Part 18

One of the most striking ways in which this principle of common sense is displayed is in the absolute freedom exercised in planning, or, more correctly speaking, the absolute subordination of external design to the practical requirements of the interior. There was no love of irregularity for its own sake among the Mediæval builders; on the contrary, they had no objection at all to general uniformity where the circumstances of the case did not suggest a departure from it; and where irregularity was demanded for use, they did not carry it beyond what the demand required; but when the practical requirements naturally led to irregularity, they fearlessly followed them, without any of that morbid striving after forced uniformity which characterises--I will not say Classic works, for the ancients also acted on more natural principles--the great majority of modern buildings. That they did not capriciously strive after irregularity is proved by such buildings as the great market halls of Bruges and Yprès, the latter of which has a front of 450 feet long, without one deviation from uniformity, simply because the practical requirements in each wing were identical. That, when the internal requirements but slightly differed, they carried irregularity no farther than the demands of reason suggested, is proved by such fronts as that of the ducal palace at Venice, and of a very great number of street houses and palaces in different countries, where the normal idea is uniform, but the windows placed to suit rooms of varying size; but that, when the practical requirements had no reference to uniformity, they fearlessly acted on them, without any of those sickly repinings which would so sadly disturb the peace of the modern architect, still more without any torturing of the internal arrangements to make them fit to a preconceived elevation (which is the usual practice in these more enlightened days), is abundantly proved by many of the noblest works which our forefathers have bequeathed to us.

Now, far be it from me to say that this honesty of treatment belongs exclusively to Gothic architecture. It does not. It is the leading principle of all true architecture; and I have no doubt, indeed we have indisputable proof, that it was acted on by the Greeks and Romans, as well as by our own forefathers. The contrary practice seems to be an error rather of our own age than of the genuine periods of Classic art; but when the defenders of the revived Classic art use it as an objection against Mediæval architecture, we then have a full right to point out its true principles, and to show that it is an exercise of common sense so obvious and reasonable, that any style of art which refused it would stand self-condemned, as rejecting the plain demands of reason; and, though I do not hold that Classic architecture stands so condemned, it would be so if we were to admit against it the accusations of some of its own advocates. At any rate, it is fair on the part of Gothic architecture to say that in this great principle of the subordination of external design to internal requirement, it not only follows the great styles of architecture which preceded it, but that, in the opinion of its opponents, it carries out the great utilitarian principle even to an excess.

There can be no doubt that the principle is pre-eminently in harmony with the genius of Gothic architecture; more so, probably, than with any other; and if those who think it a vice desire to saddle it exclusively on our style, they cannot complain if we, who hold it to be a virtue, at the least, claim for that style the lion’s share of the credit.

I do not for a moment dispute that there is room for excess, even in acting on a principle so reasonable. If we were to make it an excuse for careless planning; if we were so affected as to seek excuses for irregularity when the arrangement, if carefully considered, offered none; or if we neglect reasonable means of avoiding them when it can be done without any injury to the arrangement, we are clearly open to the charge of excess; but, on the other hand, if we were to avoid irregularity by making two essentially different parts look alike, at the sacrifice of their practical demands; if we place windows in inconvenient or unsightly positions in the interiors of our rooms, for the sake of making them match some windows in an opposite wing, or to form a regular range, disagreeing with internal divisions; if we make sham windows where none are wanted, or omit real ones where they would be useful; or if we torture and displace our rooms to obtain uniformity; or play any of the thousand tricks which are too current amongst us to make our exteriors uniform where our interiors are the contrary; surely we are guilty of a far more culpable excess in the opposite direction, for the exaggeration of common sense is unquestionably a more venial sin than its renunciation. However this may be, Gothic architecture, whether rightly or wrongly, looks to internal requirements as paramount to external regularity; places its windows rather with reference to the rooms within than to the elevations without; and rejoices in making the exterior express in some degree the changes of purpose in the internal arrangement: but it does not reject uniformity where compatible with truth and utility, nor refuse to admit of careful artistic combinations of parts, so long as they are made subservient to, or at least do not militate against, practical requirements. As I have said before, I believe that in this it only reflects, and carries out more perfectly, the principles of true Classic art; and that, if these principles are often forgotten or rejected, it is in the main an abuse of modern date. It is, however beyond all question inherent upon that form of revived Classic art with which we are surrounded.

The same may, in fact, be said of truthfulness in minor things. It would be unjust to father the contemptible and endless fallacies of our own day upon Classic architecture. It is true that they pervade and saturate many of the modern productions of that style, and that the revival of Gothic architecture has somehow led to their exposure; but the truthfulness which we are proud to claim as one of its great and leading stars, we freely yield as the property, not of one style, but of all noble architecture.[62]

Did time permit, I might follow up the _rationale_ of the style under consideration as evinced in the judicious employment, treatment of, and the mode of workmanship applied to, different materials as well as different branches of artistic decoration. The Mediæval architect adopted the material he could most readily obtain, and adapted his design to suit its peculiar qualities.

If he used block-stone throughout his work, or united it with rough walling-stone or rubble, or if his building were of brick, or flint, or pebbles, he studied to use them so as to look well and to aid the effect by their variety; as instances of this I will refer to the exquisite stone and flint structures in the eastern counties, and the interstratification of block stone with the thinnest rubble in some of the oolitic districts; to the domestic brick architecture of Norfolk, or Northern Germany, and of Lombardy, to the timber structures of innumerable districts and cities; to the variously-coloured stones in the buildings in Auvergne; and last, but not least, to the magnificent marble structures, with their inlayings and mosaics, which delight us when in Italy. The great principle was how best to utilise the materials which Nature had provided: where Nature had been chary in her gifts, even external plaster was not despised, but truthfully made use of; where she had been lavish, even precious stones were used as building materials, as at Prague, where there is a chapel whose interior is faced with a kind of rubble-work of polished amethyst, the stones being cut through, but otherwise unshaped, the irregular jointings being covered with embossed gilding.

In metal-work each metal was treated on its own merits and its own natural characteristics.

In decoration--frescoes, mosaics, tapestry, needlework, embossed leather, metal-work, enamels, etc., were profusely used when funds permitted. Indeed, nothing was rejected, either on the score of homeliness or expense, provided it suited the work in hand and the means at command.

But what, I may be asked, is the utility of tracing out evidences of a fact so probable on the face of it as that our forefathers acted upon reason when engaged on so practical a thing as architecture? I would reply that its utility is twofold. In the first place, we have too much lost sight of the _rationale_ of architecture, and of the necessity of acting upon it. I do not wish to rip open old sores, or to object against other errors of which we are all of us guilty. Let us each examine ourselves, and ask ourselves how far we act upon truth and reason in our designs; and if compelled to admit our derelictions, a review like that on which we have been engaged may not be otherwise than useful--quite apart from any question about what style we are working in.

In the second place, it is an undoubted fact, that we are at a transitional period of our art, that we are dissatisfied with the present and aiming at an altered future, and that some of us are following up that aim on the basis of a revival of the style of which I have been treating, while there is a _vis inertiæ_ in art which is not easily overcome, but yields reluctantly to change; how important, then, is it to us to know that the style we are reviving was itself based, as all good architecture must be, on the firm rock of common sense, and how essential to our success that we should place our revival on the same basis! Shall we, then, secure this object by doing only _what_ our forefathers did? By no means; rather, as I have urged in a former lecture, let us do _as_ they did: that is, _act upon reason_. They thoroughly suited all their works to their varied objects. Let us do the same, how much soever more varied our requirements may be. They made their houses comfortable to the extent of their habits; let us make ours so to the greatly increased extent of our own habits. They welcomed every invention as it arose: let us do the same by the inventions of our own prolific age. They utilised every material which presented itself to them: let us do so by all the materials which modern science or ingenuity has placed at our command; only let us do all this truthfully and consistently with reason; for example, if we meet with an invention suited to the surface decoration of rooms but devoid of constructive strength, let us use it _as_ a surface decoration, and not, as is too commonly done, make troughs and pipes of it, and pass them off for beams and columns! If we admire a vaulted construction, by all means let us use it, but do not let us emulate the vaulting of Diocletian’s Baths and Westminster Abbey or the domes of the Pantheon or St. Sophia in lath and plaster! If we want plaster casts of ancient monuments, let us place them in our museums, but, for goodness sake, let our buildings themselves be real!

The conditions to be demanded of our future architecture, whether destined to be based upon the Classic or the Gothic Renaissance, or whether they are to continue ever, as now, to assert side by side their rival claims, are:--a perfect and unhesitating fulfilment of practical demands, whether of construction, convenience, or comfort; an equally unhesitating adoption of the materials, inventions, and mechanical and constructive appliances of the age; a capability of reasonable economy or of judicious magnificence in all degrees and proportion; a character at once noble and in harmony with the country and climate, and with national associations; a perfect freedom of treatment, united with perfect truthfulness; and a free admission of the sister arts in their highest and most perfected forms. How happy would it be for art if we could proclaim an armistice between rival styles, while the advocates of each devote heart and soul to the realisation of these conditions, so obviously demanded by reason and common sense!

That Gothic architecture is in its spirit well fitted to unite these conditions, I think may be judged by much that I have shown you in this and the preceding lecture. It lays claim in a pre-eminent degree to the character of _Freedom_. Free in its use of arcuated or trabeated construction, as may best suit each particular case; free in the form of its arches, which, in addition to those used in other styles, take other and excellent forms, which enable them to assume all possible proportions of height to span; free in its vaulting, which has peculiar facilities for adapting itself to every possible space and span; free in the proportions, as well as infinite in the varieties, of its columns; free as air in the sculpture it applies to their capitals, as well as to other architectural uses; free in the pitch of its roofs; in the size, number, form, and grouping of its windows; and, above all, absolutely free in its planning, in which the practical requirements of the interior have undisputed sway irrespective of external design--it seems as if it could not be otherwise than suited to an age in which freedom is the great point to be aimed at in all we undertake. Convinced that such is the case, let us devote ourselves, heart and hand, to the task; let us bring all our energies to rendering the style we select as our groundwork really and absolutely subservient to the wants and to the spirit (so far as it is a healthful and a truthful spirit) of our age; let us apply to the work all our reasoning powers, and ground all we do upon common sense. But let me not be mistaken: this cannot be done by a mere abstract effort of the mind: let me, therefore, urge upon you who are students to exercise your reason and common sense in another way, and to be assured of this, that you cannot succeed in the practice of art, unless, in addition to all the practical considerations I have had occasion to allude to, you make yourselves, in the strictest sense of the word, ARTISTS.

A Digression concerning Windows.

In the foregoing Lectures, having only brought the history of our Architecture down to the close of the thirteenth century, I have neglected that of the later styles, and, consequently in great measure, the development and progressive changes in window-tracery. This has, however, been so amply treated of in many books and essays that it is not a matter with me of much regret. I confess I _had_ intended to have supplied the omission in subsequent lectures, but circumstances prevented.

It would have been an agreeable task to have followed up the history of window-tracery and the many details which accompanied it, through the remaining two and a half centuries of the reign of Gothic architecture--to have shown how it grew from the purely geometrical system of Westminster, Newstead, and the “Angel choir” at Lincoln into the sweeter tracery of the “Easter aisle” at St. Albans, and of St. Etheldreda’s Chapel in Holborn; and on again into the yet softer loveliness of the Lady Chapel at Chichester, the halls at Penshurst, Mayfield, the gatehouses of Battle Abbey and of St. Augustine’s at Canterbury, and the Chapel of St. Anselm and De Estria’s work at the cathedral there; and then again into the more flowing tracery of Alan de Walsingham’s work, till it fell into debility by its too sensuous ramifications, and was brought back again to vigour by the stern perpendicular work of Wykeham; and how that, in its turn, became softened down, into such works as Crosby and Eltham Halls, and again into the exuberance of the Tudor style. All this would be very pleasant, but would necessitate the treating of all contemporary variations of detail, and would swell my lectures out into another volume: more than this, _I have given no such lectures_. It has been _my_ task to show the principles on which Gothic architecture _was founded_, and on which it attained its leading developments, rather than to follow them out to their ultimate results, on attaining which much which led to them was thrown aside, as scaffolding is taken down when a structure is completed.

I feel it necessary, however, while neglecting the more usual course of chronicling the history of window-tracery, to supplement my lectures at this point with some remarks on the general construction of windows--applicable more or less to all periods of Mediæval architecture.

The most normal form of a window in an arched style is simply an opening straight through the wall covered by a barrel arch. This is, however, obviously defective in its fitness for diffusing light in the interior, a deficiency which, though slight in the case of a large window in a thin wall, becomes serious when the window is narrow and the wall thick. The simplest method of meeting this is to splay the jambs and arch of the window, at, for example, an angle of forty-five degrees, so as to allow for the spreading of the rays of light within.

In English architecture of pre-Norman days, this was most frequently done, both within and without, by placing the glass a long way from the outer face, or perhaps in the mid-thickness of the wall (Fig. 154). This had the advantage of splaying the head or arch as well as the jamb, which allowed more high light to enter; an advantage often increased by splaying the exterior of the arch _more_ than the jambs, giving it a bonnet-like shape, and so obtaining still higher light (Fig. 155). Windows thus splayed inside and out, may be seen in the Castle Church at Dover--some few of these are not arched but had oak lintels, splaying upwards at about forty-five degrees (Fig. 156). The bonnet-headed window may be seen at Holy Trinity Church, Colchester; Clapham Church, Bedfordshire and many other buildings.

The deeply splayed window may also be seen in part of St. Pantaleon’s Church at Cologne (Fig. 157), which is a work of the tenth century, and in the aisles of the Basse-œuvre at Beauvais, a church of at least as early a date, so that it may be viewed as a feature common during these early periods of Romanesque which preceded that from which our Mediæval styles were developed. During the rise of the Norman style, a different system was more usually adopted, the splay of the jambs and arch being mainly internal. A series of humble village churches at the back of Dover Cliffs have windows in which the glass was flush with the exterior, and all the splay put inside; many both in Normandy and in this country differ from this only in having a very small external splay, and even when the exterior is shafted the inner splay often comes close to the face of the recessed order.

This excessive flushness is less frequent as the style advances, and in Early English, though sometimes, as in the beautiful chancel at Burgh in Norfolk, (Fig. 158) the glass is sometimes brought extremely close to the outside: it is usual to have at least a few inches of splay around it.

In transitional work, as in Norman, the internal splay, often of very great width, usually runs round the arch concentrically; but in developed Early English,

and in subsequent styles, a special variety of internal arch is introduced suited to those numerous cases in which the glass-plane is far nearer (as it is in a majority of instances) to the outer than the inner face of the walls. The simplest form of this internal window-arch takes the form of a barrel (pointed) arch, springing so much lower than the spring of the outside arch as to allow it to span the increased internal width without rising unduly higher than the outside arch, as was the case when the splay was continued round the inner arch. This arch of necessity formed an intersection with the inside splays. Its edge was usually in the plainest specimens, relieved by a chamfer (Fig. 159), which was often exchanged for a moulding (Fig. 160); but a far more agreeable finish was a rib dropping down a little from the arched soffite, its edges being either chamfered or moulded with or without a label over it (Fig. 161). This, if the arch were made slightly segmental, would die into the jamb-splay, or it might be carried on a corbel (Fig. 162) or a shaft (Figs. 163, 164), thus forming a very agreeable and picturesque internal finish to the window.

This rib is usually termed a rere-arch.

Professor Willis, in his paper on the _Architectural Nomenclature of the Middle Ages_, calls it a “Scoinson Arch,” from a French word “_escoinsons_.” He also quotes the term “_arrière voussure_,” probably meaning the arch behind the rib.

Professor Willis’s general description, which I had not referred to when I wrote the above, is as follows:--“An arch is placed so as to carry the inner surface of the wall. In simple examples, like the present, this rib is plain, and dies against the jambs, but in superior buildings is richly moulded, and a shaft, with base and capital and side-mouldings, are added to the edges of the jamb. But this arrangement is mostly distinct from the window-tracery. This arch is of different and larger span from that of the window-head, because the spreading or embrasure of the jambs increases the opening inwards. It is also of a different curvature, and the decoration of the two disconnected and separated by the plain splayed sides of the window-opening, connecting the two, and resting at one end on the tracery, and at the other on the rib, is a narrow vault or _voussure_, which again is not necessarily of the same curvature as the sustaining arches, but which carries the core of the wall above.”

He says farther on:--“We may therefore call the said vault, rib, and shaft; the rere-vault, rere-rib, and rere-shaft of the window.” He also remarks that, “in the thick walls of Mediæval structure, the tracery and its glazing are commonly placed much nearer to the outer surface of the wall than to the inner.” This last observation calls our attention to a great and important distinction by which nearly all Mediæval windows may be classified--viz., those which have their glass-plane at or near the mid-thickness of the wall, and those which, as the Professor says, have it “much nearer to the outer surface than to the inner.”

This distinction was, as I have shown, of early date; being in its earlier ages rather distinctive of “Saxon” from Norman windows. The class, however, in which the glass was nearer the outer than the inner side had, up to about the year 1200, its inner arch concentric with its outer one; but the invention of the rere-arch and its accompaniments obviated this, and established a hard and obvious distinction between these two great classes of windows.

The custom of sometimes placing the glass at the mid-thickness of the wall was in no degree given up, but, on the contrary, was continued through all styles; but, when adopted, the older system of making the inner concentric with the outer arch was nearly always continued, marking more distinctly the great difference between the two classes of window. The choice between them became a mere matter of taste and of outlay; all styles acknowledging both as equally admissible and correct.

The two systems may be distinguished as _rere-arch_ windows and _through-arch_ windows--_i.e._, those in which the inner is distinct from the outer arch, and those in which the same arch runs _through_ the wall, showing itself more or less similarly on its outer and inner faces.