Chapter 5

ASSIZE COURT, MANCHESTER.enlarge-image

ASSIZE COURT, MANCHESTER.

An age of municipal and civic development has found for the buildings it requires a representative architect in Mr. Waterhouse, who has erected most of the magnificent town-halls and court-houses of the great provincial cities. These vast, and in a certain sense beautiful, buildings are the only ones that can compare with the old cathedrals and castles of England, built with as serious a purpose as theirs, and with as physiognomical a relation to the age that produced them. Mr. Waterhouse takes the Gothic style for his basis, just as a pomoculturist might take a russet as the basis of the apple he means to produce, and, like him, modifies only in obedience to the fundamental law of the style he has selected. His Gothic building has in it nothing capricious or eccentric. So genuinely as, under change of conditions and needs, the bent and bound boughs were copied in the first pointed stone arch, even so, by lawful adaptation, may the window point become more obtuse or the lancets more luminous;but the lesson of this style, which, above all others, has no part or trait not traceable to a use, is never lost, and the Gothic of Mr. Waterhouse is the natural evolution of that found in Westminster Abbey. In one of his buildings, and one of the best structures in the world, the Manchester Assize Court, I could discover but two things which appeared to me without special use or meaning. These were two small figures, a snail and a frog, carved in granite, sitting in the angles of a wall on each side of the main door-way. Of course these may not be merejeux; they may have some connection with a previous bit of eccentricity in an older building (such as it is often desirable to copy and preserve for archaeological reasons); but these two forms, each about as large as one’s two fists, were the only things in the vast building which appeared “not to the point.” In going over this building I speedily found that it would not do to pass anything, as the most casual-seeming bit of ornament was apt to possess a root in history. Thus the superstructure of the great portico at the entrance is supported by detachedshafts of solid granite two feet in diameter, which stretch out into foliage as they meet the low roof; but on examination it is discovered that, framed in this foliage, are finely carved and most appropriate representations of ancient modes of punishment—persons undergoing the pillory or some ordeal, broken on the wheel, wearing the mask, or bridle, for scolds, and the rest. On the outside wall the decoration of the upper edge of a large corbel is twined about the words, “He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.” Over a gate leading to the judges’ residence the tympanum of the gable is adorned with a fine mezzo-relievo of the Judgment of Solomon. On each side of the grand entrance are carved two chained dogs, imposing enough to be mythologically descended from Cerberus and Orthros themselves. There are but two figures on the outer walls, one of “Justice,” another of “Mercy.” The building is a parallelogram in form, with a frontage of 335 feet. Within is a grand hall 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, 75 feet high, with an open timber roof of eight carved bays, the principals having moulded brackets and ribs forming pointed arches, and the spandrels filled in with elegant tracery. Carved figures hold the chandeliers. Around this hall, which is for state receptions and banquets, run in ancient letters the words of the Great Charter: “Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur aut disseisiatur de aliquo libero tenemento suo vel libertatibus vel liberis consuetudinibus suis, aut utlagetur aut exulet aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terræ. Nulli vendemus nulli negabimus aut differemus rectum vel judiciam.” This makes about as beautiful a cornice edging as can well be imagined. The last sentence is repeated on a stained window at the end of the hall:

To none will we sellTo none will we denyTo none will we delayRight or Justice.

The subject of the window illustrates the history of the GreatCharter—King John in the centre, and Archbishop Langton and Chief Baron Robert Fitzwalter on either side. There are three miles of corridors, all with a dado of tiles more than a yard deep, of a rich brown tint, and capped with a scroll made of lighter colors. On the whole, I can hardly express adequately my admiration of this superb building, the total cost of which was £130,000.

MINTON TILE.enlarge-image

MINTON TILE.

In the centre of Manchester the same architect has erected a larger building, a Town-hall, which cost £1,000,000. Rich and admirable as it is, it is not, on account of the crowding of houses around it, and the irregularity of the ground upon which it is built, so effective in appearance as the Assize Court. The interior decoration is remarkable for the beautiful variety of colors secured by a careful mingling of English, Scotch, and Irish granites grouped as double stems in the balustrade of a spiral stairway. The Irish granite is a bluish-gray, the Scotch has a faint red tint, and the English Shapfels has salmon-colored spars, which are as large as raisins. They all take a beautiful polish, and I think that for a large public building the effect is better than if they were marble.

Manchester has shown good sense and good taste in having employed Mr. Ford Madox Brown to paint six, at least, of the panels in the great hall of this Town-hall. These mural paintings are not surpassed by any recent work of the kind which I have seen. Mr. Madox Brown is pre-eminent forhis archæological knowledge and poetic conceptions, and his genius has been at its best in these noble works. At the time of this writing three panels have been finished. The first represents the Romans building a fort at Mancenion (Manchester), anno 60. Agricola, Governor of Britain, is represented with a centurion beside him, examining a parchment plan of the Camp; a standard-bearer holds the silken Dragon-standard—emblem borrowed from the “barbarians”—which floats in the wind. The Legionaries are doing mason-work; Britons bear the stones and cement. Agricola’s wife and little boy are in the scene. The second panel represents the Baptism of Edwin, at York, in the year 627. The artist follows the account of Bede, who says that a small wooden church was hastily erected for this purpose on the site where York Minster now stands, but has introduced a Roman mosaic floor. In his noble picture of Edwin he has been inspired by Wordsworth’s sonnet, “Paulinus:”

“Mark him, of shoulders curved, and stature tall,Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek,His prominent feature like an eagle’s beak;A man whose aspect doth at once appallAnd strike with reverence.”

The third panel is the Expulsion of the Danes from Manchester. One less acquainted than this artist with ancient fact might be surprised at the beardless, boyish appearance of the escaping Danes; but it is true that the Vikings began their adventures early—at the age of fifteen, it is said—and became respectable married men a few years later. The town-folk are hurling missiles at the retreating party, one of which—thrown by a young woman from a house—strikes down the “Raven” standard. Mr. Madox Brown’s further designs include “The establishment of Flemish Weavers in Manchester, 1330;” “William Crabtree (draper, of Broughton, near Manchester) observing the transit of Venus, 1639;” and “The Decree Court Leet that all weights and measures are to be tested, 1566.” No man is better able to invest with beauty these events connected with the history of Manchester. Mr. Madox Brown is using for these mural paintingsthe “Gambier-Parry” process. The medium consists of a mixture of wax, resin, and essential oil, with which the stucco of the wall is coated and the colors ground. Every color ever used with oil, water, or fresco is admissible with this medium; and the surface when dry is without shine, while yet the utmost luminosity pertaining to any other method is attainable with it. It seems likely to become the general mode in this climate, and has given equal satisfaction to Sir F. Leighton and Mr. Madox Brown.

One other of the immense buildings which have become so characteristic of the populous centres of England I must mention, namely, the new Midland Railway-station, at St. Pancras, in London. This is probably the finest railway-station in the world, and it is the chief work of Sir Gilbert Scott. It is a vast pile, of which every outward detail is graceful and substantial, its turrets and great clock-tower superb. This immense building conveys, however, an unpleasant impression of being out of place. It implies a park, or at least a larger and more picturesque space than the irregular and ugly one at King’s Cross, to secure the perspective needed for any sight of it as a whole. Entering, we find ourselves beneath a vast span of iron and glass, almost like a sky. The front part of the building is a hotel. It has been decorated by Robert Sang, and furnished by Gillow, in the most expensive style, and certainly presents some rich interiors. The reading-room has green cloth-paper, and a ceiling gay with huge leaf frescoes; it is divided by a double arch with gilded architraves. The mantel-pieces are of dark marble, with two small pillars of yellow marble set on either side. The coffee-room has a general tone of drab, with touches of gold in the paper, and a sort of sarcophagus chimney-piece, surmounted by an antique mirror of bevelled glass. The sitting-room has red floral paper, and an imitation mosaic ceiling. One of the bedrooms which I visited had deep-green paper, with gold lines and spots, and bed-curtains somewhat similar. The furniture was of heavy oak, tastefully carved. The halls and corridors have a dado of fine dark brown tiles, and bright fleur-de-lis paper above. All ofwhich was rich, costly, and, with slight exceptions, by no means gaudy. Yet I could not altogether like it, or think the decorations entirely appropriate for a hotel. It looked as if there had been more exercise of ingenuity to find things costly than to find things beautiful. Thesalon, the reading-room, may naturally be made gorgeous, but the bedroom ought to be more quiet. One does not desire to sleep amid purple and gold. The traveller who needs rest may well spare these things—which, however, he knows will not spare him; for if there is gold paper on the wall, there will be gold paper in the bill.

KIDDERMINSTER CARPET—FERN DESIGN.enlarge-image

KIDDERMINSTER CARPET—FERN DESIGN.

For its purpose it would be difficult to fancy, impossible to find, a more complete structure than “The Criterion,” which the great London caterers, Messrs. Spiers & Pond, have erected at Piccadilly Circus. This building includes social and privatedining-rooms, room fortable d’hôte, hall for public banquets and balls, restaurant, and buffet; and beneath all these a theatre large enough to entertain a thousand people. The architect, Mr. Thomas Verity, plainly had it in his mind to raise a great gastronomic temple, and when one enters the door, what he sees on every side is the apotheosis of eating. Through an archway we enter, and find ourselves amid the French Renaissance. The façade outside, and the door-way, with its glazed framing and superb bronze columns, make one feel that he is about to dine superbly. Really he does dine remarkably well, though the French Renaissance hardly extends to the culinary art of the establishment, for that would imply a revolution in the Briton’s constitution. Mr. Wyon has placed some fair sculptures, the Seasons, etc., in the niches and on spandrels of the wall outside, but the inside decorations of Mr. Simpson are truly, in the words of Messrs. Spiers & Pond, “upon a scale which has hitherto never been attempted.” The grand hall rises squarely through three stories to a light Mansard-roof, from which sunburners blaze down at night, and outside of which is a promenade commanding a fine view of London. All of the sides of this grand and lofty hall are of tiles made for this establishment, and combining to form large pictures, the subjects of which were designed and painted by A. W. Coke. Over the right-hand door, leading to the restaurant, is a semi-classical scene of youth and maid by the sea-side gathering in fish; on the opposite side, over the door opening into the buffet, is a picture of two girls in a wheat field, where there is an apple-tree, the one attending to the sheaves, the other to the apples; around the lower hall are—still in tile mosaic—large figures of Euterpe and Terpsichore (for there will be music and dancing above), Pomona, Flora, Bacchus, and, of course, Diana, goddess of venison. The floor of the hall is as fine as any mosaic in London, and is adorned at the edges with the monograms of the firm. In the restaurant there are all manner of allegorical figures on the walls, the Seasons, and the genii which dig and delve and hunt, all with the object that humanity shall be fed. In the buffet there are charmingtile pictures representing chubby boys and girls; one party up the tree gathering fruits, the other beneath catching the same and putting them into baskets; in each picture a different tree and fruit. On one side of the main stairway is the figure of a boy stealing up to a bird’s nest, over which a bird hovers; opposite, the boy has the nest, the bird flies away. This device is not immoral; it means that plovers’ eggs are on the bill of fare. One of the finest things in this staircase is an ebony hand-railing, three inches in diameter, with plated silver mountings. Also a very fine effect has been produced by framing the door-ways in white majolica, although greater simplicity in the designs than human faces festooned with flowers would, I suspect, have beenbetter. I must not omit to mention that the cornice inside the grand hall, at the top of the first and here floorless story, has the unique ornament of sentences from Shakspeare running all around the walls, with picturesque lettering:

“None here, he hopes,In all this noble bevy, has brought with herOne care abroad: he would have all as merryAs first-good company, good wine, good welcome,Can make good people.”“A good digestion to you all: and, once more,I shower a welcome on you;—Welcome all.”

MINTON TILES FOR MANTEL.enlarge-image

MINTON TILES FOR MANTEL.

So it is that money enough enables common folk now to dine in palaces and enjoy banquets quite as royally served and surrounded as Bluff Harry offered to Cardinal Wolsey and the lords and ladies at the Presence Chamber in York Place. But even that monarch could not have entertained his guests so luxuriously in one particular as Messrs. Spiers & Pond theirs; for these, having dined, may pass through a door and descend by a stairway adorned with Muses and mirrors, and rich with floral clusters, to a theatre all glorious in blue and gold, cushioned chairs, boxes with curtains of yellow satin and lace, and a good drab background to set them off, and pass the rest of the evening in enjoyment of well-acted comedies or operettas.

So far as most of the hotels and restaurants of London are concerned, one may with satisfaction follow the advice of the Duke of Gloster to Anne, in the first act ofRichard III.:

“Leave these sad designsTo him that hath more cause to be a mourner,And presently repair to Crosby Place.”

For the old Gothic palace in the City, which Sir John Crosby built on a piece of land with one hundred and ten feet frontage, for which he paid a little over eleven pounds, which his widow sold to the duke who afterward became Richard III., and which in Shakspeare’s time had fallen to the richest of Lord Mayors (Sir John Spencer), has now followed the course of so many royal buildings, and become the banqueting-hall of the public.

ALBERT MEMORIAL, HYDE PARK.enlarge-image

ALBERT MEMORIAL, HYDE PARK.

ALBERT MEMORIAL. EUROPE.enlarge-image

ALBERT MEMORIAL. EUROPE.

ALBERT MEMORIAL—EAST FRONT. PAINTERS.enlarge-image

ALBERT MEMORIAL—EAST FRONT. PAINTERS.

Crosby Hall is haunted by memories of the great. It gives flavor to everything one eats in it to know that it has been celebrated by Shakspeare, that from the year in which it was built (1466) it was associated with whatever has been most romantic in the history of London. Here Sir John Rest was installed as Lord Mayor in the days (1516) when the Lord Mayor’s Show meant something. The civic procession which accompanied him contained four giants, one unicorn, one dromedary, one camel, one ass, one dragon, six hobby-horses, and sixteen naked boys. Here resided Sir Thomas More, Under-treasurer and Lord High Chancellor of England. Here he wrote his best works, and received the visits of Henry VIII. Here Erasmus visited the author ofUtopia, whose domestic life he described: “With him you might imagine yourself in the academy of Plato; but I should do injusticeto his house by comparing it to the academy of Plato, where numbers and geometrical figures, and sometimes moral virtues, were the subjects of discussion; it would be more just to call it a school and an exercise of the Christian religion. All its inhabitants, male and female, applied their leisure to liberal studies and profitable reading, although piety was their first care. No wrangling, no idle word, was heard in it; every one did his duty with alacrity, and not without a temperate cheerfulness.” In 1672 the hall was arranged for Non-conformist meetings. For ninety-seven years it was devoted to this purpose, and among those who preached here was Thomas Watson, who wrote the famous tract (Heaven Taken By Storm) which converted Colonel Gardiner. It is not wonderful that its old splendors then began to depart. TheMercuryof May 23, 1678, advertised a sale at Crosby Hall, where would be disposed of, among other things, “tapestry hangings, a good chariot, and a black girl about fifteenyears of age.” Then it became the office of the old East India Company; next a literary and scientific institute; next a wholesale wine warehouse; and at length came into the hands of its present proprietors, who have restored it to its original purpose by making it a banqueting-hall. They have preserved it, and stained its windows with portraits and pictures representing all its history. The decorations are in perfect keeping with the beautiful Gothic style of the building, and the colors seem to have expanded on it as a flower on its stem. One seems to be dining here in an older Guildhall and at a daily Lord Mayor’s banquet, with ancient Shakspearian characters for company. It is particularly entertaining to observe what a rich frieze can be secured for a hall in England by a skilful arrangement of the historic shields and coats of arms which belong to the country; while if some beautiful central figure on wall or glass is desired, it may be obtained in any one of the suggestive and mystical devices which are associated with the olden time—the boar, the lamb with its flag, and so on.

But neither the Criterion nor Crosby Hall furnishes, as I think, the same degree of beauty appropriate to dining-halls as may be found at the South Kensington Museum. Here one of the rooms was intrusted for decoration to Mr. Poynter, for a time President of the Art School there. He has made exquisite designs for the tiles of which the walls are altogether composed. The simple blue and white colors, and the purely decorative character of the figures thus made, make one almost regret that these figures are not Chinese instead of classic or allegorical, in which case one might eat with a feeling of comfortable seclusion in a china dish. The regular dining-room in the Museum was intrusted to Morris & Co., who have placed on the upper part of the walls a rich floral decoration of embossed plaster, colored (gray-green) by hand. The lower part of the wall, extending over two yards from the floor, consists of panels, on each of which is painted, on a gold ground, some allegorical figure. These figures represent the sun, the moon, and signs of the zodiac; they were designed by Burne Jones, and bear toomuch of that mystical light and expression which invest all forms and faces evoked by his magic touch to be gastronomically suggestive. In this respect neither Burne Jones nor the young artist (Murray) who painted his designs could rival the decorator of the Criterion; but one may dine at South Kensington amid one of the pleasantest little picture-galleries in existence. When Ralph Waldo Emerson was last in London, a poet who wished to give him a dinner conceived the happy thought of bringing him here, and the sage of Concord no doubt approximated hisfriend Alcott’s ideal of “dining magnificently;” even the “bowls of sunshine” with which A. would replace wine were supplied by the rich stained windows of Morris, and by the brilliant white-and-gold of the restaurant which separates the two rooms so exquisitely decorated.

ALBERT MEMORIAL—CONTINUATION OF EAST FRONT. PAINTERS.enlarge-image

ALBERT MEMORIAL—CONTINUATION OF EAST FRONT. PAINTERS.

ALBERT MEMORIAL—SOUTH FRONT. POETS AND MUSICIANS.enlarge-image

ALBERT MEMORIAL—SOUTH FRONT. POETS AND MUSICIANS.

There is no doubt that the barbaric element in English taste received a fresh accession of vigor with the advent of the Georges to England. What it was capable of, and what it found pleasing to the aristocratic butterflies who flitted around him whom they adored as “the first gentleman in Europe,” may be discovered in the Pavilion, at Brighton. That building may be regarded as the physiognomical monument of George IV. It is his cerebral interior projected into stone and decoration. The secret stairways and passages leading up to fictitious wardrobes, really door-ways to rooms which his majesty desired to visit, represent the prince that sent horsemen to trample down laborers at Peterloo, whose only guilt was to discuss their wrongs; the bizarre carvings, which make fine stone look like terra-cotta, illustrate the fop who had come to prefer figment to fact. The interior decorations do not represent so well the monarch whom Thackeray analyzed, and found in his h nds only a heap of pad, paint, gold-lace, but no man at all. Those frescoes were made during the first furor which occurred in England about Chinese and Japanese art; and, though ludicrously gorgeous, they are not without a certain interest, arising from the boundless freedom of their design and colors. How this can be it will be difficult for my reader to imagine, when he is told that the walls are covered with large dragons (life size, one might say, if dragons existed), serpents, wild cormorant-like birds, all having a grand field-day amid ladies and pleasure-grounds. The pillars are like barbers’ poles, with the archæological serpent twined around each instead of the red stripe. The Pavilion is said to have found in Mr. P. T. Barnum its only admirer. English critics have been rather hard upon it. Sydney Smith said that the structure looked “as if the dome of St. Paul’s had come down to Brighton and pupped.” William Cobbett thought that “a good idea of thebuilding might be formed by placing the pointed half of a large turnip upon the middle of a board, with four smaller ones at the corners.” The main intent of the building is to imitate a Chinese pagoda, and it was with that aim that the Prince of Wales (for he seems to have been mainly his own architect) committed this enormity. Two years ago the British Association for the Advancement of Science gathered for its charming summerséancesat Brighton, and the rooms of the Royal Pavilion were placed at their service. Never were the sessions of the Association so well housed, but it was amusing to witness the difficulty which even eminent savants had in the rivalry between the attractions of the wall-papers and the scientific papers. On the whole, it is to be feared that the grotesque ornaments left by the Regent carried the day. On one occasion, when a discussion occurred in the anthropological section on serpent-worshippers, the dragons and serpents on the wall were so appropriate that the room had the appearance of being frescoed for the archæological purposesof the day. But the ordinary contrast between the severe disquisitions of the scientific men and the luxuriant and barbaric colors and forms of the Pavilion was not so great as I witnessed recently in the same place. In the room which above all the rest might be regarded as the temple of vanity, a hundred ritualistic gentlemen and ladies had gathered to hold a prayer-meeting! In the evening there was a ball in the same room, and then it appeared plainly what had been the final cause of the Brighton Pavilion. I may add that the large building which George IV. erected for his stable, and whose roof is a vast dome, is now the chief concert-room of Brighton, and that another outlying building of the place is occupied by a fair picture-gallery, a good museum, and a capital library. Huish, in hisMemoirs of George IV., says: “Nothing could exceed the indignation of the people when the civil list came before Parliament, in May, 1816, and £50,000 were found to have been expended in furniture at Brighton, immediately after £534,000 had been voted for covering the excess of the civil list, occasioned entirely by the reckless extravagance of the Prince Regent, whose morning levees were not attended by men of science and of genius, who could have instilled into his mind wholesome notions of practical economy; but the tailor, the upholsterer, the jeweller, and the shoemaker were the regular attendants of his morning recreations.” These mechanics were no doubt the worthiest folk who frequented the building they had made so fine, and probably most of them had to take their pay in royal smiles; but it would have relieved the indignant minds of the middle classes, who chiefly had to supply the exorbitant civil list, if they could have foreseen that their money was destined in the end to supply their favorite watering-place with an agreeable, instructive, and useful institution.

ALBERT MEMORIAL—CONTINUATION OF SOUTH FRONT. MUSICIANS.enlarge-image

ALBERT MEMORIAL—CONTINUATION OF SOUTH FRONT. MUSICIANS.

When the English people now look upon the Royal Albert Hall they are quite warranted in drawing pleasant conclusions as to the change which has come over the spirit of royalty since the Pavilion was erected. Here we have the real monument of the late Prince Consort, who, however he may be estimated, certainly did have the ambition to be associated with the progressof science and art in England. Since the erection of the Coliseum in Rome no building so stupendous and noble has been built as this. It is a pile worthy of Rome in its palmiest days; and, with its superb oval form, and external frieze and cornice moulded after the Elgin Marbles, devoted to international industrial and art exhibitions and to music, it stands as grandly amid the European civilization of to-day as the Parthenon stood in Greece. This palace of art, and the Albert monument in the park opposite, make the beauty-spot of London. The latter is beyond question the finest monumental structure in Europe. Thisafternoon, while the golden sunset of a balmy spring day was glorifying the sky, I walked to it, passing by the old Kensington Palace, where the little girl was informed that she was Queen of England who has since had her name associated with her country’s longest period of peace and prosperity, passing beneath the ancient patriarchal trees and through the gardens beautified by flowers and plants from every region of the world, until at length I saw the spire of the monument shining like flame through the boughs. There against the clear, orange-tinted sky the monument stood forth, with its grand marbles at the four corners—Asia, with its genius mounted on a camel; America on her buffalo, Europe on her bull, Africa on her elephant, and each the centre of a representative group—and its noble reliefs and frescoes rising up to the winged angels at the top; and it appeared to me that every one of the one hundred and sixty-nine life-size portrait figures—the painters from Cimabue to Turner, the architects from Cheops to Gilbert Scott, who designed this monument; the sculptors from Chares to Thorwaldsen; nay, the very composers and poets from St. Ambrose to Rossini, from Homer to Goethe—had done something to raise this triumphal pile, about which their forms seem to move in stately procession. The architects and sculptors are the work of Philip; the poets, composers, and painters by Armstead; and while both have done admirably, it must be said that the reliefs by the latter are not surpassed by any modern sculpture. The group of Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, the kneeling form of Fra Angelico, are works such as can only be ascribed to that fine degree where intellect passes beyond ordinary analysis, and is called genius. Its central figure—Prince Albert—under the grand canopy, seems at first a conspicuous example of contemporary Hero-worship, showing that its highest and costliest homage is paid, not to any great Englishman—not to Shakspeare, not to Turner—but to a German, of whom it is certain that, had he not been a prince, he could never have excited so much attention as a hundred others of his fellow-men. At present the figure, not yet tested by time, is brassy enough, and is throned in brass; never was man moregilded over! But there is another side to this. The inscription runs: “Queen Victoria and her people to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort, as a tribute of their gratitude for a life devoted to the public good.” The Prince received no such credit during his life; he got smirching enough then; but, if time tells as well on his statue as it has on his reputation, this figure will become increasingly worthy of its environment. Though no great man, he will sit there surrounded by the allegorical representations of art, commerce, and the various types of peaceful civilization, to which he did unquestionably devote himself. And it is something that the noblest monument in Europe, though better deserved by some who have no monument but their work, has at any rate been raised, not to any brilliant devastator of human homes, not to any royal oppressor or scheming diplomatist, but to an ordinary man, who used the position and means intrusted to him for the refinement and moral well-being of the country that adopted him. While the legend of one section of Europe is Napoleonic, there is some significance in the fact that Albert should have transmitted that of another section; and the essential—the moral—beauty of every admirable monument is thus not wanting to that which graces the largest and wealthiest city of the civilized world.

If the spirit of Prince Albert revisits the glimpses of Rotten Row, his once favorite haunt, he must long for the day when wind and weather shall have subdued some of the obtrusive glitter of his statue. It is too bad to be seen with too little light during life, and too much after death. It is sufficiently curious, while gazing on this overpowering mass of gilded metal, to remember what his private feelings were when some snobbish officials of London City proposed to erect a monument to him twenty-three years ago. The following letter, all the more creditable because necessarily private—the matter never having assumed such shape that he could speak of it publicly—was written at a time when its writer was believed by many to be the real instigator of the proposed monument to himself. It was addressed to Lord Granville, and is as follows:

“Windsor Castle, 3d November, 1853.“My dear Lord Granville,—Many thanks for your letter, evincing such kind interest in what concerns me.“I did not see the letter in theTimes, but I read yesterday’s leading article, which led me at once to considerations similar to those which struck you. Moreover, it is evident to me that the Lord Mayor started the plan chiefly as the means of bringing himself into notice, after other Mayors had gone to Paris, taken the lead in education, etc., and that theTimesis attacking the plan chiefly to hit the Lord Mayor, as it had hit his predecessors. My unfortunate person will thus probably become their battle-ground; and, although the first article of theTimesis civil, its music generally goes on crescendo, and the next may be purposely offensive, and meet with shouts of applause from a portion of the audience.“Still, I do not see how I can, with any dignity or respect for myself, take notice of the squabble, and cry out for mercy, or to whom I could write such a letter as you suggest. I have never been consulted in any way in the matter, and the people have a perfect right to subscribe for and erect a monument in remembrance of the Great Exhibition; nor could I volunteer to say, ‘You must not connect it in any way with me.’“I can say, with perfect absence of humbug, that I would much rather not be made the prominent feature of such a monument, as it would both disturb my quiet rides in Rotten Row to see my own face staring at me, and if (as is very likely) it became an artistic monstrosity, like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy.“TheTimesargument, however, that it would be premature to place a statue to me, is of no great force in this instance, as I suppose it is not intended to recognize general merits in me, which ought yet to be proved, and might possibly be found wanting on longer acquaintance, but rather to commemorate the fact of the Exhibition of 1851, over which I presided; which fact will remain unaltered were I to turn out a Nero or a Caligula.“As in all cases of doubt what to do it is generally safest to do nothing, I think it better to remain perfectly quiet at present. If I were officially consulted, I should say, ‘Mark the corners of the building by permanent stones, with inscriptions containing ample records of the event, and give the surplus money to the erection of the museums of art and science.’Believe me, etc.,“Albert.”

“Windsor Castle, 3d November, 1853.

“My dear Lord Granville,—Many thanks for your letter, evincing such kind interest in what concerns me.

“I did not see the letter in theTimes, but I read yesterday’s leading article, which led me at once to considerations similar to those which struck you. Moreover, it is evident to me that the Lord Mayor started the plan chiefly as the means of bringing himself into notice, after other Mayors had gone to Paris, taken the lead in education, etc., and that theTimesis attacking the plan chiefly to hit the Lord Mayor, as it had hit his predecessors. My unfortunate person will thus probably become their battle-ground; and, although the first article of theTimesis civil, its music generally goes on crescendo, and the next may be purposely offensive, and meet with shouts of applause from a portion of the audience.

“Still, I do not see how I can, with any dignity or respect for myself, take notice of the squabble, and cry out for mercy, or to whom I could write such a letter as you suggest. I have never been consulted in any way in the matter, and the people have a perfect right to subscribe for and erect a monument in remembrance of the Great Exhibition; nor could I volunteer to say, ‘You must not connect it in any way with me.’

“I can say, with perfect absence of humbug, that I would much rather not be made the prominent feature of such a monument, as it would both disturb my quiet rides in Rotten Row to see my own face staring at me, and if (as is very likely) it became an artistic monstrosity, like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy.

“TheTimesargument, however, that it would be premature to place a statue to me, is of no great force in this instance, as I suppose it is not intended to recognize general merits in me, which ought yet to be proved, and might possibly be found wanting on longer acquaintance, but rather to commemorate the fact of the Exhibition of 1851, over which I presided; which fact will remain unaltered were I to turn out a Nero or a Caligula.

“As in all cases of doubt what to do it is generally safest to do nothing, I think it better to remain perfectly quiet at present. If I were officially consulted, I should say, ‘Mark the corners of the building by permanent stones, with inscriptions containing ample records of the event, and give the surplus money to the erection of the museums of art and science.’

Believe me, etc.,“Albert.”

Foley’s statue would be nobler if the last paragraph of this letter could be read on it, and if he could have contrived some plan to let every observer know that the book held by the Prince is the Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

There is some reason why the English artists should have done their best work upon the monument of Prince Albert. He may be regarded as the first man to teach this country that money might well be largely expended for the encouragement of fine art, and that it had artists capable of the best work, ifthe means were adequately supplied to them. He was the means of employing scores of fine brains that had otherwise been unable to make their mark on the country, and he extorted from a grumbling, shop-keeping public the splendors which now render the South Kensington Museum and its surroundings institutions an art university for the world. Very different have been the resources and rewards of the artists who have built and adorned the structures I have been mentioning from those which were alone available when the frescoes were placed in the corridors of the Houses of Parliament. Nevertheless, the Prince Consort himself had to be taught by a German artist to look around him for the ability which was needed for English work. When he was appointed the commissioner for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament (1841) he made overtures to Cornelius to come over and do the work. The German artist replied, “Why should you come to me when you have the man by your side—Dyce?” Dyce, who had studied at Rome with Cornelius and Overbeck, was then professor in the School of Design at Somerset House; but he was little known as an artist, and had not competed when designs for the decoration of Westminster Hall had been invited. The Prince Consort at once suggested to him that he should send in a design; and having too little notice to make a new one, he sent in a study he had made for a fresco for the Archbishop’s palace at Lambeth. It was severely criticised, as too German, too papistical, etc.; but it was selected; and the result is the beautiful frescoes of the Baptism of Ethelbert, in the House of Lords, and of the Morte d’Arthur, in the Queen’s robing-room. How slowly the ability of Dyce was recognized in England may be estimated by the fact that one of his most admired works—“Paul Preaching to the Gentiles”—now in the South Kensington Museum, was employed at an art exhibition in Manchester as background to an umbrella-stand!

But Prince Albert does not appear to have required a hint from Germany to appreciate the Scotch artist—son of a shoemaker—whose superior genius overshadowed that of his wealthy Irish brother. Already, while Dyce was as yet undiscovered,Maclise had been appointed to set about those grand works which adorn the passage to the House of Commons. But the poor sums which were paid to both of these artists, and the grudging way in which they were dealt with, are now remembered only as a scandal. Dyce was sharply censured because he would not promise exact dates for the completion of his seven frescoes whose payment had been fixed by the Treasury at stated periods. Being rich, he offered to refund; but the Treasury, knowing that this would arouse some indignation, found it convenient to reply that “no precedent” could be found justifying its acceptance of his offer! Any one who looks upon Maclise’s two pictures—“Trafalgar” and “Waterloo,” the latter with three hundred figures, each perfect in line and expression—can but feel scandalized that Parliament proposed to pay him only £2000. Goaded by the outcry among the artists, it at length raised the sum to £10,000, but then grew sulky and cut off many of the commissions. In reality Maclise paid £30,000 for the honor of making those pictures. He gave the whole of four years to them at a time when his regular work never brought him less than £10,000 a year. When Cornelius passed through a South German town the ovation was such as no prince could command. When Maclise had completed his frescoes the artists of London presented him with a gold chalk-holder. The Prince Consort did all he could to raise an enthusiasm for decorative art in this country, and to raise the wages and the position of the artist and of the artisan, and he succeeded measurably; but time has sadly shown that he must have imported the climate of Italy rather than its schools to make this a country of beautiful frescoes. Although Cornelius magnanimously declined the overtures made to him, as above stated, in favor of Dyce, he consented to come to London and give advice concerning the proposed works. It was owing to him that frescoes were determined upon. He had seen the glory of the great frescoes of Munich; he could not see that in a few years they would be peeling off (as they are now) even there. Fortunately, Maclise resolved to put on his frescoes in silica, and they are yet fairlypreserved; but all the pictures in the Houses of Parliament have had to be retouched from time to time, and the silica has such an attraction for the atmospheric moisture that the effect of the colors is frequently diminished. While it is thus manifest that the corroding damp of the English climate is hostile to mural ornamentation, and fatal to external frescoes, there is a steady increase of the desire for such things. This has been especially manifested among the English nobility, who have everything in the wide world that their hearts can desire, excepting only the climate that might comport with luxury and beauty.

That barbaric element in the English aristocracy, of which I have before spoken, which Mr. Matthew Arnold half likes while he impales its eccentricities, is constantly revealed in the contrasts between the baronial halls of England and the majority of the homes of the wealthy middle class. One may take as a specimen of the taste of the latter any one of the fine club buildings on or near Pall Mall. Here one feels that he is stepping on floors which the Pompeians would have thought somewhat sombre, but would have enjoyed, and amid walls and arches which they would have recognized as familiar, though strangely gloomy. The halls are large and spacious, rather costly than rich, built of purest granites and marbles of various hue; the reading, dining, and smoking rooms are comparatively quiet, and built with a view to comfort alone. The clubs represent the desire of gentlemen of means to pass their hours of leisure in palaces, and these are secured at an expenditure of less than a hundred pounds each per annum, even in the best of such institutions. But when one visits the castles of the nobility, such as are still inhabited, the fondness for color and romance is at once manifest. They love their rooms now blue, now green, and again rose-colored. They love classical frescoes—nude Muses, Graces, and Cupids chiefly—on the ceilings, and gay tints on the walls even of sleeping-rooms. In a word, my lords were sensational, and in some cases descended to the most vulgar tricks, as in the case which Wordsworth rebuked so sternly. On the occasion of a visit to Dunkeld the poet was taken into a room lined withmirrors, and where an artificial water-fall was set going by a spring being touched. The water-fall was reflected one way in the mirrors, but another way in the poet’s face, and soon after in his rebuke of such mimicry of Nature:

“Ever averse to pantomime,Thee neither do they know, nor usThy servants, who can trifle so.”

SPANDREL PICTURE.enlarge-image

SPANDREL PICTURE.

But what could come of a generation trained by the royal standard which thought it beautiful to tie oranges bought in Covent Garden Market on the twigs of trees at Hampton Court for a garden party? The mansions of the nobility are still really the most tawdry and inartistic in their decorations of any class that have attempted decorations—mere blazings of white-and-gold; but there is an increasing number of exceptions, represented especially by some ancient families which have manifested a laudable desire to have their halls painted with pictures of legends or historical events connected with their neighborhood or their ancestors. Mr. William B. Scott, artist and poet, who has done excellent mural work of this character, has, I believe, fairly persuaded both the aristocracy and the artists of England that they cannot have Italian frescoes in this country, and must depend upon mural painting. In exhibiting specimens of his own excellent mural painting, before the Institute of British Architects, Mr. Scott made some interesting remarks on fresco. “In Italy,” he said, “the reign of fresco was a little more than a century in length. All the earlier works remaining are in tempera. Not many years ago it was not unusual to hear people talk of all early Italian wall paintings as fresco, but it is quite certain no such thing exists; the earlier frescoes, such as Mantegna’s works, in the Eremitani Chapel, in Milan, aremiserable ruins; while the tempera pictures of Giotto, a century and a half older, in the Arena Chapel, in Padua, for example, are perfect. How, then, did it come about that fresco, which died out in Italy very shortly after Michael Angelo finished the Capella Sistini, had a revival in this nineteenth century in Munich and London? A very short narrative of the circumstances attending this revival will, I think, be enough. The associated body of young German students assembled in Rome in the beginning of this century aspired to better things than they found existing in the lifeless art about them. They reverted to the study of earlier art—to the actual reproduction of former art. They were also pietists—at least the two leaders, Overbeck and Cornelius; they found that their patron saint, Fra Angelico, painted in fresco; they found also that all the mythological, anti-religious pictures of the Bolognese school and later period were in oil: they determined on the revival of fresco. King Ludwig seconded them, and furnished an ample field for their success. The misfortune was, they did not go back far enough; they were self-denying men, and even the hardships and difficulties of fresco had attractions for them. It was like a revival of Tudor in mistake for a revival of the best period of Pointed architecture. Several English artists living in Rome, after the great success of the first very able works of these revivalists—my brother, David Scott, of Edinburgh, and William Dyce, for example—were smitten with the same feeling.”

Some eight years ago I had the pleasure of seeing the mural paintings with which Mr. W. B. Scott has decorated Sir Walter Trevelyan’s house, at Wallington, in Northumberland. No person could have been more appropriately selected for the work than Mr. Scott, who passed much of his early life in that region, and has written such beautiful poems upon its ancient legends. The first (ground-floor) series of paintings is on panels, enclosed between pilasters supporting arches; and a second is on the spandrels above the arches, in a corridor leading to the bedrooms, on the upper floor. The mansion is near the ancient Scottish Border, so haunted by romance, and near it may still be seen the remains of the ancient Roman Wall. In four of the panels the subjectsare (1) the building of the Roman Wall; (2) King Egfrid offering the bishopric of Hexham to Cuthbert, hermit on Farne Island; (3) a descent of the Danes on the coast; (4) death of the Venerable Bede. On the opposite side are later subjects, but equally related to the same region of country: (1) “The Spur in the Dish”—the sign to the moss-trooper that the larder is empty; (2) Bernard Gilpin taking down the gage of battle in Rothbury Church; (3) Grace Darling and her father saving the shipwrecked crew; (4) “Iron and Coal”—the industry of the Tyne. The pilasters and the arcaded ends are also slightly decorated with foliage. The pictures on the spandrels are a series of eighteen on the old Border ballad ofChevy Chase. They are full of spirit, and their rich colors are like bursts of sunset along the ancient corridor. So much, indeed, depends on this color that it is impossible to convey the artist’s idea of mural painting by a woodcut. Nevertheless, I must confide to the imagination of my reader one characteristic design (page 147), “Women looking out for their Husbands and Brothers after the Battle of Chevy Chase.”

For his decoration of Penkill Castle, Ayrshire, Mr. Scott appropriately selected the old Scottish poem ofThe King’s Quair, or book (cahier, or quire, of paper), said to have been written by James of Scotland when a prisoner at Windsor, in 1420, on his love for Jane, granddaughter of John of Gaunt. The first picture shows the king in prison, turning from his reading for his pen. According to the canto in which the king describes his rising with the matin bell, there is pictured the bell, the warder, the night-watch going home, etc. In the second picture he looks from his window, and sees the fairest of womankind listening to the birds in the terraced garden. She has with her two maids and a little dog. Cupid—the Cupid of early art, a sort of pretty page—shoots at the king from behind a hedge. The third picture represents the royal poet’s dream, in which Master Cupid descends from the starry sphere to carry him away to the court of Venus, to obtain her assistance. These three pictures run along a flight of stairs, and the series is taken up with the next flight. In the fourth picture the poet finds all the lovers of history at the shrineof Venus. James prays on his knees to her, but she sends him to Dame Minerva’s court of wisdom for advice. Then we have the poet at the court of Minerva; next Lady Jane sending off the carrier-pigeon; and finally the royal poet receiving it. It requires but little reflection for any one to realize that to an ancient baronial castle such a series of paintings as this would be as the breathing of a soul beneath its gray ribs of rock. It must be mainly for the want of such pictures in them that servant-maids and children so often imagine ghosts rustling along old corridors and haunting antique stairways.

The castle of the Earl of Durham is graced by a fine stained window, illustrating the legend belonging to it of the slaying of the great worm, or dragon, by the Knight of Lambton; and the similar legend of Moore Hall is finely told in that mansion by the art of Professor Poynter. The last, however, is simply on canvas, and appeared as a large framed painting at the Royal Academy. It is, of course, necessary that a house should be very large and stately to bear mural paintings. The painting of panels is, indeed, becoming common in old houses which are well wainscoted, but as a general thing it is confined to the doors of more modern dwellings. However, a very fine effect has been produced in the dining-room of Mr. Birket Foster, at Witley, in Surrey, by inserting in the wall around the room a continuous painting by Burne Jones representing the legend of St. George and the Dragon. The stained glass which Morris & Co. have placed in the landing of the staircase, in the same beautiful residence, shows also that even a cottage-mansion of moderate size admits of a great deal more decorative color than is ordinarily supposed.

In passing from the consideration of works of a public and semi-public character I cannot refrain from paying some tribute to the most influential decorative artist whom England has produced, and whose death in April, 1874, all lovers of beauty are still mourning. Mr. Owen Jones carried into decorative art that spirit of archæological accuracy—one might almost say that profound scholarship—which was brought into pictorialart by Delaroche in France, Baron Wappers in Belgium, and Maclise in England. It is said that there was but one thing in England which the Shah of Persia wished to carry back with him to his palace—the Alhambra rooms, at the Crystal Palace; but of all their possessions, in the way of art, there is hardly one that the London people would so unwillingly part with. Yet it is probable that as little as the Shah the thousands who every week find in those rooms theirchâteaux en Espagnerealize what it really cost to put them there. Mr. Owen Jones had passed his youth and his early manhood journeying, both personally and mentally, on the track of the race to which his fine culture belonged: he had studied the mystical figures and lines of Egyptian temples; he had pondered the principles by which reason and truth find expression in stone amid the ruins of Greece; he had learned the secrets of simplicity and grandeur in Rome, where were poured the converging streams of beauty from many tribes, each bearing its freight of faith and aspiration, to be deposited in marbles and monuments which are the gospels and bibles of a primitive world. By this path, which meant for him a growing culture, he came to dwell on the heights of Granada, as the recluse and devotee of Beauty, and when he thence returned to his native land he brought with him a new era. He expended a fortune on the grand folio of colored drawings of the Alhambra, which brought him no return, but a single copy of which is now a collector’s treasure. When proposals were being received for the decoration of the glass palace of the International Exhibition of 1851, Mr. Owen Jones offered to Prince Albert and the Royal Commissioners his plans. The Prince held out against them for some time; but the fascination was on him, and again and again he returned to the exquisite designs, until he surrendered to their charm. He selected Owen Jones with some tremor, but every year since the Palace has been transferred to Sydenham has shown that it was a felicitous incident of his life to have encountered the right man for a task which was to be of far more permanent importance than he supposed. Since then Mr. OwenJones has not only given the large interiors of various great business establishments that beauty which makes many of them worthy of study and admiration, but he has won for himself and his country the highest honors of the three great Continental Exhibitions. It was with some amazement that the world found itself pointed to England as the leader in decorative art by the French Exposition of 1867. “It requires,” said the official catalogue of that exposition, “but a slight insight into modern domestic life in England to perceive how great a change has taken place within the last ten or fifteen years in the internal embellishment of the dwelling-houses of the upper and middle classes of society; and there can be little doubt that the extension of art education will lead still farther to the production and appreciation of articles which combine the three requisites of fitness of purpose, beauty of design and ornament, and excellence of workmanship.” It might be supposed by those who have not seen this master’s work that it consisted merely in clever imitations of the Moorish and other designs with which his name is associated; but, on the contrary, his chief excellence was, that he showed how the ideas and principles which underlie the great works of the past were capable of being led out into new forms and adaptations. In taking the chair at the Society of Arts, in 1851, on the occasion of a lecture on the arts and manufactures of India, by Professor Royle, Mr. Owen Jones, having accorded superiority to the Indian and Tunisian articles in the Exhibition of that year over all contributed by Europe, added: “Many of these specimens have been purchased by government for the use of the School of Design, and will, no doubt, be extensively circulated throughout the country. But it is to be hoped that they will do more than merely teach us to copy the Indian style. If they only led to the origination of an Indian style, I should think their influence only hurtful. The time has arrived when it is generally felt that a change must take place, and we must get rid of the causes of obstruction to the art of design which exist in this country.”

TheDaily News, in an editorial article on the death of Owen Jones, said: “It was to bring the beautiful in form and color home to the household, and to mingle its subtle influences with the whole frame-work of social and family life, that the great designer we are lamenting labored all his life with the patient, unselfish enthusiasm of one to whom, though full of the keenest sympathy with all the great historic movements and events of his time, his art was his life.”

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