High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  Street, conscious of the shortcomings of his earlier work, produced revised plans that strove to be more picturesque. The old Battle of the Styles was, however, reopening, partly because of a new discussion about whether the Carey Street site would be used after all, or whether advantage would be taken of a vacant site by Somerset House on the Embankment, made feasible by Bazalgette’s embanking of the river. In 1869 Lowe told Layard, who having become First Commissioner of Works in Gladstone’s administration now had some official say in the matter, that in the event of the Embankment site being used the new Law Courts ‘must be in some sort of harmony with Somerset House’.71 He added: ‘Consequently we should stop Mr Street in his plans for the erection of a Gothic temple.’ Street took this remarkably well, saying that although his layout of courts and offices had been ‘pretty nearly decided’ they could ‘no doubt be transferred to the other plan which I shall be keen to make.’ The Inns of Court were consulted and expressed their support for the Embankment site.72

  The Commons discussed the matter on 20 April 1869. Lowe’s idea of the Embankment site was widely supported.73 The next day Layard told the Chief Baron, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, that ‘the Govt will now have to propose a scheme, and the one sketched out by the Ch of the Exch last night offers many very important advantages.’74 Layard was, it will be recalled, also seeking to have the Natural History Museum on this site, or adjacent to it. He asked Sir Fitzroy on 11 May 1869 to make ‘an expression of opinion on the part of yourself and the Common Law Judges on the subject of the Thames Embankment site.’75 He said this would now be of ‘great importance, and would give much support to the Govt in their endeavours to move the Courts from their Carey Street site.’ The Law Society objected as soon as Layard introduced his bill – ‘the concentration of the courts and offices will fail to effect the objects in view unless that concentration be carried out in immediate proximity with the chambers of counsel and solicitors . . . this proximity is secured by the Carey Street site, but would be lost on the Embankment.’76

  Lowe intervened on 18 May. He agreed with Layard that the required buildings could not be put on the Carey Street site. ‘It’s very hard to fight with the lawyers. My opinion is that their influence will overbear all considerations of taste and of public convenience and that the only chance of beating them is to shew that they are involving us in a great expense, in other words that the buildings and strictly necessary approaches on the Carey Street site cannot be made for anything like the £1,500,000 authorised by Parliament.77 Layard, however, had already admitted defeat and asked Street to draw up revised plans for Carey Street. Street, at least, was happy. ‘I am really delighted with the way in which my plan is working out, and I hope now that it may live through the threatened opposition,’ he wrote on 19 May.78

  Street sent a long memorandum to Layard on 21 June, showing how his plan could be built on the site – though he suggested it might have to be more high-rise in order to fit in all the office space, which he said would ‘damage most seriously the convenience and usefulness of my plan’.79 Also, he was emphatic that there should be no ‘reduction in size of all the open courts, areas, open quadrangles, or streets within the building from which light is derived or access obtained for the offices and courts’. Layard was asked whether the government would adhere to the statement he had made in May that the building would be in the style of the ‘Gothic employed by the Italians in the early part of the 15th century’, and whether Street’s building really was of that style.80 He was also asked, somewhat mischievously, whether the three towers in the design were meant for the storage of documents, or were merely ventilation shafts. He vigorously defended Street, saying ‘it was never his good fortune to see a more beautiful and artistic piece of work’; that he had been misquoted about the fifteenth-century Italian, having merely pointed out that the Italians had used Gothic for a similar purpose in the fifteenth century; and that the three towers were merely a sketch, and in time a model of the building would be placed in the Commons for inspection.

  When the final designs were published Street was attacked from several quarters, notably in Macmillan’s in January 1872 by James Fergusson. Fergusson had written to the Builder in August 1871 on the subject, and there had been an extensive correspondence in The Times. He had said in the Builder that he had ‘no hesitation in saying that it is the meanest design for the principal front of so important and pretentious a building which has been proposed in our day’.81 He called the Central Hall ‘useless’ and an ‘imperforate’ and ‘gloomy vault’. Street, in a specially printed pamphlet, dismissed the criticism of the front as ‘a question of taste’; he went on to attack Fergusson’s opinions as ‘founded in prejudice, and fortified by an ignorance which it would be hard indeed to account for on any but Mr Fergusson’s own explanation, which is that “architecture is not an art to be learned in a day, or practised by amateurs. Long apprenticeship, and severe study are requisite for success, and if architecture ever passes out of professional hands the art will be something one dreads to look forward to.” There is no-one to whom these words apply with more singular exactness than they do to Mr Fergusson himself.’82

  Fergusson had certainly behaved badly. In his Macmillan’s article he had said that the government had been ‘worried and perplexed by the rival claims of the competing architects’ and had given Street the commission ‘because his design was the worst – a perfectly competent tribunal having awarded him only three marks in the competition, while it had assigned Edward Barry forty-three.’ Street described it as ‘improbable’ that the government would have chosen the worst design or that ‘the House of Commons, by a majority of two to one, would have confirmed the selection as it did, when it was challenged by Mr Edward Barry’s friends.’83 The ‘two most important’ criteria for the competition were the provision of ‘ample uninterrupted communication and accommodation for those who have legitimate business in the New Courts’ and that ‘the comparative cost of carrying out such design will be an important element in determining the competition’.

  What seems especially to have annoyed Street, however, was Fergusson’s impugning his architectural taste, which suggested that ‘the sun of art stood still when Edward III died in 1377, and has not moved forward since that time.’84 Lawyers, Fergusson said, ‘must be content to lounge in vaulted halls, with narrow windows filled with painted glass, and so dark that they cannot see to read or write in them. They must wander through corridors whose gloom recalls the monkish seclusion of the Middle Ages. They must sit on high, straight-backed chairs, and be satisfied with queer-shaped furniture, which it is enough to give one rheumatism to look at.’ ‘This tirade contains not a word of truth,’ Street retorted.

  Fergusson accused Street of plagiarising medieval Gothic; which, Street remarked, showed what an ignorance his critic had of that style. ‘The ground of my love for Gothic is that it is a real, free, and living style, in which copyism is not necessary or likely to be indulged in by any one who knows his art at all well.’85 Fergusson had been his heaviest, but not his only, critic. The Times had felt the building ‘too English and too ecclesiastical.’ Another critic had attacked him for not copying. Finally, ‘Mr Sydney Smirke complains that my Law Courts are not like the Flavian Amphitheatre, and Mr E W Pugin (if I understand him aright) that they are not modelled on the Granville Hotel, Ramsgate!’86 But for Street, this argument was not a matter of taste. ‘I believe that no one can have read what I have written, or can have followed the attacks on me in The Times, without seeing how very much personal animus runs throughout them.’87 He derided Fergusson for saying he was ‘proud to call me his friend’.88 ‘What more or what worse he could have done for me if he had been my enemy, and had the greatest possible contempt for me, I know not!’

  It was not until 27 May 1873 that Street finally had the go-ahead to build the Law Courts ‘in the way proposed by me’.89 It is the last great high Victorian building, and it bears the imprimatur of Gladstone upon it. The Prime Minis
ter himself insisted on Street’s design, not least because it was a work of architecture that reflected his own views about the high-minded message of the Gothic, and, although a secular building, embodied a style very much to the glory of God. As Barry and Pugin had created the ultimate monument to purist Gothic, so Street would build the ultimate temple of high Victorianism. In so far as a building could manifest an idea of perfection, this, supposedly, was it. It was the climax of the Gothic Revival, and a work of such scope that it would not be completed until 1882, the year after Street’s death. It remains one of the most celebrated and conspicuous monuments to the Victorian mind.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE REFORMING MIND: PARLIAMENT AND THE ADVANCE OF CIVILISATION

  I

  IN THE 1840S, before the repeal of the Corn Laws, the intervention of the State in the lives of the public was regarded almost as anathema. By the 1870s attitudes had changed dramatically. It was widely felt that Britain could only be effectively governed – and its prosperity safeguarded – if the State made certain strategic decisions and enforced them through Acts of Parliament. This was not least because of the level of political engagement of those outside the traditional Establishment – formalised by the 1867 Reform Act – and the fear that Establishment had of the consequences of neglecting the masses. Once it was clear how thoroughly that legislation had been accepted, it appeared both possible and necessary to follow electoral reform with social reform.

  Government itself became more professional, and modern, after Gladstone’s determination to enforce collective ministerial responsibility. A draft Cabinet minute of 21 June 1869 proclaims that: ‘The Cabinet desires notice to be taken by all members of the Government . . . [that] much inconvenience will be avoided if the person or persons concerned communicate with the Treasury before making any declaration, or taking any public proceeding, of a nature to commit themselves or the Government, so that the matter may be considered, and a common conclusion arrived at.’1

  The Liberal ministry also promoted social reform, as we have seen, by measures to advance meritocracy. However, the predominant theme of the dozen years between Gladstone’s winning office in 1868 and Disraeli losing it in 1880 was that of the State seeking improvements in public administration that would enhance the lives of the masses, with continued development of education for the poor chief among them. In addition to the reforms already discussed, Gladstone’s first ministry passed the 1872 Public Health Act, which divided the country up into rural and urban sanitary districts; the former under the jurisdiction of the Boards of Guardians, the latter under town councils, improvement commissioners or local boards appointed under the Public Health or Local Government Acts. It also allowed for the appointment of medical officers of health. The Licensing Act of the same year restricted the places and times of the sale of alcohol, restrictions eased under an Act of 1874 passed by the Conservatives, whose supporters in the drinks trade had been badly affected by the new law.

  Some great issues, however, were not addressed, because the ministry was losing support. For example, Liberal jurists yearned to codify and thereby modernise the criminal law, which had expanded greatly in the nineteenth century, but which still harboured elements of medieval practice. In 1872, following his successful codification of the criminal law in India, James Fitzjames Stephen advocated doing the same in England, to overcome the complexity of statute law. He said:

  It is a new experience to an English lawyer to see how easy these matters are when they are stripped of mystery. I once had occasion to consult a military officer upon certain matters connected with habitual criminals. He was a man whose life was passed in the saddle, and who hunted down Thugs and Dacoits as if they were game. Upon some remark which I made he pulled out of his pocket a little Code of Criminal Procedure, bound like a memorandum book, turned up the precise section which related to the matter in hand, and pointed out the way in which it worked with perfect precision . . . The only thing which prevents English people from seeing that law is really one of the most interesting and instructive studies in the world, is that English lawyers have thrown it into a shape which can only be described as studiously repulsive.2

  He cited eleven subjects that could comprise a code: ‘Private relations of life (husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward); succession to property; landed property; contract; wrong; trust; crime; civil procedure; criminal procedure; evidence; limitation and prescription. We should then have a code in the – I had almost said transcendental sense which some persons seem to attach to the word – but we should have the working kernel of the law stated in such a shape that, with the necessary amount of sustained industry, any one might acquaint himself with it.’3 However, the political means for the Liberal government to achieve this were, by 1872, wanting: too much capital had been expended on the other great reforms.

  II

  Gladstone’s high-flown interests, and above all his fascination with theological and theocratic questions in the Anglican Church, put him out of touch with his party. As the editor of his diaries points out, his high mind failed to give him the interest in gossip that might have alerted him to difficulties: and his forbidding, moralising manner deterred others from telling him things that might have been useful to him.4 Ever since the debate over the Education Bill he had failed to realise how restless the Nonconformist element was, and, indeed, how much it had him in its sights. As party unity was undermined, so too was the ministry. When it was defeated in March 1873 on the Irish University Bill the government resigned, only to have Disraeli refuse to take office. It was a brilliant calculation by Disraeli, who saw that the Liberals had more scope yet to be weakened, and he did not wish to spare them that pleasure before winning a later, and more comprehensive, election victory.

  Another difficulty the Liberal party faced was National Education League candidates running against Liberals in by-elections throughout 1872 and 1873. The interlopers made little progress, but did succeed in driving many Liberals away from voting at all. At a by-election in Greenwich in August 1873, caused by the death of the Jewish pioneer Alderman Salomons, six candidates stood, five of them different sorts of Liberal. Gladstone was another MP for the borough, but, inevitably, the Conservative candidate joined him in the Commons. Between 1871 and 1873 the Liberals, and their great reforming government, lost twenty by-elections. Some town councils, including Rochdale and Barrow, refused to pay their education precepts, on the same grounds as Birmingham had. An attempt to amend the 1870 Act by transferring the authority to levy rates from the school board to the local Poor Law guardians was a disaster. It appeared to the Nonconformists to disregard the principle they felt to be at stake and only alienated them further. They also regretted that the government had ignored an opportunity to write compulsory attendance into the law.

  Passions were absurdly high. In the summer of 1873 Bright condemned the 1870 Act – now regarded as the landmark change that paved the way for universal, free education – as ‘the worst Act passed by a Liberal government since 1832’.5 However, just when the League thought it had signed up the greatest orator and campaigner of the day on its side, Bright rejoined the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, rendering himself silent: he had been President of the Board of Trade from 1868, but resigned after two years because of ill health. In this same reshuffle, announced the evening Parliament went into recess, Gladstone appointed himself Chancellor of the Exchequer, and moved Lowe (who had failed to run a sufficiently tight ship at the Treasury) to the Home Office. Gladstone claimed to take the post with extreme reluctance, but at the urging of his colleagues.

  It was a nice point whether Gladstone, who was, of course, already Prime Minister, had accepted an office of profit under the Crown and therefore, under the Septennial Act, should resign his seat and fight a by-election to secure the approval of his constituents for his new appointment. Much discussion took place among politicians, constitutionalists and officials during late 1873 about whether it was legally re
quired. He invoked a clause in the 1867 Reform Act in support of his position, since it specified that those who took another office in lieu of an existing one were not deemed to have vacated their seats. This was not, however, quite what had happened. He consulted both his law officers; they supported his contention that having been re-elected on assuming the position of First Lord of the Treasury, he need not be re-elected again. However, by the time the new session of Parliament approached Gladstone had acquired a new Attorney and a new Solicitor General, who were less sure what his course of action should be. It was suspected the matter would be raised as soon as Parliament reassembled, on 5 February 1874. Gladstone was prepared for a long fight.

  Days after becoming Chancellor he confided in Cardwell his desire to abolish income tax in 1874, thanks to a surplus that unexpectedly appeared on the Treasury’s books. This ambition, which he regarded as essential if his party were to stand a chance of winning the election due by late 1875, forced the sudden dissolution in January 1874. Some in his Cabinet said the electorate would need to give a mandate for reductions of between £600,000 and £1 million in the Army and Navy estimates that he realised would also be required to execute the plan in a fiscally responsible way. Cardwell, however, felt such economies would be impossible, and was prepared to force the point. An election became inevitable if Gladstone were to proceed with his plan to abolish the income tax.