rn Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/architectssketchOOpeab An Archite&'s Sketch Book aiixi 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i xx AN ARCHITECT'S SKETCH BOOK Robert Swain Peabody BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY MDCCCCXII COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY ROBERT SWAIN PEABODY Published March igi2 TO Some of these essays came into existence as contributions to the " papers " read at the Thursday Evening Club. Some of them have reached the dignity of publication in the Atlantic Monthly. Some of them see the light for the first time here. All of them are by- products of an active professional life. The sketches, which illus- trate in an imperfect manner the different essays, are gathered from many sketch books which record impressions gained in those portions of an architect's life which are as precious as they are infrequent, — his vacations. 22 The Fenway, Boston March, 1912 Contents I. A VENETIAN DAY 1 II. THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE 13 III. RURAL ENGLAND 31 IV. FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHURCHES 45 V. THE FIVE ORDERS OF ARCHITECTURE 61 VI. ON THE DESIGN OF HOUSES 75 VII. BY THE SEA 91 Illustrations NORTHERN TOWER AT CHARTRES Frontispiece SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE, — VENICE 6 GOTHIC WORK IN VENICE AND FLORENCE 10 FARM BUILDINGS NEAR FLORENCE 20 NEAR MONTREUX, LAKE OF GENEVA 24 STANWICK CHURCH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 34 HIGHAM FERRERS CHURCH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 34 RAUNDS CHURCH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 36 ST. SEPULCHRE, NORTHAMPTON 36 RINGSTEAD CHURCH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 38 MARTOCK CHURCH, SOMERSETSHIRE 38 MULCHENEY CHURCH, SOMERSETSHIRE 40 YAXTON CHURCH, LINCOLNSHIRE, AND COUND CHURCH SALOP 40 KINGSBURY EPISCOPI CHURCH, SOMERSETSHIRE 42 SAINT PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON 42 xii Illustrations BOSTON STUMP, LINCOLNSHIRE 48 HECKINGTON CHURCH, LINCOLNSHIRE 49 DURHAM CATHEDRAL 50 LINCOLN CATHEDRAL 50 CHURCH OF ST. OUEN, ROUEN 52 CHURCH OF ST. OUEN, ROUEN 52 THE CATHEDRAL AT LAON 54 THE CATHEDRAL AT PARIS 54 THE CATHEDRAL AT PARIS 56 THE PORTALS AT RHEIMS 56 THE CATHEDRAL AT COUTANCES 58 THE CATHEDRAL AT LE MANS 58 THE WESTERN DOORWAY AT BOURGES CATHEDRAL 60 THE WESTERN DOORWAY AT THE CATHEDRAL OF TOURS 60 THE SOUTHERN TOWER AT AMIENS CATHEDRAL 60 CHATEAU DE MESNlERES, NORMANDY 78 CHATEAU DE LANGEAIS, TOURAINE 80 CHATEAU BRIAND, COMBOURG 82 CHATEAU DE BLOIS, TOURAINE 84 COTTAGE NEAR SEVEN OAKS, KENT 86 Illustrations xiii LUDFORD HOUSE, LUDLOW, SALOP 88 MARBLEHEAD, MASSACHUSETTS 94 MASSACHUSETTS BAY 96 ON THE MAINE COAST 96 OFF VENICE 98 ON THE PENOBSCOT RIVER, MAINE 98 ON THE THAMES AT GREENWICH 100 IN THE BRITISH CHANNEL 102 OFF BOSTON LIGHT, MASSACHUSETTS 102 AT SEA 104 i A Venetian Day I ||| ||| IIP i||ll'ill||||l'il|||||li«n|J|ll''M||||lill|||| |||ll"l||j|M'il|||||Hil||||l |||t<"H|||ll"l||||IMHI|j|l ||||I'>|||| I llllllMlllIll IN llllllnlllllllllllllllN.lllll/lllllllllhllllllllllllllll ill lllllllllllllllllllll iL.iiiLmiiiLiIIiIii llllliilllll llli llli llllliilllll Illllliilltlll lIlllMlllI An Architect's Sketch Book i A VENETIAN DAY 1892 WHEN we open our blinds in the early morning a gray fog envelops all Venice. We can just see the gondoliers at the boat landing beneath us busily polishing the steel prows and the brass sea horses that brighten their craft. Then little by little the fog grows transparent, and the two pale domes of the " Salute," shimmering in the early sunlight, define themselves on the pale sky. The Venetian day has begun. If any single building in Venice is conspicuous as a beautiful and characteristic landmark it is this twin-domed church. Many neighboring cities possess towers resembling those of Venice. In fact there are one or two others here in Venice that are confus- ingly like the great Campanile, and except for its great size we can- not reckon its towering mass as peculiar to Venice alone. St. Mark's Church is too hidden to be a prominent landmark in a general view. The Ducal Palace is too simple in outline to count from a distance as a noticeable feature. But from every side of approach the coupled domes of Santa Maria della Salute mark nobly the entrance to the Grand Canal. Its general scheme is fantastic and unusual. Its details, though classic, are exuberant 4 An ArchitedVs Sketch Book and not remarkable for delicacy or purity; yet both on the canal side, where it rises above a spreading flight of steps and a deserted piazza, and on the side of the Giudecca, where its domes and slender towers overtop a green grove of trees, it forms a graceful composition. Its general mass is perhaps the most pleasing that any Renaissance church can offer. As is fitting in Venice, the Salute's white walls rise visibly from the sea and its domes are reflected upon a mile or two of green waters. Venice would doubtless be beautiful if it did not thus mirror itself in these broad expanses; but what an added charm this gives to it! Though it may be that our errand in Venice is to study architecture, the sparkling lagoon and its craft quickly entice us away from buildings. As the sun mounts high and the breeze freshens, we leave the Riva and gradually the city fades into the haze. The green waters are flecked with white caps. Fishing "burchios," with dragnets spread and sails half raised, drift broadside with the wind. Up the wandering channel that is marked by long lines of piles come huge "trabaccoli," their bellying sails banded and starred with red and yellow. Although they and the "bragozzi" of Chioggia are boxlike, flat-bottomed structures with no centre- or weather-boards, yet these great boats tack and go to windward very handily. The secret of their power lies in the great rudder which goes far below the boat's bottom and forms an effective centreboard that can be raised in shallow waters. Their rounded bows end in involved curves. On each side of the bow is carved and painted an immense eye. Because the Adriatic boats have always been thus adorned, the A Venetian Day 5 trabaccolo must have its useless eyes, and has had them since in somewhat similar craft the Greeks rowed from Athens to Syracuse or Romans cruised off the Carthaginian shore. A wealth of color — orange, or red, or brown, or pale blue — is given to the views of the lagoon by the sails of all these vessels. They are seen in every variety as they cruise outside of Chioggia or along the coast by Rimini and Ancona. When the fishermen come to Venice very early on Sunday morning to mass and to market, their boats, draped with loose-hanging sails and drying nets, are moored in picturesque masses along the Riva and against the wooded banks of the Public Gardens. They look like a row of brilliant butterflies sunning their outspread wings. On one sail is drawn in bright colors a huge Madonna. On another is a flying horse. Still others have crosses, circles, or bands rudely sponged upon the canvas. The forecastle is adorned with sacred paintings and carvings and an angel is painted on either side of the stern. A handsome crew, looking and talking like pirates and cut- throats, thus dwell amid holy pictures and images. Each sailor wears an amulet around his neck. At the masthead swings a tangled flag-vane decked with pious emblems and surmounted by the cross. When we leave the broad and silvery stretches of the lagoon, the gondola glides in shallow, smooth waters by the white dome and turrets of the church at the Campo Santo. Through the dull canals of Murano amid heavy-laden barges and by de- serted houses we come to the lonely tower of Torcello keeping its watch over wide expanses of flat and marsh. Remembering 6 An Architect's Sketch Book that we are architects, we hastily look at the Byzantine capitals and ambones in the chill, death-stricken church, but come back, shuddering at the damp and the cold, to find the azure sky, the fresh greensward, the distant snow-clad Alps, and the far-stretch- ing luminous waters of the lagoon more beautiful and enchanting than ever. A huge chimney on the outside of one house near the canal attracts us. We land, and a whole family welcomes us to a table where steaming polenta is served for the midday meal. This great chimney is like many others at Burano and Chioggia. It serves a fireplace large enough to have windows in it and a seat all around the hearth. You can walk all about in these fireplaces, and they make us think of winter evenings and Northern climes. But, after all, an architect does not visit Venice to find cozy nooks, and it would seem as if even the enticing green lagoons should not call him away from such a city of palaces. Sooner or later the palaces do assert their right to admiration. Then one remarks at once their essentially modern character. This is true even of the fagades of the Gothic buildings, for they are free and open, with rows of windows and airy galleries, — really modern fronts. The great groups of windows are framed in with broad bands enriched with dogtooth or carving. Colored materials, such as serpentine and porphyry, toned by time, also lend them their hues and the mouldings of arch and balcony and cor- nice have elegant profiles. There is no rudeness or coarse pictur- esqueness such as often characterizes Northern Gothic work. A front like that of Desdemona's house would not look rough or A Venetian Day 7 uncouth nor out of keeping with life in any city of to-day. We see in it the Northern Gothic detail become polished and re- fined and modern. No wonder that when the English Gothic revival was at its height, fifty years ago, its disciples drew in- spiration from Venice. Without such help they found it a difficult problem to translate an English or French mediaeval fagade, with great wall surfaces and a few pointed windows, into a modern front where the essential thing is to permit floods of light to penetrate a deep building. But, floating down the Grand Canal, we also pass one by one the great Renaissance palaces. Again we are struck, as in the case of those of the Gothic period, with their modern spirit. There are good models for the great buildings of to-day among these rich, well-lighted, stately fronts. Yet to any one who has been studying Renaissance detail at Urbino or Rome or among the tombs of Florence, and who has recognized Donatello and Mino da Fiesole as the masters of such work, the carving even on the purest and best Renaissance work in Venice, beautiful though it be, is yet a disappointment. We can say this even remembering the dainty work that covers the church of the Miracoli. It may be the material in which it is wrought, or it may be the touch of the workman, but despite its amount and richness there is some- thing hard and mechanical about even the Early Renaissance carving in Venice. It falls far short of the Florentine and Roman standard. Perhaps, as the Venetian architecture is so largely one of incrustation and of applied and inlaid marbles, we uncon- sciously miss in it the serious solid stonework of Florence and 8 An Architect's Sketch Book Rome, or the rugged qualities of the terra cotta found in more northern cities. To be sure, the great later palaces of Venice are built of solid stone, but in them the carving is distinctly bad. We should be glad to find there what we criticise in the earlier buildings. Except at Sansovino's stately library the carvings and the details of the late work are clumsy and out of scale. We wish that their superb masses were marked by such mouldings and carvings as adorn the Cancelleria or the Farnese palaces in Rome, or the Pandolfini and Rucellai palaces in Flor- ence. We look in vain for the dainty architectural details that Bramante and Alberti and Peruzzi would have used. Then after wondering, as we pass along the Grand Canal, how the architects of these imposing piles were satisfied with such clumsy detail, we enter the grand apartments in the Doge's Palace. Here Scamozzi and Palladio and Sansovino worked hand in hand with Tintoretto, Veronese, Titian, and Bonifazio, to record the victories and the glory of their country. All over the walls are paintings of the naval combats of Venice. Galleys with many banks of oars bear down upon Saracens or Genoese. Amid the golden frames and azure skies of the ceilings Venice sits enthroned, and the heroes and heroines both of Parnassus and of the Old Testament lend their vigorous presence to give color and life to the decorations. Nowhere have painter, carver, and archi- tect worked in better accord, and nowhere with more brilliant results. What a stately series of chambers ! What combinations of dark paneling and gorgeous gold frames and decorative color- ing! They are the most splendid and sumptuous rooms in Europe. j A Venetian Day 9 Venice is indeed rich in buildings the first sight of which sends a thrill through the frame and which become indelibly impressed on the memory. True, such moving architecture is to be found elsewhere. One does not forget the nave of Amiens Cathedral, as the host is raised and solemn stillness broods over the crowd of worshipers; or St. Paul's dome in London, looming above bridge and river and city into the murky sky; or Saint-Ouen's * 4 crown of Normandy," shooting its tangled traceries high above roof and pinnacle out of the green treetops in the little wooded park at Rouen; or the stately grandeur of the Farnese Palace; or the awe- inspiring size of the mighty Coliseum. Scenes made thus effective by architecture are to be met with throughout Europe, but they are more abundant in Venice than in any other city. For here the church of St. Mark, within and without, is unique, and cannot be compared with any other Christian church ; the Salute and San Giorgio, the Ducal Palace and the Piazzetta, are certainly objects of wonderful grace; and possibly, to the architect, the interior of the Ducal Palace yields to none of them for the impression it leaves of grandeur and stateliness. They let us wander at will around the lofts and galleries of San Marco. All through those "dim caves of beaten gold" we can keep close company with the gaunt long-robed prophets, the white-winged angels, the martyrs, and the patriarchs set in that golden firmament. Below we see the worshipers kneeling in crowds on that intricate pavement, and our eyes try to pierce the gloom where, under the baldacchino, rest in splendor the much-traveled remains of St. Mark. io An Architect's Sketch Book We emerge upon the outer galleries amid the forest of marble vegetation and the statues of angels, prophets, and saints. We touch the Greek horses that were modeled perhaps in the days of Pericles. Then we look down with a momentary surprise on the sunlit piazza bright with the world of to-day, the smart Ital- ian officers, the eager tourists, and the happy children from beyond sea feeding the fluttering doves. To-day there is festa in San Marco, and an unusual vesper service at the high altar; so we descend, and from a dark corner watch the solemn evening pageant. In the deep shadows of the sanctuary blaze countless lights. The aged dignitaries, in rich and sparkling vestments, move here and there, and kneel, and read. Younger attendants serve the incense and reverently bear the great books, while white-robed men in the high balcony sing the vesper music. As the loud organ begins to grow a little wearisome there is a sudden hush. Then on the stillness, from far aloft above the sanctuary's gloom, is heard the sweet treble of a boys' choir. The harmony floats through the golden vaults; simple, innocent, solemn; "trauncing the soul with chaunting choirs." The organ notes cease. The day dies. We grope our way through the darkly glittering church, and come out upon the Piazzetta to find the outer world also golden. The white churches and palaces set against a sky of gold are repeated in the golden waters, and the last rays of the setting sun permeate and glorify this other golden miracle. Later, when darkness falls over the city, we turn the corner of A Venetian Day 11 Sansovino's library and wander across the Piazzetta. The black- ness of the sky is studded with stars, and above San Giorgio is the moon, showering light on the surrounding waters and defining in dark masses the island church. The slender tower shoots high above that long line of nave and dome. The buildings of the port and the convent bring down the composition to the water- line. Yes, perhaps the interior of San Giorgio, though correct and refined, is cold. Possibly there exists in the obvious faults of the fagade some feeble justification for Mr. Ruskin when he says, "It is impossible to conceive a design more gross, more barbarous, more childish in conception, more severe in plagiarism, more insipid in result, more contemptible under every point of rational regard.'' Yet most observers must avow that, whether you call it scenic effect or architecture, a great thing was done when the architect turned this wonderful site to such advantage and gave to the world such a beautiful and graceful church. Poised between the sky and the wide waters of the lagoon, it is one of the few groups of buildings in this wide world which most appeals to the traveler and which no visitor to Venice can ever forget. The night advances. Tattoo is sounded. Across the moonlit waters we hear the bugles respond to the band as the patrol marches merrily down the Riva. We look over to San Giorgio from beneath the awnings of our balcony. The reflection of its tower comes in a long line to our feet across the rippling water. Gondolas flit here and there and cross the track of the moonlight. Tinkling guitars sound from the barges. A tenor on the steps of 12 An Architect's Sketch Book the Salute sings. From far up the canal the guitars and chorus send an answering refrain. Our day in Venice closes! "Venezia benedetta non te vogio piu lasar." So sings the chorus as it floats away into the night; and then all is silence, save for the sound of lapping waves and the distant warning cry of a belated gondolier. The Italian Renaissance II THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE 1892 OUR little party of architects climbed from the Adriatic to the heights of Urbino, traveled over the hills of Tus- cany, and crossed the furrowed plains of Lombardy; together, also, we made a hurried visit to Rome. Thus we had opportunity to review the causes of the wonderful overturn of the old sys- tems which we now call the Renaissance of architecture. We saw and studied the work done in those fruitful days by Brunel- leschi, Alberti, Bramante, Peruzzi, and the other architects of that great epoch. Though we are often told that Gothic art never took root in Italy, many a Gothic arch and crocket and gable show that it had for long a treatment of its own on Italian soil. True, if Gothic architecture be held to be a complete principle of construction, to which ornament is but an accessory, we must promptly agree that neither the Italians nor any other people except its French inventors ever thoroughly mastered its principles. But one can regard architectural detail as merely a decorative expression, and as an indication of the trend of thought of those who use it. This is all the substance there is to most of the historical "periods." Accepting this view, we must admit that in Italy of the Middle Ages pointed architecture was universal, and its detail imbued with native peculiarities. In mediaeval Florence the Gothic 16 An Architect's Sketch Book tower of the Palazzo Vecchio looked down on the stir and the strife, the pageants and the troubles of the city. Above the Florentine Duomo the bells rang notes of triumph or alarm, of joy or sadness, from amid the spiral shafts and pointed arches of Giotto's Gothic belfry. Siena even to-day remains a Gothic city. Its narrow streets are closed in with mediaeval palaces and the shadow of its slender clock-tower tells off the hours on the fronts of Gothic houses encircling its great piazza. Perhaps the spirit of the Middle Ages has clung more to San Gemignano than to any other Tuscan city. The Renaissance left little mark upon it, and there has been hardly a change since the days when Dante trod its streets. Pointed arch and cusp and trefoil abound there. Above steep street and grim palaces the city still "lifts to heaven her diadem of towers." These lofty eyries are so un- changed that in fancy we easily garrison them with the rioting factions of the Salvucci and Ardinghelli hurling rocks and blazing pitch from tower to tower. These abundant remains on all sides indicate that although Tuscany was the birthplace of the Renais- sance, it for centuries had neglected its classic traditions and bore a thoroughly mediaeval character. Not far away, however, from these mediaeval Gothic cities lies Montepulciano, one of those Tuscan towns where the Renais- sance spirit had free play. It is remote from the railroad, and, like so many of its neighbors, clings, shaggy and gray, to the mountain top. For two hours we toil upwards. In the mists far below us are the green waters "of reedy Thrasymene," and the broad plain that beheld the triumph of Carthage stretches far to The Italian Renaissance 17 where, in the haze, lie Siena and the heights of Perugia and Arezzo. The main street of the town climbs steep between crowded buildings to the battlemented tower of the Palazzo Publico, which crowns the city. On the sides of the little square and down the narrow streets are Renaissance palaces. The church of San Biagio is a successful example of the Renaissance domed church with four short arms. If in San Gemignano we see a town that stopped building with the advent of the Renaissance, its neigh- bor, Montepulciano, indicates what happened to those which prospered and built when classical forms began to meet with favor. Still more is this apparent in the little town of Pienza. Here was born ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who finally became Pope Pius II, and whose history forms the subject of Ghirlan- daio's frescoes on the walls of the library at Siena. Before its prosperous son returned to it, as well as after he left it, the town must have been a very humble one, for there is nothing in it now of any interest to the traveler except the little square that is sur- rounded by the papal buildings. Here a Renaissance cathedral faces a public palace. The classic dwelling of the Pope is vis-a- vis to that of the Bishop. The whole group surrounding the piazza is interesting, as being the plaything of a church dignitary who lived in the full tide of the Renaissance, and, like his fellows, enjoyed the building arts. These classic houses of Montepulciano, its church of San Biagio, and the piazza of Pienza, found in the midst of mediaeval Tuscany, illustrate how promptly and decidedly the Renaissance spirit appealed to the Italian mind of the fifteenth century; and is An Architect's Sketch Book what seemed to us most remarkable, here and throughout Tus- cany, was the sweeping manner in which all Gothic and mediaeval traditions appear to have been, not only forever, but at once overturned in these their strongholds. With ever-increasing surprise we recognized the strength and spontaneity with which the new spirit, almost full grown, took immediate possession of the world. This Renaissance of classic architecture began in Florence, under Brunelleschi and Alberti. Later, in the north, another school arose in Milan, under Bramante, and these two branches finally met and produced their highest results at Rome. We tried to trace these schools in their respective fields, and it was of course in Florence itself that we found the visible first fruits of the Renaissance, so far as architecture is concerned. At Pisa, it is true, we saw how Nicholas, the sculptor, had drawn inspiration from ancient Roman models for the figures on his pulpits; but the Gothic carvers of the fagades of Paris and Amiens had done as much a hundred years earlier, and the wonder is that artists and craftsmen should ever have ceased to cherish and assimilate the ancient work by which they were surrounded, and which was so far beyond their own powers. Apparently, however, for a hundred years after Nicholas of Pisa, men paid no heed to the architectural monuments of antiquity around them. The real awakening came almost simultaneously to collectors, who were eager for jewels, coins, and ivories from Greece and Rome; to scholars, who with avidity sought the classic manuscripts which until then had been buried in the monasteries; to painters and sculptors and archi- The Italian Renaissance 19 tects, who suddenly saw beauty in the models of classical anti- quity, and strove to graft the antique traditions on the civiliza- tion of their own time. What the French sculptors of the twelfth century strove to imitate; what Nicholas of Pisa faintly saw in the thirteenth century; what Petrarch at Padua, and Giotto, Orcagna, and Simone Memmi in Tuscany, found in the classics to delight them in the fourteenth century, all this finally took form with the quattro-centists, and was spread by many helping spirits over Tuscany and the world. As for architecture, this movement began in Florence, and the return to detail carefully studied upon the ancient Roman models was abrupt and without transition. Brunelleschi's was the guiding active mind, the Medici gave the opportunities, Donatello's refined genius inspired the decora- tion. The spirit of the Renaissance gradually became a patriotic fervor. Men thought they had reclaimed their inheritance from the Caesars, and wondered that they had ever fallen away from the wonderful models all around them. The hill country of Tuscany had appeared to us a rude and savage nursery for the culture and refinement of modern civiliza- tion, but the same cannot be said of the Val d' Arno. On the con- trary, it seemed but fitting that from such surroundings should come dignity and refinement. Its setting of hill and farm, of river and verdure, gives to the " City of the Lily" half of its charm. What walks and drives we take in these early spring days by the wooded banks of the Arno, where men are filling their long-prowed shallops with sand, and where, beneath the trees, across the wide stretches of river, we get glimpses of the city's go An Architedt's Sketch Book domes and towers! We have to shut our eyes to the signs of modern progress in the close neighborhood of the city, but soon we find ourselves where boughs of flowering peach and almond hang over the walls that border the roads. Then we emerge among the green fruitful fields. The broad roofs and white walls of villa and farmhouse are backed by dark and slender cypresses, and beneath the vines that are festooned from tree to tree the ground is bright with anemone and poppy, with cowslip and prim- rose. We climb the hills above these fertile plains, through olive orchards and oak woods, to the heights of Fiesole, and look away over dark pine grove and rocky hillside, and across the hazy checkered plains, to purple mountains. Far beneath us, the silver thread of the Arno, winding swiftly by field and farm, divides the widespread city, where rise Arnolfo's palazzo and Giotto's campanile and the vast mass of Brunelleschi's dome. Perhaps the youthful Brunelleschi made his famous journey to Rome, in 1403, in hope of learning from ancient examples how to roof the great church that Arnolfo and Giotto had left unfin- ished. At all events, he and Donatello spent three years in Rome together, measuring and sketching, and returned full of an en- thusiasm about all they had seen, which had far-reaching conse- quences. The huge dome with which Brunelleschi later crowned the church is always spoken of as the great work of the Early Renaissance. A great work it surely is, but possibly less a work of the highest art than a great engineering feat. His contem- poraries were amazed at it as a work of construction. Alberti, for instance, generously praised it, but chiefly because such a The Italian Renaissance 21 wonder was built without the aid of wooden centring. Its bar- ren grandeur certainly suggests little artistic excellence except such as it obtains from immense size. It was, without doubt, the first great dome of its kind, and the prototype of innumerable later and of some better designs; but whatever impressiveness it now has is due to its being a vast and capacious object. In Florence, Brunelleschi as a constructor and engineer was visible in this enor- mous barren dome, but to find Brunelleschi the artist, the original inspiring spirit of Renaissance architecture, we had to seek him in the churches of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito. In these pure and simple works, antique colonnades take the place of Gothic piers, and classic caissoned ceilings are the substitute for Gothic vaulted roofs. Every ornament not rigidly architectural is excluded, and what remains is chaste and simple and strictly after classic Roman models. The rugged walls of the Pitti Palace, also due to Brunelleschi, are broad and grandiose, though devoid of ornament; but in the Pazzi Chapel, which forms one side of the cloister of Santa Croce, we find him using dainty and elabo- rate classic ornament. His immediate predecessors, who were mainly decorators, had cared for infinite detail, no matter to what extent it might mask fundamental constructive form. We see such work in the incrustations of Giotto's campanile, and of the duomos at Orvieto and Siena. From these influences Brunelleschi's simple and clear methods led men's minds not only to the new fashion of ancient classic detail, but to more logical architectural methods. During a brief period Florence abounded in designers who 22 An Archite&t's Sketch Book followed in the steps of Brunelleschi. The city is not so changed but that imagination readily peoples it with the rich and ardent life of these early days of the Renaissance. We can forget for the moment the fresh Italian regiments treading these old gray streets to the merry notes of their bugles, and see in their places the bright-garbed crowds that Benozzo Gozzoli, and Masaccio, and Masolino, and Fabriano depict; Poggio with manuscripts cunningly rifled from monastery libraries, Delia Robbia dreaming of his blue-and-white Madonnas, Fra Angelico seeing brilliant angels in the golden sunsets down the Arno, Ghiberti designing his portals, Donatello modeling his statues, Mino da Fiesole carving tomb and pulpit and altar, Michelozzo and Sangallo directing the building of palace and of church. Alberti's generous letter, praising the work of his friends, Brunelleschi, Delia Robbia, and Masaccio, suggests the enthusiasm which prevailed among this emulous band of artists. Their labors can be traced in all the towns about Florence. At Prato we find the classic elegance of Sangallo's work in the church of the Carceri. We see at Rimini and elsewhere the gracious and elegant work of that most pic- turesque personality, Alberti, — that canon of the church who embraced the Renaissance sentiment with such fervor that, far from being content with an inspiration gained from antiquity, he dreamed of a definite restoration of pagan life and a reestablish- ment of the ancient civilization. But, after all, the astonishing thing to note everywhere about the Tuscan Renaissance is the rapidity with which it reached maturity. When Brunelleschi and his comrades left the field to their successors, little remained to be The Italian Renaissance 23 done on the lines they had laid down. Broadly speaking, they anticipated the greater part of what was perfected during the next hundred years. While the Florentine school had been pursuing the course mapped out by Brunelleschi, another school and another master had been at work in the north. In Milan and its neighborhood we can trace and study the early work of Bramante. There are many buildings in the flat Lombard country designed either by him, or by pupils so near to him that they are truly Bra- mantesque. In the main they are a little disappointing. The Bramante of this period is a shadowy sort of person, vaguely recognized as a power working for elegance, proportion, and daintiness. One gains the impression that he made sketches which were carried out more or less imperfectly by others. Per- haps the school reached its highest perfection in the Incoronata of Lodi, where to the delicate Bramantesque detail is added the charm of faded pale frescoes and golden-vaulted ceilings picked out with strong red and blue. In 1493 misfortune overtook Bramante's patron, and in 1499 Bramante left Milan for Rome. His successors in Lombardy paid less heed to that purity and simplicity of style which had dis- tinguished him. The later work of this Milanese school is seen in the richly carved and incrusted fagades of the Certosa at Pavia. Bramante, however, at the age of fifty-five, infirm and unable to draw, now in Rome first saw the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Baths of Diocletian. His spirit was ardent enough to be stirred by the genius of antiquity. Abandoning his Milanese past he 24 An Architect's Sketch Book changed his whole course and became imbued with the antique classic spirit to a degree attained before only by Brunelleschi. In Rome he built in stone, and not in brick and terra cotta. At the papal court his clients were both rich and cultivated. In that capital he spoke to the world. Under such influences, he as naturally arrived at being great as before he had been pleasing. So we find him at the Palazzo della Cancelleria, the Palazzo Giraud, and finally in the whole scheme of the Vatican courts and the church of St. Peter. His early training enabled him to add some thing of the variety and force and charm of northern and mediaeval work to the majesty of ancient building. To him it was given not only to see, but to found, one school in the freshness of the Early Renaissance in North Italy, and another in its zenith in Rome. Although, as we have said, the Renaissance of architecture took its rise in the Florence of Brunelleschi and Alberti, and was nur- tured in Milan by Bramante, most of its great masters sooner or later were attracted to the Eternal City. Peruzzi there added to the elegance of Bramante a richness and sumptuousness that the latter never permitted to himself. His work marks the high- est standard of the Early Renaissance. Almost directly after his day the sway of Michael Angelo began. Much of his architecture is certainly careless and un- finished; such, for instance, as that which we see at the Medici tombs, or as his meaningless staircase at the Laurentian Library. We cannot, however, forget that he designed the mighty cornice of the Farnese Palace, and that his hand "rounded Peter's The Italian Renaissance 25 dome." But his example had the strongest and most lasting influence through his use of the great orders. Many of us may regret that the Early Renaissance was turned aside into other paths before it had attained complete results. Most of us find delight in the fanciful and poetic phase of its history, when to the love of antique form were joined the consummate skill and graceful fancy which covered pilaster and panel, capital and architrave, church stall and marriage chest, with leaf, tendril, and flower, and a multitudinous world of real and imaginary ani- mal forms. All these and the color that enlivened them passed away with the earlier school, but the close study of the orders which succeeded to it, and the rigid dependence upon them of the artists of the Late Renaissance, had its peculiar merit. It was certainly architecture pure and simple, depending in no way on other allied arts. Its effects were due wholly to propor- tion, harmony, and a nice study of architectural detail. In the hands of these masters such qualities were not arrived at by means as mechanical as Mr. Ruskin would have us think. The masters of the Renaissance never agreed among themselves on the proportion proper for an order. The ancients used every variety of proportion. In fact, good classic design with the orders requires even now individual judgment and offers liberty but not license. And so let us, not heeding Mr. Ruskin, reckon Scamozzi and Sansovino and Palladio and the other masters of the later Renaissance not as mechanical imitators but as great artists. As the Renaissance was in its origin a modern movement, so it has remained the foundation for modern art. It quickly estab- 26 An Archite&s Sketch Book lished a type for modern palatial architecture in the frowning strength of the Florentine palaces and in the dignity and elegance of those of Rome, while the later palaces of Venice, if somewhat vulgar in detail, are still models for modern palatial work. In church architecture, however, the Early Renaissance never reached a final or consummate result. At the very outset Brunel- leschi gave an elegant classic dress to the ancient Gothic forms, but the most enthusiastic could scarcely claim that he surpassed the mediaeval solution of the same problem. Perhaps he intended to have color adorn those rather chilly interiors; and, set off by gold and fresco, their elegant detail would have given richer results. During the entire Renaissance period the favorite scheme for a church was a domed building with short projecting arms. There are many dainty examples of this idea around Milan worked out under the influence of Bramante. Indeed, such was Bramante's design for St. Peter's; but one architect after another changed and marred the design of that mighty building. Now we can only guess what might have been the perfected result of Renaissance church building. Our party are all familiar with Rome, but we spend one won- derful Easter Day there. As we traverse its streets, the whole history of the Renaissance architecture we have been studying is passed in review. Here stand before us not only the highest results of that art, which, as we have seen, came to Rome from Florence and Milan, but also the ancient classic models which had inspired both Florentine and Milanese. It is a wonderful experi- ence. True, it is not the Rome best known to the oldest of our The Italian Renaissance 27 party; the Rome of the Great Council, when the streets were full of the state coaches of dignitaries; when St. Peter's was bril- liant with processions; when the Pope, borne aloft beneath the ostrich plumes, was followed by gray-bearded patriarchs and red- robed cardinals, by archbishops and bishops beyond numbering; when Papal Zouaves made the streets and cafes bright, and the Ghetto's narrow lanes swarmed with picturesque contadini; when the Tiber flowed between marshy banks, and death lay in wait for the "forestieri" who dared to breathe its pestilential miasma at sunset. Modern improvements have despoiled the city of its picturesque charm, but our duty to humanity compels us to look upon the walled river-banks, the wide streets, and the destruction of dirt and filth, if with regret, yet with a certain approval. In crossing the city, our road lies by the great temples and the forums. Accustomed as we are to line-engravings of the orders, and to hearing ancient Roman architecture described as mechani- cal and inartistic by writers like Mr. Fergusson, it is invigorating to get a fresh look at the real thing, as we do in the Forum. Where can one find a richer, better carved, or more exuberant decoration of any period than that on the remains of such a building as the Temple of Concord? The freedom and juiciness of the Early Renaissance work is only an echo from the work of Classic days. One appreciates in Rome that it is often hard to distinguish be- tween carvings of the two periods. But our drive extends beyond the Forum, and at last we enter the mighty Coliseum. How humble and minute we feel before the tremendous mass of that immense structure! How small and 28 An Architect's Sketch Book insignificant seems the work that engrosses us moderns! One irreverent thought alone upholds us. It is a comfort to see that the giants who built it were unable to roof it. A paltry patch of velarium to keep the sun from the Emperor's eyes, a sad trouble in a gale, was the nearest they could come to our spider-web, wide-spanned roofs. Later, and in humble mood, we continue back by the Forum and the Temples and the Palaces of the Caesars to the neighbor- hood of the Renaissance palaces. We pay homage to Bramante at the Cancelleria and the Giraud, to Peruzzi at the Massimi, to Sangallo and Michael Angelo at the overpowering Palazzo Far- nese. The sun shines brightly as we reach the piazza before St. Peter's Church. The fountains on each side of the obelisk flash gayly. Men are ringing Easter peals with tremendous clangor on the tower bells as we join the crowds moving up to the doors. All this fairly intoxicates us. We have been living in Florence with such austere companions as Brunelleschi and Alberti and San- gallo, and have enjoyed a little lighter refreshment amid the pic- turesqueness of Siena and San Gemignano. What a contrast it is when we pass through St. Peter's door, and there bursts on our view the sumptuous beauty of those gold-and-white ceilings, the crowded nave, the piers decked with red hangings, the great choir singing the service, and the cardinal standing at the lighted altar. The breath catches ! Mr. Fergusson says that the great pilasters are unmeaning, offensive, useless, that the window details are in the worst and most obtrusive taste. Perhaps these or other fla- grant defects exist, but our little party is satisfied to ignore them The Italian Renaissance 29 as we sit in a row on the base mouldings of those very pilasters, feeling modest and small, and thankful to be there. The cleverness of modern writers has not yet made the study of the English of Shakespeare, of Milton, and of the Bible useless to one who would arrive at excellence in literary style. The modern architect, for the same reasons, studies the works of those who were not only the masters of modern architecture but its very inventors. Our pilgrimage among their buildings is now a memory, but we shall not forget the daintiness of the Roman villas or the grace and ornate beauty of the Roman palaces. We have learned respect for those who built the church of St. Peter and the Palazzo Farnese; and we have seen, too, with our own eyes, how closely they were the descendants and the rightful heirs of those earlier giants who covered the Campus Martius with temple and portico and circus, and adorned the Palatine with palaces; who built the forums, and vaulted the baths, and domed the Pantheon, and who raised on its mighty arches the mass of the Flavian Amphitheatre. Rural England Ill RURAL ENGLAND 1882 SMART trap met us at the little station. Soon we were ii bowling along over hard roads, by field and farm, by vil- lage inn and moss-grown country house and flowering hedges; for it was the month of May, and our driving-journey through an English countryside was just beginning. Although we were two architects traveling with sketch book and camera, and in spite of all that art and human life have done in England to interest just such travelers, it was nature and her handiwork that first claimed our notice and our intense enthu- siasm. Coming from a land which the summer sun dries and scorches, we were charmed by this humid, changing landscape. The ever-varying skies were now bright with sunshine, now filled with threatening clouds. Again they broke in drenching showers that called forth mackintoshes and rubbers, and then again were serene and fair. The roadside turf was filled with daisies, the hedgerow sweet with hawthorn and later with wild rose and honeysuckle. The fields showed green with crops, blood red with poppies or glowing with clover. "Not a grand nature . . . . . . All the fields Are tied up fast with hedges, nosegay like; The hills are crumpled plains — the plains parterres, . . . 34 An Architect's Sketch Book And if you seek for any wilderness You find, at best, a park. A nature tamed And grown domestic . . . A sweet familiar nature, stealing in As a dog might, or child, to touch your hand, Or pluck your gown, and humbly mind you so Of presence and affection." Everywhere, too, were evidences of an open-air life. Our first days were passed in a hunting-country. Each wind vane was a fox, and one side of all the main roads was finished with a soft surface for horsemen. Here and there were the brick kennels for the hunting-packs, and at Taporley the inn has served the hunt dinner for the last one hundred years. We found Chester in the midst of a horse fair. Hundreds of horses paraded the streets with colored tapes and wisps of straw skillfully woven in their tails and manes. The whole scene recalled Rosa Bonheur's familiar picture. At Alcester, where we stopped for lunch, it was market day. The inn was full of farmers, most of whom had come in the saddle on their stout cobs to the sale of sheep and pigs. While their masters stowed away beef and ale in the inn, the nags crunched their corn in the cobble-paved and brick-walled stables. The boys played cricket on the commons, and twice we came on great bowling-greens, where, in the long twilights, the villagers were playing at bowls and making wonderful twisting shots across a perfectly level circle of turf perhaps two hundred feet in dia- meter. Every cottage seemed to have a cared-for garden in which old-fashioned flowers flourished. The hedges were trimmed and cut into fanciful figures of bird and beast and, at the larger Rural England 35 places, the lawn, the garden, and the trees received the same care as the house itself. But if nature and the Englishman's love of it impressed us beyond anything in our journey, the great contrasts of wealth and poverty, of vast parks and huddled towns, of grand mansions and damp cottages were nearly as noticeable. Rarely in England are people more closely crowded together than in the back and squalid parts of Chester; and then, just across the river, you pass through miles of beautiful park lands, where the pheasants and rabbits of the Duke of Westminster seem better off than many of his fellow citizens in the adjoining town. Near Wrexham we drove by the high walls of Wynstay Park, the home of a well- known Welshman. Here again a beautiful piece of country, shaded by great trees, is inhabited only by deer and wild crea- tures; but close to this paradise is the crowded and ugly brick- making town of Ruabon. Thus, throughout the country, large tracts of fertile lands where scattered houses are infrequent alter- nate with crowded and huddled towns. A poor man can have no land on which to keep a cow; an old woman tells us how her dis- couraged neighbors have emigrated; no laborer is permitted to disfigure the landscape with a new home of his own; and such evidences that England is no place for a poor man are abundant. With the Great West and Australia, Canada and South Africa, holding out great prizes to the energetic poor, one wonders that any such remain in a country where the chance of betterment is so very small. It is, however, resting and quieting, to us whose lot is cast in a 36 An Architedt" s Sketch Book land of progress and change, to find the shopkeeper or the farmer having no apparent wish or ambition to change his lot. Such a condition is natural, no doubt, to a society that has been gov- erned by the few, and in which even the Church has instilled in each man the duty of being contented in that position to which God has called him. To the nervous American it offers a new view of life, and a calm and peaceful one, in spite of the thought that the gain of the few is the loss of the many. When we forget the poor man and his surroundings, there is little left in England that is not beautiful. " Long and low" are words that best describe the elements of English building design. The long, low walls of the cathedrals offer striking contrasts to the masses of masonry that tower above such towns as Beauvais and Amiens. The minute entrances at Wells have little rela- tionship with the gorgeous portals of the great French churches. Castles like Penshurst, Stokesay, and even Warwick have the same English qualities, and you look in vain among them for the snap and dash and fire of the French chateaux, such as Pierre- fonds or Falaise or Azay-le-Rideau, with their conical towers and many-vaned spirelets. In the same way, also, the cottages which throughout England blend so softly and so picturesquely with the peaceful landscape have widespread homelike roofs, and lie so close to the ground that you step down into most of them. Naturally these houses, large and small, were a subject of great interest to us, and we soon noticed with surprise how natural barriers, like a great hill, had once caused local diversity in building, — a diversity largely continued after railroads had Rural England 37 made it unnecessary. Through Cheshire, timber-and-plaster farmhouses alternated with brick buildings. On leaving Shrews- bury you cross a lofty hill and come down into the rough stone village of Much Wenlock. Then the crossing of another ridge brings you, at Chipping Norton and Woodstock, into towns with house fronts of cut stone like those in France. That such an obstacle as a large hill should make this serious variation in such a small region astonished us. All along our route lay castles, once the defenders of the Welsh Marches, — from the big castles at Ludlow and Shrewsbury to the little one at Stokesay. The latter lay in a fertile valley and an ancient timber-and-plaster gatehouse gave access to it through a wall inclosing church and castle. The church had the ordinary square tower with mast and vane. Within was an old Jacobean gallery and pulpit, and a squire's pew where the high wainscoted walls were open only at an arcade surrounding the top. A wooden ceiling covered in the whole pew. In such a structure the squire could sleep soundly through the sermon and not even the parson would know it. The castle itself had a fine keep, or tower, and a roof of large mossgrown stone slabs. Its great guest hall was warmed by a central hearth, from which the smoke curled up to the open timber roof. A staircase of solid oak blocks led above, and in some of the rooms were remains of richly carved mantels. Ightham Mote, in Kent, another mansion nearly as old and also possessing a grand central hall, is surrounded by a moat filled with water and is entered by a bridge. The courtyard within is hemmed in by gray stone walls and plaster gables. 38 An Architect's Sketch Book When the need had passed of such moats and towers and of halls for retainers there came into vogue the great mansions which we see illustrated in Richardson's and Nash's books, some of brick and some of "post and pan," as the black oak and white plaster work is called. Grim wall surfaces gave way to long ranges of mullioned windows, but the widespread and scattered group of buildings without striking "motifs" still kept the national long- and-low look. We saw many such mansions, and noticed the cheery sparkle that the white plaster work gave to a green land- scape, and the mellowness of an old brick wall set in great trees. Again, the tile roofs, or the yet more beautiful roofs of great stone slabs, assume in the wet atmosphere such varied hues, such blot- ted-in and run-together tones, as nature never lends to art in this bright clear land of ours. Our roofs never gain the mossy cover- ing that lends the great charm to an English tile roof. It is so valued in England that we heard of one zealous housebuilder who had given his new walls and roofs a coat of flour paste and the next day he had a many-colored growth of mould on his tiles. In the Elizabethan and Jacobean interiors there is much high oak wainscoting on the walls, often continuing even to the ceiling itself. The ceilings are covered with elaborate plaster work in strap or rib patterns or in modeled subjects. Even in its early days the oak was probably very dark, and the plaster work, as now, either white or washed in some creamy tint. Though such a contrast of black and white sounds raw, yet, with surroundings in harmony, — the great stone fireplace, the hangings of tapestry or other coarse fabrics, and the lattice-paned sashes, — these rooms if Rural England 39 are the most homelike and delightful in the world. They are the rooms that we all love as Nash illustrated them. They possess a quiet charm to which modern decorative art seldom attains. It is not alone the grand mansions that are suggestive. The small country and village houses are full of interest for the pass- er-by. But in entering them there is nearly always a step down to a brick or tile floor laid on the earth. For picturesque attrac- tion little can surpass the great buttressed chimney that serves both the ingle-nook and the brick boiler in which ale is brewed and the clothes are boiled. Lattice-panes fill the windows, and odd-shaped dressers are decked with bright tins and crockery. Whether because the climate favors flowers or because the people are fond of them, every cottage has its neat garden. We should do well to catch and imitate all this homelike air if we can, but not live in these damp and stuffy houses. For dryness and cleanliness and as healthy homes they certainly cannot stand comparison with our ugly Yankee cheap wooden cottages. The towns and villages are full of alehouses; cozy little places, with swinging signs of the Blue Bell, the Ship, the Mitre. Each has a snug bar and an inner kitchen, where sides of bacon hang on the ceiling beams; where the walls are lined with high -back settles, and where bootjacks and tankards and pewter dishes sug- gest possible comfort and cheer. As we sat hastily sketching such a room, one of the two or three old gaffers watching us asked if we were detectives; because, as he said, we seemed to be " taking it all down." Another day brought us better luck, and our well- appointed trap surprised a zealous village shopgirl, who was sup- 40 An Archite&'s Sketch Book plying us with photographs, into saying, with a blush, "Is not this Sir Charles ?" — a noble being, as we learned at the next village, who was then expected at his home near by. But of all buildings that the English countryside offers for our admiration nothing can equal the village church. We certainly never realized how generally it is to be found in the English vil- lages; rich and stately, and with history built into it; with ancient monuments on its walls, and old glass and stone tracery in its windows. The houses of the living closely nestle around it and the dead sleep in its shadow. In the hill country sturdy towers rise from the gray walls of these ancient temples, and lofty spires soar high from those on the fens and the plains. At Wrexham we climbed up into the richly decorated tower, and found the great chime of bells arranged for striking by means of hand levers, or for ringing peals by long stirrups, a man to each bell. On the walls were painted and gilded tablets, recording how, on such a date, such a party of ringers had rung so many changes in such a time, duly attested by the clerk. Most of these churches are reached by a path among the graves in the church-yard, and that in turn is often surrounded by a wall and entered through a picturesque lych gate. Nearly always the ground level is well above the church floor, suggestive of the ages through which it has received the village dead. Generally the church-yard is neatly cared for, and children play among the old stones and call to one another with the voices that in both women and children we so often notice as musical and sweet. We shall long remember our Sunday in Ludlow. The closely Rural England 41 peopled hill on which the town stands is flanked by a great Edwardian castle and crowned by the high tower of the church. Early in the morning we were wakened by the chimes that, ring- ing merrily at that lofty height, made a rippling melody audible far up the river valley. We breakfasted in the Jacobean coffee- room, and then the town seemed with one accord to go to service. The mayor and council met at the market-house in their robes of office, and, with the mace carried before them by the clerk, walked to church and sat together in the state seats. The pretty maid who had served our breakfast hastened away after them, and so did the landlord. So also did the dissenting anglers with whom we had breakfasted; and so in turn we wanderers from remote shores followed them and the rest of the town. The little surpliced choir-boys threw their youthful spirits into the chants, and their voices rang most cheerily in the stone vaults of the tower. The large congregation took up their part of the service as if they had as much to do with it as the clergyman. It seemed as if such surroundings would arouse the dullest preacher, but ours was probably more inured to the influences of the old church than we were. In spite, however, of his dogmatic plati- tudes, it was most certainly divine worship that we joined in on that Sunday morning. We were glad we had not discovered dis- senting chapels or meeting-houses. As far as we knew, we wor- shipped with all the town folk and at the only church. Though we had often heard that Chumley as a family name was spelt " Cholmondeley," we never expected to be bearers of a letter with that odd address. We hated to part with it at the 42 An Archite&t's Sketch Book great gate of a country-seat which may stand as the type of the remembrances which our journey left with us. From the lodge a sweeping avenue drove up to the fore court of a grand symmetri- cal stone house of the Elizabethan period, with great ranges of mullioned windows, and terraced walls and balustrades of a semi- Italian character. Towards this entrance side of the house all the halls and corridors opened; and on the other or lawn side were ranges of rooms opening by mullioned windows to stone terraces and to a view over a widespread lawn. The lofty rooms had stone fireplaces, and paneled wainscots, and modeled ceilings, some- what too much "done up" in modern times, perhaps, but still in good historical character. In the upper stories, besides the family apartments, were long ranges of visitors' bedrooms, with a little holder on each door for the occupant's card. After we had stud- ied the interior of the mansion, and had disposed of the grand lady who, as housekeeper, did us the honors, but who was not above receiving the Queen's money, we found our way through the intervening hedge, and were in the adjoining church-yard, with the old graves and the crosses and the sundial. This church, like most of those we saw, was of a late Gothic period. Within it were many family monuments; here a statue of a British officer on his knees holding aloft the hilt of his sword as a cross; there a recumbent alabaster statue of a lovely young wife. The church is backed by heavy dark trees; beyond the church-yard gate are the sparkling white gables of an old oak-and-plaster house, and over the moss-grown cottage roof proudly stalked a peacock with tail wide spread. Rural England 43 An ancestral mansion with stately rooms and lawns and ter- races and gardens; a cozy farmhouse embowered in trees, with the peacock sunning himself on the roof; an ancient village church; a peaceful yew-shaded churchyard; the tombs of rich and poor for generations; the sundial that had cast its shadow so many quiet centuries; the rich, pleasant voices of the few passing villagers, — such are the peaceful memories of our holiday in England. French and English Churches IV FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHURCHES 1892 LTHOUGH the mediaeval churches of France and Eng- il. land were built by men of the same faith and for the same Catholic ritual; although England was long under a French domination and a large part of France was for one or two hun- dred years occupied by and ruled over by Englishmen; yet, be- cause national traits always assert themselves, English and French churches differ as much as if an ocean parted them instead of the narrow waters of the English Channel. On the one side we find both cathedral and parish church modest, long, low, and pic- turesque, and on the other side they are self-asserting, aspiring, stately, and majestic. The English buildings are set amid the green of cathedral close or village churchyard and blend with a rural landscape. Those of France are of a grander type and rise from stone-paved streets and from amid the burghers' houses. In fact the building of the cathedrals of France was an expression not only of religious feeling but also of the struggle for civil liberty. It was thus that the king, the bishop, and the people of France asserted themselves against the power of monk and abbot. City vied with city in France in raising each a more glorious shrine than the other. But no such civil ambitions gave birth to the English churches. The Englishman's one thought seems to have been to make his temples beautiful. Perhaps we can thus in part 48 An ArchitedVs Sketch Booh explain why the distinguishing and precious qualities of English work are found in quiet beauty and picturesque composition, and why the French buildings join consummate constructive skill to majestic, ambitious, and brilliant work in the arts of design. From a distance we see the towers and lanterns of Wells rise above rounded masses of green foliage. When we reach its walls we find them springing from emerald lawns and embowered in trees, the home of cawing rooks and soaring pigeons. There is nothing in France like the picturesque grouping of these English buildings, or their setting of close and cloister, of garden and clipped green lawn and ancient trees. The Frenchman never formed such harmonious features of church and scenery. Here at Wells the three time-worn towers rise high above us and group nobly with the chapter house and its quaint approaches, with the great octagon of the Lady Chapel, and w T ith the backing of tall trees. Above the peace of the bishop's garden and terrace and the ivy-clad palace from hour to hour the chimes vibrate and die away: — "Lord, through this hour Be thou our guide, That by thy power No foot may slide." What an abode is this of the bishop's! It is the finest example of a thirteenth-century house existing in England. Indeed it seems a lordly habitation for a priest of One who had not where to lay his head. With the New England minister, who saw his more favored brother's fields and farm and cattle and books, we ex- claim, "All this, and heaven too!" French and English Churches 49 The decency and order which bring to such perfection the lawns and paths and trees of the close prevail also within the church. We are shown by the verger through aisle and chapel peopled only by the effigies of those who lie below, and we feel troubled that a building raised as a house of prayer should be treated so nearly as a museum of mediaeval art. Where are the people of the town, its rich, its poor, the thankful, the unhappy? Have the great multitude no part in this vast temple that was built that they might worship in it? We think of the West- minster verger who roughly disturbed the devout Catholic as he knelt to pray, saying, "Hif this sort hof thing goes hon, we shall soon 'ave people praying hall hover the habbey." However, there comes an hour when verger and visitor cease their rounds. At first, as we but dimly catch in the distant hum of priestly voice sonorous Old Testament sentences or familiar words from the Gospels, we feel how vain is the attempt to gratify in these vast and echoing buildings a Protestant interest in sermon and book. But as the fading sunlight shines through the western window and casts its color alike on the few living worshipers and on tomb and boss and gray stone wall, the organ notes, "wandering and lingering on as loath to die," pulsate through the stony fabric, and — "through the long-drawn aisle and echoing vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise." The great solemn place is filled with the sweetness of boyish voices. We heartily join in the long, tuneful "Amen" as it rings down the empty nave and echoes back again from distant vault 50 An ArchitedP s Sketch Book and chapel. Under these influences we see anew the beauty around us, and feel that if the Englishman was not the engineer, the sculptor, or in many ways the ambitious designer we find in the Frenchman, he surely felt to the utmost the "beauty of holiness," and imprisoned it in pier and vault and tomb and glass, in carved front and graceful spire. Let us now turn from the gentle and pastoral beauty of the English cathedral and gain a closer view of a French church. From a distance we see it, lofty and majestic, overtopping the steep-roofed town. Its traceried windows are so huge that the masonry between them seems too slight to carry the ceiling vaults. It is, however, steadied by countless flying buttresses which cross the low aisles in giant leaps and carry the thrust of the stone ceilings to those high-pinnacled piers which stand in ordered ranks about the building. At the east end these splendid scaf- foldings radiate around the circular apsis and span its chapels. Far above them, over the crossing of nave and transept, rises the lofty fleche, enriched with pinnacles and statues, its silver- white lead work brightened by faded color and gold. The bishop's palace is hard by, a dignified but ascetic-looking abode, and the dwellings of the old town climb upon and cling to the sides of the church. There is no green lawn, no quiet close, no cozy dwelling for the priests joined to this great serious structure, but from the stone-paved place, where white-capped bonnes and red-trousered soldiers gossip and chatter, broad steps lead to the platform before the three cavernous portals of the cathedral. How gloriously peopled are these triumphal arches! The French and English Churches 51 naive sculptors have crowded the stonework with representa- tions of the virtues, the signs of the zodiac, the handicrafts, and the employments of the seasons. Here we find Adam and Eve, the wise and foolish virgins, the Magi, the Apostles, and in the centre is portrayed the Last Judgment and Christ bearing the Gospel. Above all this, ranks of angels and seraphim fill the retreating arches and seem to join in the Te Deum and sing, " To thee all angels cry aloud; The heavens and all the powers therein." At every door these celestial choirs meet over your head as you enter the church. Above the crocketed gables and pinnacles of these porches stand the statues of Judah's kings, and over them story upon story of arcades rise around the great rose win- dow to the pointed gable, and to the tops of the two towers that long have waited for their spires. Crockets and leafage, statue and bas-relief, gargoyle and pinnacle are scattered over this fagade in sufficient abundance to furnish two or three such fronts as that of the Somersetshire cathedral. All is in key with the great doorways and the majestic scaffold of buttresses. All is masculine and confident. Everywhere you recognize technical skill and brilliant execution. There is nothing tentative or simply picturesque. It is Sunday, and the vast nave is thronged with ardent wor- shipers, bowed in solemn adoration before the mysteries of the mass. Around the entrances and in secluded aisles there is stir and movement. People come and go with utter absence of self- consciousness. The city-dressed son escorts his country-clad 52 An Architect's Sketch Book parents. Little children patter about the doorways in their clat- tering wooden shoes, and offer each other holy water with their finger-tips. The inquisitive visitor stares and chatters. The beg- gars are at the doors. The shrines are tawdry. But as, alike in village and town, French people live in the view of their neigh- bors and do not mind trifles, so these little incidents seem in no wise to affect their fulfillment of religious duties. Undisturbed they recite their prayers with that healthy, unaffected simplicity and directness which is characteristic of French provincial people. On other days than Sunday it is much the same. Just as humble dwellings cluster against the walls of these great French churches, so distinctions of poverty and wealth have no place in this meeting-ground for all classes. Riches and poverty no longer count. When in these churches it seems scarcely conceivable that irreligion is a mighty power in France or that the Roman Catho- lic Church is now passing through dark days. Certainly what- ever religious devotion the town possesses still daily and hourly centres here, and certainly the religion here upheld gets close to the common people. Life and death, hell and heaven, the last judgment, virtue and vice are portrayed in the carvings of the doorways. Interest in these themes fills these great temples daily with a devout population to-day as they did when the cathedrals were built. Of all the features that mark and identify the English church, its square eastern ending would seem to be the most universal and the most characteristic. In France the choir of a church has a circular end, and the aisle encircles that, and is roofed in conse- French and English Churches 53 quence with much involved and irregular vaulting. Beyond the aisle is the chevet or surrounding range of chapels. Throughout England, however, a church, whether small or great, has a square ending. In a few exceptional instances we find a church which seems misplaced. Westminster Abbey, with its apsidal east end and encircling eastern chapels, is built upon a French plan. Nor- wich, Peterborough, Lichfield, and Canterbury have circular endings. The choir of the latter, built by a Frenchman, recalls in its Corinthianesque shafts and capitals, as well as in other details, the cathedral in the French town of Sens, from whence its builder came to Canterbury. On the other hand, Laon is one of the few French cathedrals that have that square eastern termina- tion which is so nearly universal in England. Many may think that the simple quiet English termination should be preferred to the intricate vaulting and tangled perspective of the French chevet with its flanking chapels; but the French method is the more ambitious, involves vastly greater constructive skill, and produces by far the more magnificent effects. Nowhere are the contrasts between French and English churches more striking than in their relative proportions, and in the different relations that height bears to breadth in these struc- tures. We pass beneath a vaulted gatehouse and enter the pre- cincts of the cathedral at Wells. Before us, rich with carving and shafts and arcading, and with those many statues that are un- rivaled in similar English work, rises the western front of the great church. Great, do we say? Well, greatness is relative. This whole front at Wells is thirty-one feet wider than that at Amiens, but is 54 An Architect's Sketch Book only one half as high; and the nave at Wells is but twice as high as it is wide, though that of Amiens is three times its own width. This difference, both in actual height and in the relation of height to width, is further emphasized by the scale of subordinate details. At Wells the church is entered through three small doors that are insignificant features in the rich fagade. A man can span those opposite the aisles, and they do not rise much above his head. In France you would find, instead of these humble entrances, grand steps of approach and large triumphal arches lined with rank above rank of sculpture. In both countries next to the size and proportions of the gen- eral mass of the church the bell tower is the most impressive exterior feature of these cathedral churches, and of the parish churches that surround them. Who shall say that those of France or England are the finer ! If you travel across Normandy, you find almost every village possessed of a stone-spired church echoing those of Bayeux and of Lisieux or of Saint-Etienne at Caen. But in Northamptonshire it is the same. Every village there is as rich, and, if you substitute towers for spires, it is the same in Somer- setshire. In France they are stately and severe; in England they charm. The same characteristics apply to those cases where in both countries ambition prompted a central lantern or a group of towers or spires. The Frenchman who built his churches to majestic heights also laid foundations for and sometimes built im- posing towers and spires. The dignity and seriousness of the south spire at Chartres, or of those at Saint-Etienne at Caen, or the spire at Vendome are hardly to be found in England. At Coutances and / French and English Churches 55 Bayeux and Caen, and at the church of Saint-Ouen in Rouen, we find a great central lantern besides the western spires. At Rouen and Bordeaux and Laon and Chartres construction was well ad- vanced for towers not only at the west end but at both transepts. These great preparations for a group of towers rarely reached in France a final result. The Englishmen, however, either be- cause what they aimed at was not beyond reach, or because they truly prized a graceful and beautiful composition, did often carry to completion their clusters of spires and towers. Some of the spires, such as those of Lincoln, have now fallen, but France can hardly offer a central one to vie with those of Salisbury or Nor- wich, or such a group of three spires as those at Lichfield, or of spireless towers such as those at Lincoln or Canterbury or Wells. The shafts, the mouldings, the carving, and the vaulting that one finds in the two countries present the same contrasts. At first the mediaeval Frenchman was satisfied with simple cylindrical shafts between aisle and nave; with square-topped capitals mod- eled on classical and Corinthian forms; with arches and vault ribs adorned only with a large roll on the arrises; and with carving of a Byzantine character. This all gave a stately columnar design, but did not emphasize the majestic heights that as time went on were so much prized. In visiting French cathedrals one is to-day constantly wondering whether the early Corinthianesque work to be seen in Notre Dame at Paris and at Sens is more or less noble than later work, such as the naves of Amiens and Bourges and Tours, where the column gave way to the lofty clustered Gothic pier and where carving yielded to a closer imitation of natural 56 An Architect's Sketch Book forms. At the same time that you admire the dignity and no- bility of the massive colonnades and sculptured capitals of Paris and Sens, you miss the aspiring vertical lines of the lofty piers of Amiens and Beauvais and Tours. But that recasting of classic or Romanesque forms which pro- duced such fine results in France never prevailed in England. There the simple shaft for the great piers that separate nave and aisle was discarded when the round-arched Norman style was superseded. The Gothic clustered shaft, less noble, perhaps, but more intricate and more aspiring, was the constant English form. As the chisel displaced the axe in the shaping of stone, England grew incomparably rich in mouldings. They appear in broad masses on arch and vault rib, on label and jamb, depending sometimes on the light and shadow in their carefully arranged waves and hollows and fillets, and sometimes on the foliation or tooth ornament interspersed among the mouldings. English- men became so expert with mouldings that in Early English work even the caps and bases are round and formed wholly of moulded annular work — a fashion entirely English and never adopted in France. Even on such an important cathedral as Salisbury, sculpture is almost wholly absent and mouldings on arch, base, and capital form the main enrichment. But at other periods English Gothic carved foliage, without exactly copying nature, is full of its energy, elegance, and vigor, and in its grace- ful curves and masses portrays all the elements of plant life. In figure sculpture England never made any approach to the almost classic figures of Chartres and Amiens; but English foliage was, if French and English Churches 51 not so noble and stately in conventional beauty as the French, at least more free and tender and flowing. Finally also, the building of vaulted ceilings as practiced by the French was, except where the exigencies of the chevet compli- cated it, as simple as the mouldings of the arches that inclosed it. But in England a scheme of vault ribs, at first simple, was by degrees enriched by subdividing ribs. The intersections of these ribs were decorated with carved bosses, and the vault surfaces were covered with fanlike tracery, until these English ceilings became an important and splendid part of the decorative and constructive scheme. The close study of these Gothic churches in either country is of surprisingly recent date. Not long since men thought them barbarous, uncouth, and not worthy of serious study. Indeed, whitewash and lack of care wrought more destruction than Puri- tan and Roundhead, or than Time itself. Sir Walter Scott was among the earliest to praise the Gothic minster. His idea was that the lines of these lofty arches were modeled upon forest forms. "Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand In many a freakish knot had twined, Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed the willow wreaths to stone." By later writers the origin of Gothic art is found by one in natural forms; by another, in an appreciation for the aspiring forms of the pointed arch introduced by crusaders, who had be- come familiar with it in Sicily and the East; and by yet another 58 An Archite&t's Sketch Book in a development from Roman art. Sir Gilbert Scott and M. Viollet-le-Duc attributed the origin and introduction of Gothic to structural necessities, to the difficulty of vaulting irregular spaces, and to facility of construction. Recently, Professor Moore, in his scholarly book, has thrown new and clear light on this sub- ject. He admits that all these influences may have been at work in the development of Gothic building. He agrees with M. Viollet- le-Duc that its actual origin was in France, and that it was due to constructive needs. He points out that in the English church the clerestory windows rarely occupy the entire space from pier to pier; that the flying buttresses are there neither essential nor very frequent; that the vaults are largely supported by thick walls and shallow buttresses, and often spring from a wall instead of from strongly marked piers. He finds such a church merely the earlier Romanesque structure with pointed arch details, and not the same complete organism as the great French fabric. For in that the slender piers that carry the vaults are firmly marked inside and outside; also the entire space between the piers is occu- pied by a traceried window; and the thrust of the vault ribs is carried in a visible manner by the flying buttress from the wall piers over aisle and chapel to the great outer buttress, which in turn is loaded to security by the lofty mass of the pinnacle. He thinks that this brilliantly conceived framework of pier and vault, of buttress and pinnacle, contained the most essential spirit of Gothic art; and that in France alone do we find the whole structure of a cathedral one fully organized and visible framework which the wealth of applied ornament only serves to emphasize. French and English Churches 59 In by far the larger part of the English churches the detail one now sees is late and of the perpendicular period. Though the Early English and decorated periods had national peculiarities, they were cousins of similar work across the Channel. But Per- pendicular Gothic was a distinctly English growth, and in the hands of great artists like William of Wykham it became the most stately period of English Gothic architecture. What was lost by the substitution of mechanical and geometric detail for naturalis- tic carving was more than made up for by noble proportions and balanced symmetry. What the Perpendicular style lost in poetry and imagination it gained in formality and stateliness. There is something almost classic in the regular repetitions and the grand and simple proportions of Winchester's nave or in the great chapels at Windsor and at Christ Church, Oxford, or in the chapel of Henry the Seventh at Westminster. On the other hand, in the later work of France fantasy was given free rein and her later Gothic buildings were clothed with an exuberant abundance of intricate flamboyant detail. This French flamboyant work was a beautiful product, whether it ap- pears in the flowing bars of window tracery and the flaming rays of the great roses, whether it covers with its dainty tabernacle work the deep recesses of porches, or whether it rises in stone pinnacle or oak canopy to a forest network of buttress and crocket and finial that rivals the intricacies of woodland branches. You see that the work of the thirteenth century better satisfies reason, but still your eyes delight in this fairylike construction and these fanciful creations. If you try to sketch this work, you respect 60 An Architect's Sketch Book still more the poetic genius that invented it and the art that car- ried it to perfection. Before the lacelike portals of Saint-Maclou and the intricate convolutions of the "crown of Normandy' ' or the wonderful gables of the Courts of Justice in Rouen, you recog- nize that the farthest bound has been reached, — that the end has come. But only a philosopher could bring himself to say that Gothic architecture thus met its fate in a sad decline. The artist feels rather that in its latest hours, when its work was done, it yielded itself wholly to romantic fancy; that, with a fairy touch, it spent itself upon flaring crocket and interwoven moulding, upon tangled snarls of miniature buttress and complicated pin- nacle, upon a sylvan growth of window tracery and panel work; and that in this brilliant, fiery burst of flaming beauty the end of mediaeval architecture was indeed glorious. The Five Orders of Architecture THE FIVE ORDERS OF ARCHITECTURE 1905 LAYMAN must be puzzled when writers present 4 'the A. X orders "as the fundamental elements of good architecture. He must wonder by what accidents or for what reason these very conventional arrangements of ornamental design are accepted as of such authority. Textbooks rarely give any answer to such questions. They lay before their readers little but the details and the appellations of the various parts of the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite orders. They scarcely explain that "the orders" are but the orderly arrangement of the elements of classic architec- tural design. Yet the orders have a history and a meaning, and if these con- ventional forms are far less flexible than the average American builder confidently but ignorantly believes, they are far more so than many books would give one to suppose. The American peo- ple knew a good deal about the orders a hundred and fifty years ago, and even through that period in the last century when the temples of Athens were the models for houses and public build- ings throughout America. Thereafter they remained forgotten until the Chicago Exhibition introduced them again to a public thirsty for architectural display. Now there is a crying need for 64 An ArchiteSl's Sketch Book restraint or discipline in their use. What, then, are these com- binations of architectural forms called the orders? The most primitive building involves the placing of two posts in position and the spanning of the intervening space with a lin- tel. It is but a slight step beyond this to imagine an Egyptian easing the harsh angle of post and lintel by binding the spray of the lotus around the top of the post, or the Ionians as finishing the same point of junction with curled volutes, perhaps to imitate shavings or choppings from the wooden post itself, or simply because they found the form agreeable. The story may be true that Callimachus observed how a basket of toys, left at the grave of a child and covered by a tile, had become overgrown by the leaves of the wild acanthus, and that, turning this incident to ar- tistic account, he carved the first Corinthian capital. To such incidents has the origin of the different capitals been attributed, though possibly no other cause need be sought for them than the innate love that man has for grace and beauty. It was an obvi- ous and natural thing to decorate in these ways the simple post and beam construction. But why do the 6 6 orders " persist? What have we in America to do with them? Why is not some new and original decoration more suited to us and our ways? Well, what new and original decora- tion? Why use meter in poetry? Hexameters have been in use for ages. Is not the sonnet form too worn a framework to support new ideas? Why not use some new methods of expression? Of course no reason exists why you may not do this if you can find new methods, but your search is likely to be fruitless. In the same The Five Orders of Architecture 65 way, so long as building remains fundamentally the placing of a lintel on two supports, all the old reasons from which the orders sprang remain in force. The study that was given them by Greeks and Romans and by the great artists of the Renaissance has only added to their authority and made them almost indis- pensable as a means of expression. They pervade modern building even when no colonnade is visible. The wall of the room in which you sit has a base and a wide wall space and a cornice. Columns and pilasters may be present or may be lacking, but the wall represents them. The base, the wall, and the cornice may be elaborated to a greater or less degree, but the parts are those of an order. The doorways too have an architrave around them which represents the lower part of a door cornice. In its com- plete state this door finish would also have a frieze and cornice. The old-fashioned, dignified rooms that we like owe their good qualities to a study of proportions that imply a recognition of these facts. To-day our minds are often distracted from these main essentials by the thousand petty details and complications that modern life suggest. Still, when we build a twenty-four story office building the best arrangement yet discovered is to divide its vast height into a base of two or three stories, with a lofty plain shaft of many repeated stories over it, the whole being surmounted by a frieze and cornice. This is a division much like that of an order. It is for such reasons that the orders have, for good or bad, come to form the basis of most modern archi- tectural design. Painters tell the student to draw the human figure, and it is 66 An Archite&t's Sketch Book almost an axiom that if he can draw the figure he can draw anything well. It is on somewhat the same principle that the youthful architect is set to master the orders. The painter learns to portray rugged age and stern simplicity. The architect learns the details of the Tuscan and Doric orders. Womanly beauty and the beauties of the Ionic order have some common attributes, and what perfect manhood is to the painter, that Corinthian and Composite details represent to the architect. It is true that in some very good architecture it is hard to find the influence of the orders. In like manner it may be said that one can write poetry without any very apparent regard for the usual poetical meters. Walt Whitman and Bret Harte have done it, and so perhaps has Kipling. Also, one can paint great pictures with- out being a perfect delineator of the human figure. Turner and Constable and many a landscape painter have done that. Hence among architects there are those who resent or decry the study of the orders. Some do this because they seek something new and fresh and all their own. Of such are the adherents of "L'Art Nouveau" in Paris and a not insignificant class of skillful men in America. But, happily, thus far our public ask with increasing insistence more for what is good than what is fresh or original, especially as results indicate that the nearer work of any style comes to the well-established principles that govern mass and proportion and detail, the better is the result. But besides those architects who seek originality there are others who are akin to those landscape painters who can draw landscapes without much knowledge of the figure. As some painters feel that painstak- The Five Orders of Architecture 67 ing academic drawing of the figure crushes out life and interest and that academy drawings become mechanical and pedantic, so this class of architects set most store by honesty and naivete and quaintness, and count sentiment and poetry higher than skill and knowledge and technique. They urge that these, the more roman- tic qualities, give the same pleasant results in architecture which in painting are derived from the color and joy of the fields and forest and the sea rather than from the study of a model. In short, almost the same objections are made to an extended study of the orders that are often urged against elaborate academic study of the nude. Men of this way of thinking, whether painters or architects, may produce delightful work. Not unnaturally their kinship is with mediaeval artists, for it is true that there was during the Middle Ages little recognition of the classic orders, however much the eternal principles that underlie them influenced monk and artisan. The builders of the old stone houses of Somersetshire, of the abbeys and cathedrals of England, or of the still grander churches of France, had no knowing allegiance to the artists of Greece and Rome. Hence, then, mediaeval builders are perhaps the natural masters to a school that would drop all conventions and be guided only by utility, by the suitable and constructive use of materials, and by ornament evolved from native natural forms. At all events to such a school probably Ruskin is a prophet, and it agrees with him when he says, "If it be good work it is not a copy, nor anything done by rule, but a freshly and divinely imagined thing. Five orders! There is not a side 68 An Architect's Sketch Book chapel in any Gothic cathedral but it has fifty orders, the worst of them better than the best of the Greek ones, and all new ; and a single inventive human soul could create a thousand orders in an hour." If there is weakness in this position it lies in the fact that the human family in all ages is more bound together than at first appears, and that there is really no such absolute and distinct dividing line between the art of the Middle Ages and of other pe- riods. All art has a historical sequence, and, though the mediaeval architect perhaps did not know it, the base and shaft and capital of the French Gothic churches were evolved in natural sequence from the Corinthian orders of Rome. The introduction of the pointed arch and its logical use in vault and opening brought new elements to architecture with new ornaments, but the art of architecture then as always was a consecutive growth and subject to the same fundamental elements of design as in classical periods. Still, it must be conceded that there was little to remind one of the classic orders in buildings at the close of the Middle Ages. In the lofty moulded pillars of the perpendicular period in Eng- land or in the exuberant traceries of French flamboyant work it is difficult to trace close relationship with the colonnades of Rome. There will always be men that find the highest beauty in this period ; to whom the picturesque and the poetical will make strong appeal ; and who feel most sympathy with building design in which the influence of classic art is the least apparent. To them the orders are not as indispensable objects of study as to others. The Five Orders of Architecture 69 The same revival of learning that brought to the modern world the Greek and Roman classic authors brought also the study of classic art. Vitruvius, a Roman architect of about the time of Augustus, was the author of a treatise on architecture as prac- ticed in his day. Interpretations of his instructions and restora- tions of the buildings he described were favorite labors and pas- times for the architects of the Renaissance. Brunelleschi and Bramante were early students of the ancient work that they found in Rome. Alberti, Scamozzi, Serlio, and Vignola and many others reduced to proportional parts such a scheme for each order as they had individually composed from a study of the then ex- isting antique models and of such classical authors as wrote about architecture. That of Vignola is the most complete and the most studied ; but the orders as approved by each of these different artists and by many later ones, such as Sir William Chambers at the end of the last century, are within the reach of every architect. Mr. Ruskin says that one can "have no conception of the inani- ties and puerilities of the writers who with the help of Vitruvius reestablished its five orders, determined the proportions of each, and gave the various recipes for sublimity and beauty which have been thenceforward followed to this day." From the dogmatic way in which the authorities of the Renaissance period each stated the exact proportions that every member of every order should hold to every other it is not surprising that the orders are generally thought to be inflexible and to offer no opportunity for invention or variety. This is surely far from being the case. The 70 An Architect's Sketch Book order of Serlio differed from that of Alberti, and Palladio's pro- portions were not those of Scamozzi. If we turn to the ancients, a glance at the orders used in the Doric temples shows how very varied was that order as used by the Greeks, and how sure was its progression from the stumpy columns with wide spreading caps of the temple at Corinth to the perfect order of the Parthenon. That consummate product of Greek art had a constructive scheme of the utmost simplicity. The Athenians applied to it a prod- igality of study and refinement that brought every line and contour and ornament to a perfection of Doric beauty. The same gradual progression is true of the Ionic order as in the hands of Greeks it was evolved from the rough forms of Asia Minor to the riper beauty of the Erechtheum. Then when Rome inherited the orders and carried the Corinthian order to that fulfillment of which the Greeks had seen but the early promise, there is all the difference in the world between its calm dignity at the Pan- theon, its richness at the temples of Vespasian and Concord and Jupiter, and its glorious opulence at the Temple of the Sun. No invention and no variety ! Even precise and elegant Athens tol- erated two different Doric orders and an Ionic order in the Propylsea, and few buildings are more picturesque or irregular in arrangement than the Erechtheum. Who supposes that there was any lack of variety or invention in Imperial Rome? Truly one can but faintly conceive of the variety and splendor of the cities of Augustus or of Constantine, filled as they were with colonnades and porticos, with vaulted halls and temples and forums of which the varied and marvelous remains left to us are but indications. The Five Orders of Architecture 71 We are told that the Greek was the great artist and the Roman the great constructor. Roman carving was from the hands of Greeks, and Vitruvius in his treatise on architecture says he de- rived the greatest assistance from the writings of Grecian archi- tects upon architecture. Still the Corinthian order was never de- veloped until it came under Roman influence, and then Roman conquest spread it throughout Greece itself. It does not greatly matter whether this was done by true Romans or by Greeks under Roman influence. These great artists may have lacked the pure Athenian refinement, yet, in the presence of the mighty remains of their work which we even now find in Rome, one cannot but recognize that they were supreme in their use of the orders. By means of them they obtained perhaps the most majestic and overpowering architectural effects that the world has ever seen. If in the works of antiquity the proportions of the orders varied greatly, even greater variety was prevalent during the whole Renaissance period. The orders then were adorned with ara- besques and carving. Besides being applied to buildings they entered into the design of altars, wainscots, and furniture of every kind. Passed on from age to age and through various countries these conventional forms have come by devious paths to modern days. The artists of the time of Francis I, finding them habitually used in the Italy they invaded, grafted them in a playful manner on the mediaeval stock of France. Later in England Elizabethan and Jacobean work showed a similar combination of classic de- tail on a picturesque body. Then in the more formal periods between the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XVI in France and 72 An Architect's Sketch Book under the guidance of Sir Christopher Wren and Sir William Chambers in England, the purer use of the orders obtained. Thus by degrees they reached us and appeared in the White House at Washington, in the New York City Hall, and in King's Chapel and the State House in Boston, as charming echoes from the courts of Louis XVI and of Queen Anne and the Georges. In the modern world the Ecole des Beaux Arts has been the nursery where the study of the orders has been most fostered. Nothing can exceed the grace and dignity with which they were used by the French masters of that school in the first half of the last century. It is sometimes questioned whether Parisian " taste " holds now to the standards of the past, but the principles that govern the use of the orders and the making of a plan still are taught better in France than elsewhere. When the American student returns from his studies in a Pa- risian atelier and uses the orders in his monumental work, he finds almost as many questions confronting him as if he were using something fresh instead of a convention two thousand years old. Shall his order be light or heavy? Shall he make his pilasters without entasis and flute them as at the Pantheon, or make them plain and with an entasis as at the Temple of Mars ; or shall he dis- regard the advice of the wise and give them both flutings and an entasis? Then, how can he correct the bow-legged look on the face, and how adjust the flutings on the return? If the pilaster has no entasis, where shall the entasis that the column does have be taken up in the pilaster? What proportions of the many that are possible shall be given to the modillions? Shall the capital be The Five Orders of Architecture 73 modeled on the bell prescribed by Vitruvius, or will the horns then be too protruding, and shall he study it after some other Classical or Renaissance type? Shall he place in the corner of a room a little fraction of a pilaster as a respond, or shall he adjust the whole scheme to give large pilasters in the corners? Perhaps, in protest against the malformed orders he sees all around him, he may vow to follow closely Vignola, and then, in attempting to give a colonial air to some design in wood, he may find, perhaps too late, that the essence of such work lies in attenuated orders and slender details. Surely the use of the orders offers questions enough to puzzle over, questions that involve the nicest taste and clearest judgment and widest experience. They are questions that are perhaps best likened to those that must trouble the writer of a sonnet as he brings his lines into the accepted form. Perhaps the chief objection to be found with such a general use of the orders as is now prevalent in monumental work is a certain uniformity in the design of clever people. Depending as the orders do on very delicate distinctions and selections, the per- sonal and individual touch is not apparent to most eyes. At present, for instance, in a competition for a great government building it is almost impossible to attribute any special design to its author. All the designs have one pervading spirit. Thirty years ago the work of the designer was more interesting and picturesque in intention than it is to-day, but it lacked in skill and knowledge. To-day it often lacks in interest, though carried out with consummate technique. We are not going to lose the orders. They are with us to stay, 74 An Architect's Sketch Book just as much as the poetical framework of the sonnet, which they so much resemble. They will not be used everywhere. We must remember that there are ballads and lyrics to be written as well as sonnets and epics. Burns was a poet as well as Keats, and Millet a painter as well as Ingres. Charming and poetical designs are possible which show little affiliation with classical traditions, though we may believe that in some degree such beauty as these have rests on the same fundamental principles from which the orders have been evolved as convenient and long-accepted epitomes. But in modern monumental work majestic colonnades and porticoes will probably be the most usual means of express- ing these fundamental principles. It will be long before a better means of giving grandeur and stateliness to a building will be found than can be obtained by the skillful and intelligent use of a noble order. On the Design of Houses VI ON THE DESIGN OF HOUSES 1905 WHEN a rich American who has no traditional ties wishes to build a mansion, there at once arises the question, what character or style of historical detail shall be used in its design, or whether as far as possible all such relations with the past shall be ignored. In these days of photography and easy travel the history of art forces its treasures before him in blinding profusion. The last century moreover multiplied to countless numbers the books which show in attractive guise what architec- ture has meant in other times and to other people. These bless- ings have wrought a swifter revolution than any that has previ- ously affected the arts of design. They have also brought with them troubles that are quite new and very puzzling. Even our great-grandfathers were little concerned about the style in which their buildings should be designed. Up to their day architecture had shown a systematic and continuous growth. Throughout our country the designs of Gibbs and Wren and Inigo Jones were reproduced in many forms, and every village builder, without discussion or question, accepted such details as the only method of expressing himself in porch and cornice, in mantel and cup- board. The man of to-day can continue in their steps, but his position differs from that of his ancestor in that this is but one of various courses open to him. 78 An Architect's Sketch Book Many will certainly be found who object to the use of detail, ornament, or forms that have served other people and other ages. The 44 laudator temporis acti" passes with many for an old fogy, and the " practical man" cannot see why we moderns are not sufficient unto ourselves, or why we have to depend in any manner on the styles of buildings in vogue in the past. Let such an objector, however, try to design even so familiar a building as a country house, and he will soon agree that the world must needs be more artless and less sophisticated than we find it to- day to permit him to ignore the work of the past. A trifling bit of detail gives a long historical ancestry even to an unimportant design. To the informed mind the pitch of the roof, the shape of the eaves or of the wall openings, the preponderance of hori- zontal or vertical lines or shadows, still more, the profiles of mouldings and the spirit of the ornamental detail, all promptly proclaim their origin. Obviously, the question may be dodged to a great degree in many simple houses. Many buildings may have that "style" which means only grace and beauty of mass or of outline or color, and possibly those designers who can stop with this are the more fortunate. But, even in a little house, what shall be done with the inevitable detail of the stairs, the mantels, the porches, and the furniture? The traces of past human life and art cannot be so eradicated that all this detail shall be colorless, for it is out of the power of man to prevent its having some degree of affili- ation with some bygone art. If such questions arise with the small details of a small house, how much more pressing are they in work of magnitude. > r mm i fl ' I 3 **m u m 1. *-» -a £f irt , sc rr A On the Design of Houses 79 Why should not the rich American find safe models in the build- ings of ancient Rome? Indeed, he might do worse, for there is much in common between our life and that of those distant days. We read classic authors and we feel familiar with their ways and methods. Cicero argues his cases as if in one of our courts. Csesar tells the story of his campaigns as Grant or Sher- man have told of theirs. Horace describes his Sabine farm or Pliny writes of his Tuscan villa, and we are in the company of country gentlemen who find a truly modern enjoyment in house, farm, and cattle, in trees and gardens, in running streams and shady coppices. So, although the mediaeval castle or cloister, notwithstanding its charm, has little in common with our life, we find that the villa of the ancient Romans would almost meet present needs at Lenox or Newport. Colonnades, courts and cloisters, great sunny baths from which the bathers have a view of the sea, tennis courts, riding-grounds and amphitheatres, marble seats and basins, flat lawns surrounded by plane trees that are linked by festoons of ivy and banked by masses of box and laurel, — all these met the tired Roman when he drove, on an afternoon, to the seaside or the mountain. They would accord well with the luxurious manners of modern watering- places, and their richly decorated interiors, doubtless something like those we see at Pompeii, would make no unfitting back- ground for fashionable life to-day. Yet, as we say this, we know that, though the general spirit of such a building might be retained, it would be scarcely pos- sible for a modern family to abide comfortably even in a luxu- so An ArchitedVs Sketch Book rious villa such as the Romans built. In the fifteenth century men were still living ruder lives than we do now, and yet, anxious as the humanists of the Italian Renaissance were to restore classic ways, they did not copy the old Roman villa, but, with good common sense, adapted it to their own customs. The car- dinals and princes who built the villas of Italy succeeded natu- rally to the luxurious tastes and ample expenditure of the ancient Romans. The love of gardens, shaded walks, terraced lawns, and sloping steps, of fountains, statues, and porticoes, was as great with a Prince of the Church as with a Senator of ancient Rome. The villas on the hills around Florence and Siena and those that are fast vanishing from the neighborhood of Genoa; the precipitous terraces and gushing fountains of the Villa d'Este; the ports and casinos that stud the steep shores of Lake Como; and the lovely vaulted porches which Julio Romano and his pupils built and made to glow with dainty arabesque and delicate color on the rugged sides of Monte Mario; all these must have resembled to a great degree the structures that covered the hillsides around imperial Rome. These Italian villas are in- deed the classic structures adapted to modern uses. Thus it happens that in them the history of art opens before us another line of wonderful examples. But if, instead of studying the ancient palaces of Rome or those of Italy during the fifteenth century, we turn towards France, we are soon in imagination leading our rich client along a very different road in search of a style. We find the Valois kings returning one after another from Italy with imaginations 1 V On the Design of Houses si fired by what they had seen there of an advanced civilization, and bringing in their train a host of Italian artists to render service in modernizing the arts of France. Whatever their faults, the Valois were great builders. Under their influence, little by little, that domestic comfort and luxury suggested by recent con- tact with the higher civilization of Italy was introduced into the ancient fortresses of France. The ancient structure remained fundamentally unchanged. The high roofs, the conical turrets, the machicolated cornices, and the vigorous picturesque outlines of the mediaeval castle, all gave an indigenous shape to the buildings. Rude walls were however pierced with mullioned windows, and decorated with paneled pilasters tier on tier; a forest of chimneys and dormers grew on the roof, and the car- vers, abandoning the rugged mediaeval forms, enriched window and doorway, chimney and arcade, with arabesques and refined mouldings adapted from Italian models. The Renaissance be- came master in the old feudal dwellings. In spite of the admiration of the Frenchman for the work of foreign artists, the latter were not strong enough to crush out native talent. As the French had shown themselves great art- ists during the mediaeval periods, so they asserted their strength during the Renaissance of classic art. What had the general mass of Chambord or Fontainebleau or Chenonceaux, with their high roofs and multitudinous chimneys, in common with the Villa Madama that Julio Romano was building in Rome, or with the Farnesina that was growing under Raphael's guidance? Hardly anything, except a general resemblance in detail, and even to that 82 An Archite&t's Sketch Book the Frenchmen gave a new touch in arabesque and capital and cornice. The work of Philibert Delorme and Pierre Lescott, of Germain Pilon and Jean Goujon, although influenced by Ital- ians and inspired by the antique, was thoroughly French. The Italians had applied the art of ancient Rome to their own needs and customs. The French adapted to their own uses the work of Italy. Hence there are no better examples of the proper method of assimilating the art of other days and other countries than these French chateaux. For such reasons they are full of sugges- tions for a people to whom the world of art is presented, much as it was to the subjects of Frangois Premier. When we turn to England we find repeated there all the various phases that occurred in the history of French architecture. Dur- ing the Middle Ages the efforts of English builders had been spent on churches and monastery buildings, or on castles that were places of safety quite as much as dwellings. With the Re- formation, church building practically ceased, but the increased luxury of the time produced the change of the defensible fortress into the comfortable dwelling-house. The castle of Elizabeth's favorite Leicester, which is familiar to us in Scott's novel "Kenil- worth," though not of the purer Gothic type, showed nothing to indicate the coming change in art; and yet Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, only six years before Michael Angelo died. But during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, means of de- fense gave way to the desire for comfort and luxury and light and air. Courtyards were opened up. Long ranges of windows ap- peared where before would have been blank walls. The English ■ r. i i i 1 I >— : — 4 5r,">vJ On the Design of Houses 83 buildings resulting from this movement, where free from orna- ment and where builders adhered to the local traditions as handed down from father to son, were full of a quiet reason- able beauty due to the well-considered use of materials and the absence of desire to surprise by learning or technical dexterity. Such delightful work is to be found all over England. We see it in stone cottages and manor houses, in the plainer portions of great mansions; in the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge and in the brick houses of Kent. It is difficult to name the age of such buildings. They have but little detail that ties them to any given period. They are simple, wholesome, and direct architec- ture. In these honest plain buildings the unbroken traditions of English building were continued throughout the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and formed a charming English style unlike anything in France or Germany or Italy. But more important building could not remain thus without the ornament that betrays the thought and learning of its de- signers. The larger houses and mansions demanded enrichment. They retained the picturesque group and outline that was a legacy of the Gothic tradition, but they soon were crowded with detail that is ill understood and with ornament that is poor. Though this ornament adds greatly to the picturesque effect of the structures, it is almost universally marked by extreme ignor- ance of the scholarship of architecture. Ill-proportioned orders, odd intermixtures of Gothic and Italian ornament, rude versions of familiar classical designs, all show a desire to appear familiar with the modes which were then prevalent in Europe, but which 84 An Architect's Sketch Book were not fully understood in England. France under Francis I, subjected to the same influences, made the Italian " motifs " her own and gave them a new and peculiar beauty. England was satisfied to adopt the 66 motifs" and be content with the richness they added to building. She accepted them as seen through the eyes of Dutchmen or other foreigners, and, caring for no refine- ments, was satisfied with rude suggestions of the original work. As a result Elizabethan and Jacobean building charms by its pic- turesque grouping, and is attractive in texture because of lavish and well-placed enrichment. The enrichment is not such as bears the scrutiny of a purist, although it must be said that its very naivete and picturesque crudeness, joined to an abundant exuberance, gives it a certain interest of its own. All this change was the same as that which, caused by the same influences, was going on in literature at this same mo- ment. Perhaps the most fashionable book of Spenser's day was Lilly's "Euphues." It was considered by the Court a proof of refined manners to adopt its phraseology. "That beautie in court who could not parley Euphuisme " was as little regarded as she who now cannot speak French. This foppery is described in Sir Walter Scott's novel of "The Monastery," where a court gallant calls the cows "the milky mothers of the herd" and the youth who tends them "most bucolical juvenal." Indeed, the ardor for classical erudition was so prevalent among the learned and great, in England as elsewhere in Europe, that the mytho- logy as well as the diction of the ancients became fashion- able. It is impossible to read such a poem as Spenser's "Faerie On the Design of Houses 85 Queene" and not see that it is the expression of exactly the same feelings as those which dictated the design of such great mansions as Audley End or Wollaton. One is a Christian ro- mance of the Middle Ages embroidered with classical names and ill-understood allusions to heathen gods and goddesses; the others are Gothic palaces plastered over with such Corinthian pilasters and details as indicate the point which men of taste had then reached in realizing the charms of Roman art. The classical allusions, applied to a truly English allegory, are but the counterparts of the Italian mouldings and ornaments, the cherubs and wreaths and shells that are applied to the truly English buildings of the Elizabethan age. The numerous foreign artists who came to England during Elizabeth's reign were nearly all natives of Germany and the Low Countries. Their influence was prominent in all ornamental detail, such as on the staircases, or in the carving of screens and mantels, in strapwork gables, in male and female figures ending in balusters. These all show Dutch influence on Englishmen. The workmanship was full of dexterity, but lacked the grace and elegance of the Italian, and the crudeness of the Dutchman's version of Italian detail made it far more easy for the ruder workmen of England to reproduce than the real Italian work. The Englishmen with these surroundings made very free with the five orders, and depended for guidance and help mainly on pattern books like that of Vriedman de Vries, which was pub- lished in Antwerp in 1563. It was largely by means of these pattern books that this taste was so quickly disseminated. They 86 An Archite&t's Sketch Book were used instead of the Italian treatises of Alberti and Palladio and the other interpreters of Vitruvius, with which in fact Eng- lish builders at that time were not familiar. Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth the workmen from the Low Countries found their principal employment in the making of monuments and chimney-pieces, and perhaps more design was lavished by them on interior wooden fittings than on the masonry itself. Staircases, which before this time had been of stone and which had been valued solely as means of communication, now became or- namental and stately. They were generally of oak and very often with interlacing strapwork on the balustrades or rude figurework on the posts. The designer's skill was also freely spent on man- tels of oak or of colored marbles in houses, and on wooden screens or pulpits in the churches. But everywhere in all this detail Dutch taste made itself felt. In England, then, we see that the work of a hundred years had produced from the mediaeval castle a modern mansion, in all re- spects admirable in an artistic sense as long as plain building was adhered to, but adorned, enriched, and beautified by ornament that does not bear close analysis. In spirit and in shape these houses form a type that is distinct and national, and as they were built by the common ancestors of Englishmen and ourselves, every Anglo-Saxon may legitimately delight in their beauties. There is also one more reason why we should like them. In France the art of the aristocracy was imitated by humbler classes and the manor and farm dimly recalled the round towers and lofty roofs of the chateau. But all English architecture starts On the Design of Houses 87 with the home as the unit, and as the grandeur of the house in- creases, it is still an enlarged home. So we find scarcely a palace in England. Saint James's Palace is as nothing by the side of the Louvre; Blenheim is inconsiderable compared with Versailles. The truly interesting grand houses of England are such as Knole and Penshurst and Compton Wyngates, where features common to humble dwellings throughout England are found in the greatest perfection. The world has never known houses more homelike than these, for in them domestic charms take the place of splen- dor, and that homely aspect is retained which characterizes cot- tage, manor house, mansion, church and cathedral throughout the length and breadth of England. Our wealthy client by this time will probably find this dis- cussion confusing. Here already are several very distinct styles with which he may affiliate his design, and we are far from the end. That we have this wealth of authority prodigally placed before us is perhaps a misfortune, but it results from our being born in this century. It is the blessing and the burden of to-day. We can despise it and try vainly to be original; we can copy it exactly as many fashionable decorators advise; or we can, like the artists of the Renaissance in Italy, France, and England, or indeed like the real artist of all time, try to adapt the art of past ages to immediate needs. If we despise it, we may create novel- ties, but we have no guarantee that novelty is improvement. The slang of the cowboy is not likely to supplant permanently our mother tongue, and startling novelties in architecture will only please for a time. In fact, only ignorance is blind to the past. 88 An Architect's Sketch Book On the other hand, slavish copying is unmeaning, pedantic, and stupid. Shall we go without bathrooms because an English- man ' Hubs" it? Shall we forego piazzas because they are not needed under the foggy skies of England? At this moment, American fashion, ignorantly groping for a sure guide, sometimes blindly accepts almost any room if only it be of a "period," and especially a French period. It goes farther and makes each room of a different period. When the result is beautiful and ap- propriate, all is well, but to many the name gives undue confid- ence. In many cases it seems affected, and inappropriate, and consequently vulgar. For such reasons we may be sure that strict archaeology is as much out of place in American house design as is the demand for a new and wholly American style. There still remains the possibility of adapting the art of past ages to our own uses. This is the only work worthy of an artist, and whether the house be modeled upon the Petit Trianon or Haddon Hall, whether it resemble a chateau in Touraine or a Tuscan villa, it is of course lifeless and inappropriate unless adapted to our customs, life, and habits. He is the true artist who can thus adjust in a natural and straightforward way, with- out pedantry or affectation, the traditions of the past to the life and need and ways of the present. The American house thus conceived will surely have one final advantage over its ancient prototypes in the fact that it will be new and sweet and clean. It is impossible not to feel a certain sympathy with one distinguished though perhaps somewhat Philistine writer when he says: — On the Design of Houses 89 "It is beautiful, no doubt, and exceedingly satisfactory to some of our natural instincts, to imagine our far posterity dwelling under the same roof-tree as ourselves. Still, when people insist on building indestructible houses, they incur, or their children do, a misfortune analogous to that of the Sibyl, when she obtained the precious boon of immortality. So, we may build almost immortal habitations, it is true, but we can- not keep them from growing old, musty, unwholesome, dreary, full of death scents, ghosts, and murder stains ; in short, habi- tations such as one sees everywhere in Italy, be they hovels or palaces. You should go with me to my native country,' observed the sculptor to Donatello. 'In that fortunate land each generation has only its own sins and sorrows to bear! ' " By the Sea I VII BY THE SEA 1898 NEITHER forest nor stream, neither mountain nor lake, can satisfy the lover of the sea. If the sough of the breeze through wind-swept woods is sweet to him, it is because he hears in it the murmur of the ocean. Rivers, woods, and hills are for others. Give him the briny air blowing in from kelp-laden ledges; the rollers breaking in a white crescent on the sand; the wet spray dashed from the bow of his boat; the wide spread of blue water stretching far to the horizon, where coasters silently pass and repass and where ocean and sky blend together. "What heed I of the dusty land and noisy town ? I see the mighty deep expand From its white line of glimmering sand To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts down." "Love the sea?" says Douglas Jerrold. "I dote upon it . . . from the beach." When fog settles down and lies thick over land and sea, we are certainly better off on the beach. No inventions have conquered fog, and the fisherman on the Banks, the deep- sea sailor on the ocean, and the yachtsman along our shores must alike hold it in dread. But almost any weather that is not foggy lures many a man from the beach and gives him his best holidays. In the break of day our boat glides silently from the sleeping harbor. We pass the green ramparts of the fort, and the sentinel 94 An Architect's Sketch Book pacing his lonely round is darkly outlined on the morning sky. The sea is rosy with the early sunlight, but here and there the rising breeze breaks it into ripples and these grow and broaden and join until the whole sparkles. The ocean swell meets us as we haul to for a basket of bait at the herring traps by the outer ledges. In the wake of these rocks, that are at once the de- fense and the danger of our harbor, there is smooth green water flecked with foam. Outside, where the surges break, are advanc- ing rollers and ebbing torrents, a roar of waters and the scream of circling gulls. Sailing far beyond all this, we get due bearings on the distant shores ; then down come our sails and we are at anchor. Certainly nowhere is nature so large, so direct, so unconfused as on the sea. The ocean and the sky are each full of change, but the story they tell is as simple as it is grand. For ages the dry land has been combed and furrowed and planted and sheared ; but man has been as powerless to change the surface of the sea as of the heaven that arches over it. "Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain, Man marks the earth with ruin, — his control Stops with the shore." The waves sing the same song that they did when the boundless deep was gathered into one place and God saw that it was good. The sea remains as majestic as when the Spirit of God first moved upon the face of the waters. Away in the distance the world we have left behind has faded into a mystery of haze. Wide heaven is above us and a clear By the Sea 95 horizon bounds the waves that encircle us. The golden path- way to the sun starts from our feet. What might be an over- powering loneliness is lightly but constantly broken. Now a school of porpoises rises near us and the surface of the sea is broken by their gleaming bodies. Then with snorts and puffs they vanish in the deep. A fishing schooner cruises down upon us and the lookout in her cross-trees sights menhaden. In a trice her two boats are dropping their nets in a circle around the frightened fish. We watch the hauling of the fatal purse and see the shower of silver fall glancing into the boats. The whole picture rises and falls with the deep-sea roll. The waiting schooner, the seine boats with their groups of working- men, the long sweep of the net buoys all swing into one graceful group, and the next moment they drop behind a great roller, and of this scene of bustle and activity nothing is visible but the schooner's sails. Our Palinurus is what they call a lucky fisherman. This means that he spends the afternoon before a fishing-trip wading over the mud flats and digging up "sweetmeats" for bait. Then, unless detained by less ardent companions, at three in the morning he can be found rowing a heavy dory five or six miles out to sea, and just as the sun rises and as the tide begins to flood he dangles a tempting breakfast before the largest cod on the coast. After all, is it not to such people in other walks of life that luck comes? But energy and laziness are strangely mingled in the dwellers on our coasts. Palinurus himself will make these trips without 96 An Architect's Sketch Book compass or biscuit or water bottle, and when confronted by sudden gales returns in a condition of exhaustion wholly due to his own imprudence. The people of our seashore towns in general have but modest means, and yet scarcely a man or woman can be found for an odd job. Every one is independent to a fault, but when their interest is aroused men nowhere are more ready to go aloft or man a lifeboat or follow the flag by land or sea. Read the inscriptions above the graves on our rocky hillside. There you see how the men of the town have met death in ship- wreck and battle, amid adventure and danger, doing men's work. Indeed, here is told on one memorial stone how sixty -five of them went down in one terrible gale on the Grand Banks. As far back as in the days of the Revolution it was to the regiment recruited in our town that Washington turned for help in his retreat from Long Island. The same amphibious body rowed him and his men across the icy Delaware at Trenton. This little town of Marblehead alone sent a thousand men to the War of 1812, of whom over seven hundred were on privateers. The town an- nals are full of the stories of the courage and daring of the men who manned these ships and of the sufferings of the several hun- dred who were held as prisoners in Halifax and Chatham and Plymouth. The local heroes are not the wise or the learned or the good, but men of action; Captain Mugford, who with his boat crews captured an English war vessel; General Glover, who led the Marblehead regiment in the Revolution ; or Captain Knott Martin, the butcher, who, when the call came in 1861, left his By the Sea 97 newly killed hog half-dressed that he might notify his men promptly, and then reported with his company at the State House before any other country troops reached Boston. Of such stuff are these men made. Soft sea mists and life beside the ocean render them sleepy until an emergency arrives, and then the pure blood of Old and New England tells. While Marblehead was sending out fishermen and priva- teers, the ships of our richer neighbor, Salem, were doing still larger work. They were to be found rounding the Cape of Good Hope, pushing onward for the trade of the Red Sea, and bringing their cargoes from Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay, from Ceylon and Sumatra. Later, Salem vied with our own town in sending out privateers, and the waters where we are now fishing were the rendezvous of all these armed ships. Dur- ing the Revolution Salem equipped at least one hundred and fifty-eight vessels. They brought in four hundred and forty-five prizes, and during the War of 1812 forty privateers sailed from that now sleepy port. The ships commanded by one captain alone captured more than a thousand guns from the enemy. As prize after prize was sent in by him and his fellow fighters, our quiet waters must have been the scene of much activity and excite- ment. When these venturesome sailors vanished from the sea the seafaring spirit to a great degree departed with them. There were perhaps but two or three men from our town in the Navy during the Spanish War, although she sent a full company into the Army. There is no commerce to speak of at our own wharves. The great range of warehouses that line the long 98 An Architedt's Sketch Book piers at Salem, once filled with silks and teas and nankeens, now moulder empty by the deserted harbor. Have these old commu- nities, like so many others through the country, irrevocably suc- cumbed to modern life? Are the energy and brains that once found employment at home now absorbed by the great cities? Has manufacturing, which came in with the great Embargo, definitely supplanted the seafaring life of New England? Let us hope that the old spirit is but dormant, and that new circum- stances may bring to these shores marine industries for which nature has fitted them, — shipbuilding, shipping, and fishing, — as well as the pleasure yachting that now absorbs its harbor life. Even here where we are fishing the world's business is in sight. Stone sloops with decks awash, bankers with nests of dories, seiners with seine boats in tow, puffing tugs and ocean liners and three-masted coasters, they all go by us, way off, hull down on the dim horizon. To-day, at any rate, all the coasting cargoes but coal go to other ports, and the American shipping which sailed to foreign ports, giving us so much glory and gain, is, because of the indifference of Congress, a thing of the past not only here but all along our shores. Our lawmakers do indeed seem hopelessly hostile to things marine. With a little help from them, for instance, we might as we now talk be catching more codfish. What we want here are laws of repression that will restrict the fisherman to the use of hand lines. Failing these, our waters are swept clear by trawls and seines and traps, so that the fish and lobsters whose nurseries are among our rocky headlands have no chance to multiply. By the Sea 99 When November comes and the great codfish come in from out- side to spawn on the rocky ledges, they are met by trawls, four to a boat, with five hundred hooks to each trawl, or by ranks of cod seines floated near the bottom by glass floats, tended by dories that carry naptha engines. When the fishermen underrun these murderous outfits, they bring up all that swims. No wonder that where once hand-line fishing was a good occupation, there now are but poor and ever lessening fares for the shore fisherman. An absolutely close season for lobsters would also be effective, but the present laws only limit the length of those that maybe taken. The fisherman is expected to throw back the small lobsters found in the trap. But as these meet a ready purchaser and can be used for bait, is not this asking too much of him? If he fails to throw them back there will soon be no lobsters on our coast. Such subjects occupy us in the intervals of fishing, and, as we while away the time with talk, the ever-varying hours pass, and gradually we find the sea changing in color to a deep indigo. The scudding vessels show hard and dark against the horizon. In the west the clouds pile up leaden and brown in ponderous masses. Slowly the threatening curtain moves towards us, the edge of the storm cloud showing ragged and frayed against the dead white sky. Then with thunder growls and lightning flash and furious wind and drenching rain, the line of shower, clean-cut on the water, comes driving white towards us. The gusts strike us, and while the windows of heaven are open the world is for a space blotted out from view by the falling torrents. Clad in "oilies" and tarpaulins, with everything snugly stowed, we wait patiently ioo An Archite&'s Sketch Book until the tempest passes down the coast and long slanting gleams of sunshine break through the scattering clouds, and thus gradu- ally the heavens clear and smile again. There are days when the sea is leaden and oily, when the air is laden with the smell of fish and the distant shores look near and hard; but even then it needs but a fresh wind from the north- west to change all this, and in their turn come clear air and sparkling waters and a bright gladness everywhere. Then down the opposite shore sails the great white-winged procession of coasters that have sought a lee during the bad weather. There they go, fifty sail of them, in long single file laden with lumber and laths and coal and lime and bound across the bay. "Behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea, Breasting the lofty surge." With another morning the scene again changes. The dawn comes calm and windless and a summer haze sends the other shore into remoteness. Nature dreams, and over the watery mirror come in broad patches the reflections of idle sails and of "Ships softly sinking in the sleepy sea." Can it be that these changes go on every day; that daily this endless succession of cloud and storm and sunshine continue and the vast circle of ocean smiles or frowns or laughs in the sunshine, veils itself in impenetrable fogs, or lashes itself with the gale? Why are we, cooped up in dull offices, shut off from these great wonders? Perhaps we should find hard the lot of the lobsterman By the Sea 101 who hauls his pots off the brown rocks of our shores, or of the fisherman who sets his seines on the broad sea, but they have their compensations, for "These men see the works of the Lord 5 and his wonders in the deep." Sailing about our harbor is never tiresome. It is the most picturesque one on our coast. The town is old and the houses rise above the wharves in straggling masses. But the harbor's unique beauty is mainly due to the red-towered building that tops the closely built town. Though a simple structure, it is so well placed that it commands and dominates the hill and dignifies every view. This tower-crowned hill forms a pleasing background to the varied shipping as we thread our devious way among yachts and coasters and fishermen. Doubtless the painter wishes that the foreground of this picture offered some of the picturesque models that the ports of the Old World offer. There are no long-winged lateen rigs; nothing like the great Thames barges with their brightly varnished spars and great expanse of brown sail; there are no such brilliant winged boats as one sees on the Adriatic, nor round-bodied, full-breasted fishing-boats such as France and Holland and England send to the North Sea and the Channel, flat-bottomed and tough, fitted to thump on unprotected ocean beaches and start forth again on the returning tide. We have not even the square-rigged brigantines that monopolize the coasting trade around the British Isles. It is true that a few old pinkie sterns on the Maine coast recall by their high poops the castles of mediaeval vessels and can claim close descent from the May- flower and the Arbella. But, except for these, the boats in which 102 An Architect's Sketch Book Irish and Portuguese fishermen cruise about Massachusetts Bay, and the Johnny wood boats from Nova Scotia are about all that we can show of the ancient fashions. The ancient and the pic- turesque have vanished before the desire to carry great cargoes rapidly or to ride out the gales on the Banks and bring fish speedily to port. The American vessel now embodies the hope of the future rather than respect for the past. Hence are left to us of sailing-vessels only the three- and four-masted schooners and the Gloucester fisherman and the yacht. These models are less pic- torial than those that Vander Velde had before him when paint- ing those'pictures of Dutch men-of-war in harbor and in battle that we see at Antwerp and The Hague. But for all that, one may well envy the occupations of painters like De Haas and Norton and Quartley and Winslow Homer, who have pictured sea life and who daily drew the beauties of sea and sky on our coasts. What a short history has been that of the evolution of the modern ship! In the days when Columbus "sailed the ocean blue," oars were relied on for propulsion quite as much as sails. At the Ducal Palace in Venice we see on the walls a painting of the Battle of Lepanto. It is a confused mass of charging galleys pro- pelled by serried banks of oars. These terrible oars were often sixty feet long and manned by four or five men. We wonder how these vessels were controlled and what happened when a miser- able oarsman missed his short, jerky stroke or fell at his labor. But our curiosity is greater still about the feats of those early sailors who depended on wind alone. When storm and stress overtook the ships of Philip's Armada, it seems but natural that their By the Sea 103 high castles fore and aft, their bellying sails and flaunting ban- ners and their more or less open hulls should have made them an easy prey to the hungry rocks and the tempests of the North Sea. But how did Sir Francis Drake bring home safe his almost equally clumsy ships, and how did Cabot and Columbus and Magellan cross the wide oceans on their unwieldy craft? Doubtless they drifted on merrily enough with favoring winds, but, when the gale came out ahead, why did they not lose all they had gained and more? If they once did strike a trade wind that wafted them across, how did they know where to seek an equally fair wind to bring them back over strange waters? Yet Columbus and Magellan did somehow knock off as many miles of progress a day as many vessels still in service on the Down East coast can do to-day. We must admit that they were wonders! Possibly the curious drawing of many artists in those old days made the ships appear more clumsy than they really were. But even if this is so the enormous poops and forecastles were so long perpetuated in Dutch carracks, in Spanish galleons, in British East-Indiamen, and even in British men-of-war up to the days of our Revolution, that we may feel sure that the ships of the early navigators were in form as clumsy as and perhaps not unlike Chinese junks. Nelson fought with ships of boxlike hulls, that had heavy quarters and overhanging galleries, though they were well rigged and well handled ; but on some of the American frigates clumsiness of the hull above water changed to sharp entrances and graceful, easy runs beneath the water. The hulls of the American clipper packets and Baltimore slavers assumed the finer lines that give 104 An Archite&t's Sketch Book fleetness. The introduction of steel rigging and masts and hulls, and, more than all, of steam, completed the revolution, until be- tween a modern battleship and Nelson's Victory there is but a shadowy resemblance. Curiously enough, all this has happened at the hands of seamen, who of all people are the most conservative and who hold fast to speech and ways and facts wrung from the bitter experiences of generations of sailors. The shipwright has the best of trades. He uses head as well as hands, but whether he be laying down patterns, or framing and planking his hull, or doing joiner work, or paint- ing and rigging his craft, he is bound on every hand by marine conventions and customs. It is strange that, guided by such men, the evolution of the modern ship has been so rapid an achieve- ment, for certainly no modern structure has changed more from its early prototype than has the modern ship from that of the days of Columbus. Jack Tar through all the changes keeps much the same. His world is still all his own and in it the landsman is indeed a stranger. But his methods, his peculiar language, and his prejudices persist because they are founded on experience and common sense. Through every chance and change his know- ledge, though applied to new and varying problems and to the rapid changes in shipbuilding, never lets go of the methods and ways that have been proved fit by centuries of fighting with wind and wave and tide and calm. Indeed, because the vessel that thus comes from his hands has lines in sympathy with the ele- ments that surround her, whether yacht or merchantman or fish- erman or fighter, she is a thing of beauty. By the Sea 105 A holiday on the sea gives respite from the thoughts that occupy other days. Still no architect can fail to notice that the steps taken by the art of shipbuilding are very like those by which the art of architecture progresses. The conventions by which both express themselves are founded on necessity and experience. These conventions are bent and adapted to special needs. When the adaptation is perfect the result is beauty. With these thoughts before us let us paddle ashore past the white hull and tall, shining masts of the crack yacht, and by the plutocrat's ocean steamer populous with white-shirted jackies. The quivering reflections of the vessels brighten the surface of the water. Over by the fort an anchor chain runs out with a rattle as the fishing schooner ends her day's work. The click of the lobster- men's oars sounds across the harbor. From the fields comes the scent of bay and fern and rose, freshened by the recent rain. Bugles sound from the fort, and as the sun dips in the west the flag comes down. The harbor begins to sparkle with riding lights. We near the wharves and they lower over us black and forbid- ding, but behind the tower-topped hill, the sky is aflame with red and purple and gold; and above us is a pale and slender moon. THE END CAMBRIDGE ■ MASSACHUSETTS U • S • A liiiilf 3 3125 01360 8555