MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
MUCH has been written this week upon the themes of Lutyens the great architect and Lutyens the entrancing companion. By the public he will be remembered as the designer of the Cenotaph, and indeed the speed with which he improvised that simple but intricate memorial seemed to those who watched him working to be borne upon the wings of genius. The lay-out of New Delhi, which might have provided the finest processional way in all the world, was marred by departmental economies ; but we may be sure that the Viceroy's House at least will remain as one of the most notable examples of English applied architecture. It will be years before we can tell whether the Catholic Cathedral at Liverpool will justify the high promise of its model and designs. In any case, Lutyens is 'certain to rank with Norman Shaw and Philip Webb as among the greatest British architects of the last hundred years. It was only late in his life that he acquired the scope, the ardour and the ambition of an architect on the grand scale, and even then. his fulfilment was hampered by two great wars and the penury and delays which they produced. The larger proportion of his life (the full force certainly of his adult invention) was devoted to domestic architecture and to the designing of small and perishable things. Yet it is interesting to observe how between 1888 and 1913 he developed from the picturesque, through the traditional, towards the classic. And one is surprised to discover that throughout these marked variations of intention and method there ran a Furiously distinctive strain ; an emphasis, a sense of proportions and an ingenuity which were wholly personal.
* * His picturesque, or Surrey, period showed a rapid development. Crooksbury, which he built in 1891, is certainly an unsuccessful house ; but even here the steps which lead to the porch are drawn with something of the Lutyens swing and swagger. Munsted Corner, which followed in half-timber and tile-hanging, seems to have led him to repudiate for ever such facile and unauthentic materials. In the design of the cloister. at Orchards he showed how even in 1899 he could develop a conventional theme with lavish originality. And in Grey Walls and Little Thakeham (19oz) he was able to crown his picturesque period by two buildings which combined extreme ingenuity with simplicity and strength. It was not long, however, before he tired of the gables and mullions of the Tudor tradition, ancl began to work in hipped roofs and sliding sashes. The little house at Monkton, with its wonderful view and curious design, enabled him to exploit that gift of gaiety which, in more solemn associations, was often developed into a fault. The Salutation, Sandwich, was more successful in that it achieved happi- ness while avoiding whimsicality ; and the steps which lead down from its garden front are the true forebears of the vast propylaea which adorn the facade at Delhi. In 1906 Lutyens made his first major experiment in the Palladian manner. He was given a free hand to construct, upon an impossible site, a mansion of his own design. Heathcote at Ilkley was an ambitious enterprise, from the construction of which Lutyens learnt many lessons and acquired a few tricks. The result is honourable rather than triumphant, and the garden front is marred by one of Lutyens' strange quirks of flippancy in the shape of a foolish window where a pediment should have been. None the less, Heathcote marks his development from a designer of charming houses to an architect on the grand scale.
* * * The genius of Lutyens was always being impeded by his clever-.. ness. He was an admirable restorer, and his work at Lindisfarne or Great Dixter is fine indeed. Under the influence of Miss Jekyll he brought his architecture tumbling into the garden, and we find the unfortunate masonry of Hestercombe or the intricate heaviness of the sunk garden at Marshcourt. From Philip Webb he had derived a deep respect for natural materials, and with his accustomed ingenuity he studied their application, sometimes unfortunately and sometimes with success. • Original as was his combination of chalk and brick and flint at Marshcourt, the resultant effect was brilliant rather than satisfactory ; only at Daneshill did his experiments with small bricks prove, during his middle period, a complete success. There were times when his gift for using material in unexpected ways produced results which were not justified by the expense ; he had a most extravagant habit of constructing garden paths from slates arranged like a pack of cards upon their sides. His archi- tectural humour (as at Nashdom) was not always frivolous ; his inventiveness (as at Papillon Hall) was something more than whimsical ; he could construct secondary buildings (such as the Dormy House at Walton Heath or the memorial lodges at Leicester) which had all the charm of small things and all the dignity of great. He was apt, it was said, to think more of his elevations than of his plans and to cause thereby great inconvenience to his clients. Even the Palace at Delhi, superb though it is, was designed with slight consideration for the needs of Vicereines ; and the Embassy at Washington, which has both grandeur and charm, is not adapted either to the domestic or to the official life of an Ambassador. Lutyens, who was himself indifferent to comfort, seldom seemed to realise that' great works of architecture were sometimes places in which men and women and servants were expected to live.
It seemed strange to his clients that somebody so gentle should be so obstinate ; that a man so considerate in the small affairs of life should be so relentless when it came to stones or staircases ; that a man who regarded his own genius with such simp'e delight, and who viewed the solemnity of architecture with such awestruck veneration, should so frequently introduce into his build:rigs the jokes that he made in conversation. Never, however, since the days of Sheridan or Goldsmith has a man of genius been so widely beloved. Even the most sedate company, even the most imposing personages, would relax at the sight of that round figure, those , round spectacles, that round and beaming face. He would intrude upon Kings or Cabinets with that bland certainty of proving delightful which one finds in a gay child. His pockets would be stuffed with little pipes, with little pencils, with pruning knives to sharpen them, with scribbling blocks on which to illustrate his witticisms or ideas. His puns crackled around one like the fire- crackers of Guy Fawkes' night. "Have I shown you this? " he would ask—and out of his pocket would come the scribbling block, and then a pipe, and then two boxes of matches, and then a broken pencil, and then the pruning knife. Puffing slightly from the exertion of getting these many possessions into their correct order, already beginning to giggle at the joke he was about to illustrate, he would at last get pencil to paper, and in a few rapid strokes would sketch, either a proposed mausoleum for some unpopular statesman, or else a schoolboy drawing joke, or else, quite suddenly, an idea which had occurred to him in the taxi for the readjustment of Trafalgar Square. With eyes of unbelievable innocence he would gaze up above his spectacles to see whether he was being a success. He could be pleased so easily ; sometimes, quite unexpectedly, he could be easily hurt.
Lutyens possessed the faculty of making everybody feel much younger. He adopted an identical attitude of bubbling friendliness whether he was talking to a Queen Dowager or a cigarette girl, a Cardinal or a schoolboy. He would on occasions disconcert the elderly by intruding with outrageous flippancy upon conversations which were intended to be sedate. When reproved for those excursions he would show the most disarming contrition and begin all over again. His puns were unending ; his gaiety irrepressible ; his affections universal. He was a most lovable man. It is not surprising that the country should mourn the loss of so great an architect, and in the ears of those who knew him will echo always Tennyson's superb lament:
"The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever looked with human eyes."
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