THE ENGLISH GENTLEMAN'S HOUSE.* Mn. KERR has pitched his key-note
just a trifle too high. The book especially wanted was a guide to the principles of domestic architecture intended for men with 1,0001. a year and 2,500/. to expend upon a house, and he has obviously selected 8,0001. a year and 6,000/. for the house as his minimum limit of thought, It is 'of no use to give directions to people with those means. They can always buy good advice, and if they will dispense with the purchase can afford to pay for their experience, and ought in every feasible way to be made to do it. If they put all the offices in such a position that the first result is a system of mutual -espionage between masters and servants, and build their own rooms so that the sun is perpetually in their eyes, they will not be seriously injured, and will acquire the exceedingly useful lesson that architecture, like sculpture, is an art which requires some study even on the part of those who have some instinct for com- prehending its first principles. It is the man who really wishes to build well, but is compelled to economize his materials, who cannot afford to build twice, who knows a good deal about stone, and wood, and brick, and sites, and his own permanent wants, but _nothing about art, who really requires to be taught, and who would be sincerely grateful for teaching. Mr. Kerr, with the true architect's instinct for completeness irrespective of cost, has flown a little over the beads of such people, and missed, we suspect, an audience more numerous and more malleable than any class of architectural amateurs. They build the worst houses all over England, yet they want to build good ones, and they might build them if only people like Mr. Kerr would teach them a few leading rules, show them that space is not of necessity ex- travagant or compactness mean, that it is possible to erect a Louse which shall neither be " square " nor " cottage " and yet convenient, which shall have offices reasonably large and yet Gut of sight, and which, above all, shall have.its windows facing the quarters whence the sun only glares when he is wanted to glare. They will, we fear, glance at Mr. Kerr's book with a feeling that it is not for them, that it is over their heads, that they do not want two dressing-rooms per bed-room, or guest suites, or galleries, or state-rooms, or the extraordinary variety of offices which Mr. Kerr particularizes with so much care and gusto. They want a house which will hold them and their chil- dren and a governess, and give them room for two married guests and two bachelors, and offices for perhaps seven ser- vants, and for the rest, be as convenient and as " important "—a funny word of Mr. Kerr's—as they can get for their money. They could get a good deal more than they do get, more in ;some respects than they have any idea of, without spending an additional hundred pounds, and Mr. Kerr, to judge from his work, could very well teach them how, but his present lecture, we fear, will not be exactly popular. People who do not want all he suggests will be apt to think it useless to study the prin- ciples he professes, though they are in themselves as applicable to a cottage as a mansion, and begin to be afraid that " aspect "
• The English fientlentan's House. By Robert Kerr, F.R.LB.A. London Murray.
and " salubrity, and " spaciousness' and " compactness," and " privacy" and " importance " are things involving a great out- lay of money.
Some of them do involve it, but a great many more do not. It is at least as cheap to build a house, no matter what its extent, on a good plan as on a bad one ; the choice of a site, if you have any land at all, is often a matter of taste, and aspect iu the country really costs nothing. Half the comfort and all the cheerfulness of a room depend on the sun looking into it at the right time, yet this is the last point very often of which amateur builders think. Mr. Kerr's advice upon this subject is exceedingly shrewd, and gives perhaps the best single illustration of his capacity for his task. He meets, in the first place, the great country difficulty, the collision between aspect and prospect, by a decision, except in very special cases, in favour of the former and more permanent requisite. One can get reconciled to a poor prospect ; one can never get reconciled to sitting with the sun in one's eyes all the afternoon. He admits, and all honour to him for an admission so true, so heterodox, and so revolutionary, that the " chief element of cheerfulness is the sunshine," but still he endeavours to keep the sunshine in its place, and with that view gives special directions for every room. A. dining- room, for example, should face the north or north-east. That is a gloomy aspect, but then you can eat in a room with a north aspect at all times of the day, and the chief use of a dining- room, at least in England, begins when the curtains are drawn. If it is to be used as principal sitting-room also, the aspect should be south-east, but the houses where this imbecility pre- vails are becoming few. The habit of " preserving " the draw- ing-room is happily dying out, and the dislike to sit where you are fed is increasing with civilization. Consequently a man who is building a house may, we think, always presuming that lie intends to use all the other aspects, lay it down as a rule that his dining-room should, if not used for breakfast, face north-east, and if used for breakfast, due north. The "sitting-room," or to use a much better, though humbler word, the " keeping room," if the family is an unwise one, should be south or south-east, but if it is wise, and consequently deems it true comfort to keep uo sit- ting-room, but open two drawing-rooms, and live habitually in both,—rejecting utterly " covers " and gauzes, and all such wretched devices, and boldly using its furniture up, preferring a worn look to a formal one,—the whole of this side will be used up for those rooms. The drawing-rooms will then be full of light never quite direct, and free from that horrible drive of the rain which in England falls upon western windows, and upon them only. The library, on the other hand, should be either south-east and by east or due east, the principle in this case, as in that of the drawing-room, being light without glare during,the time of day at which the room is principally used. To get the full advantage of this light, too, the room should be arranged in a peculiar way. The side should be either one vast bay or three bays, so that the owner may sit with the window on his left,—so avoiding the shadow of his pen,—the fire on the right, the principal book-cases behind him, and the entrance-door in front, or better still, wholly out of sight in a corner recess. Any other arrangement is certain to destroy half the comfort of the room, either by false light or too great distance from the fire, or, most intolerable of all, a door directly behind the sitter. It looks very easy to secure all these advantages of aspect in very simple ways, but just let the amateur try. The very simplest formula is surrounded by difficulties. A broad hall, for example, running east and west, the west being the entrance, with drawing-room to the right, dining-room to the left, and library across the breadth of all three, will secure all the aspects re- quired, but at the cost of all the appearance of the house, which in front will look like a barrack, with its blank walls. It is here the architect comesin, and Mr. Kerr gives plans which, with the reservation that they are a little too magnificent, seem sensible and clear. We wish he had added one for the regular square or oblong house, to which many amateurs adhere with obstinate tenacity, and which has some considerable advantages in the way of " importance," compactness, cheapness, and capacity for doing without the useless ornament which Mr. Kerr, we are happy to see, condemns. He yields too often, too, to the fancy some men have for connecting dining and drawing-room, the greatest mistake that can be committed. After science has done its best, hot food will smell, and the first requisite of a good sitting-room is to escape that lingering odour which, however kept down by good ventilation, still destroys the sense of fresh- ness and of change.
Mr. Kerr adds to his reflections 'upon the modern house a.
thoughtful but not very full history of the growth of the English mansion through the centuries, some observations on laying out a garden, analyses of a long array of plans, and a chapter about cost at which the ordinary reader will probably glance with some interest. It will not, we fear, afford him much satisfaction, its cardinal lesson being that a house for 1,2501. will cost him 1,6881., and a house for 2,5001. will run away with 3,7001., the enormous extra consisting of garden fixtures, out-buildings, professional charges, and extras at 10 per cent. For 1,688/. one does not get much beyond a dining-room 18 x 15 ft. and a drawing-room of the same size, while even the larger sum gives only in addition to those rooms a study of 14x 12 ft., which a man accustomed to space would think a closet. These estimates, however, at any distance from London are excessive, a fact clearly shown by the kind of house obtainable for 1001. a year, which represents the interest on 2,0001. at most. Mr. Kerr's main fule seems to be that the family rooms will cost on the average 90/. per room, and the offices 871., but the old rule is, we suspect, everywhere true. Fools build houses for wise men to live in, and the cheapest way to get a house is to buy one, and add the extra room you want, though the plan by no means tends to the improvement of domestic architecture. The best rule for building is, we suspect, to design the house clearly, pay a good architect well for thorough revision of plan, then get the most honest local builder you can find, contract for the whole, and insert in the contract a clause that the award of a London architect as to the builder's adherence to specification shall be binding. It is quite useless to play off local builder against local architect, for they won't be played off. The next best, we believe, will be to read Mr. Kerr's book care- fully, understand his principles, get well alarmed by his estimates, and then set to work, sure at least if not of a cheap of a well laid- out house.
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