Part 14

In the first place, then, a gentleman's country house (we are adverting here to country residences alone--to those in the metropolitan haunts of men we shall return hereafter) should be thoroughly warm. Now, of course a man may make a fire-place as big as Soyer's great range at Crockford's--poor dear Crocky's, before it was reformed--and he may burn a sack of coals at a time in it; and he may have one of these in each apartment and lobby of his house--and a pretty warm berth he will then have of it; but it would be no thanks to his architect that he should thus be forced to encourage his purveyor of the best Wallsend. No: either let him see that the walls are of a good substantial thickness--none of the thin, hollow, badly set, sham walls of the general run of builders; but made either of solid blocks of good ashlar stone, with well-rammed rubble between, and this rubble again laid in an all-penetrating bed of properly sanded mortar with plenty of lime in it, and laid on hot, piping, steaming hot, if possible--and the joints of the stones well closed with cement or putty; or else let the walls be made of the real red brick, the clay two years old or more, well laid in English bond, and every brick in its own proper and distinct bed of mortar, as carefully made as before, and the joints cemented into the bargain. Nor let any stone wall be less than thirty-six, nor any brick wall than thirty inches thick; whereas, if the house exceeds two stories in height, some additional inches may yet be added to the thickness of the lower walls. These walls shall be proof against all cold, and, if they be not made of limestone, against wet also.

"But all this is horridly expensive! why, a house built after this fashion would cost three times the amount of any one now erected upon the usual specifications!" Of course it would. Materials and labour are not to be had gratuitously; but then, if the house costs three times as much, it will be worth three times more than what it would otherwise fetch, and it will last more than three times as long. "But what is the use of building for posterity? what does it matter whether the house is a good one in the time of the next possessor but six? Why not 'run up' a building that will have a handsome appearance in the present, my own life-time, and if my descendant wishes for a better one and a warmer one, why let him build another for himself? Add to which it will grow so dreadfully old-fashioned in fifty years hence, that it is a hundred to one if it is not voted a nuisance, and pulled down as an eyesore to the estate." Such is the reasoning commonly used when any architect more honest, more scientific, and more truly economical in his regard for his employer's means, ventures to recommend the building of a mansion upon principles, and with dimensions, which can alone fully satisfy the exigencies of his art. We take leave, however, to observe, that such ought not to be the reasoning of an English nobleman or gentleman. In the first place, what is really erected in a proper and legitimate style of architecture, be it classical or mediaeval, can never become "old-fashioned" or ugly. Is Hampton Court old-fashioned and ugly? is Audley End so? are Burghleigh and Hatfield so? If they are, go and build better. Is Windsor Castle so? yes, a large portion of it is, for its architecture is not very correct; and though it has been erected only so few years, in another fifty the reigning sovereign--if there be a sovereign in England in those days--will pull down most of it, and consider it as sham and as trumpery as the Pavilion has at length been found out to have been all along. True; if you build houses in a false and affected and unreal style of architecture, they are ugly from the very beginning; and they will become as old-fashioned as old Buckingham House or Strawberry Hill itself, perhaps in the life-time of him who owns them; or else, like Fonthill, they will crumble about your ears, and remain as monuments of your folly rather than of your taste. But go and build as Thorpe, or Inigo Jones, or Wren used to build. Or even, if you will travel abroad for your models, take Palladio himself for your guide, or Phillbert Delorme, or Ducerceau, or Mansard; and your erections shall stand for centuries, and become each year more and more harmoniously beautiful.

Next, your house should be dry; do not, then, go and build it with a slightly-framed low-pitched roof, nor place it in that part of your grounds which would be very suitable for an artificial lake, but not for your mansion. Do not be afraid of a high roof; but let it tower up boldly into the air; let there be, as the French architects of old used to term it most expressively, a good "forest" of timber in its framing; cover it with lead, if you can--if not, with flag-stones, or else, if these be too dear, with extra thick slates in as large slabs as can be conveniently worked, and as may be suitable to the framing,--least of all with tiles.

"But, good Lord! what ideas you have got of expense! Why, sir, do you know that such a house would cost a great deal of money! and besides this, I am almost certain that in ancient Rome, the houses had quite flat roofs, and even in Italy, at the present day, the palaces have remarkably low-pitched roofs!" Rome and Italy go to the ---- Antipodes! Did you not stipulate that the house should be dry? do you think that the old Italians ever saw a good shower of rain in all their lives? did they? "_Nocte pluit tota_," is all very well in the poet's fugitive inscription; but did they ever see a six-weeks' rain, such as we have every autumn and spring, and generally in June and July, to say nothing of January and February, in Devonshire? My dear sir, if you wish to lie dry in your bed, and all your family, too, to the seventh generation, downwards, make your roof suited to the quantity of rain that falls; pitch up its sides not less steeply than forty-five degrees, and do not be afraid if it rises to sixty, and so gives you the true mediaeval proportion of the equilateral triangle. Do you consider it ugly? Then we will ornament it; and we will make the chimney-stalks rise with some degree of majesty, into an important feature of the architectural physiognomy of the building. Are you grumbling at the expense, as you did just now about that of the walls? What then! are you a Manchester manufacturer, some dirty cotton-spinner? have you no faith in the future? have you no regard for the dignity and comfort of your family? are you, too, bitten with the demoralising commercial spirit of the age? are you all for self and the present? have you no obligations towards your ancestors? and are you unwilling to leave a name to be talked of by your posterity? Why, to be sure it may tighten you up for five or six years; but then do not stop quite so long in London: make your season there rather shorter, and do not go so often to Newmarket, and keep away from White's or Boodle's, and do not be so mad as to throw away any more of those paltry thousands in contesting the county. Let the Parliament and the country take care of themselves; they can very well spare an occasional debater like yourself; the "glorious constitution" of old England will take no harm even if _you_ do not assist in concocting the hum-bug that is every year added to its heterogeneous mixture. Lay out your money at home, drain your land, build a downright good house for yourself; do not forget your poor tenants, set them a good example, and let us put a proper roof on Hambledown Hall.

Providing, however, that the worthy squire actually consents to pull out a few more hundreds, for the sake of having walls of proper thickness and roofs of right pitch, it does not quite follow that his ground-floor rooms will be dry, unless the mansion is well vaulted underneath, and well drained, to boot. We have known more than one ancient manor-house, built in a low dead flat, with a river running by, and the joists of the ground floor resting on the soil, and, yet the whole habitation as dry as a bone; but still more numerous are the goodly edifices which we have witnessed, built on slopes, and even hills, where not a spoonful of water, you would say, could possibly lodge, and yet their walls outside all green with damp, and within mildew, and discoloured loose-hanging paper, telling the tale of the demon of damp. When you are seriously bent on building a good house, put plenty of money under ground; dig deep for foundations, lay them better and stronger even than your super-structure; vault every thing under the lower rooms--ay, vault them, either in solid stone or brick, and drain and counter drain, and explore every crick and cranny of your sub-soil; and get rid of your land springs; and do not let the water from any neighbouring hill percolate through your garden, nor rise into a pleasing _jet-d'eau_ right under the floor of your principal dining-room. If you can, and if you do not mind the "old-fashioned" look of the thing, dig a good deep fosse all round your garden, and line it with masonry; and have a couple of bridges over it; you may then not only effectually carry off all intruding visits of the watery sprites, but you may keep off hares from your flower-beds, two-legged cats from your larder, and sentimental "cousins" from your maids. You may thus, indeed, make your hall or mansion into a little fortified place, with fosse and counter-scarp, and covered way, and glacis; or at any rate, you may put a plain English haw-haw ditch and fence all round the sacred enclosure; and depend upon it that you will find the good effects of this extra expense in the anti-rheumatic tendencies of your habitation.

And now for the plan of your mansion, for the Ground Plan--the main part of the business, that, on the proper proportioning and arranging of which the success of your edificative experiment entirely depends. Here take the old stale maxim into immediate and constant use, "Cut your coat according to your cloth;" and, if you are a man of only L2000 a-year, do not build a house on a plan that will require L10,000 at least of annual income to keep the window-shutters open. Nor, seeing that you are living in the country, attempt to cramp yourself for room, and build a great tall staring house, such as would pass muster in a city, but is exceedingly out of place in a park. As a matter of domestic aesthetics, do not think of giving yourself, and still less any of your guests, the trouble of mounting up more than one set of stairs to go to bed, but keep your reception and principal rooms on the ground floor, and your private rooms, with all the bed-chambers, on the floor above. Since, however, you have determined on going to the expense of a proper roof, do not suppose that we are such bad architectural advisers as to recommend that the roof should be useless. No; here let the female servants and the children of the family, perhaps, too, a stray bachelor friend or two, find their lodging; and above all, if you are a family man, if you have any of those tender yearnings after posterity, which we hope you have, introduce into the roof a feature which we will remind you of by and by, and for which, if we could only persuade people that such a very old and useful idea were a new one, and our own, we would certainly take out a patent.

There should, then, be only two stories in a gentleman's country residence, and a dormer or mansard story if we may so term it, in the roof;--we will not be so vulgar as to call it a garret,--nor yet so classical as to resort to the appellation of an attic. If, therefore, you require a large house, take plenty of ground, and lay out all your rooms _en suite_. Let all the offices, whence any noise or smell can arise, be perfectly detached from the dwelling part of the mansion:--such as the kitchens, sculleries, laundries, &c. They should all be collected into a court with the coach-houses and stables on the outside, and the whole range of the domestic offices on the other. Never allow a kitchen to be placed under the same roof as your dining-room or drawing-room: cut it off completely from the _corps de logis_, and let it only communicate by a passage;--so shall you avoid all chance of those anticipatory smells, the odour of which is sufficient to spoil your appetite for the best dressed dinner in the world. If you would have any use for the vault under your house, keep all your cellar stores, and all your "dry goods" there;--it will be a test of your house being well-built if they do not show any effects of damp after a few months' stowage below the level of the soil, yet in _aere pleno_. We do not mean to say that we would put one of our best and newest saddles, nor our favourite set of harness, in one of the lower vaults, to judge of the dampness of the house; but depend upon it, a pair or two of old shoes form excellent hygrometers; and you may detect the "dew-point" upon them with wonderful accuracy.

"But only look at how you are increasing the cost of the house by thus stretching out the house, and really wasting the space and ground!"--What! still harping on the same string--that eternal purse-string!--still at the gold and the notes? If you go on at this rate, my good sir, you will never do any thing notable in the house-line. Take a lesson from Louis XIV. when he built Versailles;--that sovereign had at least this one good quality,--he had a supreme contempt for money;--it cost him a great deal no doubt, but it is "Versailles," _nec pluribus impar_;--why, it is a quarter of a mile long, and there is, or rather was, room in it to have lodged all the crowned heads of Europe, courts, ministers, guards, and all. Never stint yourself for space; the ground you build on is your own; it is only the extra brick and mortar;--the number of windows is not increased by stretching the plan out, the internal fittings are not an atom more expensive. Be at ease for once in your life, and cast about widely for room.

And now, dear sir, if you can but once remove this prejudice of cost from your mind, you may set at defiance all those twaddling architects who come to you with their theories of the "smallest spaces of support," and who would fain persuade you that, because it is scientific to build many rooms with few materials, _therefore_ you ought to dwell in a house erected on such principles,--and that they ought to build it for you. You may send them all to the right-about with their one-sided contracted notions: is the house to be built for _your_ sake or for _theirs_? who is going to inherit it--you or they? who is to find out all the comforts and discomforts of the mansion--the owner or the architect?--If _you_, then keep to your two stories and to the old English method of building your house round one or more courts. Go upon the old palatial, baronial, or collegiate plan; no matter what may be the style of architecture you adopt, this plan will be found suitable to any. The advantages of it are as follows: first of all, it gives you the opportunity of having your rooms all _en suite_, and yet not crowded together; next, it is more sociable for the inmates of a large country mansion to have the windows of their apartments looking partly inwards, as it were to the centre of the house, and partly outwards to the surrounding scenery: and thirdly, it requires and it gives the opportunity of having that most admirable and most useful appendage of any large mansion,--a cloister, or covered gallery, running round the whole interior of the court, either projecting from the plane of the walls--and, if so, becoming highly ornamental; or else formed within the walls, and, if so, giving an unusual degree of warmth and ventilation. In this damp and uncertain climate of ours, just consider how many days there are in the course of the year, when the ladies and the children of a family cannot stir out of doors, not even into the gardens; and then think of what a comfort it would be to have a dry and airy and elegant promenade and place of exercise within their own walls. Then the children may scamper about, if it be, a proper cloister external to the house, and make that joyous noise which is so essential to their health, without any fear of annoying even the most nervous of mammas. Within an instant they may all be under her own personal inspection, and yet they may have their perfect freedom. Here may the ladies of the family walk for hours on a wet day, and enjoy themselves without trouble, and with the facility of being at home again in a minute. If the court is well laid out as a flowery parterre, and the green-house is made to contribute its proper supply of plants to the cloister, it becomes converted into a kind of conservatory, and forms of itself an artificial or winter garden. Both a cloister, and an internal corridor with windows opening into the former, may very appropriately be constructed together, and then the accommodation of this plan is complete.

Whoever has lived in a cloistered and court-built house will know the convenient and comfortable feature we would here point out:--it is especially suited to the climate of England, and to the domestic habits of English families; it is one of the most ornamental features a house can possess; it gives great facilities to the waiting of the servants; it makes the house warm rather than cold; and it adds greatly to the comfort of the whole. As for the additional cost--let the cost be----! have we not entered our caveat against all such shabby pleas? Take this along with you, good sir,--do the thing well, or don't do it at all.

A TURKISH WATERING-PLACE.

Ten days ago, when snowed up by winter, recurrent for the third time this season, I could not compel myself to the recollection of my Adalian experiences. Now that I am sitting with window thrown wide open, and with fire raked out, the spirit of the scene encourages memories of my visit to that very hot emporium of Caramania.

We had been kept on the Smyrna station till we pretty well knew it under every changing phase of season. Through the rigour of winter we had been brought now to the very flagrance of the dog-star, to the time when human nature can pretend no opposition to the mood of the lordly sun. Even late in the autumn, these clear skies afford so little interruption to the tide of sunbeams, that one is not quite exempt from risk of _coup de soleil_. Indeed this is perhaps the very time when the untutored stranger is particularly exposed to this danger. It is the only time of the year when travelling can be pursued as a serious occupation; or when one of the pale-faced Occidentals can venture forth _sub dio_ at mid-day, without positive madness. During the months that, on the admission of the indigenous, do duty as summer, the state of things is so evidently beyond a joke, that no idea of trifling therewith enters into the most unsophisticated mind. Life is reduced to something very like a resignation of the sturdy substance of the day, and a diligent employment of the two fag-ends. The intervening hours must be slept away, or read away, or somehow employed without the requisition of corporeal activity. And, considering that these are the hours during which musquitoes vex not, and lesser tormentors of the rampant kind are inactive, it is no slight boon to have such an interval, during some part of which you may sleep in peace. As for the night, you may use it for eating ices, or strolling on the Marina, or pulling out on the phosphorescent waters of the bay; but unless you be very fresh, you will hardly think of using that as the time for turning in. And thus are rendered grateful those slumbers which are induced by the prevailing spirit of noon. Of course, under such conditions of existence, there is no great probability that much risk will be encountered by any one gifted with the ordinary instinct of self-preservation. Should any one be foolhardy enough to dare for himself the experiment, he would scarcely find a _surridgi_ to furnish animals, or a guide willing to pilot him. And should he even make a start of it, am I not the very man to know what a lesson he would get in the course of the first six hours of his march; and to predict that he would, should any brains be then remaining to him, turn back on the strength of that same sample? It is only a very young, and somewhat foolish person, who would be at all likely to be found in this predicament. The dissuasion of the indigenous is so earnest, and so without exception, that, considering their knowledge of the facts, a prudent stranger must perceive in them the substance of reason. The Asiatics, perhaps, carry a little too far the dread of exposure to the atmospheric influences of summer; for they are careful to shut out even the cool breezes of night, and dread the odour of freshness that a shower calls forth from the earth. This delightful exhalation they affirm to be the producer of fever. But indeed we may concede to them the entertaining of some whimsies on this subject, as being the necessary contingencies on their fatal experiences of marsh _malaria_.