THE IDEAL HOUSE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 59, 11 March 1937, Page 22

THE IDEAL HOUSE

"SOUND, DRY, LIGHT, WARM,

AND SWEET"

A special issue of "The Architectural Review" gives big italic print to W. R; Lethaby's concept of "the house of heart's desire."

"Our aim," he wrote, "should be to develop a fine tradition of living in houses. It is a matter for experiment, lik*e flying. We should seek to improve in detail, point by point. There are enough sketch designs; now we want solids. Exquisite living on a small scale is the ideal. 'House-like' should express as much as 'ship-shape.' Our aeroplanes and; motors and even bicycles are in their way perfect. We need to bring-this ambition for perfect solutions into housing of all- sorts and scales. .'■' . '•' ' .. .

"The chief obstruction to our haying better houses has been the superstition that they should be built in a style. There is a great difference between being built-in. an imitative style, Elizabethan, Jacobean, or Georgian, and being built with style. ■ A motor-car is built with thought for 'style,1 that is, finish and elegance, but it is not built to look like a sedan chair or a stage coach. To be concerned with style imitations and what the Americans call period design is not only irrational in itself, but it blocks the, way. to any possibility of true development. . If you have your eye on that, you can't see this. To go oh building houses in the cocked-hat and brass-candlestick style is not only rather imbecile playacting, but it destroys rational growth. "We have to put-an efficiency style in the place of this trivial, sketchy picturesqueness. Even leaving out the style trimmings would be something. If you cut away disease and surplusage, you strengthen and consolidate. There are many cases in which the half is greater than the whole. We have to prune our building forms as we prune a fruit-tree and sternly cut away the dead wood. Whenever we contemplate on some directing datum, some reality like health, seryiceableness, or even perfect cheapness, true style will certainly arise as the expression of this and the other human qualities embodied. To design in 'a style' is to design a'seeming which stands in the place of style proper. This style superstition is a much greater evil than I could persuade you to believe. It filters down to lower and lower strata, and the poor-man is at last persuaded that nightmares of vulgarity and discomfort, are necessary offerings to 'style.'--■": ■-■■■■ ; ■-■■.■■■■

"The dwelling-house should be sound, dry, light, warm, and sweet. We should save in all thoughtless extravagances, and concentrate on the conquest of dirt, disorder, and waste. Houses must be built for living rather than for. letting. ' A false and confusing opposition between science and art has been allowed to arise, and indeed is rather fostered by expert simulators who 'go in for old-world effects'; but properly there is no strife between science and art in architecture. It does not matter a bit if we call flying an art or a science; the art of housebuilding is practically one with the science of housing. If we must worry over strict definitions, 'science' may stand for codified preliminary knowledge, and 'art' for operative skill, experiment, and adventure. Science is what you know; art is what you do. The best art is founded on the best science in every given matter. The art of shipbuilding is the science of shipbuilding in operation. The notion that there are special 'art forms' or 'art colours' has led to all sorts of pretences and sham picturesqueness. Art is.high competence in doing what is worthy to be done."

nacle. The whole fairy:-tile., is. told by Mrs. Violent Markham, his granddaughter, in "Paxton! arid the Bachelor Duke." . : ''v'.-i.v--' Vv- ' : ':,-

Paxton must have been/an odd'gardener's boy, for he took .a: keen' interest from the beginning in.the botanical side of horticulture, and also' in the artistic side of landscape gardening, and when the Horticultural Society started Chiswick Gardens he rushed from Bedfordshire . and; applied for work at Chiswick. He got it,. and'by the time he was twenty he was 'a foreman. Then came the piece of luck which made Paxton's , entire career. "',,'- ■ •"■' '

Next door to the , society's, gardens lay the Chiswick house; ■• of.:W,illiam Spencer, sixth DukeKof:<Devonshire^ and it was often his 'Grace's ."pleasure, to stroll from one garden jto the other and examine casually—for he was not an , enthusiast—the • rare and freakish specimens from all parts of the world. The Duke was thirty-six years old, handsome, religious, lonely, very deaf, reserved, enjoying indifferent health, introspective, gloomy. The post of head gardener at .Chatsworth .fell vacant in 1825, and the puke suddenly appointed, the twenty-thr.ee-year-olcl foreman. And then, two- days later, he departed on a visit to his friend, the Tsar of Russia. It was a queer, impulsive act, and its results were farreaching. . ' A RAPID WORKER. Paxton went straight off to Derbyshire and got to business at once. He was. a quick worker. In his own words:—"l left London by the Comet Coach, for Chesterfield; arrived at Chatsworth at 4.30 a.m. in the morning :; of the ninth'-of..May, 1826. As no person was to''be'seen at that early ■'hour,.'l got.over",the greenhouse gate by:the old covered way, explored th-a pleasure grounds, and looked round the outside of the house. I then went to the kitchen.gardens,; scaled the outside wall, and saw the whole of'the I place, set. the. men to. work there at 6 o'clock; then returned to' Chatsworth and got Thomas Weldon to play ma the water works, and afterwards went to breakfast'with poor dear Mrs. Gregory: and: her niece. The'latter fell in-loye with me. and I with her, and thus /completed ;my first 'morning; work' at Chatsworth before 9 o'clock.1' 'Paxton -lost as 'little1, time ..over'.his courtship as over his gardening,; and he. married1 his. Sarah and adored.her for; the "rest of his life.; 'She', was.beautiful, brilliantly able,' and possessed a dowry of £5000. This was one of trie'two paramount influences in. Faxton's life. The other, of 'course, was the JDuke. ■• : The new head gardener threw himself into the organisation: of Chatsworth with immense vigour, and the. Duke, dropping his casualness, joined eagerly in the- game. 'But it was; not until 1832: that', as,"'he said himself, he took to caring for his plants in earnest. "The old greenhouse' was converted into J store, the greenhouse at the gardens was built, the aboretrum invented and formed. Then started up Orchidaceae, and three successive houses were built to receive their .'increasing numbers.1 la the meantime, the ex-gardener's boy had not only replanned thegga r dens, saved-the kitch/en garden'from floods, and become chief forester, but he had founded- a r> nthly paper called "The Horticultural Register," and was writing botanical articles in fluent, vigorous, and lucid English. He followed it up in 1834"with the "Magazine of Botany;"'the success of which roused the jealousy and angry., scorn of the ' celebrated Loudon. The Duke became more and more absorbed in' his new hobby, and his friendship, with Paxton: became closer and closer. They travelled, about the country together, visiting gardens. "They visited Dropmore; they visited Windsor, where the Duke took Paxton over the Castle, 'showed me everything himself, and took great pains to explain everything to me.' They took a visit to Woburn Abbey near Paxton's old home, and both apparently derived much satisfaction from the trip. .. ." . EXPEDITION TO INDIA. And again:—"ln December, 1835, during a spell of beautiful weather, the Duke and Paxton set out on a tour in the West of England. From Newbury they visited Highclere, where the pleasure grounds and rhododendrons were much commended, and from Highclere-.went on to Tottenham Park, famous-for a'beautiful'beech avenue four.miles long." The next step was inevitable. The hothouses were at Chatsworth. But where were the rare plants for them? The answer was simple. They were in Assam..: So- : the,: Duke. decided-to send

had'been lifted for him by the Grand Tour on to a new plane. He left ChatsWorth an intelligent gardener; he returned a traveller who had.seen "cities cf men, and manners, climates, councils, governments," and had profited by every experience that had come his way. Still more important, he had. been privileged to share the daily life and intimacy of a cultured gentleman, ■whose pleasure it had been to train and form his'mind. GARDENER SUBMERGED. ■;':A11 this time building was going on furiously at Chatsworth. In 1840 Paxton made the Great Conservatory, rebuilt the village of Edensqr on up-to-:date model lines with, laid-on water, playing-field, and public drying-ground, made the mammoth Rock Garden, and designed the formal Garden. But the gardener was rapidly being submerged by the man of affairs. Paxton was Estate Agent; he arranged the Duke's' affairs with the Duke's solicitors; he drew up the scheme, which was accepted and carried through, for liquidating the Duke's debts; and during all these activities he was taking an intensely active part in the new railway boom, dashing incessantly to Manchester and Liverpool and London for meetings. In 1848 he became.a diretcor.of the Midland Railway. Then there, were giant palm-trees to be transplanted and brought to Derbyshire, the Duke's Irish estate to be reorganised and its gardens redesigned, and, as if this was not enough to keep him busy, Paxton went into Fleet Street and launched the "Daily News" with Dickens as editor. Paxtqn's contribution to the capital was £25,000. But "the venture was not successful, and it was some years before the paper was firmly on its feet. But all this tearing activity is t but a prelude. The curtain for the great climax does riot go up until August 3, 1849, when Paxton caught the ,9 a.m. from Euston with a box containing the Victoria Rega lily from .British Guiana. It' had never blossomed anywhere outside the :, Amazon-Equatorial, region. But it blossomed .at. Chatsworth; on November 2° .1849,' and its; fruit stood until recently, for all the world.to,see, a giant of iron and glass, on the top of Sydenham Hill. :,;.,.. \. ...' '. [ For Joseph Paxton; designed a tank of. iron'and glass for Victor ia Regia, and ..the very same-principles of architecture which he invented- for the Chatsworth ' lily tank .were those which The, embodied in .a sketch, jotted down on blotting paper; at a railway meeting, that ultimately became the Crystal Palace. Two hundred and thirty-three competing designs for the Great Exhibition were turned " down, but the Bedfordshire gardener's boy produced, off-hand, a design that was accepted. The Crystal Palace may. not. be-everyone's idea, of a beautiful building, but it was'a miracle of engineering. Paxton became the hero of-the hour. But-he was utterly unspoilt. No amount of- adulation could turn that level, quiet, honest head. A huge public dinner was given in his honour at Derby to'commemorate, his success in London. HIS FINAL TRD3TJTE. Paxton, in his speech, referred to tha Ijly tank and the story of the famous' design. He went on: "But the Crystal Palace. does - not derive its origin from that noble plant. No. It owes its erection to a nobler work of Nature, the noble duke.. whom I have had the honour and pleasure to serve for more,than a quarter of a century. It is to1 his fostering hand'l,'owe all I possess; "he took me when quite a. youth and moulded me according to his tastes and wishes." It was Paxton's simplicity and fundamental honesty of mind that underlie the extraordinary tale. No one was jealous of him, except Loudon for a moment, no one hated him for his success, no one regarded him ..s a sneaking upstart. The duke's affection for his gardener must have worn an, eccentric air to his friends and family. But among ilie Devonshire letters there is no hint of an undesirable influence, or of any nuisance resented by the Cavendishos. Paxton was a master of tact. Further, he and his wife knew their places and never presumed. As time went on, the duke's man took his seat at the duke's table among the other guests, but Sarah remained,, as before, steadily in the background. In 1854 Paxton entered Parliament as Liberal member for Coventry. He was ■ essentially a man of affairs and no politician, and proved an admirable back-bencher. But it required all his tact to skate round the difficulty that a lifelong Free Trader had to face in a constituency like Coventry, that was being undercut in the silk and rib1 jn trade.by France. Paxton saw clearly that' the solution was alternative trades,