The trick enigmatical nature sometimes plays the gentlest parents by an offspring who, notwithstanding their constant solicitude—the constant bending of the twig—turns out to be a disappointment, not to say a positively black sheep, has its analogy in art. And of such curious analogy no more picturesque example exists than that supplied by what has come to be known as our “Transitional period”—a hopelessly ordinary offspring of a civilization highly cultivated and refined.

To see the Transitional period in its popular aspect, which is its worst aspect, no better spectacles may be borrowed than those once worn by Charles Dickens, the novelist, to write his “American Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit.” Only, it will not do to pass final judgment from a scathing arraignment of crimes to the extent of burlesquing the subject, as happens at times in Dickens’ books. There is the documentary evidence to be sifted and examined which, I am very sure, will lessen and correct the scandal materially. And if I have hitherto neglected to avail myself of such evidence, permitting the scandal of the Transitional period to appear as common gossip in these articles, it was for dramatic effect and for contrast. In the present article I propose to make reparation, and direct the magnifying power mainly upon that which is good.

It was somewhat unfair of Dickens to expect that we should have achieved architectural grandeur in the brief time at our disposal; but I regret that his uncomplimentary description of the City of Washington in the forties is yet graphic in a degree of the present capital, though vast appropriations by Congress have been frequently lavished upon it, and misspent. We know that Dickens was not always prejudiced, by the encomiums he bestowed upon the scenery of New England, for instance, and the pretty girls he chanced to meet during his visit, who it seems contrived to be born in America despite the banal times and hideous fashions which, I am glad, could not wholly disguise them. However, as complete sets of the works of Charles Dickens are to be found upon the shelves of every public library, and secondhand copies of “American Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit” may be picked up for a few pennies at the bookstands, nobody need miss the salutary influence of many of the criticisms. Not so easily may the American student provide himself with a copy of the diary of Philip Hone, though it be a much more instructive and faithful commentary upon the Transitional period than anything Dickens ever wrote. For I think the two volumes sell for $7 net. There are no pirated copies to be had, of course, no cheap editions, as is usually the case with the more reliable sources of information it is obligatory upon us to look up would we follow cause and effect in the history of American art. Here indeed our own copyright law is a positive hindrance to the acquisition of knowledge. Few architectural students can afford $7 for a purely literary work devoted to the Transitional period.

Mr. Hone wrote his journal from day to day as Samuel Pepys wrote his, without idea of publication, and, consequently, without exaggeration, praise or ridicule for effect. He wrote things down as he saw them. He was not writing to correct popular abuses. He was, apparently, governed in his avocation by no other desire than the simple one of keeping a diary. And it is this unaffected form of diary that makes its contents more and more valuable as time goes on.

When Dickens has “Martin Chuzzlewit” entertained in New York society he constructs for our edification an amusing farce which we enjoy as a farce, though the author himself pretends to be in very earnest; but when Philip Hone relates of an assembly ball with great difficulty arranged owing to the painful lack of homogeneity and even suitability of the available personnel, another and serious phase of the case is presented, because it is sadly true. Under the ingenuous pen of this diarist, we may see James Gordon Bennett the elder wrangling with the unliveried servants for admission which, we are told, the management finally consented to extend upon the one condition that the account of the ball which was to appear in the Herald the following morning should at least be “decent.” I believe that is the word Mr. Hone uses.

At any rate, we realize as never before how disorganized the social fabric must have been at the period, and how it had deteriorated from that of the older rÉgimes. It is all but ludicrous, that entry in the diary where the connoisseurs gather in Barclay Street to pay their respects to such mediocre art as was exemplified by the allegorical series of paintings called “The Voyage of Life.” The reader remembers the old engravings of them, I dare say, very well. But we know that the connoisseurs did do this very silly thing, because Philip Hone’s diary is indisputable and exact evidence uncolored. It is incredible, nevertheless, that a political expediency should have caused the whole nation to forget so readily the proficiency in art matters attained by preceding generations, and, presto! resolved its most representative spirits into an unpromising class of abecedarians.

There is a tone often noticeable throughout the memoirs of Philip Hone, who sometimes made trips abroad in the sailing packets of his day, thereby extending the scope of his own horizon, as though he were a bit ashamed of the crude provincialism of his compatriots when it was the custom to speak the English language incorrectly, and when the three Rs—“Reading, Riting and Rithmetic”—were all the academic preparation for a life of usefulness that was required. Indeed, if he were quick at figures, could follow Webster’s spelling book, and make neat flourishes with his pen, no young man of the Transitional period need ever have despaired of positions and promotion.

The question often heard, now-a-days, “What chance has a man for self-cultivation in a boom town?” applies very nearly to the metropolis of the Transitional period.[5] What use more profitable could one have found for his time than speculation in real estate, if one could buy a house for $25,000, as did Philip Hone, and sell it within a few years for $60,000? Certainly, there was little inducement to pursue art in such a phenomenally active market for values. The best that could be expected of the very busy man of the day was to send his son betimes to college and to Europe, the liberal education, it is true, often unfitting him again for business as it was transacted in America. There was a manufacturer of Transitional furniture who sent his son to Paris to learn cabinet-making of those most renowned of European artificers; and I have it from the son himself that he was, afterwards, obliged to unlearn and forget all his Parisian training in order to meet the home demand for cheap and tawdry stuff. Fancy!

The art prophet which this bourgeois epoch produced corresponded exactly to it—just such a one as might be naturally expected—John Ruskin, old fogy with ideas of no practical value to communicate to the world, but, like Browning and Emerson, full of words, rhymes and sentences. Ruskin conceived a violent passion À la Plato for the Gothic mode of building. He affected to deplore the “foul flood of the Renaissance.” And his great theory was that as the leaves of plants nearly always terminate in a point, it was intended by nature that man should take pattern therefrom for his architecture. To make a theory so point-device consistent Ruskin went so far as to criticise those leaves of plants which terminate in other ways. Imagine some classic writer tracing the origin of the Roman arch to lily-pads which may have floated in the Tiber!

The only really clever observation concerning architecture Ruskin ever made was the metaphor he applied to the great mediÆval cathedrals—“frozen music.” But he was not a purist of Gothic architecture in the truer sense. Had he been so, he would have defended the Tudor castles of England against Renaissance obtrusion; for the Tudor architecture was a true development of the home idea, legitimate and historical, while that of the Gothic cathedrals was not intended to serve for dwelling-houses by any possible contingency. Yet Ruskin persisted in the feasibility of an anomalous adaptation, something, as a matter of fact, that nobody has achieved with very great credit. For rectories and parish houses the ecclesiastic Gothic may serve as far as sentiment and harmony are desired; but for practical uses it is a failure applied to dwelling-houses. Grace Church rectory is extremely disappointing within if we consider all the disiderata of a modern home, however suggestive of comfort it may be to the casual observer. (See Plate XLVII).

The Richmond-Dow house at Warren, R. I., shown in Plate L, is a typical example of Ruskin Gothic when the poet’s influence was at its height. For the romantically inclined individual of the Transitional period but one course was open, namely, to build himself a Ruskin Gothic cottage. The stone cottages like the Richmond-Dow cottage were the better sort, and if the narrow lancet windows tended to make them a little gloomy they were otherwise not half bad; but the wooden cottages with the perpendicular battens are execrable. Another very decent stone cottage in ecclesiastic Gothic is shown in Plate LI. It has a charming setting on High Street at Middletown, Ct., and again the interior, like Grace church rectory, is a disappointment. The delightful window overlooking the lawn is not nearly so nice from the inside. The fibre of quartered oak was generally too tough for the planes and chisels of the Transitional joiners, who always preferred to work in white pine, and leave to the makeshift grainer the responsibility of doing it up to simulate oak. We are, all of us, familiar with that forlorn art of graining.

Then, in order not to forego in the ecclesiastic Gothic cottages another indispensable makeshift—the American veranda—the Transitional architects desecrated rood-screens and chancel carvings. Happily, now-a-days, nobody would think of copying Ruskin in a dwelling-house. People may like to read a conventional gift-book occasionally, and take up “Sesame and Lilies” from the drawing-room table when they have time to kill, and want to get away from everyday life and practical things. Moreover, the most selfish and unscrupulous people in the world are apt to have a vein of sentimental efflorescence in their nature which will reveal itself, when they read Ruskin or Browning, with a zest that is Machiavelian.

But the Transitional period as we have come to know it best was not a Gothic revival, but a poverty-stricken application of Renaissance motive and detail out of the midst of which I have proposed to try to find something commendable—something to praise. Well, I think I shall have done so when I throw upon the imaginary screen I have so often suspended before my very patient audience, the picture of the doorway in East Fourth Street, New York City (Plate XLVIII). And were it a “truly” phantasmagoria I were conducting, I know it would be difficult for an audience to restrain itself—not to cry “Ah!” after the manner of the gallery, because I know how this picture affects me, and can discount the reader’s enthusiasm accordingly. The adjoining windows are out of proportion to the doorway, and badly spaced, but are faithful to the epoch. One must not expect too much of a Transitional house. The part of the window shown belonging to No. 23 Bond Street—(see Plate XLVIII), has better proportions, though the doorway beside it is not half as beautiful as the one on Fourth Street. Still, we owe it to an uncommon episode that this doorway has been photographed at all, and to which my acknowledgment is given, though I do not altogether approve the sentiment of the episode.

No. 23 Bond Street was once the property of a great beau of the Transitional period named Harry Ward. He had money besides. Now, it is very easy and natural for a great beau of any epoch, with money besides to believe that because the Sabbath was made for man, the six other days were made for him, also. Alas! no mistake could be more unfortunate, and of this the doorway has long stood as mute evidence. In coming into possession of No. 23 Bond Street, in his time a fashionable neighborhood, Harry Ward decorated and refurnished the house in a way which may be said to have been the last word upon the subject of household art of the period; and, to recur to a Transitional colloquialism, “he had his girl picked out.” But there were inimical circumstances which precluded the nuptial celebration, so they could not live in the house. Then Mr. Ward died, and, I believe, bequeathed No. 23 Bond Street, in fee-simple, to his sweetheart. This sweetheart, like Edith Bartlett in “Looking Backward,” rode on the top of the coach, and consequently she also coveted the six days that were not made for man, very much. The dispensation seemed unnecessarily cruel. We may not judge of the motives that induced her to rebel, and to keep the house as long as she lived a sacred memorial to Mr. Ward and to have nothing moved or changed from the way he had ordered it during his lifetime; but we know that without

a superabundance of wealth, she could not have gratified a sentiment wherein a sinister and selfish side out-weighs its virtue. You see, how very few of us may be trusted with money! For it would have been a so much finer monument to Mr. Ward had this house been bestowed by his legatee upon some poorer though deserving couple whom the Lord had destined to be of use to Him:—it would have been infinitely better dedicated as a museum of the Transitional period for its didactic benefit to art students; but I fear I am the only human being, excepting the care-takers perhaps, who has derived any tangible satisfaction from No. 23 Bond street since the sad dÉnouement which closed it so tightly to the busy stream of life constantly passing. [6]

I suppose the finest specimen of Transitional domestic architecture extant in the United States is the Bennett house on County Street in New Bedford (see Plate LI, also Frontispiece), erected about 1840, for a full description of which I would respectfully refer the reader to the Architectural Review (Boston) for July, 1901. There is nothing disappointing about this Transitional exemplar; it was one of those grateful notes of hope at a season of national melancholia. Wonderfully imposing from its great size, it will grieve the reader to learn that the magnificent pile is already crumbling from lack of appreciation, and it will not be long before the dealer in second-hand building materials carries it away, piece by piece, to his yard, so little do the people of New Bedford care for the most interesting building by far that their city possesses to-day. The Bennett house is the only successful adaptation of the Greek-temple motive, pur et simple, to domestic purposes that has come to my knowledge.

And here I want to say a single word about restoration. If by any chance you live in a house of the Transitional period that illustrates as good architecture

as that of the de Zeng house on High Street in Middletown (see Plate LIII), don’t try to make it Colonial as I have seen a tendency among ill-advised people to do of late. Let me say to you that you have something already so much ahead of average modern Colonial—“as she is spoke”—that it would be a sin against the decalogue of art to alter or, indeed, do other with it than religiously to guard. Just keep your Transitional exemplar in the same admirable state of repair in which you see the de Zeng house at Middletown—and enjoy it. You will thereby have fulfilled your duty to art and to the future generations who will rise up and call you blessed.

The foregoing paragraph applies equally to the Roberts mansion at the northeast corner of Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia (Plate LIII). For the sake of goodness, don’t try to colonialize it! There are several houses in Philadelphia that resemble the Roberts house—the Dundas-Lippincott house and the Willstack house being two of them, but I think neither so admirable.

I do not know that I should ever build myself a house to live in after the manner of the Transitional period even after such delightful and exceptional models as are supplied by the Bennett, Roberts or de Zeng houses, but if I already possessed one, I should rest content that its architecture could not be improved by any material alteration I could suggest.

In the Architectural Review for February, 1902, the reader may read about the Transitional houses of lower Fifth Avenue, New York City, also of that celebrated row facing Washington Square. The Waterbury house (see Plate LIV) was demolished last winter, so that its entrancing attic windows screened by the crosses of St. Andrew will no longer delight the visitor who returns to the old neighborhood.

The venerable Colonnade on Lafayette Place (Plate LV) probably makes its last public appearance in this review as among the remains of our Transitional period. Half of it is already gone, while the other half is in imminent danger. This row of dwelling-houses should not be confounded in any way with that other row known as London Terrace of Chelsea village (Twenty-third Street), because the Lafayette Place

houses were the “real stuff,” those of the London Terrace are sham in comparison.

In the Colonnade there dwelt at different times many noted individuals. When the first John Jacob Astor decided to devote some of his money to art, the Astor library and other gracious projects, he looked about him for some men of a gentler type than those with whom he had rubbed elbows in the accumulation of his wealth—men of some literary and artistic achievement who would be competent to direct the proposed outlay. Such spirits were rare in the forties, and Mr. Astor had difficulty in finding them. He induced the poet Halleck to become his protÉgÉ, and Washington Irving to pay him extended visits. I am not sure that Washington Irving was considered a guest of Mr. Astor when he lived in apartments at the Colonnade, but as he was often entrusted with various commissions in matters of literature and art, and the financing of same for Mr. Astor, who lived just over the way, it was nearly the same thing.

Washington Irving spoke and wrote the English language correctly, an uncommon accomplishment in his time, and for which the American people paid him nearly a quarter of a million dollars in royalties. He was the dilettante par excellence of his epoch, who, without having anything in particular to say, said it very gracefully. They did not pay according to real genius in the Transitional period, for otherwise, Poe should have made a fortune with two of his poems alone—namely, “The Raven” and “The Bells,” which we know, as a matter of fact, he did not. However, Washington Irving had his own mission to perform, though it must have been with extreme reluctance that he quitted his snug bachelor quarters at Wolfert’s Roost for the then palatial surroundings of the Colonnade even to serve Mr. Astor. For if you accept the hospitality of very rich people—and if you can do anything worth while you do not want for invitations—you are generally expected to return every penny’s worth of it in some way. Niecks in his “Life of Chopin” relates how when the “grand artiste” was asked to play after dinner at the hÔtel of an opulent host, he begged off, pleading that he had eaten so very little, which was true enough, for the malady from which he suffered sadly

impaired his appetite. But we are not all such consummate masters of our art as was Chopin of his, and do not dare say such things, however well merited they may be. Washington Irving saw that he could be of service to his country by telling the “old gentleman,” as he alludes to his patron in the “Life and Letters, etc.,” how to avoid banality and vulgarisms, and the Astor library was the largest and most important public charity that had yet been attempted.

In an age when the anatomy of charity is under the microscope of many a millionaire as to-day, it seems discouraging that its secret is yet likely to remain unrevealed. But let us acknowledge to ourselves, are we not hindered to a very great extent by that awkward condition imposed upon us by every religion that one hand is not to know what the other is about? And of course, you know, that really takes all the fun out of charity.