of it may be found.
 * A History of the Gothic Revival; an attempt to show