CHAPTER III

.

EARLY PROFESSIONAL LIFE.

1820-1829.

Early difficulties and failures--Thought of emigration--Non-publication of his sketches--Holland House--Revival of Gothic--His Manchester churches, and their peculiarities--Marriage--Church at Oldham--Alarm at Prestwich Church--Designs for King’s College, Cambridge--Royal Institution at Manchester--Gradual relinquishment of Greek architecture--St. Peter’s Church, Brighton--Sussex County Hospital--Petworth Church--Queen’s Park, Brighton, his first Italian design--Islington churches--His relations to church architecture generally--Removal to Foley Place--Subsidiary work--Travellers’ Club--General character of his life at this period.

In August, 1820, Mr. Barry returned to England to commence his professional life. He took a small house in Ely Place, Holborn, a position of no great pretension, but one recommended by its quietness, centrality, and cheapness. There he began the struggle of life in real earnest, with little external advantages of patronage or connection. It was a great, and not a pleasant, change from the brightness of his foreign life, during the latter part of which at least he had earned a high artistic reputation, and enjoyed the society to which such a reputation is the passport. He had warm friends of his own and his future wife’s family of the middle class, but they had little power, though much will, to help him. He had attracted at Rome the notice of men of high rank and influence; from them he received much courtesy and even kindness, but their patronage brought as yet little substantial fruit.

With regard to the leading members of his own profession, of Mr. Nash, the Wyatts, and Sir R. Smirke, he knew little or nothing; of Sir J. Soane he had some slight knowledge, and from him on one occasion (that of the Islington churches) I believe he received some recommendation; of his own contemporaries he knew best Mr. Cockerell and Mr. Tite, and afterwards (partly through Mr. Wolfe) Messrs. Donaldson, Angell, and Poynter--all beginning life, as he was, and struggling, with more or less of advantage, against the same obstacles.

Perhaps a more serious difficulty still was the great change of architectural style in general, and of his own architectural taste in

## particular, which seemed likely to render valueless much of his

professional study, begun when the ascendancy of the Greek style was still undisputed.

All these obstacles were of course incapable of hindering that ultimate success, which must depend essentially on a man’s own intellect and character. But they delayed its attainment, long enough to cause him disappointment, and the occasional despondency which belongs to the reaction of a sanguine character. He had begun, as almost all young architects must begin, by the harassing and thankless work of public competition; in it he had, as usual, his share of failures, embittered perhaps occasionally by the inevitable suspicions of incompetency or

## partiality of judgment. At times he even thought of leaving London, and

settling in a provincial town; at one time of leaving England, and trying his fortune in the more open field of America. His want of success had also the effect of delaying his marriage, and continuing the difficulties and the discomfort of an already long engagement. For after paying the expenses of his foreign travels, he had little money of his own to fall back upon, while waiting for the first gleam of fortune. All these causes made the first years of his professional career a time of anxiety and struggle, his first real entrance (in fact) on the battle of life. During this critical time he received much encouragement and much substantial help from his old masters, Messrs. Middleton and Baily, who still preserved their kindly feeling towards him, and felt proud of the reputation he had already achieved.

A natural way to public notice would have been opened to him by the publication of his Egyptian sketches. They were unique at the time, and had attracted much notice; his travelling companions, especially Mr. Wyse, urged him to bring them out.[26] His careful notes would have enabled him to give them something more than an æsthetic value. It is clear that he had cherished the idea of bringing them before the public. But it happened that in Egypt he had made the acquaintance of Mr. William Bankes of Kingston Hall; and he appears to have entertained the idea of some publication in conjunction with him. He probably needed a literary coadjutor, and he had been much attracted by Mr. Bankes’s brilliancy and talent. But after much delay and trouble, circumstances prevented the realization of the plan; and by this time, he probably found that the favourable opportunity had been lost. At any rate he gave up all idea of publication, and to a great extent all care for those sketches which remained in his own possession. For his books are full of blank spaces, and many sketches have been altogether lost to his family.[27]

For the sake of the world, as well as for his own sake, it must be a subject of regret that he abandoned his project. The Egyptian field has been occupied by men of high talent and extensive knowledge. But probably there are few who would have brought to bear on the subject so much clearness and accuracy of observation, and so entire a freedom from prejudice. All that he ventured to publish would have been substantial, practical, and trustworthy, and might have been a sure basis for future study and speculation.

At Rome he had made the acquaintance of the Marquis of Lansdowne, who continued to be at all times one of his kindest patrons and friends. Through him he was introduced to Lord and Lady Holland, and became a not unfrequent visitor in the society for which Holland House was then famous. There he first met many noblemen of the Whig party, who showed him great kindness, and many of the distinguished literary men and artists of the day. He appreciated most highly these intellectual and social influences; for his interest was keen and comprehensive, though his study was chiefly confined to his own profession. He enjoyed literary and scientific, at least as much as artistic society, and certainly possessed the faculty, peculiar to men of quick observation and clearness of conception, of understanding rapidly, and of seeing in their most important bearings, subjects on which he had no special experience or knowledge. Holland House therefore gave him great enjoyment and encouragement, and produced occasionally some substantial results of work. From his host and hostess he received such kindness as he could never forget.

Still, however, he was working on without much success. The Gothic style, though as yet little understood in its real principles, was now asserting its claims, especially for ecclesiastical purposes; and some stimulus had been given to ecclesiastical architecture (such as it then was) by the erection of the “Commissioners’ Churches.”[28] To this style he had never paid sufficient attention; he had now to become a student; and he threw himself into the new study with characteristic diligence and perseverance. His first essays were not very successful, though certainly not below the average of the time; he used to think and speak of them afterwards with a humorous kind of indignation; he carefully destroyed every drawing relating to them, and would have still more gladly destroyed the originals. Up to the day of his death he felt that he was continually advancing in knowledge of Gothic, and was unsparing in the criticism of his own earlier work.

The event proved that he had judged rightly. His first works of any consequence were two churches built for the Commissioners, one at Prestwich, and the other at Campfield, Manchester.[29] His letters show the exultation with which he hailed the first success, and the complacency with which he regarded his first church designs, a complacency justified by the high opinion formed of them by others, but destined to undergo a woful change in after years, when these churches served as a continual subject of laughter to his friend Mr. Pugin and to himself.[30]

The first stone of the Prestwich Church was laid by Lord Wilton,[31] on the 3rd of August, 1822, and that of the Manchester Church (Campfield) by the Bishop of Chester, on the 12th of the same month. The designs seem to have been then well received, and to have given him his introduction to Manchester, where he found warm friends (especially the late Sir J. Potter), and afterwards did a good deal of work. They, of course, showed little acquaintance with the spirit of Gothic detail. But they were considered to have elegance of proportion, and some originality of design. The fronts of churches appeared to him deficient in extension, and he attempted to obtain this by means of an arcaded porch at Manchester, as afterwards at Brighton by spreading the lower part of the tower. In this, as in other points, he carried out principles fixed in his own mind, without shrinking from ecclesiological heresies. On the other hand, in spite of his admiration for the horizontal lines and regular forms of Egyptian and Greek architecture, he entered so thoroughly into the vertical principle of Gothic, that he felt unsatisfied in carrying out any Gothic building without a spire. In his first church at Prestwich, as afterwards at Brighton, he did his utmost to secure the erection of one, though in both cases economical considerations prevailed against the architect’s protest. In his last work at the New Palace at Westminster, as soon as he felt himself “master of the situation,” the castellated character of the original design faded away, and a forest of spires sprang up, which he at times longed to complete by some spire-like erection on the Victoria Tower itself.

His success with regard to these churches was the more welcome, inasmuch as it enabled him at last to conclude his marriage, on the 7th of December, 1822, and thus to enter on the domestic life which he so much desired and prized. The small house in Ely Place continued for a time to be his home. Economy was still a necessity, and in that economy he had a prudent and affectionate coadjutrix. But, indeed, except for his art, he was never lavish; and in spite of his enterprising and sanguine temperament, he had a horror of embarrassment and debt.

The work at Manchester seemed to be the first entrance on his long career of professional success. He was appointed, in March, 1823, architect for the erection of another church at Oldham, somewhat on the same scale and style as those already built. A commission was also given him to prepare drawings and plans for some alterations and enlargement of St. Martin’s, Outwich, which were afterwards carried out under his superintendence.

In the midst of it there came an alarm which would have overwhelmed a nervous architect, though it failed to disturb his equanimity to any serious extent. Soon after the opening of his church at Prestwich there came an express from Manchester, stating that one of the galleries had shown signs of falling during service, that the congregation had rushed out in panic, and that many were seriously hurt. By the time the then tedious journey to Manchester was over, the report had grown into “Stand Church fallen, 300 killed and wounded.” It turned out that a small hair crack had appeared in the plaster in consequence of too rapid drying. A man under the gallery perceived it, and fancied that it widened rapidly, whereupon he shouted out, “The church is falling!” The consequence of this sapient proceeding was a sudden rush to the doors, at one of which the steps had not yet been fixed. Down went the temporary steps, and the congregation over them. Happily but few were hurt, and those not seriously; so the architect’s reputation escaped.

Meanwhile he was constantly at work. In the year 1823 he entered into the competition for the new buildings at King’s College, Cambridge, his friend Mr. Wolfe being also a competitor. The building was to be either Grecian or Gothic. In spite of the _genius loci_, he proposed a Greek building, thinking that a classical style (for which the Fellows’ Building afforded a precedent) would be less likely to invite comparison with the overwhelming grandeur of the chapel. Besides, in Gothic he was still weak, and somewhat inclined, after the fashion of the day, to restrict its employment to ecclesiastical purposes. In this competition he experienced a failure, probably fortunate enough for his reputation; for he never looked back on his design with any satisfaction, and, in fact, his attachment to Greek was gradually giving way. He felt that, for modern purposes, the style was not sufficiently plastic. Except on a grand scale, and in a commanding position, with full command of polychromy and of sculpture, the Greek portico seemed to him to lose its original effect, and become flat and insipid.

He did not indeed suddenly relinquish the style which in his early days he had regarded as the perfection of beauty and truth, nor did he fail to show that he had really grasped the principles on which this truth and beauty depended. In 1824 he built the Royal Institution of Fine Arts at Manchester, an edifice of considerable size and importance. On this building it was remarked, in the ‘Builder’ of May 19th, 1860, shortly after his death,--“The building was of great importance, historically speaking, and in the results which it produced. By contrast with the pseudo-Greek, which was general in public buildings, and which in Manchester had even degenerated from the time of Harrison, it presented what was at once Greek derivatively, or Greco-Roman in details and impress, and yet was work new or original--work of art and mind. The portico, as a feature of architecture, was used and not spoiled; that feature and remainder of the building were grouped together, whereas in Greek of that day a portico was often tacked on to a many-windowed façade; the staircase hall, grand in proportions within, and culminating to a central feature of the exterior, was the forerunner of later efforts of the kind by the same architect and by others.” And even after he had given up the erection of buildings in the Greek style, it was remarked, with great truth, that “his feeling for the subtle beauty of Greek architecture never left him, and probably contributed in no slight degree to give that air of finish and refinement to his works which so greatly distinguished them.”

In 1831 he made a Greek design, of great massiveness and grandeur, for the Birmingham Town Hall--a building which had the needful advantages of scale and position.[32]

But with these exceptions, he did little in the style to which his early studies had been given. Practical experience confirmed the doubts which had already been suggested by theory; and he saw that Gothic and Italian had the mastery of the field.[33]

His most important work of this period in the former style was St. Peter’s Church at Brighton. The opportunity was considerable; the competition exceedingly severe, and his victory was a subject of great delight and encouragement to him. A hurried note to his wife announced, August 4th, 1823, the day when the result was proclaimed, as the “proudest day of his existence,” likely to be the “entrance on a brilliant career.” Nor were these expectations altogether groundless. The church was much admired at the time, not undeservedly, for it was a decided step in advance, though the greater knowledge of Gothic in the present day will hardly altogether endorse contemporary criticisms. He himself in after days naturally felt dissatisfied with the faults of detail and the mixture of styles admitted therein; and his architectural conscience felt a strong and characteristic repugnance to the aisle windows, on the ground that, being in one height, they sinned against “truth” in giving no indication of the galleries within. But his greatest cause of regret always was the absence of the spire, with a view to which the tower was expressly designed. He did his best to fight against the economical veto put on its erection, and always considered that the want of it did much injustice to his first important Gothic design.[34] But he had, on the whole, little reason to be dissatisfied. The design showed a marked advance, as compared with those of the earlier churches, and secured to him a good position in the ranks of church architects.

The erection of this church opened a new field to him at Brighton. Several minor works gave scope to his activity, and supplied welcome aid to his exchequer. He built Brunswick Chapel for Dr. Everard, a gentleman who appreciated his talents, and showed him very great kindness. Some other chapels and dwelling-houses he built or altered; of the Sussex County Hospital he designed the centre, to be at once erected as a portion of a larger design. The first stone was laid by Lord Egremont in March, 1826. Large additions were, however, made by other hands in the shape of wings, which entirely altered the proportions of the whole mass. He became also known to Lord Egremont in August, 1824, and was a not unfrequent partaker of the generous hospitality of Petworth Castle. For him he almost rebuilt Petworth Church in 1827, and added a new spire to the restored building.

At this time he also became acquainted with Mr. Attree, a solicitor of considerable eminence and influence in Brighton, who was, then and afterwards, one of his sincerest friends. For him he undertook the laying out of a considerable tract of land as a park, to be called the Queen’s Park, and to be portioned out in villas--all designed in the Italian style. Of such detached villa residences there was great scarcity, and the scheme had every prospect of success. But the co-operation of the owners of adjacent property could not be gained, and in consequence no good access from the cliff was possible. Hence the Queen’s Park has never been so well known and frequented, as from its beautiful situation might have been expected. Only Mr. Attree’s house was built, on the plan of an Italian villa, excellently adapted to modern English requirements. Near it was a circular tower in the same style, intended to cover a horizontal wind-wheel for raising water. The work deserves notice as his earliest essay in the style in which he first gained his fame, and which to the last (in spite of the Gothicists) he maintained to be in some respects peculiarly fit for mansions of the present day. Small as it was, it was designed with as much care and finish as any of his larger works. In it for the first time he had an opportunity of carrying out his ideas of “architectural gardening,” as the house was set in a terrace-garden, with small fountains and pretty loggie, after the Italian manner. It led indirectly to a larger work of the same kind. The Duke and Duchess of Sutherland (to whom he had been introduced at Holland House) saw it, and were struck with the elegance and refinement of the design. From this impression resulted his subsequent employment to carry out the greater works at Trentham.

Meanwhile the church-building movement continued, and in that movement he found much occupation. In 1826 he was employed by the Rev. Daniel Wilson, Rector of Islington (afterwards Bishop of Calcutta), to erect three churches in Islington--at Holloway, Ball’s Pond, and Cloudesley Square. These were churches of considerable scale, and no small expense;[35] but in them, as in so many other churches of the time, little was effected compared with what could now be done for the same sum. In 1829 he built a chapel and schools at Saffron Hill, London.

It was at this time only of his professional career that he was much employed in the building of churches. The consequence is that, although his churches were fully up to the mark of their period, they cannot take their place among his important works, or be considered to form any important step in architectural progress.

It was not merely that at this time Gothic detail and Gothic principles of design were comparatively unknown. But church architecture, as such, was only in the infancy of its revival, inasmuch as its symbolism was neglected, and the true proportion and meaning of its various features ill understood. Churches were regarded very much as “auditoria,” or preaching-houses--for the sermon still usurped a pre-eminence obscuring the other great elements of public worship. It was not wonderful that in their design a want of power to enter into the true principles of church architecture was often betrayed, either by slavish adoption of that which was now meaningless, or by innovations which outraged the whole harmony of its grand idea. The minds of men have since been awakened to truer conceptions of the church and of its worship, and the progress of thought is seen in that advance of art, which has left behind the works of an earlier period. But architects, unlike other artists, cannot destroy the crude conceptions, which are their steps towards perfection.

Mr. Barry’s architectural career soon led him in another direction. This was probably not a mere accident, for it may be doubted whether his mind was such as to enter very deeply into the principles of church architecture, or at any rate into the particular development which such architecture has received. He himself felt strongly that the forms of mediæval art, beautiful as they are, do not always adapt themselves thoroughly to the needs of a service which is essentially one of “Common Prayer.” Deep chancels, high rood-screens, and (in less degree) pillared aisles, seemed to him to belong to the worship and institutions of the past rather than the present. Time-honoured as they were, he would have in some degree put them aside, and, accepting Gothic as the style for church architecture, he would have preferred those forms of it, which secured uninterrupted space, and gave a perfect sense of unity in the congregation, even at the cost of sacrificing features beautiful in themselves, and perhaps of interfering with the “dim religious light” of impressiveness and solemnity.[36]

It still remains to be seen, whether the value of these principles will not yet be felt, and asserted more forcibly in the church architecture of the future, and whether the actual requirements of our service will not prevail over the beauty of special features and the power of old associations. But in the stage, through which ecclesiastical architecture was passing in the days of his active work, “correctness” was everything, and any innovations were ruthlessly hunted down as heretical. The stage was a very useful and necessary one; but it was rather preparatory than final, and there are already signs that it is passing away, and giving place to greater freedom and originality of treatment.[37]

All these works gave him constant occupation, and were gradually carrying him on through the first struggle of life to pecuniary independence. The improvement of his circumstances was shown by his removal in 1827 to 27, Foley Place, Cavendish Square--a house more desirable in situation, and better fitted for his increasing family.

Still he found time for much subsidiary work. Then, as afterwards, it was his practice never to neglect or despise anything. In October, 1824, he undertook to make or correct a plan of Lambeth parish--a work in which no doubt his old local knowledge stood him in good stead; and in the next year he thought it worth his while to survey an estate in Dulwich. Nor did he shrink from the labour of preparing designs for competitions, or on the chance of professional employment. In March, 1824, he was busy upon a design for the “National Scotch Church;” in 1825 he sent in designs for the Leeds Exchange, and for the erection of a church at Kensington. The year 1828 seems to have been one of great

## activity. In it he prepared no less than four different designs in the

competition for the Pitt Press at Cambridge; in the same year we find records of designs for three very different buildings--the Law Institution, a new concert-room at Manchester, and a new church at Streatham; while at the same time he was working hard at the design for the Travellers’ Club, the building which, more than any other of the period, secured him at once a high position in the architectural profession. His life at this time, as at all others, tells the story of work and enterprise, with the drawback of repeated failures, and the encouragement of occasional success. Such practical work was gradually absorbing the time hitherto given to artistic study. But he still found time for occasional architectural tours, in which, of course, his sketch-book was seldom out of his hand, for an elaborate plan and drawings of Jerusalem, in 1823, and for a drawing of a building, which he greatly admired, the cathedral at Palermo, contributed to a Leeds exhibition in May, 1825. For his life was at this time full of activity and a sanguine hope, which gave zest to its hard work.

But the building which first gained him high reputation, and which even now holds a high place among his works, was the Travellers’ Club. He entered into a select competition for its erection in the year 1829. In sending in his designs he had great misgivings as to success; for, though he felt confident that the building would be satisfactory if erected, he thought that in the drawing it would be too plain to be attractive. Fortunately he was mistaken; and no sooner was the building carried out, than its erection was recognised as a real and important step in artistic progress. Italian architecture was already making its way in England; but it was observed at the time by a favourable critic, that “Barry’s Italian differed from much of that which had preceded it, as the perfection of language differs from mere patois.” The work itself was noticed by those interested in the revival of the Italian style, as a practical protest against the identification of that style in England with what is “little more than one mode of it, namely, the Palladian, which, if not the most vicious and extravagant, is almost the poorest and the most insipid.” The chief points of novelty noticed in it were the large proportion of the solid wall to the windows, and the striking effect of the great cornice.[38] “There is no single distinctive mark” (it was said) “which more forcibly characterizes the difference between the Palladian school and that which preceded it, than the _cornicione_ employed by the older artists to crown their façades. It was reserved for Mr. Barry to introduce the cornicione here, and its value as an architectural feature may be said to have been since admitted by acclamation. That the example thus set has not been lost upon us is already tolerably evident.”[39] But the great charm of the building was attributed with justice to the beautiful simplicity of its design (according, as it did, so well with the comparatively small size of the building), and the exquisite proportion and finish of all its parts.[40] In it, as in all Mr. Barry’s designs, there was not a line which had not been carefully and even elaborately studied, and the apparent ease and simplicity of the result, while it might lead the ignorant to wonder what there was in it to be called original, showed to competent critics the presence of the “ars celare artem,” which is pre-eminently the characteristic of genius.

The woodcut on the opposite page gives the elevation of the garden-front, and the plan of the principal floor. With regard to the latter, there is little to

[Illustration: THE TRAVELLERS’ CLUB HOUSE, PALL MALL, LONDON.

PLAN OF THE PRINCIPAL FLOOR.]

[Illustration: TRAVELLERS’ CLUB HOUSE, PALL MALL.

VIEW FROM CARLTON GARDEN.]

notice, except the care for finish and detail, which has been remarked as eminently characteristic of its author. The position of the door at one extremity of the street front was acknowledged by him to be a blemish, inconsistent with the symmetrical principle of his design, but forced upon him by considerations of convenience, and the very small frontage at his command. The grouping of the central windows on the garden front was also an innovation on the principle of the regular Italian front, but it was one of a totally different kind. It was thoroughly in accordance with the main idea of symmetry, while it gave life to that symmetry by the evidence of artistic design, and it should be added, that it is as successful and convenient, in relation to the internal arrangement, as it is graceful externally. It was noticed and approved of at once by all critics.

The success of the design being undoubted, it naturally followed that its claims to originality were disputed. The garden front was acknowledged to be original and singularly beautiful, but the street front was asserted to be a mere copy of the Villa Pandolfini. On this point it may be better to quote the words of one in the highest degree competent to give an opinion. “The Pall Mall front has been characterized by superficial observers as a copy, with slight modifications, from Raffaelle’s Pandolfini Palace at Florence. One moment’s comparison of the two elevations will suffice to entirely dispel the idea. The Pandolfini Palace has, in common with the Travellers’ Club-house, only the accidents of being two-storied, having rusticated angles, and a doorway at the extreme right-hand of the ground-floor of the principal façade. In every other respect the dissimilarities are most striking; the proportions of the windows are about one-third narrower in the Travellers’ than they are in the Pandolfini; in the former they are Ionic on the first-floor and Doric on the ground-floor; while in the latter they are Corinthian on the first-floor, and have simply returned architraves and no order on the ground-floor. The four windows on the first-floor of the Florentine façade are surmounted with alternately angular and segmental pediments, and united by panels in the interspaces, and by horizontal members; while the five of the Pall Mall building are precisely uniform, and the wall is entirely free from panelling, and the running through of any one of the members forming or decorating the fenestration above the cill-level. One of the leading features in the Pandolfini is its deep plain frieze, adorned only with a simple classic-looking inscription; while in the entablature of the Travellers’ Club the frieze is reduced to so small a proportion, and is so highly carved, as in fact to do duty rather as an enriched member of the cornice, than as a distinctive frieze at all.”[41]

This question of originality, always recurring in the career of every great artist, in fact of every distinguished man, is often most inconsiderately handled. It is clear that the progressiveness of man depends on the power, which each generation has, of using and modifying the work of its predecessors. Every great epoch in science and in art has had its period of anticipation and preparation. It is the characteristic of genius to create out of materials common and well known to all; and its creations are universally recognised and accepted, as the clear and beautiful expression of that which is vaguely felt by the generality of men. If a man, in order to be original, defies established principles, and despises the treasures of the past, he voluntarily places himself on a level below that which has been already attained by humanity. Originality, in the true sense of the word, implies that ideas and suggestions from without shall be truly appreciated, studied, and reproduced with the stamp of native thought and imagination upon them, to individualize what is general, and to harmonize materials in themselves crude or uncongenial. Then, and generally speaking not till then, can we hope for a new creation, which shall be true, and therefore permanent, in harmony with that which has gone before, and therefore capable of striking a new key-note not unaccordant with the old.

In this sense it cannot be denied that Mr. Barry’s work was original. Simple details excepted, he copied little or nothing. Every design was conceived and moulded into shape, before he referred to a book or drawing. His mind was teeming with the stores of memory; but, when he borrowed an idea either from the works of the past or the advice and criticism of the present, it was sure to be modified or replaced by some fresh kindred idea of his own. External influence was with him only suggestive; it set his mind in motion, but did not dictate the direction in which it should proceed. “Where we have an opportunity” (says the memoir already quoted) “of tracing the progress of his thoughts through a series of studies for any particular building, we find the work growing, as it were, evenly under his hand from the slightest generalization in the first small-scale sketch, to the plotted-out bay or repeat, and subsequently to the large-scale detail; then back again to another general elevation, to see how far that particular detail will work well in combination, then altered according to the result of that test, and roughed out again on a large scale to make sure of the effect of the parts when near the eye, and so on, till his fastidious judgment would be almost bewildered under the multiplying and conflicting impressions produced by the various studies. The man who works perseveringly in this way may at least make sure of two things--that his work will be good, and that it will be his own.”[42]

What is here so well said as to his work generally, is true of the Travellers’ Club in particular. It was certainly like nothing which had preceded it in England; it was certainly recognised as a model for future imitation or guidance. These two facts alone stamp the design as having a real place in architectural progress, and justify its being regarded as that, which first secured to its author a position among those who have deserved well of the cause of Art.

Meanwhile adverse criticisms did not weigh very heavily on his mind. He felt that by the new building he had become a man of mark, and had produced a decided effect on the growth and improvement of Italian architecture in the country. He was steadily advancing in prosperity, having passed through the period of doubt and difficulty, which besets the opening of most artistic lives.

His private life and tastes were simple enough. He appreciated the higher class of society into which he was thrown, and more particularly the peculiar brilliancy which distinguished that of Holland House. But he never was so thoroughly attracted by it as to feel quite at home there; probably, in England at any rate, few artists can be so. He came back with constant relief and pleasure to the quiet of his own fireside, and the society of his wife and children. Increasing work shortened his time of amusement and relaxation; for, as the day was taken up with business, the morning and evening became the times of composition and study: but at these times he neither needed nor liked solitude; music, in which he greatly delighted, was always a welcome accompaniment to his drawing, and even conversation failed to disturb him. When the opportunity for amusement came, he could always throw himself into it with all the delight of a schoolboy. These days were the palmy days of the London Theatre, and in theatrical entertainments he always took the greatest pleasure, and found in them, as I suppose most hard-worked men do, the most complete relaxation and change of idea. But of all evening occupations, which his work left him time to enjoy, he cared most for those afforded by scientific and literary institutions. At the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, while he lived in London, he was a most regular attendant.

This time seems to have been, not indeed the most famous, but perhaps the happiest and most hopeful period of his life. With good health and spirits he entered with equal zest into hard work and complete relaxation; he saw his way opening before him, and had not as yet had that experience of disappointment, injustice, and misrepresentation, which every public man must expect, and from which he was not to be exempt hereafter.

##