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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

Civic Notes

page 228

Civic Notes.

Either the teachings of John Ruskin cannot be applied to the ethics of modern building and construction, or the interpretation of them in the terms of the builders' morality is surprisingly incongruous. At all events it is near enough the truth to say that the nation for whom those teachings were specially intended have seemingly profited by them least of all. If not, why is it that we so calmly pursue the even tenor of our way, and persist in covering the areas of our towns and cities with the most grotesque and hideous structures that are to be found within the limits of civilisation, or conceivable in the heart of man ? And if we are to believe that our attitude in this respect is to be measured by the principle "that certain right states of temper and moral feeling are the magic powers by which all good architecture, without exception, have been produced," we shall have to hide our heads in sackcloth and cry aloud for absolution, for we have sinned greatly.

If good architecture is "essentially religious," we must be fatally and hopelessly deficient in those higher qualities which find their base in the spiritual nature of men, and without which reform and progress cannot be made. If we want an example of this it is easily furnished by a glance at the lines of buildings flanking the great streets of any English city in the world. There is generally little, if any, clearly defined pretension to artistic beauty to be found. Buildings are jumbled together in variegated confusion everywhere. Short and long, high and low, huge and indescribably ugly they are; not of seven but seventy-and-seven orders of all architectures and no architecture, wens and excresences frowning down upon thoroughfares which are generally as bad as bad can be, and as ill-dressed and ill-kept as Dr. Johnson's famous leg of mutton.

The reason of this deficiency in artistic sense is probably due to the inherent practicability of the Anglo-Saxon temperament, whose radius of vision is exactly circumscribed by a line which usually finds definition somewhere in the locality of the extreme point of the nose. Consequently we have few ideals of beauty, and in all our building we worship in fear and trembling at a shrine of expediency, in which cost and convenience are the presiding deities. What wonder, then, that the streets of our great cities—and by that I mean colonial cities—are utterly devoid of that striking regularity, and present so few of those magnificent prospects which are to be found in, for instance, Paris or Washington!

page 229

It will, of course, be said that idyllic building is possible only when the State undertakes the work, and were it not so France and America would fall as low in the scale as any other country. I reply that when we learn to educate the artistic sense of our citizens as we now endeavour to train and strengthen the mental and physical faculties in order to fight the battle of life successfully, it will be as possible for every municipality to have beautiful and well-kept streets, and magnificent and costly structures to adorn them, as it is now possible to adorn our gardens with rare and beautiful flowers. Ruskiu would have us believe that all building without exception is the true expression of domestic virtue and national faith, and has always essentially been the work of the commonalty. "Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, and the burgher's street. It was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of labouring citizens and warrior kings." The baron's castle and the warrior kings have gone, the burgher's street and the labouring citizens remain with their lesson still unlearnt, or perhaps rather forgotten, that the power to build nobly and well "is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible laws of an undoubted God."

This simple truth has just been emphatically enforced in a delightful lecture delivered by Mrs. Ormiston Chant before the working men of London. "Every city," she contended, "is the result of the characters of the men who build it. When you go into the wretched little slum tenement" (and I would parenthically add: Into the vast majority of the great business structures of all cities) "with its narrow rooms and absence of bath-room and larder, and no water supply, and damp, dirty cellar, will you tell me that the man who made that place was a man of lofty character and noble aspirations, that he dreamed dreams and loved his fellow-men ? He did not, he loved his money-bags."

"If," continued Mrs. Chant, "we could get a London full of men and women who did not care about appearing what they are not, a large part of London would be levelled to the ground in a few years' time. There would be such a run on the builders that the women would have to turn out and learn the trade. I have often dreamed what London shall be like, but we must get the right men before we can get those days, and what is more, we must get the right sort of man in every coat, and the right woman under every bonnet." All this may, of course, be the lively expression of an imagination that dwells in the fairy realms where visions are seen, but, as she finely remarked, it is also "the echo of some far-off living fact."

Be it so; but it points to the probable development of a higher ideal in one of the main concerns of civic life, and when a more refined and artistic page 230 conception of beautiful surroundings shall express itself in the external as well as the internal life of the people. No one can doubt that at present the last thing to admire in our colonial cities are the edifices which should be their first and noblest characteristic. Although we have numerous examples of grand and imposing structures, they serve rather to make the vast remainder conspicuous only by their insignificance. We are beginning to understand somewhat that life, to be lived in the best sense and in the best way, is inseparable from some high conception of art that shall be striven after in ideal, and lead to some harmonious result. When we are able to find expression to this principle in what we build, we shall have advanced something towards that true human state which, as Ruskin tells us, is as good for all men as for ourselves.

Civis.