MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD• NICOLSON
ONE of the many advantages which we, who were born under the sign of Mercury, possess over those miserable creatures whose birth-night was clouded by Saturn, is that we believe in human progress, whereas they do not. When we remark that duelling has ceased to be fashionable, they reply that trial by torture, which had been abandoned in the eighteenth century, has in the twentieth century been reintroduced ; when we speak of advances in health and social justice, they become solemn about the tyranny of the machine ; when we praise penicillin they say that it is losing its potency and, in any case, what about bacteriological warfare? Our Marshalls become their Molotovs. The Saturnian temperament, moreover, induces its victims to regard the masses as totally uneducable ; in dyspeptic despair they contend that it is no use whatever persuading the British public to be interested in anything but bread and circuses ; you cannot—thus the pessimists affirm—induce the citizens of London even to notice their own city. I confess that there is some truth in this remark. The other day we were discussing the disposal of the Grinling Gibbons statue of James II, which has been driven from its former site outside the Admiralty by the intrusion of Lenin's tomb. We deplored the fact that the authorities could not persuade the Civil and Sea Lords to place this statue in the centre of Admiralty courtyard ; we deplored the fact that our aediles intended to dump this statue upon the strip of herbage which separates the National Gallery from Trafalgar Square. That led us to deploring our London statues and the sites on which they are dumped. There was a man present at our discussion whom I had not met before ; he appeared to be prosperous and educated ; he spoke standard English and he wore spats. This man told us that although he had lived in London most of his life he had never observed any of our statues. When we came to cross-examine him we discovered that his ignorance and lack of observation were in fact a vast complacent lake of indifference. " But surely," we asked him, " you know the statue of Charles I ? " "Oh, I know that," he answered. "That's the one in Parliament Square."
The Saturnians would have taken delight in this discouraging episode. But I (Mercuri nam to docilis magistro) refuse to become defeatist upon such subjects. The fact remains that there are more people in this year 1947 who worry about the Grinling Gibbons statue than there were in 1847. Our aediles may not all of them be enlightened or well advised, but at least they know that the disposal of this statue is a subject upon which they should decide warily ; at least they know that James II, although an insufferable man, was the founder of the British Navy and thus of empire ; and at least they know that we have only a bare handful of reputable statues and must think carefully when we put them up or pull them down. The Victorians suffered from no such inhibitions. Their minds of polished granite were impervious to the delicacies of the past. They believed in all righteousness that they were performing a public duty in removing every vestige of antique squalor. But today, in spite of wide public indifference, we are more considerate in such matters. We really do consider the effects of our planning upon the amenities of future generations ; and we really do regret that the only period • in which we have erected ugly buildings happened to coincide with the Industrial Revolution and that the only time when we designed badly happened to be the time when we built most. I should not say that the public are as indifferent today to the planning of our cities or to the design of our buildings as they were from 1840 to woo. Progress, although slight and patchy, is certainly being made.
* * * * I have been examining this week a brave and brilliant scheme, advocated by the Architectural Review for the replanning of West- minster. It is clearly explained by plans and drawings prepared under the direction of Mr. Gordon Cullen. It is based upon the correct assumption that London and Westminster differ from each other both in origin and character. Westminster was founded upon the marshes of Thorney Island at the point where the Thames could first be forded ; London was founded as a maritime port. Even when London, the port-town, absorbed Westminster, the ford-town,
the distinctive character of the latter settlement was for centuries preserved. Westminster, until Victorian days, retained the atmo- sphere of a precinct. The Architectural Review wishes to restore to it that special atmosphere. Its aim is to "recreate the coherence which the Westminster precinct possessed until, the Victorian traffic engineers cracked it wide open with Victoria Street and the Embank- ment." Nor is this high aim as impossible as it may seem. Much of the old Westminster still remains, and all that is needed is to sweep away " the varying-sized traffic islands " into which the Victorians carved it up and to recreate it as an area of peaceful unity. Nor would this scheme in any serious respect run counter to the Aber- crombie-Forshaw County of London Plan. In fact the suggestion now advocated by the Architectural Review follows the main lines of Sir Patrick Abercrombie's traffic proposals for this area. The idea is to seal off Parliament Square to all traffic except that required for ceremonial occasions ; access to Parliament will be provided by special roads running at a lower level. The whole area of what is now Parliament Square, Old Palace Yard and Abingdon Street would be paved and grassed so as to form a huge quadrangle and to give to the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament the precinctual calm of an Oxford College.
The area to be comprised within this precinct is not to be confined to the actual parvis of the Abbey. It will embrace the pleasant little streets around Smith Square and will extend even to Queen Anne's Gate. In this vast cathedral close, in which the roar of traffic will echo only as a distant hum, our citizens and legislators will recapture the peace of a less harried world. " The visual nerve," writes the Architectural Review, "is extraordinarily inactive in the urban individual." But if the citizens of London could stroll about these lawns and terraces they might derive some conception at least of the architectural wealth and the deep historic associations which those few acres of Westminster comprise. It would provide our capital city with a precinct such as no other city in the world does, or could, possess. It would be a delight for the future and an abiding memorial of the past. Above all, it would not, as I have said, be impossible or even very difficult to achieve. Even the details of the scheme, which the Architectural Review has worked out with great in- genuity, would be an addition to our present amenities. The statues of Victorian statesmen which now desecrate Parliament Square would be lined up along Great George Street ; they would stand there as solid and quite harmless Belisha Beacons. Under the plane. trees a café would be established for the refreshment of the strolling tourists. The Victoria Tower Gardens would be abolished and a row of small buildings would be erected, similar to the buildings in the Temple, where members of Parliament could .acquire rooms. A little quay would be provided where they could moor their yachts and barges. More seriously, the paving-stones of this enormous precinct would be carved with the names of those who fell in the war, and the whole scheme could thus be given the dignity of an Empire War Memorial. Are such schemes fantastic? I do not believe so. All that is needed is a little more imagination and a little more energy. * * * * Only at one point would I add to the plan advocated by the Architectural Review. We suffer much in London from a lack of small exhibition galleries ; we do not possess the facilities with which Paris is so abundantly endowed. In Smith Square we have Thomas Archer's church of St. John the Evangelist, the finest existing example of English baroque. The church was completely gutted during the blitz, but the walls and the towers still stand. It could, with archi- tectural gain, be turned into an ideal gallery for smaller exhibitions. I feel' -hopeful that the ecclesiastical authorities, if approached, would grant their consent. And there, in the centre almost of the West- minster precinct, we should have in lovely form the small exhibition gallery of which we stand in such dire need. I recommend this suggestion to our aediles.
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