Sir: 'Why then may not we too revert to Classical
or Gothic when we so choose?' asked Sir Anthony Wagner in your issue of 24 February. The reason is, I think, that when an architect reverts to his 'second language,' his syntax may be passable but his accent is usually atrocious. Sir Anthony cites Wren and Hawksmoor but I think he might agree that Wren's essays in the Gothic at St Mary Aldermary and St Dunstan's in the East are not happy examples, nor is Hawksmoor's St Mary Woolnoth, memorable chiefly for its 'dead sound on the final stroke of nine.' Gothic Gilbert Scott's classical Foreign Office was made to order and the architect, we are told, had to take a cure before he could start on the St Pancras Hotel!
Oddly enough, second-rate architects of the past seem to have been quite successful at their second language, witness Bentley's ridiculous but enjoy- able Strawberry Hill. There is a lesson here, some- where.
My greatest fear is that architects may revert to classical styles in surroundings in which their miser- able attempts will do most harm: there is currently a proposal to run up a row of pseudo-Georgian town houses on a site beside Richmond Green, directly opposite to that most splendid early Georgian terrace Maids of Honour Row. Before any architect thus blasphemes in his 'second langu- age,' may his T-square cleave to his drawing- board!
Desmond R. FitzPatrick 20 Belvedere Close, Teddington. Middlesex
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