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LOS AKGELE8
PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL RECOLLECTIONS
BY THE LATE
SIR GEORGE GILBERT SCOTT, R.A.
EDITED BY HIS SON, G. GILBERT SCOTT, F.S.A.
Sometime Fellow of Jesus Colleget Cambridge.
an Introduction
VERY REV. JOHN WILLIAM BURGON, B.D.
Dean of Chichester.
ILonfcon : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. l879.
[All rights reserved^
JUSTORUM AUTEM ANIMAE
IN MANU DEI
SUNT
5"
0ST9
527
PREFACE.
THE following " Personal and Professional Recol- lections" were commenced by my father many years ago. They were designed originally for the infor- mation of his family, but as the work progressed the scope of it became enlarged. In 1873 my father drew up directions for its publication in the event of his decease, and his instructions upon the subject are precise. " I feel it due," he writes, " to myself that the statement of my professional life should go before the public in a fair and unpreju- diced form ; and the more so as I have been one of the leading actors in the greatest architectural movement which has occurred since the Classic renaissance. I only seek to be placed before the public fairly and honourably, as I trust I deserve ; and I commit this especially to those whose duty it is to do it, begging the blessing of Almighty God upon their exertions." The manuscript, naturally enough, contains much that is unsuited to publica- tion, and which my father, had he lived to revise it for the press, would undoubtedly have modified or erased. With such matter I have endeavoured,
A 2
iv Preface.
aided by the advice of others, to deal as it may be conceived that its author would have dealt, had opportunity served. There is also much relating to purely domestic concerns in which the public could not be expected to take interest. The greater part of this has been omitted. So much only is left as appeared necessary to the completeness of the story, and valuable as an indication of cha- racter. I trust it may not be thought that too little has here been expunged, and that something may be allowed to the partiality of a son.
My thanks are due to the Very Reverend the Dean of Chichester who, with equal willingness and kindness, undertook to contribute the Introduction, and who has further given valuable aid and advice in the revision, throughout, of the proofs. I have also to thank the Very Reverend the Dean of Westminster for the permission to reprint the ser- mon preached by him on the occasion of my father's interment ; Mr. Edward M. Barry, R.A., for a simi- lar permission in respect of a portion of a recent lecture delivered in the chair of Architecture at the Royal Academy, in reference to my father's career ; to Mr. E. A. Freeman, who was at much pains to recover a passage in one of his early pamphlets to which my father in his manuscript had referred, but of which he has given no very accurate indica- tion; and to Mr. George Richmond, R.A., for kind assistance in regard to the engraving from his drawing, which he has allowed me to place as a frontispiece to this work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION BY THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER.
CHAPTER I.
Birth and parentage, i. Native village, 4. The early " Evan- gelicals," 9. The "high and dry" clergy, 12. Village characters, 16. The Drawing Master, 24. Rev. Thomas Scott, the "Commentator," 27. Visit to Margate, 33. John Wesley, 36. William Gilbert, 37. Stowe, 38. Hillesden Church, 42. Residence at Latimers, 48.
CHAPTER II.
Gawcott Church, 53. Articled to Mr. Edmeston, 55. St. Saviour's, Southwark, 59. Death of his brother, 65. The Oldrid family, 66. Messrs. Grissell and Peto, 71. Fish- mongers' Hall, 73. Death of his father, 77. Poor Law work, 78. Marriage, 85. Erects his first church, 85. Augustus Welby Pugin, 88. The Martyrs' Memorial, 89. The Infant Orphan Asylum, 91. Camberwell Church, 92. St. Mary's, Stafford, 97. Chapel on Wakefield Bridge, 101. The Cambridge Camden Society, 103.
CHAPTER III.
The Gothic Revival in 1844, 107. St. Nicholas, Hamburg, 113. First Visit to Germany, ib. Visits Hamburg, 117. The Competition for St. Nicholas' Church, 118. Journey to Hamburg and Holland, 127. Dissolution of Partnership, 130. Apology for undertaking the erection of a Lutheran
vi Contents.
Church, 135. Appointed architect to Ely Cathedral, 146. Important works (1845 — 1862), 147. Paper on Truthful Restoration, 149. Becomes architect to Westminster Abbey, 151. Bradfield Church, 155. Tour in Italy, 157. The Great Exhibition (1851), 164. The Architectural Museum, 165. St. George's, Doncaster, 170. The Rath-haus at Hamburg, 174. Elected an A. R. A., 175.
CHAPTER IV.
Treatise on Domestic Architecture, 177. Competition for the New Government Offices, 178. Is appointed to this work, 181. Change of Government, 185. Is directed to prepare an Italian design, 192. Is elected a Royal Academician, 199.
CHAPTER V.
The Gothic Revival (1845 — 1864), 202. Progress of the subsidiary arts, Carving, 214. Metal work, 216. Stained glass, ib. The Gothic Revivalists, 225.
CHAPTER VI.
Death of his mother, 230 ; and of two sisters, 234 — 236 ; of his third son, ib. ; of his brother, Samuel King Scott, 241. Illness at Chester, 247. A "haunted" house, 252. Moves to Ham, 254 ; thence to Rook's-nest, 256. Death of Mrs. Scott, ib,
CHAPTER VII.
The Prince Consort Memorial, 262. Reply to criticisms on this design, 267. The Midland Railway Terminus, 271. Glasgow University buildings, 272. Decoration of the Wolsey Chapel, Windsor, ib* Competition for the New Law Courts, 273. Design for the Albert Hail, 279. Pro- fessor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, 280. Works at Ely Cathedral, ib. Westminster Abbey, 284. Hereford Cathedral, 288. Lichfield Cathedral, 291. Peterborough Cathedral, 298. Salisbury Cathedral, 300. Chichester Cathedral, 309. St. David's Cathedral, 311. Bangor
Contents. vii
Cathedral, 316. St Asaph Cathedral, 318. St. Albans Abbey, 320.
CHAPTER VIII.
Is knighted, 327. Tour in Switzerland and Italy, 329. Works at Chester Cathedral, 330. Gloucester Cathedral, 336. Ripon Cathedral, 339. Worcester Cathedral, 342. Exeter Cathedral, 345. Rochester Cathedral, 349. Winchester Cathedral, 352. Durham Cathedral, ib. St. Albans, re- sumed, 353.
- CHAPTER IX.
The Anti-Restoration Movement, 358. The Queen Anne Style, 372.
APPENDIX A.
An Account of Sir Gilbert's last days, and of his death and funeral, 377.
APPENDIX B. Funeral Sermon by Dr. Stanley, Dean of Westminster, 387.
APPENDIX C. Papers on the subject of Restoration referred to in p. 367,398.
INTRODUCTION
BY
THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER.
INVITED to contribute an Introductory Chapter to Sir Gilbert Scott's " Recollections," I willingly undertake the task ; yet have I little to offer beyond the expression of my personal regard for the man, my hearty admiration of the great work which he lived long enough to accomplish.
(i.) It is impossible to survey the revival which has taken place in the knowledge of Gothic archi- tecture within the last forty years without astonish- ment. Not that our actual achievements as yet are calculated to produce excessive self-congratu- lation : but when it is considered out of what a state of childish ignorance we have so lately emerged, it is surely in a high degree encouraging to review our present position. And to Sir Gilbert Scott, more than to any other individual, we are indebted for what has been effected. He in- genuously acknowledges his obligations to others : tells us at what altar he first kindled his torch : arrogates to himself no claim to have been facile princeps in his art. On the contrary, he frankly recalls his own failures ; and recounts the steps,
x Introduction.
slow and painful, by which he himself struggled out of the universal darkness, with a truthfulness which is even perplexing. Yet has he been un- questionably the great teacher of his generation ; and by the conservative character of his genius he has proved a prime benefactor to his country also. To his influence and example we are chiefly in- debted for the preservation of not a few of our national monuments — our cathedral and parochial churches. And (it must in faithfulness to his memory be added) a vast deal more would have been spared of what has now hopelessly perished had his counsels always prevailed — above all, had his method been more generally adopted.
(2.) In the " Recollections" which follow (would that they were less fragmentary !) Sir Gilbert has chiefly — all but exclusively, in fact — dwelt upon the great Cathedral restorations which were con- ducted under his auspices. His remarks will be read with profound interest, and will become local memorials of the most precious class, as the au- thentic private jottings (for they do not pretend to be more) of the great architect himself. But one desiderates besides an enumeration of the many dilapidated parochial Churches on which he was employed ; and one would have been glad at the same time to be reminded by himself of the eloquent plea which was ever on his lips for deal- ing in a far more conservative spirit with those precious relics of antiquity. Let me be allowed in this place to say a few plain words on a subject very near to my heart — as I know it was very near to his : a subject concerning which those who have a
Introduction. xi
right to be heard, and who ought to have spoken long ago, have either practised reticence or else spoken ineffectually until, I fear, it is too late for any one to speak with the possibility of much good resulting from what he says. I allude to the ruthless work of destruction which for the last thirty years has been going on in almost every parish in England under the immediate direction of our architects, and with the sanction of our parochial clergy. Verily, it is not too much to declare that with the best intentions and at an immense outlay, more havoc has been made, more irreparable mischief wrought throughout the land within those thirty years, than any invasion of a barbarous horde could have effected. We have severed ourselves, on every side, from antiquity, — have effectually broken the thousand links which used to connect us with the historic Past.
(3.) At the beginning of the period referred to, to seek out and to study the village churches of England was almost part of the education of an English gentleman. In the case of one of culti- vated taste, whatever was remarkable in their structure or in their decorations, — from the primi- tive window or singular font or rude bas-relief above the doorway, down to the fragments of stained glass, specimens of wrought iron, or vestiges of fresco on the walls, — nothing came amiss. The ancient altar-stone degraded to the pavement ; the curiously-carved finials ; the dila- pidated stand for the preacher's hour-glass ; all found in him an appreciating patron. That the edifice itself was as a rule in a most discreditable
x i i Introdwtion .
plight, is undeniable. The green walls, low plas- tered ceiling, chimney thrust through the window, —the ponderous gallery above and the tall pews beneath, — all were sordid and unworthy. But for all that, the great fact remained that our village churches were objects of surprising interest ; full of beauty, full of instruction. There is no telling what a privilege it was to pass a day with one's pencil among the many relics which they invariably contained ; and from every part of the edifice to learn something. Externally, enough remained at all events to tell the story of the structure : within, comfortable it was to reflect that nothing after all was so much needed as the removal of pews, galleries, whitewash : the re-opening of windows : the careful repair of what, through tract of time, had vanished : the restoration of what had been barbarously mutilated. Nothing in short was required but what a refined taste and strong conservative instinct might reasonably hope to see some day effected.
(4.) And now, what has been the actual result of thirty years of church " Restoration " ? Briefly this, — that in by far the greater number of our lesser country churches there scarcely sur- vives a single point of interest. In the case of our more considerable structures — with a few bright exceptions — the merest wreck remains of what did once so much delight and interest the be- holder. The door of entrance has been ''restored," but not on the old lines : three other doors — in order to obtain additional sittings, to exclude draughts, and to save expense — have been so
Introduction. xiii
blocked up as to make it impossible to discover what they were. The curious Norman chancel- arch has been " enlarged :" the ancient font and pulpit have been supplanted : the screen has either been painted over or else removed entirely. The windows (furnished with stained glass of the kind which it gives the beholder a sharp pain across the chest to be forced to contemplate) are wholly new, and do not assort with the edifice : a huge east window in particular (bad luck to the author of it !) has effectually obliterated the record of what stood there before it. The venerable tomb of the founder (on the ground, under a mural arch) has been built over with seats. Another mutilated recumbent figure of an ancient lord of the soil has been buried, — inscription and all. Sedilia, piscina, aumbry, niche, — ruthless hands have rendered every one of them uninteresting and unintelligible. Some exquisite tracery has been chiselled away within and without the building. A specimen of the ancient oak seats has disappeared, and a forest of rush-bottomed chairs covers the floor. There were once traces of curious fresco painting on the walls ; but they also have been obliterated. After repeated inquiry I find that the sepulchral slabs, of which there used to be several, are at the present hour either (a) buried, or (b) lying in the churchyard, or (c) ingeniously plastered into the wall of the tower where they cannot be seen and where they cease to be of the least interest, or else (a) destroyed. A prime object seems to have been to assimilate the tint of the walls to that of a cup of coffee : also to procure a surface of unbroken
xiv Introduction.
colour. Another leading principle has evidently been to introduce a quantity of varnished deal furniture. A third, to overlay the floor in every direction with " Minton's tiles " —except where the perforations for the " heating apparatus " have established a stronger claim. The result is that there is no longer discoverable a single inscribed stone — certainly not in situ — from one end of the church to the other. When will architects and country parsons learn that the most unmeaning, most commonplace, most vulgar thing with which the floor of an ancient church can be covered is an assortment of black and red tiles ? Is it not per- ceived at a glance that they must needs be unin- teresting, disappointing, and when they have pro- cured the ejectment of ancient sepulchral stones, downright offensive ? Has the parish then no history? It had one — a history which thirty years ago was to be seen written on the walls and on the floor of the parish church. Is it tolerable that on the plea of " restoration " these local records should all have been obliterated ? How about the men who ministered to the many generations who once worshipped within these walls ? Behold, they have (all but one) departed. And have they then, like a long line of shadows, left no material trace of their occupancy behind them ? The answer is obvious. Certain of them sleep in dust, side by side, in front of the altar which they served in their lifetime; and a row of sepulchral slabs until yesterday acquainted the beholder at least with their names, dates, ages. Am I to be told that yonder assortment of parti-coloured tiles (which are to be bought by the yard by anybody, any day,
Introduction. xv
anywhere) are so much more interesting than those memorials of the past, that it is reasonable they should cause their unceremonious ejectment ? .... I have said nothing about the architectural Vandalism of these last days, being without pro- fessional knowledge ; but I have the best reason for knowing that the author of the ensuing " Re- collections " would have endorsed every word which has gone before. O, that what has been written might avail, if it were but in one quarter, to arrest the work of ruin which is still steadily going forward throughout the length and breadth of the land !
(5.) I recall with interest an opportunity I once enjoyed (1869-70) of acquainting myself with Sir Gilbert's skill and conscientiousness in superin- tending a work of no great magnitude. The beau- tiful church of Houghton Conquest, in Bedford- shire, had fallen into a state of exceeding de- cadence ; and the rector (the late Archdeacon Rose) having been encouraged to invoke the assistance of Sir Gilbert Scott, the architect paid us a visit. (I say us, because Houghton Rectory was the happy home of all my long vacations.) Sir Gilbert fully shared our concern at the entire destruction of the large east window, which had been half blocked up, half replaced by a wooden frame containing three vile mullions of wood. After conducting him round, the Archdeacon and I took our seats by his side on the leads of the nave, while he took a leisurely survey of the roof of the structure. "What is that?" he inquired, directing his glass to the summit of the eastern
xvi Introduction.
gable. I volunteered the statement that it was a ruined fragment of the former cross, for such it seemed. " That was never part of a cross," he at last said thoughtfully ; " it is part of the tracery of a window. I can see the cavity for the inser- tion of the glass." To be brief, it proved to be, as he at once suspected, the one necessary clue to the restoration of the east window. On the window-sill, which was honeycombed with decay, his practised eye had already distinguished traces oifour mullions. I need not go on. A few more fragments were found built into the wall, and the entire window for the architect's purpose was recovered. He preserved everything for us, from the dilapidated screen to the old hour-glass stand. Several specimens of fresco were revealed on the walls ; a curious coat-of-arms in stained glass was detected in the tower ; two windows which had been closed were opened ; the grave- stones were left in their places ; the very reckoning of the parson with certain members of the Conquest family, scratched with the point of a knife (I sup- pose in the time of Queen Elizabeth) inside the arch of the vestry door, was ordered to be reli- giously preserved. On the other hand, a por- tentous Georgian pulpit, furnished with a for- midable sounding-board above, and a species of pen for the accommodation of the clerk beneath, were banished. The sordid porch and plastered ceiling of the chancel were supplanted by objects exquisite in their respective ways.
(6.) I have said nothing hitherto about Sir Gilbert's personal characteristics, disposition,
Introduction* xvii
habits of mind. It will be found that these emerge with tolerable distinctness from the autobiography which follows. His indomitable energy and unflagging zeal, as well as the en- lightened spirit in which he pursued his lofty calling : his enthusiasm for the great cause to which he devoted himself to the very close of his earthly life : these lie on the surface of his narra- tive. And here it is impossible not to admire the entire absence of any expression of professional jealousy from first to last; and indeed the absence of depreciatory language concerning others, — although the man who worked after Wyatt in the last century, after Blore in the present, might have been excused if he had testified both surprise and annoyance at what he was daily constrained to en- counter.— A stranger, I suspect, would have been chiefly impressed by the exceeding modesty and unassumingness of his manner, — " his beautiful modesty," as one who knew him most intimately has well phrased it ; adding a tribute to " his per- fect breeding and courtesy, — not so much finish of manner as genuine inbred politeness." Such " graces of character," writes another friend of his, " will not soon be forgotten by those who knew him, however slightly." Obvious as it always was that he entertained a decided opinion on the point under discussion, he yet bore with the crude remarks of persons who really knew nothing at all about the matter in hand to an extent which used to astonish me. Even when conversing with those who were submissive and really only wished to learn, there was no appearance of dictation or dogmatism. His affability was extraordinary. While on this
xviii Introduction.
head let me not fail to acknowledge his wondrous patience and kindness in matters of detail.
I must needs also again advert to the conserva- tive character of his genius. When I became Vicar of St. Mary-the- Virgin's, Oxford (1863), I found to my distress that Laud's porch was doomed. The parishioners willingly listened to my recom- mendation, and it was spared. I confessed what I had done to Scott, and asked for his forgiveness if I had counselled amiss : but he commended me highly. A few feet in advance of the porch how- ever, are two plain piers, erected in the last century, — either of them surmounted by a strange kind of dilapidated urn. Were they also to stand ? I presumed that the architect who had already removed the high wall which used to enclose the north side of the churchyard, and substituted for it the present elegant erection, would have been for their removal : and certainly I was not prepared to offer any resistance had I discovered that such was actually his view. But no. After a careful survey, he recommended that they should be retained, and gave me his reasons for retaining them. It was truly edifying and interesting to hear his remarks on such occasions. The thing was " historical ; " — or at least it was " good of its kind ; " — or it " had a certain cha- racter about it ; " — or " I don't altogether dislike it." In short — for whatever reason — the end of the matter commonly was that " I think we had better let it alone."
(7.) Notwithstanding all that has gone before,
Introduction. xix
were I called upon to state my private estimate of the man, I should avow that in my account, second to no other personal characteristic was the ardour of his domestic affections : first, his love for his parents, brothers, sisters ; then his entire devotion to his wife and his children. There is many a passage in the ensuing autobiography which bears me out in this estimate. I well remember the exceeding distress which the death of his son in 1865 at Exeter College occasioned him ; an event on which he had freely dilated with his pen, but which it is thought was of too private a nature to find here so extended a record. I should also think it right to declare that in my account a deep undercurrent of Religion, as it was the secret of his strength and of his life, so was it also the secret of his heart's affections : the fountain-head too, by the way, of a certain playful joyousness of disposi- tion which came to the surface continually, and never forsook him to the last. His general man- ner, however, was grave and thoughtful ; and his piety of that quiet and even reserved kind which only occasionally comes to the surface, and easily escapes observation altogether. No one about him, in fact, not even his sons, knew the strength and ardour of those religious convictions which were with him an inheritance; for (as the reader will be presently reminded) the Rev. Thomas Scott, of Aston Sandford, the commentator, was his grandfather. To his faithful valet, who had repeatedly asked him to tell him (but had been in- variably put off with some evasive reply) how it happened that the lower side of his arms looked galled and sore, had in fact a leprous appearance, he
xx Introduction.
one day avowed as follows : " When I am praying, especially for my sons, I feel I cannot do enough. I feel kneeling to be but little, and I prostrate my- self on the floor. I suppose that my arms from this may have become a little galled." — He never syllabled his wife's name in conversation with his sons without a silent prayer for her repose ; and when out of doors, he would always raise his hat (the token of how he was mentally engaged) at the mention of her cherished name. — I trust it is not wrong to reveal such matters. One must either practise reticence, and so conceal the cha- racter which one professes to exhibit faithfully : or else risk offending the very persons probably whose good opinion one would chiefly be glad to conciliate.
JOHN W. BURGON.
THE DEANERY, CHICHESTER, May iTth, 1879.
SIR GILBERT SCOTT.
PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL RECOLLECTIONS, 1864.
CHAPTER I.
MY motive in jotting down the following mis- cellaneous recollections is this: — that a man's children have no means whatever of getting at the particulars of his life up to the time when their own observation and memory begin to avail them, and that they are peculiarly apt to receive mis- taken impressions. It is consequently, as it ap- pears to me, the duty of every one who has appeared much before the public to supply this defect from his own memory, and thus to prevent misapprehension.
I was born at the parsonage-house at Gawcott, near Buckingham, on July i3th, 181 1. Though my father, like myself, was born in Bucks, I hardly feel that I have in reality any very direct connection with that county, clergymen being so much birds of passage, that the place of their children's birth seems little more than a matter of chance.
My grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Scott, so well known by his commentary on the Bible and other works, was a native of Lincolnshire, '««. B
2 Sir Gilbert Scott.
where his father was a considerable agriculturist. I have not been able to ascertain whether the latter was a native of that county, but as his eldest son J took some pains to disclaim connec- tion with families of the same name in his neigh- bourhood, I infer that such was not the case. He (the father of my grandfather) was born in the time of William III. (1701), and was connected by marriage with the Kelsalls of Kel- sall in Cheshire, the representative of which family was about that time vicar of Boston.2 His wife was one of the Wayets,3 a very respec- table county family. From the arms made use of by my grandfather's family, I gather that they must have sprung from the Scotts of Scott's Hall in Kent, who left Scotland in the thirteenth century.4
My mother's family were West Indians. Of the family of her father, Dr. Lynch of the island of Antigua, I know but little, but her maternal grandfather was the possessor, at that time, of a valuable estate known as " Gilbert's Estate."
This family settled at a very early date in Antigua, previous to which they had resided in Devonshire, one of their representatives being Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother and com- panion-in-arms of Sir Walter Raleigh.
1 William Scott, of Grimblethorpe Hall, near Louth. — ED.
2 Edward Kelsall, Vicar of Boston, 1702 — 1719. See Mac- kenzie's edition of Guillim's " Display of Heraldry," p. 68.
3 He married Mary Wayet of Boston. One of her sisters was married to Lancelot Brown, " the omnipotent magician Brown " of Cowper's "Task," Bk. III. The family of Wayet was also settled at Tumby in Bain, in the same county. — ED.
* One branch of this Kentish family was settled at Rotherham, in Yorkshire, in the reign of Edward I V. — ED.
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 3
My great-grandfather, Nathaniel Gilbert, ap- pears to have been a most excellent man. Living in a century of extreme deadness in religious matters, he was roused to a sense of the short- comings of his age in this respect either by the preaching or by the writings of Wesley. He consequently joined the Wesleyans at a time when they were not considered as severed from the Church of England. At his request Wesley sent over to Antigua some ministers of his society to instruct the negroes and others, but though the whole family joined the new society, it is clear that Mr. Gilbert did not consider himself otherwise than a member of the Church of Eng- land, for he brought up his eldest son as a clergy- man. Nor do I recollect even a hint of those members of the family who were living during my childhood (including my grandmother and a great-aunt, Miss Elizabeth Gilbert,) being other than Church people, although the last named treasured up most affectionately her personal recollections of John Wesley himself, and retained through life a strong sympathy with his followers. This family was indirectly connected with several good families in England, among others with that of Lord Northampton, with the Abdy's, and with the Gordons of Stocks. Sir Edward Colebrooke once told me that he was connected with the Gilberts, arid Sir Denis Le Marchant also through his marriage, as also Lady Seymour, wife of canon Sir John Seymour, and Sir George Grey.
My father, the Rev. Thomas Scott, was the second son of the well-known commentator. He was born at Weston- Underwood in Bucks, during
B 2
4 Sir Gilbert Scott.
the short period of my grandfather's residence as curate of that village in 1 780. My grandfather, about that time, served several churches in that district. The next year he removed to Olney, the former curate of which, John Newton, was his intimate friend; where he was brought a good deal in contact with the poet Cowper, who was his next-door neighbour. I well recollect an old man occasionally calling on us at Gawcott, who had known my grandfather at that early period of his clerical life.
MY NATIVE VILLAGE.
The following notice of my native village, and of some of its inhabitants, its customs, &c., I give merely as a memento of times in which, though not long gone by, there remained much more of old manners than has survived to the present day.
Gawcott is a hamlet of, and situated a mile and a half from, Buckingham. It had had a chapel in former times, as is proved by a field retaining the name of " chapel close," and showing marks of ancient building. How long this had ceased to exist I do not know, probably for some cen- turies. The absence of a church had its natural consequences, producing a partly heathenish and partly dissenting population. The former of these evils, and perhaps to some degree the latter, was so much felt by one of its inhabitants that he determined on refounding a church in his native village. This excellent person, one John West, was a man of humble origin, who had made what to him was a considerable fortune by the trade
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 5
of a lace-buyer, that is to say, by acting as middle-man between the poor lace-maker and the trader. The difficulties he met with in carrying out his generous project were considerable. I have often heard my father say that after the church was built he had the greatest difficulty in getting it consecrated, and that he at last sent a message to the bishop (Tomline of Lincoln) in these words : — " Tell the bishop that if he won't consecrate it I'll give it to the dissenters," — a message which had the desired effect. This church or chapel, erected during the first years of the present century, was perhaps as absurdly unecclesiastical a structure as could be conceived. Enclosed between four walls forming a short wide oblong, it had a roof sloping all ways, crowned by a belfry such as one sees over the stables of a country house. The pulpit occupied the middle of the south side, the pews facing it from the north, the east, and the west, and a gallery occupying the north side, in the centre of which were perched the singers and the band of clarionets, bass-viols, &c., by which their performances were accompanied. The font, I well recollect, was a washhand-stand with a white basin ! The advowson was placed in the hands of five trustees, all being incumbents of parishes in the neighbourhood, and belonging to the then very scarce Evangelical party. My father was the first " Perpetual Curate." There was at first no parsonage, and he lived for a time in the vicarage at Buckingham (the vicar being non-resident), where my two eldest brothers (and one who died in infancy) were born. He soon,
6 Sir Gilbert Scott.
however, raised funds for the erection of a par- sonage, which, as he had a fancy for planning, he designed himself, — and I must not find fault with my native house. It was close to the church.
My earliest recollections of the church bear upon the digging of the vault for the founder and my sitting in the gallery at his funeral, and seeing it pass the opposite windows. This was in 1814, so that it is a pretty youthful reminiscence, yet though it is my earliest, it does not come to me otherwise than any other, and does not seem by any means like a beginning, showing that though we forget what happened in our early childhood, we nevertheless have no feeling of being incapa- ble of observing and remembering it. Here, for instance, I can recollect who dug the vault, and who took me to church, and I have a full sense of being conscious of who they said Mr. West was, and of the house he had lived in, though I was but three years old.
The inhabitants of Gawcott were a very quaint race. I recollect my father saying that when he first went there to reconnoitre, he found the road to it rendered impassable by a large hole dug across it, in which the inhabitants were engaged in baiting a badger, a promising prelude to an evangelical ministry among them. However he succeeded in bringing the place in due time into a more seemly state as to externals, though the old leaven remained, and a certain amount of poaching and other forms of rural blackguardism still .prevailed. There grew up amongst all this, however, a good proportion of really excellent
CHAP, i.] Recollections. j
people, some of whom had at one time belonged to the previously more normal type.
The neighbourhood of Buckingham is by no means picturesque. It is situated geologically at the junction of the Oxford clay with the lower oolite, and though in other districts the latter rises into high and picturesque hills, such is not the case with this portion of its course. It is a plain, slightly undulated, agricultural country, partly arable, but mainly devoted to dairy farming, butter being the only produce for which it is famous. It is (or rather was) here and there well wooded with oak, is everywhere enclosed, with a good deal of hedge-row timber, sadly dis- figured by lopping, and there is usually some more ornamental timber round the villages. The latter, as a rule, retained some traces of the "Great House " the residence of the old proprietor who had in most instances succumbed to the all- absorbing influence of a single family, originally one of their own — the squire-race, but then become the Marquises and subsequently the Dukes of Buckingham, who from their semi-regal seat of Stowe, some four miles from my own humble village, lorded it over the county. An unpicturesque country, denuded of its natural aristocracy, is no doubt very dull and unattractive, yet it possesses some interest in the natural and quaint character of its inhabitants and in its reten- tiveness of old customs. I have never met with so many odd eccentric characters as in my native vil- lage, nor do I suppose that there were, even then, many districts in which old customs were better kept up. Whether they are so still, I know not.
8 Sir Gilbert Scott.
The cottages were usually of the old thatched type, built of rough stone, or of timber and plaster. The one sitting-room known as " the house " had the old-fashioned chimney-corner, in the sides of which the master and mistress of the family sat, with the wood fire, placed upon bars and bricks, on the floor between them. In the ample chimney over their heads hung the bacon, for the benefit of the smoke, and below it all sorts of utensils for which dryness was to be desired, and high overhead as they sat there the occupants could see the sky through the vertical smoke-shaft. The room was paved with unshapen slabs of stone from the neighbouring quarry or "stone-pit" and the oaken floor timbers showed overhead, though hardly sufficiently so for a tall man to feel his head to be safe. Between one of these timbers and the floor there was placed (where babies were to be found) a vertical post, which revolved on its central axis and from which projected an arm of wood with a circular ring or hoop at its end, so contrived as to open and shut. By passing this about the baby's body the little thing could run round and round at will, while its mother was busied at her household work or at the lace- pillow. The bedroom arrangements I do not recollect, but I do not think they were so defective as those we now so often hear of, and the gene- rality of cottages had a pretty ample garden.
The farmers did not live very differently as to general forms from the cottagers, the difference lying chiefly in the very substantial distinction be- tween abundance and scantiness of fare. They usually lived in the " house " or kitchen, though
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 9
they (and indeed some of the cottagers) had " parlours " which were only used when they had company. In a. corner of the "parlour" was usually a smart cupboard called a " bofette."
I have heard my father say that Mr. West, the founder of the church, lived in the same room with his servants, all helping themselves at dinner from a common dish placed in the middle of the round table.
In the midst of this funny population we lived almost as a stranger colony. My father was by education a Londoner, and my mother too, though a West- Indian by birth, had been educated in London, as were also my grandmother and my great-aunt, who resided with us, while our isola- tion was rather increased, than otherwise, by my father taking seven or eight pupils who came from all parts of the kingdom, and by our mixing very little indeed in local society, though we had numerous friends at a distance, who occasionally visited us. Our few local friends lived in the neighbouring town of Buckingham, and now and then a clergyman was admitted to our ac- quaintance : most of them, however, shunned us as evangelicals, or as they were then called " methodists."
My recollections of the period of my youth are indeed very curious in this respect, I mean as to the relations which at that time (up to 1830 and later) subsisted between an evangelical clergyman and his family, and the other clerical families around them.
Now be it remembered that my father was in his way very much of a man of the world.
io Sir Gilder I Scoff.
Having been brought up in town, he had seen a good deal of life in one way or another. He was the farthest possible from being a sanctimo- nious man, and, though he made religion his pri- mary object and guide, he did not bring it to the front or parade it in the least degree so as to give offence to others. He was, in addition to this, a peculiarly gentlemanly man, ready and well fitted for any society, and as much at home with men of rank as with his equals or inferiors. He was also a man of especially popular manners, more so than almost any man I recollect, thoroughly genial, merry, and courteous in all companies and to all comers.
My mother too was a particularly ladylike per- son, a hater of all vulgarity, an absolute detester of all low and unworthy motives, and ready to sacrifice any advantage rather than risk any, even the most punctilious, point of honour or high feel- ing. She was well-born, of a good old family called on the monument of one of them 5 (a stranger to us) in Petersham church, " generosa et peran- tiqua familia."
She was related to persons of good position : her grandfather and uncle were West India planters, (the former, President of the Assembly in his island), whose family had intermarried with baronets, and in one case with a marquis, so that there was no social or personal reason for our not being familiar with our neighbours, but the reverse.
6 Thomas Gilbert. He was, says his epitaph, " Integer, probus, severe Justus, fidus ad amicos, ad omnes, ad Deum ; sine promissis, sine dissimulatione, sine superstitione, firmus, benevolus, pius." He died in 1766. — ED.
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 1 1
Yet how many of the neighbouring incumbents ever called on us or we on them ? I may almost say not one. I have no recollection of knowing the wife, son, or daughter, of any clergyman in the neighbourhood, and none ever appeared at our table, with the exception of one or two curates who had slightly evangelical tendencies. I do not know whether this arose most from the exclusive- ness of the "evangelicals," or from the repugnance felt toward them by other clergymen, perhaps from both. I recollect one highly eccentric rector hard by, a master of a college at Oxford, who had assisted the son of a farmer, who showed literary talent, to enter the church, and had signed his testimonials for deacons' orders, refusing to do the same for him when he went up for priests' orders, because he had once taken duty for my father .in his absence. Of this rector I used to hear that when once led, the worse for his cups, through the quadrangle of his college, he ex- claimed, " All this I do to purge my college from the stain of methodism ! " (Wesley had been of his college). This, however, was of course an extreme case, and the man both eccentric and disreputable. The ordinary incumbents contented themselves with taking no more notice of us than if we did not exist. Even common civilities were so rare, that I recollect the pleasure which my father expressed when he met with any. There were a few exceptions, and my father in one or two cases was in the habit of helping a neighbour, but as a rule no incumbents ever appeared at our table, nor any of us at theirs, nor indeed did we know more than two or three, even by sight,
1 2 Sir Gilbert Scott.
much less to speak to. I remember that my father used to speak with great respect of Mr. Palmer, the father of the present Lord Selborne, but no acquaintance existed between them.
Now let it not be for a moment imagined that it was because these clerical neighbours held what are now called " High Church views." Not a bit of it. No such notions existed among, or would as a rule have been understood by them. The greater part of them preached mere moral essays, which would have come almost as naturally from a respectable pagan. What most of them hated was the name of " methodist," while some of them resented the essential doctrines of the Christian religion, such as the Atonement, and the influence of the Holy Spirit, which went among them by the name of " enthusiasm," ' and among the best of those who did not exactly define their objections, there was one sentiment in which they all concurred, that " as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against."
Nor was there less feeling on our own side. My father and mother would not have allowed us to associate with what they termed "worldly peo- ple," nor would they themselves be intimate with clergymen whom they considered " not to preach the gospel," so that as the result of these two influences we were absolutely isolated.
It is a curious question what the rank and file of these old " high-and-dry " men really were. I cannot see any resemblance between them and the
8 The old toast of "Prosperity to the establishment and confusion to enthusiasm " illustrates this state of feeling. — ED.
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 13
present high churchmen ; though, on the other hand, the fact remains that the high churchmen have naturally succeeded to them, and they have lapsed into the high church party. Nevertheless I do not imagine that they held any doctrine in common with their successors, unless it be bap- tismal regeneration, which the old men possibly held ; not indeed actively, but just as a safeguard against the " methodistical " doctrine of " conver- sion." They held, I suppose, that the wicked suffer future punishment ; but any severe pres- sure of that doctrine they practically repudiated. They were, I think, theoretically believers, but practically or passively disbelievers, in the prin- cipal doctrines of Christianity. They did not hate evangelicals so much from differing with them on specific points, as because they pressed religion and piety as the chief aim of their teaching, whereas the high-and-dry men did not care, or take the trouble to do so, the fact being that they were not religious men.
They seem to me to have been practically Pelagians, though they knew nothing and cared nothing about what they were, being content with the consciousness that they were neither " me- thodists " nor " enthusiasts " and that they detested both. This, however, does not apply to the lead- ing men of the party, many of whom were ex- cellent, as they were undoubtedly learned, men ; who held, in the main, a good and orthodox code of doctrine — so much so, that when the evan- gelicals came to compare notes carefully with them, they did not find very much difference, ex- cepting that these made more of sacraments and
1 4 Sir Gilbert Scott.
less of conversion, of original sin, and of the in- fluence of the Holy Spirit, and that they repudiated co-operation with dissenters in any matter what- ever (e. g. in the Bible Society), while the evan- gelicals did not object to anything which they thought would promote earnest religion.
Many of the bishops who belonged to this better stratum of the old high-and-dry party hated the evangelicals even worse than the less moral of their opponents did. I remember one of them at a visitation, publicly rebuking a most pious and zealous evangelical for some irregular act, such as preaching in the open air, or something of that kind, and afterwards taking wine at the visitation dinner writh a clergyman so noted for his immo- rality that he subsequently had to be chass&ed altogether.
My father and mother were among the most admirable people I have ever met with, and the most affectionate of couples. Their marriage was purely a love-match, though strengthened by the ties of earnest piety. They had become acquainted shortly after my grandfather had taken the living of Aston Sandford, near to which is the semi-romantic village of Bledlow, on the edge of the Chilterns, of which my mother's uncle, the Rev. Nathaniel Gilbert, was rector. My mother, having lost her father at a very early age, had been brought by her mother and aunt to England, and had been educated in London, as also had my father, though they did not become acquainted till they met in Buckinghamshire, at one of the neigh- bouring rectories. They were married in the beautiful church of Bledlow, and such was the
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 15
simplicity of manners in that county and time that — " tell it not in Gath " — my father took his wife home seated on a pillion, and that from the house of the proprietor of a considerable West Indian estate, a man of no mean connexions, and a Buck- inghamshire rector ! This simplicity, however, suited their means, which were very slender. My parents, as I have said, were both of them what may be called " well-bred," both by nature and training "gentlefolk." I have often witnessed, with admiring wonder, my father's gentlemanly address when he met with persons of a higher station, so superior to what we young villagers could ever hope to attain to. He was a man of popular and winning manner, and of a remark- ably commanding aspect, so that, while he felt at home with persons of any rank, he could at once quell, almost with his eye, the most obstreperous parishioner, and even insane persons, under the most violent paroxysms, would yield to him with- out resistance.
My mother had been beautiful in her youth, and, when I first remember her, was a very noble and stately person, somewhat taller than my father, with an aquiline nose, piercing, though soft, dark, hazel eyes, and black hair. She was indeed a commanding woman, though of an intensely affec- tionate disposition, and devoted to her husband, her family, and the parish. Were it not for such parents, and for our having been kept aloof from the rough society of the place, and brought in contact with strangers, owing to my father taking pupils, I cannot conceive to what degree of rus- ticity we should have fallen ! As it was, we all
1 6 Sir Gilder t Scott.
came out into the world, certainly somewhat ungarnished, but rather plain than rustic. Our parents always tried to impress upon us the feelings of gentlemen, in a degree only second to their endeavours to train us up religiously.
Our village, as I have already said, was full of odd, quaint characters. I will describe a few of them.
To begin with the farmers : — Our great farmer was Mr. Law. He cultivated two large farms, one which he rented, and the other his own free- hold. We held him, and I believe rightly, to be very rich. He was nephew and executor to the founder of the church, and from him my father received the scanty endowment. He was a short, burly man, of no great talent, but a very worthy, good-natured person ; he was perpetual church- warden, and always lined the plate he held at the church doors after charity sermons with a one- pound note, with which now obsolete form of money (called, from its greasiness, " filthy lucre ") his breeches-pockets were always well filled.
Then there was old Zachery Meads, a sulky, obtuse old giant, who was never seen at church, or ever expected to do anything good.
Next there was Benjamin Warr, a splendid old yeoman, who, with his sturdy wife and a family of twenty children (most of the sons six feet high), made a fair show in one of our square pews.
Then, again, John Walker (of Lenborough, an allied hamlet), a downright, thoroughly excellent specimen of an English farmer — a man of sterling sense, honour, and excellence in every way. (By- the-bye, he is but just dead, and I saw his mourn-
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 17
ing-card but yesterday.)7 He has, since our day, been more than once mayor of Buckingham. He was our best singer, our best yeomanry cavalier, our best dairy farmer, our most strong-headed and right-minded parishioner, and withal a really Christian man.
The other farmers had nothing very marked which merits notice. They used to dress much more in the true John Bull style than is now the fashion. Their costume was a long frock coat, a very long waistcoat, divided at the bottom below the buttons, and reaching over the hips, corduroy knee-breeches, and, when not top-booted, shoes with large buckles. They usually carried a gun, and were accompanied by a sporting dog.
Among the labourers we had many very excel- lent men, men of real piety and worth, though I need not describe them individually. I may men- tion that, so far as I can recollect, these men were all decently educated, though how this came about I do not know. Indeed, oddly enough it seems to me that inability to read was less frequent forty years ago among these rustic labourers than it is now in the immediate neighbourhood of London. In our time we had Sunday-schools, and there was a village schoolmaster who kept school on his own account, but we had no parish school, beyond a national school at Buckingham. The females were all employed in lace-making, which was com- menced so early in life as to leave little time for schooling, yet I fancy they could very generally read, and they were by no means ignorant of Bible history and of general religious knowledge. 7 January, 1864.
C
1 8 Sir Gilbert Scott.
Among the more eccentric inhabitants of our village I may mention a man of the name of Walker, surnamed " Tom O' Gawcott," a super- annuated prize-fighter, whose great boast was that he would never " darken the doors of Jack West's church ; " but in his old age he relented, and he died a truly religious man.
One of our village characters was a Mrs. Warr, who kept a shop for " tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff," opposite to the churchyard. As in our childish days we were not allowed to go into the village alone, " Mother Warr," as we used to call her, carried on a great trade with us in lollypops, &c., by answering our call across the road from the churchyard ; a brook ran through the village street, and she or her old husband had placed stepping-stones to aid her passage to and fro. It was quite a picture to see her in her quaint, old- fashioned dress rise at our call from her lace- pillow, and step nimbly across the brook with her sweet wares. She wore a high cap, with her hair brushed vertically from her forehead, her stay- laces showed in front, and her gown, divided at the waist and gathered up in a bundle behind, exposed to view a stiff glazed blue petticoat; she had short sleeves hanging loosely from her elbows, and large buckles to her shoes, and on Sundays she added long silk gloves, a black mantilla edged with lace and a bonnet of antique cut. Personally she was tall and dignified, as became her costume, and in mind as strong as you please, and by no means disposed to be trifled with, though generally condescending and benignant. Her husband, surnamed "Old Baccy," was equally
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 19
antique, though by no means her equal in other ways.
The village was as eccentric in its diseases as in its other conditions. Two of its inhabitants, both named Warr, suffered from the strangest form of madness, and poor old Molly, " Mother Warr's" sister-in-law, was one of them. I have heard that she and two others, while girls, had been seized with "St. Vitus' dance," and were kept shut up together in the same room, where at certain hours, when St. Vitus was rampant, they commenced dancing till the room was not high enough for their capers. At this particular stage in their disorder the charming influence of the fiddle, played by a boy, was prescribed, which had the effect of reducing the more active form of the attack, but in the case of poor Molly, left matters not much the better, for ever after- wards she had two fits of raving madness in the twenty-four hours — at noon and at midnight. During eleven hours she was quiet and inoffen- sive, though the subject to her neighbours of a strange mysterious awe, which was perhaps one of the hindrances to our venturing to the shop for our lollypops, for when we did so she occa- sionally served us herself, to our intensest horror, for our dread of her, even during her lucid intervals, was beyond description.
One of the two other sufferers from St. Vitus' dance was known amongst us as "Nanny White;" the success of the boy fiddler had in her case been perfect, and she had attained a good old age, not in strong health, for she was, poor old lady, tremulous through a tendency to palsy. I call
C 2
2O Sir Gilbert Scott.
her a lady advisedly, because she was what one may term a peasant-lady. She was a person of earnest piety and of admirable conduct, — an aris- tocrat among the peasantry. Her income was 3O/. a year, but she lived almost in state. We went as children once a year to drink tea with her (which was more than we were allowed to do with any of the farmers, but good John Walker), when she received us with great dignity, dressed in her best old-fashioned clothes. The good little old lady sat smiling and shaking in her arm-chair, while her waiting-maid handed about the tea and cake ; we all sat round on old high-backed chairs with twisted pillars and cane backs, which, by-the- bye, she had bought at a sale of the furniture of the latest despoiled of the neighbouring great houses (that at Hillesden, which I shall mention anon). We sat on that occasion, for the nonce, in her " parlour," while in the " house " through which it was approached was the old dresser, under which was a series of copper cauldrons of gradually diminishing sizes, presenting their highly polished interiors to the spectator. This good old woman some years after, when my father had to rebuild his church, made out of her savings a really hand- some subscription as " a friend," no one but my father and mother knowing whence it came till after her death. I recollect that she had at one time for her maid and companion a young person named " Betsy Scott." I wish I knew enough of her to sketch her character. She was a " lusus naturae," both in intellect and piety, and after her death (of consumption) my father wrote a memoir of her, embodying many letters and papers of her
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 21
writing, some I think in poetry. I well recollect his applying to her the quotation from Gray : —
" Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear ; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
Two of our favourite village characters were a half-cracked man, and a semi-simpleton ; the one known as " Cracky Meads," and the other as " Tailor King." The former had been a soldier, and on his return from campaigning had found that his elder brother had inflicted upon him a very base injury, which drove the poor fellow out of his mind. After this his great desire was to build himself a house with his own unaided hands on a piece of waste ground by a road side. He made many beginnings, but what he built in the day the young men of the village pulled down at night. At length, however, his perseverance and active defence of his work prevailed, and he succeeded in completing a very tolerable bachelor's cottage. He enclosed a long piece of waste as a garden, which he successfully cultivated, and with the help of his pension lived pretty comfortably. He was, when unexcited, quiet, sullen, and in- offensive ; but it took only a little skilfully directed conversation to stir him up tremendously in dif- ferent ways. His most interesting excitement was that of warlike reminiscence, when he would tell endless tales of his personal experiences, sometimes enacting them with the bayonet, which he kept under his bed, with a vigour hardly con- sistent with the safety of his audience. His most terrible movements, however, were against his
22 Sir Gilbert Scott.
brother, upon whom his imprecations were as fearful as they were deserved. He was popular among my father's pupils, both for these displays, and for his services in getting them eggs, and boiling or frying them in his cottage, and for allowing occasionally a little indulgence in the form of a pipe of tobacco.
Poor " Tailor King" was a very different but equally amusing character. He was blessed with but a scanty store of sense, but had a double supply of instinct. His intincts were wholly de- voted to sporting matters. He was always pre*- sent in the hunting-field, knew of course where every meet would take place, and by long practice in the ways of the fox, could so surely prejudge his course, as by wary cuts to keep up with the hunters. The time lost to his trade by these digressions was made up for by the rewards received for .occasional aid, taking home a lame dog, assisting a fallen rider or a damaged horse, and so he made his hunting pay. He could sometimes tell the very hole in the hedge through which the fox would emerge from the wood. He was an uncouth figure, his neck all on one side from catching it in a forked bough while leaping a hedge. He hunted in a light green coat, knee breeches, and low shoes. We were often sent by my mother, if she wanted a hare, to Mr. Law to ask if he would shoot one for her, and his constant reply was, " I'll go and ask the tailor," or as he pronounced it "tyahlor." We then went together to the tailor's shop, where he was sitting cross-legged at his window. " D'ye know where there's ever a hare (yahr) sittin', tyahler ?"
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 23
was the constant question, and the tailor could always tell or show where to find one. His con- versation was a mixture of ludicrous simplicity with instructive cunning, and by the amusement of his talk and the general character of his in- stincts, he became a great favourite among us boys.
Another favourite was old " Warr of the Wood- house," a clever skilled old woodman ; but I am ashamed to say that we only cared for him when he was drunk, or "market-merry" as he called it, which took place once a week on market-day. When he died, after my leaving home, poor old " Mother Warr " and her husband retired from their shop to the said woodhouse, where they ended their days. My wife saw the old woman there in her old age, later than I did myself, and says that she never saw so picturesque a figure ; tall, straight, and dignified still, in her last-century dress, sitting at her door in the wood plying her spinning-wheel.
These are a few specimens, but the whole place was full of character, even where there are no very salient points to depict. The old women seem to my recollection to belong to another age, and the sturdy worthiness of many of the men, with their funny old-fashioned way of expressing them- selves, formed a most agreeable contrast to the contemporary tendency to pauperism, which was silently making way among the less estimable part of the population, who, like spotted sheep, in time infected the flock.
Our own family was a large and rapidly in- creasing one. My eldest brother was a youth of
24 Sir Gilbert Scott.
remarkable talent and was viewed as a little god by his brothers and even by his parents. This had a bad effect on me. He was looked on as a representative person, and all efforts were con- centrated upon him. His next brother got a little attention at second hand, and being a boy of steady industry and good ability, he got on ; but I, the third, was too far removed to pick up even the crumbs, and not having a natural love of books and nothing occurring to make me love them, I came off but badly. I was also under the disadvantage of having no boys of my own age to work with ; indeed with all my faults I was forwarder than any who were at all of my own standing, so that at twelve or thirteen, I had to be classed with idle fellows of eighteen or more ; a desultory way of going on which was very in- jurious. I ought certainly to have gone to school, but this was out of the question. My father was poor, and as he took pupils himself, he was too busy with the older ones, often men of from twenty to twenty-five or more, to give me much of his personal attention, so that I slipped through be- tween wind and water. I do believe, however, that if encouraged and helped, I should have done well, and in mathematics I did get on fairly. My great relief from this life of heedlessness and rough handling was the visit of the drawing- master. Though I never acquired any very high powers of drawing under him, I can never be too grateful for his help and kind encouragement. He was a Mr. Jones, of Buckingham, who had been in his youth patronized by some of the Stowe family, and had been sent to London, where
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 25
he became a student at the Royal Academy, and was much noticed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of whom he entertained an affectionate remembrance. Foolishly, however, he returned to his native town, and had consequently failed of reaching the eminence for which nature had fitted him. He supported himself as a drawing-master, and occa- sional portrait-painter. His visits twice a week were the very joy of my life. I remember, as if it were yesterday, and almost feel again while thinking of it, my anxiety when he was a little late in coming, my frequent glances towards the path by which he reached our garden, and my heart-felt joy when I saw his loose drab gaiters through the bushes. Mr. Jones was a mild, be- nignant, and humble-minded old man, and though he had not attained eminence, he was thoroughly grounded in his art. His knowledge of anatomy and of perspective was perfect, as was his ac- quaintance with the principles of colouring, whether in oil or water-colour, and his powers of drawing were remarkable. Yet his training had stopped short of bringing his powers to bear upon actual high-class work of his own. I often wish I had some of his drawings, I am sure they must evince the elements of genius, though unmatured, and consistently enough with this, he instilled into my mind an intense love for the subject without any ripened knowledge or skill. While, however, depreciating myself on this and other subjects, it is fair to mention that my home schooling termi- nated when I was only about fourteen and a half years old. The little I learned of French my mother taught me, and I might, had I worked
26 Sir Gilbert Scott.
hard, have learned it well, as she understood it perfectly, and spoke it with ease. My eldest brother had also a good French master, in whose instruction unhappily I did not participate.
How infinitely important it is for boys to feel the duty and necessity for exertion. Though I have reason to be most thankful for my success in life, the defects of my education have been like a millstone about my neck, and have made me almost dread superior society. A very little extra attention would have obviated this, for if with the same means of education my brother carried off in his freshman's year one of the highest univer- sity classical scholarships, why should not I have been a fair classic ? It is one of the greatest wonders of my life to witness the way in which young men deliberately throw away their chances of eminence and seem satisfied with the bare prospect of getting a living ; as if man was born, not to do the very utmost in his day and genera- tion which the talents committed to him render attainable, but merely to exist. Old Sir Robert Peel, as I was told by his son, used to say that if any youth of ordinary ability made up his mind as to his object in life and bent all his energies to its attainment, he would be almost certain of success, and this led the son of Sir Robert to determine, when a child, that he would be prime minister, and to persevere till he became so.
Being younger than most of my father's pupils (who, in fact, were many of them matured men, who had determined late in life to read for the church), I had very little companionship, and I became a solitary wanderer in woods and fields,
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 27
and about the old churches, &c., in the neighbour- hood.
I have a tolerably distinct recollection of my grandfather, the author of the Commentary on the holy scriptures. We used to visit him en masse about once a year ; it was a time of great joy and excitement when it came round. The post-chaise was ordered from Buckingham, and usually was made to carry seven. My father and mother occupied the seat, three small children stood in front, and two sat on the " dickey," while the fat old postboy rode as postillion. It was some twenty-five miles to Aston Sandford, and I think I could find my way now by my recollections of that date. My grandfather was, as I remember him, a thin, tottering old man, very grave and dignified. Being perfectly bald, he wore a black velvet cap, excepting when he went to church, when he assumed a venerable wig. He wore knee-breeches, with silver buckles, and black silk stockings, and a regular shovel hat. His amuse- ment was gardening, but he was almost constantly at work in his study. At meals, when I chiefly saw him, he was rather silent, owing to his deaf- ness, which rendered it difficult to him to join in general conversation. I well remember, when any joke had excited laughter at the table, that he would beg to be informed what it was, and when brought to understand it, he would only deign to utter a single word — " Pshaw ! " One day, as we sat at dinner, a very old apple-tree, loaded with fruit, suddenly gave way and fell to the ground, to the surprise of our party, and I remember my grandfather remarking that he wished that might
28 Sir Gilder I Scott.
be his own end, to break down in his old age under the weight of good fruit. Family prayers at Aston Rectory were formidable, particularly to a child. They lasted a full hour, several persons from the village usually attending. I can picture to my mind my grandfather walking to church in his gown and cassock, his long curled wig, and shovel hat.8 He had a most venerable look, and I felt a sort of dread at it. On Sundays he had a constant guest at his table — the barber, to whom he was beholden for his wig. Those who are not acquainted with the evangelical party in its earlier days can hardly understand the way in which community of religious feeling was allowed to over-ride difference of worldly position. I recol- lect the same at Gawcott, where, though not allowed to associate even with our wealthiest farmer, we ever welcomed to our table a very poor brother of his, in position scarcely above a labourer, who was a man of piety, and came many miles on sunday to attend our church. The same was the
8 My father's recollections upon the subject of clerical dress may be of interest. He has often told me that in the earliest period to which his memory extended, the clergy habitually wore their cassock, gown, and shovel hat, and that when this custom went out, a sort of interregnum ensued during which all distinction of dress was abandoned and clerics followed lay fashions. This is the period which Jane Austen's novels illustrate. Her clergymen are singularly free from any trace of the ecclesiastical character. Later on, the clergy adopted the suit of black, and the white necktie, which had all along been the dress of professional men, lawyers, doctors, architects, and even surveyors, of men, in short, whose business it was to advise. Of the modern developements which this lay-pro- fessional dress has received at the hands of clerical tailors, it is unnecessary to say anything.— ED.
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 29
case with the barber at Great Risborough. He was a pious man, and he walked over every sun- day to hear my grandfather preach, and a place was kept for him at the dinner- table. He was, however, a superior man, and he had the good fortune to get his two sons into the church. Some time after he had settled at Risborough he found that there was an old bequest for the educa- tion (for the church) of any one of his name living at Risborough, which he at once claimed and obtained for his son. The other boy, having a good voice, was placed in the choir at Magdalen college, Oxford, when in due time he was admitted into the college, and finally into the church.
Near Aston lived my uncle, the Rev. Samuel King. He was son of an excellent man, George King, a large wine merchant in the city ; and being a pupil of my grandfather's, he formed an attachment to his only daughter Elizabeth, and married her before or during his residence at the university of Cambridge. After they left Cam- bridge, he took the curacy of Hartwell, near Aylesbury, where was the seat of Sir George Lee, at that time occupied by Louis XVIII. and the ex-royal family of France. Subsequently, or at the same time, he was curate of Stone, close by Hartwell, where I first recollect visiting him, after which he removed to Haddenham, nearer to my grandfather's, so that our visits were jointly to my grandfather and to him. My aunt was a gifted and lovely woman, and at that time she used to aid my grandfather in the correction of a new edition of his commentary, as did also a young man who then resided with him, Mr.
30 Sir Gilbert Scott.
W. R. Dawes, since well known as. an astronomer, and who in his old age returned to Haddenham and built himself a residence there. I well re- member my puzzlement at hearing that certain printed sheets, which came every morning by post, and seemed to be viewed with great consideration, were " proofs of the bible." I connected them in idea with the evidences of Christianity.
The whole household of my grandfather seemed imbued with religious sentiment. Old Betty, the cook, and Lizzy, the waiting-maid, and old Betty Moulder, an infirm inmate, taken in on account of her excellence and helplessness, were all patterns of goodness, and even poor John Brangwin, the serving-man, partook of the general effect of the atmosphere of the rectory. Poor old fellow ! I visited him last spring, with three of my sons at an almshouse at Cheynies, when he poured forth his recollections of my grandfather for half an hour together. It was Sunday, and we found him reading in the copy of the commentary which my grandfather had left him in his will ; and he told us he had just had a cold dinner. "He never had anything cooked o' sabbath day ; Muster Scott never had anything cooked o' sabbath days " — a precept he had followed for more than forty years. I regret that my recollections of my grandfather himself are so very scanty, while my memory of the place, and of its less important inhabitants, and of its trifling incidents, is as perfect as though it were of last year.
Some five miles beyond Aston Sandford runs the range of the Chiltern Hills, the "delectable mountains " of my youth, always forming our
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 3 1
horizon, though very rarely reached by us. They divided the county into two parts, as different as possible in their character ; the northern, where we lived, homely and picturesque, the southern hilly and delightful. Once only in these early days I saw this beautiful part of my county, when I went to visit my aunt (the widow of the Rev. N. Gilbert), at Woburn, near Wycombe, and I well remember the pleasure I experienced. I re- member our all walking up Stokenchurch hill, a coach-load of passengers forming a long procession before us.
After my grandfather's death my uncle King was presented to the living of Latimers, in this southern division of Bucks, our visits to which place were the brightest spots in my early life. My uncle was a most lively and amusing man, who, having no family of his own, devoted him- self, when thrown in the way of children, very extensively to their amusement. He was a man of multifarious resources, an excellent astrono- mer, and perhaps the best amateur ornamental turner in the kingdom. He was a glass-painter, a brass-founder, and a devotee to natural science in many forms. My aunt was a literary person. She had received the same education with her brothers, instead of learning feminine accomplish- ments. She was one of those " ladies of talent " one occasionally meets with, whose company is courted on account of their superior knowledge and conversational powers. I have every reason for gratitude to them both, as I shall afterwards show.
My maternal grandmother and her sister (as
32 Sir Gilbert Scoff.
before-mentioned) lived with us at Gawcott. The former was a very excellent, quiet, unobtrusive little woman. I rarely heard anything of her husband, Dr. Lynch. He died early, leaving her with a young family, and I fancy but slenderly provided for, for the only thing I ever heard of him was, that he impoverished himself by being so easy-going, that he could not refuse any one who asked money of him. His eldest son was, during my childhood, a medical man at Dunmow in Essex, where he also died early, leaving a large family. My aunt Gilbert had accompanied my grandmother and her family to England, or possi- bly was here already, as her English recollections reached to a much earlier date. This must have been about 1790, as nearly as I can tell, my mother being at that time about four years old. They resided in Great Ormond street, Queen's square, which then bordered upon the fields. My aunt was a person of considerable talent, of great piety, and of an extraordinarily affec- tionate disposition, and withal wonderfully simple- hearted and forbearing. She devoted herself to my mother during her childhood, with an intensity of affection, exceeding probably what a child would always find agreeable.
She and my grandmother were provided for by annuities upon their father's estate, then pretty good, but ever diminishing with the decline of West India property. My mother went to a very good school (I think in London) kept by a Miss Cox, who was afterwards married to a Mr. WoodrofFe, a clergyman in Gloucestershire, and my mother always kept up an affectionate
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 33
correspondence with her, and they mutually visited from time to time. She was author of a reli- gious novel entitled, " Shades of Character, or the Little Pilgrim," and of " Michael Kemp." When my mother married, my aunt came to live with her (my grandmother living for a time near her son at Dunmow). When I made my appearance on the tapis, my aunt pitched upon my unworthy person as her pet, and ever afterwards followed me up with an assiduity of affection which it is impos- sible to exaggerate. This was probably enhanced (though my conduct was not calculated to produce that effect) by her having had the charge of me, when five years old, for some months, while I made a stay on account of some casual disorder at Margate. This was in 1816, and as it was the landmark of my childhood, I will give a few reminiscences of it.
Of the coach journey to London, I have hardly a glimmer of recollection. On our arrival, however, we transferred ourselves to the house of a sort of " Gaius mine host," who dwelt hard by the coach- office where we alighted. This was a Mr. Broughton, of Swan-yard, Holborn bridge, who kept a boarding-house for travellers, with a pre- ference for those of the evangelical party, and a still more particular preference for missionaries, and most especially for missionaries to New Zea- land. This, his most powerful preference, was rendered manifest to the eye by his rooms being hung with patoo-patoos, war-rugs, and all the marvels of a New Zealand museum ; and occasionally a tattooed chief or two, to his intense joy, took up their quarters under
D
34 Sir Gilbert Scott.
his roof. All this, however, I gathered at subsequent visits.
Mr. Broughton showed his special regard for the commentator, my grandfather, by opening his house to his descendants at all times gratuitously — indeed he demanded their acceptance of his hospitality as a right. Swan-yard, which has perished in the extension of Farringdon street, was opposite to the then Fleet market. It was a waggon-yard, devoted to broad-wheeled waggons and straw, and the house was far from lively. At the time of our visit Mrs. Broughton, who was enormously corpulent, was laid up with the gout, and I was forthwith conducted by my aunt to the good lady's bedroom. Here I was so terrified at the sight of her vast person, enveloped in volumes of dimity, and her legs swaddled in a stupendous gouty stocking of white-and-pink lamb's wool, that I at once proclaimed a mutiny, and refused to stop in the house, in which I so resolutely per- sisted, that my good aunt actually yielded to me, and transferred me to the cabin of the Margate sailing-packet, which was to start in the morning.
Here we met a number of Buckingham friends, who were to join us in our lodgings at Margate. My impression of the cabin is very vivid. It was full of passengers, and I well recollect a lively and lengthened argument, in which my aunt was a warm disputant, as to whether in dealing with savages we ought to aim at civilizing before chris- tianizing or vice versa, a point on which the cabin was about equally divided. As the night drew on, the ladies and children retired to the berths which lined the sides, while the gentlemen retained
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 35
their chairs. I well recollect peeping out from between my curtains, and seeing gentlemen, who had lately been warm in argument, sitting quietly asleep round tables, on which their heads and elbows were deposited.
Of the next day my leading recollection is the sweeping of the boom across the deck as we tacked, and the havoc it always threatened amongst the crowded passengers. Arrived at Margate we took lodgings on " the Fort," at the house of one, Captain Bourne ; my aunt and I, and our Buckinghamshire friends all living to- gether as one family. There was already a steamer to Margate ; but it was such a new thing that the visitors and inhabitants crowded to the pier to see it come in. I well remember the ex- citement of seeing its approach. One of my most vivid recollections of Margate was our going with some of our friends to a Quakers' meeting at a place called Drapers, and hearing several ladies preach. I also recollect seeing a fleet of thirty- two East Indiamen pass in a row, probably under convoy, as the war was but recently over. While at Margate I lost an infant sister named Elizabeth.
After leaving Margate we visited my uncle Lynch at Dunmow, and in passing through Lon- don, my aunt stayed with an old Wesleyan friend, Mr. Jones, of Finsbury square. I remember their showing me, from his windows, gas-lamps as great curiosities. We also went to see another Miss Gilbert, a cousin of my aunt's, (we called her "Cousin Harriet.") She was a wild, eccentric person, and while we were there, went into a fright- ful fit of hysterics, owing to her having visited
D 2
36 Sir Gilbert Scott.
the grave of a near relation, who had been her sole companion. I have preserved two coins which this old cousin gave me that day. I will not, however, increase frivolous reminiscences. It is vexatious to think of the perversity of children's memories. I recollect the funeral of Mr. West in 1814, and this digression from my village home in 1816, as well almost as if they had happened last year. Yet of the battle of Waterloo, which occurred in the intervening year, I have not even the slightest recollection.
My aunt Gilbert was most interesting in her reminiscences. John Wesley was the great saint of her memory. I remember her telling me of his having kissed her, which she esteemed a great privilege. She had been an intimate ally of Mrs. Fletcher of Madeley, who, after her husband's death, became a sort of female evan- gelist " All round the Wrekin." This hill was familiar to my childish ideas from my aunt having lived so long under its shadow. The date of this I know not, but it was during the days of Mrs. Fletcher and of Lady Dorothea Whitmore. Who the latter was, I do not know, but the family I find still resides in the neighbourhood. One of my aunt's sisters had married a Mr. Yate of Madeley. Her son, the Rev. George Yate, was rector of Wrockwardine. I remember another son, a naval officer, bringing to Gawcott a flag which he had taken in the American war ; and a daughter, Anne Yate, used to visit us, (by the way it was she who took me to Mr. West's funeral). She died of consumption some few years later, " poor cousin Anne."
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 37
My aunt kept up a very extensive correspon- dence, and had done so all her life. One of her great correspondents was her brother William, who lived in America. His was a very re- markable character. He was a barrister, and a man of acute genius, and was just rising into fame when his mind gave way. His insanity took a political line, and, the first rage of the French Revolution being rampant at the time, he went to France to ally himself with Robespierre and the rest, but took fright, I fancy, when he got nearer, and returned. He subsequently went to America, as the only country with the govern- ment of which he could feel satisfied. He was a friend of Southey and Coleridge during their early days. Southey remarks of him in his life of Wesley :9 " . . . . Mr. Gilbert published, in the year 1 796, ' The Hurricane, a Theosophical and Western Eclogue/ and shortly afterwards pla^ carded the walls in London with the largest bills that had at that time been seen, announcing • The Law of Fire.' I knew him well, and look back with a melancholy pleasure to the hours which I have passed in his society when his mind was in ruins. His madness was of the most incom- prehensible kind, as may be seen in the notes to the ' Hurricane ;' but the poem contains pas- sages of exquisite beauty. They who remember him (as some of my readers will) will not be displeased at seeing him thus mentioned with the respect and regret which are due to the wreck of a noble mind."
Another constant correspondent was a cousin. 9 Vol. ii. chap. 28, foot note.
38 Sir Gilbert Scot I.
Poor man, he corresponded till the last, and then came the news that he had shot himself. I re- member one of my aunt's last letters to him, which was evidently intended to keep him from religious despair, for she quoted the passage : " Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow," &c. Let us hope that he was insane. Another correspondent was a Lady Abdy, also a cousin.
My aunt's object in all these cases was a religious one, this being the main subject of her thoughts. My aunt was a poetess, she wrote a good deal, and not badly. She was in great requisition for epitaphs, &c. I wish I could get some of her longer productions. She was an admirable woman, and in my view quite an his- torical person. She had a large chest filled with selected letters from her correspondents, from John Wesley downwards ; but this most valuable collection was indiscriminately destroyed after her death, which happened I think in 1832. A grievous error ! She lies buried a little to the south of the church of Gawcott. My grand- mother lived a few years longer, and was buried at Wappenham. Both were, eighty or upwards at their death.
STOWE.
We lived within about four miles of Stowe, then in its greatest glory. The Marquis (afterwards Duke) of Buckingham was the puissant potentate of the district, and Stowe was its seat of govern- ment. It was to us of great advantage, to have this centre of art and princely splendour to refer to when we pleased. It was a set-off against the
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 39
otherwise almost unmitigated rusticity of the neighbourhood.
To Stowe we all made an annual pilgrimage. This was the great day of our year. It took place in early June, that we might enjoy the glories of the lilacs and laburnums. The journey was somewhat grotesque. My father rode his old horse " Jack," or subsequently "Tripod." The older boys walked, while my mother, my eldest sister, and the children performed the journey in the baker's cart, a tilted but unspringed vehicle, furnished with chairs for the occasion, and further with a large basket of provisions which were conveyed by our serving- man William to " The Temple of Concord and Victory," our traditional lunching place. I well recollect the gratification afforded by the hard- boiled eggs, &c., eaten beneath the unwonted shade of a classic temple.
Stowe was really a very fine place. It was most extensive and well wooded ; indeed the park with its woods merged gradually off into the forest of Whittlebury. It was approached from Buckingham by a perfectly straight road some three miles long, and bordered by a wide grass drive and an avenue on either side, and leading to a triumphal arch known as the " Corin- thian Arch." From several other directions it was somewhat similarly approached, so that from the Buckingham lodges to those in the direction of Towcester could hardly be less than eight miles. The house had (and has) a frontage of nearly 1000 feet, though it is fair to mention that its extreme wings hardly form a part of its archi- tecture. It is entered, properly speaking, from
4O Sir Gilbert Scott.
behind, where it assumes the form of a convex semicircle. To us, however, the approach was from the garden front, which is the great archi- tectural facade and looks south. Here the en- trance is by an octastyle Corinthian portico, ap- proached by a lofty flight of steps rising the height of a basement storey. I well remember the kind of awe with which this stately approach inspired me, and how vast it appeared to my young ima- gination, We were welcomed under the portico by an almost equally stately groom of the cham- bers, Mr. Broadway, a man of portentous aspect and intense dignity of demeanour. He paid special attention to us from his respect for my father, and devoted much pains to showing and explaining the pictures, &c. I can fancy that I hear now the dignified and measured words in which he introduced the pictures to our youthful inspection : " The Burgomeister Sichs, by Rem- brandt;" <(The portrait of the elder, by the younger Rembrandt," &c. His tone gave us a reverence for the old masters beyond what our discrimina- tion would have alone inspired, It was really a ^very fine collection, and being the only one I had seen, I feel thankful to think that I had the opportunity through it of seeing noble art so early. The sculpture was also fine, containing a great number of antiques, which were mostly ranged round a large elliptical saloon, entered directly from the garden portico. My veneration was greatly enhanced by the fact that one vast room was wholly devoted to the collection of engravings, classified in an infinite number of portfolios, and another to similarly-arranged music,
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 41
and that the library was so extensive as to demand the services of a man of learning and position (a dignified Roman Catholic priest, Dr. O'Connor) as the librarian. One modern picture, the " Destruc- tion of Herculaneum" (by Martin), used to fill us with wonder, as did a magnificent astronomical clock, giving the true motions and positions of the planets, and only wound up, as we were told, once in four years, i. e. on the 29th of February.
The house was in point of fact a " palace of delights," a wilderness of art, vertu, and magnifi- cence, of which upon the whole I have not seen an equal, and it is beyond measure aggravating to think of its glorious contents having been dis- persed through the folly of its possessor.
The duke of my childhood was the grandfather to the present one. He was a man of consider- able ability and attainments and of portentous ambition and pride. I believe that the downfall of the family was fully as much owing to him as to his son. He literally came under the woe pronounced upon those -' that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth," for he nearly ruined the family by purchasing estates with borrowed money, the interest on which exceeded the rental.
We made, by-the-bye, two annual peregrinations thither, for once a year we went over to the review of the yeomanry cavalry, of which the Marquis of Chandos (the late Duke) was lieu- tenant-colonel. It makes me feel very antique to remember that I was present at the festivities which celebrated the baptism of the present duke,
42 Sir Gilbert Scott.
and very magnificent they were. The fireworks were, I suppose, as fine as that time could produce. I recollect on that day, while sitting on a bench so placed as to overlook a very large piece of water surrounded by beech plantations, hearing the remarks of two old women. " Lawk, how unkid," said one, "you can see nothin' but water!" " Oh, bless you," replied her more knowing com- panion, " why, the sea's twice as big as that."
Of the architecture of Stowe I cannot say much from memory, nor is it necessary, as it remains, I believe, intact.
As Stowe was my introduction to classic archi- tecture and high art, so was my liking for gothic architecture due to the old churches in my own neighbourhood. The district is not famed for its ancient churches, yet it possesses several of con- siderable merit. Our own village was utterly devoid of early remains, though I venerated the old " Chapel Close," where its ancient church or chapel had once stood. In the same way Buckingham had lost its old church, a very fine edifice, which fell in 1776. My drawing-master, Mr. Jones, remembered its fall, and told me that it had an aisle called the Gawcott Aisle. The old churchyard remains, though the church now stands on the Castle Hill, and a very ungainly edifice it is.1 There is only one really ancient building in Buckingham, the chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury, now a grammar school.
The building which first directed my attention to gothic architecture was the church of Hillesden,
1 Its reconstruction, under my father's direction, was in progress at the time of his death. — ED.
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 43
situated two miles to the south of Gawcott. This is a church of late date, but of remarkable beauty. It was our great lion, and every new comer was taken to see it on the earliest possible opportunity, and was appraised by me in proportion to his appreciation of its beauties.
I always looked upon Hillesden with the most romantic feelings. It was a beautiful spot as compared with our neighbourhood in general ; it was situated on a considerable elevation, sur- rounded by fine old plantations and avenues of lofty trees conspicuous throughout the district. Near the church stood the " Great House," a deserted mansion of the time, I believe, of Charles II. The place had, from early in the i6th century, belonged to the family of Denton. They were staunch Royalists, and had suffered severely during the Great Rebellion. We used to be told that Sir Alexander Denton, the then proprietor, after a vigorous defence of his mansion, was taken prisoner, and after being conducted for some distance from his home, was made to look back to see his residence in flames. He died in prison. The family in the direct line had become extinct, and its last member, having married Mr. Coke of Holkham, became the mother of the celebrated Mr. Thomas William Coke, afterwards Earl of Leicester. He was the proprietor of Hillesden in my early days, and I recollect going to the house of a farmer whose wife boasted that they had been playfellows when children. The house had been much reduced in size, but what re- mained, though uninhabited, retained its old furni- ture. I particularly remember the bedrooms, the
44 Sir Gilbert Scott.
beds being placed in odd recesses between two closets partitioned off on either side, through which you would have to pass, to get into bed, by doors in their sides. The grounds still retained their old form with terraces and a large fish-pond. There were also the stables, of earlier date, proba- bly of Edward the Sixth's time, and a rather ele- gant octagonal dove-cote of brick. Mr. Coke had repeatedly refused to sell the Hillesden estate to the Duke of Buckingham, but at length it was purchased by Mr. Farquhar of Font Hill, who immediately afterwards sold it to the duke. This was a sorrowful event to me, as the duke was in my eyes the great enemy of local history. He soon destroyed the old house, and carried off the curious old sentry-box, in the form of a brick gate- pier, to Stowe, while timber began to disappear, and keepers destroyed the liberty of the woods, and the little glory which had remained departed.
The church, however, was there after all, and to it I made my frequent pilgrimages, and a little later dear old Mr. Jones used to meet me there to teach me how to sketch. These were, perhaps, the happiest occasions of my youth, and I look back upon them now with a glow of delight.
Hillesden Church is, as I have said of late date. The tower is humbler in its pretensions than the rest of the church, and is of rather early and simple " perpendicular " work. The church itself was begun in 1493, by the monks of Nutley, to whom the rectorial tithes belonged. It is a very ex- quisite specimen of this latest phase of Gothic architecture, and possesses all the refinement of its best examples, such as the royal chapels at
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 45
Westminster and Windsor. Indeed, I have seen no detail of that period to surpass those of this church. In plan it consists of a nave with aisles and quasi-transepts, a large chancel with north aisle, a sacristy of two stories at the north-east angle of the chancel aisle, the upper story of which is approached by a very large newel stair at the extreme north-eastern angle. This stair- turret is a very exquisite and striking feature, being finished with a sort of crown of flying buttresses and pinnacles, of which I have seen no other instance, indeed it is one of the most beautifully-designed features I know.2 The upper sacristy has a series of radiating loop-holes look- ing into the church. The walls of the chancel are ornamented by stone panelling. The ceilings throughout had panels of plaster, with wood mouldings. I have since seen some which had unhappily been taken down, and found the plaster to be in thick and very hard slabs, on which were set out curious geometric figures, drawn with the compasses, as if to form the guides for painted decorations. The rood screen was perfect, and of exquisite beauty. The fittings were nearly all of the original date, and very good, though, of course, of very late character. The chief exception was the great square pew of the Dentons, a somewhat dignified work of Charles the Second's reign, furnished with great high-backed chairs.
The monuments of the Dentons were, of course, of very varied date, from Edward the Sixth's time, or thereabouts, downwards. There is, by the way,
2 Its design was reproduced by my father in the angle turret of the new buildings at King's College, Cambridge. — ED.
46 Sir Gilbert Scott.
a fine monument to one of the earliest of the family (after Hillesden had come into their hands) in Hereford Cathedral, which I have lately had the pleasure of reinstating, after it had been lying in pieces for twenty years.3 The north porch is a very charming structure, of exquisite design and finish. The churchyard cross appears to be of the fourteenth century. I greatly hope to have a hand in the restoration of the church to which I owe so much as my initiator into Gothic architecture.4 I fear it is in a very damaged state. I should men- tion the remains of painted glass which it contains. They are beautiful fragments, in the style of those in King's College chapel, though more deli- cate in finish. The principal remains illustrate the life of the patron, St. Nicholas. In other windows, where most of the glass is gone, frag- ments remain in the heads, containing charming representations of mediaeval cities, such as one sees in the background of Van Eyck's pictures.
I recollect my father writing to the Duke of Buckingham to urge his repairing this church. The result was that his Grace whitewashed the exterior of the tower !
Maids Morton church, the second in rank in our district, is also of " perpendicular " date, but earlier. Its tower is of admirable and unique design. It, at that time, retained its old seats, with fleur-de-lis poppy-heads ; also a beautiful stoup by the doorway, all which have since been ruthlessly destroyed.
Tingewick Church was the nearest to Gawcott
3 Cf. infra, p. 294.
4 This wish was realized in 1874 and 1875. — ED.
CHAP, i.] Recollections, 47
of our mediaeval structures. It was a good church, containing norman arcades and a few fragments in the south wall of the same date ; the rest, I think, all " perpendicular." The tower was attributed to William of Wykeham. It has since undergone strange transmogrifications. The south wall has been rebuilt, I think, twice, and much good and interesting old work destroyed. My father, at different times, took the curacies of Hillesden and Tingewick in combination with Gawcott.
The only other church I will mention as con- nected with my youthful days is Chetwood. I was never more astonished than when I first saw this church, never having before seen or heard of " early english " architecture. It is a fragment of a small monastic church, and its east window con- sists of five noble lancets, with, externally, plain but bold detail. On either side are fine triplets. Never having before seen such windows, I was greatly perplexed at them, and, failing to get the key, and being reduced to peeping through the keyhole of the west door, I was astonished and puzzled to find that the east windows had shafts with foliated capitals, a thing I had never seen and could not understand. I remember continuing
o
all day in a state of morbid excitement on the subject, and having no access to architectural books, it was very long ere I solved the mystery. My taking in this way to old churches first led my father to think of my becoming an architect, and, after consulting with my uncle King on the subject, this became a fixed arrangement. I was then about fourteen years old, and shortly after- wards my uncle very kindly offered to take me
48 Sir Gilbert Scott.
under his own charge, and to superintend me in studies having a tendency in that direction. I accordingly took up my residence at Latimer's, in 1826. I had, two years before, made a trip to London, where my eyes were opened to much which I had never thought of before. West- minster Abbey, I need not say, I was charmed with ; it was the only gothic minster I had seen ; nor did I see any other, excepting St. Albans and Ely, till after my articles had expired, in 1830! I recollect that when I saw Westminster Abbey, in 1824, they were putting up the present reredos, or rather " restoring " in " artificial stone " the old one.5
My uncle's instruction was mainly in mathe- matics ; he carried me on through trigonometry and mechanics, in which I took great pleasure. He also gave me direct instruction in architecture, of which he possessed a very fair knowledge. I was by him initiated into classic architecture, both Greek and Roman ; and a friend of his (the Rev. H. Foyster), who had been once intended for our profession, having lent me a copy of Sir William Chambers' work, and some one else a portion of Stewart's Athens, I was able to follow up architec- tural drawing, as then taught, pretty systematically, and by the time I was articled I had already been put through my facings to a certain reasonable extent. I think I also had access to Rickman, as I certainly got to know the ordinary facts as to the different periods of mediaeval architecture. The only treatise I had before seen on this subject had
5 This was restored anew in alabaster and marble in 1866. — ED.
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 49
been an article in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, of which I remember little but the illustrations, more especially a west elevation of Rheims Cathedral, in which I took, when quite a child, the greatest delight. I stayed, I suppose, with my uncle about a twelvemonth, on and off. Though a somewhat solitary life, it was one of very great pleasure and enjoyment. The country there is peculiarly charming, and so wholly different from my own home as to be like a new world. My love of woodland was here transferred from oak-woods, choked up with hazel and blackthorn, to beech- woods, through which you may wander without obstruction. The very wild-flowers and wild fruits were different, while the search for chalce- donies and fossils, among the flints with which the woods were bestrewed, afforded amusement to my solitary wanderings and pleasure in showing upon my return what I had found. My uncle was a man of infinite resources. Turning, carried to a perfection probably never surpassed, mechanical pursuits of other kinds, practical astronomy and other branches of science, occupied his leisure hours, while his conversation was always lively and instructive. My aunt, too, was a person of great talent and attainments ; and they had occa- sionally at their table persons of extensive infor- mation, while they themselves visited at the aris- tocratic houses of the neighbourhood, and their company was sought after, as of persons of talent and varied information.
The twin villages of Isenhampstead Latimers and Isenhampstead Cheynies (commonly called Latimers and Cheynies) are situated within a mile
E
5O Sir Gilbert Scott.
of one another, and are rivals in beauty of situa- tion. They both overlook the charming valley of the little Chiltern trout-stream, the " Chess," which rises five miles off, at Chesham, and falls into the Colne, near Watford. This little valley is not much known to the world at large, though of exquisite beauty, and now, or formerly, containing the dwelling-places of some noble families. Chey- nies was the old residence of the family of Cheyney, and later of the Russells, whose original seat there is still in existence (though now but a farmhouse), and whose mortal remains are still brought here from the more lordly abbey of Woburn, and here deposited in their final resting- place. Latimers (now, by the dictum of its pro- prietor, called Latimer) is one of the residences of the Cavendish family. It belonged, at the time I am speaking of, to old Lord George Cavendish, afterwards created Earl of Burlington. He was brother to a former Duke of Devonshire, uncle to the then duke, and grandfather of the present duke. He was a noted patron of " the turf," and had another seat at Holkar in Furness. His eldest son, the father of the present duke, was dead, and his next son, Mr. Charles Cavendish (the late Lord Chesham) was the expectant heir of Latimers.
The two " great houses " were both probably of the age of Henry VII. or Henry VIII. (Latimers perhaps a little later), and both were chiefly famous for their chimneys. Latimers had been spoiled in the Strawberry Hill style, with the exception of its beautiful stacks of tall octa- gonal chimney-shafts, in charming proportions
CHAP, i.] Recollections. 51
and profile, but all alike. Cheynies had been so dismantled that its chief glory was also in these its upper regions, but unlike those at Latimers they were nearly all different in design, the shafts being decorated with varied and admirably executed pattern-work in brick.
Both still remain, though those at Cheynies have their caps reconstructed and spoiled. The house at Latimers has been rebuilt by Blore all but its chimneys. Latimers is charmingly situated, and I think my uncle's rectory was even better placed than the great house. The church was modern and vile, but the village which was in two parts, one on the hill and the other below, was very picturesque, with old timber houses, and a glorious old elm tree of towering height on the little green. The upper village is now destroyed, and the whole merged into the " grounds," perhaps to the increase of the beauty, but certainly to the diminution of the interest of the place. Latimers is a sort of hamlet of the little town of Chesham, five miles up the valley, where my brother John (now Rector of Tyd St. Giles-' in Cambridgeshire,6) was at the time articled to a medical man, Mr. Rumsey. This was an increase to my happiness, as I could occasionally walk over and see him. My recollection of the whole district is as of a little paradise. The hills, valley, river, trees, flowers, fruits, fossils, &c., all seem encircled in a kind of imaginary halo. I fancy I never saw such wild flowers or ate such cherries or such trout as there. There I ter-
6 Since preferred to the living of Wisbech and to an honorary canonry of Ely.
E 2
52 Sir Gilbert Scott.
minated my childhood, and thence I emerged into the wide world, in the prosaic turmoil of which I have ever since been immersed.
Here, then, let me bid good-bye to my childish years, strange, half-mythic days, full of quaint, rough interest, full of faults and regrets, yet of pleasure, of thankfulness, and of affection. Oh ! that I had availed myself of the many privileges of those my early days, of their religious oppor- tunities, and of their means of intellectual im- provement ! But regrets are unavailing. Let me rather thank God for my pious and excellent parents and for the many blessings of my life, and crave His forgiveness for my negligence and shortcomings.
CHAPTER II.
WHILE I was under the direction and tuition of my uncle King, he and his father, Thomas King of London, were on the look-out for an architect to whom to article me. It was a sine-qua-non that he should be a religious man, and it was necessary that his terms should be moderate. They happened to inquire of Mr. Charles Dudley, travelling agent to the Bible Society, who, after telling them that there was scarcely a religious architect in London, recommended Mr. Edmes- ton, better known as a poet than as an architect, and it was finally settled that I was to go to him on or about Lady Day, 1827.
About this time I may mention, by the way, that old John West's church had shown signs of falling to pieces, and my father, after the first perplexity was over, set vigorously to work to raise subscriptions for rebuilding it. He was wonderfully supported by religious friends in all parts of the country, and raised, I think, I4oo/., or
I 5<DO/.
Among the large subscribers I recollect Mr. Broadley Wilson, Mr. Joseph Wilson, and Mr. Deacon, all men of note in the city, also Mrs. Lawrence, of Studley Park, Yorkshire. It was
54 Sir Gilbert Scott.
unlucky that the rebuilding of the church should have been necessary at perhaps the darkest period, or nearly so, of church architecture (though not quite so bad as that of old Mr. West, to be sure).
My father was again his own architect, made his own working drawings, and contracted with his builder at Buckingham, Mr. Will more. I cannot say much about either design or execu- tion ; but these were days to be winked at, as no one knew anything whatever of the subject. It did, however, exceed the old church, in having a western tower and an eastern apse, and is more reasonable in arrangement, though not much more ecclesiastical.
I often wish we had it now to build. I recollect one day, when its foundations were being put in, our friend Mr. Thomas Bartlett coming to see the work, and my father telling him that he was about to place me with an architect; Mr. Bartlett congratulated me upon it, and added, " I have no doubt you will rise to the head of your profession," when my father at once replied, " Oh no, his abilities are not sufficient for that." I hardly knew which to believe. It would have been conceited to hold with the one, but I could not quite knock under to the other.
The new church was commenced, I fancy, when I was living at Latimers, but I saw a little of the work at intervals. It was my first initiation into practical building, though the lessons learned were not of the best, as Mr. Will- more was far from being a good builder. It was
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 55
built of the rough bluish limestone of our Gaw- cott Pits, with dressings of a freestone from Cos- grove, near Stoney Stratford.
During my stay at home before leaving for London, my brother Melville was born, just twenty years after the birth of my oldest brother, who was then at Cambridge.
My father took me to London and placed me with Mr. Edmeston, with whom I lived at his house at Homerton, his office being at Salvador House, in Bishopsgate Street. The first remark of my new master which I recollect was to the effect, that the cost of gothic architecture was so great as to be almost prohibitory ; that he had tried it once at a dissenting chapel he had built at Leytonstone, and that the very cementing of the exterior had amounted to a sum which he named with evident dismay.
I had no idea beforehand of the line of practice followed by my future initiator into the mysteries of my profession ; I went to him with a mythic veneration for his supposed skill and for his imaginary works, though without an idea of what they might be. The morning after I was de- posited at his house, he invited me to walk out and see some of his works — when — oh, horrors ! the bubble burst, and the fond dream of my youthful imagination was realized in the form of a few second-rate brick houses, with cemented porticoes of two ungainly columns each ! I shall never forget the sudden letting down of my aspi- rations. A somewhat romantic youth, assigned to follow the noble art of architecture for the love he had formed for it from the ancient churches
56 Sir Gilbert Scott.
of his neighbourhood, condemned to indulge his taste by building houses at Hackney in the debased style of 1827! I am not sure, however, that I was any very serious loser from this. Mr. Edmeston's practice was a mere blank-sheet as to matters of taste, and left me quite open to indulge in private my old preferences, or to choose in future what course I pleased.
I learned, too, in his office a great deal which I might have missed in a better one. I learned all the common routine of building, specifying, &c., so far as was practised by him, and I had a good deal of time for reading and drawing on my own account. Still, however, I confess it had a lower- ing and deadening effect, and it failed to inspire me with that high artistic sentiment which ought to be impressed upon the mind of every young architect.
Mr. and Mrs. Edmeston were very kindly per- sons, and as they had a good library, which was my evening sitting-room, I had excellent oppor- tunities of that kind for self-improvement, and I think I took very fair advantage of them. I read much and drew much, made myself acquainted with classic architecture from books, such as Stewart's " Athens," the works of the Dilettante society, Vitruvius, &c., and with gothic, so far as the scanty means went. I thoroughly taught myself perspective in one fortnight, from Joshua Kirby, so much so that I have never had to look at a book on it again ; indeed, I used to set myself the most difficult problems, and invent new ways of solving them. I had liberal holidays at midsummer and christmas, when I went home, to
CHAP. ii. J Recollections. 57
my intense delight. In my summer holidays, I devoted most of my time to measuring and sketching at Hillesden, Maid's Morton, &c., and on my return I devoted my evenings for a long time to making drawings of what I had measured, most elaborately tinting them in indian ink, which was sponged nearly out twice over, according to the custom of the day. I remember indulging my rural yearnings, by designing a farm-yard and its buildings in true rustic style. I think it was on this occasion that Mr. Edmeston wrote seriously to my father, warning him that I was employ- ing my leisure hours on matters which could never by any possibility be of any practical use to me.
I had at first only one fellow-pupil, one Enoch Hodgkinson Springbett. He was a very good sort of fellow, but without an aspiration beyond the class of practice he had been trained to ; I used to try to get him to work in his evenings without avail. His great pride was in his cards, on which he styled himself " Architect and Sur- veyor," and in mentioning certain gentlemen as his " clients." He was, however, well skilled in reducing the plans and elevations of Mr. Edmes- ton's houses to a very small scale, and drawing them with sparkling neatness in the margin of the sheet of drawing-paper on which the specification was written out in diamond text for the builder to sign as his contract. Thus I went on without a companion of my own taste, indeed for a long time without knowing a single student of architec- ture but Mr. Springbett. It is right, however, to mention that he used occasionallv to take lessons
58 Sir Gilder ~t Scott.
at the drawing-school of Mr. Grayson, nor would it be right to allow it to be supposed that Mr. Edmeston's taste in the abstract was proportioned to the nature of his practice. He really took much pleasure in, and appreciated fine works, whether ancient or modern, and being a man of literary tastes, his feelings and views were by no means in unison with his practice. He was, in point of fact, a most agreeable companion, and a man of liberal and refined mind, thoroughly well-informed and well-read, in fact a most supe- rior man in everything but his own direct profes- sional work, viewed in its artistic aspect. He had, too, a strong appreciation of artistic drawing, and recommended me to take lessons of Mr. Maddox, an architectural drawing-master of great talent. I delayed this very long, fearing to bur- den my father unduly. I greatly regret this ; I certainly ought to have followed up this extra tuition during the whole period of my pupilage. As it was, I did so only for a little more than the last year of the four of my articles.
Mr. Maddox was certainly a man of real ability, with a wonderful power of drawing, and a high appreciation of art. He was, however, far from being an estimable man in other ways. He was an infidel, and his conversation on such subjects was " truly appalling. My lessons with him were much disturbed by my catching the smallpox, and by a very mournful occurrence of another kind, which led to a rather long absence ; but I gained great advantage from his instruction, and only wish I had had more of it. Among my fellow-pupils was Edwin Nash,
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 59
who became my staunch friend. Morton Peto, who had just left Decimus Burton, and Thomas Henry Wyatt occasionally attended.
The scanty holidays I obtained, in addition to the prolonged ones already mentioned, I used to devote to walking out to see old buildings within reach of London, and in my evenings in the summer, I searched out objects of architectural interest in London itself, so that what with books and with sketching, I obtained a very fair know- ledge of gothic architecture, by the time I was twenty years old, though I had hardly a thought of ever making use of it. Amongst the longer tours which helped me in my studies, I may name a pedestrian journey home, by way of St. Albans, a visit to my eldest brother at Cambridge, whence we walked over to Ely, and a journey to Northamp- ton and Geddington, to sketch the crosses. I had twice visited Waltham cross, so that I thoroughly knew, and had sketched in detail all of the three Eleanor crosses by the time I was nineteen years old.
I well recollect the ardour with which I looked forward to seeing St. Albans. I wrote to my brother John at Chesham to ask him to go with me, or meet me there, and he came to London to accompany me. I had not, however, allowed my- self time to sketch. We went on to Dunstable, and I visited Leigh ton Buzzard, and Stewkley, on my way home.
When I was in my articles old London Bridge was standing, though the present one was in course of erection. St. Saviour's, Southwark, was then in a certain sense complete. The choir was
60 Sir Gilbert Scott.
about that time, or just before, restored by old George Gwilt, while the nave, transepts and Lady chapel were untouched, though in a strange state externally, being faced with brick. Their interiors were, however, nearly perfect, but encumbered like other old churches with pews and galleries. The nave was a magnificent thing. There was a vast early-english double doorway, of great height and depth on the south side, and at the west was the fine early perpendicular doorway, which is given by the elder Pugin in his " Specimens," and the destruction of which is celebrated by his son in the " Contrasts." The Lady-chapel was almost a ruin, with unglazed windows boarded up : to the east of it projected a seventeenth-century chapel, containing the tomb of Bishop Andrewes. To the north of the church was a large vacant space, where the cloisters, &c., had stood, on the eastern side of which there still remained some remnants of the monastic buildings. There was also a late archway, to the north of the west front, leading into the open vacant ground. There was a fine late norman doorway on the north of the nave formerly leading into the cloisters.
The fate of this noble church is melancholy but instructive. Old George Gwilt had restored the choir, and, with his son, had devoted to the work the most anxious and praiseworthy study. The style being by no means then understood, he had taken the utmost pains in studying it wherever he had the opportunity, and to whatever criticisms his work may be open, the result was on the whole highly to his credit.
This anxious painstaking did not, however, suit
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 61
the parishoners, and when the transept was to be proceeded with, they placed it in the hands of another architect, Mr. Wallace, who knew little or nothing of gothic architecture, and made but a poor affair of it. About this time, a parish squabble arose on the subject of the Lady chapel, and happily Gwilt offered, if funds could be raised, to give his services gratuitously, and we see the happy result. A few years later Mr. Wallace was deputed to report on the state of the roof of the nave, and with that perverse thoughtlessness which even in our own day characterizes such reports, he con- demned it at once as unsafe, the ends of the beams being decayed.
Now about the same period a well-known architect had done the same at St. Albans, and had his report been followed out to its natural con- sequences we might have to deplore that glorious nave as a thing of the past ; but another architect, Mr. Cottingham (let us give him all praise for the act), offered to guarantee the safety of the roof, and to give his services gratuitously to save it, which he effected by inserting cast-iron shoes to the decayed beam ends. At St. Saviour's no such happy interposition took place, the con- demned roof was taken down in haste before arrangements were made for a new one. Parish squabbles, spreading over several years, caused the nave to remain a ruin, exposed to the ravages of the elements, till at length another surveyor was found to condemn it in toto, and to erect in its stead the contemptible structure now existing. Thus did London lose for ever one of the most valued of her ancient edifices.
62 Sir Gilbert Scott.
Hard by St. Saviour's were, and I fancy are now, the ruins of the Hall of the Bishop of Win- chester's palace, with its beautiful round window. The latter still exists, though immured in a ware- house wall.
Crosby Hall, which was close by our office, was then a packer's warehouse, and was divided into three stories, an arrangement not so conducive to the appreciation of its beauty, as to the close inspection of its roof.
Austin Friars Church was much as it is at present (or rather was until the late fire), barring the external cementing, which was not yet done.
Winchester House, close to Austin Friars, was also then standing, an Elizabethan mansion erected by the Lord Winchester, to whom most of the property of this religious house had been granted.
St. Bartholomew's, in Smithfield, possessed somewhat more of its accompaniments than it now retains ; one side of the cloister existing, and a good deal of the south transept, though in ruins. A great fire occurred there in 1830, by which some parts were lost ; but I recollect that it brought to light the lower part of the walls of the Chapter-house, with fine early arcaded stalls.
The ancient bridge over the Lea at Bow, may also be mentioned amongst the remnants of an- tiquity I then knew, but which have since perished. Waltham Cross was then unrestored, or rather unspoiled.
The monotony of my life was from time to time
CHAP. IL] Recollections. 63
relieved by short visits from my eldest brother, on his journeys to and from Cambridge. He was a most amusing companion, and his little visits filled me with delight. My father, too, occasion- ally came to town, as did others of my family. I had at first no friend that I cared for but Robert Rumsey, the son of the medical man at Chesham, with whom my brother John was placed ; he had been a pupil of my father's, and was articled to Messrs. Longman, the publishers. We were very great friends. He subsequently gave up the busi- ness for which he had been intended, and became a stipendiary magistrate in the West Indies, where, I fancy, he still continues.
Later, however, a great change came to me as to companionship, through my brother John coming to London to attend the hospitals. This was a very great relief and pleasure, and we almost lived together, always meeting to dine together at an eating-house in Bucklersbury.
Mr. Edmeston was a dissenter at that time, though I think he subsequently joined the church; and I alternately attended service at the episcopal chapel at Homerton, known as " Ram's chapel," and at the " Jews' chapel," Bethnal Green, of which my old friend and kind patron, Mr. King (my uncle's father), was perpetual warden. On those alternate Sundays I dined and spent the day at Mr. King's house in London Fields, Hackney, and I shall never be sufficiently grate- ful for the kindness both of Mr. and Mrs. King, which was continued by the latter after her hus- band's death.
The incumbent of the " Jews' chapel," was Mr.
64 Sir Gilbert Scott.
Hawtrey, a very gentlemanly person, and the curate was a noble old gentleman of the name of Fancourt. There was a tendency amongst the congregation to those views known at the time as " New Lights," and which subsequently culminated in Irvingism. I was one day startled at hearing thanksgivings offered up in the name of Miss Fan- court, the curate's daughter, for a miraculous reco- very from a long illness. The miracle had been performed through the agency of the Rev. Pierre- point Grieves, an Oxfordshire clergyman. It created much excitement at the time, and was unquestionably a very marvellous circumstance, though doubtless capable of being explained by natural causes. Mr. (afterwards Bishop) Alex- ander was a frequent preacher there, and Dr. Wolf was worshipped as a sort of demi-god, though not without a full appreciation of his eccentricity.
My last year was ushered in by a great pleasure, followed up by the greatest affliction I had ever experienced. My next brother, Nathaniel Gilbert, three years my junior, had, since I left home, grown up into a very charming and noble-minded youth, of excellent ability, most amiable and genial disposition, and with a fine vein of semi-humourous, semi-romantic sentiment, which gave interest and expression to all he said. Early in 1830 he was articled to Messrs. Bridges and Mason, of Red Lion Square, who most gene- rously offered to forego their premium, out of con- sideration to my father. He took well to his new occupation, and promised great success. My delight at having him in London was more
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 65
than I can express, for I loved him as my own soul.
My very office-work was gilded by the prospect of meeting him in the evening, which was managed by mutual arrangement. One evening after he had been in town a month, he told me he had a bad headache. I did not think much of that, as he had been rather subject to them ; but the next evening he failed to meet me, and on calling where he lived (the house of my excellent friend, Mrs. Boyes, then of Charterhouse Square), I found that he was ill.
The illness increased day by day, and my poor mother was hurried up to attend him. It was soon evident that it was a case of brain-fever. And one evening, when I had hurried from the office to see how he was, I was bluntly told by the servant boy, that he was dead ! I shall never forget the stunning effect of the announcement ; my legs gave way beneath me, while incoherent sounds were involuntarily uttered, and I was with difficulty helped upstairs by my two brothers, Tom and John, who had hastened down to break the mourn- ful news to me. It was my first introduction to sorrow, and deep, deep it was. My health suffered much from it for some time.
My poor brother Nat was but sixteen years old, but a fine well-developed fellow, of a noble countenance, and a fine bold disposition. I recol- lect some time earlier that he, and a pupil of my father's of the same standing, apprehended and secured a man who had been committing a robbery. And about the same time, when the inhabitants of Otmoor in Oxfordshire rose against the carrying
F
66 Sir Gilbert Scott.
out of an enclosure act, and the Bucks yeomanry were called out, he jumped on to one of the cannons as they passed through our village, and rode fourteen miles on it to see the fight.
He lies buried in the churchyard of St. Botolph's, Aldersgate, where in 1841 I erected a monument to his memory, with an inscription which my father had given me some years earlier.
I will, however, turn to more cheerful topics.
My father's first cousin, the daughter of his eldest uncle, William, had married Mr. Oldrid of Boston, and when I was, as I suppose, about eleven, had brought her son, John Henry,1 to Gawcott as a pupil. She had three daughters, the eldest of whom, Fanny, had once in these early days accompanied her to Gawcott, when it was supposed that my eldest brother was attracted by her. Some years later she and her two sisters went to school at Chesham, and on two occasions they spent their Christmas holidays at Gawcott, and an infinitely merry time it was. It was during these visits that my feelings towards my present dear wife,2 the youngest of these cousins, grew up. My brother Nat was then at home, and the mer- riness of our party was perfect. I was not, however, aware that I was wounded, till the pain of parting began to be felt. But more of this anon.
I must of necessity wind up the account of my pupilage with the narration of two circumstances. One was that during the latter period of it,
1 Sometime lecturer at St. Botolph's, Boston, and since then Vicar of Alford. — ED.
4 She departed this life February 24th, 1872. — ED.
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 67
Mr. Edmeston very kindly appointed me and Springbett, joint clerks of the works to a small building, a proprietary school. We attended on alternate days, and to my no small advantage, though perhaps not to that of the building. The other circumstance was one which had a very strong influence on my subsequent life, though whether more for good or ill it is not easy to say. Certain, however, it is, that it was attended with many advantages, but also with much vexation of spirit.
The circumstance was this.
A builder named Moffatt, having taken a con- tract under Mr. Edmeston, induced him to receive his son, then about sixteen, as a pupil. Young Moffatt was a remarkably intelligent, though uneducated boy, a native of Cornwall. I remember before I saw him, Mr. Edmeston describing him to me with great satisfaction on the score of his bright intelligent appearance. It devolved upon me to help him through our office text-book, " Peter Nicholson's," and I found him ready in the extreme. He had been brought up at the bench, which was then always the case with a young builder, and was in theory held to be a good thing for an architect. He could do anything and every- thing which wood and tools could produce, from a four-panel door to the finest piece of cabinet work, and knew all the practical lore of the timber merchant, the builder, and the mechanic, a class of knowledge which I perhaps almost unduly appre- ciated, and which with the brightness of his uncultivated parts won for him in my mind a sort of regretful respect.
F 2
68 Sir Gilbert Scott.
He was subject to lameness, the result of a fever, and soon becoming unable to go to town, and Mr. Edmeston having established a branch office at Hackney, near where Moffatt lived, it was arranged that he should be placed there, and I used to go in the mornings to instruct him in architectural drawing, Euclid, practical Geometry, and I think perspective, in all of which he got on remarkably well, so long as I continued at Mr. Edmeston's. I also persuaded him subsequently to take lessons of Mr. Maddox.
After I left, he continued at Mr. Edmeston's city office for some time, till getting sick of having next to nothing to do, he rebelled, and refused further attendance ; but I shall have plenty to say of his subsequent progress before I have done.
On leaving Mr. Edmeston's about Lady Day 1831, I went for a month to visit my uncle and aunt King at Latimers, where I again saw my merry cousin, Carry Oldrid. My uncle met with a serious accident while I was there, by the break- ing of a ladder, by which we were getting to the roof of the house, the ladder breaking between his feet and my hands, so that he fell to the ground while I escaped. Happily he was not very seriously hurt, though he long felt the effects of it. This threw me all the more into the society of my favourite cousin, and fanned the spark already kindled.
I may note here as an archaeological memoran- dum, that during this visit I walked over to King's Langley, where I found a farmer, on whose ground was the site of the ancient monastic estab- lishment, digging up the foundations of the church ;
CHAP. n.J Recollections. 69
many of the bases were exposed to view, exhibit- ing the plan of a cross church of the first order. I compared it at the time to Westminster Abbey. I recollect that the bases were of purbeck marble, and belonged to columns surrounded by eight detached shafts, with larger piers at the crossings.
The farmer was taking a plan of it before the removal of the bases. I mention this because it is not generally known. I fear the plan can hardly now be extant.
This visit to Latimers was one of peculiar delight. The April of 1831 was as bright and genial as the May was severe, and both in one respect symbolized my own feelings. The Latimers country was charming that April. The tender green of the beechwoods, luxuriant before its wonted time, and relieved at all points by the blossom of the wild cherry ; the snowy splendour of the cherry orchards ; the hedgerows and woods gemmed with wild flowers, and all nature rejoicing in the all too early spring, offered enjoyments almost intoxicating to one who had not seen the country at this season for four years, and now saw it in an unusually exquisite spot, and at an antedated season ; but this was accompanied by something much more fascinating, the society of my cousin, who was the constant companion of my walks.
On my proceeding at the end of this enchanted sojourn, to Gawcott, oh how plain and homely everything looked! My dear sister, Euphemia,was quite hurt at my admiring nothing. The very primroses were pale and colourless compared with those at Latimers. The plain homely Oxford clay district, with its lopped hedgerow timber and
70 Sir Gilbert Scott.
its oakwoods, looked sadly prosaic after the beauties of the Chiltern land. My sister suspected a deeper cause, and privately suggested it to my mother, who, with the decision and commanding force which were her characteristics, at once brought me to book, and absolutely prohibited any further indul- gence of such sentiments, partly on account of my, for long years to come, dependent position.
I really had not indulged specific and acknow- ledged intentions, though certainly harbouring warm sentiments, but this lecture determined me to resist them for the present at least, and my state of mind was aptly symbolized by the deep snow and sharp frost, by which May was ushered in, which killed and blackened the precocious growths of the too early spring to a degree which I have never witnessed since, and which was said by the knowing ones, but mistakenly, to be beyond the powers of summer to restore.
I spent a couple of months at home sketching, making sundry drawings, &c., and then paid a visit to my eldest brother, who was settled at Goring on the Thames, a charming spot, where I also sketched a little among the old churches, &c., and indulged a few thoughts of my cousin Carry, who had recently been there. Shortly afterwards I set out on the longest journey I had yet taken, a visit to my uncle at Hull.
On this journey I sketched a good deal, and saw much which delighted me. I went to Peter- borough, Stamford, Grantham, Newark, Lincoln, Howden, Selby, York, Bridlington, Beverly, Boston, Tattershall, &c. I also had a pleasant coasting trip to Scarborough and Flam borough
CHAP. IL] Recollections. 71
Head. My visit to Hull, too, was a very merry one, and I formed a more intimate friendship with my cousin John,3 which has lasted ever since. On my return I saw my cousin Carry again, but followed the prudential counsels of my mother, as closely as I could.
This journey was a very great advantage to me ; it opened out and extended greatly my knowledge of gothic architecture, and tended to reduce my shy, taciturn, and somewhat gauche manner, a point in which I was by nature at a great disadvantage.
I now entered upon the second stage of my professional life. Returning to London, I ob- tained many introductions to architects and others, several of whom gave me good advice, varying with their particular practice or antecedents. I think it was Mr. Waller, a well-known surveyor, who advised me to put myself with a builder; and, obtaining an introduction to Mr. (now Sir Samuel Morton) Peto, I placed myself with him and Mr. Grissell, his partner, giving such ser- vices as I could offer, in return for having the run of their workshops, and of their London works.
It is impossible for me to exaggerate the ad- vantages of this arrangement in giving me an insight into every description of practical work ; and that on a scale and of kinds greatly differing from what I had been accustomed to. I was specially stationed at the Hungerford Market, then in progress of erection under Mr. Fowler, to
3 Afterwards Vicar of St. Mary's, Hull. He died in 1865. —ED.
72 Sir Gilbert Scot I.
whose very talented and excellent Clerk of the Works (the late Mr. Colling) I was under very great obligations for kind and continued aid in my pursuit of practical information. The work was constructed on principles then new. Iron girders, Yorkshire landings, roofs and platforms of tiles in cement, and columns of granite being its leading elements.
I got much information, too, in the joiner's shop, from the foreman, from the clerks in the office, and especially from assisting in measuring up work, usually with the foreman. I had at one time to assist two surveyors of eminence, Mr. Roper and Mr. Higgins, in measuring up all the work in a row of houses in which Mr. Peto and Mr. Grissell lived, in furtherance of some arrange- ment under the will of the late Mr. Peto, and a most valuable lesson it was.
I ought, too, to mention the advantage of con- stant reference to Mr. Fowler's working drawings, some of the best and most perspicuous I have ever seen, and of selecting from Messrs. G. and P.'s office copies of specifications by different architects, which I was kindly allowed to take to my lodgings, and make copious extracts from.
I may mention that my brother John and I lodged together during a part of this time in Warwick Court, Holborn, where I continued to live long after he had left town, and where my stay was from time to time enlivened by visits from my cousin John from Hull, and sometimes from my father and my uncle John, and now and then by my eldest brother taking for some weeks together the duty of his rector, who held a
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 73
plurality, being incumbent of one of Barry's Islington churches.
My stay with Grissell and Peto, though I seem to have made much of it, was not of long con- tinuance. It became necessary that I should be doing something for my living ; and Mr. Peto did not quite relish my prying so closely as I was wont, into the foundations of the prices of work and materials, though both he and Mr. Grissell were most kind towards me. I accordingly some time in 1833 entered the office of my very excellent friend, Mr. Henry Roberts, who had recently obtained by competition the appointment of architect to the new Fishmongers' Hall, at the foot of new London Bridge.
Mr. Roberts had, subsequently to his original period of pupilage, been for a considerable time in the office of Sir Robert Smirke, whose tastes, habits, modes of construction, and method of making working drawings, he had thoroughly imbibed. He had subsequently made the length- ened continental tour customary in those days, and had not, I think, very long been in practice since his return. He was in independent circum- stances, and was a gentlemanly, religious, precise, and quiet man. I was the only clerk in the office at the time, though he subsequently took a pupil, so that I had the advantage of making all the working drawings of this considerable public building, from the foundation to the finish ; and of helping in measuring up the extras and omissions, as well as of constantly seeing the work during its progress.
This engagement lasted two years, and though
74 Sir Gilbert Scott.
most beneficial to me, it seems almost a blank in my memory, from its even and uneventful cha- racter. I recollect that during that time I once ventured into a public competition for the gram- mar school at Birmingham. I also got a picture one year (I don't recollect trying again) into the exhibition, and attended a course of Sir John Soane's lectures, at the Royal Academy. I often contemplated becoming a student there, and chalked out Gothic designs, but I never followed it up. I do not think I did much in sketching at this time, Smirkism and practical work having for a time chilled my own tastes ; nor had I any advantages of artistic study. It was a dull, blank period, and I think I was to blame for it.
I have little recollection of my visits home during this time, though in the course of it I lost my aunt Gilbert. I remember, however, one visit. My father being presented by the Bishop of Lin- coln (Kaye) to the living of Wappenham, North- amptonshire, eleven miles north of Gawcott, I went with him to reconnoitre, and, having to build a new house there, I supplied him with a very ugly design, founded on one of Mr. Roberts' plans, which his old builder, Mr. Willmore, took care to spoil and slight, as much as he thought necessary for his own purposes. About this time, also, I was requested by my friend, Henry Rumsey, who had succeeded to his father's practice at Chesham, to plan him a house there. My taste seemed under a cold spell, and the design, though convenient enough, was wholly devoid of any attempt at architectural character. He wanted to employ several local tradesmen
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 75
and I named my old fellow-pupil Moffatt as clerk of the works, who was also to get a good deal of the joiner's work done in London under his father. Thus was recommenced an acquaintance productive of such marked influence on my future career. Moffatt performed his duties most efficiently and cleverly, but with so little tact as to make an enemy of his employer for the very acts by which he was best promoting his interests, while I lost in my friend's esteem by defending my representative.
In the spring of 1834, Mr. Roberts kindly gave me the appointment of clerk of the works to a small work at Camberwell, which I superintended throughout its erection, which was very rapid, and was completed in the autumn of the same year. My conscience tells me that this arrange- ment was much more beneficial to myself than to the building.
I now made up my mind to attempt to get into practice, but previous to doing so, I took three months' holiday, which, foreign travel being out of the question, I spent partly at Wappenham, and on visits to my uncle King and my eldest brother, and partly in a sketching tour, on which I was accompanied by my friend Edwin Nash. I sketched a good deal during this interval, and did something towards recovering my old but dormant tastes. My stay at my father's new home was very delightful to me, but how much more precious had I known that it was my last visit to him. His health had evidently much failed him of late, and I heard whispers of deadly maladies, but they seemed as idle tales to my sanguine mind.
76 Sir Gilbert Scott.
Alas ! how soon they proved Far otherwise.
While we were on this tour we heard the news of the destruction of the Houses of Par- liament.
I remember with great interest the many even- ings spent in hearing the debates within the walls of old St. Stephen's, where I was familiar with the eloquence of Peel, Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), O'Connell, Lord John Russell, and others, with the early efforts of the then youthful and blooming Gladstone, and the quaint absurdities of old Cobbett.
The old St. Stephen's resembled a rather sump- tuous methodist chapel, all its real architecture being concealed by wainscotting and round-topped windows, denying every hint of the real ones. When I saw it on my return to London, how changed was its aspect ! It seemed as if the subject of an enchanter's spell, and converted suddenly from a mean conventicle into a Gothic ruin of unrivalled beauty, glowing with the scorched but quite intelligible remnants of its gorgeous decorative colouring. The destruction of this precious architectural relic is the single blot upon the fair shield of Sir Charles Barry.
About this time the new Poor-law Act had come into operation, and my friend Kempthorne, just returned home from his continental tour, had, through the interest of the Chief Commissioner, who was a friend of his father's, been employed to prepare normal designs for the proposed Union workhouses.
Being inexperienced, he, in an unhappy moment, called in the aid of his old master, Mr. Voysey,
CHAP, ii.] Recollections* 77
who, though a clever and ingenious practical man, had not one spark of taste, and took a very exaggerated view of the necessity for economy. The assistant commissioners were instructed to press upon the newly-formed boards of guardians the desirableness of employing Mr. Kempthorne, the commissioners' architect ; and thus poor Kempthorne was placed under the real dis- advantage (though seeming advantage) of having a vast practice thrust upon him before his expe- rience had fitted him to conduct it, while he embarked with a set of ready-made designs of the meanest possible character, and very defective in other particulars.
While visiting my brother at Goring about Christmas, 1834, I received a letter from Kemp- thorne, telling me that a set of chambers next to his own, in Carlton Chambers, Regent Street, was vacant, and that if I liked to take them, he could find employment for my leisure time, in assisting him with his Union Workhouses. I closed with this and was soon ensconced in my new chambers and busied on work even more mean than that of my pupilage. This had not, however, continued more than a few weeks, when one morning Kemp- thorne entered my room with an expression on his countenance which soon showed me that he was the bearer of heavy tidings. He soon broke to me, kindly and gently, for he was a good, kind fellow, the sad intelligence of the sudden death of my father.
Here was a stunning blow, of which I had experienced no parallel ! I will not go into our family grief, my poor widowed mother's prostra-
78 Sir Gilbert Scott.
tion, nor the sudden break-up of our happy home. After the first flood of grief was passed, and my father's honoured remains were deposited along- side of those of old John West, in the church at Gawcott, action and decision became the necessi- ties of our position. My two eldest brothers were fairly on their own hands, and my eldest sister was married to my cousin, the Rev. J. H. Oldrid, who had succeeded my father at Gawcott. I was the eldest of six still unsettled in life, and I must adopt my course with promptitude, or my chances in life were gone.
The two steps I took were, first to write a kind of circular to every influential friend of my father's I could think of, informing them that I had commenced practice, and begging their patronage, and secondly, to quit Kempthorne, and to use my interest to obtain the appointment of architect to the Union Workhouses in the district where my father had been known. Both steps were happily attended with success. Several friends placed small works in my hands, and I succeeded by a strenuous canvass of every guardian in obtaining appointments to four unions in our immediate district.
This was a success for which I have to thank a gracious Providence, and without which I really do not know what course I could have taken. Now, however, I found myself in a few months in what was to me good practice, though for a time unpro- ductive, and involving considerable outlay, in which I was helped by my mother out of her scanty means, and — it would be contemptible if I allowed pride to lead me to ignore it — by my share
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 79
in a fund, which was, wholly unasked, subscribed as a testimonial to, and a help to the descendants of, the Commentator, my grandfather.
If the three previous years come back to my memory as a mere blank, those which succeeded seem an era of turmoil, of violent activity and exertion. For weeks I almost lived on horseback, canvassing newly formed unions. Then alternated periods of close, hard work in my little office at Carlton Chambers, with coach journeys, chiefly by night, followed by meetings of guardians, search- ing out of materials, and hurrying from union to union, often riding across unknown bits of country after dark, sudden sweet peeps in at my poor mother's new home, (a nice old house at Wappen- ham, where my brother had, by Bishop Kaye's kindness, succeeded my father at the rectory,) with flying visits to Gawcott and elsewhere, as occasion served.
I employed one clerk, and had invited Moffatt to come to help me in preparing my early work- ing drawings, which he did with the utmost dili- gence and efficiency, and on the works of one union commencing, and those of others within reach being about to commence, I recommended him as resident superintendent of a little circuit of buildings within a few miles of one another. He accordingly took up his residence at one of those places whence he was to ride the round of the others.
By some strange coincidence of circumstances an influential magistrate in Wiltshire had become acquainted withx and. taken a fancy to Moffatt, and had invited him' down there, promising to use
8o Sir Gilbert Scott.
his influence in getting him appointed architect to the Amesbury Union House. He went accord- ingly and succeeded, and we made the plans and working drawings at my office.
An anomalous state of things was thus set up. I was architect to four union workhouses in one district, to which Moffatt was clerk of the works, while he was architect to one in a distant part of the country, the drawings for which were made at my office. This led him to come and make a formal proposal to me. I agreed to this proposal, and it became the foundation of our future partnership. I will here stop these hard, dull incidents, and speak of a circumstance of a very different and more interesting character.
Early in the period which I have been describ- ing, during one of my visits to Wappenham, my mother had told me that my cousin Carry Oldrid had just come on a visit to Gawcott, and that if my old feelings continued towards her, she did not desire me to be influenced by what, three or four years previously, she had said. I met my cousin at Buckingham, and, thus set free, my old sentiments came back upon me like a flood. I spent a day or two at Gawcott in her society, and I soon found myself over head and ears in love. In a few months we were engaged, though without any near prospect of marriage. This afforded a softening and beneficial relief to the too hard, unsentimental pursuits which at this time almost overwhelmed me, and to which I must now return.
The effect of Moffatt's new arrangement was magical. He followed up union-hunting into
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 81
Devonshire and Cornwall with almost uniform success, and my poor little quartette of works round my old home soon became as nothing, when compared with the engagements which flowed in upon us as partners. Moffatt's own exertions were almost superhuman, and when I recollect that no railways came to his help, I feel perfectly amazed to think of what he effected.
When I first set about this poor-law work, I considered the look of the buildings as wholly out of the question, and felt myself bound in a great degree to the arrangements laid down by the published plans of the commissioners, though I attempted better construction than they prescribed. I recollect a competitor, Mr. Plowman of Oxford, who was both a builder and an architect, saying of one of my earliest specifications, that it was one of the best he had ever seen, but impossible to be carried out in a workhouse on account of the cost. This I found to be true, for Kempthorne's plans and specifications, in which everything had been cut down to the very quick, had given the scale of estimate which the commissioners led the guardians to expect, so that for a long time it was unsafe to venture beyond it. Architecture and good finish, or even any great improvements in arrangement, were at the time hopeless, and one was driven to the wretched necessity of view- ing one's profession, as represented by one's chief works, merely as a means of getting a living, ex- cepting that when competitions became frequent, there was an excitement and speculation about them, which added a certain kind of interest to otherwise most uninteresting work. Competition
82 Sir Gilbert Scott.
soon, however, produced other effects. Variety became necessary, or where was the ground-work for competition ? Thus improved arrangements began to be aimed at. Perspective views were naturally regarded as attractive elements in a competition, and to give them any interest there must be something to show, so that external appearance began timidly to be thought of, and estimates stealthily to creep upwards, and many a row and uproar did this produce, to the joy of the disappointed competitors.
The competitions for union workhouses were conducted on principles quite peculiar to them- selves, They were open in every sense, and each of the competitors was at liberty to take any step he thought good. They used first to go down and call on the clerk, the chairman, and any of the guardians who were supposed to have any ideas of their own, and after the designs were sent in, no harm was thought of repeating those calls as often as the competitor pleased, and advocating the merits, each man of his own arrangement. On the day on which the designs were to be examined the competitors were usually waiting in the ante- room, and were called in one by one to give per- sonal explanations, and the decision was often announced then and there to the assembled can- didates. Moffatt was most successful in this kind of fighting, having an instinctive perception of which men to aim at pleasing, and of how to meet their views and to address himself successfully to their particular temperaments. The pains he took in improving the arrangements were enormous, communicating constantly with the most experi-
CHAP. IL] Recollections. 83
enced governors of workhouses, and gathering ideas wherever he went. He was always on the move. We went every week to Peele's coffee- house to see the country papers, and to find adver- tisements of pending competitions. Moffatt then ran down to the place to get up information. On his return, we set to work, with violence, to make the design, and to prepare the competition draw- ings, often working all night as well as all day. He would then start off by the mail, travel all night, meet the board of guardians, and perhaps win the competition, and return during the next night to set to work on another design. I have known him travel four nights running, and to work hard throughout the intervening days, a habit facilitated by his power of sleeping whenever he chose. He used to say that he snored so loud on the box of the mail as to keep the inside passengers awake. He was the best arranger of a plan, the hardest worker, and the best hand at advocating the merits of what he had to propose, I ever met with ; and I think that he thoroughly deserved his success, though it naturally won him a host of enemies and traducers.
I meanwhile carried on my own private poor-law practice through Northamptonshire and Lincoln- shire, which was viewed by us as my privileged ground. I built, I think, at that time two union- houses in Bucks, five in Northamptonshire, and four in Lincolnshire, in which I stood alone. I also had a certain amount of practice of other kinds. I lived, like Moffatt, in a constant turmoil, though less so than he. The way in which we used to rush to the Post Office, or to the Angel at
G 2
84 Sir Gilbert Scott.
Islington, at the last moment, to send off designs and working drawings, or to set off for our nocturnal journeys, was most exciting, and one wonders, in these self-indulgent days, how we could stand the travelling all night outside coaches in the depth of winter, and in all weathers. The life we led was certainly as arduous and exciting as anything one can fancy in work, which in its own nature was so dull as our business in the abstract was, but one's mind seems to shape itself to its day, and I believe I really enjoyed the labour and turmoil in which I spent my time.
These were the last days of the integrity of the old coaching system, and splendid was its dying perfection ! It was a merry thing to leave the Post Office yard on the box-seat of a mail, and drive out amidst the mob of porters, passengers, and gazers. As far as Barnet on the north road seven mails ran together with their choicest trotting teams passing and repassing one another, the horns blow- ing merrily, every one in a good humour, and proud of what they were doing. Then the hasty cup of coffee at midnight, and the hurried break- fast had joys about them which I seem even now to feel again. One coach I travelled by — " the Manchester Telegraph " — cleared eleven miles an hour all the way down, stoppings included. It was a splendid perfection of machinery, but its fate was sealed, the great lines of railway being in rapid progress. Our shorter journeyings we did by gig and on horseback, though they often ex- tended through the length and breadth of a county.
I had in the midst of all this confusion made
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 85
myself decently acquainted with geology, which, with my old church-hunting tendencies, added greatly to the interest of my journeys. I was in fact an enthusiast on this subject ; and though I had not time to follow it scientifically, I obtained a very good practical knowledge of the stratification and geological productions of the greater part of the country. My sketching of gothic architecture was at the time but scanty ; having to fight for bare existence, I directed my efforts mainly to the matter before me.
In 1838 (June 4th) I was married to my dear cousin Caroline. We took apartments until we could find a house, and about the end of the year we settled down at No. 20 (now 31), Spring Gardens, where my two eldest sons were born in 1839 and 1841. From this date my practice began to take a more legitimate and less abnormal line ; and though I soon afterwards became actual partner with Mr. Moffatt, this partnership was not of permanent duration.
In 1838, shortly after my marriage, I competed for a church with success. This was at Lincoln, and I cannot say anything in its favour, excepting that it was better than many then erected. Church architecture was then perhaps at its lowest level. The era of the " million " churches of the commissioners had long past, and Barry's four churches at Islington, which were really respectable and well intentioned, and liberal in their cost, had been succeeded by an abject fry, the products of the " Cheap Church " mania, in which all decency of architectural finish and con- struction was ground down to the very dust, to
86 Sir Gilbert Scott.
meet an idolized tariff of so many shillings a sitting.4 My first church (except one poor barn designed for my uncle King) dates from the same year with the foundation of the Cambridge Cam- den Society, to whom the honour of our recovery from the odious bathos is mainly due. I only wish I had known its founders at the time. As it was, no idea of ecclesiastical arrangement, or ritual propriety, had then even crossed my mind.
Unfortunately everything I did at that time fell into the wholesale form ; and before I had time to discover the defects of my first design, its general form and its radical errors were repeated in no less than six other churches,5 and which followed in such rapid succession as to leave no time for improvement, all being planned, I fancy, in 1839, or early in the succeeding year.
The designs for these churches were by no means similar, but they all agreed in two points — the use of a transept of the minor kind,6 which happened to be suggested to me by those at Pinner and Harrow, and the absence of any regular and proper chancel, my grave idea being that this feature was obsolete. They all agreed
4 This tariff system is not yet closed. A district of so many thousand souls is still held to require a church of so many hundred " sittings " at the cost of so much a-piece. The pro- portion— grotesque as it sounds — of " sittings " to souls has to be adjusted, and the area of each laid down in square feet and inches. — ED.
5 At Birmingham, Lincoln, Shaftesbury, Hanwell, Turnham Bridlington Quay, and Norbiton.
6 Curiously enough, an old English tradition, derived from Saxon times, and prevalent in England and Ireland all through the middle ages. — ED.
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 87
too in the meagreness of their construction, in the contemptible character of their fittings, in most of them being begalleried to the very eyes, and in the use of plaster for internal mouldings, even for the pillars.
This latter meanness had been forced upon me, for at first I aimed at avoiding it, but the cheap- church rage overcame me, and as I had not then awaked to the viciousness of shams, I was uncon- cious of the abyss into which I had fallen. These days of abject degradation only lasted for about two years or little more, but, alas ! what a mass of horrors was perpetrated during that short interval ! Often, and that within a few months of this period, have I been wicked enough to wish my works burnt down again. Yet they were but part of the base art-history of their day. In 1841 I was em- ployed by Mr. Minton to design him a church, the first to which I put a regular chancel, but in some other respects, hardly an advance on the others, though before its completion I had awakened to a truer sense of the dignity of the subject.
This awakening arose, I think, from two causes operating almost simultaneously : my first ac- quaintance with the Cambridge Camden Society, and my reading Pugin's articles in the " Dublin Review." I may be in error as to their coincidence of date. The first took place in this manner. I saw somewhere an article by Mr. Webb, the secre- tary to the Camden Society, which greatly excited my sympathy. Just at the same time I had become exceedingly irate at the projected destruction by Mr. Barry of St. Stephen's Chapel, and I wrote to Mr. Webb and subsequently saw him on the
88 Sir Gilbert Scott.
subject. I was introduced, I believe, by Edward Boyce. Mr. Webb took advantage of the occasion to lecture me on church architecture in general, on the necessity of chancels, &c., &c. I at once saw that he was right, and became a reader of the " Ecclesiologist." Pugin's articles excited me al- most to fury, and I suddenly found myself like a person awakened from a long feverish dream, which had rendered him unconscious of what was going on about him.
Being thus morally awakened, my physical dreams followed the subject of my waking thoughts. I used fondly to dream of making Pugin's acquain- tance and to awake, perhaps, while on a night journey in high excitement, at the imagined inter- view. I had heard of Pugin as a boy, ten or eleven years before, at Maddox's. I had again heard of him and his " Contrasts " from my ardent and ex- cellent friend Charles Bailey, who had often helped me with my drawings, and I had more recently got to know more of him in this way. I had under- taken in 1838 (or thereabouts) a large workhouse at Loughborough. The contractor for a part of the work was a strange rough mason from Hull, named Myers. While engaged under me at Loughborough, he competed with success for the erection of a Roman Catholic Church at Derby, nearly the first which Pugin built.7
Myers was a native of Beverly, and had been ap- prenticed to the mason to the minster, from which he had acquired an ardent love of Gothic architec- ture, and this now dormant tendency was roused into energy by his being brought into contact with 7 St Mary's, a really beautiful work. — ED.
CHAP. IL] Recollections. 89
Pugin. Eternal friendship was sworn between them, and Myers was the builder of nearly every subsequent work of Pugin's.
I made my crusade in favour of St. Stephen's an excuse for writing to Pugin, and to my almost tremulous delight, I was invited to call. He was tremendously jolly, and showed almost too much bonhomie to accord with my romantic expecta- tions. I very rarely saw him again, though I be- came a devoted reader of his written, and visitor of his erected works, and a greedy recipient of every ta1e about him, and report of what he said or did. A new phase had come over me, tho- roughly en rapport with my early taste, but in utter discord with the "fitful fever" of my poor- law activity. I was in fact a new man, though that man was, according to the trite saying, the true son of my boyhood.
It was, I suppose, while the awakening was commencing, that I was invited to compete with a small number of architects for the erection of the Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford. This was in 1 840, and it seems strange that one so unknown in matters of taste, should have been named on a select list for a work like this. I owed it, I fancy, to the kind influence of my friends, Mr. Stowe and Major Macdonald, with two members of the committee, and to a third member, Dr. Macbride, having been a friend of my father and of my grand- father : when I received the invitation I threw myself into the design with all the ardour I possessed. My early study, full ten years before, of the Eleanor crosses was a good preparation. I obtained every drawing of old crosses I could
9O Sir Gilbert Scott. [ 1 840
lay hand on, and devoted my best endeavours to producing a design suited to the object. I suc- ceeded. That this was before my awakening to a true feeling for church architecture, is proved by the defects of the accompanying addition to St. Mary Magdalene's church ; but I fancy the cross itself was better than any one but Pugin would then have produced.
An amusing incident occurred at, I believe, my first interview with the committee. I found them in disagreement as to the best stone for the monu- ment. The commissioners for selecting stone for the Houses of Parliament, had not long before made their report in favour of the purely mythic stone of Bolsover Moor. One party favoured this imaginary stone, for its warm colour ; another, the white variety of magnesian limestone from Roche Abbey, on account of its fine grain. I ventured on the suggestion, that by visiting the district, it might be possible to find a stone unit- ing these qualities, when Dr. Buckland snubbed me with great scorn, saying that such a sug- gestion might have been made in years gone by, when little was known of the geological productions of the country, but that now, when every variety of stone was so well known, it was hopeless to look out for new ones. I happened, however, though without scientific knowledge, to have nearly as practical an acquain- tance with stone quarries as Dr. Buckland, and I did not see the force of the argument. I there- fore started off with Moffatt for the magnesio- calcareous district. The first quarry we went to was that at Mansfield Wocdhouse, which, on the
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 91
discovery of the Bolsover delusion, had been re- opened for the Houses of Parliament ; this stone did not meet my wishes, being too coarse in grain, and not pure enough in colour. On describing, however, to the foreman of the quarry what I was seeking for, he at once told me he could show me what I wanted ; and, taking a hammer and walk- ing with us across a few fields, he brought us to an ancient and long-disused quarry, grown over with brushwood, and on striking off a fragment from the rock, presented to me the very stone which my imagination had pourtrayed ! My de- light was excessive. The committee at once, though at a great increase of cost, adopted it, and in their next report attributed the happy dis- covery to the pre-eminent geological skill of Dr. Buckland.
The stone is perhaps the finest in the kingdom, though it is not to be obtained in large blocks, and is very costly in the quarrying. The rock is still known by the name of " The Memorial Quarry."
About this time, or shortly afterwards, two important works came into our hands by public competition : the Infant Orphan Asylum at Wan- stead, and the Church of St. Giles, Camberwell.
The former of these works is a magnificent institution : one of the many which own the well- known Dr. Andrew Reed as the founder.
Nothing could exceed the energy with which Moffatt threw himself into this competition, the most important by far into which we had then entered, nor the pains he took in thoroughly master- ing its practical requirements. The planning was
92 Sir Gilbert Scott,
chiefly his, the external design, which was Eliza- bethan, mine. We succeeded. The first stone was laid in great state by Prince Albert, and the building opened by Leopold, the King of the Belgians.
The old Church of St. Giles, Camberwell, was burnt down in 1840, and there was a public com- petition for designs for its re-erection. We com- peted, sending in a very ambitious design, groined throughout with terra-cotta. No one had an idea whose our plans were. The competition being close, we adhered scrupulously to its regulations. Mr. Blore acted as assessor, and reported in our favour. Tenders were received for our design, and came in, I think, pretty favourably, but a parish opposition being excited, and a poll called for, a compromise was at length made, and we were commissioned to prepare a less costly design, which resulted in the present structure.
My conversion to the exclusive use of real material came to its climax during the progress of this work, and much which was at first shown as of plaster was afterwards converted into stone, the builder promising to accept some other change as a compensation. He died before the com- pletion of the work, and his executors ignoring this promise, a good deal of dissatisfaction ensued, though, I must say, they had a very cheap build- ing, and the best church by far which had then been erected. The pains which I took over this church were only equalled by the terror with which I attended the meetings of the committee, though, I think, they nearly all continued my very good friends, and were very proud indeed of their
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 93
building. The then incumbent was the Rev. J. G. Storie, a remarkable person. He was a man of great talent, and personal and moral prowess, the most masterly hand at coping with a turbulent parish vestry I ever saw. His only great fault was that he was a clergyman, instead of, as nature intended, a soldier or a barrister ; but this was the fault of his parents or guardians, not his own. He was a thorough man of the world, and immersed in the society of men of his own taste. I greatly admired, and, to a certain extent, respected, while I feared him, -for he was a man whose very look would almost make one tremble, when his wrath was stirred. He was determined to have a good church, and so far as his day permitted, he got it, and after all the little rubs we had, I view his memory with respect and friendship. His expensive habits led him to sell the advowson, which was his own, with a covenant for immediate resignation. The sale was effected, and the covenant performed before the purchase- money was paid, and those who wish to know the rest may inquire for themselves. However this may be, poor Mr. Storie was reduced to poverty, from which he never recovered.
By a strange coincidence, a triple announce- ment was one Sunday made in the new church. The choir had struck, the bellows of the organ had burst, and the vicar had resigned.
Our great mistake in the church was the use of the Caen stone, an error fallen into by many at that time and later. It reminds me of a funny incident relating to the Oxford Memorial. The Chapter of Canterbury had presented three fine
94 Sir Gilbert Scott.
blocks of Caen stone for the statues of the three bishops. I much desired to sketch carefully, for the benefit of the monument, the details of the noble tomb of Archbishop Peckham, and took occasion to stop at Canterbury for the purpose. The verger, however, soon told me that no sketch- ing could be permitted without an order. The Dean (Bishop Bagot), was away at his See. Canon Peel had gone out, Archdeacon Croft, whom I knew, was not to be found, and my last resource was Dr. Spry. I called at his house and sent in my name, with full particulars of my mission and its objects. The Reverend Doctor was at his luncheon, I heard the " knives and forks rattling," no " sweet music to me," and after more than one attempt, was sent off with a peremptory refusal.
One of our great works at this time was Read- ing gaol, and few brought me greater annoyance, I think unjustly. Our design was chosen by the Inspector of Prisons, Mr. Russell, though he made great alteration in its arrangement.
Like the Poor-Law Commissioners, he was interested in not frightening the magistrates by a high estimate, and he almost pledged himself to us, that from his experience, he knew we might safely name a particular sum.
Had the usual course of a builder's estimate been followed, the error would have been dis- covered in time, but the Inspector further pre- scribed a course which prevented this. He advised the magistrates to contract only for a schedule of prices, and to have the work measured up when completed. Thus the work went on, and we did
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 95
everything as well as possible, making a capital work of it, but when measured up the result may be imagined ! The Inspector of course made us the scape-goats, which perhaps served us right for being so easily gulled. I doubt, however, whether it was more costly than other prisons, and it is unquestionably a first-rate building.
I must in fairness confess that cost was our weak point. This was not intentional, but re- sulted from a combination of circumstances. The turmoil of competitions, crowding one upon another, left little time for more than the roughest esti- mates, though we did employ a regular surveyor upon them. Then the degradation of feeling as to cost, from which the public was just emerging, and our own ardent and sanguine ambition for improvement, all tended in the same direction ; yet I must confess to a certain carelessness on this point, which was decidedly reprehensible. Where there is no competition, an architect can gradually raise the ideas of his clients, from the undue lowness which so generally characterizes them, but in the case of a competition there is no chance of this, and this is one reason why, as soon as I was able, I was rejoiced to kick down the ladder which had raised, but at the same time endangered, me.
From about the time of my marriage, I had resumed my Gothic sketching to as great an extent as my hurried life permitted, and the subject of restoration soon forced itself upon my attention. I think the first work I had to do with of this kind was the refitting of Chesterfield church, and here I cannot say much for my sue-
96 Sir Gilbert Scott.
cess. Galleries were forced upon me, contrary to the wish of the Incumbent, Mr. (afterwards Arch- deacon) Hill. I found the rood screen to have been pulled down and sold, but we protested, and it was recovered.8 I recollect that there existed in the church, as I found it, a curious and beautiful family pew or chapel, enclosed by screen- work, to the west of one of the piers of the central tower. There are two such chapels now in St. Mary's church, Beverly.9 This was called the Fol- jambe Chapel, and was a beautiful work of Henry VIIL's time. What to do with it I did not know, it was right in the way of the arrangements, and could not but have been removed.1 I at last deter- mined to use its screen work to form a reredos, and if I remember rightly, it did very well. I mention these unimportant matters merely for the sake of adding that the " Ecclesiologist," in alluding to this work some years afterwards, when they had begun somewhat to run me down, for purposes of their own, coolly stated that I had had the rood screen sold, and that it had only been recovered by the exertions of the parishioners ; and that I had converted the material of a Jacobean screen into a reredos, a fair specimen of their criticisms, when they had an object in view. My real initiation, however, into the various considerations affecting the sub- ject of restoration was the work undertaken at
8 There is no such screen now in Chesterfield Church. — ED.
9 They have also disappeared. — ED.
1 This is a good typical example of what is misnamed " re- storation." The removal of ancient remains to make way for " necessary " modern arrangements, would be more naturally termed " innovation." — ED.
CHAP. IL] Recollections. 97
St. Mary's, Stafford. The circumstances attend- ing the commencement of this work were so re- markable that I will briefly detail them.
I had, about 1838, made the acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Stevens, then assistant poor-law commissioner for the counties of Stafford and Derby. Mr. Stevens was the only son of the rector and squire of Bradfield, near Reading, and as chairman to the union there, had so successfully taken up poor-law work, that he was persuaded to join the commission. He was a thorough man of business, a sound churchman, and a lover of Gothic architecture. His head-quarters were at Lichfield, where he attended daily service at the cathedral, so far as his journeys permitted, a tusus natures surely amongst poor-law commissioners.
I first met him at Sir Thomas Cotton Shepherd Shepherd's, near Uttoxeter, when we formed a lasting friendship ; and he shortly afterwards got me to meet him at Bradfield, to consult together as to the restoration of the church, a work which was happily postponed till ten years later. The next year he married, was ordained, and took the curacy of Keele, in the county of Stafford.
In 1840 or 1841 he wrote to me, telling me that Mr. Coldwell, rector of Stafford, was most anxious to restore his church, if only he could get funds, and suggested my writing to him, offering to make a survey and report, with a view to facilitating that object. I did so, and made my report, but Mr. Coldwell's appeal was but faintly responded to. Mr. Stevens, being about to return finally to Bradfield, I visited him on his last day at Keele, and we went together to Stafford, where we found
H
98 Sir Gilbert Scott.
Mr. Coldwell in despair of ever effecting his wishes. On my return to town I found a letter from Mr. Stevens, telling me that, on reaching Bradfield, he had found a letter awaiting him from a friend, whom he did not yet name, asking his advice as to the appropriation of a sum of 5OOO/. devoted to church building or restoration, and expressing a preference for Staffordshire.
Mr. Stevens had already recommended St. Mary's, subject to the condition that another like sum should be raised by public subscription. The challenge was accepted, and the sum quickly raised, so that the despair of the rector was suddenly changed to joy and thankfulness.
The principal parishioner was, and is, my truly excellent friend, Mr. Thomas Salt, the banker,2 whose brother-in-law is the Rev. Louis Petit, since so well-known by his architectural writings, and his truly marvellous sketches.
Mr. Petit raised some considerable objections to certain parts of my proposed restorations, on the ground of their not being sufficiently conser- vative, and wrote a very important and talented letter on the subject.
I differed from him, not in principle, but on the ap- plication of the principles to the matter in question. I wrote stoutly, and I think well, in defence of my own views, and the correspondence was, by mutual agreement, referred to the Oxford and Cambridge Societies, who gave their verdict in my favour.
The whole case is given in the account by me of the restoration in Masfen's " History of St. Mary's Church," to which I would specially refer. 2 He died a few years since. — ED.
CHAP, ii Recollections.
99
Whether I was right or wrong in my views I am doubtful, but the result was a happy one, for embedded in the later walling we found abundant fragments of the earlier work, which enabled me to reproduce the early English south transept with certainty, and a noble design it is.
I employed, during the earlier part of this work, the services of my now deceased friend, Edwin Gwilt, son of old George Gwilt, the restorer of the choir and Lady chapel of St. Saviour's, South wark. He was conservative to the back- bone, and where stonework had to be renewed, he went on the principle of making every stone, and even every joint of the ashlar, correspond to a nicety with the old.
The pains we took in recovering old forms and details were unbounded, and though too little actual old work was preserved, I believe that no restoration could, barring this, be more scrupu- lously conscientious.
The most serious practical work was the repair of the central tower, whose four piers had become so crushed that they had to be nearly rebuilt, a dangerous work, which it has since been my too frequent lot to repeat, and a most unenviable lot it is.
Let me impress two or three great principles on the mind of those who have to undertake such works. I. Be assured that no amount of shore- ing can be too much for safety, no foundations to your shoreing too strong, and no principles of constructing it too well considered. II. Use the hardest stone for your new work which you can pro- cure, and spare no pains in bonding it, and tying it together with copper. III. Be very slow in your
H 2
TOO Sir Gilbert Scott.
operations, excepting at critical junctures, where the very contrary is necessary ; be careful in your principle of moveable supports, as you cut away old work ; set every stone in the very best cement, and run in the core with grout of the same material. IV. Key up well at the top, and leave your shoreing a long time after the work is done, and then remove it with the greatest care. V. (Though more properly first.) Tie your tower well together with iron before you begin, and take especial care of your foundations. Above all, have a thoroughly practical clerk of the works, neither too young, nor too old.
The shoreing must be all of undivided timbers, and often of four or more such balks, bound and bolted together into one by irons.
The fittings of St. Mary's were not very suc- cessful ; but, as a whole, it was beyond question the best restoration then carried out, nor have many since been in the main much better. My valued friend, Mr. Jesse Watts Russell, of Ham Hall, was a munificent patron of this work ; and this led to a friendship which has lasted unshaken ever since.3
I may here mention that during the years I have been chronicling, our poor-law work still continued ; but that we were erecting a very different class of building, usually in the Eliza- bethan style, and in many cases of really good design. I may mention especially those at Dun- mow and Billericay in Essex, Belper, Windsor, Amersham, and Macclesfield. Some of these, indeed, went almost as much too far in this direction, as the earlier ones in meanness.
8 He died some few years after this was written. — ED.
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 101
We competed frequently, too, at this time, for county lunatic asylums, though with less success. The vigour with which my partner entered upon these, and his assiduous energy in obtaining the opinions of practical authorities on questions of arrangement, were beyond all praise. These competition drawings were usually prepared at his private house at Kennington, where he gave up all his sitting-rooms, and peopled the house with clerks, who had all their meals together, and had half an hour for a good game in his grounds, every other minute of the day being devoted to the closest work, in which he, and often I, joined as zealously as any of them.
Meanwhile, my church practice rapidly in- creased in quantity and in merit. I recollect with regret one work of restoration to which I devoted my very best energies, but which was rendered abortive by one false step.
Designs were advertised for, for the restoration of the beautiful chapel of St. Mary on Wakefield Bridge ; and I devoted myself with the greatest earnestness to the investigation of the relics of its destroyed detail. I was seconded by Mr. Burli- son, then clerk of the works to the church at Chesterfield, and by examining the heaps of dtbris in the river wall, &c., we discovered very nearly everything ; and I made, I believe, a very perfect design, illustrated by beautiful drawings, the perspective views being made by my friend Mr. Johnson. My report I viewed as a masterpiece. I succeeded, and the work was carried out, and would have been a very great success, but that the contractor, Mr. Cox, who had been my carver
iO2 Sir Gilbert Scott.
and superintendent to the Martyrs' Memorial, had a handsome offer made him for the semi- decayed front, to set up in a park hard by. He then mad6 an offer to execute a new front in Caen stone, in place of the weather-beaten old one ; and pressed his suit so determinedly, that, in an evil hour, his offer was accepted. I recollect being much opposed to it ; but I am filled with wonder to think how I ever was in- duced to consent to it at all, as it was contrary to the very principles of my own report, in which I had quoted from Petit's book the lines beginning, —
" Beware, lest one lost feature ye efface/' &c.
I never repented but once, and that is ever since.
The new front was a perfect masterpiece of beautiful workmanship, but it was new, and, in just retribution, the Caen stone is now more rotten than the old work, which is set up as an ornament to some gentleman's grounds. I think of this with the utmost shame and chagrin.
During all this distracting period we lived in the same house in which my office was placed. I fear it was wrong towards my wife to subject her to such disturbances, particularly as her health, after the birth of my second son, was very indif- ferent. In 1844, however, we happily moved to St. John's Wood, where my other three boys were born.
I have little recollection of the visits from or to my relations at this time. It seems, to look back upon, like a tumultuous sea of business and agitation, leaving no time for the claims of natural
CHAP. IL] Recollections. 103
affection, or of friendship, though I hope it was not so bad as my memory seems, by its blankness, to suggest. We used, however, in most years, to go to the sea-side, and on one of these occasions I made my first continental trip of one single day. It was simply to Calais, where my sketch-book tells me I must have worked violently, for I made many sketches.
At this time we were regular attendants at the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where Sir Henry Dukinfield was incumbent, and after leav- ing Spring Gardens, we continued to go there in all seasons and weathers, till Sir Henry resigned the living. We had the greatest respect and affection for this excellent man, which continued up to his death, and he was godfather to our youngest child, who is called after him.
My wife made, in most years, long sojourns with her parents at Boston, and my hasty runs down there were a great relief and pleasure. Mr. and Mrs. Oldrid were admirable people, most sterling characters. A triple union had made our families in every way one, and our mutual visits were periods of great pleasure and happiness, as well as of great advantage to my wife.
I may here mention that during this period the Cambridge Camden Society, with many of whose views I strongly sympathized, and who had been at one time most friendly, had suddenly, and with no reason that I could ever discover, become my most determined opponents. My subsequent success was, for many years, in spite of every effort on their part to put me down by criticisms of the most galling character. No matter how strenuous
IO4 Sir Gilbert Scott.
my endeavours at improvement, everything was met by them with scorn and contumely. I be- lieve, though I did not know it at the time, that this partly originated in a mistake. They had recommended me to the restoration of a church in Berks, and a parish opposition having been got up against restoring the ancient and very fine open seats, Archdeacon Thorpe, the President of the Society (in whose archdeaconry it was situated), went with me to a parish-meeting, to endeavour to quell the opposition. His eloquence and archidia- conal authority were alike unavailing, and the farmers carried their point against him, to his no small chagrin.4 I fancy that the members of the Society vented their vexation upon me, though I was as earnest in the cause as they, and that they believed the adverse vote was to have been ac- tually carried into execution, whereas I had watched my opportunity, and had effected by default, what the archdeacon had failed to carry by assault, and I had in fact gained my point to the full, without saying a word about it, so that I had, in reality, a double claim upon their approval.
I suppose that I was not thought a sufficiently high churchman, and as they fell in at the time with my very excellent friends Carpenter and Butterfield, they naturally enough took them under their wing. This no one could complain of : but the attempt to elevate them, by the syste- matic depreciation of another equally zealous labourer in the same vineyard, was anything but fair. I never would, however, publicly com-
* The chancel of this church I did not do. It was done some years later by a local clerk of the works.
CHAP, ii.] Recollections. 105
plain, and my constant answer when urged to do so, was, " that those who are rowing in the same boat must avoid righting." I therefore bore with their injustice patiently, chiefly grieving that the leading advocates of so great and good a cause should not act on principles better calculated to recommend it to the moral perception of the public. I think it right to mention these facts, though it is many years since I have had any cause to complain, and though I now number many of the leaders of the Society among my most esteemed friends. I remember one amusing little key to their line of conduct. They had criticized one of the very best churches I had ever built (and one in which all their principles were carried out to the letter) in a way which led to a remonstrance from the incumbent, who pointed out glaring errors in matters of fact. The line of defence they took was this, that as they had had nothing on which to ground their critique but a small lithographic view, the onus of any errors they might have fallen into, did not lie with themselves, but with the architect, who had abstained from submitting his working plans for their examination. With all its faults, however, the good which the Society has done cannot possibly be over- rated. They have, it is true, like all enthusiastic re- formers, often pressed views, in themselves good, too far, and their tendencies have at times been too great towards an imitation of obsolete ritual- isms ; but in the main their work has been sound and good. Their reprobation of bad work has never been blameable, indeed at the present time,6 6 About 1860.— ED.
io6 Sir Gilbert Scott.
it is too mild by far. It is, I think, the duty of such a Society to rebuke the atrocities of false architects with unflinching courage. What I com- plain of is, their attempt just at this period, to crush those who were labouring strenuously in the same cause, and the same direction with them- selves ; and that, with the sole object, so far as I could ever ascertain, of the more easily elevating others whom they viewed as more distinctly their own representatives. To expose the misdoings of ignorance and vandalism was their duty ; to point'out the shortcomings of their fellow-labourers would have been a kindness ; but to treat friends and allies with studied scorn and contumely, through a series of years, because they had not sworn implicit allegiance to their absolute regime, was discreditable to the sacred cause which they professed to make the object of their endeavours, and ended in undermining their influence, through the obvious self-seeking it evinced ; thus damaging the movement they otherwise had so ably ad- vocated.
Even Pugin himself could not escape their lash, his single sin being his independent existence. It is vexatious to reflect that the vigour of the Society, and its tendency to unfair dealing, seem to have varied directly But it must be remembered that it was then young and vigorous, was natu- rally somewhat intoxicated by success, and was especially open to the constant temptation of such bodies to rate the success of the Society itself above that of the cause, and consequently to estimate persons rather by their loyalty than by their merits.
CHAPTER III.
HAVING arrived at a point closely approaching to what I view as the most important era in my professional life, I will offer a few observations upon the position of the great revival of Gothic architecture at this period (viz. about 1844), and also as to my own humble share in it, up to that date.
It is almost vexatious when we consider how great an event that revival really has been, to recollect, at the same time, how unconscious one felt of this fact during its earlier years.
I call these its earlier years, because I hardly view those which preceded 1830 (or even a later date), as belonging to the period of the revival at all. Writers on this subject are wont to talk about Strawberry Hill, and a number of such base efforts, as the early works of the revival. They may be so in a certain sense, but one can scarcely trace much connexion between them and the work of its really vigorous period, and, as I per- sonally know little, and knew nothing, about them, I will leave them wholly out of the question.
When I first commenced sketching from Gothic buildings (which was about 1825, though I had taken delight in them a few years earlier), I did
io8 Sir Gilbert Scott.
not in the smallest degree connect my feelings towards them with any thought of the revival of the style. I think that a very base church at Windsor, (putting aside the ludicrous " Gothic Temple " at Stowe, which belongs I suppose to the Strawberry Hill type), was the first modern Gothic building I ever saw. This was, I fancy, about 1823,' and bad as it is, I recollect its giving me some pleasure. On a visit to London the next year I remember seeing the yet baser church at Somers town, since celebrated by Pugin in his " Contrasts." I do not think that this was very gratifying to me, though, during the same visit, I recollect seeing with extreme delight the restora- tion of the reredos in Westminster Abbey, then in hand: that of Henry VII. 's chapel had, I think, been already completed. The great majority of new churches were still classic, and I remember that in 1826, when my father had to rebuild his church, the idea of making it " Gothic " was con- sidered quite visionary, nor am I conscious of any practical object occurring to me while studying Gothic architecture till many years after this time. I did so, purely from the love of it.
A great deal is said, too, as to the influence on the public taste of different publications, in leading to the appreciation and the revival of mediaeval architecture, and it would be unfair to ignore such influence. I believe, however, that the effect was really of a reciprocal kind. The natural current of human thought had taken a turn towards our own ancient architecture, and this led to its in- vestigation and illustration, while such investigation 1 The church was, I find, erected 111-1822. — ED.
CHAP, in.] Recollections. 109
and illustration in their turn reacted upon the mental feelings which had originated them ; so that, by a kind of alternate action, spread over a series of years, the mind of the public was, both awakened to a feeling for the beauties of the style, and in- structed in its principles. So far as I was per- sonally concerned, my love of Gothic architecture was wholly independent of books relating to it ; none of which, I may say, I had seen at the time when I took to visiting and sketching Gothic churches. The first prints I had met with bearing upon the subject (for I do not think that I read the article) were in the " Encyclopedia Edinensis," where, under the head of " Architecture," were two or three engravings illustrative of our style ; the west front of Rheims Cathedral, an internal view of Rosslyn Chapel, and a view of an Epis- copal church at Edinburgh. The latter, by-the-bye, must have been a very early work (as it was about 1823 that I saw this print), and it was, I fancy, rather in advance of its day. After this I saw nothing tending in the same direction, beyond one volume of Lysons' " Magna Britannia," till after I had left home to read with my uncle in 1826, and then what I saw was very slight, Storer's " Cathe- drals " being the choicest and dearest to my memory. It must have been very long after- wards that I first became acquainted with any of Britton's works.
So far, then, as my own consciousness goes, books had little to do with the earnest stirring up to a love of the subject which I experienced. I was unconsciously subjected to the same potent influ- ence which was acting upon the public mind, and
1 1 o Sir Gilbert Scott.
which was rather the cause than the effect of the publications which subsequently so much aided it.
Among the books which did most to aid the revival in these early days was Pugin's (sen.) " Specimens of Gothic Architecture." This, though it first appeared in 1821, came out in its present more perfect form in 1825. Its great utility was that it set people measuring details, instead of merely sketching, and its practical effect was to lead architects, who attempted to build Gothic churches, to give some little attention to detail. The specimens given were mostly of late date, but the spirit of the work, rather than its actual contents, was its great value, and the several volumes of " Examples " which followed carried on the same feeling.
There can be no doubt that it was the share taken by the younger Pugin in these works, and what he saw of their preparation, which stirred up within him that burning sentiment which has produced such extraordinary results. I should be disposed also to attribute to the first of these publications a share in the merits of Mr. Barry's Islington churches, which, with all their faults and their strange commissioners' ritualisms, were for this period wonderfully advanced works. They were going on while I was in my articles (1827-30), and I doubt whether anything so good was done (excepting by Pugin) for ten years later ; indeed, in their own parish nothing so good has been done since. For myself, I can hardly say too much as to the benefit derived from Pugin's " Specimens." I found them at Mr. Edmeston's when I was first articled to him, and they at once had the effect of
CHAP, in.] Recollections. 1 1 1
leading me to the most careful measuring, and laying down with scrupulous accuracy, of the details of the works I sketched. Indeed, the greater part of my holidays was spent in making such detailed measurements. All thanks and honour then to the older Pugin, however much our illuminati may sneer.
So far as I was personally concerned, nearly another decade had to pass before my studies became practically