High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  Street spent five years with Scott, and won his first commission to design a church – in Cornwall – in 1847. He set up his own practice in 1849, and made his name designing churches, many in the diocese of Oxford, and in a revival of the thirteenth-century Early English style. Street’s conviction about the superiority of the Gothic was rooted in his admiration for the technical supremacy of the arch, its ability to bridge large spaces using small stones, and especially its use in vaulting. As his fame grew he built more secular buildings, and began to write widely. Like Ruskin, he travelled extensively and wrote prolifically about what he had seen, and became a great admirer of his fellow critic: unlike Ruskin, and perhaps because Street had the practical experience of a man whose designs had to be built, he was broad-minded and lacked Ruskin’s peculiar other-worldliness. Street became a great teacher of architects whose names would resonate later in the nineteenth century, notably Norman Shaw and William Morris.

  By the time of the competition for the Law Courts Street was at the peak of his profession. However, the tension between those who built in the classical style, and those who built in the medieval, had still to be resolved. Scott’s defeat by Palmerston suggested the institutional prejudice lay with the former. Street was determined to make high Victorianism a style in which the beauty of the medieval could be seen also to be original, modern and what a later age would call ‘state of the art’. As David Brownlee, one of Street’s biographers, has observed: ‘Street maintained that medievalism could be made modern by extracting these principles from the study of Gothic, by admitting a wider historical and geographical range of precedents than the purists of the forties had allowed, and by permitting a process called ‘development’ to transform Gothic architecture to meet the needs of the nineteenth century.’55 Street’s high Victorian was not merely a copy of what had gone centuries before, but an advance upon it. ‘Copyism’ was what Pugin had done.

  Designs for the Law Courts had to be submitted by October 1866. When the question was raised in the Commons the previous April, Lord John Manners threw an entirely predictable spanner in the works: he asked ‘whether any intimation had been given to the architects who had been invited to compete as to the style of architecture preferred by Her Majesty’s Government? The omission to give such an intimation has resulted in a blunder six years ago, and it was therefore desirable to know whether Her Majesty’s Government had decided as to the style to be now adopted.’ Henry Cowper, the minister responsible, told Manners that the style was an ‘open question’.56

  A plan to invite only six architects to compete was attacked in the Commons on 22 March 1866 by George Bentinck, who complained that a commission of this size should, like the Houses of Parliament thirty years earlier, be open to all comers. The six were Street, Waterhouse, Henry Garling, Thomas Deane, Raphael Brandon and George Somers Clarke. All except Garling were medievalists. Edward Barry, Scott, Hardwick and Wyatt had declined to enter: it was thought because of a condition that the successful architect would not, in the three years it was expected it would take to build the courts, take on any other work without the consent of the Treasury. However, this restriction was not seen as unreasonable, as the fee would be 5 per cent of the cost, or £37,000 over three years: a small fortune. Eventually, the field was expanded to eleven, including, after all, Barry.

  The chairman of the judges was William Cowper, Palmerston’s stepson and First Commissioner of Works in his administration. Cowper had just chosen Waterhouse to build the Natural History Museum after Fowke’s death, so seemed disposed to the Gothic, unlike his stepfather. Roundell Palmer, the Attorney General and future Lord Chancellor, had chosen Waterhouse to build his country house, and was on the panel. Gladstone installed himself as a judge; as Chancellor, he would write the cheques. His affection for the Gothic was well documented. He knew Street, had admired his work at Cuddesdon where Street had built the Theological College, and had read some of his writings. Street, like Scott and Butterfield, was an occasional visitor to Gladstone’s Thursday breakfasts.

  The Law Courts were to this era what the Houses of Parliament had been to early years of the reign: the single most important building of the period, an institution designed to reflect the new might and sway of an imperial power that led the world and enjoyed the foremost prosperity. In February 1867 the public were invited to scrutinise the drawings. A special pavilion was erected to display them in Lincoln’s Inn. It was immediately apparent that all the designs were Gothic, with even the two architects who might have been considered classicists having submitted medieval designs. This was saluted as a triumph by the Ecclesiologist but lamented as retrogressive by the Builder, which still sought a vernacular that could be called the age’s own.

  The Quarterly Review was even more disdainful. While it conceded that the area to be demolished for the courts was a ‘foul blot on London’, it felt that what was proposed to replace it would constitute ‘an irreparable mistake’.57 The courts constituted ‘the greatest building of modern times’, and the Quarterly wondered whether the plans addressed ‘the first requisites of utility’. What it saw reflected instead was a ‘growing taste for material vastness’ that had taken root in Britain since the building of the new Houses of Parliament. The Palace of Westminster it regarded as ‘a mere mechanical feat’, since its accommodations were ‘most cheerless and revolting in every sense’ – unless one happened to be on the river front, which had improved since the Embankment put an end to the great stinks.

  The outcome, the article went on, was to create ‘such a strong antipathy to Gothic Architecture . . . a Palace was ordered, where there should have been Houses; just as now we ask for Courts of Law, and they offer us a Palais de Justice. Palaces are state residences: not places for public business. They are built not for convenience or comfort; but for pomp and ceremony.’ The main complaint was that neither House of Parliament was discernible by looking at the exterior of the new building; and no court of law would be discernible from the exterior of any of the eleven proposed palais: just ‘a screen, masking the essential parts of the building’.58 So it was that one man’s – or eleven men’s – pursuit of perfection was another’s aesthetic cul-de-sac. It was also argued that the building would be incongruous in the Strand, ‘a street of shops, a long bazaar’.

  The Quarterly wanted an even bigger site, to make the accommodation less crowded, and to rid London of a few more slums. There was no money for this: and it would mean the eleven architects starting again, so was an entirely pointless, almost mischievous, observation. It argued for a ‘noble avenue’ to run from St Clement Dane’s to the river (which did happen) and a subway from the Law Courts to the underground railway (which did not).59 Having condemned the designs for making courts of law seem like a palace, it also condemned them for looking ecclesiastical: which brought the Quarterly, in denouncing the architects for taking cathedrals as their model, to its fundamental complaint about the designs: that they were Gothic.

  It railed against ‘Gothic imitations’. It referred to Inigo Jones, observing that ‘there were giants on the earth in those days’. It said the architects had ‘had to satiate an ignorant and exacting multitude, who have money and who will have show.’60 It suggested, unfairly (considering the erudition and aesthetic sense of Gladstone, for one), that the committee of judges were there by ‘mere wealth and position’, and not because of their ‘intelligence and culture’. The use of the example of ecclesiastical architecture in the secular would result only in ‘degradation’. This litany of abuse ended with the resounding climax: ‘The simple sad truth is, that Architecture in England is a dead art.’ The ‘works of our modern architects are composed in a foreign language; a style as suitable for our Law Courts as if the barristers were to plead in Greek or medieval Latin, or the judgments were to be given, as of old, in Norman French.’

  The article’s conclusion, in lamenting the modern interpretation of medievalism, made a point that resonates to this day about the effect Victorian
Gothicists had on the fabric of many ancient buildings: these architects were merely ‘a number of superior mechanics, whose works, whether in wood or metal, are destroying the individual artistic character of every church and cathedral that falls within the scope of the “restoring mania.”’61 It continued: ‘In everything we are too elaborate. A city warehouse in the Gothic style must have the marbles and enrichments of a cathedral presbytery: even a village church is not allowed the dignity of simplicity, and is nothing if not pretty.’62 It attacked the politicisation of architecture, something inevitable when so many great commissions were State patronage. It might be thought that this, therefore, was an assault on the Gothic: but the article ended by hoping that the necessary style was ‘purely English’: ‘Let us start again from the pure Gothic of the fourteenth century, and let every advance be a genuine and sympathetic development of this, not a mere addition of inconsistent and incoherent forms.’ This was disingenuous: it was too late for that, and had been too late for it for 500 years. It enunciated a truth, however, that marks the Victorian epoch in building: ‘Buildings are enduring monuments of the character of an age.’63

  At that time, the zeitgeist was against these strictures, with their implicit support for classicism. It was not only the committee appointed by Gladstone, before the Liberals left office in the summer of 1866, that favoured the Gothic: so too did an informed public whose awareness of architecture was fed by a strong sense of historicism or atavism. The Gothic Revival defined a new, contemporary style. It was about show, and show paid for by a prosperous country (however parsimonious Gladstone might try to be). That was the spirit of the age, which had in many respects, ever since the Great Exhibition, been one of greater ostentation and less restraint. The majority of architects built in that style because of public demand: they would have been short of work had they not.

  Street’s biographer has described his submissions as the ‘ideological ally’ of Scott’s, with a regularity and developed medievalism typical of high Victorianism, with a low, predictable roofline of a quadrangular building punctuated by the obligatory towers.64 The style, as with many of Street’s earlier buildings, especially his churches, is early French Gothic tempered by English Decorated of the fourteenth century: the interior of the Law Courts as eventually built is entirely fourteenth-century English. As such it was raved about by the Ecclesiologist, but dismissed by the Builder. His critics said the elevations were monotonous and showed a lack of imagination. His was certainly not nearly so picturesque as the other designs. Nor did his designs redeem themselves by the utility of their interiors: Street’s original plan did not allow adequately for the separate circulations of public and lawyers, which the legal profession (consulted at every stage) deemed a most important feature. However, his designs would, if executed, be within the budget allowed; and he did seem to have striven for the sine qua non of high Victorianism, classical order and regularity combined with the picturesque of the Gothic.

  V

  The judges deliberated from February 1867 until July. They wanted Street’s elevations and Barry’s interiors. This offer of the commission to two incompatible men, whose aesthetics and ways of working were so profoundly different, was at least recognised by one judge – Gladstone – as the worst possible outcome. In June 1868 he lamented that he and his fellow judges ‘had so entirely failed in rendering effective aid to the Government’ when choosing a design.65 As soon as the judgement was announced the Treasury tried to declare it invalid, as the rules had decreed the appointment of one architect. The judges were asked to think again. They met in November and announced stalemate: they were still split between Barry and Street. In an attempt to calm matters various of the other architects announced they supported the judges’ decision: notably the two winners, who professed they could work together.

  Almost no one else agreed with this, including The Times, which observed on 19 November that of the designs ‘Mr Barry’s exhibits the nearest approach to convenience, and Mr Street’s is thought the least unsightly, and as no one candidate is found to combine the useful and the ornamental the Commission appears to be of the opinion that these two gentlemen can do it together.’66 It ridiculed the eleven designs as ‘an indistinct recollection of facades, groups of towers, and plans ten times more intricate and incomprehensible than the Labyrinth of Crete.’ Understanding the artistic temperament, the leader-writer doubted that a collaboration in which one architect had constantly to consult another, rather than the muse, would work. ‘Such works require an incubation, which is a solitary process.’ It urged another competition: it said that ‘our medieval ancestors made their wants the rule for their edifices, and adapted the outside to the inside.’ That was how this should proceed: and the style could follow from that.

  On 14 May 1868, the day before the Commons debated the project, the Attorney General decreed that the judges’ decision to award a joint commission could not be binding upon the Treasury. After a fortnight’s consideration the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Ward Hunt, announced the Treasury would exercise its right to appoint a sole architect, and he would be Street. There has been much speculation on why they made this choice: Street’s best political contact was Gladstone, who was not in power. Theories include the greater expense of Barry’s design, the complexity of its network of offices, the inconvenience of its space for keeping records (this was a special gripe of the Probate Department), even Disraeli’s affection for medievalism because of his Young England connections. Barry had also just been announced as winner of a competition for a new National Gallery (which was never built), which may or may not have been his consolation for losing the Law Courts. Whatever the reason, Barry was outraged, and began a self-destructive campaign to do down Street, of which the successful architect soon became painfully aware.

  Barry wrote to the Treasury – a letter helpfully copied to The Times for publication – on 8 June complaining about the decision, and reminding the government that his interiors had been deemed the most satisfactory. He listed the conditions laid down by the judges, and spoke of how he had fulfilled them and Street had not. He said the rules stated that the judges’ decision was final, but this had turned out not to be so. He whined that ‘I must, in justice to myself, maintain that by the award of the judges my claims were made superior to those of any other single competitor, and no other ought to have been preferred to me.’67 He urged the government to stick by the original ruling, since the alternative course would be ‘a serious loss and injury’ to him. He claimed to write ‘in no spirit of hostility to my friend Mr Street’, but that was not how Street took the publication of this letter, which had made its points clearly enough when it remained private.

  Street sent a long, defensive memorandum to the Treasury on 22 June that was copied to Layard. Street told Layard in a covering note that Barry was seeking to undermine him by making ‘a very incorrect statement’ about the proposed arrangement of rooms, and sought Layard’s support at the imminent debate on the Select Committee.68 A week later he wrote to Gladstone, then Leader of the Opposition. On finishing his book on Gothic architecture in Spain (‘on which I have taken a good deal of pains, and as the subject has never been treated of before’) he had asked Gladstone whether he would agree to be the dedicatee.69 ‘I do not suspect you, in the midst of all your work, to interest yourself much in such a subject; but I can hardly say how much pleasure it would give me to be able thus to express the extreme respect and admiration which for a very long time I have felt for your character.’

  He had been reluctant to presume upon this connection, but now felt the time was right to do so. Street said that he had ‘been very careful for the last two years, ever since I was asked to compete for the new Law Courts, to avoid all attempts to see you, feeling a certain delicacy about claiming any acquaintance with one who had so much to do with the decision.’70 However, Street added that he had been ‘strongly advised now by one of your followers in the House of Commons’ – possibly Layard – ‘t
hat I ought not any longer to let this feeling exist.’ He told Gladstone he had been at work ‘literally night and day on the plan’. Yet he found himself ‘threatened’ by a motion put down by Lowe that evening in the Commons which promised ‘a re-opening of the whole question.’

  Barry had put Lowe up to this. ‘I cannot pretend to suppose that as the judges of the design reported my merits and Mr Barry’s to be equal, they will now be at all likely to give a different verdict. But you will have seen, no doubt, that Mr Barry maintains that if one architect is to be appointed he ought to be the man. I on the contrary hold that if the award was invalid the Government was entitled to select me.’ Then there was the small fact that, once the estimates had been considered, Street’s plan was £90,000 cheaper than Barry’s. ‘I feel it would be a very real injustice to me if after having been appointed architect by the Government my appointment were to be disputed or cancelled,’ he concluded, after professing his willingness to make whatever modifications were necessary. ‘I can hardly exaggerate the difficulty which I feel as an artist in working with these parliamentary attacks pending.’

  He entreated Gladstone: ‘I venture to hope therefore that you will lend the great weight of your authority to support my appointment – I venture to say that there never was one made which was more entirely free from personal bias. I have absolutely no speaking acquaintance even with any member of the present government.’ He added: ‘I did not expect the opposition which I have met from Mr Barry,’ since Barry had written to him three weeks earlier complaining that ‘I have not been well used at the Law Courts, and then you will hear no more of me in connection with the matter . . . I can fully sympathise with your natural joy in being independent, and I have no doubt of the result being a worthy building.’ He mentioned that Waterhouse had written to say that ‘our common cause will receive a great stimulus by your work, and it will be a great glory to you’. Clearly pained, Street added: ‘I have attempted in this great competition to do nothing which as a gentleman or an artist I could be ashamed of – I have said nothing against the other competitors, and as you no doubt are aware, I competed with my own hands trusting entirely to my own drawings, and not borrowing other men’s talents to put an attractive face on my designs.’