AND ANOTHER THING
Windows show us the world, but open into our souls too
PAUL JOHNSON
There are true and false windows. An example of the false is television, which pur- ports to give you a window on the world but allows you to see only what is selected, edit- ed, spun, twisted and sloped. When you look through a true window, you use your own unguided eyes and, while you may not range far, what you see is unmediated reality. I do not watch television but I like windows. They are among the greatest of human inventions, the unit of architecture, the light of the home, the eye of civilisation. Windows, pro- tected by matting, emerge in early Egyptian wall paintings. The Greeks, oddly enough, hardly ever inserted them, fearing sunlight and having each room lit by a door opening into the central court. But the Romans built huge windows in their bathhouses and to conserve the heat installed bronze lattices filled by panes of mica, thin marble, shell or glass. The salient invention of the early Mid- dle Ages was the use of soft lead to hold fragments of painted glass in place.
Proper windows are divided into three: casements, which are mediaeval; French, which are Renaissance; and the sash, 18th century or a little before. Of course there are oriels, too, and modem picture win- dows, and those horrors in air-conditioned buildings; but none of these opens, they are therefore mere skylights. Strictly speaking, a casement has two glazed wings which open inwards, and beyond them wooden shutters which open outwards. Hence in the morning you have two satisfactory flinging gestures to bring the sight, sounds and scents of the world into your chamber.
Certainly a casement is the best of win- dows, especially if it has a box seat inside, on which the observer can sit and meditate. The first Queen Elizabeth was a regular dawdler in casement-seats, curious to watch the world go by and pick up scraps of informa- tion which would otherwise not reach her. Once, at Windsor, she heard a carter, charged with moving her baggage, complain that she had changed her mind yet again. `Now I know the Queen is a woman,' he announced to a guard. Elizabeth sent him an angel (a silver coin worth ten shillings) `to stop his mouth'. On another occasion, at Richmond, her favourite home — she called it 'a warm box for my old age' — she spotted Sir Edward Dyer moodily kicking stones in the drive. He had thought she would give him a cushy government job but, despite many petitions, none had emerged. She called out, 'What does a man think of, when he thinks of nothing?' He replied instantly, `Of a woman's promises.' She said, 'Anger makes men witty but keeps them poor,' and then 'she shrank in her head'. Almost as sat- isfying as flinging wide the casement to let in the morning sun is the ability to end a con- versation while you are ahead in the repartee by shutting it firmly.
Painters are understandably fascinated by windows, but also hugely irritated by them because of the repetition involved. Canaletto, who never scamps a window detail, must have been a paragon of patience. Constable, by contrast, loathed repetition of any kind and said, 'I hate the task of painting a gentleman's scat. The first thing he does when you have finished is to count the windows, to make sure you have put them all in.' That was exactly what J.B. Priestley did when I stayed with him at his home, Kissing Tree House, near Stratford, and did a sketch of it. Close scrutiny showed I was two bays short and he said, 'You have diminished my mansion.'
But painters early learnt to use windows as ingenious compositional devices, to increase depth, introduce contrasting light- ing systems and combine interiors with extensive landscapes, as in Van Eyck's sumptuous 'Virgin and Child and Chancel- lor Rolin'. In the 18th century artists brought in windows to cope with the weath- er. The first to do this, I think, was Thomas Jones, who could not bear the hot Italian sun, and so did some closely observed Neapolitan roofscapes from the window of his lodgings. They were dismissed at the time as unadventurous, but are now hugely prized. In the north it was the other way round — often too cold to paint outside. So Danish and north German painters devised the 'window picture'. This was a straightfor- ward painting of a window, usually open, from inside the artist's room. The townscape or landscape outside might or might not appear. The weather was often an excuse, for most artists are lazy and will happily set- tle for a conscientious reason for working from their studio instead of lugging all their impedimenta around. So the Romantics introduced the device of putting a woman at the window to make the composition more interesting. Masters such as Christian Kobke and Caspar David Friedrich produced real dramas out of such window work. But, of course, as the human figure was necessarily looking out of the window and thus turning his back to the viewer, the effect is melan- choly. The Victorians, tiring of neurotic Romanticism, reversed the mechanism and painted window pictures from the street, with ladies looking out. And the ladies smile, so the effect is jolly. I possess an enchanting little oil painting by that meticulous profes- sional George Smith of a golden-haired creature, by no means coy, beaming out of her casement. She is wearing a comforting crimson bed-gown but there is no sign of a nightie. Smith entitled the picture Venial', but I call it 'Come up and see me — now!'
Windows penetrate so deeply into our consciousness that it is no wonder they are politicised. Latin dictators orated from their: Mussolini's favourite aperture, in the Palazzo Venezio in Rome, is still to be seen. Unpopular leaders, especially in Czechoslo- vakia, were defenestrated. In English cities, between the mid-18th century and the uni- versal arrival of gas lighting, householders signified their approval of major events by sticking candles in every window. Not to do so was taken as a mark of disapprobation. It was an early form of opinion poll. If the mob was on the side of lighting up, you would be taking a risk if your house remained dark. So, among upright citizens, a typical conver- sation ran: 'Shall you illuminate tonight?' I would not dare to do otherwise.' When `Johnnie' Russell sacked Lord Palmerston as foreign secretary, his clerks, who hated him, illuminated the Foreign Office to signal their joy. Poor Dr Priestley, the chemist, failed to illuminate his Birmingham house at the demand of a Church-and-King mob, and had it burned down. That was unusually drastic. The customary punishment was to have your windows broken. During the Reform Bill agitation, the great Duke of Wellington, who declined to light up when the Whigs won a vote in the Commons, had the windows of Apsley House stoned in con- sequence. He responded by putting up effec- tive iron shutters. I wonder if they are still there. The success of the present duke and his clever son, Lord Douro, in wresting Aps- ley house from the dead hand of the Vict- oria and Albert Museum may provoke a bit of window-smashing. Art experts can be fierce when roused and I would not be sur- prised if a mob of assistant curators, led by Sir Roy Strong, 'took it out on the Duke's crystal' (as the saying went). Windows show us the world outside but they also permit us to peer into minds, and souls.
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