CHAPTER VIII

REIGN OF TERROR--ITS NEGATIVE VALUE

Alison, Carlyle and all the great historiographers who have essayed the French Revolution go into long preambles of the causes leading up to the principal drama, antedating, by some years, the assembling of the States-general. I am very fond of the opening chosen by Charles Dickens for his “Tale of Two Cities,” namely, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The contradictory statement is yet so graphic as to suggest to my mind all the preamble I need for a chapter upon the Reign of Terror in American domestic architecture, especially as I have already touched upon the remote causes in preceding chapters.

If money was ever to be made without the impending shadow of nervous prostration and heart failure--I mean a decent sum of money, a competency--that opportunity presented itself with dazzling splendor in

PLATE LVI.

the loyal States of the Union during the latter years of the civil war and those immediately succeeding. All kinds of property advanced in value, no matter what the kind was. Anything--even cobblestones would have been a good purchase. The great boom of the Transitional period was entirely eclipsed, and people who never expected to be wealthy, people with the humblest ambitions, people whose callings, ordinarily, would not warrant any such hopes, had affluence literally forced upon them. I am sorry that most of the fortunes thus made had to be lost again upon the inevitable return of normal conditions--sorry as I am when I read a story of Captain Kidd, that the treasure-box has always to sink out of sight at the moment when the happy finders are rejoicing, and the future seems assured.

I do not know of a political economist, not excepting Henry George, who has had “the nerve,” shall I say, to attribute any of the blessings of civilization to war, pestilence and catastrophes. Yet, as nearly as a spectator may judge by effects, these direful things are all conducive to the greatest amount of comfort and ease of those who do not dwell too close to the points of friction. The swifter is dissolution, up to a certain ratio, at least, with the number of births, the greater the wealth, per capita, for the survivors. The survivors of the civil war who lived in the undevastated territory of the Northern States were largely a happy lot. It began to look for them as though God had decided to abolish the odds in favor of the bank, so to speak, and that life would be, henceforward, a square game affording everybody a chance to nibble at the crust of prosperity, not each one subject to gain only as another is bereft. Some inexorable condition appeared to have given way, for, at last, there was enough to go ’round--yes, more than enough; and with their surplus funds mounting higher and higher, these alarmingly prosperous people were much addicted to the erection of houses with “coopilows.”

In the books of published designs which circulated at the period, dwelling-houses of this class were called “Italian villas,” although as we have come to know the Italian villa, especially since the art of photography has brought it to our intimate acquaintance, we fail to

PLATE LVII.

see any actual resemblance. The house with the cupola in America was, in effect, a newly-invented style or architecture of its era, no doubt suggested by the sumptuous villas of the Italian Renaissance, since they have always suggested prodigious opulence, and would naturally attract a people who had suddenly become rich. Besides, in no other style of building that I have seen could a dollar be made to make more show than in the cupola-house of our Reign of Terror. The art of pretentiousness was never better understood, and no art has responded more quickly to a popular demand.

The photograph of a house, which I have not the heart to publish, recalls to memory the story of an old gentleman, now some years deceased, who at the height of his career started out to build the most fanciful house that anybody could possibly imagine. “Fanciful” was the word he used, and appears to have been the favorite adjective of Jacobinical builders. It seemed to me that he succeeded marvelously well, as I cannot picture to myself a greater number of odd conceits in a limited area than he achieved, nor do I see how the scroll-saw could be made to perform greater wonders; but I knew not the resources of those clever artificers. A still more fanciful house, he told me, which he afterwards discovered, caused the ambitious builder of whom I write to grow somewhat dissatisfied; for after all his pains his own house had failed to capture the prize. He had not made it fanciful enough. His property, however, advanced so rapidly in value upon his hands, and was considered so beautiful withal by those of the ultra-Jacobin party, that about the year 1869 he was enabled to dispose of his disappointment for $50,000. And I do not want to leave you to suppose that in this sale there were considerations of exchange or mortgages entailing a modicum of equity as the only cash transaction happening so frequently in the difficult real estate deals we effect to-day. No, the $50,000 represented all cash, which ample fortune, together with, perhaps, as much again, this remarkable person managed to lose in the national liquidation of the early seventies. Fancy $100,000 getting away very easily from any one in his right senses now!

The only explanation that can be offered why so many of the snug fortunes of those best and worst of

PLATE LVIII.

PLATE LIX.

times miraculously disappeared is to be found in the hypothesis that the majority of the people were utterly incompetent both by education and experience to manage the vast amounts of money that had, as magic, rolled up while they slept.

But there were two kinds of Jacobin houses, there were the sincere Radicals (see Plate LVIII), and the Scaramouches (see Plate LIX). In other words it was another struggle between the Girondists and the Mountain--the moderately-minded folks and the ultra-revolutionists. Examples of the Scaramouches are becoming difficult to obtain, they give the present generation such indescribable pains in the head to be continually seeing them that every year their owners cause them to be altered or to disappear altogether one after another. A perfect nightmare of a house upon which I relied for my _pièce de résistance_ in this chapter was recently remodeled before I could make a picture of it in all its pristine extravagance; and the next reviewer of Jacobin architecture will find the Scaramouches still rarer acquisitions. But I truly regret when I see a Jacobin house of the better sort (see the one illustrated in Plate LVIII), losing its character to make conform to a later fashion in architecture because of certain didactic purposes which it would serve as originally designed.

This Jacobin house exhibits a very creditable composition after the manner of the Reign of Terror; and if we accept the standard by which we judge the newly invented architecture of our own day which I had the honor to illustrate in the second chapter of this review (see Plate VIII), the Jacobin house has but one fault--a fault, by the way, that admits of argument, too--it is out of fashion. The two designs are equally original, equally dauntless and equally successful from the standpoint of harmony, good lines, balance, proportion and all the more obscure terms artists invoke to impress the neophyte while often groping in the dark, themselves for the touchstone whereby they may discern what is good and what is bad in architecture.

Now, every well-trained mind has the sense of order developed to a very high degree, and everything that tends toward order and harmony is, naturally, grateful to it; while that which tends to disorder, want of

PLATE LX.

purpose and method is always repugnant. Hence, if we eliminate the matter of fashion, I cannot see wherein newly invented architecture has any material advantage over that less recently invented except that, in some ways, we have in the former a much simpler design. The Jacobin house is over-decorated; but we must give it odds as in a handicap to make up for the progress in matters of taste the nation is supposed to have made in thirty-five years. Strip it of its meretricious ornament, if you please, and I prefer the lighter grace of the Jacobin exemplar.

Still, granted for the moment that these two antithetical schools of design, both palpable products of the modern brain enfranchised from all considerations of precedent, are equal measured by the laws of harmony and logic alone, it does seem almost beyond belief that the newly invented architecture of this epoch, for which such fine promises are made in all good faith by representative architects, is destined to acquire quite the discreditable reputation of the Reign of Terror, and by the inconstancy of fashion. Yet, is it not inevitable?

The only attribute that perpetuates a style of architecture in the resistless march of events is the historic atmosphere the said style may be made to embody. For this and nothing else has posterity the slightest use. Clever as were the architects of the Jacobin houses--and I consider some of them to have been very clever--clever as are the inventors of our newest type of building expression, there are no inherent qualities in the work of either school of design that will serve historical succession. Invented architecture has no more atmosphere than exists upon the surface of the moon. It may divert popular fancy for a time. We may discuss the subtleties of mass and moulding to satiety. To the human heart by which we live, dependent upon personal associations, these abstract discussions mean just about as much as love means in tennis. Harmonious lines have merely a negative value, they do not grate upon the nerves, they do not offend the eye; but unless the personal reminiscence--the history of one’s antecedents--is discernable through the academic integument, the lines, themselves, cannot long satisfy the mind reaching out for companionship in all its concerns.

PLATE LXI.

Were it not for these psychological needs of ours, one might do much worse, even now, than build himself a not too grotesque Scaramouch house. Jacobin architecture was, at least, symmetrical (see Plate LX), and in plan that it was eminently sensible cannot be denied. The rooms were square, commodious and airy, amplified by numerous bay-windows, besides being so arranged as to open en suite with either folding or sliding doors. The windows were tall, generally extending from floor to ceiling, affording the best of light and ventilation. The second story enjoyed the relative advantages of the first, while every cubic inch of the third story was available for bedrooms owing to the economy there is in the Mansart roof. Then, piazza space was generous to a fault, a porte-cochère went without the saying, and I must add that in all this there was a gracious note. Indeed, there is no good reason that I can see why we should not exploit Jacobin architecture to-day, save one, and it is just _that_:--“Man cannot live by bread alone.”