High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  That was considerable – £380,000 to purchase and clear the land. William Tite, the MP for Bath, said the cost of building the winning block design would be from £5 million to £10 million – ‘no prudent country would embark on such a scheme.’20 Yet Tite, an architect himself, also raised matters of taste: some of the plans had been Renaissance, or French, or Italianate in style and were one of them adopted it ‘would create a great incongruity with Sir Charles Barry’s building’ – the new Palace of Westminster, which had also overrun in costs. In fact, ‘the architectural question’ had not been considered: merely ‘the question of the propriety of acquiring a site and sufficient land to carry out what might be desirable with reference to public offices’.21 To have ignored this question ignored also the desire to use these showpiece offices as a display of British stature and, just as worryingly, ignored the factionalism between those who wished to promote the Gothic and those who opposed it. The problems of what to build, in what style, and how extravagantly to build it, had barely begun.

  Scott was not one to wait to be told what to do by a team captain: he was his own team, and his own captain. He wrote to The Times on 26 August 1857 to dismiss Coe (one of his former pupils) and Hofland’s winning effort and that of Banks and Barry (who had come second), but promoted his own on the grounds that ‘my design has been placed by the judges at the head of those which were founded upon a development of our mediaeval architecture, and, which is more to the present purpose, of those which treated the two offices first to be erected as essentially a single and indivisible group.’22 Combining the Foreign and War Offices, as he had done better than any other, was ‘a most essential element to the success of the project’; though heaven forbid anyone should think he was acting ‘from any wish to push my own claims’. He was right to say, however, that the decision to hold a competition for separate designs for the two buildings, to be erected on a single plot of ground, risked ‘the ruin of this grand architectural scheme by dividing it into unconnected blocks’. The result was merely an architectural competition for which some had won prizes: it contributed nothing to the ‘magnificent project for at once beautifying the neighbourhood of the House of Parliament and supplying a great public necessity’. Furthering his own cause, he quoted Tite: ‘No man of taste would wish to place a renaissance (and a fortiori a classic) structure in proximity to House of Parliament [sic] and Westminster Abbey.’ That would, however, be precisely what would happen, and Scott would be the architect.

  For a time it looked as though Scott would not only have the commission, but could build as he wished. Palmerston’s administration fell in February 1858 and the incoming Tory one had Lord John Manners, son of the Duke of Rutland, in Hall’s place. Manners changed the terms: the public offices would be the Foreign Office and the India Office, since India was coming under direct control following the mutiny of the previous year. The India Office would be funded from a separate budget, the revenues for which were raised in India, so the cost to the British taxpayer would fall. Manners, a Gothicist, appointed Scott in November 1858, after a new select committee had deliberated. Helpfully for Scott, its chairman had been none other than Beresford Hope.

  When Parliament resumed in February 1859 Tite, who had also been on the committee, attacked Scott, arguing that his design was ‘inconvenient and expensive’.23 Tite’s main beef was his belief that Scott’s building would not have sash windows and ‘every hon Gentleman who had served on Committees of that House would, he thought, agree with him, that the simple method of drawing down the sash of a window was a better mode of ventilating a close room on a hot day than more complicated arrangements, however ingenious.’ He had a personal point too: that ‘Mr Barry, son of Sir C Barry, but in no other way connected with that eminent man, felt that he had not been quite fairly dealt with.’ This was because Barry had finished above Scott in the competition; but even he had not won it. Barry would spend much of the next decade, on this and other matters, protesting that he had been unfairly treated, and was on the way to becoming expert in the injustices of his profession. Scott called Tite’s criticism – and Palmerston’s support for it – ‘as absurd and unfounded as anything could be’.24

  Manners said the committee had simply advised that one of the successful (that is, ranked) competitors should be appointed. They had also said, in reference to architectural styles, that ‘there is no material difference as regards economy, commodiousness, and public utility between the rival styles’.25 He had been constrained by restrictions on the size of the site, the need to have the new India Office on it, and the need to find an architect who could extract maximum utility from that space, combining the two offices. That man was Scott. ‘I am in daily expectation of receiving the drawings and plans, and the course I propose to adopt is one which, if the House should sanction it, will, I think, tend to promote the public convenience, and be consistent with due economy,’ he said. ‘A Foreign Office will be erected worthy of the country.’

  Hall sharply observed that ‘if it were to be decided that a Gothic building should be constructed in the midst of buildings that had nothing Gothic about them, no architect could be found who understood that style of architecture better than Mr Gilbert Scott’.26 He wished to know, however, why it had been decided to appoint a man who came third. Beresford Hope enlightened him. ‘On the list of judges of the designs exhibited there was only one professional gentleman . . . and there were two professional assessors,’ he observed.27 The ‘professional gentleman’ was the architect Burn, who was rebuilding Montagu House at that time for the Duke of Buccleuch, who happened to have been the chairman of the judges. The professionals had put sixth the man the majority of judges had placed first, had put Barry and Banks first for the Foreign Office but nowhere for the War Office, but had put Scott second in both categories. ‘According, then, to the award of the professional gentlemen, who must be supposed to know more of the matter than amateurs, however skilful, the sum total of merit in the competition rested with Mr Scott.’

  He added that to have done other than select Scott ‘would have been a miscarriage of injustice [sic], and a great injury to a most distinguished man.’ He said Scott had made modifications to ensure a good flow of air on hot days; and he dismissed, too, notions of incongruity of style, reminding the House that the Gothic of the Palace of Westminster and the Abbey would be in the same locus and that ‘all forms of Gothic were but phases of the same style’. His killer point was that Barry père, whose views had been prayed in aid by the anti-Scott faction, had ‘said that if he were going to erect a great building in close proximity to St Paul’s, it would not necessarily lead him to adopt the Italian style; and when he was asked if he would put a large Gothic building in St Paul’s Churchyard, he replied that he was not prepared to say he should not.’

  Palmerston followed, proclaiming that ‘I have never heard a less satisfactory explanation, both as regards the selection of the architect and the choice of style in which the Foreign Office is proposed to be built, than that given by the noble Lord the First Commissioner of Public Works.’28 He ridiculed Scott’s appointment ‘on the principle, I suppose, that the two negatives make an affirmative.’ He continued: ‘It certainly is a new doctrine. What would be said if it were applied to horse-racing, and the horse which ran second in two heats were held to be entitled to the cup?’

  It was the Gothic, more than Scott, that upset him. ‘We are told that it has been adopted because it is the national style, suited to Teutonic nationalities, and all that sort of thing. If that theory of nationalities is to be carried out in our public buildings, the noble Lord the Secretary for India, in building his new office, should be lodged in a pagoda or a taj-mahal.’ That was only the start. ‘In my opinion it is going back to the barbarism of the dark ages for a building which ought to belong to the times in which we live,’ he said. ‘It is said it is the intention to fill up the entire space between Downing Street and Westminster Abbey with buildings, all of which are to be Gothic,
and that therefore it is desirable to begin with a Gothic Foreign Office. This is, to my mind, a reason against the proposal . . . instead of being an ornament to London, [it] will create a black spot in the metropolis.’ Much of this was misrepresentation and exaggeration. ‘We should have to Gothicise the Horse Guards’. He spoke of the ‘great mistake’ of having made the new Palace of Westminster Gothic. The certainty with which posterity feels the Victorians built was rarely apparent at their buildings’ conception, or even after birth.

  All Palmerston could do was huff, puff and tell jokes. Scott dismissed his intervention as ‘a quantity of poor buffoonery which only Lord Palmerston’s age permitted’.29 However, to Scott’s misfortune a general election was called in June 1859 and won by the Liberals, putting the old buffoon back into office: ‘My arch-opponent’, as Scott rather dramatically put it, ‘became once more autocrat of England.’30 Scott’s main hope was that as the Liberal party had absorbed some old Peelites he might, at least, have a friend at court. Gladstone, on whose estate at Hawarden Scott had worked on a church a few years earlier, was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Scott seized his chance. He wrote to him on 19 July 1859 to say he was ‘suffering severely from prejudgment or misapprehension on some points’ to do with his commission.31

  It is of the utmost importance to me that my position should be thoroughly understood in all its bearings before any decision, mental or otherwise, is come to – or I feel that there is a danger of a very serious injustice being inadvertently done to me . . . I have definitively and unconditionally been appointed architect to a great and most important public work . . . my name has long since gone forth throughout Europe as the architect appointed to this great work. I think you will see that, after this, to treat me still as a mere competitor and to threaten my position from causes which I had no means of avoiding is a course which I had hardly a right to expect and which is not in accordance with the customary conduct towards professional men.

  I have gone into this business with the utmost ardour and enthusiasm, and I do confidently trust that Her Majesty’s Government will see that my moral claims under their protection and support are of no ordinary character: and I cannot but feel (though I have hardly a right to an opinion) that the building I propose is such as future ages would think worthy of the government to whose inspection the drawings of it (now ready for actual execution) are now submitted.

  He concluded that he was ‘earnestly begging your kind aid in this very difficult and painful position.’

  Palmerston started playing rough. He appears to have hoped to impose such unreasonable conditions on Scott that the architect would resign the commission: which shows Palmerston did not quite know his man. He wrote to Scott, demanding he submit a new, Italian or classical, design, on 26 July in response to a letter Scott had sent him – ‘and I can assure you that I much regret that you should feel the disappointment which that letter expresses’.32 Scott had complained about the waste of his labour, but Palmerston argued that ‘the internal arrangements which you have settled for the two offices in question will be equally applicable, whatever may be the style of the external elevation; and when the question to be decided regards a building which is to cost a good deal more than Two Hundred Thousand Pounds, and which for much more than Two Hundred Years is to be an ornament or the Contrary to this Metropolis, Regard for Personal Feelings must give way to Higher Considerations.’

  Palmerston blamed Manners – ‘it is much to be regretted that the late Board of Works should have encouraged you to go on with your Gothic Plan’ given ‘the strong expression of opinion elicited from the House of Commons in the Session of Parliament in 1858 against the choice of the Gothic Style.’ However, he stressed it was not so much the feeling of the Commons as the feeling of Palmerston that was at issue. ‘You say that the Gothic Style is the English and National Style for public Buildings, but I wish to know where in the United Kingdom the public buildings are to be found that are built in that style.’ He said the main public buildings he knew were in other styles; and that this was the case ‘for public buildings for civil and secular Purposes.’

  Scott had told Palmerston that ‘the eye of the spectator would not be offended by the Contrast which would be presented by your Gothic Building in the immediate neighbourhood of structures in another style’. However, the Prime Minister asserted, ‘if that argument be good it may be turned the other way and the eye would be still less offended by the contrast between an Italian structure in Downing Street and the more remote House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.’ Then the gloves came off: ‘I own I could not contemplate without alarm the Idea of filling up with gloomy looking Buildings in the Gothic Style, the whole of the space between Downing Street and Great George Street.’ He dealt his final blow: ‘I cannot entertain the smallest doubt that an Architect of your known Talent and Ability will find it an easy Task to design an Elevation in the Italian or the Classic Style, the more especially as those styles are simpler than the Gothic, and do not require such minuteness of small Details.’ He told Scott he only intended to ask Parliament to vote money for laying the foundations of the building, ‘and therefore there is no necessity for hurrying you in the Preparation of the altered Plan, or rather I should say, Elevation.’

  The attempt to oust Scott outraged the profession, and damaged Palmerston’s reputation. Scott, buoyed by the support of his peers, went to see Gladstone. They met on 2 August. Scott wrote to him later in the day, reviewing their conversation with his usual egotism, saying that ‘I felt my consistency, having put myself forward publicly and frequently as a champion of Gothic Architecture, demands that I should state my views on the application of that style to the Government offices in some ostensible manner.’33 However, he explained that ‘the fact is that I am viewed by the very numerous body throughout the country, and still more widely spread, who ardently favour the revival of this style, as one of the leaders of those who take this view; and that it is necessary to my position with them as well as to my personal consistency to lose no proper opportunity, in such matters as this, of stating my individual views – though I trust I do so temperately and with all the consideration and respect due to those who differ from me.’

  On 4 August Lord Elcho, a Whig MP, used a debate in the Commons to complain about the delay in proceeding with the project. ‘The present Foreign Office was in such a state, that whenever receptions were given by the Foreign Minister it was found necessary to prop it up, and the Foreign Secretary sat in his room writing important despatches, with the chance that at any moment the roof might come down upon his head.’34 Elcho also put on the record something Palmerston had apparently said at a private meeting a few days earlier, and which had found its way into the press: ‘that Mr Scott’s design was one of the most monstrous things he had ever seen – that it was more fitted for a monastery than anything else, and that as long as he held office he would never consent to the adoption of Mr Scott’s plans.’ Henry Bruce, who would briefly in 1868 serve as Home Secretary, urged the importance of allowing Scott to build in the style to which he was accustomed. ‘They must take care’, he warned the House, ‘not to fall into the mistake committed in regard to Sir Christopher Wren who, having great reputation as a Palladian architect had been employed to erect two Gothic towers to Westminster Abbey. Naturally he performed the work in the most unsuccessful manner, and his two cumbrous erections were a great disparagement to the beauty of that noble edifice.’35 Charles Buxton, who spoke last before the Prime Minister, said that ‘Mr Scott’s design would form one of the most beautiful buildings in the country’ and that ‘the Italian style was becoming effete’.36

  With the House about to go into recess, Palmerston said no final decision would be taken until it met again: a further delay of the best part of six months. He refused to be embarrassed by Elcho’s disclosure of his undiplomatically expressed feelings towards Scott’s plan. ‘The Gothic style might be admirably suited for a monastic building, a monastery, or a Jesuit col
lege, but it was not suited, either internally or externally, for the purpose to which it had now been proposed to apply it.’ Nor was he shaken by the effect a change of plan might have on Scott: ‘The model which Mr Scott had exhibited was, no doubt, the result of very much labour, and if that labour should be thrown away – it would be very unfortunate for him, but it was no fault of his [Palmerston’s].’37 Then came an observation that, presumably, was intended to force Scott to draft his letter of resignation. ‘Nevertheless his opinion was that Mr Scott, like any other clever architect, would be able to construct a different building for the ground plan, and he did not see that there was such a necessary connection between Mr Scott and the Gothic style that the Government should be prevented from inviting him to endeavour to design his elevation on a different plan.’

  Manners rounded on Palmerston about the absurdity of this. ‘The noble Lord who had said Mr Scott was a monomaniac, now said that he was very eminent in his profession, and he had no doubt could erect a building in the Italian style quite as well as in the Gothic. But if a man had obtained a world-wide reputation for his success in one style of architecture, would anyone in his senses give that man a commission to execute a work in an entirely different style? Would any man in his senses commission Sir Edwin Landseer, who was renowned for his paintings of animals, to execute a picture of the Holy Family?’38