The eye of an artist differs structurally not at all from the eyes of other people. His constant having to do with lines, values and all that, gives him an enviable facility in delineation, the same facility that training would impart in any other vocation; but it is the man—the artist temperament that exists behind the ocular sense that denominates the artist, a matter of pure luck, however, or of birth, which amounts to the same thing.

When nature issues his temperament to a man, she stamps on the back of it the words “not transferable” rubricated. By no effort of his own can he bestow his temperament upon anybody else nor materially alter it within himself. He looks upon things always in a certain way—envious folks call it a squint—never may he see them in any other. He struggles with a personal bias so strong, that, in nine cases out of ten, he had much rather die than have to live his life contrary to the cherished autonomy imposed by temperament.

The artist contends with a temperament unusually exacting and, at times, very inconvenient. I remember having to ride my bicycle twelve miles one afternoon some years ago, to a bakery in another town from where I lived, to gratify a whim of temperament, I suppose, for some particularly delicious tea rolls that were manufactured there. I felt I could not possibly get along with the plain bread and butter I knew we had for supper. I purchased the rolls, and was tying the precious bundles to the handle-bars of my wheel when a carriage drove up in front of the bakery. It contained two rather unprepossessing women who were evidently acquainted with the baker’s wife, judging from the familiar way they called to her from the curb. The baker’s wife came out upon the doorstep, and inquired what kind of bread she should bring them. It was then, without an idea of causing the slightest shock to the sensibilities of the man they saw, with a bicycle, they replied with picturesque indifference—“Oh, any kind, just so long as it is bread to fill-up on!” Overhearing this I could not help making the necessary mental memoranda what unpromising subjects for art influences were the temperaments of these women—how little education could really do for them! how utterly impossible it would be for them to change their temperaments, and how, in all probability, they had much rather be dead than to be continually harrassed by the fastidious obligations of art!

But the case I have chosen is, perhaps, extreme. There is a pleasure for most temperaments in art—a certain happiness that it contributes in a mild way. The average temperament experiences through art a sensation akin to that produced by music, and like music to the average temperament, art is by no means a necessity. It is merely the graceful accomplishment to be cultivated after the serious business of life is off the stage for the day, and we turn to playthings; whereas in the case of the artist, it is his whole existence. My mother ridiculed me about episodes like that of the rolls, but always commended my talent for drawing. Although I tried to explain, she refused to believe that my talent for drawing was only one result of the

temperament which sent me for the rolls. For does it nor naturally follow that if any old bread will do to live on, why, any old house will do to live in, and I should have had no interest for anything better, certainly no incentive to the laborious grind of the drawingboard? Still, in no instance, I believe, is art or charity—for they are one and the same—wholly absent, if sometimes obscure, in the temperaments of civilized people. Without the artistic sense, charity is the uncut diamond, it yet accomplishes its own mission; while again, the gentle passion reveals itself in singular guises, we recognize it with a little patience. Unique among which guises let me cite the astute financier’s well-known love of flowers,—and here let me tell you something besides! It may be a strange observation, but the love of one’s fellow beings, and an inordinate love of flowers, in a man, rarely go together. Robespierre, at the fÊte to the Supreme Being, walked ahead of his colleagues, laden down with flowers, and away back in the morning of time the avocation of Cain was the cultivation of flowers. So, whenever you see a man passionately fond of flowers (professional florists excepted) you may know that every atom of charity which, normally, should be distributed throughout his whole nature, has been focussed at this one point; and it behooves you to mind the painted notice to small craft you have seen suspended from the guardrail of an awe-inspiring ocean liner in port, namely—

In his conservatories, surrounded by brilliant flora from all over the world, it is quite different; here you will find your astute financier the most charming of hosts; but in your business deals with him, have a care!

No true artist could be entirely happy to look at the world from the financier’s standpoint. He may listen attentively to the cunning of expediency fascinatingly unfolded, for his own good, for the good of his family, and the assurance of the future, he may heartily wish to exchange temperaments with that financier, temporarily, till he shall have gained independence of the world commercial, in vain. The unaccommodating

temperament again will not let him. He is perfectly aware that there is not half enough in the world to go round, and that he must divert the earnings of other people somewhat into his own coffers if he is to be entirely comfortable; but he had rather that circumstances divert these earnings than his own cupidity. He hopes that God will, after a little, see how hard He has made it for the people individually, and order a new dispensation. It may be a forlorn hope, but it is none the less a hope divinely implanted in every true artist and in every other charitable nature. What else is it that applauds the dramatic note whenever and wherever it is struck, even though it be the Laura Jean Libby kind from the melodrama and the threadbare theme of the indigent heroine who arraigns the conventional villain thus—

“I’d rather be the poor working-girl that I am than all your cruel gold can make me!”

These are the sentiments which reflect those of every true artist. The profession of architecture even more than that of the ministry should be entered without hope of much financial gain. For the sake of goodness don’t believe any such Munchhausen stuff about it as you, perhaps, read in a popular magazine lately. The preacher’s service to God is direct, something which He must take into consideration at least every Sunday; while the service of the architect is indirect—so subtle indeed as to create the natural fear in a student’s mind lest God forget about him entirely, even to the barest livelihood. Professor Ware of the school of architecture at Columbia College once told me that if he paused for one moment to consider how very few of the new class of pupils which every year assembled to be instructed could succeed by reason of the inexorable laws of supply and demand alone, he could not teach them. “But,” he added with a twinkle of satisfaction in his eye for having placed his finger squarely on a grim but unerring philosophy—“I had much rather starve to death in a profession that I loved than in a business that I hated, since success in everything is achieved only by the same meagre percentage.”

I am not forgetting that the profession of architecture is frequently turned into a business enterprise, run

upon business principles, used merely as a means to an end, and that end financial success—a state of things which has retarded the development of American Renaissance more than any other one factor—but this leads me back again to art and commercialism, to which I have already consecrated a chapter of this review. Let us consider for the present only the different kinds of architects we have in America, so differently equipped as to cause positive amazement while cataloguing them. What diversity of talent confronts us! talent, in some cases, one would say, that scarcely concerned architecture. I can think of no other profession which has quite so many branch specialists. Incredible as it may seem, there are prominent and successful architects—trained architects of ability—who are able to draw plans but who cannot draw elevations, and others who can draw elevations but cannot plan. There are architects who are skilful draughtsmen who cannot design, architects who can design but cannot draw at all, architects who can only write specifications and superintend—two very important branches of the profession, however, that usually go together—while stranger still, there are practising architects who can neither design nor draw nor write specifications nor even superintend, but who possess a wonderful business aptitude and personal magnetism by which they command clients for their partners or draughtsmen who actually prepare the drawings and the other instruments of service.

This class of architects is, by no means, confined to America or to the epoch.[8] As long ago as the reign of Louis XIV in France, Jules Hardouin Mansart was a shining example of the financier-architect. The description of him given in Miss Wormeley’s admirable translation of the memoirs of Saint-Simon[9] is so intensely interesting that I believe I cannot do better than to quote the fragments which succeed:

“He [Hardouin Mansart] was ignorant of his business. De Coste, his brother-in-law, whom he made head architect, knew no more than he. They got their plans, designs and ideas from a designer of building named L’Assurance whom they kept, as much as they could, under lock and key. Mansart’s cunning [his name was probably assumed for what we would call in America an ‘ad.’] lay in coaxing the king by apparent trifles into long and costly enterprises, and by showing him incomplete plans, especially for the gardens, which instantly captured his mind, and caused him to make suggestions: then Mansart would exclaim that he never should have thought of what the king proposed, went into raptures, declared he was a scholar compared to him, and so made the king tumble whichever way he planned without suspecting it.”

* * * * * * * *

“He made immense sums out of his works and his contracts, and all else that concerned his buildings, of which he was absolute master, and with such authority that not a workman, contractor or person about the buildings would have dared speak or make the slightest fuss. As he had no taste, or the king either, he never executed anything fine, nor even convenient for the vast expenses he incurred.”

The episode about his bridge at Moulins that floated down the river to Nantes is excruciatingly funny as told by Saint-Simon, but I must not appropriate the space necessary for its relation.

I cannot think, however, that the damage of an occasional Hardouin Mansart in France or a Mr. Pecksniff, I may say, in England, to the architecture of either country has been anything like as great as that done American Renaissance by their numerous colleagues upon this side of the water. That our modern architecture is as good as it is, is no less than remarkable, considering, too, how we are always trying to make it pay financially. And when at last there comes a scintillating opportunity where an architect is no longer obliged to turn out a rent-trap, a manufacturing plant, or something else that will pay a given percentage upon the investment, as happens in the case of a large country house, the marks of our national trade are very apt to obtrude themselves in a hundred amusing ways. The commercial habit cannot be relinquished in a moment, and thus, unconsciously, we betray ourselves.

Of the modern country seats of America, I should select Biltmore (see Plate XCII), in the North Carolina mountains—the masterpiece of Richard Morris Hunt—as standing first and foremost at the time I write. It is one of the very few examples of domestic architecture we have that can be compared with the historic castles of England to which I have referred and we are accustomed to seeing illustrated so beautifully in Country Life. We call Biltmore French Renaissance now; it will be American Renaissance later on. No other of Mr. Hunt’s designs can begin to equal it. You may observe that Ochre Court at Newport has a fine elevation to the sea. It is true. But the place is much marred by an overgrown servants’ wing, while the notorious Marble-house appears to have been created under pressure when the artist was overworked, for it has neither his inspiration nor individuality, merely representing several thousand cubic feet of classic architecture which would serve to better advantage for a plate in a text-book. But at Biltmore, we have an original design with the necessary attributes—attributes which I need not take the trouble to enumerate again, having been so particular about the reader’s making their acquaintance in the other chapters.

I remember I also mentioned the house of H. W. Poor, Esq., at Tuxedo (see Plates XCIII and XCIV), as an example of modern work in America that might withstand the odious ordeal of international comparison. Really, it is a very simple thing, the Anglo-Saxon home idea; for the life of me, I do not see why we have so little of it. The Jacobean manor-house historically developed to date is an admirable medium of expression, and in the illustration in Plate XCIV we may discover one other example of good American Renaissance. If you think the Tuxedo house looks too English to be called that, place it, it you please, beside Blickling Hall in Norfolkshire, a genuine Jacobean prototype, several fine illustrations of which will be found in the Architectural Record for October, 1901. Upon the long gallery of the latter, I think, Mr. T. Henry Randall, the architect of Mr. Poor’s house, has improved. The gallery of Blickling Hall has some

ugly features. In my opinion, this American architect understands the adaptation of a Jacobean manor-house better than any other of his day.

It is style and historical development—not fashion—that produces the architectural comedy—its story, its personality, its life. And now that I am about to speak again of the most popular kind of houses of all in America—Colonial houses, notwithstanding the very great number of them erected during the last decade or two, I am yet almost in despair of finding illustrations where the architectural comedy, its personality and life are to be sufficiently discovered. Perhaps the firm of architects who have been most noted as specialists in this line have done nothing better than the house they designed in the eighties of the last century for Mr. William Edgar, on Beach Street in Newport (see Plate XCV). This design was always very much superior to that of the Taylor house, of which I drew a sketch for Chapter IX; and as time goes on the gap between them widens, while I do not see that the Edgar house loses by contrast with a number of much more pretentious successors in the same style of composition.

That there is so much room for general improvement in America is what I have to offer in extenuation for the questionable sarcasms into which I have sometimes fallen in these articles. Because of its salutary influence, I have found sarcasm useful in scoring my points, preferring it greatly to flattery, which D’Israeli used, he averred, for the same purpose—he “found it useful”—adding, “and when it comes to royalty you want to lay it on with a trowel.” I do not know that the simile holds good as far as that, and I fear my sarcastic allusions have already become fatiguing.

In glancing back over what I have written, I find yet another class of architects and another theory of architecture to which no credit has been given. I refer now to that class of architects who publish books of readymade plans, and who advertise for clients in the periodicals, and to their theory of architecture which does not allow that the artist enters into the proposition. This is as I understand it, at least, from one of their advertisements, which reads, “Plans made not by an artist, but by an architect.”

Bored nearly to death by having to listen to unwelcome

art discussion which to them does not seem either necessary or practical in what they consider a purely utilitarian business for housing the people, they have conceived a positive aversion to architecture as a fine art. I do not know exactly what they mean by the affectation and exaggeration they exploit if it is not intended to be artistic; but it is quite possible they deprecate all that, themselves, as the necessary amount of tawdriness the American people will have, feeling the while unequal to educating such hopeless material. For it may be that I do these wholesalers of printed plans a great injustice—it may be they realize, as do other architects, only too keenly, that architecture is the cubic measure of art, and requires an artist of the third power to fuss with it successfully, in which case I fancy I recognize even greater method in their madness.

THE END