AND ANOTHER THING
The cave of a Christian Aladdin who was Gothic even in his wives
PAUL JOHNSON
The greatest treat a civilised person can enjoy in London today is a visit to the Pugin show at the V&A museum. It is truly sensational; arranged not only with glitter- ing skill, but with manifest love, and crowd- ed with extraordinary and beautiful objects. Those who think the British race has declined may well argue that we could not produce such a man as Pugin today. Even the Victorians, accustomed as they were to giants, knew he was exceptional. 'Genius and enthusiasm in every line of his face,' wrote one. And another: 'His energy was boundless, his powers of application almost unrivalled and the versatility of his powers Inexhaustible.' At the age of ten he was already hard at work, drawing, painting, designing, inventing. Thereafter, in cease- less procession, came churches, altars, vest- ments, holy vessels, jewellery, frames, tapestry, wallpaper, book-bindings, tiles, furniture from thrones and pulpits to the humblest stools, carpets and scarves, cush- ions and covers, ceilings, candelabra, stained glass, crockery and goblets, swords and forks, fireplaces, tombs, an entire Aladdin's cave of precious things. Much was wrought by his own busy hands; the rest by the incomparable craftsman in which the Victorian age abounded, jealous- ly watched by the Master as they worked from his meticulous drawings. All this pro- ceeded with ever-increasing speed until this English Leonardo, soon after his 40th birthday, was abruptly swept into Elysium, like Elijah, on a whirlwind of madness and death.
The life of this amazing man was driven by a consuming passion for the Gothic, which frog-marched him into the Catholic Church and forced him to conjure up a world transformed into one gigantic point- ed arch and its endless transmutations. It even determined his singular — and for a man of his time, robust and varied — sex- life. When he married his third wife Jane, he exulted: 'I have got a first-rate Gothic woman at last!' Driven' was indeed the word. His diary entries, mostly brief and to the point, record a frenetic life spent dash- ing all over Britain and the Continent, on stagecoaches and brigs, later on steamboats and trains — like Trollope, he found rapid motion conducive to creative work — in the execution of myriad commissions or in search of inspiration. He was short (5'4"), muscular, with a tall forehead and a beauti- ful mouth which made him a devil with women, a commanding voice, restless movements, dauntingly energetic, prone to bursts of furious temper when thwarted.
Like all Englishmen of his generation, born (in 1812) at the height of our naval supremacy, he loved the sea. From the Gothic mansion he built for himself at Ramsgate (recently on the market, I believe, at £300,000), he ran a succession of sizeable boats which he mastered himself, engaging in contraband, wrecking and trea- sure-hunting. He even dressed like a sailor, favouring a navy-blue overcoat with colos- sal pockets in which he could conceal folio volumes, monstrances, brass crucifixes and other items he picked up on his voyages, and his one spare shirt (he travelled light). He must have seemed an odd figure. Land- ing at Dover and entering 'as was his cus- tom' a first-class compartment, he was greeted with: `Halloa, my man, you have mistaken, I think, your carriage.' Pugin: 'By jove, I think you are right — I thought I was in the company of gentlemen.' The Master was not easily crossed in matters of manners, taste or anything else, and was quite capable of 'decking' an opponent with his huge fists.
Pugin believed trustingly in an almighty, all-caring merciful God, but there is no dis- guising the fact that he associated Gothic with inspissated gloom. His diaries show he delighted to record disasters, personal, financial, artistic. He always noted, for instance, when a West End play closed abruptly after bad reviews. Entries read: 'Sixty bankrupts this day.' Lady Erskine forced to apply to the Lord Mayor for relief.' Chartres Cathedral burned.' 'Dreadful thunderstorm.' The iron roof of Mr Maudsley's Manufactory fell in, burying a great number of persons in its ruins, some of whom died immediately and the rest
'The latest model: it automatically changes channel every few seconds.'
removed to the hospital on shutters, with slight hopes of their recovery.' The French libertine play not well received.' Aladdin opera not successful. The machinery wretchedly worked.' During the evening a cluster of lamps fell, covering the Lord and Lady Mayoress with oil.' And so on.
Despite his taste for the lugubrious, it was part of Pugin's genius that he contrived to make his form of Gothic light and airy, at times ethereal, almost gossamer. There is grace, elegance, gaiety in his lines. In his church screens, for instance, he uses an ultra-light-grey background, which brings out the power of his rich greens and reds, while avoiding heaviness. His tables, even at their most massive, seem spare and springy. His delicate touch makes his work immensely attractive today, and it is one of the merits of this display that so many of the items are available in reproduction. Tiles, jewellery, cups and saucers, chairs and desks, wallpaper of course, even richly worked hangings are for sale. I set my heart on a three-foot-high reliquary of brass and gilt. With its columns and porticos, archi- traves and spires it is an encyclopaedia of Pugin Gothic, its central crystal eye waiting for a piece of the True Cross. Alas, the price is 14,000.
But what is, or was, money in Pugin's magic, or rather miraculous, world? His great patron, the Earl of Shrewsbury, gulped when he discovered that the tremendous church Pugin built and deco- rated for him at Cheadle was costing him not the £7,000 he expected, but £40,000. So what? There is nothing like it on earth, the combined fortunes of Packer and Soros and Goldsmith would not buy it now. We spend half a billion on the hideous, cheap- looking and still unfinished British Library, but we could not afford a Pugin, even sup- posing one existed. None does exist: that is the point. We have artists of consummate single talents. David Hocluiey draws almost as well as Ingres and Glyn Boyd Harte achieves effects with watercolour which make me weep with envy. But the mould which brought us the omnicompetent genius like Pugin, Ruskin and Morris seems broken. Or is it? Perhaps some special boy or girl will be taken to this scintillating trea- sure cave at the V&A and emerge, trans- fixed and empowered, determined to devote a life to doing even better. The his- tory of art is full of such improbable, thau- maturgical events.
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