Part 6

First there is the question of the site, and in this, of course, one has not the same freedom of choice as in a new house. For one thing, our ancestors especially those who lived before the romantic movement, had not the desire for extensive views from their windows that is characteristic of to-day. The sites they chose were usually sheltered ones, often in positive hollows. No doubt, access to roads, themselves less numerous than now, had something to do with this, but it was a question of temperament too. In Georgian times for the smaller houses they seemed to prefer seclusion and privacy on one side of the house even when they made a bold front to the road or village green on the other. I suppose if they wanted a view they climbed a neighbouring hill to get it. There is something, I think, to be said for this, especially if the view is over the sea or a wide estuary. Such a view continually before the eyes is apt to be depressing. A wide view is all very well in a holiday resort as a contrast to the shelter of one’s walled garden at home. To live on the mountain tops all the time, however, is too strenuous for most mortals. We are not all poets and seers who can look eternity in the face every hour of the day. There may, therefore, have been a certain wisdom in the builders of old houses in sheltered situations, an intuitive knowledge of psychology if not of hygiene. This being so, it is all the more necessary to make sure, not only that the house is dry or can be made so, but that the site itself does not exhale vapours. It is not pleasant when November comes to find each night and morning the chimneys of one’s house poking out of a cloud of mist while the rising ground on either side is free. Such mists, however, are not generally to be found above a chalk or gravel soil unless they come from the sea. With clay and loam the matter is different, and it is well, then, to make further enquiries if the house of one’s desire happens to be in a hollow.

The dryness of the structure is a different matter. Most old houses were built without damp-proof courses—I think an early nineteenth-century invention. These are layers of slates and cement or asphalt or other impervious material placed in the walls just above ground level to prevent the damp from the ground rising through the foundations into the walls above. Such things can be inserted yard by yard at a time, but it is an expensive proceeding. If damp courses do not exist and are too costly to put in, it is all the more necessary to see that the subsoil is a dry one, such as gravel, sand or rock. A flagged basement assists in keeping a house dry if it is dry in itself. If, however, it acts as a sump or drain-pit for the surrounding soil, it, of course, makes matters worse confounded, because it ensures damp even in dry weather. Some of the driest houses are the old timber-constructed ones; if such had been damp their timbers would have rotted away long ago. They, however, if not damp are rather apt to be cold in winter and warm in summer, in spite of the cavity in their walls. The inner and outer coats of lath and plaster or weather-boarding are not really sufficiently thick for comfort. Such houses, therefore, need more heating than those with substantial brick or stone walls.

Let us now consider the walls a little. In most old houses they are strong and substantial. They may, however, have been neglected. Rain-pipes may have been left unrepaired, and frost may have entered and disintegrated the mortar. This, however, is not a very serious matter. A little re-pointing will set it right if it has not gone far. What is more necessary is to look at the state of timbers built into the walls. In most old houses these are plentiful both as wall plates and ties. There are two chief dangers connected with them—worm and dry rot. Either will turn them to powder or to a frail semblance of themselves about to fall to powder. In both cases there is nothing to be done but to replace them. Dry rot, however, is not a usual complaint of old houses. It is much more often found in new. It comes not so much from damp as from bad ventilation. A wood floor laid on concrete which has had linoleum on top of it so that the wood is effectually smothered both above and below is the sort of place where it starts. Unfortunately, once it starts it spreads very quickly. Old houses by their age, therefore, generally show themselves proof against it. Worm in the timbers is the reverse. This works more slowly, and is to be found in the hard woods of old houses as well as the softer ones of new. As in chairs, a little dust like sawdust is the proof of its presence. Palliatives may be tried, but for the sake of one’s furniture, if for nothing else, it is better to take the timbers out.

The roof, however, is generally a more important matter, as regards maintenance, than the walls. Roughly speaking, the order of covering materials in cost of upkeep would be thatch, most expensive of all, and only suitable to quite small houses, then stone-slates, tiles and, last of all, slates. But more important than the material covering is the construction. Look to see whether there are internal valleys and flats where snow and leaves can collect and check the flow of water till it penetrates. The less of such gutters and flats the better. When they exist they should be of lead, as indeed, they usually are in any decent house. Repairs, however, in these hard times may have been done in zinc, and zinc has a very short life in our climate. If the roof is of tiles, it should have been boarded over the rafters and under the tiles. Generally speaking, the steeper the roof, except in a very exposed situation, where the wind can blow the covering off, the sounder it is likely to be, for, of course, the water runs off more quickly. The slope, however is determined by the style of the house, and the materials by the slope. Slate, for instance, is quite safely laid at a much less steep slope than tiles, thatch or split stones. Being a truer material it lies closer. An over-all roof in two or four plain slopes with no breaks in it is, whatever the material, the safest form. The water is then shot everywhere into gutters clear of the walls or into a simple lead trough behind a parapet. There are then no internal and half-hidden gutters to leak and pour water down the centre of the house. Indeed, it may be laid down as a general axiom that simplicity of mass and form, given equally good construction, means cheapness of upkeep. A simple cube or rectangular mass with a plain roof hipped all round with no gables or dormers would be the most compact and cheapest of shapes, not only to build, but to maintain. Such things, however, are obvious. Let us now consider the internal arrangements.

The first question in these semi-servantless days is whether the old house of one’s choice can be adapted to the restricted post-war service which is all that most of us can afford. It behoves one, therefore, to see whether the rooms can be so rearranged, without expensive alterations, that the kitchen is not only reduced to a reasonable size, but is sufficiently near the dining-room. Generally the spacious old kitchen, with its flagged floor, its stretch of cooking apparatus down one whole side, with open range, hot plates, ovens and boilers, had better be abandoned. Sometimes it will make a billiard-room later and sometimes even a garage. Perhaps the old pantry or scullery can be turned into a modern kitchen. The point is that in any case you will need new cooking apparatus on a reduced scale, but with greater efficiency. The expense is when you have to build a new room for it. See, therefore, whether you can avoid doing this by a readjustment of function in the various rooms. The ideal arrangement, both in a new and old house, is a small pantry between the dining-room and the kitchen with the service through it. The pantry so placed acts as a buffer to noise and smell from the kitchen, and yet is handy for setting things down. However do not spoil a vista or some real architectural feature by giving up a good sitting-room to a modern kitchen. If you love the beauties of your house you can often pay too dearly for conveniences. The same remark applies to baths. You will probably have to find extra space for them, but it is obviously a sacrifice to give up to one a good bedroom on the main front. With modern plumbing, in which the bath water is at once taken outside the house and discharged in the open into a rainwater-head, there is, in my opinion, no objection to a small bath in each bedroom provided a suitable recess or space can be found for it. The small American deep tub bath in which one can sit with the water over one’s shoulders, but not lie full length, takes little space and gets over many difficulties of placing. The safe general rule on all these questions of adapting an old house to the conditions of to-day is to see whether for kitchen, motor car or baths one can install the new requirements without rebuilding or serious additions. On every ground that is the safe proceeding, whether to preserve character, to avoid the clash of old work with new, or merely to save outlay.

XVI.

WREN AS A BAROQUE ARCHITECT.

WHAT is the quality in Wren’s work which gives it the very human appeal it undoubtedly possesses? How is it different in this respect to the work of Inigo Jones? Why do we all in our hearts love any of the façades of St. Paul’s better than that of the Banqueting Hall, or, if that is to compare things that are incommensurable, what is the quality in Trinity Library, Cambridge, which endears it to us, while, as we pass down Whitehall, we view the Inigo Jones building with respect and admiration, but hardly with any sense of deep affection? We may even breathe a sigh of thankfulness that we did not have the mile or two more of it Jones intended.

It is an interesting problem, and one I think worth a little consideration. Twenty years ago, when Belcher and Macartney’s “Later Renaissance” was issued, Wren’s work appeared the final word in architecture. No one challenged it except the Gothicists. Gradually, however, the younger architects discovered architecture had not stood still since the 17th century. Each of us pushed our enthusiasm a little further, some pinned their faith to Chambers, some to Robert Adam. Some even went as far as measuring Cockerell and Elmes and the later Greek work. Finally there appeared Professor Richardson’s “Monumental classical Architecture in Great Britain and Ireland,” and at last we thought we saw the whole thing in perspective. All the time, however, there were very vital folk like Sir Edwin Lutyens and E. A. Rickards who stuck to Wren. The former is even reported to have said that the English Renaissance ought to have been spelt the English Wren-naissance. So to-day, especially with Wren bicentenary just past, we are all beginning to cast our eyes back to the great 17th century master and find that, incorrect as a great deal of his work was according to all the rules of the game—coarse as a great deal of his detail undoubtedly is, with faults of taste and inconsistencies of scale—there was something very rotund, full-blooded, almost Falstaffian, in the mass of his work, which makes us give him an affection we give no other. In comparison the work of the later men, especially of the Neo-Grec ones, seems hard, even spikey. It is all very well for the historians to tell us of Wren’s mathematical genius and the consequent sublimity of his conceptions. That, I beg leave to say as regards his architecture, with the possible exception of Greenwich, is what is vulgarly called ‘eye-wash.’ The dome of St. Paul’s is a paltry affair compared to the dome of St. Peter’s and only insular prejudice would say otherwise. Its tricks of construction are no doubt evidence of mechanical ability, but such are not architecture. Internally with its muddle of unequal supporting arches or externally with its tight unmodelled surface it is very inferior to its great prototype. Yet the lovable quality of the work remains especially in that nearer the eye. Think of the Dean’s doorway under the great recessed arch of the window on the side of the North tower, or that other lovable doorway, with its oval window and fat cherubs also under a recessed arch in the tower of St. Mary-le-Bow. What comfortable happy invention! What richly curved surfaces; what cheery display, designed, one may be sure, with sheer enjoyment.

In a very obvious sense all Wren’s architecture is civil architecture, his cathedral and churches not less than the rest. He built in an age of humanism, when paganism was no longer feared. As Miss Milman has wisely said in her life of Wren, a church with him “would differ from a court of kings only in being more full of splendour.” This was the renaissance spirit, but it was the spirit more particularly of the baroque period when, freed from the rules, though remaining masters of them, men built for sheer swagger. It was in this spirit the Jesuit Churches of the counter-Reformation were built. Knowing human nature, those wise men chose a style for their sacred edifices full of dramatic human appeal. So did Wren, as far as he knew and could. I venture to suggest that it was because he had in himself a large share of this baroque spirit, this happy posturing, and not because he was a scholar and a mathematician—rather because he broke the rules instead of following them, because in essence he was not a Palladian like the majority of English architects—that he is loved to-day not only by architects, but by the great mass of the people as no other architect has ever been. I realise that in attaching the term “baroque” to Wren I am running the risk of libelling him in the minds of many. That is because of the unfortunate ill-odour which nowadays hangs to the word. The baroque is synonymous with decadence we are generally told. Indeed the ordinary text-books, like Anderson’s “Italian Renaissance,” either treat the great parent baroque work in Italy with a few contemptuous remarks, or leave it alone entirely. Yet one can hardly label as decadent a style which covered Italy with the most vigorous buildings it possesses, which gave the colonnade and baldacchino to St. Peter’s, which planted the superb mass of Santa Maria della Salute at the end of the great sweep of the Grand Canal—to mention but two examples.

What is the real function and intent of baroque architecture? Geoffrey Scott defines it very well—“to give the picturesque its grandest scope and yet to subdue it to architectural law.” “The baroque is not afraid to startle and arrest.” “It enlarged the classic formula by developing within it the principle of movement. But the movement is logical; it is logical as an æsthetic construction, even when it most neglects the logic of material construction. It insisted on coherent purpose, and its greatest extravagances of design were neither unconsidered nor inconsistent. It intellectualised the picturesque.” Baroque buildings, he goes on to say in effect, may do all the above, “yet their last and permanent impression is of a broad serenity; for they have that baroque assurance which even baroque convulsion cannot rob of its repose. They are fit for permanence: for they have that massive finality of thought, which, when we live beside them, we do not question, but accept.”

Now I do not want to suggest that the full baroque spirit is to be found in Wren’s work. It is obviously much too staid and too English for that. But I do think that there is more of it there than we have been accustomed to realise and that it is because it is there, giving vitality and humanity to his architecture, we return with more affection to his work than we do to that of either Inigo Jones, his more academic predecessor, or to any of his Palladian successors. To my mind it was very fortunate that instead of going to Vicenza, as Jones did, Wren escaped not only the plague by going to Paris, but went there at the very time the great Bernini visited that city. One can imagine that these two men, both so energetic, vigorous and long-lived, both to accomplish a prodigious amount of work in their lives, would be very much of the same kidney. The influence of the elder, at the height of his fame and treated as a prince by the French, on the young Englishman, who till then had built but one or two small structures, who came seeking information in every direction, was very likely immense. If one looks for similarities of thought in design in Wren’s later work with that of Bernini, they are not difficult to find. The great doorways of the Chigi Palace are echoed in those of the river front of Trinity Library, while the altar-piece of the Chapel of Chelsea Hospital might have been designed by Bernini himself. It has the same sumptuousness, the same great scale, and the same use of coupled columns. In the All Souls’ collection of Wren drawings there is, too, a design for a monument, with twisted columns covered with garlands, a sun-burst, gesticulating angels and fat descending cupids—all in the best baroque manner. This latter however is an extreme example, only quoted to show Wren’s knowledge of baroque detail. It is when Wren is most like Bernini in his decoration and less like the contemporary French artists, with their insistence on free foliage and asymmetrical ornament, that he is most satisfactory. The altar-piece at Chelsea is infinitely superior to the more often quoted one at Trinity College, Oxford, where indeed the baroque may almost be said to sink into the rococo.

“To give the picturesque its grandest scope and yet subdue it to architectural law”—what better description could we have of Wren’s towers? “The baroque is not afraid to startle and arrest.” Think of the sturdy chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, swaggering with its big Corinthian order, its boldly broken pediment and its upstanding cupola, among the timidities of Tudor Gothic. “It enlarged the classic formula by developing within it the principle of movement.” Think of the barrel vaults and saucer domes in the chapels and aisles of St. Paul’s or the gay little Temple Bar neatly striding across the Strand. “Baroque buildings are fit for permanence. They have a massive finality of thought.” Trinity Library has just this quality in supreme degree. Its last and permanent impression is indeed of a broad serenity, which the back elevation to the river possesses in an even greater extent than the courtyard front. But other buildings can be serene beside baroque ones. The point is that this building of Wren’s has the rich modelling, the warm vital spirit which in classical architecture is the peculiar quality of the baroque and the baroque alone. All we know of the man himself bears out this view of his architecture. In a pedantic age he was no pedant. He had the enquiring mind so characteristic of the 17th century, which sought new knowledge in every direction, leaving it to be tabulated and scheduled by the colder and more precise 18th century. We have preserved in the Parentalia several of his exuberant letters, including one charming love-letter to the lady who was his first wife. We know that like Michael Angelo he worked till he was nearly ninety, compressing an immense amount of labour into his later years, and that like him, too, his fiery spirit could not brook opposition. The list of his executed works compares to-day in extent with that of a great American architect, but to superintend that work he had to travel many dreary days on horse back. He must have been a man of magnificent physique and we know that he had a gay happy spirit. All who met him delighted in his wit. His friends were legion. He knew everyone worth knowing and had achieved fame in other walks in life before he began his proper work. He was an honorary doctor both of Oxford and Cambridge before he became an architect. It is difficult to imagine such a man blindly following Vitruvius Palladio, Serlio, or any other theorist. He might, and no doubt did, confound the ignorant by quoting them; but in his own practice I feel confident he relied on his own innate genius for expressive form, and that genius led him towards those self-confident happy, almost swaggering, shapes we now in their fulness call baroque. It is in his combination of such forms with the more sober methods of English buildings that the great lovableness of his work lies.

XVII.

THE ANTI-SOCIAL CONTRACT.

ONE of the troubles in obtaining good buildings to-day, as everyone who has tried in the capacity either as owner, architect or builder must realise, lies firstly in the system of asking for competing tenders from builders, and secondly in tying down the lowest tenderer to carry out the work under a strict and binding legal contract. We look on the builder as a contractor and call him such. His chief function in modern eyes is to undertake to do a carefully specified piece of building for a fixed sum. His profit is not specified and he is free to make as much as he likes out of his operations as long as he carries out the specified work in the specified way. The real difficulty is that by no manner of means yet devised can the work be specified beforehand with absolute accuracy, nor has any means yet been discovered by which, in all the multifarious processes of building, it can be ascertained whether what has been specified has been actually carried out. We may make drawings as complete and thorough as is humanly possible; we may write long specifications and have the number of bricks, and the amount of all other material and labour to be used, assessed beforehand by a quantity surveyor, yet quality of material and workmanship enters so largely into every stage that no one can definitely say at the end that the contract has been carried out to the letter. Further, we may appoint clerks-of-work and other watch-dogs to follow the contractor at every step on the building itself, or rather to attempt it, and yet we may be fooled by work made off the site and brought to it, or by work done on the job and covered up before the architect or any of his agents, including the clerk-of-works, can see it.