A Dual Personality James Wyatt. By Antony Dale. (Blackwell, 30s.)
THIS excellent and informing study of one of our greatest architects, first published twenty years ago, now makes its reappearance in amplified and augmented form, if destined more for con- sultation than for 'catch-breath' reading. Fame came early to James Wyatt with the opening of the Pantheon, in Oxford Street, when he was twenty-six years old, in 1772. Walpole wrote of it: 'Imagine Balbec in all its glory!' and went into ecstasy over the fetes and Venetian masquer- ades. Gibbon was more cautious: The Pantheon, in point of ennui and magnificence, is the wonder of the eighteenth century, and the British Empire.' But it languished, was converted' into an opera house, and, typical of the fate , of so many of Wyatt's buildings, was burned down in 1792. Wyatt, so it is said, saw the glare of the fire lighting the sky over London from his post- chaise as he was crossing Salisbury Plain, though, as the author of this book infers, if this be true, it must have been an unnaturally clear winter night.
And now let us remark on Wyatt's death, thrown out of his patron Codrington's coach- and-four, and killed 'while travelling at great speed' (seven miles an hour?) two miles from Marlborough. Wyatt was always in a hurry, and nearly always late. Did not King George III, when kept waiting by him for half an hour at 7 a:m., ask how many hours he usually slept, adding : 'It is *a maxim with me to allow six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool. Think of this, Wyatt, think of this!' Later, in good humour, giving him a present of a gold watch.
Wyatt was just the person to suffer from a stroke. In 1804, nine years before his death, according to Farington, 'He was paralytic and had his mouth to one side.' Three years later, someone else says: 'His mind seems to be gone,, and it is not probable he would ever be restored to what he was before his last illness.' Yet, what an inconceivable amount of work he got done. The catalogue at the end of the book is like look- ing in Grove and reading the opus list of Haydn.
The Pantheon open, with the King and Queen in attendance, Wyatt in the same year began work on Heaton Hall, now in a suburb of Manchester. Its facade is masterly in movement and right emphasis, and the interior must once have been a marvel of delicate ornament, made lively with the paintings of Biagio Rebecca, and the flutter- ing of what was a favourite motif with Wyatt, the radiating fan. Most unfortunately, when the- Manchester Corporation bought Heaton Hall they allowed most of the specially designed fittings and furniture to go. At about the same time it is to be assumed, direct evidence being lacking, Wyatt designed the exquisite dining- room at Crichel, in Dorset. And within a year or two he was at work at Heveningham, in Suf- folk; which is his masterpiece. Here are to be seen wonders of delicate invention; blue and white candelabra, so personal in design that they could be by no other hand, and, above all, the Orangery. The, later, Duc de la Rochefoticauld who 'had seen everything in France' writes that
he knew nothing to compare with Hevening- ham—just as another Frenchman, the ambas-
sador, Duc de Guisnes, writes of the Pantheon : 'Ce n'est qu'a Londres qu'on petit faire cela.' May it be added that it was for this Duc de Guisnes and his daughter that Mozart composed his flute and harp concerto (K.299) !
Wyatt has still much work in classical style before him. Another small masterpiece, the Mausoleum at Brocklesby, in Lincolnshire; and Dodington Park, for Codrington, with its circular lodge contained in a Doric colonnade, passed on the Bath Road a mile or two after the Worcester Lodge at Badminton,' one of the most original works of William Kent. Wyatt built as well, Castle Coole, in Northern Ireland; and Stoke Poges Park, which so much resembles what HBM's Embassy should be in Tehran.
But now this improviser of genius starts on another line altogether, pulling down whole sec- tions of mediaeval cathedrals, and simultaneously putting up card-houses in the `Gothick' style. He demolishes the Norman chapter house at Durham, has designs on the Galilee chapel there and 'cleans up' Salisbury. And for William Beckford he builds Fonthill Abbey, which within twenty years has fallen down. What a strange gimcrack fantasy! A Grand Octagon Saloon, 120 feet high, 'the loftiest apartment which domestic architec- ture can present, probably in the world'; the room where Nelson dined -in 1800, seventy-eight feet high; the octagonal tower rising to 276 feet; and little bedrooms over the turret, is 'the highest we should think in the world.' Strange evenings they must have been with scented coal burning in the fireplaces; the 'Caliph' with his high, querulous voice and the youthful Courtenay, soon to be ruined by their `friendship; `in the besieg- ing wind's uproar : And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.'
There was more `Gothick' work to come. Ashridge and. Bel■roir; Norris Castle in the Isle of Wight with farm buildings like the background of 'Sir Glorion,' one of the Hoxton prints; and New Palace, Kew, which cost George. III half a million, as much as Brighton PaVilion, and was pulled down by George IV. By the end of his life this architect of the split personality, one of the most fanciful and delicate of all classicists had gone over entirely into the `Gothick: A great destroyer as well, though his 'bag' was nowhere near the 39 cathedrals and 476 churches operated on by Sir Gilbert Scott. • SACHEVERELL SITWELL
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