The Letters of Philip Webb: 4-Volume Set

Table of contents :
Cover
Volume1
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Abbreviations and cue titles
Introduction
Letters 1864–1887
Volume2
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
Letters 1888–1898
Volume3
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
Letters 1899–1902
Volume4
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
Letters 1903–1914
Index

Citation preview

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB

THE PICKERING MASTERS SERIES

Philip Webb, by George Howard, c. 1875?

[From the Castle Howard collection: reproduced by kind permission of the Hon. Simon Howard.]

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB Edited by John Aplin Volume I 1864–1887

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Editorial material and selection © 2016 John Aplin; individual owners retain copyright in their own material All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Webb, Philip, 1831–1915, author. [Correspondence. Selections] The letters of Philip Webb. volumes cm Contents: volume 1. Letters 1864–87 — volume 2. Letters 1888–98 — volume 3. Letters 1899–1902 — volume 4. Letters 1903–14. ISBN 978-1-84893-498-6 (Set) — ISBN 978-1-315-63964-2 (Set) — ISBN 978-1-138-76144-5 (vol. 1) — ISBN 978-1-138-76145-2 (vol. 2) — ISBN 978-1-315-64257-4 (vol. 2) — ISBN 978-1-138-76146-9 (vol. 3) — ISBN 978-1-315-64256-7 (vol. 3) — ISBN 978-1-138-76147-6 (vol. 4) — ISBN 978-1-315-64255-0 (vol. 4) 1. Webb, Philip, 1831–1915—Correspondence. 2. Architects—Great Britain—Correspondence. I. Aplin, John, editor. II. Title. NA997.W4A3 2016 720.92—dc23 2015035179 ISBN: 978-1-8489-3498-6 (Set) eISBN: 978-1-315-63964-2 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-1387-6144-5 (Volume I) eISBN: 978-1-315-64258-1 (Volume I) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

VOLUME I 1864–1887 Preface Abbreviations and cue titles Introduction

ix xv xix

Letters 1864–1887

1

VOLUME II 1888–1898 Introduction

vii

Letters 1888–1898

1

VOLUME III 1899–1902 Introduction

vii

Letters 1899–1902

1

VOLUME IV 1903–1914 Introduction

vii

Letters 1903–1914

1

Index

319

vii

PREFACE

I quite agree that they are literature, & I think that his letters are as fine a manifestation of his personality as his architecture, or anything else. There are masses of them in existence, & it would not be very easy to make a choice for publication.1

Editorial principles The architect Philip Webb (1831–1915), co-founder with William Morris of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, was an important influence upon the emerging Arts and Crafts movement. This four-volume collection of letters comprises a comprehensive selection from his surviving correspondence, little of which has previously been published. As well as revealing the range of Webb’s professional endeavours and the value he invested in a number of close friendships, the evidence presented in his letters confirms his position as a key member of the Morris circle. It is unfortunate that, for many of Webb’s buildings, few if any letters survive pertaining to their construction, although for some others a significant amount of material is available to show his typical ways of working. But important aspects of his professional practices, as well as his intellectual and emotional sympathies, also emerge in his private correspondence, and the legacy of his unswerving commitment to the preservation of our ancient building heritage is fully represented in the fascinating letters he drafted on behalf of the SPAB. As Sydney Cockerell suggested when writing to Webb’s first biographer, W.R. Lethaby, there is something compelling and noble about Webb’s writing, displaying a consistent thoughtfulness and integrity characteristic of the way in which he conducted all of his affairs. The more than 1100 letters selected for inclusion have been newly transcribed, with the exception of a few published by John Brandon-Jones several decades ago, for which the originals have not been located, but which are too interesting to overlook. My aim has been to provide authoritative texts with a full scholarly apparatus in which the editorial interventions remain unobtrusive. Webb’s alterations and deletions are therefore retained in full, as these often provide telling ix

P R E FA C E

information about the process of his thinking and (re)composition. As many of his letters survive only in their draft form, this is especially important. All deleted material is shown as double crossed-through text, and insertions and second thoughts, wherever they are sited on the manuscript, are placed above the line, as superscript text . Commonly used contractions and shortenings are not normally expanded, such as wd and shd, or wh. and ’tis, but occasionally, where the sense or context requires it, a word is filled out by employing editorial square brackets, such as in dim[ensio]ns. Webb used colons and semi-colons freely, where a full closure might make for clearer comprehension, and I have tended to rationalise these, converting a number to full stops in accordance with current usage. Occasionally I have added missing apostrophes without comment, but I have not normally amended misplaced ones. In common with many literate Victorians, Webb often used an apostrophe to indicate possession as in ‘your’s’ and it’s’, and these too I have left without comment. On the other hand, I have registered most spelling errors and archaic usages either with an editorial [sic], or have supplied missing letters in a bra[c]ket. Webb’s original underlining has been retained, and not converted into italics. All ampersands are similarly left in their original form. I have decided not to standardise the use of quotation marks – he often uses single and double marks interchangeably within the same letter – but for reasons of clarification I have occasionally changed single marks to double. One editorial intervention I have made is to break up long passages of text into more digestible paragraphs, but usually by taking the clue from Webb himself who, without starting a new line, would often leave a bigger than normal space between the end of one sentence and the start of the next. His reason for not starting a fresh line was usually to save paper. Webb’s writing is usually perfectly legible, and there are relatively few irretrievably damaged portions to his letters. All suggested reconstructions are placed within square brackets. Where I have hazarded a reading of an illegible word or two, I place this within , and where that passage is hard to read because it is one which Webb has deleted, I indicate it . Where a heavily deleted or illegible passage cannot be reconstructed, I record this as [words illegible]. Pre-printed letterhead addresses are shown in italics, whereas those written by hand appear as standard text. For reasons of space, addresses spread over more than one line are usually contracted, with original line breaks indicated with a vertical slash. I have similarly contracted closing valedictions. I have chosen not to standardise the different ways in which Webb dated his letters, but I have consistently placed the address before the date, even on the few occasions when he reverses this. I am conscious that in an edition of this kind, repetition within the editorial notes is hard to avoid, and is sometimes desirable. How many times, for example, should one identify a name which may be relatively unfamiliar, or explain an allusion, especially for the reader who may not be reading chronologically but

x

P R E FA C E

dipping in and out of volumes? I have tried to minimise this by cross-referring in the endnotes to letters, and by trusting to the reader’s judicious use of the Index. But occasional repetitions have proved to be unavoidable. Wherever possible I have endeavoured to contextualise a letter by incorporating within the editorial notes cross-references to the surviving letters of Webb’s correspondents, using many published and unpublished extracts where such material survives and has been traced. I hope that this will also offer new insights into some of those correspondents whose names may be well-known but about whom relatively little has previously been published. With just a few exceptions, I have avoided repeating citations or the use of ‘ibid’. For each letter, any source is therefore identified within the endnotes only after the first passage of quoted material, and any subsequent quotations from the same source simply carry forward the initial citation.

Acknowledgements For allowing me to include letters and other materials held within their collections, I am most grateful to the following: International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam; Local Studies, Bedford Central Library; Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham; British Library; Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum; Courtauld Institute of Art; Emery Walker Trust; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Houghton Library, Harvard University; Castle Howard (by permission of the Hon Simon Howard); Huntington Library, San Marino, California; National Archives, Kew; Red House, National Trust; Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, London; Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; Victoria and Albert Museum, Archive of Art and Design and the National Art Library; West Sussex Record Office, Chichester (the Blunt papers by permission of John Lytton, fifth Earl of Lytton); William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest; William Morris Society and Museum, Hammersmith. In addition, I am grateful for information provided by The Crown Estate, by Trinity College Library, Cambridge and by Stratford Library Local Studies Collection, Warwickshire County Council. I am especially indebted to Frances Cockerell for granting me permission to quote from the invaluable diaries and letters of Sydney Cockerell. I am grateful to the following, who have assisted me in a wide range of ways, for their interest and support: Judith Bronkhurst, David Chambers, Jane Cohen, Heather G. Cole, Christine Conboy, Michael Drury, Helen Fisher, Anne George, Mary Haegert, Kirsty Hartsiotis, Kathy Haslam, Charles Hind, Lynn Hulse, Sue Hodson, Antony Hopkins, Roisin Inglesby, Carien Kremer, Karin Kyburz, Frances Lansley, Christopher Marsden, Amy Marquis, Jan Marsh, Claudia Marx, Anne Louise Mason, Jaimee McRoberts, William S. Peterson, Ines Pina, Chris Ridgway, Gayle Richardson, Nicholas Robinson, Robin Stannard, Virginia Surtees, Anne Thorne, Viem Tummers, Rick Watson, Nick Wilde and Chris Woodham.

xi

P R E FA C E

A particular word of thanks is due to the unfailingly helpful staff of the Manuscripts and Rare Books and Music reading rooms of the British Library, as well as to the staff of the London Library. I have been exceptionally well served by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the organisation closest to Philip Webb’s heart, and I am particularly grateful for the help extended by Matthew Slocombe and Maggie Goodall, who have been generous with their time and advice. Tessa Wild, National Trust curator for London and the South East, has kindly resolved queries relating to Red House and Standen. Helen Elletson, curator of the William Morris Society and Museum, readily gave me access to Emery Walker’s house at 7 Hammersmith Terrace so that I might hunt down one or two fugitive letters, and she shared in my pleasure when I found them. She also supplied an image of Webb’s ‘Sniffing Lion’ sketch for use as a frontispiece. I am especially indebted to my former colleague Penny Lyndon, now volunteer librarian of the William Morris Society and Museum. At an early stage of my research she put me in touch with several useful contacts, and made a number of helpful suggestions. I am particularly grateful to Mark Pollard, commissioning editor for Pickering and Chatto, for his faith in this project, and to Eleanor Hooker who helped to promote it. I have since been served well by the helpful team at Routledge, to whom the project transferred at a late stage. Frank Sharp’s compendious knowledge of the William Morris circle has meant that he has been able to provide almost instant answers to what I thought were arcane queries, and he has enabled me to plug several gaps in my editorial notes. I am grateful for his generosity. Godfrey Rubens kindly shared his expertise on W.R. Lethaby with me, lent me materials, and also allowed me to use some letters in his possession. Chief amongst recent commentators on Webb’s professional work is Sheila Kirk, whose authoritative Philip Webb. Pioneer of Arts & Crafts Architecture, published in 2005, is an exceptionally valuable and superbly illustrated study of his buildings. It will be evident to readers of this edition just how much I have relied upon her understanding and clear accounts of Webb’s building techniques. Indeed, Webb’s letters – particularly those pertaining to his buildings – are best read with her book to hand. I am greatly indebted to Chris Rycroft, who has been most generous with his time and read virtually all of my transcriptions and editorial notes, offering many helpful suggestions. It has resulted in my reconsidering and refining a number of my assertions. Any errors and misconceptions which remain are of course my own, but without his involvement there would have been rather more. To Peter Burman, whose sympathetic appreciation of the work of Philip Webb and his contemporaries is second to none, I owe several unpayable debts. He has generously shared with me his expert knowledge, and loaned me invaluable material given to him by the late John Brandon-Jones, including Webb’s office letterbooks. He also made available to me his own transcriptions of Webb’s letters to George and Rosalind Howard, and these form the basis of my selections from the Castle Howard material, although the editorial notes are mine. I have much xii

P R E FA C E

enjoyed our long discussions and email exchanges about Webb, whose world Peter understands so well. Peter Collister has lived with this project since the beginning. Even whilst engaged in his own major editorial projects relating to Henry James, he has been able to offer suggestions on matters of style and detail, and I am grateful for his continuing support.

Note 1 Sydney Cockerell to W.R. Lethaby, 2 August 1915, BL Add 52731 ff. 117–8.

xiii

ABBREVIATIONS AND CUE TITLES

Printed sources CAGM

CDGR CLJM CLWM Dakers DNB Drury Elliott Gaimster Greensted JRIBA JWMS Kirk LeMire Lethaby

Originality and Initiative. The Arts and Crafts archives at Cheltenham, edited by Mary Greensted and Sophia Wilson (Cheltenham: Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, in association with Lund Humphries, 2003). The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 9 volumes, edited by William E. Fredeman (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002–10). The Collected Letters of Jane Morris, edited by Frank C. Sharp and Jan Marsh (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012). The Collected Letters of William Morris, 4 volumes, edited by Norman Kelvin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984–96). Caroline Dakers, Clouds. The Biography of a Country House (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993). Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press: online resource consulted). Michael Drury, Wandering Architects (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000). David B. Elliott, Charles Fairfax Murray. The Unknown PreRaphaelite (Lewes: The Book Guild, 2000). Amy Gaimster, George Jack 1855–1931. Architect and DesignerCraftsman (Waltham Forest: William Morris Gallery, 2006). Mary Greensted, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1993). Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects Journal of William Morris Studies Sheila Kirk, Philip Webb. Pioneer of Arts & Crafts Architecture (Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2005). Eugene D. LeMire, A Bibliography of William Morris (London: Oak Knoll Press, 2006). W.R. Lethaby, Philip Webb and his Work (London: Oxford University Press, 1935).

xv

A B B R E V I AT I O N S A N D C U E T I T L E S

LTF LPW LTF

MacCarthy, LPR MacCarthy, WMLT Mackail Miele NBS OED Penn Peterson Surtees White

William Hale White, Letters to Three Friends (London: Humphrey Milford, 1924). John Brandon-Jones, ‘Letters of Philip Webb and his Contemporaries’, Architectural History, VIII, 1964, pp. 52–72. William Hale White, Letters to Three Friends, edited Dorothy Vernon White (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1924). This volume contains a selection of Hale White’s letters, and some extracts from letters, to PSW. Fiona MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite. Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination (London: Faber and Faber, 2011). Fiona MacCarthy, William Morris. A Life for Our Time (London: Faber and Faber, 1994). John William Mackail, The Life of William Morris, 2 volumes (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1899). From William Morris: Building Conservation and the Arts and Crafts Cult of Authenticity 1877–1939, edited Chris Miele (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2005). John Brandon-Jones, ‘Notes on the Building of Smeaton Manor’, Architectural History, I, 1958, pp. 31–58 The Oxford English Dictionary Arthur Penn, Brampton Church and its Windows (printed by Howe of Brampton Ltd, 1993). William S. Peterson, A Bibliography of the Kelmscott Press (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). Virginia Surtees, The Artist and the Autocrat. George and Rosalind Howard, Earl and Countess of Carlisle (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1988). Dorothy Vernon White, The Groombridge Diary (London: Oxford University Press, 1924).

Note: All textual references to Shakespeare within endnotes employ The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd edition (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).

Sources for manuscript material Amsterdam BCL

International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam Local Studies, Bedford Central Library (‘Mark Rutherford’ collection) Birmingham Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections University of Birmingham BL British Library, London CD The year diaries of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, at the British Library (Add MSS 52623–52702) Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, Cheltenham xvi

A B B R E V I AT I O N S A N D C U E T I T L E S

Courtauld EWT Fitzwilliam Houghton Howard Huntington LB-1; LB-2 LPW NA NBS Red House SPAB SPAB W-W Texas V&A, AAD V&A, NAL WMG WSRO

Library of the Courtauld Institute, London (two boxes of PSWrelated materials; most of his letters to GBO are in the form of old photostats, probably produced no later than the 1930s) Emery Walker Trust, London Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Castle Howard, Yorkshire; PSW’s letters to George and Rosalind Howard, in transcriptions made available by Peter Burman Huntington Library, San Marino, California Letter-book 1; Letter-book 2. PSW’s office drafts/copies for 1874–88. Private collection (See printed sources) The National Archives, Kew (See printed sources) Red House, National Trust Archive of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, London; individual case files recorded where appropriate Volume of letters from PSW to William Weir at the SPAB Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin Philip Webb papers (formerly part of the Brandon-Jones collection) in the V&A, Archive of Art and Design (ref. AAD/2014/5), London V&A, National Art Library, London William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest West Sussex Record Office, Chichester

Main correspondents CF CFM DGR DJB EBJ EW GBJ GBO GH GPB GWJ GW HTT JEM JM JR

Charles Joseph Faulkner Charles Fairfax Murray Dante Gabriel Rossetti Detmar Jellings Blow Edward Burne-Jones Emery Walker Georgiana Burne-Jones Giacomo Boni George Howard George Price Boyce George Washington Jack George Wardle Hugh Thackeray Turner Jenny Morris Jane Morris John Ruskin xvii

A B B R E V I AT I O N S A N D C U E T I T L E S

JWM KF MM PSW PWY SCC WHW WM WRL WSB WW

John William Mackail Kate Faulkner May Morris Philip Speakman Webb Percy Wyndham Sydney Carlyle Cockerell William Hale White William Morris William Richard Lethaby Wilfrid Scawen Blunt William Weir

Organisations MMF & Co Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co RIBA Royal Institute of British Architects SPAB The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

xviii

INTRODUCTION

It is perhaps curious that none of Philip Webb’s extant letters so far recovered date from his earliest years, and indeed that nothing survives until after he had completed the construction of his first major architectural project, Red House. Nor, with the exception of a congratulatory letter from his mother on his twentyfirst birthday, did he keep any of the family correspondence that certainly would have passed between parents and siblings and which might have offered us unfiltered access to the events of his childhood and early adult life. What we know of those years is derived instead from what he chose to recall for friends in later life, unconnected pieces of information which they in turn refracted. But that Webb afforded a special status to the solitary survival from amongst his mother’s letters is suggested by his careful annotation on its reverse – ‘Mater Jany 1852’ – an aide memoire to indicate that this one, at least, was to be kept until the end. Addressing him by the French spelling of his name with which he had been christened, Elizabeth Webb is affectionate but also somewhat formal and a little awkward, suggesting a woman rather shy of her sons as they began to make their own way in the world. Her husband, Charles Webb, a family doctor with a practice in Oxford, had died four years earlier when Philip was seventeen, and the black edges to her sheet of paper present a conventional image of mid-Victorian mourning whilst also emphasising the loneliness of widowhood and its obvious financial constraints when it came to assisting the careers of her children. January 11th 1852 My dear Phillippe Tomorrow being the anniversary of your Birthday as well as being the Most important one you having attained your 21st year, Aunt Sarah with me my dear Boy offer you our best wishes on the occasion, for your Health, & happiness as well as success in all your undertakings in your Profession. May you be fortunate, put your trust in the Almighty my dear Boy & he will give you patience & perseverance which in the end will bring you I trust, & believe to prosperity. Imagine our disappointment that you are not at home with Harry, did you not think him looking very thin & ill? did he tell you he had a bad xix

INTRODUCTION

knee? I much fear he is very out of health but he would not hear of it. I want much to know how long he staid with you also if anything was said to him by Mr & Mrs Billing[;] when you write give all particulars[;] everything here is going on as you left it. Yesterday was a very sharp frost today windy, wet & mild. I am sorry to say Harry tells me he cannot aprise me as regards Frank which has much disappointed me so that I must again exercise my patience again[.] wishing you many happy returns of the day believe us to Remain with true affection my dear Boy & our sincere well wishes Mother & Aunt Sarah1 Webb had already completed three years of his architectural apprenticeship under John Billing in Reading by the time he was 21, and was committed to his chosen career path. The virtues of ‘patience and perseverance’ which Elizabeth Webb wished for her son found a resonance in him – ‘Well did my mother preach to me, that work kept people out of trouble & mischief’ (Letter 32) – even if he did not share her confident trust in the reality of a personal God. He was the second of four brothers, all of whom (like their sisters) were given their mother’s maiden name, Speakman, for their own middle names. The eldest, Henry (Harry) became a doctor, training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, whilst Frank became a successful brewer – Philip later designed at least one label for his beer bottles, and a house for Harry, in Welwyn, Hertfordshire. The fourth brother, not mentioned in this letter, was Perceval (Percy), who entered the church: in the 1890s he would keep the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings apprised of unwelcome proposals for restorations at Chichester Cathedral, where he became a Canon. A childhood spent in Oxford profoundly shaped the sensibilities of the intelligent, observant boy born at 1 Beaumont Street on 12 January 1831. When he was aged about three, the family moved to a large house in St Giles’s, formerly owned by the Dukes of Marlborough, not far from St John’s College. We learn from his first biographer and devoted admirer, William Richard Lethaby, who had privileged access to all the papers which passed to Emery Walker as executor in 1915, that Webb greatly admired the work of his paternal grandfather, the Birminghamborn medallist, Thomas Webb, who was known for the accuracy and technical adroitness of his portraits. Something of the grandfather’s artistry was inherited by Webb’s doctor father, who drew animals and passed that interest in turn to his own son, whose later sketches are exceptionally well-observed. Lethaby remembered being told that ‘To draw animals you must sympathize with them; you must know what it feels like to be an animal’.2 The boy would accompany his father on some of his visits to patients, getting to know Oxford’s streets and buildings, storing away his direct experience of the lives of its residents to be retrieved in moments of delicious reminiscence and shared 60 years later with Jane Morris, whose recollections of an Oxford childhood were not so fond as his own. He recalled Holywell Street, where she had been brought up. ‘My father had two or three regular patients there, and when I was a little modest boy I used sometimes xx

INTRODUCTION

to go to the house of one of them & spend the day, but that was on the north side of the street, with the garden down to the pig-styed [sic] path-way leading between garden palings direct – in a winding way – to Holywell Church. I loved that pig and apple tainted air, as children do in the making of mud-pies.’ (Letter 606) The way in which memories could be triggered by chance associations intrigued him, and Lethaby remembered being told that they ‘seemed to be stimulated by something in the nature of vibrations’.3 The demolition and unsympathetic restorations of Oxford’s historic buildings (not least among them the work on the spire of St Mary the Virgin) was always a cause for distress, but his learning in 1874 of the clearing away of his own past had an almost tragic poignancy. ‘The Oxford houses are sold, and the Webbs & Speakmans swept away and the town purified. Poor old town, poor old memories.’ (Letter 68) ‘Being born & bred there my first perception of anything was of the beauty and seriousness of the buildings – that was my earliest and unconscious “study of architecture” – that good breeding – at all events has never left me. I may say, the manners of the Oxford buildings were the making of me.’ (Letter 614) His powers of recollection even encompassed the act of imagining himself as a child still haunting the old streets, an image prompted by Giacomo Boni’s first visit to Oxford in 1889. ‘If you saw a little & wonderstruck boy in Oxford trotting along the pavements of the streets there, it might have been the ghost of my youth, for I was born in that seat of learning, but not in its head.’ (Letter 353) This making a distinction between being a native of the town, rather than having been an undergraduate there, is telling, for Webb was acutely conscious of his lack of a formal university education. In his mind, if in no-one else’s, it set him somewhat apart from the close friendships he formed in the later 1850s, principally with William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Charles Faulkner, all Oxford men in a way that he was not. He comes close to confessing this sense of inadequacy in a letter to Rossetti in 1866. ‘Ever since fate was kind enough to make me acquainted with Topsy [i.e. Morris] & through him with Ned [Burne-Jones], [Madox] Brown & yourself I have always thought that to allow of my being considered as one of such a company, there must be something about my mental constitution wh’ excused the seeming disparity. To a certain extent I have thought the allowance to be this, that I had the capacity of understanding my men, if I could not compete with them.’ (Letter 5) He admired and envied those who were able to speak out in public without apparent self-doubts, for it was something other than natural reticence which inhibited him. On completing his articles, Webb stayed with Billing for a further two years before moving to the Wolverhampton practice of Bidlake and Lovett in April 1854, carrying with him a reference which spoke warmly of his ‘assiduity and perseverance’ and the proficiency of his drawing and design skills ‘particularly in the several Gothic styles’,4 but within four weeks he knew that he could not endure living and working in such close proximity to the symbols of modern industrialisation and deprivation. He was offered instead the happy chance of a move back to his hometown, and in May 1854 joined the office of George Edmund Street, xxi

INTRODUCTION

the Oxford diocesan architect, whose chief assistant he became and within a year saw his annual salary doubled to £100.5 He remembered with affection the comradely spirit of the office, and would always remain grateful to Street, even after he drew away from the older man’s quasi-medievalism. ‘He was everything that was honourable, and industrious beyond words, a very able architect according to his lights.’6 But whilst the years with Street ensured his acquisition of a surefooted professional confidence, enabling his move into independent practice, he was shaped even more profoundly by the cementing of a friendship that was to be the most important of his life. After completing his degree at Exeter College, Oxford, William Morris joined Street’s office in January 1856 as an articled pupil, having told his mother that Street was ‘a good architect, as things go now, and has a great deal of business, and always goes for an honourable man; I should learn what I want of him if of anybody.’7 Morris’s restless intelligence and active interest in both visual and literary culture made him seem like a new kind of creature altogether, and Webb later told Lethaby that he remembered perfectly first meeting this ‘slim boy like a wonderful bird just out of his shell’.8 By the summer of 1856, Street moved his practice to London, and Webb and Morris went with him, but already Morris was thinking of moving on. Soon afterwards, influenced by his new friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he gave up architecture to try his hand at painting. But the friendship established with Webb was never broken, and their very different personalities seem to have created a symbiotic relationship essential to both men. A trip they made to northern France together in the summer of 1858 to see medieval cathedrals – one of only three foreign visits Webb ever made – was a seminal experience which fed his imagination thereafter. Thirty years after their first meeting, he described how the experience of knowing Morris had challenged his own reticence, recognising that he took sustenance from the other man’s vitality. I can always read Morris, partly, I think, because he is most free of modern poets from thinness of thought in verse, and partly because he enjoys doing his verse, as he does in doing a piece of dyeing, or hand weaving – and all just like a child. His very egotism is amusing and childlike. Again, you see, I am a poor non educated ill furnished bundle of strange fancies and ideas. Well, Morris understands me, and never praises what I do, so that I have no call with him to pull out my too ready scepticism. Now, don’t laugh, I am most surely of a melancholy temperament, and I have found for more than 30 years it has been good corrective to rub shoulders with Morris’s hearty love-of-lifedness. (Letter 324) And in a real sense, Morris framed Webb’s own independent architectural career. Red House, near Bexleyheath in Kent, Webb’s first major project after leaving Street’s office in May 1859, was designed and built for Morris and his wife, whilst the two simple workers’ cottages at Kelmscott commissioned by Jane in memory of her husband were not finally completed until 1903, more than xxii

INTRODUCTION

two years after Webb’s retirement to Sussex. ‘Almost the very first building I set up was for you, and the very last, if I can so make it, will also be for you.’ (Letter 666) His affection for Morris extended to the whole family, and continued almost as a duty of care to Jane and the children after Morris’s death. After Red House was completed in 1860, the happy cooperative endeavour of working on its internal decorations, which drew in Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Charles Faulkner and other friends, seemed to lead naturally to the formal establishing of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, the first incarnation of what later became ‘Morris and Co’, or the Firm, in which Webb’s own contribution as a designer during the early years was always fundamental. But the most fruitful and dynamic aspect of the special relationship between Morris and Webb emerges through their founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (the SPAB), which they affectionately called ‘Antiscrape’. They both brought to this enterprise a belief in conservation through repair, and a fierce opposition to restoration and sham copying, attitudes born of their deep love of old buildings, and their sympathy for Ruskin’s vision, who had first raised the banner for such a cause. It was a matter of fortuitous chance, but one which proved essential to the success of the new society, that they brought together a set of complementary skills. When the SPAB began its work in 1877, Morris was already a public figure, a prolific writer and, increasingly, a voice shaping the direction of interior design in middle-class homes. It was inevitable and indeed right that his energy and willingness to promote ideas effectively would make his the prominent public voice of the SPAB, even if the hard graft of its casework was shared between a few of its more active committee members. Of course, Morris also had real architectural understanding, more than that of an informed amateur, and readily engaged with controversy. What Webb brought to the table was no less essential to the success of the enterprise. As a practising architect, he spoke with a palpable and precise authority derived from experience, and until he retired at the end of 1900 it was his meticulous analysis which found practical working solutions to many of the cases which passed before the committee. For nearly 25 years he remained the undisputed first amongst equals of the Society’s working architects. The evidence for this is the number of letters he drafted to be sent to churchwardens, vicars and cathedral chapters, as well as to newspapers and secular officials, although these always went out signed by the secretary. We cannot now know quite how many of these were authored by Webb, although a good many survive in his hand in the SPAB files. As the years passed, and as Morris’s growing commitment to the socialist cause loaded more pressures upon him, not least as a public speaker, it was inevitable that he was able to give less time to the SPAB. Webb would assume an even greater importance at the heart of the Society, although he began to fear for its long-term survival as the exponential growth in casework was being handled by so few of its committee members. The confidence placed by the SPAB in Webb’s exceptional expertise and professional sureness-of-touch, and indeed the affectionate respect extended to him by his colleagues, may be measured by the fact that, even after xxiii

INTRODUCTION

his retirement, he continued to be asked to advise on specific repair projects. The SPAB has survived as one of the lasting testimonies to Morris’s inspirational farsightedness, but it would have struggled without the tireless commitment which Webb devoted to it, work which he quite possibly felt was of more real value than any one of his own building designs. Without Morris, the SPAB would never have been formed, but without Webb, it might not have endured. The influence of Morris’s political sympathies upon Webb are more difficult to disentangle. The journey into socialism appears to have been a shared one, with Morris as leader and Webb as a committed fellow-traveller, but there is enough evidence in the letters to suggest that Webb had always been a socialist in his beliefs, but perhaps one whose instincts were to work at a modest level, helping his fellows more practically and immediately, rather than someone who had high expectations of success through revolutionary struggle. His belief in an elected democracy, however flawed, was something he affirmed towards the end of his life. To me, and in spite of the detested contest in declamation, either by lies or honest speech, I prefer – in the long run – this rule by parliament of tongues, & seeming waste of words, to the rule of blood & thunder. (Letter 1076 ) That said, his personal notes survive to show that on two occasions he stood in for the absent Morris, leading off discussions at the Bloomsbury branch of the Socialist League in September 1886 and at the committee of the Hammersmith Socialist Society in August 1891. Webb’s loyalty and simple decency is why Morris described his friend as ‘the best man he ever knew’, conscious also of the straightforward wisdom which allowed him to steer others towards correct decisions in their own lives. An absence of personal self-aggrandisement, coupled with an unwavering commitment to principles of honest dealing and modest living, meant that Webb was never to be wealthy. Indeed, throughout his professional life his means were slender, though he would give money to friends and causes in which he believed, often at times when he could not easily spare it. His elder brother recognised this quality, confessing that ‘I consider him Quixotic in the extreme. He likes to pay double fee for all that is done for him, & will only take half its value for work he does for others.’ (Letter 1033, note 2) That no letters survive from his earliest years might be read as a wish to be judged by what he achieved, rather than by who he was. And yet, Webb never represented any of his buildings as being anything more than honest and workmanlike, even saying once to his assistant, George Jack, that ‘I was never satisfied with any one building of my contriving’ (Letter 971). He was almost pathologically reticent and, unlike most significant Victorian architects, he resolutely refused to write about his own work, or indeed to make any public utterance about any aspect of his profession. He carefully avoided joining any professional associations, except for one, the important if somewhat eccentrically named Sanitary Institute of Great xxiv

INTRODUCTION

Britain. He turned down invitations to formal dinners as a matter of course and generally avoided anything which might loosely be termed ‘society’. This was maintained until the end of his life. In 1912, he refused the offer of the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects – as had Ruskin, and as would Lethaby – having avoided membership throughout his working career. Despite this rather ascetic modesty, he was no recluse. He had a following of friends whose admiration bordered on devotion, and invariably was one of the small company of active members of the SPAB who would repair after the weekly Thursday committee meetings to Gatti’s restaurant in the Strand, where the gossip and jokes ran freely. If a man is defined in large part by his friendships, this seems especially true of Webb. For it is in the surviving resource of letters retained by his friends that we discover his charm, humour, affection and rich imaginative life, enabling a more nuanced view of his mercurial personality to emerge. At the same time, we are often offered revealing insights into the lives of those other correspondents, several of whom though important are not currently well-represented in published documents. Fortunately, letters also survive to clients, builders and other contractors, so that for some projects (such as the Palace Green town house he built for George Howard in Kensington, or ‘Clouds’ at East Knoyle for Percy Wyndham, or the textbook repair of the medieval tower at East Knoyle’s parish church, or indeed for his new church building at Brampton in Cumbria) an enhanced understanding of his professional life is made possible, although an even clearer view of his working-methods emerges in those letters which he wrote to his long-term assistant George Jack and his former assistant William Weir. The current volumes draw in full measure from the range of these sources. Few of Webb’s letters have previously been published, but his privileged situation within the William Morris circle would alone justify this new project. At his death in April 1915 his surviving papers passed to his executor, Emery Walker, who was one of Morris’s trusted intimates, and quite as reticent as Webb himself. With the help of Sydney Cockerell – Morris’s former secretary and subsequently a remarkably successful Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum – Walker arranged the removal of the contents of Webb’s retirement cottage in Worth, Sussex, to his own house at 7 Hammersmith Terrace, just a few hundred yards upriver from Kelmscott House, Morris’s final London home on the Thames at Hammersmith. Amongst the letters were those Webb had received in later years from correspondents such as Walker himself, Cockerell, W.R. Lethaby, George Jack, George Wardle and Giacomo Boni, but Webb seems to have destroyed most of the incoming letters from earlier years. Thus there is next to nothing from his close friend and former client, the water-colourist George Price Boyce, or from Jane, Jenny and May Morris. Wardle had died in 1910, so his letters were retained by Walker, as were those from Boni, and in due course both collections were given to the Courtauld Institute. The other letters were returned to their senders. When Webb died, his own surviving letters, naturally, tended still to be with their original recipients, but in due course several important sets found their way into public collections. Sydney Cockerell was responsible for ensuring that xxv

INTRODUCTION

a number of major holdings were secured in this way. As an instinctive but discriminating collector himself, Cockerell kept everything that he ever received from Webb, and arranged for three bound volumes of these letters to be deposited in the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum (though he had first contemplated giving them to the Courtauld), as well as a small group to Rossetti and Warington Taylor, and several important letters to Kate Faulkner, written from Italy during the winter of 1884–5. Also deposited at the V&A are the surviving letters from Webb to Morris, and Cockerell’s precise prefatory note to the volume characteristically contextualises the circumstances of their survival. William Morris died on Oct 3 1896. He was not in the habit of keeping letters and this book contains only a small number of those which he received from Philip Webb which, like those received from other friends, were too often used as pipe lights. After his death they were collected in order that they might be returned to the writer, who admitted that he would immediately burn them, and at my request gave me leave on Nov 5 1896 to keep them; which I thankfully did as a memorial of a friendship of forty years between two of the noblest men of our day. (V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687) Webb’s letters to Boyce, given to Cockerell by Boyce’s widow, as well as letters to the wife of another of Webb’s clients, Elizabeth Wickham Flower, were presented to the British Library (formerly the British Museum). Cockerell’s own letters to Webb were divided between the V&A and the British Library, the latter institution also receiving s significant part of the large collection of picture postcards of ancient buildings which in later years he sent almost daily (and sometimes several in a day) to Webb. Amongst the many volumes which form the large collection of Morris papers, the British Library also holds Webb’s surviving letters to Jane Morris and those to her daughters. Amongst the letters of William Hale White (‘Mark Rutherford’) at Bedford Central Library are those from Webb, whilst Charles Fairfax Murray gave his to the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Castle Howard archives contain Webb’s correspondence to George and Rosalind Howard, whom he first knew as part of the Morris circle when Howard’s own real ambition was to be a painter, long before he inherited the responsibilities and expectations placed upon him as ninth Earl of Carlisle. In the archives of the SPAB there survives an important group of letters to his former assistant, William Weir, most of them dealing with repair projects which Weir undertook for the Society and upon which Webb’s advice had been sought, whilst at West Sussex Record Office are letters to the landlord of his retirement years, the poet and society philanderer, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who counted Jane Morris amongst his successes. Nor should the charming set of letters written during his retirement to his housekeeper be overlooked, for they show Webb’s skill in adjusting his register to the expectations and experiences of any intended recipient, without ever being patronising. This might suggest that putting pen to paper came easily to him, but xxvi

INTRODUCTION

if so it challenges his own claims that letter-writing was never anything other than a difficult and at times tortured process. Indeed, it was normal for him to make a draft, and sometimes more than one, before despatching a final version, the draft often being retained as his record, this being his practice not just for business correspondence but occasionally also when writing to friends. As a result, there is far more material to draw upon than if we had to rely only upon the survival of letters in the hands of his correspondents. His collection of drafts was amongst the papers which Walker and Cockerell transferred from Sussex to Hammersmith in 1915, and seems to have stayed in Walker’s house until after his own death in 1933. All of the papers that went to Hammersmith were made available to W.R. Lethaby when he was working on the series of essays which first appeared in The Builder during 1925, and were subsequently republished in 1935 as Philip Webb and his Work, providing us with the first authoritative biography. Friends had made other letters available, but there was much which Lethaby did not see, or chose not to use. It is frustrating that some letters from which he did quote (including a few of his own from Webb) have not since been traced – at least, not yet – but it is quite possible that they were destroyed by his sister-in-law after his death. The flame of interest in Webb studies was kept alive after the deaths of those who knew him – most importantly Lethaby, Walker, Jack and Cockerell – by younger champions, first amongst them being the architect, John Brandon-Jones. When he published a few of the letters in Architectural History in 1964, Brandon-Jones explained how ‘on the death of Emery Walker, his daughter, Dorothy, inherited the Webb papers and passed them on to the present writer’.9 It formed the basis of a superb personal collection, to which in due course Brandon-Jones added Webb’s letters to and from George Washington Jack, given to him by Jack’s twin daughters. Since his death, the bulk of this collection has been deposited in the Archive of Art and Design at the V&A, and provides the source for many of the materials within the present edition, including letters to Walker and his wife, those which survive to Lethaby and his wife, to Detmar Blow, Alfred Powell and to a wide range of other individuals, as well as letters relating to particular building projects, including St Martin’s church at Brampton, ‘Clouds’ and the restoration of the church tower at East Knoyle. Particularly interesting survivals from the Brandon-Jones collection are two volumes covering the years 1874–88, which probably formed part of what Dorothy Walker passed on to him. These contain Webb’s drafts (rather than copies) of letters which he sent to clients, and which formed the office record. The two office books are probably a chance survival, for they are in no sense a comprehensive record of his business correspondence even for those years, and there was no particular reason for Webb having chosen to spare these whilst destroying so much else, probably on removing from London to Sussex. They feature just a few of his projects in progress, whilst others are not even mentioned, and it seems reasonable to suppose that there were once equivalent volumes which dealt with those other buildings. Nor should it be supposed that his good office habit of recording xxvii

INTRODUCTION

all of his business transactions only operated during these years: doubtless, it was followed throughout his career. The fortunate recovery of these two volumes only serves to indicate the richness of what has been lost. They contain drafts of letters not just to his clients, but also to builders, clerks of works, and to other contractors, making them a fascinating insight into the working practices of a busy nineteenth-century architect. All of the content selected from the two office books for inclusion in the current edition falls entirely within the year boundaries of this first volume, which ends in 1887, when Webb was aged 56. Much of his defining architectural work was already behind him by then, whilst some of his key friendships with men of the next generation were still in their early stages, or yet to be established. Indeed, some of the very best of his letters lie ahead. These earlier pages are underpinned throughout by the relationship which profoundly shaped the contours of his working life, and which continued until William Morris’s death in 1896. Webb would later tell Morris’s younger daughter that ‘his brotherly love has left a mark on me which has clung as if I were branded like a sheep’s back with W.M – an assertion of “property” . . . he having run me down in the chase of his early life. There was something out of the “common” in that.’ (Letter 592). Morris had married Jane Burden in 1859, and after their daughters were born the unmarried Webb had extended his affection to encompass them all, something which would take on a particular poignancy after Morris’s death, when Webb reached out to the survivors. Several other close friends during these years were acquired through a mutual friendship with Morris – including Charles Faulkner and his sister Kate (had Webb ever felt inclined towards marriage, Kate would surely have been in his mind as a possible partner), as well as Rossetti and Edward and Georgiana BurneJones. The strength of these affections show up clearly enough, even if there are few surviving letters to Rossetti and apparently none at all to the Burne-Joneses. George Howard, George Price Boyce and Percy Wyndham all feature importantly as friends who were also clients (or in Wyndham’s case a client first, who became a friend) and to the wives of each Webb also extended his friendship, though there is always the sense that women are to be treated with a certain caution. Although Webb was able stubbornly to defend his work when it seemed necessary – and did so during the earlier part of his career when the office of the Commissioner of Woods and Forests objected to his plans for George Howard’s house at Palace Green – his instinct was to refrain from controversy and public comment, however strongly-held his private views might be. When invited to supply some notes on his principal buildings to assist in a book on the English Gothic revival, he politely but firmly refused to break his rule ‘not myself to make unnecessarily public any work which I’ve designed or completed’ (Letter 34), and although he was persuaded by Burne-Jones to provide quite detailed information when John Mackail’s Life of William Morris was in preparation, he was reluctant to be publicly associated with it. ‘I hope you will be able to do with as little mention of my name as may be – and if it were nil, I should be the more content.’ (Letter 614) It seems almost wilfully obtuse. But through the confidences of his xxviii

INTRODUCTION

letter-writing the complex and elusive character of this fiercely loyal and abundantly affectionate man is allowed to reveal itself. We are permitted to see how such uncompromising integrity lived itself out, but it is difficult to escape the conclusion that so consistent a clinging to simple ideals was bought at the high price of a sometimes heroic loneliness.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/5 Lethaby, p. 3. Ibid, p. 5. John Billing, quoted in Lethaby, p. 9. Kirk, p. 13. Lethaby, p. 17. WM to Emma Morris, 11 November 1855, CLWM, I. Lethaby, p. 15. LPW, p. 52.

xxix

LETTERS 1864–1887

1 • To William Morris, 18 November 1864 Transcription from Marsh1 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Nov. 18 1864 My dear Morris. I saw Brown2 the other day upon his return from Red house, & Ned read Janie’s letter to me this afternoon, so I just know something of you.3 I can only hope that you are not in great pain, and that you manage to keep up your spirits. I must say that Ned’s case has been a striking example of things all coming round after a depth of trouble – and things are never quite so bad as they look.4 Charlie Faulkner comes up to town again tomorrow,5 so Campfield6 and I manage with him to keep things going pretty smoothly at the shop, and it will do some of your brutes of customers good to wait a bit. Some of the Cambridge glass goes off tonight which has stopped Bodley’s mouth.7 I’ve set them going at S. Philips Bethnal Green with a pattern for the roof of chancel and I am now going to give them a wall & dado patterns for the same.8 I am rather pushed in a corner just now with work as I was away in Norfolk for 2 days & a night. Best love to you both | Yours ever | Philip Webb. Red House

1 During a programme of repairs and renewals overseen by the National Trust in 2006, this letter was discovered beneath the floor of one of the bedrooms of Red House, Bexleyheath. Designed by PSW for William Morris (WM, 1834–96) in 1858–60, Red House now attracts many visitors principally for its associations with WM, but is important in its own right as PSW’s first independent architectural project. My text and notes are here informed by Jan Marsh’s transcription in ‘Red House: Past and Future’, in Philippa Bennett and Rosie Miles (eds), William Morris in the Twenty-First Century, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010 (pp. 65–6). Dr Marsh also kindly shared digital images of this letter with me.

1

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 2 The painter and designer, Ford Madox Brown (1821–93), was one of the original seven partners in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co (‘the Firm’, referred to here as MMF & Co). 3 Ned is WM’s Oxford friend, the painter, Edward Burne-Jones (EBJ, 1813–98). WM married Jane Burden (JM, 1839–1914) in April 1859. 4 Three days after the date of this letter came the death of the infant son of EBJ and Georgiana (Georgie) Burne-Jones (née Macdonald, 1840–1920, hereafter GBJ). She had herself been dangerously ill with scarlet fever since the birth. 5 See below, Letter 3. 6 George Campfield was a glass painter and foreman of MMF & Co at its Red Lion Square premises, where its shop was based. 7 The English Gothic revival architect, George Frederick Bodley (1827–1907), commissioned decorative work and stained glass from MMF & Co for a number of his newly-built churches, including the East window of All Saints’, Jesus Lane, Cambridge. 8 ‘Saint Philip’s, Bethnal Green, one of twelve new churches built in the poorest parish of London’s overcrowded East End, opened in 1842 to a Romanesque design by T.L. Walker. . . . Decorative work by [MMF & Co] for the interior of the church has not previously been documented, and Webb’s patterns – probably stencilled – for the chancel ceiling, walls and dado are not recorded.’ Marsh, p. 66, note 30.

2 • To George Price Boyce, 11 April 1865 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, April 11 1865 Dear Boyce I quite forgot on Saturday when I half accepted your invitation for Wednesday that I had a 3 weeks engagement to be at G: Rossetti’s on that evening.1 I am very sorry that this will hinder me from being introduced to Wolff2 – for whose work I have a great admiration. On my next passing Chatham Place I shall look in with the hopes of see[ing] you and yours.3 Yours very truly | Philip Webb BL Add 45354, f. 1

1 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (DGR, 1828–82), poet, painter and founder-member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was also a founding shareholder of MMF & Co. 2 Probably Joseph Wolf (1820–99), the German-born wildlife artist and illustrator, regarded by many – Sir Edwin Landseer (1802–73) amongst them – as the finest animal painter of his generation. 3 Late in 1862, DGR having moved to 16 Cheyne Walk (‘Tudor House’), the watercolour painter George Price Boyce (GPB, 1826–97) took over his former studio at 14 Chatham Place. GPB had formerly shared chambers at 15 Buckingham Street with the architect, William Burges (1827–81). From Chatham Place he would transfer to West House, in Glebe Place, Chelsea, built for him by PSW (1868–70). See Kirk, pp. 75–6 and 297.

2

1864–1887

3 • To Charles Faulkner, 27 May 1865 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, May 27 1865 My dear Charlie.1 I have waited ’till now to answer because I could only see Top last night.2 – He does not take to the idea but rather makes up his mind to a more extended affair on the lower river sometime in season. I think I could safely say I could run down to Faringdon for the 22nd or 23rd of June, but I am sure I could not get away before.3 – Should we go let us hope all natures stock of West wind won’t be blown out, for then we might enjoy A. West Wind. B. Burgundy bottle. C. bow ripple. [PSW sketches a boat under sail, to which these labels refer] Yours very surely | Philip Webb C.J. Faulkner Esq Texas

1 The mathematician Charles Joseph Faulkner (CF, 1833–92) was a contemporary of both William Morris (WM, 1834–96) and the painter Edward Burne-Jones (EBJ, 1833–98) at Oxford, where he subsequently became a fellow of University College. He trained as a civil engineer, became a founding shareholder of MMF & Co in 1861, and was its first financial manager. These ties were loosened when he returned to Oxford in 1864, but he continued as a shareholder until the firm’s reorganization as Morris & Co in 1875 and with WM and PSW would be a committed member of the early socialist movement. A stroke in 1888 left him speechless and housebound. PSW would visit daily to sit with his friend, thus easing the pressures on Kate Faulkner (KF, 1841–98), her brother’s nurse in the house they shared in 35 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. See also Vol. II, Letter 587. 2 ‘Topsy’ (or ‘Top’) was WM’s nickname amongst his closest friends, supplied by ‘Ned’ (EBJ) as ‘an in-joke referring to his mop of hair’. MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 74. The fictional Topsy was the slave girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). 3 The Oxfordshire market town of Faringdon, in the Vale of the White Horse, lies about 3 miles to the south of the River Thames and WM’s future country house, Kelmscott Manor. The River Ock, south of Faringdon, is a tributary of the Thames, joining it at Abingdon, and is probably what PSW means by the ‘lower’ river.

4 • To John Ruskin, 17 October 1865 Unsigned draft; incomplete? 1 R.B. G.I Oct. 17. 1865 Dear M Ruskin. A gentleman of the name of F Warburton Stent – an Archt & Surveyor2 – wrote to me & also called, to explain a plan for forwarding the building of middle class houses of a sound & seemly character. r

1

3

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Mr Stent told me that he had laid the plan before you, and that you desired to have my opinion upon the subject.3 I told Mr Stent that I thought it might be possible to find tenants for houses, where the best part of the cost was put into the substance and conveniences of the building instead of into the tricking out, but that in my practice I had not found it so – that the main body of the people never really accounted for their ills of housing – & would probably refer a bad smell from the drains to the bad taste of the Architect. Still I have seen many things for wh’ I myself have not thought it reasonable of to make effort wh’ have been carried through by abundant energy to a fair end. Another main difficulty I think would be that it would be impossible to give an equivalent to the people in sound work for the bad ornament wh’ has had its value in their eyes – in the same way that a badly painted scene at a play is accounted for and accepted. Even the entire class of designers who are determined to solve the problem, & give solid practical decoration – by jutting a brick out here & blocking another in there – have scarcely such contented tenants as the more wise and fashionable builders. It is found also now by the mercantile classes that they can build houses for one purpose, wh’ by management can be used for another, and pay 12 or 15 p ct interest – 6, 7 or 8 or 9 per ct would be the utmost that could be got I fancy from the class of house in question, if the purpose were honestly kept in view – it is scarcely likely that there wd be rush of capitalists, for such a proposed return for their money.4 Texas

1 Indisputably the most celebrated art critic of the nineteenth century, John Ruskin (JR, 1819–1900) was also a social commentator of great importance. His writing and thinking profoundly influenced both PSW and WM, not least in the principles underpinning their founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877. 2 The London-based Frederick Warburton Stent (fl. 1846–94), architect (with Augustus Laver), of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa (1865). 3 A month earlier, the Daily Telegraph had published a series of letters from JR about domestic servants, in the last of which he commented on the poor quality of suburban house-building. ‘Round every railroad station, out of the once quiet fields, there bursts up first a blotch of brick-fields, and then of ghastly houses, washed over with slime into miserable fineries of cornice and portico. A gentleman would hew for himself a log hut, and thresh for himself a straw bed, before he would live in such; but the builders count safely on tenants’ (18 September 1865). It is surely more than mere coincidence that on the same day that PSW was writing to JR, the Daily Telegraph published another JR letter (dated 16 October) headed ‘Modern Houses’, itself prompted by a correspondence to which he would direct PSW’s attention (see note 4). JR was responding to ‘W.H.W.’, whose letter had appeared in the paper the day before, seeking JR’s advice for effecting an improvement in modest, middleclass housing. This was the author and civil servant William Hale White, ‘Mark Rutherford’ (WHW, 1831–1913), for whom PSW would design 19 Park Hill, Carshalton, Surrey (1867–8). They became close friends, JR bringing the two together. ‘I am happy to be able to tell you of an

4

1864–1887 architect, Mr. Philip Webb . . . who will give you perfectly sound and noble work for absolutely just price.’ JR to WHW, 27 October 1967. See White, p. 41. 4 JR’s reply is somewhat equivocal. ‘Sincere thanks for your letter. I have no hope in such business myself – but do not choose to discourage others, and it seems to me at least conceivable that a company might be founded for useful & permanent building – and drag on a miserable, but a very honourable and useful existence. Did you see the letters in the Daily Telegraph yesterday and Tuesday or Monday, on this subject. I expect further communications on the matter, and will write to you again.’ JR to PSW, 19 October 1865, Texas.

5 • To Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 21 May 1866 Unsigned draft, annotated by SCC ‘?21 May 1866’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, My dear Gabriel. I am so much obliged by your kind letter,1 that I think it worth while to run the risk of boring you to explain, that, what you said in it has been carefully read & more carefully considered – let me start by saying that I quite agree with your argument in the abstract, but I cannot think that you would have considered thought it necessary of application if you had known more of the person to whom it was applied.2 Ever since fate was kind enough to make me acquainted with Topsy & through him with Ned, [Madox] Brown & yourself I have always considered thought that to allow of my being considered as one of such a company, there must be something about such a my mental constitution as mine wh’ wd excused the seeming disparity. To a certain extent I have considered thought the allowance to be this, that I knew I had the capacity of understanding my men, if I could not compete with them. I am certain that I never made a mistake in judging of either of you – and I am also certain that I know of some men whose work at first sight wd seem to lead to the belief that they were deserving of greater attention, but an experience of their ways of thought lead to a certain knowledge of their real incapacity. Mere flattery would not blind me to defect, for instance [Warington] Taylor was treated by me for a long time in a less kind way than was his right on acct of his sweeping praise & blame – and to a certain extent it was you who gave the casting vote to my mind for accepting him as very genuine in his way.3 I am quite sure Gabriel that you will agree with me that the present time is not an artistic one, and that any one who wishes to follow it art with advantage to the world at large and with hope of competing with that art gone before must be very severe on the liability of disturbance from collateral causes, such as payment, popularity, position &c. None of these are of necessity ruinous to art, but they do often ruin the workman. In fine Gabriel if I was not so gauche a companion you would know me to be very large-minded with regard to all ability and exceedingly thoughtful of the 5

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

unhappiness of those who do not possess it, careful not to give them offence – but in reality irritated beyond measure by presumptuous ignorance & wrongdoing. Please read this in a good temper & burn it before you are in a bad one & believe me, | Yours very truly V&A, NAL MSL/1958/691/11

1 ‘Thanks for your good letter most sincerely. I considered you grossly abusive but not in the least unfriendly, which was all right and as it should be between members of a firm headed by Topsy & sentinelled by Taylor.’ DGR to PSW, 20 May 1866, CDGR, III. 2 Of MMF & Co DGR had written that ‘I do not see that our views are best fostered by notorious over-exclusiveness, nor that a gifted and enthusiastic artist who is outside of our circle [SCC annotation: ‘?Whistler’] need be described or thought of as a “blackguard” because we do not exactly agree with his aims or their result, nor even because he does not exactly agree with ours. There are such things as Art-criminals; but, such an one, if intellect and devotion to Art are worth anything, cannot be reckoned among them, whatever his style.’ 3 George Warington Taylor (1835–70) was appointed manager of MMF & Co in 1865, a position which he held until his death five years later. His endeavours to place the firm on a sound footing met with some success, although this was predicated on the kind of business discipline to which some of the partners were not likely to be sympathetic. A case has been made for Taylor’s role being less crucial than is sometimes claimed, and that WM’s own grasp of business competence was already well developed by this time. Jon Press and Charles Harvey, ‘William Morris, Warington Taylor and the Firm, 1865–1875’, JWMS, VII (Autumn 1986), pp. 41–4.

6 • To Charles Gore, 22 August 1867 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Aug 22 1867 Sir:1 On the behalf of Mr George Howard, I left the plans of the proposed house in Palace gardens at 1 Whitehall Place today, and I explained the peculiarities of arrangement to the Clerk.2 I also saw Mr Pennethorne’s clerk and arranged that tracings of the plans shd be sent to Mr Pennethorne on Wednesday evening for his approval.3 As the building season is far advanced, both Mr Howard & myself w’d be much obliged by any assistance of expedition that you could give us in the matter of official assent to the plans. Should personal explanation be required I will attend in Whitehall, at your request. I am Sir: | Yours faithfully | Philip Webb: | Archt The Hon C: H: Gore. NA CRES 35/21217

6

1864–1887 1 The Hon. Charles Alexander Gore (1811–97) was Commissioner of Woods and Forests, the government office in Whitehall Place which oversaw the public and commercial interests of the Crown Estate. Approval for any building on Crown property therefore came within his authority. 2 For George Howard, see next letter. In March 1867, he had ‘purchased the lease of the old graceand-favour residence at No. 1 Palace Green for £1,600. This lease, which was for eight years from 1863, contained a provision that the old house had to be demolished and a new one built at a cost of at least £3,500.’ Survey of London, General Editor: F.H.W. Sheppard, XXXVII, Northern Kensington (London: The Athlone Press, 1973), p. 185. 3 The neo-classical architect James Pennethorne (1801–71) trained under John Nash and learned drawing from Pugin. Most of his professional work involved government contracts, and he exercised significant influence from 1839 when he was appointed Architect and Surveyor to the Commissioners for Woods and Forests. His advice and recommendations would be sought for building proposals on the Crown Estate. Pennethorne received a knighthood after he retired in 1870.

7 • To George Howard, 7 September 1867 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 7 1867 Dear Mr Howard.1 After quite unavoidable delay I have this day got tenders for the house in Palace Gardens Kensington. The amounts are tolerably satisfactory – but not quite. They are for total works & everything for use except papering – £6,664.0.0. For hot water supply to all floors with kitchen cooking apparatus grates &c and the Lift from basement to all floors up to 2nd floor £272.0.0. The total sum will be £6,936.0.0. and is within the boundary which at your request I feel myself bound to keep, viz £7,000 but I cannot allow you to suppose that in a work of this size no unforeseen or accidental costs will have to be met – at least £300 ought therefore to be allowed for this and £50 for a temporary clerk of works which brings the total to £7,286. At your desire upon hearing from you I will go over the quantities and reduce where possible to the amount of £286. I am afraid that we are likely to suffer further delay on account of Mr Gore or Mr Pennethorne, for one or both of them (I cannot tell which) object to the character of the elevations.2 Now this I do not think we were led to expect, more especially as I have taken particular pains to avoid anythink [sic] like obtrusive or erratic design, and I think you know enough of my work to be able to say that it is not likely to err on the side of ostentation. In a letter which, at the request of his Clerk, I sent to Mr Pennethorne who is abroad, I explained the motives of the design and how I had endeavoured to keep the artistic impression of the Palace neighbourhood always in mind subject always to the necessity of a modern difference.

7

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

If you could bring any friendly pressure to bear on Mr Gore it would perhaps be advisable to use it, so as to avoid delay as much as possible.3 [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 George James Howard (GH, 1843–1911), who in 1889 succeeded his uncle as ninth earl of Carlisle, inheriting substantial family estates in Cumberland (Naworth Castle), Northumberland and Yorkshire (Castle Howard), was a regular member of the WM circle in these earlier years. He was a capable landscape painter, and a close friend of EBJ. After his marriage to Rosalind Stanley (1845–1921), daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley, GH commissioned PSW to build 1 Palace Green, Kensington (1867–70), which was subsequently decorated throughout by MMF & Co. See Kirk, pp. 71–4 and 297. PSW also undertook projects for GH’s northern estates. 2 Evidently, PSW had heard word that the plans were being challenged. Pennethorne (who was on holiday in Switzerland) had written to Gore with his initial reactions, setting the tone for an increasingly personal dispute between two architects of fundamentally different outlooks, and which has been aptly described as epitomising ‘the passing of an age’. See Geoffrey Tyack, Sir James Pennethorne and the Making of Victorian London (Cambridge: University Press, 1992), p. 305. ‘I have looked at the plans & elevations proposed by Mr Webb for Mr Howard’s House at Kensington but am very unwilling to report officially upon them until you have had an opportunity to consider them. The plans could not be reported on because only two floors are shewn – and though the arrangements are more for Mr Howard than for the Office I may observe that the Dining Room is small – and the Stable yard so narrow I doubt if a carriage could be turned in it: and it might be more convenient and less objectionable to Mr Huth if the Stables were turned to the North end. The Elevations as drawn are almost unintelligible, but I am quite certain that the House if built according to them would be far inferior to any one on the Estate – it would look most commonplace – and in my opinion be perfectly hideous – it is probably intended for dutch or german but is unsuitable for London. The plain wall of the Stables and the Terrace above them would both be objected to by Mr Huth.’ Pennethorne to Gore, 31 August 1867, NA CRES 35/21217. Henry Huth (1815–78) and his wife, Augusta Westenholz, would be the Howards’ immediate neighbours, having bought 2 Palace Green, the house built for William Makepeace Thackeray, after the novelist’s death in 1863. 3 ‘I have this morning heard from Mr Webb that there is some delay in sanctioning the plans for our house in Kensington Palace gardens; I can not understand the reason for this as the design is extremely simple and purposely designed to harmonise with the palace opposite; I thought that the only stipulation that the Crown made, was that the house should be well and substantially built and over the value of £3000; now the building of this will cost £6000 and Mr Webb’s building is known to be exceptionally solid and good. If I had not understood that I was free to have a different design from that of the neighbouring houses (since it will be a detached house) I should not have bought the ground. The house will look most unobtrusive, it’s only peculiarity being that it will be built of red brick & with a gable roof.’ GH to Gore, 8 September 1867, NA CRES 35/21217. GH’s father, the MP for East Cumberland, Charles Howard (1814–79), also wrote to Gore a few days later, concerned that approval was still awaited, but Gore defended his adviser for not yet having provided an official report on them. ‘If Mr Webb had sent these plans before everybody was scattered about, Mr Pennethorne’s report would come to me sooner, but it seems to me not quite reasonable that because Mr Webb takes several months to prepare plans, Mr Pennethorne is to be considered as obstructive, if his Report upon them is not made in as many days. Mr Pennethorne’s duty with reference to plans for buildings proposed to be built on Crown Property is a very responsible one. He has

8

1864–1887 to regard the effect upon the Crown Estate, the effect upon the Crown Lessees adjoining and in the case of the Kensington Garden Estate, the effect upon the Palace itself.’ Gore to Charles Howard, 12 September 1867, NA CRES 35/21217.

8 • To Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 24 September 1867 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 24 1867 My dear Gabriel. I fully understand the evils of your situation & will do all I can to help you out of them. I am sorry to say that I am out of town on Sunday and have business engagements on Thursday but if tomorrow (Wednesday) or Saturday – both days before 3. oclock or at any time on Friday would suit you I could come up to Chelsea, & talk the matter over? As you have a good memory anything instructive wh’ I may say you can report to Brown. Unless under some extraordinary private arrangement, you would have to pay the builder in instalments. Say of half the amount, during the progress of the work, & the balance, 3 months after completion – and as for my energies in the business, they will be more likely to be employed in keeping him (the builder) from cheating you than you from making him a fool. I have not been into your stable at all.1 Let me know what you can do in the way of appointment. Yours ever | Philip Webb: Texas

1 For renovations done for DGR at 16 Cheyne Walk, including to the stable, see below, Letter 44, note 1.

9 • To H. Perkins, 3 October 1867 [possibly W Perkins?] 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Oct 3 1867 Dear Sir:1 Since your call upon me this morning, I have carefully considered the matter of your proposition that the works of Mr Howard’s house in Palace Gardens should be begun at once – leaving the questions, of “mere details” to be settled between the “Woods & Forests” and my client & myself at some later time.2 I’m very sorry that I cannot assent to this, for it would seriously compromise my client’s interests, as I think I explained to you this morning, that the very reasons 9

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

which induced my client to purchase the lease of site, would make it very unwise on his part to enter into an agreement, which – quite possibly – would negative his purposes. I am Sir, Yours truly | Philip Webb: H: Perkins Esq: NA CRES 35/21217

1 Perkins was presumably an official within the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who on Charles Gore’s instruction had seen PSW in James Pennethorne’s absence abroad. See above, Letter 7, note 2. 2 On 12 October, Pennethorne sent an internal memorandum to Gore, summing up his objections to PSW’s plans for 1 Palace Green: ‘In my opinion Mr Huth might not have any legal or equitable right to object to the house if so built; but as, according to my judgment, the enjoyment of his house would be lessened by the erection of so unsightly an Elevation near it is important that his interests should be borne in mind. So far as I understand the drawings there would be scarcely any stone visible in the fronts of the house, the whole of the surfaces would be masses of red brickwork without relief from stone or from any important strings or cornices and I fear that such a house with its high roof and gable towards the Road (the drawing for which I do not understand) would be far inferior in appearance to other houses upon the Estate; would be objected to generally by the Crown Lessees, and may hereafter become a difficulty in the event of large additions being made to Kensington Palace.’ NA CRES 35/21217.

10 • To James Pennethorne, 18 October 1867 1 Raymond Buildings | Gray’s Inn London. Oct 18th 1867 Dear Mr Pennethorne I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 16th and to express my regret that you are still suffering from your severe attack of illness.1 If you had not so fully expressed yourself with regard to the design for Mr George Howard’s house in Palace Gardens, I would have at once come to Worcester Park with the hope of hastening the settlement of the business,2 so as to save Mr Howard from any further serious loss of time. It is not customary for an Architect to be forced to explain to a gentleman of the same profession, what he may consider to be the merits of his own work, and I would have gladly refused the office at once, did I not hope to assist my client by the apology. Mr Howard has been allowed to purchase the site in question, without so much as a hint that the disgracefully heterogeneous forms and colours of the greater number of houses in Palace Gardens, would have to be followed in one form or another in new and more carefully considered work; or that the various crude 10

1864–1887

ideas of the uninformed inhabitants of the district would have to be considered by an architect who was desirous of attending to the really artistic character of the neighbourhood. As an Architect who has given much and careful attention to the subject of house building in London, I must decidedly disagree with you, that the proper proportioned window opening which I have used, fitted with well-divided sashes, is an “unattractive” form; – Sir C: Wren, Sir J: Vanburgh, H: Hawksmoor, T: Ripley and many other Architects of acknowledged artistic power, who constantly used the form; and from hundreds of examples in London now existing – visibly with great simplicity & breadth of effect – support me in my opinion; and I am perfectly satisfied that for most purposes of modern convenience whether of light, ventilation, internal fittings or facility of construction, there is no form of window so suitable for English town architecture. I must also beg to differ from your opinion that the materials used would not give the proper relief. A well chosen full coloured red brick, with pure bright red gauged brick mouldings, arches, string courses, cornices &c with the addition of white Portland stone, whiter sash-frames, lead, and grey slates, are in my opinion the very best and most harmoniously coloured materials to be used in London, & more specially in a neighbourhood so happily full of green foliage; and again, the many existing examples of work of this kind done by the above mentioned Architects, and remaining to us with a perfectly delightful effect through years of accumulated soot and dirt, give me most faithful support, even if modern carelessness and ignorance of this subject did not daily testify to the soundness of my opinion. In conclusion, I must express my great surprise that you should consider it worth your while to hinder the erection of a building, which – whatever may be its demerits – possesses some character and originality, tempered most certainly with reverential attention to the works of acknowledged masters of the art of Architecture, and as certainly framed with the wish to avoid adding another insult to this irreparably injured neighbourhood. A copy of your letter shall be sent to Mr Howard, and I will not in any way advise him to hinder his most necessary business, by persisting in requiring the assistance of an Architect whose work seems to be so likely to cause delay.3 Believe me to be | Yours very faithfully | Philip Webb: James Pennethorne Esq NA CRES 35/21217

1 ‘Mr Gore has returned to me your Drawings for Mr Howard’s House at Kensington, with a request that I would see you upon the subject. I regret to say that I am forbidden by my medical advisers to go to London for some time hence; but should you think it necessary to come here I shall be most happy to see you at any time. I believe you are aware I have expressed to Mr Gore a very strong opinion that the exterior of the house if built according to the design submitted would not be suitable to the locality – it would not

11

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I assimilate with others built of late years on the Estate; it would probably be very dissimilar to any buildings hereafter erected should Kensington Palace be enlarged, and, above all, it would I fear be objected to by Mr Huth, and the other Crown tenants of Houses on the Estate. My objections to the Design are perhaps, not so much to the style (though that I think unsuitable) as to the fact of the whole house being a mass of red without relief of any kind; the windows small & the forms not attractive; - the gable also of the roof towards the road would not I think produce a good effect.’ Pennethorne to PSW, 16 October 1867, NA CRES 35/21217. 2 Pennethorne lived at Worcester Park House, Long Ditton, in Malden, Surrey. 3 On receipt of this letter, Pennethorne wrote to Gore. ‘Considering the tone and purport of Mr Webb’s letter it appears to me hopeless to expect any good result from an interview, or from communications between us; and it only occurs to me to propose to you to follow one of two courses – viz:- First – To submit the drawings with the letters of Mr Webb and myself to some impartial professional Man of high standing, and to be guided by his opinion – such a course has been pursued on former occasions: - the only one that at present occurs to me is the Convent in Osnaburgh Street the drawings for which (prepared by Mr Butterfield) I objected to; though, on the advice of Mr Hardwick, they were approved by the Board. Mr Burn, Mr Donaldson, Mr Salvin or Mr T. Wyatt are names I would suggest for your consideration. The second course would be for you to act entirely upon your own judgment after having requested Mr Huth to look at the drawings with reference to his own interests’. 23 October 1867, NA CRES 35/21217.

11 • To George Howard, 22 October 1867 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Oct 22 1867 Dear Mr Howard. In answer to your letter of the 20th – I would advise you not to consider the matter of the Palace Gardens site a hopeless affair. It was absolutely necessary for political purposes that I should write Mr Pennethorne that most heartrendingly affecting letter of which I sent you a copy; and it would not have been quite reasonable in me to have settled upon a design for a client, if I did not think it at the time worth fighting for: – I also considered, and now consider, that I have reason on my side. It would be wise I think to take it for granted that we shall not be able to begin building until next Spring, and that we shall thus have the winter in which to be able to make up our minds as to what we can modify, and what stand by in the design; and by a little patient pertinacity make our opponents as tired of us, as we are of them.1 I am not at all afraid of making alterations in the design, which may not injure the fundamental principles – and I have already made another drawing for the large window in the studio, the former design of which was so emphatically condemned.2 I shall be at home on Monday next at 11 oc & ready to talk over, & explain anything, which you may require to know. [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard 12

1864–1887 1 Minded to follow Pennethorne’s suggestion to consult another architect (see previous letter, note 3), Gore wrote to GH on 25 October to say that he was ‘willing to submit the Drawings with the Correspondence that has passed upon the subject to Mr Burn or Mr Salvin’, whereupon GH requested that a second architect, to be proposed by himself (‘either Mr Street, Mr Bodley or Mr Butterfield’) should also be consulted, as ‘I believe that it is usual in any case of arbitration for each party to name its professional referee and this course seems to me the more necessary in the present case, as professional differences of opinion on the most fundamental subjects are known to be so strong’. GH to Gore, 29 October 1867, NA CRES 35/21217. Gore acted quickly to clarify the position. ‘I have no desire to refer the question to another Architect. There is no question of Arbitration. Plans of Buildings upon the Property of the Crown in London must be approved by me, and it was solely with a friendly view & to shew you I was not an obstructive, that, contrary to practice, I expressed a readiness to consult either Mr Burns or Mr Salvin, as impartial and competent judges, upon the disputed question’. Gore to GH, 31 October 1867, NA CRES 35/21217. 2 Gore evidently felt that matters could be resolved, if only PSW were prepared to be more forthcoming and amenable to compromise. ‘Mr Webb had better go and see Mr Pennethorne and take with him the amended Plan of your intended House, and give such explanations as may be necessary to make it intelligible. I shall be very glad if the altered Plan and Mr Webb’s explanation succeed in removing Mr Pennethorne’s reasonable objections. Mr Pennethorne in his letter to Mr Webb suggested an interview, which Mr Webb in his answer declined, in terms which your own observation will best know how to characterize.’ Gore to GH, 31 October 1867. Accompanied by GH, PSW did meet Pennethorne on 11 November, and showed the new window design in the east elevation, but refused to make other changes: ‘Mr Webb maintained that his designs are perfect, and such as would have been proposed by Sir Christopher Wren or Inigo Jones if they had lived at the present day: and he thought the objections I had stated arose from my inability to appreciate them. Mr Howard approves of Mr Webb’s design and wishes to have the house built accordingly because it would be entirely of red brick; and he considers that before he purchased the lease he had obtained your verbal consent to use that material. I explained to Mr Howard that the term “Red Brick House” did not imply commonplace forms built entirely of brick, and without any relief, but rather such buildings as the Admiralty or Marlborough House should he prefer that style: or Hampton Court Palace and many other country houses should he prefer a style of the time of Henry the 8th, Elizabeth or James 1st.’ Pennethorne to Gore, 18 November 1867, NA CRES 35/21217. Gore now informed GH that he would submit the plans and correspondence to Anthony Salvin (1799–1881), ‘whose eminence as an Architect will be a justification to me to abide by his opinion upon the subject in dispute’. 19 November 1867, NA CRES 35/12127. Salvin asked that he might consider the case jointly with Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807–80), but any sense of independence in their brief report is flawed by its close dependence upon Pennethorne’s initial criticisms. ‘It will probably be sufficient, as a guide to you in dealing with this question, if we state our belief that in their present state the Elevations could not be considered pleasing in composition, or satisfactory in their relation to the locality, & to the other Buildings on the Crown Estate. We agree with Mr Pennethorne in thinking that “they would be objected to generally by the Crown Lessees” that “the design submitted is not suited to the locality; it would not assimilate with others built of late years on the Estate; it would probably be very dissimilar to any Buildings hereafter erected there (whether Kensington Palace be enlarged or not)” and we are prepared to share Mr Pennethorne’s responsibility in advising you not to approve this Design.’ Salvin and Wyatt to Gore, 9 December 1867, NA CRES 35/12127. Gore sent the report to GH, and turned down PSW designs. GH’s response was to ask for clarity as to the reasons for refusal. ‘I could then ask Mr Webb to consider the possibility of designing a house subject to the given conditions. I can only regret that those conditions were not stated to me before the purchasing of the land; I then stated my intention to you of building a red brick house designed by Mr Webb different in character from the ordinary model of London builders houses.’ GH to Gore, 16 December 1867, NA CRES 35/12127. See below, Letter 13.

13

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

12 • To George Price Boyce, 20 December 1867 Annotated: ‘recd Decr 20 67.’1 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Friday My dear Boyce I knocked at your door with the hope of being able to give you half an hour’s chat, good for convalescence as Wells2 had just then said by letter that you were getting better after a severe touch of illness – but did not say that you were not at Chatham Place.3 I shall hope soon to see you at work again or hear that you are gone into the country to make hay where there is a possibility of sunshine. In spite of an exhibition I enjoyed your pictures at the W: Co:4 – Was it not a “Bradley” who did some teams of horses (or oxen) last year that were interesting?5 If it was the same man he has not done so well this. I am trying to screw up my courage to go & hear the great “Chorale” at Sidenham [sic] tomorrow.6 I do not know whether you know it well enough to hum it to your toes in bed. Let me know that you are better. | Yours very truly | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 3-4

1 GPB often recorded the date of a letter’s receipt. 2 The portrait painter, Henry Tanworth Wells (1828–1903) married GPB’s sister, Joanna Mary Boyce (1831–61), in 1857. She had herself been a painter. Wells was a staunch defender of the Royal Academy and its traditions, and would act as Sir Frederic Leighton’s occasional deputy as President during 1895. 3 See above, Letter 3, note 2. 4 The sixth winter exhibition of the Old Water-Colour Society had opened at the end of November, The Times (28 November) noting several works by GPB: ‘his small drawing of “Hay-carting at Arisaig”, his autumn study in Wotton-woods [Tate Gallery, London], his moonlight view of San Giorgio, Venice, and his “Deserted Colliery, near Durham”, all show that characteristic quality of sweet and solemn calm and fine sensibility to the harmonies of subdued colour which give this painter a place high and apart, in spite of his systematic indifference to grace of line, amounting almost to defiance of the accepted practice of composition.’ 5 The Times reviewer concluded with praise for two pastel drawings by Basil Bradley (1842–1904), ‘one of the most recently elected associates of the Society.’ 6 On 21 December, Beethoven’s ninth Symphony (the ‘Choral’) was given at Crystal Palace, Sydenham, under its musical director, August Manns (1825–1907).

14

1864–1887

13 • To George Howard, 17 January 1868 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn | London Jany 17. 1868 Dear Mr Howard I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your note, enclosing a letter from Mr Gore to you, with a copy of Messrs Salvin & Wyatt’s second report on my design for your house.1 The following are the only remarks I can make on this most unjustifiable obstruction. I do not see why Messrs Salvin & Wyatt should wrest your remark, of the site being overlooked, to a complaint on your part, that light was difficult to be obtained. Messrs Salvin & Wyatt commence with saying that “we find it difficult to define portions which appear to us objectionable, when the whole composition has in our eyes little to recommend it” and finish with “we have however, the satisfaction of knowing that Mr Webb may without any interference with his general plan, and with little if any addition to the contemplated expenditure, meet the objections we have raised”[;] this, with a former regret that it was possibly on the “score of economy” that some of what was objectionable in their eyes, existed in the design, is to say the least, a strange effort of criticism. That the ordinary mercantile Architect does design his elevations without reference to the plan, to escape labour, & please the ignorant, can be no excuse to a man who takes an artistic interest in his work. That Messrs Salvin & Wyatt are “unable to discover what actual style or period of Architecture” I have used, I take to be a sincere compliment, as the greater number of existing houses in Palace Gardens have their origin fairly written on their faces, though it is a question whether their fathers would be pleased with the likeness. I distinctly deny that the parapet to the bay window on East elevation, is fantastic in the sense used by Messrs Salvin & Wyatt. That it has some fancy or fantasy of design about it I will allow, and that in that position a most delightful effect has been gained in all ages by an extra allowance of imagination I can prove; and in fact, throughout the elevations the simple forms of decoration suited to the material, are all legitimately derived from admired examples, subject to the necessary adaptation to make them mine, & fit for the time & place. I would willingly – to help you out of the trap, in which you have been most unreasonably caught – re-design the whole of the house, were I not certain, that

15

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

if the new design possessed any character & proper simplicity it would be again objected to by Messrs Pennethorne[,] Salvin & Wyatt – but, if Mr Pennethorne will consider his objections sufficiently attended to, and that I have bowed low enough to his superior knowledge of the art: First, by redesigning the chimnies [sic] above the parapet (2) by broadening the pilasters of the parapet to 14" instead of 9" (3) by putting stone moulded sills to the windows instead of brick & tile, (4) by arranging carrying round the East and North elevations, at the level of base of drawing room bay & balcony, a stone moulded string (5) by adding broad pilasters to East wall of stables (6) and by redesigning the Entrance Porch with more ornamental stonework – I will so do at your request.2 Believe me Dear Sir: | Yours very faithfully | Philip Webb: George Howard, Esqre NA CRES 35/3106

1 GH having asked for more details as to the rejection of PSW’s designs of 1 Palace Green (see above Letter 11, note 2), Gore asked Pennethorne to consult further with Salvin and Wyatt and seek amplification. They met on 3 January 1868, and submitted a report, the substance of which Gore communicated to GH ten days later. ‘With regard to a remark in one of the letters that “the peculiarities of the ground are so great rights of light &c interfering in all directions that much of the peculiarity of the design may be attributable to the necessities of the situation” we feel that it would be very difficult to find a site in London in which fewer difficulties on the score of light or level actually exist, Light being really obtainable on all 4 sides. . . . Dealing with the Elevations, we find it difficult to detail portions which appear to us objectionable when the whole composition has in our eyes so little to recommend it. We are unable to discern what actual style or period of Architecture Mr Webb has sought to adopt. We think the combination of Square, Circular & Segmental forms for the windows & pointed arches for doors & recesses unusual & objectionable. The upper portion of the Bay window on East front appears fantastic, unpleasing, and unnecessary. The window of Drawing room on North front in which the principal attempt of Ornament has been centred, presents to us a most unfortunate & unpleasing combination of forms. We think the recess in North Elevation might be made a very pleasing & effective feature, but as treated, with the 2 Circular windows & pointed arch over the recess, we feel it to be much the reverse. We think the Pilasters on upper storey & on the Chimney Stacks, rising from a projecting string course are not satisfactory. They are thin & poor. The very long one on the Chimney shaft in North Elevation we think especially so. We feel that the Chimnies, from the absence of sufficient base & from the poverty of their upper members, have a very meagre effect. We think the large surface of unbroken wall on East Elevation, most unpleasing & unnecessary. We regret the necessity (if on the score of economy such exists) of so large a mass of Brickwork without any relief of color or stonework on its surface, but for the Window Sills at least we hold stone to be essential. It is to us a matter of regret to have to express opinions so adverse to this Design, but as you have sought our candid opinion we have no alternative. We have however the satisfaction of knowing that Mr Webb may without any interference with his general Plan & with little, if any addition to the contemplated expenditure, meet the objections we have raised.’ Salvin and Wyatt to Gore, 3 January 1868, NA CRES 35/3106. 2 ‘I beg to enclose Mr Webb’s letter to me in answer to the report of Mess Salvin and Wyatt; the general objections of those gentlemen to the whole appearance and style of the design are so strongly

16

1864–1887 expressed that I fear any new design by Mr Webb would be equally objectionable to them; but you will see that Mr Webb proposes to introduce six important alterations in those parts of the design which do not affect the proportion or construction of the house.’ GH to Gore, 18 January 1868, NA CRES 35/3106. ‘If Mr Webb would have the goodness to submit to you fresh drawings for the three Elevations I could give an opinion upon them, and could if necessary consult Messrs Salvin & Wyatt – and it is to be hoped that he will see the prudence and propriety of doing so – for upon verbal description only I could not recommend you to approve of any design.’ Pennethorne to Gore, 21 January 1868, NA CRES 35/3106.

14 • To George Howard, 18 February 1868 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn | London. Feby 18 1868 Dear Mr Howard The new Elevations to your house are now ready to be sent into Mr Gore.1 I have spared no pains in endeavouring to remove from the designs anything which would be likely to incur Mr Pennethorne’s disapproval, and also in adding such features as would make the building more attractive to him and the general public. I have been aided in this matter by the advice of an Architect of great reputation with whom I was not before personally acquainted. On the East Elevation, I have raised and broadened the porch, and added a considerable amount of carved decoration. To the bay window an attached shaft cap & base has been put to support the bracket, the parapet altered and finished with pierced panels, instead of the engrailed outline as before. To the Studio the window has been redesigned & set in a more ornamental gable of diapered brick & stone. On the North Elevation – the recess against back stairs has been fitted with couplet windows & pilasters running up to support the springing of vault & the vault is now thrown over the recess from the staircase wall to the back of front wall – i.e. from the South to the North, instead of from East to West as before. The buttress pilaster to chimney has been stopped at the gable, & narrow double pilasters substituted from the parapet coping upwards – the exposed portion of this gable has also been disposed as that on the East Elevation. The Drawing room window looking north has been modified and a considerable amount of ornamentation added. A broad band of stone, in combination with moulded sills & large string course and a massive stone moulded plinth have been run round both sides of the house, and bracketed stone moulded sills have been substituted for brick & tile to the bedroom windows. The chimney caps have been finished with stone moulded strings & gabled hoods. In fine both the Elevations have been much enriched, and I have taken particular care to tint the different materials in such a way that no mistake can be made as to their variety.2 17

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

You will of course not be surprised to learn that the above alterations & additions will cost a very considerable sum over and above the 7,000£ of the lowest tender, though I can assure you that I have tried to keep the cost as low as possible, but unless external decoration is of the ordinary stupid pretentious kind, it costs a good deal of money.3 If you will kindly send your letter to me I will forward it with the drawings to Mr Gore at once. Believe me Dear Mr Howard | Yours very faithfully | Philip Webb: George Howard Esqre NA CRES 35/3106

1 ‘I beg to enclose a letter of Mr Webbs together with fresh elevations for my proposed house at Kensington. I hope that these new designs will be approved of by Mr Pennethorne as the proposed alterations will add considerably to the former estimated expense of my house.’ GH to Gore, 14 February 1868, NA CRES 35/3106. 2 ‘The drawings now under consideration do not shew any radical change of deign but only a few extra embellishments, and as it is now clear nothing will ever convert the original into a good design, it appears to me necessary either to require Mr Howard to abandon it altogether, or to permit him to proceed to build according to these new drawings, and this latter alternative under the circumstances I would submit to you as to be preferred – because Mr Howard has already been greatly delayed and annoyed (though by fault of his own Architect), - the building as regards expenditure will meet the requirements of the Agreement – and (except that you refrain from using stringently your compulsory powers) you will have done all within your means to secure the building of a respectable House. . . . [T]hough I have proposed to you to approve it, I would, if you should be pleased to act on this suggestion, submit to your consideration the propriety of requiring still further improvement in two of the details. First, I think the rubbed arches over all the windows should be made double the width they are shown by the drawings, and secondly that the main cornice which runs along above the heads of the Chamber windows should be of stone at least 18" in depth, and with a projection of about 18". Pennethorne to Gore, 27 February 1868, NA CRES 35/3106. 3 ‘The alterations from Mr Webb’s original design as proposed by these amended Elevations are enumerated in his letter, and it does not appear to me necessary to remark on them seriatum – but, with reference to his statement that “the alterations and additions will cost a very considerable sum over and above the £7000 of the lowest tender”, I would observe that the additional cost occasioned by these changes ought not to be considerable; and that although the total cost to be incurred by Mr Howard will be equal to his Agreement, the decoration work of the exterior will be much less than usual for the class of House.’ Pennethorne to Gore, 27 February 1868.

15 • To George Howard, 3 March 1868 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Mar 3 1868 Dear Mr Howard. I am sorry that I could not send you the following information before; but I have been much pressed with work the last few days. 18

1864–1887

With regard to 1st requirement of Mr Gore’s letter of the 27th of February.1 “Mr Webb will not object to modify the arches of windows as there required – that is – to double the thickness of those arches which on the last submitted elevations only show to be one course. “Mr Webb is much surprised at the second requirement, which is that ‘the main cornice which runs above the heads of the chamber windows is to be of stone at least 18 inches in depth and with a projection of about 18 inches.’ “Mr Webb cannot conceive it possible that the elevations should have been carefully examined; or such an incongruous detail would not have been specified. “The chief feature in the design is the gauged brick band or string course in combination with the pilasters of parapet – & Mr Webb has been most careful in the altered elevations not to impair or destroy this most necessary feature, or damage the surface of colour, which the material would give; and he is satisfied that, no person desirous of injuring the design and bringing ridicule upon the architect, could have hit upon a more successful idea than that of substituting the stone cornice specified. “Mr Webb therefore declines to accede to the above requirement on the grounds that no Architect who is worthy of the name, will allow his work to be mutilated by irresponsible hands; & he is decidedly of opinion, that the arbitrary rule of another professional man in such a matter of detail – even if he should happen to be a man of genius – would not tend to improve the work of any architect who has taken pains to make his design a consistent whole.”2 Perhaps you might follow up here with your surprise &ct & about the concessions made by you in regard to cost & by me in design, being entitled to more respect, and that the risk of the exposure of a great scandal with so palpably gross an assertion of right & the probable withdrawal of Mr Webb from the unequal contest, with certainty of intense annoyance, great delay, & loss of money as a consequence would be scarcely repaid by the pleasure another architect would have in seeing his own handiwork on the design.3 Please do not hesitate to cut I hope & alter in any way that you may fancy and believe me [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 See previous letter, note 2. 2 ‘To the second requirement . . . [Mr Webb] is altogether unable to accede, as it would completely destroy the effect of the elevation in his eyes. . . . I can only say that I agree entirely in Mr Webb’s objections, and was of the same opinion before I heard his strong objections. If you insist upon this condition the whole process will certainly have to be given up as the introduction of the stone cornice into the present designs is impossible. I hope however that you may give your consent to the plans without this concession, as Mr Webb has spared no pains in altering his original plans and in modifying them very considerably to secure their adoption, while I shall have to make considerable

19

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I sacrifices in money to meet the increased cost which the alterations necessitate.’ GH to Gore, 6 March 1868, NA CRES 35/3106. Upon Pennethorne’s further advice, that ‘Mr Webb appears to forget that having regard to the Agreement he is not in a position to accede to anything, but that you have the power to compel compliance with the conditions named’ (Pennethorne to Gore, 18 March 1868, NA CRES 35/3106), Gore wrote again to GH, reaffirming that his agreement was conditional upon the need for a stone cornice. 3 GH responded to Gore by stating that PSW was ‘unable on this condition to continue the undertaking’, and complained that although the eight objections raised in the report made by Salvin and Wyatt had been met, approval was still being withheld, due to the ‘prejudice’ of Pennethorne. ‘[I]nstead of obtaining your assent we were met by a fresh demand which we consider entirely inadmissible. I must say that such a course as this seems to have been dictated rather by professional animosity than by a spirt of just and impartial criticism.’ GH to Gore, 22 March 1868, NA CRES 35/3106. He sought William Butterfield’s assistance, although in the circumstances it was an approach unlikely to succeed. ‘Since I wrote to you yesterday, I have ascertained that Mr Butterfield will not undertake to design any plans for my house at Kensington Palace Gardens; he refused for two reasons. First, because he considers that Mr Webb (who is no personal friend of his) has had a great injustice done to him, and is therefore unwilling to take his place. Secondly, because he is unwilling to place his work under the control of Mr Pennethorne’s taste after seeing the way in which it has been exercised. You will observe I am thus placed in a position of peculiar hardship, as I am unable to obtain your consent to the plans which have been made – modified as they are according to the suggestions of your advisers, and in consequence of this refusal of yours and of the treatment of Mr Webb, I am unable to secure the assistance of an excellent architect for the designing of new ones.’ GH to Gore, 23 March 1868, NA CRES 35/3106.

16 • To Thomas Henry Wyatt, 28 March 1868 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, March 28 1868 Sir: (Mr Howard’s House Kenn Pal Gardens) I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of this morning.1 I shall be very willing to meet you with the hope of bringing (what you reasonably call) “this most disagreeable matter” to a conclusion.2 I will come with the drawings to Gt Russell St on Monday at 11.45.3 Yours truly | Philip Webb: T:H: Wyatt Esq NA CRES 35/3106

1 In a final effort to resolve the disagreement, and responding to GH’s heartfelt sense of injustice (see previous letter, note 3), Gore once more asked Salvin and Wyatt to advise on the remaining matter of the stone cornice. 2 ‘Mr Salvin will not be in town for some time & in the hope of aiding to bring this disagreeable matter to a practical, if not satisfactory conclusion, I will waive my own feelings & propose an interview. . . . As however I believe that the only difficult now existing may be met

20

1864–1887 [by] a few minutes conversation, I am ready to make the attempt.’ Wyatt to PSW, 28 March 1868, Howard. 3 Thanks more to Wyatt’s pragmatism than to PSW’s willingness to compromise further, the two men met on 30 March and finally reached agreement over the revised designs for 1 Palace Green: ‘I gather from the correspondence which was sent from your office that the only point now at issue is the material of the cornice. In asking for stone, I conclude that Mr Pennethorne’s principal object was to ensure greater solidity of construction & perfect protection from injury to the upper part of this projecting feature; & though as a matter of color & taste he would probably prefer a rich colored stone to the monotony of the red brick (a feeling which is shared by Mr Salvin & myself) yet as both Mr Howard & Mr Webb are particularly anxious to retain the Brick Cornice, & as there is abundant authority for this material in cornices, I venture to advise that you should sanction such a cornice merely stipulating that Mr Pennethorne should be satisfied as to the solidity & safety of its construction prior to the Lease being granted. Mr Webb would then have to bear (as the Architect always should) the whole responsibility on the score of taste and propriety. I enclose a Section shewing the description of Cornice Mr Webb proposes to erect. He will adopt any suggestions which may be thought necessary to ensure strength and safety in its construction, & the whole of the Cornice & the wall above will be executed in cement. I trust that your concession will relieve you from further correspondence & misunderstanding on this very troublesome matter.’ Wyatt to Gore, 31 1868, NA CCRES 35/3106. With a resolution achieved, the builders moved on site on 8 June, the contract having been awarded to Richard Ashby & Sons. The existing grace and favour house had first to be demolished. ‘The poor old house was very rotten – but I have saved such things as would be possible to reuse as memorials.’ PSW to GH, July 1868, Howard.

17 • To George Warington Taylor, 27 July 1868 Draft? July 27, 1868 Dear T. I am delighted to hear that you had a nice interview with Gabriel – he is – if he chooses – very straightforward and his intellect is very keen and I take it for granted you were sure of what he was saying at the time, from the character of your letter to me.1 With regard to your reversionary interest in the property I can speak less comfortably.2 I think you know pretty well my ideas on the subject, viz. that the attempt to guide by trustee or will the channel into wh’ it shall finally flow is a fal[l]acy and I have the strongest dislike to preaching one doctrine & practicing the opposite. I would say appoint your solicitor in the will to see to the carrying out of it and then let the matter rest – but I am sure that there are many men who would consider this absurd – Gabriel perhaps among the number – therefore I shall not be at all surprised at your not considering my opinion worth much. And I myself have a sufficiently low estimate of its value – but that would be no reason for my going against my settled convictions however poor they may be. By this preamble you will I suspect make ready to be offended at my refusing to be a trustee as you propose, and I can only hope that you may make an exception 21

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

to treating me with the contempt which is sure to find me out at the tail end of a friendship. I can only say that I am not quite light hearted at thus refusing your request If possible – Believe me | yours ever | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/691/79

1 ‘What a splendid woman she has been to me all through. What might she not have done – & with right too – never was there a woman so damnably ill-treated as she was by me. . . . Gabriel has told me rightly what I was – he has hit me so hard. How rightly he summed me up. He never was so splendid as on Friday when he told me what he thought of it all, & what a damned scoundrel I was. And now after all this she takes me back again.’ Warington Taylor to PSW, 26 July 1868, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/691/77. 2 ‘Once more I appeal to you. Will you be a trustee – & I wish to ask also William Rossetti as a man of truth & also my solicitors Cookson & Wainwright. If I had really ever given any thought to the matter I should have seen the idiotcy [sic] of leaving a lovely woman sole trustee to her own property throwing her open to every designing villain in the world. Therefore now this must if possible be changed & may I once more ask you to take the work. You know why I trust in you but you always forbid me having confidence in you!’ SCC later commented of Warington Taylor’s marriage that ‘This truly remarkable man married a girl out of an eel pie shop in Bristol. He was devoted to her & much tragedy resulted therefrom’. SCC to WRL, 2 August 1915 BL Add 52731, f. 117.

18 • To Charles Augustus Howell, 17 October 1868 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Oct 17 1868 My dear Howell1 It would be very nice to get some tiles done in a genuine way by others than the British workman2 but as it would be difficult to arrange matters by letter would it not be better for us to meet & talk over the matter. – ’tis true we should have to undergo the horror of seeing you but perhaps you could put up with this for once? The bestial drawings belong to Top, but I don’t mean to let him have them except for use by the firm, as they are not fit for anything else than rude decorative purposes.3 The question seems to us to be, for first to get specimens of work from manufacturers and then order so many for the shop, giving you some for your trouble – if this would not add to it. But more of this if you choose to undergo the pain of a personal interview. Yours ever | Philip Webb: C: A: Howell Esq Texas 22

1864–1887 1 Charles Augustus Howell (1840–90) was a complex and elusive personality, whose career is summed up in his DNB entry as being that of ‘agent and rogue’. Born in Portugal of English and Portuguese parents, his recounting of the story of his early life may have been imagined, at least in some of the livelier details. After his arrival in England a winning personal charm allowed him to build useful contacts, and he was soon moving in influential art circles, having, as Whistler put it, ‘the gift of intimacy’. JR, DGR, EBJ, Swinburne and Whistler all placed their confidence in him, which sometimes they had cause to regret. He often used this trust to his own advantage, for he combined an exceptional artistic eye with rather shady business practices, acting as an intermediary for unwitting artists or simply on his own behalf. 2 ‘I am in communication with the Lisbon people, and they are ready to try their best with the tiles. Can I have your beautiful designs the Crow, Cock & Hare? Should you like to design any flower tiles for yourself, ie for your grates, you can do so, and I will get them made for you.’ Howell to PSW, 15 October 1868, V&A, AAD. PSW’s Delft-style blue and white designs of a Hare, Raven and Cockerel, were sold from 1869 and 1870 by MMF & Co. See the colour illustrations of the Hare and Cock, ‘for decoration by a Dutch tilery . . . thought to have been prototypes, possibly painted by Webb, and kept by the Firm until after 1934’, in Richard and Hilary Myers, William Morris Tiles. The Tile Designs of Morris and his Fellow-Workers (Shepton Beauchamp: Richard Dennis, 1996), p. 55. See also Kirk, p. 39. This exchange between Howell and PSW places the prototype drawings a full year before PSW recorded the tiles in his account book (see Myers, p. 135). 3 It was in character for Howell to seek to make himself indispensable, ever alert to an advantageous business opportunity. ‘Regarding your three designs (the crow, hare &c) I should like to know exactly how the matter stands, if they belong to you or to the shop. I should like to have the drawings for myself, but not the copyright, and therefore would like to know distinctly whom the tiles belong to when ready and paid for by me. Will they be yours and sold by the shop for you. Will they belong to the shop (who will pay me their cost and sell them for what they like) or what?’

19 • To Jenny and May Morris, 31 October 1868 Postmark LONDON. W.C. OC 31 68 Address Miss Jane & Miss Mary Morris: | 26 Queen Square: | Bloomsbury. 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Saturday My dear Jenny & May1 Though I have a great dislike to eating and drinking, and can’t bear to do either at your house, I cannot resist your polite invitation to dinner tomorrow. I will come to you at half past one, and will so carefully hide my disgust, that you shall not be able to see from my appearance that I am anything but happy & contented. Your affectionate | Old Webb: BL Add 45342, f. 2

1 Jenny (JEM, 1861–1935) and May Morris (MM 1862–1938) were aged 7 and 6 respectively when PSW wrote this letter.

23

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

20 • To Elizabeth Burden, probably 1868 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Tuesday 18 [[pre-printed year, not day] Dear Miss Burden1 I send you designs for two altar cloths wh’ I hope you will like. I have told Morris what I wish Wardle to do, in drawing them out for you2 – that is, to make them pretty drawings for you to shew. I will do two more of a simpler kind, if you like these Yours very truly | Philip Webb: Please to make any suggestions. Huntington MOR 578

1 Elizabeth (Bessie) Burden (b. 1842), youngest sister of JM, and like her a skilled needlewoman who executed many projects for MMF & Co. ‘In the 1860s [Jane and Elizabeth] began to work embroideries to designs by Morris and Webb. . . . A frontal embroidered by Elizabeth in 1868, to a design by Webb, is one of only two extant pieces to represent this decade [in the history of MMF & Co embroidery].’ The surviving frontal is the ‘Lamb and Flag’ design at Llandaff Cathedral. See Mary Schoeser, The Watts Book of Embroidery. English Church Embroidery 1833–1953 (London: Watts & Co., 1998), p. 79; see also Schoeser, p. 80 for an illustration of the Llandaff Cathedral frontal. See also Lynn Hulse, ‘Elizabeth Burden and the Royal School of Needlework’, JWMS, XXI (Winter 2014), pp. 22–34. 2 For George Young Wardle, see below, Letter 25, note 8.

21 • To Jane Morris, ?about January 1869 Annotated ‘Watermark 1868 | ?Jan. 1869’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Wednesday My dear janie1 I take it as very kind of you, that the nice comforter you have sent me, is not knitted in the form of a rope. This piece of soft work done by your hands shall be to me as a promise that you are not going to withdraw from me, what has hitherto been unfailing kindness on your part. Good luck to you at Hastings – I sincerely hope that the air will do you much good. Believe me to be | Yours very affy | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 3-4

1 In these early letters to JM (and occasionally to JEM), PSW sometimes uses the lower-case ‘j’.

24

1864–1887

22 • To George Howard, 2 January 1869 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, 2 January 1869 Dear Mr Howard Thank you very much for your new year’s wish, that I may have better clients for the future. For myself, I’ve never grumbled at the race. They have treated me quite more than fairly and allowed me to live without many reproaches.1 For a return, I wish you a better house than you will get, and the same full of friends that you may forget your disappointment. I have told Morris about the chairs in which matter I quite agree with you. The building is progressing satisfactorily, as there is plenty of small work to occupy the time of doubtful weather. I think that when you come back, a couple of pounds spread over 4 payments will be more likely [to] reach all hands, than if made in two. With kind regards to Mrs Howard | [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 But he might have felt rather differently a few months later. See below, Letter 32, note 2.

23 • To James Pennethorne, 31 May 1869 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, May 31 1869 Dear Sir Mr Howard’s House | Palace Green The carcase of the house is now completed and I shall be obliged by your sending me a certificate to that effect, as I believe that Mr Howard’s solicitor requires the same before completing certain forms. Yours truly | Philip Webb: re James Pennethorne Esq NA CRES 35/3106

24 • To George Price Boyce, 12 July 1869 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, July 12 1869 Dear Boyce I was at Chelsea to-day1 – the roof was all but on, and they will begin tiling shortly. 25

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

’Tis quite possible that we may be able to change the sewer manhole, from where it is to a less objectionable position & as soon as we apply to open into the sewer, I will try what can be done with the “board”.2 I’ve nothing whatever to say against the red colour you propose and should be glad if you wd try in watercolours to get a tone you would like. The use of your Bramah locks is specified.3 Here we have summer weather 80o in the shade. I hope you are picking up health, and are making yourself good company. Here except for the hope that the “Commons” will sit upon the “Lords”4 we are dull enough. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 13-14

1 West House, Glebe Place, Chelsea. See Kirk, pp. 75–6 and 297. 2 Under the provisions of the Public Health Act (1848), local Boards of Health were given extensive powers over sanitation. 3 The founder-designer of the Bramah lock company, Joseph Bramah (1748–1814), patented his first design in 1787. 4 The Irish Church Act, or Disestablishment Act, was an important plank in Gladstone’s support for Irish Home Rule. The state (Protestant) church had the loyalty of perhaps only a ninth of the Irish population, which formed a natural Catholic majority. Despite fierce opposition from the House of Lords, the legislation passed rapidly through parliament. ‘[T]he bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 1 March 1869 and received the royal assent on 26 July. The Irish Church ceased to be established by law on 1 January 1871.’ Alan Megahey, ‘Gladstone, church and state’, in D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds), Gladstone and Ireland. Politics, Religion and Nationality in the Victorian Age (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 56.

25 • To William and Jane Morris, 23 July 1869 Gray’s Inn Friday July 23. My dear Janey & Top1 I got your kindest of letters this morning,2 and was a king for the time being, when you went away nearly my all was gone. Ned & Georgie & Gabriel are part of the family but we look at each other in a kind of rage that the rest are not by – I make solemn vows that if I see you again I will be better, kinder and less selfish, but shall please myself just now by thinking that you would not like me so well if I changed. I was at Fulham on Tuesday,3 but had the edge of my nervousness taken off by old Müller4 who dined there before going to Italy. We tried to talk of anything but you but burnt our wings in that flame occasionally. Of course I sat right & then left, expecting Ned to say, “Webb, why are you such a bloody fool?” but he was good-natured & didn’t. For God’s sake dear Janey use your English privilege and 26

1864–1887

keep on saying “demain” instead of giving up and I shall see you tomorrow better than yesterday. I see the effect of going into society (Brown’s!!!) by a note in the Spectator that the great Stephens has said that Mr Morris is going to publish another portion of the E.P: in November.5 I hope it will be good, Top, and free from spite. You never go a journey but you find the world – however shocking in the change – all of a piece warp & woof very much alike & you’ll tell of your neighbour there, what will amuse the thief here. As for newspapers it is this. The Lords have “caved in,” the bill is to pass6 – trimmers are to be considered excellent,7 and the world a marvel of beauty. Wardle8 carried me yesterday to Beddington – – Oh what magnificence – what disporting – English Oak ‘in excelsis’.9 I hope the whistleing [sic] from that bird cage will be pure Handel. Now my dear Top & Janey I ought to wind up with something unkind, for you to recognise me – but Ive always said that people misunderstood me. Try for this once to believe that I am your most affectionate Phil Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 7-8

1 It is not certain when the affair between DGR and JM began, but it was almost certainly under way by the time that WM took her to Bad Ems in July 1869, where they spent two months so that Jane might take the waters. Her symptoms may have been as much nervous as physical, but it is possible that the Bad Ems treatment was for a gynaecological condition. Although her ‘ill health continued intermittently for much of her life . . . there is no evidence that she ever suffered from a serious organic disease’. MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 201. 2 WM and JM wrote to PSW from Ghent on 22 July, CLWM, I. 3 EBJ and GBJ moved from Kensington Square to The Grange, North End, Fulham at the end of 1867. It remained their London house and studio until the painter’s death. 4 Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900) was a German-born Sanskrit scholar and a specialist in the anthropological disciplines. He lived in England from 1846, was appointed Professor of Modern European Languages at Oxford in 1851, and took British nationality in 1855. His six-volume translation of the Rig Veda was published by OUP (1849–74). 5 PSW means The Athenæum, not The Spectator. Its art editor from 1851 to 1901 was Frederic George Stephens (1828–1907), who, with (unrealised) hopes of becoming a painter had joined the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. He was a model in several paintings, including Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet (1852–6) by Ford Madox Brown, the friend whom PSW asserts to be the source of the information published in the ‘Literary Gossip’ column of The Athenæum on 17 July 1869. ‘We hear that Mr. William Morris has determined on publishing a further portion of his poem, “The Earthly Paradise,” in November, instead of delaying it till the whole of the work is completed. The volume to be published in November will comprise the tales for Autumn; and we understand that the final volume of tales for Winter will follow in May next.’ PSW’s own set of the six-volume edition of The Earthly Paradise (London: F.S. Ellis, 1868–70), of which only 25 copies were printed (presentation copies from WM), is in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 141. 6 See previous letter, note 4. 7 Trimmer: ‘One who trims between opposing parties in politics, etc; hence, one who inclines to each of opposite sides as interest dictates.’ (OED).

27

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 8 The artist George Young Wardle (GW, 1836–1910) became the highly skilled general manager of MMF & Co on the death of Warington Taylor, a position he then filled for twenty years. A good number of his letters to PSW survive (mostly at the library of the Courtauld Institute), but scarcely any from PSW to him. His drawings of historic buildings were highly regarded by both PSW and WM. 9 The Tudor Great Hall of Beddington Park, Sutton, the former manor house of the Carew family, has a fine hammer-beam roof of four bays.

26 • To William and Jane Morris, 31 July 1869 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn Saturday July 31 My very dear Top & Janey I was delighted to hear yesterday that you had got to Ems all safe and in better condition than you could have expected. I hope you will not be astonished when I say that we feel mutilated, a great member gone – and none of our work or pleasure quite coming comfortable to us. I’m sure you won’t be surprised when I say that we seldom mention you, as we thus avoid a difficulty wh’ can’t be got over better, than by silence – how can I tell you anything wh’ you have not guessed before? Gabriel invited us to a tent dinner last Monday and tried to make us cheerful by getting Val1 & Howell to “carry us off” – the latter didn’t come but Val work[ed] admirably; a grunt set him going and a roar approved him. Gabriel was very kind, and received the points of his friends’ tempers in the side of his own. Ned & Georgie are quite as well as can be expected. I bore them on Tuesdays, but they kindly put up with it, & I was there yesterday to help with Burton2 & Crom Price.3 Crom, I think, betters instead of worsens, as is not usual with absentees. I can only see a difference in his lobs, by their coming slower than they used to do. Taylor is very anxious to run a tilt at Howell with a Sheriff’s officer, but I am just going to write to him to stop any hasty burst of that kind – as I don’t think we have any right to expect Howell to change his manners and customs – for us, particularly. We knew what he was before allowing him to draw on us.4 I say Top, dont have this letter in your pocket, and drop it in his garden. Ellis5 has very politely made me a present of “Speed”, see what comes of being allied to poets but he also good natured like, sold me at what he gave for it, that large 4 vols of serpents bugs & beetles – (wh’ I daresay you know) – for me to give to the 2 Neds,6 for Phil is a “chip” indeed.7 We thought last night of collecting a hundred pounds to send out to you, for you to make a proper appearance at the green cloth table,8 if one is allowed at Ems. Janey might make “eyes” at the people & break the bank. Sing out in your next letter, at my broad-wheel’d waggon wit if it is unbearable. We are here 72o in the shade today, & it has been much the same for some time. If you are hotter I hope you bear it with some ease, and this puts me in mind of drink – what do you

28

1864–1887

drink? – Janey, of course, water, sandwich fashion with every act of her life, but intermittently, you must both try something stronger, what is it? I am a Father to the shop,9 and go in there as a fine protecting spirit making a touch here & speech there to vindicate my character, ’tis slightly a “do” but as they don’t laugh in my hearing, what does it matter. If I could hear both yours I would forgive it, if it were against me. Your affectionate | Phil Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 9-10

1 The personable Valentine Cameron Prinsep (1838–1904), son of Henry Thoby Prinsep and Sara Monckton Pattle (patrons of the society portraitist, George Frederic Watts), was amongst the group of painters who assisted DGR in decorating the Oxford Union debating hall in 1857. 2 The Irish-born watercolour painter, Frederic Burton (1816–1900), became director of the National Gallery in 1874, and received a knighthood in 1884. He supported EBJ’s 1864 election as an associate member of the Old Watercolour Society. 3 Once schoolboys together in Birmingham, EBJ and Cormell (‘Crom’) Price (d. 1910) remained lifelong friends. Price is best-known as the first headmaster of the United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon in 1874, where he oversaw the education of the young Rudyard Kipling (a nephew of GBJ). He encouraged the young writer, who portrayed ‘Uncle Crom’ affectionately as the headmaster in Stalky & Co (1899). Late in life, Price married his housekeeper (he was 60, she 32), and they named their son Edward William, after EBJ and WM. 4 WM and PSW were less easily taken in by Charles Augustus Howell than some in their circle (see above, Letter 18, note 1). Although WM had been a witness at Howell’s marriage, ‘he became disenchanted, perhaps at the point at which Howell had invoked Morris’s authority to trick Warington Taylor into letting him have wallpapers at a special discount price.’ MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 218. 5 WM’s friend and publisher, Frederick Startridge Ellis (1830–1901), was an author and dealer in antiquarian books and manuscripts. Later, with JM and Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (SCC, 1867–1962), he was one of WM’s executors. 6 PSW seems to be referring to two different books. ‘Speed’ may be John George Speed, The Borderer’s Leap, and other Poems (London: E. Stock, 1869); the four-volume collection has not been identified. 7 Philip (1861–1926), the elder of the two surviving Burne-Jones children, was aged seven. 8 The gambling table. 9 In 1865, the Morrises gave up Red House and moved to 26 Queen Square, living above the office and showroom of MMF & Co.

27 • To William and Jane Morris, 3 August 1869 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn Tuesday. Aug 3. Thank you very much dear Top & Janey for your letter of Saturday – got last night. That you are there, is something – that you are not worse is more – let me see if I’ve virtue enough to allow me to preach – no I haven’t – therefore I won’t. I like your soberness of style in your letter dear Top. It is as if God were laying on the stripes and you changed your tone from “damn” to “whee! Whaa! ’tis all

29

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

my fault”. There is no doubt, Janey in the corner on the sofa, is thinking of the “provincial” people she has left behind. I will open your letters, keep your secrets, & send only those wh’ require your own attention and tie the rest up in a bundle for future amusement.1 I’ll make inquisition about the cruets you mention and do what I can – the soup plates I’ll take when I can get them, as a “retainer” from you both & what is more, will make an effort to deserve ’em.2 You know that it has been said, that repentance is the only chance for a chap. Dear old Taylor has written to me to say that he will be quiet, but speaks feelingly as a father to our finances. I think from his letter that he must be a shade more in spirits. I’ve heard of Bodley that there is great doubt as to whether he will ever use his leg again – crutches being thought of.3 Like Gabriel’s parrot4 I find myself going, with a “humm – whoo!! whoo!! whoo!!” for I miss the sound of poetry – you’ll test our eyelids when you come back. If Acontius has laid Cydippe on her back I hope he hasn’t, you.5 I hope you got a letter of mine from at Poste Restante Cologne – and one wh’ was addressed from here last Saturday – Poste Restante Ems ‘Nassau’ – they would have been dry chips, but they would put you in mind of the fellow you keep alive by your letters. Day’s poor Mother came looking after her son yesterday & Wardle & I did what we could – and it now remains for Day himself to have a try.6 The Lord Chamberlain was a little to[o] late in clothing the legs of the Drury Lane beauties.7 Janey ought to pick me up a tune from brass bands at 90o. You’ll be able to absorb the music of the future along with the water – and I shall scarcely be able to say Mozart – before you batter my brains out with Wagner. However they are not gone yet for I still think of you both. Phil Webb BL Add 45342, ff. 13-14

1 ‘[W]ill it give you too much to do to open any letters for me; if there were any secrets between (as there are not) you would hardly come across them’. WM to PSW, 31 July 1869, CLWM, I. 2 ‘[W]ill you ask Wardle to send round and ask Lucy Brown if the soup-plates and delft cruets came safe to hand – the soup-plates are for you if you care for them – the cruet bottles have had tops to them – I think: Could you get Barkentyne to fashion these again; if you think it a fitting end to them – if not silver mounted corks would do I suppose though not so well – I bought them and the plates in Ghent on Georgie’s birthday and meant them . . . for her – will you give them to her with my love when what is necessary is done’. See next letter, note 3. 3 For Bodley, see above, Letter 1, note 7. He was left very lame after an illness during 1868–9. 4 At Cheyne Walk, DGR indulged his fascination with animals and birds by maintaining a small but exotic menagerie in the garden. William Rossetti would recall that, during the years after 1863, his brother’s collection included such esoteric specimens as armadillos, kangaroos, a racoon, a deer, several varieties of non-native owls, an African grey parrot (the talker noted by PSW), chameleons and salamanders, as well as more standard pets – dogs, mice, rabbits and the like. One of the most

30

1864–1887 charming of DGR’s sketches is a self-portrait of him weeping over the upturned body of his pet wombat. See Jan Marsh, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Painter and Poet, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, p. 267 (the drawing is reproduced between pp. 242 and 243). 5 While he was away, WM worked on ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ for the forthcoming third volume of The Earthly Paradise. 6 Unidentified, but Day may have been an employee of MMF & Co. 7 Allusion not identified.

28 • To William and Jane Morris, 10 August 1869 1 Raymond Buildings | Gray’s Inn. Aug. 10. My dear Topsy & Janey. This is the first letter for you that I have got.1 The first glance without further reading shewd me – that it was poet’s work, and must be delivered at once or the world would “smoke for it”. I read the prospectus and grinned a broad, & cheerful grin – and you may thank both your stars that during your absence, there is any grin on my face. Ned don’t help me to grin, Georgie don’t either and I don’t help them neither but we’ve made up our minds to do nothing else than grin during the remainder of our term. Instead of a quick hob a knob at Fulham we meet tonight at cheerful Poynter’s.2 The scoundrel Barkentin is engaged upon the cruets to be done in abt 3 weeks, cap to be this [sketch of top of jug, with ‘German silver’ indicated] without any rim to the top edge of jug. The cruets are very pretty – I’ve not got my soup plates yet.3 Ellis recd me with a guffaw the other day upon the subject of the length of nets hung on the banks of upper Thames wh’ we did not take proper note of – the length of bottle & countenance being our fist. I hope your harvest is better than ours. We have a wet one, though the weather is often pleasant enough though cool – now, 4. Oc in the afternoon & 62o. Ask Janey to put a female scratch at the end of your next letter, just to keep me in mind of her fingers ends. My cheer is the usual and Dd – Bd. The buildings clients and architect, all, ought to be drinking the waters, at a depth of 20 feet, with a fireproof safe hung to their necks, to sink & save ’em. Ned rather talks of going to have a day or two in Crom’s Folly4 – but is waiting to know if the coast is clear enough. Boyce, McDonald5 & an actor named Belford have aired the place just now – but there are sweetening gales in those parts. My most affectionate love to you both. | Phil Webb. BL Add 45342, ff. 11-12

1 The letter (now lost) which PSW forwarded was from Edward Nicholson, an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford. WM responded on 12 August (CLWM, I), but Nicholson’s plans for an undergraduate magazine came to nothing.

31

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 2 The painter Edward John Poynter (1836–1919) married GBJ’s sister, Agnes Macdonald (1843–1906), in 1866. He was appointed director of the National Gallery in 1894, succeeded John Everett Millais (1829–96) as president of the Royal Academy in 1896, and became a baronet in 1902. 3 See previous letter, note 2. Barkentin & Krall, ‘Goldsmiths and workers in all metals’, had premises at 289–291 Regent Street. The co-founder, Jes Barkentin (c. 1815–83), was a Danish-born silversmith. 4 Between 1866 and 1874, Crom Price rented The Tower, a 65-foot high folly on Broadway Beacon in Worcestershire, dating from 1800, where friends visited frequently. EBJ signed the visitors’ book for the first time on 22 August 1869. See Lorraine Price, ‘Cormell Price Esq., The Tower, Broadway’, JWMS, V, (Winter 1983–4), pp. 30–9. 5 Probably GBJ’s brother, Frederic Macdonald, a Methodist preacher regarded by Rudyard Kipling, his nephew, as ‘the wit of our family’. MacCarthy, LPR, p. 394.

29 • To William and Jane Morris, 17 August 1869 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn August 17. 1869. My dear Top & Janey: Thank you very much for your two last letters. When reading them I burn to answer, but before I’ve sighed over the recollection of their contents business & idleness come in & stop one. As it is well as you say to get over the root of evil at once, I say that I was pleased that you depended on me in the matter, and as I thought it would save us all trouble, I cashed a cheque of my own at Praeds’ and they sent me to Coutts’s for the enclosed letters of credit for 60£ wh’ I hope you will get all safe & that the form will be convenient.1 You & Janey will give me great pleasure if you will take them as a little present from me, and as expressing only a bare outside of my affection for you both. As I was returning from Coutts’s I turned in to wet my whistle with a glass of “cocks eye” and stumbled with dew dropping mouth, on Gabriels familiar – Dunn2 – who told me that he came there to cheer himself after packing off Gabriel to Scotland. Dunn said, Gabriel was pretty cheery as no doubt Dunn would be in time, if he cocked his eye sufficiently. Since you hint at amusing contents of the Oxford poet’s letter I wish I had read it. Keep it in mind to amuse on return.3 I’m glad the work proceeds.4 ’Tis the best cure for weariness. I’d turn-to with a will on mine if I could do it, when I did turn-to. I say Top, don’t sit down on wet green banks. I’ve the Rheumatism in my shoulder now from a soft wet draught at the back of my neck, taken carelessly. But the adders will keep you out of that mischief. O Lord! How frightened I should have been.5 I’m pretty kind to beasts as a rule, but the serpent tribe – all except the innocent worm – put me in a mortal terror & therefore make me cruel. Ned or Georgie will no doubt write to you that the former is gone to Crom’s Tower. Out with you Janey. If you’ll make your first presentiment come true, I’ll insure that the second shan’t.6 I’ve finished my Clarissa – ’tis, after all is said – a very fine, notable book,7 and I can’t for the life of me call it prolix, if once it has the character of merit at all, 32

1864–1887

as its accuracy is its chief merit. I do not envy the jackass who could set himself down to reduce it. Taylor came down upon me on Friday and stayed talking for 2 hours or more – he spoke very nicely about you, put all upon his affection, wh’ I believe to be true.8 I’ve to write 2 or 3 more letters before post therefore break off – not before wanted, you’ll say. Your affectionate | Phil Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 15-16

1 ‘The root of all evil, is, if not the root yet one of the roots of this letter, lets get done with that first. I want to make myself safe from being kept in pawn, and set to hard labour at Ems (say sweeping up horse-dung, an office religiously observed here,) I want £60 somehow; I suppose Wardle will be able to let you have it; if not would it strain your resources to be so kind as lend it me’. WM to PSW, 15 August 1869, CLWM, I. 2 The painter, Henry Treffry Dunn (1838–99), was DGR’s studio assistant until they quarrelled in 1880. His unpaid salary was settled only after DGR’s death. 3 ‘Ah hah! the letter you sent me wasn’t sent on for nothing. Janey got a pain in her back from laughing at it; I hope you read it right through.’ WM refers to the letter from Edward Nicholson (see previous letter, note 1). 4 ‘I also brought Paris’ Death to an end roughly; again I’m not very sanguine about the merit of it; but I shall get through the work I set myself to do here in some way, and have a month to turn over the first of the tales before I go to press when I come home.’ WM to PSW, 15 August 1869. ‘The Death of Paris’ appears in the third volume of The Earthly Paradise. 5 ‘[T]he adders are lively too in this wet warm valley: yesterday morning I heard a rustle in the dry leaves behind me and out crept one as long as my umbrella. . . . I kept feeling the legs of my trousers all the way home after that, and feel a little shy of sitting down on green banks now; however they are always wet.’ 6 JM added a note to the letter of 15 August. ‘I have a sort of presentiment (though of course you don’t believe in such things) that I may make a rapid turn – and feel myself well all of a sudden – and then I have another presentiment that should this change come – all those I now call my Friends would also change – and would not be able to stand me.’ 7 Clarissa (1748), Samuel Richardson’s long epistolary novel tells the story of its tragic heroine, Clarissa Harlowe. ‘What a glutton at reading you must be to get through C.H in such a short time; I have done but little more than half of it, though certainly I never found it a tiresome or dull book nor, if one takes it on its own grounds, even prolix.’ WM to PSW, 20 August 1869, CLWM, I. 8 ‘What news of Taylor again?’ WM to PSW 9 August 1869, CLWM, I.

30 • To William and Jane Morris, 24 August 1869 1 R: B: G: I. London Aug 24. 1869. Dear Top & Janey Let me begin by saying, bother to all matters wherein “tin”1 is concerned. It is a pitch which can’t be touched without defiling. Gold is never sweated half so much as it drains us of nerves-water, and I’m sorry I should have made your flesh creep.2 33

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

With regard to Taylor you need not be afraid that I shall give his dicta more than their due value.3 I hear that Ned came back yesterday and as this is Tuesday I go up to look at him this evening. I’m rather tired of standing on one leg – my own peculiar – in London, a second at Ems – and the third in Crom’s tower, and shall be glad when they are drawn together again within reasonable compass. The devil will be in it, if one quarrels with ones limbs even if they be the devil’s own. I’ve two little bills for you when you come back and they are the only love letters of yours come to hand, since the Oxford genius’s. Wardle was here this morning, report satisfactory – he was at Cambridge yesterday. Young Scott seems to be dancing a professional hornpipe at Peterhouse to which he wants us to pipe.4 I’m going to talk to Ned about it to night to see what can be arranged. Shall be cautious. Was at Kenn Musm on Saturday – thought the room interesting & pretty – somewhat comic in character but happily not much galvanized.5 I like your telling of the landscape at Ems. It might have been ugly bad this word too like a worse joke & that you wd have had to take exercise with shut eyes. You’ll surely make use of it for future seasoning to your trifles of 20,000 lines? I hope Gabriels parrot has a better memory than I have, for I’ve nearly forgotten the sound of verse – wh’ (said verse) luck has made a kind of brine or pickle to my mind to keep it from stinking. Brown looked in 2 or 3 nights since, smoked & drank and talked most amiably – and went with the nicest steps, over the sore points of my vanity. There must have been ‘ozone’ or something in the air in large quantities – he even volunteered to allow of the Brumagem6 Bromwickham door-knocker character of in mind & body.7 My rheumatism, hangs about my shoulders in harmless fashion still – bless my soul – I said just now that I’d forgotten the sound of verse. The truth is, Janey I believe I’m a poet also. If this don’t make you both laugh nothing I can write will. Therefore do laugh. Yr affete | Phil Webb. BL Add 45342, ff. 17-18

1 Money: the term was much used by DGR. 2 WM had received the notes of credit which PSW had enclosed with his letter of 17 August 1869, but refused to accept them as a gift. ‘I think the money will be much more equally divided by your keeping it, than by your casting it on the dry and thirsty ground of a ne’er-do-well – the best of thanks all the same for the offer, and for the trouble of getting & sending the money.’ WM to PSW, 20 August 1869, CLWM, I. 3 ‘Taylor is better then, I hope? I hope he don’t think I am seriously vexed at any thing he has said, or otherwise than very much obliged by his friendliness: I think I understand the whole matter

34

1864–1887

4

5

6 7

perfectly well; and know there is a great deal of reason in what he says, though he is not at present quite master of the details.’ George Gilbert Scott Jr (1839–97) was the eldest son of Sir George Gilbert Scott, and like him an architect. He was responsible for the restoration works at Peterhouse, Cambridge (1866–70), for which MMF & Co designed the stained glass windows and decorative tiles in College Hall and the Combination Room (1868–74). MMF & Co’s first important secular commission came from the South Kensington Museum in 1866, for the decoration of the Green Dining Room. PSW planned and supervised the project, the frieze being his design ‘modelled in relief with a dog chasing a hare, based on a sculpture he had seen on the font in the cathedral of Newcastle upon Tyne’. Kirk, p. 46. PSW seems here to use the term in both of its meanings, suggesting something cheap or counterfeit, and also alluding to Birmingham. Allusion not identified.

31 • To George Howard, 26 August 1869 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Aug 26 1869 Dear Mr Howard. I take it from Mrs Howard’s letter to me of the 17th that you are now in London, therefore I send this to Park St.1 I have to go out of town tomorrow (Friday) but shall hope to be back the same night, but at all events not later than Saturday morning. Mr Taylor, the foreman at Palace Green, was here this morning and I told him that you would most likely be here – and would be looking in at the house. I wished him to settle with you in which room you would prefer having the Dutch tiles fixed. If you think they would be a too shocking “lark” in the drawing room, they – or part of them – could be used in the dining room or Library fireplaces – in the last – perhaps – only. I hope you will find the house as comfortable as you expected. Please to name to Taylor any alterations or additions you would like made. The work up to the present time has been admirably done. Please to let me know if you would like to see me, and if here or elsewhere and I will arrange. [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 GH’s maternal grandparents were the late James Parke, Baron Wensleydale (1782–1868) and Celia Arabella Francis, Lady Wensleydale (d. 1879), whom he married in 1817. Their London house was 122 Park Street, Grosvenor Square.

35

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

32 • To George Howard, 7 September 1869 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 7 1869 Dear Mr Howard. I will go to the house one day this week and see what can be arranged for your sending furniture to be stowed away – at present I fancy that the lady’s maids rooms would be drier and more out of the way than any other – but a watchman would have to be provided as soon as you put anything into the house which is not the contractors – this, however, could be done without difficulty – & fires could be kept up by the watchman. I quiver with fear when I think of the risk I have run of meeting, such tremendous celebrities at Naworth. Well did my mother preach to me, that work kept people out of trouble & mischief – only fancy my concentrated ignorance “cheek by jowl”, with that compendium of knowledge “Browning”, & in a country house too!1 But seriously, I am sorry to be obliged to say no, to such kind reiterations of hospitality. It is most probable that the Cortachy work will keep me here, until I am obliged to go there.2 With kind regards to Mrs Howard. [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 During September, the guests at Naworth Castle included the poet Robert Browning (1812–89) and his friend the American sculptor and writer, William Wetmore Story (1819–95), his wife, Emelyn, and their daughter, Edith, later Edith Peruzzi (1844–1907). See Surtees, pp. 77–9. 2 In 1868, PSW was asked by David Ogilvy, tenth Earl of Airlie (1826–81), who married Rosalind Howard’s sister, Henrietta Blanche Stanley (1830–1921), ‘to consider the feasibility of building a new country house on the site of the old family seat, Airlie Castle [near Kirriemuir, Angus, in Scotland], destroyed by the Campbells in 1640, and an alternative one of improving and enlarging its substitute Cortachy [Castle] – an ancient rectangular tower to which a wing, stair tower, and porch, all in the Castellated Gothic style, had been added in the early nineteenth century. . . . He produced designs for both schemes between 1868 and 1869, after warning Airlie that the costs would inevitably be high.’ Kirk, p. 182. PSW estimated £50,000 for the first scheme, and £36,000 for the second: only then did Airlie reveal that his budget could not exceed £25,000. Having been asked to make reductions, PSW had to insist that Cortachy could not be enlarged within that smaller figure, although a separate scheme for repairing a turret and enlarging the library was completed. Airlie did not proceed further, and paid PSW £600 for the designs and work which had already been undertaken. ‘Lady Airlie was pleased with the library but she added to Webb’s distress, after his second scheme for enlarging Cortachy – over which she had enthused – had had to be abandoned, by putting it about that she disliked it.’ (ibid). As Kirk remarks, this experience led PSW to treat his clients with much greater caution, requiring that they should agree to his terms of business before he accepted their commissions.

36

1864–1887

33 • To William Butterfield, 27 November 1869 Draft/copy 1 R: B: G: I: Nov. 27 1869 Dear Mr Butterfield I was at Oxford yesterday for the first time since I got the permission to look over your college1 – Mr Braithwait was very polite & took pains to shew me the works. You were quite wrong in supposing that I should not like the buildings. I like them very much indeed. I admire the general arrangement, the planning, the proportions and details. If my own work bears no resemblance to yours it is because I could not do good work like yours and therefore I do not try, but I am quite capable of observing with huge pleasure a successful effort of a contemporary – (please excuse the impudence of this last remark) I take it that on looking round the neighbourhood of the college you saw that there was an activity of life in building wh though you might not relish the out come – it would be wise in you not to ignore, & thus came your idea of planting a vigorous red brick work in Grey Oxford. I wish that Kebles own work had been as vigorous. The skill you have shewn wh I wish most to praise, is that of having managed to put together the requisite little boxes of rooms and yet that your building should not look small – and this without the advantage of the larger parts, such as Library, Hall & Chapel. I think you are quite right in your large Quadrangle and in pushing the East front close to the trees – both bold ideas. I cannot forgive you for using cold blue slates, this colour is a real drawback. You will most likely say that you had no money for grey Westmoreland slates, and I shall say in answer, ’tis a great pity that you hadn’t.2 The contrivances of Scouts rooms, cisterns, lifts, stairs, sliding “Oaks”, paving &c were interesting and I thought quite good. If in these days of dolour the mocking of a new peel of bells could be allowed – I should rejoice that you should have a hand in keeping up the tunefulness of Oxford and of adding yet another tower to the view from Hinksey.3 Believe me to be | Yours very truly | Philip Webb: P.S. I tremble for the filling up of a yawning gap on the South side of Lower High St. LPW

37

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 An enthusiast of the Gothic Revival, William Butterfield (1814–1900) was the architect of Keble College (1868–70), named after John Keble of the Oxford High Church movement. 2 ‘I of course feel with you about the blue slates . . . .A low tender helped me much, but the Committee was bent on economy and was composed of persons who did not I imagine care for the question of colour in slates, and I had not the courage, with further works in prospect for wh. I knew there was not enough money, to ask them for any extras of an artistic kind.’ Butterfield to PSW, 11 December 1869, LPW. PSW was not alone in expressing reservations about the chosen materials. In 1872, Charles Eastlake felt that ‘the horizontal bands of stone, of black brick, and of white brick, oppose each other so crudely that . . . one can see nothing but stripes.’ A History of the Gothic Revival, p. 262. For details of this book, see next letter. 3 Hinksey Hill, two miles south of the centre of Oxford, affords a fine view of the college spires.

34 • To Charles Eastlake, 14 March 1870 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, March 14 1870 Dear Sir,1 I should have much pleasure in complying with your request2 did it not break a rule which I’ve had some satisfaction in keeping, up to the present time – viz – not myself to make unnecessarily public any work which I’ve designed or completed. I should have been less able to have refused your polite proposal, if my work could have properly come under the category of the “Gothic Revival in England” Yours truly | Philip Webb LPW

1 The architect and furniture designer, Charles Locke Eastlake (1836–1906), was appointed director of the National Gallery in 1878. He was researching for A History of the Gothic Revival: an attempt to show how the taste for mediæval architecture which lingered in England during the two last centuries has since been encouraged and developed (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1872). 2 ‘I am very anxious to obtain authentic information regarding the most notable buildings of a mediaeval character which have been erected during the present century. May I venture to hope that you will kindly assist me in this endeavour by supplying me with a few brief notes on the principal works which have been executed from your design?’ Eastlake to PSW, 10 March 1870, LPW.

35 • To Fanny Warington Taylor, 19 July 1870 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, July 18 1870 Dear Mrs Taylor1 I enclose you the memorandum of accts and I think you will find it correct. You will see that Morris & Co have paid me the balance of acct as I told you I should arrange with them to do – that is to pay to Warington Taylor an extra 38

1864–1887

quarter’s salary. The balance paid by Morris & Co is £63.7.9 wh’ leaves a balance due to me from you of £26.11.3 – but I should much prefer that you should consider me as paid, and allow me to bear this small cost in memory of my poor friend. I am sorry to hear that you are unwell – though this continued beautiful weather is trying to many people, & may acct for it. Believe me to be | Yours very truly | Philip Webb: r Account rendered by M Webb, of payments made & received by him for Mrs Warington Taylor, with accompanying vouchers. [Here PSW lists various funeral expenses and payments to Mrs Warington Taylor, paid by him] _______ £89.19. 0 Recd of Morris & Co the balance of acct with Warington Taylor 63. 7. 9 £26.11. 3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/691/108-9

1 Widow of George Warington Taylor. It is evident from this letter that, despite his reluctance to act as a trustee (see above, Letter 17), after Taylor’s death PSW responded extremely generously on his behalf.

36 • To George Howard, 17 August 1870 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Aug 17 1870 Dear Mr Howard. Thank you very much for the grouse, though I prefer the letter very much to the birds. The letter certainly mixed up friendliness & business – the business I will attend to, but how can I make a return for the sacrifice of the delights & laziness at Naworth in writing to so fearful an old fogy? This letter can be no return for I am bound to write it. My “Imperial hero” has fallen, & I fancy not all the imperial horses & men can set him up again.1 I hope you are prouder of France, than I am of the “lost one”! I still think, that till now, France has been well served by Napoleon. The French must look out for some other dictator, for they evidently have no head to manage their own affairs themselves. I am very glad that you liked “our Mr Morris” – if stroked the right way, the beast is tame enough for practical purposes.2 Thank you again for your inquiries at to my well doing. London is not so bad a place when empty, the 3 millions run on pretty comfortably, and if they are hot, they take their handkerchieves [sic] and wipe their faces, and go on again, with the delightful expectation, of town once more being full, when serene happiness will 39

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

take the place of dull care3 – but apart from joking, I am glad that you don’t look with much horror on the time of your return. You will no doubt laugh, when such a being as myself, says that he has a pleasing recollection but I distinctly remember the few days spent at Naworth as delightful & most enjoyably lazy. I will look after the organ, and the organ hole, at once.4 [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 Napoleon III (Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, 1808–73, Emperor of the Second Empire), had suffered French defeats against the Prussians. The ‘imperial horses & men’ is an allusion to the children’s nursery rhyme, ‘Humpty Dumpty’: ‘All the kings’ horses and all the king’s men / Couldn’t put Humpty together again.’ For PSW’s later, modified view of Napoleon III, see Vol. II, Letter 351, note 3. 2 WM had holidayed at Naworth with JEM and MM, his daughters striking Rosalind Howard as ‘the cleverest little things I ever knew’. WM read to the Howards from The Earthly Paradise ‘most beautifully’. See Surtees, p. 87. 3 ‘Begone, dull care! / I prithee begone from me’ (Anon: traditional). 4 See below, Letter 46, note 5.

37 • To George Price Boyce, perhaps December 1870 Annotated ‘Dec 70?’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Tuesday 1. Oclock My dear Boyce I am altogether in the dark as to what you mean, all except the thoughtful kindness wh’ made you send me the note just recd. We may be able this eveng to have a few words in a corner, wh’ may do away with any awkward feeling wh’ may have arisen from any carelessness of speech either on my part or yours – if there is evil about in the air, it was probably brewed by me; for I find that when I get out in the evening, (sometimes) with kindly disposed friends, my natural melancholy departs, and I am merry & thoughtless enough, or more than enough, to create disagreeable mistakes by the dozen. Please to believe me that I should deeply regret that even a careless word of mine should give you pain, much more that I should say or do anything of malice or forethought wh’ should hurt – but this latter is I hope impossible. Thank you again for your note. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: Good God! To think that while that heaven sent music was going on, any other than heaven sent thoughts should be in our hearts. BL Add 45354, ff. 30-1 40

1864–1887

38 • To Alexander Ionides, 26 December 1870 Draft/copy G[ray’s]. I[nn]. Decr 26. 1870 Dear Aleco Ionides. I shall have much pleasure in doing what I can for you at Walton.2 The only difficulty, at present is that I am barely my own master, as this weather keeps me close at home – however I am daily hoping to get about. I enclose a letter for Ashby & Sons (your brother’s builders) wh’ you can either post or take to their office – wh’ is close to you in the City, and make your own appointment. Friday would be the safest day for me. I had better tell you at once that it will cost very considerably more if Ashby’s did do the work,3 than if some local builder (say a Kingston bui man) did the work undertook it – tho’ Ashby’s would, of course do it much better. Believe me to be | Yours very truly | Philip Webb: 1

V&A, AAD

1 Alexander (Aleco) Ionides (1840–98), son of Alexander Constantine Ionides (1810–90), the businessman and art collector for whom PSW made substantial alterations to the interior of 1 Holland Park, Kensington in 1879–83 and later. 2 Ionides wrote from Southend about a cottage at Walton on Thames, ‘which if you will kindly lend me your assistance, I believe will realize all the wishes I had. I have only seen it once & then hastily, but I think that with very little work it would become one of the prettiest little places I have seen’. Ionides to PSW, 25 December 1870, V&A, AAD. 3 The builder, Richard Ashby & Sons of Bishopsgate, had undertaken a rear extension designed by PSW for Aleco Ionides’s brother, Constantine, at 8 Holland Villas Road, Kensington (1870). See Kirk, p. 298. Ashby was also the builder for 1 Palace Green, Kensington.

39 • To Robert Chamberlain, 20 February 1871 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Febr. 20 1871 Dear Chamberlain,1 I have put off answering your letter with the hope of finding something to tell you of in the way of help, but I can think of none. Your advance on Butterfield was unfortunate. I think only that. But it seems to me that you had better try him again, by letter, and you may say that I have promised you to call & see him if he would like it & tell him what I think of you. This I shall be pleased to do. I would write to him openly saying that it is absolutely necessary for you to get regular work – and that harder work & less well paid under an architect whom you respect, would be preferable to easy work in most offices.2 41

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Thank you for openly explaining your circumstances to me.3 I can manage to let you have 20£ to help you pay off your debts, (the worst item of your trouble) on the only terms on wh I lend money, viz. to pay again if you can, but if you can’t not to trouble about it. If your Father can afford to let you have the allowance, I do not see why, so long as you really need it, you should not take it, for of course you would be only too glad to do without taking it.4 If you like you may say to Butterfield that you have asked my advice & that I recommended you to apply to him again. I suspect his work would be irksome – but if it is, straightforward & honest habit will soon make it less tedious but behind all is the devil of “impecuniosity” wh should be met in as manly a way as possible. Yours vy truly | P.W. LPW

1 Not identified. 2 Chamberlain had written of his failure to obtain an architectural clerk’s position with William Butterfield. ‘The fact is I must get work in some office without any more delay. If it cannot be in one I like; temporary employment would be most pleasant while I was looking for some other. Can you do anything with anyone you know to help me? Terms (I think) not less than £2:10: a week, tho’ I would take £2. from Butterfield – or less, if he would at any rate be civil till I was his clerk. . . . I took no introduction & probably began in a rather shoppy way. . . . I said I’d called to ask if he would be so good as to remember me when he should be in want of a clerk – if I was likely to suit him. He turned sharp round on me with “So good as to remember you Sir! Why should I do that? when I know nothing of you.” . . . [I]t ended by his saying he had others in view when he wanted assistance.’ Chamberlain to PSW, 11 February 1871, LPW. 3 ‘[L]et me add that my Father allows me £75 or if necessary £100 a year, indicating at the same that I ought to be independent. Also that I owe about £75: a good part of which I ought to pay off this year.’ 4 ‘I made up my mind to take your advice when I asked it, and will do as you say. . . . For your offer of help . . . I shall always thank you most heartily, but at present, if I get work I think my debts are well in hand.’ 23 February 1871, LPW.

40 • To George Howard, 20 February 1871 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Feb 20 1871 Dear Mr Howard. I will get the new stalls put in hand as soon as possible1 – some care will be required to secure good ventilation &c. We just missed each other the last time I was at Palace Green, for I think I saw you riding home after I left. I have a greater repugnance than ever to having my portrait painted and not even my vanity – which you have shocked by the request – will make me sit – and 42

1864–1887

besides it is too late.2 What little shew of nobleness my face may have had in youth, is quite gone now, through my own bad temper & the worse temper of the Metropolitan Board of Works, evil living, & bad company, & old age (premature). I will look in upon you on the first opportunity. [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 For stabling at 1 Palace Green, presumably, and perhaps not unconnected with Rosalind Howard’s new horse. ‘I shall hope to like the look of him, and to believe that he will be safe for you – if he be tame – his 5 years only will be an advantage but perhaps I am writing to a horsewoman superior to effects of temper in a horse. I’ve only seen you riding the Eastern beast with long ears.’ PSW to Rosalind Howard, 18 October 1870, Howard. 2 GH’s fine sketch of PSW in profile, dating from the 1870s and reproduced as the Frontispiece to the present volume may well have been done surreptitiously.

41 • To George Price Boyce, 14 April 1871 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, April 14 1871 Dear Boyce. You cannot but have eased your sense of obligation to me by writing your kind letter, because you must have known, that kindness is the thing above all others wh’ repays – in fact is the only thing which can repay me for any effort I make for another. Now let me relieve you still more by quite honestly explaining myself. When you asked me to do your house for you, I was uncomfortable, as I always am at doing work for a personal friend, and I would not have done it at all, if I had seen a graceful way out of it – however as that could not be, I did the work as well as I could – not so well as it should have been done, and I believe could have been done by someone else – and it has only been your delicate kindness which has kept me from feeling even deeper disappointment than I do. Now please to try & get rid of any sense of obligation to me. You are under none rightly, none whatever – you gave me no more trouble than was absolutely necessary, and less than I expected you would, and you express a contentment, more than I usually get from my clients. I will send you the original, signed sheet of plans with pleasure, for you to keep – and if you ever return architect1 you may copy it put one of your own windows in it à la Pecksniff,2 and spoil it & build it 20 times over without admonition from me. I thank you for being quite sure that I could not have been content with any more than my legal payment. For the generosity of your offer to send me a memorial of your good nature, I can only thank you, and bear the thoughtful kindness in mind – really never forget it. For the “Rossettis” I cannot receive 43

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

one,3 and for any work of yours I shall look forward to give you a commission, when I have the money, to do me something – that may strike me – in the way wh’ only you can do. Please let the matter remain like this, and believe this letter to be faithfully honest. I think I shall try to hear “Israel in Egypt” on Wednesday next at St James’ Hall. Would you care to victual with me there & go?4 Yours very truly | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 34-5

1 GPB trained as an architect before devoting himself to painting. 2 Dickens’s creation, the sanctimonious and hypocritical architect Mr Pecksniff, takes on Martin Chuzzlewit as an architectural apprentice, and sets him as an exercise the task of preparing plans for some ‘proposals for a grammar school’. Martin produces a skilful design, which Pecksniff later passes off as his own more, merely adding four windows which manage to destroy its proportions. Martin Chuzzlewit (chs 6 and 35). 3 GPB would give him DGR’s The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise in 1885. See below, Letter 267. 4 St James’s Hall opened in 1858, and had frontages on Piccadilly and Regent Street. There were two restaurants. Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt, performed on 19 April, was advertised as one in a series of ‘Oratorio Concerts’, and involved 350 choral and orchestral performers.

42 • To William Reid, 20 April 1871 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, April 19 20 1871 Dear Sir Arisaig House1 The spring of drinking water at Arisaig House has been analysed, and it has been found that sewage or other poisonous matter finds or has found its way into the current w[ater] cistern. Lord Abinger2 – one of the trustees to the late Mr Astley – has directed me to advise and obtain an estimate for providing a supply of drinking water into the house wh’ shall certainly be free from contamination. I think the best way would be for you to send to Arisaig some competent man who will could look into the matter carefully, and who will would be able to advise as to the most economical and effectual way of supplying the water, either from catching touching the spring at a higher level or from taking water from somewhere else. I have a feeling that it would be best to hit the present spring somewhat higher up, as I know the spring to be a constant one. Upon your mans returns I should be glad if you would send me an estimate for laying on the fresh water in enamelled 44

1864–1887

iron pipes to the basement – and for cutting off the present supply, or rather for securing that no more water shall be taken from it. [sketch plan] The present spring supply now is taken at A in the basement of house. I think now it should be taken at B outside the Kitchen yard and carried to the basement as in iron pipes as above. I shall be glad to hear from you on the subject. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Mr Wm Reid. V&A, AAD

1 William Reid was the plumber engaged when PSW built Arisaig House (1863–6), in Arisaig, Invernessshire, together with its adjacent stables and farm buildings. The house was commissioned by the colliery owner Francis Astley (1825–68), once a member (like PSW) of the defunct Hogarth Club. See Kirk, pp. 104–11 and 296, and also below, PSW to WW, 4 October 1901, note 8. 2 William Scarlett, third Baron Abinger (1826–92).

43 • To Jane Morris, June-July 1871 Annotated ‘Watermark 1870.’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Saturday Dear Janey. I thank you very much for your pleasant letter. I had not forgotten that you were gone from these parts, though my not having written or sent the design for [the] cushion, might have made you think that I had – but I am a poor letter writer, and also a lazy man with much to do. Your description of Kelmscott with landscape on one side of the river at least, is quite true it is naked & plain, but with all that I still think it has a great deal of character, at least it has that look to me, and the river makes up for the want of variety. I have almost forgotten Lechlade church but I remember going up the steeple on to the parapet, and making out that it was built late in the 14th century, and that it was very pretty.1 I looked in W. Rossetti’s life of Shelley and the following is there said – “At the end of August, (1815) Shelley, with Mary[,] Peacock,2 & Charles Clairmont,3 went in a wherry towards the source of the Thames beyond Lechlade in Gloucestershire. The beautiful ‘Lines in Lechlade Churchyard’ were the result.”4 I almost quite agree with you about the effect on one’s mind, wh’ Goethe’s works have, namely that of a theatrical unreality, but then after the outward effect is gone, there remains a huge reality behind; not often a pleasant one, seldom in 45

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

fact a pleasant one, but nevertheless fearfully true and therefore enchaining. I do not think I am ever happy when reading Goethe.5 I am most glad that you are stronger, so as to be able to get about.6 If you could manage to get your handyman Comely7 to hire a tax cart8 and drive you over to Uffington you and Jenny & May could crawl up to the White horse hill and enjoy a delightful look round.9 I send you by book post the design for the cushion wh’ I hope you will like.10 I have coloured in the pattern over my first drawing, how I think it would look well to be worked – but you need not let the colours bind you. Love to Jenny & May and affectionate regards to you | from | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 21-2

1 ‘I have been to Lechlade, I want to ask you about the church there. Is the spire as old as the church itself, and do you happen to remember if Shelley was living in the town at the time he wrote his poem in the churchyard.’ JM to PSW, June-early July 1871, CLJM. She was writing on the occasion of her first visit to Kelmscott Manor. 2 The satirical novelist, Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), author of Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey, was one of the closest friends of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). 3 Charles Gaulis Clairmont (1795–1850), Mary Shelley’s stepbrother. 4 William Rossetti, Memoir of Shelley (London: 1870), pp. lxxx–lxxxi. The text from which PSW quotes reads: ‘At the end of August, Shelley, with Mary (always called Mrs Shelley), Peacock and Charles Clairmont etc’; PSW omitted the words in parentheses, and the comma which followed them, leading the editors of JM’s letters mistakenly to suppose that PSW was referring to Mary Peacock, not born until 1820. CLJM, p. 46, note 2. A civil servant in the Excise Office until his retirement in 1894, William Rossetti (1829–1919), younger brother and future biographer of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was also a prolific art critic and editor. He was secretary to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, editing its short-lived magazine, The Germ (1850). 5 ‘I have nearly finished “Elective Affinities.” I think with all due respect to Goethe it is a most unsatisfactory book. What! is nothing real? Must everything that is delightful change and leave nothing behind? I can’t believe it; one begins by liking his characters very much, then they change, and one can no longer look upon them as real people.’ JM to PSW, ibid. She was reading J. A. Froude’s English translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Elective Affinities (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854). 6 ‘I am already so much better that you would scarcely recognise me. I have actually got some suspicion of red in my face – am feeling quite a different creature, I get down to breakfast comfortably with Jenny and May at half past eight.’ JM to PSW, ibid. 7 Philip Comely was the caretaker and his wife the housekeeper of Kelmscott Manor. 8 Two-wheeled horse-drawn cart, subject to a tax. 9 The White Horse on the chalk hillside at Uffington in Oxfordshire, dating from the Bronze Age, was a favourite haunt for both WM and PSW, and the place where SCC and W.R. Lethaby (WRL) would scatter PSW’s ashes on 10 July 1915. 10 ‘I shall never dare ask you for any design again. I had not expected anything half so elaborate or beautiful, thank you very much for it. I shall work it carefully in fine wool on blue serge I think, taking care to get different shades of blue for the flowers.’ JM to PSW, 25 July 1871, CLJM.

46

1864–1887

44 • To Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 29 July 1871 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, July 29 1871 Dear Gabriel I send by book pattern post the patterns of paints. The green, is said by the painter who made it, to be an exact match of the lighter parts of that in your dining room, the whites & reds are such as I should use with alterations for different circumstances. The little frame which Dunn shewed me could have an eighth of an inch cut away all round the sight opening with but little injury to the frame this would give you a quarter of an inch more in width & height. For the little pillars I would replace those wh’ seem to have belonged to it, and look fairly well. I was at No 16 yesterday and found no Brass at work. I met him in the street on Tuesday & he promised to begin on Wednesday morning last. I think you had better send him an eloquent letter, to dim the lustre of his countenance.1 There is an old fellow at No 42 who keeps snakes by the hundred, from Lillebut [sic] size to that of him who could crush an elephant. One of the snakes four feet long (so tis said) got into the garden of no 6, and gave the workman a dinnertime’s hunting, but without result. Who can ever again unbutton with ease comfort in any garden within 2 miles of the house? The price of broken bottles for topping the walls of the neighbourhood is going up. Yours | Philip Webb. Texas

1 Lot Brass, a builder, was engaged by DGR to undertake minor repairs at 16 Cheyne Walk, under PSW’s supervision. ‘I have taken your advice, & written strongly to Mr. Lot Brass, who must be more brazen than his namesake Samson if he is not shamed into action by my objurgations.’ DGR to PSW (written from Kelmscott Manor), 31 July 1871, CDGR, V. 2 4 Cheyne Walk was formerly the home of the artist Daniel Maclise (1806–70), and was where George Eliot spent her last weeks in 1880, but in 1871 it appears to have been occupied by the antiquarian William Sandys Wright Vaux (1818–85), a fellow of the Royal Society. If his various interests included keeping snakes, it is not recorded.

45 • To Heynes Hardwicke, 14 August 1871 Draft 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Aug 14 1871 My dear Hardwicke1, Your To get a letter from you was a bigger surprise than if anyone had gratuitously given me a hundred pounds, & was a pleasanter gift. I cannot help you accept your proposition

47

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

though, mores the pity, as you have troubled so kindly to write to me – but I’ll try to explain.2 My business (of wh’ I have as much as I can do) (with wh’ I am fairly enough supplied at the present time) consists chiefly in trying to put up buildings in this country wh’ shall be free from art vulgarity – no easy matter this – & with all my care I do not succeed too well; but I have only succeeded as well as I have, by strictly avoiding the attempt by 1st to give people generally what they want 2nd of trying to satisfying the wants of the great majority of people in the way of architecture. There are some few people who think it worth their while putting to put up with my fancies on account of something wh’ pleases them, after all, in my work – but this is quite apart from the fashion of the day or commercial advantage. Now a place like Bournemouth depends much on the fashionable character & commercial value of its buildings, & to wh’ everything else must be subordinated in the art of building – whereas, the art of building as a fine art, must just reverse this order of things. Supposing that I was so unwise as to go contrary to my ideas settled views, & undertake to attempt to assist your friend, I should be doing him an injustice, for I could not do so well for him, as even an inferior man, who was experienced in the ways of the place and or in the manners & customs of such places generally. Please take it kindly that I am thus open with you, as I thank take it as very kind of you that you should have thought of me at all. With kindest remembrances to Mrs Hardwicke. Believe me to be your sincere old friend. Philip Webb: V&A, AAD

1 Heynes Roger Hardwicke (1815–1901), medical officer of health. He lived at Saxlingham Nethergate, Norwich. 2 Hardwicke had written about a potential new project in Bournemouth. ‘Building is going on rapidly at B. Mr Durrant tells me he is now about to dispose of land in the very centre of the Town for public buildings &c. I mentioned your name again & he said I was at liberty to tell you that Crick was no longer his man and that there is a splendid opening for a clever fellow as Architect at B. If you entertain the least idea of doing anything there & wd like to come down here I will introduce you to him.’ Hardwicke to PSW, 11 August 1871, V&A, AAD.

46 • To Rosalind Howard, 30 September 1871 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 30 1871 Dear Mrs Howard. You will remember an old proverb “Tis an ill wind” &c, now an ill wind has blown Ned & Georgie away and cleared London of other good folk, but it has blown me 48

1864–1887

a letter from you, to make amends. The letter has somewhat of a semblance of saying, “Well, if the best are away, I must put up with the inferior” however as proverbs are afloat, I may say, “tis rude/unwise/stupid to look a gift horse in the mouth”.1 Ned went off alone to Italy about a fortnight ago, much wanting a change.2 Georgie went to her sister in Worcestershire,3 when they will be back, the fates and the purses provided, only know. Morris is returned from Iceland after a most successful journey; he is in London, having just come back from Kelmscott.4 If to dinner at Palace Green be quite quiet, I will come to you with pleasure on Tuesday, but if not I would prefer to call on you & see how you all are. Would it not be well to let Mr Ferguson (the architect) make arrangements with Mr Lewis for the organ.5 The architect should know what it best, though sometimes (I speak from experience) they have to make believe that they do. With kind regards to George and Sir Charles Howard6 | [Yours very truly Philip Webb:] Howard

1 In Rosalind Howard, PSW had his first experience of ‘a client’s wife who took as keen an interest in every aspect of the new building [1 Palace Green] as her husband. He stood up with spirit to [her] domineering manner but consulted her about interior details and fulfilled her requests whenever he considered them wise. They soon became good friends.’ Kirk, p. 73. 2 Out of sorts and depressed, EBJ arrived in Turin on 21 September, spending about three weeks travelling in Italy. He had decided to leave England at short notice, with a minimum of fuss, though GBJ was upset. She wrote to Rosalind that ‘I can write of nothing else, and disappointment is an unlovely theme’. MacCarthy, LPR, p. 224. 3 GBJ’s youngest sister, Louisa, married to Alfred Baldwin. See below, Letter 54. 4 For WM’s Icelandic journeys, see below, Letter 57, note 4. 5 For the Carlisle architect, Charles John Ferguson, who would succeed PSW as architect to Naworth Castle, see below, Letter 104. The Howards may have been planning to transfer an organ from Naworth to 1 Palace Green: ‘I took the measurements of the organ-case opening the other day’. PSW to GH, 14 August 1871, Howard. 6 GH’s father. See above, Letter 7, note 3.

47 • To George Price Boyce, ?autumn 1871 Annotated ‘Autumn 1871?’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Saturday Dear Boyce Thank you for your letter. I thought you had buried yourself and were rejoicing at your success. I’m half inclined to fancy that if I should take you at your word and appear in Ludlow Street, next week, you would mutter “damn the fellow, can’t he 49

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

take a civil letter as if it was meant, & stop away” but as I have great pleasure in paying people out for professing to take an interest in me when they really do not, you had better look out, and bolt if wise. I’ve a case in point – some stranger to me wrote some time back, for a design of mine for some buildings, after considerable care of thought, I send them. I hear this morning that he is much obliged, but that some of the design he does not like, and the rest is unsuitable. So I shall send him in (with great glee) the highest possible charge I rightly can – but all this is not apropos of your politeness for I believe if I can come down, you will be very glad to see me. If I should come (this week) it will be somewhere abt Tuesday or Wednesday but you need in no way put yourself out, for the “Feathers” will no doubt hold me beautifully.1 Thanks for the photograph – as Carlyle wd say, the coach maker should be “more particularly damned”.2 For myself I have been working slowly and unsteadily, and as you see from the foregoing, to little purpose. I’ve been much pleased to see Beresford Hope3 & Ld Elcho4 sit upon themselves and Ayrton on the top of that, flat.5 – And the “Lords” too, but I’m afraid your fingers are already in your ears or eyes. I’ll look after Boyd – I gave him orders to prepare a stove in the rough, some time since, but I’ve not done my part of it. Music, I’ve had none – not even the blackbird in my neighbours window, for he has left off singing, and is having his throat relined, for it must have been worn as thin as a wafer. There, I’ll have done with this rubbish, and will bend my mind to think of hoping to leave, for 2 or 3 days, this earthly paradise in Middlesex. Yours | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 38-9

1 Featuring a striking seventeenth-century timber façade with motifs of ostrich feathers, Ludlow’s most famous building was built in 1619 as a private house. It has long served as an inn, and was named ‘The Feathers’ in 1863. 2 A precise source has not been traced, although in a letter to his wife (1 October 1852), the historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) picks up some of her words: ‘Driven out of the house again, and sleeping solitary in a little lodging! I declare it makes me quite sad to think of it; and --, if – is the fundamental cause of it, deserves to be, as you say, “particularly damned”.’ Cited in James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London, 1834–1881 (London: Longmans & Co, 1884), p. 117. 3 Alexander James Beresford Hope (1820–87) was a politician, journalist and influential proselytiser for Gothic revivalist architecture. He was President of the RIBA in 1865–7. 4 Francis Wemyss-Charteris-Douglas (1818–1914), styled Lord Elcho from 1853, and from 1883 eighth Earl of Wemyss and sixth Earl of March, was at this time Conservative MP for East Lothian. 5 Acton Smee Ayrton (1816–86), Liberal MP for Tower Hamlets, was First Commissioner of Works, in which government position he demanded that major public spending should be constrained wherever possible, but also was sure-footed in advancing his pet projects. On 14 August 1871, the Pall Mall Gazette carried the report of a House of Commons debate and Beresford Hope’s failed attempt to move a resolution critical of Ayrton’s approval of a new road in St James’s Park, which Beresford

50

1864–1887 Hope called an ‘inconceivable act of subordination. . . . Mr. Ayrton replied that . . . there was, perhaps, nothing more remarkable than the mistakes which men fell into when they were carried away by feelings of personal hostility, increased by a sense of humiliation and defeat’. Lord Elcho entered the fray the next day, commenting on Ayrton’s incivility. ‘Regarded from an artistic point of view, his appointment to the post of First Commissioner of Works was most incongruous and astounding.’ Ayrton deftly brushed Elcho aside. ‘For his own part, he did not profess in a loud tone to have a profound knowledge of every question relating to art. . . . and he would therefore confine himself to the assertion that he perhaps knew as much of these subjects as the noble lord did. (Much laughter)’. Pall Mall Gazette, 15 August 1871.

48 • To Charles Augustus Howell, 9 November 1871 Draft 1 R.B. G. I. Novr 9. 1871 Dear Howell In answer to your letter recd this afternoon yesterday I will I should be glad enough to lend assistance to in settling matters between you and Messrs Dunn – for they the matter certainly should be settled, but I will not attempt to do so, unless you will allow me to produce to Messrs Dunn all the memoranda you enclosed with your letter to me, and also your letter so much of your letter to me as relates to your dealings with them.1 I should think the torrent of virtue poured on you by the “Vox populi” whether worldly or spiritual, need not disturb your serenity, seeing that the article of virtue in any form, (according to wise-heads) is a useful one to be assumed even if we have it not. For myself, with regard to you – I say one I have said very little in public next to nothing , & in private & to myself but little more. Except that I thought that you did not know when you were well off, or if you did know, did not care.2 The habits of my life and its surroundings would make it impossible for me to get on well with in your society – and I have always held it best, to live in quiet good nature with as many as possible and to do that one must have no reason to one has to live apart from a good many in order to avoid a stupid failure. I am yours faithfully | Philip Webb. C: A: Howell Esq V&A, AAD

1 Howell was in dispute with the builders, Samuel and Samuel Dunn, of Brewer Street, Golden Square, who were pursuing him for unpaid money, and as PSW employed the firm for some of his own work (they were currently completing repairs under his direction to the church of St Dunstan, Hunsdon in Hertfordshire), Howell sought his advice. The fault and prevarication probably lay all on Howell’s side, despite his pleas for sympathy. ‘I find myself accused of crimes I never committed, some of them being really old stories of the time of Queen Anne, and the Georges, quite spoiled

51

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I by being badly dressed in shoddy, and thrown on my poor shoulders.’ Howell to PSW, 5 November 1871, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘What Messrs Dunn may have said to astonish you I do not know, the only – to me – astonishing thing in the affair is the bill itself, and the letter which I enclose. On the other hand let me say that I am heartily sorry if the fact of my having been unable to meet this bill at the time it was sent in has caused you the least annoyance. Believe me or not, I would do very much to please you, and suffer much to save you pain.’

49 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 26 November 1871 Annotated ‘Nov 26/71’ 1 Raymond Buildings | Gray’s Inn. Sunday. Dear Murray1 I went in to Ellis’s yesterday to ask him to come to me on Wednesday evening at 7. oc. to victuals and meet you & Morris – but he told me that he thought you might be obliged to say no. I hope you can get into a cab at your door and out at mine, and I will pack you off again in the same way at good time. Try & come if you think it right, as I should like to see you go before you go to “happy land”.2 I fancy that by shutting the sash down of a Hansom you need not fear – and as you must be proof against all other diseases, perhaps a closed cab would be as good as your own room, and your company would soften our manners. I am indeed sorry that fate is pegging at you so, but, somehow envy you your way to Italy.3 Come if you possibly can to yours, | Philip Webb: Fitzwilliam 3

1 Early in his career, the painter, art connoisseur and collector, Charles Fairfax Murray (CFM, 1849–1919), undertook copying work of various kinds for DGR, EBJ, JR and WM. His personal life was complicated, for as well as marrying an Italian girl in 1875, with whom he had six children, he also raised a family in London with Blanche Richmond (d. 1952). He continued to visit his Italian family in Florence, whilst also maintaining a house in London. His complex domestic arrangements came to light after his death, when his legitimate Italian children disputed the will, and SCC spent considerable time advising his English son, Arthur. CFM was generous in gifting paintings and manuscripts from his collection to the Fitzwilliam Museum during SCC’s early years as Director. 2 Italy. 3 During this first Italian trip of several months, CFM began the close studies which resulted in his detailed technical understanding of Italian paintings, based on ‘painstaking examination of hundreds of works of the great masters allied to an extraordinary visual memory’. Elliott, p. 36. JR wrote ‘with somewhat mortified respect of my friend . . . as knowing more in many ways of Italian pictures than I do myself . . . [E]very picture he buys for you is a good one’. Fors Clavigera, letter 79, in E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, The Works of John Ruskin, XXIX (London: George Allen, 1907), p. 155, note 3. JR described him as ‘a heaven-born copyist’. Elliott, p. 43. In 1885 PSW commissioned from CFM a copy of Carpaccio’s St George and the Dragon at the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, in Venice. See below, Letter 253.

52

1864–1887

50 • To George Price Boyce, 22 August 1872 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Aug 22. 1872 Dear Boyce I have to go to Shrewsbury on the 27th (Tuesday next) and that on my way back I could look in on you – but, it also occurs to me that possibly you might like to join me on Wednesday morning at Shrewsbury and that we might take a cart and go & look at Wroxeter (is not that the Great Roman Station?)1 then to Buildwas Abbey & back by Wenlock Abbey2 & Acton Burnell3 to Dorrington on the Shrewsbury & Ludlow line.4 The round would give an embarrassment of riches, but the wealth would not injure us, I hope. Possibly you have seen all these, or probably your work ties you to Ludlow, & you could not give the day – in either case do not hesitate to say that it would be inconvenient. You could leave Ludlow by the 10.14 am train for Shrewsbury & hear of me at the “Raven” on Wednesday morning abt 11.30.5 We could spend ½ an hour in looking at Shrewsbury & then journey away as above. Let me hear, but in no case inconvenience yourself. | Yours | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 45-6

1 The village of Wroxeter in Shropshire, on the River Severn, is the site of Viroconium Cornoviorum, the fourth largest Roman city in England. Excavations had begun in February 1859, and Charles Dickens was an early visitor. 2 Buildwas Abbey, a ruined twelfth-century Cistercian abbey, is situated on the Severn not far from the ruins of Wenlock Priory, a Norman foundation of Cluniac monks. See also below, Letter 85. 3 Near the Shropshire village of Acton Burnell are the ruins of Acton Burnell castle, a thirteenthcentury fortified manor house. 4 Opened in 1852 on the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway, Dorrington station closed in 1965. 5 The Raven Hotel in Castle Street, Shrewsbury, was demolished in 1960.

51 • To Jane Morris, 7 September 1872 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 7. 1872 Dear janey I was very glad to have your letter, because it was written without my asking for it – and I very much wish to have your confidence in my sympathy (if you think it would be worth anything).1 By “sympathy” I do not mean to express anything more than a wish that you – an old friend – should find a comfort in liking me, and being liked by me and that no real untruth shd pass between us, and as little mistake in expression as possible. 53

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Of course I know the strength of resource in despair, well enough – that is, the willingly cutting oneself off from the help of any one, so as to avoid the risk of being deserted by them – but, “nothing venture”, you know – well, one must venture in friendship, for such a thing to be possible; and, assured friendship is very beautiful, and at times deeply soothing in the mere belief in it. I send 3 books, not at all knowing whether you have read all or any of them. I’ve not seen Topsy to ask him. Very much should I like to come to Kelmscott again, and will try to do so, if you stay much longer. The last visit, on arriving, did give my soul a twist, wh’ I hope my face did not express, as it was quite unavoidable (i.e. the unfortunate circumstance). Like a fool I stayed in my damp shoes at Kelmscott, and have had a return of Bronchitis, slightly, wh’ still hangs about me. I spent a day & a half free from business in Shropshire last week, and rather enjoyed going to the Roman station Uriconium, [sic] (Wroxeter) – Buildwas, Much Wenlock and Acton Burnell – all very interesting places, specially the Roman one, for, I cannot resist (& don’t try) the effect of looking on these strange visible expressions of long past life. To see twenty miles of Roman ruins in Italy would be trifling, but as many yards of the same in this northern place, is entrancing. Yours affectionately | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 23-4

1 Although the letter has not survived which prompted this notably sensitive response (and also the letter following), JM’s turning to PSW at this time was prompted by DGR’s mental collapse and probable suicide attempt in June 1872. ‘Many friends blamed his infatuation with [her] for this.’ CLJM, p. 49, note 2. It is touching to see PSW’s refusal to rush to judgment. He wanted Jane restored to health and happiness no less than he wished for the peace of mind of her husband, his closest and oldest friend, though it is hard to see how both outcomes were equally achievable.

52 • To Jane Morris, 12 September 1872 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 12. 1872 Dear janey. Thank you for your letter, wh’ is simple & straightforward, to my minds content. I do not think I misunderstood your former letter, for I had no idea that you would think it worthwhile to tell me a lie, any more than I would really lie to you. There is something in human nature, pure & simple, wh’ touches me closely, and when I see any one clinging to the natural parts of life, I feel much inclined to become one of their friends. This is not often, as you know. So many things come between a human being & simplicity, and so few can resist the inter attraction. 54

1864–1887

I have always taken a great interest in you, and none the less that time has tossed all of us about, and made us play other parts than we set out upon. I see that you play yours, well & truly under the changes, and I feel deeply sympathetic on that account – for, my old own tumbles are not so absorbing that I cannot attend to the tumbles of those who are wrapt about, with the pains of life wh’ are not ignoble. Please believe that I, in no way wish to penetrate into sorrows wh’ I can in no way relieve. I, from my own self, know the impossibility of two people bearing one’s burden. Yours affectionately | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 25-6

53 • To Rosalind Howard, 17 September 1872 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 17 1872 Dear Mrs Howard. Your letter gave me real pleasure, for though I can manage to steel myself against offers of friendship pretty well, any resuscitation of what has looked in passed times to be real good nature, always overpowers me – is irresistible – and so, your kind letter coming after such persistent silence & in itself seeming to be so full of spontaneous good nature, beat down my natural defence, and has laid me open to the possibility of finding one of these days that I have been mistaken. This is pride, mere pride, is it not? but then one has a right to one’s pride, as much as to the shape of one’s nose and no amount of education will get rid of the latter, without destruction. I rejoice that you acknowledge that you are a “hum bug” for a portion of your time, for the mere acknowledgment shows that it oppresses you to be it. In fact I think you do better, and look better, when you are quite honest – i.e. it “becomes you”. Your notice of the effect of your scepticism interested me very much; but what I should like to know, is, if you ever believed? Also, do you not think it quite as difficult to be sure of what you disbelieve, as to what you believe? I think you might perhaps have answered your friend the organist by saying that you were not certain of your disbelief and therefore did not attempt to help others into the same difficulty. I am afraid you will have some difficulty in teaching your boy that injuring live things is not beautiful; I believe that the love of injuring is deeply ingrained in humanity, and that all interference will be mere education, to be washed away with change of fashion. In myself there is a strong natural bent that way, and, perhaps only the advocacy of such an advocate of sporting as Anthony Trollope makes me look upon it with disgust, & keep it down.1 This education however is 55

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

self education & therefore the best of that matter. Let me return you your quotation “Lord what fools these mortals be”.2 I met Colvin the other evening & he told me he had been with you & had had wet weather.3 I am sorry for you, tho’ I think you wise to brave it and make up your mind to enjoy even the bad weather. The heavy grey clouds & driving wind must be very fine on your lovely hills for, lovely they are, though so far north, and if it were not for my habit of making & keeping to “shallow excuses” I would come and look upon them (the hills) with you. Your own self-addressed birds came this morning and at same time a letter from George, to say that they were all right &c. Thank you very much for them, though your letter was the more delightful. You must have enjoyed your laugh (I even did myself) at my writing to remind and then to send me a present.4 Please to forgive the rudeness of this scrawl, & write me a lecture (for education’s sake) when you have time and inclination. [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 Trollope contrived to include extended fox-hunting scenes in many of his novels, even when incidental to the plot. 2 Puck, in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, III.ii.115. 3 The fine arts critic, Sidney Colvin (1845–1927), like GH a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. Through his close admiration of the work of EBJ, he was drawn into that circle of friendships, which also included DGR, WM and Robert Browning. Colvin was appointed Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1876, and Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum in 1884. He was an occasional guest at Naworth Castle. 4 ‘Some time since, 3 brace of grouse were sent to me from the north, and I wrote and thanked a friend of mine for them; this was a bad shot of mine for he had not sent them to me, but he took my letter as a reminder & sent me some birds later on; since then, another friend has sent me birds and now I think all have sent who usually do send; so that I may safely label you with the first gift of 3 brace; you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not letting me know that you were doing the kind turn, so that I might have avoided one blunder in my life.’ PSW to GH, 13 September 1872, Howard.

54 • To Louisa Baldwin, 15 December 1872 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Decr 15. 1872 Dear Louie.1 I am not sure that it is pleasant to be quite forgotten even by ones enemies, but I am quite sure that it is very delightful to be remembered by ones friends. Thank you & Baldwin, very much for your kind invitation.2 I cannot come to you just now but I intend to come when it is possible for me to do so. For many years I have gone to my mother at Oxford at Xtmas time, and should do so this year is she were in better health; but, she has taken to her bed and I think 56

1864–1887

will never be able to leave it – however, as she is over 80 years of age this is not wonderful. When this Xtmas engagement is broken through, I think I shall please myself by never making another, as I so much prefer, seeing my friends when I can, even at a moment’s notice, than to looking forward to the pleasure, wh’ is so often may end in disappointment. I have often to go northward and north westward on business, and if it would not be unpleasant to you & Baldwin I shd be glad on one of my journeys to turn out of my way, & stay a day with you, after giving you due notice of my coming? I say, a day, but I shd like to stay a week, though this, as time has gone for years with me, seems quite impossible. The last time I saw Georgie, she was looking very well. Agnes I have not had the pleasure of seeing for a long time. With kind regards to Baldwin | Believe me to be | Yours very truly Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Louisa Macdonald (1845–1925) was the youngest of the four celebrated Macdonald sisters: her eldest sister, Alice, was mother of Rudyard Kipling; the second eldest was Georgiana (Georgie), who married EBJ; Agnes, who was closest in age to Louisa, married the painter Edward Poynter who became Director of the National Gallery in 1894. In 1866 Louisa married the Stourport industrialist Alfred Baldwin (1841–1908). Their only child, the future Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947), succeeded his father as MP for Bewdley in Worcestershire in 1908. PSW probably came to know the Baldwins through his friendship with GBJ. 2 Louisa wrote to PSW on 12 December, from Wildern House, Stourport, inviting him for Christmas Day, ‘or failing that between then and New Year’s day’. V&A, AAD.

55 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 18 March 1873 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, Mar. 18. ’73 Dear Murray You brought me last evening the most graceful as well as the most delightful present you could have made me – namely, the portrait of my life’s friend.1 In sending you 10£ I only wish to recognise the value of the your gift in a way that cannot intend that such a gift should even appear to be repaid, only that my present shall cost me some thing, to shew my gladness. The mere money will defray (perhaps) the cost of the antiquarian’s print but cannot in any way represent the value of the gift. Yours, in the flesh you have kindly laboured to represent, | Philip Webb: Fitzwilliam 4 57

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 CFM’s fine watercolour portrait (Tate Gallery, London) is one of the very few known images of PSW, and therefore much reproduced. None of the few surviving photographs of PSW are formal poses, and were usually taken without his knowledge, most of them late in his life. It is therefore surprising that he should ever have agreed to this portrait, but despite himself seemed pleased with the outcome.

56 • To Charles Faulkner, 26 May 1873 Draft/copy 1. R.B. G.I. May 26 ’73 My dear Faulkner, Thank you for your very kind letter of Saturday.1 I cannot but admire your boldness, your quite wonderful courage. Supposing it possible I could agree to undertake the work in question, if it were offered to me, and that I succeeded in building it. Your life in Oxford would be simply unbearable for ever afterwards, and I do not know if you could quite escape obloquy if you spent the rest of your natural life in Wagga Wagga.2 In the second place therefore know my deep aversion to having any hand in turning exceptional Oxford into a place of ordinary architectural expression – well, my mind is in no way changed, since I said to you that I never wd help in that way. There is great improbability that any committee wd think of allowing me to try my hand at a design, and even if it did and I was so far lucky as to moderately satisfy myself, I am quite sure that I should never satisfy anyone else, except perhaps, Morris. There is only one architect living who I think could do something wh wd not seriously hurt Oxford and who wd be capable of carrying with him some opinion more extensive than that of himself and one dis-honourable friend (this friend will be here in half an hour & I’ll tell him what I’ve said) and that is Butterfield. So, accept my very sincere thanks and forgive any seeming rudeness | from yours ever | Philip Webb: LPW

1 ‘Yesterday convocation was called on to approve of designs for new Examination Schools prepared by John O. Scott (a son of GGS) but convocation by a large majority rejected and sat upon the designs, & this I think they deserved. . . . I hope that opinion may now prevail that it will be better to appoint a committee to select an architect . . . [without the university] reserving to itself any right of subsequent approval or rejection. If such a committee were appointed and were to crawl up the steps of No 1 Raymond Buildings on their knees, would you kick them out or would you consent to entertain the idea of making designs for these examination schools? I know you dislike Oxford

58

1864–1887 being pulled about and still more of having anything yourself to do with the matter. But this is a case of necessity. We must have a building and it does seem as if we might as well have a decent one while we are about it.’ CF to PSW, 24 May 1873, LPW. For the Examination Schools, see also below, Letter 169. 2 Now the largest inland city in New South Wales, Australia, Wagga Wagga grew rapidly between 1850–70 from a small village to the size of a modest town. PSW’s point here is to suggest a location almost inconceivably removed from CF’s Oxford.

57 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 6–17 July 1873 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn. July 6. ’73 Dear Murray From one of your own natural instincts you will have allowed exactly for the cause of my not writing – idleness to wit. I was very glad to have both your letters – the first of date May 7 – & the second of June 1. I cannot but think that a blessing has been laid on your black-haired head, and that often you must shake it with intense satisfaction, that the fates laid it, for once, in such a bed of clover.1 I assure you that the evil sights, smells, and associations of London, have in no way changed for the better – so that you may comfort yourself during any time of depression with the certainty of your better surroundings. When you had last the tingling of vexation, at your hindrances in getting to see what you had to see at Rome, you must have had great satisfaction also, that for once, railways had been made for one useful purpose – that you had been able to use them for it in particular. Your liking or disliking the Sistine ceiling pictures wd have all depended on your way of having thought of them. I shd not easily forgive myself if they disappointed me at first sight. The quantity of saffron colour in them, of wh’ you speak, does not surprise me – and the white being a pale blue one also seems to me to follow naturally. Would it not be possible to make a tracing of one of the photographs and try and fill in the colour of one of them it would not take long in that way, and it would interest me immensely?2 July 17 – 4 pm. There, you see when this letter was begun & you see the new ending – unless I send it off in 10 min time, you will never hear from me. In case no one has written to you I will just say, that Mr Jones is much better, I suspect the over stimulant of wonderful Italy is just subsiding, for I’ve heard him calling for more of that liquor.3 Mr Morris is I suspect at this moment leaving the embraces of the chaste “Diana” & preparing to pickle his bottom on the Iceland poneys.4 [sic] Mr Rossetti is I believe flourishing.5 For myself – well! here I am! With my bottom thoroughly pickled by my usual chair, or, if it is not, it will be, by continued use for at least 12 months to come – I’ve expended a pound or two more on some photographs of MAB6 over which I dream, and try to believe that there is “such such person” or has been. I think of you often, and always with that kind of pleasure, wh’ you know human nature will take, in seeing unworthy persons receiving the rewards of merit 59

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

wh’ properly belong to the sigher. Dear Murray, write to me if it is no trouble, and only expect an answer from me when it is no trouble to me to write. May the shadow of your hair never be less, | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb: Phil & Margaret [Burne-Jones] & Jenny & May all flourish, so also flourishes the birch rod. Fitzwilliam 7

1 He means CFM’s being in Italy. 2 In January 1885, PSW would eventually see the Michelangelo Sistine frescos for himself. Meanwhile, he relied on photographs and the reports of others for his impression of the impact of these works. 3 Towards the end of his protracted affair with Maria Zambaco, EBJ left for the last of his visits to Italy, in April 1873. His companion for the first few days was WM, on this his first Italian journey, but on 13 April WM started his return trip from Florence. EBJ continued to Siena (where he met CFM, himself on his way to Rome to make Botticelli copies for JR) before travelling to Ravenna, where he developed a fever. ‘Returning homewards at Bologna, he collapsed for several days, delirious, having to abandon his plans for Umbria.’ MacCarthy, LPR, p. 249. 4 WM and CF made two trips to Iceland, the first in 1871 in the company of the Icelandic scholar Eiríkr Magnússon. They embarked on this second expedition in early July 1873, transported once again on the Danish mail boat, Diana. PSW’s thought of WM on horseback was perhaps prompted by EBJ’s sketch inspired by the previous trip, reproduced in MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 294. 5 DGR was living at Kelmscott Manor at the time, and had recovered much of his strength since his collapse of just a year earlier (see above, Letter 51, note 1). During these years he painted JM many times. 6 Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). The earlier mention in this letter is evidence enough to reveal the reverence in which PSW held the work (particularly the sculptures) of Michelangelo. Amongst other masters whose portraits he admired for the same truthfulness, and flawless technique, are Durer and Holbein. His annotated copy of C. Heath Wilson, Life and Works of Michelangelo Buonarroti (London: John Murray, 1874) is in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 147.

58 • To George Howard, 25 July 1873 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, July 25 1873 My dear Howard. After struggling with Ashby’s I have brought their estimate for the new south addition to Palace Green House down to 1066£.1 I’ve no doubt that by putting the work out to tender we could get it done for 100£ less, but it is a question if Ashby’s and Taylor’s proved care would not be worth the other hundred pounds.2 Will you let me know, as soon as possible, if I shall proceed with the work as it is, or reduce the design? Yours very truly | Philip Webb: Howard 60

1864–1887 1 Ashby Brothers (formerly Richard Ashby & Sons) had been the original builders for 1 Palace Green. They now undertook to add a schoolroom and bedroom to the third floor. See Kirk, p. 296. ‘Mr Cates – the Archt to the Crown lands – since the death of Mr Pennethorne – was pleased to say that he thought the addition to the house was a great improvement and that he would forward its carrying out as much as possible’. PSW to GH, 4 July 1873, Howard. 2 Taylor was the works’ foreman for Ashby Brothers.

59 • To Frances Hohenthal, 29 July 1873 Postmark LONDON. W.C. JY 29 73 Address Frances Hohenthal | Hamilton | Canada. 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, July 29. 1873 1 Dear Frances Hohenthal I was very glad indeed to have your letter, telling me of your safe arrival in Canada & Niagara, and of your having met with an employer. Now, there looks to be a good chance for you to do well. You are free from the impediments to right progress wh’ met you at each step in England, and you can depend upon your own honourable labour to carry you through life, without unreasonable drawback. I have been very busy ever since you left, or I shd have answered your letter before. My business gives me many letters to write, wh’ has caused me to put off writing this for so long. London has not changed since you left – it is still a very dirty overcrowded place, and it makes me very often wish to be – where you are – that is, with more fresh air about me. Keep up your courage – behave honourably – (that you can always do) and you will live to be happy on your own exertions. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: LB-1, loose insertion

1 Although the identity of this correspondent is uncertain, and her relationship with PSW unclear, it is evident that this was someone whom he had done his best to assist and presumably encouraged in her decision to emigrate. He had also provided her with a reference.

60 • To George Howard, 4 August 1873 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Aug 4 1873 My dear Howard. Ashby’s will begin as soon as possible.1 I was only able to settle with them today as I had not included the parquet &c &c in the 1066£ and have had to cut and 61

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

carve a little to get it to fit – however now we are straight & I will urge on as fast as possible. Ashby’s will sign the accurate bills of quantities and for their own sakes will hurry to get covered in before the autumn wet & frost comes on them. I have not put in the carving for at the present moment I don’t see my way to its being done properly. I am surprised at your suggesting a journey to Cumberland when I must be on the ground to push the Palace Green affair forward. Also, you know my sentiments as to taking the appropriate morsels out of the mouths of local men. The Cumberland men must be of different mould (& no doubt are very different indeed) to Scotch men or the whole county would have howled at the thought of a London architect having so much as been inside Naworth.2 Please take care – both of Naworth & Lanercost – there was a good article in the Athenæum on Saturday on the subject of historical monuments which have nearly ceased to remain with us.3 The stable door however is I believe reduced to one broken hinge and half a bolt. Yours | Philip Webb: Howard

1 See above, Letter 58, note 1. 2 Between 1873 and 1879, PSW undertook a number of works for GH at Naworth Castle, including converting the Moat House into a studio for GH, creating an additional room in the Morpeth Tower, and designing staircases, fireplaces, bookcases and other library fittings. See Kirk, p. 299. 3 On 2 August, The Athenæum carried an anonymous article headed ‘Exeter Cathedral’ (pp. 152–3), which used the then current restoration work of Sir Gilbert Scott to bemoan such practices, anticipating by a full four years the underpinning philosophy of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, founded by WM and PSW. ‘We prefer to speak of the “renovation” of Exeter Cathedral, rather than describe the works we carefully examined the other day as “restorations,” which they are not, in the opprobrious sense of that term, at least. . . . Whether it is desirable to turn an old cathedral into a new one, is a question upon which we need not give our opinion. There is now no first-class cathedral left to be meddled with, and Westminster Abbey is the sole work of the kind which remains substantially unrenovated. We do sincerely trust that the Abbey Chapter will control the iconoclastic zeal of their Dean, and that the church may be allowed to remain as it is, if only that we may have a specimen of what churches were before the avatar of Sir G. Scott.’ p. 152.

61 • To George Howard, 27 August 1873 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Aug 27 1873 My dear Howard. I should be very sorry to vex you. Would indeed sacrifice some of my own most valuable moral satisfaction to avoid doing so, provided, that I find your wish to 62

1864–1887

have me as a coadjutor is not more vicious than wishing to join me with you to rob the Bank of England of 100,000£; prove that, & I’ll make some effort. You will know that it would be utterly impossible for me properly to advise you upon the Brampton work, without my looking into the affair on the ground.1 Well I cannot come just now at all events for I am kept close by two or three things which have to be roofed in before the end of December. Would it be possible & well for us to journey to Brampton in the winter, and look into affairs there, in the calm of blood, caused by the thermometer being at 32 degrees? I dare say that I can arrange this, and it might not be inconvenient to you. I will not forget the vane, but shall probably raise difficulties about the carving at Palace Green. We could surely find a place for the small terracotta, easily, in the new study. I’ve been obliged to arrange for scaffolding to be bracketed out from our ground, as the tenants in the court, whether of their own will or by superior advice, refuse to allow scaffolding to be used on their ground.2 This will cost us 10£ but we should have had to pay more than that in bribes the other way. I’m sorry you have had bad weather – hope it will give over for a fortnight at least before you leave. London is dull, but we bear up under the loss of beauty & fashion. With kind regards to Mrs Howard & your father. | Yours | Philip Webb: Howard

1 As the patron of the existing parish church at Brampton, which was ‘of poor quality, badly in need of repair, and had no free pews for the poorer townsfolk’ (Kirk, p. 261), GH was keen to replace it with a wholly new building on the same site. See below, Letter 75, note 3. 2 This relates to the additional works carried out at 1 Palace Green in 1873–4. See above, Letter 58, note 1.

62 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 3 October 1873 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, Oct 3. ’73 Dear Murray. Thank you very much for your letter – and also for the photographs, or, as they might better be called the invisible pictures.1 By the aid of strong magnifying glass I can make out that it must be beautiful at Siena. Your description is a great help. ‘The invisible part on the left is so & so, that in the middle such & such the jet black of the right hand is very delightful’. The architecture is evidently good as also the round crested horses. Italian horses are always well done. They must have been a good breed of horse. Your pleasant description of the colouring of the MA Holy family is a great help to me over & above my own power of divination.2 63

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

It rather enrages me, however, that I cannot see it with the eyes that water in my own head. What a blessing it is that pictures & music don’t want translating. If you were to buy a live Italian he would have to be translated before being of any use to an Englishman. I’ve lately got some Philpotti photographs of ivory carvings,3 very much more interesting & valuable than I expected – of Byzantine & pre-Byzantine date & with mediævae many of the designs quite wonderful & some of the execution wonderful to a degree. I take it that you have heard from Morris, who has come back very like a Scandinavian skipper, as brown as a berry – & much less portly, on acct of hard fare & laborious journeys – if he writes he will tell you of his doings, no doubt. I am glad to find you are so industrious, it confirms what I have often felt that this damp oppressive climate is a serious breaker of good resolutions. The fine climate of Italy making you feel inclined to work as long as light & your back hold out, confirms me in my opinion. The little awkwardness of your desiring to do the work you ought not to do, will also give way under the better climate, no doubt. Heaven help you in your strife. For myself, my work goes a little awkwardly, but I try to frighten it by making faces at it. I sometimes succeed in frightening it to death, wh’ keeps it from killing me. You will be pleased to hear that they are diligently searching for coal in the remaining pleasant places of England & sometimes finding it. In another 20 or 30 years most of the country will be more or less of a cinder heap, at that time America will have gained the iron trade so that we can then enjoy our wealth & witness the ruin – perhaps, for a great treat, now & then, going over to American to see Canterbury Cathedral, wh’ they will have there under a glass case – no doubt. If this something bitter spirit of mine does not “inspire” you & make you “speak like an oracle” tell me in a long letter what will. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: Fitzwilliam 10

1 Throughout his professional life, and on into his retirement, PSW placed great value on the detailed evidence to be gleaned from photographs about historic buildings or works of art, and he was always grateful to receive them from friends. The development of the commercial picture postcard was a godsend in this respect, but he was equally pleased to receive the traveller’s own snapshots. 2 The circular panel painting of the Holy Family by Michelangelo (c. 1506–7; Uffizi Gallery, Florence) was commissioned by the businessman Agnolo Doni at the time of his marriage. 3 John Brampton Philpot (1812–78), a British photographer resident in Florence. His photographs of art works included a series of 265 images of fictile ivory (now in the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest).

64

1864–1887

63 • To William Morris, December 18731 Draft 1. R.B. G.I. Dcr. ’73 My dear Morris, Some time I ago I wrote to Wardle upon what I considered was necessary for the good of the Firm under its present circumstances, namely, to have an accurate account made of its value and financial state by some perfectly unconcerned and professional accountant, & he agreed with me (at least such is my recollection) that it would be well to do so. Since then I have further considered the matter, and am more sure that I was then right as to what would be for the good of the Firm, as well as I am now, for myself. For, I know that the “concern” is active, and therefore very considerably involved in a mercantile way, but, I also know that I, personally, have no control over the business; though I am personally interested in its prosperity, and shd be involved in its adversity. In either case the result would be unjust. Now, this is not a reasonable state of affairs; and, although I am dealing with artists, perhaps it would be as well to try and amend it. I have therefore concluded to withdraw from the Firm as a mercantile partnership – though proposing to keep to the friendly and artistic conjunction, so long as I can be of any use to it. I must ask you – whose daily work it is to interest yourself in the matter – not to fancy that I am suspicious of the Firm’s stability, but to understand only that my work will not let me be as certain of the “Queen Square” affairs as I am of those wh keep me alive every day. Also let me say, that I am glad of the business activity shewn, (though as before explained I cannot involve myself in it) because I am sure of the usefulness of the Firm’s labours, as well as the harmlessness of them, in comparison with the monstrous rubbish usually turned out under the name of fine art wh makes such sober work as yours (apart from drunken poetry) most agreeably honourable. Yours very affectionately, | Philip Webb. P.S. You can use all, or any part, of the above, in letting the other members know that I wish to put myself on a new standing with the business. Also, I shd propose that in the Christmas account, the value of each of the members shares should be named, and that any portion belonging to me shd remain in the business as long as it is required, at the rate – say – of the English Funds – 3 per cent. LPW

65

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 This is an important letter in the history of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, for it was almost certainly written with the intention of assisting WM in his subsequent decision to re-organise the firm so as to take sole control, against much opposition from three of the partners (Madox Brown, DGR and Marshall). It may even have initiated the momentum for change. It is a skilfully constructed document, for although PSW may seem to be protecting his own interests, it can be argued that his real motive was entirely selfless. Ever since the initial equal investments from the original partners at the firm’s founding, subsequent capital injections had come from WM, and although he was the sole partner taking a regular salary, he was also the only one who was ‘full-time’, and much of the risk fell on his shoulders. By seeking to initiate a debate between the partners (the postscript suggesting that his ideas might be circulated was probably no afterthought, but the whole point of the letter), PSW probably hoped that the ensuing discussions would be amicable and reasonable, and might lead to the kind of outcome which WM eventually achieved in March 1875, the dissolution of the partnership and the re-branding of the business as Morris & Co., under his sole ownership. WM agreed a settlement of £1000 to each of Brown, DGR and Marshall, but EBJ, CF and PSW all waived this payment. It is entirely characteristic that PSW should additionally refuse to take the £640 of fees due to him for work done over the years for the firm, and should continue to recommend Morris & Co. whenever possible to his own clients. For the protracted negotiations which led to the establishment of Morris & Co., see MacCarthy, WMLT pp. 341–7 and Charles Harvey and Jon Press, William Morris. Design and Enterprise in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), ch 3.

64 • To Elizabeth Burden, 4 April 1874 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, April 4. ’74 Dear Miss Burden Thank you very much for your letter, I shall be very pleased to become a subscriber or double subscriber as you may feel the want.1 Mind, I take it on your responsibility, if a church & state ware shd happen, not on mine With kind regards | Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Huntington MOR 579

1 Bessie Burden taught students for the School of Art Needlework (later the Royal School of Needlework) from 1872, and also took on private pupils before endeavouring ‘to set up her own teaching establishment. On 13 April [1874], she received a letter from Rossetti . . . offering to be a “large Donor to your School”.’ Lynn Hulse, ‘Elizabeth Burden and the Royal School of Needlework’, p. 33 note 16.

65 • To George Price Boyce, 16 May 1874 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, May 16. ’74 Dear Boyce I’ve written to my “sawbones” brother to ask him to look in upon you on his next visit to London.1 If you feel able, & inclined you shd go down to Welwyn & have 66

1864–1887

lunch with him. It is a pleasant place & the fresh air wd probably do you good. Journey under an hour, and cab at Welwyn Station – address “H: S: Webb Esqr Welwyn | Herts.” There are many old fashioned plants in the garden wh’ has a gravel bottom & poor soil. Trains, Kings Cross to Welwyn Station, wh’ is the next below Welwyn Hatfield. My brother is a careful & patient surgeon, knowing the exceeding value of both. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: My brother is a Bartholomew’s man & keeps up his connection, & knows of new hospital treatments &c & knows Paget very well.2 BL Add 45354, ff. 58-9

1 PSW’s elder brother, Henry (Harry) Speakman Webb (1827/8–1911) was a general practitioner in Welwyn, Hertfordshire. Their younger sister, Caroline (d. 1909), lived with him, and after her death another sister, Sarah (?1826–1922), moved in, by which time he had retired to Winchester. All three, like PSW himself, never married. PSW often spent Sundays with Harry and Caroline, and would design and build New Place (with surgery) in Welwyn (1877–80). See Kirk, pp. 224–6 and 300. 2 St Bartholomew’s Hospital (Barts) in Smithfield, in the city of London, was founded in 1123. The surgeon, Sir James Paget (1814–99), had a long association with Barts, having trained there before returning to teach, serving as curator of the museum and as warden of the medical school. Paget was celebrated for his surgical and pathological work, and for new procedures in treating a range of diseases.

66 • To Lady Fitzhardinge, 7 July 1874 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 7. ’74. To Lady Fitzhardinge. Cranford house | Hounslow. Dear Lady Fitzhardinge1 I have obtained an estimate from Morris & Co of Queen Square2 for reglazing the Hall windows of Berkeley Castle from my design, with reinsertion of the existing shields of arms. I propose to glaze the lower portion of each light with a flowered quarry and coloured border, and the upper portion, in wh’ the shields are set, with a flowing grisaille3 border. Each window, composed of two under and two upper lights wd cost between 18 & 20 pounds, and as there are 4 windows, this wd amount to about 80£. There wd in addition be the usual charge for carriage & fixing. Yours very truly, | Philip Webb: LB-1, p. 1 67

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 Georgina Holme-Sumner (d. 1897) married Francis Fitzhardinge Berkeley (1826–96) in 1857. On the death of his father in 1867, Berkeley became the second Baron Fitzhardinge. The family seat was Berkeley Castle, in Gloucestershire, where between 1874–7 PSW oversaw various alterations, decorations and glazing work, the latter involving MMF & Co. See Kirk, pp. 183–4 and 299. 2 PSW here uses the Morris & Co. designation about eight months before the official demise of MMF & Co, though perhaps as a convenient shorthand rather than in deliberate anticipation of the future changed status of the firm. See above, Letter 63, note 1. 3 Grisaille: ‘Decorative painting in grey monotone to represent objects in relief’ (OED).

67 • To George Frederic Watts, 8 July 1874 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 8. ’74. To G: F: Watts Esqr Little Holland House | Kensington Dear Watts.1 In answer to your letter just recd. It is with real distress that I find come true, what I could not but have anticipated. The encouragement offered to the interested people in the Isle of Wight to gratify their angry disappointment at the employment by me of a London builder on your house has told.2 When I paid my lawyer for his advice in the disgraceful matter of Saunders & Waterfield3 I resolved not to further trouble myself where great care and anxiety had been of no avail, and my professional reputation had gained no consideration for my opinion. I will send for Tyerman, and as carefully as possible put the matter before him to see if there is any probability of his considering himself responsible, since (as I heard from Tyerman) other workmen than those employed by him have been engaged upon the house, and wh’ report is confirmed by your letter & enclosure of today. There is still a balance of 30 or 40£ due to Tyerman under my direction and I will do the best I can, though I am not at all hopeful. The rest Each day of this week I am engaged and I have to go into Yorkshire next week,4 so that I cannot possibly go to Freshwater ’till the week after next. Yours faithfully, | Philip Webb. LB-1, pp. 1-2

1 The painter, George Frederic Watts (1817–1904). 2 The difficulties which arose in connection with the building works for The Briary, the studio-house PSW designed for Watts at Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight (1872–4), made this an unhappy commission. In order to reduce the costs for Watts, PSW turned to the London builder, John Tyerman, whom he had previously employed to build houses for GPB and the painter, John Roddam Spencer

68

1864–1887 Stanhope (for whom see below, Letter 96, note 6), and risked doing without a clerk of works. A disgruntled Isle of Wight builder chose to make trouble and criticised the work as inadequate: ‘after examining it, Webb found that this was not the case, and the accusation was withdrawn. Unfortunately, Watts took up residence before the house was finished and, finding the house damp, he wrote angrily to Webb impugning his professional integrity, got the local builder to investigate the problem, and brought in local tradesmen.’ Kirk, p. 274. 3 The dispute resulted from PSW’s work being challenged. 4 He was overseeing work on his house for Isaac Lowthian Bell. See below, Letter 73, note 5.

68 • To Jane Morris, 13 July 1874 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, July 13. ’74 Dear janey Thank you for your affectionate letter. I’m afraid I shall not see you before I go. I’ve no recollection of Morris having mentioned your wish for me to come up, but then I know that my memory is worse than his, & therefore he may have done so. I have been very busy, partly unavoidably, & partly through a bad way I have of letting work get into a knot. ’Tis in that state now, & I’m untying it. I go into Yorkshire tomorrow morning, & shall not be back ’till Thursday or Friday night. It pleased me to think of your going to the Flemish towns, a van Eyking. How the childrens eyes will round in their heads.1 I am glad that you liked the Goethë conversations. The old boy found out his own proper Boswell, did he not? Johnson managed his, with verbal bangs & buffets – Goethë with the most delicate flattery.2 Oh the wonders for the 2 girls & the boy.3 You and me never had such wonders. The Oxford houses are sold, and the Webbs’ & Speakmans’ swept away4 – and the town purified. Poor old town, poor old memories. I commission you to drink a bottle of wine for both of us, for forgetfulness sake.5 Yours faithfully | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 31-2

1 WM took JM, their daughters, and the Burne-Jones children on a trip to Belgium in July, from Calais travelling to Tournai, Ghent and Bruges. Jan van Eyck (c 1395–1441) was one of the most significant Flemish painters of the fifteenth century, and is known to have worked in The Hague and Bruges. 2 Much of Goethe’s biographical history depends upon the published work of Johann Peter Eckermann (1792–1854). Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret first appeared in English in a translation by John Oxenford (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1846). James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson was first published in 1791. 3 Philip Burne-Jones. 4 The end of the Webb family home in St Giles’, Oxford. 5 It was a regular theme of PSW’s that he and JM had a special link through their Oxford childhoods.

69

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

69 • To George Frederic Watts, 17 July 1874 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 17. ’74 To G: F: Watts Esquire Little Holland House | Kensington Dear Watts. Upon finding it impossible for myself to visit Freshwater at once, I considered it wd be best to employ another Archt (whose professional character wd be above dispute beyond suspicion, and who might be considered unprejudiced –) to visit the works and examine them, in the presence of Tyerman the builder employed by me, and the several tradesmen who had been called in without my consent or approval to report upon Tyerman’s work. I enclose a copy of the report of Mr Vinall1 – the Architect I employed – and wh’ report I consider to be a careful and dependable one. It will be seen by the report that Mr Tyerman expressed to Mr Vinall his willingness even now to do – even now – all that was required of him to remedy defects. I beg to say for myself, that Tyerman has never hitherto objected to do any work to the house that I expressed a wish shd be done. I propose, now, to request that Tyerman shall should receive the instructions of from Mr Vinall, and carry out the necessary repairs under his direction, before any further the balance or balances due from you to Tyerman are paid to him. I shall be obliged if you will let me know at what time it wd be convenient to you for Mr Vinall to direct Tyerman to begin the repairs. As soon as these repairs are completed I must beg you to release me from any further interference in a matter wh’ has been so little far from satisfactory to me.2 Yours faithfully, | Philip Webb. LB-1, pp. 3-4

1 Charles George Vinall, of Goodman and Vinall in Buckingham Street, the Strand, from whose architectural practice GWJ would join PSW’s office, in early 1882. Vinall would serve as an Honorary Secretary for the SPAB (1880–89), and a regular committee member, reporting on particular cases. 2 Vinall oversaw the completion of the project. Finding the whole affair distasteful, PSW refused to accept any fee from Watts. Remarkably, their relationship was not permanently soured. See Kirk, p. 77.

70

1864–1887

70 • To William Tatham, 25 July 1874 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 25. ’74 To W: Tatham Esqr 118 Pall Mall | S.W.1 Dear Sir: I beg to acknowledge the rect of and to thank you for your letter of the 23rd inst and to say in answer, that it will be impossible for me to enter upon any fresh work for some time to come on acct of present engagements. Also, to avoid any possibleity of misunderstanding I will tell you say, that for some time past, I have decided not to undertake work to build for any one who is not conversant with my work, and able to judge of what would be the finished effect of what that wh’ I should propose agree to carry out. Yours truly, | Philip Webb. LB-1, p. 6

1 William Tatham (1834–76), wine merchant.

71 • To Reverend Oswald Sharp, 4 August 1874 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Aug 4. ’74 To Revd Oswald Sharp. Martyrs Meml Ch. | St John’s St Rd E.C.1 Dear Sir: I awaited your answer to my letter of Saturday last & deferred writing again, thinking it possible that you might not have recd my letter it in proper time. In your letter of Saturday you presuppose that it is my wish to keep Alice Burbridge away from her duty. The suggestion is completely erroneous, and I must beg to refer you to my letter of to you at the time when Alice’s mother’s life was in such a critical state, that it was absolutely necessary that her daughter shd

71

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

attend upon her personally.2 I recd no answer from you to thisat letter though in it I proposed to become responsible for any the cost of providing a monitor substitute for Alice during her enforced absence from school. If from your continued silence I shd be obliged to consider the necessity of applying to the committee of Privy Council for assistance, I must beg you to remember that I shd only do so, because you deny me the usual business attention to my appeal to you as manager of the School to which Alice Burbridge is attached. Yrs truly | Ph. Webb. LB-1, pp. 7-8

1 The Reverend B. Oswald Sharp was the first vicar of the new church of St Peter’s, Clerkenwell, also known as the Smithfield Martyrs Mission Church, consecrated in 1871. The building stood on the site of the former town house of the Marquesses of Northampton, used as a school until its demolition in 1869. The church suffered severe bomb damage in 1940, and was demolished in 1957. 2 ‘A quarter’s salary is due to-day for Alice Burbridge’s services: but as she has rendered scarcely any service of late & you still propose to keep her away, it is fair to the Managers to ask if you are prepared on her behalf to make some arrangement on this score.’ Sharp to PSW, 1 August 1874, Cheltenham 1991.1016.665.i. The history of PSW’s philanthropic interest in Alice Burbridge is unknown. She was employed as a pupil-teacher at the parish school attached to the Martyrs Church, based at 12 St John Street Road, but the critical illness of her mother kept her away from work. Earlier in the year, PSW had written to explain this: ‘The comfort of her daughter’s attention is so great, that I shd be much obliged if you could arrange that Alice’s place at the school shd be filled by a substitute, ’till such time as death or increased strength relieved Alice of the sad necessity of breaking in upon her work. If the providing a substitute shd cause the school an additional expense, I shall be glad to be responsible for the same.’ PSW to Sharp, [1874], Cheltenham 1991.1016.665.h.

72 • To the Managers of the Martyrs Memorial Church Schools, 5 August 1874 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Aug 5. ’74. l” To the Managers of the “Martyrs’ Mem Ch’ schools. St John’s St Rd E.C. Gentlemen. Having been enabled to see The Revd Mr Sharp – one of the managers of your School – I explained to him that it was the wish of Alice Burbridge’s mother, expressed to me just before she died, that her daughter should be transferred from your school to one in the country, more particularly on acct of her health. I beg therefore to give send you this as a formal notice that it is necessary that Alice Burbridge shd leave your school at the end of 3 months from this time. I shd also 72

1864–1887

be obliged, if I shd succeed in shortly finding a proper school in wh’ to place Alice Burbridge, that you will arrange to let her leave you – if necessary – before the whole time of 3 months has expired.1 I am Gentn Yours faithfully, | Philip Webb. LB-1, p. 8

1 ‘I beg, in the name of the Managers to accept your 3 months notice for Alice Burbridge, from Aug 5. If you get a School before that time & they can obtain a candidate in her place, they will release her as you wish.’ Sharp to PSW, 10 September 1874, Cheltenham 1991.1016.665.e. PSW found an equivalent position for Alice Burbridge as a pupil-teacher at a parish school in Datchworth, Hertfordshire, but two years later was writing to the vicar there, fearing that she might be wanting to join her stepsister in Russia. ‘I think, if Alice goes to her sister to live with her, it will be one of the worst things that could happen to the girl. However, I have no power to hinder it, personally; and I could only hope that some aid might have been given, if it had been this wish as well as in the power of Rector or Church (or School) wardens, to by keeping her to her signed indentures ’till they were completed.’ PSW to Reverend John Wardale, 3 August 1876, LB-1, p. 44.

73 • To George Price Boyce, 1 September 1874 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 1. ’74 Dear Boyce I have your double dampy [sic] letter, and therefore let me begin at once by damning you, for no force of words can lower your tone; let us hope they may brace you with echoes of many damns from the ring of the one “damning” against Dartmouth rocks. I see, that if you are not worth coming for to see, the old church is. I beg you to preach at the parson on each Sunday & Saints day, that he may not blast his church by restoration. Tell him what evil minded persons all Church restorers are, and that you have it from the highest authority, that if he does not keep the Scotts’ & Streets’ & Burgesses’1 out of the church he – the parson – will never see Heaven or, if he does he will not be able to appreciate it, & it will be Hell to him. If you shd go to church please make one or two notes of the details of arches capitals &c, wh’ I see are peculiarly Devonshire – the parson will think you are taking down the heads of his sermon, & he will fire up with disestablished force. I haved a book with the pulpit in it, but someone has stolen the book from me. Altogether, I fancy the screenwork & pulpit &c must be very beautiful.2 It looks to me that it may be very well for you to be at the warm end of England, even if it is not bracing now, for you will be able to stop on late into the Autumn. You probably want 3 or 4 months of real change. I shall not see my brother for a fortnight, unless he looks in upon me, but I will give him your message when I do see him. 73

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

There is not any probability that I shall come down and see you as I’m fairly tied by the leg – worse luck for me, better for you, if it is not unkind to say so, & I don’t mean it as such – but, I’m losing that natural sweetness of temper, a characteristic of me wh’ you can’t have forgotten. As ill luck wd have it I’ve made a deadly enemy of Wells,3 by building stables at Bowman’s in front of a telescopic view of his (Wells). I’m very sorry to have done it, but nothing will make him believe that is not malice on my part.4 How shall I ever get to be an RA now, good God! What ill luck. I go to Rounton again next week for a day I believe,5 & am only anxious to avoid beautiful Doncaster with your bloody aristocracy & their brutal sports.6 I suppose you are setting-to at a large picture, one that will torture you well, & keep you from troubling about any other evil on Earth. Hope you’ve got pleasant rooms, & feeling Landlady, and many bottles of good wine; O Lord how lazy I could be, & what a lot of wine I could drink. Yours with a pinch for remembrance, | P Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 62-3

1 For William Burges, see below, Letter 76, note 2. 2 Mention of the roodscreen makes it clear that PSW refers to the fourteenth-century church of St Saviour’s, Dartmouth, in Devon. 3 See above, Letter 12, note 2. 4 PSW had built Joldwynds, at Holmbury St Mary, Surrey (1870–5), for the eye surgeon William Bowman (1816–92), created first baronet in 1884. Bowman was consulted by DGR on his eye disorders, and also became PSW’s oculist. 5 PSW was currently engaged in overseeing the construction of Rounton Grange at East Rounton, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the house he had designed for the iron and steel manufacturer, Isaac Lowthian Bell (1816–1904). ‘The interior, which was comfortable rather than grand or luxurious, [would be] furnished and decorated almost entirely with Morris & Co. products, many of them designed by Webb’. Kirk, p. 123. 6 The annual St Leger horserace was run at Doncaster on 16 September.

74 • To Lord Sackville Cecil, 11 September 1874 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Sep 11. ’74. To The Lord Sackville Cecil. Great Eastern Rail:y Bishopsgate My Lord.1 I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 9th inst enclosing a cheque for £218.1.8 wh’ I return.

74

1864–1887

If your Lordship will refer to my letter to you of the 16th of April last, you will see that I declined to accept no any remuneration whatever for my work in respect of your house at Hayes.2 I told Messrs Goodman & Vinall that I shd not object to their charging the whole 5 per cent for their works, as I considered, & still consider that they would barely be remunerated – even by the full amount – for their labours in the matter. Yours faithfully. | Philip Webb. LB-1, p. 9

1 Lord Sackville Arthur Cecil (1847–98), for whom PSW designed Oast House, Hayes Common in Kent (1872–3). He was a younger half-brother of the third Marquess of Salisbury, the future Prime Minister. 2 As in the case of The Briary, PSW’s house for Watts (see above, Letter 67), here is evidence of the upset which followed a client’s interference in the building work, with the result that (as before) PSW refused his fee. ‘Cecil might have been expecting to get on well with Webb, with whom he had in common a capacity for conscientious work and sympathy for those in difficulty. However, during construction in 1873, a problem arose, probably as a result of Cecil attempting to direct the building work himself, which certainly Webb would have taken as an insult to his experience and skill. Charles Vinall took over the supervising of construction.’ Kirk, pp. 217–8.

75 • To George Howard, 29 September 1874 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Sep 29 1874 Dear Howard. In answer to your letter of the 24th. It does not at all surprise me that your working estimate for the Brampton houses should be as much as £2,990, as on referring to my papers, I find that I estimated the work at £3,350.1 You must bear in mind that practically there would be 9 houses, namely the Carpenter’s or archway house, 6 intermediate houses, and we must count the lodging house as two, for it has that capacity. There is no doubt that the size of the houses could be reduced, but the plans would have to be re-drawn, so as to reduce everything in proper proportion. You must know that I always considered that they were to be larger & in every way somewhat superior as town houses, to the cottages you ordinarily build in the fields. Therefore if Warwick2 puts down £250 as the price of a country cottage, I do not think that £332 or thereabouts would be unreasonable for the town houses. Don’t you think you could get an average of 25£ a year for each house? Mind you, there would be no difficulty in reducing the size of the houses and still keeping the character of them. As to the Church – when I looked at the present church and its site in Brampton, I made up my mind as to the character of the church for a new one to suit that site, 75

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

which is a good one for a town church.3 So that if you would let Warwick make me a plan of the ground with a section from north to south giving the fall of the ground and position of the present building I would make a plan of new church in sufficient manner to let me make an estimate of the cost which would enable you to set to begging with some certainty as to how much you would want to collect. I would do this at once on your sending me the plan of the ground – and section [small sketch of existing church and churchyard]. The section, if I recollect rightly is something like this sketch. Our branch of the family of the Smiths has been very remiss.4 I’ve no doubt in my own mind that they have only just now begun upon the clock. A workman came here this morning and promised that the clock & dial should be ready in 15 or 16 days from this time. Warwick has the address of Smith, and you can thunder at them as soon and as often as you please. I saw Ned on Friday last and I thought him pretty bright, but perhaps this came of the reflection from some new Botticelli photographs which he was shewing me.5 However, I did think that he was looking pretty well. I hope that Rosalind is stronger than she was.6 Please to put my kind remembrances to her in as pretty a form as possible. I don’t believe so much in your “beastly” weather as you are too far from London or any of the “black countries” – wind & wet are as nothing in comparison with the clouds of prosperity. I cannot come and see you now, or I would do so, as I encourage a feeling that you would not ask me to come unless you wished to see me. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: Morris is laid up with a strong touch of rheumatism first in one foot & then in the other.7 P:W: I was at Palace Green last Thursday. I think they must have nearly if not quite done the work they had to do there. I was obliged to give orders for them to paint the iron trellis over the stable wall as it was rusting through. Indeed outside painting should be done generally as soon as it can be arranged. PW. Howard

1 GH was wanting to erect a terrace of workers’ houses in Brampton, close to the Naworth Castle estate (see also below, Letter 77). PSW drew up three different schemes between 1874 and 1876, but they were never executed. See Kirk, p. 299. 2 Thomas Warwick was GH’s clerk of works for the Naworth estate. 3 The appointment of a new incumbent to the parish church of Brampton, the Reverend Henry Whitehead (1825–96), made GH’s wish to replace the dilapidated existing church more likely of success. See also above, Letter 61, note 1, and for Whitehead, below, Letter 214. 4 The London clock-making firm, John Smith of Clerkenwell, founded in 1780, had been engaged to make a clock for Naworth Castle – and is not to be confused with the unrelated but equally prestigious firm of clock-makers, Smiths of Derby. 5 EBJ had visited Naworth during the summer, and was joined there by WM. ‘They had been given for their use a room in one of the towers, once the old library, and not touched since Tudor times.

76

1864–1887 Twenty tourists were ushered in one day: Rosalind thought that “two lions in the old room ought to enhance its interest”.’ Surtees, p. 101. For EBJ’s admiration of Botticelli (‘no one is like him and never will be again’), see MacCarthy, LPR, p. 101. 6 Rosalind Howard’s elder sister, Kate, Viscountess Amberley (1844–74), had died in June, having caught diphtheria from her daughter. 7 Probably gout, to which WM was prone.

76 • To George Gilbert Scott junior, 6 October 1874 Draft/copy [1. Raymond Buildings . . .] Oct 6 ’74. To G: G: Scott Junr 7 Duke St. Portland Place W: Dear Mr Scott. In answer to your letter of yesterday. The firm of London builders who have done most work for me is that of the firm R Ashby & Sons of 24 Bishopsgate without, and I have always found them both willing, & capable and responsible men of business, and doing good sound work.1 They have never built a church for me, but I hear that they have built one for Mr Burges.2 With regard to Washington Church, I shd be very glad to lend you any assistance.3 r M Lowthian Bell is abroad for 3 months, but I shall see his son, Hugh Bell, in a few days & I will mention the matter to him & urge him to use any influence he may have for you.4 I shall be glad when the foundations of your church are getting in to go and look at them, as the new ground with its varieties is always useful. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. LB-1, pp. 11-12

1 PSW had used Richard Ashby and Sons for at least four of his London commissions by this time. See above, Letters 16 and 38. 2 The architect and designer, William Burges (1827–81), much of whose stained glass and other decorative work rivals that of Morris & Co. He was close to many in the broader Pre-Raphaelite circle. The Ashby firm would be the contractors for his own Tower House, in Melbury Road, Kensington (1875–7). The foundation stone for Scott’s new church of St Agnes, Kennington Park, Lambeth, was laid in August 1874, but there was ‘a succession of difficulties with different contractors. Dove Brothers were to have undertaken all the work but a dispute over prices confined their contribution to the foundations.’ Gavin Stamp, An Architect of Promise. George Gilbert Scott Junior and the Late Gothic Revival (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2002), p. 75. 3 Scott prepared designs in 1874 for a new chancel and tower at Holy Trinity, Washington, co Durham, but the plans did not proceed.

77

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 4 Although currently engaged on work for Lowthian Bell (see above, Letter 73, note 5) PSW had previously designed Red Barns at Coatham, Redcar (1868–70) for Bell’s son, Thomas Hugh Bell (1844–1931), who succeeded his father as second baronet. The celebrated archaeologist and diplomat, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (1868–1926), was Hugh Bell’s daughter.

77 • To George Howard, 15 October 1874 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Oct 15 1874 My dear Howard. I do not think anything can equal your good nature towards me, except your folly towards yourself. Bundles of rods are you binding together with which to birch yourself. However, don’t say that I did not try to open your eyes – when some years hence you have to stand in that “Public” at Brampton, & lay your hand on your heart, & speak of the help you have been to the town,1 what’ll you answer to the little fresh coloured farmer wife, who will sing out in Cumbrian treble ‘how about that “shitten yellow coloured” architect who you saddled us with’? Oh sirs! where’ll you be I should I like to know? By good luck I have to go to Rounton in the early part of next week, so that I can come on without much loss of time to myself, or expense to your committee.2 I think that trains will serve for me to get to Naworth-gate by the train 7-oc there on Wednesday evening. I could spend Thursday in the several businesses, and get back to town by the 8.41 train from Naworth to Carlisle on Friday morning. By these means I could be better judge of the amount of mischief you intend for the “moat house”,3 Brampton cottages &c &c, and display a dignified face before your church committee; the interspaces of time being filled up with Naworth ale. I went to Clerkenwell today, and taxed the Smiths with negligence; but they, with unblushing effrontery (which could only have come from their relationship to the Foreign Office) turned to memoranda to see if such a thing as an order had been given: however, it stands now that their man is to come to me on Saturday with such dimensions &c as will allow me to look into Warwick’s part of the clock business.4 If you see “your committee” will you be so good as to say that I will attend to their request, and be at Brampton on Thursday 22nd. You will understand this light letter of mine for what it is worth and believe, that beneath the lightness, there remains very real appreciation of your kindness, mixed with grave doubt as to the object on which you expend it. With kind remembrances of Rosalind [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 PSW envisages GH canvassing in a future election campaign. Indeed, after his father’s death in 1879 he was elected in his place as MP for East Cumberland.

78

1864–1887 2 For the Brampton church building committee, see below, Letter 80. PSW was remarkably prescient in foreseeing some of the local opposition which would surround the erection of his new church, something which he would put down to mean-spirited provincialism. 3 The room at Naworth which PSW converted into a studio for GH. 4 See above, Letter 75, note 4.

78 • To Rosalind Howard, 26 October 1874 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Oct 26 1874 My dear Mrs Howard. Thank you very much for your admirable letter. A mere word or two saying that Howard was better of worse would not have satisfied me, for I was very anxious to know clearly something of his state – now, I can think reasonably of his attack.1 I rejoice to hear that your sister is going to be with you so that you may more easily get some rest for yourself, for unless you are careful of your own health you will not be kind to anyone. On the whole Dr Baylis’s opinion seems to me to be a hopeful one, and the disappointment at George having to go away this winter, is as nothing compared to the confidence given at his pulling through, if care is taken. Indeed, I am very much relieved by your letter, and also impressed by your kindness in thinking it worthwhile to write it to me. I found our friends all fairly well on my return but they were quite upset by my dolefulness. Fortunately, I had not to write it to them, for Morris and Burne-Jones were at Queen Square, where I saw them by 9 o’c on Friday night, and I was able to speak clearly of George’s state; their expressions of affection were also very agreeable to me. The ending of your letter is something of a relief to my mind, for, on finding George ill when I had looked forward to seeing him well, was a trial to my spirits, and made me rather savage I thought, and that again vexed me. If there was any apparent kindness in me, it was my real feeling shewing through, in spite of circumstances. When George is well enough, I will write him word of how his Naworth affairs have been working in me, and that will help to drive away the bogies of weakness & weariness from him. Pleasant Naworth, I know of no country house, so free from the things which make them so really dismal, as yours; you will understand, then, why I do not wish to be an instrument of change in it.2 As you say nothing of the children I take it that they are getting on well. I send your letter on to Georgie3 at once. [Yours very truly | Philip Webb:] Howard 79

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 GH was suffering from ‘pneumonia and severe bronchitis’. Surtees, p. 101. 2 See above, Letter 60, note 2. 3 GBJ.

79 • To Ford Madox Brown, probably 8 November 1874 Gray’s Inn Sunday My dear Brown I heard last night of the fatal end to the illness of your poor boy.1 Please accept my sincere sympathy with you, in this great loss to you and your wife. Believe me to be | Yours very truly | Philip Webb: Huntington HM 45439

1 Oliver (‘Nolly’) Madox Brown (1855–74), son of Ford and Emma Madox Brown, was a gifted painter and writer. He died on 5 November from peritonitis and septicaemia, leaving his father bereft.

80 • To Thomas Forster, 17 November 1874 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Novr 17. ’74 To Thos Forster Esqr Brampton Cumbd Dear Sir.1 Brampton Parish Ch I beg to acknowledge the rec of your letter of the 11th instant, conveying to me the directions of the Committee for me to proceed with the necessary plans for rebuilding Brampton Parish Church.2 I will put the matter in hand in due course, keeping in mind the memorandum as to the cost that it shd not to exceeding £6,000.3 I am dear Sir | Yours very truly | Philip Webb: t

LB-1, pp. 13-14

80

1864–1887 1 Thomas Forster, a local solicitor, was secretary of the Brampton church building committee. 2 PSW had attended a meeting of the committee on 22 October, and sent them a report a week or so later. ‘As I have sent in to the Brampton people my reports as to the Church affair and as Howard will not be there, to see the babe he has so tenderly nursed, I send a copy to you to read to him if he is well enough to undergo it; it you are too anxious to be bothered by it, just put it in the fire.’ PSW to Rosalind Howard, 4 November 1874, Howard. 3 ‘I think I am right in the way of taking the Brampton instruction.’ PSW to GH, 21 November 1874, Howard.

81 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 25 November 1874 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, November. 25. ’74 My dear Murray It was very good of you to send me those translations of the Ourchael Angelo letters.1 They have stirred me to read Grimm again.2 None of my enthusiasm about OA. is at all dimmed. He is a very good expression of the best kind of power of the Italian artists, because he has such a variety of their capacity almost unmixed with any other faults than his own. I would rather that you shd go through the letters in order, than pick out the plums. First, because it will induce you to translate them and secondly, because I don’t know wh’ are the plums. Also, I can stick them into my Grimm. I’ve lately read again George Eliot’s “Romola” – it is, as you must know, all about Florence & Savonarola – but there is not a word about the said master.3 This reading on my part came from a longing to read of Italian matters, as I could not see the places & remains of the people. Also, the thoughts of the places counteract the catarrh & rheumatic pains, which rack our northern noses and joints, in this November weather here. So you are at beloved Pisa again! Though, if you are warm, is a question, for, I heard from Florence the other day, saying that it was very cold there, and snow on all the hills. I’ve nothing whatever to tell you, except that our Burnejones is doing pretty well, though nearly chained to his hearth. Mr Morris is at work on his Italian parchment and doing very pretty things on it4 – but is “so so” in health. I am building houses for people who wd prefer them other than I can do – this they find out when they are done. Poor them.5 The newspapers are banging about the poor pope, “him not caring one straw”.6 Quaritch7 is in despair since your departure as he sells no books, except a pounds worth to me in the shape of Plutarch’s lives – but what is a pound? There, if this cheers you up, a very little will do so indeed. Again I thank you for the translation. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 14

81

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 ‘Ourchael Angelo’: a wordplay on Michelangelo. CFM presumably sent his own translations of letters from the recent Le Lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti (Florence, 1875). 2 Herman Grimm, Life of Michael Angelo, translated by F.E. Bunnett, 2 volumes (London, 1865). 3 George Eliot’s historical novel, Romola, first appeared in serial form in the Cornhill Magazine (1862–3). 4 On 18 February 1874, WM had written to CFM, seeking a supply (‘100 skins’) of Italian vellum, as he wished to try his hand at his own illuminated manuscripts. ‘In March, he began a vellum manuscript of the Odes of Horace. At the same time, he planned to transcribe one of his own tales, “Cupid and Psyche,” which was to include the pictures and designs made by Burne-Jones in 1869 for the original scheme of an illustrated Earthly Paradise.’ CLWM, I, p. 214 note 2: see also WM to CFM, 9 and 26 March, 1874, 1 June 1874 and 11 March 1875, CLWM, I. 5 He means G.F. Watts and Lord Sackville Cecil. 6 W.E. Gladstone’s article, ‘Ritualism and Ritual’, The Contemporary Review, XXIV (October 1874), pp. 663–81, prompted some discussion, initiated by The Times which, as well as publishing substantial extracts, commented in a leading article that ‘we shall esteem that to be the safest error which keeps us at the greatest distance, we will not say from Popery, but from those doctrines and influences which have made Popery detestable’ (28 September 1874). For Gladstone, sell letter following, note 3. 7 The second-hand and antiquarian specialist bookseller and publisher, Bernard Quaritch (1819–99) operated from a shop at 15 Piccadilly, although much of his business came from the postal distribution of his catalogues. ‘[A] voracious though discriminating collector’ (Elliott, p. 166), over the years CFM would amass an important collection of rare printed books, pictures, manuscripts and autograph letters. PSW’s comment suggests that his buying habits were already in place.

82 • To Rosalind Howard, 6 February 1875 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Feb 6 1875 My dear Mrs Howard. If a kindness comes after some delay perhaps it is none the less sweet. Your good natured letters burst upon me with equal surprise and pleasure. I have delayed answering them till now, because I have had before me the risk I shall run of endangering the continuance of “that firmly established friendship” of which you, in your sweetest manner, have given the name. Let me ask you in future not to use the word “snub” in connection with me and any one, much less you. If there is anything in me which has such a horrid appearance please believe that it is only my nervousness putting on armour. In fact I must be in mortal fear, but thinking it best to cry out “who’s afraid?” Your absolutely & purely delightful description of the joys you could give me if I came to you in Italy were not dashed by my feeling that I would prefer to be with other people in that land, for I know of none with whom I should so well like to be with amongst those scenes and associations;1 I am sure both of you would put up (with infinite kindness) with my dulness, my entranced spirit or witless wonder. So, when I tell you that I cannot come, you will know that I shall feel very much the loss of the opportunity of being with you, and in Italy. It is impossible that I should leave England now; death & destruction with all kinds of malignant influences 82

1864–1887

would attend upon me. I am 3 deep at least with work promised, and 50 deep with work which people promise themselves of me. You will understand I am sure, and not wilfully disbelieve me. I go to Yorkshire in next week, which will cost me four days, and having turned off my clerk of works there something more is added to my own work and annoyance.2 All this means, you see, that I am afraid that you will be angry with me, and nip the friendship in its 8 years bud. Your cheering news of the good & promising health of you all is wonderful and makes me hopeful of your good temper and forbearance. When people are not well they are apt to be snappish. Don’t let George be reckless if you can help it. They tell me, that at this time of the year the Italian towns you name are almost always fearfully cold, and that not before April should people go there who have not been living there regularly, excuse the Irishism. It does not seem to me to matter one way or the other as to which man the leadership of the Liberals is given (Lord Hartington has it) for, with a few exceptions, they are a base lot.3 Perhaps Lowe would have been the wisest choice, as he might have been able to frighten the small fry of the Conservatives – and, Oh, what a small-fry!4 Happy, thrice happy Gladstone, to be quit of them. Have you read the Newman pamphlet? If you have not, do so, for ’tis the sweetest of reading, and Gladstone may well study the style and exercise his faculties in answering it.5 I was at Northend last night and gave your letters to read as best conveying your “love” to them.6 The weather here has turned out very cold and villainous foggy. Ned is I think quite as strong as could be expected. Morris has been really unwell but is very much better, having wisely studied to be so.7 In answer to your kind expressions as to my health, I’ve got through the cold very well indeed, and shall do very well if you are not hard upon me. Is it of any use telling you to be careful of yourself? To the children please give my prettiest remembrance, and to you my most distinguished esteem and valorous efforts to continue Yours very faithfully | Philip Webb: Howard

1 For the Howards’ invitation to PSW to join them in Italy, see next letter. 2 For his work on Rounton Grange for Isaac Lowthian Bell, see above, Letter 73, note 5. The clerk of works had initially been John Graham, ‘who, having failed to give satisfaction, was replaced by W. Taylor in early 1875’. Kirk, p. 298. 3 The former Liberal Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98), resigned as party leader in December 1874 after losing the general election earlier in the year. Spencer Compton Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington and later eighth Duke of Devonshire (1833–1908) became leader on 3 February 1875. 4 PSW believed that Robert Lowe, later Viscount Sherbrooke (1881–92), who had held the cabinet posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary under Gladstone, would have been a stronger replacement.

83

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 5 Angered when his friend J.J. I. von Döllinger was excommunicated for opposing the doctrine of Papal infallibility, Gladstone attacked British Catholics for falling into line with the Vatican. His pamphlet The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: a Political Expostulation, published in November 1874, prompted responses from the English Catholic divines, Henry Manning and John Henry Newman (both of whom became Cardinals). Newman’s Letter to the Duke of Norfolk appeared in January 1875, which in February was answered by Gladstone’s Vaticanism: an Answer to ‘Reproofs and Replies’. 6 Since 1867, EBJ and GBJ had lived in Fulham, at ‘The Grange, Northend’. It was to be their London home until his death in 1898. 7 At the beginning of the year, WM had complained of ‘cold & – liver’ (to Aglaia Ionides Coronio, 1 January, CLWM, I) and of being ‘so full of indigestion’ (to Eiríkr Magnússon, 4 January, CLWM, I).

83 • To George Howard, 6 February 1875 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Feb 6 1875 My dear Howard. I am like that one of them in the Bible story, who when invited to the feast said “I cannot come”. I’ve not bought a horse or a house or married a wife, but still I cannot come & that is Gospel truth.1 I fully enter into your enthusiasm about the little “estate”, and, if you can lay hands on the money without going to Monaco for it, I don’t see that you will be unwise to pour it out on pretty Italian soil.2 ’Tis much better that you should do so than find a coal mine there. And now about the house, if you get the ground I would advise you to get hold of some small Italian architect who will make plans by your side, and you can send me memoranda of what you are about, and I can probably help you as well from here as there. I think I should try to keep the old house, unless it is very badly situated, and add on where you want and cut off what you don’t; and have nothing architectooralooral about it3 – whitewash of course, and window openings and doorways, thus: [sketch] and you can’t go far wrong. You will see by my letter to Rosalind, how I appreciate your anger at my refusing to listen to the voices of the charmers.4 But, how can I? Here I have had Routledge and Colonel Thompson conning over the Church plans,5 and at Mr Whitehead’s urgent request to name a date, I have promised that they shall have the general plans by the end of this month.6 Then, I have not touched the Estate cottages for Brampton, and other things in number that I don’t like to think of, but must. I went to see the Naworth clock before it was sent off, & tried the bells. Smiths’ write me word with their bill (they have kept to their estimate of 142£) that the clock is fixed, so that I hope it will “ting tang” on your arrival there in the summer.7 Now listen, please. Do take care not to run risks ’till you get fearfully and wonderfully strong. Don’t be a wilful fool and try to have breakfast lunch & dinner of Italian delights all at once. If you get the house, please make little sketches of it from the S.W. & N.E. and East-North by South-West, and trace them for me as “consulting” architect – surely my years ought to allow me that dignity. If only 84

1864–1887

you could see what I see at this moment (1:oc) out of my window – a cold white fog, with spiderswebs of tree boughs, and thermometer at 37 degrees – you would hug yourself with joy, and be good. I am sorrowful, and yet keep good. What it will be in Yorkshire next week heaven only knows, or the dormice & squirrels. I will give your love to Morris but I will tell him not to go to you, for he ought not to go: write to him and ask him yourself if you want to do him an injury.8 I’ve said nothing of your kindness in wishing me to come & help you & enjoy myself, but I feel it very much, more particularly as you are a man for whom I have built. I find it very general that so soon as I have walled a man in, he walls me out of his esteem. You have not done this, & therefore I want you to get hearty-strong, and live for ever, and when you die be sorry for it. [Yours very faithfully | Philip Webb:] Howard

1 ‘Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many; / And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were hidden, Come: for all things now are ready. / And they all with one consent began to make excuse. . . . / And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ St Luke 14:16–8, 20. 2 ‘For some few weeks George was fired with the possibility of buying property at San Remo and rebuilding an old house on it.’ Surtees, p. 105. 3 ‘Architectooralooral’ – used to suggest something over-fancy in design – is coined by Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, in Dickens’s Great Expectations (ch 27). 4 GH had urged PSW to come to Italy to advise and make designs for his San Remo venture. 5 The publisher George Routledge (1812–88), a Brampton man, was a committed member of the church building committee. ‘He acted as agent in soliciting subscriptions from people in London with a Brampton connection.’ Penn, p. 12. Thompson was presumably another member of the committee. 6 For the Reverend Henry Whitehead, see above, Letter 75, note 3. 7 See above, Letter 75, note 4. 8 See previous letter, note 7.

84 • To Sir Baldwyn Leighton, 15 March 1875 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Mar: 15. ’75 To Sir Bal[d]wyn Leighton Bart 2 Upper Berkeley St Portman Square Dear Sir Bal[d]wyn1 I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter to me of the 13th. You will possibly remember some of my strictures on those people called Architects who go about the country, and, under the pretence of “restoring” old 85

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

the remains of old buildings, end in destroying them. and If so, you will be able to advise your friend Mr Gaskell, that, if he wants to know how not to do anything, to such notable works as the mediæval buildings at Wenlock (wh’ I went to see some two or three years ago) I could, perhaps, advise him as well as most architects.2 But, if the reverse is his intention he would only find me a hindrance instead of a help. My charge would be 6 guineas and travelling expenses if the visit did not occupy more than two days. Thank you for your good-natured wish to have me to dinner at your house, but, though I do not altogether refuse to go out I do so as little seldom refuse as often as possible. With kind regards to Lady Leighton3 | Believe me to be Yours very truly P: W: LB-1, pp. 17-18

1 Sir Baldwyn Leighton (1836–97), eighth baronet, became Conservative MP for South Shropshire in 1885, and positioned himself as a liberal. 2 The lawyer, Charles Milnes Gaskell (1842–1919), became Liberal MP for Morley in 1885. In 1873 he inherited Wenlock Priory, in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, from his father, James Milnes Gaskell, who having purchased the site in 1857 from his wife’s cousin, Sir Watkins Williams-Wynn, set about restoring the Priory ruins and turning the Lodge into a family home. PSW’s previous visit to the Priory ruins was in the company of GPB. See above, Letter 50. 3 The Hon Eleanor Leicester Warren (1841–1914), daughter of George Warren, second Baron de Tabley.

85 • To Thomas Forster, 23 March 1875 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Mar: 23. ’75 To Thomas Forster Esqre Hon Secy to New Ch’ Committee Brampton Dear Sir. I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 18th enclosing several questions put to me by your Committee, and wh’ I will answer in the order given.1 1st It certainly would be possible to transpose the vestry, putting it on the South instead of the North side as shewn, but I wd seriously recommend that this shd not be done. The composition as it now stands is one of very careful consideration, and the position of the vestry has considerably regulated the disposition of parts of the whole of the North side – the displacement of one side part wd affect the whole. Also, the vestry chimney as it stands is at the greatest distance from the highest or central roof & is best placed there with regard to the South West wind. 86

1864–1887

Again the effect of the chimney (artistically) will help to balance the tower at the West end. 2nd The so called prayer desks are in reality mere extensions of the stalls Westward. The western desk facing West on each side is intended for a lettern2 use, instead of a separate lettern – however these desks could be omitted and a lettern standing clear substituted. 3rd The exact position of the pulpit as shewn need not be insisted upon, but it wd not do to put it more eastward, as that would be into the stall space behind them the stalls , but it might be moved more south, as then the sloping roof of south aisle would act as a sound board, but I have, myself, no fear but that all persons in the church wd be able to hear the preacher distinctly. 4th Answered in the 2nd place. 5th There are examples of double sedilia, but if the Committee wd prefer it, I see no reason why the seats shd not be three instead of two as shewn.3 6th I wd put a credence table4 & piscina5 combined in the southern jamb of great east window. 7th The mullioned screen between nave and ringers loft is to be glazed. 8th The screens to chancel are to be of fair ashlar stone, and I think about 3 feet 6 in high from pavement on the chancel side. They will be higher by the height of the added steps on the aisle sides. I am Dear Sir, Yours very truly | P: W: LB-1, pp. 18-20

1 PSW had estimated that, by leaving the construction of the belfry tower to a later time, when more funds might become available, the building costs would be £6070. 2 Lectern (obsolete). 3 The sedilia (usually three in number) are the clergy seats normally on the south side of the choir, near the altar. 4 ‘A small side table or shelf to hold the Eucharistic elements before consecration’ (OED). 5 ‘A perforated stone basin for carrying away the ablutions, generally placed in a niche on the south side of the altar’ (OED).

86 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 25 March 1875 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, Mar: 25. ’75 Dear Murray It was partly your own fault that I did not answer your last letter but one. If I’d written at once (a most improbable thing with me) it wd have been all right, but your saying you were shortly going to Rome & giving me no address for there made me seize the idle excuse & wait ’till I heard again. Now that I have your Pisa (in an aureole)1 letter of the 13 of this mo: you see, I do write, tho’ late as usual. 87

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

You see also the reason why M’Angelo is a lasting joy to me, is, that he never dropped the mediæval directness of expression and yet is free from archaic mannerism. In truth I fancy he had the power of giving the greatest amount of collected good in his work, though no doubt some of the earlier folk were purer and more direct in some one characteristic. With all of Raffaele’s2 wonderful facility & grace he did drop into sentimental sloppiness (forgive the slang) and gave smiles of uninteresting cleverness. Then you see again I’m a huge lover of frescoe painting over every other kind, well, I find the execution of the Sistine work incomparably the finest. I wd give a good deal just to fly up to the ceiling and rub eyes over the surface before I die, or restorers have their own wicked will on it. Perhaps one of these days you’ll be able to get a photo: of the new-old Baptist statue. I don’t much care whether it be the one or other master’s work – Donatello being so splendid a master.3 The fretful stupidity of most people in thinking of any particular part of the earth – where they happened to be born – as “home”, makes them, I suppose, when they are in Italy to wish to get to New York or Paris or London again. Everybody goes to Italy who can, but they grumble at being away (for more than a few months at a time) from soot and ugliness. This is what I thought when I heard that you hoped to get back shortly: as for coming back to see friends, it is ridiculous for when you do see them you find all their bad qualities rampant – whereas when away from them you remember their good only. Also, in England at least, it is thought degrading to be prettily unfettered with wasteful encumbrances of living. Painters even, in England, who cannot design a proper fold of drapery, look to keeping a carriage & pair, be knighted & dine with the Ld Mayor – damn them! So you have not yet done “it” and therefore Pisa is so.4 When you have done it, I hope it won’t be London [sketch of smoking chimney stacks either side of ‘London’] and so – with you, with pleasure you must know, that I am very glad of your translations & take it as kind of you to do them.5 I forgive all crowing as well as disgust on your part, & I look for more at your leisure. There is nothing amusing going on here, people are so rich in England that they can’t afford to be interesting and that blasted dillettantism is creeping over the nation more than ever before I fancy – so there is even less of hope for the next future. Mr Jones is doing good work, though I’ve not been able to see it by day time, and Mr Morris also is not idle & his work is also good.6 Our weather is pickleing, [sic] with fast wind, but the spring is well kept back by it; always a good thing for this climate. Yours. | Ph Webb. Please tell me how properly to address an Englishman (on envelope) who is living in Italy. Fitzwilliam 15 88

1864–1887 1 Presumably CFM had highlighted his current location by placing ‘Pisa’ within a halo. 2 Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483–1520), the Italian painter and architect whose name was purposefully chosen to lend significance to the intentions of the ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ Brotherhood. 3 The bronze statue by Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, c.1386–1466), of St John the Baptist (1457) is now in the Cappella di San Giovanni Battista of the Duomo at Siena, in which city the sculptor was resident between 1457–61. 4 He highlights ‘Pisa’ by encircling it, in imitation of CFM (see note 1). 5 CFM seems to have sent more of his translations of Michelangelo letter. See above, Letter 81. 6 The protracted arguments over the future of ‘the Firm’ had finally been resolved. ‘On 31 March, an announcement was made that Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was formally dissolved and the business would continue under Morris’s sole ownership, trading as Morris & Co.’ MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 342. EBJ became sole designer for the company’s stained glass.

87 • To George Howard, 9 April 1875 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, April 9 1875 My dear Howard. Your letter – at last but a very kindly long one. ’Tis true, being indolent, I did not so much care about the answers to questions, but I did want to know how you were both getting on. Of course I had heard of Mrs Howard’s safety, but I wanted to know that you were both doing well.1 If I look with “microscopic eye” in to your letter2 I distinguish a tone of depression, which may only be the natural outcome of nature, and if so it cannot be helped, & we must take you as we find you. The Italian Villa interests me very much.3 I hope you are sure of the ground. Surely you might tell the owner, & he, the Pope, that your ancestors were good Catholics, and you yourselves are not much better; and that in your Castle in the north of England you have a Catholic Chapel – even Cardinal Manning would approve of such Catholic deceit:4 also your most Catholic architect in England (consulting architect) is quite free from a “bloody-bones” spirit of desecration. Your ideas look pleasant enough on paper, as to what you hope to do in pulling down & putting up again, and if your architect is not a dunderhead he will be careful in knocking about the thick walls, brick vaulting &c. I hope you will keep to paved floors. They stop out bugs & beetles, and make a place quiet. How will the colonnaded balcony be covered? The Brampton Committee are taking their own sweet time in making up their minds.5 It will take to the middle of June at the least to get ready to start, and if much later than that, I should advise putting it off ’till next year. I do not mean to say that it is extraordinary, their not seeing the merits of the design as I do, for you know what even “cockeyed” children are to their mothers – well, a few dabs of the brush or architectooralooral pencil,6 are of more value in the toorallooral eye, than many cockeyed children. The said chimney is part of the composition, the pulpit is a moveable feast, and eloquence could swell from any of the 4 corners of the church. 89

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Now, about the cottages.7 I redesigned them & sent the plan to Warwick, but he only took off two hundred pounds, when he should have taken 5 or 600 at the least from the whole block, so that when I went to DuCane he shook his head,8 and I initiated him, & of my good nature promised to make a third plan which should come in a winner. This is not yet done, as you may guess, for, I am a little pressed with work, but it will be done in time. Also, I’m something malevolent at this time, and frown & bite my lip, & frown again. However, the sun of laughter will re-gild this countenance upon the return of the faithful. I will send the grates for the nurseries. Warwick has never sent me the memoranda of the moat house, but I will gird him to do so. No Rome, poor you, I am sorry for you indeed I am for ’tis one of those disappointments which I should keenly feel myself; never mind, youth is on your side, and if steam holds good, you’ll go a many times yet.9 You people also are so greedy. It was not at all foolish my supposing you might be angry at my not coming at your call to San Remo, for I was vexed myself and could not expect you to be more reasonable. Ashby’s sent Heath to me the day before yesterday, to say that you had directed that the outside painting of Palace Green house should be done now. I’ve promised to go up on Monday and direct, and also meet Boyd, the engineer’s man about some broken boiler which the frosts did for you. I passed the house yesterday on my way from Ned’s, it looked solitary; some kind critic told me the work looked Italian, somewhat, and I forgave him. Good God! like me, he never can have been in Italy. The Northend works looked very beautiful to me, and they are progressing finely, though not finished; however, much comes on at the head if little drops off at the tail, so the studios are full for our benefit.10 I have the photographs of the Hampton Court Mantegna series, so that time is pleasant while I look at them and I do not care that Agnew & others have been paying between 2 & 300£ for D. Cox’s landscapes when the Cox only got 30, 40 or 50£ for them.11 My Mantegna’s only cost 2 guineas the set. It has been said that Mr Gladstone & the Prince of Wales, are the two orators who most aptly notice accidental circumstances during their speeches. I see that the latter used an unusual appearance of the sun with tremendous effect the other day.12 There, that is all my scandal, and now I wish you well, with very kind regards to Mrs Howard and remembrance to the children. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Howard

1 On 14 March, Rosalind had given birth to Oliver Howard (1875–1908) whilst in San Remo, following which GH fell ill with congestion of the lungs. His thoughts of building in San Remo were set aside. See above, Letter 83. 2 This may have been one of Ford Madox Brown’s sayings. William Holman Hunt recalls Brown visiting his studio and in commenting on his work ‘he cited certain artists as unappreciated whom

90

1864–1887 he championed earnestly and humorously in turns, meanwhile indulging in playful irony upon what he termed my “microscopic detail”.’ Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 2 vols (London: Macmillan & Co., 1905), I, pp. 126–7. PSW uses the coinage again in Vol. III, Letter 835 (see note 7). 3 See above, Letter 83, note 2. 4 For Manning, see above, Letter 82, note 5. He had been appointed Cardinal only a few days previously, on 29 March. 5 See above, Letter 85. 6 See above, Letter 85, note 3. 7 See above, Letter 74, note 1. 8 As clerk to the trustees of the Earl of Carlisle, Richard Du Cane was the formal contact in PSW’s relations with the Naworth Estate. See below, Letter 112. 9 In fact, the Howards set out in January 1876 for a three-month visit to Rome. 10 Almost certainly this refers to the work which EBJ was doing for Morris & Co.’s extensive decoration work at 1 Palace Green, which continued through the 1870s and into the next decade. ‘In designing the dining room . . . Webb had carefully provided a “very good space” flowing around the upper panelling, awaiting s sequence of murals by Burne-Jones [who] had already planned out the frieze and made preliminary watercolour designs when the canvases were ordered. It was an ambitious sequence, a cycle of twelve panels in the grand Italian manner of Pinturicchio, Perugino and Mantegna, painters that the Howards, like Burne-Jones, had admired on their travels in Italy. . . . The panels were begun in Burne-Jones’s studio and gradually moved to Palace Green to be worked on it situ. But as so often with Burne-Jones’s ambitious projects, progress was extremely slow.’ MacCarthy, LPR, pp. 266–7. 11 On 8 April, the auctioneers Christie, Manson and Woods had sold the Quilter collection of British watercolours, with works by the landscape painter David Cox (1783–1859) selling very well. The buyers included the art dealer, William Agnew (1825–1910). The Times recorded (9 April) that one of Cox’s drawings, Green Lanes (originally sold by the artist for £33), went under the hammer for £1,470, and that The Hayfield, sold by Cox in 1850 for 50 guineas, was the subject of spirited bidding between a Mr Addington and Agnew, the latter securing it for £2,950. 12 Although the precise allusion remains unclear, this probably refers to the visit on 7 April of the Prince and Princess of Wales to the Chatham dockyards for the launch of the ironclad ship, the Alexandra, named after the Princess. The weather earlier in the day had been torrentially wet, but the sun appeared for the launch. The Prince of Wales was Queen Victoria’s son, Albert Edward (1841–1910), who as Edward VII succeeded her in 1901.

88 • To Lady Fitzhardinge, 18 May 1875 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 18. 1875. To the Rt Hon The Lady Fitzhardinge Berkeley Castle Dear Lady Fitzhardinge. In answer to yours of the 14th instant. I well recollect the window in question in the other drawing-room at Berkeley Castle and I will make a diagram for the Carpenters to work by, but I must first get from them, fuller dimensions & instructions as to the present frame of the window. In comparing your drawing 91

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

with a tracing of the window already altered, I fancy it may be better to put only one mullion but this will depend upon the diagrams notes I get from the foreman. With regard to the Hall fireplace, I am very anxious to do this quite rightly. The fireplace itself does not belong to the date of the hall, and though I think it sufficiently good to be kept, the treatment of its decoration will have to depend upon the woodwork adjoining. I propose to decorate it (the fireplace) with gold on a dark ground and by this means soften those parts wh’ are incongruous, but to do this properly, it wd take more than two months and I must make some trials here first before sending a man down to do the work. Upon your request I will make these trials. Also, if you wish it, I could put in hand one of the lights of the hall windows as a specimen, but in that case the glass itself of the light wd have to be sent to town. I enclose mema for the Carpenter. Yours very truly | P.W. LB-1, pp. 22-3

89 • To Lieutenant-Colonel William James Gillum, 13 September 1875 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Sep 13. 1875. To Lt Col Gillum Ch. Hill Hse East Barnet My dear Colonel1 In answer to your letter recd on Saturday containing enclosing Mr Sydney Turner’s objections to school building scheme. I must insist again that it is for the very purpose of spreading the warm fresh air that a gill stove is strongly recommended by me (& others) for large school areas, when simplicity & economy of heating is absolutely necessary. I have proved this in as many as three artists’ studios where two open fireplaces were quite ineffectual. Let me explain again that a good gill stove allows of the introduction of an immense body of fresh air into the room (the first necessity for effective ventilation) and this abundant supply of fresh (external) air keeps the surface of the gills from overheating. After 4 or 5 days of use the smell of the iron ceases. Of course, rather than throw any hindrance in the way of your committee getting what they want at once, if Mr Turner still insists, I wd put in two open fireplaces, for, at some future time a stove could be applied. With regard to the windows I must still be firm, as it is absolutely necessary for the proper lighting & ventilation of the school that they shd be as high as they are shewn, for a diffused light – not a direct light – is what is required – the reflection from the ceiling taking doing away with all shadows. 92

1864–1887

Will you be so good as to stop Bradley2 proceeding with the part of the wall against wh’ the stove was to be set, and at the middle of the south east end wall. Yours very truly, | P.W. rs P.S. M Gillum will explain to you what I have just told her as to the concrete. LB-1, pp. 27-8

1 PSW had known the former army officer and philanthropist, Lieutenant-Colonel William James Gillum (1827–1910), since their days as fellow-members of the Hogarth Club (1858–61). Gillum provided PSW with one of his earliest commissions, the construction of a terrace of six craftsmen’s houses, each with a shop and workshop, in Worship Street, Shoreditch (1861–3), and followed this by funding the erection of an innovative Boys’ Farm School, in East Barnet, Hertfordshire (1867–8) to which PSW also made later modifications, including the conversion of the cow house into a new schoolroom (the subject of this letter), dining room and kitchen (1874–5). Gillum’s own Church Hill House, also in East Barnet, was executed by PSW in 1868–70. See Kirk, pp. 112, 208–10, 296–7 and 326–7. 2 The builder William Bradley, of Cockfosters, who was undertaking the current work at the Boys’ Farm School.

90 • To Jane Morris, 28 September 1875 Annotated ‘Watermark 1873’ Kelmscott Lechlade Tuesday Sep 28 My dearest Janey Thank you for your note. I guessed the minute that I saw the pencil marks, that you were bodily very weak again.1 I shall ask Morris – who is expected to eat some of a duck of Mr Hobbs’s here this eveng – who & what your new doctor is.2 I hope he will try to help you. Fortunately for me there was not a clear space in my rooms on wh’ to put the sole of one of my feet, I was practically squeezed out of the house, and had not to make up my mind if I could stay or not. I am most methodically trying to get stronger here, and no doubt another week will tell upon my weakness. You wd have laughed to see me yesterday afternoon striving toes nails & teeth to get the boat out of its shed & up the little canal. The stream ran & the wind blew & I was so weak, that it took me ten minutes to do it, to say nothing of being twice blown down the small stream south of the house. I eat all the fish Philip [Comely] catches but they don’t tax my powers much. I live in the Hall, or passage room, & sleep over, & have not seen even the skirt of a bogey. Yrs affectionately | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 29-30 93

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 The choice of pencil by the Victorians for letter-writing almost invariably indicates illness, and certainly a letter being written somewhere other than at a table or writing-desk with an ink stand. 2 R.B. Hobbs was a Kelmscott farmer, and the owner of Kelmscott Manor. According to MM, in later years, he became a successful stock breeder.

91 • To George Howard, 1 October 1875 Manor House, Kelmscott, by Lechlade Oct 1 1875 My dear Howard. I am here as you see & your letter reached me this morning. It is quite against my inclination that I find I must not come to you as you ask. For the last 4 or 5 months I have been gradually sinking into a state of great bodily weakness & general want of vitality. Indeed I had sunk into such a state of worthlessness, with regard to my work in particular, that I let out all the reef of my sails & drifted down here, which place Morris most kindly put at my service. Here I am trying to revive, with the hope at some time or other of getting at least strong enough not to be a nuisance to my friends and to get power enough to think it worth while fighting my enemies. Do you not see from this that it would be impossible for me to come as you ask? I shall probably stay here for another week or even two, as my chambers are being scrubbed & painted. If I do anything for Naworth I should wish it to be the best of me and therefore I must see the site of new Agent’s house.1 Could not you & the authorities make notes of what you want and I could get to Naworth in November or December and make up my mind what should be done in the shape and make of the house. As for the church. The bishop is very stupid in the matter & I suppose is incapable of understanding a design.2 (1) I should wish not to do away with the outside or ringers’ stair. (2) The tower would have to be completely redesigned to ring from the nave floor, & thereby the effect of the design would be quite changed of the whole church. (3) I should have no objection to putting 3 dormers instead of one. (4) The little south door (which would air the organ-chamber) can be omitted. I put it in by particular request. Moat House.3 I would put the new chimney (if there is to be one) in the opposing corner to the present one, & carry up the flue without cutting in any way into the old walls. Warwick could leave a hole in the roof, thus: [sketch] I would let him have a drawing for flue &c when I get back to town. Will you write me just a cheering word saying that you are not angry with me for not thinking your works of more value than my own health, as certainly they are. Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb: Howard

94

1864–1887 1 PSW would design Four Gables, near Brampton, a house with stable for the agent to the Naworth Estate, John Grey. See Kirk, pp. 221–3 and 300. 2 The Right Reverend Harvey Goodwin (1818–91), Bishop of Carlisle, had written to GH on 20 November 1875. ‘I ventured to make notes of all the points which struck me with regard to Mr. Webb’s plans. Of course on questions of pure architecture I should not venture to criticize him; but there are certain points of a practical kind to which I dare say he will give a little further consideration at my suggestion, e.g. The importance of not giving the ringers an outside entrance; of not having a corner for seats as at the S.W. angle of the plan; and the necessity in this latitude of giving tolerably capacious windows to the south. I am much obliged to you for kindly submitting my remarks to Mr Webb, and I cannot doubt that we shall have an excellent church.’ 3 See above, Letter 60, note 2.

92 • To George Howard, 7 October 1875 Manor House, Kelmscott by Lechlade Oct 7 1875 My dear Howard. It is particularly good of you to put your natural feelings in your pocket & write me so good natured a letter as your last. You are probably right as to my perversity, but the clear truth is that I am exceeding weak in body just now, and some persistence in not doing much work is necessary. I cannot get much strength as yet, but am determined to find myself all the better for the rest and fresh air shortly. If you could go with me to Naworth it would be very agreeable & for the good of the businesses. I would try to make the particular date suit you. I hope that you have some good Bordeaux at Castle Howard to smooth away all discomforts and statelinesses. Morris came down here last night with Faulkner of University, for a day.1 They brought me a good bottle of wine of which you are now having the next morning effect. They two are gone afishing, & I wish they may catch ’em. We caught an eel in a basket last night; he did look slippery as we took him out this morning. The river is in that condition, however, with puzzled anglers, and takes their vocabulary of damning. Hooks in breeches, worms in your eye, oars in your back, stretchers on your shins & the fish visibly saying ‘bother your poverty stricken enducements’. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: Howard

1 CF was a fellow of University College, Oxford.

95

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

93 • To Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith, 22 February 1876 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feb: 22. 1876. To Mrs Orrinsmith Beckenham Kent. My dear Lucy Orrinsmith.1 Thank you for believing that I shd have pleasure in being of any assistance to yourself or husband if it were in my power. Your question is perfectly clearly put. To build a detached house of 10 rooms (or even a “semi-detached”) with any careful arrangement of plan & proportion out of the ordinary run of suburban buildings, in a sound & workmanlike way, with the most simple of good materials at present prices, would, I am satisfied, cost you more than £1200. If quite detached the cost would be nearer 15 or 1600£ I believe. Therefore I cannot recommend you to incur the preliminary cost of finding out the truth of this in practice. You will easily understand that any departure from the usual way of building in or near large towns, even if there is no more space covered in or materials used than in the usual house, costs more in labour from the mere departure from routine. If the house is not to be better planned & better built it is never worth while to go through the trouble & run the risks of building for oneself – added to which, an exceptional house is not so easily let or sold for its cost value as one of an ordinary type. With very kind regards. | Believe me to be | Yours very truly | P: W: LB-1, pp. 31-2

1 Lucy Orrinsmith (1839–1910), sister of Charles and Kate Faulkner, had undertaken work for MMF & Co in its early years, including tile-painting. In 1870 she married Harvey Edward Orrinsmith (d. 1904), a wood engraver, bookbinder, and a director of the bookbinding firm, James Burns & Sons. Lucy Orrinsmith published The Drawing Room: its Decoration and Furniture (London: Macmillan & Co., 1877), in the successful Art at Home Series. See Emma Ferry, “‘The other Miss Faulkner’: Lucy Orrinsmith and the ‘Art at Home Series’”, JWMS, XIX (Summer 2011), pp. 47–64.

94 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 1 April 1876 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, Sat: April 1. ’76 Bless you my Murray for sending those wonderfully sweet & strong Donatello’s.1 They are after my heart altogether. I wd that the other sides of the pulpits were also photographed that you might send them likewise. Your proposition of sending me what you yourself delight in will be sure to fit my ease, because you will be quite 96

1864–1887

aware when you are getting any for yourself if you are doing wrong. I’d like the MA drawing of “Ganymede” as I have it not.2 Mr Morris is in Staffordshire up to his thighs in dyes and “darning his eyes” & Staffordshire lies,3 for the former are too few & the latter too many. I am but weak & poorly, & do what I will I cannot get off for Florence before Wednesday week.4 The Calligraphy of your letter was wonderful to say nothing of being easy to read. You’d better write to Mr Morris at once before this style has worn out & your third period begins. Should you come across any Raphael drawings free from vanity affectation simpering &c please send me some photos as I have not any of the “wonderful boy”. This is asking you to do things with a vengeance, but I merely mean, when you are wasting your time in the shops you might salve your conscience by picking out good for me. My state is “flat stale & unprofitable”5 & I can say no more but thank you again for the blessed Donatello’s. Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 16

1 CFM had sent photographs of the two late bronze pulpits by Donatello in the basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, probably left unfinished at his death and completed by others. 2 In 1532, Michelangelo presented his drawing of The Rape of Ganymede to the young Roman nobleman Tommaso Cavalieri (1509–87). The lost original was widely copied. 3 Between 1875–8, WM made frequent visits to Leek in Staffordshire, determined to master traditional dyeing techniques from the silk manufacturer Thomas Wardle, brother-in-law of GW, by then manager of Morris & Co. He persuaded Thomas Wardle ‘to co-operate with him in large-scale experiments, using the dye vats at Wardle’s Hencroft Works’. MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 348. 4 PSW probably had no serious plans for visiting Italy at this time: it is unlikely that his work commitments would have permitted it. But see his next letter to CFM (12 June 1876), in which he contemplates an autumn visit to Florence. 5 ‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable | Seem to me all the uses of this world!’ Hamlet, I.ii.133–4.

95 • To W. A. Cardwell, 6 May 1876 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings] May 6 1876. To W: A: Cardwell Esqre 6 Spencer Rd Eastbourne My dear Sir.1 I have delayed answering your letter of yesterday the 4th ’till today so that some of the annoyed surprise with wh’ I read the same shd have time to subside. I think many of the facts have of the case must have escaped your memory, or you have would hardly have expressed your irritation in the way you have. 97

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I will endeavour to call back to your mind several circumstances since your letter to me of August 28. ’75. In that letter you say, that you hope to be able to secure my assistance, and I perfectly remember having recommended you to go & see Mr Tomes’s house at Caterham,2 so that you might be fully aware of the kind of work I shd be able to do for you; this visit you made, so that I was assured in my further proceedings. After my visit with you & Mr Wheatcroft to Eastbourne, when I exerted myself to advise you to the best of my ability as to selection of site, materials &c, I had an interview here with Mr Wheatcroft, and in a letter to him in answer to his opposition to Messrs Wallis fixing the prices for the materials & labour of the new house, I wrote the following – “That Mr Cardwell’s archt shd let his surveyor prepare bills of quantities, and that Skinner should price & money them out, & that then they shd be subject to the approval of Mr Cardwell’s archt & surveyor”. By a letter to Mr Vinall of the 16th of March last you thus express yourself “I received the plans safely and we are much very pleased with them. I have shewn them to Skinner. I shall be glad to have a duplicate of his estimate & should also like to see the bill of quantities if it can be managed”. After I had many & repeated conferences with Mr Vinall in making changes, alterations and adaptations to perfect the plans to your particular wishes so far as they could be done, consistent with economy & the character of the design, Mr Vinall wrote as follows “I have seen Mr Webb who approves of all the alterations we made in the plans on Friday”. In a letter of Mr Vinall’s to you 21st Decr ’75, he says, “I send you with this a tracing of plans showing another arrangement for your house”. To some of the propositions made to me by Mr Vinall at your suggestion, I told him (more than once) they can could not be allowed, as the house wd already cost at least £1800. The “sketches” you speak of, & for wh’ if we had gone no farther, I shd have been quite willing to charge a nominal price, wd have been the first plans I made, from wh’ in the final drawings we have completely departed. In these final drawings, from wh’ only could accurate quantities be taken, everything is laid down with precision, all the important parts being amplified in half inch scale detailed working drawings, from wh’ if the estimates had turned out satisfactorily we could have made tracings & proceeded with the actual works instantly – and this care & forethought was to meet your urgent wish; for in a letter to Mr Vinall on the 22nd Feby 1876 you say “I am very glad to hear that you are getting on with the plans, for I am extremely anxious to get into the house before next winter. I need scarcely say more, for you will probably have a copy of your letter to me of last Thursday, and you will see how thoroughly completely the changes, therein made, are here met. I think Sir, when you quietly reconsider the matter subject, you will understand how thoroughly & carefully both Mr Vinall & I have worked in your matter, sparing no neither pains & nor cost on our parts, to prepare for you a house wh’ shd be both pleasant & comfortable to you as well as a creditable to ourselves. That the work did not proceed further was your own wish, or reductions could 98

1864–1887

have been prepared on the existing data to meet the too high estimates caused by the high price of labour & materials. In conclusion I beg to say, that neither I nor Mr Vinall can make any reduction in our charges, wh’ are barely sufficient to cover the expenses of the work of ourselves & our assistants. Yours truly | Philip Webb: LB-1, pp. 35-8

1 W.A. Cardwell, son-in-law of the surgeon, Sir Benjamin Brodie, to whose Regency country house in Tadworth, Surrey, PSW made alterations in 1872–4, commissioned plans for a new house in Eastbourne. Cardwell’s failure to pay the fees, once the project was abandoned, led PSW to go to law. ‘I feel it wd be useless for me to enter further into personal discussion with you. I will, therefore, put the matter into the hands of my solicitors’ (PSW to Cardwell, 11 October 1876, LB-1 p. 47). The action was unsuccessful. See Kirk, pp. 275 and 299. 2 PSW’s house, Upwood Gorse at Caterham, Surrey (1868–9), for the dental surgeon, John Tomes (1815–95). See Kirk, p. 297.

96 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 12 June 1876 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, June 12. ’76 My dear Murray Your photographs have all reached me – viz. The paradise of Orcagna & the Inferno (also I suppose by him)1 the roll of Benozzo Gozzoli’s wh’ EBJ has recd 2– the early Pièta of MA & two copies of the late one, all of wh’ are admirable, &, to my wilfully bad taste, good in the extreme.3 The Inferno you need not have been nervous abt as it suits me to a T – Also I’ve recd your two last letters, the first written 29th May, the last recd this morning. I wd have answerd the former before, but awaited your new address, not being willing to enrich the Italian dead-letter box. The Inferno, it is marvellous, so much so that I can put up with its indistinctness. The late Pièta my MA madness can rejoice in likewise, as I see so little of giggling company, and RAs never venture up my stairs. Glory be to God for my tiring staircase and inhospitable countenance. If any of the filthy should come, I’ll shew them the early Pièta, the Ultramontane black whirligig of wh’, will just suit them. I send you by this post the comic annual you ask for,4 it will make you grin, & overcome seasickness on your voyage home, & save you the trouble of going to the Academy where you wd be picture sick. Please bring me a photo’ of Orcagna’s tabernacle work of which you speak write.5 I dined with Stanhope the other evening.6 Mrs S told me that she had begun to slaughter chickens & the fatted calf, when she heard a shout of laughter from her husband & stayed her hand.7 This was from your message on your last 99

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

return from England. I’ll talk to you when I see you about my return with you to Florence this autumn (you may laugh if you can) of wh’ I am considering;8 as, since the Q was made Emperess [sic],9 Architecture has been on the decline, & fifty flunkies to a Lord, absolutely necessary. What the devil do you mean, in sending your address, by writing “(ultimo piano)”?10 does it imply ‘ring the bottom bell softly’? I’m going to re-create myself this evening by listening to Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony, of wh’ there is no parallel.11 I dont know much of the cost of Pieta photos, save, that Wallis got me a small Mantegna the other day, private handed, wh’ cost I think 5 francs12 – he considered that high, but I thought it worth £20,000, ie double the cost of the lost Gainsborough. I’ll tell Boyce of your kind regards, and Crippa’s13 address. I don’t know about war, but expect shortly to have to pay 5s/- income tax, but as architecture will only bring me £50 a year shortly it won’t matter – to me – & the P of W is not nervous I believe, or anxious as to his debts.14 Please bring me any outlandish Photos you may fancy as good food for my corrupt imagination. Is there such a thing as a photo of the Pandolfini Palace at Florence ascribed to Raffaelle?15 If there is will you bring it. Please accept my very sincere thanks for all the trouble you have taken in so kindly helping on my education. Also bring your little bill, for my pocket burns to pay it before the war comes on. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: Fitzwilliam 17

1 A number of problems surround the traditional attribution of works to the Florentine painter, sculptor and architect Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna (c. 1315/20–68). The frescoes of the Triumph of Death and the Last Judgement in the Campo Santo in Pisa, attributed to Orcagna by Vasari, are now ascribed to Francesco Traini (d. after 1347). Similarly, the frescoes of Paradise and the Last Judgment (1354–7) in the Strozzi Chapel of the basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence (where the retable is certainly his work) are mainly the work of his brother, Nardo di Cione (c. 1320–1365/6). PSW probably refers to these Florentine frescoes. 2 CFM had probably sent reproductions of the Gozzoli frescoes in the fifteenth-century Magi chapel of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, works which PSW valued highly when he visited in 1884–5. See below, Letter 242. EBJ’s interest in the work of the Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli (1420–97) was fired during his Italian visit in the autumn of 1871. In the Campo Santo in Pisa he saw Gozzoli’s celebrated series of biblical scenes (irreparably damaged during World War II), and in San Gimignano examined the fresco cycle on the Life of St Augustine (1463–7) in the church of Sant’Agostino, as well as an Assumption and a Martyrdom of St Sebastian in the Palazzo Communale. See MacCarthy, LPR, pp. 227–9. 3 The ‘early Pietà’ is the sculpture completed in 1500 for the tomb of Cardinal Jean Villiers de La Grolais, in St Peter’s, Rome. There are two candidates for ‘the late one’ – that in the Duomo in Florence, and the incomplete and radically reductive Rondanini Pietà in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan. 4 Irony, surely. It is likely that PSW was sending a catalogue of the Royal Academy Exhibition, which ran from May to August. 5 Orcagna’s ornately Gothic tabernacle (1355–9) in Orsanmichele, Florence. 6 The painter, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (1829–1908), a friend of CFM for whom PSW had designed a studio-house in Cobham, Surrey (1860–1), his first work after Red House. See Kirk, p. 296.

100

1864–1887 7 Elizabeth King married Stanhope in 1859. 8 See above, Letter 94, note 4. He did not visit Italy until the autumn of 1884. 9 Encouraged by her Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria assumed the title of Empress of India from 1 May 1876, but a Royal Titles Act had to pass through Parliament, and it received opposition from Liberals who objected to the aura of absolutism. The Queen’s title formally changed from 1877. 10 The top floor (It). 11 He heard Mozart’s 41st (and final) symphony in C major at the Royal Philharmonic Society Monday ‘Pops’ concert at St James’s Hall, which also included Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto in E flat major (the ‘Emperor’). 12 The painter and collector, Henry Wallis (1830–1916), became an authority in foreign ceramics, his researches being published in twenty volumes. He served as secretary for the committee formed for the preservation of St Mark’s, Venice (1882–90), though PSW would come to doubt his commitment to protecting Italian buildings. He is best known for Chatterton (1856, Tate Britain), his early painting of the dead poet. 13 Identity uncertain. 14 See above, Letter 87, note 11. 15 Work started on Raphael’s design for the Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence in about 1518.

97 • To George Milburn, 3 July 1876 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 3. 1876. To Mr Geo’ Milburn (carver &c)1 Gillygate York. Sir. Being in want of a good carver in the north capable of doing good work in sound sandstone of the Cleveland quarries, I applied to Mr Robert Johnson Archt, of Newcastle on Tyne, and he recommended me to apply to you as a person likely to suit me for my kind of work. What I want done, is carving of a bold & simple character on the outside of the house. If you think you wd care to undertake the work, and could do so at once, would you meet me at Rounton Grange on Monday the 17th of this month to consider the matter? The house on wh’ the work is to be done is “The Grange – East Rounton by Northallerton”. The station to book to, is “Welbury” on the North Eastern Railway, and the station is about 3 miles from the Grange – a porter wd direct you to the house. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Architect. LB-1, pp. 38-9

1 The sculptor and wood carver, George Walker Milburn (1844–1941) had an established York business by 1881. Several of his statues are to be seen around the city.

101

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

98 • To Lady Fitzhardinge, 25 July 1876 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 25 ’76 To The Rt Hon’ The Lady Fitzhardinge Cranford House Hounslow. Dear Lady Fitzhardinge I went to Berkeley on Thursday last, and I was fortunate in having Mr Morris with me. I examined the “Princes” room, and came to the conclusion that the safest colour to use with the tapestry there, wd be white, “flatted”, of the same shade as that I used in your bedroom. After the Hoppner portrait is removed1 (is it necessary to remove this picture?) Mr Morris suggested hanging over the fireplace any piece of handsome old silk or other embroidery – that is, needle work wh’ wd be sure to go well with the existing tapestry. I found the windows in the first drawing room, inserted under my direction, very simple & unostentatious & therefore satisfactory; I shd have no objection to changing the large drawing-room windows in the same way, with a difference, on acct of their size. I cannot agree to your with the proposition to remove the organ from the music room & place it in the chapel, for these reasons, that, it suits the room it is now in, and is out of character with the chapel, & wd too much encumber the chapel it. With regard to the small window on the landing of the great oak staircase, I wd propose that the coloured glass in the lead of it be removed, as it is very harsh & discordant, and plain white glass inserted, instead, to match the lower part of the window. Mr Morris & I made up our minds as to what to do wd be best to be done with the rest of the glazing of the great hall windows on the court side, when it is decided to have them it changed. I told Mr Cooke2 that when you agreed had settled that the work shd be done he was to send up to London the whole of the four compartments of the window of wh’ one quarter has been altered and I wd insert the shields of the upper glass parts in a proper frames borders and slightly alter that wh’ has been done to bring the whole together.3 I considered the change already made, a great relief to the hall. With regard As to the new oak seats, it seemed to me that the simplicity of the ends was more suitable than any addition that I could make & that they had better remain as they are. The decorating of the fireplace is slowly advancing and will come out satisfactorily when finished, as Mr Morris’s man has put on a very good ground colour, in a right manner. I have directed him to leave the work at the end of this week, and he shall return with an assistant when the Castle is empty again, wh’ Mr Cooke told me it wd be in August & a part of September. Will you allow me to urge upon you the great necessity there is for providing a large quantity of English oak to be cut to proper size & stored in a dry airy shed, so as to be ready for use when repairs must be done, as they will have to be before many years have passed. This oak shd be cut from the park or procured elsewhere

102

1864–1887

at once as soon as possible. Also, whenever it is found that any of the chimneys must be rebuilt a proper design shd be supplied and the right stone & way of building shd be employed, all as to wh’ I carefully explained to Mr Cooke. It was discomforting to find that the gas had already begun to discolour the walls & ceiling of the Great hall, but that is not the most serious evil – for, certain & more rapid decay will go on in the timbers of the roof, unless the gas is removed. Permit me to urge you to have it removed at once. I must ask your pardon for writing so decidedly on these points, but, unless I did so, I shd not consider it wd be of any use my visiting the Castle at all. Believe me dr Lady Fitzhardinge | Yours faithfully | Philip Webb: LB-1, pp. 40-3

1 The portrait painter, John Hoppner (1758–1810) was elected RA in 1795. In the Catalogue Raisonné which forms the main part of William McKay and W. Roberts, John Hoppner, R.A. (London: P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., 1909), two Hoppner portraits at Berkeley Castle are described (pp. 22–3). One shows the fifth Earl of Berkeley, Frederick Augustus, with his son, William Fitzhardinge; the other, the Countess of Berkeley, the fifth Earl’s wife (he being her second husband), born Mary Cole, of Wotton, Gloucestershire. 2 J.H. Cooke was the Castle’s Estate Manager, and something of a local historian, producing a Handbook on the Castle in 1881. After returning to London, WM sent Cooke a copy of The Earthly Paradise. ‘I enjoyed my visit to Berkeley exceedingly; I think the castle can scarcely be matched among all the famous houses of England for romantic interest, using that much abused word in its best sense.’ WM to Cooke, 24 July 1876, CLWM, I. 3 ‘[E]xcept in the case of the Great Hall windows, there seems to be no evidence of Morris’s having supplied any new stained or coloured glass. The shields of arms were eventually reset by Morris & Co., in quarries and borders, since an entry in the Catalogue of Designs, dated November 1884, for a window for Holmstead, Mossley Hill, Liverpool, mentions that the same quarry and border design was used as for Berkeley Castle.’ A. Charles Sewter, The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle – A Catalogue, 2 vols (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), I, p. 15.

99 • To George Black, 21 August 1876 Draft/copy Aug 21. 1876 To M George Black. Builder Devonshire St Carlisle Sir. r

Brampton Ch As the tenders for the above works (only 3 in number after advertising) were far too high, I am going to Cumberland to arrange matters for getting fresh tenders to begin the work next spring.1 As your tender was the lowest, perhaps you wd like to meet me there, when you d w be able to look into the matter more closely with me, and perhaps come to the 103

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

conclusion to give a more reasonable price for the works required to be done, and so avoid the necessity, otherwise, of getting altogether fresh tenders. I shall be at Naworth Castle on Thursday the 24th of this month, and if you shd think it worthwhile I shd be glad to see you there (at the Castle) at 11. oc on that morning. Please give me an answer by return of post. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Archt LB-1, pp. 44-5

1 The tendering process at Brampton was rather laboured. PSW had initially approached eight local builders, of which only two seemed interested in the work. Even after inviting tenders by advertisement, George Black’s was one of only three received. After a further invitation in October, the contract was awarded to Beaty Brothers, of Wetheral Quarry. See Penn, p. 17.

100 • To Percy Wyndham, 28 December 1876 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Decr 28. ’76 To The Hon’ Percy Wyndham M.P. Wilbury House Wilts Dear Sir.1 I was sorry to find on going to Stanfords’,2 that neither the 6 in[ch] nor 25 in[ch] scale maps of your district were yet published, as either of these maps wd be of great use to you. I directed Stanfords’ to send you four sheets of the 1" scale geologically coloured map of the district round Knoyle. The packet was to be addressed, to remain at Grateley station until called for. Since my visit with you & Mrs Wyndham to Clouds estate, I have carefully considered the matter, both from your point of view & my own, with regard to my entering upon the business of building a house for you there, if you shd wish me to do so.3 I have no doubt that the site of the small existing house, keeping in mind the absolute necessity of preserving the fine yew trees, wd answer very well in all respects as the position for a new house, & in many ways I consider it to have exceptional advantages. I have thought that the suggestions I made, & the expression I gave as to what I shd consider would be the best way of meeting the circumstances of the case (apart from the rude way in wh’ I am afraid they often were given) seemed to meet your wishes, & therefore I shd be quite willing to undertake the designing & superintending of the works in question if you shd wish me to do so, subject to the following conditions – viz – That all drawings, whether of works done or only proposed, shd be my property – (This not to exclude my providing you with all the 104

1864–1887

necessary plans &c for your future use after the work was done). That my payment shd be at the rate of 5 per cent for on the cost of all works done under my direction, & further payment of all travelling expenses for myself and assistants. That if plans in whole and in detail are prepared by me ready to be laid before contractors and the works shd not be carried out by me, 2½ per cent on my estimated cost of the same execution of the works be paid to me. That if only preliminary sketches and plans be made by me 1¼ per cent on my estimated cost be paid me for the same. I must ask you to excuse these particulars, as it has been found that such care & explanation between client & Architect before any work has been entered upon, tends very much to the avoidance of any dispute or awkwardness afterwards.4 I am Dear Sir yours truly | Philip Webb: LB-1, pp. 50-2

1 The Hon. Percy Scawen Wyndham (PWY: 1835–1911), Conservative MP for West Cumberland, married Irish-born Madeline Campbell (1835–1920) in 1860. At the end of 1874, they became tenants of Wilbury Park House, near Salisbury, and in November 1876 bought the estate of Clouds, East Knoyle, with the intention of building a new house as their family seat. As friends of the George Howards, they had seen the results of PSW’s work when in June 1872 they were dinner guests at 1 Palace Green, whereupon they settled that he should design their house in due course. Indeed, PSW had already undertaken minor work at their London home, 44 Belgrave Square. For a full account of the Wyndhams, and more particularly of PSW’s design and construction of Clouds (1877–86), see Dakers. See also Kirk, pp. 132–42 and 300. 2 Edward Stanford (1827–1904) established his business as a map-seller and printer in 1853, with shop premises in Charing Cross and a printing works at Long Acre. 3 PSW stayed overnight with the Wyndhams at Wilbury House on 15 December, in order that they might visit the prospective site for Clouds. ‘I will bring any drawings I have wh’ wd be likely to assist, though I shall hardly be able to shew you anything but working drawings.’ PSW to PWY, 12 December 1876, LB-1 p. 50. 4 PWY replied at once: ‘I give my adherence to all your propositions, and think your method of doing business a very satisfactory one’. Dakers, p. 51.

101 • To Percy Wyndham, 30 December 1876 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Decr 30. 1876 To The Hon’ Percy Wyndham M.P. 44 Belgrave Square. Dear Sir. I recd your letter of yesterday, this morning. I fully understand your caution with regard to the future water supply for Clouds, but I am persuaded that at the present state of proceedings, it wd be sufficient for you to express dependence, on the vendors of the estate proving to you, that the reservation of the water from “Barnes 105

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Hill springs” would not leave the estate you without an equally good supply from elsewhere on the estate.1 I think it probable that Mr Rawlence will be able to shew this without difficulty,2 and if so, I am inclined to think that the proposed new house wd be better supplied than from the lower situation of the Barnes Hill springs. I am inclined to think that it might may be advisable to have the opinion of a skilled engineer to aid in carrying the best water in the best way to the site, but I think believe it wd be premature to have him on the ground ’till after the vendors had proved their words, or at least given good grounds for their assertion. It is very likely that Mr Rawlence will do this when he meets you on Saturday next. I also have been thinking of the water supply & have thought it possible that the windmill might be turned to account as the motive power for a pumping engine as the soil in the neighbourhood must be full of springs. With regard to the latter part of your letter about the sizes of rooms, I am very glad that you are so carefully considering the subject, and I shall not be likely to obstruct, except on the score of cost. I shd be inclined like to have the chief rooms 20 feet wide, and this width, with recessed fireplaces on the sides of the rooms, wd give the right amount of serving way. Yours truly | Philip Webb. LB-1, pp. 52-3

1 When PWY purchased the Clouds estate from Alfred Seymour, a distant relative, there was an existing four-bedroom house dating from the late eighteenth century, with adjoining stone cottage, and two further cottages. ‘The old house would have to be demolished, though Webb made a careful note of parts that could be used again: oak floorboards, oak stairs, cast-iron grates and even “a good brass knocker on N door”.’ Dakers, p. 51. 2 James Rawlence, of the Salisbury firm of land agents and surveyors, Rawlence and Squarey.

102 • To Lord Fitzhardinge, 10 January 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jan 10. 1877 To the Rt Hon’ The Lord Fitzhardinge Berkeley Castle. My Lord. I enclose you my charge for work done by me for Berkeley Castle since my first visit in April 1874. In letters wh’ I have written to Lady Fitzhardinge, I have mentioned that considerable works wd have to be done in coming years in repairs to the Castle, more particularly in timber & lead work to the roofs. Also, at my last visit I carefully examined the several new chimney stacks wh’ have been rebuilt, & wh’ 106

1864–1887

have are not been at all satisfactory as to the stone used or as to the design. If other chimnies [sic] are rebuilt, I wd advise the use of different material, different design & the flues to be lined with fire-clay pots. I also spoke to Mr Cooke as to putting by oak timber for future use, & if necessary the cutting down as soon as possible of oak trees for the sake of such timber, or, when any oak timber is in the market from 5 to 7 years old, from time of felling, it wd be well to purchase. I am my Lord, yours faithfully, | Philip Webb: LB-1, p. 55

103 • To Percy Wyndham, 16 January 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jan: 16. 1877. To The Hon’ Percy Wyndham M.P. Wilbury House by Salisbury My dear Sir. I sent to Mr Grantham a note of the probable height of the cisterns in the proposed new house at Clouds,1 but I shall not be able to decide as to the position & arrangements of the house until I have spent some hours in particular examination of the site and surroundings. No arrangement can be made as to the Laundry until I can send down to take the plan & measurements of the cottage, and this, of course, could not be done until the tenant had left.2 I have been carefully considering the plan of the new house, & I have concluded that it wd not be necessary to make the hall or common room more than one story in height; this wd make a very considerable saving in the cost of the building. And, as I shd propose to make the hall itself large enough to give 1760 cubic feet of air space to each of 10 persons using it at the same time, the room wd be much more thoroughly warmed than if it the ceiling was raised 2 stories or even 1½ stories in height, but of this & other matters I shd like to consult with you & Mrs Wyndham personally. Yours very truly | Ph Webb: LB-1, pp. 56-7

1 ‘I went this morning to Mr Grantham, a Civil Engineer who has lately arranged the water supply to Lord Normanton’s house at Somerley in Hampshire. . . . The arrangement I made, was that Mr Grantham shd go on to the groins especially to advise you as to such supply of water as wd be suggested by Mr Rawlence, and also generally to look to the high ground of the Estate for a good supply, beyond what might be pointed out to him.’ PSW to PWY, 2 January 1877, LB-1, p. 54. 2 The tenant of the cottage adjacent to the existing Clouds House was the former estate gardener.

107

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

104 • To Charles John Ferguson, 6 February 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feb 6. 1877. To Chas Ferguson Esqre 50 English Street. Carlisle My dear Sir.1 A Mr J: Morland – Clerk of works – applied to me some time since for the situation of Clerk of works to the new church at Brampton. I was not then in a position to advise the committee to accept his services. We are now ready for a Clerk of works, and I again applied to Morland, & he wrote to say that he had again engaged himself; however, I had a letter from him this morning saying he had reconsidered the matter & wished to work for me. Now, if he was engaged to you, I shd be very sorry to cause him to leave you without your looking to your convenience in the matter. Morland also referred me to your firm for his character as to fitness for the position in question. Will you kindly let me know, if it wd inconvenience you his coming to me; and if it did not do so, if you thought him honest, sober, & fit & a fit & capable person to look after the building of a church over a contractor. I hope you will not be disagreeably surprised at my so soon using your most friendly offer of assistance. Believe me yours very sincerely, | P.W. LB-1, pp. 59-60

1 The Carlisle architect C.J. Ferguson (1840–1904) was at this time in partnership with John Cory. PSW’s respect for Ferguson’s work was such that in 1879 he recommended to GH that Ferguson should succeed him as architect to Naworth Castle. See Kirk, p. 183.

105 • To Thomas Forster, 10 February 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feb: 10. 1877 To Thos Forster Esqre Brampton Cumberd Dear Sir (Brampton Ch) In answer to your letter of yesterday’s date. The sum of £5678.6.3 only includes the cost of the works authorised by the Committee to be entered upon and the cost of preparing the necessary “quantities”. 108

1864–1887

I shd be anxious if possible to avoid the use of gas in the church, as it is found in practice that gas does serious injury to public buildings. A few lamps or candles at the darkest season of the year wd be all that wd be necessary in a Country parish like Brampton. Yours truly | Ph Webb: d P.S. I sh like to have the drawings &c back as soon as possible, as Messrs Beaty are writing pressing for working details.1 LB-1, pp. 62-3

1 Beaty Brothers had been awarded the building contract. See above, Letter 99, note 1.

106 • To George Howard, 15 February 1877 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Feb 15 1877 My dear Howard. Glory be! I am indeed glad that Mrs Howard has pulled through so well. I was a little anxious, but her courage is great & her constitution good, & so we rejoice again.1 Yes, I will come with pleasure some day next week; perhaps you will have some evening when you will be dull & alone. Then would be the time for me to bring you my dulness. Two dulnesses making one round jolly face. Let the Bramptonians fight it out together, I have done my part, & be damned to them. They are not bad sort of fellows though, but to want to go to church & have gas to pray by, Good Lord! One dim lamp (a la Tooth) at the East end,2 & beating of breasts on account of having quarter day in front of them, would be ample. However, they shall have gas like to Drury Lane theatre if they please. I am glad it was Beaty who praised the Architect, not Webb who praised Beaty.3 I can’t have given him a “Commission”, my pet law suit wouldn’t allow of that, & he didn’t offer me one. Our poet, “on the premises”, has returned, all glorious with Tyrian dyes – he didn’t show me his feet, but I saw his hands.4 A stammering lover would want to know if he was be-be-blue all over. Kindest remembrances to Mrs Howard. | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb: Howard

1 Rosalind Howard had given birth to her seventh child, Geoffrey, on 12 February. 2 Arthur Tooth (1839–1931) was an Anglican clergyman whose fondness for ceremonial ritual led to accusations of Papist sympathies. Having been instructed to refrain from practices such as the use of incense and altar candles, in January 1877 he was taken into custody for contempt of court, and was regarded as a martyr by Anglo-Catholic opinion. PSW’s reference to a ‘dim lamp . . . at the

109

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I East end’ denotes the discreet candle in (Anglo)-Catholic churches which marks the location of the Blessed Sacrament (the consecrated communion wafer). 3 See previous letter, note 1. 4 For WM’s involvement with dyeing techniques, see above, Letter 94, note 3.

107 • To Major Arthur Godman, 22 February 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feb. 22. 1877. To Major Arthur Godman Smeaton by Northallerton Dear Major Godman1 I enclose you proposed plan of stables, cow byre, kitchen garden &c, for your consideration. I believe that the stable & cow byre without garden walls, greenhouse & pig styes [sic] would cost, as [I] have shewn, as much as £3,000 – so I should be glad if you wd consider the matter, & on the basis of this plan suggest any reductions you can. You will see that I have indicated two small Cottages for groom & coachman & helps bedrooms – but I should like further information as to what you would like for this part of the system. The hay, straw & corn lofts wd be over the north wing of stables & loose boxes. You will see that I have allowed room for 2 (large) carriages only, would you require more? Yours very truly | Philip Webb: LB-1, pp. 68-9

1 PSW designed Smeaton Manor with stables and farm buildings in Great Smeaton, North Riding (1876–9) for the army officer and horse-breeder, Major (later Colonel) Arthur Fitzpatrick Godman (1841–1940) and his wife Ada Phoebe Bell (1850–1900), a daughter of PSW’s client, Lowthian Bell. See Kirk, pp. 126–31 and 300.

108 • To Thomas Forster, 22 February, 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feb: 22. 1877. To Thos Forster Esqre Brampton Cumberland (Brampton Ch’) Dear Sir. I have directed a Mr J: Morland, Clerk of Works, to call upon you. After considerable negociation1 I have selected him as a fit person to advise for the Committee to 110

1864–1887

appoint; first, on acct of his experience in church work, and secondly on acct of the recommendation I have recd from his late employers – Messrs Cory & Ferguson – as to his honesty & capability. The salary he will require will be £3.0.0 a week, and the committee could not get a properly experienced man for less, if he had to spend his whole time on the works of the church, wh’ it will would be quite necessary for the Clerk of works to do. Messrs Cory & Ferguson have kindly facilitated the transfer of Morland’s services. Yours truly. | Philip Webb: d P:S: The Clerk of works sh be appointed by the time the contractor commences work on the site. LB-1, p. 69

1 This spelling, common enough in the nineteenth century, was favoured by PSW.

109 • To George Price Boyce, 15 March 1877 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Mar: 15. ’77 My dear Boyce Thank you very much for your trouble about the idea Utopian, as to preservation of noble old buildings. All I could expect was, that of your good nature you wd lay the matter before friend Norbones,1 leaving it to him to write or not, as he might please or be able. We shall, I think make an effort to start a Society, not, however, anticipating any great success.2 Tewkesbury will certainly be destroyed, but there are still some fine buildings, like Selby,3 Howden4 & others wh’ might be saved, if sufficiently loud screaming were set up. A steam fog-horn blowing night & day in Trafalgar square might do good – and when the blood-thirsty have fixed their blasting eyes on a new found remnant, the fiery cross shd be sent round. I have to go to Cumberland on Monday, but shall hope to be back by Wednesday night at the latest, and therefore in time for the Philhc on Thursday.5 My calculation is easy for your work, and I send you the charge.6 It wd have been much more pleasant for me to have done this work for you out of pure love; but, if my enemies won’t pay, my friends must, or society be shocked by the death of an archt from starvation appearing in the radical papers. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 91-2 111

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 The Reverend Thomas W. Norwood (1829–1908), from 1878 vicar of Wrenbury, Nantwich, was a founder member of the SPAB, and became the local correspondent for casework in Cheshire. 2 In a letter in The Athenaeum on 5 March, WM deplored the imminent ‘restoration’ of Tewkesbury Abbey, asserting that it would be ‘destroyed by Sir Gilbert Scott’. The letter concluded with a statement of intent. ‘What I wish for, therefore, is that an association should be set on foot to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all “restoration” that means more than keeping out wind and weather, and by all means, literary and other, to awaken a feeling that our ancient buildings are not mere ecclesiastical toys, but sacred monuments of the nation’s growth and hope.’ This is the earliest reference to the imminent founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (hereafter, the SPAB). Its first meeting was at Queen Square on 22 March, and GPB was present. 3 The eleventh-century Selby Abbey, in the former North Riding of Yorkshire, which, in the words of its website, was ‘overhauled and repaired’ in the nineteenth century. http://www.selbyabbey.org.uk/ selbyabbeyhistory.htm [accessed 10 July 2014]. 4 The east end of Howden Minster, in the former East Riding of Yorkshire, fell into ruin after the Reformation, although the nave survives as the parish church of St Peter and St Paul. 5 The Philharmonic Society concert at St James’s Hall on 22 March was a mixed programme of orchestral works by Beethoven, Wagner, Schumann and others. When the inaugural meeting of the SPAB was fixed for the same day, PSW and GPB gave up their concert plans. 6 In 1876 PSW added a dressing room to GPB’s Chelsea house.

110 • To George Price Boyce, 17 March 1877 Annotated ‘March 17. 1877’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, Friday night. This will never do my dear Boyce. It wd be justice wrong way upwards. I’ve a devil of a lot of weakness in good, & strength in evil, but that of taking in-justice kindly, when I know it, is neither a strength nor a weakness of mine. If I’d done the same work for an enemy, or say a lord, I shd have made the same charge – so as you are a friend & not a lord I can not charge you double for your sweetness. To shew you that I was just, I did think of not putting in the item of £1.13.0 for Clerk’s travelling expenses, but thought it wd be affectation not to do so, & there & then writ it down. Please be as just yourself & be not falsely “ashamed”. Tho’ I don’t take the cheque I take the kindness of the thought, and shall put it in the balance against the unkindness of having to go to law with another client of mine for my due.1 I suspect my rude jokes about my delightful lawsuit, have in some way made you over-sensitive. You a great deal more than repay me, if the bit of work I’ve done for you is not a torture to you. I was at Dannreuther’s last night, and had Brahms & Chopin.2 I’m looking now for the choral Fantasia on Thursday,3 if I’m not killed by the Midland4 or by a stone “out of the blue” for meddling in church building. An archt wd die properly, if a der[r]ick gave way, & a good lump of red sandstone dropped on his ignorance box. 112

1864–1887

I see Norland’s letter is not in the Athenæum.5 If damning & blasting wd only bring Tewkesbury church tower down on the assembled destroyers I shd think the noble old building well “restored” to mother Earth, and wd damn away like Hell itself. I’ll tell Morris about your promised name. Wallis also is willing to join in – but our vandals, like our parliament foes, are in a “brutal majority”. Best remembrance to Mrs Boyce6 from your touched but “lean” | “P.W.” BL Add 45354, ff. 93-4

1 The reference is to his grievance against W.A. Cardwell. See above, Letter 95. 2 Having added a teaching studio/recital room (1874–7) to the Orme Square, Bayswater house of the German pianist Edward Dannreuther (1844–1905), PSW attended a number of the chamber music concerts held there. Dannreuther’s wife, Chariclea Ionides, was the sister of another of PSW’s clients, Alexander Ionides. See Kirk, p. 299. 3 See previous letter, note 5. 4 The Midland Railway ran trains from St Pancras to Leeds, connecting with routes to stations further north. 5 He means Thomas Norwood. Presumably, a letter from Norwood to The Athenaeum supporting that from WM of 5 March about Tewkesbury was not published. Instead, Sir Gilbert Scott was defended in the edition of 27 March, to which WM responded on 4 April. 6 GPB had married the French-born Augustine Aimée Caroline Soubeiran in August 1875. After his death, she gave his PSW letters to SCC, who later gifted them to the British Museum.

111 • To Robert C. Driver, 22 March 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Mar: 22. 1877 To Robert C: Driver Esqre 4 White hall.1 Dear Sir Mr Prinsep’s Hse I am really very much obliged to you for your temperate letter of yesterday, and I hope from it that you are quite willing to believe that it was complete simple inadvertence on my part that the right & proper notice & inspection of the plans were omitted to be laid before you before commencing the work was begun. I can only acct for the omission by the pressure of the business, for Mr Prinsep, having gone to India, left me but too short time in wh’ to carry out the work during his absence.2 It is the more surprising that the necessary notice escaped my memory, as Mr Prinsep left me a cheque for the estate fee, before he left. My clerk brings with him the plans, & will explain what is proposed to be done, and on his return with them a tracing shall be made for you at once. 113

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Please accept this expression of my regret that you shd have been put to the trouble of reminding me of my negligence. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. LB-1, pp. 72-3

1 Robert C. Driver was the buildings surveyor acting on behalf of the Metropolitan Board of Works. 2 In 1876–7 PSW made some enlargements to the studio-house which he had originally built in 1865 for Val Prinsep at 1 Holland Park Road, Kensington. See Kirk, p. 296. Prinsep had gone to India at the invitation of the viceroy, Lord Lytton, to witness the formal ceremonial in Delhi celebrating the Queen’s new title as Empress of India, and to prepare a commensurately grand painting, ‘The Imperial Assemblage at Delhi’, 27 feet in length. See also above, Letter 96, note 9.

112 • To Richard Du Cane, 22 March 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Mar: 22. 1877. To. Richard DuCane Esqre Gray’s Inn Square. My dear Sir.1 I visited the works for the new agents house at Naworth on Tuesday last, and I am sorry to be obliged to state say that the state in wh’ I found them was not at all satisfactory to me.2 I considered that undue haste had been used, and work begun on the ground without any information having been given to me that the work any building had been begun done upon the ground at all was quite contrary to the requirements of the specification. I found The work over the main part of the building house had been brought up to the finished ground line, and levels arranged for without regard to the possibility of any necessary deviation from the plans if the foundation had did not prove satisfactory – but, beyond this, I found the bricks being used were on the whole inferior, but what was worse than this, was, that no care had been taken to sort the bricks and reject those, wh’, even a hasty glance wd have been sufficient to prove have shewn, shd not have been used even in a quite inferior class of building. The result has been that the wet & succeeding frosts have most injuriously affected the work, & the workmen have thus been encouraged to consider that bad work would be allowed & passed from the beginning. Added to this, the damp proof course, wh’ it was most important shd be laid in the very best manner way, has been put on the walls in a careless manner & without questions having been asked as to the composition of the material to be used. I cannot acquit Thos Warwick of having been much to blame in these proceedings,3 as, when talking with the mason I found no reason for believing, that, if proper attention and direction had been 114

1864–1887

exercised by the clerk of works, the builder wd have been perfectly willing to do his work in the proper way and according to my instructions. May I ask you to aid me, by insisting that no unsound bricks shall be brought on to the ground at all, and that Warwick shall be required to superintend the carrying out of this order. The bricks shd first be sorted at the kiln, and those brought on to the ground picked over again, & those any of them found to be inferior shd be then broken up at once and only used for concrete or levelling up of ground under floors. That the most irregular shaped bricks shd only be used in the solid parts of brick work, as without this regulation the bricklayer cannot keep his narrow walls true & level. Even with the best of the bricks, only, being used, there will none of them be found sufficiently even & good for facing work, so that those walls in wh’ facing is shewn to be done in bricks will have to be thickened out to allow of stone facing being applied. A question was raised by Mr Grey4 as to the use of fireclay flue pipes throughout the work. Now, tho’ I prefer a good brick flue, pargetted with cowdung mortar, to any other flue, still, under the circumstance that the bricks are uneven, and that the best bricklayer wd be unable to make a quite sound flue with their use, I shd be inclined to advise the use of the fireclay pipes. If you shd decide upon this, the bricklayer shd give an estimate for the extra cost of supplying & using the pipes, after deducting the cost of the labour of shaping the flues in brick. Also, Warwick should be particular in watching that the pipes are procured of proper shape for bends & in the use of the pipes that hasty filling in, and unsound bond in the chimneys shd be avoided. I am going to write to Warwick to give him directions instructions as to the manner of remedying, as far as possible, the defects of the work already executed. May I also request that you will give orders that no further building in mortar be proceeded with ’till all danger risk of frost is over. Yours very truly | P.W. LB-1, pp. 73-6

1 Richard Du Cane was clerk to the trustees of the Earl of Carlisle. See above, Letter 87, note 7. 2 Whilst working on St Martin’s Church, Brampton, PSW also built Four Gables (near Brampton), a new house and stables for John Grey, the agent to the Naworth Estate (1876–9). See Kirk, pp. 221–3 and 300. 3 Thomas Warwick was clerk of works to the Naworth Estate, but his role in this project was not productive. Warwick had himself initially estimated a price for the house which PSW considered ‘most extravagant’, so ‘competitive tenders for the separate trades were requested by advertisement’, PSW having to insert clauses into the individual contracts ‘that required all trades not to hinder one another and to submit daily records of work done, materials used, and all extras’ (Kirk, p. 221). PSW wrote to Warwick on 24 March with very precise instructions about the future supervision of the work. ‘No more mortar work should be done until all danger of frost is over, in the meantime, I should wish you to have all the worthless & frost bitten bricks cut out of the cellar walls and replaced with sound bricks. Also, I shd wish you to carefully examine the tar damp course and remove such parts as are defective and irregular and make good with fresh asphalt. The asphalt to

115

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I be made of equal parts of pitch tar & sand constantly stirred while boiling, the same to be laid over the walls on a perfectly even bed.’ LB-1, pp. 76–7. The relationship of trust had been irreparably undermined, and Warwick was replaced by William Marshall in September. 4 Agent to the Naworth Estate, for whom the house was intended.

113 • To Percy Wyndham, 18 April 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] April 18. 1877. To The Hon’ Percy Wyndham M.P. Wilbury Park Salisbury. My dear Sir. I delayed answering your letter of the 16th as I had hoped that the printer wd have sent me some copies of the Old Buildings society statement.1 As soon as they do come I will forward some copies to you. The weather was fortunate for me on the 11th and I had a good time on my return to Clouds. I went on to the first hill to the north – that with the fine Scotch firs – and then on to the top of the taller one north of that – the hill covered with gorse. From both places I could better make out the possible disposition of the parts of the new house. I felt, when there that it would be well if possible to keep as many trees as possible on the east of the present house including the two walnut trees – and I made out that the east end of the new house could very well be swung round more towards the south. I have had a letter from a Mr [John] Harding of Salisbury recommended by Rawlence & Squarey as a surveyor who would plot the ground. Mr Harding is quite willing to do so, and I have sent him instructions today. I return you the reports on water supply. I agree with Mr Grantham that the Green & Trodwell springs are the most promising for supply. In conversation with Mrs Wyndham I gathered that she was not quite content with the groundplan scheme for the house; now, as it is very important that she shd be quite satisfied as to the objects to be gained I shd be glad if she wd again closely consider the matter since my explanation. The point I’ve aimed at in the hall, is to get north and south light & view – in the dining room north view and east light – in the staircases to serve the more private & the more public rooms, and in the offices, to screen the east garden. Nothing I saw on my last visit made me wish for another kind of plan, but as I am not to live in the house and you & Mrs Wyndham will, I shd like to have your expression of opinion again before anything further is done. If you shd happen to be in London shortly & could find time to call here, I wd gladly enter upon these points with you & Mrs Wyndham. Yours very truly | P: W: LB-1, pp. 82-4 116

1864–1887 1 The inaugural manifesto of the SPAB. PSW circulated copies to those of his clients and acquaintances whom he thought would be sympathetic to the cause, hoping to recruit members. PWY became the local correspondent for the SPAB in Wiltshire, and played a vital role in the conservation efforts for East Knoyle church, in which PSW was the supervising architect. See Vol. II, Letter 410, and subsequent letters.

114 • To Thomas Forster, 24 April 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] April 24. 1877. To Thos Forster Esqre Brampton Dear Sir. (Brampton Ch. Coulthard mem[oria]l)1 I am much obliged to you for your communication recd this morning. I am, naturally, much interested in the proposal, as it will altogether depend on the character of the stained glass put into the window as to whether the Church will be injured in appearance by it or not.2 Messrs Morris & Co of 26 Queen Square Bloomsbury, London do all such work for me, and I do not know any other stained glass manufacturer to on whom I could depend for such work being in accordance with the design of the Church and of sufficient artistic excellence . Yours truly | P: W: LB-1, p. 84

1 The inscription in the most westerly window on the north side of the church, reads ‘To the glory of God and in memory of Joseph Coulthard of Croft House Brampton the founder of Croft House School who died on the 18th day of October 1871 and was buried in Lanercost Abbey churchyard.’ See Sewter, The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle, II, p. 29. 2 Morris and Co. would design and supply fourteen stained glass windows for St Martin’s, Brampton. See below, Letters 127 and 136.

115 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 26 April 1877 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, April 26. ’77 My dear Murray. I had your last letter of Wed: evening.1 I do not think you will find any letter from me awaiting you at Florence. You hit the mark when you supposed I deferred writing as I expected a face to face argument. Mr Morris was here when your letter came, & I read it to him to kill 2 birds with one Stone of Venice. What does 117

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Venetian Ruskin mean by his objurgations? (thank the stars, I do, for so fine a word).2 Are not his friends as well as enemies always ducking their heads to avoid his broadcast missiles? Do they not raise them again when the malignant darts are past, & say, ‘please forgive, & don’t do so any more’? Do not I remember when “he took the mighty metal & kissed the brass of war”3 against a modest God of mine, MA to wit, who was once felt to be a giant even by his enemies?4 Am I and the likes of me always to forgive? No! Sometimes we’ll not forgive no, not for any wheedling. I’m really glad of the proposed His: of Venice tho’5 and hope he won’t treat it as once did a high church parson with the “Pilgrim’s Progress” viz, turn it into a High Church novel. It shd be real histy (the Venice one) and not transformation of good into bad, & bad into good to bias luckless, pudding headed English boyish & girlish people. There, that is my infantine lesson as to how to suck eggs. In your letter of Feb: 22, you speak of the landscape photographs you sent me, of yours, to look at and enjoy. Have I not done so & delighted myself with “threshing floors . . . haystacks & even vin[e]yards”? And the gentle white oxen, how I wd rejoice to rub their patient noses; how much more interesting they are than Punch’s jokes – the horn of whose scantiness is raised in this miserable capital, alas! once a week. Yea, truly 80£ wd be nearer my mark (or 8£) than 800£ for the pleasant house for sale in Siena. The water wd be cheap & nice tho: while here it is dear & nasty – what a place of fountains Siena is – and gardens too, there is one garden, back-with an arcade, wh’ I covet intensely.6 I’d rather be a gardener in that place than live in Burlington House & call myself RA:7 WM is still deep in his blue vats, occasionally recreating himself in red & yellow.8 He is doing admirable work, and is as gentle in his dabblings as one of Pliny’s doves.9 I’m very glad to hear of your industry, not carried on in an architectural sooted brick house on the Regent’s canal but in a place on a Canaletto’s canal (the spelling, right or wrong, to suit the alliteration, you see) – yon eye shot windows quite delightful. Happy Murray, master of the situation. The shop in Oxford Street is for fine ladies to go to for their half yards of chintz & carpet & paper.10 The malefactor11 still sits in the Old house in Queen Square, originating pretty devices in the old den – books, I fancy will again populate the cases, but no feasting & upturning of glasses. By the way, is good wine to be had in Venice? suppose one drank water for 6 days, could one get a fine bottle of wine on the 7th, say for 5 francs? If so, I’ll come – one of these days. I’ve no news, except that we have started an anti-scraping society to stop blasting restoration of old buildings.12 In fact, backing up Ruskin, in his protests, so far back as “The Stones of Venice”. This new thing is all of a piece with the fulmination from Q Square, abt not putting new wine – I mean to say – new glass into old windows.13 The wind is East, East by north north East here & again by East – drying up the watery humours of the last 9 months or so. ’Tis a fine country 118

1864–1887

this of ours – pity ’tis so small – not in land but in the men’s manners of it. Adieu, after this grumbling. Many thanks for your letters, and kindest remembrance to the Signora.14 Yours sincerely | Philip Webb: Fitzwilliam 19

1 CFM was in Venice, copying parts of Carpaccio’s series of large wall paintings in the Accademia, the Legend of St Ursula, for JR. A portrait of JR himself (now lost) was also under way. From June CFM would base himself in Florence, spending several weeks in London during the summer. See Elliott, pp. 79–80. 2 Relations between JR and CFM were not always easy. CFM ‘liked to challenge Ruskin’s interpretations, and pointed out the inconsistencies in the St Ursula cycle; hence Ruskin’s comment that his help was “given much in the form of antagonism”.’ Robert Hewison, Ruskin on Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 348. 3 ‘But Hogni turned to the great-one who the Niblung trumpet bore, / And he took the mighty metal, and kissed the brass of war,’ from ‘Atli speaketh with the Niblungs’, Book IV (‘Gudrun’) of WM, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs (London: Ellis and White, 1877), p. 359. PSW’s presentation copy is in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 142. 4 JR attacked the mannerism of Michelangelo in ‘The relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret’, a lecture given at Oxford in June 1871 and published 1872. EBJ, to whom JR had read the lecture privately in 1871, was especially upset. ‘He read it to me just after he had written it, and as I went home I wanted to drown myself in the Surrey Canal or get drunk in a tavern – it didn’t seem worthwhile to strive any more if he could think or write it’. Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones (London: Macmillan, 1904) II, p. 18. 5 JR was contemplating a revised edition of The Stones of Venice, and adding a fourth volume. 6 His comments are based on CFM’s photographs of Siena and the countryside round about. 7 ‘I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.’ Psalms 84:10. 8 See above, Letter 94, note 3. 9 A Roman floor mosaic at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, depicting doves at a drinking bowl, is thought to be a copy of a Greek original at Pergamon, described by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (c. 77 AD). 10 ‘In the spring of 1877 [WM’s] position as a general household furnisher was strengthened when the Firm leased a shop at 264 (later 449) Oxford Street, on the corner of North Audley Street. . . . [A] shop so close to Morris’s most fashionable competitors – Liberty’s in Regent Street, Morant’s in Bond Street – contributed enormously to the future expansion of the Firm.’ MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 409. 11 WM. 12 In 1878–80, CFM was the corresponding secretary of the SPAB in Italy. 13 After the foundation of the SPAB, WM decided that Morris & Co. should no longer provide new stained glass for ancient buildings, and announcements appeared in papers such as the Pall Mall Gazette. It led to misunderstanding from potential clients, as GW recalled. ‘In the minds of most people who took any interest at all in Mr Morris’s work the raison d’être of “Morris glass” was its so called mediaevalism, & it was supposed nothing could be more suitable for an ancient building. The profound misconception which this opinion implied & the other hopeless mistake which assumed that Mr Morris’s work was purposely “mediaeval”, made it impossible that the circular could be understood.’ ‘Memorials of William Morris. Christmas 1897’ (prepared for JWM as he worked on Mackail), BL Add 45350, f. 24. 14 CFM had married Angelica Colivicchi of Volterra in April 1875. Of their several children, two died in infancy.

119

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

116 • To Lord Fitzhardinge, 4 May 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 4. 1877. To the Rt Hon’ The Lord Fitzhardinge Berkeley Castle Gloucestersh My Lord. On Jany the 10th of this year I sent to you my charge for professional assistance begun in April 1874, & on March the 5th last I wrote to your Lordship to remind you of my charge having been sent in: also, in requesting payment I said that it wd be a convenience to me to receive it. I have had no answer from your Lordship to either of these letters. If this present letter is not acknowledged, I shall suppose that your Lordship is unwilling to pay me for my work, and shall not again press the matter upon your Lordship’s attention. I am my Lord, | Yours faithfy | P: W: LB-1, pp. 89-90

117 • To Lady Fitzhardinge, 10 May 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 10. 1877. To The Rt Hon’ The Lady Fitzhardinge Berkeley Castle Gloucestersh. Dear Lady Fitzhardinge. In answer to your letter to me of the 6th instant, I was very glad to find that the touch of irony in my last letter to Lord Fitzhardinge was not really necessary. Mr Cooke has sent me the cheque this morning, & if any blame was due for the delay in answering my letters, he has taken it on himself. With regard to the glazing of the Great Hall windows. When Mr Morris was with me at the Castle last year,1 we came to the conclusion that the piece of glazing done under our direction at his works, was not quite satisfactory in its place, and we noted then & have decided since, that the better plan would be to glaze the windows with plain white glass of good kind in small panes in lead, and simply insert the shields in this glazing in the upper part of windows. This wd not take long to do, & one or two windows could be done at a time, & at such times as you may be away from the castle. So that, if you shd decide upon having this

120

1864–1887

done the glass (of, say 1 or 2 windows) could be taken out & sent to Mr Morris at 26 Queen Square Bloomsbury and could most likely be returned in a month afterwards. Believe me, yours faithfully, | P: W: P.S. As I think it possible that you will take an interest in the subject of protecting ancient buildings, I enclose a couple of copies of the statement of a Society to wh’ I have lately become a member. It explains itself & so I need say no more.2 P: W: LB-1, pp. 91-2

1 See above, Letter 98. 2 Lady Fitzhardinge joined the SPAB, but her membership lapsed after 1883.

118 • To Thomas Forster, 10 May 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 10. 1877. To Tho’s Forster Esqre Brampton Cumbd Dear Sir. Brampton Ch’ In answer to your letter rec this morning enclosing copy of a letter from Mr Hough. I think it quite possible that some very slight diminution of light may occur to Mr Routledge’s house, but as the Church is a public building for the good of the town, and as we could not have used the site for the new church without placing it as we have, Mr Routledge is not likely I shd think to object in any way when he knows the circumstances.1 For, if the church had been built elsewhere that part of the site wd have had to be let for building on, and cottages small shops or a forge or public house wd really have injured Mr Routledge’s property, whereas, the church will considerably enhance the value of it – and the loss of light, if any, will be so trifling that it is not worth consideration in any other way than I have mentioned above. Yours truly | Ph’ Webb: d

LB-1, pp. 92-3

1 Thomas Routledge, who owned a house to the east of the church, had conveyed through his solicitor, Mr Hough, ‘his apprehension that his lights may be interfered with by the building of the new church’. See Penn, p. 18.

121

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

119 • To Thomas Forster, 17 May 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 17. 1877. To Thos Forster Esqre Brampton Cumberland Dear Sir. (Brampton Ch’) In answer to your letter to me of the 15th instant. I am naturally surprised at the want of public spirit in Mr Routledge, the more so that he is making it to appear that a serious injury is being wd be done to his property whereas the difference will be merely nominal would be hardly appreciable between what has been designed and what we shd have to do to be strictly within our legal rights. The enclosed tracing will aid you in explaining to the Committee the facts of the case. This diagram gives the worst apparent form of the case, as right and left of this vestry gable (that is East & West) the church recedes. All I can say farther is, that unless the Committee can convince Mr Routledge and he shd prove willing to withdraw his obstruction I must re-design the upper part of Vestry to bring it down within a line of 45o from the sills of Mr Routledge’s ground floor windows. I have seen Mr Geo Howard one of the members of the Committee & he agrees with me as to the tenor of this letter. I cannot possibly come to Cumberland before the beginning of June as my engagements ’till then are close. The slight delay will not delay hinder Messrs Beaty as they can proceed with the other parts, and in the meantime, if I hear from you that Mr Routledge will not withdraw his opposition, I will design the then necessary alteration.1 Yours truly | Philip Webb: LB-1, pp. 94-5

1 Routledge remained aggrieved, and in December 1878 claimed £150 in compensation, before finally settling for £50, as he ‘wished to avoid unpleasantness and considering also the object of the buildings by which he is injured’. Penn, p. 18.

122

1864–1887

120 • To Percy Wyndham, 18 June 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] June 18. 1877. To the Hon’ Percy Wyndham M.P. 44 Belgrave Sqre S.W. My dear Sir. (Clouds Ho:) I only got home from Cumberland on Sat: morning, & was too much worn out to give proper answer to your letter wh’ awaited my return to London. This morning Howell the brickmaker has been with me,1 bringing specimens of the green sandstone. I am also very much pleased with the Cle[e]ve hill specimen,2 and I shd be glad to have some talk with you, as to the best course for us to pursue with regard to it and the bricks. I am rather pleased with the appearance & speech of Howell, & shd be glad like that he shd be employed, if on consideration we thought it wise to do so. I could make an appointt either to come & see you in this week or to be at home here. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: LB-1, pp. 96-7

1 John Howell, of the East Knoyle Brickyard. 2 ‘An Upper Greensand ridge runs from north-east to south-west across the middle of the parish [of East Knoyle] to include Cleeve hill’. Victoria County History: Wiltshire, vol. XI, 1980. http://www. british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=115485 [accessed 13 July 2014].

121 • To George Howard, 18 June 1877 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, June 18 1877 My dear Howard. The Routledge lawyer did not turn up ’till Forster & Routledge had to leave to return to Brampton.1 Hough’s questions were chiefly as to the possibility of pulling down what we have done of the vestry & putting it elsewhere – ‘anywhere, anywhere out of the way’ – as

123

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I fancy Routledge thinks that Whitehead will be shewing his backside to Mrs R: out of the vestry windows for 5 hours on end. I could hardly say to Hough that Whitehead would have something else for his rump to do, or that probably Mrs R: would not mind if he did – and so & so, the lawyer left, and the Architect came his way. Thanks for the numbers of folios’ octavos’ quartos’ & little fry. As for the windowbay and the “gazebo” – “O you chorus (in yourself) of indolent reviewers”. I will do what I think right and as little badly as possible; but I will mind your objurgations no more than the braying of your peacock. This puts me in mind, wouldn’t Whistler come & paint paycaucks all over the room?2 It would enliven the Castle, that would, and cheer up the gardener, as you could then slaughter the real ones. London is pestiferous, but I’ve smelled little of it, as I went down to Welwyn on Sunday3 to sleep off my tired spirits. I’ve just sent round to DuCane, but he is out. French matters look horrid threatening in this morning’s paper.4 O how I do hope cutting & carving of carcasses will be staved off. Best reminders of me to Mrs Howard and the children; Van Dank and the girls will smile prettily, perhaps; the other boys will be rolling down precipices & will not care.5 Health & good cheer to all from your obliged & faithful servant, Philip Webb: Howard

1 See above, Letters 118 and 119. Routledge’s solicitor was Hough. 2 The American-born painter, James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), produced his masterpiece of Japanese-influenced interior decoration, the panelled room known as Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, in 1876–7, for the Liverpool industrialist and collector, Fredrick Richards Leyland (1832–92). 3 To visit his brother. 4 In May 1877, a constitutional crisis in France arose over the relative powers of the President and the government. The dismissal by the President, Marshall MacMahon (1808–93), of a moderate Royalist Prime Minister was followed by fresh elections in October 1877 and a resounding victory by Republicans. 5 There were seven Howard children in 1877, five boys and two girls.

122 • To Charles Milnes Gaskell, 6 July 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 6. 1877 To Chas Milnes Gaskell Esqre Wenlock Abbey Shropshire1 My dear Sir. In answer to your letter to me of the 3rd instant. It wd be impossible for me to give you an opinion of any value as to what shd be done to that portion of the Abbey 124

1864–1887

buildings mentioned in your letter as being in an unsafe state, without I examined it carefully with a view to sustaining it without injury to its historical interest. Speaking personally, I shd be exceedingly anxious to avoid any rebuilding even if the alternative were the necessity of putting any amount of plain mechanical supports or ties had to be resorted to, in keeping it standing in its integrity. If you are of opinion think that it wd be dangerous to leave it till I happened to be in the neighbourhood & could then examine it, I wd at your request make an appointment to come to Wenlock as soon as possible to examine look at the building in question. I am daily getting more convinced of the great value, from historical and artistic points of view, of the remains of ancient architecture of wh’ Wenlock is so fine an example, that I have lately assisted to form and have joined a society to assist aid in the work preservation of such works – and I enclose you some papers of the society wh’ will I am sure interest you in the cause, & I shd be obliged if you wd use them in any way in your power likely to increase the numbers & weight of opinion brought to bear on the subject by the society.2 Yours very truly, | P.W. LB-1, pp. 98-9

1 For Charles Milnes Gaskell and Wenlock Priory see above, Letter 84, note 2. 2 ‘Your good natured reference to the Society, as, “somewhat Quixotic”, I take to mean, that, the generality of people with whom it would have to deal wd be as witless as windmills, wh’ wd, no doubt be true – but I shd have no difficulty in explaining to you that the Society is much more reasonable than the destroyers in question.’ PSW to Gaskell, 9 July 1877. LB-1, p. 100.

123 • To George Price Boyce, 15 September 1877 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Sep. 15. ’77 My dear Boyce “Wonder” is not in my nature, if it ever was, it has been dulled by over use. I don’t even wonder at the ways of the ministry in France,1 or at the degradation of “restoration”. I thought, on not hearing from you, that you had got work in your eye, & were taking precautions to be undisturbed, & wise you would be. Take grateful thanks for the valuable cartes de visite you so kindly sent me, all three of them are peculiarly interesting.2 Please to try & find out anything you can about the “Saxon chapel” as they have some hints at the anti-scrape society of its being about, once more, to be tampered with.3 The flying figure, must be of Greek origin – i.e Byzantine, and is wonder-ful, even to me, in its deep interest. The bridge too; surely you must find time to make a drawing of it (if not, a study or sketch) as, with its turn-pike house it is a sweet subject, to say nothing of object. I’m afraid 125

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I shall not reach you this time, as I’ve been pressed with work, & have had to grind in Cumberland, where the weather was pelting. I hope however to have a few days holiday with Morris at Kelmscott next week. I shall, however, pass your way on Thursday, having to go to Knoyle on business, & I hope Morris will go with me. I shall go by way of Swindon & Chippenham to Warminster, getting to the last place at 11.26 am. Thence to drive to Knoyle. Can’t you join us on the way & give me your opinion as to the thing to be done on the site at Knoyle?4 We shall get back again in the evening. The lawsuit, manages it itself in quite comfortable indolent fashion, & I expect nothing of it, except, that it will come on for hearing when I’ve forgotten all about it, as, indeed, I have even now.5 The antiscrape meetings are regular & attended by the virtuous few – members increasing, also the cause of its existence. I’m not going to drain your generosity about small photographs, so, please to get me any you can, as valuable as those you sent me, & I will pay with delight. With kind remembrance to your wife. Believe me yours truly | Philip Webb. I’ve not seen the Welwynites for 3 weeks but go there this evening.6 BL Add 45354, ff. 102-3

1 See above, Letter 121, note 4. 2 GPB had sent picture postcards of places or objects seen. 3 GPB was staying in Bradford-on-Avon, where the chapel of St Laurence probably dates from about 1000. Partly converted into a school and a cottage, it was purchased in 1871 at the instigation of the local vicar. 4 His plans for Clouds. 5 His unsuccessful attempt to obtain payment from W.A. Cardwell. 6 To his brother and sister at Welwyn.

124 • To John Hebb, 10 October 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Octr 10. 1877. To John Hebb Esqre Metn Board of Works.1 My dear Sir. I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 5th. After having given careful consideration to your proposition I have concluded not to depart from my habit of reserve in putting forward my own ideas of art matters2 – tho’ in the present case, if I possessed any clear aptitude for impressing an audience with 126

1864–1887

what I considered the truth of the subject, I shd have been strongly urged to depart from put aside my rule for once, as I am so deeply impressed with the urgency of the cause advocated by the society in question for the protection of Ancient Buildings, of wh’ we are both members. May I be allowed to suggest to the council of the Architectural Association thro’ you3 (if you yourself are still disinclined publicly to advocate the cause) that they shd apply to some Architect gentleman whose name represents higher authority than mine, in the profession, to press upon the attention of the younger Architects, the matter that Mr Stevenson has so boldly done before the society of the older members of the profession.4 In looking thro’ the list of our members of our Society, the following names seem to me to represent possible lecturers – Mr Aitchison, Revd Stopford Brooke, J: S: Hodgson A:R:A, Lord Houghton, Revd J: W: Norwood, Revd Mark Pattison, J: H: Pollen, Henry Wallis. I shall be glad to speak further with you on the subject at our next meeting. Yours very truly | P: W: LB-1, pp. 104-5

1 John Hebb (1832/3–1916) was Assistant Architect for the Metropolitan Board of Works from 1876, and eventually became an acting Superintendent Architect for the LCC. He was an active committee member of the SPAB. 2 PSW always turned down invitations to write or speak either about the profession of architecture, or his own work, and unlike many of his fellow practitioners scrupulously avoided becoming in any sense a public figure. Although this habit of extreme reticence was counterbalanced by the tireless energies with which he devoted himself to proselytizing for the SPAB, not even for this cause was he willing to set aside his aversion to personal appearances. 3 ‘The Architectural Association was founded in London in 1847 by a group of young articled pupils as a reaction against the prevailing conditions under which architectural training could be obtained . . . [L]arge premiums were advanced to private architects in return for imparting an education and training.’ From a lecture by Edward Bottoms (February 2010). http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/ AALIFE/ LIBRARY/aahistory.php [accessed 14 July 2014]. 4 The Glasgow-born architect John James Stevenson (1831–1908). He was a proponent of the Queen Anne revival style, and built for himself Red House on Bayswater Hill, after PSW’s house for WM. He was a founder committee member of the SPAB and the author of Architectural Restoration: its Principles and Practice (London: W. Clowes & Sons, 1877).

125 • To George Price Boyce, 12–15 October 1877 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Oct 12. ’77 My dear Boyce I was glad of your letter & sorry to hear that you are not strong. Why will goodness of nature always be “shaky”, & health & strength only ally itself with your Howells1 Palmerstons2 Popes & Pagans? True, I shd have liked to see 20 pleasant places with you, but my trade is a taxing one (see, it has put an end to 127

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

poor Raphael Brandon)3 and I could do no more than carry out my plan of getting a few days freedom of air & nothing to do in the friendly arms of Kelmscott and the Thames. Thank you much for the photographs of the barn & church.4 I’m your debtor for them, and any more you may consider improving to your friend’s mind. I was at the “anti scrape” last night; dull meeting, for Morris was in his die-vats at Leek, and Norwood basking in the luxuries of Crewe Hall.5 I mentioned the Saxon Chapel, but things are deferred ’till you report in person. I have secured you a “Burnt Njal”;6 when you have read it, perhaps twice through (I speak from personal experience) you will most likely become acclimatised to the tremendous northern imagination, and feel inclined to attack the later translations of the Morris-Magnùsson series & be ready to enter into the noble poem wh’ Morris has given to the English,7 founded on “The Great Epic of the North” “So draw ye round & hearken, English Folk, Unto the best tale pity ever wrought! Of how from dark to dark bright Sigurd broke, Of Brynhild’s glorious soul with love distraught, Of Gudrun’s weary wandering unto naught, Of utter love defeated utterly, Of grief too strong to give Love time to die!”8 I beg your forgiveness for throwing this weighty stanza at your head. I’m afraid I cannot help you in suggesting a sea-side place to answer your present purpose. Would Swanage be likely to suit? it is well sheltered from the N & has S E exposure. It is, as you most likely know, not far from Corfe castle, and is got at from Wareham station – however, I see on looking again at your letter that you may have left Bradford by this time – but I shall send this, as your (late?) landlady will most likely know where to forward it. Monday. 15th. I’ve delayed sending this and shall now send it to West house to be forwarded. With kind regards to Mrs Boyce, believe me yours very truly | Philip Webb: P:S: I go to Smeaton tomorrow to see what the rains of have left of 800,000 bricks.9 BL Add 45354, ff. 106-7

1 PSW clearly had no illusions about Charles Augustus Howell. See above, Letter 18. 2 Henry John Temple, third Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865). His long political career, during which he moved from Conservative to Liberal camps, including periods as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. He was known for his abrasive style, and for his womanising. 3 The architect, John Raphael Rodrigues Brandon (1817–77), had more success as a writer than as a practitioner, co-authoring with his brother several books on English ecclesiastical architecture,

128

1864–1887

4

5 6 7 8

9

including Parish Churches (1848). He took his own life a week before this letter, shooting himself in his chambers on 8 October. These would have been of the tithe barn and Saxon chapel at Bradford-on-Avon. See above, Letter 123, note 3. The barn became the subject of a watercolour by GPB, now in the V&A. See Vol. II, Letter 482, note 3. Crewe Hall, a Jacobean mansion in Cheshire, which Hungerford Crewe, third Baron Crewe (1812–94) inherited on his father’s death in 1835. George Webbe Dasent, The Story of Burnt Njal, from the Icelandic of the Njals Saga (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1861). Sigurd the Volsung. This is the last stanza of a six-stanza prologue by WM, which he placed before his and E. Magnússon’s translations, published in 1870 as Certain Songs from the Elder Edda, which Deal with the Story of the Volsungs. For Smeaton Manor see above, Letter 107, note 1.

126 • To William Marshall, 15 October 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Oct 15. 1877. To Mr Wm Marshall Clerk of Works. Naworth. Dear Sir Agent’s House1 I am indeed very much annoyed at the accident, if such a piece of carelessness on the builders part can be called an accident. If the work gable had been of twice the thickness it shd not have been left without proper support against even an ordinary wind. I must direct you at once to survey every part of the work likely to have been in any way affected by the fall, make notes on the ground of even any appearance of injury, & where the work has only been shaken order it to be taken down at once & rebuilt. Have all the ruined stone work taken out of the work building, the materials cleaned & stacked and all injured cut stone work, even if only a corner is [k]nocked off, broken up so that it shall not be re-used. Please to examine the chimney & see that it has not suffered in the falling of the gable against it. Will you be so good as to shew this letter to Mr Grey as well as to Mr Sproat and further report matters to me.2 Yours truly, | PW. LB-1, p. 107

1 Marshall was Thomas Warwick’s replacement as clerk of works on Four Gables. See above, Letter 112, note 3. 2 The stonemasons contracted for this project were Sproat Brothers of Talkin. See Kirk, p. 300.

129

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

127 • To Thomas Forster, 24 October 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Octr 24 1877 To Thos Forster Esqre Brampton Cumberland. Dear Sir. Brampton Ch’. I have rec the enclosed from Messrs Morris & Co, it is an estimate for the glazing with stained glass the 3 windows of the north aisle of the nave. When I last was at the church, I stated that it wd be best to consider any part of the ornamental glazing of the windows, with regard to the whole; therefore, the accompanying note is arranged in accordance with that resolution. In the estimate you will find the 3 windows numbered, 2, 3 & 4 and these numbers refer to the windows so numbered on this sketch [sketch, with 3 windows marked in north aisle].1 From Messrs Morris’s estimate you will see that the cost of these windows, framed according to my directions on a system appropriate to the character of the building, is at a lower rate than when I was talking with you on the subject I told you was probable, so that it has seemed to me as prob likely that your subscriptions wd enable you to put in two of the windows and the third wd be supplied by the gentleman who proposed to glaze one as a memorial to a member of his family.2 I have examined the designs for the figures and find them very noble pieces of work, & very satisfactory to me from an art point of view. The cost of packing & fixing wd probably amount to 7 or 8£ each window, if fixed separately, if the whole 3 were fixed together at one time the cost wd probably not be more than 18 to 20£. I have recd a memorandum from Mr Beaty, saying that Mr Geo Routledge proposes to give the porch entrance,3 but before sending the detail drawings for execution, I shd be glad to receive a more formal order for the same. Yours truly | P: W: d

LB-1, pp. 108-9

1 Morris & Co. supplied fourteen windows in the church. 2 For the memorial window to William Carrick see below, Letter 136. 3 For George Routledge, see above, Letter 83, note 4.

130

1864–1887

128 • To William Shearburn, 30 October 1877 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] October 30. 1877. To Mr Wm Shearburn Builder Dorking.1 Dear Sir. Dr Dowson’s Hse2 In answer to your letter of the 24th instant I can only say that I disagree with you entirely that Dr Dowson has evaded payment of any money due to you for any work for wh’ I have been his adviser . Dr Dowson has invariably placed the matter wholly in my hands, telling me that he was perfectly willing to abide by my decision. You yourself have fully recognised my professional right in this matter, for in a letter to me so far back as June 1873 you wrote “but should you think that any item ought not to be allowed please strike it out and send me a certificate for the balance”. My answer has always been to you that before I could certify for the payment of any balance due to you, certain things necessary to be done to complete the works to my satisfaction as Architect shd be done. In a letter to you of my assistant Mr Basset of 10th of July 1873 this passage occurs.3 “Mr Webb will feel obliged if you will get these things done that the account may be settled as soon as possible.” Well, Sir, you have never done any of the things to the house wh’ were necessary according to my decision as Architect, and Dr Dowson has been put to great inconvenience & discomfort in consequence, and as he is obliged to have workmen about the house at the present time I have advised him to let those workmen do at once what you have failed to do at my repeated request. If, when the necessary things are done, there shd remain any balance due to you over and above the cost of executing them, I will see that it is forwarded to you, but as much of your work has proved itself to have been done in an inferior manner, more so than even I had supposed when I drew up the list of requirements in 1873, I have but small hope some fears that Dr Dowson will himself be put to further expense. Please to believe that I have no animus in the matter, and that I shd have only been only too pleased glad if you had at once set the thing at rest by acting in the usual way as between Architect & builder. Yours truly | P: W: LB-1, pp. 109-11

131

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 William Shearburn (b. 1833) of South Street, Dorking, is described in various census returns as builder, surveyor and architect. 2 In 1867–73, PSW had overseen work on an existing house at 77 Park Street, Mayfair (including the addition of a dining room) for Dr E. Dowson. 3 ‘Basset was Webb’s draughtsman for many years, his name appeared for the first time in Webb’s accounts for 1869 and he remained in the office until 1884.’ John Brandon-Jones, NBS, p. 33.

129 • To Jane, Jenny and May Morris, 5 December 1877 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Decr 5. ’77 My dear Janey & Jenny & May: You will be sure that I was very glad when Father Morris read me a part of Jenny’s first letter home, and also when he told me on Monday that he had again heard that you were all resting, or rested, and that you were looking about at the wonders of creation in your part of Italy.1 I repeat, that I was very glad to hear of you, as I fancied that you might all have died on the journey, or have stopped in mid-France declaring that you would not budge a mile farther. And now I find that you have oranges & lemons, if not the bells of St Clements.2 The other day a friend of Murray’s called on me to shew some paintings of Italian country and towns, amongst them I eagerly looked at 2 or 3 of the sea-side hills you inhabit. Oh how pleased I was to see that the big mountains were close, or seemingly close down upon you – I had had it in my mind that you could see the tops of them by running a mile or two & putting on spectacles. Last night I went to hear the dyer’s lecture,3 & he spoke of this (my) country as being a pretty peasant land, but with nothing strange or visibly wonderful in it, with just the tail of the sun seen on lucky days, & with small sea-begirt land inhabited by small wealth-begirt minds. I never quite knew before why I was so stupid; you, no doubt, had known this long before, & when you return I shall expect you hardly to speak to me, & that if you do you will get no answer. As to the lecture itself, you will be glad to know from unprejudiced me, that it was a great success, full of truths & knock-me-down blows, but also tender & beautiful, & withal hopeful to poor folk if not to Kings & Lords. I thought that the working men there seemed pleased at being talked to in a way that recognised their being men, not children. For myself, I assure you I was deeply excited, water running out at my finger ends, & sometimes very nearly out of my eyes & down my patient nose, but a pinch of snuff stopped the latter and I was comforted. I hear that the wild Irisher did not take the house at Turnham Green after all, but that someone else is nibbling.4 If you see the [George] Howards, father, mother & children many, please remember me to them. Also, I shall be glad when either of your girls or both will snatch a few minutes 132

1864–1887

to tell me of your condition, & of the flavour of the Mediterranean mullets & the red & yellow wine. Please all three of you accept the love of your faithful | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 39-40

1 Jane and her daughters had left for Oneglia, on the Italian Riviera, on 21 November. They were abroad for several months, staying at a house found for them by Rosalind Howard, and not far from the Howards’ villa. WM joined them at the end of April 1878. 2 A reference to the opening lines of the traditional English nursery rhyme, whose subject is the bells of London city churches: ‘Oranges and lemons, / Say the bells of St Clement’s’. 3 This was WM’s first formal public lecture – many more would follow – and he had been nervous about his ability to project his voice adequately, practicing beforehand on GW, and listening to advice (some of it facetious) from EBJ. ‘The Decorative Arts, Their Relation to Modern Life and Progress’, was delivered to the Trades Guild of Learning on 4 December at the Co-Operative Hall in Castle Street, ‘a dismal hole near Oxford St: I am not sanguine as to its reception’. WM to JM, 3 December 1877, CLWM, I. 4 WM was endeavouring to find tenants for their Turnham Green house, now that his family was away. ‘[T]he Homan lot are off: I was firm about Sarah [the cook] & so they refused: not at all to my grief: I am now advertising the house at 3½ guineas including the cook’s wages’. WM to JM, 29 November 1877, CLWM, I.

130 • To Jane, Jenny and May Morris, 25 December 1877 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Christmas day in the evening. 1877. My dear mother and daughters. I need hardly try to tell you with what pleasure I had your letters, written on the 12th & 13th of this month. In the first place they solved the riddle of your having got getting to Italy, & then, that you were settling down to the life of the new home for the time being. It must have been troublesome to you to tell again & again of the “cardboard” house, of the terraces, of the unripe lemons, of the sun setting & rising, of the wrangling with custom house officers, & of this that & the other, but it was news to me, & very pleasant news too. May is right (I suppose?) for she makes her sun to rise over the sea; Jenny is wrong (I suppose?) for she makes her sun to set over the sea; probably she has been reading Walter Scott’s Antiquary, where he is pleased to do the same.1 In such a wonderful country the sun should be accommodating, if only to put to the blush (in setting) the cantankerous openers of boxes at the station. This kind of chaff (the light part, or the husk, winnowed from grain) will put you very much in mind of me, & that is what I want to do by this poor letter. If folk did not shew their faults, how wd they be known by their friends from perfect people? I shd be sorry that either of you shd pass me in the street without recognition. 133

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

The other day the word “chitta bob” came into the top part of my body, and I tried to think of the rest of the abracadabra chatter wh’ was so amusing at Kelmscott, but alas, no wagging of poll wd do it, and I was forced to remember visible signs – The fire, the draught board, the kittens, & mother Janey coiled up on the sofa – To say nothing of ladders in apple trees, starlings, shooting the foot bridge at the weir, feasts in the dining-room, & plum cake in tapestry chamber – Jenny poring over her book, & when disturbed saying “bosh” & May drawing & when criticised saying (internally) “bother the fellow”. How much easier it is to remember a picture than a sentence! The last few days, here, in Gray’s Inn, have been clear, and the rooks a-many. They don’t shew in foggy weather, no doubt they are off to the clear aired fields then – and they have amused me mightily, coming down to my scatterings in a flock, like so many Oxford Dons in Masters’ gowns. They are precious greedy chaps these rooks. They will take 8 or 10 pieces of bread, one after the other, & as they can only eat, say 7, they go & bury the other & walk a-way with their hands behind their gown – when in comes a watchful other one, & digs it up, & if he is full goes & buries it in some other place, & the starlings & sparrows look on, as I look on Lords & Ladies. Now, my friends, this is a picture, I don’t give you a verse to remember. Phil Jones came to see me the other day; he is grown a monstrous fine gentleman, sweetness beaming from his mouth & light from his eyes – he looked very well, and as if the air of the Marlborough downs suits him.2 He was cheery and kind, and I felt, beside him, like a musty old cheese, only fit to be toasted, wh’ I hope you will do in the best wine you can lay hands on. I will drink your health in whiskey & water you may be sure. We are all on the qui vive here – believing that Dizzy is going to do – well, the devil knows what?3 If you shd hear of an architect being trampled to a pancake in the streets you will know who is gone, & rejoice or be sad as the case may be. I think of taking a public house at Gravesend or Portsmouth and hocussing4 the soldiers so that they shall not go to fight the Russians. Apart from jesting, we are in a mighty to-do about the ways of rascals in high places. If the blunder comes, in a ferry we will be, of that you may be sure. Father Morris’s lecture was quite admirable, & altogether delightful. I am dunning Ellis for a copy wh’ he is having printed, as I won’t read that in the building paper.5 O my children (older & younger) there are such drawings at the Bond St Gallery (I don’t like writing the “Grosvenor” for it smells of beefstakes! [sic]).6 Botticellis’, Mantegnas, Leonardos’, Durers’, M. Angelos’, such a sight of fine things – all of which I’ve only had an hours glimpse of. Odours of Italy & Flanders enjoyed thro’ all the cooking below.7 There is one little Albert Durer water colour, about as large as half a crown – a mill & water wheel, beautiful indeed to see. I speak of this because it is of the smallest – I’ve no skill to write of the more magnificent.8 This is about all I have seen, & I’ve heard no music. Hard at work I am, that is, hard for me. I’m designing a kitchen at this present time, & as I do it I think 134

1864–1887

of the overtaxed cook who will have to go to bed, as I must, having so much to do. You will have heard of the father & me going to Kelmscott9 – we had fine weather, and Annie [Allen] cooked our pike very well for us. We were on the water all the daylight, both days, & came home to victuals so comfortably. My stars! did we not quarrel over cribbage? Did we not sleep afterwards? Was the garden pretty with its remains of flowers? did Mouse10 ruminate (no, that belongs to cows) under his many long winter red hairs? Philip Comely looked quite as well as I expected, but a little too clear eyed & thin skinned to please me – however, I think he may round the corner of the winter & pick up strength in the warmer spring. The kittens are grown to be fine cats, but not handsome – but they make up for want of good looks by being cleaner than anything less than their country tongues could make them. As usual they were one in the room & the other out. If by accident you should see Mr & Mrs Howard, will you kindly give them my professional “duty” and also my respects to their sweet little children. You might perhaps hint that I am in doubt as to the honesty of the Whigs – but no – do not enter on politics, keep that to raddle the bones of your affectionate | P.W. BL 45342, ff. 41-2

1 ‘The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and falling monarch.’ Walter Scott, The Antiquary (1816), ch 7. This was a favourite book for PSW, as well as for WM. 2 Philip Burne-Jones boarded for four years from 1874 at Marlborough School. Fiona MacCarthy questions his parents’ motive for choosing it, ‘a particularly brutal boys’ public school in those days, for a boy already highly strung and difficult’. MacCarthy, LPR, p. 259. 3 For some months, during the unfolding crisis of the ‘Eastern Question’, it seemed as if Britain, in its existing alliance with Turkey, might go to war with Russia which sought a sphere of influence in the old Ottoman Empire. But enlightened opinion had recently cooled towards the Turks, following the brutal suppression of a Bulgarian uprising, and about which Gladstone published a pamphlet highly critical of the foreign policy of Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Matters came to a head in the second half of 1877, when Disraeli seemed determined on conflict. After Russia declared war on Turkey in April 1877, WM and PSW became enthusiastic supporters of the Eastern Question Association, a liberal pressure group which argued that Britain should not fight. 4 ‘Hocus’ was used as a verb in the nineteenth century: to trick, to confuse. 5 ‘The Decorative Arts’ was published first in The Architect, XVIII (8 December 1877), pp. 308–12, and then as a pamphlet in 1878. Note PSW’s avoidance of the professional magazine. 6 The Grosvenor Gallery in New Bond Street, founded by Sir Coutts Lindsay as an alternative venue to the Royal Academy, opened on 1 May 1877. In that first summer exhibition, eight canvases by EBJ were featured, and also James McNeill Whistler’s ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’ (c. 1875, Detroit Institute of Art), made infamous by JR’s attack. See below, Letter 132, note 6. The winter exhibition featured drawings rather than paintings, an eclectic selection, from Old Master drawings (including examples from the Royal collection) to more recent British work. 7 The first-floor galleries were situated directly above the ground floor dining room, and the basement restaurant and kitchen. See floor plans in Colleen Denney, At the Temple of Art. The Grosvenor Gallery, 1877–1890 (London: Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 20 and 23–4.

135

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 8 Cat. 709: ‘Landscape with Mill-Wheel in the Foreground. Highly finished in water-colours. Lent by E. Cheney, Esq.’ The Grosvenor Catalogue Illustrated Catalogue. Winter Exhibition (1877–78) (London: Libraire de L’Art and Chatto & Windus, 1877), p. 83. There were thirty Dürer drawings on show. 9 ‘On Tuesday I believe Mr. Webb & I are going down to Kelmscott for 2 or 3 days: the river has been much flooded Annie says but is going down a bit now.’ WM to JEM, 7 December 1877, CLWM, I. 10 WM’s pony.

131 • To George Price Boyce, 17 January 1878 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Thursday. Jan: 17. ’78 My dear Boyce I’m very sorry to hear that the pains, & perhaps the penalties are upon you. I can only hope that you do not pay for coming here the other night. I got your note on returning from Exeter Hall last evening. I did not stay there longer than enough time to see that the meeting was to be a success, for my cold is none of the most kindly. If you do not show yourself at the anti-scrape I’ll apologise for you and ask them to await your better day. Both, the meeting on the Dardanelles question, at Willis’s rooms, and that at Exeter Hall went off better even than we had hoped;1 people were hearty, & had surely made up their minds. I missed Morris’s verses sung to the tune of the “Hardy Norseman”2 played on the organ at the latter meeting, but the poet tells me that the congregation fell in with the idea capitally. The Daily News gives a more full acct than the Times – tho’ even that trimmer was steadily tho’ cautiously on our side.3 Kindest remembrance to Mrs Boyce, & please tell her that the taste of the fruit is quite up to the appearance. Thank you also for the last “carte”. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 110-11

1 PSW and WM attended these two anti-war meetings on 16 January, in the afternoon at Willis’s meeting rooms, St James’s, and in the evening at Exeter Hall, in the Strand (organised by the Workmen’s Neutrality Demonstration), where WM spoke. 2 WM had been asked to write new verses to fit the song melody, ‘The hardy Norseman’s home of yore’. The audience was rehearsed before the meeting started, and later in the meeting WM’s words ‘Wake, London Lads! the hour draws nigh . . . cast off the lie, and cast the Turk away!’ were sung by all present. The trade unionist Henry Broadhurst recorded that ‘the effect when the burning words were thundered forth by the vast assembly was electrifying’. See MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 384, for an account of this occasion. 3 The Times reported on both meetings. ‘The meeting at Willis’s Rooms yesterday afternoon was chiefly occupied with the discussion of one special point – the opening of the Dardanelles to the

136

1864–1887 ships of war of all nations. . . . [That at Exeter Hall] was made up from the working men of London, who were invited to be present in order to protest against England being dragged into a war. . . . This they did with one voice, and the concord between “the brains and muscles” of the country was thus once more ratified’ (17 January).

132 • To Jane Morris, 30 January 1878 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Jan: 30. 1878 My dear Janey Thank you a-many times for your letter. It has given me great pleasure I assure you. I was not going to be done out of my native obstinacy as to the truth of the latitudes & longitudes of your two infants, so I took to the map (I have bought a big one since you have gone to Italy) and I find that Jenny & May are right, and that you have the blessing of the sun from early morn to dewy eve.1 Jenny & May will say, ‘O, mother, we told you so, what a positive & ridiculous old mule that Webb is’. True my children; what is bred in the bone, &c. But I have the advantage of you, I cannot be proud of my accuracy – a pride of the most dangerous kind, of which I warn you both, perhaps all three. Alas, your kindly scheme for bringing me to Italy in the spring will remain a scheme. ’Twill be impossible; what with my work, and the hindrance of the double dyed D’Israeli, stick to my work closely for the next 2 or 3 years I must. Never mind, it won’t so much matter, as you will tell me all about it when you return. I smiled over your “Glaum eyed” horrors. Still, matters have been very stirring, and we all have (the reasonable amongst us) real cause for joy, that at present a European war has been staved off. Morris & some others have done more than yeoman’s service to the state. We are not quite out of the wood yet, but I think I see light on the other side. “Lord, what fools these mortals be”.2 If we succeed in avoiding war I think I shall subscribe to have the Windsor looms make a portrait of the Queen as large of as the Norfolk Giantess at St Giles’s fair.3 Christopher Sykes must not be allowed to have all the fun to himself.4 What do you think of this subject, ‘Triumph of the Imperial Indian Cæsaress of after the manner of Mantegna at Hampton Court,’ designed by Val Prinsep.5 Field Marshall HRH Prince of Wales, his jack boots in the foreground. Whistler & Fortnum & Mason on white Elephants as attendant sprites – followed by Sir Coutts Lindsay with frying-pans à la Grosvenor Gallery?6 Howell and the Bendizzy as thimbleriggers, by kind permission of the Derby day, might be thrown in.7 I had a letter on Saturday from Annie Allen. She said that the dining room & kitchen ceilings had been whitened, and the window put in to the “green room”. This last “a great improvement”. She also said that Philip Comely gets weaker, for wh’ I am very sorry, as I had hoped he wd pull through – hope against reason. I shall see Morris tonight, & I must talk to him about writing to Mr Hobbs to clear away the blown-down elm, wh’ he has not yet done. 137

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I saw Lady Stanley in Harley St the other night, as brisk as a four-year-old, of this I was glad, because as I think Rosalind is very much like what her mother must have been, I hope the former will hold on in life as well as the mother does.8 Your picture of the cows being milked close to the house door knocker, and Rosalind as monitory priestess over-aweing the neighbourhood pleased me mightily. I hope May works at her drawing manfully, and that Jenny basks in the sun shine, and will call this “bosh” as soon as she hears of it. I had a letter from Stanhope the other day, telling me of the joy he had in reading the Trade Guild lecture – and, what do you think? he asked me if I had read Mazzini’s “Duty of Man” – !!!9 What will the world come to next? he called it a “noble bit of thought,” as assuredly it is. Oh, the lovely mountains, to be seen at times when you can take a short walk. Then you think of that little peasant land, the description of wh’ we have in all our mouths just now; never before has England been written of so closely and well. Morris had a reception at Horrington House last week, of wh’ I was one guest & a man named Vinall, who works for the shop, another.10 I believe it was chiefly to give Sarah the cook something to do – & she did it. I went into the kitchen as I came away, & found her reading (life of late Prince Consort no doubt) and Jack the cat, lying full length, belly towards fire, a perfect picture of ease & dignity. I missed the 3 affectionate women-kind, but looked forward to embracing you all there once again at last. ’Till then I beg you to hold me in kindest remembrance, forgetting all the evil, mindful only of the little parcels of good scattered at intervals, for the making of wh’ whole, God only knows the reason. Your affectionate | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 43-4

1 This was a familiar phrase, and probably derives from Milton’s Paradise Lost: ‘from morn / To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve’ (I, 742–3). 2 Puck, in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, III.ii.115. 3 Mary Hales Laske (?1811–41), known as the Norfolk Giantess, was more than seven feet in height. PSW might well have seen her in his childhood (JM would have been too young), at the annual September fair held in the thoroughfare of St Giles, Oxford. 4 Christopher Sykes (1831–98), Conservative MP for the East Riding of Yorkshire, was known as the Gull’s Friend for sponsoring a bill in 1869 for the preservation of seabirds. He regularly entertained the Prince of Wales at his Berkeley Square house. PSW’s remark is prompted by newspaper reports of a visit by Prince Leopold (1853–84), the Queen’s fourth son, to the Windsor Tapestry Works on 18 January. ‘The Prince remained at the works for about two hours, attentively examining the various tapestries in hand, among which are Mr. P.M. Ward’s cartoons intended for the town mansion of Mr. Christopher Sykes M.P.’ The Belfast News-Letter, 22 January 1878. WM had been particularly irritated by the establishment of the Windsor works in 1875 under the Queen’s patronage, just when he was wanting Morris & Co. to move into tapestry making, and was convinced that Victoria was robbing him of customers. See MacCarthy, WMLT, pp. 406–7.

138

1864–1887 5 PSW’s inclusion of Val Prinsep in his facetious remarks is prompted by ‘The Imperial Assemblage at Delhi’. See above, Letter 111, note 2. 6 This mention of Whistler and Sir Coutts Lindsay possibly alludes to the furore caused when JR attacked Whistler’s painting, ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’, shown at the inaugural Grosvenor Gallery exhibition. ‘I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask for two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’ (Flors Clavigera, 1877). Whistler decided to sue, and much to his embarrassment, EBJ was called by JR as a witness for the defence. Interestingly, the offending Nocturne was bought by PWY. See Dakers, pp. 56–7. 7 A thimblerigger is a professional cheat. The swindling game of thimblerig invited bystanders to bet as to which of three thimbles covered a pea. In linking Charles Augustus Howell and Disraeli, PSW flatters neither. 8 Henrietta Maria Dillon-Lee (1807–95), married Edward John Stanley (1802–69) in 1826. He succeeded his father as second Baron Stanley of Alderley in 1850. Rosalind Howard was one of their daughters; another married Bertrand Russell. Lady Stanley was politically active, and a campaigner for women’s education. 9 The politician Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) argued for Italian unification. Doveri dell’uomo was published in 1860, and in English as The Duties of Man (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875). 10 The reception was at Turnham Green. Charles Vinall undertook occasional surveying work for Morris & Co.

133 • To Salisbury Baxendale, 4 February 1878 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feby 4. 1878. To Salisbury Baxendale Esqre Bonningtons by Ware Herts. My dear Baxendale.1 I duly recd your letter, and have taken time, as the judges say, to consider the judgment. I shall leave the most imperative reason to the last. In the first place, I have allowed myself to be involved in an amount of work wh’ will keep me from making any fresh engagement for a long time to come, and I am steadily refusing to do fresh work even for old & valued clients like yourself.2 Secondly, I’m not over-strong in health, & must therefore draw the line somewhere, and lastly, if I were able & willing to enter on more work, I have put it out of my power, in the matter of altering old churches or other valuable relics of history or art, by becoming a member of a very valuable Society of wh’ I enclose you the manifesto and list of members. I think you will readily understand the meaning and use of the society from the papers, and I shouldn’t be surprised if you yourself asked to be allowed to become a member. When I repaired your church,3 I did as little in the way of transforming it as I possibly could, but when it was done I was dissatisfied with the amount of 139

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

change, and at once determined to be even more radically conservative in future. The society is a kind of buttress to me and helps me to meet entreaties of friends wh’ otherwise I shd not have been able to do without greater discomfort. Naturally there has been some opposition to the object of the society, but on the whole it has been supported more ably & fully than I had expected. With very kind regards to Mrs Baxendale, whom I congratulate heartily, Believe me to be yours very truly | P: W: LB-1, pp. 116-17

1 Salisbury Baxendale was born in or about 1827, and served as High Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1883. 2 PSW built Bonningtons for Baxendale, an estate cottage near Hunsdon, Ware in Hertfordshire (c. 1866). See Kirk, p. 297. 3 St Dunstan’s, Hunsdon (1870–2). See Kirk, p. 298.

134 • To Alexander Cassavetti, 23 February 1878 Draft/ copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feby 23. 1878. To Alexander Cassavetti Esqre Fairfield Lodge Kensington1 Dear Alexander Cassavetti I was rather annoyed on reading your letter recd last night, not because it wd seem as if it reflected on me, but rather that my explanations to you must have been somewhat misleading could not have been full enough or clear to you, & if that is the case I am really very sorry. It is not at an uncommon thing, I assure you, for Archts clients to be surprised when the final accts come in, as ’till that time, they have, as a rule, hardly realized the amount of things wh’ have been added to the contract, beyond those things (especially in an altered house) wh’ could not have been foreseen. Allow me to explain a little now, so that when I see you on Monday you may be in a better position to judge rightly of the case. Messrs Ashby’s tender for the works made on the quantities taken out by your surveyor, was £3689.16.0[,] to that, you will recollect, I added as a note that 7½ per cent shd be allowed in such work for unforeseen contingencies, that practically brought the amount to £3965.0.0. Well, I found on carrying out the works that even more than that sum was necessarily expended by me. Added to this, I made the staircases better than taken in the contract, to meet your particular wish with regard to this part. 140

1864–1887

Then follow the additions of bow window in bedroom over east drawing room, and the wide stone stairs out of new dining-room to garden &c. To these was added, what I confess has much worried me, namely the great cost of the engineer’s drainage. As the work was proceeding I found the existing drainage in such a miserable and even dangerous state, that the amount allowed for this work was utterly insufficient. And beyond this, the fall to the street sewer was so slight, that in any case the whole of the drains must have been taken up. In my anxiety to get the thing done quickly, and in the best way, I incurred the responsibility of putting the management of the drainage into the hands of an expert (Mr Field) who had been strongly recommended to me.2 Tho’ I did this, I by no means left it in his hands witht spending a good deal of time in watching & approving his process, and tho’ but Mr Field said he wd not & even could not give me an estimate of the cost, & his assistant told me that the amount of work to be done was found greatly to exceed what he, an experienced man, had anticipated. Well, tho’ the total cost of this work has much vexed me I cannot, looking at your interest in the matter, regret that I ordered the work to be done as I did. I think you are slightly in error as to my having told you that the total cost of drainage & superintendence wd be £500. I could hardly have said that, for Mr Field had never told me what his charge wd be – but before he made those alterations to draining the front garden, his assistant had said that he thought Mr Bartholomew’s work wd to [sic] amount to £100 more than the £400 already paid. I beg to say that I do not consider Mr Field’s own charge excessive, for the skill shewn in dealing with the matter and the trouble he took in carrying out his scheme – and I am satisfied that if you wished to sell the house, the plan wh’ you hold shewing what has been done wd greatly add to the value of the property. With regard to Messrs Ashby’s payments, they “two months” refers to the balance of £124.0.7 might have asked me for a certificate for £600 further on acct some 4 or 5 months ago. I shall be glad to talk over the matter with you on Monday, when I propose to call on you at 4. oc. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. LB-1, pp. 118-20

1 PSW made significant alterations to Fairfield Lodge in Addison Road, Kensington, first for Mrs Euphrosyne Cassavetti (in 1871–2), and later (in 1876–8) for her son, the solicitor Alexander Cassavetti (1854–1923). 2 The civil engineer, Rogers Field (1831–1900), was a long-standing member of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain, and at his death left £5000 to the Institute, which established a gold medal in his name, awarded annually ‘for an exhibit of outstanding merit from the point of view of hygiene’.

141

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

135 • To Major Arthur Godman, 27 February 1878 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. February 27th 1878 Dear Major Godman. In answer to your letters of Feb. 23 & 24. I received Hardy’s suggestions for reducing the cost of cottages.1 I now wait ’till you find whether you can or cannot buy the property which would serve instead of the cottages, before letting Hardy know what in his suggestions I can agree to – of course I should be glad if you could get the property in question, so as to be able to do without the new buildings. I am exercised in spirit about the drainage of your house. The levels Hardy has sent me are so little an improvement on those of the first proposition, that I have returned to that, but as I am in doubt as to the best way of dealing with the sewage under the conditions of deep digging, I have consulted an engineer expert, and I am now waiting his report upon the propositions I laid before him.2 I think in all probability we shall stick to the first scheme with, perhaps modifications, but as it would be impossible to put this scheme in shape just at once, I think you should go on laying down the grass. In any case we shall not much upset that. At all events there would be no difficulty in sowing such parts as are disturbed, again. I don’t think you quite realise the amount of hay, straw and corn room in loft – you have 96 feet in length – 20 feet in width and 8 feet high – with easy access from wagon at outer end. It would add considerably to cost if you made loft space (with timbers to bear weight) over the remaining part of coach houses &c, with some trouble and expense to get access. It could be done, if you found you really wanted it. I have made notes of smithy and calf pen. Yours very truly, | Philip Webb. NBS

1 The clerk of works at Smeaton Manor, John Hardy, was described by PSW as ‘honest as the Yorkshire stone amongst which he grew up, and as full of grit; a most stoical and hard living man – always on the job, winter and summer, before the men.’ See John Brandon-Jones, NBS, p. 36. 2 The expert would almost certainly have been Rogers Field. See above, Letter 134, note 2.

142

1864–1887

136 • To John Carrick, 16 March 1878 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Mar: 16 1878 To John Carrick Esqre Brampton. Cumberland Dear Sir. (Brampton Ch’) I have delayed answering your letter of the 5th until I had seen Messrs Morris, & consulted with them in the matter of your window.1 The practice of sending out designs of stained glass windows from wh’ donors may select that wh’ most pleases them, is only followed by the regular manufacturers of stained glass in the gross . It could not be done by artistic workmen, such as Messrs Morris, who have to pay very highly for their designs. Also, in fitting to windows appropriate glass, all the circumstances of the case must be taken into consideration – two of the most important being, the character of the architecture of the building in wh’ the glass is to be placed, and the system on wh’ all the windows of the building are proposed to be glazed. In the two designs sent for glazing 2 of the 3 windows on the North aisle of nave, Messrs Morris have closely followed my explanations as to what character of glass would best fit that position, & I beg to say that I was much pleased with the drawings forwarded wh’ were made arranged from the full sized cartoons made by the artist. It is quite possible that you wd be better pleased with a design applicable to a window or windows in another position in the church. Messrs Morris say that they have cartoons wh’ would do for the 3 light window on the south side of the south aisle of chancel arranged in this way, [sketch] namely 3 single figures in the upper part of the lights A and subject panels at the bottom of lights B. But this window would most likely cost more than the window on the north side, of wh’ the design has been sent. The square windows in the South aisle of Nave and the West window (circular) of south aisle would require original artist’s designs to be specially made for them, & therefore wd relatively be more costly. If you shd decide upon abandoning the design sent to you for one of the north aisle windows Messrs Morris would have to charge you £2/10/0 for the use of the drawing, the drawing itself still being their property.

143

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Allow me to say in conclusion that, as the designer of the Church, I am very anxious to have stained glass in its windows of the best character and fitted for the building, and I particularly wish to avoid the use of harsh crude designs and inharmonious colouring, the ugliness of wh’ spoil most of the churches in wh’ they are placed. Yours very truly, | Ph Webb. LB-1, pp. 123-5

1 John Carrick was the son of William Carrick, a solicitor in the partnership which acted for the Naworth estate and ‘one of the leading laymen in the church building project. . . . He died before the completion of the church and his son decided to commemorate him by giving the second [Morris] window.’ Penn, p. 56. The subject of this letter is the central window in the North aisle, depicting the Old Testament figures of Moses, Solomon, David and Elijah.

137 • To Percy Wyndham, 10 March 1878 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Mar: 19. 1878. To The Hon Percy Wyndham M:P. My dear Sir. I recd your letter yesterday with its enclosures, wh’ matter I return. My opinion after reading them, is, that you may pipe ’till you are black in the face, but you will not save that building which so much pleased us on Thursday. The list of subscribers is great enough to deface a whole county.1 I intended that my former “notes” shd read like the utterances of a sorrowful lay-man, and not like those of a jubilant Archt, however, your request is quite reasonable, and I send you a few more notes, wh’ you can are perfectly welcome to use or adapt at your pleasure, or even not use at all. I agree with you that some protest shd be made, and as you have been applied to for aid in the destruction, you have a perfect right to point out the proved disastrous result, of such proceedings as are proposed in the circular. You will not succeed in this case, but some one or more of the subscribers may make note of your piteous appeal, of and not be so sure of the virtue of their action when the next case comes before them. Clouds House. I must beg you not to be too sure as to when we shall be able to begin, for the amount of work before me is very great, tho’ I have been refusing further work, elsewhere, so as to give me as much time for yours as possible. I must beg you also to remember that I shall have to add 20 or 25 percent to my estimate, if a first-rate London builder is employed. I told you that it wd be to my interest (apart from any money gain to me) that a London builder shd be employed, 144

1864–1887

but you may be quite certain that it will cost about that percentage more if we do not try some local man. I shd be glad to know what you decide to do abt the venetian fireplaces, as, if you buy them, I shall have to arrange so as to rightly dispose of them. Yours very truly, | P: W: d P:S: I w have West Knoyle Ch’ photographed inside & out, there is a very good man at Trowbridge who wd do it without mentioning your name. LB-1, pp. 125-6

1 The thirteenth century church of St Mary the Virgin, West Knoyle, was restored (1876–8) by J. Mountford Allen of Crewkerne. Local subscriptions covered the cost of about £1,800.

138 • To Jane Morris, 6 July 1878 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Sat: July 6. ’78 My dear Janey You must have thought me very loutish last night when I accepted your kind present from Italy – & I quite excuse you if you did, for I was so, and indeed I always am when taking a present, more than under other circumstances of my life, wh’ is saying a good deal. Daylight shewed me the lovely colour and surface of the wonderful stone, and I am very glad that you thought of being so kind to me. The “verde antico” is a fit reminder of our green old friendship.1 Yours very affectionately | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, f. 47

1 ‘Verde antico’, popular since antiquity as a decorative facing stone.

139 • To George Price Boyce, 18 September 1878 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Sep 18. 78 My dear Boyce. I was very glad to hear from you, the more so that your news was good news. I quite understood your long silence, for if I had been in your place & you in mine, you very likely wd not have heard from me ’till the day before my coming home, when I shd have written for you to prepare me dinner on my arrival. You lay a fine 145

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

trap for me in your mention of a good cuisine at the Golden Lion of Vèzelay [sic] – gently gliding away from the sorrowful subject of wine, to spare my pledged conscience.1 However, wine or no wine, that is not the question,2 & my coming to you is out of all question. I’ve not seen Wallis for a month I shd think, and then he had just returned from Paris. I fancy he goes to Italy this winter. Morris is at Kelmscott, & has been so off & on for a month or more. My own work sits on my shoulders like the old man of the sea,3 & I can’t dislodge him & break his head with a lump of green sandstone, as I shd wish. Your little photographic card of Vézelay, gives me a good idea of the situation, & with your story of it, I can hardly think of a more delightful place to work and recreate in. I take it that the place is out of the line of bustle of tourists or active trade, wh’ must be a comfort. I went to Batsford’s yesterday, but he could find nothing in his French catalogues of Vézelay.4 If I get to South Kensington [Museum], I’ll look in the library there. Murray’s note of it in his guide, is lean & hungry in the extreme.5 The situation puts me in mind of an Italian town, but the look is not so white. I suppose the wine you get there is of the Burgundy type? as it is in that province, seemingly just on the edge of it. By the time you come back I shall have got through my wine-fast, & shall enjoy a talk on its merits, & I’ll look you out a bottle of my best to refresh your memory. If you’ll promise not to tell V: Hugo, I don’t mind saying that France is a notable place and a lovely – & if not the navel of the world, it is only because the Earth has a good many navels – and nationalities must not be allowed to label themselves, or the Irish would be quite unbearable. Please tell Mrs Boyce that I’ve been reading a translation of George Sand’s “Consuelo” and its sequel6 – some parts of the book I thought delightful, but others, extravagant & absurd. Consuelo herself wd have been a beautiful character, if she had not been thrown in to impossible situations wh’ fairly washed her off her pleasant legs. I’ve seen nothing of Norwood, have intended writing to him to ask for a walk in company, but have not found time & opportunity. I fully appreciated your note of the Paris exhibition, and the state of its Art show. I think there is hardly a doubt that if the French wd (could?) take seriously to art, that in these times they wd stand the greatest chance of succeeding of any European people, but if the Italians prosper, it will be they I think, as wd be natural, who will lead the rest. The English have imagination tho’ little aptitude, the French have an abundance of the latter but little of the former. The Italians have both, if they were set fairly going. The Germans are doubtful, yet a-while at all events, as they have hardly recovered from topping the musical tree with their Beethoven. I shd be glad if when you come back to Paris if you could find out anything more of the bronze heads of M: A:7 & if photographs could be got of them.

146

1864–1887

I’ll bear your remembrance to Welwyn when I next go there. I’ve designed the house for them, & it is being worked out8 – but we are late in the year to do much this side of Christmas. With my kindest regards to Mrs Boyce | Believe me yours sincerely, Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 128-9

1 It would seem that for health reasons, PSW had temporarily given up drinking wine (of which he was very fond). 2 ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’, Hamlet, III.i.55. 3 In the Arabic stories of Sinbad the Sailor, the Old Man of the Sea tricks a traveller into carrying him across water, but then refuses to release his grip from the victim’s shoulders. 4 The bookseller and publisher, Bradley Thomas Batsford (1821–1904), had a shop in High Holborn from 1843. 5 The first of John Murray’s series of Handbooks for Travellers appeared in 1836. 6 PSW may have read the 1847 English translation of George Sand’s Consuelo; its sequel, La comtesse de Rudolstadt appeared as The Countess of Rudolstadt in 1851. The character of Consuelo is thought to have been based on the soprano Pauline Viardot. 7 Not identified, but presumably he means bronze copies of Michelangelo sculptures. 8 See above, Letter 65, note 1.

140 • To Jane Morris, 8 November 1878 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Nov: 8. ’78 My dear Janey It was bad of you to taunt me in that way about my dining out. If I were not as bad as you in the way of ungracious jibes I wd not forgive you, no, not for a long time – however you threw in the soother of Jenny’s face and so I unpuckered mine & grinned forgiveness already. I am very busy; not that I get through much work, for my lumbering brain causes me to do & undo over & over again what a better head than mine would do easily once & well. At last I have ordered the bookcase to take the place of, & the books out of your cabinet; wh’ will I hope shortly be on wheels to your new old house. The possession of the beautiful wooden box has always rather tortured my tearing rag of a conscience, and I shall be glad to think of it standing in its new and proper home.1 I saw Morris last night, and between the yells & mingled gabble of a full antiscrape meeting he told me that you had all safely fled from the little shed on the high road to “Kelmscott house”!!2 Lord my dear Janey what a magnificent title

147

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

to the house at t’other end of the river. I must take care when I do come to dinner, not to go off to Paddington to the other of that name.3 That I will come to dinner shortly you may be sure, and as soon as I can “after next week”. Perhaps I may hire a boat one of these moonlight nights at Temple stairs, & row up to you, and sound you a pretty tune off my bassoon. You’ll know it is me by the sublimity of the air. Give my fragrant unbearded kisses to the girls, thank Jenny prettily for her likeness, (wh’ is a good one) and yourself | believe me sincerely yours Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 48-9

1 A fine French cabinet which PSW had kept in his rooms in Raymond Buildings, as it had been too tall for the Turnham Green house. 2 At the beginning of April 1878, whilst his wife and daughters were in Italy (and after much consultation with JM by letter), WM decided to take the riverside house on Upper Mall in Hammersmith as their future London residence. Called ‘The Retreat’ by its former occupant, the writer George Macdonald (1824–1905), Morris renamed it Kelmscott House, after Kelmscott Manor. It would be the house in which he died. PSW had helped him to decide on its suitability in March, offering persuasive advice about possible flooding at high tide: ‘Webb thought that this might be easily guarded against, as it does not come up through the drains (since the house drains into the main sewer not into the Thames)’. WM to JM, 18 March 1878, CLWM, I. 3 Trains to Lechlade, via Oxford, started from Paddington station on the Great Western Railway.

141 • To William Lawrance, 16 January 1879 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jan 16. ’79 To Mr William Lawrence Builder. Datchworth. Dear Sir (Mr H.S. Webb’s house) I was much annoyed on finding that after all my trouble taken in this matter, you, to whom I had given preference before other builders, shd have both delayed matters and had failed to give me an estimate which I could accept. I now return you the quantities repriced (in red ink) according to a more liberal scale than better works in several places which have been done for me, when prices ran higher than they do now. If you will agree to do the work according to the new list of prices for the total sum of £2403.0.0 I will arrange with my brother on Monday next as to accepting it. Otherwise I shall have to put the work out to competition.1 I shall be at my 148

1864–1887

brother’s at Welwyn on Monday morning the 20th at 9. oc when I shall be obliged if you will call with the quantities. Yours truly | P: W: LB-1, pp. 142-3

1 The building contract for New Place, Harry Webb’s house, was finally awarded to Lawrence.

142 • To Major Arthur Godman, 13 March 1879 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. March 13th 1879 Dear Major Godman. I am glad you had the doorway made from the yard to the cellar, otherwise my wish might have stayed you against your own particular inclination. Of course the internal wood covering to the stair will do as I shew in drawing without the doorway from the inside, or you might put the door and lock it – as you please. Certainly, colour such rooms as you want to make quite neat, taking care to use no arsenic in the colour. Perhaps the best colour would be to match a full toned piece of parchment: or if you use more decided colours match some of these on Morris’s papers. I sometimes have used white, coloured pinkish with a little venetian red, or white coloured with a little brown yellow ochre. Wednesday the 2nd April would do very well for me to come to Smeaton, and I will do so unless I hear from you to the contrary. I am heartily glad to learn that Mrs Godman is stronger. With kind regards, believe me, | Yours very truly, | Philip Webb. NBS

143 • To Percy Wyndham, 14 May 1879 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 14. ’79 To the Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P: 44 Belgrave Square My dear Sir. (Clouds Hse) I went to Geo’ Smith’s on Saturday, & saw Mr Mansfield their manager, and Mr Fletcher their estimating clerk, but could failed to get no a definite date for my 149

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

receiving the estimate.1 Mr Fletcher was to have called upon me yesterday, but failed to do so. The ill-wind of the present state of the sandstone quarry has reached Smith’s, thro’ Howell,2 but I set met this difficulty with regard to their estimate, by saying that as we had successfully opened the quarry, we would continue to open further so as to be sure of providing the stone we shall want. I think it is likely that Smith’s have sent Mr Cross, their master mason, to look at the quarry, & that this has delayed them. I will send you further news as soon as I have it. Mr Fletcher has just been here, & he said that he thought it likely that they wd be able to let me have the estimate by Saturday evening. I went to Chance’s yesterday.3 The 4 Sansovino frames4 are not of that excellence wh’ wd make me say ‘buy them’ for fear of missing an opportunity wh’ shd not be lost. The console tables would not suit the house at all. Chance had a small carved Italian frame wh’ I asked him to let you have the refusal of, if some one who was looking at it did not take it. I went on to Sinclairs,5 and found the De Witt pictures of no value, that is, according to my lights. Yours very truly, | P: W: LB-1, pp. 145-6

1 PSW was drawn towards the Pimlico firm of George Smith & Co., as he had reservations about employing a country builder for a job the size of Clouds. However, settling on a contractor would be a protracted and frustrating process. See further letters to Smith and PWY, below. 2 The East Knoyle brickmaker, John Howell. 3 The carver, gilder, and picture frame-maker, James Henry Chance (1810–1902), had premises in Fitzroy Square. 4 A style of picture frame ‘richly carved with scrolls, masks and swags of fruit . . . [and] named after the Italian sculptor and architect Jacobo Sansovino (1486–1570), whose Venetian buildings were particularly influential on the decorative arts from about 1530’. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/ O134792/frame-unknown/ [accessed 17 July 2014]. 5 The auctioneers, Sinclair & Son, of 381 Kingsland Road, NE.

144 • To George Smith & Co., 19 June 1879 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] June 19. 1879. Messrs George Smith & Co. 9 Commercial Road Pimlico Dear Sirs. (Clouds House) I have considered, with M Wyndham, the subject matter of your letter to me of the 16th inst of June, but before stating to you the result of our conference, I wd make note of one or two passages in your letter. r

150

1864–1887

You state that your Mr Mansfield retained a conviction that I considered your prices generally consistent for really good work. What I intended to convey to Mr Mansfield, was, that I found no individual items of the prices for the work particularly extravagant, but that on careful examination I found the prices over all the many items to be what I considered full high, & that these prices and the sums allowed for contingencies carriage &c and the charge for profit did account to me for my estimate for the work (wh’ I still consider a fair one) being below yours, but that I did not consider you were not justified in using such prices, &c, as it was most likely that your usual clients were quite ready to pay such prices for your work. As to your remark, as of the misleading character of any price per cubic foot over the whole of the a building, I should not differ with you when proper precaution and experience are not used in such estimating. When time, and careful consideration to place, materials, labour &c are applied, & where, from accurate knowledge of the character of the work to be done, and with when full and accurate particular delineation of the substance and detail is made before estimating, I believe that cubing the contents of a building is even a sound check upon the individual prices of put to a very large number of items taken on full quantities. After consultation, Mr Wyndham has decided not to countenance begin building until he is satisfied that the total cost of the works to be done for him under my direction will not exceed £75,000; and though he would be sorry to have to agree to the work I have designed being cut down, as I have proposed, to the amount of £5,000, with the further deduction of £1,000 for stables, and £2412 from the sum I have allowed for extras & omissions, (£8412 in all) yet, if you found it to come within the bounds of safe calculation on your part to make a reduction on your charge prices, say to the extent of 12½ percent on the total amount of your estimate, he wd feel greatly inclined to agree to it what he considers would be a mutilation of the design. On the other side I have put down a statement in figures explaining the above red[uctio]ns. Allow me to conclude with by thanking you for the your courtesy with which you have attended to myself, and for your patience in attending to my serious difficulties in this matter. Yours truly, | P: W: LB-1, pp. 149-50

145 • To George Smith & Co., 25 June 1879 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] June 25. ’79 To Messrs George Smith & Co. 9 Commercial Road Pimlico 151

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Dear Sirs (Clouds House) I have seen M Wyndham, and very carefully explained to him the details of your proposition for reduction on certain items of your estimate, with the resulting offer on your part to do the works of the main block of the building for £50,000. Mr Wyndham expressed himself as being pleased that you had been willing to entertain the necessity of making some reduction, tho’ the result, as you would have expected, could not make the question a practical one for him. I was directed by Mr Wyndham to inform you that he had resolved to defer building at Clouds altogether at for the present. Will you be so good as to send me a memorandum of any expenses you may have been put to in sending to Knoyle and elsewhere for information before making your estimate, so that I may put the same before Mr Wyndham for payment. I am, Dear Sirs, with many thanks for your attention to this matter, | Yours truly | P: W: r

LB-1, pp. 151-2

146 • To George Price Boyce, 26 September 1879 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Sep 26. 79 My dear Boyce I duly had your letter of the 22nd and was glad of it. The kind offer of “the good extra bedroom” is very tempting, but I must say “get behind me” to it. One might say that the evil of the world was only “blundering” written small, so I must stay at home to scotch as many of the embryo blunders as I possibly can. If the swallows are gone they will come back again, & the martins are still with us for best joy. If you are out of tune with your work, don’t believe but that a happier view of it will come back to you as the swallows. Don’t think for a moment that I read your complaint as “whining”; I did no such thing; for I well know that but little good is to be done in art, as well as other things, without the doer is being often troubled by the thought of its imperfection. I wouldn’t for anything offer you any false comfort, but I did think that your last work had some of your strongest quality in it, as well done as ever. What wd be your greatest cause of depression, is that of your being disabled by weak health, and I sincerely hope you’ll get over most of that. I went to West Ho last evening, and your dark-haired maid very politely shewed me the tiles and put in paper the little basket. I found the tiles in better condition

152

1864–1887

than your letter led me to expect. I think I can use comfortably 24 of them, (all that I shd want) but I must beg you not to let me have them if there is the slightest chance of your wanting to use them.1 I shall not take them away ’till I’ve paid for them, as the Welwyn “sawbones” is like me for this, that he has a dislike to “sponging” upon even his best friends. My sister will, no doubt, write to you or Mrs Boyce about the pretty basket. I’ll take it to her on Sat: I’ve heard nothing about the mending of the neckless [sic] clasp. I’ve seen nothing of Wallis – he’s in Italy surely! and if so, getting rid of his Roman Catholicism scare, we will hope. Murray has gone back at last. Thanks for asking about my bronchial affection (the “sawbones” laughs at that). I have a cold, wh’ has I suppose for the last 9 months thickened the tubes of my ears, so that I have a singing and “hum-buzzing” in my head nearly constantly, but, no doubt, by time of swallows-return I shall have their music in my ears instead. You would have laughed if you had seen my face the other day, on receiving a bit of engraving wh’ I had tried to get done from my design. Mrs Wyndham had asked me to get for her a gold toy map-meter, and have said design done on it. Casella said ‘let Marino do it’:2 well, the design for was a “Talbot” dog3 on a wreath, with a background; and the engraver didn’t dog it, but bitched it, so I’ve to cancel the gold case and get another; that is easily done, but where to find an engraver I do not know – do you? Did you ever get anything of that sort done by Strongitharme?4 [sic]. Stanhope very kindly sent me a capital photograph of the back of an altar-piece at Arezzo by John Pisani5 [sic] – such a noble piece of work, wh’ you’ll be glad to see. We’ve had very broken weather, with a drenching rain on Tues: aft: and the whole of the night. Hope you are better off, as it has been brightly fine, tho’ cold, here the last 2 days. Best remembrance to Mrs Boyce & a kindly cheer to you fm | Yours sincerely Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 138-9

1 These are likely to have been tiles left over from work to GPB’s Chelsea house, PSW having added a dressing room in 1876. His intention was to use them in New House in Welwyn, which he was building for his brother. 2 Louis Pascal Casella (1812–97) was head of the London firm of scientific instrument makers, located in Holborn. They manufactured drawing and surveying instruments, meteorological apparatus, thermometers, and similar items. Louis Marino was one of his sons, who worked for the firm. 3 A white hound once used for hunting. 4 Founded by John Strongitharm (d. 1839), this firm of engravers was situated in Pall Mall. 5 The marble altar and reredos (c. 1286) in the cathedral at Arezzo is by the architect and sculptor, Giovanni Pisano (c. 1250–c. 1315).

153

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

147 • To George Price Boyce, 8 October 1879 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Oct. 8. 79 My dear Boyce. I duly got your letter of the 28th Sep: I can’t say that I liked the tone of it, and was afraid that your liver was not in a good state when you wrote it. I hope Mrs Herrick is a pretty good cook, & that you can get some of Gilbey’s wine, at least, to drink with your dinner.1 You’ll not forget that you are got a little to the north, and that it is Oct: after the wettest of summers. The weather, here, the last few days, has been much finer; tho’ the sun has had to struggle thro’ mists. You are on higher grown, [sic] & perhaps it is better with you. I had last week to go and look at a fine Elizabethan house, with earlier parts attached, in Essex; my would-be client wanted at once to pull down the earlier parts, and all the lovely garden walls, & cut down the fruit trees. I persuaded and enforced, and jeered, & beseeched for 12 frightful hours; to what effect I don’t know; but I strongly suspect to none whatever. If he wd only leave it ’till next summer, you might go and picture it, so as to have some memorandum of one of the glories of this land; before the loveliness of it departs and can be no more seen. ’Tis a place called Moynes House, on the north border of Essex, a few miles west of Long Melford.2 “New Place” is getting on but slowly, but I hope this weather will allow of the tiling being done before more heavy wet comes. I had some difficulty in making up my mind as to the size of the bowling green, but as it wd only be used in that way some 10 or 15 times in the year, I determined to not to [sic] use too much ground in it, so I have made it some 20 feet longer than yours, on wh’ we have played some quite comfortable games, & think that will do well enough for Welwyn. No, I’ve seen nothing of the Burlington F A club catalogue,3 in truth I see little of such things ’till some good friend lugs me to them. We have had no meeting yet at the “Anti-scrape”, but I hear that there is a pretty kettle-of-fish between the Socy, Christian,4 Street,5 and Tom-fool Becket6 on the Southwell question.7 It seems that the society, in criticising Christian’s report, incidentally noticed that Street proposed pulling down the 14 c stone rood screen.8 He denies this, & sends his report to the Bishop to the building papers. I read this last night, and in it he does suggest as an alternative the pulling it down if no other way can be decided on (accepted) for making the ecclesiastical arrangement of the choir &c, “correct”. So Street is at daggers drawn with us – never mind, the publicity will do all the good & more than we can do. I think it is either Mazzini or Mill who says, that publicity is the soul of freedom, and it is the tyranny of autocrats like Becket & the Church, who sit upon freedom. When are you thinking of coming back? I suppose the weather will decide for you. Kindest remembrance to Mrs Boyce from Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 140-1 154

1864–1887 1 The Gilbey brothers, Henry, Walter and Alfred were wine-merchants, with business premises in Oxford Street from 1867. 2 Moyns (or Moynes) Park, in Steeple Bumpstead, Essex, a late sixteenth-century mansion built for Thomas Gent, which remained the family home until the end of the nineteenth century. 3 Catalogue of Bronzes and Ivories of European origin, exhibited in 1879 (London: Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1879). 4 As part of his role as architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, Ewan Christian (1814–95) was closely involved in a number of major restoration projects, including the long-term works on Southwell Minster, in Nottinghamshire. 5 George Edmund Street (1824–81), in whose practice PSW had worked from 1854 when Street was Oxford Diocesan architect. 6 Sir Edmund Beckett (1816–1905), fifth Baronet and, later, first Baron Grimthorpe, was already a target of the SPAB’s wrath for his ‘highhanded proceedings’ (WM to James Bryce, 3 June 1879, CLWM, I) in relation to restoration work at St Alban’s Abbey, where he interfered at will with the wishes of Sir Gilbert Scott. He quarrelled enthusiastically with the many who disagreed with him. 7 The SPAB first became concerned about alterations at Southwell Minster, either proposed or implemented, in April 1878, when on behalf of the committee WM wrote to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners objecting to specific proposed changes, including removal of the existing low-pitched roofs and flat ceilings and replacement with high-pitched roofs, and thereby the threat to ‘the obliteration of the wooden lantern between the western towers’. WM to Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 17 April 1878, CLWM, I. An exchange of letters in The Architect followed. 8 ‘[The SPAB] understands Mr. Street also advised the removal of the fourteenth century screen’, WM to Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 29 July 1878, CLWM, I.

148 • To Percy Wyndham, 20 November 1879 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Nov: 20. 1879. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P: Wilbury House, by Salisbury. My dear Sir. (Clouds Hse) I enclose tracings of the ground, first, & second floors of the new design for the house, and I should be obliged if you and Mrs Wyndham would carefully consider them, and note anything which is unsatisfactory to you. You will see that I have added oriel windows to the chief bed-rooms on the south front on the first floor, Mrs Wyndham suggesting the convenience of them, and as they would go very well with the general design, I have added thought it would be well to put them in. Also, I have provided large coal bunkers on the first & second floors, and on the first floor a box-room and on the second floor a box or lumber-room. On the ground plan in the central hall I have indicated a pair of “settles” to the large fireplace on Mrs Wyndham’s suggestion – they would be moveable, but in their places they would not interfere at all with the passage way. I hope to be able to get the House, offices, Stables &c built for £75,000. 155

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I had not forgotten about the parquet flooring matter, but it was only at the end of last week that I was able to see the French manufacturer I spoke of to you. I found that I had been mis-informed as to his price. It is 1s/9d the foot superficial1 laid, all expenses. His address is Mons’ R: Gueraut, 2 Orris Villas Glenthorne Road Hammersmith W: I rather think that Howard’s price for carpet parquet is 1s/3d the foot superficial of a plain kind. Gueraut’s is rather thicker and better laid. Howard’s address is Messrs Howard & Sons, 25 Berners Street, Oxford Street, Yours very truly, | P: W: LB-1, pp. 158-9

1 Per square foot.

149 • To Major Arthur Godman, 8 December 1879 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. December 8th 1879 Dear Major Godman. I received your note this morning. It was, may be, the frost, or perhaps the influx of callers which kept me from sending you on Sunday the final accounts which I now do. You will see that I have directed you to keep back the odd money in Mackenzie’s bill1 ’till I am further satisfied by them as to the item of the well; I have written to them about it. However, you can at once pay them the £2,100, after checking the item of £8,480, which is put down as the total they have yet received from you in instalments on my certificates. I find in my certificate book that the last certificate I gave you was on September 5th 1879 for £2,000. I also send you Mr Goodman’s the surveyor’s account for measuring the work. This item is sometimes put into the contractor’s bill of extras, but I prefer as a rule that the client should pay it direct to the surveyor.2 My own terrible account comes last, and I should be glad if you would look to see that I have made no error in the same. If the amount of my charge should seem large to you, will you be so good as to turn over the drawings from the first to the last (I suppose Hardy has put them into your hands?) and then it will not look so monstrous.3 Please get Hardy to write down in your own book a memorandum as to what taps pipes &c should be looked to in case of frost &c. In making my final bow, will you and Mrs Godman accept my sincere thanks for your very kind and courteous bearing towards me during the whole time of my work in considering and building your house. Believe me, | Yours very truly, | Philip Webb. NBS 156

1864–1887 1 The Darlington building firm contracted for Smeaton Manor was J.W. & M. Mackenzie. 2 T.W. Goodman’s account was for £135.7.9. 3 PSW’s total account was for £668.15.0, of which £300 had been paid on 26 November 1878.

150 • To Major Arthur Godman, 10 December 1879 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. December 10th 1879 My dear Godman. I very willingly drop all formality in thanking you very sincerely for your quite kindly letter accompanying the cheque. As for the indemnification for my work I consider the customary 5 per cent quite sufficient payment; but when, on the top of that, one gets a thoughtfully kind letter of thanks one almost feels over paid. You may pay me for the cottage design when the cottages are built, and if that is deferred ’till your boy comes of age I may have to come down upon him, so please warn him not to get into debt at college, if he should be so lucky as to go there.1 Your house is certainly a cheap one, but then you must remember that it is a quite plain one throughout. I have set Mr Basset to work to scheme out the glazed screen for the upper (first floor) corridor; but it is rather awkward to fit rightly, and if it does not come better than he has it at this moment, we must put our two heads together over it tomorrow, and I’ll send it directly it is done. There were some tracings of details of the house which Mr Goodman’s assistant brought back here with him. I directed him to forward them to Hardy, so that you might have the whole bundle of drawings together. With very kind remembrance to your wife. Believe me, | Very truly yours | Philip Webb. If at any time you should be in this lawful neighbourhood, I should be glad if you would look in upon me. | P.W. NBS

1 The two additional cottages were never built. See Kirk, p. 300.

151 • To George Hector Croad1, 27 February 1880 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London Feb: 27. 1880 Having heard from Miss Burden, of 22 Upper Woburn Place, that she is applying to the School Board of London for the office of Lady Examiner of Needlework to the Board, I have much pleasure in bearing testimony to her special fitness for such work.2 157

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I have known Miss Burden for 20 years, and have had occasion to ask her advice and assistance for all kinds of needlework, from the most simple & rudimentary to the most particular and complicated, and I have been aided by her with the greatest readiness and precision. I have personal knowledge that Miss Burden is an industrious, capable, and honourable woman.3 Philip Webb. | Architect. To G: H: Croad Esqre | Clerk of the Board. Huntington MOR 583 1 G.H. Croad (1829–1902) was appointed secretary to the London School Board in 1870. For WM’s equally supportive letter of recommendation, see WM to Croad, 28 February 1880, CLWM, I. 2 For Elizabeth Burden (sister of JM), see above, Letter 20. 3 As well as herself producing work for Morris & Co., she was involved in organising the work of the other embroidery workers.

152 • To George Price Boyce, 19 May 1880 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Wed: morn: May 19 My dear Boyce On no acct would I wish to stop you fm the Richter concert. Not going there myself, I’d quite forgotten the time of the concert.1 Neither can I go to the Berlioz evening, as I have a cold & do not care to face the gas.2 Often on the Sat: evenings that I am at home, I go to the S: Ken: Museum to pick up information. As you suggest Friday or Sat: could you meet me there – say not later than 6. oc – and come back here with me for some tea at 8. oc, when we could look at the plans and talk of the house matter in question? I have to go to Bowman’s in Surrey3 on Thursday, (tomorrow) and I think it likely I shall not be back in time to attend the Restn meeting of the anti-scrape,4 therefore I hope you will be able to get there. There is a long letter in today’s Times, from their Italian correspondent, on the Ravenna Baptistery. It wd be well if Wallis also came to the meeting at Buckingham St.5 I agree, of course, abt the keeping open of the Nat: Gallery, and shall write to members as directed by Wallis. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: P:S: Don’t put yourself out as to meeting me at S: Ken, but if you cared to go, I would meet you about the Trajan column at the time above named. P: W: BL Add 45354, ff. 148-9 158

1864–1887 1 The leading Hungarian conductor of his generation, Hans Richter (1843–1916), appeared in a series of nine concerts in May and June at St James’s Hall, which included performances of the nine Beethoven symphonies. The concert on 20 May featured the second symphony, as well as music by Cherubini, Wagner and Brahms. 2 Charles Hallé (1819–95) brought his Manchester-based orchestra to St James’s Hall, for performances of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust on 21 and 22 May. 3 See above, Letter 73, note 4. 4 In an attempt to encourage greater participation in the work of the SPAB from more members, WM’s proposal to establish two business committees was implemented in January 1879. A general committee considered matters of principle, whilst the restoration committee handled the casework, meetings being scheduled on alternate Thursdays. In practice, the same small nucleus of committed members turned up on a regular basis to both, so that within two years the general committee was disbanded. ‘The reconstituted committee met from 17 November 1881, and as the decade progressed admission to this inner sanctum became increasingly harder.’ Chris Miele, ‘The first conservation militants: William Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings’, in Michael Hunter (ed), Preserving the Past. The Rise of Heritage in Modern Britain (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1996), p. 35. In view of the sensitivity with which the SPAB came to regard the concept of ‘restoration’, as being in opposition to that of ‘repair’, it seems curious that one of the two committees was given this name. 5 The Italian authorities were concerned about the condition of the Ravenna Baptistery itself, and of the destructive effects of damp upon its ancient mosaics. They wished to raise the building ‘from the swamp into which it has sunk full three metres’. Henry Wallis had already alerted readers of The Times to the crisis, which had prompted its correspondent to visit the scene, and to suggest a visit from competent representatives of the SPAB, so that they might examine the state of the building whilst listening to the opinions of the Italian architects and engineers. Mindful of the local offence which had been caused by the previous SPAB campaign against the damaging restorations at St Mark’s, Venice, when in the autumn of 1879 WM had led a very public criticism of Italian ‘headlong rashness’, The Times now offered wise advice. ‘Would not this be better than calling for an “English protest” on a subject which it is evident thus far the English people are absolutely uninformed?’ (19 May 1880).

153 • To Thomas Richardson, 11 June 1880 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] June 11. 1880 To Mr Thos Richardson1 Draper &c Brampton Cumberd. Sir I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 9th inst. In answering it, I would begin by saying that with regard to the organ itself I merely assisted the parish in explaining to the organ builder the situation and surroundings of the position in wh’ it was decided to place the organ it.2 With regard to damp, and the effect it has had on your organ, I would say that organs always suffer considerably on being placed in a new Church[e]s; and, considering the thickness and solidity of the walls of your church, it is quite certain that it will be several years before they are thoroughly quite dry. 159

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I see no reason whatever to doubt of the building becoming in time thoroughly dry, for, happily, the foundations are on good dry sand and rock – but the very particular construction used to make the church a dry one would be apt to make its drying a matter of some time. For instance, the damp proof course applied to keep moisture from rising in the walls, also hinders the water used in their construction from uninterrupted descent into the ground, consequently the walls have to dry wholly from the surfaces. This drying also, no doubt, has been delayed more or less by the late wet seasons. I took the precaution to have a specially designed raised floor made on wh’ to place the organ, partly chiefly to allow the air to pass under the instrument and help to keep it dry , partly to raise it up, and partly to add to the power of its sound. I would urge on the church-wardens to the necessity of taking particular care to air the building in every possible way. During all fine days from sun rising to sun setting the doors shd be kept opened. The iron ventilating doors on the inside sills of windows shd always be kept open, as also the ventilating doors in the ceiling of the nave roof. Any expedient to create a draught in the church when it is not being used, and during fine weather, would tend more than anything else to dry the building permanently, and when the heating apparatus is used it shd be allowed to burnt slowly for one or two or three days together, rather than fiercely or strongly for one day. Periodically, at stated times, all rainwater heads, pipes, gutters and drains shd be examined by a responsible person, for removal of any stoppage from leaves, dirt, or bird-building. I noticed when I was last at Brampton that one of the down pipes at the East end of church had become stopped and the pipe had evidently been leaking for some time at one of the joints. Any parts of the organ-case wh’ are moveable or will open, shd be opened on bright airy days, particularly when the sun and air could pass through the door in the South wall adjoining the organ. Also where the organ case abuts against the walls it would be well to have a series of circular holes drilled up the styles, thus [sketch] about one inch in diameter, also and holes of like kind might be drilled in the organ floor next the walls. I am, Sir, | Yours truly | Ph’ W: LB-1, pp 166-7

1 Richardson was one of the Brampton churchwardens. 2 In July 1878 PSW had visited a Kentish Town organ-builder, Robson, who was at work on the instrument to be installed at Brampton. In order to save money, the Brampton authorities had decided on a reconditioned instrument, which required much remedial work, costing rather more than had been expected. ‘I think it probable that the Committee wd stand a greater chance of getting the value of the money they have already advanced, by advancing another £50, than if they refused to do so.’ PSW to Thomas Forster, 13 July 1878, LB-1, p. 129.

160

1864–1887

154 • To unnamed architect, after 16 August 1880 Drafted on behalf of SPAB [20 Buckingham Street . . .] Sir The committee of this society having been told that the Church of Saint Nicholas New Romney, Kent, was about to be repaired or “Restored” wrote to the vicar of that parish, and asked him for information as to what was proposed to be done to the building, enclosing one of their papers, “Table 1. Unrestored Churches”, with the request that he should fill up the form describing the character and parts of the church and the condition of the building. The Vicar thought fit to refuse to give the information,1 on which the Committee applied to the Churchwardens, but failed to get an answer from them. As the Committee was aware of the importance and special value of this ancient building at New Romney, it decided to send some of its members to examine and report upon it, which was done. Since then the Committee has been informed that the work of restoration had been placed in your hands. In writing to you on the subject the Committee is hopeful that anything it says may be looked upon by you as the doing a duty to which all Englishmen are bound with regard to their ancient historical fabrics; this Society being the more bound to take this course, as it was especially founded, with the assistance of competent members, to inform the general public as much as possible of the risk, which ancient buildings ran of being tampered with, often on insufficient grounds, but more often with mistaken zeal. The Committee believes that New Romney Church is a case to which its efforts may be more than usually effectively applied, as the building has, as yet, been practically untampered with for many years; whereas, in many cases, the Committee is only informed of what is about to be done to an old building after it is too late for it to notice the fact for any saving purpose. The Committee would call your attention, first, to the beautiful building in its present state of dignified antiquity, then to its great size as a parish Church, and lastly to its wonderfully good preservation. These things being so, the Committee would urge upon you, in simplicity and good faith, to use your utmost endeavours, as an Architect of reputation, to save this lovely building from the fate which usually attends such when its guardians have determined to enter upon the task of renovation. The Committee feels that the building in your hands will have all the prompt attention and sagacious examination which its fabric will require for repair and support; but the Committee would also respectfully urge upon you to see that no absolutely unnecessary change be made in its aspect, and that you may resist the introduction of the usual modern incongruous details and mis-called embellishments, such as marble reredos, pavements, pretentious deal fittings,

161

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

stained glass, petty brass ornaments &c. Also, that in such repairs as may be found necessary, no plastering or other work of past times be removed except such as may be rotten, and that no architectural parts which may have been removed from the building be reintroduced in imitation of the old work lost. The Committee was somewhat disappointed that the work of pulling down and renewing was going on at the extreme North West end – when its members visited the church2 – and it hopes that the pulling down was only on account of the danger of falling? For those persons noticed the fallen aisle on the South side, which at some time had suffered rough usage, but which now only wanted plain repair and no renovation.due to causes which they did not discover in the corresponding aisle on the South side, which, though it has at some time suffered rough usage does not need more than plain repair to make it perfectly sound.

In commending this old building to your careful professional attention the Committee expresses a hope, that on any of its members revisiting the church, after the repairs are done, they may find little or no change in aspect from its present grave and satisfying simplicity. This Society would feel obliged if during your researches you were able to verify the exact dates at which the different parts of the church were built, you would kindly communicate the same to it. I am, Sir, | (on behalf of the Committee) | Yours faithfully Newman Marks, Secy3 SPAB, St Nicholas Church, New Romney file.

1 On 8 June 1880, the vicar, Richard Marshall South, wrote to the SPAB secretary. ‘I did not reply to your first note because I am not inclined to supply the information you require for 3 reasons. 1. Your reasons for the existence of such a society are to my mind, in many points very absurd. 2. Your Committee includes the greatest radicals of the day. 3. Your questions strongly suggest impertinent inquisitiveness.’ 2 PSW and GW visited the church on 16 August 1880 and PSW wrote up their report for the Committee (SPAB file). 3 Valediction and signature in the hand of T. Newman Marks, the SPAB secretary.

155 • To Reverend Theodore Henry Marsh, 29 September 1880 Drafted on behalf of SPAB Sep 29. 1880 draft Society for the protection of Ancient Buildings Sir:1 The Committee of this society having received from Mr Wardle, one of its members, a copy of a circular on the “Restoration of the Roof of Cawston Church 162

1864–1887

Norfolk” together with some further information given in a letter addressed by you to Mr Wardle on the same subject, dated Septr 23. 1880, feels that it may be possible for the society to aid you in your efforts to support and sustain the valuable building you have under your care. That the remains of ancient art in Cawston Church are worthy of all care and properly directed attention there can be no doubt even if the report of Mr Phipson the Architect and Diocesan Surveyor had not particularly drawn attention to its intrinsic value delicate art-meaning, and present condition.2 With regard to the word “Restoration”, the Committee would ask you in any future steps you may take in the matter to carefully avoid that its use, of as it cannot but be misleading and is often injuriously so. An No old building any more than an old man cannot be restored, it may be protected, strengthened, and its inevitable decay deferred, but it cannot be renewed without hastening the destruction of what is most worth preserving. Given that £4000 could be collected, instead of the £400 you mention as possible to be got, not a pound of the money should be spent in trying to reproduce the lost art forms work and the inimitable dexterity of the original. The Committee would urge upon you that, in any works undertaken in future, close and definite instructions should be given and maintained that only repairs of simple and mechanical construction should be attempted for, from experience, the Committee is certain that even a large sum would be needed to in only undertaking the repairs which will be clearly demanded, year by year, in sustaining the fabric. With regard to the valuable report of Mr Phipson, the Committee would wish to explain that by in any remarks the it may make on the same it would not wish it not to be inferred that at the present time (Mr Phipson’s report was made in 1875) the Architect would not agree to the principles on which they are dictated. The Committee will take the items of the report in order. In paragraph 4 5, we would advise that the roof should not “be reframed and brought together with new tenons and pins” but that the separated parts should be tied or strapped with iron to keep them from spreading further, and, as it is always dangerous to unsettle the existing bearings of old work. Paragraph 6. We quite think with the architect that the work should be undertaken “bay by bay”, as the work could then be done more gently, and be more easily protected from weather. Also Though we think, that in the recladding, the boarding should not be “tongued” as that weakens the edges & stops the circulation of air. Also, we would advise that the new lead should be cast, of 8 lbs to the foot, instead of milled lead of 7 lbs. Perhaps the Architect might find that a good deal of the old lead need not be removed. Of course the architect he would see that all old lead sufficiently sound should be retained & not recast. Paragraph 7. We would advise that the new “troughing & fall pipes” should be strong and good, but not plain, & of no particular design. Also, in the “beam filling” the circulation of air should not be stopped. Paragraph 8. Any parts of the merely decorative parts of the coving & cornice should not be renewed. Paragraph 9. It is here stated that, fortunately, portions of the ornamentation still remain. Now the Committee would strongly urge that all such ornamental work 163

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

be strengthened and supported in the most careful way, but that no reproduction of lost ornamental parts be attempted at all. Also, in The Committee thinks that it might be unnecessary to clean the colour or whitewash from the stone corbels,3 but that if such cleaning be done, it should only be washed off, no sharp tool being used or chemical product; and in case of any decorative painting being found under the whitewash, this cleaning shd be done with the utmost care to avoid removing the decorative painting disturbing it. The notes on this paragraph would naturally, cover the greater part of paragraph 13. In conclusion, the committee would beg that no delay should occur at any time in keeping out wet by instant repair should any weak spot be found. from time to time. Also, though the foregoing remarks have only been made with regard to the nave roof of Cawston church, still they would might and should apply to such other parts of the building standing in need of examination and repair. V&A, AAD

1 Theodore Henry Marsh (c. 1826–1905) was the rector of St Agnes, Cawston in Norfolk, from 1855 until his death. 2 Richard Makilwaine Phipson (1827–84) was architect and surveyor for the Norwich diocese and oversaw the restoration of many East Anglian churches. His 1875 report on the condition of the church emphasised its outstanding historic value, and urged that any work undertaken should be approached cautiously. The quality of the hammer-beam roof ‘will vie in beauty with almost any roof of the kingdom’, and Phipson insisted that ‘it would be much better to leave the roof as it is than allow it to be meddled with by rough and inferior hands’. Cited in Susie Timms, Within These Ancient Walls. Discovering St. Agnes’ Church Cawston (County Collegiate, 2013), pp. 379–80. 3 Corbel: a projection jutting out from the face of a wall, to support a superincumbent weight (OED).

156 • To Constance Astley, 14 October 1880 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Octr 14 1880. To Miss Constance Astley1 Arisaig House, by Fort William N.B. Dear Constance Astley I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 9th instant. I still have the plans by me of the Chapel which I designed for your father. No kind of estimate was made of the cost at the time – 1866 – as it was proposed, (and indeed some part of the stonework was prepared) to build it without contract, the Clerk of works getting together the materials and directing the labour, in the same way that the stables & other works, separate from the house, were done.

164

1864–1887

On looking now at the plans, & for the purpose of this letter roughly measuring the contents of the building, I think the work would have been done for under less than £2,000 in 1866, with the workmen then about who had got accustomed to the kind of masonry, and when both materials and labour were both cheaper than they now are. I believe it the chapel as designed would cost considerably more than that sum to build now under wholly altered circumstances. I need scarcely say, that before I could usefully advise you and your sisters in this matter, it would be necessary for me to see you and consider the whole question carefully. I beg you to believe that it would give me great pleasure to be of assistance to you. Of course I heard of the great calamity which had fallen upon you, but refrained from writing, as in such letters genuine sympathy is hard to express, & pain is more often given than kindness of heart shewn.2 Please accept yourself and give to your sister3 my sincere regard & to Beatrice also4 if she is with you, & | Believe me yours very truly | Ph’: W: LB-1, pp. 170-1

1 Constance Charlotte Astley (1851–1935), younger daughter of Francis Dukinfield Palmer Astley (1825–68), for whom PSW had built Arisaig House. 2 The Astley sisters thought of erecting the chapel originally designed for their father by PSW in 1866, but not carried out at that time, to the memory of their brother, Francis Dukinfield Astley (1853–80). Nothing further came of this idea, but see next letter. 3 Gertrude Susan Astley (1849–1920), the eldest of the Astley sisters. 4 Beatrice Emma Astley (1858–1923), the youngest sister.

157 • To Constance Astley, 26 October 1880 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Oct 26. 1880. To Miss Constance Astley Arisaig House, by Fort William N.B. Dear Constance Astley I duly recd your letter of the 20th instant. With regard to your questions as to the memorial cross, I also should be glad wish , whenever possible, to use local materials.1 The only stone on the estate, so far as my recollection serves, wh’ would be capable of being cut to shape, is the Basalt which in many places is called whinstone,2 generally so at Arisaig, I think. When building the house a good deal of this was used, our chief quarry being in “the Glen”; afterwards we worked for it where the dyke crops out somewhere near the mains. A man named Murdoch was, I think, the quarry man. Now, this stone would be very durable, but it is rather treacherous to work, sometimes giving way

165

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

when the work on it is not unfinished, so that very large stones of this material cannot be depended upon. The porphyry we used in the small dining-room fireplace was got from a small slight projection on the road to and not far from the head keeper’s lodge (Sunning’s). It was got with little trouble, but only in quite small pieces. I have no doubt that larger stone could be got, but it is so very hard and costly to work (the London mason said it was harder than Italian Porphyry) that it would be unwise to attempt it, so that I think we should have to depend on the whinstone. Your proposition for the monument to be about 10 feet high would be rather against my inclination, but as to this I could better explain my meaning when I saw you. Might I suggest that a temporary & small wooden cross be placed fixed at the present resting place? This could remain till another place and another memorial are decided on, or a more permanent memorial could be substituted at some future time. I feel that in such a matter I cannot satisfactorily advise you ’till we can talk it over together. With kind remembrance to Gertrude. Believe me yours very truly | Ph’: W: LB-1, pp. 171-2

1 The Astley sisters had decided to erect this memorial to their brother (see previous letter, note 2). 2 ‘A name for various very hard dark-coloured rocks or stones, as greenstone, basalt, chert, or quartzose sandstone.’ (OED).

158 • To Eustace James Anthony Balfour, 9 February 1881 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Feb: 9. 1881 Dear Mr Balfour1 I feel some discomfort in following a rule with you which has been kept by me for several years, namely, to avoid “dining-out” whenever possible: but, as I have found the rule a good one I must not depart from it, even in this case, when I have felt inclined to set it aside and have the pleasure of being introduced to your wife.2 I hope to see you at the meeting of the society tomorrow,3 with a smile of good nature on your face at my self-denial. Believe me sincerely yours | Philip Webb: Huntington HM 35060

1 The Scottish architect, Eustace Balfour (1854–1911), practised in London. His house and office was in Addison Road, North Kensington. Balfour’s uncle was Lord Salisbury, Prime Minster on three

166

1864–1887 occasions, and his elder brother, Arthur (1848–1930), succeeded their uncle as Conservative Prime Minister in 1902. 2 Lady Francis Campbell (b. 1858), a daughter of the eighth Duke of Argyll, married Balfour in 1879. 3 Balfour served as an Honorary Secretary for the SPAB (1880–90), and a member of its Foreign Committee.

159 • To May Morris, 7 March 1881 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Monday. Mar: 7. ’81 My dear May I thank you for sending me the ticket for the lecture, and now I find I cannot go to it – such is my misfortune.1 I shall now have either to beg the sight of the manuscript fm your father or – if he be not then to[o] weary of the matter – ask him to read it once more to the audience of myself alone with him! I return the ticket, as I fancy there will be need of it for someone else. I was glad of your note as to your mother, tho’ the word “fever” is rather alarming, but I suppose the word means something belonging to place & season, and that her being now better is reasonably re-assuring. Have you seen the terrible news from Ischia – The earth gaping and swallowing as it used to swallow?2 With love to jenny believe me your affectionate | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, f. 55

1 WM lectured on ‘The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation’ on 10 March, at the London Institution. 2 Newspapers carried reports of a major earthquake which hit the island of Ischia on 4 March. ‘The shock took place at five minutes past one on Friday afternoon, the hour at which the village clock of Casamicciola remained standing. It lasted seven seconds, and was accompanied by a noise like subterranean thunder. Then came the crash of falling houses, mingling with the shouts of the victims. Many were killed instantaneously, mothers being found crushed with infants still clinging to their breasts.’ Daily News, 7 March 1881. The aftershocks continued for some days.

160 • To Jane Morris, 16 March 1881 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Mar: 16. 1881 My dear Janey Yesterday came there came to me a packet by post from the South, containing brilliant “sarcasms” of blue, red & yellow.1 Speech is silver, & your silence was parti-coloured golden!! 167

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Alas! I said to myself, as I opened the parcel, these poor pretty flowers are gone, past recovery. Still, I thought, I would cut off the stalk-ends and put them in water, when, in an hour or so, they revived, and I now look at them in a state not so very far from that in wh’ you gathered them, and so your pretty thought for me came well home, and was not beaten by the weary ferrovian2 journey. I am still unsatisfied. I would be glad of a word from you, if only to say how you are – my last note of you from Morris was that you were mending a little from your feverish attack. Please take my hearty thanks for the lovely flowers, & believe me yours affectionately | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, f. 56

1 JM was spending the winter months in Bordighera at George and Rosalind Howard’s villa, Villa Margherita. This was where Henry James first encountered her, and was struck by ‘the strange, pale, livid, gaunt, silent, and yet in a manner graceful and picturesque, wife of the poet and papermaker’, noting especially her ‘wonderful aesthetic hair’. James to Fanny Kemble, 24 March 1881, Leon Edel (ed.), Henry James Letters, II (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 352. After leaving Bordighera, JM visited Florence and Siena, meeting WM in Paris at the start of May. 2 In other words, transported by railway on iron tracks.

161 • To Percy Wyndham, 3 June 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] June 3. 1881. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M: P: 44 Belgrave Square. Dear Mr Wyndham. I enclose you a copy of the memorandum of estimates and provisional sums for the building of the house at Clouds. In my personal explanations of yesterday I think I stated as subjects for your consideration that I wd advise, if the difference of £4,375 and odd money between the estimates and the sum you had agreed to spend (75,000£) was of importance to you, you shd throw over Smith’s estimate, have the quantities lithographed & laid before 3 or 4 first class country contractors – but, if the extra sum required on Smith’s estimating was not of sufficient importance, I wd advise you to accept the tender, and begin work at once. During my our conversation with you, I think I heard a remark f’m you, that delay in building would not be an inconvenience to you? If this was so, I would 168

1864–1887

say that there need be no hesitation on your part in following that course. Smith’s estimate having exceeded the sum allowed by you, you could decide not to accept their tender, paying them their charge for making estimates, and you could delay building and take up the quantities for use at any other time. If you decided on this plan, you would have to pay Mr Goodman, the surveyor, half the cost of his quantities and pay him the balance when the building was begun. I also, should have to make a proportionate charge in the same way. Yours truly Ph: W: d It occurs to me also that if you sh decide to delay building, you might think it well not to risk building so large a house, and that you might prefer to have a new design on a smaller scale and, possibly, from another archt. In any case I shd wish to be no hindrance to you. Believe me yours faithfully | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 175-6

162 • To Percy Wyndham, 10 June 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] June 10. 1881. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M.P. 44 Belgrave Square. S.W. Dear Mr Wyndham (Clouds) I recd your letter last evening. As it is very direct, full, and to the point on the important parts connected with the present state of things with regard to the building, I will give such information as I can to further to help you in coming to a reasonable decision. If we at once accepted Smith’s estimate, you would not be able to move into the new house before the summer of 1884. If we set ourselves to finding satisfactory country builders, getting tenders fm them, and on approval beginning works, we should be delayed for 6 or 9 months later, and perhaps should find that the country builder, however willing, would not be able to give up the house to you from some months beyond the three years required for building. You are quite correct in supposing that if you got a satisfactory tender, and the estimates were some £10,000 below Smith’s, the saving would be so considerable as to make it of much greater importance than the matter of the 3 or £4,000 difference between Smith’s tender and the sum you have proposed to allow for building; 169

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

and Mrs Wyndham’s contention that “she does not see why we shd give Smith so much more than the thing can be done for by another” has reason on its side; but neither point quite states the whole of the question, as the work done by Smith would have cost more in the doing than that of even the best country builder we shd obtain get – & for these reasons among others. The timber employed used wd have been more carefully selected, would have lain in stock for a longer time, and fin1 there being larger quantities on hand the workmen wd more certainly be supplied with the best for any particular purpose. Then, as to labour, Smith’s wd certainly give higher wages to their men, & from working in a large way would be able to keep their best men; and also, they would have over their several trades, better educated and proved foremen. I will now take the mason’s trade. One of my chief reasons for wishing, if possible, to hold to Smith’s was, that in using the Tisbury and the local green sandstone, they had largely used both at Longford Castle,2 and the former at Lady Westminster’s house at Fonthill.3 If, as I suppose we should, have Mr Cross as the foreman of masons, we shd have be at great advantage, as he knows a great deal about the Tisbury stone,4 and is well aware of the custom of the quarrymen of sending out from the quarry the first stone to hand, without regard to its lasting character. I have no doubt that Cross’s salary is as much as £300 a year, if not more. Again, as to iron-work. There are to be a number of iron girders used in the house, and the familiarity in their use, hauling, and setting is of importance – and, practically, the same reason would run through all the trades, tho’ not in an equal degree. I think we should hardly be able to keep Smith’s to their present prices without accepting their tender before we shd be able to arrive at a conclusion as to country builders, but of this and other points, such as seeking country builders &c I wd speak to you more particularly. I will come to Belgrave Square tomorrow, (Saturday) at 2.o-c. Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 177-9

1 Used in its obsolete form of ‘lastly’ (fine). 2 The historic seat of the Earls of Radnor, Longford Castle at Bodenham, south of Salisbury, on the Avon, had some architectural alterations and additions (1870–5) made under the direction of Anthony Salvin (1799–1881). 3 Fonthill House, Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, was built in 1846–52 for Richard Grosvenor, second Marquis of Westminster (1795–1869), by the Scottish architect, William Burn (1789–1870). Victoria bestowed the title of the Duke of Westminster upon Hugh Grosvenor, the third Marquis (1825–99). 4 PSW later refers to this as Chilmark stone (PSW to Albert Estcourt, 3 January 1882), a creamcoloured limestone of exceptional durability favoured in the south of England for building (and now prized in restoration work, such as at Salisbury Cathedral and the chapter house of Westminster Abbey).

170

1864–1887

163 • To Henry G. Smith, 21 July 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 21. 1881. To. Henry G. Smith Esqre Messrs G: Smith & Co | 9 Commercial Road Pimlico. S.W. Dear Sir. (Clouds House) r I saw M Wyndham yesterday. After he had read the letter you sent to me on the 14th inst, I explained to him the proposition you laid before me at our interview here on the 18th. I found Mr Wyndham wholly averse to your proposal for taking into partnership another firm in order to enable you to enter into the contract for building the house under my direction at Knoyle.1 Before deciding upon what should be done under the present circumstances, I agreed with Mr Wyndham that it would be well best that you shd send me a letter of introduction to the solicitors of the Executors of your late father’s will, so that I might learn from them the cause and probable duration of the injunction against your entering into any contract after March 1880. Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-1, p. 186

1 By the end of June, PWY had resolved to give the building contract to George Smith & Co., which was certainly PSW’s own preferred choice, but the death of the head of the firm now threw up a very real difficulty. Under the terms of George Smith’s will the firm was constrained from taking on new projects, hence Henry Smith’s proposal to link up with another building firm.

164 • To George Edmund Street, 27 July 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 27. 1881. To G: E: Street Esqre 14 Cavendish Place. W. My dear Street.1 Having been disappointed failed in getting a satisfactory tender from a London builder for a house I have to build in Wiltshire, I am now looking to get tenders from 4 or 5 first rate country builders. As I believe you have done a good deal of work

171

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

in the W & S.W. of England I thought perhaps that you would perhaps be able to recommend some safe man or men from your own experience of their character, work & their command of capital. The work in question would be of considerable size, to the extent value of over £50,000, and both mason’s & joiner’s work shd be of the best. If you can help me in this matter I shall be much obliged, and if you will forgive my troubling you I shall also be grateful. Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-1, p. 187

1 Street was, of course, PSW’s former employer. See above, Letter 147, note 5.

165 • To Emma Oldham, 29 July 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 29. 1881. To Mrs Oldham1 The Vicarage Clay Cross. Dear Mrs Oldham I needed no apology for your writing to me. Your cause was sufficient excuse, even if it had not been put before me by your brother William, my own perfectly good friend. I shall have great pleasure in helping you to the best of my power, and in order to do that in the most direct way I have set down, on the other side, a list of questions which I should be glad if you would answer as accurately as you can. I think I am right in so understanding, that you want laid down on paper sufficient plans to allow of a rough estimate of the cost being made, so that with the plans and the estimate you will would be able to explain in your district what money would be necessary to be got in the way of subscriptions?2 Believe me, | Yours very truly | Ph: W: 1 2 3 4

Will it be possible to set the building on the ground East & West in its length? On wh’ side of the ch’ would most of the people come for entrance? What is the soil on wh’ the ch’ would stand – Clay? Gravel? Sand? Rock? &c Would the ground slope at all on the site of the area of buildg and if so, would wh’ way wd it slope E-W &c? 5 Will it be necessary to calculate for any boundary fence? 6 Would a Vestry be wanted, and if so what wd be the least size necessary?

172

1864–1887

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Would any heating be required? Would chairs or benches be preferred? Would there be any seats wanted in chancel for a choir, if so for how many? Would a font be necessary? Would the people be satisfied with paving through’t the ch’? Are not the houses, amongst which the ch’ wd be put, mostly built of brick? Are pan-tiles at all used in the neighbourhood for roofing? Pan-tiles are of this shape [sketch]

LB-1, pp. 188-9

1 In 1850 WM’s eldest sister Emma (b. 1829) married Joseph Oldham (d. 1896), her German tutor and a former curate at Walthamstow. 2 PSW drew up plans and estimates for this proposed Mission Church in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, but the work did not proceed. Presumably the funds were not forthcoming. See Kirk, p. 300.

166 • To Thomas D. Ridley, 30 July 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 30. 1881. To Mr Thos: D: Ridley1 Post Office Bgs Middlesborough My dear Sir (T: Hugh Bell’s Hse) I am very glad to find that you are able at once to push on the work, as I know of Mr Bell’s anxiety to get the present small addn to his house done as soon as possible. I enclose further details wh’, I believe, will be quite clear to you. I think it will be as well to send you a larger detail of the south or end ww of the new dressing room as the inside fittings lead &c are somewhat different to the other ws. All the rest of the new work (and in case of any doubt of detail to other parts of joinery) you can follow the character of the existing work. I shall send in a few days a plan of the new drainage. Also I shall hope in a few weeks to be able to meet you personally at the house. Yours truly | Ph: W: you P.S. Will be so good as to direct your foreman to be very particular in setting out the work, and in exactly following the drawings as far as possible. LB-1, pp. 189-90

173

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 Thomas Davison Ridley was engaged to make additions to Red Barns, PSW’s Redcar house built for Hugh Bell more than ten years previously (1868–70). See Kirk, pp. 297-8.

167 • To Henry G. Smith, 8 August 1881 Draft/copy August 8. 1881. To Henry G: Smith Esq Messrs George Smith & Co. 9 Commercial Rd S.W. My dear Sir. (Clouds House) Acting on the information contained in your letter to me of the 14th of July last, and upon my report to him of the result of my interview with the solicitors to the executors of your late father’s estate, Mr Wyndham has, after careful consideration with myself of all the facts of the case, including your proposition to take into partnership for this particular work another firm of builders, come to the conclusion & decision that, he will not proceed any farther with you with regard to entering into a contract for building his house under my direction at East Knoyle. I cannot but express my regret that circumstances shd have so ruled that the work intrusted to my care by Mr Wyndham should not have had the advantage of being carried out by the firm of George Smith & Co.1 Believe me | Yours truly | Ph: W: re

LB-1, p. 191

1 This was a hard letter to write. PSW evidently held the firm’s professional record in high regard, but he had to recognise that the legal constraints set by George Smith’s will was an unacceptable risk for his client.

168 • To George Price Boyce, 27 August 1881 Annotated ‘Bywell Aug. 28. ’81’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Sat: Aug 27. 1881 My dear Boyce I was hoping, that as we had bad weather in the south you might be in better luck in the north, but as your letter, recd this morning, tells of doleful wet I can but sigh with you by post. I have no doubt that whatever the weather will let you set-to upon will turn out a sufficiently good subject, and that if Miss Davison1 is reasonably humane, you and Mrs Boyce may find some set-off against disappointed hopes. 174

1864–1887

I’ve had out the ordnance maps and found your whereabouts, and in spite of the weather-damped tone of your letter I felt inclined to come & see you with a gig umbrella or two in hand.2 The glass is now rising, but ’tis not to be depended on, and the unhappy farmers must have broken theirs in their useless rage. Thank you for sending me the note and the Building News of August 12.3 I had to “stump” in the West, last week,4 but only got 20 min: in Tewkesbury Ch a Ch’ wh’, in spite of the late Sir Scott and the present suckling, (Lord how they have scraped it!) is one of the most interesting in England. I had not seen it before, and could have spent 20 hours in it instead of 20 min: I had not time at Gloucester to get to the Cathl: I did however, see Wells, and Glastonbury. Also I had to go to Blandford, and it is one of the prettiest of little towns, tho’ the fire of 1700 & something burned most of the old work away.5 The present town is composed mostly of dignified brick houses with wood cornices &c painted white. ’Tis the situation wh’ is so pleasant – over the meadows, with high down-shaped hills around, with old camps on the top of them – however, I had but time enough to look as I ran. I did not see the article in the D News, but the socy has already dealt with Lefevre about the pulling down of the Westmr courts, and when [Newman] Marks or his successor returns to business we must look in to this matter again.6 I see they have made Bradley of Univ: Coll: Oxford the new Dean of Westminster, and I must ask Faulkner what sort of a dean he will make, as Bradley was his “head”.7 I had to go to Oxford too, last week, in my builder-hunting, and I looked at the scraping there, wh’ has gone on rapidly since I saw the place some 4 years ago. I found no excuse for their wanting to widen Magd: bridge – and as they are now making the road over it for the tram-way, I hope they won’t touch it after the row we have kicked up. Mrs Boyce, I suspect, will be in high glee at Gambetta’s rebuff.8 It seems to me, withal, that the rebuff itself is not a bad sign, as it shows that Paris itself is not inclined to run the risk of a dictator, and Gambetta has wits. I take your apothecary’s pot to Welwyn this evening, stuffed with the good messages from you and your wife. Morris was here last night, and he and I gloated over the lovely painting on it. I hope that if either of you want anything sent to you in the wilds of Northumberland, you will remember that I shall have pleasure in seeing to its being done. That is a pretty photog: of old Hexham houses, but there is a row of villainous boys aslant on the plinth of the bay window, wh’ is exactly like the demons of boys Bewick so well did9 – the boys look as like embodyed [sic] mischief as ill can be. Surely the state shd have no “close season” for the protection of those wild animals. There shd be boy-clubs as there used to be sparrow-clubs! Please keep me aware of your movements, for tho’ there is next to no chance of my getting to you, I shall like to know about you. With best remembrance to Mrs Boyce. Believe me faithfully yrs | Ph: W: BL Add 45354, ff. 163-4 175

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 The Boyces’ landlady in the village of Bywell, Northumberland. 2 A gig umbrella was of larger than usual size, to cover the passenger(s) in a one-horse carriage. 3 The issue of The Building News for 12 August included a report and some lithographic illustrations of the restoration work undertaken by Sir George Gilbert Scott and his younger son, John Oldrid Scott (1841–1913) at Tewkesbury Abbey (pp. 195–6 and 204). 4 He was on the hunt for possible builders to tender for Clouds. See next letter. 5 A fire on 4 June 1731 destroyed the greater part of the market town of Blandford, Dorset. 6 In view of PSW’s next sentence it is conceivable that the reference is to a letter from the Duke of Westminster about a proposed memorial to Arthur Stanley (1815–81), the late Dean of Westminster, in the form of an appeal for funds to purchase a suitable site and build a new Westminster Nursing Home and Training School for Nurses (Daily News, 3 August 1881). 7 George Granville Bradley (1821–1903), Master of University College, Oxford since 1870, was Stanley’s successor as Dean of Westminster. 8 A seminal influence upon modern French parliamentary government, Léon Gambetta (1831–82) became the French premier for just three months in November 1881. His attempt to re-establish the scrutin de liste system for the election of deputies, supported by the Assembly, had been rejected by the Senate in June. 9 The wood-engraver, Thomas Bewick (1753–1828). PSW would have admired both the subjectmatter and the craftsmanship of Bewick’s History of British Birds (1797–1804), including the many lively and often amusing vignettes which crowded every empty space. Perhaps he had in mind a drawing such as ‘Boys and Ships’, from the title page of the second volume, showing a group of five boys on a riverbank, sailing toy boats, with the smoking chimneys of an industrial town in the background.

169 • To Percy Wyndham, 27 August 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] August 27. 1881. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P: Wilbury House. Salisbury Dear Mr Wyndham (Clouds Hse) I wrote to you on the 12th instant, enclosing copies of letters &c and I sent posted the letter to Wilbury, but as I have not recd an answer I am not sure if the letter reached you. Last week I went to Blandford – Frome – Gloucester – and Tewkesbury to see builders – and this week I have been to Oxford to see some work there (the new University Schools) done by one of the builders to from whom I am to get a tender for your work.1 And next week I am going to Bristol to look into the circumstances of another builder I have had recommended to me.2 At the present time I have four builders’ names on my list who have accepted agreed to give me tenders, and from on whom I think I can rely for satisfactory work. Mr Simmonds – Ld Wolverton’s Clerk of works – called here yesterday, he having heard from Ld Wolverton as to the Clouds’ work. I shall have to see, or write to 176

1864–1887

Mr Waterhouse, as to his qualifications. I shall be glad to know, if you have seen Ld Wolverton, and if what his report of Simmonds was.3 Yours faithfully | Ph: W: LB-1, p. 194

1 Albert Estcourt, of Gloucester, would win the contract for building Clouds, PSW approving of what he saw of Estcourt’s work for Thomas Graham Jackson (1835–1924), the architect of the Examination Schools at Oxford (1876–83). For the sometimes bitter University politics involved in the eventual selection of Jackson for this controversial project, see William Whyte, Oxford Jackson. Architecture, Education, Status and Style 1853–1924 (Oxford: OUP, 2006), pp. 92–103. In 1873, CF had been unsuccessful in trying to persuade PSW to put himself forward as a candidate for the work (see above, Letter 56), but kept him in touch with the internal debate, having become a strong supporter of Jackson’s candidacy (Whyte, pp. 96 and 98). For Jackson’s later spat with the SPAB over restoration works to the spire of St Mary the Virgin, see Vol. II, Letter 441. 2 Recommended by George Edmund Street, perhaps. See above, Letter 164. 3 James Simmonds, who would be appointed clerk of works for the Clouds project, had held the equivalent position in 1874 during the building of the large mansion on the Iwerne Minster estate in Dorset, designed by Alfred Waterhouse (1830–1905) for the Liberal politician, George Glyn, second Baron Wolverton (1824–87).

170 • To Emma Oldham, 29 August 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] August 29. 1881. To Mrs Oldham. The Vicarage Claycross: Chesterfd Dear Mrs Oldham. I send you by this post herewith the design for the new church, arranged in the way that I thought best with regard to economy and the getting “some degree of dignity” as expressed in your letter to me of July 26.1 I have estimated that the building will cost, including the fittings as shewn – but not the harmonium or the heating apparatus – about one thousand and fifty pounds (£1,050). And as I suppose that the bricks would cost about £200 to buy and put on the ground, so that if these were given the cost of the church would then be about £850. Some reduction could be made if the East end of the church was made as plain as the nave. Your brother William has seen the design and expressed his satisfaction with it, and I hope that you and Mr Oldham will find it answer to your want. Believe me, | Yrs very truly | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 195-6 177

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 See above, Letter 165.

171 • To Percy Wyndham, 30 August 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] August 30. 1881. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P. Wilbury House. Salisbury. Dear Mr Wyndham. (Clouds Hse) I recd your letter, with the enclosed cheque, this morning – for which I am obliged – & I enclose receipt.1 It is quite true that Smith should have let us know before he did of the restriction under wh’ his business lay – but as I had by way word of mouth & letter told him that his reticence had caused us great inconvenience, I thought it better to avoid useless irritation on taking leave of him. This course has proved was itself right, I think, as his offer of Mr Cross’s assistance services might, in case of difficulty with the Tisbury quarry, be worth accepting. I have to go into Yorkshire tomorrow, and I mean to take Bristol on my return, so that I shall not be in London before Saturday night. I shd have been pleased to come to Wilbury as you kindly propose, but these & other engagements will hardly allow of that before you leave home. I thank you very much for your condolence on my journeyings, [sic] but they are will be of little matter, if by looking closely at first into the country builders’ resources I may be able to avoid having to do with untrustworthy or unsubstantial contractors. Yrs very truly | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 196-7

1 ‘As, necessarily, there will be some further delay, and as my outlay on the several designs for the house has been considerable during the last four years, I shall be obliged if you can, conveniently, let me have a thousand pounds on account.’ PSW to PWY, 12 August 1881, LB-1, p. 193.

172 • To George Price Boyce, 9 September 1881 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Sep: 9. 1881 My dear Boyce You are indebted for this friendly discharge of ink, to a report brought under notice yesterday at our first meeting of the society after the recess. The report is this. That 178

1864–1887

an archaeological society – I think it was, but of this I am not quite sure – has been advising Mr Fuller to “restore” some painting (decorative) which remains at Great Chaldfield [sic] House.1 I promised the Comme that I would ask you to write to your friend, Mr Fisher,2 to find from him if there is any truth in such an absurd proposal. I shd have liked to send you something more clearly defined, but amongst the crowd of business we had to attend to yesterday, I could only gather what I have written above. At all events it will do no mischief if you will kindly ask Mr Fisher the question. Every now & then as it comes across me & I think of you at work out-o-doors, I long for fine weather both for you & the farmers. When it has rained hard, or been very cold I’ve hoped that you had comfortable lodging, good books, and honest food. I was not so very far off you last week, when I was at Redcar. I was there to look after a little addition I’m making to Hugh Bell’s house,3 and I would have come on to you in spite of the cheerless & very cold weather, if I had not been bound for Bristol at once, which place I took on my return home. I have to go to Exeter next week. In these journeyings I am searching for sound builders, and am rather tired of questioning them as to their ways & means. It was Thursday morning that I was at Redcar & having done my business at Bristol, I went, with Wardle who good naturedly met me there, to Cirencester on Saturday, & f’m thence drove to the site of the Roman Villa at Chedworth, abt 8 miles off.4 Both Cirencester & Chedworth repaid fully, & the weather was less unkind on that day. Try & screw up your courage (or failing, ask Mrs Boyce) to tell me what & how you are doing. Grumble as you like, but throw in such encouragement as you may have found. At all events you are in the country, anxious to do what you can, and I hope you both get hungry and bear up against the cold and the country gentlemen, without Rheumatism & too much bad language. I wonder if my sawbones brother wrote to acknowledge his beautiful Apothecary’s pot! both brother & sister were mighty pleased with it. With kindest remembrances to both of you, believe me sincerely yours, Ph: W: BL Add 45354, ff. 165-6

1 Great Chalfield Manor, in Wiltshire, is a fifteenth-century manor house built for Thomas Tropnell (c. 1405–88). It was bought by G.P. Fuller, M.P. (d. 1927) in 1878. PSW may have in mind the late medieval wall-painting, possibly of Tropnell himself, in the parlour (now the dining room). 2 Perhaps George Fisher, who lived at The Folly, in Winsley Road, Bradford-on-Avon. GPB may have made his acquaintance when staying in the town in 1877, and had been made aware of possible restorations at Great Chalfield Manor. 3 See above, Letter 166. 4 About twelve miles from Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, the Roman villa at Chedworth was discovered in 1864. Excavation ‘revealed a series of huge and impressively intact mosaic floors, two bath houses, a water shrine, and over a mile of Roman walls. By 1865 a museum had been built on site, along with cover buildings to protect the main mosaics, and the villa ruins were being displayed to the visiting public.’ http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/chedworth-roman-villa/history/ article-1355824095951/ [accessed 22 July 2014].

179

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

173 • To Percy Wyndham, 20 October 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Oct: 20. 1881. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P: Wilbury House by Salisbury Dear Mr Wyndham (Clouds Hse) I recd your letter of the 13th instt authorising me to treat with Estcourt the builder if I recd satisfactory answers f’m Mr Jackson & others.1 I wrote to Mr Jackson on the 14th, and as I had not had an answer up to this morning I sent my clerk to his office, and he found that he was in France, but that my letter or a note of its contents had been sent to him. Mr Jackson’s assistant told my clerk that they were very well pleased with Estcourt. I also wrote to Mr Chapple, assistant to the late Mr Burges, the architect, and I enclose a copy of his answer.2 Mr Simmonds has been to me again abt the berth of Clerk of Works for Clouds, so I wrote to Mr Waterhouse, the architect of Lord Wolverton’s house at Iwerne Minster, and I enclose a copy of his answer. This, with your information f’m Ld Wolverton himself would be satis certificate enough I think to allow of our engaging Simmonds as soon as the contract is signed. If you agree with me, will you me so good as to let me know, so that I may write to tell Simmonds at once to say that we shall want him for the work if we should accept the builder’s tender now under consideration? Mr Estcourt is anxious to begin at once, so as not [to] lose any fine weather we may get before the winter sets in. If Mr Jackson’s answer should confirm Mr Chapple’s reply letter (I have also heard well of Estcourt from Mr Ewan Christian’s office)3 will you let me know if I shall I enter on the business of preparing the contract for signature as soon as possible? Before beginning at Clouds, it would be well if I could meet you there as to setting out the ground on which the builder could place his plant & materials. Should you be able to meet me there at Clouds on one day in next week? Yrs truly | Ph’ W. LB-1, pp. 197-8

1 For Thomas Graham Jackson, see above, Letter 169, note 1. 2 Albert Estcourt had undertaken work for William Burges at Cardiff Castle (1872–5), and was also the builder for his Gothic folly of Castell Coch, from 1871. 3 See above, Letter 147, note 4.

180

1864–1887

174 • To James Simmonds, 27 October 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Oct. 27. 1881. To Mr James Simmonds, C of Works East Street Blandford. Sir. (Clouds House. East Knoyle) d I duly rec your letter of the 24th of last month. I believe that I have now a contractor who will under-take the building of the house at East Knoyle for the Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P. and as I have spoken to Mr Wyndham on the subject, and had an answer from Mr Waterhouse with regard to inquiries I made of him I should be glad to know if you are still dis-engaged and would wish to undertake the office of Clerk of the Works under my direction to superintend the execution of the above-named works? The salary you ask (four guineas a week) is, I consider, a high one for work which will extend over a space of time of between two & three years, but I shall not consider it too high if from the ability, energy, and honourable trustworthiness which I shall expect from you be confirmed by experience.1 The work in question is an important one, and constant attention with aptitude, and judgment, will be necessary in you for the satisfactory carrying out of my intentions and the Contractor’s responsibility. ’Till the contract is signed I am not sure that I shall require your assistance, but as it is probable that the signature may take place in next week, I should then shortly afterwards want you to enter upon the engagement. It would be necessary for you to give me a month’s notice before requiring to give up your situation, and I should have to give you the same amount of notice before wishing to end the engagement between us. Also, I should require you to find an efficient substitute at your own expense but paid by me should illness, tempora for a time, disable you. I suppose that it would be suff satisfactory to you if you were paid your salary at the end of each month? In case you shd think it worthwhile to go to Knoyle to look at the ground and see about lodging, Mr Russell of Knoyle – Mr Wyndham’s agent bailiff – would be able to shew you the site & in other ways assist you. Yours truly | Ph. W: Archt LB-1, pp. 201-2

1 As the work on Clouds neared completion, PSW reflected that Simmonds had not been ‘worth his salt’. See below, Letter 255.

181

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

175 • To Thomas Hugh Bell, 10 November 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Novr 10. 1881. To T. Hugh Bell Esqre Red Barns Coatham. Redcar Dear Hugh Bell. (Middlesboro’ Offices) I enclose of tracing of [sic] the proposed offices for Bell Brothers.1 In planning the same I have carefully considered both the amount of accommodation, given set forth in your paper sent to me, and the disposition of the different rooms. I hardly consider that these plans to be likely to be of more use than to shew the amount of space taken up by such and such rooms, especially with regard to gaining as much light as possible under the circumstances. It is for this reason that I have tried to try and get as much sun as possible into the heart of the block from the south, by direct south light from the south wall in Brunswick St, and the glass roof running from South and to North. On the North front, in Zetland Road, I should propose to put 3 2 large bowwindows on the ground floor, and 3 on the first floor, on which floor latter, I agree with you, it would be best to place the offices of Bell Bros. On the ground floor I have thought it best well, for instant communication & best light to put the entrance in the middle. Also, I have made a quite private entrance from Brunswick Street, to serve also as entrance to the basement either from the hall, or from this subordinate entrance street. As I wished to get direct south light over the lavatory into the hall I do not propose to carry up the lavatory part beyond the necessary ground floor height. Over this part therefore could be a kind of gallery communication and between the east & west wings, but I hardly see to what purpose for general use. Would it not be well, in considering the basement accommodation, to put another set of waterclosets & lavatory directly under those on the ground floor? If you wished a strong room, this also must be in the basement. The second floor plan is only an indication of what might be made there. At all events I have put the Bell Bros’ Boardroom and a book & paper room there, and noted the place where an occasional Board or other rooms might be made. The other parts the plans will sufficiently explain. Will you be so good, when your firm has examined the plans, to answer the following questions. 1o. Is any communication wanted up & down by means of paper lifts? 2o. Are speaking tubes wanted and any bells? 3. Is any safe required? 4. Any door of communication between the your general and Private office? (I have shewn one) 5. Should any or all of the floors be fire proofed? 6. Mark the rooms which should have fire places.

182

1864–1887

If you & your people should generally approve of the plans, would it not be as well, at once, to shew them to the Borough Surveyor? If you took a piece of tracing paper, and slightly indicated the walls of ground floor you might generally shew what conveniences should be supplied in the basement. Perhaps a caretaker’s room might be put here? LB-1, pp. 207-9 1 PSW undertook the design of offices for the iron-founders, Bell Brothers, in Zetland Road, Middlesbrough (1881–3), with construction occurring in 1889–91. See Kirk, pp. 239–42 and 300.

176 • To George Howard, 12 November 1881 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Nov: 12 1881 To George Howard Esqre MP: My dear Howard. Castle Howard, by York. (1 Pal: Green Kenn)1 Your letter of the 9th was rather startling. The amount of work to be done, as stated in your letter, would take at least 4 months in doing! Parliament will probably meet in the beginning of Feby. I fancy that Morris & Co were not so much afraid of the injuries to workmen act,2 as that if, while they were at work, some of the drawing-room ceiling came down, they would have to replace it. The winter time is a bad one for doing plaster work, but it the ceiling could be done in the winter.3 As to the drainage, I have for some time associated myself with Rogers Field Civil Engineer 4 , who with Corfield,5 Richardson6 and others are the chief lights of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain & of which mighty nursery I am a sucking infant up in arms.7 I would propose to arrange a scheme for the Palace Green house with Rogers Field and get it done the work done as soon as might be. The paving of yards &c would go on in proper course after the drainage was done. It seems to me that there would be some risk in connecting your house with the “white house” without the Woods & Forests knowing.8 At all events we should have to get the permission of the district surveyor, but if I remember rightly he is a decent body and would not be purposely vexatious. After the warning as to time &c, given above, please let me have your directions. I am exceedingly sorry to learn that Mrs Howard is not in her usual good health, & I should be glad if you would say so to her from me with kindest remembrance. Believe me yours sincerely | Ph: W. LB-1, pp. 209-10

183

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 Between about 1881 and 1896, PSW undertook various alterations to the Howards’ house at 1 Palace Green, Kensington, including improvements to the drainage. See Kirk, p. 297. 2 The Employers’ Liability Act (1880) gave some protection to workers sustaining injury at work, when the accident was a result of the negligence of a manager or supervisor. 3 Replastering and redecoration of the drawing room ceiling was done. 4 See above, Letter 134, note 2. 5 William Henry Corfield (1843–1903), appointed Professor of Hygiene and Public Health, University College, London, in 1869. He became Vice-President of the Sanitary Institute. 6 The physician, Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson (1828–96), was a pioneer in the fields of public health and sanitation. His address to the Social Science Association in 1875 ‘described a health utopia, a city of spotless cleanliness and hygiene; this was later published as Hygiea, a City of Health (1876)’. DNB. 7 PSW was elected to membership of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain in May 1881. 8 Howard had it in mind to acquire this property, behind 1 Palace Green (see below, Letter 182). The trouble which PSW had encountered when his original designs for Palace Green were considered by James Pennethorne still rankled.

177 • To George Price Boyce, 28 November 1881 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Monday. Novr 28. 1881 My dear Boyce Thank you for your letter. I will come with pleasure on Thursday not later than 6.30. Please do not, on my account, add to your usual bill-of-fare. I had heard from Morris that the quantity of business in front had stopped the production of your information as to North-Allerton Ch’. I may have to see Neave shortly and I should hear as to the quality of his old dutch tiles.1 I might have good use for them, but I daily find from clients that they are not of my way of thinking in art matters, so that I am careful of risking my own money ’till I am assured as to what they really do want. I am, nevertheless, obliged to you for your note of this matter. I believe that Keith Johnston’s Atlas2 is a better one than Black’s (not, I think, “Blackies”). I have, myself, an old edition of the Black’s & have always found it a poor one.3 My brother has a small edition of Keith Johnston’s wh’ I got for him a long time ago, and I have found it good – however the large size is the one to buy. If you got one (Stanford’s is the place) you might get them to bind a copy in a less abominable way than they do – (with a sceptre crown crozier, & whatnot of other nonsense on the cover – ) If I knew only a smattering of German I should, personally, prefer a German Atlas. ’Tis Spruner, I think, who has done a first rate historical atlas,4 and probably at Williams & Norgate’s5 you could learn what is to be had, and see samples before making up your mind – be sure & have the latest edition. Yours sincerely, and also to Mrs Boyce. | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 171-2

184

1864–1887 1 Neave was the builder/decorator who would be employed in the remedial works to 1 Palace Green. See below, Letter 182. 2 High-quality atlases were produced by the firm of Edinburgh cartographers, founded by Alexander Keith Johnston (1804–71) and his brother William, and continued by family members, including the younger Alexander Keith Johnston (1844–79). Of the several contenders, their National Atlas of Historical, Commercial and Political Geography (1849) may be what PSW had in mind. 3 Like Johnston, A. & C. Black was also an Edinburgh-based firm, founded by the politician and publisher Adam Black (1784–1874). Black’s General Atlas first appeared in 1840. 4 Karl von Spruner, whose Historisch Geographischer Hand-Atlas zur Geschichte der Staaten Europas von Anfang des Mittel-Alters first appeared in 1846. 5 Publishers specialising in foreign scientific material, with premises in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden.

178 • To Albert Estcourt, 3 January 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jan: 3. 1882. To Mr Albert Estcourt Builder &c. 1 Barton St Gloucester. Dear Sir. (Clouds House) In answer to your letter of Dec 28. I am trying to arrange to go to Knoyle next week (probably Wedy the 11th) and I should like to know if you think that time would be a good one for me to see to the digging of foundations, surface drainage &c. Also as to the working of a specimen or two of the Chilmark stone?1 If this would be too early for you I wd defer my visit for another week. It wd be impossible to have any of the permanent drainage now laid, neither do I approve of drains being laid till the buildings have settled. I will certainly attend to carpenters & joiners details as soon as possible, and I am glad that you remind me of those you would wish to have first. As to the solid door & window frames for stables, it is better that they should be built in, but as you will be using these buildings when they are covered-in, we shd have to consider as to their the protection of the frames &c from injury. Yours truly | Ph: W: r

LB-1, pp. 220-1

1 See above, Letter 162, note 4.

185

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

179 • To Nathaniel Ramsay and Son, 5 January 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jan: 5. 1882. To Messrs Nathaniel Ramsay & Son 31 St Vincent Place Glasgow. Dear Sirs. (Arisaig House)1 I duly rec your report, and letter of Decr 31. Your report seems to me to be perfectly satisfactory in its character, tho’ most likely more work would have to be done than is there indicated – however the “notes” you speak of would be incorporated in the specification you would prepare for the use of the Clerk of the works. I can quite understand that it would be impossible to get a contract for the whole of the works to be done, and therefore we shd have to depend much on the judgment and honesty of the Clerk of works. Now, I could find a Clerk of works here for this short-time business, but I shd doubt whether an Englishman would be able, unless he had Scotch experience in Scotland, to understand local peculiarities and ways of work, materials &c. ’Tis true I had an English Clerk of works when the house was built,2 but then I was often at the place myself for 8 or 10 days at a time. Do you think you could find a Glasgow or Edinburgh Clerk of works, with a good reputation, to undertake the business under your direction and occasional supervision, and my instruction and drawings? I can see by your plan of the drainage, and from my recollection that the system there shewn is not far out, and I should have no difficulty in making the necessary improvements, with further information from the Clerk of works. The T nails for securing the slating would be a very good plan, but much would depend on the nails themselves, they should be light, strong, and the nail end should be long, and not too much tapered [sketch] and should be galvanized. With regard to plumber’s work, this is most important in such a climate as the West of Scotland. The extreme purity and softness of the rain water acts chemically on the lead. For some time I have had considerable doubts as to the use of “milled” lead in exposed positions, and I find other architects who agree with me, and in some places “cast” lead is being again used. Mr Wm Reid of 117 West George St Glasgow did the plumber’s work at Arisaig House,3 and at several times since he has worked for the estate, and as I have never found him other than a fair tradesman, & as he knows the place and the work, I think it would be well that he shd be employed on the repairs if he would give you reasonable prices? Will you see him, and ask him if he could make or prepare procure cast lead for the outside work, say at 8–10 or 12 lbs weight to the superficial foot? As to the mason, I think that Mr Routledge the bailiff spoke well of a local man who had done work, recently at the house & fairly well. Of course all the tradesmen should work under a schedule of prices for labour and materials. d

186

1864–1887

All new hot and cold water supply pipes (except the closets & other such uses) should be “tinlined” copper. With regard to the heating apparatus, I think you should consider as to a Glasgow man undertaking the repair of this. Miss Astley most likely mentioned to you when she would wish the repairs begun and ended. I should propose that you should undertake the direction of the work, and if you shd agree to this I should be glad if you would send me a memorandum stating in what way & in what proportion your want & expect to be paid charge would be made ? I am obliged by your prompt attention to this matter. | Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 221-3

1 Having been consulted by Gertrude Astley about necessary remedial works at Arisaig, PSW advised a full survey so that a timetable of priorities might be drawn up. This was undertaken by Nathaniel Ramsay, surveyor for the original works in 1863. 2 John Smith. 3 See above, Letter 42.

180 • To George Price Boyce, 11 January 1882 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Jany 11. 1882 My dear Boyce I recd your postcard this morng. Was very pleased to think of Mrs Boyce and you frolicing [sic] in this fine weather. On the other side I note down such things as I have found in the books to remain (do they now remain?) in Coventry. I have only a dim recollection of the place, which I last saw in 1851! The Churches have, I fancy, all gone the way of the restorers – as some of the restorers are going the way of the Churches! We have a note at the Antiscrape as to the Cross, and I think one of the local correspondents has been asked to go and see about it. It would be very well if you would note down for the society its present state, and how little should be done to keep it in repair – noting, also, how “restoration” would ruin what remains of value.1 If you could suggest any site in the City where the present restless folk could put up their proposed memorial, to their own glorification, instead of ruining an old & valuable object, please do so. So far as I can make out from Parker, the buildings of St Mary’s Guild, with some furniture glass &c must be inviting – if they now remain.2 Ford’s hospital, especially, you will note.3 Parker puts Coventry along with Shrewsbury for remains of old houses – timber chiefly. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb: 187

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Notes. Remains of Hall & other buildings. “St Mary’s Guild” middle of 15th centy (finished 1414 (?)) – very valuable ________ Several “Decorated” window heads (timber) built into the walls of an Inn ________ Quantity of houses, or parts of houses; one in “West Orchard St” - temp: Richd 24 ________ Fords Hospital – 1529 ________ Bablake or Bonds Hospital – 1506 ________ “Free School”, was a Chapel of 14 cent: said to have belonged to St John’s Hospital ________ White friars monastery in the suburbs “now workhouse” – (?)

BL Add 45354, ff. 173-4

1 The first stone of the Tudor market cross in Coventry was laid in 1541–2, a replacement for the two former crosses which had stood on the site. It underwent various repairs during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in 1880 was threatened with comprehensive restoration ‘at the junction of Broadgate and Cross Cheaping . . . [A] committee has been formed to further the same, and we trust the object may be successfully accomplished’. T.W. Whitley, The Coventry Cross (Warwick, 1880), p. 18. Thomas Wardle was asked to check on the condition of the cross on behalf of the SPAB committee, and confirmed that the original no longer existed. ‘I have not heard of more than a wish to erect a new one on the site of the old one which was where the Cab stand now is opposite the Castle Hotel. . . . [R]estoration would now I think be impossible if attempted.’ Thomas Wardle to SPAB secretary, 8 January 1882, SPAB, Coventry Cross file. 2 The fourteenth-century St Mary’s Guildhall, much altered in the early fifteenth century. ‘This is probably the most perfect house of the period that we have remaining in England, and may be said to be quite complete, though somewhat spoiled, first by neglect, and then by modern improvements. . . . [The hall has] a long flat window of several lights at the upper end, which has the original painted glass, and under it hangs the original tapestry.’ John Henry Parker, Some Account of Domestic Architecture in England, from Richard II to Henry VIII, 2 vols (Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1859), II, p. 239. PSW’s notes at the end of the letter are gleaned from Parker. 3 William Ford, a Coventry businessman, established this almshouse in Greyfriars Lane to provide accommodation for five elderly men and one woman, a tradition of caring which by the mid nineteenth century was housing 40 women. Parker described it as ‘a remarkably perfect timberhouse of the time of Henry VIII, with bargeboards and buttresses, and panelling, and windowheads, all of carved oak, in a very perfect state’ (p. 240). The building suffered from bombing in 1940. 4 ‘The city of Coventry abounds with timber-houses, many of which have very good Gothic windows, most of . . . the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but one in the West Orchard is believed . . . to be of the fourteenth, and the forms of the tracery would agree very well with the time of Richard II.’ Parker, I, p. 127.

188

1864–1887

181 • To James Simmonds, 14 January 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jan: 14. 1882 To Mr James Simmonds. Clerk of Works Clouds House – East Knoyle. Salisbury Dear Sir. (Clouds Hse) I rec your mem of position [of] walnut tree this morning. Having considered matters carefully since my visit to Clouds I have concluded that things generally are in a satisfactory state of progress, and that Mr Estcourt and Mr Hibbins1 seem perfectly willing anxious and able to make a good work of the buildings – but the present manner of working tooling the faced and moulded Chilmark stone is not as yet satisfactory – however from the appearance of the last piece of stone worked for me to see before I left I have no doubt that the kind of work to be done will be arrived at in a very short time. Will you be so good so far as possible to see that the masons – ’till they get their hands in, only do plain work, or work which only includes the more simple mouldings, as, the moulded work yet done would not, if continued in that manner, not be useable. In working all mouldings, sharp tools and a light mallet will be necessary. I must beg you also to see that no dirty materials be used in making the concrete, the gravel must be washed. Also the size of the larger lumps must be reduced. It would be well also to wash, and use with the larger gravel & broken bricks, some of the sifted gravel. Please to find from Mr Russell2 if Mr Estcourt buys the gravel for the concrete from Mr Wyndham? I should wish you to see that the men facing the green sandstone face a large quantity as bond stones to tail into the walls. As I am not sure if you have yet removed f’m Mr Russell’s I direct this letter there. Yours truly | Ph: W: d

m

LB-1, pp. 225-6

1 Estcourt’s foreman. 2 PWY’s bailiff, with whom Simmonds was lodging.

182 • To George Howard, 16 January 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jan: 16. 1882. 189

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Castle Howard. by York. My dear Howard. (1 Pal: Green) I went to Pal: Green on Friday and met Neave there who had set up some trestles for me to examine the ceiling in the drawing-room. I could not see that there would be danger of its falling, at all events at present, neither did Neave, so I directed Neave him first to use slips of paper to take the salting out of the pattern, then to trace one of each of the patterns of panels &c – after which, that the ceiling should be washed, stopped, and covered with strong paper, then painted in thin oils and afterwards distempered white. Neave thought of covering up the walls with sheets, leaving the pictures hanging, but I was afraid of risking damage to these valuable works, and directed their removal. They begin today. There was an awkwardness of in finding other whitewashing people in the house! Afterwards I went with Neave into the “white house” & found the shell a good substantial building.1 The tenants, of wh’ there are a crowd, looked on us as agents of a bloody landlord; and if any of them are Irish you may expect to have to billet a bullet. I will now consider what sort of letter I shall write to you for the benefit of the “woods & forests”. I also directed as to repairing the yards paving temporarily. Hugh Bell was here the other day & told me of the doings at your North Riding contest. I shd be particularly glad if you got in Rowlandson whether he can open his mouth or not.2 Yrs very truly | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 226-7

1 This was the building to the rear of 1 Palace Green, which Howard was considering purchasing. See Caroline Dakers, The Holland Park Circle (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 104. 2 Following the death of the sitting MP, a by-election had been called for the North Riding parliamentary seat. The Liberal candidate, Samuel Rowlandson, a local tenant farmer from Newton Morrell, lost by 386 votes to the Conservative.

183 • To G. Sedger, 14 February 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings. . . .] Feby 14. 1882. To G: Sedger Esqre 26 Great James St Bedford Row. Sir. I am sorry that you shd have had the trouble of calling here when I was not at home. I did not return yesterday ’till 12. oc. 190

1864–1887

I am looking out for a junior assistant, and if you thought that your brother, who is in want of work, would be likely to be willing and able to do the work I have to be done I shd be glad to see you on the matter. I want a young man who has already obtained gained laid the information foundation of his knowledge of the building arts in a practical way in a good business-like office, and would be anxious to extend his knowledge and give the use of his head and hands – in an energetic way – to nothing but the practical work which goes on in my office. The aptitude that I most require is that of a person who had a natural turn for construction, and would set himself to master the difficulties which would occur in adapting construction to art matters in various kinds of buildings. In A young man of fair education so inclined, and with a determination to make the work business he would be engaged on, his own as it were, for the purpose of carrying on my business intentions he would, I believe, find interesting and instructive work here. He would have to work on my designs, add to them & complete them, and then trace and make them the drawings perfect for the builders. I am Sir, | Yours truly | Ph: W: I shall be at home for the next two days between 10 & 12. am. LB-1, pp. 232-3

184 • To G. Sedger, 20 March 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] March 20. 1882 To G: Sedger Esqre 26. Great James St Bd Row. Dear Sir Your brother, Thomas Sedger, having been in my office for a month – I have been able a sufficient time for him to get over any the nervousness accompanying a young man’s entry on work in a strange place – I have been able to come to a conclusion as to his position in the knowledge of his profession, and as to whether he was sufficiently advanced to do the work which I shd have to expect of him. I am sorry to say that he is not yet sufficiently forward to be able to assist me in the work to be done here. I am the more sorry that this is the case, as he seems to be a quiet and industrious fellow, and if a young man for whom I should have felt a pleasure in helping in every way in my power. I spoke to him on Saturday, and strongly advised him not to give up his exertions, but to try and get in to an office where there was plenty of work to do of a kind within the reach of his attainments. I sincerely regret that his coming here has not been so successful as I had hoped, but I beg to thank you for the trouble you have taken in this matter. Believe me | Yrs truly | Ph. W. LB-1, pp. 237-8 191

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

185 • To George Price Boyce, 18 April 1882 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Tuesday night April 18. My dear Boyce You may remember that I spoke to you of a Mr Jack (assistant to Mr Vinall, & now helping me in my work)1 who would like to see any of your pictures which you may have by you, and your collection of works by both old and new masters. I have told Mr Jack that you, with your usual good nature, would be good enough to let him see these works, and he is looking forward to that pleasure when it may be convenient to you to do so. Mr Jack has the Saturdays for himself, and would come to Chelsea next Saturday or any other Sat: more suitable. I would mention that this good fellow is extremely shy, almost nervously so, and I the more move in the matter myself as, otherwise, he probably would not; and yet it would be good for him to see such good work, as he has a turn for art though he is modest. Would you be so good as to let me know what Saturday would be least inconvenient to you for him to come to West house, and the best time for him to come in the day. Yours very truly | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 177-8

1 John Brandon-Jones believed that George Washington Jack (GWJ, 1855–1931) ‘joined Webb’s staff in 1879’ (NBS, p. 33), but this letter appears to suggest that he started working for PSW in 1882, perhaps replacing the unsuitable Thomas Sedger (see previous letter). For Vinall see above, Letter 69, note 1.

186 • To Constance Astley, 26 April 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] April 26. 1882. To Miss Astley 33 Princes Gardens S.W. Dear Miss Astley I send you a tracing of the design for the memorial.1 Having tried the matter in various ways, and carefully considered the circumstances, I concluded that it would be best to make the cross as different as possible to a, so called, Runic cross

192

1864–1887

or a village cross; also to mark it as much as possible might be (considering its height) as a private memorial. To do this, I have placed the inscription close under the cross part itself, which will more than anything else mark the stone as a personal monument, and make a good position – out of the way of injury – for the inscription tablet. This tablet I would propose to have cast in bronze with the inscription on it in raised characters. I think that you said that possibly you might note, in addition to the inscription to your brother, that the bodies of your Father & mother lay elsewhere. If you thought now think of this plan, I would make both sides of the memorial the same, instead of different, as shewn on the tracing, and this would give another panel for inscription. I was obliged to make the stonework solid and simple, considering the character of the whinstone. I shd propose, if there is a chance of getting it, to cut the whole of cross & stem in one block of stone – if this is not possible, to make it 2 or 3 stones. It is intended to surround the plot of earth with a plain curb of whinstone 12 inches high. Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 240-1

1 See above, Letter 157, note 1.

187 • To Albert Estcourt, 6 May 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 6. 1882. To Mr A: Estcourt Builder 1 Barton St Gloucester. Dear Sir. (Clouds House) I have considered the matter of the kind of lime for use above the datum line1 of the main building of house, and have decided that Lias lime in the lump shall be used.2 It will be necessary therefore that all the mortar should be ground in the mill. As the mortar with our rather too fine sand would be much improved by grinding with it all broken bricks and stone chippings, I should wish you to direct that this waste should be collected periodically and used for this purpose. Will you also give strict orders to Hibbins that he should see that the sand is screened from all fibrous and other vegitable [sic] matter.

193

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I will speak to Simmonds & Hibbins about setting turning of the vaulting as the work proceeds. I am providing the details mentioned in your letter of the 3rd May. Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-1, p. 242

1 A line serving as a reference for the measurement of other quantities. 2 Lias is a blue limestone rock occurring in the southwest, used in lime mortar.

188 • To Bella Duffy, 12 May 1882 Draft 1 R B: G. Inn, London. May 12. 1882 Madam. I must ask your kind consideration for my seeming delay in answering your valuable letter to me, dated April the 25th.1 On receiving it, and also one from Mr Stanhope, I laid the matter before an ordinary committee meeting of the English Society for the Protn of Ancient Buildings and it was decided to call together a meeting of the Foreign Committee of the Society to consider the matter it under the light of your letter. This Committee has met, and I believe it will send a report of the result of its consideration directly to you. As I have not had the advantage of having visited seeing Italy I was not a member of this Committee, but as most of its members are familiar with the buildings of great importance in several of the larger cities of Italy I was well satisfied in handing over to them the information you had been good enough to impart to the Society through me. Personally, I feel that but little serviceable resistance can be made to individual works already entered upon by the Florentines or other Italians themselves; though but I believe that no nation is quite free from a reasonable susceptibility to the notice taken of it by honourable and hearty foreigners, and as this English Society was organised and is most strongly supported by educated artists practical architects and able historical students, who have no other thought in the matter than the welfare of the infinitely valuable ancient monuments of the world, and is absolutely free from any mercenary bias, I am in hope that this spirit will in time be appreciated by the Italians and other nations, and that all suspicion of motives will die out as the increase of communion between nations does away with that the fear which comes is bred of ignorance.2 I should be glad if you in your intercourse with cultivated Italians you could impress upon them that we in England would be sincerely glad if they would familiarise themselves with our monuments, and they would help us with forcible expression from their side when the intelligent English are hard-pressed while striving to save what little remains unfalsified in their own land. You may be sure that it is the minority in England which is active in saving, and I feel satisfied that there is a minority in Italy who only want banding together to make a society of its own 194

1864–1887

which will would do more to save its inestimable antiquities than any outside elements would, though it would might be helped by foreign sympathy. Believe me Madam | with much respect | Yours sincerely | Ph W. ma All’ Illustr Signorina | Signorina Bella Duffy Via Santo Spirito. 6 | Firenze. | Italy. Courtauld 4a-b

1 The Irish writer Bella Duffy (d. 1926), a friend of Vernon Lee and a long-term resident of Florence, had written initially to John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (for whom see above, Letter 96, note 6) on 10 April, concerned about the dangers of likely future restoration work in Florence. She wanted the SPAB to become publicly involved, but doubted whether many Italian papers would be prepared to print the SPAB manifesto. ‘I know of two & perhaps three that would publish it & without comment: but the remainder (and unfortunately those most influential in artistic matters) wd probably only publish it in order to make it the text of a semi-comic & wholly resentful diatribe against the English.’ Instead, she urged that a specially-composed pamphlet ‘to be written very strongly’ should be targeted at an Italian public, ‘announced in the Gazzetta d’Italia & stuck up in the shopwindows’. Bella Duffy to Stanhope, 10 April 1882, Courtauld 3a-f. Through Stanhope, PSW sought more detailed information from Miss Duffy about the threatened buildings. 2 More than a year earlier, following rumours of planned restoration work on the Loggia del Bigallo, WM had written to the Prefect of Florence urging restraint, fearing ‘that the threatened restoration aims at reproducing ancient features now lost or injured’, and citing the instance of ‘the disastrous so-called restoration of that loveliest of Churches, S. Miniato’. 26 January 1881, CLWM, II. Perhaps surprisingly, the response was encouraging, and Stanhope had the case in mind when writing to PSW. ‘[T]he careful way in which the Bigallo had been treated might be partly owing to an “awakened conscience” thro the efforts of the society.’ 26 April 1882, Courtauld 2a-e.

189 • To John Howell, 25 May 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 25. 1882. To Mr John Howell East Knoyle Brick Yard. Salisbury Dear Sir. (Clouds Hse) I was much disappointed at not meeting you at the new house yesterday, as I learned fm Mr Simmonds that you knew I was to be there on that day. The sample of handmade facing bricks shewn to me by Mr Simmonds were was not at all satisfactory, and as the progress of the works will be seriously hindered if in from your next kiln a brick more nearly approaching what is wanted is not produced I shd have wished to consider with you what shd be done. 195

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Mr Wyndham has often urged upon me his wish that the facing bricks should be of the character required, and as I have as often told him that you had assured me that you could produce bricks of the colour and quality wanted, he will be much disappointed if it shd be necessary for me to apply to other brickyards for the right quality of bricks. I have directed Mr Simmonds to forward me a sample of the your next kiln’s burning which as soon as possible & I hope they will be more to the purpose than the last. Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 243-4

190 • To Canon William Greenwell, 6 July 1882 Drafted on behalf of SPAB The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings [pencil date] July 6. 1882 d 1 To the Rev Canon Greenwell Sir The notice in the “Durham Country Advertiser,” of May the 19th last, of the meeting of the Durham & Northumberland Archæological Society held at Durham when you, as President, delivered an address on “Church Restoration”, having been brought before a meeting of the under the notice of a Committee of our Society, it was resolved, that a letter should be written to you to expressing the satisfaction which the Committee felt at so outspoken decided and otherwise satisfactory a declaration of opinion as to the evils attendant on church Restoration, from a Gentleman so likely to command the attention and respect of his audience.2 It was also resolved at by the committee to ask you to consider a proposition then made that your address should be published by our Society for distribution in the usual way with other writings of the society in aid of the movement for protecting old buildings. In A letter of yours, to the editor of the Durham paper of June the 13th, which corrected a very palpable reporter’s misunderstanding of one of your the arguments in your address, has confirmed the Committee in thinking that several other passages in the address had suffered in like manner, and it was decided that you should be asked – in case you agreed to the proposition of the Committee – to explain or correct alter other passages, before the address was published by the Society. It is quite evident from the admirable tone of your address that you are a member of the Society for the Protection of Ant Bgs not only in name; and the Committee therefore feels that any remarks it may make on passages in your address will be received by you in a sympathetic spirit. and It is also probable some of the passages marked by the Committee have, from self evidence, not been intended by you as they are set forth in the County newspaper.

196

1864–1887

You are represented as saying that “Restoration was a very valuable word because true restoration was a very valuable thing”.3 The Committee of our Society is constantly finding from their experience would urge upon you that in 9 cases out of 10 “Restoration” is a very mischievous word, and it also the Com: can find no proper use for it, as it means simply an impossible thing: one can restore five shillings because another 5s/- represents exactly the same value, but it is impossible to restore the lost art of one generation of people by the new art merely imitative art of another. The Com: therefore thinks that you will on re-consideration you would agree with it that the use of the word “restoration” had better not be used by thoughtful responsible people with regard to the maintenance of A[ncien]t Bgs. In speaking of the necessity there will be at times to enlarge churches, you are reported as saying that “this was not a difficult matter”. Now The Committee feels that this can hardly have been the expressed your intention of your expression, for, the task of enlarging a venerable building must always be, to a sensitive architect, one of the most perplexing of necessities works. Indeed, Committees of our Society have from time to time expressed the opinion that no ancient church should be enlarged or otherwise dealt with in its structure & detail on the representation of the triple opinion of even the most experienced architect or antiquarian archæologist. Indeed this Committee is convinced that, only in cases where churches have been mutilated and ruined in some one or other part of it, that, at that place only can an addition can be made without irreparable destruction of the evidences of art & history, and the loveliness of age & appreciation.

There are, unfortunately, many opportunities in this way for enlarging churches, but this Committee feels that a consultation, even in such cases, of several trained & unbiased minds should be insisted upon before the a plan was settled upon decided carried out accepted . In speaking On the subject of decoration the Committee would suggest that you add – where you speak so forcibly of the miserable character of such work in general – that it would be well that all modern decoration in old churches should be moveable? In reading your amusing notice of the kind of architect often employed on the renovation of churches, some members of the Com: thought that you were rather hard on the half educated masons, and others, as they have not done a tenth part of the mischief that the educated architects have, and the Committee feels sure that you will agree with them it in this. The Com: wd also suggest at the part of your address where you speak of the walls of old churches being too often considered ruinous when they are not necessarily dangerous, that you might add that, constant attention to such old walls with the necessary repairs to the foundations would, in many cases, save the churches from being “restored”, and at greatly less cost. The last part of your address struck sharply at the mischief caused by the ignorance & laxity of so often shewn by the superior ecclesiastical authorities, and the Committee can hardly express its relief at such a clear and manly forcible acknowledgment exposure of such this unfaithfulness. The Committee feels deeply

197

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

the helplessness of the English people with regard to their rights over their public buildings. The Committee knows that, in cases where the majority of opinion is against a scheme of restoration, that the faculty is obtained in an obscure way, and too often under the influence of a gift of money; all the more then does the Committee rejoice that you should have found yourself impelled to put into such decided language what other people in like position with to yourself are afraid to acknowledge. [pencil ] July 6 1882 Sent to Wardle to trim & send on to Boyce for him to bring to meeting tomorrow. SPAB

1 William Greenwell (1820–1918) was a minor canon at Durham Cathedral and its librarian for many years, in which role he pursued his antiquarian researches, but his principal interest was in the excavation of burial mounds. His collection of artefacts at the British Museum is central to its early British holdings. A fellow of the Royal Society, he was President of the Durham and Northumberland Architectural and Archaeological Society from 1865 until his death. 2 Greenwell gave his Presidential address to the Durham and Northumberland Architectural and Archaeological Society on 16 May 1882. 3 A comprehensive report, essentially a transcript of Greenwell’s address, was eventually printed in the Society’s Transactions, III (1890), pp. xl–xlix, but Greenwell chose not to amend his remarks. Had it been published as a paper rather than a record of what had been said, perhaps he might have tweaked it, but he probably felt unfairly harangued, irritated that his commitment to building protection was being picked over, and chose to resist the idea of pushing a party line.

191 • To James Simmonds, 14 July 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 14. 1882. To Mr James Simmons. C of Works. Clouds Hse East Knoyle. Salisbury Dear Sir. (Clouds Hse) Will you be so good as to direct that no sand of less finely ground quality than that done for me by the mill next the main block, be used for the cavity filling-in. It is of the utmost importance that this filling-in should be accurately & scientifically done the sand and cement being measured. I should wish you to go to the place mentioned by Mr Howell, where there is a store of drift sand belonging to Mr Wyndham, on Monday morning (if you have not already done so) and send me a sample of it in a letter by post Monday evening’s and direct Mr Hibbins to have a few loads carted on to the ground at once, at all events. 198

1864–1887

I am a little disappointed at finding learning that I am sometimes the first to find out that things are not being done as they should be. Your time should be employed in watching each kind of work as is goes on, and at once correcting mistakes and directing change of proceedings, when necessary. You are aware of the kind of Chilmark stone I most want used and, in case of doubt, as to quality, you had better go again to the quarry and find out where what bed the stone comes f’m, wh’ is being sent to the works – the “Pinney” bed being the one decided on.1 Please also to agree with Mr Hibbins as to measuring with proper box frames the proportions of lime & sand put into both mills. And, ’till we can decide as to the drift sand, Mr Hibbins must use the sawing grit for the cavity filling, unless he can grind some gravel to that fineness, but even then it is of the greatest importance necessary that the quantities of sand and Portland cement should be exactly measured. I am very anxious as to the successful filling of the cavity between the two walls, and it can only succeed if it is the rules of materials & mixing are followed. I think you quite understood what I wanted done with the damp course over the window & door heads – namely, that over the thin coat of asphalt a thin coat – chiefly of tar – should be brushed while hot. Yours truly | Ph’: W LB-1, pp. 244-5

1 Of the different geological ‘beds’ of Chilmark stone, ‘the Pinney Bed is more crystalline than the others and is harder at the bottom; its colour is yellowish-brown; it works freely and is said to weather well.’ John Allen Howe, The Geology of Building Stones (London: Arnold, 1910), p. 252.

192 • To General Augustus Fox Pitt-Rivers, 17 July 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 17 1882 To Genl A: Pitt Rivers.1 4 Grosvenor Gardens. S.W. Dear Genl Rivers. (Rushmore Lodge) In answer to your letter of the 14th inst. I shall not myself be able to go to Rushmore before the week after next, but with some notes of the dining-room taken by my assistant, and with my recollection of the room, I can give you my opinion as to the finishing of it, as follows.2 The room is 32'.0" long by 24'.0" broad, and is 15'.9" high. It is rather a gaunt room, from my recollection, and from the dimensions it is too broad in 199

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

proportion to its length – therefore, anything done to it should be in the way of giving it parts. For the hanging of valuable pictures it is not satisfactory, as they would (I suppose) have to be opposite the light. Would it not be possible to hang these pictures on the two end walls of the room so as to give them a side light? It is always unsatisfactory to colour walls as a background to pictures. Either the walls should have a proper toned and patterned paper or, which would be better best, they walls should be hung with tapestried stuff. I think at present, that the best way would be to divide the walls in their height, namely, with dado, hanging, & patterned frieze on a light ground. If you thought well of this scheme I would consult with Morris & Co as to the hangings, painting, and patterning of frieze & cornice, and, perhaps, you could send me the clear outside sizes of the frames. Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-1, pp. 245-7

1 The archaeologist and anthropologist, Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers (1827–1900), married Rosalind Howard’s eldest sister, Alice Margaret Stanley (d. 1910), in 1853. His work was influenced by that of Canon William Greenwell (see above, Letter 190, note 1). He became vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries, and his collection of ethnographic items formed the basis of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University. The results of his significant archaeological excavations in Cranborne Chase were given to Farnham Museum, Dorset (now an inn). 2 PSW oversaw interior alterations to Rushmore Lodge, Pitt-Rivers’s eighteenth-century house at Tollard Royal, Wiltshire (1882–3). See Kirk, pp. 186–7 and 300.

193 • To General Augustus Fox Pitt-Rivers, 20 July 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 20. 1882 To General A: Pitt-Rivers. 4 Grosvenor Gardens. S.W. My dear Sir. (Rushmore Lodge) Before answering your letter (with its inclosure of plan) of the 18th inst, I thought it better to see Messrs Morris on the subject of the hangings & painting for the diningroom. After going into the matter we decided that it would be quite impossible to prepare & get the work done in a month’s time. The best way would be to prepare all the designs and material ready for executing the work when the house was vacated for a month or six weeks. Messrs

200

1864–1887

Morris agreed with me that the hangings would make the best ground for the pictures, but that it would [be] well for us to go and see the room before deciding upon the details, & this we could arrange to do in the week after next. Green1 has promised to send me drawings of the 4 sides of the room in a few days. Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-1, p. 247

1 A.H. Green, of Blandford.

194 • To General Augustus Fox Pitt-Rivers, 18 August 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] August 18. 1882 To General A: Pitt-Rivers. Carlsbad Austria. Dear Genl Pitt-Rivers. (Rushmore Lodge) I duly recd your letter fm Carlsbad of August 8, and since then I have set the going the work of cleaning decorating the dining-room according to the more economical estimate wh’ I sent to you on August 5, and I have since heard fm Mr Green that he is advancing rapidly with the works. I have not found occasion for changing the scheme, except that the curtain stuff will be is being made up with a little handsomer stuff. I have spoken to Morris & Co about a carpet for the large corridor, and they tell me that they could make one of the proper width of with negative coloured wools to go well with the Persian rugs you may have (Morris’s understand the character of these) and which rugs would be set on the floor occasionally right & left of the long strip down the centre middle of the corridor. I do not think the long carpet need be more than fm 4 feet to 4'.6" wide, and this would give room for Persian rugs, cabinets &c at the sides. There are 16 brackets on the top of oak panelling on each side of corridor – 32 in all – which would make good standing for various objects, such as bronzes, china bottles &c, there being a space of white frieze between the top of the brackets and the underside of plaster cornice of 2'.9" in height. LB-1, pp. 251-2

201

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

195 • To Albert Estcourt, 28 August 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] August 28. 1882. To. Mr Albert Estcourt Builder. 1 Barton St Gloucester Dear Sir. (Clouds House) I was at Knoyle on Friday and I am glad to be able to report that I found the works going on rapidly and in most ways satisfactorily but, I was greatly annoyed at finding that – beyond the damage by the railway to the Hopton Wood stone columns for the hall1 – the stones had been inaccurately bedded, and in setting them plumb the bed joints came so irregularly as to make it quite impossible for me to pass this work. There is nothing to be done other than to have the work lifted and the beds of the stones rebeddedcut perfectly truly. Also, to have such the bruises and injuries to the arrises cut away at the same time. I must leave it to you to settle when & how this shd be done, but wd suggest that the Hopton Wood people shd send a man or men to Clouds to do this work themselves. I have consented that to one of the broken capitals it should have its broken string cut out and be pieced according to my directions to Mr Simmonds, but I must beg you to insist that all damaged arrises be cut down to and removed and that the settled total height of shafts be kept; and to do this, one or more of the stones will have to be worked anew, of increased length to make up the loss of height. The bedding joints should not exceed 1/12th of an inch and should be equal in thickness all round the shafts. Now, in some cases, the thickness of the bedding joints varied from 1/16 on one side to 3/16 on the another. Mr Wyndham noticed this work, and I told him that the work it was not yet finally set. I had to complain to Mr Hibbins that his bricklayers, at times, will use ordinary mortar for pargetting the flues, in spite of my re-iterated directions to use only cowdung mortar, well made with lime & cowdung and applied thinly and carefully.2 Howell produced some roof tiles of much better character than those he shewed me last time and though they are not the right size, still I would agree to them being used for the stables so as to avoid hindering the work (the first load of inferior tiles shd be sent back) which will shortly be ready for tiling. The tiles for the offices and the main block shd be 6" x 10" when burned, and I am doubtful if Howell will be ready for with tilinges for the offices this year. Would it not be well to get a sample of this size from Donhead or elsewhere? I understand that they had good tiles at Donhead and would be accommodating there.3 We shall also want hip & valley tiles to fit the pitch, and tile & half wide tiles for bond to verges and ⅔rd tiles for eaves course and ridge course – also ridge tiles. 202

1864–1887

The ch[imne]y pot Mr Hibbins shewed me was a good one, but the finish at the top would not do. I will send you a section for this so that you can get them made for the stables & offices. The pots to the main block will have to be oval on plan. I complained to Mr Simmonds that the oak posts to stables had been painted! I do not know for what reason this had been done, but the paint will have to be scraped off. Mr Wyndham was much pleased with the work generally, and with the progress made. I enclose tracing of a ridge tile, wh’ tiles shd be made abt 15" long, also a section of the upper edge for chy pots. Yrs truly | Ph: W. LB-1, pp. 253-5

1 Hopton Wood limestone was quarried in Derbyshire and transported by rail and road to East Knoyle. 2 The traditional technique of including cow dung in mortar is still employed in parts of the world where farm animal dung is readily available. 3 The 1881 census records several brick makers in Mill Lane, Donhead St Andrew, Wiltshire.

196 • To Gertrude or Constance Astley, 29 November 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Novr 29. 1882. To Miss Astley Arisaig Hse by Fort William N: B: Dear Miss Astley In answer to your letter of the 17th instant. If you should fail in getting whinstone of sufficient size to do the memorial1 from stone got from your own ground it would seem to be hardly to the purpose to get that sort of stone from elsewhere – unless it could be got from somewhere nearby? Still I think, in that rude little churchyard with its ancient ruins standing by, the native stone would look more congruous than any imported stone would; but, if the whinstone is not to be come at I think unpolished granite would be the next best, though, in that case, I should have to make a fresh design as the design you have is quite unsuited to the working of granite. I enclose you a letter I have had from Mr Ramsay in answer to my request as to what rooms he had taken as wanting new paper &c. Would it not be well for you to come and see me when you are in London? I would have a book of Morris’s & Cos papers here and from this you could choose any variations from the papers now on the walls and, as I have the plans of the house, we could easily determine 203

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

on the best for each purpose room? Also I could get patterns of the different paints made to suit the papers settled on, and the painters could match the colours from the patterns. Believe me | Yours sincerely | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 1-2

1 See above, Letter 186.

197 • To General Augustus Fox Pitt-Rivers, 11 December 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Decr 11 1882 To General A: Pitt-Rivers Rushmore Lodge by Salisbury Dear General Pitt-Rivers. (Rushmore) I sent my assistant to measure the fire-place woodwork at Penywern Road on Friday1 & I went myself in the afternoon and met the Cabinet maker there & directed him how & what to remove, pack and send to Rushmore. He told me that you had some old marble mantels which wd replace the woodwork. Will you be so good as to write to him & tell him where they are? I told him he had better not disturb the tile settings or remove the dog grates.2 These latter are of no value to remove & to refix others would cost more than those removed were worth. My assistant was there again on Sat: and completed his measurements. In answer to your letter of the 7th inst. I have no objection to your proposed collaborated conceit but if Brer Jackass should saddle, bridle, and ride to the devil on Brer Fox please do not blame me. Something might be made of your A & your R but the P, as you have it, will not do at all. In any case I think the jest had better be cut in the oak cresting which is to come just under the coving of the roof of the wood canopy to the fireplace of hall.3 Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, p. 4

1 Pitt-Rivers’s London residence was in Penywern Road, Brompton, until he moved in 1880 to 4 Grosvenor Gardens, Belgravia. He may have continued to own or to maintain an interest in the Penywern Road house.

204

1864–1887 2 Simple free-standing fire grates, which stand upon supports called dogs. 3 Pitt-Rivers seems to have been wanting to incorporate above the hall fireplace at Rushmore Lodge some kind of crest or motto, to his own design, incorporating his initials and middle name by illustrating the Fox and Stork fable of Aesop. PSW was less than convinced: see also next letter.

198 • To General Augustus Fox Pitt-Rivers, 15 December 1882 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Decr 15 1882 To General A: Pitt-Rivers Rushmore Lodge by Salisbury Dear General Pitt-Rivers. (Rushmore) Since receiving your letter of the 12 inst Mr Toten has called upon me and explained his case. He said that he had specified in his estimate that nothing was allowed for refitting the back room at No 21 Penywern Road after the panelling tapestry &c were removed. As you, most likely, have a copy of his estimate you can see if what he says is correct. I did not propose that the P, or central character of the Fox and Stork story should be “omitted”; what I meant was that, decoratively, the sketch of it, as it stood on your paper, would not do, as the bird and bottle would topple over and the Fox would lap-up the liquor. I do not say that the P is an impossible letter but, as a designer, I shd say it would be a “twister”. To get such a design (altogether) made would be something, in the way of thought & care; but to get it carved in marble and set just in the front of all beholders would be more than difficult, and its obtrusive presence, trying. It seemed to me that it would be easier to get it done in wood, and that a good place for putting it up would be as part of the cresting just under the coving of the hood of the fireplace. [sketch] The scroll-work could be left in uncoloured oak and the story be gilded. Your special admiration for the design of the middle letter put me in mind of the artist & critic. The artist asked his friend the critic what he thought of the central figure in the artists picture, and the critic said ‘don’t you think the legs are a little short?’ on which the artist said returned ‘too long you mean, too long; yes, they are a little too long’!! Yours very truly. | Ph: W. LB-2, pp. 5-6

205

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

199 • To John Henry Middleton, 13 February 1883 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn,| London. Tues: Feb: 13. 1883 Dear Middleton1 Would not you be able to prepare a resolution, to be agreed to on Tuesday, in answer to the Dean of Peterborough who is to say that the tower is to be broken down?2 Would not the points be The present lantern is a good example of one of the mediæval changes wh’ have occurred in the history of the cathedral – That its height & character are well fitted for the indifferent foundation on wh’ the church stands That it has for 500 years given the a marked character to the building so that its loss would be missed & regretted in future by all thoughtful people, &c &c The Socy would urge upon the authorities to take the best precautions in removing the tower to meet the forces wh’ will be in activity all round when the pressure now exercised by the tower on the 4 arms of the church at the Crossing is withdrawn, &c &c. Yours | Ph: Webb. P:S: No one on earth except, perhaps, Pearson,3 would care two straws for what any modern archt wd put in place of the present tower. SPAB, Peterborough Cathedral file

1 John Henry Middleton (1846–96) was distinguished both as an art historian and archaeologist, though a long period of debilitating depression whilst an undergraduate took its toll on his long-term health. His expert knowledge of Roman antiquities resulted in specialised studies in 1885 and 1892. He was elected Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge in 1886, awarded honorary doctorates from Cambridge (1893) and Oxford (1894), appointed director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1889, and became art director of the South Kensington Museum in 1892. The pressure of this final appointment threatened a recurrence of his former depression, and his death in 1896 was the result of an overdose (probably accidental) of morphia. PSW admired Middleton’s erudition, and valued his membership of the SPAB. 2 See next letter. 3 For John Loughborough Pearson, see next letter, note 2.

200 • To John Perowne, Dean of Peterborough Cathedral, probably late February or early March 1883 Drafted on behalf of SPAB S.P.A. Buildings to the very Reverend the Dean of Peterborough.1 The Committee of this society having seen the notices in the public newspapers as to the state of the central tower or lantern of Peterborough Cathedral ventures 206

1864–1887

to address you, on a matter so momentous as that of the proposed rebuilding of the tower.2 The Committee wishes to express their its satisfaction that instant steps havinge been taken under the direction of a skilled Architect to meet the danger hanging over one of the noblest buildings in England. As it will, evidently, be necessary to erect under and around the tower a shoring and scaffolding of enormous immense strength, the Committee would suggest that when this and other precautions have been taken to avoid collapse in this part of the fabric, a consultation should be held in the building under the direction of the Cathedral authorities and the architect, with the assistance of an engineer or engineers of great experience, to see if it would not be possible to so to support underpin, support and stay the tower that the necessity of taking it down and rebuilding it might be avoided. SPAB, Peterborough Cathedral file

1 John James Stewart Perowne (1823–1904) was Dean of Peterborough Cathedral from 1878 until he was appointed Bishop of Worcester in 1891. 2 The poor condition of the central tower at Peterborough led the architect John Loughborough Pearson (1817–97) to condemn it as too dangerous. In 1883 it would be demolished and rebuilt, with argument focussing on how it should be replaced. ‘Some people wanted the pointed east and west tower arches to be replaced by round Norman ones, while others suggested heightening the tower by one stage of work in the Norman style, using original stones . . . where possible and placing the Decorated stage above it.’ Gerald Cobb, English Cathedrals. The Forgotten Centuries. Restoration and Change from 1530 to the Present Day (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), p. 98.

201 • To Reverend John Perowne and Chapter of Peterborough Cathedral, 24 March 1883 Drafted on behalf of SPAB; an earlier pencil draft also survives Peterborough Cathedral March 24 1883. To the very Rev The Dean and the Chapter of Peterborough Cathedral Gentlemen. The Committee of this Society fearing that its suggestions with regard to sustaining and repairing the lantern tower of the cathedral, as opposed to the proposal to pull it down and rebuild it, have not received the attention which such a proposition deserved, begs leave to reiterate its opinion that before one stone of the tower is raised, lifted a competent committee, aided by one or more civil engineers of acknowledged skill, should be formed to report upon the possibility of keeping the tower standing as it is save, only, with the necessary renewal of one or more of the piers, the strengthening of the foundations on which they stand, and the repairs of the superincumbent structure. d

207

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

That it is within the power of English scientific skill to compass the safe preservation of so valuable a part of the ancient fabric this Committee fully believes and, if this is so, the public would not be fairly treated if this Society did not earnestly press on the guardians of the Cathedral the necessity there is for the assurance that all possible plans for securing the tower have been honestly canvassed before giving in to an acknowledgment of defeat & pulling it down. [added] I have the honour to be | Gentlemen | Your most obedient Servant Thackeray Turner | Secretary1 SPAB, Peterborough Cathedral file

1 See below, Letter 208, note 6.

202 • To Reverend William Henry Metcalfe, April 1883 Drafted on behalf of SPAB The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings To the Rev W:H: Metcalfe Vicar of Ottery St Mary: Devon.1 Dear Sir Your letter of the 31st of March last was duly laid before a Committee of this Society and received the attention due to a matter of so much importance as the preservation of the well known church of your parish.2 I am directed by the Committee to say that, after careful consideration, it is unable to express any sorrow for ignorance which has not been successfully laid to its charge save, perhaps, that the Society may, happily, have been misinformed as to any further proposition with regard to alterations to the building. The Church of Ottery St Mary is so exceptional in its general character and particular features that, for many years it has been visited by very constantly by archæologists and art students with both pleasure and profit and, though it suffered severely when it was scoured almost at the beginning of the, so called, restoration movement still, up to within a few years, its general aspect appearance had not been tampered with. The decorations applied to the interior of the south towertransept have been done with the well known skill of one of the ablest of modern architects3 and, no doubt, the intention of the munificent donor of the work was most praiseworthy; but this committee, and it is persuaded that a great majority of those people who are skilled in historical and artistic matters, have seen with dismay the disastrous effect upon the original perfect balance, and breadth, and simplicity of this, one of the delightful examples of English originality and beauty in the list of its mediæval monuments.4 d

208

1864–1887

This Committee cannot agree with you that such decoration in such a building is a mere matter of taste; surely it is rather a matter of fact that before these decorations were applied the building was almost unaltered in its mediæval appearance and that, now, one part of it is very markedly and unnecessarily modernised. Unhappily this work is done, & can hardly be undone, but this Committee would ask you, in all sincerity, to add your influence persuasion to what influence it has in protesting, in season & out of season, against any further change beyond the necessary repairs being made to a building which, beyond the necessary repairs, should be spared from any kind of experiment whatever either in surface decoration or structural alteration. SPAB

1 William Henry Metcalfe (b. 1838/9) was vicar of St Mary’s, Ottery St Mary, from 1874 until 1890. 2 St Mary’s was consecrated in 1260. 3 William Butterfield oversaw the restoration in 1849–52, a report from the Exeter Diocesan Church Architectural Society in 1841 describing the church ‘as having a degraded and neglected appearance’. The choir screen had been taken away earlier in the century, ‘and Butterfield completed the process of opening out the building into one parochial church. The floor of the transepts and of the western part of the chancel was lowered to the level of the nave . . . In 1878, the walls of the south transept were tiled in mosaics, out of the keeping with the mediaeval work, but considered “beautiful” by the Victorian “restorers”.’ John A. Whitham, The Church of St. Mary of Ottery (Gloucester: The British Publishing Company, 1979), pp. 15–16. 4 This pinpoints the essential irreconcilability between the views of the SPAB conservationists and even the most well-intentioned of restoration architects. For PSW, Butterfield’s work at Ottery St Mary could not be anything other than wrong-headed, and the fact that it can be held to typify one phase of Butterfield’s use of colour captures everything that was objectionable about it. ‘[Butterfield’s] churches of the 1840s are the simplest. White walls, brown seats and dark roof timbers always set the tone. . . . Perhaps the supreme example of this first phase is the wonderfully light and creamy brown stone interior of Ottery St Mary, where Butterfield picked out the medieval vaulting in blue, red and gold, and the windows glow with the same primary colours.’ Paul Thompson, William Butterfield (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 272.

203 • To Percy Wyndham, 1 May 1883 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 1. 1883 To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P: 44 Belgrave Square. S.W. Dear Mr Wyndham (Clouds Hse) I recd your letter on Saturday evening but decided to wait a day or two before answering it. I am exceedingly sorry that any of the work at Clouds should have 209

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

been so contrary to your pleasure that you should have felt obliged to make up your mind to have it removed and at great cost.1 It is certainly true that, if the buff glazed bricks in the stables have to be replaced by another facing, it would be better done before any other work is fixed there, but I feel that now is not a good or safe time in which to judge of the effect of the said bricks. When the boxes and stalls are made up, the walls whitened and the rack & manger fittings in place the whole thing will have a quite different appearance. As these bricks are built-in solid and are part of the substance & strength of the walls, if they must be removed I shall have to make build up a half brick lining instead in addition to fixing the coloured tiles you are in favour of: added to which the tiles are in themselves never so secure as the solid glazed bricks. I am going down to Knoyle this evening and will consider the matter there.2 I am obliged to you for the pleasant expressions of approval of the great body of the work at Clouds given in the former part of your letter but I am afraid I re-read them of rather as sops to Cerberus3 and the pleasure was somewhat qualified. Will you be so good as to make an appointment to go with me to the Pancras Iron Company’s rooms to choose the stable fittings as I should like to have settled which mangers racks &c you would wish used before giving Estcourt drawings for the work which will be in combination with them.4 I shall be back here tomorrow night, but I have to see Rogers Field as to the drainage &c on Thursday, but I could go with you on Friday or on a day which would suit you in next week. Yours very truly. | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 10-12

1 After visiting Clouds on 21 April, PWY wrote of his reactions to the work in progress, expressing a reservation about the stables. ‘“I was . . . very much pleased with the house. . . . I realized how much bigger the rooms look now the house is nearer finished . . . I cannot get over my dislike to the buff colour at the horses’ heads and am determined to change them. I have given myself plenty of time and have tried to convince myself but cannot do it.” He spoke to [Estcourt] and discovered that the glazed faces could be cut off the bricks and replaced with a facing of grey glazed tiles. The work would cost £175.’ Dakers, pp. 67–8. 2 In fact, nothing was done about the bricks. A year later, PWY had begun to shift his ground, perhaps as much to please PSW as anything else. ‘I was at Clouds yesterday and liked what I liked before as much, and disliked what I disliked before perhaps rather less’ (25 June 1884). By December 1884 he had given way altogether. ‘I took my coachman over to Clouds the other day and he was much pleased with his quarters, and not having a sensitive eye does not mind the yellow glazed tiles.’ Dakers, p. 68. 3 The multi-headed dog of ancient Greek and Roman mythology, who guarded the entrance to the underworld. 4 The St Pancras Ironwork Co., describing themselves as ‘Engineers, Ironfounders, and Smiths’, was based in Old Saint Pancras Road, opposite Old Saint Pancras Church.

210

1864–1887

204 • To Salisbury town clerk, 12 May 1883 Drafted on behalf of SPAB; a first draft also exists The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings 12th May 1883 To the Town Clerk of the Corporation of Salisbury Dear Sir The Committee of this Society, having received very valuable assistance from you, at the time when successful efforts were made to preserve the historic fabric of Audley House in Salisbury,1 ventures again to ask your assistance help with regard to the ancient bridge, called Crane Bridge, which spans the small stream adjoining Audley House.2 The Committee learns that the small scheme for widening this bridge is again under the consideration of the town authorities, and that it is proposed to take away one or more of the piers and to cover the space of two or three arches with an iron construction in combination with what may remain of the ancient stone bridge.3 Anyone who has noticed this way of dealing with old bridges – many of which in late years have been so maltreated – will be aware, at once, that this interesting remnant of mediæval Salisbury, if so treated, will not only be ruined, but will be treated with gratuitous contempt. The bridge has evidently been widened at some former time and, with such skill that, the more ancient part of the bridge is still to be seen faithfully serving the purpose for which, so many years back it was built. If it is now necessary to make any alteration to the bridge (this Committee has received no information of such necessity) surely it cannot be quite out of the power of modern science to do this work without such a bungling contrivance as a piece of common railroad disfigurement? If, Sir, you can assist the Society by bringing this matter before the Town Council, or other proper authority, or in any other way helping this Society to press upon the town’s-people the necessity there is to scrutinise very carefully closely all dealing with their antiquities, this Committee will be much indebted to you. I am Dear Sir – On behalf of the Committee – | &c &c SPAB, Crane Bridge Salisbury file

1 In 1880, Audley House in Crane Street, Salisbury, the oldest parts of which date from the fifteenth century and which from 1634 had served as the Workhouse, was threatened with demolition. A campaign to save it resulted in the building being purchased by a member of the cathedral chapter. It is now the administrative centre for the Salisbury diocese.

211

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 2 Although there was a bridge as early as 1300, the present Crane Bridge, over the Avon, dates from the fifteenth century. 3 This had been brought to the attention of the SPAB by Margaret Hussey, of the Close, Salisbury (9 May 1883, SPAB, Crane Bridge Salisbury file).

205 • To Jane Morris, 16 May 1883 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. May 16. 1883 My dear Janey Your letter did not come to me as quite from the dead, for I had been, a many times, living with you in thought over your great trouble. Morris has always put aside his nervousness when I asked him to tell me how you were getting on.1 Your letter came to me on Monday after my return from Welwyn and, as I shall not see my brother for a fortnight now, I will write to him. When I got your letter I wrote to Morris to ask him for a doctor’s description of the complaint so that I might put more clearly to my brother what was wanted: of course I am not sure that he may know of such a place but, if he does not, he may know someone who does. As soon as I get his (my brother’s) answer I will let you know what he says.2 I have always thought it lucky that, for the time, you were able to go to such a fresh scene as the place you are staying at and, remembering what the weather has been for so long a time, the place could hardly have been a better one for you all – and now the weather looks as if it meant to trifle with our feelings no more, for a while; and even smudgy London looks as fair as such a monstrous wen can look. I went yesterday evening to see the working man – Tinworth’s – terra cotta models of new Testament story.3 They are really interesting, having a character which can only come of freedom from convention. I shd like you to go and see them when you come to town. With kindest love to Jenny & May. | Believe me yours affectionately Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 59-60

1 Jane had been unwell through the winter, spending time with a carer first at Bournemouth and then at Lyme Regis, which is probably where she was still when PSW wrote. See CLJM, p. 127, note 1. 2 Presumably he was hoping that Harry Webb would suggest either a healthy location for Jane’s symptoms, or some kind of specialist clinic. WM mentioned Jane’s health when sending birthday wishes and some money to his mother. ‘Janey is not so well as when she first came back from the country [probably Kelmscott Manor]. . . . I would have sent [money] before, but I have had so much to pay with Janey’s illness & all that to say truth I have been somewhat pressed.’ WM to Emma Shelton Morris, 23 March 1883, CLWM, II.

212

1864–1887 3 The ceramic artist, George Tinworth (1843–1913), after a childhood of exceptional hardship, worked for the Doulton ceramic factory in Lambeth from 1867 until his death. In addition to producing pottery in the familiar Doulton salt-glazed stoneware, he also made larger terracotta pieces which were displayed annually at the Royal Academy and which had won JR’s admiration. PSW attended an exhibition devoted to Tinworth’s terracotta panels on biblical subjects at 9 Conduit Street, Regent Street. The subjects included The Release of Barabbas, Entry into Jerusalem, and The Descent from the Cross.

206 • To William Thomas Tate, 13 June 1883 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] June 13. 1883 To. W: Thomas Tate Esqre Stranton Green Hartlepool1 Dear Sir. I had hoped to have answered your letter of June the 7th by sending my memoranda for your assisting you in building your house, but, imperative work intervened and delayed me and I could not get done by deputy what I wanted to express. I now send you a carefully considered arrangement of plan to enable you to go into the matter with your architect.2 In so far as I am concerned, you are at liberty to use the plan in any way that may suit your convenience. I also send a sheet of memoranda to help you in advising with your Architect as to what you want done in detail. I need scarcely say that you would do well to insist that no ornament should be applied to the house. If all ornament were omitted in modern houses they would be much less offensive. Unfortunately, ill understood and therefore bad ornament is much cheaper than good construction. In the matter of fine grates, “Messrs Longden, Phœnix Foundry Sheffield” would supply you with casts from any of my patterns, which you will be at liberty to use.3 Yours truly. | Ph: W: LB-2, p. 13

1 William Thomas Tate (1843–1921), bank accountant. 2 PSW designed Hill House in Greatham, near Hartlepool, for Tate, but pressures of work led him to entrust the working drawings and oversight of the construction work to the Hartlepool architect, James Barry. PSW refused any fee. See Kirk, pp. 226–7 and 300. 3 PSW often used Longden and Co. of Sheffield as suppliers of cast-iron fireplaces, stoves and other kitchen apparatus. ‘Tate followed Webb’s advice to avoid ornament on the exterior – and indeed also in the interior, which has characteristic Webb fittings, including fireplaces with bracketed mantelpieces and grates by Longden to Webb’s design.’ Kirk, p. 227.

213

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

207 • To Canon William Greenwell, 22 June 1883 Drafted on behalf of SPAB, and dated in a different hand. Amendments in pencil. 22 June 1883 To The Revd Canon Greenwell Dear Sir. The Committee of our Society has since my last letter to you seen in the “Architect” newspaper of the 9th of June 1883 a report of certain remarks made by you at a meeting of the Durham and Northumberland Archæological association, on Langley Castle, Northumberland.1 The Committee was pleased to have its attention again drawn to so valuable a remnant of a north country stronghold before any work had been undertaken in alteration of its present condition. In Parker’s Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages, there is a paragraph noticing the neglected state of the building under the care of the trustees of Greenwich Hospital;2 and it would be satisfactory to all students of historical architecture in England if they could be assured that the present possessor of the fabric would give skilfully directed attention to its preservation. Evidence of this neglect is seen in the diversion of Stream into the main building where it forms a pond.

On turning to page 332 of Parker’s book – Vol. II, it will be seen that this building is a massively constructed border castle of great strength, evidently built, chiefly, for purposes of defence, when the comfort and convenience of even those days were subordinated to the special purpose of the work. You most satisfactorily state your strong views against “restoration” but you are reported to have said that Mr Fowler (the Architect into whose hands the building would be entrusted) “would not destroy anything he could help, and would not put into the Castle any work of an ambitious or pretentious character”. Now this Committee thought that it fully understood what was in your mind when so expressing yourself, but it also thought that both the proprietor, the Architect, and many others might consider that no real injury would come to the building from the adaptation of its ancient and peculiar accommodation to the requirements of a modern English gentleman’s house.3 At our Committee meeting there were several members of large experience both of the characteristics of such strongholds as Langley Castle, and of the accepted necessities of modern house requirements of even the ruder type, and they were aghast at what would certainly happen to this noble building in refitting it (even with the best intentions as to respecting its present completeness of example) for modern use. The Committee believed that if the building were simply roofed in, roughly floored, and used as farm storehouse and cattleshed, it would suffer less serious injury than would surely happen to it from the proposed transformation; and the Committee also wishes me to ask you if you could not communicate with the proprietor and the architect and get clearly stated information of what was

214

1864–1887

proposed to be done, before any stone of such a splendid specimen of mediæval England were touched in the way of alteration? SPAB, Langley Castle, Northumberland file

1 The Society had visited Langley Castle on 31 May, the guest of the collier and archaeologist Cadwallader John Bates (1853–1902), who bought the Castle from the trustees of Greenwich Hospital. In 1890 he served as High Sheriff of Northumberland. 2 ‘It is now the property of Greenwich Hospital, and much neglected by the trustees of that establishment. The interior has evidently been destroyed by fire.’ John Henry Parker, Some Account of Domestic Architecture in England, From Edward I to Richard II (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1853), p. 334. 3 Cadwallader John Bates was vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. After his death, the Society noted that Langley Castle was, ‘with the assistance of Mr. Hodgson Fowler, architect, of Durham, converted into a stately dwelling-house, sufficiently furnished with all modern comforts’.

208 • To Reverend Francis Browne Newman, 7 August 1883 Drafted on behalf of SPAB; an earlier draft also exists The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings To the Revd F: B: Newman.1 Burton Latimer Rectory. Hon’ Secretary to the Northants and Oakham Architectural Society. Sir The present state of the Steeple of Irthlingborough Church, Northants’ having been brought under the notice of a Committee of this society it was decided – after receiving the report of the Secretary of the Society who had visited the Church – to send to Irthlingborough two members2 who were experienced in old buildings to examine into the condition of the structure of the tower and to report upon it. This visit was made in last month, and the gentlemen were kindly assisted in their examination by Mr Joseph Peacock, the architect,3 who conducted them over the building and much assisted them with his experience and local knowledge. The members of the society were also aided by a gentleman who was there engaged in measuring and making drawings, and who most willingly answered questions and gave much useful information. Undoubtedly the tower is in a very critical condition and must be the cause of great anxiety to the custodians of the Church. It appeared to the surveyors after close examination that the foundation itself of the steeple had not given way. This seemed to be corroborated by the fact that, about the year 1807, a buttress of great bulk, height and of enormous weight had been added to the Eastern face of the tower and, apparently, without further depressing the foundation.4

215

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

The cracks in the walls which were, most likely, the cause of this buttress having been built were evidently stayed by its support, but the cracks through the walls of the other faces were too surely in an active state. All round the tower at its base the faces of the walls shew signs of being crushed between the weight from above and the resisting foundation below, so that it appeared certain that the bulk of the walling was becoming disintegrated, and the upper stage of the tower below the lantern was spreading outwards, tearing the walls of the base of the lantern apart. The lantern itself, of much originality in design and of great beauty, seems to have been built with greater care and with better mortar than the rest of the tower and is, practically, in a sound condition. That this steeple of Irthlingborough should, if possible, be sustained there can be no two opinions, as to pull it down and reconstruct it – apart from the great cost of such a work – would destroy its value: added to which, before it could be taken down, it would have to be shored and strutted to make it safe for those engaged on the work. In any case this Committee supposes that the tower will not be allowed to fall as, in falling, it would probably do untold damage to the adjoining church, fine vaulted crypts &c and would endanger life. As, Sir, your architectural Society, which has so wisely undertaken the cost of making careful drawings of the tower as it at present stands, would be able to influence people in the county and others interested in such a valuable remnant of unmutilated Northamptonshire art, I am therefore directed to appeal to you to urge upon the attention of all so interested the necessity there is of at once taking steps to put up a scaffolding around the tower, and afterwards to apply in the most careful way a large mass of bonding, shoring and strutting, the most important part of which would be this banding or cradling. This banding should be done at several stages, bolting timbers completely round the walls, filling out between the buttresses, and sustaining with perpendiculars to keep the cradling from sliding; adding on the inside occasional stiffened floors or stagings with the necessary planking and strutting to the faces of the walls. As soon as the cradling with its supports is secured a perfect system of diagonal shoring should be applied. If this temporary support to the tower should be determined upon and the risk of sudden collapse of the fabric met, there would be time and security in which to consider what should be done permanently to sustain the weight and support and repair the walls. If, as this Committee believes, the foundation on which the tower is built is a sound one, it also believes that the tower could be permanently sustained. Though this work should be schemed out by an engineer or other expert accustomed to deal with great weights the Committee would suggest, as one opinion only, the principle of building up on the inside from the foundation to the lantern a complete tower of hard brick in cement, octagon on the inside, and to the outline of the inside of the tower against its walls. At certain points to lay across the new brick tower iron girders or joists projecting into the old walls, vaulting each girder

216

1864–1887

stage with cement concrete between the joists, banding the tower on the outside with iron and tieing through from wall to wall with strong iron ties resting on the top of the concrete floors. In addition to this, solid brick blocks with a short iron joist in each of them should project at intervals from the internal brick tower into the old walls beyond, and the whole thoroughly grouted with liquid cement. If such a work as this were well done, it would secure the tower from collapsing or spreading, would sustain part of the weight of the tower itself, and the whole of the lantern on the top, and would give a core of great rigidity for applying any other safeguard. The Committee thinks that the question before the guardians of the building is this: That it cannot be entertained that the steeple should be allowed to fall; That to take it down a strong and safe scaffolding would be necessary; That as this scaffolding was being fixed particular examination could be made as to the weakest parts of the building which could be at once secured, and that afterwards, at a comparatively small cost, shoring cradling could be added so as to make the work safe while the workmen were engaged in preparing and executing carrying out any scheme which might be resolved upon for sustaining the tower in a substantial way. I am directed, Sir, by this Committee, to ask you to give the matter your consideration and to lay this letter before the authorities and others interested, as an outside expression of opinion formed on the necessity of considering at once how to save Irthlingborough steeple. [ pencil addition to first draft] Sent to Middleton5 for him to overhaul & send to Turner for copying & sending off.6 August 7 1883. SPAB, Irthlingborough file

1 2 3 4

Francis Browne Newman (1826–1901), rector of St Mary the Virgin, Burton Latimer, 1872–95. The survey was made on 27 July by PSW and John Henry Middleton. See above, Letter 199. The Scottish-born architect, Joseph Peacock (1821–93) undertook his training in Worthing, Sussex. St Peter’s, Irthlingborough, of twelfth-century origin, was renowned for its lantern tower. Despite the earnestness of the SPAB’s campaign for its careful repair, the tower was pulled down and rebuilt in 1889–93. The new tower, lacking its original sloping buttress, was rededicated in 1893, and its peal of bells increased from six to eight. 5 See above, Letter 199, note 1. 6 Hugh Thackeray Turner (HTT, 1853–1937) had been appointed part-time paid secretary of the SPAB on 13 December 1882. From January 1883, all letters sent on behalf of the Committee carried his signature; he was doubtless the author of many of those concerning individual projects, but PSW drafted a significant number of others. For an account of HTT’s own career as a church architect, which ran concurrently with his work for the SPAB, see Robin Stannard, ‘The ecclesiastical work of Hugh Thackeray Turner’, in Geoff Brandwood, ed., Seven Church Architects 1830–1930 (London: The Ecclesiological Society, 2010), pp. 121–46. I am grateful to Robin Stannard for information on a number of matters relating to HTT.

217

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

209 • To George and Caroline Boyce, 8 August 1883 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Aug: 8. 1883 My dear Boyce, and Madame also. It was kind of you to write so soon, and I hardly expected to hear of you for a fortnight or so. They accused you of all sorts of malignity at New Place for not taking it on your way, but I pacified them by saying how unwise it wd have been for you to stop on your journey with the inevitable lumber, and they gave-in to the reasoning of the wise-one. Yanwath rejoiced you more than you allowed yourself to express, I am sure;1 though, considering the fearful peril of from the ring nosed bull I can hardly wonder at your caution. How I should have flown out of the field, and my wits at the same time, I know too well. Heaven save me from a bull, even an Irish one. I fancy your point of view of Yanwath must be from the back – i.e. with your back to the iron way looking to the S: W: with the beck somewhat fronting you on the right hand; but I may be wrong, wh’ w’d be strange indeed. Brougham Castle gatehouse is a noble tower and – from Parker – not so horridly ruined as to be useless fm a reasonable point of view: added to which, a castle should be in ruin if any building can look satisfactorily in a picture in that state – a castle in ruin is a peaceful looking object.2 How about the mill, attached to the Castle, wh’ Parker mentions as still having some of its wheels? Brougham Hall is, I suppose, still used as a house and therefore will be for having flunkies in the foreground, plush breeches all complete or, may be, they would be ruined too under the coat tails! When you get settled, either you or Mrs Boyce will be good enough to tell me more of the sweet antiquity you must have about you: but no more of bulls I beg of you, – my very flesh did creep when I thought of the ring in his nose and his long swinging trot. Middleton and I went down to Irthlingborough on Friday last, and found the Ch’ tower there even finer than we had expected and also in worse condition.3 The archt who met us and is, strange-to-say, anxious to save it, has “restored” the church itself – wh’ he was proud in shewing us – in such a way as to have put both of us in high fever. He was absolutely unconscious of what he had done and, tho’ a good-natured fellow, was incapable of understandg the matter of old art in any way. Also, I’m afraid his constructive or engineering power is far below what is wanted for dealing with such a crumbling mass as the tower is. I believe the tower could be saved, with care, and some notion of cause and effect, and I should like to try, but the work would be taxing and somewhat costly. I think the only effort that will be made will be to get money enough to pull it down & rebuild it – say at a cost of £5000: but they can’t get enough money to keep it standing – say at a cost of half that sum. Tis a bad lookout I’m afraid, as the landlords about there are all very rich and profoundly careless as to what will

218

1864–1887

happen – and that shortly, unless it be looked to at once – namely, it must fall. I felt some spice of fear lest it should come down while I was on its parapet under the lantern. On our way by train we had two Irish – man & woman – going to Liverpool on way to America, and it was a curious thing to hear them, & their friends on the Euston platform, cursing the English, with a mixture of whole Earse4 and broken English, finishing with a shout of joy with, “Carey”! as much as to say that that made amends – his death – for a good deal.5 I found the Welwyn folk all right on Sunday, but it was misty-wet all day and I got not other walking than continual pacing of the garden, wh’ was lovely enough. It has been a hot bath of moisture here ever since & today there has been heavy rain. I hope you are better off, but am suspicious of the neighbouring mountains supplying you with more than enough of water. Wallis looked in here last night and he wanted to know of you, as you were not at the meeting,6 he said, (I suppose there must have been a meeting of the O.W. Colour Society)7 and he did not know you were gone. There, blessings on you both, and much luck do I wish you, and freedom from the horns of such a dilemma as those of the ringed one. Yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 187-8

1 GPB and his wife were staying at or near Eamont Bridge, in Cumbria, GPB sketching and painting. Yanwath was the neighbouring village. 2 The thirteenth-century Brougham Castle is situated on the south bank of the river Eamont, about two miles south-east of Penrith, in Cumbria. The ruins were painted by Turner, and also inspired Wordsworth (in The Prelude). The owner in 1883, Henry James Tufton, first Baron Hothfield (1844–1926), a member of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society, was sensitive to the historical value of his possession. ‘As far as the castle’s structure was concerned . . . he wished above all to leave well alone.’ Henry Summerson, ‘The History of the Castle’, in Henry Summerson et al, Brougham Castle, Cumbria, Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Research Series, VIII (1998), p. 72. 3 See previous letter. 4 Meanings and spellings vary: here, either Scots Gaelic, or Irish. 5 The Irish nationalist, James Carey (1845–1883) had been shot dead days earlier, on 29 July. He had been complicit in the murders of Thomas Henry Burke, Permanent Undersecretary at the Irish Office and Lord Frederick Cavendish, Chief Secretary for Ireland, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in May 1882. After arrest, Carey gave evidence against fellow conspirators, and whilst on the run was killed on board a ship travelling from Cape Town to Natal by an Irish republican who discovered his identity. 6 The usual Thursday-night meeting of the SPAB committee. For Henry Wallis, see above, Letter 96, note 12. 7 The Old Water-Colour Society, of which GPB was a member.

219

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

210 • To Lord Crewe, about 12 August 1883 Drafted on behalf of SPAB The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings To. The Hon’ Lord Crewe1 My Lord As honorary Secretary of this society I beg leave to inform you that we have received a report from a skilled Archæologist and trusted correspondent – a member of our Socy: - informing us with regard to Astbury Church2 near Congleton in Cheshire, that some steps are to be taken during the putting up a new organ in the North aisle of the Chancel of this Church of a new organ which may involve the removal of a parclose screen,3 a fine carved oak pulpit, and the cutting into and destroying the completeness of one of the few remaining perfect examples of English Rood-screen work.4 That such ruthless destruction of work ancient art of exceptional value should be entertained contemplated for a moment by the custodians of the church, this Society can hardly believe, as Architects, and other advisers of Rectors & Church Wardens are daily becoming more aware of the priceless value of our national monuments of ancient art, and particularly of the rarer specimens of original fittings preserved in our Churches. It is probable therefore that the Rector & Church Wardens of Astbury have not been fully cautioned informed as to the irreparable injury which would arise from displacing or truncating any portion parts of the items of furniture above named, and I feel sure that your Lordship will consider that this society is only doing its duty by calling the attention of yourself, and other persons of cultivation and responsibility in the County of Chester, as to any danger which would seem to be approaching to threaten injury to any of the fragments remaining in the Country of those works of artistic beauty and invaluable historical fact which may, by rare good fortune, still remain in this Country. I would ask your Lordship therefore if you would, in a friendly way, use your influence to urge upon the custodians of the Church at Astbury,5 the wisdom of reconsidering, before it may be too late, any scheme which may be under consideration contemplated for putting up in such a position in the church a merely modern piece of furniture which would in any way involve the destruction or disturbance of parts of the building which should, surely, be sacred in the minds eyes of all thoughtful and educated people. Copied on to Society’s paper and sent to Morris for his amendment or signature, and to be sent to Lord Crewe, 23 Hill Street Berkeley Square at once. Dated Aug 12. 1883. | Ph.W. SPAB 1 Hungerford Crewe, third Baron Crewe (1812–94), of Crewe Hall in Cheshire, was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. 2 St Mary’s, Newbold Astbury, Cheshire. There was a church in Saxon times: the present building is of Norman origin. Some restoration work had taken place in 1862.

220

1864–1887 3 ‘A screen or railing in a church enclosing an altar, tomb, etc, or separating a chapel, etc from the main body of the church.’ (OED). 4 ‘The chief glory of the church is the Rood Screen of fan-tracery, of 15th century construction; the Choir Stalls and Parclose Screens are of the same date. The Rood Screen . . . suffered much from the paint and whitewash of the Puritans . . . [The Pulpit] is of the Tudor period, though it is evident that it was only placed in its present position after the removal of the “Three-decker” in the 19th century.’ J.E. Gordon Cartlidge, A Short History of the Church of St. Mary of Astbury, Cheshire (Congleton: rev. edn., 1970), [p. 9]. 5 The rector was John Edmeades Colyer (d. 1888).

211 • To Kate Faulkner, 20 August 1883 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London. Monday Aug: 20. ’83 My dear Kate1 It was kind of you to write and let me know how “the mother” and you were getting-on, and all you said pleased me except as to the scraping of St Peter’s Ch:,2 and your determination to come back to London so soon as the 28th! Are you bound, in the way of lodging or anything other than a virtuous resolve, to be back at work so soon? The wisdom of the mother would tell you that to get the benefit of a change, time must be allowed to work. Of course I cannot say but that it may be necessary for you to come back so quickly, but, if your intention is only governed by virtue, you had better take honestly to vice and stay where you are for another week at least. Be guided for once by my superior intelligence and matured judgment and stay longer, unless it be really impossible for you to do so. Last week month I had to borrow some money to carry on with, but this month I can let you and your mother have some to “have a fling” with, and cast care over the North Foreland into the vasty deep.3 Be advised and – who knows – but I might come down and have a drinking bout with you both in another week? I am sorry to say I can’t manage it this week, for my work has me by the leg, as people, during their holidays, have time to provide me with occupation in turning the mill for their fancies. I hope Charles got off pleasantly and that, between the spasms of S.S,4 he is laying siege to the heart of the lovely US female.5 She must be lovely, single, and free from all bonds except scrip, which – for all I know, may be no bond. This is nonsense, so I will leave off. I saw Jenny Morris yesterday and her father too. Jenny is much stronger and will, I hope, do well in her quiet farm home. She seemed more cheery and herself, in all ways, than I have seen her for a long time, which made me, metaphorically, to skip with joy. If you can find time and inclination to tell me more of your doings, and if you hear any news of Charles and let me know it also, I shall be glad. With kindest love to the mother – Believe me Yours every sincerely Philip Webb. V&A, AAD 221

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 PSW was extremely fond of KF (1841–98), the younger sister of Lucy Orrinsmith and Charles Faulkner, ‘a designer of fabrics, wallpapers and ceramic titles produced by Morris & Co., and Jeffrey & Co., best known for her gesso-work’. Emma Ferry, “‘The other Miss Faulkner’: Lucy Orrinsmith and the ‘Art at Home Series’”, JWMS, XIX (Summer 2011), p. 51. 2 KF was staying in or near North Foreland, a headland on the Kent coast at the easternmost point of the Isle of Thanet. The church of St Peter-in-Thanet is twelfth century, with a Norman nave, Early English chancel and later Perpendicular features. It was extensively restored, beginning in 1860. 3 ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’ 1 Henry IV III.i.53. 4 Seasickness. 5 This refers to CF taking a sea voyage to Italy, via Gibraltar, PSW imagining a shipboard romance for him. See below, Letter 227.

212 • To Mary Anne Ewart, 14 September 1883 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Sep: 14 1883 To Miss Ewart.1 The Peacock Hotel Rowsley, Bakewell. Dear Miss Ewart I duly received your letter of the 8th instt with its inclosure of Mr Bray’s letter, and also yours, this morning, of yesterday’s date.2 Since I saw you I have been engaged on the plans, sections &c in trying to bring the house into shape and convenience at a lower cost. After trying several ways the plans have resolved themselves into the number and disposition of rooms &c as shewn on the accompanying tracing. You will be able to lay the new tracing over the old one and see at a glance how, in going over all the parts, I have made the reductions. With regard to the estimate: I have gone into this as carefully as is possible at the present time, and I think I am safe in saying that the house as indicated on the new tracing can be built (not including the papering and final painting, which should not be done for a year or two after the house is built) for £4,300. I do not think the house could be built for less money (soundly), without beginning the design again on a different scheme. I am really anxious that you should not spend more money than you would consider to be wise on your part, therefore I should be glad if, between now & when I see you again, you would consider whether it would be better to throw over the present scheme and begin again, or not? It seems to me that if I should meet Mr Bray on the ground it would be well for you to be with us, as many things could be settled at once which would, otherwise, be deferred. I could arrange to go to Ewhurst on Tuesday the 25th of September and, if this would suit you and you could send me an answer at once, I would write to Mr Bray and let him know. He said in his letter that he could meet me in “this month” if I gave him a few days’ notice. 222

1864–1887

It would be quite convenient to me to see you here either on Thursday or Friday the 20th or 21st between 10 and 12 o’clock in the morning, if you could let me know which day you would call. I have noted your remarks about fencing and would speak to you about the same. Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 16-17

1 Mary Anne Ewart (1830–1911), daughter of William Ewart, Liberal MP, was a supporter of educational and training opportunities for young women. She was a founder member of the SPAB. 2 In the next letter, Bray is described as Mary Ewart’s ‘landlord’ – presumably the owner of the land on which she wished to build at Ewhurst, in Surrey. PSW designed Coneyhurst for her, consisting of a five-bedroom house, with cottage and stables. See Kirk, pp. 227–9 and 300.

213 • To George Price Boyce, 26 September 1883 Annotated ‘recd at Eamont Bridge’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wed: Sep: 26. 1883 My dear Boyce Your letter was a surprise to me this morning; I had thought that you were given over to perpetual silence in order to avoid having another letter full of bad jokes from me. I cannot think the beginning of your letter was rose coloured, but rather that it was liver coloured, and I think therefore that you are not very well, for I much doubt what you say of your work: some painters are over-nasty; you I think are a little over-nice with regard to your pictures and that, as every artist worth anything makes his aim higher than he can attain-to, you are put out a bit that you have not reached your ideal – faith, my friend, I cannot trust you on the subject of your work, and I will believe only when I see for myself. I can trust that critic, tho’ you cannot. The picture I have in my bedroom is always a solace to me and is, to my judgment, a very serious and skilful piece of pure painting come of a keen perception of reality, with a fine sense and delicate imagination. This was done only 2 years ago, and I see no reason for your sorrowing quotation of “the night cometh” &c.1 If it hadn’t been that I could not move from here, I believe I should have put shoes & stockings into a bag and have come to Eamont Bridge in person,2 as a yellow devil to have turned your blue devils to a laughing autumn green colour. I have many bad jokes on hand ready for such a service. Perhaps you may thank your star that I couldn’t come. I was at Ewhurst yesterday with Miss Ewart and between whiles of interviewing her landlord (Mr Bray) and scratching my head as to how I should be able to least mar the site with the coming house, I enjoyed the fine breezy Surrey landscape; pure 223

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

bright with heaven’s own sun between small showers. There is a very pleasant little Inn there at wh’ we put up, and as at my former visit I admired some blueblack pigs of the landlord’s which were “coming on” – knifewards. I asked after their healths and went with Luff (the landlord) to the stern of his premises and certainly to the leeward of the pig stye, and there were the beauties! We cut them up, weighed them, hung them up to smoke and partly eat them, all in a fine frenzy of anticipation. I longed to give Miss Ewart the slip and let her get back to the station alone, while I stayed & fed with the pigs like the “prodigious” son.3 I did not: hence these tears of regret. As Mrs Boyce will, naturally, dislike to read this brutally English letter, please to tell her that the Mathurins nectarines came soundly to mouth this morning.4 I always delighted in nectarines, even so far as over peaches; partly because one has not to wait & take off a great coat before eating them. ’Tis an ill wind that blows no one any good, and the kind folk of Etampes will be consoled by the knowledge of the pleasure we have had from their heavy blow: all we can hope is that the trees were not permanently damaged. I can find nothing in Turner & Parker’s books5 of the “Catterlens Hall” you mention.6 Cartmel Church I have not seen, but Morris has told me several times that it is a very fine piece of work and, unless it has been pulled about by restorers, I think you shd get to it if you can.7 I well remember the impressive rings of ancient stones near Keswick:8 my New Place brother and I walked by them one fine Sunday morning more than 20 years ago, and stayed on our way some quarter of an hour in their company. Chipping Ongar Church is past praying for.9 Other antient buildings (we ought to spell ancient with a (c) my lord) are in our orisons10 to the devilish powers that be; but I am sorry to say that our committees are small as yet – last Thursday there were the secy, and Vinall & myself as dictators, alone. I too never saw the like of the projecting vous[s]oir to the chancel arch at Newton Regny11 (save in the photograph you brought me of the aquaduct in the S. of France) but I think it must have been intended for the support of the rood beam. I have no Murray’s guide to Cumberland & Westmoreland. I went to buy it once, but found almost all the book taken up with flowery descriptions of Lake scenery, and came away in disgust. The Ordnance maps, I am afraid, are done in an inferior manner, wh’ is a great pity, as the one inch scale is quite large enough to allow of much more and accurate completeness. Cockermouth Castle, I believe, belongs to Percy Wyndham’s brother – Ld Leconfield – but I did not know that it was all in ruins: I suppose there must be a house there besides?12 You will be staying in the north as long as the weather is bearable I fancy, and will do something in the way of a drawing of Dacre castle? I have it in my head that the place has the making of a picture in it, though the church which I had reckoned on as a part of the subject has been mauled by soulless thieves.13 My sister writes me that she has had a pleasant letter from Mrs Boyce therefore I suspect that New-Place will reply, as in duty bound. At all events I shall carry your

224

1864–1887

good wishes when I go on Saturday evening. I have lately got a lot of Cobbet[t]s books, and among them is his French Grammar which I must attack “one of these days”, but as there is an English Grammar as well I must go through that first as you will be sure that I should, from this letter.14 I’ve read the “Legacy to Parsons” with much amusement. Indeed Cobbet[t] was outspoken & clear spoken and simply funny without meaning to be so.15 Kindest remembrance to Mrs Boyce, and joy be with you both. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 189-90

1 ‘I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.’ St John, 9.4. 2 See above, Letter 209, note 1. 3 In the Biblical parable of the prodigal son, the profligate younger son spends all the money his father has given him, and is close to starving. ‘And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.’ St Luke, 15:16. 4 GPB’s wife often sent fresh fruit to PSW from France, when she visited. Her parents lived at the convent of Les Mathurins in Etampes. 5 Thomas Hudson Turner, Some Account of Domestic Architecture in England, from the Conquest to the End of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: Parker, 1851). For Parker, see above, Letter 207, note 2. 6 He means Catterlen Hall, in Cumbria, an early fifteenth-century fortified tower. 7 The twelfth-century Cartmel Priory is the parish church of Cartmel, in Cumbria. 8 The late Neolithic or early Bronze Age stone circle at Castlerigg, two miles from Keswick. 9 The SPAB were opposing imminent restoration at the eleventh-century church of St Martin’s, Chipping Ongar, in Essex. ‘Their objections were answered in a vigorous letter by the architect, C. Rolfe. This correspondence shows that the old south wall of the church contained two “ancient” windows and a doorway of original Norman work, an injured 14th-century window and a piscina at the south-east corner of the nave.’ http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=15630 [accessed 27 July 2014]. The changes went ahead in 1884. For Clapton Crabb Wolfe, see also Vol. III, Letter 779, note 1. 10 ‘Nymph, in thy orisons / Be all my sins rememb’red.’ Hamlet, III.i.88–9. 11 The twelfth-century church of St John, Newton Regny, about three miles NW of Penrith. A voussoir is a stone forming part of an arch or vault, ‘usually having the sides inclined towards each other’. OED 12 The earliest parts of Cockermouth Castle, in Cumbria, are Norman, but since the Civil War much remains in a ruined state. It has been long associated with the Wyndham family, following the marriage of the sister of the first Earl of Egremont in the eighteenth century. In the mid-nineteenth century, owners of the castle took the Leconfield title. Henry Wyndham, second Baron Leconfield (1830–1901), was the eldest brother of PWY. 13 The fourteenth-century moated tower house, Dacre Castle, is situated four miles south-west of Penrith. The twelfth-century church of St Andrew’s, Dacre, largely untouched since the fourteenth century, was restored in 1874–5. 14 William Cobbett, A French Grammar, or, Plain Instructions for the Learning of French (London: Charles Clement, 1824) and A Grammar of the English Language . . . more Especially for the use of Soldiers, Sailors, Apprentices, and Plough-Boys (London: Thomas Dolby, 1819). 15 Cobbett, Legacy to Parsons (London, 1835).

225

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

214 • To Reverend Henry Whitehead, 27 September 1883 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Sep 27. 1883 To The Revd H. Whitehead1 The Vicarage Brampton. Carlisle Dear Sir In answer to your letter of the 24th received by me this morning.2 The manufacturer of the patent wood flooring used in Brampton Church is Mr Thomas Gregory, Station Works, Clapham Junction London S:W: and as his men laid the flooring I think the best plan would be for your churchwardens to write to Mr Gregory and ask him to send an experienced man to Brampton to examine the wood flooring laid by him which requires some attention. When an appointment is made for this man to be at Brampton I would advise the Churchwardens to get Mr Court, of Carlisle, the joiner who made the seating, to come to Brampton and meet Mr Gregory’s man and together with the Churchwardens consider the state of the flooring and the reason cause of the decay in the material. I enclose an authorised prospectus of this system of flooring and in it you will see that Mr White the inventor of the flooring stipulates that the timber should be “properly Burnettized”3 and I suspect that much the resistance of the wood to decay would much depend on this preparation having been properly applied. Upon your report as to the result of the proposed meeting I should be better able to advise the Ch’ Wardens. Yours truly. | Ph: W. LB-2, pp. 17-18

1 Upon his arrival as vicar in April 1874, the Broad Church reformer Henry Whitehead (1825–96) had supported GH in his wish to replace the dilapidated Brampton church with the new one by PSW, together with its Morris & Co. windows. The Naworth estate also commissioned PSW to build a new Vicar’s House with parish room for his use (1877–80). See Kirk, pp. 223–4 and 300. 2 Whitehead had written about evidence of decay to the patent wood block floor at Brampton. 3 A process named after the naval physician, Sir William Burnett (1779–1861), who served at Trafalgar. His independent commercial interests involved patenting ‘a solution of zinc chloride for use as a preservative and disinfectant’. http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/ article/4077?docPos=17 [accessed 28 July 2014].

215 • To Christopher Benson, 29 October 1883 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Octr 29. 1883 226

1864–1887

To Christopher Benson Esqre1 Cumberland Union Banking Co | Brampton by Carlisle Dear Sir (St Martin’s Ch’ Brampton) Mr Gregory called came to me on Saturday, and I called on Mr White on Friday but he was not at home, so I wrote to him & recd an answer this morning. I explained fully to Mr Gregory the character & construction of the church, and shewed him that it was separated from the “bank” of earth by a gangway of considerable width: That the church walls was were carried down to an admirable foundation, with an intercepting damp-proof course, and that there were no “vaults” under it the building; also that this – the bank side of the church – was on the south or sunny side: That the church was specially & carefully ventilated, and that in a letter to Mr Tho’s Richardson (a churchwarden) of June 11th 1880 I had explained and insisted upon how the airing the church was to be seen to.2 Mr Gregory could in no way account for the decay in the floor, except that the sand used with in the concrete must have held some material which was injurious to the wood. Mr White tells me that he has known two or three cases of wood block paving decaying either from moisture or the presence of loam or some other objectionable thing in the concrete, and that in almost all positions there should be a damp course under the wood paving. Such a plan as this suggested by Mr White must be an improved way of laying these floors, as Mr Gregory at that time did not suggest to me that it would be well to do this, as it could well have been done.3 I told Mr Gregory that I should still advise the Churchwardens to ask him to send an experienced man to examine the state of the flooring, and he said he would send such a man upon request. and I now express again to the Churchwardens my opinion that this should be done, and I would also advise that Mr Gregory’s offer to do any work in rectification of the mischief at “cost price” be accepted. My own opinion is, that the whole of the wood paving should be lifted, that all decayed or tainted wood be removed and that in relaying and renewing, all the woodwork should now be set on “hot Stockholm tar” as he suggests.4 I am, Dear Sir, | Yours truly | Ph: W. d r P.S. It w be well I think for M Court, of Carlisle, or his representative to meet Mr Gregory’s man when he goes to Brampton. LB-2, pp. 20-1

1 Benson was churchwarden and former organist at Brampton, the son of the previous vicar (also called Christopher Benson). His father’s infirmity meant that for about three years before his retirement in 1874, and the appointment of Henry Whitehead as vicar, a curate, William Miller, was placed in charge. Miller attempted to introduce a more High Church mode of worship, opposed by many, including from the younger Benson as organist. ‘Miller mentions “Persistent attempts at disturbance by gestures and noises of contempt and ridicule from the singing gallery”. At length Miller

227

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I persuaded the churchwardens to threaten Benson junior with a charge of brawling in church if he did not resign. He did so, but when he died 25 years later he was a much respected churchwarden, bank manager and justice of the peace.’ Penn, pp. 10–11. 2 See above, Letter 153. 3 Distressed that the flooring was already in need of remedial treatment, PSW decided to meet the cost of the extra work. ‘He later sent to Mr. Stephenson, the agent of the estate, a cheque for £25 to cover this, saying that he was sending it to him rather than to the churchwardens, as the latter would probably ask why it was not £100, and would think him a fool for doing such a thing voluntarily. The cheque was later returned to him, presumably on the instructions of George Howard.’ Penn, p. 24. 4 High-grade pine tar used in Scandinavia as a wood preservative is often known as Stockholm tar, a single company once holding the monopoly for its export from Stockholm.

216 • To editor(s) of Bristol newspaper(s), 1 November 1883 Drafted on behalf of SPAB To the Editor of – Sir. The notice in the London newspaper, the “Building News” of October 10, of an attempt to work upon the feelings of the Citizens of Bristol so that contributions may be drawn towards a scheme for the “restoration” of the Abbey Gate-House on College Green,1 calls for notice from this Society, for it would seem that the Ecclesiastical authorities are not ashamed to beg of the public for subscriptions for towards to a fund for restoring ancient work on with one hand, while they pull down valuable historical records with the other, and that in opposition to the earnest appeal of local and other authorities thoughtful people against the wanton destruction of The Prior’s Lodging or “Minster House”! What does this anxiety for saving in one case and destroying in another mean? Let the Citizens of Bristol look to it, or the precious abbey Gateway will as be as good as be practically as much destroyed as the Prior’s Lodging was really. How can the English public trust such people? The Abbey Gate House called for watchful attention so that no stone should become loose accident should happen to it without protection being applied at once in skilful manner. Instead of this, the noble relic has been grossly neglected and the result is, in the words of the Dean, that “it was notified to me that portions were so ready to fall that it had become necessary, for the sake of safety of those passing through the gateway, that they should be removed. This was accordingly done”. Now Sir, this is this usual thing! It must be “notified” to the caretakers of that a piece of antiquity is likely to break a citizen’s head, before they understand that they have in charge a valuable possession, the neglect of which, to every one else the neglect of the charge has been patent known to every other passer-by. And now Then comes the second and consequent movement; ‘let us “restore” this wilfully injured monument of ancient art and make it as good as new, or perhaps better, and no one shall know that we have slept over our watches’. Architects will be called in, estimates of cost made, & the hearts of the faithful torn wrung with descriptions of quick coming dissolution, which can 228

1864–1887

only be met by the generosity of the toilers & moilers2 of the city of Bristol, whose property the Abbey Gateway is not. This is no over coloured picture of events, and the Citizens who are asked to give should, before giving, demand an explanation of what is going to be done. If it be proved that only repairs, and support, and strengthening are done, to be undertaken well & good; & the citizens will would, no doubt, respond with their money; but, if “Restoration” is to be the outcome, not a farthing would be given by men of commonsense, and the city would let it be known the reason why be known. Sir, there are, no doubt, many educated people in and about Bristol who will come forward and, by through the aid of your columns, let the people know of what they have lost in the past and are likely to lose in future, and thus aid help this Society in doing what little can be done and in trying to save if only one, if only one piece of what remains to England of her genuine ancient art. [pencil] Thursday Novr 1. 1883 and taken to the Committee meeting. | Ph. W. SPAB

1 The Great or Abbey Gatehouse on College Green, with its two distinctive Norman archways, was the main entrance to the original monastic precinct of St Augustine’s Abbey. Its earliest parts date from the late twelfth century. Above the arches is a two-story tower with mullions and niches for statues, dating from about 1500. These later portions would be restored by John Loughborough Pearson in 1888. 2 Thankless work (archaic). ‘To toyle and moyle for worldly drosse’ (Edmund Spenser). (OED).

217 • To George Price Boyce, 13 January 1884 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 13 Jany 1884 My dear Boyce Since I left you last night I have been considering some of my follies, one of which yesterday was my jestingly insisting on your going to France this year whether you would could should ought or not. You are too wise, I take it, to be taken in by my fun, however real-looking from its boorishness. Those two fine works I saw must not run the risk of being unfinished, from any whim bred in my unthatched head. I am really trying so to arrange my affairs as to get to Italy this coming winter and, when I first seriously considered this uplifting of myself from deeply ingrained home-keeping habit, I had calculated that you might be going to France in 1884 and that, if so, it would be pleasant if I could be with you for a little time in that lovely country, of which I know so little. Added to which it was borne in upon my mind that as the French were so absurd as to use a language that I did not understand I should have the advantage of your parler-vousing in getting bed, board and liquor without blushing; hence my jesting scheme and these tears. 229

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Your being unable to go to France will not stop my main business, wh’ is to get to Italy this winter or never; and I can do this by going directly to Florence a little later on without so much as stopping in France. You see? In the first place, your order of work must not be put out on my account. And in the second, you are not bound to go [to] France because I bind myself to go to Italy. I really pine to see those two fine drawings by daylight. The more finished one – the Brougham Castle – struck me strongly. The Yanwath one having no sky or foreground gave no chance to me except in imagination and I think such a foreground as you will put in may make it one of your best works.1 All these words merely to say that you must not let your good nature lead you astray in listening to my jesting gabble! Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 193-4

1 GPB exhibited these two watercolours in 1885. See below, Letter 258, note 1.

218 • To Percy Wyndham, 30 January 1884 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jany 30. 1884 To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M.P. Wilbury House by Salisbury Dear Mr Wyndham (Clouds Hse) In answer to your letter of the 27th instt. I saw Howell when I was last at Clouds and he wanted to know what bricks might be required this year so that he might turn over the clay for them at once. Of course I cannot now say how many bricks will be wanted for the garden walls and for Slades1 but you surely may safely say that Howell should make this year as many bricks as he can burn, and I think you should tell him that the price for the different qualities must should be the same as paid for Clouds, delivered, and that no inferior bricks would be accepted, and that all bricks tiles and other material must be subject to the approval of your Architect. I think you would run less risk by ordering as many bricks for this year as Howell can make than you would if they ran short and you had to buy a haul from Gillingham or Donhead. Supposing you changed your plans the bricks would keep, or you would surely be able to sell them in detail.2 Howell will not be able (according to former experience) to turn out any bricks till the middle of May. 230

1864–1887

I must of course see you about Slades and the garden wall before I can do anything myself in those matters and if we could meet shortly at Knoyle so much the better. I also should wish to see Mrs Wyndham about the baths for Clouds as soon as she comes to London. I will put your S.P.R papers in my pocket so as to ask friends for their experiences and note the answers3 – for myself I answer this, after careful consideration. 1 2

“Hallucinations” – NO. “Dreams” – NO. Yours very truly | Ph: W:

LB-2, pp. 27-8

1 Existing cottages on the Clouds estate which were converted into the head gardener’s cottage. See the illustrations in Dakers, p. 71. 2 To sell off a few at a time. 3 The Society for Psychical Research had been founded in 1882 in order to investigate human experiences not susceptible to explanation by empirical evidence. PWY was an active member, and gave financial support to its Research Fund.

219 • To Mary Anne Ewart, 28 February 1884 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feby 28. 1884 To Miss Ewart. Grand Hôtel | Grasse Alpes Maritimes. France Dear Miss Ewart. I only got Messrs King’s tender for your house1 on Tuesday morning last – 26th – just as I was starting for my work in Wiltshire. However, I saw Mr Goodman the “quantities” surveyor before I went and directed him to telegraph for Messrs King to come to London and see him at once. The cost of the works estimated for by King is unsatisfactory, in so far as it comes out £456 higher than my estimate. This sum King’s tender does not include the Porch – which is incorporated with the gardener’s cottage – nor the Engineer’s work for grates, ranges, heating apparatus &c. Messrs King came up to see Mr Goodman yesterday and on my return I had his report. After going all through the estimate and prices of the different items Mr Goodman could find no mistake and the prices generally were reasonable but he also found that many things had helped to swell the total. Bricks wd be 45s/- a thousand on the ground instead of 40s/- as I had calculated. Lime & other things equally high in proportion chiefly on account of the cartage. Also the drainage as planned, is a heavy item, partly on account of the improved pipes and laying I proposed to use. Also, I had specified that the water 231

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

pipes should be treated with the “Bower-Barff” process to guard against the action of the water on the metal.2 (The water there is soft in that part of the country and eats into the metal flaying the pipes and choking with rust. It does not make a deposit like hard water does.) Again, the fittings throughout the house – cupboards, shelves &c – are very numerous for the class of house, so the surveyor tells me; therefore, though the prices are not unreasonable, the causes above named and others have brought up the total in a disappointing way to me, as I had hoped after my careful estimate that the tender would have been within the sum of £4,300 – whereas it comes to £4,756 without including the afore-named items. The builders & other estimates stand thus – Messrs King’s tender, for the whole of the house without the Porch " Longdens (engineer’s) estimate for grates, Ranges, hot water supply, heating apparatus &c – From this I can deduct say £70 for a slight change in some of the work, and if the fencing by the cottage and along the west boundary of the ground were not done now £66 more could be saved.

£4,756.00 250.0.0 £5,006.00

dedt 136.0.0 £4,870.0.0

Though it is a real advantage to employ a known responsible builder of the close neighbourhood it always results in a higher prices being charged than would be the case if the work were put out in competition before several builders, and I warned Messrs King of this, but they say they have been very careful in their prices (they took a fortnight to make up the tender) and have left no margin on which reductions could be made. There are now 3 courses open to us. First, to have the quantities lithographed and put before several builders for in competition? Second, to make some reduction in the size of the house? and Third to accept King’s tender as it stands? I am exceeding quite unwilling to ask you to spend more money than you have considered right, so that I should be glad to learn what you think of the first & second courses. Believe me | Yours faithfully | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 29-31

1 William and George King of Abinger Hammer would be awarded the building contract for Coneyhurst. 2 The Bower-Barff process was a recent commercial application to prevent iron from rusting, established by Frederick S. Barff and improved by George and Anthony Bower, who bought the Barff rights.

232

1864–1887

220 • To George Price Boyce, 16 May 1884 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. May 16. 1884 My dear Boyce The doctor was got away on Monday and I had a letter from him from Dunster yesterday morning.1 They enjoyed the place & surroundings very much – walked about, saw Dunster castle and Cle[e]ve Abbey, but having some 50 dozen of flies and other tackle, became restless to the extent of moving to Dulverton yesterday, where they mean to expose their flies & themselves. I fancy that place will not be bracing enough. It is greatly beautiful I believe, but is in a blind alley of the hills. Wardle – who is a fisherman – knows that country and strongly advises their going to Exford, right up in the moor, where there is Exe in its smaller state, and quiet quarters. The doctor writes in good spirits, and that they are living freely on four square meals a day and, though he doesn’t mention it, I hope sleep in proportion. The sister writes from New Place that she is getting on very well in the present order of things and as she wishes me to go there on Saturday I shall do so, when I hope to find out for you the name of the plant of which you send me a slip. The plant was not too far gone to be seen, but I don’t remember it (seldom do remember plants, except the crab stick which had been laid on the outside of my head) or its kind – added to which I have lent some vols: of my Baxter:2 but I’ll let you know from Welwyn. Dillon came to the meeting yesterday,3 and he also gave me an admit to the Burlington.4 I shd be glad to go with you there on Thursday if it may be. I’ve had a pretty satisfactory letter from Middleton in Rome. If things went well he wd be still there when I should hope to be able to get there & under his wing. With best remembrance to Mrs Boyce | I am sincerely yours | Ph: W: BL Add 45354, ff. 199-200

1 For reasons either of ill-health or exhaustion, Harry Webb had decided to take a fishing trip to Somerset, accompanied by a friend – probably the Reverend Henry Jephson (see below, Letter 329, note 2), with whom he took a similar expedition in May 1885. 2 William Baxter, British Phaenogamous Botany: or Figures and Descriptions of the Genera of British Flowering Plants, 6 vols (Oxford: Baxter, 1834–43). PSW’s copies of volumes I and V are now at the Emery Walker Library, both with his signature and the date July 1881 in his hand, in Vol. I. See CAGM, p. 133. 3 The landscape painter Frank Dillon (1823–1909) was a committee member of the SPAB. 4 This was an exhibition of drawings of ‘architectural subjects by deceased British artists’ at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, and included works by Turner, Joseph Nash, David Cox and Thomas Girtin.

233

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

221 • To Percy Wyndham, 1 July 1884 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 1. 1884 To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M.P. 44 Belgrave Square. S.W. Dear Mr Wyndham (Clouds Kitchen Gardn) I have made designs for the kitchen garden walling and sent them to Estcourt for estimates. The digging, concrete, walling & buttresses all round the garden will cost about £1550. The difference in price for the mediæval buttresses that you said you wd prefer over those which I had arranged for, does not come to much, about £12, and if the cost was were the only consideration you would probably agree wish to have those you prefer. Over and above the advantages which my buttresses give for practical purposes, of casting less shade and permitting fruit trees to be trained against them, there is another. The mediæval buttress shapes represent an appearance of counterpressure against thrust at individual points, and they would look more reasonable if there was a roof over them whereas those I would prefer merely look as if they were meant to steady the wall. I have designed some decent buttresses on your plan, but I would still much prefer to use those I had proposed. Will you let me know as soon as possible if I shall direct you wish me to set about building the walls, and your decision as to buttresses as the time of year is getting on, and we shall have to get the copings made at once? The digging, concrete and plain walling could go on directly.1 Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 38-9

1 ‘Percy was completely outmanoeuvred and replied with one of his shortest notes: “This is to authorise you to set about building the walls. You can put up the buttresses recommended in your last”.’ Dakers, p. 70.

222 • To Albert Estcourt, 19 July 1884 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 19 1884. To Mr Albert Estcourt. 1 Barton Street Gloucester 234

1864–1887

Dear Sir. (Clouds Hse) When I was at Knoyle on Tuesday last I directed Mr Simmonds as to building the kitchen garden walls and told him to see that the bricks were well picked over to select the best for facing. In a letter from Mr Simmonds recd this morning, he writes “Mr Estcourt says you struck the facing price out of his estimate – and he cannot afford to have them picked now – but the men shall pick them when building the walls”. As I am anxious that there should be no mistake on this point, I write to say that in allowing 10s/- a rod extra for this brickwork, that would include for picking the bricks for facing; what I had cut out was for special facing with handmade bricks. It would not do to trust to the bricklayers picking selecting the bricks as the work went on, as they would certainly take those which first came to hand. Added to which, if the bricks were picked over properly, to have it done by a man or men ready for the bricklayers would save time to you rather than lose it. Will you be so good as to send me an answer to this before they begin laying any bricks? Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 40-1

223 • To George Price Boyce, 28 July 1884 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. July 28. 1884 My dear Boyce I think your determination is a sensible one as, from conversations with you, I know your outlooks pretty well. As far as being able to foresee what weather will happen in the North of England, this year seems as good as any other, and your work there would be easily caught up without any other delay than accidents of flood & bulls. Mrs Boyce, merely going to and from Etampes, wd not be troubled with quarantine, and it is not likely she would be inconvenienced by the sickness in the South.1 I mean – if possible – to get into Italy in October, but how, it is not possible to say at present. In any case I shd not start before the end of the first or second week in October, and if I did not propose to stop in France I need not leave here before the end of October, when things choleraic [sic] may have passed away by that time so as to leave the Brenner pass open, at least, by that time.2 In any case I beg you not to let this prospective state of affairs in any way hamper your movements. I feel anxious that you should try hard to complete that magnificent subject of Brougham Castle, as it is so far advanced and, with moderate weather, you would 235

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

be able to attain the end of the Yanwath one also; the more so that you can counterbellow from the safe side of the hedge!3 Please let me have your address when you have one, such as, G: B: Esqre in front of the bull, England!! Yours sincerely, with best wishes to Madame (who, happily, is not afraid of Mounseer) | Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 206-7

1 An outbreak of cholera in Toulon was reported on 23 June, causing delays to shipping and the introduction of quarantine measures. Marseilles also soon reported cases, and travel restrictions to the south of France were put in place: P&O suspended its service to Marseilles early in July. During August, there were incidences of cholera in parts of Italy. 2 The Brenner Pass gave access to Italy from Austria, and a railway link had been completed by 1867. 3 See above, Letter 217, note 1.

224 • To Mary Anne Ewart, 31 July 1884 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 31. 1884 To Miss Ewart Broadleas. Devizes. Dear Miss Ewart. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 28th. I expect that the present quick demand for certificates1 will partly fall off after the building is roofed in. I was at Ewhurst on Tuesday and found the works had been got on with very rapidly, but I was also glad to find that they were being very well done also. I had no fault to find with either materials or workmanship. Some half dozen pairs of rafters of the main roof were already set up, and the Kings, for their own sakes are alive to the wisdom of getting the whole covered in before the autumn rains set in; the rains we have been having lately have been good for the work. I don’t think there is much risk of the water failing, indeed Holt thought there must have been some error in measurement before – as, from Saturday at 3. oc p.m. to Monday at 6 a.m., 6 feet of water had come in, which is about the ordinary supply in such time. I can hardly by letter explain what I propose to do with the outcome of the drainage and, probably circumstances will of ground &c may make it better to defer a settled scheme ’till later on, but in no case would the emptying and disposal of solid & subsided matter be a serious difficulty, such as that in the case you mention. 236

1864–1887

As it is customary to give the workmen some present when the roof is getting on I asked King what would be the best way of doing this; he said that all his men were going for an outing to Portsmouth on the 16th of August and then wd be a good time for you to give help if you felt so inclined. I wd suggest that half a crown a man wd be appreciated sufficient and as there are some 34 or 36 men on the ground and others working for you in the shop at Abinger Hammer, if you gave £5 that wd meet the occasion. Of course you need not do this, but I thought you wd wish me to let you know of anything that occurred to me as reasonably customary. I find, as a rule, that workmen appreciate such thought of them. Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 41-3

1 As supervising architect, PSW was responsible for approving any claims for payment from the contractors engaged on a building project, which would then be presented to the client.

225 • To George Price Boyce, 29 August 1884 Annotated ‘recd at Newton Reigny’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sat: Aug 29. 1884 My dear Boyce Your letter really distressed me for the time, but on reading again & again I feel that you cannot be well and, if your liver is out of order I know, from experience, that the ill going of one’s work is positive torture. With my knowledge of your work I am much more inclined to condole with you over the unlucky spots in the sky of the Yanwath drawing than in the rest of your clearly described state for, however doubtful positive failure in your work may be to me, the spots are, liver or no liver, there to confound you. You say “do not refer to it”, your doleful letter to wit; but how the devil am I to pass by unnoticed a letter from my friend so coloured with real trouble? I think I can sympathise with you, for ’tis some years past now that I gave up all hope in my own work and was sad in the extreme for some time and, indeed, great sadness has possession of me in whiles even now, but I ceased to be troubled with my disappointment at finding I was not what I at times thought I was and, barring the times when my soul is in the pit, I am merrier mostly than I used to be for, I have not yet ceased to believe that I have within me what I shall certainly never be able to bring out: and then I take infinite interest in the life of my fellow poor, & chiefly all those who have heart. Intellect is a great thing but it must, for my joy, have heart or I prefer only the company of beauty and the beasts. The world – away from the suburbs of our old towns – is full of exquisite beauty and thousands 237

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

of lovely beasts – truly, when one forgets oneself the outer world becomes more lovely still. If you are not well – as I must suppose – clearly nothing I can write will be of any service to you but, should you be taking too much to heart some real failure in your work, and that is your only real cause of distress, I would say ‘I don’t care, there still remain beauty, history, love, glorious appreciation of all that noble souls have conceived, and I’m not too old to wallow in those infinite joys’. You are a social being and have never been thrown on your own solitary companionship as I have (’till it has grown upon my shoulders like a comfortable old coat) and the company of your wife will be a relief to you. I presume that Mrs Boyce is on her way to you now, for, did she not kindly call this evening and leave me a box of delightful fruits of the earth? Peaches, pears, grapes, plums &c and, an egg! laid, no doubt, by the partner of a real Gallic cock; none of your miserable barn door Dorkings, but a true bred, never-to-be-improved French hen, born & reared in the navel of the world. I was sorry when I came in to tea to find from my housekeeper that Mrs Boyce had been here while I was away from home (been to see some failures of mine in foliage sculpture). Mrs Long said that her daughter, who took the parcel, said that a ‘French lady brought it’. I wonder if Mrs Boyce parlervoused – or was it a lady’s maid that your wife has captured in Etampes? I should have so liked to see the French country bloom on Mrs Boyce’s cheeks that it was too bad of fate not to have telegraphed that she was coming. Please give her my kindest thanks, not only for the beautiful gift but for the kindness of in bringing, with such trouble, the present to me herself. There, that is all the bad grammar I’ll use about it. Surely I will go to West House as soon as I can and have a look round your garden, though I fancy Mrs Boyce must have herself gone there and will tell you what the hot sun has done to the garden, as is she sure to have been the case, viz, to burn it up. Still that will do it good in one way, though in another it may have killed some of the plants, but it will have strengthened others. [Fairfax] Murray writes me word from Basle that he fled on learning that he might creep through the alps (by the St Gothard pass I suppose) and escape quarantine at Luino if he was lucky, but if unlucky it was the best frontier to be shut up in.1 Turner is away for his holiday so that I know nothing of anti-scrape matters. We meet again on the 4th Septr. Morris’s paper read at the meeting is now published in the report and is good reading, but you will get that.2 He himself is see-sawing weekly between London & Kelmscott and has got over a strained ancle which he had come by, & which laid him up for 2 or 3 days.3 I know nothing of Holm Cultram Ch’ – go and see it when you can, for the Society.4 When I last inquired about the variation of the compass it was 19o or thereabouts west of true North. Come, you must write me again shortly or I shall be anxious. Yours sincerely, | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 208-9

238

1864–1887 1 See above, Letter 223, note 1. 2 WM addressed the annual meeting of the SPAB on 1 July 1884. He covered familiar themes, extolling the skills of the medieval craft guilds, in contrast to the present ‘time of barbarism’: ‘you cannot doubt that in one way or other the surface of an ancient building, the handling of the old handicraftsman that is, is most valuable and worthy of preservation, and I am sure also that we all feel instinctively that it cannot be reproduced at the present day; that the present attempt at reproduction not only deprives us of a monument of history, but also of a work of art.’ SPAB Annual Report, 1884, pp. 53–4. 3 ‘I have been seedy: slipped on the grass & strained my ancle and obliged to lay up for two days; then a touch of gout, not over yet.’ WM to Andreas Scheu, 13 August 1884, CLWM, II. 4 The former Cistercian Holm Cultram Abbey, founded in the twelfth century, in Abbeytown, Cumbria. By the nineteenth century it was much ruined, the stones quarried by local people for farm buildings. In 1883 some restoration occurred, including the lowering of the floor by two feet to its original level and the removal of the galleries.

226 • To Madeline Wyndham, 30 August 1884 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] August 30. 1884 To Hon’ Mrs Percy Wyndham Wilbury House by Salisbury Dear Mrs Wyndham (Clouds Hse) In answer to your letter of the 28th instant. You are, of course, perfectly free – so far as I can be concerned – to alter and rearrange the plan of the East or and kitchen gardens. I have done neither of these works professionally and should not have suggested any arrangement except that things were required to be done at once when they were undertaken. With regard to the East garden, I should naturally have an opinion, as the whole surroundings of the house have been under my consideration for some years, and as I have had some experience of many failures happening from want of careful examination of attention to all circumstances I arranged my plan with such knowledge & taste as I had. It was a pretty piece of ground and required delicate handling and doubtless you saw this in your dealing with it. Would it not be well to defer fitting up the little garden house in the south wall at the bottom of garden ’till things are more settled? It should be a handy neat & tidy place and wd be very convenient. I say this because of the rather wild suggestion to turn it into a dirt hole of a mushroom house. The kitchen garden would be the place for such things where proper heat will be supplied. Surely the house plant greenhouse shd not be attempted this year as many things will have to be thought of with regard to it and the other glass houses in [the] kitchen garden. Mr Brown1 could rig up some frames for his plants this winter without difficulty.

239

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

As to makers of glass houses, they are legion. There is Weekes of Chelsea,2 Smith of Ipswich3 &c but care would have to be used in dealing with them or you will be fitted with work at great cost & which would ruin the appearance of the most lovely place in England. I send you a plan of the ground on which the greenhouse is to stand, and as there is plenty of room there wd be no reason for removing the sycamore tree. Of course it wd not do to put the greenhouse on the East side of [the] gardener’s house as it wd be in full view of all who came up the hill to Clouds. I daresay you have noticed the pretty look of that corner as you pass the stables towards the house? I will write to Mr Simmonds and tell him to send you an accurate plan of the kitchen garden with the roads &c as laid out. Veitch is I believe the best nurseryman for rare plants (costly in proportion)4 Rivers for vines and other fruit trees,5 but as the Salisbury man seems to have supplied you with a good lot of apple trees he might also be able to do the same with other fruit trees, and at a less cost than Rivers, though vines had better come from Rivers . Ware of Tottenham is a good man, I hear, for all herbaceous plants.6 Believe me | Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 43-5

1 Harry Brown, the head gardener at Wilbury, who would take on the same role at Clouds. 2 John Weekes & Company of the King’s Road in Chelsea were described as Horticultural Builders. 3 The Horticultural Engineers, W.G. Smith & Co., specialised in the manufacture of glasshouses, conservatories and greenhouses. 4 Established by John Veitch (1752–1839) in the early nineteenth century, the Veitch plant nurseries at Chelsea and Exeter were well-known for their skill in growing exotic plants. 5 Established in 1725, the Rivers Nursery in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire specialised in orchard fruits. 6 Thomas S. Ware of Hale Farm Nurseries, Tottenham were suppliers of young plants and seeds. In consultation with Brown, Madeline Wyndham undertook some initial planting before Clouds was finished. She limited herself ‘to slow-growing yew hedges, and the chalk-walled garden was planted with bulbs and magnolia trees’. Dakers, p. 74.

227 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 2 September 1884 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. Sepr 2. 1884 My dear Murray I did not think you could hang about ’till I was ready to go to Florence but thought you would surely run for it as soon as you thought you saw a hole in the Alps which you could creep through. As the cholera seems to be active in some parts of Italy I fancy you may have been caught on the frontier and clapped into quarantine, and this letter may get to your home before you do. If you should write again, tell me how you did on the way as it might be a pleasant route for me. I suppose – after looking at the map – that you went by the St Gothard pass,1 as that 240

1864–1887

is north of Luino a place you mentioned in your letter from Basle. I suppose they have modernised that town which people used to tell me was a delightful old one? Faulkner went for a sea voyage in his holiday by goods steamer from Liverpool, by Gibraltar into the middle sea and landed for 2 days at Genoa, from whence he went on by [the] same steamer to Naples, where also he landed and stayed, I believe, some days. He is now on his way home again. I may hear from him what chance there is for me, but as I shall not be able to get away before the end of October there is some hope that the cholera may by then have expended itself, and rules will be relaxed. I hope you found your womenfolk and childer all well and merry or, if you have not yet got to them, that they will be so when you do. I suspect that the Englishish-ish-man, Stanhope, has gone into the country here somewhere, to wait ’till he can get into Italy with due dignity.2 I’m sorry to say that I have been too busy to buy my dictionary and conversations book, and may be, it will end in my not knowing a word of Italian when I start – alas! I can see myself sitting down on my trunk (not my nose) at the stations, watching for what next I shall be done with, for no doubt they will have their way & will torture me. I’m afraid that the name of Mazzini3 would not now be a name whereby I might conjure myself into a bed in Florence? I meant to have had another talk with you and get many passwords to help me, before you left: however, you can write ’em. Here, now, we have sunshine and shower, and really delightful cool & warm weather. Adieu | Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 24

1 The St Gotthard Pass in the Swiss Alps is on the route from Zurich to Milan. The first Gotthard rail tunnel opened in 1882. 2 See below, Letter 229, note 3. 3 See above, Letter 132, note 9.

228 • To Percy Wyndham, 26 September 1884 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Sep 26. 1884. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P: Wilbury House. Salisbury Dear Mr Wyndham (Clouds Hse) I beg to acknowledge receipt of cheque with thanks – I enclose a regular receipt.1 I will write to Mrs Wyndham about meeting her at Clouds on the 7th of October. Your good-natured advice to me to keep my temper with the dagger-drawing Italians will not be disregarded. I will be “wery careful of that there suit of clothes”, 241

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

my skin to wit.2 However, I shall only associate with the lower orders of people when in Italy – Sacristans, Gravediggers and other poor folk, and a Communistic or other sign will, no doubt, make us all but kin. Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-2, p. 47

1 ‘If convenient to you I should be glad if you would let me have £1,000 further on account of my work. I had £1,000 in Aug: 1881 and another £1,000 in August 1883.’ PSW to PWY, 24 September 1884, LB-2, p. 46. 2 ‘Hereupon there was a general laugh; and the little judge, looking with an angry countenance over his desk, said, “You had better be careful, Sir.” “So Mr. Pickwick said at the time, my Lord,” replied Sam; “and I was wery careful o’ that ’ere suit o’ clothes; wery careful indeed, my Lord”.’ Dickens, Pickwick Papers, ch 34.

229 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 5 October 1884 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. Sunday October 5. ’84 My dear Murray I had your letter of Sep: 5, written just after you escaped from quarantine and, last night, I got yours of Oct: 2. It is very amiable of you to spare time in trying to lug me out of my shell. I fancy that a good cracking, such as thrushes give to the “hodmandods”,1 would be sufficiently persuasive with the doubtless, and peradventure Wardle may perform that operation. I went with him, nearly a month ago, into Wiltshire – or rather he came to me when I was at my work there – and we went on to see some old English buildings and, during our talks over victuals at the bad English Inns, he rashly said he would go as far as Basle with me, at the end of October, on my way to Italy, by way of Bruges, Liege, Strasbourg &c. If he keeps to his promise I shall be well content as he is a good companion among antiquities, holding his own in a dogged fashion which provokes closer examination of objects and though, as you know, I am always right (!) still its well, even for genius, to be stimulated. I had with me your former letter which I shewed to him and I fancy that set him afire to see some of the places he has seen before. The weather here has been so splendidly fine all through Sep: up to now, that it cannot be long before the rain comes down in force which might damp his ardour before we could start: however, he is courageous and will probably hold to his promise. If you hold to the suggestion, in your last letter, of meeting me on the border, that wd be better than well also, as I shall shiver on being left alone with my tongue fast tied. I have bought a kind of Italian grammar and a dictionary, but they drive what few wits I have into my slippers. I’ve heard it said that the natives are very shy of a foreigner who talks their tongue so that there may be some chance for me. Still I should welcome your appearance at a station in the land when you can untie the label affixed to my collar, otherwise I should flee through Milan 242

1864–1887

without stopping, unless there were a dog like that of Norcia who would take charge of me.2 I have got some money set apart to pay for our journeys if you should find time and inclination to pilot me anywhere. I could tell you lies about buildings and you wd do the same about pictures to me. A relative of the “British gentleman” was here yesterday and he said that the latter had got back to his rest. I was told that if I journeyed to Villa Nuti I should be taken in charge by a regiment of beggars as a shield to them on approaching his door.3 A ragged lot of that kind would be a good joke to pass on John Bull at his home. I am busy licking my business things into such shape that they may be left in a not too embarrassing condition to the colleague left in charge.4 It wd be a good thing for my clients to find out that the work had not gone on of itself before. Wallis came in the other night and played the part of a Job’s comforter, sitting upon my travelling suggestions and proposing ways for me which are not likely to be followed if I shd go by my nose. Among others he said I shd go to Turin at once as, afterwards, I shd not be likely to do so, which seemed reasonable; but my stomach will not be able to take in all the pictures I shall see in any way I may turn, even if they were taken out of their frames and rolled into smallest baggage compass. I saw Morris for two days with his “fambly”, at Kelmscott in Oxfordshire, last week and took a lesson in Italian from his daughter May, who only failed – for a reason – to pull my hair when I was too stupid.5 Faulkner got back all safely from Naples and enjoyed his sea journey. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I shall write again, of course, before I leave the lawyers here. Fitzwilliam 25

1 Dialect: from ‘dodman’, a snail. (OED). 2 Probably PSW is picking up on a detail in one of CFM’s letters, relating to a visit to the Umbrian town of Norcia. 3 Spencer Stanhope bought the Villa Nuti at Bellosguardo, on the outskirts of Florence, and for health reasons moved there permanently in 1880. 4 During PSW’s absence of five months, GWJ oversaw the ongoing building work at Clouds and Coneyhurst. The two were in constant communication. 5 The ‘reason’ was PSW’s baldness.

230 • To William Morris, 8 November 1884 Year added by SCC 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn,| London, W.C. Sat: Novr 8. [1884] My dear Fellow You left your bottle and Oliver Twist last night. The former I shall throw to the dogs and the latter I shall put in my bag. I hope the foot is mending.1 243

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I have told almost all people interested, that I am going away. Should you see anyone who wd care to know it, please tell them. Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 9

1 A return of the gout from which WM had been suffering in mid-August?

231 • To George Washington Jack, 22 November 1884 Florence November. 22. 1884 My dear Mr Jack I got away really on Sunday the 9th, and have come through Dover, Ostend, Bruges, Ghent, Brussells, [sic] Basle, Lugano, Como & Milan to this place. Mr Wardle left me – or rather, I left him – at Brussells, and I got here last night, having had most beautifully fine weather all the time, but very cold. It now rains for the first time since I left. I have seen many fine things – mostly in a state of decay – but many of them quite beautiful and exciting, perhaps too much so for me for I feel rather like a fish out of water, wanting the support of my daily work which has become so much of a habit to me that I do not feel quite at ease without the stay of it. This feeling will perhaps go off and I may get more elastic in mind and less strained in it. You will readily understand that I have not touched any of my home work, and it may be that some days must pass before I can do so, but I mean to do what I can, and as soon as possible, to help you out so that you shall not fancy yourself deserted by me. Will you write and tell me of anything which it wd be well that I should know, and also let me know how you yourself are getting on? The Slades alterations and new building are rather important, as the washing women will have to be at work there in May or June next year.1 Your going to Clouds and personally looking into things will help you and set my mind somewhat at rest, but I think you understand what we considered together as best to be done for Clouds and Ewhurst. Mr Buckle will I think help you in this latter.2 With much kindly feeling, believe me | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Address me “Al Signore Philip Webb | Presso Il Signore C.F. Murray 106 Via de’ Serragli | Firenze” | Italy V&A, AAD 244

1864–1887 1 After much deliberation and expert consultation, the decision had been made in 1884 for the water supply to be pumped up to a newly-built water tower, to the west of the house. This was the last of PSW’s major designs for Clouds; that work, as well as the completion of the laundry and alterations to the head gardener’s cottage, were continuing under GWJ’s supervision. 2 Buckle must have been one of PSW’s assistants.

232 • To William Morris, 25 November 1884 Florence November 25. 1884 My dear Fellow I am not quite sure as to the date, for time with me has rather given way to space. Everything is large here and about, and the walking of the moon seems rather to belong to the little tidinesses and handful beauties of the small fatherland away than to this spot on the world of huge decay. Wardle will have told you of how ill he was used by his impatient companion and how we parted at Brussells a week ago. The good natured Murray picked me up at Lugano, on this side of the St Gothard, and like his forerunner puts up with my dreaming, very faithfully. He who goes abroad without the tongues has his punishment always with him, and but his home friends are relieved, no doubt, from a dreadful penalty. The antiscrapers must be in a state of blessed relief! He who has all his senses should not travel – much – for the whole 5 of them are terrible torturers of the imagination, giving pleasure and pain too fully. That the things I daily see, hear, and in other ways suck in have not been killed by universal babblement, is proof of their high piled-up power. Some are less and some are much greater than I had heard of, and disappoint and please by with perverse surprising. I’ll tell you nothing of them, so as to vex you as little as may be. I merely write to you that you may not suppose I am lost to you and your surroundings. The weather has been fine and very helpful, only part of Saturday & yesterday be having been wet. Today is splendid again, but with sharp white-frost and keen low wind streaky with warm bright sun. I have not yet had heart to touch my work – some which must be done – but shall turn to in a day or so as a relief. If you have an inclination, send me a note of your well being and of that of the women folk. Give my love to Janey and the girls and believe me your affectionate | Ph: Webb. address Al Signore Philip Webb | presso Signore C: F: Murray 106 Via de’ Serragli | Firenze. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 10 245

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

233 • To Kate Faulkner and Mrs H. Faulkner, 26 November 1884 Florence Novr 26. 1884 My dear Friends You may have been reproaching me – in your kindness – for not having sent a word to you before this, and I hope you have, for I should be pleased at your wish to know whether I had been lost on the way or not. I have had several letters to write and have been much disinclined to write anything from my crowded head. I fancy that my head is the more overwhelmed that by the tongue in it being more or less disused: the good-natured Murray being the only one to whom I can remark anything, either in jest or earnest. I left London on Sunday morning the 9th and went from home to Dover, across to Ostend, then to Bruges, Ghent and Brussells, all with Wardle as companion – a very good one – who watched and guarded me in the most kindly manner. I left his shielding arms on Monday the 17th in the evening, and travelled alone by night-train to Basle: I did not stop there, but went on in the morning to the St Gothard pass: from Basle and upwards there was snow and complete winter, both in appearance and coldness up to the mouth of the great tunnel: after passing through which, and shooting out into the Italian side, I came into clear bright sunshine again – another world – with no snow; one of the greatest reliefs I ever had, for I much dislike snow except – may be – on the far away mountain tops. Continuing, I came in the late afternoon to Lugano, and stopped there for the night, my present good host, Murray, arriving there also at about 10.20 at night, a very great relief to me as my tongue was a most useless & wooden one. Beside the splendid and quite lovely scenery of this Italian Switzerland and the pretty town there was one of the noblest frescos in the world to see – in wonderful condition, & as wonderfully lighted with a perfect sun.1 We journeyed together to Como and stopped, then to Milan and stayed there, afterwards to this place where we came on Friday night the 21st. Murray’s home having many rooms, he has very kindly put at my disposal two of them in which I can be solitary after my manner and do some work, which I began this morning.2 I shall not attempt to tell you of the wonders of the land, as I can better amuse you with my account when I come home again. My spirits vary, but I am never depressed for long together, though I confess to finding such a dim waste of glory and beauty, at times, really oppressive; this however will wear off, no doubt, and ruined beauty and deserted space will come to look natural. You must not think that I do not enjoy the wonders, for I do so, but they are piled-up, and are apt to set me musing in a rather melancholy way. If, my dear Kate, you should feel inclined to send me word of yourself and the dear mother, I should be very glad of the news indeed. I would like you to tell me all about yourselves and Charles. 246

1864–1887

My address is Al Signore Philip Webb. | presso Il Signore C.F. Murray 106 Via de’ Serragli | Firenze. | Italy With kindest love to you both, believe me, very sincerely yours | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 88

1 On the interior wall dividing the two parts of the late fifteenth-century church of S Maria degli Angoli in Lugano is a very large fresco of scenes from the Last Supper and Passion, executed in 1529–32 by Bernardino Luini (c. 1480/5–1532). 2 This work mainly related to further internal design details for Clouds, as his letters to GWJ show.

234 • To George Price Boyce, 27 November 1884 Florence November 27. 1884 My dear Boyce That I have not written to you and your wife from Italy, or even from Flanders, is because there has been too much for me to see and dream over and altogether a too distracting time for anything like friendly writing: added to which I was obliged to bring some work with me, and as soon as I got sat down in Florence I had to take up that. I shall reduce it to the smallest possible quantity but any work takes time. I cannot say that I find work worrying, for it rather saves me from becoming savage and moody under the impress of staring at and wondering over the vast wreck of ancient art strewn all over this country. Wardle went with me as far as Brussells and kept things from eating too deeply into my consciousness and now, the good-natured Murray, with whom I am staying, helps also to temper wonders to my vexed soul. How wise it was of me (!) to refuse to come to Italy for a month – say – for I find that, go to the study as slowly and carefully as I may, I am driven almost to desperation with the multitude and variety of things which cannot be passed by hastily without intense folly. The days also are so short that little time is left to go backwards & forwards over things that should be knawed [sic] at and not bolted. I thought to pay but general heed to pictures, but I find that they lay hold of me irresistibly and as what the knowing ones have told about the Italian architecture is was but little to the point I have to make up my mind all afresh. I was so caught in the net of a tremendous Luini fresco at Lugano, on my first stepping into Italy, that I have barely recovered from the surprise of that capture now, after more than a week has passed by. I need scarcely say that things are getting muddled up in my mind in spite of my utmost care and patience. I came here last Friday night and have as yet (partly on acct of work) seen but here and there a sight. Murray is a fine sleuthhound, scenting out many hidden 247

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

things that, without his aid, I shd surely have missed. My tongue is quite useless except in its own way of wagging, so that I have been obliged to add to my business by taking some lessons, the first of which I broke my shins over this evening, and the governess who is so good as to bear with me must have gone home with hands upraised at the folly and stupidity of the English. If she had known enough English herself she wd have cursed me, surely, by all her Italian gods, from Bacchus downwards. I was very glad to have your letter from Wrenbury before I left home,1 but such was the haste with which I had to get my things together before leaving, I am not sure if I even answered it, ever so briefly? Please forgive me if I did not. If you should be willing to write me a word of the well being of yourself and Mrs Boyce, of which I should be very glad to learn, please do so and to the address given below. I heard from my sister this morning and she says she wrote to you in the north (somewhat lately) and not having heard from you is unaware of where you are. I think they wd have real pleasure in getting you and Mrs Boyce to spend one of my usual times with them at New Place, if the cold is not too much for such an outing. Please do not consider from this that you are to go as a duty; there is no such need whatever. My address at present is – Al Signore Philip Webb. | presso Il Signore C: F: Murray 106 Via de’ Serragli | Firenze | Italy. Sincerely the friend of both of you | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 212-13

1 The village of Wrenbury, in Cheshire, is situated on the River Weaver.

235 • To George Washington Jack, 27 November 1884 Florence Novr 27. 1884. My dear Mr Jack. I have your letters of 20th & 24th the former last evening, and the latter this morning. The first letter went round by Brindisi, by accident I suppose. I will here answer your questions. The stable fittings Clouds to be enamelled – see Mr Basset when you can, as he is familiar with this work.1 If Mr Hensley writes to me I will answer him, but you can write to him & say that I shall be home in April of next year and I could, no doubt, set to work at once, then, to design his house, but it is not likely that things wd be ready to begin building ’till the autumn of 1885, if even then; it being more likely that we shd be 248

1864–1887

ready to work about the early spring of 1886.2 I must see the ground before I can do anything, as the position of house depends upon circumstances, and is most important. You can make any arrangements you like to go and see the ground and take notes with Mr Hensley (his address is 51 Norfolk Square Hyde Park) Before leaving, I wrote to Mr Wyndham and told him that I had arranged with Goodman that he should certify for all payments to Estcourt and others during my absence. Wyndham must have failed to let Rawlence & Squarey know of this. I enclose a note for you to forward to R & S in Salisbury. Please remember me kindly to Mrs Long,3 and tell her to have the carpets cleaned, but to be careful to whom she goes, as some cleaners wear a carpet out in one cleaning, – do more mischief than 10 years of wear. I send with this a drawing for the plaster enrichment in the spandrils of the dining-room beams for Clouds.4 I think you had better faintly square this drawing in pencil and draw out full-size – as accurately as possible – the outlines and particular curves of the design in pencil, not putting in any shadows. Send my drawing and your outline to Estcourt with directions, first putting (in the space I’ve left on my drawing) the height from floor. The modeller who has done the former works will be quite able to do this work from my drawing and directions. I will do next a piece of the enrichment to run along the beams at A and send it as soon as possible, to keep the men going. After this, I will make more clear some of the parts of the drawing-room frieze. I feel quite safe in your hands as to all the works, but I should like to help you as much as possible, but depend on your using your own judgment as you think fit. I cannot sufficiently thank you for the care you are using on my behalf. I will write to Mrs Coronio.5 If Mr Buckle has come back he might go and see Ewhurst to save you, but I leave it to your direction. I suppose you have my letter written, I think, from here on Sunday last. You will send me what notes you can for Longden’s work on the Clouds fireplaces, as I am anxious about the fitting of ironwork. Rough bits of tracing and pieces of details will be enough. In case my last letter has not reached you, my proper address is, at present. Al Signore Philip Webb | presso Il Signore C. F. Murray 106 Via de’ Serragli | Firenze | Italy Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. It is admirable weather here, but very cold. V&A, AAD

1 PSW’s former assistant. 2 The barrister, Charles Ernest Hensley (b. 1845), appears to have left an enquiry (perhaps through the recommendation of Sir William Bowman) at Raymond Buildings in PSW’s absence. Nothing would come of this, probably because Hensley was wanting to proceed more quickly than PSW’s schedule allowed.

249

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 3 The housekeeper for the various chambers at Raymond Buildings. 4 Spandril: ‘The triangular space between the outer curve of an arch and the rectangle formed by the mouldings enclosing it, frequently filled in with ornamental work’ (OED). 5 Aglaia Ionides Coronio (1834–1906), elder daughter of Alexander Constantine Ionides, was a member of the lively Anglo-Greek community in London and, with her cousin Maria Zambaco and Marie Spartali, one of the ‘Three Graces’ of Pre-Raphaelite imagery (she was a model for both Rossetti and Burne-Jones).

236 • To George Washington Jack, 6 December 1884 Florence Decr 6. 1884 My dear Mr Jack I send off this evening a detail of the smaller division of the frieze for the drawingroom at Clouds. I sent off by post, a detail (3" scale) drawing for the ornament to the curved beam for the dining-room, on the 27th Novr, and a full-sized drawing of the pattern to run along beams, either on the 30th Novr, or the 1st of Decr; will you let me know if you have received these? Mr Murray tells me that it is not wise to post drawings without registering them, so I send this in a different way so as to be sure that it has the best chance of getting to you. The drawing cannot go to Mr Estcourt ’till the rest of the frieze drawing is ready, but the work on it may assist in getting on with the rest of the plaque. I will now set about the Crown Imperial Lily,1 which comes on the right hand centre-line, as that is a part less settled than the rest, and wants clearing up. I heard from my sister yesterday, and she told me you had been to see the Ayot Green building,2 and had called at New Place. I am very glad of this, as I fear in your anxiety for me, you may overwork yourself. I get on pretty well but find that the wonders to be seen are legion, and require a great deal of time to digest them, so that they may remain by me in time to come. I went to Pisa on Wednesday and returned on Thursday, and found there another mine of wealth, altogether too large to be rightly assimilated. The want of the Italian language much bothers me, and though I have laid on a Governess (!) I still make but little way in it, as the things I have to do do not give me time to work long enough together at the vocabulary and grammar. When trying to measure parts of a fine 13 cent: Baldac[c]hino at a church,3 about 4 miles from Pisa, I fell off a high stool, grazed my ankle and shook myself, but had no other mischief. A couple of workmen and 5 or 6 mischievous boys enjoyed this mischief under cover of commiseration for my disaster, and they reaped all the copper money I had, as guerdon for their sincerity. The weather is broken, and there have been 2 bad days together which has let me work steadily, with a better conscience, but again comes a fine day and I set to work to see as clearly, as my poor wits allow, those things which I have thought about for many years. When you write, please tell me of yourself, and how you get along, and if people worry you too much. Please to remember me kindly to Mrs Long, and 250

1864–1887

tell her that I often wish myself back again, but that as I am out here I must stick to it. I have not yet heard from Sir W: Bowman’s friend about his house.4 Believe me, Dear Jack | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. My address is as I gave it correctly in one of my letters. V&A, AAD

1 Fritillaria Imperialis. This design survives amongst the Wyndham papers, and is illustrated in Dakers, p. 93. The finished plasterwork frieze is illustrated in Kirk, p. 141. 2 In 1884, PSW designed a ‘small timber-framed pump house, for drinking water, on the village green’ at Ayot St Peter, a hamlet close to Welwyn. See Kirk, p. 300. 3 A baldacchino (It) is the canopy covering the high altar, either suspended from the roof or projecting from the wall. From the next letter, the church seems to have been San Piero a Grado, four miles to the west of Pisa, and best known for its extensive fresco cycle in the nave. 4 See above, Letter 235, note 2.

237 • To Kate Faulkner and Mrs H. Faulkner, 7 December 1884 Florence. Decr 7. 1884 My dear Friends I had your kind letter from the hand of Kate – dated Novr 29 – and the reading of it gave me much pleasure, all except that part of it where you tell of being disappointed at not hearing from me sooner. Truly I have been busy, more so since I have been in Florence as, added to seeing, dreaming, trying to learn, going about &c &c, I have had work to do which has occupied me much. I cannot say that I dislike this work as it makes the wide-mouthed-wonder of my life in Italy seem life-like, human to me. My tongue is sadly tied, so much so as to make the time somewhat tiresome to me, as I like to talk to people wherever I meet them, & this I cannot do. In spite of 3 good lessons from a Governess (!) I make so little way that it seems almost as if I went backward, even in my baby like efforts, and I fancy that I shall, practically, have to hold my tongue almost all the time I am away. I sometimes say that it will take a strong rope to draw me away from England again. I liked Bruges very much indeed and, I fancy, much as you did. Wardle and I were quite active in going about, and saw much. St John’s Hospital1 and the Jerusalem Ch’2 impressed me most, perhaps, but the Belfrey [sic] was always a pleasure.3 Of course I went to see the “Adoration of the Lamb”4 and, luckily, the guide went to his dinner and left us alone there for some time. What with the pictures there and at Brussells I thought there were more than enough to get through with attention, but here they are by the thousand and, do 251

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

what I may, many, very many only just get looked at, which is a shame, or wd be if it could be avoided. I had 2 days at Pisa last week and found that place crammed in like manner! Like an embarrassment of friends, one has to pick out those most to one’s heart and mind and stick to them, so I do with the pictures. Tomorrow (I write this on Sat: night) I go again to the Uffizi gallery in the morning to try and lay hold of the greatest works there, but after all, the frescos remaining on the walks built for them are most to my content. Consider an old building of the 13th or 14th cent:, all dreary and half forgotten, having the walls more of less covered with the works of busy and skilful minds and hands of the time that the walls were ready for the painting, and all the life that has gone on and been touched by these works for 5 or 600 years! This was the case in a ch’ about 4 miles out of Pisa (San Piero in Grado) lying in the fields, only a farm house adjoining it.5 A large old ghostly church of the 13th cent: with the walls above the arches all covered with stories; the painting dim mostly, and in spaces nearly gone but yet wonderful in its diminished splendour. This ch’ was not lighted up by bright sun, for it rained, but in spite of this gloom I got used, after a time, to it and came away with regret. Pisa itself is also full of wonders but they are almost deserted and neglected except in the Duomo, where worse has happened, in the way of scraping and touching up. Your description of the going to the S. D. Federation gathering, interested me much, the more so that it was the first news of active life at home that I had heard of (I see no newspapers, except Italian ones, wh’ I can’t read) and the activity in such a cause cheered me:6 here, if I could read, I do not think I shd find much socialistic news, as all of that kind of thought is damped down, partly by force, and partly by the anxiety to make money, which last is not of much use to the hard workers, as the taxes descend on them with dreadful weight, in order that the navy and the army may be kept at a high pitch to match those of the ‘great powers’! I can tell you that what I have seen of the land in the plains of Italy – (here there is a great deal between the ranges of mountains in the val D’Arno, and a great deal more in the vast plains of Lombardy) makes me stare with amazement at the laborious care with which the tillage is carried on, labour upon labour, so that the whole place is as closely dealt with as a garden; indeed the ground looks as if it were one vast garden, clean and neat & tidy as such. This patient labour of man and beast is very touching to me. I think I know – or rather feel – what Ruskin means with his beating down of Shelley and raising up of Keats for I have had some of the feeling of distaste for the former wh’ I can hardly explain, except that I think Shelley wrote more from the head than the heart.7 I am sorry to learn, Kate, that you have been somewhat sleepless of late, as that wears one away and leaves nothing in repayment for the waste; I can only beg that you will take exercise, for I really believe that air and exercise is are the only help for such evil. Also, I am sure the work you did would be easier to you in the doing. I smile while writing this, thinking of my own determined opposition to any way but of my choosing. I feel almost inclined to come away home, if only to see 252

1864–1887

your piano-case before it goes from your hands and is no more thoughtfully seen, for I was greatly interested in it.8 However, I shall have the pleasure of seeing what you are about after that piece of work is done. My sister wrote to me from Welwyn and asked for your (Mrs Faulkner’s) address, as she would like to send some winter flowers when they come out: I think it likely therefore that she will have the pleasure of sending some to Queen Square, as I cannot bring them to you. You will be good enough, I am sure, to send Charles my love & any cheery word from me you can think of. I feel that it would take 50 years for me to be able to make – even a bad joke – in Italian. My last English one was at Stanhope’s grand old villa, ½ a mile from here,9 where I dined last Monday with Murray, and had rather to keep the table alive. On being pressed to eat some more after having done well in that way I said “I am half an artist myself, and must draw a line somewhere” the ‘somewhere’ being very much like half an artist. Murray, my host, has gone on business to London, and will not be back for some 10 days I fancy, so that his family here, who only talk Italian, will not be bored by my jests! The weather today, after 2 days damping rather than raining, has been quite foggy this afternoon, so that when I went to the post and walked on into the middle of the town I could not see the top of Giotto’s tower when standing near it.10 This is different to what it was last Monday when I went up to its top and saw a world of splendour all round it, the day was so bright. I am intending to go into the construction of Brunelleschi’s dome if I can find time and opportunity, as that is very interesting from a builder’s point of view.11 I did make a note of the preparation at the top of Giotto’s tower for the lantern, or pinnacle stage, which was never built & would have been such a perfect finish for it. Now I will tell you that I am very well in health indeed, nothing really ailing me but the universal man-cry of ‘I want’. My address, for some weeks yet, will be the same at to that [sic] you last wrote to, and I shall always be glad of a letter (you must not make a point of writing) from you telling me of yourselves and what you have at heart. My kindest love to you dear Mrs Faulkner, also Kate, and I beg you to believe me Sincerely yours | Philip Webb. If you are in want of any books, you had better go to 1 Raymond Buildings and see if you can find them in my cases. I am sure Mrs Long would be glad to see you and give you some tea. This would be an excuse for going out! V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, ff. 90-1

1 The twelfth-century St John’s Hospital in Bruges was extended during the middle ages, with the addition of a monastery and convent. Part of the building now houses the Hans Memling Museum. 2 Built in the early fifteenth century as the private chapel of an Italian merchant family, and to commemorate a pilgrimage undertaken to the Holy Land, the building was modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

253

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 3 The thirteenth-century bell tower, located in Bruges’s market square, features a distinctive octagonal upper section, added in 1483–7. It originally supported a wooden spire and a figure of St Michael, but this pinnacle was destroyed by lightning in 1493. PSW recalled this visit towards the end of his life. See Vol. IV, Letter 1117. 4 The twelve-panelled polyptych of The Adoration the Lamb (c. 1423–32) known as the Ghent Altarpiece was made for St Bavos Cathedral in Ghent. Begun by Hubert van Eyck (c. 1385/90–1426), the work was completed by his brother, Jan van Eyck (b. before 1395, d. before 1441). 5 See previous letter, note 3. 6 Early in 1883, WM committed himself to the socialist cause, becoming an active member of the Social Democratic Federation, founded by Henry Mayers Hyndman (1842–1921). However, with others such as Andreas Scheu (1844–1927) he grew increasingly uncomfortable with Hyndman’s leadership. In The Historical Basis of Socialism (1883), Hyndman revealed himself ‘motivated by a conception of imperialism, whereby the English speaking and perhaps Teutonic peoples would lead the way to Socialism’. Moreover, he tended ‘to flirt with representatives of the ruling class, and [held] an optimistic view of the possibilities of parliamentary democracy’. Martin Crick, The History of the Social-Democratic Federation (Keele: Ryburn Publishing, 1994), p. 33. By December 1884, factionalism in the Federation was reaching a crisis point, and would result in WM’s resignation and the formation of the Socialist League. See below, Letter 241. 7 Catherine Maxwell suggests that Shelley’s perceptible influence upon JR’s own early writing may account for a sometimes aggressive counter-reaction in later life, such as in his 1884 Oxford ‘Lecture on Patience’, almost certainly the source for PSW’s comment: ‘read as much Keats as possible, and no Shelley. Shelley, with due admiration for his genius notwithstanding, is entirely mischievous’. Cited in Maxwell, ‘Sensitive Plants: Shelley’s Influence on Ruskin’, Durham University Journal, LXXXVII (January 1995), p. 39. 8 KF had taken on the decoration, in gold and silver-gilt gesso, of the piano made in 1883 by John Broadwood & Sons for Alexander Constantine Ionides. The decorative design was prepared by EBJ, to match Ionides’s interiors at 1 Holland Park. The piano was exhibited in 1888 at the first Arts and Crafts Exhibition, and was given by Mrs Ionides to the Victoria and Albert Museum. KF completed the decorations in 1885. 9 For Villa Nuti, see above, Letter 229, note 3. 10 The campanile designed by Giotto (1266/7–1337) stands adjacent to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore and the St John Baptistery, all of which are situated in the Piazza del Duomo. Begun in 1334, the tower was not completed until 1359, more than twenty years after Giotto’s death. 11 The Duomo of the Cathedral was designed by the architect and engineer, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), to crown the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, designed by Arnolfo di Cambio (c. 1240–1300/10). Construction of the Basilica began in the late thirteenth century and was completed in 1436. The bold façade of pink, green and white marble panels, a deliberate attempt to combine aspects of the Gothic with the newer Renaissance style, is actually the product of nineteenthcentury restoration, and was commissioned from Emilio de Fabris (1808–83) in 1871.

238 • To William Morris, 9 December 1884 Florence. Decr 9. 1884 My dear Fellow I had your letter of 29 Novr on the 5th Dec. and was mighty-glad of a word from activity in the region of the whistling winds; here, I doubt if there be much activity in the Cause. I am hardly able to be a judge, however, as not knowing the tongue I am mostly shut into the cell of myself. This alone therefore wd make any news you could give me of the working of the S.D.F as interesting as the name of 254

1864–1887

the ‘Derby’ winner to a City clerk. You know that I am not bursting with hope of instant advance (as I say when doing my Italian primer with my Governess) but the future success is certain to my mind, but most surely only in the future.1 From what I can see and learn here of land cultivation and labour, the system wd be against agricultural movement, as the farming folk have a pretty tight grip of the land – leading landlords a dance – that that is enough to keep them from hazarding anything. Landlords get half of the fruits, and let them look to it that the wine be not “measured in oil barrels” as they say; the oil barrels being the smaller. The landlord must up with the light to see what is being done or the early bird will assuredly have the worm. By this it comes that “factors” are much employed, when it is “pull devil pull baker”2 and, as a rule, the agent gets rich so quickly that the class is looked upon with envy and admiration. I hear tell that the taxes are the very devil on the top of the factor-imp,3 and all classes have to smuggle, in one way or another, the amount they make by their labour, honest or rascally. It is amazing to look at the cultivation of the soil, all so close and careful that a London market garden looks rather slovenly in comparison. I am drinking the good common wine of the country and I find it capital stuff: however sharp it may be it is not rough. Well, on my journeying to Pisa – say 50 or 60 miles – I saw the whole vale – plain is trellised (in plan) with vines hung to trees, and the rest of the growth is carried on in between; that is, the lines are the vines and the corn, cabbages &c are the spaces. I see no newspapers, but now & then Murray reads a snatch of news out of an Italian print. He did this one morning at Pisa, when I heard that the English Government were on the redistribution bill, and I had heard nothing of the franchise settlement, neither do I know now!4 I think you might make it plain what should not be done to Westminster Hall if you give evidence – make an effort for this.5 You have not seen what they have done to San Ambrogio at Milan – one of the most interesting churches in the world.6 What touched me most in Florence? Well I can hardly say – perhaps the view from Stanhope’s Villa, overlooking the skirts of the city on one side and the val D’Arno on the other, this broad valley bounded distantly on both sides by the mighty and beautifully outlined & gradated hills. In the midst, one mass of splendid cultivation: tree’d for use mainly but plenty of such branched growth. The city itself looked mighty lovely one day when I got on to the top of Giotto’s tower. Archly, the outside of the Duomo is not so bad as English archts & others have thought they made out. Inside it is dull as I knew it must be from plans of it. Still the dome is simply wasted – it really is a noble one. Of paintings, wall work is my pleasure; ’tis quite new to me, and the sight of Luini’s great picture across the screen-wall of a plain early church at Lugano was quite compelling. It was in perfect condition lighted by the west window (so called by me) in early morning, so that all the plain of coloured light of the picture was quite and completely touching: on turning away from it the beautiful hills about the place there were all in keeping. I’ve had no such slap on the soul since I saw that. Indeed, as soon as the train ran out of S. Gothard tunnel the sweet hills had me at their mercy, I had 255

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

no will of my own. Occasionally – say once or so in a day – I am dull; at other times I rise sufficiently to wish to stay out of my time. I find not being able to talk is a beastly nuisance, which I will not easily incur again. You will smile when I tell you that my work, which occupies me some good part of my time, is not looked upon by me as an evil! The days are very short and I sometimes work ’till it is too late to see anything inside a building. I gave a pinch of snuff to one of the “dogs of the Lord” at Santa Maria Novella, the other day,7 who kindly waited past his dinner time talking with Murray while I had undisturbed looking at the pictures in the ‘Spanish Chapel’ there, & he then opened the door for us to go – it was past the time. It was meagre day & perhaps his loss was not great. I shall surely not go to Rome ’till after Xmas, and my address at present will still be ‘presso Sig: C. F. M.’ as before. Give my kind love to Miss Meadows8 and the girls and think of me, when you do, in our 30 years way. | Your affectionate | Ph: Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 11

1 PSW’s willingness to commit himself to an active part in the Socialist cause is moving towards some kind of decision, and would be triggered when WM left the Social Democratic Federation. See below, Letters 241 and 248. 2 Now archaic: each man should do his best in his line of business and not interfere with that of another. 3 Meaning is allusive here, unless ‘factor-imp’ itself is a kind of tax (imp[osition]). 4 The principal reforms brought about by the 1884 Representation of the People Act (commonly known as the Third Reform Act) extended the franchise to all men paying rent or owning land valued at £10, and redefined boundaries, so that in future each constituency (with just a couple of exceptions) would return only one member of Parliament. Women remained wholly excluded from voting. 5 The House of Commons had established a select committee to consider a report from John Loughborough Pearson for the proposed restoration of Westminster Hall. WM’s statement drawn up on behalf of the SPAB (?November 1884) argued for the careful protection of recently-discovered parts of the wall of archaeological interest, and that no more than repair and preservation of the Hall itself should be contemplated (see CLWM, II, p. 335, note 3). There had apparently been a response from the select committee, indicating that WM would be invited to testify to the select committee: not only must his (lost) letter to PSW of 29 November have alluded to this, so did another of 25 November, probably to George Somers Clarke: ‘My evidence will be of the shortest & simplest kind, and will merely be a protest on the part of the Society against any alteration at all; except perhaps a petit house to guard the stones in the lower part of the wall’. WM to Clarke, 25 November 1884, CLWM, II. On 11 March 1885 he testified to the select committee. 6 Originally founded by St Ambrose in 279–86, the Milanese basilica of Sant’Ambrogio survives in its twelfth-century Romanesque form. 7 Alludes to the medieval pun on ‘Dominicans’ (Domini canes: ‘dogs of the Lord’). The cloisters of the monastic portion of the basilica of Santa Maria Novella, the most important of the churches founded by the Dominicans in Florence, contain the fourteenth-century Cappellone degli Spagnoli (the Spanish Chapel), in the former chapter house. The walls are decorated with frescoes by Andrea da Firenze (d. 1379?), including scenes of the Passion and Crucifixion, and a large Allegory of the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant (executed 1365–9). 8 Not identified.

256

1864–1887

239 • To George Washington Jack, 9 December 1884 Florence Decr 9. 1884 Dear Mr Jack Your letter of Decr 4 – recd this morning – was comfortingly assuring. I had set to work to do another piece of the drawing-room frieze at Clouds when I got the tracing of the small dining-room arches at the end. I will now do this first, and let you have it when done. You do not mention it, but I fancy you had received the 2 separate drawings I sent for the D. dining room ceilg? and, as I wrote to you on Saturday, I have sent another drawing, registered, so as to be more sure that the work is not lost by the way. Perhaps, when you next write you will say what things you get from me & letters. They will be wanting to lay some drains at Ewhurst I fancy shortly, and the laying shd be carefully looked-to either by you or Mr Buckle; and perhaps he might help you with this as he knows much about the levelling &c. Each length of pipes laid should be tested before they are covered up. As to Ayot parish room.1 The builder has nothing to do with levelling of ground or putting gates. Mr Jephson must settle this or leave it ’till I come home;2 but my brother tells me that Jephson is going to write to me. Clouds. I am very glad indeed that you like the hall, as I feel sure you wd not say so, if you did not feel it. Plasterer is vain, well, a little conceit in a workman is often a good sign, as men are seldom vain of scamping their work.3 I am surprised that the carvers have not finished the 4 cap[ital]s in the hall: if they had been of granite they could hardly have taken longer. I am really disappointed with this length of time in their doing and shall probably think it right to pay a part of their cost myself – however, it can’t be helped. I hope the lobby at foot of private stairs won’t be quite as dark, as it seems to have struck you as being, when all is finished. In any case it is the private stair and people using it will know its ways. I quite agree with you and Mr Goodman about mending Slades roof, this shd be done as suggested, keeping in mind repairing simply, and economically – good also as to your intention about the ivy. In answer to your list of questions. (1) the W.C. seats at Clouds only to be of clean Honduras mahogany, not stained, and French polished with clear uncoloured polish – the rest of the W.C. fittings, oak, untouched with anything. (2) I must depend on Mr Longden for saying if I ordered a cistern for still-room boiler. I rather thought I said that it might be hand fitted, and I still rather think it might so be. (3) Cedar-wood fireplaces not to be polished or oiled – if anything be done it will be waxed, but I shd wish this to wait till I see it. (4) About these tiles which Longden has in stock of Morris & Cos des work. I was not anxious for them, but if you think some of them will go well in the rooms, use them as you like, but Longden ought to keep the price down, as I shd not have used such costly ones otherwise, please to let him know this. (5) I shd use deal boards to garden wall,

257

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

but I think the gardener had better supply these when he wants them for the trees, which will not be yet awhile. (6) I think the well in middle of garden might wait a bit, or ’till I come home, unless the Wyndhams’ – either of them – ask to have it done now. (7) The boarding to covered way to laundry to be deal, and tarred, but the tarring not to be done till they have been up some little time and been dryed [sic]. How are you getting on with this work? I mean, is it in Howell’s hands to begin any work about it? and has Goodman got his schedule of prices &c. I think the new building should be begun and carried on when weather allows. I will do the necessary work to the iron fittings to the large fireplaces of house, directly I can. I should like to do this carefully, and will therefore think of it at once, & send to you when done. I thought when doing the spandril [sic] pattern to the dining room beam, that it was hardly worthwhile to make any change for the opposite side: but, as it will [have] to be separately modelled, if you could see your way to making a drawing with some slight variation, to guide the modeller, please do so. I thank you much for your care for my work wh’, poor as it is, I am always anxious about myself. Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. Please give my kind remembrance to Goodman when you see him. I am getting along pretty well but find my memory very poor. I heard from Welwyn that you had been to New Place, and I was glad you did so. I have a number of letters to write so that I should be glad if you mention me kindly to Vinall. I hope Mrs Long and her people are well. I suppose you have more water than we have, the Arno is so low that it could almost be waded – quite perhaps – in parts. Address to me as last letter. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 236, note 2. 2 The Reverend Henry Jephson was rector of Ayot St Peter, 1872–1911. 3 ‘Scamping’: negligently or hurriedly. (OED).

240 • To George Washington Jack, 26 December 1884 Florence. Decr 26. 1884 My dear Jack. I have had no letter from you since yours dated Decr 12. I merely mention this that you may know if your letters have reached me. There is no necessity for you to write unless there is something demanding attention. I send you by this same post a drawing of the cactus-like flower of Clouds frieze. I rather suspect that the plasterers will be pressing you for this frieze very shortly, and therefore I hasten 258

1864–1887

to send you all I can to enable you to make up the whole of the detail. I think I have given enough now to allow of you and the modeller doing the rest between you. However, I shall send you one more note of this detail viz. the branch-end which falls over the top of the Solomon’s seal boughs, and I will do this as soon as possible. In the drawing I now send I am not satisfied with the character of the flowers indicated at (A) on the Sn seal boughs, but I think you will be able to give some character to these (in another place on the panel) from the drawing – which is of good size – in the green-bound books of botany which I left with you, with a mark at the page of the Solomon’s seal. I wish the modeller to be impressed with the importance of giving the character shewn, in my later drawings, to the arching boughs of leafage, such as those marked (B) (C) on this drawing, and all leafage referable to the same kind of plant in the panel. These boughs to be well raised above the ground, but to be kept flattish at the upper surface or top plane, giving sharpness &c to the veining and general character of the leafage proper. I have noted on my different drawings that the work is to be modelled to suit the distance of the work from the eye. The exact height of this I have not by me, therefore I should like you to specify it to the modeller. You will readily understand what I mean when I say that I want the whole panel brought well together, to be modelled boldly but not heavily or with great relief to catch dust. Also, that the panel should have variation in its relief according to the disposition of the different parts of the design. I hope my last letter of explanation gave, with sufficient exactness, my answer to your reiterated question as to Slades.1 What sort of weather are you having? Open, or closed with frost? Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 PSW had written to GWJ on 13 and 16 December, with further instructions and clarifications about the work in progress on Slades, the gardener’s cottage at Clouds.

241 • To William Morris, 28 December 1884 Florence Decr 28. 1884 My dear Fellow I had your letter of the 11th Dec: and found it good for me. Snuff, and a letter now & then of yours will gan [sic] me live in this home of lovely graves, for a while. You conjured up for me a set of scenes which have cropped up now and again as I have mooned about. You have the hive about your ears and you should be more hairy all over than a bear to live tolerably thro: it. I would that you could have moderated that interesting fire-brand in Auld Reekie, but I doubt the power of water on him.1 259

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

The want of “no man wanting to get anything out of it for himself” will be, always, in the strife for right, the devils cross buttock in social life. Over, the combinations of men must go, time after time: well, patience. I am much afraid that I see too much in front and behind and too little in the middle to be a really useful companion.2 Willing but unable – in fact. If only the people would but appear on the field with questions to be answered I shd be more hopeful of the present. I think that the best of us English, if we were without money, could be “got at”. We even we, who are well off can’t could not be sure of ourselves if the pinch came to us. The English cannot live on a little, when food fails them, spirit fails also. Here’s a Job’s comforter: I didn’t mean it! As for the ‘Gentlemen’, they are as blind as bats and will go on pigeon shooting ’till the day of judgment. When Capitalism is really at its wits end for markets something may be done in England, and as soon as I read newspapers again that will be what I shall look for. Still no one must think that when capitalists are down on their marrow bones that they will be for the people, they are a bad-bred lot, and the ill gotten race must die out, for no good can come of them. I should be glad to hear if, between the acts of politics, something could be done to save Westminster Hall or any other good thing remaining to us. Shaw Lefevre is bent on dishing us,3 but he can turn tail on occasion and I should dearly like to make him, in this one matter at all events. Micklethwaite is a student, and nothing therefore can be done with him in a living world, of things tangible I doubt if he has the ghost of an idea.4 In the whole of the small antiscrape society there are only 2 or 3 who have ever seen an old building. I have a little got used to this place and shall feel when I move to Rome somewhat stiff and awkward again, but I dare say I shall get away there about the end of the first week in Jan: stopping at Siena on the way. I went to Prato, Pistoja and Lucca on the 3 first days of this last week and found much to gape at. Lucca has the wonderfullest hills round it possible and, as it was a very fine day, the sides and grooves of them shone again all in their deep green-brown. Tis only the towns that look old, the country looks as young and fresh as a 15 years old girl. All the old architecture about, before the Renaissance, I like better than I expected, but I have mixed feelings while staring at it. Strange enough to say, I can still go on with my own trumpery work without too much disgust – perhaps the reason is that I only see it on paper, where it looks real. I make next to no way with the tongue, nor shall I, that’s certain – In the first place I’ve too little time to learn in, and in the second and worse I have no turn for learning languages, and my memory is worse than words can say. I may see a working man – a mason – at or near Siena, who talks English, and I shall try and see if he is shy on serious matters. How are Janey and Jenny & May doing this winter? Tell Janey that I think I like the very small England as much as ever but I also have real delight in this different looking country, and the only thing which at all jars on me is the sight of a well to do Englishman. Of course I see now other than the well to do. There is a shoddy-fortuned American here who drives 7 or 8 horses in a string – has driven 16 – 2 x 2 – ’till 260

1864–1887

an accident blocked the streets and the Lord Mayor of the place restricted him to 6 or 8. He uses all his horses by making his coachmen follow with separate teams, and be damned to him. Don’t you put yourself to writing me a letter ’till you have time & inclination, but I shall always be glad of a few words. Your affectionate | Ph: Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 12

1 ‘Auld Reekie’ (Old Smoky), the colloquial name for Edinburgh. WM delivered his lecture, ‘How We Live and How We Might Live’ to the Edinburgh branch of the Scottish Land and Labour League (founded by Andreas Scheu) on 13 December, and the next evening lectured in Glasgow on ‘Art and Labour’ to the Glasgow Sunday Society. On 29 December he resigned from the Social Democratic Federation, and with other dissidents announced the formation of the Socialist League. Its manifesto was drafted by WM, as one might have supposed from the rhetorical sonority of its opening sentence: ‘Fellow Citizens, We come before you as a body advocating the principles of Revolutionary International Socialism; that is we seek a change in the basis of Society – a change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities.’ 2 PSW seems not to have been a member of the Federation, but clearly was influenced by WM’s own recent history, for he quickly agreed to WM’s wish that he might join the Bloomsbury branch of the Socialist League. See below, Letter 248. 3 George John Shaw-Lefevre (1831–1928), created Baron Eversley in 1906, was at this time MP for Reading (1863–85). He was a member of Gladstone’s government, serving as Postmaster-General and First Commissioner of Works, in which role he had hired John Loughborough Pearson to report on the restoration possibilities for Westminster Hall. See above, Letter 238, note 5. 4 The architect John Thomas Micklethwaite (1843–1906) was an antiquarian and liturgical scholar by inclination, whose publications up to this time included Modern Parish Churches: their Plan, Design and Furniture (1874), and a scholarly paper on Westminster Abbey, which were perhaps the grounds for PSW to consider him a ‘student’ rather than a practitioner. Nonetheless, the SPAB had an excellent professional relationship with Micklethwaite, ‘one of the few architects they did not hesitate to recommend in their early days’: Chris Miele, ‘“English Antiquity”: Historic Buildings Culture and National Identity in the Nineteenth Century’, in David Crellin and Ian Dungavell, eds., Architecture & Englishness 1880–1914 (London: Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2003), p. 98. PSW would himself canvass ‘the erudite Micklethwaite’ about Westminster Abbey when acting as an intermediary for Giacomo Boni. See Vol. II, Letters 447 and 460, and his letters to Micklethwaite written during July and November 1893.

242 • To George Price Boyce, 5 January 1885 Florence Jan: 5. 1885 My dear Boyce I had nearly given Mrs Boyce & you up as ‘gone coons’,1 when your looked for letter came and stayed all further maledictions and indeed changed the tone to blessings. I have not written so many letters of the personal & friendly kind for years as I have within the last 8 weeks, but well I know the kind of delay which 261

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

besets one at home and delays the writing of a letter which wd be a pleasure, after all, to write. I’ve no doubt you said when yours was written, that it was not such a terrible matter after all when it was done. I am glad you screwed up courage to go to New Place2 as I am sure the folk there would be very glad to have the change of the company of both of you in the house, and I don’t fancy the journey is much of a trouble or the place much of a bore to you; the country, even so near London, being real country and the physic real nasty! ‘snasty’ is the older form of a very trenchant word. When I am there, I make the doctor my conscience keeper, and eat & drink whatever he sets before me, laying any consequences on his shoulders. I hope you & Madame did the same. I have not seen Dering’s pictures for 15 or 16 years and I am afraid those left to him have been turned face to the wall for most of that time.3 You do well to attend at the antiscrape meetings, as so many of the half or quarter hearted members take no interest in the object, probably because they do not know or care anything about ancient work. I believe that they are really a little more careful in Italy than they were, but much mischief still goes on. To shew the kind of stupidity in the Italian mind as to buildings, I will instance a thing I noticed the other day. I was going into Santa Croce again one afternoon,4 and found masons at work rubbing down the marble work of the new front there, which was only finished a few years ago, to make it look quite white again; some tone of time was actually improving the look of the dull modern work, & it was too much for the neat & weak modern mind, so they set themselves to grind it off. However, there is but little spare money in the country, and things are not being done here on the large scale they are in France. I believe that St Marks at Venice is safer now than it was before we made the row.5 I have seen the North western towns of Lugano, Como, & Milan, and the mid Italian towns of Pisa, Lucca, Pistoja and Prato, and I have worked away here pretty steadily, but I have almost too much to see to find time to make many notes, & what notes I do make are of the roughest – Helps to my own bad memory more than anything else: the pictures are a great hindrance, for I have found them so many & so good that I have been unable to resist looking hard & long at them. I had a sudden burst of fresh enjoyment over the Benozzo Gozzolis’ in the small chapel of the Pal: Riccardi on Saturday, and they took my breath away. I like Benozzo immensely, & his work there is in such good condition.6 There is a good deal to be seen in Florence if you poke about for it, but I can see that one suffers less pain than others do who saw Florence 20 or 30 years ago. The loss of the walls is immense, as I have gone the ring of the place and counted the towers & bits of wall remaining & found the dulness of the boulevards which have taken the place of the walls.7 My work, as you note, did follow me here, and though it was a loss of time to me in one way it was a gain in another, as it made me feel less like an idle man amusing himself while the poorer were working for him. However, I have done one fit and another meets me in Rome so that friend and assistant Jack, at home, be 262

1864–1887

not left too heavily taxed. If, when I come back, and we find opportunity and you inclination, we will go together to Knoyle and see the mess I have made there.8 If there be any part of it bearable no one will be able to say that the good of it came of my seeing Italy. How different the English and Italian landscapes are and yet how equally beautiful. Morris’s first lecture put this difference on the right footing and any thoughtful person can readily know the reasons why.9 I have heard from Wardle, but hardly in a hopeful way, as to the energy of the anti-scrape committees. I have read no newspapers, and have only gathered what I know of this and other English things from what friends have written to me. I thank you for seeing my beautiful Halton Castle in its place again, ready to meet me on my return.10 I hope Mrs Long offered you civilities, as she wd hardly look upon you as a thief, having brought something instead of taken something away. Our weather has been broken, but of late more dry and cold, the last few days having a kind of English March touch in them. I take onions and oil here in moderate fashion but, as I sleep alone – yes, I do – this does not matter. I hope when this reaches you that both Mrs Boyce and you will have thrown off your colds. I start for Rome on Wednesday, taking San Gimignano & Siena on the way, both of which places I am looking forward to seeing. I shall stay in Rome somewhere about a month, I fancy, and then return by Perugia Assisi &c to Florence again & then almost directly northwards to Bologna, Verona, and other towns to Venice, at which time it will be more spring like; but things may change my course. If you shd wish to say anything before I again write, and you have not my address, you can send a note to Mr Jack & he will enclose it. With kindest remembrance to your wife. Believe me | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb rs d I am afraid that M Boyce w hardly be able to spell out this letter.11 (My Italian goes very badly) I gave Murray & wife the kind message of you and yours. BL Add 45354, ff. 214-5

1 Slang (USA): a hopeless case. 2 Harry Webb’s house in Welwyn. 3 This probably refers to the inventor, George Edward Dering (1831–1911), who inherited Lockleys, an early eighteenth-century house in Welwyn, from his father, Robert Dering. Something of an eccentric, Dering based himself in Brighton, only visiting Lockleys once a year until finally settling there in his final years. He inherited some fine pictures, including Conrad Faber von Creuznach (c. 1550–52), Portrait of a Man with a Moor’s Head on his Signet Ring (c. 1535, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). 4 The Basilica of Santa Croce is the principal Franciscan church in Florence. Doubtless PSW was drawn to make repeated visits not just for its Giotto frescos, but in the knowledge that it was the burial place of Michelangelo.

263

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 5 For the SPAB campaign against restorations to the façade of San Marco, and the resistance experienced, see Frank C. Sharp, ‘Exporting the Revolution: The Work of the SPAB outside Britain 1878–1914’, in Miele, and also below, PSW to GBO, 18 September 1886, note 8, and Vol. II, 15 December 1889, note 6. 6 The subject of Gozzoli’s cycle of frescoes, commissioned by Piero de’ Medici, and which cover three walls of the Magi chapel in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, is The Procession of the Magi (1459–61). 7 In 1865, Florence became Italy’s capital until it was replaced by Rome six years later. During this short time the city saw much modernisation, involving the removal of many medieval houses and the demolition of the ancient town walls, leaving only the gates, as well as the introduction of a widened street system and public squares. The architect in charge was Giuseppe Poggi (1811–1901). 8 He means Clouds, at East Knoyle. 9 Writing from memory, PSW probably means WM’s lecture ‘The Lesser Arts’, delivered before the Trades’ Guild of Learning on 4 December 1877, in which he dwelt on the English countryside: ‘beyond that smoky world, there, out in the country we may still see the works of our fathers yet alive amidst the very nature they were wrought into, and of which they are so completely a part: for there indeed if anywhere . . . was there a full sympathy between the works of man, and the land they were made for.’ Hopes and Fears for Art (London: Reeves and Turner, 1889), p. 22. 10 GPB’s 1881 watercolour of Halton Castle, in Northumberland, was given by PSW to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1911. 11 The writing is small and the pages crowded.

243 • To George Washington Jack, 18 January 1885 Rome. Sun: Jan: 18. 1884 [sic] My dear Jack. I have received your letter of date Jan: 5 and also the roll containing the tracings notes &c for band in hall at level of cap’s, and the figured dim[ensio]ns of drawing [-room] ceiling for Clouds. I left Florence on Jan: 9 and was just a week in getting here, stopping at 2 or 3 places on the way, and since I have been here my time has been so fully occupied, and in a way intermixed with other peoples time, that I have been quite unable to set apart any for particular work. Also, I have not the same convenience here for work that I had in Florence, but I think I shall be able to manage the necessary details to keep you going without your being overtaxed with indefinite work. I will now take the items of your letter as they came and answer the questions. Drawing-room frieze. You are right I think as to sending what you propose in the way of drawings for the modeller, added to which it is well that you should have the original drawing by you. I am really glad of your opinion as to the probable effect of the pattern if it is well done. Plasterboard in great hall. I will do this pattern, but it may be a week before I can get anything satisfactorily done to hand to you as, my seeing, so constantly, work of the utmost nicety in Italy makes me even more “fidgetty” than ever in doing my poor work, added to which, when I really do the work, it must not be a reflection of any antiquities I am studying. It must stand on its own weak legs. I will keep the scale of the ornament as large as you wisely suggest. 264

1864–1887

Hot water service for Laundry. Yes, Longden should do this, and I explained to him what I should want, but I shd wish you to impress upon him that careful economy was very necessary, as Mr Wyndham has been accustomed to very rough work at Wilbury, & was quite satisfied with it. He is also beginning to do other things about Clouds under the direction of Rawlence & Squarey in a cheap way – as a warning to me, I fancy, that he does not want to spend much more money I fancy. However, there is no need whatever for the laundry work to be done in a fancifully perfect way, and Longden should be made to understand this. Ironwork to large fireplaces. You must stick to it that the work to all these fireplaces should be done on the principles I have laid down and any variation shd only be allowed if you yourself see that it is really necessary. Longden’s are very mechanical people, and so long as they can get steam engines and unskilled labour to do their work at a good profit to themselves they will care for nothing else. Anything like useful ingenuity – which wd tax their brains (?) or reduce their profits – is out of their bargain. Unless Longden is successful at Clouds with his work – where he has already had too much his own way – I shall look to put any future work into other hands. He disappointed me too about the Ewhurst prices. Certainly, let the dining-room chimney piece be set up (fixed) to take templates accurately from,1 and I think all the other fireplaces will have to be done in the same way, but they can easily [be] protected when fixed. I am afraid young Mr Turner has – beyond his nervousness – been a little wanting in energy; however, Macculloch should now get the carving done straight off without more ado.2 He is wrong in saying that the matter was only between Mr Turner & myself. I applied to Macculloch once or twice for estimates &c, wh’ he promised me – even by letter – but never let me have. I suspect I shall have to pay, myself, for the waste of time. Area on N. side of offices. I think this might remain ’till I return, as, shd it be unfinished when Wyndham gets into the house it wd not matter. Ewhurst. Mr Buckle’s report is good – but all the drains should be seen to and tested either by him or by you – and none covered up ’till they have been so tested. Have you heard at all from Miss Ewart? If she wd like to meet either you or Buckle at Ewhurst you cd arrange to do so. I thank you for telling me your wishes as to taking your young friend to study in Raymond Bgs. I can see no objection to the proposition whatever, but you will readily understand that I shd like it to be your affair and that your cousin shd be under your control, not mine, subject of course to my decision on certain points.3 I shd be very glad to be the means of giving a helping hand, but wd not like in any way to be fettered. At all events the thing might be tried by you to see what comes of it, and if the young fellow can, in time, make himself useful, I shd be very glad to pay for all assistance according to the necessity for help and its value. I feel sure that I can leave myself in your hands in this matter. Will you kindly make a note of this kind of agreement?

I enclose the Income Tax “Demand note”; will you be so good as to pay it for me and get the proper receipts? If you shd be short of money before my return, will 265

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

you ask Mr Wardle for some, showing him this letter, as I am sure he will kindly do it for me at the risk of Mr Morris, as the latter would wish to help me I know. A letter to my bankers wd be enough, but the thing would be easier done in the way I here propose. Will you be so good as to go to Archbutts’, the mathematical instrument makers in Bridge Street Westminster4 – opposite the east end of the Houses of Parliament – and get a small spirit level, like that I had, which has a small reflector inside it; the instrument is for taking levels as you walk about, thus. [sketch] It is of brass, about 6 or 7 inches long. I think you saw the one I had.5 The thing costs 21/- exactly, I believe, and I shd like you to get Archbutts’ to pack it in cotton wool in a thin light wooden case, to send by post, and you should have it registered and very clearly addressed to Al Signore Il Signore J: H: Middleton | 29 Via Babuino | Roma. | Italy The thin wooden box shd be put into a paper wrapper – paper of a tough kind, or cut up a canvas-lined large envelope to gum to size and form. It is quite likely that Archbutts’ are accustomed to send things abroad, and will know how to send it properly packed; but, at all events, it should be registered so as to be able to trace it in case of it’s mis carriage. I have rooms here in the same house and on the floor in which Mr Middleton lives, and I think it would be better for you to address your letters to me, “presso” Il Signore J: H: Middleton, as your last letter &c came all right. I came from Florence by way of San Gimignano, Siena, and Orvieto and found much to interest me and, with their decayed wonders, also to distract me. Rome is a monstrous city which is embarrassing in more ways than one, as it has great beauties, great ruins, great uglinesses and vast discordancies [sic] and, though extremely interesting is, in itself, not so beautiful as many of the smaller towns of Italy; added to which, a large amount of time is necessary to allow of properly sifting the good from the bad, and a memory as long, as mine is proportionately short. The Vatican, alone, is one vast heap of wonders, beauties, extravagant and monstrous pomposities all muddled up together. Mr Middleton is a very able and experienced antiquary and, when he can get away from his laborious studies, he guides my steps through the vastnesses of ancient Rome. Sometimes I feel inclined to run away from the place at once, at others to stay ’till I can disentangle the multifarious objects spread over square miles of a closely packed town. I sometimes wish myself back in dingy Gray’s Inn where decay – if real – is not so terrible in its self-assertion. If my writing is not very clear, I must ask you to lay it to the account of my being cold for, even in Italy towards the South, the rooms in which one has to work or sit are not so warm & comfortable as in sooty London. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. r I duly received a paper kindly sent me by M Boyce.

266

1864–1887

I think I am likely to be here for 3 weeks or so longer, so that you can give my address to anyone. V&A, AAD

1 PSW’s design of a bird returning to the nest, symbolic of ‘the central importance of Clouds to the Wyndham family’ (Kirk, p. 139) would be carved in the centre of the drawing-room mantelpiece. See illustration in Dakers, p. 93. 2 This relates to PSW’s irritation at the slowness with which the carvers were working on the hall capitals. See above, Letter 239. 3 This may have been the brother of Annie Christian Gray (1861–1942), the cousin whom GWJ married in 1888. 4 J. & W.E. Archbutt, of 201 Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth, founded in 1796, manufactured scientific measuring instruments. 5 He intended this as a gift for his host in Rome, John Middleton. See below, Letters 245–6.

244 • To Kate Faulkner and Mrs H. Faulkner, 24 January 1885 Rome Jan: 24. 1885 My dear Friends Since I last wrote to you I have been on the move and, as I think, in my last letter I said I was about to leave Florence, I have not expected a letter from you. I have been here for 10 days, and took a week to get from Florence. The post has been stopped altogether for some days, and I believe even now it goes by the St Gothard pass instead of the Mont’ Cenis route,1 the heavy snow in the mountain region having blocked the way. It has been partly on this account, partly because I have been busy with my work, and at other times getting about to make myself as well acquainted with this city as possible in the time that has caused me to almost cease writing to England for a little while, save that I have been obliged to write to Mr Jack who is working for me still in Gray’s Inn. I hope you have not been vexed at my silence or accused me of forgetting you? Truth to tell, Rome has been very cold indeed since the storms & rains which lasted 3 or 4 days after I got here; so cold has it been, that my fingers had to be thrust into pockets to keep them useable at all. I ought at once to have written when I got here, to give you my address, as I want much to know how the good mother is, and it will take at least 8 days before I can learn; however, perhaps I could not have heard from you, the post being out of gear. Will you kindly send me some word as soon as you get this letter – if you do get it. I left Florence on the 7th of Jan: and went direct to Siena, which is nearly half way to Rome.2 I spent some 5 days there and found the place full of interest: that is a walled town after your hearts, the streets all uphill down dale: the middle of

267

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

the place being on a hill and the rest on hills which radiate from the centre, like fingers from a hand; the valleys being between the fingers. Of this place too I shall be able to shew you some photographs when I get back. The Cathedral and the town hall are the great buildings of the place, the other Churches, though huge & noble in scale, are mostly almost bare. The cathedral is extraordinarily full of fine work of a strange kind, one of the most interesting being the floor, all over which are graven, & inlaid in marble, many fine pictures.3 You can see an example of this work in a rubbing of one design which hangs in the S. Kenn Museum in the great hall on the right-hand side after of the one you enter by. One of the chief delights of Siena, to me, is the number of large mediæval houses still standing; some of them almost untouched. I went one day to San Gimigno [sic] but was only there long enough to see its strangeness and general, but rude, beauty.4 From Siena I went to Orvieto, a noble & most ancient city on a rock, overlooking and high above the river Pallia [sic], which, soon after, runs into the Tiber.5 It was very rough, stormy weather while I was at Orvieto and, as the stupid authorities have been blundering over their repairs of the roof, a very considerable part of the Cathedral church was drenched with rain, even frescos (luckily not the best) being heavily wetted.6 Of this place too I shall have some photographs to shew you. I am somewhat indurated7 with sight-seeing, but I confess I do not like it, and shall hardly be sorry when my time is up and I can pretend to earning an honest living, for as it is now – in spite of the work I do – I feel somewhat of an idle man, living on the sweat of the labours of poverty. Rome to me, is almost a terrible place. Very wonderful it is and it has many beautiful things in it, but apart from its appearance, the very memories it stirs give it a grim cloudy look to the mind. I often think of Andrew Fairservice’s “Muckle hure that sitteth on the seven hills.”8 The place is full of the remains of palaces of the rascally rich, both lay and priestly, which give it a devilish cast. Now, also, the people generally are given up to making money with the hope of becoming as rich as the envied English, and Socialism, at present, is not here, or it is so damped down that none appears. I am luckily and most kindly helped in my study of the less unworthy part of the remains by my friend Middleton, who is very hard at work upon a history of ancient Rome;9 and as I live in a room on the same floor as his, and he likes to see a good deal of me, I pick up a good deal something of true information which I other-wise should miss. Amongst thousands of other wonderful things M: Angelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican is the most beautiful and comforting. The ancient ruins are wonderful, truly, but also terrible indeed. Man, in Rome, has surely shewn what a curse he can make himself. To cap past iniquities, the people are now active in building, under Mr Jeremiah’s most able guidance.10 Just now I went for a walk, a couple of miles or so out of Rome, in to the Campagna and back by Tiber’s side. This country too has a terrible look, softened here and there by some grace of beauty. I think that the most gentle things I have

268

1864–1887

seen here are the happy Jackdaws, which I see playing about in the air and settling on the wind vanes, while I lie in bed before rising-time in the morning. These dear creatures have their myriad homes in the towers, and the ruined walls of the Colosseum, and Palaces of the C[a]esars. They makes this dead-alive place human to me with their active flight and their clattering talk. If you should feel inclined & of to write to me again, and after you have told me how you both are, I should be glad to know how the new “League” is getting on. I heard from Morris just after the break up had happened, and as some time has passed since then I should like to know if things are going pretty well in the new form.11 I shall be here, I think, ’till about the 15th of February and my address ’till then will be Signor Philip Webb presso Il Signore J: H: Middleton | 29 Via Babuino | Roma. | Italy I hope you have been able to get to your work again Kate, and that the mother is able to watch you and perhaps read to you a little at times out of the pleasant books you have pleasure in. I hope the post will serve to take this letter to you, as I should like you both to know that I often think of your kind ways to me and of the pleasure I have in your friendship. Believe me, both of you, | Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. If my writing is hard to read, please to lay the cause of its badness to my ink rusting my pen & to my fingers being cold. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, ff. 92-3

1 Now located entirely within French territory, in the second half of the nineteenth century the Mont Cenis pass formed part of the Alpine border between France and Italy, the ancient route through to Turin and on to Rome. 2 He may be measuring by journey time, rather than distance: by road, Siena is 44 miles from Florence, and Rome 149 miles from Siena. 3 The thirteenth-century Sienese Duomo is dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, and is visually striking for its use of marble, both for the façade and the interior. The marble mosaic floor (fourteenthsixteenth century) features 56 panels illustrating Biblical scenes and representations of the sibyls, allegories and virtues. There is notable fresco work, including examples by Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto, 1454–1513), in the adjacent Piccolomini Library. 4 The ‘strangeness’ of the Tuscan walled hill town of San Gimignano rests in its unique group of mediaeval tower houses, visible from afar. 5 The Paglia joins the Tiber to the south-east of Orvieto. 6 See also Vol. II, Letter 369. Much of the Duomo at Orvieto, dedicated, as at Siena, to Santa Maria Assunta, was completed during the fourteenth century. The most important frescoes, by Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455), Gozzoli and Luca Signorelli (c. 1445–1521), depict scenes of the Apocalypse and Last Judgment, and decorate the vault and walls of the fifteenth-century Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio. 7 Hardened.

269

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 8 In Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817), Andrew Fairservice rejoices in the survival of the Orkney cathedral of Kirkwall. ‘“Ah! it’s a brave kirk. . . . It had amaist a doun-come lang syne at the Reformation, when they pu’d doun the kirks of St. Andrews and Perth, and thereawa, to cleanse them o’ Papery, and idolatry, and image worship, and surplices, and sic like rags o’ the muckle hure that sitteth on seven hills, as if ane wasna braid eneugh for her auld hinder end”.’ (ch 19). 9 John Middleton, Ancient Rome in 1885 (Edinburgh: A and C. Black, 1885). He wrote a sequel in 1888, and then a revised version of both volumes appeared as The Remains of Ancient Rome in 1892. 10 The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah condemned the Israelites for their sins, warned of the destruction of Jerusalem and foresaw the period of Babylonian captivity. 11 His desire for news is revealing, for the Socialist League was barely a month old.

245 • To George Washington Jack, 25 January 1885 Rome Jan: 25. 1885 My dear Jack. I recd your letter this afternoon and I at once write to notice one or two things in it which should not be delayed. The spirit level has not yet come, but the parcel post is often a little later than the letters. You were quite right in sending the bronzed one, and I thank you for taking this trouble for me at once. I am really sorry that the plasterwork for the dining-room has not been modelled with spirit and on my return, if I find it not up to the mark of that done for the hall, I must have the work taken down & redone. As to the frieze for the Drawing-room, this must be done with spirit, and I do not see why Estcourt took it (the modelling) out of the hands of the man who did that for the hall, as I expressed my satisfaction with that. Please write to this effect to Estcourt, and ask him to call and see you about it when he is in town. The drawing-room frieze is so important a part of the room that it should be modelled in the best way it can be done, and in no case should it be a lifeless rendering of the designs, on which we have spent much time & trouble. The man who did the modelling for the hall was a Gloucester carver, but I have forgotten his name. I am now at work on the drawing-room ceilings, but the larger one will take me some time to do. I will send the one for the East drawing-room first, as I am making that simpler, & it will take me less time. Mrs Wyndham must, of course, do what she pleases with the things you mention, but if she shd turn things about in a ridiculous way, I shd wish you to point out the reasons for not changing my arrangement, and you shd let her know that you keep me informed of what is being done. As to the Laundry, I pointed out to her, when she met me at Slades, where & what I thought of doing in this work and she agreed as to the reasonableness of my scheme. However, I am not very anxious about this work, though the supposed saving in labour of servants &c is a myth. Please to write to Mr Jones, and refer him to Messrs Wing & Du Cane, solicitors, of 1 Gray’s Inn Square, who have the money (£32/10/0) ready for him when the difficulty about the chambers is properly settled.1 Will you go round and see 270

1864–1887

Mr Du Cane, and tell him of Mr Jones’s application. In no case should you pay Mr Jones. I have told him it is in Messrs Wing & Du Cane’s hands. Nothing can be done for the Mrs Kohl who calls begging.2 I have told her so before. I have no objection whatever to your giving Mr Basset tracing to do when it helps you on, but I suppose you have come to some agreement with him as to payment by piece-work? I say this, as it would be better for him to work in that way now.3 I am glad you are satisfied with what I said about your cousin: I really hope he will get on and be able to help us. I sent off to you on Friday the detail for the enriched band in hall. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. My address same as given on your letter just received. V&A, AAD

1 PSW’s payment for the lease of 1 Raymond Buildings. It is not clear what issue required resolving. 2 Not identified. 3 Basset, PSW’s former assistant, had now retired, but his experience clearly made him the obvious candidate when extra help was needed.

246 • To George Washington Jack, 26 January 1885 Rome Jan: 26. 1885 My dear Jack. Your letter of the 23rd came this morning also the spirit level, quite safely, for wh’ I am much obliged. You were quite right to send it at the cost of the postage, as it would have been absurd to risk it more than necessary. Mr Middleton is much pleased with it, and it will be useful to him in his labours amongst the ruins of ancient Rome. I have nearly designed the ceiling for the East drawing-room, and I will finish that first as it will not take long. If they have not run the cornice to this drawing room, let them wait ’till you have written to me to say so. Also, do not let them cast any of the design for the plaster frieze of the long or west drawing-room for this room, as I think I might arrange something cheaper & simpler; but at all events they need not make casts of frieze yet for this small drawing-room. I will go on next with the details for carving of main staircase. By the way, if you can manage that the fireplace for the small or East drawingroom shall come opposite to the centre of the pier between the 2 south windows, I shd be glad, as in my design for this ceiling I have kept this line as the cross centre line – an inch or so out would not matter. I am surprised that Longden should raise so many difficulties about the chimney hoods. Casters of iron must be in a bad way if they are not up to such 271

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

simple matters. The Carron compy would have done it easily I am sure,1 and the Coalbrookdale company could, even now.2 Why should there not be another flange or two on the back of the plates to keep them straight. I can’t say I like the idea of grooving thro’ the stall boards for the safety bars to stalls. You see to many of the stalls the width of gangway of stables is 10 feet from posts to wall, and the bar would have to be a large one. I think perhaps the best way would be to use a galvanized iron chain strained across at night, to hang against the wall during the day, but perhaps this could wait? Would you write to Mr Wyndham and ask him if it can wait ’till I come home? You see, highly fed & sometimes vicious horses kick their stall divisions violently, and they will sometimes lean their whole weight against the divisions, so that I should much wish not to weaken their present strength, which I have aimed at. I can say nothing about the laundry as, if it is to be put in another place, the whole thing will have to be reconsidered, as the present design was made for the Slades position. Of course another design can be made, when I return, to suit the new scheme. I don’t quite know where “Loader’s” is. Yes, please pay the cost of repairing bedding (£3.16.10) for me. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Founded in 1759, this very successful ironworks took its name from its location on the banks of the River Carron near Falkirk, in Stirlingshire. It made naval cannon and many cast-iron products, including fire grates and bath tubs. 2 The origins of the Coalbrookdale Company in Telford, Shropshire go back to the earliest period of iron smelting. During the nineteenth century, the company was famous for its decorative ironwork.

247 • To George Washington Jack, 2 February 1885 Rome February 2. 1885. Dear Mr Jack. I have just received your letter of the 30th Jany telling me that you have had my letters, and the design for enrichment of string1 at level of capitals in hall. I hope by this time you have got the design for the East drawing-room ceiling, as I shd not care to do it again if it were lost – but I kept a rough tracing of it. I dare say the “liver colour” for inside of stables will do well for the painting, and the “stone colour” for harness & saddle rooms, but I hope the stone colour is white enough. The door frames outside of stables and coach houses, and like work, should be whitish stone colour and the doors themselves dark myrtle green – quite dark. The rest of the work generally white, but not pure white, a little greenish umbre2 mixed 272

1864–1887

with it. I fancy we can manage, when the dining-room ceiling is painted, to make the enrichments clear. If the plaster work is done sharply and to the character of the design, I daresay I shall not be more than usually disappointed. I send with this a design for the carving of the 4 small pinnacles to the newelcaps of main stair case – with instructions written on the drawing, for carver. I have sent this at once so that the carver should not be kept waiting. I will send the design for the carved support to the balls between pinnacles as soon as possible. I think you had better make & keep in the office a rough tracing of the carving I now send, and let the carver have the original. This would be sent to Estcourt at direct and at once. The weather is warmer here, but is very damp. I wrote direct to Mr Mowatt.3 If Mr Wardle will kindly advance what money you may want beyond the £50 I left for office expenses, perhaps it wd be better than my writing to Praeds, but if it shd be inconvenient to Morris & Co I will write to Praeds.4 Thanks for your kind questions as to my health &c. I am very well, but I do not get on with seeing things to be seen, as fast as I shd like, as my mornings are much taken up with this home work, and there is the large drawing-room ceiling to be designed! Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 2 3 4

String-course, or string-moulding. ‘Umbre (also umber)’: a brown earth pigment (OED). Not identified. The banking firm of Praeds & Co., founded in 1802, was named after one of its partners, William Praed. It would be bought by the Lloyds Banking Company Limited in 1891.

248 • To William Morris, 3 February 1885 Rome. Feb: 3. 1885 My dear Fellow. Your letter of Jan: 24 reached me all right, and was even better in its tune than the former ones. I felt quite happy, for the time, that the League had escaped the snare of sham reconciliation. Now that the cable is really cut, even if our side drifts a little, it would not matter so long as we can keep clear of the too cranky hulk of the S.D.F. I am also glad that you agree with me as to the shaky character of the new venture, but are not afraid to look in the face probabilities. I confess that my anxious nature makes me tremble a little at the work you personally have to do. I am so much afraid of the hot-bed character of such incessant work on one turn line of life. Work for Merton Abbey – when you can turn to it wd, I think, be your safety; but how you are to manage it I cannot see.1 If my business goes to the 273

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

demnition dogs, as is likely, I might help you there, but I can say nothing certain as yet.2 At present, ’till I come home, I am doing what I set out to do, and have my heart well in hand, which is the more easy that I had imagined most of what I find in going to & fro on the earth. I cannot say anything clearly of Middleton, as his health is so uncertain; but I think he has (for an Oxford man, which is a doubtful quantity) some right feeling as to Socialism, but then he has not much power outside of what he has learned, which no doubt is a good deal.3 He seems to me to be really kindly at heart (most kind to me at all events) from expressions of his now and then, which broke through the crust of his education (?). He has been really kind to me, and the more so that my qualities – if I have any – are too uncomfortable & rude, and rasp him, I am sure: added to which I laugh and make brutal jokes when customary civilization comes to the front of in him too unconsciously. I think that if his health gets stronger, and he finishes the work he is about, he will move for England and would I think be really useful. Physically he is very strong, or his ailments wd have dragged him down. He walks a good deal and can tire me out, but his inwards are but badly arranged and he becomes very irritable at times, and falls to savage silence ’till the fit has passed away. As to the Bloomsbury branch of the League, you were right to put me down for it, and you can apply £5 ’till I come home, for subscriptions &c.4 Do you think you have much hold over Scheu, & can you make him sit quiet when the fever is on him? If you can, I shd think he wd be the most helpful of the companions. Charley F[aulkner] is always to be depended upon, and he is good to have in spite of his being at Oxford.5 Sanderson is I take it, at least, a “gentleman” and can only be useful in a sort of way when hoisted by someone he is rather afraid of, so that you had better keep your eye on him.6 By the way, I was glad to learn from Murray (who knows a man named Fisher living in Florence who married a Cobden girl)7 that Mrs Sanderson did, after all, produce something.8 How did you put you accts in order as treasurer of S.D.F when you parted company? You see, that my grocer-like nature makes me think of such things! If things go as well as they have done, I hope to save a little money from what I had put together for this journey, and the League can have it, but it may not be much, as there have been more expenses in the Gray’s Inn office than I had calculated on. The Wyndhams’ – at all event the female one – are rather wriggling about and upsetting the work there at Knoyle, wh’ has cost me much work and money, but this don’t really matter, as I did my work to amuse myself. It was not likely to interest anyone else. A good bit of my time here goes to doing work for Knoyle, but I don’t dislike the interruption to seeing the battered beauties of antiquity. The Byzantine work, and the 12th & 13 century pieces scattered about Rome and the suburbs are very interesting to me. M: Angelo is still gold to my mind, but the Renaissance is worse here, a good deal, than in Florence. Raphael comes out badly, but minor lights such as Pinturicchio tell delightfully. St. Peter’s Ch’ seems to have been a mistake throughout and is only a wonderful monstrosity. The big dome I think altogether unlucky9 – expect perhaps from some miles off, 274

1864–1887

the inside of the smaller domes are done very well, as architecture, but some of the decoration is lamentable enough. The Sistine chapel is altogether another thing and always holds its own, because of the great spirit of the workman who did it. The Stanza of Raphael is, to me, a waste of nonsense.10 The mosaic covered half domes of the church apses (early) are always good and serious, even the rudest of them. Perhaps, of all buildings in Rome, the Church of S: Stefano Rotondo, a round building of great size and as bare as one’s bottom – said to have been consecrated A.D. 467, but not built for a church, though I am almost sure it was.11 The Campagna generally is quite noble and touching, ringed round as it is with fine hills and mountains. There, I’ve done. I wish you could have given me better news of Janey and the girls. I can say nought, but only hope for better times. My kindest love to them, though I suppose Janey and May will be on their way to Bordighera by this time.12 Kate tells me that her good old mother has been sadly ailing. I shd think Kate wants looking in at as often as may be. I shall not leave here before the 15th or 16th of this month, after which I shall move to Perugia, Assisi, Arezzo & back to Florence for a few days. If you should happen to write after the 12th, you had better address to Murray’s. Yours very affectionately | Philip Webb. On re-reading this, I found it a sad scrawl & must ask pardon. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 13

1 In 1881, WM had transferred the manufacturing workshops of Morris & Co. to Merton Abbey in south London. 2 ‘Demnition’ and its shortened form, ‘demd’ is employed by Mr Mantalini, the employer of Nicholas’s younger sister, Kate, in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. PSW favoured the use of ‘deminition’ in his later years, such as in ‘demnition slow’. 3 WM seems to have been exploring the possibility of recruiting Middleton to the Socialist League. 4 See below, Letter 271, note 2. 5 CF was a member of the Socialist League’s Provisional Council, and a co-signer of the Manifesto. He also established an Oxford branch of the League, which WM addressed on 25 February. See below, Letter 253, note 1. 6 Thomas James Sanderson (1840–1922) first practised as a barrister, meeting WM and EBJ in the 1860s. In 1882, he married Julia Sarah Anne (Annie) Cobden (1853–1926), younger daughter of the radical politician, Richard Cobden, changing his surname to Cobden-Sanderson. His interest in bookbinding began from this point, becoming his profession. In 1893 he would move to 15 Upper Mall, in Hammersmith, a few doors from WM, where he started the Doves Bindery, later establishing the Doves Press in partnership with EW (see Vol. III, Letter 741). The Cobden-Sandersons were active in the Hammersmith Socialist Society from 1890, and Annie was later a prominent suffragette activist. 7 Catherine (Kate) Cobden (1844–1916), Richard Cobden’s eldest surviving daughter, had married a Sussex neighbour, Richard Fisher, in 1866. 8 The Cobden-Sandersons’ first child, Richard, was born on 12 November 1884. ‘Oh, that all may go what to us seems well? May he grow up strong and well, and a help for the people, and Annie strong and well, a delight to him.’ Entry for 16 November in The Journals of Thomas James CobdenSanderson, 2 vols (London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson, 1926), I, p. 204.

275

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 9 St Peter’s in Rome (1506–1626) replaced an older church with fourth-century origins, and which by tradition marked the burial place of the saint. Successive design plans, including those by Donato Bramante, Raphael (1483–1520) and Antonio da Sangallo, led finally to that by Michelangelo who in 1547 succeeded Sangallo as Capomaestro, superintendent of the building works. He preserved features of the designs of his predecessors whilst imposing his own authority on the work. The huge central dome was his conception, and at his death in 1564 most of the supporting drum had been built, but the dome itself was not completed until 1605. Perhaps a certain lack of architectural unity, inevitable after such a gestation in the hands of so many architects, led PSW to describe even Michelangelo’s contribution as ‘altogether unlucky’. 10 The four rooms in the Papal apartments of the Vatican, with frescoes by Raphael and his studio were commissioned by Pope Julius II (1443–1513), but not completed until after the painter’s death. 11 The Basilica di Santo Stefano al Monte Celio is remarkable for its large number of sixteenthcentury frescoes. 12 JM and MM had left London the day before PSW wrote, arriving in Bordighera on 10 February.

249 • To Kate Faulkner, 7 February 1885 Rome Feb: 7. 1885 My dear Kate. Your note, which came this morning, confirmed an otherwise wavering resolution to write to you in answer to it and the other kind letter of yours of date, Jan: 27. This does not mean altogether laziness or carelessness but, having a good deal to do, I take first what seems to be most urgent, and as your letter gave a rather better account of the dear Mother I rather rested on that real satisfaction. I daresay my letters, which seem so poor to me as I send them are, perhaps, in your good nature, not so trying to you to read. You see, I judge me by you by myself (partly) as I am always so happy in having a letter from Queen Square. It did not surprise me that the mother did not rise at once to usual strength, as the changeful weather is very trying, and mostly to invalids. Please to forgive my bad writing. I am just home from a walk and my hand shakes; also, the Italian ink is made with such strong acid that the pens become scratchy at once – and decent letters & words cannot be made with them. Morris said in his last letter that he wd send me a ‘Commonweal’ but as I have not yet had it, I fancy it may have been confiscated by the police.1 Therefore, if you will be so good as to send me a copy in an envelope, as a letter, I should like it. I fancy the postage would not be more than 5d wh’ I would repay on my return. Next to my walks outside the city, a little way into the Campagna, and the looking into the old or Byzantine churches I have not had such pleasure in Rome as my second going to the Sistine Chapel, where I stayed for abt 2 hours. There were but few people there, so that the more real and familiar people on the ceiling came more home to me. This great boon of M: Angelo’s to the world is a triumph of art, imagination, and beauty, and I could have comfortably spent the day there. Indeed, to use my fam common saying, I could live comfortably in this vast hall with self and cat, so noble & pleasant is the art of its painting. I find that 3 parts 276

1864–1887

of the – so called – splendid buildings in Rome are brutal in their magnificence; whereas this greater creation than all is to me as free from offence as a small quiet room. I say ‘to me’ for I find few in sympathy with me on this point. Raphael’s extraordinary skill, artificial, in an artificial time commands attention and much futile gabble. I am quite sick of it. I have just been to the Villa Borghesi,2 [sic] where there are ancient statues by hundreds – some good, some indifferent and some bad, but the building, the fitting and marble decoration &c &c are so offensive, that I was glad to get away – even from the good things, into the open ground about, which is really beautiful in its half neglected but not ragged state. These gardens (old park rather) of great size, are a boon to the Romans, as it is free to all for 4 days in the week, where they can roam about and gather flowers, which are many: violets, making the now warmer air quite strongly scented with their own special scent. Jackdaws, by the flock, make a noise which is a comfort in this country, where the smaller birds are so killed down. After two or three tries I, at last, got into the Pantheon,3 which is closed to the people on account of the taking down of much theatrical rubbish, put up for the anniversary of the death of the late fat king.4 By dexterously putting my hand into breeches pocket, the custodian let me through the gate, and I was satisfied with wonder of at the area & dome of this noted old Roman work. It is really a quite impressive vault, comparatively low down, with the big hole in the centre open, & the rain coming in as it has done since the building was set up. This is the only light into it, and it is ample. The Italian governt had decided to cover this light with glass, but there was enough row made to stop them; so that the meaning of the building will still remain – yet awhile! The Italians are quite reckless in destroying the smaller remains of greatest antiquity in order to set up long rows of houses of a lofty Bayswater type – though, I am bound to say, of not quite so bad a type a kind. I rather think, Kate, that you are in want of me to tell you candidly, as I always do, what I think of your work; for I feel sure that, from long continued strain in doing so great a labour, you are not able yourself alone to make out what it is really like. However, I am afraid I shall not see it in its finished state, as I shd so much like to do.5 It seems to me that such work as raising patterns with gesso must be disappointing to you, as to do it perfectly one wd have to be brought up to it, and work at it in a traditional manner; but I felt satisfied, & more so, in the way you had done it. Added to your personal disappointment, you shd allow for all hearty workers being dis-satisfied with the outcome of labour which has taken some time to do. You must comfort yourself by imagining what my houses look like to me, when I see them finished, or as nearly finished as the people who are to live in them care for. My comfort is in setting about another work, to drive the taste of the former away. I shall not be sorry to come home, when the time is up, though I hear that jinks have been played upon my work at Knoyle, but I only laugh and jeer at the stupidity. The mother and you would accuse me of brutality I am sure, but I should much like to jest in the usual way with you both, in spite of the offence I should give: never mind, but forgive me, & I shall not get better – no doubt – as I get 277

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

older!! My kindest love to you both, with a petition that you will believe me, as always sincerely yours Philip Webb. I shall, I fancy, be leaving here in a week or ten days, but if you have a fancy to write again, please address – ‘presso C: F: Murray 106 Via de’ Serragli. Firenze.’ Enclosed is an Anemone, gathered just outside the walls of Rome, & is a common wild flower here. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 94

1 The Commonweal, of which WM was joint editor, described itself as ‘the official journal of the Socialist League’. The inaugural number (for which PSW is asking) was published in February 1885, and carried on its first page the League’s Manifesto, drafted by WM and others. 2 The Villa Borghese – house and substantial gardens – was designed by Flaminio Ponzio (1560–1613) for Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577–1633). 3 One of the finest survivals from ancient Rome, the Pantheon has been in continuous use since its erection by the Roman general, Marcus Agrippa (c. 64 BC – 12 BC), probably as a private temple. In the seventh century AD it was converted into use as a Christian church, and became known locally as Santa Maria Rotunda, signifying its circular interior. 4 Victor Emmanuel II (1820–78) had died on 9 January 1878. 5 For the piano decorated by KF for Alexander Constantine Ionides, see above, Letter 237, note 8.

250 • To George Washington Jack, 10 February 1885 Rome Feb: 10. 1885 My dear Jack. I recd yesterday yours of 6th and today yours of 7th Feb: I sent off to you, on the 2nd, detail for carving of pinnacles of newels of main stairs which you do not seem to have received when you posted your letter of the 7th instant? I now send the detail for the carving of support to balls on top of the newels. You had better make sufficient memorandum tracing of this and let Estcourt have my original drawing. I have think I have put sufficient notes on drawing to keep the carver right, if he attends to them and the indications of effect in the drawing. I now answer your questions. East drawing (smaller) room. I think you must have the cornice, at present run, (of wh’ I am sorry) hacked off, and the new design, made to go with the ceiling, run in its place. They were over-hasty in running the cornice. The moulding made under frieze may remain at present in both rooms, and, of course, the old cornice in West, or long drawing-room is to remain, as that is all right. I should like a diagram made by Simmonds of the 4 sides of the East (small) drawing-room frieze, made in elevation, with figured spaces clear of inside of plaster, as I want to design a different frieze for this room to go with the ceiling. [sketch] This done to "½ scale will do, if accurately done. This should be done

278

1864–1887

directly, and a tracing sent to me as soon as possible to my old address ‘presso C: F: Murray. 106 Via de’ Serragli Firenze’, as I shall leave here I think in a week’s time, and shall be about a week in getting to Florence. I will do the detail for fire-place column &c, next, and send it to you. From the notes of painting work given [in] your letters, I think you will manage this all right, but I think the painting of stone work to fire places had better stand over till I return, as the surface of stone may not please me & I might wish to have it improved. Tiles for fireplaces in bed rooms. I think I should like one or two of the first floor rooms to have Miss Faulkner’s tiles, of a pleasant quiet kind, put into such rooms as Mrs Wyndham wished to have made best rooms, which you will now know her mind upon. Please to call on Miss Faulkner and consult with her about which would suit the chy pieces, and select a pattern (not too large) and perhaps a pale green of 2 shades wd do. Miss Faulkner shd supply the tiles to Longden and he only charge for carriage & not a percentage on them.1 The other bedroom tiles I would leave to you and Mr Wardle’s choice (if he will kindly do me this service) keeping in mind quietness of effect, and going with the marble work round them. A plan of the loose box doors shd be sent by Estcourt to the lock-maker for him to make locks fastenings (somewhat in character to the detail made by Basset, but of course made to suit new arrangements.) The thing to be borne in mind, is to avoid catching against horses as they pass through doors or when in boxes. The marble recesses in W. Cs to remain ’till I return. I will write to Mrs Coronio.2 As soon as I have designed the West or long-drawing-room ceiling I will say who ought to model it. Of course Estcourt is bound by contract to get the modelling of plaster &c done to my satisfaction. The design is difficult and will take me some time, but I shall simplify it as much as possible. The East drawing-room ceiling is easy and cheap, and the plasterer can manage all that, as also the frieze of which I am to send the design. Fire place tiles again. Perhaps Miss Faulkner’s tiles might be chosen for the one or two of the ground floor rooms in addition to those mentioned above. Any of the best fire places might have rubbed “Trough-bed” Chilmark stone hearths3 – the hearths under grates to be in cast iron as Longden has been directed. Paving. Hall paving must remain ’till I return. The corridors might be paved with Howell’s picked and hardest paving bricks laid herringbone with a strip of rubbed trough bed stone laid down the middle as sketched over. [sketch] You make no mention of what Mrs and Mr Wyndham4 have decided about the Laundry? Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. r Kind remembrance to M Wardle, and tell him I will write to him soon. I hope my asking his help about fireplace tiles will not inconvenience him. If it does, please settle it yourself with my indications here given. V&A, AAD

279

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 This suggests that KF was herself independently supplying tiles which she had decorated, rather than that they were bought through Morris & Co. Of the known Morris & Co. designs attributed to her, perhaps a tile like ‘Peony’ (c. 1880) was the sort of thing which PSW had in mind. See Richard and Hilary Myers, William Morris Tiles, p. 96. 2 See above, Letter 235, note 5. 3 ‘The Chilmark Trough Bed was recorded as having been used for the renovation (1867) of the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey.’ Francis G. Dimes, ‘Sedimentary Rocks’, in John Ashurst and Dimes, eds., Conservation of Building and Decorative Stone, 2 vols (London: ButterworthHeinemann, 1990) I, p. 113. 4 The insinuation of the emphasis on ‘Mr Wyndham’ is that his was the opinion to be respected.

251 • To George Price Boyce, 5 March 1885 106 Via de’ Serragli Firenze March 5. 1885. My dear Boyce When about to leave Rome (which I did on the 19th Feb:) I was so much engaged, and since I have been here my home work has been so heavy on my hands that I had to neglect answering any but business letters, yours among the number: but I received in Rome yours of date Feb: 13, and when I got here I found yours (sent on by Mr Jack) of the 20th – both letters much worth receiving and answering. Now to note some of the contents. I only got to Rome 2 days after the high flood of Tiber, wh’ had risen in its usual way after heavy rains which bring down snow water from the mountains. The water rose and came into the Pantheon &c. When I was in that building I noted the lifting of the floor in the middle of it, sloping to the wall of circumference, and the holes under the altar steps for letting the water run off again. I worked really at making out something of Rome, and was there 5 weeks, but out of this time had to be deducted most of my mornings which I had to use for home work, and the days were short; however I was really helped by friends, especially by Middleton, so that I saw things which, otherwise, I must have missed. After the Sistine ceiling, perhaps I was most taken by the Pinturrichio’s [sic] in the Borgia rooms at the Vatican, to see which, quietly, some influence was used for me.1 I did a good deal of walking round in the Campagna for 2 or 3 miles outside the walls and, as I was not bitten or throttled by the herdsmen’s dogs, I enjoyed this much. On my way back here I stayed at Assisi, Perugia and Arezzo. Assisi particularly interested me – of the very few notes I have had time to make, those made there are most useful to my understanding of what I saw, but they wd be quite unintelligible to anyone else. True – it is hardly a loss to me that I missed the ‘old masters’ this year in London,2 for my head won’t hold half of what I have seen and thought over in the way of pictures in Italy. After work time I have rushed out to refresh 280

1864–1887

my memory of frescoes in Florence. My time is drawing towards a close, and Mantegna, Giotto, and all the Venetians loom before me, among which Carpaccio is one that I much want to look to, there being only one fragment of him in the Uffizi here. I saw a good deal of Giotto in Assisi.3 The Pietro della Francescas’, in the Francescan ch’ at Arezzo, were a great gain to me4 – and also the Luca Signorellis’ at Orvieto.5 Benozzo Gozzoli is also too one of my close friends. The good and great Fra Angelico will, I think, even with my worst of memories, never be forgotten. His work really did surprise me, in spite of what I knew of him. Mantegna is great of the great and I look forward to him.6 Of Giotto & M: Angelo I need say nothing. By the way, the Pantheon was also rather of a surprise to me to the good, as St Peter’s was to the bad (speaking broadly). This Church was, evidently, a mistake from first to last, and even M: Angelo could not lick [it] into satisfactory shape. The work of his there bears no relation to his well known work at San Lorenzo (the library) here, & which much interested me.7 It is very much a test to me of how much of the detail of S: Peters at Rome was his own work. But I can safely say that I have not seen a really good Renaissance ch’ or one which has in any way pleased me since I have been in Italy. Brunelleschi’s San Spirito here is not really Renaissance.8 I thank you for your useful hints for Venice; I shall of course not be able to see all, but I shall keep the notes by me as reminders of things to be looked for. I think Murray is likely to go with me to Venice, as he has business there & which may keep him there for a while, but Mr Darvall’s address is very welcome.9 Murray says he knows him & he speaks well of him, though your recommendation was enough for me. If Murray goes with me I shall go at first to an Inn he frequents, which will give time for fixing where I shall abide for the 3 weeks I think of spending there at Venice. I wd rather take some places in Italy quietly, than a great many in a fuss of hurry. I would not have missed the time I gave to Siena, the Campagna of Rome, Orvieto, Assisi &c, for any amount of hastily looked-at places, and I must spend some time in Verona, and a couple of days in Ravenna – taking some of the places on the northern border on my way home. I am sorry to say that my good friend Middleton had to rush home to England only to see his father die, after a stroke of paralysis. I fancy you may see Mn in London before he returns to Italy. I am looking forward to his coming book on Roman antiquities. His articles in the new Ency: Britannica (I suppose the Burlington Club will have a copy) are well worth reading, and he is to write a number more if he keeps well enough. I got on capitally with him, & he is a ‘kittle creature to shoe behind’.10 Your or Mrs Boyce’s violets from Etampes are in front of me now, and they reached me quite fragrant. The grass was nearly full of violets in the park of the Villa Borghesi [sic] at Rome, where the people roam to pick them. The Carnival was rather a bore to me, but the folk enjoyed it (of wh I was glad) and I could manage to slink about down back streets, & avoid the press and racket. 281

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I hope you will get your drawings sent to the Society’s gallery all right,11 if it is only to take you off them & set you going on other work. I had better news from New Place, and I hope you & Madame will be going there to moan together over your several ills, and cheer up Giddens12 by eating his cabbages. The birds, wherever there are secure gardens here, are singing away – particularly blackbirds – but in the open they are mercilessly slaughtered for the market, and the country is far too silent of song, in consequence. I am afraid that the scare from last year’s cholera will make the authorities here throw down what still remains of the old town wall. They propose to do this, I fancy, because it is easy and will attract attention, but it will do as little good as burning my hat would.13 They won’t sufficiently do the things which are really urgent, but would not be seen when done. With kind remembrance to Mrs Boyce. | Believe me sincerely yours, Philip Webb. If your colds still stick to you, get into the fresh air! I leave here on Mon: 9th Mr Jack will have my address sooner than anyone else – but “Albergo del Vapore” wd find me. BL Add 45354, ff. 216-7

1 The Borgia Apartments in the Vatican, created for Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia (1431–1503) when he became Pope Alexander VI, were elaborately decorated in 1492–4 with frescoes by Pinturicchio. The rooms were little used for many years, and only in 1889 reopened to the public. 2 The sixteenth annual winter exhibition of Old Masters at the Royal Academy had opened on 5 January. 3 The principal Franciscan church in Assisi – the town in which St Francis was born and died – is the thirteenth century Basilica di San Francesco, which features an important cycle of frescoes on the life of St Francis. Though traditionally attributed to the early part of Giotto’s career, this work is now believed to have a more complex authorship, and relatively little can now be assigned with complete certainty to Giotto. 4 The mainly fourteenth century Franciscan Basilica di San Francesco in Arezzo contains some of the very best work of Piero della Francesca (c. 1415–92) in his fresco cycle on The Legend of the True Cross (c. 1447–65). 5 See above, Letter 244, note 6. 6 Andrea Mantegna (1430/1–1506), born near Padua, worked from 1460 in Mantua, where he became court artist to the Gonzaga family. 7 When Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici (1478–1534) became Pope Clement VII in 1523, he commissioned Michelangelo to design the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, the library adjoining the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence. Begun in 1525, work was interrupted when Michelangelo left for Rome in 1533, but it was completed to his design by about 1562, and was regarded from the outset as a masterpiece for its innovatory use of space. 8 The Florentine Basilica di Santa Maria del Santo Spirito was built by Brunelleschi on the site of a thirteenth-century Augustinian priory. He began work in 1428, and it was completed after his death. 9 Little is known of the English painter, Henry Darvall, who appears to have been resident in Venice for some years, and was active c. 1848–89. 10 Apparently a variant of an old Scottish saying, ‘kittle cattle to shoe behind’, used here to mean that Middleton had the reputation of being awkward.

282

1864–1887 11 On his return from Italy, PSW bought GPB’s watercolour of Catterlen Hall as a gift for his brother. See below, Letter 258, note 1. 12 Giddens was the gardener at New Place, Welwyn. 13 See Vol. II, Letter 333, note 11.

252 • To Kate Faulkner, 8 March 1885 Florence. Mar: 8. 1885 My dear Kate. I daresay, if you had been quite sure of where I was at this time, you wd not have had time to write. I should have written before this if I had done rightly but have excused my neglect by saying that I was too busy, wh’ w’d have been mostly true. Mr Jack sent me work here which has kept me well employed since I returned to Florence. As I leave for Bologna tomorrow (the 9th) I want you & the mother to know where I am likely to be and I use this broken day for writing. I duly received the 1st no of “Commonweal” at Rome, and the 2nd, or March no, here; for wh’ I thank you very much.1 I am deeply interested in the progress of this new venture, and no one except Middleton, whom I have seen, cared at all for such matters. I met a very pleasant Oxford man in Rome, Bradley by name, step brother I think of the Dean of Westminster,2 who did not dislike talking of English Socialism, but he was afraid of the sweeping character of the “Commonweal”; but as he is much less prejudiced than Oxford men generally are, I don’t think he will altogether drop the subject again. He is now a professor at Liverpool, is suffering from broken health and trying what change of air & scene will do for him. I rather expect to meet him again in Venice, as he was to go from Rome to Naples & then to Athens, taking steam boat from there to Venice. He says he wants not to miss seeing me there. Morris’s poems were, both of them, a great delight to me, and I altogether liked his tone compared with the rest of the paper, which I think rather weak.3 I suppose it must be so. I think I told you that good friend Middleton had to rush home to England to his father who was stricken with paralysis. Mn got to Wales before his father died, but he never rallied (fortunately) I think, & was quite unconscious. I had a letter from Midn the other day, and he said he had been in Oxford and met Charles & Morris at Bywater’s rooms,4 & had had a pleasant talk with them. When I left Rome on the 19th Feb: I went first to Assisi – a beautiful town pitched on the top of a high hill, with a fine valley & mountains in front, and other high hills behind & close to it. San Francesco, the chief ch’ is a double one, one under the other, & both covered with paintings by Orcagna, Giotto and other early Italian men. The church, beside the paintings, is also a beautiful one, and I was all busy during my stay in trying to understand what I saw there. Other churches there are, & a ruined castle, but the churches (except Francesco) have been much mutilated. I went from Assisi to Perugia, the chief interest of wh’ place is its Palazzo publico: the churches also are fine in spite of terrible transformations 283

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

wh’ they have undergone. This large town is also on a hill. From Perugia I went to Arezzo – another hill town, but not so high up. This place had, in its Francesco ch’, a series of Frescoes by Piero della Francesca, a paintinger much to my mind. There are two framed pictures of his in the National Gallery, wh’ you could look at if you turned in there. The chief is a baptism of Christ, which gives his characteristics very well indeed.5 Great purity and simplicity are the main. I am much fonder of Frescoes than framed pictures as they are there for good or ill, and permanently beautify a building – whereas the separate pictures become too much objects of mercantile exchange, of which over reaching is the chief element. Of course all noble framed pictures should be in public galleries, and not to be continually passing through the hands of cheats. After Arezzo I came on here, and while here I have been mostly at my home work. I go, as before said, to Bologna tomorrow, from there to Ravenna: from there back again to Bologna and then on to Venice, perhaps stopping at Ferrara. I expect to be in Venice on Sat: or Sun: the 14 or 15th and to be there about 3 weeks; after which, I propose taking the remaining places I shall have time for, on my way to Milan – from Milan I shall probably come direct home. The spring is now shewing it[s] effect here, many things are quite green and the almond trees in full bloom. The weather is fine now after some cloudy, damp & then windy days. Still, on sunny days, one gets to the shady side of the street, foretelling what it will be in May and June. I do not think the winter is a bad time in wh’ to be in Italy except for the shortness of the days. In country towns the long evenings are something tiresome, and caffès [sic] only amuse for a while. In Venice they may be better, if the weather be warm, as one could sit outside in the evenings. If you should be able to write to me, please tell me all you can about yourselves and Charles and Morris. I hope the mother is now stronger, and that you are at your work again, and of that not so despairing as when you last wrote. ‘Commonweal’ is the only English paper I have looked into since I have been away, and I know nothing really as to affairs in Egypt,6 or politics generally – sometimes people tell me scraps of things about these, but in an uncertain way, as if the sources of their information were not to be depended upon. My last news from Welwyn was rather better, my brother & sister had been in a lowish sort of way and their former letters were of that complexion. The numbers of travellers’ inventions which I shall have to tell when I come back, to cure lumbago rheumatisms &c, will be frightful. Unfortunately, for the Italians, I have not been able to make them understand my brutal jokes, and I shall be out of practice when I have the pleasure of seeing you again. If you should see Morris, please tell him I have gone on to Venice, as I shall not have time to write from there here. My address there will be ‘signor. Philip Webb. Albergo del Vapore | Venezia. Believe me my dear Kate and mother | Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1957/697, f. 23 284

1864–1887 1 See above, Letter 249, note 1. 2 Andrew Cecil Bradley (1851–1935) was appointed to a chair in literature at the University College in Liverpool in 1881, subsequently moved to the University of Glasgow, and eventually was elected to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. There he wrote his best book, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904). He had a commitment to improving women’s education and to egalitarian causes, but his own career was tinged with a morbidly self-critical outlook. For his half-brother, George Bradley, see above, Letter 168, note 7. 3 WM’s poems in the first two numbers of The Commonweal were ‘The March of the Workers’ (February 1885), and ‘The Message of the March Wind’, the first part of a longer poem which became The Pilgrims of Hope, (March 1885). ‘I have written a poem for the next number, not bad I think.’ WM to JM, 10 February 1885, CLWM, II. 4 Ingram Bywater (1840–1914), Reader and later Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, was a committee member of the SPAB from its early days. CF and WM were old friends. ‘Though he rarely spent a night in Oxford, Morris was often to be seen in Bywater’s rooms.’ William Walrond Jackson, Ingram Bywater. The Memoir of an Oxford Scholar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917), p. 41. The occasion described by Middleton occurred on 25 February, when later that evening WM addressed a socialist meeting in the Holywell music room. Bywater was in the audience (Jackson, pp. 42–3). See next letter, note 1. 5 The National Gallery in London bought Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ (1450s) in 1861. There are two further pictures by the artist in the collection, The Nativity (1470–5), bought in 1874, and Saint Michael (1469), bought in 1867. 6 He has in mind the shockwaves in the aftermath of the Siege of Khartoum (March 1884–January 1885), defended by the British-backed Egyptian forces in the Sudan under the command of General Charles George Gordon. The capture of Khartoum by the Mahdi, Muhammed Ahmed, resulted in many of the defenders being killed, including General Gordon. There was a national outcry in Britain, for the government had refused Gordon’s requests for further aid, though many regarded him as culpably stubborn.

253 • To Kate Faulkner, 28 March 1885 Albergo del Vapore. Venezia (Italy) Mar: 28. 1885 My dear Kate. I had your letter of Mar: 8; it was sent on to me here from Florence. I rather think I wrote you a letter which must have crossed this one of yours, but I am not sure, as I can find no note of it – but I have an indistinct recollection of having (at last) acknowledged the receipt of the Mar: “Commonweal” you were so good as to send. If I did not write this letter I am indeed sorry, as I have recd yours with so much pleasure that it wd be shameful indeed if I did not make efforts to write to where I so much wish to be remembered without reproaches. I never was a good letter writer, and here, between work of various kinds and natural indolence, I am too weak in the matter. I was greatly pleased with your note of the kind mother’s being about again, it makes me ashamed to be away, as I should be at home helping all I could those friends who like to have such poor aid as kindly face can give – my kindest love to her. I left Florence on the 9th Mar: & went to Bologna, from whence to Ravenna, then to Forlì and on Friday the 13th I came here. 285

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Bologna is a pleasant and still much of a mediæval town, mostly built on open arches to the streets, so that one can walk all about & from end to end under vaulted cover. Ravenna is a wonderfully interesting place but, as a town very poor in character, the only interest beauty being in the ancient churches which, not only are old but have an air of very great age on their faces. The place is also really gloomy, perhaps more so to me then, as the weather changed from good to bad there. Forlì (accent over the i) is a pleasant place but not of great moment interest in architecture. I can only tell by word of mouth of Ravenna, as it is so peculiar. Of Venice I would first say that having heard much talk of it since I was a boy, nothing in that way had spoiled it to me when I came to walk in and about its strange ways. I have been here a fortnight and am still untired of it. Added to the deep interest of its history &c, it is still very lovely to look at and, there being no hoofs & wheels to trouble one (always extraordinary in effect) the getting and standing about in it is so comfortable. To push or be pushed about in striking looking boats is a never failing pleasure, especially after being tired of walking the narrow alleys – everywhere some pieces of admirable archre turn upon one singly or in connected numbers – wait a little and then move and others front you as pleasantly. These are the gentler delights – the greater & more terribly lovely, such as the St Marks Ch’ & the Ducal palace, meet one on return and are always touching. I cannot say that I like travelling, after all is said, but Venice gives me less cause for regret that I am not at home & at work or sympathising with my friends at their labours. I must try and not be dull to you & the mother when I do come back, as there will be no excuse then for my talking of myself, that dull fellow! I really hope you will be driven into the country for a while as soon as it gets warm enough, & I shall force myself not to regret your absence if you shd be away when I return. I have all sorts of vain regrets and longings myself but, when I write to you, I feel inclined to say that you must take heart and be of good cheer, as if my only saying it wd or shd be enough to clear your way of anxieties. I rejoiced from what you said & from what Morris also wrote to me, that the meeting at Oxford – with Charles in the chair – was a successful one in spite of difficulties.1 I am so with our friends in heart that I blush that I do or can do next to nothing to forward the cause. However you know how cheery I can be when picked out of myself by the companionship of those I love, that I even look forward to claiming my place with them on my return though in myself of so little strength for helping. Never mind, I still hope to cheer you with honest laughter – none of the crackling-under-pots-kind. A. C. Bradley, of Balliol (of whom I think I must have written word) is here. He is going on to other places and I go with him tomorrow as far as Padua, where I shall stay 2 days and then return here for a few more days – perhaps a week. Murray came here to do some work, wh’ he has done, and he is now at work on a study from a St George by Carpaccio for me, wh’ will still take him some time2 – he has been hindered by bad weather & would be stopped by Easter festas, so that I am anxious that he shd get on or I shall not get my memorial of a delightful work 286

1864–1887

by a painter who pleases me so greatly. I don’t like to think of possible delays as I might then fail to get what I much want. When I leave here finally, I go to Verona, to stay as long as my now nearly ended time away will allow, but in any case I can stay but a short time in any other place than Verona. If you should feel inclined to write again, & be able to do so, send your letter here if it can arrive here before the 4th of April if you shd write before the 6th or 7 (letter arrived) please send it to the Poste Restante Verona; but, please don’t write unless it be quite easy to you. I only make these notes to avoid my losing a letter when moving on. I did not smile when you told me the piano was not yet gone, as I felt quite serious over your wish to make it as perfect as you could3 – all art-work shd be done in that spirit. I shall hope to be able to see it when the owner has it: I shall try to get to see it. The weather here has been very wet for some days, but happily with no snow; snow was heavy as nearby as Ferrara. Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 95

1 Although WM’s letter to PSW is lost (PSW’s reply follows immediately below), we may assume that he had reported on the Oxford meeting held in the Holywell music room on 25 February, at which he and Edward Aveling (1851–98) addressed a rowdy gathering, in a similar tone to that he adopted when describing the occasion to GBJ. ‘Well, we had a fine lot of supporters, town and gown both . . . but the “enemy” got in in some numbers, and prepared for some enjoyment. Charley was in the chair and led off well, and they heard him with only an average amount of howling. . . . I was rather nervous before I began, as it was my first long speech without book, but the noise and life braced me up, and after all I knew my subject, so I fired off my speech fairly well I think . . . Of course they howled and stamped at certain catchwords, and our people cheered, so that it was very good fun.’ WM to GBJ, 28 February 1885, CLWM, II. The ‘joke of the evening’ occurred during questions being asked, when a stink-bomb was let off. For more on Aveling, see the next letter, note 5. 2 PSW commissioned from CFM a copy of Vittore Carpaccio’s St George and the Dragon at the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, in Venice. See below, Letters 257, 262, 264, 270, 272 and 273. 3 See above, Letter 237, note 8.

254 • To William Morris, 3 April 1885 Venice April 3. 1885. My dear Fellow. Your letter of Mar: 19 was very pleasant to me, the more so that it had in it just what I wanted to know of your goings-on.1 Kate Faulkner sent me the April no of ‘Commonweal’, so that when I get back I shall not be quite in the dark as to how things are with my friends. I was heartily glad of the continuation of the poem which was the best of reading for me here of elsewhere.2 287

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I was on the scaffolding at the Ducal Palace this morning, & while at work I lent ‘Commonweal’ to the director of the works there who reads & speaks English.3 He wanted permission to translate such pieces as the “Workers’ share of art,”4 which I gave him, and I promised to send him that piece and any more of the like kind of yours. He thinks the Italian workmen will be interested in it. This young fellow is well read in French, German & English poetry, and I mean to send him a volume of yours on my return, in recognition of the help he has given me in looking into the construction of buildings &c here. He is coming to dine with me on Sat: evening when I shall have more talk with him on this and other matters. He is a rather excitable fellow working much too hard, having the necessary vanity to stimulate his natural cleverness. He is certainly not likely to let his masters be in ignorance of the mischief if they propose anything in the way of scraping to Venetian works. He has already been threatened by the engineers, who direct all works here, that they will put him on the dredging boat in the lagoons if he is not more reticent. He is poor, & wd have to put up with that, but he will get the sack soon I fancy unless he bends to what is really very ignorant authority. I hope you didn’t think I meant to infer, in my last letter, that you wd neglect your Merton work? I thought, and still think you may overtax yourself, and hasten the business of the ‘separator of companions’. I am always nervous as to possible health accidents from overwork, such as paralysis &c! I am not afraid of Aveling, though I don’t think I shd like him,5 but I understand that it may be, & probably is, absolutely necessary for you and other serious members to use any ability you can lay hold of. I thought so even with Hyndman, who was of very inferior stuff in comparison with Aveling. I met a very good natured fellow (a friend of Middleton’s) at Rome, & who came on here for a week or so, by name of Bradley, a late fellow of Balliol & now a professor at Liverpool. He is half brother of the Dean of Westmr. I talked socialism with him & he was not afraid, but goes but only a short way. If he comes to London I will ask you to come to dinner & meet him. He is poor as a rat, and in very weak health. Charley Faulkner is, of course, a capital fellow and his want of facility is small in conjunction with his heartiness & faithfulness. I have just heard of “rumours” of wars, but I didn’t give heed, as I doubted the information &c. I was at Padua on Sun: Mon & Tuesday in this week and looked at the big town hall there & thought of your efforts for Westminster.6 Wardle sent me the pamphlet,7 and I still hope some shrill yell may get to the ears of the first fool of a minister of works, before things are quite settled. Padua is an interesting town, but the hall there – barring the amusing paintings on the walls – is not equal, inside, to that of Westminster. Venice I like also, & if I were in love of impure idleness could spend or waste my time here, but I shall really be glad to get home to do what I can in the way of honest work. I go on to Vicenza on Sunday on my way to Verona, where I shall stay as long as I can (2 or 3 days I’m afraid, only) and from thence to Brescia, Mantua, Modena & Parma to Milan whence I shall leave direct for London, on or about the 16th. Don’t, therefore, write to me again as, in moving about, I should lose the letter. 288

1864–1887

I hope Jenny is stronger and that I shall find her cheery on my return. I suppose Janey & May are still in the Riviera. Your affectionate | Philip Webb: V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 14

1 ‘Webb is not back yet, nor have I heard from him, nor to say the truth written to him.’ WM to MM (in Bordighera), 11 March 1885, CLWM, II. 2 WM was sufficiently pleased with ‘The Message of the March Wind’, in the March number of Commonweal, that he decided to continue it, calling the longer poem Pilgrims of Hope, the story of three English people – two men and a woman – who fight for the Paris Commune in 1870–1. See WM to JM, 10 February 1885, note 3, CLWM, II, p. 386. 3 This was PSW’s first encounter with Giacomo Boni (GBO), whose friendship was to be of such profound importance in the years which followed. 4 WM’s ‘The Worker’s Share of Art’, The Commonweal, I, no 3 (March 1885), pp. 18–19. 5 Though he cannot have known Edward Aveling well at this time, PSW’s instincts about him were perhaps surer than those of WM. Aveling’s ‘free marriage’ with Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, together with his intellectual brilliance and scientific background, gave him a commanding presence in the socialist movement. But he was essentially untrustworthy. MM is harshly realistic in observing that he was ‘spewed out of every Socialist and Secularist Society because in money matters and sexual relations he was almost incredibly shameless, conscienceless and heartless’. Cited in MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 508. 6 For WM’s efforts on behalf of the SPAB, relating to the planned restoration of Westminster Hall, see above, Letter 239, note 5. WM had given evidence to a select committee on 11 March. 7 In early 1885 the SPAB published the committee’s views as an appeal to the House of Commons, in Remarks on the Proposed Restorations of Westminster Hall. It went out as from the secretary, over HTT’s name.

255 • To George Washington Jack, 4 April 1885 Venice. April 4. 1885. Dear Jack. I had your letter (with the enclosed letters) of the 23rd Mar: but have been too busy to answer it ’till now, and I thought there was nothing of instant importance to be said. I winked and smiled at your cutting down the drawing-room frieze pattern at Clouds – however, I am getting old and should hardly kick if you shortened my legs, both pattern & myself might be improved by your shears! Damn the gardener and his employers, I say: for cutting down that sycamore tree where they have put their stupid greenhouse – there, I’ve done! We must try some ‘dodge’ if the beams in the dining room look as if they sagged. Simmonds & the plasterer ought to have seen to this as, after I had over & over again spoken of this matter for the drawing-room ceiling, it never occurred to me to waken them up for this one. Simmonds is not worth his salt.1 I think Mr Goodman should make an agreement with Howell for all his work. 289

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Yes, it is in the Contract that Estcourt shd keep the roads used by him in constant repair. Simmonds knows of this. Kind remembrance to Mr Goodman. I wrote direct answers to the letters you sent me – Wyndham, Pitt Rivers &c. I leave here tomorrow for Vicenza on my way to Verona. I must try & stay 2 or 3 days in the latter place – then I shall take 2 or 3 more towns on my way to Milan which place I think I shall leave direct for England on the 15th or 16th. As I shall be more than busy for the rest of my time in Italy I shall not be able to do any more drawings for Clouds ’till my return. If there shd be anything of moment for you to write me, send to “poste Restante” Milan. I will2 hope you will manage to do the things necessary ’till my return, and that I shall find you well then. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 174, note 1. 2 Not crossed through, but PSW surely meant to do so.

256 • To Kate Faulkner, 4 April 1885 Venice. April. 4. 1885 My dear Kate. I had your kind letter of the 29th of March with the ‘Commonweal’. It was really very good of you to think of sending it to me, as it is the only paper I care to look at just now. And as it had 2 of Morris’s things in it, I the more rejoiced that you sent it.1 I am very anxious both for Morris and Charles, as they will be both of them very earnest in their labours and neither of them wanted any added work on their shoulders. Still, there is a certainly kind of obstinacy which one gladly puts up with in one’s friends, even though they and we may suffer by it. The note you gave me of your going away in to the country was the most pleasant news I have had for some time; let nothing short of impossibility stop you. As you say you do not go before the 8th or 9th, I send this to Queen Square. I fancy it will be the last I shall write to you from Italy, as I shall be moving about so much that there will be scanty time for writing anything more than business lines. I leave here tomorrow morning for Vicenza on my way to Verona, where I shall hope to be able to stay for 2 or 3 days, after which I shall make my way to 2 or 3 other towns and leave Milan for England – I think – on the 15th or 16th. I shall also come home quite direct, in a through train, as I must not delay any longer getting to my home work. 290

1864–1887

Venice I have found a pleasant enough place as, over and above its great monuments of beauty, it has so many old houses remaining that, perhaps, more of a mediæval town is to be seen here than elsewhere. I need hardly say that the cold and formal archre of the Renaissance looks duller here than in other places. Venice is also blessed with many pigeons, and they make alive even a stupid & pompous piece of building. The canals and shallow seas are also a continual pleasure and the absence of wheel traffic, a boon beyond comparison. Still, with all the aid of my having much to do in the way of study (without it, I wd not have stayed away half as long) I do not really care for travelling, though I shd be more ready to travel if I knew the language of the people I was in the midst of. I really like to speak to all I meet, the more so as I get older. I also wish to get back, to avoid the daily reproach that my friends are without even my small backing in their efforts for the mass of mankind. I shall be able to do very little indeed, but I can say & look some heartiness to them. The good mother’s kind remembrance to me was a real pleasure and I hope she will be strong enough to pick up some good from the change into country air. Please give her my kindest love and beg her to remember all my bad jokes if she should be inclined to wisdom too severe for her health. Bless me! After all, I may be able to see the piano before it goes from Queen Square, and I shall look to have that pleasure surprise. I was at Padua the first 3 days of this week, and found it a pleasant and very Italian looking city, full of streets built with arches on each side to carry the houses. Even now, when there has been more or less cloudy weather, the pleasure of the shady walk was real. The weather, on the whole, has not been bad, and a good many days have been splendidly fine. I was lucky in having bright weather for the day I went to Torcello, which is a place all too sad by side of its ruined & injured splendours. Its two strange churches stand side by side as if they were the last of the place, as they very nearly are.2 Now I must give over, and beg you and the mother to keep yourselves as well as you can to bless me with your friendly kindness on my return. Don’t forget to remember me to Charles. Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 89

1 In addition to ‘The Message of the March Wind’, the March 1885 number of The Commonweal carried a paragraph from WM as treasurer of the Socialist League, appealing to members to pay subscriptions regularly, to offset the expenses of ‘pamphlets and leaflets setting for the principles of Socialism’, and so that the League might ‘engage in organising Socialism in the provinces’. 2 The two churches on the now quiet island of Torcello in the north of the Venetian Lagoon are the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, and situated immediately on its right side, the smaller and simpler Chiesa di Santa Costa.

291

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

257 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 30 April 1885 Incomplete 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. April 30. 1885 My dear Murray I found your letter of “Sunday” here on getting back from my work in Wiltshire, where I was yesterday and the day before, undergoing the pain of seeing the translation of the drawings I sent from Italy, into modelled & carved plaster & wood! I don’t wonder that you thought ill of my delay in writing. You might so easily have guessed that I was caught & robbed in a bawdy-house in Paris or elsewhere when I was out of reach of your guarding self. You did well to give me a lien upon you.1 Fawcett sent me the prints today,2 and his bill, wh’ I paid: the bill came, in exact figures, to £49.19.5 wh’ was near enough for me to consider right, when your figures were 48.19.0. You must fight Fawcett for the odd shillings of difference after adding 8s/5d for telegrams.3 In any case I am determined not to lose by you, though, unless I get the Carpaccio St George – done with your finest touch (and go) – I shall consider myself ill-used, though I have these Mantegna & other prints (including a Beccafumi) in my hands or strong box. Mind, you take all risks of fire or burn bailiffs! I have just looked into the National Gallery here for ½ an hour; some goodish pictures, no doubt, but the 70,000er Raffaello was a mistake,4 like the building of St Payther’s at Room5. However, poor Burton6 serves “ower many maisters” “as the paddock said to the harrow.”7 While looking at this Raffael I thought of the little one of his in the Louvre, with the lovely hill & treed background, wh’ you may remember as having some interest in it beyond refinement of manner.8 Do you know anything of an English painter (of the end of last centy I fancy) named Agas? I’ve seen 3 or 4 of his pictures of very well done animals,9 in landscapes worthy of Old Crome,10 which surprised me into admiration. I know nothing of the name, but relished work which had some real soul, though in a lowish form of art. You had better look in the newspaper from Godalming and see if there is not a paragraph describing some bad work done by a Gray’s Inn archt who has been bungling in Surrey lately. I know of no other cause for such a paper been [sic] sent to me in Italy except this friendly or Job’s-comforting sort. I have no ‘separate establishment’ in Surrey. If I did not well know the extreme caution with which you mount and ride a scaffolding, standing some 3 or 4 feet above the floor, I should be somewhat anxious as to your life when you are at work again in the Schiavoni Chapel; bewitched, may be, by the rattling of the money box. Don’t ‘stint’ the Half Hannikin11 when your [page missing] Fitzwilliam 30

292

1864–1887 1 Lien: to give a right of possession. 2 Probably the woodblock colour printer, Benjamin Fawcett (1808–93), who produced engraved colour illustrations for works such as the six-volume ornithological handbook by Francis Orpen Morris, A Natural History of British Birds (Groombridge, 1850–7). 3 Evidently, PSW carried out a commission for CFM on his return to England, and had paid Fawcett on CFM’s behalf for prints which he had ordered. A final settling of the debt occurred when CFM sent PSW his Carpaccio copy. See below, Letter 273, note 3. 4 In 1885 the National Gallery bought Raphael’s so-called Ansidei Madonna, one of the paintings from the Ansidei Altarpiece made for San Fiorenzo, Perugia, from George Spencer-Churchill, eighth Duke of Marlborough, for £70,000, three times the amount previously paid for a painting. 5 St Peter’s at Rome. 6 For Frederic Burton see above, Letter 26, note 2. Some of the National Gallery’s finest works were acquired during Burton’s tenure as director, including not just the Ansidei Madonna, but also The Ambassadors by Holbein, the Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo and Botticelli’s Venus and Mars. 7 ‘“Ower mony maisters – ower mony maisters, as the paddock said to the harrow, when every tooth gae her a tig”.’ Words of grumbling complaint by Andrew Fairchild in Scott’s Rob Roy, ch 27. 8 Almost certainly he has in mind the Virgin and Child with the Young St John the Baptist, known as La Belle Jardinière (c. 1507). 9 The Swiss-born painter Jacques-Laurent Agasse (1767–1849) settled permanently in London after 1800. He is best known for his paintings of horses and rarer animals (leopards, tigers, lions, etc). 10 The Norwich painter and engraver, John Crome the Elder (1768–1821), whose landscapes influenced nineteenth-century English painters such as Turner, Constable and Cotman. 11 An old English dance tune, included in John Playford’s English Dancing Master (1651), and the nickname which PSW and CFM gave to the sacristan at the Schiavoni chapel.

258 • To George Price Boyce, 4 May 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Mon: May 4. 1885 My dear Boyce I like the “Catterlen” drawing in a “more” degree.1 Am never “rash”; the my nearest approach to that human weakness is a rasher. I know a great deal about pictures, neither Burton nor Wallis2 nor Murray can hold a candle to me in that respect. Such is my decided opinion! The above named b---y swells might consider me ‘rash’ in this assertion but then, I know them to be rash in urging to & giving £70,000 for a picture, merely because it is rare,3 & there are other fools in the picture bourse. I confess it is a serious thing to buy a modern picture, requiring more & better judgment than for an ancient one! But I have this advantage in the case in question, as I know that you painted it and that it is a good example of your work. Also, and this is a great point, no damned middleman has fleeced me of 4 or 500 percent in getting it. I had spent less money in Italy than I expected & arranged for, and I could manage, when I saw – unexpectedly – an opportunity of getting another piece of honest & beautiful work for New Place, to do what I did.

293

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

My brother was greatly pleased at my “rashness”, but he raised so many horrid yells at my making him a present of it that I don’t know yet if he will allow me to have the pleasure of giving it; all I can do at present is to say ‘let it remain, we shall see’ &c, but this point is unimportant – whether I or he finally pays for it. The picture is secured for our intelligent delight and nothing more need be said. As to your doing anything more to it the Catterlen drawing when it comes home, & you may have time, that is your affair, I cannot suggest anything except, perhaps, that you alter the colour & the disposition of the house and trees, tone down the foreground & heighten the background &c, and which said alterations wd, in my opinion (a good one, as aforesaid) resolve themselves into removing a crumb of discomfort wh’ has crept in between the drawing & the glass, and which looks like a bit of supernaturalism. I looked at other pictures in the Gallery, but was much disheartened at the state of the ‘pot boiling’ grooves into which most of the painters’ wheels do visibly run. The painters do mainly wear financial spectacles, I am afraid, and nature gets denaturalized through these lenses. Grass is not grass to them, trees not trees, and the human figure element becomes like bad novellists’ [sic] dreams of what simple country folk are like. Mrs Allingham seems to be getting quite ridiculous in this & other ways.4 Albert Goodwin looks to have found out how to do things with a ‘go’, to save thought & work. One of his drawings No 197 was less bad in this respect.5 Smallfield’s No 242 has some nature in the landscape & it is somewhat interesting & beautiful, but is wanting in composition, so that it is hardly a picture.6 Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 218-20

1 The exhibition of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours opened in Pall Mall East on 27 April. GPB had entered several works, including Yanworth Hall, Brougham Castle and Catterlen Hall, worked up from sketches made in the autumn of 1883, when staying in Cumbria. See above, Letter 213, note 6. PSW bought Catterlen Hall (now in the V&A) as a gift for his brother, Harry. As The Times put it, ‘Mr. Boyce has been wandering, as usual, among the old houses of Westmoreland and Cumberland’ (1 May). The Athenæum liked the picture, though expressed caution: ‘a grand group of old grey towers in pure light, very solidly and beautifully painted. Yet much as we admire Mr. Boyce’s work, it is not to be denied that he repeats too often a favourite effect of light and scheme of colour.’ (2 May). 2 Henry Wallis (see above, Letter 96, note 12) was represented in the exhibition by Oriental Glass Merchant, which The Times described as displaying ‘a wealth of colour that will be a revelation even to his admirers’ (1 May), as well as by Going to Market, Bruges. 3 See previous letter, note 4. 4 Helen Allingham (1848–1926) was represented by A Basket of Clothes, set in a cottage garden, and Lessons, showing a family schoolroom, works which, for The Times, were ‘faultless and most covetable’ ( May). See also Vol. II, Letter 331, note 1. 5 This was Ilfracombe by the landscape watercolourist, Albert Goodwin (1845–1932). The exhibition also included his Porlock Pier and Clovelly. 6 Frederick Smallfield (1825–1915) painted in oil and watercolour, his work revealing a distinct PreRaphaelite sensibility.

294

1864–1887

259 • To George Price Boyce, 23 May 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sat: May 23. 1885 My dear Boyce I have had a little anxiety lest you should have made your cold worse in the journey and umbrellaing we had together: unfortunate weather it was for us. The little ‘account’ I promised to send you is this. When I asked you to go to Knoyle with me, to cheer me in my disappointment over the work there, it was as my guest and not as a professional adviser: no doubt you thought your advice so valuable that, rather than I should not get it, you would even pay for the pleasure of rubbing it in! However, this would never do, as you would be “bad to hold” if I in any way lent myself to encourage so preposterous (fine long word) an imagination as that anything you could say would improve my future efforts in the way of house building. Apart from the inevitable jesting, I was – in spite of the weather – made much more comfortable in my mind by your good natured attention to what I had been able to do at Clouds, and so, peace be upon all work which I had done, and better hope for the future. I go to Welwyn this evening, when I will give your and Madame’s kindest remembrances. I have not yet heard from the doctor, but my sister tells me he has – as was to be expected – had bad weather.1 With kind regards to Mrs Boyce | Believe me | Sincerely yours | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 221-2

1 See next letter, note 2.

260 • To George Price Boyce, 26 May 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. May 26. 1885 My dear Boyce Let it be so then – though I shd have been easier in mind if I had borne the cost of the journey, it being an unprofitable one for you. The money-order pays too much, so that I shall pay you, when I think of it, at our meeting, 4s/9d! and you go to Sheol!!1 The plant journeyed safely on Sat: and I stood him on the bed (to be taken in if weather threatens frost) on a S. E aspect, & secured against falling. H.S.W will tell you what he thinks of it and you, on his return.2 At all events my sister was pleased with it, but she will not transplant it, leaving that for the more botanically learned 295

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

doctor. I have heard from him from the top of Dartmoor – he & Jephson are doing their best to catch fish & health on those wild knolls. The garden at Welwyn has been considerably touched by these cold winds I noted an Arbutus3 gone the way of all vegitables, [sic] and other bushes pinched and unhappy looking. Still, the place looked lovely on the whole, and the birds were miraculously wonderful in movement and song. Nightingales only turning up here & there – evidently waiting for a milder time. I thank you for your notes on the painter, Agasse4 – which will make me learned when I next meet General Pitt-Rivers at Rushmore. I will try to go to the Pastoral Symphony next Monday, but am not now sure that I shall be able.5 Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. My sister certainly would have written about the Illicium6 had she not been too much put upon with house & professional labours (& headache) while the brother is away. Still, she desired kindly remembrance to you & Mrs Boyce, wh’ I now deliver, as I did yours to New Place. BL Add 45354, ff. 223-4

1 The underworld (Hebrew); the abode of departed spirits from which none return. 2 Henry (Harry) Speakman Webb was repeating the fishing expedition of the previous year. See above, Letter 220, note 1. 3 A family of shrubs with edible red berries, commonly called the Strawberry Tree. 4 See above, Letter 257, note 9. 5 Hans Richter conducted Beethoven’s sixth symphony (the ‘Pastoral’) at St James’s Hall on 1 June, in a programme which also included music by Liszt and Wagner. 6 An evergreen shrub.

261 • To Percy Wyndham, 25 June 1885 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn June 25. 1885 Dear Mr Wyndham I thank you for your note, which was enigmatical and amusing. I fancied that, if I had been sent to the parliamentary school in parliament, it wd have been no enigma to me and I shd have read between the lines easily enough. How delighted I was to learn from a safe source that the Conservatives had nobility of heart, even at the cost of being fools,1 and that if they do the bidding of “auld Nickie-ben”2 it is he has gifted them with a knowledge of his better qualities, and a power to touch pitch on its clean side only. I was at Clouds yesterday and Tuesday. Things are smoothing down there. One of the men there said you had already got a fence for the south side of house, and another that you would like a “white” fence. If you have not yet concluded as to 296

1864–1887

this fence, I would say (if you wd care to know?) that a white fence wd, I think, perhaps be the better, round the stable land opposite the house, and about 3 feet 3 inches high. The spars should be close enough to keep out a young rabbit and, perhaps, something of this kind, with a top bar that you could lean on. [sketch] They have now got the panelling up in the entrance hall, & this place looks very well. I also think the great hall and main stairs look very well, & the high panelling in the dining-room to be a great gain. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. The Hon’ Percy Wyndham M:P: V&A, AAD

1 PSW and PWY were exchanging comments about the new Conservative caretaker administration under Lord Salisbury. Gladstone had resigned on 9 June after a defeat over Irish home rule, and Salisbury agreed on 23 June to form a government until an election under the terms of the extended franchise and revised constituencies could be called. 2 The devil, taken from the Robert Burns poem, ‘Address to the deil’ (1785): ‘But fare you wheel, auld Nickie-ben!’ (121). For PSW’s more telling use of this poem, see Vol. II, Letter 388, note 3.

262 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 30 June 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. June 30. 1885 My dear Murray It is with deep grief, tempered with high pleasure, that I condole & rejoice with you that you are once more perched on the swaying scaffolding in the beautiful chapel of the Schiavoni. Please to refrain from taking snuff, when you are on this tottering stage, or you will certainly sneeze and bring yourself & my picture to the ground, and your admiring patron (what a delightful position to hold in this wonderful world) to a premature grave. If I could but jabber, passably, in the Italian tongue, I would send my clients to il diavolo1 (their own proper home) and come at once to the Schiavoni, take the place of the “Half Hannikin” of a Sacristan,2 and watch over you with my best air of patronage. In one hand I should hold a birch rod, proper, and in the other a bag of lollipops, applying one or the other to you as occasions required and, now & then, setting you on your perch again when the scaffolding collapsed. If you were to think of my work, of trying to find out what my clients want, and really finding out that they don’t want what I can give them, you would enjoy your work of crooning over the colour, texture, and fancy of Carpaccio, shewn in the picture you are perpetuating the fame of, instead of malignantly writing that “it was too bad of me to give you this to do”. If you tumble off your perch, now, you will know the reason why. 297

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

I think Ruskin went to the wrong man for his triplicate of the Tintoret donkey’s head! surely R: should have applied to me, as I know the animal well from studies at home.3 I think I shall make an enlarged study from the photograph of one of Benozzo Gozzoli’s mule heads, and send it to Ruskin as a specimen of my work of the kind, taking care to leave the study unfinished, so that the thing shd not look to have too much work in it. Putting in some touch and a great deal of go, but it would be touch-& go if R: would stand it, eh? All right of Alinari4 to photograph the minarets or double campanile at the choir end of S: Antonio: at Padua.5 I also shd like a photograph or two of one or two of the cloisters there: perhaps you pointed this out to him? True, the museum at Padua is a wonderful effort of Sig: Boito’s genius.6 I remember holding forth upon it loudly to Bradley when we went to see the things there. If you should see Alinari in Venice, suggest to him the making of goodsized photographs of the triple shafted “tree” capitals in the Ch’ of S:S: John & Paul.7 He might do it, if only to spite Naya.8 These capitals are quite beautiful and are also fresh in style. There also shd be a good large photo: of the sharp pointed pedimented doorway in the Campo San Luca. I have measurements of it but want a photograph. This puts me in mind that I did not take the exact size of the S: George picture you are copying. Will you kindly do this for me? You will surely cry out against the number of tiresome and unremunerative commissions I give to you. There will be nothing for it but for you to strike and sturdily refuse to listen any more to my prayers. However, for all these and many other mercies you have bestowed on the cussedness of your friend, receive my hearty thanks. I see in today’s paper that Watts has had the grace to refuse his Baronetcy. I shall begin to look upon him with some respect again.9 Just now I was writing of the “cussedness” of friends. Surely it must have been ‘friends’, so called, who teazed [sic] E:B:J into the Academy. The thing is too stupid for one mind to have grasped the whole folly alone.10 My kindest remembrance to the Signora & the little maid. Entreat them from me to take a black water-gig and go to the Adriatic side of the Lido, often. I expect you to spend at least 5 lire a day in gondolas while you are at work for me. Greet the Signori Boni & Barnaby11 for me, and also the taxed Allesandri, [sic] and say something pretty to Darvall’s long legged good natured gondolier. No more orders at present, nor bad jests either, but sincere good wishes | from your kindly befriended | Ph: W. 12 I posted a letter for you to the Serraglio on Friday last, I think. Fitzwilliam 31

1 The devil (It). 2 See above, Letter 257, note 11. 3 In 1885, the Italian painter Angelo Alessandri (1854–1931) made a watercolour copy for JR of Tintoretto’s Flight into Egypt (1582–7) at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, which is now

298

1864–1887 in the Guild of St George collection maintained by Museums Sheffield. The donkey is placed in the foreground, in front of Mary, with head lowered, and for JR it was the making of the composition. ‘I have never seen any of the nobler animals – lion, or leopard, or horse, or dragon – made so sublime as the quiet head of the domestic ass. . . . The painter seems to have intended that everything should be subordinate to the beauty of this single head.’ The Stones of Venice, 3 vols (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1851–3), III, p. 328. 4 In 1852, Leopoldo Alinari and his two brothers established in Florence the world’s first commercial photographic firm, which specialised in images of historic buildings, works of art, and portraits. Its archives are now at the Museum of Multimedia and History of Photography, Florence. 5 The Basilica di Sant’Antonio di Padova was completed in the early fourteenth century. The two nave bays each support a dome, with minaret-like belfries. 6 The Italian architect, Camillo Boito (1836–1914), elder brother of the composer and librettist Arrigo Boito (1842–1918), designed the Municipal Museum in Padua (1879). 7 The Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, one of the largest Venetian churches, completed in 1430. 8 Based in Venice, Carlo Naya (1816–82) photographed many of its buildings and art works, and also documented the restoration work on the Giotto frescoes in the Cappella degli Scrovegni, Padua. 9 G.F. Watts was offered a baronetcy by Gladstone in 1885 (as was Millais, who accepted), and again in 1894. He refused on both occasions, believing that he did not have the financial means necessary for the position. Had PSW known this, he doubtless would have mingled contempt with the soreness he still felt over his experience in building the Briary for Watts. See above, Letter 67. 10 PSW’s puzzlement over EBJ’s election as an Associate of the Royal Academy in June is wellfounded, as it was ‘an institution from which he had deliberately kept his distance and which he had very often ridiculed’. MacCarthy, LPR, p. 364. When the news of the election came by messenger, even GBJ assumed it was a mistake. EBJ went to see Frederic Leighton, president of the Academy, who persuaded him to accept. However, he was passed over when it came to full membership as an RA, and in 1893 resigned the Associateship. 11 Not identified. 12 CFM’s address in the Via de’ Serragli, in Florence.

263 • To Editor of The Times, 17 July 1885 Drafted on behalf of SPAB To Editor of the Times re “Refacing of Westminster Abbey”1 As a being supplementary to the letter you were good enough to publish in your issue of Oct: 15 1884, we beg that you will again aid the Socy for the Protn of Anct Bgs by giving this letter in as early a number of your paper as may be convenient. We ask for its early admission, as the case of Westminster Hall having roused the attention of the public to the fact that one the few remaining great historical buildings in London are in utmost danger of destruction, under the present lamentable system of treating them as official or private property to be dealt with in the least possible public way, we think this newly created interest should not be allowed to die away without before calling attention is called be called to the activity at this moment displayed shewn in continuing the wholesale refacing of the clerestory on the south side of Westminster Abbey Church. Slowly, and almost imperceptibly this replacing began at the western end, next the south west tower, but during the last nine eight months a much greater force of workmen labour has been engaged, and the work of removing all traces of the original Abbey walling is being gone on with only too much actively. In a twofold way, is this, in our opinion, this is disastrous. In the first place 299

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

a great quick change in the settled forces of the old walling more certainly acts on the fabric than a slow & piecemeal one; and secondly, the sooner the work is done the less chance is there for the public mind to become aware of the mischief, being done before it is too late. We beg, even now, that all those interested in this noble historical fabric wonderful Church to go into the cloisters and, with an opera glass from the opposite side examine what has been done, while there is still time, to see a chance of seeing the two or three bays of the work left which have remaining their original Godstone or Reigate stone facing.2 The beautiful colour of this green-grey stone will be easily recognised, with its varied coursing and fine jointing. It must be acknowledged that The transformation in appearance is lamentable, as may be seen, but we speak with some knowledge when we say that the action of the fabric is equally mischievous. We can decidedly affirm that the work repairs which are were necessary, could have been done in a better & cheaper way, and the aspect appearance of the walling scarcely changed when the proper security had been obtained. Such is the haste with which the work is now being carried on we can hardly hope that even a righteous outcry against it could avail for what remains of the old facing on the south side of the nave; But as but the public through their sluggishness have having lost this deeply interesting old work should be made aware at once there is still the north side of the nave to be done ruin in the same way and this at least should be stopped if there is any care whatever remaining in the people for their great Abbey Church. Almost all intelligent observers agree that the church of Notre Dame in Paris has been made one of the dullest and least interesting of the mediæval historical fabrics in France; surely therefore that sharp fact should not be lost upon us with regard to Westminster Abbey. [pencil] Wrote & sent this to Hon’ R. Grosvenor for him to make a letter out of it to be sent to the Times.3 July 17. 1885 SPAB

1 This letter did not appear in The Times. 2 Stone from quarries at Godstone in Surrey were used in the Abbey construction. 3 The barrister, the Hon Richard Cecil Grosvenor (1848–1919), became a Progressive Party member of the London County Council, and at this time was one of the SPAB’s Honorary Secretaries.

264 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 22 July 1885 Incomplete 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. Wed: night 22nd July 1885 My dear Murray The effect of the brick & a half on my head was somewhat softened by the news of the finishing of the S: George. The crocodile tears you have shed over

300

1864–1887

my stomach and other aches really fell, no doubt, on account of your sorrow at having to leave the Schiavoni after so many days of happiness spent there. All people like doing what they can do well, and the pleasure you must have had will hardly be compensated by the payment. The pain you have suffered cannot be paid for at all, and therefore it will do you no good to remember it. I hope you behaved liberally to the Half Hannikin, whose plaything has been taken from him as well as the pleasure of seeing you at work while he was idle. When I see the work you have done I shall look narrowly at S: George’s nose. As I learned from Maddox Brown’s pictures the power of reflected colour, I fancy the “Venetian Burgundy” must have got into your nose & then canted off on to the George’s.1 ’Tis a pity I was not with you to take the better half of each bottle, in my usual way. If I should find fault with what I might consider the underfinish of your work you will have to lay the blame on that simple creature, good red wine! Still, I anticipate no disappointment whatever, and in spite of your oleo-margarining me as to the want of the value of my stimulating presence while you were at work, I fancy it was better done than if I had been by you; as your natural “antagonism”, (as a well-known celebrity of a taskmaster has allied with your name in good sized print)2 would surely have cropped up to the damage of the red cross knight, his girl, his horse, his toads, his ships, his city and his sky! Perhaps I should have liked to have seen how you drew the whole picture together, when the detail was done, with the masterly touch of which you are so proud though you don’t talk of it. I shd have been somewhat delighted if you could have told me that the great white waistcoated Liard3 had made you come down from your perch, & that he had mounted the scaffold to get a nearer view of the work, & that that unstable pyramid had collapsed and the hoary old vagabond had broken his head on the Schiavoni pavement, and that Checco4 & you had danced round the insensible scoundrel to the tune of the money box. How you two could have brought him round with a liberal supply of July ditch water from the neighbouring canal & toned down his white waistcoat in fine artistic style. Still I am glad for your sake he was civil & let you have a study of his pictures. I see in my notebook that there are 3 steps to the big Campanile above the present pavement of the Piazza, so that there must have been a series of 7 or 8 of these steps to the base of the tower, originally? I forget how many Bellini shews.5 Certainly, my good friend, keep the drawing for a reasonable time to make any copy you like of it. I shd be sorry to be the cause of the loss to the world of even one more faithful copy of Carpaccio’s delightful picture. However, don’t let the young Nero6 jump through it (my drawing) like the clown at the circus. As part punishment for my delay in getting the work, I should be glad if you would get me the whole series of [page missing] Fitzwilliam 33

301

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 See also below, Letter 273, note 1. 2 CFM was never reticent in expressing his opinions about Italian painters, for they were usually wellfounded. In this sense his relationship with JR was different in kind from that of the several other men employed to copy paintings or architectural details; as JR admitted, CFM did such work as well if not better than most, but their occasional disputes could be quite fiery: ‘another of my young helpers, Mr. Charles F. Murray, – one, however, whose help is given much in the form of antagonism, – informs me of various critical discoveries lately made, both by himself, and by industrious Germans, of points respecting the authenticity of this and that, which will require notice from me: more especially he tells me of certification that the picture in the Uffizi, of which I accepted the ordinary attribution to Giotto, is by Lorenzo Monaco’. ‘The Shepherd’s Tower’, from Mornings in Florence (Orpington: George Allen, 2nd edn., 1883), pp. 153–4. 3 Variant of lyard or lyart, now obsolete: grey, approaching white (OED). One can only assume that PSW refers to the custodian of the chapel, whose permission had initially been sought for making the copy of the Carpaccio. 4 The sacristan? 5 Gentile Bellini (c. 1429–1507) painted his Procession of the True Cross in Piazza San Marco, Venice (now in the Galleria dell’academia) as one of three (1496–1501) which he contributed to a cycle of eight pictures on the story of the True Cross for the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista. Carpaccio also participated in the commission. The steps of the campanile are not distinguishable as it is thronged by people. 6 One of CFM’s young sons, either Giovanni (b. 1880) or Eduardo (b. 1883).

265 • To George Price Boyce, 14 August 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday Aug 14. 1885 My dear Boyce I have tried to find an evening either to get you & Mrs Boyce here, or for me to come to you before you have fled, but have failed. Send me a note to say when you are off as, if you were obliged to stay over Monday, perhaps you could, both of you, come here on that evening. I am disappointed at having seen so little of you of late. My room, for the last week, has been lighted up by the Catterlen drawing, and I shall miss it when it has gone to New Place as it will go on Saturday – however, I shall see it there in better position with less disturbing surroundings than here. The Welwyn folk are looking forward to having it. I must ask either you or Mrs Boyce to write to me from France so that friendliness may be kept up. If you go to look at the pictures in the Louvre, don’t forget to look at the Raffaello, No 365 in the Salon Carré – I think it one of the pleasantest of his pictures.1 Also, note No 162 Jan Van Eyck!!!2 – a minute Memling – no number.3 I need scarcely say that you should refresh your memory of the Mantegnas’ in the 7 metres gallery.4 I wish you both good voyace, [sic] unless I shd see you before you go. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 227-8 302

1864–1887 1 Raphael, Holy Family (c. 1518–19). 2 Jan van Eyck (c. 1390/5–1441), Virgin and Child with Chancellor Rolin (c. 1430–4). 3 Hans Memling (c. 1430–94). Either the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (c. 1480), or Donor Presented by St John the Baptist (c. 1490). 4 Mantegna, Parnassus (1495–7), Madonna of Victory (1495–6) and Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (1499–1502).

266 • To George Price Boyce, 16 August 1885 NEW PLACE, | WELWYN, HERTS. Sunday 16. Aug: 1885 My dear Boyce The doctor has been good enough to pay attention to my case (the shell of my spirit) and, he having ordered me to be quiet today, here I am on my back, a pattern patient.1 If I am as well as I hope to be, I shall come up tomorrow by my usual train, but if not so well I may delay return ’till an evening train; but at all events if you can come in and see me about 7. oc I shall be very glad. The Catterlen drawing has been properly rejoiced over. I seem to think that it wd go best over the side board – where the Puy de Dome drawing now is2 – as it would have a left hand light. The new picture also should I think go on the darker ground of the paper in the dining-room. I suspect the 2 old people here will rather grumble at my changing the place of the older picture, but they will get used to it after a while. Wardle came in to my rooms yesterday and he was much pleased indeed with Catterlen hall, congratulating you on your luck in having the light shewing through the later wing. He said “Boyce must have asked the occupier to pull up his blinds”!3 This is as lovely a summer’s day as we have had this year. The garden looks very well having had some showers the week before last. I will ask Mrs Long to do you a bit of stake [sic] at 7. oc. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I am very sorry indeed to miss seeing Mrs Boyce. Very kindest remembrance to her. BL Add 45354, ff. 229-30

1 He was at his brother’s house. 2 GPB’s landscape In the Puy-de-Dome. 3 See the image at http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/19188, where this effect through the windows in the left wing is evident.

303

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

267 • To George Price Boyce, 18 August 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tuesday 18th Aug: 1885 My dear Boyce It was well I refrained from saying anything about the Rossetti drawing last night, as I was too much surprised; a state of surprise not being good for well considered speech.1 I have been comforted by this expression of your kind feeling and sympathy, shewn so certainly by an act of unmistakeable generosity and goodwill. I should be more at a loss what to say under all the circumstances if I were not dealing with you, a friend of many years standing through sometimes good but mostly (and deservedly) ill report. To start freely on the aforesaid assumptions, I cannot (that is the word) accept this gift from you; though, perhaps, I could have done so from one less a personal friend. The preparation (see note on back of picture) for leaving this wonderful design permanently in my hands makes marks the assured hope you had that I should accept it;2 therefore, putting it somewhat paradoxically, I do accept it with abundant pleasure, and though I shall bring it back to West House one of these days, it must remain there – as mine if you will – but still so to remain till fate settles things in a way that it should actually come to you me, or abide with you as the survivor. I do not feel much anxiety from this half rejection of your spontaneous act of kindness but, from my knowledge of you, I am sure you will understand what I intend by these poor words and will not be hurt, no my friend, not disturbed or wounded by what I have felt constrained to do. I have great pleasure in remembering that Mrs Boyce added her goodwill to the gift. Yours very affectionately | Philip Webb. A pleasant voyage to you both. From one, either, or both I shall expect intelligence of your doings, and I shall rejoice or be sad with you as time may deal it out. BL Add 45354, ff. 231-2

1 On the previous day, GPB had given PSW Rossetti’s watercolour, The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise (1853–4). PSW would in turn later present it to SCC, on the understanding that its final resting-place should be a national collection. The provenance is recorded on two labels on the reverse: ‘(a) “. . . The property of George P. Boyce (since April 1854) now of 33 Glebe Place, Chelsea, who at this date August 17 1885 presents it to his good friend Philip Webb whose property it now is. G.P. Boyce ’85.” (b) “I, Philip Webb of Caxtons Worth, Sussex (formerly of Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, London) did on the 17th December 1900 give this picture to my friend Sydney C. Cockerell assured that, when he had to dispose of it, the picture would finally be placed by him in a ‘National’ English Gallery of Paintings.”

304

1864–1887 “Given to the Fitzwilliam Museum by Sydney C. Cockerell above named, 3 June 1937. This picture is in a frame designed by the artist”.’ Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). A Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), I, p. 72. See also Vol. III, Letter 730. 2 See label (a) in previous note.

268 • To Ewan Christian, 10 September 1885 Drafted on behalf of SPAB The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings To Ewan Christian Esq Architect1 Dear Sir. A notice in the “Building News” of August 28 of on the present state of Arreton Church in the Isle of Wight and of some proposed repairs proposed to be done under your direction, has been brought under the before the Committee of this Society, and I am directed to write to you and express its satisfaction (if the report is correct) that no sweeping changes are under consideration.2 The extreme simplicity of Arreton Church and the beauty of many of its details must be the cause of some anxiety to you would make any change in its character a lasting cause of regret to those who have had the pleasure of seeing this building before characteristic example of an Isle of Wight church; and our my Committee would hope that you will be able to restrain any intention on the part of the promoters of the reparation from should any sign be made that the usual “restoration” be added to the necessary repairs. In the notice, mention is made of removing the colour wash from the stonework and that the bases & capitals of the pillars shd be repaired.3 The Committee would suggest that the colour wash be only removed so far as brush & water will take it off, and that unless the injuries to the pillars are dangerous to their stability any broken portions may not be pieced. It is specified that plain red tiles are to be laid for the new flooring, and the Committee hopes you will be able to use native or other plain tiles and not those of the usual mechanical kind so much in vogue. I am Dear Sir &c re

Copied & taken to Buckingham St | Sepr 10. 1885. | Ph. W. SPAB

1 See above, Letter 147, note 4. 2 St George’s, Arreton, on the Isle of Wight is mainly of twelfth and thirteenth century construction, with later additions. In 1886, the nave ceiling and box pews were removed. 3 The short report in Building News, XLIX (28 August 1885), p. 347, summarised Ewan Christian’s judgment that ‘The stonework of the arcades and windows should be cleansed from colour wash, and the bases and capitals of the pillars, needful, repaired, and the whole area refloored on a bed of cement concrete, and the bricks replaced by plain red tiles, the sound stones being relaid.’

305

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

269 • To George and Caroline Price Boyce, 11 September 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday Sep: 11. 1885 My dear Friends. I had your letter of the 4th written by George, yes, by George it was written within & without. No, I do not think any robbery went on with the box of fruit from Etampes, as the box was very full and the beautiful Tamarisk sprays were there, flat & uninjured. I fancy all the injury the fruit suffered from was perhaps that it was thrown for a catch and was missed by a “butter fingers”. The fruit was delightful, & we all partook – New Place, my clerks, Mrs Long and myself – praising the Mounseers & Madames who so kindly thought of perfidious Albion. I have no books from wh’ to give you the botanical names of plums, except Gerard.1 He gives 2 specimens of Damson. One he calls the “Damson Plum tree – Prunus Damascena” and the other “The Damson tree – Prunus Domestica”. I rather think, from the woodcut, that the Damascena is our common Damson. The Sloe is Prunus Sylvestris. I rather think the larger damson you mention is known as the Shropshire Prune – much used in the Midland counties. Miss Faulkner & I always quarrel on that point, as she, being a Birmingham person & having been brought up upon the larger damson, swears (if she could do such a thing) that it is the damson, and that my little blue black fellow is not worthy of consideration by any one born in the land of pots & kettles. I need scarcely say that my friend Miss Faulkner has been grievously imposed upon. I need also hardly say that I have poetic authority on my side. The author of the Earthly Paradise2 swears horribly on my side – need more be said? And so the French devils are still at their work at the old buildings in France, and tho’ you don’t exactly say so, I am afraid the west or nobly sculptured front of Sens Cathedral has been served as the rest of the ch’ had been when I was there some 19 years ago. The front was then untouched.3 I am really glad that you have got into fairly good quarters at Vézelay. I wish there was a merry fiddle or two in the town to strike up on Sundays, & give the boys & girls a dance. I rather expected to find some cheerfulness of that kind in Italy, & was disappointed. If the weather has mended you have set to work, and either you or Mrs Boyce (when inclined) will tell me on what you are engaged. If I recollect rightly, you have the old castle to finish? Our weather has turned wild, with deluges of rain at intervals, and occasional brightness, as to day, after half a day & a night of open sluices. Grass well green again: weather really pleasant when one is not being drowned. I have been down to see Tangley Manor, & found that the pleasant garden maker has been dancing a pas d’orticulture there – playing old gooseberry there in fact, and something must be done to remove his or some of his miserable handiwork.4

306

1864–1887

The old house is really beautiful, but I have no recollection of your taking me round to see the wooden front, but though I remember your shewing me the back. Mr Jack has been down to measure, and I am going to try & get a little more offices accommodation without injury – if possible – to the rest of the house. I see that the house is 15th c – altered in 1582. Miss Ewart has got into her house, and seems to like it well enough, & when she gets some pretty things to grow against & veil the brickwork, I shall like it better.5 Did I tell you that one of the pomegranite [sic] bushes at New Place has blossomed one bloom, & that another is coming out & may complete itself before the sun is gone south. I am a little surprised at the fact, considering how cold Welwyn is. I fancy the dry weather did the business. The New Place folk are well, and I will deliver your message when I next go there – they will be glad to learn that you are comfortable. Your new drawing is now a part of the house & helps to make that comfortable. The doctor has been good enough to pay me much attention and has succeeded in mending me, I hope & believe, nearly to the extinction of the trouble. When he put me on the rack and I made a horrid noise, he said, ‘if anyone else did it for you he would have given you a deal more pain’ so I was obliged to grin & bear it – at all events now I can sit upon my injuries. I have some more photographs for you to see – The virtues & vices by Giotto from the Arena Chapel & 5 of the coloured frescoes6 – also a pho: of Piero della Francesca’s virgin from the Milan Brera – one of the most lovely pictures in existence.7 Murray talks of bringing my Schiavone S. Georgio over to England in November. I wish you both a kindly time and that beautiful France will be still pleasant to you. Your work will, I know, go all right if you will but go right at it. Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 233-4

1 The Tudor herbalist, John Gerard (c. 1545–1612), published The Herbal, or General History of Plants in 1597, with hundreds of woodcut illustrations. Perhaps PSW learnt of the book through WM, who as a child had studied a copy in the family library. 2 WM, of course. 3 One of the earliest French Gothic cathedrals, that of Saint-Etienne at Sens in the north of Burgundy is mainly twelfth century, although the building was not completed until the early sixteenth. 4 Great Tangley Manor, near Guildford, Surrey, was bought in 1884 from the estate of Lord Grantley by the solicitor and antiquarian, Wickham Flower (?1835–1904), who at his death would leave incomplete an Early History of England. PSW undertook various modification and enlargements of the house, in two phases, 1885–7 and 1891–4. See Kirk, pp. 187–9 and 300–1. ‘During Lord Grantley’s time the place was used as a farmhouse; the moat was choked with earth and rubbish, and overgrown with brambles and wild brushwood . . . Orchard and cabbage-patch came right up to the house . . . [Webb] set his face entirely against any renewal that should be in direct imitation of the old work; and when, later, another sitting-room and more bedrooms were required, and he built the library at the eastern end, it was done in such a way that it assumed no effect of competition with

307

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I the timbered front. It is perfectly in harmony, but gives the impression of voluntarily effacing itself in order to enhance the value of the older work.’ E.H. Kennard, History of Great Tangley Manor, privately printed (1908), pp. 42 and 44. 5 See above, Letter 212. 6 The Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua (also known as the Arena Chapel, as it was built adjacent to the site of a Roman arena) features Giotto’s earliest known frescoes (c. 1303–5), cycles on the Life of the Virgin, events in the Life, Passion and Resurrection of Christ, the Last Judgment, and Allegorical scenes of the Vices and Virtues. 7 Piero della Francesca’s Virgin and Child (mid-1470s), known as the Brera Altarpiece, and commissioned by Frederico III da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1422–82), is in the collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. PSW must have been struck by the striking architectural context, typical of contemporary Urbino building, beneath which the figures are placed. See also next letter.

270 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 13 September 1885 Incomplete? 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. Sunday Sep: 13. 1885 My dear Murray As I wrote last only to cross yours, I write now to be beforehand with you. I shall expect you in Nov: with the George under your arm, unless your bluggy swell carries it off under his arm, when the above adjective will be spelled with a D. I hope you have got your copy all clearly laid down from mine as, when I once clutch the watercolour, ’twill be hard to whistle it away again. Cole1 has now sent me all the phots with the account for all except the 3 which you gave him to send, the value of which I shall have to hang on George’s horse’s tail. I thank you much for your trouble and, as reward for this graceful acknowledgment on my part, please to tell me if there is any reasonable doubt that the delightful blue virgin and attendants and kneeling Montefeltro is by Piero della Francesca?2 I looked at it very closely the last time I was at the Brera, & found it full of signs of Piero’s workmanship as well as faces, posing of figures, tag-ends of hair &c but, on the back of photo: is writ the name of B: Corradini and the bluggy Murray also gives it to that, to me, unknown painter.3 Who was Corradini & where is his work to be seen? You must know all about the matter but, if you do not, don’t profess that you do. I have not yet picked up the 3 other vols of Cavalcasselle [sic] and cannot look for myself,4 and I have been too indifferent to gaining knowledge to go and get a Bohn’s Vasari.5 The Montefeltro is quite as good a photo: as I expected, but the print generally is black, and the flesh as black as your new felt hat. I wd like to see what Braun could make of it.6 He has made a very good one of the red baldechinno’d Mantegna in our Gallery.7 I have not yet run against Burton, consequently I have not again trodden on his coat tail. I bought the small new catalogue of the foreign pics: in the Nat: Gall:8 and see on the cover that the larger book is to be out shortly. Burton will be shorter I suspect when it is out and some one politely contests any points in it: I shall not for one. 308

1864–1887

What do you think of your violin player picture? a success?9 You may as well say, as I can’t contradict you. Boni has not sent me his paper on the Piazza diggings at Venice, probably because he knew I could not read it: my vocabulary gets shorter day by day except in English expletives, the pure well of which is in Billingsgate near here. Wardle, when looking at photographs here, sometimes asks about a Tuscan word; when I either coin an answer or refer to the Italian dictionary, but he knows his customer. I think he looks forward to see the George nearly as much as I do, with the difference that it is not for him particularly. I have sent to Cole for some more things as he is so admirable in attending to business. I hope he prospers. If Edward10 only finds cracks in himself, he could hardly guess that other things would break in two or 20 pieces when they tumble down. I remember his “ways & his manner” with regard to things on the table: bless his roars & his bellows. [page missing?] Fitzwilliam 35

1 Not identified. 2 See previous letter, note 7. 3 The painting, with a traditional misattribution to Fra Carnevale (Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini, c. 1420/5–84), came into the collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan in 1811, not identified as being by Piero until the mid-1860s. See Keith Christiansen, ed, From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca (New York: Metropolitan Museum, 2004), pp. 267–71. 4 Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle produced several collaborative works. PSW presumably was wishing to consult volumes such as their A New History of Painting in Italy: from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, 3 vols (London: Murray, 1864–6), and A History of Painting in North Italy, 2 vols (London, 1871). 5 Giorgio Vasari, translated by Jonathan Foster, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 5 vols (London: H.G. Bohn, 1850–2), published in the Bohn’s Standard Library series. 6 The French photographer, Adolphe Braun (1812–77), who in the later part of his career photographed many art works in European public collections. 7 Presumably the Virgin and Child with the Magdalen and Saint John the Baptist (c. 1490–1505), in the National Gallery. 8 This would have been the latest edition (there were many) of the Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery . . . Foreign Schools. 9 The Violin Player, the original work which CFM had been working on in Florence since at least 1875, is now at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. 10 Eduardo, CFM’s eldest son.

271 • To Charles Faulkner, 9 October 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday. Oct 9. 1885 My dear Charley Both good luck & good nature got for me the fine books of the blessed Plato. I’ve looked in two or three places between the covers & it seemed as there would be fine times for me when leisure & resolution should come, but now I must 309

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

needs join Avelings classes. I made for Geology, & Wardle seniors piled on me chemistry for which I’ve about as much bent as an archbishop of Canterbury has for directness – I did not intend the pun. These lectures mean an evening in the week & some other time for consideration, so that ‘chemistry’ must go by the board before long I shd think, as my earning work is to hand.1 I missed you last evening at the Old Compton Street branch, as Aveling must keep away without notice and so I had to make a meeting go, pretty well all on my own lifting, and I am not very handy in making people understand what is not quite clear to myself2 – but I’ll take to Plato & his philosophy to mend myself for occasions. I don’t see my way just yet for dropping on you in Oxford as I have things to do. I should have liked to come while the boys are away, but things must be as they are; wh’ saying seems somewhat Platonic! I thank you very much for these books and will have the money for payment when I next see you, which will be a pleasure to Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. Texas

1 Edward Aveling was well-known as a public lecturer, from 1879 having undertaken much educational work for the National Secular Society. He also published textbooks on a range of scientific disciplines. By 1884 his subject matter was increasingly on socialist themes. PSW attended Aveling’s weekly classes on Geology, which began on 13 October 1885, the twentieth (and last) being on 23 March 1886. By contrast, he appears to have gone to very few on Chemistry. The small book in which he made notes during these classes survives (V&A, NAL MSL/2000/11/2), and on the first page he notes recommended text books: ‘Lyall’s Student Geology (the smaller book) 7/6. Copy of Aveling’s Chemistry non metallic . . . Roscoe’s small chemistry. Jago’s chemistry out of print’. The notebook also contains some of his sketches (of fellow students?), presumably done during classes. 2 The Bloomsbury branch of the Socialist League, which PSW had joined in absentia when he was still in Italy, organised talks ‘in a meeting room above the Eagle and Child Coffee-House on Old Compton Street’. Rachel Holmes, Eleanor Marx: A Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). p. 236. As his local branch, it was natural that PSW should sign up for Bloomsbury. It came to contain some of the most high profile of the early socialists, including Aveling and Eleanor Marx, and acquired a reputation for itself as ‘the most politically formidable of the Socialist League branches’. MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 575.

272 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 28 October 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. Wednesday 28th Oct. 1885 Scene – own room: fire & light Time – 9.45: pm: Dramatis persona, the lean P:W: with a placid smile on his face as, when not at the moment writing, his face is turned slightly to the left & his eyes rest on a - - *

310

1864–1887

My dear Murray Your welcome letter of the 22nd refreshed me as usual. The comfortable note in it of rich – and I may say – titled folk visiting your studios reflected a graciosity on me, even here, and made me think of the world as a delightful place for some one in 10,000 people basking in the sunshine glints from the fair white waistcoat of the Assyrian bull. I conceive also, your glib tongue newly oiled and applied to the tenderest feelings of the director of the gallery of that nation on which the sun never sets. Let us hope the sun does not wink at robbery!1 You are now awake, & rubbing your eyes after a quarter of an hour’s nap brought on by the paragraph above, and I proceed *Yes his eyes rest on a picture set on an easel turned to proper angle of a good light. I had note of its arrival last night, from McCracken & Co, with a ‘stand & deliver’ if payment of expenses of transit were forthcoming. I forthwent myself this aftn into the City and brought my George home in my arms; then shredded him of his wood box, zinc case, and brown paper foldings and sat to get back my breath, which had fled up the chimney as the colour of the horse housings2 flashed on my unutterable gaze. I’m now an older, perhaps a wiser, yes, certainly an older man, and am as one possessed of a. . . . . downright good copy of Victor Carpaccio’s S: George of the Schiavone. I don’t wonder at your keeping it by you for a while, and even Edward must have felt defrauded when it left the Serragli.3 When dusk put an end to examination of the picture by Jack & myself, I posted off to Watson’s of Wardour St to find a suitable ragged old frame, as suitable as might be,4 and I picked out two which come here tomorrow for me to try on the picture itself; when it (the frame) will be cut to fit, and regilded, and the hoped for possession will be complete, all but # As yet, I’ve seen none of the defects of the copy and only a hundred or so of the beauties, so that I cannot write you much more now of the soporific kind save, briefly thus. It is better than I expected, and the beginning I saw raised my hopes. Hard-to-please-Jack also murmured praise, ’till I kicked him back to his work. Now, there is peace & contentment, so far, & for the rest you must lend further aid. # Make out the account between us to the uttermost farthing and send it me directly, so that I may look on the picture with less of the glance of a thief. The bill for drink may be heavy, but who would grudge a cask of wine or two, when the colour of it has been turned to such good account on a quarter of the surface of the picture, not including George’s nose, which is not too gluggy?5 I’ll say no more now, but send me the memorandum, so that I may remain the friendly Philip Webb. If the family is yet out of bed, tell them of my joy over the picture, & give them my kindest greetings. Fitzwilliam 37

311

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 PSW’s meaning in these opening sentences is obscure, but if it does not refer to visitors viewing the Carpaccio copy in CFM’s rooms in Florence, it may allude instead to CFM completing his own painting, The Violin Player. See above, Letter 270, note 9. 2 ‘The leather fastened at a horse’s collar to turn over the back when it rains.’ OED. PSW uses the term more generally, to describe the harness and other tackle, which is a clear feature in Carpaccio’s St George and the Dragon. 3 ‘Edward wasn’t troubled by its disappearance – at present his soul is occupied with boiled chestnuts – for these delicacies he would renounce his mother grandmother & all his belongings.’ CFM to PSW, 1 November 1885, V&A, AAD. 4 Edward F. Watson, the picture dealer and restorer, operated his business from St James’s Gallery, 201 Piccadilly. 5 See next letter, note 1.

273 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 5 November 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. Not posted till Friday. Novr 6. | Thursday 5th Nov: ’85 My dear Murray I was glad to find from your letter, wh’ came last night, that you were “set up” by my last sleight of hand; though glad, as I say, I am rather surprised, as you are seldom cast down. You will not fail to remember that I remarked the care with which you guarded against such accident when you were on the (as I should consider) preternaturally secure scaffolding in the Schiavoni chapel! I can understand your looking upon my expression of genuine admiration of your copy of the St George, as “flattery”, as you would naturally look upon my capacity for understanding a picture as too novice like to be worth more than a smile of ‘professional’ contempt, tempered with a cutaneous pleasure at the application of amateur butter somewhat ignorantly applied. There, I’ve done with that lantern jawed paragraph! The St George gives me more and more pleasure to look at as my enthusiasm settles into clearer vision and upon more certain examination; the first effect though is the best test of permanent satisfaction. I have found a pretty enough, but commonplace frame for the picture which I think will aid but not in any way destroy the lovely simplicity of the colour and modelling and, in a fortnight or so, I shall have my friend clothed & in his right mind with myself in breeches and still sane. Maybe, when you come over to us, I shall have to get you to put a touch or two to hide a sixpenny thickness of light at the edge, as I have been careful not to cover a 27000th of a centimetre more than I could help. The beautifully drawn bill you sent me has rather put me to the blush, without the aid of wine: what was I to do?1 I knew that the picture, according to modern commercial practice, was worth a good deal more than the £50, and to me it is worth much more than commercial villainy could make of it; but then I could not pay you its value, but I can and must pay you a little more to cover expenses, without considering the consumption of Comet wine!2 I therefore send you £11; £10 for fee and £1 for some 17 francs you have paid to ‘Barnaby’ for me. I also 312

1864–1887

send you Fawcett’s bill for prints, which is for £50, within a dirty copper or two, which will make up the £60 for the picture. which This I know is all too little for it, but I must console myself with the knowledge that I am sure you have the pleasure of doing me an unpaid good turn.3 Now, shall I send you the Mantegna & other prints, or will you be coming over here so shortly as to make sending a mistake? If you tell me to send the prints, tell me also how best to do it, and whether I should take any extra precautions against damp? The agent, through whom I got the St George, said that the tin-case was a superfluity, though I did not agree with him, considering that the parcel was a water-colour. The weather here is 2 days of deluge to one of fine, with temperature varying from cold to warm, wh’ keeps my sawbones brother on his legs from morning to night & sometimes lugs him out of bed too. The highest consideration to you & yours from Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 38

1 To his receipt, CFM added: ‘The artist deeply regrets that he is unable to charge less, but the fact of the money being spent & the expense incurred in covering St Georges nose with the purest wine to be procured in Venice for money will he trusts plead in his favour’. Characteristically, PSW had insisted on paying more than the £50 agreed, recording beneath CFM’s remark: ‘Threw in another 10£ to pay for the expensive wine colouring of S: George’s nose’. CFM to PSW, 1 November 1885, V&A, AAD. See also above, Letter 264, note 1. 2 Vintages coinciding with a significant astronomical event, such as the appearance of a comet, have traditionally been regarded as offering exceptional quality. 3 See above, Letter 257. In effect, PSW was offsetting the cost of what he had already paid on CFM’s behalf for prints from Benjamin Fawcett, against the cost of the commissioned Carpaccio copy, whist insisting on making up the difference to £60 as an expression of his pleasure with CFM’s work.

274 • To George and Caroline Price Boyce, 23 November 1885 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Monday 23rd Nov: ’85 My dear Friends I am sure you must have given up all expectation of getting any information from me as to the state of your garden at West House. Indeed I had myself almost given up hope of getting there before your return. However I did manage to go on Saturday aft: last, was joyfully received by the maid who knew me, and permitted to walk the garden for a quarter of an hour. I really think the plants, as well as the garden generally, are looking satisfactorily; better than I had expected, as we have had some 6 or 7 sharp frosts, day after day. The gardener has been using the 313

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

pruning knife pretty freely, but, so far as my little knowledge of that operation will allow me to judge, I should think it was done with judgment. There were 3 or 4 Chrysanthemums (doubtful spelling!) in blossom, one of wh’, a dark red one, looked particularly beautiful. Patches of the bowling green grass had failed outright, but the rest of it looked sound, and I fancy that it would now bear taking up and relaying so as to cut the long roots and fine it down as turf – that is, to relay it next year. I did not see Polly,1 but heard that he or she was in good condition. The pigeons I saw, and the maid said they were all to be counted, the cats having been unsuccessful in their raids. You will be glad to know that the bell pulls at the front door were so clean and bright that I could settle the cock of my hat in their reflection, wh’ means that the house did not look deserted. I asked the maid when she expected you home, & she said ‘about the end of this month’. Well, as you too have given no sign I shall send this note to Vèzelay [sic], with the hope of its finding you still there. I took back to Chelsea with me the Rossetti drawing, with many sighs and some moans, but I shall get over this dolefulness, as the drawing will still be in your hands.2 My hands have been very full, with too many small things, to keep me active, without much to shew for my trouble. But I have got the clients into their house at Knoyle, though it is still unfinished. I slept in the house one night myself, to help them to understand their surroundings which are so different to what they expected. When they get used to finding things on their right hands, which they expected to be on their left, they will be more at ease!3 I have set to work at Tangley Manor,4 and I shall hope that you will, both of you, approve of what I am doing – at all events, the old house is not being knocked about, and the garden arrangements are being made somewhat more decent in appearance. However, I will say nothing more about it now, & you will be able to judge for yourselves when you go there next year. The Welwyn folk always ask after you and perhaps the sister may have written, so I need say no more than that the housemaids have been dropping away – seemingly by the half dozen. They just come for a week or two and look round, after which, as I suppose, finding no marriageable young fellow about, they skip off again. This is rather like, I see, an old bachelor’s way of looking at the fun! You will be pleased to learn that I have my S: George by Carpaccio. Murray has made an admirable copy, and it is to me a ‘speaking likeness’, as they say. I hardly like to worry you with any question about the work, but I must hope the weather has been better for it lately. We have had it very cold here, and Murray said that when he was in Paris last week it was as cold there as it is here. With kindest remembrance to you both. | Believe me sincerely yours, Philip Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 235-6

314

1864–1887 1 A pet parrot? 2 See above, Letter 267, note 1. 3 ‘The Wyndhams moved into Clouds on 23 September 1885, even though the plasterwork was unfinished in the drawing room, the baths were not working efficiently and there were no chandeliers in the hall.’ Dakers, p. 81. 4 See above, Letter 269, note 4.

275 • To Archdeacon Alfred Earle,1 about 9 February 1886 Drafted on behalf of SPAB, later signed by HTT and dated 9 February 1886. Some of the amendments in pencil. This is what I would say to the Ven: Archdeacon on the Philology of the English tongue. (Dear Sir) Before replying to your letter of the 25th Jan. I took the first opportunity of laying it before the Committee of the Soc: This will I trust excuse the unusual delay. I am now directed by the Committee to express its regret that the expression in my letter of the 22nd Jan: should have been interpreted by you as conveying a condemnation of anything you had done. It was intended to convey the opinion of the Committee that it could only usefully interfere in a work which seemed already far advanced & was clearly being conducted by principles quite at variance with our its own those of the Society. Your letter of the 17th Jan. described the ch: as of great antiquity, with many alterations & the “restoration” of it as “line for line”, all the mutilation being “fully & accurately restored”. On those expressions the Committee founded its opinion. It did not however “condemn” what we feared you might be doing – it expressed no opinion except that one as to the wide difference that was between our deliberations our several views of what was & was is and is not possible in regard to the preservation of ancient buildings. Feeling that the Committee considered difference & considering the work as well nigh completed, the Committee thought the only useful thing it would do was to submit to your consideration criticisms & advice we have offered in cases which have come under the inspection of the Society. some of the Society’s printed papers. You blame us severely for not giving timely advice. We admit you would have done so justly, had we known of the restoration of Milton Church sooner & had allowed it to go on to the present point in order that we might find cause for concern. My letter however said that the Committee had seen the notice of the proposed restoration which surely implies that the Committee had seen it for the first time & that it believed the restoration was only a proposal. If your reply to that letter had shown that the help of the Society might have been offered with a chance of usefulness, the usual step might have been taken by us. We should have proposed to make a survey of the building with a view to preparing such a series

315

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

of suggestions & cautions as are found in the letter to the Rectors of Wolferton & Tadmarton copies of wh: I now send you . The Committee much regrets that this opportunity did not occur. As regards the canons on which the Soc. acts, we think you have formed an must be allowed to say you have formed an incorrect opinion. The papers submitted as samples of the advice we give on the preservation of ancient Buildings are not general statements intended to comprise all cases. They do not therefore contain canons but only the application of some canons to the particular cases. we cannot understand how think after reading the Tadmarton report you should have will no longer accuse us of suppose that we should not have accepted your canon as to the retention of the western gallery. It is possible the Committee would not have opposed – it might have recommended the removal of the galleries. Its advice would have depended upon all the circumstances. We do not include all galleries in a general clause either of destruction or preservation. We must also ask you to believe that we should not have condemned much that you say by implication we did should condemn. Perhaps you expressed your opinion of the work Soc. before reading fully the papers which we intended as illustrations of our work. Surely the illustrations are too plain in most cases to be misinterpreted. We do not condemn, for instance, we strongly encourage & plead for the retention of old floors, the careful taking down & reseating of unsafe pinnacles, the careful underpinning of old walls the proper drainage of buildings, the retention of old roofs, of old iron bars to windows & of all such like works of preservation & protection. We oppose to the best of our ability the “reproduction of ancient features”, of old tracery, old screens, old carving &c. We protest in general against the assumption that anything can be reproduced or restored which once bore on its face & has lost the impress of former modes of thought, or of artistic feelings now utterly changed or nonexistent. The assumption that such things can be restored is unfairly founded on a view of the nature & capabilities of Art, which reason & experience show to be untenable. The view has worked much mischief & will always do so. It has been the ruin of many of the noblest works of art that remain had escaped every other danger & it is still destroying those beautiful & but homelier works of which at one time every English village could boast at least one & its own peculiar example. You call our views on this point absurdly inconsistent. We fear you have failed to notice the name of the Society which is not for the restoration of ancient buildings but for their Protection. SPAB, South Milton Church, Devon file

1 Alfred Earle (1827–1918) had a long career in the church, including periods as vicar at All Saints, South Milton, a small Devon village (the church about which PSW here writes), whilst also serving as Rural Dean and Archdeacon of Totnes (1872–87). He was subsequently a canon at Exeter Cathedral, rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, rector of St Botolph’s Bishopsgate and canon at St Paul’s Cathedral, suffragan Bishop of West and North West London, and finally Dean of Exeter from 1900 until his death.

316

1864–1887

276 • To membership of The Socialist League, ?spring 1886 Draft, damaged The Socialist League | 113 Farringdon Road. E: C1 Comrade I have been instructed by the “Ways & Means” Committee of the League to remind you that subscriptions are due from you, and to draw your attention to article No 111 of the Rules, under the heading “Contributions”.2 I am also to suggest that, if you do not belong to any Branch of the League, you would do well to give in your name to the Clerkenwell Branch now forming at the central body office or, which would be better, that you should join the nearest Branch to your place of abode, so as to aid in strengthening as much as possible the branches. They also point out to you that as the forthcoming Conference is to be a delegate one, you will may not be represented there unless you belong to a branch. As Treasurer, I should w consider that as the is fixed for Ju at most membership should be made up to shewn at its full strength, by which can only be honestly done by the names representing paying members, and those alone. Yours faithfully | Philip Webb. | Treasurer. I shall be glad if you will claim my attention personally at the meeting on Monday evening, or, if you are unable to be there, that you will give me an answer, in writing, to this appeal. Amsterdam S.L. 3186

1 113 Farringdon Road had been the headquarters of the Socialist League since the summer of 1885. 2 PSW had replaced WM as Treasurer of the Socialist League by early February. ‘Webb has taken my place, as on all hands it was thought necessary to pull up as to money matters.’ WM to John Mahon, 7 February 1886, CLWM, II. Sadly, MacCarthy is probably right to conclude that PSW was ‘an inept choice for a post in which communication skills were of the essence’, even though his wish to relieve WM of some of his burdens was laudable. MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 554. Nevertheless, he was re-elected into this position by the annual League meeting on 29 May 1887 and again in 1888.

277 • To Percy Wyndham, 4 June 1886 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] June 4. 1886. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham. Clouds House | East Knoyle. 317

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Dear Mr Wyndham In answer to your letter of 30th May. The cost of the drawing-room ceiling as originally designed would have been £645. The cost of the ceiling as executed is £289 – a reduction of £356; which is very satisfactory to me. I thank you for your kind expression of satisfaction with the house, and which I accept with much pleasure. I have sent Estcourt by this post a certificate, for further payment on account of his balance, for £2,000. Mr Rogers Field asked me to see him so that he might tell me the result of his visit to Clouds to when he inspected the drainage. I saw him on Wednesday, and he gave me a full acct of the examination of the working of his system as laid down. On the whole, subject to some trifling accidents, he seemed to be much well satisfied, but he was evidently disappointed with what had been going on at the outflow in the dell. You will readily understand that the getting well rid of the effluent from drainage is the most difficult thing to manage successfully in all sanitary science – so called. Rogers Field knows, I believe, as much about house drainage matters as any sanitary engineer in England and, though I carefully considered with him each part of his proposed system for Clouds, I have throughout carefully avoided interfering with his arrangements and their execution, as these sort of works depend so largely on the exact way in which they are done. I gathered from Field that, one of the most necessary points was to spread the outflow of foul water over as large an area as possible on the upper surfaces of the dell, and that this intention, since his foreman Dodman left, has been somewhat disastrously departed from. Field has sent me a copy of his letter to you of yesterday’s date, and I am decidedly of opinion that it would be best for him to send his assistant to remedy the evil as soon as possible, and that this assistant should have some labourers under his own directions, entirely free from any interference from by other authorities. I feel this to be important, as the warm weather will soon be here, and though there would be no danger to health from the present state of the dell, the smell would probably be extremely disagreeable. Believe me | Yours very truly | Ph: W. P.S. I hope to send you the plan for hot house wall &c tomorrow. LB-2, pp. 52-3

278 • To Henry Halliday Sparling, 25 June 1886 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 25th June 86 Dear Sparling1 I have to be at Kensington on business at 10.30 tomorrow (Saturday) morning. Can you use the money you have in hand for payments till Monday at 10.30, 318

1864–1887

when I would come round to Farringdon Hall? If this plan would do, you need not answer this. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Amsterdam S.L. 3185/1

1 The son of an agricultural worker, Henry Halliday Sparling (1860–1924) was appointed secretary of the Socialist League in July 1885, co-editing Commonweal with WM, of whom he was a fervent admirer. He and MM married in June 1890, rather against the wishes of her parents. They separated four years later and were divorced in 1898, whereupon MM reverted to her maiden name.

279 • To George Washington Jack, 1 July 1886 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thursday. July 1. ’86 My dear Jack Your letter was a relief to me, as I chose to amuse myself with the fancy that nothing but the Kilt and Bagpipes country would be stimulating enough to make you take a real holiday! Also, you might have been fearful that, as I myself wd like to see your part of Somerset, I might turn up one evening and spoil your fun with some grim suggestion of the loveliness of mediæval architecture. Rest in peace for your allotted time, and come back well in health and I will forgive the imagined insult, set forth above. You did not mention a sum, so I have only sent you 5£. If you want more let me know. I have made the order payable to your Xtian and surnames in full. Porteous is working kindly with me, but he was not very well this morning and had to go back home.1 Should you feel anxious towards the end of your time to throw a sop to this Cerberus,2 you could take half a dozen notes with dimensions of that vaulted way at Cleeve, which wd interest the “fidgetty” old man.3 Yours very truly | Philip Webb. My best wishes to your mother. V&A, AAD

1 Porteous was the junior assistant at Raymond Buildings between 1886–8. 2 The multi-headed dog of ancient Greek and Roman mythology, who guarded the entrance to the underworld. 3 Cleeve Abbey in Washford, Somerset is a late twelfth-century Cistercian foundation. After the dissolution of monastic houses under Henry VIII, the surviving buildings became a manor house.

319

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

280 • To Percy Wyndham, 9 July 1886 Draft Friday. 9th July 86 Dear M Wyndham. I am sorry you your family & guests should have been discomposed with the noise of hammers. I should have thought, however, that the clattering rush of the election winnowing-vans1 would have drowned the noise of such hammering as went to laying the edging to floor boards at the hall door, and putting in the plain panels to door heads! Nevertheless, the tone of your letter was not – seemingly – very malignant. Perhaps the your joy of at having rushed in at Field’s drainage – maugre the Angels2 – counteracted the disturbing element to your temper? From what I gather from your letter to Field of June 22 (of which he sent me a copy) I, at all events, am not much disturbed at the way you have gone to work to get rid of the effluent water from the drainage, and I sincerely hope the plan may succeed as I think perhaps it might. There may be a short delay in Estcourt’s getting the dark marble (Derbyshire spar,3 the same as that in the hall paving) to cover the coil cases, and I have told him to ask you when he could fix them at the least inconvenient time for the household. I am afraid I cannot accept your kind call to come to Clouds and be lectured, as I have Ramsden’s and other bits of work to attend to.4 The former goes but slowly at present, and certainly has not yet advanced to that stage when he will call me “Coxcombe.” It will probably arrive at that comfortable stage point when I am about to send him in my bill! Yours very truly | Ph: W: r

V&A, AAD

1 Winnowing-vans (more commonly, winnowing-fans) were the machines used to separate the grain from the chaff. Campaigning was under way for a general election. On 25 July Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister once more, leading an anti-home-rule coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. 2 ‘For fools rush in where angels fear to tread’, Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711). 3 Derbyshire Spar, otherwise known as Derbyshire Blue John, is a semi-precious mineral which in the nineteenth century was mined at Castleton in Derbyshire. It typically features a purple-blue banding. 4 PSW was engaged in making and re-making designs for a house for John Charles Francis Ramsden (1835–1910), a former army officer, which would become Willinghurst (initially called Lapscombe), in Shamley Green, Surrey (1886–9, with later additions). See Kirk, pp. 143–9 and 301. See below, Letter 293 and later letters.

320

1864–1887

281 • To Percy Wyndham, 17 July 1886 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 17. 1886. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham Clouds. East Knoyle. Salisbury Dear Mr Wyndham I thank you for your temperate good tempered letter of July 12. I do this the more especially as I am afraid these unlucky baths have bothered you and the rest of the family. As I also thought that no diaphragm or other contrivance would serve the purpose of moderating the pressure of cold water for any length of time, I did, on the 27th of March last, get an estimate from Longdens’ for putting in an intercepting cold water cistern for the baths with separate supply to each bath, and the amount of their estimate is £70. I propose now, to direct Longdens’ to proceed with this alteration at the same time as they are at work on the boilers’ business, I myself undertaking to pay the cost of the former. I did my work to the baths with the best of intentions but, unfortunately, without the aid of Dodman (Field’s man) Longden’s man, or Moncrieff’s man,1 who should have warned me at the time of the too high pressure of the cold supply. Still, I am pretty cheerful under the circumstances. I do not see why “good intentions” should not take the skin off one’s tail as well as “pave Hell”! On re-reading your letter, I think I would make another suggestion, before ordering Longdens’ to proceed with the baths, and it is this; that I direct Moncrieff to change all the present complicated bath apparatuses for the ordinary system of hot and cold supply, and this also I wd do at my own expense. I have not made so very many blunders over the rather difficult works of Clouds House that I should hesitate to clear myself of the any reproach of on this bath affair, and one or two other items of which I have made note. Will you therefore, send me word at once if you would like the bath apparatuses changed for the ordinary system? Now, for a matter of taste; the paling on the south side of house. I am glad of your report as that it looks “cottag[e]y”, for this I wished, as it would add much to the apparent size of the house. The greater part of our 19th century architecture is ruined in appearance for want of attention to a knowledge of the laws of proportion. Again, to have put up a stone balustrade would have cost as least four times as much as the wooden one, and would have taken away something from the house of what I consider its best quality – namely, its simplicity.

321

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Will you answer at once the question asked above, as to whether I shall direct that the bath apparatuses shall be changed? Yours very truly | Ph.W. LB-2, pp. 56-8

1 Moncrieff appears to have been a contractor involved in plumbing work. See also below, PSW to Bowman, 10 October 1887.

282 • To Wickham Flower, 20 July 1886 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 20. 1886. To Wickham Flower Esqre Old Swan House Chelsea. S.W. Dear Mr Flower1 I am exceedingly sorry to have been obliged to keep you waiting for the stables’ design. I now send you a tracing shewing what I propose should be done. On the ground plan you will see that I have made the stable-yard of just sufficient width to allow of 2 pairs of coach-house doors at the end of it, and to give room enough for the projecting horse doorway to stable and the man’s entrance to Coachhouse harness room &c so as to allow of going in and out without necessarily opening the main stable door, an important point. I put this horse stable door in the way shewn to avoid awkward opening of door and to keep it from being repeatedly blown-to by the wind. As shewn, the door will open inside in its own recess and thus avoid its awkward opening into the stable itself, or having it to open out on the yard. The coach-house I merely make a shed which will join on to and not interfere with the old granary. The harness-room is so placed as to communicate with stable & coach-house and also to get a separate entrance to stairs to loft, man’s-room, hay shute &c. I propose putting a brick foundation and on the greater part of 3 sides a framed & black-weather-boarded superstructure. Will you kindly consider the plan & let me know what you think of it? Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 58-9

1 See above, Letter 269, note 4.

322

1864–1887

283 • To Percy Wyndham, 20 July 1886 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] July 20. 1886 To Hon’ Percy Wyndham Clouds East Knoyle Salisbury Dear Mr Wyndham. I had your letter of the 18th, yesterday, and I saw Longden in the afternoon, when I gave him directions to proceed with putting in the intercepting cold water cistern &c to reduce the pressure on the baths. As Mrs Wyndham’s suggestion, to supplement the present bath water appliances with two separate draw supply taps, seemed to me a very good one, I consulted with Longden, and we thought it could easily be done, and by him when he was doing the other work; so I ordered this also to be done prepared for by him. I shall most likely be writing to Mallett1 about these works of Longden, but I should be glad if you would direct him to make himself thoroughly master of these alterations and keep me informed of any difficulties which may arise. I had a hearty chuckle over your pleasant jest of a probable crowd of “influential people” hastening to Gray’s Inn to obtain the modest services of a “lean P.W”! No, my friend, there will be no such rush such as to make the police put me in “Quad” for obstruction. I must differ with you as to the joke that Clouds “is the house of the age”! There are two classes of houses, which would rightly come under that title in England . The first is the majority one, the natural style of a “shoddy period” of which the houses in Tyburnia,2 Belgravia, Victoria Street &c and their kind in the country give the type. It might be called Victorian after the last, and hang-dog style after the first. The second is the artificial one non-natural class is of which the mediæval style, represented by – say – the Law Courts3 – the scholastic, by the British Museum,4 the showy, by the club-houses &c and the Dilettante-picturesque, by the (so-called) Queen Anne style. All these styles are exceedingly artificial styles, and have been worked and run to death by lively fashion. Where they are least annoying or disappointing it has been is, when they have been built worked on by really able men. As to my “keeping people at arm’s length” (if what you hint at thereby, is true) it would merely be that I do not want to lay myself out to do work for people who do not in any degree want what I could honestly do for them. With a begging pardon for this essay | I am | Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 59-61

1 ‘In July [1885] William Mallett was appointed house carpenter; he was to become clerk of works for the [Clouds] estate until his death in 1923.’ Dakers, p. 78. 2 ‘Tyburnia was a name used in the early 19th century for the south-eastern corner of the [Paddington] parish, the first part of the Paddington Estate to be built up. It was adopted presumably because

323

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I “Tyburn” was already well known, as a reference to the gallows at Tyburn tree.’ http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22664 [accessed 11 August 2014]. 3 The Gothic style of the winning design for the Royal Courts of Justice (the Law Courts), which had opened in 1882, was by George Edmund Street. 4 The British Museum was built to a Greek revival design by Sir Robert Smirke (1780–1867), and the main building was completed in 1852. In the following year it received the RIBA Gold Medal. The White Wing, matching Smirke’s main building for the quadrangle, was completed in 1885 to a design by Sir John Taylor (1833–1912).

284 • To Percy Wyndham, 16 August 1886 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Aug: 16. 1886. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham Clouds Hse E: Knoyle Salisby Dear Mr Wyndham. I recd your letter this morning, inclosing cheque for £1,000, for which latter I am obliged. The money was a convenience to me, the but your pleasant expression of complete satisfaction with the house at Clouds was very cheering, and will continue to be a help at times in my work when a sense of hopelessness will at times creeps upon me, that all one’s efforts to make modern architecture in some way genuine seems to be futile. As to your report of the red coloured matter found in the water supply. After your first use of the house I had a report from Simmonds that the water was distinctly reddened, and when Dodman – Field’s for[e]man – went again to Clouds to finish his work I directed him to go carefully into the matter, to empty the water tower cistern and make general & particular examination to settle as to the cause of this redness. He told me that [he] found everything coated with an exceedingly fine precipitate, including the sides and bottom of the main reservoir, and that he was satisfied that it came from the well, and was not caused by the rusting of the pipes. When Rogers Field and myself were considering the scheme of water piping we decided to use cast iron pipes for the main systems, coated with “Dr Angus Smith’s composition” which he had found to be a better protection to the pipes than galvanizing.1 He had often found galvanizing give way in patches and the water penetrate between the iron and the galvanizing. I have also elsewhere largely used the Angus Smith coated pipes elsewhere & have never found them rust. For the branch supply pipes, of smaller bore, where cast iron cannot be used, we decided (after testing pieces of pipe down the well for about 2 months’ time) to use wrought iron drawn barrel piping, submitted to the “Bower-Barff” steam chamber process.2 You will understand that the difference between the action of water on cast and wrought iron is very great. 324

1864–1887

One of the dangers risks of using the Bower-Barff process is, that if any of the pipes are cut or bent after the process that there is a danger of rust. Well, all this piping was fitted in its several positions ready for use and was take[n] down again and then put through the Bower-Barff system; and this was done with the greatest precision by Dodman. For the hot water supply, I used tinned copper piping, wh’ has only one drawback, that of being very costly – so costly in fact that I could not entertain the idea of using it for the branch cold supply which has a great length of piping. The use of lead pipe for such soft water as yours was out of the question, and tinned lead, which has sometimes been used, has proved to be a failure. I still think the reddening of the water is from a precipitate, and that that it will use itself out, and the great rush of water through the pipes will keep them from choking. I sincerely hope that this will be the case as, if the Bower-Barff process fails I shall hardly not know what to use in many places where the expense of tinned copper pipes makes them their use impossible. I have used the Bower-Barff pipes elsewhere and have not yet found them to rust, and that with very soft water. Rogers Field’s (not Roger) address is, 4 Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street Westminster S: W. I will see Field as soon as I can, but when you send him your cheque, perhaps you would ask him to see his foreman Dodman upon the point of the reddened water. Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 62-5

1 In 1848, the chemist Dr Robert Angus Smith (1817–84) patented a method by which the interior of water pipes were coated in a prepared coal tar, to protect against corrosion. 2 For the Bower-Barff process, see above, Letter 219, note 2.

285 • To Percy Wyndham, 24 August 1886 Draft 1 R B Gray’s Inn Tuesday 24th Aug: ’86 Dear Mr Wyndham. Your box of boiler deposit is very interesting and may be useful. I am still inclined to believe that the red matter is not from rusted pipes, but from a precipitate. I hardly think that a small quantity of water resting for 24 hours would be enough to give a appreciable sediment, but we shall see. I think the best way wd be for Mallet, when the house is empty, to clean out the water tower tank and see what deposit there is there. 325

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

The well was deepened, and tunnelled at the bottom at last, to give greater storage of water and I thought it likely that a vein of fine iron sand was cut into, and that after a time (some years perhaps) this vein might be pumped out. As you say that I am mad on the subject of trees, I hope those in the dell won’t die from the effluent which went in there. If I am crazy, I do not think it can be timber rabies, as I do not bark like a tree! Your punishment to the yew-tree-trunks is too sad: surely if Hellfire is not enough the perennial perpetually being sat upon by conservative backsides is more than enough of purgatory. Yours very truly | Ph: W: V&A, AAD

286 • To Giacomo Boni, 18 September 1886 Photostat. Postmark LONDON. W.C. SP 18 86 Address Al Signore | Il Signor Giacomo Boni | Palazzo Ducale | Venezia. | Italy 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Saturday. 18th Sepr ’86 My dear Signor Boni I have sent you today, by book post, the “Correspondence respecting the imprisonment of Mr Worth by the Prussians”.1 I have not yet been able to get you the other information, either at the place for the sale of Parliamentary acts, or at Hansard’s for parliamentary papers, but I hope to be able to do so, and as quickly as possible. I am trying to find a trustworthy agent to search for and read up the papers and copy the same. I hope your friend will be able to wait a little. You may promise him (the Professor of International Law) that I will get the information – if I can – as quickly as possible. I heard from Mr Hebb2 that the Institute of British Architects (whom I called ugly names when I wrote to you before) had agreed to publish your paper and drawings on the Ca’ d’Oro, and I have no doubt if the Institute does not present you with enough copies I shall get one, at least, from Mr Hebb.3 I am looking forward to reading your paper and seeing the published drawing. I remember your telling me you had found out, from a scaffolding, what the old cornice was like, and as I went past the building in a gondola, I thought I recognised the pendentive character of it; but perhaps I saw this through the mind’s eye, guided by what you had told me. No, I have not seen your account of the Cloaca Veneziana4 of the x c. or that of the bronze lion on the column in the Piazzet[t]a.5 Believe me, I have not lost my enthusiasm for these things, though I am getting on to be 2 years older since I had the pleasure of being stimulated by the fire of your springtime of life. Here, I am “tugging at the daily oar” in my ordinary work of supplying people with houses in the style of the 19th c by Ph: Webb, and the incongruity of attempting any reasonable art in this year of (un)“redemption” is almost too much for the muscles of laughter in one’s face to resist! PAZIENZA. 326

1864–1887

About the Ducal Palace:6 This building is better imprinted on my mind than any other in Venice, for I had the benefit of your attention, and a scaffolding from which I rubbed my mind and fingers well into the visible, touchable work of the mediæval Venetians. Whenever I look through my rough note book I wish to be back there, to work all day at the pretty builded story, and talk over my thoughts with you in the evening. It is not likely that I shall ever get to Italy again, but I have enough stored within me to interest my walking thoughts for the rest of my years. Added to which sentimental reflection, comes another more serious still. The peoples all over the world are awaking to the fact that they have been horribly cheated of their rights and I, who have enough food, clothing, and house roof must throw in my lot with them, and spend no more on myself than is reasonably necessary.7 I began with the Ducal Palace and have drifted. I wholly agree with you that it is a pity the authorities should have been drawn into a “frenzy” about the otherwise unimportant matter of the filled-in arches at the end of the building next the Ponte della Paglia: surely that there are a good many of the arches that are open? However, I also think with you that, as they have renewed the more important work of the capital, the filling-in of the arches is not much worth fighting for. Have the engineers enough intelligence to know, if the opening of these closed arches will in any way affect the present settled equilibrium of the building? We, in England, find that the element of curiosity outweighs commonsense and, what is worse, no sooner is their curiosity satisfied on one point, than they forget all about the thing they were so frenzied upon a few weeks before! Now, about S: Marco. Some little time since, the society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings addressed a modest letter to the Prefect, about some notice of a proposal to take up and relay some more of the pavement in the church. There have been certain letters in the “Times” newspaper from authorities in Italy ridiculing this letter of our society.8 This does not matter in the least, but our Society wants to know if there is anything further likely to be done to the beautiful old church, in the way of restoration, so called? There seems to be some proposal also, to turn round some of the marble columns, so that the side which has been protected from the weather shall now be exposed to it. The society wants to know what, out of a number of doubtful stories, are the facts as to impending mischief? If you can tell us anything, without violating your trust as superintendent of some of the Venetian buildings, we shall be thankful to you. You will easily understand that, till the Italians take up the protection of their ancient buildings for themselves, outsiders will be in a state of fear for the buildings, and outsiders of any nationality are liable to being misled by false report. Believe me, with much delightful recollection of you | Yours sincerely Philip Webb. Courtauld 9a-g 327

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 On 10 September 1886, GBO wrote on behalf of Giulio Cesare Buzzatti (1862–1920), a professor of international law seeking information about the case of a British national, F.G. Worth, arrested in Prussian-occupied Paris in October 1870. Having been refused permission to leave Paris, Worth was captured whilst attempting an escape by balloon. 2 See above, Letter 124, note 1. 3 The Palazzo Santa Sofia (the Ca’ d’Oro), is an early fifteenth-century Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal, built for the Contarini family by the architect Giovanni Bon (1355–1443) and his son, Bartolomeo Bon (d. after 1464). On 6 December 1886, ‘the Ca’ D’Oro, Venice, and its External Colour’, ‘the work of Signor G. Boni . . . written in English by himself’ was read on his behalf at RIBA by George Aitchison, and was illustrated with drawings and photographs. An abstract together with the resulting discussion (to which Hebb contributed) was published in the RIBA Proceedings (9 December 1886), pp. 61–5. 4 Venetian sewers (It). 5 The Piazzetta is the area linking the main Piazza of San Marco with the waterfront (the Molo), where the column surmounted by the winged lion of San Marco stands. See Vol. II, Letter 358, note 7. 6 The Palazzo Ducale in the Piazza San Marco was the residence of the Doge, the chief magistrate and governor of the Venetian republic. The current building is mainly of fourteenth and fifteenth-century design, with later additions and restorations. It was on the scaffolding supporting works in progress that PSW first met GBO in March 1885. 7 PSW’s most explicit statement to date of the extent of his conversion to the socialist cause. 8 The letter sent by the SPAB to the Prefect of Venice, expressing concern about plans to relay the mosaic floor of San Marco, was also published in The Times on 21 September, prompting an attack from a British correspondent, ‘mocking the society’s efforts as fighting change because “the touch of a broom might injure the ‘tone’ of the dust” in the cathedral’. Frank C. Sharp, ‘Exporting the Revolution: The Work of the SPAB outside Britain 1878–1914’, in Miele, p. 197.

287 • To Edward Augustus Freeman, 20 September 1886 Drafted on behalf of SPAB; later signed by HTT and dated 20 September 1886 The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings 9 Buckingham Street Adelphi. WC. To Professor E:A: Freeman The “Saxon” Chapel at Bradford on Avon.1 Dear Sir.2 At the last Committee meeting of this society, attention was called to notices which have lately appeared in the public papers respecting the venerable remains of this Church or Chapel.3 The building is, of course, well known to many members of the society, and some of them have noticed from time to time that various repairs have been undertaken, and the Committee is bound to confess that some of them have been done with more zeal than knowledge or discretion. From this it will be inferred that my Committee is heartily glad to learn that your valuable advice is at the disposal of the present guardians of the building. My Committee directs me to express to you a doubt it has, as to the wisdom of the proposal (seemingly sanctioned by you) to remove the comparatively modern building which is at present attached to the South side of the Nave. With all 328

1864–1887

respect, my Committee would urge that further consideration should be given to this proposal before it is carried into execution. Practical architects are aware that risk is often run in removing from an ancient building any structure which has for some time been attached to an old building it , and they are convinced that unless such attached work is certainly injurious it is much safer to leave it standing, for, its weight has been brought in contact with the more ancient work and, in course of time, has settled to its present state of equilibrium: the removal of which force will assuredly be felt by the main structure. It also appears to my committee, that the more modern building is far from unsightly, and if carefully repaired would not really be damaging even to the appearance of the little church, as it noticeably gives it scale. Also, the more modern floored building gives facility for students to examine closely some of the interesting instruction and other character of the blank arcading. It might also be suggested that, if the attached building were strongly repaired, it would serve for storing and arranging for examination any fragments of interest discovered from time to time. I remain &c. P.S. My Committee would ask you (if you have not already done so) to give the weight of your name to any appeal which could be made to the owner of the beautiful 14th c Barn, in the outskirts of Bradford,4 to protect it from unnecessary injury. Some time back, by some carelessness, that allowed the smoke from a steam engine had been allowed most unfortunately to blacken one side of the walls. T.T.

1 See above, Letter 123, note 3. 2 The historian Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92) had argued that the earliest surviving parts of the chapel dated from the time of its putative founder, St Aldhelm, and read a paper on the subject to the Somerset Archaeological Society in 1874. 3 The SPAB file includes cuttings from The Architect (10 September) and The Saturday Review (11 September). 4 See above, Letter 125, note 4.

288 • To George and Caroline Boyce, 30 September 1886 Annotated ‘recd at St Donat’s’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thursday. 30th Sep. ’86 My dear Friends I have your united and, on the whole, unconscionable letter of the 26th. How to pacify an irritable man, living amongst the lawyers, will occupy your time of enforced seclusion from the intelligent world (?) for the rest of your stay abroad!1 I am not sure that I have said all, on this point, which has been stored up in my 329

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

breast for the last month. I should be sorry if these bitter reflections on my part should destroy the appetites of one or both of you, but that must be as it may; still – but perhaps I had better say no more, or perhaps a hat & bonnet may be found on the St Donat’s shore as the only [word obliterated] relics of a faithless pair! It is really difficult to tear myself away from this distressing subject, but I will make some effort. I carry with me this afternoon, George’s memoranda on Llantwitt [sic] Church,2 to the anti-scrape meeting of a few responsible and dependable persons giving their intelligence to the preservation of the memorials of the dead art of architecture. The photograph received is accepted as in some small way expiatory of a shocking sin, (slightly touched upon above) and will be looked at with a dashed pleasure. According to Madame’s note, “landscape painters have always difficulties” in the way of their work and, according to an interscription of Monsieur’s, it is from incompetency in the painter. I should say it is rather from an over nice sense of the tremendous character of nature, in combination with ancient art, that makes the painter take refuge in dallying over his coffee and cigarette and thereby getting late to work, and then leisurely considering that, if the arrangement of the mechanical contrivance of the world (whereby hills are steep and are hard to climb) had been so modified, that, when the top of creation was at the bottom of the hill, it did then tilt up and allow the forked radish, called man,3 leisurely to walk down to his object, things would have been easier. I grant that, but the reason (according to my way of thinking) why nature did not stop at the gorilla and made the aforesaid forked radish was, that the last & worst-and-best animal was intended to set things straight & make them plain, out of pure enjoyment of the exercise of the faculties he is said to be endowed with. It may be altogether a mistake, and man is not endowed with exceptional faculties beyond the brute beast; well, considering the present state of human affairs I am, at times, inclined to doubt if the forked creature is anything else than a strutting, gibbering sham. I am glad to learn that Madame has turned to reading that classical piece of English literature in which Signors Quilp and Swiveller are embedded in a perfect mass of egg, jelly and juicy gravy with which the rest of the precious book is made up.4 I see that the inimitable (perhaps happily so) Voltaire, has had ashes sprinkled on his head by a performance lately put on the stage in Paris (in a more or less reasonable way) of the play of Hamlet by the British “barbarian”, the “immortal Williams”.5 Tears seem to have flowed freely, and the Parisians to have forgotten the perfidy of Albion when considering that of Hamlet’s mother. Peace be with the ashes of Shakespeare, Voltaire and England (for it looks as if this ‘geographical expression’ were coming to an end) and may the shade of Hamlet’s father never be less! When George likened the lovely turmoil of the sky, the birds, and the sea roaring and rattling through the pebbles of your beach, with that subdued but sadder and more terrible roar of the outraged peoples now going on within the rings of all the beaches of the world,6 I felt inclined to flit from my present engagement with the 330

1864–1887

latter, to the stimulating sounds of the former, but, patience, all things are good for those who can see into them. George may rest assured that I have not missed his words of sympathy with those who feel drawn towards a tragedy which is neither written, not acted, but is. And now I must give over, asking if I have not worked out your expiation for you, by laying on you this tangled hair-shirt of stuff contained on these sheets? I did a hare Peacock, then a Hare, then a Lion in watercolour for Morris’s people to do in tapestry: I do not know if you saw either [sic] of them. I am now engaged on a Fox, and am looking forward to Sunday holiday to finish him, or get well on to making him round.7 The Welwyn folk are pretty well, & I shall carry your words to them next week, as Carry8 is on the look out for such news. She is getting on pretty well with household matters. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Do you get “Commonweal”? There are some good things in it, and wd be good reading by sounding shore.9 BL Add 45354, ff. 237-9

1 GPB and his wife were staying in St Donat’s, near Llantwit Major in the Vale of Glamorgan, about 19 miles west of Cardiff. 2 The church of St Illtud, Llantwit Major, founded by Illtud in the fifth-sixth centuries, was an early centre for learning. The present church is mainly thirteenth-fifteenth centuries, with earlier survivals including ancient Celtic crosses. 3 ‘When ’a was naked, he was for all the world like a fork’d redish, with a head fantastically carv’d upon it with a knife.’ 2 Henry IV, III,ii,310–12. 4 The malign Daniel Quilp and good-naturedly feckless Dick Swiveller are characters in Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–1). PSW’s copy (London: Chapman and Hall, 1856) is now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 136. 5 i.e. Shakespeare: an in-joke, presumably. PSW had evidently seen that day’s report in The Times of a well-received performance of Hamlet by the Comédie Française, a revival of the abbreviated translation made by Alexandre Dumas père (1802–70) and Paul Meurice (1818–1905), with Jean Mounet-Sully (1841–1916) in the title role. The mention of Voltaire alludes to the dismissal of Shakespeare’s importance by this most famous of France’s Enlightenment figures, who considered the English stage to be ‘in a grossly infantile state’. Cited in John Pemble, Shakespeare Goes to Paris. How the Bard Conquered France (London: Hambledon and London, 2005), p. 3. 6 This seems to allude to both the language and theme of Matthew Arnold’s poem, ‘Dover Beach’, first published in 1867. 7 The ‘Forest’ tapestry (bought from Morris & Co. by Alex Ionides for 1 Holland Park, now at the V&A), was designed by WM and John Henry Dearle and woven in 1887, embodying PSW’s animal and bird designs (peacock, hare, lion, fox and raven, now at Wightwick Manor). It is generally regarded as the Firm’s ‘most successful tapestry’. Linda Parry, William Morris Textiles (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), p. 111. For PSW’s recollections of drawing the creatures, see Vol. III, Letter 786. The tapestry is illustrated in Kirk, p. 54. 8 Caroline, PSW’s younger sister. 9 Pope, An Essay on Criticism: ‘But when loud surges lash the sounding shore’.

331

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

289 • To Hugh Thackeray Turner, 5 November 1886 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday. 5th Nov: ’86 My dear Turner If I go to Oxford at all I must go, I think, next Thursday;1 as I should surely be asked at Brazenose College as to the Society’s informant abt the chapel &c I should either have permission from Parson Mitchell2 to give his name or refuse to answer the College people this question. Will you be so good as to write to Mr Mitchell and tell him that there is a grievance against the society, at Brazenose, and that a member of our come had been deputed to go to Oxford to try and make peace – and would he, Mitchell, object to his name being given as informant as to what was proposed to be done to the chapel. Mitchell’s name would not be mentioned unless it was found impossible, without further mischief, to withhold it. Yours truly | Ph: Webb. SPAB, Brasenose College, Oxford file

1 ‘I write to inform you that Mr Philip Webb proposes to visit Oxford next Thursday the 11th inst: and he will then take the opportunity of calling upon [you] as arranged.’ HTT to Alfred John Butler, 6 November 1886, file copy, SPAB. Butler (1850–1936), was Bursar of Brasenose, and had recently resigned his membership of the SPAB, writing on 9 October that ‘I cannot pretend to agree with the principles of a Society which forbids the addition of a memorial tablet to any ancient building: which disapproves the replacement of a common glass window by stained glass (in a case like the present): which considers a really infamous tile pavement dating from some 20 years ago so sacred that it must be for ever better than a good mosaic pavement of today: and which actually pretends to reverence the varnished deal case of a new organ to such an extent as to censure the proposal to put up a fresh organ-case of possibly some artistic merit.’ SPAB. 2 Not identified.

290 • To Henry Wallis, 8 November 1886 Copy of draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn. Mon: 8th Nov: ’86 Copy My dear Wallis. You are as difficult to draw as a Badger. There was no wish to bait you, as if you were the Lord Mayor! I cannot say anything formally in answer to your letter to me, as I shall not see my colleagues until Thursday; but, as an individual member of the S: Mark’s Com: I can say that I know there have been various suspicious-looking proposals 332

1864–1887

made by the Italian functionaries which ought to be looked into by the S: Mark’s com:;1 and, unless we, who are in town, can get our secretary to meet us with his evidences we might have some difficulty in giving authorities for statements. Your time I know is precious, and Morris’s and mine and that of others is not of much account, but if you feel, as naturally you might, that our opinion is not of weight sufficient to stir you to call a meeting of the S.M. Com: I, as a mere individual, would ask you to come down and cross examine us and, if necessary, charge us for the loss of your time.2 I don’t wonder at the Italians making a mistake as to the particular Com: they should thunder at, as it was the S.P.A.B who first brought the wasps’ nest about their ears, and stayed their defacing hands, before the S.M. Com: “first saw the light”, born of the above named lesser light. Perhaps you could come to Buckingham St on Thursday at 4 o’c, letting the S.P.A.B. Secy know, so that he might urge other members to meet you. After which we might consider whether it would be worthwhile to summon Street (no, you can hardly get him to attend come) & Poynter & other big-wigs to attend a meeting. But in no case ought we, I think, to offer to pay their expenses or the expenses of any R:A; who would ruin us altogether if they were paid the value of what they estimate their time at. Yours very truly | Ph: W: V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 286, note 8. 2 If Wallis is being accused of prevarication, in his defence it needs to be said that his report to the SPAB’s Foreign Committee in 1879 had provided on-the-spot information to assist its campaign against the earlier planned restoration of the West front of St Mark’s. At that time he had managed to examine behind the protective screens erected by the workmen. But the force and tone of SPAB’s consequent opposition under WM’s leadership was received as arrogant and patronising, resulting in a perhaps predictable reaction from the Italian authorities as well as from some voices closer to home. Wallis feared that any future campaigns could be counter-productive, and had written in December 1879 to warn WM that if the wider public in Britain registered the force of Italian protests, this would ‘prevent us getting support on another occasion’. See Sharp, ‘Exporting the Revolution’, pp. 188–94, and next letter, note 1.

291 • To Henry Wallis, 10 November 1886 Copy of draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Wed: 10th Nov: 86 Copy My dear Wallis, Thanks for your letter recd this morning. I agree with you that it would hardly do to summon the magnificent and foreign members of the S. Mark’s Com: to dingy 333

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

November London to meet half a dozen or so of nobodies (you are not included here) in a dirty street off the Strand. If the President were of the R:A: were a member of S:M: Committee (is he?) it might be different; as he, with his shiny-pot-hattedness and grease-pot eloquence might make some amends for the want of the signs and seals of respectability, so lamentably deficient in some members of the S: Mark’s Com:1 I am sincerely glad of your assurance that nothing “serious” is contemplated in the way of improvement to the Basilica.2 When I was in Venice last year I felt somewhat uncomfortable on this point, I assure you; but as my hands and eyes & mind were so full of the still wonderful things about me, I had to stick pretty closely to making up – what I am pleased to call my mind – on many things connected with my inner life, that I probably failed to get much information on controversial matters which would, perhaps, might have helped in the future. However, I did get hold of some unfiltered Venetian information, and have, luckily, been in touch with it since my return.3 Naturally, I cannot tell you “what business is to be transacted at the meeting”, as I fancied the suggested meeting of the London members of the S Mark’s Com: was to see if it was necessary to set about transacting some! But if you cannot come, you cannot, and thus an end of my unofficial movement in the matter. I will therefore merely send your unofficial letters to Buckingham Street, and hope for the best to come to the top in this “best of all possible worlds”.4 Yours very truly | Ph: W: V&A, AAD

1 It seems hardly credible that these remarks were simply to be regarded as ‘good-naturedly chaffy’ (see next letter). The bitterness of PSW’s sarcasm suggests a real sense of anger at Wallis’s reluctance to enter into another dispute with the Italian authorities. 2 ‘I suppose you have some letters, or papers respecting the “suspicious circumstances”. Can I have copies of them? I will then make enquiries at Venice. I know there are things done at the Church that you & I wld not approve of, but they are not serious. If we are constantly “nagging” about trifles we shall destroy our influence, & then will not have public opinion with us in any really serious matter.’ Wallis to PSW, 9 November 1886, V&A, AAD. 3 He means GBO. 4 The words of the German philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz (1646–1716), that ‘we live in the best of all possible worlds’, were satirised by Voltaire in his novella Candide (1759).

292 • To George Wardle, 10 November 1886 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wed: 10th Nov: ’86 My dear Wardle As I have – as you know – to go to Oxford tomorrow, on the Brasenose Coll: business, I send you two letters I have recd from Wallis about the S. Mark’s Com: matter &c. I have made a copy of my rough draft of first answer to Wallis, as I 334

1864–1887

thought you would hardly decypher [sic] that scrawled on the back of Wallis’s own letter. Wallis is not a bad natured chap really, but his “cussedness” is amazing. Also, it seems to me that he may have tipped a wink to his friends in Italy as to his (Wallis’s) opinion of the S.P.A.B or, why this close reserve on his part and steady refusal to give us any information? I thought it well to be good-naturedly chaffy in my letters to him, as I know of no other physic for cussedness. If Morris is at the meeting tomorrow, try and get at his second thoughts after he learns of Wallis’s tactics. For, any stiff standing against Wallis will only make him stiffer than a telegraph pole. Of course that is all nonsense about his being desired to summon all members of the S.M: Com:, foreign & other, as, at several times, he (the Secy) has called a few members together in the way we proposed, though, in dealing with Wallis we should be most punctilious as to wording any request. I am to meet Butler at Brasenose Coll: tomorrow between 12 & 1 o’c: and shall do what I can (honestly) to smooth matters, so as to avoid breaches new or widening of old.1 Thanks for sending me the engravings of ventilating apparatus from old Newgate. I shall want your aid to set the mousetrap, as the principle is unexplained, there being no letter press. Yours | Ph: Webb Will you kindly send me back Wallis’s letters & my answers when you have read them on Thursday? | Ph.W. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 289.

293 • To John Ramsden, 17 November 1886 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Nov: 17. 1886. To J: C: Ramsden Esqre 1 Busbridge Hall, by Godalming Dear Mr Ramsden I have taken a little time to consider how I might best advise you on the matter contained in your letter of the 14th inst. I will at once answer your particular questions. 335

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

My estimate of the probable cost of the present design for the building at Lapscombe, according to my letter to you at Manchester of the 6th July last, was £9,332 but in working out the glazed corridor at the West end of house some little addition was incurred & an allowance should be made – say – of £100. This estimate does include for the drainage, water service inside the house, bell-wires, and two or three speaking tubes and the cost of surveyor’s charge for taking out the quantities. It also includes for all grates, ranges &c unless in the kitchen some further apparatus is required than I have considered necessary for the size & character of the house. Preparation is made for the heating apparatus & included in the cost, but the cost of the apparatus itself (boiler, pipes &c and such covering to coils as I usually adopt) is not included, but I think you can safely put this cost at £175.0.0. The cost of any decorative painting and papering is not included, as that wd probably not be done for 2 or 3 years after the house was

My own charges as Architect are fully given in a memm attached to my letter to you of March 17, 1886. If a clerk of the works is employed you would have to pay him, according to his class, from £3.3.0 to £4.4.0 a week. If it should be considered that the builder was so trustworthy that a resident clerk of the works would not be necessary, or only necessary for a time, I could arrange that one of my assistants should spend an occasional week or month on the works and only charge you half his salary, and his expenses of living, for the times he was at the works. You will easily understand that with my experience I can am aware how easy it is, when a house is being designed, for the client to, almost unconsciously, increase the extent of the house, and when conscious of some addition it seems so natural when building a house to put in what might prove to have been unwise to leave out. I think your recollection will bear me out that, all along, I have been very anxious to keep the extent of the house within bounds? Upon looking at the plans you will see that a large amount of accommodation and a number & variety of rooms have been grouped together in a compact and workmanlike way and, though the house is extremely simple and unostentatious it is, nevertheless, substantially designed? If you should think, after having completed your calculations, that it would be unwise to build so large a house, I would advise you to begin again on a smaller scale, and not attempt to modify the present plan which is well arranged as it is, but wd be ill arranged if its scheme is were disorganised. Again, if you should think that another architect would give you a better & cheaper house more to your mind & at a less cost, I would advise you to put yourself in his hands, as it would be better to sacrifice 3 or 4 a few hundred pounds now & save say 3 or 4 a few thousand pounds in the end. I find that Mr Goodman the surveyor has completed about half of his work in taking out the quantities, and if the works are not carried out his charge for the work done would be £107.0.0 but, as I said before, if the works are carried out this built.

336

1864–1887

charge and that for the completion of his work would be a part of the estimate of the house, and included in the builder’s tender, and paid for by him. Believe me | Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 65-7

1 For Ramsden, see above, Letter 280, note 4.

294 • To Mary King-Milbanke, Lady Wentworth, 19 November 1886 Draft, incomplete 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Nov: 19. 1886 Dear Lady Wentworth1 In answer to your request that I would give you my opinion on the practicability of repairing and so far refitting some of the houses in Cheyne Walk Chelsea, that they might be made habitable under changed sanitary conditions, of sanitary science I would say in ans that I took the opportunity of going over two of the houses the other day and just looked into a third, and from my personal knowledge of the construction of two other houses in Cheyne Walk – namely, that inhabited by Mr Rafe Leycester,2 and another west of Manor Street which was the residence of the late Mr Gabriel Rossetti – I am able to speak with more confidence than if I had merely been able to judged of the houses from the outside and not in addition from professional experience of two of those above mentioned. Mr Leycester’s house, No 6, is, no doubt, less injured by modern alterations than the houses between it and Manor Street, but I suspect that the materials of construction would practically be nearly the same. And as I found, when I directed the repairs to No 6 some 10 or 12 years ago, that the timbers of the floors were heavy and sound, it is probable that the main timbers of some if not all of the other houses in question would be sound also. Now, if any of the buildings had to be repaired and partly refitted, it would probably be found that the roofs and the basement floors would require the more considerable attention. At No 6, I had to lift all the paving in the basement and take out the earth below down to the footings of the walls, and as [page missing] V&A, AAD

337

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 Mary Caroline Stuart-Wortley (1848–1941), second wife of Ralph King-Milbanke (1839–1906), thirteenth Baron Wentworth and later second Earl of Lovelace. 2 PSW had undertaken alterations and the refurbishment of 6 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea in 1869–72, for Rafe Oswald Leycester (1844–1929), of Toft Hall, Cheshire. See Kirk, p. 298.

295 • To John Ramsden, 26 November 1886 Copy/draft [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Nov: 26. 1886. To J: C: Ramsden Esqre Busbridge Hall by Godalming Dear Mr Ramsden Before answering the letters of yourself and Mrs Ramsden, dated respectively the 20th & 21st of this month, I wished so to consider the matters contained in them that there should be as little possibility of misunderstanding between us as possible. On referring to back drawings I find that my first design, a tracing of which was sent to you of the plan was submitted to you here, and is dated Mar: 18: 1886, on this plan was based a fresh design, a tracing of which was sent to you April 13. 1886, and since then there have been 3 other arrangements of plan, the last one of which, after various modifications, has marked on it several more modifications in detail in different parts of the house and several more alterations marked on it is dated July 6. ’86 . From this last plan, to 1/16th scale, the ⅛th scale plans were made, and as these plans latter were proceeding several variations in detail were suggested, and agreed to by me. It will thus be seen that from March to November of 1886 I have been closely engaged on the designs for your house, and I can safely say that I have never before taken as much time & trouble in sifting the arrangements of a house before the definite plans were proceeded with, as I have in this of yours. I do not in any way complain of this, indeed I congratulated myself in thinking that whatever time & trouble had been bestowed upon the plans before the final drawings were made, so much time would be saved in the long run. Now, as the ⅛th scale plans exactly represent the settled arrangements arrived at between us on the preliminary plans wh’ accurate first plans were considered by us in detail at interviews, and by letters, I confess I was disappointed at finding the questions of the arrangements completely unsettled by your last letters. I would like to guard against a possible supposition that I should think that, even now, some better scheme might could not be arrived at, and which would be worth the trouble and expense; but I certainly feel that the probability is, that any further designs made by me would only leave the thing in an a still unsettled state, and myself in a more uncomfortable position as architect. No architect, worthy of the name, ever matures a set of plans without understanding as he proceeds 338

1864–1887

that the work shewn on the drawings is practicable & workmanlike, & to be sure of this, I always carry on at the time of making out the working drawings, others drawings to a large scale, so that all construction &c may be clear to myself, and the surveyor who takes out the quantities. For the house for Lapscombe this has been properly done, and it necessarily caused occupied much time, so that it was imperative that the work should be in [a] form for getting from which to get tenders from builders as soon as possible, so that the works might be begun in the earliest open weather of 1887. When I put the drawings in the hands of the surveyor on the 13th of October, it never occurred to me that any important variation from the agreed upon plans would be contemplated. To prepare a fresh set of drawings embodying such radical alterations as are proposed in your last letters would occupy me for so considerable a time, that, with the best hope for mutual & settled agreement on such plans, would the time at which the works could be begun after obtaining tenders would must be later in the coming year than would be satisfactory. I do not, as I said before, think that it might not be better to incur such delay, but I feel very doubtful whether your confidence in me as an architect is such as to make it reasonable for me to undertake fresh plans for you; for, from several criticisms on my character of design made verbally here & some note in your letters with regard to my having run into expensive roofing for insufficient cause, make me hesitate in any way to lead you to repose any further confidence in my experience and ability as an architect. It would be hardly be worthwhile I think for me to enter now on further detailed explanation, but perhaps I had better just say that the second staircase is 2'.9"¼ wide in the clear: That the greatest value of the third staircase is from the ground floor to the first floor: That the first floor main block water closet is advisedly placed where it is for sanitary reasons: That there would be no difficulty in my modifying the windows to the main stairs if a change was really a wise one: That the arrangement of the main stairs was arrived at, after much consideration, to make the hall a pleasant place to sit in: That there would certainly be a saving in cost if the south wall to yard were stopped at the s. end of main yard and did not continue as a screen, but the loss of it would, I am sure, be felt as much both by the servants and those using the garden: That the bay window to the drawing-room is without a pillar dividing it, as the window was expressly designed to avoid the using a pillar here, and I had no intention of departing, in a side way, fm a settled arrangement. With regard to your expression of opinion as to the drawings beings “beautiful”, I would merely say that they are only plain straightforward “working” drawings, made without the waste of any useless work labour on them whatever. In conclusion I would say, that I do not wish to carp over small things, & which are really unimportant from my point of view; but I would seriously urge upon you whether it would not be better that the proposed re-disposition of the arrangements of the house were undertaken for you by some other architect, before 339

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

other cost was incurred which, too, might not be a satisfactory end of preliminary expense? Believe me | Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 68-71

296 • To James Havard Thomas, 13 December 1886 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Decr 13. ’86 Sir1 I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your circular letter of accompanied by two other papers regarding the matter of a proposed “national exhibition of the arts” &c. Having carefully considered as to whether it would be well for me to accept the offer made to me by the signatories of the letter of invitation that I, as an architect, should agree to serve on the committee referred to therein, I beg to say that I have concluded not to accept the invitation. I am well aware of the evils of the present mercantile monopoly of art exhibitions in England generally, and should be well pleased if some more honest way could be found as a remedy to the present restricted and prejudiced ways of exhibiting works of art. As I am not myself an exhibitor, and as my time is fully occupied even now by serving on committees in addition to my daily work I am certainly not a fit person to serve on your committee, the more so, that the work to be incurred by the movement entered upon will require much energy and perseverance on the part of all concerned engaged, to carry it to a successful issue. I am Sir, | Yours faithfully | Ph. W. J: Havard Thomas Esqr Cheltenham 1991.1016.658

1 The sculptor, James Havard Thomas (1854–1921), moved to Italy in 1889. In 1886 he was a founder member and secretary of the New English Art Club, but in 1889 ‘he destroyed the contents of his studio and moved to Italy.’ http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/ 64509 [accessed 11 March 2015].

340

1864–1887

297 • To Percy Wyndham, 24 December 1886 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Decr 24 1886. To The Hon’ Percy Wyndham Clouds House by Salisbury Dear Mr Wyndham Inclosed is a revised summary of Mr Estcourts acct for his work at Clouds, which I hope you will find clear. As to Longden’s acct, the £22 for coil case wire guard shd have been sent direct to me, but the mistake is of no importance. It can be paid by you to him along with your own acct with him and the balance of his acct of 233.12.9. By the reduction of £66.13.4 on Estcourts acct and the addition of the £22.0.0 of Longden’s it will give a reduction of £44.0.0 on the amount on which my own charge is made – therefore, if, when you pay my balance, you deduct £2.4.0 from the £215.0.0 it the error will be corrected. I am indeed glad that you find the your house fairly satisfactory as, in these days of rottenness in the arts, that is as much as can reasonably be hoped for. The Master of Balliol must have given you the smooth side of his tongue, than which there is nothing more oily!1 When you decide upon doing any “whitewashing”, as advised by William Morris, please let me know, as there is a way of doing even this properly. I will give my advice as an amateur in the whitewasher’s art. Please accept my thanks for the brace of pheasants. If you could have but persuaded them to come here on foot I wd have painted their portraits for them, whereas now, I shall have to eat them. Believe me, | Yours faithfully | Ph.W. rs P.S. I presume M Wyndham has not returned to Clouds? I sent to her there two sets of drawings for fittings, and have a third ready. I hope her sister is better. Ph.W. LB-2, pp. 73-4

1 The reputation of the classicist, Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), rests on his authority as a highly influential Master of Balliol College, Oxford. He was committed to college and university reform, and although this brought him opponents, generations of undergraduates were shaped by his powerful influence as a tutor. Perhaps Jowett had visited Clouds.

341

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

298 • To John Ramsden, about 27 December 1886 Draft/copy Decr 17. [sic] 1886 To J: C: Ramsden Esqre Busbridge Hall. Godalming Dear Mr Ramsden I duly recd your letter of Dec: 21 inclosing a tracing of a suggested new treatment of the entrance, hall space &c for the house at Lapscombe. I can understand that you were not satisfied with the space given for to hall in comparison with the arrangement in the finished plans. Nevertheless, the plan I sent you on the 17th Decr had its qualities, which perhaps may not have weighed with you as much as they did with me. The tracing of suggestion you sent me can hardly be accepted by me as in any way satisfactory, and for the following reasons among others. (1) There is no head room at entrance under half-landing of stairs. (2) The entrance into the hall cuts across the window recesses, and delivers the cold air almost directly on to the fire place (3) The hall itself would certainly be an awkward shaped space and in serving the hall door it wd be rendered uncomfortable. (4) The landing by of stairs on corridor under skylight comes too close into one corner, and the entrance to the W.C is very uncomfortably exposed too openly exposed to the corridor. (5) The W.C apparatus working over the hall itself would certainly be felt as a nuisance, and no “deafening” would sufficiently deaden the sound. (6) The necessity for another soil pipe to W.C and an increased length of drain, extra ventilation shaft manhole &c would be, as I explained to you when you were here, ruinous to good sanitary arrangement. Having let the matter rest for a few days, I turned-to once more to see if it would not be possible yet to arrive at some more or less satisfactory arrangement of this part of the house, and to which we could both agree. I now send you a plan which certainly gives more hall space than the 17th of Decr plan, and to in which I have been able to attach a bow window in combination with the porch. The porch itself is enlarged so as, in some small way, to make up for the want of an entrance hall, and I have arranged that the entrance door can be served without first coming into the hall. The arrangement on the landing is satisfactory, in so far as it meets those requirements, in which my experience of the working out of house plans enables me to be sure of what the result will be. I believe the plans will sufficiently further explain themselves. Yrs very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 76-7

342

1864–1887

299 • To Percy Wyndham, 28 December 1886 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Decr 28. 1886. To Hon’ Percy Wyndham Clouds House East Knoyle Dear Mr Wyndham On the other side I send receipt for cheque &c. I am exceedingly glad that the drawing-room pleases you. I looked that it should do so, as it is planned for a long south room, having the fireplace towards one end, and heating coils at the other, so that when in use for one or two persons only there would be a pleasant place by the fire, not exactly in the middle of the room, and yet the other end of room would not be cold. For a drawing-room, when filled, it would also be good: as the philosophers – male & female – may generalise at one end, and the rat-catchers (general name for the sporting fraternity) enter into particulars of prowess at the other, and both may be out of ear-shot. Will you get Mallett to makes notes of his observation of the effects of the very soft water, as it might be useful in future. I need hardly say that all evidence shd be sifted! Please tell Mrs Wyndham that there is no necessity for her to write. I was merely desirous of knowing if the plans reached their destination. Yours faithfully | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 74-6

300 • To Frank Faulkner, 24 January 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Jan 24. 1887 To Frank Faulkner Esqre Croswell’s Brewery Oldbury My dear Frank Faulkner1 Your letter of the 21st inst was addressed to E: Webb instead of Philip, and went to No 6 in these buildings, where there seems to be established another person with the surname of Webb, but whether he is an iniquitous archt or unjust lawyer, I cannot say; however, he forwarded the letter to me this morning. You may be assured I should be very pleased to be in any way of assistance to you, but, as to professionally, I had better first send you a note or two from my experience, for your guidance before entering on the proposed work of house building.

343

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

The success of investment of money in house building depends so much upon circumstances. As a rule, the better the house, the poorer the investment. If a house is carefully built, with some attention to the scientific parts of its construction &c, the less likely is it that, on being sold, it will fetch the consequent price. Again, as to the art part of the matter; if it be fairly good from that point of view it will be less likely to sell well, as the popular idea is for much shew at little cost, whereas the art value depends upon considerations which have no market value. Then, again, would the person who is to live in the house be disappointed if it were not of the ordinary kind? The foregoing applies to a small as well as to a large building house. If after considering these questions, you would still wish me to help in the matter I will come would go to Leicester to look into the surroundings and other matters at such time as would suit you. Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 79-80

1 Brother of Charles, Kate and Lucy Faulkner, Frank Faulkner ‘was a pioneer in modern brewing methods . . . [and] a prolific writer on brewing matters with much of his work appearing in the Brewers’ Journal’. Amber Patrick, ‘Beeston Maltings . . . ’, Brewery History, no 136, Summer 2010, p. 59. Although the proposal came to nothing, Faulkner’s family relationship to CF and KF made PSW willing to help. See also Vol. III, Letter 850, note 10.

301 • To Frank Faulkner, 10 February 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feb: 10. 1887 To Frank Faulkner Esqre Croswells Brewery, Oldbury. Dear Frank Faulkner. I went to Leicester on Tuesday (the 8th) and examined the site on which the Messrs Bates’, the Eagle Brewery stands,1 and also the additional piece of ground adjoining on which the proposed house for the brewer is to stand be placed. The proposition, thus far, seemed to me to be a good working arrangement. At first I had the assistance of Mr Bates, the younger, and afterwards of Mr Saunders in explaining the circumstances, requirements, and collateral necessities. At lunch (which I took with Mr Saunders) I arrived at the particulars of requirements from Mr Saunders’ point of view. At my suggestion, an appointment was made for me to meet Mr Bates, the elder, Mr Bishell and Mr Bland (a local builder who had done much work for the firm, including the brewery buildings) at 3 o’clock. Mr Saunders’ wish was to have 2 moderate sized sitting-rooms and one 344

1864–1887

small one, with kitchen, small washhouse &c and upstairs 2 bedrooms & a bathroom, and servant’s bedroom, with a water closet for the house, and another in the a small back yard for the servant, a general cellar underground, and a coal cellar. This proposal seemed reasonable enough to me, but I should have preferred that there should have been one considerable sized sitting room and a small alternative sitting room instead of the 3 sitting rooms. On meeting Mr Bates senior and the rest of the firm & the builder I carefully went into particulars of contrivance, cost, materials, drainage, water supply, &c, and I found that Mr Bates was strongly averse to so large a house as that above described. He was somewhat (though good humouredly) sarcastic on the amount of accommodation specified by Mr Saunders. I mediated as well as I could, and promised, if I undertook the work, to reduce in every way possible. I obtained useful information from the builder, but found that his ideas of a substantial though exceedingly plain & simple house, were rather different to mine, but not so much so but that a medium might have been struck. Mr Bates insisted that the house should, practically, be of the rental of £25 a year, and he considered Mr Saunders’ proposition wd turn out to be one at £50 and, if so, it would be an unwise proceeding on the part of the firm merely for a “brewers” house. I did not combat this opinion, and said I could say nothing myself on this point but would lay the matter before you exactly as the case stood and wh’ I have here done. On my return journey I rather thought of suggesting that it would be better that Messrs Bates should employ the architect at work on the brewery, for the sake of economy, but on further consideration yesterday, I thought I would offer to make a plan of what I considered would be a satisfactory arrangement for a small house for the purpose in question, and submit it for your and Messrs Bates’ approval – but I received this morning the inclosed letter from the firm, which practically puts the matter at rest as far as I am concerned, however, I must beg you to be assured that if I can aid you in any way farther, I shall have much pleasure in doing so. Yours very truly | Ph W. Copy inclosed Eagle Brewery. Northampton Sqre & Lower Charnwood Street. | Leicester. Feb: 8. 1887 Dear Sir. On looking at Mr Faulkner’s conditions we saw a reason for seeing our solicitor. We have done so and find the house cannot go up on those lines. Please, therefore, do not go into the matter at present. We fear it will have to drop, or if it is done we shall ourselves have to do it. It would have been best had we seen our solicitor at first. Yours truly (signed) | Bates Son & Bishell P. Webb Esqre LB-2, pp. 80-3 345

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 The Eagle Brewery in Leicester was founded in the 1820s in Northampton Square, and in the 1870s took on additional premises in Charnwood Street, where there was also room for expansion. The business later became known as the Leicester Brewing and Malting Co.

302 • To Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, 23 February 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Feb: 23 1887 To Sir Lowthian Bell Bart’1 Rounton Grange Northallerton My dear Bell I am really sorry to have been obliged to keep you so long without the drawings of the memorial but it was unavoidable.2 The design was somewhat tiresome to work out in a clear way for the mason, and I found it necessary to do some of the work twice over. I now send the drawings which I hope you will like. In dealing with the mason (the same one, I suppose, who did the other family memorials?) I think you should send the drawings to him and that he should understand he was to estimate for doing and fixing the work, and the whole in exact accordance with the drawings and the directions thereon written, and that you should urge that the stone used should be carefully selected. You will see that I have ordered your shield to be cut3 as, it would be difficult at some future time to cut it without moving the stone and, indeed, the 2 shields should go together. It wd be easy enough to cut any further inscriptions without moving the stone. Believe me | Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 83-4

1 See above, Letter 73, note 5. 2 Lowthian Bell’s wife, Margaret Pattinson, had died in 1886. 3 He means the space on the memorial where Bell’s own name would eventually be added.

303 • To Charles Faulkner, 8 March 1887 Postmark LONDON W.C. MR 8 87 Address Charles Faulkner | University College | Oxford. 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tues: 8th Mar: ’87 My dear Charley I saw Kate last night and found her better, certainly; so that I hope, as soon as the wind changes and milder weather comes, she will get round again. She showed 346

1864–1887

me your last letter which interested me much (I hope if this freedom is not to your mind, you will say so?). It is, perhaps, a good thing you cannot come up this week as I feel sure that the less excitement she has, the better chance there is for her, and you know that the “strong meat” conversation which goes on between us when we meet, and which interests her more than ordinary talk, also excites her. I have taken round to her photographs and drawings to pass away the time which hangs rather heavily on her hands. I think Mrs Lewis is a great help, at present, and I trust it will last, as seems likely. The next book which I shall say I want – before you – will be, say, Beate Virginæ Maria c. 1320, illuminated & pictured on all its leaves, bound by Grolier1 &c &c, price £860 as, perhaps, that price might stop you from lending it to me. Now I have Cæsar’s Commentaries from you2 (wh’ I mean to pay for on purpose to vex you) and a host of other books which my present dynamite studies do not even allow me to look at for more than 5 min: at a time. I cannot say that my intellect is allowed to rust for, last night at our Council meeting3 there was more cantankerous criticism than enough and more angry answer than would serve for a board meeting of a Vestry. Nevertheless I thank you kindly for the “Omnis Gallia” book. Your affectionate | Ph: Webb. We shall probably see you on Friday week? WMG J551

1 Jean Grolier de Servières, (1489-90-1565) was French Treasurer-General and an eminent bibliophile. His collection favoured elaborately decorated book-bindings, now much valued. 2 Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. Amongst the several editions which CF could have acquired for PSW is that edited by Dr Giles in 2 vols (London: Cornish & Sons, 1886). 3 Council of the Socialist League, of which PSW, as Treasurer, was an elected member.

304 • To William Morris, 20 March 1887 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sun: 20th Mar: ’87 My dear Fellow I have John Glasse’s £5,1 and have sent memm to Debney.2 I thought we were fairly well delivered by the Commune and as well as could be expected afterwards. I saw you were dog tired and hoarse as a raven – added to which there was not much more to be said on the theme without careful thought as to how to ring a change.3 I believe at the first commemoration of your death I should be obliged to say, ‘we will drink to his memory, and in silence’. 347

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Things are being brewed, I fancy, for a one-sided conference, which would be a misfortune if so ruled, never mind, patience! Yours, | Ph. Webb. I think Charley may come up on Mon: or Tues: Kate is certainly better, but is very slow on the way, a S.W wind would be a help to her. This persistent wind is whiggish. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 15

1 The Christian Socialist, John Glasse (1848–1918) was an Edinburgh clergyman, and a member of the Democratic Foundation. PSW records here Glasse’s membership fee for the Socialist League, which WM had encouraged him to join when he spoke on 14 March at the Edinburgh Branch of the Scottish Land and Labour League. A note in his diary records that ‘Glasse proclaimed himself a socialist and active . . . and said he was going to join the League’. CLWM, II, p. 628 note 2. 2 Lawrence Debney worked for Morris & Co., and was an active Socialist League member. 3 On 17 March at the South Place Institute, Finsbury, WM spoke at the annual commemoration of the Paris Commune, organised by London socialist organisations. Like PSW, WM felt that ‘one has by this time said all one has to say on the subject’. WM to JEM, 17 March 1887, CLWM, II. He reflected ruefully in his diary that ‘I spoke last, and to my great vexation and shame, very badly . . . I tried to be literary and original, and so paid for my egotism.’ CLWM, II, p. 628 note 3.

305 • To Henry Barker, 26 March 1887 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn W: C: Sat Mar: 26 ’87 Dear Barker1 I have recd fm you the Commonweal bills but not the weekly ways & means sheet: as I cannot enter anything in my book without this I should be glad if you could manage to make it out. I believe Charles is still in London;2 could you not get him for half an hour just to aid in putting last Thursday’s business into the usual form? Yours Ph. Webb Amsterdam S.L. 3180/1

1 Henry Alfred Barker (1858–1940), appointed General Secretary of the Socialist League on 29 May 1887. 2 Probably Frederick Charles. See Vol. II, Letter 337.

348

1864–1887

306 • To Mitchell Brothers, 30 April 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] April 30 1887. To Messrs Mitchell Bros Builders Shalford Guildford Dear Sirs. (Mr Ramsden’s Hse) Mr Ramsden has decided to accept your tender for building the his house, and that the works should go on at once. I will prepare the specification and agreement for signature with the drawings. This work will take me some little time, but you can, of course, at once proceed in making preparation for the works by ordering bricks &c. Mr Ramsden seemed to think there would be some spare room in the Cottage adjoining the site which might possibly be of use to you, and if you will call on me the next time you are in London I would speak to you about this and other things. You will understand that I am taking it for granted that you will do your very best in all ways to make the building satisfactory to Mr Ramsden and a credit to me & yourselves. Yours truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 90-1

307 • To John Hardy, 3 May 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] May 3 1887. To Mr John Hardy – Clerk of Works1 Mr Gilbertson’s. Market Place Guisboro: Yorks’. Dear Sir. The building of a House in Surrey of wh’ I spoke to you about when you were last here is now to go on and as my client (Mr Ramsden) has decided to have a resident clerk of the works on the ground I now write to ask you if you are disengaged and able & willing to undertake the work under my direction? The house is somewhere abt the size of Major Godman’s. The builder is a satisfactory person who has done work for me before, and he undertakinges all the trades; and I believe you would only have to help him properly to carry out his work, and not be troubled in any way with obstruction.

349

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

Will you be so good as to let me know if you could come within a week, and what salary you ask? There is a comfortable Farm House on the estate (within 10 minutes walk of site) where I believe you could come to terms with the tenant, with Mr Ramsden’s consent, for use of bed-room, small private room for your papers, &c and general room with tenant for your meals &c. As the year is already far much advanced I am anxious to get things forward at once, and I shall be glad of an answer directly. Yours truly | Ph: W: P.S. I believe you are able to use the surveyor’s level? LB-2, pp. 91-2

1 PSW held John Hardy in the highest professional regard. See above, Letter 135, note 1, and also below, Letter 311.

308 • To Henry Barker, 4 June 1887 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn Sat: June 4 ’87 Dear Barker Your plan for cash acct seems promising and I shall be glad to fall in with it if nothing better turns up. I think, at all events, we can try it till Faulkner comes to London in 2 or 3 weeks’ time. Cannot you make out a black board acct for Monday to be taken as only moderately accurate? Perhaps Turner1 will be able before next Thursday to have another wrestle with the transfer of items from you to me and, as he will not now have to learn the office ledger, he can give more time to the unsolved problems. Yours truly | Ph Webb. Amsterdam S.L. 3180/2

1 William Turner was appointed Financial Secretary of the Socialist League on 29 May 1887, providing administrative support to PSW in his role as Treasurer.

309 • To Editor, Stratford-on-Avon Herald, 28 July 1887 Second draft, on behalf of SPAB1 To the Editor of the Stratford on Avon Herald. Sir. The letter published in your paper of July 8 [1887] calls aloud for a protest from the Society for the Protection of Ancient buildings. 350

1864–1887

The letter in question, signed by G.E. Bell, is one of those the point of which should be met with persistent opposition from all English people, and more particularly from those in the neighbourhood of Henley in Arden where a wayside-cross is still actually standing in, as far as the several members of the cross are concerned, a singularly complete condition.2 We have photographs by us giving this fact clearly, and by the use of a lens it is also as clear that to “restore” it would be to lose at once, for this and coming generations, the inestimable value of this relic of mediæval England which has escaped that doom up to the present time. It is probable that Mr Bell is both sincere and earnest in his proposal, but how mistaken only those who have watched for the last 30 or 40 years the ceaseless destruction by “restoration” are able to appreciate. It is certain that our descendants will be more intelligent in such a matter than we are, but unless what intelligence we possess is whipped into activity there will be nothing ancient left standing for our children to take care of. Now, many of us know, only too well what calling in the “eminent architect” means. It will be, that he comes to the place, shakes his busy head over the iniquities of ruthless time, and decides to send an assistant to measure the antiquity for its new suit of clothes, after which, certain drawings will go through the mill of his many handed office; books of antiquities will be searched for “examples”; many and wide differences of opinion will go the round of vivacious pupils, as to whether such and such a detail from some other ancient building is of the exact date of the miserable patient to be operated upon. At last things are settled so that a sparkling drawing is made which carries by acclamation the vote of ignorant people: the works are set about, and a venerable fragment is made a jest of till time also shall soften the severity of just opinion and one more piece of concrete dishonesty. Now Sir, this Henley in Arden way-side-cross can only be saved for an indefinite time by one way of treatment, and this is to prop, stay, band, tie and secure in every honest possible way so that no part of the work shall fall or be thrown down by the wind. Then time will gradually crumble it to dust, and it will never be an object of scorn and ridicule as in a “restored” state it certainly would be. Its still remaining years of existence would be of some use to students and other sincere people, and it might be said for years to come that one town cross remained which had power in it to compel respect if it did not afford personal glorification.3 [pencil] July 28. ’87 SPAB, Roadside Cross, Henley-in-Arden file

1 A first draft also exists in PSW’s hand, as well as a file copy as sent on 30 July, signed by HTT. It was published in the Stratford-on-Avon Herald on 5 August 1887. 2 The likely condition of the cross in 1887 is captured in a handbook published in 1863, which also included an engraving. ‘In the centre of the town, which is called the Market-place, stands one of

351

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I the few Crosses remaining in this country, which is traditionally related to have been preserved from destruction in the seventeenth century by a shed which was built over it. This Cross is now much injured by time. The base, shaft, and capital are composed of three separate stones; the base being mortised into the shaft and capital. At the beginning of the present century there were niches on the four faces of the capital, containing the Rood, the Trinity, St. Peter with his key, and another subject defaced, all of which have now mouldered away, not a trace of the sculptured figures named being visible.’ John Hannett, The Forest of Arden, its Towns, Villages, and Hamlets (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1863), pp. 44–5. 3 In fact, no restoration occurred. Only the base of three steps and a small portion of the shaft now remains.

310 • To H. S. H. Jones, 1 September 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Sep 1. 1887. To H.S.H. Jones Esqre1 Bragbury by Stevenage. Dear Sir. (Datchworth Ch’) In answer to your letter of yesterday’s date. It seems to me that nothing need (since the receipt of this letter) stand in the way of my surveying your church, with regard to some apparent defects in the structure, supposed to be active, and requiring immediate attention. My time is wholly engaged till Monday next, the 5th instant, on which day I could come to Knebworth station by the 1.25 train from Kings Cross, getting to Knebworth at 2.17, I believe. As I have heard separately your Co-Churchwarden’s acct of the building, separately I should prefer to hear yours also alone before meeting the Rector2 & Mr Lawrance,3 and this you could probably give me on your way to the Church? I told Mr Lawrance last Monday that he should at once put some shores against the building in the best way he could, and I think it would be well if you directed him to provide ladders of such length in the church for as would allow me to examine the cracks when I am there on Monday. I am sorry to be unable to accept your & Mrs Jones’ kind invitation to lunch or to stay to dinner as I must return by the 5.54 train from Knebworth station. Yours very truly | Ph.W. r P.S. Of course I should wish to see both M Wardale & Mr Lawrance at some time during my visit. LB-2, pp. 96-7

352

1864–1887 1 Jones was one of the churchwardens of All Saints, Datchworth, Hertfordshire. PSW undertook some repairs and remedial work (1888–90). 2 The Reverend John Wardale, rector. 3 William Lawrance, the local builder who undertook the work under PSW’s instructions.

311 • To Mr Edwards, 3 September 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Sepr 3. 1887. To Mr Edwards. Foreman of Works Lapscombe. (Cranleigh) by Guildford Dear Mr Edwards. For some little time I have been aware of a little difference between you and Mr Hardy, my clerk of the works, and yesterday I endeavoured to get at the bottom of the difficulty for, as you will readily understand, any serious increase of misunderstanding between you and Mr Hardy would oblige me to act decisively, and probably injuriously to one of the parties to the difference. In questioning Mr Hardy and Mr Mitchell, I think I found out enough to guide my judgment in deciding what should be done if a better feeling did not arise at once. Of course I know there is something to be said on both sides, and shall allow for that, but I would wish to impress upon you in a friendly way that I have not put a clerk of the works at Lapscombe who is a hasty inexperienced man, but one I have known for years, and who has always done his duty fairly and honestly under the circumstances, and I have a respect for his judgment and experience. Now, I must ask you, for your own good, for the good of the works, and out of respect to me as Architect having heavy responsibility, to carefully consider whether you cannot manage to work with Mr Hardy in such a way as to modify, if not altogether do away with hastiness and ill feeling? Please to remember that it is a rule with me as well as a pleasure to me to work to the utmost of my ability in a perfectly friendly way with all classes of working men with whom I have dealings. Yours truly | Ph: W: r P.S. I have also written to M Hardy on the same subject. LB-2, pp. 97-8

312 • To John Hardy, 3 September 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Sepr 3. 1887 353

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

To Mr John Hardy – C of Works Shamley Green Guildford Dear Mr Hardy (Lapscombe works) I had a talk with Mr Mitchell yesterday, after leaving the works, as to the uncomfortable relations between Mr Edwards as foreman & yourself as Clerk of the works,1 and I explained to him what I thought was the chief cause of the difference namely, that Edwards was a young and rather inexperienced man & that he did not sufficiently submit to your greater experience and the necessity there was for you, as clerk of the works and my assistant to decide upon how things should be done. Mr Mitchell seemed to think that the chief cause of Edwards’ irritation was that you sometimes gave direct orders to the workmen without doing so through Edwards. Of course you will know, that with my limited knowledge of how things go on between you, that it would be almost impossible for me to be quite fair to both parties if I hastily decided upon sharp measures. I particularly wish to avoid this, and as I have written a clear letter to Edwards, though in a very friendly spirit, I am in hopes that he will now more easily defer to your wider experience and greater age. If you can help me to narrow the causes of difference in any possible way I shall be obliged. If I had taken severe measures, you will readily understand that Messrs Mitchell would then be put out, which in the long run would act injuriously to the works they have in hand for Mr Ramsden. Yours truly | Ph. W. LB-2, pp. 98-9

1 Mitchell ran the local firm to which PSW had awarded the Lapscombe/Willinghurst building contract at Shamley Green (see above, Letter 306), and for which Edwards worked as foreman.

313 • To Henry Barker, 19 September 1887 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn Mon: Sep 19. ’87 Dear Barker I have caught a sharp chill with sore throat and can do nothing more than just poke at my work here a bit. As I shall not be at Committee tonight1 will you be so good as to book up the 6 pences &c of the weekly donations for me – I shall have here the C. J. F[aulkner]. Oxford Br[anch]: E. B. B.2 P. W. and “Langley” so that you can advertise them & what you get, in the ’Weal. Lane3 or Morris would take round the hat in an impressive way. 354

1864–1887

I hope to be well enough for the Ways & Means Yrs Ph: Webb. Amsterdam S.L. 3180/4

1 Meeting of the Council of the Socialist League. 2 Ernest Belfort Bax (1854–1926) was a close associate of WM, having help found the Socialist League after their departure from the Social Democratic Federation at the end of 1884. They collaborated on some articles for The Commonweal, and were its co-editors for a time. 3 Joseph Lane (1851–1920), a founder-member of the Labour Emancipation League, later affiliated with the Social Democratic Federation. His working-class origins gave him a special credibility when, like Bax, he too left the Federation to found the Socialist League with WM.

314 • To Henry Barker, 9 October 1887 1 R B Gray’s Inn Sun: Oct 9. ’87 Dear Barker I looked for Commonweals’ and, lo, none! I looked for salve to my depressed mind from reading the “dramatic sketch”1 and my spirit has sunk lower from want of cheering aliment. No reproach intended – nothing covert – all above board. My throat is rather dogged but I hope to be well enough to meet comrades on Monday. Yrs Ph Webb. Faulkner sent me a Commh but I found no advertt of the 7/6 subscrns!! no reproach, still For Council meeting October 10 ’87 Philip Webb. To ask a question as to what course the Socialist League will pursue with regard to the “unemployed”, during the coming winter. Amsterdam S.L. 3181/2

1 He may mean the introductory ‘Notes’ of current matters, over WM’s initials, or the short piece on ‘Free Speech in America’ in which WM deplored the capital sentences passed in Chicago on seven men who had demonstrated against a police attack on striking workers. Both items appeared in The Commonweal on 8 October.

315 • To Sir William Bowman, 10 October 1887 Draft/copy [1, Raymond Buildings . . .] Octr 10. 1887. 355

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

To Sir William Bowman Bart’ Joldwynds, by Dorking My dear Bowman I have been unwell for some 3 weeks and have done comparatively little work, but I am now able to send you some tracings of what I would propose to do to stay the spreading of the billiard-room roof.1 In a letter of yours to me of Aug 28, you suggest to run a tie rod across the roof midway of the room. The plan had occurred to me and returned again and again as the simplest resource, but I have been obliged to put the idea on one side as out of the question. It would be certain, when using the billiard table that the cues would be constantly knocked against coming in contact with the rod, which would be exceeding annoying to the players and provocative of bad language: injurious to cues and morals at the same time. From the tracings you will, I think, readily understand my plan, which is the simplest and I can think of, having in view to disturb the room as little as possible. The east wall at the plate level is now slightly bowed outwards as shewn and the applying the 2 steel joists running the whole length of room, secured at each both ends with tie rods across the room against the 2 end walls and also bolted through the plates at distances apart midway, will secure against further expansion. The steel joists allow of less size for the amount of strength than iron and they would, I believe, secure the roof from spreading any more, and yet allow of keep free the clear height space over the billiard table. Will you kindly let me know what you think of the scheme? The works at 25 Young Street are now drawing to a close,2 and both Sanders and Moncrieff3 would be glad of another instalment of payment on acct. I therefore certify for £500: (£400 for Sanders and £100 for Moncrieff, which the former will pay to the latter). Sanders has had £1200 and Moncrieff £150. Sanders would be glad of the cheque – if convenient to you – by Thursday morning. Yours very truly | Ph: W: LB-2, pp. 99-101

1 PSW had built Joldwynds for Sir William Bowman in 1870–5 (see above, Letter 73, note 4). These subsequent works, including a library extension, were carried out in 1888–93. See Kirk, p. 298. 2 Bowman paid for alterations, enlargement and redecoration of Felday House, 25 Young Street, Kensington (1887–8), the house of his younger son, Frederick Bowman and his wife. 3 The building work for Felday House was undertaken by Francis Sanders of Dorset Square, Marylebone.

356

1864–1887

316 • To George Price Boyce, 11 October 1887 Annotated ‘recd at Llantwitt [sic] Major’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tuesday. 11th Oct: ’87 My dear Boyce I thank you for your good letter, though I am not happy with the bad news you give of the treatment of the church of Llantwitt [sic] Major. It all but drives one to despair. Perhaps you could not have done better than make for the place so as to better finish your fine drawing of the Ch’, though I am afraid it may be very cold for you, as the paper of this morning said there was snow in Shropshire. Perhaps the neighbourhood of the sea may keep you free of that trial. Last Saturday fortnight I went to Welwyn with the hope of being cured by Monday to return and go on with my work, but getting worse I did not get away till the next Monday. I hate being ill in another’s house, but I was hardly my own master and the doctor & the sister nursed me as if I were a Saint, which is odd, considering that I belong to a profession which points ancient churches with black mortar! However, I am better now, though feeble – able, happily, still to laugh at a joke, even a bad one of my own. I’ve had a bad throat that is all. If socialists have throats they shd be of cast iron. I go on Thursday with Wardle to examine Staple Inn, for which building we are in a state of doubt & anxiety.1 I don’t think any fellows understand what the society means. Let me hope that you have a comfortable lodging, and that both you and Madame will enjoy the good Welsh air and wild sea. After you have been seated for half an hour at your work, take a turn round the ch’ yard to quicken your blood, and . . . and . . . don’t be obstinate. Mrs Boyce will dish you up a dinner after your work which will make a new man of you. I wd like to be with you and make merry over a bottle – even of Gilbey’s reflection of Bordeaux. The Welwyn doctor looked in here today, and I gave him your & Madame’s greeting. He said he expected you both to go to New Place on your return. Confound that nuisance Wallis; what with his impudence and stupidity, he will do more mischief than enough.2 With kind remembrance and thanks to both of you I remain as before, till I hear from you again, | Sincerely | Ph: Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 245-6

357

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 On 13 November 1886 the SPAB had presented a formal petition to ‘the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the City of London, in Common Council assembled’, appealing against the forthcoming sale by auction of Staple Inn’, and asking that the whole site ‘be acquired by the Corporation to be held by them in trust as memorials of the history of the City of London, and as an open space and garden’. 2 See above, Letter 290.

317 • To George Washington Jack, 24 October 1887 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Monday. 24th Oct: ’87 My dear Jack Of course I have made a hundred & one jokes over your faithfulness. You say that writing in holiday time is a luxury, & so it seems to be, & only to be partaken of very sparingly! Never mind, you can make up for your studied silence by telling me long travellers’ stories of the wonders you have seen on your way, that is, on your return, for I cannot expect you to do more than you have done in the way of letter writing. I see that New Abbey, in my list, is also called “Sweetheart”! perhaps because of the use to which the ruins are now put by lovers.1 I see that you are not far from the estuary of the Nith, and have much notable ground (to say nothing of water & perhaps whiskey) to soak your mind with. Please don’t forget to make yourself acquainted with the proper pronunciation of the names of places, not forgetting Annan, and all other names connected with the immortal Nanty Ewart.2 If you spot any characteristic pieces of work in photographs (odd and unfashionable beauties) please bring them back say, to the amount of 5/- or so. I shall want something by which to correct your tremendous enthusiasm for N.B.3 I take it for granted you will somehow manage to get across & see what Hackston [sic] is about4 – remember me to him [word deleted and illegible] with all proper civility due to himself, & as the pupil of the invaluable madman of Coniston. News is rough here – the town & people’s heads being under the rule of policemen’s batons.5 I see in this morning’s paper they have tumbled the erratic Wilfrid Blunt off a platform in Ireland.6 They are putting more power into their elbows, and revolutionists must look out for their knowledge boxes. I am getting on single handed, pretty fairly. Have to go to Datchworth Church this afternoon and, I hope to be able to get to Lapscombe on Friday, but I’ll not name any more of these horrid things. I am not yet as strong as I shd like to be, but the doctor does not seem to be anxious about me so I look forward to coming out strongly in a little time. I send you by book post Morris’s amusing “Interlude” which will make you laugh and, perhaps, forget things you wd rather not remember.7 Yours very truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD 358

1864–1887 1 About eight miles south of Dumfries, the Cistercian monastery which came to be known as Sweetheart Abbey was founded in 1273 by Dervoguilla of Galloway as a memorial to her husband, John Balliol. 2 Antony (Nanty) Ewart is master of the brig, ‘Jumping Jenny’, in Scott’s ‘Waverley’ novel, Redgauntlet (1824). 3 North Britain. 4 The Scottish watercolourist William Haxton (1855–1921) started life as an architect. JR encouraged his painting, as well as commissioning drawings of French cathedral towns, suggesting also that he change his surname to Hackstoun. His fiery temperament was not best suited to JR’s somewhat imperious demands. He spent some years in St Andrews, landscape painting. 5 The autumn of 1887 saw increasing civil unrest, with high unemployment and ongoing frictions over the unresolved issue of Irish home rule. Processions of the unemployed were routinely stopped by the police. PSW was writing before the crisis of ‘Bloody Sunday’, on 13 November, when ‘Trafalgar Square was the scene of the most ruthless display of establishment power that London has ever seen’. MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 567. A well-planned operation, involving large numbers of police, cavalry and foot soldiers broke up a procession of the unemployed, supported by Socialists, Radicals and Anarchists. Many were injured. 6 The poet and maverick aristocrat, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922), JM’s lover and PSW’s future landlord, was arrested on 23 October at Woodford in Ireland for inciting tenants to resist arrest for the non-payment of rent. He subsequently served a prison sentence of two months with hard labour. 7 The Tables Turned: or Nupkins Awakened, A Socialist Interlude. WM’s dramatic satire was performed in the hall of the Socialist League headquarters in Farringdon Road on 15 November 1887, as a fundraising event for The Commonweal, WM himself taking the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

318 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 6 December 1887 Dictated to GWJ 1 Raymond Buildings | Grays Inn WC Decr 6th 1887 Dear Murray Sorry that the exigencies of sacred sickness obliged my nurse to drive you from my door this morning. She was just strapping me down to my board to perambulate the streets, when you called, so there was nothing else to be done.1 Apart from joking I should like to have had a few words with you though the doctors make it a very hard and stiff rule that I should keep away visitors. The doctors say visitors introduce all sorts of maggots into my brain, religious, revolutionary, artistic, & what not that is dangerous to the foundations of society. When you next call, purify yourself of anything more dangerous to this community than that of money getting honestly or dishonestly, as the case may be. The best time to call will be perhaps between one & two, for a few minutes Yours sincerely | Philip Webb | by Geo: Jack Fitzwilliam 48

1 PSW described his illness as ‘rheumatism of the knees’ (PSW to HTT, 17 November 1887, SPAB archive). He was seriously incapacitated for months, and even at the beginning of February 1888 he was still required to keep indoors.

359

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I

319 • To Giacomo Boni, 21 December 1887 Pencil; dictated to GWJ Decr 21st 1887 My dear Giacomo Boni By the hand of my friend & colleague I send you a few words in answer to your delightful letter of Dec 14th. It was my greatest surprise during the whole time of my sickness, as I had almost forgotten everything else in the world, than a bed and a sick fool in it. However I am better now1 and able to think of your rhapsodic idea of the lagoon & Torcello. It was very good of you to chime in with my present sentiment which is almost childish.2 Your notes on what you and others have done towards saving for a more reasonable generation some small fragments of beautiful things – done also by a less foolish generation than ours – demands my respect and hearty congratulations. Go on as long as there is any breath in your body and earn honest thanks. After I left Venice with Sig Murray, we went eastward, and I staid for a day and a half in Vicenza – and after having been made melancholy by the skilful but dismal representatives of the skill of the great Palladio3 I turned to the beautiful bits of remains of that Mediæval work of which you speak with admiration.4 Your photograph of the Casa Pigafetta5 interests me greatly though of course the Renaissance had already begun to tell disastrously on the imaginative work of the middle ages. If you can get your book of 20 plates together of these Vicenza remains I, and some of my friends shall be glad of some copies – at 20 f each & at all events for your present purpose of collecting subscriptions to enable you to publish you may put down the following names as subscribers *** for which money you will hold me responsible, and I will send you the money when you write for it.6 The pamphlet on ca’ D’Ora interests me exceedingly and your beautiful drawing of the original cornice and parapet finish most satisfactory. I hope shortly to become a human being again and able to do something for myself once more – when I will write to you, and tell of things unmentioned in this letter. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb | by George Jack *** William Morris Charles Faulkner George Boyce George Wardle Philip Webb

5 copies 3 " 1 " 2 " 5 " ---------16 "

Courtauld 17a-f. 360

1864–1887 1 ‘Better’ than he had been, perhaps, but he was still having to dictate his letters, either because he was bed-bound or otherwise incapacitated. 2 GBO had heard that PSW was ill. ‘You will recover soon, that is my heartiest wish, and take a long rest, here, as you deserve after such a laborious life, and we will build a little sandolo [a flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat], with a pointed sail, of a dark yellow colour, and with its upper point darker, like the wings of a swallow – and we will go to Torcello and touch with our fingers the basket-work of the XI century capitals, and see how the little cristals [sic] of the Greek marble glitter.’ GBO to PSW, 14 December 1887, Courtauld 16a. 3 The work of architect Andrea Palladio (1508–80), infused by the influence of Greek and Roman models, can be found throughout the Venetian Republic. He spent much of his life in Vicenza, where there are many Palladian buildings. 4 ‘[D]uring last autumn I spent twelve days at Vicenza, and studied its mediaeval antiquities; so beautiful, and yet so unknown, and neglected.’ 16b. 5 The Casa Pigafetta in Vicenza, dating from 1440, was the birthplace and home of the navigator Antonio Pigafetta (c.1492–c.1531) companion of Magellan during his circumnavigation expedition of the world (1519–22). 6 ‘[T]o preserve some record of these precious remains I have photographed the most characteristic examples, of which I propose to print a certain number of copies on Bromide paper. . . . These prints I desire to publish by private subscription at the price of 20 francs for the collection of 20 sheets.’ 16c.

320 • To Jenny Morris, 29 December 1887 Pencil 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thursday. 29. Dec: ’87 My dear Jenny It was very good (of course) of you to send so quickly the photographs of the great man – on the whole he comes out pretty well. Unfortunately not one of them gives the best known side of his character, namely, that of “volcanic” rage. The serious side-face portrait gives the tragic of [sic] an ill spent life, and says to me as much as, Well – ‘there is a devil after all then’!!1 Excuse freedom of thought & speech writing. And so the mother is keeping me company in the dismal shades of sickness. My love to her and best wishes that she may soon touch the firmer ground of ordinary well being – as I am doing. Good will to May also. For yourself, I’d like to have a talk with you, to shew you how egoistic a sick man (either in England or Turkey) can be. Charley & Kate are to touch their lips when (in time to come) I pass the bounds of honest breeding in the line of chattering. I’m apt – now that I’m out of recognised delirium – to talk of things far too volubly – Things wh’ ordinary folk wood [sic] say were barely on the sane side of life! My love to you my dear. | Yrs sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, ff. 63-4 361

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME I 1 This set of pictures may include the ‘side-face portrait’ from the late 1880s, taken by Elliott and Fry and illustrated in MacCarthy, WMLT, black-and-white plate 85. ‘I send herewith a photo: the artist has done his best in it I do believe. But what would you have?’ WM to John Bruce Glasier, 21 December 1887, CLWM, II.

362

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB

Webb to Augustus Fox Pitt-Rivers, 15 December 1882 (Letter 198)

[Private collection]

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB Edited by John Aplin Volume II 1888–1898

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Editorial material and selection © 2016 John Aplin; individual owners retain copyright in their own material All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Webb, Philip, 1831–1915, author. [Correspondence. Selections] The letters of Philip Webb. volumes cm Contents: volume 1. Letters 1864–87 — volume 2. Letters 1888–98 — volume 3. Letters 1899–1902 — volume 4. Letters 1903–14. ISBN 978-1-84893-498-6 (Set) — ISBN 978-1-315-63964-2 (Set) — ISBN 978-1-138-76144-5 (vol. 1) — ISBN 978-1-138-76145-2 (vol. 2) — ISBN 978-1-315-64257-4 (vol. 2) — ISBN 978-1-138-76146-9 (vol. 3) — ISBN 978-1-315-64256-7 (vol. 3) — ISBN 978-1-138-76147-6 (vol. 4) — ISBN 978-1-315-64255-0 (vol. 4) 1. Webb, Philip, 1831–1915—Correspondence. 2. Architects—Great Britain—Correspondence. I. Aplin, John, editor. II. Title. NA997.W4A3 2016 720.92—dc23 2015035179 ISBN: 978-1-8489-3498-6 (Set) eISBN: 978-1-315-63964-2 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-1387-6145-2 (Volume II) eISBN: 978-1-315-64257-4 (Volume II) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

VOLUME II 1888–1898 Introduction

vii

Letters 1888–1898

1

v

INTRODUCTION

Something close to a complete breakdown, called by W.R. Lethaby ‘a severe illness’,1 had resulted in Webb’s decision to spend most of the winter of 1884–5 in Italy. He was away for a full five months, leaving England on 9 November 1884 and not starting on the return journey until the middle of April 1885. This represented the first real interruption in his work schedule since he had taken on his chambers in Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, twenty years before. He had long wanted to see Italy, reluctantly turning down previous invitations to stay with Charles Fairfax Murray in Florence, but it had always proved impossible to organise his schedule in order to take a sufficiently long interruption to make the trip worthwhile. The fact that he was finally able to do so was clear testimony to the confidence that he invested in his capable office assistant, George Washington Jack, who had joined Webb’s practice, probably in 1882. Jack was left to oversee the ongoing projects. Even so, Webb had often to restrict his daily sightseeing both in Florence and in Rome, spending valuable hours during the mornings completing designs for the decorative details which still remained for the interior work at ‘Clouds’, his house for Percy and Madeline Wyndham. Plans and sketches were sent off regularly to Jack, with explanatory letters and copious instructions. If he was never able entirely to escape from the ties of work while he was there, the experience of Italy was nonetheless a revelatory one for Webb. Its range of buildings, from the antique to the Baroque, its landscapes, paintings (especially its frescoes), and its people, all this made Webb’s collective memories of Italy a storehouse which nourished him for the remaining 30 years of his life: ‘the food I collected there is not half consumed yet’ (Letter 403). Although he never again went abroad, his imagination would recall the incidents of his Italian adventure in vivid detail, and in returning to England he brought with him the seeds of a new friendship which became one of the most valuable enrichments of these later years, and in some ways was as important to Webb as his long relationship with William Morris. The encounter had come near the end of his travels, when he was introduced to Giacomo Boni on the scaffolding erected against the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, where Boni was directing repairs. Webb would recall the incident several times in the months and years to come, and it evidently was one of those transforming moments destined to take on a special meaning. The way in which he blends the vii

INTRODUCTION

incidence of his meeting with Boni with a direct sensual exploration of the building’s external fabric, of standing on the scaffolding and ‘rubbing my fingers & almost my nose over the mouldings & carvings as if they were round soft babies that did not roar out and bellow’ (Letter 323), makes the occasion strangely potent. Born in Venice in 1859, Giacomo Boni was nearly 30 years younger than Webb. An architect by training, but one whose antiquarian interests drew him increasingly towards archaeology, he would be appointed in 1898 to oversee the archaeological excavations of the Roman Forum, but the early part of his career was spent in conservation work. It was a happy chance that he should have been working on the Doge’s Palace during Webb’s brief visit to Venice, for there was evidently an immediate rapport and agreement about the relative value of over-zealous restoration (in the way that the SPAB understood it) as contrasted with the virtues of sensitive repair. Webb recognised that he had met a kindred spirit, someone whose influence upon Italian attitudes to building preservation might prove to be profound. In 1888, three years after their meeting, Boni moved to Rome to take up an appointment as Inspector for Monuments, a role which involved making recommendations on preservation and repair, and which increasingly took him on nationwide tours of inspection and evaluation. His skills as a photographer also led to his involvement in the assembling of a national collection of images of important buildings, many of which he would send to Webb for his own personal collection and which prompted detailed discussions in their letters. Boni was a man of dynamic energy with a huge capacity for hard work, as well as a highly competent linguist – he spoke and wrote in several languages – and someone who was widely read in literature and interested in ideas, with a sense of humour attuned to Webb’s, who described his new acquaintance to Morris as ‘a rather excitable fellow working much too hard, having the necessary vanity to stimulate his natural cleverness. He is certainly not likely to let his masters be in ignorance of the mischief if they propose anything in the way of scraping to Venetian works’ (Letter 254). As he got to know him better, Webb recognised also a vein of ruthless determination and a man not to be underestimated: ‘a “monstrous clebber” chap, and – consequently – somewhat hard on stupid people’ (Letter 364). Although Boni was quick to admire the writings of Morris which Webb sent out from England, and was not unsympathetic to their broader socialist message, he may also have checked himself from questioning Webb’s more explicit enthusiasm. Certainly, it was probably as well that Webb was dead by the time that Boni was elected to the Italian Senate in 1923, when he committed himself to the fascist cause. This later political aberration aside, there was evidently much in the forceful emotional energy, intellectual competence and practical expertise of the younger man which drew Webb’s admiration. At some unconscious, wholly instinctive level, Webb may have been alerted to those same extrovert qualities which had first appealed to him in Morris. Boni and Morris shared a personality type, that of the man of action, different from Webb’s temperament in many ways, but supplying a necessary counterbalance to his own reserve and inner strength. viii

INTRODUCTION

Although the letters exchanged with Boni cover the years between 1885 and 1907, with Webb keeping those he received from the start, relatively few of his own survive before 1889, the year in which Boni began scrupulously to keep them all. The greater number date from the years 1889–96, after which their exchanges became more sporadic, probably owing to Boni’s ever-increasing work burden. Webb’s letters are amongst the longest that he ever wrote, and their composition seems to have given him unusual pleasure, supplying a rare opportunity for genuine relaxation and reflection. Distance lent some enchantment, perhaps, to what was normally regarded as a task by Webb. He wrote uninhibitedly to his foreign correspondent, typically starting on a Sunday evening and continuing until the early hours, ranging over matters of art and architecture, often by picking up on Boni’s current conservation projects or prompted by a detail from one of the photographs of buildings he had been sent. He consistently encouraged the younger man, reinforcing their shared view of the vital importance of the work he was undertaking, the letters moving serendipitously through many topics. Having alerted the SPAB to Boni’s official role and consequent importance for Italian building conservation, Webb invited him to address the annual meeting in 1889, and although illness prevented the Italian from coming then, he managed to pay a short visit to London and Kelmscott Manor later in the year, his itinerary being carefully arranged by Webb. Other friendships emerge during these years. Webb’s future executor and close associate, Emery Walker, appears for the first time, as does his second office assistant, William Weir, whilst his surviving letters to the civil servant and writer William Hale White (‘Mark Rutherford’) start now, although the men had been acquainted since the later 1860s, Webb having designed a house for Hale White following a warm introduction by John Ruskin. As in his letters to Boni, those to Hale White are discursive and wide-ranging, and Webb is unusually detailed in his views of literature and art, interests which the men had in common. To another fresh voice, Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (born in 1867), we owe the comment made by Morris about Webb, that he was ‘the best man he ever knew’. Cockerell’s authority is that of someone who personally witnessed important events, who heard things and recorded them. Whilst his hero-worship was too intense for him to be entirely dispassionate, his credibility derived from complete honesty and faithful reporting. The ‘best man’ comment, probably said by Morris to Cockerell himself, was squirrelled away as a pearl of great price, as was anything concerning those Cockerell most admired, whether Morris, Ruskin, Webb or Burne-Jones. Cockerell first visited Kelmscott House in November 1885, aged only eighteen, taking the river walk from Chiswick where he lived in Bedford Park, Norman Shaw’s fashionable Arts and Crafts development. Morris was away, and the lecture on socialism which Cockerell had gone to hear was read instead by May Morris. By 1886 Cockerell was a regular attender at the Sunday lectures and he was present at a Hammersmith Socialist League social evening organised at Kelmscott House in February of that year, recording carefully in his diary that Morris read two of his poems, that May played her guitar and sang, and that the ix

INTRODUCTION

walls of the old coach house were decorated with pictures by Burne-Jones and Walter Crane. The ‘assembled host’ were led in the singing of the Marseillaise by Morris himself. Cockerell became Morris’s personal assistant during the final years, having first been employed to catalogue his books and manuscripts. He acted on Morris’s behalf with dealers and auction houses, and was present at Kelmscott House during Morris’s last weeks in 1896, helping as a night nurse at times, and in the day assisting the failing patient to walk in the garden. For Cockerell and Webb, much of the final month was spent sitting with their dying friend, and humouring him as best they could. When asked by Morris whether the Kelmscott Press should be kept going after his death, Cockerell wisely advised against it. Instead, he steered the last items through the Press and then oversaw its final closure, his scrupulous care and sensitivity earning him the lasting gratitude of Jane Morris. And Cockerell became one of Morris’s executors, a job he carried out, as he did everything else, with integrity and rigour. After Morris died, Cockerell’s continuing friendship with Webb lasted for a further twenty years. They first got to know each other well through the SPAB committee, and in summing up the events of 1890 in his diary, Cockerell highlighted the value of this new experience. I have thus come in weekly contact with Philip Webb, a great architect for whom my admiration and respect cannot be told – and have also met William Morris constantly, as well as Emery Walker and other exceedingly nice friends, from all of whom there is much to learn. (Letter 386, note 1) Cockerell will feature still more prominently in Webb’s remaining story. But if this second volume of the letters is notable for the emergence of enduring new friendships, it is marked also by the end of his most long-lasting relationship, which had been present since near the start of his adult life and continued throughout his professional career. Morris’s death in October 1896 affected him profoundly. It was inevitable that thoughts should turn towards memorials, but the speed with which the process was set in motion is perhaps remarkable. This was driven not by Morris’s own immediate family, but by Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones, who evidently believed that the process needed to be carefully managed in order to avoid prurient speculations, and to protect Jane and the children. The first biography needed to be authoritative, in an attempt to thwart the gossipers, and when the Burne-Joneses proposed their son-in-law, the respected Classical scholar, John William Mackail, Jane probably felt relief that, if the job had to be done at all, then it was best to place it in such competent hands. Mackail himself was evidently placed under considerable pressure to take the task on, for it was probably not one which he would have chosen. He was not a natural biographer, and the knowledge that he would have exclusive access to privileged material must have been balanced in his mind by the expectations placed on him by watchful parents-inlaw. The Burne-Jones machine went quickly into action, putting Mackail in touch x

INTRODUCTION

with Morris’s surviving friends, in order to enlist their support. Just a fortnight after Morris’s death, Burne-Jones wrote to Webb, preparing the ground and bringing him on side. He told Webb that he was jotting down what he himself could remember of the early years. If you will do the same and let [Mackail] have the notes to consult & absorb it would be nice. . . . [T]he vultures will be down of course to their unholy meal – that can’t be helped – & many a lie will be in the air – but most of the lies we can send to their natural home & all silly anecdotes & folly will be excluded & banned. (Letter 547, note 3) Webb’s reticence would probably have led him to want to say nothing at all of the memories of a friendship to which he attached an almost sacred importance, but he felt unable to spurn this personal intervention from one whose call on Morris’s affection was no less strong than his own. Edward and Georgiana advised Mackail how to approach Webb, whose avoidance of society was legendary, so when Mackail wrote, inviting Webb to spend the evening with him and his wife, Margaret Burne-Jones, he made it clear that it would be entirely informal – ‘we are simple folk who dine at 7 o’clock, and don’t put on any clothes for the occasion’ (Letter 547, note 2) – he meant evening dress – but he wisely offered the alternative of going to see Webb at Gray’s Inn, thereby making the matter easier from the start. This seemed a happy solution for Webb, who suggested that they eat first at Gatti’s in the Strand, the regular Thursday evening gathering place for the SPAB committee regulars – Morris, Webb, Cockerell, Walker and others. He would prove to be of considerable help to Mackail during the months he worked on the Morris Life, answering specific queries about Oxfordshire buildings and landmarks, about Morris consulting him in 1871 before taking Kelmscott Manor, about some SPAB case histories, and about his and Morris’s early history in the architectural practice of George Edmund Street, in Oxford. He also offered to act as an intermediary with the seriously ill Kate Faulkner, later making her letters from Morris available to Mackail. Webb played his own more practical part in memorialising his friend, and meeting the wishes of his widow. Jane asked him to design the memorial stone for the plot in the Kelmscott churchyard, which the two of them visited together, and at the beginning of August 1897 he set out his preliminary ideas, wanting to find an appropriate gesture which, as he put it, ‘would not be quite out of keeping with the life of him who had been for so many good years the very back bone of my poor life; and who is still not very far away from me – is even close at hand as I read the lines of his ever living books’ (Letter 558). A year later, Jane had a further favour to ask. In what would turn out to be the final architectural design of his career, and in a way balancing Red House, which was the first, Webb agreed to construct a pair of modest cottages at Kelmscott for local working people, to serve as a permanent tribute to the village’s most celebrated former resident. The project was first mooted in August 1898, when he was already trying to reduce the work xi

INTRODUCTION

of his architectural practice, and although he worked on until the end of 1900 he took on no major new projects. He was tired after 40 years of continuous work, during which time he never had more than a couple of assistants. Even now, his designs for the cottages were delayed by the demands of concurrent projects, and not until June 1899 did he set out his detailed thoughts for Jane. Much came to a close with Morris’s death, and by the end of 1898 the 67-yearold Webb was wondering whether Wales might suit him as a place to which he might retire, whilst reassuring Cockerell that it was ‘only a preliminary speculation’ (Letter 616). That year had seen the deaths of both Kate Faulkner, which touched Webb deeply, and Burne-Jones, prompting from Cockerell a comment astutely placing Webb in the scheme of things. ‘How one’s heart goes out to Webb – how we ought to cherish him – the only one of those great heroes that remains to us.’ (Letter 589, note 2)

Note 1 Lethaby, p. 161.

xii

LETTERS 1888–1898

321 • To George Wardle, 9 February 1888 1 R.B. Grays Inn Thursday evening 9th Feb: ’88 My dear Wardle After you were gone I asked Jack if he knew of anyone who could find photographs for us of Dunblane in Glasgow1 – he said yes, but there was most likely an agent in London. It then occurred to me that Mansell2 might have some. Jack went there in dinner time, and brought back 4 helpful pictures, wh’ I send you, and from them – with a lens – it will easily be seen how much wd have to be done to fit the place for use. There is the great gap at the west end of S. aisle – window gone at east of S. aisle. The north doorway in ruins, & window &c gone at west end of N. aisle. All this & other visible without glass, but with a lens you will see what would have to be done to the clerestory windows before they could be fitted with glass (I doubt if the 2nd course of cornice went beyond the eastern end of W.W. buttress cap). The cornice outside too – both of aisles & clerestory would have to be almost renewed. I had forgotten too that the inside of the church was not lined with ashlar. All the walls here would have to be scoured of lichens moss &c. – the more so that the modern Cameronians would not put up with a moss hag for a seat.3 From these photographs you will easily be able to point out these & other items for schedule of difficulties, in the letter to the ‘Scotsman’. It is evident that the West gable shd have a roof – if a roof is put at all – over the whole of what remains. Just look with lens & see what would have to be done to the s. clerestory windows. Yrs | Ph: Webb. SPAB, Dunblane Cathedral file

1 Dunblane Cathedral dates mainly from the thirteenth century, with a Norman tower. Following the collapse of the nave roof in the sixteenth century, worship was conducted in the choir for

1

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 300 years. The Reverend Dr Alexander Ritchie was appointed incumbent at Dunblane Cathedral in 1886, a post he held until 1917. He initiated and oversaw the restoration works in 1889–93 under the architect, Robert Rowand Anderson (1834–1921). It is Ritchie’s ultimately successful campaign for re-roofing the nave which is here of concern to PSW. See also next letter. 2 W.A. Mansell & Co. were photographic and fine art publishers, with premises in Oxford Street. 3 ‘Moss-hag’: a pit or hole from which peat has been dug (OED). PSW envisages the lump of extracted peat itself serving as a seat.

322 • To George Wardle, 14 February 1888 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. Tuesday. 14th Feb: ’88 My dear Wardle Honeyman’s letter is very satisfactory so far as it goes.1 But as we shall tell him the Socy will do their utmost, I think he should go over and see for himself and make notes of the state of the building, as he evidently has not in mind its state as shewn by the photographs we now have. It was rather more than 30 years ago since I was there, & no doubt the weather, and gasses from manufactories with tall chimneys, which have since then been built, have made considerable havoc with the details. I think the Society shd both mobilise the ‘Office of Works’ and urge the roof protection scheme in Dunblane Edinburgh & Glasgow. In writing to the Office of Works we shd I think, start by saying that since we first wrote to them we have gone thoroughly into the matter and find that the ‘Restoration’ scheme will be much more mischievous than we at first supposed and that, practically, it must destroy the value of the antiquity from all points of view. We might instance Eltham Palace,2 wh’ is in the hands of the Office of works. It has its roof on & 2 bays of this shored up from below, but that this valuable building is always open for instruction &c in history & art (confound them, they would not let me sketch, when I was last there, without a written order from London) and is well protected. I have sent the beasts and the small drawing of the peacock.3 Am not quite sure if I made myself understood as to photogg them. I do not want them large (full size) as you probably do, therefore I wd undertake to pay for the other size of copies. Yours truly | Philip Webb. SPAB, Dunblane Cathedral file

1 John Honeyman, Glasgow local correspondent for the SPAB, had written to HTT on 10 February 1888: ‘It appears to me that the Restoration Committee now intend to make the preservation of the building entirely a secondary consideration & that their chief object is to acquire a very handsome church for their own use. Their action should therefore I think be opposed by all legitimate means. I do not think the Board of Works a proper body to be entrusted with the custody of our ancient

2

1888–1898 buildings. . . . [I]f a fund of £5,000 could be raised for the preservation of the building on the understanding that it should not be used, but remain accessible to the public, the Restoration Committee would be effectively put out of court. The presumption now is that they mean to spend £5,000 on preservation & £20,000 in destruction.’ SPAB, Dunblane Cathedral file. 2 Given to the crown by the Bishop of Durham in the early fourteenth century, Eltham Palace, now in the London Borough of Greenwich, was a royal residence until the sixteenth century, when Greenwich Palace came to be favoured more highly. In the seventeenth century, Sir John Shaw leased the estate from Charles II, by which time the Palace had been seriously neglected. Repairs costing £800 were carried out in 1828. ‘Perhaps the most important permanent effect on the [great] hall was the removal of the peaked roofs over the two oriels, these being replaced by flat roofs.’ John Priestley, Eltham Palace (Chichester: Phillimore & Co., 2008), p. 104. 3 His drawings for the Morris & Co. ‘Forest’ tapestry. See Vol. I, Letter 288, note 7.

323 • To William Hale White, 19 February 1888 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 19th Feb: ’88 My dear White Any news of you (and yours is too painful to me) is better than none, and I can but hope that the effort to tell me of yourself took you – in spite of yourself – for a little while out of yourself.1 There has been nothing in my little illness, after the quick descending scale of weakness was stopped, that was really distressing to me, and I am at your service to give any little relief of cheerfulness that I may. In truth I shd think that you wanted companionship of some clear witted, good natured kind which wd supply you with outside thoughts on an entirely equal base. It wd be a cunning physician who could divest himself of a certain assumption of superiority to his patient. I have got to that stage in life when, if anyone accuses me of ignorance and a touch of stupidity, I can smile and say, ‘I knew that before you told me’ – so if I say anything in this letter contrary to your good sense you can retort without making me sulky. Your illustration of the omnibus driver’s & city clerk’s cheerfulness under wearying monotony was well chosen, and I believe the chief reason of the perfect dul[l]ness of an upper class English country house is, that the resource of honest jesting retort is out of the question there; partly because it wd not be understood, & partly because the place wd become even duller from the ill concealed disgust at ‘bad manners’. I confess that when my business – as it too often has – sends me into that atmosphere, the ill-bred but highly relieving jest must out, or I shd burst. However, I have found, at times, that in a side way the relief is twofold. I used to invent long rigmaroles to my night nurse (to pass the time) of how, perhaps, her next patient wd be the Archbishop of Canterbury, and how, when Mrs Archbp had gone to bed, his Grace wd say ‘now nurse, let us have a story’. My nurse (a highly respectable person) was highly delighted with the novelty of the joke and was never tired of my addition to the string of fable. Morris came in one day when I was at dinner with her, and we all 3 told stories – and I said ‘When you go to your next patient you will tell some of these stories’ and she said ‘yes, that I shall’ – to 3

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

which I answered, ‘will you say that your last patient was a Socialist?’ and she said ‘no! that I shan’t’, at which we all 3 laughed very merrily. I don’t think I quite agree with you that a good prose translation of Homer is better than any versified one. When reading Morris’s Odyssey I had Butcher & Lang at hand, and compared passages and found Morris’s verse far preferable.2 Now, I don’t mean to insult you when I say that being a better scholar than I am (who cannot read a line in Greek) you naturally would prefer the greek to any translation, but my difference with you is that you shd prefer prose of Homer instead of to verse. You see, I wanted to get some lilt of music into my reading of Homer, and as Morris’s would be my only chance of getting at the work as a great old poem flowing along, as no prose can flow, the verse was a relief to me. At the present time I do not think anyone could do a translation of Homer as well as Morris – looking at the thing as a whole, and as a living story. Indeed there is no doubt that B & Ls prose translation of the Odyssey was owed more than something to Morris’s teaching of the English language. If that was so, it was ‘got up’ whereas Morris’s simplicity came by nature. It was somewhat as Walter Scott said of his contemporaries who wrote historical tales, that they were under the disadvantage of having to read up the history. There, my time is up & you may go on! When I was in Venice I was (luckily indeed) introduced to Sig: Giacomo Boni, who was directing the repairs to the Ducal Palace, and as a scaffolding was up there, I had the liberty of being on it for hours together, rubbing my fingers & almost my nose over the mouldings & carvings as if they were round soft babies that did not roar out and bellow. Well, this Sig: Giacomo Boni (who knew & could talk in 4 or 5 languages) gave me the benefit of his very good English and his better company, and in an irregular but continuous way we have kept in touch by letter. He is a learned man, and I had to pretend to understand his Greek quotations, so as not to stop him. He has mastered the art of photography sufficient for his fine art and archæological purposes, and he occasionally sends me slips of sun-pictures which ‘the trade’ would not supply3 – for the intelligible reason that there wd not be a profitable demand. I have several sets of some 20 or more interesting (all) and beautiful (some) subjects from Vicenza, where the skilful but (to me & some others) dull Palladio reigns supreme, to the almost total ignoring of the mediæval and early Renaissance remains in that town. I send you a set of these photographs with the hope that they will interest you as they do me.4 Boni strives day by day to save what remains of genuine old art in Italy, and is a thorn in the side of officialdom, but as they cannot well do without his knowledge & skill they have not, as yet, sent him to the devil, as they would like to do. Boni tells me that I may connect (No 3) The Castle of Montecchio, with the Romeo & Juliet story of the Montagues & Capulets.5 This picture with its ragged foreground & screen of dark cypresses against the solemn old ruin is very beautiful I think. Notice in No 4 (the numbers are in pencil on the back) the fine Lombard brick arches cut into by the Venetians when they got hold of 4

1888–1898

Vicenza. The Campanile of No 7 is, I think, a remarkably beautiful example of Italian towers. If you use a lens to the spire, you will find it is built in walnut-shell fashion, as they call it, the courses of bricks being built alternately thus, [sketch] that is, the next brick is laid over the mortar joint of the lower bricks, the bricks being of this shape, [sketch] and, as the courses continue they make spiral lines up the cone. The Lion in No 10 from the Ch’ of San Lorenzo6 has a legend on the base of the pillar, thus – SE BOZO I SAN LORENZO VUOL STARE LA ZATA DEL LION FE ASIARE: which means, according to Boni, somewhat as follows – “If Bozo (a judge living about 1350) wished to stay (perhaps meaning, to be buried) at S: Lorenzo – he caused the paw of the Lion to be repaired”. You will see that the ‘restoration’ is not one to which the anti-scrape Soc: wd have objected. A pretty picture is No 11. Palladio did not rebuild this street, No 12. The faded fresco painting of No 14 is delightful. The upper part of No 17 is a comical extravagance. No 18 has the motto on the sides of the archway, of no rose without a thorn you can read the ‘sans-espine’. No 19 has pretty trees, priests, and beggar boys. No 20 has an early Renaissance arch more exquisite than good, but the observant company of mixed young Italy is delightful. No 21. Though the upper archl detail is not particularly good the building, as a whole, is one of those which make Italian streets so pleasant to look at. No 22 with 2 tall Renaissance columns brought to a cow shed from somewhere. The landscape pillars and people make a pretty picture. Have you any scotch friends who would fight to save Dunblane Cathl from destruction? The heritors are about to preserve this wonderfully beautiful piece of the scarce remains of Mediæval Scotland, by spending £25,000 on it.7 They would not spend 25d on preserving a starving family. Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. If you have any inclination to write, at any time, please do so. BCL MR 10/4

1 Throughout his life, WHW suffered periodic bouts of depression, aggravated by the declining health of his first wife. His eldest son, the physician Sir William Hale White (1857–1949), recalled his father’s ‘one great sorrow, enough to overwhelm most men. . . . Shortly after his happy marriage [in 1856], my mother showed signs of disseminated sclerosis – an incurable disease of the nervous system – which had been completely unsuspected. . . . My father cannot be understood by those who are unaware of his wife’s illness.’ Catherine MacDonald Maclean, Mark Rutherford. A Biography of William Hale White (Macdonald: London, 1955), p. 245. Harriet Arthur White died in 1891. 2 WM, translator, The Odyssey of Homer: done into English Verse, 2 vols (London: Reeves & Turner, 1887); Samuel Butcher and Andrew Lang, translators, The Odyssey of Homer: done into English Prose (London: Macmillan and Co., 1879). PSW’s copies are now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 138. 3 The very earliest photographic images were sometimes call ‘sun-pictures’, and here PSW uses the term generically. 4 See Vol. I, Letter 319, note 6. 5 The tenth-century castles of Bella Guardia and della Villa in Montecchio Maggiore, seven miles west of Vicenza, are associated with the Romeo and Juliet legend.

5

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 6 The thirteenth-century Franciscan church of San Lorenzo in Vicenza. 7 See previous letter.

324 • To William Hale White, 1 March 1888 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thursday 1st March. ’88 My dear White I rejoiced in your letter this morning, wh’ I read in bed after breakfast, feeling glad that Vicenza had your sympathy. At first I could not make out why you sent back the photographs & my poor letter. I intended you to keep both, and have returned them, for I have still several sets of the former & am sending you a fresh specimen of the latter. Morris always gives me a large paper copy of his writings as they are published, and my Odyssey is splendid and tall, so that I may not send it by post. To excuse my acceptation of his gift I always buy a copy of the work for the good of his trade, and as you disclaim scholarship I send you by parcel post the cheaper edition of the Odyssey, with my love. Now, you are not to put your cantankerous quality of critic under a bushel, but if you find you can tackle the translation of a great poem, let me know what impression it makes upon you. I never am quite satisfied that what I feel & say of Morris’s work is quite unprejudiced, partly because all Contemporary work is subject to being judged by partial blindness, and again, I have known & quarrelled & rejoiced with him for so many years that he is rounder to my eyes than, probably, to anyone else’s. Also, I can only read some poetry; indeed I have no natural turn for poetry, by wh’ I mean that I do not read all fairly good verse as I do prose. I can look at a poor picture or stand for a quarter of an hour in the street listening to a grinding organ, whereas I look a good many times at a vol: of poetry before even venturing to dip. Well, I can always read Morris, and partly, I think, because he is most free of modern poets from thinness of thought in verse, and partly because he so enjoys doing his verse, as he does in doing a piece of dyeing, or hand weaving – and all just like a child. His very egotism is amusing and childlike. Again, you see, I am a poor non educated ill furnished bundle of strange fancies and ideas. Well, Morris understands me, and never praises what I do, so that I have no call with him to pull out my too ready scepticism. Now, don’t laugh, I am most surely of a melancholy temperament, and I have found for more than 30 years it has been good corrective to rub shoulders what with Morris’s hearty of love-of-lifedness. There, now you may peg away at the translation (there can be no such thing as the translation of a real poem into another language – I had almost said into the a dialect of the same language) and say your truthfullest without making me so much as wince. ‘O that I had wings like a dove’1 – and those free from rheumatism – that I might settle on the roof of Bolton Abbey when you were there and explain to you, without blushing, what I myself should surely not understand. I spent a day at 6

1888–1898

Bolton, and most of the time drawing & noting of parts of the old building, so that but little was left for Wharfe himself, but that little made him out lovely to me.2 The Augustine Priory of Bolton is to me a peculiarly interesting piece of English work, of quite unusual character. Indeed, English mediæval work, in comparison with that of other European countries, is singularly various in character. French work is more magnificent, more skilfully built, and in many ways more beautiful, but it is not so startling in the difference between one building & another as English work is. In the County of York alone there is very great variety. It was in 1857 that I was at Bolton, and I clearly remember the beauty of proportion & design of the West front as seen under the arches of the 15. c tower placed just in front of the 13. c work, as much as if the builders of the tower said ‘we are going to do better than that, but the old thing is not so bad and we must not injure it’. The South side of Nave too is quite peculiar with its long 2 light transomed3 13. c windows (hardly clerestory) over where the roof of the cloister came. I also remember the interesting jumble of different dates of work at the east end of the ruins. Wharfedale I really do not know, neither do I know that fate will let me become acquainted with it. I walked from Skipton to Bolton having spent the day before in Kirkstall Abbey:4 the venerable building now all besmirched with sooty sludge, the appropriate accompaniment of gold making. What Yorkshire has to shew in excuse for the muck she has made for herself I don’t clearly know! What I do know, is, that it was to be so and it certainly is so. When tears are wiped from all eyes,5 I would like to spend my pocket handkerchief on the blurred openings of Kirkstall Abbey. Of late years I have only glanced at its miserable aspect in passing by train on my way to Carlisle. The Society set up a petition for its protection, but neither gilded ease would nor grovelling labour could listen to us. It was (& is) the “property” of someone, and he was waiting for others to protect his property for him, otherwise, it might go to ruin. I can fancy him saying ‘it is a trifle black, perhaps, but still a lovely ruin, and a good peg on wh’ to hang sentiment, as it crumbles away’. Your description of the snow on the moors (Rombalds moor as my map makes it6) was striking. It is almost a pity you could not stay and see the moor clad in its early summer coat in contrast to its present of one colour. You ask a very large question in “What is it wh’ has now dried up all the fountains of such lovely originality?” All I can say, at present, in answer, is, that the plastic and partly the graphic arts are heirs of their fathers & not of their great, great, grandfathers. Of these arts the entail has, as it were, died out, whereas the art of writing, proper, has necessarily been continuous. No one knows, except the thoughtful in practice, how in the thoughts of the heart the clear expression of them in the plastic arts depends upon dexterity of hand. If I & others had been in M: Angelo’s or Lionardo’s [sic] workshop three parts of the battle of our art life would have been won at the age of 15 or 16. I find it even now with the common artisan. 30 years ago, in the country I could always find some man who had the traditional method of doing this or that piece of work. Now, I almost never find 7

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

this help. Our best artists of the present will not be out of their long clothes7 of drawing till they are putting on their last shift. It is a large subject. I think it probable that Giacomo Boni will add to his photographs some story of the times in wh’ Vicenza was built and, if so, he will send me his work and we must get it translated. I have several very interesting pamphlets of his wh’ you should see. Perhaps your Italian friend that I once met might translate them for you?8 If you should write to me again from Ilkley, tell me how long you are likely to stay there – if you can – as I might send you, for examination, some more Italian photographs. Faithfully give my kindest wishes to your home folk. I never saw your steelmaking son.9 Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. On re-reading the above I find it full of rheumatism of the head & hand. I hope it wont be tiresome to you? BCL MR 10/5

1 ‘And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.’ Psalms 55:6. 2 Situated on the banks of the River Wharfe, Bolton Priory is a twelfth-century Augustinian foundation. The nave was used as a parish church, and as such survived the dissolution. Nineteenth-century restorations include windows (1851) by Augustus Pugin (1812–52). 3 Divided by cross pieces. 4 A Cistercian foundation of the twelfth century, Kirkstall Abbey is located on the River Aire, about four miles from Leeds. A victim of the dissolution, it is nevertheless the most complete British example of an early Cistercian building. 5 ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ Revelation 21:4. 6 A large area of moorland between Ilkley and Keighley in West Yorkshire, of which Ilkley moor forms a part. 7 The standard clothing for a baby. 8 Conceivably, one of the sisters Marie and Margherita Turin, or more likely their parent(s). WHW was fond of these friends of his daughter: ‘I like so the contrast between our slow, hypochondriac, northern natures and these sunny children of a happier climate’. Cited in Maclean, Mark Rutherford, p. 241. 9 John (‘Jack’) Harry White (b. 1861), WHW’s second son, worked in heavy industry, at first for a Welsh iron-blasting firm, and subsequently in Workington. In 1912, he left England for Chile ‘to take charge of a railway there which crosses the Andes at a height of 12,000 feet’. WHW to PSW, cited in Maclean, Mark Rutherford, p. 395.

325 • To William Hale White, 11 March 1888 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday eveng Mar: 11. ’88 My dear White. Your letter of the 2nd, wh’ I only answered by a post card when I sent you the Venetian & other photographs, deserves fuller notice as was intended by me. 8

1888–1898

You began with a large order in my petty bank of education, which is too often obliged to suspend payment. Byzantine architecture is the mother of all our Western art after the decline of the debased Greek art of the Romans.1 The nearest line to be drawn between the old and the new art is the time of Diocletian who retired from empire to his palace he had built at Spalato in Dalmatia; this building was, more or less, a last dying effort of Roman architecture on its own lines strained to the utmost.2 Now this was – say – about the year 300 of our time, and S: Sophia was built about A.D. 537.3 Though there was, of course Byzantine work before Justinian’s time,4 still the buildings put up before S: Sophia shew traces of pure or impure old Roman form, whereas S. Sophia is purely of the new style. There was even later work wh’ was less pure. The metamorphosis came from the east, which transformed the art of Diocletian’s time to that of Justinian. You see, it took about 330 years to do it. I wonder how long it will take to rekindle art amongst us? You can safely say that all our western art down to the 15. c was derived from the work at Constantinople, with cross breeding from various sources. From what particular part of the east came the ideas which stirred the hearts anew of Greek workmen is hardly known. So far as I can make out, it was arrived at more from freedom from old tradition than from any engrafting of special eastern forms. As you will have seen, in the photographs of Ravenna amongst those I sent you, the architecture there was pure Byzantine in the 6th c. and the Ch’ of San Vitale the most peculiar example,5 all except the tomb of Theoderic which is not to be classed with any style.6 Well, the earlier (former) ch’ of S. Mark at Venice was Byzantine and those at Torcello still are, in detail, and one in form, and the present S. Marks is a mediæval child. You can particularly notice the 4 older capitals – not in service – which stand in the narthex or western porch, and shew their Byzantine origin. All the archre of Italy, France, England &c was descended from the Byzantine work coloured, or rather featured by local peculiarities and various races of builders. I am sorry that I cannot tell you of a book such as you ask for, which gives clearly and shortly what I have ignorantly noted above. James Ferguson’s book, 2 large octavo vols: of the history of archre certainly does not do it, for he was narrow, more than obstinately opinionated and obtuse to a degree about niceties of art.7 Nevertheless, it is useful if read with some touchstone of knowledge. Our English work – say of the 11th c – betrays its origin, but how altered and qualified by northern heads, hands, & materials I cannot easily express. That early work shewn in fragmentary arches by the photos of Vicenza has an almost exact counterpart in Constantinople itself – another likeness is helped by both being in brick. It is astonishing how much the material itself modifies architecture. Even in this little England, one county often differs fm another – even in contemporaneous buildings – by the material used by necessity of circumstance. I believe some decent building might be done now if architects had to make the best of extremely limited resource in material. Our architecture, now, might be said to be designed by steam carriage, which has almost completely killed local ingenuity. You see, I’ve made an effort to answer your question, but no one knows better than I do that I am the last person to be able to do it clearly or rightly. 9

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

For some years my thoughts have been exercised upon how far the Romans taught the British to build. There is an exercising example at a Roman station 8 miles from Cirencester which set me all on fire some 5 or 6 years ago8 – and its question is as full of heated argument as an egg is of meat.9 I quite agree with your feeling as to criticising books, that is, of books which are worth thought & care in reading, however much one may disagree with them. I mean books that one reads for how much there is in them, not for how little. Still, a translation of a great poem wh’ holds its own after an unknown number of centuries, must, & necessarily, create a feeling of distrust, or even dislike in those who know something of it in the original. Pope is clever and even skilful beyond measure, but I could read him 40 years ago, I cannot now: of his Homer I am thinking.10 However, his was a highly artificial time, and whatever poorness there is in our present literature, since Walter Scott came upon us there is no doubt that artificiality has decreased in the better books. I can fancy you & yours looking over the photographs and enjoying the lovely detail of those pierced foliaged balcony fronts from S: Marks & Ravenna. Remember that the best part of the work to the Ducal Pal: that on the Riva, or sea side, was done in 1347. Also, I am sure, you will delight in the earlier private palaces. With very kindest remembrances to your good people, I am | Yours sincerely Philip Webb. I send you Giacomo Boni’s letter with his notes upon the Vicenza photographs which either you or Mary11 can copy & return me the letter. This will be better than binding in with the photos my feeble notes. BCL MR 10/6

1 This view, which PSW shared with WM, was influenced not just by JR’s recognition of the strengths of Byzantine influence upon St Mark’s in Venice, but more particularly by their reading of French architectural theorists such as Viollet-le-Duc (in Entretiens sur l’architecture, 1863), ‘who saw Byzantine architecture and above all Santa Sophia as a turning-point in the history of architecture’. Mark Swenarton, The Ruskinian Tradition in Architectural Thought (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 76. 2 The Roman emperor Diocletian (c. 243–316) retired to the now ruined but still striking palace that he had built in the late third and early fourth century in Spalato, Dalmatia (Split in modern Croatia). 3 The Eastern Orthodox sixth-century basilica of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (Istanbul), the ancient seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, was a Christian church until the city fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, whereupon it became a mosque. The hugeness of scale of the interior, with its vast dome (the cathedral remained the largest in Christendom until the completion of that at Seville in the sixteenth century) makes this one of the most important surviving examples of Byzantine architecture, admired (if only from drawings and photographs) by WM and PSW alike.

10

1888–1898 4 Justinian (c. 482–565), ruler of the Byzantine Empire, and considered a saint by the Eastern Orthodox church. 5 Building began in the early sixth century on the octagonal Byzantine Christian church of San Vitale in Ravenna, famed for its mosaic work. 6 The mausoleum of the Ostrogothic emperor Theoderic (454–526), just outside Ravenna, was built under his instructions in c. 520 to house his body. In two distinct layers, the lower section is a decagon, and the upper circular with a domed roof. 7 James Fergusson, The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, 2 vols (London, 1855). 8 For the Roman villa at Chedworth, see Vol. I, Letter 172, note 4. 9 ‘Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat.’ Romeo and Juliet, III.i.22–3. 10 Alexander Pope began translating and publishing the Iliad episodically in 1711. He completed the Odyssey (with assistance) in 1726. 11 Mary (b. 1869), daughter of WHW.

326 • To George Price Boyce, 8 May 1888 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tuesday night. May 8. ’88 My dear Boyce I have been disappointed by failing to get to West House before going into Surrey. The view of you at S. Kensington during the lecture & after was of the briefest1– my other misfortune was being out when you last called here. The New Place folk asked after you on Sunday, when I was there, and I had to display ignorance of the present state of both Mrs Boyce & yourself. This separation has not been willingly undergone but I have been feeblish, working but indifferently though on things pressing to be done. There seems to me to be a chance of getting strength in the country, by being much in the open air with not too great exertion; and if the clawed clients will allow, I shall not over press my brain at the building house, but there will be quite enough work there wh’ I can’t merely stand and gaze at.2 Not having seen it for 6 months I may have outgrown its style – things architecturallooral having transformed themselves so rapidly of late. As Morris says this month in the “Fortnightly”, our starting point on the work of the 14th c. is “hull down”, and we are well on into eclecticism of the Georgian era.3 When we arrive at copying Strawberry hill the circle will have been completed.4 Read W: Ms article – the whole thing is in a nutshell. My address will be Ph. W. | c/o of Mr Miles | High Upfolds | Cranleigh | by Guildford. I hope there won’t be too much of “The Lord will provide” on the walls of my room, and too little other provision, housewifely and good-naturedly, on the table. But I do look forward to the geese on the common – or linked commons – of those parts. If Rheumatic fever having spared my life & it should be lost amongst

11

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

savage gosling-protecting geese, poetic justice would be outraged, as I should be killed by one (or more) of my loves. Best remembrance to Mrs Boyce and blessings on your kindly head from Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I am off, tomorrow (Wed) morning. BL Add 45354, ff. 249-50

1 On Saturday, 28 April at 3 p.m., the South Kensington Museum hosted a lecture sponsored by the SPAB and given by John Willis Clark on ‘Collegiate Architecture in Cambridge’. Clark (1833–1910) was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and secretary of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. 2 On medical advice, and in a determined attempt to free himself from the lingering symptoms of the rheumatic fever which had crippled him during the winter, PSW left London for several weeks and became a paying guest at High Upfolds farm in Cranleigh, near Guildford. The choice of location was not a chance one, for it gave him the opportunity to continue to monitor progress on his houses at nearby Ewhurst (for Mary Anne Ewart) and Shamley Green (for the Ramsdens). His ‘clawed clients’ were the Ramsdens – more specifically Mrs Ramsden (interchangeably ‘the auld betch’, cat, or dragon). 3 ‘The architect in search of a style might well say, . . . “The unapproachable grace and loveliness of the fourteenth century is hull down behind us, the fifteenth century work is too delicate and too rich for the commonplace of to-day; let us be humble and begin once more with the style of well-constructed fairly proportioned brick houses which stand London smoke well, and look snug and comfortable at some village end, or amidst the green trees of a squire’s park”.’ WM, ‘The Revival of Architecture’, The Fortnightly Review, XLIII (New Series), May 1888, p. 672. 4 The parliamentarian, arts patron and writer, Horatio (Horace) Walpole (1717–97), fourth Earl of Orford, son of the former British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, rebuilt an existing seventeenthcentury house in Twickenham, west of London, in an elaborate Gothic style from 1749. The Gothic revival took much of its nineteenth-century momentum from ‘Strawberry Hill Gothic’.

327 • To George Washington Jack, 10 May 1888 c/o Mr Miles | High Upfolds | Cranleigh | by Guildford Thursday 10th May. ’88 My dear Jack If the weather holds as now I see no difficulty in getting to Farnham on Saturday, and in making an appointment weather must be taken for granted; I will say therefore that I will be at Farnham station at 11.35. You will either be there at the same time or at 11.45 on Saturday. This place seems as if it wd be as good for me as any other. It is a real farm, though only a mile from somewhat cockney Cranleigh. I was foraging there this morning and now I am resting before 1.30 dinner, so as to have force enow to get to Lapscombe this afternoon. I don’t think it can be more than 2 miles up to the woods, and maybe I can rest there if the dragon is not there to harry me. 12

1888–1898

My stock of farming knowledge was increased this morning by watching Mr Miles dressing his sheep, which have suffered a little in the feet from the late wet weather. I can read all the detail of Miss Ewart’s house from my room here through the opera glass – the nearer distance & hillside has been blasted by a beast of a large house just stuck up between Rallis’ house and the doctor’s – ie that house nearer to Miss Ewart’s.1 There are 5 geese here (not a 6th as you will be saying) and 20 or 30 goslings – a few ducks, and horses, cows and other stock. Cranleigh ch’ was very interesting before it was scraped to death – the tower is still fine.2 Till Saturday, if not longer, | Yours sincerely | Ph: Webb. P.S. I think you had better shore through 4 or 5 attic fireplaces & then the staircase. LB-2, loose insertion

1 For Winterfold House, see next letter, note 3. 2 The church of St Nicholas, Cranleigh is of twelfth-century foundation, and was restored by William Butterfield in 1845 with the south porch being added in 1862.

328 • To George Price Boyce, 14 May 1888 Ph. W. c/o of Mr Miles. High Upfolds | Cranleigh by Guildford Mon: 14th May ’88 The bitter wind of this morning was tempered to me by your letter. It was impossible for me to think of asking Miss Faulkner to go with me to West House before I left – as she was so beaten by the journey and business of the S. K. Mus: on the day of the lecture there.1 If you could look in upon here (35 Queen Square) some evening – say, at her tea time 5.30, – I am sure she would be pleased to see you and “tell sad stories of the death” of friends.2 Yea, truly, but what can you expect in the way of art, when it is ‘devil take the hindmost’ in the race for attention? The bloody flock paper, is, I suppose, to catch the dirt and then not shew it – but surely it might have been a touch brighter for that latter purpose. When you say that your remarks are “not criticism” you shd explain what else they are. When my clawed clientess puts her finger on my drawing & says “I don’t like that window” I call that criticism, and of the sanguinary kind. You may call it affectionate playfulness. This is a pleasant farmhouse place, and the house folk kindly and in other ways pleasant to be with. The weather yesterday was direct from the brew house of Paradise; today, in spite of the sun, the N. E. wind is piping cold – as much as to say, ‘you must pay for all you have’. 13

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I have been twice to my work on the hills 2 miles N. of this & go again today to be scratched there by the evil one in petticoats. I shall sew a tin plate in the seat of my nethers and smile sublime as I sparkle in a prickly way in retort. Miss Ewart’s house is to be seen with naked eye from here, and its detail visible through the opera glass. There is a Victorian beast of a house just built on the mid-distance hill side between here and the Miss Ewart’s, and is a fit house for a successful lawyer – S. Richard Webster to wit – it quite mars the landscape.3 Truth to tell, all this kind of luxury house does that, and I am under the lash too! Oh dear me, and that Seddon is to mutilate Barfreston Ch’ – (I don’t know the Ch) surely Turner must go & see it, and the Society must do their best to sow the nose snarlers’ path with thorns.4 It would be very pleasant to me if you could manage to come to the neighbourhood before I leave. I mean to stick here as long as I can, so as to throw off the Rheum. if possible. There is another bed in the house here, but it is occupied just at present. Perhaps you might be able to spend a night or two here before I go, if you come anywhere nearby. Miss Ewart is away till after the 17th, so she said at the S. Ken: lecture – after that date I shall call there on my way to Joldwynds, where I have a little bit of damage to make good just now. I sent back Bowman’s Wotton picture before I left,5 and there is your Rossetti which puzzles me as to dealing with it. Your thought – twice insisted on – is so purely good and pleasant that I hardly know what to do. Can’t afford to set your back up finally: wholesome friends are too few, & my power of making new ones too problematical. Alas, what is to be done? Boni of Venice is now Boni of Rome, and architectural superintendent of the “Direzione Generale delle antichita e belle arti” of Italy.6 He writes me that he has hope of doing good in the way of sustaining and really protecting the multitudinous antiquities of the country. I hope he is quite honest and I fully believe he is. He has much knowledge, and is no coward – and I think the authorities there know that he is the man who understands the business. If the S. Mark’s Venice Comme had not been renegade, through its Hon: Sec:, we might have been in a stronger position with the Italian Government. There is nothing wh’ breeds contempt like cowardice, &, unfortunately we have allowed Wallis to manipulate the Comme.7 Please give my best remembrance to Mrs Boyce and tell her not to be too much of an admirer of the French Baker! Upfolds farm is only a bare mile from Cranleigh and it is a solitary house with its farm buildings. Let me hear again when you can write without too much effort. There are 32 goslings here who penetrate to my beast loving soul – a cart filly more delightful with illimitable legs than I have words to tell – song birds galore (if that be the spelling) and all things save the wind are – S. W. Yours sincerely Ph: Webb: BL Add 45354, ff. 251-2 14

1888–1898 1 See above, Letter 326, note 1. 2 ‘For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the death of kings.’ Richard II, III.ii.155–6. 3 Winterfold House, in Cranleigh, was built in 1886 for the judge, Sir Richard Everard Webster (1842–1915), later Viscount Alverstone, who served as Attorney-General for much of the period 1885–1900. The architect was Edward Blakeway l’Anson (1843–1912). 4 The late eleventh-century Norman church of St Nicholas, Barfreston, in Kent, lies on the pilgrim route to Canterbury. The architect, Ernest Gimson (1864–1919), who would later join the SPAB and become an active committee member, had drawn attention to the planned restoration work, under John Pollard Seddon (1827–1906). ‘I was down there a week or two ago and was lucky enough to see the Architects plans at the Vicarage. They show a great amount of unnecessary destruction and many additions. . . . I may tell you as a proof of the baseness of the whole thing that J.P. Seddon is the Architect. The ch: undoubtedly want some repairing and perhaps a little propping.’ Gimson to WM, 10 May 1888, SPAB, Barfreston file. The SPAB mounted a campaign of opposition, with some considerable success. 5 The GPB watercolour, ‘Wotton House, Surrey’ (1866), bought by Sir William Bowman (now in private hands?). PSW may have been looking after the picture for Bowman. 6 Having moved from Venice to Rome, GBO was appointed an Inspector of Monuments. His duties also involved the foundation of a photographic archive for the Ministry of Education. 7 See Vol. I, Letter 290.

329 • To George Washington Jack, 15 May 1888 c/o Mr Miles. High Upfolds. Cranleigh | by Guildford Tues: May 15. ’88 My dear Jack Your letter with inclosure this morning. Confound Parson Wardale.1 I wrote him before I left to say that I shd be away for a week or two, and wd set about his work on return. Now they have been messing about, and as the foundation is very important they will have to cover up the hole till I can see it. I write direct to Lawrance. I will find out if you must go before I return, but I don’t want if I can help it to throw the responsibility on you, the bottom of the hole being clay.2 Very glad I am that the Waverley did not disappoint you. You might have put your pride in your pocket & let me pay the tenpenny piper. I can almost fancy you scratching your nether region under kilt, with your nose in the air like a true proud Scot! Never mind, I’ve lugged some enthusiasm out of you over a bit of mediæval Engd but I suspect it was the name “Wauverley” [sic] that did it. The auld Cat was all velvet and wheedle yesterday. I would not budge a bit (this is not quite true, she wanting to lower the ground against the S.W end, and I said it might be 3 in lower!) She even agreed that the west end was very good, and has given-in about the covered way there, so that will go on. I think I shall find how best to carry the drainage. [sketch] Through the gate A, and across field at B, into another field beyond in a line with B, and then let it soak away in sand wh’ Hardy has found there. Some, indeed most, of the work at the house seems to be well done, but I have not yet been over the place. I go again on Tuesday, when the Ramsdens are not to be there. 15

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I think it probable that I shall give in to Ramsden, & put the stables on the site of the barn, as he has strong feeling against having them on the higher ground. Instead of going N of the old barn for more room I shd go West, and put the highest building at the entrance opposite (or nearly) the way out from the house. There are several things to be said for this plan, but I shd have held out, only the barn wd have been done away with in any case. He wants out-o-door earth closets, and I shall manage to put them adjoining the garden door through the S.E. wall of kitchen yard. I called on Dr Merriman yesterday morning and I felt when talking with him (a seeming good-natured fattish comfortable Philistine) that he took more interest in my nether region than in my head & that he was calculating where he shd lay on when my breeches were down!3 The E: wind is touching, though the sun is bright. I’ve done little or nothing in the way of pencil, been too busy except on Sunday. Boni’s letter was good. He is made Archt-General over ancient Italian monuments, and is now in Rome with full authority. More power to his elbow. Don’t burst yourself over Ange Pitou, but enjoy his argument with the Abbé Fortier!! One of the best things Dumas ever did.4 Yours sincerely | Ph Webb. I told the thing of claws that she must have got at the blind side of you with the 2 wood gables on the S. side, or they never would have been so architecturalooral! The Rheumatism sticks pretty fast. LB-2, loose insertion

1 See Vol. I, Letter 310, note 2. 2 ‘I have received from Mr Jones a copy of the resolution passed at the Vestry meeting, and at the same time directing me to proceed with & see carried out the necessary protective shoring and strutting to secure the Church [Datchworth] as much as possible till permanent works are carried out.’ PSW to William Lawrance and Son, 14 October 1887, LB-2, p. 101. 3 PSW undertook some minor works in 1887 for the surgeon John Jones Merriman (1827–96), former neighbour and doctor to the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. Merriman was son-inlaw to Sir William Bowman, who paid for the work at 42 Kensington Square, close to the house of Merriman’s brother-in-law, Frederick Bowman, at 25 Young Street, Kensington. See Kirk, p. 301. 4 Alexandre Dumas, père, Ange Pitou (1853).

330 • To George Washington Jack, 17 May 1888 Ph. W. c/o Mr Miles | High Upfolds | Cranleigh | by Guildford Thursday. 17th May. 1888 My dear Jack Thanks for your good letter recd this morning, inclosing Revd Wardale’s. I think he is a good-natured happy-go-lucky one rather than wrong meaning. I’ll write direct to him. 16

1888–1898

Yesterday I was up at the works, & found that Mitchell’s mason has been at Jerry tricks. The Portland stone sill of the hall window has been worked thus [sketch] with arris joints at a-a – a disgraceful piece of work. I think it must have the angles cut out thus [sketch] and pieces inserted at b. Even Mitchell was ashamed of it. Also, he has sent slate shelves scaling off in parts, leaving less than half an inch in thickness; part of these I have had to condemn. If it were not that some of the work (weather tiling, plumbing &c) was well done I shd be too much put out. I did awake this morning with a kind of delirium on me in consequence of the stupidity. The “auld betch” isn’t slain, she is only scotched. I’ve left the doorway into the Nursery bedroom as it is, for her to alter if she likes. She did not name it to me. Today is a regular S.W. rainy one, and I am using the time in writing letters. When you have time, get out the staircase from the first attic floor to the loft over, to be closed in, but as wide as the trimmer will allow, so as to take boxes &c easily. You might sail over the trimmer a little with the framed enclosure, thus. [sketch] I go up there again on Monday. Shall (if fine) try & go & see W: Allingham near Witley tomorrow.1 I walked on Tuesday up to Sir R: Webster’s new beast of a house, planted down on the ground by a novice of an Archt, if there was one at all.2 I was too tired to crawl on to Coneyhurst as I had the way back to do. The unfaithful Lindsays had not sent the steel joists last week! Bowman may be coming back directly, and there will be a row. I am going on with the Plato, stumbling at times over the difficulties, but not in an uninteresting way. I see you have taken a little bread of Carlyle in between your cups of Dumas’ sack.3 Only a pennyworth I suspect, considering that you know where the Bastile [sic] is to be found. I’ve done but little (almost none) of taking notes of life here. It has been too cold to sit about, but I fancy this change is the beginning of the end of the N. Easters. I hope you told Tomes4 that I was getting on as well as could be expected? Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. We did not go & look at the old Castle of Farnham.5 LB-2, loose insertion

1 The Irish-born poet, William Allingham (1824–89), had been a friend of Rossetti, and sympathetic to the Pre-Raphaelite sensibility. His wife was the watercolour painter, Helen Paterson Allingham (1848–1926). The Allinghams divided their time between their Hampstead house and one at Sandhills, near Witley, in Surrey. 2 The architect for Winterfold House was Edward Blakeway l’Anson. See above, Letter 328, note 3. 3 GWJ may have been reading Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: a History, 3 vols (London: James Fraser, 1837). 4 PSW’s former client, the dental surgeon John Tomes. See Vol. I, Letter 95, note 2. 5 The Norman castle at Farnham, in Surrey, rebuilt in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was home to successive Bishops of Winchester for eight centuries.

17

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

331 • To George Washington Jack, 21 May 1888 c/o Mr Miles | High Upfolds | Cranleigh | by Guildford 21st May 1888. Monday night My dear Jack I don’t know yet whether my absence is good for getting rid of my rheum, but it has evidently had a cheering effect on your spirits, for such a sprightly letter as your last was a surprise to me; perhaps it is the mixture of Carlyle & Dumas which made you explosive, in any case I hope you will not be too much depressed on my return. Just been spending another afternoon at the works with Hardy alone. I had unfortunately forgotten that today would be a general holiday, and thus robbed him of half of his. He was more cheerful than usual, perhaps on acct of Edwards being away whom he cannot abide, and I do not wonder at it.1 The house improves on acquaintance, part due perhaps to the trouble we took in putting it on the site. It has all the advantage of sufficient view, and is not an eyesore to all the country round. The men’s bedrooms are capital, and I have been trying to get their bath in to the larger cupboard. Propose to do it like this, and suit the feelings (sic) of the A.B.2 [sketch] – (x) a sitz bath3 (y) a wash hand basin with slop sink below, put a dormer in the sloping roof over x to ventilate bath room &c. The view from the S: attic bedrooms of main block is delightful. The stables, over the position of which on the site of the old barn I am making up my mind, will not come easily there, but I must set to & manage it directly I get home. I’ll stave it into shape before I leave here. It was most kind of you to “Punch” my head, but somehow this publication does not go well with the country. You had a malicious pleasure I fancy in my seeing the drawing of the waiting hall at the “New Gallery”.4 I confess I did find the row of fogies, men & women, with their noses over the railing, very funny, but my spirits sank over the laboured letter press of the rest of the paper. I started for Tangley on Sat: afternoon but it began to rain when I got to the station and I came back.5 Yesterday was a day or pure idleness to me & a lovely one it was. The sun now, at this moment is going down in an ominous level of thick blue-black clouds, and I fancy there will be no Tangley tomorrow. Yours sincerely | Ph: Webb The fireplace in the S.W. bedroom has two openings in the wall at the side of it, thus. [sketch] These Hardy is to measure accurately, so that we may make the woodwork to fit these as cupboards. Keep back that of f.p. I go there again on Wednesday. LB-2, loose insertion

1 See Vol. I, Letters 311–12. 2 ‘Auld Betch’ (Mrs Ramsden).

18

1888–1898 3 A shallow hip-bath. 4 On 19 May, Punch acknowledged the opening of the New Gallery, at 121 Regent Street, with a cartoon by Henry (Harry) Furniss (1854–1922) filling most of the page (p. 238), the inaugural private view having been a great social occasion on 8 May. The proprietors were J. Comyns Carr (1849–1916) and Charles Edward Hallé (1846–1914), former co-directors of the Grosvenor Gallery, from which they had resigned in 1887. In ‘The First Plunge’, Punch depicted the vestibule filled with people, whilst in the foreground Carr and Hallé carry an infant with a glowing ‘New Gallery’ halo towards a pool and fountain, ready to lower the child into the water. The New Gallery would continue to highlight work from the same kind of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement artists favoured by the Grosvenor, and who tended not to be seen at the Royal Academy. The gallery’s credentials were made even clearer when, in October and November 1888, it hosted the first show of the newly-formed Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. 5 Great Tangley Manor, near Guildford, home of Wickham Flower. See Vol. I, Letter 269, note 4.

332 • To George Washington Jack, 23 May 1888 Ph. W. c/o Mr Miles | High Upfolds | Cranleigh | by Guildford. Wed: 23rd May. 1888 My dear Jack Your letter & inclosure of yesterday, to hand. The fireplace hearths are certainly narrower on the upper floors than they shd have been, but the railing over of the marble blocks under the architraves wont much matter. In some cases they would be stone, if I remember rightly, and would be painted with the wood work, & where they are of marble, they will look like applied decoration, and not as if they carried the house. If a portion of the marble or stones bases stand on the hearths, it will do. In any case don’t spoil the proportion of the mantellings so long as you can put ever so small a piece of the base on the hearth stone. I am glad you do not fret too much over my absence, & could take such a walk as that to Bushey.1 When the Dumas’ are all run out, you will be for putting on your severe aspect again, and reading nothing but dissertations on nice points of North British theology, or for reading Marcus Aurelius into Jesus of Nazareth, after the manner of M: Arnold, to keep the latter genteel: grafting “sweetness & light” on to the rudeness of holy rage.2 Yesterday I got to Tangley in time for tea, found the flowers (big F here surely) all in full bloom: couple of callers and, fiddle faddle: Mrs all in a flutter about the removal of the sundial. I . . . didn’t mind that – but made more jests, upon the evident improvement &c, that she came up to a pitch of dreadful doubt as to what I meant by my fun. Tell me truly, is it possible that I might have rubbed a joke in too persistently? It might be said to take two to make a jest effective, but only one to enjoy it – eh? Fortunately I had paid Casella for the dial,3 so that Flower has not lost much over his misfortune. He said he had not paid Casella yet, as much as to say ‘and serve him jolly well right’. They have made the garden too spick & span to please the cognoscenti, and they (Flowers) complained that Morris & Boyce had not managed to keep their opinion back, as I very wisely did (am not such an unworldly fool as you think!) 19

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Yesterday was dull & cold, today fiercely bright and even more terribly keen: the wind with as much east in it as the N will allow. Go up to the hill again today, and, as I learn from the Kings of Abinger that the joists have at last been sent, I go to Joldwynds tomorrow.4 Walk over to Miss Ewart’s and, perhaps, get dinner there at her lunch time, and King carry me on from there and back to there, or, maybe, along the hill top a bit. Rheumatism, so so, but I don’t mean to bother about it, as I fancy it will be a long time – fine satisfactory weather or not – before it works out of my system. Drawing, all no go at all. Yours reverentially, wistfully, regretfully, and gratefully | Ph: Webb. LB-2, loose insertion

1 The small Hertfordshire town of Bushey, about 20 miles from central London. 2 Nineteenth-century liberal theologians regarded the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (121–180), whose Meditations articulated a Stoic philosophy, as ‘the pagan thinker whose thoughts most closely resembled the key tenets of Christianity’. Heather Ellis, ‘Reconciling Classical and Christian Culture: Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations in Victorian Scholarship’, New Voices in Classical Reception Studies, Issue 7 (2012), http://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/newvoices/ Issue7/Heather-Ellis.pdf [accessed 15 May 2015]. The poet and cultural critic, Matthew Arnold (1822–88), who had died on 15 April, published ‘Marcus Aurelius and the Christian Church’ in 1863, an essay which, according to E.H. Plumptre, enabled Arnold ‘to seek, like the emperor himself, “something above the ‘sweetness and light’ on which he commonly lavished his praise”.’ See Ellis, citing Plumptre. ‘Sweetness and Light’ is the name Arnold gave to the first part of his seminal study, Culture and Anarchy (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1869). 3 For the scientific instrument maker, Louis Pascal Casella, see Vol. I, Letter 146, note 2. 4 William and George King of Abinger Hammer were the builders contracted by PSW for additional works at Joldwynds, Sir William Bowman’s house in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey.

333 • To George Washington Jack, 26 May 1888 c/o Mr Miles | High Upfolds | Cranleigh | by Guildford May 26. 1888 My dear Jack Your letter recd this morning was cheering, fresh & bracing. The prayer ‘O would the giftie gie us’1 (I quote from the worst of memories) seems to be answered in my case by your aid, and one has no call to complain if one’s prayers are answered, especially in the affirmative. When I next go to Roslin I will see if the ’prentice’s head deserved to be broken.2 My present recollection is that the heads of all concerned in the building were deservedly cracked – but, as it seems to be allowed now, that some touch of insanity is necessary to keep the world sweet, I shall not feel insulted if in your next I am told by you that I am mad, ‘stark mad Sir’3 and if like Pecksniff I put a window into your design for a lunatic asylum, & spoil it, and get an M:P. to say that the “creation” is lovely what 20

1888–1898

more, in this world of incongruities, can we want?4 Answer me that, ‘a Daniel come to judgment’.5 I was not, in my arrangement of things, to have gone up to Sparelands, Lapscombe, Willinghurst yesterday, but Hardy brought a post-card here yesterday morning to say that She wanted to see me there, so went. It was to know if it would not be delightful to put a very small conservatory at the N. end of the west covered way! I sat upon the idea flat, without mercy, and likened the thing to a Brixton Villa, and if a hideous piece of uselessness were necessary, I wd advise a large one reaching from the house the whole length of the retaining wall to the road. This finished the affair. Don’t you think I carried my pencil & rubber with a smile to her scheme, & with a malignity worthy of a Gray’s Inn tyrant? I made King laugh, in his tombola way, when I told him (forgive the forgery) that you thought sometimes, my business of receiving fine ladies in the inner room was an easier task than grinding at the board outside, but on the whole you agreed not to change places with me. I thought King would never get back from Joldwynds to Coneyhurst on Thursday evening – he allowed his fat mare to go so slowly – to go just as she pleased, in fact – so that he might have more of my jokes. Is this the way to mend your ‘guvner’? Now, there is a fine opportunity for you to play high jinks with one, at least, of the fire places. Hardy has sent you the position & size of the 2 holes at the side of the S.W. bedroom fire place, so you can fire away at turning these effectively into love cupboards, for visitors to peep into when they go to bed, and find the most lovely store of French stories, not otherwise obtainable in the house. Put in what you like, & I promise not to rub it out (or “rub it in”) whatever your fine frenzy (spell it with a p.h. my lord) may arrive at. Old Leveson Gower6 ambled up to the house yesterday (he has touch of rheumatics) after I had parted from the she & was at work with Hardy. I told him to observe how beautifully we had placed the house, so as not to be an eyesore to the neighbourhood; he took the joke & jogged on. Afterwards the she returned with a bevy of fine ladies and introduced me to Lady Spencer,7 who stood talking with me alone for 3 or 4 min: Hardy standing hard by ravished with my promptitude with in telling polite lies. I asked L: Spencer if she did not think the good architects must have the best of tempers to undergo whimsical clients? ‘and they so ignorant too’, said she, ‘and so old & incapable of mending’ said I, – when we bowed & separated. This is the she who has the power, if not the will, to shut herself up in the great Althorp library for weeks together! All one side of the house is the library [sketch], only think! There, I must stop or you will crack your jaws with yawning. When “ ’prentices” go to Sweetheart abbeys8 & other jollifications, they don’t break governors’ jaws with long letters, do they? Wardle is coming down this evening to E. wind & sun himself for a little while. He too thinks I may have ‘rubbed it in’ at Tangley, but, somehow, does not seem to regret the possibility. However, as I did not think too highly of the sundial there 21

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

my withers are unwrung,9 and if she buys a Wardour Street affair10 and puts it in that place, little mischief would be done. I think Mitchell is not so diligent as might be, and will say my illness and the She’s dallying have been the cause. I shall have to write to him sharply, but to what end I know not. The letter you inclosed was from Stanhope of Florence. He says the authorities are going to pull about the small piece of the city walls remaining to let the air into a slum there, and then they will think they have done their duty by the poor.11 Yours sincerely (and, if I do not make the word stink in your nostrils as a bitter one, believe that I remember with real feeling your kindly attention to me when I was hard tested in the winter) | Philip Webb. LB-2, loose insertion

1 ‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us!’ (42–3). Burns, ‘To a Louse, On Seeing one on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church’ (1785). 2 A legend is attached to the construction of the fifteenth-century Rosslyn Chapel, situated close to Roslin Castle, Midlothian. One of the fourteen pillars in the nave is called the Apprentice Pillar, supposedly carved by an apprentice, who was then hit on the head and killed by the master mason, jealous that such work could be successfully completed without reference to the original design. 3 ‘That wench is stark mad or wonderful froward’. The Taming of the Shrew, I,i,69. 4 For PSW’s previous use of this allusion to Martin Chuzzlewit, see Vol. I, Letter 41, note 2. 5 ‘A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel! / O wise young judge, how I do honor thee!’ The Merchant of Venice, IV,i,223–4. Shakespeare’s allusion is Biblical: ‘I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee.’ Daniel, 5:14. 6 George Granville William Sutherland Leveson-Gower, third. Duke of Sutherland (1828–92), was a Liberal MP until he succeeded as Duke in 1861. He was estranged from his first wife for some years, and remarried within four months of her death in November 1888, which earned him a certain notoriety. 7 Charlotte Seymour, Countess Spencer (1835–1903), married the Liberal politician John Poyntz Spencer, fifth Earl Spencer (1835–1910), in 1858. The Spencer family house and estate is Althorp, in Northamptonshire. 8 See Vol. I, Letter 317, note 1. 9 ‘Your Majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the gall’d jade winch, our withers are unwrung.’ Hamlet, III.ii.241–3. 10 In the later nineteenth century, Wardour Street had a large number of antique shops and furniture stores, its reputation being rather downbeat. 11 See also Vol. I, Letter 242, note 7, and Letter 251, note 13.

334 • To George Washington Jack, 30 May 1888 c/o Mr Miles | High Upfolds | Cranleigh | by Guildford 30th May. 1888 My dear Jack. I had your’s this morning, and with it one from the She-confusion, saying (with a whine surely) ‘I don’t like Nos 8, 5, & 9’ [sketch of fireplace and cat’s claws] and 22

1888–1898

wanting something different, i.e. to leave out the top &c. So stop all further work on fire places till my return. I am going up to meet her this afternoon and will smile my congratulations on her judgment, and let her know what she will lose in the way of “prentice” work. We shall have to turn on to the drainage plan when I get back – and at once – so will you prepare a plan of the house in skeleton – on paper – & ink it in, so that we can work on it in pencil till it is fidgetted right. ⅛th scale will do, I think, with details of the different parts made to a larger scale. Also, please make (say ¼ scale) sections up through the water closets, baths &c, so that we can shew the soil pipes & other parts and pipes. I have written so many letters (my mornings have been one perpetual scribble) that my paper is out; hence this apology for paper. Yes, you must have run dry. I send cheque for £15. Will you be so good as to send me post office order for £3 (to Philip Webb, from George Jack) by return of post, payable at Cranleigh post office. I am glad that Millais has done a sound bit of work. His work commands admiration if it does not touch one. Tho’ I cannot but think that landscape wants the touch power of imagination more than any other painters’ work – but good honest work will always have a value.1 But you will be sure to shew fight, & I had better reserve my strength till we can have it out (no, nothing but knives or pistols really settle things) with you over a cup of tea. I shall try & get back on Saturday. Yours. | Ph: Webb. LB-2, loose insertion

1 Several new works by John Everett Millais could be seen in London during May. At the Royal Academy was the landscape, Murthly Moss, Perthshire, a picture with which the critic of the Birmingham Daily Post was initially disappointed, but appreciated more with each viewing (5 May 1888); The Pall Mall Gazette thought that ‘in parts [it] verges on the commonplace’ (5 May). Meanwhile, at the Grosvenor Gallery was Millais’s portrait of the composer, Sir Arthur Sullivan, whilst at the New Gallery was Forlorn and The Last Rose of Summer, neither of which was admired by The Era, although The Pall Mall Gazette thought Forlorn ‘remarkable . . . as rough as it is vigorous’ (9 May).

335 • To George Price Boyce, 2 June 1888 Annotated ‘recd June 2. ’88’ High Upfolds | Cranleigh | by Guildford May [sic] 2. 1888 My dear Boyce Since your letter of the 11th May I have been expecting either to see you turn up here with an ‘I told you so’, or a note to say you were within reach of me, that I might have come & see[n] you, and criticise a standpoint you had taken for preserving 23

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

in one (& in these times invaluable) way to posterity what remains of beautiful builded Surrey, and now comes your long expected letter and I am off for Gray’s Inn by the 3.54 train this afternoon – so no pleasant gossip with you here for me. I know your croaking as to yourself as well as I know the real meaning of it – viz, by that true touchstone, myself to wit. I am clearly older, if you are not, but in going over Joldwynds yesterday with the builder (a pleasant decent colleague) while doing a little job there, I said to him I wished I could put my head, (wh’ has by this time gathered a little experience in to it) on new shoulders and begin afresh. The builder didn’t think it could be done! Well, this long preamble means, that with your work it is the same. I looked long yesterday at your early drawing of the chalk hill & mill,1 wh’ hangs in the dining-room at Joldwynds, and I also looked at the still earlier drawing, at Miss Ewart’s, of the Verona tomb on the top of the wall,2 and I wished your older head on the top of newer shoulders. Do you see? But it can’t be done Sir – it can’t be done. I’ve been a trifle bothered here by the feminine part of my client and also with the builder, but I hope for the best. I was obliged to take my fresh air near by my work, but I could willingly have done without such a neighbour, and perhaps I should have made more of the geese, pigs, mares & foals &c – but I’ve got the natures of these beasts more into my system, and it will work out into something (perhaps?) when my hand gets a little more amenable to reason. I shall look you up at the first moment I can & with Miss Faulkner too if I can, tho’ I am sorry to say she has been unwell since she saw you in Q. S. Please tell Mrs Boyce I am glad she is not in love with the baker – and before she falls in love with a fag end of the house of Bourbon she is to send me a photograph and indisputable proof of legitimacy from both father & mother. Yours faithfully | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 253-4

1 Presumably Old Mill and Chalk Quarry near Goring, Oxfordshire (October 1863). 2 Tomb of Castelborco, Verona (1854).

336 • To Elizabeth Burden, 31 July 1888 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 31st July 1888 Dear Miss Burden1 I have delayed answering your letter of the 24th because it was necessary for me to consider what sort of design I should be able to make for Mr Ellis’s book cover.2 I have now concluded that the embroidery of the design should be darkish green, and therefore it would be better, I think, for the velvet ground to be red, and the more so, that probably the centre of the book-side would be in gold.

24

1888–1898

Of course I cannot make anything more than a mental sketch of the design till I have the exact size of the book (I hope it will be of good size – say 6¾ inches by 8¾) but the probability is that the design would take somewhat of this character, thus – [sketch] The border of green leaves, pink stems, and blue flowers. The centre of gold shewing the red ground. This is all I can say to help you in what you require for preliminaries in dealing with Mr Cobden-Sanderson.3 Still, perhaps, if the outside of the cover be of red, the lining might be of another colour, if so be it was chosen to go with the red. I should prefer the red to be a dark one. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Miss Burden Huntington, MOR 580

1 See Vol. I, Letter 20, note 1. 2 This may well have been work that Elizabeth Burden was planning with F.S. Ellis for the first Arts and Crafts exhibition in October, although PSW did not in the end complete a design. See below, Letter 344. 3 For the bookbinder Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, see Vol. I, Letter 248, note 6.

337 • To Frederick Charles,1 10 August 1888 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn W.C Aug 10. 1888. I wrote to Morris to say that as I was unable to attend the Council Meeting on Tuesday, I wished him to ask you last evening if you were in want of money and, if so, you were to send round to me. I now inclose cheque for £4.0.0. Faulkner, before he left London, gave me the balance of 14/- which was minus the 6/- for Miss Faulkner’s subscription (weekly) which I failed to bring, making the £1 off the £5 I lent you, so now we are square? Yours &c | Ph: Webb. F: Charles Amsterdam S.L. 3182/2

1 In May 1888 Frederick Charles (1866–1934), a clerk by profession, became secretary of the Council of the Socialist League. He was often short of money, as he gave freely to the unemployed. In 1892 he was tried and sentenced to several years of hard labour for supposed involvement in an Anarchist plot; on release he became involved with the Whiteway Colony in the Cotswolds, a social experiment in practical communism.

25

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

338 • To Elizabeth Burden, 5 September 1888 Postmark LONDON W.C. SP 5 88 Address Miss Burden | 13 Upper Woburn Place | Tavistock Square. 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wednesday. 5th Sep: 1888 Dear Miss Burden Inclosed is postal order for 10/- for your schools.1 Also, I return the patterns of silks & velvets. I have pinned together, with my initials, the two (silk & velvet) wh’ I think will do best, of those you sent, for the purpose. The velvet is rather hot, but as I propose to make the embroidery cover the larger part of the ground, and that pretty closely, it will be cooled down; and as the velvet gets rubbed, it will improve in colour. Of course, before I can get the design together, I must have the exact size of the volume to a T, know what the book is about and anything else which might guide the motive of the design. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Huntington MOR 581

1 See also Vol. I, Letter 64.

339 • To Emery Walker, 4 October 1888 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thursday 4th Oct: 5.pm My dear Walker Miss Faulkner asks me to send a few words to you in grateful acknowledgment of your kindness to her brother and herself in their trouble: she thanks you heartily.1 Mr Peck brought the specialist, Dr Bastien, to see Faulkner today – report not too good.2 I wd add a word of thankfulness myself for your very ready and sympathetic help last night. Faulkner lies in much the same state you saw. Peck advised a night nurse, so I went and got one today, and she comes to Q-square at 8. o’c this evening. I hope to see you, shortly | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Cheltenham 1991.1016.332.e

26

1888–1898 1 In the evening of 3 October, CF suffered a severe paralysing stroke. He survived until February 1892, living at Queen’s Square in the care of KF, PSW visiting most evenings to sit with his old friend. See Vol. I, Letter 1, note 1. 2 Henry Charlton Bastian (1837–1915) was a physician at University College Hospital and Professor in the Principles and Practice of Medicine. Peck was presumably the Faulkners’ general practitioner.

340 • To George Price Boyce, 8 November 1888 Annotated ‘recd at Richard’s Castle’1 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thursday. 8th Novr 1888 My dear Boyce I thank you for your kind letter. Faulkner lies in much the same state he has been in for the last 5 weeks, except that there are more signs of consciousness though the progress, if any, is most terribly slow.2 I cannot say I have no hope of recovery, as, indeed, his strength in other ways hold[s] out wonderfully. Occasionally too I am very anxious about Miss Faulkner, as, at times, the strain & anxiety is almost more than her strength can stand. I hope; that is all I can say. I gave her your very kind remembrance which she was glad to have. I am sorry that the weather has got to be so severe; here it is bitterly cold with a penetrating East wind. If I tried to comfort you, it would be too much in the way of Job’s friends, and the inevitable ‘I told you so’ wd be worse than any arguments they used to the afflicted of the Devil, by God’s leave! All I can expect for you is that this wave of hard weather may blow over in a day or two, & a little memory of late summer’s sweetness take its place for a while and allow you to finish your drawing. Have not been able to get to New Place for the last month, though I learn that the folk there are pretty well. I fancy it probable you may look in on Norwood on your return:3 if you do, tell him from me I miss him as I shd a mentor, of whom I was greatly afeared, but that I’m getting most sweet & gentle as old age creeps upon me and the churchyard approaches, when no work can be done. Mrs Boyce bears up against the ‘proud Salopians’, I hope, and is not too scornful herself? My best wishes to her, and also that you will – both of you – come back robust and hearty, and ready to forgive the delinquencies of Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 259-60

1 A village with the remains of a pre-Conquest castle, about five miles from Ludlow, bordering Herefordshire and Shropshire.

27

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 2 See previous letter. 3 Thomas Norwood. See Vol. I, Letter 109, note 1.

341 • To Frederick Charles, 8 November 1888 1 Raymond Buildings | Gray’s Inn Novr 8. 1888 Dear Charles Inclosed is usual cheque for League. I am sorry I cannot give any better acct of Faulkner than that he is in much the same state, though his constitution still holds out in a wonderful way. Yours truly | Philip Webb. F: Charles. Amsterdam S.L. 3184/3

342 • To Giacomo Boni, 13 November 1888 Photostat Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn, London, W.C. 13th November 1888 My dear Giacomo Boni If you had thought that I was dead and buried, it would not have surprised me had I learned that you were reposing on the only satisfactory ending of friendship; but, as I am still above ground, I write – when sending the inclosed papers – to soften the effect of the news upon you. In the language of Othello, I have been “perplex’d in the extreme”1 by not succeeding till this moment in getting any information as to the possibility of England providing you with a portable scaffolding, such as you begged me in your letter of the 23rd of August, to get for you, conjuring me with these words “I have (and the monuments have) a great favour to ask of you”.2 From my long silence you might have muttered in your bitterness (without the reserve of Job) ‘He takes all he can get from me, but hesitates to move his little finger in return for repeated benefits.’ It would not have been unreasonable if you had thus vented your discontent! When your letter of August came, I consulted with my friend and colleague, Mr Jack, who is a Scotchman, and acquainted with iron and steel ship builders in Glasgow, on the Clyde, in the south west of Scotland, to find some person there who would go into the matter in a preliminary way, so as to let you have a diagram, rough specification, and estimate of the probable cost. This information came to me by yesterday morning’s post, and at the same time arrived your pamphlet on the Sepulchre of the Prophet, the Blessed Simeon, for which I thank you very heartily.3 Music, drawing and sculpture are universal languages, and the 28

1888–1898

photographs please me greatly. The Italian language is musical, but instinct alone will not allow me to understand its meaning, and, to my sorrow, I can only make out a phrase here and there; the rest must wait till I get some charitable soul to enlighten me upon the matter. Having waited so long for the Glasgow people to send me the diagram and specification for the steel and iron scaffolding, I was afraid they were working it out in too great detail, so that if you found it would not answer your purpose, their labour would be thrown away, and they might be discontented. As it is, I think they send enough information for you, with your insight and experience, to be able to judge of the practicability of the scheme, and the reasonableness of the weight, and the cost. This last seems to me to be rather small, but he makes no mention of supplying a separate ladder, or ladders; but, if you found the thing was in the right way to meet your wishes, a more detailed plan would have to be made shewing the construction, with the junctions at the several stages &c. You see, they make the base on plan, a parallelogram of two squares. The weight (9 tons) does not appear to be heavy for so high a construction. An English Ton equals in weight 2240 English pounds: and 2.266 English pounds equal 1 kilogramme. The cost (£130) – if you take the pound at 25 lire, would be 3250 lire. The “My dear George” of Mr Crawford, the writer of the specification-letter, is my colleague Mr George Jack, who works with me kindly, and puts up with all my humours, and the peculiarities of a rather old man! Mr Jack rejoiced in having a copy of your Vicenza photographs. And now my dear Giacomo, if you have not forgotten all about this scaffolding matter, write and tell me what you think of it, and also – if you, with your taxing duties, can find time to tell me of yourself and your “ways and your manners” – I shall be greatly pleased. I half expected to see you in England about the end of September, but thought you had taken my advice, and put off the journey till fine weather and long days made of England a more pleasant prospect to you. Since my illness, I find that I am much older and weaker than before it, and such work as I can do hangs more heavily on my hands. Never mind, I shall probably last longer than I shall be of any use. I cannot tell you how pleased we all are here at your having been made a directing head for securing to the Italian ancient Buildings a longer life than they would have had without your insight and force of character being set to watch and guard them.4 From the stories I have told about you, you are well known and respected by all my best friends. Peace be with you. Yours faithfully | Philip Webb. Inclosed are specification, & tracing of tower. Courtauld 24a-d

1 ‘Then must you speak / Of one that lov’d not wisely, but too well; / Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought, / Perplexed in the extreme’. Othello, V,ii,343–6.

29

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 2 GBO had sought advice on the manufacture of a portable scaffold to be used for site inspections. ‘If the model is suitable I could order several ones to be use[d] for repairs which do not permit a delay. The scaffolding needs to be 100 feet high . . . easy to compose, and be taken into pieces, and carried by railway or on the back of mules.’ GBO to PSW, 23 August 1888, Courtauld 23c. 3 The Venetian church of San Simeone Grande contains a marble effigy of Simeon the Prophet, who in St Luke 2:25–32 is ‘the “just man” who received in his arms the Infant Christ when He was presented at the Temple’, and whose words form the text known as the ‘song of Simeon’, the Nunc Dimittis canticle of the Latin liturgy and part of the Anglican service of evensong. See Charles Seymour, ‘The Tomb of Saint Simeon the Prophet, in San Simeone Grande, Venice’, Gesta, XV (1976), p. 193. 4 See above, Letter 328, note 6.

343 • To George Price Boyce, 28 December 1888 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 28th Decr 1888 My dear Boyce Yesterday being no antiscrape day I was at 35 Q. Square as usual from 6 to 10.30: and our patient does not advance at all quickly; still, he is stronger, but speech lingering it is hard to make him as comfortable as is to be wished. His sister bears up wonderfully – perhaps because her time is so fully occupied in fending for her brother, that she has less time to look into the abysses before and behind. At her more vacant time in the evening I do what I can to distract her thoughts, and your photographs have been helpful to that end. If the weather is fairly dry tomorrow afternoon I would try and bring these interesting pictures back to West House, and if I could come, it wd be about 4-oc. I know more of the Welwyn folk from their sending up winter flowers for Queen Square than from anything else, as I have only been there once these 3 months. I learn from Signor Boni, that he is hard at work inspecting all the ancient monuments of Italy, and a new title has been given to him of “Inspector of the antiquities and excavations”. He – when he wrote – was then setting out to visit 8 or 10 different places. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 261-2

344 • To Elizabeth Burden, 4 January 1889 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 4th Jan: 1889 Dear Miss Burden I am very sorry to disappoint you about the design for the book cover.1 I was hindered much by my illness, and now I have other things on hand which made it impossible for me to put them aside or do any other work than that just in front of me, from day to day. 30

1888–1898

I am also disappointed at being obliged to say that I shall be unable to continue my subscription to your school, at all events for the present. Just now I have other calls upon me which make it impossible for me to continue some subscriptions to which I had become accustomed. Believe me | Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Miss Burden. Huntington MOR 582

1 See above, Letter 336.

345 • To George Price Boyce, 11 January 1889 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday. 11th Jan: 1889 My dear Boyce I thought I might see you last evening at antiscrape & thank you for your good letter. Fifty years hence, I hope work will be done in building wh’ will be worth remembering the sight of. In these days of the night of architecture there is nothing to consider, when a modern building goes by fire or stupidity, than how to build less badly.1 My time is nearly gone, but “I shall try”, as the Frenchman said when he galloped after the fox to personally catch it! Wyndham feels the loss much, and in a way that wd be surprising, except that I had perceived a basis in him of genuine feeling. He feels his loss as one personal to himself, having got, in a way, increasingly to like his surroundings; so that I sincerely feel for him. In a month of two he will be able to look around calmly and make out what will best be done to meet this stroke of fate. He lays no blame on anyone, indeed he has, as yet, not found any reason to do so – and the cause seems to be a perfect mystery. I shall know more when I have been there, wh’ will be in next week:2 my relief will be in doing all I can for him and his wife. They seem not to have lost their presence of mind. With sincere thanks to Mrs Boyce for her sympathy joined to yours | I am yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 263-4

1 A major fire engulfed Clouds during the night of 6 January 1889, ‘a nameless maid had left a lighted candle in a cupboard. . . . [T]he interior was all but completely gutted. Subsequently the surviving

31

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II woodwork had to be cleared out, joists and all, as rot set in.’ Dakers, pp. 131–2. This letter is PSW’s earliest recorded reaction to the news, and is remarkably sanguine. As WM noted, after seeing PSW on 9 January, he ‘made light of it as he would be likely to do. It seems it will be rebuilt, which is a good thing; but there is a certain feeling of weariness in the proceeding, isn’t there, dear? Webb says that some of the walls may be all right, especially as they are mostly built of sandstone, not limestone: the lower rooms, or some of them, were not burnt. The walls were 3 ft thick.’ WM to JEM, 10 January 1899, CLWM, III. GWJ recalled that after The Sun Insurance Company paid £27,000 for the rebuilding (1891–3), PSW’s comment was that ‘They have paid up like their namesake the great luminary.’ Lethaby, p. 99. For a later legend relating to the fire, see Vol. IV, Letter 953, note 9. 2 PSW went to assess the damage on 15 January.

346 • To Giacomo Boni, 12 March 1889 Draft R.B. Gray’s Inn Monday 12th Mar: 1889 My dear Giacomo Boni I break through a too long silence to ask you a question which was put to me by the Committee of our English society for the Protection of Ancient buildings of wh you are an honorary member . Annually, our Society gets some able man, either within or outside the Socy, to write a paper and read it at our yearly meeting of members and their friends. This, whenever possible, we print in our annual report, as you will have noticed. Last year we were disappointed, for though an able good paper by a Dr Jessop was read at our meeting, the Editor of the “Nineteenth Century” Review refused to allow us to publish it as it was to after it had appeared in his review)1 after it was delivered before us by the author. unless we waited a year, which wd not have served the purpose of the Socy. We want “fresh blood” in these papers, and our Com: asked me to put it to you, whether – if you come to England in this summer – you could prepare and read before us some paper, historical, philosophical, or practical, in harmony with the purpose we all have for sustaining of doing our utmost to sustain those ancient monuments in all parts of the world the loss destruction of which – through ruin, & ignorant ignorance, or wanton destruction carelessness would be such a grievous loss to the human race? I need scarcely say how glad we should be to see you here, where your name, even to those who do not personally know you, has become familiar as that of one who has great knowledge of ancient art to back up his enthusiasmtic for it admiration & love of it. Our annual meeting is generally held in either in June or July, and if you found that you could come to England in either one of those months, we could arrange our time of meeting to suit your convenience. It seems to me that it would be good for the two countries that an Italian architect should speak in London, in the English tongue, of the ancient art of either or both countries, touching, it might be, upon the varieties of the same art which you passed on your journey between Rome and London? Of course, I do not know what your ministry might have to say against to such a proposition, but I cannot but think that they might think see that it would do good rather than harm. 32

1888–1898

Will you kindly let me know if this project is too wild a dream on our part, or, that you will be able, and willing, to come over and help us? 2 Yours always sincerely | Ph: W: Courtauld 26a-26b

1 Augustus Jessop, ‘Who Owns the Churches?’, The Nineteenth Century, XXIV (August 1888), pp. 145–60. 2 GBO responded enthusiastically, keen to share his experiences with leading SPAB activists ‘as a private person, interested in such things’, as ‘the result of an exchange of views might possibly be one of mutual help’. GBO to PSW, 15 March 1889, Courtauld 27b.

347 • To Kate Faulkner, 3 May 1889 Postmark OXFORD MY 3 89 Address Miss Faulkner | 35 Queen Square | Bloomsbury | London. W:C: The Kings Arms. | Holywell St Oxford Friday. 3rd May. 1889. 6.45 p.m. I came here all right, and have been in Charles’ rooms almost all day: but have done little beyond making a sufficiently careful inventory of the furniture, and giving orders for some boxes to be prepared (or found) and brought to the college tomorrow morning. The Master has been quite civil in his way,1 and Dendy very polite and good natured, & willing to forward matters.2 The Fellow who is to have the room does not come up till towards the end of the term. Wentworth3 says that he is a decent sort of person, and Wentworth seemed to think that Mr Franks4 had no furniture of his own at present, & would be rather glad to use that now in the rooms – so I have a mind to write to him and ask him about it. It wd be much better than housing the furniture, at all events for the present. I have also seen Halford,5 been home with him to see his books, and I think there cannot be a doubt that the debt is genuine and has never been paid even in part. I shall see about it tomorrow. I am going to dine here, and going back to the College afterwards. Yours | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 The historian, James Franck Bright (1832–1920), succeeded George Granville Bradley as Master of University College in 1881. 2 Arthur Dendy, Fellow of University College, as well as its Domestic Bursar and Dean. 3 Not identified. 4 William Temple Franks, appointed Fellow in Civil Law at University College in 1888. 5 Not identified.

33

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

348 • To Giacomo Boni, 3 June 1889 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Monday. 3rd June 1889 My dear Giacomo Boni These illnesses of good and true men (& women also) are always startling. I can but hope that you are recovering, and the more so that you have (I believe!) not tried your constitution by anything more mischievous than – perhaps – too continuous and exacting work, though this is dangerous enough.1 All I can say is (here comes the paternal “advice”) if this be true, be wiser in future. Not knowing where you are at the present time, I have to put on the envelope of this letter our English expression “to be forwarded”, but neither my own moderately small amount of Italian – which is even quickly getting less – nor that of my friends can put it in a less comical way than “Prego di fare seguire”, which will make your ministerial clerks laugh, no doubt: never mind that if it gets this letter sent on to you. The time has now come when the Society for the Protection of buildings, in England, (nick named “The antiscrape”) must arrange for its annual meeting, but we are most anxious that you shd be able to help us with a word, shewing that Italy is not behind in seeing the inestimable value of builded history and art. Now, if your health is not recovered, or your delayed work is now too pressing, I must beg you not to hesitate to say that you cannot come to England this year? If things are shd be easier for you next year, you might be able to venture over sea to this den of soot and “money-grubbing”, when we will wash ourselves as clean as circumstances will allow, and welcome you in the best way our surly tempers will permit. Please write me word as soon as you can. We propose that the meeting of our Society should be either in the last week of this month of June, or in the first week of July. Perhaps you may be able to add in your letter, where you have been disposing yourself in the mountains? You said on your postcard, your native places: one, I suppose in the Titian country North or North West of Venice? and the other somewhere on Venetian ground? I await this answer from you to learn how you are, as I may have exaggerated the effect of malaria fever. It would be a pleasure to me if you could say that you are well again, and that the doctors do not shake their heads over the future prospect of permanent good health for you.2 My old friend3 still lies in a very bad way, and it is, I fancy, only a question of time for him to quit us and the world together. Yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 29a-c

34

1888–1898 1 In a postcard dated 16 April, GBO reported that he was slowly recovering from ‘a sudden and terrific attack of malaria fever’ (Courtauld 28), but feared whether coming to England in June for the SPAB annual meeting would now be possible. 2 Writing again on 9 June, now in better health, GBO regretted that the pressures of recent work meant missing the SPAB meeting. 3 CF.

349 • To William Morris, 26 June 1889 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wednesday. 26th June 1889 My dear Fellow Your letter was interesting. Say 10/- for ordinary field labour. Man & wife & – say – 4 children, and say rent 1s/6d – leaving 8s/6 for 7 days food, clothes, drink, school fees &c. To make up, if ever so little, an occasional shilling fm children’s labour! For amusement, drinking, whoring, and poaching or, putting in respectable form for the upper crust, Epsom, claret, “Skittles”,1 and the battue!2 But this last class, not on 10/- a week but 10£ a day. Your lecture for Antiscrape will be sure to do:3 but I think if you had time you should extend your “notes” on important points, filling up the gaps a la Spurgeon.4 You see, there will be a reporter,5 but he may make a hash of the principle you express, & you will have to write it after all. Merely a word fm the fool to the wise. Kate has been very poorly for the last week – overdone, no doubt. Yesterday morning, fainting &c. “When are we going to get our barrrn” controversy settled to both our satisfactions? I believe Coxwell barn to be the finest in England, not because you insist upon it, but from my not having seen it.6 W M M W M & W not WM, you be damned, by & by you’ll be saying that Westminsters [sic] is the most lovely building in the world. There, I’ve done. Yrs Philip Webb. The Council went fairly well on Monday. Bullock7 & the other one are to try & audit the accts V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f 16

1 ‘Skittles’ was Catherine Walters (1839–1920), the most celebrated society courtesan of the later Victorian period, and the first of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s succession of lovers. See Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion. The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), ch 2. 2 Beating woodland and undergrowth to flush out game.

35

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 3 As GBO was unable to lecture at the Annual Meeting of the SPAB on 3 July, at the Old Hall, Barnard’s Inn, in Holborn, WM stepped in at short notice. ‘I must explain to you that I am put, almost at the last moment, to make a few disconnected remarks in the place of a gentleman whom we should have much liked to see – Mr. Boni, who now holds a position under the Italian Government which enables him to be of great service to us in stopping the unfortunate flow of restorations in that country. He could have given to us most interesting and encouraging information as to what is now going on in Italy.’ SPAB Annual Report, 1889, p. 62. 4 The Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–92), was celebrated for his delivery of extempore sermons to large numbers, but he also had discriminating admirers, including JR and Gladstone. From 1861, his base was the newly-constructed Metropolitan Tabernacle at Elephant and Castle. 5 Secretary. 6 The Great Coxwell tithe barn, near Faringdon, in the Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire, is a thirteenth-century survival of the monastic grange which supported the economic well-bring of St Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire. WM enjoyed taking his Kelmscott Manor visitors to see it, one such being SCC on 10 August 1892: ‘[T]he superb tithe barn quite carried [Morris] away, he declared that it was the finest piece of architecture in England, and wanted to build a house like it. He had not seen it when he wrote the House of the Wolfungs’ CD. 7 Samuel Bullock, a Fabian and active member of the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League, was an engineer by profession.

350 • To Giacomo Boni, 30 June 1889 Photostat 1 Raymond Buildings. Gray’s Inn London W.C. June – the last day of the beautiful – 1889 My dear Giacomo Boni. See, I’ve taken a larger piece of paper, it being Sunday! There is something stirring in looking forward to see again a friend so luckily found. I turn it over in my mind, & say, inwardly, ‘what will he have risen or descended to’? patience, I shall see; and patience is supposed to be well rewarded. If you do come, you will find me here, and my united arms as long as my body.1 I am not likely to be going anywhere away from home except for a day, now & again, to look at my work in the country now going on. You will find my room here a pleasant place, with its windows governing a well-treed garden of 7 acres. The gods, in honour (no doubt) of my having remained a single worshipper, have permitted this joy, of looking on to green leaves instead of sooty brick walls. I tremble to think of your disgust when seeing this monstrous accumulation of dingy houses and paper strewn streets – pah! Paris too, the “cynosure of neighbouring eyes”,2 has become common, and brutal, under the fostering of that hell babe, Napoleon the Little!3 If you really do come to England, and have not made any arrangements for lodging, I would get you a bedroom in an hotel hard by, and you would use my room to sit in and calm your mind in the day time? I am much pleased with the photog: of the delightful page of XII. c. manuscript, with its monitory Abbot, and the house with its door & staircase, lower loggia, 36

1888–1898

and two upper loggias filled with Kings & Queens. Also, the little memorandum of Caprarola. Capra would stand for the goats? but what is rola? This villa interested me much when I was at Florence, as Carlo Murray lent me a book there, giving well drawn diagrams, plans, sections, and elevations of this peculiar work of Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola.4 I wanted to get the book, but could not find a copy at the time. I have the 3 vols: of “Rome Moderne, by Paul Letarouilly”, in which are shewn many works by Vignola.5 This book I had studied for some 40 years, and I was somewhat disappointed when I was at Rome in seeing the actual buildings. The history attached to these vain-glorious buildings, even when not iniquitous, is so poor as compared with other and less presumptuous times. Even the great Palazzo Farnese is dull and spiritless, in spite of the Great M: Angelo, who tried (vainly) to put life into Antonio Sangallo’s ponderous effort.6 Also, one remembered how the Roman ruins were stripped of their brick work and Travertine stone for these scandalous palaces! Vignola had to do also, with the villa of Papa Giulio7 – This I went to see. But the villa which pleased me most was that called Villa madama on Tevere side, about 3 miles fm Rome – some of the stucco ornamentation being really good.8 If I were younger, I think I shd try to get some Italian workmen into England to teach us to make plaster again, as we have quite lost the art now, whereas, in the 16th & 17th centuries, we did it well. There is a small palace in the Borgo Nuovo which I rather liked, this is by Baldassarre Peruzzi. It has shops on the ground line.9 But the smaller Palace of Venice, by Baccio Pontelli, is the most pleasant to look at of these great houses in Rome.10 Almost all our large Club houses in London are poor imitations of these Roman buildings. Your goats are quite monumental, as if the villa and the beasts were all made of stone! The latter with their noses all to the wind. I thank you for these photographs. I could not give your kind message to my sick friend, as he lies heavily stricken with paralysis, having neither speech himself, nor understanding that of others. He makes out what we mean from “nods and becks and wreathed smiles”11 – still I gave your message to his good sister, who watches her brother hour by hour. This good lady is always pleased when I tell her of your doings in the way of saving the antiquities of Italy. I gave her a set of your photog: of Vicenza and always shew her those you send to me from time to time. Now for your “poor English”. Tell me what kind of reading you would like and I will find you a book. Can you enjoy works of imagination depending to some extent on fact? If so, there is a book, written by an East country Englishman – who only died a few days years ago – which is always a pleasure to me, take it in hand when I may.12 He was a great traveller, and spoke many languages: he was over 6 feet in height and fearless; had learned the art of self defence, “boxing” to wit, and yet was gentle as a lamb. He also knew the language of the Gypsys, [sic] and could talk to them, whether he met them in England or Spain, or wherever he came upon that nomadic race. This author even learned to read & speak Welsh, which is a very hard one to master unless it be got in childhood. If you like this description of a writer – little known except to the curious – I will get you one of his books, 37

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

in which the English speech is simple and good. All our best literature is very simple and direct, having no part in those delicate shades of meaning which give all the impressions but the one which cannot be mistaken. Here I am at the end of this large sheet, and I must ask your pardon for such a tiresome piece of gossip. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 32a-d

1 ‘Supposing that I were to come to England in September, for a day or two, only to see you (you cannot realize how much I long to see you!) – Where shall I find you?’ GBO to PSW, 22 June 1889, Courtauld 31b. The visit lasted about a fortnight, during which PSW went out of his way to make his friend’s stay a fruitful one. 2 ‘Meadows trim, with Daisies pied, / Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide. / Towers and Battlements it sees / Boosom’d high in tufted Trees, / Where perhaps some beauty lies, / The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.’ John Milton, L’Allegro (1631), 75–80. 3 As Emperor Napoleon III, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (1808–73) instigated the reconfiguration of Paris under the direction of Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809–91), the Prefect of the Seine Department, thereby creating the modern city. As an exercise in town planning it was visionary, but also highly destructive of the ancient city fabric. 4 The Villa Farnese at Caprarola, in the region of Lazio, north-west of Rome, is the work of the Italian architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (1507–73), its severity indicative of his Mannerist style. 5 Paul Marie Letarouilly, Édifices de Rome moderne, 3 vols (Paris, 1840–50). 6 Not to be confused with the Villa Farnese in Caprarola (see note 4), the Palazzo Farnese in Rome (now the French embassy) expanded an earlier design when in 1534 Alessandro Farnese (1468–1549) was created Pope Paul III. Michelangelo completed work begun by the younger Antonio da Sangallo (1484–1546), and there were later modifications by Vignola. 7 Vignola built the Villa Giulia (1551–3) in Rome for Pope Julius III (1487–1555). 8 The initial design for the Villa Madama was by Raphael, and after his death building was overseen by Sangallo. The commission came from Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII (1478–1534), cousin of Pope Leo X (1475–1521). PSW’s admiration is probably for the stucco bas-reliefs of Giovanni da Udine (1487–1564), which were closely influenced by the discoveries of parts of the Domus Aurea, a villa built for the Emperor Nero on the Palatine Hill. 9 Presumably the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, a late work of the Sienese architect Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481–1536) built for the long-established Massimo family. 10 The Palazzo della Rovere, or Palazzo dei Penitenzieri (c. 1480–90) was probably the work of Baccio Pontelli (c. 1450–1492), and is closely modelled on the existing Roman Palazzo Venezia. It was commissioned by Cardinal Domenico della Rovere (1442–1501). 11 ‘Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee / Jest and youthful Jollity, / Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, / Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles’. Milton, L’Allegro, 25–8. 12 George Henry Borrow (1803–81), born in East Dereham, Norfolk, author of novels and travelogues, including The Bible in Spain (1843), Lavengro (1851), The Romany Rye (1857) and Wild Wales (1862). His writing blends reality with vividly imagined characters and incidents, offering an original but not a widely-appreciated voice. By his death his reputation was in decline. PSW’s annotated copies of Lavengro and The Romany Rye (London: John Murray, 3rd edition, 1872) are in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 93.

38

1888–1898

351 • To Giacomo Boni, 26 August 1889 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Monday 26th Aug: 1889 My dear Giacomo Boni I rejoiced over you post card received this morning. The first week in September is strongly impressed on my mind. You will tell the cabman at the station to drive you to – No 1 Raymond Buildings | Gray’s Inn | Theobald’s Road. I will look out for a decent lodging for you. My “house” as you call it, is merely a “set of chambers”, but I will warn my housekeeper, Mrs Long, who lives in the basement of the house, that she is to let you into my rooms whenever you may come, and when once you are there you can do whatever you have a mind to do in them. In case of hunger, or thirst, ask Mrs Long to get what you may want. This is supposing that I may be out when you come, and the outer door closed. If so, go down stairs (my rooms are on the 2nd floor) to the very bottom of the house, and call out Mrs LONG with a good shout, and she, or her maid, will attend upon your cries. If you should have time, when you land from the steamer at Dover, or Folkestone, or whichever port you come to, will you send me a telegram (from the Railway station) to say that Boni leaves the port by such & such a train for London. You will find the cabman’s fare from the station to this place is 1 shilling – by law – or 1s/6d by courtesy. My rooms will be open to your use as long as you may stay in London, and I shall be “swept and garnished” ready to receive you. Adieu till then | yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I shall not be gone to bed before 12.30 in the night. Courtauld 34a-c

352 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 11 September 1889 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. Wednesday 11th Sepr 1889 My dear Murray It has been difficult to fit things in for Boni. Could you meet him at the National Gallery at 10.oc tomorrow, Tuesday, and help him to see the pictures there?

39

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Boni will have to be at the Paddington station at 2.15 – on his way to Kelmscott, and he must not miss his train, as he is to be met at Lechlade station &c. Perhaps you would kindly take Boni – when he’s weary of the pictures – to the Solferino wh’ is hard by, and refresh him & yourself there.1 Then, if you would take him in a cab and see him off by the 2.15 train at Paddington I should be at ease as to his whereabouts. Please to look to me for all expenses incurred by you out of your good natured help to me. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 51

1 Routledge’s Popular Guide to London and its Suburbs (London: Routledge, Warne, c. 1873) described the Solferino, in Rupert Street, Haymarket (a short walk from the National Gallery) as an establishment where one could be confident of getting ‘a good dinner at a moderate price’.

353 • To Giacomo Boni, 16 September 1889 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Monday morning 16 Sepr 1889 My dear Boni I had your “Tamig” letter this morning, which set my anxieties for you at rest.1 Murray, no doubt, put your feet on the lines on which they should go, but I was afraid that – possibly – you might have found yourself at Edinburgh on Thursday night instead of Kelmscott. However, you seem to have 9 lives, like Middleton & the cat, with the power of the latter of alighting on your feet! Whether the grass green meadows and waving woods of English country life will make some amends in your heart for the infernal London whitewash, and the roar of its commercial hurry after gold, I cannot say, but must hope for the best. In Middleton’s kind hands you will have your feet planted on fresh rundles of the ladder of learning, and wisdom poured into your ears in a way which will give an impression of receiving a boon rather than giving one.2 Tell the unbeliever Middleton that I should have been at Cambridge with you to have added another and a longer pair of ears to the flow from his lips, if it had been possible for me to have listened to his hospitable wiles, for I have not yet forgotten the kind help I had from him in Via del Babuino in 1885 – and when the ferocious dogs of the Campagna were polite to me under the penetrating command of his eyes. If you saw a little & wonderstruck boy in Oxford trotting along the pavements of the streets there, it might have been the ghost of my youth, for I was born in that seat of learning, but not in its head, and Middleton – in himself – will explain the difference! 40

1888–1898

All luck & happiness be with you while you stray in these wild & barbarous regions of the North. Let me know what you are thinking to do for the rest of your time in England. Postcard, or any fragment of letter will do to tell me of what to expect. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 36a-d

1 Writing from Kelmscott Manor, GBO reported that ‘I caught 4 little ones and Morris 8 big ones. (We just came from fishing in the Tamig.) What a clean, greenish, weedy, reedy, tiny little stream it is! . . . And the old house! O God, give me a house like this when I am old and unfit for nomadic life.’ WM talked of Venice, his face ‘radiant’, and on being told that PSW had tried to teach GBO some slang, ‘Morris explained that you did so in order to enable me to understand him.’ GBO to PSW, 14 September 1889, Courtauld 35a-c. ‘Tamig’ was perhaps some shared joke about GBO’s pronunciation of ‘Thames’. 2 John Henry Middleton was a fellow guest at Kelmscott Manor, and then accompanied GBO to King’s College, Cambridge.

354 • To Giacomo Boni, 29 September 1889 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 29th Sepr 1889 My dear Boni I have given you a week for enjoying the bright city of Paris – as I felt sure you would not be able to tear yourself away before the end of a week.1 Now that you have left us, I find hundreds of things which I failed to say while you were here, and when I got your post-card from Paris I felt the questions & answers would never be forthcoming. Never mind, some few things were said & done which were pleasant to me at all events, and have entered into the bone, sinew, and spirit of the life, making one different to what one was before. I do not mean to infer that my head is recovered with natural thatch, but some vacancy inside of it is filled with new ideas. These strangers have been naturalised there, and there are no bickerings between the old and new inhabitants. I much miss the delightfully companionable breakfast times, when such wits as one had flowed quicker, & were charged with more light than later in the day, when weariness was creeping upon one. The only real drawback to my content with your visit, was, that my attendance in the evenings had to be given to my old friend, who lies locked in the dungeon of paralysis. I could not let him know that my Italian comrade was within hail. You are right, nothing but honest work could put you straight with yourself again after the whirl of things and I am looking for your next Roman letter when you will tell me that your useful strife with human stupidity is active again. 41

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

My good old friend Miss Faulkner has gently reproached me that I did not allow her to see the back of the your head even, of the man she has heard me so often tell of. Truth to say, I thought that a visit from you to the sad house might not be quite free & comforting, therefore I refrained, and she will have to be satisfied with another look at the photographs! When guiding – as far as may be – the machine of life, one is not quite sure if it would not have gone better if it had been allowed to manage itself, but Miss Faulkner did not venture to hint anything when there was a chance of following another lead. I make no excuse, for fear it should read like an accusation of my very small self, which does not need to look any smaller. Be that as it may be, surely I might have got from you an address, to which place I might have sent any letters to you in Paris. There was time enough to think of such things on the platform at Victoria station, surely? However, I send you two missives to you, a postcard & a letter, though they will now – most likely – be of little use. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I fancy there is a flavour of Podsnap in what is written above?2 Courtauld 41a-d

1 ‘Ten days passed since I left you, and I crossed the Channel and I spent a few days in the Louvre, at S. Denis and in the palace of Cluny, and I came all the way back to Rome.’ GBO to PSW, 2 October 1889, Courtauld 42a. 2 In Our Mutual Friend (1864–5), Dickens creates in the pompous middle-class society man, Mr Podsnap, and by extension ‘Podsnappery’, a critique on complacency and pretension. GBO had told WM that PSW ‘played Podsnapp (?) to me in London’. GBO to PSW, 14 September 1889, Courtauld 35b.

355 • To Giacomo Boni, 6 October 1889 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 6th Octr 1889 “Gratitude”! What is gratitude, my fine Giacomo Boni? The dictionaries say the word comes from the Latin word “gratus” – pleasing: that must be the right sense of it. One is pleased with one’s neighbour’s piping or dancing to us. Any other “gratitude” than this seems to me to be impertinent – eh? I am glad you have got back to your nest and can now twitter to me from under your own eaves – and tell me from time to time how many fat flies have come to your maw. In your letter, which I had yesterday morning, you tell me of one delightful mouthful you have just swallowed – “John Ball”, to wit!1 – Well, that is as sweet a morsel as has come out of the womb of things these 50 years. Perhaps,

42

1888–1898

when 50 years more are gone, it may be read by some curious, out of the way folk; at present it has but very few readers and, so far as I know, except yourself, and a limited few others, is not understood or valued in the smallest degree. How comforting it is to think one’s-self one of the elect! I take round to Miss Faulkner this morning the pleasant photograph of the Pieve di Castelritaldi.2 This good lady still rather reproaches me for not letting her have a glimpse of your outer man – something of the inner she knows from what I take liberty to shew her of your letters. She agrees with me, that an Englishman, with ever so long a telescope would could not have written so clear-witted a letter, and to the point, as this your last to me. We socialists cannot do without the international looking-glass? Your praise of “advice” rather startled me: how can one advise another, without making food for laughter – except one gives it in the form of, “observe this, myself, and take warning” – eh? Even Podsnap himself must have had a tingling in his toe – at times – as he stretched himself down in bed. No suicide would shorten his life only from the cruelties of the world in general to him; the last straw, sinking the balance of his resolution, comes from the reflection of himself. Ah bah – I’m too serious. What a world of earth’s story is in that simple entrance front of the little Umbrian church, all turned to kin-ship by the squatting figures of the happy children and the worn face of the long man leaning against the door jamb. So graceful is the architecture that, without the grinning grotesques in the heads of the niches, one would have thought the art of the elevation was of later date, though the carving of the second rung of the door arch has the reflection of the ruder North in it – touched with southern sweetness.3 I smiled when thinking that possibly the minister of war would be inexorable, and you would have to shoulder your rifle again for a time, and carry your thoughts and other baggage under word of command.4 If things were in a more healthy way, that is the only reasonable principle of soldiering – that everyone should take his share of the hardship & danger of guarding the hearth – but, to be told off from one’s work, or play, or enchanting study to secure to the usurer his pound of flesh,5 is only to be borne till the time comes when it shall no more be so. However, if you must turn out you will make some hay of the cut grass of experience, and have a larger look-out in the future. What I saw of your soldiers made me think that perhaps they were not so excruciatingly brutal as to make living amongst them for a while unbearable? There are some of my Socialist comrades here, of the poorest labouring population, who are not such bad companions as the coarseness of there [sic] lives might lead one to suspect. I’ve met plenty of unspeakable brutes in the well to do classes in England, to whom no reasonably human word comes home. I have to pick you out some few English photographs, characteristic of the country, as soon as I can find time in the daylight, and among them shall be one of “John Ball’s” companion in the church.6 Also, I am going to consider what information I can get for your Venetian friend Cadel.7 If these things do not get to

43

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

you quickly, you will know that I have my hands full: indeed, just now, they are so, and I am a trifle slow in making my way amid the press. When I saw Morris, I thought he looked really pleased when I told him that I thought you enjoyed your time at the little house on the upper Thames. Middleton says that both you and he were happy there. On Thursday, when I duly attended “Antiscrape”, there were several letters telling of dreadful slaughter of the innocents of country churches. In one place the parson was ill, and the builder having to decide for himself, cleaned the remains of paintings off one wall there & then. In another, the parson had almost rebuilt the church under his own direction, and was proceeding to chizzle [sic] down the carved Norman font to make it match the renovated church – patience, we may save a remnant. There, there, I leave off, so that you may not break your jaws with yawning. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I suppose you had the postcard & letter I forwarded to the ministry? Write when you have time, and a mind for so doing. Courtauld 43a-d

1 WM wrote his historical romance A Dream of John Ball as a serial in The Commonweal (November 1886 to January 1887), its first book publication coming in the following year (London: Reeves & Turner, 1888). The narrator dreams that he is in Kent at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. PSW’s presentation copy from WM is in the Emery Walker Library. It carries two inscriptions: ‘Philip Webb / from / William Morris / April 3rd 1888’ and ‘to S.C.C., in memory of Philip Webb, from Emery Walker 1915’. See CAGM, p. 144. 2 GBO sent a photograph of the small twelfth-century Umbrian chiesa pieve (parish church) of San Gregorio in Castel Ritaldi, Perugia. There were plans to restore an original window. 3 The entrance doorway of San Gregorio is surmounted by two niches which are topped with grotesque masks. 4 From 1865, all Italian men were eligible for military service, requiring occasional short periods of training. GBO had been ‘summoned to serve again in the army for a few days. My Minister has however written to the Min. of War to let me alone, and I hope he will’. GBO to PSW, 2 October 1889, Courtauld 42c-d. 5 In The Merchant of Venice, the money-lender Shylock demands from Antonio, who defaults on a loan, the pound of his own flesh offered as surety. 6 As the first-person narrator of A Dream of John Ball, WM is John Ball’s companion in their long concluding conversation in a Kentish church (chapters 9–12). GBO had asked for a photograph of WM. ‘I want my friends to see what he looks like, so different from the “false sheep-skins” he hates.’ 42d. ‘These and other thoughts cross my mind, and father Thames, and John Ball himself who goes on dreaming with me and repeating what he said in the church.’ 42c. 7 GBO had served his apprenticeship at the studio of the Venetian engineer and restorer, Antonio Cadel. See Giuliana Peri, The Influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on Fin de Siècle Italy (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2007), p. 22.

44

1888–1898

356 • To George and Caroline Boyce, 24 October 1889 Annotated ‘recd at Etampes’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thursday 24th Octr 1889 My dear G. P. B. & A. A.1 Les “Fleurs”! The strange dynamite-looking boxes arrived all safely, and I carried them off to Queen Square, to Miss Faulkner’s great delight, and, the more so, that they revived in a wonderful manner after their (the flowers) long journey. Flowers in a house of watching are a heaven-sent boon, and your pretty thought supplemented with a fresh variety those from New Place. Miss Faulkner impressively asked me to thank Mrs Boyce and yourself for the pleasure you have given to her. I am very busy over some fidgetting [sic] but useful (in a “pot-boiling” way) works, which keep coming to hand for me to do from time to time,2 to keep his barbed-tail majesty from to[o] persistently thrusting an archl model of a workhouse under my nose. And a certain placid content – born of the wisdom of years – helps me to smile over words wh’ are more troublesome than beautiful – hence this very short letter, wh’, perhaps otherwise, would have been filled up with grandmotherly objurgations to yourself as to work more beautiful than fidgetting! How wise the prayer, for more work for idle hands to do!3 Gray’s Inn is bestrewn with yellow leaves, and the heavy autumn rains are upon us, but we look forward to . . . to . . . tomorrow, and are as cheerful as may be. I am afraid Mrs Boyce’s admirable turn for housekeeping is rather in abeyance under Madame Soubeiran’s autocratic direction,4 and the charcoal stove simmering pots can only be looked into with wordless admiration. Adieu, with many good wishes | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 265-6

1 GPB’s wife was Augustine Aimée Caroline Soubeiran. 2 A number of smaller projects engaged PSW’s attention in 1889, including work for the dental surgeon Charles Tomes in Cavendish Square, and for Constantine Alexander Ionides, at Second Avenue in Hove (see Kirk for details, p. 301). 3 The origin of the familiar ‘the Devil finds work for idle hands to do’ is probably via St Jerome, filtered through Geoffrey Chaucer – ‘Therfore seith Seint Jerome: “Dooth somme goode dedes that the devel, which is oure enemy, ne fynde yow nat unocupied’ (‘Tale of Melibee’, Canterbury Tales) – and,

45

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II more recently, Isaac Watts. ‘In Works of Labour or of Skill I would be busy too: / For Satan finds some mischief still for idle Hands to do’ (Divine Songs, 1715). 4 Madame Soubeiran was GPB’s mother-in-law.

357 • To Giacomo Boni, 27 October 1889 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 27th Octr 1889 My dear Boni If “Fortuna” had bandaged you1 all the while you were in England, perhaps you would have thought it a fairer place? Each man is more or less tied to the associations of the place he was born & bred in, just as he is more of kin in mind to some persons than to others: and the reason, I suppose, is that he knows more about them, and is less frightened. We are almost always afeared, or in doubt, of what we don’t know or understand. If you could have seen more of England generally, you would have found plenty to love, because it bore on its face the lines of grave natural beauty, and few of the scars of civilisation – so called. It was in this frame of mind that I went to gather a few photographs for you, (which I send with many British blessings to Italy) not giving you much of the earth of England certainly , though some of its beauty clings to the old buildings represented by the sun. For example, see the Daisies in the foreground of No 19, to whose race the 13th cent: buildings are as young children to old men. Necessarily, in order to give you the pure, unadulterated mediæval work, I chose ruins rather than more complete buildings, so that the cursed hand of the restorer should not be visible. I am sure you will rejoice with me over the singularly pure and delightful work of the Cistercian Monks, who evidently had grace of proportion as a god like gift, so that they could even do without sculpture, and yet their handiwork should not be bald. One can hardly conceive human beings so embedded in corruption as to have unroofed these churches for the lead & the timber. Our Henry the VIIIth (“the great widower” as the schoolboy called him) was as much in want of money as of wives, and he turned his religion to some practical account, and became profitably Protestant, and his greedy followers were not ashamed. Tintern, Fountains, Rievaulx attest the powers of the Architects in England of that time to carry out an idea under arbitrary conditions, and yet not fail in doing lovely work. It seems to me that, as soon as we had shaken off the Norman influence, we became markedly insular and expressed ourselves in a pure dialect, which, if it had been intruded upon by higher elements from the outside world, would have lost us something, which the greater magnificence of foreign communication wd not have compensated for the destruction of native simplicity. In late years, learning did it, but there was some compensation, though to my mind, rather a sorrowful one. The recurrence of Pan and his pipes was not altogether a beneficence, though perhaps it was a useful scourge. At all events, what is – is! 46

1888–1898

Your good letter of VIII-15-’892 found me all at home, and quite ready to be pleased with the account of yourself, all set a going again in the line laid down for you. I would like to be whiffled by a snatch of wind and set down in your midst, when you and your friends are together, and you are explaining, to the less travelled, how the miserable English Islanders live, & move and have their being – and how you have to explain that we do not gnaw the legs of the tables, or gibber like Barbary apes, and how your friends set down what you say as a traveller’s story! I sent your photograph of the double pages of M.S. to William Morris at Kelmscott (wh’ you now know) where he had gone to fetch back his family. He says in a letter, “Thanks for sending Boni’s photo: and explanation. By the way, the Florentines don’t seem to be letting the ‘state aided emigrants’ into their town, but are feeding them outside the walls. It is a very curious picture.”3 Now you may be sure that W.M. has this picture in his mind from this day forth, thanks to you. I am exceedingly glad that NATURE took as good a model for her clouds as Mantegna’s work! Ah, la! I am not so insular as not to remember Tuscany, and also the hills & vales between it and Rome. All the wonders and beauties of my 5 months’ wanderings in Italy are with me to this day. Also, this poor letter is the outcome. Yours sincerely always | Philip Webb. I will send the photographs tomorrow, as my time is up. I have the promise of, and will send the photograph of Morris.4 Courtauld 46a-c

1 PSW takes his cue from GBO, who described his recent trip to Florence and a visit to the Laurentian library, where ‘FORTUNA put her bandage around my eyes and led me before a bench where I was set in company of a Florentine ms. of about 1300.’ GBO to PSW, 15 October 1889, Courtauld 45c. 2 GBO dates his letter ‘VIIIber 15. ’89’. 3 GBO’s photograph from a Florentine manuscript was of an illustrated double page showing the towns of Florence and Siena. ‘Lawyers and the “strong hand” are pushing out of the town the poor and the sick ones pushing them down the step of the gate. Look at the human[e] Florentine (there were some when Giotto and Dante were living) coming at the very edge of the page to meet the poor people. See practical charity going on at the foot of the wall and at the entrance gate.’ 45d. 4 See above, Letter 355, note 6.

358 • To Giacomo Boni, 1 November 1889 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 10th Novr 1889 Bravo Toro, bravo Giacomo, not forgetting the brave Ravelli! I had your letter and lettered photograph of 4th Novr and on Friday I got the bull, representing his safety 47

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

and soundness. Most remarkable bull, Giacomo, and Ravelli. Long may they all three keep their present shape.1 I took your letters to “Antiscrape” on Thursday, and read to the committee those parts necessary for it to know, modestly dipping any words applied to myself in a too generous way! In addition to this feat, at my request, Mr Hebb translated the article of yours in the “Reforma” you sent me, and the translation was read to the Committee, and much to the satisfaction of its members.2 It was proposed (with your permission) to use both the Reforma article and the story of the St Luke bull, when the society found good opportunity, and you should let me know if you have any objection to this proposal, and with or without your name? Unless there may be reasons of policy, in the matter of your position under Government, not to publish your name, you had better not be “bashful” as, when you dropped your hesitation, and struck out fairly, the bull was saved and 2800 francs into the bargain. Yes, the bull is a beauty, all the right animal is there with a “pale cast” of symbolism, to fit him for his particular office in the church. Now tell me, if you can, what is about the date of this piece of fine bronze work? After looking again & again carefully, it seems to me – from the knowledge of animal anatomy (or observation of its external shew) and from the skilful expression of it, that it could not be earlier than the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15 cents? When I was at Orvieto, I was so much engaged in examining Luca Signorelli’s painting, and in venting curses on the people who were letting the rains of months flood the building (with its roof off the nave) that I only remember noticing the emblem of St John on the west front, (as that wd be with us) the eagle, with his upraised leg & expanded claws, being demonstrative – and though I got several photographs of detailed carving, I got no general view of the front. I would have liked to stay a month at Orvieto, its position and quality having so great a hold on my mind.3 Are you likely to do anything to preserve the Palazzo Publico [sic] there?4 This is a delightful building: after sending half over the town for the key we got inside it and enjoyed the magnificence of the great hall. Here is a detail I noted down outside (string under window outside). [sketch] There is also a Bishop’s Palace which I somehow missed seeing.5 The hall of the Commune was (so I made out) originally divided in its roof with admirable arches in stone, one springer remaining, thus. [sketch] Tis a pity that this fine hall should not be used by the boys and girls of the place to dance in, and sing, and be very merry, when thinking of the builded deeds of their forefathers. How magnificent is the internal arrangement of the great entrance double gateway into the town, on the side of the hill! I got much interested too in the Ch’ of S: Giovenale.6 When you stiffen and support the bronze S: Marks lion at Venice, you will not alter the poor late wings, will you?7 I think they, and the book, had better be let alone to speak for themselves. Do you know the beautiful bronze horse in the Capitol museum at Rome, which has been so injured by time, carelessness or malice?8 I thought it one of the best pieces of modelling I saw, and, in some ways, finer than the 4 horses in Venice. I asked 48

1888–1898

old Tuminello (through Murray’s mouth) to photograph it, and he may have done so – or not – as it would not sell to many people.9 You could not guess how much cheered I am by your Orvieto bull? The secretary will be sending you the annual report of our society, and I am sure you will be pleased with the address of speech by Morris, at the end.10 He has been holding-forth at the Art Congress at Edinburgh, and he tells me the 3rd class people were much more attentive and enthusiastic than the 1st and second classes.11 Truth to tell, the upper and middle classes are mostly thinking of those wonders, themselves, and unable to lose their self consciousness in admirable wonders. There, you are not to answer this ragged fragment of a letter, wh’ is merely a letting off of my delight at what you have sent me. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I go on Tuesday, with Morris and 2 or 3 more, to Peterborough, to see to the state of the fabric of the west front of the cathedral, as the Dean and Chapter are begging for money to “restore” it – as if it had not more life in it than all the Deans & Chapters of in Europe. There may be some settlement and fractures in the work which must be seen to before we fly at the throats of the felons. Courtauld 48a-c

1 The four bronze statues above the entrance doors of the cathedral at Orvieto symbolize the Evangelists of the Book of Revelation, represented by the bull of St Luke, the angel of St Matthew, the eagle of St John and the winged lion of St Mark. These are the work of the Sienese architect and sculptor, Lorenzo Maitani (c. 1275–1330) and helpers. ‘I send you by book post a phot. of the bronze bull of Orvieto. It fell from the façade some years ago, and the many fragments, some of them much crushed and distorted, were gathered. . . . Last year I was sent to Orvieto to look after the contract for casting the new bull. . . . [I found a blacksmith] named Ravelli, a true workman, able in handling the pencil and the hammer. He grew enthusiastic. I got permission to recompose the bull on a copper framework and now the work is done, and well done. The original bull shall be put back to its original place as sound and beautiful as if no misfortune had happened to it.’ GBO to PSW, 4 November 1889, Courtauld 47a-c. 2 For John Hebb, see Vol. I, Letter 124. 3 For his first responses to Orvieto, see Vol. I, Letter 244. 4 Almost from its inception in the thirteenth century, Orvieto’s Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo was modified and enlarged, and by the end of the sixteenth century was used as a centre for students in law, theology and logic. 5 The Papal Palace or Palazzo Soliano at Orvieto, adjoining the Cathedral, successively housed five popes during the thirteenth century. 6 The present church of San Giovenale in Orvieto dates mainly from the eleventh century. 7 The bronze lion symbolising St Mark and the city of Venice (see Vol. I, Letter 286, note 5) was first set on its granite column in the thirteenth century. Damaged during its removal to France by Napoleon’s forces in 1797, and again in 1815 during its return to Venice, the surviving fragments underwent repair. The lion was restored to its column in 1816. 8 A statue in bronze of the emperor Marcus Aurelius on horseback, originally displayed in about 175 AD in a public space such as the Roman Forum, now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. 9 The Italian photographer, Ludovico Tuminello (1824–1907), highly regarded for his topographical and architectural work.

49

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 10 See above, Letter 349, note 3. 11 WM attended the Edinburgh Art Congress with EW, Cobden-Sanderson and Walter Crane, spoke on ‘The Origins of Ornamental Art’, and chaired the session of the Applied Arts Section on 30 October. ‘The Congress has not been much of a success, I fancy; I was in the chair at some monumentally dull papers; and you may imagine how I fidgeted, my dear.’ WM to JEM, 2 November 1889, CLWM, III.

359 • To Hugh Thackeray Turner, 20 November 1889 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn W.C. 20th Novr 1889 My dear Turner I send you the draft of letter to Den & Chap: of Peterborough. ’Twas a tough job to avoid saying anything, and the your Committee will deal with it as it sees fit – also, will settle whether it shall be sent thro’ Canon Argles or direct. I have been unable to fit in appointments, and am sorry I shall not be at next meeting, for I have to go to Tewkesbury. Yours | Ph. Webb. Thackeray Turner SPAB, Peterborough Cathedral file

360 • To the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough Cathedral, about 20 November 1889 Drafted on behalf of SPAB The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings November 18891 To the Very Reverend the Dean2 and the Chapter of Peterborough Cathedral Gentlemen At a meeting of the Committee of this Society, those members who had been asked to visit the Cathedral – for the particular purpose of examining the West Front of the building – gave a verbal report of their visit: and I am directed by the Committee to convey to you its thanks for your kind consideration in forwarding in every way the object of this Society in sending the deputation. As the day was very fine, it allowed of a longer time being favourably spent in examination, under a clear light, than could have been expected at the time of the year; but, in addition to this help to close inspection, the assistance of your very experienced Clerk of the Works – given with the greatest good-will – was invaluable. Our Committee has seen the interesting report of the repairs which have been done during the 5 years ending in 1889, and of what further works are proposed 50

1888–1898

to be undertaken for the preservation of the fabric, should the supply of funds permit; and amongst the items of the latter, our Committee is glad to find your architect urging that a scaffolding should be put up at the West Front, for the purpose of making a satisfactory examination of the stability of that singularly beautiful and impressive part of the fabric of the Church: And, as the members of our body who examined the front were capable of understanding the necessity for the preparation being made, I am directed to express the hope of my Committee, that such scaffolding for examination may be set up as soon as possible; for, though there seems to be no immediate danger of the weakness in the structure developing rapidly, still, the very preciousness of this part of the church, and its exceptional freedom from mutilation, make it the more necessary to take the right steps to secure it from the injury of neglect, and, while there is still time, save it from a transformation which otherwise might occur. My Committee begs me to express a hope wish that, when the examinationscaffolding is put up, you will allow us the opportunity of making a more particular survey of certain parts, which were not accessible at the time our deputation was at the Church. I am Gentlemen te [added by Thackeray Turner] The Com approves of this draft but wishes to ask Mr Webb whether he intentionally omitted to express satisfaction upon hearing that Mr Pearson has refused his sanction for the ringing of the bells so long as the upper portion of the bell touches the walls, for the comte understood that we were going to say this. T.T. SPAB, Peterborough Cathedral file

1 Space left for Secretary to add date. 2 As in 1883, when the SPAB had previously been in communication with the Cathedral, the Dean was John Perowne.

361 • To William Morris, 24 November 1889 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 24th Novr 1889 My dear fellow On getting back from Severn, I found the book on the table ready for me;1 and as my lines are not cast in reviewers’ shoes I can read him without subterfuge, and, given that I don’t like him, I can say so without choking! The actual reading will probably be for the help of poor Kate, when she gets the time to listen – at all events I can look into him and about for present relief, and count him as undisputed “property”. Of course, if the whole edition is used up at once I must lend him to a poor beggar, shd such a creature in that line turn up! 51

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Alas, poor “Pall Mall”. If it had been the first genius instead of the second, it would not have mattered, but to have been the second to the Daily News was too bad. Fate is inexorable, and obliged Stead to say so last night!2 When I got back I found that Charles had been in a terrible state of uneasiness from the kidneys’ trouble, and of course Kate was worn down to a piteous spectre. Charles is a little easier today, the doctors have had to sweat him to relieve the kidneys. I suppose you will be at Council on Monday? Your affectionate | Philip Webb. Mind you, I hope you made amends to good natured Walker,3 after the rumblings and crooked flashes that evening at Gattis’?4 Mind you, no 2. I have the book, and shall make my own comments on type, paper, binding, and the blue spirit or grey! V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f 19

1 Annotation by SCC: ‘This was one of the handmade paper copies of Morris’s Roots of the Mountains. It is now in my possession with Morris’s inscription to Webb dated Nov 20 1889’. This prepublication copy of the 250 in the ‘superior Edition’ (The Roots of the Mountain, London: Reeves and Turner, 1890) was printed on ‘Whatman pott quarto paper with a special cloth binding of Morris and Company chintz from either of 2 designs by Morris’. LeMire, p. 133. 2 William Thomas Stead (1849–1912) was editor of the Pall Mall Gazette from 1883 until 1889. He would die on the Titanic. A comment on the newspaper’s front page for 23 November recorded that ‘There have been two rather curious instances of journalistic coincidences this week. The cartoon in Punch and the cartoon in the Pall Mall Budget, which were of course drawn entirely independently of each other, both represented Mr. Chamberlain as the Sphinx; and both the Daily News and the Pall Mall Gazette – again quite independently – adopted the parody form in reviewing Mr. Morris’s “Roots of the Mountains”.’ 3 The incident may in some way have touched on early plans for the Kelmscott Press. ‘I really am thinking of turning printer myself in a small way; the first step to that would be getting a new fount cut. Walker and I both think Jenson’s the best model, taking all things into consideration.’ WM to F.S. Ellis, 21 November 1889, CLWM, III. Jenson was a fifteenth-century Venetian printer, known for his Roman type of 1470. 4 For Gatti’s, see below, Letter 397, note 12.

362 • To Giacomo Boni, 15 December 1889 Photostat. Postmark LONDON W.C. DE 15 89 Address Signor Giacomo Boni | Architetto | Direzione Generale | delle Antichita e belle Arti | Roma. Italy 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 15th Decr 1889 My good friend Boni I duly recd your letter of the 23rd Novr, written on the back of a photograph of one of the wall towers of Grottaferrata,1 and also the other pleasant sun pictures in 52

1888–1898

the same envelope, and all of which gave me pleasure and such improvement as my wits can take. The pretty shield encircled by the garter – as we call it – with its “Hom Erit” legend and acanthus wreath. The shield, I suppose, of Federico da Montefeltro. Is not this the same Federico who kneels with so calm a face, sideways to the face front of the virgin, in Piero della Francesca’s wonderful picture, in the Brera at Milan?2 I made a note of the nose of said Federico, notched by bullet or nature. It is one of the pictures which will be with me so long as I remain. Then there were (and are) the delightful carved (or bronze?) doors of the Chapel at Grottaferrata, with the mosaic above. Also, I have, at twice received, [sic] your articles in 4 numbers of the Reforma, one of which good natured Hebb has translated for me, that on the gutting of Venice – an admirable criticism on modern vandalism. In addition to wh’ boons, I got last night your letter of 12th Decr, and its accompanying skeleton frame of your plan for Venice; [about 6 words deleted and illegible] I send on to Miss Morris (Jenny Morris) by tonight’s post, the included letter for her, and, as soon as it comes, the book also. Her address in London is “Miss Jane Morris. Kelmscott House. Upper Mall. Hammersmith. London. W.” I should have lifted up my pen-voice before now, in answer to all these mercies, if I had not been so pressed with things imperative to be done. And now I must tell you that I had put about to find what I could to send to Sig: Cadel,3 according to the note I made when you enlivened my mornings at breakfast-time here. The effort was quickened by your note, that Sigs Cadel and Allessandri had been put upon (or elected to?) the Municipality at Venice.4 John Hebb stirred himself for us in this matter, and has got together various English government pamphlets &c on sanitary and other matters which I hope to send off to Cadel on Monday or Tuesday.5 No doubt Sig: Cadel will find much of what we send is of no use to him, but some of it I think he may find useful, at all events I hope so. Signor Cadel I do not know in the flesh, and only in the spirit from what you told me. But Allessandri I met often, in Venice. We three, that was, Allessandri and myself, and ignorance of English and Italian in between us. Confound the tower of Babel. Now, in the explanation of your sanitary & social ideas for Venice, I clearly perceive the dredging of the lagoon for greater sweep of water through Venice and out beyond the Lido. But the question of better dwellings for the labouring people, I’m afraid I cannot aid in answering. Our social conditions are so different – and I know nothing of “the ways and the manners” of the Venetians. You made a little plan sketch – good, that I understand. That you do not want to make barracks, like our new London poor’s houses, that I grasp, but have you enough land to allow of only making each house or pair of houses one (or two?) stories high? If there is enough land, 2 stories would do, but if there were three (in a crowded town) it would be allowable I think – with a fairly commodious stairway. Our poor folk have a bad habit when they are paid well enough for their work to have two or three rooms, one of these rooms they lose for rational use by turning it into a little show room, in imitation of “respectable” people. Your 53

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

houses I suppose will be for quite poor labouring people, who could only afford one, or at most two rooms? The little garden I look upon as essential in a warmish climate like that of Venice. It would be well if a house was here or there made into a public washhouse. Perhaps, in some cases, the whole of the gardens might be lumped in the middle of a square of houses? but, how can I say what could be done for a people whose language – except that of the eyes – I know nothing! As to the Article in the Times, of wh’, except to you, I hold my tongue6 – Well, no one with knowledge pays any attention to “Articles” in the Times on art matters. Occasionally there are letters which are useful, but editorial prompted effusions in the Times are generally made for Commercial and Political purposes, and elastic souled ignorant people are pitched upon to write to orders of the meanest kind. All the worst things that have been done in Italy have the support and admiration of “The Times”: and anything which has life and virtue in it is autocratically sat upon. However, sensible people in England had long ago discounted (lovely commercial phrase) the bluster of that gross newspaper, and since the monstrous blunder of the “Parnell forged letter”7 even dull people are beginning to rub their eyes, and exclaim in almost Puritan fashion “how long O Lord, how long”.8 The writers they employ for their foreign art correspondence are, for the greater part, wholly ignorant of what they treat of, and pudding-headed new capitals for the D: Pal: would be as good in their eyes – which see not – as the most lovely of the mediæval. The new are generally thought to be the better art, because they are white, and their admirers’ logic is satisfied if the new is coloured over so as admirably to simulate the age of the old. Human nature is a rum one, as Dickens makes one of his characters exclaim. I hope you will lay on the lash with as much neatness and strength as your arm will allow, and may I be by to pickle the wounds with strong brine! And so our old friend Robert Browning is gone to his rest, a somewhat notable figure in any land, and remarkable in England, where much learning is not often wedded to poetry.9 And, if Browning is to be taken as an example, learning, of itself, is not of much gain to the poet. How many fine things he had in his mind, bred of his studies, which he did not make clear, could not, because stirring water to a foam will not make it clear. Let it settle, man, and draw off the refined. Still, in spite of real human weakness, there was a great deal in Browning which ought to live, but which, on acct of his poetic infirmity, must die – not for want of being read, but from not being understood. Browning knew this, I am inclined to believe, and therefore drowned himself in high class social and artistic life, where to know the poet himself excuses the ignorance of what the poems meant. It is a shocking degradation for a poet, which it is hardly too much to say, was a great one. You know, if we cannot make our art of architecture a clear one, in stone and mortar, it is no use to give bring in your paper sketches, from a soft pencil, shewing in that way what has passed through your mind. Your Italian Giants – Dante, M’angelo, tried the impossible, and almost – if not quite – succeeded, whereas Giotto, and some few others did with ease what, such as Beethoven sweated his soul out to attain to. If the giants do not quite succeed, what are 19th c. folk to do, who are not gifted in the way of Goliath? 54

1888–1898

Now, good Boni, forgive me this long scrabblement. When I sat down I meant (not having too much time on hand) only to say a little of my thanks for sending me delightful things, but, you see, I have been led on by Sunday’s little leisure to dirty a whole sheet of paper and torment you. Still, quite sincerely, | Yours, | Philip Webb. Courtauld 52a-c

1 Located about twelve miles south east of Rome, the principal building in the small town of Grottaferrata is the Abbey of Santa Maria, founded in 1004 on the spot where, by legend, the Virgin appeared to Saint Nilus the Younger (910–1005). 2 See Vol. I, Letter 269, note 7. 3 See above, Letter 355, note 7. 4 For Angelo Alessandri, see Vol. I, Letter 262, note 3. 5 In a letter dated 12 December 1889, GBO had described in some detail his plans for sanitary improvements in Venice. 6 This probably refers to a column headed ‘ “Sventramento” in Italy’, by ‘our Rome correspondent’, which had appeared in The Times on 15 October, and concerned proposals for demolition work in various Italian cities to allow for new sanitary improvements. The American-born journalist, painter and photographer, William Stillman (1828–1901), who married his second wife, the painter Marie Spartali in 1871, was Rome correspondent for The Times from 1886–98. Stillman argued against the loss of buildings in Venice, but for Florence concluded that ‘nothing really worth preserving historically or architecturally will be disturbed, but will, on the contrary, be better seen by being isolated more’. There was a history of tension between the SPAB and Stillman, for he was critical of the Society when it had attacked the restorations of San Marco in Venice, although later he was himself highly critical of treatment of the marble façade ‘with acid and with chisel’. See David P. Elliott, A Pre-Raphaelite Marriage. The Lives and Works of Marie Spartali Stillman and William James Stillman (Antique Collectors’ Club: 2006), p. 107. 7 Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–91) became an MP in 1875, an advocate of Irish nationalism and Home Rule. On 18 April 1887, having run a series of articles which linked Parnell with crime, The Times published a letter purporting to have been written by him in 1882, in which he excused himself for having publicly condemned the murder by Irish nationalists of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke, in Phoenix Park, Dublin (see Vol. I, Letter 209, note 5). In February 1889 the forgery was exposed as the work of the journalist and blackmailer, Richard Pigott (1828–89), who subsequently took his own life. 8 ‘How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? How long wilt thou hide they face from me?’ Psalms 13:1. ‘And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost though not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ Revelations 6:10. 9 The poet Robert Browning (1812–89) had died on 12 December in Venice,

363 • To Jenny Morris, 15 December 1889 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 15th Decr 1889 My dear Jenny The good Sig: Boni sent in a letter to me I got last night, the enclosed note (which I successfully resisted reading) and these were his commands. “Hand over please 55

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

the enclosed and book to Miss Morris – as I don’t know the address in London”. The “book” will I suppose come to me tomorrow and, if it does, I will sent [sic] it also to you. Alas! my dear child, that I see so little of you, when you wd have the pleasure of doing me a deal of good if I could talk with you and yours! Your father’s shoes I sometimes sit at, but only too seldom, & for such short time, now. ‘Cheer up Jeremiah’ (what is the feminine of Jeremiah, as I am addressing you?) ‘old’ girl, and we will make the best of a bargain which is common enough with all of us – namely, that we don’t quite get what we would like. But I see I have been addressing myself Ph Webb | Super Grammaticus. I have left out ‘your affectionate’ but having just dirtied a large sheet to Boni (he sends me lovely photographs) all my reserve of literary strength is exhausted. Kind love to May and the mother of 2 lovely daughters. | P.W. BL Add 45342, ff. 65-6

364 • To Jane Morris, 24 December 1889 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tuesday 24th Decr 1889 My dear Janey The two “Riforma’s” I asked Morris to take to Kelmscott House for the family, endowed with the Italian language, to operate upon were mine, though – of course – for the use of “Antiscrape”.1 As I find your handwriting is the means of giving me the good translation I write to thank you for it, but you must spread out that precious ointment on any of your kind folk who lendt a hand. How good is Boni’s closing sentence on the pride the Venetians have in using coal in preparing the pavement of S. Mark’s! I think Boni enjoyed his time with you on the upper Thames more than anything else in his visit to England, and I hope you found him good company. I am just a trifle dull and slow-witted, so that I was glad he should see others not so much afflicted with these diseases. He is a “monstrous clebber” chap, and – consequently – somewhat hard on stupid people, so that I had to assume a virtue with the best face I could. He is now rampaging on the toes of the enemies of the old places in Italy, but is steady and nice in his movements in slippery places, and I hope he will be able to keep his footing. My love to you all | Your affectionate | Philip Webb. d I have rec the “Riforma’s” all right BL Add 45342, ff. 67-8 56

1888–1898 1 La Riforma was a Roman newspaper to which GBO regularly contributed articles on archaeological and other topics.

365 • To Giacomo Boni, 4 January 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Saturday 4th Jan: 1890 My dear Boni Your letter of the 30th of last month was a particularly pleasing one to me, full of that incisive quality which I much admire in your writing.1 It is good in English, but what it must be in pure Tuscan, let the “galled jades” who “wince” under it, tell?2 There is one drawback however – to me – that it, and perhaps much important occupation, make the letters themselves too short. I have to extend each paragraph – and that would be better done if you did it yourself. Of course I followed you heartily as you laid the stripes straight down the backs of the Venetian “bureaucrats”. Lord, how all the nations have their weaknesses alike, if not their strengths. I read the letter to Morris (at the Solferino, having asked him to meet me there for the purpose) and when he sees the article you are to send me the proof of, he is quite willing to write something for an English liberal paper, as you suggest. I will put down some notes in pencil for him before he begins. I was far too short a time at Bologna to know or find out a tenth part of the interesting things in that city, and I cannot call back the memory of the Mercanzia.3 All I can say now, is, keep clear of the “malaria”, so that no more historic buildings may slip through your fingers to perdition. Now, you must condone my long-winded gabble, if I tell you what I think of the photographs you sent of the crucifix church at Spoleto.4 Now from the egg onwards! Spoleto is, I see on the map, somewhat midway between Orvieto and Ascoli. Indeed, I must have passed it on my way to Assisi from Rome. Why did I not stop there? Why? Never mind, I could not see everything in Italy in 5 months. Also, you send me the photograph, so that it is better that I missed Spoleto than failed to see you. Guess my friend how often I was puzzled with dates in my journies [sic] in Italy! My solution of the riddle – or a part of it – is this. We in England find some counties, or outlying districts, for one cause or another, carrying on to their building in a style long after it has ceased in other parts. Well, Spoleto must have been somewhat isolated when the Crocifisso was built, and some real Greek workmen remained there. There are to my eyes several Byzantine signs about the work. Diocletian’s palace of Spalato was built – say – 300–320 A.D. and has, behind its wonderful qualities, the fullest expression of depraved architecture;5 whereas, this door-head at Spoleto, probably built as you suggest in the Vth c., has almost perfect purity of detail and refined skill of execution. The first sign of breaking 57

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

through tradition, is the semi cornice on the top of the architrave. In Byzantium, this would have been the Cornice proper. In the frieze we have the barbaric corners next to the consoles [sketch] which is a bungle, such as a horse makes in changing from the trot into the gallop. The carving of the frieze, so soon as the artist had satisfied convention with the usual outline form of scroll, is admirably designed in detail, and cut to perfection, the tendril-like variations from the primal scroll being purely beautiful, and worthy of the descendant of the fine Greek time! The cornice, well, that is all right in its way, like a that Greek [sic] not quarrelling with his Roman fetters. Still, after saying all this, the thing is a puzzle. What is the marble? ’tis fine grained close stuff, but is evidently brittle – for the architecture has given in. Is it anything like the lime stone of the brittle kind of which I picked up the debris of Assisi? Now you may damn me to your heart’s content and, if you do, do not send me any more photographs, for they set me going. Another word. From your blue-pencil scratch, I take it the church is in regular Byzantine form of plan? Heavenly powers! Here is an Italian rejoicing over one of Smollet’s [sic] works; when will wonders cease?6 Mind you, H. C is good, in his its way, but who wd have thought that an Italian, with rather a particular habit of mind (does not laugh or weep at every request) shd pick out such a book to read in his privacy. Still, after all, it is not wonderful. Smollet lived at a time when England was thoroughly English, egotistical, brutal, and generally stupid, when even Germany had its astute Friederic the Great, and Voltaire reigned in the navel of the Earth – or, as the Yankee says, “the hub of the Universe”.7 Ah, my friend, did I not set under your nose Geo: Borrow’s Lavengro,8 and did not that nose go up, so that even my “nose was out of joint?” This last sentence seems to be imperfect. I mean, that Smollet is good: that is, natural, historically right, but, as the Greek at Spoleto, in his work bungled liked a horse into a canter, so Smollet came between whiles. Pace, my friend. I cannot tell you what I mean in two-line paragraphs. Let me get to John Bright, and have done. John Bright died last year? the year before? two or three years ago?9 I cannot remember: still, he did die a little time back, and took an age of the century with him. Thoroughly English was John Bright. Dogged, tenacious, narrow, positive without excuse, and withal tenderly fond of English poetic expression, of the second rate kind, truly; but that he should have cared for that at all, being as he was, only shews that you are never sure but in an English fool you will find some eternal wisdom. Bright formed his style of speaking on the purer (simpler) English language, and was our last orator, pure and simple. He could move the masses, and even his enemies with speech. He lived till after his elasticity was at full stretch, and he could see no farther than he could tell. What John Bright himself knew, was (to him) all that was worth knowing, a fatal weakness. The long factory 5 stories high filled with human beings, men, women, children, driving at monstrous toil, was no sorrowful sight to him. The thousand tall chimnies [sic] of Lancashire, belching black smoke was not ugly to him. What more can be said of the limitation of the human mind. All the hells of Dante were to him as if 58

1888–1898

they were not, and the beautiful English homes, and Italian hillside hamlets, were nothing. The poor folk making their 30 shillings a week for him, & his like, were in the paradise for such people. The dirty feet on the Christ kissed in the churches, was idolatry to him, but the savings-bank of the poor was a god. He was a great man who might have been something if he had been less. Pride does not always go before a fall. Devil take it all. These humans that in which one hopes to find images of pure gold, always turn out to have a foot, or a hand or some part of them of clay, and the pottery cracked in the burning. Now for your last. Yea, let us be “merry” on these terms.10 We too will go down content into the middle of the earth with the granite needles of the Alps, the Duomos and cathedrals of men’s hands, the spring awaking lizard, and the joy of young men & maidens – and, if we are to be rightly merry we will have tears as well, a goodly brine to keep us from decomposing. Adieu, | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I await further orders. Have you heard anything from Cadel of Venice, since I sent him the sanitary papers? Courtauld 54a-d

1 GBO had sent a translation of his Riforma article critical of municipal proposals to place an inscription on the Ducal Palace recording the date of restoration work. GBO to PSW, 30 December 1889, Courtauld 53b. 2 See above, Letter 333, note 9. 3 The Palazzo della Mercanzia, on the main square in Bologna and completed in the late fourteenth century, is the work of architects Lorenzo da Bagnomarino and Antonio da Vicenza (1350–1401/2). 4 Probably a reference to the Croce di Alberto Sotio (located since 1877 in the cathedral at Spoleto), made in 1187 for the Romanesque church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Spoleto. GBO was visiting the former antique Tempietto del Clitunno, subsequently the church of San Salvatore in Pissignano, a few miles north of Spoleto. In the spring of 1890 he and the architect Giuseppe Sacconi approved a proposal ‘to build stairways against the entry porticoes’. Judson J. Emerick, The Tempietto del Clitunno near Spoleto (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), p. 97. 5 See above, Letter 325, note 2. 6 ‘I am very much amused by “Humphry Clincker” by Smolett [sic]’ 53d. Humphry Clinker (1771), described by William Hazlitt as ‘the most pleasant gossiping novel that ever was written’, was the final novel by Tobias Smollett (1721–71), published a few months before his death. 7 ‘The hub of the solar system’, a phrase first recorded by Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858) about the Boston State House, became modified as ‘the hub of the universe’ to describe Boston itself. 8 See above, Letter 350, note 12. 9 ‘I am much interested in a book about John Bright – is this politician doing good work now?’ 53d. A celebrated public speaker for radical causes, ‘Honest’ John Bright (1811–89) first entered parliament in 1847. He was a supporter of parliamentary reform, religious dissent, free trade and Irish home rule, and opposed British support for the confederate states during the American Civil War. 10 GBO sent New Year greetings. ‘Let us go on talking merrily about sad subjects, and act merrily for painful ones, and finally, smiling an adieu to the moving products of the decomposition of the earth, going down into the earth and mire with its elements.’ 53d.

59

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

366 • To Giacomo Boni, 26 January 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 26th January. 1890 1 My dear Bullfinch – Grey Friar – “Monaco Bigio” – “Black artist” (Carlyle)2 – Ace of Clubs – Dark horse (Racing slang) Angel of the pit!! – There, that is enough for one breath. Your letters amuse me. (Plebs must be amused as well as kings?) I am amused by them partly, by their telling me of things which, otherwise, I should not know, partly, because they administer flattery which, though I know it to be such, is administered with so delicate a hand that I needs must swallow it – partly, because you add to the letters photographs, which set all my life a-going actively, and partly – partly – because I am taken out of my poor self by them. If it were not for these, & probably other reasons, no more letters in answer, for I am not, naturally, a writing man. Writing is always a task to me, for I do not care to put more stuff on paper, therefore I set about to say things wh’ are part of my life’s consideration, and, for an indolent (not an idle) man, this is troublesome. You, I see, can write freshly, in brief, with your pen one moment in the ink, and the next with your foot on the carriage step and, perhaps (?) your tongue in your cheek – if you know what that significant English phrase means? – You would not have had this letter – maybe – unless you had said that on your return from your first journey from Villetri out and back to Rome,3 you would expect to find a letter from me: at the same time, not telling me when you would be back, whether in 3 days, or a fortnight. However, I have seldom much time for any but business letters except on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, the time of writing this. I am very glad to have the second photo: of the unfinished Temple at Segesta (suppose that the Cella was never built?) which, with the first picture, complete the picture of the place itself. What a platform on which to stand Doric columns upright, and entablature lying along against the distant hills & sky – and what a background of huge rocks for godlike shelter!4 Of the Girgenti Temple, I have careful drawings of this, in the additional vol: to Stuart’s Greek antiquities. It is called there the Temple of Hercules.5 Looking at the book again, now, I am not sure of this being the same as that of your photo: as Stuart’s plan only gives one column & a piece of the cella, as standing, though the orders of architecture seem to be exactly alike – the junction of shaft & capital being particularly graceful, here it is, traced, on the opposite corner. [sketch in corner of adjacent page] I told the Antiscrape Com: you would be sure to know all about the proposed removal of San: Gallo’s work at the Ca: of S. Angelo, but they insisted on sending you the Times article.6 The “Times”, if its foreign (English foreign) correspondents were not made of wood, would have found out that the Italian office was aware of what was proposed to be done, and would be opposing the destruction. You may make an aphorism of the following. 60

1888–1898

Dilettanti, and professional people generally, are wanting in imagination – and they must pull a building to pieces, or they cannot understand what is behind its later additions, without the ground being 3 parts cleared, and, perhaps, a model (not too accurate) of the ancient, set up. Then they rub their eyes, and say, ‘dear me, bless my soul, (what is that in Italian?) how wonderful, how pretty (yes, sic) how charming’ it would be for fools to have the original restored, so that even blockheads might be able to enlarge, at dinners, upon the genius of the middle ages. This is a specimen or sample of my vitriolic elixir. Your pretty fable of the “cats” is more penetrating stuff. How the cats persist in looking at the finger end, instead of through the open window, where something more than a dot may be seen. The point of the finger is the wrong end of the telescope, which the cats stick to looking through, for fear, if they took their eyes off, dinner would not be on the table tomorrow.7 When you have time, can you tell me what there is in the S: Angelo of the very Roman work, and what of the mediæval? The Castle, mutilated as it is, is still so majestic, that Rome wd not be the Rome without it. I suppose it might have been a kind of enlarged Cecilia Metella?8 Don’t laugh inordinately at my ignorance or, if you do, I shall have to give more astonishing “pardigmas”. I don’t care, go to the devil! You may laugh as much as you like, and be anything but quite dull & stupid, or stupidly malevolent. In those short weeks when I was recovering from my fever, and when such powers as I had were at command, I was sufficient for myself. The earth had given, and desisted from taking away, and left me the balance of all the memories of this interesting turmoil of oneself. That finger end, as it were, at which one’s fellows look and can make no more of. Witless people we are. We expect others to leave their own egotistical delight to pay attention to what they can never arrive at the meaning of – whether the being be cat, dog, or human. Oh. The smell of freshly turned earth is delightful, it is one’s mother, of which the other was but a shadow. But, eh but, my friend, these things must be (and greek capitals too, for it is under my nose) [a reference to his sketch beneath which his text now continues] and what should we be without enigmas. Contrasts; by this, you shall know that. By fools, you shall know that you – even you, are not quite wise. The Doric of the Parthenon, or that of Segesta, which is of the wise, and which of the foolish? I have listened to people who said they could not see, from any example, that the Italians did anything worthy in mediæval architecture, and that the Byzantine and early Renaissance were the only things to study there. If you wanted to know of mediæval, you must go to France or Cairo! Now, Italian mediæval archre is a window to see through which I can see more things than I can tell of and be believed. The very curiosity of the thing, that it should have never been quit of the Greek element, adds to the delight of the history, and finds pleasant problems innumerable. That Christianity should have had such a representative, in its architecture, as the Byzantine, is an almighty wonder, and whether scepticism will provide any better builded representative than decayed Roman work is a problem, which I shall not solve unless I have another fever & not die from it. You did not bargain for this, and I leave off. 61

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Go on my friend. Drive into my wooden head more of your Italian brightness, and accept these brutal pushes of mine as fresh stimulants to your power of condensed retort. Should you at times meet some of your countrymen, fellows (a sacred word this last) who are more than pegs on which to hang clothes, or a pension (and to be ‘fellows’ of yours they must be) give them my salutation out of England – almost the Ultima Thule9 – and tell them, I find their ‘fellow’ a boon to my life – ‘amusing.’ Now I go to play games at ‘Backgammon’ with my paralysed friend, who cannot speak, or understand what is said, but plays a better game than I do. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. (name in a flourish) You may reasonably claim to be decently thanked for your delightful photographs, wh’ I think I have failed to do as respectably as a ‘cat’. Courtauld 57a-c

1 GBO signed his letter of 16 January 1890 (and several subsequent letters) as ‘Monaco Bigio’, an anagram of his name and the pseudonym under which he published occasional pieces in the Italian newspaper, La Riforma. Courtauld f 56d. In transcribing an extract from a later letter, WRL misread the anagram as ‘Mousiobigio’ (Lethaby, p. 169). 2 An allusion to Whistler’s 1872–3 oil painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black, No 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle. 3 Villetri is a town within the province of Rome, in Lazio. 4 The ancient Greek city of Segesta in Sicily features on its extreme outer edge a well-preserved hillside Doric temple from the late fifth century BC. It seems that it was never roofed, and also lacked the main internal structure (the ‘cella’). 5 The city of Agrigento (Akragas to the ancient Greeks, and Girgenti to the Sicilians) lies on the south coast of Sicily. Remains of seven Doric temples have been excavated, including one dedicated to Heracles, greatest of the Greek heroes, and known to the Romans as Hercules. PSW was consulting James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, 4 vols (London, 1825–30). The fourth volume is The Temple of Jupiter at Arigentum, with illustrations by C.R. Cockerell. 6 Beneath the heading ‘Roman Demolitions’, The Times reported the proposal ‘to cut away the front of Sangallo’s bastion on the Tiber side of the Castle of St. Angelo, the erstwhile tomb of Hadrian, in order to widen the street, a mutilation which would destroy the symmetry and picturesque aspect of one of the few medieval structures in Rome’ (30 December 1889), and that this had resulted in a dispute between the two Ministries of Public Works and Public Instruction. See also next letter. 7 Remarking on the standard responses of dogs and cats to a pointing finger – dogs look towards what is indicated, whilst cats register merely the finger itself – GBO speculated more broadly. ‘Humans ought to look at what has been pointed out as a paradigma, an instance, an open window through which whole species and immortality itself may be admired or taught from that point of view.’ f 56e. 8 The first-century BC Mausoleo di Cecelia Metella on the Via Appia, just outside Rome. Cecelia Metella was the wife of Gaius Verres, governor of Sicily in 73–71 BC, and the daughter of the Roman consul, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus. 9 In medieval maps and accounts of geographical discoveries, ultima Thule denoted any place beyond the limits of the known world.

62

1888–1898

367 • To Giacomo Boni, 9 February 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 9th February 1890 My dear Giacomo. As I have to be very serious for the greater part of this letter, I start with a jest. Why do you address your letter to Ph. W. “Esquire”? You might as well write ‘To His Grace the Duke of Gray’s Inn’! What I am I to say in return for such lovely photographs? The landscape fm Sicily is like what the author of ‘Genesis’ has in his eye, when he wrote of Paradise, and threw-in the 4 rivers to make the perfect Eden we know from that writer.1 One sighs over your beautiful view, as one has done after taking bread and wine,2 & while lying along in front of some more moderate but still heavenly view in this poor island of ours. Then there is your view of the S. Angelo,3 which the Italian powers that be shd never have allowed to go out of the country, for it tells a tale too much against their plan. These photographs of yours are admirably taken, from good positions, and the process is exceedingly satisfactory. Now, my friend. This question of the S. Angelo, is so important, and moves me so much, that I must ask you, at starting, to forgive me if I write over freely on the subject, which I assure you has disturbed me much ever since I had your letter of the 2nd instant.4 If you don’t like what I say, tell me so, and I will be more careful in future, though I feel sure that you, personally, will not feel hurt, though you might think I might should have been more careful of the feelings of your colleagues – whoever they may be. Well, friend Hebb translated for our Society the article in the ‘Riforma’ of Jan. 24th which gives several distinct views of the question, but none which quite come home to me as the true one. The fact is this; the guardians of the Castle say, in effect, ‘We have this ancient building to present to the Italian people as a great possession, but before we do that, it must be beautified. The necessity of widening and easing the curves of Tevere is our opportunity and the Imperial modern magnificences of France and Germany our models, and Baron Haussmann our Golden Image,5 but, we have no money wherewith to set about the work. Well, we must buy some! Let us sell a few of the family limbs of the Castle and get in return an equal number of handsome wooden legs.’ If that is not true, I am incapable of understanding a situation? Now, I will digress, so as not to be too tragic. O, your funny letter, in the part where you describe the finding of the Cannon balls, and the sudden change of the public mind from destruction to conservation. Throw on your “logs”, say I. Give them photographs of the dents made in the walls by the blows of the enemies’ cannon balls – but save the pentagonal encasing of the bastions. Now, let me look at the plan you sent me of the systematizing of the surroundings of the Castle – not your plan, but the wooden legged plan. Here we see the 3, and two halves of the

63

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

5 scarpments of the latest parts of the fortification. How do they shew on the plan? Why, they keep back the mass of house building from encroaching on the lines of a very significant piece of Roman history. Our wonder is, how they shd have escaped destruction till the time when such things can (or ought to be) be [sic] looked upon from the point of reason. My friend, I am not speaking without some knowledge of how like things have happened here, though, perhaps, we had not so much cause for fighting against so grandiose a piece of insanity as the Romans have in the St Angelo affair. Why, there are articles on the subject in our 2nd & 3rd rate newspapers, so much is S. Angelo known to the obtusest of English people, who have never heard of Segesta or Girgenti.6 My first idea on looking at the “Progetto” was to send you a tracing shewing how I (with but little knowledge of the facts) would try and save the S. Peter and S. Mary horns of the scarpment, [four words obliterated] by throwing S. Paul to the wolves, but I could not face my antiscrape colleagues if I had allowed it to go forth that I had done so. I explained the matter to our Committee on Thursday, and they agreed that I shd use my own judgment in writing to you about the Castle. Am I right in understanding the Vic: Emanl and the Umberto bridges are now built?7 I do not recollect seeing them when I was in Rome in 1885, but my eyes were all over the parish then, with too much to look at, not to miss too much in right seeing. It has seemed to me that you sent me this plan with some such thought in your head as follows – ‘I will send it to Webb, and perhaps that twopenny old jackass may strike out an idea which would be some help to me in my difficult position.’ Well, let me suppose the jest so. Philip wd say to himself, I will get up early every day in next week, and stalk about the castle, looking at it from every point of view, and realize how the place would look when the houses crowded round it as if they wd drive every memory of Emperors and Popes into Tiber. I cry on Peter, Paul, and Mary for help. ‘You blessed spirits, what shall a poor devil of an architect do with you?’ Peter, being impulsive, says, ‘Cannot you see, you old fool, that we are yourself in perplexity? leave us there; plant cedars, cypresses, and other trees to become big on our backs, and make us set-jewels to the great mass standing on Hadrian’s tomb”. Peter, becomes excited, and quotes Shakespeare, “Lord what fools these mortals be”.8 When the rattle of the keys has subsided, Philip, who wanders from one horn of the scarp dilemma to another (in the spirit only) hears the “still small voice” of Giacomo,9 saying, ‘my ancient friend, you are wandering, ’tis the 19th century we are in, and “compromise” is the order of the day. I am surprised that you – a practical architect – should not understand that you know nothing of the levels of this pentagonal scarpment and, indeed, nothing what I have shewn you, and yet you “rampage”, (“see, I’ve been to England, and have read about Mrs Gamp in Dickens’ book”)10 do you think you can help me with your bombastic stuff ?’ Philip, not abashed, says in modest but impressive tone, ‘an idea is not an idea at all, if facts are contrary to it, but is this idea impossible in that way?’ Philip’s voice is again heard. ‘They know not what they do,11 these 64

1888–1898

wonderful Italians, they think that a country is twice made in the same way, and they are going to begin making it the second time – all out of their own heads – and, if Hadrian and all the rotten old Popes are in their way, let them be removed with pick, spade, and barrow without more ado.’ Giacomo, in a somewhat spiteful tone, says, ‘when I was in England, you shewed me many things which all your high-flying notions could not save, and yet you bellow across to me here as if you could save S. Angelo, which is a more difficult business to settle than all your little trumpery matters put together’. Philip, silenced, but not convinced, changes the point. But Giacomo, my friend, I hope you will be able to save all that delightful mass of building running North & South on the top of the parapet which crowns the machicolations of the great drum. I beg you to do your utmost, only to repair here, do not pull down or change one stone or roughly built fragment more than may be necessary for preserving it. Look at the photograph again my Giacomo; see how lovely it stands, and 110 times more interesting than if you could put up again a 19th cent: sham of Hadrian’s colonnade, upper base, quadringa &c all complete. In the beautiful Sicilian landscape, in the mid-distance, is seen the ruins of a temple; what is this, and where is it? (Perhaps, when you next write you may think to tell me). In my old book of engravings of Agrigentum, there is a view of the foundations of the great caryatic temple of Olympian Jove there,12 and in the distance on a hill, beyond some forest-like land, is a also a ruined temple; perhaps it is the same as shewn in your photograph? This photograph raises all my imagination of what earth’s loveliness can be, and with art which does not injure, but adds to its interest and beauty. The old – earth enclining [sic] – tree, full of white-blossomed, what is it, cherry, plum or, or, what? Giacomo, in choice Italian, says, ‘damn this Philip, I send him pleasant photographs to amuse him, and keep him quiet, and he asks me childish questions’. ‘Go to the devil, friend Giacomo, if you say that, for earth and its greatest gain to man is made up of small things, and not – as is so often supposed – by imperial loftiness of conception. Someone said something about Solomon in all his glory, and a lily, which seems to me to be to the point here.’13 I hope to find time to write something for the ‘antiscrape’ annual report this year, and, if I can manage it, I shall bring in your bronze bull of Orvieto, and preach on the text of it: you have sent me ‘Riforma’, with your notice of it there. Now: there will be much stuff written in England about your S. Angelo, cannot you retort in the ‘Times’, and point out the mess of statues still being plastered on Westminster Abbey walls.14 Westminster hall itself still being knocked about to make it look more mediæval than it did in Richard II days.15 Sham bastion gateways still being built to the ‘Tower of London’,16 and yet the English people think the Italians are doing more mischief to their antiquities than the English do to theirs. You can write all this in admirable aphoristic brevity, and not with the long-windedness of Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. 65

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

If there should still be some chance of saving S. Angelo, and I could lend you any help in the way of suggestion based on facts given by you, I shall be only too glad to do so, and still remain your debtor. Ph W I forgot to answer your question.17 It is fair “average” weather in this part of England, but these last few days the East wind has been, I suppose, somewhat more touching than the sun warmed winds of Sicily!! Courtauld 59a-c

1 ‘And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.’ Genesis, 2:10. 2 The agnostic PSW was here only celebrating the pleasures of bread and wine in their ordinary forms, rather than acknowledging their Christian sacramental meanings. 3 The large cylindrical Castel Sant’Angelo on the right bank of the Tiber, originally the Mausoleum constructed for the Emperor Hadrian in the second century, later became a Papal fortress and prison. See previous letter, note 6. 4 ‘Castel S. Angelo (I send you a copy of a plan with some modifications which I propose in order to save the front towers) has kindled the imagination of the most obtuse among my fellow countrymen, because I was lucky enough to find that the polygonal wall of the tower to the right (built by pope Alexander VI – Borgia – about 1495) was only a lining of the identical tower of pope Nicolò V (1445) still preserved inside.’ GBO to PSW, 1 February 1890, Courtauld 58a–b. 5 For Haussmann and Paris, see above, Letter 350, note 3. The Golden Calf was the false god erected by Aaron to satisfy the Israelites in the absence of Moses (Exodus 32). 6 On 31 January, The Standard published a piece from its Rome correspondent summarising La Riforma, and its view that Castel Sant’Angelo, ‘like the Tower of London, should be converted into a national museum of arms’. By 27 February, the same paper recorded that several members of the Italian cabinet ‘are against the scheme of destruction; but the Minister of Public Works, in whose hands the affair rests, is obstinately bent upon it’. 7 The construction of the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II, designed by Ennio De Rossi in 1886, was not completed until 1911. The bridge affords a view upriver of Castel Sant’Angelo. The Ponte Umberto was built between 1885 and 1895 to a design by Angelo Vescovali (the architect of several of Rome’s principal bridges), and dedicated to King Umberto I (1844–1900). 8 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, III,ii,115. 9 ‘And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.’ 1 Kings, 19:12. 10 Sairey Gamp is the old nurse in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, over-fond of gin and with a less than perfect bedside manner. 11 ‘Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ St Luke, 24:34. 12 See above, Letter 366, note 5. 13 ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ St Matthew 6:28–29. 14 See Vol. I, Letter 263. 15 See Vol. I, Letter 238, note 5. 16 Anthony Salvin and his successor Sir John Taylor (1833–1912) embarked on an extensive programme of restoration at the Tower of London, removing later additions whilst revealing or otherwise replacing its supposed mediaeval fabric. There was predictable criticism from those who regarded such work as archetypal ‘scraping’. 17 ‘I expect to find, in your next letter, a chapter on the average February weather in London as compared with the Sicilian one of the same month.’ 58d.

66

1888–1898

368 • To Giacomo Boni, 30 March 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 30th March. 1890 My dear Boni I duly received your postal packet of copies of “The Restoration of the Duc: Pal: of Venice”, and it has been sufficiently well translated for me to make out it[s] manifest scope.1 It is seems to me to be exceedingly clearly and powerfully written. Of course your letter to me of Decr 30 last, in which you sent me the gist of an article sent by you to Riforma, made me aware of the general character of the paper from the ‘historical archives.’ Now, the time has slipped by for me to get written an article to one of the English papers as to the usefulness of the ‘Reforma’ in publishing notices of works affecting the preservation of national monuments. Partly, because we have been too much occupied in our own affairs, and because we find it very difficult to get our ‘capitalistic’ press to venture on doing anything really useful. Morris’s name, of course goes a great way, but if the papers fancy there is anything in an article which wd in any way compromise them they are too shy to allow it to appear. You see, our publicists are blankly ignorant of all art matters, and as they cannot understand the points themselves, they are obliged to depend on a limited and biassed [sic] number of fancied experts. For example, the ‘Times’, knowing nothing of ancient art, is led into publishing such information as Mr Stillman can give it, and the value of which you know perfectly well.2 I think it probable that I shall have to write something as a prologue to the annual report of ‘anti-scrape’, and I thought I might, in it, put something to shew how helpful the ‘Riforma’ is in Italy. Do you think this will do? I thought also, of bringing in your short story of the salvation of the symbolic bull of Orvieto, with, perhaps, a print of him from your photo, as a frontispiece. This I think you said you would not object to. You will understand my friend that I would be anxious not to do anything which you would dislike, or which might hamper you in your position. I am aware that by your sending me notes, and other news of ancient art matters, from time to time you run this risk of my making a mistake, and putting you in an awkward position. This I particularly wish to avoid, and I beg you always to make quite clear to me.3 With regard to the article, of which you have sent me several copies, wd you wish me specially to use one or more in any particular way? I suppose you have sent one to the ‘Times’? but of course they will not publish it. I think you shew very great skill in shewing indicating that you are not quite satisfied with what has been done, and yet do not wish to quarrel with those who did it, and infer that they did what they did with the best intentions, but that there would be no excuse now for them to do the same sort of thing again? And your quiet boldness in hinting (this was in the ‘Reforma’ article) that, at some time, wise courage might be shewn by reinserting the old ‘warehoused’ capitals in their places again. In reading through 67

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

the article, I noted “all the bases of the ground-floor loggia were renewed” – that meaning, I suppose, the bases under the pavement level [sketch] thus? You will remember you sent me a tracing of the construction of the front of the Palace. This, I greatly value. When reading that part of the article dealing with the new tie-rods inserted, I suppose, from the description, that it was done in this way, [sketch] for I remember noticing the round bars when I was at the Pal: Well, how did you connect the cross ties? If you shewed your article to Mr Stillman, I hope he behaved like a man? though I am afraid, even if the ‘Times’ would allow it, he would hardly publish your correction of his blunders. Men are too apt to fancy they would lose in character by shewing magnanimity. Just now, the most successful Architects in London and elsewhere are banding themselves together to resist ‘antiscrape’, by with[h]olding information as to what they propose to do with the ancient buildings to which they have been appointed as architects. And as our society has nothing to back it up, except such public opinion as it has itself created, we are in a poor way, and we much want some of your Italian neatness of execution in dealing with such hindrances. These architects are ‘successful’ mainly as business men, by acquiring an amount of work in their hands which, even if they were as great as Palladio of Vicenza or Wren of London they could not carry out worthily, and the one notable thing they will do is to leave behind them fortunes accumulated at the expense of the veracity of our historic buildings. This greed of money, and the “respectability” which comes of it, is eating out the manliness of England. Again, I am your debtor for most interesting photographs, particularly for the one of the ancient port of sub Cosa – for I am so ignorant of the tribal and race history of Greece, Etruria &c.4 Also, it may be your Italian historians of research do not know for certain much about the Etruscans or the “Pelasgians” as you call them? The photograph itself is melancholy-looking enough, though part of this comes from the abominable line of the prison on the left. Have you ever seen a piece of ruin of Pelasgic wall, so as to know how thick – from front to back – the wall is? The other photo:, of Palazzo Vitelleschi, is pleasant to look at, though I never liked the artificial marking of wall surface.5 Also the continuing the tracery down below the spring of the arch is a mistake more common in France & Italy than in England. Can you tell what kind of hanging apparatus was used with the metal supports [sketch] – were they for banner pole, or canvas shades? In some early houses, such as at Assisi, I noticed stone rings, thus, [sketch] which I fancy were for the same purpose. Answer these trifling questions, or not, as you like. If Italian weather is of the ‘good ordinary kind’ belonging to spring, it must be magnificent in comparison with ours, which is unusually beautiful. It requires a good deal of philosophy for a sensitive human like myself to pass through it undisturbed in mind & body. Even the charcoal whitewash of London is set alight by the sun, and the green of the country is a miracle of beauty. Your vine stems are all bleeding, no doubt, where the pruning knife has been used. I came away from Italy just too early to see the bursting out of the buds. Only the lizards were 68

1888–1898

in active life when I was at Verona, and I spent half hours in watching their joy at Bergamo, on my way home. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 63a-c

1 Presumably, offprints of GBO’s ‘I restauri del palazzo ducale di Venezia’, Archivo Storico Dell’ Arte, II (1889), pp. 428–30. 2 For William Stillman, see above, Letter 362, note 6. 3 It is ironic that, despite this precautionary anxiety, PSW still managed to embarrass GBO and had to change the first draft of his SPAB report. See below, Letter 376, note 4. 4 Cosa was a Roman colony founded in 273 BC on the south-west coast of Tuscany. It stood on the site of a former Etruscan settlement. It is probable that the town was abandoned in the early fifth century AD. 5 The Palazzo Vitelleschi in Tarquinia, the former Etruscan city in Lazio, was built in 1436–9 for Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi (d. 1440)

369 • To Giacomo Boni, 13–20 April 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London W.C. Sunday 13th March [sic] 1890 To Giacomo, autocrat of all the antiquities of Italy, Admiration, and such praise as will keep him in well doing. These.1 I, your obsequious servant, acknowledge with gratitude, (bother the word, why shd one be grateful?) receipt of letter of more or less significance, produced by the writer at the expense of somewhat of his leisure, inclosing photographs of an ancient Roman fragment of architecture, dignified by flower pots, and line with clothes drying and the same. Subjects of frieze, Griffons and candlesticks. The limbs of beasts more worthy than the candlesticks. The shade of Faustina should be pleased with the lie of the beautiful Roman tiles, and the fall of the drapery from the clothes line.2 “The noble dust of Alexander . . . stopping a bung hole”.3 On reading your answers I felt ashamed that I should have put to you such trifling questions – nevertheless, I am more learned than I was. Someone must pay for the increase of knowledge, as for the increase of corn. Your dates of the Roman bell towers are, or will be useful as interesting. I remember more particularly the Campanile which stands between the Arch of Titus and the Constantine Basilica – Sa Croce, in your list, I fancy.4 I noted the dishes of green and red. The use of pottery decoration I remember best in the Church of S. Piero in Grado near Pisa, where Rhodian dishes were affixed in the stucco of the outside pilasters.5 Very lovely pieces of colour in the sombre colour of the stucco. This isolated church touched me , standing as it 69

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

does in the dull flat land of the Pisa district. Mind you, it was in December that I saw it, and on a rainy day. How different it would look now, under an April sun. Your spirits must go up and down in your stimulating and depressing journeys in the land of many and much dead! It is pleasant, when turning over thoughts in a depressing journey, to see the pigs happy, and the cocks steadfast under the rain which bends the bow of their tail feathers. Alas, I would have liked to sit down with the farm men under the shelter of the barn, and talk to them, till internal fire dried up the dripping sky. Another misfortune was, for me, to be at Ravenna in wet weather. That over dismal city wants sunshine the moment one’s eyes are off the precious antiquities, and even they look better in a shimmer of light. I have looked out Altamura, & Bari, on the maps, and guessed at your striving up hills and diving into vales, and the coachman cheering up his sweating horse. Venosa is in the same hilly district.6 I fully enjoyed your jest about making “incomes” to spread dung over the fields, and stimulating sweet smelling orange trees for the dusty noses of no longer sneezing horses. There, I’ve just eaten an orange, to stimulate my imagination of the land where they will grow. The very skin of the fruit just eaten was touched – perhaps – by a happy girl as she gathered, and put in the heap, for the Englishman overseas. Maybe, now, she is sitting in a bench outside the whitewashed wall of her hovel, dreaming of a fine dark-haired man who will make her bear fine round legged children to serve greedy masters – who knows? The very skin of the book in front of me may be off the back of some sheep in Africa, who has browsed round the limb of a half worked column of porphyry meant for a Cæsar? I can conceive something nearer. Giacomo rubbing his hair back while he pens “XII articles and explanatory notes” for the Minister, who will wonder how it all came there: how his subordinate should sweat his brain about crumbling stones that will bring no money (god) into the exchequer? How the inspector of ancient dust will adjust his phrases, so that the minister shall fancy he is directing the labours of the government into a channel which shall command the respect of Europe, and the God may come in that way. How the said Giacomo wastes an hour in Pincian slopes, bedded in violets, and dreams7. . . . of this, that, and the other: for today? no – for tomorrow? no, no. For some far off time which will never come. Never mind, you have the violets and the shade of the camellias. Happy he who knows the violet, and the shade, at the time he has them, and the purple blue of the hills, and the pit-pat of the shoes of the small Italian finelegged horse who tugs to the place of antiquity, which has to be thought over and dealt with, for . . . what? The god – money? honour? – ‘not a bit, you puzzle headed Fillipo – but for the sweet smell of the spring herbage, and the curves of the stone worked by my fellow men 1000 years since. Will you not understand that I am paid by my eyes, ears, and nose, and the wits mother Italy distilled into my brain.’ The former rather rhapsodical piece was done last Sunday, guided – no doubt – by my belly. This, (Sunday 20th April) must come more from the head. You will 70

1888–1898

be able to judge of my week’s growth, and be glad that something hindered my finishing last Sunday. To give some relief to our “antiscrape” supporters, I have decided to put your Orvieto Bull as a frontispiece to the annual report, with some tag from my poor pen in the way of ‘O be joyful’ so that the matter may not be all Cassandra like.8 When I was at Orvieto in Jany 1885, my time was taken up chiefly in gathering of the seed of Fra Angelico, and Luca Signorelli in South (?) transept of the Cathedral, and the rude ch’ of S. Giovenale,9 so that I did not give enough time to swallow the sculpture at the base of the west front of Duomo, or the emblems of the cornice over. The photograph-shop provided me with some prints of the nave capitals (strange, though fine) and here & there an enlarged detail, but no Evangelist emblems or general view of the West (?) front.10 So I went last week and got some views of the portals, from a general photographer here, shewing the emblems, so that I might have my memory refreshed. The S. Luke’s bracket is untenanted, but I suppose by this time he is pacing out on his pedestal, [two words obliterated] reinvigorated for another few hundred years. (What a long preamble!) Sir Giacomo. Our ‘black and white’ illustrator (a good socialist, and energetic man)11 when I produced your photograph for reproduction, said ‘This seems to be an enlarged photograph – cannot you get me an original or, what wd be the better thing, the negative’? What was I to say, but that I could hardly ask Sig: Boni for such a thing? he (you) must draw the line somewhere, &c &c. Well, Minister of Italian salvation, what am I to do? or, rather, what can you do without too much bother to, and profane expletives from, yourself? Do not hesitate to say ‘go to the devil, for an unmitigated beggar’, if you feel so inclined. It will ease you, and my feathers will not be ruffled by telephone or other electrical messenger of mischief. We have offered your ‘Restoration of the Ducal Pal:’ at Venice to our “Athenæum”, to be translated by them and printed in their weekly paper – critical, literary, artistic, &c. Whether they will publish it I cannot say.12 We sent it to the editor with the comment only that, as the object was of universal interest, the public would be glad to know what the ‘restoration’ really was like. I suppose you sent a copy to the “Times”? O, mendacious Times!13 I was mooning last evening (an English expression for the moonstruck, or preoccupied) on a mid-road retreat – (answering to the posts and rails here & there under the Aurelian wall of Rome, to secure the passenger from pressure of harried bullocks) – and the faithful Carlo Murray came out of an omnibus at me, as if to squeeze or gore. I asked him of your welfare, as he told me he had seen you lately. He said (in answer to my anxious eyes) that you seemed brisk & well. So be it. You should be hurdled round, so that human, ministerial, or bullock pressure should not press you to death. I sometimes add up the pressure around you. XII articles and explanatory notes to write. Orders of the minister to be written to the prefect of here & there. Measurements & notes, with photographs, to be taken of Pelasgian or mediæval antiquity; the anxiety and pestilent pressure of northern London barbarians to be fenced off; Castle of S. Angelo to be manipulated so that all people may be satisfied (including the undersigned) &c &c, till the 71

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

brain becomes bewildered . . . . and . . . . and I will leave off, and relieve you of any more of this stuff. Adieu, and the right fate attend you to secure your salvation | Philip Webb. Courtauld 61a-c

1 The courtly formality of this opening flourish (also used in some of his other letters to GBO) apes the conventional salutations at the start of a written exchange between Renaissance grandees. 2 Faustina (c. 100–40 AD) was the wife of Antoninus Pius (86–161 AD), who became Emperor in 138 after the death of Faustina’s uncle, the Emperor Hadrian (76–138 AD), who recognised Antoninus as his heir. 3 ‘To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till ’a find it stopping a bunghole?’ Hamlet, V.i.202–4. 4 The Roman Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme forms part of the original Imperial Palace of the Empress St Helen (c. 255–330), mother of the Emperor Constantine, who on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is said to have recovered the true cross of the crucifixion, for which she established a shrine in Rome. 5 The inclusion of ceramic dishes in the fabric of a building is believed to indicate ornament of possible Moorish influence. For PSW’s visit to San Piero a Grado, see Vol. I, Letter 236, note 3, and Letter 237. 6 GBO was about to embark on a visit to Altamura in southern Italy, to review the condition of its buildings. A separate trip to Venosa in the province of Potenza was pending. 7 ‘Spring is at its climax now; yesterday (Easter day) we enjoyed a few hours rest on the slope of the Pincian hill, covered with violets and daisies, and felt grateful towards the camellias for the shade they afforded to us and the snow-like, pink and patched blossoms with which our table was laid.’ GBO to PSW, 7 April 1890, Courtauld, 64d. 8 In the Greek myth, Cassandra is the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Awarded the power of prophecy by the god Apollo, her refusal of his advances meant that her prophecies would never be believed. 9 See Vol. I, Letter 244, note 6. The ancient church of San Giovenale contains twelfth-century frescoes. 10 See above, Letter 358, note 1. 11 EW. 12 It seems not to have been used. 13 The Times made no mention of the article.

370 • To George Washington Jack, 18–19 May 1890 Pencil Sunday night. 18th May. 1890 My dear Jack. I was wrong, the train leaves Paddn at 10.20. I am not sure if I shall be able to go tomorrow, as there has been no improvement, indeed I have been rather worse than yesterday. One does not want to be shut up for a month at the Lode!1 I saw Mr Weir on Sat.2 His eye was getting better, but was no means well when I saw it, it looks probable that he will not be able to come for a day or two. I tried to cheer him a little, but he was not dull. 72

1888–1898

Will you see what Smith & Hevens mean by their letter & diagram, and write to them.3 If even by cutting the sides of the 4 posts a little against the stair another 1½ inches in width (narrow) could be got so much the better. Will you look at the panelling for Brighton, and let Garretts’ have any diagrams to explain the whole setting out of panels &c in connection with the rest of the work.4 Mrs Hanting says she will have me.5 If I get there I hope I may get away again. Yrs Ph. W. Am not in good fettle this morning either – but perhaps, by taking care, the movement & air may do me no harm. You see, next week is W[h]itsuntide, and they want to be set going on the big roof. Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 PSW was modifying and enlarging Forthampton Court, near Tewkesbury (1889–92), a medieval house owned by John Reginald Yorke (1836–1912), former Conservative MP for Tewkesbury. The builder was Albert Estcourt, who had worked with PSW on Clouds. See Helen Smith, ‘Philip Webb’s restoration of Forthampton Court, Gloucestershire’, Architectural History, XXIV, 1981, pp. 92–102, and Kirk, pp. 190–3 and p. 301. The Lower Lode Inn is situated on the banks of the Severn, with views of Tewkesbury. 2 William Weir (WW: 1865–1950) had become PSW’s second assistant in 1888, and stayed until 1897. He would later work in close consultation with PSW on various repair projects for the SPAB. 3 It is unclear to which project this refers. 4 PSW was constructing a picture gallery at 23 Second Avenue in Hove, for Constantine Alexander Ionides. The builders were William and Thomas Garrett of Brighton. See Kirk, pp. 187 and 301. 5 Mrs Hanting was PSW’s usual landlady during his visits to Tewkesbury. See below, Letter 374.

371 • To Giacomo Boni, 4 June 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Tuesday 4th June 1890 My dear Giacomo Boni I had your ever delightful photographs and scrap of a letter of May 16. You certainly may be on some interesting track – but a man with your wits, and living in Italy, can hardly fail of that at any time. The thing I note in the Temple or oratory of Clitunno,1 which wd have made me suspicious of its pagan origin, even if the cross had not been in the pediment, would have been the arrangement of the pediment itself. Your front photograph runs a little short of the side angles of the pediment but I can see that the members of the horizontal and diagonal cornices must have a clumsy – non classic – intersection. In the regular, ancient, arrangement the horizontal cornice would have had no cyma or top moulding. The oratory near Trevi has one, and at the angles the 73

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

two must meet awkwardly – in the regular cornice, as you know, the diagonal would be thus [sketch] and the horizontal thus [sketch]. The place must be a pretty little building with its elegantly (but not classic) decorated columns, and its curiosio, or half columns attached to the ante. I suppose that in some districts the ancient tradition lingered on much longer than in others – just as in some districts in England, the 15th c. work continued right into the 16th c. I well remember the beautiful Campanile of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, but what I delighted in most at that church was the exquisite Baldac[c]hino, of which I have a photograph, and took a measurement or two.2 I also noted the lotus or lily at the apex of the vaulting. What an old world look that choked arch of the Roman bridge has at the village of S. Marinella.3 We have had a splendid month of May, more beautiful than I can remember back to.4 It might fairly be called finer than the “average” English May. You should have been here, or me there, it wd not have much mattered which, except that I should like to meet you on your own ground. How pleasant it wd be (for me, at least) for us to be together – say, just where the sea laps the sand in front of this old Roman broken bridge-arch, when you might lay down the law while staring at my wondering open mouth. And so the “law” is out of your hands and in those of “H E”.5 Let me hope that the last letter of his title expresses his quality. I cannot at the present moment think of any one member of our governing class, or body, who knows anything whatever of ancient art, and, what is almost worse, they act as arbitrarily as if they did. Most of our mischief is done by the authorities, acting under the cloak of the advice of some “eminent” professional, who knows only too well on which side his bread is buttered – can you understand that rude saying? I suspect, by this time, you may be at Venice, gliding in gondola in and about the small canals, and putting Sig: Cadel through an examination. I hope you may find him “sound”, and that he will ring as true in metal as one of the best bells which vibrates under the towers of S. Alessio.6 Memorandum, are there any really old bells in Venice, such as that little beauty which stands in the upper loggia of the Bargello at Firenze, dated in fine Lombardic characters + A.D. M.CC.XL. VIIII – that is, I read it, 1249?7 It has 4 square holes in its crown, such as I do not remember to have seen elsewhere – thus [sketch]. The hanging cannons, or loops, have been broken off. Were the 4 square holes intended for the escape of sound? In our papers we learn that it is proposed to “restore” (damn the word) the house of Columbus at Genoa.8 Does this sort of mania come within your jurisdiction, and, if so, can you keep them from making such fools of themselves as our people did when they destroyed all that was interesting of Shakespeare’s house at Stratford on Avon?9 I have now written the preamble for our annual report, speaking as plainly as I could of the principals [sic] which have guided the “antiscrape” society since it was founded.10 This plain speaking was quite necessary, as almost all people are densely ignorant of the inestimable value of authentic ancient work. Our annual 74

1888–1898

meeting is on the 25th of this month; the report has to be printed by then, and the Toro reproduced to explain what has been said about your success at Orvieto. Our photograph reproducer11 asked me this question (and, as he does not know you personally he was regardless of your convenience) ‘Can you learn from Signor Boni if he could let us have a silver print from negative – or a glass positive on any scale not exceeding in size 14.7 x 10.1 centimetres’ that is 5¾ x 4 inches. Now, as I know something of your busy life and engrossing occupations, I am more modest, and said something deprecating your being troubled any more in the matter, but I send you what he said. If you are unable to send what he asks for, or the smaller negative you mentioned in your last note, we must manage [to] reproduce from the print I have of the Bull, but the time is running out. I beg you not to disturb yourself, and I detest, more than almost anything else, being a beggar. In addition to which I am so much your debtor for the many interesting photographs you are continually sending in your letters. All you have to do, if you feel so inclined, is to curse the brutal Englishmen from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads, and altogether ignore the importunity of Yours sincerely | Ph: Webb. Courtauld 66a-c

1 See above, Letter 365, note 4. 2 The church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome, supposedly built on the site of the home of the martyred Roman saint. The campanile is twelfth century, and the ornate baldacchino in the presbytery is attributed to the architect and sculptor, Arnolfo di Cambio (c. 1240–1300/10). 3 In the coastal town of Santa Marinella, a former ancient bathing resort about 35 miles northwest of Rome, the remains of two bridges survive on the shoreline of the ancient Via Aurelia, which connected the capital with the coast. 4 ‘May has been a very rainy month this year’ GBO to PSW, 16 May 1890, Courtauld 65a. 5 ‘The law is in the hands of H.E. who consults some of his historical friends before presenting it before our house of Lords’. 65a. ‘His Excellency’ was the government minister to whom GBO was accountable. 6 The Romanesque campanile of the fourth-century church of Santi Bonifacio e Alessio on the Aventine hill in Rome. According to legend, when Alessio died all of Rome’s campaniles rang spontaneously. 7 The thirteenth-century Florentine castle of the Bargello was the residence of the city sheriff. At one time, curfew was rung nightly on the great bell, called Montanina. 8 Christopher Columbus was born in the Genoan republic in 1450/1, and a house in Piazza Dante close to the Porta Soprana in Genoa may have been a childhood home. 9 The sixteenth-century house in which Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon was bought for £3000 in 1847 by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, established once it became known that the New York showman, Phineas Barnum (1810–91), was hoping to acquire the building at auction and ship it to America to exhibit in one of his museums. The house underwent major exterior restoration work between 1857 and 1864, based largely on the evidence of an eighteenthcentury engraving in The Gentleman’s Magazine after a drawing by the antiquarian, Richard Greene (1716–93). 10 ‘The word “Restoration,” as applied to ancient buildings, dies hard; it is satisfactory only to the ignorant and ill-instructed; it fills the vacancy in the minds of the many, promising what it

75

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II cannot perform. . . . If, therefore, the Society, which has held on for thirteen years, considers its present position and power, it need not blame itself for keeping freshly in mind its first principles: without this staunchness its list of members might have been more than doubled, but its power of doing what was wanted of it would have been infinitely less.’ SPAB Annual Report, 1890, pp. 7–8. For the problems which arose from PSW’s first draft to his report, and subsequent revisions, see below, Letter 376. 11 EW.

372 • To May Morris, 9 June 1890 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Monday 9th June 1890 My dear May Is your new house ready? Is the coal cellar whitewashed? Is it large enough to hold 3 tons of coals? Is there anyone staying in the house? ______________________ If so, I propose sending a blackguard wedding present to you,1 to indicate a potentiality of warmth in my friendship, with the advantage that it will not long remain in the house as a nuisance, which most presents come to be considered. Patriarchal blessings on your head from your affectionate | Philip Webb. Perhaps, in your postcard, you will send me the right address of the house in question. BL Add 45342, f. 69

1 MM married Henry Halliday Sparling on 14 June, at Fulham Register Office. See Vol. I, Letter 278, note 1.

373 • To Giacomo Boni, 29 June 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 29th June 1890 My dear Boni. I am greatly sorry to have troubled you about finding the negative of the Orvieto bull. There was no need, after all, to have done this, as our photographer made a quite sufficiently good copy on copper for us to publish in the annual report, and of which I posted you a copy by Thursday’s mail.1 A good and learned paper was read at our meeting, on the old ‘craft guilds’, which will be printed in the second edition of the report, and sent to you as usual, as a member of the society.2 In the 76

1888–1898

report I sent you, and to which I put the ‘Ph. W.’ in pencil at the end of that part for which I was responsible, you will see put, in my poor way, some notes on what we consider to be our most important points in regard to the care of our monuments. I should like you to tell me – when you can find time – what you think of it, as what you could say would be of assistance to me in future: also, you shd tell me if the use I have made of you, and of ancient Italian monuments generally, is offensive in any way? I wanted to let our members (of which a list is always given in the report) know, that Italy, which used to be an anxious point with us, is now in much safer and more effective hands than ours, and that now, we shall look for help from Italy. I spoke to you of this, one morning when you and I were walking in the neighbourhood of Westminster Abbey, but to which you – perhaps – did not pay much attention, namely, that you or your friends should report on the English, in a fair and kindly way, as to how they are serving their ancient buildings. Anything you chose to say of us, our society could get published, in one way or another, in an English paper. Now, “don’t be bashful”; spit it out like a man, and tell us what you clearly think of the English ‘booby’ – which word you may find in your English dictionary. I know you must resent (only you are a politic fellow, & skilfully veil your sentiments) now and then what we say of the Italians on the subject of antiquities, but we will take our whipping with better philosophy, and kiss the rod without wincing.3 We are going to have printed for ourselves a few copies of the bull from the negative you have sent, and then I will return it to you. Truly, I took out my maps, and went for Manfredonia, Bari, and the rest, and then got to the books to read about he of the ‘gentle aspect’, who died without hesitation.4 However, I am lamentably deficient in knowledge of Italian (and, indeed, of much other) history – only knowing enough to make me want to know more – therefore your – only too short – notes of the story, and description of the situation about Bari, Benevento, Monte S. Angelo, and the rest, flew away with my own personality for the time, till the waxen wings dropped me to the earth again, and when the silex arrow heads became mere flint barbs, and ceased to be tips to Michael’s spears.5 Now, is the dialect of this mountain people easy for you to understand? Lord, what a wealth of hoar antiquity did you walk about in for a time, and resolve to do so again shortly! You, who must know your Dante pretty well, are well furnished to pick up the threads of various history as you tread upon them in your official journeys. I fancy your people will not be loved the more at the Vatican for carrying the message to the Basilica of S. Nicola at Bari?6 I thank you for the useful photograph of the arch of Trajan at Benevento.7 I can never look at this decayed Roman work, that so much energy was put into, without sighing it should be such poor art. The Greek before, or the Byzantine afterwards, would have left something worthy of all the labour. This arch seems to be in a state of good preservation. Perhaps, when you next go to Bari, you will take a photo: of the enamelled slab in front of the ciborium.8 I have now a vision of spring flowers and sucking bees, of Ilex forests, and the fine mountainous region of the Gargano. A sail round this fine promontory would be delightful. 77

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

You write of Thomas d’Aquino,9 Francis d’Assisi,10 and Bernardo of Chiaravalle.11 Is this the Chiaravalle near to Milan?12 You also write about Norman, Longobardic,13 Angiovine,14 and Suavian (if that is the word, for though your writing, minutely small as it generally is, I can usually make out, is sometimes a small puzzle to me).15 Do you mean Suabian or Teutonic architecture? The archre which came of the Imperial German rule in Italy? When I have written a passage like this, I sometimes smile, and say, ‘Boni has not time to answer your questions, it is enough for him to write of what he is thinking about, without attending to the return of ignorant questions?’ If that be so, well and good! Of course, what is common enough to you learned antiquarians and historical students is not – necessarily – easy for me, a poor art student and workman to follow quite certainly. The two are a quite separate set of human beings, highly useful to each other, but the qualities of either are seldom common to both. William Morris, & John Ruskin, combined them more nearly than any other I can remember just now. Perhaps you will understand what I am aiming at, and perhaps you will not: but in any case you need not be put out by my questioning. A mysterious business of this, of scribbling down something to send off to a far away fellow mortal, trying to express an altogether different current of feeling to another of whom one only knows so little as we know of each other. The stronger the individuality, the less really known of each of the two. To know another fairly well, one of the two should be subordinate to the other, and sit at his feet, a kind of Boswell to the Johnson.16 A universal language would not be of much use, as it wd only be in words. Hence the value of ancient monuments, for they tell no lies – you one sees the works, whether of Etruscans, Pelasgians, Phœnicians, or Greeks, and one knows (almost) the people themselves; and, if Homer had been an architect or sculptor or painter we should have known more of him (if he was a personality) than all the Illiad [sic] or Odyssey can tell us. If your tribes of the Gargano have lived there, fairly unmixed, since the silex arrowhead time; and if (?) their race has done the handiwork of the district, whether of vase or of building, then you may fairly claim to know the people. But, much depends on the purity of the race. Race, that is, in contradistinction to converse or education. I hold that the race – if fairly pure – is stronger than any education. The modern European Greek, however stupid he may be from education (consider the education of the Greeks, Jews, and other outcast peoples, money-grubbing for 2,000 years!) very generally carries his race in his make, and gait, and physiognomy plainly enough for there being no mistake as to what stock he must have come from. Therefore, I would like to look upon your Gargano mountains people and see them in the flesh, as well as in the velvet coat & red sash, as in the men, and the gold ornaments and arrowheads of the women. Have you any gypseys [sic] in Italy? You could not read George Borrow, or this question wd have set you going.17 There, that is enough, the most patient beast gives in under too great a load. Yours Philip Webb. Courtauld 70a-c 78

1888–1898 1 This appeared as a frontispiece to the SPAB Annual Report, 1890. 2 In fact, this paper was not printed. 3 ‘Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love, / That (like a testy babe) will scratch the nurse / And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod!’ The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I,ii.57–9. 4 On 12 June 1890, GBO had written from the ‘sea-coast of Bari’ in southern Italy, describing a journey from Manfredonia to Monte San Angelo, where legend tells of three appearances in the years 490–2 of the archangel, St Michael. Courtauld 67a–d. 5 GBO reported of the prehistoric implements to be found in the mountainous region of the Gargano, and of the silex (flint) arrows ‘worn by women as an amulet.’ 67b. 6 Completed by the end of the twelfth century, since 1087 the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari has been a shrine for the relics of St Nicholas, removed from Myra once the city came under Saracen control. 7 The triumphal arch of the Emperor Trajan, built in 114–117 on the Via Appia as the entrance to Benevento. 8 By ‘ciborium’, PSW presumably means the canopy or attic supported by the massive structure of the arch, featuring an inscription with a relief on either side. 9 The Italian Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), was influenced by Aristotelian philosophy in his own Christian thinking. Regarded by the Church as perhaps its finest theologian, he was canonised in 1323. 10 Founder of the Franciscan order, the Italian friar Francis of Assisi (1881/2–1226) is best known for embracing a life of poverty and humility. In 1224 the stigmata, the wounds of the passion of Christ, appeared on his body. He was canonised in 1228. 11 Bernardo di Chiaravalle (1090–1153) is better known in the English-speaking world as the French abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, and is of central importance in the influence of the Cistercian order. He was canonised in 1174, and in the nineteenth century recognised as a Doctor of the Church. 12 See below, Letter 377, note 5. 13 Italian Lombardic architecture. 14 GBO wrote of architecture in Monte San Angelo dating from the time of Charles I, King of Sicily, also known as Charles of Anjou (1227–85). 15 GBO’s script is indeed hard to read here, but he subsequently clarified that he means Suabian, ‘which is so typical of the time of Frederic the II (about A.D. 1230) in South Italy’. GBO to PSW, 1 October 1890, Courtauld 73d. 16 Much of what we know of the writer, wit and lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–84) is dependent upon the testimony of his friend, travelling companion and biographer, the lawyer and writer James Boswell (1740–95). 17 See above, Letter 350, note 12.

374 • To Emery Walker, 24 August 1890 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday morng 24 Aug. 1890 My dear Walker I was disturbed on finding you had left for Faulkner the 2 vols of the Gazette des beaux Arts,1 and that I missed you, and what was worse, when you called with the Tewkesbury photos & I was also again out. Friday, I was at Brighton all day2 – Sat: morning I had gone as usual to Q. Sqre. Miss F will try her brother with a vol: of the French pictures, & see what he says to it. He has no understanding that the American Mages do not run back as far as the deluge, and, as habit serves him in place of memory, he always looks for today for that which the like of what he had yesterday. However, we shall see. Miss F. begs me to thank you sincerely. She was 79

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

delighted with your photo’s of Tewkesbury, particularly with the toy public at the “lode”, the ferry, and the 4 ducks, with the willows.3 They are pretty pictures. I’m afraid if you turn them to acct in Macs Mag. Brighton will suddenly shift anchor, and go & squat there, and Mrs Hanting’s prices will rise.4 All we could hope would be, that the Justice Shallow wd drive them away again with Virgilian quotations, or break their necks on his new wire fence.5 I was surprised you made such good pictures of the Tomb, the turret, the painted man’s head &c – they are delightful.6 It was stupid of me not to get you on to the gutter of the Nave, to do the turret. Please take hearty thanks for your kind acts – to say nothing of my time (anxious often) having been made blessed to me in Gloucestersh’ by your cheeriness. Yrs Ph. Webb. It occurs to me that if you give Mrs Hanting the two prints of the Inn & Ferry, I would put them into simple, decent frames – say, gold cut mount, and blocked wood outer frame. Murcott of Endell St generally does such things for me, and I wd get him to do this.7 If the pictures only turned out one of the bad German litho’s, it would be better for all? V&A, AAD

1 The monthly Gazette des Beaux-Arts Courrier Européen de l’Art et de la Curiosité was founded in 1859 and survived until 2002. Well-regarded as a reference work, it contained illustrated articles on contemporary and historical art topics which PSW doubtless hoped would divert CF. 2 For his work at 23 Second Avenue, Hove. See above, Letter 370, note 4. 3 See above, Letter 370, note 1. 4 ‘Brighton’ is here used generically, signifying a destination for the fashionable. Mrs Hanting was PSW’s Tewkesbury landlady. 5 Robert Shallow, a country Justice of the Peace in 2 Henry IV. PSW here alludes to his client, John Yorke, for whom he was doing work at Forthampton Court. 6 Evidently EW had been with PSW in Gloucestershire, where he took photographs of Tewkesbury, Forthampton and other local views. 7 The picture framer, Henry Murcott (b. 1836?) of 6 Endell Street, Long Acre, W.C. He undertook work for Whistler, amongst others.

375 • To William Weir, 28 August 1890 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thurs: 28 Aug. 1890 Dear Mr Weir I am very glad to learn that your long ride, and the broken “machine” detention,1 did not harm you or your friend, and that you found such a pleasant place as Walsingham to sit down at. My recollection of it is delightful.2 The remains of the Abbey buildings – though small – are full of interest and good for the study of construction. (Mem: always put in your notes the jointing 80

1888–1898

of the stones). Remember to see the wayside, Pilgrims’ chapel, of Houghton-leDale near by you.3 If I remember rightly, the detail of this little casket is large in proportion to the building and, if so, important to note. Do not be put out, if I urge you to determine in your own mind, before leaving an old building, why it is good – whether from proportion alone, the quantity of ornament, or the disposition of it. If you can manage to note the proportions of the different stages (when you cannot measure) such as the relations of one part to another in their height – thus [sketch] – and the relation of height to width. Again, the relative size of detail between that to the lower and upper stages. I hope you will be able to get a good study of East Barsham ruined house, and, if you can, trace out where the rest of the original building extended to.4 My recollection of the vaulting of the tower of the main block (not the outer, or gate house tower) is, that it is rather curious. It is late work, Qy Hen: VII time, though I fancy some of the work about, is earlier. Mr Jack sends good wishes and, no doubt, would wish to send himself. The Brighton work is being very well done. Forthampton is also getting on well: but of these you would prefer, no doubt, to be quit of in your present lease of freedom. Good weather for you and pleasant companionship is the wish of yours truly Ph: Webb. SPAB

1 WW was an enthusiastic bicyclist. 2 The two villages of Little and Great Walsingham, collectively called Walsingham, in the north of Norfolk. Walsingham has been an important centre for Catholic and Anglo-Catholic pilgrimage for centuries, as the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a noblewoman there in 1061. Some ruins and the grounds of the eleventh-century Augustinian Priory survive. 3 The hamlet of Houghton St Giles, formerly known as Houghton-le-Dale, is on the river Stiffkey, near Walsingham. Once the last of the series of wayside chapels on the pilgrimage route to Walsingham, the fourteenth-century church of St Catherine of Alexandria, known as the Slipper Chapel, would become the Catholic shrine to Mary in 1897, undergoing restoration in 1904. 4 East Barsham Manor, three miles north of Fakenham in Norfolk, is of Tudor origins (c. 1520). During the eighteenth century the building became derelict, undergoing restoration in the first half of the twentieth century.

376 • To Giacomo Boni, 28 September 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 28 Sepr 1890 My dear Boni I duly received your letter of 1st July, and the ‘Riforma’ of the 24th June. Also, the Riforma of 14 Sept r. In the former newspaper was an article on your 81

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

scientific military experiments, and in the latter an article on “La Montagna di Afrodite”. I laboriously spell out parts of these articles, but lamentably fall short of understanding them in their directness and force, but, as in one of Dickens’s books, he makes one of his curious heroes lay all the blame of his shortcomings on fate, I must do the same, and say with the hero, ‘let fate take the consequences’!1 In your last letter, which was written just as you were going to rejuvinate [sic] yourself in your native place, I found several things to consider which asked for patience. See, I have given to time his fair allowance, so that no haste shd be an excuse for heat in my reply. Now, I am as much of a philosopher as I shall ever attain to, and may write whatever comes in to my head without fear of evil consequences. Let me first, however, put in writing my great disappointment at having disturbed your serenity. There is a sorrowful note in a good book – a kind of wail – that the being of that time, had been “injured in the house of his friend”.2 I feel, also, that it would have been better had the millstone been hung to my neck, and I had been cast into the sea, before I had said anything which shd cost you a regret.3 However, neither millstone nor sea were turned to reasonable use, and the mischief happened. It must be a caution to you in future, only to tell me of ordinary things, such as I might find in public report, or 10 to 1 (considered to be large odds) I shall blurt it out, inconveniently, to some one. I never could keep a secret, and, as for circumspection of behaviour, my nature knows it not, so that he would be a fool – knowing this – if he trusted me with anything that required secretion, or delicate handling.4 How the stupidity came about is easily understood, if it were worth attempting. Truth to tell, when I was writing that note for the annual report of ‘Antiscrape’, I was thinking of English fools, not Italian; and how I might drop on to our blockheads with sufficient weight to drive through their thick skulls, some sense of the value of things. It never occurred to me that one single Italian would ever read what was written, except, perhaps, yourself – even if I thought of you, at the time. I now see that I did an unwise thing, and that though you might understand what I meant, other Italians would certainly not, and the few, though emphatic, words might do mischief. Also, I should not be a fit judge of the extent of the mischief, being wholly impolitic in my construction of mind. The copy of the ‘report’ I sent to you, was only the first edition; for use at the annual meeting of the society, but it is quite possible a copy of the few printed may get out to Italy, and be turned to bad account; I hope not. The regular report, with the paper read at the meeting, is now published, and you will receive a copy in the official way, as a member of the society, and in it you will see that I had struck out all that I could which might be injurious to you, but it is hopeless to suppose all that you would dislike had been removed. However, should any evil tongues hiss at you, you must repudiate the whole thing, and say that because you happen to know a few English who are incapable of common sense, you cannot be held responsible for them, and will not be held hold yourself responsible. 82

1888–1898

I told my committee here that I had “put my foot in it”, and that the alteration in the report must be made, to which it agreed. They were not surprised at my making a blunder! I make no excuse for myself; it would be of no use, as the mischief is done, but you may turn the thing to account, by [three words obliterated] using the politicoeconomical doctrines of the present time, which inculcate the necessity of being guarded in communicating honestly with anyone. I hope you gained some good in Venice, and that you found your friend Cadel working out the schemes for doing the place good with little or no harm. Adieu, | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 72a-b

1 PSW may have Mr Toots in Dombey and Son in mind. Although not properly countable as a ‘hero’, Toots is a wholly admirable character, for whom ‘it’s of no consequence’ is a favourite remark. 2 ‘And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’ Zechariah, 13:6. 3 ‘It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, then that he should offend one of these little ones.’ St Luke, 17:2. 4 GBO had acknowledged receipt of the SPAB Annual Report, written by PSW (see above, Letter 373). ‘Your article is a very good one – the aphorism well placed. I only wish you had not printed anything about official reproaches, or governments withdrawing edicts – Such things if read in Italy might greatly injure individuals without helping the good cause in the least.’ GBO to PSW, 1 July 1890, Courtauld 71a. PSW’s hand-written text survives (SPAB archive), including amended pages incorporated in the final version published to the full membership. The first version, considered by the committee, gave GBO’s account of the repair of the Orvieto bull with an explicit attribution to him; the revised account turns this into a report derived from ‘our informant’. PSW also amended the following paragraph, the tone of which had concerned GBO: ‘The Italian Government finding its countless objects of builded history steadily dropping to decay, or their decorative details falling piecemeal under the mercenary greed of private owners has, where possible, put a stop to the progressive mutilation of its historical fabrics, and, what is more remarkable, has even recalled its own edicts which, as knowledge increased, proved to be destructive rather than protective.’ The ‘aphorism’ noted by GBO stood at the head of PSW’s report: ‘ “Authenticity does not constitute the principal value of monuments, but is a necessary condition of every value they may have.” (Modern Italian Aphorism)’.

377 • To Giacomo Boni, 19 October 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 19th Octr 1890 My dear Boni. I had your letter of the 1st Oct: duly, with the photographs of the Monte Vergine chair,1 and those of the Casauria pulpit,2 and for which I thank you heartily. You began your last letter with regret that you had criticised my poor fragment at the opening of ‘antiscrape’ report.3 You need not regret anything in that way, 83

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

it was no fault of yours. It was for me to regret – which I do sincerely. I must ask you to let me know if any mischief arises from my stupidity, so that I may (metaphorically) put my head under water. I did not wish to punish you by my delayed in writing. I merely wished to let the thing settle in my mind, so that I should not write in haste and repent at leisure. It (the blunder) has probably passed from your mind. It has not from mine, as I fear some fool may have got hold of the first printed book, and conveyed it to someone in Italy who would make mischief out of it. Comrade Hebb has kindly translated for me the “Monaco Bigio” letter in the Riforma of the 30th Sep: so that we shall have your official explanation of what has been doing in Venice. What your private one may be is another thing! You have yourself said that you have learned to be “an individual”. I doubt whether your taking a higher flight would be for the good of Italian antiquities, and as your judgment seems to me to be very acute, I will hope that Sphinx-like attitude will be the safe one. For example, when you first caught sight of the IX c chair, you must have waited till the last monk went out of the doorway of the magazine before you allowed your features to relax, and a human smile to replace the Sandstone one. Now let me give up friendly (individual) sarcasm, and speak of the chairback. This is what I wrote in pencil when I got your photograph – “I would say, that all expression must first be barbaric. If in early (barbaric) times there is no fit expression, there will – in later life – be no expression at all” (so there is some little hope left for the Sphinx) “or only an artificial one. Without the descent into the hell of art” (touching mother earth again, after the Roman degradation) “there could have been no fresh fruitfulness, such as this splendid piece of carved human expression is. Between the 4th and the 9th centuries, there has been time enough for the grosser particles of earth to drop away, without destroying the vigour of the new youth, with the sweet smell of the dew of morning on it. It is this “quality”, I take it, which makes us pass slowly, and regretfully, from the Archaic Greek expression, to that of the Pheidian time.” Are you, or shall you be able to read all the story represented in the 12 circles of the centre panel of the back of the chair? Is it one story, or a combination? or, is it merely a reflection of preceding myths? or, a representation of the spirit of hunting? I hope the continued work provided for Ravelli, will not corrupt him, so or that he may give up his simplicity and take to vicarious ways, looking on, like an architect, at the workman who does the thing itself?4 I often turn to the “bull”, and conjure up in my mind the aspect of Orvieto of the precipitous sides. The Orvieto of Luca Signorelli: of black pottery (sham or real) and of a pleasant little white wine, of which I drank, reverently, and with caution. I doubt if the wine of the small republic of S. Marino tasted better than that of Orvieto. Na, na, never mind the better, let us hope they were both good. That is an expression of my love of locality. The variety of things on Earth’s surface. These things of good are far too many to be crammed all into one partitioned space.

84

1888–1898

Your note of the 3 great Cistercian Abbeys, is good for me, for I am but too poor an historic antiquarian.5 You should have known more intimately George Wardle, whom you saw at Venice. He is a good and enthusiastic one. He is now moving about between the South of France, the upper end of the Lombard valley, and the common ground of that part of Switzerland. That is, he has moved about there, according to the seasons, for this last year and a half, and in search of health. He sends me interesting and pains-taking letters of the story of architecture there, from the 4th century downwards. And asks me questions as if I – the god-forsakenone in Archæology, could answer them! I have almost forgotten what I asked you about Chiaravalle, but I should have thought it had been from the craftsmen’s side of the question of that Cistercian Abbey near Milan. How was the lantern over the crossing supported? To build, sit under the roof tree, (or vault) that is my poor craftsmen like love. This does not presuppose carelessness as to antiquity. That too interests and delights me much, but I am not naturally cunning therein. You see, this dome (duomo I suppose?) at the crossing of the church, interests me more than that of Brunelleschi (I cannot stop to see if his name is rightly spelled) at Florence, or of the Buonoretti at Rome. They are good in their way, but this pyramidal dome at Chiaravalle is peculiar, and has not had the praise laid upon it that the others have. Here, you may take the following reflection to your soul. We are all hemmed in by circumstances of the time of your life, only allowed to put our heads out of the portholes of the ship of the century, and cry aloud for recognition. Some hold their peace, and go down with their ship in silence. Perhaps the great M. Angelo knew that he was in the net, and had to build S. Peter’s house of shame. Never mind, Michel. Did you not smooth the limbs of the dead Christ, and his mother’s nose, with your own human fingers, in the ‘Pieta’, in that very Peter’s Church? Rest in peace. This last pretty reflection (I hope it may not be rubbish to you) comes of my delight in what all the natural, simple, and direct Italians did. And now we have horrid news that the good building of the cathedral at Siena has been on fire! Our newspapers are so much taken up with time serving politics – moneychangers’ doings – and gambling business with horses, and pugilists, that they cannot take trouble to learn what has really happened at Siena. I burn to know if the pavements have suffered, or the baptistery, or the delightful paintings of Pinturicchio? I suppose you will have to go there and find out the extent of the mischief. Then there are the Ducio pictures, and a hundred other admirable pieces of work we, we poor 19th centy people cannot afford to lose.6 Adieu – do not write unless you are free to express yourself, in good leisure, and without loss to more useful work. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 74a-d

85

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 GBO described his ascent of Montevergine from Arellino, north-east of Naples, and of visiting the Abbey of Montevergine. ‘At 1320 metres above the sea level is a Benedictine abbey, which church is full of medieval tombs. . . . Here I had the good luck to discover, a cathedra [bishop’s chair] of the IX century being abandoned in a magazine [storehouse] of the convent. I enclose a photogr. of it, hoping you should like to know what the design of this precious wood carving is like. The wood itself seems not to be indigenous, but I have not yet succeeded to establish what it really is. . . . I had the cathedra placed in its original place in the church.’ GBO to PSW, 1 October 1890, Courtauld 73a–b. 2 Probably a photograph of the pulpit of the Abbey of San Clemente a Casauria, in the central Italian province of Pescara. 3 ‘I wish I had not written those slight remarks on your report, for they seemed to have caused some grief that ought to have never been caused by myself.’ 73a. 4 ‘Ravelli has been working the whole summer at Loreto, now I send him to Venice to strengthen the lion of bronze.’ 73b. For Ravelli, see above, Letter 358, note 1. 5 In response to PSW’s query of 29 June, GBO listed ‘the three great Cistercian abbeys of the denomination’, at Clairvaux, ‘Chiaravalle, in the diocese of Milan, founded A.D. 1135 by S. Bernard himself’, and the abbey of Santa Maria di Chiaravalle in Fiastra, in the Marche. 73c. 6 On 18 October, English newspapers reported on a fire which had begun the previous day in the Duomo at Siena, where workmen had been working on repairing the lead. It spread to the central nave, a cupola collapsed and the colonnade surrounding the dome was destroyed. Damage was estimated at 100,000 francs, but no art works were lost. The earliest report in The Times was particularly alarming, predicting the complete destruction of the dome.

378 • To George Price Boyce, 28 October 1890 Annotated ‘recd at Pembridge’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tues: 28 Octr 1890 My dear Boyce Now, this is too bad – and that from an old friend too – and Mrs Boyce no doubt is set against me by you. O dear me. You have no right to serve me so, and my poor self so hampered that I cannot do as I would. I believe your wretched song is – “He, oh he neglects us”. Just consider how all this autumn I have expected you to tell me you might be going to Tewkesbury, and would I give you introduction to old Hardy, the clerk of the works at Forthampton. Well, my sister, guessing that you and Madame had given me the slip, has sent on to me Mrs Boyce’s letter to her, from Pembridge,1 thinking I might be advertising for a lost watercolour painter. Now, I am abusing my sister’s confidence and incurring the wrath of Madame for the letter having been sent on to me. Mr Jack and I were for 3 days (minus travelling) at Forthampton, on the 13, 14 & 15th of this month. As we walked past Tewkesbury Ch’, I said to Jack, ‘look out we may find Boyce huddled in a heap, hard by, making an immortal picture of the glorious West front and central tower. Alas, no Boyce – only a pig. No easel & camp-stool – only a cow with crumpled horn. No Mrs Boyce – only 7 Blackbirds singing in a bush. So we dropped our heads & faced about for the ferry. 86

1888–1898

We had lovely weather and set to work on the old house with a will. You missed seeing Hardy, having a good gossip and the delight of seeing the Abbot’s hall roof, and many pleasant corners of the old house – and, and . . . only because you desired to spite me. How Mrs Boyce must have skipped about at the good luck of not having to look at my poor work in the house, and how you must have launched out about those fools of architects who go about destroying ancient art. I tell you I have not destroyed the house. I have propped, and stayed, and bound up the old place so that it, which was close on the edge of destruction, will last many years. If you had cared to see the old roof, you would have been obliged to say that you could not see that it had been touched. There, I could go on with the grievance for a month. Now, here is an odd thing. Last week I was written to by an old client who is about to give a new clock to the detached tower of Pembridge Ch’. Yes, the very church you are working at.2 My client wanted to know if he was would be doing mischief by such & such work on which to put the new clock, & to which I had to say nay. He sent me a photograph of the outside of the tower, but I wanted information as to the timbers inside it. The 4 big legs &c – and about the date of the work. I thought fm the photo, from the jamb of the door way at the canted angle, that it might be of the same date as the ch’ – 14th c – or, at least, the early part of the 15th c. Can you make some pencil scratches of the internal woodwork of the tower – guess at the date &c. If possible put your head into belfrey [sic] stage, and understand what is up there. I Balaam-d my client, and he has gone away discontented.3 I am afraid he will go on – and perhaps put a nasty french blue clock dial where the little simple disc is now. If you could send or bring me some notes (as above hinted) I might meet him armed, should he return upon me. There I cannot write any more, time being up. Kindest regrets to Mrs Boyce and abusive eloquence to yourself from the angry – Ph. Webb. [ pencil notes by Boyce on reverse of f 270]: The Great Bell. Wheel of the great bell extends to the North end of the clock casing – its rope is about 20 ins away from north end of clock case. BL Add 45354, ff. 269-70

1 GPB and his wife were staying in Pembridge, a village noted for its medieval timber-framed houses, about seven miles from Leominster, Herefordshire. 2 The free-standing bell tower at Pembridge (repaired in the seventeenth century, with major restoration in 1898) is of early thirteenth-century origins. A contemporary account describes ‘the lower part of stone, of an octagonal form, the upper portion of wood, supported on four huge massive timber posts, each consisting of a single tree-trunk, giving to the inside of the tower all the appearance of a barn; it contains a peal of bells and a clock’. Henry Thornhill Timmins, Nooks and Corners of Herefordshire (London: E. Stock, 1892), p. 89. The adjacent timber-framed church of St Mary

87

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II the Virgin is a fourteenth-century structure. The new clock by Thwaites and Reed of Clerkenwell costing £140 ‘was given by the relations of the late rector, Rev. J. Crouch [1809–88], and his wife [Elizabeth Wardale, 1820–88], as a memorial’ (F. Whitehead, ‘Pembridge Church and Belfry’, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, 1900–1901 (Hereford, 1903) p. 140), and was installed in 1891 after PSW’s advice on the soundness of the structure of the tower. 3 Although the allusion to the Biblical figure of Balaam is not clear, it may refer to the story of Balaam and the ass, to which PSW returns on a later occasion. See Vol. IV, Letter 1018, note 3.

379 • To William Morris, 25 November 1890 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tues: 25 Nov: 1890 My dear Fellow I was at Council (save the mark) last night. It was chaos pretty particularly or, in other words, drift, with something, I fancy, (which did not appear) added. No questioning on my part produced anything. Burney has not turned up there the last 2 or 3 council meetings, which may be significant, or not.1 I told them you awaited decision as to whom to send the money promised, but I could get no definite resolution. I said that perhaps you had better send it to me to be passed on as soon as they could arrange to receive it, and the ‘Premises fund’ I have in hand. I had to tell them that I must cease to be treasurer, and in a kind of unsettled way it seemed to be agreed that Nicoll shd be the treasurer and Kitz & Mowbray the trustees,2 but I doubt if these things will appear in the minutes. Kitz, I take it, had used Sat: Sun: & Mon: as saints days, and leant heavily against the ‘Pillars of Hercules’.3 But this I do not know. In fact I know nothing except that the Hammersmith had sent in its withdrawal from the League, and which was read out to us, but on which no comment was made.4 It was said they were looking for new premises, but whether in earnest or not I could not find out. I had to ask if there would be another Council meeting, and I gathered there would be one next Monday. I believe, but am not sure, that the last weekly Commonweal will come out – as usual – on Wednesday.5 The whole thing was a little sad, but the humour of it I could not resist, it was a very funny concourse of human atoms – governed by some law no doubt, but not sufficiently tabled by scientists – as yet! Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. r By the way, I am directed by M Yorke to order from you the carpet – 35 x 15 feet for Forthampton drawing-room – and the hangings for the walls. I should like to see you about these latter before you begin making them, as to strengthening the colour on the line of the wings of the peacocks.6 I believe Mrs Yorke has sent back the 2 patterns I sent to them, and they have agreed to my wish to have the lighter coloured one, to which I attached a label. Shall I meet you at Oxford Street about this, & when? V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 22 88

1888–1898 1 Factionalism saw the Socialist League in decline during 1889 and through 1890. A growth in anarchist influence meant that WM and PSW were increasingly marginalized. At the Annual Conference in May 1890, only fourteen delegates attended. WM and Sparling were removed from the editorship of The Commonweal – the costs of which as publisher WM was continuing to underwrite – and replaced by the anarchists, David J. Nicoll (1859–1919) and Frank Kitz (1849–1923), both of whom had joined the League at its foundation. Kitz was a dyer by trade, and had worked for Morris and Co. at Merton Abbey. 2 The garment maker Charles Mowbray (1857–1910) was a member of the Labour Emancipating League (as was Kitz) before joining the Socialist League. 3 ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ is an early eighteenth-century public house in Greek Street, Soho (favoured now by writers). PSW’s hint that Kitz seemed somewhat the worse for wear is supported by J. Bruce Glasier’s recollection he was ‘fond of his beer and jolly company’, in William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1921), p. 128. 4 After the May 1890 Conference, ‘Morris did not withdraw his support immediately. He resisted the making of an ending although he had seen it coming for so long. But the contents of Commonweal became increasingly provocative as well as less literate.’ MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 582. On 21 November the Hammersmith branch finally bowed to the inevitable, detached itself from the League and renamed itself the Hammersmith Socialist Society. A letter, signed by EW as the Hammersmith secretary but probably the work of WM himself, and speculatively dated 26 November by Kelvin, was sent to the secretaries of the remaining branches of the League, explaining the reasons for separation as stemming from the increased influence of the anarchist group, such that ‘a great part of our time, which should be spent in attacking Capitalism, would have to be wasted in bickering with our comrades’. ?26 November 1890, CLWM, III. PSW would quickly transfer his allegiance to the Hammersmith Socialist Society, attending a meeting for the first time on 16 January 1891, when he is recorded as a ‘Visitor’. In the week following he was proposed for membership and duly elected on 30 January. Two weeks later he chaired the meeting. See the minutes of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, BL Add 45893. 5 The Commonweal dated 29 November carried an announcement that issues would appear thenceforth on a monthly basis, though weekly publication was resumed for a time on 2 May 1891. 6 This must have been the woven wool fabric, ‘Peacock and Dragon’, of 1878, ‘the closest [Morris] ever came to his early ideal of English medieval hangings’. Linda Parry, William Morris Textiles (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), p. 64 (illustrated on p. 62). ‘This use of fabric hung on walls was a system few were to copy, despite its practicality and good looks.’ See also Helen Smith, ‘Philip Webb’s restoration of Forthampton Court, Gloucestershire’, Architectural History, XXIV, 1981, pp. 98–100.

380 • To Giacomo Boni, 28 December 1890 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn,| London W.C. Sunday 28th Dec. 1890 My dear Boni This is rather a large sheet of paper to begin answering your briefness, of Dec: 1, upon. You had a long list of place-names drawn-out for you to visit before getting to Rome at Xmas, and when I enjoyed your scrap of paper on the 4th, I said, it is a long while to Xmas time, and so did not write then. I wish I could invent a sufficient and satisfactory punishment to you for writing so shortly! I can hardly return in kind, as that would not be purgatory to you, and . . . and then, I was touched (being weak, you see) by the photograph of the 89

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

exceedingly beautiful steeple at Pomposa,1 which you must have cunningly put inside the envelope to damp down my wrath, and which was all but quite successful. The particular circle in which my soul is to travail, when it is gets beyond the earth line, would be beneficently lightened if memory then served me with a view of this admirable piece of tower building, wherein the bricklayers & masons of the 12th c. must have joyfully danced away the evening of the day on which they finished it. ‘I Piero, and you Carlo, and you Giacomo have done this good tower of strength & beauty, and the beings following us will know it.’ Yea, truly, we know it. When the great Peter raps me over the knuckles with his keys at the golden gate, and asks me why I do not go to the back row, may I be ready to say that when I left home below, I was capable of knowing a good tower when I saw it, and that I came to see the masonry of Heaven’s front door to judge if it was better done. What could good Peter to say against that argument? If you had but stretched your measuring line across the base of the Campanile and given me the meters long of one side, I should have been able to judge of the height in total, and of the proportions.2 There you have the builder, myself, who – as he gets older – finds it more & more necessary to know, when building, the relation of one thing to another. This tedious relation of enthusiasm over the tower, does not mean that I forget the historical significance of the other photograph, that of the Roman gate at Spello, (Umbria)3 but, that is another thing, appealing to a different sense – a good one in its way, but not of the value of the other – touching which touches one on altogether different lines. No doubt, friend Boni, you get to be sore travail-stained in mind and body in the journies [sic] of yours through the length and breadth of the Italian boot? but, – and here we come upon the salve – without this labour you wd have none of the knowledge, which could come in no other way. Doubtless, after wheel-back, & mule-back, and foot-tramp, you have bodily rest and delight here and there from good natured hosts, and when such good wine & bread, as is made in the district, is set before you, that you may fill & be easy, then you turn to the various minds of the people of outlying parts, and find them so interesting, that the night goes, and sleep is but short. A good companion (with or without cowl) will make great amends, and you get away to the next place a gainer in some sense. How the devil you can distinguish between the dialects, is a marvel to me. ‘Greek I know, & Latin I know, and the Venetian Italian I am at home with, but, what is this which is neither Greek, not Latin, nor Venetian, nor Tuscan’? The Tuscan on which you cast some scorn from Terra d’Otranto.4 You see, I’m obliged to invent things about you, for you do not tell me of them. You name places at which you are going to touch in your journey, and I get out the large map to note the surface of earth on which you are toiling; then, between

90

1888–1898

one historic name & another, I forget you & me, and the between us, and drift in to space, and the petty and the great go before me in solemn & ridiculous silence. There, you have sunshine, with fits of stormful weather, no doubt, but still not too trying for patience; here, we have hard winter of the North, not too trying even this, but different – O, so very different (a hair in the pen).5 The thermometer 10o (average) below freezing, snow, and general slop, the product of coal and civilization. You we wash your hands fairly clean in the morning, but before noon they are carbon black. The streets, my friend, are fairly slushed with blackest mire, which is only bearable under the tramp of millions of feet, for these feet are all a fetching and carrying in eager earnest for something, and their very going & coming is of interest to eyes that can see. We have dire starvation, & worse riches, & a leaden sky, but, at times, a moon which is as a measuring rod to us, that, at an inconsiderable number of meters above, there is beauty, which people below are reading of as being open to the look of others in other places. But this kind of feeling I gauged when I was in Italy, and I found the earth the same, and my fear of Russia is no more than your’s of Gray’s Inn. I had to survey a timber belfry of the 14th cent: two weeks ago, and found it very delightful work clambering amongst the big timbers (22 in x 22 inches, and 19 in x 13 in) all of English oak, framed to carry the weight & swing of the bells down to the ground. In amongst these timbers I thoroughly forgot myself, and only remembered them & their makers, brushing away the dust of ages when measuring their sizes, and rapping the big bell, to find his tone, with the metal end of my rule. This tower was in Herefordshire, where, in the 14th c., there was much timber – this was the shape of the belfry, almost like a Norwegian one, only that it was of solid oak instead of fir.6 [sketch] There, my friend, you have what I can say to you till you stimulate me to fresh exertion by your answer, even though that be too brief. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 76a-c

1 The Benedictine Abbey at Pomposa, near Ferrara, dates from the ninth century, its imposing Romanesque campanile being a construction of the eleventh-twelfth centuries. 2 The campanile is 48 metres in height. 3 Three gates from the Roman period (and parts of others) survive in the ancient town walls of Spello, in Umbria. 4 ‘[I] feel very much pleased with the people, those of Terra d’Otranto especially who speak Italian in a most sweet tone, far more pleasant to listen to than the Tuscan dialects.’ GBO to PSW, 1 December 1890, Courtauld 75c. 5 ‘Different’ is blotted. 6 For the bell tower at Pembridge, see above, Letter 378, note 2.

91

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

381 • To Giacomo Boni, 18 January – 15 February 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn,| London W.C. Sunday 18. Jan: 1891 My dear Boni The first page of your letter of 1–1–’91 made me for to rub my eyes. ‘What the devil does he mean by choking with laughter over anything I could have said’? My memory is treacherous and weak beyond explanation, and no sooner has a letter been dropped into the post office than I have forgotten all I had written. You must have been ‘chaffing’ me, as we say in slang, & I fancy it possible that, instead of Marian water dropping from your glass on the paper,1 it must have been drops of brine from your eyes over the passages of a sad imagination contained in my letter. When you had done cursing & choking you gave me a pleasant sketch of the flank of Trinity Abbey near Venosa, shewing that you had no malice, and was willing to impart.2 This sketch helped me much in solving the problems of style and date given in the photographs. First idea. Do you know if there is a condensed students’ book of the general history of Italy, and which – if I was a scholar – there would be no difficulty, but as I am one of the most ignorant of learned pigs, a translation of foreign languages is my only chance. Your delightful and interesting photographs sent to me from time to time, make me desire much to know a little more than I do of what has gone to make the Italian land a perfect store house of the history of nations since the beginning of our era. Tell me if you would care for me to send you an English students’ history of this country, one volume of which has just been published, and which is condensed by one of our best modern historians?3 It gives the facts purely and simply, accompanied by engravings of the arts which flourished at the different periods, and which I think is likely to lead young people to a little more accurate knowledge of themselves than most other histories do. The plan is, I think, a good one, to set down alongside of the written story of England, the graphic one, and that, as one reads of such and such a time of war, or peace, these were the buildings they actually lived in then, and these the armour & dresses they wore, and the manuscripts they made. Tell me what you think as to such a schoolboy’s book, and I will send it you or not, accordingly. If you will be so good as to send me the enchanting photographs, which you do, you must expect me to question you about parts of them, though whether you will answer the questions or not, is another thing. Now, about this strange tomb of Guiscard’s Alberada, was there anything else like it done in Italy? The 2 long drawn out capitals, the thin lintel, and the rafters of the gable (all of marble I suppose) are strangely old world in their look, and I do not remember anything else like them.4 When you speak of the “right nave” of a church, what part do you mean? Our English churches were all built east and west in plan of their main axis, so, when 92

1888–1898

we speak of the east end of the church, we mean that limb of it belonging to the serving priests – i.e. the choir and main altar. We also only call the central gangway of the church the nave, and the north and south passages, the aisles. In your admirable snow clad photo: of the Norman basilica at Venosa I do not know whether I am looking east or west (our orientation) but in the sketch you made – and very prettily done with only a few pen scratches – I take it I am looking at the south flank of the building, with the priests’ end on the right, and the guests’ house on the left? You must understand that though you – in your high mightiness – may cast these things carelessly to the English swine, I study them with great delight, and patiently dig out of them such good as I can wrap my soul in for ever after. People sometimes say to me ‘you must be dull, living all alone’, and I answer, ‘not at all, never so busy as when alone, at which time I take out my gods and fondle them, making my architecture, and my painting, and my music all alive, as if the world were not marked with hours.’ S. Mark’s, and the Sistine, and S. Zeno5 come to call; the paintings of Pisanello, or Piero della Francesca, and the tunes of the later times of music, not quite forgetting Palestrina, though I cannot call to mind anything of Guido Aretino.6 It is a pity the good (if he be good?) chaplain at Venosa could not call his gods out of his memory to make up for his isolation, and ill-filled cupboard.7 To me, there is nothing like a railway journey, alone, to unlock the presses of one’s memory, and the beat of the gliding train will set going the rhythm of a score of half-forgotten times. But — — how far I could draw upon these sources of delight in the solitary wilderness, such as you were shut up in for 8 days, I do not know. Yes, I do, but for I have been up in church towers alone for hours together, and fell to singing as I kicked the ruins of the bells with my foot. I shall never see the springs of Volturus with you, but if I did, the tinkle of the water-threads would send me in to myself, and you would have to cry aloud for recognition.8 You put up a graceful prayer for life, that you may go on doing some good amongst the abandoned tombs, for some years to come. Amen, say I, though my prayer for myself would be somewhat different. I can do little, if any good, but at times I can be. That is, the very essence of life will be in the four walls of my skin. Guiscard will be my brother, here, in Gray’s Inn (and a rough one he must have been)9 and Michael Angelo’s broken nose I can see round the corner, to say nothing of the straight ones he put upon his ceiling. This puts me in mind of a preposterous paragraph in the a paper here – see. “We warn the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings that a rumour is current on the Continent that Leo XIII has taken advice as to the desirability of restoring ‘the Last Judgment of M. Angelo’ in the Holy City. The statement is almost incredible” &c, &c, and so say I10 – but, there are an incredible number of fools in the world, and one or more may be found courageous enough to mount the ladders for such a purpose. May all such break their necks say I. You, yourself, speak but doubtingly of your Italian folk rewarding you by paying attention to the things you are saving from destruction. You must put in your last Will & Testament, that Ph: W of London 93

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

is to write your epitaph, so that when some old neglected roof falls on your head I may set myself down to proclaim – not myself – but you, to those who would care to trace out the inscription. My wage, to be a bottle of old Italian wine, with a label round its neck written by you for me. Sunday 15 Feby 1891. Alas! You see, I’m not a free man – who is free? Certainly not me. Still, I’ve no governor – so to say – or wife & family, but, if I’ve made by accident (they all have come to me in that way) a somewhat lasting friendship, that fate is something of a tyrant, and “earmarks” come of my freedom. He writes me letters, brief but significant; brings me to blushing over photographs – each of which is an important corner of history – and generally makes me anxious that in answering him I shall not drive him to use shrewd Italian contemptuous rebuff. Whence all this monstrous babblement of letter, which would have been less in length if it had been better. I put it in the drawer a month gone by, and have not decent fresh stuff within me at this time to make up a better shew if I burned this – so send it, and brazen it out. You must even do as you like in the way of insult on my simplicity. What do you think of something like this for the epitaph? ‘Here lies a little man, great from the soil of Italy he was made from. He hung about the skirts of historic stones. All but his heart rests here, that was not found by his friends, and his enemies did not look for it’? Confound it. I cannot lay hands on your particular letter mentioning Guido and the place he was supposed to [have] made the musical notation in.11 Also, I cannot find what I want of him in my books. I have something in memory about him, but only too hazy. I think I blundered over his name above. From what I read in the papers, I fancy your lines, at the present time, are cast in a hubbub of human self-seeking. Awaiting your next | I am your patient Philip Webb. Courtauld 78a-d

1 GBO’s explanation for some marks on the page. 2 The Benedictine Abbazia della Santissima Trinità in Venosa was founded in the eleventh century. 3 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Student’s History of England from the Earliest Times to 1885, 3 vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890–1). The many illustrations were engraved by Walker and [Walter] Boutall, ‘process and general engravers, draughtsmen, map-constructors, and photographers of works of art’, established in 1886 at 16 Clifford’s Inn, with its Hammersmith works at Sussex House, Upper Mall. EW and Boutall had started their careers in the 1870s working for the Typographic Etching Company, established by the landscape painter Alfred Dawson (1843–1931), son of the artist Henry Dawson (1811–78). See Alan Crawford, Emery Walker Printer of Pictures (Pasadena: privately printed, 2007), pp. 2–3. 4 The Abbey at Venosa contains the tombs of the Norman mercenary, Robert Guiscard (c. 1015–85), who rose to become Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and Duke of Sicily, and of his first wife, Alberada of Buonalberga. Only her tomb survives in a complete state. 5 He is recalling his visit in 1885 to Verona, and the Romanesque basilica of San Zeno, restored and enlarged following an earthquake in 1171. See Vol. IV, Letter 1040.

94

1888–1898 6 Guido Aretinus (991/2-after 1033), better known as Guido d’Arezzo, a Benedictine monk and music theorist famous for developing staff notation (the manner in which music is still notated), which made neumatic plainsong notation redundant. His development of solmization as a method of teaching choirboys to read musical notation by associating musical pitches with text syllables (ut, re, mi, etc) was reinvented in the nineteenth century as the tonic sol-fa system of the Reverend John Curwen (1816–80). 7 ‘I found the old chaplain of the abbey – he has been a chaplain there 33 years, but, as he told me, nobody ever comes here to point out how needful and worth[y] of repair the building was. If the roof fell down while you were here, that was all the work of Providence.’ GBO to PSW, 1 January 1891, Courtauld 77f. 8 GBO concluded by hoping that PSW might find ‘leisure to come and spend the spring with me along the sources of the Volturus’. 77h. 9 See note 4. 10 Source not identified. 11 See note 6.

382 • To Giacomo Boni, 21 February 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Roma. 21–2. ’91 Dearest Webb. The little Hist: of Italy I sent you is well worth the close study which I know you always give to what you can read; and though you have over discretely veiled from me your knowledge of the Italian language, I have put that down to the same feeling ascribed to monkeys, namely, that, if they spoke, they would be set to work.1 It is a strange characteristic of the human race – particularly of the men part – that they will often assume to know something of what they are particularly incapable, and profess to ignore their real capacity. I know you, for a man with some small share of wit, to be rather assuming with regard to art matters, and of which I have found you particularly ignorant; but of languages – all except your own – I have thought there lay hidden some mastery in you. I may be mistaken, but so it seemed to me, and I do not often make mistakes. Your affectionate M.B. My dear Boni How the letter, which I have copied out and set above, could have got to me, I cannot say, as it is evident that you never intended to send it, and I do not think you keep a valet who would be so indiscreet as to understand your affairs so intimately, as to and take it upon himself that to see you did not defraud one of your best among many English friends. There, that is enough of a lumbering British jest. Know, that I have the pleasant looking “Storia Patria”, and shall hold it as tenaciously as a little girl does her doll, not knowing what is inside it. The epitaph composed by your Pisan friend will not do; it makes you out to be striving to protect yourself. You do not want to be protected, no one would wish to 95

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

“restore” you; they would let you go to ruin rather, and would not even scrape the lichens from you. Tell he of Pisa to try again, and send me the result of his labours. I have got through the first line of another, but have been too busy to put the tail of meaning to it – here it is – ‘Hic jacet Boni’! – Ah, a bright thought and a brief, I add the tail. (BONI NEVER LIES) – Surely that is worthy of the brutal English, who produced the punning Shakespeare, of whom we hear too much. Alas – all this has been written and not one useful serious word! All in answer too, to your own letter which was one tissue of instruction tempered with the fumes of the grape. What am I to say? “I could well be content with either, with t’other dear charmer away,” as the English play-writer makes his hero speak of two of his women friends.2 Shall it be ‘blackest Brindisi’ or whitest Capri?3 ‘The bitter Grosseto, or the Muscati Otranto’? The Grosseto with a sweet face & a bitter tongue, or the hard featured Otranto with odoriferous breath? I shall make a shocking mistake if I choose either, therefore I will remain unmarried to either any one of your sirens, though I confess to having been captured by that light heeled wench, (pure English word) Orvieto – well called “leg cutting”, for I could not run away from it, and I was caught with a bottle under each arm as I entered the train on my way to Rome – a fact. I read with great interest your catalogue of “DISPOSITION GENERALI”.4 O Lord what a systematic people you are; how you grasp things, and make the road you set out to travel on, clear and straight. The English get well on the way before they know where they are going. Except the illustrious Gibbon, I have hardly a book on my shelves which is carried through on a distinct plan. The architectural books (English) never attempt any plan at all, but just amble along, looking for their dinner to be somewhere by the way under the shade (or umbrella) of a tree. I read some of the items to one or two discreet friends, but I am a little nervous now with any news from you, for fear I should make an awful false step! Your catalogue is so lovely, that I should like it to be set to music, like that most melodious one sung by Mozart’s Leporello.5 I see the Norman Church all rightly now with your effective sketch of the plan. There is one Englishman, if only a small one, who likes to be methodical! It cheers me to think that political changes do not lift you out of a chair which your latter end fits so admirably. The only reasonable vacation of the seat, will be, when you rise from it, shake official dust from your shortened locks, take me – even me – by the hand, and lead me a dance on the soil of Italy along such a route as will allow me to taste all the wines in that other catalogue, which is melody itself, without music. If we could but get the highly subsidised South Kensington Museum to start on some clear plan of Photographic illustration of English monuments (and foreign) there would be less excuse for encouraging the pulling down of ancient monuments to exhibit fragments in the museum, and the beastly trade in Italian & Saracenic antiquities might be done away with, but, pipe as our little society may, 96

1888–1898

nobody with any authority dances to that reasonable tune. To use an unseemly English expression, my mouth waters over your “400 negatives” given by you to your ministry! Mind you, I do never forget my own private collection of prints of old buildings received from an Italian with a head upon his shoulders. When any one, with a turn for commonsense looks in upon me, I produce of a few of them, partly to instruct him, & partly to glorify my own worthiness in having received them. Have you any school of deputies being educated to take up the 4 corners of your mantle when the tower of Pisa drops on your head? Even supposing you escape the crash, how will it be possible for you to direct the works of 1400 objects? You see, I have some little knowledge of what goes to protecting even one small building. I am glad to learn that the S. Mark’s Lion is to be sustained, and nothing more. I shall never see him again, or rub my finger over the granite of his column. Yours | Philip Webb. Courtauld 80a-c

1 GBO accepted PSW’s offer of a book on English history (see above, Letter 381), dispatching an Italian one in return. ‘A good compendium of Italian history is this one used in our Gymnasiums by Prof. Ercole Ricotti – I send you the Italian edition.’ GBO to PSW, undated (about 18 February 1891), Courtauld 79a. This was probably Breve storia d’Europa e specialmente d’Italia dall’anno 476 al 1878 (Milan, 1891), first published in 1870, and regularly updated. 2 ‘How happy could I be with either, / Were t’other dear charmer away!’ John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), scene 13. 3 ‘Your epitaph is excellent [see above, Letter 381] – you shall have the bottle of old Italian wine.’ 79b. GBO explained the differences between various regional wines, inviting PSW to choose his favourite. 4 GBO had told of his workload of ‘1400 works in progress and inspections in my province.’ 79d. 5 In Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni (1787), Leporello’s celebrated catalogue aria, ‘Madama, il catalogo è questo’, itemises his master’s female conquests.

383 • To Reverend John Pincher Faunthorpe, 9 April 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9 April 1891 Dear Sir1 Whitelands Chapel Reredos2 Upon my return to town last night, after three days’ absence on business, I saw Miss Faulkner, when she gave me a brief postcard from you, which she told me she could not understand, and, considering her state (she being very ill) I was glad she did not. It seems to me there must be some misapprehension as to the Whitelands Reredos, but I am fully aware of the whole circumstances. 97

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Miss Faulkner had finished the reredos, and completed her contract, when a fresh order came for a lower retable to be added, decorated in gesso, and with a raised Latin inscription upon it. I myself got the original drawings, then exact measurements by carpenter of the reredos as fixed, when I designed the fabric of the additional retable – which was not an easy matter to do for a highly finished work of art already completed. The joiner then made the woodwork, which had to remain for some time thoroughly to dry – Miss Faulkner meanwhile designing the necessary decoration. She has now completed the gesso work on the wood, which has been silvered and lacquered, and only requires colouring, but, as Miss Faulkner is now ill, the finishing must be delayed. Perhaps insufficient consideration has been given to the difficulty – in these days – of doing anything which could reasonably be considered a work of art; and such work as has been done for the reredos may – from want of knowledge – have been thought to be easily and quickly executed. Gesso must always have been laborious and difficult work to do, and in these days is much more so. No blame can justly attach to Miss Faulkner (who has already given full explanations) for any seeming delay. I should be obliged when you have any communication to make to Miss Faulkner – which press of business may make a hasty one – to address it to me, as I shall be better able to estimate its importance, and save Miss Faulkner from needless anxiety, she already being overtaxed almost beyond safe endurance. Mr William Morris has himself been seriously ill, and I forbear to inform him of your communication.3 Yours truly | Philip Webb. The Revd J.P. Faunthorpe Huntington MOR 584

1 John Pincher Faunthorpe (1839–1924) was Principal of Whitelands College in the King’s Road, Chelsea, an institution founded in 1841 by the National Society of the Church of England as a women’s teacher training college. His association with JR led to introductions to WM and EBJ. 2 In 1885 Morris & Co. were commissioned by Faunthorpe to undertake the decorations of the new Chapel at Whitelands College, which would include painting, wood-carving, twelve windows and an elaborately decorated reredos for the altar. PSW designed four of the panels of the reredos with the traditional symbols of the Evangelists, the decoration in gesso work being undertaken by KF. See Kirk p. 39 for an illustration. 3 ‘Towards the end of February Morris was laid up for several weeks with a severe attack of gout, attended by other symptoms of an alarming kind. On consultation the kidneys were found to be gravely affected; and he was told that henceforth he must consider himself an invalid to the extent of husbanding his strength and living under a careful regimen.’ Mackail, II, p. 255. But WM was also coping with a deterioration in JEM’s condition, for during February she had been dangerously ill with meningitis, requiring full-time home care.

98

1888–1898

384 • To Giacomo Boni, 26–27 April 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 26 April. 1891 My dear Boni What would you have of me? an old man of 60 has a right to make himself a nuisance to a young one of 32, even though the youth (sic) was the better man of the two. I’m not a judge in such a case. Everyone wants keeping up to the mark, I have not got to where I am without learning that; and if I were a scholar, which I am not, (being more like Sig Calore – with regard to even my native tongue)1 or a parasite, which I am not, or a “big-wig’s” dog, which I am damned if I am, I shall have my say, and put up with the penalty when it is laid upon me. A nuisance is a nuisance, all the world over, and a man of insight is – not uncommonly – that, and, if he is not bearable, he is thrown over, and, let which of the two count the cost. How do you like that my learned friend, seated snugly behind the driver of a pair-horse diligenza on the via Cassia. Let us hope a bottle of wine and the leg of a fowl are in the inside of the creaking machine, ready to be pulled out on the top of a long hill, while the poor Italian horses are getting their wind, and considering the etymological variety of curses which had been bellowed from the box seat at their tails. ‘Pax – Pax, Philip Webb, the remark I made in my letter to you of the 21st (wrongly dated 22) was a calm statement – merely, that “you do complain” – why this long-winded tirade? seemingly the result of having drunk both bottles at once of the red wines of Italy I sent you, I will send no more, if this is to be the result of my kindness of heart’. True, Sig Giacomo Boni, this is a strange world, and if you carry your reading of the immortal Dickens somewhat farther on, you will find he puts into the mouth of one of his characters, “human nature is a rum-un”2 which, in less vulgar language, means, that human nature is a strange thing to contemplate. This passage came from the longer necked bottle, from Venosa! Now, strange to say, your letters give me very considerable pleasure (not because they are flattering to me, far from it) for I find in them a certain quality of Italian character, which I should never have been able to goet at, if the author had not been able to express himself (very well indeed, say I) in the English language. So, when I come home at night, after looking to my sick friends, and find a large foreign envelope, I say, ‘Boni, by George,’ (or Bacchus if you like)3 and I hasten off my shoes, and sit down to learn what he can give me out of his head. Then, possibly, out tumbles a photo: “Sutri”,4 “M.B. as a photographer”, and I look at the picture of a ‘pillar of the state’ pretending to look at a watch, so that the exposure may be right; then I make slippered-ease comments. ‘Ah, friend Boni is getting stouter. He had better not lean against the sparred fence at his back, or he

99

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

will go down the hill – ’ then I look at the left hand of the picture and say ‘Sutri! I should like to see Sutri’; then I read a passage or two in the letter, and I find, modestly crammed into the corner, this, “am I too old or too young for my age”?5 The Gray’s Inn brute considers, and mutters, “You are at the age, to a minute, to do that which you have set yourself to do.” – Sip of the bottle ‘Ruvo di Puglia’.6 No, my friend, I’ve not had the courage yet to break one of the seals of the wine. Perhaps a day will come when I can talk the necks of the bottles off, perhaps, – say – with William Morris – and conclude, in conversation, that the boot [sketch map] had produced to the world some excuse for the sea leaving it high & dry. O Lord, how parts of the earth have engrossed themselves on the minds of men – clear-cut, and yet dim Egypt. All the truculence, splendour, and dusty mystery of Chaldæa; all the bright lustre, and contradictory force of minute Greece. All the brutality, and wonder making of Rome. The heavy sweep of the north, and the crystallization of Byzantium, of which we are the rather rank growth of that seed, and then the . . . . . but we are not yet there my friend, and we shall not see it. I don’t care, are there not the same winds which blessed aforetime, and blow upon us to sweeten this after time? My mother, who was a good woman, & with some of the humour of one of her sons, used, when I complained too much, to say, ‘what are your troubles to me?’. Alas! when the re-nascence came, it was not sufficiently well born. All Some of these pretty photos of yours are reborn, ’tis true, but, look at the Monstrance from Capranica (14. c, I fancy)7 and compare it with the Olearium infirmorum of the school of Mino da Fiesole8 – surely, the latter child was weak when it came to the (re) birth? – But all these photographs you so kindly send to me are pretty, and good to look at, and ponder over. My criticism alone will tell you I do that, and that I note the ‘kind’ of each one you send me. Indeed, I note even of Giacomo himself, as to how that after birth is to turn out! I am glad you are going to look on at the closing of the cracks of S. Mark’s lion.9 Solder him up tight, and bless him, and leave him alone, for we later ones must not meddle beyond our depth. William Morris is better, after a rather bad illness.10 He is now full of life again, though not quite back to his ordinary strength. Smile with pleasure, when I tell you, that we sometimes talk of you, and express hopes and fears. He, Morris, is happy over making his own types to print a book with after his own mind. The first book he has thus printed has all been sold off (only 180 copies) so that I shall hardly get one myself – except by his gift.11 I am glad you liked the Hist: Eng:12 – I sent yesterday the 2nd vol. Here again you will note the falling off in art over the 1st vol. The re-birth is pretty apparent here. Still, note the Holbein portraits – a servant of God truly, sent to say, that things done well carry with them their own salvation. The man who got together the illustrations of this history book, is he who directed the reproduction of the Orvietan bull, which was in the ‘Anti-scrape’ report – in which a certain gentleman made a terrible faux pas! This must be enough from me for the time being – peradventure it may draw from you some stimulating retaliation, when you will forget reserve, though not 100

1888–1898

forgetting to add the caution as to my use of views into the interior maw. As you move in your chair to ease the soreness of the sitting part of a mule jolted man, you may, when turning over your thumb of the father abbot’s wine, set down in your mind some further insight for me into that part of the human family which has been enslaved, and torn, and tossed about by fate for so many generations. Let me hope that the effect of the blow-up in Rome13 has told more upon the last expression of the building genius of Italy, than upon that of any former time. Perhaps Sallust,14 in the shades, has tipped Zeus the wink (a British slang phrase) and hinted that a bolt or two launched into his old gardens would do no harm. Adieu | Philip Webb. | letter finished Monday morning. Courtauld 85a-d

1 ‘Signor Calore [is] a young fellow of Abruzzo, who does not even know his country’s language.’ GBO to PSW, 22 April 1891, Courtauld 84b. GBO had sent PSW some copies of the pamphlet by Pier Luigi Calore, ‘L’Abbazio di San Clemente a Casauria’, to distribute to interested friends. PSW’s copy (annotated by him ‘Recd from Giacomo Boni March 16 1891’) is now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 134. 2 Although not an exact quotation, PSW probably has in mind Sam Weller in Pickwick Papers. ‘ “You’re a rum ’un to look at, you are,” thought Mr. Weller, the first time his eyes encountered the glance of the stranger in the mulberry-coloured suit.’ (ch 16). 3 Dionysus to the Greeks, Bacchus to the Romans, he was the god of wine and the grape harvest, of intoxication and quasi-religious ecstasy. 4 The ancient town of Sutri, about 30 miles from Rome, has significant remains, which include a Roman amphitheatre and the church of the Madonna del Parto, built into the rock face and incorporating an existing Etruscan tomb. 5 ‘By the by – the 25th of April is my 32d birthday! – Am I too old or too young for my age?’ 84d. 6 A town known for its wine and olives in the province of Bari. 7 The hillside town of Capranica, about 40 miles from Rome, occupies a volcanic landscape overlooking the Sutri valley. 8 Presumably a photograph of a vessel containing holy oil for the sick (oleum infirmorum). The sculptor Mino da Fiesole (c. 1429–84) is celebrated for his portrait busts and bas-reliefs. 9 ‘I am going to Venice one of these days to witness an experiment of soldering of the fragments of the bronze lion. A workman of the Arsenal succeeded in making cracks to come together so perfectly that no damage will derive in the future from bells jumping down from the top of steeples.’ 84b. 10 ‘How is Mr. Morris?’ 84d. See above, Letter 383, note 3. 11 The first book to be published by the Kelmscott Press was WM’s The Story of the Glittering Plain. ‘A small quarto printed in Golden type, it was sold by Reeves and Turner. The printing, begun in February 1891, was completed April 2, and the book was issued May 8, 1891.’ CLWM, III, p. 200, note 5. Having been announced in The Athenæum on 4 April (no doubt another of Frederic George Stephens’s coups of ‘Literary Gossip’ – see Vol. I, Letter 25, note 5), ‘all copies were disposed of almost immediately. . . . Of the 200 paper copies, 180 were sold (Morris’s first plan, in fact, had been to print only twenty copies for distribution to his friends)’. Peterson, pp. 4–5. 12 ‘The history of England is a very good one, concise & simple & beautifully illustrated.’ 84c. 13 On 23 April the accidental explosion of a powder magazine beyond the Porta Portese in Rome caused panic and many injuries. 14 The Roman historian, Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86–35 BC). He spent his retirement years cultivating his gardens on the Quirinal Hill in Rome.

101

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

385 • To Emery Walker, 13 May 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wed: 13. May 1891 My dear Walker Things have not gone too quickly with the tower,1 and I have just been hindered for half an hour by a client fresh from Greece. We cannot get our part of the work done today – can you manage yours if you had the drawing by 2-o’clock tomorrow.2 The Council of the whole town of Ledbury sits upon the design on Tuesday, and the Sunday & bank holiday before will interrupt all carriage, post &c. If we could post the copies by Saturday evening’s post it would do – what do you say? The town tower committee thinks the matter important, though it does not strike me in the same way. The secy of the Come says he wants 500 copies, but if we sent off 50 at first it would surely do. Yours indebtedly | Philip Webb. Emery Walker. V&A, AAD

1 PSW submitted designs in 1891 and 1892 for a clock tower, to be erected as a memorial to Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Ledbury, Herefordshire. He then appears to have withdrawn from the commission in 1892, ‘because he could not countenance the pulling down of a worthy seventeenth-century timber-framed house to create a large enough site’. Kirk, pp. 235 and 301. The tower was built instead to a design by Brightwen Binyon (1846–1905). 2 EW was evidently preparing photographed copies of PSW’s plans to be considered by the Ledbury authorities.

386 • To Sydney Cockerell, 15 May 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 15 May. 1891 My dear Cockerell1 I thank you feelingly for your note on the milk-bath for painful eyes. If the cold water I am now using (have only just begun doing so) does not ease them, I will leave the cow with the iron tail for she with a flexible one.2 My right eye has now taken up the running, so that some advance – at all events – is made! Please to lay it on tightly and with precision, about S. Bartholomew.3 Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/6

102

1888–1898 1 SCC had joined the committee of the SPAB in 1890, recording in his diary at the year’s end that ‘I have thus come in weekly contact with Philip Webb, a great architect for whom my admiration and respect cannot be told – and have also met William Morris constantly, as well as Emery Walker and other exceedingly nice friends, from all of whom there is much to learn’. CD. 2 ‘The Cow with the Iron Tail’, an essay published by Charles Dickens in Household Words (1850, II, pp 145–51), compares the conditions of dairy husbandry in town and country. ‘The iron tail of the article’s title refers to a public pump from which unscrupulous urban “dairymen” allegedly obtain the amount of water necessary to dilute and extend their milk supplies.’ Jules Law, The Social Life of Fluids. Blood, Milk, and Water in the Victorian Novel, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2010, p 11. 3 SCC had prepared a note for the SPAB Annual Report on the current work at St Bartholomewthe-Great, Smithfield. The proposals included restoration of the Lady Chapel, erection of a north transept, a new porch to the west entrance and new vaulting in the north aisle.

387 • To Giacomo Boni, 17 May 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. 17 May. 1891 You who sit at the 4 cross roads of the winds, and blow your edicts to lieutenants in the provinces of Europe – of which I am one – receive this, magnificently, as befits such. My dear Boni I had your letter with the Napoleonic date – “R – 2/5/91”, and read it with that trembling interest which befits me. You start with the blowing up of Rome, in miniature, and leave me to piece together the fragments, be they real or “restored”.1 Garibaldi was right,2 and Mazzini, and Carlisle [sic] (may the shades settle their differences) and Ruskin, and William Morris . . . &c – and the statesmen, so called, are, as usual, wrong. Just think, for a moment, of fortifying Rome. Given that you left the ways open to Westminster Abbey and a few other places, you might then safely fortify London. Poor Paris had been destroyed before, but if it had been open to the Germans it would have been better for it.3 I believe politicians fortify precious cities, so that they may have time to run off with their gathered gains. Mind you, I did not start this “complaint”. My time is so occupied now, that I do not pick up sufficiently the important points in the newspapers, and I had not gathered the interesting news you note of a ‘rising’, however abortive.4 I did see a note of trouble at, or near, Como, but that does not answer to your description. I am dead against these efforts not backed up by some sort of unanimity of the peoples, but, I am not sure they are unimportant. He or she who lays down the life for an idea, how is one to estimate the product of the sowing? Let them lie, good souls, (or poor) and when we reap, let us remember, not for them but for ourselves. I am truly glad you, personally, were at the experiment of soldering the S. Mark’s Lion5 – a report to you of the condition of things would have been valueless. Now

103

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

you are going to treat the wreck after the manner of Boni & Ravelli, well and good, so far as I can tell. Your responsibility is only equalled by my admiration, if you succeed in keeping together what has been left to us. Your photograph at large is very helpful, it shews the wear & tear of the ages. All the effects of sea-air, modern city gasses &c, are visible. What I would first ask, is, are the several pieces, of almost detached metal, in themselves tough? will they hold rivets? because, if so, I would rivet them to a skeleton framed inside, and so that the divisions of the real Byzantine bronze might be as the sections of a map, and I would not care, so long as the water could escape at the bottom. The photograph makes clear the poverty stricken quality of the later addition of the wings, but that does not matter. You attempt to make imitation wings, and that will matter. See the beautiful locks of mane of the lion’s head & ribs. These were done – probably – by a workman who had not seen a lion, except, perhaps by in an artist’s vision, like that of John of Patmos.6 You have the elephantine tasks of picking up needles and banding together mountains (of monasteries) so that I need not wonder at your briefness of in written characters. I will certainly search for Lions of all ancient countries for you;7 but, just now, I am attacked by a cold (not the influenza) which has fastened on my eyes, and made me rather helpless. Have written about the negative of the Orvieto bull, and will send it back to you if it is not in pulp.8 When one attains one’s end, as with the bull in the “antiscrape” report, how one forgets the means! Your written words, though minute to a degree, are generally clear after study (an important point that the letters should all be there) but I read this, “a sussulto’ [squiggle]”, an undulation [squiggle] &c – now, I cannot find in my dictionary the word ‘sussulto’ – is that it, and what is it?9 Fortunately you will read those lines while you stumble over a fragment of Cæsar, or Guiscard, and will forget the minute nothing, under stress of attention to the important. If I were to tell you of my doings, you would gape so as to endanger the Appenines. [sic] And now there are my 2 wines to note. 3 you sent, but either the love of liquor, or curiosity, or carelessness deprived me of one, and that one, with the mouth filling name of ‘Tusculum’. The post office or Custom house must needs open and see what was in the parcel, and when they deliver it to me, say, ‘it was badly packed’ &c &c. Now I have only the 3 of the first sending and two of the last. Also, one of the 2 saved bottles had its label washed off, into the poor roses. What was the, or is, this bottle’s name? I have the Aleatico of Barletta – safe – and the unnamed bottle – safe – and the broken Tusculum. Now my fine Italian friend, please to give-over sending me these precious wines, (I don’t mean costly) for I shall only keep them till some pleasant friend says ‘let us try them’.10 ’Nay, perhaps Boni himself, undeterred by his first 104

1888–1898

adventure, will drop in upon you as you (me) get out of bed, and he will help you drink them, and while doing so, will unlock himself.’ All well and good, if it should be so, but in the meanwhile, these Italian wines, which mean more to me than their names, or bottles, or colours, indicate, will remain untouched unless some impulse should direct differently. In the meanwhile Still, I am your debtor for a kindly thought in sending them, and no kindly thought, any more than a righteous death, is unfruitful. Yours, in friendly laughter, | Philip Webb. Courtauld 87a-c

1 GBO gave an account of the explosion of 23 April (see above, Letter 384, note 13). ‘Many destroyed windows in the monumental buildings. All the coloured glass of S. Paolo was destroyed – but it was a restoration.’ GBO to PSW, 2 May 1891, Courtauld 86a. 2 ‘Garibaldi was against the project of fortifying Rome.’ 86a. 3 PSW refers to the siege of Paris in 1870–1, during the Franco-Prussian conflict. 4 ‘Yesterday the anarchists have prevailed on the socialists and tried to start a revolution – 300 in number against several thousands of troops and an indifferent population.’ 86a. A May Day demonstration in Rome was followed by a group of anarchists attempting to march into the city, and being prevented by the authorities. A policeman was killed. 5 See above, Letter 384, note 9. 6 John of Patmos, also called St John the Divine, the supposed writer of the Book of Revelation. 7 ‘Would you kindly help me to illustrate an article on the bronze-lion? Send me please as many photographs you, and your friends, possess of Indian, Persian, Assyrian, Egyptian & Greek lions.’ 86b. 8 ‘I got a letter fm Boni last night. Incidentally he asks, “By the bye; did you use the negative of the Orvieto bull?” The meaning of which, I gather, is, that if not destroyed he wd like it back again. I am so ignorant of processes (and one or two other things!) that I cannot tell if it may not be in the Hammersmith creek?’ PSW to EW, 15 May 1891, V&A, AAD. 9 These are the opening words of GBO’s description of the explosion of the powder magazine: ‘sussulto’ means a rumbling (It). 10 ‘Please, before you answer, break the neck of the some of the sample bottles, and taste the contents. The lost one contained Alban wine. The loss was not great, and it shall be repaired.’ GBO to PSW, 5 June 1891, Courtauld 89d.

388 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18 May 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Mon: 18 May. 1891 My dear Cockerell True, I recognise everything but the “mercantile” in it.1 Good, clear, bright, heatsustaining anthracite. None of your blazing, bitumenous, [sic] soot-producing stuff.2 Natheless, I demur to giving ‘auld Nickie-ben’ – my namesake architect, more than his due, unless it were the red-hot poker mediævally applied! He “who came to Paradise, incog. 105

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

------------------An’ gied the ancient church a shog”.3 Our Committee cannot forgive the destruction of the authentic east clerestory wall, at the chord of the infernal (allowable word, for poetic reason) new apse. We put up our hands pathetically-prayer way personally to the architect to spare that wall – but no; “Clootie”4 could not forbear using the opportunity of distinguishing himself, at the expense of mere humans. You see, I am as spiteful as an old hen over her few Rat-spared chicks. These ancient buildings are my loved-ones; and I closely question a professional providence, so hoofed, and horned. I’ll be glad to see you tomorrow morning – not just between 12.30 and 1.15, when I go to see my patients.5 Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. As you magnanimously leave out the ‘Esq to me, peradventure you may be brought to omit the ‘Mr’, also? I’ll give the supple-tail a trial, as the eyes are not so well this morng. re

V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/7

1 His reference is to the report on St-Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield, written by SCC for the SPAB Annual Report, 1891 (pp. 27–30). See above, Letter 386, note 3. 2 SCC annotation: ‘I was then a coal-merchant at 33 New Bridge St near Blackfriars Bridge (the house by Woodward now destroyed) – Hence the references in the first sentence.’ 3 The unflattering allusion throughout this passage is to Aston Webb (1849–1930), the ‘namesake architect’ who had been appointed to oversee the restoration work on St Bartholomew’s, here likened to the mocked devil (‘auld Nickie-ben’) of Robert Burns’s ‘Address to the Deil’ (1785). ‘Then you, ye auld, snick-drawing dog! / Ye cam to Paradise incog, / An’ played on man a cursed brogue, / (Black be your fa’!) / An’ gied the infant warld a shog, / ’Maist ruin’d a’.’ (91–6). Aston Webb became President of the RIBA (1902–4) and was knighted in 1904. His architectural legacy includes significant public buildings and monuments, such as the main façade of Buckingham Palace, Admiralty Arch, the main building of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Naval College, Devon. 4 ‘O Thou, whatever title suit thee! / Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie,’ (‘Address to the Deil’, 1–2). 5 CF and KF.

389 • To Giacomo Boni, 1 June 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 1 June 1891 My dear Boni I do not mean to try your patience with a long letter today, but merely tell, that I will send off tomorrow to you some photographs of ancient lions – not as many 106

1888–1898

and as various as I wished, but I may be able to get some others.1 I am a poor sort of help in these matters, being somewhat of a recluse, knowing but few people who could put quickly in the way of coming at what I may be in want of – therefore, all my life through I have done without many things which (perhaps?) might have made me a better neighbour to the rest of men & women about me; for, ignorance is one of my mishaps, which makes learned people put a gulph2 between themselves & me, and I do not make much effort to narrow the breach, unless with those who have something in them other than what they have learned. There you have a half opened door, letting in a ray. As good luck was, my friend Emery Walker, who reproduced your Orvietan bull for me, had been careful of the negative; and I send it back, interrolled with beasts of Assyria, Egypt, and Greece.3 I tried the South Kensington Museum yesterday, but they had nothing to your purpose there, and for a museum, which – surely – should be a home of learning, could not tell me where I could get what I was in quest of. However, I will try the India Museum next Saturday, if I can manage to fi nd opportunity, and they may (?) have some photo’s of Indian lions there,4 but, but . . . . . well, I will not “complain”, more than this. We English cannot administer in our museums, better than we do in India itself!! Witness ‘Manipur’, and the fatuous disaster, there.5 There is a quality which the English have, which carries the people farther than could have been supposed, all over the world. They can, and do run their heads full-force against a wall. Sometimes they even get through, sometimes they leave only their heads on the other side. The nimble-witted French people have a happy turn for saving themselves trouble, and their heads at the same time; and argue, there is not much of value on the other side of the wall; and they set themselves quietly down in there [sic] loved Parisian boulevards to tell of the wonders which they know must be on the other side, but which they can realise, without losing a cup of coffee, or a bright remark from a clean ankled girl of the pavement, just as well where they are. Of the Italians – ah! Here we are on delicate ground – but I may say, that the few of that wonderful people I have met, seem to me to be possessed of many of the qualities which they have retained from the fine races who have possessed their shores from time out of history. If, as a Roman citizen, you try to be without the Greek, or the Etruscan, you will fail. Your features would belie you, and your keen wittedness assure to the contrary. Now, look you, mind that you are not undone by your wits. And to myself I say, mind you are not undone for the want of it – united answer – we cannot help it. Such was my abstraction of thought, when in monstrous S. Peter’s Church at Rome, that I do not recollect if there was any glass of original date of any value in it. I either tried (with eyes on tip toe) to see the beautiful Pieta, or I was thinking of the Basilica, which 16th c. people did not think good enough for them. So, when we read in the papers of tons of glass being taken from Peter’s Church, I do not know what the loss may mean. Also, I never quite got to see well what Italian glass 107

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

was, at its best. The fine windows in the Frari6 (or was it in the S.S. John & Paul?)7 were covered with scaffolding – someone was at them – and in Florence, there was not much window glass, though some of it was beautiful & effective, and in the Duomo at Milan, though it was fine, it was not very effective, but what was there which was effective in that great wonder of a building? It was wonderful, that was all one could say. Now, in the delightful photographs you send me, in letter after letter, I have the sweets of varied Italy. All that has been done in that centre of European earth, in the way of expressive unostentatious building, comes before me. Phœnician, Greek, Etruscan, Goth, Norman – and the rest, comes home here, in island northern Europe, with its gift of pleasure. I do not make distinction between a broken arch on a Roman way, and the Norman’s fierce assertion of himself on the Italian hills. Norman – north men. The cold-wind force which split Roman Civilization in to small pieces, and sent them flying into all corners of Europe. Unbuckle yourself, my friend, and, between whiles, give me some insight of what the marvels you have seen between paying your fare to the mule owner, your life at the outlying Albergo, and your experiences amongst the tombs of antiquity, flavoured with the scent of the flowers you picked on the way. Forget ambition, and remember Yours faithfully | Philip Webb. Here we have a summer’s day, perhaps the first of the year, though we have had weather, which, not summer, has been beautiful in its way. What weather has not beauty, if you have mind to adapt to its stress of necessity? Courtauld 88a-c

1 See above, Letter 387, note 7. 2 PSW customarily used this obsolete spelling for ‘gulf’ and ‘engulfed’. 3 ‘The collection of photog. contains precious materials for a comparative study of the bronze lion. You have taken so much trouble in searching for them, that I ought not to ask for more, but to make the collection complete I find it necessary to have (if extant) a phot. of the lions resting on the top of the triumphal columns of King Acoka (III centy B.C) in Simla.’ GBO to PSW, 5 June 1891, Courtauld 89a. 4 The India Museum or Oriental Repository collection was originally at the headquarters of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street, before transferring to the South Kensington Museum. 5 The Anglo-Manipuri war of 1891 led to the annexing of this former sovereign north-east Indian state, after it fell to British forces on 27 April. 6 The Venetian Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in the San Polo district was built by the Franciscans and completed in 1338. 7 See Vol. I, Letter 262, note 7.

108

1888–1898

390 • To Giacomo Boni, 21–27 June 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 21. June 1891 What follows expresses some of my thoughts on getting your letter of June 8 inclosing the 2 photos: of Monaco Bigio. My dear Ladrone!1 The dictionary is the foundation of that word, here, and your photograph the cause of the use of the dictionary. No doubt there is a feminine Ladrone somewhere in the hills, which is “metal more attractive” even than duty2 – solemn, pious, doubtful – which impels, even if it did not embroider that surcoat under the Jacket. As you dismount, and shake your stern free from the friction of the saddle, over the hill-top appears the syren (with or without wings & claws) ready to embrace her brave from the metropolis, and save his pocket, and skin, from the fangs of the male population of caves, and secrecy. Let me begin at once and get rid of this item. I cross-questioned John Hebb about the Baldoria matter, and found it a complicated affair.3 He – Hebb – is much vexed that a mistake should have occurred. He says he mistranslated a part of Sig: Baldoria’s letter. He also in a letter to me quotes a part of a letter from you to him, saying that “he (professor Baldoria) is disposed to sell the electrotype of his English translation”. Now, I cannot come at the right of this matter (neither do I make out the correct name of the professor – such is English stupidity) and Hebb seems to me to be much in the dark as to what he meant. Now, cannot you throw over the whole your mantle of shelter, and stay ill feeling? Say, there are two English people, one called Hebb, and one Webb, and that even you – yourself – have never quite arrived at which is which, but that they are both English devils, which no respectable Italian can be supposed to understand. In fact they are always drunk – a weakness of the people – and whether one person is two, or two one, cannot be found out unless the elucidator drinks himself into the same state. My own private opinion (and a perfectly sober one), is, that Hebb made a mistake, and is sorry for it. I do not wish to drive him into a corner, knowing only too well the habit of the human when he is sent there – he bites. You once wrote to me of Prof. Baldoria (give me the correct name) in enthusiastic terms, therefore and I can understand that you do not wish him to be hurt by the stupid English; therefore tell him they are an insular people, much befogged by the atmosphere of their great city, called London, where whitewash is black! There, dear Boni, is my effort to keep the peace, and, your reading goes

109

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

for little, if you have not found out that the moderator of difficulties gets the worst wound. You can hardly call this a “complaint”? Now for your particular point of illustrating the subject of a lion on the top of a pillar – a stylus. I went to the English-India Museum, and actually found a photograph of the TIRHUT Lion on his pillar.4 It is of JAINA architecture,5 but the date of it – so I am informed – is a mere guess – my informant, the curator of that section of the museum, saying, that students of language of things Indian, often fall into mistakes of date. This lion may be of any reasonable age, but that may not be determinable. Well, I arranged with this curator to have a photographic copy made of this photograph, as it must not be taken from the museum, and it is not known if there is a negative of it &c &c. I can get this done, and will let you have it as soon as I can. You see, you damned (anglicæ) antiquarians are so particular, that directly one travels off your particular point, oneself is damned, (Italians) and it is not easy to arrive at a helpful solution. You want, I suppose, lions on columns? and nothing else may help you? I suppose you have a photograph of the Mycenæ lions, supporters to a column?6 if not, I daresay I can send you one, if you wish it? I dance round your “laws”, municipal, and other, and try to fancy how I should like them.7 Well, if applied to antiquities, I think I should like them, for example. The Ecclesiastical authorities are playing ‘old Harry’ (I believe this saying applies to Henry the VIII, who dissolved the monasteries) with the Abbey Church of Westminster, and our ‘antiscrape’ society is trying to stop the mutilation, by ‘restoration’, of that fabric. Well, I wish there was a ‘law’ here to help us – well, there is none for that purpose, but plenty to enable them to destroy the church, which I think you vouchsafed to think worthy of a hasty glance at! Saturday. 27 June. See, I could not finish last Sunday. Since then, I have seen my good friend, and he will send a photographer to the India Museum and see what he can do in the way of reproducing the TIRHUT lion from the old photograph there. Do you know anything of the Chæroneian Lion of Bœotia, near the Cephissus on the borders of Phocis?8 When Philip defeated the Athenians & Bœotians there, B.C 338 the sepulchre (tumulus) of the dead had a lion placed on the top of it, as an emblem of the spirit of the Thebans. I believe there is a cast of the head of this lion in the Brit: Mus:, but the figure itself was broken up long ago by the barbarians in search of treasure. (You need not read this How this human propensity sticks. All our people are in search of plunder in one form or other, and they destroy right & left to gratify the evil passion. The spirit of greed not only makes railways, but it destroys anything in its way, the value of which is not calculable by figures in many columns.) I learn there is in the “Monumenti Annali of the Institute of Rome” an engraving of the Chæroneian lion. You need not send back the photographs of lions I send you, they may be useful to you at some other time. 110

1888–1898

The ‘Antiscrape’ report for 1891 will be out in a week or two. There is an interesting parallel at the beginning, written by George Wardle (I think he saw you in Venice) and it is very much to the point, of destruction by restoration.9 We will send the report to you when it is out. You must tell me if you would care for me to send you a very beautiful work of Wm Morris – a purely lovely piece of imagination and fact combined – but as it is on a socialistic basis, I am not sure if you would care to have it?10 I have a certain little weakness of pride in being able to address a growing Italian notability in the familiar way I do. I ask your pardon, knowing that you cannot return the compliment. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 90a-c

1 Ladrone: a bandit or highwayman (It). Two versions of a photograph of GBO, wearing an elaborately embroidered shirt or waistcoat and velvet jacket, are currently kept with his letter dated 5 June 1891, but were sent a few days after this. PSW has annotated them on the reverse ‘From Boni (portrait of himself) June 8. 1891. Age 32. 25 Ap. ’91’. In his subsequent letter, GBO ran with PSW’s joke: ‘Monaco bigio is puzzled by your not having stated whether he is the right or left-hand ladrone, the so-called good or bad one. His sympathies are for the so-called bad one for he hates people living in one way and dying in another.’ GBO to PSW, 3 July 1891. Courtauld 91a. 2 ‘No, good mother; here’s metal more attractive’. Hamlet, III.ii.109. Said by Hamlet of Ophelia. 3 Natale Baldoria (d.1892) was a specialist in early Italian art. ‘Some time ago Mr. J. Hebb wrote to me that he was going to translate the article on Casauria for the R.I.B.A. I answered that the author (Prof. Baldoria) would feel very grateful if before the translation was printed he might be allowed to look at the proofs. Mr. J. Hebb, as a reply, wrote a postcard to Prof. Baldoria (an eminent archaeologist & Keeper of the national Galleries & Museums of Italy) saying that his article on S. Clemente of Casauria would not find an English editor disposed to print it, unless the author paid in advance. Prof. Baldoria who has not asked anybody the favour of translating his literary demonstrations, and had never desired to make the acquaintance of english editors, felt a little surprised – I did and do the same: but you can perhaps help us in explaining the whole thing.’ GBO to PSW, 5 June 1891, Courtauld 89c-d. 4 In the third century BC, a number of columns were erected in the northern territories of the Indian subcontinent during the reign of king Ashoka, of which several survive surmounted with animal capitals. At Bakhra in Tirhut is a remarkably well-preserved example of a seated lion. 5 The ancient non-theistic religion of Jainism, stressing pacifism and a respect for all living things, is likely to have appealed to PSW. 6 Above the entrance gate to the ancient Greek city of Mycenae is a stone relief of two lions rampant, flanking a column. 7 In his letter of 5 June, GBO listed three new municipal laws for the protection of Italy’s ancient buildings, to be considered by the national government. 8 The Lion of Chaeronea is a funerary monument commemorating the Theban soldiers killed in 338 BC during the battle of Chaeronea, in the Boeotian province of Greece, in which Philip II of Macedon was victorious. 9 ‘Alexandrinism’ forms the first section of the SPAB Annual Report, 1891 (pp. 7–14), which was ‘taken and read and adopted’ at the annual meeting on 10 June, chaired by PSW. GW comments on a number of extended extracts from an address by Emile Fauget on ‘French Humanism in the Sixteenth Century’, which introduced a course of lectures at the Sorbonne on French poetry. The

111

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II ‘interesting parallel’ which GW draws is that ‘of illustrating the mischiefs of “restoration” by reference to its results in other arts than that of architecture’ (p. 7). ‘Like the Humanists of the fifteenth century our architects sought to reproduce the fertility and beauty of better times by the simple process of imitation.’ (p. 9). 10 WM’s Utopian novel, News from Nowhere, appeared first as a serial in The Commonweal from January-October 1890 and then as a book in a revised version in March 1891 (London: Reeves and Turner).

391 • To the Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn, 23 June 1891 Drafted on behalf of SPAB The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to The Benchers of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn.1 23rd June 1891 Gentlemen The Committee of our Society having received several anxious inquires as to the safety of the fabric of the Chancery Lane Gatehouse to the Inn;2 and as reports have recently appeared upon the probability of this interesting, and in several ways beautiful example of old London building being pulled down; we felt bound to ascertain as quickly as possible from an architect, what was the actual state of the structure. We therefore asked Mr Philip Webb to examine the building for our Committee, and we are glad to be able to inclose you a copy of his report, which we have no doubt will be as satisfactory to the Benchers of the Inn, as it is to ourselves.3 Our Society has always held, that the preservation of ancient buildings should not depend upon one or two opinions alone as to the possibility of saving them in their integrity from destruction, for the enjoyment of future generations of men. The Lincoln’s Inn Gatehouse is an exceedingly interesting example of transitional building; and, considering how few examples of such work (or indeed of any ancient work) remain in London, it is the more necessary to question every possibility – however remote, of one more, of the too few left, disappearing. We beg therefore that you will accept this excuse for our Society putting before you any suggestion on a point in which you yourselves must naturally be anxious. Our Society knows only too well the risks such a building as the one in question runs. One class of mind, the destructive, would work only on the lines of unmixed utilitarianism. Another would look at the question only from a money point of view; while a third would regard it with the eye of a mischievous sentimentalism; and, unfortunately for the buildings themselves, this last is the one which obtains most generally. The building is, of course, to be saved; but it must be so transformed – under the guise of ‘restoration’ – as to make its importance clearly perceptible to the meanest of artificial sentimentalists. The report of our architect shows clearly that the building need not be pulled down on account of its structural weakness. 112

1888–1898

The value of it, under its present aspect, our society is fully assured, and also, of the loss to the community at large, (hardly second to that of its being pulled down) if it were ‘restored’, as that term in these days is understood. We sincerely trust that your Honourable Society will see its way to preserving the building to its own honour, and for the pleasure of those who have a delight in looking at a dignified piece of ancient work, amongst surroundings which have no such reasonable claim on their respect. As many people look to our Society for information with regard to ancient buildings in any way threatened, we shall take the opportunity of publishing our Architect’s report and – as giving the reasons which have moved us in the matter – this letter to your honourable Society. I am Gentlemen | (on behalf of my committee) | Yours faithfully Th. Turner | Secretary | June —— 1891 to the acting Committee of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. SPAB

1 The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn is one of the four ancient Inns of Court in Holborn, to which barristers belong. Of the three categories of membership – Students, Barristers and Masters of the Bench (or Benchers), the last-named is the most senior, and forms the governing body. 2 The Tudor Gatehouse is the oldest surviving part of Lincoln’s Inn, having been constructed in 1518–21. Restoration occurred at the end of the seventeenth century, and again in 1967–9. 3 An autograph copy of PSW’s report on the Lincoln’s Inn Gatehouse survives in the SPAB archive.

392 • To Giacomo Boni, 12 July 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 12 July 1891 My dear Boni Monaco Bigio turned the trifling jest of “ladrone” very well indeed.1 The honest (?) thief is far preferable to the moral liar who lives up to the infamy. So, if you will put “right hand” brigand in to good Italian, I will lay it alongside of Monaco Bigio. Your letter of July 3 is very good reading to me, and the stroking of my beard with the photograph of the Augustan gate at Spello was quite effective, and laid my easily ruffled temper perfectly.2 How often one looks at a beautifully made musical instrument – say a “Stradevarius” [sic] – and sighs that one cannot draw sweet sounds from it. The marvellous fiddle-and-its-bow can make itself disagreeable if mishandled. When 19th cent: builders can frame a piece of hoar antiquity as beautifully as the mediæval folk did the Roman gateway, (see your photo:) there will be no need of ‘antiscrape’ societies, and edicts ad nauseam? You sometimes make the mistake of gauging my wits by your own, and did so this time – perhaps, in a ‘left hand’ way – by supposing I was clear in mind as to 113

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

the muddle between Prof: Baldoria and John Hebb. All I really knew was, that a blunder had been made by someone, and I wished, if possible, to stay its rolling and accumulating as a ball of snow. ‘Blessed are the peace makers’,3 though they get nastily burned when exercising their office. “Your piece of good news”4 set me a-smiling over a parallel which has occurred here. The brutal coercion going on now in Ireland would only have been possible in its actual form, if a certain law – tempus Edward III – had lain unrepealed. It was found “unrepealed”, and was applied with such vigour, that it will act as a lever to help on the evolutionary idea which is now in the air all over the world. Many bad acts of parliament as well as good historical documents will go up in flames when mad rage has its way in coming time. A cloud of injustice, no larger than one’s hand, will spread out into a huge cloud, which will take the light of the sun off the earth, and men will grope to their mischief. Theoretically I did not go to Italy to look particularly at 16th cent: buildings, and I did not give much time to looking for work of that date, and though Michael Angelo was too great to be passed by without note, I did miss paying attention to Sanmicheli.5 If my too short time had but served me better, no doubt I should have been impressed by his quality as a scholastic architect. You will understand what I mean by this? S. Peter’s at Rome did not touch me, except in the way of common wonder, but the library of Lorenzo at Florence, did. However, I hope your useful Roman law will save Peter’s church from being ‘improved’, either by Pope or Moneybag. Your success in applying the ancient law, to save the characteristic quality of the Guastaverza Pal:, was very satisfactory, and I wish I could understand the nicety of the play upon the name of MALFATTI – but this I can understand, namely “a patrimony which, considered from its artistic aspect, has already passed into the domain of the Public”. I would that, of hundreds of more precious art buildings than that of Sanmicheli. Here, in London, the ecclesiastical authorities have the right (seemingly, but this we are going to try and break through) to refuse to give any information as to what they mean to do to the great church. When I get the various pieces of information from you, of this and that resting on your shoulders for preservation, I do not wonder at your energy, but I do at your strength to bear up under the load. ‘More power to your elbow,’ as the Irish people say. And now I have your admirable photograph under my eye of the Spello – Umbrian – gateway (which last word is tautologous, as gate, and way, have the same meaning like gang, and go &c.) The right word is “door” – literally an opening. In our old towns, where any town wall remains, this “door,” is called the “Bar”, like “bargate”, that is, impediment by the way, or gate. How beautiful this piece of old wall is, in all its variety of masonry, with the different plants clinging to the joints like martin-swallows to a wall. I was surveying a 15th cent: tower, on Wednesday last, which is in a dilapidated state, and I think I shall have to put one principal iron tie across it, and, as I do not

114

1888–1898

much like to trust to any form of screw to connect the bar, I feel inclined to fall back on the old fashioned clip-joint, and wedges, thus. [sketch] Do you know of any better way? I think a screw would safely stand for many years, if it was imbedded in the wall, and made water-tight, but I do not like the thought of the action of time on a screw, when the thread of the worm will be acted upon by gasses and damp. The “screw” is no doubt useful, when you want to draw up and tighten the tie, considerably, but in this case of mine, I merely want to keep the tower archway from spreading wider apart in future. True, every building of intrinsically noble, or historic character, which you save to posterity, is, on your part, really socialistic, that is, for the good of the people, regardless of the individual. When the people will come to know they have real possessions, I cannot say. I hope they will not stop short after taking the gold from one pocket, and putting it in to another. Commercialism has made a wide gap between the “people”, and anything like admiration of beauty in object or subject. The poor devils can think of nothing, as yet, but leisure, and more food. I have your copies of “the extract from the official bulletin of the 1st of July 1891” and I will get it translated. I do not think you grasp, or wish to do so, my complete ignorance of most things under the sun, languages included? perhaps that will partly account for my modesty, (not your obstinacy) – *see beyond. Ah! what a picture you draw of the desolate, miasma-loaded wastes of the Pontine marshes, with the plains dotted with the noses & horns of the buffaloes only appearing above the surface of the swamps. One of the noses above ground, crossing the waste, must have been tortured by mosquitoes. Do you know if the herdsmen who tend the cattle on these extended marshes, have any life in them beyond that pertaining to pure savagery? Are they obliged by the circumstances of their life to be altogether filthy and barbarous, or is there, lying under the necessary roughness of their labouring life, any spark of light which would be grateful to a human soul who came across them, if he could understand them? *I tried to make out pretty clearly the paragraphs of the Riforma article you inclosed to me, (for which, and all other touching attention to my many wants, I thank you heartily) but I fail to be certain that I read rightly, so that I must get this translated also. Now, if I send you William Morris’s “News from Nowhere”, you will not have to get it translated, and, unless an excess of obstinacy besets you, you will take in, besides the fine English language in which it is written, much admirable thought and imaginative insight. Morris is, really, the only English modern poet, who has risked his reputation for the people, that is, for himself, my friend, if the money-closed ears could but hear the sound. Inclosed is a photograph of the Asoka pillar with its Lion. It was made from a rather poor & discoloured photograph in the Indian museum, but I think you will be able to make out its significance. James Fergusson, in his book on Indian architecture, says – “Asoka is only busied about doctrines. He does not even mention his father’s name; and makes

115

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

no allusion to any historical event, not even those connected with the life of the founder of the religion. Among a people so careless of genealogy, history is impossible”.6 Fergusson goes on “These LÂTS, or pillars, which he (ASOKA) erected to contain edicts conveying the principal doctrines of the Buddhist religion as then understood”. “The circumstances of the architectural history of India commencing with Asoka, about B.C 250.” The district of TIRHUT is in Northern India, on the north side of the Ganges, north of Patna. The question is, whether the classic ornamentation of the capital of the column (which can be seen by help of lens, in the photograph) is imitated from Assyrian or Greek art. Fergusson holds to the Assyrian, but the strung-bead ornament might, to my mind, make it Greekish. There can be no doubt of the character of the lion being different from other Indian lion sculpture. I send you 3 other photographs of lions & gryphons, as a contrast. Therefore wipe up your crocodile tears my friend, and “go for” the obstinate people who do not agree with you about the Venetian lion, which looks to me to be Byzantine, but – as aforesaid – ignorance rules7 Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 92a-c

1 See above, Letter 390, note 1. 2 The ancient walled-town of Spello in the province of Perugia features the substantial remains of three late Roman gates, including the Arch of Augustus (c. first century BC-first century AD), incorporated within its later medieval walls. 3 From the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.’ St Matthew 5:9. 4 PSW’s next four paragraphs are prompted by GBO’s account of a successful campaign to prevent the inappropriate restoration of the Renaissance Palazzo Guastaverza in Verona, work of the Venetian mannerist architect, Michele Sanmicheli (1484–1559). Its wealthy owner was Giuseppe Malfatti. GBO to PSW, 3 July 1891, Courtauld 91a-c. 5 See note 4. 6 James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London: John Murray, 1876), p. 52. 7 ‘My desire to know what Indian lions on columns were like is caused by the opinion of some archaeologists (stupid ones, presumably) that the Venetian lion is not Venetian.’ 91a.

393 • To Emery Walker, 12 July 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Grays Inn, | London, W.C. 12 July. 1891 To Emery Walker My dear Walker I believe I go to Forthampton on Monday next, taking the usual 3 days – out and home – for doing it, but I am not absolutely sure of the date of going, though very nearly. 116

1888–1898

Do you feel inclined to be more or less idle & go with me? Something was said the other day about the possibility of your going, but I do not wish you to think you ought to go, for I well know how busy you are, and the ties of illness &c you have upon you at home,1 so that you should be quite free to say yea or nay? I sent your photographs to Boni on Sunday, and thank you for your great assistance in the matter. I suspect Boni will skip with pleasure at getting the Lion on the lât. Let Boutall2 send on the bill in a business-like way. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Mary Grace Jones (1849/50–1920), who married EW in June 1877, suffered from extended periods of poor health. 2 Walter Boutall, EW’s business partner. See above, Letter 381, note 3.

394 • To Giacomo Boni, 20 July 1891 Postcard. Photostat. Postmark LONDON. W.C. JY 20 91 Address Signor Giacomo Boni | Architetto | Ministero dell’ Istruzione | Roma | Italy 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn. London W.C. 19 July, 1891 I send you by book post today, the volume you claim: the post-historical record of the universe, as set forth by an insular genius.1 If the Northmen, setting their seal on Gaul, spread their cold-blast genius by the force of a Guiscard into the Italian peninsular,2 they also stamped a deep impression on this island, and, aided by the kindred intellectual force of Scandinavia, produced here a reflecting light, of which the above named historical volume is a 19th cent: outcome: neither a glimmering candle, nor a mischievous spark, but a glow from the ages, which nature always seems to provide from time to time, now from here, now from there, making all the world akin at all times. The antiscrapian philosophy of Britain will also be sent to you in the usual manner, I believe, in the shape of its annual report; but should it fail to reach you, a word to this corner of London will produce it. I commend in it to your notice the article entitled “Alexandrinism”, which has good point in its comparison.3 Yours Ph: W: Courtauld 93

1 ‘Many hearty thanks especially for the Utopian romance – the few pages [of News from Nowhere] I have read struck me with wonder, and I determined that the book itself shall accompany me in the

117

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II Sabine mountains – you shall be told in proper time what pleasure or instruction I derived from it.’ GBO to PSW, 27 July 1891, Courtauld 94a. 2 See above, Letter 381, note 4. 3 See above, Letter 390, note 9.

395 • To William Weir, 24 July 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 24 July. 1891 My dear Weir Your letter of yesterday’s date (anxiously looked-for by Jack and myself) gave us the satisfaction of knowing you had got to your moorings and were busy at your pleasant work, and we rejoiced accordingly. The weather you have seems to be much the same as ours. I was lucky in that particular in my 3 days on my work at Forthampton, for, only as I left came a thunderstorm. The old mended house there looked very well, and the flowers enchanting, but I had not much time in which to bless them. I am glad you got to Old Barsham House again – for one sees so much more then, than one did at first, when mere admiration hinders judgment. I should be glad if you could find out any facts as to the building, and as to the probability of its being made fit for Lord Hastings to live in, as that would be death to the historic value of it.1 If you can find out anything about him, & where he lives, it might help our society if we should have to petition him not to transform the place. Perhaps he wd only mean to use it as a “shooting box”, and, if so, there wd be something to be said in favour of a limited putting in order. By the way, I see you call the terracotta work at Barsham, & Great Snoring,2 “cut brickwork”! no doubt some of the repeated work was cast in a mould, and the rest worked by hand, before burning. We are very busy here, and shall be glad to have you back again to keep us in countenance, but I shall not be particular as to a day or two if you find that addition to your fortnight would be a convenience – in any case I shall hardly expect you before the Wednesday after ‘bank holiday’. Note – wherever you find old (15th century or 16th c) brickwork, mind you measure the bricks and the joints, taking a rubbing when you can. This also should be done when you find the original tooling on ashlar stonework. Some lining paper and a cake of heelball does the thing nicely. With best wishes for you & your friend I am yours truly | Philip Webb. r M William Weir. SPAB W-W 1

118

1888–1898 1 George Manners Astley, twentieth Baron Hastings (1857–1904) was the owner of the dilapidated East Barsham Manor. See also above, Letter 375, note 4. 2 The Norfolk village of Great Snoring lies about 40 miles to the north-west of Norwich, on the river Stiffkey.

396 • To Sydney Cockerell, 12 August 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wed: 12 Aug: 1891 My dear Cockerell I have heard from Morris this morning.1 He seems to have been doing very well – especially at Abbeville & Beauvais, but grumbled over Amiens.2 Writing from Beauvais yesterday – 11th – He says – “shall stay here till over Thursday & then go on to Soissons and thence to Reims, where we shall be on Sunday and Monday next. Tomorrow (ie today) we drive out to Gournay and S. Germer. If you see Cocquerel (sic!) tell him so”3 – Perhaps this will hardly tell him as he may be in Venice – if not, perhaps Ph. W. will see him at antiscrape tomorrow?4 Yrs Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/8

1 WM wrote from Beauvais: ‘Here I am after 33 years, and yet not as melancholy as I suppose I ought to be.’ 11 August 1891, CLWM, III. He spent a fortnight in France with JEM. 2 See next letter, note 3. 3 WM was full of his trip after the SPAB committee on 27 August. ‘Morris had photographs of Noyon, Laon, Beauvais, Abbeville, Soissons etc and was full of interesting talk about the places in France that he has just visited. Said that Verona (apropos of our approaching trip) is a glorious town, although he prefers the Northern architecture – but that he was at first disappointed with Venice, feeling as though he was looking from the top storey of a submerged town! The squalor of it also very painful to him.’ CD, 27 March 1891. 4 SCC was present at the SPAB committee on 13 August, a month before he left for Italy as part of a group of 27 organised by the Art Workers’ Guild, and led by the basket-maker and self-taught Italian scholar, Thomas Okey (1852–1935). His companions included EW and George Bernard Shaw. SCC had spent much preparatory time in studying PSW’s photographs of Verona.

397 • To William and Jenny Morris, 13 August 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thursday 13. Aug. 1891 My dear Children1 Do not be frightened at the large paper, for I shall not fill it. Your kind and mutual story found its billet yesterday, having come home in the 24 hours. How glad I am

119

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

that you got out together, and that the impudent dog, fate, has not dished you. Lord, how those calves must have quivered as the big French dog made for the bluetrousered veal! Blessings on the blue bloused froggies who preserved with thunder of voice those legs undented – there, that’s rather like hexameters!2 The sympathetic Kate enjoyed the combined letter last night when I took it to Hampstead, and as she had seen some parts of the France you wrote of, she could catch the atmosphere. Alas! it was hoped that Charles would be able to take some turns round the bandbox garden there, but he went from Q[ueen]. S[quare]. unwell, and got worse, so that the first week was in bed, and this week recovery; so that it may be he won’t move round and under a very fine old medlar tree there is there. You – both of you – may not be able to understand what useful purpose bad jokes can have in the world – but there is a use at times, I can assure you, though the worst of jokes, 5%, is not in some cases one of them. Your veiled grief over Amiens I understand, and your joys of Abbeville and Beauvais too.3 Am indeed, particularly set up by the former place still being a place for the mind to rest on. Ah, Jenny, is it not good to know something of the strange story of life from the formful blocks of stone? First the fingers and then the nose, following the grey surprise to the eyes, and all the kingdoms of the earth go before one – the sceptic, “Thomas,” was not such a fool after all.4 And the Coat of Treves is no myth, in a way.5 So our fathers slept, and so they snored, and I would like to see Odysseus, his shoes, hobnails and all. When your father writes of his ignorance of architecture – such as that of the “flowing-decorated” like, at Riquier, don’t believe him till you have asked me, or he wd be disappointed.6 Le Duc’s misrepresenting drawings are being discounted at this moment if you are looking at the angel-pinnacles of Reims.7 Take note, that the father will call it ‘Reems’, as if it were printed paper, sold at a high price at Hammersmith. I sent an extract of your letter to “Cocquerel” (writ thus, after the manner of reems)8 so that he might know of your whereabouts, in case I do not see him this evening. The opening of the discussion on ‘toleration of opinion’ came off last Friday, at last; and it was rather like my house of commons story of deferred answer to the question.9 However, it raised the wind of discussion, and the opener-up had to listen – not to praises, which are an injury to weak flesh, but to faithful exposition of fallacy – they were all very good natured, but rather pitied the poor thing – me. Even Mordhurst,10 had rather to shew his back, though Bullock did put in a word of consolation.11 I must plant gibes in Walker, if I see him at Gattis’ tonight,12 and find out how low I have sunk in the riverside mud of Hammth. The greatest pleasure of the matter to me, was the directness of honesty of the whole talk. Both the Gaffer and his daughter must (they surely will) understand, that I am still obstinately right. I made Kate laugh by saying that, if the father of the Hammersmith flock (4 are a flock you must remember) had been there, he would have upheld both sides with Jove-like balance.

120

1888–1898

I am sorry you won’t see the pretty shield of my design – (Yorke’s arms) – for Forthampton, which Jack carved in English oak, and Kate coloured.13 I varnished him on Sunday and he will be dry to go to his place on Monday – the Mr Justice Shallow rather feathered-up with pleasure,14 though I am afraid the carving and colouring had too short appreciation – as would an orchard pippin for the matter of that. I can hear a ruckle of bones as the abbot of Tewkesbury turns over in his stone coffin, when the thing is set up in the library fire place. Go to, father abbot, I have served your house well – and you too must put up with Shallows. If you should be casting about to write a line to Kate, the address is K.F. c/o Mrs Orrin-smith, Sunny bank, Christ Ch’ Road Hampstead, N. but I suspect they will be home by Monday or Tuesday. Hampstead is villa bedevilled out of all countenance. It must have been a jolly hill-top-nest at one time, and that very ancient. I go up each evening, trimming rheumatic legs up the hill and down again. When trade leaves England, materials for concrete will be plentiful for “nowhere”.15 Goodbye my dear child Jenny. I thank you for your pleasant blessing, and look that the rest of your time will be as good as the first half of it.16 The old man wd be put out of countenance if I said anything more civil to him than Your affectionate | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, ff. 70-1

1 For WM’s reply of 19 August, see CLWM, III, pp. 346–9. 2 ‘4 French dogs big sitting in the litter of a shed barked at us . . . when we came back out bounced a big one very flamboyant, but did not get so far as the legs of the rear guard (me to wit) chiefly I think because 3 or 4 bloused French men cursed him till all was blue.’ WM to PSW, 11 August 1891. 3 ‘[Amiens] is dull, bourgeois, and in a word gritty, and is much improved for the worse since I saw it last by the addition of some beastly buildings of the (3rd) Napoleonic style inconceivable outside Zola’s books. . . . Abbeville we liked hugely.’ 4 The apostle Thomas refused to believe in the resurrection until he placed his fingers in the wounds on Christ’s body (St John 20:24–9). 5 More than one church claims to possess the seamless garment of Christ for which the soldiers cast lots at the Crucifixion (‘now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. / They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots.’ St John 19:23–4. Since about 1100 the cathedral in the ancient German city of Trier (Treves in English), on the banks of the Moselle and close to the Luxembourg border, has claimed to own the true relic, given by St Helena. 6 ‘One day we drove out some 8 miles to Riquier . . . [and found] a lovely church wholly unrestored front and nave, flambouyant, transepts & quire early 14th with additions & insertions that seemed to my ignorance like English flowing dec: & not flamb.’ 7 Most of the work of the French architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79), an exponent of the Gothic Revival style, involved restoration rather than the construction of original buildings. His approach involved updating and speculative reconstruction, conflicting at almost every level with the principles extolled by the SPAB. In Viollet-le-Duc’s monumental ten-volume Dictionnaire

121

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

8 9

10 11 12

13 14 15 16

Raisonné de L’Architecture Française du XIe au XVIe Siècle (Paris, 1858–68), the article ‘Pinacle’ uses the cathedral at Reims as an example, and furnishes an illustration of the ‘angel-pinnacles’ (VII, p. 180). In other words, misspelled. Famously resistant to speaking publicly, this a rare instance of PSW making an exception to his own rule. On 7 August he had led off a discussion at a meeting of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, on the topic ‘Toleration of Opinion’. He prepared his thoughts with care, and six pages of his detailed notes survive (V&A, AAD). He started thus: ‘I take it, the reason why Socialists, and Religionists, are so markedly intolerant, is, that they have their convictions only on probable evidence’, and in concluding, opened up the general discussion: ‘Toleration, to my mind, is very much a matter of manners, of courage, and of reason, and I give it over to your tender mercies.’ The minutes record that eight members spoke in response. BL Add 45893, f 29v. August Mordhurst, a branch member of the Hammersmith Socialist Society. Samuel Bullock, Literature Secretary of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, and an engineer by profession. A. & S. Gatti’s, at 436 the Strand, close to Charing Cross station, was a modestly-priced but goodquality restaurant to where the regular attendees of the Thursday evening SPAB committee meetings at Buckingham Street almost invariably transferred afterwards. Relaxing there was a tradition with its own rituals, good-humoured banter being at its heart. SCC added this note to Letter 498, below: ‘After the Committee meetings of the ‘Antiscrape’ . . . in Buckingham Street, Strand, we adjourned to a tea-supper at Gatti’s in the Strand – usually four or five, of whom Walker and I were two. It was then that Morris & Webb were like boys together & at their best.’ See Alan Crawford, ‘Supper at Gatti’s: The SPAB and the Arts and Crafts Movement’, in Miele, pp. 101–27. PSW usually referred to Gattis’ rather than Gatti’s, though as the establishment was A. & S. Gatti’s it does not seem to justify a precautionary sic. There is no record of this armorial shield in Gaimster, nor in Kirk. See above, Letter 374, note 5. The allusion is to News from Nowhere. JEM had added a closing note to her father’s letter of 11 August. ‘All the lovely places & buildings which I am now seeing for the first time have brought thoughts of you to me, when you & Father & our other friends were making your first journeys in France, and have made me wish to write a line of remembrance & love to you. I can’t be finding them less beautiful & noble than you did first, though you knew more about them.’

398 • To Giacomo Boni, 16–17 August 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 16 August 1891 My dear Boni The 27th July – date of your last letter to me – is long past, but only now have I been able to turn to answering it. One always, when getting a longed-for letter, feels inclined (when the fresh glamour is upon one) to write a full return – something, or many things hinder, and the energy for doing it at the best has gone. I think I catch some of the same effect in you – no reproach – at all events no more than applies to myself – but truth to tell, you have an unfair advantage. When criminally neglectful, you are able to search in your store house and send me a bundle, or sheaf rather, of photographs and buy me off – and with a light phrase 122

1888–1898

too such as, I send you something to “muse over”. I am easily subdued in this way, and “complaint” is stopped, and I can even forgive the scorn with which certain printed papers, veiled in the Italian tongue, are pushed under my ignorant nose. But that is my misfortune, not your fault. I have scratched at the “extraction from the official bulletin of 1 July ’91”, like a dog at a rabbit hole, and made some little of it, if only the scent – as it were – of the beast’s tail. That rather grim note of yours of the probable lives of some of the humans (they are still humans) in the Pontine marshes, brings up in my mind the old saying, “it is not good for man to live alone”,1 but I dare tell, that as much brutality – though perhaps in a different way – lies with those, over-crowded, and tormented, in the hells of huge cities.2 Man is certainly a very imperfect beast, and I would not care to hide my own brutality under a Bishop’s mitre or judge’s wig. Do your judges so veil their beastliness? How about the covered nakedness of Ferdinand II,3 and the Prince Torlonia?4 Your sheaf of photo’s give me admirable subjects of study, this time (also always) but none more miraculous or stirring than those of the lovely art shewn in the screen and ciborium at Rocca di Botte, (I am rather confused by your double name to the same objects – namely R. di B, and Rosciolo) with the pulpit.5 The work is singularly simple, with all the richness of beauty, and very interesting from the point of the history of art. You have sent me nothing more delightful than these 3 photographs. I note especially the singular grace of the trefoil arches, and the admirably skilful though involved lines of the sculpture – but, whence – historically – come the strange bands round the middle of the columns supporting the screen beam? You will forget to answer such a question, because I cannot put it with others in a proper table. Rocca = Fortress (or chimney pot – or distaff!) and Botte = cask or barrel. I do not readily grasp the boundaries of the provinces (or tribal boundaries) say, such as the Abruzzo, but I have looked out the places on the map, and damned my ignorance quite comfortably. I do not fancy the Torlonia having been much disturbed or delighted (?) that his purchase included the beautiful doorway of S. Benedetto.6 In the Castle of the Piccolomini, I should have said the original work was of the 13th or 14th, rather than of the 15th cent: The entrance front is very fine. But what strange work is that interlacing carved work from Celano?7 I never saw anything quite like it before. It seems neither to be Byzantine, nor Norman, nor Scandinavian. Its skill is not beautiful, nor its savagery masterly. Italy has homed many and various races of men. Here is another troublesome question. Why do you call that cyclopean wall ‘Pelasgic’ – Is there any reasonable authority for builded work being done in Italy by the people called the Pelasgi?8 The other day a friend came in to my room at 2 o’c, when I had just finished dinner, and I could not therefore ask him to partake – but I thought of your wine, and produced a bottle and some biscuits, and we drank to you, and the hills whence came the liquor. It was good, and strong, made us merry, and able to overlook each other’s faults. Would water have done the same? Since then, I have tried another, also good, but, unless I saw the women of the country in which each was made, 123

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I could not tell you which I liked the better. And now comes the thought of how I could be happy to be seated on one of these pelasgic stones, with a bottle of wine from the haversack, and here a nod, and here a sip, and some free conversation (including – perhaps – a debate on the ‘Pelasgi’) on all the subjects which have made men free, and easy, or unfree, and uneasy, ever since those stones were deftly set one upon another. I have never had you quiet and human like at such a coign of vantage in the world9 – something has been of close confinement of feeling, which has not led to clear understanding. A strange thing, that of finding out what your friend is. There are more clothes on the human being than those which ever were warped and woven. You see, I was never married, and therefore my mother could not come in to the bridal room with the corn and the bone, or, perhaps, I might have known more mysteries than I do know. I am looking for you to tell me what you have found in the “News from nowhere”. The merits of the book will be overlooked yet awhile, I fancy. Its perfect art is too simple to go home to many minds, at present: the touches too fine to make impression on preoccupied minds. Its humanity is pervaded by scents of earth & water, of tree freshness, and wind sweetness, and our kind written about there are only clothed in hand woven stuffs, no artificial film comes between. Old Thames is pleasant to muse over, but I found Arno and Tyber [sic] answer my need equally well when I was in Italy. One day in Venice, I thought I had worked enough, so I made sign to a Gondolier, and he took me aboard. We passed Palazzo Ducale, (where – no doubt – you were at work seated on your onion stone) when I made a note of its windowed wall above the tracery. Then swish – swish, went the oar, and presently I landed on the Lido, walked across, and then along the sands. I took off my shoes, and waded in the Adriatic, and made myself free of that water. After which I came back, and entered again into my other self. So, and so, when you write to me of the “yellow blood and the swollen belly” of the humans secreted in solitary watch of herds in the pestiferous marshes, I feel at home, even there, so that all the good and all the ill of the universe can make of me nothing but a sad brother – no, that is not quite all – sometimes – not unoften – I am a merry brother, and always willing. I have been reading, lately, of our rule in India, that wonder of creation, a wonder, not in a Pandora box, but spread over thousands of miles of sun beridden earth – ’tis the same there. All the tribes, and all the religions, and all the tigers, and the sweat of life, have not kept it from being ruled, or misruled, by a small people, not so very remarkable, except that it retains in its hold, what it cannot understand. You write of Cocullo, where you halted to rest, but I cannot find it on my map, or in the guide.10 Guides are always imperfect about small places generally unknown, but I like to trace where you go. Always give me the nearest town or place likely to be marked on my large map, (by Carlo Cerri 1875).11 George Wardle, whom you saw in Venice, has been staying in the south of France for 2½ years; is very deep now in the history of early art there. He stayed one winter near to Cannes (not amongst the half sick & wholly lazy of that place Cannes) close to the Island of Lerins – now this little island was a cradle of 124

1888–1898

the early Xtian missionaries, and he (Wardle) took to close examination of the different remains of early buildings. On a separate island there, (isle of S. Honorat) was a very early building roofed with a dome of this form.12 [sketch] Wardle asked me to send him a photo or two of yours, to compare with this work, and I sent him those of Clitunno near Trevi, and the Chiesa del Crocifisso, Spoleto.13 Wardle sends me long archæological letters of what he sees and does, and some note-sketch books, with beautiful pencil drawing of details. He has lately been to Arles, working amongst the Roman and early Xtian work there, and I have to answer his letters with my best lights, which are but farthing candles at the best, of which you know only too well. He has now got on to the hills during the summer, for health’s sake, and he is hard by Bruno’s Grand Chartreuse.14 I hope you will not be worn to death by your “preaching” labours – telling a story very often to those who partly cannot understand, and partly do not wish to. I confess I should like to see those out of the way buildings, such as you send me pictures of, but as I don’t know the language, living there would but oppress me. Still, the art part of the thing, the beauty, and simplicity of the forms &c would keep me from being wearied. I should hardly be able to drag myself away from such work as that at Rosciolo.15 It always wants the love of the craftsmanship, in addition to the knowledge of the history &c. I thank you for the suggested iron tie, which is very ingenious, and I should think very strong. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. I see it is Monday now, 17 Aug. I suppose you have not neglected the Chimera (really a magnificent lion, with the combination of goat & serpent) in the Etruscan Museum at Florence?16 Well, the Venice Lion is not unlike this – (with a difference) – especially about the mane. I send you a photo given me by Emery Walker for you. (He who reproduced the Orvietan Bull). He does not know anything about it except that the lion is Japanese, and at Tokio. I think the lion must be bronze, and an ancient one, mounted on a new base. However, I know little or nothing about it, but Walker has asked a lady who is visiting places somewhere under our feet, to tell him the lion’s history, but it may be many months before he gets the story. Ph. W. Courtauld 95a-d

1 ‘And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.’ Genesis 2:18. 2 ‘You ask me about the people of the Pontine marshes. So far as I know they live in carnal intercourse with the quadrupeds among which they live, and they cover themselves with their skins after their death.’ GBO to PSW, 27 July 1891, Courtauld 94c-d. 3 Ferdinand II (1810–59), king of the so-called Two Sicilies (the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples). 4 GBO told of having caught a fever near Lake Fucine in the Abruzzi, ‘alas! no longer a lake, since Ferdinand II (may his memory be cursed for ever) sold the whole thing (it was not his, it was res

125

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

5 6 7

8

9

10 11 12

13 14

15 16

nullius [a thing which has no owner]) to prince Torlonia’. 94b. Don Alessandro Torlonia, second Prince of Civitella-Cesi (1800–86), employed the Swiss engineer, Franz Mayor de Montricher, to construct a canal in order to drain the lake, thus reducing the threat of malarial infection, work which was completed by about 1875. Rocca di Botte, a small town in the L’Aquilla province of the Abruzzo region. This presumably refers to a much-photographed ancient doorway in the hilltop village of San Benedetto in Perillis, in the L’Aquilla province. Completed in the mid-fifteenth century, the Piccolomini Castle situated on the San Vittorino Hill in the hill town of Celano, overlooks the valley of the now drained Lake Fucine (see note 4). Two members of the powerful Piccolomini family of merchant traders became Pope in the fifteenth century. Pelasgi: an ancient race widely spread over the coasts and islands of the Eastern Mediterranean and Ægean, and believed to have occupied Greece before the Hellenes. Pelasgic architecture describes the oldest form of masonry found in Greece. (OED) ‘no jutty, frieze, / Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird / Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle.’ Macbeth, I.vi.6–8. PSW may have known the phrase as much from Scott as from Shakespeare: ‘so that it seemed as if the traders had occupied with nests, bearing the same proportion to the building, every buttress and coign of vantage, as the martlett did in Macbeth’s Castle’. The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1822), ch 6. Cocullo is a village in the Peligna valley, in the L’Aquilla province. The nineteenth-century Italian engraver and cartographer, Carlo Cerri, published several largescale maps for commercial use and the burgeoning tourist market. The Iles de Lérins, an archipelago of four islands off the coast of Cannes, consists of two larger islands, Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Honorat, and the much smaller Tradelière and St-Féréol. There has been a monastic community on Saint-Honorat since the early fifth century, and during the middle ages the island became a popular site of pilgrimage. See above, Letter 365, note 4. Bruno of Cologne (c. 1030–1101), founder of the Carthusians, established the order’s first and most important monastery in 1084 at Grande Chartreuse, in mountains north of Grenoble. He was canonised in 1623. See note 5. The Chimera of Arezzo, a bronze Etruscan statue of c. 400 BC, now in the Archaeological Museum in Florence.

399 • To Emery Walker, 18 August 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Grays Inn, | London, W.C. 18. Aug: 1891 My dear Walker Miss Faulkner is mightily taken with your man’s rendering of the Yorke shield.1 Her brother recognised it as a picture of the object he had seen so often. Jack returned this morning, and has a copy with which to “butter” himself, and I want to give one to the second in command here – Mr Weir. May I trouble you for a few more copies and, perhaps, another copy or two of the platinatype kind – as, when I have time (?) I might tint one up, though I do not know if the paper will take watercolour? I have a note from Percy Horne about S. Benet, Paul’s Wharf – a church of Wren’s, which is to be sold to build a bawdy-house with!2 Is there any chance of getting Norman to help us about City matters?3 126

1888–1898

Take means to get rid of your rheumatism. I daresay it is merely the outcome of your trying labours of late. Miss Faulkner is taken with the notes on the life of Wilson in the Mag:4 I have not yet read it, but will. Yours Ph: Webb. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 397, note 13. Walker and Boutall had made photographic copies of the finished work, as a record. 2 Although under threat in the later nineteenth century, the merger of the London parish of St Benet’s, Paul’s Wharf with that of another City church, St Nicholas Cole Abbey, both of them Wren churches, saved St Benet’s from any worse fate. Unlike St Nicholas Cole Abbey, St Benet’s survived Second World War bombing unscathed, one of only four City churches to do so. 3 Philip Norman (1842–1931), antiquary and SPAB committee member. 4 Not identified.

400 • To Giacomo Boni, 13 September 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 13 September 1891 To the | “Most potent grave and revered” junior Giacomo Boni – these. Perhaps you had my postcard of Sunday last, wherein I said I could not answer you as then? No, I had not the intention of awakening the lethargic “Dryasdusts”1 of modern Rome when I raised the “Pelasgic” question – knowing very well that people are most irate over things they are least sure about.2 When writing to friend Wardle (who is at this moment on his way from the Grand Chartreuse to Vienna – higher up the Rhône) I mentioned to him – he being deeply exercised at this time with early history in buildings – the note you gave of the Aristotelian legend of the leaden rule and multangular stones. He answered, that the saying surprised him in earlier years of study, but he made, neither then, nor now, anything of it. It seems to me it was a jest of Aristotle against the barbarism of such coursed stone work. Still, if it is so, Aristotle probably did not know, any more than we do why they (the prehistoric) followed such a (seemingly) unreasonable custom. Surely, first of all, it must have been a necessity, and afterwards a custom. The animal man is much hampered, as well as helped, by ‘custom’. Wardle is still worrying (as a dog does a rat by shaking it) the old work in France following the withdrawal of the Roman power from there. He has been hard at it in the cloister of S. Trophime at Arles,3 and has written me long and many sheets on the subject which have interested me closely. He will treat me, much as you do, as if I was 127

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

intelligent on such questions, and I answer him with the gibe, (from a good old Icelandic word – “to talk nonsense”) that it is a refined way of insulting a friend. Now, what am I (the ego above explained) to say to “cyclopean, poligonal” &c?4 I told Wardle much in the same way, in answer to his questions, that I knew nothing about them, but that I had no objection whatever to give him my opinion based on instinct only! If all the world is a-kin, surely all building is. Our greatest building difficulty is the embarrassment of our riches of antiquity. We know more of others’ work than of our own. All I can say on the cyclopean point, is, that many tribes may have built much in the same way, but not altogether so. And your interesting photographs help me out in this. I think I see certain (or uncertain) differences between Micene and Argos, as between Argos and Segni, or between Segni and Stonehenge. I should have been free and you should have been at liberty to stroll about this petty island of Britain, when you were here 2 years ago, and we could have amused ourselves, and got heated in controversy as easily about Old Sarum (the ancient Salisbury) and Stonehenge, and Avebury as if life depended only on that which had almost ceased to exist. Stonehenge bids fair to be buried under champagne and soda water bottles and, (curiously enough) perhaps, thus preserved for a wiser folk coming.5 You and Wardle are rather happy in being unproveable [sic] laughing stocks; whereas, I have to set up my sign in visible folly of an actual new buildings, and done – my friend – in that saddest of states, without believing in myself. Happily you saved my blushes by never looking at anything modern in English building. I shall be happy to have your map of the Italian prehistoric, when propping up here, and arguing right and left there, leaves you time to set down on paper your accumulations of facts. The sketch map of the ‘Abruzzi’, in the last letter, is very useful to me. Now, for your AD. 2891, post historic, fragment from Tiber, (he, like Thames, and Rhône, should always go without the article.6 Schopenhaur [sic] was right, in his ugly german way, in telling of his insight.7 Whereas William Morris tells of the rise & fall of the sap in the human body and mind as sweetly as the wines of the Italian hills do, one drinks his words, and smells the breath of divinity. All animal & mental delight go up as a sweet mist of earth over the words of Ellen at p. 228. “The earth and the growth of it and the life of it! If I could but say or show how I love it!”8 You evidently remember the grey walls that W.M. makes Ellen’s brown hand rest upon. It is a curious thing how men – especially in later times – have made brutal the essential conjunction of earth and spirit, whereas it is altogether the heart-of-hearts of life, the health of it, not the disease. I rejoicingly do not wonder that you gave a generous sob over the Kelmscott pipe. Yes; “grass, poppies, and lavender”, that is, the sea lavender, that we are blessed with as well as Tiber.9 My sick friend Faulkner brought me a spray from Greece. All I can say is that your ancestor is keeping his eyes open through his descendant, and the said Scion of that house shall have friends who will prop up the eyelids of him and apply the spina10 in the proper place, so that they shall not be closed by ambition or killing other sleep-compelling element, and, no “lies”, “Odyssean” or other. 128

1888–1898

If he, the third (?) generation of the Bigio’s of Monaco, is about to keep a human stud farm, for the propagation of healthy “two legged animals without feathers”, he will have to keep eyes – multitudinous as those of the peacock’s tail – very wide open indeed, and when open I should expect they would quiver and rattle their quills, as that feathered two-legged is apt to do with the props to his eyes. Philip on Thames-side, rather missed the point (from ignorance, pure ignorance) of the serpentine from “Taigeto”. Ah, yes, put in your will that your descendants do shut up academies and such “dung markets”.11 ‘Come Philip, give over this post historic radiance of 19th c. reflection, and return to a rush bottomed seat, from the easy puffiness of a cumulous silver-lined cloud.’ Ah, my friend. The good man Walker, who helped in the photographs is going for an eighteen days’ journey (from Thames back to Thames) to Venice in a congregation of people, who will put up with the multitudinous rush in order that he may see with his eyes what others have said they saw.12 I wish you should happen to stumble upon him in his native good nature as his eyes open upon the many wonders of the canal streeted city. I’ve told him of what will make him sad, and what will seat him at the other pole. He will go with several, amongst the 20 or so composing the party, seriously intelligent companions, who will really look through other than dilettante spectacles, and would not be rightly called “forestiere”13 – he starts tomorrow or Tuesday, and I wish them reward for their tiring pilgrimage. However, it is better than fighting your way to Bayreuth, and striving with dilettantism in excelsis.14 Inclosed is a photo from a small piece of carving in oak (about a foot square) which was done by Mr Jack (he who helps me at that desk in the outer room) from my design.15 I think it very well cut for 19th cent: work, and you will readily understand, if I say that of his rendering of my design of the lion’s head, I really think so. Miss Faulkner – sister of my sick friend, coloured it transparently on silver. Shield, argent; saltire cross, azure; annulet, azure; lion’s head, “proper” – altogether it looked pretty and free from affectation. It goes on to the fireplace of a client of mine who – even in these days – thinks something of family! However, I have saved the old building, which has been in his family for 150 years or so, but it is really the house of the abbots of Tewkesbury, who built it in and about 1370; Henry VIII bundled the abbot out, and generations of recipients of the plunder have knocked the old place about ever since, but Ph. W. has propped it up to serve for a few more generations of men, and it is hoped they will be of better breed. See A. below. Note, we have weather here (see “News from nowhere” for a reason rational acct of the right effect of weather & season on human beings) almost quite like that you found when you were here 2 years ago. Very pleasant after our summer of sunshine and shower. Yrs Philip Webb. (A) Do you know that delightful house in Mantua at the end of one of the streets which is said to be the work (decorative) of Mantegna?16 I got into it as it was being transformed into a modern hospital. The old ceilings with gilding & colouring

129

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

still remained, in 1885. Stars, arrows, roses, suns, &c – all looking as if they had not been touched since Ms time. Mantegna I always look upon as an early member of my family! Have several kinsmen of the same kind. Courtauld 98a-d

1 Jonas Dryasdust is an invention of Walter Scott’s, representing the kind of tireless antiquarian researcher devoted to pedantic detail. Ivanhoe (1820) thus includes a ‘Dedicatory Epistle’ to ‘The Rev. Dr [Jonas] Dryasdust, F.A.S.’ 2 ‘Pelasgic-Cyclopeian, poligonal, proto-Doric, &c, &c, &c. O, Holy Virgin! are you going to stir up from their graves or their arm-chairs the archaeologists who just pretend to be able to put a label on an ancient wall much better if they have not seen it, or if, in seeing it, would not say the “where” or the “how” of it?’ GBO to PSW, 18–20 August 1891, Courtauld 96b. 3 The Romanesque church of St Trophime in Arles, southern France, contains fine sculptures on the capitals in the twelfth-thirteenth century cloister. 4 See note 2. 5 During the 1880s, there was much public discussion concerning the future of the Stonehenge site, which had been listed in the Ancient Monuments Bill steered through Parliament by Sir John Lubbock in 1882. The fact that it was an attraction for ever-growing numbers caused concern. Letter-writers to The Times wrote of the ‘eaters, drinkers, smokers, and playmakers’ and the resulting litter and damage to the stones (5 and 9 September 1885), whilst a leading article feared that the site was ‘threatened not so much by the natural process of decay as by the destructive agency of human wantonness and vulgarity’ (18 August 1886). The Morning Post opposed any restriction of access, hoping that means might be found ‘to prevent the barbarisms of the modern pic-nic maker, and to keep the site free from further desecration at his hands’ (20 August 1886); there were also concerns about any proposals for ‘restoration’. 6 GBO concluded his letter by writing as if from the year 2891: ‘I find among the papers of Monaco Bigio, a forefather of mine, some notes on News from nowhere the prophecy of which we celebrate the millennium.’ 96e. 7 ‘I satisfy the egotistical pleasure of following my instincts, but this pleasure is a mere reward for some work which is to be useful to some generation which is not the present one, just as love (says Schopenhauer) is but the effort of a new generation coming into existence.’ 96e. 8 GBO wrote of News from Nowhere. ‘When reading that lovely chapter of the tobacco-shop, when the carved pipe is given to the customer, I stopped reading, I took the pipe I was smoking out of my mouth, looking for a long while at it. It was W. Morris’ pipe, the one he gave me at Kelmscott, of which I remember so often the kind hospitality, the roofs of the cottage, the rooks on the top of the tall elm trees, the narrow green Thames, – and felt my throat swelling, and could not go on reading at all. A blessing to Philip of Gray’s Inn for sending the book.’ 96e. 9 GBO’s imagined descendant writes of nineteenth-century restorations and other buildings which might have been removed from the Roman ruins by changing the course of the Tiber for a week, ‘but the rotten bricks and poor mortar were found useful material to fill up some stagnant pools. If it were not for the picturesque ruins of ancient Rome, father TIBER might raise now his head, crowned with weeds, out of the water and turn his dripping face from one to the other shore, covered with grass, poppies and lavender, and forget all about Romulus and Rome.’ 96f-g. 10 Spina: thorn (It). 11 ‘Fond as he [i.e. GBO] was of marbles, he was very fond of green serpentine, because it came from Taigeto. Of art, he considered it as a flower of the social plant when in a healthy state, and he shocked the official people among which he lived by proposing to shut up all the Academies, and Institutes, and buy more tiles to cover ancient monuments.’ 96h.

130

1888–1898 12 This was the Art Workers’ Guild trip to Italy, in which SCC also participated. See above, Letter 396, note 4. 13 Foreign (It). 14 Bayreuth in northern Bavaria is closely associated with the music of Richard Wagner (1813–83), who lived there from 1872 and oversaw the construction of the Festspielhaus (opened in 1876), the theatre devoted exclusively to the performance of his operas in near ideal conditions. Ever since its opening, it has been the place to where worshippers of Wagner have flocked. 15 See above, Letter 397, note 13. 16 PSW appears to be referring not to Mantegna’s own fifteen-room house in Mantua (completed in 1476, and exchanged with Francesco Gonzaga in 1501 for another building), but one for which he undertook some decorative work, and probably now demolished. For this information, I am grateful to Rodolfo Springo, Jane Martineau and David Chambers.

401 • To George and Caroline Boyce, 25 September 1891 Annotated ‘recd at the Mathurins Etampes’1 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 25. September. 1891 My dear Friends Pleasant and delightful as your fruit & flowers were, which you sent me, I do not pass over your silence. We hunted the box through for a word, but there was no sign of writing except that on the label. Surely it was your bounden duty to let me know where you were? and how? However, I must put up with the affront, as I cannot punish you except by this letter. Possibly the male half of the pair had done no work, and was afraid of saying so, and the other half fell in with the slight, to screen the husband. I made Miss Faulkner eat some of the peaches and the nectarine as they would be good for her, and I brought one of the beautiful pears back here, and found it delicious in the extreme. All other pears I have eaten this year have been sleepy. Yours was wide awake. Can you find out the name of your dark russet brown and green pear? I fancy there is one at New Place of the same kind, but it has not produced fruit equal to that of Les Matthurins, [sic] and Mons’ & Madame Soubeirans must be admirable gardeners. Please to give them my kindest congratulations and thanks. The weather here has been pleasant enough to live in, but not favourable for harvest work, or fruit ripening. Too many sharp changes of temperature for that. All prognostications have fallen short of truth about the quality of each fresh month’s weather. It has, practically, been showery throughout. Morris took his daughter Jenny in to France last month, and had a very enjoyable time there, both of them. They went to Abbeville, Beauvais, Amiens, Soisson[s], Laon and other places in the district, and he was as joyous as ever over the French landscape and its architecture. Beauvais was an old love of his, with which I agreed in 1858. Soissons I never saw, nor Laon. Morris was pleased to dip into the forest country of Ange Pitou.2 The Mahatmas were not civil to him,3 and he did not meet the shade of Dumas pere. 131

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

For myself I have done little but press on with what work was about me, and do my best in the evenings to cheer up my two patients there. Miss Faulkner sends her kindest regards to both of you, and she agreed with me it would be a pity if no other likeness of beautiful France was made by the honourable landscape & building-scape painter, Boyce. Excuses would be of no avail, and therefore I do not anticipate them. The faithful few tug at the labouring oar in Buckingham Street, though the autumn holiday-time has let much blood out of us.4 Walker and Cockerell have gone, for 18 days, to Venice, and one or too neighbouring places. Some of our helps will be brought back to duty when the fire irons begin to rattle in the fender, no doubt. The old house near Tewkesbury,5 which your modesty hid from you, is now inhabited by the family, and Mr Jack reports (for he was there last) that the place looked very homely and comfortable. The drawing-room – formerly the abbot’s hall – wonderfully beautiful even in the 19th century. It is to be hoped that new servants on first coming to the place will not be paralyse stricken with paralysis when they are set to clean it. Everything in England, and elsewhere too, is strange and awful now, if it be beautiful. I send you a photograph of the owners’ coat of arms, which is put in the wood work of the library fireplace. The room itself was Elizabethanised about 40 years ago, and would not be injured by it. Mr Jack carved my design in English oak, and Miss Faulkner silvered and tinctured it. The colours (in the photo:) are, of course, not visible.6 Now, turn over a new leaf and let me know something of you both, but in the meantime believe me | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. 7 The Welwyn folk are well, having though, just undergone papering painting and cleaning up generally, after 11 years of use! BL Add 45354, ff. 274-5

1 GPB and his wife were staying at the convent of Les Mathurins in Etampes, with her parents, Monsieur and Madame Soubeiran. 2 Ange Pitou, the novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. 3 PSW appears to be using the phrase to mean ‘The gods were not kind’, for at the end of the century a mahatma was held to be a Buddhist with preternatural powers, supposed to exist in India and Tibet (OED). 4 Attendance at SPAB committees inevitably reduced during the summer months, and indeed meetings were not necessarily held weekly at the quietest times, but this comment reflects more broadly PSW’s frustration that the vital work of the Society was spread thinly on the shoulders of a few active supporters. 5 Forthampton Court, owned by John Reginald Yorke. See above, Letter 370, note 1. 6 See above, Letter 397, note 13. 7 His brother and sister.

132

1888–1898

402 • To William Morris, 23 October 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 23 Oct: ’91 My dear Fellow I lingered over the parcel of books with Kate last night, and opened to the tune of a box of sweetmeats you had sent her, till the mouth began to run – then opened to view, and ahs, and much joy over the prize.1 She will expect you, with a shameface, on Sat: afternoon, if you are in town. I cannot say much myself about the beautiful and sweet thing – How could I? However, here it is, it did not flit during the night. Good things come by good intent, Loved things go by accident. There is a poem for you, written when I was 6 years old – no – sixty! Just getting together a few useful things for life furniture; shall be pretty well set up when I come of age. Your affectionate | Ph: Webb. If you should come by way of the Temple tomorrow, look in here for a moment. I have a bird on the stocks which Id like you to see before it is smudged in the carver’s shop. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f 27

1 WM had sent KF a copy of the Kelmscott Press edition of his Poems by the Way, published on 20 October 1891. See below, Letter 406, note 3. For this presentation copy, see Peterson, p. 8.

403 • To Giacomo Boni, 25 October 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 25 Oct 1891 Truly, I do not think there was much the matter with your liver, Signor Giacomo, when you were writing the letter to me on – well, the end of it – the 16th Octr. Now, I make you laugh. I read your new address, at the first glance, as ‘the windy way of September’!!1 I have tried to localise your nest amongst the sparrows. I dimly remember the Palazzo Barberini2 – though I do not remember the adjacent trees you write of. You call your neighbouring house, Villa Barberini, and my guidebook places

133

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

that at Albano – so that I suppose your pen made a slip? The Palazzo of that name seems to be placed all right for the sun rising and setting views you so well describe. Mind you, I do not contradict your friends’ view of your power to become incomprehensible; but as I am, myself, far too mysterious in my written periods (coming, as I say, from having too much to say, and too little of form for putting it rightly) I do not “complain”, as it gives me the opportunity of excuse for reading again and again what you are good enough to write to me. There is one good thing I can say about your manuscript, and that is, if one takes time to read it, all the letters are there, though often minute to a degree. Tis a good hand writing, though, perhaps, rather spoiled by haste from stress of work to be done of more consequence than wakening up a poor islander on the skirts of the North Sea. Not quite ‘Ultima Thule.’ No doubt, at times, you take pride to yourself in thinking that, when my forebears were stalking about in red & white paint, yours were clad in fine woven stuff, before Julius Cæsar dragged some of you across sea, and ran them up Thames mouth. I don’t know the kind of dress worn by your people in Servius Tullius’ time,3 though it, too, might have been paint, in outlying parts of Italy? I am really glad you have not varnished the wood lining to the walls of your room. The soft colour of the pine is well enough, but when varnished it becomes a disagreeable colour. I never see Middleton now, so that I cannot cross question him as to the setting of the gem.4 However, your description is enough to let me know that you are lighted up by the sun, so that if you were made of mere glass you would shine again like the brightest of jewels. I’ll expect another prose poem after the 21st March, when your sparrows – not blackwashed – begin to salute the coming seasons. You will know, I spent my time in Rome in January. How well I recollect walking the streets there between sunset, and dinner time at 7 o.c, and trying in a new way of returning to the Babrius, not to lose it. These walks were generally when I was alone, and had my mind’s will unfettered by that of others. I used to look at the plum coloured porphyry of the Constantine Basilica pieces of columns till the dusk sent me on my journey.5 Rome is a good place to wander-in quite alone, and raise the dead, without contradiction, in one’s own way. I never went to see or hear anything in Rome – when I was there – so that I might have the terrible ruin of it all unspoiled by the thin-ness of modern life. Cecilia Metella,6 and Stephano Rotondo7 – two epochs – were better to me without anyone being there to turn them into one, and that of the 19th cent: I have no objection to there being a 19th cent:, and shall not help you bore to the bowels of the earth and blow it up; for, each age is the shoeing-horn to another, and who knows but that in days to come people may neither be clad in paint, nor fine cloth, but have a robe which is not settled and arranged in Paris for the whole civilised (sic) world. When old buildings will be dust, needing no props or stays – either of wood, or preaching – and the new needing no Archits. peradventure, also, there will be no bankers, and no dilettanti! At such a time Sandro Botticelli’s Venus coming to shore will not surprise us,8 nor Prince Torlonia draining the lake either.9

134

1888–1898

Come now, are we to drink wine then, or not? I say yes, for, till wine closes the eyes, it opens them, and is the fountain of knowledge (not taught) of good and evil. One of your bottles leaked, in my cupboard, and, each time I open it, the god lays hold upon me, and we breathe into each other’s eyes. There, your Rhapsody on the birds and setting sun is matched with that of the vine under the sky of sootclouded London town. It was good of you to send me the photo of that carved door (literally carved all over, for I see the styles and rails are carved out of the solid) from San Pietro at Alba.10 Wash him tenderly, for the thought’s sake of the soul who made him so good to look at, and when (now) souls are scarce. Even Vatican cannot help us much to find them. We sadly want a new breed of Dominicani to scent out souls, and give full voice when they the hounds, are on the track.11 Your photo of the panorama from the window in Via Venti has not yet come to hand, but it will meet my eye one evening when I take off my shoes hastily before unsealing the cover. Lord, what admirably systematic people you are. Here is all Italy mapped out, and each protected province has its protecting president, as chief governor.12 I hope they are all good and true men, and will not fail, with plausible excuse. Before they are taken they should all be branded with a hot iron on the bottom, and if they disgrace themselves they should have the name of the faithful burnt out of them. I told William Morris you would like some samples of his printing, and he will let me have them to send to you.13 I gave him your greetings, and told him of the effect on you of the carved and decorated pipe in ‘Nowhere’, and the timber one you got from him at Kelmscott. Kelmscott is just now very much under water, as we have had much wet, indeed the few days of fine in September soon changed to many days of wet. Still, I love all weather (the more so if I am not sitting in a pool of water!) and have found the sunshine and shower of 1891, very beautiful. Also, the springs were low, and will now fill up. Nature is not easily corrected. I gave your pretty speech to Mr Jack, and he hid it away in his jerkin, but no doubt the Signorina Jack heard it with pleasure.14 The prospect you hold out to me, of admirably fried fish in the tower of observation, haunted by sparrows, and industry, which you now inhabit, came home pleasantly – but I may not set foot in Italy again.15 The food I collected that there is not half consumed yet, and “business”, as you call it, only affords me enough return to let me jog along till the sun will have no meaning for me. In addition to which prospect, I have shelves full of books for mapping purposes, and kindling wood, and your letters of correction to give odour and colour to my living pictures. Also, though I cannot sing the words of Italy I can sing the words songs . I have sparrows too, and green trees. Then again I live in the flesh. I make good drains to my houses, and like well made bricks, and mortar, and can link these, and green England, and Paradise, together, so neatly that you may not see the joining of the sections of life. The best Utopia is a heaving, changing, and rolling one, and the maxim of King Alphonso of Castile suits me, (as given in Walter Scott)

135

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

“Old wood to burn – old books to read – old wine to drink – and old friends to converse with” and new too, as Scott adds.16 Ph. Webb. Shall I continue to address you at the Ministry of Instruction, or would you prefer that I sent the letters to ‘sparrow tower’? Courtauld 100a-c

1 ‘My liver, thank heaven, is in a perfect condition, particularly so since I moved my lodgings to via venti Settembre 4 [Rome]. Never in my life have I slept so well as I do now in my bedroom all lined with Tyrolese red-pine, unvarnished – and paved with oak-mosaic. The chirping or chatter of several thousands of sparrows among the tops of the . . . trees of Villa Barberini, spreading its extensive woody and flowery surface nearly 100 feet under my windows, act as an irresistible morning-call.’ GBO to PSW, 16 October 1891, Courtauld 99a. 2 The Palazzo Barberini in Rome, built for Maffeo Barberini, later Pope Urban VIII (1568–1644), was begun in 1627 by Carlo Maderno (1556–1629), and completed in 1633 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). In the mid-nineteenth-century, the American sculptor and poet William Wetmore Story (1819–95) had an apartment at the Barberini where his many visitors included Henry James and Robert and Elizabeth Browning. 3 Servius Tullius was the sixth of the ancient kings of Rome, reigning c.578–35 BC. 4 ‘Sorry that Prof Middleton did not stop here till I had begun to furnish my apartment (two rooms, for present) so he cannot give you any description de visu.’ 99c. 5 The largest of the buildings of the Forum in ancient Rome, construction of the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine was completed in 312 AD under Emperor Constantine I, having begun under Maxentius four years earlier. Only part of the northern aisle remains. 6 See above, Letter 366, note 8. 7 See Vol. I, Letter 248, note 11. 8 Sandro Botticelli’s most celebrated picture, The Birth of Venus (1482–5, Uffizi Gallery, Florence), depicts Venus, naked on a seashell, blown by zephyrs to the shore. 9 See above, Letter 398, note 4 10 ‘Enclosed is a phot. of another wood-carving done by a Mr. Jack of the XI century. I was delighted to find his beautiful door in the interior of S. Peter’s church at Alba.’ 99c. 11 For this medieval pun, see also Vol. I, Letter 238, note 7. 12 In a sketch map, GBO identified the regional directors responsible for Italy’s archaeological sites and ancient buildings. 99d. 13 ‘Would you kindly let me have some proofs of Morris’ new prints or press caratteri?’ 99d. 14 ‘Please walk to your own next room and give my sincerest ’gratulations to bravo Mr. Jack who does great honour to your sketch of an heraldic emblem.’ 99c. GWJ had married his cousin, Annie Christian Gray (1861–1942) in August 1888. 15 ‘When you are tired of business come and let me offer you a room, a dish of fried fish (I have nearly got over the mastery of cooking it) and Venetian polenta – and a glass of Alban juice.’ 99c. 16 ‘ “And if you venture on a glass of wine, you will find it worthy of one who professes the maxim of King Alphonso of Castile – Old wood to burn – old books to read – old wine to drink – and old friends, Sir Arthur, – ay, Mr. Lovel, and young friends too, to converse with”.’ Walter Scott, The Antiquary (ch 6).

136

1888–1898

404 • To Giacomo Boni, 22–23 November 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 22 Novr 1891 My dear Boni I am somewhat dismayed at the thought of the time which has gone by, between my receipt of your packet of instruction papers, with the Rome panorama, and now. I was reminded of this on Friday when I was speaking to a friend of mine who went to Venice last autumn, and I was asking him if he knew a student of the Italian language who wished to practice on translation. He told me he knew of one, so I have sent him one of your papers to begin upon. When I get the translation I shall be better able to judge of the Atlas-load you act as a prop to. In truth, you must be a “pillar of the state”. Now, I write of another pillar belonging to the state, namely that of the Lion of S. Mark. In the Pall Mall Gazette the other day there was a description and printed diagram shewing how the column had been balanced into the upright on a bar of copper &c &c, all of which you know about much better than I do.1 Now, I suppose, the stately shaft is “plumb” upright, and you will tell me what is being done to the capital – the newspaper paragraph said as much as that the base was to be put back again and not renewed. Lord have mercy upon me, but some sense is creeping into the heads of mortals (more I fancy in Italy than in England) as to the value of the antiquities of the different countries. Now for the panorama. I understand and forgive your note of jubilation upon taking up your quarters on the Quirinal,2 overlooking such a magnificent expanse of antiquity as your sparrows’ nest gives you. I took down a volume of Letarouilli’s “Rome Moderne”,3 found the Palazzo Barberini and it matched the building in the right hand bottom corner of your photograph, so from thence I traced out and understood your “coign of vantage”,4 the point of eye-flight of Il passero5 Boni. Here you sit, stand, pace, muse over, contrive, animadvert, and perfect your apparatus for outwitting hindering persons and their formulas. The roofed soil you look at from day to day is not virgin – even you and your learned friends cannot tell when it was first deflowered by man. In your photo. I find the trees in the Quirinal Pal: help to keep the great expanse of houses from appearing to be a desert waste of building, and the scattered trees about on this side of Monte Mario (near Trinita dei Monti) help to frame the picture,6 and to keep the scene from being one sweltering mass of buildings, containing base contriving souls. Monaco Bigio allies himself with the sparrows, so as to lie outside the reproach (not ‘complaint’) contained in the line above. Nevertheless, the sparrow is a knowing bird; town-bred, educated, cunning – able to fend for himself, and – as

137

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

we poor English folk say – “knowing what is what”. He, the chief sparrow of Via Venti Settembre, is quite capable of hoodwinking (take out your dictionary) the innocent (sic) being who sits crow-like over the plane trees of the Gray’s Inn Garden of London Town, venting his old-age-philosophy on a sprightly quick witted Italian in his early prime of life. Go on, upright, like the new-set shaft of the Molo in Venice. Knowing early, there is only one real repentance, and that is, when one does violence to one’s self. Good God! it’s Sunday, and I’m preaching. Now my eye strolls along your panorama, is happily stopped before it can rest on the sacrilege committed in the garden of Sallust,7 and is debarred from seeing Southward, and enjoying the placid semi-waste of the C[a]elian,8 and the Stefano Rotondo, peaceful in its cloak of mid-antiquity. If you should ever happen to have a waste (no, it might be called a cultivating one) hour, take your photographing box, and catch a likeness or two of the bronze horse in the Capitol museum (that with the bruises, and the bent leg) which I much would like to renew acquaintance with.9 I found this horse to have some finer points even than those in S. Mark’s. Peradventure you might be able to tell me something of its history into the bargain. Just think, for a moment, of your rash invitation to land me on the oak-paved floor of your new bird’s-nest home! If I were once there, you would have no peace till you had whispered me away at the Railway station. Patience my friend, such an awful fact has not happened yet, and your pastors & masters at the ministry will not soon be obliged to complain of a Socialist dreamer being under your roof. Now is your opportunity, take your pen, and have a good all-round fling at me; pay the old brute out – vent all your pent up wrath on the “two legged thing without feathers” seated in coal-black London. Choose your most penetrating Italian tongue, and then translate (as you so well can) into English all you feel with regard to the author of these staggeringly formed words. I’m much like a child, even in my old age. I see a pot, whole and round. I say, what wd it look like if I threw it sharply to the ground? I have a friend, (here and there one) I say, I’ve seen him sweet-tempered, placid, reserved, circumscribed: now let me see him angry, soul-swept, unguarded for a moment; then bring him back again, and restore his self love, leaving him a fair man in a fair place, all in his armour of proof once more. (I had to leave off here, to go and cheer up my patients.)10 Monday night. Looking at your panorama last night, set me on fire for Roma, so I have looked out my large map of the suburbs of the city, (“Carta topografica dei dintorini di Roma, in 9 fogli”)11 and I have mused over it till I seem to know nothing. Do you know Viollet le Duc’s dictionary of Architecture, and, if you do, do you remember his diagrams shewing the construction of Ancient Roman concrete vaulting? He shews with great skill (whether absolutely right, or not, I cannot say) the use that was made of tiles to divide into cells or reticulated spaces the area of the vaults.12 Our good friend Henry Middleton holds – or held – heretical doctrines with regard to the practical value of the use of the tiles, while, on the contrary, Ph. W considers his own opinion to be the just one, namely, that these tile-ribbings, or skeleton framings were of the utmost constructional use 138

1888–1898

for steadying the floating mass of semi-fluid concrete.13 I have had many wordy fights with Middleton on the subject, but, as he is learned, and I am ignorant, it has only been by aid of much sparrow-like impudence that I have held my own. Now, can you prove either of us to be right or wrong? If you know the dome, of what is called the “Minerva Medica”, in English books,14 you will know what I mean. In that dome, the tiles are in ribs, like those of an umbrella. Also, perhaps you know one of the vaults of the baths of Diocletian (there was one space covered by a vault, at the corner of the ruins, which, when I saw it, was occupied by a timber merchant) and in this I remember noting the tile-work framing clearly.15 My theory is, that the tiles were set in cement and soon became rigid, and then the fluid concrete was filled in, and was steadied – till it set – by the already firm ribs. I also think the tiles were thus used to economise the wooden centering on which the concrete was laid. One cell might be filled with concrete, was allowed to set, and the centering removed for another cell? Tell me what you can when you have time, and are not too much angered by my questioning. A great number of the Roman concrete vaults were of large span. M: Angelo’s adapted church (of the angels I think) in the baths, was of, I think, some 80 or 90 (English) feet span,16 and one has to gather one’s wits together to estimate the enormous weight of such a vault. Then again you see blank arches of tiles set in the circumscribing wall of the Pantheon, and these I believe were also used to steady the semi-fluid concrete. Again, in the use of concrete the water is apt to drain away from it to the lowest point; well, the tile framework would stop this running, at the bottom of each compartment. There, I beg your pardon, but I could not help it; perhaps you can! I have not forgotten your request for some proofs of William Morris’s printing, and I will send you a specimen or two when I can find a moment in which to pilfer from his printing house. I told him I was wishing to send them to you, but he is so busy that it is not always easy to lay hold of him for definite purpose. I have a copy of his last issued (new) volume of short poems printed with his own types on Italian vellum, but I can hardly pull out a sheet of this to send to Rome! Here is a stanza – nay, two.17 (1) “Hark, the wind in the elm-boughs! From London it bloweth, And telleth of gold, and of hope and unreast; [sic] Of power that helps not; of wisdom that knoweth, But teacheth not aught of the worst and the best.”

(2) “Of the rich man it telleth, and strange is the story How they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide; And they live and they die, and the Earth and its glory Has been but a burden they scarce might abide.”

There, that is better than my tediousness, and so, ‘goodnight.’ Yours, Philip Webb. Courtauld 101a-d 139

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 In an item headed ‘One of the Stones of Venice’, The Pall Mall Gazette (6 November 1891) described the adjustment to one of the twin columns, ‘seriously off plumb’, which supported the Lion of St Mark in the Piazzetta, an operation which took three days under the direction of the superintendent of the works, Signor Vendrasco. His ‘practical sense’ in devising an engineering feat of such precision was heralded by the paper as ‘a veritable stroke of genius’. 2 The Quirinal hill, one of the seven hills of Rome. 3 Paul Marie Letarouilly, Édifices de Rome Moderne, 3 vols (Paris, 1840–50). 4 See above, Letter 398, note 9. 5 Sparrow (It). 6 Monte Mario is the highest hill in Rome, but not one of the seven within the walls of the ancient city. The church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti, above the Spanish Steps, is a sixteenth century building. 7 See above, Letter 384, note 13. 8 The Caelian: another of Rome’s seven hills. 9 See above, Letter 358, note 7. 10 CF and KF. 11 A set of maps of the environs of Rome published by the Instituto Topografico Militare in 1876. 12 The article ‘Voute’ in Dictionnaire Raisonné de L’Architecture is substantial, and well-illustrated with line diagrams (IX, pp. 465–550). PSW appears to have in mind the construction diagrams between pp. 466–79. 13 John Henry Middleton’s Ancient Rome in 1885, updated as Ancient Rome in 1888, turned into a ‘revised and greatly enlarged version in two volumes’, The Remains of Ancient Rome, 2 vols (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1892). The second chapter, ‘Methods of Construction’ includes his thoughts on concrete vaults and tiling technique (I, pp. 66–8). 14 The ruined Temple of Minerva Medica, near the Porta San Lorenzo, is misleadingly named, as the building is a fourth-century nymphaeum, intended for bathing. A decagonal hall supports its domed roof. 15 Amongst the most spectacular of antique survivals, the Baths of Diocletian of the early fourth century cover a very large area on the Quirinal hill, and would have accommodated at least 3,000 people. The complex has housed the National Roman Museum since 1889. 16 Michelangelo designed and started the conversion of some of the areas of the Baths of Diocletian – the frigidarium, tepidarium and calidarium (cold, warm and hot baths) – into the Carthusian Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri. Begun in 1563, the construction to his design was completed by Jacopo Lo Duca. 17 Stanzas 7 and 8 of ‘The Message of the March Wind’, from Poems by the Way (1891). See also below, Letter 406, note 3.

405 • To George Price Boyce, 29 November 1891 Annotated ‘recd at Les Mathurins Etampes’ 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 Nov. 1891 My dear Boyce I rejoiced in getting your letter of the 24th as it set at rest some little anxiety I had as to you. It seems to me that I understand your feeling pretty well, as to failing powers, &c, and knowing you as well as I think I do, I have no doubt you over-rate your disability.

140

1888–1898

The natural creeps upon us before one is aware. Occasionally I have glimpses – “as through a glass, darkly”,1 of my own natural depreciation; but I go on, sucking the sweet air of the Earth as if it were about to renew me; as indeed no doubt it does, for each day’s life; for, without my appreciation of its precious quality, I should waste what remaining strength I have in hopeless regret. I hope you will set your face hard and fast against any giving-in to the hard side of life; only taking-in with increased delight, what remains to a man, of joy over the feeblest animal and mental powers, till they are snuffed out altogether. I find, if I can separate myself from the surrounding circumstances of life, and lay myself open to receive that which is not circumstance, but everlasting fact, that the sky, the air, the earth are ready for my resusitation [sic] at any moment there is strength in me to take them. Really the most injurious thing pain is to us, is, when it makes incapable of taking hold of other things about us; but I have found the effort will do a great deal to silence the mischief of any tormentor. I hope you and Madame will have a good sniff at what Paris can shew to you before you return home – even tho’, may be, you are tormented by the wreck of the pleasant old city, as it now is. You need not ‘consider the lilys [sic] of the field’, of the Bourse;2 but you may get good of those of the field of France – extra, greed of money, and vain applause. Alas, and I only utter it with a smile of hope, we are running down much too fast for the pace to mean anything but rejuvinescence. [sic] It always has come heretofore, and will again; and I shall hope for the rest of my short time to be keenly alive to the merest gleam of the new light which may come in my time that short space. Best of thanks to Madame (indeed, what I have said here is for her) who is so good as to give her best help to my old friend. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 276-7

1 ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face’, I Corinthians 13:12. 2 ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.’ St Matthew 6:28.

406 • To Giacomo Boni, 29 November 1891 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 29 Novr 1891 I take only a half sheet of paper, for fear of being seduced to send you as long and tedious a Philippian epistle as my last, of only late date, almost before you have

141

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

wakened out of the deep sleep caused thereby.1 If (?) you could have been induced by the above named Philip to proceed in reading Borrow’s “Lavengro”, you would have found a lovely story of a person found sleeping in a field under a tree, with an open volume by his side. Upon being awakened by a stranger under the fear of death to the sleeper from the moist grass, he complained, that he was wakened out of such a sweet sleep as he had not tasted for a long time. and Upon being questioned as to the volume of poems at his side, he said, he always took it with him when troubled with insomnia, as, reading one page of it was enough to send him to sleep!2 I send you by book post some sheets of William Morris’s typography which, when I told him you would like to see, he good naturedly (and, no doubt, proudly) sent me for the purpose of sending to you. You will find one sheet of the new volume of W. Ms poems, “Poems by the way” – id est – those written occasionally for several years, but not published.3 The other, a larger sheet, is a very careful reprint of our old printer Caxton’s edition of an English Translation of “The Golden Legend”. The book of poems is now published by W.M. himself, the “Legend” he is printing for the celebrated bookseller of ancient books, Quaritch, by name, of whom you may have heard.4 The type was carefully and patiently designed by W.M himself,5 and also all the capital letters borders (ornamented) &c, and the paper was specially made for Morris, on which to print with his own types.6 If you should feel any pleasure having these samples of his work, perhaps you would please him also by writing a line or so, direct to him, at the house I took you to, at the London end of Thames, and the address would be “William Morris | Kelmscott House | Upper Mall Hammersmith | London. W.” England. This is merely a suggestion of mine; you will do what seems good in your eyes, and pay no more attention to me than if I was your impudent friend | Philip Webb. To Signor Giacomo Boni | at the place to which all roads lead. P.S. “The Golden Legend” is not yet published, and you had better keep your specimen of its typography private till it is published. Courtauld 102a-b

1 In detecting a tendency to ‘preach’ in his letters to GBO (something he had noted in his letter of 22–23 November), PSW wittily likens them to St Paul’s biblical epistles to the Philippians. 2 In fact, PSW is remembering an episode not from Lavengro (1851), but from its sequel, The Romany Rye (1857), in which an insomniac finds his cure in the pages of an (unnamed) poet (ch 22). 3 The first sheets for WM’s Poems by the Way (the second book to be issued from the Kelmscott Press) were being printed in July 1891, and continued intermittently during the next few months. WM had probably given PSW one of the sheets which SCC recorded as seeing at Kelmscott House on 5 November (CD). The book was issued on 20 October 1891, 300 paper copies being produced. Peterson, pp. 6–7. 4 Originally intended by WM to be the first Kelmscott Press publication, the collection of lives of the saints originally produced by William Caxton as The Golden Legend finally appeared in November

142

1888–1898 1892, the technical challenges of producing this three-volume work in large quarto meaning that several shorter books were issued before it. The bookseller Bernard Quaritch ‘agreed to print 250 copies (a number almost immediately doubled) at his own expense’. Peterson, p. 21. 5 The type was Golden type. ‘Morris used only three typefaces in the Kelmscott Press books, all designed by himself: the Golden type (a roman English), the Troy type (a blackletter Great Primer), and the Chaucer type (a blackletter Pica).’ Peterson, p. xxi. 6 WM was as exacting over his choice of papers as he was with his fonts. Joseph Batchelor of Little Chart, in Ashford, Kent, became his supplier of hand-made papers, of which only three were ever used for Kelmscott Press books, ‘Flower’, ‘Perch’ and ‘Apple’, taking their names from the watermarks which WM himself designed. See MacCarthy, WMLT, pp. 610–11.

407 • To William Morris, 4 December 1891 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 4 Decr 1891 My dear Fellow I was too abashed last evening – (indeed at Gattis’, & in company, is not a fit place) to say anything about the Saga,1 or, indeed, abt the sheets of type which Walker brought me. Truth to tell, I cannot say much now – the best point being, that I like your having the pleasure of giving them to me. This state of matters is a good expression of British shamefacedness. It is all delightful, this interchange of feeling between fellows who are always at work, and the giving & taking between each; my stock in return is not very handy, but it goes between, nevertheless. Of course the look of the Saga is pleasant, but it is rather tame after the Glittering Plain, and the poems.2 I have sent the specimens on to Boni, and I know he will enjoy them, though it is 10 to 1 if he allows himself to say much. He’s a queer chap; and the blessed foreigner to me is always a child under my protection, even though he may be as masterful as Machiavelli.3 Boni is I fancy of that Italian stock, and has cut all his eye teeth. Should have been more comfortable last evening if you had been in better trim. Diet, and no excess, are the words, and your Grandfather has said it. I thank you for my books, and would like to carry them away with me when the time comes – and it is jogging along with one of whom I am aware. Never mind, I shall be rather stupid when being snuffed out, and shall “babble of green fields,” probably,4 instead of lugging my books off to Peter-gate. Yours | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 28

1 The Story of the Ere-Dwellers (Eyrgbyggja Saga) . . . Done into English out of the Icelandic by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon, The Saga Library, vol. II (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1892). Initial printing was completed by 23 September 1891.

143

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 2 Poems by the Way (see above, Letter 406, note 3). PSW’s point is that WM’s Kelmscott Press editions had set a new standard for book production. 3 The name of the Italian humanist writer, philosopher and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), now describes a type of unscrupulous politics or politician – Machiavellian – deriving from his extraordinarily influential book on contemporary political science, Il Principe (‘The Prince’), perhaps completed by 1513 although only published posthumously, in 1532. 4 ‘I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and ’a babbled of green fields.’ (On the death of Sir John Falstaff). Henry V, II,iii.14–15.

408 • To Emery Walker, 26 December 1891 Postmark: LONDON W.C. DE 26 91; Address: Emery Walker | 3 Hammersmith Terrace | W. 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 25 Decr ’91 My dear Walker I felt myself a brute-beast (not an uncommon thing) last evening after you had gone, because I did not take your kindly gift of the Hist: & picture book without adding a condition.1 I need not have been so offensive, and I must be a proper descendant of the grumbling “high rents and low prices” type – forgive me, and make amends! that is it, when you are rude, make the recipient pay for it in both ways. Cannot you find some old photo: in your work-collection which would improve my social morals? Have you an old print of the Westminster Abbey view, fm which the engraving was made for the Gardiner? and, if admissible by business rule, present it to me, and cheer me with a picture of our solemn Westminster triforium?2 As I sat down to cribbage with Charles Faulkner last night I gave him the Gardiner, and he, one handedly, turned over some pages at once for the pictures, and began the game afterwards with increased go. He will be at that book for a month or two. If it had not been for you he would not have had today’s amusement, and the fog makes it dreary for him. Hope you got comfortably home, and found the wife and daughter not too severe on your lagging return. Also, I hope they both laughed at the comical gift of the jam? The Lord help all good people say I, and may I find many of ’em alongside, when – in the next life – I am a rabbit at the edge of a warren, polishing my nose with my toes. Yours Philip Webb. Someone – I guess Rooke himself – sent me some more photos of his pictures – as the handwriting was not of the scriptorian Cockerell, who gave me the other photos. I suppose a letter addressed to Rooke, at Bedford Park, would find him?3 All this nuisance to you because I was a brute – penes me, as Carlyle harped.4 V&A, AAD 144

1888–1898 1 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Student’s History of England. See above, Letter 381, note 3. PSW’s condition was, doubtless, that he wished to pay for the volume. 2 This illustration appears in Gardiner, I, p. 205. 3 The water-colour painter, Thomas Matthews Rooke (1842–1942), is now best-known for his records of EBJ’s conversations, which he kept during 1895–8 whilst working as EBJ’s studio assistant – see Mary Lago, ed, Burne-Jones Talking (London: John Murray, 1981), also Vol. IV, Letter 952, note 2 – but he is an interesting artist in his own right. He lived in the fashionable Arts & Crafts suburb of Bedford Park, Chiswick, a close neighbour and family friend of SCC, whose mother had moved there in 1884. Rooke’s exquisitely skilled drawing work made him a valued copyist for JR. He went on to make a large number of his own fine drawings of buildings, work undertaken during extended annual summer visits to the continent. Rooke would paint a group of water-colours of the interior and exterior of PSW’s retirement cottage, Caxtons, one of which shows a late image of PSW reading in the kitchen (illustrated in Kirk, p. 295). 4 Penes me: ‘With me’ or ‘in my possession’ (Lat).

409 • To Giacomo Boni, 3–4 January 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 3 Jan. 1892 My dear Boni You cheer me with your letters telling of the hopes of success in your virtuous labours,1 and if the effects of the Tower of Babel did not stand somewhat between me and the papers you inclose to me from time to time, I should be better able to pat you on the back encouragingly, or, disapproving with my magisterial severity when I felt called so to do. However, I shall get the whole of the rude translations of those papers you sent last, when some of my young Italian-language-learning friends have completed their arduous task. What you say in your letter of the 1st Decr is encouraging to me, if doubtfully so to you who are throwing the shuttle. I am glad you can speak as you do of Sig: Villari’s mind, your Magister Domo.2 Now, here comes a query which you may answer, or dismiss – as you often must – my inquisitive incredulity. You say, “They (the instructions) abolish even the very name of restoration”. Good, very good indeed – so far, but, you go on to say, “substituting that of ripristino or recomposition of the scattered limbs of ancient monuments as disjecta membra poetæ”. Is there not some contradiction which has fallen between the two languages? My Italian dictionary does not give me the whole word ‘ripristino’, but it does Pristino, as “ancient, primitive, former” – and I can add the ‘ri’ to it. I can understand gathering the detached limbs together, and binding them as well as may be in their places again, and be thankful that no worse is to follow, but I cannot see the accuracy of the word ‘ripristino’. It does not matter, because I see, in what you say afterwards, in the paragraphs which will be crowded out of your instructions, that you mean the right thing, and I rejoice over the care with which you emphasise the value of the carved tooled texture of the plain stone work. Hope the ministerial pruning knife will not cut out the live wood of your experienced assertions? 145

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Missing the point of the argument is only too common in official quarters. “Every substituted portion diminishes as (so) much the value of the building,” with its addition of “and what is left of the old work seems to suffer (under) the influence of the restored parts” – I shd say does not ‘seem’ but ‘suffers’. These lines are admirable, and I wish they had appeared “in Italian”, and the in letters 2 inches long. I was glad to have your approval of my idea of the intention of the ancient Roman concrete builders in using their tile-bricks, for, it seemed to me that the frame-work of brick was a practical essential of the work.3 Also, your note of the Capitoline bronze horse is good, but it has set me thinking as to how much the Romans did of themselves, without their Greek workmen, in some of the art? There is a particular style of horse expressed in the 4 bronzes of S. Marks, as well as in the horses of Pisanello4 and Benozzo Gozzoli,5 which seems to show of a special breed, and which is unlike the little attic horse, as in the frieze of the Parthenon (which also represents, I think, a breed, as do those of the Assyrian sculptures) and unlike the horse of the Capitol museum. It does not seem to me that the difference in the modelling of the S. Marks and the Capitoline horses is only of degree, but rather of workmen, and breed? It is curious – by the way – how few of the great Italian artists could draw, well, the horse – the next most difficult thing to drawing man – and how one of the greatest, Leonardo, tried hard & failed, as very much did Raffael – whereas Victor Pisano6 & Benozzo Gozzoli succeeded without difficulty, and as Piero della Francesca did in his way. There is a certain fullness and roundness about the Byzantine and Italian horse drawing which makes me think it was done from a well-known breed. Perhaps you have a “horsey” friend who may have thought of the subject. I saw some good breeds of horses in Italy, and a certain American crack-brain at Florence had gathered together a large number of very good ones, with which he made himself a nuisance to the syndicate! but I much liked to look at his horses myself, when they were not “clubbed” in a narrow street.7 I beg you not to gratify my whim as to the Capitoline horse at the expense of much trouble on your part. No doubt Lisippo turned over with pleasure in his grave when I fell into admiration of his horse, and maybe he is quiet again now & may had better be allowed to rest, if he be not driving a team of the chariot of the sun!8 I sent you by this evening’s post the 3rd, & last vol: of the Students illustrated Eng: Hist: The whole book has been a striking one to me, as shewing clearly how genius art fell off at the end of the 15th cent: Indeed, the publishers found the greatest difficulty in getting beautiful and interesting enough pictures to finish the book with. The example set by this book is being followed up, and John Richard Green’s good, and graphically written history (a larger book) is now being illustrated on a more extended scale,9 so that English boys and girls will have a pretty inducement to read what has often been to them an uninteresting matter in their lives. Italian boys and girls are not so lazy, I fancy? ’Tis the Northern blood in our veins, surely, which – when we are young – makes us shirk all mental labour, excepting those of natural genius. When you wrote last you were just starting for Bari & Altamura. Hope you were not snowed up? or if you were, you fed the birds, and if you were lodging 146

1888–1898

with some father abbot, he fed you. You are back in Rome again, now, no doubt, and have climbed into your sparrows’ nest. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. You did not tell me what you thought of William Morris’ beautiful (to me) typography and woodcut decoration to books.10 Mon: night, the 4th Courtauld 104a-c

1 ‘Some good news I can give you this time: 1st the instructions to our technical offices are finished; after being revised by our Commissions of Archaeology & Fine Arts, (hope they will not spoil the little good I put into them) they will be published and spread over all Italy so that no Administration, however small, shall be able in the future to excuse the vandalisms it perpetrates.’ GBO to PSW, 1 December 1891, Courtauld 103a. 2 The historian Pasquale Villari (1827–1917) was minister of education in the Italian government, responsible for approving GBO’s new measures for building protection. GBO praised Villari as being of ‘a philosophical mind’. 3 See above, Letter 404. 4 Antonio di Puccio Pisano, known as Pisanello (c. 1395–1455), was an Italian painter of frescoes and portraits. His liking for horses is evident in such works as Saint George and the Princess (fresco, Pellegrini Chapel, Verona) and The Vision of Saint Eustace (National Gallery, London). His exquisite drawings feature many animals and birds; whether PSW knew them is not known, but they represent a form of studied naturalism close to his own methods. 5 For Gozzoli, see Vol. I, Letter 96, note 2, and Letter 262. 6 Giorgio Vasari wrongly called Pisanello ‘Vittore Pisano’ in Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (1550). 7 See Vol. I, letter 241, where PSW says more of this ‘shoddy-fortuned American’. 8 The fourth century Greek sculptor Lyssipos, to whom is attributed the original copper/bronze four horses at the Hippodrome in Constantinople, which were brought to Venice in the thirteenth century and placed on the terrace of the façade of San Marco in 1254. 9 John Richard Green, A Short History of the English People, in four parts (London: Macmillan & Co., 1888–90). 10 ‘Last month I wrote to W. Morris from Altamura, expressing my admiration, and that of some learned friends of mine, for his success in typography. I don’t know whether my letter reached him.’ GBO to PSW, 17 January 1892, Courtauld 105a-b. WM replied to GBO on 28 January (CLWM, III).

410 • To Reverend Robert Milford, 15 January 1892 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. Jany 15. 1892 To The Revd the Rector | East Knoyle | Wiltshire. My dear Sir1 East Knoyle Church Tower2 I am obliged to you for your forbearance in the matter of the inclosed report. When I examined your the church tower it was, for convenience sake, at a time when I had to visit Knoyle on other business and, at that time, and since then, I was 147

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

so closely engaged that, beyond obtaining the information necessary on which to base a my report on the state of the fabric of the tower, I have been unable until now unable to give the matter the its due attention and consideration. I now send the report, with the hope that it will give you and your churchwardens the assistance you were in need of. I have been careful to set down nothing beyond what seemed to me absolutely necessary with regard to the condition of the building. At the time of my After the examination of the fabric, I was satisfied that the work requireding to be done could not easily be entered upon at the close of last year, so that the time which has elapsed since then has allowed me to consider quietly the several conditions which must accompany such a work as that of sustaining an interesting, and in other ways valuable, monument of native English art. and I do not think I have overstated the necessity there is for proceeding cautiously and determinedly in setting about the necessary works of strengthening and repair. I am Dear Sir | Yours truly | Ph. Webb. Inclosed with this letter and the report, are the papers you were so good as enough to lend me. Ph. W. and have been

V&A, AAD

1 Robert Newman Milford (1829–1913) was rector of St Mary’s, East Knoyle, from December 1865 until 1912. 2 The execution of the repairs to the Gothic tower of the church of St Mary’s, East Knoyle in Wiltshire (1892–3) represents the best example of PSW’s own application of the principles which he so strongly espoused through the SPAB, and is the subject of several recent studies: see Kirk, pp. 172–3, Drury, pp. 32–5 and Peter Burman, ‘Defining a Body of Tradition: Philip Webb’, in Miele, pp. 67–99. The tower was so dilapidated that demolition was a real possibility, but PWY – for whom PSW had built Clouds, in the East Knoyle parish, and who was himself a SPAB committee member – urged the church authorities to allow PSW to report on the condition of the tower with a view to repair, half the costs of which PWY would himself bear. For this project, which PSW saw as having an historic value and therefore different in kind from his normal commissions, he engaged the young architect Detmar Jellings Blow (DJB: 1867–1939) as his on-site supervisor, and the builder Albert Estcourt, with whom he had collaborated on Clouds.

411 • To Giacomo Boni, 24 January 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. 24 Jan: 1892 Sunday. I will let you off with very desirable brevity, this time – but must acknowledge now your letter of the 17th, which was a pattern of a shortness in which you triumphed, if I did not rejoice.1 The shortness of your letter is only too well accounted for by the sad news of sickness it contained.

148

1888–1898

First, you lay on the insult of a long paragraph in Greek, so as to choke the Island dog. Then you translate, to complete your satisfaction.2 Then you go on to say, the dark in my (his) face reminds you of William Morris’s “News from Nowhere” &c. Well, we were all in a state of trembling anticipation of your wrath at the notice we took of Holman Hunt’s letter in the Times.3 I had, on the morning of getting your letter, to go into Herefordshire, and sent your letter to a discreet friend to read the parts applicable to the Antiscrapers at the Thursday’s meeting.4 He got the “articles” you inclosed, translated, and laid the whole before the meeting, which rejoiced greatly at the news of the ‘Hunt’ alarm being a false one.5 Now is your time, to do as I said you should, when you were in London. Get one of your colleagues, gifted with a vitriolic pen, to indite under your help of knowledge of facts, a striking letter to the ‘Times’, to clear up the mistake as to the Pisan Campo Santo. Then tell your amanuensis to lay on the lash about Westminster Abbey, and adjacent Hall! Here is a ‘tip’ for you – “You miserable Island dogs, who cannot understand the poor little pieces of genuine antiquity you have in England, and yet venture to bark at keen sighted educated Italians, who have to spread their motherly and protective wings over a thousand objects of value where you, insular and ignorant, have but as one in comparison. Here, we sweat under the load of a precious patrimony, and do a worthy best to hand them it on unmutilated; whilst you are incapable of repairing such comparatively trifling things of value as the ancient buildings of Westminster, without transforming them into ridiculous 19th cent: travesties of the mediæval English building” – there you are, that is a text for you. When your letter appears in the ‘Times’, I will hold my tongue as to the main-spring(s) of invective in it!! I told W. Morris of your having written to him from Altamura. He said he had received your letter, and had intended to write in answer, but much and many labours had hindered. I should not wonder if he did write to you now.6 I am sorry for your sorrow of sickness in the family of the Boni, but cannot but consider with patience how the human race is burdened with afflictions of that kind. We have them at hand here, in London, and the Influenza is making large bills of mortality for us.7 I sincerely hope your own woman folk will come out of the strife safely, and give you rest and comfort. It is pleasant to me to hear of your getting the sympathy with regard to the taxation of Italian monuments. What that may mean I do not quite know.8 Here, when you are a little more free to consider such things, is a question which, probably, you can answer. In countries bordering on Italy, or those in which the Romans had lengthy power, there were many marble columns saved from Roman buildings. Many of these columns, as you know, were re-used by the early mediæval builders. Well, we know that many of them were used without change in such buildings, and the varieties of size were made up, in base or capitol, to fit them for the purpose – but, there are so many columns which appear as if they were must have been reworked by the mediævals, so as to be used symmetrically; and as there wd probably be no freshly 149

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

imported foreign marbles introduced in those rude times, they could not have found enough of particular sizes to serve their purpose, and wd have to use them in various unequal sizes, or recast them; do you know if the ancient shafts were so recut by the early mediævals in Italy? Yrs Philip Webb. To Signor Giacomo Boni, with regrets at the length to which the ‘brief’ letter has run. Courtauld 106a-c

1 ‘Just now my mother and two aunts (which constitute my home) are all three dangerously ill with influenza.’ GBO to PSW, 17 January 1892, Courtauld 105b. Italy was experiencing a serious influenza epidemic, and GBO’s mother and his friend, Professor Natale Baldoria died within weeks. See below, Letter 417, note 1 and Letter 418, note 1. 2 GBO included a quotation from the late second century Greek philosopher known as Maximus of Tyre, which he also translated: ‘Once the Athenians sung themselves their own songs; since they begun [sic] to pay people to sing for them on the stage, they have decayed.’ 105a. It reminded him of sentences in News from Nowhere. 3 Beneath the heading ‘The Campo Santa at Pisa’, on 6 January 1892 The Times published a letter from William Holman Hunt, written after visiting Pisa, where he had examined the frescoes in the Campo Santa. ‘More peerless than ever they appeared, notwithstanding new mischief which certain influential families – thinking of nothing but the importance of a lost member – had caused in tearing down portions of the sacred wall to put up monuments to their lost heroes. . . . I learnt, to my dismay, that an artist was engaged in repainting the works, and . . . I was able to see that this meant the blackening of the celestial purity of colour, and the muddling of every delicate form in the innocent drawing of the figures.’ In fact, the SPAB’s attention had already been drawn to the apparent restoration work by C.J. Herringham (a member) in a letter dated 25 November 1891 (SPAB, Campo Santo file). An extract was sent to GBO on 4 December asking for his comments. See note 4. 4 ‘I received a letter from the S.P.A.B., concerning the restoration of Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes at Pisa, – and the article published by Holman Hunt in the Times on the same subject. Both letter and article (as pictures are not in my department) I communicated in an official way to the Ministry, for consideration. Senator Villari has sent a telegram to the Prefect of Pisa. I will send you information by & by. In the meanwhile I can testify that Signor Fiscali, who is doing the work at Pisa, is not a painter but simply a repairer, – and that the instructions he is to obey (issued by the ministry, and a copy of which is enclosed here) specify . . . that the repairer is not to add even the least retouch of pencil on ancient pictures, and . . . that he is not allowed to varnish them nor to cover them with any other substance whatever.’ 105c-d. The instructions issued by the Ministero Della Istruzione Pubblica on 3 June 1879 are entitled ‘Norme pei lavori di restauro dei dipinti a fresco’. The translation made for the SPAB meeting is headed ‘Rules for the restoration of frescoes’, Courtauld 105. 5 WM wrote to the same effect. ‘They have been terrifying us here with reports of restorations of the Pisa pictures. Considering what I had heard of the later proceedings at Assisi, I could not believe that they were really repainting; but of course I was glad to hear the letter which you were kind enough to send to our Society and which was so reassuring.’ WM to GBO, 28 January 1892, CLWM, III. 6 See above, Letter 409, note 10. 7 Compared with Italy, the impact from influenza was less dire. In May 1891 a national outbreak had started in Yorkshire and spread to London, and a fresh one occurred in January 1892. There were far fewer deaths than in continental Europe, although hospitals quickly filled up with sufferers.

150

1888–1898 The Times reported that ‘Mr E. Burne Jones, his wife, and son, have been laid up with influenza, but they are now recovering’ (22 January 1892). 8 ‘I held a conference at the Art Association of Rome about the Catasto [registration] of monuments in Italy, it was received with warm sympathy’. 105b-c.

412 • To William Morris, 20 February 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 Feb: 1892 My dear Fellow We tug hard in the cock boat1 to keep the hulk off the rocks, and snap goes the hawser, and we are on our backs amongst the thwarts. Poor old fellow, he had done a very good do, and now has left poor Kate all forlorn.2 Let us wait patiently and she will come to if she do not split, but I hope not. I think it might be better you should not see her till you come back, when she may have sucked some of the grim out of it – I will do what I can – even taking on me the responsibility of saying this. I myself, a hardened old sinner, have been somewhat staggard [sic] by a blow which I had almost even asked for as a better than the weariness – but we don’t know, you see. I’ll give Kate your letter. She was all metal for the patient till the last, and then did not cave-in but the reaction will come. Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A MSC/1958/687, f. 29

1 ‘A small ship’s boat, especially one towed behind a vessel going up or down river’ (OED). 2 CF died in the early hours of 20 February. See following letter.

413 • To Emery Walker, 21 February 1892 Postmark LONDON W.C. FE 22 92 Address private | Emery Walker | 16 Clifford’s Inn | Fleet Street | E.C. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD 35 Queen Square Bloomsbury. W.C. Sunday 21. Feby 1892. My dear Walker Miss Faulkner, remembering so well your being at the house here on the 3rd Octr 1888, when her brother was stricken with paralysis, that she particularly wishes me to write for her to you and say that her brother Charles died on Saturday at 3 o’clock in the morning.

151

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

He had a very severe attack, or attacks in succession, on Sunday and Monday last, from which he could not rally; and though, at times, it seemed that he might possibly have partially recovered, it was not so; but and though he was very restless till 4. o’clock on Friday afternoon, he then became quiet, and gradually passed away. Miss Faulkner thought you would like to know of the loss direct from her, as your recollection of her brother, she feels sure, must have been a pleasant one. With kindest remembrance to you from Miss Faulkner. I am yours truly Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

414 • To Jane Morris, 24 February 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wed: 24 Feb: 1892 My dear Janey I found your note when I got round to Queen Square at 12.45 today. I read it to Kate as the best words you could send have sent to her. Really, it all depends now upon her getting some rest for her nervous system, which has been at high tension for 3½ years, and in a less degree for years before. It will much depend upon her real – human – friends as to her recovery from too great a strain, which she has borne wonderfully well and patiently. The reaction is what one has to think of at present, but I am hopeful – as she has her work to fall back upon, and even through all she has not lost interest in life, and good talk from reasonable people. I do not expect her to look forward to anything till her nerves are more at rest, but I believe, afterwards, she will stand up again with cheerfulness. Frank Faulkner comes this afternoon, and takes the body away in the evening to be buried at Birmingham. Frank is very good to her, and she is in sympathy with him.1 I hope to get Morris to see her next week if she is well enough. You see, she has got accustomed to the old brute, me, for I have been constantly about the house, but of with almost everybody else, though she clings to her good friends, she is naturally shy yet a while. I thank you very much for helping with your welcome words, and I invite patience. You who have had a sore time of it will understand, I am sure. Your affectionate | Philip Webb: BL Add 45342, ff. 72-3

1 For Frank Faulkner, brother of CF and KF, and a brewer by profession, see Vol. I, Letter 300.

152

1888–1898

415 • To George Price Boyce, 3 March 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thurs: 3. March. 1892 My dear Boyce You have probably seen in the newspaper the death of our old friend Charles Faulkner;1 still, if things had not held me so closely I should have written to you before. After a succession of severe attacks, the good old fellow could not rally, as he had done before, and when the restlessness which succeeded gave way to quietude, it was only that of waning strength, and he passed peacefully away about 3 o’clock on Saturday morning the 20th of February. I need scarcely say that his sister is in a very weak state, after nearly 3½ years of unceasing and tender watchfulness. However, time will help her, as it so kindly does most people who suffer keenly under such pain as she does. The brother and sister were so purely affectionate and at one with each other, that the present vacancy of her life is sad indeed, and all she can feel at present, is the wish to hide her head. I know my dear Boyce, you will sympathise with her, and your good wife will feel with you for the sorrow which cannot be comforted at present. Time and her work will be the moving counter force, and I hope by and bye in a little while to be able to tell her good friends she is stronger in bodily health, and more able to look about her without pain. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, ff. 278-9

1 The death was noted in The Pall Mall Gazette, which remarked that CF was ‘a kind-hearted, eccentric, original man, whose oddities were the themes of a hundred stories’ (24 February), and also in The Times (quoting an obituary in The Academy): ‘We are not aware that he published anything, though he could talk with knowledge and brilliancy on most subjects, and held very definite opinions’ (26 February). Both reports highlighted his friendship and business relationship with WM.

416 • To Giacomo Boni, 6 March 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday. 6th March. 1892 My dear Boni I am in a middle state, neither quite firm on earth, and do not tread with precision the cumulous vapour between us and the great gates. Your Italian papers, and pamphlet, are with me, and I arrive at their contents as my good translators give me a piece of their work from time to time, and what 153

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I can yet make out of the “Catasto die Monumenti in Italia” is very interesting, and satisfactory, if the result is that?1 I see you at the work, useful, (or, may be, treading water) and industrious, and hope accordingly, and any clearly explanatory notes you send me (in English) always cheer me on the way. The way is a rough one, not, however, without gleams which are every wit as good as the Italian sun, and better than that of the Indies. “A dark horse”, as the racing people say here, is an unknown quantity – he way win – he may lose, in any case it is a lottery, and I sometimes I [sic] think of you as balancing on the great wheel of fortune; but rather in the way of a piece of mediæval sculpture, than as the painted wooden fabric they set up in the Piazza at Venice – 99,779, you win your “plum” – 977,99 you despair, and take to the oar of the gondola and turn through the canals, and round the sharp corners of the small ones, to the amusement of Signor & Signorina Inglesi who sit in the black cabin in front of you. Keep your head my friend in going round these corners, and when I next time go to Venice I will ask for the Gondolier who keeps his head and shouts, staccato, at the right moment, lands me under the right building, and I go – say – to – the Schiavoni, and see Carpaccio with infinite joy. I come out, and find the good Giacomo, and he takes the Englishman such a course on the shallow waters, that we both land at last on the shore of a haven which is a rest indeed. Where is that rest? I have but little time to write, my friend just now, and should not have touched pen for your discomfort at this moment, except to say, that George Wardle – whom you know – is at Naples. Wardle has been staying in various parts of France & Switzerland for the last 3 years, partly for study, and partly because the doctors tell him he must get away, and he has mainly found rest in the South of France – in Provence. He has been working at the late Roman building there and the early mediæval which followed it, and has arrived at certain conclusions which want verifying from other parts. He thought of going into Italy – south – and I told him he should write to you, and tell you what he was about – he did not do so, and now writes to me for your address, which he has mislaid. I have sent it to him today, and I now send you his. “George Wardle Villa Capella | Posillipo | Napoli.” He has gone there to examine the late Romano-Greek work in which he is much interested, having spent time and thought in Provence in trying to unravel the enigmas which congregate there, accumulated by Phœnician, Greek, Saracenic, Barbarian (sic, fm an Englishman!) Gallic, Norman, and other tribes & peoples who used that corner of the earth in which to display their peculiarities. Wardle (whom you know, I fully believe) is a very good fellow, and rather a careful and thoughtful man on the subjects of art and history combined. I urged him to seek out you [sic] when he had opportunity, and you must forgive me if I have misplaced you. I thought you might, in your ordinary work, happen to be in the region of Naples, and – perhaps? – be glad to talk to a human being with ideas, and he – Wardle – would be delighted to have the help in that way of antiquities

154

1888–1898

which you could so well forward in Italy. He will surely write to you. Perhaps you might write to him and say if (?) you are likely to be south within a month or so. In any case I have given you both the opportunity of comparing notes. I do not know – O, sparrow of the Quirinal – if you remember having once been in Ultima Thule – or very near there? London, to wit, and undergone the period of banishment under my hospitality, (sic) but I remember it, and that you were here when I was much engaged with the waning life of an old friend who lay sick on the opposite side of Queen Square, where you lodged. Well, Charles Faulkner – after a rather weary waste of his latter life – has gone off to seek the morning star in other atmospheres. He died peacefully, under the care of a sister who warded all ill from him that her life could guard. I am now looking after her that she should not despair, but take up her thread again, and travel the rest of her road in peace and quietness of soul – and, till she is well on her way, I must be occupied in furthering that end, so, I am much engaged in addition to my ordinary work, whereby I answer, when questioned, as to the reason of my existence. Write when you can, for I like to hear of your activity, and in other ways it Pleases | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Courtauld 107a-c

1 ‘Il Catasto dei Monumenti in Italia’, Estratto dall’ Archivo Storico Dell’ Arte, Anno IV. Fascicolo VI (Rome: 1892). See above, Letter 409, note 1.

417 • To Giacomo Boni, 27 March 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 27 March. 1892 There were two notes, dated 6th & 10th March, of yours, O Giacomo, and one for William Morris. The latter I forwarded to that master, and the former I absorbed myself – all too brief for my satisfaction. With regard to . . . no, that wd have been a complaint. I read your sympathetic words on the loss of her brother, to Miss Faulkner, and softened her sorrow for herself by the story of Baldoria’s mother, who was in like distress.1 I did not remember there was any particular turn of “melancholy” in my last to you; for, though I have been capable of that expression, of late years the study of various forms of pain & joy have rather eased me of my own. I bide my shortened time of fretted life with less vexation than I did when the probable lease was longer.

155

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

To make amends for other shortcomings, you cunningly slipped into my hands the 17 photographs of some of the story lying open to be read in Italy; of the passage of various tribes of humanity who have from time to time set up in stone the bent of their minds in various parts of that chequered surface of the earth. How rich that land is in stone quartos, octavos, duodecimos &c all lying to your hand to straighten the leaves, mend the tears, and cramp in the bindings – and what is greater, to drive off the destructive human worms who have fed & still would, feed on their decay. Last Thursday, at the weekly meeting of “Antiscrape” committee, I read carefully item by item – sometimes twice or thrice – the articles prepared to kill the vermin, the sharpening of whose teeth almost sounds now in my ears.2 The consent to the rightness of rule laid down was unanimous, at last, but not without occasional questionings and interruptions as I proceeded with the catalogue. I then asked for some response which I might send to you from this side of the sea, and it was put into words by William Morris. Thus. “That, if the new rules were certainly carried out they would absolutely prevent the destruction of the ancient buildings in Italy by ‘restorations’ and ‘improvements’ ” (sic). Since then I have been thinking of the cunning machine you are making, which is to grind to powder the over watchful enemies of true history and real beauty. There is one chance for you, which you may think a strange one. The finances of Italy are straightened. In England we have no public guardian of anct monuments, and there is any amount of private money ready to the spoilers’ hand to be applied to the annihilation of historical art fabrics, and the state (so called) has no power to stop the mischief. There is only public opinion, on which our society can work, and that is steeped in ignorance. People will write indignant letters, that some building is being ravaged in a neighbouring county, and at the same time – under their very noses – the destructive hammer is at work in their own parish, and they do not even know the history which is attached to the building of which their foot is on the doorstep. It must have been some quick-witted Frenchman who could have said, ‘each man is the guardian of another man’s wife’. If it should happen that the Italian state could draw a line of protection round its ancient buildings till the folk of Italy comes to its senses, all would be well. Therefore, hold tight to your strong rope. I would that we had such a fortification. I also read to the Committee your question as to the “Pettenkofer method of restoring (?preserving) oil pictures”, and it was decided to ask the opinion of a well-known English chemist.3 I am very greedy of your photographs, but I almost wished you had sent them to me via George Wardle, who is at Posillipo. Did you write him a word? Are you likely to be able to see him while he is in Italy? I am sure he is looking forward to having your words of help in his study of art-history there. Knowing how much you are pressed for time, still I did rather fret & fume when I found no name on some of your 17 photos: And, such is my impudence, I would almost have asked for a note on the back of the prints, with an intimation that the building is of such or such art – Saracenic Italian – Norman Italian and the like. Some of the pictures are extremely mysterious to me. Take for example, 156

1888–1898

the façade of the Cathl of Troja.4 Is it of 1, 2 or 3 dates? Who were the people, or peoples, who built it? Is the strangely carved hood moulding or bracketted [sic] bent-bow over the head of the wheel window by the same hands as the window itself. I cannot make it out – a word from you would have set me going. Then the wonderful chair (no name to it) supported by 3 men. What sort of men invented it? The surface patterning on the posts seems to be of eastern workmanship?5 Then, again, I am utterly at a loss to acct for the strange wheel window of the “Chiesa Madre a Bari”.6 Is it a collection of relics of various ages, or is it of one composition, and that of no time at all? Is it early, or is it late? Ah, this is a strange piece of work – strange, beautiful, and wonderful, the “Matroneo” (what is that word?) of the Cathedral of Bitonto.7 This thing looks to be a huge parapet, and, I fancy of Saracenic work? However, I must leave off, as I shall only annoy you with my ignorant surmises. You should be able to snatch me out of my chair here, whisk me over the spaces, and set me down in Bitonto for 3 months, put me in the hands of a motherly woman there, and let me spell out the wonders of a wonderful place, and its very name is as sonorous as if it had been belched out of a volcano in eruption. Good Lord! only think of your Italian wealth. In this lot of 17 photos: there are 3 sets of bronze-covered doors!! I thank you quite heartily for these representations of the buildings you move amongst as a fatherly protector – “more power to your elbow”, and may you live long and usefully in the land. I think at this moment of the good natured Darvall,8 who, when I was introduced to him by Fairfax Murray, said to me, “would you like to know Signor Giacomo Boni, who is superintending the works at the Ducal Palace”?, and on my servile answer, I mounted to your den, and found you seated on a slab of old cipolino,9 [sic] and turning a good natured face to the troublesome introduction. Poor old Darvall has joined his fathers, having done me a good turn. Adieu till I have more time to represent my weakness to your strength. Sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 111a-c

1 GBO had written of the death from influenza of Natale Baldoria, aged 30: ‘he left a great void around us, he was a great specialist for the preservation of monuments of the Byzantine period’. GBO to PSW, 6 March 1892, Courtauld 108a. The news about the death of CF now touched him: ‘let us condole reciprocally, for each of us has lost a friend. . . There is a melancholy which pervades over your letter which stirs a similar one in my bosom, and I almost long for the other atmospheres where our departed friends wait for us.’ 10 March 1892, Courtauld 109a-b. 2 GBO had listed 22 newly-instigated Italian regulations ‘for the preservation of ancient buildings’, helpfully providing summary translations. 3 This was Arthur Herbert Church (1834–1915), Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Academy of Arts and author of The Chemistry of Paints and Painting (London: Seeley & Co., 1890). ‘My prolonged stay in Venice gave me an opportunity to study the Pettenkofer method for restoring oil pictures. . . . I prepared some questions to be answered by our chemical Institute, and I will inform you of the results. In the meantime can you procure me the opinion of some competent english authority?’

157

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

4

5 6 7

8 9

108a-b. Max Josef von Pettenkofer (1818–1910) was celebrated most for his scientific work in the field of public hygiene, but in 1863 he patented a chemical process to reverse the aging of varnish. The Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, in the hilltop town of Troia in Apulia, was consecrated in 1120. It is representative of Romanesque architecture of the Puglian region. The ornate carving in the arch around the top of the superb rose window features many animals and human figures, the arch itself being supported on two columns resting on the backs of lions. Elements of the architectural details at Troia suggested Byzantine and even Islamic influences. The photograph may have represented the church of Santa Maria della Pace in Noicàttaro, in the province of Bari. The Romanesque Cattedrale di San Valentino in Bitonto, in the province of Bari. ‘The early XIII centy. matroneo of Bitonto is the upper story of the aisles which was once occupied by female-worshippers (matrons).’ GBO to PSW, 2–10 April 1892, Courtauld 113d. For Henry Darvall, see Vol. I, Letter 251, note 9. Cipollino: a type of veined Italian marble, which takes its name from the interleavings of an onion.

418 • To Giacomo Boni, 6 April 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Wednesday 6. April 1892 Alas, my poor friend Giacomo. You had not recovered from the pain of the wound caused by Baldoria’s death, when this terribly heavy blow of fate has reached you.1 I have an instinctive feeling it would have been well for me if I had been taken to your mother when was in Venice, and I wish it could have happened. It is this instinct in me, which comes to my mind, that much of the Giacomo would have been clearer to me from the sight of the mother who bore him. The note in the “Riforma” seems to give to my ‘instinct’ a truth which I welcome as a certainty. You, my Italian brother, will go on your way, sadder, but not broken down. The unfolding of the scroll is not all pain if we read clearly as we journey on. Adieu dear Boni | from yours sincerely | Philip Webb. “Or rather marvel not, that those should cling Unto the thought of great lives passed away, Whom God has stripped so bare of everything, Save the one longing to wear through their day, In fearless wise; the hope the Gods to stay, When at that last tide gathered wrong and hate Shall meet blind yearning on the Fields of Fate” _____ Prologue in verse, by William Morris.2 Courtauld 112a-c

1 ‘My work is just now incapable to fill up a great vacuum left in my existence by recent family misfortunes. My mother died while I was waiting for the train to go to Venice and see her for the last

158

1888–1898 time; friends and charitable people came to see me and send good words and gave me all manner of advice, just as if I wanted anaesthetics, or some kind of moral chloroform. I fled from Rome to divert if possible in hard work a portion of my grief, but I find it as yet overwhelmed and tasteless.’ GBO to PSW, 2–10 April 1892, Courtauld 113a. This letter arrived after PSW had received news of the death from MM (see next letter). 2 The second stanza of ‘A Prologue in Verse’ to Völsunga Saga: the Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, translated from the Icelandic by Eiríkr Magnússon and WM (London: Walter Scott, 1888), p. li.

419 • To May Morris, 6 April 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wed: 6. April ’92 My dear May I have the result of your kindly effort in the way of translation. I felt as ashamed, as is possible to an old and incapable sinner, (not incapable of sin) in having to ask you to do what (after the tuition you gave me before I went to Italy) I ought to have been able to do for myself. Only think of the learned and apt Giacomo Boni keeping company with such an incapable northern thickhead as myself, it passes believing, and has the tone of a “Mrs Harris” about it!1 At ‘Antiscrape’, if there is any question of Italian antiquities, I throw G.B. at the heads of my colleagues, and they wag them with the kind of incredulity in their faces that must have appeared in Betsy Prigg’s. [sic] I thank you nevertheless, being glad to know abt Boni’s loss before writing to him a letter of condolence, on the loss – say – of a pet cat. However, he would have made out what I meant even if I had given his mother a tail. Boni’s family was this good mother, and two aunts, and all 3 had been ill of the influenza, and were supposed to have recovered. Alas, and I think he will feel his loss.2 He was laid up for 4 weeks in Venice just now, but I hope he is soundly refitted. I heard at the Friday’s meeting that Sparling was ill, but improving, and am glad of your report.3 Yes, the universal Samaritan, Walker, comes, from his nature, to be laid-on, like the Water, only we don’t pay the rates for him. I hope he will turn Anarchist and blow us all up, being sure he would do the necessary work with the least possible disturbance to our feelings. I think (having really considered your question) if you could casually turn up in the afternoon, without warning, at 35 Q. Sq:, your visit would do Kate good. Poor thing, she is much beaten down with the loss of her staff of life – such a dependable kind of St Christopher’s tree as he was to her in wading the strong stream of her passage.4 My ultima Thule jokes, pall at times, and black care, in the shape of memory, stares her too often in the face. She is physically very weak too, but I am looking she shall get relief from time, and mild weather, when she can really get out without almost dying of fatigue after ten paces. Kate is doing much good work on the piano for your father’s client,5 and you can cheer her up over it with your sympathy, and with the knowledge of what real work really is.6 159

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I thank you again, my dear May, and ask pardon for this long tangle. Yrs sincerely | Philip Webb. (3 cheers to Sparling) BL Add 45342, f 74

1 In Martin Chuzzlewit, the existence of ‘Mrs Harris’ is eventually exposed as a figment of the imagination of Sairey Gamp during her quarrelsome friendship with Betsey Prig (ch 49). 2 See previous letter, note 1. 3 MM was now married to Henry Sparling, for whom see Vol. I, Letter 278. 4 The legend attached to St Christopher (his name meaning ‘the one who bears Christ’) tells of him carrying an unknown child on his back across a river, and the child then revealing himself to be Christ. Christopher is thus the patron saint of travellers. 5 But see below, Letter 424. 6 The reference is to MM’s own skill in embroidery. She had studied textile arts at the South Kensington School of Design, and from 1885 managed the Morris & Co. embroidery department. She exhibited her work through the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, and also wrote and spoke on the subject.

420 • To Giacomo Boni, 24–25 April 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 24 April. 1892 Dear Giacomo. Yes, the blessed work takes the “night mare”* out of the “stuff” we are made of,1 and I was glad of your double letter of Ap 2 and 13 telling me you were taking to the most certain of all medicine for the mind. Tis quite true, I would gladly be alongside of you on your work path, and particularly on the line of the calf and heel of the “boot”.2 Lord-ha-mercy, what wonderful works in old building your mission of mending carries you to! However, I cannot attain to this, as I have my own puddles to splash about in, and I doubt if I shall every drink a bottle of wine again with you in your (our?) own land. Never mind, I smell the savour of Italy across the hills and salt sea, and have food enough stored for real pictures of the great historic land. I can make but little in that way of Russia or America, though Iceland is not nebulous to me, and Persia, Assyria, Egypt, and Greece are as my brothers and sisters, but I have personally introduced myself to a good part of Italy, and you kindly keep up the illusion that I am partly Italian, by making me tingle with pleasure by every letter you send to me. * [margin] Skeat, in Etymological dictionary, gives the proper sense of this word (in contradistinction to the mistake, of the female of horse,) as from Old High german, a night incubus – a crusher.3 On Friday last I was invited to attend a meeting of the “Art Workers’ Guild,” a smallish brotherly society here, maintained by mostly youngish men, to help 160

1888–1898

each other in their work, with social consultation. People who look for gain in the building arts (and decorative) by giving attention to the “Crafts”. William Morris, chosen by common consent as the Master of the Guild, was in the chair.4 The subject for discussion was, “Restoration” of ancient buildings. One of the members hoped that something like the centralised influence of the French Government might be applied to England, when there was a chorus of ‘no’. And it was pointed out, that infinite mischief had happened in France from the Council there (mainly appointed architects) having done mischief on a wider scale than elsewhere in Europe. In speaking to this point, the ‘Master’ said, there was more hope in Italy, for, from the kindness of Sig: Boni, Archt over ancient buildings to the Ministry of Instruction, the English Society for the Protection of ancient buildings had been favoured with information as to the new regulations applied to the Italian Antiquities, and these instructions were so good, that if they were honestly carried out, there would be no more “restoration” in Italy. (much cheering). There, see what is expected of you and your colleagues, “honesty”, perhaps the most difficult thing for human beings to attain to! “Common honesty” being more uncommon than anything else. We English people are quite capable of dishonesty, but then we are not over-quick-witted, and the result is that we are continually being ‘found out’, and our evil practices stopped. When you Italians take to double dealing we must make Greeks and Jews policemen – as pronounced thieves are clever in that way! Nardo – I have looked it out on the map, and almost dreamed of the paintings you have discovered and, I hope, saved.5 You will be able, perhaps, to tell me if these paintings were in distemper colour, or in fresco? I presume the houses of the town are somewhat like the Syrian houses, as given in De Vogué’s book6 – that is, very Eastern Byzantine – Ionical buildings? Of what race are the people, with their dark eyes, and yet in themselves are not criminal? The bishop was good natured, and the kindly wine was a beneficent addition to the ascetic books – which I first read as ‘erotic’!7 I think I could find something interesting in an ascetic book – by the help of the wine – and the erotic, would rather insult the wine. There are certain books inspired by Venus, which do not stink in one’s nostrils, because they are so great, human, and beautiful, such as Chaucer’s tales (some of them – many) which were inspired, no doubt, by Boccacio [sic] – and if Boccacio’s – in the original – are as good from an art point of view, they too would not injure the flavour of the wine. [sketch of wine label: MUSCATE OF TARANTO8 | IN HONOUR OF THE NATAL DAY | A.D. 1859.] What wine, of what age, would you produce for the natal day of A D. 1831? It should be 61 years old, and – if you are there – 2 bottles, but only 1 cork screw! I have gone along the coast with you on your way to Molfetta.9 Many thanks for the information about the matroneo of Bitonto.10 That part of the aisle of the church is our ‘Triforium’ – which is of good size at Westminster, and some other churches in England, but is not so important with us as in France. The Bitonto gallery is a lovely one, and I much longed to squat down there and fill my stomach (where rests my soul) and gather in a likeness of the Saracens in 161

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Italy dominated by the Normans. If there is any library in Rome where they let out English books to read, try and get Ruskin’s “The Bible of Amiens” – it is one of his best books, written with all that suavity and large heartedness to which he has sometimes attained to.11 BARISANUS of Trani.12 How much I prefer to have such a reference to the usual one, such as, ‘s. Sofia of Constantinople, built by Justinian’! Justinian is much more likely to have drunk his Cyprus wine and looked on. Ah, that is a pretty idea for countries, where the sun is clear and a great power, to put shot-holed lead in their windows.13 That sun being a blessing, mounting to a splendour, and finally becoming a curse. In photo’s of India, I see the natives squatting down, with all the muscles of their brows puckered (drawn together) to give a covering to the eyes against the sun. Here in England we dig the sooty coal and make oneself ourselves a kind of sun on one side of the question, and charcoal whitewash on the other. Mind you, after your burst of promises, I am all “patience”. I will wait till doomsday, till I get your sign of all the wonders. Gonzalo’s “patience” would be as nothing to mine, but, may be, I shall be the first to cry out “we split, we split”.14 Yes, Gonzalo, Shakespeare’s gentle dreamer, is very pleasant, and how good for your smart courtier to exercise his wit upon! I fancy the great poet expressed by Gonzalo the effect the faery Island had on the spirit of the good old man and, quite possibly, the effect of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia was in the author’s mind.15 I thank you for raising a question, as it made me read the play once more, and it came to me as fresh and beautiful as ever. The miraculously fit words for all phases of mind and body came home to me again with the greater pleasure that you too had read them with perception. Yours. Ph. W. Monday 25 April Courtauld 115a-c

1 GBO had started his letter of 2–10 April, in which he wrote of his mother’s death, with Prospero’s words: ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’ The Tempest, IV,i,156–8. 2 In the weeks before and after his mother’s death, work took GBO to Bari and Nardò in Apulia and elsewhere in the heel of Italy. 3 Walter W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), gives several meanings and origins of ‘nightmare’, including the one cited by PSW here. ‘The sense is “crusher;” from MAR, to pound, bruise, crush’ (p. 393). PSW’s copy of Skeat is in the Emery Walker Library, and bears the annotation: ‘Ph Webb. Took in the parts as they came out / afterwds, the binding of the parts / by help of Douglas Cockerell / Jany 1901’. CAGM, p. 115. Douglas Cockerell (1870–1945), younger brother of SCC, trained as an apprentice under CobdenSanderson at the Doves Bindery in Hammersmith, and established his own bindery business in 1897. 4 The position of Master was held for a year. ‘For the Mastership of 1892 there were eleven nominations handed in on November 4 [1891], and William Morris was elected.’ H.J.L. Massé, The ArtWorkers’ Guild 1884–1934 (Oxford: Art-Workers’ Guild, 1935), p. 73.

162

1888–1898 5 ‘The cathedral [at Nardò] was improved last century, and as they were pulling it down they discovered the ancient pilasters, covered with greek frescoes of the XI centy: carrying pointed arches of a Saracenic shape.’ GBO to PSW, 2–10 April 1892, Courtauld 113b. 6 The French archaeologist and diplomat, Charles Jean Melchior de Vogüé (1829–1916), wrote extensively on the architecture of Syria and Palestine. 7 ‘The bishop offered me . . . some bottles of Muscate of Taranto, 33 years old, to commemorate my approaching birth day. (I was born the 25th of April 1859).’ 113c. 8 Taranto is a city on the southern Apulian coast. 9 A city, north of Bari, on the Adriatic coast. 10 See above, Letter 417, note 7. 11 John Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens (Orpington: George Allen, 1884), part I of Our Fathers Have Told Us. Sketches of the History of Christendom for Boys and Girls who have been Held at its Fonts. 12 ‘I find this corner of Italy to be the cradle of the Italian architecture of the XII & XIII cen[turie]s. . . . The names of the architects are local, such as BARISANUS of Trani, who modelled the wonderful bronze gates of that cathedral. (You shall have the phot. by & by).’ 13 April 1892, Courtauld 114a-b. 13 ‘Churches such as. . . . Bitetto have the rose-windows filled with sheets of lead, perforated, with small holes . . . which admit a great quantity of light and show from the outside the shape of flowers, of animals &c.’ 114b. 14 ‘We split, we split! Farewell my wife and children!’ The Tempest, I,i,61. ‘ARIEL puts me in mind of the Shakespearian socialism which is uttered (if I well recollect) by Gonzalo in the Tempest. Can you tell me anything about that?’ 114d. 15 The Tempest (1610–11) certainly belongs within the same pastoral tradition as More’s Utopia (1516) and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1596), ‘works, in turn, that draw upon centuries of European yearning for a simpler, freer, better, more just existence’. Frank W. Brevik, ‘The Tempest’ and New World-Utopian Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 114. Utopia was also a fundamental influence upon WM’s News from Nowhere (1890), as PSW was well aware.

421 • To Giacomo Boni, 12–19 June 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 12 June 1892 “Trani, April 10 ’92” such is the date of your last benevolence to me!1 To Giacomo To the learned, the busy, the ambitious, – patriotic, scornful &c &c, these. Failing fresh notes of your well, or ill, doing, I have had to fall back once or twice on your last letter, with the delightful photographs to which part of said letter referred in the way of explanation to – the ignorant, the disappointing, the philosophical, – patient, and kindly, and – in a sense – the justly scorned! (slightly sarcastic preamble). I – no, that is not the polite way of beginning – You, no doubt, have finished your April, and perhaps May, journeying along the sinuosities of the calf and heel of the concentrated essence of that preeminently historical – geographical, and ethnological, section of the surface of the earth, Italia. What do you think of that as proceeding from the drenched wits of a puzzled islander? Is it not Shakespearian, though hardly Arielesque? If you will quote the goose “of Avon”,2 163

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

and Matthew Paris, a two-legged descendant with webbed feet must reply in well watered character.3 Some English friends of George Wardle pounced upon him at Posillipo, and carried him off for a fortnight to the island of Sicily, and he sent me by their hands some photographs, chiefly, of Palermo and Monreale. These were also a kind of peace offering to still any feelings which might be stirring in my breast at neglect of letter writing. In these photos: I learned something more of the effect of the Saracenic holding of that part of Italy, and it went well with that which I had learned of the same element of the Normans – Sarascenico in Bari, Troja, Bitonto &c of your photographs. When you pour the black wine of Bordeaux into the white wine of Orvieto, you have a spoiled mixture – untasteable, but that cannot rightly be said of the mixture of Greek, Saracenic, and Norman building in Italy, however amalgamated. Take your Archbishop’s chair from S. Nicola of Bari, for example. Was there ever such delightful evidence of history, and art, as that?4 I have spelled it all out with the utmost pleasure, and quite free from any taint of antiquarianism. Pure love of humanity, with all its weaknesses, so able to express its godlike qualities, under oppressions from their enemies and themselves. Did the Saracens carve the seat, and the Normans the support? Did the two (or 3, or 4) races amalgamate, (as the Normans & Saracens did in England) or did the Eastern element separate itself from the conquering, as did the Hebrews, and as they do to this day? Can you, as you walk the shores and hills of Apulia, and elsewhere, distinguish the noses and skins of the Eastern element now, and accents of speech which are not Tuscan? Are there Arabic words embedded in the language of South East Italy, as Roman words are here? Did the people who carved your marble chair squint malignantly at Abbot Elia when he passed down the nave of the Church at Bari, and put hand to knife under their gabardines? Is the variety of language you meet with as unintelligible to you as Welsh is to me? – These are not questions for you to answer (whether you can or not) but merely rumblings from my mind so pleasantly disturbed by your photographs.5 True, I am quite capable of “dancing or kneeling” when I come across such memorials of man, having beauty as the solvent to my 19th cent: insular mind. I am not an “unspeakable Turk”, though, perhaps, not as useful to the rolling of the world. Sunday. 19. June. Since the above was written, has come to me your letter of the 9th, with its 3 photo’s, and all of them of great interest to me. But I thank you chiefly for the kindly note of your early life under the care of your mother, who “did more than she said”.6 I do not follow with any particular pleasure the excess of expressed admiration for mothers, commonly used by the French, who, also, in their stories, mostly say that wives are unfaithful to husbands – nevertheless, I always like to know something of the lives of the mothers of the men I know personally. There is a sarcastic saying, somewhere, that – before marrying a girl, you should see her mother, which has some sense in it; but, the mother is not uncommonly the expression of the intelligence of the son in an older and different form. I fancy you are spare of words too, but I cannot so well judge of your 164

1888–1898

actions, though I may suspect you capable of seizing occasion by the forelock – and also, that you may complete the work you are about before relaxing into geniality with a friend, and sometimes – and this is only a vague suspicion – I fancy you may trample upon ignorant people who “will not be said” – an old English expression of disgust at the persistence of those who have nothing in their nature worth persisting in? I am sure William Morris will invisibly blush (perhaps at the seat in his breeches) with satisfaction when I tell him of your reading the “News”, 10 times!! – He is quite alive, though mostly in a hidden way, to the praise of people with honest wits. I am very fond of this book myself (though I have only read it, I think, 4 times) and for several reasons, one being, that it is a work of art on a pressing subject of quite modern insistence. People generally are in such a hurry to have their say of on things happening about them, that they cannot put their story into a form which will make a lasting impression on readers. Also, the book shews in a delightful way that ‘progress’ should not mean ugliness. There are very few modern writers who could have done that, 9 people out of 10 feeling (they cannot know) that anything beautiful must be useless – not business – and they are shy of it in consequence. Art (?) and Religion (?) are not neglected, though, for business people are quite well aware of their money value, at times. You made me smile when you wrote yourself down as simple “James” – it looked so exceedingly unfamiliar. Did you not once tell me you were partly Venetian, and partly from the Titian country at the head of the Adriatic? Well, if we called you James in the wooded country there, the echo surely wd be Giacomo! At this moment you may be in Venice city, walking the byeways on waterside there, casting a look at the Lion when you are on the Molo. That is a pleasant picture of the hoisting of the old bronze into his old place. I see you have kept the Renaissance wings. Have you pitched the book into the lagoon? Another question, (I ask pardon) Could you safely mend the Capital, and its . . . what shall I call it . . . upper part? This upper part represents the fragment of architecture in Roman work which the Byzantines kept on which to rest their arches [sketch] eh? The reduplication of this mass of work on the Lion capital is very finely done, I think. Hope you will be able to restrain ambitious Venetians in what is being done to the other column.7 I suppose you have a dependable resident deputy at Venice. Well, my friend, I am afraid we cannot help you much with English ancient bronzes. England with regard to bronzes is like Ireland as to serpents – there are none, or very few. We have a few recumbent statues on tombs, but these are of the 13th & 14th centuries. That of Eleanor of Castile is figured in the English history book you have. I failed to find out where the Byzantine sarcophagus from Constantinople had gone to – yes, I was not up to the standard then. My friend Walker has taken your photo: of the Hercules and Nemœan lion8 to the British Museum, to see if the learned folk there can make anything of it. I was doubtful about it: in many points it looked to me to be archaic, but in others (such as the tree branch on the left, and the ornamented band at the bottom) to be rather 165

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

late Greek work. If the portico of the Pantheon is Agrippa’s there must have been some earlier building attached to it than the cylindrical part with bricks stamped with “Hadrian”.9 Is it probable that the portico – originally – was the entrance to the baths behind? If you refer to the “Catasto dei Monumenti”, at p.7, at the 20th line from the bottom,10 we have “Ta[l]luri dei suoi” . . . . . . . . . . and something with . . . “dei rispettivi territori”. Well, friend Hebb (I hope you have not trampled on him?) asks me if I can get a right translation of the passage, as he cannot manage it. Do not answer this, if you would prefer to be silent. Ask the next 10 Italians you may meet, of intelligence, what they think of the ‘intelligence’ of Englishmen, and they will say, in purest Tuscan, “stupid” – Memorandum, what is the Tuscan of STUPID? I must give over worrying your ‘intelligence’, but I bless you for those photographs you sent me from Bari, Troja, Bitonto, &c, they are delightful, and give me more pleasure than I can put into bad English, and now you may ‘trample’ on Yours truly | Philip Webb, if you like, for he is not easily put out, being something of a philosopher. Courtauld 117a-d

1 PSW began writing this letter before receiving that sent from Rome by GBO, dated 9 June. 2 Shakespeare is sometimes called the Swan of Avon, but PSW may also had had in mind the proverbial phrase, ‘to think one’s geese all swans’. 3 The medieval chronicler, Mathew Paris (c. 1200–59), a Benedictine monk from St Alban’s Abbey and author and illuminator of manuscripts on historical subjects. The mention of ‘webbed’ feet is of course a pun on PSW’s own name. 4 ‘The marble chair of S. Nicola of Bari was sculpted while Abbot Elia, (a Benedictine monk, archbishop of Bari, who died A.D. 1105) was building the church. Did he give the plans? did he mix with the workmen? . . . The Saracens supporting the chair are supposed to be a simbol [sic] of the Norman conquest over them.’ GBO to PSW, Courtauld 13 April 1892, 114b-c. 5 ‘I made up an account of the quantity of volumes required for a proper answer to your last, doubledated epistle. . . . Unfortunately I can only send you the titles and one or two explanatory notes. . . . Vol. II On Apulian dialects. Monaco Bigio could demonstrate in this volume, if he chose to write it, that no spot of the earth affords such interesting materials for the study of the origin of dialects as the sea coast from Barletta to Bari’. GBO to PSW, 27 June 1892, Courtauld 118c-d 6 ‘My mother was natural in whatever she said or did – and, usually did more than she said. She liked to stay near us (her three boys) while we were studying, but did not even stir for fear of interrupting our studies. . . . After my father’s death (I was only seven years of age then) she sold all her jewels and superfluous things. She dropped all acquaintances, except those that she might consult for the benefit of her children’s education.’ GBO to PSW, 9 June 1892, Courtauld 116a-b. 7 ‘The bronze lion was replaced upon the column the 25th of April (S. Mark’s day) – now the scaffolding has been moved to the other column which also requires some slight repairs.’ 116b-c. 8 Nemea, a wooded area near Argos where the Greek hero Hercules killed a lion (‘the Nemean lion’). 9 ‘I enclose a third phot. showing a portico of the outside back wall of the Pantheon. Some investigations are just now carried on in that building, and we discovered that the large bricks of the cupola, of the cylindrical walls & the foundations have all the stamp of emperor Hadrian – that

166

1888–1898 is to say that the celebrated monument is not AGRIPPA’s but only the portico in front of it or the pediment which bears Agrippa’s name.’ 116c-d. 10 For these instructions, see above, Letter 409, note 1.

422 • To Giacomo Boni, 17 July 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 17 July. 1892 That you should have taken the trouble, good natured Giacomo, (I can write this, as I have not lived long in the same house with you!) to write me even the titles of the books you could write on the subjects I led up to, says something for your friendly energy.1 Now let me imperil the grace of my praise by another venture in the way of questioning. In “Vol. I”, you wrote useful information for me,2 but, in addition, I wish to learn – if possible – and with comparatively little trouble on my part, something more as to the Saracen. Who was this ‘Saracen’ who did works of which are worthy of admiration? When we talk of Greek art, of Roman art being done by Greeks, and likewise of that of Byzantium, we do know, in the main, that these arts were done – mostly – by men of Greek race. Well, it may not be more possible to say who the Saracens were, than to say who the Pelasgians were. Still, as the work of the former is still clearly in front of us, in a complete sort of way, there does not seem to be the same difficulty in coming to a reasonable conclusion. All the little I have read of what the English experts (self-dubbed so, perhaps?) say on the point, shews that the doctors differ in pretty much the same ratio as of 6 of one and half a dozen of the other – or, rather, of 10 disputants, and 10 different opinions. You see, I could not be an antiquarian, but I must be interested in the antiquities of the arts which go so much to make my peace of mind. Still, I can understand the interest taken in the accumulation of facts for their own sake, and the more so if for some definite end instead of for a mere love of the means. Nineteenth cent: able people have a tendency to admire a railway bridge for carrying them away from enjoying the river which the bridge spans. And, may be, the bridge is not the means of attaining any other end than that of getting away. You may say, ‘a good bridge too, if it does that’! – Ah, yes, it was the ‘Saracens’ I was upon? Well, these last words of mine were a bridge by which to get away from the subject. Well, the Saracens were – I suppose – an Asian, or African, people or tribe; but there were many Eastern people in those two countries who were not naturally artistic. And I fancy the term ‘Arab art’ was given up because so many Arabs have no turn whatever for working in art, or, indeed, for working in anything. The Jews have distinctly a reputation for money making, in all times, but it is doubtful whether they designed and made their own dies? George Wardle says he believes the Saracens were first heard of in Ammianus Marcellinus, which he recommends me to read, as if I had time to do it!3 Wardle also says the name Saracen, perhaps, applied to the strange peoples of Africa, and he adds, “It is

167

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

certain that the name continued to be applied specially to the uncivilized tribes of the south coast of the Mediterranean”. There now, I’ve done with the Saracens, and you need not answer my question at all unless it would please you to do so. By good luck rather than by virtue on my part I was able to send you on the 14th 3 prints of the “Gloucester Candlestick”.4 The glass negative at the South Kensington Museum was broken, and it would take 2 or 3 months to get the thing photographed again, &c. So I wrote to Thomas Armstrong, one of the art managers there,5 and he – being an old acquaintance of mine – very good naturedly commanded a new photo: to be made at once. The word went forth, and it was done. See how good you are to me. You not only send me the most delightful photographs of the best loved country in the world, but you stir me to get some photos: of one of the least loved countries, when, if it had not been for you I should not have lifted a finger to get the ‘Candlestick’ done. Now, I’ve ordered some copies for myself. Glory be to Giacomo, the friend of the indolent – not ‘idle’ – do not, as you love me, make that mistake. Though a very bad artist, still I am a genuine one, and particularly so in one of the attributes of artists, namely, indolence. Something must set me going (if you want to know anything about this ‘trumpery thing’) before I can be moved, something external. Some fellow comes in to see me, and he raises a question on some point; well, when he is gone I look it up in the books, and elsewhere, as if my life depended upon the momentary energy, and I find there is a quantity of knowledge in my own book case of which I had not guessed, and I become lively (for a time) like the fleas in the Castle of Chillon.6 Now you wise people, like Monaco Bigio, and George Wardle, are always on the move to fill themselves with fresh information. What good are they? I will tell you, they exist to supply an indolent dog with information without the trouble of searching it out for himself. Now for the sweetmeats you put into my mouth to ‘bribe’ me to exertion. Ah, my friend, here you ‘have me on the hip’, as the wrestlers say. I mentioned the ‘Bitetto’ doorway in my last letter, but it is by no means the only one of the 14 photos: you last sent me which have made me skip with delight. For example, there is the one of Boemondo’s [sic] bronze doors, which is Saracenic work7 – (In part, perhaps, for it may be the engraved figures on two of the panels are Western work?) and it pleases me highly. Again, it was very sensible of you to send me the sea view of Trani. How should I have learned the aspect of the place without this? I am exceedingly fond of maps, but their work does not give the same plump into the world of fact, as this picture does. The old worn church, whose walls are almost washed by the waves. I was heartily glad to see the stout shoring up of the Campanile. We, in England, would pull such a tower down to save it – as the Irish “bull” would say. No, we shd not do that, we should pull it down, either because we didn’t want it there, or if we did want it there, because we had not wits enough to keep it standing. Then, there is another enchanting Archbishops chair, from Canossa, with its Elephant supports.8 One would sit in that chair, and easily fancy oneself wiser than an Archbishop. Then there is the – for Italian – rather unusual doorway from Barletta.9 In short, 168

1888–1898

you may know that I enjoy these good things quite naturally, and feelingly, without wishing to have a bridge over which I might pass to get away from them. I thank you heartily for these and all other mercies, but must beg you not to send me more than I can receive in common honesty. There is a catalogue of the bronzes at the S.K. Museum, but it is only brought down to 1876! 10 I hope to see Armstrong next week, and see what can be done in the way of getting a more complete book. Yours, whether skipping with joy, or cast down with ignorance, | Philip Webb. Courtauld 120a-c

1 See previous letter, note 5. 2 In a putative list of the six books he would have to write to answer PSW’s questions, GBO stated that the first would be called ‘Saracenic influence on Norman art of Apulia’. 3 The fourth-century Roman soldier, Ammianus Marcellinus, wrote a history of Rome from the year 96, of which only the portion dealing with the years 353–78 AD survives. 4 The gilded copper alloy ‘Gloucester Candlestick’ (1104–13, V&A, London), was made for the abbey church and later cathedral of St Peter, Gloucester. It is ornately decorated with real and mythical animals. 5 Thomas Armstrong (1832–1911), a painter with a strong interest in the applied arts, was a friend of Whistler who influenced his own work. In 1881 he was appointed Director of the art division of the Department of Science and Art at South Kensington, and over the years was directly instrumental in developing a clear public education role for the museum, working with practitioners like WM and Walter Crane. 6 Chillon Castle (twelfth-thirteenth centuries), built on an inlet on the shores of Lake Geneva, near Montreux, became a state prison in the sixteenth century, and is the setting for Byron’s romantic poem ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ (1816), itself the subject of Eugene Delacroix’s painting of the same name (1834, Louvre). 7 The twelfth-century domed Mausoleum of Bohemond of Hauteville, adjacent to the cathedral of San Sabino in Canosa di Puglia, near Bari. 8 Presumably from the cathedral at Canosa di Puglia. 9 Barletta is a city on the north coast of Puglia. 10 A Descriptive Catalogue of the Bronzes in the South Kensington Museum, Committee of Council on Education, Science and Art Department (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1876).

423 • To Percy Wyndham, 9 August 1892 Draft 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn London. W.C. 9 August. 1892 Dear Mr Wyndham. (East Knoyle Ch’ Tower) I send with the report on the tower, and I must apologise for its’ [sic] length, but it seemed to me, if you had to go begging for funds, there must be some this

169

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

reasonable explanation by the Archt of the works to be done which would call for a considerable supply of money. When writing to the Rector, yesterday, I told him I should probably be able to post the report to you today, and that you would take it with you to Knoyle. Yours truly | Ph. W. The Hon’ Percy Wyndham. V&A, AAD

424 • To William Morris, 16 August 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tues: 16 Aug: 1892 My dear Fellow Perhaps I had better write [to] you instead of depending on my bad memory, and your appearance at ‘antiscrape’ on Thursday. Oxford Street1 has felt obliged to put some pressure on Kate as to the time when she will be able to finish the Piano, which is surely a “ferocious”, in one in this case.2 I roughly measured the work done on the case last night, and came to the conclusion that the rest of the work could not be done before another 10 months have slipped by. Kate began it last October, and the work has been going on steadily through all the hard disabilities of her state. She, poor woman, is in a sad state of health, and – if that were not only another way of killing her – she should lie up, but I seriously doubt if anything will do her good. She is, at times, dreadfully low, and also – at times – all my striving to help her on her road avails nought. She tells me she markedly feels her strength declining, and, no wonder. The food she can take is not enough to sustain her, and I gather that Broadbent (eminent, of course) gave her little hope of any improvement – even if things smiled upon her.3 We thought a small house, opposite to 35, in Queen Square, might do for her, but, having surveyed it, I can say it would be decidedly unwholesome. Kate is very stiff on the point of a new home, and though I have ventured courageously with her on the subject, I must be more cautious, as any irritation – so said Broadbent – wd be mischievous. Well, the new house has to be found, and Kate got into it before March; and even when the place is found, that may be the cap of her distress and prove too much for her. All this tryingly long preamble is merely to put you a little on the line of facts, so that you may decide, should the Piano client be importunate, as to what should be done.

170

1888–1898

I think the best way would be for Kate to go on with the work as long as she can, as the sudden cessation of it would be but an added stroke of pain, but this would depend upon the temper of your client. If time is not of real importance, he could hire from Broadwoods’ another piano till the decorated one is done – or done as far as Kate may be able to do it. Forgive this long blot, but lengthy things are not always the least clear. Kate is really in a bad way, no doubt, the question is, will she be able to rally? Your affectionate | Philip Webb. The effects of my chill were too significant for it to be wise on my part to come up to the meeting on Friday night. V&A MSC/1958/687, f. 30

1 The Morris & Co. office and showroom. 2 KF had previously decorated a Broadwood piano on behalf of Morris & Co., a project undertaken for Alexander Ionides. See Vol. I, Letter 237, note 8. 3 WM would see the consultant physician Sir William Broadbent (1835–1907) during the course of his own final illness (see below, Letter 517), but at this date knew of him only by reputation. ‘Do you think Broadbent is the best man to see her? What is his speciality? Isn’t the right man some one who understands hysteria, which, as I have heard say, simulates often other forms of disease, so closely as to deceive really experienced persons?’ WM to PSW, 19 August 1892, CLWM, III. Broadbent’s specialisms included neurology and heart disease.

425 • To Detmar Jellings Blow, 18 August 1892 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 18 Aug: 1892 1 To Detmar Blow. | Brandsby Easingwold. Yorkshire. My dear Blow. (Knoyle Ch’ Tower) I sent in my second – or working report – to Mr Wyndham on the 9th Aug:, by his wish, and he sent it on to Mr Milford. I heard fm the latter this morning, as follows – “Wyndham has sent me your full report – wh’ I have submitted to the Ch’ wardens – and shall afterwards read to a Parish meeting. As the season is so far advanced, the work ought to be taken in hand immediately. Wyndham suggests that you shd begin all the most important and necessary repairs first – so that we may have done first what is absolutely essential. But I shall not be satisfied unless we entirely carry out your suggestions. Will you therefore see to the work being taken in hand at once. I am glad to think that Mr Blow will superintended it. Yrs &c R.N.M.”

171

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

My report was a longish one – abt 13 or 14 foolscap pages, so they are not in the dark as to what we propose to do. Since I saw you I got a schedule of prices of Labour & Materials from Estcourt,2 which allowed me to make my estimate of cost of the works a little more confidently, and it amounted to between £430 and 470£, inclusive of your payments. This does not seem to have shocked them, so that I am looking to make an arrangement for you to begin on your work as soon as you can conveniently do so. Will you therefore kindly be good enough to let me know when you will be in London and can call here to arrange matters? In a very kind letter from your mother of the 9th Aug: she mentioned leaving for a visit to Yorkshire, and of seeing you there3 – being away from Cheyne Walk abt 3 weeks – and that probably return with her you would be returning to London, but not saying when. You will understand I do not want to put any pressure on you, but am only looking to make such arrangements as will meet with Mr Milford’s request for beginning at Knoyle Tower as soon as may be. If you are in communication with Mrs Blow, will you remember me kindly to her? I would have written but have not her address. Do you know of any simple place in the neighbourhood of Easingwold where my colleague – Mr Jack – could take his wife for a fortnight’s holiday in September away from any throng?4 Yrs Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 For the context of this letter, see above, Letter 410, note 2. In the company of his friend SCC, DJB had met JR in June 1888 by chance in Abbeville, a profound influence on both young men. After his return to England he met WM and PSW, and fully absorbed the SPAB principles of hands-on care for the built heritage. DJB became PSW’s trusted supervisor for the East Knoyle work, but was at this stage still completing a house for Hugh Fairfax-Cholmeley (1864–1940) at Brandsby in north Yorkshire, PSW having introduced the two men in 1891. ‘Educated at Oxford, Fairfax-Cholmeley had worked with the Guild of Handicraft with C.R. Ashbee at the Toynbee Hall settlement when, despite having almost been disowned for his socialism, he inherited the Brandsby Estate in 1889.’ Drury, p. 27. 2 Albert Estcourt would undertake the conservation work at East Knoyle. 3 DJB’s mother, Johanna Antoinette Finke (1838/9–1924) was born in Bremen, and had studied the piano under Clara Schumann. 4 ‘I am looking out for Mr Jack. This morning a young farmer friend gave me the address of one ½ a mile from Gormire Lake, on the Hambleton Hills, a grand situation about 7 miles from here. At Wass next to Byland Abbey lives one of the most delightful of Yorkshire farmers wives, who would be pleased to take in Mr Jack.’ DJB to PSW, 21 August 1892, V&A, AAD. The twelfthcentury Byland Abbey, a Savigniac foundation taken over by the Cistercians, was dissolved by Henry VIII.

172

1888–1898

426 • To Reverend Robert Milford, 18 August 1892 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 18 Aug. 1892 To The Revd | The Rector of East Knoyle Dear Mr Milford East Knoyle Ch’ Tower. In answer to your letter of yesterday’s date. I have written to Mr Blow – who is in Yorkshire at the present time – to ask him when he can arrange to be at Knoyle to superintend the works of repair to the tower, and as soon as I have his answer I will let you know. The first thing to be done will be the putting up a scaffolding under the tower arch, fixing some spars to it, and hanging cloths to separate the work wh’ will be going on there from the body of the church. In making arrangements for carrying on the work in a satisfactory way Mr Blow will consult with you. Yours truly | Ph. W. V&A, AAD

427 • To William Morris, 20 August 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 August 1892 My dear Fellow Thanks for your letter. When I saw Walker at antiscrape on Thursday, and afterwards at tea, I understood you had not gone back to Kelmscott when I thought you had. It was not unreasonable for Oxford St. to ask for some kind of date as to finishing the piano.1 The difficulty was in answering the question. It would be well for you to see Kate, and I will ask her to shew you the work she has done on the piano case.2 Naturally she is a bit hurt that she has not been able to do all in getting the work together, but tis really her work, and looks well. I fancy Broadbent found out pretty well what was the matter. You might suggest another doctor. Yours affectionately | Philip Webb.

173

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

’Tis the turning out of Q Square which is the serious matter. V&A MSC/1958/687, f 32

1 See above, Letter 424. 2 ‘I am coming up to town next Thursday again & will make a point of seeing Kate & getting her to show me the piano, if that would be pleasant to her.’ WM to PSW, 19 August 1892, CLWM, III.

428 • To Detmar Jellings Blow, 23 August 1892 Draft 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 23 Aug. 1892 To Detmar Blow East Knoyle Ch’ Tower Dear Blow. Your double letter of the 21st is a rather difficult one for me to answer in a rightly balanced way.1 To my eye you are something like Joshua Reynolds’ Garrick, between Tragedy & Comedy2 – or “How happy could I be with either, with t’other dear charmer away”.3 I quite see your “harvest point”, and I also see the oncoming shortened day, with Knoyle tower under the light of 3 guttering dips, and danger risk of fire. The head of an “outlay devil”4 set on pole between the battlements, an would be my attitude then, My my present pose as being rather that of the carved image under the north end of the label5 to the West window of the tower! When acknowledging the Rector’s request that we shd proceed at once, I said I would write to you and let him know the result. The best way would be, I think, for you to write to him direct, and say how you are placed, and giving a date for you to be at Knoyle – anything earlier than the 10th Sep would be better than nothing, still, I recognise your responsible position between contrary pulls upon you.6 The points of our Knoyle work are these. That you shd be there to consult with Wood the foreman and direct the setting up of scaffolds. To arrange about the placing of materials on the ground, and removing the benches under the tower – both in consultation with the rector. While these are doing, you to set a mason at picking a hole in some place piece of wall to find out what the core of the walling is, & so on. Looking to the strength and hardness of the ordinary hand turned local bricks, &c, &c. & seeing to ordering the new timbers &c. In fact getting things into such a state that I may might inspect with you as much as possible, when you let me know that I should come down.

174

1888–1898

You see, I would not have undertaken the work at all without your help, but, having done so, we – together – must manage the work so that it shall be done in quite a different ways to those usually done to a perfunctorily performed on precious pieces of antiquity. Again, I should not have felt justified in asking such a man as you to help me, if I had not honestly thought it was an opportunity for you to get some particular experience early in your professional life – the work you are now engaged on being an admirab a valuable initiation. This may seem to you to be over-serious on my part? I have already let Wyndham & the Rector know you could only undertake the work at Knoyle alternately with your other engagement, and you see the Rector wants to have your aid, my own position being that of Emmett’s “architectural drawing master”!7 Yours truly | Ph. W. I am really sorry your good mother should have had her holiday shortened, as she had looked forward to enjoying it in your neighbourhood. George Jack thanks you for your consideration of for him, his holiday begins about the 3rd Sepr. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I should have liked about 3 more weeks at least here to see certain things ended or more advanced, say if I returned after the first week of September, on the 9th or 10th of September, would that be putting it off too late. For nothing would prevent my coming sooner if so you wished it.’ DJB to PSW, 21 August 1892, V&A, AAD. 2 Joshua Reynolds’ painting, David Garrick between Comedy and Tragedy (1760–1, Waddesdon Manor, England) shows the eighteenth-century actor-manager being pulled in both directions by female embodiments of comedy and tragedy. 3 The reference is to Gay, The Beggar’s Opera. See above, Letter 382, note 2. 4 ‘Outlay’: outlying (Scottish, obsolete). OED. PSW gives a full description of this carving in Letter 447. 5 ‘Label’: moulding over the window. 6 ‘I’ll return on Tuesday, Aug 30th and if I should not be in time – which I fear – to call on you that day, I will do so early Wednesday morning and go down to East Knoyle ready to start work on Thursday, September 1st.’ DJB to PSW, 24 August 1892, V&A, AAD. 7 PSW evidently approved of the series of cynical appraisals of contemporary architectural practice by the architect John Thomas Emmett (1828–98), which first appeared as articles in The Quarterly Review between 1872 and 1881, although he may not have known of them until their recent republication as Six Essays (London: Unwin Brothers, 1891). He seems to have been especially taken by ‘The Profession of an “Architect” ’, first published in April 1880, in which Emmett drily scorned contemporary snobbery which regarded architects as gentleman, and masons and carvers as tradesmen, whereas in the Middle Ages, artistry and intelligent skill rested solely in the hands of artisan practitioners. In those days, Emmett argued, the Church would have ‘referred to masons for advice on masons’ work’ (p. 7). ‘[I]n the times of real art there could have been no drawing-master architects. The working masons were the architects or masters, and themselves worked out their glorious designs.’ (p. 37)

175

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

429 • To Albert Estcourt, 27 August 1892 Draft 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 27 August 1892 To Mr Albert Estcourt. Dear Sir. (East Knoyle Ch’ Tower) I have received instructions from the Rector & Ch’ Wardens of East Knoyle to begin the repairs of the to the Tower at once, & these repairs are to be carried out on the plan of a report on the condition of the tower furnished supplied them, by me. My report recommended the plan of getting my asking you to supply labour, scaffolding, and materials to carry out the works under my direction, superintended by Mr Detmar Blow, and was based on your schedule of prices of August the 1st. This has been agreed to by the Knoyle authorities. I have made arrangements for with Mr Blow to attend at the church on Thursday afternoon next, the 1st Sepr, to consult with your Mr Wood as to putting up some scaffolding, and providing some ladders, materials &c; Mr Blow to agree with Mr Milford the Rector as to the most convenient way of disposing the same on the ground. Will you therefore be so good as to give directions that poles &c for the first portion of scaffolding be taken to Knoyle before next Thursday, and placed laid in some safe place adjoining the church, but not in the churchyard till Mr Blow is there. The first piece of scaffolding wanted is that to the tower arch, and which must be sufficiently double to give secure platform for drilling holes north and south through the arch piers at an exact angle. The width & height of this tower arch are about as given in the marginal sketch, thus, [sketch] and the thickness of the wall of arch about 3' 4". On the west east side of this scaffolding, that towards the church, there will have to be a covereding with of cloths, to keep the dust from entering the body of the Church, as much as possible. Till the holes are drilled through the walls at the springing of the arch, the length of the iron or steel tie rod I propose to fix across the tower, from outside face of wall to outside face, cannot be truly ascertained. On Thursday next Mr Blow would consider with Mr Wood as to the materials to be supplied, but the quantities of these will depend upon what is found as the works proceed, but still, it would be well if you supplied by Thursday some sharp sand and some local sand, and some 6 x 12 x 2 and some 9 x 4½ x 2 blue Staffordshire paving bricks, and with some dark Portland cement, with and as well as some of the hardest burned local, "9 x "4½ x "2½, building bricks. Till the tie rod is fixed, no works of repairs above the springing of the arch should be undertaken, but, at the base of the stair turret on the inside, the work I have decided upon to be done there might be begun at once, and a labourer,

176

1888–1898

and handy, dependable, mason-bricklayer would be wanted. The process to be followed at starting would be to pick holes in the walls from the inside, at points settled upon, of sufficient size only for one man’s working room, with the necessary strut support to the wall over; and then to wet the core and below, grout with liquid cement and sand, and rebuild solidly with chosen materials in Portland cement mortar, well bonded and tightly closely pinned. For this pinning, some hard, thick, rough slates would be required, in smallish pieces. These instructions are merely preliminary; for, till I have seen the exposed walls myself, I cannot decide upon the exact special means to be employed; but the above notes will be sufficient to guide you as to providing some things now, so that no time may be lost in doing some parts of the work at once, and thus economise Mr Blow’s time. Yours truly | Ph. W. V&A, AAD

430 • To Percy Wyndham, 19 September 1892 Draft 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 19 Sepr 1892 Rough draft To the Hon’ Percy Wyndham. Dear Mr Wyndham East Knoyle Ch’ Tower Inclosed is a memorandum of the acct for preliminary expenses incurred in this matter, and which I send to you according to your expressed wish. As you know, Mr Blow is now at the work on the tower in superintending it under my direction, the actual work of reparation, and he is keeping account of all time and materials being expended, and separate from the cost of the preliminary work.1 I have heard from Mr Blow this morning, and I think the best time for me to be at Knoyle to examine the progress made, and direct further work, would be on Monday next, the 26th, and I shall have to stay one night at Knoyle. Will you be so good as to let me know if I should arrange to get a bed in the village, as it might not be convenient for me to be at Clouds? Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. You need do nothing in the way of payment of the preliminary acct till after I have seen you. | Ph. W.

177

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

East Knoyle Church Tower Reparation works Rough draft 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 19 September 1892. Memorandum of Preliminary Expenses, incurred in the employment of Detmar Blow as superintendent under the direction of Philip Webb, Archt. For work done in measuring, making plans, and directing workmen, in preparing for the works of reparation From 18th March 1892 to 29th May 4th June 1892 – 31 days at 10/- a day, including travelling expenses. £15.10.0 Mr Albert Estcourt, builder, for supplying labour, ladders &c when attending upon the architect, and Mr Blow, in preparing for work to be done 9.1.7 £24. 11.7 Of the charge agreed to and made by Mr Blow, of £15.10.0, Mr Webb has paid him – April 14 5/0/0/, 26 July 7 June 5/0/0, 26 July 5/0/0 = £15.0.0. – . 10.0 leaving balance due to Mr Blow. Ex[amine]d & approved by Ph: W. Archt | Sep 19. 1892 V&A, AAD

1 ‘We wish to keep the Preliminary Expenses which I undertook to pay in February last distinct from the expenses of the Repair of East Knoyle Church Tower. I should like to know what they come to.’ PWY to PSW, 26 August 1892, V&A, AAD.

431 • To William Morris, 3 October 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 3 October. 1892 My dear Fellow You should not have plopped down those “Balls” under my nose in the public assembly on Friday night if you wished me to keep my presence of mind.1 What little may have remained to me was lost over the “Legend”,2 and your new pageborder. Am a little cooler now, and can behave a little more “distinctly”. The John Ball is one more gain in its highest style of art, and I am set up for the rest of my unnatural life, though embarrassed for the future disposition of effects! The spinning & delving picture is greatly improved, and makes a beautiful foil to the first page. It was impossible to get rid of some of the carelessness of the otherwise delightful design, but these accidents are unimportant.3 Kate was much lifted when I produced her copy, but I doubt if she will be able to acknowledge the gift to you, as she is in a low way in addition to her burden 178

1888–1898

of weakness.4 You see, this moving has to be done in a month or so, and there is burning of letters, and disposing of household things which may be too many for the smaller crib next the Foundling.5 I shall have to see to the cleaning down of the walls, and fettling up to make it decent & wholesome – and the drains must be tested and secured, and the rest – Amen. I wd like, when you get anchored again in London, to have a talk with you at rather more length than has been possible of late. I only meant by this rambling to shew that I was a little less sheepish than on Friday night, and more able to calmly enjoy my possessions. Your affectionate | Philip Webb. P.S. They have made me a member of the ‘Art Workers Guild’, and I am on the verge of refusing the very kindly intention of the dealers out of honour. My grins are too broad for society.6 V&A MSC/1958/687, f. 33

1 The Kelmscott Press edition of A Dream of John Ball and A King’s Lesson was published on 24 September 1892, having previously appeared in book form by Reeves & Turner in 1888 (for which see above, Letter 355, note 1). 2 Although originally intended as the first book to be printed by the Kelmscott Press, The Golden Legend was delayed until November 1892. See above, Letter 406, note 4. 3 The frontispiece to A Dream of John Ball was designed by EBJ, showing Adam and Eve above the legend ‘When Adam Delved And Eve Span Who Was Then The Gentleman’. The roman lettering and the border were designed by WM. The ‘carelessness’ referred to details of the engraving from EBJ’s design, executed by W.H. Hooper. See Peterson pp. 16–18. 4 For WM’s presentation copy to KF, see Peterson, p. 18. 5 KF moved to 2 Caroline Place, Guilford Street, a house within the sizable estate owned by the Governors of the Foundling Hospital, which institution became a significant landlord in the speculative developments of Bloomsbury. 6 A further instance of PSW’s reluctance to join professional societies, or to promote his views.

432 • To William Morris, 13 October 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 13 Oct: 1892 My dear Fellow I do not know where you are, but having seen your name in the paper as a functioneer at Westminster,1 I fancy you may be at Hammersmith. It has taken me all this time to get my wits together after getting the Golden Legend.2 Well may you – if so inclined – skip like the little hills, over the triumph.3 My stars, Mr Morris, ’tis a lovely book; and I wetted my tooth on it by reading a few lines to Kate out of it on Tuesday night. She, poor thing, is a little dumbfounded by this last gift from you coming closely on the top of the one before it. I made her smile by reading the first lines as ‘ “of the advent of our Lorde” Bernard Quaritch, the god from the machine’. The ‘Times’ having so made it.4 179

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

You see, I cannot help it, I must make jests to hide my blushes, which ought to be permanent, a kind of port-wine mark on my cheeks, or the permanent patches of modesty under the tails of resplendent baboons. Alas, they (the blushes) fade away and I drop again into immodesty. Still, I am | Your affectionate Philip Webb. V&A MSC/1958/687, f. 34

1 The funeral of the poet laureate, Alfred Tennyson, took place on 12 October at Westminster Abbey. WM was invited, and only on the day itself told Macmillan & Co that he would not be attending: ‘I have only this minute returned to town or I would have sent the card back sooner’ (12 October 1892, CLWM III). On 13 October The Morning Post include WM in the long list of those invited, ‘nearly all of whom were present’, and PSW probably assumed that he had been in the Abbey. 2 See above, Letter 431, note 2. 3 ‘Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams, and ye little hills, like lambs?’ Psalms 114:6. 4 The first words of The Golden Legend, under the heading ‘Of Thaduent of our Lorde’ are ‘The tyme of thaduent or comyng of our lord in to this world’. PSW’s joking presumably was directed at The Times announcement in its ‘Books of the Week’ column (6 October 1892). ‘Pre-eminent among reprints and new editions is Mr. Bernard Quaritich’s truly magnificent reproduction of The Golden Legend, as translated by William Caxton. . . . Ocular evidence alone can convey a just idea of the elegance of these three large quarto volumes, which, we are afraid, would have excited the envy of Master Caxton himself. We can but testify to the judgment and taste of the joint editors, Mr. William Morris and Mr. F.S. Ellis, who, we understand, have given their services to Mr. Quaritch gratuitously . . .’ The relationship with Quaritch was in fact more complicated, because whilst effectively he acted as publisher and distributor, the contract gave WM ‘absolute and sole control over choice of paper, choice of type, size of the reprint and selection of the printer’. But it is true that WM and Ellis agreed to receive 12 copies each in lieu of any payment. See Peterson, pp. 20–23.

433 • To William Morris, 28 October 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday. 28 Octr My dear Fellow I was disappointed of you last evening. Walker on leaving Committee whispered me you were not all right. Had intended looking in upon you this evening before H.S.S1 business this evening; but I have a chest cold on me (barking enow to bring dead enemies to life again) and do not like to lay it bare to the extra damp of today, so had better not come up – however, if it turned out to be drier in evening, I might – but it don’t so promise. I much wanted a talk with you to learn facts, good or bad, and find out what you have to do in the way of going abroad, or what not. Am getting Kate’s new house done up for her to go into next month, of course it proves to be more out of sorts than we were led to believe (wh’ I did not) and I find drains & other matters must be put to rights, and the work will amount up a bit, but it can be managed. 180

1888–1898

If not too laid-by, send me a word of yourselves, or depute Mercury Walker to do it.2 Cockerell told me stories about books, & printing, and hundreds of pages, galore, at Gattis’ last night, and I listened with longest ears.3 Your affectionate | Ph: Webb. V&A MSC/1958/687, f. 35

1 Hammersmith Socialist Society. 2 ‘Mercury’ was an occasional nickname for EW, his range of social and business contacts making him an effective messenger. 4 On 1 November, SCC began work on the ‘truly enviable task’ (CD) of cataloguing WM’s manuscripts and books, work which he attributed to PSW’s influence on his behalf with WM. The job would lead to him giving increasing secretarial support at Kelmscott House and assisting WM in his purchases of books and manuscripts. He is an invariably reliable witness in matters relating to the Kelmscott Press before WM’s death, and thereafter when he supervised its closure.

434 • To Giacomo Boni, 30 October 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 30 Octr 1892 My dear Giacomo I spelled your letter out in 2 minutes, so there was no great advantage in condensing some months of your ideas on two miserably small slips of paper. The longest part of your notes was given to an uncondensed and perriphrastic [sic] expression of indolence, such as “Cicero” in his long-winded “tales” would have been ashamed of.1 Let me lay down the law . . . for once! There is no merit in brevity, if the story can be better told at length. Some modern prose writers aim at expressing themselves as if prose & poetry were the same things. G.B is so much in love with terseness, that, when he’s too lazy to write a reasonable letter to an Englishman, he writes in a way befitting his idle humour, and magnifies the virtue (?) of the feat. Memorandum, take warning from this, and stop on the southern shore of the straits of Dover in the spring – or, shall I say, keep on the southern side of Holborn, so as to be clear of the objurgations of Pippo the non-condenser. Damn – (you cannot complain of the want of brevity in that word) your impudence in trying to ascribe to me a lengthiness of senility [word obliterated] undeserved. See, I am not scared by your unveiled scorn. Note this large sheet of paper. There, now I am easier in my mind. Occasionally I have a turn for re-reading on old subjects, and this generally happens when there is some public disturbance on the matter. There has just been published another life of Michel Angelo.2 I have 2 of my own,3 and have only looked through this, and found it vacant of all valuable idea, and a mere beating about of controversial matter. The story is told at great length by John Addington Symonds, 181

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

and it is evident to me he should have let the dead giant alone. Well, I’ve turned over books & photo’s: and other matters, consequent of the troubled water. You probably know a book called ‘Mirabilia Urbis Romæ’ which gives a 12th cent idea of Rome.4 The English Editor gives a photogravure of one of the panels of the bronze doors of S: Peter, and, in a note, says, “The bronze doors of S. Peters made for Eugenius IV, in 1447”.5 Now, Middleton mentions that there are two hands visible on the workmanship of the doors,6 and when I looked at them, in the bronze, with these eyes (and I have a photo: of them) I thought they looked – at all events in parts – much older than the 15th cent: What can you tell me about them in your brief way? I have looked carefully at your impression of the seal, and can but conclude it is an abolitionist piece of work.7 You say XVII cent: which seems to me to be early for it, as the cutting (from the wax impression) is not remarkably good. In truth your drawing of the setting of the seal is better, and a pretty setting it is. I don’t think in the 17th cent: there were many ideas about of humanity at large, or in connection with an African human form. In that time, black slavery was not looked upon with very different eyes to that which is obtains [sic] with white slaves at present, and I doubt if the Italian urn-fillers on 6 Nov: will have much thought or knowledge of a ‘factory hell’.8 Maybe there will come about in the 20th cent: the abolition of factories, and seals may be cut shewing a factory thus [sketch]. I wish a scientist would collect, in a sealed bottle, the human sweat which daily goes up to heaven from these hells, and produce it at the right moment to the noses of unbelievers. Parliamentary government has had its day – not a bad one, perhaps, in earlier time. In England it has much lost its savour, and when Gladstone is stretched under the grass of mother earth, it will be shaken in England, and have to march, as Carlyle wd have said.9 Things are right for their day, tho’, not all things are right even at that time. We have to distinguish between laws of nature, and laws of convention. We ought to be “roped” to the laws of nature when climbing, as they do to the venturous on the alps. There is a tendency to slide away from the rock base. The English Parliament is acknowledged to be a slave (chained, like he of your seal) to precedent, convention, and compromise, and, practically, it says, ‘let laws of nature be damned.’ You are young enough to live, and see changes which my age will not let me see. Never mind, I can file away at a link of the chain. Ah! “GOSSIP”.10 Well, ‘cosi fan tutti’, except such an one as he who is blotting paper at this moment, at great length. Middleton has been caught by the engulfing stream. He is a good fellow, and I hope he will survive. Some day I shall have an epigrammatic epistle signed – M.B – with “married yesterday to the loveliest girl you can imagine. Am just off to the hills, cannot say more”. If you were to write me a laconic epistle, thus, “Am training for one of the papal choir, my voice is getting to be distinctly male Alto” – I should not be much disturbed, as the mischief would be clearly calculable. Ah; suppose Giacomo were to talk tersely of the ‘laws of nature’? Well, the laws of nature in this matter are the “separators of companions”. Buoni Boni, you

182

1888–1898

are unkind. Here you send me verses prettily written, “Tu strisci, iovolo; tu”, &c, and do not translate them. I know you do it purposely to infer my ignorance. I wd have liked to know what Ada Negri had it in her poor unconventional heart to utter.11 It meant, I dare say, “How long – O Lord – how long”.12 Ah, ‘How long’ – indeed. We have not found out much yet. There is space enough between the dome of sky and the round earth for more things now undreamed of.13 Your long winded | Ph. Webb. There seems to be so much abuse in this letter, that you may forget that I am thankful for your goodness to poor me. Courtauld 127a-c

1 ‘Cicero is rather long for me in his tales, yet he found greek professors of eloquence who asked his leave to amplificate [sic] in their translation what he had written in the original.’ GBO to PSW, 16 October 1892, Courtauld 126b-c. 2 John Addington Symonds, The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, 2 vols (London: John C. Nimmo, 1893). This book was actually issued in 1892; Symonds’s preface is dated April 1892. 3 PSW’s annotated copy of C. Heath Wilson, Life and Works of Michelangelo Buonarroti (London: John Murray, 1874), is now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 147. 4 This description of the ancient city, written by one of the canons of St Peter’s in the second half of the twelfth century, remained a standard guide to medieval visitors and pilgrims for several centuries. The first English translation was that by Nichols (see the note following). 5 Francis Morgan Nichols (ed) Mirabilia Urbis Romæ – The Marvels of Rome or A Picture of the Golden City, an English version of the Medieval Guide-Book (London: Ellis and Elvey, 1889). The illustration appears as the frontispiece, and is discussed on p. 196. 6 ‘The doors of St. Peter’s show distinctly the work of two hands; the large panels are very inferior to the small reliefs and the rich foliage in the borders.’ Middleton, The Remains of Ancient Rome, II, p. 287, note 2. 7 GBO includes a red wax impression of a seal, ‘with figure of chained negro, supplicating, bent on one knee. . . . I have a mind of making a present of this seal to some Museum, but I should like to know first what the figure means, with his empty stomach. Was it a missionary seal, simply referring to the slave-trade? Or is its figure a symbol of the labouring classes chained down and starved (two centuries ago) by feudalism?’ 126e-f. 8 A general election would take place in Italy on 6 November. 9 ‘Dickens & Carlyle were not tender of parliamentary discussions in their own country which has heard the first balbettamenti [babblings] of a representative government.’ 126d. 10 ‘GOSSIP. Prof. Middleton was here a few days ago. Mr. Stillman announced [to] me that his second daughter, named Bella, & Prof. Middleton are fiancés.’ 126c. Middleton married Bella Stillman, William Stillman’s second daughter from his first marriage, in December 1892. 11 ‘Ada Negri a poor Lombard girl, is a village-teacher of children; her mother is worn out by hard work in a cotton or hemp manufactory. Ada looks around with infinite melancholy . . . and crystallises her own impressions in strange verses.’ 126g-h. 12 ‘How long wilt though forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?’ Psalms 13:1. 13 ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Hamlet, I,v.166–7.

183

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

435 • To the Council of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 23 November 1892 Draft 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 23 Novr 1892 To The Council of | The Royal Institute of British Archts Gentlemen I learn from Mr Detmar Blow, who is, I believe, a “Pugin Student” of your society,1 and is at the present time engaged in superintending, under my direction, the repair of the valuable 14th century tower of East Knoyle Church, Wiltshire, that he is also at work in preparing certain drawings in connection with the studentship. I ask, therefore, to be allowed to explain to your Society, that, Mr Blow, being anxious to add to his knowledge of ancient building construction, is, at the same time, he was to be engaged in preparing his drawings for your society, entered upon the work of carrying out the repairs to the above named tower, believing that he would have sufficient time in which to complete his work for your society both objects within the stated periods. Mr Blow tells me he has done between 4 or and 5 weeks’ of his work for the studentship, but he may be delayed in completing the pressing work he is engaged upon for me, and asks for he wd humbly ask your society to grant him an extension of time into the early part of next year for his studentship work. Personally, I would ask to be allowed to express my opinion that the work Mr Blow is engaged upon under my direction, is of such importance to a student of architecture, that it would be a misfortune for him to have be taken off from it till it is completed, wh’ I believe will be about Christmas of this year. I would also add that I have the greatest respect for his ability, industry, and general aptitude for in directing a very difficult and particular work of constructive repair, the execution of which is giving me great satisfaction. As Mr Blow is only receiving 50 shillings a week for his duties as foreman of the works in question, under my direction control, it wd be a matter of some importance to him that he should not lose the money value of his studentship, having given some considerable time to the work attached to it.2 Believe me I beg | Gentlemen | Yours faithfully | Ph.W. Archt V&A, AAD

1 In 1892, DJB was the recipient of the Pugin Travelling Scholarship of the RIBA. See also below, Letter 439, note 6. 2 ‘Your letter . . . was laid before the Council of the Institute at their meeting of yesterday, when they readily assented to the request you have made on his behalf. The Council desire that Mr Blow should submit, prior to the 23rd instant, what drawings he has already executed, as part of his engagement with them; and they will then grant him such extension of time for its completion, as may be necessary under the circumstances you describe.’ RIBA to PSW, 6 December 1892, V&A, AAD.

184

1888–1898

436 • To Sydney Cockerell, 25 November 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 25 Novr 1892 My dear Cockerell I had another letter from Arthur Dixon this morning on the matter of Broadway foot paving.1 He says, “The question of the footpath is so very serious to Broadway, that I venture to ask if you would not also write to the Times & other London & Worcester papers about it, & perhaps get the letter signed also by Mr Morris & some others of authority & influence who know Broadway. I believe Alma Tadema has been there”.2 I doubt the “Times” letters, but a Worcester newspaper might have some effect. When writing your letter to County Council – could you insert a paragraph about mistaking destruction of interesting & beautiful features, and homely character of places, for common sense action in sanitary matters, and that when the places have been turned into 19th century badly built modern houses, with all their abominations of fouled befouled streams &c &c comparatively small & not overcrowded towns become more dangerous to health than before they were disturbed by ill considered schemes. You will understand what I mean by this, from remembering the agent’s letter about Bell’s farm. Morris will put you up to the soul comforting qualities of Broadway, and that its beautiful character might easily be destroyed and its healthiness not improved one wit, even if it were not worsened.3 In a hurry to catch early post | Yrs | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/16

1 Arthur Stansfield Dixon (1856–1929) was an architect by training, became a maker of arts and crafts metalwork pieces and founded the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft. See By Hammer and Hand. The Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham, edited by Alan Crawford (Birmingham: City Museum and Art Gallery, 1984). 2 SCC annotation: ‘The Broadway (Worcestershire) authorities wanted to pave the footpaths with blue bricks, and I was asked to draft a letter for the S.P.A.B. by way of protest.’ The Dutch-born painter, Lawrence (Lorenz) Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) moved with his family to London in 1870, rapidly building a reputation as a major Victorian artist: he was knighted in 1899 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1905. 3 In his lecture, ‘The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation’, delivered at the London Institution on 10 March 1881 (see Vol. I, Letter 159, note 1), WM used a labourer’s cottage in Broadway as an example of honest building – ‘a work of art and a piece of nature’ – which risked being overlooked and lost. ‘Who built it then? No strange race of men, but just the mason of Broadway village: even such a man as is now running up down yonder three or four cottages of the wretched type we know too well: nor did he get an architect from London, or even Worcester, to design it.’ Hopes and Fears for Art (London: Ellis & White, 1882), p. 182.

185

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

437 • To Giacomo Boni, 27 November 1892 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 27 November 1892 To | Signor Boni My dear Giacomo. Doubtless you thought you were doing a clever thing when you posted those 6 copies of your “Lion of S: Mark” without a word of grace from yourself.1 Of course I blessed you for the one gift, and banned you for withholding the other. But my curses “deep but not loud”, do not end there.2 I am sure your essay is written with terseness, and fire, (my experience of your written expression is that, at least) but I can neither read the one nor warm myself with the other. And there are you, in your Barberini sparrow’s nest, rubbing your hands with huge delight – as is the custom with learned or rich people – at ignorance & want. However, I’ll be even with you. When you next wend your way to pit-coalblack-town, I will change my lodging, rub out my address, and put on the clothes of a gentleman, so that you would pass me in the street without recognition. You will then have to put up with the society of the Prince of Wales and the Dukes and Duchesses of Do-nothing. Also, I will order William Morris to make a ballad on you, print it in his boldest type, and set it on the pillars of the portico of the Lord Mayor’s Mansion house. There, out of dire revenge I’ll do that, or ---- worse! And you call this kind of thing ‘a complaining’ – Bah. Well – Pax. The wings of your Lion are expanded, and floated to the gaze of all mankind. The voice of the carper is quelled, for the Lion of Venice is himself again. By this, I do not mean to say, for an instant, there are no people in boot-shaped Italy who do not point the finger of scorn at your efforts. That would be too much to say and, perhaps, to be borne. For, if it were not for the wicked how could we estimate the good? Answer me that, and you answer one of the great riddles of the human world. I wrote your name in conjunction with that of Emery Walker (he who sent you the photo: of the Japanese Lion) and gave him a copy of the essay with your blessing, which, with other stories told of you, is making him lie-in-wait to see you when you next foul your eyes with this dirty quarter of the world. In like manner, I soothed poor Miss Faulkner in her sick bed (only for a while I hope) with another copy, and kindly thanks arose. She knows much of you – both lies, and fact, which I have told her from time to time. When with William Morris & a friend or two the other evening at the Café, and I was lifting your name aloft, I said – “When Boni was with me, he asked if W.M. was not a very simple, hearty, honest fellow,” and I said “O, no, he is a Gothic Machiavelli”. This was much enjoyed, and I said “that’s a lie”. Never mind Giacomo, it rolled back to your credit.

186

1888–1898

It was wise of you in the second plate to give the diagram in black and white shewing the old, and the “restoration”, of the Lion. I should like to treat all our misused ancient buildings in the same way – some of them would be all black except the inside of the walls. I hardly thought the poor photo: of the Asoka lion would have reproduced so well. The illustration of the 4 lion-supports from the Sanchi Tope, is a good one.3 Wonderful is all the skilful jumble of the lintel supported on the serious lion props. In the note under the view of the mended lion, I see that the Orvieto workman, Ravelli, comes in for comforting praise – but I make wonderful blunders in translating Italian. Now, if you, and Adolfo Cozza, and Ravelli have not done your best for the beloved spiritual beast, may S. Mark singe you well in purgatory. I think George Wardle will be in Rome shortly, if he is not there now? When I heard of him from Posillipo a few days ago, he said he expected to be there on the 23rd or 24th. I hope you will see each other, and impart the one to the other life compelling wisdom. I would like to make a third, and set the two learned by the ears! I fancy that Wardle has collected many hard knots which wd be well if they were untied; perhaps your ten fingered mind may release the bonds? He, George Wardle, has sent me many interesting and accurately described facts of antiquities he has seen in his 4 years travelling in France, Switzerland, and Italy, and these accompanied with many photos: – I need scarcely say that, as he is of the learned in many matters, I am always impudent and sceptical as to what he says on antiquities, and we have many a point between us of such extremity of dryasdustic fury, as can only be laid with the blood of one or both. If you should be at all shy when you see him, fall-to and abuse me, and you will be in each other’s arms as sealed friends for ever afterwards. There, adieu. When you want more, ask for it. In the meantime believe (this is no lie) that I thank you for your Lion book which is only one of many kindnesses you have laid on the entity Philip Webb. Courtauld 128a-c

1 Giacomo Boni, ‘Il Leone di San Marco’, Archivo Storico dell’arte, V, 1892. ‘I [have] nearly finished my article on the bronze lion: and among the phototype illustrations you shall find some of the lions which you kindly sent to me.’ GBO to PSW, 9 June 1892, Courtauld 116c. 2 ‘And that which should accompany old age, / As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have; but, in their stead, / Curses not loud but deep’, Macbeth, V.iii.24–7. 3 The Buddhist Sanchi Stupa is located in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, north-east of Bhopal.

187

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

438 • To Sydney Cockerell, 29 November 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tues: 29 Novr ’92 To | Sydney Cockerell Dear Cockerell Winchelsea Ch’1 Yours gladly rec of yesterday’s date. Paul Cooper’s letter useful though chaotic.2 He shd be encouraged to work the Ellen T. If she wrote direct to the Society asking it to advise her as to how to move – as an interested resident – in pressing the state of the ch’ on the authorities, the society could send down, and report. Inderwick is functionarial, mainly, I fancy – but might, possibly, be shoved – perhaps?3 The T. should be urged to lose no opportunity of expressing her anxiety as to the fate of such an incalculably precious piece of work – as the ingredients of mischief are in the pot, and will soon begin to simmer. Till there is a dependable archt’s report on the fabric, nothing can be laid down, advanced, and driven home. I know next to nothing of the British ‘Sara’4 – and I dare say she is as flighty as a field full of hurdles. I turned to the ‘Tailor Patched’, but failed to find the pertinent passage – mine is the cheap edition.5 Carlyle’s first rattle of his tab chain, and clearance of his barking throat, is delightful. His volume of voice on ‘things in general’ is always wonderful. But his bark was as nothing to mine on Sunday night, when I must have been reported to the benchers as a W.C nuisance. I’ll write to Hale-White, eve’ tonight, for now I’m writing hurriedly.6 Yrs decently | Ph: Webb. Am glad the books begin to sing to you.7 W.M. has laid me under the table of shame with his black letter on my chest.8 d

V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/17

1 SCC annotation: ‘[St Thomas’s, Winchelsea] was threatened with restoration and I went down to spy out its condition and interview the parson who was a surly fellow. Ellen Terry lived there and it was thought that she might have some influence in the right direction.’ The actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928) bought Tower Cottage in Winchelsea, East Sussex in 1892, where Henry Irving was a frequent visitor. 2 An architect by training, John Paul Cooper (1869–1933) became a significant figure in the production of Arts and Crafts metalwork, silver and jewellery, designing the silver casket in St Paul’s, Covent Garden, containing the ashes of his friend, Ellen Terry. See Michael Holroyd, A Strange Eventful History. The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families, London: Chatto and Windus, 2008, pp 513–4. SCC and Cooper became friendly during 1892: ‘Found Cooper at home when we returned and talked with him about architecture etc until he left at 11. He had been staying with Ellen Terry, and told us some interesting things about her.’ CD, 16 October 1892.

188

1888–1898 3 The barrister Frederick Andrew Inderwick (1836–1904) had been MP for Rye (1880–5), and at this time was mayor of Winchelsea (1892–3). 4 Ellen Terry greatly admired the work of the French actress, Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923). ‘People said she was to the French stage what Ellen herself was to the English stage.’ Holroyd, A Strange Eventful History, p. 158. 5 Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, completed in 1831. SCC annotation: ‘I had quoted some sentence from Carlyle’s passage about the advisability of young men retiring under barrels at the age of nineteen & of their being “there left &c &c till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty five” Sartor II ch 4.’ 6 WHW had intended accompanying SCC on 4 October to inspect St Thomas’s, Winchelsea, but he was prevented by illness. 7 See above, Letter 433, note 3. 8 The Kelmscott Press employed WM’s new black-letter font for William Caxton’s translation of Raoul Lefevre, Recueil des histories de Troy (The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye). This, the first book Caxton printed in English (1474), was published on 24 November 1892.

439 • To Detmar Jellings Blow, 18 December 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 18 Dec: 1892 To Detmar Blow My dear Detmar In your letter of the 15th you seem to be satisfied with neither my question nor your answer – No, this won’t do, your question, and my answer.1 Well, the answer was no more shadowy than the question. Again, I had better enlarge a little, for even poetical allusions demand some knowledge of a considerable range of matter which has gone before. Well, (again) your conjunction with the R.I.B.A was of your choice, not theirs, so that, having penetrated to their bosom, you must accept the constitutional stoniness of the embrace. You cannot ask them to enlarge the borders of the argument at this period of the epic. It was somewhat allowable for me to do so when I wrote to them, and, as they have acceded – in a way – to the request, you will have to fulfill the engagement as well as is possible under the circumstances.2 Though, I, with others, fell in heartily with Emmett, and his architectooralooral “drawing master”, it does not follow that architectural drawings must be of no value.3 Even the peoples who followed (in outlying places) the disintegration of the Roman Empire, had, for lack of their own knowledge, to imitate what they could see of the Roman architecture still remaining, as they were as dead to living art as we are, so that they all – more or less – became antiquarians. Again, the antiquarianism of our own time has the seeds of life in it, ready to grow when it is in the soil – which it is not, nor cannot be, in our time – or, let me say, my time. A well done drawing is always good, and by, ‘well done’, I don’t mean refinedly done, but done with a frank expression of the value of the object drawn. I have often laid the rule down the back of my grandmother,4 and have found the inspiration of it, (a touching mother earth, as it were) as Ruskin did, when he went 189

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

minutely into the arithmetical progression of the parts of the Fondaco dei Turchi.5 Truth to tell, if I – under extraordinary illusion – had fallen in love with a girl, I should have been well inspired if I had laid the 2 foot rule down her back before I committed either herself or myself. The subtlest turns of art are never injured by the tests of facts, and, if ones grandmother’s nose is 4½ inches long, it would be as well to know it, before kneeling down for her blessing. I think I should say, ‘send what drawings you can to the R.I.B.A. to the time named, (do not be half an hour late) with a simple and direct expression of what you may have learned when in close contact for months with an interesting and valuable mediaeval building, &c. How you had noted, (for example) that the rude sculpture – evidently done by the local masons – was full of interest, and historical instruction; above all, it was effective in the several positions, and always tended to complete the impressiveness of the building – ’ Also, you might hint, that till architects could can enter into the feeling of such a building, they should not be entrusted with its repair, &c, &c.6 I am afraid this will help you but little – but I mean what is written, by Ph: Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I have your letter – you should have had the terrible news the same day, but as will happen fresh enthusiasm soon rose above sorrow. Your reply to my last question does not satisfy, or rather the question does not. I fear myself much especially in your personal, or spiritual presence, taking your sayings to heart.’ DJB to PSW, 15 December 1892, V&A, AAD. 2 See above, Letter 435. 3 See above, Letter 428, note 7. For ‘architectooralooral’, see Vol. I, Letter 83, note 3. 4 He means the East Knoyle tower: see below, Letter 443 – ‘ “our grandmother” as we call her’. 5 The Fondaco dei Turchi is a thirteenth-century palazzo on the Grand Canal. JR was fascinated by its arcade, and in The Stones of Venice (3 vols, London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1851–3) he included various measurements and a diagram (I, pp. 121–2) and his own drawings of several of the capitals (III, facing p. 299). 6 ‘Alas for the Institute undertaking. I gave way under the influence of building, or could have spent the time here as in Yorks in luxurious drawing, and started the year with the fixed intention of making such use of it as never before.’ DJB to PSW, 20 December 1892, V&A, AAD. Despite PSW’s efforts on his behalf, DJB failed to meet the alternative requirements of the RIBA Committee and the money for the Pugin Travelling Scholarship was consequently withheld. I am grateful to Michael Drury for this clarification.

440 • To Sydney Cockerell, 28 December 1892 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Wed: 28 Dec ’92 My dear Cockerell You see, I was not a bit frightened at the work you set me to do. I lay down and went to sleep by it. When your post card waked me up, I rubbed my eyes, 190

1888–1898

and became aware of my awful position. However, I attacked the duty with that rashness which attends upon ignorance, and, inclosed, you have the result.1 May it not damn your chance; rather that you damn me and suppress it, if you fail to suppress me. Besides the sleepy metaphor, I have been occupied closely since I saw you, and almost single-handed, as my two fellows retired for 3 days to their puddings,2 and Mrs Long, my housekeeper, provided me with mine. Get the berth if you can, as it is handy here, and I could pay you out by repeated visits there!3 Asking all possible pardon | I am yours, till the day of (better) judgment | Ph Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/19

1 SCC annotation: ‘I applied for the curatorship of the Soane Museum, being unaware at the time that the post can only be held by professional architects. P.W. refers to a letter of recommendation that he wrote for me.’ SCC was also recommended by (amongst others) WM (see letter of 23 December 1892, CLWM, III, pp. 484–5). PSW and WM wrote to the President of the Royal Academy (then Sir Frederic Leighton), as the 1833 Act of Parliament which designated Sir John Soane’s house and its contents a museum stipulated ‘that the Royal Academy should nominate the curator’. CLWM, III, p. 485, note 3. 2 His assistants, GWJ and WW. 3 Raymond Buildings was a short walk from the John Soane Museum, at 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

441 • To Sydney Cockerell, 29 December 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 Dec. 1892 Dear Cockerell What, more! I thought, when I knocked the bottom out of that keg of ‘best Irish’, and laid-on with the largest pallet knife, you would have shone like the ball & cross of Paul’s, when the mist shifts on a May morning.1 At Sig: Gattis’ next collection of the frugal party, I’ll ask you to open your mouth, that I may see if your breed is that of Capt: McIntyre’s dog, which, for quickness of swallow, made Monkbarns almost forgive the loss he had sustained.2 These recondite jokes be almost worthy of the Dec: ‘mists’ enshrouding our peace of mind at this moment. Have a care of your eyes my friend, so that you may be able to see clearly the precious mediæval figures (sic) Jackson is to soothe our feelings with, when he robs our St Mary’s of her originality.3 Ask Walker to shew you ‘the Times’ – as the thing should be followed up, if need be.4 Jackson has been called, the maker of new Oxford, (or some such phrase) and I can but hope Oxford will curse its maker in newest fashion, and with American aptitude in blasphemy. 191

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I make a note or two, in case you should have to put your admired pen to paper again on this subject. Here be a few memoranda. The statuary to the new (sic) transept front of Westr Abbey Ch’, looks so unlike the real thing, that the figures might almost be copies.5 The renewed figure heads round Wren’s theatre at Oxford are, fortunately, crumbling into such softening of folly, as to be of no more use as pegs on which to hang the undergraduate wit.6 The copies of the capitals of the Ducal Pal: at Venice, which cost so much money to carve in imitation of the still precious & serviceable remains of the discarded ancient ones, had to be almost recarved before they were presentable to the “Forestieri”.7 If Oxford is to be thus abused, let the remains of the statues go to South Kensington; to be sent alongside the Winchester coll: stained glass there, which, also, was discarded.8 If - - - - no, enough. How heavenly bright it was on Tuesday in Sussex, when I gazed with awe at the tricks the frost had played upon my brickwork there. I had some difficulty in taking “a wide estimate” of my own architecture.9 Get those eyes well, so that they may shine upon my poor jokes when you next meet | Your befogged | Ph: Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/20

1 See previous letter. 2 In Scott’s The Antiquary (1816), Hector McIntyre’s dog (Juno) swallows an earthenware jar owned by the Laird of Monkbarns (ch 30). 3 The architect Thomas Graham Jackson (1835–1924), appointed to manage the restoration of the spire of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, oversaw many important projects in Oxford, including extensions to several colleges, restoration of the Bodleian Library, and the design and construction of the Examination Schools. His books included Modern Gothic Architecture (1873). See William Whyte, Oxford Jackson. Architecture, Education, Status, and Style 1835–1924, Oxford: OUP, 2006. See also Vol. I, Letter 169. 4 On 28 December, The Times published an exchange of correspondence between HTT, as secretary of the SPAB, and Jackson, which the latter had forwarded to the paper. It made public the SPAB’s concern that repairs to the masonry of St Mary the Virgin would result in the removal of the medieval statuary, ‘that the authentic figures, however worn, will always be of extreme interest, while the most skilful imitations obtainable will be harsh when new, and misleading when time has softened them’. SCC annotation: ‘As one of the Committee I was deputed to draft a letter to the Times. I am not sure whether it appeared. If so it was followed up by one dictated by Morris on Jan. 6 1893. The battle raged for some time.’ WM’s letter (dated 6 January, and not in CLWM) appeared in The Times, signed by HTT for the SPAB committee. See also WM to PSW, 6 June 1893, CLWM IV, reporting on his visit to Oxford, and detailed discussions about the proposed works. 5 WM had raised the concerns of the SPAB about proposed restorations to Westminster Abbey in his letter to The Pall Mall Gazette, 22 October 1891, CLWM, III.

192

1888–1898 6 Christopher Wren was the architect for Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre (1664–68). 7 Foreigners (It). But PSW may be trying a cross-language pun here, suggesting the Italian equivalent of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, which his experience over 1 Palace Green led him to equate with petty-mindedness and obfuscation. 8 Three panels made in the late fourteenth century for Winchester College by Thomas of Oxford were removed between 1821–8 with a view to restoration, but instead were replaced with copies. The originals were bought in 1855 by the South Kensington Museum. 9 PSW’s current ‘secular’ project was the construction of a country house for the solicitor James Samuel Beale and his wife, ‘Standen’, near East Grinstead in Sussex. See below, Letter 474.

442 • To Sydney Cockerell, 31 December 1892 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 31 Decr 1892 To | Sydney Cockerell Dear Cockerell The letter to the Times could not be better; I cannot alter it, would not if I could.1 I scorn the implication that archts are the best sort of people to take a broad view of - - even a letter; or that they would make the best museum keepers.2 Offer the wings at reduced price to Sir Harris of Drury.3 Preen your remaining feathers, and fly at higher game next time. I saw Morris last night; he seems to have held his ferocious team of adder, scorpion, alligator, Hornet &c, well together at the Kelmscott; and had come off with but trifling scratches; but, in his garden, cabbages are scarce.4 Old Soane is a nuisance now that he is rotten, and I’m sorry he did not live to have the cold water cure for Architects applied by Emmett.5 This note I perceive is not in order, for I must add, that I knew Ffoulkes when he was young, and now we are old folks.6 He was probably right about the statues though. Jackson is an archt, Ffoulkes was not. The right title is, “Church of S. Mary the Virgin, Oxford.” There is a Magdalen there, and well known too. I return all the papers. | Yrs | Ph. Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/21

1 As SCC himself implies (see note 4 to previous letter), this draft was not published. 2 An allusion to SCC’s failure to obtain the Soane Museum curatorship. 3 The actor and theatre manager, Sir Augustus Harris (1852–96), promoted lavish productions at Drury Lane, including opera and pantomime. He had been knighted in 1891. 4 WM spent Christmas at Kelmscott Manor with his daughters, where the company included George Bernard Shaw, Mary De Morgan and Henry Sparling. See CLWM, IV, p. 486, note 3. 5 See above, Letter 428, note 7. 6 Edmund Ffoulkes (1819–94) was vicar of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford.

193

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

443 • To Percy Wyndham, 3 January 1893 Draft 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn. London W.C. 3 Jan 1893 To | The Hon’ Percy Wyndham Dear Mr Wyndham. I thank you much for the brace of Pheasants you have kindly sent me, to keep me from altogether becoming a vegitarian [sic] – I suppose! East Knoyle Ch’ Tower. se The works here are getting going on excellently well under Blow’s efficient direction, and I am more than pleased with his way of helping us. There is an anxiety attending upon this work, as in all others, namely, that the work necessary to be done to attain the end desired may come to more than the estimate. I have just received the second account I asked for from Estcourt, which gives me the cost of all materials and labour employed upon the tower down to 23 Decr 1892. It amounts to Many of the items come within the cost of many of the items I allowed for them but exceeds in others, and I am a little suspicious of what the sum total will amount to, when we have are cleared out of the tower – “our grandmother” as we call her. Blow is so determined to set her on sounds legs again, that he allows no weak place to go without treatment, and I cannot bring myself to say him nay. The men under him are working very well indeed, and he assures me he gets a good honest day’s work out of each. We have one very awkward part of the fabric to deal with in the present ringing stage, and when that is passed, I shall breathe frëer. The weather is rather against our work, but they are taking using all precautions, taking the frost out of the sand and bricks by heat of furnace; and, as we are using cement for the new-built walling, we shall, I believe, be safe from frost inside the tower – where we must keep till the weather breaks. I hope to see Blow tomorrow, on his way through town, and shall try and arrange with him the best time for my next visit, and of which I will let you know, as I shall most likely have to make a two-day time of it. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

444 • To Giacomo Boni, 8 January 1893 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 8. Jan: 1893. My dear James Goodfellow. Better late than never at all. It came; letter and “bribes” on Jan: 4 – Not unlooked for, ’tis true, but patiently awaited, as mortals look for crumbs from the table of 194

1888–1898

the gods. Do not take this too literally, as there are maledictions under cover of a gentler skin: to be produced if loving kindness fails. I do not doubt. Neither ropes, nor pincers, clawed irons, nor red hot holy-pokers would draw your secret of silence:1 but, if the first part of your letter tallies with the last (and you (so you say) are no Gros-bonnet)2 there can be no great difficulty in guessing – either rightly or wrongly – that the good Bishop of Nardò thought one evil would be less injurious than another.3 Your hint was enough, and I laid the case of the patient before the doctor Miss Faulkner, and (in the language of the British brute) I’ll be damned if she did not hint. Yes! – such are the ways of women. Rather than that the world should go on unpopulated, they would advise the way of Lot!4 There is nothing terrible in the way of “barbed sarcasm” which could touch your tenderest skin, in the foregoing? Yea: Nardò – Gallipoli – Terra d’Otranto; I remember your note of hoping to find something – and, ’tis no wonder simple folk stood in awe, and the womenkind wept, when S: Nicola burst his tomb, and came back to light and air, uncorrupted.5 “Nay, with the dead I deal not; this man lives. . . .” as William Morris said of Grettir’s story.6 “Bribe” or no bribe, your faint photo’s: helped me to realise the facts taking place at the walled up Norman piers, and yourself – soft bread in hand – tenderly wiping the dust of ages from the worn look of the saint. In our country he has been called the patron of thieves – and, if he be the patron of any human beings, they are thieves; though not – perhaps – ‘Gros-bonnets’.7 If pressure should be put upon the inspired of the spirit, and your clothes should have to be snipped into 2 inch shreds for the faithful, I pray you to send me a piece from the seat of your breeches, as the wind of false doctrine does not proceed from that end of man. When I think of the spiritually bald Rococo XVIII c: church wall, yielding such fruit from such a husk, I almost hold my breath. The beautiful patch of noble colour in its childlike simplicity appearing from such a shell. Ach! the gods must smile broadly, at times, if they do not fall into a cloud-compelled roar of laughter. I like much your paraphrase of ‘symmetry’.8 ’Tis quite true – I have, in another way, called it, relation. If all things be in ‘relation’ to one another, we have proportion, and in no other way. The great law of building, is contrast, and, that is, of balance. A bunch of grapes in one scale, and of figs in an the other, would be fairly symmetrical. Your round arch, grapes, your pointed arch, figs. The third element being myself, weighing and eating. I have asked the clerk, at ‘antiscrape’, to be on the lookout for any sign, in the Times, of the wink you gave to papa Stillman.9 All the numbers of the Venice Lion have been distributed to those you intended to have them, and I can fancy 6 heads bowed over the pages, eager to learn what lay hid under your piquant Tuscan words.10 ’Tis a pretty monograph on mediæval and other bronze work. What a lovely crystal & bronze candlestick! I could hardly expect, in such a brief, evasive, letter, that you should tell me if you had seen George Wardle. When I last heard from him, he mentioned that he 195

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

had not seen you, though he had called (I suppose at the Ministry) and written. It would be a pity if you did not see him, and cheer him with dryasdustic gossip. It need not be “the friction of two souls entirely alike”.11 The laws of contrast would come in pleasantly. Wardle mentioned he had found a learned, and in other ways intelligent, Frenchman at his Hôtel or Pension. This would be good for him, as, though he knows French very well, he would not be ready with his Italian, and the English people in Rome are not – all of them – preternaturally intellectual good company. He has been sending me much interesting news from the Naples district – Capri, Amalfi, Salerno, La Cava &c – and pleasant photo’s: of details – and in return, I quarrel with him dryasdustically, and – as he is not here, praise will not do him any mischief, – I find him a great help to understanding the differences between the works of various nationalities, the rulers of which districts have trampled on their submissive subjects for so many centuries, and have made the history of this section of Europe, a coat of many colours.12 La Cava seems to be a quite wonderful example of mediæval story, based on the decay of ancient Rome.13 Henry Middleton has, I suppose, rolled off in his fiery chariot of love,14 and is out of reach of “nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles”15 – such as old fogies like Pippo, here, are likely to dispose around the frailly human. There is an old Persian saying, that death “is the separator of companions”, and I have sometimes considered that marriage – or love in any form – is a twin sister of his importunate majesty. Shakespeare has it of love – “If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain; / If lost, why then a grievous labour won”16 and, as a learned Oxford “don” is said to have expressed himself, when quoting S. Paul, on some point of doctrine, that he “partly agreed” with S. Paul! I do not suppose it was S. Paul who said “that women were kittle cattle to shoe behind”;17 but, if he did, I partly agree with him. They are delightful creatures, these women, but they are a perilous quality to handle, and lucky is he (or she for that matter) who comes of[f] unbroken. These are a few hints for your conversation with the Bishop when he next proffers his good offices. Perhaps, when this good Bishop reads your 30 pages of letter,18 he may reconsider the point, and say to himself, ‘this noble young man, who expresses himself in so noble and epigrammatical a way, is too valuable, as a lay preacher, to have his whole life imperilled by the gratification of the weaknesses of the greater body of mankind.’ Bravo, Bishop. Look well after this sheep, who is not quite lost, yet! Alas, Giacomo, see what your brief letter has done to me; no wonder you are cautious in sending me information about yourself, when it may bring down upon you the burden of a letter from Your comical English friend, | Philip Webb. Courtauld 130a-c

196

1888–1898 1 ‘If you were a cruel inquisitor and had me tortured before your eyes, to satisfy yourself about the reason or reasons which prevented me to write to you for so long a time, nothing more than what follows you could extract from my lips.’ GBO to PSW, 1 January 1893, Courtauld 129a. 2 From the French: a ‘big wig’, a person of consequence. GBO had used the word in his letter. 3 ‘The bishop of Nardò sends me his blessings for the new Year, and expresses himself in very pathetical terms about his desire to give me a sweet (dark eyed, I suppose) campagna. Monaca Bigio should cease to be then: I wish I might have Miss Faulkner’s advise [sic] on the matter.’ 129d. 4 After his wife had been turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s two daughters plotted to bear his children. ‘And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: / Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.’ Genesis 19:31–2. 5 GBO had spent several weeks examining the grounds of the ancient abbey at Nardò in southern Italy, and was excited by his discoveries. ‘Among others, one morning, as I ordered a wall of tufo (porous stone, often volcanic) to be tumbled down to let the day light shine once more upon the face of S. Nicolas (a XIV centy. picture which had been walled in about 1450) and the above mentioned S. Nicolas reappeared, very calm looking, and blessing, gorgeously attired in pontifical robes of scarlet and gold, I felt something beating quicker than usual within my breast; the people stood in awe, the women cried, and the news spread that I was inspired by the Holy Ghost.’ 129b-c. 6 Facing the title page of The Story of Grettir the Strong, translated from the Iceland by Eiríkr Magnússon and WM (London: F.S. Ellis, 1869) is a prefatory poem in two verses by WM, from which PSW quotes the start of the second verse. 7 St Nicholas is claimed as a patron saint by a range of communities, including sailors, pawnbrokers and archers, as well as by repentant thieves. 8 Of the abbey at Nardò, GBO commented: ‘just now I have only time to say that it affords one striking practical definition of symmetry. The arches on the right of the nave are round ones, those on the left are pointed ones. I gave a short memorandum about them to Mr. Stillman, the father-in-law of Prof. Middleton, and you shall read something of it in the TIMES I think.’ 129c. 9 Stillman’s report (from ‘Our Rome Correspondent’) appeared in The Times on 10 January 1893. ‘Signor Boni, Inspector of Antiquities for Apulia, has been for the last year employed in cataloguing and securing photographs of the monuments of the region under his care. . . . Amongst these is the discovery of a Norman Cathedral at Nardo entirely covered by barocco decorations . . . by the removal of which there appear the columns of the original, with capitals of olive and palm decoration, the motive of which is borrowed from that of the vases of Magna Grecia.’ 10 See above, Letter 437, note 1. 11 The phrase was GBO’s (see note 18). 12 ‘Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.’ Genesis 37:3. 13 The eleventh-century Benedictine abbey of La Trinita della Cava, near Cava de’ Tirreni in Salerno. 14 Middleton had married Bella Stillman in December 1892. See above, Letter 434, note 10. 15 See above, Letter 350, note 11. 16 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I,i,32–3. 17 See Vol. I, Letter 251, note 10. 18 ‘The Minister is going to sign a letter of mine (30 pages long) to the bishop of Nardò explaining the fact that modern simmetry [sic] is a very corrupt meaning of the original word which meant the harmony of the whole, not the mechanical repetition on the left of what has been done on the right side, or vice versa, just as sympathy does not mean a kind of moral electricity only to be provoked by the friction of two souls entirely alike.’ 129c-d.

197

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

445 • To Gillett and Co., 23 January 1893 Draft 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn London W.C. 23 Jany 1893 To Messrs Gillett & Co | Bell Founders. Whitehorse Road | Croydon (West)1 Dear Sirs At some time in 1891, you were good enough to give me some information as to the weight of the Bells in the you cast and set up in the tower of the London Law Courts2 which were set up by you: The work for which I wanted this information has not been done. At the present time I am directing the repairings to a Church Tower at Knoyle, near Salisbury, and I write to ask if you could send an experienced man to the Church, to advise me as to what should be done to secure the bell cage there, before the bells are again rung? The cage is not in bad condition, but it wants judicious repairs, strengthening, and rebeddings, as well as steadying on new oak beams under it which are about to be placed. Also, some extra precautions must be taken to make the cage do its work of reducing the vibration on the bells, when being rung, before acting on the walls. The axles of stocks,3 and the wheels, will as likewise want attention, judicious repairs done to them. I have an assistant at the church who has personally superintended all the repairs &c to the tower itself, and he will be able to receive your man, and explain as to the condition of the tower, and the value of the new strengthening work which has been very carefully put in, but I should wish to have your an expert’s report on the different points before I advise the authorities at Knoyle as to what should be done. The work, in any case, will not be a change of system, but that which will negative the action of the bells on the walls of the repaired tower. Will you be so good as to let me know if such work, explained above, comes within your regular business, and if you can undertake to advise me in the way above I have described? Also, If you can do so assist me, perhaps it would be best that I should see, either one of yourselves, here, or the man you would propose to send to Knoyle. If so, perhaps you would you name a morning, between 10 & 12 o’c, when I wd arrange to be at home? Yours truly | Philip Webb, Archt V&A, AAD

1 Gillett & Co (its name from 1884) began as a Croydon clock making firm, founded by William Gillett. When Arthur Johnston became a partner in 1877, the business became a bell foundry and as Gillett & Johnston achieved a worldwide reputation. 2 George Edmund Street, under whom PSW had first trained in Oxford, won the competition for designing the Royal Courts of Justice. The work was virtually complete at his death in 1881. The

198

1888–1898 clock in the southeast tower by the Gillett firm was erected as a memorial to Street, and placed within a case of his own design. ‘The clock was lit from within by gas, for night-time visibility, and it announced the time by night and day with six bells, sounding the St. Mary of Cambridge chimes. The hour bell weighed 6800 pounds. Accuracy within one second per week was guaranteed.’ David B. Brownlee, The Law Courts. The Architecture of George Edmund Street (New York and Cambridge, Mass: The Architectural Foundation and The MIT Press, 1984), p. 366. 3 Stock: ‘the block of wood from which a bell is hung’ (OED).

446 • To Percy Wyndham, 20 February 1893 Draft 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 20 Feby 1893 To The Hon’ Percy Wyndham Chateau S. Pierre | Hyères France1 Dear Mr Wyndham. I went to Knoyle on Friday last, the 17th, having written to Bertha to say I was coming, &c.2 The coachman brought to the station a letter from Mrs Wyndham, sayg that she and Lady Elcho3 were still at the house, and wd I come there to dinner at 7 o’c. I got to the Ch’ at 2.15, and set to work at once with Detmar Blow, and carried on till 6.30. I joined him again on Sat: morning, and worked till 2 o’c, meeting Estcourt in the tower. I found the works being done in a most satisfactory way, but necessity had made it heavier in quantity than I had at first anticipated. My point from the first has been to so contrive the repairs that they should effectually prevent the decay of this valuable tower from the effect of & provide against a multiplying injury from ringing the bells, and to keep out all wet fm the body of the tower and the walls themselves, as well as making good the injury which had arisen from ill-judged repairs, & alterations, of former times. Wherever a sign of weakness declared itself, we have dived into the walls to remedy the evils, and the number and extent of these weak places have exceeded my expectation. However, I think we know now all that we are likely to be able to find out, and the works are gradually being drawning themselves to an end. It has been a difficult job, patiently and energetically carried out. Fortunately, the men have worked willingly and harmoniously, thanks very much to Blow’s tact and industry. The lead of the roof has been recast and relaid in the best manner, and the walls securely strengthened from the top down to the heads of upper (or belfry) windows, and we are now working up from the level of the ridge to the nave roof (the height to which we have arrived from the floor of church) to meet the work done downwards from the top. Not feeling inclined to trust my practical knowledge of the condition of the bells themselves and their ringing apparatus, I directed asked the bell founders, Gillett & Johnston, 199

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

of Croydon, to send a man down to consult with Blow, and give me a report and estimate for putting the bells in working order: this they did, accepting my guidance as to calculating upon doing no more than would be really necessary. They gave me 3 estimates, No 1 to cost £45, or No 2 – £55, or No 3 – £90. I went into the matter on Saturday and concluded that the £45 estimate would be enough to secure the bells in safe condition for 50 or 100 years or so, but that this amt of work should could not be delayed without risk to the bells themselves if they were rung. I saw called on the Rector on Saturday before leaving, and explained these points to him; and I also said that the works had having proved heavier than I had anticipated, and I should certainly throw in the amount of my professional charge as a contribution in order to help give the reparation Committee some help to meet some small help in a small way to meeting the increased cost of the works.4 I asked the Rector him, as Treasurer, to grant Mr Estcourt a cheque for £300 on acct, as that was due to him, but Mr Milford said he should first have to write to Mr Bouverie, (I think that was the name) on the part of the Seymour Trustees,5 and you, for subscriptions to be paid in. As I wished to write to you a letter as to the state of the works, I undertook this latter work for him to write to you for him. I am writing to Estcourt to ask him for a statement of his acct for the materials supplied, and work done by him & his men up to the date of my visit on Saturday, and when I have it I will let the Rector know the amount. I have Estcourt’s memorandum of acct down to Xmas, and it amounted to £420. Yours truly | Ph. W. that I met rs I was rather glad to meet M Wyndham & Lady Elcho at Clouds, as they both looked worn and thin, and I thought my natural, though rough, manner helped to cheer them up a little, at least I hoped so. The children evidently looked to be in fair way of regaining their strength.6 As Mallett7 was talking to Mrs Wyndham about some necessary repairs to the dairy house, below Clouds, she asked my opinion, but, as I could not give it without first seeing the place, I went there with Mallett & Blow just before leaving. I found the place dairy end of house much in wanting of repair, much, but I did not think it wd do to carry out Mallett’s suggestions, for them, as the work shd be more carefully considered before anything permanent was carried out done.8 Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 Over the years, the Wyndhams were not infrequent visitors to Hyères in the south of France, where Madeline Wyndham’s sister, Emily, had a house. 2 Bertha Devon appears to have spent her working life as a housemaid in the service of the Wyndhams, and was at Clouds ‘until her retirement at the end of the First World War. Percy and Madeline’s granddaughter Pamela Adeane recalled visits to Clouds as a child and being taken up to the nursery quarters by Bertha, “a tall, tranquil person with a kind, low voice”.’ Dakers, p. 104. 3 Mary Constance Wyndham (1862–1937), the eldest of the Wyndham’s five children, married Hugo Richard Charteris, Lord Elcho (1857–1937), in 1883. Their house, Stanway, in Gloucestershire,

200

1888–1898

4

5 6 7 8

became the gathering-place for ‘the Souls’, a fashionable group of intellectuals and politicians (including Arthur Balfour and Mary’s brother, George Wyndham). In 1895 she had an affair with her cousin, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, and had a child by him. Elcho became ninth earl of Wemyss on his father’s death in 1914, from which time Lady Elcho was known as the Countess of Wemyss. Caroline Dakers notes that in 1896 she was frustrated at being unable to afford engaging PSW to ‘restore’ the parish church of St Peter’s, Stanway. Dakers, p. 152. ‘It is very handsome of you not [to] charge anything for your work, I am afraid you may not approve of the above adjective. I do not protest because I know it would be no use, but you must not think that I or the other subscribers take it in the least as a matter of course or anything approaching to it.’ PWY to PSW, 23 February 1893, V&A, AAD. The Seymours were the former lords of the manor, from whom PWY had purchased the Clouds estate. See Vol. I, Letter 101, note 1. Probably Lady Elcho’s children. William Mallett, clerk of works for the Clouds estate. See Vol. I, Letter 283, note 1. ‘Do not do anything more about the Dairy unless you hear from me on the subject as I am quite in the dark as to what is or is not proposed, and have never even heard of Malet’s [sic] suggestion.’ PWY to PSW.

447 • To Giacomo Boni, 26 February 1893 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 26 Feby 1893. To Giacomo the good mentally magnificent. “ ’Twas ever thus from childhood’s hour” &c (see British poet, Moore).1 I expend what I am pleased to call my ‘soul’ upon you; well, you might reasonably ignore this poor vapour of striving humanity, but, you do not; you batter in my head with oracular sentences from the “Fathers”, or such as are of the fatherly kind2 – in answer to my letters – if original composition can be taken as answer? This indictment follows on your letter of 21 Feb: – And further, in my last 2 letters (maybe, 3) I ask a particular question with pertinacious reiteration. You ignore me, as some people do the new moon, which has 2 sharp horns to it – questions both. Now, you may have some disinclination to renewing acquaintance with George Wardle – my friend. Why not say so, if that be the case?3 There is nothing wonderful in personal disinclination. Gabriel Rossetti used to say that all men had their own ‘bores’, who were not necessarily bores to other people. Well, I have my bores, why should you not have yours? Rossetti was an Italian, yet I found he swallowed food in just the same manner as a painted ancient Briton. I mention this matter not again, after this, as I may reasonably conclude you expect of me to be as keen witted as an Italian – wh’ Rossetti did not, and yet he answered my questions. Now for the ‘vaporous’ part of my literary efforts. My remembrance of the sayings of Paul, the sword bearer, is rather from the renewal of knowledge thro’ John Bellini Cima da Conegliano than accurate recollection of early reading of Hebrew scripture,4 but I do remember he Paul dealt with the 201

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

tender subject of listening to the mutterings of nature in the womb of humanity. There was once a naive preacher in an University English pulpit, who, in one of his sermons opened up with – “S: Paul says --- (such and such), and I partly agree with him” – and, if I knew more or S: Jerome’s ‘Theophrastus’ than you tell me, I should probably partly agree with him.5 My experience of human ventures tends to shew me that marriage (whether “certificated” or not) is, next to blowing your one’s brains out, the most momentous. Also, as I have a leaning towards personal friendship with, here & there, one whom I may pick up with on my journey of life, I may be excused if anticipations of cause and effect intrude upon me. Human beings are apt, when listening to womb-sounds, to sell all they have in order to possess the one pearl. This wise reflection of mine is probably to be found in one of the Fathers too, though not so laboriously put? All hail to the worthy Fathers. Here I’ll tell you a story. I am directing the repair of a late 14th cent: tower in Wiltshire. On this tower is some rude BRITISH sculpture. At one corner is a country sculptor’s idea of a grinning head, full of expression of rough enjoyment of the humour of life. On the head is a conical cap. The Rector of the church asked me if this cap did not represent a bishop’s mitre, as the place was once called “Bishop’s Knoyle?” I said, no, it was a fool’s cap, and it could not mean a bishop’s. On another side of the tower, was is another sculpture – even ruder – and, from the height at which it was I could see that the figure twisted itself round, in stone, lifted the tail of its skirt, and exposed his naked tail of flesh, with huge enjoyment. This figure had a bishop’s mitre on its head!6 (Here, a friend looked in and interrupted the malicious flow from my uneasy pen). However, I’ll try to pick up the thread again. True, Eves there have been and Eves there still are, God bless their fruitful fancies. What would Homeric stories be without the war-compelling touches of Venus? Your learned prelate’s saying as to the Providential trustfulness of husbands is not so easily understood.7 ’Tis like many ecclesiastical utterances, as which to many are to be read in any way the hearer pleases. Perhaps the devil was the father of Adam, and the Venus of that time married her own son, whence the universal fountain of tears. Tis an old story, too, the dislike – even the modest woman has, to a too inexperienced man. The doves in the Venetian Piazza are an everlasting study of the ways and the manners of nature. Who knows but there may be domestic tragedies in the loves of the volcanos? [sic] I see you touch on a particularly marked disease of the 19th century – namely, that of commerce.8 ’Twas common, no doubt, in Phœnicia, Assyria, Egypt, and, in later times, of Greece. We have it markedly in the gospels, and, in spite of perennial beatings for this disease, the Hebrews hold to it now as tenaciously as ever. Also, consider the possibilities of carrying on commerce in these days, when you can go round the world in 12 to 14 weeks! So, the world is vocal with biddings of cheats, and Paris, Italy, and England are alive in that way to the understanding of the whole world. And, Socialistic pills to purge the passion for cheating have been invented, but the medicine is very bitter to the taste of the diseased.9 Even 202

1888–1898

Bishops cannot be persuaded to take it. Your thought ran on into aristocracy, and the primitive meaning of the Greek compound word – wh’ I take it to be the government of the best men, which I agree with you wd “not be a human form of government.” I too hold to this aristocracy – of mind as it has been called – but not to its being the government. Rather, I hold that these gods should be the hewers of wood and drawers of water. They should still be gods, but gods to be beaten by the multitude till the universal prayers of the multitude are properly answered. If we could make these gods of wood, and paint & gild them, so much the better, for there would then be more hands to the beating. The blood of the saints was the seed of the church, at which time of beating men treated their government quite properly. One is quite afraid at this time the beating may cease in the house of Peter, ’tother side of Tiber, which wd be a misfortune. Tribulation makes the faces of gods to shine. All people should be made to pay for their possessions. Well, your government of the best would be men of large means. The genius-god – your Poet, Learned man, &c. These I hold are to be our servants, and must be well beaten for their riches; and so well beaten that their riches wd increase for the beatings, and the governors – the multitude – must eat and drink of these riches and fall to beating their gods again. In time, we should know our most useful gods by the indents of in the material they were made of. Your geniuses wd then shew their wounds, and be proud of the same, as the upper class now is of its titles of nobility. ‘Where are our boots’, shout the multitude, ‘here,’ sings he of the shining face, ‘here are your boots, beautifully blackened’. I am quite behind hand with my archæological news of fresh finds, as I suppose that is of the vaults under Nero’s golden house?10 I am on the look-out from now for new particulars as to what you and the sun may do for us. I am preparing my thick stick with which to beat you! I will ask Micklethwaite about the Cosmatesque pavement in Westminster Church, and let you know the result.11 Yea. John Hebb has signalized himself by translating your article on the Venetian Lion. As he was good enough to send me his draft of translation, I have read it – even today – and enjoyed the full explanation you give in the original. I am at one with you on the mysteriously beautiful expression of India, and read your passage on your study of Max Müller’s book,12 and the remark you make of the effect on you of the beautiful ideas, rather than the etymological amusement of the study.13 Your artist god – well beaten – will render to you an image of your idea, wh’ he did not understand, but yet – being a well beaten god – he rendered to the ignorant multitude who had an indefined [sic] idea. Come, my friend, your letter was not “dull”, it was only criminal, & when you suggested ‘dulness’, you must have instinctively intended, criminality. Have I not raised you up as an image, called you a god, and – as one of the base multitude, well beaten you. You see, you had not “disabled” me, you only made me understand my vocation, wh’ is to “whack” gods Yours, | Philip, the god-whacker. 203

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

When do you venture northward to shew me with the pride of genius your many well earned wounds? Courtauld 132a-d

1 ‘Oh! ever thus, from childhood’s hour, / I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay; / I never loved a tree or flower, / But ’twas the first to fade away.’ Thomas Moore, ‘The Fire-worshippers’, Lalla Rookh (1817). The lines are quoted by Dick Swiveller in The Old Curiosity Shop (ch 56). 2 See note 5. 3 ‘[Wardle] came to Rome when I was out and left his address at the Ministry, but before I returned he sent another card noticing his change of lodgings. I went at once to see him but his landlady told me that he had left his room because the chimney was smoking and refused to tell her where he was going. . . . Now would you kindly inform me whether he is still here, and where he is lodging?’ GBO to PSW, 29 March 1893, Courtauld 133a. 4 The Italian painter, Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459/60–1517/18), worked exclusively in Venice. PSW may have known of the painting after Cima’s manner, The Virgin and Child with Saint Paul and Saint Francis, in which St Paul is portrayed prominently bearing his sword (National Gallery, London, but not acquired until 1916). 5 GBO had already detected PSW sympathising with St Paul’s antagonism towards marriage. ‘You seem to submit to St Paul’s anti-matrimonial humour. I don’t trust myself so much in this very tender kind of subject, so to express an opinion, but . . . I can point out to you that St Jerome has quoted, and preserved to us, a very clear & reasonable passage of Theophrastus against matrimony i.e. the last words that the opposition party has used on the subject.’ GBO to PSW, 21 February 1893, Courtauld 131a-b. St Paul privileged the celibate, unmarried state: ‘For I would that all men were even as myself’ (1 Corinthians 7:7), and ‘He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: / But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife’ (7:32–3). Such thinking ‘was to determine all Christian thought on marriage and celibacy for well over a millennium’. Peter Brown, cited in James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), p. 692. 6 See also above, Letter 428, note 4. 7 GBO reports the comment of an unnamed Vatican prelate that ‘The most Providential arrangement in the world is the trustfulness of husbands’. 131c. 8 ‘I wonder whether a sublimate of aloe or some kind of exorcism would prove strong enough to make our bankers & members of Parliament evacuate the millions of francs which they seem to have swallowed.’ 131d. 9 ‘I am willing to add that socialism with a human race composed of people like some that I have the luck and the pride to know, might also prove advisable.’ 131e. 10 ‘Next week I hope to be able to examine the pictures on the vaults of the DOMUS AUREA of Nero under the Baths of TITUS, with the help of a scaffold which will allow me to touch them for the first time, and have them properly repaired and photographed stereomatically with magnesium light.’ 131e. 11 The Cosmati family of Roman architects and sculptors, whose work dates mainly from the thirteenth century, gave their name to a style of decorative inlay stonework (Cosmatesque), derived in part from Byzantine influences. ‘I have been asked by the English & American Archaeological Association to lecture on the works of the Cosmati, the Roman architects, sculptors & mosaicworkmen of the XII and XIII centuries, and as I recollect that Mr. Micklethwaite has shown to me a relic of Cosmatesque decoration in the pavement of Westminster Abbey, I should feel very grateful both to him & to you if you would kindly send me some information concerning the date & other

204

1888–1898 historical data of that mosaic.’ 131f-g. For John Micklethwaite, see Vol I, Letter 241, note 4. GBO gave his lecture to the British and American Society of Rome on 28 March 1893. 12 F. Max Müller, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated by the Religions of India (London: Longmans, Green, 1880). 13 ‘[T]o me, to us I may say, it is more interesting to consider how poetic the impression must have been when man differentiated for the first time in his speech between things or animals that stand still, and those than run, or float, or fly.’ 131h.

448 • To Reverend Robert Milford, 2 March 1893 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London. W.C. 28 Feb. 2nd March 1893 To The Revd the Rector. East Knoyle Dear Mr Milford. Repairs to the Ch’ Tower I had to write at some length to Mr Blow yesterday the day before on Monday, and I mentioned a point or two on wh’ I wished him to consult with you. Since then Mr Estcourt has sent me his acct down to Feby 24 for all the materials, labour, scaffolding &c supplied by him to by on my orders for the repair of the tower. The total amount – to the date above given – comes to £593. Now there is still a certain quantity of work which must be done while Mr Blow is with you at this time, but these necessary works will, I hope, be finished by the end of March. But there are other questions which I should now call your attention to. The Bells. In my estimate the repairs to the Bells themselves were not included, only the examination of their condition by a qualified bell founder and hanger. The Bell cage. The work of repair to this was included, and Mr Blow is engaged on that work now. The proposal for changing the ringing stage only pressed itself upon me when I found the result of putting up a deafening ceiling under the bell cage had resulted in the decay of the supporting beams under it. The question then was, should the ringing stage be on be brought back to the ground floor of the tower? This no doubt wd have its advantages, one of which wd be that the ringers need not be constantly using the turret stairs. Against Arguments against this plan are that the length between the present ringing floor and the ground would necessitate steadying the ropes with irons &c in between the 2 floors. Also, that the use of the space under the tower for seating would – practically – be done away with. At one time, you may remember, I proposed you that a proper ringing floor should be put into the tower at the level of the sill of the large west window of tower, just over the present woodwork inside the West door. I have returned to this suggestion more strongly since considering all the circumstances, and including the report of the bell founder’s man. By it this arrangement we should be able to utilise the west door for entrance, and ventilation, (this latter an important point) keep the floor clear for seating under

205

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

the tower, be able to and put a stair to the new ringing floor on one side behind one the present west door screen; and on the opposite side the space could be used for brooms &c. Also, if we raised the ringing floor to the level of the west window sill, we should not want the iron steadying frame to bell ropes. I consider this scheme by far the best I can think of. Now, As it is possible that your Committee for repairs would not be able now to undertake these works, which are outside my instruction of repairing the fabric of the tower, we had better settle what should be done for the present time. If the actual repairs and improvements to the bells, wheels, stocks, ropes &c are deferred for a time, I think the ringers would have to return to the present ringing floor, and put up for a while with the noise of the bells; and the floor there could being sufficiently repaired for them to ring from. The present ground floor of wood under the tower, which is not in a good state condition but wh’ could be sufficiently repaired for a time, should be so repaired, and the seats re-fixed. Will you be so good as to see Mr Blow in the tower itself with this letter, and consider with him the points here mentioned? with him. When you have the money in hand, I should be glad if you would pay Mr Estcourt £300 on acct as he has forwarded our work – out of his ordinary way – in an exceedingly helpful manner. This certe letter would be my certificate for the payt to him: and, when the sum has been paid, I shd be glad if you would let me know.1 Believe me | Yours truly | Ph. W. side of

V&A, AAD

1 Milford was concerned about the mounting costs for the work, whilst recognising its importance. ‘I wrote to Mr Wyndham after our interview – but have not yet heard from him. I do not see except he helps us largely where the money is to come from, and yet I do not see how we can stop from going forward, now that we have gone so far.’ Milford to PSW, 3 March 1893, V&A, AAD.

449 • To William Morris, 29 March 1893 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 Mar: 1893 My dear Fellow As in the Troy story book, “what shall I say”?1 Confound it, I’ll never again keep a poet on the premises to raise blushing embarrassment, and be the cause of a last will & testament. ‘Lie heavy on him earth, for he’ – &c.2 The “news” – ever fresh – is a delightful book, and a bloody-minded revolutionist has seldom been so embalmed.3 Come now – make up your mind to outlive me, and come round and collar the library, and my old ‘crabshells’,4 when I cannot again walk in the one or read the other. Kate has been very bad all over, but worst in the eyes. I begged her to bed, and to leave the piano altogether till after Easter. The removal from Q-square to 206

1888–1898

2 Caroline Place, Guilford Street, was done as easily as possible, but the strain & effort were too much. Affairs are winding up, but the damned Foundling landlords are incredibly mean, knowing, as they certainly do, they have a bad case; but they equally well know there will be no law suit: still they tremble for fear we shd be such fools as to risk one.5 I fancy it was arranged there was to be no antiscrape Comm’ tomorrow, so that I am shorn of a meeting. Looked in upon Walker last evening, but he had fled from his City sparrow Court, to his eaves at Hammersmith.6 There will be no Friday meeting at the H.S.S I suppose? Your affectionate | Philip Webb. Kate cannot read, so I have hummed the Recuil to her in the evening, and comfortable Hercules has comforted her.7 V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 36

1 Raoul Lefevre’s The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye was published by the Kelmscott Press in November 1892. ‘In the summer of 1890 Morris was trying to decide which Caxton title to reprint in order to launch his new Press.’ Although he held The Golden Legend to be the more important, ‘he eventually began printing the Recuyell . . . in February 1892’. Peterson, p. 25. 2 ‘Lie heavy on him earth: for he / Laid many a heavy load on thee!’ – the sardonic epitaph to Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect of Blenheim Palace, attributed to the Reverend Abel Evans (1679–1737). 3 The Kelmscott Press edition of News from Nowhere was published on 24 March 1893, having previously been published in book form by Reeves & Turner in 1891. SCC suggested that a drawing by Charles March Gere of Kelmscott Manor should appear as the frontispiece, which delayed the volume originally planned for 1892. See Peterson, p. 34. 4 Shoes (slang). 5 See above, Letter 431, note 5. 6 EW’s business address was in Clifford’s Inn; his home was in Hammersmith Terrace, Hammersmith. 7 WM’s presentation copy to KF (dated 27 November 1892) of The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, is now in the Library of Queen’s University, Belfast.

450 • To Albert Estcourt, 5 April 1893 Copy 1 Ryd Bdgs. Grays Inn. 5 April 1893. Copy Mr Albert Estcourt. Dear Sir. East Knoyle Ch Tower. It having been found that the old deaffening [sic] to underside of bells, caused the timbers to wrot, [sic] it has been decided, if possible, to have a new floor above the head of west doorway, and I send with this a tracing of my proposed new floor, to ring the bells from. 207

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

As the works necessary to be done to repair & strengthen the tower have cost more money than had been anticipated, and as the repairs Committee will be short of funds, this new floor has been designed so as to cost as little money as possible, consistent with strength & fittness. [sic] Will you be so good as to give me an estimate for preparing and fixing the floor & screen on top of floor complete? You will see I do not want the oak to be wrot,1 only just neatened by having any ragged surfaces slightly planned [sic] off. The timber need not be picked stuff, as long as it be sound & seasoned. With regard to your charge for the hire of scaffolding, I hope you will be able to revise this, as the items in your bill, when added together come to a very heavy sum. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 To be planed smooth.

451 • To Reverend Robert Milford, 17 April 1893 Draft; pencil 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 17 April 1893 To | The Revd the Rector. East Knoyle Dear Mr Milford. East Knoyle Ch Tower I am obliged by your letter of the 15th inst.1 The question of your Church Warden as to putting on more men, so as to expedite the work, was not unreasonable on his part, for it would not be possible for him to understand the variety and amount of work done in a very confined space, and the serious risks which had to be considered when dealing with the walls. These walls have been, practically, honeycombed from the inside, and and solidly repaired & strengthened any carelessness on our parts wd – almost certainly – have led to disaster. Happily, up to the present time, we have hardly had any mishap. I doubt if the parish will ever realise the amount of solid and careful work which has been done to the tower under Mr Blow’s supervision and personal work labour. I have had considerable experience in repairs to churches, but I never saw work done so well, and yet with so little disturbance or injury to the an ancient fabric. Much praise is due to the men who have worked so amicably under Mr Blow, and the more so that their labours have been carried on in a very cramped and confined spaces, and a large proportion of it under artificial light. Any builder who would had [sic] taken a contract for the works done to the tower must either have lost money over it, or he would have had to shut his eyes to 208

1888–1898

and pass over many difficult and dangerous places which continually developed themselves. As I know for certain that such inefficient and misleading work is often done when restoring (as it is called) old buildings. By keeping the number of workmen down, it has been possible for Mr Blow to consider and direct each man’s work as it was being done; also, waste of labour has been saved by not allowing more men to be engaged in the confined spaces than could work at one time, and yet not be in each other’s way. Mr Blow is putting more figures dimensions on to the drawing for the new ringing floor, after which I will direct Mr Estcourt to proceed with the work at once. Believe me | Yours truly | Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I have just seen Mr Blow, and asked him at the request of my Churchwarden whether by putting on more men the work could be expedited, but he tells me that the masons work inside the Tower will soon be finished.’ Milford to PSW, 15 April 1893, V&A, AAD.

452 • To Gillett and Co., 10 May 1893 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 10 May. 1893. To Messrs Gillett & Co1 Bell Founders &c Croydon (West) East Knoyle Ch’ Tower Dear Sirs Since my answer of Feby 3 to your letter and estimates for doing the necessary works to the bells in this tower, I have made a fresh examination of them, and more particularly as to the ringing floor. The Rector and Church wardens were averse to losing the seating space under the tower, so that, under the circumstances, I advised an altogether new ringing floor which will stand be fixed intermediate between the ground floor of the church and the vaulting over the tower arch. If you refer to your draft of specification of Feb. 2, you will see that, as stated there, the ringing height from the ground floor would be upwards of 32 feet to the floor above, where the ropes pass through the vaulting, and that this height would necessitate an intermediate ring of iron, for steadying purpose to the ropes. By the new ringing floor, which is now being made, the height will now be reduced to 18 feet so that we can do without this steadying ring to the ropes, and have retain the space on the ground floor for the seating as required. The works of repairing the walls of the tower, and the bell cage, and of carrying the strain on the bell cage lower down, have occupied a good deal of time, but my assistant tells me that there wd be room now for your man to work in. 209

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I took your estimates to Knoyle and explained them to the Rector, after which he called a parish meeting, and it was decided to accept your “No 1 Estimate” for repairing the bells, as the Parish, at this time could afford no more money. This estimate, at Forty-five pounds (£45) is, therefore, the one we shall have to work to, subject to a deduction for omitting the steadying iron ring to the bell ropes. The holes in the vaulting, through which the ropes pass, will have to be fitted with new wooden guides which you would have to provide. As my assistants asks me how he is to prepare the present holes in the vaulting to receive your guides, I should be glad if you would send me a drawing or a sample of the usual kind and size of guide (wooden tube, I fancy) you are accustomed to use, so that I may direct for the repair of the holes to receive them. Will you let me know when on what day you can send down your man to Knoyle to carry out the works according to your specification of estimate? Yours truly | Ph: W. Archt The sooner you can send, now, I think, the better. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 445, note 1.

453 • To Giacomo Boni, 27 May 1893 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 27 May. 1893 To James the Ambitious Seated in his watch tower over the “Barberini” in Roma. These. My dear Giacomo Boni. This will not do. Here is the date of my last letter from you, ‘29 March ’93’. ’Tis also true that I could only send you a brief (none the worse for that, you will be saying) acknowledgment, but I have thought a good deal, and much occupation has relieved you of any more enlargement upon the items in your letter. I cannot afford to let my single Italian friend go by on the other side of the hill of silence without one shout, or so, and to listening for return of voice in answer. George Wardle wrote last to me on 26 April, when he was, as he said, “thinking of breaking up camp”, and getting more lofty and cooler quarters for an invalid’s summer. He wrote as having seen you twice since I gave you his address, and that you had evidently been working hard, (and I add, perhaps unwisely hard) and shewed the signs of it.

210

1888–1898

’Tis likely to be true that you have been over working, as folk will who have set eyes on the purple hill of fame (or infame, [sic] as the case may be) and determine to get to the top of it. These attractive, or ugly mountains (they too, are attractive, often) usually shew many bones littered about the base of them, and wise energy is flouted, when a wiser would have attained. A British sermon – ecce signum.1 Have you been [on] your journey to Normandy, and feared to cross the sea in search of the city of black whitewash?2 Have you been afraid of contact once more with the island barbarians, and preserved your supremer self from the contact with commercialism in excelsis, if so, surely you are wiser than most in your generation, and I shall look that Italy may escape the slime of that infernal pit? If you had come to England any time in the last 12 weeks you would have found one almost unceasing bath of sun from morning to evening. Never in my recollection has there been such fine and dry weather in England in the months of March, April, & May. We may now expect deluges of rain, and cold airs for the next 3 months. If that comes I shall say, ‘never mind, we have had the lovely weather’. Gray’s Inn garden, with its plane trees, have been and are still delightful, for the rain of February is not yet exhausted. I hope the trees seen from your eyrie are as green and consoling. Commend me to mountains for emotion, and trees for consolation, and to both for balance of soul. If the balance of that paradise is too enervating, commend me to human friends, who will raise the devil within one. If London town is uninviting, come and see my “Kelmscott Library” of Morris’s books. No getting out of a ghetto into a theatrical representation of an earthly paradise is to be compared to London literature in book form, and Morris’s reprints of masterpieces. One forgets all the squealing and squalor of modern books when one’s eyes are set on books as visible objects of serene beauty. Venice should have them all in a corner of its greatest library. I feel inclined to bequeath my copies to the library you should name!3 I made out as much as I could (How very little though) of your newspaper memorandum of the “Conferenza”,4 and made blunders over your “Giacomo ebbe un figlio chiamato Cosma”5 – but I remembered the “e gli stupendi ambone dell’Aracœli”.6 Perhaps, though, I was more taken by the columns and capitals of the nave of that church, which I went to look at many times. Still, I was vexed that I could not talk to the sandalled monk who walked by me, now and again, and who looked as if he would have found a little worldly talk with a barbarian heretic a pleasure to him – and within the rules of his order. I do not know if he would have blessed me by taking a pinch of my snuff, but a monk in San Lorenzo in Florence7 did me that honour, and understood the language of the eye, whole volumes – and always unedited. I had an hour yesterday afternoon, which I spent in Westminster abbey church, and sat down at the point where we two once sat. I looked at, and was happy over those “lines”, as you called the pillars’ clear uplifting, and I concluded that the scale of this comparatively small church arose from the wonderful relation

211

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

of parts, when such wonderful churches as the Maria dell fiore of Florence,8 and S.S. John & Paul,9 and the Frari in Venice, 10 lost much of their value from the want of this right relation. However, S Mark’s has this value to the utmost, and its really small size is more dignified and effective than all the vastness of S. Peter’s of Rome. There, you see, I have no news, but I send this feeler, in hope. | Yours, as you will. | Philip Webb. Courtauld 135a-c

1 Here is the proof (Lat). 2 London. 3 After PSW retired, he presented his set of Kelmscott Press volumes to Trinity College, Cambridge. See Vol. III, Letter 857, note 2. 4 GBO had enclosed with his letter of 29 March 1893 a newspaper cutting, reporting his conference contribution on the subject of Roman marble workers from 1100–1300. 5 ‘Giacomo had a son name Cosma’. 6 ‘And the beautiful pulpits’: the chiesa di Santa Maria in Aracoeli al Campidoglio, situated on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, has its origins as early as the sixth century, although the present building reflects its fourteenth-century expansion. Two Cosmatesque ambones (pulpits) from c. 1200 are placed at the sides of the piers of a triumphal arch leading from the nave to the transept. 7 The fifteenth-century Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence, which replaced an eleventh-century building, was designed by Brunelleschi and completed after his death. The extended complex of buildings around San Lorenzo includes Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. See Vol. I, Letter 251, note 7. 8 See Vol. I, Letter 237, note 11. 9 See Vol. I, Letter 262, note 7. 10 See above, Letter 389, note 6.

454 • To William Morris, 5 June 1893 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Monday. 5 June 1893 My dear Fellow. I have gathered from Cockerell and Lethaby1 that the outcome on Friday evening at the A. W. Guild was a flat compromise to avoid breaking of heads.2 Lethaby seemed anxious that I should send you a word or two on structural matters of St Mary’s Tower,3 wh’ I had thought of doing, but this wd probably have fallen through if I had not been goaded. I am rather sorry W. Richmond is going, as he is tarred with S. Pauls work.4 If Jackson is as sharp as I suspect, he made may make a sally, and damage Richmond’s evidence.5 ’Tis a weak point, and I think – if things turn up so, you ought to repudiate the St Paul’s work. All yesterday afternoon I was wading through Case’s essay6 (“Historical Inquiry”) which is somewhat skilfully put together, but his conclusions are as illogical as . . . well, as an Oxford don’s might be expected to be! 212

1888–1898

He makes hardly any point of the sculpture (our point) but enlarges on what shd be done to improve the “cluster” of pinnacles. However, he does reprint our report, more or less incorrectly. He does give useful information about the repeated dealings with the tower. His opinion as to the alteration of the pinnacles (what should be done) is as lame as it well could be.7 In 1848. – Blore, with the assistance of Hussey,8 reported on the condition of, and made proposition for “restoring” the pinnacles, but this seems not to have given satisfaction, and they were paid off. 1850 to 1852 – Bucklers’ – father and son,9 were engaged upon treating the pinnacles as we now see them, but, I gather that comparatively little attention was given to the substructure. It was in 1851, I think, that I (just out of prep my apprenticeship) went on to the scaffolding, and stood on the truncated apex of the spire. Jan: 1856 – Sir Gilbert Scott was called in to report on the condition of the substance of the tower proper – this he did and made it out to be in a dangerous condition.10 1856–7 – He was commissioned to repair, and did so by walling up openings, & stair turret, and adding several tiers of cross ties. Case gives various evidence as to danger of iron ties (not to be depended upon)11 but adds, that probably, at present, they are keeping the fabric steady, but he is illogical, even here. My motive for putting these points is, that you, who have to speak about the statues only, should guard yourself against saying that there may not be no occasion for attending to anything else. I shd say, before anything else is done, the condition of the whole fabric should be looked into, and that all necessary repairs should be done, at whatever cost; and a skilled engineer be called in should subsidence or other serious points of weight &c be disclosed. If the architect, and or engineer are able to keep the fabric standing, there could be no excuse for the architect’s saying that he could not keep the statues standing. The condition of the fabric would be the only difficult point. If you should have to listen to Case’s proposition for altering the present design of the pinnacles, you can safely say there are no dependable facts known as to what the original design was. If he should argue, as he does in his essay, that the weight of the present pinnacles adds to the risky condition of the fabric or substructure,12 you can safely say that any alteration of them wd have infinitesimal effect. Also, that you are assured there would be more risk in changing the present equilibrium than in leaving it alone. Of course all decayed structural stone work shd be renewed, and only that. 213

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

You will be likely to say ‘I knew all this before’, but I can only say, I can’t help what you do know, but I might help you in what you don’t know. Yours, without trembling, | Philip Webb. Memorandum. The society of “antiscrape” is not only composed of amateurs! V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f 38

1 PSW’s first reference to his future biographer, William Richard Lethaby (WRL, 1857–1931). 2 SCC noted that strangers were excluded from a discussion at the Art Workers’ Guild about St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, which took up most of the evening, though the scheduled business was to hear a paper on artificial lighting. CD, 2 June 1893. 3 See above, Letter 441, note 3. The dispute over the statues of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, was ongoing. ‘Morris and the S.P.A.B. had insisted from the first that the statues not be removed and a means found to keep them safely in place.’ CLWM, IV, p. 47, note 1. 4 Controversial decorations were under way to the interior of St Paul’s Cathedral, under the direction of the former Master of the Art Workers’ Guild, William Blake Richmond. There was argument about this work during the remainder of the 1890s, partly reflecting a High-Low church debate between ornament and plainness. See Vol. III, Letter 633, note 1. 5 For Jackson, see above, Letter 441, note 3. 6 Thomas Case (1844–1925), Waynefleet Professor of Philosophy and fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. PSW refers to Case’s St. Mary’s Clusters: An Historical Enquiry (London: James Parker and Co., 1893). 7 ‘Thank you for your letter, which was of use enabling me better to understand the drift of Cases long speech. I confess I don’t think much of him: he seemed to me to be one of those knowing noodles of which Oxford always produces many.’ WM to PSW, 6 June 1893, CLWM, IV. WM attended a meeting at Oxford, where Jackson ‘took me up the spire, & I had a good look at the images, & fought Jackson at every point. The fact is he would now willingly keep the images, if he could so without visibly banding & tying them, but this he funks.’ 8 The architects Edward Blore and Richard Hussey. See Case, ch 3 (‘Reconstruction in the 19th Century’). 9 The architectural partnership of J.C. and C. Buckler. See Case, ch 3. 10 See Case, ch 4 (‘Mechanical Problems’). 11 Case, p. 79 ff. 12 Case, p. 81 ff.

455 • To Giulio Sartorio, 24 June 1893 Draft 1 R B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 24 June 1893 To Signor Giulio Sartorio1 Dear Signor Sartorio I went to see William Morris last night, and he told me he would be pleased if you could call on him on Sunday (tomorrow) about 5 o’clock in the evening.2 It seems to me it might be helpful to you if I went with you to his house, and if you agree with me, I would propose that we meet on Sunday afternoon at 214

1888–1898

4 o’clock in Trafalgar Square by the Portico of the National Gallery. Will you kindly let me know if it would be convenient to you to go with me to Mr Morris on Sunday in the way proposed above?3 Yours truly | Ph. W. Courtauld 138

1 Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860–1932) trained at the Rome Institute of Fine Arts. His earlier paintings were exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition (1889) and at the first International Exposition in Venice (1895). In a late career development he directed silent films, including Il Sacco di Roma (1920). 2 ‘My friend Sartorio has kindly offered to take some photographs for me at Westminster Abbey – and I wish to make him known to you & you to him as I know that you will both be grateful to me for doing so. . . . Do me the favour to put Sartorio at his ease with Morris.’ GBO to PSW, 23 June 1893, Courtauld 137a-c. See also below, Letter 460. 3 ‘I will come with pleasure tomorrow Sunday at your mett [sic] under the Portico of the National Gallery at 4 o’clock.’ Sartorio to PSW, 24 June 1893, Courtauld 139a.

456 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 3 July 1893 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 3 July. 1893 My dear Murray I hope to see you here this evening to help me out in trying to amuse Sig: Sartorio? My ménage is at so low an ebb that I cannot dine either of you, wh’ disturbs my mind. If you can come for talk about 7. o’c I shall be much pleased to listen to your good jokes, and throw in a bad one of my own now & then. My nose has been nailed to the counter since I saw you at Hammersmith. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 52

457 • To Percy Wyndham, 3 July 1893 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 3 July 1893 To The Hon’ Percy Wyndham Dear Mr Wyndham East Knoyle Church Tower. By mutual arrangement consent, and to suit various convenience at Knoyle Detmar Blow and myself went to Knoyle the Church yesterday on Saturday to examine the finished 215

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

works of reparation to the tower, and direct the first ringing of the bells. All things fitted in exactly, and the business proceeded without hitch of any kind in the presence of the Rector, and with the assistance of the bell founders’ man, and the parish ringers. Naturally enough, I was anxious that the work, which has taken so much time to do, should prove effective in securing the tower from further injury, and I believe the work it has been very efficiently done. The effect on the tower of ringing the bells, proved to be even less than I had anticipated, and the precautions taken to carry down the strain from the bell cage to the floor below proved turned out to be very satisfactory. One item in the work which has been the resulted from many imperative considerations, and which has exercised my mind much, namely, the insertion of a new ringing floor between the ground floor of the tower and the vaulting, excuses itself in a gratifying manner way: so that if work under like circumstances had to be done to another building, I should feel bound decide to treat it in the same way as we have done that at Knoyle. I am bound to bear testimony to the invaluable assistance of Detmar Blow, to whom, I am convinced, any success attained has been chiefly due. and, If, when you have seen the tower as finished, you should feel with me on this pointed, I should be glad if you would send him a letter from yourself in the way of appreciation. of his most honesty completed labours, in this interesting but exacting work. My one drawback in the whole business, is that I have put the parishioners have been put to a heavier expense than I had anticipated – unavoidable, it is true, but none the less a disappointing necessity. For, if I had hesitated to proceed as I have done, when the various weaknesses in the fabric of the tower declared themselves, I should have unjustifiably have risked the failure of the whole of the work. I have had the bill of the total cost, but have given it to Blow to take down with him to Yorkshire, (where he is now at working) to cheque check all the items, and compare them with his vouchers. When I get the papers back again, I will put them in proper form, for the Rector, Ch’ Warden, and the parishioners to consider. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. arrangements

V&A, AAD

458 • To John Thomas Micklethwaite, 7 July 1893 Draft 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. 7 July. 1893 To J.T. Micklethwaite Esqe My dear Micklethwaite Thanks for your letter. I will now write to Boni, tell him of your service to Sartorio – and say, that any proposition to the “antiquaries” must remain till

216

1888–1898

November.1 Boni is such an so indefatigable an antiquary, that he gives no peace to his friends, but he is generous in return for help. The other item in your letter, is a more serious one, and I am considerably disappointed, there is no doubt about that; for it seems to me to be not so much as a difference of opinion – which one can allow for, as loose reasoning Your on your part, and the flower-pot illustration is not illustrious.2 However, if you will nail your colours to the mast, we must grin, and bear it and without malice Go “gently tip-toe over the pimples”!3 Yes, I heard a long yarn in Winchester Church the last time I was there, of how hundreds of loads of scrapings were at one time carted away, and the remorselessness of the treatment is visible to the naked eye.4 Our “restorers” are lineal descendants of those impenitent thieves. Hell is a little out of fashion now, but let us hope there is one in store for the like of them. Purgatory would not be sufficiently corrosive to eat through their tough skins. God be with them, in direst mood, be with them. If the new statues go into the Wykeham niches, the stupid sheep will plop down and worship them. I was once in Tewkesbury Church – enjoying what is left to us there, when I found dullards on their knees tracing out the beauties of Sir G. Scott’s truly wonderful pavement,5 and it was evident that it was what they came out for to see; and they brushed it off with there [sic] noses, like swine. Forgive me this grumbling, but rage must rule me when I see learn of women, and or ancient buildings, being deflowered. Yours truly, though grimly – | Philip Webb. Courtauld 142a-b

1 See above, Letter 447, note 11, and also below, Letter 460, note 6. 2 To commemorate the Quincentenary of Winchester College in 1893, three new statues were placed in the niches of the fourteenth-century chantry chapel of William of Wykeham, in Winchester Cathedral, Micklethwaite being the consultant architect, and George Frampton (1860–1928) the sculptor. See Philip W. Sergeant, The Cathedral Church of Winchester (London: George Bell & Sons, 1898), p. 49. ‘As for Wykeham’s chapel it was no doubt Turner who told you that I do not object to putting new figures into the empty niches. I see no more harm in doing so than in putting new flower pots on an old chimney piece. . . . Several mischievous proposals had been made including one to repaint, but I hope all that is stopped now.’ Micklethwaite to PSW, 6 July 1893, Courtauld 141c-d. 3 ‘Mr Bailey smiled through the suds in his satisfaction. “Gently over the stones, Poll. Go a tip-toe over the pimples!”. Poll Sweedlepipe obeyed, and scraped the lather off again with particular care.’ Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (ch 29). 4 ‘You probably know that the whole surface of the chapel and the tomb has been pared down in comparatively modern times. The effigy has been better treated but has been tampered with. Except it and the floor and the base of the altar and the ironwork about the chapel there is nothing really old left.’ 141d. 5 Ironic of course. Scott’s restoration work at Tewkesbury Abbey was directly instrumental in the formation of the SPAB in 1877. See Vol. I, Letter 109, note 2, and Vol. I, Letter 168.

217

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

459 • To Gillett and Co., 11 July 1893 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London. W.C. 11 July 1893 To Messrs Gillett & Johnston. Dear Sirs East Knoyle Ch’ bell repairs. d I sh be disappointed if the settlement of your bill for this work was not as satisfactory to both of us, as the work itself. When I went to Knoyle with Mr Blow, on the 1st July, to examine the repairs to the bells, I found – after very a careful examination, and test of ringing &c, that your man’s work the work of your Mr Hitchens – so far as I could thus judge – had been very well done indeed, and, with one exception (that of repairing some of the shrouding to the wheels with deal, instead of elm) I was much pleased with the result. I was also gratified that the precautions I had taken, to carry the racking of the bells, when ringing, lower down the tower, and the repairs to the bell cage, had proved to be successful. Now, your estimate tender for repairing putting the bells in order (after having sent a man down to examine their state) for £45, was quite an inclusive one, and it was so laid before the Parish Committee, (which has no money to spare) and accepted. By The omission of the iron steadying-ring to ropes, the sheaths attached to the ring, with the supporting bars, and fixing – which could not, I am sure, have been done by you (or me) for less than £7 – so that would allow make (if this omission is not taken into acct,) the amount of £45 is quite a fair one for the work done, so that I hope you will at once agree with me to modify your bill to the simple form of ‘for putting the bells in proper working order, as per according to estimate given to the archt, £45.’ Even if I could agree (wh’ I cannot) to allow you the extra £7.10.0 beyond the cost of the omitted steadying ring, I am satisfied the gain to you would be an unwise one, in view of doing further work under my direction. I am so particular about the proper way of hanging of bells, and the getting bells cast of good tone &c, so that I should like to be able to depend in future on some bell founder with whom I could consult in such an important matters. I had pleasure in expressing my satisfaction to Mr Hitchens, and the Rector, for the way in which the work had [been] done. his work. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

218

1888–1898

460 • To Giacomo Boni, 16 July 1893 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday. 16 July 1893 To James the Wise (in his generation!) My dear Giacomo Our friend Giulio Sartorio called here on, or about, the 21st of June, and delivered to me his credentials – namely, your two letters1 – one of them dated 1 June 1893. He – Sartorio – came, saw, and conquered me, and in the last way, doubly so, for I could only understand him by signs – by “nods and becks & wreathed smiles”.2 He produced your photographs, and these – with your letters – gave me the cue to the situation. I held forth to him with the simplest syllables I could lay tongue to, and changed the form of phrase to make it easier, but, I am afraid, he did not find out from these efforts that I was a wise man. I can fancy him saying to himself – ‘he looked to be a wise man; he certainly was an old one; but, per baccho,3 I’ll be hanged if I could make out what he intended me to know’ – no doubt these possible reflections of his were – sotto voce – in pure Roman dialect! In short, we got on together as well as we could. I praised you to the seventh layer of the heavens, and, possibly, he may have concluded I was taking away your reputation behind your back. When he returns, do not believe anything he says to you in English, about me! Barring the difficulty of fishing for his soul, with hooks baited with the English language, I thought he seemed to be a good natured fellow; and when, afterwards, he brought here some of his pastel landscapes, I thought he had a distinct turn for art. I sounded William Morris as to seeing him (Sartorio) and took him up to Kelmscott house, Hammersmith, and introduced him to the Lion in company with the lioness and one cub. Also, by good luck, Fairfax Murray was there, and he acted as the interpreting angel without feathers. When we were at tea, I asked Sartorio what he thought of the Leone! This was from my end of the long table, to the other – at which there was a roar at the other end – &c &c. I had already written to Micklethwaite, and he had bestirred himself to break through the fortifications set round Westminster Abbey by the authorities.4 Having blown up the defences round the Dean – he, out of pure love to the erudite Micklethwaite – allowed Sartorio to do the photo’s: Another hindrance arose when the Dean was away. The Canon in charge refused to let Sartorio photo: the space before the altar. Micklethwaite again attacked the Dean, and got further permission, but, the weather, after having been magnificent here for 4 months, has been

219

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

upset by thunderstorms, and the light is now bad for photographing. I got Sartorio here, one evening, with the ‘angel’ Murray, and we had a pleasant time over a bottle of wine.5 At this time I saw his pastel (Sartorio’s) drawings, and I think (he says he is a figure painter, and not a landscapist) his landscapes are distinctly good. At least I was struck with the pure semblance of Roman landscape; so much so, that I wished I could be there between the haycocks (the heaps of hay raked into mounds) and talking ‘of things in general’ with you. You see, you and I may quarrel with each other over disputed points of mere opinion, but we can make each understand what the other means. Your other request was a more difficult point to deal with.6 Micklethwaite is a leading light amongst the Archæological brotherhood, and this is their time for spreading themselves over the country, to tell of the wonders of this grassy mound – those rude stones raised one upon the other – This Cathedral, and that old palace – so that the art societies are on the loose, and not in bounds of lecturetheatre in London. Micklethwaite is therefore in a hurry, and he has not been able to come and see your delightful photos: but he has written to say that the Society of Antiquaries will not be in ‘session’ again till November; at which time he will bring your proposition before them. I very much doubt their doing what you so reasonably ask, for all Societies are apt to go to sleep, and leave one or two active people to do the work. Perhaps Micklethwaite and one or two others might stir the society to move in the matter, but, we shall see! At all events you will have to wait before you get any help from England. We are nearly as difficult to move, as it is to “hoist the Dutch”.7 To me (poor miserable, ignorant mortal) your grammar of Roman construction is an admirable idea, and should be carried out; but, I am, by nature, a craftsman. That is, I love the ways of putting stones, timber, &c &c together – but the generality of people have no care for these things. They want to know how high the cross is at the top of S. Peters, and whether the telegraph tapes used by financiers would not, in a week, girdle the Earth! Those 2 sheets of photos: you send are good examples, and exceedingly interesting. The first, that from Porta Sebastiano is wonderful.8 If the work was Greek marble, re-worked, the new setting looks to be Greek also, for the joints are wonderfully close. What the lumps, or bosses, are left on the surface for I cannot make out. I remember, in France, seeing a Cathedral, where the shafts to the arcading had quartz lumps sticking out from the smooth faces. This was on account (I suppose) of the danger of tooling them off, for in doing so, they might have broken the shafts themselves. Are the lumps left on the Sebastiano gate left for that reason? What admirable tooling. Do you think this was done with a pointed axe, or with chizel [sic] and mallet? The second sheet is of the Aurelian wall, and this I well remember in the Ludovisi gardens, which, then, were untouched by the destroyers.9 Even I, your ignorant servant, noted the differences of brickwork (& stone) in Rome, 220

1888–1898

and could guess the age of it from the workmanship – sometimes. However, Middleton took some trouble to explain this in his book on Rome.10 Note, and question. Was there any sign, before the building of Diocletian’s palace of Spalato, of the Eastern (Persian) element being used in Roman work? You must know, my friend, that I am most interested in the work which has changed all Europe after the complete decay of Roman art, proper. That is, the work derived from Greece – (ancient). Well, the neo-Greek, is the point, when he became alive again, and shewed what he could do if he was free to direct his own work. The Byzantine – so called – is the foundation of all Western art till the end of the 15th century. After which we come to the art of the pedantic people – that is, the learned of art, but not in art. In your delightful photos: what a study the thing is in the 12th & 13th cents: Look at the pretty portico (porch) set up in the earlier work in “Caesoli” – for example.11 See Grandmother and grandchild. How pretty they look together. When I shewed the photo: of “Lapide nella chiesa d. S. Pietro in Albe Fucenze”12 to a friend of mine, he asked me what was the meaning of the square sunk recess in the pilaster, between the words of inscription ABAS ODORISIVS FIERI FECIT □ MAGISTER GUALTERIUS. &c, for, he said, he had seen several such square recesses, in the same position, at Constantinople. Were these recesses for relics, put under glass? All the works of the Cosmati are beautiful (of course they were not all done by that family?)13 and I well remember the Church of the Aracœli at Rome.14 I oftentimes went into it alone to look quietly at the work, from the earliest parts (such as the columns of the Nave and aisles) to the Cosmati work, and the Pinturrichio [sic] painted chapel. When a monk came round I would have liked to exchange human words with him, but not fleas (pulci). That Church in Firenze is a serious, and history-enforcing place, and the solemn front of S. Maria in Castello, Corneto Tarquinia, touches me closely.15 Old-world, my friend. Human folk surrounding themselves with their own solemn thoughts, in stone & marble, six or seven hundred years ago. I send you by this post a small pamphlet written by William Morris on Westminster abbey, which perhaps “antiscrape” may have sent you, as honorary member? It was written by him for our society, to stir up people to save what remains to us in the abbey from further mischief.16 You should write a criticism of it, and send it to the Dean & Chapter of Westminster! Morris’s admirable printed books are not criticised at all in England.17 Critics do not concern themselves with beautiful printing. The books he prints are mostly sold to rich people who think they ought to have them in their libraries – but they do not read them! They cost a good deal of money, few are printed, and most of them are bought up in a week or two after they are published. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Had I better not give the photos: you send me by Sartorio, to Micklethwaite – as he has been so helpful to Sartorio? I will keep them till you write to me. Adieu. Courtauld 144a-d 221

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

17

See above, Letter 455, note 2. See above, Letter 350, note 11. My goodness (It). ‘Our friend turned up one hour ago with an introduction from Boni and I have got him an order from the Dean to do what he wants.’ Micklethwaite to PSW, 24 June 1893, Courtauld, 140a. See above, Letter 456. ‘Now do you think that the Society of Antiquaries of Great Britain could help us by procuring the photographs of the few types of roman masonry which are still extant in England or thereabouts? We could give in exchange a set of the roman types in Rome or in Italy. I elect you as my plenipotentiary in this transaction.’ GBO to PSW, 1 June 1893, Courtauld 136c-d. He seems to be using the phrase in the same sense as ‘to beat the Dutch’ – to do something extraordinary or startling (OED). The Porta San Sebastiano (known in ancient times as the Porta Appia) is a well-preserved gate in Rome’s Aurelian Walls, built originally in the time of the Emperor Aurelian (214/15–275 AD). The seventeenth-century Roman Villa Ludovisi was built on the site of the Gardens of Sallust, close to the Porta Salaria in the Aurelian Walls. This gate was demolished in 1921. Middleton, The Remains of Ancient Rome, II, pp. 372–89. Casoli is a town in the province of Chieti, in the Abruzzo region. ‘The tombstone in the church of San Pietro in Alba Fucens.’ This Benedictine church is located on the former site of the temple of Apollo at Alba Fucens, in the town of Massa d’Albe, in the province of L’Aquila. See above, Letter 447, note 11. See above, Letter 453, note 6. The church of Santa Maria di Castello in the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinia (previously called Corneto), in the Lazio region, was completed in the early thirteenth century. WM’s SPAB pamphlet, Concerning Westminster Abbey (London: Women’s Printing Society [June 1893]). Republished by Longmans & Co in 1900 at the Chiswick Press, using WM’s Golden type for the Kelmscott Press. See also Vol. IV, Letter 1051. ‘Aldo Manuzio’s bones would vibrate with joy if such typographic treasures as William Morris’ books could be placed in the library of the Marcian library. Would you kind[ly] send me a list, with prices, of what has been issued up to date? I would willingly undertake to publish a bibliographical note about them in the ARCHIVIO STORICO DELL’ARTE whose director is also the Prefect of our central library. Kindly send me also some of the best criticism which has been originated by these publications.’ GBO to PSW, 23 June 1893, Courtauld, 137d.

461 • To Giacomo Boni, 23 July 1893 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 23 July. 1893 (there is no mistake about this, why do not you do as well in this way?) My dear Boni “Rome, Saturday”. There is no mistaking that, from the writing, but which Saturday? I had this literary fragment of yours yesterday – also Saturday – and I suppose your missive was of the Saturday before? Well, Sartorio the Roman, he met me by appointment at the natural-History Museum at South Kensington,1 where I had to go to make a note of the plumage of 222

1888–1898

a “chatterer,” or Bohemian Wax-wing – a bird, sir. It was in the shabby-magnificent hall of this museum that Julio the Roman handed me your over repentant 2 pence halfpenny worth of communication. A strange thing is human nature! – example – an Italian Maestro of antiquities cannot hunt over the Roman Campagna but he must needs repent of his studies of the strangely ancient and curious things he himself has found in the pestiferous plains around the city to which all roads draw. Why this sudden consciousness of one (supposed) fault, when so many (real) others dog his steps to glory? Because I write you long letters full of Gray’s Inn gab[b]le, you are not bound there & then, when you get them, to sit down and answer provoking questions. And as for my belated answer to you, did I not write it last Sunday in the afternoon on this grey oak table, with one eye on the paper and the other looking through the window on green trees and floating rooks and pigeons? I have a map, which I bought in the Roman city itself, and it is of a large scale (“Carta Topografica dei Dintorini di Roma in 9 fogli”)2 so that if any of the constructional wonders you have been staring at should lie within the bounds of this map’s margin, and you tell me the name, I shall understand something of its situation, and of your wonder-struck fancy. When you were here in 1889 I did not find you so markedly communicative, nor do I think you could stand, now, talking to me for some hours a day for a whole month; and, if you listened to me for that length of time you could not improve your knowledge of the barbarous (if expressive?) language of England, for my letters you have already found to be wholly wanting in correctness of expression. Still, if you should ever mount these stairs again, I would receive you with a “blooming” smile, which is good language everywhere. No, you wd not care to see the black whitewash again – once in a lifetime is enough for anyone not a native. How do you manage to keep your health in the Campagna, this hot July weather?3 Even in England it has been really warm for 4 months. So dry indeed has it been that the cattle are in want of grass, and for winter store there will be but little. Yes, Wardle had to flee to the shady woods of Vallombrosa, after which summering he will descend on Florence.4 He wrote to me with much joy of what he had found at Spoleto, but it was getting too warm for him at Perugia, and he had to give up work and take to the hills – but he sent me some descriptions, and among them was that of the Templechurch of the crucifix at Clotunno [sic] – of which you will remember sending me 2 photo’s: Now this sort of antique building was just what Wardle wanted to see. He, I fancy, holds that it was a temple, and that the two ends were added in early Christian time. So far as I, in my ignorance, can make out from the photographs, the front is certainly all of Xtian date, and not the crucifix decoration only. If Wardle’s theory is right as to the later rebuilding of the ends of the temple, it might account for the simple classic form of the portico, as they must have followed the lead of the more ancient building. 223

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Wardle holds strongly to his opinion of the constant return of the early Xtian centuries to the old Roman style. If you should remember this point when you write, you may tell me what opinion you hold, so that I may throw it at Wardle when he looks with scorn (as well he may) at my poor opinion. Only think for a moment, if you, he, and me, were together at one of these early places in Italy, how the air would resound with the exclamations from 3 different points of view – and how I would be the peacemaker, by screaming out ‘we are all 3 wrong’! ‘God rest you merry gentleman’,5 and I do not hastily take up with a wrong idea as to my temper. When I have a complaint of you in my mind I shall be sure to out-with-it, so you need not anticipate evil. Sartorio told me yesterday he had an appointment to see the English painter Watts, and was much pleased with his fortune. He also told me in language English (much better than mine would have been in Italian) that he had made 2 good negatives of the work you wanted from Westminster. Keep honest, and farewell, | Yours, comically | Philip Webb. I merely wrote now to ease your mind as to my temper. I await what you may tell me of the wonders of the Campagna. Courtauld 146a-c

1 ‘With very pleasure [sic] Saturday four o’clock I will expect you in the hall at Natural History Museum. I have made for Boni two very good negative[s] from the work-floor. Yours truly Julius Romanus.’ Sartorio to PSW, 10 July 1893, Courtauld 139d. 2 See above, Letter 404, note 11. 3 ‘If you had only an idea of the temperature of the roman campagna in July, of the number & variety of the ruins of temples, tombs, roads, villas, aqueducts, & similar ancient constructions among which I drive, or ride or walk or climb like a lizard.’ GBO to PSW, ?15 July 1893, Courtauld 143b-c. 4 ‘But a few days ago I had a letter from Wardle, the roaming Wardle – the summer winds have blown him towards the Alps.’ 143d. 5 The text of the English Christmas carol, ‘God rest you merry, gentlemen’, together with its traditional tune (not that to which it is usually now sung), were first published in William Sandys, Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern; including the most popular in the West of England (London: Richard Beckley, 1833), pp. 102–4 and tune 7.

462 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 July 1893 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Thurs: 27 July ’93 My dear Cockerell I’ve just seen Miss Faulkner. Happily, she is a little better; her yesterday in bed has evidently told. Hope to keep her there today. I mentioned your kind offer to write to Miss Octavia Hill,1 to learn if she knew of someone (not of the ordinary servant kind) to answer Miss Faulkner’s domestic

224

1888–1898

needs – so that, if you could conveniently write she would be thankful. The points are, about these – 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

An honest widow woman (any sort of ‘widow’) who had a woman child; Shd be old enough to do simple household work, methodically – say 35 to 45 years of age The child is mentioned, as it would be company for the woman, and because that sort of ‘incumbrance’ [sic] is a hindrance to finding an ordinary place of service; and a when a decent home is the one boon. Wages, from 17s/- to 20s/- a week – according to circumstances – and board herself. There would be no one living in the house besides Miss Faulkner. Sunday afternoons freedom generally given, and an occasional holiday. If there was a child it wd help this point. The house newly repaired, clean, small, and with good kitchen & scullery, and wholesome bedroom. The cooking for Miss F. very little – mostly of the milk kind.

These are all of the things I can think of at the moment, but, perhaps, they would help Miss Hill to understand the situation – the most important things are willingness, and honesty. I must hope you will forgive my taking you at your word, and believe me, thankfully yours | Ph. Webb. Miss Fs house, is 2 Caroline Place, Guilford Street, W.C.2 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/24

1 SCC had known Octavia Hill (1838–1912) since his childhood, as she was a friend of his father’s. Her innovatory work in improving the housing conditions of the London poor combined practical interventions with effective tenants’ self-help groups. JR gave vital financial support at the outset of her mission, and after they fell out the young SCC effected a reconciliation, even persuading JR to apologise. In 1887, SCC had started giving administrative help to Hill’s housing schemes at Southwark, and they remained close until her death. 2 See above, Letter 431, note 5.

463 • To William Weir, 30 July 1893 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday. 30 July. ’93 My dear Weir I was glad of your letter last night, telling me you were enjoying your holiday. If one commits a holiday, or a murder, surely it is well that the crime should prove satisfactory! Knaresborough is but a name to me, as I only once passed it on a

225

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

walking time, but Nidd river attracted me.1 Alas! and your spirits will, I’m afraid, often be damped by finding the ancient buildings destroyed, as far as interest and beauty are concerned, by restoration, one of the triumphant devils of our time. We know what we lose by the trail of this serpent, but the people who will come after us will hardly estimate what they have lost. However, our wails are but ineffectual. If you should be able to get to Brandsby and see Detmar Blow he wd be able to shew you things wh’ wd be amusing at all events,2 but your time may be too short for you to attain to Ri[e]vaulx. York, perhaps, you may be able to glance at; and, if time pressed, you might steal a day or two from Jack and myself now you are on the tramp. Do not fail to do so if you are so minded. We are getting along fairly well. Jack is thin and looks as if a roll on the grass would do him good. We will not damp your ardour by mentioning anything else about the “office”. We too have lovely weather, sunshine & showers, and the trees here have shed their yellow leaves and refreshed their green ones. Believe me yours truly | Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 2

1 The market town of Knaresborough in North Yorkshire, on the River Nidd, is situated about four miles east of Harrogate. 2 See above, Letter 425, note 1.

464 • To Giacomo Boni, 6 August 1893 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 6 Aug. 1893 Dear Giacomo Boni I do not quite know where we are in our conflict of wits; accompanied by thunder from above (cracklings & roar of intelligences) or spume from below (earth clogging from graspings) – Where are we? Unclean animals, most of us: but to some it is given that a few pearls of price stick to the aforesaid scum of the boiling, which may be retained if the spirit can but balance itself in the “hurly burly”. Imagery we have in abundance, if so be we can wipe our eyes clear enough whereby to see. “If you only had an idea of the temptations of the Roman Campagna”.1 Well. I have some idea of what it must be, and if that is your worst temptation, you would be in fairly good case. ‘What went you out for to see’?2 George Wardle, from Dante’s wooded hills by Firenze, writes me word that he also looks to hear you talk, at some future time, of what you have seen in the world renowned fens of Rome – perhaps you may think it worthwhile to impart to him? 226

1888–1898

He once asked me a question about certain lintels he had noticed in Spoleto and Clotunno of which he could not make out the story [sketch] thus. Why was the bed of the lintel put at (a-a)? I made a rude guess, that it might be the makers had a stone deeper than was wanted, and they cut up the soffit to (b-b) instead of carrying the line right through. In answer to this, as an objection to my poor suggestion, he said, but why as many as 3 lintels on the same lines, and in different places? I held my tongue. But I made another shot. Why might it not be that the instinctive remembrance of the Greek form of opening [sketch] thus, gave rise to the bedding joint at (a-a). He seems to have thought the idea a less stupid one than the earlier. What says the Roman candle, Monaco Bigio, with his ‘bullfinch’ sharpness of wits? I duly received your 3 copies of the 2 numbers of “Riforma” of 22 & 23 Juglio, and have spread them amongst the enlightened. John Hebb has done his best to translate the original parts (ie. not the quotations) which antiscrape is offering to an English newspaper. We shall see. Mrs William Morris has some little knowledge of Italian, so that I sent one copy to Kelmscott, the place you know near the head waters of Thames. She has probably translated your kindness, to her husband. I do not know. For, I feel as far from Kelmscott as from the tail waters of Tyber. My Campagna are the green fields of Gray’s Inn, which also you know, if patriotic nonsense has not rubbed the scene from your memory? Natheless, I thank you for the article in Riforma. Memorandum. I have been asked by John Hebb to put a question to you: namely, this. He has, for his own amusement, translated your pamphlet on the Venice Lion, and, wishing to print it, he would like to reproduce some of your illustrations. Can you permit?3 It may be you would doubt the lucidity of the translation: or, you might have other ideas of reproduction for the barbarian side of the sea? If you think anything of this ‘memorandum’, let me know the result of your consideration, so that I may deal accordingly with Hebb’s ambitious proposal. Say what you like to me, and I will convey to him, in judicious manner, the consent or objection. Am I not an amiable cat’s-paw? Positively no claws! We shall see. In my last letter to you, (was it the last?) I told that Micklethwaite was occupied in dancing round London archæologicalizing, and now he’s pirouetting in the same manner about some English counties, so that I know nothing more of what he can do with the Society of Antiquaries, in the photo: matter of English-Roman remains, than I have told. He has not even seen your beautiful photographs which were sent to bribe the beasts. However, I will pin him to the gutter when he returns from wandering. Now, you may throw this letter impatiently on one side, but you cannot wisely say it is epigrammatical – though, why I write it at all may be enigmatical. Human nature is a strange thing, resolved out of wind water and fire, which elements leave vacua in which germs human may maintain . . . . along with lice. I will tell you another story. A certain young man – of Celtic blood more or less – resolved out of earth from Cornwall and Devon: having ideas and “juices” – more or less “orange-like” – crossed my sphere some year or more 227

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

ago, and dug and delved in nearness to my garden plot, clinking spade of his with that of mine. He taking me for a passable old beast much besmirched with ignorance; and I, he, for a piece of human quartz or other sparkling stone; the incrustation surrounding him it being my amusement to “peel off” (I don’t know whether you recollect your own imagery) with the hope of finding something for remuneration of my industrious idleness. This human, or inhuman nodule when listening – as he must at times – to my sheepish bleatings, has gathered that you, on my report, maybe of the worthy, whom he wd approach with humble hope of future content. He, W.R. Lethaby, (something Danish must have crept into the tribe at some time, from the last syllable of his name) using me as a vehicle, sends you a book of his, as tribute to your Italian worthiness.4 Great men sometimes use ignoble means, and I might not be better used. To drop this somewhat stilted style, I will say that he is by profession an architect, somewhat tinctured with letters – lives at 1 Gray’s Inn Square, London. W.C, and is on more or less worshipping terms with William Morris, when the latter is in the flesh and in London. Of physiognomy, his approaches that of one or two of Holbein’s portraits made from West country English worthies – so called,5 and bumpkin I have fancied a likeness between his noddle and that of one of Michel Angelo’s figures in the Sistine Chap: This last is a safe insertion on my part, as I keep clear of noting which figure. I took up his book with a certain smile of brutal incredulity – coming as it did from an Architect! – but I think I see in it some seed of insight into a fanciful subject, and that he has treated it in a style of brevity quite commendable, and, being thus, I forward it to you, knowing your prepossession for briefness, the very opposite of this letter.6 As I draw this scrawl to an end, I feel as if I was an ass of burdens not my own, and heavier than I calculated upon when proffering myself as a medium. If you ever cross the narrow sea again you may examine for yourself this new prospect of companionship, less absurd than that of your faithful English correspondent Philip Webb. P.S. Of Sartorio, I am a little in doubt as to his pleasure when he was in England, for his English and my Italian vocabularies were of the most limited order. But, I gathered he was of elastic temperament, and would cheerfully rise to the top of any wave he encountered in his journeyings. At all events, I hope so. You are not necessarily to answer this farrago, but do with me as you have done, hit out when you so feel inclined, and amuse A lover of horses. P.P.S You will never know what weather these islands can produce, say, once in a century – as I now do. P.S. ad libitum. I pray you send me your proper style and title, for someone has put out you are ‘Cavaliere’-----!! and that I am a goose. and may well sign myself | Philquadrello.7 Courtauld 147a-d 228

1888–1898 1 PSW quotes from GBO’s letter of ?15 July 1893, but misreads ‘temperature’ as ‘temptations’ (see above, Letter 461, note 3). 2 ‘But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold they that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses.’ St Matthew 11:8. 3 See John Hebb to PSW, 19 July 1893, Courtauld, 145. ‘Anything [Hebb] requires for the best success of his work, if pointed out to me, will be done by me with the greatest pleasure.’ GBO to PSW, 6 September 1893, Courtauld 148d. 4 Architecture Mysticism and Myth (London: Percival & Co., 1892). 5 WRL was born in Barnstaple, Devon (though see below, Letter 494, in which PSW describes WRL as ‘a Cornish Celt’). Perhaps he had in mind Holbein’s portrait of William Reskimer (d. 1552), at the top of which the artist wrote ‘Reskeemer a Cornish Gent’ (c. 1532–3, Royal Collection); another candidate would be a drawing of Simon George, which carries the later annotation ‘S. George of Cornwall’ (c. 1536–7, Royal Collection; the finished portrait is now at Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main). See Hans Holbein the Younger. Painter at the Court of Henry VIII, with catalogue entries by Ariane van Suchtelen (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), pp. 88–91 and 110–13. 6 ‘Architectural mysticism & myth is a very valuable present for which I feel compelled to thank you over & over again. . . . I pray you to convey my best thanks to its author Mr. Tithaby [sic] which I hope to meet and embrace sometime somewhere for this contribution of his towards clearing the path of the etymology of architectural ideas.’ 148a-b. 7 His meaning is obscure: ‘quadrello’ means square tiles (It), and there is an obscure English usage, ‘quadrel’: a square block, especially of brick (OED).

465 • To Reverend Robert Milford, 19 August 1893 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 19 August 1893 To The Revd the Rector | East Knoyle Dear Mr Milford. East Knoyle Ch’ Tower I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter last night with an inclosed letter for Detmar Blow. I was much pleased on his account that he I had received from him yesterday morning the whole of Mr Estcourt’s bills, and the same rearranged, and corrected and rewritten throughout by himself from his own records of each item. Mr Blow has made many some small corrections throughout, and his version will have to be submitted to Estcourt for his acceptance or recorrection. However I can now safely tell give you and your committee a rough total to guide you for guidance in collecting the necessary subscriptions to meet the remaining debt – if I allow a margin for doubtful items to be adjusted between Estcourt, Blow, and myself. The total amount of Estcourts claim is " " " " D. Blow’s statement – amount of difference –

£966.18. 4 940.13.10 £ 26. 4. 6

It is not likely that either Estcourt or Blow will be found to be quite right in each item, and the number of items amounting to 323. 229

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Therefore, at present, I think it would be safer to calculate on having to meet the higher amount – say, of £966, this sum being made up as follows. For materials and labour for works done week by week from Sepr 1892 to June 1893 under Blow’s direction – £900.19.7 Cost of new ringing loft (same as estimate) 65.18.9 966.18.9 Gillett & Johnston’s bill for repair to bells – 50.0.0 Amount of payments to D. Blow as sole director of the works, to June, ’93 62.10.0 £1079.8.4 Paid to Estcourt – £440.0.0 " " Gillett’s – 50.0.0 " " D. Blow – 62.10.0 552. 10. 0 552.10.0 unpaid – £526. 18. 4 The delay of Mr Blow in returning the bills will be readily understood, as his work in Yorkshire is constant, and he could only in his evenings be able to give the time and attention necessary for the perfect examination of the accounts. I hope to see him on the subject in London, on Monday week. Believe me | Yours truly | Ph: W. V&A, AAD

466 • To Reverend Robert Milford, 23 August 1893 Draft 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn London. W.C. 23 August. 1893 To The Revd the Rector | East Knoyle East Knoyle Church Tower repairs. In acknowledgment of your letter received last on Monday night, I will at once say, it does not at all surprise me that you should feel have felt oppressed by the figures roughly given in my letter of the 19th inst 1 The forecast I was able to make, after getting Estcourt’s account down to Feby 24, made it sufficiently clear to me, that the work yet still to be done in securing the tower would finally amount bring up the cost to an uncomfortable sum. However, there was no alternative for me, open to me. I was bound to proceed with the work and to the finish it [sic] on the same lines as those of the followed in the former part, and, so far as concerns the work itself the work itself is concerned, I do not for an instant regret the expenditure course pursued. It will be sufficiently clear to anyone, that I should not have forborne to make my own reasonable charges for professional work, if I had not felt that the principles

230

1888–1898

I maintained (and still maintain, even more strongly) required some sacrifice on my part under the circumstances of the case and I in no way regret that resolution for if the work should be permanently successful (as I believe it will be) I shall be quite content. Still, I felt it necessary to make some sacrifice myself, when maintaining a principle contrary to the customary order of things when dealing with ancient historical buildings, and I in no way regret my resolution, for if the work done is effectual, as I believe it will be found to be, the result will be worth the cost. I believed I was chosen for as your architect because it was known I held strong opinions as to the responsibility which should attach to any professional man engaged with repairs of an invaluable building: and, for the like reason, I chose Detmar Blow to carry out the works act under my direction. In all cases where work has to be done, requiring aptitude and experience has to be done, in those undertaking it a considerable amount of trust must be placed in the executants them ; as it would be impossible for them the archt to explain – more than generally – what had to be done course he would have to pursue. Indeed – as in this case – it could not be known at any one time what it might be found necessary to do. I had constantly to be varying the methods of doing the work procedure, as it disclosed itself things disclosed themselves from time to time. I know that one of the most difficult points greatest difficulties in front of you and your Committee, will be to satisfy others as to the actual amount of work done: for, only Mr Blow and myself can know what has been done fully understand this, and the difficulties there are in doing it were in carrying it out; for the main part of it is buried in the walls, and the appliances used to allow of its being done securely have been removed. It should not be forgotten, that a very large part of the work had to be done by the light of lamps, and in very cramped conditions. In many cases deep holes had to be made and in the walls, the weight above supported, and the materials delivered to the workmen in the holes by another man passing them in as by a peel-stick into an oven.2 If Mr Blow could take a body of your parishioners all over the tower, inside & out, he could not shew them more than a quarter of that which has been done. With regard to the point you mention, of Estcourt’s bill amounting to so much after Feby 24, I would say, that the former period of time was for work done in about six months, and the latter is about four months. Thus, Sepr 1, 1892 to Feby 24, 1893 – from Feb 3rd 24, ’93 to June 17 1893 minus the cost of the ringing loft –

£593.0.0 307.0.0 £900.0.0

The expenditure in the first 6 months would be at about the rate of £99 for a month. The expenditure in the last 4 months would be about the rate of £77, a month. and The cause of the difference between the rates would be, that there was a

231

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

considerable amount of materials on the ground at the end of Feby. Now, the materials have cost a great part of the money expended, for examples – I deemed it necessary in order to consolidate the extensive and dangerous fractures in the walls, and counteract the original causes of ruin to use the hardest and toughest paving bricks I could get from Staffordshire. The largest size of these bricks cost £9/8/0 a thousand, and the smaller £5/3/0 a thousand. These exceptional bricks were only used where the strain was greatest, but a large number were had to be used. Still a much larger number of tough local bricks were built in, which only cost £1/2/0 2/2/0 a thousand. We had to Again, it was necessary to use Portland cement for the mortar, and a considerable portion of coarse sharp sand had to be brought from Wareham, at 12s/6d a ton, while the local sand, to mix with this coarse sand, only cost 3s/3d a load. I reduced the amount quantity of Portland cement made used to a minimum, partly for economy’s sake, but much more so because I am convinced experience has convinced me that Portland cement mortar is generally used injuriously strong in most cases. You will easily understand that the repairing of towers is always much more costly than doing such work to slighter built and less lofty works buildings: There is additional risk, and expenditure of time, in explaining the work with men; and an extra cost for scaffolding, and in lifting and lowering materials and the rest, which, in our case, proved to be a large quantity: and every new cubic yard of materials displacing displaced a cubic yard of old. I have carried on this letter on to this length, as it seemed to me that the points considered in it might be of assistance to you in explaining matters before you received the further information as to the when the exact amount of the cost, when that has of materials and labour has been determined.3 Believe me, dear Mr Milford | Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘The amount of Estcourt’s bill surprises me – up to Feb. 24th it was £593 now it has mounted up to £900 . . . I should like to know the labour bills – and the cost of materials – to show the people how the money has been expended. I shall be able to send Estcourt another £200 – for the rest he will have to wait.’ Milford to PSW, 21 August 1893, V&A, AAD. 2 Peel: ‘A baker’s shovel for thrusting loaves, pies, etc into the oven and then withdrawing them from it’ (OED). 3 This careful explanation seems to have been well received, though the funds were still hard to come by. ‘I must thank you very much for going so fully into the causes of the great additional expense in the Church Tower Repairs – it will be very useful for me when I have to call another meeting of the Parishioners. I will send to Estcourt in a few days a cheque for £200 – and I hope later on in the year to send him another £100 – after which I shall have to hold my hand until it gets a little fuller.’ Milford to PSW, 25 August 1893, V&A, AAD.

232

1888–1898

467 • To George Robinson, Marquis of Ripon, 29 August 1893 Drafted on behalf of SPAB; an earlier draft dated 29 August survives (V&A, AAD) The S.P.A.B. Septr 18931 To the most Hon. The Marquis of Ripon, &c &c. My Lord Marquis.2 Fountains’ Abbey The Committee of this society having considered your Lordship’s letter of the 20th Aug. date, applied to the gentleman who reported to the Society that water leaked through the vaulting of a part of the Abbey ruins.3 I am now directed to express the sincere regret of my Committee that the position of the leakage was inaccurately stated in our letter of the 14th Aug date, and which must have given your lordship unnecessary trouble. I am able now to correct the mistake, and to say that our informant visited the ruins on the 2nd of August, last, and found water dropping from the vault at the southern end of the “ambulatory”, and, during quite dry weather. He was again at the ruins on the 5th of August, when there was rain all the morning, and there were several pools of water on the floor. Also, it was noted that green moss was on one of the supporting piers of the vaulting. Inclosed is a small tracing, on which is clearly indicated the position in the ambulatory where the water came through. As it is well known how carefully the ruins of Fountains’ Abbey are protected by your Lordship my committee was the more anxious to be assured it had not vexatiously interfered in the matter in question. I am, my Lord Marquis | Your faithful Sert | T T – secy [pencil] I send this, as it will have to brought before the Comm: on Thursday. Ph W. | Aug 29. 1893. SPAB, Fountains Abbey file

1 PSW left a space for the day, and gave the month as September, realising that by the time it was sent out by HTT some days would have passed from the draft of 29 August. 2 The Liberal politician, George Robinson, first Marquess of Ripon (1827–1909), entered Parliament for the first time as an MP for Hull (1852). He was Viceroy of India from 1880–84, and

233

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II at the time of this letter was Secretary of State for the Colonies. He converted to Catholicism in 1874. 3 ‘Lord Ripon has received your letter. The description given does not, however, answer to anything in Fountains Abbey so as to enable him to identify the spot named. He thinks there must be a mistake. You are probably aware that the remains are very well cared for.’ J.H. Pollen to HTT, 20 August 1893, SPAB, Fountains Abbey file.

468 • To William Morris, 18 September 1893 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 18 Sepr 1893 My dear Fellow I gave to Kate the Thomas More,1 and she was touched, and all in a nervous twitter at such repeated grace to herself; and, “what am I to say. O what am I to say” &c. Well, I feel in like manner. Indeed there is little to be said, but many good and lovely books to be read, looked at, and rejoiced over, till the bum bailiffs put in an appearance,2 and I doubt if they would allow us to smuggle some into the work house, even if they did not confiscate the spectacles. ’Tis lucky for us all you had the means and the go to get this beneficent work done while there was yet day. You can point to the pile of them as you cough away the last breath; turning face to wall with some kind of internal chuckle. However, put it off a while. I feel the Gatti-teas are the social boon, at present,3 when one can disburden one’sself of accumulated ribald jesting, to shew that the old man stands in his old shoes. Lethaby tells me there is to be a large piece of tapestry at the Arts & Crafts’ show – after your figuring: that is good.4 Having anticipated a rather dismal show, I can now put in an appearance with some fair prospect. Kind love to Janey and Jenny, who now will be sniffing the early fog-dew on the roses and box edging. I am still, | Your affectionate | Philip Webb. I guess (sic) you did not go to the Piccadilly toy shop for nothing on Thursday!5 The piano case goes steadily on, but the colouring asks for wary artfulness.6 V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 39

1 The Kelmscott Press edition of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia was published on 8 September 1893. WM’s presentation copy to KF is now at the Houghton Library. 2 Bumbailiff: ‘i.e. the bailiff that is close at the debtor’s back, or that catches him in the rear’; ‘a bailiff of the meanest kind’ (OED). 3 For Gatti’s, see above, Letter 397, note 12. 4 This was Sir Galahad and the Holy Graal, one of the six large Holy Grail tapestries designed by EBJ and woven by Morris & Co., commissioned by the wealthy entrepreneur William Knox D’Arcy (1849–1917), founder of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, for Stanmore Hall, his house near Harrow. See MacCarthy, LPR, p. 434. It was exhibited in the fourth Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the New Gallery, and The Times noted that it occupied ‘most of the end wall, but leaves room underneath it for Mr. Burne-Jones’s sketches for other tapestries of the San Graal series’ (2 October 1893).

234

1888–1898 5 SCC annotation: ‘The Piccadilly toy-shop was Webb’s name for Bernard Quaritich’s, then at 15 Piccadilly, where Morris bought many a manuscript in these days.’ 6 See above, Letter 424.

469 • To Percy Wyndham, 16 November 1893 Draft 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn London W.C. 15 16 Novr 1893 To The Hon’ Percy Wyndham Dear Mr Wyndham. East Knoyle Ch’ Tower reparation I have to crave pardon, the delay is all on my part, for I had Detmar Blow’s criticisms on Estcourt’s bills in September, but as I had no difficulty in settling the matter, and being plentifully engaged with urgent work I deferred completing drawing up the accounts in form, and sending them to the Rector as Treasurer. However, I will give the first day I can find for this purpose, and make them out, and send them. Of the £26.4.6 in dispute between Blow and Estcourt, the latter gives gave in to Blow’s figures as being correct, to the amount of £17.6.5, but holds held out to as to the small items making up the balance of £8.18.1. Blow shook his head over some of these small items, though he held that one or two might be right, so that I decided to allow them to Estcourt. I could the more easily agree to this as I am glad to be able to say that Estcourt has taken £20 off his corrected account, in order to meet my views with regard to the cost of the scaffolding which, though priced out according to facts, amounted to a higher sum than I thought was quite justifiable considering the care with which it had been treated, & which had reduced the wear and tear of it to a minimum. Estcourt might legally have held out about this, and therefore I think we must should thankfully acknowledge his goodwill. I am sincerely glad you have been able to collect the money for the works to within £160 of the whole. Mrs Blow spoke to me of your letter to Detmar and was highly pleased with your attention to her son. Yours truly | Ph. W. rs I had not heard of M Wyndham’s illness, and I learn it now with much discomfort. If the illness was from fever a form of Rheumatic fever, from my experience of that, I should say that nothing but time would get rid of its effects, but that they will give way to time – this I believe and most assuredly I hope so. Please to give my kindest remembrance to her. Like that peculiar genius, Monkbarns, you are, for an obstinate man, sometimes right.1 I cannot however be said to have “snubbed” the American globetrotter, Mr Ellicott,2 who wrote to me (I have not seen him) that he had invaded your house and some others of my devising. 235

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I wrote in answer (I am not sure if he got the letter, as he was one day here, the next in Gloucester, and the third in Chester, &c) stating the case of the building craft from my point of view, that modern architecture was not worth running about for to see, and that I was a modest man and, in effect, that I did not care to have my plumes either smoothed or ruffled. This could hardly be considered a snub! However, I did say I was glad he could carry back with him some idea of the politeness of owners of houses in England, whose “castles” seemed to be imperfectly fortified, &c, &c. However More justly Mr Ellicott spoke wrote appreciatively of the kind attention paid to him at Clouds by “a young lady called Fräulein”!3 Who knows but, if he visits enough country houses in England, France, Germany, Italy, and perhaps the principality of Monaco, he may carry back to – say – Chicago, a titled lady, to gild ornament the profession of archre in a strange land? We reverse the custom practice, and from America we gild the our titles! It serves you right, you brought this stuff on your own head. | Ph.W. V&A, AAD

1 In Scott’s The Antiquary, Jonathan Oldbuck is the Laird of Monkbarns, after whom the novel takes its title. 2 Not identified. 3 Fräulein Schneider, appointed in 1875 as the governess to the Wyndhams’ daughters, became an integral member of the household. At PWY’s death in 1911 she was the highest paid of the domestic staff, and received an annuity of £100. See Dakers, pp. 106 and 109.

470 • To John Thomas Micklethwaite, 30 November 1893 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 29 30 Novr 1893 To J.T. Micklethwaite Esqre My dear Micklethwaite. A letter from me to Giacomo Boni is more than due, and I must say something to him as anent the question he asked as to the Socy of Antiquaries, for November ebbs quickly, the month you named for meeting for the beginning meeting. I had rather thought you might have volunteered a call here to see the photographs

I doubt if you will call upon me call after the fandango I danced upon your entity in the matter of the proposed modern statuary 1 for Wykeham’s tabernacle. However, your learnedness should be comfortable secure under its armour, and not be savage under at with my sentimental spasms!2 I am dreadfully closely tied by both legs, so that I cannot yet personally draw you in your den, therefore I send the Boni photographs, which – at all events – you will be able to enjoy, and keep, for they were really sent for you as credentials when bearding the ‘big wigs’ of the antiquaries, yourself included.3 As you may have mislaid the extract from Boni I gave in my letter from Boni to you, I here recopy it with additions. in question but no doubt you too have been fully occupied. round

236

1888–1898

From letter of Giacomo Boni to Ph: W.4 Preamble. “Here I am knee deep in a Grammar of Roman Constructions,5 the elementary part deals with masonries. The peculiarities of the workmanship of the materials, will be carefully described, together with the composition, thickness & building quality of the mortars with the stamps, sigillæ or other marks belonging to the several types of brick masonry.” Request. “Enclosed are some samples. Now, do you think that the Socy of Antiquaries of Great Britain could help us by preparing the photographs of the few types of Roman masonry which are still extant in Engd or thereabouts? We could give in exchange a set of the Roman types in Rome or in Italy. I elect you (Ph. W.) as my plenipotentiary in this transaction. “Also, I send you some photographs of pulpits & other monuments of XII & XIII centy Roman marmorari for your own use and Micklethwaite’s and the Dean of W’r in case this last did not feel disposed at first to allow my friend Sartorio to take some photographs in the Abbey.” You will may remember that you obtained from the Dean what was wanted for Sartorio, so that and the bribe was not wanted there, so that you could use the photographs in that way with the “Antiquaries”, if your diplomacy needed this the additional lure. The 2 unmounted photos (with names written on their back) gives – I suppose – the kind of photographic representation of walling and materials Boni wants, with the scale and size. You may have to feel your way in dealing with the comfortable somnolence of the Antiquaries (if you should care to try) but perhaps you might be able to let me know if you thought you would try? Archæology, fortunately, is now becoming international, and its comparative study seems to me to be the most rational way of dealing with it. Boni is indefatigable, and well found in all languages and other keys for the study. Also, he is – to me my mind – almost preternaturally acute – and good medicine for drowsiness. Though he comes to the Antiquaries as a beggar, still, the petition is rather not un complimentary. Yrs Ph W. Courtauld 150a-c

1 See above, Letter 458. 2 ‘I am sorry that you should have thought that a difference of opinion as to the filling up of empty niches has prevented me from calling on you. The causes of my omission are first inertia which since my last dose of influenza I have not been able to shake off altogether, and secondly the way time has of running along without giving any notice of his pace.’ Micklethwaite to PSW, 1 December 1893, Courtauld, 151a-b. 3 ‘I have only had time to turn over the photographs. They are a most interesting collection.’ 151c.

237

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 4 PSW’s extracts are taken from GBO to PSW, 1 June 1893, Courtauld 136. 5 Elsewhere, GBO calls this ‘the ANNALS of the preservation of monuments, ancient buildings & object[s] of art or antiquity’. 148b.

471 • To William Morris, 3 December 1893 Year added by SCC 2 Caroline Place | Guilford Street | W.C. 3 Decr Sunday. My dear Fellow Kate makes but little if any way, and the sharp cold weather is against her. She was refreshed by your – as she said – good & kind letter: still she is low and feeble to a degree, however, there is less fever, though it is still at hand. I read her some of the Sidonia last night, and, if she invites, will do so this evening.1 Your setting is a delightful form for the good story; and it makes a notable and beautiful book. Kate, of course is inarticulate about the glory of your gift, and even I am but a dumb dog. You see, one has not time, between the tail of one fine volume and the head of another, to get one’s breath – as it were – though I cannot say that I’m out of practice in receiving such over-topping gifts, and I swallow the affront with a very fair semblance of content. None the less, I feel I should be 25 years old instead of 63 – so as to look forward to a longer time of possession. However, it don’t much matter, someone will get them, and – perhaps – try to read ’em. In the name of our companionship | Your affectionate | Philip Webb. Not the ghost of an idea could come through the scratch of this – such a pen. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 40

1 The Kelmscott Press edition of William Meinhold’s Sidonia the Sorceress was published on 1 November 1893.

472 • To Giacomo Boni, 3 December 1893 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday. 3 Decr ’93 Caro Giacomo Boni – Illustrissimo – Intelligentissimo. “Ultisimo”. There. I’ve already got beyond the bounds of my knowledge.1 Your last was of “Roma. 6.IX.’93”. In which you began by likening me to the honoured and loved of Demonacte, only more so.2 This was applied as a kind of oil or butter to 238

1888–1898

make me falsely shine in my own eyes. After which you ask the question “am I an usurer, or are you a very liberal man?” To which I answer – ‘both’. You see, such was your haste when you wrote, with valise on leg, and I suppose spurs on heels – that you had no more time than to indicate with finger of pen → Venice → Udine → Venzone → Trieste → Parenzo → Pola → and → Ancona as the circular area you were going to surround on the wings of the “resources of civilisation”. Have I not been kind to you, in the thoughtfullest of all ways – namely, by keeping quiet for 3 months? leaving in the place of a “usurer’s” conscience your entity, free from the buzzing of a belated islander. The friends of Demonacte were not so thoughtful as your Gray’s Inn one. They probably piled up the “good advices, good teaching” &c and left the recipient barely his valise and spurs with which to flee from them. I suspect Sartorio shut himself up tightly on his return from the land of barbarism, for fear you would ask him how he had been treated by one of the rude islanders to whom he had taken credentials. Well, it could not be helped, for we met at the ‘public house’ of the sign of Babel Tower.3 I almost wore out my explanatory muscles by explaining in shewing, by brow eyes and hands, that London was a squalid accumulation of ugly huts whitewashed with charcoal. However, he did bring to our aid the common language of pictures – by himself – upon which my simian muscles were at work to express my admiration and pleasure. I delivered your politely worded message to John Hebb, (who has been long ill) and your gratification to W.R. Lethaby, who now – of course – only awaits your arrival in England, in the warmer part of next year, to entertain you with his rare intelligence. Jupiter, William Morris, will surely preside, and you will be surrounded by many nimble sprites to answer to your craving for increase of knowledge. Indeed, I have so spread your fame abroad here that the echoes from the cliff of the four seas does but answer whatever name is called – BONI – I – I – I-! ending with ah! ha! while the gulls, Puffins, cormorants, Solan geese4 and the rest, circle round the headlands like the crown of angels in Botticelli’s nativity in the National Gallery here.5 It is also probable that Imre Kiralfy will regulate his conduct by his knowledge of your visit.6 To get out of these altitudes, I will notice your remarks on the doings – under your permission – of Count Sacconi at Spoleto, and of the failure in finding at the Crocefisso any result from their stripping of the walls.7 Am I now to look on a ruin only, if I should ever set foot in that memorable place? Your projected “ANNALS” would be more looked for by me, if I could read them when they were published.8 However, we will hope the Italians will pore over the pages, and learn their duty. You must have heard that Middleton has been put at head of the art department of the South Kensington Museum? he is now installed there, and will be sure to advance the usefulness of the place.9 He too will receive you on bended knee, with his keys of all the secrets on a golden cushion. It was only last week that I laid hands and tongue on Micklethwaite. The meetings of the Socy of Antiquaries have only lately begun for the new session – and 239

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

he proposes to sound the more learned members of the Society on your suggestion for obtaining photographs of the few remaining fragments of Roman walling in Great Britain, before bringing the matter before the body of the Socy. He asked me to send him your letter to me (in which you pointed out the objects aimed at) as his credentials – and I did so. He, as well as I, would caution you against expecting any great hurry from that body of Illuminati, whose movements are apt to shew like those of the tortoise – “Slow & sure” – I can answer for the former part of the proverb if not for the latter, with them. We propose that your fine selection of photographs of Roman mosaic pulpits, ciboriums, ambos &c should be presented to the Antiq: Soc: in your name, for, as you must know, a bribe will sometimes stir the slowest of coachmen, and therefore the Socy too may be amenable to such a graceful tickling of the palm. Either Micklethwaite or I will let you know what may be the result of stirring up the silent pool, which was not caught in the mouth of an extinct, fiery, volcanic crater. I had a letter from George Wardle yesterday. I find he has returned to Rome for a while, and is perched on the Pincian opposite your nest on the Quirinal. He, Wardle, never saw the Ludovisi Gardens before they were attacked by the Phyl[l] oxera10 of the “Jerry builder”11 – (Slang London term for mercantile building, probably because it was thought the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah wd have spewed his most awful wrath on them if he had beheld their iniquities.)12 I was luckier, for I enjoyed my rambles there under the interesting shadow of the Aurelian wall. Much has been done both of good and ill (I’m not going to imitate the great Jeremiah) since I was in Rome in Jany 1885, and perhaps there is no-one in Rome who suffers more than you do under this plague. If you should ever think of writing to me again, give me all you can of your hopes and fears for all the things confronting you – take up my rôle, and lay on the lash with an arm more fully equipped with epigrammatic penetration than mine can lay claim to. Yours apologetically and submissively | Philip Webb. Courtauld 152a-d

1 He means his command of Italian. 2 ‘Demonacte, a greek philosopher of the time of Hadrian, honoured Socrates, admired Diogenes and loved Aristippus. You are thrice as lucky as any of these people and I am using the same purse, or bag or accumulator for my spiritual electricity, for I honour and admire and love you viribus unitis, all at once. You duly return a fat per cent of my savings under the form of good advices, [sic] good teaching.’ GBO to PSW, 6 September 1893, Courtauld 148a. 3 Another expression of PSW’s familiar frustration at not being able to communicate in Italian. Genesis 11:1–9 describes the descendants of Noah sharing a common language on the plain of Shinar, ‘where they perfected the techniques for monumental brick architecture and built the renowned tower of Babel. Building the tower is interpreted as an act of arrogance, and human history is here understood to take a decisive turn from a common thread to many strands as God descends to confuse human speech and scatter the people all over the earth.’ The Oxford

240

1888–1898 Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: OUP, 1993), p. 71. 4 Old name for the gannet. 5 Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity (1500, National Gallery, London, purchased 1878). 6 Imre Kiralfy (1845–1919) and his brother, Bolossy Kiralfy (1848–1932) were Hungarian impresarios who created immensely popular large-scale public spectacles across Europe and in America. In the summer of 1893 they presented Venice at Olympia in London, and on 22 November The Standard announced their next Olympia show, Constantinople, which would open on 26 December. ‘The stage . . . will afford ample room for the nearly 2000 performers who are to be engaged. Adorned by boldly-painted pictures of scenery and life in England, Spain, Vienna, Roumelia, and Constantinople, full of streets in which the picturesque architecture is reproduced, bright with colour that is never allowed to be become too garish, the whole enterprise is sure to elicit admiration.’ 7 ‘Count Sacconi, architect, promised to go on with his studies at Spoleto, and we authorized him to clean the walls of the church at Crocefisso from modern plaster in order to be able to study the structure of the building, but no results have as yet been heard of.’148b. 8 See above, Letter 470, note 5. 9 John Henry Middleton was elected art director at the South Kensington Museum in 1892, but the pressures of his new responsibilities threatened his always fragile health. He died from a morphia overdose, almost certainly taken accidentally, in June 1896. 10 Phylloxera is an insect pest highly destructive to vines. 11 Of quite recent coinage in 1893, jerry-building denotes the speculative development of poorlybuilt houses. ‘The statement made in a letter to the newspapers in Jan. 1884 that [jerry-builder and jerry-built] commemorate the name of a building firm on the Mersey, has on investigation not been confirmed.’ (OED) 12 For the doom-laden prophecies of Jeremiah, see Vol. I, Letter 244, note 10.

473 • To William Morris, 15 December 1893 Year added by SCC 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 5-10-15 Der and half the month gone My dear Fellow No amount of self schooling in private will make me other than sheepish when you discharge upon me a new book at Gattis’ – and it wd not fare much better anyhow. No doubt Lethaby would have liked to look at the Rossetti volume, but that could not be till I had slunk away with it like a cat with the mouse.1 ’Tis a delightful lodging for the Rossetti poems, and it was lucky for all that it could come about. Kate last night was a little easier (I think partly because I had told her in the morning of what I had done with Frank Smith)2 and I read her a poem after having turned over the pages to her, and given your kindest love with the book – anything throws her on beam ends now, and this kindly gift of yours did so, but not too sadly.3 When we are sick, our best as well as poorest qualities come to the front like the galloping Arthur figures in the Wells’ clock.4 For these and all other merciful copies of your printed books you give to me, well, the act must bide the touch of

241

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

long and pure friendship between us, and thanks are less than needful. We must gang our gates5 for we can go no other. Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. Of course you are not to answer this fragment of expression. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 41

1 The Kelmscott Press published DGR’s Ballads and Narrative Poems in November 1893. 2 Frank Smith worked for Morris & Co., and may at this time have been based at the Oxford Street showroom. The reference probably relates to KF’s decoration of the piano for Morris & Co. 3 For WM’s presentation copy to KF, dated (like that to PSW), 14 December 1893, see Peterson, p. 55. 4 The astronomical clock in Wells Cathedral, the original fourteenth-century mechanism of which was replaced in the nineteenth century, features jousting knights which appear on the quarter-hours. 5 In old Scots, ‘gait’ or ‘gate’ means a way, or road. The sense of ‘gang our gates’ here would appear to be ‘keep to our road’.

474 • To Margaret Beale, 27 December 1893 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 Decr 1893 To Mrs James S. Beale1 Dear Mrs Beale Hollybush House In looking through my notes of things to be done to the house, I found this one. “What cheapish floor could be laid in the conservatory, instead of the plain nine inch square red tile ones”? These tiles, which we are using, are very good ones, and would look well; much better than any “fancy” ones, and these latter would be sure to disagree with the flowers.2 If you should prefer it, I could lay the floor with York stone, but it would be rather more costly than the tiles, and would look colder. I would still recommend the plain red tiles. Any kind of glazed tile is disagreeable to walk upon, and more so from the nails in country shoes. With regard to the fittings in your own storeroom near the back stairs – I can find no notes as to what you would like there. In the specification, a considerable quantity of glazed cupboarding is taken, and other fittings, but if you have any particular wishes as to these fittings, will you kindly note them down for me? I am putting a glazed frame to the window – an extra one, to be fitted with coloured glass – for photographing purposes, and a sink, with water laid on. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I hope you have had fair weather, and in other ways a pleasant time in Wales.

242

1888–1898

The works at Hollybush were going on pretty well when Mr Beale and myself were there on that lovely day in last week. You will be glad to learn that at last the conservatory roof is being fixed. WSRO, Standen MS 171

1 Margaret Field (1847–1936), wife of the solicitor, James Samuel Beale (1840–1912). For the Beales, PSW built Standen in East Grinstead, Sussex, on land adjacent to the existing Hollybush Farmhouse (1891–4, with later additions in 1896 and 1898). See Kirk, pp. 150–60 and 301. 2 Margaret Beale was a keen gardener, and the long conservatory on the left of the south entrance to Standen was preserved during the modifications to PSW’s original design for the house. See Kirk, pp. 150–2.

475 • To William Morris, 7 January 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 7. Jany 1894 My dear Fellow. Going round as usual at midday to see Kate, I found her a little picked up over yesterday’s weariness; and, as your little book was clear and black, easy to read by fog candle, I bid her try the little story.1 I meant to do other things (or rather try to) but, after dinner, with candles and good fire, I took to the Florus and Jehane. A very sweet and wholesome story, delightful in its new language and setting. Coming home, even to a midland Englishman – None of the bombast of Beauvais in it – all simple, as if it were in a piddling English countryside! Lord, how you two Celts – you and Lethaby – sit upon a miserable Saxon, myself. It’s quite clear to me why Ireland is a trodden worm; Wales falling back on Methodism; Cornwall and Brittany forgotten. It is all on account of pride – “The pride of the cobbler’s dog, who took the wall of the brewer’s dray, and had his guts squeezed out.” You see, I have not lugged in the Jew, or – or – the other Tory!2 I wish some decent young fellow, too much book-feuded, could find this Jehane story in a cabinet, and set himself in a comfortable draught, and read it in full happiness of the light of life. When he grew up, he might not be lucky at Eton, or get into Parliament, but he might turn out to be a man. All this stuff really means that Kate was upset by your repeated thought of her in sending the books, and sighed as to what could be said. Here is a poor lame dog. And another poor – butcher’s – dog is fending for the lame one and sending her thanks, in very queer guise indeed; and his own in like manner: but that does not matter, being past mending. However, we will jog on. Your affectionately | Philip Webb.

243

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

No answer needed. Kate is, I think, a little mending – still, I am by no means sure. Sawbones no: 3, goes again tomorrow. I hope his lights may be sufficient. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 42

1 The Kelmscott Press edition of The Tale of King Florus and the Fair Jehane, in WM’s translation from the French, was published on 28 December 1893. For WM’s presentation copy to KF, dated 4 January 1894 (as was PSW’s), see Peterson, p. 58. 2 The troubled on-going issue of Irish Home Rule had been opposed by the Conservative (and Jewish) former Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81). The ‘other Tory’ is perhaps Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914), for whose politics and personality PSW developed an almost obsessive contempt. In fact, Chamberlain started as a Liberal politician, but had become a member of the Liberal Unionist Party in 1886 which would form an anti Home Rule coalition with the Conservatives in 1895. See below, Letter 556, note 2.

476 • To Emery Walker, 10 February 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 10 Feby 1894 My dear Walker It is most serviceably kind of you to entertain the request at all, and you look at it too much from my side, whereas I look at it from yours, as being possibly – not probably – troublesome to you when I have entered into the peaceful social state.1 You see, I have had some experience lately. Miss Faulkner was sole executrix to her brother’s will, but I had to manage the matter, and there was but little trouble, and that mainly in trying to ward off anxiety from her. The legal cost was about £25, where there was more to be done in proving the will than there would be in my case, and the lawyer managed that easily, in the regular way. I should get the same lawyer to knock off my little job. You would be able to wash your hands of the affair in a month or so after the “woodpecker had tapped the hollow elm tree”. Also, you would be able to refuse to act, if you felt so inclined. What money I shall have not have eaten up before I die would go to 3 maiden ladies, who have received the interest of it for a good many years.2 Your business would be to disperse the books and pictures, keeping those you yourself might have fancy for, and I should leave a memorandum to the executor, (you) noting what might be done with the things, which you need not attend to unless you thought well. It is your knowledge of books, artistic matters, and of artists themselves, which makes me know that you could manage the thing quicker, easier, and better than anyone else; but, and this is important, I think you have some kind of liking for the rude, but kindly inclined sarcastic me, and would not feel too much bored by in serving me a good turn.

244

1888–1898

Who knows? I might live as long as Gladstone, and get into the House of Lords, yet, (such surprises have happened) and if you existed then you might act for a brother peer! Therefore, unless you say, no, I doubly and thankfully say, yes, yes. A post card would be answer enough, and I would go to the lawyer on Monday, and to the surgeon on Monday week.3 Yours, with – I think – a just appreciation of your honesty & kindness, Philip Webb. EWT

1 PSW had asked EW be his executor. 2 Two of his sisters, Sarah and Caroline, were indeed unmarried, but the eldest of his siblings, Eliza, was married to Nowell Stowers, who had worked as a young surgeon in Charles Webb’s practice in St Giles Street, Oxford. See also Vol. III, Letter 745, note 3. 3 He had decided to put his affairs in order before undergoing minor surgery. See below, Letter 478, note 5.

477 • To Giacomo Boni, 11 February 1894 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 11 February. 1894 To Monaco bigio My dear piping bullfinch Your song, though long in coming, was much welcomed. Still, no doubt, the intellectual advantage of so learned an Italian correspondent has its drawback. The unlearned of 1 Raymond Buildings has to tax, what he alone calls, his intelligence in answering the songs of Buoni [sic].1 Those songs are sometimes clad in the garb of the ancients, but at this period of singing (Jan 27.) the Aristotelian excuses for the aristocratic, were translated for the advantage of the northern brute. By this means you do not carry your nose so high but that I can jump over it, with some exertion. By the way, you too might imitate your slave in the faithfulness with which he acknowledges receipt of song. How am I to know that my brain-stretch reaches your hand? The melody in your last is almost Russian in the sadness of its tone, and no Aristotelian swathing of the blanket around you can hide the cry which goes up from the poor – “How long O Lord, How long?”2 – A true Puritan cry over despotism. The sadness of your poor folk penned into inactivity, and its shade, starvation, by the idle, who have enough to waste, and all of the sordid joy of waste, sit lazily by, as the gardener watches the writhing of the worm in two halves from the spade.

245

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

My revenge would be to let all the toilers of the fair Italian earth go to wider spaces, and forget the lovely gods of Italy in the less consecrated soils of the Americas. We who deal with beauty as a life-element, quail at the thought of not being able at the spring of the day to touch the works of the labours of ages, & shrink from the thought of your kinsfolk leaving sun capped hills, and art bespotted plains, for the unhistoric wilds: but ’tis better to make your own gods, on such art unhallowed spaces, than in starvation and in the [deletion illegible] withering blight of criminal neglect, to curse in your frenzy the beauties so lovely in ungoaded sanity. We Europeans toss backwards & forwards reproaches as to the misery of our labourers – our life givers: but we do not honestly throw one such dart. We who are familiar with the shameful reproaches which hit or drop at our side, have no right to be ashamed only of those on our neighbours’ earth, which are strikingly strange to us. ‘He that is without sin amongst you, first cast the stone’.3 England is full of unnecessary misery, and personal disgrace. I wish that Italy were alone in such sadness, and that all the rest of the known earth could minister to the sadness of the brother, with unhesitating hands. I am no aristocrat, Aristotelian or other, for I lay claim to be one of the sad at heart, and only patient because there is no other wise outlet. When patience is infamous, I go into the camp of rage. All I have read and thought of Italy in my keen vision of the book of art, makes me – aided by the pictures you send me – to live amongst your hills, and sit down touching your historic stones, as my own familiar friends, and your sorrow over wrongs is my sadness too. I am glad you thought well to tell me of what touched you. Now, shall we say that “lawyers & usurers” are those only who are to blame? Are there peoples whose patience is infamous? Are there not sad peoples who know that they are the manure of propagation which grow the scourges with which they are beaten? Give an outlet for the evil tenth of our individual natures, and we find the other nine tenths powerless to control. “KPΩTON”,4 the “horny excrescence”, the land you have wandered upon, Calabria. You may be tied and bound by official duties, but those duties take you (on mule back or other lifting-help) to wide-world known, or dreamed of, scenes; and you cannot but be aware, in that best of all learning from the natural thing – not the merely book thing – of what the round earth is made in the heart of the influence of old Rome. Now, I’m not going to enlarge on the value of one space over another – but, using Italy as a symbol amply displayed, one can speak of it with greater significance to many peoples than from almost any other object. Rome is Rome, even if you trumpet out, Chicago, till you are black in the face with effort of blast – and Rome is Rome for a reason, even if Chicago can claim another. Well, France too has her plaint, and far from me be it to deny. Still, there are wheels within wheels under the stars, and each wheel has its hub, – so that there cannot only be one hub of the universe, let alone the planets and other aids to the completion of things. No doubt when sad people get to be on other shores they 246

1888–1898

look upon the stars as universal friends. I have known the difficulties of dealing with turning to use the old world buildings, such as the castle at Cotrone,5 and at our “antiscrape” meetings, when Italian antiquities are on the table, I hold forth on these difficulties. No doubt you will do what you can to mitigate the wrath of the peoples against their gods. In truth, save them from their insane selves for the time when they may have collected their intelligence. It may be a long while to wait, and the books of life are being burned the while, but, there is nothing else to be done. The wheel goes round. I had an instructive letter from Wardle from Posilippo, [sic] and some beautiful drawings of things he had noted at Siena and Perugia. He makes perfectly beautiful drawings of the fragments of antiquity.6 A voice crying in the wilderness7 – yours and mine also, my friend. I am afraid I shall disappoint you with my tale of the search for photographs of the time of Justinian in Constantinople, Syria, and Greece.8 I have asked at several places in London, but I do not find them – I shall try again next week. You gave me but vague instructions, so that I may send you what you already have, and fail to send what you want. However, I will try again – but, this month is waning! If you should see Sartorio, please to tell him I have been so much engaged that I have been unable to answer his kind offer, but I will do so, if the British fates will allow.9 The fates which, for a while, Cæsar overcame. Now, up goes your head, till it strikes the stars, as Carlyle said.10 You too, be patient, and believe me | Your comical English friend Philip Webb. Send me a post card if I should be too late in sending photographs in next week. That is – this week. Courtauld 155a-d

1 Writing from Cotrone, in Calabria, GBO was struck by the depressed condition of the poor. ‘They look very forlorn, ragged, older than they are. . . . The teachings which Pythagoras addressed here, 25 centuries ago, to the upper classes were meant to separate them as much as possible from those which seemed not worth the trouble of being taught his wisdom. . . . [J]ust now I feel decidedly against him and all his sham aristocracy of intellects.’ GBO to PSW, 27 January 1894, Courtauld 154b-c. 2 See above, Letter 362, note 8. 3 ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ St John 8:7. 4 The city of Crotone was founded in the eighth century BC as Kroton, a colony of the Greek province of Achaean. 5 The name for Crotone until 1928. 6 PSW believed that GW’s sketches of architectural features warranted greater recognition as an historical record. There is a collection of them at the Fitzwilliam, and see also below, Letter 518. 7 There is more than one potential biblical source. ‘He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.’ St John 1:23.

247

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 8 ‘Can you lend me some photographs of architectural details of the VI century (Justinian’s epoch). . . . I require them for a lecture which I am to deliver next month.’ 154d. 9 Sartorio had offered to send photographs of some of his pastels. See below, Letter 479. 10 In The French Revolution (1837), Thomas Carlyle wrote of the acquitted Marat, carried shoulderhigh by the mob: ‘The injured People’s-friend has here reached his culminating-point; he too strikes the stars with his sublime head’. Book 3, chapter 3, ‘In Death-Grips’.

478 • To William Morris, 18 February 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sun: 18. Feby 1894 My dear Fellow You will go [to] your gate, I to mine.1 You present a wonderful book to me in face of company, not proven – (save Walker) – and I refuse to respond to eyes of company, and merely hug my possession.2 Whoever was so foolish as to say that no one should have his peculiar way of setting on one side the waves of life which – on their ingate or outgate – have the imperative sun’s instructions to attend to? Hence these tears, that I should have slunk home with contraband goods. They are contraband, for no one would buy them if they were not. I keep you, a poet of mark, merely for the purpose of understanding what I mean . . . in writing. “An’ the books was good, and the printing was good: waiter Steward! Bring us some more Kelmscott” The book is quite up to the Thames-side mark in all but the pictures, and these, if one is careful in looking, have their value: but Crane will not (or can-not) take pains.3 A lot of work in these blocks is good – really good – but the inaptitudes [sic] are abundant. His landscapes are almost always beautiful & helpful, but his figures are fusionless. However, do not mind – the whole book looks delightful; and, for the pictures . . . why, they are more than helped out by the borders, and the heavy-line engraving of the subjects, but the textures, why, they are killed by Crane’s no-notion of surface, or of black white and grey. Also, costume is before the figure it clothes. I cannot see the difficulty – with a knowledge of old time – of inventing costume. Alack – but still, it don’t much matter; but again, do not be so rash in trusting the picture makers, in future. How can they know? I’m glad you go to see Kate on Tuesday.4 She will represent me to herself as on a mediæval grid-iron – whereas it is nothing, save the putting my work together for 3 or 4 weeks absence.5 ’Till the next time | Ph: Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 43

1 This perhaps has a similar meaning to ‘we must gang our gates’ (see above, Letter 473, note 5) – ‘we can only keep to our own ways’. 2 WM’s The Story of the Glittering Plain was published by the Kelmscott Press on 17 February 1894.

248

1888–1898 3 SCC annotation: ‘Morris was no less dissatisfied than Webb with Crane’s illustrations to his Glittering Plain & thought this volume his one Kelmscott Press failure.’ 4 KF’s presentation copy from WM of The Story of the Glittering Plain is now at the Houghton Library. 5 PSW would be away from the office for a few weeks, undergoing and recuperating from minor surgery – perhaps for a hernia (the medical condition is never mentioned). He became a temporary resident at a nursing home in Beaumont Street (see the letters immediately following).

479 • To Giulio Sartorio, late February 1894 Draft; pencil [Beresford House | 57 Beaumont Street | W.] My dear Signor Sartorio I beg you not to form your opinion of the British character from such an inferior specimen as myself. But, I must explain, and excuse, which the keen-witted French people put down as a form of self-accusation. When your very the kind pleasant idea suggested itself to you of giving me pleasure, and you wrote in Jany Decr to ask if I wd care to have some photographs of your pictures, actually designed by you on Vesuvio itself,1 I said, yes!, audibly, but failed to write and let you know how glad I should be to have such admirable representations of the historic mountain as rendered by your quite remarkable genius aptitude in that way. Now, for excuses – which I assure you will be honestly set down in writing. For the last 6 months I have been so fully engaged with my work, and, in addition to this, I have been watching a sick friend who has been very ill,2 and is still not recovered. This seems not to have been enough, so that for I myself have been unwell, and am now lying on my back after a surgical operation which has been performed on me and I shall be in the hospital for 2 or 3 weeks longer, I think. Last Monday, just as I was leaving home for the hospital, the 8 photographs came – I had not time to open them then, but while lying on my back in hospital, looking at and studying them, has given me a I have received great pleasure, and an addition to my stock of knowledge, which is stored up pleasure. When I was a little boy, an old artist friend of my fathers, who had been to Naples, used to make drawings of Vesuvio, wh’ quite delighted me. This mountain ever since then has rested in my memory. Therefore, this childlike memory is now corrected and enlarged in my old age by your masterly picturing of many phases of its appearance, so closely rendered by you, that the gulphs [sic] and fiery ribbed paths of the volcanic hill are, in everything but the colours, clearly before my eyes. I am sufficiently an artist myself to be able to appreciate your masterly admirable handling of outlines, curves, and rippled and rolling surfaces, with the beautifully given appearances effects of white, and sombre vapour peculiar to the singular impression of horror raised in even by the after results of irruption on the ridges, sides, & pits of a perpetual burning fiery mountain, which is seemingly almost at rest for a while. 249

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I shall continue to trace in the reproductions of your perception & power of handling, all the accurate drawing and refined gradations so palpably there clear to those who have eyes that can see. Please accept abundant and hearty thanks for an undoubted kindness bestowed upon me.3 I write these few lines while lying on my back, and, when you see Giacomo Boni, please to let him know why I have been – seemingly – so neglectful of his expressed wishes. However, I did send him such photographs as I could get together, the day I left home. Unfortunately they were sent too late for his service, I am afraid. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Surely I am right in supposing from your letter itself that you have much increased your knowledge of the English language since you were here? Private collection

1 ‘Do you like the Vesuvio. I have eight negatives of my pastels designed on that mountain in last year’s travels, and if you will permit me to send you some copies of these pictures, you will do me a favour not [sic] to consider them a present.’ Sartorio to PSW, dated 18 December 1893 by PSW, Private collection. He clearly meant the opposite of what he appeared to write. 2 KF. 3 ‘I hope that when you receive this note you will have recovered, and if I expect another letter it should be the simple words – I am well.’ Sartorio to PSW, 3 March 1894, Private collection.

480 • To William Weir, 6 March 1894 Pencil 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Beresford House | 57 Beaumont Street | W. 6 March ’94 To | William Weir My dear Colleague This is to say that the sick man you have so kindly looked after, and petted, is getting on successfully, and is looking forward to the time when he may again become the tyrant of Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn, and sit upon his helpmates with that magnificence of superiority so wonderful to behold in all tyrants – artificial or natural – from Roman Emperors to head gardeners. Peradventure the autocrat who wields the sharp knife of the surgeon, will permit me to leave these shades for the more wholesome atmosphere of Gray’s Inn Garden, on Saturday next, or – at latest – on the following Monday.1 No doubt I shall feel the loss of those delicate and kindly attentions when I can no longer appeal to friends from the coign of vantage of a sick man.2 Never mind, freedom will be the compensation. 250

1888–1898

Mr Beale looked in upon me on Sunday evening, and carried off with him your capital photographs to shew to his Mrs and his daughters – but he has now sent them back to me, so that I may again calculate from them the 101 blunders made by that presiding tyrant of the T square in carrying out the Hollybush house of pride.3 Mr Emery Walker looked at the photographs with consideration, and he desired me to tell you that, in his photographic workshop, they were continually developing negatives and printing, so that whenever you were at a loss for getting some subjects printed, if you would send him the negatives, (to 16 Clifford’s Inn) he would gladly turn out the prints for you, as it would be no inconvenience to his “staff”. Jack goes today to Tangley,4 and on Saturday or Monday again to Holly bush, and afterwards he will have me at his mercy, with no William Weir to shield me from his second fiddle savagery. With best wishes for your success & comfort, wherever you may be | Believe me | Your greatly obliged | Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 3

1 For the surgery which PSW underwent, see above, Letter 478, note 5. 2 See above, Letter 398, note 9. 3 James and Margaret Beale, for whom PSW was building Standen, near East Grinstead. See above, Letter 474. 4 Great Tangley Manor, owned by the Wickham Flowers, to which PSW was making further additions. See Vol. I, Letter 269, note 4.

481 • To Giacomo Boni, 8 March 1894 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. 8. March. 1894. My dear Boni Something is due to you from me at this time, when I am more free to write than I have been for some time. In your double letter of 27 January in this year, you asked me to send you some photographs of Justinian’s epoch, for the purpose of helping in a lecture you were to give in February.1 At that time I was occupied in urgent business matters, and was preparing my other affairs that I might get into a hospital in order to undergo a surgical operation of a minor kind; the necessity for this had been upon me for about a year, but various causes had made it impossible for me to pay attention to the matter. All I could do, and only the day before I left home, was to send you some photographs of Sta Sofia in Constantinople which were given to me by a Greek lady a good many years ago.2 251

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I tried for 2 or 3 days to find in London shops some Byzantine examples of details in Salonica, and Syria, but failed to do so. Our photographic supplies are mainly of those subjects which attract the feminine part of the English “Forestieri”3 – nomads of an altogether different type to Monaco Bigio. At times I have had lent to me many interesting pictures of the abundant Byzantine works in Salonica, but they were private photos: by architects for purposes of study and were not available. If I had been a frëer agent, and you had not wanted the pictures at once, I daresay – upon close search in London – I might have found a few from Palestine which would have answered your purpose – but, as aforesaid, I myself was pushed into a corner, and could not help you as I should have wished. Some time ago Giulio Sartorio sent me, amongst other photos: of his works, one of an admirable pastel, done on the spot, of Vesuvio, and upon my expressing delight in it, he sent me some more views of the historic mountain. So good and true do they seem to me, and so helpful to the imagination, that I almost understand what must be the aspect of a volcanic hill in partial action. I had to acknowledge his kindness whilst lying on my back in the hospital here, and I asked him to tell you of my condition if he should be seeing you.4 Our friend George Wardle seems to be in comfortable winter quarters at Posilippo [sic], and, as the weather gets warmer he will make excursions to neighbouring places to study the stories of ancient buildings on the points he is engaged upon. My friend William Lethaby, author of the book on Architectural myths, which he sent to you, wished me when I next wrote to you, to ask you if the monogram at x (on the side sketch of capital) exists, [sketch labelled CAPITAL IN PIRANESI OF ONE IN THE PALLAZO [sic] MATTEI];5 he would be glad if you could send him a sketch of it, to compare with others. As I have from time to time enlarged upon your antiquarian genius and learning, which seem to me to be unbounded, he naturally thought you would be able to afford him this assistance. He is an able student of antiquity, and as the race of these students are beggars by instinct, and profession, (I am free from all but a taint of the disease) he at once saw that you might be turned to account. One of the books I brought to the hospital to amuse me, was Smith’s dictionary of Geography.6 In it I found the article CROTON, the place you dated your last letter to me from. A Greek colony of great interest, and the coins of which are significant – especially with a variety of tripods.7 Each stone of the great historical places you have to visit must captivate you, and draw all your learning into service. I had a few words from Micklethwaite just as I left home, saying, that the “Society of Antiquaries” in England were inclined to fall in with your wish to have photos: of the Roman manner of building in Britain. The Society will, I fancy, be slow, but they will probably do what they can, carefully.8

252

1888–1898

I hope to be allowed to depart out of hospital, and reach the green grove of Gray’s Inn on Saturday next, the 10th. I am very well in general health, and when I can take exercise freely, no doubt my usual strength will return. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Courtauld 157a-c

1 See above, Letter 477, note 8. 2 ‘Many hearty thanks to you for the splendid photographs of S. Sofia &c. They will form the source of light of my lecture which will take place next Thursday (March 8th).’ GBO to PSW, 3 March 1894, Courtauld, 156a. 3 Foreigners (It). 4 ‘Sartorio lent me your letter [see above, Letter 479] which makes me wish I could stay with you and chatter over many things while you are waiting for the end of your convalescence.’ 156a. 5 The Palazzo Mattei di Giove in Rome, designed by Carlo Maderno in the early seventeenth century for Asdrubale Mattei, Marquis de Giove (d. 1638). 6 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, edited by William Smith, 2 vols (London: Walton and Maberly, John Murray, 1856–7). 7 The article on ‘Croton or Crotona’ in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, I, pp. 709–13, is by Edward Herbert Bunbury. It concludes with a description of the ‘very numerous’ coins, and shows a characteristic tripod design ‘in allusion to the oracle of Delphi, in pursuance of which the city was founded’. 8 See above, Letter 470.

482 • To George Price Boyce, 9 April 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9 April 1894 My dear Boyce I went to see your old drawings on Thursday, before ‘antiscrape’ meeting.1 It was like being in the country with you 20 – or so – years ago, and looking at beautiful parts of England. I do not remember having seen the Edward Confessor’s Westminster before.2 It is a perfect piece of work, and ought to be in the National collection – and I hope – eventually – it will get to be there. The Tithe barn at Bradford on Avon – I remember well, for, did you not personally take me to see the place itself?3 This drawing I thought to be one of your best pieces of good work. Work – in truth – which was always good, and often quite perfect of its kind. You should know that you have left for future generations an historic representation of what the Architects and others had not then destroyed, but will soon do so. I was at Tangley on Saturday, looking at my architectural ‘mess’ – and Mr Flower, at lunch, said, ‘They are selling my drawing of the “back of Tangley”

253

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

now. I hope I shall get it.’ I’ve no doubt he has got it, for he covered it with more money than I see it sold for.4 Fairfax Murray (whom I saw at Christies) has just written me a sympathetic letter – and I am glad he had a finger in the pie of bidding. We were quite agreed as we looked round the rooms as to which of all the good drawings should be striven for. He said to me, “Boyce’s work is not properly understood as the work of an English master”. Kindest remembrance to Mrs Boyce, and best wishes for us all that a shower or two of rain will come on the top of this lovely weather. | Adieu | Yours truly | Philip Webb. BL Add 45354, f. 283

1 On 7 April, the auctioneers Christie, Manson and Woods held a sale of ‘Modern Pictures and Drawings of the late John Wheeldon Barnes, Esq., F.R.A. of Durham . . . late of the Bank’, in their King Street, St James’s saleroom, featuring works by GPB, Cotman, Millais, Turner and others. 2 GPB’s watercolour, Edward the Confessor’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey (1852–5, V&A, London), sold for £110. In August 1857, he had identified this as one of four of his pictures to be lent to the American Exhibition of British Art in New York, and priced it at 12 guineas. However, it appears that none of his work was included. See The Diaries of George Price Boyce, edited Virginia Surtees (Norwich: Real World, 1980), pp. 18 and 80. 3 GPB’s watercolour, Tithe Barn, Bradford-on-Avon (1878, V&A, London). 4 At the Back of Great Tangley House, Surrey sold for £63.

483 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 9 April 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 9 April 1894 Dear Murray Thank you kindly for the Boyce drawings notes. I suppose the Bewick bird fetched more than the 5 gns I could not have afforded to give for it – allowing for the 2 otherwises, I wd have wished to have it?1 Well. I gather, the Tithe barn goes to S. Ken. and I’m glad. Would it not yet be possible for the S. Ken people to take the Edd Con: shrine off Boyce?2 I don’t like my old friend having so many of his own drawings on his hands. I think it was fortunate you were at hand to help in the matter, No doubt it is not easy to avoid letting one’s own special likings come in at a sale, but I believe the Westmr and the Tithe barn were the works at the highest point of the drawings for sale. You were quite right in saying that Boyce’s work was not known. That is, picture buyers do not – as a rule, buy for the permanent value of the work. When you have the opportunity I shd be glad if you could look in and cheer the Boyces up. Madame will be wanting some help in that way. Yours truly | Philip Webb. 254

1888–1898

I saw Flower down at Tangley on Saturday: he was hoping to get his picture of the place, and I know he had more than covered the cost. He told me the name of the chap who was to bid for him, but I’ve forgotten it.3 Pictures are pictures in such various ways. The Pangbourne Poplars is an admirable drawing4 – quite worth the money, but not in the way that the Westmr or Tithe barn were worth double – each of ‘em. Fitzwilliam 54

1 2 3 4

CFM was present at the sale on 7 April. See previous letter, note 1. See previous letter, note 2. See previous letter, note 3. GPB’s watercolour, Black Poplars at Pangbourne (1868, private collection?) sold for £89. He had exhibited this at the Old Watercolour Society exhibition in 1871, pricing it at 40 guineas.

484 • To William Morris, 27 May 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sun: 27 May 1894 My dear Fellow There is little to be said and less done when you rain upon me at Gattis’ books of price – or better – of books without price. One can but look like a thistle-surprised jackass. Never mind, I have the books. I take them home like the leg which has been kicked under the table in company by the girl I left behind me. Both Keats and Rossetti look lovely in their Sunday clothes.1 ’Tis a pitty [sic] they cannot be turning over the leaves in their elm boxes, or their elbow-chairs in paradise. Maybe they are doing so: at all events they are by me, the deputy. I like your “style” of night-caps as shewn, in the sonnets and lyrics vol, by L, B and S on pages 41 and 121. The S is peculiarly effective.2 I’m a little divided in mind as to the magnificent T. on p. 97 though not confident either way. Mem: the engraver could clear out the line of loop in the letter at x [marks with an x on a squiggled representation of the top of letter T] The white thread is just broken here. I noted it in Kate’s copy also.3 Just Believe me | Your affectionate fellow on the way | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 44

1 The Kelmscott Press edition of The Poems of John Keats was published on 8 May 1894; that of DGR’s Sonnets and Lyrical Poems was published on 21 April 1894. 2 PSW picks out from the large ornamental capitals letters which start each of the poems in the DGR volume, L on p. 40, B on p. 41 and S on p. 120. These stand respectively at the heads of sonnets 59 (‘Love to his singer held a glistening leaf’), and 61 (‘By thine own tears thy song must tears beget’),

255

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II and the lyric ‘So it is my dear’. Unlike most of the ornamental initials in the volume, which are white within an ornamental surround, these three are black. 3 For KF’s presentation copy from WM of Sonnets and Lyrical Poems, dated 24 May 1894, see Peterson, p. 56. For that of The Poems of John Keats, see p. 67.

485 • To Giacomo Boni, 3 June 1894 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. 3 June 1894 To Giacomo Boni Architect, Engineer, Antiquary | Venetian, Cosmopolitan, &c &c. | These. My dear James the Erudite. Your double letter of March 16–19 stirred all we students of antiquity mightily. We were all set a-quarrelling on the subject of “pretiosissimus lapidibus structam” – “gypsea metalla sculpta” – “gypsearum fenestrarum” – “Gypsoplastis” – “Albarium opus &c”.1 Wardle referred me to the six and thirtieth book of G. Plinius Secundus2 (old English translation) Chapter XXIIII, which I did look into, and was much interested – but, it wants that I should be face to face with the heroes of the quarrel fully to do justice to the matter, and get properly red in the face with fierce argument. Then I had your postcard from Athens – Yea, Athens and no other place! and by this simple means of 19th cent: civilized (?) communication you threw a new bomb into my camp, regardless of china, glass, and preconceived ideas. What, in the name of all the devils still unchained in the root-caves of Vesuvius and Etna, and still roaming the surface of the globe, do you mean by “iron clamps”, or cramps, being used by the builders of the Parthenon and other Greek buildings of the Pheidian time?3 Are you sure of your facts? Were you drunk as the companions of Socrates? Were you mad as an Italian of combative instincts? Were you Giacomo among the sane, or Monaca bigio with a whisp [sic] of straw round the middle, otherwise naked, sitting on Athenian ruins, out of your mind in consequence of what you were sitting on? We thought the mid greek cellas were built of blocks of marble, so accurately worked that they adhered together merely by the exclusion of the air from the beds and joints of the work, by reason of the mathematical accuracy with which the stones were set. I say, what do you mean by disturbing other Europeans in their gentle slumbers? Write to the Ministero dell’Istruzione – say you have a pain in the stomach, and then use the time of simulated sickness by writing a full account of your journey to places of [the] world’s story. I know I have no right to ask for anything more than you give me; but, “like the daughters of the leech” I cry, give, give!4 Well, you have just done some (little?) more, you have sent me the extract from fasciolo II of Archivio Dell Arte, Anno VII, on Duomo di Parenzo, and, you may 256

1888–1898

well be proud of your gift.5 I am an ignoramus, and therefore you make me skip (if not from tree to tree in Gray’s Inn garden) and rejoice vocally over this lovely Byzantine building. I will send the several copies to the contemporaries written on the covers, Messrs Morris, Richmond, Powell,6 Hebb, and, the one unindicated, to Lethaby, who is deep in the subject. When you next visit this black city I shall hardly see you, you will be so embraced by the notorieties of the English capital. Never mind, I can make jests at the notable amongst notabilities, and make my skip of freedom from the disease of knowledge. Ah, my friend Giacomo, what a piece of illumination is this essay on the Duomo di Parenzo. For myself, I simply buzz over the pictures like a big bumble bee over the flowers from which he is incapable of making honey.7 I begin with the pure Byzantine Basilica plan, and note the Campanile (is the main axis East and West: your churches standing unorientated so often, though S. Marks is E. & West) at the West, then the baptistery, after that the Atrium, then the 3 aisled church with the 3 apses. Now, I note, after the 5th bay of the columniation, there are 3 arches on each side from the aisles, north & south (?) and in the view, I see, on the inside, the recesses, also entered through Byzantine arches, why did you not indicate the north and south recesses, or transepts, on the plan? Surely they were of the original church? or, is it that the arches were built at the first, and the areas of the recesses added afterward? Of course I note the stucco work on the soffito of the arches on the north (?) side but the most significant stucco work is on the West (?) front over the roof of the atrium. The tripple [sic] window, the side buttresses, and the gable. On the southern buttress I seem to recognise a vine pattern – on the two spaces between the buttresses and the windows, figures in relief, and in the pediment wall, indications of some art expression – but, what is the meaning of the decorative work between the windows. This is very singular to me. I cannot make it out at all. On the left hand pier there are 3 dark openings, and on the right hand, 4. Are these only deep, or pierced recesses? and what are the things which look like pine tree supports to the recesses? The whole of this gable end is most mysterious and exciting. Perhaps you may do away with the mystery, but not destroy the excitement. This answer will be merely a fragment of your long letter, for I want to know what you saw, and thought of what you saw, in Constantinople, that home of all the wonders descended from Rome, the Rome so despoiled. Surely you will tell me of the S. Sofia – the wonder of the world – of the earlier Churches, of the old cisterns, of the walls, of the carving of the Theodosian pedestal. Lethaby who has been there is very silent and I can hardly make a picture of what he tells me of the place. Is it because he cannot? Will you send me the same miserable excuse? However – pax – on this matter. As to Parenzo – you may be more full in description, as it is almost an unknown beauty. Were the Austrians shy of you, looking upon you as the covetous Italian?8 for I suppose Istria is one of the patches of the world’s surface 257

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

which Italy laid reasonable claim to? I notice that the names of places in Istria are Italian, whereas, on beyond, they are German. Had Diocletian a free run round the head of the Adriatic to Spalatro, [sic] or did he come in contact with “barbarians”, that is, those whom the Romans considered such, outside their pale? Also, tell me of yourself, of your “hopes and fears” for art, and for the position you occupy, as arbiter of the destiny or destruction of the antiquities of Italy. As I, who am of no country, look on Italy as my own, quite as much as I do on India, which is not mine, but theirs – they of the darkened skin, sun-troubled, and tiger-troubled; a monstrous continent full of the world’s history, and yet dominated by an insular people, a people devoid of sentiment on one side of their character, but on the other full of prehensile power to hold a story when they can come to understand it. Yours in the flesh, till I meet you in the spirit. | Philip Webb. I need hardly use the prosaic word of thanks for the essay on the Duomo di Parenzo. Courtauld 161a-c

1 ‘This letter is about nothing but: STUCCOES’. GBO to PSW, 16 March 1894, Courtauld 158a. A close discussion of the building techniques of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna followed. 2 Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23–79), known as Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalist and natural philosopher, author of Naturalis Historia, usually called in English The History of the World, or, more commonly, Natural History. The ‘old English translation’ which PSW saw may have been that by Philemon Holland (1552–1637), which was first published in 1601. Books 6 and 30 deal with ‘The Black Sea, India and the Far East’ and ‘Magic’ respectively. 3 ‘I examined nearly 300 fractures & splittings of the Pentelic marble blocks forming the cellas of the Parthenon & of the temple of Minerva, and found them to be produced only by the rusting of iron clamps.’ GBO to PSW, postcard from Athens, April 1894, Courtauld 160. See also below, Letter 497, note 6. 4 ‘The horseleech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give.’ Proverbs 30:15. 5 GBO, ‘Il Duomo di Parenzo ed I Suoi Mosaici’, Archivio Storico Dell’Arte, Vol. VII, 1894, pp. 107–31 and 359–64. GBO’s presentation copy to PSW is now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, pp. 133–4. GBO was highly critical of the restoration of the Parenzo mosaics then being undertaken by the architect, Pietro Bornia, accusing him of destroying the originals. There is still much uncertainty ‘about the extent to which the mosaics should be attributed to the nineteenth rather than the sixth century’. Ann Terry and Henry Maguire, Dynamic Splendor. The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral of Eufrasius at Poreč, 2 vols (University Park, Penn: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), I, p. 9.

258

1888–1898 6 See below, Letter 487, note 10. 7 GBO featured a diagrammatic plan (p.108) as well as many photographs in his Parenzo article, including exterior and interior views of the Cathedral, close-up shots of mosaics and capitals, several capitals from Ravenna and a single capital from Santa Sofia in Constantinople. 8 Since 1813 Istria had been under Austrian rule, the population consisting of a mix of Italians, Croats, Slovenes and other ethnic groupings. Indeed, Parenzo is now called Poreč, having become part of Croatia in 1947.

486 • To Margaret Beale, 7 July 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 7 July 1894 Dear Mrs Beale I am sorry I could not have the pleasure of fitting in with your arrangements for Standen, but my day there yesterday was so fully occupied with innumerable small items, that I had no time for considering useless regrets. However, while having my dinner in the dining-room (which should have been in the servants hall, but your butler insisted on trying to make a gentleman of me) I could not but enjoy looking through a partly open window on the south and seeing the lovely wooded hill on the other side of the valley: and this – perhaps – the more so, that I had to refrain from a lovely fruit pie, and strawberries with cream, set out to tempt me from the path of wisdom! The sun till about 4.30 was burning hot, but the house was delightfully cool. I took down with me the two copper embossed plates for the cheeks of the drawing-room fire place, and both scant-o-praise Hardy,1 and the housekeeper, vouched they looked ‘beautiful’ – and I really hope you will join in the welcome chorus. They will be fixed next week. Those in steel, for the dining-room, had not arrived when I was there, but I learn from Mr Jack they were sent off yesterday, and you may see them on Sunday. I carefully considered as to what might be done for the electric lights in the drawing-room, and concluded that embossed copper sconces standing on the picture rail (of the same kind of work as to the fireplace plates) would be the best form for the finish of these bracket supports, – something like this sketch. [sketch] I could get the embossed plates (A), and the crane-arms (B) made by the coppersmith who did those for the fire place, easily enough, but I do not know how the electric engineers would fall in with their work. Note. The copper plates

259

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

should not be scoured, but only occasionally rubbed with wash leather. Will you give this your consideration in the room tomorrow? Yours truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Standen MS 174

1 John Hardy was PSW’s clerk of works for Standen.

487 • To Giacomo Boni, 29–30 July 1894 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 29 July 1894 To Signor (Query, Cavaliere) Boni My dear Giacomo (of that I am certain) Your letter of 20th July came as water to the thirsty – or rather, may I say, as red wine and water. For a long time I had only your Parenzo book to remind me of an Italian tie of friendship.1 So that, when the letter came, I rather criticised its brevity than its intelligence. Now I can do both, and add to its shortness some interlining of what could reasonably be inferred, as naturalists do, from the nature of the beast. Sartorio, when he burst upon me a little while back, refreshed my Italian consciousness, and, naturally, I reclined in my defensive armour of gentle sarcasm, not spiteful, but generally sufficiently rude in form of expression.2 When I happen to go into our Zoological garden, I look at all the strange animals, from the serpent (the ancient “worm” of the Scandinavians legends)3 to the Elephant – (embracing all between) and try to enter into their mysterious existence. I look them in the face, mutter endearing terms, now, and abusive, then: and at last discharge arrows of sarcasm, to see if I can find a brother under the veil which hides one being from another. Cannot you fill in here, from your knowledge of the nature of this beast? True, I did not fail to estimate the nicety with which you applied the pat of butter to the anticipated irritability of your Gray’s Inn acquaintance. “The soft speech” to turn away deserved wrath. I deserved swallowed it – as we all do – and took a new lease of forgiveness. Of course, I could understand that your journey to Constantinople and Greece must have so fully occupied your mind, and filled your system with material for assimilation that, with your professional engagements, you had no time on hand for other things. However, I sent your newspaper “resumé” of the Greek study, in situ, to Hebb, and he, good naturedly, lent me for a day a translation of it, so that the wonders you saw were, by the aid of letters, partly imparted to me – and I, figuratively, went over the eternal hills with you, and fingered the quiet stones: as I did, actually, those of the “Ducal palace” when 260

1888–1898

you allowed me to creep about the scaffolding behind the screen of reeds there.4 When reading the translation of your visit to Greece, I naturally pictured you as touching – S. Thomas-like5 – the actual body of the Venetian-placed stones which crowned the Greek hills, sending an earthquake-caused grin of affection to a later son of Venice. You were likely to hug yourself with the vain pride of nationality, and to look upon yourself as a peculiarly favoured human being, like unto the Jews when regarding the walls of wailing in these crumbling times of antiquity? Your story of the effect of iron cramps on the cella walls of the Parthenon, which so surprised me,6 has since been confirmed by my reading an account of the English School in Greece, who have been digging about the underground remains of the ancient Megalopolis in Arcadia, where the walling stones are regularly bonded together by iron cramps of this form, [sketch]7 so that my poor theory (whence gotten I do not know) falls to the ground – namely, that the Athenian, and other specially constructed buildings, had no iron in their construction! As to whether the atmosphere, before the buildings were tossed about by earthquakes, would have effected the iron, I cannot say, but the air of Greece being dry, the close limestone-marble might not have admitted damp. Of course, I am all alive with hope for some account of what may be found by you of the prehistoric archæology in the Pontine marshes. All our people interested in antiquities here, are asking questions as to what is being done, or about to be done at the Cosmedin Church in Rome.8 All my answer is, that ‘sig: Boni is not alarmed’. I gather, there is some sham modern vaulting under the original vaulting of the church, and it has been decided by the best Roman intelligence that the modern work should be removed. Of course you know how false reports get about, and how hard it is – almost impossible – to get the truth spread about equally broadly. I am sorry I never got inside the ch’ of Sa Pudenziana, but I see it may be, and probably is, on the site of the earliest ch’ in Rome.9 Personally I do not know Mr James Powell, but I may be able to get at him, and see if he can provide you with a “piastrella” of gold tesseræ to compare with those of Murano.10 I have not seen W. Richmond for some time (I had the copy of your “Parenzo” sent to him) but I should think he would be the best person for you to write to for English help in saving the mosaics, as he frequents the company of the learned, influential, and aristocratic classes, who might be urged to persuade the Austrian people. Still, there is not too much courage amongst us in facing rebuffs. Richmond’s address is “W.B. Richmond A.R.A. Beavor Lodge. Beavor Lane. West End. Hammersmith. London. W.” We, “antiscrape”, are always in hot water in that way, and neither are we arm in arm with the dilettanti! Nevertheless, I hope some movement towards help may be made.11 Also, I suspect it must be a delicate point with your Italians? You cannot guess with what thoughtfulness we (unimportant) English people look upon Italy (I don’t mean the “forestieri”!).12 We are anxious that some inspiration, good and honourable, should come over the lovely country, and 261

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

guide it into simple ways, when the mass of your people shall have their pitiful cry listened to. We do not throw stones, for we are aware of our own bad case. However, there are signs here that the cry of our people is beginning to command attention. Apropos of mosaico-tesseræ – surely, Murano makes an unnecessary number of tints, and – if not wanted for right effect – a great number is mischievous?13 William Lethaby (whose book on architectural mysticism, &c, you have) told me that the ancient way of setting mosaics on different facettings, as at Parenzo, is also used at Sa Sophia, and – according to the English “Palestine exploration” people, at the “Dome of the Rock” Church in Jerusalem.14 Sartorio I only saw for a short while, but he seemed to be very sprightly, and, as he could not call again, he wrote me a very kindly letter in wonderfully improved English – but he spoke too highly of English modern art. He probably saw some of the best in picture form, but had to make some search in those dismal commercial towns called Liverpool and Manchester – pah! O, you lucky man, or rather wizard, to be able to attract Roman City sparrows to domicile with you. But what do you mean by “seven nightingales”?15 Have you been re-reading The Arabian Nights’ tales?16 or have you seven Opera houses in your chambers? but, perhaps, there may be safety in the number 7. Come again to England one of these days, and go with me into our green grass meadows, where, by a gentle river we will lie down, and I will listen to your improvisations as wonderful as the 7 nightingales. Good night, for tis now Monday instead of Sunday. | Yours in cheery companionship by letter | Philip Webb. I am sorry this letter must be tedious rather than ‘cheery’ to you. Courtauld 163a-d

1 See above, Letter 485, note 5. 2 ‘Sartorio writes (unexpectedly) from London that when he mentioned my name, you said something that looked like sarcasm. Sartorio being an artist I trust him, and also envy him the opportunity he has of studying the expression of human feelings in such a rare sample of sincere humanity as you are.’ GBO to PSW, 20 July 1894, Courtauld 162a. 3 In the literature of Norse mythology worms feature significantly, the word covering a range of creatures from snakes to dragons. 4 PSW is recalling his first meeting with GBO in Venice, in April 1885. See Vol. I, Letter 254. 5 For the sceptical apostle Thomas, see above, Letter 397, note 4. 6 See above, Letter 485, note 3. ‘As to the Parthenon I can only confirm what I wrote from Athens, that iron was the cause of the splittings which defaced the walls of the cella.’ 162b. 7 PSW had seen the paper, published by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, describing recent investigative work undertaken at Megalopolis by the British School at Athens, Excavations at Megalopolis 1890–1891 (London: Macmillan, 1892). Of particular interest to him was the section ‘Architectural Description and Analysis’, by Robert Weir Schultz, which included the diagrams of iron cramps (pp. 21–27).

262

1888–1898 8 The Roman Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin was originally a seventh-century Byzantine structure. Major restoration occurred in the twelfth century, and again in the early eighteenth century. The removal of these later Baroque additions was the work now being undertaken. 9 ‘Just now I am busy with the mosaic of Santa Pudenziana (IV century).’ 162b. It is indeed Rome’s earliest church. 10 ‘In my article on Parenzo I quoted what Mr. Powell said about the gold tesserae. Would it be possible to have a sample of one piastrella to be compared with those manufactured at Murano?’ 162c. James Croft Powell (1853–1922) worked for the family firm of glassmakers and stained glass manufacturers, James Powell and Sons, which traded as Whitefriars Glass. He mainly produced designs for stained glass, and in a paper read before the RIBA on 12 February 1894, subsequently published in JRIBA, Third Series, I (1893–4) pp. 248–54, spoke about the manufacture of mosaic glass. During his talk, samples were on display of the colours which William Blake Richmond was using for his current mosaic work in St Paul’s Cathedral (see above, Letter 454, note 4), and Powell explained his technique for overcoming the flaws in earlier uses of gold within mosaic. ‘Any one who has carefully looked at specimens of the ancient gold tesseræ will have observed that many of them are imperfectly covered with the gold leaf’ (p. 250). Whitefriars Glass worked closely with nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts architects and designers, an early commission being the manufacture of the table glassware specially designed by PSW for The Red House, and its subsequent commercial production for MMF & Co. For a history of the firm, and detailed examination of its products, see Whitefriars Glass. The Art of James Powell & Sons, edited by Lesley Jackson (Shepton Beauchamp: Richard Dennis, 1996), in which PSW’s glass designs are illustrated (p. 97). 11 ‘Has the S.P.A.B. shown any inclination or intention to help us in saving the mosaics of Parenzo?’ 162d. John Hebb’s review of GBO’s Parenzo paper in JRIBA, Third Series, I (1893–4) is unambiguously full-blooded. ‘No one would dare now to advocate the restoration of the Elgin marbles, the Rosetta stone, or the Codex Sinaiticus; but because these mosaics form a part of a building, they are subjected to the same brutal treatment as the rest of the building, and are hacked, patched, and reworked with no more compunction than it they were the signboards over a gin-palace.’ (p. 651). 12 Foreigners (It). Presumably he means Austrians. 13 Above, note 10. 14 Founded in 1865, the Palestine Exploration Fund (still in existence) was established to study the Levant through the archaeological excavation of ancient sites. So far as the church of the Dome of the Rock is concerned, ‘Restorations were commenced in 1873 . . . and during their execution several interesting discoveries were made. . . . It is remarkable that the gilded tesseræ are fitted in at an angle so as to reflect the light downwards. The tesseræ of other colours are not so arranged, but are placed flat in the wall.’ Charles Warren and Claude Reignier Conder, The Survey of Western Palestine. Jerusalem (London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1884), pp. 246–8. 15 ‘Wild sparrows came to pay a visit to my seven nightingales, and built a nest under a chair in my kitchen’. 162d. 16 The first English translation of the collection of Arabic stories, the One Thousand and One Nights, collected over some hundreds of years by Islamic scholars and writers, was published in 1706.

488 • To William Morris, 11 August 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sat: 11 August 1894 My dear Fellow Not having at hand the ready exchange of good will and kindly recognition when you thrust into my ribs at Gattis’ a new book from the press, what can I do but

263

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

quietly write my satisfaction, where there is no more or less indifferent person to mark my halting?1 I handed Kate her copy, but I doubt if she musters courage enough to put down a few words to send to you.2 The book looks and reads beautiful and convenient – the latter so much so, that I read a few pages before it came home to me it was printed in black letter. I’ve just looked out Moxon’s original copy; odious to compare, no doubt, but convincing.3 You well marked with grander flourish, on p. 66, the beautifully placed regiment of semichorus, chorus & Messenger. It is exceedingly effective, giving a second glorification in the book to answer to the magnificent title page.4 For once the finest form of D.T5 should attack Swinburne, and he should see scrolls, and capitals – of various degrees – crawling over the coverlid of his bed, driving the small letters in packs. I am thankful for yet another lovely modern book: the length of the list will be longer than the length of my (y)ears – which last sentence is almost Swinburnian. Goodbye till you turn up in town again | Your affectionate | Philip Webb. Love to Janey and Jenny. My stars Mister Morris, do not the leafy trees look lovely? V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 45

1 The Kelmscott Press published Algernon Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon: a Tragedy on 24 July 1894. 2 KF’s presentation copy (like that of PSW) is dated 9 August 1894, and is now at the Houghton Library. 3 Atalanta in Calydon was first published by E. Moxon & Co. in 1865. 4 The reference is to a section towards the close of the book, beginning on p. 66 with a border of vines and grape bunches enclosing the text, through to p. 77, with each of the frequent alternating passages for Chorus, Semichorus, second Messenger and Meleager beginning with a large ornamental initial letter (47 in total). 5 Delirium tremens, a severe form of psychosis brought on by alcoholism, in which the sufferer experiences uncontrollable trembling. Algernon Swinburne (1837–1909) certainly drank heavily, but a shaking in his limbs from which he suffered was probably a symptom of mild arrested hydrocephaly, a genetic condition. See Vol. III, Letter 632, note 4.

489 • To Sydney Cockerell, 20 August 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 August 1894 My dear Cockerell I have just heard from Giacomo Boni after long silence, with an object in his mind rather than a subject, and therefore offensive, as if he were thinking of the Bank of

264

1888–1898

England and the stock exchange instead of the Holy Ghost. Let me therefore take the edge off my indignation before flaying him in answer. He says, among other begging items – “Can you tell me something about the author of ‘Protection & Production’ in the report of the S.P.A.B?1 Who and what is he? I was struck with what he wrote, and I have already translated into Italian what seemed to me most useful for my countrymen to know”.2 Now. I know nothing about Heywood Sumner save that he has done some decorative black and white work for the Eng: Illd mag: &c, and ventured on a kind of wall decoration.3 As you know everybody, almost tripping up Walker in that capacity, can you tell me if Sumner (who really did write a good paper for the S.P.A.B) is a painter, or architect, or centaur, or ---- what not? I would like to know more of him if he be a good fellow (by fare the finest profession – if the “good” is read rightly) but I’m “sae shie”!4 Can you unbutton, yourself, or button hole Sumner, so that I might give a just answer to Boni? Another part of Boni’s beggar’s petition is, about the oncoming Art Exhibition at Venice.5 He says, “The Syndic of Venice (Riccardo Silvatico, (or Selvatico), a good vernacular poet) as President of the Venetian Art Exhibition,6 is anxious to get a reply to from some English artists to whom he sent invitations” and he goes on, and, “considering the advantages that would be derived by my native town ---- by seeing good English work, I dare to pray you and your friends (he knows I am incapable) to help as much as you can the efforts of my fellow citizens” --- he continues, “Gilbert,7 Hercomer,8 [sic] Orchardson (sic)9 Richmond (underlined), W. Scott [sic] of Oldham,10 G.F. Watts, are among the names of some of the artists wanted by the Venetian Committee to exhibit their work, can you do anything to persuade them, and add any other good names to the list? Burne Jones already belongs to the committee.”11 As you will be sure to see some 365 of the art illuminati in one day, perhaps you could drop a persuasive tear, and help the Venetians to make a shine in a less harmful way than taxing the miserably poor in order to flaunt big ships in rival waters? If you can give ear to this diluted cry I beg you not to mind me, and do so, and keep up the title you more than aspire to of being a “good” fellow! Damn them! they are improving the wood carving in the Lady Chapel at Winchester.12 Yours, as a thorn in the flesh, | Ph: Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/27

1 Heywood Sumner’s paper, ‘Protection and Production’ (SPAB Annual Report, 1894, pp. 64–73) established its intentions at the start. ‘I begin by explaining that the Protection of which I shall speak is that which this Society preaches, namely, the Protection of ancient art; and the Production of which I shall speak is that which we desire to have practised, namely, the Production of living public art.’ (p. 64). For Sumner, see note 3. 2 GBO to PSW, 16 August 1894, Courtauld 164c-d.

265

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 3 The artist Heywood Maunoir Sumner (1853–1940) became an Arts and Crafts practitioner through his friendship with W.A.S. Benson (1854–1924), the metalwork designer and friend of WM. Sumner worked in many media, favouring the technique of wall graffito, in which designs were incised on the plaster. He was active in the Art Workers’ Guild, and helped organise the first Arts and Crafts exhibition in 1888. In reply, SCC described Sumner as ‘genuine to the backbone & most kind & public spirited’. SCC to PSW, 21 August 1894, Courtauld 165a. 4 i.e. ‘so shy’(faux-Burns). 5 The first Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia, opened on 30 April 1895, and would be succeeded by the Esposizione Biennale Artistica Nazionale. 6 Riccardo Selvatico (1849–1901), mayor of the city council of Venice. 7 Sir John Gilbert (1817–97), artist and illustrator of books and periodicals (especially the Illustrated London News). 8 The Bavarian-born painter and illustrator, Hubert von Herkomer (1849–1914), succeeded JR as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford in 1885. A naturalized British citizen, he was knighted in 1907. 9 The Scottish painter William Quiller Orchardson (1832–1910). PSW’s ‘sic’ is probably ironic. 10 The landscape painter William Stott (1857–1900) often signed his works ‘William Stott-ofOldham’, signalling his birthplace, to avoid confusion with the contemporary Sussex painter, Edward Stott (1859–1918). 11 GBO to PSW, 16 August 1894, Courtauld 164a–b. SCC was not encouraging. ‘I fear that scarcely any English artist would run the risk of sending pictures to Venice, even though no expense were involved. The chances of a sale there are, I suppose, of the smallest, & that is all they think about.’ 165a–b. Three days later, however, SCC was able to report that he had seen William Blake Richmond, who was willing to send The Death of Ulysses to Venice. 12 Much of the woodwork in the Lady Chapel at Winchester Cathedral dates from the early sixteenth century, including wall panelling, seats, desk and screen.

490 • To William Morris, 26 August 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 26 August 1894 My dear Fellow Don’t be frightened at a bit-scrape of writing from me, but the trifling accident of the Heimskringla volume on Thursday at Gattis left my ears burning, beyond the power of my impudent repartee to carry off decently.1 It mattered nothing worth troubling about that the first volume of the book was tall, and the second you brought me was short: but it did matter that I should have been unable to explain the peculiarity more deftly in company. However, that trifle is not the point of my present say. You know I could not have the Kelmscott press books from my own condition. Your loving gifts of them have been more than a mere boon to me; but I must not lose this opportunity of saying that such a book as the ‘Chaucer’ is beyond the swallow of my conscience.2 As to the ‘saga Library’, I can buy those from time to time when there is money to hand; and I shall surely get a sight of the oncoming Kelmscott books by going to the Brit: Mus:, if other chances failed me. Therefore I must go on strike now, though in an inverse way to the ordinary.

266

1888–1898

You will understand the meaning of this reasonable rule – even though I write it: for your weaknesses are many – doubtless, but being unable to understand my lame expositions is certainly not one of them – lucky for me!3 There is no call for you to answer this, as we need not begin to misunderstand each other at this time of our lives, even if the winds were contrary.4 Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 46

1 The Stories of the Kings of Norway Called the Round World (Heimskringla) by Snorri Strulusson, done into English out of the Icelandic by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon, The Saga Library, Vol. IV (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1894). This was published on 26 July. 2 The most celebrated of the Kelmscott Press publications would be The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, finally published on 26 June 1896, five years after WM first conceived of the project. It represented the joint labours of WM and EBJ, who supplied the 87 illustrations. EBJ described it as ‘the finest book ever printed – if W.M. had done nothing else it would be enough’. See Peterson, p. 111. 3 PSW’s reluctance to accept gratis copies of Kelmscott Press books is characteristic. In his reply, WM robustly refused to stand for this kind of nonsense. ‘You see as to all these matters I do the books mainly for you and one or two others; the public does not really care about them a damn – which is stale. But I tell you I want you to have them & finally you shall.’ 27 August 1894, CLWM, IV. When in 1903 PSW presented his Kelmscott Press publications to Trinity College, a specially-printed copy of WM’s letter was inserted in each volume. See Vol. III, Letter 857 and Vol. IV, Letters 862–3. 4 SCC annotation: ‘The last sentence refers to a disagreement Morris and Webb once had as to which way the wind was blowing.’ The friendly banter was on-going: see below, Letters 525 and 526, with in the latter WM’s reply as note 2.

491 • To Giacomo Boni, 7 October 1894 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 7 October 1894 To The Cavaliere Giacomo Boni Arch-preserver of the antiquities of Italy These – We poor benighted islanders are all in a flutter of distress at something more than a rumour, that the Cathedral of S. Martin of Lucca is to be “RESTORED”.1 The English language has been considered to be very full and complete in its vocabulary of anathema, and we, too feeble representatives of enlarged idea as to the sanctity of ancient builded art, are careful not to lift the lid of the Pandora box of curses before they we have reliable information of what is to be done to San Martino under the disguise of repair to the fabric. I have before me a translation from “La Nazione, Firenze” of Sepr 16, 1894, wherein the whole world is invited to become sponsors to the proposed ‘restoration’,

267

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

under the stimulating invitation to rivalry of the Florentines and the Bolognese in their ambitious works of restoration. We remember, and as often as we do, with tears in our eyes, the effects of zeal displayed on the front of San Michele at Lucca.2 When, having dried our eyes, we begin to handle the fastening of the casket of curses, but hesitate to raise the lid. At my left hand, while writing, there is a large and clear photograph of the incomparable front of S Martino of Lucca, than which triumph of builded art there is no more wonderful and delightful example in the whole world. Signor Giacomo. I am got to be almost an old man, after having spent nearly 50 years in the study of the arts of antiquity, and for the last 30 of these years I have been a close student of the ways of supporting and sustaining ancient fabrics, aided by the constant practice of the craft of building. Well, sir. I quail before the thought of having to lay a finger or direction to the work of Master Guidetto (if he was the master-mason of this great work?)3 knowing, that without genius, and absolute self-abnegation, such a labour would be too great a tax on the capacity and rectitude of a human being, let alone the knowledge we have of the vanity and incapacity of the modern pigmy, miscalled an architect! Being – as I said before – an old man, my virtuous colleagues have chosen me as their Jonah,4 to pacify the raging sea of the modern madness called RESTORATION. Damn! (there goes the lid of the box, only raised one quarter of a millimetre). Now, to put aside this “Ercles vein”,5 as having only been used to veil my nervousness in dealing with so delicate a matter as that of suggesting to an able man of another country a caution, which might be quite unnecessary, I ask, straight out, if you have any power to influence the authorities of Lucca against any form of, so called ‘Restoration’ of San Martino?6 I am sure your humanity will be broad enough to make you forgive any seeming impertinence in this writing to you, but those of us who have seen this wonderful work of mediæval men’s hands cannot but be anxious – (made so by experience) – that this building should not be filched from future generations by a zeal untempered by the instinct of genius and sympathy, or that knowledge which is a bar to personal gratification of a mischievous kind. Probably the building has to be repaired, and this is a necessity which should be faced at once. The one question being, how to stay, and support, without any transformation in its appearance whatever. If you can give us comforting assurance, we shall be greatly relieved. We would also be glad to know if any mischief is likely to happen to the Cosmedin Church in Rome?7 Now, having executed my commission, however rude & ungently, let me ask if you and your sparrows are flourishing, and whether your tower of observation

268

1888–1898

over Rome is still as delightful to you as the photograph (panorama) you sent me, and your bird like letter description, have led me to imagine it. Always your debtor, but not hurt thereby | Philip Webb. Courtauld 163a-d

1 The upper logia section of the early thirteenth-century façade of the Cathedral of San Martino, Lucca, is credited to the sculptor, Guidetto da Como (fl. 1187–1211), known as Guido Magister from his work in another church in the city. 2 The church of San Michele in Foro, built over Lucca’s Roman forum, has a thirteenth-century façade which underwent an extensive nineteenth-century restoration. 3 See note 1. 4 A great storm engulfs the ship carrying Jonah to Tarshish. ‘And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.’ Jonah 1:12. 5 Derived from Bottom’s pronunciation of ‘Hercules’, and used to suggest bombast. ‘This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein; a lover is more condoling.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, ii.40–1. 6 ‘We do not know, officially, of the constitution of any Committee for the restoration of the Lucca Cathedral. This being a national monument and a property of the State nobody will be allowed to touch it, and if money is collected in order to do something on behalf of the Lucca Cathedral, it will be spent under the direction of our Office for the preservation of Tuscan monuments.’ GBO to PSW, undated, October 1894, Courtauld 168a. 7 See above, Letter 487, note 8.

492 • To Sydney Cockerell, 23 October 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 23 Octr 1894 Dear Cockerell Your letter of the 21st was most helpful in this business of trying to get so good a man into the County Council berth.1 And I have lectured him up stairs & down as to his duty towards his country, and you, and me, & he. Docility is hardly the word to express the sweetness of his smiles under admonitions drawn from so far back as prehistoric time, to this of the mutilation & kicking about the streets of the body of Queen Anne. I have written to Dick Grosvenor,2 and have read it to Lethaby, so that nothing offensive to his sensibility shd be posted. Yours with admiration tinged with age | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/29

269

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 Natural reticence meant that WRL had to be persuaded by his friends, including EW and SCC, to apply for the position of art inspector to the new London County Council Technical Education Board. Then, in 1896, he was jointly appointed Director of the Board, with the sculptor, George Frampton. SCC annotation: ‘Walker and I undertook to obtain the necessary recommendations as he would not raise a finger himself.’ 2 For Richard Grosvenor, see Vol. I, Letter 263, note 3.

493 • To William Morris, 28 November 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 Novr 1894 My dear Fellow I gobbled up your “Wood beyond the World” at the first reading, as is the wont for ill regulated minds, but I have just read him again with my headstomach in tone for assimilation.1 There was a blind road which I might have followed, a kind of philosophical lane, but I kept the open track, and enjoyed the exercise. Your ideas are all beautiful as could be expected, but the diction seems to me to be both closer and easier. For simplicity and directness, the driving before the wind of the second voyage is the highest success of the whole, and, for effectiveness of scene, I took most to the flower-dressed maid, with the iron leg, on the stones in front of the bears.2 There can be no doubt that Chaucer, Defoe, and you hold the times for bawdry – a great praise, no doubt, but as nothing is veiled, perhaps the young folk will not take to Haymarket courses after reading it.3 I assure you I was heartily glad when Walter’s sword did bite into the scull of the yellow rabbit.4 The wizardry comes off delightfully and gives the landscapes another aspect. And so – and so, I thus do a disagreeable thing, namely, writing to you about my way of taking to others’ way, and that too of you, my other other, the first being my own double. Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 49

1 WM’s The Wood Beyond the World was published by the Kelmscott Press on 16 October 1894. 2 Chapter XXVIII: ‘Of the New God of the Bears’. 3 The area of the Haymarket in London was regarded as disreputable in the mid-nineteenth century, and a haunt for prostitutes. ‘If Piccadilly may be termed an artery of the metropolis, most assuredly that strip of pavement between the top of the Haymarket and the Regent’s Circus is one of its ulcers. . . . a shame and a disgrace to the supervision of any police.’ Albert Smith in Household Words, no. 390 (12 September 1857), p. 264. 4 In fact a lion, ‘a great-headed yellow creature’ which threatens the Lady, and is killed by the hero, ‘Golden’ Walter, in chapter XV, ‘The Slaying of the Quarry’.

270

1888–1898

494 • To Giacomo Boni, 11 December 1894 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. 11 Decr 1894 My dear Boni I am doubting in mind if I answered your graceful contribution to my intelligence, of the 11th Octr of this year. If I did not, this seems to represent black ingratitude? Let me – supposing the worst, try to turn the blackness into at least brown, though I fear you will hardly think brown “whitewash” will hide the sin-stain of ingratitude. Now, let me be quite honest, if it be possible for humans? Thinking the worse of myself, I have sent a “sop to Cerberus”1 in the form of what is to me a reasonable book on the glory of S. Sophia at Constantinople, the image of which will hardly yet have become dim in your memory.2 The two authors of the book (one of whom you knew in the spirit, if you read the little volume he sent to you) are both capable men after the English way, though the second – Swainson to wit, is not English by race, but must have hailed from Scandinavia, is a learned man, and therefrom [sic] cannot be repulsive to you. The other, William Lethaby, is – racially – I believe, a Cornish Celt, having the spiritual power of that branch of our Aryan race, representing the British form of the Armorican folks.3 As I know more of Lethaby than I do of Swainson, I can speak the more assuredly of his value in the fight of 19th century mortals with the demons dealing with the false art of our transition times: he being a capable digger of graves in which to bury the hapless body of art as now cumbering the Earth. If the Parthenon was our Grandfather, surely S. Sophia was our veritable mother and to whom we might most reasonably turn for stock into which might be poured the essence – if there be any – of our 19th century degraded quality? I think the Lethaby-Swainson book, in its preface, deals very justly with this point in the inverted pyramid of type at its prefatorial finish.4 There, do you not think I could write in the vain-glorious style of the daily newspaper?5 John Hebb was good enough to let me see a translation of your general rules for the preservation of historical buildings, which seems to me to have an admirable tendency; but I also perceive that the wicked architect, or subordinate syndicate, may find holes in the rules through which they may creep and work their wicked way, unless your central power has a hundred well placed eyes to confound and correct. In our branch of effort in that way we find the evil one goes about – not roaring – but smiling his lies, and saying yes, but craftily doing no! Nevertheless, hope springs eternal, and I will hope your gins & traps may stay diabolus from working his evil way on S. Martino of Lucca.6 Also, I have in hand a translation of the paper on the preservation of ancient paintings. This interests us much, and we hope that Hebb’s translations (which must, of course be faulty here and there) which are so helpful to us, will stir us into the right ways. 271

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Should you answer this letter, you would have a good text if you told me much about your quest for timber amongst the red pines of Calabria, and if your 7 nightingales (sic) received your report with joyful song upon success.7 The book was posted last night. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Memorandum – when you have done with the photographs of S. Sophia (they would be useful when reading the books) I should be glad if you would send them back to me, as they were a gift from a Greek lady friend of mine, and must be respected accordingly. I am in no hurry for them. Courtauld 169a-c

1 The multi-headed dog of ancient Greek and Roman mythology, who guarded the entrance to the underworld. 2 W.R. Lethaby and Harold Swainson, The Church of Sancta Sophia Constantinople (London: Macmillan & Co, 1894). PSW’s copy (presented to him by WRL in December 1894) is now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 139. 3 Armorica is the ancient name for the region of France, including Brittany, where Breton was spoken. 4 The ‘inverted pyramid’ refers to the layout of the text at the close of the preface by Lethaby and Swainson: ‘In estimating so highly the Byzantine method of building in its greatest example, we see that its forms and results directly depended on then present circumstances, and then ordinary materials. It is evident that the style cannot be copied by our attempting to imitate Byzantine builders; only by being ourselves and free, can our work be reasonable, and if reasonable, like theirs universal.’ 5 ‘The volume on S. Sophia is not only a beautiful present and very dear to me in coming from you, it is not only a very valuable work which does great credit to its authors, but to me it proves just now as a providential help.’ GBO to PSW, 15 December 1894, Courtauld, 170b–c. 6 See above, Letter 491. 7 ‘The seven nightingales are kept well covered and well warmed with bottles of water. Whenever a warm bottle is added they perch around the large cock and resume chirping.’ 170d.

495 • To Jane Morris, 16 December 1894 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 16 Decr 1894. My dear Janey I wrote to Hughes of Faringdon, the builder, asking him for information as to the existing drains on the south of Kelmscott house,1 and, if possible, a plan – and he sent me a very useful plan, he having opened up the drains at certain points. I sent him on Friday a plan and details of what to do in laying new drains to take the place of the old; and as the old drains ran round and across the bullock yard, I decided to lay the new main drain in a right line from the kitchen-scullery yard to the edge of the ditch, and through the coach house. In the yard I put a man hole with an air tight cover, and inlet and outlet ventilation pipes, so that – when you are curious – you can have the door of man hole lifted, and see the drains at work. 272

1888–1898

Just before the main drain reached the stream on the south fall I put a straining filter, with a grating over it. This will let the filtered water run into the stream, and any solid matter retained in the filter may be cleaned out from time to time. Where the pipe from the scullery sink runs out to yard, I have put a grease box, which should be lifted out and cleaned once a week. I have cut off the old drain in two places next the kitchen end of house, and stopped these up, taking away the old drain within the precincts of the house, but not destroying that part which runs across the bullock yard, as that would serve to drain that place. When Hughes has done his work, I have asked him to let you have the plan I have sent him, as by it you would know the lie of all those new drains. The thing is not a serious matter of drainage, but it will probably be effective, and the house all the safer. Yours truly | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 75

1 In fact Kelmscott Manor, where there had been some flooding. ‘I was very ill at Kelmscott with dysentery, and only got well enough to come away in November, fortunately just before the floods set in – for the week afterwards the water burst over the dyke came into the house and flooded the village.’ JM to WSB, 15 December 1894, CLJM.

496 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 3 January 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 3 Jany 1895 Dear Murray For sending a small item or two to Wardle in Florence, De Morgan slipped through my fingers.1 Then another friend said he was going to meet W. at Xmas time, but did not succeed in getting away. I now hear from W. that if you should go out within a month or two, perhaps you wd kindly carry the things to him. The things he does not like to trust to the tender mercies of the post office are a double million multiplying water colour box of his own composing, and a water colour brush which shd not be bent double. Perhaps you wd kindly warn me when you find you are going. The good Boyce’s affairs are being knit together on acct of his incapacity for managing them,2 and the lawyers want inventories of the contents of West House. Mrs Boyce can manage to set down many things, and I can help, but for the pictures it wants a specialist – and, who so specious – beg pardon – special as you! Could you, without too great inconvenience, make that inventory? The lawyer said you could charge a fee. I am going to see the Boyces next week to talk the matter over, and make it as clear as may be to him. 273

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

There, business letter you see – no jokes – save the ‘specious’ one. Yours truly | Philip Webb Fitzwilliam 56

1 On the advice of his doctors, since 1892 the ceramicist William Frend De Morgan (1839–1917) had spent his winters in Florence. 2 Periodic bouts of depression appear to have prevented GPB from working, and clearly he was having difficulty in engaging with day-to-day concerns. He lived until February 1897, when he succumbed to a stroke.

497 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 4 January 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 4 Jany 1895 Dear Murray And so you thought I should have a copy, maugre the seeming absurdity.1 Well, there might be more mischievous mistaken ideas. One more of so many precious gifts of books will not make me blush after so much practice in hiding shame. Sydney Cockerell placed the packet in my hand as I entered the ‘anti-scrape’ conclave last evening, and I stowed it away, thinking only it might be a lock of your hair or a Christmas Italian cake. When I got home at 10.30, I uncovered the gift and translated my various, without so much as a word of explanation from the giver to help my confused British brains. My stars, Mr Murray, what a kindly New Year’s gift from an old and long lost acquaintance – two, I might say, you and my memories of S: Marco of Firenze. It stirred up my dormant memories of 1884–5, when you took in the belated traveller and did for him. You will have to answer my notes of yesterday’s writing, and you can – must – fill up the chinks with a full, perfect, and close explanation of how the lovely thin book came to the birth. I am your thankfully fraudulent debtor | Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 57

1 CFM presented him with Girolamo Savonarola, Epistola de Contemptu Mundi di Frate, published privately for CFM by the Kelmscott Press. A slim item of just 15 pages, the title page features a fine illustration by CFM of Savonarola writing in his cell in San Marco, Florence.

274

1888–1898

498 • To William Morris, 18 January 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 18 Jany 1895 My dear Fellow Your note by Cockerell’s hand softened the situation, for I always look to the probability of a talk with you at antiscrape aftermath.1 I had to boss the tea by virtue of years, &c. I might have come to the Hammersmith meeting tonight if work had not got me to Bayswater, where I was tired out by trifles, and kept longer than expected. However, I do not think I could have said anything useful, as I’m not in tune for cutting a socialistic dash in these waiting days, and shd not be allowed a voice, as I’ve been so bad an attendant at the Friday meetings. I rather hope the ‘motions’ died down without heat. Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. I was at Cambridge on Monday. ’Twas long since I was there. Found it an impressive suburb, with a few forlorn old buildings bedded in its middle. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 50

1 He means at Gatti’s after the meeting.

499 • To William Morris, 2 February 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 2 Feby 1895 My dear Fellow Monday morning, 11. oc – maugre snow – at Liverpool Street – Buntingford line – good. The hurried look at Beowulph [sic] on Thursday, and the friendly use of the log-lever in the Chronicle this morning, let me know you have had a stiff bit of work, shaping into English this old story; and I see it will come home to me nicely when I’ve got into the swing of reading it.1 Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 51

1 The Kelmscott Press published The Tale of Beowulf in a translation by WM and A.J. Wyatt on 2 February 1895. It was reviewed that day in The Daily Chronicle.

275

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

500 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 8 February 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 8 Feby 1895 My dear Murray The Lawyers lent me your inventory of Boyce’s pictures &c to look through, and I must thank you for having done the work in so thorough a fashion.1 To anyone less of an expert than yourself it would have been a hard task, not to say tiresome, but I hope you found old memoranda amongst the drawings, which cheered you on the way. By another way, I saw your name in the ‘Chronicle’ this morning, appearing as an author! “a volume dealing with the historic collection of pictures at Welbeck and in London, prepared for the Duke of Portland by Mr Charles Fairfax Murray,” going on with “Mr F.M. has written an exhaustive description of the pictures” &c.2 I was glad to see it, for, when the time comes I shall know of two houses which must be handed over to me to sack! Mrs Boyce tells me it pleased poor old Boyce to have you in the house busy over his much loved pictures. If it had been anyone else than you he would have cried out ‘murder’. In truth it was luck you could help Mrs Boyce in her anxious time. With hearty thanks | Yours truly Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 58

1 See above, Letter 496. 2 CFM, Catalogue of the Pictures Belonging to his Grace the Duke of Portland, at Welbeck Abbey, and in London (London: Chiswick Press, 1894).

501 • To Reverend William Clavell Ingram, Dean of Peterborough, about 10 February 1895 Drafted on behalf of SPAB; pencil To the Very Revd the Dean of Peterborough1 My dear Mr Dean. In the matters of the Society brought before my Committee I brought before laid before the members an important letter dated which appeared in The Times newspaper on Feb 9, with regard to some very important proposals for a continuation of “restoration” of works. I am sure you are quite aware of the interest our Society takes in all the Cathedral, and as we hold you to be a valuableed member of the society, we have always looked to you for information as to what and help when anything was likely to be gone on which with beyond the ordinary yearly repairs. 276

1888–1898

Through your kindness some members of our Committee were allowed to make an examination of the state of the West front in Novr 1889,2 and that part of the building again mentioned by you Mr Leicester as a work to be gone on with as soon as funds permitted, we should be much obliged if you would give us the advantage of considering what is proposed to be done, so that we might give any aid we could to advancinge the structural repairs without in any way injuring or changing the present appearance of the building. My Committee does not wish to hastily to express any opinion on the proposals contained in the Times letter, till we have more particular information from you. SPAB, Peterborough Cathedral file

1 The Very Reverend William Clavell Ingram, D.D. (1834–1901) was appointed Dean in 1893, and held the post until his death. He had succeeded the Very Reverend Marsham Angles, who had himself been appointed to replace John Perowne. 2 Until Ingram replied a few days later, PSW may not have been aware that there had been two Deans since 1889. See below, Letter 503.

502 • To Hugh Thackeray Turner, 12 February 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 12 Feby 1895 My dear Turner I have heard from Mrs Coronio (one of my Greek friends)1 in answer to my letter to her for help in writing to someone who could put the society in the way of getting protection for S: Sophia, Salonica.2 She writes as follows, “A new Consul has been appointed whom I do not know – but your best plan I think would be to write to Mr Romano, the chargée d’affaires: his address is 7. Chesham Street. S.W. He is an intelligent man who cares for good works of art and is soon going to Greece. My friend Mr Trîcoupi is not in office now and is therefore powerless, or I should at once have suggested writing to him. I think Mr Romano will pay you every possible attention”.3 Mr Romano’s Christian name I do not know, so you had better address him as ––– Romano Esqre Yours truly | Philip Webb. SPAB, St Sophia, Salonica file

1 See Vol. I, Letter 235, note 5. 2 The Byzantine cathedral of St Sophia in Thessalonika, under Turkish rule, was in use as a mosque. ‘It was in a poor state of repair and the Turkish authorities were not preventing flooding of much

277

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II of the building.’ Frank C. Sharp, ‘Exporting the Revolution: The Work of the SPAB outside Britain 1878–1914’, in Miele, p. 200. 3 Athos Romanos was Chargé d’Affaires at the Greek Embassy in London. ‘Romanos suggested that the best contact for the Society would be Hamdy Bey, the Director of the Imperial Museum in Constantinople. The Society sent a detailed proposal to Bey recommending minimal repairs. . . . Although the campaign was unsuccessful, the careful planning of the protest is proof of the care the Society now took in relation to foreign governments.’ Sharp, Miele, p. 201.

503 • To Reverend William Clavell Ingram, Dean of Peterborough, about 15 February 1895 Drafted on behalf of SPAB The SPAB To the very Revd the Dean of Peterborough. D.D. Dear Sir I laid your letter of the 12th of February before my Committee, and I was instructed to thank you for so kindly explaining the state of affairs with regard to the cathedral under the charge of yourself and the Chapter. It was thought that some explanation should be sent to you of the reasons why which had moved the Committee when to asking for information. It was the Bishop of Leicester’s letter, which seemed so clearly to point be veracious, that impressed my Comme with the necessity of writing to you for corroboration of its statements. Of the things which have been done to the church, or which are now being done it would be of little use for my Committee to express at this time either its satisfaction or regret; but with the condition of the west front, we feel bound in duty, as a society supported by public subscription, to speak as straightforwardly as possible, and your letter will keep us from making a mistake. When, by the kindness of the late Dean,1 some three or four members of our committee carefully examined the state of the West Front on Novr 12, 1889, we found it in such a state, structurally, as to make us anxious that it should undergo a much more searching examination than our members could give it in one day, and without any aid of scaffolding. In the published sheet shewing the things your Architect considered “necessary for preservation”, was an item of £385.0.0 for scaffolding to the West front for the Architect’s examination of the structure, and this we considered so necessary, particularly after our own examination, that I believe we expressed our satisfaction that such a scaffolding was asked for. In your letter last letter received you merely speak of some slight falls of ornamental stone work as indicating want of attention, but, you say, “The Porch has not suffered any serious changes since the 2 great central piers were strengthened by the insertion, in the 14th century, of the building now containing our valuable library”. We wish we could be as satisfied that no movement is at the present moment going on in the greater Porch, for our examination shewed to us that the 278

1888–1898

lesser porch had been to some extent, at some time, torn away by the whole front leaning outwards. Our examination rather intensified our anxiety that some steps should at once be taken to find out, not only if there was this part of the cathedral was in a state of unrest, if but also, if there was any probability from the conditions of stability, that it might soon develope [sic] a dangerous tendency. My committee does not wish to be unnecessarily alarmist, but our great public monuments have suffered so dreadfully both from carelessness on one side, & misdirected zeal on the other, that we are not without fear for the magnificent building you have under your charge, and doubtless you share with us the feeling hope that neither of the above mentioned misfortunes shd attend upon Peterborough’s great front. We know only too well that noble buildings, even quite recently, have been neglected, or only partially examined & attended to; and then so mercilessly treated as to become worse than a wreck of themselves. My Committee is sure that you will understand & sympathise with its anxiety, which is certainly justified by events, and will aid our society in every way, so that it may be able to allay apprehensions as to the fate of the West front of Peterborough Cathl. SPAB, Peterborough Cathedral file

1 See above, Letter 501, note 2.

504 • To William Morris, 16 February 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 16 Feby 1895 My dear Fellow Vinall came to see me this morning by arrangement,1 and I could see by his manner he did not think I should expect him to go to Hadham and stand about for a whole day or two’s work in this weather2 – and, as he has a nose which means a weak heart, I thought it better not to urge, and he awaits a break in the cold spell. I had a note from Thurgood3 saying he would be ready to help Vinall in any way he could, and the latter writes to him today, saying it will have to stand over a bit. Perhaps you will write a word to your sister saying that no unnecessary delay will happen. I cannot do my work till I have the necessary information, as nothing should be guessed at. Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 52 279

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 For Charles Vinall, see Vol. I, Letter 69, note 1. 2 PSW took on the conversion of two cottages into one – ‘Morris Cottage’ – for Henrietta Morris (1822–1902), elder sister of WM, at Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. He refused any fee for the work. See Kirk, p. 302. WM wanted his sister to be comfortable, now that she would be living alone following the death of their mother in December 1894, and he wrote warmly of PSW’s plans: ‘[it] gets you a nice look out into the garden both in the parlour and the room over it: and the passage to get at the rooms will be very convenient. Altogether it will make a very sunny and pleasant little house.’ WM to Henrietta Morris, 13 March 1895, CLWM, IV. 3 George Thurgood, a Much Hadham builder. See below, Letter 519.

505 • To Percy Wyndham, 17 April 1895 Drafted on behalf of SPAB Society for the protection of Ancient Buildings 9 Buckingham Street. Adelphi W.C. To | The Hon’ Percy Wyndham Dear Sir. In the matter of Chichester Cathl I am directed by my Committee to bring under your notice before you, as an influential member of the Socy, the important notice which has been issued by the “Executive Committee” for the “Repair and Restoration of Chichester Cathedral”, and of which we I inclose a copy of the same.1 If it had not been well known to my committee that repairs were necessary imperatively needed to the fabric of this church, the necessity for constant and painstaking attention to a very so large and ancient a buildings is always before us in this and as in other examples: repairs, the cost of which, if faithfully attended to carried out, would demand call for the utmost support from all who are alive to the importance of our invaluable incalculable value of our ancient ecclesiastical monuments. But, we are also equally well aware cognisant of the unworthy use to which which such a just claims upon the public support assistance are made in these days times of covert intention. In the 5th paragraph of the Cathedral executive’s appeal, the it is remarked that many of the repairs might be met by the “Fabric Fund”; and in the next paragraph we are assured that “the case is different” &c &c with in regard to one particular portion part of the church. Now we are well aware that the repairs required to the fabric – repairs which are absolutely demanded by common admiration and common sense, would absorb all the money which could be reasonably be collected in one ecclesiastical district for one building in a diocese . As you know of you have had experience of the service done by our Society, for the (founded and maintained for the last 18 years) for the purpose of urging for impressing on the English people the necessity for attending to the condition safety of its ancient buildings, we are my Committee is assured of your sympathy with our Committee at this time at this time threatening time for Chichester Cathl, when the distress call made upon the outside public as well as on the diocese is put forth with by authority. As You are well aware

280

1888–1898

our society would in no wise restrict wish the efforts of the English people to be restricted to their own local needs, but and the Chichester executive committee evidently think see with us that the English people generally should be represented when a building like Chichester that of the Cathedral is in need want of outside help. Our This society, fairly representing as it does the responsibility of the general public, has a claim to be heard even if common sympathy had not been appealed to when that general public is appealed to for assistance in maintaining so great [a] possession as its ancient buildings. On paragraph 7, it will be seen, that the cathedral authorities are including in their appeal request to the public for assistance in scheme for the repair of only one part only of the fabric, the cost of building a new North West Tower to the church, and basing this extra claim their call of from some £4,000 to £5,000 for this new tower mainly on the ground of its necessity as a support to the “West Bay of the Nave roof”! The Our Committee of our society is more than sufficiently experienced to know to be sure that, supposing the expense of building such a tower were is not necessary for the support of the weak point in question, but, for the sake of argument, supposing it were necessary a fitting tower could not be built for that the sum named. but However, what is of much more importance than the expenditure of £5,000 or even £10,000, is, that this invaluable building would be lowered in its dignity – even insulted, by the intrusion of a modern tower (not to speak of a base imitation of an a “restored” ancient one) being added to the time touched West front as it now stands. My Committee is aware that efforts have been made within the body of the “executive Committee” Cathedral authorities to oppose this scheme of modernisation, and I am instructed to ask you, as a member of this our Society, and as a native of Sussex, to give any assistance you can in supporting of the dissident side more conservative side of local feeling. As it is well known that you have worked effectively with our Society for the guardianship and support of our church architecture, and have largely subscribed and in other ways faithfully helped in the support of to preserve your own parish church,2 amongst other buildings, my Committee believes that, as a known sound churchman the expression of your opinion with Chichester to such Sussex authorities as the Duke of Richmond3 and Lord Leconfield,4 or Archdeacon Mount 5 would be attended to, and that fresh consideration might be given to a most important point, which our Society is convinced has not had weight enough attached sufficient impartial judgment given bestowed to it.6 My Our Committee is the more anxious to have your assistance help at this time, as it is aware that knows efforts will be made to cry down the all opposition to the unfortunate scheme proposal of the authorities. by stating It has been used as an argument that our society has no credentials. This – in the face of our list of membership, shews clearly enough the way in which the fear there is that our society has may have more influence than would be convenient to those who are pressing forward a more than doubtful point scheme. that

V&A, AAD

281

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 The north-west Norman tower had collapsed in about 1629. In 1894, a Cathedral Restoration Committee was established to raise £12,000, to include the cost of the tower’s rebuilding under John Loughborough Pearson. The attention of the SPAB committee was drawn to this intended restoration work by PSW’s younger brother, Perceval Speakman Webb, (1833/4–1903), Prebendary Canon at the Cathedral, who was strongly opposed to it. He continued to provide inside information, which must have made his position with the Archdeacon, Dean and brother canons difficult at times. 2 St Mary’s, East Knoyle. See above, Letter 410, note 2. 3 Charles Gordon-Lennox, sixth Duke of Richmond (1818–1903) was a Conservative whose political career began as an MP for Sussex West, which included Chichester within its boundaries. 4 Henry Wyndham, second Baron Leconfield (1830–1901), was PWY’s elder brother. 5 Francis John Mount (1831–1903) became Archdeacon of Chichester in 1887. 6 The suggestion to canvass the support of PWY and others came from PSW’s brother. ‘Can you get Mr Percy Wyndham to write himself or thro’ Ld Leconfield to the Archdn . . . or to the Duke of Richmond . . . to say that there are persons who believe in the Preservation of Ancient Historical Buildings: & that the action of the Committee will be watched by influential people in the country.’ Perceval Speakman Webb to HTT, 2 April 1895, SPAB, Chichester Cathedral file.

506 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18 May 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 18 May 1895 My dear Cockerell Our little assignation rather fell through, as should have been foreseen. W.M, once having nailed my nose to the M.S.S, it was all over; (he with the gout too) there was nothing to be done than to smile the situation through,1 under the additional prick of fate in the form of W.Ms sister – who is bent on getting into the house I am mending-up for her;2 she too had to be carried off! If you still have courage, we must make another appointment, and I must go direct to Richmond, spit over the parapet of the bridge, and wait till you come? Of course the books I looked at were enough to turn a stronger head than mine; and as they – the manuscripts – were early loves of mine at the Brit: Mus:, I was pulled all ways with painful delight – floods of old memories tumbling in, and cutting off retreat – patience. Perhaps, in a fortnight or so, the weather may have got back to more genial quality, with the voices of the nightingales improved by a “diet of Worms”.3 Give me a word of consolation. | Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, MSL/1958/688/30

1 SCC annotation: ‘P.W. was to have gone first to W.M. at Hammersmith and to have come on thence to me at Richmond, but W.M. very properly held him fast.’ 2 See above, Letter 504, note 2. 3 A pun which works well for an English audience. The 1521 Diet of Worms was an assembly of the Holy Roman Empire which met in the Upper Rhine city of Worms.

282

1888–1898

507 • To William Morris, 20 May 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 May ’95 My dear Fellow I hope the gout is only a touch to warn you on to the narrow way – a bad attack is not good for you nor me. My curious visit to you on my way to Richmond, made me – in a note to Cockerell, lay the blame on M.S.S not on you or myself. The next time I start for the Cockerell’s-nest, ’twill be by way of Hampstead, Harrow, and Hampton Court – clear of the magnetic current of manuscriptural attraction. My stars Mr Morris, you do lay it on, and nothing to shew for it outside the covers – letting alone inside of ’em; but when one does get inside its all over with good manners. You softened my drop from Paradise to Gray’s Inn by giving me the photographs of the Tenison Psalter.1 These are a delight to me. ’Tis a lovely book, and the original is my property too, held in common. Cockerell made a good point in a note to me by writing, it did not matter my not going on with him to Richmond. “The fact is that the manuscripts are as much my own as the Park is, with a William instead of a George for the ranger”.2 Socialism creeps even into the ideas of the unlikely! but, I do not write to sing of these, but of the Percyvelle of Galles (is that last word of Gaul or Wales?).3 I delight in this sweet book, inside & out and all round about. The picture I think is one of – if not the best ever set in front of a touching story. It is just fit and beautiful in all it[s] qualities.4 Thanks are of no use in my case. The undeserving generally get it – don’t they? So we won’t be hard on the brass buttoners and the pheasant-featherites. I shall have to keep the Doughty book yet a while – my reading time is short, and I like to spell the book out in my slow way – of course I’ll bolt it if you want it back earlier?5 There, I ask your pardon for this tame rigmarole, but I had to satisfy an uncommon conscience. Your affectionate | Philip Webb. If I see you on Thursday, tell me something about the origins of the Beowulph.6 V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 53

1 The late thirteenth-century English illuminated manuscript known as the Tenison or Alphonso Psalter (BL Add 24686). 2 SCC annotation: ‘The notices in Richmond Park were at that time signed GEORGE, Ranger – George being the Duke of Cambridge.’ 3 The Kelmscott Press published Syr Perecyvelle of Gales on 2 May 1895. 4 The wood-engraved frontispiece is by EBJ. 5 Charles Montagu Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2 vols (Cambridge: University Press, 1888); SCC annotation: ‘a great favourite with Morris and Burne-Jones’. 6 See above, Letter 499.

283

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

508 • To Giacomo Boni, 26 May - 2 June 1895 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Dear Giacomo Boni You need not have danced round the word “apologise” – with your pen, as if with skates on thin ice.1 You have been no worse in the way of correspondence than I have – save, that you write as with one foot in the stirrup of mule-saddle and your with travelling purse in your mouth, so that your words are few, and those given to business rather than communion of saints! If I fall back on the philosophy of endurance, there is nothing to wonder at. When I can take life as a whole, you have to take it as a department, with the mirage of ambition as a reward. I want to know of Athens, Constantinople or Ravenna as living images of my own life; you have to look on them as rungs of a ladder. This difference – seemingly wrong sometimes, is all right – variety of temperament is often the cement of friendship, if the adhesive compound is sufficiently tempered with a due sense of humour. My blue, white, and yellow drug-pot2 is full of that conserve. Your last fragmentary missive, of 10 May, stirred me to see what I could do in the way of forwarding your Torrigiano scheme,3 but you come to a lame dog for help. I live too much out of the world to be able to move in it. Doubtless, if the story be true, there was good reason for M. Angelo’s nose being broken by Torrigiano.4 The art-firebrand of the early Renaissance was a peppery customer. If he said sharp things to Popes, he was not likely to stay his tongue with such artlaggards as he must have thought Torrigiano and others. Natural art, ie, mediæval, had got to be so low, the advanced guard of the Renaissance ignis fatuus5 could not but be insulting in the resistless march of learning. It could not be known then that learning and art were not own-brothers. I gather that Alfred Higgins has sent you his essays on the Torrigiano tombs,6 and as Micklethwaite has kindly sent me the book, I too shall know something of the subject when I have time to read it. I gather that the “plaster” (mentioned in Sir G. Scott’s “Gleanings”) has never been removed, and I, for one, should not assent to its being taken off, as the version of the inscription given in the “Gleanings”, is all right.7 The poor old shrine of the Confessor has been so mauled during various religious rages, that it should be defended now from the equally dangerous rage of the Savant. There, my friend, I have labelled you. There is some mischievous proposal afloat to “restore” the royal tombs in Westminster Abbey Church.8 Now, these early tombs are worth more to the world than all the builded or sculptured art since M. Angelo dropped from heaven, like Hamlet, to set the world right. I went to see Middleton last evening, and ask his advice in your matter, but I found him too ill for me to press on the point. When warmer weather comes, I believe he will be better. 284

1888–1898

As to the rubbings of Roman mosaics in Westminster, I will see what can be done. If Micklethwaite has failed you, I am not likely to succeed.9 You see, as Westminster is in the hands of the Dean, and as he is dominated by his infernally “eminent” architect, “antiscrape” is in bad odour there.10 If we could join with the spoilers, we might have the run of the noble old church. I shall be seeing Lethaby – who is a sound antiscraper – but with the addition of tempered zeal, and we will do for you what we can do. Hebb has sent me your letter to him, but – as it is in Tuscan (?) Italian I cannot read it – except the words “Philip Webb” which I conceive are not Tuscan! As I have only a small note or two of the plan of the Frari church at Venice, I hardly gather what you intend to do when you have pulled down the parson’s gift of the last century houses against the . My recollection of the sacristy is more that of Bellini’s triptych11 than of the building. I spent more time in the John & Paul ch’ than in the Frari. Wardle is now gone to Ravenna. He is better in health, so that he will probably send me stories of the wonderful Byzantine works there, which I was glad to learn you were looking after. Sunday 2nd June. I wrote the above a week ago, but did not finish, as I wished to see if more could be done for you in the Torrigiano matter, but it seems not. Of course I am quite impotent, having no more influence with people in authority than I have with the Polar Bear in the Zoological gardens. You say Micklethwaite ‘is silent’, which I fancy means, he has done all he can. Though he knows more about the abbey than anyone else although he has no authority there. It rests with the Dean, and he is guided by his architect who rules over the building with autocratic sway. You say “we asked officially of the Italian ambassador”, here, to obtain permission to take casts – and I should think your ministry of Instruction would have more power over the Dean than any private person in England. Though I have no influence whatever, still it is known that I am an active member of “antiscrape”, and am therefore adverse to what the authorities are doing to the abbey – and as Torrigiano said, am “among those beasts of Englishmen.”12 If I can find out from others any possible way of helping you, I will let you know. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Is it not a strange to think, [sic] with these repeated upheavals from earthquakes, that domes like that of S. Sophia, and Florence, and the campanile there, escape destruction? I have just seen a client of mine, whose family had to run out of their hôtel in Florence, when the shaking brought plaster ornaments from the ceilings.13 I have written to ask Wardle to tell me as much as he can of the art of S John’s baptistery at Ravenna.14 This ancient building laid hold of my imagination more than anything I saw in Italy. I have a good photograph of its inside. Courtauld 173a-d 285

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 ‘I cannot, I will not, I dare not, I try not to apologize!’ GBO to PSW, 10 May 1895, Courtauld 172a. 2 His snuff box? 3 ‘Now I wish to publish an article – a long illustrated article, on the Italian artists and works of art in England. . . . We asked officially to the Italian ambassador in England to obtain permission to take a cast of the tombs of Pietro Torrigiano.’ 172d. Here PSW annotated GBO’s letter: ‘ask Middleton at Sou. Ken. for Heny VII & some ornamental work on his tomb’. The tomb and monuments of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, as well as the altar in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey, are the work of the Florentine sculptor, Pietro Torrigiani (1472–1528). 4 Torrigiani famously broke Michelangelo’s nose, following a dispute ‘when the two artists were working together, as youths, in Florence. Vasari ascribes the act to Torrigiano’s jealousy and envy . . . but it must be remembered that [Michelangelo] had a sharp tongue, and sometimes gave way to a gibing spirit only too likely to provoke a fiery youth like Torrigiano beyond endurance.’ Alfred Higgins, ‘On the Work of Florentine Sculptors in England in the early part of the Sixteenth Century’, The Archaeological Journal, LI, 1894, pp. 130. 5 Figurative: a ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’, representative of the fleeting phosphorescent light occasionally seen at night in marshy ground. 6 See note 3. Higgins read this paper at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute on 14 July 1893. 7 ‘G.G Scott (Gleanings on p. 141): “there could be little objection to removing the plaster put on by Fakenham, so as to enable us to read the original inscription, and to find out the form of the original cornice”.’ 172b–c. See George Gilbert Scott, Gleanings from Westminster Abbey, 2nd edn (Oxford and London: John Henry and James Parker, 1863). GBO had moved on to discuss the thirteenthcentury shrine to Edward the Confessor, erected when Henry III rebuilt Westminster Abbey. Italian craftsmen had been involved in its decoration. 8 A letter from WM, fearing the implication of ‘rumours afloat’, appeared in The Times on 1 June. He foresaw restored monuments, ‘got together, partly by servile and inartistic imitation, partly by guesswork from the originals. . . . The record of our remembered history embodied in them would be gone; almost more serious still, the unremembered history, wrought into them by the hands of the craftsmen of bygone times, would be gone also.’ 9 ‘Micklethwaite & Higgins helped me a good deal, but the first is silent, the second went to Greece. Can you find someone to help me (Lethaby?) concerning Edward the Confessor’s shrine at Westminster?. . . . . Would [he] kindly send me a rubbing or two of the patterns of roman mosaic on the XIII ceny tombs and pavement at Westminster?’ 172b–c. 10 As Surveyor of the Fabric and architectural adviser to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, John Loughborough Pearson was responsible for rebuilding the north transept front. Pearson’s quarrel with the SPAB over his restoration of the west front of Peterborough Cathedral left a longstanding bitterness on both sides. When Micklethwaite succeeded Pearson at the Abbey in 1898, it was clear that a repairer, rather than a restorer, had taken charge. His inaugural report of 10 May 1898 to the Dean and Chapter set out his stall. ‘ “Restoration” by the substitution of new copies for decayed old work may be allowed sometimes as the only way to preserve an architectural design, but applied to such a work as the entrance to the Chapter House from the Cloister at Westminster it would be nothing less than destruction. And it is better to allow the old work to perish, slowly, keeping some interest as long as any of it remains, than to cut short its existence by a deliberate “restoration”.’ Surveyors of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey 1827–1906: Reports and Letters, ed Christine Reynolds (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011), p. 162. Some years earlier he had said of Pearson’s work in the Abbey that ‘I have given up all hope of reasoning him into a better way. He knows his ignorance of old buildings and tries to conceal it by dogged obstinacy and to forestall criticism by making his mischief in secret’ (Reynolds, p. xxiii). See also below, Letter 570, note 9. 11 The triptych altarpiece by Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516) in the Pesaro chapel of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (1488). 12 Here PSW cites Alfred Higgins, himself quoting from Vasari, about Torrigiani’s return to Florence: ‘He kept talking every day about his gallant feats among those beasts of Englishmen’. ‘On the Work of Florentine Sculptors’, p. 144.

286

1888–1898 13 There was significant earthquake activity in southern Europe at this time, including a severe tremor in Florence on 18 May and another a week later, and elsewhere in Tuscany. 14 The octagonal Battistero Neoniano in Ravenna, begun by Bishop Ursus and completed by Bishop Neon towards the end of the fifth century, from which time dates the mosaic ceiling decoration showing John the Baptist in the act of baptising Jesus in the river Jordan.

509 • To William Morris, 16 August 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 16 Aug: ’95 My dear Fellow Cockerell will have told you that I expect you would do your Gray-zing here tomorrow at 1.30. He and I were the only survivors at Antiscrape last evening, after which we took tea & scandal at Gattis’. Your note this morning makes the promised postcard unnecessary. I’m just off to Much Hadham. Nothing less than Olaf’s little axe would move Thor’s priest there – a lawyer and 2 architects with your sister as Cassandra are mere flea bites to him, and he don’t mind fleas. ’Till tomorrow | Yours | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 54

510 • To William Morris, 20 August 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 August 1895 My dear Fellow Your sister Henrietta has sent me what has been proposed for the inscription on the grave stone,1 and I am to ask you if it is what you wish – here it is. “In loving memory of Emma, widow of William Morris Esqre, of Woodford Hall Essex who fell asleep in Jesus on the 8th December 1894, in the 90th year of her age” (Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty) 33 cap Isaiah 17 verse.2 Your sister adds “it seems to be more simple to omit, ‘of Woodford Hall, Essex’.” Now I think to omit the ‘Esqre’ and put in ‘of Woodford Hall Essex’, as that gives locality, and I would strike out the chap: & verse. I would also strike out the word ‘loving’. Of course, the shorter the inscription, the better.3 Give my love to Janey and Jenny. I fancy the last 5 or 6 days of fine have lifted the countenance of Mr Hobbs more than the Parliamentary report in the morning’s paper.4 Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 56 287

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 WM’s mother was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. 2 These pencil amendments to the inscription appear to be in WM’s hand. 3 Accounts relating to the preparation and erection of the memorial stone dating from March and April 1896, annotated by PSW, are at WMG, J19a–f. 4 For R.B. Hobbs, see Volume 1, Letter 90, note 2.

511 • To Sydney Cockerell, 21 August 1895 Year added by SCC 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Wed: 21 Aug. My dear Cockerell Unless you are a mouse at play, and in other ways it would not be inconvenient, as antiscrape folk are sand bucketting on the sea shore, I might use the occasion and come to Hammersmith and see the printing business going on there, tomorrow – Thursday – under your guidance, about 5 in the afternoon?1 It is quite unimportant, so you must not let it interfere with any plan of play or work you may have in hand. A post card would settle the matter. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/31

1 SCC’s work for WM had increased considerably from just that of cataloguing books and manuscripts, in that he was now overseeing much of the day-to-day running of Kelmscott Press business. He enjoyed showing visitors the printing machinery, and invited various friends to call for that purpose, especially if WM was out of town.

512 • To George Price Boyce, 11 September 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 11 September 1895 My dear Boyce Your good Madame has kindly let me know you have got to Tenby safely, and even comfortably. I have no doubt you must have been surprised when I came to West House Chelsea and turned the house upside down last Wednesday. I assure you I laughed heartily afterwards at the success of my visit! You see, it could not be expected that this lovely Summer would last always; and as I knew your good doctor much wished you to get away for change of air, I thought I must ‘stir my stumps’ (ask Mrs Boyce to put that in to French) and get you gone without delay. It was such a lucky chance that young Southern1 had to come to London on business, so, if you missed the opportunity of having his companionship on the journey, it would have been a pity. 288

1888–1898

I cannot but praise Mrs Boyce’s promptitude in having all things ready for a start that night, and when I followed the two cabs down Glebe Place, I felt quite proud of the success of my efforts, backed up by you, it is true, for you laughed and joked with me when you fell a prey to the happy scheme. I hope you did not lose the shoeing horn out of your pocket, for, if you did, I should have to send you another! Now let me ask you to do your best to get all the good you can from the sea air; and when you & Madame have walked yourselves tired, take a fly and go for a drive. I did not like Mrs Boyce’s pale face when I saw it, and therefore I was doubly urgent to get you both gone to the sea-side. If anyone was to blame (and I do not think any one was, not even you,) it was all my fault; and when you come back you may ‘blow me up’ as much as you like, so long as it is not with dynamite! Madame will be so good, I am sure, to let me know how you both get on, when she has time. There, my good George Boyce, surely you will say I was very clever in getting you gone for a much wanted holiday? With hearty good wishes for both of you, I am Your good old friend | Philip Webb. Now you may laugh. BL Add 45354, f. 288

1 Not identified.

513 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 December 1895 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9 Decr 1895 Dear Cockerell I did not me intend you should take the trouble of writing again about the ‘blamey’ Lion; if the grammar is right (that is one of the beasts I know nothing about) the readers must choose their own epithet: ‘rating’ I prefer as I have made the Leo’s phys of that quality of expression, good articulate regal school mastering.1 Alas, and is it so? I would, in the nature of things, much like to come up to Kelmscott house and see the new pictured bible, but am really bondaged with work, with none too many wits to do it with, and time runs like water. Also, going about, in this my old age, is a kind of dissipation which tells upon me – out of practice in it too: If Leo. typographicus roars, well, I must come.2 What a good letter about Peterborough that was in the Chronicle.3 Wyndham’s letter to the Dean of Salisbury (wh’ we put him up to sending) seems to have borne fruit – see small paragraph on p. 2 of D. Chronicle this morning.4 ’Tis 289

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

to be anticipated though that some of the £10,000 will go in “upholstery”. The “Earthquake” and “tornado” were good! Beg pardon for the “Esqre”. I sometimes think my ‘equality’ brutality is offensive to people, and, unless I’m sure of sympathy, I do not care to leave out this badge of respectability when addressing people. I’ll now register your name. Lethaby told me Walker’s lecture was a capital one – three cheers for Emery and six for Walker.5 Forgive the length of this blather, & credit me with Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/34

1 SCC annotation: ‘Leo objurgat was, I think, a motto in connexion with a coat of arms designed by P.W.’ 2 PSW went to Kelmscott House on 23 December to see WM’s new manuscript acquisitions, ‘with both of which he was much pleased’. CD. 3 This was WM’s letter (dated 5 December) published in The Daily Chronicle on 7 December, commenting on the public appeal for £12,000 by the Restoration Committee of Peterborough Cathedral to make safe the west front after gale damage. 4 The Daily Chronicle reported on 9 December that Sir Arthur Blomfield had made ‘an elaborate examination’ of the condition of the Salisbury spire, and that his report was being considered by the Dean and Chapter. ‘For the present, all that can be said is that the condition of the spire is not such as to give cause for alarm, except in the case of an earthquake or tornado.’ A public meeting would be called to appeal for £10,000. For Blomfield, see below, Letter 517. 5 EW gave a lecture at the Bolt Court Technical School (formerly the Guild and Technical School in Clerkenwell Road) on 7 December.

514 • To Giacomo Boni, 5 January 1896 Photostat Sunday 5 Jany 1896 Dear Giacomo Boni At least I suppose it must have been you who sent me a letter of 19 December last, but, from the passage of time, the formerly well-known handwriting had become strange to me, so that I stared at the envelope as if it must have come from Egypt – or say Abyssinia – where Italy is whetting its colonising tooth: or south American Guiana, where England’s practiced foot is in the mud: or Madagascar, where France, the irrepressible, is seeking la gloire in pestiferous regions: or Germany, where the infant Emperor is learning the dancing steps of the great Freiderick: or Russia, where Tolstoi preaches, and cast-iron officialdom practices, or Turkey, where the sword of the Prophet is used with the hereditary instinct for extermination, or Japan, where the far east is beginning to dance to the tunes of the 19th cent: of the West, or the devil, whose home is that of all the mischiefs this later world practices with equal perseverance to the older. Stay. I cannot get 290

1888–1898

into celestial regions, for the maps of that district of the universe are worn into indistinct indications, and all is blurred – so, I stop on this point. But, on another, there is Monaco Bigio, casting his antiquarian skin, and coming out in shining coat of the morning, to shew the world the way to glory in the building arts! Well, when I read your admirable description of the house which the Italian James is building to cover the head of Italy’s present guide in the whirl-dance of foreign affairs,1 I . . . I . . . I felt like the serious old Cat, who watches her kitten gambolling in the meshes of a tangled ball of thread, careless of the wearisome meanderings of the Minotaur’s labyrinthine puzzle. A worn out hound, like myself, thinks of the joyous sounds of the pack in the dewy morning – and also of the foot-sore, hollow-bellied, condition of the same as they return, embarrassed by a “blank day”, in the evening. But, the old must be excused, as they sit in the chimney corner counting the number of their failures, if when the light of the morning casts a different glow than that of the sun in the evening. There is still day time in life, when the ways may be trodden with truer result by fresh feet. Your description of what you are doing near S. Agnese is most interesting to me, for, should I not know something of the attraction of setting stone upon stone in a new building, and of the pitfalls which lie in wait for those who at this end of the 19th cent:, having lost the thread of tradition – the guide of the labyrinth – in building, have to fall back on the bewildering directions of varied knowledge. Each item of your programme read to me like the page of a much thought-over book. I presume the secretary of “Antiscrape” has sent you this year’s report of our Society, (if he has not, send me a postcard, and I will forward one) and you have read or will read Wardle’s admirable preamble on “True and false Renaissance”, which, to me, seems to show briefly what has stood in the way of steady progress in the arts, of old time, & promises to mislead us in this of ours, and gives an explanation of the causes of the miserable mischief of “restoration”, both as regards our patrimony of antiquity, and our training in the arts for the future.2 Having had so much help from Wardle lately, on the subject of Italian history of the 5th & 6th centuries, when the decay of ancient Rome left the arts in the melting pot, I was doubly glad of his putting together his studies in the short form of an essay. As you will be likely to see him again before he leaves Rome, you will be able (I fancy) to add your congratulations to mine.3 Salzenberg’s book on the S. Sophia of Constantinople,4 as well as Lethaby’s consideration of this building,5 and your paper on Parenzo, stirred me to additional enthusiasm for the works of the early centuries of our time. Well, Wardle wrote me much valuable information from Ravenna, and set me going with new ideas of Theodoric’s tomb, so that I know more and can see clearer the peculiarities of the antiquities of Ravenna than my short visit would permit me to see for myself. Bearing in mind the illformed and tedious character of my writing, I rest here, with best wishes for the success of yourself as “ædifico”.6 Yours truly | Philip Webb. Courtauld 175a-d 291

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 ‘I am building a Villa, near S. Agnes fuori le mura, for a friend of mine, baron Albert Blanc, (for present our Minister of Foreign Affairs). He insisted so much, that I could not refuse. How difficult to find good old simple materials – how difficult to persuade & educate workmen to use them as they humanly require to be used!’ GBO to PSW, 19 December 1895, Courtauld 174a–b. 2 ‘True and False Renaissance’ serves as a prefatory essay to the eighteenth Annual SPAB Report (pp. 7–26) published in November 1895. 3 ‘I saw Wardle a few days ago – he was well enough. I hope to see him again before Christmas.’ 174d. 4 W. Salzenberg, Alt-christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom V. bis XII. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1854). 5 See above, Letter 494, note 2. 6 I build a house (Lat). ‘ÆDIFICO! replied the avaricious person, in Martial’s epigram, when he was asked something. Myself ædifico.’ 174a.

515 • To Reverend Charles William Stubbs, Dean of Ely, 16 January 1896 Drafted on behalf of SPAB; pencil The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings To | The Very Reverend the Dean of Ely Cathedral.1 Sir. I am instructed by the Committee of this Society to approach you on the very important subject-matter of your “appeal to the public”, (appearing in the “London Daily Chronicle” of today) dated January 10, asking for additional help as an addition to the fund now being collected raised for the purpose of supporting the repair of the fabric exterior of the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral.2 My Committee directs me to acknowledge the unusually satisfactory way in which this appeal is cast, and to beg that you will give to my the remarks the Committee is bound to make in such a case, your the candid and sympathetic attention, which your reputation as an historian leads it to anticipate, and your the appeal generally expresses. The following words therefore will not therefore be so much addressed to the Dean, (and, presumably, the Chapter also) personally, except in so far as they would be of use in helping to restrain subscribers, and mistakenly zealous people who so often, and so fatally, have insisted on having works carried out beyond the intention original intention of the authorities. “A storm of exceptional force”3 has blown upon the remains of our national ecclesiastical and civil architecture during – say – the last 50 years, which has done more mischief to the precious irremediable injury to our fabrics of historical art, than all that the storms of wind have effected in 300 years, at the least. It is now – however slowly – beginning to be acknowledged that this is so storm is abating; for our Society is now able to remark on the appearance of a considerable change in which in feeling towards the action taken by it from time to time by it during the last 19 years. and The vital points of our repeated contention are being accepted (more or less intelligently) 292

1888–1898

than had been the was the case in the earlier days of the our movement. From the time when “it is said that Welby Pugin once estimated the probable cost of the restoration of this chapel . . . . at £100,000”, a great something of a change has come over the spirit of the “restoration” movement; but how deeply if we must but deeply indeed must we regret that the change has been so slow – and even is as yet so imperfect, that the relics of our national art bears are from time to time the saddest of witnesses of the continued impetus of a mistaken an ill-restrained force. In the opening paper on “True & False Renaissance” in the Annual report of the society, accompanying this letter, and in the last paragraph of it, occurs this serious inditement, that “It will always be a reproach to this 19th cent revival, that it used its imperfect knowledge in the correction of the masterpieces of antiquity, and made upon them the childish experiments of its immature days”.4 Well, Sir, though the Committee of this society has acknowledged an improvement in the public mind on this point, it is bound also to say that the improvement is not general; but, from the character & learning of the Dean of Ely Cathl it feels such a point will not be overlooked by him at this time, when work on the Lady Chapel is being undertaken. We are sure, Sir, that your experience as well as that of this society will need no further apology for distrusting the completion of the change which, is coming which has has as yet, only partially effected the public mind. My Committee would also wish to draw your attention to another paragraph on the accompanying report, which appears on p 24, and one and which lays a finger on a mistake one mistaken idea which has all along accompanied modern “restoration”. “The preservation of our ancient buildings is indeed a first duty, but for this no help is needed from archæology. Archæology, whether it can restore the past or cannot, can do nothing for the stability of a building.” In drawing your attention to this paragraph, my committee feels that believes it will have your sympathy, for it has remarked with satisfaction in your “Appeal” the following passage, ‘there is no attempt intention on the part of the chapter to attempt a “restoration” of the interior of the Chapel’, but the evidently accidental omission of the word ‘exterior’ will, we believe, be accepted by yourself and the chapter, as an important omission.5 My Committee feels also that you will be at one with it, that the sustentation of what exists of the fabric of the whole Cathedral, as well as that of the Lady Chapel, in the direct meaning of the word, is the only safe way in which we can read the meaning of our trust. It would therefore only be necessary to add, that the “substantial repairs” to be undertaken on the outside of the Lady Chapel would be confined solely to the sustentation of the fabric; and that workman-like experience will be sought to sustain this fabric in every practicable way; and that “Archæology” will not be called in with the futile hope of replacing the art which weather, and the passage course of time, and mistaken zeal, have taken from the still noble priceless buildings of Ely Cathedral. by custodians of ancient buildings

V&A, AAD 293

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 Charles William Stubbs (1845–1912) was Dean of Ely Cathedral from 1894 until his elevation as Bishop of Truro, in 1906. 2 Stubbs’s letter (dated 10 January) also appeared in The Times and The Standard on 16 January 1896, prompted by a report on the fabric by the architect, Oldrid Scott. The Dean and Chapter appealed for £6,000, ‘to be spent solely on the substantial repair of the exterior of [the Lady Chapel]’. 3 PSW here picks up Oldrid Scott’s phrase: ‘A storm of exceptional force . . . would be very likely to blow some of these windows into the chapel’. 4 For GW’s paper, see above, Letter 514, note 2. 5 ‘There is no intention on the part of the Chapter to attempt a “restoration” of the interior of the chapel. They are quite as well aware as the members of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Monuments [sic] that that is an impossibility.’

516 • To William Morris, 20 February 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 February 1896 My dear Fellow I was away all day yesterday at my work by Newmarket, but, on returning, I found a pencil note of Walker’s, who had called. He did not speak satisfactorily of your doing, but I’ve not made too much of it: as I cannot but incline to the thought that you are going through some form of the influenza, which is a lingering sort of illness, whatever else it may be.1 Of course I shall not see you at ‘antiscrape’, but also, I cannot manage to come up to you afterwards – as, not having been to Kate’s last night, I must go tonight, she being so lonely in her sick time, not being able to do any work to while away the time. I’ve got [an] appointment to go to your sister Isabella’s on Friday,2 and to Boyce’s on Saturday, but if it suited you I would come up to some tea on Monday? Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 58

1 ‘I duly went to the great doctor & found him a pleasant looking man, not given to long words and circumlocutions.’ WM to PSW, 23 February 1896, CLWM, IV. ‘W.M. went with E.B-J to see Broadbent, who reported, as B-J said, “not so well as he had hoped, but better than he had feared”.’ CD, 22 February 1896. For Sir William Broadbent, see above, Letter 424, note 3. He saw WM again four days later at his rooms in Brook Street, and ‘reported rather favourably’. CD, 26 February 1896. 2 WM’s sister, Isabella Morris Gilmore (1842–1923), was Head of the Deaconess Institution close to Clapham Common and opposite St James’s, Clapham Park. After the death of their mother in 1894, she decided to spend some of her legacy on a chapel. On WM’s advice, she approached PSW to undertake the work. ‘As they talked over the project of the chapel during tea, he asked her to explain exactly what she felt she wanted. Her reply was: “I want something perfectly simple. I want the green of a field and a great big silver cross.” . . . The simplicity of design which she had in mind appealed to Philip Webb. “I see what you want,” he said, “neither a miniature parish church nor a cathedral. You have given me a difficult job, but I will think it over and come and see you again.”

294

1888–1898 When he came the next time, he suggested that, in addition, extensive alterations should be made to the side of the house where the chapel was to be built. This consisted of a large conservatory situated above a very dark scullery, and beyond the scullery a large dairy.’ Janet Grierson, Isabella Gilmore. Sister to William Morris (London: S.P.C.K., 1962), pp. 142–3.

517 • To Sydney Cockerell, 26 February 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 26 February 1896 Dear Cockerell I thank you for the post card bulletin. W.M had written me of his visit to the bigwig doctor, and the ¾ hour of diagnosis or bellycosis seemed to me very satisfactory.1 I cannot make out the mischief in a house drain under less time. If the old man gets to be more cheerful I shall also be more so. You will bring news to Antiscrape on Thursday I hope – also, if you went to Hastings you saw W Hale White and will tell me whether he was in the dumps.2 Sir Blomfield3 has footed it unfeetly again in another report on Salisbury steeple to the Dean. Wyndham sent me the local news report, which I take to the Comme.4 Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/35

1 See previous letter, note 1. 2 SCC saw WHW on 23 February. 3 The ecclesiastical architect Sir Arthur Blomfield (1829–99) strongly favoured the English Perpendicular style. The young Thomas Hardy joined his office when he came to London in 1862. 4 A short piece on ‘Salisbury Spire’ in The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post (29 January 1895) details a meeting at the Council House, Salisbury, and Blomfield’s comment that ‘they would be able to put the tower and spire in a stronger state than it had been at any time during the last century’. A motion to effect repair and preservation, seconded by PWY, was passed unanimously.

518 • To Sydney Cockerell, 3 March 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 3 March 1896 Dear Cockerell I thank you for your good-cheer inspiring note: I’ve written to the old man to whop, to warn, and to win him from recklessness – His devil will be about him as well as his good angel. ’Twas your good turn I fancy which got the folio of Wardle’s Eastern Counties’ drawings to me this morning.1 There seem (I’ve only just rushed through the book) to be lamentable gaps in the admirable series of representations, and if this be so,

295

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

there will be small chance of recovery. Possibly Dearle might make a search?2 I thought there were a number of drawings of the angel-hierarchy? However, what are safe are invaluable, and should go into the Brit: Mus: – If it could be done, and Wardle would agree to it, they should by right be reproduced in some way. Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. Last night I was in the bosom of Aucassin & Nicolette, but had to put it down & go to bed at 1. o’c.3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/36

1 SCC annotation: ‘There are many of George Y. Wardle’s beautiful drawings of screens &c in East Anglian Churches at the S.K. Museum’ [the former South Kensington Museum, now the V&A]. 2 Following training by WM himself, John Henry Dearle (1860–1932) rose from being an assistant in the Oxford Street showroom of Morris & Co. to become chief designer of wallpaper, tapestry, embroidery and stained glass, and ‘from the late 1880s it was usually Dearle who was charged with meeting important clients of Morris and Co. to discuss decorative work’ (CLWM, IV, p. 143, note 5). He was manager of the Merton Abbey textile works until his death. 3 SCC may well have recommended the anonymous medieval French romance of Aucassin et Nicolette to PSW, having himself read it in 1893.

519 • To Henrietta Morris, 3 March 1896 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon. W.C. 3 March 1896 Dear Miss Morris I learn from the Hopton-Wood Stone Co of Wirksworth Derbyshire – the masons who have worked the memorial stone for your mother’s grave, that it is ready to be sent off after receiving my instructions as to where & how it should be sent.1 The memorial itself is in several stones, and will want careful handling and fixing, but I believe Thurgood could do arrange it rightly if he got an experienced “marble mason” to do the work itself setting of the stones.2 Will you kindly consult with him as to this? I should think the best way would be, for the Derbyshire people to consign the cases to Mr George Thurgood, to be left at Much Hadham station till sent for, and he would see to hauling them to his yard, where they would be opened to see if they are undamaged, and then carry them to the church when he has prepared matters there? I presume you would have to inform and consult with the Vicar or Rector of the parish, and get his permission for the memorial to be set up over the grave? Of course I should give Thurgood the necessary instructions, and perhaps send my assistant to Hadham to put Thurgood’s mason in the right way. Believe me | Yours truly | Ph. W. 296

1888–1898

My last yesterday’s news of your brother William, was, that he was really better. I saw him on Friday. WMG J197b

1 See above, Letter 510. 2 For Thurgood, see also below, Letter 522.

520 • To William Morris, 17 April 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 17 April 1896 My dear Fellow Cockerell gave me the last medical news, that Broadbent had washed his hands of you, and given you over to mine. There is some method in the madness of the ‘terrible child’ – myself. If love is the basis of life, surely one must condone it sometimes being tiresome: so, look out! I am in a blue funk lest the Commercial craftsmen should have failed to keep the promised appointment – but, with both my warnings, and Hughes’s, they should have been honest for once.1 However, I write directly to the wood flooring people to say that you go to Kelmscott on Wednesday (I’m not particular as to the true day), and that the floors will then have been done. I also write to Hughes to say that if the renewed skirtings were fixed, it would not be necessary for him to paint them till the house was empty again. It would be good for you to dance the Carmagnola “with a double laddy double, and for the double dow”2 – and you’ll not ‘bring the house down’, for I shall not be there to clap hands and shout. So, skip and stump on the solid floors till the devils of gout and other ill companions get to Oxford for refuge. Do get fresh air into you. Don’t go into the garden in slippers – do eat and drink what you should – don’t sit up till 1 in the morn over the sweetest morsel of your studies – do . . . but that is enough. Cockerell whispered alarums & excursions of a possible new M.S., and that on Monday evening it might be on view.3 I’m none too leisurely, but, as you are likely to be flitting so soon, I’ll do my best to give you the doubtful comfort of my coming-up then. There are some folk who get through twice the work I do, and yet take four times the holidays – but then, you see, they are constant never. The Bowdlerised Coleridge is very good.4 On two nights I’ve read Kate into the mysteries and blue-flame goblinisms of the book; not with a single eye to the sense, for my eyes skellied5 fearfully over the pleasant pages, whilst mouthing. See - It’s all over – for the present | Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 59 297

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 Probably the Acme Wood Flooring Company, whom PSW had engaged to do work at Kelmscott Manor. See next letter, note 1, and below, Letter 523. 2 ‘La Carmagnole’ was a French revolutionary song and energetic dance which may have originated in the Piedmontese town of Carmagnola. A popular form of humiliation was to make aristocrats and anti-revolutionary church dignitaries perform ‘La Carmagnole’. 3 WM had asked that a twelfth century English Bestiary be sent to him on approval by the Stuttgart dealer, Jacques Rosenthal. Rosenthal was unwilling to send the manuscript, but provided WM with a photograph of a page. WM instructed SCC to go to Stuttgart and negotiate on his behalf. See next letter, note 5. 4 The Kelmscott Press published Poems Chosen out of the Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by F.S. Ellis on 12 April 1896. 5 Squint-eyed (OED).

521 • To William Morris, 26 April 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 26 April 1896 My dear Fellow I had rather looked you would have sent me a word that you got all well to Kelmscott, and that you were not so uncomfortable in the house as might have been expected, but you have to tell of your side of the time.1 We have been busy here. I had to back up Turner, and went with him on Wednesday to Winchester to look into the matter of repairing the roof of the Cathedral. The main part of it is a very old roof – doubtless the Norman one – of canted-rafter form, with large timbers. The centre wall-shaft of nave piers (Norman) running up, and still remaining in the pockets of Wykeham’s vaulting. ’Twas said the vaulting was in danger from the roof. I don’t think it: the vaulting is good, of strong form, and slight repairs, only, necessary, but some of the tie beams will have to be lifted; partly to secure vaulting, & partly to allow of stiffening the Norman roof, which is generally quite sound, but wants help in its old age. Fortunately there is no eminent archt engaged, and the local architect-surveyor is much interested in doing the work wanted, without fuss.2 He by no means shewed himself shy of us, though he was undemonstrative. Like a wise chap, I believe he looked for any tips which might be had, so we gave him all the help & encouragement we could – wh’ was considerable.3 As for Peterborough, the notes I was to supply Turner turned out to be the report itself, which the Comme accepted.4 I made the report cogent, (can’t find an A.S. word) as the case is parlous. But in writing matters, with me, there are disabilities, as you know, and I have to give much time to make amends. Had the seeds of a cold in me, and the long and exhausting day at Winchester made them sprout, and me for to bark like a pack of foxhounds – but I’m pulling through. Cockerell gave me what he knew on Thursday of the M.S situation, and I guess you may be in suspense, like the Cat & the Mice in the fable,5 however, take heart 298

1888–1898

and a 3 pronged fork, with which to keep Israel within Jewish if not of Christian bounds. You are not as ill found as a bishop when buying a horse, for you do know the points of M.S.S, though the Jew might say would look that the scent of the object might overpower you, and you would surely drop into his claws.6 Love to Janey & Jenny | Yrs Ph: Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 61

1 Some of Kelmscott Manor had been re-floored. ‘The London men didn’t get out of the house till Thursday noon. The same day (young) Hughes called, and promised to send the next day to put up the skirting, and they duly came on Friday noon and bungled the skirting into its place by dinnertime on Saturday. . . . . Today Monday they are at work on the White Parlour, & I think they will finish it today.’ WM to PSW, 27 April 1896, CLWM, IV. 2 This was John Barnes Colson (c. 1852–1908), the architectural surveyor to the Dean and Chapter at Winchester. He undertook repairs to the roof, which he described as suffering from defective lead work as well as ‘general disorganisation of the timber framing’, subsequently publishing his account of the work as Winchester Cathedral. A Descriptive and Illustrative Record of the Reparations of the Nave Roof 1896–8 (Winchester: Warren and Son, [1899]). 3 The SPAB report which resulted from the visit of PSW and HTT was sent to Colson on 15 May 1896. They were right to have faith in his judgment. Colson’s published record of the Winchester work indicates relief, mixed with a justifiable pride. ‘Every effort has been made to retain as much of the ancient structure as possible, and no timbers except those actually decayed have been removed. It is interesting to note that the “Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings,” the somewhat severe critics where “restoration” and “reparation” are concerned, have expressed themselves entirely satisfied both with the plans adopted by the Architect, and the manner in which the work has been carried out by the Contractor.’ Colson, Winchester Cathedral . . . , p. 24. Colson’s contractor was John Thompson, of Peterborough. 4 The SPAB reported submitted to the Dean and Chapter at Peterborough, for alternative ways of treating the West Front (and which was ignored), was PSW’s work, and would later be endorsed by the Society of Antiquaries. See below, Letter 548, note 2. 5 ‘About that Bestiary there is some hitch, so that I have not been able to see the book itself, only one page photo: which looks about as fine as such things were ever done; but I doubt its English-ship.’ WM to PSW, 27 April 1896. See previous letter, note 3, and the letter following, note 2. 6 For the time, this kind of casual anti-Semitism was routine.

522 • To Sydney Cockerell, 4 May 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 4 May 1896 To | Sydney. C. Cockerell | for William Morris Dear Cockerell When Morris comes home will you lay the inclosed 2 bills before him for payment.1 Morris will have to settle whether he pays the whole, finally, or whether some other member or members will pay a part. At all events the bills should now be paid, and you will see I have endorsed them. 299

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

1

Cheque for £22 to be sent to “The Hopton-Wood Stone Co. | Wirksworth | Derbyshire” 2 " " £11.18.5 " " “Mr George. L. Thurgood | Builder | Much Hadham | Herts” I hope you got through with your journey pretty comfortably, and the matter has turned out satisfactorily?2 Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/38

1 WM was still at Kelmscott Manor. These bills related to the memorial stone at Much Hadham for WM’s mother, and perhaps also to the cottage conversion for Henrietta Morris. See above, Letters 504, 510 and 519. 2 SCC returned from Stuttgart on 3 May with the Bestiary bought from Rosenthal. As he awaited SCC’s arrival, WM passed on the good news: ‘I had a letter from him yesterday in which he spoke of it in measured terms; but we take it that was to prevent disappointment, as he would hardly have bought it then and there if he had not thought it worth the sacrifice £900.’ WM to PSW, 4 May 1896, CLWM, IV. For an illustration from the manuscript (now at Pierpont Morgan Library), ibid, p. 365.

523 • To William Morris, 15 May 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 15 May 1896 My dear Fellow I was just able to ask of Walker & Cockerell last evening as to how you were getting on – but they had to split & squander, so they were not at Gattis’. We had a terrible bout of antiscrape. It was resolved that a letter should be written to Dean of Ely asking him to read a paper at annual meeting this year, for you to sign, if you could agree as Hon: Secy I’m all behind with my work or I would have come up tonight. I send the bill for the oak flooring at Kelmscott, to be paid; this is quite separate from Hughes’s bill, which has not come in; when it does I shall have to wait before certifying till you have been down again and found they (his men) had put in their dropped stitches. In sending cheque for the wood flooring, it should be drawn to The Acme Wood Flooring Co1 (and sent to) Gainsborough Road | Victoria Park. N. E. Yours affectionately | Philip Webb V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 66

1 See above, Letter 520, note 1.

300

1888–1898

524 • To William Morris, 6 June 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 6 June 1896 My dear Fellow Often I have some presence of mind on the coming of the unexpected and undeserved, but when you are upon me with a new book (doubly new this, yours and of you) I am mostly abashed, as if a girl smiled upon me instead of passing me by.1 I got the light load home all right – was prepared to cry out ‘Pleesmun save me’, if a snatcher bumped on me at a corner. Now I’ve a store of dependable stuff to fall back upon o’ nights, and – may be (?) to say something of the fodder when it has been munched. I was not taken aback by your bodily condition, having forecasted, but would have liked to see you a bit stronger; but still, that will come – for the thunder showers are promising.2 As usual there was a lot in front of me last evening for my short time to deal with, and I was partly disinclined to muddle the moments. However, I said on Thursday at antiscrape I would speak to you of a proposition made, and generally assented to, that there should be no annual meeting this year, but instead thereof, a pretty full explanation of the position of the society should be printed and sent to all the members at one posting – but Cockerell, if squeezed, would explain what happened.3 Members will die, and others dissolve themselves, so that the number, and ten & sixpences, are reducing; so that therefore some effort should be made to see if the nearly spent horse cannot be flogged into a trot home. Our Committees are reduced to one or two dependable members, and your enforced absence has left us a bit scanty. Therefore, just give this a little thought, and Cockerell next Thursday could give us the result.4 Your affectionate | Philip Webb V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 72

1 The Kelmscott Press published WM’s fantasy story, The Well at the World’s End, on 4 June 1896, the book having been ‘longer in production than any other title’. Peterson, p. 98. The delay was caused principally by WM’s dissatisfaction with the original set of illustrations prepared in 1893 by Arthur Gaskin, and their subsequent revisions. ‘On 20 February 1895 . . . Morris sought the advice of Philip Webb, who agreed with Morris’s unfavourable judgment of Gaskin’s work’ (ibid). The book was finally published with illustrations by EBJ. 2 WM replied to this letter later the same day. ‘We have had a baby thunderstorm this morning about 8 AM and a smartish shower there with.’ CLWM, IV. 3 ‘As to the Annual Meeting, I really think we might forego it and try the tract you mention. I will talk to Cockerell about it.’ 4 PSW is never more explicit about his fears for the future effectiveness of the SPAB, but it was not an infrequent complaint of his that the wider membership had no real understanding of the extent of the challenge facing the Society. In his view the problem was not simply a matter of funding, but of an insufficiently active membership equipped with the right level of expert knowledge. See next letter, note 5.

301

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

525 • To William Morris, 8 June 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 8 June 1896 My dear Fellow The note of your present condition was good for me.1 I did not think it could be worth Broadbent’s while to blink at facts to you, and I think it less probable he should have tipped a wink to Pavy.2 Considering the rough usage your carcase has had (I don’t blink at facts) it has worn very well; and I really believe a little commonsense used – not by me or by the man in the street, but by yourself, wd give you a reasonable renewal of lease, subject to paying for dilapidations, such as a ‘trip’ to Folkestone – for instance. ’Twould be odd if you could not wile away the time by watching the ways of gulls instead of those of the London Cockney, and come back with something handy in your head for future use. Between such friends as ourselves, there are two souls to be saved, but in quite different ways. You have superstition & no religion, I have the latter and not the former. You dot my eyes, and I cross your limbs. Of the two others, Athos has been gathered to his Italian fathers’ and Aramis is General of the Jesuits!3 I will promise not to peril my soul for a marshal’s baton. If your legs should fail you in the grotto of Loc Maria,4 the heavy weight of ‘Pomes’ in verse or prose, Kelmscott presses &c &c, and candid friend, are a quite decent load to lie under. As to the antiscrape matter, we are not well furnished for that fight. We cut off one or two of the heads of Hydra, but the 7 or 8 still remain, and we go to a wedding, or other inconsiderable amusement, and the 2 first heads join on again. I doubt if there is enough stuff or stuffers at hand to make out a proper “tract”.5 Well, the Notre Dames and other shrines of men (not mere forked radishes) must give way to the unutterable load of these last centuries – and become food for Dryasdusts. Good God! here you are complaining again, and of the brevity of the S.W. showers: (I’ll be damned if they don’t come from the S.W).6 I’ll have you carted to Chicago or St Louis, and set in the track of a Yankee tornado, or a typhoon of journalists at Sandy hook.7 Kate was smitten into a ruined heap of sadness & joy over the ‘World Without end’. I keep my presence of mind, as one of the aforesaid four. Your affectionate | Philip Webb. As to another sheet of paper, Author said yes – Editor, no. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 74

1 ‘I am just back from the consultation to find your friendly letter awaiting me. The doom of the two was not death, but exile to Folkestone. . . . Being weighed this morning, I scaled 10.6½, which was just my weight last Monday; so at any rate I haven’t lost anything, which as things go is a gain. Pavy (who clearly thought me very uninteresting, as not being, or likely to be, a genuine diabetes patient) said that with only that amount of sugar in the water I might go on all my life without being

302

1888–1898

2 3

4 5

6 7

a penny the worse. Broadbent said I looked much better, as indeed I am.’ WM to PSW, 6 June 1896, CLWM, IV. Frederick William Pavy (1829–1911) founded ‘Pavy’s test’ to measure sugar in the urine, and specialised in treatments for diabetes. SCC annotation: ‘Athos stands for Rossetti, Aramis for Burne-Jones. “Les trois mousquetaires” was a very favourite book with all this circle, and Dumas, in one or another of his books, was more or less a standing dish, second only to Dickens in their affections.’ In The Vicomte of Bragelonne (1847–50), the devious plotting of Aramis leads to his nomination as Superior General of the Jesuits. In Dumas’s The Man in the Iron Mask (1847–50), the climax of his Musketeers stories, chapters 47 and 48 are set in the Grotto of Locmaria in Brittany. See previous letter, notes 3 and 4. The SPAB Annual Report for 1896 differed from its predecessors in that it included no reports of casework undertaken during the past twelve months, but dwelt instead on ‘the broad principles the Society was founded to advocate’. It is somewhat bleak in tone, closing with a call to its membership for greater commitment, and an increase in its funds, subscriptions during the year only having amounted to £295. ‘Surely a society whose duties include travelling all over the country should not be so cramped for means; and the committee would earnestly entreat all who agree with its principles and value its work to become subscribing members; not only in order that its funds may be augmented, but that a bolder front may be opposed to the destruction of our remaining unrestored churches’ (p. 14). See above, Letter 490, note 4, and next letter, note 2. Sandy Hook is a spit of land on the Atlantic coastline of New Jersey, USA. From 1874 until 1919 it was used as a test ground for Army ordnance.

526 • To William Morris, 17 June 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 17 June 1896 I had your bit scrape of pen this morning with some satisfaction. However small the mercy, it is something – and doubling it by reading between the lines, I made out you may not be in a bad way of having, for your condition, at this time. The graces of drapery can be studied from the harsh ribbings of a seaman’s overalls. I don’t think you should study (in a doubtfully accurate way as it must be) the rise & fall of the scales.1 If you had an extra book in your pocket it wd make all the difference, and you’d go off with a wrong idea – bother wrong ideas. Today here it looks – with a due S. wind as if at Folkestone it might stir up a dash of sea for your entertainment – and for setting the fisher-sails a squattering.2 Damn all “work”, if you have strength enow to spit clear of the jetty, and ease the irritation of your bottom on a boulder stone. If it weren’t for your aristocratic leanings you’d do very well for the time in question. You see, we (Britishers at all events) are not in fit condition to manage blessings – at present, and coertion [sic] is a fine drill-sergeant. These are only the heads of the discourse and I’ll omit their expansion. On Friday I was at Etchingham – just this side of Robertsbridge.3 The Ch’ just one of those placid 14 cent Sussex pieces of serious village building; a kind of happy sing-song of labour and unconscious feeling; which was as of picked-up manna in the Wilderness, to me.4 The tracery-part of all the nave and aisle windows still holding untouch’d the glass of its date – all masculine, and of colour none better anywhere in the world.5 303

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Damnation-touched all about it, but did not touch that (the glass) except in one place. Date 1360. Three separate brasses of the Etchingham leader sword-folk; the earliest, of the founder.6 Collegiate Ch’ of 18 stalls for monks, with some 10 or 12 mercy seats as good as could be in simple way. One of them Reynard the fox at his tricks.7 I then went on – 3 miles – to Burwash – pretty Norman steeple with shingle spire. Rest of Ch’ all damned by witless fiddling.8 A beautiful James I house just ½ mile below on the head water-ditch of the Rother.9 House solid 4-square & gables, of Sussex sandstone, scabbled ashlar.10 All in good condition – neglect having saved it. The country all about being the rolling humps of the sandstone, just as silly-simple as the architecture and as beautiful. The Lord do so unto me and always, and I give-over railing.11 I will lick my best soul-work out of simplicity. Perhaps you may be coerced to send me another word or so, about “Cæsar’s Camp” or other thing12 – it would set me going; if not in your way in my own. You have quite enough of yourself, and you won’t get a double from me. Paper out, and wit – exactly at the same moment. Just now a soft dust of rain here. Barometer slowly feeling its way back to change. Kind love to Janey. Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 76

1 ‘After my letter to you, I had a fall back, and on being weighed last Friday, found I had lost 2½ lbs in the week which was bad.’ WM to PSW (from Folkestone), 14 June 1896, CLWM, IV. 2 ‘It has immensely hot here [sic] with a N E wind, which has now southered a little, so that it looks like weather. I wish it would come, it would be something to do to watch it. For I am pretty hard up for something to do, since at present I can’t get on with any kind of work.’ 3 Etchingham and Robertsbridge are villages in East Sussex, respectively about twelve and ten miles to the north-east of Hastings. 4 The fourteenth-century parish church of the Assumption of Blessed Mary and St Nicholas, Etchingham. 5 ‘The tracery consists of five long main lights, with cinquefoil mouldings to each under a double ogee arch. Above, and between the heads of these main lights, is a horizontal row of four quatrefoil lights, which form a cross.’ Harold Lethbridge, The Parish Church of the Assumption of Blessed Mary and Saint Nicholas, Etchingham (Etchingham, [1960]), p. 3. 6 A memorial brass of Sir William de Echyngham (d. 1387) is situated in front of the High Altar, and a second one to his son, also Sir William (d. 1412), daughter in law, and their son. Of the third brass, only the inscription now remains, to Sir Thomas Echyngham (d. 1485). 7 The set of fine misericords includes one of a fox dressed as a priest, preaching to six geese. 8 The eleventh-century parish church of St Bartholomew, Burwash, in East Sussex, about fifteen miles inland from Hastings, underwent restoration in 1856. 9 He must mean Bateman’s, built for the industrialist John Brittan and completed in 1634. Now a National Trust property, it was where Rudyard Kipling lived from 1902 until his death in 1936. 10 Scabble: ‘To rough-dress stone. Stones are said to be scappled or scabbled when they are dressed with the pick end of the hammer.’ (OED). 11 Perhaps an allusion to 1 Samuel 3:17. ‘And he said, What is the thing that the Lord hath said unto thee? I pray thee hide it not from me: God do so to thee, and more also, if thou hide any thing from me of all the things he said unto thee.’

304

1888–1898 12 ‘We are going a bit of a drive after tea, to Caesars Camp; which is a fine point of the hills behind: all of which would be very beautiful still if it were not for the almost incredible squalor & hideousness of the miles of squattering new buildings.’ WM to PSW, 14 June 1896, CLWM, IV. Folkestone’s former Norman castle was sited on the Bronze Age earthworks to the north of the town, known as Caesar’s Castle.

527 • To Giacomo Boni, 24 June 1896 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. St John’s day 1896 To The grey Bulfinch [sic] This being the central point of the glad seasoned year, and in these northern countries marked specially by the blooming of the elder bush (“Sambucus”, from the shepherds’ use of the wood for musical instruments)1 I am sure St John looks upon it – and you and me, with particular good will. If this singularly beautiful tree will grow with you in quiet angles of ruins, as it does with us, plant it there in the name of God, and all the pitiful poor who have, for so many thousands of years, had in this merciful season of the year their greatest ease from the tooth of nature, and the heel of the rich.2 It was good of Wardle to guess I had not had from you the beautiful picture of the Augustan age, multiplied by the Sun after so long a space of miraculous preservation.3 No, the first you were so good as to send did not reach me; but the second, which came to hand the other day, is a great delight to me, and I thank you for the friendly gift. Some time ago, John Hebb sent me a kind of translation into English of your appeal to the imagination of the world, for an improved natural clothing to the history of the world, as laid before us in the fragmentary lime & stone heaps which still appeal to us above the cries of rage howling for destruction continuously, with the insane cry of ‘great is the goddess of destruction’. Now let the voice of the “Theban” be heard again in all the lands,4 not only over the tombs of Sophocles and Anacreon, but over those of the betrayed in Armenia & Crete, and in the blasted alley’s [sic] of our brutalised cities. I picture you as Giacomo the Sower, scattering right and left the seeds of new life from the deserted Pontine marshes, so that out of the grave of the old, the new shall come with new hopes, to scale the heights of the “ancient of days” – once more. How does the Palazzo Blanco progress? How are your building labours flowering?5 The devil’s builders are active with us, and Palazzi are rising, with the stones bound together by ill gotten gains from South Africa,6 in the chief places of this the London home – (a head city) of commercial rascality. Adieu | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Courtauld 177a-c 305

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 The genus Sambucus covers a large number of flowering plants in the elder or elderberry family, the wood of which is traditionally used to make flutes in various parts of Eastern Europe. 2 GBO had written, enclosing a newspaper cutting, ‘Flora Dei Monumenti Romani’. ‘I heartily recommend to you, and to the patrocinium of all your friends, the Flora of ancient buildings. Seeds, roots, bulbs &c, a rose tree or any other ornamental shrub will prove valuable contributions.’ GBO to PSW, 12 June 1896, Courtauld 176a. 3 This probably refers to the Porticus Liviae, a public garden constructed by the Emperor Augustus on the Oppian Hill. ‘Wardle doubts that you have not received [sic] the pho: engraving of the Viridarium of the time of Augustus. By book-post, I send another copy.’ 176b. 4 ‘The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.’ Song of Solomon 2:12. The ancient city of Thebes plays an important role in Greek myth, with its associations with Oedipus, Dionysus and Heracles, and with its foundation traditionally attributed to Cadmus. Perhaps by association PSW alludes to GBO as ‘the Theban’. 5 See above, Letter 514, note 1. 6 He probably has in mind the trial which followed the Jameson Raid in the Transvaal, in the conduct of which he had played a small part on the previous day. See next letter, note 8.

528 • To William Morris, 26 June 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 26 June 1896 My dear Fellow Henchmen Walker & Cockerell gave me news at Gattis’ last evening. I had thought no news was good news, but was glad to learn you were no worse – in fact, really stronger. You’ll be sure to have ups and downs, but the ups will have it, I believe, and the more so that you can stand Folkestone. I believe people have borne up under a wife with a voice, nails, and an odour as strong as a Foumart.1 Surely you may stand for a sufficient while the fish-guts and gentility of Folkestone. Do. You have had a sea voyage; that’s to the good.2 Get Cockerell to courier-it for another. You are taking drives. Take walks as well, and turn your pins into legs. Have you been to see, or have you not seen, Lympne – standing on the cliff overlooking the Romney Marsh? In Parker’s Dom: Arch: it is mentioned as still having some considerable & interesting work, (at all events outside) with a round tower at the end of the hall in the position of the Solar.3 I learnt that Janey was still with you. Tell her, Bella Middleton asked me to go and see her, and I did so. She was quiet, and kind, and the girl-child will keep her from too heavy a loneliness.4 Where – in the name of all the South: Ken: devils they will get another fit director I can’t see. The place without one of some clear insight will become a sink of official iniquity and muddle. Purdon Clarke is – I fancy – a good sort of departmental chap, but I should not think him up to driving a dirk into thick heads, and giving it plenty of comfortable turns.5 I’m more curious than you would suppose about that early calf (?) binding.6 Surely you must have been in luck’s way - don’t pitch it into the sea because it only cost 13£! 306

1888–1898

I’ve only yet got a 90-page-way into the everlasting “Well”,7 and that is a mere wetting of the foot in the puddle. What a complete wetting will do for me, you may perhaps learn later on – at present it is a most pleasant shoeing-horn to bed. You’ll like to know I had the pleasure of giving a 24th part of a shove to the Jameson case on the grand jury – Tuesday.8 Found a true bill, and wd have liked to mark the sheet with a ‘how about the chief brute?’9 I also helped to let off an accidental manslaughter, and send a snub to the country justices who had sent a twopenny case of meat-filching up to London trial, as a case of ‘highway robbery’. This was my first experience as a jury man, and I’m trying that it shall be my last. I’m got so old, that the increase of wisdom from age does not repay for the shaking of the sand in the hour glass by trying to look as if I had a judicial mind. Now don’t answer this – as I can guess a good deal of what goes on with you. With love to Janey. | Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 77

1 Middle English: a polecat (foul marten), known for its strong smell. 2 On 18 June, WM and SCC crossed from Folkestone to Boulogne at 11.00 am and returned at 4.00. ‘Calm crossing, though there was a good deal of wind. W.M. did not seem overtired, though he declared that he had not enjoyed it. He does not care about the sea.’ CD. 3 ‘Lympne Manor-house or Castle: an embattled house of the fifteenth century, finely situated on a cliff overlooking Romney marsh, in which are the remains of a Roman villa, and the sea beyond. The walls of the house are nearly perfect, but the interior is modernized. . . . At the opposite end of the hall is a tower, rounded on the outside, containing other apartments, probably the bedrooms of the family.’ John Henry Parker, Some Account of Domestic Architecture in England, from Richard II to Henry VIII, 2 vols (Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1859), II, p. 306. In English medieval manor houses, the solar denoted a sizeable private room (usually on an upper floor) used by the family as its living and sleeping accommodation. 4 John Henry Middleton had died on 10 June from an overdose of morphia, but it is not thought to have been suicide. There was one child from his marriage to Bella Stillman. 5 Caspar Purdon Clarke (1846–1911), who trained as an architect, had a long professional association with the South Kensington Museum. Appointed keeper of the art collections in 1892, he succeeded Middleton as Director in 1896. Clarke was knighted in 1902. 6 SCC annotation: ‘The early binding was a 12th century Winchester binding – a great rarity on a manuscript Hegisippus. It passed later at a great price into M r Yates Thompson’s collection, & from him (in 1920) to Dyson Perrins of Malvern, who gave it in 1947 to the Winchester Cathedral Library.’ 7 The Well at the World’s End. See above, Letter 524, note 1. 8 This was the trial of Leander Starr Jameson (1853–1917), the leader of the so-called Jameson Raid, an attempt to overthrow the Boer government in the Transvaal. Jameson and his fellow conspirators were returned to England for trial. PSW’s involvement appears to have been restricted to 23 June 1896, as a Grand Jury member at the Central Criminal Court. Jameson would be sentenced to fifteen months, but was later pardoned. 9 Probably PSW’s bête noire, Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, who was implicated in the planning of the Jameson Raid. His offer of resignation was turned down by the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. For Chamberlain, see below, Letter 556, note 2.

307

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

529 • To William Morris, 2 July 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 2 Junely 1896 My dear Fellow I will write a few words – before going to tedious antiscrape – in answer to yours got this morning, which, on the whole, I thought a fairly satisfactory acct of your condition. ’Twould certainly be well for you to see Broadbent again now, and I should like you to nail him to giving you a clear rule for dieting. If you don’t actually lose in weight, I think it would not matter as to the quantity you ate. The improved condition of the bowels is to the good, and it’s likely you’ll pick up appetite in a month or so.1 If Broadbent sends you back to Folkestone, you had better go: otherwise, Kenelmschatka might serve,2 if you were not too quietly put out of the world there? but more of this on Monday evening when I will come to you at Hammersmith and have a talk. The Everlasting ‘Well’, goes very delightfully with me – have got to half way house in it, and the tale now looks to be getting rather a short one! Walker dropt a card here about you after 5.30 last evening when I had left. I’m glad you took him to see the old world place at Lympne.3 I was afraid it might have all been done away with as a public nuisance, and I, that I should have sent you to look at vacancy. The position of the old thing on the brow of a steep hill and backed up by another, would be just to me a delight of a situation. The old houses are more generally in the bottoms, unless they be castles. Lympne would be about Henry VI time? real domestic perpendicular. The dog’s good manners shewed insight at all events – ‘no sturdy beggar’ – said he, ‘only a very curious sort of chap, off his victuals and light headed’.4 I dare say you’ll be able to make a scratch on paper of the plan of the house, as there is nothing of it pictured in Parker’s book.5 ’till I see you | Your affectionate | Philip Webb – and afterward? V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 70

1 ‘On Friday we shall have been here 3 weeks, and I have come to the conclusion that I had better show myself to Broadbent presently, and ask him whether he thinks Folkestone has done its work duly for me so far. . . . I am much less caustive than I was: I don’t know if any stronger, but I am pretty sure I am not weaker: per contra except for my breakfast, I take no interest in my food, and can hardly eat butcher-meat at all, especially beef.’ WM to PSW, 1 July 1896, CLWM, IV. 2 ‘It is pretty much this which I have to tell said Broadbent, and ask him to give me some sort of a regimen for my victuals, as he has never done yet. I think I want this much more than exile to Switzerland or Kamsckatka. Anyway we are coming back to Hammersmith on Saturday.’ Kamchatka (spelled variously in transliteration) is a peninsular of several hundred miles in east Russia. By ‘Kenelmschatka’, PSW means Kelmscott Manor. 3 ‘We took Walker to “Lympne Court” on Sunday, going through Hythe. . . . The Court is a most exceedingly beautiful house. Knocked about as a farm-house but quite unrestored.’ See also previous letter, note 3.

308

1888–1898 4 ‘We didn’t get inside [Lympne Court], being afraid of Sundyfied farmers; (the dog made friends).’ 5 See previous letter, note 3.

530 • To William Morris, 10 July 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 10 July 1896 My dear Fellow It so happens that the end of the long first fit in your printing-work comes markedly at the sending out of the Chaucer,1 and at the same time you have to get away from this garden of beslobbered England to refit yourself for further carrying on.2 I doubt not the swash of the seas, and the strange hills of Norway will be the best of all medicine for you, and I’m not allowing myself to trouble about the time you will be away from the companionship. Needs must, and let the devil do his office. There is nothing more to be said by me about the Chaucer, save that it improves instead of stales on longer acquaintance: a strong point as things go. I don’t remember of [sic] patience having done his work better than in the strife of getting this solid work to completion. I’m not besotted, but I know what I do know, and I know of that quality in work, and that the slightest good things which have been done well have not been by sleight of hand. How much more is this so in the whoppers of work? I feel very silly-simple in thinking of these matters things and of your having to go away, but I’ve no fancies as to your being able to refit for fit no. 2. There seems no reasonable doubt that you have been a little over taxed in bodily strength; and if you care to do me a good turn, you’ll have patience in this as well as in making your work, and turn yourself out a good job. Walker told me of you; and that passage had been taken, but I failed to ask him of the day you were going?3 Your affectionate | Philip Webb. The devil danced round us at antiscrape yesterday, and I think he will have his will. The Socy is practically used up. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 78

1 The Kelmscott Chaucer was published on 26 June 1896. WM’s presentation copy to PSW is dated 7 July. Peterson, p. 114. 2 SCC annotation: ‘On July 6 W.M. saw Sir William Broadbent, who reported that he was better and prescribed a trip to Norway.’ 3 SCC annotation: ‘On July 8 I took berths for Morris and a companion on the Orient S.S. Garonne sailing for the North Cape and Spitzbergen on the 22nd. Emery Walker & I went with them to Tilbury. Morris begged me not to leave him, but I had to go back.’ WM would travel with the political economist and engineer, John Carruthers (1836–1914) and Dr Dodgson as companions.

309

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

531 • To James and Margaret Beale, 15 July 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 15 July 1896 My dear Beale, and Mrs Beale.1 I was away all day at work yesterday in the country, (12 hours of it on a warm summer’s day) and on getting back at night, I found your packet – which was guessed to contain a sample of stone: and I put it aside till some tea had refreshed me. Fortunately your singularly kind letter lay on the top of the ‘sample’, so that I escaped the shock of fancying I was going to be married! The “memento” is a very pleasant reminder of many months of invigorating work carried out under the rather unusual circumstance of a sympathetic watchfulness of my clients, (for I must make it double) Mrs Beale and yourself, to wit.2 A closely engaged professional builder is apt to forget what his clients may be undergoing from “Irresponsible, indolent, reviewers,” and, doubtless, at times you must have reflected on the possibility of having engaged a blind guide? Should the penetrating criticism of an educated French architect have helped to clear your minds of such misgiving, (if you ever had any of the wisdom of your own choice?) I shall be increasingly grateful for the brilliant qualities of the great French nation. Surely I accept this kindly, and amusingly endorsed gift, without hesitation; and with an equal frankness befitting so simple and direct an offering of good will. I hope there will not be too much mourning over a scanty hay crop, and the failure of the “roots”, during your four months consideration of the beauties of the Ashdown hill – as seen from Standen windows. With very kind remembrance to the ‘better half’ of the client, Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Standen MS 175

1 Having completed work on the main house of Standen, East Grinstead, in 1895–6, PSW then designed and built a pair of detached cottages (Standen Cottages) for the Beales. 2 The Beales had sent him a silver snuff box, inscribed ‘When clients talk irritating nonsense I take a pinch of snuff’. Its location is now unknown. I am indebted to Tessa Wild (curator, National Trust, London and South East) for this information.

532 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 July 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 July 1896 Dear Cockerell It was the kindest thing you could have done for me just now – and wh’ you did – by sending the copy of Carruthers’s letter – wh’, to me, is a hopeful one.1 W.M. must have been joked and then stoked by Carruthers. Possibly, the charming 310

1888–1898

circumstances of the Doctor being levelled stimulated to the eating at one sitting of fish, flesh, fowl, and good red herring – hope he had not indigestion afterwards, and did not smoke one of Carruthers’s cigars.2 afterwards It is a dangerous thing for W.M to ‘be good’, as he is apt to pay his friends out for it when he recovers his balance of mind. Now we will turn to our work and think no ill of the prospects of the rest of the voyage, not even when the telescopes are charged and let off.3 The great fact being that W.M. cannot get out of his cage, and is not likely to pistol the captain for not putting about and coming back at once. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/41

1 John Carruthers wrote three times to SCC from the S.S. Garonne with updates on WM’s condition, and SCC sent copies to PSW. ‘At present all I can say is that there has been a distinct improvement in his appearance while his spirits are much more cheery & his appetite is much better. He is beginning to funk the fogs of Spitzbergen & may possibly stay at Valdsö where we hear there is good society as the place will be full of men who want to examine the eclipse’ (19 July 1896, BL Add 52760, f 4); ‘Morris was a little squeamish today, but not enough to do any harm – perhaps it would have been better had he been really sick! the poor Doctor is prostrated with sea sickness but is now making an effort to get up (4 p.m.) Last night Mr Morris was overtired & therefore depressed, wishing himself back in Hammersmith. After dinner however he became bright & cheerful, & sat up till near 10 o’clock chatting & laughing with some of the passengers including myself . . . I open this to say that Mr Morris has just taken for dinner a plate of soup, a plate of fish, a plate of fillet steak & a little fruit. They were not big plates, but still they were of decent size – just as the steward brought them!!’ (23 July 1896, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/40); ‘He sometimes still gets a little depressed & says he is no better than when he started; but he is & I hope will be very much better before he returns. A month’s cruise is however too short to quite set him up & he ought to extend his travels in the winter’ (2 August 1896, BL Add 52760, f 7). 2 SCC annotation: ‘Carruthers indulged in very strong Indian cigars.’ 3 SCC annotation: ‘Some of the party were to see an eclipse at the North Cape.’ See next letter, note 3.

533 • To William Morris, 8 August 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 8 August 1896 My dear Fellow It was kind in you to send me the note of your doing, from off Bergen.1 I have distilled your brief say, so as to make out what was the real condition of you, and what was a moan from captivity. Cockerell also has been thoughtful, and has sent me copies of Carruthers’ letters. The last news was in the Chronicle, dated Vadsö, Aug 3, saying that the Garonne had got into the Varanger Fjord.2 I send this, as Cockerell said you would probably be at Trondhjem about the 14th – and so on. How glad I am that an imperious ship’s captain is in charge of you, and that you would be clapped into the black hole if you shewed signs of putting the ship 311

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

about to get home again. There seems to be a doubt as to fogs in Spitzbergen, and that you might be left at Vadsö with the telescopes and scientific slang.3 If you don’t pick up some colouring matter for future use – I’m a double Dutchman, and you are another. Even the idea of the Fimbal (?) winter will be clear to you now,4 and the northern Gods human, with dew drops at the ends of their noses. I think I should have liked to be with you. In the small intervals between my rather busy times, I’ve been breaking myself in to read the Chaucer decently, and have begun it aloud to Kate. I have to remember where to skip passages which wd be thought, in feminine land, to be “a trifle far aft”.5 The Chaucer is a lovely book in all ways as you have done it for us, and reads so much easier in its right minded dress. Kate sends you a word – inclosed. I took her to her sister’s house on Wednesday, (at Hampstead) where she is alone with the housekeeper6 – saw her again on Thursday, and hope she will stay a bit, but she can run away home, and thus lose her chance of some little good. All my best companions are lunatics, and sure it must be that I was born a dry nurse. Certainly dry, and passably grim. I had a letter from your sister Isabella – saying your parson sister’s husband was dead,7 and that she (Isabella) would be going to N. Wingfield.8 I’ve just got the builder’s contract made for the Clapham Chapel, and the work must go on.9 I cannot guess what the world is like round at the North Cape, or if there is any green thing to be seen save the sea, which must be grey. Be good and help the doctors to make a proper job of you, and come back nicely fit to go on with work which is not yet completed. Antiscrape is at rest, and the scrapers are as busy as bees while we are asleep. Farrer, both in private & public capacity is much worse than even a hard or a soft one.10 Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 80

1 ‘I am told that I am certainly a little better; but if I am not, it is no great wonder considering that this is but the 5th day out, and also that one day I was sea-sick (Thursday) though with little excuse, as the sea was very good . . . and also that the victualling is abundantly abhominable, [sic] the eggs & milk e.g. having a strong “scientific” flavour.’ WM to PSW, 27 July 1896, CLWM, IV. This is the only letter known to have survived from the sea trip. 2 This was reported under ‘shipping News’. 3 The eclipse of the sun was witnessed on 8 August by the on-board astronomers, headed by Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer (1836–1920). 4 The Fimbulvetr or Fimbulwinter of Norse mythology (found in the Poetic Edda) is the extreme cold period which foretells the world’s end. 5 For WM’s presentation copy to KF of the Kelmscott Chaucer, dated 7 July 1896, see Peterson, p. 115. 6 For KF’s sister, Lucy Orrinsmith, see Vol. I, Letter 93. 7 Emma Morris Oldham, WM’s eldest sister. Fifteen years before, PSW had prepared plans for a new Mission Church at Clay Cross in Derbyshire, where her husband was the minister, but the building was never constructed. See Vol. I, Letters 165 and 170.

312

1888–1898 8 North Wingfield, a village a mile to the north-east of Clay Cross, where WM’s and Isabella Morris Gilmore’s sister lived. 9 See above, Letter 516, note 2. 10 Although the context is uncertain, this probably refers either to Thomas Henry Farrer, first Baron Farrer (1819–99), former permanent secretary at the Board of Trade, who became an alderman of the London County Council, or conceivably to the architect John Farrer (b. 1843), of Finsbury Pavement, London E.C., who had been in private practice since 1877.

534 • To William Morris, 19 August 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 19 August 1896 My dear Fellow I’m glad you are back from this north sea bout, but I dare say you will harp a little on the tiresomeness of the way.1 However, as being clapped in quad was so necessary for you, the evil ways of the stars in their courses will be forgotten, if they don’t do it again to you. I will come up this evening for first instalment. Your affectionate | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687, f. 82

1 ‘I am back. Please come & see me. I saw Trondjheim big church; terribly restored, but well worth seeing: in fact as beautiful as can be. It quite touched my hard heart . . . . P.S. Somewhat better, but hated the voyage: so glad to come home.’ WM to PSW, 18 August 1896, CLWM, IV. These are the last surviving letters between PSW and WM.

535 • To Sydney Cockerell, 19 August 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 19 Aug. 1896 My dear Cockerell I’m glad you have the old man under your wing again, and that Walker & you hailed him ashore.1 I am coming up to diagnose him this evening, and shall see what I shall see. Here is a passage from Hale White’s criticism wh’ is not altogether private. “The Chaucer is the most beautiful printed book I ever saw, and the workmanship, good as handicraft can make it, is a part of its beauty, as proof that one man at least lives who considers it his duty to sell the best thing and not the worst he can produce.”2 Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/43

313

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 SCC annotation to previous letter: ‘Morris landed at Tilbury on Aug 18, Emery Walker and I meeting him on the quay. He declared that he felt “better in spite of the voyage”, but his companion Dr Dodgson warned me that there was serious and increasing lung-trouble. On the following day he was manifestly worse, after going to see Burne-Jones in the morning.’ 2 See above, Letter 490, note 2.

536 • To Sydney Cockerell, 20 August 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 for 21. Aug: ’96 Dear Cockerell Your kindly warning at the station last evening was really helpful to me, or I should have too suddenly dropped into dismalness had I got to see the old man without it.1 He was very sadly [sic] when I got in, but after he had dozed in bed for half an hour he woke up quite cheerfully, and had just a sprout of talk before I had to go. As I never liked that cough of his at all, I like it less now. If it had not been rather serious he would have shaken it off on the sea. Well, we must wait. If you can carry on your good work for him as a relief to yourself under the circumstances, it will be a comfort to me I assure you. He should have someone apt and kindly about him. Yours very thankfully | Philip Webb. I have to look after some work at East Grinstead all day tomorrow,2 but I shall come to Kelmscott house in the early evening – say about 5.30. on Saturday. I had your letter when I got in from Hampstead tonight.3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/44

1 SCC recorded in his diary for 19 August that ‘In the aftn & at teatime W.M. seemed very ill – his cough troublesome & all energy & interest gone. I went off after Dr Hogg, & then for Dodgson to ask him to stay the night. Came back to tell Mrs M. what I had arranged . . . Met Ph. W. getting out of the train & was able to warn him of W.M’s relapse.’ CD. Dr Gordon Hogg was a prominent resident of nearby Bedford Park, interested in political topics. Late in 1886 the minutes of the Hammersmith Socialist League named him as the principal contact when attempts were made to extend proselytizing activities into the Bedford Park area. WM may first have consulted Hogg professionally on 2 August 1891 when ‘he was very reassuring, and indeed seemed to think I was very well’. WM to JEM, 3 August 1891, CLWM, III. 2 The on-going work on the Standen Cottages. See above, Letter 531, note 1. 3 PSW would have been visiting KF. ‘He seems better today, is cheerful, & has made a good lunch – but the doctors have kept him in bed to stop the cough, & it has had that result so far. On examining him today they found indications of incipient lung trouble, which they regard as rather serious in his rundown condition – & in Broadbent’s absence there is talk of summoning some other physician. . . . They still attribute both cough & blood to the larynx, I understand.’ SCC to PSW, 20 August 1896, BL Add 52760, f 10.

314

1888–1898

537 • To Sydney Cockerell, 24 August 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 August 1896 Dear Cockerell Your note is good news to me, and encourages my wish that no panic should come about.1 He is a difficult patient to deal with (all the most interesting fellows are) but the very difficulty keeps the friends of Job from domineering over the sick subject. I can come up on Wednesday evening at my ordinary time and will do so. For a dry nurse I noticed you had the smoothest action. The patient didn’t want a thing, because it was there: or to get rid of another, for it was gone. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1957/696/2

1 ‘He seems rather better today – in fact decidedly better. The hand is steadier & the cough less troublesome, & he has been eating well & talking a good deal without being tired. Dr Hogg was inclined to take a much less discouraging view of the case, Mrs Morris tells me.’ SCC to PSW, 24 August 1896, BL Add 52760, f 12. Only the previous day, SCC recorded in his diary his sad realisation of a steady decline: ‘W.M. said he felt very weak, & I watched him dressing, a painful sight. I fear he goes down-hill in spite of Dr Hogg’s more hopeful report yesterday . . . I helped W.M. to bed at about 10. He was almost too weak to undress.’ CD, 23 August.

538 • To Sydney Cockerell, 1 September 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 1 September 1896 Dear Cockerell I was too tired last night at the last part to be of much use to you.1 Surely it will not do for you, working all day, not to get bed rest at night – if you and Mrs Morris would consult as to so[me]one to take care of the patient at night it would be better.2 As none of us know – not even now, what is at the bottom of the mischief in W.M. all that can be done is to watch, so as to act quickly when things are clearer. If he has to go away it will most likely be in next month when with cold is added to wet weather. So, if he should shew any sign of which place would be least annoying to him as exile, that shd be aimed at. I gather he looks for company, if he goes anywhere, in [F.S.] Ellis, & I doubt if any fitter person could be found, as he could look for a less insulting house or lodging than could otherwise be got. I said I would come up on Wednesday by the later train, but I will come by the earlier – that is, about 6. there.

315

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Walker has an idea that a treble bob major peal of doctors3 might avail – as it is so doubtful a matter. I don’t think we shd risk the effect of the annoyance of the thing to on the patient. His impatience has to be allowed for as one of the serious mischiefs. Forgive this – apparently – pedagogic manner. I really wish to help and not to pose. Yours truly, indeed, | Philip Webb. d Walker’s toughness too, sh not be drawn upon too heavily if it be possible to avoid it. Perhaps you will kindly consult with Mrs Morris. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/45

1 SCC had arranged for his uncle, Douglas Powell (1842–1925), to see WM on 31 August. Powell was consulting physician to the Middlesex Hospital, and from 1887 a court physician also, attending Queen Victoria during her final illness. Created a baronet in 1897, Powell published important works on heart disease and tuberculosis. Dr Dodgson had written to SCC ‘to tell me that there was now certain evidence that the lung trouble is tubercular, & that it was impossible to take a more sanguine view of the case’. CD, 25 August. All medical hope faded after Powell’s consultation. ‘Uncle D. Dr Hogg & Dodgson came at 5.30. Uncle regarded the whole illness as tubercular from the first, & gave no hope. Philip Webb came immediately after he had left & stayed till W.M. went to bed, & cheered him up tremendously.’ CD, 31 August. 2 SCC had started staying overnight at Kelmscott House to assist in the night care. ‘As to the night work – it is, I find, beginning to be a strain, as you surmise, & I fear that after a little while some change will be necessary, though I shall hate abandoning it, & so will Walker, I am sure. I will speak to Mrs Morris tomorrow.’ SCC to PSW, 1 September 1896, BL Add 52760, ff 15–16. 3 ‘Treble Bob Major’ is a particular ‘change’ in church bell-ringing, and gives its name to some complex compositions (such as Kent Treble Bob Major). PSW’s analogy cautions against the presence of too many doctors.

539 • To Sydney Cockerell, 4 September 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 4 September 1896 Dear Cockerell I had so little time to talk with you on Wednesday, that I could not say how helpful your letter of Tuesday was to me.1 Miss Faulkner is so very anxious about W.M, that when questioned by her, there was nothing in the letter but what I could read to her – and did so. Your verbal information there was no need for me to repeat. Your postcard of yesterday leaves the matter of well-being much as I saw it when I was there. I have to go to Clapham this afternoon,2 and as I am sure to be quite tired after my work there, it would be no help for me to come across. When talking with Mrs Morris I said I would come up on Saturday, as on Sunday there would surely be visitors.

316

1888–1898

W.M. told me that Ellis was coming up, but I did not gather on which day.3 If he is there on Saturday, I can be upstairs as long as necessary. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/46

1 SCC had made PSW aware of Douglas Powell’s assessment of WM’s condition. 2 See above, Letter 516, note 2. 3 F.S. Ellis was probably travelling by train from Torquay even as PSW was writing, for he arrived at Kelmscott House at teatime.

540 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 September 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9 Sepr 1896 Dear Cockerell Thank you for your postcard. Doubtless you heard of my being with W.M. on Monday. He was quite tired out, and really did not wake up till he got to bed, when he was clear & comfortable, and we had a good talk.1 Of course the weakness increases, or he would not have felt the effect of the trundle round the garden in the wheel chair, as evidently he did. I suppose Dr Hogg lies low as to the patient’s recovering some strength. Is there no way of ascertaining the cause of this wasting, with only comparatively small outward cause of it, for his cough was certainly not so bad when he was tired out on Monday evening? I dimly suspect that nervousness does it, rather than any other disease. A word, a thought, &c &c, lowers him at once – it seems to me. Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. Mrs Morris thought with me that Thursday – tomorrow – would do best for my coming up again. Therefore I will do so, abt 6. o’c.2 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/48

1 ‘He liked your talk with him in bed last Monday very much indeed.’ SCC to PSW, 13 September 1896, BL Add 52760, f 19. 2 In fact, he came on Friday (11 September), not Thursday, for as both EW and EBJ visited then he probably wanted to avoid tiring the patient. ‘W.M. had a very good night. Mr Sanderson brought in the Golden Psalter in its new half pigskin cover, with all the crumpled leaves flat. This pleased him. In the aftn he had what he calls “the screaming horrors” which Miss De M. & I tried to keep off till Philip Webb came at 6.’ CD, 11 September. ‘[T]he St Albans Psalter which Morris named the

317

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II Golden Psalter . . . . [was] afterwards in the collection of Laurence W. Hodson of Wolverhampton. The Psalter was sold by him to me in May 1909.’ Note by SCC attached to a letter from WM to SCC, 26 June 1896, CLWM, IV, p. 381, note 4. See next letter, note 3.

541 • To Sydney Cockerell, 12 September 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 12 Sepr 1896 Dear Cockerell I found W.M. very tired last evening. The Holford Benson1 came in with 2 more M.S.S. one a good one and the other interesting, though late.2 The old man could not go over them then, but it stirred him to speak of his great Huckery Gibbs one – and Benson asked to see it; therefore I too caught a look at it.3 ’tis a wonder, and all that enthusiastic possession painted it.4 The patient could not talk even in bed, but slept at once as I watched him. He did not seem to be worse, and he may be a little better, but he is woefully weak, and shews no sign of increasing strength. I can anticipate nothing – but can speak of the comfort your attention to him gives me, now that he is so helpless. Walker too is another gift of the gods. I am proposing to come up again on Monday – subject to Mrs Morris or you suggesting another day.5 Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/49

1 The merchant banker, Robert Henry Benson (1850–1929), had a fine collection of Italian paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His father-in-law, the MP Robert Stanyer Holford (1808–92), was also a discerning art collector. 2 ‘W.M. about the same in the morning. R.H. Benson came last night after I had left & brought another very fine 13th century Psalter. In aftn Carruthers & W. De Morgan came.’ CD, 12 September. 3 SCC annotation: ‘The “Huckery Gibbs” manuscript was the splendid “Windmill” Psalter that W.M. bought for £1000 from Lord Aldenham (Hucks Gibbs) on July 6 – his last & greatest purchase. It now belongs to Mr Pierpont Morgan.’ In the list of valuations drawn up by F.S. Ellis before WM’s library was sold (see below, Letter 557, note 3), where original purchase prices are entered, this manuscript is priced at £1050. 4 ‘W.M. told me of your satisfaction with the Windmill Psalter. It does him a lot of good to hear his favourites praised, & that Psalter is the one he loves the best.’ SCC to PSW, 13 September 1896, BL Add 52760, f 18. 5 He called at Kelmscott House on Monday, 14 September, at 6.00 p.m.

318

1888–1898

542 • To Sydney Cockerell, 17 September 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 17 September ’96 Dear Cockerell I found W.M. in rather a better way last evening, and this probably came from the good night before – and, perhaps, from the trundle round the garden.1 However, there is still the same trouble at hand of nervous excitement, which Mary De Morgan’s peculiar aptitude helps to keep down.2 It is like Saul calling for David’s bagpipes to lay the devil with.3 I hope the serious-solemn music of Fuller Maitland’s virginals, or those of Dolmetch, [sic] may not be too much for the patient – but we shall see.4 I was pleased to see the kindly Cattarson Smith [sic] come on duty.5 Mrs Morris looked for the 1st vol of the book on Universities, but it was not to be found – probably W.M has lent it, if so, never mind about it.6 Perhaps you may be able to lay hand on the photographs of Kelmscott, if so, will you put them out for me, as W.M gave leave, and I will bring them back as soon as Miss Faulkner has seen them.7 Having to go to Clapham tomorrow, I told Walker I would come up on Saturday. If this should not suit other arrangements will you kindly send me a postcard? I hope you determinedly take the air in your park of Richmond? Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/50

1 ‘W.M. had a particularly good night. Got up at 10, & went once round the garden at 11.’ CD, 16 September. 2 The children’s author, Mary Augusta De Morgan (1850–1907), younger sister of the ceramicist William Frend De Morgan, was a regular and welcome visitor during WM’s last weeks. 3 ‘And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.’ I Samuel 16:23. 4 A central figure in the revival of early music performances on ‘authentic’ instruments, Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940) – encouraged by WM to construct his first harpsichord – appeared at Kelmscott House on 20 September and played sixteenth-century English virginals music. ‘W.M. enjoyed it extremely, but was a good deal affected.’ CD, 21 September. There is no record of a visit by The Times music critic, John Alexander Fuller Maitland (1856–1936). He too had a special interest in early music, produced a catalogue of the music manuscripts at the Fitzwilliam Museum (1893), and co-edited the music of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (1894–99).

319

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 5 ‘Catterson Smith came for the night.’ CD, 16 September. The Arts and Crafts artist, sculptor and silversmith, Robert Catterson Smith (1853–1938), became headmaster of the Central School of Art in Birmingham in 1903. A member of the Art Workers’ Guild, from 1893 he worked on EBJ’s designs for the Kelmscott Press Chaucer, and would make the silver cross for the Deaconess Chapel in Clapham, to a design by PSW (see below, Letter 569, note 4), as well as the mace for the new University of Birmingham, to a design by PSW (see Vol. III, Letter 795, note 4). 6 Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895). 7 SCC annotation: ‘The photographs of Kelmscott were those taken by F.H. Evans.’ In 1896, the bookseller and photographer Frederick Henry Evans (1853–1943) ‘made a series of photographs of Kelmscott Manor, the home of William Morris, for whose lectures on architecture he had provided lantern slides; he assembled a group of these photographs in a memorial portfolio after Morris’s death’. http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/38596 [accessed 13 Aug 2013].

543 • To Sydney Cockerell, 22 September 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 22 Sepr 1896 Dear Cockerell I was at K. House again last evening, and found the old man better – in a way – but the weakness is still the black beast. When I saw Walker he told me of your eye being bad again: I remember this eye of yours, and am really sorry if it is trying your philosophy again. Of course you will do the best you can for it according to rule.1 I go up again tomorrow – Wednesday, and hope to hear of your being better. The Kelmscott photographs gave Miss Faulkner much pleasure, but the thought of it, and W.M in his present state, rather upset her. The photo’s are truly admirably done. I took them back. Yours with kindest wishes | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/51

1 SCC was troubled with a badly inflamed eye for four days.

544 • To Sydney Cockerell, 26 September 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 26 September 1896 Dear Cockerell Thank you for the note I got yesterday.1 I found W.M in a rather unusual state yesterday, but possibly it arose in part from Dr Hogg’s visit, though I think the effect has been exaggerated.

320

1888–1898

He was very restless before & at supper, wouldn’t eat much (couldn’t, I believe) and retired quickly, then he lay down on bed for a while & slept – then back to his own room, when he complained of the heat. When I put him to bed, he was sweating considerably, which I thought a bad sign. I concluded I had not seen him in so wasting a condition before. There is a magazine about the house, which contains a literary criticism of W.M. by Lang.2 I just looked into it, and found it to be rather spitefully belittling in its ill quality. I hope W.M wont chance to open and see. Mrs Morris said I had better come up again on Tuesday. Yrs Ph: Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/52

1 ‘Last night was a very broken one, but Walker administered comfort, & things did not go so badly. Today there has been no wandering & no irritability so far. He has been very quiet. Ellis here all the morning writing out ballads, & the Bart [EBJ] expected this afternoon but not yet (4.30) in evidence – an hour’s quiet sleep on his bed after lunch – & a little conversation, though he soon tires of that nowadays, & will have it very straightforward.’ SCC to PSW, 24 September 1896, BL Add 52760, f 21. During his visits to WM, F.S. Ellis ‘encouraged him to imagine he was making his selection [of Border ballads] for a new volume for the Kelmscott Press’. MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 668. 2 PSW is perhaps needlessly protective on WM’s behalf. In ‘Mr. Morris’s Poems’, Longman’s Magazine, XXVIII (October 1896), pp. 560–73, the critic Andrew Lang (1844–1912) gives a broadly generous account of WM’s output, whilst feeling that his translation of the Odyssey lacked ‘the surge and thunder of the music of Homer’ (p. 572). Lang’s concluding remarks summarise the tone of the review. ‘His place in English life and literature is unique as it is honourable. He has done what he desired to do – he has made vast additions to simple and stainless pleasures.’ (p. 573).

545 • To Sydney Cockerell, 1 October 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 1 Octr 1896 Dear Cockerell Your good letter, got this morning – no, last night, made the condition of patient clear to me, and I’m all the more glad a nurse is to come – for the night only, I suppose? In case of accident, there might have been some blame if no nurse had been provided – ie, qualified nurse.1 The early quietude of the night ceased I suspect when the effect of the opiate had gone off. I shall come up again by the usual train tomorrow evening. Miss Faulkner is not so well again now, doubtless from the colder weather coming on. Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/53

321

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 ‘W.M. had a fairly good night until 5 a.m, when he became very restless – & he has been so all day – though that may be partly the result of the opium in the medicine. He has not coughed much & there has been no recurrence of the blood spitting – but he is of course desperately weak, & I fear he will not regain much strength. We have kept him as quiet as possible, though he cannot be persuaded to lie still. He is not in any pain, fortunately. A nurse is to come in tomorrow.’ SCC to PSW, 30 September 1896, BL Add 52760, f 22. WM died at 11.15 a.m. on 3 October.

546 • To Jenny Morris, 6 October 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 6 October 1896 My dear Jenny ’Twas well you gave to me the familiar childhood name in your kindest of letters received yesterday. I am all the younger to you for it. Not only was he your father, but your friend also, as he was my friend always: And though – in a way – I was his father, still – also in a way – I was his child: I am still his friend. The pleasant earth he loved so truly is the lovely mother of us all; and we will be good children, whether lying above ground or under, in the unfailing beauty of that lap. Your affectionate | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 76

547 • To John William Mackail, 7 November 1896 Draft (in the space after JWM’s letter of 6 November 1896); pencil, with some amendments in ink 1 R.B. G.I. 7. Novr 96 Dear Mr Mackail.1 I thank [you] for your sympathetic note and can say I shd like to meet you, and also to forward your work in any possible way.2 Unhappily, my memory – always bad, is now so feeble as to be of little use even to myself.3 I could not – at all events as yet – accept your and Mrs Mackail’s kindly petition for me to come to your house Kensington, but your second suggestion, that you shd come here, promises a satisfactory beginning of acquaintance, and as that is always easier, I think, to do reasonably at feeding time; I wd therefore propose that you meet me under Gattis’ Restaurant portico opposite Buckingham Street in the Strand, when you could dine with me and break ground as well as bread, coming on here afterwards in a cab for more serious consideration. My surroundings here are not sufficient to contrive a dinner, but if the former plan wd meet your view, I would say on Wednesday next the 11th, or the following Wed: (wh’ ever suited you best)

322

1888–1898

I wd meet you as noted above at Gattis’, at 6, 6.30 or 7.0 o’clock? a postcard would do carry answer enow. Yours truly | Ph. W. WMG J167

1 The classical scholar, John William Mackail (JWM, 1859–1945) enjoyed a brilliant undergraduate career at Balliol College, Oxford, during the time when Jowett was Master. Although elected a Fellow of Balliol in 1882, he chose instead to work for the Board of Education, whilst maintaining his profile as an academic writer. He would be elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1906. His marriage to Margaret Burne-Jones in 1888 gave him access to the range of contacts which uniquely qualified him to become WM’s biographer. He clearly came under considerable pressure to undertake the task by EBJ and GBJ, for it was probably not one he would have chosen. His Life of William Morris (1899) is admirable in many ways, although his treatment of his subject’s unconventional marriage and family life is almost painfully circumspect. 2 ‘Will you so far break through your custom of not going out as to come here [27 Young Street, Kensington] and spend an evening with my wife & me? It would give us both great pleasure. We are simple folk who dine at 7 o’clock and don’t put on any clothes for the occasion. . . . If not, will you let me know when I may call on you in Grays Inn? . . . I wish to ask you a large number of questions especially about the years from 1856 onwards, so as to get a sort of outline of ideas in my own mind; at a later stage I hope you may be good enough to help me more largely with material.’ JWM to PSW, 6 November 1896, WMG J167. 3 Doubting his own powers of recall, EBJ had already written to prepare the ground. ‘I dare say you have seen in papers that Mackail has undertaken to write the facts about the life of our Beloved Top. All that I remember I shall keep for him, & I have promised to jot down in my higgledypigledy [sic] way what I can remember from the first – it’s a failing memory alas & I never thought I should have to remember for I should have gone first. If you will do the same and let him have the notes to consult & absorb it would be nice. . . . [T]he vultures will be down of course to their unholy meal – that can’t be helped – & many a lie will be in the air – but most of the lies we can send to their natural home & all silly anecdotes & folly will be excluded & banned.’ EBJ to PSW, 17 October 1896, Texas.

548 • To Jenny Morris, 4 December 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 4 December 1896 My dear Jenny Yesterday was a full one for me to push through, and in the evening I had to attend a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, and explain to them about the condition of the beautiful west front of Peterborough Cathedral – or rather, I should say, try to “hoist the Dutch”1 – so that they should help ‘antiscrape’ in preserving this beautiful, and in many ways precious work of English hands.2 I did not get home till – past 10 at night, and was not able to thank you for so kindly getting the several sets of verses copied in type writing. They will be very helpful to me; I now do thank you.

323

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I will now pick out some prose pieces, and ask you to get the same done in type writing, and will send them to you as soon as I can satisfy myself with fitting examples for the Cavalière Boni.3 My talk with you was a pleasant one to me, and I hope it did not in any way upset you? I like with assured friends to talk of the good old man as if he were still alive with us – as assuredly he is, in a way, which is a comfort to our hearts. Those verses written on the flyleaf of your and May’s copy of the E. P. are very beautiful, and were a lovingly happy gift to you both.4 Yours affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 78

1 For this meaning, see above, Letter 460, note 7. 2 The Society of Antiquaries wholeheartedly supported SPAB’s opposition to the proposed dismantling and rebuilding of the upper part of the west front of Peterborough Cathedral, under John Loughborough Pearson. See above, Letter 521, note 4. The published report of the Antiquaries’ meeting of 3 December provides a formal record of the discussion, and underlines the importance of PSW’s role. The Assistant Secretary, W.H. St John Hope, first explained to members ‘the method proposed by Mr. Philip Webb which had been put forward so long ago as April last by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings for consideration by the Dean and Chapter. By this method the disintegrated core of the walling at the back of the great arches of the front could be removed entirely from behind by small sections at a time, and replaced by sound material bonded together and into the facing stones of the arch itself. . . . The old work would of course during the operation be carefully shored up with cradling and centreing to naturalise any possible risk or movement. . . . Mr. Philip Webb, who was present, on the invitation of the President gave a more minute and detailed account than that given by Mr. Hope of the method proposed by him for dealing with the front, which he had successfully carried out elsewhere in a far more difficult case.’ Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Second Series, XVI (1895–7), pp. 244–5. See also below, Letter 550, note 5. 3 GBO intended to prepare some kind of study of WM, to which PSW gave his active support by encouraging the Morris family, SCC and GW to provide materials. See below, Letter 550, note 1, and Letter 555. Although GBO did not publish the hoped for article, he organised an exhibition of the borrowed material in Rome. 4 This copy of the 1870 printing of The Earthly Paradise, in 4 volumes, was amongst the books from Kelmscott Manor which came up for auction in 1939 following the death of MM’s companion in later life, Mary Lobb. It is described in the catalogue (Lot 468) prepared by Hodgson & Co, of 115 Chancery Lane as a ‘Presentation Copy to Jane [i.e. Jenny] and May Morris, with an Original MS. Poem of 40 lines by the Author, inserted in Vol. I, 4 vols, red morocco extra.’ Unsold on 7 July 1939, it was amongst the books returned to the local Faringdon auctioneers, Hobbs and Chambers, who conducted the on-site sale of the Kelmscott Manor contents. This information is taken from the auction catalogue and accompanying notes from the Hodgson & Co materials included in BL Add 54721.

324

1888–1898

549 • To Reverend William Richard Wood Stephens, Dean of Winchester, soon after 7 December 1896 Drafted on behalf of SPAB, pencil To The very Revd The Dean of Peterborough Winchester Dear Sir1 Having had to prepare a short report of our visit to St Cross Hospital in very brief time, I had to defer acknowledging the courteous assistance you gave to myself and Mr Philip Webb on the 7th instt. We went to St Cross and carefully examined the suggested sites for the purposed new Master’s House.2 The more we looked at the place and its surroundings, the greater seemed to be the difficulty and danger in adding to any new building to, or in close relation to, this great and beautiful historical fabric.3 I presented my card, as the secretary of this society, at the Masters lodginge, with a request that we might be allowed to see the “Master’s” Garden – but the Master could not see his way to give us the permission – however, after leaving him we were able to survey the inside of the garden sufficiently for our purpose, from the outside. We, afterwards, were under the guidance of Mr Russell, the foreman of Carpenters, were able to examine the works of reparation which had been done to the Nave roof of the Cathedral. As at our former visit Mr Colson the architect had kindly sent us a tracing of his scheme for strengthening and repairing the roof,4 we were able to understand clearly what had been done, and I have had the great satisfaction of reporting to my Committee the satisfaction we had in finding that the work was being carried out in the best possible way under an admirable scheme. I have therefore the pleasure of hereby conveying to yourself and the Chapter my committee’s thanks for the effective assistance to you have rendered it when in trying to ascertaining the needs of the Cathedral fabric, and thus enabling it to inform the members of the society of the successful prosecution of an anxious and difficult work. Believe me | Mr Dean | Yrs &c SPAB, St Cross Hospital, Winchester file

1 The ecclesiastical historian, the Very Reverend William Richard Wood Stephens (1839–1902), was appointed Dean of Winchester in 1895.

325

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 2 The Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse of Noble Poverty, Winchester, was founded 1133–6 by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and consists of a chapel and an attached almshouse with accommodation for 25 Brothers, planned around two quadrangles. Restoration of the chapel had taken place under William Butterfield’s direction in 1864–5. 3 In the Annual SPAB Report for 1897, the Committee was able to report that the Trustees of St Cross had agreed with the Charity Commissioners ‘that the new Master’s house should be built, not in the ancient precinct, but outside, on a site which will not bring it into conflict or contrast with the unique mediæval group of buildings’ (p. 68). The new building was completed in 1899, and eventually the Master’s former set or rooms ‘was converted into more accommodation for brothers, a library-cumbilliard room, a Master’s Office, and a board room for the Trustees’. Peter Hopewell, Saint Cross. England’s Oldest Almshouse (Chichester: Phillimore, 1995), p. 133. 4 See above, Letter 521, notes 2 and 3.

550 • To Sydney Cockerell, 20 December 1896 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 December 1896 Dear Cockerell In answer to your note of yesterday, with thanks for the information of what is getting ready for Boni.1 If a photograph of a carpet could be managed it wd be well, I think – as I see you name that. As to the Exeter tapestry – i.e. the magi (?) this, though directed &c &c by W.M, is wholly, or almost so, of E.B-Js design, and beautiful in that way – whereas the ministering angels has much ornament, &c, and though arranged by Dearle is really W.Ms work admirably caught up by Dearle.2 There is a photo of the “apple queen” full of W.Ms work be-Dearled, with only a single figure by E.B.J.3 and another, of the Woodpecker “I once a king and chief”, wh’ is thoroughly W.M.4 but you and Walker would decide. To inspire Boni with the tapestried magnificence, the Magi photo: could be sent for himself to shew to folk of his kidney, at all events. Yea: The Peterborough hallooing seems to be likely to create dismay in the Ecclesi[astica]l and Archl camp: but our Crux will come, and a hard one, when the archt, perhaps, resigns.5 We shall then see. The party which lets go in the ‘tug of War’ has the pleasure of seeing the victors on their bums! V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/55

1 ‘Giacomo Boni spent the evening with me [in Rome], a most interesting, sympathetic & genuine man. He is going to write an article on W.M. & we talked a good deal about him, J.R, P.W. & others.’ CD, 26 November 1896. See above, Letter 548, note 3. GBO also reported well of the encounter. ‘Mr Cockerell’s visit to Rome was of great value to me, because he spoke like one who had been frequently in contact with the people and the places I most care for now.’ GBO to PSW, 27 November 1896, Courtauld 178a. On his return to England, SCC sought out materials to send to GBO, including items in his possession. ‘Your letter, and Wardle’s letter, and Cockerell’s samples (a wonderful collection that set my heart a beating) of Morris’ prints, have so overwhelmed me with emotion that I feel in a state of bliss, not deprived of melancholy, and

326

1888–1898

2

3

4

5

sadness too perhaps, but out of which I would not like to emerge again for any thing in the world of joys. . . . When I paid a visit to Oxford and Cambridge, the late Prof. Middleton showed to me a window with a decoration of oak branches drawn by Morris – which was superb. A specimen of his drawings for glass works would also prove very valuable.’ GBO to PSW, 19 December 1896, Courtauld 179a–b. The tapestry made by Morris & Co. for Exeter College, Oxford of The Adoration of the Magi was commissioned in September 1886. The design of the figures and main compositional details were provided by EBJ, with some of the background detail left to John Henry Dearle. The Merton Abbey weavers completed the tapestry in February 1890, whereupon it transferred to the Oxford Street showroom of Morris & Co. before being taken to Exeter College. See Stephen Wildman and John Christian, Edward Burne-Jones. Victorian Artist-Dreamer (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of New York), pp. 293–5. Further versions were produced by the company, including one commissioned by WSB, who bizarrely insisted upon the inclusion of a camel and an Arab horse. See MacCarthy, WMLT, p. 630. The tapestry Pomona (1884–85) carries a bannered inscription at top and bottom, beginning ‘I am the ancient apple-queen – as once I was so am I now’. See Wildman and Christian, Edward BurneJones, pp. 283–4. WM designed the Woodpecker Tapestry (c. 1885), incorporating in its top border an inscription in a banner: ‘I once a king and chief – now am the tree-barks thief’. Illustrated in MacCarthy, WMLT, plate xxix. John Loughborough Pearson. See above, Letter 508, note 10. The Dean and Chapter at Peterborough ignored the appeals from the SPAB and the Society of Antiquaries (which in the case of the latter was to delay the start of works until they could submit their own alternative scheme, which they offered partly to fund). The demolition and reconstruction work began in the early part of 1897, and at its Anniversary meeting on 23 April 1897, a report was read on behalf of the President, Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, whose view of Pearson – and of the behaviour of the Peterborough authorities – was captured in a single sentence. ‘I, for one, greatly doubt whether the restoration of ancient buildings should be confided to an eminent architect whose business is rather to construct new ones.’ Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Second Series, XVI (1895–7), pp. 369–70.

551 • To Hugh Thackeray Turner, 13 January 1897 Postcard. Postmark: LONDON W.C. JA 13 97 Address: To Thackeray Turner Esqre | Ancient Buildings Society | 9 Buckingham Street | Adelphi | W.C. 1 R Bgs Gray’s Inn W.C. 13 Jany 1897 I suppose you saw the short article letter in the D.C today abt Salisbury?1 Surely this should be answered, as it is either an accidental or purposed misleading, and in either case would be very injurious. Ph.W. SPAB, Salisbury Cathedral file

1 The letter, dated 6 January and claiming to come from ‘A Member of Anti-Scrape’, was published in The Daily Chronicle on 13 January, and commented on the condition of the Salisbury spire. ‘A few weeks ago I obtained permission (not from Sir Arthur Blomfield) to mount the scaffolding and inspect the work in progress. The work, a most necessary and urgent one of repair, is being

327

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II conducted in the most conservative way possible: the crushed and perished stones are being cut out, and underpinning and angle-bonding is being scientifically and ably applied. I am confident that any one who had been privileged to see the work that is being done to maintain this, the finest spire in England, would not withhold his subscription even though he was as ardent an anti-restorer as your obedient servant.’

552 • To Sydney Cockerell, 1 February 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 1 February 1897 Dear Cockerell I thank you for the address of W. H. White jun r,1 and for the rest of the news, wh’ was not too good of one of my patients.2 The neuralgia is probably not a serious item, but the melancholia, is. I have written to him in a tonic manner, and if he don’t spit it out on tasting, it may give him a slight lift out of the bog of himself. In all my dealing with sick people, the ever recurring ‘depression’ is the most trying thing for the nurse – he, she, or it, to conquer. It is always shewing its beastly head round the bedpost, or house corner. Certainly, I think you should see Miss Faulkner; it would probably do her good, and could do you no harm: I will broach the thing to her, as if you were a barrel. Walker would be a good shoeing horn, as K. F don’t mind him, and he is soothing – and other kind things as well. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I was greatly ashamed of myself for not going to back Turner up at the reading of his paper on Thursday;3 I had noted it down to go, but forgot it, and had made no arrangement to be away from Caroline Place. However, Turner looked in here yesterday, and he seems to have got on very well at a very unattractive gathering. He ‘scored’ off a brute who lugged up Peterborough.4 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/57

1 WHW’s son, also called William Hale White (1857–1949), was a doctor. He was created KBE in 1919. See Vol. IV, Letter 875, note 3. 2 WHW senior. ‘Went to High Wickham & found Hale White in bed with neuritis & much depressed.’ CD, 31 January 1897. 3 HTT spoke on ‘Restoration’ at St James’s Hall to the Society of Architects on 28 January, following a familiar SPAB agenda. 4 ‘Lugged’ here could have either of two meanings: either, to introduce something in a forced way, irrelevantly, or to bait (as of a bear).

328

1888–1898

553 • To Sydney Cockerell, 2 February 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 2 February 1897 My dear Cockerell I will not wait till I bring back the carol on Thursday, because it was good of you to lend me the copy, and I thank you for the good service. I will take a copy of it with your permission, and which, if you do not give it, I will burn.1 This carol, I am sure I have seen or heard read at some time, for the burden of it is quite familiar to my ear; but this is not the one I was speaking of, and which was, with other carols published by Masters, of Bond Street, the high Anglican publishers, somewhere about 1857?2 If you should be going down Bond Street, you might ask them if they still have copies? If I should think of it when there I will ask. The copy you sent me is singularly beautiful & touching. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/58

1 SCC annotation: ‘A carol by W.M.’ PSW was asking SCC as one of the executors of WM’s estate, although the request was surely ironic. 2 The Poor Man’s Christmas Carol (London: Joseph Masters, c. 1855). A copy of the title carol of the collection, with an accession stamp of 1862, is in the BL (published by J. Masters, Aldergate Street and New Bond Street). ‘Come let us sing in full accord, / The joyful carol of our Lord; / For men of humble birth are we; / And one like us He came to be.’

554 • To Sydney Cockerell, 5 February 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 5 February 1897 Dear Cockerell The conversation of you and Lethaby was so exacting last evening,1 that I forgot to tell you the result of my good offices in Caroline Place. Miss Faulkner is singularly shy, and she looked the question in your letter to me in the face, but concluding with an assent, and she would be pleased to see you and Walker. She has heard so many unveracious yarns from me about you, that she would like to compare the original with the (mis?)representation, and rejoice in a conversation which would not be scandalous.

329

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

The days – evenings – I am not there are most always Mondays & Fridays, and you had better choose one of them, as two gentleman and a blaggiard [sic] would be too much for her.2 Yours truly | Philip Webb. No answer required. Do not at another time make such a mistake. I was right about skeleton clock faces, though it could not be proved!3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/59

1 On 4 February, PSW, SCC and WRL had supper at Gatti’s. 2 On the afternoon of 12 February, SCC and EW visited KF, ‘& had nice talk about W.M.’ CD. 3 SCC annotation: ‘I think the clock face question had something to do with the Tower at Carfax, Oxford, then being altered & refurbished.’

555 • To Giacomo Boni, 28 February 1897 Photostat Sunday 28. February 1897 My dear Boni February flits, and March comes in – March the wild one, which tosses about, and storms the citadel of winter quarters. I am indeed glad that you could say in your letter of the 15th (the one I am now acknowledging) that Cockerell’s efforts in the way of sending you pictured records of William Morris, were helpful to you.1 I had little to do with it, having only looked at the things, and seeing they were really good representations of the greater master’s singularly varied expressions of himself, and his knowledge, approved the choice. They were pretty pictures, lighting up this too dull world of ours with something of the sun of other times, when art was the outcome of the men who did it, and not a mere reflection. This may be said of Morris, that he, to whom all the arts were his of aforetime, still, he only used them without bringing contempt on them by base imitation. He, instructively, was alive to the reality of all times before, but was also of his own, however much he scorned its baseness, and shewed another way. That these reproductions should have stimulated you in your intention of giving to your own countrymen a sign of what had come out of the little island oversea[s], pleased me, and I have no doubt you will tell them that – which, without you, they would not have known. ’Twas a pretty image, in the old Jewish book, of the tower of Babel building, when the purpose was blasted by the confusion of tongues, and when none understood the other. The interpreter then came to the front, and joined together – however feebly – the broken links of the chain. But – the chain is as constantly being broken, and it is the work of the majority to keep the links apart, as of 330

1888–1898

the minority to bring them together. You, therefore, are in the sanctuary of the minority, for you would bind Italy and England with some gentle bond which would make them affectionate partners in the this time of the world’s distress. For, surely, we lumber about, rolling from side to side, as does a ship in cross-seas, having no point in front which is great enough to overcome temporary disablement of the perception of the true way. Cannot you send me some scrap of photograph of what you have been doing to the remains of the Roman Mausoleum of the II cent: for Baron Blanc? From an earlier letter of yours, I gather that you have been collecting the fragments, and setting them up again, in situ, a mere scratch of your minute pen would tell me what you have been doing. I wrote to Wardle last Sunday, in the hope of relieving his weariness in the hospital, and urging him – when he was strong enough – to go to the Neapolitan Baptistery and see what work you had been doing there.2 I am sad about Wardle, that he should be laid up without anyone (save you and Cockerell) to look in upon his weary time under sickness. Wardle has now, for a good many years, been under the great disability of weak health, and suffers when he is not able to go about and add to his large store of accumulated knowledge. In one passage of your letter you note the stags drinking out of the separate rivers – in the mosaics of the baptistery, and also your starlings who seek to feed out of every crack in your habitation. Here again is “a touch of nature” making all the world congruous. When I write to you at the address of the Ministero dell’ Istruzione, I am thinking of you at the home of the birds, and the plants, and the Terrace, when you “unbuckle,” and lay yourself out to take nature unfettered. Alas, my friend, it is these fetters which make us inhuman. Here the man Giacomo comes to the front, and not the slave to circumstances. I too rejoice with you over the early peach trees, and cherry: and look forward to the pomegranate and apple. For the Nightingale, we, in the North, have to wait till mid-April, when he will sing to the Signora all the night long, and not be paid the wages of a primo tenore!3 When I come to see you in Rome (what a name) I shall seek you in this home of the Terrace (1) – Nightingales (2) Starlings (3) Blabirds [sic] (4) and Monaco Bigio (5), all birds with which I am in accord, save, perhaps, the last, when one touch of art may kill all the other touches of nature. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Are you coming to the Northern island in June? The weather has been fitful, but, in the main, lovely. The gods are impartial. Courtauld 181a-c

1 ‘The illustrations of Morris’ work which you selected for me . . . form the subject of a special exhibition which attracts numbers of visitors, such as I think capable to understand and admire such noble

331

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II works of art. A good store of notes & translations is also at hand – but I have not yet been able to cast it into the shape of a monograph or lecture.’ GBO to PSW, 15 February 1897, Courtauld 180a. See above, Letter 548, note 3 and Letter 550, note 1. 2 ‘Some consolation I had in obtaining the permission to make sound the mosaic of the Neapolitan baptistery [Battistero di San Giovanni in Fonte] and remove the coarse coats of paint which injured it. Some days ago I paid a visit to Wardle at the International Hospital. He looked pretty well, and hopes that by this time he may be able to pay a visit to the mosaic. It would be well worth a visit of any of your friends who can travel. As a work of the beginning of the VI century it can be well compared to those at Parenzo.’ 180b–c. 3 ‘A nightingale begins to sing for half an hour a day.’ 180d.

556 • To Sydney Cockerell, 2 April 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 2 April 1897 My dear Cockerell We have been considerably straightened in these parts as regards ways and means, lately – ie for 2 or 3 years, so caution had to be exercised. I don’t mean that this fountain has been the only one rather dried up, for the wits and legs shew signs of but a small balance at their bank; still, the first noted weakness accounts for some vexation in my not being able to help you in your valiant effort to carry an admirable form of art into the bosom of Bromwichham.1 I send two guineas, with the hope that the two golden drops may allay – however slightly, the dreadful drought, till stronger showers come from other quarters. In any case you have planted Rooke’s good work amongst the hardware, and the effect will shew at some time in other forms than that of “dirty Joe”.2 The balance of 7/6 is for the Omar, for which I am indebted to your kindness of heart, and attention to the needs of friends of too little energy. I thank you much for these and other mercies.3 Our time at Gattis’ is short for me, always, though not so to the unhappy waiters; for I seem to fail in getting as much from the fellowship there that should be possible at such lucky meetings. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/60

1 For Thomas Matthews Rooke, see above, Letter 408, note 3. For some years, SCC had been responsible for collecting an annual subscription from a group of Rooke’s admirers, to pay for a drawing – usually of a piece of French ecclesiastical architecture – which became part of Rooke’s regular scheme of work for the season. Each drawing so commissioned was presented to the Birmingham Art Gallery. 2 PSW intensely disliked the industrialist and politician, Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914), elected mayor of Birmingham in 1873, and as a Liberal MP for the city in 1876. In 1886, Chamberlain resigned his cabinet post, which was regarded by many as a bid to replace Gladstone as party leader,

332

1888–1898 and became a Liberal Unionist. By 1898, his principal ambition was the founding of the University of Birmingham. See also above, Letter 475, note 2. 3 Evidently SCC had bought PSW a copy of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayan, first published in 1859.

557 • To Sydney Cockerell, 30 April 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 30 April 1897 Dear Cockerell Walker brought to me yesterday your annual Easter presentation photograph, the fruit of use or kindly custom. I am your debtor, in the best of all human ways, when repayment becomes an impossibility or an insult. You could not have brought me a more delightful – unusual – photograph, or which would be more helpful to my workmanlike habit of mind, and to which the innumerable coursing of the masonry is as attractive as the power and imagination of the ingenious French people of the early 13th century.1 I learn from your two male colleagues in travelling that it was a good time for all in this last French jaunt, of which the sea-torture of the return would be (now) but a poor revenge for a happily snatched pleasure.2 Walker also brought me the ‘shade’ of the departing library, following so closely on the swift home-going of the owner.3 If I were in love of hugging doleful experience, on this could I harp, but I will take to a new spring tulip and consider the oncoming of fresh delight, in spite of the beastly town surroundings which have now to be waded through for every simple natural delight pleasure. You are busy in the sexton’s work of putting away the books – which gave so much joy in the gathering together – and will I hope be well through the painful toil shortly, so as to tell us at Gattis’ of more wonders seen in France, instead of ‘sitting on the ground and telling sad stories’ of dispersed libraries.4 Yours truly | Philip Webb. D Hale White has come back, and I hastened to get him to look after the patient,5 who is much in need of such help. r

V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/61

1 SCC returned on 23 April from an eight-day trip to Chartres, with brief halts at Rouen and Paris. His companions had been his long-term friend, Sara Anderson (former secretary to JR and in 1897 to EBJ), EW and his daughter, Dorothy, and WRL. His gift for PSW was a photograph of the older spire of Chartres taken from the newer spire. 2 EW was invariably ill on Channel crossings, but this had been a particularly rough crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven, and WRL had also been seasick. 3 SCC learned on his return that the sale of the main part of WM’s library had been agreed through the dealers Pickering and Chatto. They were buying on behalf of the Manchester collector, Richard

333

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II Bennett, who paid £18,000, only to sell the larger part of the library through Sotheby’s in December 1898, and the residue to Pierpont Morgan. SCC’s co-executor, F.S. Ellis, drew up a list of valuations of the more important books and manuscripts before they were put up for sale, using where known the prices originally paid by WM. This list is printed as Appendix B in CLWM, IV, pp. 401–33. 4 See above, Letter 328, note 2. It took several days to pack up WM’s books, ‘a dismal business’ for SCC. On 26 April he spent the day making a copy of the catalogue notes he had originally prepared for WM, ‘so as to have some record of the books’. These volumes were old friends to WM’s intimate circle, and that evening EW went to Kelmscott House ‘to have a farewell look at some of the manuscripts’. CD. By 1 May, the last of the books had been removed, and two days later SCC met JM and MM at Victoria on their arrival home from their months in Egypt as guests of WSB and Lady Anne Blunt. See below, Letter 565. 5 If not WHW himself, then perhaps KF.

558 • To Jane Morris, 3 August 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 3 August 1897 My dear Janey It is just possible you may have thought me forgetful of the kindness shewn me by you and Jenny when I was with you, but a mere letter, without some better shew of my remembrance, seemed too poor a way. So I let the time slip by while my head and hands were closely given to the very necessary bread and butter work of ‘supply’. However, in the less occupied times I have quietly considered what seemed to me would be the least offensive way of marking the good old man’s place in Kelmscott Churchyard.1 You will I am sure have guessed it would be something of a trial to me in doing this thing: and, had it not been for our happy visit together to the place I should have been helpless: as it was, I caught in that quiet morning a little light on the task. That fashioned – old block of stone, lying under the spread branches of trees, (probably of the 14th century) set me thinking of what would not be quite out of keeping with the life of him who had been for so many good years the very back bone of my poor life; and who is still not very far away from me – is even close at hand as I read the lines of his ever living books. The thought was in this way: that as we could see him lying so well placed under the grass of the little field, if I could put a semblance of a roof over him, in mimic show of an Iceland one, it would not vex him if his spirit was alight there under it; like that of one of his old northern heroes in his cairn. So I scratched down a note or two on paper – based on the thought of the old stone aforesaid, but different. Then I let it lie-by, looking at it now and then to see if it was not quite foolish, and now I have drawn it out more truly and send it to you with this. You see. I have made it rudely simple, dividing the slopes of roof into the required four spaces with a slip of tree on both sides, which seemed to represent to me his own hands, from those words of himself in the ‘November’ Prologue of the Earthly Paradise – 334

1888–1898

“In whose void patience how can these have part “These outstretched feverish hands, this restless heart? Now dear Janey, should this design not be to your mind – I will try some other way: but I can do nothing in art-matters unless some idea lifts me on. But, you should not think I could hold this idea would be understood by anyone looking at the thing – that is not the meaning; though it would surely have some effect on the senseless stone itself. Please do not fail to let me have your thought regardless of me, or your disappointment would find me out when I am buried at the cross-ways with a stake through my heart. I saw Cockerell on Thursday, when he told me of his visit to you, and of his pleasure in the little added garden you and Giles had so well contrived in the orchard.2 I am your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. I hope Cockerell told you I was mistaken in thinking that Micklethwaite directed the repairs of Kelmscott Church? I beg his pardon.3 BL Add MS 45342, ff. 79-80

1 JM had asked PSW to design the tombstone for WM in the churchyard of St George’s, Kelmscott, near Kelmscott Manor. In due course, inscriptions for JM, JEM and MM would be added in turn. 2 William Giles was the gardener/handyman at Kelmscott. SCC was JM’s guest at Kelmscott Manor for the weekend of 24–25 July. 3 In 1885 WM had become aware that repairs to St George’s, Kelmscott were being considered, and the SPAB prepared a report which was sent to the vicar and churchwardens. In June 1888 the church began restorations under the direction of the Oxford architect, Edward George Bruton. He was instructed ‘to renew the nave and aisle roofs [and] to renew the benches in the chancel and nave, hitherto box pews’. A.R. Dufty, Church of St. George Kelmscott. An Historical and Architectural Account (Leopard’s Head Press, 1991), p. 10. During the course of restoration, more of the church’s mediaeval wall paintings were uncovered, as WM reported to MM (26 October 1888, CLWM, II).

559 • To Jane Morris, 14 August 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 14 August 1897 My dear Janey Walker brought back the drawing yesterday, and said that May was pleased the thing should be so,1 therefore I shall draw out the working plans, and put about for finding a right sort of stone, for we must be sure it is cut from a block which will stand the weather. At present I think of asking Lawrence Turner – brother of Thackeray of that ilk, to help me who is a mason carver,2 and will cut in a way which will not be mechanical in surface. I will also get a price for the making, carriage, and fixing, so that you may know beforehand what it will cost. 335

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Your kind letter telling that the drawing represented just what you wished, was a relief to me, as I was really anxious you should not be disappointed. Now you will have to forewarn yourself that the stone will look new, in our lifetimes: even Kelmscott house looked whitish and new once. I may go as far as to say that sober grey old friends once looked garish and unweathered. How happy it is when they are found to ‘wash well’? And so you have worn through the days of dismantling, and got back to the place in the garden which always smiles from the wicket entrance, to the pyramid at the opposite corner of the garden!3 I took my summary of accounts to Mrs Gilmore yesterday and she was pleased, not only with the figures, but with the figure I have cut in the little chapel of which she is the Warden.4 Things seem to be brightening up with me in these latter days – and, had I not a lucky escape from putting up a new ‘soap stead’?5 Kindest love to Jenny, and I shall remember with thankfulness her sympathetic tears over my poor drawing. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. We have beautiful summer weather here, with very little rain, and the sun is bright between the few drops. The last heavy rain I saw was at Oxford station on my return from you. The paddles of the sky weirs were up with a vengeance. BL Add MS 45342, f. 81

1 ‘I am sending up by Miss Roberts [Veronica Roberts, JEM’s carer-companion] Mr Webb’s drawing for the stone here, please show it to May some time when she is not at her very lowest. I should like her to see it and then return it to Mr. Webb. I think it perfect.’ JM to SCC, 8 August 1897, CLJM. 2 The architect, architectural sculptor and stone carver, Laurence Arthur Turner (1864–1957), was the younger brother of HTT. He was elected Master of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1922. 3 After her return from Egypt in the spring, JM decided to sell the lease of Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, ‘and thereafter to divide her time between Kelmscott Manor in the summer, London lodgings in spring and autumn, and winter lodgings in various fog-free resorts – Lyme Regis in 1897–8, Falmouth in 1900–1901. There were many decisions to make, and she was now burdened by sole responsibility for Jenny’s disability.’ CLJM, p. 287. 4 See above, Letter 516, note 2. 5 Allusion unclear.

560 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18 August 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 18 August 1897 Dear Cockerell I thank you for sending me Rooke’s letter. Reversing things, I should say the ‘Cheval Blanc’1 spurred me on to write him a tangle of mixed metaphors to cheer

336

1888–1898

him up, if such pen-garbage could do that. I agree with you, the subject he has in front of him promises well for his drawing. Mediæval saints after the manner of M.S.S. will be better for re-depicting than the softened tones of later times. We wish him well with his work. Surely his ‘location’ – even if nasally pronounced, is captivation itself?2 It was a lucky thought to let Wardle have the some show of the K.P. work: for it will rejoice him in his solitary times.3 Yes, he writes me from Perugia, and we are duly undergoing the bitterest archæological gibes provided from that country under the shadow of the Appennines. [sic] The beast wags his learned fi nger at me, but the skin of ignorance is a good buffer. Walker brought back the drawing of the W.M. memorial stone: and as Jenny & May, as well as Mrs Morris, seem to be satisfied with the symbol, I shall proceed with the craft-work of it in the between times of pot boiling. You did not say if the thing was fairly satisfactory to you, who have watched and warded the old man so well, and for which our older time thanks are due and given. Your attention in seeing the Vol: 7 of the E. P, and the wonder-isles,4 was were sent to me is hereby acknowledged with thanks. I have been enjoying the ‘linked sweetness long drawn out’ (misquotation from somewhere) of the latter,5 and now carry it to Miss Faulkner to conjure a spell with her. The old man enjoyed loosing the chains of all the witches in hell, and then over ran the country to tie them up again. Let us say that – perhaps – 5 people will read the book! – however, I’m a thankful one. Oh! Ho!! O.o.o.o!!! It cannot be true that A.P.s witch is tied up?6 Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/64

1 White Horse (of Uffington?). 2 SCC annotation: ‘Mr Rooke was making the drawing of the Chapel at Liget near Loches now in the Birmingham Gallery.’ See above, Letter 556, note 1. 3 See note 4. 4 SCC had probably sent GW a copy of the penultimate volume of the Kelmscott Press edition of The Earthly Paradise, or The Water of the Wondrous Isles. The eight volumes of the former appeared between July 1896 and September 1897, the seventh being published on 29 July 1897, the same day as the first appearance of WM’s late fantasy novel, The Water of the Wondrous Isles. 5 ‘Such as the meeting soul may pierce / In notes, with many a winding bout / Of linked sweetness long drawn out’. Milton, L’Allegro, 132–4. 6 On 7 August, SCC had heard from the architect, Alfred Hoare Powell (1865–1960), ‘that his engagement with Olive Garnett was at an end’. CD. As recently as 27 June WRL had shown him a letter from Powell announcing the betrothal. Powell was an active SPAB member, and a successful Arts and Crafts designer. He would marry the calligrapher and designer Louise Lessore (1882–1956) in 1906, whereupon they established a joint studio in Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury.

337

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

561 • To George Washington Jack, 4 September 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 4 September 1897 Dear Jack Your unexpected letter opened out visions of a very useful holiday for you and years.* The 3 babies shewing untold industry in fugitive building in sand, was pretty to consider. I hope the missis came down and criticised as cantankerous client? No wonder you discarded the sketchbook and water colour play for the more serious! * I thought of correcting this slip of pen, but let it stand as having some meaning. Don’t fret about me, for I’m getting along quietly – save for importunate visitors who upset the threads of the Warens [sic] weaving;1 they come in shoals, and behave like kittens with the ball of worsted on the floor. I suppose Arran keeps off the heavy flow of the Atlantic on the coast and allows you to study Geology. That ragged capping to the red sandstone rock must be strange stuff2 – but I suppose it would make good rubble concrete if the genteel Archts of N. B knew how to use it. If you find any good ashlar masonry in the old Castle ruins, make a note of how the face tooling is done, and the fineness of the bedding and jointing. Is there anything remaining of Eglinton Castle?3 I’ve had Mr & Mrs Eyre here, and they both seemed pleased with what is proposed for them.4 I had to give a promise to go to Warrens about the 15th of Octr, just before they – the family – leave, to come to terms about the water supply. He seems to have got further information about the water itself. Vinall has been here, short of work again, and had to take up with the work of his bearish brother in law;5 poor fellow, it makes my heart ache to see him. Alas. Kings have sent no tender as yet, and have made no sign: this delay will put a stop to any considerable work for this year on the ground.6 I suppose you girded at Mr George [King] about the pricing. As to a ‘mansion’, the house is no more in that way than Miss Ewart’s,7 and they made no bones of that, but I fancy Master William’s [William King] weakness is increasing. However, I must write to them, or Miss Cocks will be in a pucker.8 Am following your rule as to work, in doing it quietly; trying all the morning at the Warens problem till 1.30, and office work afterwards – find your desk in the outer office pleasant to work at, and now that the sun is not so powerful the gleams on to the desk are enlivening. Keep an eye on the outer door to stop the bagmen from entering. Tempers now always sweet, the “aye objecting” domine being on his native heath.9 Hope you are teaching the two girls the language of Burrrns. Please to remember me kindly to Mrs George, who must find it trying to have you at home in the middle of the day – though, if you have got as far as Largs on your own shanks, it could not have been all day at home.10 338

1888–1898

Here it is mostly sunshine & shower weather, with one whole day of steady rain, fine effects at times. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 PSW had taken on an unusual project for George Edward Briscoe Eyre (1840–1922), of the printing firm Eyre and Spottiswode. Eyre had inherited Warrens House in Bramshaw, Hampshire, the building consisting of a villa designed in 1804 by John Nash (1752–1835), and a second villa (architect unknown) linked to the first. PSW’s task was to enlarge, alter and rationalise the combined building. The project occupied him from 1897–9. See Kirk, pp. 199–201 and 302. 2 GWJ was enjoying a family holiday on the coast of Ayrshire, the Isle of Arran being situated directly to the west across the Firth of Clyde. There are significant coastal outcrops of volcanic red sandstone at Dunure, Culzean and Turnberry. 3 Eglinton Castle, south of Kilwinning in north Ayrshire, was built in the Gothic castellated style at the end of the eighteenth century for the twelfth Earl of Eglinton, replacing an earlier castle which may have dated from the thirteenth century. The older structure was demolished in 1784, the stone used for its replacement – but the costs of upkeep meant that this building too would be abandoned in 1925. 4 See note 1. 5 Charles Vinall’s brother-in-law not identified. 6 PSW designed Hurlands (1897–9), a small country house near Puttenham, Surrey, for Agneta Henrietta Cocks. The builders were William and George King of Abinger Hammer. See Kirk, pp. 161–4 and 302. 7 Mary Anne Ewart (for whom PSW had built Coneyhurst, in Ewhurst, Surrey: see Vol. I, Letter 212) was a friend of Miss Cocks, and had recommended him to her. 8 See note 6. 9 ‘Domine’ – schoolmaster. A joking reference to GWJ? 10 Unintended perhaps, but an ingenious dual-language pun. Largs is a seaside town on the north Ayrshire coast, whereas Lairg, is a village in Sutherland, in the Scottish Highlands, its name being derived from the Scottish Gaelic, ‘an luirg’ (a shank, or shin). For GWJ to have got to Largs ‘on your own shanks’, or by Shanks’ pony, means that he walked there.

562 • To William Weir, 12 October 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 12 October. 1897 My dear Weir Your signally thoughtful kindness to the ‘old governour’ [sic] is very good of you, and indeed the pretty and useful photographs of yours give me much pleasure, so that I thank you sincerely. Whissendine Ch’ tower is very singular work to me, for I cannot think of any work I have seen which resembles it in character. The parapet & pinnacles are especially good. The ashlar facing seems to be set very closely. Can you guess whence the stone came from; that is, if there is any old quarry in the neighbourhood? The beautifully built and proportioned N. transept – in two colours, seems to be of altogether different stones, and of a roughly coarse kind.1 339

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

The photo of the Oakham market house seems to have provided you with a couple of admiring girls (where do you pick them up?) wh’ put me in mind of one of your Norfolk pictures, where girls were hanging about you also – They never ran after me! The long lout of a breeches boy, with an astonishingly allround-my-hat grin, came from looking at the hooded object in front with his head in the bag?2 I would like to know where the stone slates of the market house came from – they do not look to be very old.3 It was the photos: of the hall of Oakham Castle which made me to “sit up”. These are lovely, the work in good preservation, of the best kind, with all about it delightful, except the nightmare of horseshoes real & nonsensical. Did you notice whether the tooling on the pillars and capitals had been newly done? It seems almost too fresh in the edge of it to be 6 or 700 years old. I suspect the boobies have taken the whitewash off with the chisel?4 I hope you will be able to go to the place again and take the rest of the carved work, for that corbelling to one respond you did is very fine, and does not seem to have been retooled. In Parker’s Domestic archre, the carved finishing to the two nave gables is given, in woodcuts. One is a Centaur, and the other a woman seated on a lion.5 The sculpture on the caps of columns supporting the label mouldings seems to be of a fine kind and effective. If you shd be able to do these, measure the height and width of them. I cannot make out when the corbels under the wall struts of the roof were set up – they seem to be of wood, and the mouldings not early in character? The roof may be contemporary with the building? That you are making up your mind the work you are looking after is good experience for you, & therefore you put up willingly with other things not so helpful is, I think, wise. We, here, are rather clambering up sand hills, and sliding down again about once a week which does not promise much in the way of remuneration of labour. It was to have begun in the building in August, and nothing as yet is decided about it – patience is our only wear. Jack sends his good Will and Winmill was here yesty.6 Yours truly | Philip Webb. Do you think you can find out the real price of the new quarry of Ketton stone on truck at the station? and the size of which special blocks can be got?7 I hope to see you at Xmas if not before. SPAB W-W 6

1 The tower of the church of St Andrew, Whissendine in Rutland dates from the fourteenth century, the main church building itself having been built in the thirteenth century. ‘I was glad of your remarks on Whissendine Church, the stone of tower is Clipsham, & has stood splendidly – the facings of the transept are also Clipsham with a local iron stone very rich brown, for the ashlar – the same local stone is used here at Stapleford Hall, in the old wing – photos of which I shall send you

340

1888–1898

2 3

4

5

6

7

when I manage to get them.’ WW to PSW, 19 October 1897, SPAB. Clipsham limestone is quarried in Lincolnshire. WW himself of course, as photographer. Oakham is the market town of Rutland. ‘The stone slates on the Market house are from “Colleg Weston” – a great number are used around this neighbourhood, the quarry being near at hand. They are said to require a “native” to lay them properly – on account of their irregularity – which allows of the water getting up underneath. They are laid with a mortar bed. The stone is got out during the summer months & kept buried till the frost sets in, when on being exposed in a damp state it splits readily into slabs.’ Only the late twelfth-century hall of Oakham Castle remains, but it is the earliest example to survive in such a complete state. ‘My impression of the tooling on the pillars & capitals is, that of its being untouched, but shall examine them again closely on the point – as well as some of your other questions.’ T. Hudson Turner, Some Account of Domestic Architecture in England from the Conquest to the End of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1851), one of a series of plates illustrating details from Oakham Castle, between pp. 30–1. Charles Canning Winmill (1865–1945) worked as an architect for the London County Council. An admirer of PSW, he was active in the Arts and Crafts movement. His daughter remembered his frequent claim that ‘Anything I know of architecture is due to Philip Webb. I partly knew how favoured I was, but not wholly.’ Joyce M. Winmill, Charles Canning Winmill, An Architect’s Life (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1946), p. 54. ‘I have to go to Ketton quarry soon & shall make inquiries as to actual price of the new stone on truck – it varies with the size of blocks, the ordinary being about 3.0 long, 1'6" high, 2.0 wide.’

563 • To Sydney Cockerell, 31 October 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday night. Oct: 31. ’97 Dear Cockerell I am really glad you have engaged for a twelvemonth, as this will give you breathing time, and two fresh experiences.1 I doubt if the “friendly plot”, if it be one, is not really a taking advantage of your accidental disengagement. In any case it won’t matter, so long as you are employed and not wastefully. Parliament meets in end of Jan, or February, I suppose, so you may be beginning with the M.P. first?2 As for the Arab of the desert, you must prance, and if your ‘seat’ is not good you must perfect it.3 Have you read “Youatt”? a good old fashioned book which I have.4 It wd be bad if the talk was of hocks, & you were thinking of Rhine wine. You’ll surely be going down to Sussex, and mounting one of Blunt’s flyers. May I be there, and not to see between your seat & the saddle. A little Cobblers wax5 is useful rubbed on the inner side of the breeches’ knee – I can lend you a pair!! What you are intending by the “Love Lyrics” I can’t make out, something industriously and to the purpose kind, I’m sure6 – but of one thing I’m more sure – namely that you are better in England for us, than if you went to America, where there are no Chichester Cathls to be blasted. Preb. Webb telegraphs – “Lipscombe Exeter contractors material on the ground”7 – and so you see “all mounseers8 f’m pushes are caught in the wood”. We are dished9 again. Have the ‘antiquaries’, under a titled president, thought better of it?10 Norman may be dished too?11 341

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Mind you, an Arab horse has a small head with longish ears – and a large eye. His withers seldom so high as a British thoroughbred, and his hind quarters are horizontal, carrying the tail not between the legs. Yours truly | Philip Webb. (in a hurry) V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/67

1 SCC annotation: ‘The idea at this time was that I should give my services for half the year to George Wyndham & for the other half to Wilfrid Blunt. The first part of the plan fell through & Mr Blunt employed the whole of my time.’ 2 George Wyndham (1863–1913) was the eldest son of PWY and Madeline Wyndham and a member of ‘the Souls’, with his sister Mary Elcho (see above, Letter 446, note 3). Like his father he became a Conservative MP (he was first elected for Dover in 1889), and served as private parliamentary secretary to Arthur Balfour. 3 WSB was a passionate horseman, and he and his wife, Lady Anne (Byron’s granddaughter), established a successful stud for Arab horses at Crabbet, one of his two Sussex estates. WSB probably took for granted horsemanship as a necessary social skill. SCC’s initial duties were as a researcher for the book on the Arab horse which WSB planned to write. 4 William Youatt, The Horse, [London]: Knight’s Store of Knowledge, [1841]. 5 Cobblers-wax: ‘a resinous substance used by shoemakers for rubbing their thread’ (OED). 6 The Love-Lyrics and Songs of Proteus by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was published by the Kelmscott Press in February 1892. Unbeknown to PSW, SCC was arranging for WSB to present him with a signed copy (dated 29 October 1897), now part of the PSW Kelmscott Press collection at Trinity College, Cambridge. Peterson, p. 11. See below, Letter 565. 7 His brother, Percival Speakman Webb, Prebendary Canon at Chichester. See above, Letter 505, note 1. 8 Mounseer: ‘antiquated anglicized pronunciation of “Monsieur”, which survived as a vulgarism down to the 19th century, and occasionally appears either in representations of illiterate speech or in derisive allusion to English prejudice against foreigners’ (OED). 9 Dished: done for, or cheated (slang). 10 Harold Arthur Lee-Dillon, seventeenth Viscount Dillon (1844–1932), had recently been appointed President of the Society of Antiquaries. With the SPAB, the Antiquaries were closely involved in the controversy surrounding major restoration work proposed to the west front of Peterborough Cathedral. See above, Letter 548, note 2 and Letter 550, note 5. 11 The artist and antiquary Philip Norman (1842–1931), a SPAB committee member, was also Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries, 1897–1913. His watercolours often depicted ancient London buildings at risk of demolition.

564 • To Jane Morris, 5 November 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 5 November 1897 My dear Janey I saw Cockerell at ‘antiscrape’ last evening, when he told me of the migration of Jenny and you. I hope by this time you have recovered a little from the long and cross-country journey. When you can write me word of how you are doing at Lyme Regis I shall be pleased. I have never been to Lyme, but from the lie of the land, I fancy the hills rising at the back will keep off the N. E winds, which, here in London, are rather cold just now. 342

1888–1898

Lawrence Turner has given me his estimate for the stone memorial for Kelmscott Churchyard, and which I copy, as follows. “To mason, carve, and fix a gravestone of Chelynch Stone,1 including foundation supports, but not the concrete foundation, I estimate at the sum of £25.0.0. including carriage.” This is a reasonable sum for the work and material, carriage and fixing, so that, if you agree to it, I will tell him to put it in hand. At my request Turner wrote particularly to the quarryman as [to] the durability of the stone, and the following was the answer: “There is no doubt whatever but that the hard Chelynch beds of Doulting Stone will stand all atmospheric influences remarkably well”. The stone I believe will be the best for the simple design of the memorial: and being grey in colour, and coarse in grain, will not disturb much the quiet look of the old church & graveyard. It pleased me to take some trouble in designing the two carved sprays lying over the roof of the slab, and doubtless I shall be very troublesome to Lawrence Turner when he is carving them. When the work is going on I shall write to Revd H. Meeres, as I mentioned to you, and ask him what his fee is for putting the memorial in the Churchyard.2 When I went last time to see Broadwell Church, a tall, rather good natured looking sort of parson came out to talk to us about his church.3 Do you think that would have been Mr Meeres? If so, I would mention that I had had the pleasure of seeing him & advising about his steeple. Waiting to learn how you are both getting on, | I am your affectionate friend Philip Webb. When the stone is nearly ready, I shall write direct to your man Giles, and explain exactly what I want him to do about preparing the foundation for the stone work. BL Add 45342, f. 82

1 Chelynch limestone, quarried at Doulting in the Mendip hills, Somerset. 2 For the Reverend Horace Meeres, see below, Letter 579, note 1. 3 The early twelfth-century church of Saints Peter and Paul, Broadwell, in Oxfordshire. Horace Meeres lived at Broadwell, and was vicar there as well as at Kelmscott. See Frank C. Sharp, ‘William Morris’s Kelmscott Connections’, JWMS, XIII (Spring, 1999), p. 47.

565 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 7 November 1897 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn | London W.C. 7 November 1897 To | Wilfred S. Blunt Esqre My dear Sir Through the kind office of Mr Sydney Cockerell I have your book of poems, “The Love Lyrics & Songs of Proteus.”1 Not personally knowing you I am somewhat 343

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

at a loss in rightly expressing my thanks for such an unlooked-for kindness on your part. At the time of the Arabi [sic] trouble in Egypt, Mr Percy Wyndham sent me an earlier book of your poetry:2 and our late friend William Morris had often spoken of your strong literary gift. Mrs Morris too has expressed herself gratefully for your kindness to her and her daughter when they were at Cairo.3 There is one more string of sympathy between us, and that is your love for the Arab horse, so that I am well provided with impersonal knowledge, and therefore can with some sincerity thank you for your kindly thought of me. That our great friend stood sponsor in his admirable typographical way, by setting your verse in rose-red colour on a black and white ground, gives an additional charm to the presentation.4 I look forward to this book in the evenings, after the day’s work is over. At present I have only been able to dip, to put myself in tune, but have at once found another promise of content in “the honest soul of d’Artagnan, twice happy knave, a Gascon and a man”.5 Believe me | Yours responsively | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 See above, Letter 563, note 6. 2 Probably A New Pilgrimage and Other Poems (London: Kegan Paul & Co, 1889). PSW’s copy is now at the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 133. 3 After the death of WM, JM and JEM had spent several months in Egypt as guests of WSB and Lady Anne Blunt. 4 ‘[T]he decorated initials were printed in red at [Blunt’s] request, and when the book was in progress Morris commented: “They are now on Mr. Blunt’s book. I have one sheet and it looks very gay & pretty with its red letters, but I think I prefer mine in style of printing”.’ WM to JEM, 22 October 1891. Cited in Peterson, p. 10. ‘Morris’s cheerful acquiescence is curious in view of the fact that his wife had also had a prolonged affair with Blunt. . . . Throughout the printing of the book, Janey Morris sent detailed criticisms of the poems to Blunt and proofed the entire volume.’ Peterson, p. 11. 5 ‘Oh, for the honest soul of d’Artagnan, / Twice happy knave, a Gascon and a man!’ The final lines of WSB’s ‘On Reading the Memoirs of M. d’Artagnan’, p. 178 in the Kelmscott Press volume.

566 • To Sydney Cockerell, 16 November 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 16 November 1897 My dear Cockerell It is commonplace to say how good it is of you, and had better say I am glad the Kelmscott press is coming shortly to an end, or you would go as far as to commit a crime to give me pleasure. Of course I am pleased at the thought of having a whole set, but ’tis a vanity, for I shall so shortly have to leave them to someone 344

1888–1898

who will not care to know what is inside them.1 Hope Ellis will give in to reason, and drop his further schemes.2 Yours truly | Philip Webb. Thanks to you again, Leighton has sent me the Isumbras, and the Degrevant.3 They are sweetly pretty books. The block print in the latter is, I think, too black in the engraving; and in the beauty of the former, it wd have been well if a little more light had been cut into the landscape. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/68

1 For PSW’s decision to present his set of Kelmscott Press volumes to Trinity College, Cambridge, see Vol. III, Letters 857–8. 2 F.S. Ellis edited 15 volumes for the Kelmscott Press (see the following note), and may have been contemplating further projects. 3 Syr Ysambrace and Sire Degrevaunt, both edited by F.S. Ellis, were published by the Kelmscott Press on 11 and 12 November 1897 respectively. See Peterson, pp. 128–30. PSW’s copy of Syr Ysambrace is annotated ‘From the Trustees of W.M. Nov. 1897.’ – in other words, from Ellis and SCC.

567 • To Jenny Morris, 29 November 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 November 1897 My dear Jenny I wrote to your mother on Saturday and had a letter from her this morning – too quick a return for it to be an answer to mine, but, in order not to unsettle the mother’s equable temper with yet another on the heels of the last, I send this to you.1 I learn that there have been ‘wigs on the green’ between two girls – and all about me. That is lovely! and puts me in mind of Borrow’s story of Ab Gwilym, who was a terrible Jack, among the maidens, and once – as the story goes – set a flock of them by the ears by inviting them all, singly and individually to meet him under an oak tree wherein he lay to watch the result. I am sorry to say that instead of falling upon each other at once – as they should have done, they compared notes and wished they had him there to slaughter – but he jeering from the boughs set them to the scratch while he decamped under cover of the clatter and screams.2 Shall I send two parts of thin padded boxing gloves to Lyme, or would you both prefer to use the twice 10 talents?3 As the mother – blessings on her, promises me more silk handkerchiefs will you kindly mark the next two in white silk, so that I may know which girl to think of when I blow my own trumpet? When the horn of the snuffer is heard on the stairs.4 I am made happier by learning you have had some very pleasant weather lately. Though this cannot last much longer, still you have had it, as one says to the skin & stone of the Peach. 345

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Last evening here it blew great guns in squalls, and when half down Doughty Street it swept my hat off with indescribable swiftness. There was miserable I in the dim lamplit street searching for the thing – for not a glimpse had I of its flight. It may have been flung into an area hard by, or lodged on the cross of St Pauls. 3 girls on their way to church tittered in a devotional spirit at my condition (I wished grisly bears had come and eaten them up) and perhaps that made me spiteful enough to quote from Ab Gwilym. So, after collecting my senses – except those gone in the hat, I slunk back home to get an old one. Ah! the loss was and will be felt. There my dear friend is some nonsense for you. Possibly you will be saying, all my wits went with the hat. If they did, I shall go to Pauls and listen to a sermon, but in any case I hope you will go on liking your affectionate | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 83

1 ‘If you see dear Mr Webb at the Anti-Scrape to-morrow please give him my dear love, & say I will write to him in a day or two, for he has been most good about writing to us. I have been very well since we came here, & Mother has been decidedly the better for the sea.’ JEM to SCC, 1 December 1897, BL Add 52739, f 33. 2 This story of the fourteenth century Welsh poet, Dafydd Ap Gwilym, is recounted in George Borrow, Wild Wales: Its People, Language and Scenery (1862), ch 86. 3 For the parable of the talents, see Matthew 25:14–30. 4 ‘Kathleen, Mavourneen, the grey dawn is breaking, / The horn of the hunter is heard on the hill’, are the opening lines of ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’ by Louisa Macartney Crawford (1790–1858).

568 • To Sydney Cockerell, 23 December 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 23 Decemr ’97 Dear Cockerell As you may be getting off to a French paradise,1 I do not wait for receipt of the German wood cut book;2 so I now say how much pleased I am with your always kindly thought of me. I shall much like to have this example of your help so freely given to the last years of the old man, and after he was gone on the long journey. I will carry Miss Faulkner’s copy to her directly I get it, and I know beforehand how much she will be gratified by the beautiful book, your labours on it, and the thought of the old man wh’ will be called up by it.3 Yours sincerely | Ph: Webb. If you have not started, can you send me Lethaby’s Barnstaple address, (on postcard) as he was to leave for it yesterday, and I may have to write to him? V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/69 346

1888–1898 1 Any thoughts of a trip to France were abandoned. 2 Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century, dated 15 December 1897, and published by the Kelmscott Press on 6 January 1898. This consisted of 35 reproductions from books in WM’s library, and was edited by SCC. 3 ‘You know the book you sent will have great value to me and I thank you heartily. You must have given much time and care to getting the book together so admirably.’ KF to SCC, 24 December 1897, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/69A.

569 • To Jane Morris, 31 December 1897 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 31 December 1897 My dear Janey Yes, I did much like to have your few lines, and the “festive season” could but mean, I thought, ‘pigs trotters’ for Xmas dinner. But you rejoiced my heart by speaking well of Lyme for your wintering, for I’ve often thought of you all, and sighed a wish that the place might be congenial, and in other ways fit for you to sojourn in.1 Wait but a few years, and there may be a travelling opera troupe, with the ‘high art’ placard decorations on the walls of the ancient port. I have never been even near to the place, and if the fates would make a reasonable arrangement for doing my work by deputy, I should venture on your hospitality. As it is, it is about as likely that I should go to Sicily: another place I have wished to see. No, I’ve not read the Tennyson life – but it is clear to me that it has been over stuffed, like Xmas turkeys with two or three kinds of stuffing.2 From what you say in the way of sympathy with T. I shall expect you to drop into poetry yet awhile. During a talk with one poet, and half a dozen or so of poetically inclined fellows, who had all ventured in verse making, I was the only one of the company who had never misbehaved in that way, so that self-esteem rose in me! Have just been round to carver Turner’s workshop to see the stone for Kelmscott, which has just come green from the quarry, (2 rs). It is soft yet, and in good condition to rough hew, after which it will be left to dry, and become hard for the finishing chisel. ’Tis a fine block specially got. Inclosed is a chip of it for you to see, if the post mistress does not smash it with her date-stamp.3 It is a sound limestone, with sparkling crystals or mica dotted about: when the stone is dry and been exposed to weather it will be dark grey in colour. I am glad to say Catterson Smith has done the silver cross for Mrs Gilmore’s chapel excellently well, and the good women are much pleased with it.4 It sets them off. Isabella has been a singularly kindly, untiresome client, for wh’ I am thankful: must go and see the cross in its place when I can, and cheer up the good dame. Give my love to Jenny & May, and good remembrance to your sister, and believe me your good old friend Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 84 347

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 JM was at Chatham House in Lyme Regis throughout December and, except for a few days when she visited London, until early May 1898. 2 Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir by his Son, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1897). This carefully controlled and reverential biography of his father was a deliberate attempt by Hallam Tennyson to thwart the speculations of the ‘ghouls’, as he called them, and to provide the authoritative family account. It provides an interesting parallel to the work which JWM was even then doing in preparing the WM story, and of EBJ’s anxiety to pre-empt ‘the vultures’ (see above, Letter 547, note 3). 3 See below, Letter 571, note 1. 4 ‘At the east end there was a wooden altar with carved panels. The design of the centre panel was a cross in the shape of a tree, with branches and foliage extending into the two outer panels. Behind the altar was an arched recess decorated with green and brown tiles. Against this was suspended a magnificent cross, made of thin silver laid on a wooden foundation, and exquisitely patterned. Presented by Alice Ellis, an Associate and generous benefactor of the Institution, it was made by Mr Catterson-Smith from a drawing by Philip Webb. . . . Behind the altar was a stone shelf. On this stood candlesticks and two tall Chinese vases, which Philip Webb had procured and brought triumphantly to Deaconess Gilmore exclaiming that their blue was “just the colour”.’ Grierson, Isabella Gilmore, p. 145.

570 • To Giacomo Boni, 9 January 1898 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. January 18981 My dear Giacomo Boni I thank you for your interesting floricultural letter from Girgenti – that wonderful place.2 If I had been with you I should have persuaded you to forget the recall to Rome, and take a few more days lying under the shadow of the rusted Doric temples.3 You may remember you sent me, years ago, some small photographs of the place, which, when they occasionally turn up I smile again on them with much pleasure. There is one with white flowering (cherry?) trees, and big weather-worn olives, which is particularly delightful, with distant view of a temple on a conical hill. I see you say the temples are built of “shell concrete”, that is, I suppose, what we call “shelly oolite”? and I suppose the corrosion comes from iron being in the stone.4 I gathered from someone that several of the Greek buildings stand somewhat near a scarping of the ground, looking on to the plain below. There is one photo: of yours giving a temple placed on easy sloping ground backed up by a lofty bank of rocks like a rampart. This I think is at Segesta, the columns are not fluted. Those of the Hercules temple at Agrigentum are. Did you find any signs of the stone having been coated with marble-dust stucco? Your description of the ‘terraced’ earthly paradise in the Via Genova is magnificent;5 a kind of combination of the gardens of Sallust and the Zoological society in London, and I do not envy the custodian who has to take care of them while you are circumnavigating the island of Sicily. I can fancy the grumblings of “Pino” on your return,6 of the shameless neglect under which he has suffered, and 348

1888–1898

of his demanding a state prosecution of the criminal, regardless of consequences from the Republican stars & stripes oversea. Wardle tells me his new ‘location’ – as the Yankees would say, is not far south of the church of S: Bernardo,7 so that the Italian and English “dryasdusts” can shake their fists at each other with the wrathful emphasis of learned antiquarians, with their silhouettes sharply outlined against the rising moon. I am pleased with the thought of your planting beautiful bushes on the ruins of ancient Rome, protecting with nature’s gentlest garment, and setting an example contrary to the destructive friends of ‘restoration’ which should shame them, but probably will not.8 I can only regret you did not follow my advice when you were here, and write indignantly to the English papers of the mischief going on with us. Who knows but the timely word from Italy would have had as good an effect as it had from England in the time of the Venetian St Mark’s consternation! If you had done so, regardless of the frowns from England’s filibustering fleet, you might have saved Westminster Abbey Church from the sorrowful indignities it has suffered since your visit. You will not recognise the outside of the wonderful old monument when you next come to see it.9 I have told my nearest friends of your proposed visit in the coming spring, so that they may prepare their minds for looking on the Italian saviour of antiquities, in the flesh. If it be possible for you to choose your own time for the visit – the second time, to the city of “black whitewash”, east winds, and fog, try to manage it not earlier than the end of May, when our northern year is shaking itself into its inviting clothes, which are as green as the grass of Elysian fields. If you disbelieve the tongue of the Webbian rhapsodist, ask the sedate and philosophical Wardle for confirmation of the good advice. Having told so many stories in honour of Monaco Bigio to W.R. Lethaby and Sydney Cockerell, they are a tip-toe in anticipation of the charm of your visit, and look upon me with a little awe, as having seen so closely, and without blushing, the embodied light of Italy. Cockerell having touched the hem of your garment10 looks forward to the gift of a pair of old shoes, at least, which have carried you over the sacred soil, and which he may put in his cabinet, or present to the immortal Barnum for worldwide reverence.11 But to return to prose and British common-place. There appeared in the English newspaper, the “Daily Graphic’ of January 4th in this new year, a somewhat – as it appeared to me – highly coloured expression of fear as to the present condition of the Roman Aurelian wall, stating that it was in a dangerous condition, and that the municipality of Rome would not grant the sum needed for its repair.12 It seemed to be an exaggerated expression of what might be a point of great importance. My remembrance of the wall, in which I took great delight in following its circuit, is, that on the whole, it was not in a dangerous state, though it is highly likely that, in such an enormous length, there are places in it which would want looking-to by people who possessed knowledge and insight: the latter being a quality only too scarce anywhere. I well remember my pleasurable examination of the wall from the Ludovisi gardens, and getting up on to one of the abutment towers and looking at the outside from thence. I learn 349

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

that since I was in Rome, these gardens have been swallowed up by the maw of commercial speculation, and have been devastated in the way I saw the gardens of Sallust being treated. I venture to send friendly greeting to Sig: Richard Norton on the strength of my having had much pleasure in the conversation of his father, at whose table in London I also had the pleasure of dining, and afterwards joining in a friendly romp in the drawing room with the then family of Norton.13 Adieu Sir James, and hearty wishes for his good health of body and sanity of mind. Yours truly | Philip Webb. When you burst in upon me here you will much enjoy the genuine blackwash of the ceiling, which is hardly likely to be whitewashed before your arrival. Courtauld 185a-d

1 PSW has annotated GBO’s letter ‘answered 9 January 1898’. GBO to PSW, 31 December 1897, Courtauld 184a. 2 For Agrigento, see above, Letter 366, note 5. 3 ‘As chrystallized [sic] forms of early architectural ideas these temples especially the Hera’s are worth seating by [sic] and looking at them for a while. Then these Dorics were so honest in their building and they did not boast of anything in their inscriptions, quite the opposite of the XVII centy restorers of the cathedral which is giving away in every direction.’ 184b. 4 ‘The temples themselves are built with a shell concrete tawny in colour, but turned to a red-wine like colour by the effect of fire, the quarry beds were not laid horizontally and the atmospheric corrosion originated some picturesque effects.’ 184b–c. 5 See note 8, below. 6 Pino was GBO’s ‘funny starling friend at Rome’. 7 Presumably the cylindrical, domed church of San Bernardo alle Terme in Rome, built at the end of the sixteenth century. 8 ‘Next April and May the terrace will be truly worth seeing. . . . My 500 pine trees (pinus pinea) were planted up the Palatine & baths of Caracalla . . . . and over 2000 rose trees were disseminated among the monuments, together with acanthus, oleanders, junipers, ericas, etc.’ 184d. 9 For Westminster Abbey restorations, see above, Letter 508, notes 8 and 10. PSW meant, of course, Pearson’s treatment of the North front façade (1884–92), work done in great secrecy, which when unveiled met a storm of protest, led by WM. See Christopher Wilson et al, Westminster Abbey (London: Bell & Hyman, 1986), p. 37. ‘Not content with replacing the Wren and Dickinson masonry, Pearson redesigned the major features. . . . So great was the revulsion, that Lethaby (Pearson’s eventual successor as Surveyor of the Abbey) could describe Pearson’s restoration of the North Front in print only twenty years later as having “made all false”.’ Thomas Cocke, 900 Years: The Restorations of Westminster Abbey (London: Harvey Miller, 1995), p. 75. 10 SCC had met GBO in Rome in November 1896. See above, Letter 550, note 1. 11 The New York showman, Phineas Barnum, whose promotions featured human curiosities as well as hoaxes. See also above, Letter 371, note 9. 12 ‘If the report be true that the ancient walls of Rome are likely to disappear, because neither the Italian Government nor the Municipality of Rome are willing to grant the small sum needed to preserve them from destruction, it is indeed a serious matter. Now, without wishing to wound

350

1888–1898 the feelings of Italians by suggesting that they might obtain the sum necessary by a little more economy in other quarters, we may, at any rate, point out that it is obviously injudicious to expend money upon excavating antiquities if you allow those already above ground to fall into decay and be destroyed.’ The Daily Graphic, 4 January 1898. 13 ‘My new neighbour, Richard Norton, the son of Prof. Charles N. of Harvard is a very pleasant acquisition. I gave him and his lady (daughter of Prof. White of Harvard) full command over my terrace, when they have to take care, during my leave, of 97 varieties of roses.’ 184c–d. During the Great War, the archaeologist Richard (Dick) Norton (1872–1918), son of the Harvard art historian and friend of Ruskin, Charles Eliot Norton, would lead one of the American motorized ambulance services, consisting largely of New England volunteers who wanted to serve the Allied cause in the years before the United States entered the conflict. They served on the French battlefields, and provide vital medical support. Norton’s role was recognized by the award of the French cross of the Legion of Honour in 1917.

571 • To Jane Morris, 12 January 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 12 January 1898 Dear Janey Your welcome letter with news of your ways and manners was a pleasure to me – and I am glad you could send it after the influenza attack – were willing to write in fact, in spite of the lowering of the sickness. You took it in time I fancy, which is half the remedy. We have had little sunshine here, mostly mist or half fog, but the weather has been otherwise fine, and not really cold for the most winterly of months. I am glad you like the look of the colour and grain of the stone, chosen for lasting, and its grey colour.1 It will probably take more than a month to work – say the end of February: for I shall be sure to fidget Turner the carver, as his shop is in the next street – poor man! Have you read Mark Twain’s new book, “more tramps abroad”?2 It amused me, and Kate Faulkner rather liked it. If you have not read it I will send it to you when it comes back to me. I was in the country – near East Grinstead, on Monday, looking after some odds and ends of new work to the new house I built there some two to three years ago.3 The most interesting objects I saw were the hills & woods about – with changing mists, some small birds, and an apple pie for my dinner at lunch time, so that I called lustily for more pie. You know one of my weaknesses, but nothing of the other dozen or so. Yes, I am busy in my lumbering pains-taking way; and, as usual, am all behind with my work. Not like Gladstone, who calls for more work, as I do for apple pie.4 Age begins to tell on me, and there is no workhouse I know of quite to my mind.5 Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 85

351

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 1 He had sent JM a ‘chip’ of the stone which Laurence Turner was preparing to carve for WM’s memorial stone. See above, Letter 569. 2 Mark Twain, More Tramps Abroad (London: Chatto & Windus, 1897). 3 Standen: see next letter. 4 Gladstone’s legendary energy and longevity came to a close in 1898. He had retired from public life in 1896, and the winter of 1897–8 was spent in Cannes. After his return in March cancer was diagnosed and made public, so that his death in May was not unexpected. 5 PSW’s first reference to thoughts of retirement, which becomes a familiar theme from this point.

572 • To James Beale, 20 January 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 20 January. 1898 To James S. Beale Esqre Dear Mr Beale Having seriously considered the questions put to me as to the Hall and Billiard room at Standen – since my visit on the 10th inst – I send you the result: and, to make the points clearer, I have made the inclosed drawing.1 Of the two questions it seems to me that of the hall is much the more important: and as I had the advantage of seeing the hall used at the tea-time gathering – with 11 people in it, I could fairly judge as to the reasonableness of your petition for increased space for that and other domestic functions. Now, unless you increased the size of the hall itself – apart from overflowing it into the Drawing and Billiard rooms, no satisfactory easement would be gained on the chief point. If it were possible – without waste of money and other real drawbacks, the way to combine the accommodation of the hall and billiard rooms, would be to make a wide opening between the two just where the hall fireplace is, which would injure both rooms, and I believe you would not entertain it for a moment, seeing what injurious structural alterations in the house, and other inconveniences such a proceeding would involve. I have therefore put that supposition aside. On the second point, that of making the billiard-room more accessible for lookers on at the game, I think the suggestion made to utilise the passage from the hall, and make a wide opening in the south wall of billiard room would certainly be injurious to the use and comfort of the room, as a billiard-room, unless the opening could be closed at times. The plan sheet will I think shew you how an opening could be contrived with the least possible disturbance of existing conditions, and yet give increased facility for guests to watch play at the table. As to the proposed increase of the size of hall: this I think could be done with but little inconvenience, and at a comparatively small cost in money, or derangement of the house. The plan shews the extension of the hall northwards out to the front wall of the Porch, by taking away the existing window, and putting a new form of window in the new north outer wall, with a small window in the western wall 352

1888–1898

of the new projection, & with an additional heating-apparatus “radiator” on the opposite side. This would make the hall 35.6 long (4'0" longer than the drawing-room) instead of 26'0" as at present. The tea-table could then be put opposite the fireplace, and the piano – which at present rather cuts the room in two, could very well go into the new projection and be away from the door leading to the porch. I believe the outside elevation is so contrived as not much to disturb the general appearance of the north side of the house: but it took me several days to do, for I had to try two or three schemes before arriving at the one represented on the drawing. None of the other arrangements were at all satisfactory, as they seriously injured the effect of the entrance porch, and disturbed the north front generally. In order to combine reasonably with the porch, I have faced the new projection wholly with stone, and as the increased size of the room made it necessary to get more light, the window is shaped with canted sides – with 6 lights instead of 5 of the old window, and the support of the roofing is carried by the stone mullions of the window itself: this plan allowing the least obstruction to the light: and, as the increased width of opening does not allow of workable shutters, I secure the openings with iron stanchions and saddle bars fixed in the stone frames. A curtain on the inside can be drawn across the whole window at night time. The small west window would allow, I believe, of a gleam of the setting sun entering the end of the room in summertime, and the canted north window would give reflected light from the side walls.2 Yours truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Standen MS 176

1 PSW had been asked by the Beales to make modifications to Standen, including the creation of ‘more space in the hall for a grand piano, and the larger than expected daily tea-parties’. Kirk, p. 154. 2 These changes are all explored in Kirk.

573 • To John William Mackail, 25 January 1898 Draft (in the space after JWM’s letter of 20 January 1898); pencil 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn – 245 Jany 1898 r Dear M Mackail. With this I am sending what I have been able to do in the way of answer to your questions,1 and am only sorry that my memory serving me so badly it can be but of small assistance to you. The facts are as nearly right as I can make them, and the rest of the paper substantially represents the relation between W.Ms mind and the countryside he understood to the heart of it as I understood it.2 Yours truly | Ph. W. 353

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I am sorry the notes have run to such length – (a vice of illiterate people) – but I hope you may pick something out of the tangle wh’ may in your way be helpful. WMG J168

1 ‘What I want to know, & what no doubt you can tell me at once, is the date of three things in the Kelmscott country (1) Great Coxwell Barn (2) New Bridge over the Thames at Standlake (3) a brass in Great Coxwell church, of William de Morys & Johane his wife. . . . P.S. I find that you went down to Kelmscott with Morris & Faulkner to examine the house before he took it, about the end of May 1871. I wonder if you have any clear recollections of that visit? they would be more than usually interesting.’ JWM to PSW, 20 January 1888, WMG, J168. 2 JWM reflected PSW’s opinions as well as his recollections. ‘Much of the domestic building of this region is little inferior to the churches either in age or architecture. The most splendid example is the tithe barn at Great Coxwell, a noble structure of the middle of the thirteenth century . . . its hundred and fifty feet of grey roof raised on a forest of orderly set oak timbers. . . . The grey pointed arches over the Thames, on the solitary highway leading south out of the Royal Forest of Wychwood, are as beautiful now as when, six hundred and fifty years ago, they received their still surviving name of the New Bridge.’ Mackail, I, pp. 233–4. For the Great Coxwell barn, see also below, Letter 587. ‘At Whitsuntide [of 1871] Webb went down with him to look over it, and Faulkner joined them from Oxford. The house was reported to be in a sound condition, and was taken from midsummer.’ Mackail, I, p. 239. One longer passage about Kelmscott Manor is directly attributed to PSW. ‘“From my earliest recollections this general kind of house was familiar to me, where the coarse oolite stone of Thames valley gave the peculiar character to the old buildings in and around Oxford. There are still remaining, in more or less perfect state, many houses of the same quality, though some are more architecturally marked than at Kelmscott”.’ Mackail, I, p. 231. A striking final paragraph addressed the current threat to the vernacular architecture of the countryside, written with a spontaneous anger, and representing the views of PSW as much as it did those of WM. ‘“No unprejudiced person could read the last chapter of News from Nowhere without being obliged to allow that W.M. had read the influences of the beautiful place in its entirety clearly, and without transformation by imagination; the real wanting no fanciful improvement. The price he paid for this joy in the house and all lying about it was the shadow of the coming change which overhung it: no efforts on his part – and they were many – could stay the piecemeal fungus-growth of disease in building which had begun to eat into the fringe of the surroundings: for each inevitable new element of change had tenfold brutal force in its vulgarization from the collected purity and simplicity on which it was settling down”.’ Mackail, I, p. 232.

574 • To Giacomo Boni, 6 February 1898 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 6 February 1898 Il Cavaliere Giacomo Boni My dear Sir James. I duly received your Arboricultural and Horticultural dissertation of 12 January, and only delayed acknowledging it till the paper on Westminster Abbey church came.1 Then I waited till John Hebb had roughly translated it to meet my ignorance, and now it is Sunday when I have a little more time for private conversation than in the rest of the week. 354

1888–1898

And so you had a fine raid into Sicily, bringing back with you a prisoner to solace the starling in his enforced retirement on the “Terrace”. I fancy the chattering starling will say to the Lark ‘cheer up my friend, slavery is not so bad – never was so hard even in the days of Old Rome. The masters were always kind to their captives, if the latter would not struggle too much in their fetters.’ I suspect your Lark is either the Titlark (Alauda pratensis) or the Woodlark (Alauda Arborea) of Linneus. In England they are not quite so much killed and eaten as in the Romance countries. Let us hope your new friend will fraternise with you and his fellows in captivity – and they may console each other with tales of how the humans enslave each other.2 Hebb’s translation was read by the members of our last committee meeting and the question was raised as to whether you would object to any parts of the paper being quoted by us if occasion offered, and under your name?3 We rejoice that you are doing your best to supplant the American* creeping weeds about the buildings in Italy, with the more precious and beautiful Arab plants.4 In England, if we have a lovely piece of ancient architecture we cover it with the weed, and if there is a useful plain surface we cover it up with bold bad advertisements. When renewing these attractions we litter the old paper about the streets. * You must not read this to Mr Norton, or the two countries will go to war at once. Doubtless the snorting, coughing, sneezing and nose-blowing English are recognised in Rome by the noise,5 for even here preachers have been known to pause in their rhetoric till the concerted squalls blow over, and a period of persuasion from the pulpit can be heard. No doubt the relaxing of, & in other ways irritating, the English mucus membrane is one of the ways things which give us a bad name with our neighbours oversea[s] – and, possibly, it may be one of the reasons why Italian singers flock to us for high payment, is that the English gladly pay highly for the sweet sounds of clear notes. Also, it must be borne in mind that Italy and South France are used as hospitals for the sick in body on one hand, and the idler on the other – a very trying variety of human disease. That is one of the reasons why I advised you to delay your visit here till the high time of throat-music was over, and you would be able to hear yourself speak. After the first week in June the ordinary English voice begins to make other sounds than those of an engineer’s workshop. Possibly the continental Hebrews are too “husky”, and the governments of those countries desire better music in the voice on Stock exchanges &c! We artificers are much interested in your description of the action of the sirocco on the stone of the Greek buildings in Sicily, and the question was raised – though not settled – whether the keeping the new filling of the cavities with your material, not up to the surface of the stone, would not cast a crescent shadow? We are also satisfied – and gratefully so, with your watchful eyes having been exercised round the Aurelian walls, and we hoped you wd succeed in applying the remedies described, with the consent of the municipality.6 A reasonable mending of an old wall if [sic] physically an injury to appearance but is a blessing bestowed in the intelligence, and when trees are mischievous they certainly should be 355

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

sacrificed. One should be cruel only to be kind. These platitudes of mine can hardly be thought vacuous! Caution has to be used as one gets older, and more apt to drop into violent ways of asserting the superiority of experience. Youth also comes tripping up the heels of the tedious ancients, who are querulous under the suspicion that decrepitude and senility are visible to young eyes in spite of artificial teeth and hair. When will the world decide to bury its dead before they are decomposed. This is a note of warning to you, so that the antique change which has come over the no 1 Englishman, since you last saw him, may not be too shocking to you. My bon mot on this matter, as applied to myself, is, that I have one foot in the grave and the other in a hod of mortar! What is the Italian word for “hod” (ie the triangular cup for carrying mortar on to a scaffold)? Your new and bodily unknown friend – W.R. Lethaby, is much engaged on Westminster Abbey, and he made a note of the inscription on the shrine of Edward the Confessor, which he asked me to inclose to you.7 And some little time back he proposed I should – when writing – ask you about the Campanile in Venice, if it was not always the Town Belfrey, as distinguished from the towers belonging to the Abbeys or Cathedrals? (Note. Westminster was only a “cathedral” for a few years, made so by Henry VIII, but soon relapsed again into the Abbey Church of S. Peter. However, your calling it a Cathedral was literally correct.) Our S. Paul’s had a town belfrey standing close to the church, but it had nothing to do with the Cathedral, but was the city steeple, used for all public purposes – such as calling the citizens to fires, or dangers of town fights, or inroads of bands of thieves, &c &c. Was the Venice Campanile used for City purposes as distinguished from the church? My English compliments to American Norton, with felicitations on the present fraternal attitude between the natural and national relationship; but I wd add, that I did not see the young folk of his family (it must have been some 23 or 25 years ago) and I fancy they must have been in bed, for we dined somewhere about 8-oc I suppose, when the older folk allowed themselves to be young again, without compromising their dignity before the happier youth.8 I hear from Wardle that he has got to his new lodging, and that things promise to be satisfactory in the ways of health & peace – so that if you ‘look him up’ there may be gentleness & benignity in the Archæological arguments between two such learned “dryasdusts”. This is the red rag I sometimes flaunt before the furious bulls of historical learning. Adieu till me meet again, either by pen or in person, is the blessing of | the ancient | Philip Webb. [sketch and note by WRL relating to Confessor’s shrine copied by PSW] I have found enough evidence to show that the inscription on the shrine at Westminster Abbey (1277 and by Peter Civis Romanus) was as above. I wonder if Signor Boni knows a parallel case in Rome at this same time. W.R.L. Courtauld 187a-d

356

1888–1898 1 ‘I send by book post my old article on W. Abbey.’ GBO to PSW, 12 January 1898, Courtauld 186d. This would have been the outcome of his study of the Westminster Abbey monuments, and the work of Italian craftsmen such as Torrigiani. See above, Letter 508, notes 3 and 4. 2 GBO had brought a lark back with him from Sicily, where ‘every poor person has one. . . . The starling is as merry as usual, and singing 11 out of the 12 hours he is awake’. 186a. PSW’s joking tone does not disguise his disapproval of this enforced captivity. 3 Nothing appeared in the SPAB Annual Report for 1898. 4 ‘I conceived the idea of doing something for the flora of [Sicilian] monuments, because I found a repulsive sensation from the Australian mesembryanthemum and the South-American agave which invaded all the central surface of the cloister. These vulgar plants, unknown in Europe up to the end of the middle age, were spread in south-Italy . . . to serve as hedges or for the railway embankments.’ 186a 5 ‘I saw Wardle last night. He has taken a cold (your countrymen are easily recognised by the Romans, from their unintermittent [sic] sneezing, coughing and blowing their noses all through the winter). He showed to me some beautiful books of Morris, and I feel so proud of the one I got as a present from Mrs. Morris, to whom I will write one of these days.’ 186c. 6 ‘The picturesqueness of the walls is enhanced by some trees, especially figs, which grow in wild luxuriance over their – some of these trees ought to be sacrificed, and the large cracks filled up with concrete simply to prolong the existence of the old wall, and [I] hope that an agreement may be established with the Roman municipality on this subject.’ 186d. 7 In 1906, WRL would be appointed Surveyor of the Fabric at the Abbey, following the death of Micklethwaite, who had himself succeeded Pearson in the post. His studies of the building would result in two important publications, Westminster Abbey and the Kings’ Craftsmen: a Study of Mediaeval Building (London: Duckworth, 1906) and Westminster Abbey Re-Examined (London: Duckworth, 1925). 8 ‘Norton is very much pleased to know that you met his father, and saw the children.’186a. From the tone of PSW’s comment on a former meeting with Charles Norton, GBO is justified in supposing that he had also met Norton’s children. See above, Letter 570, note 13.

575 • To Sydney Cockerell, 22 March 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Tues: 22 March ’981 Dear Cockerell In spite of orders to the contrary, I belated[ly] write to say of my pleasure in the “A note by W.M” book, which is altogether a good and excellently well done finish to the ‘Kelmscott Press’.2 What a gain this printing work has been, which, in spite of the minority it will have touched, may touch more in years to come – and I rejoice in your work – so consistently valuable – for it, which cannot but remain with you as a real satisfaction. The book is so admirably arranged and got up that it is the pleasantest full stop I ever came across. The one extra work I should have liked W.M to have done, so to have to come the full circle, would have been Borrow’s Lavengro & its sequel;3 which to me is a resource at all times and hours, and would have been a keen delight to see it togged in the K. Press stuffs. However, in any case there could only have been an unfinished ending and we have enough to swear wholesomely by.

357

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

I write to bird a lone Rooke to speak well to him of his 2 Loches picture photo’s.4 How well the inside has come out. Yours – patient under labours | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/76

1 Ten days earlier, SCC and PSW had visited the British Museum together. ‘After we had spent an hour and a half with the manuscripts, he took me into the Greek & Roman galleries & pointed out many beautiful things to which my attention has not been called before.’ SCC to JEM, 13 March 1898, BL Add 52739, f 55. 2 A Note by William Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press Together with a Short Description of the Press by S.C. Cockerell, and an Annotated List of the Books Printed Thereat. This, the last book published by the Kelmscott Press, was issued on 24 March 1898. 3 George Borrow, Lavengro (1851) and The Romany Rye (1857). 4 See above, Letter 560, note 2.

576 • To Sydney Cockerell, 25 March 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 25 March 1898 Dear Cockerell Miss Faulkner was much worn out last night but lifted herself to look at the book you were so good as to send,1 and in feeble voice expressed her great pleasure in having it from you, and begged me, as she was quite unable to write, to thank you for your great kindness in sending it to her. Till she is stronger – whenever that may be, she will not be able to take interest, in a living way, in anything; though she recognised the great value of your summary of the Kelmscott press work; and indeed she has often spoken to me of the fortunate thing that W.M. had you at hand in his last years. If she gets stronger in the summer, I hope you will go round and talk to her about the Kelmscott and other book matters. The ‘Love is enough’ is a magnificent book, and is a delight to my eyes.2 I too shall be your debtor for repeated kindness, till you wipe it out with treachery and insult. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/77

1 See previous letter, note 2. 2 WM’s Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond: a Morality was published by the Kelmscott Press on 24 March 1898.

358

1888–1898

577 • To Jenny Morris, 2 April 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 2 April 1898 My dear Jenny Emery Walker was good enough to hand to me two more of your mother’s admirable and comfortable snuff pocket handkerchiefs, which I fancy you have carefully hemmed, and assuredly, by ancient comical bargaining, you have marked so prettily with the “lean P.W.” I am your debtor my child for this and the other kindnesses of affectionate good will to your sober old friend, (I do not mean by this that Philip is sometimes drunk, as my great namesake of Macedon was credited with being, alternately with sobriety,)1 who certainly returns the affection. I saw the mother last night at May’s, and I thought she was really better than when I saw her last, which gave me pleasure. The remembrance-stone for your father’s grave is done, and will I expected be sent to Kelmscott and fixed in about a month’s time. I think you will like the stone, which is solid and grey in look, and will go quietly with the sweet ancient surroundings; at all events in a year or two, when the winds, waters, and sunshine have tended it, and softened the harshness of its newness. The mother told me that Kelmscott garden is very pretty in its early spring dress, and that Giles has given his best gardener’s fondling to it, so that when you get down to it you will have the delight of the place in its brightest. Please give kind remembrance from me to Miss Roberts and still yourself believe I am Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. Kate Faulkner has been laid up and in bed since January, and has been an anxiety to me, but I look forward to the coming softer weather to give her strength to get out of that prison. BL Add 45342, f. 88

1 Philip II of the Greek kingdom of Macedonia (382–336 BC), father of Alexander the Great, was king from 359 BC until his death. Contemporary accounts recorded his vices as well as his military successes, and PSW may have known the recently-published book by David G. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon (London: John Murray, 1897), where Philip’s behaviour after a battle is colourfully portrayed. ‘It was such an orgy as his soul delighted in, with many a light o’ love, and music and dancing; and in the grey dawn he reeled out mad drunk through his camp and on to the corpse-strewn field, shouting songs of tipsy triumph’ (p. 130). Or perhaps he was remembering Plutarch’s story from The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans in the translation by Sir Thomas North (London: 1603: his copy is now in the Emery Walker Library, see CAGM, p. 144), which recounts an incident where Philip threatens his son, Alexander: ‘Philip . . . rose from the board, and drew out his sword, but by good fortune for them both, being troubled with choler and wine, he fell down on the ground. Then Alexander mocking him, Lo, said he to the Macedonians, here is the man that prepared to go out of Europe into Asia, and stepping only from one bed to another, ye see him laid along on the ground.’ (p. 677).

359

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

578 • To Jane Morris, 28 April 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 April 1898 My dear Janey I am glad you could tell me you were alive; indeed, I can return the compliment of myself, which I hope will not pain you. The stone has been done for some time, but, luckily, Lawrence Turner was in no hurry to spare a man to fix it at Kelmscott, so that it has had the advantage of hardening in the workshop before being packed for carriage. It looks as if the best way would be if I sent Mr Jack to Kelmscott to set out the holes to be dug to receive the 2 stone supports, & have the builder over to make and put in the concrete; Giles himself doing the digging, and finding the gravel for the concrete. When this has been done, the Carver’s man can go down and fix the stone. If you think of a better way, let me know, please. In the meanwhile I will write t’ Passon,1 sending a bit of sketch shewing what the stone is, so that he may be satisfied of the morality of the object, and ask him about his permit, and fee, and also about reserving any ground round the memorial. I would like to come and see you there when the stone is fixed complete and been washed by the rain, when we could go together and look at it. I was on the eve of jesting! When will I give over exercising my mother tongue in that unseemly way? Probably at the time I’m pushed into the crematory, and even then a funny squeak may be heard. My “few days of company” at Kelmscott will I know be but the one night sleeping there, for I am hard at it to keep the wolf fm the door – and bread is rising, along with the hearts of the farmers! Hope Mr Hobbs sowed wheat last year & kept it;2 it is now at 50 shillings, instead of 24 or 30 shillings. War both empties bellies and fills them, but not on the same side of the street. Kate has continued very bad – though I think I see more of a prospect of her leaving her bed for a part of the day shortly. At present she can only sit up for ½ an hour while bed is made. Your ‘rook shooting’ offer as bribe amused me. Hope you will be stronger on leaving Lyme than when you first went there,3 and will welcome the old friend Philip Webb – heartily. BL Add 45342, f. 90

1 i.e ‘to [the] parson’. The vicar of St George’s, Kelmscott was the Reverend Horace Meeres, appointed in 1870. 2 R.W. Hobbs, the gentleman farmer and owner of Kelmscott Manor. 3 JM was about to return to Kelmscott Manor, having spent the winter and spring at Lyme Regis.

360

1888–1898

579 • To Jane Morris, 9 May 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9. May 1898 My dear Janey I send you the Revd Meeres’ letter, just received.1 On the whole, it is quite as satisfactory as I could expect, for he could not be supposed to know what was the inner meaning of the design. However, I will send him the figured size and height of the stone, but, as he says at the end of his note, he would like to know your feeling and wishes. I think if you wrote to him, saying you would prefer the cope-stone should stand clear of the ground, and that you were satisfied I am, from my long friendship with the old man, better able to have known his ideas in such design than others, and that you feel disinclined to ask me to make any change, as an alteration would risk spoiling the original intention and effect of the memorial. But you would say this – or something else, in your own way. I think you had better add your wish that Mr Meeres should leave some memorandum in the church books of an agreement come to at this date, that ground should be reserved round the stone for other family graves. As we neither of us wish “Rails” put round the stone, the fee would be 2 guineas, but this I will mention to him in my note, in which I am sending the measurements.2 In another packet I send you the original drawing, which you can keep in some corner of the house, for yourself. Would one day in next week suit you for me to send Mr Jack down to arrange getting the holes dug to receive the stones, supporting the slab? and – say, the week following for the carver’s mason to go down and fix the stones? Kindly and affectionately your friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 92

1 ‘I am obliged by your letter, enclosing design for a memorial of the late Mr Morris. I think that a recumbent Stone, such as you have designed, is very simple and nice in every way, but, personally, I should much prefer that there should be no supports to the Stone, which I am afraid will have the effect of making the Stone too high from the ground and rather unsightly – tho’ this of course is a matter of mere personal taste. Would there be any objection, on the part of Mrs Morris or yourself, to place the Stone direct upon the ground without the support? Also would you kindly give me the scale to which the Stone is drawn in your design, and thus show the proposed height of the memorial Stone from the ground? There would be no objection to leave sufficient space round the memorial for other graves of members of the family, in accordance with Mrs Morris’ wishes. The Ecclesiastical Fee (as sanctioned by the Archdeacon) for a tombstone with Rails is 3 Guineas[;] ditto without Rails 2 Guineas I shall be glad to know Mrs Morris’ feeling & wishes with regard to my suggestion as to alterations of the Design.’ Rev Horace Meeres to PSW, 7 May 1898, BL Add 45342, ff. 94–5.

361

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 2 ‘The intention was, to raise the cope-stone above the ground, to look somewhat like a shield or roof over the grave, and just sufficiently high to avoid any necessity for a railing round it; which rails always seem to me to represent isolation in “God’s acre” – a common ground to all.’ PSW to Meeres, 9 May 1898, BL Add 45342, f. 93.

580 • To Jane Morris, 11 May 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 11 May 1898 My dear Janey Thank you for your letter, but I am sorry to bother you again; still, unless these small things are attended to, blunders are apt to round upon us. I have arranged that Mr Jack, my “mate”, shall go to Lechlade by the 9.55 Paddington train on Monday morning next, the 16th, which gets to Lechlade (unless the trains have been changed) at 1.18. He will have his lunch whilst waiting at Oxford, so as to save time for his business at Kelmscott. He could look about the Place and the house after he has set the work going, and perhaps you could give him some tea and solid before he leaves for the 7.52 Lechlade train. Jack is a good-natured fellow, and will be pleased to see the old place for the first time. I shall give him full instructions how to manage matters when he gets to Kelmscott, and I inclose a few instructions for Giles. I will write to Mr Meeres to tell the day I am sending down, so, if he chooses to look on, he may. With love to Jenny, I am | Yours affectionately | Philip Webb. (If anything written above does not suit you, let me know.) As it may be Mr Jack would have to walk back to Lechlade, will you let him start early enough. BL Add 45342, f. 96

581 • To Jane Morris, 17 May 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 17 May 1898 My dear Janey Mr Jack unbuckled his report to me this morning and I turned over the result. It seems that, with Giles’s most effectual aid, things were well put through for the monument mason to go and fix his work on Monday next, but this he may not be able to do in the day, as he will have to superintend removing the stone from the truck and station. I shall go and see this mason on Thursday, and put him in mind of odds and ends, as the stone will be sent to Paddington Station on Friday. 362

1888–1898

Turner’s contract includes the Railway carriage to Lechlade, but not the cartage from the station to Kelmscott: but Mr Jack talked with Giles about this, and it seems the Station could let them have a trolly [sic] or low waggon, and Giles might be instructed to ask about this on Saturday, and let the station master know the stone would be coming from London on Friday. Jack has just told me of his delight with the book you gave him, and how poor he felt his thanks were upon receipt of it. He seems to have told you that I was to come and see you at some date, I’ve forgotten what, but this must have been from his inner Scotch consciousness, and has nothing to do with the southern end of the 3 kingdoms. However, I hope to come and see you both somewhere in the most beautifully full month of the country, June to wit; when possibly the garden – maugre the birds, may provide for the inside of a pudding. Who knows? We know but little my child; maybe we shall know more – maybe, no! With love to Jenny, I am | your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. If, as time goes on, you may should think of 2 days and a night in June which would more particularly suit you, please to let me know. BL Add 45342, f. 98

582 • To Jane Morris, 27 May 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 May 1898 My dear Janey Thank you for your letter of the 23rd, and for that received this morning telling me the stone was in its place.1 It pleased me that you found it what you wished it to be, for I was naturally anxious on that point, and indeed my having to design it and carry it through somewhat disturbed me, for fear it might not be a fitting note of feeling towards the old man who held on in his kindness to me for so many years to the end. I will come and see you both as soon as I can, and try to help do away with too much remembrance of anything which waylays us painfully. With kindest love to Jenny, I am | Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 101

1 The reaction of WM’s sensitive elder daughter is worth noting here. ‘How quietly, my dear, they are putting down a remembrance-stone on the grave of William Morris in Kelmscott churchyard on his mother’s birthday, that he has no need of; it made me think of with what a noise that lump of marble some months hence will be helping to fill up Westminster Abbey, though good old Mr W.E.G. didn’t seem to want folk to be bothered by it, I must say.’ JEM to SCC, 24 May 1898, BL Add 52739, f 68. Gladstone had died on 19 May, and the state funeral and burial in Westminster Abbey was on 28 May.

363

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

583 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 May 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday night. 27 May 1898 Dear Cockerell I have to record that the Chiswick press has sent me the pleasant thin book of the Birmingham Address,1 thanks to your care on my behalf. Glad I am this admirable address has been put into the Kelmscott form for those who care for such things. They are few, but there are the few.2 Mrs Morris wrote me word to say that the memorial stone had just been set up complete in Kelmscott Churchyard, and that she was pleased to be content with it.3 You could hardly guess how much the doing of the silly-simple thing has exercised me; for I do not like setting up memorials even to a strong maen, as the stone is too apt to perpetuate the weakness of the doer as well as the strength of the done-by. However, – and so on. Your last benevolent gift of Photographs is to me a delightful one, and they have given pleasure to the weak and worn patient. Till I think otherwise | I am yours truly | Philip Webb. Please to “tickle the hocks” of the Arabs for me.4 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/79

1 An Address Delivered by William Morris at the Distribution of Prizes to Students of the Birmingham School of Art on Feb. 21, 1894 (London: Longmans & Co., 1898). SCC annotation: ‘[This] was set up in the Golden type at the Kelmscott Press just before it closed, and was printed immediately afterwards at the Chiswick Press.’ 2 SCC was instrumental in ensuring that presentation copies of this and the other volumes published after WM’s death went to the right people: ‘let me know . . . how many copies you wish sent to May, & what other friends you would like copies sent to – e.g. Mr Webb, the Grange [i.e. the BurneJoneses] &c.’ SCC to JM, 20 May 1898, BL Add 52738, f 53. 3 ‘Mr. Webb has promised to give us a day or two shortly. I want him to see the stone in its place – it is just what I wished, and the colour quite beautiful.’ JM to SCC, 2 June 1898, CLJM. 4 SCC was at Newbuildings, staying with WSB.

584 • To Sydney Cockerell, 28 May 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 May 1898 Dear Cockerell I wrote to you last night, and this morning comes your telling of the passing of Blow père.1 The old man I knew little of, and that only when his force was nearly spent. I will send a sympathetic word to the kindly enthusiast la Mère.2 Fortunately there is D.B to do the Churchyard label. 364

1888–1898

I find as to the oak table of Red House that it was made at the end of 1859.3 There were two of the kind – to match; one for the dining-room and the other for the hall, which could be put together at feast times in T fashion: the Gods at the cross end and tributaries along the shank. I think the one Mr Blunt has must be that for the hall – the shorter of the two, which would be – if I am right, 8'.6" long. Both tables were bound round the edge with scoured iron fixed with clout-headed nails, to keep the impatient from whittling away the edge if victuals lingered on the road. Doubtless the chill of the iron would be a reminder to hot hands that enough Beaune or Bordeaux had been turned over the thumb. What became of the larger table I have forgotten, or never knew. There was a sideboard table which BurneJones had. If Mr Blunt puts on a W.M date-plate, no other name or initials should be allowed of hangers-on.4 The plate would be of scoured steel – (the better), or silver; not of brass. We shall be quite glad to see you on Thursday at anti-scrape. Lethaby put in an appearance there and at tea the other day, but his face and spirit had sadly faded from the Orkney complexion.5 Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/81

1 Jellings Blow, father of DJB, died suddenly on 23 May. 2 For DJB’s mother, see above, Letter 425, note 3. 3 SCC annotation: ‘The oak table, used as a dining table by Morris at the Red House & Kelmscott House, was given by Mrs Morris after his death to Wilfrid Blunt.’ 4 Another instance of PSW’s modesty, in not wanting to be identified as the maker. 5 In 1898, WRL was involved in designing Melsetter House on Hoy, Orkney for the Birmingham businessman and mountaineer, Thomas Middlemore (1842–1923), consisting of a substantial remodelling of an existing laird’s house. The work was executed in 1899–1900. See Godfrey Rubens, William Richard Lethaby. His Life and Work 1857–1931 (London: The Architectural Press, 1986), pp. 129–38. See also Vol. IV, Letter 977.

585 • To Jane Morris, 31 May 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 31 May 1898 My dear Janey Sydney Cockerell has forwarded to me from you the little book of the old man’s address to the Birmingham students, printed in the beautiful Kelmscott type, and put together in a most pleasant way. This admirable lecture always gave me great pleasure, and in its new and lasting form will give me delight for the rest of my days.1 Thank you heartily for it, and for all the other books you have continued to bless me with since the time when the old man saw to it. 365

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

There is no need to answer this, but I wanted you to know that I was refreshed by your latest kindness. Cockerell writes he may look in on me tomorrow, and if so I shall shew him Lawrence Turner’s account for the memorial stone.2 I hope you and Jenny are drinking in these sweet showers, which are making Gray’s Inn Garden too beautiful for “the Devil’s own”. Yours affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 102

1 See above, Letter 583, note 1. 2 ‘I was in town yesterday & saw [Webb] & heard that the stone had been fixed.’ SCC to JM, 1 June 1898, BL Add 52738, f. 56.

586 • To John William Mackail, 4 June 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 4 June 1898 Dear Mr Mackail Miss Faulkner is so seriously ill that, when I was at Caroline Place yesterday, she asked me to open and read your letter to her and then answer it for her as well as I could. Charles J. Faulkner was stricken with paralysis on the evening of the 3rd October 1888; the same day of the month in 1896 in which Morris died. Faulkner had given a lecture at Kelmscott House on the Sunday 3 days before he was seized, but of this I may be able to get more certain knowledge.1 I happened – with Emery Walker, to be at Queen Square when the stroke came; and afterwards helped to amuse the poor fellow till the end, in the morning of 20th February 1892. There can be no doubt that the long, anxious, and unfailing care of given to her brother sapped Kate Faulkner’s strength,2 which was – even then, was too slight to stand the continuous strain without permanent loss; and her state at the present time is, according to the doctors, a grave one. Doctor Hale-White, who saw her yesterday in consultation with Dr Helen Webb,3 is to call upon me today, when I may learn more of her condition. I think it would not be well for me to press her at this time for further recollection of her brother in relation to W.M. but I can answer in a dependable way as to the friendship to the last between the two men. Assuredly it was that of the greatest confidence and affection. The unbreakable courage and clear honesty of Faulkner held Morris as closely as friendship, pure and simple, could bind two men together – regardless of difference in quality of mind. They each did for the other what they could not have done for anyone else; and I had the good luck to be alive to this perfect love. C.J.F had the capacity of seeing the value of that towards which he had no natural attraction; and this, to me, seems to be one of the rarist [sic] of fine qualities.4 366

1888–1898

If any further sign on this subject should be given by Miss Faulkner I will let you know, but must ask you to be lenient towards the feebleness of your intermediary correspondent, Yours truly | Philip Webb. WMG J170

1 See next letter, note 1. 2 ‘Through all that period, his sister, Miss Kate Faulkner, was his devoted and unweariable nurse.’ Mackail, II, p. 217. 3 The general practitioner, Dr Helen Webb, would contribute Life and its Beginnings (London: Cassell, 1913) to a series of short books for children on ‘Questions of Sex’. 4 ‘Between Morris and Faulkner the intimacy and affection was perhaps the stronger that it was founded on a deeper and subtler bond than community of tastes or even association in work. A fine mathematician and a man of high proficiency in the mixed mathematics of engineering, Faulkner had no native bent towards art, and no apparent creative power. He had, however, qualities at least as attaching: unconquerable courage, transparent honesty, and deep-rooted affection; and his devotion to Morris knew no limit. He had followed him into the Socialist League as he had followed him into the firm of Red Lion Square, and lectured on Socialism for him as he had painted tiles and cut woodblocks five and twenty years earlier, with perfect simplicity and sincerity.’ Mackail, II, pp. 217–8.

587 • To John William Mackail, 6 June 1898 Draft on reverse of Mackail’s letter of 5 June 1898; pencil, with some amendments in ink 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon. W.C. 6 June 1898. Dear Mr Mackail. In answer – I asked K.F yesterday as to date of her brother’s lecture at K. Hse and she said reiterated it was the Sunday before the seizure.1 Her memory of this day is good. Also, she has lately been looking thro’ the brother’s diaries, &c. The Sundy lectures had often to be changed from the weekly monthly arrangement, and some other one person pressed into the service to take the place of defaulting lecturer. Emery Walker would probably might be able to recall the time, tho’ I do not think he was lecture secretary – then. I am afraid that K.F is past being able to give further help, though if there was a moment when I could witht injury risk renew the question, I would do so. Your having visited set bodily eyes on the Gt Coxwell barn is satisfactory to me, and it is evident from what you write, that you haved not to discount the enthusiasm of others, on that point at least.2 If the building had been near to some – at the time – enterprising ecclesiastical town, I should have dated it earlier than I feel inclined to, as the progressive changes in the style of such work reached outlying places later than in others. Also, there is one particular moulding on the barn wh’ led me to think the building would be as late as towards the end of the 13th cent: King John died in 1216. This I think believe is clearly too early a date for the work, but it wd be 367

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

a nice point of judgment – even with experts, to decide exactly; I should like to argue it out with the ‘shade’ of W.M. for The variations in style dates of style vary so much in different counties, and even in districts of counties. and In England – one of the most original countries in building – there is an infinite variety in style and quality in building within a comparatively short distance of separation . This needs no answer, but I am always ready to answer entertain a question on any point, though the answering it may not be very helpful to you. Yrs truly | Ph. W. WMG J171

1 ‘Many thanks also for your information as to Charles Faulkner’s illness. What you say as to his having given a lecture at Kelmscott House on the Sunday three days before his seizure agrees with what I had been told from other parties; but I cannot reconcile it with the reports as given from week to week in the Commonweal. The lecture at Kelmscott House on 30 Sept. 1888 is there stated to have been by T. Shore (& that on the previous Sunday by Carruthers). For some weeks back from the 3rd October there is no record of Faulkner having spoken for the Socialist League. It is probably a case in which your recollection would be more trustworthy than the report in the Commonweal, & the matter is of little importance; but it is an illustration of the difficulty of reaching certainty even as to recent events.’ JWM to PSW, 5 June 1898, WMG J171. JWM remained sceptical about the exact details of CF’s stroke, and whether the lecture at Kelmscott House had occurred or not, simply stating that ‘Charles Faulkner, the constant friend of so many years, had been struck down by a paralysis in the previous October.’ Mackail, II, p. 217. 2 ‘I was at Kelmscott a few weeks ago, & saw the barn at Great Coxwell for the first time. Notwithstanding all I had heard of it it fairly took my breath away by its magnificence. I have since come on a letter of Morris’ in which he discusses its date & concludes it is certainly before 1250. The local tradition that it was built in King John’s time may therefore be true.’ See above, Letter 573.

588 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 17 June 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 17 June 1898. re To | Wilfred Scawen Blunt Esq Dear Mr Blunt Mr Cockerell called upon me the other day, when I was not at home, and left for me ‘The Romance of the Stealing of the Mare’, with a note on his card saying that the book was sent me by you.1 I had expected to see Cockerell yesterday, but he was not visible. However, before acknowledging receipt of the gift I wished to read the whole – but have only read a part of it, my time being fully occupied, and have been too tired to read at night. Still the first half is alone sufficient to let me know you have very kindly sent me a delightful gift. I thank you sincerely for the present, and I would wish that my appreciation should also reach Lady Anne Blunt, your collaborator in giving the Romance in the English tongue to those ignorant of Arabic. 368

1888–1898

I have not read Palgrave’s works,2 and should probably not have read Charles Doughty’s admirable travels, and miraculous patience, in the desert, if my old friend William Morris (a first-rate literary “taster”) had not lent me a copy, with a word as to the great quality of the book.3 Before then, all that I knew – or rather understood, of Arab character, came to me from early time, by Lane’s Arabian Nights4 – preceded by a boyish recollection of a translation from the French of Galland, I think.5 I am therefore greatly pleased at having your production of “The stealing of the Mare”; whereby some more of the flavour of the Arab atmosphere will make clearer my idea of its enchanting essence. Your very kind proposal that I should come to Newbuildings Place and see the mares – which I presume have not been stolen – has not been slighted by me, for I should much enjoy the visit, as well as the introduction to you and Lady Anne; but at present I am tied at home by work, and other claims upon me, and cannot break my tether. With reiterated thanks – Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 The Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare. Translated from the original Arabic by Lady Anne Blunt. Done into verse by W.S. Blunt (London: Reeves & Turner, 1892). 2 William Gifford Palgrave, Narrative of a Year’s Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–63), 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1865). 3 See above, Letter 507, note 5. 4 The One Thousand and One Nights, Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments: A New Translation from the Arabic, with copious notes by Edward William Lane, 3 vols (London: Charles Knight and Co., 1839–41). This was a bowdlerized translation. PSW’s copy of the 1865 edition (London: Routledge, Warne and Routledge), is now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 139. 5 The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments: Consisting of One Thousand and One Stories (London: F.C. & J. Rivington, 1821), from the French translation of Antoine Galland.

589 • To John William Mackail, 19 June 1898 Draft, pencil 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn. Lon. W.C. 19 June 1898 Dear Mackail I hold it as markedly kind in you to have given to expended on me the serious thought in your letter of yesterday, for to you I can be but be a reflecting image reflection of greater personalities.1 Will you add to my satisfaction by giving to Margaret Mackail my serious sincerely affectionate remembrance? That I have held without effort for so many years the recollection of what she was to her father at so young a time of her life, this I count it as one of the sweetest reflections of in my old age, and that she to the last, she was the dearest-one of her father his life. 369

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

That Lady Burne Jones is bearing her unutterable load with the “courage and simplicity”, so well understood of her by those capable of insight of as to quality of mind and soul, is no fresh experience, but it is a grateful thankful recognition of a certainty. My last few words with Burne-Jones, which passed in the street only a few months back, left with me a lastingly a sense of the strength of his affection; and the tie of deepest largest human friendship was still strong between us, in which, to me, who could lay no claim to equality of intellect, lifted the beauty of simple humanity into the first place. His faithful work does not follow him; he leaves it is left with us. If I have imaged, to a laughingly, to William Morris – much to his amusement, that I was the interloper, in the D’Artagnan of the quartet, the image likeness could hold no farther than that the Jackdaw (without the assumed feathers) was not an unwelcomed friend impertinence.2 Adieu; we look to the return of sweet recurrence of the lovely earth’s seasons, to give us a new-kindling of love renewal of hope and patience. Yours truly | Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 EBJ died on 17 June, and his son-in-law wrote to provide PSW with some of the details, aware that he was ‘the single survivor who matters’ of a web of friendships and a business partnership that stretched back decades. ‘My father-in-law had been subject to irregularity of the heart’s action for some time, but had had no serious attack before the brief & fatal one of yesterday morning; & the day before had been at work as usual all day & in apparently quite good health. The attack of angina pectoris to which he succumbed gave him upwards of an hour of great agony; & I cannot but think it merciful that he had not to live on in the perpetual fear & the imminent prospect of another. As it is he has changed his life quickly & without derangement, in the fullness of his powers & the height of his fame; surely, since death must come, an enviable death & a fitting close to a great life. I do not know whether Marshall is still alive; in any case you are now the single survivor who matters of that remarkable association of thirty six years ago, in whose intimacy, if I may say so, I have been living for the last year: and you will allow me therefore to write to you to express, however falteringly, the grief & sympathy of a younger but a not wholly forgetful generation. On the closer friendship of the three of whom you were also one I will not presume to touch. Lady Burne-Jones bears this shock as she bears all things, with perfect courage & simplicity. With the sorrow of my wife, who was her father’s idol, & who I think understood him more fully than any one now alive, I know that you will sympathise.’ JWM to PSW, 18 June 1898, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘How one’s heart goes out to Webb – how we ought to cherish him – the only one of those great heroes that remains to us.’ SCC to T.M. Rooke, 18 June 1898, BL Add 52748, f 120. In his reply the same day, Rooke acknowledged PSW as ‘the last of the assembly of goodliest Knights (as Malory says) that ever was’, f. 121.

370

1888–1898

590 • To John William Mackail, 30 June 1898 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn. Lon. W.C. 30 June 1898 To/ J.W. Mackail Esqre Dear Mr Mackail Since you were here on Tuesday1 I have cudgelled my woefully bad memory as to Burne-Jones having, at (“about 1870”,) deposited with me certain policies of Insurance of his, wherein Mr Alfred Baldwin & myself were assigned as trustees;2 and I have searched with the bare hope of finding some memorandum which would help, but have failed – but I do, in a vexatiously dim way, remember that some papers were deposited here in my safe here – so called: and further that I was asked by E.B.J – either verbally by himself or by letter through Lady Burne Jones to return them to him, & which I did if so, must have done it. In any case there are I find no such papers here. If I had these papers, and they were returned, the sending them back would have been in at some time in 1876 or 1877, I think, for, as aforesaid, I find no memorandum note of such a thing as aforesaid. Is it not possible that Lady Burne Jones may remember something of this more clearly than I do? Sincerely regretting that I cannot be more helpful, | I am yours truly | Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Messrs. Lewis have probably communicated with you regarding my father in law’s life policies which about 1870 he assigned to you & Mr Alfred Baldwin as trustees. As I am one of his executors it may be desirable that I should see you with regard to the matter. I could call on you at Gray’s Inn for that purpose on Tuesday afternoon at almost any hour you named, half past five would suit me very well.’ JWM to PSW, 26 June 1898, V&A, AAD. 2 For Alfred Baldwin, who married GBJ’s sister, Louisa, in 1866, see Vol. I, Letter 54, note 1. Alfred and Louisa Baldwin had ‘wept bitterly’ when they were told the news of EBJ’s death. MacCarthy, LPR, p. 502.

591 • To Jane Morris, 6 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 6 July 1898 Dear Janey Your good letter was pleasant reading to me, for, least of all do I wish to droop under stress of loss of friends from death.1 It is a safe possession for the rest of

371

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

one’s life when they are still the friends as they pass away. Are not the tentacles shot out of those which remain to one: the few who care for these things? May has sent her word too, which is worthy of reading aright; I certainly will try to do so from such poor strength as I have.2 You ask, “But for ourselves what joy is there left on this Earth”? I answer, the most certain of joys: one laid out one’self on those souls and the interest comes in unfailingly for the rest of our time. There is an old saying, somewhere – ‘what one kept one lost; what one spent we have one has’3 – I could not swear in a court of law that my dirty dreg of a memory served me in this quotation better than in any other. The poor soul-taxed woman Kate Faulkner drifted out quite quietly, to my infinite relief. The way-worn face knitted itself together again into roundness and purity of line, only an hour or so after breathing ceased. The brother Frank4 carries the body of the sister to lie by the side of the brother Charles, in Birmingham, on Saturday. I do not go there, as you would readily understand. Yes, I know you would like to have me – you and Jenny – in amongst the Kelmscott pleasantness of beauty, and I will come, as soon as I can, with equal wish. Just at present I must help to smooth things for Kate’s brother & sister, and clear up some over-delayed work which cries out for a little concentrated attention. With kindest love to Jenny.5 I am | Your thankfully affectionate friend Philip Webb. This 19th century ink bites into a new pen ten minutes after it is first dipped – hence the scratchiness of the writing. I believe the ink was made in America, where it is the 20th century already. BL Add 45342, f. 104

1 KF had died on 5 July. 2 See next letter for his reply to MM. 3 ‘What we gave, we have; / What we spent, we had; / What we kept, we lost.’ Epitaph (anon) for Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon (d. 1419) and his wife, quoted by Edward Spenser in The Shepherd’s Calendar. 4 See Vol. I, Letter 300, note 1. 5 ‘[Her] loss will leave a sad blank in poor Mr Webb’s life, who has done so much and so many kindnesses for her, since she was left alone.’ JEM to SCC, 6 July 1898, BL Add 52739, f. 79.

592 • To May Morris, 7 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 7 July 1898 My dear May There were many feelings stirred in me by your letter of Tuesday, and the first – though not the foremost – is that you should have thought so kindly of a doddering 372

1888–1898

old man as to write what must touch him personally. You would write thus kindly because of our memory of your father, and it was well that you should; for his brotherly love has left a mark on me which has clung as if I were branded like a sheep’s back with W.M – an assertion of ‘property’ – and good property too; for the dead one had no better purchase (taking that word in its French origin) he having run me down in the chase of his early life. There was something out of the ‘common’ in that. Really, the ‘foremost’ part of your letter, to my mind, is in what you write of yourself, as “chaotic, bewildered, resentful still”. To feel in such a way is not strange in those who wish to walk in ways out of the ordinary. They who deal with art matters know well enough what it means to leave the beaten road of commonness; and how little favoured are mortals who try a fall with the gods.1 Surely my capacity for sympathy is wide enough to allow of your coming under a corner of its covering – poor though it be; and with yourself, apart from your father who is in me, I shall be glad to share communion. Truly I am a dog of some sadness, tempered with wholesome laughter, so that I need not be dull or pedantic beyond the occasional precept of ‘hope and patience’2 – which I apply to myself also. I shall look for an evening to have you quietly here, when we may thump our pulpits and yet not choke with the dust from their cushions. Of the good woman Kate: She went her way out into the vague in quietude, with less uneasiness of body than I had thought likely – and for which I was thankful extraordinary. The passionately torn soul and weary-worn body had no striving at last. She recognized with a smile the cheering jests with which at times I tried to ease the labouring of life’s ending, and I sang in my heart to her Handel’s wafting tune of winged servants,3 a fit match in music to Botticelli’s painted coronal of angels, in his ‘nativity’.4 I give you assurance that she often thought and spoke to me of with much affection towards you. The burial is to be at Birmingham on Saturday – alongside of her brother Charles. Frank Faulkner takes the body there by rail on Friday evening. I do not go, as you would be sure. Your mother writes to me in her kindest way. I spoke to Craven, Kate’s housekeeper, of a lady who had asked me if she had any place in view, and I said it would be in the country (was I right?). Craven said she wished to be in London, and might perhaps get a permanent lodging, and not go to ‘service’ again. She belongs – I believe – to some sect of peculiar religion. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. I see this letter has gotten to be an abominably long one. BL Add 45342, f. 105

1 MM had written, knowing that PSW would be feeling the poignancy of the death of KF, so soon after that of EBJ, and that his thoughts, like hers, would inevitably be drawn back to the loss of WM. In addition, the complexity of her yearnings for her father were mixed with the legal ending of

373

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II her marriage to Sparling. Things must have seemed rather hopeless to her, for even as the divorce proceedings neared their end, any hopes for a renewed relationship with George Bernard Shaw, who would describe their first attraction to each other in 1885 as ‘a Mystic Betrothal . . . registered in heaven’ ended with his marriage on 1 June 1898 to Charlotte Payne Townshend. In the view of Lucy Carr Shaw, ‘May made a fool of herself over George and there is no doubt ruined the whole of the romantic side of her life. I believe her only object in divorcing Sparling was to give George the chance of marrying her.’ Cited in Jan Marsh, Jane and May Morris. A Biographical Story 1839–1938 (London: Pandora Press, 1986), p. 237. 2 ‘And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; / And patience, experience; and experience, hope:’ Romans 5:3–4. 3 The serene tenor aria ‘Waft her angels’ sung by Jephtha of his daughter, Iphis, in Handel’s English oratorio, Jephtha (1751). 4 See above, Letter 472, note 5.

593 • To Sydney Cockerell, 7 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 7 July 1898 My dear Cockerell. I ought to have sent you the word of Kate Faulkner’s death by my own hand, but much has had to be done by me in that way by me – in the laborious fashion of an ignoramus who is not content with being quite stupid in his writing. The good woman left us in a less painful way than might have been; for the weakness of coming death worked its way course steadily and not too urgently. O, how glad I was that she passed without buffeting. The body goes to Birmingham on Saturday evening under care of her brother Frank, to be laid by the side of the brother Charles, as they were born in that cast iron town. I would not go – woe’s me for such brutality – but I see all the refined goodness of your offer to have personally helped me if I had had to go. Yes, I take very kindly to the friendship of you, Walker, & Lethaby, for I am cheered by such companionship – and don’t wish to give in as if I were the only one who had suffered from being deserted by contemporaries. I may not yet be able to get to see the kindly Blunts and their Arabs, for I am so far behind hand in doing what must be done, unless I be undone.1 Wyndham wrote me a letter today, who had just been to Newbuildings.2 I will be very thankful for the good you think to continue doing me. Your touched friend | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/82

1 SCC wrote from Newbuildings. ‘I fear that in spite of all your philosophy the world will seem an empty place to you now that almost every old friend has gone from it – Walker & Lethaby will make it less so – and I think I have as good a will as they, though far less capacity. . . . I do not know how soon, after Lethaby’s description, you will be able to come down here. It would be nice if it could be before the roses are all fallen, but I say no more, as you know that Mr Blunt will welcome you – and

374

1888–1898 as for myself, never a day has passed without my wishing you could be here.’ 6 July 1898, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/80. 2 PWY and WSB were first cousins.

594 • To Jane Morris, 14 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 14 July 1898 My dear Janey May had told me you had been thinking that Craven, Kate’s housekeeper, might answer your purpose if she would come to you, therefore I asked her the question. She does not wish to leave London. I believe she belongs to some peculiar religious sect with which she wishes to keep in touch, for she always had the Sunday afternoon and evening to attend there – the place of meeting, before Kate took to her bed, and even then from 6. to 10 at night. The weary business of handing over 2 Caroline Place and its contents to Lucy Orrinsmith and Frank Faulkner, the joint executors, is now done – and I am looking forward to the visit to Kelmscott after the 18th. If you thought of any particular day after the 18th – the time you mentioned, please let me know.1 With love to Jenny | I am your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. I have asked May if she can come and see me for an all round talk on Monday, the 18th, evening. BL Add 45342, f. 106

1 He visited Kelmscott Manor on 19 July, and stayed overnight.

595 • To Jenny Morris, 21 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 21 July 1898 My dear Jenny Even a bad and distracted memory serves as a peg on which to hang loving thanks to those who have made the greater part of two days one sunshiny or silverlined cloud of affectionate remembrance. The beauty of life, made possible for humanity to lay hold of by the accompanying pain by with which its joy could – and in no other way – be measured. I was so stuffed by the loving-kindness shewn to the old ‘stranger within the gates’ by you good-hearted women folk,1 as well as by the beauty of the heavenupon-earth home of them, that the sometimes incongruous jests had to be resorted-to to make the time bearable. Still it was borne, leaving no sting behind the tail of its time.2 375

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Let me hope that you all laughed at the ‘ways and the manners’ of the Italianized celebrity you entertained so tenderly, giving him food of heart and body that no Italian hamlet could have ever matched. Now, what is the “peg”? Did not my overstrained attention to the hundred delights and accompanying sadnesses make me leave to the wondering eyes of maid and man a snuffy-pocket handkerchief? Kindly let Kitty Giles – (if that be her name?) take water of Thames and purge of free it of “sneeshin”,3 and you post it to me purged of the refuse of the refreshing pinch. I got back here at 11.30 not too tired; and afterward slept the sleep, with no disturbance of star-bright ghost to spoil the night’s rest. Good bye, my dear friends, from your loving kinsman in the spirit. Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 108

1 ‘But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:’ Exodus 20:10. 2 ‘I should have written yesterday, but was busy, and naturally we all made the most of dear Mr Webb while we had him with us. It was curious that, when he went to write his name in the Visitors’ book, it was written on the exactly opposite space, with the same date (July 19–20) of last year. I cannot say how deeply I respect him both for his behaviour after Kate Faulkner’s death, and on coming here to stay, for I know what that loss is to him of all men, and in spite of his continual jesting to try & keep up Mother’s heart & mine, I could see only too well how every atom of the house & tree in the garden saddened him – he loves it as dearly as we all did. He & I walked together into the churchyard yesterday afternoon, & we had a good look around the lovely little church.’ JEM to SCC, 21 July 1898, BL Add 52739, f. 83. 3 Irish/Scottish dialect pronunciation of ‘sneezing’; Scottish Gaelic is ‘snaoisean’.

596 • To John William Mackail, 22 July 1898 Draft; pencil with ink amendments 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn, Lon: W.C. 17 22 July 1898 Dear Mr Mackail I am thankful you for your for the letter of the 15th telling of Lady Burne-Jones’ health. Knowing her so well as I do, her state is must be what I might must one would have guessed, for the after-wave of great trouble is that which I have always felt to be as shewing declares the wasting time of life. The energies reserves of heart and mind thus called into action when quieting down are less for the rest of one’s life, and the very strength of heart and mind which are called up to meet the stress for resisting the apathy following which follows generally follows defeat, expends more of remaining life strength than anything else. Well spent, ’tis true, but still a loss making for a further loss. Happily she can depend upon the utmost tenderness from her friends & relations relatives, & friends of long standing. 376

1888–1898

As to the matter of St Mary’s at Oxford, I am – unfortunately, too little able to help with give you useful information, for I was too cowardly to face the wrecking of this great historical monument.1 for as I was Having been born and bred at in Oxford, and its singular beauty being a was part of my life’s delight, so that the carelessness displayed in making founding miserable reputations of from on the destruction of its essence were was too much painful for me to bear resolutely helplessly to look on at face. I did not go there to see for myself, and trusted only to reports of others. However I remember that Morris went down following on the report receipt by the society of Lethaby & Thacky Turners who preceded him reports. He faced convocation (or congregation?) and the cantankerous and opinionated opinionated and cantankerous Professor Case; and He even ventured, much against his will, on to the scaffolding with Mr Jackson himself, who was too deeply involved in the manufacture of personal eminence professional prominence, 2 to be touched by Morris’s clear definition of what would be the result of doing tearing way with the statues in turn from the fabric, they being the remaining the last parts of the steeple which had not been falsified been repeatedly falsified. I remember Morris agreeing with Lethaby and Turner as to the ease with which the insecure parts of the stone figures could be secured made fast; and also that he also told Jackson, that if even the figures had even to be put into a complete cage of iron to save them in their places, that should be done, rather than complete the ruin defacement of the steeple by removing them, and insulting intelligence by putting modern images in their places. I have seen reproductions of photographs taken of the statues now where they now stand after suffering greatly in the removal in the lower part of the Church, and am confirmed in my opinion that they could without difficulty they could have easily been preserved. in their positions without removal, detached from the fabric. I will get & send you two numbers of the Architectural Review, in which have appeared Mr Wilson’s explanation thorough exposure of all the subterfuges employed by the architect and others engaged in the mischief spoliation in the miserable business of destruction. A third number, completing the demonstration will be out in August, which I will also send.3 Of course Morris objected strongly against to the proposed changes in the forms of the pinnacles, and we all urged that repair was all that could be done here without further mischief; for they had been altered more than once. The earliest dependable representation of the steeple that I know of is that of Loggan, which is dated 1675,4 and the forms there given probably represented better nearer than any after alteration of that part of the fabric what they were originally. But the statues, save for one or two which had been renewed in whole or in part were original work of a remarkably full quality, and the weather wasting away of parts of them by action of weather added to their effectiveness. I was for saving these that he W.M. pleaded so strongly forcibly, tho’ he objected to another alteration of the forms of the pinnacles. It was I think it was in 1852, or 1853, soon after my apprenticeship ended, that, happening to be in Oxford, I was allowed got permission to mount the scaffolding to the top of the spire, at the time alterations & repairs were being done under the architect, Buckler,5 and I protested against the injury he did young as I was, I realised the injury being done mischief going on then in raising to the of the central spire by raising it some 6 or 7 feet in height and 377

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

its outline. It was at this time that the surrounding pinnacles were so greatly tampered with, and which were again to be transformed have now been retransformed under Jackson. Some move should I think be made I think to get the original statues put in some a safe place – the Oxford museum or other – the original statues so that they may be watched by the public; otherwise they will surely be further injured or destroyed where they now stand hidden away.6 [ink] I have not read Jackson’s book which Wilson has reviewed with so much courage and patience.7 thus changing

Believe me Yours truly | Ph.W. I should have answered your letter earlier, but I had to go to Kelmscott on Tuesday & Wednesday, and was much occupied before leaving here. WMG J180

1 For the controversy in which the SPAB had become involved over restoration work at St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, and also for Thomas Case, see above, Letter 454. 2 For Thomas Graham Jackson, see above, Letter 441, note 3. 3 In a review spreading across the issues for June, July and August 1898 of The Architectural Review (IV, pp. 3–8, 50–3 and 109–14), H. Wilson was savagely critical of the restoration work which is the subject of Thomas Graham Jackson’s own The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897). 4 This engraving of St Mary the Virgin appears as plate XI in David Loggan, Oxonia Illustrata (Oxford, 1675). 5 Joseph Chessell Buckler (1793–1894), son of the architect John Buckler (1770–1851). 6 ‘The noble figures of the Virgin, of St. Edward the Confessor, and of St. John the Baptist, as they now lie stored in the basement of the Convocation House, may be specially cited as examples, apart from any question of historic interest, of the purest feeling and most consummate artistic excellence. Of the copies by which they have been replaced on the base of the now doubly and triply reconstructed mass of pinnacles from which the central spire springs into the sunlight, it may be left to future generations to judge. But the judgement will be – so Morris insisted – upon works of the nineteenth century which profess to be, and are not, works of nearly six hundred years earlier.’ Mackail, II, p. 287. 7 See note 3.

597 • To Sydney Cockerell, 24 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 July 1898 It is Sunday, and quiet reigns in this legal hive. My dear Cockerell It must have been you who would so attentively fend for me in the way of reading, as in other ways. Probably I must have said that I had not read Tolstoi’s ‘War and Peace’ series of books? My memory is so short, and in these days of my own history breaking up 378

1888–1898

round me, as – one by one, the old and durable in friendship – leave me stranded in all ways, save that one’s later companions keep one steady in hope and peace, so that I forget too quickly what happened in my mind, only in such a short space of time as a week or two. It must have been you who directed Evans & Jones to forward the 3 vols:,1 and I am gratified by a further touch of your kindness? Whether it was you, or the ghost who looks after the old in years, I must ask for the bill, so that I may keep up the practice of clearing off mere money scores. Tolstoi will interest me, if in no other way; but I anticipate he will in other ways, as he has done before. I was at Kelmscott on Tuesday and Wednesday, and found the ‘lone-lorn’ women folk in a fairly good way2 – perhaps under on the better side of the happy mean of life. They were all exceedingly kind to me. The place was transcendently beautiful – the weather of like kind – and time went without hitch. Jenny was thinner, and a little worn in appearance, but quite alive to the pleasure of companionship; and Miss Roberts was bright and very helpful. Jenny was much set-up by a letter from you to her which she expected, and got, on the Wednesday morning.3 Lethaby is – I think – a trifle better; but he is not well. By appointment he, Walker, Detmar Blow, myself, and Winmill4 were convoyed to Christ’s Hospital yesterday afternoon by the last named, who was a yellow legged boy there.5 He shewed us skilfully all that was to be seen – and we got primed for moving in the way of trying to save the valuable parts of the buildings from the claws of the money grabbers. As we methodically looked at the different parts, we found much which was worth fighting for, and perhaps learned how best to set about the usual uphill task.6 How about the Arabs, and the lord and lady of them, and the ‘mowing-machine’ buyers of them: and did you show them off after the stylish way of Tawno Chickno?7 I have to go to Yorkshire tomorrow and Tuesday to look after a biggish house I set up there some 20 or so years ago, and the stone of which – from report, is being eaten into by the fumes from the Hell’s factories in the neighbourhood.8 When are you coming to hunt in the libraries here again? and coax your army of life-tourists with shrill, ‘time, gentlemen, time!’?9 Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/83

1 The booksellers, Jones & Evans, had premises at 77 Queen Street, Cheapside. SCC had probably arranged for Leo Tolstoy’s novel to be sent to PSW in the three-volume English edition (London: Vizetelly, 1886). 2 In David Copperfield, the kindly Mr Peggotty has the self-pitying Mrs Gummidge (‘I am a lone lorn creetur’) living with him.

379

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II 3 ‘I have not seen Mr Webb since he was with you, but I had a very nice letter from him in which he spoke of his visit. He is a great hero, & it is an infinite privilege to know him. The presence of such men amongst us shows that there is some good in this ridiculous old nineteenth century – for they as certainly are an expression of the time, as are the gasometers & railway stations – so we mustn’t quite despair.’ SCC to JEM, 31 July 1898, BL Add 52739, f 86. 4 See above, Letter 562, note 6. 5 Christ’s Hospital was founded as a school by Edward VI in the former Greyfriars monastery in Newgate Street, in the city of London, rebuilding occurring after the Great Fire. As a schoolboy there, Winmill would have worn the traditional uniform. 6 In 1902, Christ’s Hospital would transfer to new school premises in Horsham, and concerns were already being expressed about the future of the old buildings. As well as exercising these key members of the SPAB, the matter was raised in the annual general meeting of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty on 20 July. 7 Tawno Chickno is a gypsy rider with exceptional horsemanship skills in Borrow’s Lavengro. The Blunts held their annual sale of Arab horses at Crabbet on 23 July. 8 Rounton Grange in the North Riding of Yorkshire, built for Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell in 1871–76. See Vol. I, Letter 73, note 5. ‘[I]n 1898, Webb made a thorough investigation of the entire building’, Kirk, p. 298. 9 SCC annotation: ‘ “time, gentlemen, time” was the reiterated cry of a guide who took me and others round Pompeii and hurried us on as soon as we showed an interest in anything’.

598 • To William Hale White, 24 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 July 1898 My dear Hale White. Thackeray Turner looked in here this morning to consult about a piece of ‘antiscrape’ work. He had been down to Bedford on the part of the society, to see the remains of the Priory there – the buildings of which have been occupied as a farm.1 The place now belongs to the town, and they are going to turn it into an exercise ground for the town’s use. It seems that many of the town council, or other governing people, are bent on clearing away the ancient buildings of the Priory which remain, and these are of considerable historical interest, and of pleasant 14th & 15th cent: architecture. The proposal is – of course, brutal and stupid, as is usual in such cases – and a move must be made to save them. Turner met the whole posse – including the Mayor, and he seemed to be anxious that the buildings should be saved, but said the general feeling of the council was to sweep them away. The Mayor (Mr George Wells – of Goldington Lodge)2 lent him, Thomas Allen Blyth’s History of Bedford, Published by J.R. Porter, 7 High St Bedford – (no date), which I have before me, and in it is a photo: from an old print of 1735,3 which, with some sketch notes made by Turner, enables me to say that the buildings are of great historic value. One part containing the house used by the farmer, and a considerable length of cloister wall, and on beyond a barn, which was – probably – the Refectory. Perhaps you have this hist: of Bedford on your bookshelves? If the mayor could get some support, he might be able to turn the tide of destruction, and the society is going to do what it can in this way. Do you know

380

1888–1898

anybody of influence – great or small – in the town or neighbourhood? Turner tells me the thing to do, is, to let the Council and the town’s people understand that if the buildings are destroyed the reputation of the town’s people will be blackened for ever as an unintelligent community. Can you send me an answer by Wednesday morning, as Turner will not be at ‘antiscrape’ weekly committee on Thursday, so that I shall have to lay the business before the Comm: in his stead, he leaving for us his written report of his examination of the remains? I hope you are well, and also Mary,4 and that this delightful weather is being turned by you to good account. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I am all right in health, with all determination not to be beaten down by my losses of proved friends – losses in no case to be made good at my time of life. I have business in Yorkshire tomorrow & Tuesday but shall be back in the evening of the latter. BCL MR 10/8

1 C.E. Mallows had brought the attention of the SPAB to ‘the proposed destruction of the old Priory Farm buildings here’. 24 June 1898, SPAB, The Priory, Bromham Road, Bedford file. A short campaign to save it followed. 2 George Wells (1841–1912), was twice Mayor of Bedford, in 1893–94 and again in 1896–98. A year after the case had been raised by Mallows, Wells wrote to HTT that ‘I have to inform you that the “Old Priory” Bedford has been razed to the ground – and in a few days not a vestige of it will remain. I did all I could to save it but to the shame of those who govern the town I was supported by only one member of the Council.’ 29 July 1899. HTT sent his sympathy: ‘I cannot tell you how deeply grieved I am . . . the more so as I had no idea that the opposition to the retention of the buildings was so strong’. 9 September 1899, SPAB, The Priory, Bromham Road, Bedford file. 3 Thomas Allen Blyth, The History of Bedford and Visitors Guide (London: Longmans Green, Reader, & Dyer [1873]). 4 WHW’s daughter. See above, Letter 325, note 11.

599 • To Jane Morris, 27 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 July 1898 Dear Janey I duly received your note of the 22nd inclosing copy of the Mackail memorandum. I saw Walker for a few minutes the other day, and since then I have been in Yorkshire on business for 2 days. Walker will be away for a week or so, after which he will come and see me bringing some proofs of the pictures for the book, and when we will talk the matter over.1 I found the Cabinet lock here on my return last night. I will take it to a smith and get a key made for it.

381

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Signor, no Cavaliere Giacomo Boni sent through me a pamphlet on Venice for ‘antiscrape’, and with it inclosed another small one for you on another matter – addressed as you see – with respectful homage to you: this I send by parcel post with the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine for you,2 and Lethaby’s book on Sa Sophia of Constantinople for Jenny,3 both as promised on loan. Hope the sun has come back to Kelmscott – but he has been fitful in other parts (I don’t mean myself!) for Jack tells me, at times yesterday he could hardly see to draw, and on my long journey last evening from the north of Yorkshire he was under impervious cloud of dirty mist, looking as if the world was ashamed of itself, and had blown out a cloud of its manufacturing filth to hide its face behind – one could not be surprised at his – the world’s – shamefacedness. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 109

1 EW’s firm of Walker and Boutall undertook the preparation of the illustrations for JWM’s forthcoming WM biography (22 across the two volumes). 2 PSW’s set of The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (London: Bell & Daldy, 1856), in which he has identified the essays written by WM and DGR, is now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 112. 3 See above, Letter 494, note 2.

600 • To John E. Williams, 27 July 1898 Draft; pencil, with some ink amendments 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon W.C. 27 July ’98 To J.E. Williams1 Dear Sir I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of in the matter of William Morris and the Winns Estate, Walthamstow for which I am obliged. I am sorry not to be quite at one mind on the point in question with my friend Walter Crane (on the point in the question) whose opinion and feeling on such a point is not to be lightly gainsaid.2 It stands thus with me. Of all people of this time I can think of, W.M. least requires any memorial to keep his reputation green, for his name is widely and deservedly spread in Europe, and America and elsewhere. and His serious socialist efforts were cast in such forms as to make it a them household words in every craftsman who could read a book, and think over it. “News from nowhere” – amongst other books, was not fugitive literature, and a nobly written works of art are perhaps the most lasting of any form of memorial. In addition to which, the last Printer’s craft, the last of the many he took up and carried through to perfection, was so great a work, that much of his, & other high minds were was

382

1888–1898

set down in strong type on lasting paper, in so splendid a form, that they the books will be treasured in secure places for ages to come. I do not much care for memorials of individuals of at any time, though I agree there may be cases when a valuable and nearly unknown genius of great worth may might from circumstances be nearly unrecognised, and when it wd be the duty of those who recognized him knew the value of his work to call public attention by some visible object to a name too carelessly over-looked – but that was not the case of with W.M. for his work was so strong, broad, well-known, direct, strong, simple, and honest, so that even his antagonists could but acknowledge and admire. As I am not in a position to subscribe in the way of money, I have felt it necessary to give a reason for not giving wishing my little known name to be used in connection with the efforts of those whom I sincerely regard. Your fraternally | Ph. W. house in wh’ P.S. I think, also, that the actual birth W.M. was born having been pulled down,3 seriously lessens the strength of the appeal to the Public. V&A, AAD

1 John E. Williams of 20 Collard Road, Wood Street in Walthamstow had written with the following information. ‘The Lloyd family have just presented to the Walthamstow District Council a large estate known as the Winns for a public park for the people of Walthamstow. Within this park stands a very fine old House which happens to be the birth-place of William Morris [sic]. Now there must be a very large number of admirers of Morris who would like to see the house preserved.’ Williams to PSW, July 1898, V&A, AAD. As PSW points out, this house (now the WMG), was not in fact WM’s birthplace. See note 3. 2 ‘I am writing to you at the request of Mr Walter Crane who has sent me a letter a copy of which I enclose, offering to do all that is possible for the object I have in view.’ Williams to PSW, July 1898, V&A, AAD. 3 Elm House, in Walthamstow, was a recent (1898) demolition.

601 • To William Hale White, 28 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 July 1898 My dear Hale White Your two notes were much to my mind. Having been on business in the N.E of Yorkshire on Mon: and Tuesday, I only got the former on my return here on Tues: night. You may be quite sure I did not miss the gentle point of your offer to go to Kate Faulkner’s funeral: and if I had gone your offer would have been accepted with much comfort.

383

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

That you have so well taken in hand to do what can be done, in helping our society to turn the Bedford mind to the great importance attaching to the scanty remains of historic evidence and beauty still remaining in the town, gratified me,1 and I take your notes to the weekly committee meeting this evening, when the case will be discussed: of this, I am even now sure, the Comm: will agree unanimously with the way you & your correspondents propose to move in the matter: for, I am sure you will write just the non-expert form of letter to the local (?) paper in your own name. I send you another copy of the society’s ann: report – (I presume one has already been sent to you) and more can be sent if wanted; for Luxmo[o]re’s paper in it is also by a non-expert, and is thought by all of us to be more useful to the strength of the report than an expert piece would have been:2 the slight weakness in it (to be readily understood) about Peterborough, shews that the writer is not a partisan, and will influence accordingly the respectable class.3 There are many really suggestive expressions shewing fearless advocacy for saving the most certain of historic documents, and the most unbiassed. [sic] I wrote the few lines on Dovercourt church, in which you will recognise the hand of the illiterate savage, and smile accordingly!4 Your verbal picture of the Bedford part of Ouse river, winding and rewinding on itself as the soft soil invited, with a, ‘there’s no hurry’, amused me, and I was satisfied with its rightness of touch. The form of the river as shewn on the map is not unlike that of Cromwell’s letters – and he could act, and that without hurry – helping Ouse to a right-line, and making up its mind at last.5 Yours truly | Philip Webb BCL MR 10/10

1 See above, Letter 598. 2 Henry Elford Luxmoore had read a paper called ‘Our Purposes and Prospects’ (SPAB Annual Report, 1898, pp. 58–82). The Chair for the meeting, George Forrest Browne, the Bishop of Bristol (1833–1930), proposed the vote of thanks, remarking that ‘he had never listened to a paper with deeper feelings of interest, and he heartily agreed with all it contained. It was very learned, very pungent, very conciliatory, very charming and full of right feeling’ (p. 82). In view of his future involvement with work at Malmesbury, PSW may subsequently have felt somewhat ambivalent about Forrest Browne’s SPAB credentials (see below, Letter 616, note 5). 3 The brief report was not about Peterborough Cathedral, but the Town Hall, the demolition of which was under consideration. ‘The Society at once addressed the Mayor and Corporation, and we hope with better success than it met with when addressing the Dean and Chapter on the subject of the West front of the Cathedral’ (p. 46). 4 PSW reported on some unhappy restorations to Dovercourt Church, near Harwich. ‘When the floodgate is opened from the big towns at the summer season, those of the temporary migration who feel

384

1888–1898 it their duty to attend a church must have it made attractive, as it is called, or they will not use a part of their short holiday at attending at – what must be to them – a common old building, in no way resembling the up-to-date churches they have been accustomed to in the suburbs of London or other large towns. These visitors want to see “art”-stained glass, art-flooring tiles, brass work, brilliantly stained deal fittings, etc, etc., and a general flash of things discordant which will vie with the dresses put on for “church parade”.’ SPAB Annual Report, pp. 21–2. 5 He may mean Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540), chief minister to Henry VIII (rather than Oliver Cromwell), by alluding to his skill as a political operator.

602 • To Jenny Morris, 29 July 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 July 1898 My dear Jenny Your letters of the 27th and 28th duly appeared, with the p-handkerchief in the former, looking beautiful after its pure country bath, and for all of which I thank you kindly. I can only hope you three women folk made various jokes over the habit of “auld-snuffy”!1 Of course I saw that the mother was very poorly, even when she was able to make such kind cheer for me while I was with you; but I was glad of your second letter’s note, saying that in your tender anxiety for her you had perhaps overrated the mother’s state at the moment. You will understand that with my sadly diminished list of loving old friends I am always rather anxious about the few who remain for me, but I don’t encourage either evil or good anticipations – for it is not well to do so. The Publican’s trade is doubtless a more prosperous one in these times than that of the Farmers, and it is no wonder the Manor Farm was not sold.2 If you should get more information as to what the Brewer was thinking of doing to the public house and cottages it would be well for us to contrive a letter to him, petitioning that the sober dignity of the village should not be destroyed by the repairs he will find it necessary to do with his professional property. So perhaps you could note down any trustworthy news you may get of this matter. Please tell your mother that Walker came on here last evening after ‘antiscrape’, and shewed me some of the proofs of the pictures for Mackail’s book; and the when he returns to London he will shew me the rest, which will be ready shortly, and I shall then be able to make up my mind and advise. My Yorkshire journey of two days was a very tiring one, but I survive, as you see. On the return journey, for 150 miles or more, the whole heavens were filled

385

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

with a murky gloom, composed of manufacturers’ clouds of dirt, and threatening thunder storms – and I see in the paper that the latter have been heavy in that district. We had distant lightning & thunder here yesterday, and some storm showers, and today it is cooler. My love to May. I hope she will pick up on the sweet air and billy-cock fruit puddings.3 You and your mother will believe me to be | Your affectionate friend Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 110

1 See above, Letter 595. 2 The Manor Farm is a seventeen-century farmhouse in Lechlade, now a National Trust property. 3 ‘Said to be from name of William Coke, nephew of William Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester (1752–1842).’ OED. The allusion here is obscure.

603 • To Sydney Cockerell, 1 August 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 1 August 1898 Dear Cockerell [the initial letter C is drawn as a cockerel’s head] That is one way of being kind to me among the various which your fleet-hoofed brain contrives – to buy books in order to loan them to me – and wagging an Arabian Knight’s tale. I have been reading (and it was a help to me on my weary journey from N. E Yorkshire) No 1 of the series of 3. Lord, it wants a memory as long as a rope walk to catalogue the crack jaw names of the first vol: alone. ‘Before Tilsit’1 is a wonderful puzzle of a book to read, clearly though as it is done. All the Russias pass before one, and more girls than I have fingers and toes to count them by. I shall have to read it again before going up to be examined – I thank you. If the good natured Arabian Blunt should accidentally ask when the Philhippus is coming to see the yellow-legged bays – kindly say it will be impossible – at all events in this year, for I am so hemmed in with things which should be done at once, and will not so be. Lethaby was here last evening, having first taken me by the scruff of the neck into Bishopsgate to see a 13th cent: crypt, there, and then, being destroyed2 – walls & vault all built in chalk, as white as the face of L himself. He is gone this night to his dreaded Orkney, and I hope the sea at the top-o-Scotland will be mussiful, and that he will come back browner. We together laid bare the Tammany immorals of the world,3 but found no corrective. I don’t believe there aint no such thing as making humans decent, any more than convincing gardeners of the use of blackbirds. They think (the gardeners) we pay too dearly for the whistles. I don’t, whence the better morals of Blunt and me. Alas, poor Walker – but how the long windows of the Beauvais will be lighted up by this blessed moon, a horizontal moon.4 386

1888–1898

I go to the New Forest tomorrow morning and sleep the night, dreaming of my work there5 – more Tolstoi. Adieu, my friend, and the more so that many are slipping through my fingers & through the dark gate. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/84

1 The first of the three parts of War and Peace. See above, Letter 597, note 1. 2 Almost certainly one of the two crypts of the former thirteenth-century Priory of St Helen, Bishopsgate, suppressed under Henry VIII. These lay beneath the nuns’ refectory, which was demolished in 1799, making the crypts themselves vulnerable to destruction. See John Edmund Cox, The Annals of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, London (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876), which provides an engraving of one of the crypts at the time of the 1799 demolition (facing p. 36). 3 Tammany: the central organization of the Democratic Party in New York. ‘In English use the name has become especially associated with the political and municipal corruption which at various time has characterized the government of New York’ (OED). Or perhaps PSW simply means a word play on ‘too many’. 4 The ‘alas’ probably alludes to EW’s dislike of sea-crossings. He was visiting Beauvais. 5 PSW’s project in Bramshaw, Hampshire. See above, Letter 561, note 1.

604 • To Sydney Cockerell, 12 August 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 12 August 1898 r 1 My stars, M Cockerell – What a Barrrn! and gracious goodness, Mr Barrrn, what a Cockerell! Your small income is thrown broadcast on such as Ph. W, when it should be expended in advancing civilisation amongst the heathen stockbrokers and others, who rub bare the knees of their trousers in grubbing for money. However, in this case you must let me know the cost, and let me pay for having this 13th cent: wonder of French architecture photographed. Walker brought the parcel today and upset my serenity, and power of putting the necessary letters to the words, and words to the sense. In the middle age, stone was the drug in France. In England it was timber. How fine the long stretch of square stone piers and arches, the total perspective of them must be magnificent, the length being so great. St Lazare was a hospice for the sick, I suppose, and this was the storehouse of the grain.2 I thank you heartily, not only for the trouble taken, but for thinking so kindly of me. Walker took pity on me yesterday, and steadied my tottering steps to, at, and away from my house building at Puttenham.3 We had the finest of days from dewey [sic] morn to fragrant eve – not a cloud in the sky, a perfect sun, and a fine S.W breeze to temper the heat. The perfect landscape south of the hogs-back was as lovely in its way as anything in the wide world, including France.4 The 387

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

sky line of Hindhead and connecting hills was the distance, and mid-distance was streaked with lines of dark-leaved trees, spotted and banded with colour of the ripened corn. Walker was curious on points of good building, and took in all I said as if it were gospel. Today, I’m rather tired, and tomorrow I have to go into Sussex, to look on a little piece of work there – this time alone.5 We are a scanty crew now, and I long to see you and others at times, to keep one from thinking backwards. I shall be glad when you can bring your human touch amongst us again.6 Till then, and I hope afterward | I am your indulged | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/85

1 SCC had sent him a photograph of ‘the splendid 13th century tithe barn near Beauvais’ (SCC annotation). 2 The Maladrerie Saint-Lazare in Beauvais is a large complex of medieval buildings, built as a hospital for lepers and used as such until the eighteenth century. As well as the main hospital building, there is a chapel and the tithe barn itself. 3 For PSW’s last country house, Hurlands, near Puttenham, Surrey, see above, Letter 561, note 6. He had invited EW to keep him company on this visit. ‘If you could manage to go without feeling you would be wasting your time in cheering me, I should be really glad. Still, you must not do a violence to business. Send me a postcard, and if you can go, meet me on the Waterloo platform – main line – 10 min: before the train starts, on the 11th.’ PSW to EW, 9 August 1898, V&A, AAD. 4 The Hog’s Back is a ridge on the North Downs in Surrey, between Farnham and Guildford, affording fine views over the neighbouring countryside. 5 See above, Letter 572. 6 Because of his work for WSB in Sussex, SCC saw less of PSW during these months.

605 • To John William Mackail, 12 August 1898 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 12 Aug: 1898 Dear Mr Mackail Last night, when searching for other papers, I came upon the inclosed letter from Charles Faulkner to me, dated Aug: 1888, written at that time from the country where he was staying with his sister during the vacation. Presuming you will have find it necessary to say something in the book about the time when Morris & his friends were so strenuously engaged in the social movement, I thought the simplicity and directness of this letter of Faulkner’s – who had so well balanced a mind – would give throw a helpful sidelight of that on that time of W.Ms life. I send it with the hope it may be of service. Yours truly | Ph. W. WMG J181 388

1888–1898

606 • To Jane Morris, 27 August 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 August 1898 My dear Janey Here come a little Magpied garrulity – and the Cabinet lock – which I send today by parcel post. The great (infinitely small, I mean) architect took time to consider what shd be done with the lock, then to make a scratch for the key, and then get it made . The disease of delay was caught by Krall,1 who crawled over the work. Now at last it is done. I did not want it made smart, as it was a good tough old fashioned bit of Smith’s work,2 so I would not have new bowels put inside it. Hope you will agree with me. If the joiner who is to put the lock on, should think the wood of the lid of cabinet might not bear the strain of lock-bolt in the socket (I rather think it would) he had better get made a thin ‘striking plate’ made of iron, and screw it on to the lid. If the thing would do without this, so much the better. I will send you the bill for the key and repairing of lock when I get it. Krall would have preferred a ‘sky-be-flying’ Countessess’ [sic] job, of a £100 or so, to this two penny fidgetting [sic] thing, but he did not like to refuse me. I am thinking you will have May and the good Walker with you today, to enjoy the harvest bugs which will be ready for a browze on tender London flesh. Walker brought me some more prints for the ‘Life’, and I like them very much. That of the Holywell back view with New Coll: tower in the distance I thought exceedingly pretty and very well done.3 I must know Holywell St almost as well as you do. My father had two or three regular patients there, and when I was a little modest boy I used sometimes to go to the house of one of them & spend the day, but that was on the north side of the street, with the garden down to the pig-styed path-way leading between garden palings direct – in a winding way – to Holywell Church. I loved that pig and apple tainted air, as children do in the making of mud-pies. Now, you will take my word – I am sure – that this print should go into the book – for, in spite of your waggery, you are – in a way – amenable to my reasons?? I shall press on Mackail to include a print of the Kelmscott attics.4 I hope the devil of introspection has not danced round you too much (he has tugged at my vitals a little) and that you and Jenny have treated him to Dunstan’s tongs if he became too persistent.5 I gave the tongs a good twist. With kindly love to you both, I am | Your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 111

1 Presumably an ironmonger. 2 Used generically to indicate any blacksmith. 3 As becomes apparent in letters which follow, this drawing of Holywell Street by E.H. New was not used. JM appears to have been unwilling to include an illustration which reminded her of – and

389

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II perhaps drew the attention of others to – her humble origins in Oxford. JWM evidently sought PSW’s support in attempting to persuade her, and shared his frustrations with SCC; ‘Mrs Morris objects, to me somewhat unaccountably, to the inclusion in the book of a drawing which New has made of the bit of old Oxford (off Holywell St) in which she lived before her marriage. The suggestion of having such a drawing, & the drawing itself when it was made, were both warmly approved by Sir E Burne-Jones, & I am rather vexed by her objecting to it. I don’t know whether she has ever discussed the matter with you. Mr Webb also has told her that he thinks it should go in, but without effect.’ JWM to SCC, 19 September 1898, BL Add 52734, ff 10–11. 4 This drawing by E.H. New was included in Mackail, I, facing p. 232. 5 A pair of smith’s tongs is a symbol of St Dunstan, who employed a pair to fight the devil.

607 • To Jane Morris, 30 August 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 30 August 1898 My dear Janey The dear – at any price – “Mr Webb,” thought something must have happened as bad as – shall I say twins! – (for I find “twins” make very bad cooks when they are only 9 months old) which caused the formality of your address. I am glad May is with you – and that she will pick up. Cannot you ease the lock ‘escutcheon’ as well as the key of the cabinet. I think it would be well if you got Sydney Cockerell to see Mr Hobbs1 in a business-like way, and wrote down some story about the cottage, and the land, and the ways and means – &c – &c – so that no after dispute could happen. Certainly, I can get out a plan, but I should like as much information as possible got together, as to what accommodation is wanted in each cottage (I think you said there were to be two,) and if the fashionable and useless parlour of modern times would be necessary.2 I believe in a good sized living room, and a decent wash house. I suppose there must be 3 bedrooms to each cot? Perhaps May would make a rough plan of that corner of the ground on which the building is to be placed with some measurements as to boundary wall &c. I should, before designing, have to send Mr Jack down to take levels and accurate dimensions &c. Also, can you find out if there is a “Local board” surveyor for the district; as, if there is, he would have a hand in making the pie. In some districts the L.B is in existence, in others not, and this I know to my cost. Mr Hobbs no doubt could tell you if there is one, and if he is a decent one or an indecent? I have generally had to deal with the latter. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 112

1 The Kelmscott landlord. 2 This is the earliest appearance of JM’s idea for a tangible memorial to WM in the form of a pair of semi-detached family cottages for working people at Kelmscott (1898–1903). PSW would design them, but the project would not be completed until after his retirement, when supervision passed to GWJ, who continued to work in close consultation with PSW. See Kirk, pp. 211–12 and 302.

390

1888–1898

608 • To Detmar Jellings Blow, 9 September 1898 Copy, not in PW’s hand 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | W.C. 9th September 1898 To Detmar Blow My dear Detmar Winmill on his return from Clare came here and reported his visit to the church tower there.1 He seemed to have used his eyes and intelligence, talked to Neale,2 as well as consulting with you. The result of my conversation with him was that I considered the case, a serious one, which required the utmost caution and constant observation on your part till the structural repairs had gradually reduced the risks, which are I think considerable – however nearly the worse thing that could happen would be to lose one’s head over the matter. On my questioning Winmill upon the condition of the north western buttresses, I came to the conclusion that the N.W. corner of the tower stood upon a compressible foundation, and it had given sufficiently to let the tower down there enough to splinter the buttresses, weakened in their upper body as they are by the set-offs on their faces. I also gathered from him that you had underpinned the south side of tower & S.W. corner (where the tomb graves had been sunk) and that the underpinning had been done in concrete. I have found it impossible to underpin properly with concrete alone. The base of the hole would be made with concrete, but the underpinning to be done tightly should be in brickwork and cement. In any case piers of brickwork might be used so as to pin up tightly, and then, if bricks were dear, the piers might be filled round with concrete but pinned with bricks at top. The whole of course being done piece-meal. You will probably consider now if the N.W. angle should be underpinned? when you have secured the jamb of the W. window? At the first regular meeting of the ‘Antiscrape’ Committee yesterday after the recess, I reported the matter to the members (Winmill not being able to attend) and the Committee asked me to communicate the result of our consideration to you. We were unanimous in thinking that a serious effort should be made by you to be much more continuously on the ground, watching, scheming to meet difficulties as they occur, and personally directing the work of your men. With the waste of time now occurring from constant railway travelling by you, this very necessary attention is not possible on your part; and if any accident should happen, SPAB would have to acknowledge they were aware of this; and therefore it is evident that they were bound to draw your attention to the fact; and this letter represents that they are not neglecting their obvious duty. At the time Thackeray Turner carried on the arduous business of overcoming the difficulties in the parish as represented by the Parson, it was agreed between them that the Secretary of the Society or other capable representative should visit the place from time to time to see that the work being done corresponded with the intentions of the S.P.A.B. So, you see we are doubly responsible – and the Society cannot be accused justly of overstepping their duty by reminding you of it. 391

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

There seems to us to be no reasonable doubt that with your more constant personal attention, the tower can be safely and strongly repaired, but we are equally assured, that unless you can give greatly more such attention than you are now able to do, very serious risks are being run. One serious risk has occurred already, that of omitting from the first to cradle up strongly the western doorway and window over. Could you not see Mr Gimson, and put the case plainly before him, and see if he could arrange for some weeks at least to look after the Leicester cottages?3 It might be more difficult with the unfortunate London work, but if you gave Saturday Sunday and Monday to that, it would give you four consecutive days in each week for Clare, and the loss of time in mere travelling would be reduced? However capable & willing Neale & the other men working under you may be, they cannot do your work, which is that of scheming & contriving, for they have their own work to do, which in itself is no light matter. I think I told you when here, that Lethaby, (who had not moved in the matter before) spoke very seriously to me on these points, and asked me to urge upon the Society to explain to you that some change should be made in the way of proceeding with the work. You know enough of me I am sure to understand, that I have not undertaken to speak, and write in this way, willingly? It has gone much against the grain – but the responsibility both of the Society and you are too great to allow of my shirking the disagreeable4 Yours truly | (Signed) Philip Webb I was hindered today & could not send it till the night post. SPAB, Clare Church, Suffolk file

1 Repairs to the partly thirteenth-century tower of the parish church of St Peter and St Paul, Clare, in Suffolk, were initiated by the vicar, the Reverend James R.M. Vatcher, who had been appointed in 1896. He had followed the advice of the SPAB in inviting DJB to undertake the work, but both Vatcher and the SPAB committee became concerned that DJB was insufficiently in attendance to supervise the work, because of building commitments elsewhere. ‘Clare was the first project Blow worked on for the SPAB without Webb’s help. Nonetheless he reported back to the committee as work proceeded and this correspondence indicates that things did not go easily. They thought Blow was spending too much time in Leicestershire, and agreed with James Vatcher that ‘a representative from the society would visit from time to time to approve the work’. Drury, p. 94. It was such a monitoring report by Charles Canning Winmill in August which prompted this letter to DJB. 2 James Neale, DJB’s foreman at Clare, had previously been one of Albert Estcourt’s men at East Knoyle with whom DJB worked on the repairs to the church tower in 1892. Drury, p. 99. 3 The Leicester-born architect and Arts and Crafts furniture marker, Ernest Gimson (1864–1919), trained as an architect under John Dando Sedding, to whom he was recommended by WM. In 1890, with WRL, Sidney Barnsley and others, he founded a decorating firm in Bloomsbury, Kenton & Co., clearly modelled on the principles behind Morris & Co., though the firm did not last. See also Vol. III, Letter 632, note 10. DJB was overseeing the building of three of four cottages designed by Gimson in Ulverscroft, Leicestershire. Drury, pp. 85–91.

392

1888–1898 4 DJB’s self-confident response to criticism is notable. He put up a robust defence of the actual work undertaken to date, but avoided altogether addressing what was perhaps PSW’s greater worry, his intermittent presence on the site. ‘I am sure you will understand that the purport of this reply is not to blame your reporter (a very young man) but to re-establish myself in your holiness’s mind. The Tower stands on firm ground, a mixture of gravell [sic] and stiff loam, but on the South side graves have been frequently dug to a depth of seven feet and the soil broaching this side of the Tower has become a loose and light mixture, we have therefore encased the more solid ground upon which the Tower stands with a concrete wall in a line with the outside of the Tower footings to a depth of seven feet below the ground, which is the bottom of the vault. The N.W. corner of the Tower upon which we are now engaged proves to be in a much more disintegrated state than was expected from the direction of the fractures visible through the plaster inside of the Tower, our work proceeds with the greatest precaution, the superstructure rubs hard on that part of the projecting buttresses not underpinned by us’. DJB to PSW, 20 September 1898, SPAB, Clare Church, Suffolk file. The completed work vindicated DJB’s self-belief, such that the formerly critical Vatcher later insisted on using DJB for later repairs to the choir stalls, for ‘[t]he people here would not consent to anything else’. Drury, p. 97.

609 • To Jane Morris, 30 September 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 30 September 1898 My dear Janey I waited till I had seen Cockerell on his return from Kelmscott, before answering your letter of the 24th. I have now seen him twice, and his report is just what I wanted about the cottages; and May’s little plan made the matter all the clearer.1 Perhaps, before you leave you could get from Mr Hobbs, if there is any Local Board (Government) interference in buildings of the Kelmscott district? In some places there is, and in others there is not. For example, in certain districts of Surrey, there is; in other parts – only 10 or 12 miles away, there is not. If there is in your district I shd have to negociate with the Local Board Surveyor. I really think you would be safer if your local builder did use Morse’s paints,2 as, in these days of centralization, the little builders have little or no knowledge how to make their own paints, and often make a mess of it when they try – and as “white lead”, which is the body of the paints, wants keeping (maturing) in bulk which this they cannot do now. If your local man has been accustomed to use Morse’s (a recognized maker) he is less likely to make a mess. You should instruct him to make several patterns, on boards nearly as large as this paper, of the colours you want, submit them to you when dry for your approval – and alteration if not satisfactory. In choosing your white paints, get some hen’s eggs (you can find them gradated from pure white almost to reddish brown) and choose your white for him to match. I am glad you have had a fine hot summer – and noble moons galore; but now (and the moon is a wonder this evening after last night’s rain) you will find the mornings and evenings coolish – at least I do, not yet having lit a fire. Cockerell

393

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

gave me – religiously, all your affectionate loves, with Miss Roberts’, modified in colour – not being quite “reddish brown”.3 Giles must have than blessed the moon and all the stars for the handy river for his garden waterings. There, my dear friend, distribute my love amongst you, being careful in the tint of that to Miss R. [sketch of ‘egg’ and beneath ‘The tint.’] Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f 113

1 ‘I handed over May’s little plan to Mr Webb, who will no doubt give it to Mr Jack when he goes down to take stock of the ground. Mr Webb thoroughly approved of the ground being bought, so that the cottages may be entirely in your hands.’ SCC to JM, 1 October 1898, BL Add 52738, f 70. 2 A.T. Morse Sons & Co. manufactured paint, varnish and distemper, operating from premises in Stratford, east London, from about 1890. 3 SCC called on him again a few days later, and they walked first to the Tate and then on to the South Kensington Museum ‘where we had tea & stayed talking & gazing until nearly 10. The talk was a very nice one. Mr Webb was in one of his kindliest moods, and we discussed first the Gothic casts, then the old fashioned water colours upstairs, & then the Hispano-Moorish dishes & finally the Florentine terra cottas – & he told me much about all these things, & pointed out many beauties that I should have missed had I been alone. At the tea table, where we sat long, the talk was of men rather than of things – & I asked questions about Madox Brown & Rossetti whose work we had been looking at – & we spoke of your father, as we always do, those of us who had the inestimable privilege of knowing him.’ SCC to JEM, 10 October 1898, BL Add 52739, ff 100–101.

610 • To John William Mackail, 8 October 1898 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon. W.C. 8 October 1898 Dear Mr Mackail Kate Faulkner’s sister – Mrs Orrinsmith, on clearing letters from a cabinet in 2 Caroline Place, sent me a parcel of letters those from William Morris to the brother Charles Faulkner, with a request that I should look through them and send those to you which seemed looked appeared to me likely to be of any assistance to you. I have done this, and it seemed better that I should send the whole bundle – important, or not so, as a date might be of assistance helpful even in the least interesting of them. I also send one of Morris’s to K.F herself, as it seemed read to me as singularly characteristic and graceful. There were a few more letters from and to the same persons K.F, but there they were merely notices of calling going to see her, or of not being able to do so.1 I know that K.F destroyed some letters of W.M to her. Mrs Orrinsmith when writing to me, said, she presumed you would return the letters to her when you had done with them. 394

1888–1898

When I was at Kelmscott in the summer, Mrs Morris spoke to me about the reproductions of drawings being prepared by Emery Walker for printing in for the ‘life’ you are doing writing, and she expressed a wish that the one of her early home in Holywell St, Oxford, shd not appear. This feeling of hers I combat[t]ed, and since then I have seen a good proof tho’ print reproduction. It is a singularly pleasant little picture, very characteristic of well representing the small but pretty Holywell St house-backs, with a good view of New Coll tower in the background. Mrs Morris gave in to my arguments if I would bargain that a picture of the attics at Kelmscott was also inserted – for W.M delighted in those roof-rooms. I said I had no influence – nor even right to put in a word, but would risk urging upon the authorities that the garret picture should go into the book as I sincerely really think it should.2 I am much pleased with Mr New’s the drawings, and of Walker’s reproductions of them, and so I have acted up to my promise to Mrs Morris, as you see. I hope you are threading your way through the task contentedly, in spite of the doleful loss of the stimulating companionship. Yours truly | Ph.W. letter I send the packet of letters in a registered postal parcel today, having just sifted them into dates, as certainly as I could, before tying them together – the earliest at the top. WMG J182

1 ‘I have to thank you for sending on the bundle of letters given you by Mrs Orrin Smith, & also for the pains you took to arrange them in order for me. A few of them are extremely valuable, & they are all interesting, even the notes.’ JWM to PSW, 9 October 1898, WMG J174. 2 See above, Letter 606, and below, Letters 611–3.

611 • To Jane Morris, 19 October 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 19 October 1898 | 10. p.m. My dear Janey Having been so closely ‘targed’ with work,1 part of which has gone “quite contrairy”, I have been unable till now to recognise receipt of your letter and the addendum which followed. Also, I have to tell you the result of an interview I had with Mackail last Friday. I learn you have receded from our bargain (‘ratted’, it is called elsewhere) as to the Holywell picture for the “Life”. You know – there is no ‘deniying’ it, that we solemnly agreed in the council of 2 – that if I got Mackail to agree to the picture of the Attic in the roofs, you would give in to the little Holywell print. Are you prepared to wash your hands of me? Modesty – no doubt, is sometimes a virtue but sometimes a vice, so why should you be vicious? This, the prettiest of all the non Kelmscott drawings, is historical, linking the Oxford 395

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

part of his life with all the rest of it, and afterwards, there are my feelings; I always liked Holywell more than any other part of Oxford, from the corner-house* in the ‘Broad,’ to Maudlin-Grove wall; and when I went down the street at 6.30 on Summer morning I peered into every alley and open door down that street – and I used to go as a chick to Stevens-Pinfold’s, the butcher’s garden; as a Miss Stevens – invalid, was a patient of my father’s, and gave me sweets. O, the sunny and the shady sides of the Street were a pleasure to me. I told Mackail I should bringyou-to. You have been good to me, don’t begin now to be bad?2 [squeezed into left margin] * Do you not remember Mr Wood, the surgeon (father I fancy of the naturalist Wood) who used to screw himself down the Street with a semi academic paralytic kind of walk? He lived at that corner house in my early time. The house has now been replaced by a base attempt on India.3 I am sorely mistrustful as to building at Kelmscott, and I almost wish the other foot was in the grave, instead of in a hod of mortar at the lovely place. I was glad of your notes as to the requirements for the cottages, and your sketches of the outsides – but thought you much too ambitious – and I feel sure I shall have to go [to] Kelmscott and search all round for a suggestion of simplicity which shall disarm the critics, who would shoot out their lips at my defacing the old place.4 I think £30 for half an acre is reasonable, and would (the size of ground) be big enough. Building only decently is so hard a matter, and I am so old, and nearly worn out, that I am contemplating, with elbows on table & chin in hands, the gradually backing out of that work, so as not to be quite ruined: for I have been losing rather than gaining the last 2 or 3 years in the practicing of it, and am thinking of some healthy corner (in the country if possible) where I can Diogenate on £150 a year,5 turning to some kind of publisher’s or other drawings to make up that amount, and so, don’t be hard upon me about the little pictures for the Life. Your doddering old friend and fellow-townsman (not gownsman) | Philip Webb. P.S. I argued with Mackail about the bird’s eye view picture for the life. I do not like it at all. It gives a wholly wrong idea of the place. I think it will, after all, be omitted.6 BL Add 45342, f. 114 1 For ‘targed’, see also below, Letter 688, note 1. Here, he uses the word to mean being pinned down by the pressures of work. 2 As this was the second occasion on which PSW sought to persuade JM to include the print of Holywell as an illustration in the biography, he clearly had not registered quite how sensitive the topic of her working-class origins was to her. But see the two letters following. 3 Completed in 1896, the Indian Institute on the corner of Holywell Street was designed by Basil Champneys (1842–1935), and now forms part of Hertford College. 4. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,’ Psalms 22:7.

396

1888–1898 5 The Greek philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope (d. 323 BC) was critical of the values of what he regarded as corrupt society and lived in poverty as a beggar, sleeping in the market-place in a ceramic jar. 6 It was omitted.

612 • To Jane Morris, 24 October 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 October. 1898 My dear Janey O, dear me, what have I said? Is it that my jests are so profound that you “fail to understand a good part” of them –? if that is all, I don’t mind, but I hope there was nothing in my letter which hurt you. Be assured I had no such intention, could not have; for your continuous kindness to me I am always sensible of. However, I shall hope to see you when you come to town – and till we can then have it out together Believe me | Your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 115

613 • To Jane Morris, 31 October 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 31 October. 1898 My dear Janey Your tenderly kind letter is very comforting to me, and I am almost glad I unwittingly gave you some pain, by urging the putting into the book the little Oxford picture, now that you have opened to me your real reason for objecting to its use there. Of course now I would be as much against putting it in as I was for it.1 Now that you have so lovingly written to me of your motive I think you will really like me the better for having so wished it before? I have always felt your having been born in Oxford was a kindly tie between us, and I feel it even more now that both of our families had their rather sad lives there. Also I confess to have had pleasure in thinking of you as a child spending the unconscious part of your life in and about that region of the beautiful place, which I at my young and unconscious time rejoiced in without really know [sic] why. I thank you for having “opened your heart” to me on this point. Believe me, that deep down in my spiritual system there is more sensitive tenderness for my close personal friends than my jesting humour may – at times, let them believe of me. ’Tis [word obliterated] often, I assure you, but a veil drawn in front of my own sadness of heart. I should be very glad if you could come and see me before you leave, but as it is such a long way for you I will willingly come and meet you at May’s. Just tell me which you would prefer, and let me know wh’ day it shall be. It had better be in the day time if you come here, and in the evening if I come to you. 397

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

Mr Fletcher called here to tell me of his visit to Kelmscott, and he left the large scale Ordnance map for my use, as it is helpful.2 Your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, ff. 116-7

1 The picture was not used, and indeed we learn nothing at all of JM’s family background in the biography. She is introduced, with her sister, as ‘daughters of Mr. Robert Burden, of Holywell Street’ (Mackail, I, p. 136). Two pages later, she and WM are married. JWM was all too aware of this inadequacy of treatment, though was inclined to feel more sympathetically towards WM’s position than to that of JM. ‘What I feel is that it does grave injustice to Morris himself to slur over the fact that he married “beneath him” and did so with perfect simplicity & as a thing which he had no reason whatever to feel ashamed of in any way. I have been obliged to some degree to slur it over, & the loss will be the book’s, & Mrs Morris’ own I think, if she knew it. . . . If Mrs Morris feels ashamed of having lived in a little house among surroundings of extreme beauty before she married, all I can say is that such a feeling is to me unintelligible.’ JWM to SCC, 22 September 1898, BL Add 52734, ff. 12–13. 2 Probably the lawyer who had previously acted for WM. He advised JM on the legal issues relating to where the Kelmscott cottages might be sited. See also Vol. III, Letter 633, note 7.

614 • To John William Mackail, 8 December 1898 Draft 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 7 8 December 1898 Dear Mr Mackail In answer to your letter of yesterday, the 6.th Tuesday1 I was apprenticed to an architect in Reading in the spring of 1849, and served my master as paid assistant after my the time had run out.2 Then for a short space and with an archt in Wolverhampton, whom I left to go to Street’s in Oxford – in the spring of 1854.3 When W.M Morris came there I had been put at the head of the office, and came up with Morris WM. to London when on Street moving there moving to London in the autumn of 1856. On At my leaving Street’s in 1858, Norman Shaw took the elevated stool there.4 He was apprenticed I believe, to Burn, (or Burns) a well known Scotch archt of the time.5 Morris could not have been influenced by Street’s work, I am sure, except in coming in the negative way of determining to leave the study of what to him was but a change from one kind of Victorian art to another; & whereas W.M he had already grasped the inner worth of a natural growth in art as against an artificial study of mere forms: Street, though a very able man could not perceive that only from the life of the people could make come a living art. Shaw may have been influenced by Street a little, but he had no turn for Ecclesiasticism, and took his own characteristic line. He had little or no sympathy with Morris’s work when that came to the front, and I doubt if the two men ever met.

398

1888–1898

Street always behaved in a kindly way to me, and I respected his ability, but even when with him I became aware of the injury being done by the ecclesiastical architects to the remains of native English art, which in Oxford was so fully expressed; so that being born & bred there my earliest first perceptions of anything was of the beauty and seriousness of the buildings – that was my earliest and unconscious “study of architecture” – and that good breeding – at all events has never left me. I may say, the manners of the Oxford buildings were the making of me.6 Morris’s first study of the ‘antique’ in that way came from the interesting and somewhat peculiar churches in Essex, which he never ceased to remember distinctly. I hope you will be able to do with as little mention of my name as may be – and if it were nil, I should be the more content. Let me congratulate you on the tiresome business of moving from one house to another having been got over.7 Yours truly | Ph: W. Cheltenham 1991.1016.332.d

1 JWM had written in connection with his work on the WM biography. ‘I have incidentally mentioned the revolution in common domestic architecture from the early Victorian type as intimately associated with the homes of Morris, yourself, and Norman Shaw, who had all been in Street’s office. I had spoken of you as “those three pupils,” but it has been suggested to me that you were not technically Street’s pupil, but only a clerk in his office. Will you let me know please whether the phrase is incorrect? It would not of course imply that any of the three had owed ideas or style to Street, but only that you had begun the study of architecture under him.’ JWM to PSW, 6 December 1898, Cheltenham 1991.1016.332.b. 2 He obtained his articles under John W. Billing (1817–63), the borough surveyor in Reading and member of the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society. PSW worked in Reading from 1849–54. 3 The Wolverhampton practice, which PSW joined in April 1854, was that of Bidlake and Lovatt, but ‘[a]fter only four weeks [he] secured a new post, the reduction of his salary of £2 a week being of no matter against the unutterable relief of returning to his beloved Oxford, where on 16 May 1854 he began working for the Diocesan Architect, George Edmund Street (1824–81)’. Kirk, p. 12. 4 ‘Street’s senior clerk was then Philip Webb, a man a few years older than Morris. Between them there arose a close and lifelong friendship. When Webb left Street’s office in 1859 [sic] his place was taken by Norman Shaw. It is hardly too much to say that the work of these three men has, in the course of a generation, revolutionized domestic architecture throughout England.’ Mackail, I, pp. 102–3. 5 Richard Norman Shaw (1831–1912) was articled in the Piccadilly practice of William Burn, before succeeding PSW as Street’s chief assistant. 6 His love for Oxford’s buildings is also reflected in his ownership of David Loggan, Oxford and Cambridge Illustrated (London: H. Overton, 1675), a book presented to him by CF and now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 139. 7 JWM and his wife, Margaret Burne-Jones, had just moved from 27 Young Street, Kensington (which they had rented from Thackeray’s daughter, Anne Thackeray Ritchie), to 6 Pembroke Gardens.

399

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

615 • To Sydney Cockerell, 22 December 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 22 December 1898 Dear Cockerell I thought there must be something to the good or bad with you, and – worse luck – it is not the good, except that it enabled you to avoid last ‘antiscrape’. However, now that you have wisely retired behind the closed door you may stand better chance of shaking off the severe cold. It was only because my time was limited that I did not look in upon you on Sat: last when I went to see Wardle. I thought he was shewing well being, and I found him industrious at his literary work. Some of his fair copy I read, and like the other works of old time, I found them very good. He “will be bad to hold” now, as someone says in Jorrocks,1 if the Yank editor swallows the whole of the yarns.2 Yes, Lethaby’s fling was a very sharply planted stroke on the shoulder of the enemy of mankind.3 If I had written (could have?) anything so stinging, eyes and hands wd have been held up in Buckingham Street,4 that I was dangerously affronting ‘influential’ people – and the staff wd have been pruned down like an Italian vine in the spring! Thank you very kindly for lending me the S. Franciscus.5 I will turn to him in the more free days of Xmas, and have his help to exorcise the devil from within me. This day week at Gattis’ you may see my face for to shine accordingly – but perhaps you may look in here.6 Surely you will like having another go at fine M.S.S. and I hope you will get on comfortably with Yates Thompson.7 Lethaby has insulted me with a present. He only escaped tooth & claw by its being a book, and that abt Holbein, with numbers of photo: reproductions of the GREAT man’s pictures.8 Such a man, O such a man he was and is and will be to come, if fires are rightly kept under. I put my feelings in my pocket and received a backhander from him as result: I wrote a polite letter of thanks, and he told me to my face that the letter seemed to invite another gift. If this had been said to a boy with hair on his head it might have passed – my noticing it to you is evidence of dire ire between we he & me for ever more. He goes home tomorrow. Hope he’ll be gored by a Devon bull, and be bluggy.9 I agree with you about a right arrangement of margins. Now that you are a journeyman, you must thank your stars for having been an industrious apprentice. Is there such a thing as a good short – or moderately so – History of Wales? Geo: Borrow has been my only source as to that corner of Britain hitherto10 – Does this prosy letter look like begging? darrrrnations! Yrs Philip Webb. V&A NAL MSL/1958/688/88

400

1888–1898 1 Robert Smith Surtees (1805–64) wrote articles about Mr Jorrocks, his ‘jolly, free-and-easy, foxhunting grocer’, for the New Sporting Magazine which he co-founded in 1831. These subsequently appeared as Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities (1838), and some novels featuring Jorrocks followed. 2 Although GW would produce various articles and short pieces, he abandoned attempts to publish something more substantial, ‘my dealings with Yanks being almost certainly ended’. GW to PSW, 16 February 1899, Courtauld, 207c. 3 In his review of Emile Hovelaque’s, Comment on Restaure Versailles (Paris, 1898), a pamphlet critical of the then current restoration work at Versailles, WRL condemned the arrogance of French and English restorers. ‘The essential trait of these people is that, knowing not how to create, they would remake everything. . . . They pretend to be co-workers of the men of genius whose works they destroy.’ ‘How they Restore’, The Architectural Review, V (December 1898), pp. 14–20. 4 The SPAB office was at 10 Buckingham Street. 5 S. Francis of Assisi, the Mirror of Perfection, edited by Paul Sabatier, translated by Sebastian Evans (London: David Nutt, 1898). 6 ‘Had supper with Lethaby & then went with him to Philip Webb’s & spent an hour there. Discussed P.W’s scheme for retiring into Wales.’ CD, 29 December 1898. 7 Henry Yates Thompson (1838–1928) was the most discriminating British collector of illuminated manuscripts, almost to the point of ruthlessness, limiting his collection to 100 items and selling something of lesser importance when a new purchase was made. On 13 December he invited SCC to help catalogue his treasures, if WSB would release half of his time. WSB readily agreed to this arrangement, and by the close of 1898 SCC was spending whole days working at Yates Thompson’s house at 19 Portman Square. 8 WRL had almost certainly given him the just published H. Knackfuss, Holbein, translated by Campbell Dodgson (London: H. Grevel & Co., 1899), which has 151 illustrations. 9 ‘Pretended infantile pronunciation of Bloody’ (OED). 10 George Borrow, Wild Wales: its People, Language, and Scenery (1862).

616 • To Sydney Cockerell, 23 December 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9.45 p.m. 23 December 1898 Dear Cockerell Just had your letter, and write a word of answer which may catch you on – if not before the Margate hop.1 It is very good of you to hide your kindness under a bushel of jests – real jokes because not true. Wales, of course is only a preliminary speculation with the hope that it might turn out to be possible and free from ‘posters’, and the 19th century craze for decoration with waste paper.2 Winchelsea would I fancy be too cold a place, and the White Hart too extravagant a hostel for the class of friend who would come to see me. I see that you and Walker & Lethaby think I should drop into moping and slovenly habits if I seldom saw cultivated people; and perhaps end by saving sixpences up the chimney. How came you to bless me with the Sebastian-Francis book, which will only stimulate my reclusive turn?3 However much I do dislike presents, in a general way, I cannot be grumpy over

401

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME II

your tenderly kindness insertion of such a volume to go with those, too much valued to sell, wh’ I shall take with me to Wales or Hounds ditch.4 I suspected as much about Malm[e]sbury, and the Soc: of antiquateds may have been a motive power.5 Mind you, there is no antiscrape next Thurs: but on the Thurs: following. I shall be glad to see you here when you can shew yourself, and revived by the sea air. Useful young men shd not be poorly. Jack has a holiday till Wednesday morning – he going to take the Jackettinas to the pantomime. Lethaby gone to examine the Devonian strata. You remember Rossetti’s immoral foisting of his young friends’ childish work on the public. I must post. | Yours, and always touched by real kindness | Philip Webb. I may go & see Wardle tomorrow, and may look in to see if you are going or gone – but I hope it will be possible for you to move away.6 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/89

1 On Christmas Eve, SCC went to Margate to spend Christmas with his old friend, Arthur Walton Rowe (1858–1926). Rowe joined his father’s Margate medical practice in 1884, and became an authority on chalk fossils. His marriage to the wealthy Emily Barton in 1887 meant that he could afford to build Shottendane, an Arts and Crafts country house in Margate designed by HTT. 2 PSW was now actively considering where he might retire. SCC annotation: ‘[He] thought of Wales as a possible resting place. We, who wanted to see more of him, complained of the distance.’ 3 See previous letter, note 5. 4 A street in the City of London partly adjacent to the ancient London Wall, marking the location of a ditch into which waste was dumped. PSW doubtless has in mind the fact that it was formerly used for the disposal of dead dogs. 5 A report in the Daily Chronicle for 23 December reported a meeting at Malmesbury, with the Duke of Beaufort in the chair, when ‘it was resolved to take steps to restore Malmesbury Abbey’. The speakers included the Bishop of Bristol, George Forrest Browne, appointed in 1897, and formerly Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Some months earlier, on 11 August, the Daily News had carried a short report noting that the Bishop had met with the Vicar and churchwardens when ‘the unanimous opinion was that the ancient fabric must be taken in hand without delay. The Bishop, who is a Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, has undertaken to obtain a preliminary survey of the fabric from an antiquarian point of view, to be followed eventually by a complete report.’ Browne was also a member of the SPAB (see above, Letter 601, note 2). 6 GW was at this time lodging in Richmond, close to where SCC himself had rooms, in Friars Stile Road.

617 • To Sydney Cockerell, 31 December 1898 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 31 December 1898 Dear Cockerell This comes to say you have drawn it upon yourself – the infliction of a letter – to wit, or rather, the weather and you – for the glass is dropping quickly for another 402

1888–1898

storm, and it rains enough now. Otherwise it seems as if I should have looked in upon you for 5 min: this evening in the body, instead of the in black liquid, for Wardle had invited me to entice away his loneliness again, and of his kindness, perhaps, thinking I might be lonely.1 Still he is a consolidated fund of knowledge from which I draw with pleasure, and forget again with sorrow. However, I leave damnable faces and begin. The Chiswick Press has sent me yet another ‘Kelmscott’ book: The Art and beauty of Burslem2 – and all through your untiring energy in heaping hot coals upon my slated head – for it is not thatched. I thank you kindly, but what is another ‘thank-you’ amongst so many? I see there is nothing for it but Wales, or Ultima Thule3 and an alias, to fend myself from attention which no sporting of Gray’s-Inn Oaks will keep out.4 Get married instantly and concentrate your attention on a “oner” (?2. ees)5 with a promise of two cradles in 9 months. Jorrocks was to double his subsidy if the handsome boy and girl produced twins.6 (no, I will not turn over) [this at bottom of page - rest of text squeezed in at top and sides] You shocked me the other night, for I thought I might have lost or st sold the 2 vols of translated poems – but were found them in the bookcase & packed them up to bring with me tonight – if I came. Yours inexpressibly | Philip Webb. The John Audelay poems are interesting and touching, with a beauty which . . . . was at hand in those days.7 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/92

1 In fact, PSW did call later the same day. ‘Jenny Morris & Mrs Grove came to tea & Philip Webb looked in for a few minutes while they were here, and then went on to Mr Wardle.’ CD, 31 December 1898. Mrs Grove was a lady with whom JEM was then living, in Chiswick. 2 WM, Art and Beauty of the Earth: a Lecture Delivered at Burslem Town Hall on October 13, 1881 (London: Longmans & Co., 1898). 3 In medieval maps, the furthest extent of the known world. 4 To sport one’s oaks: shutting an outer door against unwelcome visitors. 5 The OED records both spellings, oner and one-er, as a slang term for someone who is exceptional, a one off or an expert at something, and notes usages by Dickens and Thackeray, amongst others. 6 See above, Letter 615, note 1. 7 John Audelay (fl. 1417–26), an Augustinian friar of Haughmond Abbey, Shropshire, and author of poems and carol texts to be found in a manuscript now at the Bodleian Library. His works were made available in The Poems of John Audelay, ed J.O. Halliwell (London: [Percy Society], 1844).

403

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB

Webb to George Washington Jack, 30 May 1888 (Letter 334)

[Private collection]

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB Edited by John Aplin Volume III 1899–1902

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Editorial material and selection © 2016 John Aplin; individual owners retain copyright in their own material All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Webb, Philip, 1831–1915, author. [Correspondence. Selections] The letters of Philip Webb. volumes cm Contents: volume 1. Letters 1864–87 — volume 2. Letters 1888–98 — volume 3. Letters 1899–1902 — volume 4. Letters 1903–14. ISBN 978-1-84893-498-6 (Set) — ISBN 978-1-315-63964-2 (Set) — ISBN 978-1-138-76144-5 (vol. 1) — ISBN 978-1-138-76145-2 (vol. 2) — ISBN 978-1-315-64257-4 (vol. 2) — ISBN 978-1-138-76146-9 (vol. 3) — ISBN 978-1-315-64256-7 (vol. 3) — ISBN 978-1-138-76147-6 (vol. 4) — ISBN 978-1-315-64255-0 (vol. 4) 1. Webb, Philip, 1831–1915—Correspondence. 2. Architects—Great Britain—Correspondence. I. Aplin, John, editor. II. Title. NA997.W4A3 2016 720.92—dc23 2015035179 ISBN: 978-1-8489-3498-6 (Set) eISBN: 978-1-315-63964-2 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-1387-6146-9 (Volume III) eISBN: 978-1-315-64256-7 (Volume III) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

VOLUME III 1899–1902 Introduction

vii

Letters 1899–1902

1

v

INTRODUCTION

. . . certain it is, if I neglected the signs, that I should shortly drop, having come to the end of my professional tether. I have been losing money over the last 3 of my pieces of work, and the rent and other costs of living in London are eating me up – mind, body and estate. I believe I can live in a cheap [part of the] country for 10 years on £150 a year, and my only risk is, that perhaps I may live too long under stimulus of free air and freedom from anxiety. (Letter 620)

It was natural that there should have been a process of taking stock as the old century came towards its close. For Webb this meant the winding-up of his professional practice, and preparations for a move from London to Worth, near Crawley in Sussex, where he would spend his last fourteen years. Although he had initially hoped to give up his Raymond Buildings chambers in Gray’s Inn with the expiry of the lease at Michaelmas (September) 1900, delays in finding the right retirement location, and then having to make some necessary changes to the property itself, would mean that he only finally left London in the first days of January 1901. It would not have escaped him that there was something apposite, perhaps even auspicious, in starting a century with the slate wiped clean. For Webb was by no means alone in asserting that 1901, not 1900, signalled the start of the new century, 1900 being the final year, the hundredth, of the old one. Thoughts of retirement may already have been present at the time of William Morris’s death, in October 1896. But two years later, soon after the memorial stone he had designed for his old friend was set up in the churchyard at Kelmscott, two more of Morris’s former circle died within weeks of each other during the summer of 1898, Burne-Jones on 17 June and Kate Faulkner on 5 July. Both deaths affected Webb profoundly, if in different ways. That of Burne-Jones was perhaps the more symbolic, for it left him as the last representative of the nexus of friendships which had given life to Morris & Co. in its earliest manifestation; as Burne-Jones’s son-in-law put it, Webb was ‘the single survivor who matters of that remarkable association of thirty-six years ago’ (Letter 589, note 1). The point pressed itself painfully upon him with Kate’s death, for not only did Webb care

vii

INTRODUCTION

deeply for her – and more complexly so, perhaps, than he was able to recognise or we can now recover – it also reinforced the finality of the break with her brother, Charles, one of the other original founders of ‘the Firm’. To both brother and sister Webb had been a long-standing and loyal friend in their final painful years, first by supporting Faulkner through the long months that followed his stroke with nightly visits to Queen Square, distracting him with card games, books and pictures, and then by a similar regime of caring support for Kate herself, who never really recovered after her brother’s death and went into a steady decline. Webb was well into his sixty-eighth year when she died, and the combination of a harsher financial outlook with a new sense of melancholy and world-weariness made the prospect of retirement ever more compelling, but he would be 70 before he could make it a reality. Another who was directly affected by Morris’s death was Sydney Cockerell, and not least because it brought to an end congenial employment. He had acquired a specialist set of skills during the years since 1892, first from his meticulous cataloguing of Morris’s manuscripts and then in helping to secure new acquisitions, a role which encompassed acting more generally as his secretary and personal assistant. The final years in particular had supplied privileged access to Morris’s immediate family and close friends, Webb not the least amongst the latter, and the confidence in Cockerell’s integrity and in his capacity for doing the right thing is evident not just in Morris having appointed him as one of his executors, but also by Jane placing the winding-up of the affairs of the Kelmscott Press in his preeminently safe hands. He was not therefore immediately made jobless in 1898. Although Cockerell had scrupulously avoided taking advantage of Morris’s trust, and indeed studiously ensured that he continued to do the right thing in overseeing the interests of Jane and her daughters, there is no doubt that he enjoyed the advantages that a place in the centre of important daily affairs had offered him. His work for Morris had been of a kind for which he was singularly well-equipped, but it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he had positioned himself in the right place and at the right time, making it almost inevitable that if anyone was to be asked to do it, he would be that man. Since 1886 he had been a regular attender at the Sunday lectures on socialism at Kelmscott House, a few years later joining the committee of the SPAB – his qualifications being those of an enthusiastic if informed amateur, self-taught in the appreciation of architecture (his interest fired by his readings of Ruskin, and reinforced by his eventual meeting and friendship with the great man), a ready convert to Ruskinesque ‘antiscrape’ ideology, and with a tireless capacity for hard work. A trusting friendship with the Morrises developed, leading to his being a guest at Kelmscott Manor on two occasions in 1892, at the end of which year he started his manuscript work for Morris. But Cockerell suggests in his diary at the close of that year that Webb’s special hold over Morris may have been crucial in this appointment, and that ‘out of my stays at Kelmscott, and thanks also to Philip Webb’s influence, arose my present work of cataloguing W.M’s books, a truly enviable task’ (Letter 434, note 3). It was a blissful situation for Cockerell, in daily contact with men he regarded as personal viii

INTRODUCTION

heroes and who as followers of Ruskin figured in the first rank of great names in the world of art and ideas to which he was drawn. Much of the admiring loyalty he had shown to Morris was now transferred to Webb, to whom he remained devoted for the rest of the older man’s life. But what now developed was an almost playful affection between Cockerell and Webb, as if from a favoured nephew towards an especially benign uncle. The death of Cockerell’s own father in his early years may well have assisted in the flowering of this surrogate relationship, but if so it was one which supplied Webb with a role he was evidently happy to play. Cockerell was instrumental in securing the retirement cottage which eventually proved to be Webb’s home for fourteen years, and in which he would die peacefully, the ever-loyal Cockerell at his side. In one of those delicate ironies which cannot have passed unnoticed at the time by the various players, Webb took on the cottage called ‘Caxtons’ on the Crabbet estate, owned by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, former lover of Jane Morris and whose part-time personal secretary and assistant Cockerell now became (largely on the strength of the skills and experiences he had gained with Morris). Webb, Cockerell, Jane and Blunt himself must all have felt that there was something curious about how things tend to work out. But we can be certain that Webb would not for a moment have entertained the idea of becoming Blunt’s tenant if he had felt in the least degree anxious or awkward about what it might have meant to the sensitivities of others concerned, always assuming that he was not wholly ignorant of the ‘history’ between Blunt and Jane, and by extension between them and his late friend. The letters in the current volume reveal just how prolonged was Webb’s search for this eventual retirement location, which, it should be said, was neither his first nor his preferred choice. His hopes had been that somewhere suitable in the Cotswolds would present itself, so that he might be in the vicinity of the Arts and Crafts community which gathered round Ernest Gimson and the Barnsleys at Sapperton, near Cirencester. It was not to be. When this likely outcome became evident, Cockerell seems to have discussed the problem with Blunt, who suggested that one of his own estate cottages might suit, upon which Cockerell passed on the tentative suggestion, knowing that Webb might need soSme persuading if the offer was to be seriously considered. The location a mile from the station at Three Bridges, easily reached by train from Victoria or London Bridge, was attractive to Cockerell and Webb’s other friends based in the capital, including Walker, Lethaby and Jack, as their visits could continue once he had left Gray’s Inn. Cockerell had particularly feared the thought of his friend’s departure, worried that Webb might feel isolated from the friends of his former life. In this respect, Caxtons’ relative accessibility proved to be an ideal location. As for Webb’s last building project, the pair of cottages at Kelmscott which Jane had asked him to design as a lasting memorial to Morris, not a single brick had been laid by the time he finally left Gray’s Inn for Sussex, even though the project had first been discussed between them in August 1898. Constant prevarication and evasiveness by the Lechlade builder whom they had initially favoured as a preferred bidder for the work finally led Webb to believe that some kind of ix

INTRODUCTION

cartel between the local builders and perhaps a jealous architect was in operation to prevent the work proceeding. It reinforced a general mood of melancholy in him, as he confided to Cockerell: You will readily understand my position in the matter: 1. my strong disinclination to build a modern thing in Kelmscott: 2. my equally strong wish to help Mrs Morris in her very natural desire to build: 3. my own necessary change of life at this time: 4. Jack’s getting on to his own business legs – and only partly available for any of my last building work: 5. my own spirits not having much spring in them. (Letter 686) The builder’s estimate for the work was impossibly high, and Webb refused to allow Jane to spend more money than the job was worth, especially as he was deeply suspicious about the reasons for the inflated prices. He recommended that she abandoned the project, at least until more auspicious conditions prevailed, so it was something of a surprise when in March 1902, more than a year into Webb’s retirement, the Lechlade builder expressed new interest in undertaking the work. More tough negotiations took place, but a reasonable price was arrived at and Webb was able to recommend Jane’s acceptance. The work finally proceeded, but entirely under George Jack’s supervision – he and Webb communicating constantly during the building works – and the original specification was followed with only modest adjustments. After five years in the planning, the memorial cottages were finished by about May 1903. Webb would never again visit Kelmscott Manor after leaving London, but he took real pleasure in Jane’s happiness at the completion of this long-standing project. One last detail remained. There was space between the first floor bedroom windows of the semidetached cottages for some kind of inscription or plaque to be added, and in December 1902 Webb proposed a carving featuring an image of Morris, resting amongst trees and surrounded by birds, his inspiration being the poem which Morris had written specially for the piece of embroidery which May had designed and which still hangs from his oak bed at Kelmscott Manor, lines which included the one that Webb gave to his image, ‘The Town of the Tree’. Webb’s design was executed by Jack, who was an exceptionally skilled carver in wood and stone. The work took some months to complete but Webb’s vision for the carving was there from the outset, a design which worked powerfully on his imagination as being the most fitting tribute to his much-missed friend. He wrote to Jane from Caxtons, in language whose cadences echo the poetic rhythms of the English Prayer-book: Having turned this last of present matters over in my mind ever since taking in hand the designing of the cottages, and mostly during my early solitary night & day walks here, it came into my mind the ring of the beautiful bed-valance poem: a piece of literature of brevity the swiftest, x

INTRODUCTION

of English the sweetest, of diction the most perfect, and so touching, that it enlightens & softens my heart whenever I think of it. (Letter 856) By the onset of this third volume of Webb’s letters, a number of the key correspondents of his earlier years have already left the stage, but some older friends remain (such as William Hale White and Emery Walker) and younger colleagues step forward to provide fresh stimulus. Cockerell’s importance continues to be evident throughout, but we also find the name of W.R. Lethaby cropping up regularly now (though not yet any surviving letters to him: they are to be found in the final volume). A fascinating series of letters to Webb’s former assistant William Weir, many of which relate to the repair work supervised by Weir at two Welsh churches in Carmarthenshire and Glamorgan, and based on the site reports which Webb had undertaken as some of his last visits for the SPAB, reveal the studied care and genuine interest which he continued to take in the preservation of vernacular buildings and in traditional techniques. It is evident that the SPAB continued to place great store by his wisdom and experience, for although he never again attended a committee meeting, he remained one of its members, enabling them to call on his services as an adviser and consultant to their on-site architects. The closure of his office practice at last gave Webb the time to do more of the meticulous drawing work which he enjoyed, but for which there had never been sufficient time. When Emery Walker took on Cockerell as his new partner in his engraving, photographing and printing business, soon after Webb retired, they took the opportunity to offer him small design jobs – a bookplate and a printer’s mark – projects to which he devoted the same care and professional concern as for the major building designs of earlier years. He also designed the mace for the newly established University of Birmingham. Retirement brought one novelty. For the first time in his life, Webb employed domestic ‘help’, for the former housekeepers in his Raymond Buildings chambers had been shared between all of the residents in the building. How to find the right person to act as a residential housekeeper in a part of the country which he did not know particularly well proved to be a new kind of challenge, but he was able to call on the advice and recommendation of Elizabeth Flower, the wife of one of his former clients, the solicitor and antiquarian Wickham Flower. Webb had made alterations to their sixteenth-century manor house, Great Tangley Manor in Surrey in the 1880s, and had remained on good terms. Mrs Flower now became one of his regular correspondents, and they had a common friendship in George Wardle. As well as overseeing a number of the necessary housekeeping decisions for the new cottage, such as the buying of linen and kitchen equipment, she was able to recommend to him one of her own former servants for the position of housekeeper. It was a very happy solution. Margaret Dickinson appears to have been the victim of an abusive marriage, and had stopped working for the Flowers in order to remove herself from her husband’s influence. She had two young children, Alice and Reggie, but Webb had no qualms in taking on mother and children as co-residents in xi

INTRODUCTION

Caxtons, and for the remaining years of his life they were a fixed part of the local community at Worth. He grew very fond of the children, following their progress at the local school with interest, and when the time came he did his best to help in finding work for the boy. During the fortnight when Mrs Dickinson took her annual holiday, Webb usually went to stay with his retired elder brother Harry and sister Caroline in Winchester, from where he sent her kindly and thoughtful letters, which were written in a straightforward but never patronising manner. Margaret Dickinson looked after him devotedly, not least when his health began to fail and as dementia took hold. In one of her few surviving letters, dating from 1911, she once told Cockerell that ‘Mr Webb keeps so well & still enjoys his long walks, & I trust he will keep so for many years, for I dont know what I should do if anything happened to him. I think I should break my heart’ (Letter 1099, note 4).

xii

LETTERS 1899–1902

618 • Jane Morris, 22 January 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday night 22 Jan: ’99 My dear Janey. If I do not sit down and write to you at once you will be first in sending me a letter, and I shall be beaten in the race of not doing it. Doubtless you have excellent reason or reasons for accusatory excuse on your side; I have none – save my daily, and daily resulting indolence – a far stretch out towards the land of nowhere on which I shall never land, nor see its well known Castle. You, in the kindness of your heart, will be saying for me, “but your work is so tiresome, only equalled in its wearying labour by your clients’ stupidity, so that you can have no time for indolence”! My answer can but be, that I have found time in which not [to] write to you, and that the rowel of the spur1 of my conscience is only now pricking me on to do so, that the very craziness of my style may stir you to retort in kind. Do so, and forgive me. I dare not enlarge on the crimes of my remaining clients, for fear of the oncoming last one preparing her skirts to sit upon me as they (the penultimate) are doing – for, in the indolence of dream-land I have pictured myself as defacing that pretty hump of ground where the two cottages are to stand near the second crook on the way to the village cross: but, and the ‘but’ brings me up. As soon as the days get long enough for me to do the outing in the day, I must go up to Kelmscott and gather my wits together to see if it be possible not to Cockneyfy the simple sweetness of the place. I have heard of you through Jenny and May, as well as Walker and Cockerell; but from neither have I gathered that you are robustious, and leading the dance on the verge of the quay at Lyme Regis, either with flourish of ‘skirt’ – or without.2 The time before when I was up at Chiswick, Mrs Grove and Jenny asked me to come again on the 17th Jan: for the birthday supper, to which I said, yea.3 The irresistible Cockerell caught me by the scruff of the neck and landed both – hippogriph fashion,4 in the New Gallery, as a preliminary wakening of my slow faculties.5 O, my child, what a setting out of fabulous pictures were there of sailed-away Ned’s – numbering some 220 & more in the Catalogue. The hour and a quarter we had only allowed me to glance over old and some new friends with the allied 1

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

witchcraft of memory attending on the looking. 40 years or so of enormous aptitude and industry collected to bedaze one – and I comed [sic] away sadly-serious, with a lurking joy at the bottom, that I had been allied for those 40 years with the two men we knew – enough. Cockerell then switched me on to Chiswick, and we were prettily welcomed in a very carefully chosen party, all willing and able to be cheery,6 and we were so; and so much so that I ate supper of the best without fore – or after taste of compunction. On the whole I thought Jenny was stronger, and she could not have been kinder to me. She shewed me her newly attained Bewick’s birds,7 with much satisfaction to both. May fairly well, so far as I could make out, and she invited herself heretoward as soon as an evening could be declared, which is to be so; when I shall learn more of her in the tete à tete than I could in the throng the other night. There, my paper is out, and I send you the above affectionate nonsense from Your old friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 118

1 The rowel is the small wheel at the point of a spur. 2 JM had been at Chatham House, Lyme Regis, since early December 1898, and did not return to London until April 1899. 3 JEM’s 28th birthday. PSW’s had previously seen her on New Year’s Eve. ‘[Jenny and Mrs Grove] were up here for tea yesterday, & I thought Jenny looking very well – so did Mr Webb who looked in for a few minutes on his way to Mr Wardle.’ SCC to JM, 1 January 1899, BL Add 52738, f 79. 4 The legendary hippogryph, a winged horse-like creature with the head of an eagle. In Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, it is capable of great speed. 5 ‘Met P.W. at the New Gallery at 4.45 & looked at the pictures with him till 6.’ CD, 17 January 1899. After EBJ’s death, arrangements were set in place for two concurrent exhibitions of his work, with paintings at the New Gallery in Regent Street and a selection of drawings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in Savile Row. SCC attended the private view of the New Gallery show on 28 December 1898. ‘A most glorious collection of pictures, many of them new to me.’ CD. 6 ‘[W]ent on to Jenny’s birthday party at Mrs Grove’s – Walker, Miss de Morgan & Mrs Sparling [MM] there – & a merry evening.’ CD, 17 January 1899. 7 The illustrations of the Northumberland wood-engraver, Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) are renowned, especially those of animals and birds. His History of British Birds first appeared in 1797 (land birds) and 1804 (water birds).

619 • To Jane Morris, 28 January 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 January 1899 My dear Janey Your good letter of yesterday eased my conscience a little – for I have one, though it gets mislaid at times. It pleased me to learn the rheumatic “knots” were uncoiling, 2

1899–1902

allowing you to get out in the sun when his blessed face in these northern regions is a boon in winter time, and you are not shy of him in such a summer as the last. I would be glad to Darby & Joan it with you at Kelmscott when you get there – if it can be managed, for you would not hinder my trying to get at the bottom of the cottage problem as how not to cockneyfy the sweet place. I could go about alone and come back and tell you of what seemed likely to be least injurious. In any case it would be a new building. True, it is devoutly to be desired that May should see her way to peace without rash adventure into the terrible ways of chance: she is always so kind to me that I should the more fear hurting her feeling in any way, and you know I am apt to be too frank: my feeling is of the kindest towards her, but kindness is sometimes killing. I think too she has some of her father’s shyness: maybe I may get her here shortly and have a cheerful talk on things various, in which she may lead the way as may best please her. I am saddened when I see her sitting as the pain-touched woman in a dark dress.1 ‘Antiscrape’ finds Parson Burchall (but the boy in me asks if it is not Birchall?) exceedingly helpful in his district – which he makes a wide one, for he has been fighting for Oxford and is likely to do more there.2 You have been likely to hear that rumours of new railways in the Kelmscott neighbourhood are flying about, and he is up in action on that point: for of wheels and stock-jobbing are the chief spiritual thought of our time, and I would have liked to be on ‘tother side of Jordan’ before the porters sing out, ‘Kelmscott Junction, change here for Jerusalem’. Perhaps the covered 7 acres of Gray’s Inn garden may at this moment be on the stock-jobbing road to perdition, and a bill may be in Parliament before my name is in the bills of mortality. Adieu for the present from your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. I had a note from Aglaia this morning:3 she is still unable to get about; I must go and see her as soon as I can, and talk of the coming summer and a new lease of life without lameness. BL Add 45342, f. 119

1 For MM’s difficulties, see Vol. II, Letter 592, note 1. ‘May’s proceedings ended satisfactorily, and she has now lost a tiresome husband & a comfortable grievance. I fancy these two things rather balanced each other and that the sense of relief is not very great. However she is working & lecturing.’ SCC to Judith Blunt Lytton, 17 February 1899, BL Add 54155, f. 11. 2 PSW would have been delighted to have his preferred spelling confirmed: the Reverend Oswald Birchall was rector of Buscot, near Kelmscott. He had been close politically to WM, and also became involved in investigations relating to local SPAB casework. Frank C. Sharp notes how Birchall was one of those who ‘reported to [Morris] on renovations and threatened buildings, feeding him important local information about builders, architects and parish finances which was used to form strategy in London. Birchall performed the most detailed and arduous assignment by being in charge of the restoration of St. John the Baptist Church in Inglesham, Wiltshire.’ A continuing campaign for funds for Inglesham, following the SPAB’s appeal first made in 1887 by WM, saw JM

3

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III making the largest individual contribution in 1898. See Sharp, ‘William Morris’s Kelmscott Connections’, JWMS, XIII (Spring, 1999) p. 50 and note 38. See also below, Letter 703. 3 For Aglaia Ionides Coronio see Vol. I, Letter 235, note 5.

620 • To William Hale White, 30 January 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 30 January 1899 My dear Hale White When your letters extend beyond mere memoranda, they are good for me, stirring the mental energy. You write also of things at times of which I have no knowledge, which give loopholes for my ignorance to air itself. I once knew a man with the smallest of knowledge sit down to the piano and play – say, a few bars of the 9th Symphony of Beethoven, which was stopped at once and corrected by a friend who knew, and was there & then – the correction, added to the display for future opportunities. That is my case when writing to you – only, I do not quote Latin or Greek. No one who has rubbed his nose so affectionately as I have (for 50 years) against the handiworks of the mediæval workmen but must know – if he has only moderate intelligence and sympathy, but cannot what sort of folk they were in those days.1 A ploughman, even now, sitting under the hedge at noon with his hunch2 of bread and gobbet of bacon must be much like a 13th centy labourer, minus the war bill lying handy for emergency: and the Sir Galahad and Sir Lancelot would have been quite as realisable to the 13th cent: field labourer, as the Tory electioneering agent’s speech about the glory of the fall of Omdurman.3 It is – I think merely the sympathy there – or wanting, which makes the difference between then & now. If my clients sympathised with my work it would be nearly as much to them in the getting, as to me in the doing. I agree with you wholly as to the blundering of the learned-only, who would read into Euripides a modern agnostical or atheistical atmosphere.4 The gasses were to my poor mind wholly different – the air breathed was in no way the same. The Duke of Argyle’s aspiring nose has a difficulty – doubtless – in kenning the difference between the Athenian and Inverary disputant: as he would say, it would ‘be bad for the Athenians’.5 Perhaps you may have seen in the ‘Chronicle’, lately, letters about what gentlemen and ladies really are? It was childishly amusing, therefore I felt inclined to join in the fray. It went no farther with me, happily, than putting down the following in my note book: “The two classes, are those with the titles of ‘gentle’ and ‘simple’. There is however a third class, these are the ‘vulgar’ – neither gentle nor simple: ie the great majority of the fairly well-to-do, the ‘Bourgeoisie’.” Doubtless there are some gentle mingled with the simple, and vice versa; but the ‘vulgar’ are self-contained – to say nothing of self-content, and Thackeray was their prophet??6 It is most kindly of you to think for me at this turning point of time, and I rejoice in the friendliness, which I hope may not suffer a check wherever I may 4

1899–1902

be this side of Jordan, but you could not realise that it would be impossible for me “to go on till I drop” – for certain it is, if I neglected the signs, that I should shortly drop, having come to the end of my professional tether.7 I have been losing money over the last 3 of my pieces of work, and the rent and other costs of living in London are eating me up – mind, body and estate. I believe I can live in a cheap country for 10 years on £150 a year, and my only risk is, that perhaps I may live too long under stimulus of free air and freedom from anxiety. Of course Wales is only a problem, soluble or insoluble, as there may be no foot-hold for me there, but as I have to go there for 2 or 3 days in March I may as well look about me.8 If the thing should ever come about you might leave off mewing, and meet me at Romsey or Winchester, as halfway house, occasionally. One night at the Inn there would keep us from mistaking the time of the day in our lives, be good for one of us at least and do little harm to the other. I will answer for the first. Yours truly (and ‘simply’) | Philip Webb. P.S. I am much in want of muscular exercise, taken gently at first, and have imagined a possible delight in a rooft of a tree, with beetle and wedges9 in a shed!! Kindest of greetings to Mary. BCL MR 10/12

1 WHW had been reading The Mirror of Affection by St Francis of Assisi, and Malory’s Mort d’Arthur. ‘I felt, from both these books, that to bring back – really – the Middle Ages is impossible. They are beyond us; completely (almost) outside us and unrealizable, and he who approaches them with any nineteenth-century intent will certainly mistranslate them.’ WHW to PSW, 29 January 1899, LTF, p. 299. 2 Hunk. 3 On 2 September 1898, British forces commanded by General Herbert Kitchener defeated the Sudanese army of Abdullah-al-Taashi at Omdurman, in central Sudan. There was subsequently some controversy over the number of casualties: very many thousands of Sudanese were killed, including those left wounded after the battle, British troops suffering fewer than 50 dead. 4 ‘A man named Verall, [sic] a learned scholar, published a little while ago a long essay called Euripides the Rationalist in which he attempts to classify Euripides as a very witty agnostic, a cross between Voltaire and Huxley . . . . . [O]n the whole he completely fails because he is dealing with somebody . . . who cannot be comprehended by forcing him head, tail and shoulders into a modern type.’ LTF, pp. 299–300. A.W. Verrall was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. The book was Euripides the Rationalist: A Study in the History of Art and Religion (Cambridge: University Press, 1895). 5 Inverary Castle on the banks of Loch Fyne, about 50 miles from Oban, is the ancestral home of the Dukes of Argyll. At this time, the Liberal politician and former Secretary of State for India, George John Douglas Campbell (1823–1900), was the eighth Duke. He was an articulate amateur scientist, and Fellow of the Royal Society. A letter from the Duke had appeared in The Times two days earlier, on 28 January, attacking the proposed arbitration Courts as lacking the authority of established Courts of Law. 6 Thackeray’s ironic satire of society manners is most famously to be seen in Vanity Fair (1847–8), but PSW seems here to allude more to the bourgeois world of writers and painters which is the focus of the novels from Pendennis (1848–50) onwards.

5

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 7 ‘I do trust you will pause before selecting Wales. . . . It is too damp and too enervating, and it is too far away. What am I to do if you exile yourself two or three hundred miles! . . . My humble advice to you is to go on till you drop.’ LTF, p. 300. 8 The Welsh trip was to visit two parish churches, St Margaret’s, in Eglwys Cummin, Carmarthenshire (properly, Eglwys Cymmin) and St Brise’s, in Eglwys Brewis, Glamorgan, in order to prepare reports on their condition and necessary repairs, the advice of the SPAB having been sought. The work would subsequently be undertaken by WW, who continued to take close advice from PSW, working to his plans for the repairs. See below, Letter 640 and continuing. 9 These are carving tools.

621 • To William Hale White, 7 February 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 7 February 1899 My dear Hale White I believe in many encyclopedias some articles cover several closely printed pages – and are greatly condensed. How shall I be able to put in a few lines a fairly intelligible answer to your last question. My effort in that way, on the understanding of mediæval life, was not I fancy easy to understand? For a man like myself who could never learn anything (it is so much easier to invent) is not likely to be able to teach. Paolo Uccello who painted that skirmish – wh’ is in the National Gallery (its fellow is in the Uffizi Gallery)1 painted horses effectively, if in an archaic form, and the vigorous breed is clearly intelligible to me. After the Romans had knocked the Greeks on the head, the arts began to decline rapidly, and at the break up of the Roman Empire fell all to pieces, but began to revive in the new Greek or Byzantine time, and in their bronze work set examples which continued as models for long after. Witness the bronze horses in front of S. Marks at Venice, wh’ came from Constantinople. Paolo Uccello’s rocking horses are clearly of this type, done rather I fancy from other representations than from nature-studies. Vittore Pisano (died mid 15-cent:) called Pisanello, painted and modelled animals evidently from the life, and with great freedom & naturalness as well as sympathy, and horses of his are very characteristic, especially in their breed.2 Then Andrea del Castagno did that fine horse-fresco in the Cathl at Florence, of Nicolo da Tolentino, which is surely done from nature-study.3 The balancing fresco in the same church, by Paolo Uccello, of Sir John Hawkwood (Giovanni Acuto) has a fine decorative horse, but is rather traditional, I think, than from nature-study.4 Then there is Benozzo Gozzoli, who drew, & painted in fresco his horses, of fine type – evidently, from natural studies, which certainly shew a particular breed – all these horses are a heavyish type, though not by any means clumsy, they are full of vigour.5 Albert Dürer drew his horses with wonderful and clear precision but of a singular type, expressing a particular breed which was an ugly one; as indeed for the greater part were his women, which he surely did from nature.6 I suspect the breed of horses which draws the hearses in our London funerals, and came to England with the Rats, and Royalty, are allied to A. Dürer’s breed, are and ill formed. What 6

1899–1902

is not overdone in their lines, is underdone. The breed must be carefully kept up – as mourning is, for striking appearance only, like the giant or fat woman at the fair. The Greeks – at all events in their advanced time carved their horses in marble to the life, as did the Assyrians, and the types of both were evidently done from nature-study. These too show different types of breed and are done with evident sympathy with the animal. The drawing of animals is a curious point in the history of art. The modern Millais – who seemingly could draw anything easily and well, never succeeded with a horse.7 Watts, who took a great deal of trouble in the effort, and studied from nature, somehow never managed to make his horses vigorous, living beasts. E. Landseer, who was always doing horses from nature, and was in several ways very skilful, could not give them individual quality – the various types were all of the same aspect, like portraits of Q. Victoria, just from the hands of her barber.8 Our Stubbs did his horses with great skill and anatomical knowledge, and made them living beasts.9 There was also another animal painter of the early part of this cent – if not earlier, who painted horses extraordinarily well, and with evident sympathy, his name was Agasse or Aggas, I forget which.10 Then there was Thomas Bewick who did his horses so that they are alive from his delicate graver, with a clear distinction in the various breeds, (all except his Arab horse which must have been taken from some unauthentic source.)11 To draw animals, and especially horses, well and naturally, the artist must be brought up amongst them, and be in perfect sympathy with – and be in fact on an equality with them. Drawing horses rightly and naturally, with purity of line, and muscularly modelled surface, is nearly as difficult as to draw the human form perfectly – for the lines of both are so subtle. There is no difficulty in drawing an elephant, and comparatively little, a lion, but the tiger or panther are most difficult subjects on account of their almost imperceptible delicacies of form & surface. I suppose one of the difficulties with artists who are not in sympathy with horses, and are not familiar with them from youth up, is, that they are not easily brought into a studio, like human models are, and they have to trust to representations of them without first knowledge, or do them from photos: Now a horse never takes well by photography, he always looks lumpy & sleepy. Lastly (by jove it is time) there is a palæolithic engraved bone in the British Museum, from Derbyshire, shewing the head & neck of a horse in an exceedingly well outlined way:12 so that it seems to me, the power to render forcibly, & like nature, a horse, belongs rather to the individual than to any particular age. Individuality is then copied & in time the form gets to be degraded. You are lucky in that my paper is run out, or you would have had more of this ill assorted stuff. Never mind, I forgive you for asking me the question, and subside into Yours truly | Philip Webb. BCL MR 10/13 7

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 The Tuscan painter, Paolo Uccello (c. 1397–1475). Two versions of The Battle of San Romano (c. 1438–40) are at the National Gallery, London (acquired 1857), and the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. 2 For the animal drawings of Antonio di Puccio Pisano, known as Pisanello – often called (wrongly) Vittore Pisano – see Vol. II, Letter 409, note 4. 3 The fresco by Andrea del Castagno (c. 1421–57) of Niccolò da Tolentino on horseback is painted in monochrome, to suggest a marble statue (1456, Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence), and is situated to balance the earlier work by Uccello (note 4). 4 Uccello’s fresco of Sir John Hawkwood on horseback was commissioned as a funerary monument in 1436 (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence). 5 For Gozzoli, see Vol. I, Letter 96, note 2 and Letter 262, and Vol. II, Letter 409. 6 A number of the engravings of the Nuremburg-born artist Albrecht Dürer, much-admired by PSW, feature horses, a few (such as Small Horse and Large Horse of 1505) showing the animal alone. PSW could well have had in mind the dramatically naturalistic portrayal of the group of beasts carrying the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (c. 1497–8). 7 See next letter, note 2. 8 Sir Edwin Landseer (1802–73) specialised throughout his career in painting animals. 9 George Stubbs (1724–1806) made a close study of human anatomy, and subsequently also that of the horse, dissecting many and making drawings. Although he painted many portraits, it is for his paintings of horses and other animals that he is now best known. 10 Jacques-Laurent Agasse. See Vol. I, Letter 257, note 9. 11 Thomas Bewick, General History of Quadrupeds (1790) and his two volumes of History of British Birds (1797 and 1804). See also above, Letter 618, note 7. 12 This engraving on a rib fragment, found in Robin Hood Cave, Derbyshire, is about 12,500 years old, and ‘is characteristic of late Magdalenian engraving on the European mainland’. Ann Sieveking, A Catalogue of Palaeolithic Art in the British Museum (London: British Museum Publications, 1987), p. 103, illustration at Plate 131.

622 • To William Hale White, 12 February 1899 Separate draft also survives at Cheltenham 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. My dear Hale White Your letter from Haslemere is – in one or two ways, elucidatory:1 (forgive ‘Telegr[a]phese’) so that I shall be better able to understand your difficulty over the mediæval cast of mind and matter. You must be too hard upon yourself – have indeed used too much black from your colour box, and – may I say it? – laid yourself open to being ‘touched’ by my poor foil. How can you have mustered courage to say you look upon imaginative work – i.e, the real work of an artist, only “as one of the people to whom the subject is of much importance”.2 If it is so, and you add that “the artist should not work for the artist only”, the artist must either give up his own vocation to one or more of such people, and teach them how to practice the arts themselves, otherwise or the works of the artist, or poet, or musician, or cook would be four-fifths closed to you, as in fact it is generally in our day; and an art-priesthood should be set up, with a kind of papal authority, to tell the incapable what in art they are to believe in;

8

1899–1902

which to my mind, as a lover of Jesus of Nazareth, is one of the worst heresies ever propounded. In other words, you tell Ph: W, that, as he cannot write half a dozen sentences grammatically, he cannot read to any purpose any literary work that is written grammatically. To my poor intelligence, anyone who loves any thing represented, either in art or literature (that is a different thing, I allow, to merely considering the subject as of much consequence) is necessarily half an artist himself. Also, I go so far as to say, that, unless there is such a body of lay-artistry at the back of the practitioners, the workers in art will become less and less, and the few who are genuine will descend to the level of the incapable, or commit suicide. In writing to a sympathetic mind like yours, I have supposed that by using such an exaggeration as, that Millais had no imagination, I did not think I should lay myself open to be misunderstood, for – of course, no one is wholly without imagination – the having it, or not having it, is only a matter of degree.3 However high the imagination may be, it must “be planted on the earth”, indeed the earth (or we would say the universe) supplies the only symbols by which the imagination can work. The Rhapsodical work of John’s Apocalypse was full of symbols of the universe, and may be considered as imagination carried to the – something degree in mathematics, and of which form of madness – if it may justly be so called, Dante, St Francis, Albert Dürer, Beethoven, Blake and many others, partook in their degree.4 If they were all insane, as some would avow, then Shakespeare, Handel, Keats, Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, Burne Jones, &c, were decidedly cracked; and I did not accuse Millais of being cracked; for the lights he had were of the good honest kind – a good fellow in art, as we might say. The honest stockbroking world was good enough for him, and he never really attempted to hang his imagination on one of the horns of the moon: but, as he had sense enough to see the force of the great art movement of the day, and attempted to follow in its ways, he also had wits enough to give up doing so when he found it could not be his gait.5 To me, his picture of autumn leaves was one of these forced-gait pictures, wonderfully done considering the circumstances, but un real;6 whereas the “Blind girl” – though somewhat within his grasp in that way – tended to his real way, and was I think the highest he attempted in that way, but it was more unreal than most of Burne Jones’ work, for the hair was too red, the grass too green, &c, &c – to be quite of the natural Millais.7 He was a really able modern artist, a man of the world, and did some admirable illustrations to Anthony Trollope’s novels.8 I was in no way hurt by the comparative explanation you gave of my inventive powers as being like those of the impossible young apothecary,9 for we are much akin in some ways: for I could now not pass the primary examination of the Royal [sketch of crown over ‘Royal’] Institute of British Architects and yet I can lay drains fairly well, and am a good hand at decorative white wash, but could never become an “eminent” architect; though, as a real socialist, I have some ideas on the “Theory of Life”, and I do not think these ‘ideas’ are detrimental to my considered way of making mortar, which I have pounded at: forgive the pun, for it was accidental.

9

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Give my love to Mary, and ask her from me to pick up as much as she can of the change of air, “bottle it, cork it tightly, and lay it up in bin No . . . : [”] what was the number of that bin to receive the bottle of crystal globules? I suppose you are in the region of Tyndall’s “windy waas”?10 We are behindhand with our work in these parts, so that the rest of Sunday is well employed in change of airing myself with you. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Hope you corrected the wrongs in spelling and other illiterate misfortunes before sending my letter on to your “interrogator”?11 BCL MR 10/14

1 WHW’s letter from Haslemere, dated 10 February 1899, is at Cheltenham AG&L 1991.1016.249. PSW annotated the latter: ‘ansd 12 Feb: ’99’. 2 ‘One sentence in your letter reminds me of your ancient heresy that Millais had no imagination. To me he is the only modern painter who has any that is perfectly healthy, the only one who can seize a dramatic position; whose pictures have a point. Burne Jones’ pictures are collections of various persons and you dont know precisely why they are brought together. But I pardon you. You inevitably look at the works of art as an artist, and I as one of the people, to whom the subject is of much consequence.’ WHW to PSW, 10 February 1899. 3 See note 2. 4 The final book of the New Testament, the Revelation of St John, often called The Apocalypse, sets out prophetic visions in often exotic imagery, describing the collapse of the material world and culminating in the Second Coming of Christ. 5 With DGR and William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais (1829–96) had been a co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Indeed, at that time he was the only one whose promise had already been recognised, and whose work therefore was closely scrutinised. After the adverse reception of Spring and The Vale of Rest in May 1859, he turned away from innovative work, undertook more commissions, and no longer regarded himself to be a practising member of the Brotherhood. 6 Autumn Leaves (1855–6; Manchester Art Gallery). Effie Millais said of this painting that he had ‘wished to paint a picture full of beauty and without subject’. Cited in Christine Riding, John Everett Millais (London: Tate Publishing, 2006), p. 32 and illustrated on p. 33. ‘The girls in “Autumn Leaves” with their perfectly English faces are better than [Burne]-Jones’s type (for it is always the same) of impossible spirituality. That you can deny imagination and poetic unity to “Autumn Leaves” would be incomprehensible to me, were you not, as I say, an artist.’ WHW to PSW, 10 February 1899. JR hailed it in his Academy Notes for 1856 as ‘the most poetical work the painter has yet conceived; and also, as far as I know, the first instance existing of a perfectly painted twilight’. 7 The Blind Girl (1854–6; Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery). Illustrated in Riding, John Everett Millais, p. 31. 8 Millais provided illustrations for the Cornhill Magazine serialisations of Anthony Trollope’s novels Framley Parsonage (1860), Orley Farm (1861–2) and The Small House at Allington (1862–4), as well as for Phineas Finn (1867–9) in Trollope’s own journal, St Pauls. See Andrew Sanders, ‘Millais and Literature’, in John Everett Millais. Beyond the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, edited Debra N. Mancoff (New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 69–93. 9 ‘Ah yes, it is so much easier to invent than to learn! I know a young man who has invented a Theory of Life, but he cannot pass the lowest examination to qualify him for practising as an apothecary, the profession for which he is designed.’ WHW to PSW, 10 February 1899.

10

1899–1902 10 In 1885 the Irish-born physicist and keen Alpine climber, John Tyndall (1820–93), had retired to Haslemere, and is buried there. Amongst Tyndall’s experimental work were important studies into the action of radiant energy on the constituents of air. 11 ‘Thank you very much for your letter. I have taken the liberty of sending it to my interrogator.’ WHW to PSW, 10 February 1899. Presumably PSW’s views about the skills needed to draw horses effectively (see previous letter) was a response to a query from a friend of WHW.

623 • To John William Mackail, 8 February 1899 Draft (in the space after JWM’s letter of the same date); pencil, with some amendments in ink 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon. W.C. 8 Feb: ’99 Dear Mr Mackail. I quite agree that the motto wd be good in the book, and the pretty leaf pattern does very well;1 but I think it should be set in its lead ‘cameo’, showing as glass, for which it was made. In my mind I have no doubt it was W.Ms own design – it certainly was not mine, and it is quite unlikely that any one else did it. I send a tracing I made from that you sent me inclosed (wh’ I return) and have put in the lead beading round it, wh’ – as you will see, turns the pattern into a transparency. If the legend of from wherence it came from, &c, were was printed underneath, it that wd explain that it was not put used in the book merely as decoration.2 It wd be well If your publisher would agreed to have it cut engraved on wood – (the sample you sent other form of reproduction is rather coarse) for then it could be cut with both force and delicacy – and the lead bands made grey, not black, and done with fine diagonal hatching lines of hatching. It might be done cut after the manner of one of Winston’s engravings of old glass.3 Walker could help in this. Doubtless, when you are through with the tiresome proof reading, the result of your labour of love will be a pleasant reflection a brightness of pleasure in you, as of work well done4 – at all events I hope so. Yours truly | Ph. W. WMG J175

1 WM’s motto was ‘si je puis’ (‘if I can’), which appears in the glass and also some of the decorative tiling at Red House. ‘I am thinking of having the enclosed ornament on the title page of my book. It seems to be the best extant specimen of any design introducing Morris’ chosen motto, & though not quite satisfactory in its decorative effect upon a page, it will I think look sufficiently well. It has suffered from the translation from coloured glass to black & white, being drawn from one of the painted windows at Red House. I am not certain whether the design is W.M.’s own: it looks to me rather like your style. Can you tell me for certain how this is?’ JWM to PSW, 8 February 1899, WMG J175. 2 Mackail (I, p. xv) includes the following note beneath the list of illustrations. ‘The design on the title-page containing William Morris’s motto was made by him in or about 1861 for quarries of glass in some of the painted windows of the house he was then building for himself. That on the back of

11

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III the cover is a reproduction of one of the borders designed and cut on wood by him in 1872 for the ornamented edition of “Love is Enough,” then in contemplation.’ 3 The lawyer, Charles Winston (1814–64), whose interest in the historical manufacture and colouring techniques of medieval glass led him to work with the Whitefriars company of James Powell and Sons and to recommend a return to old manufacturing principles. His An Inquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings, Especially in England (Oxford and London: James Parker and Co., 2nd edn., 1867), contains more than 70 coloured plates of English medieval glass, derived from his own drawings. 4 ‘I am in the agonies of printing now: I hope the book will be out in April.’

624 • To May Morris, 9 February 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9. February 1899 My dear May When with Wardle the last time, I talked of you, and said you would like to see him, as was mentioned when you were here. He also would like to see you, but as he is invalided enough to have to be careful against cold & wet weather, he could hardly be sure to get to you on a fine day and back again by sundown. If you should think of going to see him, his time is thus – working during the morning, and if it [is] fine he goes out – when he can, between 2 & 4. oc, so that soon after 4, would be the time. Perhaps you would write to him. His address is, George Y. Wardle, 11 Friars-stile Road, Richmond, Surrey.1 He lives on the top of the hill. After you come out of the station, cross the railway bridge southward, keep along the high road to the parish clock, in a widening of the street, then turn to the left up Eton Lane, continue on by the Churchyard passage and right up the hill to the top, when F-stile road crosses it – turn to the right and No 11 is opposite a gabled public house. I found the house by help of the gable, from the outside. Mrs Gilmore called on me the other day, and was kindly lenient in the matter of the altar cloth, but I have made a push and sent her the drawings today. She would like to see you and have your advice as to how the work may best be done, and I should like you to help her if it may be within the bounds of your good will.2 As you seemed to think the chief difficulty in the work would be doing all the embroidery (of such a pattern as I have made) on the velvet, and that probably much might have to be applied – therefore I have suggested that the whole be embroidered on canvas, and the scarlet-crimson colour of the velvet be the key for the colour of the ground of the pattern? as the super frontal hangs down, and the altar cloth is horizontal, I think there would be no awkward difference in general appearance, and the work would be both easier & better done. Mrs Gilmore would I believe be harmonious, and you know the amiability of Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. 12

1899–1902

Hope you got home comfortably the other night, and not too tired. Wardle was pleased you liked the reading [from] the Byzantine M.S.S of his, cosi fan tutti.3 BL Add 45342, f. 120

1 ‘Mr Geo. Wardle who is staying near me here and is always rather an invalid is just now worse than usual . . . He is very dull when he is not well enough to read and write, as he is all alone.’ SCC to JEM, 18 March 1899, BL Add 52739, f. 123. 2 The altar super-frontal (now at the V&A, London), which PSW designed for the chapel of the Deaconess Institution in Clapham (see Vol. II, Letter 516, note 2). It was worked by MM, who recorded its subsequent history on a piece of paper which she then attached to the frontal. ‘How wonderful I am, and what great things I have seen! Philip Webb was the friend and companion of William Morris, while May Morris, her mother and aunt brought back good work [i.e. the craft of embroidery] to England in the years from 1860. So Philip Webb was delighted with my design for May, for he said she was the only woman in England who could work me. I travelled in April 1914 to the Louvre, in Paris, where a great exhibition of beautiful things was held, among which was the work of William Morris and his friends. I was greatly admired there. But when the Great War started that August, we exhibits were walled up in the cellars of the Louvre for more than four years, while guns sounded, and raids went on overhead. Although our creators and admirers never expected to see us again, we were safe there, and so in January 1919, I came home, and was glad to return to my old corner.’ Taken from Grierson, Isabella Gilmore, p. 146. The Paris exhibition was the Exposition d’Art Decoratifs de Grand-Bretagne et d’Irlande (1914). 3 As all women do (It).

625 • To Isabella Gilmore, 9 February 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9 February. 1899 Dear Mrs Gilmore1 I send you by parcel post to-day – registered, the sheets of drawings of the super frontal to the altar for your chapel, and I have added a suggestion, and some instructions.2 There are also, as you will find, 2 sheets of thin paper to make tracings on, which is better than tracing paper, which is so brittle. When May was here, and we were talking of how the embroidery would or could be properly done, her argument was, that to do it on velvet would be too difficult, and that some of it would have to be applied – so it occurred to me that the whole might be worked on canvas, including the red ground, which would be kept of the same depth and tone as the velvet top. I have written this on the drawings: will you speak of the suggestion to May? With kind regards | Believe me, Yours truly | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 121

1 See Vol. II, Letter 516, note 2. 2 See previous letter, note 2.

13

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

626 • To Sydney Cockerell, 23 February 1899 Draft 1 R B Gray’s Inn: W.C. 23 Feb: 99 Dear Cockerell. Thank you for your good natured attention to the patriarch, (I am not aware it has not been said, that I know of that patriarchs were blessed with wits as well as (y)ears) whose ‘philosophy’, as you are pleased to butter him with, has been just a trifle upset by this ‘memoir’ business – bother all biographies, say I: whether from the sham religious airs of Oriel, or the Jowett flunkeyism of Balliol.1 There was Froude who made a cesspool mess of it;2 and W. Rossetti, who stirred up a his brother’s quietly decomposing bones to stink-pot pitch wh’, if it had been let alone tenderly dealt with would would not have beenoffensive had a sweet savour:3 and now our particular Solomon must cater unconsciously for the vulgar noses. Geo. W told me there had been a bit of a bungle about Merton stained glass, and he wrote at once to see if the careless crack could not be leaded up a bit.4 You see, I have not read a single proof sheet, and can only guess on report – added to wh’, I am more personally interested perhaps in the subject than perhaps any other could be, so I ought not to write to the Mrs – and therefore I thank you for so doing. I fancy Balliol5 may be obstinate, and not like to have h its stew tasted privately – or without pinched noses. I only really care in this matter for Jenny – sick people often get hard usage, often being looked upon as criminally ill – as starvation wage-workers are labelled maliciously poor.6 O, Where is your ‘philosophy’ O, Ph W.? Fancying I understand your thoroughness in dealing with the “little book of hours”, it is not wonderful to me that you shd be disturbed by the length of time necessary to for getting rightly done what you are about. When it is so done, no one will regard the time & trouble the work cost.7 I wish your friendly anxiety about south Wales turned out to be a real one, for it is more than likely the Gray’s Inn bird will return to the Ark not having found there finding in ‘Little Eng1d beyond Wales’ any foothold.8 What is the geological formation of the range of Kentish hills running from N.W to S.E.? If the air there wd turn old bodies into new ones it might do be good enough for the reverend ‘signor’9 – if porridge and mutton were on Houndsditch scale of prices,10 and if the rent of a disused limekiln was not landlordian. So be reasonable, and wipe away your tears – tears so touching to yours wilfully | Ph. W. I read a third of the “In-quest”11 last night till 1. oc sent me to bed. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/91

1 See Vol. I, Letter 297, note 1. PSW’s meaning becomes clearer during his next sentence, for James Anthony Froude (1818–94) had been an undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford, whilst JWM was an undergraduate and subsequently a Fellow of Balliol during Jowett’s time as Master. 2 Froude was a close friend of Thomas Carlyle. The four volumes of his biography of Carlyle appeared between 1882 and 1884, provoking many objections regarding his handling of intimate aspects of Carlyle’s marriage to Jane Welsh.

14

1899–1902 3 William Rossetti (1829–1919) made extensive use of his family papers when preparing Dante Gabriel Rossetti: his Family Letters with a Memoir (London: Ellis and Elvey, 1895). Though insufficiently discrete for some of his brother’s friends, William had recognized at the outset that ‘some readers of the Memoir may be inclined to ask me – “Have you told everything, of a substantial kind, that you know about your deceased brother?” – My answer shall be given beforehand, and without disguise: “No; I have told what I choose to tell, and have left untold what I do not choose to tell”.’ (Preface, p. xii). 4 GW is quoted at length on the Morris & Co. policy for producing stained glass for ancient buildings. See Mackail, II, pp. 38–40. 5 i.e. represented in the figure of JWM. 6 ‘Mackail has written to Ellis to say that Mrs Morris has sanctioned the passage about Jenny’s illness, so I have written to ask Mrs M. whether on reconsideration she does not think it should be modified.’ SCC to PSW, 22 February 1889, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/90. ‘I have had a letter from Mr Ellis expressing concern about a passage in the Life respecting Jenny’s illness. He thinks that a direct reference to the nature of it might cause pain for Jenny, & even prey upon her mind – and I cannot help feeling that this might be so. Mackail to whom he wrote first about it replies that you have sanctioned the passage as it now stands, & that May also approves. Do you not think it would be well to ask him to leave out the word “epileptic” altogether? Surely the matter can be left more vague. It is necessary to move at once, if you agree, as the sheet in question is either printed or about to be printed. If it is printed it would be possible to cancel & reprint a couple of leaves. I may mention that Mr Webb, who was up here on Saturday, was very strongly in favour of this course.’ SCC to JM, 22 February 1899, BL Add 52738, f 81. ‘I am glad you have reconsidered the matter of the reference to Jenny. I have a letter this morning from Mr Webb in which he says he feels quite concerned about it.’ SCC to JM, 24 February 1899, BL Add 52738, f 82. There would be no mention of JEM’s epilepsy in Mackail. 7 SCC had been working intermittently since early January on the catalogue description of Henry Yates Thompson’s ‘beautiful Book of Hours of Joan II of Navarre’, which included taking the manuscript to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in order to compare it with examples there. 8 ‘Mr Webb has gone into Wales today in search of a cottage into which to retire. I rather hope that he won’t find anything suitable, in which case Walker & I will have to make it an excuse for some Sunday excursions into Kent, as we should like to see him settled within reach of us.’ SCC to JEM, 4 March 1899, BL Add 52739, f. 119. 9 SCC invariably began his letters to PSW with ‘Dear Signor Filippo’, almost certainly because this is how he was addressed by ‘Ticino’, their usual waiter at Gatti’s. See below, Letter 702. 10 Synonymous with rock-bottom prices: the medieval Houndsditch, originally part of the defences of the city of London, was so-called because of the dead dogs thrown into it. For PSW, therefore, it epitomises pathetic degradation. 11 Sebastian Evans, In Quest of the Holy Grail: an Introduction to the Study of the Legend (London: J.M. Dent, 1898).

627 • To John William Mackail, 2 March 1899 Draft; pencil with some ink amendments 1 R .B. Gray’s Inn Lon. W.C. 2 March 1899 Dear Mr Mackail After reading & rereading the matter contained in the printed “slip” you sent me,1 I must not hesitate to say that, as it there stands, it does not it would not, to my mind, give the general public much chance of crediting Morris with intelligent the power of right judgment he certainly had on a point of and which he was supposed by understood by intelligent 15

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

non-professional people to be a good capable judge. I believe the passage in would have this kind of effect on the public mind, if Morris’ “invective” could descend to applying the words epithet “knowing noodles” to Oxford dignitaries,2 he wd be quite willing wish to have the ancient statues out of spite to the dons covered with iron cages – the words “even if they had to be” wd go for nothing with those people not very un able to judge of the value of words. Morris was of course right, that if iron cages were necessary for the salvation of the statues in their niches these shd be put without hesitation – but he had gathered fm people those who understood such building technicalities, that it was not even necessary to do this. Quite Apart from my own professional experience, I have gathered learned from others, of knowledge and experience (who have examined the statues closely now inside down in the church, as well as when they were in position and from the scaffolding) that it would have been a comparatively easy task to secure them statues in their places without unsightliness, even to the unintelligent beholder. For the intelligent, it is would be another thing. The very visible support which might be to a venerable work of art which might be visible from below wd add to rather than detract from the interesting fact of time-worn antiquity; while the travesty of antiquity reality in the new images would be looked upon with angry contempt. Mr Jackson’s [word illegible] puts him out of court altogether to any who could give candid consideration of to the matter. I do not quite like the expression effect of the sentence that the spire was, or is even now, “the most beautiful in England” – for, I have seen so many suffering under that anti-climax of enthusiasm – like all fine ancient art – it was is fitting for its place and beautiful relatively.3 There are equally beautiful spires in this country, but they were so are so with St Mary’s because of their fitness for the places they were invented for. Not myself having seen the steeple since its final mutilation, I cannot advise you so well on points of fact as Mr Lethaby could, who has had that painful advantage. I know he would be quite willing to give you the advantage benefit of his accurate knowledge of all the circumstances he noted. In case of your not knowing His address, it is W.R. Lethaby, 2 Gray’s Inn Square, W.C. I return the printed slip with thanks for allowing me to see it. Yrs truly | Ph. W. reasonable

question

WMG J182

1 ‘Would you be kind enough to look through the enclosed slip & say whether you think it gives a true account of the matter? I have wished to avoid controversy with regard to it, while not slurring over the facts, though they must be put very briefly.’ JWM to PSW, 1 March 1899, WMG J176. 2 This refers to WM to PSW, 6 June 1893, concerning the proposed removal of the statues surrounding the spire of the church of Great St Mary, Oxford (CLWM, IV, pp 46–47). See also Vol. II, Letters 454 and 596. 3 ‘The twelve statues grouped round the base of that magnificent spire, still in spite of all restorations and reconstructions the “eye of Oxford,” the central crown of all her architecture, were among the noblest surviving examples of English sculpture of the early fourteenth century.’ Mackail, II, p. 286.

16

1899–1902

628 • To John William Mackail, 6 April 1899 Drafted on reverse of Mackail’s letter of 4 April 1899; pencil 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon W.C. 6 April 1899 Dear Mr Mackail Thank you for so promptly returning the W.M. letters, wh’ I read anew with fresh admiration delight in their admirable presentation of fact and fancy – lighting up past times as with a flash.1 “A thousand peties” – as Mr Jorrocks wd have said2– that the “knowing noodles” letter could not possibly be printed word for word in your memoir of the great man. It might have created a revolution in Oxford where density in art matter reigns supreme. Yours truly | Ph.W. WMG J177

1 ‘I return to you herewith the five letters from Morris to yourself which you let me have more than two years ago, & a sixth from Faulkner which you gave me later.’ JWM to PSW, 4 April 1899, WMG J177. See also Vol. II, Letter 605. 2 For Jorrocks, see Vol. II, Letter 615, note 1.

629 • To Jane Morris, 10 April 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 10 April 1899 My dear Janey I was really glad to have your letter from Hammersmith, for I neither write often, or expect to hear from you unless there is special reason for so doing, and now we can meet easily. Would this day week (Monday) suit you and May? It was Walker, I think, who told me you were rather stronger & Jenny not so well. For her surely it would be the spring time that would be trying. My youngest brother has lain at the doctor’s at Welwyn for over two months, and died last Monday, buried on Friday, at Ayot hard by.1 I have been on business to S. Wales, and looked there for some likely bracing place to keep me going longer than a relaxing one would; and perhaps Cockerell may have found the sort of air on the Cotswolds near Cirencester – who knows?2 There was nothing in the Welsh place. If Monday the 17th shd not suit for No 8.3 let me know an evening which would do. With love to May, | Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 122 17

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 Frank Speakman Webb (?1834–99), three years younger than PSW, had followed a career as a brewer. He had formerly been a co-owner of the Warwick Brewery, for which firm PSW had designed a bottle label (the design survives at WMG). 2 SCC and EW had been staying at the village of Pinbury, in the Cotswolds, as guests of Ernest Gimson. See below, Letter 632, note 10. 3 MM was now living at 8 Hammersmith Terrace, a few doors from EW, and JM was visiting.

630 • To John William Mackail, 27 April 1899 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 April 1899 Dear Mr Mackail This morning I got from the publishers your life of William Morris. My preference would have been to have bought it, but as yours was that of giving it to me the salve is a soothing one. Please therefore to accept my sincere thanks.1 I hope Margaret, the children, and yourself have weathered the winter easily, and are stoutly resisting the tryin[g] time of spring. With very kind remembrances | I am yours truly | Ph.W. WMG J178

1 ‘You will find in Vol. II, p. 306, the reason why I could not allow you to buy the book yourself: for I hope you will regard this as in a sense a last gift from Morris himself, and give it a place among the rest of his works accordingly.’ JWM to PSW, 27 April 1899, WMG J179. This refers to WM’s letter of 27 August 1894, in which he insisted on presenting PSW with a copy of every volume published by the Kelmscott Press, despite the recipient’s protestations. See Vol. II, Letter 490, note 3.

631 • To George Wardle, 9–10 May 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 9 May 1899 – finished on 10th 1 My dear Wardle I should be pleased if I could answer to your request with any sufficiently clear exposition of the weak condition of East Knoyle tower and of its substantial repair, but I doubt my power of explanation.2 If I had had you here, with the remaining working drawings and sketches, it would have been easy enough. The tower, when I was asked to examine & report on its condition, was in a bad state, and the Rector, Ch’ Wardens, bell-ringers &c believed it was not safe and must be pulled down. On examination, I concluded that the foundations had not given way – most important this: but that from injuries of time, some alteration of parts of support, 18

1899–1902

and neglected bell-cage and bells, the tower had serious cracks in it from the top to nearly the floor of the church. The cracks were developed by bell ringing, as they opened and closed with the sway; the consequence was, that the dust of the disturbed core of walls descended, and acted as a wedge to the fractures. Over the tall tower-arch, from the expansion, a pyramid of wall had dropped on to the crown of it, and as the stair turret had been weakened by the spiral stone steps having been removed at some time, the southern abutment to the tower arch was pressing outwards, and one of the voussoirs3 had been nipped by depression from the crown, &c. The tower was in a bad state, but I was sure was in no way hopelessly so. I then made another, and more close survey with a young architect who was active to learn of structural work,4 and I gave him instructions, and a builder5 to supply him with 3 or 4 capable all-round handy mason-bricklayers. Drawings, plumbings, levels &c were got done. I ordered the young fellow to set up some scaffolding, and begin by pouring water into a surface-stopped crack, with clay, following with liquid cement grout. I heard from him this was no go, he could not get the grout to run down to any sufficient extent. I went to look at the tower, and determined on another plan. I made a good sized hole on inside of wall at the bottom of lowest crack deep into the wall, say about 2 feet wide by 3 feet high – and cleared it out of all loose walling, leaveing all firm stones – such as would not wag.6 Then I built up some of the internal wall facing and poured in water – this soaked away – then I mixed Portland cement liquid grout, and filled the hole up to the brim of the internal fender, this all soaked down: when it ceased to be thirsty I filled up the hole with cement stones and sand rubble – broken stone, brick, gravel, coarse sand &c – rammed it down and laterally. This set quickly enough, though only 1 of cement to 5 of hard material was used. I then made another hole higher up the crack in the same manner, and grouted as before till it ran down through the interspace of untouched wall, between the two holes, and the 2nd hole was rubble concreted as below. After which I got to another crack on one side and made a hole right out to the facing stones, ie. the backs of the stones, through the joints of which we could see daylight – from the inside we passed slate or tile on edge – according to thickness of open joints or beds, leaving their tails projecting inwards – then I grouted and concreted as before, and theseis laid hold of slates and tiles, and incorporated the irregular ends of facing stones and jagged teeth of lateral stones, and solidified the whole. As we got higher up the cracks got worse, and I determined to get some horizontal ties. To do this I made a hole as before, out to facing stones, (all from inside of tower) levelled up the bottom of it, and laid 3 courses of hard staffordshire paving bricks, 6" x 12" x 2" thick with lapped joints. On the same level – after filling up the hole as before – I made another hole two widths of hole away laterally, and did the same, and then a third at same level further still away. When the first and second holes filling up was dry enough, I made another in between them, and connected the two ends of staffordshire paving tiles, so that I had interbonded to a length of 6 or seven feet. As we went from one wall of tower to the other in this 19

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

way, it gave the earlier work time to dry and consolidate, and we were able to put in this horizontal rib – once or twice the whole width of tower, and gained great lateral strengthening to the walling, see section of walling thus. [sketch] As I went on I found I could safely reduce the proportion of cement from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6 to 1 in 7 – if carefully done; at times it was found strong enough in such thick walls to reduce the cement even more. In the bad walling over tower arch, where the pyramid of walling had dropped at P, [sketch] I first put in a tile bond at A at the top. Then by a succession of holes made from time to time – as aforesaid – got in a line of bond right across the east wall over the arch at B B. Then we took out the top of loose wall of pyramid and completed bond of C, and so on D, E & F. In the stair turret – wh’ has wooden newel & steps replacing the stone, I managed to corbel out with hard brick at x..x [sketch] without losing headway, and so stiffened the abutment to arch that I could get hold for the tie rod at spring of arch. At the same time we tunnelled in the thickness of wall to back of arch voussoirs, T T, and handed in material to workman with a kind of pele stick,7 and at the same time prepared the hole for tie rod. (see small section in margin and larger scale piece of plan; incorrect sketches) Of course we had to change our ways of meeting difficulties as the work went on, and I am bound to say the men became very handy at their work, and, as it was fresh to them, they took to it with some real enthusiasm, and the young archt picked up a lot of useful knowledge, and – truth to tell for once, so did I. The backbone of such work is personally watching it, with real considering cap on all the while. The young archt used to send for me when he was puzzled, and together, with the good workmen, we made the walling very sound – secured the early fan vaulting (which rises and follows just over the tower arch, which was not broken, but somewhat disturbed) strengthened the beams of floors, adding new timbers, mended and stiffened the bell cage, rehung the bells with a working bell hanger, recast the lead of tower roof &c &c, and made all sound again, & rewhitened the inside of tower again till it shone – and the parish rather complained there was nothing to shew for their money – which was true, for neither on the inside or out could you tell from its appearance that the tower had been dealt with as described above. (In the sketch section, the tower arch is drawn wrongly, it is nearly the internal width of tower.) You must understand that 3 of the tower walls were dealt with all over (as I have tried to explain) in parts, and the fourth wall considerably less than the others. There was an old fireplace on the ringing floor (priests watching loft I suppose) with flue to the top, f.p. opening built up, and parts of flue, but this I had to fill up solid, but leaving the fireplace stones untouched. The cost was between 800 and 900 pounds. If the tower had been pulled down and rebuilt it could not have cost less than 1600 or 2000£, and then it would have been a new tower. We found 2 very early N or late Saxon capitals in one part of walling, which on tapping we found to sound hollow, and we dug them out, and have preserved them in a locked case in the tower for you to see if you go there. Young Detmar Blow, the archt who acted throughout as clerk of works – using his 20

1899–1902

own hands meanwhiles, has done some good work in the same way since, but I have not seen it – his good qualities are several, his worst is rashness. He has taken some of those men about the country with him.8 Now there was no difficulty in doing these solid repairs, for the core of the walls was not very rotten, save in small spaces. Of course I had to strut up in the holes to keep the upper part of walling from dropping, and had to strive against careless[ness] in this respect, but really had to use but little scaffolding, and no shoring to speak of, which was a saving in money. If the tower had been taller, and the core of the walls had been more decomposed, a considerable sum of money would have had to be spent in shoring, strutting, and even cradling. The chief point of importance is in using few men so as to be able to watch them closely; and to avoid hammering as much as possible; and to do nothing wholesale. After examining Peterborough west front from a scaffolding, I was convinced it could have been soundly treated in the same way9 – with the necessary differences, for there was no great superincumbent weight, but one should live at the place when such was being done, and direct each attack on the fabric, be able to stop at any moment when fresh circumstances were exposed, and sit down and quietly consider how to apply fresh remedies. The absurdity is to suppose that any specification can be written as to how to do the work. I have been asked once or twice so to specify. Certain things are patent. Capable workmen, good materials, and the proper use of them – especially in the making up of the cement mortar, and in the mildest way consistent with its finally drying hard without pulling as it sets. I have some considerable experience of the little care modern architects have for building, proper, and no knowledge or aptitude for meeting difficulties as they arise – also, it does not “pay” – and one could not become ‘eminent’ in that way. Where is the love and sincere appreciation of old buildings? Anyone who could do such work with pleasure in the doing, could do it easily and well. This is also not to be forgotten; you must not go searching for antiquities for the mere purpose of becoming a learned archæologist. In any use you may make of these ill-expressed facts you will – doubtless, avoid giving names of workers. You can safely say that the greater part number of old buildings condemned, and pulled down, need not have been so destroyed.10 Modern architects could not afford to spend the time over the work, even if they had the wits to set about it, and carry on. Then, the fatal ignorance of what to do, and the mischief of depending for intelligence on a regulation clerk of works, and expensive builder, has led to most of our Cathedrals being ruined. But there is a worse evil; the rascal clergy will have their architects make a recognisable splash, something which will make boobies for to admire. Forgive the scraggy exposition and believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. (doubtless there are many blunders I have passed over beyond those I have seen – ) SPAB, East Knoyle, Wiltshire file 21

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 This letter is discussed in Drury, pp. 34–5, and by Peter Burman, in Miele, pp. 88–91. For PSW’s extensive surviving correspondence on the repairs at St Mary’s, East Knoyle, see Vol. II, Letter 410 and continuing. 2 Whilst staying in Bognor for his health, GW was endeavouring to prepare a paper for the SPAB Annual Meeting of June 1899. He wrote seeking ‘a few lines of description of the Tower at Knoyle . . . as it was before you began the repairs & . . . two of three words as to its present condition. . . . You have told me already – but nothing quite justifies a man in writing about what he has not seen himself’. GW to PSW, 7 May 1899, Courtauld 214b-c. 3 See Vol. I, Letter 213, note 11. 4 DJB. 5 Albert Estcourt. 6 ‘To move, budge from a place’ (OED): i.e. to be unstable. 7 See Vol. II, Letter 466, note 2. 8 Including James Neale (see Vol. II, Letter 608, note 2). 9 See Vol. II, Letter 521, note 4, and Letter 548, note 2. 10 In ‘Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. A Chapter of its Early History’, GW wrote of the Society’s beginnings and its early membership, of the often good intention of restorers frequently having flawed outcomes, and cited the case history of the East Knoyle tower as a ‘successful application of the methods recommended by this Society. . . . [It] was considered by all who saw it, as a hopeless wreck: it was cracked, the core of the walls loose and running out through the cracks, the great arch had sunk, being weakened by the removal of the stone steps from the turret, which served originally as an abutment, and the wall above the arch had dropped with it, disclosing a huge triangular fissure. Notwithstanding its apparently desperate state, and the fears of those most responsible for its safety, we advised that it should not be pulled down, and, our advice being taken, the tower still stands, a monument of what may be done by intelligent care, when the object is not to destroy, but to preserve.’ SPAB Annual Report, 1899, pp. 33–4.

632 • To William Hale White, 13 May 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 13 May 1899 My dear Hale White The extra precision – (on account of the “pin” instead of pen you wrote with) in your admirable engrossment received this morning, seemed, at first-glance, as if you had shaken off the mortal coil,1 but retained your manuscriptal power in the spirit-world beyond the stars – kindly Peter merely clattering his keys and letting you in with that trifle of earthly luggage – blessings on his softened impetuosity. And so you have got to the ‘Quantocks’ before me. I have long wished to set eyes and feet on those humps of rolling hills.2 If other places fail, I may peer about on that countryside for setting up my tub-tabernacle: who knows?3 And so you have come across that Gnome-child, Swinburne, and observed his twitchings and St Vitus dancings4 – wh’ I remember so well of old time. Have not myself set eyes on him for more than 20 years. ’Tis good of Watts-Dunton to fend for him so faithfully.5 I have lately read a painstaking, but otherwise tiresome and unenlightened biography of Borrow, by a Dr Knapp – Yankey [sic] I suppose; who does not know the meaning of a man of genius.6 George Borrow’s books – to those who bring the most necessary sympathy, are clear as noonday. Of course there was an ‘Isopel Berners’, 22

1899–1902

built up in the spirit on some bodily image G.B had seen in the flesh, and that was the woman he loved – only a little less than freedom from the bondage of women.7 Ah! the Cuckoo – bird of my heart; his full, rounded, but penetrating song is a musical mystery of the creator. Mozart Handel and Beethoven knew the value of repetition in music, as did the mediævals – they, like the cuckoo, said, ‘listen’. If you have not seen the place, and could conveniently get to it, you should see the beautiful remains of Cleave Abbey: [sic] so very lovely and gentle in its perfect simplicity of dignified art.8 If it were not that I am tied by the leg to my uncomfortable work, I would be down there to see it myself before Cuckoo ‘changes his tune.’9 I suppose, in your upper walks you come across the Wheatear – a white rump, sitting standing on a stone or tussock – a very pleasant looking bird frequenting moorlands? I don’t remember if I told you that I found no stance in S. Wales. The air there on the higher ground would have suited my health-need, but there was no place in the bracing air for me to house myself in. Since then I have been to a beautiful place in the Cotswolds, 6 miles west of Cirencester – “Pinbury”, to wit, which has loveliness and other satisfactory things.10 and It is just possible harbourage might be found for me there, but that is very doubtful. 600 feet or so above the sea, on limestone earth, with a string of Duntisbournes – villages, and hamlets, as neighbours,11 within a mile or two of where it looked as if I might settle if I could. Much out of the ways of this world upon wheels, and within ¾rs of a mile of 3 friends who have settled there these last five years, and in living – family like, in 3 contiguous houses in a kind of tribal way, and would be good naturedly human if I should get to be there, but it is “a’ in the clouds”. Lambeth religion,12 my own work, necessity at my time of life to get more fresh air and muscular exercise, with the crowding-out of London-town by stockbrokers and waste paper, makes it imperative for me to flit, like Cuckoo in August;13 I shall be miserable for 6 months after change from the beautiful shades of Gray’s Inn to any other place, for 35 years of rooting here will make me squeal like the mandrake when uprooted. For the last 2 years I have felt both bodily and spiritually that time has told upon me, and that unless I do move into a freër air, with more freedom of life, I shall collapse unnecessily [sic] quickly. I do not mope over the repeated losses of beloved intimates, but feel the want of the steadfast rock of assurance their bodily presence afforded me. Please give kindest remembrance of the old man to Mary, | and believe me Yours truly | Philip Webb. Your doctor son very kindly called on me, but I have been too much occupied to go and see him and his in Harley Street. BCL MR 10/15

1 ‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,’ Hamlet, III, I, 65–6.

23

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 2 The Quantock Hills to the west of Bridgwater, Somerset, extend for about fifteen miles from the Vale of Taunton Deane to the Bristol Channel, and afford views into Wales and towards Exmoor, as well as of Glastonbury Tor. WHW first took rooms in Holford, and from 19 May in Bicknoller, villages in the Quantocks. 3 PSW frequently likened his prospects to those of Diogenes. See Vol. II, Letter 611, note 4. 4 The medieval tradition of dancing before the statue of Saint Vitus led to him being regarded as the patron saint of dancers and other entertainers. By extension, Saint Vitus Dance is the common historical name for a neurological disorder the symptoms of which involve spasmodic jerkings of the face and limbs, properly called Sydenham’s disorder. The poet, Algernon Swinburne, may have been a sufferer: certainly, it was not just PSW who thought so. ‘It is impossible not to feel an interest in him. He says he is 26; he looks 16 – a pale, sickly boy, with some nervous complaint like St. Vitus’ dance.’ Lord Lytton to his son, 20 August 1866, cited in The Swinburne Letters, ed Cecil Y. Lang, 6 vols (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1859–62), I, p. 174, note 1. A more recent medical diagnosis has suggested that Swinburne was born prematurely, and consequently suffered from mild arrested hydroencephaly, the symptoms of which may include involuntary hand and foot movements. (DNB) See also Vol. II, Letter 488. 5 From 1879, Swinburne lived with Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832–1914) in Putney. Watts-Dunton persuaded Swinburne to stop drinking, with notable benefits to his health, and effectively became his business manager. Although some contemporaries believed that there was a loss to Swinburne in critical independence, Watts-Dunton’s intervention undoubtedly extended the poet’s life and material comforts. 6 William Ireland Knapp, Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow (London: John Murray, 1899). 7 Isopel Berners (Belle) appears quite late in Borrow’s Lavengro (ch 86), and describes herself as ‘a poor travelling girl, born in a workhouse’. 8 For Cleeve Abbey, see Vol. I, Letter 279, note 3. 9 Part of the traditional rhyme: ‘In April the cuckoo comes, / In May she’ll stay, / In June she changes her tune’. 10 In 1894, Ernest Gimson, together with Sidney Barnsley (1865–1926) and his brother, Ernest Barnsley (1863–1926), both of them architects and designers, had decided to establish themselves in the Cotswold hamlet of Pinbury, where they devoted themselves to the production of Arts and Crafts furniture; in 1902 they moved to bigger workshop premises in Sapperton. It seems that SCC and EW put the idea of a Cotswold retirement in PSW’s mind, for in April 1899 they had been guests of Ernest Gimson in the Cotswold hamlet of Pinbury, and saw a cottage which they thought might suit him. CD, 2 April 1899. 11 Duntisbourne Leer, Duntisbourne Abbots and Duntisbourne Rouse are all Cotswold villages in Gloucestershire. 12 He presumably means by this the notion of formal, orthodox religion, Lambeth Palace being the official London residence (since the thirteenth century) of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior Anglican primate, who at this time was Frederick Temple (1821–1902). Tensions between high and low church factions led to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York ruling in 1899 against the Anglo-Catholic practice of carrying candles in liturgical procession. 13 ‘In July she prepares to fly, / Come August, go she must’ (Trad).

633 • To Sydney Cockerell, 24 May 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 May 1899 Dear Cockerell There must be controversy, and we are lucky when ’tis the angels who rush in where Richmond fears to tread.1 If we get people who know what they are writing 24

1899–1902

about – such as Wardle, to make the say for the Report, there is – I think, nothing to be done by the republic save to accept the help with as little controverting as may be: for your born scribe is touchy.2 If wise – like Lethaby, he claps his bomb under the Blomfield seat without more ado.3 When that has had its surprising effect, he can preach suavity at our round table with the grace all his own. The “calm historic voice” of the story, you will remember, was backed up with the gentle persuasiveness of the Derringer.4 Not having read the Richmond bluffing it, in the Times, I cannot quite see the force of the professional ‘Punch’ – though well understanding the point of the scrambled punctuation, for my own ungrammatical self is apt to use stops as if feeding fowls with barley.5 Doubtless the negative style is a self protecting one, but it is irritating to the cognoscenti like – say – you and me! And when reading the life of W.M, there is muttered thunder from the belly, ending with the penetrating punctuation of the ‘damn’.6 Am sorry you will not be with us tomorrow, as I shall have single handed to bear the brunt of varied criticism on Wardle’s paper: on the one side peppered by Turner, and on the other by Fletcher, who would have the advantage of not hearing what is said.7 He lays on the lash like Maryatt’s [sic] compunctious sailors, as if he were ‘brushing flies from a sleeping Venus’ – (I quote from memory).8 Lethaby, the architect of “evasion”, will – I suspect, not be back from all the Orkneys. Personally, I am only so-so, for the wheels of the professional chariot drive deeply in the ruts of old age, and Gray’s Inn Garden smiles unconscious of Cotswold charms9 – knowing nothing of City rents. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/97

1 ‘For fools rush in where angels fear to tread’, Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711). For William Blake Richmond’s controversial decorations at St Paul’s Cathedral, see Vol. II, Letter 454, note 4. The first phase of work had been completed by 1895, but through Gladstone’s parliamentary intervention new funds had been approved for additional mosaics to the aisles and elsewhere. Richmond defended the work in a letter in The Times on 6 May, prompting an editorial in the same number: ‘[W]hile fully appreciating Sir William Richmond’s desire to be judged by posterity (which, by the way, a very clever man once defined as “an ignorant mob”), we may remark that the present generation also has an interest in St. Paul’s, and that it cannot be blamed if it rouses itself to repel what it regards as a most dangerous attack upon its own Cathedral.’ 2 SCC annotation: ‘Wardle had written a rather dull preface for the Antiscrape Annual Report.’ ‘I am returning Mr Wardle’s paper to Thackeray Turner. I think it is of course a very able piece of work, but I am disappointed that it is not what I was hoping for, namely a calm historical sketch free from the polemical writing that already exists abundantly in other reports & leaflets. I should like to see much of the argument taken for granted & the length reduced in consequence – but I fear that would involve entire remodelling on different lines – so I do not propose it. I only mention my opinion for your private ear, as I shall not be back till the end of the week and you may wonder whether I have

25

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

3 4 5

6 7

8

9

performed the task you set me.’ SCC to PSW, 23 May 1899, BL Add 52760, f 24. For GW’s paper for the SPAB Annual Report, see above, Letter 631, notes 2 and 10. See Vol. II, Letter 517, note 3. By generic extension and a common mis-spelling, the name of the American gun-maker, Henry Deringer (1786–1868) came to signify any small pocket pistol. ‘I enclose Punch on Richmond’s letter to the Times, which I think will amuse you, if you have not seen it already.’ SCC to PSW, 23 May 1899. On 17 May 1899, Punch had mocked Richmond in the guise of a letter of grotesquely inflated length from ‘a celebrated decorator . . . U.B. Blowerman’, defending the St Paul’s work: ‘Why I have studied painting all over the world and then, some imbecile from Italy comes and says I don’t understand architecture. What is an architect? Give it up? He’s a builder. When is an architect not a builder? Give it up? When he’s a painter. I am a painter and one of the greatest painters, that ever (Here we omit thirty-one lines) and compared to who Velasquez and Rembrandt were mere nobodies. (Here we omit five and a half pages.)’ One passage entirely lacks punctuation (‘I can’t waste time to put any commas into this’). WM was famous for his swearing and sudden explosions of temper, much relished by his friends. SCC annotation: ‘G. Rutter Fletcher was a deaf lawyer, who was on the Committee of the S.P.A.B. He did some legal work for Morris.’ This is presumably the same man who was currently assisting JM with legal issues to do with the planned Kelmscott cottages, although on another occasion SCC refers to WM’s lawyer as ‘Arthur Fletcher’. See CLWM, IV, p. 223, note 5. ‘ “Boatswain’s mate,” roared the captain, “do your duty, or by G— I will have you up, and give you four dozen myself. One would think, d––n your b––d, that you were brushing flies off a sleeping Venus, instead of punishing a scoundrel, with a hide as thick as a buffalo’s . . .” ’. Frederick Marryat, The Naval Officer; or, Scenes and Adventures in the Life of Frank Mildmay (London, 1829), ch xvi. See previous letter, note 10.

634 • To Jane Morris, 24 May 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 May 1899 My dear Janey By a letter from Sydney Cockerell received this morning I am reminded that you too are at Kelmscott,1 and I send a word to the bower with the hope that you are putting up fairly with the dashing spring showers, which are so finely helping on the growth of things green. I have not forgotten that I am due you towards at some convenient day [sic], to try and come to some reasonable conclusion as to my last work of art in the way of building. I am very slowly – so slowly – knitting up the ravelled edges of my professional doings, that the days go by as if January was only just gone – instead of only having a month in front before St John’s day winks at us as it flies past. On Friday I have to go to the work in Surrey, and next week to the same in the New Forest2 – and there are things undone here staring stolidly at me, as if that would raise my enthusiasm! But I shall await your call just as you find it may suit you to have the ill luck about the house? Cockerell will have said that I have been in the neighbourhood of Thames-head, but I assure you there was no poison put into your water supply. 26

1899–1902

The Cotswold district is very beautiful in its way, for, in this little England, only 15 or 20 miles of distance makes a difference in the quality of the landscape. While in France (let alone America) you may go 50 miles and not be sure you have left home, as far as the countryside tells you. The Colony of the settlement I went to were very kind to the old man,3 but there is no surety that I get to that district any more than another. Now take your pen, and fire a retort at me. With kind love to Jenny | I am your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 123

1 SCC stayed at Kelmscott Manor from 19–26 May as JM’s guest, taking three of Yates Thompson’s manuscripts with him to work on. 2 Hurlands, near Puttenham, his house for Agneta Cocks, and Warrens House in Bramshaw, for George Eyre. For these two projects, see Vol. II, Letter 561, notes 6 and 1 respectively. 3 Gimson and the Barnsleys. See above, Letter 632, note 10.

635 • To Jane Morris, 27 May 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 May 1899 My dear Janey Thank you for your clearly intelligible letter: I am afraid mine was not quite as clear. Yesterday I was on my old legs from 9. a.m. to 8. pm to and from Surrey, with the exacting work there; and next Wednesday I have a rather longer day to go through at my work in the New Forest, which, with the home work will make it impossible for me to get to Kelmscott before the following week. Would Monday or Tuesday – the 5th or 6th June, suit you for me to come to you for the parts of 2 days and one night? a post card would be all the answer you need give me. It seems likely the stormy weather and following East Wind will rather nip you as well as the tender green of the garden, till a new moon turns things summer-like in early June; it has been so for years of late – that broken weather and cold winds have lasted till June came. I am indeed glad that Cockerell was able to get to you and cheer the house with his vigorous life. I cannot call body and soul of me my own if he has his finger in my life-pie, for he twists my settled habits into a corkscrew without compunction. If I did not hold on at times, like kittens’ claws in a knitted shawl, I should be whisked off by him to Jerusalem or Timbuctoo! Cheery love to Jenny from her and | Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. 27

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

P.S. Had just written thus, when Mr Fletcher looked in with your letter in his hand. I have promised to let him have the information he wants from me, on my return from Kelmscott.1 BL Add 45342, f. 124

1 Legal queries relating to the projected Kelmscott cottages.

636 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 May 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 May 1899 Dear Cockerell Thank you for your last letter. Have just written to Mrs Morris about my going to Kelmscott. I was all day yesterday at the work in Surrey, and next week an even longer day have I has to be given to the New Forest work, so, with the home strivings, I cannot go to Kelmscott till the following week, June 5 or 6.1 Fletcher has just looked in about the conveyancing business, and I have promised him my information for that on my return from Ktt. O dear me. I should have been with you at the Bodleian to look over that ‘Ormsby’ [sic] book. The library there would be such a setting for the beautiful thing – & with no butter about the table to vex my righteous soul.2 “The beautiful Miss Baillie”3 will do all she can under the prod of Gimson’s kind hand – doubtless; and the thing must be as it may. Have had a letter from Hale White, just as he was leaving the Quantock hills in Somersetshire, telling of the wild upper moorlands there, and the fine old buildings under their wing – but the parsonic-cum-architectic devilry is ramping round them with Hell’s delight. I am really sorry your idea was not Wardle’s (or mine for that matter) as to the motive part of the ann: report.4 I shall see W: at Sou: Ken this evening, and find out his temper from having read the criticisms on his work. I doubt if any serious change can be made though. Lethaby looked in here last night after my return, when we sorted mutual ideas a little, and he forgot his rigorous bed-time till close on 1. am. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/98

1 ‘Mother is going up to town after Mr Webb has paid us his little visit at the beginning of next week, to which I am looking much, [sic] but no doubt it will be a sad visit to him.’ JEM to SCC, 2 June 1899, BL Add 52739, f. 130.

28

1899–1902 2 SCC would later write a study of this manuscript, Two East Anglian Psalters at the Bodleian Library, Oxford: The Ormesby Psalter, ms. Douce 366, described by S.C. Cockerell. The Bromholm Psalter, ms Ashmole 1523, described by M.R. James (Oxford: printed for the Roxburghe Club, 1926). 3 Not identified, although in 1903 SCC refers to a Miss Baillie, who undertook bookbinding. CD, 6 April 1903. 4 See above, Letter 633, note 2.

637 • To William Hale White, 7 June 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 7 June 1899 My dear Hale White I got back from my 2 days country work last night, and have today payed [sic] the penalty of these snatches of country air and sights of Earth’s beauty, by being a wasted rag all day today – the stimulant is too much for me, and should be followed up by continuous doses: a kind of swallowing a hair of the dog that bit me. So, you see, I must shuffle off this coil of city life and professional wear and tear. Your catalogue of pleasant places in the neighbourhood of the Quantocks is necessarily interesting to me, as I may fail in getting what I want in the Cotswold district; shall not know this however till September. These parsons are preeminently a stupid class of people, the Stogumber church being an illustration of the clergy rushing in where angels fear to tread.1 (see foot note) 2 The Bicknoller photographs are very interesting, especially in the west country woodwork, the perfect rood-screen and richly carved benches are fine examples of the art of the district, and of which I have seen so little.3 The enchanted roof of Cleeve Abbey Refectory is a perfect example of grace and skill.4 I would that I had been with you when there, though my enthusiasm would most likely have shocked you. The ‘day room’ is dreadfully battered. It must have been a lovely place when its double row of vaulting was standing. It would take much to persuade me that the monks were not appreciative of there [sic] noble housing. I read that you think the N.E side of the Quantocks would suit me best – as you think it would you? but, given a health-dealing place it is a question first if the place is overrun in the summer time with vacuous minded recreationists, and secondly if a small Cottage could be had? There is just a chance that I might get the one on the Cotswolds, but if that fails me I must look elsewhere.5 Cirencester itself is a very pleasant town, with a large number of really pretty houses in it – a real country-town yet, and possibly not yet subject to the usual degredation [sic] of such places, as it is rather out of the way of attraction for the majority who come on the scene but to destroy. It stands high, just above Thames head waters. Also, there is the park 6 miles long attached to it, full of fine trees, and practically a public place for walking or driving in. Kindly tell Mary when she returns that I hardly think she can be working on anything of my designing, as I have done so little for the needle. 29

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I thank you sincerely both for your notes, and the photographs. Yours truly | Philip Webb. This bald letter is an evidence of my dilapidated condition after the country had made me drunk with its beauty. Philip is hardly yet sober. (At our last antiscrape meeting, on a reading from a parson’s letter, which was incredible, one of the committee said, ‘that is a clergyman’s lie’ – upon which another member reproved, by saying it should be called a ‘clerical error’.) BCL MR 10/17

1 See above, Letter 633, note 1. The Arts and Crafts architect, John Dando Sedding (1838–91), like PSW a pupil of George Edmund Street, oversaw repairs and modifications to the late thirteenth-century church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Stogumber, in the 1870s. Sedding was close to WM, with whom he shared an interest in domestic decorative work, and from 1880 occupied Oxford Street offices immediately next door to the Morris & Co. shop. The context of PSW’s comment is not known. 2 PSW’s own comment. 3 ‘I enclose the photographs. The inside of Bicknoller has been foolishly taken at some time when there were decorations about, but a magnifying glass will show the details.’ WHW to PSW, 4 June 1899, Cheltenham 1991.1016.661. WHW sent pictures of the twelfth-century church of St George, Bicknoller, the village where he had been staying. 4 The virtually intact wooden roof of the fifteenth century refectory at Cleeve Abbey with its carved angels. 5 A year later, he was again hoping for a Cotswolds cottage for his retirement, a prospect which dismayed WHW, who responded with a remarkable offer. ‘I would give much if you could feel happy in being nearer Sussex. You say you have no money. I have scraped together a little bit, and would thankfully build half an acre at Uckfield or Buxted or some untouched agricultural village, and you could put a cottage on it, for which also I should pay, and it would be an investment for me.’ WHW to PSW, 14 June 1900, LTF, p. 303. This intriguing proposition came to nothing.

638 • To Jane Morris, 24 June 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 June 1899 My dear Janey I am afraid you may have been thinking me dilatory in the matter of your Cottages? This would not be unnatural, though not a fact: for I have been hard put-to in getting through – or trying to get through my daily work under the disablement of increasing weakness belonging to the “lean and slippered” time of my life.1 I send with this a tracing shewing my scheme in its general form, and in its first process. It is to be hoped you may make it out with little difficulty. Jenny was good enough to send me a measurement which I had left out when we tramped “Crook’s Close” on the 6th of June, and that has helped me to make more certain the guiding principle for setting down the cottages on the half-acre taken from the field – judgmatically.2

30

1899–1902

You will see that the old road boundary retaining wall on the north side, as taken in its whole length, to the iron fence, decided the width of the ground at this end, and has been the base of the departure; for that would be the chief help in making the new cottages look less strange. Also, you will note that the shape of the rest of the close is as little injured as may be by taking out of it at the north west corner what was wanted, without leaving acute angles. On the same sheet I have made a tracing of this part of the village (including the Manor premises) from the Ordnance map, which will make clear the larger scale of my plan of ground and cottages. These I have shewn to Mr Fletcher, and he is satisfied from the legal point of view. Bearing in mind all the points, of village, field, freehold, leasehold, your motive, sentiment, &c, and not forgetting the final cost to you, the happy mean has been aimed at – whether succeeding or not, – is another question? It seemed to me that the broader in effect the 2 cottages could be made, the less of upstart in character would be the result; so, the thing is done with two simple gabled roofs crossing each other. The roof which runs north and south shewing on its north – or road front, with the larger gable in the middle of the block, would give this breadth – and as much simplicity as possible; that is, not to cut it up in to too many points. This gives the additional value of economy in construction. Then it seemed to me the peace of the place would be better kept if the entrance to each cottage was as far away from the other as it could be. I have put the well in the front garden, so as to be away from any possible contamination; [a few words obliterated] nearness to the road being the safest place. I have also divided this garden with a low wall from the building to the old boundary wall. I was sure that the “keeping-rooms” 3 should look on to the street, but should have another window at the ends, looking west in one cottage, and east in the other, for the sunlight, which arrangement gives a good corner for the little pantry. To get 3 bedrooms to each house, the keeping room is made long from east to west, and this would allow of a work table being in the recessed part, away from the fire-place. Not having to provide the usual little waste room4 allows this the chief living-room to be of such a size and shape, that the members of the family need not tumble over each other. Breathing space is thus given – and not at the expense of the wash house. The little yard with its covered sheds is, I am sure, a real necessity; where the mother of the family can do a good deal of wet work out of doors, and partly under the pent house roof,5 where she can air her pots and pans as well as her children, and all under her ken. The big gable at the back – answering to the one in the front, and in between the low walls of the yard, would look well from the Manor House, if the trees would let you see it.

31

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

By this arrangement of plan both cottages would be alike, though transposed, but the building having the larger gable in the middle would unite the two cottages in appearance. As to the division of the land: I found when the ½ acre was set out, there was more ground to each cottage than it would be well to allow; and as you would be the freeholder, it would be better for you to retain a portion for yourself, which would give you some hold over the whole without being looked on as a spy when you surveyed from your patch, and complimented the cottagers on the way they kept their pieces. Your walk to the place might be by the end of the Manor new kitchen garden, through the gate into the Croft, round the edge of the field to the gate in your reserved ground; as it would be the easy way for anyone of your household who inhabited the westernmost cottage. Is this longtailed explanation enough for you? In any case I think you will gather more from a close study of the plan – which you can keep, and ask further questions if need be. I made the sketch view in fear and trembling, anxious lest the gods should drop bolts of contempt on my unlucky head! Do not you therefore be an irate goddess, and shake my remaining sand of time in your wrath. If any mark sign should be desired on the building to mark the memory of the old man of the place, I thought it might possibly be put between the upper windows of the big north gable – as shewn there by a pencil scratch or two. Perhaps this significance might take the shape of a rudimentary tree and a couple of birds, to signify, to those who cared, “the town of the tree,” of the poem on the big bed-top? but of this more, later on.6 If you should take to this general outline of the scheme, I should at once proceed with the working plans – improving the thing as they are being done? With kind love to Jenny, | Believe me | Your faithful professional adviser & friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, ff. 126–7

1 The sixth of Shakespeare’s seven ages of man: ‘The sixth age shifts / Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, | With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,’ As You Like It, II,vii.157–9. 2 His design, dated 24 June 1899, is now at the BL Add 45344. ‘Have you seen anything of Philip Webb lately? for Mother had from him yesterday a long letter with a most lovely little drawing & plan of the cottages she thinks of building. Naturally we were both having a good deal of talk over them together – & wondering whether, well-built & convenient as they are sure to be, they are not sure also to be the longest before getting a tenant in the village.’ JEM to SCC, 26 June 1899, BL Add 52739, f. 138. 3 PSW was fond of this term for an unpretentious family parlour or sitting-room, and would use it frequently to describe such a room in his own eventual retirement cottage, Caxtons. 4 Presumably the under-used ‘front parlour’, traditionally kept for best in working-class homes. 5 A sloping roof. 6 It is interesting that he had this idea from the beginning, developing the details much later. See below, Letter 856.

32

1899–1902

639 • To Giacomo Boni, 6 July 1899 Photostat; dated from comment in a letter from PW to GBO of 26 August (not included) 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. My dear Giacomo Boni After too long silence on my part – from a growing disinclination to writing, I was stirred by your kindness in sending me the papers throwing further lights on the history of Rome, due to the untiring labours of yourself and others – learned and industrious people that you are.1 The plan, fig. I, given on page 4 of your communication, is very acceptable,2 for it makes clearer to me the contention given in earlier papers from you on the subject: but my ignorance of your language is a sad bar to my following the explanations and conclusions. I must therefore wait till John Hebb or other kind translator puts into some kind of English for me what you and others have written. Therefore, as yet, I can only thank you for remembering, and trying to enlighten me, which I do with the old sincerity. The word ‘old’ puts me in mind to say that I too am old, and feeling fatigued too continuously to make any efforts beyond getting through my daily work as best I may. Indeed it seems necessary that I should go and live in the country in the simplest possible way, and rest in some place on high ground where the air would be bracing – not relaxing, with the hope of recovering some bodily strength. Therefore I am trying to clear off my professional work, and taking to other which would not be so exacting in its demands on the bodily and mental powers remaining to me – for at my age, with at any time a not over-strong constitution, it seems necessary to try and avoid breaking it down altogether.3 This is too much about myself, but I thought the story might explain why correspondence with good friends has been falling away. You have probably heard that our friend Micklethwaite has become the ‘surveyor’ to the fabric of Westminster Abbey Church,4 and from that fact the real lovers of that great monument of art an[d] history will not be subject to so much fear of alterations and further fanciful ‘restorations’, and that a more judicious consideration may be given to the condition of the structure itself, and it his [sic] historical contents. We are alive to the fact that the invaluable Roman pavements in the Sanctuary, and about the Shrine of S. Edward, are showing clear signs of rapidly increasing disintegration: therefore steps must be taken to secure what still remains, with as little disturbance or change of appearance as possible. Micklethwaite asked two or three friendly architects to meet him in the Church and consider what had best be done to preserve these works of old Italian art. This we did, and closely examined the floors, when we found that the Purbeck marble (a large shelly oolite) in which the mosaic tesseræ are set was rapidly decomposing under the action of the gasses in the London atmosphere.5 Some kind of tough and holding cement will have to be used to bring this framework – where it has worn down – up to the level of the Italian marble pattern 33

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

work embedded in it. I much distrust the use of English Portland cement for such a purpose, though it has been used to these floors in past time when making slight repairs. It occurred to me that you must have had experience in the same kind of reparation, and could advise as to the most effectual and least obtrusive cement or other material for the purpose – namely, first to level up the worn and decaying Purbeck ground, and for re-embedding the loose tesseræ: also you would perhaps give some hint as to the best size (coarseness) and kind of sand to use with the cement, for some kind of coarse sand was used when the pavement was laid down. I told Micklethwaite that, with his permission, I thought of writing to you on these points for your opinion, and he willingly accepted my offer. I believe that reasonable people look upon ancient works of art – wherever they may be, as belonging, to lovers of such things, to all the world: and as you have put in an effective word for the salvation of the precious splendours of Westminster, part of which are due to Italian workmanship, you would rightly claim this building as your own possession, and would gladly give your experience in aid of the best means of securing those parts of Italian genius which lie sacred in the English Westminster; which was founded on a French plan and yet in its structure is one of the most characteristic of works in the English style of mediæval form and construction. Can you conveniently give an answer to my questions which I may communicate to Micklethwaite? You will remember Sartorio’s pamphlet, “Imarmorari Romani” in Westminster Abbey Church, in which these mosaics of Italy are considered.6 I hope you are well, and that the anxieties of archæological controversy are not too great a strain on your energetic constitution? With sincere friendliness, believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. George Wardle is now staying for a while on the sea coast in Suffolk, and I am sure he would wish to be remembered to you in this letter. I am aware this must read as a very serious-solemn writing for me, but I have put away for once my habit of rude jesting! Courtauld 188a-c

1 In 1898, GBO was appointed Director of Excavations in the Roman Forum, a position he held until his death. 2 No letters from GBO to PSW for 1899 appear to have survived. 3 ‘[L]ast Thursday Mr Webb came up here [Richmond] for the evening & turned over books & photographs. It was a great honour and treat to have him. I shall be so glad when he gets to the end of his work and retires to rest in the country. The strain of life in town is beginning to be too much for him, though he is always brave & cheerful.’ SCC to JEM, 7 August 1899, BL Add 52739, f. 148. 4 Micklethwaite had succeeded Pearson in 1898 (see Vol. II, Letter 508, note 10). 5 PSW would also be invited to join a committee set up by Micklethwaite to consider the problems of stone decay at Westminster Abbey, but declined on the grounds of pressures of work. Surveyors

34

1899–1902 of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey, 1827–1906: Reports and Letters (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011), p. 169. 6 Giulio Aristide Sartorio, I marmorari romani nella chiesa di Westminster Abbey (Rome: Unione Cooperativa Edizioni, 1896).

640 • To William Weir, 8 August 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 8 August 1899 My dear Weir Your plans, notes, rough-estimate, &c, of Eglwys Brewis Church came all right,1 and Kent came to me today,2 as Sir John Llewellen [sic] is in London now and wants to hear about it.3 Therefore I gave K. the plans &c, and made up some extra items of the preliminary estimate. For I think the work would take longer than 3 months in doing, so I added 25%, and your payment own salary, which brought it to some £450, and said that probably the whole work might come – say – to £500 – as, Sir John wished some kind of estimate to guide him in asking others to contribute to the cost. Your plans were very satisfactory to my business-like eye, and pleased me highly – though I was too much in the clutch of my own work to do them justice with longer examination – for Jack, now, is on his native heath, and I am at the beck & call of every one who chooses, so that I have no choice. Today came the Podington seating plans and description &c. This work was also excellently well done, and I handed them over to papers to Kent, who is to forward them to Mr Orlebar, and write to the vicar to beg for delay in destroying (for that is the way they are treating the seating) more seats – but I much doubt if anything can be done to stay them in their recklessness.4 You must be sure and keep account of all your expenditure and charges. Just now there is only Kent and myself to attend to the work,5 now that the holidays are on. With sincere thanks for your good working will | I am yours truly | Philip Webb. I have Eglwys Cummin Ch’ now on my hands, and am struggling with the report of my visit there in March.6 The people there are stirring Mr Treherne, and he is giving a poke with a long pole, and is coming in person tomorrow7 – am much like Falstaff – “babbling of Green Fields”.8 SPAB W-W 10

1 The church of St Brise, Eglwys Brewis, Glamorgan. For this, and also for the church of St Margaret, Eglwys Cummin, in the south of Carmarthenshire, see above, Letter 620, note 8. WW would supervise the repair works on behalf of the SPAB. 2 John Kent was the SPAB office clerk.

35

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 3 Sir John Talbot Dillwyn-Llewellyn (1836–1927), first baronet, Conservative MP for Swansea and formerly Mayor of Swansea. He was the patron of St Brise, Eglwys Brewis, and oversaw the fundraising to cover the costs of repairs. 4 The parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Podington, Bedfordshire, dates mainly from the thirteenth century. There were plans to repair or even remove the church seating, which the SPAB wished to resist. The rector was Augustus Scobell Orlebar, and his father, R.R.B. Orlebar, the local SPAB contact. WW visited the church on 5 August, found some of the seats on the north side of the nave had been destroyed, and ‘that if the old seats are to be saved something must be done to shape the work immediately’. WW to PSW, 7 August 1899, SPAB, Podington Church file. 5 He means, to oversee any SPAB business. 6 Note 1, above. 7 The solicitor and antiquarian, George Gilbert Treherne Treherne [sic] (1837–1923), was the local SPAB correspondent, who liaised with the committee about Eglwys Cummin. See also below, Letter 644, note 3. 8 See Vol. II, Letter 407, note 4.

641 • To George Washington Jack, 9 August 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9 August 1899 My dear Jack. I found all your papers, note book &c, on my table in the late evening of Saturday. The notes were very clear and helpful; and, as those on the foolscap sheet were just to the point, I decided to inclose them – as well as my long letter, to Mr Eyre, asking him to return your paper. In my letter I quoted from your note book, with comments of my own at considerable length, quietly, but with some decision, Mr Franklin1 having sent me his estimate for preparing (a heavy business) varnishing, and wax polishing all the floors of the S. wing, of £46, which I considered reasonable, and inclosed with my letter posted on Monday night, but have had no answer from him as yet. Am glad you thought well of the black & white marble pavement. We are not out of the wood yet with C. Room decorative plaster, for Turner has had manufacturing mishaps with it – however, is trying to amend things.2 Certainly the ornament has not been well modelled. I finished the design for the work over the 3 window heads, but when I took this to his workshop, was frightened at what would be the conjunction of the pattern at the N.E & S.E corners of the room – so, brought the pattern back, and made an alteration of part of pattern for these 2 corners: for the spandrels complete between the windows it did well enough. Hope the whole thing will not be too disappointing. Fortunately I had just managed to write my Eglwys Cummin report (18 sermon paper pages) when Treherne came back from his holiday, hoping, but not expecting it to be done. I read him to placidity with it today. Stanleys’, after all, printed the six copies of the New Place house & garden &c, (12s/-) and did it better than they anticipated. They have a German tracing paper, made for them, which is very transparent, and said not to get brown, 36

1899–1902

as is usual.3 Thank you for your kind wish as to taking care of myself by not working too much, but am afraid that – though I shall do all I can in that way – fate will sit upon me in the way of work, yet awhile. However – patience is your only wear. I am, however, really relieved that you and yours got away before worse happened here, for the callerer air of N.B,4 and fresh herrings, with teaching the Gemini frolicking on one side,5 and ‘manners makyth’ kids on the other,6 will bring you, & madame their mother, will bring “all round the square”. Weir has sent wonderfully good drawings & report on Eglwys Brewis; and since, has been for anti-scrape to Bedfordsh’, and done good service their [sic] also. here endeth, with the blessings of antiquity, from | Yours truly | Philip Webb. forgive the length of this twist Since my last shrewd shot at Puttenham, there has been no return fire. I shewed Lethaby the wonderful seaweeds I have which came from where you are, he was greatly taken with their grace. He started last night for a fortnight in Switzerland. V&A, AAD

1 PSW had employed the building firm of Franklin & Son, from Southampton, as the contractors for Warrens House in Hampshire. 2 For the architectural sculptor, Laurence Turner, see Vol. II, Letter 559, note 2. 3 These copies were probably done at the Lincoln’s Inn branch of William Ford Stanley & Co, first established as a manufacturer of mathematical and drawing instruments by the inventor William Stanley (1829–1909). 4 ‘Caller’ (rather than ‘callerer’): fresh or cool (OED). GWJ was holidaying in Scotland (‘North Britain’). 5 By association PSW links GWJ’s twin daughters, Jessie and Margery, to the twin gods of Classical mythology, Castor and Pollux. After Castor’s death, Pollux wished to share his immortality with his brother, and they were transformed by Zeus into the constellation of Gemini. 6 The allusion is to William of Wykeham’s motto, ‘manners makyth man’.

642 • To George Washington Jack, 13 August 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 13 August 1899 My dear Jack Thank you for your satisfactory letter of the 10th. If you had pined, after fleeing the tyranny of Gray’s Inn, I should have doubted the boasted power of native heaths – and been disappointed with Daoine Schie, or Bailie Jarvies fairies, and have thought it would be well for you to propitiate them by staying within their ring some few days more.1 37

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

If you could get back here – say, on Wednesday 23rd night, or Thursday 24th morning it would do quite well: for I have promised the Lady of Puttenham2 for you to go there on the 25th and meet the plumber – anent the W.C flushing cisterns, when you would settle how an alteration could be made with the least disturbance. You see, if a larger inflow is applied, a larger overflow would have to follow. Perhaps you could go round to Twifords’ [sic] in Southampton Row on Thurs: afternoon and familiarise yourself with the right action of the waste preventer cisterns.3 The poor lady wrote a rather pathetic letter to me, stating that some part of the panelling to the hall had been lost for 3 weeks, and that things were going on as slowly as ever. This must have been just after our visit. She also begged me to write to the Kings4 – which I did, in my most judgmatical and non irritating way. Mr Eyre too is both hard to lead or drive – preach and coach and coach & preach again, when up he pushes head from the back of some other fancied difficulty.5 But enough of business, which you should keep your head clear of while you are away. When you wrote “sail” up Loch Long I suppose you meant steam? I was once on L. Long6 – got there by crossing Loch Fine from Inverary, (where the Duke’s nose was brushing the north star) then by Diligence – with “3 yellow wheels and a black ane”7 overland to Lochgoyle head, then down to L. Long to Glasgie town. There was I remember a fine stiff winter breeze and the loch looked fine – partly yellow from the sun breaking through lowering grey clouds – all in the days when I was younger and bided the buffet. You write rather nakedly – i.e. Kilt fashion – of my casting away dull care, and swinging on a gate for comfort’s sake, but how about a mad cow on one side of it, and an enrage[d] Billy goat on the other, with his goatee wagging at me and threatening extremity of law? However, at times I’m still cheerful even in London – though not in Emerald Street, which would have taken the heart out of even Mark Tapley.8 Now pinch the little ones first on the tae side and then on t’ither, telling them that, should they ever see me, what a jolly humpty-dumpty they would find in the old man. Describe to them myself as thus. [sketch of head of a young man with a full head of hair] Remember me in your most amiable way to Mrs George, and Believe me your truly | PHILIP WEBB THE YOUNGER. V&A, AAD

1 In Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817), the magistrate Baillie Nicol Jarvie tells of the legendary caverns of the fairies in a hill above the Forth, of ‘a race of airy beings, who formed an intermediate class between men and demons, and who, if not positively malignant to humanity, were yet to be avoided and feared, on account of their capricious, vindictive, and irritable disposition. “They ca’ them,” said Mr. Jarvie, in a whisper, “Daoine Schie”.’ (ch 11).

38

1899–1902 2 Agneta Cocks. See Vol. II, Letter 561, note 6. 3 Twyfords was a long-established manufacturer of sanitary equipment. 4 The builders, William and George King of Abinger Hammer, who were the builders PSW contracted for Hurlands in Surrey. 5 See Vol. II, Letter 561, note 1. 6 Loch Long in Argyll and Bute extends about twenty miles from the Firth of Clyde, and formerly formed the boundary between Argyll and Dunbartonshire. 7 Another Scott reference, this time from the opening of The Antiquary, when an answer to an enquiry about the likely arrival of the Queensferry diligence (the stagecoach), scotches any doubts about its existence: ‘“O dear, yes, sir; the neighbours ken the diligence weel, green picked out wi’ red – three yellow wheels and a black ane”.’ (ch 1). 8 Emerald Street in Bloomsbury is a turning off Theobald’s Road, about 100 yards opposite Raymond Buildings. Perhaps a building not to PSW’s liking was being erected. In Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, Mark Tapley, the relentlessly cheerful employee of the Blue Dragon Inn, refuses to recognise any personal merit in his happiness: ‘“any man could be jolly at the Dragon. There’s no credit in that”.’ (ch 5).

643 • To Sydney Cockerell, 23 August 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 23 August 1899 Dear Cockerell I have your Northumbrian letter on returning from a business journey into Surrey at 9.30 p.m.1 It pleased me much to think of you in borderland, and that you should be targing tightly the enemies of antiquity in its most dependable form of historical fact – until these most decadent of days of the human mind. They will beat you though, because they are sly, and you cannot be that. Never mind, penetrate their defensive armour under the arm pits and put them to shame, if it might be so.2 My stars, Mr Cockerell, only think of it; for you to be smuggled into Durham Library on Sunday to see M.S.S; I can almost hear the clank of the keys as you are being admitted to the smell of ancient book bindings & the dust of ages.3 If you can find the time for the ramble, go to Corbridge, East of Hexham, and hard by it. Then walk to Aydon Castle (which is not a Castle, but a 14th centy strong small house) which lies a couple of miles N.E of Corbridge, and you will rejoice in the situation of and the house on the verge of a ravine – both site and house equally captivating.4 Then make your way diagonally from Aydon to Halton Castle – a couple more or so miles N. West of it. This is the subject of Boyce’s picture.5 A little farther N. – say 1½ miles, is Stagshaw Bank, where there is a 4 want way, & by which a northern cattle fair is held in a hollow of the hills, and where there is a public house to serve the people of district [sic] who come to higgle at fair times.6 ’Tis the Stainshie-bank Fair of Walter Scott’s Dandie Dinmont.7 There was a drunken fiddler who played excellent music to Boyce when he stayed at the Pub: at the time of painting the picture. ’Tis a pity you have not time to see Langley Castle – 5 or 6 miles S.W of Hexham. This is a larger northern Castle with 4 upstanding towers, one of which is a Gardrobe tower all to itself, with a hall (if it was never divided) 80 feet long!! 39

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

It is disfigured in Parker’s Hist: of Domestic mediæval buildings.8 I never saw it, worse luck. I have been wondering where you were, but now I remember your telling me of your going north. Jack is away in Scotland, his native bare-breeched home, but comes to business and black Monday blubbering on Friday. All London is out of town and the innumerable omnibuses are full of Yankees, and the noise in the streets is of the nasal music of the Doodle. There was a full flavoured Yanks twist of speech in the train this evening. The cottage near a wood north of Pinbury is claimed by the gallant Colonel, who stays on, and I stay out – so that I am squinting all round the compass for another possibility in the way of Diogenes’s tub.9 Saw Wardle on Sat: at Sou: Ken: Mus: he has got a lodging close by Onslow Square, so as to be within spitting distance of the library. He did well in Suffolk, and is much stronger. Where is Walker? Lethaby has not yet returned from Switzerland. True, ’tis the splitting & squandering time o’ the year. Adieu my friend – see all you can, & tell travellers’ lies on your return to Gattis’ and good fellowship. Yours truly | Philip Webb. My stars. Durham Cathedral Library!. . . . ! P.S. There is a Pele tower too at Corbridge.10 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/99

1 ‘I was at Naworth yesterday (as a tripper, not as a visitor) & saw your embroidery, as well as Mr Webb’s beautiful little church at Brampton.’ SCC to JM, 22 August 1899, BL Add 52738, f. 94. 2 ‘The Abbey here at Hexham, in which I spent the whole of yesterday is no less wonderful. I have crossed swords with Hodges, the acting architect, who is sufficiently modern to consider Pearson a terror and to abhor scraping, but more of an antiquary than of an artist, & incapable of realising how modern ecclesiastical claptrap designed by himself could possibly disturb the effect of the old architecture, for which he has a genuine affection, as shown by his book. My host here [Canon William Greenwell] is on the restoration committee and we have had huge arguments. In his heart he agrees with me us, but he is careful not to commit himself. He is devoted to Roman antiquities, & we are going to spend today at the Roman wall.’ SCC to PSW, 23 August 1899, BL Add 52760, f. 25. For Greenwell, see Vol. I, Letter 190, note 1. 3 ‘I saw something of York & a good deal of Durham on my way here, and am going back to both these places, partly for the sake of the manuscripts which are very fine. Canon Greenwell at Durham has promised to let me have the keys on Sunday, so I shall probably leave here on Saturday.’ SCC to PSW, 23 August 1899, f 26. 4 Aydon Castle, a thirteenth-century manor house a mile from Corbridge, Northumberland. 5 For GPB’s watercolour of Halton Castle, see Vol. I, Letter 242, note 10. ‘I think the border tower shown in your Boyce drawing is somewhere near here. If so would you mind telling me the name, as we are making excursions and I should like to see that tower more than another.’ SCC to PSW, 23 August 1899, f. 25. 6 Higgle (haggle): to bargain over terms.

40

1899–1902 7 Dinmont, who attends the Staneshiebank Fair, is a cheerful farmer in Scott’s novel, Guy Mannering or The Astrologer (1815). 8 See Vol. I, Letter 207, including note 2. 9 ‘I am very much disappointed about your Pinbury cottages. Walker must find you some others next time he goes there.’ SCC to PSW, 24 August 1899, BL Add 52760, f 27. For Diogenes, see Vol. II, Letter 611, note 4. 10 The early fourteenth-century pele tower in Corbridge, built as a watch tower, was used until the early seventeenth century as the vicarage to the adjacent parish church of St Andrew’s.

644 • To William Weir, 29 August 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 August 1899 My dear Weir Your photographs will greatly assist the committee to understand the reports and your capital drawings1 – but the Comm: will not meet till after the recess – the next meeting being 7 Sepr – as even Mr Kent – the clerk, is away for his holiday; so I cannot learn if Sir John Llewellen has decided on anything. If nothing is settled shortly it would not be wise to begin actual work till next spring, for it is most likely we shall have a rainy time to make up for the long drought, and continuous rains with frost afterwards would hinder and then damage the work – so, it is likely Mr Micklethwaite will have your good service, for some little time longer.2 The almost complete photo: from the S.E is a good one, as also the one looking obliquely into the chancel, where the light from the E. window does not dazzle the lens. It also shews the bad condition of the Chancel arch wall very clearly – but I believe it can be mended in our way, with due care in the doing. If you should be employed on this interesting work – which I hope will be the case, I shall certainly be able to give you my opinion on the operations by letter, if I should not be able to get to the place itself. Mr Treherne takes my report to Eglwys Cummin on the 10th of September, after the Committee has sat upon it. You would enjoy dealing with that church too, and if the work comes to pass (I know nothing of the possibilities – though they are already collecting money) it will be an ‘interesting case’ – as the doctors say of a patient, as the acutely pointed vault will have to be recovered with its slating, and again without woodwork. I am working out my plan of it from the measurements I took when there, but the building would have to be more particularly examined and laid down on paper.3 It is half a day’s travelling to get from Eg: Brewis to Eg: Cummin. I shall be glad to see your detailed photos: of Stapleford house, as the work of the older part interests me much. Jack has come back from his native heath, and has discarded the kilt and taken to the common British slops!4 He is much better; but I am so peppery in my old age and bodily weakness (for I’m not yet stronger) that I am obliged to bridle myself to keep him from fleeing to the mountains and asking them to cover him.

41

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

We have trying people to deal with in these parts: but we are amicable when the moral sun shines, and we have not yet taken to fisticuffs, after the manner of you and your old ‘governour’.5 At least I choose to think blows were given and taken in those days! With thanks for your kindly attention to my whims, and best wishes for your further progress in good building, I am | Yours truly | Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 11

1 WW’s reports on St Brise, Eglwys Brewis. See above, Letter 640, note 1. 2 WW appears to have been assisting John Micklethwaite, who was involved in some additions to Stapleford Park, near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, from 1894 the family seat of the Conservative MP, John Gretton (1867–1947), later first Baron Gretton. 3 After PSW’s death, Treherne published Eglwys Cymmin, The Story of an Old Welsh Church (Carmarthen W. Spurrell and Son, 1918), which includes an account of the repairs completed in 1901–2 ‘under the auspices’ of the SPAB. ‘The plans were prepared by the late Mr. Philip Webb and were carried out under the direction of Mr. William Weir. This work included the renewing of the decayed ridge tiles and coping stones with solid Marros limestone, and other necessary repairs of the exterior roof and walls. In the interior, the floor was relaid, new oak sittings, lampstands and two small chambers at the west end were provided, and a sustaining stout oak beam with the date of the work incised upon it, was thrown across the west end of the nave. Oak chests were placed under the west window, the upper to contain the Orgam-stone, and the lower the church books and other valuables. . . . The precise pitch of the older gable . . . may have marked the line of an older sharply-pointed roof, probably (as suggested by Mr. Webb) of wood and thatch. . . . Mr Webb’s plans included the partial panelling of the chancel roof, but lack of funds prevented this being work being carried out. Copies of Mr. Webb’s Report and Mr. Weir’s Record of work done are in the church chest.’ Treherne, pp. 11–13. 4 Slop: a loose outer garment, such as a tunic or smock. 5 i.e. PSW himself.

645 • To Jane Morris, 2 September 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 2 September 1899 My dear Janey We have let each other rather severely alone of late. Doubtless there have been causes on your side as there have on mine. I hope however not of the same kind. Here the troubles have come partly from unreasonable clients, two in particular have been both tedious and exasperating. The third strain came very much from the beautiful summer, which blessed me on one hand, but took away my forciblyfeeble strength on the other. I have worked all day and every since I saw you, and managed to do about half a day’s work in each, so that August made it clear – both to the Cuckoo and myself, that we must go, or worse come of it. Having failed in getting that cottage on the top of the Cotswolds’ leaves the question of my flitting from here more in cloud-land even than before. I saw 42

1899–1902

Walker the other day, when he said he was going to Kelmscott as today [sic] – therefore I asked him to report the disability of your architect. My two tiresome clients are getting into their houses, and as there are but few chairs ready for them – their own faults – they sit on me, and think it boney: being unaccustomed to a vertebrate and unpadded seat. Your work has always been on my board, but has had to take its chance of getting wedged in between that of the more exacting claimants – with whom I could not quarrel till I had found a cave in which to hide myself. However, the delay in your work has not been unmixed disappointment, for I have thus been able to fine it down carefully before it got fixed and inevitable; for if there is one thing more than another which reasonable building won’t stand – it is haste. It has become evident for the last 2 months or so that it would not be wise – under all the circumstances, to begin actual building so late in the season; for about the middle of October frosts begin, which would surely pull about the green walls: even the last mild winter served me that trick with one house I was setting up. I therefore propose having all the working drawings ready, finding the fairly promising builder, getting the contract signed, &c, starting early next spring, and – if possible, getting Mr Jack to stay pretty often at Kelmscott to watch and guide the builder. That is what seems to me the best line to take if it could be so managed.1 Jack himself was quite beaten by the heat; so that I was obliged to send him to his native Scotland to recruit,2 wh he did wonderfully, in 3 weeks. Too much about myself – though unavoidable. Let me hope that the warm weather which has tried me, has helped you, to whom the blessed sun is almost an unmixed good. Give my kind love to Jenny, and always believe me Your affectionate friend Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 128

1 ‘I saw Mr Webb yesterday and he told me that he was obliged to put off the building of the cottages until next spring. I hope he will then be at Cirencester, and that you would see more of him during the building than could be possible this autumn when he is very hard pressed by two tiresome clients. I wish he could be persuaded to retire at once, but that seems to be impossible.’ SCC to JM, 3 August 1899, BL Add 52738, f 92. 2 Recuperate.

646 • To Sydney Cockerell, 3 September 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sun. 3. Sep: ’99 Dear Cockerell I duly had your letter of 27 Aug: from Durham, and yesterday the one from Richmond inclosing Rooke’s last – much cheer there is in this, as if the fates had 43

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

made France for him, and made a personal gift of it. How “the Dean” saw into Rooke’s minimising of himself – no mouse hole too small for him to creep into out of the magnificent ways of hierarchies – happily the human cleric picked the painter out of the cleft and set him on many chairs. The proof sheets, also inclosed, I have read once, but must at it again to be more sure of it’s good. Thank you for these kindly attentions, without which I perhaps should creep into holes and corners. Your letter to the New: D. Chron: was just excellent – the ‘word in season’, &c.1 I have forgotten the filling in at the W. front of Lanercost – but ’twas a good half brick to heave at the heathen. Lethaby liked it too, and what was more strange – acknowledged it to me. ‘My stars’ Mr Cockerell, you have not been “going to go it”, but have gone the whole hog of the north countrie. Shortly you will cease to turn all English M.S.S into French ones! a ‘boom’ in English for a while and then a ‘slump’ – see, the slang of the gold disease is catching even in this opposing quarter. So, you followed the Hen: VIII footsteps to Rivaulk2 [sic] and Byland3 – what a circuit you have made in this unusual summer. Of course, I allow the right discount on the enthusiasm for these places, thrown out to soothe the lean & aged P.W. More may be said on these points when we meet on Thursday. I do not envy Turner on his return to the A.S. secretaryship – such an accumulation of filth in which to bury his country washed mind – he must hop & skip here & there amongst the lumber to avoid being stifled by the whole. Walker is today – I believe, at Kelmscott. I put off writing to Mrs Morris till yesterday, for I feared her disappointment: asked W. to tell her I’ve been somewhat overdone, &c. She could not understand the difficulties in my way. These increase with me. Wardle has migrated to 19 Brompton Sq: near to the library. Saw him last night over some books there. Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. 1 Ah! The trail of summer’s sun after the swish of yesterday’s rain. 2 Is not Wilfred Blunt a little over careless of his rhymes?4 3 The Germans will surely reduce their army, seeing how that of France is officered? If there was another Napoleonic (No 1) strong man in France,5 there would be a “whiff of grapeshot” in the midst of these dirty officer boys – ‘fired into the brown’ as British sportsmen say. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/101

1 ‘Today there has been a meeting of the Durham archæological society here, & much talk from the rector, Canon Greenwell & Hodges. There were some chaffing hits at the S.P.A.B. to which I propose to reply in a moderate letter to the local paper if I can get it written & they will put it in.’ SCC to PSW, 24 August 1899, BL Add 52760, f 27. He sent a copy of his intended letter to PSW. ‘Here is my “Filippic”, which I hope you will approve of. It is very moderate, for me, and treads lightly on the corns – but I reserve the right of stamping on them later. I have argued myself hoarse both here & at Hexham. Canon G. is the nicest of men, & has done immense service in saving buildings from restoration – but he has got lax in his old age (78) & needs screwing up again.’ SCC to PSW, 27 August 1899, f 33. This comment on Greenwell is interesting, and chimes well with PSW’s attitude

44

1899–1902

2 3 4 5

in his later letter (never sent) about Hexham Abbey (see below, Letter 654). SCC’s letter, a long one, appeared in the Hexham Herald on 9 September, in which he wrote as a member of the SPAB against the intended work at Hexham, fearing any attempts at imitation. ‘The more learned and exact the copy the more tiresome it becomes, as is shown by the works of Viollet-le-duc in France, and of Sir Gilbert Scott and J.L. Pearson in England, to name only the masters of this antiquarian school.’ This restoration project became a rather bigger quarrel shortly afterwards: see below, Letter 652, note 1. Dissolved in 1538, the twelfth-century Rievaulx Abbey, near Helmsley in Yorkshire, is a Cistercian foundation. For Byland, see Vol. II, Letter 425, note 4. Presumably a reference to WSB’s new volume of poetry. See below, Letter 656, note 4. His careful indication of ‘No 1’ is to distinguish Bonaparte from Napoleon III, whose sanctioning of the destruction of much of medieval Paris PSW could not forgive. See Vol. II, Letter 350, note 3.

647 • To Giacomo Boni, 18 September 1899 Photostat 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn London W.C 18 September 1899 My dear Giacomo Boni. I duly received your letter of the 2nd Septr, but to-day Mr Baddeley1 has sent me that of yours which he brought with him from Rome, and which is more particularly helpful in the matter of the Westminster Abbey Church pavements.2 I am sure that Micklethwaite will be delighted with any assistance he gets from such an authority, fruit of experience dropped from the Archæological tree grown in the Forum of Rome and flourishing there. I will send him your letter to rejoice over, and tell George Wardle of your wisdom – he being something of a chemist, on whose knowledge I often depend for exact information. Mr Baddeley tells me of the additional responsibility which has been thrust on you,3 and in my answer to him I expressed satisfaction at an able man being appointed who has the advantage of years of activity in front of him instead of behind. Long may you shake defiance at Time, and refuse to be buried in the Westminster Abbey of Rome till after 90 years of age. Mr Baddeley is resting himself at Painswick in Gloucestershire on the western side of the Cotswold hills – afraid, I suppose, to venture – (after leaving Italy) – on the charcoal whitewash of London town.4 However, we have had so fine a summer that even the sparrows here shew the natural colour of their feathers. Thank you much for your good nature in sparing some of your much occupied time on the outer barbarians living hard by Ultima Thule. Farewell, from Yours truly | Philip Webb. Courtauld 190

1 The traveller and amateur archaeologist, Welbore St Clair Baddeley (1856–1945), who as a result of his friendship with GBO published Recent Discoveries in the Forum: 1894–1904 (London: G. Allen, 1904). ‘[I] return thanks here for valuable assistance given to me without hesitation and at

45

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III all times, not only by my personal friend Comm. Giacomo Boni and those of his staff, but by each and all of the workmen and custodians down to the humblest, under his direction.’ p. vii. 2 See above, Letter 639. 3 Probably in connection with GBO’s appointment as Director of the Excavations at the Roman Forum. 4 Baddeley later wrote A Cotteswold Manor: Being the History of Painswick (London: Longmans, 1929).

648 • To Jane Morris, 22 September 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 22 September. 1899 My dear Janey Thank you kindly for your letter received this morning. If you had not said you were somewhat stronger, I should have known from the tone of it that you were so, for it rather twinkled with ‘littel gestes’ – shewing that your “gizzard” (good gracious me) had its full complement of gravel stones, which had ground your food to some purpose. You will I hope be clapping your wings shortly. Indeed I am pleased that Buxton is helping you and keeping up its character, with its air and bath tonics.1 ’Tis not unlikely that the fresher air of September (for it is decidedly so even in London) is acting on Jenny – in spite of Cassandra-Mary’s reportings.2 I rejoiced in the lovely summer weather we have had, but it rather told on me, and it is feared that Mr Jack found me somewhat irritable upon occasion: so that perhaps it would be well if I also bolted some gravel stones at the next visit to a building of mine? Take care of yourself my child, for I want you to write my epitaph – such as, ‘Here lies a fool’ (Scottish for fowl(?)) ‘who had ne’er a gizzard’ – which reads something like the first line of a couplet. It is evident a Yankee should complete the poem with the rhyme of “Blizzard,” which would be a polite representation in sound of ‘bless-hard’ – or in other characters, of ‘D A M’. If you find continued improvement where you are, I should advise you to stay as long as you conveniently can in Derbyshire. The square shaped hill to the South West of you is marked on the map as 1435 feet above sea level; and though this may be somewhat more than that of Buxton town itself, you must be considerably uplifted.3 The Cotswolds, my lofty aim, are about 700 feet. I believe in the upper air for an alterative, therefore I beg you to make the best of it. Also, still believe in me as another kindly alterative in the spiritual way, and as always Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 147

1 ‘I felt very much better for my stay at Buxton, though I could not finish the course because of bad weather.’ JM to SCC, 4 October 1899, CLJM.

46

1899–1902 2 Presumably PSW had received a more pessimistic view of JEM’s health from her sister. 3 A Bronze Age barrow near Buxton, in Derbyshire. In the 1890s, a folly was added in the manner of a fortified tower, known as Solomon’s Temple or Grinlow Tower.

649 • To William Weir, 26 September 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 26 September 1899 written at night My dear Weir The photographs and your good letter came all rightly, and for both am I your debtor. It certainly would not at this time of the year do to begin work either at the ‘Brewis’ or the ‘Cummin’ – neither does it seem to me it will be required of you; so you are wise to stick to your present work between while, as it will leave you free to go when more improving opportunity comes. You see, Sir John Llewellen now knows what the work at Eglwys Brewis means in the way of cost, and he is I believe looking about for other subscribers to join with his subscription. As for Eglwys Cummin, Mr Treherne took my report with him to his Welsh audit there, 2 or 3 weeks ago, and I have not seen him since his return to learn how the Taffies took the report; the parson I think might be uppish, and require soothing medicine. That you will be wanted before long to undertake reasonable church mending I have no doubt, any more than I have of your capability in that way, or of the good it would do you – the science of materials, and the ways of handling them in relation to venerable old walls. Carry on therefore in the cheerful way I know of you, and pick up clearly all the knowledge of all the crafts you can at the Stapleford work.1 You see, I am slipping the professional cable as soon as the things I am about are done, and I have found a hut, under which roof I may creep for the rest of my time; but I shall surely be able, till I am quite disabled, to communicate with you and give any help I can to further the work you may be engaged on. The photographs you sent me are very interesting. The old wing of Stapleford Hall is even better work than I had expected – not that I have yet knocked the bottom of its secrets yet. However, this point is clear to me, that the 6 first statues from the re-entering angle at the S. end of the old wing have no relation to the six at the N. end of east front, though the niches themselves may be all of the same date. The first 6 have the label, the last 6 have not; and the statues there are evidently of original mediæval work, while the labelled ones are ‘bogus’, or fancy ones, of a later date, perhaps Elizabethan or Jacobean. The real or early statues and niches look as if they were of Hen: VII or VIII date, and good of their kind. If the 12 niches are all of the same date, then the scroll label, and supporting corbels under, have been inserted when the ‘bogus’ statues were set up. Or, the niches may have been imitated from the more northern six. Then, the pretty 6 days of creation carving is quite as early (perhaps of same date) as the real statues at the northern end of E front. Then I see other carvings of subjects which – from the small photos:, look to be of the same quality as the creation series. What about the little figures niched 47

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

in the gables of dormers, are they bogus or real? Of course the dated inscription under eaves of east flank could only represent the time these dormers were set up, as well as the northern gable. I cannot make out where the ‘creation’ carving is in the building, perhaps on the west side? Then there is, I see, some carving behind your masons’ shed. I have little paper left for recognising the beauty of Gaddesby Ch’.2 What a pleasant piece of workman’s delight in that W. end of S. aisle – how he, or they, played with it, and succeeded. Bother the Ivy, I say. It should be grown on modern ugly buildings. The Earl of Winchelsea has other old buildings on his estates, and has his hands full, with perhaps the lordly purse rather empty.3 The Podington photo gives a good idea of the seating & the very interesting Ch’. We have heard nothing of Mr Orlebar’s success in staying the mischief, or his failure. I will speak of it at ‘Antiscrape’ on Thursday.4 Thank you sincerely my friend for the pleasure you are so often giving, Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. No, I’m afraid I cannot come and see you in Leicestersh’ though I should like it. Jack has done his Eagle excellently well.5 SPAB W-W 5

1 See above, Letter 644, note 2. 2 The parish church of St Luke, Gaddesby in Leicestershire, which has early twelfth-century origins. 3 The inference is obscure. Henry Stormont Finch-Hatton (1852–1927) became thirteenth Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham in 1898, on the death of his brother, the twelfth Earl. The family seat is Kirby Hall, in Nottinghamshire. 4 See above, Letter 640, note 4. 5 Not traced.

650 • To Robert Steele, 30 September 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 30 September ’99 Dear Mr Steele I took so much time last night in reading and re-reading the article that I was tired when setting down the little I was able to say.1 Of course when I got on the back of W.M. he ran away with me, but you need pay no attention to the other matter than that which deals with the particular question you asked of me. I felt quite clear as to the truth of what I have said about the ‘separation’ of the firm.2 You will understand that I lived in close companionship with this friend of humanity for over 40 years, and that without a hitch; and he a man of genius too! Please excuse my literary ineptitude. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Huntington MOR 585 48

1899–1902 1 Robert Steele is the author of the review-essay, ‘William Morris, Poet and Artist’, Quarterly Review, CXC (October 1899), pp. 487–512, which surveys five recent studies of WM, including JWM’s The Life of William Morris (1899) and Aymer Vallance’s The Art of William Morris (1897). 2 Evidently, Steele had consulted PSW before writing his essay, which makes his criticism of JWM’s account of the reconstitution of ‘the Firm’ as Morris & Co. especially interesting. He was particularly keen to defend DGR’s position. ‘Mr. Mackail has been less than just to Rossetti in his account of [the Firm’s] business affairs. . . . It is but fair to remember that of the original members of the firm there were only two then known to the public – Ford Madox Brown and Rossetti. Whatever of artistic reputation the firm had at its beginning was due solely to these, and this reputation was surely a valuable asset, ranking as capital with Morris’s money.’ Of the dispute surrounding the reorganisation of Morris & Co. on a different basis, Steele asserts that ‘We have the best authority for saying that, whatever annoyance the affair may have caused to Morris, it was but transitory, and that he even took comfort in the thought that the hardly-spared money did his friends a good turn.’ (p. 493). In 1899, ‘the best authority’ can only have been PSW, and this letter confirms that he had shared his views with Steele.

651 • To Hugh Thackeray Turner, 6 October 1899 Postcard Gray’s Inn. 6 October 1899. Cow Honeybourne & Church Honeybourne – R Station here, and some 6 miles from Evesham on Oxford Worcester & Wolverhampton line. The two Honeybournes are close together. ‘Murray’s’ Guide only says this. “The Perpendicular Ch’ of Cow H:, which was allowed a century ago, to fall into ruins; its nave and chancel being converted into labourers’ dwellings, has been restored by the Worcester Architectural Society.” – Would it not be well to write to the secretary of this society to ask how much the church had suffered from ‘restoration’, and if the Society knows what kind of work is proposed to be done at this time?1 Ph: W. y

SPAB, Cow Honeybourne file

1 The parish church of Cow Honeybourne, about five miles east of Evesham in Worcestershire, was used as almshouses between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. All but the fifteenth-century tower was rebuilt by the Worcester Diocesan architect, W.J. Hopkins (1820–1901). The church was converted into private houses in 1978.

652 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18 October 1899 Postcard 1 R.B. G.I. 18 Oct 99 I suppose you saw the Hexham Rectorial counterblast in the Times?1 Possibly you may bring your retort to A.S on Thurs: though I do not know if you are at home or abroad. 49

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

The reprint in comely fashion of the W.M pattern designing essay, was sent to me this morning.2 Thanks to your inevitable goodness I have it. Have just read a page or two, and laughed aloud at the powerful simplicity in stating. It could hardly – rightly be called humour, but it underlay the seriousness. Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/102

1 Proposals to make structural changes to Hexham Abbey took on a national dimension when a letter from its rector, E. Sidney Savage, was published in The Times on 28 September. He set out a case for necessary changes, because of ‘the straitened dimensions of the portions of the church now used for service’, and on the basis of a report from the architects C.C. Hodges and Temple Moore, sought public contributions to alleviate the costs of building a nave ‘on the ancient foundations and of the character of the intended nave of “Perpendicular” date’, as this work had been left incomplete in the original church. See also above, Letter 643, note 2, and Letter 646, note 1. The SPAB responded at once, and on 30 September a letter over HTT’s name rejected the idea of ‘a mass of new imitative work’ as being necessarily injurious to the ancient building, and suggesting that the money would be better spent ‘on a new church in another part of Hexham’. To this rebuff, the Hexham rector replied on 10 October, the nub of his objection being external interference. ‘Surely the Bishop of the diocese, the rector and churchwardens, and the northern archaeological society are more able to judge of what is best under the circumstances than Mr. Thackeray Turner.’ A further response from HTT on 17 October made a gesture towards conciliation, in the suggestion that ‘the large disused transepts could be made available for the congregation without necessitating the building of a nave’. See also below, Letter 654, note 1. 2 Some Hints on Pattern Designing. A Lecture Delivered by William Morris at the Working Men’s College, London, on December 10, 1881 (London: Longmans & Co), was published on 4 October 1899. ‘Copies of this third lecture will be sent out as before to Mr Price, Mr Webb, Lady BurneJones, Mr Walker & May as well as to the executors (including yourself). It is rather more technical than its predecessors, but not the less useful on that account.’ SCC to JM, 18 October 1899, BL Add 52738, f 95.

653 • To William Hale White, 28 October 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 October. 1899 My dear Hale White The book duly came back,1 with something added in the letter preceding it, which pouring out of your vials did not surprise me, having become accustomed to your way of looking at literary and other art matters. With regard to Balzac’s – The Chouans, it seemed to me your excuses for not patiently reading it were insufficient, for one who does not read merely for amusement. Allowing for the great draw-back in a translation, I think this book is a worthy example of the master, shewing power in the scheme, and in unveiling the plot – the said plot at first seeming to be unreal, but in expanding ceases to be improbable; the theme being the great Revolution which made Europe stagger.2 50

1899–1902

It – the book, opened a window to me, as to what must have gone on in secondary scenes of that extraordinary time of transformation. It is thoroughly French, but with no nastiness in it, and that ‘hub of the universe’, Paris, is nearly left out of the scheme. This you may be thinking is hardly French! Never having been to Brittany, the wonderfully living descriptions of that part of French territory was a boon, for I much wished to know something of its characteristics. Balzac’s word picturing, and Rooke’s water-colour pictures of Fougères, gave me the lie of the land in its natural form, and of the human handywork [sic] indenting it. This being so to me, I have read it 3 times, after the manner of my reading Walter Scott’s stories. My temerity in arguing with you on such matters is – doubtless, presumptuous, but, as art in all its forms is the back bone of my life, it cannot be helped – when girded at by the learned, that I should, from pure enthusiasm, put fear on one side – and an oar into the dangerous water of criticising your discontent, and in spite of your natural contempt for ill-informed people, such as I am one. As to your Renaissance contention, it is so large a subject that I must fail in making my point clear in writing, for which I have no natural aptitude, and have never been taught. To me it was finally a destruction of art for the people, and in itself descended from its very beginning, instead of rising from the first of its course. The art preceding the Renaissance came about from the greatest of all rebirths, Christianity, and ran a continuously progressive life till the middle of the 15th cent: when it became hide-bound, and the religion it accompanied, and instead [of] absorbing new blood it went back, not to simplicity but to the complication and meaningless expression of the past paganism (don’t like the word, but cannot find a better) and without belief in it, and which could but result in affectation of belief. At first set off in the new way, it had the splendid tradition of mediæval work not yet dead, and, with boundless skill of mind hand an[d] eye, its marvellous practice astounded even the artists themselves, and they got to be proud. The greatest of all the leaders in the destruction of simplicity in art was Michael Angelo, and his best work was his earliest, and a strong example is his ‘Pieta’, now in the St Peters of Rome.3 The Sistine ceiling was all wrong as decorative art, but though its tremendous force and refined skill carried all before it; but the ‘judgment’ at the east end, done late in life, though tremendous in its human wrestling with labour, is a sad descent: progress in the fall was rapid with that swiftest of workers. As for the St Peter’s, and Wren’s St Paul’s, they are were not living art, but essays in style – and strangely enough Wren’s is the less disappointing of the two.4 Your string of men of genius does not meet my point; but the work of Shakespeare owes its best to the mediæval tradition which was alive within him – and which the pedantry of the time could not kill. After him, the really poetic quality – apart from exercises in style – steadily descended, and now we are wallowing in the mire with only the occasional flame of genius to cheer us in our discontent. There, luckily for you, my paper is out. Yours, | Philip Webb. 51

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I have not yet found a hut in which to house the entity. BCL MR 10/19. There is a draft of this letter at V&A, NAL.

1 ‘I have sent by parcel post today Balzac’s ‘The Chouans,’ which I much like, and have longed to go and see the place – Fougères in Brittany, of which I have seen a picture, and Balzac describes so well.’ PSW to WHW, 9 October 1899, BCL MR 10/18. 2 Balzac set Les Chouans ou la Bretagne en 1799 (1829) during the post-Revolution royalist uprising. PSW had probably read it in the translation by George Saintsbury (London: J.C. Nimmo, 1890). 3 See Vol. I, Letter 96, note 3. 4 See Vol. I, Letter 248, note 9.

654 • To Canon William Greenwell, 3 November 1899 (not sent)1 PSW prepared two drafts, both of which are given here. The first version was shown to WRL and revised, but, as his letter to SCC of 6 November indicates, PSW decided against sending either. Dated from that letter to SCC. First draft; pencil, some ink amendments. To/ The Revd Canon Greenwell. F.R.S.2 Dear Sir. I should not have felt justified in addressing a letter from a comparatively unknown student of the history and essential meaning of ancient religious architecture, to so well-known and appreciated a labourer in the field of human endeavour as yourself, if my friend Mr Sydney Cockerell had not politely shewn to me, at the usual weekly committee meeting of the Society P.A.B., a brief letter of yours to him (on other subject matter) in which, by the way, my name was mentioned without distrust. It is true that I read with much satisfaction your enlightened explanation of the inestimable value characteristic architecture of Durham Cathedral, coupled with the faithfully judicious reproof of the ruthless treatment it had received at the hands of various well meaning meddlers3 – a kind of ill service which seems to turn the heads of seemingly otherwise serious men to the vacancy of idle and mischievous children. In further excuse for my troubling you with this letter, it seems wd seem not unreasonable to add that I have spent 50 years of my life in gratifying my natural bent, and then in correcting mistaken impressions with regard to the true purpose of life work in my calling – that of understanding the essential inner meaning of the ancient fabrics entrusted to the care of professional architects. I can say without false assumption, ‘natural bent’; for I was born & bred amongst the buildings of Oxford, and had no other teacher than the impressive buildings themselves objects, which that time had more true teaching in them than architects – primarily – have allowed to remain in as faithful evidence for future generations. In commenting on the inestimable value (or the reverse) of early impressions on the minds of men, I here quote a passage from J.S. Mill’s autobiography, which has always appealed to 52

1899–1902

me as vitally true. On p. 55 of the 1873 edition is the following4 – “nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations. The middle-age architecture, the baronial hall, and the spacious and lofty rooms, of this fine old place”, (Ford Abbey in Somersetshire) “so unlike the mean and cramped externals of English middle class life, gave the sentiment of a larger and freer existence, and were to me a sort of poetic cultivation, aided also by the character of the grounds in which the Abbey stood;” – From this unbiassed [sic] expression of the effect on such a mind as Mills’, it may be judged with what effect the life-giving impressions of beauty in simplicity of the Oxford buildings had on my young mind; and in all my pleading during many years for securing our ancient architecture from the ever varying fashions of unsympathetic generations; and which I can safely say it has been steadily maintained unbiassed by under the constant sophistical attacks from the contrary condition of mind. So far, and in the way of excuse, for the intrusion of my poor opinion on your attention. It was at the same Committee meeting above noted, that your letter to the ‘Times’ of November 1, on the proposals for Hexham Abbey Church, was considered by the acting commee of our Society, and I confess to having been staggered much disturbed by the contrary opposing effect of its points to that of your handbook on Durham Cathedral. I assure you Sir – and without heat – that my pleasure of satisfaction in the faithful pleading of the latter was almost wholly counteracted by the former. Canon Greenwell’s name appears regularly in the annual report of our society as one member of its committee, and has been accepted as that of a dependable member where other names on the list have unhappily not proved so quite so trustworthy. Here was Cannon [sic] Greenwell publicly and practically proclaiming that the Society, practically, was untrue to its steadily maintained principles and practice. The Society is hardly strong enough in the public mind for it not to be hurt by a rebuff from such a quarter. It is surely not necessary for me to weary you here by noticing each item of your catalogue of contention, but I will – for brevity’s sake – take the one paragraph beginning with “The church is quite inadequate” &c. It may be that the building is not large enough for the present purposes of its use – and I will not contend the point; but – to my feeling mind the fallacies underlying the advocacy of its enlargement are so all important in their teaching, that I beg ask for no excuse in redrawing your attention to them. You say, “it is intended to build a nave on the lines of that projected in the 14th cent, and in the spirit of the style then prevailing”, &c. Now I hold that this futile proposal (which cannot be Canon Greenwell’s) it is impossible to be maintained by anyone who has watched noted the laborious efforts of strenuous architects from the time of A.W. Pugin to that of the late Mr Pearson. This mimicry in the late 19th century has proved itself to be a logical impossibility – with no holy “spirit” in it. It has been a sand-hill under which most of these builders have been ignominiously buried. “No destruction whatever will take place, but a necessary addition &c”. Is it Would it be no destruction of the “spirit” of the place to enter this wonderfully exalting building, Church at Hexham, (made by hands imbued with the religion of their time, from the Bishop to the labourer with his 53

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

mortar-hod, all unconsciously attuned to their work by father to son witnessing of their undoubting endeavour) through another a piece of a nave of guesswork mimicry, made by the hands and spirit utterly at variance with the simplicity and poetic directness of a time so alien to the present? Surely the lesson of from the mid-distance of time which is exemplified by the St Paul’s Church of Christopher Wren, taking the place of the ancient Cathedral, which at one time it was thought might have been ‘restored’ by him, should not be lost on us: for we have been spared the ludicrous effect of such a misleading? But you (or your the “Restoration Committee”) go further, and I say, - with no intention of offence in the words discourtesy – I say you fare yet worse, in reputation of for reasonableness, when writing to the public, that, “while the appearance of the present church cannot fail to be improved and its artistic features enhanced by an extension enabling the proper proportions of the building to exhibit themselves”. To me, it cannot be but seem that the Canon Greenwell of this ‘Times’ letter is another being than person from he of the guide to Durham Cathedral. I assure you sir – that, and with thankfulness for your sound leading of the poor ignorant sheep in your “guide”, I can in no way reconcile it with your, and to my mind, misleading, manifestation in the ‘Times’ letter. I am sure, Sir, As the subject is an acknowledged debateable one, and as it is so eminently necessary for all of us to arrive at a right mind in the matter, you, of your kindness, will condone this poor effort of an unready writer, (tho’ not in one sense not an inexperienced one,) to in endeavouring to lay forcibly before strongly you forcibly the disheartening effect your of the Times letter has had on the mind of, yours faithfully, Ph.W. With your permission, I might add, that, perhaps you hardly realized what would be the effect on the almost uninstructible for good public mind in any good thing of such a letter as that in question from one who is regarded as an expert a safe adviser on such questions? SPAB, Hexham Abbey file

1 The controversy over the proposal to build a nave at Hexham Abbey, and thus finish what had been left incomplete in the original church, took a new turn when a letter from Greenwell appeared in The Times on 1 November, prompting PSW to attempt a direct approach to him. As a SPAB committee member, Greenwell insisted that the church was inadequate for current liturgical use, that there would be no destruction but only necessary additions, and that ‘in the accessories and furnishings of the church, nothing will be done except absolutely necessary reparations and reconstructions, with some equally desirable transpositions’. SCC was charged with the formal response from the SPAB. ‘I am sending Turner the best I can do in the way of a Times letter – a little butter to Canon Greenwell & then a remonstrance. I doubt if the Times will insert it. On reading Canon G’s letter carefully I perceive that it was written before our letters appeared & is in answer to Powell’s report. Canon G. told me that he had written one when I was at Durham, & I concluded that he had put it in the fire – but here it is, with a sentence or two added to bring it up to date. If you have not already written to him the knowledge that this is so may help you in your line of attack. It is best to pursue him on the subject of the shrines rather than of the nave, as he really agrees with us about them & will probably use his influence for their protection. However you are certain to say exactly the right thing.’ SCC to PSW, 4 November 1889, BL Add 52760, f 35.

54

1899–1902 2 PSW had written once before to Greenwell, also in a rather haranguing manner, about principles of church restoration (see Vol. I, Letter 190), and would surely have recalled that earlier occasion. His decision eventually not to send this current letter – written ‘when warm, a spontaneous pleading for Hexham, in the round and rough’ (see next letter) – is perhaps a recognition that unless he could freely convey the honest passion which he felt about the projected structural changes at Hexham Abbey, and thus risk distressing Greenwell, it was preferable to stay silent. ‘My draft of letter was quite good enough for the Canon, but not for me, having only one face.’ See below, Letter 656. 3 ‘It is difficult to speak of the wanton destruction which has taken place in the Cathedral with any degree of patience. There has been almost as much mischief done during the last forty years as was done previously during a couple of centuries. Beautiful pieces of work, containing many interesting features, have been swept away under the ridiculous notion of restoring the building to what was called its original state of Norman simplicity.’ William Greenwell, Durham Cathedral 3rd edn (Durham: Andrews & Co., 1889), pp. 68–9. This formed the text of an address given at Durham Cathedral on 24 September 1879 to a joint meeting of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club and the Durham and Northumberland Archæological and Architectural Society. 4 John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, 2nd edn (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1873). PSW quotes accurately.

Second draft; pencil To/ The Revd Canon Greenwell. F.R.S. It would hardly have been justifiable on my part to address a letter to so well known a student of the history and characteristics of ancient religious architecture as yourself, if my friend Mr Sydney Cockerell had not politely shewn to me (at our weekly Committee meeting of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings) a brief letter of yours to him, in which my name was mentioned without distrust, in relation to a guide to Durham Cathedral, with which I had expressed my satisfaction. It is true that I had read with careful attention and much pleasure your enlightened explanation of that ancient building, coupled with judicious reprobation faithfully applied to the ruthless treatment it had received at several times from well meaning but mischievous meddlers – a kind of ill-service which seems to turn the heads of otherwise estimable men to the vacancy of idle and thoughtless children. In further excuse for troubling you with a letter from so little known a student of the history and essential meaning of what still remains to us of our mediæval architecture in its integrity, it would seem not unreasonable for me to add, that, having spent more than 50 years of my life in studying the artistic and constructional qualities of such veracious historic records, for the purpose of understanding the inner meaning of these fabrics, entrusted, for the greater number of them, to professional architects, and have watched with dismay the betrayal of that trust in so many hundreds of cases. Holding as I do the inestimable value of such examples of ancient human endeavour in impressing the minds of the young in the highest way, I quote here a few words in support of this contention. On p. 53 of J.S. Mill’s autobiography, which has appealed to me as vitally true. He wrote thus – “nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of 55

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

their habitations. The middle-age architecture, the baronial hall, and spacious and lofty rooms, of this fine old place” (Ford Abbey in Somersetshire) “so unlike the mean and cramped externals of English middle class life, gave the sentiment of a larger and freer existence, and were to me a sort of poetic cultivation, aided also by the character of the grounds in which the Abbey stood;” – From this unbiassed [sic] expression of the effect in youth on such a mind as Mills’, it may not be too presumptuous in adding to it from my own person[al] experience. I was born and bred in Oxford, and had no inferior other teacher in the arts than the impressive objects of the old buildings there; the effect of which on my natural bent has never left me. For in all my pleading for many years towards securing our ancient architecture from the ever varying fashions of unsympathetic generations; which I can safely say this principle has been steadily maintained against the constant sophistical attacks from the contrary condition of mind. It was at the same committee meeting of our Society that your letter which appeared in the ‘Times’ of November 1 was read, on the proposals for dealing with the fabric and contents of Hexham Abbey Church, was read; and I confess to having been greatly disturbed by its controversial argument: for it was so opposed to the acceptable statements made in the handbook to Durham Cathedral. The disappointment to me – personally – could be of little importance, but to the society, of which we are both members of its committee, it is likely to do a serious disservice – and it seems to me you can scarcely have realised what the effect of the letter would have on the minds of poorly instructed people: for here is Canon Greenwell – a valued member of the Society, publicly and practically proclaiming disclaiming the undoubtedly consistent principles and practice of the co-operative body with which he is has for a length of time been allied. The Society is hardly strong enough in numbers, and in the estimation of the public mind generally, for it not to be seriously injured by a rebuff from such a quarter. It is I am sure not unreasonable to ask what the committees of the society has done to have drawn on themselves the severe comment? I would hold – and without over heated emphasis – that its consistent warning has been that the constantly repeated assertions of custodians of ancient buildings that the treatment of them today is wholly different in principle & practice from that of heretofore, is not the fact – for it is patent that the laborious efforts of well meaning architects from this the time of the younger Pugin [to] that of the late Mr Pearson that they have worked on a sandhill under which their reputations have been buried under the same along with so much of the historical and artistic works they have misdealt with. For one example of my point: you say in your letter – “it is intended to build a nave” (in attachment to the transepts of Hexham Ch’) “on the lines of that projected in the 14th cent, and in the spirit (my italics) of the style then prevailing”, &c. Now, unless I am wholly mistaken, this proposition is diametrically opposed to the consistent contention of our Society – and, how could it be otherwise? and you add, “No destruction whatever will take place, but a necessary addition will be made to enable the congregation to be accommodated, while the appearance of the present church cannot fail to be improved and its artistic features enhanced by an 56

1899–1902

extension enabling the proper proportions of the building to exhibit themselves”. Would it be no destruction of the “spirit” of the place to enter the ancient Church of Hexham, (imbued as it is with the art & religion of the time in which it was set up, from the Bishop to the very labourer with his mortar-hod – all unconsciously attuned as they were to their work by father-to-son witnessing of their undoubting endeavour) through a new nave, the motive of wh’ would be a mere guesswork and miserable mimicry of the genius of old time; and made in the spirit and by the hands utterly at variance with the simplicity and poetic directness of a time impossible to be reproduced in one so wholly different as this age of ours? I am sure this is no mere fancy on my part, and assert it has been proved over and over again that such childish efforts only call forth the contempt they deserve, almost before the scaffolding from such wasted labour is removed. If the church has to be enlarged – of which I am unable to fairly judge, let it be done with honestly true intent, and without the doleful mockery of the veritable, by that of a necessarily fatuous as well as a base imitation. SPAB, Hexham Abbey file

655 • To Sydney Cockerell, 6 November 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 6 November. 1899 My dear [sketch of crowing cockerel] It is well you have written the necessary thing for the ‘Times’,1 or the matter would have gone by default – the worst of sloppiness. It could only be said usefully in that vehicle of unrighteousness – “Wher’er down (Thames) garbage flows”, &c, – pah! what a cesspool. I am sure you will have said the judicious word. For myself it is another matter. I did write something on Friday, when warm, a spontaneous pleading for Hexham, in the round and rough. Took it to the Censor in the Square,2 and read it with my finger on his pulse: he was gentle, and not altogether prohibitive. However, I saw at once it would not do, and tried to amend it in form, but have given it up as an impossibility from this passionate side of the Inn, where the irritation of two bloody wars on hand at the same time3 are too much for the nervous system of No 1. second floor south. I feel like the aghast – head scratching – carter, of the story; when his turnips were going down hill with devilish double quickness: “ã –ã – ã canna do joostice to it,” without making feathers fly. These parsons are impregnable in their fastness of Pharisaism. ‘Lie Sir? – why they are never upright!’4 This rain – to a country minded imp of my persuasion – is a lovely one, and your M.S.S to croon over must be just the medicine for the mind of he of Rosemont Road when he cannot get out.5 Imprisonment with such companions is a godsend rather than otherwise. Still, I see by the barometer that the water company above is pegging up the holes of the heavenly colander. 57

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Had a quiet go at the ‘Gesta’ yesterday. There must be a dreadful loose screw in the translation of them, for they do not read humanlike. I am obliged to read between the lines of the stories by the help of instinct and familiarity more or less of with the mediæval mind.6 On Saturday afternoon I took my habitual pasturage at the S. K. Mus:, on the grass-green herbage there provided in admirable photos. Before the end of the 13th cent: the French and English builded in unison; then came the great change between the peoples, when English grandeur became grandiose gesticulation. I think Bourges shews the pivot of the change: but, my stars, Mr Cockerell, the Frogs were always wonderful: I thought so when standing on the banks of Yonne many years ago,7 when the bull-frogs in spawning time sounded like Paul’s organ with all the stops out. English reptiles cannot tune up to that pitch of ‘contrapuntal profundity’. Adieu. Keep yourself sweet to console me on the downward road. Yours, till Gatti-time | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/106

1 See previous letter, note 1. The SPAB’s response to Canon Greenwell, which appeared in The Times on 8 November, was written by SCC, though signed by HTT. It praised Greenwell’s pioneering work at Durham Cathedral for the defence of ancient buildings ‘from the misguided zeal of the restorer’, and therefore found it difficult to understand his position with regard to Hexham Abbey. 2 From 1891, WRL occupied chambers at 2 Gray’s Inn Square. 3 The Second Boer War had begun on 11 October, and lasted until 31 May 1902. 4 ‘Greenwell is the least parsonic parson in the world. I am sorry you did not think your letter suitable for him. The difficulty is to write & hit the nails exactly on the head without having seen the building – but I thought you would circumvent this somehow.’ SCC to PSW, 9 November 1899, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/105. 5 ‘What depressing rain! I hope Lethaby will come in to cheer & be cheered. I have a couple of manuscripts to describe, so I do not so much mind being kept in.’ SCC to PSW, 4 November 1899, BL Add 52760, f 35. SCC’s address in Richmond was 17 Rosemont Road. 6 SCC had lent him Gesta Romanorum; or entertaining moral stories . . . translated from the Latin . . . by Charles Swan, which had appeared in its most recent edition (London: G. Bell, 1899). ‘You are quite right about the Gesta. I found them very disappointing, but supposed the defect might be partly in myself. No doubt the translation is a miserable one.’ SCC to PSW, 9 November 1899. 7 This occurred during a trip to France in the summer of 1866 with WM, JM and Warington Taylor. One of the towns they visited was Sens on the Yonne river.

656 • To Sydney Cockerell, 10 November 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 10 November. 1899 Dear Cockerell I had your Dublin letter at 8 p.m. half an hour ago, just as I had tea-ed. It was good of you to send me some of the salt breeze of the channel – I could almost smell you, and with no flavour of the steward’s cabin. It was very well that you 58

1899–1902

went to see the 2 Old Men: the one under a cloud of rain, and the other of years. Peace carry him away, for he served well in his vigour – when he could buckle to without fear or favour.1 Your good brief letter was in the Times; read at yesterday’s meetg, and applauded.2 At the Gatti time, Lethaby only with me, where we laboured the Absentees, as Walker had – so we said, gone to dine with a Lord--Mayor, & to listen to old Fagin’s whitewashing of himself. ‘When the cloth was removed’ – not at the Guildhall, but at Gattis’ – who shd peer through the glass doors there but F.S. Ellis: Lethaby semaphored wildly, and the retired vendor of M.S.S. came to us. I think he was on the look out for you and Walker, with cheap-jack clatter of books and bishness.3 However, he good-naturedly – as is his wont – put up with us, and I served with a fine flow of chaff – &c, &c – L. applauding: and so we comed away. [sic] There was a hasty review (if so it could be called) of Wilfred Blunt’s new poem, in the Chronle this morning – not altogether bad, though, in its meaning.4 I’ll read Bs work again one of these days. Your tour in the Provinces after M.S.S is a oneer (doubtful of 2 es) and you will rise from the laden tables, crowded: a jolly time in which you will sort yourself. On returning, you – doubtless – will crow over the rest of us from your own middenstead. Power to your elbow – so say all of us. Your head went up, and your tail down over poor me and my Hexham, as if it has not been a personal friend of mine in ’63! – (had him there.)5 Those transepts are as clear to me as if only seen yesterday: have a blind scribble or two in my notebook. Doubtless you would have liked to ‘look over my head’ at S. K. Mus: as now you vainly crow over me about the mother of things. Rome and Constantinople were the grandmothers of all Europe in the building art; and happily the progeny was “human-warious”, instead of all of one feather.6 I cannot be-little France – and you should listen to me when someone belauds England at her expense. I shall not see Bourges in the lime stone, therefore the pictures at the ‘boilers’ must serve – and they do pretty well.7 Yes, I gave the lords of the garden here notice at Michaelmas, and they politely allowed me to stay on till Mick:, in 1900, if I could not happen on a shed for my head and a bed on the Cotswolds, or elsewhere, before. May perhaps try a week or two with the wheelwright at Sapperton,8 to look about, when March opens up the new life of the earth. Shall have more or less killed and buried my remaining customers by then.9 No, none of your soothing syrrup (one ‘rs’ enough) of blarney, nor any other dram of the drowsy, will make me unsuspecting of the parsonic bifron[t]s.10 It was too double barefaced of Cannon G – to imitate a Bishop in ‘crook’ed ways. My draft of letter was quite good enough for the Canon, but not for me, having only one face.11 A just rage is not appreciated in these days, not even by Carlie over the water.12 Let me hear your language when a parson wipes his bottom with pages of a M.S., for he will be sure to use more than one, out of pure ecclesiastical cussedness. After this you can turn to ‘the book of Kells’ and come up smiling. 59

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Forgive me for venting on you a mixture of bad jokes and malice. It was your good letter from the evergreen side of the water which stirred the embers in Gray’s Inn. I thank you for good fellowship, good books to read, and a good many other good easements of my time as it slopes to the end, and would not like you to find me a cursed of old curmudgeon. If Lethaby looks in tonight he will see your letter, for he is something ‘lone-torn’ when you are at sea. Find a fresh spirited Irish girl and bring her to Gattis’ for approval at the judgment seat there. Good luck be with you is the worst wish from yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/107

1 SCC was in Dublin, assisting with setting up an Arts and Crafts Exhibition, and on his way he had visited JR at Coniston. ‘I was taken up to see J.R. who was sitting in his chair, not visibly older than when I saw him seven years ago, his hair still dark & very thick – but the soul all but gone out of him. I dont think he recognised me, though Arthur Severn pretended that he did. “I have been nine times to Beauvais” I said “since we were there together.” “And I have not been once” he answered. All other answers were monosyllables “yes” or “no” – It was like interviewing a clever wax-work or a ghost, but still very wonderful, and as he seemed quite tranquil I was not cast down. I stayed only a few minutes & then went back to his study & sat at his table with his manuscripts upon it, & the lake outside covered with white horses & the Old Man quite hidden by the rain.’ SCC to PSW, 9 November 1899, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/104-5. 2 See previous letter, note 1. 3 i.e. business. 4 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Satan Absolved. A Victorian Mystery (London: John Lane, 1899). The review by ‘L.J’, in The Daily Chronicle of 10 November concludes thus: ‘Had Mr. Blunt cast aside all his pseudo-Christian dramatic setting, and in his own person chaunted his indictment of the world’s wrong, he would probably have been far more convincing an advocate, and certainly would have produced far more satisfying a poem.’ 5 A response to SCC’s assumption that PSW had not seen Hexham Abbey. See previous letter, note 4. 6 A favourite phrase of the taxidermist, Mr Venus, in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. ‘“What’s in those hampers over them again, I don’t quite remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated English baby. Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle, warious. Oh, dear me! That’s the general panoramic view”.’ (ch 7). 7 ‘I wish you could see Bourges. It would make you jump out of your skin! I suppose that cannot be till next summer however.’ SCC to PSW, 9 November 1899. SCC annotation: ‘“The boilers” was a name for the S. Kensington Museum’. 8 In June 1900, PSW would stay for several days in Sapperton, near Cirencester, with the wheelwright Richard Harrison, hoping to find a suitable cottage for his retirement. See below, Letters 687–91. ‘Sapperton, which was the nearest village to Pinbury, was particularly well-served in its wheelwright, Richard Harrison, who was to work in close co-operation with Gimson and the Barnsleys.’ Mary Greensted, Gimson and the Barnsleys. ‘Wonderful furniture of a commonplace kind’ (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991), p. 73. He was the kind of dedicated, skilled craftsman likely to appeal to PSW, in love with the materials which he handled daily. 9 SCC was anxious for PSW’s health. ‘I wish the move to Cirencester could be planned & carried out, & your clients thrown to the winds. I am sure they have all had more than their share of your

60

1899–1902 time & thought & that where a few i’s still remain to be dotted Jack could do it quite well in consultation with you. I forgot to ask whether you gave the landlord notice at Michaelmas. You ought to be in the country when the blackbirds & thrushes tune up next year & the daffodils begin to peer.’ 10 Bifront: ‘having two faces or aspects’ (OED). 11 See above, Letter 654, note 2. 12 ‘Carlie’ (from his middle name, Carlyle) was how SCC was known to his immediate family and to the friends of his childhood.

657 • To William Hale White, November 1899 A draft of this letter survives at V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687/86 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. November. 1899 My dear Hale White The ‘Achilles’ of your last letter is certainly vulnerable in more places than the back extremity of his leg,1 and if the abuse of your superior power should blow him to smithereens, you will get no more honour from succeeding, than the wasteful British Government will when they have ignominiously smashed the Boers: but I am pleased to have ‘drawn’ you. Of course I have for some time felt that our ideas on various interesting points of discussion were developing somewhat antagonistically: but to know, and good humouredly understand our different points of view of the same things, will do no serious harm to our written companionship. It seems possible for me to have misled you when I threw the bomb into your squadron of Renaissance genius, as not meeting my point:2 what I really meant to express, was, that geniuses – even in a decadent time of literature, are flames of light to the world; though I must have insisted at some time in my talk with you, that it is genius which has so often helped a corruption by its power of doing splendidly in an injurious way. Byron, for example, I always have looked upon as a sad corruptor of sentiment and language, and not in that alone. I do not think you should avoid being “rash” in expressing yourself on Architecture, for if that is reasonable in you, my expression of opinion on literature would be unreasonable, and I do not believe it is. You would probably be quite as capable of forming a sound general opinion on the one, as I on the other. For I hold strongly, it is not so much an accumulation of learning from others, as from the natural aptitude for seeing into the heart of things,3 though possibly without the power to master the subtleties of motive and execution that a practiced workman in the arts of architecture sculpture and painting would. There is no absolutely trustworthy ‘authority’ in the arts, any more than in religion, and we know that the Catholic hierarchy trusted too blindly to keeping the lay mind in subjection at the time of the Renaissance, as to be unaware of their own gross corruption; and the less-furnished in all manner of learning shot an arrow between the ribs of ‘authority’ which it has not yet been able to extract. The unblushing vice of

61

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

the teacher was too gross even for the ignorance of the people, for it was at that time, of the beginning of the Renaissance, that Luther appeared and the people in many places backed him up. If it had not been for this instinctive support of the ignorant the unholy hierarchy would have put the movement down. There is a singularly significant passage in Carlyle’s Friedrich, in chapter IV book 3, where he notices the concurrence of time, when Pope Leo the Xth was rebuilding St Peter’s at Rome and was much in want of money, that Tetzel had the order to publish the “Indulgence in Germany”. It was the greatest of the oncoming Renaissance artists – Michelangelo to wit, who was the architect who carried out the magnificent failure of the new St Peter’s. As Carlyle sarcastically wrote “The 15,000 l. remained unpaid, and Pope Leo, building St Peter’s, ‘furnishing a sister’s toilet,’ and doing worse things, was in extreme need of it” and so Tetzel was set going.4 Wherein I think my point of difference with you chiefly lies, is, that the high cultivation of the Renaissance in art did not carry the ‘people’ with it, for it was the beginning of an aristocracy in all the arts: and artists began to be supported by the upper classes, and to pander to the luxury of the time. Raphael himself, with transcendent ability, lived with the great as their friend and companion, and had no spiritualisms to put into his work for a class who – as a whole – had no spirituality in them; and Raphael to this day is looked upon by cultivated people as the greatest of all artists.5 I believe that to this day we feel the effect of this taint of faithlessness in artists, who could not from their ‘cultivated’ lives express the deeper feelings of the people, as Giotto did, and no one who studies closely the sculpture of the French in the 12th and 13th centuries, but must acknowledge that those carving-masons had a depth of unconscious feeling peculiarly belonging to the ‘people’ from whom they sprung. Take, as another kind of example, the music of this time, which is highly representative of the Renaissance spirit; it is steadily killing all music in the hearts of the people, for they have mostly lost the power of singing their own music, and have to hire experts to amuse them with ‘tweedledum and tweedledee’ in excelsis. Curiously enough though, Handel, a foreigner, made himself a master of English music of his time, which was not dead; and to this day in 1899, his works are the delight of the people, though they do not know the English music which fitted Handel to touch their hearts. Handel was a German savage with the heart of a child, stealing any of others’ music which suited his purpose, and. . . . and, not spoiling it. Doubtless there was artificiality at all times, but from the Renaissance there came the cultivation of it. Before then there the artifice was beautiful in its way, but that which followed in Queen Elizabeth’s ‘philosophy of clothes’, which was highly artificial, certainly, and positively ugly – whereas Queen Eleanor in brass on her tomb in Westminster, is as positively beautiful in her habit. Our present controversy – if we can call it so, began I think by my writing of Sandro Botticelli as having his affectations. Now, Sandro is – happily – not my only joy, but he is a true one to me, in spite of many of his figures ‘making 62

1899–1902

a leg’, as the saying was, which is to me often a drawback to my content in him; and that part I still hold is the distinct Renaissance element in him: such as must have made Carlyle look upon all art as dilettante: that is, having no sincerity in it. What could have made Milton ever think of gathering up the broken Arthurian legends, and of making a great connected poem of them?6 Surely, because even that fragmentary literature which remained was so dignified, expressive, and beautiful. Happily, he did not write the poem: and as happily Wren did not ‘restore’ old St Paul’s after the fire – as was proposed. Tennyson, who, in spite of the fineness of his workmanship, did – and as I think, unfortunately – take up the Arthur stories, or some of them, and wasted his genius and my patience in turning them into drawing-room poems.7 The English border ballads, of which I think you are too rashly scornful, remain to us altho in fragments – much besmirched and broken in digging them up again; but still there remains in many of them a fine strain of the enchanting power of a people’s poetry.8 but They had a strong and legitimate influence on Coleridge, Wordsworth, and even Tennyson. Take the first stanza used by Scott in the ‘Antiquary’, at Chap: 10.9 It was the stir these border ballads caused at that time which made that stanza so good. The second stanza there given is not so poetical, suffering from Wordsworthian philosophising – though it is fine in its meaning.10 Both Shakespeare, and to a great extent Scott, made their characters do the philosophy. The former enforced his work with perfect mediæval sympathy, and instinctive perception of its power; and the latter was one of the forerunners of the present movement (now being rather vulgarised) for greater simplicity and naturalness. See, I have – for once – put aside idle jesting, and have written seriously, and I am sorry to see at too great length; but and what is worse, with too little power to make what I have said, in my ignorant way, other than tiresome to you. Forgive, and burn; but believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. BCL MR 10/20

1 In Greek mythology, Achilles, hero of the Trojan War, is killed by Paris who fires an arrow into his heel. When Achilles was born, his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx, hoping to achieve immortality for him. However, as she held him by the heel, this was the one part of his body which remained vulnerable. 2 See above, Letter 653. 3 Perhaps an unconscious gloss on Wordsworth: ‘While with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things.’ Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (1798). 4 The passage is quoted accurately from Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II of Prussia, called Frederick the Great, 6 vols (London: Chapman & Hall, 1858–65). Carlyle explains that Pope Leo X appointed ‘one Tetzel for Chief Salesman, a Priest whose hardness of face, and shiftiness of head and hand, were known to him’ (I, pp. 223–4).

63

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 5 During his 1884–5 Italian trip, PSW was frequently critical of Raphael’s work. For example, see Vol. I, Letter 249. 6 ‘Milton’s early plans for his future life imagined that the culminating poem of his career would be an epic on the subject, not of the Fall of Man, but of early British history, including King Arthur. He mentions the idea briefly on several occasions; he spent a considerable time in the 1630s reading everything available to him, but if he began writing it too, as has been suggested, the attempt was abortive, and nothing survives.’ Helen Cooper, ‘Milton’s King Arthur’, The Review of English Studies, New Series, LXV (2013), p. 252. 7 Inspired by Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, as of course were WM, EBJ and the PreRaphaelites, Tennyson’s cycle of narrative poems, Idylls of the King (1859–85) found immense public success. 8 PSW’s copies of three volumes of English and Scottish Ballads, edited by Francis James Child, 7 vols (London: Samson Low, 1861), are now in the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 135. 9 At the head of the chapter is a verse by W.R. Spenser, beginning ‘When midnight o’er the moonless skies / Her pall of transient death has spread’. 10 The verse opens: ‘My eyes are dim with childish tears, / My heart is idly stirred, / For the same sound is in my ears / Which in those days I heard’.

658 • To May Morris, 8 December 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Friday 8 Decr 99 My dear May I much enjoyed your lecture last night, for it was very well written, and capitally delivered. You must have taken much trouble in preparing it, and your spirited rendering must have shewn that you enjoyed doing a really good piece of work.1 With sincere thanks for the same, | I am your affectionate friend Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 150

1 SCC had also been present. ‘Went to lecture at New Gallery by May Morris on Masques & Pageants. It was very well done.’ CD, 7 December 1899.

659 • To William Weir, 8 December 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 8 December 1899 Eglwys Brewis Church My dear Weir I made out on a tracing from your tracing of the sections of the church, of what would have to be done in renewing – or partly so – the 2 roofs of Nave and chancel, the latter being done in the same way as the former, and I took it to 64

1899–1902

antiscrape last evening for the Committee’s approval, which they gave; and Mr Turner will send you back your tracings by today’s post from London. I have sent you by today’s post your notebook and photographs. You will understand that the parson has asked for drawings such as the church building societies demand when applied to for grants for repairs &c. Now most, if not all, such demands are for alterations, additions, &c, whereas we only want repairs done, so that there is nothing to be shewn beyond such; therefore your drawings will shew the church as it is with the signs of dilapidation clearly marked on them, and the additional drawing giving the works to be done in the partly renewing of roofs. Mr Turner wished you to send the drawing &c to the parson, signed by you as architect, and at the same time write and explain to him, that though you shew what would have to be done to the roofs, the first part to be undertaken would be making the foundations and walls sound and decent, and that if the money is forthcoming the roofs might follow on. What you write to him will be in addition to the report of the Society, which of course will be sent to him when you forward the drawings. When he acknowledges the drawings &c, he may ask you for more information when making his application to the societies for grants – they sending him official papers to fill up. The Brewis Church will I think be a test for you as to doing the necessary repairs to the walls, which will require cautious handling; but I am satisfied we it can be done soundly on the principle advocated by our society. I need hardly say that I shall be glad to give you any help possible (as wd Mr Turner) if you have to undertake the work, which I think is possible. If you want any further information before sending the drawings to the parson, write to me, but it would be well for you to send them off as soon as you can. Eglwys Cummin. r We have heard from M Treherne that the church committee at E. Cummin have accepted the arrangement, that you should go there to measure and make notes, about the end of January, but as you are likely to be here at Xmas, I could explain matters to you, and put you up to things necessary to be found out, as I have seen the place and know the particular circumstances of the parish. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Last evening the antiscrape Committee were much pleased by your report of a church you had visited for us, and which was read out – but as there were many other cases before us, I have forgotten the name of the church.1 SPAB W-W 13

1 There are no surviving minutes to help identify which church this was.

65

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

660 • To Jane Morris, 21 December 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 21 December. 1899 My dear Janey Your spontaneous letter was a pleasure to me; and the increase of briskness in Jenny, after repeated colds, a relief: for I think of you both – but always hopefully. Surely I will come and have the rest of the melody in plain-song as soon as I can. May comes to me on Wednesday – for she is not afraid of my surly unsociable habits, which put off things instinctively – not of malice aforethought. Her lecture at Arts & Crafts was quite successful; she carried through with tact and much spirit.1 I heard from Cockerell & Walker that you were going to Kelmscott, though hardly did it seem to me you would face the weather: I believe, now the feat has been done, it was good for you. There could hardly be Jingos there – even in the Public house, though Giles may have expressed a wish to have a “shot at old Kruger”– as the French take newspaper bangs at our great Victoria.2 Good! so you broke through the ice of your feeling in Oxford, where I dared only to skulk in the bye ways of the old place, and hide myself in her mantle for the hour between trains. When ‘I meet my double’ there, I have to soothe him in a fleshly way, for he is always wishing to punch a Don’s – or Grocer’s head – or both, for they are a bifront of mischief:3 ‘Two faces under one hood is bad heraldry’ – as old Osbaldistone said.4 I go to antiscrape as usual this evening where two hours of metaphorical head punching and gnashing of teeth goes on. No, my child, your hand writing did not shock me, for I am sure of your kindly allowance for and patience with me. I hope to get the improved plans of the Cottages ready for tracing during this holiday time. Mr Jack will be away till Wednesday which will leave me more free. If the last two worrying clients – that I cannot yet wash my hands of – will but take to eating and drinking more than would be good for them, it would be all the better for me. Your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 152

1 See above, Letter 658. 2 The already difficult relations between England and France were not improved by the outbreak of war against the Boers in October 1899, and during its opening months the French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, additionally sought Germany’s support for the Franco-Russian demand that England should cease its military occupation of Egypt. ‘As a gesture of protest against French sympathy for the Boer cause, Queen Victoria cancelled her annual visit to the Riviera’, and she

66

1899–1902 was attacked by the French press. Christopher Andrew, ‘The Entente Cordiale from its Origins to 1914’, in Troubled Neighbours. Franco-British Relations in the Twentieth Century, edited Neville Waites (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), p. 14. Paul Kruger (1825–1904), President of the Transvaal, was the symbol of Afrikaans resistance to the British. 3 See above, Letter 656, note 10. 4 Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone is a character in Scott’s Rob Roy (1817): ‘“Have a care thou provena too cunning for thysell – two faces under one hood is no true heraldry”.’ (ch 11).

661 • To Jane Morris, 28 December 1899 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 December 1899 My dear Janey I wish all ‘money spinners’ were all hanged from the webs of their own weaving, as you have hanged poor me from the golden thread of your own weft.1 The old man’s jest on the degrees of comparison he attached to my name – “Webb – Webber – Whopt”, he left it for you to “Play a spring and dance a round beneath my gallows tree”: (an adaptation from Burns’ dare-devil song)2 – but my memory is so short that the quotation is barbarised, and I cannot get at the book to verify it. Thank you fellow citizen of no mean City (or used to be) for, with your own hand, working out my condemnation so beautifully. You say “use it”! How could I, unless I put it in a glass case and bowed to it each night on getting to bed? At all events it must be kept in lavender till I get to the clear air of the country, where dirt will not reign supreme. I know you must have chuckled as you worked the pretty thing, and that thought cheers me. Blessings on your wonderful wig. May was pretty cheerful last night, putting up with the rough and tumble of my begrimed ménage, where there is scarcely “man’s meat nor mare’s meat nor a chair to sit down”. I saw her into an omnibus, where she was as the last herring the barrel of the ‘ship o’ the street’ would hold, and I hoped she wd not be frizzen to death. I cannot come to you next week, but if Tuesday or Friday in the following would suit you (say the 9th or 12th of Jan:) I would do so with pleasure? Let me know. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 153

1 JM had embroidered something (a handkerchief to support his snuff habit?) with his name, or a motto of some kind, as a Christmas gift. 2 ‘He play’d a spring, and danc’d it round, / Below the gallows-tree.’ Burns, ‘McPherson’s Farewell’.

67

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

662 • To William Weir, 29 January 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 January 1900 My dear Weir Thank you for your cheery letter, under stress of weather circumstances: not a bad beginning for understanding the situation: however, the evening seems to have been more hospitable.1 I expect to see Mr Treherne this week to report his interview with you on Saturday. I had your letter this morning, and am writing this to put in the night pillar box. The gale and rain with it must have been from the S. west I suspect, and when examining the glazing of chancel as well as nave, note how wide apart the saddle bars are, and the width of the lead cames2 – also the kind of grooves for glazing in the stonework – and the size of the glass quarries. I found the most washed drift sand on the main roadside nearly opposite that pleasant farm house on the way back to Green Bridge, on the right hand. Mr Jack is away – most of last week, and a good half of this, on his own work, part of which is the examination of the state of the drains of a large house near Welwyn. Hope they treat you kindly at the G.B. Inn,3 and that old Mr Thomas is still flourishing. Please remember me kindly to him and his daughter. Mr Treherne is a good walker and fond of it, so I suspect he got you to join him on Sunday unless that was a wet day too. We have had stormy weather here. It gives me pleasure to find you are not out of your element on a rough countryside, and an additional satisfaction that so energetic a help is giving his attention to forwarding the saving views of the S.P.A.B. Detmar Blow came to me the other day for hints as to another church tower he has to report upon in Suffolk, so the menders instead of the pullers-down are extraordinarily in request. If you get a photograph or two in addition to your measured drawings it will help us. Good luck and a fine appetite be with you is the wish of | Yours very truly Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 16

1 ‘I had a very vigorous and most cheerful letter from Weir this morning. He had a 12 hours journey to St Clears, slept there comfortably, and a stormy drive of 7 miles to Eglwys Cummin next morning – wind and rain; but at once fell to work in the church, which he likes as much as I do. He is a good light-hearted and energetic fellow.’ PSW to GWJ, 29 January 1900, V&A, AAD. 2 The cames is the lead rodding which secures the pieces of glass in stained-glass windows. 3 Green Bridge Inn, between Marros and Pendine in Carmarthenshire.

68

1899–1902

663 • To Giacomo Boni, about 5 February 1900 Photostat 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn | London. W.C. My dear Giacomo I gladly opened your letter of the 2nd Feb which came this evening – as all the reflections of my companionship with the you, [sic] of my knowledge of Italy, are pleasant. The Italy of story being the country I had expected – and found when I was there – I would have enjoyed then to have talked only with Italians, but that pleasure was denied to the ignorant Englishman who could not explain himself or understand the native explanation, because he was ignorant of the finest of the Romance languages. Never mind – said I – for by happy good luck you were found to me, behind the screens of reed in front of the Ducal Palace, who could tell to me with the voice of Italy in the dialect of England what so deeply interested and still retains a hold on my verified imagination. Alas my friend, not all the gentle wisdom of Solon can lift us out of the slough engulphing1 the European mind at this time2 – and which is more catching with its foul immoral miasma and more disastrous to the afflicted than the Bubonic plague or the disabling Influenza, because it may take a century to eradicate its poison – The poison, that is, of the all embracing effect on the mind, of greed.3 I remember saying to you and others when in Italy, that I hoped you would not follow the commercial temptation held out to you by England’s success in that way. Also, I knew well enough that the late disastrous result in Greece came of the same diabolic virus which had run into the veins of that unfortunate and yet deeply interesting people. So ubiquitous is this moral miasma that it leaped to farthest Australia, and nearly ruined that opening country,4 and we well know that Germany is hastening to the embrace of the same diabolic agent. And Russia has told us through Tolstöi, Turguéneff, and Kropotkin of that country, hardly emerging from barbarism and which is in the bondage of the same devil.5 You, who have been rereading in Ruskin lately, will know how well he and how prophetically he wrote of the broad ways to destruction: and in one of his best books, “Unto this last,” exploded the immoral myth which is laying all the western countries as low as that of Turkey.6 You will be saying ‘Ha, here is a long puritanical sermon’. Tis true, but many (no not very many) thoughtful people in England are beaten down with what has so fatally led up to this disastrous and dishonourable war in S. Africa, foretold by the contemptible ending of that in the Egyptian Soudan, when all real humanity was shocked at the unheroic and barbarous treatment of the dead Mahdi.7 So, when in your letter, you just gently touched on our dishonour in S. Africa, you lit up my angry feeling, that beauty of idea had seemingly deserted the English, when the last of a long beaded string of poets had died out with William Morris. I can but say as now, that the mass of this nation has gone mad in a brutal way, and

69

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

the strugglers against the mania are but few and far between. Patience I say; but I shall not live to see this country lift itself from its moral pigs-bath. And so, your pretty unearthing of Solon’s “O, best of mothers,” &c, touched me as a gleam of light making the Euganean hills purple against gold as I once saw them.8 I will see to getting a photograph of one or more of Wi Holman Hunt’s characteristic pictures and sending it to you.9 I think your people are well aware of the simplicity and directness of thought and mastery of design and expression in Burne-Jones’ work. Addio, from | Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. 1 I believe there is not one jest in this letter! but I can still laugh I assure you when I am not angry. 2 Your benediction shall be laid on the heads of your remembered friends in this besmirched island in the northern sea.10 3 Lately at the art library I have been looking through the volumes of the ‘Archivio Storico dell’ Arte’ with much interest – when I came upon the very remarkable metal-niched figure of the ‘Madonna di Loreto’ – La pace di Pio II’. Also, a fine work by Cosme Tura, “Il vescovo Lorenzo Roverella”.11 Courtauld 171a-d

1 Engulfing (obsolete spelling). 2 ‘One of the first acts of Solon, as an Athenian magistrate, was that to remove all the pilasters which had been stuck by creditors as marks of mortgage on the labourers’ fields of Attica, and his friends say: “O, best of mothers, brown Earth, you had been enslaved, now you are free!”’ GBO to PSW, 2 February 1900, Courtauld 191b-c. Solon (c. 638–558 BC) endeavoured to halt the moral and political decline in Athens, and is believed to have prepared the ground for democratic government. 3 ‘I hope that the influenza has not persecuted you. We had it here but in a very mild form – I was laid down only for three days, and my thoughts wandered back to England, trying to alleviate the terrible situation in which politicians have involved your Nation, but I did not succeed.’ 191a. 4 The Australian gold rush which began in the 1850s led to booming prosperity, followed by depression and collapse as financial institutions over-stretched themselves. There was a run on the banks in 1893. 5 Clearly, PSW’s target in this broad brushstroke is the corrupting influence of international industrialisation and capitalism. Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842–1921) was an influential Russian anarchist and scientist, who had arrived in England in 1886 after periods of imprisonment in Russia and France. He became close to WM and his family, and spoke on a number of occasions at Kelmscott House to the Hammersmith Socialist Society. He returned to Russia after the 1917 Revolution. He came to PSW’s mind now as he appears to have been reading one of his books: see below, Letter 666, note 4. 6 JR had died on 20 January. ‘I went back to Ruskin’s books and was struck by the deep meaning of one sentence in Seven Lamps: It is easier to find out what is just than what is possible.’ 191a. 7 For Britain’s inglorious victory at Omdurman, see above, Letter 620, note 3. 8 See note 2. 9 ‘The Rivista d’Italia has agreed to publish some notice about Ruskin’s work. I gave also W. Morris’ print proofs, which this time seem to be highly appreciated, and they ask me for a photogr. from one of W. Hunt’s most characteristic pictures. If you have one to give or to lend I will be grateful.’ 191c-d. Although PSW had assumed GBO wanted examples of William Holman Hunt’s pictures,

70

1899–1902 GBO was actually enquiring about William Henry Hunt (1790–1864), whose work JR greatly admired, hailing him as the finest painter of still life. 10 ‘With best wishes to you and Wardle, and Lethaby and the few people who remember me.’ 191d. 11 Illustrations of the ‘statuetta di Madonna in Rame con Smalti’ (at Santa Casa di Loreto) and ‘La Pace di Pio II’ (at Pieve d’Arezzo) appear in Archivio Storico dell’ Arte, 2nd series, II (1896), pp. 412–3, and the Cosmè Tura illustration (from the Galleria Colonna in Rome), in 1st series, VII (1894), facing p. 90.

664 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 6 February 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 6 February 1900 Dear Mrs Flower1 Your forecast of possibilities in the way of offering kindly hospitality is admirable; and barring a visitation of the Influenza demon, I may safely arrange to restrict my “researches” in the Museum Library on the evening of the 24th by one half, and be able I hope to answer questions you may put to me about your new studies in Mediæval building. I consider Holbein, who lived and worked so wonderfully on the verge of the great change which came over the intellect of Europe at that time, to be a helpful bridge between the two eras, enabling us to judge more clearly of the peculiarities of both: so that your new pictures of this great master’s work will be a good reference to you – as they have been to me – in the study of the arts of both times.2 I shall hope when the spring has cleared the London air a little, that Mr Wardle will lend his instructed mind to the interesting subjects in question. My last letter from him I read as being rather hopeful in the matter of his health at Sandwich.3 Mr Courtenay seems to be sticking to his guns admirably, in spite of the miserable minority in which he has courageously placed himself.4 Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. I hope your ‘Quaker friend’ (if of the feminine order) is as good as the gold of “Miss Geddes”, who has always been a gentle friend to me.5 BL Add 45355, ff. 5–6

1 The flower painter, Elizabeth Flower (1842–1920), was married to the solicitor Wickham Flower, for whom PSW had modified Great Tangley Manor, in Wonersh, Surrey. See Vol. I, Letter 269, note 4. 2 ‘I have asked Mrs Flower to get your help – I am sure you will very gladly give it, in the framing of some copies of Holbein’s drawings she has bought. I suggested to her that mounts of cedar wood inside the plain oak flat might give the best colour to the prints, which are very grey & sometimes faint, even dirty.’ GW to PSW, 6 February 1900, Courtauld 236d.

71

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 3 For health reasons, in October 1899 GW transferred to lodgings at Sackville House, in the Kent town of Sandwich, one of the medieval Cinque Ports and situated at the mouth of the River Stour. He stayed there throughout the winter. 4 There had been correspondence in The Times (and elsewhere) as to whether 1900 was the final year of the nineteenth century, or the start of the twentieth, Sir Courtenay Boyle (1845–1901), Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade, maintaining that it was perfectly legitimate to argue that the twentieth century had begun on 1 January. 5 In Scott’s novel Redgauntlet (1824), set in eighteenth-century Dumfries, Rachel Geddes is the sister of the fisherman Joshua Geddes, a Quaker.

665 • To Jane Morris, 13 February 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 13 February 1900 My dear Janey I only had your note by the late evening post. Surely – unless you are obliged – you will not risk the journey to Kelmscott in this cold stormy weather? As to your little jest at the expense of my character for politeness, I can but answer, I did not utter the brusque “hold your tongue”; and my usual wish is that you should let it go! There is nothing for me to ask you to do personally about the Cottages just now – but it was good of you to give me the opportunity. I am very anxious to avoid failure both in the use of materials, and in getting Mr Bowley to give me a dependable estimate.1 As soon as I have things quite ready I mean to let Mr Jack go down and personally put him through his paces, and help him thoroughly to understand the work to be done. Country builders are so apt to give an estimate without really understanding the meaning of anything out of their ordinary way of doing work in these decadent days of building and morals. I have lately followed this plan of explanation, which has succeeded, and without which there would have been a failure. The advance in building materials still continues; that is the prices are going up continuously, and this iniquitous war will add to the difficulty. However, we shall see. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. I am glad you have extracted the Abbot’s superfluous T.ooth.2 BL Add 45342, ff. 154–5

1 Joseph Bowley was the local Lechlade builder with whom PSW entered protracted negotiations about the building of the Kelmscott cottages for JM. 2 JM had been staying for some months at 22 St Mary Abbott’s Terrace, Kensington. PSW here must refer to her misspelling of the address.

72

1899–1902

666 • To Jane Morris, 21 February 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 21 February 1900 My dear Janey Thank you for your very good letter of the 18th. How glad I am you were not drowned, for I so much dislike writing letters of condolence to relatives: but I winced when you said that to Kelmscott you would go.1 These floods are lucky for me, as we shall now have some evidence as to where the water has risen to, now that an old-fashioned flood has come down the valley. Fancy the whole village fleeing for refuge to our knoll! I want to come and see you and Jenny, but the cottages, not yet planted on the Knoll, are like a millstone hung round my neck by a rope – does that mean that I shall never be drowned? You see, my fears are in this way. Almost the very first building I set up was for you, and the very last, if I can so make it, will also be for you. I have almost recovered from the night-mares of the first, but what could cure me of the evil, anticipated, from the last. The only near hill I could call upon to cover me I shall have weighted down, and no one will be able to enquire ‘You little hill why do ye hop’?2 I am now struggling with the specification of the works, and am as it were between the devil and the deep sea. The first, it being, I may make it too brief: and the last, that I may make it too long, and frighten old Bowley into matching it with a 10 foot price. I wanted Mr Jack to go to Kelmscott with the drawings and specification about the end of this next week, but I hardly think that possible now. Thinking of one thing and another which have come on me in the way, mostly, of long winding up of accts of 2 of my last works, and being old & feeble, have delayed me, and small items will keep coming in, so that I am pretty well tired each day by 3. oc, & then there are business letters to write, and excuses to make, and these excuses you will be saying are the accusation against me. I cannot say, like Mr Joe Chamberlain, ‘I don’t care’, because I do. Beg your innocent pardon for this unaccustomed grumbling, but it is so. I learn that the old Guildford Bridge has had two of its arches swept away into the river Wey, and the folk have to skip the gulph or go round about.3 What if Thames should bow up the concrete floors at Kelmscott out of revenge for my sitting on his accustomed habit of rising – ‘but let me not anticipate’. Surely I will come & see you as soon as I can. Tell Jenny her Kropotkin book has interested & pleased me much.4 I will bring it back when I come. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 156

1 Heavy snow, followed by rain, had caused severe flooding in many parts of the country. 2 ‘Why hop ye so, ye high hills? this is God’s hill, in the which it pleaseth him to dwell.’ Psalms 68:16 (Book of Common Prayer version).

73

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 3 The Times reported that on 16 February ‘the very ancient town-bridge of Guildford was completely carried away by a big balk of timber brought down by the floods from a neighbouring timber yard’ (17 February 1900). 4 There are several books by Kropotkin in English translation which JEM might have lent PSW, including the recently-published Memoirs of a Revolutionist (London: Smith, Elder, 1899).

667 • To William Weir, 28 February 1900 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn. Lon: W.C. 28 February 1900 Eglwys Cummin Church My dear Weir Having been much occupied, I could not send you the inclosed tracing till now. Which is – as you will see – the framework for the West end new arrangement for Vestry, Sexton’s box, and chest for the Ogam Stone;1 all of which I hope will be clear to you, as I send it off without further delay. It has had the approval of the S.P.A.B. Committee, & Lethaby, Turner, & Winmill have agreed to the work as here detailed. I have got it together in the simplest form, so that the Pendine carpenters could do the work, and I should think the Llanmiloe estate supply the timber at a cheap rate.2 The chief beams would be shaped with axe and adze, both cross beam and the two main uprights, all three being worked out of limbs – big enough to allow of cutting away sap wood. It should all be of English (or Welsh!) oak, and need not be over particularly seasoned, as the church can never be hot. Much of the stuff would only want a little planing – not more than to remove the raggedness of the saw – but it should all be morticed & tenoned stoutly, & pegged. Could you take out the quantities at once, and make an estimate of the probable cost, that I may add it among other items to the other estimating given in your report.3 You shd also make out what your charges will be – say, so much a month and travelling expenses, &c. Mr Treherne goes to Llanmiloe on Friday (2 March) and will be there most of next week. Would it be possible for you to give me the estimating, so that I might send the whole estimate of cost to him there before he leaves? I know you must be rather too busy, but I cannot help myself, or I would not so hurry you. I heard from Turner you had met him in Norfolk with advantage to the S.P.A.B. and I learn you are shortly to meet him again at Exeter,4 all well and good. In arranging this West end, I have tried to meet the E. Cummin Rector’s wishes not to have the seating rising on steps at the West. You will note too, I give a seat against the Ogam chest, and this will allow of stepping up on to window sill to see to the working of the casement, &c. 74

1899–1902

Also, you will note I set the new part of paving hollow, carried at slab edges by sleeper walls, the joints not resting on sleepers should be roughly channelled thus [sketch] to be run in with cement. If the seating in the Nave should have ventilation under its floor boarding, the fresh air might be let in through the west wall and travel down one side, cross the paving by chancel arch in a pipe, and return up the other side & out at another grated hole, as the ground is lowest at the W. end? I was somewhat in doubt what to do in the way of keeping the rain from coming down the pipe of bell ringing rod, and asked Lethaby, and he suggested a kind of extinguisher, as the water is mostly carried down the chain & rod. I have therefore indicated a cop[p]er (hollow) cone, which will rise & descend with the ringing of bell. It did not seem to me necessary to put a glass lid under the wooden one to the ogam chest, as this lid would have to be secured with hinged & padlocked iron band, so that no one could open the lid without getting the key from the Rector. Some of the rougher wood work underneath might be of elm for cheapening’s sake. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I give a rough detail section to 3" scale of the proposed new eaves coursing. SPAB W-W 18

1 The Ogam Stone ‘is the most precious relic in the church. It was found by the writer . . . as one of two steps giving access to that portion of the churchyard which lies to the east of the approach. . . . [It] is a notable specimen of a mysterious family of memorial stones found in Ireland and in South Wales, principally in Pembrokeshire, and dating from the 5th to the 9th centuries. The origin of the name Ogam (or Ogham) is still in doubt, but the people who used the Ogam alphabet were undoubtedly Goidels (early Irish) of whom Cynin was one.’ George Treherne, Eglwys Cymmin, The Story of an Old Welsh Church, p. 22. 2 The village of Llanmiloe is situated between Pendine and Laugharne, St Clears in Carmarthenshire. Llanmiloe House, originally dating from 1720, was rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century; its estate land is what PSW had in mind. 3 WW to PSW, 14 February 1900 (draft): ‘In making out the approximate estimate I have not gone into many points which would follow on, after the structural repairs have been carried out, but should you think it would be advisable to put down a sum to cover same, perhaps you will kindly say so.’ 4 For oversight by the SPAB of repairs to the medieval Exeter Guildhall, see below, Letter 678, note 1.

668 • To Sydney Cockerell, 4 March 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday 4th March 1900. My dear Cockerell. It is one thing to get so good and kindly a letter from you, as that which reached me on the 28th Feb: but quite another thing for me to ‘do justice to it’ in the way of answer; for you have a lucky bag in which to dip your pen for an infinite variety of travel-story material to amuse the home-keepers with.1 Ours must be 75

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

but well-known themes – of which you would be already 3 parts aware. Never mind, take this as an acknowledgment of the pleasure your Arabian day and night stories gave us, so pleasantly cooked was the dish to set before clowns. I say ‘us’, because at Gattis’ on Thursday it was handed to Walker and Alfred Powell2 – it having been read to Lethaby the night before. That was the quartet to whom your Egyptian message was served out. They all said, ‘what a good fellow he is’, and I had to steady the enthusiasm for fear it might hurt the feelings of No 16 Clifford’s Inn.3 I ventured therefore to hint, that when the partnership was declared in July, there might be ‘money in it’ if with the greatest delicacy it was therein set forth that the new member of the firm was a well known scholar and traveller in the east, who had been on quite friendly terms with the Sphinx of Gizeh &c. I added, by way of caution against cock-a-hoopedness, that the Emery we know had better begin the new arrangement with a tight hand on the rein, or there would be heels through the splash board of the business gig. However, jokes could scarcely be heard even by ourselves, for in the big hall, where we had to scramble for a seat, there was row more than enough, and the clatter was deafening from the human – or inhuman flood which invaded it – pah! it was beastly. It was eating one’s victuals to the tune of ‘we be all mad fools’, for the news of Ladysmith having been relieved was to hand, which turned the lubberly heads of 3 parts of London town.4 A couple of trumpery Union Jacks were stuck at the back of our seat – as a sign I suspect that we were believed to be Boers – not boors, or bores. Hell & Tommy5 was going on all the evening everywhere, and the town gutters ran beer in some parts and Usquebaugh6 in others. What will it be when the full fledged Eton boy actually shoots Kruger, only brewers & distillers could tell. Even this page you see is sacrificed to the devil of truly British disorder. To me, in this my quiet time of somewhat sad reflection, it seems as if there was nothing for the miserable minority owning some commonsense, but to hide their injured feelings in the study of the ancient arts remaining to us, or we shall die daily – which is nothing less I fancy than the life in Hell. Lord, in our trying times of socialistic display there was nothing comparable to this welling up of flunkey filth. When you wrote me of orange trees and lemons – of jackals, wolves, and of breakfasting on the house-top, watching the circling of kites and kestrels it comforted me. I agree with you that the journey was worth the venture, to say nothing of being free from the diabolic coil which encircles your unhappy companions at home – if it be a home. But this too will pass away, and perhaps the unholy joy of Babylon will have its lid shut down by the time you are back in it, and the bill for the drunken frolic is sent in. Gracious powers, I am back on the subject again! Fergusson gives the area of the Great Pyramid as more than 13 acres;7 well, as Gray’s Inn Garden is 7 acres – perhaps Lincoln’s Inn Fields may be a match for he of Gizeh? I always liked the sphinx: his sandstone look of everlasting gravity has a touch of eternal peace in it: how different to a London lodging-house bed! 76

1899–1902

Yes, the middle-age must have seemed to you, when buried in wonder, to have lain in comparatively recent time as your mind strained to grasp the terrible thousand-volume story of Egypt. The great sights, like a mountain range, or a sandy desert, with such strange forms like Pyramids and Sphinxes resting on it, puts me in mind of getting out of bed in the morning and looking in little England at a big hill in the free air; and saying ‘Ah, he is still there’, so to you the wide horizontal plain and its objects must have given the same kind of feeling – a kind of gentle hand laid on the nervous system. I daresay that Coniston ‘Old man’ must have had that affect on the way-worn J.R. in his last years? but how I wish the Severns had contained themselves and avoided Westminster Abbey altogether: people go on well for a time, and then give over going on well: I cannot abide such vexatious weakmindedness.8 Ah, yes, I understand the effect the sculpture on those underground tombs had on you with their beautifully soft and flattened roundness: they were unfretful, and fitting the place exactly. Indeed all the best ancient art – wherever it may be, suits the places it was invented in.9 The pictures in the M.S.S. have this precious quality, a touch as it were of the monastery cell in them. By the way, I saw in the Daily damned Chronicle that a book of Hours sold for 299£ – and a Kelmscott Chaucer for £66 – that must have been on vellum I suppose?10 You may have heard that this flood time has washed away one pier and 2 arches of the old bridge at Guildford. Antiscrape is to put in its oar to try and stave off a new iron bridge in exchange for the old, but our success in the effort is more than doubtful.11 We have a polite answer from Ld Curzon, and the inclosure of a printed speech of his on Indian ancient buildings. The speech on the whole is decidedly good, and we are proposing to ask permission to put it in the ann: report, that suggestion would be a sample of our best Irish butter laid on his feelings.12 Perhaps the archæological knowledge displayed in the speech may have been got together by some German dam-professor; though if this Curzon is descended from he of the Levant monastery book, he may inherit some twist for the history of art?13 Rooke the amiable, was at Gattis’ last Thursday week and confab’d with me about ‘Moissac’, for he had been to look at the S. Ken. photo’s, and liked the look of the big cloister there, in the S. of France: but tis a far cry – even beyond Poitiers.14 If France should be too restless now for his peacefulness, he might hit on an English subject? Some – & Ph. W. among others, have suggested a space of the W. front of Wells (which would not be “duller than anything else”) (sic). What say you, when you come back from treading in the footsteps of Moses? I saw in the paper that some Froggies set upon some English in a Paris restaurant, and ill treated them; however, the French boors got locked up. Perhaps the very stolidity of the British was too much for the Gauls – who should be stringed and wired like champagne bottles. Surely the kindly Rooke with the gentle looking family would not be too much of a red rag in the S. of France. I can but hope the latter part of your time will equal the first, and that when you return to beer and the British (though you have the beasts in Cairo) you will not complain of being unhappy. Yours truly, so long as you use as you have done, | Philip Webb. 77

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Is there such a thing about the town Cairo as a handsome & clearly photographed Egyptian donkey. I will pay for it if there is, and no other kind of photo: will be received with a smile of welcome. With much pain I succeeding [sic] in re-reading this stuff, & found it woefully dull. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/114

1 Invited by WSB to Sheykh Obeyd, his estate near Cairo, on 6 February SCC left England, travelling via Paris and sailing from Marseilles two days later. On 19 February he wrote to PSW from ‘among the orange trees, & very happy. . . . One looks down on to apricot blossom of oranges & lemons, with a background of palm trees, whose blue green foliage does not in the least recall the hateful plants in drawingrooms & greenhouses. Overhead a kite is always sailing & wheeling, often two or three, quite low down so that all its feathers are lit up by the sun and as clear as in a beautiful heraldic drawing of an eagle displayed. Kestrels also take some part in the scene, but they look very small besides the kites. . . . The Gizah pyramids and the citadel of Cairo, about ten miles off, are visible from the roof.’ 19 February 1900, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/112-3. 2 Alfred Hoare Powell (1865–1960) was an Arts and Crafts architect (trained in the office of John Dando Sedding), and together with his wife Ada Louise Lessore (1882–1956) became a very successful designer and painter of ceramics for the Wedgwood firm. Powell worked closely with Ernest Gimson and the Barnsley brothers, and from 1902 was based in Tunley, near Oakridge in Gloucestershire, close to Sapperton and the centre of Arts and Crafts activity. 3 As his business partnership with Boutall neared its close, EW made a new one with SCC, and from 1 July 1900 the firm traded as Walker & Cockerell, Process and General Engravers. By the end of the year, SCC was doubting whether this was an ideal situation for him. ‘This work has proved on the whole congenial and I do not think that Walker has regretted taking me – but I feel more and more the oppressiveness of London, and I wish I could get my living without having to spend all my days in it.’ CD, 1900. 4 A four-month siege of Ladysmith in Natal ended on 1 March 1900, when the embattled British garrison was relieved by forces led by General Redvers Buller. It was celebrated exuberantly in Britain as a national triumph. 5 Slang; usually used in the sense of ‘to play hell with’ – to alter for the worse (OED). 6 Whisky, from ‘the water of life’ (Gaelic). 7 James Fergusson, The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1855), I, p. 217. 8 JR had died on 20 January, and at once a national debate began (conducted in the letter columns of The Times) as to his proper resting place and appropriate memorialising. JR himself had wished to be buried at Coniston, having died at Brantwood, but many influential voices signed a letter urging that he should be given a place in Westminster Abbey (24 January). A month after the funeral at Coniston, the discussion was reopened. Joan Severn, JR’s cousin and during his later years effectively his guardian at Brantwood, suggesting that a memorial tablet in Westminster Abbey ‘would be a grateful tribute and a gratification to all who loved and honoured him’ (22 February). 9 SCC had written of his visit to Sakkara ‘where there are other pyramids, including the step pyramid which is said to be the oldest of all. But the great attraction is the tombs, vast structures now underground, the walls of which are covered with figures & animals in low relief of exquisite delicacy.’ V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/113 10 425 paper copies of the Kelmscott Chaucer were published in 1896 (price £20), and 13 vellum copies (price 120 guineas). See Peterson, p. 106. 11 See above, Letter 666, note 3. PSW’s scepticism was well founded. The SPAB Annual Report for 1901 reported that, despite the Society’s urging that the bridge be repaired or otherwise to be rebuilt in stone or brick, but not steel, the Town Council had decided to build in steel. This was

78

1899–1902 regrettable on grounds of economy – the new bridge would require regular repainting – but principally for its stylistic jarring with ‘the quiet dignity and beauty of Guildford’ (p. 41). 12 George Nathaniel Curzon (1859–1925), Baron and later Marquess Curzon of Kedleston was Viceroy of India from 1899 until 1905. The SPAB Annual Report for 1900 did not reproduce Curzon’s address, but in a section on ‘Indian Monuments’ (pp. 22–5) referred to it approvingly. ‘It is . . . with great satisfaction that the Society has noted the attitude taken by Lord Curzon, the present Viceroy of India, as to the duty of the Government with regard to this matter, as expressed in various speeches made by him, and more recently in an exhaustive paper read before a meeting of the “Asiatic Society of Bengal” held at Calcutta in February last, with a print of which His Excellency has kindly favoured this Society.’ (p. 23). 13 Robert Curzon, Baron Zouche, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (London: John Murray, 1849). 14 Probably dating from the beginning of the twelfth century, the cloister of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre at Moissac, in south-west France, is one of the earliest surviving examples with relief monumental sculpture. 76 capitals survive in its four galleries.

669 • To Sydney Cockerell, 26–27 March 1900 Gray’s Inn – Monday 26 March 1900 My dear Cockerell It was on Saturday afternoon that I had your fateful letter, from which I learned that you and the Padrone were not drowned.1 Truly it seems to be weeks since then. I grasped the situation unusually quickly for the slow witted me: perhaps because of living in England where it is possible for the most ordinary people to be aware of the humours of the sea: for, at any moment, and within 40 miles or so of Gray’s Inn, a ‘sea change’ may be happening to someone – with whom one has or has had companionable dealings – who is at the point of ferrying over to the other shore2 which is different to landing at Calais. Mind you, I cannot write a real letter to you now, but must wait till things are quieter in one’s mind. It is but a shoddy, or stock exchange kind of intelligence which can look without seriousness upon the loss of one more friendly soul at any time of life, and the more so at my time, when but few more can be picked out of the uncompanionable mass one is hustled about in. Of Mr Blunt I have but the common politeness of acquaintanceship, though that is backed up by literary communication of spirit, which always gives an insight to what lies behind the veil covering individuality – but I should have been sick and sorry that a man of the minority3 should have been snatched away from any possible further converse. Of yourself, I can but say it would have been a dead loss to me if you had not remained till I was out of all hearing. Your letter – which has gone on its travels4 – was a very clear and unaffected sign of your still being with us, though in faraway Egypt. No sign in it of the damnable journalistic bog-trotting swing of conveying intelligence from the front – all ‘spurs and shirt collar’,5 for coolness – and the sketch-drawing was so good as 79

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

to need no belittling.6 At all events the lines of it made me get out the map to see with its help what you were seeing looking at in those long drawn out hours of four days. I forgave your half encouraged patriotism at the spick and span British handiness coming to your help out of the blue, as it were. It was Byron who made the unlucky remark, that the army and not the navy produced the ‘gentleman’.7 Probably barrack life, and club lounging, and other dismal devilry, would soon reduce the seagoing folk to the dismal lower level of the land force; if the former were not for the more part enforcedly dwelling on the mightier leadings of the mind. As you and your friend lay and looked at the inviolable hills in front of you, and the swarm of 300 or so of various shades of Eastern humanity around you, the mist of vain things was dispersed. Here Lethaby came in at 11 p.m. and stopped me. The 27th 9.15 p.m. Walker turned in here yesterday evening full of your story, and it was evident he was relieved at not having to look about for another partner. As it is, we both agreed that the experience gained under extremity would be valuable, though I could hardly see how it could be turned to account at Clifford’s Inn! – save, that having miraculously escaped from sea-sharks, you will be cautiously on the look out for land-d[itt]o in the form of Borrow’s “ferocious publishers”.8 At the beginning I said this could not be a respectable letter, I therefore end here – and the more reasonably that there will be a chance of putting in another before you leave Egypt. Believe me your relieved friend Philip Webb. r rs Have just had a kindly letter from Gimson, saying that M & M Wheelwright will be ready to receive when I can go to Sheapperton9 – at present I am hard & fast here. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/117

1 ‘The best laid schemes of camels & men gang oft agley. We started eight days ago for Sinai, but got no further than halfway down the gulf where we ran on a reef in the night & were detained for over four days in much discomfort.’ SCC to PSW, 15 March 1900, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/115. Although he made light of it, SCC and WSB had been in real danger of drowning, together with hundreds of Egyptian pilgrims. They were rescued by a British gunboat. 2 An allusion to Charon, the ferryman of Greek mythology, who carried the souls of the recently dead across the rivers Styx and Acheron to the region of the Underworld. 3 In other words, an aristocrat. 4 ‘I had the inclosed startling letter from our pleasant friend yesterday morning – expected Lethaby wd come in here late in the evening, but as he did not, I took it round to him this morning. . . . When you have read the letter, and your blood begins to circulate again, please send it to Rooke, and ask him to return it to me.’ PSW to EW, 25 March 1900, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/116. 5 See also ‘all smiles and shirt collar’: below, Letter 702.

80

1899–1902 6 ‘I made the enclosed sketch of the wreck, which is not strictly accurate owing to my not being a Royal Academician.’ SCC to PSW, 15 March 1900. 7 ‘After the bungling & disorder to which we had got accustomed in these four long days it made us quite patriotic to see the Hebe’s spotless decks & the beautiful precision of all the arrangements. The officers, as naval officers usually are, were an exceedingly nice body of men, nothing fussy or stuck up about them.’ 8 ‘[S]ometimes I would narrate to [Belle] other things far more genuine – how I had tamed savage mares, wrestled with Satan, and had dealings with ferocious publishers.’ George Borrow, Lavengro (ch 91). 9 See above, Letter 656, note 8. The Sapperton wheelwright was Richard Harrison.

670 • To Jane Morris, 3 April 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 3 April 1900 My dear Janey Thank you for sending on the Cotswold book, and even more for your kind avoidance in the brief letter of any word which might be thought over by me as a reproach, on account of my delay in completing the work for the builder in the matter of the Kelmscott Cottages. One is enough in that sort of pain-giving, and I have perforce been that one. He has pitched into me in the morning early, and given me no peace in the rest middle of the day. If it had not been for the rest and tea-solace in the evening, I should have broken down. That is a long preamble, but not much overstrained. My work for the last 3 months has been a dead pull on me, and what is worse, I have not been strong enough to throw off the load, and my jesting with it has been a trifle forced. However a little gleam of light begins to shew through the wood of the Kelmscote matter.1 Something rather like chaos reigns here. My housekeeper has been obliged to take a lodging outside the Inn for her family, because 2 of the rooms she had here, on a kind of sufferance, have had to be given up; so that my modest domesticity has rather gone to the wall, and the little I want seems as if it would get less in the way of supply – for Mrs Fifield with her 4 children looks as if there would soon be a fi[f]th to dispute my claim for a little attention:2 also, as the last arrival was twins, for all I know the next may put in a claim for the Queen’s bounty on the rule of 3 – and then where should me be? [sic]3 Then I want to put Jack (‘my man-jack’) in the way of getting his living when my back is turned on the garden here; and as he is getting small things to do for himself, I give him time away from here to do them. Lastly, I am got to be really old, and the whole day’s work is too much for me, so that winding up 2 or 3 of my last works has been laborious affairs for the feebleness of antiquity. Doubtless, if I could get on to the hillside somewhere I should revive and turn up smiling again; but the place in which I could practice that cheerfulness has not yet come at my call: and so, and so, you must have thought I was careless of your natural wishes. I assure you I have in no way been careless of your satisfaction.

81

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

My present hope is that by Easter I shall be ready, and Jack free to go to Kelmscote and tackle Mr Bowley. Those of my neighbours capable of understanding this nice point of building at all at Kelmscote, speak favourably of my design; but I must be a harder critic, & am. I will send you the sheet of plans as soon as possible, which may be too technical for you to clearly understand, and I can but hope you may think better of them than I do. I could tire your attention still more, but happily my paper is scrawled nearly all over, so I make an end. I will write to kind Jenny now that she is at the pleasant place I love so well.4 Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb – Do not weep kind lady over my sheaf of sorrows! BL Add 45342, f. 157

1 In his later years, PSW tended to use the spellings Kelmscott and Kelmscote interchangeably, as in this paragraph. 2 Mrs Fifield had succeeded Mrs Long as housekeeper at Raymond Buildings. 3 Although not applicable in this case, PSW has in mind a payment introduced in 1849, instigated by Queen Victoria (and which lasted until 1957) whereby in multiple births greater than two (triplets, quads and so on), a one-off payment of a guinea for the third and any other children was paid to help offset the sudden additional costs facing parents. The award came to be known as the ‘Queen’s Bounty’. 4 JM had returned to St Mary Abbott’s Terrace, Kensington, after spending some time during March in Bognor, where JEM had ‘revived wonderfully and has really enjoyed going about’. JM to SCC, 12 March 1900, CLJM. JEM had herself probably now relocated to Kelmscott Manor.

671 • To Giacomo Boni, 8 April 1900 Photostat 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Sunday 8 April 1900 My dear Giacomo. I ask your pardon for delay in telling my want of success as to photographs of one or more of William Hunt’s pictures, to help you in your laudable intention1 – though I doubt if Italy or either of the other Romance countries will care for anything English at present. The silly hubbub of mind running in the heads of three fourths or more of our people cannot invite the attention of your people, to any serious thing, and prejudice will colour the little they know of English art. There are two drawings of William Hunt’s in the Kensington Museum, and they have been photographed, but are not characteristic specimens of the painter. One of them is of a monk – a very protestant Englishman in a monk’s frock, and the other is of a negro boy; and neither of them interesting examples of art work.2 I have made inquiries in several places, and have gathered that this artist’s really characteristic works has not have never been photographed – and indeed I do not see 82

1899–1902

why they should be, as they would be valueless in that form. They are miracles (generally) of minute handwork and brilliant colour – small pictures chiefly, almost wanting a magnifying glass to see their quality. Details of hedgerow flowers set in various grasses – of birds nests and eggs – of fruit – of birds &c – and nothing of which would tell significantly in photography. Ruskin I think made so much of his work because it represented, with great skill and feeling, and exact truthfulness, natural objects which would not be noted by ordinary observers. One of the best which I can remember was a small patch of grass with a bell or two of the fiery ‘red cup moss’ in it. Alas, my friend I have just heard dreadful news, that Parenzo has been attacked by the devil in the form of a modern renovator, and that hammer and pick have been let loose on the mosaics.3 If there is any comfort to be got out of the knowledge that England is not the only land which nourishes barbarians, we have it – but I find no comfort whatever, as I care as much for Italy and Austria as for this miserable home of stupid unteachable people. Let me in ending, wish – in Irish phrase – “all power to your elbow” in saving to Italy what still remains of ancient art in that country, which has been the mother of what should be regarded with as much respect as mothers claim from humanity. Adieu, and good luck attend on your virtuous efforts is the wish of yours truly Philip Webb. Courtauld 193a-c

1 See above, Letter 663, note 9. 2 William Henry Hunt’s The Monk (watercolour) and three studies of black boys – Master James Crow (print), Mulatto Boy (watercolour) and A Brown Study; Portrait of a Black Boy with a Slate (watercolour) are in the V&A collection. His best work is represented by his still-life studies, exquisitely observed nature paintings of flowers, nests and eggs, which led to his acquisition of the nickname, ‘Bird’s Nest Hunt’. 3 This was the restoration work to the Parenzo mosaics undertaken by Pietro Bornia, which had begun in 1890 and continued until 1900. See Vol. II. Letter 485, note 5. PSW’s fresh concern was raised by information passed on from Elizabeth Flowers, through GW. ‘The news from Parenzo is enraging. . . . [Boni] may perhaps be able to make some kind of remonstrance with the German [i.e. Austrian] authorities, if not with the Bishop.’ GW to PSW, 5 April 1900, Courtauld 242a.

672 • To Sydney Cockerell, 12 April 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 4.15 p.m. 12 April 1900 I have just read your letter dear Cockerell, and as you expect to be in Florence between today and the 17th this may reach your hand if not your heart1 – and a search and find at a poste restante is I fancy pleasanter than no result, though 83

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

the letter may not be worth the satisfaction. Perhaps this is the last you will ever get from me, as – if I am right in my reading – you will not be the barberous (sic) self you have been,2 and others beyond ‘Trab’s boy’ would not know you.3 It was quite right that you shd have to shew yourselves at the Naval court, as some dependable evidence of your having been on a wreck at all will be open to anxious enquirers.4 Glory be – one makes jests of these things – but, beard or no beard, one does not care suddenly to lose a friend unless he holds a secret which might be blabbed. Lethaby retired to Barnstaple this midday, but he said he had written to you. Rooke wrote me a pretty letter in return for your story I sent him – and Jenny Morris tells me she had a pleasant one from you. She is at Kelmscott for a fortnight with her companion – Janey is gone to the Stillmans’ in Surrey.5 Walker is on Easter holiday trot. Winmill turns his arms about on a hillock like his grinding ancestor. Jack has been to Roth[e]say to see herons in a natural state, to be plastered on a wall6 – I – only me – am the solitary, trying to do work and failing lamentably. The War is as it was – that is, still damnable, and as there is no ‘antiscrape’ today I can swear without frightening Norman.7 When you come back, and if not too fearful to speak to, I want to ask if you think anyone would buy those 4 beastly tapestry cartoons I did: would they sell at a saleroom? if they would bring £5 – so much the better.8 Wardle is just about migrating from Sandwich to Canterbury, but is a bit put out that they won’t put his Niccolà article in the Review; and, in a letter to me says, “I hope Lethaby and Cockerell who were kind enough to speak to the editor about me will not think me unreasonable. I should have been very glad to work for the Review” – I fancy his article is too learned and in other ways too little attractive for the ruck of readers, though the paper had set up the 1st part, and the proofs had been corrected. I had read it in M.S. and thought it well done, and a really important disquisition on Nicolà. But a newspaper is an ugly craft to steer, and may ‘turn turtle’ at any moment.9 I hope you got – or will get to Arezzo and see the Piero’s in San: Francesco, for they are so Fresco-flat on the wall, and so mysterious in their imaginative breadth and time-wornedness.10 Treherne – to whom I had held forth on the ‘messan dog’, wrote about it to his friend Hornby (of Eton?)11 who wrote at length suggesting untenables other than ‘maison’ – and Wardle has flown into a knowing rage that anyone should think Jamieson’s ‘guess’ a good one.12 I’m rather proud to have raised a devil of a question which the learned cannot lay. Skeat rather shirked it, for what is the expenditure of 2 or 3 hours in searching, to such a man as he? Treherne says, there is “The English Garner – published by Geo: Arber”, which “has a chapter from an old author on various sorts of English Dogs”13 and this might be found in the Brit. Mus. No, I’ve not yet found time to go Sapperton ways, though I have at last heard again from Gimson. And till I get this – to me – sorrowful work of the Kelmscott cottages on way, I cannot move except to bed. All this poor rigmarole is merely a recognition of your good thought of me from so far away. I doubt 84

1899–1902

your beard growing, but we shall see if the fates permit you to see the retreating back of Boutall.14 As you are evidently not to be drowned, perhaps the hempseed is not yet sown. Adieu, till I see you in front of Newgate, | Yours anciently and kindly Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/119

1 ‘Mr Blunt’s plans have been changed once more on account of a sudden burst of scorching weather. We leave Egypt tomorrow for Brindisi, & go to Florence, probably for a week. I hope to pause at Arezzo, for the sake of the Piero della Francescas, which I think are there, but it would only be for a day. Please tell Lethaby, if he has not already written to me, that Poste Restante, Florence ought to find me from about the 12th to the 17th.’ SCC to PSW, 6 April 1900, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/ 688/118. 2 SCC was growing a beard. ‘On the five mornings spent on the wreck I omitted to shave & I have done so since, in order that Walker may not miss Boutall too much. By June 30 I shall hope to resemble him exactly – at present I still look like myself, though not at the first glance.’ 3 In Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860–1), Trabb’s boy is the tailor’s assistant who holds no respect for anyone, ‘the most audacious boy in all that country-side’ (ch 19). 4 ‘We had to go to Suez again to give evidence before the Naval Court. It was rather a tedious business, but the result was satisfactory as the finding of the Court was a severe reflection on the Khedivial Company & it will no doubt lead to reforms in the pilgrim traffic, – the more so as another boat of the same line went ashore a day or two after we did, probably owing to culpable negligence on the part of the master or of the Company.’ 5 On retiring from The Times in 1898, William Stillman settled with his wife Marie Spartali in Frimley Green, in Surrey. 6 Rothesay is the principal town on the Isle of Bute, containing the ruins of the thirteenth-century Rothesay Castle. This project by GWJ not traced. 7 Philip Norman (1842–1931) was treasurer of the Society of Antiquarians and subsequently its Vice-President, and also served as a committee member of the SPAB. 8 These are four of the animal and bird designs for The Forest, the Morris & Co. tapestry (1887), which PSW prepared in 1886. SCC negotiated their sale on PSW’s behalf for £100 to the wealthy brewery owner and collector, Laurence W. Hodson (1863–1933), of Compton Hall, Wolverhampton, but had great difficulty in getting him to accept that much in payment. See Vol. I, Letter 288, note 7, and below, Letters 722 and 728. 9 GW had thought that his article on the thirteenth-century sculptor Nicola Pisano was about to appear in The Architectural Review, but the editor appeared to be holding it back in favour of items of wider interest. ‘I have told him that I am not dying to be published, but only that I object to being hung up in this way & used as padding when there is nothing of interest &c &c to make up a number.’ GW to PSW, 11 April 1900, Courtauld 243b-c. 10 See note 1, and also Vol. I, Letter 252. 11 John James Hornby (1826–1909) was formerly headmaster of Eton College (1868–84). 12 PSW was much intrigued as to the origins and meaning of ‘messan dog’. On his behalf, SCC approached the philologist, Walter William Skeat (1835–1912) editor of several early English texts, including Piers Plowman and a complete Chaucer. ‘I thank for the Skeat card. It seems to me just possible that “maison” may be the right derivation; as a house dog would be about the right thing in contrast to a dog of duties.’ PSW to SCC, 15 March 1898, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/75. 13 Edward Arber, An English Garner (London, 1877–83). 14 See note 2.

85

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

673 • To Giacomo Boni, 13 April 1900 Photostat 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, London W.C. Good Friday. 1900 My dear Giacomo. I am sending you by tomorrow’s book post, 3 photographs. Since writing to you, it occurred to me from your saying, “I wish only to shew just now what England’s best sons could do” in the way of rendering nature in pictures. Now, George Boyce, who died a few years back, was a friend of Ruskin, of Burne-Jones, of Morris, and Rossetti, &c – all of whom acknowledged his singularly fine qualities as a watercolour painter. Fairfax Murray – who is no mean judge of the work of artists – both ancient and modern – said to me in a saleroom, where many of his pictures were being eagerly bought up – that ignorant picture buyers were often unaware of what a ‘master’ George Boyce was. I wrote to Mrs Boyce and asked her if she had, and could conveniently lend you, 2 or 3 photographs of characteristic pictures by her late husband, and she kindly sent me these I forward to you. I am sure you will recognize the ‘masterly’ quality in them. Mrs Boyce’s are the 2 larger ones. The upright photo: is an admirable picture from France, and is thoroughly French.1 The other, horizontal, is of Shillingford on Thames, and is an equally perfect rendering of a quiet English river scene.2 Even the colourless photographs have the effect of the difference between French and English landscape colour. If you find them suit your purpose, please use them – if not, kindly return them to me – (you will find their names written on their backs). The little one is a photo: Boyce gave to me. When I was in Venice I searched for the little campo, but found the pretty tower had been destroyed (Boyce painted it in 1854) but perhaps it may have been standing in your earlier time, and you will be able to vouch for the genuine likeness of Boyce’s picture: kindly return this with the others.3 Morris used to say, “I like Boyce’s pictures of places, for you are quite sure they are like the real thing”, and Morris dearly loved a beautiful building in lovely landscape. Forgive me if I have misunderstood the kind of English good work that you wanted, and Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. me It was George Boyce who gave an introduction to Mr Darvall,4 who was so good as to introduce my insignificance to you. Please to forgive his memory. This has been written in a hurry. Courtauld 192a-b

1 Not identified. 2 Presumably the painting of Shillingford which GPB exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society Gallery in 1870, with a price tag of £45.

86

1899–1902 3 Not identified. GPB made several paintings in Venice and Verona during his 1854 visit. 4 For the painter Henry Darvall, see Vol. I, Letter 251, note 9.

674 • To Sydney Cockerell, 29 April 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 April 1900 Dear Cockerell The worst side of gifts – even from kind friends – is, that they are apt to paralyse the tongue. Paralysis in any way is uncomfortable, even when a neighbour pitches a part of his victuals into one’s waistcoat in his effort to carry it to his own mouth. Your sun-picture of the white ass took my breath away at Gatti’s;1 for it was so expressive in its strong light and shade of modern Egypt as to dazzle my wits; and the Trees of Wall staggered me with its impression of the ancient world there – so, after having been dazzled and then staggered by gifts as to have only recovered presence of mind today, it is not wonderful that I should look even a gift Donkey in the mouth. However, there is no way of staying your kind thought of others save by quarrelling with you, and in these death defrauded days one cannot be surly to a later friend who pities one’s condition. For the past 3 or 4 weeks I have embedded my thoughts in the S. Ken. Library in India; then your pictures of the East drop on me; and today I have been reading Wilfred Blunt’s ‘The future of Islam’,2 so that – with the wind in the east – my thoughts are all in that direction. I went to see Mrs Morris on Friday evening, and found Jenny surprisingly herself: brightly kind when the demon of fate gives her peace. It was Mrs Morris who lent me Blunt’s book, and I have been reading it with much interest. I sent on your delightfully written Gulph of Suez M.S to Lethaby, after reading it quietly and enjoyably on Thursday night myself. ‘Thank you’ as J.R used politely to express himself in the way of payment for a good turn. I hope your housekeeper received you with a ‘prodigeous [sic] sons’ reception on your return, and that you have nestled once more in to your Richmond home. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I will give you back that photo: of the Raphael (or other) portrait, for you to give it to some one else. The others I keep, as well as that of Rooke’s mountainous front of Bourges.3 See what a Sunday’s quiet reflection does in the way of thankfulness. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/121

1 ‘Very merry meeting at Gatti’s after Antiscrape Committee. P.W, E.W, W.R.L, Rooke & Winmill. I told the tale of my adventures.’ CD, 26 April 1900. For ‘sun-picture’, see Vol. II, Letter 323, note 3. PSW had requested a picture of an Egyptian donkey at the close of Letter 668, above. 2 WSB, The Future of Islam (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1882). 3 Thomas Rooke’s Bourges watercolours date from his 1899 visit.

87

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

675 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 7 May 1900 A separate draft also survives at V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 7 May 1900 Dear Mr Blunt It would be a pleasure for me to advise you – non professionally – on the condition of your old house and that of the neighbouring farm: coupled as I might hope with a look at some of your Arab horses?1 Possibly Cockerell did not say that my state at the present time was between the devil of leaving this old home, and the deep sea of finding another in which to pass the rest of my time; so that I could not spare more than the day in my visit to your interesting place: and this I am afraid must be near the end of the month. Kindly let me know which day then would suit you best.2 Yours truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 WSB’s family estates in West Sussex consisted of Newbuildings Place, Southwater, and Crabbet Park, Poundhill. It was at Crabbet that WSB and Lady Anne Blunt founded their famous stud of Arab horses. 2 PSW visited WSB at Newbuildings Place on 26 May, travelling by train and returning that night. On the next day, SCC wrote with WSB’s offer of ‘Caxtons’ in Worth as a possible retirement location for PSW. See below, Letter 684.

676 • To Sydney Cockerell, 13 May 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sun: 13 May 1900 My dear Cockerell Of course I found the ‘Digit’ and laid my ten on it with satisfaction:1 at the end of [the] preface there was my book mark, which explains that I had begun reading and put it out of harm’s way when on some other tack – indeed it is a tacking N. E. S and West in these days – wh’ are not days proper, but of semi-dissolution, and no certainty of what the future remains of life may be. I told you of my looking into books on India these last 6 or 8 weeks at the Sou. Ken. Library, and that I had had joy therein; simply, I suspect, that the reading was not akin to any future life, but to dreams of the past – dreaming is not so bad as some folk think it, when waking has so small an outlook; and India, in all the pictures I have looked in to, is but (to our present eyes at least) a condition of dreaming; and the sweet dream-face of Buddha has been soothing. 88

1899–1902

In reading the delightful ‘Digit’ I came upon a passage which has helped my consideration of the sculptured forms of women in India. I could not imagine why – even in graceful sculpture – the female body was, to my eye, so unpleasantly enforced; when, lo, this is what I read in the Digit book to-day – after a string of similes of the beauties of Anangarágá – “and Hémacumbhiní, for thy bosom resembles a pair of golden gourds; and Pulinákrití, for the curves of thy hips are like the swell of a river bank.”2 – This exactly resembles the female form divine of the Indian mind, even in the earliest and their most human like sculptures. The similes are delightful: for example, “for thy intellect is like a diamond needle”; amongst 17 of them in one passage3 at the end of a quite successful climax to the beautiful story of the ‘Digit of the Moon’. The book seems to me to be excellently well translated. Do you know anything of F.W. Bain?4 Will it be early enough if I bring the book back on Thursday? No answer will save your saying ‘yes’. In Saturday’s Chron: there was the J.Rs Will – £10,000 odd pounds, only. The good old man must have given away most of his money before making the Will. I gathered he had cancelled in a codicil the arrangement with Allen as future publisher – perhaps that would be well.5 Have had a note from Wilfred [sic] Blunt. He says I “can arrange the date” of going to Newbuildings Place “as it suits you with Cockerell, whom I shd like to be here with you. Later in the month will suit the mares better as they have still their winter coats on them” – Lucky for them under such a harsh day as this has been. I was in Surrey – away by Cranleigh – on Friday,6 and the weather and beauty of the growth, air, and bird-song of the country was worthy of Digital epithets. When I had done my undreamlike work, I set to dreaming once more when rolling through the paradise of greenery back again to doleful L:n, short for HELL! I was in India again last evening at the library, and – and, dreaming once more. Adieu – yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/122

1 Francis William Bain, A Digit of the Moon. A Hindoo Love Story Translated from the Original MS (London and Oxford: J. Parker & Co., 1899). 2 A Digit of the Moon, p. 116. 3 Ibid. 4 ‘About Bain I know nothing more than can be gathered from the preface & from a letter I received in answer to one of congratulations on his book – in which he said that he had been 8 years in India & that he was on his way home with broken health.’ SCC to PSW, 15 May 1900, BL Add 52760, f 40. Doubt remains as to whether A Digit of the Moon was a ‘translation’, as asserted on the title page, or Bain’s wholly original fiction. 5 Details of JR’s will were also published in The Times (12 May). Arthur and Joan Severn were left Brantwood, with the instruction that it should be preserved intact and never sold, and his papers left jointly to the charge of Joan Severn and Charles Eliot Norton. The codicil relating to his long-term publisher and friend, George Allen (who had lent JR money following a quarrel with the Severns in 1887), dated from 4 June 1884, and, as The Times put it, ‘modified the condition as to the employment of Mr. Allen as publisher’.

89

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 6 In 1900, PSW added a gardener’s cottage to the work he had previously done for John Ramsden at Willinghurst, Shamley Green in Surrey. See Kirk, pp 148 and 301. See also Vol. I, Letter 280, note 4.

677 • To Charles March Gere, 13 May 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 13 May 1900 Dear Mr Gere1 Thank you for your letter of the 9th, shewing such goodwill towards an almost complete stranger – using the word ‘almost’ on my side advisedly, for I have looked at the results in reproduction of your good work with much pleasure, which is next to personal knowledge. A more complete stranger to me appears in Mr Arthur Fowler, whom you have interested on my behalf;2 and have just written to him about another place on the N.W. slope of the Cotswolds, about which also he has been good enough to seek for information; but this I am afraid – even if it could be obtained – would be in too exposed a situation for a man of my age. However, I am looking – when at liberty – to call at Bengeworth3 and have some talk with him, as his knowledge of the Cotswold district would be a great help to me in my search. Believe me | Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. Huntington HM 39356

1 The painter and book illustrator, Charles March Gere (1869–1957) was closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. He had provided the drawing of Kelmscott Manor which served as the frontispiece to the Kelmscott Press edition of News from Nowhere. See Vol. II, Letter 449, note 3. 2 Aware that PSW was looking for a possible retirement cottage, Gere evidently was putting out feelers. 3 Bengeworth, a Cotswold village adjoining Evesham, Worcestershire.

678 • To William Weir, 14 May 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 14 May 1900 My dear Weir As it is 10.30 p.m I shall not be able to write a sufficient answer to your very clear explanatory letter of the 11th; am glad you were not put out by our committee having decided on the fireplace arrangement (as sent to you) for the Exeter Guildhall.1 At present I feel inclined to say, ‘keep and paint the deal doors’. Am not sure it would be necessary to carry the panelling to the same height as to the fire place,

90

1899–1902

on the other sides of room. Perhaps the window-sill-board height would be better? Do not think the iron dowels to oak floor need be galvanised, and as they should fit closely in the dowel holes, the galvanising would hinder driving them home – they should be greased to make this easy. Eglwys Brewis. After considering the point carefully, I think it would be well if you could see me when you have got hold thoroughly of the lie of the work in front of you. I was sure the walls were in a bad condition. The Chancel arch should be well shored up – if you have not already intended this. Perhaps the painted plaster covering the west side of the old doorway to Rood loft, or pulpit, had better be cut cleanly round and lifted out, to put back again: as you will want the room there to attack the inside of the wall against the N. side of Chancel arch. Perhaps you may be able to persuade the Parson to keep the present pulpit and have it nicely mended, for I think it fits the Church to a T. I would like to keep the Altar rail if possible, but it might be arranged to go all across the chancel if seriously desired: but we may be able to talk together about this and other matters. Should you be able to come up (when you are ready) please to let me know some time before, so that I may be at home, as I have to go out of town for some days when freed from things which hold me here. Thank you for your interesting letter, and believe me Yours truly | Philip Webb. I would much prefer to keep the present slates to the Church, and the money new ones wd cost should go elsewhere. SPAB W-W 24

1 In 1881, the Exeter Town Council had commissioned a local architect, Edward Ashworth, to report on the crumbling forefront of the medieval Guildhall. His estimate for renovation was in the region of £900, but only minor work was undertaken then. In 1898, the SPAB offered to report and advise on necessary repairs, including to the first floor front room, which became the Mayor’s Parlour. Work began in March 1900 and was completed in April 1901, at a cost of £1250, the project being supervised throughout by WW, who regularly sought PSW’s advice. ‘The enclosed rough tracing indicates proposed new oak panelling in place of the deal that existed – also the old stone pink of original fireplace (dark red sandstone) which the council wish to open up in place of the modern ch[imne]y piece now in use. It would be necessary to reduce the opening which is very large & would be sure to smoke if kept so. Do you think what I have indicated would be suitable.’ WW to PSW, 21 April 1900, SPAB. After a meeting of the SPAB committee on 26 April 1900, PSW sent WW detailed instructions, ‘I having – beforehand – rather simplified the work suggested by you. . . . It was thought necessary to raise the hearth, partly to get apparent height of opening, and yet not make that more than 2’.7”½ above the hearth. Then, by dropping the two elbows of the opening as shewn on the S.P.A.B. drawing, there would be less danger of the smoke lipping out there, which often happens in wide fire places.’ 3 May 1900, SPAB W-W 21. See also H. Lloyd Parry, The History of the Exeter Guildhall and the Life Within (Exeter: James Townsend, 1936), pp. 146–8.

91

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

679 • To John Francis Bentley, 15 May 1900 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 15 May. 1900 Dear Mr Bentley1 I am indebted to your kindly permitting a consideration in offering giving me the opportunity of examining seeing your great Church now being built in Westminster, and the more so that you are so good as to promise me me the pleasure of being shewing me the of [sic] seeing the works under your personal guidance; for there must be many problems solved by you which would surely interest and old professional architect like myself.2 My business engagements are rather close till the end of this month, but if you could conveniently name a day and hour either on Sat: 2 June, or a day after that I shall be will arrange able to accept it? but I could meet you at the works on Friday next the 18th at any hour. Believe me | Yours truly | Ph. W. Or, should that day not suit you, would you fix another day and hour after the 31st? Believe me Yrs truly | Ph. W. Texas

1 Westminster Cathedral was the work of architect John Francis Bentley (1839–1902), and in PSW’s view the most successful of modern buildings (see below, Letter 800). This letter dates from just a month before Bentley’s speech was affected by paralysis. Fearing a total collapse, Bentley thought to persuade PSW to take over his work on the project, but it was self-evidently not something which he would now consider. Three years after Bentley’s death, PSW expressed unqualified respect for the technical triumphs of the still incomplete building. ‘It touched me sharply, he being gone, that I could not tell him what came over me while looking at the outcome of this last living force of his life’s efforts.’ PSW to WRL, 28 August 1905, Lethaby p. 141. WRL himself later described the Cathedral as ‘a building nobly planned, carefully balanced, and soundly constructed. Beyond the echoes there is the universal and the living . . . a building serious, serene, and really modern.’ Introduction to Winefride de l’Hôpital, Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, 2 vols (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1919), I, p. vii. 2 ‘Mr Lewis tells me that you are interested in the Concrete Construction now being carved out at the Westminster Cathedral. Need I say that it will afford me much pleasure of shewing you over the work at any time?’ Bentley to PSW, 12 May 1900, Texas.

680 • To Jane Morris, 16 May 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 16 May. 1900 My dear Janey I have written to Mr Bowley, explained myself clearly to him, and asked if he will be at home on Monday next – the 21st, when I propose sending Mr Jack to 92

1899–1902

Lechlade with the cottage drawings, specifications, &c, from which the estimate for the work is to be made; and asked him if [he] would wish to give me an estimate before my applying to other builders. I told him that both you and I wished, if possible, to employ a local builder, and asked for a reply at once. I also wish Jack to look about him for local information, to go to the quarries and see the stone, and to find out the quality of the bricks, sand, &c. He would leave London by the 9-45 a.m. train, and go direct to Bowley’s, and open up the business, and walk in to Lechlade Kelmscote in the evening. I depend on your letting me know if it would in any way put you out Mr Jack stopping at the Manor House, as he could quite easily put up for the nights at Lechlade. He will probably be helping Bowley to make his estimate, and gathering information for 2 or 3 days at this time. Would it be possible to cut some of the grass (I suppose it is tall now?) where the cottages are to come, as I want Jack roughly to set out the lines on the ground, with pegs, and to take some levels of the irregular surface, &c. Perhaps it would be well if you let Mr Hobbs know that we were trying to get an estimate and make a start, but of this you would use your own judgment. I daresay on one day Bowley wd come over & meet Jack on the ground, and consider it together. If you should answer this note please tell me Mr Hobbs’ other name, so that when I write I may give him the extraordinary title of ‘Esquire’! I suspect you are praying for showers and softer weather? With kind love to Jenny | I am your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. Hope – almost against hope, to get away myself shortly, to try again near Cirencester to find a hut on the Cotswolds – as time, now that I am old, goes the pace. BL Add 45342, f. 159

681 • To Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith, 16 May 1900 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 16 May 1900 Dear Mrs Orrinsmith1 Thank you for your letter. It is pleasant to think of the young people so earnest over their scheme, and that Mr Jack is so helpful in matters of experience.2 I daresay the rages of controversy are amusing enough; as there can be no party feeling it is all hands to the work. It would be well I think to strive to keep all unnecessary expenditure down, for in all building matters it has a tendency to rise. Also in these decadent days of art, simplicity is sure to be the most effective element. The Kelmscott books you mention will not be lost, though in other keeping.3 I have heard that the British Museum set shews signs of wear, and this – doubtless – because there are so many students now who go to them for inspiration, which mostly ends I fear in despiration [sic], if one may judge from the published results of the study of the originals. 93

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

The books were an unfailing resource to me; for Kate was fond of being read to, and I got through many a volume to her very genuine enjoyment and mine; and even the Chaucer was attacked; for the great English poet seemed to read kindlier under the beautiful and most fitting setting of the verses, emphasised by such fine and congruous pictures. Rarely have two men of genius so successfully laboured together.4 Kate often spoke to me of Miss Scott, and always with great affection. And so the good lady has passed away blessed by the affectionate remembrance of her pupils. Curiously enough I have not met your brother Frank in the Street, but I am glad to learn he is looking better. With kind remembrance to Mr Orrinsmith. | Believe me Yours truly Philip Webb. WMG J552

1 Elder sister of CF and KF. See Vol. I, Letter 93. The Orrinsmiths lived in Christ Church Road, Hampstead. 2 The ‘scheme’ was the design of a cottage at Chorley Wood, Hertfordshire, for Lucy Orrinsmith’s daughter, Ruth (1873–1954) and her husband, the young architect Charles Evelyn Simmons. ‘As Charles, aged only 21, was still relatively inexperienced, his mother-in-law asked Jack – probably via Philip Webb – to advise and oversee much of the detail.’ GWJ’s fee was £38. Gaimster, p. 43. 3 This reference is not to his own set of presentation Kelmscott Press volumes (soon to be given to Trinity College, Cambridge), but to those given by WM to KF. 4 He means WM and EBJ. For the Kelmscott Chaucer, see Vol. II, Letter 490, note 2.

682 • To George Washington Jack, 22 May 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 22 May 1900 Dear Jack Conning over the Kelmscott Cottage work this morning I bethought me to send you a veritable sliver of the Thames valley or Tainton stone (so called) of Oolite stone – that is, egg-form.1 If you look at this through your lens, the character of the stone will be clear to you, and good to compare with any other of the ashlar stone Mr Bowley may tell you of. This sample came from Farmington – near Northleach (Gloucestershire) about 12 miles, as the crow flies, from Lechlade. This is a good example of the Thames valley Oolite. It was got by Charles Faulkner, when, as Bursar of University College, he was mending the college walls. It is quite possible Mr Bowley will know of a quarry nearer to Kelmscott, and if so – and from any quarry – please to bring me such a sample as I now send you. Yours truly | Philip Webb. 94

1899–1902

We had a heavenly soft S.W rain in the early hours of the morning. V&A, AAD

1 ‘It was very common for each village to have . . . its own quarry. Some, such as Headington, became famous in their own right and exported stone throughout the land, and was in use from early medieval times right through to the mid-19th century and was used extensively by the Oxford colleges. Also well known is Tainton stone, but Burford, Stow, Clipsham, Bladon, Long Hanborough all have local quarries in the surrounding villages.’ Martin Hall, ‘The Care and Maintenance of Cotswold Stone’, http://www.projectbook.co.uk/article_153.html [accessed 26 November 2014].

683 • To William Weir, 25 May 1900 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 25 May. 1900 Eglwys Brewis My dear Weir. Your drawings you sent me yesterday, are in every way excellent; and an unusually large Antiscrape Committee last evening were much taken with them, as shewing with unusual clearness the state of the fabric; and I was instructed to consult with you as to the best way of setting about securing the walls from further disintegration. Certainly the walls are in a poor way, but to my mind they are by no means impracticable to be dealt with in careful and methodical ways. I have numbered your tracing I, II & III in red: No 1 shewing the chancel arch wall looked at from the nave, and I begin with this. Kindly understand that all the things I suggest are merely what the Committee wd consider necessary to say in consultation with their architect – you; and that anything which to you which may seem, from your position on the ground, to be impracticable, will you let the Comme know, either through me, or direct to the secretary as may seem best to you. I will figure the different points on your tracings in small characters in red chalk. To begin, at (a) – the wall on this South side of it is in a bad state as the crack evidently runs all the way up in a pretty continuous line, making the S.E aisle of nave very weak. I presume you have good strong shoring on the outside of it? Now at (a) would be a good place to begin, by opening up here about 9” above floor line a sufficient hole wide enough to get the shoulders in, then removing the stones downward, in thickness of wall, to see what is the state of solidity of walling down towards the foundation, then try a bucket of water poured in, and if it runs down freely, make some Aberthaw lime concrete1 (6 and 1) and fill the hole up to the bottom of the crack at (a) pressing the concrete into the walling right and left. When this concrete has set sufficiently I would lay a double course of 95

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

flat stones (or hard bricks if you can get them as cheaply as stone) in Portland cement and sand (8 & 1), this will stop all water from workg down from above running and through it. I wd then follow this crack upwards by pulling out fresh walling and building up a fender, as it were, If you go through the wall there would be 2 ‘fenders’, some 12” or 18” high, and filling in with rubble concrete – (that is, mixed rubble stones & gravel with sand, such as you get out of the holes) – to the top of the ‘fender’ as before, and go on till you get – say – to the level of the screen wall top, under chancel arch, when it would be well to put in another 2 course bond of flat stones in cement at (b). Perhaps then you could go a bit higher to the bottom of inscription panel, and put in another intercepting horizontal course as before. When this has well set, you might make another hole at (c) just above the painted panel, and then I think you might grout with liquid cement & sand which might (but of this you will judge) run down and consolidate the cracks in walling behind the inscription panel. If this succeeded, you might put an intercepting bond course as before at (c). If the grout will not run freely, I wd advise getting at the inside of the wall behind the inscription from the chancel side. In any case I think you would find it best to work from both sides of the wall – that is on the E. & W sides on occasion. In order to let the new filling-in with old rubble, &c, set periodically, I would go on with the crack (d) on the N. side of Chancel arch, backwards & forwards, (that is, till the one is set you go to the other) and if necessary for letting the work set, keep 3 or 4 places going in different pieces of walling, more or less at the same time, wherever you may decide to work in any part of the building. Now you may say on reading this long story, ‘O, bother, the Committee is teaching its son how to suck eggs’; therefore I must reiterate, that we only suggest processes, for I am sure the Comme rely on your safe judgment, and you will smilingly put up with the old fogy’s ways, wh’ are proper to the absurdity of old age! You will have noted, that I say Aberthaw lime concrete. It is because there being comparatively little weight to carry, and as that lime is a strong one, it wd be needless to use the more costly cement – and the latter is always more risky to use. Wherever intercepting courses come, and pinning up, I wd use cement. Of course you will provide struts to prop and stay all walling where you make holes. There is an important part to be attended to (e-e) – here, I think you should make one hole at a time – say first at spg of chancel arch – let the new intercepting course and filling-in set, and make the other hole, and meet the intercepting course & continue it where I put the dotted red line, under e-e. When you have lifted down the circular ornamental inscription, and the intercepting course at e-e has well set, you will be able to clear out the opening of rood loft doorway (strutting well the while) and get at that bad place which you mark (B), first making secure the present stone propping jamb (C), then concrete grouting, &c, as before; and probably getting 2 interceptor bond-courses at (f and g). You would want considerable propping at the big hole (B), and perhaps you could build thin toothed props in the interior of wall in cement to sustain the weight over, and fill in round these props with concrete? (D. Blow, 96

1899–1902

on my suggestion, has used these built props with much success at Clare.)2 Fortunately you can get at the bad place (B) from the loft door way & W & E sides of wall – and if the work is done piece-meal, there would be small risk of slipping. As you make good and fill-in from (e-e) and upwards, making strong abutment against thrust of Chl arch, I would fill in strongly with intercepting courses, and rubble concrete ¾rs of the rood loft doorway, just from the east side shewing the return of door rebate – see marginal sketch – and thus secure the work of new filling at (B), and after the filling up of this loft opening to the level of its archspring, I think it would be well to get a new oak tie beam across nave roof on the top of the new wall plates, against the walling face, which would lay hold of these plates on N & S walls (if the plates ran on nearly through the Chl arch wall) and tie all this gable wall together – say that the tie beam was 6”x12” set on edge. The filling up of doorway on the west side – flush, would greatly strengthen the N. side of gable. All the foregoing is merely suggestion for your judgment, but your capital drawings bring the thing so closely before me, that I hope you will not tell our Committee of this terrible long yarn of an old man! At all events I spare you any more on this point till I learn how you have borne with my dotage – or, perhaps, I may see you, and talk these suggested points over together. I should delight in fighting these matters out with you in the church, but I am altogether in a state of flux here – having tiresome and importunate works to finish, and I ought, a month ago, to have got to the Cotswolds a-seeking for a new home – or I shall be stranded in very awkward ways. If you have not got too far with the new wooden window frames of N. Chancel wall we would suggest that they be treated as much as possible in a non domestic fashion, and in yet the simplest form. Under the wall plate there would have to be an internal lintel, or lintels not less than 6” deep, and on the outside a lintel of 6” just over the head of new window frame (all lintels if possible of old oak, from some pulled down building, if quite sound). The arrangement somewhat as given in marginal sketch, [sketch] subject to your judgment – as to saddle bars, casements &c – hereafter – but I pull up now, (for which you may be thankful), as there is other work I must do today. Yrs Ph. W. [pencil] Note I return your tracings, so that if you should have questions or suggestion to ask or make, you could send them back to re-inform me. SPAB W-W 26

1 Aberthaw blue lias limestone was the raw product deployed at the coastal Aberthaw Lime Works in the Vale of Glamorgan, which opened in 1888. 2 See Vol. II, Letter 608.

97

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

684 • To Sydney Cockerell, 28 May 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 May 1900 To the Incorrigible, or, if you would prefer your own cognomen in old French, “Intreferir,” which, in horsecouper’s1 slang is “screw”, let it be so. Dear Cockerell.2 ‘Three Bridges’! As if one was not enough for my old hinder-end. Well as – say – a pis-aller,3 Wilfrid Blunt’s magnanimity should not at once be ‘blocked’ – like a bill in Parliament; if I do not succeed on the Cotswolds it would be well to go and see ‘Caxtons’. Of course it would be considerably bigger than I shd want, and it may be squadrons of stockbrokers would swarm & disperse morning & evening hard by, and my ethical sense would become Blunted.4 Nevertheless, I shall expect to see you the first time you are in this way – that is, in the way of good nature, wh’ makes my constant use of ‘thank you’, rather trying – perhaps to both? Yours truly | Philip Webb. I got home all right on Sat: (at 10.45) and in bed just before 2. am, the usual time on Saturdays.5 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/124

1 A horse dealer. 2 On 27 May, SCC wrote from Newbuildings Place: ‘Near Three Bridges there is a hill, and on that hill there is a cottage, and in front of that cottage there is a Saxon Church & a forest where a dragon was killed. Lilies of the valley grow where his blood ran, & nowhere else. The cottage is an old fashioned thing without a bathroom or even a gasometer, but it could be made very comfortable, and the position is reputed the healthiest in the district. Mr Blunt has kept it for himself of late, but he almost never goes there, & would be proud if you would occupy it & roam over his portion of Worth Forest – item, behind the cottage are apple trees, & behind the apple trees grassland in which Arab horses abound. Upon my word I think you might do worse – though the disadvantage of being near enough to town for Lethaby & me & my future pardner [sic] to swoop down upon you on a Sunday will have to be reckoned with – & of course there are more inhabitants than hereabouts. . . . The cottage is called Caxtons, a name of good omen for a friend of the Kelmscott Press.’ V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/132. 3 A lesser evil (Fr); presumably meant here in the sense of ‘having to make do’ with a second choice. 4 ‘Caxtons is not too big. It may be too small; but I should call it exactly the right size. It would need a little tinkering to make it draught-tight in the winter. The garden is small, but you would have to use Worth Forest for your garden. Can we not drag Lethaby there some afternoon soon, & see the Saxon Church, which though much restored is still beautiful?’ SCC to PSW, 29 May 1900, BL Add 52760, f 43. 5 PSW and SCC had gone together to Newbuildings Place on 26 May (PSW’s first visit there).

98

1899–1902

685 • To Sydney Cockerell, 31 May 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 31 May 1900 My dear Cockerell1 I believe both the words of your expression, and the motive of them, were honest – and one has not time on the earth but to accept what one believes. Therefore, your singularly sweet letter is as honey to one who tries to guard himself against falsity with a mailed covering of good-humoured doubt. This ordinary defence you have passed through in your kindness, and I accept the loveliness of love fearlessly when – happily – it crosses my way; which gate of passage through life has its sadness at times – from the contrary of love besetting the road. How can I be unhappy when trustfulness in my life has met truth by the way from those whom you too have known? I can talk of the rest of your good telling; this counterpart had to be written. Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. t I took the Hare to Murcott (6 Endell S Long Acre – Eastside)2 and he will do what is wanted, and have it in his shop when done, for you to see.3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/126

1 SCC had been given a loving-cup by PSW, which had made him melancholy, ‘since it means that you are soon to leave us behind in London, – and it is only by remembering that it is a token of your friendship that I can drive away heavy thoughts. We all long to think of you as renewing your strength on some country hillside, but you little know how shipwrecked we shall feel when we see your place at Gatti’s empty. . . . This loving cup will always be one of my chief treasures. While we are both alive it shall never be used without a silent prayer for your good health – and if I survive you (who can tell?) it shall be emptied lovingly in your memory and in that of the noble & strenuous brotherhood which you now represent in our eyes. What that brotherhood has done in the world, some of us, as being detached from it, can perhaps discern more clearly than you, who are blind to the merit of other things besides beast cartoons. We are not blind, nor unmindful of our indebtedness in the past & in the present.’ SCC to PSW, 30 May 1900, V&A, NAL MSL/ 1958/688/125. 2 For the picture framer, Henry Murcott, see Vol. II, Letter 374, note 7. 3 ‘Alas, the drawing of the hare is already disposed of, along with the three other finished drawings for the Ionides Tapestry. Mr Webb entrusted them to me, & I saw at once that it would be impossible to sell them to anyone he knew, as he would suspect friendship to be the motive for the purchase – so after approaching two other people in vain, I offered them to Mr Hodson who at once bought them. I must say also that I think it important that they should be kept together & that but for this & the other reasons above stated I should have bought one of them myself – for they are of course splendid things.’ SCC to JM, 25 July 1900, BL Add 52738, f. 111.

99

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

686 • To Sydney Cockerell, 4 June 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 4 June 1900 Dear Cockerell Your letter of Saturday was good reading for me, and the more so at this time of transition, when shoulder to shoulder of living friends is the best of all medicine to minds. Wilfrid Blunt’s few words about ‘Caxtons’ is cheering, for Sapperton may not be a possible retreat. At this time – when a decision must be come to – such a friendly offer as his has double value.1 It would be lucky for Mrs Morris and myself if you go to Kelmscott in this week, for the Lechlade builder – who has taken time in making his estimate for the Cottages, has now sent it in. It is altogether disappointing; so much so, that till I have outside assistance in checking his and my calculations the ‘tender’ cannot be explained to Mrs Morris. As it now stands, Bowley’s offer could not be accepted. At present, I think he may have made gross mistakes; but from general examination I am inclined to believe he has put up the prices on all the many items, which is not an uncommon trick with builders who are not hard up for work to do. When Jack went through the points with Bowley at Lechlade, on 23rd & 24th May, he spoke very fairly, and shewed Jack drawings and estimates of cottages he was doing for Buscott [sic] Park,2 of the same size as mine but with more shew – which promised well for Mrs Morris. His estimate bears no relation to his former shewing. Jack comes down here to work tomorrow, and my ordinary “Quantities” surveyor is to be here,3 and the three of us will go carefully into the calculations: after which I can safely write to Mrs Morris, and send Jack again to Lechlade to tackle Bowley. You will readily understand my position in the matter: 1. my strong disinclination to build a modern thing in Kelmscott: 2. my equally strong wish to help Mrs Morris in her very natural desire to build: 3. my own necessary change of life at this time: 4, Jack’s getting on to his own business legs – and only partly available for any of my last building work: 5, my own spirits not having much spring in them. You may say (though that is not likely) “what has all this to do with me”? which would not be unreasonable on your part. In any case this Bowley obstruction must incur further loss of time; and if you go to Kelmscott, the information given above would be a base on which you could talk to Mrs Morris, and gather the feeling before I write directly to her as to the outcome with Bowley. I do not expect you to write an answer to all this, but if you are this way soon, perhaps you could look in upon me. (by the way, do we not meet at Ellis’s lunch, 1. oc on Wednesday?)4 You see, I must keep appointment with the Pinbury Colony, as they are holding the Sapperton Cottage in hand till I have seen it: I go there on Thursday for 5 or 6 days – as may be. 100

1899–1902

Pardon this intolerably long and dull letter from | Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/127

1 ‘Blunt writes “I was over at Caxton’s today and sincerely hope we may house Webb in it. I find it stands nearly 400 feet about the Sea”. 400 is not 550, but it is probably high enough to be healthy.’ SCC to PSW, 2 June 1900, BL Add 52760, f 44. 2 Buscot Park, the late eighteenth-century country house near Faringdon in Oxfordshire, now a National Trust property. In 1887 it had been bought by the financier and MP for West Staffordshire, Alexander Henderson (1850–1934), later Lord Faringdon. 3 The surveyor, James Kennedy, had a long professional association with PSW. He was involved, for example, in the work for Brampton church in 1879. 4 ‘Had lunch with Philip Webb & F.S. Ellis (invited by the latter) at the Author’s Club. Very good talk.’ CD, 6 June 1900.

687 • To Jane Morris, 6 June 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 6. June 1900 My dear Janey I have been obliged to let you ‘severely alone’ during the negociation with Bowley. He took quite enough time in making his estimate to be sure of his ground, but having sent it to me I find it quite at variance with what Mr Jack learned from him at Lechlade. That seemed all clear & above board, for he was quite open in the matter, which often is not the case when a builder is face to face with an architect. As a rule, with assistants, the builders are more communicative. Certain it is that Jack brought me a satisfactory acct of Bowley’s probable estimate, but the actual thing is out of all reason. To check my own calculations and point of view, I got my usual surveyor to go over Bowley’s estimate, item by item, to find out where the discrepancy lay, and this is being done, and afterwards I must send Jack down to have another explanation, and if possible before I personally see Bowley. I have unfortunately (in one way) to go to Cirencester tomorrow, to see a cottage near there which friends Gimson & Barnsley have found, and are holding till I have examined it. It may be 5 or 6 days before I can come to a decision as to the wisdom of taking it for life! If things go fairly well, I propose coming from there to Cirencester, thence by fly to Fairford, and so on to you. I shall write from Sapperton, (the village hard by the Gimsons) where I shall lodge for the time at a wheelwrights, as to what may occur, and of my movements towards Kelmscott. As nothing, as yet, has been said to put Bowley out, it may be he will see due reason for our not accepting his first estimate (which is an impossible one) as it now stands – even after allowing for the continuous rise in all building prices at the present time. I knew that your cottages must cost more in proportion to such 101

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

as Bowley builds for the Buscot landlord,1 and I allowed for that; and though your cottages are simpler than his, my work is to be more substantially built. The points due to Kelmscott, and our feeling for the place, are – simplicity, and soundness of work; and more or less that it should follow the traditional style and sweet gentleness of the old buildings. Therefore, you see, I have to leave you for a week in a further state of doubt as to what can be done with Bowley. Mr Jack worked here yesterday and to-day. The placing the cottages on the site will be all right as I had arranged, (this in answer to your note to Mr Jack) for we have to abide by the figured dimensions on the deed of conveyance of the ground, & which I gave to Mr Fletcher. You will guess that I am in a bit of a pother2; with settling for good and all my professional work; (quite time as far as health is concerned) the uprooting from Gray’s Inn, and the striving that I may not insult the beauty of Kelmscott; nor forget for a moment the long enduring kindness you have shewn towards your affectionate friend, Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 161

1 For Alexander Henderson, see previous letter, note 2. 2 Fuss, or fluster.

688 • To George Washington Jack, 8 June 1900 c/o Mr Richard Harrison | Sapperton | by Cirencester. Friday 8 June 1900. My dear Jack Here, in this beautiful head water of Stroud valley, there is a double cottage, which possibly may be had, but the outlook is very doubtful, as they would want much repair, and contrivance, to be habitable, and that would take more money I feel sure than would reasonably be employed on them. The chief drawback as a house (when made in to one) to live in, is, that the height of one cottage on the ground floor 6’ 9”, and the other 6’ 3”, and both of them are in poor condition. It will be Monday before I can learn if even they are to be had at all. If by this time you have seen Kennedy and learned what he has made out of the prices, &c, of Bowley’s estimate, I should be glad if you could make an appointment to go again to Lechlade and ‘targe him tightly’1 on the subject of the extravagance of the tender. Perhaps Kennedy may have discerned blunders as well as too high prices, and if so that would add considerably to the strength of your arguments. Therefore it would be important that you should arrange to see Bowley again as soon as possible, for the year is drawing on to that unhappy time of ‘too late’. 102

1899–1902

I learn there is a daily omnibus from Cirencester to Fairford,2 so that I shall go to Kelmscott by that way, as on Tuesday or Wednesday, and if I could see him after you it would be an advantage. The Barnsleys and Gimson here know what the rise in prices means, but they say – in spite of that – Bowley’s estimate is absurd. The air is wonderfully fresh and stimulating here, and it is acting on me like strong physic, & with much the same effect. Yours truly | Philip Webb. The utter badness of this ink is dead against inditing, writing & spelling. V&A, AAD

1 Yet another phrase which PSW picked up from his reading of Walter Scott, though employed slightly differently. PSW’s meaning clearly points to a close cross-examination, whereas Scott’s use implies a persistent overseeing: a character in Waverley (1814) mounts guard over a tailor ‘and, as he expressed himself, “targed him tightly” till the finishing of the job’ (ch 42). 2 A distance by road of about nine miles.

689 • To George Washington Jack, 11 June 1900 Pencil c/o Mr Richard Harrison. | Sapperton – by Cirencester. 11. June 1900 My dear Jack. I must do this in pencil, for the ink is like black ‘tinned mild’. Thank you kindly for your clearly put letter. The facts leave me in doubt of course; but I rather look that Bowley will give you an appointment early in this week, so that you may make it clear to him from the errors, &c, it is no wonder that we are shy of his estimate. To Gimson & Barnsley, here, who work in stone and oak of the best, and in no way skimped, the Bowley estimate is out of all conscience. Even here the great rise in prices are is of the same proportionate rate, and labour hard to come by. If you see Bowley, try & get from him, if we could agree to a fair estimate, whether he would really like to do the work? for I fancy that may be where the shoe pinches? Hope Franklin will set about the work at ‘Beechwood’ at once, for H.S.W. is anxious to have the house to get into as soon as may be.1 Now that you are free of the torment Ph. W. I shd be glad to think your own particular businesses are not so vicious to you as mine are to me? This place is a wonderful Earthly Paradise, tempered with the influx of corrugated tin-pot defilement. The pleasantest cottages will have a huge lean to at the end or back destroying the graces of earth & heaven, which the Sunday’s petition in the church does not wipe away the wickedness thereof. 103

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

As yet I have found nothing for housing my head here – the expected cottage being no go at all, at all. I am just starting with Barnsley for a six mile walk in another direction of a new track. Kindly give me more business news as early as you may, so that I may write to Mrs Morris. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 On retiring from medical practice, Harry Webb moved with his sister, Caroline, from Welwyn to ‘Beechwood’ in Winchester. PSW arranged for the necessary alterations to be made to the house, using the Southampton firm, Franklin & Son, which he had employed at Warrens House. GWJ was assigned to oversee the project. See Vol. IV, Letter 937.

690 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 12 June 1900 Pencil Ph: Webb. | c/o Mr Richard Harrison | Sapperton. | by Cirencester. 12 June (?) 1900. rs Dear M Flower Forgive the pencil writing – for the ink here is mere black jelly – and I can only grapple with it on the envelope – for – see, my hand shakes from yesterday’s debauch in the free air, sunshine, and thunderstorms; and a two legged jaunt from breakfast to supper time. Consider the transformation, for a citizen of the “Great Wen”,1 suddenly transferred from Hell’s mouth to the gates of Paradise, which latter are not as yet open to your correspondent. When passing through Cirencester last Thursday on my way here, I stopped at Messrs Whatley & Cos offices in Castle Street, and gave them your memorandum as to a house for your need – as you desired me to do, and they promised to write to you if they found such a place in the neighbourhood; and I am hoping they may have been able to do so, for I feel sure you wd feel with me that the Cotswolds, in these decadent days, would be a haven of beauty to you for a while.2 I am writing this scrawl in a spare corner of the wheelwright’s mansion – 12 feet by 8, with a box taken out of that area in order to get me into it. Item, 3 large pieces of furniture – 2 smaller, and every available ledge filled with nick-nacks close-crowded; so there must be no reckless sneezing to bring down an avalanche of inutilities! [sic] My singularly kind friends, a mile & a half away, are leaving no stone unturned, so as to find for me (if possible) a refuge for the rest of my life in this really lovely countryside. In our long trudge of 14 miles yesterday, we came across a place which looked promising, but the performing is very doubtful. It is without a lawful tenant just 104

1899–1902

now, only a country losel3 has ‘squatted’ in it for a while – and its overgrown neglectedness, and the general disrepair of the cottage wd have frightened any but your friend’s experience as to how such a beautiful and refined nook could be recovered to order & sweetness. If it should ever be possible for me to offer a home to your life-perplexed old servant, I shd take care she should not see it till transformation had taken the place of misrule.4 I am waiting to hear from Mr Jack as to what my next movement will be, but I suspect it will result in my moving to Lechlade on Thursday, on the way to “Mrs William Morris, Kelmscott Manor by Lechlade” – so that if you wished to send me a word, that wd be my address till Saturday – perhaps? but nothing is certain in this time of my wandering. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Kindly forgive this ragged note; written under ‘cabined cribbed & confined’ circumstances,5 plus the long drawn exercise in the free air of yesterday. BL Add 45355, ff. 12–13

1 William Cobbett coined the term in 1830 to denote London, ‘this smoking and stinking Wen’ (a wen being a disfiguring cyst). Rural Rides (London: Everyman edition, Dent, 1912, 2 vols), II, p. 18. 2 Whatley and Co. were land agents, and PSW had undertaken on Elizabeth Flower’s behalf to see whether they might have a suitable Cotswold lodging for the late summer. 3 ‘A profligate, rake or scoundrel’ (OED). 4 The first mention of Margaret Dickinson, who would be PSW’s housekeeper in Sussex during the whole of his retirement, and was with him when he died. 5 ‘But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears.’ Macbeth, III. iv. 23–4.

691 • To George Washington Jack, 13 June 1900 Pencil c/o Mr Richard Harrison | Sapperton by Cirencester 13 June 1900 My dear Jack I expected your letter of the 12th which reached me here all right this morning, for which I thank you; as your care in this Kelmscott matter has done me yeoman’s service.1 It seemed to me much better that I shd not meddle with Bowley till you had personally gone into the estimates with him – and as I could say nothing to Mrs Morris before this preparation for her consideration, I had better keep away; and the more so as there is just a possibility of a cottage being got hold of within a mile & a half of Pinbury (Gimson cum Barnsley’s place) which is 600 ft above sea level, (an important item) I have been turning this over in my mind. The air on the 105

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

higher ground is so sweet and invigorating, that on Monday I walked 14 miles in it, and was not foredone at bed time. Your useful letter and “notes” will I think allow of coming to some kind of reasonable terms with Bowley, and then clearly explaining to Mrs Morris our position, and getting her to tell me frankly what she wishes to, and can do wisely. Of course I knew our Cottages must cost more, in proportion, than Bowley’s; and your notes explain the why, so far, that, in my interview with Bowley, I can approach him with some valid reasons for meeting us – and this wd be the more likely as he does not seem to have wished a putting us off with a dummy estimate. I think therefore of leaving here on Friday morning & getting to Lechlade as early as may be; and seeing Bowley, and coming to general terms: perhaps, then, getting him to meet me at Kelmscott on Sat: or Monday, after I have explained things to Mrs Morris? All this has – prospectively – been made possible by your management of the times & opportunities. I write both to Bowley and Mrs Morris by this post, accordingly.2 The 30,000 cube feet of Bowley’s cottages, and 36,000 of ours, is an invaluable point on which to go, and terms may I think be come to for Mrs Morris to decide upon without her being pressed by me to make up her mind; my cue being merely to advise her. Here I am, in the heart of stone wall cottage building; with oak and larch timber of the best kind, with hills galore for hauling over, and yet the work is cheaper than Bowley’s. The friends here are not only helpful with their various country building knowledge, but they are extraordinarily kind and sympathetic. In spite of the necessary anxieties of my position at the fag end of life, I am braced up with the healthiest of fresh air, and simple food in plenty, so that my legs are thinking of getting a new pair of bellows to work with, and ‘Dick Harrison’3 could almost put them on for me. What thunderstorms we had yesterday rolling over the hills & threading the valleys; lighting up the crests, and swashing down the valleys with deluges of longed-for rain. This morning is sober and fresh after the atmospheric drunken fit. I will write again from Kelmscott, but will knock off now with hearty thanks from | Yours very truly | Philip Webb. I may have left here on Friday before the post would come in. V&A, AAD

1 The term ‘yeoman’s service’ suggests good and efficient service, as given by a servant to his squire. 2 ‘The information Jack has given me allows – now – for my personal dealing with Mr Bowley, having kept myself in the back-ground as a Jorkins – or thunderous Jove – till the exact moment was at hand. Still, I must with you keep further silence till I have dealt with Bowley face to face; after which, and at Kelmscott, I can put the whole case before you with clear intonation and befitting gesture.’ PSW to JM, 13 June 1900, BL Add 45342, ff. 162–3. Jorkins is the silent partner in the

106

1899–1902 firm Spenlow and Jorkins, in David Copperfield, someone whom Spenlow suggests inhibits his own instinctively generous nature, as David eventually realises. ‘I found out afterwards that [Jorkins] was a mild man of a heavy temperament, whose place in the business was to keep himself in the background, and be constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men.’ (ch 23). 3 PSW’s wheelwright host.

692 • To Sydney Cockerell, 17 June 1900 Kelmscott Manor. Sunday 17 June (I think!) 1900 My dear Cockerell To you, the aptest in doing the right thing at the best time, from me – inaptissimus – comes sincere thanks for your letter of the 14th fm here – (see how my tea drunken hand shakes) where I set foot on Friday about 8.30. p.m; having come down in a right line from the Cotswolds by various means of delivery. The scruff of my neck is still open to your hand; for there is no certainty of a steading in the Cotswolds for my bewildered feet and wits – only a possibility. Your good thoughtfulness on my behalf may now – perhaps – have a chance by the Saxon Ch’ in the forest.1 Should you be writing to ‘Newbuildings Place’ – kindly add my thanks in sincerity – to Lady Anne for her graceful invitation to a dance in the Caxtonian woodland.2 O, Lord, when will my worn soul settle down in some place to patch itself up for the final shuffling of the coil? All yesterday I was Kelmscott cottage-driving, with Mrs Morris first, & builder Bowley afterwards. On my way down from Cirencester a stop was made at Lechlade for a preliminary skirtmish with the busy-B - and yesterdy I walked to Buscot & on to Lechlade and tackled him again, finally I hope: but of this more anon with you. Jack has been good in forwarding this business. I do not think the ‘old man’ would have done the E.P. so well if he had not had the key of the gate of this Paradise, for a veritable P. it is, and the good souls here are kinder than ever to me. May ‘the eternal verities’ – as Carlyle called the spiritual heights – be good to them. Of the friend-folk at Pinbury, I can but thank them and my stars for wholesome attentions paid to me; from the men women & children there – not to speak of the lovers, who – necessarily – were neither fish flesh fowl nor good red herring in the run of kindness.3 Still, Gimson, when momentarily released from the hooks of steel, was all beneficent.4 Your inclosed newspapers cuttings gave me a grin of satisfaction; the Ruskin extract being so crushing in its iron-shod boot-heel of rhetoric – on the back of the Eastlakian worrrm. Your efforts will surely have some effect on the public, though time is almost at the nineth [sic] hour of our forefathers’ works.5 The infernal worm has been hard at it in the Cotswolds.6 By the way – I saw a Saxon Ch’ too, at Bisley – very characteristic.7 I hope to get to Gray’s Inn on Monday night (?)8 Your still hand-shaky friend | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/128 107

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 See above, Letter 684. 2 ‘Lady Anne writes “That reminds me I wish Mr Philip Webb would have the Caxton cottage but I fear he won’t. It would add a new and very delightful interest to life in England if he could be persuaded to inhabit it. My only anxiety is lest he should be disappointed”. If you leave Sapperton without settling anything, we must run down to Worth together some evening. The church will at any rate be worth the journey.’ SCC to PSW, 14 June 1900, BL Add 52760, f. 46. 3 The proverb ‘neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring’ implies something covering all eventualities – fish was traditionally eaten by the clergy, meat by the wealthy, and smoked herring by the poor. Used here by PSW, the context seems to imply ‘neither one thing nor the other’. 4 Ernest Gimson married Emily Ann Thompson in 1900, hence this rather acid reference to his new state. 5 ‘I enclose Eastlakeries. I haven’t replied again, as I thought it not worthwhile.’ SCC to PSW, 14 June 1900. A recent exchange of correspondence in The Times between Charles Eastlake and SCC had been prompted by Eastlake’s letter of 26 April, praising the restoration of Santa Maria della Spina, in Pisa, which had been taken down and rebuilt at a higher level, in order to protect it from damp: ‘every fragment of the old carved work has been preserved and built in where it should be, while such small features as had entirely perished have been reproduced with an accuracy which should satisfy the most fastidious antiquary’. SCC’s response on 28 May praised the conservatism of the kind of preservation work being overseen by GBO, in contrast with the ‘flayed and renovated’ Pisan church, whilst the remainder of his letter consists of a long extract by JR (Fors Clavigera), who had witnessed part of the restoration work in progress in August 1872 and deplored it. Eastlake’s riposte on 2 June reminded readers of his own credentials as author of History of the Gothic Revival, and attempted to take JR to task, as one whose enthusiasm ‘often tempted him into hyperbole’. SCC’s own brief rejoinder (8 June) described the church as having ‘all the appearance of a new building’, and that ‘a well-known architect told me the other day that the exterior was on this account so painful to him that he had not the heart to go inside’. A final quotation from JR clinches his objection. ‘Nominal restoration . . . has hopelessly destroyed what time, and storm, and anarchy, and impiety had spared’ (Seven Lamps of Architecture). See also Vol. I, Letter 34. 6 A criticism of restoration work, of course. 7 The parish church of All Saints, Bisley, in Gloucestershire. 8 ‘Mr. Webb has just left looking many months younger and better for his week in the country. I hope everything for him when he is once settled away from bustle and worry.’ JM to SCC, 18 June 1900, CLWM.

693 • To George Washington Jack, 17 June 1900 Kelmscott Manor. | Lechlade Sunday 17 (?) June 1900. My dear Jack. I think your important letter of the 10 9th got an answer from me: the one with the table of cottage facts in it. Truth to tell, as usual, I have been more or less drunken with country air, inspired by the pump suction of much walking, which makes my handwriting very shaky. I had your June 11 letter written in Bowley’s office, and the 3 letters following, written on the 12th. The one with the comparative tables of the Shillingford1 & Kelmscott cottages being peculiarly helpful in my dealings with Bowley. 108

1899–1902

I got to him at Lechlade abt 6.30 on Friday evening and had my first skirmish. He then sent me on here in his trap. On Sat: morning I opened out quietly & carefully with Mrs Morris, explaining our whole position – leaving her to judge of the situation; at which time I got from her an ultimatum with which to tackle Bowley in the afternoon. After dinner I walked to Buscot to see the cottages he had built there, and went in to one of them – which was helpful. ’Twas a longish walk, as the recent grass of the meadows wd have drenched my legs in ten minutes. This wd have been the shorter way. I then went on to Lechlade by appointment, and had a good go at him, after getting a rather retracting letter he sent to me here in the morning. He is a stiffish customer, and not free from doggedness – not a bad fellow – I fancy – but fully capable of taking good care of himself. As you must well know I am apt to be a soft sort of chap, till the time comes for hardening. Had it not been for the aforesaid ‘ultimatum’, some more time would have been lost; as it was, I kept myself in hand, trying hard not to drop between the 2 stools and lose him altogether. It has resulted in this; that we are to make, on my return to Gray’s Inn, some reductions where possible, and he will agree to do the cottages and their attachments for £900. He wd not budge from that, and I hope he will not shake himself free from that decision, or poor Mrs Morris wd be in queer St. I hope to be back in Gray’s Inn tomorrow (Monday) at some time, and I should like to see you there on Tuesday morning. There seems to be a way of getting letters forwarded to Lechlade this afternoon, for there is no postal going from here on Sunday. I have your last letter of the 15th from Highgate, telling of ‘Beechwood’ – and I hope Franklin will really begin tomorrow. There is neither “bit biggin – butt & ben”2 for me as yet in the Cotswolds, though there is just a chance one may be come at later on, though the cottage – which I saw – is in itself calling for repair & some little more convenience – however, the getting is very problematical. Ha! ha! ha! the Orrinsmith cottage;3 you are ‘in for a penny – in for a pound’ of wrangling, and I agree with your sitting on a stump and being as sarcastic as a Raven sitting for his portrait. Therefore, let us say Tuesday for our meeting when I can tell the longer story bolstered up with travellers lies. I thank you much – indeed, for your helpfulness in the Cottages matter here, & for all other of your mercies, and am truly yours | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Shillingford (the subject of GPB’s watercolour: see above, Letter 673, note 2) is a hamlet on the north bank of the Thames in south Oxfordshire. 2 ‘For awa’ in auld Scotland, / There stands a wee biggin, / It’s dear tae my hert frae the doorstep, / Clear up tae the riggin. / It’s a wee auld fashioned shielan, / A butt an a ben’ (Traditional Scots). 3 See above, Letter 681, note 2.

109

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

694 • To Joseph Bowley and Son, 19 June 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 19 June 1900 rs To/ Mess Joseph Bowley and Son | Lechlade Mrs Morris’ Cottages for Kelmscott Dear Sir. I was both surprised and much disappointed on receipt of your letter of yesterday’s date – returning as it does to points and total of the estimate after we had come to practical terms. With the care exercised in putting the case before Mrs Morris, after consultations with you, that your first impossible estimate of £1214.1.10 should not come before her consideration; she was willing on my recommendation to advance from £850 to £900 – with reductions to be made in the work itself; I really do not know how to put the case before her again. Being – as I am – quite sure that £900 is a high price for the work, after making the aforesaid reductions [2 or 3 words obliterated ] I had agreed to in various items, it is impossible for me, in common fairness to my client, to advise her to spend more than would be equitable. I see nothing before me at present but the loss of the building season, and the probability of the cottages not being built at all; which would be a grievous vexation to Mrs Morris. Unless, therefore, you can abide by the last terms we had come to, and write me word to that effect, I must ask you to send me back the drawings, specification, and quantities – with all the other papers Mr Jack left with you, so that I may consider my position in the matter as Mrs Morris’ architect. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

695 • To Lady Anne Blunt, 21 June 1900 Draft 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn. Lon: 21 June 1900 To/ Lady Anne Bunt Dear Lady Anne. Sydney Cockerell sent me a very graceful message from you extracted from a letter of yours to him.1 This I prized, and now I have your kind the invitation to the ‘Arab’ sale on the 7th July.2 What can I worthily say to such unmerited kindness? in addition to which and we all know that speech is easier than doing, to most people! to a of us. 110

1899–1902

Cockerell – (who is angelic in guiding my steps in the right better way) made me promise not to settle with anything on the Cotswolds without first seeing ‘Caxtons’; so that therefore, as soon as he returns from Germany, I must be standing at his orders, or worse will come of it! It must also be confessed that I could almost weep with you at the dispersal of the Arab horses, who petted me when I was at New Buildings Place, so that, with your consent, I wd prefer to take Caxtons and a further another look at the animals quietly on an early afternoon after Cockerell’s return, which, surely, wd be before the 7th of next month – but this, of course wd must depend on your & Mr Blunt’s convenience, and condonation of my sentimentality. My visit to the Cotswolds last week was not quite altogether successful though the door of the wolds was not quite shut in my face as to finding a cottage somewhere there. No answer to this note wd be necessary, unless the proposal here made did wd not fall-in with your arrangements – or particular wish. Yours sincerely | Ph: W. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 692, note 2. 2 No doubt alerted by SCC to PSW’s dislike of formal gatherings, Lady Anne Blunt foresaw his potential resistance: ‘I hope you will not think it a liberty to send you a card of invitation to luncheon on the occasion – the one occasion in the year – on which we have something amusing for people to look at. I am apologising because I think you do not care for public functions and this more or less comes under that head as “the general public”, behind the red cord, does join in the meal. But if you care to see us, and to look at the horses, and do not care to see the subsequent performance – the sale, which I confess always gives me a pang – why not come early?’ Lady Anne Blunt to PSW, 20 June 1900, V&A, AAD.

696 • To George Washington Jack, 24 June 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday, 24 June 1900 Dear Jack. Bowley returned the drawing, specn and Kennedy’s list, and I acknowledged receipt of them – at the same time told him I could not understand why there was any difficulty in his coming to my terms, as, from what I had seen of him and knew of his appliances, I was sure he could do the work at a more reasonable rate than any one else from his nearness to the place. I also said, I thought it probable he did not wish to do the work, and if so, he should have let me know at once, and not have inconvenienced me, and disappointed Mrs Morris – as he had done. 111

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

This brought a letter from him last night, wherein he says, “We beg to assure you that we are very anxious indeed to do it,” &c – but goes on proposing to do it by day sheets &c, charging 15% for labour and 10% for materials. This, of course I could not listen to, never [having] had him to work for me before. But I think this leaves an opening for trying him once more to see if he cannot give a reasonable estimate, if we draw up the list of reductions to be made on my side. Mrs Morris agreed with me that she should not consider any tender beyond the settled £900. Therefore, if you conveniently can come here tomorrow, do so; otherwise, perhaps you could manage it on Wednesday, as you go to Winchester on Tuesday?1 Please to let me know by return what you can do, as then I could write to Bowley and say which day you could go to Lechlade. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 GWJ’s visit to Winchester would have been in connection with his work on Harry Webb’s house. See above, Letter 689, note 1.

697 • To Sydney Cockerell, 29 June 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 29 June 1900 Dear Cockerell Had not 5 min: last evening to talk quietly with you of Sunday things. Hope you had a good sleep, and that your long grind on wheels did not over-do you?1 I had a pleasant time at Kelmscott from the Friday evening to Monday afternoon. The builder, Bowley of Lechlade, has been – & still may be – very tiresome. He will and he wont, 2 or 3 times, and over again in the 24 hours. Considering the leaps & bounds of the present time in building prices, Bowley is the only man who could do the work at a reasonable rate. Jack when went down to Lechlade again yesterday for the last time of asking, I suspect, & possibly we may come to terms, but have not seen Jack as yet on his return. I have agreed with Mrs Morris not to spend more than £900 on the fabric of the cottages; and if Bowley won’t come to terms, the work wd have to lie over till next year – a nuisance for her, & not pleasant for me. However, we shall see. I feel much – more than you could guess – your goodness in fending for the lame dog me. Have not as yet cashed your ‘Modern Painters’ cheque, because I wd first like to have your explanation of the prestidigitation amazing – and, as Patric would say, ‘not that I have any doubts, but I wd like them cleared up’!2 I rather like being led about for my own good by you for you do it so dexterously – and

112

1899–1902

certainly I come off well helped by the J.R. book. Wish all the rest of them would give me no more bother, in being quit of what I cannot house in more limited space than this. Still, it shall not bother me, any way. Tomorrow’s promising jaunt into Sussex will enable us quietly to see the right guidance of, and the health, &c, quality of the place – viz – what it really is Worth towards my latter day salvation, and you are a decent High Priest.3 Lethaby has neatly served me at Birmingham. Whingate – Furzgate – Gorsegate Wallis was here yesterday – was, I believe, taken mightily with the S. George of the Slaves, and I took the picture to Euston Station yester-afternoon for him to carry off to Chamberlain-town – and work the non-contents there up to the bargain, £60; the sum I gave for it.4 Have not seen the picture for some time, & was more pleased with it than ever before. A good catch I shd say for pot & kettle borough-town. You carry your family anxiety very sweetly, and assuredly have my sympathy, not forgetting your brother & sisters.5 My household surroundings here are of the oddest, but being summer time the muddle does not much matter. Housekeeper away for child-bedding, and the little sickly maid, not remembering what she intends to forget, has a fine time for learning that what folks cannot have, they must do without, but that does not bother me – and I look forward to babbling in green fields tomorrow,6 even if the Worth should be more than indifferent; in any case the Blunts are to be blessed by Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. I say this much with pen to-day to save talk time tomorrow. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/129

1 SCC had travelled to Wörishofen and to Munich to attend to his mother, who had been taken ill there. She was suffering from terminal cancer, and died on 14 September. 2 ‘I received £17 last week for your “Modern Painters” & now enclose my cheque for the amount. I am asking Leighton to send for it, so as to save you the trouble of packing. He will despatch it.’ SCC to PSW, 17 June 1900, BL Add 52760, f. 47. By ‘as Patric would say’, PSW may be hinting at a generic ‘Irishism’. 3 In the company of SCC and WRL, PSW saw Caxtons for the first time on 30 June, travelling by train from Victoria to Three Bridges. ‘I tremble a little, lest I should have spoken of Caxtons as other than the tumbledown unkempt place it is. To tell the truth it has its drawbacks, and you will see them fast enough – but the journey is not a very long one & at any rate there will be some fresh air & the horses.’ SCC to PSW, 29 June 1900, BL Add MS 52760, f. 48. 4 Whitworth Wallis (1855–1927) was the first director of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which bought PSW’s copy of Carpaccio’s St George and the Dragon made by CFM in 1885 (for details of the original payment see Vol. I, Letters 272–3). ‘I was pleased that the Birmingham people bought the little copy.’ CFM to PSW, 9 July 1900, V&A, AAD. 5 Note 1. 6 See Vol. II, Letter 407, note 4.

113

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

698 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 1 July 1900 A separate draft also survives in V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 1 July 1900 To/ Wilfrid Blunt Esqre Dear Mr Blunt As arranged by Sydney Cockerell – the wonderful, kindly – he carried Mr Lethaby (as moderator) and myself to ‘Caxtons’ yesterday afternoon; to which place I was drawn by Lady Anne Blunt’s singularly pleasant invitation, but not with much hope that the soil – or subsoil of the district would be suitable for my somewhat weak but balanced constitution. Of this side of an important question the facts – so far as I could then gather them – were agreeably different to the anticipation. For, I found the place highish up above the weald, and the subsoil to be of broken-up sandstone – two satisfactory items, and the cottage itself very attractive – a not unimportant third. Cockerell told me you were likely to be in London on Monday or Tuesday in this week; therefore I write to ask if – without inconvenience to yourself – I might call on you while you were in town – your naming the day & hour? For, without wearying you I could not easily or clearly write of the effect Caxtons had on me as a possible place into which I might subside at this late time of my life. With sincere apology for troubling you with so personal a matter | I am | Yours truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

699 • To Jane Morris, 3 July 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 3 July 1900 My dear Janey By the same post yesterday came your letter, and the last one from Bowley, which I inclose with this: from it you will see it is impossible to deal with him, for he constantly recurs to what I, as well as Mr Jack, have repeatedly told him by letter and personal explanation as being out of the question. I also inclose a copy of my answer to his letter. Please to return his letter. You are quite right in thinking it would be unwise, even if it could be managed, to get other builders to undertake the work at a reasonable price, to start building in this year, as considerable time would be taken up in getting an estimate from other people: but I quite agree with you it would be well to see if such could not be managed on Mr Burchell’s [sic] suggestion, of trying Mr King and his mason colleague.1 If you hold to that, I would come to Kelmscott as soon as I can and see

114

1899–1902

Mr Birchall and Mr King, &c, so as – if possible – to be prepared for getting the work done in next year. Perhaps you could let me know when the former is likely to be leaving Buscot, either finally or for change of air? It must be needless for me to say how vexed I am your good wishes should have had no effect as yet, for you would have known of the annoyance such delay must have been, and is to me. It is hardly likely that Bowley will change his wild view for our sane one, and I think there must be some underhand motive behind our knowledge of the affair, which has made him shift backwards & forewards [sic] in the way he has for the last 6 or 7 weeks. I wrote to Mr Ernest George – Mr Henderson’s archt, to ask him if he would see me,2 but for some reason or other he was not at home, and had left no message for me with his clerk. He had said he would be pleased to see me – by letter, and gave a recommendation of Bowley as a builder – thus avoiding personal conversation, which was what I had wanted. I think it just possible I may find a cottage for myself on Mr Blunts land in Sussex, and am going to see him at his London address this evening. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. I ask pardon for this ill written letter. When not interrupted, I have been writing all day. BL Add 45342, f. 164

1 For the Reverend Oswald Birchall, see above, Letter 619, note 2. King was another local builder whom PSW was proposing to approach for a possible estimate for the Kelmscott cottages. See below, Letters 703 and 721, note 4. 2 This relates to the cottages which Bowley was building at Buscot Park. See above, Letter 686, note 2. The architect and watercolour painter, Ernest George (1839–1922) served as president of RIBA (1908–10).

700 • To Joseph Bowley and Son, 3 July 1900 Copy 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 3 July 1900 Copy To/ Messrs Joseph Bowley & Son Mrs Morris’s Cottages Kelmscott. Dear Sirs In acknowledgement of your letter dated 30th June. If you will refer to my letter of the 16th May last – wherein I invited you in plain terms to give me a practicable

115

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

estimate for building these cottages – you will see there was nothing in it to lead you to suppose any other intention in Mrs Morris’s or my mind than to build a pair of cottages in the village – where they are so much needed. To build sound and wholesome working people’s homes in a simple and direct way would have been in exact accord with the late Mr Morris’s wish, and a reasonable way of acting with due regard to such wish – as well as the best memorial of such a man in acknowledgement of his regard for Kelmscott; namely, that of doing some service to the working people of the place. You seem to have misread both Mrs Morris’s intention and mine, as well as the true meaning of the drawings and specification; and from such mistake, your estimate of cost for a substancial pair of workmen’s cottages has led to the loss of valuable time; rendering the possibility of building out of the question for this year at least. After all that has been said both by letter and in argument, it would be useless for me to write at greater length; as the acknowledgement in this your last letter, in which you well say that the sum of £1284.0.0 “for a pair of cottages of course seems ridiculous and impossible to accept”, and which is really the case: for both Mrs Morris and myself as her architect, have agreed that such a price, or a mere small modification of that amount, makes it out of the question for either of us to agree to: but, at the same time I would add, that misunderstanding alone could have led you to adhere so repeatedly to the impossible amount above given as being the basis for an agreement between us. I am yours truly | Ph. W. Archt BL Add 45342, f. 165

701 • To Sydney Cockerell, 6 July 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 6 July 1900 My dear Cockerell It was too nice a question of the Worth cottage matter to be talked about last evening in the clatter of the Gatti time, and I know you must be even busier than usual now that you have taken up the Clifford Inn work – so I write a quiet word or two. I found Mr Blunt evidently preoccupied the other evening, so that the burden of question and answer fell all on my side – of course, the wrong side, but there was no help for it. I was probably right in guessing that the unfortunate accident to the horse, and the coming sale, were quite enough to make my call unseasonable. He was not at all disagreeable, but I had to make all the running; from which I more than gathered he would want the occasional use of the room downstairs on the

116

1899–1902

left of the ‘keeping room’, and the bedroom over it to keep his things in at other times; and he noted the separate entrance there and second stair for his own use, &c. I believe he would like me to inhabit the place, but hardly that he would be able to understand my position as a constant resident, with no other housing for the 365 days in the year. I have had too much to do with born aristocrats of a really kindly turn of mind – even generous, not to know they cannot understand the restricted ways of a poor lower middle class man. They do understand their own wants and the ways of their servants: and that is why – probably, I had better try for another kind of landlord and the freedom of action so necessary for my simple life?1 Of course, the delay in my second visit to the place after the 14th is rather against me, but I ought to go again, and carefully look into its conditions of convenience, the necessary repairs, &c, so as to give reasonable explanations of any decision wh’ may be come to. Mr Blunt gave me the address of his agent – Mr Caffin;2 but I do not think he would wish me to ask questions of his groom – Mr Holman.3 There would be more odds and ends of which I could tell you easily by word of mouth; and I am aware that caution would be necessary in dealing with Mr Blunt in this matter of housing in his cottage, but that may be deferred. When paying my Michaelmas rent of this place I must mention to the Steward of the Inn that I may have to ask extension of time before leaving here – as it seems doubtful if I find a place to get in to it by Michaelmas. My present discomfort just now lies in bothering you in this way, you having been so actively kind in helping the lame dog, that any sign of questioning things on my part is painful to me – however, I depend on your letting me know when I become too tiresome. Yours most thankfully | Philip Webb. Was not Walker glorious on his return from Paris, and the prospect of a brightening of Clifford’s Inn? V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/131

1 ‘I have not had another word on the subject in speech or writing from Mr Blunt, so I do not know what he is thinking. Probably if the difficulty were explained “P.W. must have the whole cottage without the smallest restriction, though he doesn’t mind housing some of your chairs & giving you a bed & some wittles & drink now & then – but it must be his bed & not your bed &c &c” he would see the point & say “Of course, of course, just how I should feel myself” – but I will not say this to him without your permission, as you may have other reasons in the back of your mind for not wishing the thing settled by the masterful one in that way.’ SCC to PSW, 8 July 1900, BL Add 52760, f 50. 2 Arthur Corfe Caffin, described by SCC as ‘Wilfrid Blunt’s excellent and kind agent and man-ofbusiness, living at Hazelwick, Three Bridges’. 3 Holman was in charge of WSB’s Arab stud at Crabbet Park, and thus PSW’s future near neighbour.

117

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

702 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 July 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 9 July 1900 Dear Cockerell Your letter of yesterday, had this morning, was much to the point, though perhaps a little stress was laid on my being tired at the interview. I was not really tired; only – and perhaps, like the 6 winged splendours in the Apocalypse, eyed within and without, there must have been some extra strain in keeping half a dozen of outsiders from squinting – so mine may have been extra sensitive when taking in the niceties of the situation. Also, my naturally frank manner, when under caution, may have made me a little over careful – but I can give the rights of the conversation when we meet. Perhaps on your way home some evening you could take tea with me at Gatti’s (this place is thoroughly disorganised) and we could have a crack all to ourselves and Mr Ticino?1 Your usual good sense kept you from opening out with W.S.B – for he was, probably, aware of his being out o’ sorts at the interview.2 No bones – metaphorical or other – were broken, and we parted all right. When I have been to Caxtons’ again I can put the case rightly to him, and possibly things might have a different complexion – who knows, for this seeking for a lasting new home is exacting? I ran against Walker in the Temple when he was on his way underground. He was – as was once said of me when a boy – ‘all smiles and shirt collar’. Never before saw him with such a handful of trumps in his eyes. I blessed you both & comed away. The “commerce” – in so far as I can be a judge – in front of you, is very trifling: but the intelligent exercise of publically [sic] useful brain power will be no trifle. The wedging in of decency when carrying on so useful good a craft will make the business interesting, and not labour in vain. Walker alone has done much in that way, and now that the Boutall skid is off the wheel when going up hill the waggon [sic] will wag so much easier. If you lose something of your freedom, the loss will be much of your own willing – wh’ is the best of slavery.3 Lord, what a moraliser am I – the inevitable ego. Shall come and see the ‘smuts’ shortly and waste some of your precious minutes in Clifford’s Inn. Adieu | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Lethaby was here last evening, and in better feather I thought. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/133

1 SCC annotation: ‘Mr Ticino was our name for a friendly waiter at Gatti’s who came from Bellinzona. His real name was Branca.’ 2 See previous letter, note 1. 3 ‘I can see that I shall have to buckle to, for a while at any rate – for I don’t even know how a photograph is made, much less a photogravure. The smuts bother horribly, coming in on to my blotting

118

1899–1902 pad through the window, & I begin to wonder how soon I can “retire” to some quiet Caxtons or other where smuts are unknown. Of course Walker is splendid & it is a privilege to work with him – otherwise I should never have thought of it for a moment. I hate commerce & I have no turn for managing subordinates. . . . Fancy £50 a week in wages, meaning 30 human creatures at least requiring to be directed. Still I knew all this before, & it is rather early to be despondent.’ SCC to PSW, 8 July 1900, BL Add 52760, f 51.

703 • To Jane Morris, 11 July 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 11 July 1900 My dear Janey Thank you for your note and the inclosure of J. S. King’s letter of promise. I think our best plan would be for me to see Mr Birchall before I see King the carpenter-builder. Mr Birchall, in his energetic and generous dealings with ‘antiscrape’, has shewn himself a good man of business – and he would be likely to know something of trade politics in the Lechlade district; and perhaps would be able to answer that King and his mason colleague would not be ‘got-at’ by Bowley to keep up the price. and I should be inclined to listen to Mr Birchall’s advice before dealing with King. Can you let me know if Mr Birchall could see me at Buscot either in next week or the week following? When answering this, perhaps you would give me Mr Birchall’s initials & postal address. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. For all these ‘Birchalls’ I ought to be birched-all, but I am hot and tired with writing all day. BL Add 45342, f. 166

704 • Jane Morris, 24 July 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 July 1900 Look out my dear Janey for shaky hand writing at this 11. o’c in the morning – for the paper sticks to the pen, & that to my hand, and that again to the blotting pad – &c. I have not yet quite forgotten you, for your last benefaction to me was, and still is, a “thrumpler”.1 He dodged last night, and lay in hiding in my jersey – doubtless – and took kindly to ungrazed pasturing on me this morning; and is now thrumpling and switching his tail, like old Joe,2 while he shifts his quarters to fresh fields of delight. Alas – if he had but stayed in that night gown of mine, I left behind, you would have kindly ‘cracked him in the parlour door’ – and he would not now be reminding me of my wretched forgetfulness. So old a man – not unkindly – but so stupidly forgetful! [sketch in left margin of eye with drops of ‘TEARS’] 119

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I had 1½ hours to spend at Oxford between trains, and walked down to the old Castle tower, through the meandering water lanes there, thence by Pembroke St through Ch: Church stable gate-way, and along ‘dead mans walk’ by Rose lane to Maudlin: thence by Long wall up Holywell St to the corner in Broad St, turning to the right to the “Parks” – (finding the curds and whey houses – little ones – still standing) and round Keble to the east end of St Giles’ Ch:, down – or up – St Giles’s to Beaumont St, down it to Worcester, and from thence to the station again; where I refreshed on biscuits and ginger beer, getting back here at 11.30 all right, but not at all “tight”! Now my remembrance is of your great kindness to me – one & all of you – which has been refreshment to me indeed.3 By good luck, Kennedy, my “quantities” surveyor, looked in here this morning; and he is going to take out the quantities of the cottage work as soon as he is free from that which he is now doing for other architects. My dears, I do not know that a pleasanter time has been spent by me at Kelmscott than this last under the watchful attention of you, Jenny & May. May your pillows be easier to you for the rest of your natural lives, for heart-intended kindness is as dew to the soul of your loving old friend Philip Webb, with the shaky hand – Adieu. Please do not quarrel as to which shall possess the prophet’s night-mantle. Pleasant remembrance to Miss Staveley,4 who so politely hid herself at the last moment. BL Add 45342, f. 170

1 A flea. 2 Joseph Chamberlain, PSW’s bête noire. 3 ‘Our dear P.W. looked in himself yesterday evening & walked with me across Waterloo Bridge. He gave a bright account of things at Kelmscott, & spoke well of Gere’s drawing. I dont know whether he said anything to you about the proposed illustrated edn of News from Nowhere. He does not like the idea, & nor does May, & I should be sorry to pursue it without their approval, though both Walker & I feel sure that Mr Morris would have approved.’ SCC to JM, 25 July 1900, BL Add 52738, f. 111. This may refer to the edition of News from Nowhere which was eventually published in serial form in the New York periodical The Comrade: An Illustrated Socialist Monthly, I–II (October 1901–September 1903), with 19 illustrations by the Dresden artist Hans Gabriel Jentzsch. It appears that Jentzsch may have begun preparing the illustrations as early as 1899, or even 1897. See Robert L.M. Coupe, Illustrated Editions of the Works of William Morris in English (London: Oak Knoll Press, 2002), pp. 153–5. 4 Companion to JEM.

705 • To Sydney Cockerell, 28 July 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 July 1900 My dear Cockerell I got to 3 Bridges at 11.31 yesterday, where Mr Caffin met and then drove me to Caxtons. He and Holman shewed me about the place: the well – at wh’ we drew 120

1899–1902

water (good) from deep down, (safer) saw to such drainage from kitchen &c as there is, which could easily be put in order. E. closet a moderately large palace; a second, wh’ might be done away with, and the use of the chief one governed by tenant’s own use. I made notes, took measurements, and particularly considered how to make the place warmer in winter – for ’tis evident that wd be necessary. Orchard a pleasant place, outlet from it to a back waggon track towards a pretty colt field. They left me, and cast about for salt to pickle my own divided mind with. Then sandwiches and bottles of ginber geer (let that stand) which I had provided, with a dash of whisky to keep the flies off. Cottage divinely cool, and my company most accommodating – no quarrelling. Place just large enough to contain No 1 & his belongings & the supposed helpmate & kidlings.1 Thunderstorms a-raging all round me, rumble cum tumble, and snatches of distant lightening – then shilling drops of rain on the white dust of road – a thin thrush awaiting more of it. It came, and with it Holman and some pleasant gossip, then a macintoshed fly (close one) which drove me to Caffin mill by the station, when the Caffin drove me to his Hazelwick to tea.2 His younger brother followed – tea & much talk, where I displayed accomplishments wide, general, & particular on everything except architecture, they were taken aback by the encyclopædic knowledge, but asked for a tip as to when the two wars were to cease. I told them. Then the longer Caffin carried me on shoes along a quiet cut – the chord of a ¾ circle, to the station; and so to hum, as the saying was. I found 3 bridges being pegged out for villas, some built, single, double, and in squadrons. Land selling at fabulous prices; a gold mine for Wilfred Blunt if he chose to give up sentiment – at present the railroad cuts off contamination. I do not think less than £150 would have to be spent on the cottage; and £20 or so would be all that wd be necessary for Blunt’s own use. Hence the tangle in my mind. Nearness to London; obligation to Blunt; spending of his or my money, (the latter preferable but not possible, as the funds go down like the bucket in the well.) Last but not least, I could not spare a bed-room, and so W.B would be kicked out of his own house – as it were. ‘Ungrateful brute’ would he be saying, while I shd be urging Grazing philosophy, that gratitude was a mistake.3 The question of RATS was raised; fears allayed by Holman. Terrier dog by me, Ferrets by he. No more of this ‘Jingle’ patter till I see you4 – tomorrow is Sunday for consideration, my two last were dissipated. Yours faithfully, ungratefully, but still truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/135

1 He evidently was already assuming that Margaret Dickinson (whom he had yet to meet) would become his housekeeper, and was envisaging her and her two young children sharing his cottage with him. 2 Caffin’s cottage at Three Bridges. See above, Letter 701, note 2.

121

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 3 ‘If you find you really have inclinations in that direction I wonder whether it wouldn’t be best to take it for the winter, with less than the £150 patching, & in the Spring to come to a final decision. In the winter WSB will be in Egypt – so the question of the bedroom could be shelved.’ SCC to PSW, 28 July 1900, BL Add 52760, f. 54. 4 In Pickwick Papers, the engagingly loquacious Alfred Jingle, a strolling player and harmless rogue, is a teller of many anecdotes.

706 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 2 August 1900 A separate draft also survives in the V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 2 August 1900 re Wilfrid S. Blunt Esq “Caxtons” – the Cottage. r Dear M Blunt Having been obliged to defer my second visit to Caxtons till Friday last, I was met there by Mr Caffin and Ho[l]man, and, with their obliging assistance in shewing what belonged to the place, I was the more able than at the first time to look closely into particularly with regard to the cottage, &c. On their leaving, I spent some hours in examination of the fabric and the convenience it offered as a permanent home for myself, with as little derangement of your use of it as possible. So far as I could judge, without analysis, the water seemed to me good, and comparatively soft; the well a deepish one, and therefore less likely to suffer from surface contamination. The Cottage itself, with the bit of front garden, and sheltering orchard at the back, would be quite in keeping with my simple needs; the situation really pleasant; the subsoil broken sandstone, and the height of the ground – some 340 feet above sea-level – was promising in the point of health. I concluded that to make the building warm enough in winter, and do the necessary repairs, would cost about £150. Mr Caffin suggested that the rent should be £12 a year, which seemed reasonable. But to this would have to be added the 5% of interest on the £150 of expenditure, which would bring the rent to £19.10.0. Having to calculate my means closely, the conclusion come to, is, that my rent should not exceed £15 a year. The Rates would probably not be high – unless the respectability (sic) of the new tenant would be an excuse for raising them? In explanation of the necessity – as I consider it – for spending £150 on repairs, &c, I would say, that the upper story of the cottage at the back should be clad with weather tiling – as the front & ends are at present – to keep out the winter’s cold. The Casements would want refitting, and if simple shutters were applied to most of the ground floor windows these would negative the contact of cold air on the glass, and keep out the draughts at night. Then there would be the general small repairs to the fabric – many of which I noticed, and others which would declare themselves when the work was in hand – though, at present, the roof tiling appears to be water tight. 122

1899–1902

One of my difficulties in coming to a decision on your very kind offer is, in dealing with my landlord – at which you will be likely to smile! and I feel somewhat diffident when stating that it would not – I believe – be possible for me to give up one of the bedrooms to your sole use; as my necessary furniture – books, and other belongings, would take up all the room in and about the cottage, even when I have sold some half of what there is in these chambers. Having learned that though you may not want to use the cottage very often, yet it would be a convenience to you at those times: and as it now stands – a few pounds spent on it for your purpose would be all that is necessary. You may be assured it would be a pleasure for me to have you as a guest (with sitting & bed room) when you had to come to Caxtons; but that is not the point; which is, that I could not rest content to accept the primal kindness at all at the expense of your convenience. The other difficulty in my decision, is, that I have just had a letter from my friends on the Cotswolds, telling me it is just possible (only that) for a cottage to be had there, at 600 feet above sea level, which undoubtedly would be better for my physical constitution; and if that should prove possible, and suitable, you would be relieved from considering the need of your very troublesome but thankful friend, Philip Webb. I beg you to forgive the length of these explanations, which, though necessary, are tiresome; but I could not put them clearly in briefer form. WSRO Blunt Box 59

707 • To William Weir, 6 August 1900 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn. W.C. London. 6 August 1900 Eglwys Cummin My dear Weir When I heard from the Rector, and his incidentally saying you were at Cummin on the 31st July, I thought twice of writing to you there, but decided not to do so, not knowing when you wd be leaving, and remembered your having said Broadway wd be your headquarters. Hence the delay in your getting my last say. Your letter and tracing of the 3rd instant, which I had on the 4th, were very interesting, but also somewhat of a puzzle. You will want all your wits about you to meet Mr Treherne’s view, that of the Rector, and myself which last means antiscrape – and all the society has been fighting for these 23 years or so. Also, for arriving at a sound conclusion of what to do to explain the peculiarity of what you have found at the West gable, and what to avoid when making good.1 To make clear what I here say, your tracing of 2. August is returned with red & blue marks – on it. The first difficulty is in reconciling the supposed lines of coping (or outside surface of vault?) at West end, outside face. 123

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

2. Could you not drop a plumb line on inside of west wall from apex point of vault (as shewn by my dotted red lines) and take offsets from centre line right & left, at 3 feet depths perpendicular, till they touch the inside curves of vault, and then take the position of bellpull tube through the vault to give the inside position of vault lines, on the outside? 3. Do you think the coping stones at x-x & y-y [these letters in red pencil] on the north side shew gable coping stones only, thus [sketch] or, possibly that the vault was not built in arch-form, with voussoirs, but merely by horizontal stones in corbel fashion, gradually giving the curved line of vault inside; and that, what I have called coping stones may have been the outer surface covering of the vault as at v.? 4. If the z-z [red] on the south side gives the supposed form of old gable on the outside, the same form as on the north cannot be reconciled with the internal line of vault on the south – as it stands on the tracing. 5. Do any of the stones – say – at x-x & y-y [red] (which you have accepted as being cut somewhat to a curve on their upper face) appear in the position on the western wall face as you have shewn on the North side? 6. I am not for a moment proposing to repair the church in any supposed earlier form of roof or vault, but only as the work now is; but if those shaped coping (or vault) stones do appear on the outside surface of west wall, it would be well to let them so appear in their most regular parts – say, as at x-x & y-y, and the securing of bonding can be got, with proper rebuilding of the modern work, in the thickness of walling. 7. Are not the shaped coping stones at Eglwys Brewis cut in much the same supposed form as at Eg: Cum: but not on the curve? I have seen a photograph lately of an ordinary Northumbrian cottage, of any (?) date, with the coping stones at gable ends cut and set in the same way, and roof thatched with reeds and heather – which abutted against the back face of the coping – thus, [sketch] and which – probably was the traditional form of covering in an equally wild part of the country as Cummin, & Brewis. 8. I am writing much of this in case you should see Mr Treherne at Eg: Cum: so that you and I may be talking with him on the same planes. 9. I am presuming that in making good the walling (on the present lines) you will improve the careless pointing by a more surface kind of filling the beds and joints? Anything you tell me of your work going on at Eg: Brewis, I shall be interested in knowing, as I believe, there, the walling is in much worse structural condition than at Cummin. Also, I should like to know how the men – in both places – work under you, and if you can depend on their following your instructions while you are away from either place?2 Having seen such reckless work to old churches in Suffolk and Oxfordshire lately, I am the more assured than ever, that, if ancient buildings are to be dealt with justly, it must be by intelligent personal supervision of the workmen by the director on the spot. 124

1899–1902

Can you get good mortar made at both places, and with what limes and sands, and the proportions of both? I am in no way doubtful of your work, but am deeply interested in what you are doing.3 Yours truly. | Philip Webb. I have not yet found a small cottage for my own future habitation, but am on the lookout for one in the Cotswolds & one in Sussex, and as I ought to get away from here by Michaelmas, my time is more than occupied in pressing things to some conclusion which shall not be a wild one. I see Jack occasionally, and he is better in health than he has been. He is busy in his way, but likes to hear of what you are doing, from the letters you send me. Antiscrape Committee are dropped for holiday recess till the beginning of Sepr. I am sure your hands too must be quite full, and hope you are as cheery under your work as usual. I return the tracing, which may serve you to send back again. I shall probably see Mr Treherne next week. Tell me if I am right in always posting to Broadway? P.S. I think Mr Treherne will expect that everything you discover in Eg: Cummin, should be noted down in a book, and which he will see is entered in a Church book and securely kept in the Church under lock and key.4 So, in your more spare time (if you have any!) will you set all the notes down for that purpose. SPAB W-W 32

1 ‘You will observe the slope on north side . . . nearly agrees with vault, while that on south side (wh is not so clear) does not agree with line of vault, this I am at a loss to account for – unless a certain portion of the old gable on south side was removed when adding the additional work.’ WW to PSW, 3 August 1900 (draft), SPAB. 2 ‘The men work fairly well & follow my instructions when left alone – at first they were inclined to have their own way, especially Baylis the mason at Eg: Cum: who is rather strong headed, but when he found the work had to be altered over again he was more particular.’ WW to PSW, 19 August 1900, SPAB. 3 ‘We are using the Aberthaw lime at both places & find it excellent at Eg. Cum: the sand (of wh. you have sample) appears to kill the lime to a certain extent & we are using it 3 to 1, & even then it sets slowly – at Eg. Brewis the sand (of wh I shall send sample) being finer it sets faster so can be used 4 & 5 to 1.’ 4 ‘Copies of Mr. Webb’s Report and Mr. Weir’s Record of work done are in the church chest.’ Treherne, Eglwys Cymmin, The Story of an Old Welsh Church, p. 13.

708 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 8 August 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 8 August 1900 Dear Mr Blunt (in the matter of ‘Caxton’s’ Worth.) I thank you for your helpful answer of the 5th to my letter of the 2nd Aug: 1900.1 125

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

It now merely remains for me to get reliable news as to the possibility of securing a cottage on the Cotswolds – some 7 miles west of Cirencester – and of which my friends in that district are making inquiry: as soon as I learn whether the place there is to be had, or not – I will let you know. Nothing could be more satisfactorily business-like than your letter, to say nothing of its most friendly tone, and giving the four points of your proposal. Namely. You to have the use of the cottage according to your explanation in article 1. 2. £150 (if that amount is found to be necessary) to be expended by you on the cottage under my direction. 3. Rent to be £15 a year. 4. You not to disturb me in the holding during my life, but my interest in the house not to be transferable. To all of these four points I can agree without reserve; and I must in fairness to you – add, that should circumstances oblige me to give up tenancy before 5 years of it have elapsed, I should refund to you – say, £75: or, one half of what you may have expended on the Cottage under my direction. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. re To/ | Wilfrid S. Blunt Esq | Fernycroft, Beaulieu. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 ‘WSB is in town for a flying visit, but goes back to Fernycroft this morning, & will write to you. I saw him for a few moments & said you were ready to spend the £150 in lieu of rent, but he declared that it would be an imposition on his part to let you do it & that he couldn’t hear of it. But he would let you spend up to £150 of his money & make the rent £15 instead of £12 – & as to the rooms, if you would take him in when he wanted to come that would answer his purpose quite well – also he would like you to keep & use the beds now in the place if not inconvenient as he doesn’t quite know where to put them. I write this, that you may understand his delay in answering your letter with which he was very pleased – also that you may know what he is likely to say.’ SCC to PSW, 4 August 1900, BL Add 52760, ff. 55–6.

709 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 August 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 11 August 1900 Dear Cockerell If today has been as kindly to the New Forest as it has been to Gray’s Inn Garden, you – other things being equal – have had a fine time of it. Your henchman Proctor1 yesterday brought me from you the Turgenev story book, the Ruskin “on the old road”,2 and the ‘speaker’ article on oppressed India.3 Thank you kindly. The J.R book is – I believe, quite new to me; and – in any case – is of great interest: doubtless Ld Lindsay’s work was a very convenient 126

1899–1902

peg on which the more advanced mind could hang his broader gospel – 1847!4 I was born, to be apprenticed in ’49. Lord-a-mercy, what a range of helpful thought has gone over our heads since then; and what is on the top of them at this day of tribulation? shewing how little the pious thought has got into heads. There are quite wonderful signs of intuitive perception in this Quarterly article. The Speaker article is very useful, but more than horrible. Of Turgenev, I shall see when I come to it’s reading. Have written the rather doleful say to Sidney Barnsley – and shall probably hear again from him tomorrow – summing up on the part of the Cotswolds; after which I write to close with W.S.B. for whose good graces I am indebted to your vigorous initiative. Proctor was quite genial, and we had a free talk. Yours truly | Philip Webb. The article on Chichester got into the Times – and reads well.5 There should be determined letters in the same vehicle on Westminster.6 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/136

1 The bibliographer and classicist, Robert Proctor (1868–1903), was an assistant at the Printed Books department of the British Museum, and a close friend of SCC. He admired WM, and after the death of F.S. Ellis replaced him as a trustee to WM’s will. He died in unexplained circumstances in 1903, when on a walking tour in the Austrian Tyrol. He set out to cross a pass, without an accompanying guide, and it is assumed that he fell. His body was never recovered. See Vol. 4, Letters 889 and 892. 2 JR, On the Old Road. A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays, Pamphlets, &c, &c, Published 1834–1885, 2 vols (Orpington: G. Allen, 1885). 3 On 14 July 1900, The Speaker – which described itself as ‘The Liberal Review’ – carried an article by Vaughan Nash critical of British policy in India, ‘The Condition of India’ (pp. 410–12). 4 ‘Lord Lindsay’s “Christian Art”,’ reprinted from The Quarterly Review (June, 1847), in JR, On the Old Road, I, pp. 21–132. This review-article was of two books by the art historian, Alexander Lindsay (1812–80), styled Lord Lindsay and subsequently twenty-fifth Earl of Crawford and eighth Earl of Balcarres. The titles were Progression by Antagonism (1846) and Sketches of the History of Christian Art (1847). 5 On 10 August, The Times published a letter from the SPAB, over HTT’s name, commenting on a fresh appeal for funds and criticising a report calling for the replacement of the modern west window at Chichester Cathedral ‘“by a treatment more in harmony with the 13th century work”.’ Reminding readers of the objections raised by the Society in 1897 and 1898 over the restoration of the north-west tower at Chichester, the flavour of the letter is summarised in its opening sentence. ‘Chichester Cathedral is fast being lost to us – not by the hand of time, but by the hand of man.’ 6 ‘I have written my views to the Treasurer of the Westminster Abbey memorial Committee. No stopping that with Ld Carlisle, Poynter, Micklethwaite &c &c at the helm. I have sent W.M’s Westminster Abbey pamphlet, which by the way is now being reprinted in the Golden type with an address delivd at the annual meeting in 1884 – all in one volume, which I think will please you.’ SCC to PSW, 13 August 1900, BL Add 52760, ff 57–8. On 22 August, a letter from SCC in The Times argued against any memorial for JR (or others) being placed in the Abbey, observing that JR had himself called such monuments ‘incoherent fillings’, and that the best possible way of commemorating him

127

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III would be by removing existing ones, rather than adding to them. SCC proposed that a famous man would better be commemorated by ‘the purchase of a beautiful cliff or hill-top’ to be preserved for ever ‘against the encroachment of the jerry-builder’. The correspondence continued, on both sides of the argument: notable supporters included Octavia Hill.

710 • To Giacomo Boni, 15 August 1900 Photostat 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 15 Aug: 1900 My dear Giacomo Boni. I duly received the postal parcel containing the 2 copies of the ‘sacrario di Vesta’ exploration description: one for myself and the other John Hebb.1 Also, the returned photographs of the late George Boyce’s watercolour pictures. I thank you sincerely, and will allow Hebb to do the same for himself, he now being away on his holiday. But – never a written word from G. Boni himself! Surely he must have been buried under the debris from the excavations?2 I want to know how it fares with you, and if all the acrimony attending on archæological research and controversy has left your skin intact? Are your ‘Cat-o-mountain’ claws worn down to stumps? and have your intellectual antagonists any eyes left in their skulls?3 This sacrum of Vesta is a singularly interesting part of your excavations, and I am bound to say the setting forth of the story in the essay seems – to my great ignorance – to be exceedingly well done. It would make you smile if you could see me poring over the sweet Italian diction, trying to follow the argument as well as stumbling over the stones of its subject will allow. What a pretty little drawing of Baldassare Peruzzi’s, on p. 168.4 And what a skilfully drawn diagram of the ‘Recomposition’, on p. 187. The fragments of a vase greatly please me, that of fig. 22 – the Menad on the Bull, particularly.5 One of these days you will tell me what is proposed to be put as protection over the most remarkable works laid bare by the pick and shovel? As I blame you for not telling me of yourself, I avoid your retort by telling of the insignificant myself. After having lived a thoughtful life in the Gray’s Inn Garden – you know of – for 36 years, I am about to leave it for the country in about a month or two, to live about 30 miles south of London on the edge of an old forest, in which is an “Anglo Saxon” church, of about the beginning of the 12th cent: an imposing building, both wide and lofty, with evident signs of old Roman influence in the design, rather than the Norman style which came in with the ‘conquest’, in 1066.6 In a rude, timber-built, cottage and garden close by, I am going to plant vegitables, [sic] and prune fruit trees, and prepare for being planted underground myself: and for the lazy time, to listen to the birds and watch the ways of wild creatures in and about the Forest, like a proper Hermit, with

128

1899–1902

whom the birds & beasts will become friendly, as the tenant of the cottage will be lovingly peaceful. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. I will let you know the new address when I leave “the Great Wen”.7 Courtauld 194 1 GBO, ‘Le Recenti Esplorazioni nel Sacrario di Vesta’, Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (May 1900), pp. 159–91. The Roman Temple of Vesta in the Forum was one of the many buildings whose excavation and preservation had fallen within GBO’s remit. 2 ‘Eighteen hours work has been my daily regimen for 20 months. . . . Vesta is only one of my thirty explorations and not even the most important or successful one.’ GBO to PSW, 18 August 1900 Courtauld 195a-b. 3 ‘In a couple of weeks will be issued my report on the plan of the Forum . . . and also 6 photographs taken from the balloon and showing the condition of the valley between the Colosseum and the Tabularium.’ 195d. 4 GBO reproduced a sketch of the Sacrario di Vesta by Baldassare Peruzzi (from the Uffizi Gallery) in his article. 5 The illustration of a Bacchanalian figure on a bull is on p. 175. 6 The parish church of St Nicholas, Worth, may date in part from the second half of the tenth century. Its tower was added by Anthony Salvin in 1871. 7 ‘Before you leave the Great Wen, I want to tell you that I have not forgotten the mornings you waited me at breakfast; I only wish for one morning now to talk to you about the Forum: perhaps this may happen when the hermit of the old forest has peacefully settled in his domain and birds begin to sing on his shoulders and peck his ears.’ 195a.

711 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 18 August 1900 A separate draft also survives in the V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 18 August. 1900 r Dear M Blunt Since my letter to you of Aug: 8 in answer to yours of the 5th, my communications with the friends on the Cotswolds have resulted in landing me finally on your good offer of ‘Caxtons’. I found that the Cottage near Pinbury by Cirencester could not be encompassed: the freehold hanging on lives, the head of which was a shaky one. Under these circumstances – and my present position here terminating at the coming Michaelmas – I fall back with much satisfaction on your offer – if you find you still can conveniently abide by it? my chief wish being that the occupation of the Cottage may be a mutual convenience. On this head, Sydney Cockerell has been helpful as usual, for he told me it would suit you that your iron bedsteads might remain for use in the cottage. This may well be, as it will save my getting others.

129

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

It remains thus then: the 4 points in your letter of Aug: 5 accepted by me, and that of my point in addition be accepted by you; namely, that “should circumstances oblige me to give up tenancy before 5 years of it have elapsed, I should refund to you – say - £75; or half of what you may have expended on the cottage under my direction”? This would ease my mind when lying sleepless o’ nights (which I do not anticipate) on one of your iron bedsteads. Yesterday I was again at Caxtons – taking my late assistant with me to get more work done in the day, and leaving me more time to look at things in the whole. Mr Caffin was good enough to attend, and we beat the bounds of the small estate together,1 when the question of the detached building – holding the Earth Closet on my side and a harness room on yours had to be looked to. I gathered that the latter half was a convenience to your stud farm; as it would also be to me as an odd & end general shed for work purposes – small carpenter’s bench, apple store &c. I sought for an alternative, which suggested itself thus. That when I was tile-cladding the upper part of outside wall of cottage under the boughs of the Yew tree, at the north west corner, to match that existing of the Larder projection, which would additionally shelter the wall at the other end of the house, and give me shed-space of about 9’.0” x 7’.6”. I also propose at the south west corner of the Parlour to inclose outside, the little space left by the brick bulk of the chimney there, as a store closet, using it on the inside of the room by the screwed up door on the left side of the fire-place – see small accompanying sketch-plan? I took with me a Gardener’s pruning knife, and gave a little more entrance way through the ivy, and learned what the little porch roof was like. Being at present unhandy with the blade, I scratched one of them; therefore you can claim having drawn first blood – which I shed on the door lintel. With regard to the two items scored red on plan: if the additional cost of them could not come within the £150 of your supposed expenditure, they would be done at my cost. I measured the depth of the well, and found it 74 feet from the curb of the windlass to the water. ’Tis a soundly formed shaft, and, a few feet below the top, some of it being cut through the solid rock. Having explained to Mr Caffin of your and my letters of 5th & 8th of Aug: – If you should agree to the further points of this letter, perhaps you will authorise him to draw up the agreement, so that I might at once see to getting the necessary work put in hand? Sydney Cockerell was good enough to send me a postcard, saying, that you would be at Clouds until the 23rd. I therefore send this directly there. Percy Wyndham has already cracked his friendly jests on the head of his tormentor of past times, and on the subject of my flitting from this house. Yours truly | Philip Webb. [separate sketch map of ground floor plan of Caxtons] WSRO Blunt Box 59 130

1899–1902

1 The ancient custom of beating the bounds in English parishes is believed to predate the Norman Conquest, and describes the ceremonial procession of the local priest and parishioners around the circumferences of the parish boundary, as a way of reinforcing the collective knowledge of the area encompassed and to pray for its protection.

712 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 29 August 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 29 Aug: 1900 Dear Murray Your letter of the 25th was such a another touch of good nature in you that I have been accustomed to in old time.1 If you or a friend of yours really want my upright book case (like myself!) you will please me by taking it, say, for £10, that is allowing 30/- for the odour of my use of it for these many years, (a bookcase could not smell as sweet under any other owner’s name)2 but I could not bring myself to imposing further on the good nature of even those who particularly dislike me. In any case it would have to remain here till I am flitting.3 I am glad you will take the bottle & basin; in the former you may “catch the crystal globules, bottle ’em, cork ’em tight, and put them in bin 14 with bar of iron on the top to keep the thunder off” – quotation as near as I can remember.4 I shall not be surprised if you reconsider the risk of taking the iron bedstead (not on acct of the B.Bs in it,5 for there never was none) but because the man who comes to fetch it will be mastered by its pugnacity, or perhaps the accumulated sleep in it may overpower him. However, granting your courage, I shall be glad if you relieve me of the iron responsibility. I could also send you a picture of it as clothed and in its right mind – cost of picture 1s 1d½ – the 1d½ representing government stamp. Honorificabiletudinitatibus – which means, all honour to you | from yours truly | Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 64

1 ‘I have had occasion to go the round of a number of furniture shops in the last few days looking for a bookcase, & I can assure you that my estimate is rather below than above the mark, you will be robbing yourself by offering that little case for less than £20. I would either take it myself or if you dont care to let me have it find you a purchaser in my friend Mr Fisher at that price.’ CFM to PSW, 25 August 1900, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.’ Romeo and Juliet, II,ii,43–4. 3 ‘Of course I will take the bookcase in your likeness at £10 – wish I could get a Bijou like it at the same price! but it was ever your way & you will die giving shillings in return for sixpences.’ CFM to PSW, 17 September 1900, V&A, AAD.

131

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 4 ‘“Catch the crystal globules – catch ’em – bottle ’em up – cork ’em tight – put sealing-wax on the top – seal ’em with a cupid – label ’em ‘Best quality’ – and stow ’em away in the fourteen binn, with a bar of iron on the top to keep the thunder off!”.’ Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838–9), ch 41. 5 Bedbugs.

713 • To Sydney Cockerell, 4 September 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 4 September 1900 Dear Cockerell I forgot to say yesterday that I wrote to Ld Carlisle abt Westminster – as you suggested.1 He wrote back in a friendly, but in a pure British Constitution spiritual dialect: attainable only by the constitutionally elect – understanding the point of the argument no better than an Abbey Bedel: [sic] but I will take my draft and his answer to Gattis’ on Thursday, with the hope you may be there.2 Thank you for writing to Blunt’s solicitor & sending me his answer, and for writing to Caffin. Treherne – who dry nurses me in a friendly wise – wants to look at the draft of lease in relation to possible death of Blunt, and as to structural repairs during my tenure. T. has regard for B, so it would only be non professional advice to me. I am not going to bother my head about it.3 Have written to Mrs Flower about a possible old servant of hers she thinks promising for my comfort; or perhaps the ‘help’s’ 2 children may tumble down the well and spoil the water? I shall have to get her to see the ungentility of the place before any decision on her part.4 I believe a ‘party’ has taken these chambers, and if so he wants my long book case, the carpet, and chimney glass, but said nothing about my old shoes. He seems a decent youngish middle-age body (not mediæval) with a presentable wife, who came with him (the second time) to see the place, and smiled on it: she did not ask me to throw myself in to the bargain. If this chap takes the place he would not turn me out to the letter of Michaelmas day, so that there may be 2 or 3 weeks time to play with. You see, I say nothing of your affectionate industry on my behalf, as if such things hung promiscuous on every tree: but, ‘sir’ said Mr. Pecksniff beating his breast, ‘the remembrance will lie here’.5 I did not take quite cheerfully the look of your pale face yesterday,6 Ph: W. Do not answer this. I go to Winchester tomorrow, to see the old brother & sister sitting on their tumbled-in integuments: the things which will cover up the nakedness of the semi-new crib.7 Excuse maundering. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/137

1 See above, Letter 709, note 6. 2 ‘I shall be interested in seeing the Carlylese correspondence on Thursday. Walker told me your letter was perfect. I was afraid that the reply would not deserve this epithet. One of the Committee,

132

1899–1902

3 4

5

6 7

who has been advocating a tablet no bigger than a vol. of Modn Painters found Lord C. his chief opponent. Lady B-J’s protest appears in the Times this morning, with a very clumsy letter from Arthur Severn. The Athenæum & the Academy vote for the Natl Gallery. Of course we shan’t gain our point, but we shall have made a stand – & here & there this may gain us an adherent.’ SCC to PSW, 4 September 1900, BL Add 52760, f 59. The argument in The Times about a Westminster Abbey memorial for JR raged on. Arthur Severn wrote in favour and GBJ against (both letters appeared on 4 September), she having refused to support the Committee of the Ruskin Memorial Fund in the following terms: ‘It would be contrary to all I have gathered from the teaching of John Ruskin and William Morris, or the strong influence of my husband’. In addition to Treherne’s local antiquarian interest in Eglwys Cummin, he was also a practising London solicitor. On the matter of the lease, see below, Letter 715. ‘The cottage is a pleasant one for a rude master, but whether it would be respectable enough for such a housekeeper, is another thing. This I should have to explain clearly to Margaret, and in any case I would get her to meet me there (should she be willing to venture on the enterprise you have considered) before she came to any decision; and I think you will agree with me that this would be a wise arrangement.’ PSW to Elizabeth Flower, 3 September 1900, BL Add 45355, f. 17. He probably is mis-remembering the scene in Martin Chuzzlewit in which Pecksniff introduces his daughters to the elder Martin Chuzzlewit, and asks them to write out their names for him, lest he forgets them. ‘“Affection,” said the old man, “will expend itself on the living originals. Do not trouble yourselves, my girls. I shall not easily forget you, Charity and Mercy, as to need such tokens of remembrance”.’ (ch 10). SCC’s mother was close to death, and was heavily sedated with morphia. She died on 14 September. Harry and Caroline Webb had moved from Welwyn to Winchester, and once he had himself retired PSW would usually spend at least two weeks in the summer with them, in order that Mrs Dickinson might take her own annual holiday.

714 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 14 September 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 14 September. 1900 Dear Mrs Flower. I duly recd your clear explanatory letter of the 12th – ‘on the situation’,1 but all day yesterday I was too – fro – and at the Cottage in Sussex, getting back here about 10. p.m – rather unusually tired, and feeling the effect today. Believe me I am quite alive to the value of your kind efforts on my behalf in this domestic ‘help’ matter – and am particularly anxious that my need should in no way be a bar to Margaret’s prospects. Workmen begin on the Cottage on Monday, and the place will be turned inside out for 4 or 5 weeks, so I think it would not be a good arrangement for your old servant to see it – as a stranger – in that condition. When the work is done – or nearly so – the place will be altogether different both in appearance and convenience. It seems to me, that if Margaret could come here and see me, we should both benefit by the interview, as at present she must be a kind of “Mrs Harris” to me, and I a “Mr” of the same spiritual world to her.2 I think the advantage of the young children in the cottage would outweigh the disadvantage, as they would be good company for her, and the healthy surroundings good in all ways for them: so, if I could talk in friendly form with her, we could in half an hour come to some reasonable conclusion as to probabilities. 133

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

If, from your experience in such matters, you might know it would be inconvenient for M: in her position to come here, I would go and see her at Mrs Wormald’s?3 My landlord having been running about from place to place (Paris being one of them) for the last month or two, it was only yesterday that a decision could be come to as to the lease of the cottage, and myself able to set the repairing and cleaning of the place going. I need scarcely say that till I get in to the new (to me) tenement my upset life here will be a burden to me, for I am only just carried on – as it were – with my present housekeeper circumstances. If you could conveniently give me your opinion on the position explained above I would at once write to Margaret. Please accept my renewed and honest-felt thanks for your very benevolent labours on my behalf – and Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. By the same post as your letter came one from Wardle; he wrote enthusiastically of the antiquities you shewed him round Newbury.4 BL Add 45355, f. 18

1 Elizabeth Flower’s letter probably had detailed Margaret Dickinson’s personal circumstances. It appears that she was either separated from her husband, or a victim of marital abuse, and that her caring former employer was seeking some kind of secure new environment where she could work and support her children. SCC refers to the circumstances obliquely, and that ‘she went to Caxtons, partly to lie perdue from a very unsatisfactory husband’. BL Add 45355, f i. 2 For the Mrs Harris character in Martin Chuzzlewit, who exists only in the gin-fuelled imagination of Sarah Gamp, see Vol. II, Letter 419, note 1. 3 Margaret Dickinson’s temporary employer. 4 ‘At Donnington Mrs Flower gave me all the fresh air I was capable of – there was an excursion for each day. We saw Lambourne church & a whole string of others in the same valley.’ GW to PSW, 12 September 1900, Courtauld 261b.

715 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 15 September 1900 A draft also survives in the V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 15 September 1900 To/ | Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Esqre Caxtons Cottage r Dear M Blunt I was at Thee Bridges on Thursday morning where I met Mr Caffin, who gave me your own drawn lease of ‘Caxtons’ for my signature, with your accompanying letter of the 12th inst. 134

1899–1902

I think you will acquit me of any wish for a lawyer-drawn lease? Indeed, after your letter of 5th August – my reply to it of the 8th – and my further letter to you of the 18th (with the sketch plan attached shewing suggestions as to slight improvements to the cottage) – which you did not contradict, I took it for granted that Mr Caffin would draft the lease; for, on the 23rd August he asked me to send him copies of your and my letters of 5 and 8 August: wherein he wrote, “Mr Blunt has sent me his instructions to prepare a draft agreement in accordance with his letter to you” – and which I did. Indeed, I was rather surprised when Mr Chandler called here on Sepr 4 with his draft of a lease, which – with his permission – I shewed to my friend Mr Treherne – a lawyer, who said it seemed all right, but that he would suggest a word or two in red ink; this he did and I sent it to Mr Caffin direct for approval, as Mr Chandler was leaving town.1 This is an unavoidably long pother – but it fixes dates, and I hate misunderstandings, having spent most of my life in trying to “get understanding”. So much do I prefer your memorandum of agreement, that I have signed it without a doubt – (Emery Walker being my witness) – making a copy of it for myself, and returning to you the document.2 By arrangement of Mr Caffin, I met the carpenter – Dench, at Caxtons,3 and talked him into dizzyness [sic] about building matters – from my altitude! He is to put one of his men on the cottage on Monday, to open up places for my examination in a day or two afterwards. This promptitude was necessary, as my lease of these chambers expires on Michaelmas day, and broken weather of early autumn will soon be due. However, I believe the Inn here will accommodate me with two or three weeks of further time. I do not think the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings will trouble us; but though I regret having – myself, to trouble you at this tiresome length. But I did not wish you to consider I was wishing wanted to put impediments in the way of two fair-dealing men; between whom, if there could be obligation on either side – it would lie on mine. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 E.A. Chandler was solicitor to WSB. WSB had not seen or approved the draft lease, and disliked it. He wrote suggesting an alternative solution. ‘I think indeed in the case of an ordinary cottage holding, such as this really is, a formal lease by indenture is unnecessary as it is unusual. I prefer therefore to give it in the form of a memorandum of agreement as between landlord & tenant and I have myself drawn one up, and forwarded it to Mr Caffin signed & witnessed, so that when you come down, as I understand you intend to do tomorrow, to arrange abt the necessary alterations you may look it through & if you approve it may also sign it. . . . You will see that I have struck out all mention of right on my part to being lodged on occasion by you, as it is best left as an understanding only between us, seeing that if we quarrelled it cd not be enforced. Similarly I had said nothing in it of your being bound to pay half the cost of the additions in case you wished to leave in two or three years’ time . . . though for the sake

135

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III of your conscience I can promise you that if when the time comes you consider it necessary to insist on paying it I will not refuse.’ WSB to PSW, 12 September 1900, V&A, AAD. 2 The copy made by PSW on 15 September of this Memorandum of Agreement also survives at V&A, AAD. The witness for WSB was his son-in-law, Neville Bulwer-Lytton (for whom, see below, Letter 767, note 4). 3 William Dench was the carpenter and general handyman for the WSB estates. See also Vol. IV, Letter 901.

716 • To William Weir, 18 September 1900 1 Raymond Buildings. Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 18 September. 1900 My dear Weir. Your letter of Sep: 11. (Exeter) made things at Eg: Brewis at the present moment clear to me, and yesterday Winmill was here,1 and gave me further news both of Brewis & Cummin. He was delightfully expansive on the ways with which you were treating both churches. I had no doubt of it, but it was well to have his outside opinion – fortunately, he had not broken his neck before I saw him. I suspect at this moment you are expounding to Messrs Treherne and Wardle at Eg: Cummin – both of them worthy people, deserving confidential treatment, which I am sure you will give them. I do not think there will be any risk of draught through the oak boarding to the roof at Eg: Brewis, for the air will be but little (though constant) through the air bricks, and distributed over the whole roof, and therefore the best of ventilation to secure timbers from dry rot. The air space between the two boardings would also negative both cold in the winter and heat in the summer. Success in your treatment of the arrangement proposed, would lie in your securing that the little triangular holes left open (marked by me with blue on the tracing, I think) were kept clear, so that the air might circulate between each pair of rafters. Barometrical changes in the atmosphere act as a kind of bellows, causing inspiration and expiration. The scientist, Pridgen Teal,2 explained this – as being like the action of weather on the Aneroid Barometer.3 Winmill was good enough yesterday to go for me to “J.H. Boobyer, and sons, Wholesale Ironmongers, 13 & 14 Stanhope Street Clare Market. W.C. London” – and seek for samples of clout headed nails. I send you one of each kind he brought back, and have tied some yellow silk round that with which you can order the nails – and have added another with light blue stuff tied round it for you to keep as sample. You would have to calculate the quantity to send when ordering, as Boobyers would have to get them galvanised. You can add when writing to them, that a gentleman from Philip Webb of Grays Inn, W.C. architect called on them on the 17th Sepr, for the sample of nail. You had better order enough in quantity, as they will not cost much, and as it would be difficult to get more – galvanized – in time. You must do what you can as to the Ridge tiles – but I shd prefer to keep the old ones if possible. 136

1899–1902

As to the pulpit, I very much wish to keep it. It shout [sic] be very neatly repaired before painting, and the colour – darkish green, should be rightly chosen. Why should the Rector feel “shut into the thing” – for there need be no door to it: you can give him the respectful compliments of the Society, if he does not “chuck it out afterwards”! __________ As to Eg: Cummin. Winmill told me you had relaid a good deal of the slating, and that it looked well: also, the black limestone eaves course was effective. I shall be sure to learn from Mr Treherne what he thinks of your handiwork, and he will be likely to learn what the workmen think of you. Amongst the notes for you to make of this church, all the new parts made and done for the church at this date should be set down. For examples, this eaves course of stone – Ridge capping, copings, &c, &c, and how the walling & roof were made substantial. For the oak tree you are in search of to cut down. Should the felling not be deferred – say – till November at the earliest, when the sap has gone down into the earth? You are not likely, I shd think, to get the order to go on with the West end screen work till more money has been got? Yes, I have got the lease of my Worth Forest cottage at last, and am now directing the estate workmen in the repairs of it, and I hope to make it quite a healthy habitable place. It is not likely that I shall get into it before the middle of October. That is too late a time of the year, but the delay could not be avoided. With very sincere good wishes for your prosperity under useful and unmischievous work. Believe me, yours truly, | Philip Webb. P.S. When ordering the clout headed nails, you had better say they are for a Church roof in South Wales, as Mr Winmill mentioned that. They should be paid for as soon as received. SPAB W-W 36

1 As he had done during work on the tower of St Peter and St Paul, Clare (see Vol. II, Letter 608, note 1) Charles Canning Winmill visited the two Welsh churches on behalf of the SPAB to review the progress of the repairs which WW was overseeing. 2 Not identified. 3 The type of barometer common in domestic use, which measures pressure without involving liquid.

717 • To Charles Fairfax Murray, 20 September 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn | London, W.C. 20 September 1900 Dear Murray I recognise a similarity in Samuel Johnson’s and your truly British constit[ut]ions, in the study of mankind; but personified iniquity palls upon me in the latter 137

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

day sinning-time.1 The “beasts that be in wood and waste” will be more deserving attention from my puristic point of view;2 but as you promise to sleep on my bedstead you will probably catch some of its well stored up ‘sweetness and light’ – if you keep the window blinds up – for it has never been accustomed to them – my only blind to too inquisitive eyes has been a pier glass,3 in which I have studied from the nude when M. & Co wanted something of me in the way of the forked radish kind,4 but I doubt if it wd be of use to me in the Forest of Worth, even if I could get it in there. Arab horses will be a renewed study for my too long disused drawing fingers to reexercise themselves upon – something hoofy, though not horny – like M.Ps. I was at ‘my cottage near a wood’ all day yesterday,5 looking to get the repairs pressed on – small chance I am afraid. It looks likely I may not be able to get in there before the middle of this [sic] month, and that would be the time for the bookcase to flit and the Chinese wash basin & bottle6 – but the bedstead must give me my last sleep here.7 If you like a lovely feather bed – nearly new – which belongs to it, you would be welcome, as it is far too large & luxurious for cottage & new ways?8 I will not forget to give you a drawing of how the bedstead was fitted out for me for the ’62 exhibition,9 so that you may decently enshrine yourself. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Fitzwilliam 65

1 ‘I am afraid I prefer Fleet St. like Dr Johnson for a permanent residence, more’s the pity for me you will say.’ CFM to PSW, 17 September 1900, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘The Beasts that be in wood and waste / Now sit and see, nor ride nor haste’ is the emblem by WM which appears above PSW’s lion design in the 1887 Morris & Co. ‘Forest’ tapestry, bought by Alex Ionides. See Vol. I, Letter 288, note 7. 3 Originally a mirror fitted to fill the pier or space between two windows, or over a chimney-piece (OED). 4 ‘When ’a was naked, he was for all the world liked a fork’d redish, with a head fantastically carv’d upon it with a knife.’ 2 Henry IV, III,ii,310–12. 5 ‘In my Cottage near a Wood’ was a traditional poem – possibly Scottish – well-known in the nineteenth century and sung to a popular melody. 6 See above, Letter 712. 7 ‘As for the bed I intend to sleep upon it if ever I return to these shores, perhaps I may catch something architectural.’ 8 ‘Couldn’t that feather bed being as you say big – be reduced in size for you? – but if you are too virtuous to lie upon feathers I will relieve you with pleasure of it. Quanto? Sounds better than the English equivalent.’ CFM to PSW, 21 September 1900, V&A, AAD. 9 The 1862 International Exhibition, open for six months from 1 May 1862, was a trade fair featuring exhibitors from 36 nations, and was mounted on land now occupied by the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. The work of MMF & Co had been exhibited, with considerable success.

138

1899–1902

718 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 21 September 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 21 September. 1900 Dear Mrs Flower Mrs Dickinson with ‘Mitchell’ came punctually to ‘interview’ me this morning,1 when I opened up on the necessary points of living and doing in the Sussex cottage in as ample and direct a way as possible. The one item I thought well not to touch upon at present with ‘Margaret’, was that of the husband in the background.2 This I believed you would deal with, just now, in the better way, as she was evidently nervous – and naturally so – in the majestic presence of the unusual specimen of poor humanity – myself, to wit! Margaret will probably know how to tell you what she thought of me, in either a favourable or unfavourable way. I said it would be wiser, I thought, for her not to come to any conclusion there and then; so that she might first consider the position quietly alone, or perhaps with Mitchell – who heard all the talk, and with you before deciding either with a yea – or nay. For myself, I thought she was younger than was expected, and perhaps more comely (the one drawback) than might have been good for her in her past life. You see, I can but judge of such things from the old-fogey bachelor standpoint, with whom fear & trembling may have been safety from troubles of a kind. Some of the items spoken of, and not disagreed with, were – the £20 wage, I providing food, &c, for all the household. Food to be taken at regular times and at the same time for all in the cottage, mine in the ‘keeping-room’, hers and the childrens in the kitchen. At other convenient times – when housework was done – the keeping-room to be free to them. Occasional holidays when she wished to go and see her relations, &c, and also see such a friend as Mitchell at the cottage – even for a night. My means quite limited, therefore simple living very necessary; no waste, but plenty of wholesome food. Rough washing to be got done with outside help; but, if possible my Jaeger woollens to be washed by her at home under directions written down by my sister, who has herself done it for me with her own hands for years – (This item because of the ruin of the fabric by careless and ignorant process).3 Play-place for the children in the orchard and about internal farm roads. School close by – 3 min: walk. Church 10 min walk – but when questioned, she said her denomination was ‘Chapel’, which I daresay would be had at Three Bridges, a mile away. Neighbours, Mr Blunt’s (my landlord) head Arab-Horse head groom, living at the lodge of Crabbet Park, of which my cottage is part of that estate. This groom has a wife and 9 children, 3 of which – pleasant looking and speaking younglings – I saw in my orchard helping to gather the apples. Holman, the said groom, district bred, has a good reputation and considerable authority. Warned Margaret that the cottage was not the princely

139

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

home of these (now black) rooms for so many years, but was a pleasant healthy place which I am now having repaired. I could tell of many more items of my explanation to Margaret, if I had the opportunity of seeing you again before leaving here. The points here noted may help you to understand what she may tell you of her visit, and therefore I need no longer tire you with further catalogue. On the whole – I should say – that Margaret’s manner impressed me with the feeling, that if the place and myself seemed to promise for her, she would be likely to suit me: but I would prefer to be helped by what your experienced judgment arrives at after you have talked to her. Mitchell behaved very nicely, but I am afraid looks upon me as a ‘gentleman’ – (because of my respectable associates) – which would be a mistake. I now finish this too long letter, with unfeigned thanks for your kind offices on my poor behalf. Believe me | Yours truly, and obliged, | Philip Webb. BL Add 45355, ff. 19–20

1 Mitchell was a servant in Elizabeth Flower’s employment – clearly an established and trusted one. 2 See above, Letter 714, note 1. 3 See also Vol. IV, Letter 901.

719 • To William Hale White, 22 September 1900 Draft 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sat: Friday night. 22 Sep. 1900 My dear Hale White The books have here have to be got rid of, because I cannot house them in the cottage, and will be sent to Sotheby’s about the end of this month (I believe, for Cockerell is the motive power) or beginning of next; They will be mostly architectural works, which I shall not now need, and will of course be put amongst other books at a periodical or general sale.1 Put below} In spite of my jeers at your enthusiasm, you may be sure I am touched by your consistently kind feeling towards your old friend, and am pleased with the any additional sign of your too favourable good will. for, are not you one of the comparatively few remaining intelligent stimulants to the better life than is now being presented to us daily?

The man who was willing to take these chambers, with the long bookcase, and the carpet, was choked off by the Inn raising the rent on a new tenant, and Emery Walker had the refusal of it in case it had to leave its right place in the Inn; and there is a wall in his house where it would fit fairly well, and it will be sent there. I wish there was a book of mine really of use to you, for it would please me to give it to you.2 140

1899–1902

I am now trying to get the repairs done – or rather started – at the cottage, but it looks as if it would be a slow matter with the Estate workmen, who have other work in hand. I was at the place last week, this week, and go again in the next. This sweet September sun & soft air at the decline of the year do but as it were promise what October is not likely to perform. The more should it have been, but could not be got started earlier. Occasionally I have searchings of mind. You see I am not a scholar, only a lover of books even those that my ignorance will not allow me clearly to understand – and by ‘understanding’ I mean something different to acquired knowledge, invaluable as that is. I am really a dreamer, with a rather wide range of perception: having penetrated pierced with bodily and spiritual eyes into through the shell of very various matters; so, what little solid intellect there is in me cries out for more information, and gets it in though in desultory fashion from books: then, having the poorest of verbal memory, which leavinges me with only a half recollection of what has been read, I am obliged to read old books again & again.3 Though keenness of perception will often save one from reading inferior literature, there are good & fitting books one would have passed over if it were not for the had it not been for the kindness of a high class of literary “tasters”, with which I have been blessed in past times, and on whom I could depend for suggesting books the missing of which would have been a clear loss to me. When I get settled in Sussex, I would borrow of you – if you have it & could lend the Palgrave book you have often mentioned to me.4 V&A, NAL MSC/1958/687/87

1 For Sotheby’s sale of PSW’s books, see below, Letter 740. 2 ‘I don’t know Mr Emery Walker but I hate him. It was not a book I wanted, but some piece of furniture in that room. If Jack’s old stool had been used by you, that would have been sufficient. The epoch represented by Raymond Buildings is now about to pass away and I wished for a reminder of it. What are you going to do with the other book-case and the table if they are too big for the cottage?’ 27 September 1900, WHW to PSW, 27 September 1900, Cheltenham 1991.1016.660.6. 3 ‘Like you, I do nothing with new books. I cannot remember them, but I do remember the old books, and the emotion rekindles – sometimes – with which they were read when I had a little more hair on my head and it wasn’t quite so white as it is now.’ 4 This probably was not something by Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–97), compiler of the Golden Treasury anthology, but more likely a historical work by his father, Sir Francis Palgrave (1788– 1861), such as the four-volume History of Normandy and of England (London: John W. Parker and Macmillan & Co., 1851–64). It was a subject likely to have appealed to PSW.

720 • To Margaret Dickinson, 1 October 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 1st October. 1900 To Mrs M. Dickinson I had a quite satisfactory conversation with Mrs Flower on Saturday evening; by which I was able to come to a conclusion – that, from her helpful knowledge 141

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

of the facts of the case, with here appreciation of your qualities as a servant – and with the additional advantage of her having known me for many years, there was a good prospect that the situation at Worth, near Three Bridges in Sussex, would be a suitable one for you, and would meet my anticipations in every way; not the least important of which is, that you might be able with your two children – in a healthy place, to lead a happy and respected life in a wholesomely simple way. I therefore asked Mrs Flower to arrange with you to take service with me at the end of this month – say, from the 1st of November. The time between now and then will – I hope – enable Mrs Wormald to find a servant to take your place in her household. I am going again to Worth on Wednesday to urge on the works of repair already begun at the cottage. Please to write direct to me here, with regard to any question on which you might wish to have an answer. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

721 • To Jane Morris, 21 October 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 21 October. 1900 My dear Janey Thank you indeed for your good and kindly letter – written so, in spite of the weary change just upon you, and when the falling October leaves are rather too impressive. We can but hope some other helpful ‘companion’ will turn up, with whom dear Jenny can take to without difficulty.1 If when you are in town, and able, let me know, and I will come to you with much pleasure, as I have no engagement made as yet for ‘next’ (this) week, unless the little builder, who is to write me, saying which day he can be at Worth; for he is divided between Wilfrid Blunt and myself, and the Great Sheik has the stronger pull: so if he names a day I must keep to it, as last week he had to disappoint me, and the repairing of the cottage lags badly. The winter too has the longest forefinger of warning which has threatened me for some time. Is it not strange that I was never at Minster Lovell? so near to Oxford too, and my business as well as pleasure have lain with such places as you have so well described. I have just seen Minster in the distance from the high road beyond Witney, and know it from diagram drawings.2 Chrom (no – that won’t do, it looks too much like Greek –) Crom must have been pleased with your visit, with the real or assumed admiration for of the baby!3 Minster Lovel[l] was an ‘Alien Priory’, that is, attached to some foreign one. It was of the Benedictine order. The church is unusually planned, with the tower set over the crossing, giving small diagonal arches at the angles in the body of the church. 142

1899–1902

Cockerell told me, when I saw him on Thursday, he would be seeing you today. He is good in time of need, as well as at other times. I know this from the way he fends for me. I shall now write to King, of Lechlade, and ask him when he can see Mr Jack,4 and of this and other things we can talk when you are in Babylon – the second.5 It is all that now. Wheels within wheels with a whirrrr . . . r, and Eolian song in mid air on the wires.6 One must have regular work in London to take the attention from the untiring grind and roar. Till then – your affectionate friend – and after, | Philip Webb. BL Add 45342, f. 172

1 See below, Letter 754, note 2. 2 The village of Minster Lovell, about three miles west of Witney, Oxfordshire, was probably a topic of discussion between PSW and JM because of its parish church, dedicated to the Saxon saint Kenelm. PSW seems to have believed, like WM, that there was a possible etymological connection between ‘Kenelm’ and ‘Kelmscott’, and in this context see below, Letter 834. 3 For Cormell (‘Crom’) Price, his marriage late in life, and son named after WM and EBJ, see Vol. I, Letter 26, note 3. 4 ‘As Mr King of Lechlade will also be clearing up for the winter, he will be ready to think of work for next year, so that I am proposing to write him that Mr Jack will take the drawings (and the “quantities”, which I have had taken out) &c, to him, and carefully explain the whole matter, so that he may prepare his estimate. Jack expresses himself ready to take into his own hands the direction of the whole as soon as things are thus arranged.’ PSW to JM, 17 October 1900, BL Add 45342, f. 171. 5 He means London of course. 6 The Aeolian harp consists of stretched strings across a wooden sounding board. Placed in an open window, it is left to the wind naturally to vibrate the strings and produce notes.

722 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 October 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 27 Oct: 1900 Dear Cockerell The ‘squire’s’ aristocratic nose held aloft does not disturb me as much as your thoughtful service in friendship. To the former one is case hardened, to the other the spirit is less accustomed, and is tenderer. The Hodson drama should – I think, be reedited: surely you can write to him and say you find me pig-headed, and that ‘he won’t take more than £50’ – that less figure is much too much.1 Why won’t you see things from a Christian point of view, my name is not “Hoskins”!2 Please to reconsider on this line – why make me afraid of a knock over the knuckles from Peter’s keys at the gate of an M.S paradise? I send the other cartoons to Murcott, after Monday, on this prayer foundation. Yea, truly, I was delighted with the Senlis pictures, for I thought they overflowed the high water mark – shewing that the gentle kindly painter was aware of art’s 143

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

responsibility, and that there should be no make-believe.3 I blessed his beautiful faithfulness: Lord God Almighty – what else are we for? Yesterday I had a note from Dench4 saying he would be at 3 Bridges till Tuesday, therefore I go to Worth on Monday – all my other days had been laid out from his silence. Thanks are altogether insufficient for your assistance in that and many other ways – so you must read between the lines above as to what it is to me. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I found the mistress of Kelmscott at the Unwin Fishers’ address last evening.5 I thought her fairly well – and able to answer to my chatter. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/141

1 For Laurence Hodson, see above, Letter 672, note 8. ‘Hodson has at last been to inspect the Hare & is mightily pleased with it. He says may the others be framed in the same way – & then Murcott could pack them all & send them off to Wolverhampton.’ SCC to PSW, 26 October 1900, BL Add 52760, f. 63. 2 The ‘Hoskins’ allusion not identified. 3 These paintings resulted from Thomas Rooke’s summer work in France. 4 WSB’s carpenter, who was doing work at Caxtons. 5 SCC annotation: ‘Mrs Morris was staying with Mrs Fisher Unwin (Jane Cobden)’.

723 • To William Weir, 6 November 1900 1 Raymond Buildings. Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 6 for 7 November. 1900 My dear Weir. Have been much occupied – mostly on my own affair in Sussex, or I wd have seen about the Eg: Cumin metal flue. I am a little in doubt as to the metal, for it wd be difficult to mannage [sic] the soot doors in that material. Cast iron would be the best for making these entries. Think I will consult with Mr Chamberlain of Elsley’s.1 Unfortunately I let the use of his visit here today on your Exeter matter of finger plates,2 by forgetting to ask him then. However, the first opportunity I will go and see him. As to the finger-plates. He was in doubt about “white metal” wh’ you had specified to him, and I fancy that may have been a blundering misnomer of mine. I really intended – at least so I fancy – to suggest what I called “gilding metal” – that is copper and zinc, and today I told him this would best answer the purpose, to go on oak, as it [is] reddish, instead of yellow, as brass is. So unless you say to the contrary, he will use the gilding metal, which is, practically bronze. It shd not be laquered, [sic] but rubbed by the servant with a clean dry cloth to keep it clean and it will sober down to a Japanese bronze tint – a greenish red. Now for the ‘Cumin’ (Mr Treherne holds to the older form, as Cymin) woodwork at West end. Though you do not say so in this last letter, I am presuming you have the timber for the beam crossing the nave? 144

1899–1902

For the smaller work of the inclosing partitions, any sound oak would do well enough – for, though it should be well and strongly framed together, it would not matter if it wound or shrunk somewhat. The timber you mention in the yard at St Clears, though it wd have been better if it had been sawn into planks and boards, still, having been felled 5 years ago, it would have dried considerably. The other point would be its cost? If you could get it on the ground for 5s/- a cube foot, sawn, would be reasonable enough I think – but will you be able? Mr Treherne will probably be here in a day or two, when I will ask his opinion, and suggestion, &c. What about the “Chestnut” you mention? I suppose this is a “sweet” chestnut, (otherwise often called “Spanish Chestnut”) and, if so, would do well enough for the material, if it is not altogether unseasoned. Should you fall back on this, save a piece of board of it, as I should like to see it in comparison with English oak. Cockerell’s address is ‘Sydney Cockerell, 17 Rosemont Road, Richmond Surrey,’ or his new office, in partnership with Emery Walker, at ‘16 Clifford’s Inn, Fleet Street, London. E.C.’ to either of which places you could write to him. My cottage repairing is going on rather better now, as the master Carpenter – acting as builder – has been released from his work in the New Forest by Mr Blunt, my landlord, and is seeing to the work getting less blundered & is pushing it on. I go there again on Friday, which will be my 12th journey, and to, fro, and at work there takes the whole day, and I have to draw things out here at home. Hope to go into residence – as the gentility saying goes – at the end of this month; and, as in Mr Jorrocks’ phrase “’opes I shall”!! ’Tis o’wer late in the year to be setting to a new life, for an old fogey, but I dare say it won’t kill me. All my friends are very kind to me under this change of a life, which is, as you will allow, a very considerable consolation to the old man. Jack to[o], pets me, as if there had never been any Clyde gull sea-squealings between us, over the bend of a drain or a smoke flue!3 By the way, I passed St James’s Park water today, and there were hundreds of largish and beautiful gulls, sharing food offerings with the ducks, from the human population. Yours truly | Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 40

1 Thomas Elsley was a manufacturer of cast iron architectural pieces, whose Portland Metal Works was situated in Great Titchfield Street, running parallel to Great Portland Street. 2 Work on the Exeter Guildhall was near completion. A description of the project was included in the SPAB Annual Report for 1901, and thanks were recorded to WW, ‘the architect acting on behalf of the Society, for the painstaking care which he gave to the building while directing the works on the spot’ (p. 36). 3 ‘Like Philip Webb, Jack had a deep-rooted and sympathetic fascination with animals and birds, and seagulls in particular. . . . In a letter to Webb written in 1899, when Jack was taking a holiday in Scotland, he mentions that “the gulls are everlastingly interesting and their skirling is, as you say, just like you and me over a drain plan”.’ Gaimster, p. 54.

145

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

724 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 November 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sun: 11 November 1900 Dear Cockerell Perhaps I did like and thank you in mind for sending me Powell’s scrap – so good to get, as he is still cheerful.1 Lethaby put in appearance here last Fri: & Sat: nights, and told ’twas a pleasant evening at Goodnatured Norman’s feast to the faithful – and you back up the report.2 The old folk were all right on Wednesday night & Thursday when I was with them at Winchester – rather overdone with polite callers. Hope I shall be underdone in that way at Worth. Was there all day on Friday. Dench and his slouch of a bricklayer have made more progress, but the latter is one of the roughest of workmen, and a trifle shifty – a straight line to him does not coincide with Euclid,3 but does with the parlour chimney top. Dench is anxiously willing; and I am willingly anxious to get into the place by the end of this month – after a week’s fires have been set going. The parlour is used as mess room by the workman and is the only dry room, for a fire is generally on there. Do you think your sister could conveniently come here on Tuesday morning any time after 10. o’c? I have been thinking of my paternal conference with her – the lady I have never seen, but believe her name to be Olive?4 Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/142

1 ‘You will perhaps like to look at the enclosed message from Alfred Powell.’ SCC to PSW, 9 November 1900, BL Add 52760, f. 64. 2 SCC annotation: ‘Philip Norman gave a dinner in honour of Philip Webb, at which however he could not be persuaded to be present.’ ‘I wonder whether your ears tingled in the train last night when we drank your health. We missed you, but you were there in the spirit, though not in the flesh. Many sensible things were said, & nothing that you could have disapproved of. I hope you found Winchester & your relations there flourishing.’ SCC to PSW, 9 November 1900, f 64. 3 The ancient Greek mathematician, Euclid (fl. 300 BC), who established the principles of what is known as Euclidian geometry. 4 After the death of their mother on 14 September, SCC was concerned about the future of his unmarried sister, Olive Juliet Cockerell (1868–1910), and arranged for her to see PSW to ask his advice on her prospects in art work. She illustrated The Windfairies, and Other Tales by Mary Augusta De Morgan during the year, ‘although some of the illustrations were done while she was nursing Mother & are therefore not as good as they would otherwise have been’. CD, 1900. ‘I think you will be glad to know that your time was not wasted. She is rather a remarkable person, but she hides her fine qualities so carefully that few people are aware of their presence. You would however discern them in a moment. All her life the fates have seemed against her. I do not know whether it has been more than “seeming”, for she has not been soured but has been made sweeter by every rebuff. Thank you so much for advising her.’ SCC to PSW, 15 November 1900, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/143.

146

1899–1902

725 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 18 November 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sun: 18 November 1900 Dear Mrs Flower Mr Cockerell, with his unfailing helpfulness, came here yesterday at 3. o’c and worked till 6, cataloguing the books I make myself believe can be spared and sold at Sotheby’s.1 There are so many, that when I say – ‘there, that will do’ – more are still left over than I can house in the new old cottage at Worth. When we had finished what could then be done I carried my helpful friend to Gatti’s, (sending you a telegram, on the way) where we had tea, concomitants, and talk, till I saw him off at Waterloo for Richmond. Let me hope it is needless for me to try and express my thankfulness for your speeding the parting friend to Sussex. Am always doing so internally, but, set down on paper they (the thanks) are ineffectual, and look to be tiresome. I was at the cottage again on Friday – a wet day. When not raining steadily it poured down. The men, of course, were forced to work inside, so that the place – inside and out, was in a fine mess: outside especially, down trodden & sloppy: inside, no fires except in the Parlour where the glazier had one for mending the lead lights of the windows. That fireplace not yet fettled up. That of the kitchen, in the doing, and the rest drying before undergoing heat. And yet, withall such drawbacks, the country and the place generally was really not depressing – at all events to me; but I will not let Margaret see it till the tears have been wiped away from its face.2 Having opened up to the flue of the kitchen fireplace, I find the Kitchener will have to be a left hand one instead of a right;3 this I see to tomorrow, and order it to be sent down when the place is quite ready for it. If you should be disengaged at 7. oc, next Saturday, and in all ways at liberty, I would come and talk the linens over, and come to contributive terms on them. For the linen cupboard, I took down a drawing for setting a decent sized one up on the grand staircase landing; and the carpenter will be about the work this week. The whitewashing was going on nicely. Hoping this antagonistic weather to rheumatic peace is sparing you, I am yours truly | Philip Webb. Have had no time to write to Wardle, for a letter there shd have due consideration, as, indeed, all letters should have. What a misfortune it is there is no architect at Caxtons on whom I could lay all the blame for everything – including the elements! I can quite fancy Mrs F saying to her archt, ‘Mr W; what in the name of all that is two penny do you mean by this irritating delay and general disorder’ – x x x x x? BL Add 45355, f. 22

1 ‘I am at your service whenever you care to name an evening for sorting books.’ SCC to PSW, 9 November 1900, BL Add 52760, f. 64.

147

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 2 ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes’. Revelation, 21:4. 3 The Kitchener range of patented stoves was developed by the Devon iron-founder, George Bodley, at the start of the nineteenth century, though PSW may here be using the term generically. The stove he fitted at Caxtons proved to be a source of great inconvenience for some weeks after he had moved in, and he had completely to rebuild the flue in order for the stove to draw efficiently.

726 • To J.S. King, 20 November 1900 Draft, pencil. 1 R.B. Gray’s Inn. Lon: 20 Novr 1900 To/ Mr J.S. King. Mrs Morris’s Cottages for Kelmscott Dear Sir. I send you today by parcel post – registered – the Drawings, Specification and Quantities; according to your request of Novr 13. I have arranged with Mr Jack that he shall go to Lechlade on Monday next, the th 26 – by the train getting there at 1.27. He will go on to you directly, and in order to have sufficient time to consult with you as to making your estimate, he will stay at Kelmscott Manor, the night. Mr James Kennedy, who has taken out the quantities in a direct and simple way, is an experienced surveyor – and has very satisfactorily done work for many years from my drawings – and Mr Jack will be able fully to explain to you the full meaning and intent of the work. I am hoping to get a reasonable estimate from you, so that it may be accepted, and the work proceeded with as soon as the season permits. Yrs truly | Ph. W. V&A, AAD

727 • To Percy Wyndham, 24 November 1900 Draft; incomplete? 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 24 November. 1900 My dear Wyndham. You see, I address you now almost as a fellow country-gentleman – (save the name), and would ask you to some shooting in the ‘Forest’, were not my fellow trustee in the estate abroad – all abroad perhaps we might say – and I can do nothing now in the way of securing game by poaching till I have donned that kind of professional clothing, and have greased the palms of keepers and receivers, when perhaps you would not object to a moonlight turn turn on a cloudy night – for there is a fine chamber in the chimney bulk at Caxtons where we could stow away 50 head or so till the cart came round – but more of this anon. 148

1899–1902

At all events I can must thank you for tipping me the wink with a brace of pheasants. I have vamped up the chimney top you noticed of my shooting box, which your professional eye detected as being slightly ‘a wee bit agee’,1 and have done several things to make good the damage you did in getting into the place by the upper window. Come by the doorway the next time; but however, I suspect it will not be I suspect before the middle or end of December that I take up residence there, and have furbished up my gentility, and cut my all acquaintance with ‘Jorkins’ & Co.2 V&A, AAD

1 Agee: ‘off from the straight line’ (OED). 2 See above, Letter 691, note 2.

728 • To Laurence W. Hodson 15 December 1900 Draft 1 R B - Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. 15 Decr 1900 To/ Laurence W. Hodson Esqre Dear Sir Our friend Sydney Cockerell was good enough to inclose your cheque to me yesterday, adding a few pleasant words of satisfaction from you as to the tapestry cartoons of animals received.1 The drawings have not been in any way been added to since they were done, and thus in a way they are more interesting than if they had undergone after-treatment. Recd of with thanks from L.W. Hodson Esqre the sum cheque for of £100 for four framed watercolour cartoons of animals, and a small pencil drawing of Peacock. with thanks. Recd by cheque | Ph W. BL Add 52760, f. 67

1 ‘Mr Hodson writes that the cartoons have arrived & that he is delighted, and that he sends his cheque, which I enclose.’ SCC to PSW, 14 December 1900, BL Add 52760, f. 65. See also above, Letter 722.

729 • To Sydney Cockerell, 15 December 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 15 December 1900 Dear Cockerell What a whitewashing of my rather black day at Worth, when I found your letter & Hodson’s cheque after parting with you last evening. Architects and animal painters find the white robe of lime wash covers a multitude of sins – and my soul 149

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

is nearly as discoloured as old Slouch’s.1 Mutually, not to “weary with thanks”, I add that your helpfulness in getting this very lame dog over his awkward stiles is as boundless as the southern horizon of Caxtons; and as – doubtless – I shall often be drunk there, your goodness will appear double to me there along with the moon. On second thoughts I can conceive no better place for the Rossetti Dante than in your hands, so let it be for my contentment.2 I have sent Mr Hodson a memorandum of thanks and receipt, with the addition of your having added a few words of his satisfaction at getting the cartoons.3 Yours truly | Philip Webb. I have seen Shoolbred’s man of business here this morning4 – a decent oldish fellow, who grasped the situation without difficulty – and proposed beginning the removal on the 27th – penes me – as Carlyle said.5 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/144

1 The ‘slouch of a bricklayer’ employed by Dench. See above, Letter 724. 2 ‘I do not weary you with thanks for the “Michael Ange” photographs, as you know well that I value them for what they are, & doubly and trebly as having belonged to you. As to the glorious Rossetti I think you ought to keep it by your side – but if you finally resolve to place it in my charge, it will be the omphalos [centrepiece] & pivot of my little room, round which all my pictures will revolve while it remains amongst them.’ SCC to PSW, 14 December 1900, BL Add 52760, f 65. During the morning of 17 December, PSW called on SCC at the Clifford’s Inn office and gave him DGR’s watercolour of the first meeting of Dante & Beatrice ‘which I am to take care of as “a permanent loan”.’ CD. This was The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise, given by GPB to PSW in 1885. For its provenance, see Vol. I, Letter 267, note 1. 3 See previous letter. 4 James Shoolbred & Co. began designing and manufacturing high quality furniture in the 1860s, based in premises on the Tottenham Court Road. Their expertise in delivering their own products presumably also made them skilled in removals work. 5 See Vol. II, Letter 408, note 4.

730 • To William Weir, 18 December 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 18 December 1900 My dear Weir I went to Morris & Co. and chose some hangings for back and sides of Eglwys Brewis altar, and also arranged for what wd be suitable for top and frontal of altar. They were to communicate with you as to these propositions – direct.1 Afterwards, at ‘antiscrape’, I put before the Committee the proposal of Mr ‘farmer’ Daviss [sic] to fill the East window with stained glass.2 This – as I expected – raised a discussion. You see, this is the most ancient window in the Church, and the S.P.A.B. is bound to be cautious of modernising so valuable a relic of antiquity. I was asked if there was not a modern window in the church, and I said ‘yes, at the back of pulpit,’ and they at once said, ‘why not put the memorial glass 150

1899–1902

there’? to which I wholly assented. Will you therefore let the Rector and Church wardens know of this. If agreed to, the glass should be of a delicate kind, being so near to the eye, and should not obscure too much light. It would look pleasant there, and would not destroy the ancient appearance of the church on entering. I need scarcely add, there is always some risk to the stone work of an old window in putting in stained glass, and they are often renewed on that account, which is very mischievous. Also, the glass should be good, which necessarily makes it costly; therefore the smaller (and modern) window would cost much less.3 ________________ I got William Smith to come and see me about the hopper casement for the West window of Eglwys Cumin Ch’. He said he could make a strong casement to stand the wind and keep out the wet. He took away with him your figured drawings. You could write to him direct at 1, Balcombe Street. Dorset Square. London. N.W. He said it would not be necessary to cut the jamb & mullion, as you indicated, into which to fit the casement, thus, A. [sketch] but a groove could be cut on the jamb side deeper than on that of the mullion, so that the casement could be pushed in and then slid back to go into the mullion groove as at B on sketch, soft lime putty on this groove which would compress as the casement was pushed back, and a little could be run in from the top. I am not yet out of the wood on my way to the Cottage, but the foot has been put down for it, and the furniture men begin operations here on the 27th and I may (?) get in at the first week in the new century,4 but things are not ready at the hut, and my distractions are becoming worse distracted. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Since writing the letter, Morris & Co have sent round a sheet of paper with the sizes of frontal & super frontal of altar cloth, with note – as follows. “As requested we beg to send you herewith full sized setting out of the new altar frontal for Eglwys Brewis Church, for you to design the embroidery for it. Will you kindly let us have it at your earliest convenience, as until we know the amount of embroidery we cannot give Mr Davies an estimate?” I will do this for Morris’s as soon as I can. Ph: W. SPAB W-W 44-5

1 ‘I am afraid the funds will not allow of much embroidery for the frontal. Mr Davies’ idea was to have it quite plain of some suitable colour with a simple cross in centre. Perhaps Messrs Morris will give an alternative est. & we can decide accordingly.’ WW to PSW, 19 December 1900 (draft), SPAB. 2 The rector was the Reverend H.C. Davies, but a Mr J.A. Davies was a member of the church committee overseeing the repairs. 3 ‘With regard to the stained glass in East window I should like to explain to you that the present glazing is not old, & rather objectionable. It is cathedral tinted glass in alternate diamond panes clear &

151

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III amber with a rather dark orange tinted border. I quite agree that the window behind the pulpit would be equally as good [sic] but Farmer Davies would much prefer the former. However we might leave this for the present.’ 4 PSW is of course technically correct in stating that the new century began not in 1900, but in 1901.

731 • To Jane Morris, 23 December 1900 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 23 December. 1900 My dear Janey All Friday I was to and fro at Worth urging on the work at the Cottage, and fairly tired on getting back here at 9. p.m. Yesterday, Jack came, when we consulted over the Kelmscott business; afterwards, with his help and that of Winmill we destroyed – I may say – thousands of ‘professional’ (sic) drawings, and many more remain for tomorrow’s attention, and they all have to be looked through.1 If Tuesday (No, no, that is Xmas day) I will knock off about 5. o-c tomorrow, and be with you about 6. in the evening, as I have much for our quiet consideration. On Thursday Shoolbred’s begin to take me to pieces and cart me to Caxtons, where I hope they will put me together again the right way up. You see, I am quite unaccustomed to be hunted like a Queen’s deer. Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. I shall devote Xmas day to ‘routing out’ here, when no-one will call. BL Add 45342, f. 178

1 ‘I shall come abt 10oc & give you a hand with the drawings, a sort of melancholy task too. Winmill asked me to let him know when we were going to do this . . . as he said he would like to lend a hand & have some of the plunder.’ GWJ to PSW, 18 December 1900, V&A, AAD. PSW encouraged GWJ to take any architectural drawings which interested him, and Winmill accepted some as well. ‘I had so many parcels of one kind or another owing to your generosity, and what with this and the swish swish of tearing drawings (like old father time’s scythe become audible) that Winmill and I had a buzzing in the head which disturbed our in general steady intellect. . . . I took away Earl of Carlisle’s drawings to post to him – also Beale’s & some others . . . only I think I should like to keep Beale’s myself as they may be very useful to refer to if ever I should have the luck to get a big house to build.’ GWJ to PSW, 26 December 1900, V&A, AAD. The drawings PSW gave to GWJ and Winmill formed the basis of the collection which they gave to the RIBA and the V&A, later added to by EW’s daughter, Dorothy.

152

1899–1902

732 • To Sydney Cockerell, 30 December 1900 1 R. B. Gray’s Inn Lon: W.C. Sunday night. 30th Dear Cockerell Your help about the wine was wonderful, though I could but wince at the price.1 Shoolbreds’ took it to Harley Street in their van on the way to the station, & I sent a letter (including receipt for cheque) by the foreman to your uncle – but in a great hurry – the foreman waiting impatient to be gone. Today I have written a better thing to Sir R.D. Powell, and told him I hold myself responsible to pay him back half the value of his cheque if the wine turns out to be disappointing.2 I went to Worth by afternoon train yesterday – found the Cottage inside being nicely scrubbed by Mrs & daughter of the upper Crabbet lodge (very nice bodies & minds) and the fires had been kept going, and place noticeably warmer. Tomorrow I go by early train for all day – to direct Shoolbred’s people when getting in – in a way, the furniture &c. Shall be back at night to do London things, and possibly on Tuesday afternoon going to the quite decent Inn there at East Grinstead for a night or two; and at the town shops get some things to start with, & then send for the housekeeper. I hope the ‘stores’ will be there by Wednesday – at the station at all events. You will guess that my philosophy is somewhat at stretch – like this handwriting. Jack, and Winmill, with Weir took the casts, and things other, to arrange with Lethaby on his return. Yours Ph. W. I had written the first page, & in turning over found this snuff-stain from a mixing! These rooms are bald & black and blank, as is the late resident – for he does not reside, he grubs along anyhow. Murray takes the bed from under me on Wednesday.3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/688/149

1 SCC wrote from Wimpole Street, the home of his uncle, the surgeon Sir Douglas Powell (for whom see Vol. II, Letter 538, note 1). ‘On the table tonight were two decanters. One contained 1863 port & the other 1820 Madeira. But there are only 7 bottles left of the former & my uncle will gladly take your 3½ dozen at 10/- a bottle. He is only afraid about the moving – but I told him that you were so particular about the handling of the wine that he need not be uneasy. . . . Here is the cheque £21.’ SCC to PSW, 28 December 1900, BL Add 52760, f. 70. 2 SCC annotation: ‘The wine, 3½ dozen of 1863 port at 10/- a bottle, turned out to be even better than was expected.’ 3 See above, Letter 717.

153

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

733 • To Margaret Dickinson, 1 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 1 January. 1901 To Mrs M. Dickinson At last I have managed to get my cottage in Sussex sufficiently habitable, for me to ask you to go there and help me to put it in order. Of course all the things from here have rather crowded the place in their disorder, but even when I left there yesterday it began to look pleasant again. The fire places now all burn well, and the bedrooms have been well aired during this last week, and beds and bedding – for yourself and children,1 are in their places in your room. I am going there again tomorrow, to see to the other things being placed, and have ordered those things, which Mrs Flower and you got with me, at the stores,2 to be sent down to Three Bridges tomorrow, and I am going to East Grinstead to sleep after I have been again to the cottage (tomorrow) to get odds and ends of things to tide over the time till we know where we are in the new home. I am writing to Mrs Flower by this post to tell her what I am here telling you. Both Mrs Flower and myself think it would be better – till the cottage is a little more arranged & in order, that you should go there some days before the children came, and that you should have them sent to you from King’s Langley to London, where Mitchell3 would see them off for Three Bridges Station from Victoria Station, where and where you could meet them & take a fly up to the cottage. There is a train which leaves Victoria Station at 1.30 p.m. and gets to Three Bridges station at 2.32, which you could go by, and also the children later on. I think the best day for you to go, would be on Friday the 4th of January – and if you write at once on getting this, to Philip Webb, Caxton’s – Cottage – Worth – by Three Bridges Sussex, I will do my best to meet you at the station and take you up. I will warn them at the cottage tomorrow that you are coming, and there will be a nice body – (a Mrs Hoare)4 – who will welcome you, should it be impossible for me to meet you. If my plans should be upset, and I cannot be there, take a fly at the station up to the cottage. Mrs Hoare’s daughter would sleep in my bedroom to keep you company. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

1 Margaret Dickinson had two young children at the time she became PSW’s housekeeper at Caxtons, Alice, aged ten, and five-year-old Reginald (Reggie). PSW became extremely fond of both. 2 The Army and Navy Stores in Victoria – see next letter, note 4. 3 Elizabeth Flower’s servant, and a friend of Margaret Dickinson. 4 The Hoares were PSW’s near neighbours at the upper Lodge, presumably one of WSB’s estate properties. Mr Hoare was the gardener at Crabbet Park (see Vol. IV, Letter 958, note 9).

154

1899–1902

734 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 4 January 1901 Caxtons. | Worth. | Crawley* | Sussex. Friday night. 8.15. | 4. Jan. 1901. *Mark the ‘Crawley’ as the postal address. | Three Bridges is the Railway address. Dear Mrs Flower The first writing from this old-new place is to you who have so helped to get us all here. The thanks for the same being, as you wished, an unknown quantity, and the hand writing, as you see, of a hand labourers quality – from pulling and hauling. Mrs Dickinson arrived duly at Three Bridges, where I awaited her, with her 2 children who are now just a-putting to bed – at least the younger one.1 The mother bears up wonderfully under the – to me – extremely comical absence of important items: for I found East-Grinstead this morning to be a small town full of nearly useless fancy shops – so that my loot was only a pound of tea – do of bacon – but we got a neck of mutton on our way up from 3. Bs (Three Bridges). To get our tea, when all kinds of ingredients were wanting, was wonderful & twice I went to the little shop, about a furlong from here, which proved a palace of assistance – milk – sugar – Blacking – teaspoons – knives – &c, &c, all my things being still in their boxes. The good neighbour-woman of the upper Lodge here greeted us2 – and helped amazingly, finally going for an article of furniture quite indispensable3 – also, &c. At last we got the tea. The 3 in the kitchen, with the lord in the keeping-room, each passing from one place to the other for mutual accommodation. My getting from chaos in Gray’s Inn to the same in the streets – plus – military to-doings going on – and only 2 minutes to save my train at Ln Bridge, whence I went to E-Grinstead for the night, saw banker &c – ending in getting back at midday today to the meeting at Three Bridges as aforesaid. Tomorrow will be a wrestling with boxes to find – doubtless – what we were not in search of. Never mind, for the day and moonlight was and is lovely. Your two letters of Dec: 31 and Jan: 1 came to hand – whether duly, or not, does not matter. They were – &c – &c, but I stop as agreed to. Your ‘stores’ things came,4 and have been unpacked to the admiration of the little builder and his men who helped us – but never a table of effects, as I am alive; and the whole Army and Navy are dead to such business virtue – but I dare guess they may be all right, the things, that is, for neither Navy nor Army are right – tho: the ‘things’ themselves seem – like Creation, to be very good.5 Mrs Dickinson seems to be in no way depressed by the hand to mouth barbarous condition of things, and has compared the necessary stoopings under beams of this steading to the magnificent place of Tangley.6 Truth to tell – however, this little home is not unattractive, as I am sure you will agree when you stoop to its simplicity. Therefore – thus far attained, leads to a hope that no worse may follow, and so I send this complicated haste of congratulatory words. Believe me | Yours truly and – &c | Philip Webb. 155

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Mrs Dn, in answer to question, tells me that the house flannel & soap have come – therefore I look at my own hands with less awe! No – I cannot quite end thus. I thank you heartily. BL Add 45355, ff. 26–7

1 2 3 4

See previous letter, note 1. Mrs Hoare. See previous letter, note 4. Probably the chamber pot mentioned in his letter to SCC: see below, Letter 736. Elizabeth Flower had overseen the ordering of various household necessaries for PSW from the Army & Navy Stores in Victoria, from where it had traded since the 1870s. 5 ‘And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good.’ Genesis 1:31. 6 Great Tangley Manor in Wonersh, Surrey, was the house that PSW had modified for the Wickham Flowers and where Margaret Dickinson had been a servant. See Vol. I, Letter 269, note 4.

735 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 9 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. 9 Jany 1901 (for 10th post) Dear Mrs Flower Your letter of the 7th was underlined for impressiveness. Welcomed. The assuredness with which you declared that Mrs Dickinson would be most helpful during the pinch of moving has been well borne out. Still I was not altogether unwise to defer her coming to the last moment, and until the most disorderly time of the cottage mending had been got over: for now, the working carpenter1 & his ‘mate’ doing things in the way of fitting-in my Gray’s Inn furniture, does not put her out; for they are willing and handy, and things are looking less forlorn. She has certainly been tried on one point – namely, the action of the small ‘Kitchener’, or rather the huge chimney bulk into wh’ it delivers its smoke – and that with insufficient draught: so that today has been and tomorrow will be without a fire there; for I am trying a professional art-ful dodge with it; so, if you put up a prayer for its success, perhaps it may succeed, and she will be able to bake! However, with this serious drawback to contentment, I have had dinners better and pleasanter than has been my lot at home for years. She will allow – when declaring to you her experiences – that the neighbours around us have been, beyond the ordinary, helpful, and often personally obliging. I hope she will tell you I am a willing co-worker; and that the demands made on my wits and muscles have been met with great good humour. As I have to keep country hours at night, there is earlier working in the morning, so that the

156

1899–1902

‘male brute’ is about his business out-o-doors, and out of her way when the household wheels are being set going. Now, let me ease your mind as to the children, for that side of things had occupied mine in the way of doubt. Well, they do not annoy me, or stop my doing or even thinking and writing while their chatter goes on with open door between us, and is no more to me than that of a caged starling or the ticking of a clock. They (the children) are at it now – at 7. oc. pm – in the parlour, for the kitchen fire is not alight: so that if no change in that way occurs, I am more than content, for they are certainly a great tie to the place for her. Today she has hunted through the parcels of my wardrobe things which had been hidden, and found things for wh’ there had been crying want. I too, you see, ‘chatter’ of these things, feeling sure they will better put you up to the situation than anything else could. We had one very trying night (last Sunday) from the cold – wh’ was intense, so that the next night was better-guarded against with extra good bedroom fires, and more clothes. Even the snow – 6 inches deep – has not depressed us; though, when I had swept the lines of way [sic] they were covered up again in an hour – and Wood-cutting has been a vocation for me, under wet & cold, which has not beaten me. If we get the Kitchener to go, we shall not then I believe have any serious hitch to overcome – &c – &c – &c. The A. & N. Stores book-keeping is certainly wonderful, for the invoices were all wrong, so that I sent them and the duplicates back as they were no guide to me. They acknowledged, with receipt, my cheque, and have now sent me word that they have 2/0/11½ overpaid in their hands, and have not sent me a corrected account of the items: but this does not matter, for I can get further things for the money from them which will surely be wanting. Still their things are good, at reasonable cost, and I am greatly your debtor for introducing me to the place.2 Happily the little shops about here are hives of the necessaries. If one cannot get a tin pot, or a lemon, or a pair of gloves at one it is readily got at another, all in a smiling readiness which is very cheering. This eveng I got a mother ‘black cap’ tin pot3 – [sketch] thus, at a shop (the thing out of fashion now) to warm Mrs Ds beer, which was too cold to drink, for I was and am an old hand at taking the edge off beer without flattening it. There now – do you not think I have dropped into the ‘truly rural’, when all the arts and sciences are of less account than a wanted farthing candle? This it may – perhaps – be why I do not drop into Idyllic poetry! No, as yet, the spoons & forks and knives have not declared themselves: but they will you may depend on’t. See I have paper enough to hope and declare upon, that rheumatism or other trouble does not worry you – and end with Yours thankfully | Philip Webb.

157

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

My other friends write to me with untiring kindness too, but my hatchet-worn fingers make my writing rather choppy. BL Add 45355, ff. 28–9

1 William Dench, the WSB estate carpenter. 2 See previous letter, note 4. 3 This usage not traced.

736 • To Sydney Cockerell, 10 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C, Corrected address (postal) | Ph. W. | Caxtons Cottage | Worth. | by Crawley. 10th for 11th Jan: 1901. My dear Cockerell. Your letter of the 6th refreshed me – In that you & Walker and the rest of the fellowship feel kindly towards the fellow who has had to desert you. Though I veiled my sadness under jests, that bottle of wine you and Walker emptied with me did not do away with melancholy, as its duty was.1 Truth to tell, kinship of such kind as ours has been, while the rest were reaped away from us, cannot lightly be considered – and I am too home keeping a fellow-being not to feel vacant hearted at the separation – so that your good letter was even better than good for me.2 I very nearly lost my train at London Bridge on Wednesday3 evening, (could not get away before) but did not; dropped some lumber at Three Bridges, & slept at East Grinstead the night – came on to T. B mid-day Thursdy4 and met housekeeper & children; brought them with bag & baggage here under bright sun & got tea – tho’ not without difficulty. Still we had it, under kindly fostering of working neighbours. One of them nobly befriended us by bringing a “chamber” with her, unabashed and not without dignity. The surrounding folk everywhere have been more than helpful. Things have not turned up even to this day sen-night,5 but we smile and in company with smiling helpers: and Mrs Dickinson (housekeeper) bears all crosses excellently well, and cooks – under cooking difficulties to the very froth of perfection – she is evidently a born artist, and treats me as such. As yet, the children have proved to be no nuisance. I mind their chatter no more than that of a magpie, or a clock’s ticking. They go rollicking to school twice a day, and are not troublesome o’nights. Truth to tell, though the postman in his mail cart awakes me most mornings at 6.30, & if he has parcel I must come down & open for it, I do not mind that settling time for [I] get up to sweep and water draw, open shutters, & under scant

158

1899–1902

garments; after which the housekeeper has gotten hot water made & I go to the washing of self – coming down to a breakfast of milk sop or porridge, both sane & hungry; & afterwards turn to till dinner time at 1. oc – wood cutting and generally guiding to clearing up the loose threads of the house mending. But the time of the short days is all too short to find things which still won’t be found. It don’t matter really at all, as it is part of all day’s work not to be able to do what has to be done. The kitchen-kitchener refuses to face the chimney vacuum into wh’ it has to keep company in escaping up the lum;6 so I am trying fresh dodges to quicken the draught; but still for two days there has been no fire there, but the cooking artist has managed to ring a change on stewed things, done in the ‘keeping room’; done, to a miracle. Even today there was a steik steak? pudding such as would have drawn Walker from his vegitabiliariness, [sic] and made the cook to the house of Brunswick7 blue with vexation that Windsor could not compete with it. There, let that clatter be the end of this small beer: but, out of it you will best guess my situation. Thanks to both partners, I got the address card all right,8 tho the change of postal ways make it necessary for me to add something in ink when sending out. Well, as soon as things are a little less at sixes & sevens here, and the weather promising I will suggest a Sat: afternoon for the first staggerer of hospitality.9 Just at present the workmen & the snow have even more mashed up the surroundings, so that clean footing is impossible; and my hands at this moment are both dirty – with dirt of earth – and sore with defacement of labour. Depend on it I will let you or Walker or both know if you can do me and extra good turn on the back of all the rest of your most beautiful dealing with your poor, old, but much touched friend Philip Webb. I see that my sore hands will make sore reading for the eyes of both of you, who at this time, 8.45, p.m. may be on the point of “splitting & squandering” from Gattis with the rest of the very good folk who have made those evenings not one too many in my later life.10 V&A 1958/689/7

1 ‘Philip Webb, who still has one foot in town, called in the morning for a final goodbye & had lunch with Walker & me at the Cock. He sleeps at E. Grinstead tonight & goes to Caxtons tomorrow.’ CD, 3 January 1901. 2 ‘I picture you having your tea at your own table, & learning to forget “the wen” you have quitted – I hope my picture is not a false one. The tearing up of so many thirty year old roots must have been a sufficiently exhausting operation, but I do not pity you. On the contrary, and in spite of all losses, I think you more to be envied than anyone I know – since in your days of labour you have done

159

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

everything with your whole might and can now rest with an easy conscience during the 8th decade, troubled only by your friends.’ SCC to PSW, 6 January 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/6. Corrected by SCC to ‘Thursday’. Corrected by SCC to ‘Friday’. Sennight: a week since. Lum: chimney (Scottish and northern England dialect). The British royal family. The firm of Walker & Cockerell prepared a set of change of address cards for PSW. See below, Letter 738, note 1. ‘We were rather sober at Gatti’s, as though propped on misereres instead of on the broad seats we have been accustomed to. The destruction of that great heap of plans & drawings was referred to, but it was agreed that you do nothing lightly & without a purpose, so we forbore to question the wisdom of the deed.’ SCC to PSW, 6 January 1901.

737 • George Washington Jack, 11 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons | Worth | by Crawley 11 Jany 1901 My dear Jack You must have thought ill of my silence, but perhaps not so hardly as I have. Truth to tell, there has been no spare time here for me – from the time of getting out of bed – 6.30 a.m. – till putting up the shutters (the inside ones) at 5 p.m. my head, hands & legs have had no reposing save at victualling, so your good letters have remained unacknowledged. ’Tis just a week since we housed ourselves here, all in a heap, as may be well said. All the worry, all the unfound necessaries, all the slop of poached ground & general mess from work going on, are compensated by the evident hea[l]thiness of the place. Actually, visibly and certainly, I have not been in better health in my life. Damp feet, draughts, sweating & cooling, wind rain frost and snow seem to have had no ill effect on me when all risks have been run. On going to the 3 Bgs 1 station this evening, after the work of the day, I found rather more than half down the hill that there the top of the river mist lay; while here at the hill top the air was free of it. That, and the sandstone subsoil, are the keys to the health-situation, I believe. You may be quite sure of the difficulties – numerous & varied which have had to be faced, either in laughing fashion, or with a differently drawn mouth. I really cannot remember if I have sent you a word since we parted that evening, for the business habits of noting the writing of letters has been dropped with other habits – such as going to bed at 1. o.c. a.m. Now, here, the mail cart stops at the gate at 6.30 a.m. when there are letters, and if one or more will not go into the door slit, the postman thumps me out of bed to the door. Then I get up with scratch clothes on, and go to sweeping or water-drawing, shutter opening, &c, &c, till water is made hot, when I return to bedroom & wash up: on coming down breakfast is ready, (either bread sop or porridge) and an eager appetite satisfied. Now and again a shade of sadness steals over the spirit at the loss of so many faithful friends; which 160

1899–1902

is got rid of by vigorous chopping and sawing of wood, which the sharp spell of cold has cried out for as an imperative necessity – so that, with scheming and directing the workmen still about the place, and the hundred other small affairs of living in a new way altogether, my time is crammed with activity; so that the letters to friends, who are unceasingly kind in cheering me, get left, to be answerd when I can manage to write, which is chiefly at this time in the evening – say 6.30 p.m: so that the date of my letters is generally a day earlier than the posting. Mrs Dickinson is a most industrious woman, and helpful beyond my power of telling, and the 2 childer in no way annoy me, though there is seldom a door shut between us. Only today have I succeeded in getting the little Kitchener oven hot enough for baking, and was almost in despair before, lest it wd not serve us at all. The housekeeper – who is an able & experienced cook, bore up well, and has managed well cooked changes in stews, &c, to keep peace with the stomachs. I do not quite like your refusing the too due pay for your days in helping me to throw off the mortal coil of Gray’s Inn, for your most serviceable aid was so furthering.2 Your visit here is looked forward to as soon as the weather dresses the country in other guise than sandstone mud after the hard frost and galloping thaw.3 Cockerell & Walker have asked to be the first intruders on the “unsocial socialist”, and maybe by then things may be found at last: all knives, spoons, forks, &c, &c, are somewhere, but certainly not now to hand. I had to buy some useful twopenny things of that kind at the nearest village shop, but everybody here has lent the helping hand with generous friendliness and good humour. But, I might go on in this jog trot way about really trifling happenings for an hour or two, and only send you this without much shame, because they will put you up to the ways & manners of the old professional tyrant, (you know only too well) in his new surroundings. I wrote to Mrs Morris to tell her you were going to try other tactics with King of Lechlade, & that you wd shortly go again to Kelmscott.4 She has been but poorly, and has gone for a week or so to Worthing to try and get better sleeping power. Philip Webb. (Esqre not allowed) this

V&A, AAD

1 Three Bridges was PSW’s closest railway station, used by visiting friends. 2 ‘As for the two or three days spent in clearing up – that was as much my business as yours – and if payment was to be considered, I have been paid over and over by what you have been so kind as to give me in the way of “portable property”. I should feel a very mean cuss if there was any other payment thought of.’ GWJ to PSW, 4 January 1901, V&A, AAD. For the ‘portable property’, see above, Letter 731, note 1. 3 ‘“Caxtons” will soon become a place of pilgrimage – and I hope in the interests of the pilgrims you will find the quiet country life giving you an appetite for such intrusions.’ GWJ to PSW, 4 January 1901.

161

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 4 ‘I shall write to the quarryman . . . & to King & make arrangements to go to Kelmscott when I hope we may see a clearer prospect in front of us.’

738 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 16 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage. | Worth, by Crawley. 16 Jany 1901 In spite of your raid on my unfinished surroundings, the pleasure of seeing you both here was greater than could have been yours in the visit, and railway run, for so short a time, and part of wh’ was in the dark.1 Still, what larks it were, and now to hand are all your industrious efforts on my behalf – in the covering of 2 parcels; Cockerell’s primus, and Walker’s secundus.2 Of the former, the sketch by owner is clear enough for my purpose; only, you will have to send me the blazonry of the shields. As to the design – or intention of one – it is all as yet too rectangular, like an architectural drawing, and I may have to amend this by setting the 2 shields somewhat askew. I must hunt for my herald books,3 so as to put in the tinctures with proper symbolic lines & dots. Possibly my drawing may be neat & clear enough if done to the same size as the sketch, but of this I shall find out. ’Tis all of a piece – you partners, ‘heavenly twins’,4 dancing in business way round a-Boutall dismal dead:5 and putting some of this ‘business’ into my wood chopping & chopped hands – but ‘let me not anticipate’! If Mrs Dickinson, when finding me thus engaged, should put in her head at the door, saying, ‘please sir, had you not better give over that scribble-sketchering and saw me some wood’? you will know a cause for some delay, if not to the length of my tether.6 The 3 prints will be most useful, being “human-warious”.7 The Inner Temple one is the best through rather stiff, but ’tis effective. The other two are not, being – one sketchy and the other scratchy; but it is unwise to carp at crutches, wh’ is useful things, before I have made my shot, wh may be botchy. As to the Greek coin, nothing can be said of it till a shot has been made in style; it was the one art which had ‘style’, and that not pedantic: a mystery of selfsufficiency.8 About the bookcase: I would rather you had it of me as a gift, even if I had to beg 10£ of you at the when one foot leg [sic] was in the grave and the other in pawn: so let it be my friends, unless the feeling is unpleasant to you. To both of you always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/8

1 On 12 January, PSW’s seventieth birthday, SCC and EW were his first visitors at Caxtons. ‘We came away from you on Saturday feeling very easy in mind & body. It seemed to us that you had launched yourself without mishap into the new element, & that you were destined to sail on gaily for many & many a year.’ SCC to PSW, 14 January 1901, BL Add 52760, ff. 71–2

162

1899–1902 2 The firm of Walker & Cockerell had been commissioned by the cartographer Herbert George Fordham (1854–1929), of the Cambridgeshire hamlet of Odsey, to design and reproduce a bookplate for his extensive personal collection of maps and atlases. Whilst PSW was engaged on the work, he often referred to it simply as ‘Odsey’. ‘Cockerell sent you the drawing (or sketch) for the bookplate yesterday and with this I forward some specimens of the pens ink and card we use. Of course you will understand that none of these may suit your touch, and that any pen paper or ink may be used providing the paper be smooth and the ink quite black. . . . I also send three copper plate book-plates; all of them reduced very considerably. . . . We also send a cast of a Greek coin, our custom is to draw the outline first on a photograph made to twice the scale of original, and then to discharge the photograph and finish the drawing on the white paper.’ EW to PSW, 15 January 1901, Cheltenham 1991.1016.652.a. 3 His copy of Charles Boutell, Heraldry, Historical and Popular (London: Winsor & Newton, 1863), with insertions and annotations, is now at the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 134. 4 For the ‘heavenly twins’ of the Gemini constellation, see above, Letter 641, note 5. 5 He may be referring to Charles Boutell (see note 3) rather than Walter Boutall, EW’s former business partner, but the context is both ambiguous and curiously coincidental, which is perhaps the point of his comment. 6 ‘Mrs Dickinson, the housekeeper also perfection, as it seems, with 2 nice children a girl aged 10 & a boy aged 5.’ CD, 12 January 1901. 7 For this allusion to Our Mutual Friend, see above, Letter 656, note 6. 8 See note 2. ‘If you would prefer an earlier coin, we can send a cast of one – or if you would prefer to draw your own Greek horse, it would do equally well.’ SCC to PSW, 16 January 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 73.

739 • To Hugh Thackeray Turner, 16 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage | Worth | by Crawley. 16 Jany 1900 [sic] Dear Turner Mr Jack forwarded your letter of the 12th in the matter of Stonehenge, and I here give you my opinion on the point of supporting the stones:1 someone told me of the fall & breaking of one of them. I have a dim recollection of the Society having petitioned the owner of the ground to look to the support of the stones? The contention of the “engineer” seems to me (for it is long since I saw the place) good, as far as it goes.2 But, I am strongly in favour of adding to the use of the underground buttressing, some slight underpinning – but his description of digging the trenches is not clear to me. Does he mean after the manner of (A) or (B)? [sketches: A shows trenches on four sides of stone; B a trench beneath] for his words imply both ways. I certainly think A to be the right way, and that the underpinning should be somewhat as at (a-a)? Also the earth over the concrete shd be more than 6” deep, or the grass in dry seasons would dry up, and shew in an ugly way. Of course each stone should be strongly supported before any digging was done for no one knows how slight a support may actually be supporting any stone at the present moment. Then the concrete should be made of broken flint and chips, with 163

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

coarse gravel, sand, and the cement not more than 1 to 8 or 9 of hard material, &c; also, so very much would depend on the intelligence as well as the experience of the foreman or clerk of the works, and of his being there. What does “engineer” mean by “of course cement or any other suitable material could be employed instead of concrete”? I beg you excuse the raggedness of this answer to your letter, and of the handwriting, for I have been sweeping, water drawing, & wood cutting all the morning, and am not just fit for explaining myself clearly. Things here are generally in the position of snatch up what one can when it is found, for we are in no way shipshape at present.3 Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. I keep “engineers” Times letter, in case you have to refer to me again.4 SPAB, Stonehenge file

1 ‘The “National Trust” has asked for the Society’s opinion as to the possibility of carrying out some such scheme as that set forth by “Engineer” in a letter which appeared in the “Times”, a copy of which I enclose, but before giving a definite reply the Committee is anxious to have your views.’ HTT to PSW, 11 January 1901, copy, SPAB, Stonehenge file. 2 The letter in The Times had appeared on 7 January, sent by ‘Engineer’ of Blackpool. It was a response to an article of 4 January, where the recent collapse of one of the uprights in the outer circle at Stonehenge had led the paper to fear that little could be done. ‘Engineer’ was altogether more positive and proposed a scheme of remedial support by concrete-filled trenches. ‘[It] would be an easy and inexpensive task to substitute an absolutely secure foundation for that existing without leaving the slightest trace that anything had been done, and without any danger of disturbing the stones during the process.’ 3 ‘We were all so pleased last Thursday to get your letter and a little light thrown upon your new life. We have already made use of the information you sent us about Stonehenge.’ HTT to PSW, 21 January 1901, copy, SPAB, Stonehenge file. 4 ‘Detmar [Blow] was in here yesterday & it seems likely that the repairing of Stonehenge will be undertaken by a Committee of the Antiquaries, S.P.A.B. & Wiltshire Arch. Soc. with Detmar as architect to represent Sir E. Antrobus, the owner of Stonehenge, for whom he is doing other work. We thought Ld Avebury, Lethaby & Carruthers might be appointed to represent the S.P.A.B. on the Committee. D. had seen your letter of advice & had inwardly digested it.’ SCC to PSW, 31 January 1901, BL Add 52760, ff 77–8. For PSW’s earlier comments on Stonehenge, see Vol. II, Letter 400.

740 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 24 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage | Worth | by Crawley. 24 Jany 1901 My dear Twin friends1

164

1899–1902

If you should ally me with yourselves, it would be triplets, and I should be glad to think the Siamese connection – of muscle or what not, wd never be divided. I had a memorandum from Sotheby’s this morning, to say that the sale of my books amounted “in the gross” to £148.6. – and that a priced catalogue of [sic] would be sent to me in abt a fortnight. Here is a pretty outcome of the energy and prevision of one if not of both of the twins! Was ever one of a ‘triplet’ lame dog ever before so helped over the stile of difficulties? I have no compunction in accepting this friendship’s offering as arose over the beast cartoons, & the wine, for I know the books on the average were worth the money.2 I have forgotten the exact figure to be allowed for the percentage of Sotheby’s – fancy it was 15% – and if so, I shall get something like £125, which will help pay the extra outlay in transforming a journeyman archt into a bag trotting country gentleman – and clear off the month’s debts to the village “general providers” – who have been unusually helpful and neighbourly. Peradventure I may do without selling 2½ consols in this year – wh’ would be a giving me another year clear of the workhouse, or my brother’s hospitality. He, good man, has had a stiff bout of cold – amounting, probably, to an influenza touch, which has pulled him down considerably. Colds have laid hold of Mrs Dickinson & children, but – as yet – have given me the go-by. In a few spare ¼s of hours, I have made an adumbration (as Carlyle might have said) for the bookplate, but am not pleased with its significance; so that as the days get longer, and intellectual (save the word) work, is duly apportioned with that of a day labourer, I may have a better sustained shot at it. Fear of trembling lies at the root of my efforts on behalf of the Clifford’s Inn dragons in the publishing way: for your Mr Jorkins may be ferocious in his hiding behind the strong box in the senior partner’s office. This is no letter, only a recognition of the Sotheby fact, and how such a thing came about for “the lean P.W.” P.S. Mrs Hoare – my neighbour at the upper Lodge, when having a gossip with me over the hedge wicket here yesterday, told me of the death of Her Gracious M. of the House of Brunswick: so you see I am really in the back woods of ignorance.3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/9

1 See above, Letter 738, note 4. 2 PSW described SCC as ‘the motive power’ behind the sale of many of his books at Sotheby’s. See above, Letter 719. ‘I did not like to blow too hot when you blew cold, but I knew, and I think you also knew, that the prices you put down were recklessly small – & that if some of the books are worth less than what you gave others are worth much more. I had the curiosity to look in at Sotheby’s for a minute or two & when I saw the large paper Rossetti go for £13 I felt that there was no cause for anxiety, even though the Transactions of the Sanitary Institute [of which PSW had been a member since May 1881] only fetched 19/-! Quaritch collared the Salzenburg for £8, which I fear

165

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III was much too little.’ SCC to PSW, 25 January 1901, BL Add 52760, f 75. ‘Sale of some of P.W’s books at Sotheby’s. Walker & I went to bid them up & found Fairfax Murray doing the same thing.’ CD, 23 January 1901. 3 Queen Victoria died on 22 January, aged 81.

741 • To Emery Walker, 27 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage | Worth | by Crawley | Sussex Sunday 27 Jany 1901 (for Monday’s post) My dear Walker The two promising young men displayed themselves quite complaisantly here yesterday afternoon.1 Allowing for a few doubts as to my capability for dealing with ancient buildings generally, and Caxtons in particular, they let me down gently. Or, in other words, we were mightily congenial companions, and the too brief time passed merrily away: for a variation of this story, apply to Sydney C, who discharged his important mission with a grace worthy of your colleague. Indeed. I took your little book – so large in manner and matter – with a feeling of pleasure which any words of mine will fail to impress justly: for, in such judgment as I could bring to bear on its nicety of consideration in getting together, and from the evident patience with which it has been brought to completion, I hold it to be a great success. I take it to be a boon to the minority of book loving people – the intelligent folk, and more particularly to mysself, (sic!) a devout student of all the arts. I beg you to give Cobden Sanderson this expression of my poor judgment.2 What a delight too, in my spectacle darned eyes, is the paper; how worthily have you translated that of the little book of Hours: a dangerous model unless followed in its integrity. You are too markedly kind in remembering my hands as fit to receive this early copy from yours, and I am heartily thankful for such delightful evidence of your great good will towards an old friend. May the powers favour future strivings when endeavouring to lift the present condition of the printer’s art out of the barbarous forms of the time. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Should you have a few waste sheets of the paper, I should [be] glad to have them to pencil on: the texture would be excellent in that way I fancy. Texas

1 ‘Went to Three Bridges by the 2.3 [sic] train with Lethaby & had tea with P.W. who was very cheery, though he had strained his back by too much wood chopping on Thursday.’ CD, 26 January 1901. 2 Cornelii Taciti de vita et moribus lulii Agricolae liber, edited by J.W. Mackail (Hammersmith: The Doves Press, 1900). ‘E.W. brought up a copy of the Agricola printed at the Doves Press which looks splendid.’ CD, 23 January 1901. The Doves Press, which started in 1900, was an extension

166

1899–1902 of the Doves Bindery which Thomas Cobden-Sanderson had established in 1893 at 15 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, the shortest of walks from WM’s Kelmscott House. See Vol. I, Letter 248, note 6.

742 • To George Washington Jack, 28 January 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage | Worth | by Crawley 28 for 29 Jany 1901 My dear Jack I have had your inclosures, and hope you have not been much bothered by volumes of advertisements. I beg you to keep acct of all expenditure in postage, &c. You will be pleased to hear that the Sankey’s Grease Gully has acted extremely well here.1 After rather more than a fortnights use here – when it was nearly full up to the iron grid, I emptied and cleaned the perforated metal receiver; then I applied two buckets of waste rain water from the barn roof dipping tank, and flushed out the stoneware syphon part, and next to no greasy substance came away with the rush of water. Also, there is no trouble in keeping clean the open drain, carrying away the overflow, and I sweep it down every morning: and There has been no stink whatever. My one trouble here, in the household way, is the little Lon: C.C. range, or rather with the action of the flue from it, wh’ enters into the cavern of a baconcuring chamber, which makes the draught sluggish, so that the close fire does not draw quickly enough to sufficiently heat the Oven for anything more than warming plates – a great drawback, as the fire, when refed, smokes considerably; the only sea coal fire we have. I added 2 feet of extra iron pipe, but it made but little difference, and the whole pipe wants sweeping every other day – even for such use as we get out of the Kitchener. I am almost certain there is nothing other to be done save to build a separate flue for it, which will be a nuisance as we are in the house; for I shall have to break through the floor, and roof, when the weather gets settled. The setting up of scaffolding again will be an unwelcome business. Mrs Dickinson, the housekeeper, who has to bear the burden of the difficulty, has borne it very well, and as she is a very capable cook & industrious, I feel for her one tribulation. Otherwise the cottage proves a really pleasant one, and will be more strikingly so when things get to be arranged. My time in outdoor sweeping, water-drawing, and woodcutting – especially in the wintertime, is much taken up, so that the books and other impedimenta cannot really be tackled. I have made a carpenter’s bookcase in my bedroom, and another is making for the parlour, when the setting up the books will be possible. There has had to be great ‘ruptions’ with the ivy on the S. front, both to allow of repairs to walling, and to keep it from further injuring the timbers. Have put v shaped eaves guttering to the N. side and east end which looks well, and is efficient, and two huge water butts are ready, when the weather allows

167

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

brickwork to go on again. So, you see, I am not much to be pittied [sic] in the evolution in my life, and when the days get longer, I hope to turn to some paying hand work other – or rather in addition to that of a day-labourer. Now, set me down a few (or more, if you can induce yourself) words and tell me of yourself and family, and how “the great Wen” wags with you. We here are out of all news, for I have not yet ordered a newspaper – (being out of joint with them) and only heard fm a good neighbourly woman this morning that the Queen was dead: Queen Victoria, not “Queen Anne”.2 I am really glad the old lady did not undergo a long illness. If you should write to me, kindly inclose a dozen of J pens.3 There is a gross lying hidden in the chaos here; I may find them tomorrow, or two months hence. The one I am writing with is a fancy article found in the instrument box. I shall be glad to learn if you have cleared off the Orrinsmith cottage,4 and that the Tangley work has not suffered much from the frost: here some poorly burned bricks in the new paved path have been burst with the severity of it. Mrs Dickinson, who was a servant to the Flowers, and knew you at Tangley, will be glad to see you again when you come down to see your old torment. Best regards to Mrs George and the girls – and hearty good wishes to yourself from Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. How about the Kelmscott matter? Kennedy too writes the same question. By the way or rather as P.S No 2, the prefacial “Mr” to my name is also not allowed. V&A, AAD

1 J.H. Sankey and Son of Essex Wharf, Canning Town in London, and of Ilford in Essex, were established in 1857. Their catalogue of ‘sanitary Stoneware, Pipes, Gulleys, Traps etc’ dates from 1894. 2 Poetic licence: he seems to have been told on 23 January. See above, Letter 740. 3 Manufacturers such as Hinks, Wells & Co were known for their ‘J’ nibs, which carried an embossed ‘J’. These were standard nibs which fitted onto a pen holder, and were dipped in the inkwell. 4 See above, Letter 681, note 2.

743 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 6 February 1901 A separate draft also survives in V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage | Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 6. February. 1901 r Dear M Blunt Thank you for your letter recd on the 28th Jany. I was the more pleased on learning of the good effect of freedom and sunlight on your health and spirit.1 168

1899–1902

Naturally, you have thought of the fate attending on this interesting place being left in the hands of one you know so little of. I can justly assure you that nothing has been done carelessly on my part. Doubtless the Cottage is now in much better condition than it has been for years. The additions have really made it warmer, for without these shields against cold and wind it would hardly have been bearable during such weather as we have had. The two bedroom fire places – working well now, have greatly helped, and on only one night was the cold too much for sleep; on the next this was guarded against. The item which will, I believe, disturb your satisfaction more than others is, that the Ivy on the south front – which from neglect had led to considerable decay in the timbers of the fabric – had to be disturbed. It had lost its natural hold on the walling when the living tendrils – partly growing into the rooms – were removed. By the carelessness of the bricklayer, the mass overhanging fell away from the wall, to which it was only attached with iron hooks wire and props. In lightening this top hamper it was roughly cut away, when Mr Dench’s and my backs were turned; doubtless it hampered their work. The bush at the south west angle – which still stood – was brought down, supports & all, by a heavy night gale. I asked my neighbour – Mr Hoare of the upper lodge, to look at it and give me his professional opinion as to future treatment.2 He agreed with me that – practically – the fall was no real misfortune, as now the accumulated rotten matter behind, and the network of living and decayed branches could be cut out, so that a new self supporting growth would set up from the main stems – which are healthy. We have had two heavy falls of snow since I have been here; the second, was on the night of 4th Feby, when the weight of snow broke off the leader at the top of one of the Scotch firs at S.E corner of cottage. The snow lay to a depth of 6½ to 7 inches, measured by me not on a drift. This heavy snow has stopped much of the labour work here. I may safely say that all the natives about here have been friendly and even helpful, though the carriage folk are greater in number than I had anticipated. Doubtless they will tone down under my Boerish turn of mind and become harmless. Your deputy stud groom – Holman, now looks upon me without the suspicion that an intruder is behind the scenes, and I play the part of an Arab horsey knowingone, with a skill of presumption almost surprising to myself. Mr Caffin, too, fully carries out your very thoughtful instructions as to my convenience. By accident I caught him passing Caxtons while I was writing this chronicle, and had him in to approve (or disapprove) what is being done at this moment; at present he has not taken exception to any one item, and promises Mr Dench’s account for the work done according to the agreement: so polite is he, that I must caution you against a too flowery description of the wonders worked on the place under the direction of an archt of such extraordinary ‘eminence’ (only found out when stepping down from the pedestal) as myself! 169

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

discount him Mr Blunt, now, or you will be surprised in a minus direction on your return. Please excuse these twopenny items of communication; but it seemed to me they would interest you more than anything else I could write about. The ever energetic & good natured Sydney Cockerell has looked in upon me two or three times to see if the medicine of the mind you have prescribed in this new home was telling on my – at present – very un-‘British constitution’? My strained placidity of temper has been eased by my not having a newspaper at hand for the last month, so that your benevolent physic has had a – more or less – clean spiritual corpus to work on. One more item relative to this place may possibly interest you, and I hope it will not give offence; namely, that Cockerell good-naturedly lent me two earlier volumes of your poems; the “In Vinculis” & the “Esther”.3 Of all the verse of yours I have read (and all of it is deserving of serious consideration) I hold more particularly to the In Vinculis, as a most successful poetical & personal expression on a modern theme. You have shewn, I think, that such can be handled more perfectly in verse than in any kind of prose. Yours truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 WSB was at Sheykh Obeyd, his estate near Cairo. ‘Here I lead an ideal hermit’s life seeing absolutely nobody from the outside world & having moreover perpetual sunshine to keep me cheerful.’ WSB to PSW, 21 January 1901, V&A, AAD. 2 Hoare was the gardener on the WSB estate. 3 In Vinculis (London: Kegan Paul & Co, 1889); Esther, Love Lyrics, and Natalia’s Resurrection (London: Kegan Paul & Co, 1892).

744 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 February 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons C!1| Worth | by Crawley 11 February 1901 My dear Cockerell This morning the post man thumped me up at 6.30, and when I got out of bed & opened window, he said “must come down sir – registered letter to sign for” – so, into great coat & bare legs, and got Sotheby’s packet – wh’ I took to the still warm bed to study. There was catalogue & all the lots priced: gross total of sale £148.6.0: after deducting 12/6 for van & cab hire & 12½% for selling amounting to 19.3.6 they gave me a cheque for £129.2.6.2 A very pretty stroke of business done by you for your friend. I shd have hum’d & ha’d; Sothebyed Wilkinsoned & Hodged for 6 months before I could have pulled it through;3 and what is better,

170

1899–1902

there is no compunction on my side this time – like unto the beastiary [sic] and vin ordinary businesses:4 but they were, in their implacable way, good – and you can have but small trouble on your conscience. Sins in the cause of lame dogs will not surely be printed in “upper case”! I sent Sotheby’s a proper receipt, and some neatly planted praise for their businesslike performance, and thanks. Of you, my friend there can be nothing but a happy reflection – that when deprived of the older faithful, new, and most kind ones, rise from their ashes. You will see the catalogue of prices when next you venture on the ‘Cottage’. I certainly – on the whole – think the books went at fair prices. I had thought the wind would have been taken out of the sails of Scott’s Swift,5 by the new up to date edition published some years ago: but, in a like case, Pepys’ fetched a higher price than I believe I gave for it.6 Walker will have told you of my last Saturday’s complexion. He seemed to enjoy himself – though kept off the bellows. I had another shot on Sunday morning at an arrangement of the bookplate: rather better, but not yet at all right. The motto has 4 words only 3 or 5 would have been worth more in the way of setting.7 ‘Four’ is the fault of French tracery, and from which you will suffer when next you bless yourself on that incomparable soil. Adieu (I must to post) | Yours, always appreciatively, | Philip Webb. Your most prettily pointed jest, on Ed: VII and the 2 staircases, gained the laugh, wherever it was repeated; and “Well I knows how flat you falls without it”.8 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/11

1 See note 8. ‘I rejoice to see that Caxtons stands alone at the top of this letter. This will enable Edward VII to climb down gracefully. Windsor Cottage forsooth!’ SCC to PSW, 12 February 1901, BL Add MS 52760, f. 80. 2 ‘£120 will keep you going in milk & eggs for many a day. The odd £9.2.6 should be set aside for a trip to Beauvais when the days are longer. It is an old dream of mine to see you there – but perhaps you will prefer to stick to the columbines in Worth Forest.’ f. 79. 3 At this time, the auction house operated under the name Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge. 4 This refers to SCC’s negotiation on his behalf of the sale of the ‘beast’ designs for Morris & Co.’s 1887 tapestry, The Forest (see above, Letter 672, note 8), and to the sale of his stock of port to Sir Douglas Powell, SCC’s uncle (see above Letter 732, note 1). In both instances, PSW felt he had been paid too much. 5 The Works of Jonathan Swift . . . with Notes, and a Life of the Author, by Walter Scott, Esq. (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1814). 6 It is unclear which edition of Samuel Pepys (presumably his diary) this might have been. ‘In every sale some things go cheaply, but if on the other hand some have gone fairly high (like the Rossetti) there is ground for congratulation.’ 7 The motto on the bookplate for Herbert Fordham reads ‘Fides Telum Christus Turris’ (My tower is faith in Christ). 8 SCC annotation: ‘P.W. at first wanted to call his little Elizabethan dwelling, always known as Caxtons, Caxtons Cottage. It had two staircases, and I wrote to him that Edward VII had taken it into his head to call Windsor Castle Windsor Cottage, although there were two staircases there also.’

171

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

745 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 13 February 1901 Dated by Cockerell 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons (Pallidge – or, “as you like it”)1 | Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. My dear Twins I only recd (i.e. 6.30 this morning with the postman’s wump-wump) your letter and the packet of boards.2 Lord – how seriously you take me, with preparation for the fray – of wh’ I am afraid. However, we shall see. Heard this morning that my eldest sister (married – 6 old children) at Brighton, is lying on what looks like her last bed, with bronchitis. A good woman, if ever there was one – aged I think abt 76.3 If the doctor thinks fit, and she wishes to see me I shall go to town. If so, I will surely look in on you, if only for a few minutes. The junior partner’s red herring of a Beauvais & Abbeville is a fine-smelling trailed red herring drawn just under my nose; but there will no sich [sic] thing as a waste 9/2/6 – for payments due being made – now that something is in the bank – will leave little for the necessary quantum of the beloved vin ordinaire.4 Never mind, Worth must be your Beauvais (Worth spelled Wortts by banker’s clerk!) and tea instead of vin(dictiveness). Yours lovingly | The Snoring partner. | Philip Webb. rs Having shewn M Dickinson (while she was hemming some old blankets of mine cut in two, after the children were gone to bed) some photos: of Venice the other night, I read her a chapter of R[uskin]s “Sea Stories” from the ‘stones’, wh’ made the wonders clearer to her. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/12

1 A gloss on the title of Shakespeare’s play. By ‘Pallidge’ PSW is presumably hinting at ‘Caxtons Palace’, having previously toyed with the name ‘Caxtons Cottage’, and SCC having commented on it in relation to Windsor Castle (previous letter, note 8). 2 ‘We are sending you the drawing boards at last.’ SCC to PSW, 12 February 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 80. These were to assist him in his work on the Odsey bookplate. 3 His eldest sister was Eliza, who was 18 at the time of the 1841 census. She subsequently married Nowell Stowers, who in 1841 had been living with the Webb family in St Giles Street, Oxford, and was then described as ‘surgeon’, aged 24. Presumably Stowers was a partner to Charles Webb, PSW’s father. 4 See previous letter, note 2.

172

1899–1902

746 • To Sydney Cockerell, 19 February 1901 Dated by Cockerell 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons (not to offend)1 | Worth | by Crawley | Sussex My dear Cockerell Just a word to acknowledge yours of yesterday. Mrs Dickinson had retained a stick of celerery; [sic] & on my asking why? she said, it was possible that either you or the 2 or 3 others might appear on Sat: so, you see she does not dread you. My good old sister died on Friday, 3.20 a.m. – the killing time of the 24 hours for so many. Happily there was only a 10 days of illness, & bronchitis carried her off; unconsciously for the last days. Her 6 boys were very good to her; the only feather in their cap as far as I could be interested in them, and the father is senile on the top of mental trumperiness – and so – & so on.2 I had another go at the bookplate on Sunday; the only day the “tutor”, as yet, finds for doing anything ‘by-ordinar’. It comes a little less stupid, & as soon as I see it may pass muster will send it for approval before hand work is put to it. The winter keeps hard here, & nothing can be done in gardening yet. The only thing which equals the weather with me, is appetite; which now I am obliged, in common sense, to restrict within bounds. Both hunger & restraint, Worth-y things. Glad W.S.B is refreshing himself on dates, & oasis water – the latter a kind of sacramental, or tent wine. Hope the partner is congenial, & puts up with wiles of files. Yours irresistably [sic] | Ph: Webb. I had a good letter lately from Alfred Powell. He is in distress about Mount Grace – for A. Poynter takes it easily & a workman has been made resident Archt & his men take ‘sights’ at him.3 BL Add MS 52760

1 For the on-going joke about ‘Caxtons Cottage’: see previous letter, note 1. 2 See previous letter, note 3. ‘If your sister’s departing was fated to take place now it is well that the illness was so short. I learn from The Golden Bough that there is a universal belief that death can only come when the tide is running out. I find that in this case it was at half-ebb, not, as with Falstaff, just at the turn.’ SCC to PSW, 20 February 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 82. 3 Since 1900, Powell had been living at Mount Grace Priory, near Northallerton, engaged by PSW’s old client, Lowthian Bell – probably on PSW’s recommendation – to make a house within the former Carthusian Priory. However, once he had been diagnosed as suffering from pleurisy, Powell had to resign from the project. ‘T.W. Ridley & Sons of Middlesborough completed the scheme . . . under the superintendence of Sir Ambrose Poynter.’ Drury, p. 61.

173

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

747 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 21 February 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons | Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 21 for 22 February 1901. Dear Mrs Flower I am not sure if you have been expecting a note from me – as much as I have from you: but on this side there shall be no longer delay, for fear an accusation of continued silence sh. rest on me. Peradventure you were overdone when so faithfully watching your old friend’s passing away?1 Possibly, you may have been unwell? Perhaps you were not inclined to write? Lastly, have I “put my foot in it” with you? My more intimate friends agree with me at times that I have 3 feet, and that often they are all ‘in it’! Let me hope this last suggestion has not been the cause of constraint. If it should have been, you may be sure it was an all unconscious rudeness on my part – for, am I not indebted to you for the singularly efficient help in this thorough change in my life? certainly I am, and also daily pleased with the indebtedness. We (I use the plural for the household) have been here since the 4th of January: on that evening the weather was splendid, but later on it became a bright frosty night: on the next a still keener frost; and on the third – Sunday, it was a hard frost. Since then there has been hardly any cessation of real winter weather; twice with snow, the last lying 6 or 7 inches deep; not measured in drift, and it is snowing again tonight. So hard has the weather been, that many of the new bricks used in mending the cottage have burst from it. Still, in spite of the cold and snow, there have been many bright sunshiny days or half days: but so really busy have I been, with one work or another, that but little of the country round has been examined. My walks – mostly being taken after 6. o’c to the post, or local shops for provisions, &c. To go on about myself – the inevitable! my health is wonderfully good – have not even had a cold, though my out of door work and exposure have been continuous: the work various, exacting, and strength taxing, making me to eat, drink and sleep well, and also bear the cold, from the thin walls of the cottage, without wincing. So much for the ego. There has been time enough now for both Mrs Dickinson & myself to understand each other fairly well; and, for my part – as yet – there has been everything on my side to be more than satisfied with her. I can but hope – if you saw her – there would be little to be said on her part against me. The weather having been so hindering, no brickwork could be entered upon without rashness, so that the separate flue (which I find must be built for the little Kitchener) cannot yet be set about: so that a cook’s most vital difficulty and annoyance still daily confronts the good housekeeper. I really believe that now she understands the thing cannot be done till all severe frost is over. Mrs Dickinson is the most industrious, untiring household worker I have had dealings with, and yet, nothing I can say will make her cease offering to do more for me than I have been accustomed to, and I have to resist it, or run the risk of 174

1899–1902

getting more than usually indolent. The children get on capitally at school, are fond of it, and only fear lest they should be late there: they have also made many school companionable friends. Now, unless quite disinclined, tell me all (or as much as your time will allow) about yourself, and surroundings; and if the rheumatism gives you more peace than when I had the pleasure at times of conversation with you on Saturday evenings? Wardle pretty constantly helps me with the good of his studies, which keep me from living a lazy non intellectual life in the quiet country, when [sic] my small time for reading would be likely to promote. There, please pardon this rambling amble of a letter, for I really want to know how you are getting on, and have risked the telling you in so cumbrous a way. The writing, you see, is rustic. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. I believe there is still standing in your and my names at the Army & Navy Stores a credit of £2/0/11½. Therefore, may I venture on asking that you or Mitchell – when either have to go there – to be good enough to order for me a good box of ‘wood bricks’ for children to play with. The boy2 has a turn that way, and now does the play with reels of cotton & other odds & ends. There should be a good number of pieces in the box, of the ordinary kind, but none of the more modern fantastic shapes? Mrs Dickinson is also noting down a few items of things it wd be well to have by us, and if the bricks do not eat up the ‘credit’, I will send you the memorandum of them. Again, pardon me. BL Add 45355, ff. 33–4

1 ‘Learning from Mrs Dickinson that your old friend had died since you last wrote to me, I refrained from writing, being sure that your time would be much called upon. Also, as I personally knew nothing of Mr Watts, I could only have written a valueless letter of condolence.’ PSW to Elizabeth Flower, 5–6 February 1901, BL Add 45355, ff. 31–2. 2 Reggie Dickinson.

748 • To George Washington Jack, 26 February 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage | Worth | by Crawley Sussex. 26 February 1901. My dear Jack. I had been expecting a letter from you, and when it came it was so clear and explanatory of the Kelmscott Cottages question, that I am not going to dilute it by explaining to Mrs Morris, but shall send it direct to her, with only my conclusions drawn from the same. 175

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Now, I have no doubt whatever there has been and is collusion between King and Bowley. All King’s peculiar shyness was no doubt on account of his unenviable position with Bowley: you will remember your meeting with young Bowley (evidently an enterprising young business politician) and his knowing all about our dealing with King, &c. Well, they have just put their heads together, and the stonemasons, quarry men, &c, are all in the ring – and, from the Buscot architect’s ill behaviour (I can’t think of his name now) on whom I called, I have strong belief in his collusion too – in a way.1 However this may be, the matter has become an impossibility for Mrs Morris, from my consideration as responsible adviser, for, supposing you went to an Oxford builder, or even to Estcourt’s,2 who might give a lower proportionate tender, that would in the end amount to as much money, for they could not do the work as cheaply as the local people. Therefore, I must advise Mrs Morris to try and give up her strong wish – for it would be a rascally triumph for King & Co if they could get the work at their monstrous price – even though this thrice abominable war might give them a colourable claim for the extortion. I know that the prices of labour & material for local builders have not jumped up at that rate – but I quite agree with you, the railways cheapening has destroyed in most districts the advantages of cheap local materials & labour; and it saves the architects the trouble of learning the various qualities of local work, and they won’t put up with good sound rough workmanship, which gives cottage – & indeed modest building, its real interest. So far, we are beaten. I should not have been at all put out by your redesigning and adapting the plans, as I have faith in your reasonable work – but I feel that Mrs Morris would be more likely to be extravagant in giving the money, even to her own injury, than give up any of the accommodation, and the substantial quality of the work. Your praise of the design is of course pleasant to me, but ’tis over-flattering for ‘there is as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it’. But I thank you heartily for your kindliness. If I could have trusted D. Blow (wh’ I am sorry that I cannot – good fellow in other ways that he is), I believe he could have imported labour and gathered together local materials, and set Bowley & the rest a good example – for they have no shift out of their spoiled customary work. We might have got Weir to join us, but he is nailed to the work in Norfolk directly – and so, & so, I must advise Mrs Morris accordingly. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Now that milder weather has set in, I am about to build the new separate flue for my Kitchener, and the house will again be in a mess (it has never yet been out of it though) much to permanent relief of self & housekeeper, and present discomfort. With another effort, I think you can leave out the ‘Mr’. V&A, AAD

176

1899–1902 1 The architect Ernest George designed the cottages at Buscot Park for which Joseph Rowley was the builder. See above, Letter 699, note 2. 2 Albert Estcourt of Gloucester, PSW’s builder for Clouds and the repair works at St Mary’s, East Knoyle.

749 • To Jane Morris, 26 February 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley, | Sussex. 26 February 1901 My dear Janey We have let each other severely alone in the way of letter writing, partly – doubtless – because I had to wait for evidence in the Kelmscott Cottages matter, & you had to wait for me. Now I have had a letter from Mr Jack; an exceedingly satisfactory one from the point of exact information, but in no other way. As he has put the information very clearly, I will not dilute it with my rendering but send it direct to you for your careful reading. I should not have minded in any way his redrawing the whole thing again with adaptation to circumstances, for he is thoroughly up to doing it well and honestly, if that was the only point. I am now satisfied there has been and is collusion between King & Bowley: Bowley was tricky & extortionate, & he was in a strong enough position to be able to frighten nervous King into joining the ‘ring’ – which ring enterprise has – doubtless – been communicated to masons, quarrymen, &c. Bowley & King have so naively followed the same system of blunder, evasion, and harking back to foregone conclusions, that there is no other possible explanation: for, though this brutal war, and the resulting increase in taxation, has something to do with increasing prices, that alone would not account for the monstrous estimating, or all work must have stopped in the country. I know your first impulse will be to feel that you will not be beaten, and at any sacrifice give them what they ask: but, apart from that unwise outlet, I could not trust either Bowley or King, under such a triumph for them, to do the work well, and the more so that I am suspicious of the architect who has done so much work near by.1 His behaviour to me – to say the least of it, was suspicious. From my own ancient friendship for you, I could not assent to your giving in to them – for the price is far beyond what the work is really worth; and to be driven into doing an unwise thing is the worst kind of assent. It might be – in a year or so more – that another way of dealing with the work may disclose itself: but, in any case I would advise you, with all the earnestness I have, to give up the undertaking, at all events for the present. For, and you must add this to the sum total of cost, that [sic] other expenses are involved; for there would be fencing, planting, &c, which would have to be done, and this that & the other which would render the outcome a decided mistake on all hands.

177

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I have thought the matter out further – in this way; that if we went further afield for an estimate, & could get an honest one, (not from Burford or Oxford, wh’ would be useless) the very extra cost of distance away would make the total cost amount to the same thing. The only way to be able to deal with local obstruction of this local kind, would be for two or three people to com in the neighbourhood to combine, and introduce labour & materials from a distance, and keep them in the district, but that means that regular work for a considerable time would be had to do. This honest advice puts me out much; but I see no alternative whatever, and must therefore press my point strongly upon you. Your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. I hope, as I learned from Cockerell that you are still at Worthing, that the place has suited you from the health point,2 for I cannot bear to think of your suffering in health and from worry, and the more so, that my health is excellent: though I have not yet been able to make an end of mending the cottage, the hard weather hasving delayed us for nearly 2 months. Now, at this moment it is blowing strongly from the S.S.W. & the barometer continues to go down. When you have quite done with Jack’s letter please to let me have it again. BL Add 45343, f. 4

1 See previous letter, note 1. 2 ‘I have been hunt, hunt, hunting for Mrs Morris’ address at Worthing & failed – if there is to be more hunting today I shall miss the post. Will you kindly complete the address & post.’ PSW to SCC, 26 February 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/14.

750 • To William Weir, 26 February 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons | Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 26 (for 27) Feby 1901 My dear Weir I am rather ashamed of not answering your letter of 12 Feby till now, but – save for the rudeness – it does not matter, as yours of the 21st explains more fully that of the 12th. As to the seats, as the parishioners & parson would have new ones, it is well they shd be in oak; but the paying for them is another thing, and perhaps Mr Treherne may have something to say abt that!1 He, in a letter to me, was anxious about their being made rightly to the drawing, and wished you to watch their being done. However, as they are (the makers) to produce one seat for your approval, we shall hope your criticism of it shall leave no doubt as to what the committee

178

1899–1902

will expect the whole of the seats to be. The carpenters will probably say that the wood must be planed out of ‘winding’:2 now this is not at all necessary, for if strongly morticed, tenoned, & wedged, they will not go more into winding, and the slight curviture [sic] of the winding will be far from unpleasant. I do not think the estimate unreasonable, though I have little reason to express it thus, for I do not gather if the £90 includes the material and labour? If it does the estimate seems to me very reasonable, on the side of the Committee! The Rector rather coming round to the beam & screen work at the West end, shews that he could not have understood the drawings. I hope drawing is now taught in all schools, even in such a behind the time one as Eton, but as some people have been said to be ‘above grammer’, [sic] there are many others ‘above’ drawing. The 2 pieces of specimens interest me much: without being told, I could not have thought they were both of Chestnut. The larger grained one is very like some kind of oak, but that of the lesser grain is singular to a degree, so that I should have thought it a strange wood from Africa or S. America. I do not think it mattered at all making up the quantity of wood in oak. You do not say how you like the screen work, but I hope it looks rude enough. I did not think my drawing for the seats (that of the S.P.A.B!) was as rude as it might have been, but it may look better in the wood. I suppose you will draw out the curves of the end to the full size? Your notes of the rest of the work in the different trades is very satisfactory – that is, in the way you have had them done. I hope you will have success with the plastering: be sure it is not worked up too smoothly, and again not to the usual specification form of leaving a good “sandy surface!” but I fancy I explained that deftness of handling rather than perfect ‘finish’ was the thing to aim at. Never mind running the edge of the plaster a little over the ashlar – if it will stick: the repeated wetting (sprinkling) afterwards, will help this, as well as avoid shrinking – of course it will have to be twice whitened, as the stone in places will be sure to stain the plaster. There shd be some time given between the plasterg & the 1st coat, & the first & second coats. I am congratulating the S.P.A.B. on your direction of these 2 Welsh churches,3 and for myself I thank you very sincerely for your very good labour on them, & should much like to see both: but my anchor is down, in harbour, now – and there is no likelihood of its being lifted. Believe me as | Yours very truly | Ph. W. As you said nothing as to your address, I take it as right to send it to your original “headquarters”? SPAB W-W 47

1 The discussion relates to Eglwys Cummin.

179

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 2 In carpentry, winding describes the ‘condition of being twisted’ (OED). Evidently, PSW is encouraging WW to resist suggestions that any natural distortions in the wood should be planed smooth. 3 ‘I return Mr Webb’s letter which I read with pleasure, his help & kindness is never wanting.’ WW to HTT, 27 February 1901, SPAB, Eglwys Brewis and Eglwys Cummin file.

751 • To Hugh Thackeray Turner, 27 February 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage | Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex 27 February. 1901 My dear Turner Having I have been far too busy not to find occasion for letting your letter of the 22nd remain – amongst many others – unanswered till now, but you will have it by Thursdays Comme, tomorrow.1 I see you ask for my opinion on Flinders Petrie’s letter of 18 Feby,2 but “without comment”, which instruction I will attend to so far as I understand it. Mr Hale White inclosed a cutting of it from the ‘Times’ to me, also without ‘comment’. My opinion is, that the letter – from such an experienced expert, should be recognised publicly in some way. Now for no comment: I agree with almost all he writes – but am not satisfied with the suggestion of “The whole soil under a stone might be removed”,3 for I think the actual foundation, as far as possible, shd not be disturbed; & doubt the setting [of] leaning stones upright. It seems to me that if it is found necessary to put a security fence round the area of the stones, a sunk fence would be the only bearable one, and that a serious injury to the serious sentiment of the unobstructed space of ground on which the stones stand: some years ago I thought of this fence, knowing the rudeness & brutality of British civilization – which wd probably make it necessary. If the fence should at any time be done, it should not take the circular form of the stones. In any case, close consideration shd be given to the point. If this memorandum shd not be suitable for your purpose, you had better take [it] as a private letter to yourself. Yours truly | Philip Webb SPAB file, Stonehenge

1 ‘A long and animated discussion took place last night on the enclosed letter which appeared in the “Times”. It ended in my being directed to write and ask you for your opinion on the letter, without comment.’ HTT to PSW, 22 February 1901, copy, SPAB, Stonehenge file. For the current concerns over the condition of the stones, see above, Letter 739. 2 A letter about Stonehenge from the archaeologist and Egyptologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), published in The Times on 18 February and sent from Baliana in Upper Egypt, where the writer was currently ‘in the midst of restoring the beginnings of an older civilization’, argued for protecting the remaining upright stones from falling.

180

1899–1902 3 Petrie wrote that ‘[T]he real effort should be to save those now gradually yielding over, especially the largest stone of all. When leaning stones have been pushed up into place, then all the unstable ones should have a concrete bed filled in, below the turf level, as I proposed 20 years ago. The whole soil under a stone might be removed while the block was clamped in a timber-frame.’

752 • To Sydney Cockerell, 28 February 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons | Worth | by Crawley | Sussex 28 Feby 1901 My dear Cockerell Thank you for your two notes received by second post (2.15. p.m.) Alas, a loss to both of us, this man Ellis “whom we knew” – for myself, “I could have better spared a better man” – for he was a kind of our Falstaff, but the word ‘better’ must be taken with reserve and for a different meaning.1 He was I believe a thoroughly kind hearted man; and, somewhat like the fabulous Robin Hood, he robbed the rich to give to the poor. I had rather more than a ‘sneaking’ love for him: and the honest butter he lavished on me I confess to receiving with less than the usual self restraint. And why? The man could love, though obstructed, like the fly in the glue pot, with world-fetters; he was true to his inner self – and could admire in others that to which he himself could not attain to. I hope that now he lies in a corner of one of the Elysian fields; and that he secured the ground after a highly successful bargain! Tut-tut Ph. W. get on. I had to write to Mrs Morris about the Kelmscott cottages, and in the main to urge her strongly not to build them; at all events not for the present: or, till some way is found for setting them up at a cost which would not be extortionate. There is evidently a ‘ring’ in the district: collusion certainly, and probably pretty widely spread – perhaps extending to the architect who has done profitable business there: but of that I cannot be sure. As now – I suppose, you are the sole outside trustee, Mrs M. will probably consult with you:2 and these notes are not in any way aimed at biasing your judgment. Thank you for the memm of cost of ‘removal’ cards & plate.3 The Good Rooke has written me one of his gentle letters – just in the same atmosphere of manner of his entry into the S.P.A.B. Committee room. Bless his “ways & his manners”. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/15

1 ‘Poor Jack, farewell. / I could have better spared a better man.’ 1 Henry IV, V.iv.102–3 (on the death of Falstaff). SCC annotation: ‘F.S. Ellis, Morris’s publisher, friend, and executor, died at Sidmouth Feb 26 1901.’ 2 With JM and SCC, F.S. Ellis had been an executor of WM’s estate.

181

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 3 The firm of Walker & Cockerell had produced a plate to fix to his old Gray’s Inn chambers, as well as change of address card, to announce his removal from London. ‘While I think of it I demand, that you write in your pocket book the cost incurred by Walker for the address cards & plate put on 1 Raymond buildings. Have thought of it 20 times, & only now effectually.’ PSW to SCC, 26 February 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/14.

753 • To George Washington Jack, 5 March 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 5 March 1901. My dear Jack Your excellently explanatory letter of 21 Feby, about your last efforts for the Kelmscott Cottages, was very helpful to me in putting the matter clearly before her (Mrs Morris) , and the more so that I inclosed your letter with mine – for – as it were – it was a voice from the very place itself, and smelt of the collusive obstinacy of Bowley and Company. The Devil, it seems, does forget the right use of his toasting fork, at times. Mrs Morris’ answer to the vital communication was – more or less – in this way, and sometimes in the very words. “Many thanks for your clear explanation and advice based on Mr Jack’s letter. I see reluctantly there is nothing to be done but give up our undertaking, for the present at any rate. I quite agree with you as to the collusion between the builders, and that the local Architect is the prime mover in the affair.” (Mrs M. may have more information on this point from Mr Burchall). “I need not say how great the disappointment is, it would have been such a help to me during the next few months to watch the beautiful thing growing, to be a joy to people (if but a few) in the days to come”. And so, & so, I am glad that Mrs Morris has looked at the matter in so reasonable a way. Superadded to the greed & collusion of these builders, there can be no doubt that this bloody war has frighted tradesmen, (as well it may) and they take what the short-sighted view of evasion with prospective clients: the measure of Mr Henderson’s (Buscot Park) foot is – we may be sure, accurately taken by Bowley & Co.1 There is nothing for it now, than to send in Kennedy’s acct (I think he should consider the circumstances of the case (I have often done so under like failure) and reduce his charge, for I cannot manage now to ease him out of my own purse, which I should like to do.) Therefore please ask him to send me, through you, his charge. Of course, if in future his quantities should be of any use in carrying out the work, an extra payment (if he reduces his charge) would be credited to him. Also, please send to me a statement of your expenses, and some charge for loss of your time, and I will forward both to Mrs Morris for payment. You will not forget, that I certainly shall remember, your great help both to myself, as well as to Mrs Morris; and I heartily thank you for the same.2 Yours always truly | Philip Webb. 182

1899–1902

We are having lovely wild March weather after the break up of nearly 2 months of sharp & hard winter weather. I am still in excellent general health, and in spite of all sorts of exposure; and I hope that you and the ‘Missis’, and the two “office boy” jesters3 are flourishing, like the snowdrops here, after having been trampled hard & flat by Sussex – extremely careless – hob-nailed boots. As soon as the wild weather now on, ceases, we hope to set about building the separate flue to the little kitchener. (O, what a mess we shall be in!) Curiously, and useful for experience, these S.W gales have twice so quickened the chimney draught that the oven has actually baked, so that the fault does not lie with the kitchener, but with the smoke cavern chimney receiver. Mrs Morris has now left Worthing (in better condition) and gone to Kelmscott. V&A, AAD

1 For Alexander Henderson of Buscot Park, see above, Letter 686, note 2. 2 PSW evidently was resigned to the likelihood that the Kelmscott cottages would never be built. 3 GWJ’s twin daughters.

754 • To Jane Morris, 6 March 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons | Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 6 March 1901 How good of you, my good friend Janey, to stumble on the old woollen night gown on getting back to Kelmscott, and sending if off to me – being thin, it will be put under in the wardrobe for summer wear – and I’m ‘wery careful’ of them suits of clothes. Your answer to my advising letter about the cottages is most helpful to me, as I wished so much to have your agreement in this provoking matter. This being so, I have written to Mr Jack, quoted some parts of your letter, and asked him to get Kennedy’s (the surveyor’s) charge for taking out the quantities; for the payment of this to him – should the quantities be used in future – would stand as part of a final charge. Also, I asked Jack to send me a memorandum of his out of pocket expenses, and his charge for time given to trying to set the work going. When I have them, they shall be sent on to you. I am really pleased with the way in which Jack has acted. For some kind of unconscious sub-reasoning, I feel more than usually glad of your being at Kelmscott again, for the place fits the you I know so well. ’Tis the best of ‘settings’ for you. Hope springs eternal, as we once learned, and always ‘hope’ to find true,1 so, may the unknown powers make the new companion both companionable and really fit.2 Again, I too am rather relieved in your giving up the house at Kensington3 – somehow, neither your length breath [sic] & height 183

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

seemed to fit into that place – and also, I feel that the sea or other country change from Kelmscott in the winter, is the best alternative for you. In some (shall I not say many?) ways, you always make Kelmscott attractive: for what you are, do, or wear, never goes amiss with its simplicity. That is really honest ‘butter’ – and. . . . not too much of it! Mind, we must be careful about the Buscot architect, or an action at law might stand!4 If I were called as a witness, I could say, ‘Yes, surely, some loss of practice might result from the libel, but that wd be an advantage to all parties, for it is evident from the work itself that the contriver has too much to do.’ Sometimes when having some mechanical (more or less) work to do, part of my brain has gone off on to being a witness in a court of law, &, in my mind, I have acted the various parts admirably. Alas, poor, and good natured, Ellis has fled from us,5 gone, doubtless, to a comfortable corner in the supernatural library of Paradise, where the M.S.S are faultless, and cata[lo]guing does itself on wings. I had more than a mere liking for the genial man. Love and faithfulness go a long way in making a real man. We are having Lion-like storms of March wind, rain & Sunshine here. The whole place is blue and threatening for 10 minutes – then the down rush for another 10 – followed by a glitter of rain drop beauty for ½ an hour or so. Also the birds in the evening have begun to ‘go it’ in song. Your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb. Hope that Jenny finds the Kelmscott change a help. Kindest love to her. BL Add 45343, f. 5

1 ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast; / Man never is, but always to be blessed: / The soul, uneasy and confined from home, / Rests and expatiates in a life to come.’ Pope, from Epistle 1, An Essay on Man. 2 JEM’s new companion was a Miss Strong, ‘much more possible than the last two – a quiet wellmannered body, who is not out of place in the old grey house’. SCC to PSW, 30 March 1901, BL Add 52760, ff 86–7. 3 For JM’s stay in St Mary Abbott’s Terrace, Kensington, see above, Letter 665, note 2. 4 See above, Letter 748, note 1. 5 See above, Letter 752, note 1.

755 • To Jane Morris, 28 March 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth | by Crawley, | Sussex. 28th March for 29th My dear Janey I cannot let your writing remain, as so many others at this time, unanswered, for today came the lovely piece of Hammersmith bird tapestry hanging, so beautiful in its 184

1899–1902

greyness of colouring, steeped as it is with remembrances various, but the kindly and sweet always rising to the top.1 I thank you heartily for thinking it should be mine above any other friend of yours. It will well do for my bedroom door (that is the one communicating with Mrs Dickinson’s, the housekeeper’s room) & beautifully, if turned up at the bottom – (for I cannot cut it) – about 15 inches. It will help in the best way to keep out sound between the two rooms: and as – in the arrangement in the room of my 2 pillar-like black bookcases – (one of wh’ will hold the Kelmscott books) it will make the rude but dignified sleeping home look even more pleasant. I had arranged it so after your suggestion to me of using some of these hangings. At present I cannot well say where any more could hang, for I have been far too busy to arrange any of the other parts of the cottage, as yet – indeed it almost seems as if they would never be attended to.2 This seems rather like a wail of sadness, and possibly it is the outcome of as tiresome and upsetting piece of hindrance which has occurred, here at all events, for we have had to do without the use of the kitchen for nearly a fortnight, and it looks as if we should not get it again for another week, for we have been obliged to build an exceedingly difficult arrangement of a separate flue for the ‘Kitchener’, right up the Cottage and through the roof; every brick and pipe used has had to be personally directed by me, to avoid blundering and carelessness in the bricklayer doing the work, who cannot be trusted for 5 minutes. I am quite weary of the business; but as it was impossible to live in the cottage filled with coal smoke, the thing had to be faced, and at a loss of time which could ill be spared. From 7 o’c in the morning till 5. p.m. this dog-watch of mine goes on; then tea, and afterwards a walk to insure sleep; after which I am not fit to write a letter. So, you see, my friends must wait for answers to their letters. It was the 15th of March that Mr Jack sent me Mr Kennedy’s charge for the Cottages “quantities”, and a memorandum of his expenses, saying at the same time he did not wish to charge anything for his work. If you should agree with me, I think you would well send him £5. in addition to his expenses of £3. (£8 in all)?3 Mr Kennedy’s professional charges for the quantities, if the work is not carried out, is £16. In paying these two sums (should you wish to do so) the cheque – (crossed) – might be sent direct to George Jack Esqre, Milton Cottage, 14 North Hill, Highgate, London, N.4 and he would pay Mr Kennedy, according to his acct which I inclose with this. I weep with you as to the misfortune of not being able – at all events as yet – to build the cottages; but I rejoice with you that you have found a promisingly suitable “companion”, for you have been hard tested hitherto in that way.5 I must stop now, my dear friend, to get myself quiet before going to bed, as this is written (and so badly) after post time, & will not be sent till tomorrow. My kindest love to Jenny, and very affectionate regard to you from your really good old friend Philip Webb. P.S. Do not read this letter as a gloomy one; for I feel sure the cottage here, shortly, will be a very satisfactory home for my latter days, having found the best 185

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

of health in it; not so much as a cold caught under all sorts of exposure to all kinds of weather. BL Add 45343, f. 6

1 This was the blue-grey woven textile known as Bird, in woollen double cloth, designed by WM in 1878 as a wall-hanging for the drawing room at Kelmscott House, illustrated in Linda Parry, William Morris Textiles (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), pp. 65 and 152, with on p. 132 a photograph of the Kelmscott House drawing room with the wall-hanging. 2 But see below, Letters 759 and 770. 3 See below, Letter 759, note 2. 4 The lease on Raymond Buildings ending with PSW’s retirement, GWJ was now working from his own home. In 1902 he moved to Fairlie, 24 Station Road, Church End, Finchley, where he established his workshop, and where his daughters, Jessie and Margery, lived until 1972. Gaimster, p. 11. 5 See previous letter, note 2.

756 • To George Washington Jack, 5 April 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons Cottage | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 5 March April 1901 My memory serves me with difficulty My dear Jack I duly received your letter of 18 March, and after a week or so, I wrote accordingly to Mrs Morris, giving the essence of your notes about payment: asking her, when sending that for Kennedy – whose bill I inclosed, to send the cheque to you to pass on to him. Altogether she is rather sad at being unable to carry out her particular wish as to the Cottages. It touches me also that I could do nothing further – at present at all events. I am satisfied that over and above the present range of prices, there was a common agreement between the builders to keep up the price, thinking Mrs Morris would give in to the fraud if they held out: but she quite agreed the price was extravagant, and credited the belief that the archt had a finger in the affair. Will you be so good as to let me know when you have the cheque for paying Kennedy. It is bad news of Kennedy’s health: for some years back I have not liked the look of him – apoplectic I fancy. You are so dead-silent as to your own and family health, that I can only guess that you are all walking skeletons in contrast to Kennedy. But beyond bodily health (which is so vital) I would like to know how you are engaged in work; not only in the teaching line, but in building, carving, &c; please expound to me unless your disinclination is too strong to allow of this.1 Could you not too, bring yourself to lend head and hand to antiscrape, now that the autocrat is laid on the shelf at Caxtons, they would be glad of your professional help at Committees, and there are several good fellows there who regularly attend now, I learn?2 186

1899–1902

Winmill caved in rather suddenly (his way) in the marriage business, but I think he is the domesticated sort of fellow to do well in double harness.3 As for my own doings, they have been – as Mr Venus said, “human warious”,4 my times have been more than fully occupied, so that very little of the country round here has been looked into. The walks, generally, after 6. pm – that is after tea. The weather has too been Spring ‘warious’ – very fine in its rages of storm intermixed with fitful sunshine – and the coming on of the vegetation is, I think, rather late. The great addition to my occupations has been the blessed chimney to the kitchener. Not in the whole course of my unblessed building experience has there been such a “twister” to guide in the right way: with a decent bricklayer it would have been easy enough, but I had the most indecent ever dealt with, and the thing was only got done at all by my keeping temper well in hand, and being uncompromising. For nearly 3 weeks, from 7 in the morning till 5 in the evening I have been engaged in watching and hand-guiding the work; doing that of eminent archt, plus scientific and constructional, and that of bricklayer’s labourer. The building of new chimney right up through and outside the cottage was a good & in[g]enious way, & found perfectly practicable, even when the workmen did not understand an inch-scale drawing of it. The principle (with variations according to circumstances) was that of 9” fire clay pipes inclosed in half brick work filled in with broken brick concrete, thus: [sketch] The flue had to swerve to escape timbers, and get over to one side to attach to chyy [sic] shaft near the ridge of roof inside. I got the pipes all truly set in fire clay, plumbed upright, and levelled in true line where carried over; & with my own hand cut one pipe to meet the change of direction, thus, [sketch] with success at the joint: i.e. around its ellipse into a circle, and made the joint so true, that I passed a rammer down it easily; the pipes 2’.0” long, &c; and inside joints wiped cleanly; much insistence to get this done at all, but, after doing it twice with my own hand, it was done to all except the last pipe, when my back was turned: however I got on scaffold next morning, found it undone, & then wiped that joint. Never before has there been such cat & mouse watching in building: my rascal bricklayer lost his temper at last; and having then crossed the stream, I turned him off, as has also the estate builder. The scoundrel wanted to punch my head at last because I would not let him take the scaffolding down so that the badly done chimney top should not be seen: he said he would go and tell the local surveyor that the chimney was not safe; my answer was, ‘that is why I keep the scaffoldg standing.’ That ended the affair, and I light the first fire tomorrow morning. If the thing fails to act well, there is [a] handy rope from a tie beam in the stable for my need. As soon as we get in working order again (i.e. the use of the kitchen once more) I will ask you to come & see me when weather promises. Please give my kindest remembrance to the good wife and the children, & tell them the “office” boy is in excellent health, not having had even the prevailing cold; though my fingers now are too cold to let me hold the pen rightly. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD 187

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 An important new departure for GWJ was the woodcarving classes which he began to teach from 1901 at the Royal College of Art, in South Kensington. 2 GWJ did become a committee member of the SPAB. 3 Charles Winmill married Anne Dyer in Hove on 31 August 1901. Their daughter quotes from a PSW letter (untraced) congratulating Winmill on his engagement. ‘In all hearty good will I wish you more than only just well on your great voyage of discovery. May the new land be a radiant one and the beauty of it perennial. . . . [Y]ou can tell Miss Dyer that my bark is much worse than my bite – as most sermons are.’ A second letter gently turns down a touching invitation. ‘’Twas kind of you to think, if disabilities could be got over, to make me “best man,” but in these days of bad architects a man of such quality is not easily found.’ Joyce M. Winmill, Charles Canning Winmill, An Architect’s Life (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1946), p. 37. 4 One of PSW’s favourite Dickensian allusions during his later years. See above, Letter 656, note 6.

757 • To Sydney Cockerell, 8 April 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons, | Worth, | by Crawley, | Sussex. 8th for 9th post. April My dear Cockerell The ban is lifted. As soon as you have inclination & opportunity, come. The weary labour over the chimney is at an end. On Saturday Mrs Dickinson and your correspondent were up before 7. am – and before the curious children – when we laid and set fire to the kindling wood in the kitchener, and the smoke followed the new road eagerly; we sighed, with relief from smoke & worry, and 3 cakes and other things were be-a-utifully done in the oven, which before was an impossibility. Sunday’s dinner too was easy to get done, and was of special order in recognition of the outpouring of blessing. There is a long and not unamusing story encircling this miraculous new chimney, with which you will be wearied when you shew yourself here, and I will not weary myself by telling it with pen. Proctor turned up today, having walked from Horsham.1 He was even more particularly genial in his pleasant lantern-eyed way, and my “solecisms and barbarisms” did not seem to disconcert him.2 He told me you had not gone for the usual half holiday to Beauvais, and that the Stonehenge matter was settled, in a way, as it seemed to my half informed way, rather disappointing; though probably positively necessary. I have been busy with out o’door work all day till dinner time, wheelbarrowing muck, and other dirty things, but have washed my hands; an uncommonish thing nowadays. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. There are evident anticipations in the horse establishment, &c, of the coming of the SQUIRE.3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/19

188

1899–1902 1 For Robert Proctor, who replaced F.S. Ellis as an executor to the WM estate, see above, Letter 709, note 1. 2 ‘There are two faults in speaking that can mar its Latinity: solecism and barbarism.’ Once thought to be the work of Cicero, the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium (c. 90 BC) is the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric, and remains a source of reference. 3 ‘W.S.B. had a miserable journey to Marseilles & caught a chill or something which kept him ill in bed at Hyères. He left however on Monday & is due at Newbuildings today or tomorrow, if the journey is not too fatiguing. He may call me down there, & I may get to see you on the way. If he doesn’t call, why then I shall hope to come to tea next Saturday – & to hear the chimney story, & all other stories that have been collecting since I saw you last.’ SCC to PSW, 10 April 1901, BL Add 52760, ff. 88–9.

758 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 11 April 1901 Caxtons, | Worth, | by Crawley, | Sussex 11 April 1901 In the morning after receiving the shock from your galvanic battery! Dear Mrs Flower Do you remember the story by Maryatt, (can’t spell this) of the ship’s captain at the Portsmouth Inn meeting the new midshipman, and how polite the Captain was; and when – later on, the young one came up the ship’s side, and found his superior laying on, with both “Cat” and tongue, to the back of a sailor?1 Well, I am like that captain just now, and thus begin. Thank you kindly my most helpful friend, who have so forwarded my revolutionary affairs, that I sit in calm comfort on the hearth of a fine wood fire: who but such a patient lady would or could have done me such kindness? Now, for the reverse of the medal. I am “unjust to the Stores”;2 for, if it had not been so, I should have been unbusiness-like & impolite, which I was not. They – the Stores – sent me incorrect invoices, without a proper summary of the departmental accounts, which neither you nor I could make out: I calculated as nearly as might be, and sent them a cheque. Of course they could not send me a corrected account; for their elaborate machinery – when not out of order, can only pick up half a dozen Elephants & a Rhinoceros or two, and fail over a false stitch. They cannot write a simple ‘paid’ or ‘received’ at the end of a bill, (and that not a summary) but must steam engine a Royal academy picture of a stamp on each figment of acct, which says no such thing. Accounts of Stores are merely Infernal Machines, which go off – or not – like cannon shells sent to S. Africa by a cozening Government contractor, and M.P. After doing a day’s such business, the gilded contractor cashier gets into his Brougham and drives home to 8 o.c dinner – (after looking in at his club) – at a villa ornee,3 & thinks he has been patriotic at great self sacrifice. Pah! Is that not an elegant retort on your “tartness and irascibility”? If not, I must try ‘Billingsgate’!

189

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I really did not think – even with only the Italian journey so close at hand, you would be able to come to Caxtons just now; and from the other labours you have to attend to, (such as ‘painters’, &c,) it would be impossible; the weather too is not quite inviting, for it rained here nearly all day yesterday, and this morning it has been pouring finely to help fill my two rain water butts just set up. Still, if the heavens are not inviting, we – here, are; for both Mrs Dickinson & myself shall look forward to warmer and more summerlike weather in which to welcome you. Mrs Dickinson has been over to Grange and seen Mitchell’s friend.4 Today I have heard from Sydney Cockerell, telling me that his sister Olive’s landlady at Richmond has a daughter at Three Bridges! Surely the world is a smaller thing than London. Now, my good friend take your time, of far too many engagements, as quietly as you can, so as to save up strength for fully enjoying the hopeful time in beloved Italy, where beautiful antiquity reigns supreme; and come back to us thoroughly well set up; and, thus inclined, interest me particularly with stories of that lovely land I shall never see again. Believe me – in spite of all halfpenny accidents of fate, Yours truly & thankfully | Philip Webb. Please do not trouble (in no case move in the matter) about the comical 7/8. It will keep; for money in the hands of ‘stores’ “has no smell”! I will settle for the 7s/8d and the box of good bricks,5 when I have the pleasure of laughing over such matters here, on my leasehold hearth, with you. BL Add 45355, f. 36

1 For this incident from Frederick Marryat’s The Naval Officer, see above, Letter 633, note 8. 2 For his dealings with the Army and Navy Stores, see above, Letters 734–5. 3 A usage suggesting bourgeois pretension. A more familiar form is ‘cottage orné’, hinting at a mannered rustic stylisation which one would rather not find. 4 Mitchell was a servant in Elizabeth Flower’s employment. 5 See above, Letter 747.

759 • To Jane Morris, 22 April 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 22 April 1901. My dear Janey Let me hope that you too have had these 6 days foretaste of weather of Paradise. You like the sun – I know; and for the first 5 days here during each 24 hours there was not a cloud in the incomparable sky, and though today there has been a thin screen 190

1899–1902

of wind-spread cloud, the air has been a boon. Mrs Dickinson dried some clothes in the orchard in an hour and a half, the little place about being all alive with birds. Am inclined to be lazy, but stick to the very necessary work nevertheless. I want to tell you how excellently well your tapestry curtain becomes my bedroom.1 It hangs between the 2 stained-black tall glazed bookcases, set one on each side of the door to Mrs Dickinson’s room, (she having a little back stair) and deadens any sound from the children, and looks quite fitting in all ways. I only had to turn up the bottom of the curtain, some 15 inches, and it hangs pleasantly ponderous: its sweet greyness of colour going well with the rusty black of the cases and the half timber beams of roof & walls dividing the surfaces into panels of white washed plaster, the floor being of wide oak boards. Some more of the tapestry stuff would be an additional joy to me, but I am exercised as to the difficulties of using it on other spaces. At first I thought of taking a length, & cutting in half and joining the two pieces together at the sides, but my wall spaces are 5 feet high and the stuff, being 8 feet long, would only make 4 feet. It would I feel rather spoil the look of the thing to put some dark indigo stuff at the bottom; what do you say? and then there is the cutting, which rather shocks me. Perhaps one of these days you will manage to come and see the place and myself at the same time? The appointment of Proctor as trustee pleased me much, for he is such a curiosity of a good learned student and bog trotter; for the twice he has been here, at the first he walked 18 miles, & the second, some 13. He is quite sympathetic on subjects in which one much wants sympathy, being the peculiar people always in a minority! The Squire Blunt has been twice to see his new tenant, and has approved his judicious dealing with the dignified little old house; and he more or less unbent to me, having at first – so I fancied – been rather shy of his customer – probably that is the best way for beginning. The Arab horses are always at hand when I have time to look wise over them in the horsey way – sometimes at exercise a string of four will halt in front of here for my pertinent observations. The stud groom (Holman to wit) is a personal companion in the way of friendliness, and he too has a stud of 10 children at the lower lodge to Crabbet Park. But, I am very much occupied, the winter having hindered things about the place being attended to, and one pair of hands is but little even in this small, but of late years much neglected place. The old lady late inhabitant – the dead wood-reeve’s wife – is coming up the hill this evening to tea, to see how her old home of many years looks under the treatment of the new tenant. Fortunately my housekeeper is a good hand at presenting a pleasant teatable. I will do my best to console the bereft old lady, and carry things off with as light a hand as may be. Mr Jack still holds there was no need to make him any payment for his Kelmscott work, but I am glad you sent him the help;2 the 4 of the family, till he gets more regular work, make calls on his slender means, my standing dish of employment being gone from him. 191

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Goodbye my dear friend, with very kind love to Jenny, and good will to the promising new companion. I think of you in the Kelmscott garden, always, and as constantly with the affection you expect from Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, f. 7

1 See above, Letter 755, note 1. 2 PSW had recommended payment of £8 to GWJ for his assistance to date. Perhaps JM gave more than this.

760 • To William Weir, 16 May 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. 16 May 1901 My dear Weir Having been wholly occupied since coming here, I have been obliged to let you take the chance of a letter from me, (not that that wd be a serious loss to you) but the Eglwys Cummin rector has become so outrageously tiresome & vexatious, both to Mr Treherne & myself, as well as the S.P.A.B., that I am bound now to trouble you. I had a letter from Mr Treherne this morning (who I am sorry to say is ill) telling me that the rector has been ordering things to be done to Eg: C. ch’ quite contrary to our wishes, and mischievously injurious to what we have been so painfully doing for the lasting good of the building. On the 2nd May, I wrote an urgent letter to him stating, that, from reports, I had heard he was having plugs cut into the walls of nave to hang lamps to, and that he had instructed the mason to colour the walls, &c &c, and adding how vexatious such instructions were to the Society, & myself as its representative. He wrote me in answer – evading my points, and saying “we have consulted Mr Weir about everything that has been done since he has left” and adding “that the expenses had exceeded what we had thought and our funds are short to meet our expenses” – and “owing to this we cannot possibly afford to have Mr Weir’s personal superintendence any further”. All this after wasting the collected money on new oak seating to the Nave! Adding at last a positive insult, in, “I am sure you would be pleased with what has been done”. One thing has not been done, namely, to pay you your due in money, which shd have been thought of before the extravagance of new seating was incurred. I gave in on the part of the Society to the new seating, thinking that of course sufficient money had been collected, & that his, the rector’s, expenditure in that way wd

192

1899–1902

probably be less injudicious than in any other. I remember, in an earlier letter of yours, (though I cannot lay hand on it) your saying that the present seating could be very well made good & painted, which was what I had wished should be done. The cutting holes in the walls is very mischievous, and as I learn today he has been colouring the nave walls, &c, by Baylis (!!) “a nice grey”.1 If this stupidity be true, it is monstrous: for, there could not be a worse colour for the place than “grey” – even if it were a good one, wh’ it surely wd not be. Also, I remember agreeing with you to pick out a patch of the old red colouring which was the least stained, and to match it for the new. I really hope that the rector’s assertion that you assented to these things is not true. Indeed, I do not think it can be. I write this direct to the Rectory, as I hear you are expected there this week. If that is so, please to be so good as to strongly express your dissatisfaction with such ‘goings on’, for, all our efforts will be negatived by ‘fancy work’ been [sic] carried out on the building regardless of the consequences to the Society, which, by such ignorant action, would be brought into contempt by all people who know anything of such matters.2 The S.P.A.B. has – I believe – written to the rector through its committee, which is, of course, shocked at your account being unpaid. That should have been the first charge on the finances, for on your arduous endeavours to carry out the instructions of the Socy would depend the success of the work. It was this personal supervision which is indispensable in all work dealing with ancient buildings, and we have all here been thanking you for your (as it seems now, frustrated) endeavours. Of course, I know from experience, that the clergy, generally, are grossly careless of the destruction of the sanctity of the religious buildings unfortunately trusted to their wardenship, with the result that more than two thirds of them have been made ridiculous by the bastard ecclesiastical tinkering which has been applied to them. The pre-Conquest (Anglo-Saxon, so called) Church here has been barbarously ill-used in that way,3 & another Church 2 miles off has had all antiquity swept away from it.4 But there is no end to the cause of this righteous anger at proceedings so ignorant and childish. Will you kindly answer this letter, after having expressed to the rector your vexation, &c. Yours truly | Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 49

1 Baylis was the stonemason engaged for the work at Eglwys Cummin, described by WW as being ‘rather strong headed’. 2 ‘I had a letter from the Rector, saying that the colouring of walls was done as arranged as we intended – viz. with Indian Red to match as near as possible a light patch of the old colouring. I am glad of this as a grey colour would have been deplorable. In answer to my last letter asking if

193

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III anything had been done to painting of South door & pulpit he states that the painter is coming today, but does not say what for – I have written to ask him to let me know what he intends the painter to do & mentioned at same time that the Socty advised the doorway & pulpit to be painted a dark green, also urged him to delay the painting as I would send a sample colour to be worked to.’ WW to PSW, 29 May 1901, SPAB. 3 St Nicholas, Worth. See above, Letter 710, note 6. 4 He may mean the parish church of St John the Baptist, Crawley, a thirteenth-century building which was substantially restored in 1879–80 by Henry Woodyer (1816–96).

761 • To Hugh Thackeray Turner, 20 May 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 20 May 1901 My dear Turner. I return your budget of papers, with many thanks to your Comme for writing to that Welsh mule of an Eglwys Cummin parson. ’Twill all be of no use, for stupid as he is, he knows perfectly well we cannot force him to act rightly. Learning that Weir was expected at Eg. Cummin in last week, I wrote to him there, c/o of the Rector, and asked him if he could explain the parson’s action: and, as he may not have gone there, I have written to him at Wilby today, telling him to send for the Eg: Cummin letter if he has not yet received it. But, I suspect there is nothing further for us to do, as the mischief itself has been done. Treherne is much put out, and is ill at the present time. Yes, Weir’s report is a good one on a very interesting church, indeed Norfolk Churches almost invariably are.1 There was a point in the report which I thought you might consider with Weir; namely, what could safely be done to the recessing, &c, of the Rood Loft stair. Could it not be strengthened without quite closing it up? Also, would it not be well if Weir sent you a diagram of the form of buttress he is using, shewing his style of enlarging & strengthening, &c, such work should not be imitative of the ancients? Well, my days are full of work in one way and another here, and that to the garden & little orchard wants overtaking, for ’tis certainly behind hand. From all accounts I’m glad to learn that the S.P.A.B. gets good committee meetings. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. SPAB

1 WW reported on and subsequently oversaw the repairs at All Saints, Wilby in Norfolk, work which began in the spring of 1901 and was completed a year later. As with WW’s involvement at Eglwys Cummin and Eglwys Brewis, the Wilby project was one in which the SPAB’s advice had been sought and for which specifications for remedial work were prepared. Whereas those other schemes had started whilst PSW was still in professional practice, and indeed were carried out in accordance with his

194

1899–1902 recommendations, his willingness to offer advice even after his retirement was evidently seized upon by the SPAB. He therefore continued to be listed in the membership lists as a Committee member of the SPAB until his death, although he attended no meetings once he had settled in Sussex. On 25 January 1912, WW reported on further remedial work which ought to be undertaken. SPAB, All Saints, Wilby file.

762 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 22 May 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth | by Crawley 22 May 1901. My dear Walker & Cockerell Rather more work was done on last Sun: morning to the bookplate than usual; so that, considering its possible completion at some time, it would be better if you could, conveniently, send me the blazonry of the 2 shields. Of course, I am not satisfied with the thing; and if it don’t photo-graveur decently, another will be done, and your expenses paid for the failing one.1 I’m really sorry your anticipation of finding in me a useful ally has drawn so blankly, but when we beat the bush next time, a “very, very peacock” may be started?2 I was in a train yesterday for the first time since Jan: 4, and went to Crowborough: an inland sanitarium; [sic] looking as if a seaside spot had been pumped up 20 miles back from the shore – to grind invalids by wind-power. I thought HaleWhite looked all the better from the situation, but he is not yet happy in a country home: and a health resort must have a medicine-bottle unkempt look about it.3 This place, now, as full of nettles and other weeds as it can grow, looks quite tidy and homelike. When either of you go into Soho square, or down Long acre, could you get & post to me a large size hard cake of whi best water colour white – that is either from Ackerman’s or Robertson’s4 [1 or 2 words obliterated] Your faithful and undependable servant | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/21

1 ‘We are glad to hear the book-plate is going on. I am sure there is not the least reason for anxiety as to its success. If it is only finished as it was begun, nothing could be better.’ EW to PSW, 25 May 1901, Cheltenham 1991.1016.652.e. 2 ‘. . . and now reigns here / A very, very – pajock’ (earlier editors often give ‘peacock’). Hamlet, III. ii.283–4. The peacock reference has resonance, as the bird is the central image in PSW’s design for the ‘Odsey’ bookplate. 3 PSW was visiting WHW, who had moved to Crowborough in 1900. Situated in East Sussex on the Weald, at the edge of Ashdown Forest, its situation and height above sea level meant that the town was regarded as something of a health resort by the end of the nineteenth century. WHW’s house in Lord’s Well Lane was well situated, ‘high up, about 650 feet above the sea-level . . . in lovely country. . . . He was delighted too because Philip Webb . . . would soon be within easy distance of

195

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III him.’ Catherine Macdonald Maclean, Mark Rutherford. A Biography of William Hale White (London: Macdonald, 1955), p. 361. 4 Rudolph Ackermann & Co was established in 1829 as a stationers, publisher and manufacturer of watercolour paints; his son Rudolph Ackermann junior described himself as a ‘Manufacturer of Superfine Water-Colours, to Her Majesty and the Royal Family’, and traded from Regent Street. Charles Robertson & Co sold artists’ materials (1840–1907) from premises at 51 Long Acre.

763 • To William Weir, 6 June 1901 Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. 6. June 1901. My dear Weir. Thank you for the tracing-drawing of chancel &c. of Eglwys Cummin, which was just what was wanted to help me make a scheme for Mr Treherne to talk over, with me first, & then take it to Wales and consider the matters there with you, and you alone – if you can possibly keep his reverence from wedging in on the conversation. ______________ About Wilby Church. The Commee of S.P.A.B. was right I think (I am sure!) in asking you to strengthen the angle in question without interfering with its present condition more than absolutely necessary. To me, the whole of the corner, N & S, is so valuable as well as interesting a remnant of ancient usage, of perhaps two or even three dates, that every item that can remain revealed, after being strengthened, the more the society’s service should be valued. I have, therefore, after using the information and suggestions given on your tracing & in your letter, ventured to make other suggestions, in the same line with yours, for the desired result. In the bit-tracing inclosed, with yours returned, you will note that I wished to leave visible all that remained of the ancient use, (or uses?) and yet to materially strengthen the corner. On close consideration, the conclusion came to was not “to reproduce the outline of ogee arch on the face of the filling in”, for, that would mean that the repairers of 1901 were as sure of things, mediæval & other, as Archits of 1851 were! All we can do is to strengthen, and hide as little of present untouched work as possible, so that others following us may have a guess at its meaning – with perhaps some collateral help from later gathered knowledge. I daresay you will be able to make out the meaning of my scratch of tracing, which was made without having seen the actual building, and therefore may be much improved on by you, working daily on the site, when inches can be taken advantage of, and your plan possibly changed from that of one day’s work to that of another. I think whatever you do here should be in good hard brickwork in cementmortar. Clean washed sand, 5 or even 6, to 1 of cement. This new brickwork not to be plastered, but when dry to have two or three coats of lime white laid on it.

196

1899–1902

Do you think you could get a piece of hard York stone 6” or 9” thick to build in as a tie at y? If not able to do this, two stout iron bars – turned up at the ends, would serve the purpose of steadying the pier. As to the landing niche, which must have opened on to the top of rood loft, if this was filled in (within an inch of present plaster face) with half brickwork in cement – closely and carefully, with a tile in cement transome,1 [sic] as shewn on both tracings, it would be stiffening enough at the back pressure of chl arch. If not, 9” brickwork wd have to be used. In either case an opening should be left, for light & air, in the filling in, as suggested on the tracings.* I return your tracing in case you would wish to put further questions. Yours truly | Philip Webb. * This is hardly clear I’m afraid? It means that the back of the niche – behind the ½ brick stiffening wall would be open space. I ask pardon for my ragged work, &c. SPAB W-W 53

1 Transom: cross-beam or cross-piece (OED).

764 • To Sydney Cockerell, 14 June 1901 Dated by Cockerell 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley Dear Cockerell I had your picturesque post card from Rouen, and on which I hoped you had “got rid” of both your ears as a permanent cure for that complaint.1 Still, apart from that small joke, I sincerely wish you well out of that trouble – for, you – who take others’ troubles on yourself should be free of your own. Since – or while you were away I wrote to the senior (?) partner,2 and it, with the answer, electrically crackled with the word “Jorkins” – and jests at your expense – doubtless he was demure enough on your return. I had a P.C too from ‘Corvus Frugilegus’.3 He too sparkled with fun, in a letter I had this morng, most pleasantly – also at your expense – so that you cannot possibly live on £300 a year – “things is riz so”!4 He mentions “Wandrille” wh’ I don’t know,5 and says something cryptically of “Pull for your lives” & “on the very spot” – wh’ I suspect referred to the Oxford boat on the Seine in 1858? which would mean Caudebec?6 He is to be with his missis & son at Chartres next week. To – in some backhanded way to make up for your unlucky visit with W.R.L – this place has been replete with well cooked victuals; for Treherne was here on Monday, Hale White & his Mary yesterday; and Mrs Flower comes on Monday

197

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

next to eat up what fell from there [sic] tables, with some new laid additions. I tapped a bottle of ’63 port which proved in fine, unvexed by travel, condition; so that I hope Sir Powell-Barts’, of same age, has run the gauntlet as well.7 We have had heavenly showers here, which made our hearts for to jump; and now one cannot get down the Orchard from weeds and other vegitation, [sic] and the bottom gate has come nearly up to our back door to get us over the difficulty, for space has vanished foliageously. Almost needless the telling, under the circumstances, the bookplate is not yet finished, and nothing but work o’Sundays can complete it; for time at other times runs thro’ as if Caxtons was a sieve. I spy no more offers of work from Clifford’s Inn, and am melancholy, when not ribald jesting, accordingly. Yours truly at present | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/23

1 SCC had been suffering from ear pain since early May, at one time fearing it might be a symptom of mumps. ‘Sincerely hope your ear trouble is less troublesome, or rather that it has ceased to burden you: pain – pain is perhaps the heaviest load.’ PSW to SCC, 31 May 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/22. SCC had taken the overnight crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe, arriving in Rouen on 4 June at 5.30 a.m. 2 EW. 3 Thomas Rooke, ‘whom I found painting in the Rue Damiette. He was astonished to see me & very pleased also. . . . Mr Rooke came to dinner with me & we decided to go together to Caudebec in the morning.’ CD, 4 June 1901. On the steamboat to Caudebec, fellow passengers were Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919), elder daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, and her daughter, and together they visited the Abbeys of St Wandrille and Jumièges. 4 No origin traced, but PSW may have been quoting a tradesman or waiter (from Gatti’s?) known to his immediate circle. 5 ‘La Wandrille is a ruined Benedictine Abbey near Caudebec – in some built up portions of which certain Benedictines still reside.’ SCC to PSW, 15 June 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 92. 6 The ‘Oxford boat’ was that occupied by PSW, WM and CF in August 1858, on their French trip. 7 See below, Letter 771, note 7.

765 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18 June 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. 18 June 1901 My dear Cockerel. Your letters are always good for me, though in this last, from N.B.P1 you failed to say how you were, and if the tiresome ear disability has been got rid of. O these impediments to plain sailing in life! Doubtless you made the Rooke ‘caw’ with surprise; and how glad he must have been that you caused him to make the Caudebec holiday.2

198

1899–1902

I’m really glad to have the pleasant print of Blunt’s letter to the universally damned Times. They dared not put it in. Conscience – even in that bestial publication – must make them cowards.3 The Chiswick printers have sent me the 2 WM. addresses in their most pleasant form4 – and, how good they are: my old friend is dreadfully underrated. As he was an all round man they miss his points, and, such is the public blindness, he seems flat to it. I send the Fordham sketch: if I then said the bookplate was “progressing” – all I can say now is, that ’tis progressing backwards: for I’m trying to pick up dropped stitches with Chinese white, when my inexperience with that vehicle bothers me much, and in the drawing upsets the colour of the thing; and I can’t help thinking the two whites will shew in the reproduction? If so the mess will be complete. This is a much ado about the infinitely little,5 but I rather wished to shine in the Clifford’s Inn eyes, and not that they should damn mine.6 This hospitality business here (not the happy raids of the Saturday afternooners, but those who come for the day – much as I like to see even those) takes up much of my time – which is limited beyond all expectations. The orchard here is like an Indian jungle in miniature, and the handsome striped cat like a “man eater” shaking the currant bushes.7 He eats mice and half fledged birds by the dozen, & sleeps off the gluttoney [sic] in lackadaisical attitudes on the mat beside me: every morning when I brush said mat out o’ doors, he asks me, by lying down on it, to give him a good scrub with the besom – skipping about with joy when the birch twig cleaning is over. That trampled front garden here is indeed gay with beautiful flowers and weeds. There is a mass of wild strawberry and forgetmenot, with numberless ripening of fruit on the former, enough to make a small pudding of. Lady Anne has sent W.S.Bs & her invitation to the luncheon on 6 July.8 Have written to cry off the luncheon part, for “he is sae shie” – I made my bow under the excuse of a “retired student”! Holman had his bread & cheese & beer supper here last night; and gave me all the stud stable politics – and begged me to come once more & see the beasteses [sic] before they are ‘put up’ – so, go I must. The drought here has much reduced the hay crop, and the July rains will come just as the grass is laid low. The clover stands a better chance. The tree foliage is en masse. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/24

1 Newbuildings Place. 2 See previous letter, notes 1 and 3. 3 ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all’, Hamlet III.i.83. ‘I enclose WSB’s Times letter in its neat final form. The Times didn’t put it in, it need scarcely be said.’ SCC to PSW, 15 June 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 93. For WSB’s letter, ‘The Shame of the Nineteenth Century’, see next letter, note 1.

199

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 4 Art and Its Producers and The Arts and Crafts Today: Two Addresses Delivered Before the National Association for the Advancement of Art by William Morris was printed at the Chiswick Press and published by Longmans & Co. For conflicting evidence over the precise date of publication, see LeMire, p. 288. 5 A play on the title of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. 6 ‘Thank you for sending the wretched prototype of your wonderful drawing. You must not run it down, for it is one of your masterpieces. We look forward eagerly to the day when it will be done. We shall hold a private view & charge 1/- a head within the barbed wire enclosure – like Sir Antrobus of Stonehenge.’ SCC to PSW, 19 June 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 94. 7 PSW seems to have inherited a cat, ‘Billy’, when he moved into Caxtons. 8 ‘Lady Anne is back from Egypt, & full of preparations for the sale on July 6th. It promises to be unusually successful, owing to the massacre of horses at the war.’ SCC to PSW, 15 June 1901, ff. 92–3.

766 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 24 June 1901 A separate draft also survives in V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. 24. June 1901. re To/ Wilfrid S. Blunt Esq Dear Mr Blunt. Something in the midsummer time – I suppose, made me look at my lease of this place yesterday – where I found that a request for the renewal of it should have been made a little earlier than the quarter day before the yearly expiration. I therefore inclose a formal application for the same, with a thankful acknowledgment of the good to my health from the air, and the exercise conveniences found here; to say nothing of my being indebted to you for much kind attention to my needs and personal pleasure. I can but hope that as a tenant you have not found me a disappointing one? When I last saw Mr Caffin, I came to terms with him as to the cost of the repairs of the cottage – as nearly as such instructions received from you would allow him to give me the facts relating to the actual amount of my indebtedness to the estate: with some little pressure on my part he agreed to receive a cheque for £12 for the excess of cost over and about the £150 allowed by you for the said repairing work. I have therefore sent him a cheque for that amount. As to the very necessary attention yet to be given to the decayed front porch – the work to which would be a visible improvement to the property, he proposed, and I accepted, that the necessary cost of that work should be divided between the landlord and tenant, the former giving the materials, and the latter paying for the labour; this I will therefore see to as soon as my time is a little less occupied than at present. Let me acknowledge at this time the pleasure I have had from reading & re-reading your letter to the ‘Times’ of December in last year.1 Beyond the duly restrained force of the appeal to the conscience of the nation, I was delighted with its fearless exposure of the evils eating into the heart of an otherwise interesting section of humanity: nothing could have been more penetratingly and succinctly 200

1899–1902

put – at the opportune moment, than your well thought out sentences; and these coming from a man of a social class, too little given to marking national corruption, gave me signal satisfaction. That the chief of brutal newspapers refused to print it, shews how far moral cowardness cowardice has – of late years – sapped the foundation of manliness in English life; and, if others proof were needed, this baseness would supply it. I have remarked also, that such writers as Frederick Harrison cannot easily do away with a reproach due to them for having belittled the teaching of such serious authors as Carlyle, Ruskin, and William Morris,2 who have clearly foretold what must happen to a race, or races, the minority of whom seek to gain for themselves that which should be applied to the whole human family. I heartily thank you for this particular literary effort of yours – as well as for others which have given me comfort. With apologies for this too lengthy a letter | Believe me yours truly Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 SCC had sent a copy of WSB’s privately printed ‘The Shame of the Nineteenth Century, a Letter Addressed to The “Times”,’ [1901]. Originally written on 24 December 1900, in ‘the last week of the glorious Nineteenth Century’ (p. 1), it was an attack on the way in which Britain had laid waste the natural resources of its Empire, fomenting wars and oppressing indigenous populations. ‘It is not a moment at the close of this sad Century for anything but silence in England, and to sit with ashes on our heads, mourning for what it has brought us in the loss of our old virtue’ (p. 7). 2 The positivist thinker and writer Frederic Harrison (1831–1923). PSW may have had in mind Harrison’s ‘Ruskin as Prophet (A Dialogue)’, reprinted as chapter 3 of Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and Other Literary Estimates (London: Macmillan and Co., 1899).

767 • To Sydney Cockerell, 13 July 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. 13 July 1901. Dear Cockerell. Thank you kindly for the pens – “assorted”, some of those, other than the “crow quills”, may do for less close work than that of the never-ending bookplate – if so be the “partners” entrust me with another commission??? Your fanciful commission (not depreciatory this) is “a’ in the cloods”, as I may have said before. Still the prospect is pleasant, without the “napkin” of the “25£” – If so be, &c.1 New (I feel inclined to spell him after the manner of the Zoological beast – Gnu –) has been here 3 times, and I went with him & his friend Laws to Crabbet to talk over the point of view, &c, as he was anxious to please W.S.B in that matter.2 Before leaving, yesterday, he came to shew me what he had done up to a point, (much work to it remaining for home industry.) I thought 201

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

the view settled-on the best under the circumstances, as the house did not lend itself to picture making. As I criticised his work without charge, I got him to do the same with the bookplate, as to the possibility of failure in reproducing, but he had no experience in photo-graveur work. He is, I found, a (the?) dietitian, producing his own victuals, though at tea time it was not fat of bacon.3 I got on with him very well. As, also, I got on well enough with Neville Lytton, but he could not face ‘latter day saint’ views of a possible view future art in painting.4 I think he should be caged with selected companions for 5 or 10 years, according to his receptivity. Lethaby, happily, has gone with leaps & bounds to the nail heads. What downright good work that is of his, done for & before the “non compossers” (W.Ms) of the select circle, the R.I.B.A – extended, Royal Institute of British Asses – Lord, what a mess they made of their criticism of the paper.5 I could say, ‘thank you’, heartily to W.R.L for sending me such a soother as his paper. I preened my plumes, & took further good heart for the future. I was not put out by the raid at Arab sale time – only a little anxious about the housekeeper here.6 Yesterday I witnessed a fine feat of legs & feet in the first of the 3 chestnuts, at exercise and training, in the Paddock here. He was going in circle, and set to trot, when he started to kick with extreme force & swiftness of heels fully extended for 5 or 6 consecutive times, only for amusement in testing his own fresh young strength: no man could have sat him at the time, as he would have jerked him on to the ridge of the thatched hut hard by. Holman hopes in another week or two to mount the backs of these 2 year olds, for training tells quickly with them. No, Holman is all right – I believe – but occasions such as a sale call for recognition at the bottom of another glass - - or two!7 Today is cooler, (what fine haymaking weather it has been; though I hope all the parish won’t come & drain my well dry) and, if so be, some little progress more may be made to morrow with a less faltering hand on the (everlasting) ‘plate’. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/26

1 SCC hoped to encourage PSW to produce a new animal sketch, but nothing came of it. ‘As to the beast drawing, I hope you will bear it in mind. I do not want Hodson to be the only man to throw up his hat, and I have put aside the £25 in a napkin. The bookplate, showing your touch to be as fine as ever, has only whetted my appetite.’ SCC to PSW, 10 July 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 97. 2 SCC annotation: ‘E.H. New went to make a pen and ink drawing of Crabbet for Wilfrid Blunt.’ See also below, Letter 795. 3 SCC annotation: ‘When staying with Wilfrid Blunt, who had an oriental horror of pig’s flesh of every kind, New is fabled to have produce a private slab of cold pork at luncheon!’ 4 The artist, Neville Bulwer-Lytton, later third Earl Lytton (1879–1951), married Judith Blunt (1873–1957) the only daughter of WSB and Lady Anne Blunt, in 1899. He would have a distinguished army service record during the Great War.

202

1899–1902 5 WRL read his paper at RIBA, ‘Education in Building’, on 17 June 1901. It was subsequently published in JRIBA, VII (1901), pp. 385–94, together with the subsequent discussion (pp. 394–9), which had contributions by William Emerson, Beresford Pite, Leonard Stokes, Thomas Blashill, Sydney Vacher and Walter Millard. PSW was doubtless unsympathetic to the kind of view expressed by Stokes: ‘Professor Lethaby made out that the architect was woefully ignorant – that he did not know what a piece of timber or a piece of stone could be used for. The Professor talked about setting up technical schools. But the architect should know far more than the ordinary workman what could be done with stone and brick and timber. The architect ought to teach the bricklayer and the mason and the carpenter; but Professor Lethaby wanted the architect to go and learn from those workmen.’ (p. 397). 6 The annual Crabbet sale of Arab horses had been on 6 July. ‘W.S.B. stopped the night in the tent, but we had to get up early – 5.30, to send him off by 7-o.c. Poor Mrs Dickinson was nearly dead-beat, but the hustling of mind & body will soon be forgotten. The elect of mankind have no knowledge of what cares mothers with their goings on.’ PSW to SCC, 7 July 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/25. ‘I knew you would run the risk of manifold invasions at sale-time, but I said nothing as I did not want you to be unduly alarmed. Now that it is over your landlord will probably spend most of his time in the New Forest before his flitting southwards in the late autumn – and you will not be much disturbed before next May.’ SCC to PSW, 10 July 1901, f. 96. 7 ‘I did not know that Holman was attached to the bottle.’ f. 96.

768 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 22 July 1901 Dated by Cockerell 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. My dear Fellows. I send you by post, registered, today, the Fordham bookplate drawing, done at last – as far as I can do it. I wish it were better both for your reputation as well as my own – fortunately you will both have time to white wash, but I hope not in that offensive in all ways building adjoining the Law Courts.1 It is not possible for me to guess how the thing will reproduce in photograveur. The bargain however – as you know – is this: If it should be reasonably successful according to the judgment of the three of us, I will agree to the £10 terms, which I believe were too generously offered. If one of us should demur to the use of the ‘thing’, the bargain to be off, and you may keep the drawing of as a memorial of your own want of intelligence in employing me. Of course, a drawing which does not answer its clearly stated purpose is worthless except as a warning. The unconscionable time the ‘thing’ has taken in the doing may make it impossible for you to face your client, even if the drawing should answer its purpose; but I shall depend on your Mr Jorkins doing his part effectively from behind the screen. Let me know if you elect to try a photograph by which we can judge if it be possible to amend some of the faults for reproduction: the others – innumerable – are not in my power to set right. I have rather enjoyed doing the work, as it put

203

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

me in mind of the time when my work earned my living at the expense of my clients – a kind of “dirty Joe” philosophy.2 After this it remains to be seen if I can do any work likely to be of use to you – either in quality, or the time taken in doing it. As it was not thought likely that any of my more intimate friends would descend on me on Saturday, Mrs Dickinson went to Wilsden [sic] with her sister & the 2 children to see the 3 off to Kings Langley, the home of the grandparents. I need scarcely say that Mrs Morris & May came to see me. Still, we pulled through, and none of us were out of temper, & I pacified Mrs D. on her return.3 Your always troublesome friend | Philip Webb. What did your Sussex House experts say as to the surface temper of the mounted paper, of which your senior partner took back a sample when he was last here?4 Note. I cleaned the ‘thing’ with bread, & do not think you should venture to do more cleaning, as the paper is more woolly than enough. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/28

1 ‘The exquisite bookplate drawing came safely this morning, with your letter. The two junior partners cry ‘Bravo’, and think of having a private view to show what sort of things can be knocked off in their Caxtons Rural Department. You have fulfilled your half of the bargain, and the cheque is enclosed before you have time to raise the price.’ SCC to PSW, 23 July 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 98. 2 PSW’s dislike of Joseph Chamberlain had an irrational intensity at times. 3 JM and MM turned up unexpectedly to tea at Caxtons, and without Margaret Dickinson, PSW was left to cater for them. ‘May Morris is coming to Richmond this evening, and I shall hear what she has to say of her visit to you.’ 4 Part of a large Georgian property, Sussex House on Upper Mall, Hammersmith (named after the Duke of Sussex whose occasional residence it had been) was the location for the printing works of Walker & Cockerell, and before that, Walker & Boutall. ‘Walker will . . . begin by taking a photograph which will be submitted to you, and if it is satisfactory the other processes will follow. Our crack draughtsman has been away for his holiday and the question of the paper has not yet been discussed – but he is just back and Walker will consult him.’ f. 98.

769 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 24 July 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. 24 July 1901 To/ The Firm from the infirm. Your Mr S.C.Cs business letter was hardly couched in S. African terms, but passes muster on condition: and that is, provided the photo: comes unscathed from the

204

1899–1902

searching light of an unbiassed pair of eyes, not yet in paradise: no rhyme intended even though a bad one. Till I’ve seen the photograph your cheque will remain at Caxtons, and possibly longer.1 This however does not represent the pleasure given my me by the affectionate good will of your letter. I declare there is little else worth striving for in a troubled life than the love of those who dig & delve for one to make the road fairly good travelling. Ah, me – I’ve been well off in that way. I hardly know what answer to give to your question of what next for me to try a hand on for you: perhaps it had would be better to talk over it on one of your Sat: afternoon calls?2 Should however anything occur to me as likely, (moderation in the time taken in doing it not being forgotten) during my solitary evening walks, I’ll send you a note of it. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. I was glad to have your note on the peace prospect for W.R.L.3 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/30

1 In Letter 782, below, he finally agrees to pay in the cheque for the ‘Odsey’ bookplate. 2 ‘What kind of a commission would you like for the next one? Probably you would decline another bookplate. If not there is likely to be a demand for them. Please let us know whether there is anything that you would specially like to do, as something of all sorts comes our way.’ SCC to PSW, 23 July 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 98. 3 WRL married Edith Rutgers Crosby (1851–1927) in Geneva on 28 July. Her father was the American biblical scholar, Howard Crosby. ‘I let Lethaby cast one eye over your compliments to him, although I know that you had sent him some direct. Thursday’s will be the final meeting at Gatti’s before the wedding. He starts on Friday for Geneva, & gets married on the following Wednesday or Thursday. He seems quite undismayed at the prospect, now it is so near.’ f. 98.

770 • To Jane Morris, 26 July 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex 26 July 1901 My dear Janey The ‘o, what a misfortune’* visit of you & May1 put into my head things to talk about, & took out of it all – or nearly so, of the interesting items of your letter from Milford, which I now more or less notice, during a delightful rain which has been falling here for some 3 hours or so, and following some helpful showers of the 2 days before. The ‘items’ follow each other something like “the stick that beat the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat,” &c,2 but I’m glad you lumped the lot (were obliged) and had them attended to at once. When

205

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

reading of cleaning out the well, I had my own of 74 feet deep in my head – not remembering then that yours would probably not be more than 10 or 12 feet? The wood at the bottom would be the remains of the ‘curb’ as it is called – a kind of barrel without bottom or lid, which is used when digging a well to keep the sides of the shaft from falling in. It was quite right that what wood remained should be cleared out; also, the side puddling was good,3 to keep downward soakage from getting in. And I was thankful for the hole in the pump suction pipe which forced on the renewal of it. Now you may give up drinking wine! Panting4 too will now be able to watch the drainage and keep it in order. In writing his name you used a small p, and I at first thought it must be a workman, “scant o’ breath”, like your Caxtons friend! My doctor brother has been to see me this week, and has called back to my forlorn memory the names of plants otherwise well known to me. Do you know the wild flower called ‘Loosestrife’ – a Lysimachia? ’tis a water sedge plant on a tallish spire-like central stem: each joint in stem having 3 lance-like leaves set on a triangle & 3 flower branches from the same socket lying along the leaves. The whole recurring till the top of spire is reached. The green leaves of yellowish grey & the 5-petal flowers of a bright amber yellow, a very beautiful flower – perhaps one of the prettiest of the many kinds of wild ones this district is blessed with. I should think Thames side would give you some. I gathered a fresh sheaf of them last evening at Rowfant mill pool edge – a sweet place, in all other ways than having a staring red brick & blue slated house on rising ground, unhappily nearby the inoffensive rest of quiet beauty. The mill pool – or ‘mere’, of many acres has quantities of yellow lilies on its water surface. This countryside has many of these large pools. There is an interesting old house at Rowfant itself, a little beyond, wh’ belongs to the Locker-Lampson people – whoever they may be, & the late L-L was a friend of Blunts.5 The house has been added to by some archt (pah), and is now let to society people with purses. Have not seen it from less than a hundred yards or so off. My walks are generally got from about 7 to 8.30 p.m, and alone, but not unpleasantly so. I turn things over in my mind, as they turn cut grass over to dry into hay – my thoughts, as you know, are sometimes cut into chaff. The ‘bookplate’ you saw was got finished, at last, and sent off to Walker & Cockerell on Monday, & the latter of the firm has written approvingly of it, but it remains really to be proved fit for reproducing purposes before I can skip at having earned my first money in this century! It took an unconscionable time to do, having to be done mostly on Sunday mornings. I’m bad to please with my own work, & somewhat sep sceptical of other peoples. Now, I have concluded that another length & width of your old wall-hanging stuff can be rightly used, and without cutting, in my guests’ bedroom, therefore if you have still a mind to bless me with another parcel, in your own kindly way, I am open to the renewal of an offer?6 I dislike putting anything up in this pleasant tabernacle which does not fit it, or disturb[s] its rude simplicity.

206

1899–1902

Give my very hearty love to Jenny – for you probably have described to her the situation of your & her old and affectionate friend, Philip Webb. rs *I managed to pacify M Dickinson, but she was much put out at not seeing you (she had seen May) and not being at hand to make the table look pleasant for my particular friends. She safely landed her sister & the 2 children at Willesden on their way to the grandparents at King’s Langley near Watford. BL Add 45343, f. 8

1 See above, Letter 768, note 3. 2 This traditional text, popular with children, is derived from the cumulative Aramaic and Hebrew poem, ‘Chad Gadya’, sung at the end of the Jewish Passover Seder, signifying the start of the Passover holiday. 3 ‘Puddle’: a preparation of clay, or clay and sand, mixed with water, used as a watertight lining (OED). 4 Panting was presumably a Kelmscott Manor employee. 5 Frederick Locker (1821–95) was the author of London Lyrics (1857). The daughter of his first marriage to Lady Charlotte Bruce (d. 1872) would marry Lionel Tennyson, younger son of Alfred Tennyson. Locker’s second marriage was to Hannah Lampson, daughter of Sir Curtis Lampson, first Baronet (1806–85), to whose Sussex estate, Rowfant, Locker succeeded in 1885, having changed his name to Locker-Lampson. 6 See above, Letter 755, note 1.

771 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 5 August 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley Sussex 5 August 1901 (Been hedge cutting and the hand is shaky) rs To/ Me/s Walker & Cockerell My dear fellows Your Mr Cs letter to hand, and that shaky. The reduced photo is, I think, much better in all ways – including the reduction in size.1 Hope your other artists (the ‘staff’, to wit!) are not so troublesome as ‘Caxtons’? (You know Monkbarns was pleased by being addressed with by his territorial title).2 If the photograveure print shd come out as well as the Orvieto bull in the 1890 antiscrape report, I shd be glad.3 The tone of such is a great improvement, and wd be the more so in a crowded drawing reproduction of the ‘Odsey.’ Possibly, in future, I could mend my ways for reproduction – who knows? As to “printer friend – Hornby”,4 I daresay I could hit upon something fitting for a printer’s mark, if he could find the something to build on significant of

207

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

the craft, and of himself, giving abt the size, and how it would fit on the page. Perhaps a modest something after that of T. Kerver to fit gothic letter5 but in the manner of the 20th cent: not the 16th! for we are all tarred with the last two dirty centuries. I went to Newbuildings place on Friday, journeying with Caffin (highly companionable) who also was summoned. You may guess the to-do there was sympathetically shared by the 2 guests – both W.S.B & the Lady were much moved by the brutal raid on the little walled garden, and busying themselves to set all possible wheels going to relieve their Arab retainers.6 A more stupid & brutally pot-house exhibition of English officers genius for wrong doing could not have been imagined – W.S.B could not help exclaiming, now & again, “I’m glad they were beaten” – ie with sticks! I think both host & hostess were cheered by our sympathy – mine I know was deep, and strongly verbal. Thanks for the note of the raid in the Daily Mail, recd. Newbuildings house certainly wants attention, but is not at present alarming. I could give closer attention to it this time than at the first visit a year ago. I am going to advise him on the matter in writing. I’m really relieved by your report of the “P.W. brand”.7 If it is in good condition is all I hoped for, as its quality I knew, and wd advise young stomachs not to take much of it at a time, for ’tis as strong as an elephant, & seemingly as harmless. The few bottles of the same date I brought here, but of another shipper, bore the journey well – so it pleases me to think you did not take in your Uncle. I’ve been living on the wine & books, you manœuvred so effectively, for the last 6 months, and the victuals do not seem to have disagreed with me. Treherne in writing to me fm Hamburg inclosed cutting fm the Morning Post of Aug 3 on W.Ms “autograph copies of all his larger works, & several smaller ones, 36 vols:” &c, secured by Lawrence Hodson. Mrs Dickinson has gone for holiday & won’t be back till next Monday week, when she brings back the children fm the Grandparents. I have a deputy housekeeper, a quite pleasantly helpful body.8 Forgive this too long yarn, but yours was full of items interesting. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I – wonderful to relate, had a real living letter from Lethaby – good & pleasant reading, and, at his asking, sent him a return cheerer. Am hoping for the best there. I return his card, which seemed, between the ragged lines, to read well. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/32

208

1899–1902 1 ‘Walker says it is a better negative than the last one, & that the plate will now be put in hand. The little touches you suggest can be easily made on the plate. Everyone who has seen the drawing has waxed enthusiastic, including most of our Antiscrape friends (some are away, but Lethaby saw it before he left) Mr Blunt & Mrs Wyndham.’ SCC to PSW, 3 August 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 100. 2 The Laird of Monkbarns, a character in Scott’s The Antiquary (1816). 3 This had been undertaken by EW. See Vol. II, Letter 371. 4 ‘A printer-friend wants a simple design for a printer’s mark, to be engraved on wood & printed with the type, which we are preparing for him (Gothic letter). It is for a small private press which he works with his own hands, & he might want his shield of arms & name with some ornamental filling. Is this a matter that you would care to undertake? The man, by name Hornby, is a first-rate fellow – & his books will be beautiful productions, as, though an amateur, he knows far more about the matter than most others.’ SCC to PSW, 3 August 1901, f. 101. Charles St John Hornby (1867–1946), one of the founding partners of the W.H. Smith firm of newsagents, founded the Chelsea-based Ashendene Press in 1895. 5 Kerver was a Flemish printer of the fifteenth century. 6 Having ignored a ‘Sport Forbidden’ notice, in the early morning of 21 July eight British officers of the 11th Hussars had entered WSB’s garden at Sheykh Obeyd in Cairo in pursuit of foxes. The sound of their horn awoke WSB’s overseer, who with two other Egyptian servants attempted to repel the officers with sticks. The arrest and subsequent imprisonment of his staff for assaulting white men outraged WSB, who sought redress from the British Foreign Office, mounted a letter campaign in the newspapers, and sought to raise the matter in Parliament. The sentences on his servants were reduced significantly, his claim of trespass was acknowledged, and the government produced an official ‘Blue Book’ report on the incident, in response to which WSB wrote his own supplementary paper, The Military Fox-Hunting Case in Cairo (London: Chiswick Press, 1902), which he presented to both Houses of Parliament. For an account of this incident and its repercussions, see Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion. The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), pp. 345–7. See also next letter, note 1. 7 ‘I dined with my uncle last night (I think I told you that he has just lost a son in S. Africa) & tasted the 1863 port P.W. brand. It was pronounced first rate. My uncle thought that it had just arrived at its perfection.’ SCC to PSW, 3 August 1901, f. 101. This relates to the port which PSW had sold to Sir Douglas Powell when he left Raymond Buildings. See above, Letter 732, note 1. 8 This was a Miss Tidy. See below, Letter 774.

772 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 7 August 1901 A separate draft survives in V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley 7 August 1901 r Dear M Blunt The Clifford’s Inn folk were good enough to send me yesterday’s ‘Daily News’, so that I have been gratified by your most excellent letter:1 but hope you can pardon this my irrepressible sympathy being additionally stirred by it. In all ways I think you treated the ugly matter in the best possible form – the righteous indignation being prettily veiled.

209

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

It seemed to me an important item – the possibility of your Arab stud organisation in Egypt being deranged; for all the sweetness and beauty of your little oasis there would be far beyond the wits of such ill-bred and loutishly unconscious schoolboy officers, which Eton, Harrow and other British nurseries of brutality annually send out, to cloud the little light which a too scanty minority may tend and foster in this benighted time of ours. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I asked Mr Dench to see me here, so that what information was wanted for me on certain points could be explained to him. He came yesterday, and is to take some vertical ‘plumbings’ at the most serious point in Newbuildings Place: after getting these, I will write you my opinion as to what had better be done now, or deferred, should there seem no immediate necessity for disturbance inside the house. Ph: W. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 See previous letter, note 6. ‘I am also very glad that you approve my letter. The pepper was put inside the pudding & not sprinkled on the surface, & I fancy it will have made some of their mouths sore at the War Office. At any rate I have been more politely treated in official quarters since the letter was published, & the Appeal Court at Cairo has been instructed to reduce the sentences on my servants by two thirds. Also there is promised a blue book containing the correspondence, which will give the case a permanent value, & lead doubtless to new regulations not in Egypt only but very likely in India.’ WSB to PSW, 15 August 1901, V&A, AAD.

773 • To Jane Morris, 7 August 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex 7 August 1901. My dear Janey The panel of bird-patterned hanging came safely yesterday afternoon, and I rejoice over your kindly gift of it to ‘Caxtons’ – my territorial title! I want the hanging to make my little spare bedroom rather more guest-like, pleasant room though as it is.1 My own room is magnificent beyond the just pretension of the host – for, hostess, as you know, there is none. Yesterday I called to pay a small firewood bill at a lone farm house on the skirt of the forest; and knocking at the door I asked the good woman who answered it, if she were Mrs Dench – to which she said Mr D is not married; on my saying that I also was in that position, she looked a-saying as much as – ‘O, another poor unlucky one!’ I don’t remember the yellow ‘Loosestrife’ at Kelmscott, but think of remembering the Purple Loosestrife; have not seen that here, neither have I yet seen the Comfrey, nor the willow herb. The Bladder Campion I have in the garden. Nor have I the Agrimony. Baxter gives the tinted white one only, except the Bastard 210

1899–1902

Agrimony, which is a reclining plant.2 We have a cheering lot of wildflowers here, and tis curious to note the different kinds which favour other districts or soils. Ours, is sandstone. Yours, is oolite lime stone. Any suggestion of “wine” to me is now the wrong thing, though there is some here for bibulous guests if they call for it. I find the country air makes me drunk enough, and have reduced my whisky to 1½ tablespoonful once a day!! which spells soberness and economy. No, you did not tell me of the doctorial recommendation of Harrogate for you, but I know it is very helpful in some cases, and I hope it will help you. I was once there for an hour when walking Yorkshire in noviciate days, and the ‘dropping well’ is all I remember, and the rage of the custodian on a visitor climbing the rock to avoid paying the fee.3 If you went there, you shd go & see Fountains’ Abbey, if not too fatiguing.4 The remains above ground are so explanatory of a great Cistercian Monastery, the foundations, to an almost whole extent, having been laid bare. The ambulatory under dormitories is a lovely cool vaulted double-aisled alley of great length, & the remains of the church are extraordinarily beautiful. Following up the river Nid, to[o], is – from photographs I’ve seen – really a delight, and some ‘packhorse’ bridges still remain over it – somewhere. I suppose you have seen in the papers the rascally trick British officers – (of whom I’m sick) – played on Wilfrid Blunt, in foxhunting through his Egyptian garden, which you know? Kindly love to Jenny, and thankfulness to you from | Your old friend Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, f. 9

1 See above, Letter 759. 2 See Vol. I, Letter 220, note 2. 3 The Dropping Well spring in Knaresborough, a few miles from Harrogate, is famous for the way in which suspended articles have become petrified by the natural action of limestone deposits in the water. 4 See also Vol. II, Letter 467.

774 • To Margaret Dickinson, 9 August 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth, | by Crawley. | Sussex 9 August 1901. Dear Mrs Dickinson Thank you for your note, in which I was glad to find you got safely to Kings Langley. Your father, mother, and the children would be glad to see you out of 211

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

danger from the fierce Arab horses of Crabbet. They have not yet eaten me, though I daily rub some of their noses. I am sure you will be pleased to hear that Miss Tidy finds herself better in health since she has been here,1 and as she eats & drinks very little, it must be the air on this hill top which has done her good. She is very cheerful, and is quick in her work, taking good care of me and ‘Billy’. The latter has behaved passably well, though unless tricked at the right moment, when shutting up, he sleeps out at night, and pays but little attention to the lectures I give him on his bad behaviour. However, he looks for his morning brush up on the mat, and seems to say ‘now it is all right again’, and goes on as before. He looks at Miss Tidy – I think, as a most valuable help now that you are away; likes her petting, but is rather surprised now that this is not followed by a rib-cracking beating. I tell him that will come if he waits patiently till your return. My old friend Mrs Boyce will, I believe, come to Caxtons on the afternoon of the 20th, after which she will be going to her mother’s in France.2 The garden and orchard are much as when you left – save that there are now fewer flowers, for there has been little or no rain to speak of. Lady Florence brought a Cambridge Professor to see the cottage,3 and Miss Tidy had to hold the horse while the lady came in! Neither Miss Tidy nor the horse & dog-cart ran away. The apples are really increasing in size, in spite of the want of rain; so that on your return we must make a pie or pudding of the smaller where they are too crowded. Please to tell Alice & Reginald that their young friends are awaiting their return, so that they may tell of all they have seen in Hertfordshire to the people of Sussex. I shall expect that their behaviour after listening to their Grandfather & Grand mother will be excellent, beyond all my calculation – and especially that Alice will be resolved to shine as a needlewoman over all the other girls in school. Please give my kind regards to your father and mother, and best wishes to the rest of the family who may be at home. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. I cannot be sure that the right shirt or other things of the wardrobe have been rightly taken since those things have been under your charge. Particular remembrance to your sister Mary, whom I have had the pleasure of seeing here. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

1 Miss Tidy was performing housekeeping duties, during Margaret Dickinson’s absence on holiday. 2 GPB’s widow, Augustine Aimée Caroline Soubeiran, was a Frenchwoman. Her mother lived in Etampes. 3 Lady Florence Bourke was one of the daughters of Richard Southwell Bourke, a former viceroy of India and sixth Earl of Mayo (1822–72), and his wife Blanche Julia Wyndham, a relative of both PWY and WSB.

212

1899–1902

775 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 10 August 1901 Draft; pencil with some ink amendments Caxtons. Worth. 10 Aug 1901 Report on the present condition of parts of New Buildings House. Dear Mr Blunt. Mr Dench has been here & reported on “Newbuildings” the house, bringing me the results of his plumbings, of the vertical on the outside, &c. He also – according to my wish – found creeping room way according to my wish into the roof over the attic ceiling. The plumbings are declare much as I supposed they wd be, namely, that the attached chief chimney bulk, on the S.S.E, gives in its height from plinth to stone weather courses an inclination outwards of but "1¾, but the much shorter height of the upper b[ric]k w[or]k of chimney gives another "1¾ of outward leaning. This also is what I as expected; and as this work latter is attached to the gable end work which has suffered from considerable movement, the conclusion seems clear that the cause of dislocation has chiefly come from defects or decay in some of the main timbers in the roof timbers, and In this Dench agrees with me. If this is so, the action of on heavy Horsham slates, by wind, snow, &c on the roofing would – under changes of temperature, gales, snow, &c cause would cause vibration; and this, acting on the mortar dust in the cracks would cause let it to descend and act as leverage on repeated movement. At least I’ve found it so in other old buildings. There seems to be no little likelihood of increased in the activity of in the dislocations, so that I believe you might safely meet your own convenience and in having the building properly attended to; but I think this should be done at such time as you can arrange it when opportunity comes with least inconvenience. I wd advise that a scaffolding be set up at the East S end of house from the kitchen yard upwards, so that the roof & chimnies [sic] could be got at from the outside; then, when the S.E attic can be given up, some of the slates could be removed lifted to allow of workmen getting into free contact with the mischief: this opening to be covered by tarpaulins at night & in bad weather. At any suitable time the wood work in the attic against the S. & E walls could be lifted away so as to expose the actual walling of the gable, &c, inside. All four corners of the house have suffered, but not to the extent of that at the S.E corner. I would add here, that the aforesaid scaffolding would allow of careful repair of the two brick chimney tops; to the condition of which I drew attention at the time I saw them last year. I was relieved by concluding that the foundations had not appreciably settled – perhaps with no more settlement than had occurred soon after the newer parts of the house were built; I also think the newer chimney bulks were partly built up against and then on the top of some of the older house walling.1 Yours truly | Ph. W. V&A, AAD

213

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 WSB was staying at Clouds. ‘What you tell me of the condition of Newbuildings is consoling, & I shall let the repairs stand over now till next summer. Then we will try and carry out the thing on the lines you suggest. . . . Here I have been spending a very pleasant week enjoying the architectural luxuries of the house.’ WSB to PSW, 15 August 1901, V&A, AAD.

776 • To Sydney Cockerell, 24 August 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex 24 Aug: 1901 My dear Cockerell I write a word now for fear of your being away at Chartres.1 This is the first freer day I’ve had, having finished that which had to be done, at the E. end of this pleasant home, yesterday – just as tired as I could be; happily, sleep sets me up regularly after such super above effort. Our confabulation was so close and exacting that there was no opening for an enlargement on your inexhaustible kindliness at all times.2 The last 2 letters – blazing with good cheer, (not victuals) had had no acknowledgement by reason of my being tied to Signor Budgen, decent old boy that he was all the time.3 How queer that you got into the train with the “Caffable brothers” – “what larks”.4 I believe W.S.B must have put him (Arthur) up to reading in W.M – because, when I first saw him, he spoke of “The Roots of the Mountains” &c:5 when I offered to lend him more, & he said he got them from the library: W.H. Smith’s, I suppose. No, I think he must be ambitious to learn of those things which are considered up aloft in ‘society’ – but who knows; maybe he really enjoys the non-sense of romance? Your full fledged praise of Clouds, though far beyond the mark of reality, was swallowed with the unction – in spite of the real scepticism which lies within me – usual in such cases; a modest blush, and then the sigh of ‘I wish it were so’; but not for a moment did I think you did not mean it truly – at any rate ’tis now in my system!6 Wyndham wrote me the usual friendly letter of chaff, and sent a quarter of a pound of Taddy’s snuff mixture,7 with a wonder at my carrying on in that (mine) aristocratic sneeshin quarter of London, with the odour of Geo: IV, &c! I’ve just retorted in my usual way – also, &c. What a mine of M.S.S sheets of photos you have sent: up and down in & out with round about of beauty and, in cases, of strangeness.8 I’ll absorb as well as embarrassment will allow, and return on your notification. My stars! they are wonderful in invention, and in most cases with grace. You gave me

214

1899–1902

one of the beautiful Tenison Psalter,9 but there is one particular M.S, of which more anon. Send me a p. card when you are off – and to which place & with whom. A. Powell has sent me his essay (of wh’ you have probably heard) with a wish that I should criticise: that effort has yet to be made.10 Now to post. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/36

1 ‘It now looks almost as though I should have Alfred Powell instead of Gimson as my companion to Chartres – if I am to have anyone at all. Gimson does not seem able to leave his domestic duties, which are rather heavy with a mother in law, two or three sisters in law & 2 brothers in law to fetch & carry for.’ SCC to PSW, 11 August 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/34. In fact, he would travel to Chartres with Jack and Margaret Mackail in early October. 2 SCC had visited PSW at Caxtons on 17 August. 3 Budgen has not been identified, but he may have worked at or been connected with Three Bridges station in some way (see below, Letter 837, note 2). 4 SCC annotation: ‘The “Caffable Brothers” were the brothers Caffin of Hazelwick, Three Bridges, who spent each weekend and do still (1917) with a sister at Lewes.’ See also above, Letter 701, note 2. After visiting PSW on 17 August, SCC travelled on to Lewes. ‘Changing at Haywards Heath who should I find but the Caffable Brothers from the Mill! I was in the best of spirits after my afternoon with you, & we chatted very merrily. The good Arthur, it seems, is going through a course of Morris at your instigation. “He read from 7 till 10 last night” said his brother “& took the book to bed!” I think a good deal of faith must be mixed up with it, for it is queer stuff to them. The brother frankly owns he cannot stomach it “except the stories, & I dont know what Arthur can find in it, so absorbing”. “I’m busy now on the Seven Lectures” says Arthur, with the air of St Sebastian, offering his body to seven arrows. I suppose the Seven Lectures must be Hopes & Fears for Art.’ SCC to PSW, 17 August 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 104. 5 See Vol. II, Letter 361, note 1. 6 SCC had been at Clouds as a guest of the Wyndhams during the weekend of 10–11 August. ‘Here am I in the Palace of Beauty that you have created – & that will get each year more beautiful still, as the garden grows about it & the stones receive their painting from sun & shower. . . . I was totally unprepared for the wonderful setting of your jewel, the amazing hill country round it. I think my genuine enthusiasm gave Mrs Wyndham some pleasure. . . . I find everywhere the little evidences of close thought & reasonableness which I have found in your other houses – & there is a beautiful sweetness pervading the whole.’ SCC to PSW, 11 August 1901. 7 Taddy & Co was a long-established tobacconist firm, with two snuff mills at Morden Hall Park, by the River Wandle. 8 SCC had sent PSW a parcel of photographed pages from manuscripts. 9 In fact, WM had given him photographs in 1895, although SCC might well have been the agent in his acquiring them. See Vol. II, Letter 507, note 1. 10 See note 1. This essay by Alfred Powell not traced.

215

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

777 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 August 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex 27 August 1901. My dear Cockerell A perfect deluge of your good nature; first it rained from Forthampton, and then poured from Rosemont – Altar of Roses.1 No, the Topsy Turvey letter was beautiful – and such good clear sighted criticism too; & I said to myself, “there old fellow you can swallow that pill for ’tis so prettily gilded” – and I did! ’Tis seldom that an upside down piece of writing is consistent throughout, but I think there is hardly a flaw in yours. I read it to Mrs Dickinson – not to be too selfish, & chuckled all the time. You must have chuckled now & again when writing; and for example, the double jest of, “and the whole house is no better than a mediæval structure” – when you smiled broadly. I readily understand Walker’s disinclination for heraldic representation in these days not being done strictly in the real manner.2 Of course I too prefer the old, more striking, representations; but now, unless instinctively imitated, the reproduction is worthless. All I can do now, is to fall to with a zest in my own, & therefore the only way for me. It was Jack who so well carved the shield, and Miss Faulkner who equally well tinctured it.3 My original drawing is here – somewhere: by the way, Walker’s man photographed it. You are right, that west front of Tewkesbury is a piece of English rudeness done in a masterly way: Middleton decided that the great Norman arch was originally open to the nave. The present window filling-in was done in Mary Tudor’s time, and looks well: done naturally, in the way of the time. If you had not enjoyed doing your two beneficent letters, I should have regretted your expenditure of time on poor me – who more than equally enjoyed them. Alas, Mrs Yorke was right; I promised to design her crest for the finial to the bookcase.4 Only a month or two before coming here I got some photographs of bloodhounds (“Talbots”)5 but was called away from doing the thing for Jack to carve from. If such like energy – and time – shd attack me, I may still do the thing. Adieu, for a kind natured fellow to | Yrs truly Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/39

1 On 25 August, SCC wrote from Forthampton Court, near Tewkesbury, the medieval house which PSW had modified in 1889–92 for John Reginald Yorke (see Vol. II, Letter 370, note 1), and then on 26 August from his own lodgings in Rosemont Road, Richmond. In the first letter he wrote in the guise of a modern restorer, affecting not to like Forthampton. ‘There are no art carvings, no dados, no encaustic tiles, no varnished pitch pine fittings, no cathedral glass, no lincrusta Walton, no marble halls, no terracotta finials, no bent iron brackets – in short none of those improvements which will make the work of the 2nd half of the nineteenth century famous to posterity. You have deliberately overlooked these things as though they did not exist – & the whole house is no better

216

1899–1902

2

3 4

5

than a mediæval structure.’ SCC to PSW, 25 August 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/37. In his second letter he feared that his joking might not have been appreciated. SCC praised (genuinely) the coats of arms over the Forthampton library mantelpiece. ‘I was particularly pleased that you made the lion as like a lion as you could, instead of employing a heraldic beast of the 14th century. No doubt about it, those 14thc beasts were superb – but I have been led to think that it is wrong to copy them, & that we ought to make our own abstracts from the same living originals; if possible no worse than these, but not like them. In this matter my good partner [EW ] does not altogether agree with me – partly because the making of modern abstracts that are not hideous & worthless is such a difficult job.’ SCC to PSW, 26 August 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/38. See Vol. II, Letter 397, note 13. ‘[Yorke] could not however hide from me his chagrin when he pointed out a bookcase of your design, which was incomplete at the top. He said that you had promised to supply the missing portion, but that it had never come – with the natural result that he has lost all taste for books.’ SCC to PSW, 25 August 1901. See Vol. I, Letter 146, note 3.

778 • To William Weir, 2 September 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 2 Sepr 1901. Eglwys Cymmin My dear Weir Thank you for your letter, & the excellent estimates inclosed with it. How was it you did not let me know of your flitting from Wilby? Today I’ve made up the total of the estimating and sent it to Mr Treherne, but I cannot lay hand on the Rolfe designs for the Chancel rebuilding, &c – many sheets in a roll.1 Did I send them on to you? if I did, please take them with you to Eg: Cym: Also take the copy you made of my (the S.P.A.Bs) drawing for the chancel rearrangement, and any other information you have which wd help Mr Treherne. On carefully going into the estimating, I added 20% to your totals, making the roof work at £132 (to allow for making good, painting old seating, &c,) and for the panelling £36. Allowed £4.10.0 for oak lectern. We had to consider too the cost of Organ, Reredos, and stained glass for the East window, [for] all of which I had to make some sort of estimates. You must have been sharply pressed with the Wilby work, for it covered a large area. When do you turn on to the Oxfordshire church – this year?2 I know a little of the district where you are now, for I stayed for 2 or 3 days with my younger brother (now dead) at Stone, and was so struck with Weston church, about 2 miles from Sandon, when passing by rail, that I went to it specially,3 made some rough measurements of the Western, 13th cent:, steeple; drawing it out afterwards in as rough a way, and which drawing I now have before me. If you have your machine with you, and could conveniently photograph it, I should like a copy, as the thing is remarkable both for simplicity and effectiveness in a miniature way. The tower is markedly 13th cent, but the spire seems to be latish 14th cent: Weston is the Ch’ of the place 217

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I persisted in calling ‘Sutton’ when asking my way! and of wh’ you may have heard me tell the story? I see from the map that both Sandon and it are near to Trent River. Yours thankfully, | Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 57

1 ‘The chancel is modern, rebuilt in 1877–8, and intended to be a replica of its predecessor. It was built from the designs of Mr. Rolfe, Oxford Diocesan Architect [sic].’ Treherne, Eglwys Cymmin, The Story of an Old Welsh Church, p. 11. Clapton Crabb Rolfe (1844/5–1907), an enthusiastic Gothic revivalist, was unsuccessful in his application to succeed George Edmund Street as Oxford diocesan architect in 1881, but was subsequently appointed diocesan surveyor. 2 Following a report by the SPAB on proposed repairs to the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, North Stoke, Oxfordshire, WW was engaged to oversee the work. He reported back after attending a meeting at the church in July 1901. ‘You will be pleased to hear that it was arranged . . . to entrust the work of repair in accordance with your report, to our care – the work to be delayed till about the beginning of March 1902.’ WW to HTT, 10 July 1901, SPAB, North Stoke Church file. 3 The parish church of St Andrew, Weston, in Staffordshire, underwent restorations by Scott in 1860 and Butterfield in 1872.

779 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 10 September 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex 10 September. 1901. rs To/ Mess Walker & Cockerell My dear fellows. The little thing for Hornby has not taken quite as long to do as the Odsey one, but it was quite difficult – even more so, to make significant. Your instructions (by Jorkins junr) may be said to have been slight, or vague – with the size given. You need not be startled by the drawing looking large, though it is half as large again as the prescribed size. I knew it was better for pencil work, in order to keep the lights in it fairly clear – so important, and possible in wood engraving; therefore it can be photographed back to the Hornby size – being exactly 50% larger both ways than that, being or an increase of one third in width and depth – but – and here comes the puzzle: In composing the poor thing he cried out from time to time for more life to be put in it, and some little emphasis, especially where the shield rests on its point; so I put in the squirrel. As this latter stands, it could be cut easily enough by a practiced wood engraver, but if it is (as it will have to be) reduced by one third, it would take the ‘shade’ of Bewick himself to make it like the nutcracker – therefore I take it that long tail will have to give place to a cabbage, or other serviceable article of virtue. Or – perhaps, Hornby (or other) could concoct a trade mark to go at the base of shield, on a tablet – [sketch] thus? (Albert Durer fashion)1 As I wanted some steadying for the winding label, the word “Ashendine” [sic] suggested my ground Ash walking sticks – and from that to some healthy growing ones 218

1899–1902

at the bottom of Caxtons’ orchard, from which I made studies without more ado. Then, (and Walker will have to put his feelings, heraldic, in his travelling bag)2 I wanted the bald shield, beyond the diapering on the dexter side, to have the counter change, in effect, of what would be the tinctured appearance without actual colour, and as you – and even he – will see, it comes prettily so – and, pace E.W, – commonsensedly so. NOW, what does the ‘firm’, and its client, think of the ‘thing’ as it stands – or, as it may stand when reduced back in size to the instruction?3 If it shd be found unsuitable from the clientine point of view, do not hesitate in saying so, and I’ll try my hand again, with the advantage of the ‘thing’ being used as a chopping block for defining something else. I shall not be surprised at any thing adverse, to what has been done, being stated without ado. You see, when at a composition of any kind, one is apt to be run away with an idea, and carry it out regardless of due consideration of other people’s feelings, &c, &c. If either or both of you are in England or Wales, I shall expect an answer accordingly, and turn to again with better judgment. Yours faithfully (with an occasional lapse, as above) | Philip Webb. Postscripts. Where are you – one or both? Had the curate here to tea last evening, and the Rector this morning, the latter having returned to residence, & smelt a rat – I suppose! The blackcurrant, plum, apple & blackberry, preserves which have been made with distinction by Mrs Dickinson, will be as enticing to you both, as the fruits previously were to the wasps – at all events I hope so. I send the “thing” in separate envelope, registered. Note – The drawing is not ‘set’, because, if trifling alterations had to be made, Reeve’s excellent pencils allow of rubbing out. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/40

1 For Thomas Bewick, see Vol. I, Letter 168, note 9. ‘Mr Hornby is delighted with the drawing, but alas! its very perfection makes it not quite suitable for his purpose. As it stands it could only be adequately rendered in a Bewickian manner (perhaps only by Bewick himself) & when so rendered it would not print well on Hornby’s roughish handmade paper, nor would it quite harmonise with his type, which is rather heavy blackletter like the sample enclosed. I fear this is all my fault, as I ought to have made it clear that we wanted something in pure line, without any tone, after the manner of W.M’s mark in the smaller Kelmscott Press books.’ SCC to PSW, 11 September 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 105. 2 See above, Letter 777, note 2. 3 See next letter.

780 • To Sydney Cockerell, 12 September 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 12 September. 1901. Dear Cockerell. 219

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Your embodiment of just reprehension is admirable – swathed as it is in soft bandaging like unto that on the Della Robbia babes in the front of the Florentine hospital.1 I can almost see you & Mr Hornby coming down stairs with the ‘thing’ on tray in hand – after the manner of Beau Brummel’s valet, with his one “of our failures”. (I suspect too there is a screw loose in the ‘Odsey’?) The “thing” cannot be doctored into fresh shape; for, as done it stands or falls on its own merits, (or the reverse) for each part or attribution removed would make its little significance too insignificant. The “firm” can put the drawing into the business scrapbook, and follow the volume “to its long hame [sic] in the iron safe,” (quoted from ill-memory)2 with a dram of Rum afterwards, for assuagement, taken with the gusto of Mrs Gamp. Never mind – your artist, kept on the country premises, will have another shot, and perhaps bring down a squirrel from a too lofty branch. What greatly interesting books are those you so kindly lend me for the occasion; how my mouth waters over the good things which were done just rightly for the time – with no fuss at all – at all.3 Mr Hornby’s type is – I see, a refined version of blackletter, and would be killed by any down right line-work such as delights me in the aforenoted works.4 For example, if you look at W. Ms “mark” at end of vol: VIII of the E.P. you will see that the type above it is very strong, which allows of the even greater strength of the block below it: but the modern ‘master’ had swallowed wholesale all mediæval and other systems, and retailed them in the 19th century: with unfailing acumen and ‘right’ness, for an altogether other time. Please tell the Senior partner (if he is in Britain) that heraldry now is only a plaything, and that a Talbot’s head would best represent the little modern messan dog’s bark,5 and not the deep bell-tone of the real heraldic sleuthhound, as a finial to a pillar bookcase. I calculate (and that nasally) E. W is the Pope, and I’m but the Archb’p of Canterbury – who stood no chance at S. Augustine’s against the inflexible keys. However, Mrs Yorke can still wait?6 Poor Proctor, to have to water down his usual Swiss holiday with the damp kilt and bog-sludge of Scotland. Let Lethaby & Mrs Richard7 know I would have written them directly had I known their address, and if I were wanting in knowledge of his dislike to letters – other than literary. For yourself – my friend, do not vex the righteous soul of you, for I was never set upon by a decided client but found something in my budget to suit their “pe-peculiarity”. You will remember Ch: Lamb and the whitey brown?8 Yours invariably, with the necessary exceptions – (Is that a “bull”?) Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/41

1 The columns supporting the arcade of Brunelleschi’s Ospedale degli Innocenti in the Piazza SS Annuziata in Florence are surmounted by ceramic tondi, each of which was finished by the figure of a baby in swaddling clothes, made by Andrea della Robbia (1435–1525). SCC had written about the

220

1899–1902

2 3 4

5 6

7 8

design of St John Hornby’s printer’s mark. ‘Hornby asks that the whole may be contained in a narrow border, or in a simple line, (which would do away with some sprays which go beyond the upper limit) & that the date 1901 may be added very small in some corner – otherwise he would have nothing altered except in the way of translation, which will necessitate a good deal of omission, so far as the detail is concerned. Do you feel sufficiently forgiving towards the three of us (for not having made our wants clearer) to undertake this translation, or would you like us to try our hands at it at Hammersmith, leaving you to set our shortcomings to rights?’ SCC to PSW, 11 September 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 105. Not traced. SCC had enclosed examples of fifteenth-century woodcuts for PSW to consider, ‘in two monographs which I am sending you’. ‘The Hornby type cannot be well judged from the photograph I enclosed. It is, as near as we can make it, a copy of the first type used in Italy (at Subiaco) by Sweyneheym & Pannartz, whom you will have read of in the Cloister & the Hearth & elsewhere. W.M. considered it the best of all blackletter type, & when at last he managed to buy a copy of one of the three known books in which it is used he at once determined to have a fount on the same lines & even drew out most of the letters, but they never got as far as being cut.’ SCC to PSW, 13 September 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 106. See above, Letter 672, note 12. ‘I was much relieved to get your letter about a fortnight ago showing that you were not offended by my manner of showing my admiration for Forthampton. Mr Yorke said he would drop down upon you some day at teatime & ask after the Talbot. By the way Walker says a woman can’t have a crest – but I suppose she can have a badge, which comes to nearly the same thing.’ SCC to PSW, 11 September 1901, f. 105. PSW’s letters to Edith Crosby Lethaby tend to open ‘Dear Mrs Richard’. Charles Lamb allusion not traced.

781 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 18 September 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 18 September 1901 My dear fellows I send – registered, the Hornby printer’s mark No 2, not with any feeling that Mr Hornby will be content with it, but I can give reasons why it could hardly be other under the circumstances.1 The books you sent of old woodcut examples were really very useful,2 though there is this barrier between ancient and modern in freehand work and design, that the feeling of original design, and the carrying out not only are, but must be widely different. The cutting alone on the wood is so wholly different in the ancient from the modern. I noticed that even in the Chaucer pictures, especially in the line figure shading. Again, as to W. Ms ‘mark’, (using that at end of the Kelmscott E.P) you will see that the size of it, within the border, is about the same as that for Hornby, and there is only the word ‘Kelmscott’ on it with the label. Whereas I had to put 3 lines of writing and a shield, and yet keep some breadth in it. You will readily understand that the appearance of the drawing is wholly different to what the wood-cut will be like; for the pencil work is silver brown and the touching up with body white is blueish, so – if the ‘thing’ is as fairly appreciatively and skilfully cut as is 221

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

expected, it must look better on the page as well as different, but I do not wish to influence Mr Hornby out of his intention: should the No 2 not fit his feeling – and he would care for me to try again, I will do so. No 2 could not be altered, for each part is made to work with the rest, or as contrasting. Note, the Hornby is white on a black ground, to carry off the shield; and the relatively large leafage at the bottom is to give the thing scale; and while the Fox and his expected supper puts a little life into the whole. Should the “thing” pass muster, and you sent me a photo: of it, I would detail some of the ornament to give the carver hints as to the character of the leafage, &c – and to a larger scale. I had to design the lettering to go with the design; but for the Hornby, I followed some of W. Ms smaller capitals. This note will keep you from saying ‘how bad these letters are’! If the thing promises to answer, I must leave you to put the right market price on it. As a final word to this long yarn, the doing of these things for you gives me pleasure – keeping me from the feeling of being laid on the shelf. Yours obediently (sic) | Philip Webb. The patee + is the ugliest form of cross possible. Boutell says it may be curved on the inside thus X3 P.S. If Mr Hornby would think a stout black border line outside the present finish, it could be put as indicated at the bottom left hand corner. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/43

1 ‘The new Hornby drawing is exactly what was wanted. Hornby is greatly pleased with it, & asks for nothing more except a thickish line round it, not quite so thick as you have indicated. The fox & goose are splendid – just the genuine undiluted & unmatchable P.W. touches that we hoped for. We enclose a cheque which we well know does not compensate you for your double labours – but if you allow yourself to get into the clutches of middlemen you must expect to be fleeced.’ SCC to PSW, 19 September 1901, BL Add 52760 f. 111. 2 See previous letter, note 3. 3 ‘The Crosses Patée or Formée . . . may be drawn either with right lines, or with their radiating lines slightly curved.’ Boutell, Heraldry, Historical and Popular, pp. 29–30. See above, Letter 738, note 3.

782 • To Sydney Cockerell, 19 September 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 19 September 1901 My dear fellows Your greatly interesting packet to hand; too large for the letter slit in the door this morning at 6. oc, so that I came down in “my style” of night gown to let it in:1 whatever the missives may be in the morning, they lie unopened till I’m drinking 222

1899–1902

the “crowning cup of tea” after breakfast. You are quite right to take advantage of E.Ws (Jorkins is too threadbare) trustfulness: therefore, as he never reads my letters, any thing can be said to you which may come uppermost, from Caxtons.2 ’Tis said that London is the best place for thieves to hide in – and I fancy Clifford’s Inn, under your rule, (see, I’ve crossed out the needless .s. at the beginning)3 would be an artful dodger’s sanctum for you4 – and even Les dames de L’Opera, as Dumas pere calls the like,5 may safely send their sweet and bitter for you at that address. Now to have done with gentle fooling. ‘Odsey’ should be greatly pleased with what the firm has done for him, (has he ever seen the design?)6 for to my poor eyes, & poorer mind, the ‘thing’ is excellently rendered in photograveur – so far beyond my expectation of success (for which convey my sincerely grateful acknowledgement to your manipulator: a China mandarin’s state dress would be safe in his hands) that it will be a thorn in your flesh if you should ever give me a like kind of thing to do in future; I can see all sorts of possibilities in the process which shd be laid hold of.7 If said manipulator wd look at the upper bend of Peacock’s neck, just to the right of the black shadow of the cheek there is a too light dab, which just wants half a touch of soothing. Then, just to the right of the T in ‘telum’ there are 3 peacock feathered eyes with an inter space which might have a slight darkening touch to keep that point of weakness in my work from striking the eye. At the 3rd rose from the bottom of left hand border, one petal is wanting; this is probably from a flake of dust having crept in. There may be half a dozen other little things, but I cannot see them, and indeed those mentioned are of no importance.8 For the master of Odsey I should think your rendering is the best possible: for myself, I wd not mind the whites being a little lower in tone – but it may quite well go just as it is: THEREFORE, Your cheque, which has wasted its sweetness in the desert stuffiness of my travelling bag may well be fruitful in the freer air of Lloyd’s bank – where it shall go as the first earning of the century of your better than well-pleased friend.9 Can the ‘leopard change its spots’? Therefore I had better drop again into my easy going banker. How will Hornby stand the buffet of last evening’s consignment to Clifford’s Inn? ‘that is the question’ following a check? (sic). He ought to like it – but may not. In any case you may be at ease, for a third may be tried, for as the anvil is polished-up ready for another venture, after which winning may result. As I’m going to put this in mid-day post, I must first say a word on Alfred Powell’s venture with the carving knife: (for it looks that rather than from the graving tool).10 It is so good as a first effort, that I see most unexpected possibilities in the way of a free hand decorative (and modern too) wood engraving. Even as his capability is now shewn, there can be no doubt that if he puts his back into the thing and strives, without labouring, there must be a much wanted success, in his way; and, so good a way! Some parts of this trial of his cannot be improved; and, with determination, the parts which could be greatly improved can quite easily be made masterly. At least, that is my poor opinion, and I beg his pardon for sitting on the stool of judgment over him. He 223

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

has learned at once the bottom top & middle fact of wood-engraving – namely, to draw sweetly in white. Yours very contentedly | Philip Webb. P.S. There is a fine white streak on the right hand side of the P.cock’s neck (sinister side) horizontally with the eye, which I rather like as a ‘pe-pe-culiarity’, but has no justification in nature, & which might be a little dowdied. No 2. What say you to Powell taking the enlarged Bewick birds (for county Council purpose) and translating them vigorously for colour printing?? (suggestion not to be sneezed at.) No 3. Last night I found in Gwilym (O, those doltards, Boutell, & Herald’s office,) a quite decent cross “patee”.11 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/44

1 ‘Here is a proof of the celebrated Odsey bookplate, as reproduced in W&C’s suburban department. It was no easy job that you gave us in the breast & neck of that bird, but we hope that you will not be wholly disappointed and that our accountant’s sleep will no longer be disturbed by the fact that there is an uncashed cheque outstanding. Little touches can still be done on the plate if anything is amiss.’ SCC to PSW, 18 September 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 108. 2 ‘As to your last letter that came yesterday Walker of course read it & all the others – but you will have to put up with replies from the junior, as the senior partner is not in the correspondence department of the business.’ f. 109. 3 See the opening salutation. 4 The Artful Dodger (Jack Dawkins) is the most skilful of Fagin’s gang of boy pickpockets in Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1838). 5 ‘Les dames de l’Opéra’ probably serves here as a synonym for prostitutes. 6 ‘“Odsey” has not been allowed to see the drawing, as we did not care to send it through the post. We sent him a photograph of it, & when you have passed the corrections his eyes will be gladdened with a proof.’ SCC to PSW, 19 September 1901, f. 112. 7 ‘Please say what you would like to do next. I shall perhaps come to Caxtons for your answer on Saturday.’ f. 112. 8 ‘The little defects you point out can all be set right.’ f. 112. 9 See above, Letter 769. ‘Recd of Messrs Walker & Cockerell a £10 cheque (dated 23 July 1901) for a pen and ink drawing of Peacock & trimmings, as book mark for Mr Fordham, to be reproduced by photograveur process.’ Receipt signed and dated 19 September 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/45. 10 SCC annotation: ‘Alfred Powell drew and engraved a thistle with much spirit.’ ‘I shall let Powell know what you have to say about his thistle.’ f. 112. 11 John Guillim, A Display of Heraldrie (London: William Hall, 1610).

783 • To Emery Walker, 20–21 September 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Grays Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 20 September 1901 My dear Walker 224

1899–1902

As Cockerell may look in here tomorrow, and you not able to come with him, I send a line or two direct, (not private, of course) for the handwriting of a companion brings him near to one. Cockerell – by virtue of his office, is the duct of the business communications, while you are active in the ‘suburban department’ – as S.C has called it: so I want you to know directly how pleased I am with the success of the ‘Odsey’ plate. You may be sure my various employment has kept me alive as to what goes to make a success in any craft, and I quite well know your keenness in directing your work, as well as the aptitude and thoroughness of the same; so that in the tiresome particularity of my poor design your carefulness has turned it into an underserved triumph for me. Please to understand how I rejoice in your kindness so helpfully applied.1 That the Hornby design has been found to answer the special purpose is an additional satisfaction to that of doing any work for you: but I beg you never to be put out if at a first trial any design of mine comes short of being the right thing. I have generally found that a second attempt does not infer a drop down in the final result – to which may be added, in Sampson Brass’s phrase, “we get a bit of timber in”.2 Adieu, with hearty thanks for your sympathetic help at all times, and believe me to be Yours always truly, | Philip Webb. This letter was written yesterday, but it’s [sic] raining ‘cats & dogs’ at post time delayed its sending. No acknowledgement of this needed.3 V&A, AAD

1 ‘It has been a pleasure to both of us to reproduce a drawing by your hand and we are more than pleased that you should approve.’ EW to PSW, 24 September 1901, Cheltenham 1991.1016.652.d. 2 Said by the attorney, Sampson Brass, in Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop, when Dick Swiveller comments that the ‘first-rate stool’ he has been allocated has one leg longer than the others. ‘“Then we get a bit of timber in, Sir,” retorted Brass. “Ha, ha, ha! We get a bit of timber in, Sir”.’ (ch 35). 3 Two days later he acknowledged payment for the commission. ‘Received of Messrs Walker & Cockerell the sum of £5, by cheque, for the approved design of Bookmark for Mr Hornby.’ Receipt signed and dated 22 September 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/46.

784 • To William Weir, 4 October 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley | Sussex 4 October 1901. My dear Weir 225

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Your excellent reports on Eg: Cymmin, Llandawke,1 Wilby, and Sandon2 reached me yesterday aftn, so that I may rest, in that the best we could manage to the first item have been completed in the Nave. Mr Treherne writes me also in a satisfied way.3 He sent me your drawing for the air-tight box for the West end tabernackle, to which I agreed without hesitation. He also sent me the drawing for preserving the reclining figure in Llandawke, which pleased me very much; your arrangement seems to me very good indeed, and I wholly agree to your commonsense purpose of lifting it well off the floor.4 I told G.G.T.T. I thought there shd be an inscription (at N. end of new limestone slab) stating when it was fixed in that place. As it is merely put there for security, it is perhaps better that it should not be set E & W on its long axis, for it would have been so in its original position. That is a find in Wilby Ch’.5 Doubtless it is a S. Christopher; first, from its position opposite the entrance – 2nd its great size, 3rd the lighting across the water: S.C is generally represented as steadying himself with an uprooted tree in crossing the stream. Its great size typified the saint as a giant, &c. It was a very favourable saint. W. Morris put a Christopher in his beautiful story of “John Ball”, when describing the Church.6 I hope you kept the lead rolls as small as you could on the Wilby lead flat. I doubt if the plumber could lay the lead without the rolls of wood?7 It was good sense on your part to go & see the casting of the lead. Of course I’m pleased you took kindly to the Weston steeple.8 To me it is so characteristic of mediæval skill in art, that so small a thing should look so effectively large; that is what we moderns cannot do. I sincerely hope you are happy in your most useful works, in spite of the labour involved in carrying them out judiciously. I always think with most pleasure on the works done at Forthampton, and East Knoyle church, and shew your photographs of the former with much glee! Am looking forward to seeing those of Eg: Cymmin; (Treherne’s way of spelling the word, though I’m not sure if he does not make it ‘Cymin’) if they please, it will be thanks for your painstaking. Hope the seats are strongly made, and that the wedged tenons are rightly carried out? Have been gathering apples the last 3 days, and am fairly tired with the strain of reaching, careful handling, and fixing a heavy ladder – that is, heavy for an old man, and Yours very truly, | Philip Webb. Jack has not lately written, so I fancy he is hard at it, pressing on his Arisaig large cottage:9 shall expect him to talk in Gaelic when he has finished. SPAB W-W 58

1 The thirteenth-century church of St Odoceus, Llandawke, in Carmarthenshire, underwent some nineteenth-century restoration. It is now in the care of the Friends of Friendless Churches.

226

1899–1902 2 The parish church of All Saints, Sandon, in Staffordshire, dates from the late twelfth/early thirteenth centuries, and was largely rebuilt in c.1300. Reports and letters in WW’s hand relating to repairs survive. 3 ‘I met Mr Treherne as arranged & we had a good afternoon on Saturday & the Sunday morning following, going into all the points of interest.’ WW to PSW, 1 October 1901, SPAB, Sandon file. 4 ‘Mr Treherne is anxious to place the stone effigy of the “unknown lady” wh’ now lies in the Vestry of Llandawke ch. in a more fitting & safer position . . . The Parson being willing to give up the front seat on south side of Nave, we concluded to arrange for it being placed in that position . . . & I have suggested a limestone slab large enough to take the effigy & to raise it above the floor level on four limestone piers.’ 5 ‘Our last & not least discovery was a fresco on the north wall nearly opposite to south doorway of a large figure, evidently St Christopher. The colours are rather faint. The head unfortunately is wanting. It is painted on the old plaster, wh’ you will recollect was hacked over & replastered after the church was burned, in the year 1633. A portion of the modern plaster was loose & on removal we discovered the work. The figure is about 8 ft in height & on the left shoulder is carrying (apparently) the Infant Saviour, while kneeling on the left side of figure appears a nun holding a lantern, to light the figure across the stream. The foreground is depicted as water, with fish swimming about. Can you say if we are right in thinking it to be St Christopher?’ 6 For A Dream of John Ball (1886–7), see Vol. II, Letter 355, note 1. 7 Here PSW uses ‘plumber’ in its original meaning of one who works with lead, zinc and tin, rather than in its more limited current sense of an installer of household water and gas appliances. See also Vol. IV, Letter 1008, note 3. 8 ‘Hope to send you a photo of it soon. It is a beautiful piece of work.’ 9 As well as completing the Kelmscott cottages, GWJ took on other projects from PSW’s former practice, including additions in 1901–2 to Great Tangley Manor in Wonersh, Surrey, which PSW had originally enlarged in two phases between 1885 and 1894 for Wickham Flower and his wife (see Kirk, pp. 187–9 and 300). See below, Letter 805, note 5. GWJ’s ‘twister’ project at Arisaig in Inverness-shire was a house for Constance Astley (1851–1935) and her companion, Margaret Shaen (d. 1936). 40 years earlier, PSW had designed Arisaig House for Constance Astley’s father, Francis Astley, and the choice of GWJ as architect for this new house might seem to be simply a case of staying with the old firm, but as Amy Gaimster points out, GWJ was himself well-known to Margaret Shaen, having been commissioned a few years before to carve a commemorative lid for a case formerly owned by her father, the Bedford Row solicitor William Shaen (1822–87). The happy relationship GWJ enjoyed with his two lady clients is suggested in a charming photograph of him with Constance Astley and Margaret Shaen at Arisaig in about 1901, reproduced in Gaimster, p. 46.

785 • To Emery Walker, 7 October 1901 Postmark CRAWLEY OC 7 01 Address To/ Messrs Walker & Cockerell | 16 Clifford’s Inn | Fleet Street | London. E.C. 1, Raymond Buildings, Grays Inn, | London, W.C. To/ Messrs Walker & Cockerell Dear Walker Thank you for sending on the ‘Odsey’ prints, in spite of Cockerell disporting himself at Chartres, of whose west front he has sent me a photo-print, bringg back reflection like a blow in the face of a forgetful man.1 Have not you seen Chartres? if not, do so before you go hence and are no longer helpful to yourself or your 227

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

friends.2 In my biography it will be said – doubtless, that no one wd have heard of his existence as a craftsman if it had not been for W. & C. Neither of you can understand what a linking force you are between my present and former life – nor what a solace the companionship is, to Yours very truly | Philip Webb. 6. p.m. and I can only see my pen on the paper. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Here are a dozen proofs or rather ordinary prints of your plate. We can let you have some more if you would like them. Cockerell has gone to Chartres with the Mackails but will be back on Tuesday.’ EW to PSW, 5 October 1901, Cheltenham 1991.1016.652.g. 2 ‘O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.’ Psalms 39:13.

786 • To J. Scarratt Rigby, 8 October 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 8 October. 1901. Dear Mr Rigby. In answer to your letter of the 5th inst. You are quite at liberty to use the photograph from “the hare” for your specified purpose.1 The things were not ‘studies’, but done partly from special particular studies, and the rest from memory. They were finished watercolour drawings, done worked out with oil colour-brushes; and The Hare, Fox, Lion & Raven done in large, and the Peacock in smaller form, and with strict attention to their purpose as tapestry The decoration, i.e without shadow, but to look as living things; the wools of the weaving having this, among other, decorative advantages, that they hold the light, so that even sober pure colours look quite bright. I need scarcely say that Morris’s well taught weaving-lads did the work to perfection, & with Morris’s splendid scrolled leafage the beasts looked quite at home. It should not be forgotten that the beautiful ‘thumbnail’ poem, (at wh’ writing he was a master) added greatly to the interest of the little piece of work. It ran this – “The Beasts that be In wood and waste, Now sit and see, nor ride nor haste.”2 I wish the “influence” of the great master had not so often been misused; but that in these days is past praying for. We will hope for better, and that your articles will help to an improvement – or in with clearer perception of the simple and direct teaching of the master. With kind regard to Mrs Rigby | I am yours truly | Philip Webb.

228

1899–1902

P.S. Bedford Lemere, of the Strand,3 photographed the tapestry for Mr Ionides, who bought it. V&A, NAL MSL/1933/2559

1 The hare was one of the four animal and bird designs made by PSW for the ‘Forest’ tapestry made by Morris & Co. See Vol. I, Letter 288, note 7. Rigby’s article was ‘Remarks on Morris Work and its Influence on British Decorative Arts of To-day’, The Art Workers’ Quarterly, I (January 1902), pp. 2–5 and 61–5. 2 See above, Letter 717, note 2. 3 The architectural photographers, Bedford Lemere & Co. was established by Bedford Lemere (1839–1911) in 1861. From 1867, his studio was at 147 Strand.

787 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 8 October 1901 A separate draft also survives in V&A, AAD 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex 8 October 1901. My dear ‘squire’ I ask pardon for having received your seasonable gifts of game with, till now, ne’er an acknowledgment of the kindly thought on your part. The four partridges proved excellent food, and the three pheasants await their time for the table. Now for the postscript! On thinking of what I should next turn my hand to in keeping this pleasant tenement in seemly condition, I concluded that the ivy-browed porch would safely stand on its own stem supports till next year, so I have roughly put its tiling in order, so as to throw off the rain – and have fallen back on the early idea of putting up a decent work-shed to hold crowded out implements, &c – my wheelbarrow, ladders, carpenter’s small bench, apple rack, garden & other tools, dry wood and dry earth – &c, being now put away all over the premises, some not included in the lease, on sufferance; which gives me too much running about, with risk of things straying. I spoke about this shed to Mr Caffin – to which he raised no objection, but it would not rest with him for permission. I therefore turn to you – with some hesitation, in the way of the begging-tenant nuisance, and must ask you to decide on the proposition – without fear or favour. I have roughly drawn out the size and general form of the thing, which should stand at the south west corner of the ground, just north of the two living, and one nearly dead, fir trees – near to which nothing would grow, – see marginal sketch, over. [sketch] In plan, it would be 8’.6” wide – south to north, & 18’.6” long east to west – outside measure: 5’.0” from ground to eaves on the south, and 7’.6” on the

229

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

north: in the latter front would be a pair of folding doors to open outwards & pin back, which would give light to work by at small but pretty constant carpenteringe, [sic] of myself doing as times serve, and relieve the little overcrowded annex to the cottage I set up at starting. I give these seemingly trifling items of explanation for help to you in deciding between the yea or nay.1 The proposition stands thus. That the estate should provide the materials – gratis, on the ground, and the tenant should pay for the labour in making & setting up. It would have a concrete and brick foundation, wood framework above ground – mostly of larch, walls to be covered outside with tree “slabs”, and the roofing with plain tiles. The whole constructed so as to use the ordinary Estate materials as much as possible. William Dench has looked at the plan and other arrangements, and said the thing could be done economically. That is the full intent and meaning of my proposition, and I beg you not to hesitate in deciding according to your own feeling. In case of my death – or being forced to leave here, I am sure this shed would be of such convenience as to allow of the rent of the premises being raised without demur from any sensible tenant. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 ‘Yes. By all means make the shed as proposed. If the fir trees are in the way I do not mind your cutting them, as I hate fir trees. One of them certainly ought to go. Then you might get it nearer the hedge if you consider that any advantage.’ WSB to PSW, 11 October 1901, V&A, AAD.

788 • To George Washington Jack, 11 October 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 11. October 1900 [sic] My dear Jack. Miss Astley & Miss Shaen were here on Monday, (having got into a train not stopping at 3 bridges, the former had to go on to London from Lewes & back here, wh’ reduced her time considerably) and produced your plans, &c, &c!! I could do no less than justice by praising your drawings, & the more important designing generally, for I told them at once I wd only talk about your business in a general way, as you were quite able (& from the drawings evidently so) to help them better than any other man I could think of1 – which did not even hurt my own feelings, as – from being laid on the shelf, I could survey the whole from a shelf height of eminence!2

230

1899–1902

Upon objection to the iron drain under the scullery, I said you wd know all about making it safe, & perhaps more so than if it had to be carried otherwhere at disadvantage, &c. Then they wished to carry the soil main drain into the sea. To which I asked wh’ was the prevailing wind, & they said from the sea, so I could but say Geo: J. is right! Then objection was raised to the large stone pier carrying the roof of the S. E verandah, to wh’ I answered, ‘the block form of the house demanded the lump there’; and carried on conversationally about keeping the petty form of things out of the design – and that the lump of stone pier there would be more than worth its weight & size, &c. I thought you had managed the 2 storied glass bird cage on the south, excellently well. Indeed if there had been time I wd have liked to study the whole of design carefully, but there was not. Now for your letter recd today. I do not think McVarish could make a reliable estimate, for the drawings – which, though remarkably clear, would be sure to embarrass him.3 As the case stands, I certainly think you had better get a Glasgow ‘measurer’ to prepare schedules – one for each trade, as I did for Arisaig House; when each trade put on their own prices and contracted for that alone, but agreed between them that the Mason should take the whole in one contract, and direct all. In your case (when you had the measurer’s schedules – priced,) you could try if Mr McVarish would stomach the prices to his own more particular trade, and judge as to the prospect of the whole being accepted by him.4 Indeed, the house is too big – as it stands on your plans – for McV to undertake the measuring, calculating, &c. I found my measurer very apt in his work, & knowing how to deal with the different trades. 8d per cube foot – with extras, seems to me a good price for the work at Arisaig, where, I suspect, at present, there is no ‘boom’ in building. As to the ‘stone’.5 That gave me trouble at first: I went about the walls dividing the fields, on the roadside, &c, and pointed out patches of sorted stones, and said get stone like ‘this’ or ‘that’. We had 4 or 5 quarries, some open, & more in likely places, wh’ we opened, & got the stone easily by blasting. Afterwards, I got 3 or 4 yards, run; built fairly well, and afterwards that the men looked with contempt on their first laborious sample, and it went in future with much less labour. ’Tis merely a question of handling a stone and seeing at once where it would rightly be laid. Also – if you can, get it out of their heads that you are in want of superfine ‘fancy’ work! In no case would you be able to get the walling faced as at Arisaig Hse, or your work will cost far too much – good sound walling – rough casted, would in any case be better for the kind of house; it would give it a breadth which nothing else would.6 I kept on telling the laidies, [sic] that of all things – simplicity was the most important. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

231

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 ‘[A]mongst a hundred other details Miss Shaen asked me to alter the window & put 4 panes instead of 12. I flatly & rudely refused. I offered to do another design from top to toe based on this idea but could hardly get her to understand that there existed such a thing as harmony in design.’ GWJ to PSW, 12 October 1901, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘I am glad you liked the drawings. They are as far as I could make them an echo of your own work as I am no believer in “originality” . . . and I could hardly have had a better master for such an example in my mind than yourself.’ 3 ‘I have now sent off those drawings and specification to Mr McVarish and hoped he might fix me a price; but I received a letter from him which in his highland way (by inference) confesses his inability to make an estimate upon the drawings. I dont know whether the number of sections I gave him frightened him in any way, but he wants me to name a price, and make him secure against loss – he might as well say “I’ll do it for £50 a week & then we’ll see what is comes to when it is finished”.’ GWJ to PSW, 10 October 1901, V&A, AAD. 4 ‘I would like McVarish to do it as I know his work, he is local, and he seems a decent fellow with an established reputation so we should need no clerk of works in his case.’ On hearing from PSW, GWJ decided that he would probably ‘put the work out to tender to some 4 or 5 builders whose names I have’. GWJ to PSW, 12 October 1901. 5 ‘[T]he stone seems to me to be everywhere in mountains, but the quarry men profess that little or no stone can be got on the site or near it, fit for building. Is this cussedness? or may it be fact, like the saying “water water everywhere & not a drop to drink”.’ GWJ to PSW, 10 October 1901. 6 ‘Thanks for hints about stone which will be most useful. I mean to have the walls done as you say.’ GWJ to PSW, 12 October 1901.

789 • To Sydney Cockerell, 25 October 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley | Sussex. 25 Octr for 26. 1901 To/ Messrs Walker & Cockerell. My dear Cockerell I shall have to invent new terms of gratitude towards Clifford’s Inn, as the usual epithets must become stale – unprofitable. Here you are again, prompt as heretofore – but, you did not give Mrs Wyndham the right form of acceptance from Caxtons.1 The tenant promised to try and do justice in a drawing, and no further till success – more or less attended. M.W may rest assured the ‘thing’ will not be like the other two. Have been exercising my dog-latin, by help of Ainsworth, to translate the motto,2 and can make no more of it than the Irish mean to stick to their text! That is a really pleasant portrait of the Fitzgeralds,3 and helps me to make a little more out of the strain in the two family bloods, as shewn in the Clouds 5 children. That great ‘gory lock’ in the portrait would be handy for the executioner, if the victim was beheaded? Thanks for the picture – and also for l’addition – which eases my mind or its representative. E.W is prompt too with his transfer paper. Have myself usually made it by help of the cook’s grate brush, & with the to be expected failure. 232

1899–1902

Alfred Powell turned in here just after the dinner-meat had got cool in the larder yesterday, without warning, but Mrs D. made him as victually comfortable as might be, and he stayed the night. Thought him very greatly improved over what he looked – even before his illness.4 He is fatter too, wh’ the doctors strive for in patients with that complaint. Had a kindly letter from Mrs Morris, and, of all stimulating presents, a dozen of my ‘particular’ scotch whisky!! which shd last me under my greatly reduced use for the length of my tether, perhaps?5 To both of you, I am Yours truly, | Philip Webb. Thank your @@ this gabble did not overflow to the back of the sheet. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/50

1 ‘I have [a] beautiful Peacock that dear Mr Webb gave me to enamel – it is so fine that it would be impossible for me to do it, but it would make a wonderfully Beautiful Bookplate, would it not? with a motto round it. . . . I dare say you could get Mr Webb to make a border. No emblem can be better for a Bookplate, than the Peacock & no motto better than “Immortale Quod Opto” – & no man more right than Philip Webb – to make the Bookplate for Clouds. I send you my Peacock.’ Madeline Wyndham to SCC, 15 October 1901, BL Add 52760, ff. 116–17. 2 SCC annotation: ‘Mrs Wyndham’s motto ‘Immortale quod opto’ was given her by BurneJones. I have met it elsewhere.’ Robert Ainsworth’s Latin-English dictionary was first published in 1736, with various ‘improvements’ and shorter versions being published during the nineteenth century. ‘The legend Mrs Wyndham asks for (I enclose the first sheet of her letter) is M.W. CLOUDS / IMMORTALE QUOD OPTO.’ SCC to PSW, 23 October 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 114. In an annotation, PSW translated the motto in pencil: ‘an immortal thing I am desiring’. 3 Madeline Wyndham was a granddaughter of the Irish patriot, Lord Edward FitzGerald (1763–98). ‘I have made a rough scratch, for suggestiveness, of the B-plate for the Fitzgerald lady of Clouds, on ½ sheet of notepaper. And I see it had better be now that I got the correct (absolute – this) text for the motto, so that the space to be allowed for it should be enough & not too much.’ PSW to SCC, 22 October 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/49. SCC annotation: ‘Webb’s design for her bookplate was splendidly sketched but was never finished.’ 4 Powell was recovering from pleurisy. See above, Letter 746, note 3. 5 See next letter.

790 • To Jane Morris, 25 October 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 25 October 1901. My dear Janey I had notification from Alexander’s yesterday that on your instruction they had sent off a dozen case of S.V.O (Scotch very old) whisky to this place. Having to go to the station today with Alfred Powell who had been to see me in the den, I found 233

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

the ‘cratur’ had arrived there,1 and now a friendly Baker, who does such carrying, will bring it on to me. To be sure you must have laughed when giving the order for the liquor – knowing my dislike to solids, ‘white elephants,’ &c, as gifts! I could pour this down the gutter, after the Wilfrid Lawson manner,2 but shall do no such thing, and will vicariously (Daily Telegraph diction) drink the ‘waters’ for the good of your health. What a good friend you are to me; you would not guess it, therefore I write the most comforting fact. Thank you kindly for this and your many other mercies. No, Harrogate could not help you except, perhaps, in the drinking way, and I am disappointed in that it failed. Never mind: console yourself as I do when going through a fresh purgatory – “you have had a fresh experience”. Cockerell, when writing on business (I’m one of the “firm’s” artists kept wholesome in the country) told me of his visit to Kelmscott – and indeed he was here on the Friday before, & could report to you the colour of my cheeks. Alfred Powell is very – markedly – much better after his severe bout of illness: he is now doing the out o’ door & open window cure for the lung business, and it seems to tell on him in the right way. Your note of Jenny cheers me. | Your good old friend | Philip Webb. rs P.S. M Dickinson here tries to make me take the S.V.O twice a day again (now only after 1. o.c. dinner) so on first blush I thought she might have written to ask for your interference. Truly, I find the constant fresh air and exercise here makes the extra dose quite unnecessary. P.S. No 2. I am really glad you too are having a hand on that altar cloth, that will please the good-natured Isabella, as it does me.3 BL Add 45343, f. 10

1 ‘Creature’ is a traditional humorous reference to whisky, and the ‘Irish’ pronunciation is often represented by the spellings ‘cratur, crater, crathur, etc’ (OED). See also Vol. IV, Letter 994, note 3. 2 Sir Wilfrid Lawson, second baronet (1829–1906), was a Liberal politician and temperance campaigner. 3 For the altar frontal designed by PSW for Isabella Gilmore and the chapel of the Deaconess Institution in Clapham, largely worked by MM, see above, Letter 624, note 2.

791 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 30 October 1901 A separate draft also survives in V&A, AAD, with PW annotation: ‘Wrote something different to this to Blunt in Egypt 30 October 1901’. 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 30 October. 1901. My dear Squire 234

1899–1902

Thank you for so kindly taking the trouble to answer my question on the eve of your leaving for Egypt.1 It had got into my ancient head that you would not be moving towards the desert till November at the earliest, or would surely not have touched on your overcrowded moments. ’Tis to be hoped now that you are firmly in your seat on an Arab horse under the blessed sun of an Arabian heaven, with the remains of hoar antiquity for shade. We have often thought of the meeting between you and the faithful henchmen of the walled in paradise – that is, if the headmen are now let go free to shew their white teeth with a grin of pleasure. Will you be good enough (metaphorically) to shake the hands of them for me in recognition of their promptitude in teaching manners to the British whelps of witlessness – and tell them – as my friends, to hang up their sticks in the nearest Mosque for the admiration of pilgrims! I am really helped by your unlandlikelord like permission for me to set up my work tabernacle under the too much bescorned Scotch firs – for myself, being too sentimental, they are sacred – as indeed are all trees, save – perhaps, the ‘puzzle monkey’; that too in its own country may be a boon of providence. At a house I built – years ago, there were many well grown ones of that arbitrary kind, and I noticed that a big one had been cut down; expressing astonishment to the local builder that Sir John, or Sir James, had had the courage, the answer was, in a country drawl – ‘Gentlemen do not so much care for them, now that there is one to each cottage on the green’. When in your note you resigned me to the fate of an English winter, and wished well through it “somehow”, I thought it had begun during 2 nights, but now again it is mild and beautiful in its declining time. I am really busy here, trying to overtake the belated work which stares me in the face on turning out in the morning, so that my walks now are mostly in the dark, or by moonlight. Walker & Cockerell are good enough to find old accustomed work for me to do in such leisure as can be made, so that one does not quite feel as being laid on the shelf. They also come and heave me out of any creeping-on of mental sloth, so that the occasional visits are good in another way – beside the ‘penny fee’ for my little works. Cockerell told me of your having read Tolstoi’s “Resurrection”.2 Is it not done with incredible mastery? Such a difficult theme – so horrid, and yet withal spread out with a great light of sweetness from the heart of the patriarch. When again will the gods vouchsafe us more of the salt of spiritual genius to fill the void of those we so sorely miss? If Lady Anne Blunt has arrived in Egypt, will you be so good as to convey remembrance of me to her, and Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Have not yet caught hold of William Dench to start making the shed. To/ Wilfrid S. Blunt Esqre WSRO Blunt Box 59e 235

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 See above, Letter 787. 2 The first English translation of Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy’s final novel (1899), was by Louise Maude (London: Francis Riddell Henderson, 1900).

792 • To William Weir, 6 November 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 6 Novr 1901. My dear Weir. To[o] much pushed have I been in various ways even to acknowledge yours of 3 Novr. The photographs are all excellent according to their kind and, indeed, the Eglwys Cymmin (the darker) are clearly explanatory – and are very helpful to explain what, & how you have managed the work there. ’Tis excellent, and most satisfactory to my anxious mind. The north flank view is very effective. Truly it looks more ‘ancient’ than before you laid hands on it. Anyone with useful eyes in his head can clearly see how good, by comparison, the nave slating is in connection with that of the chancel. The continuous solid looking stone ridge is more than worth the money it cost, and from the shadow line of the eaves, the building there does not look mean, as it did before. The flue pipe against such a church, is far from annoying. I don’t suppose you cut more away from the apex of doorway arch than had been done before? The pointing too – now, looks really workmanlike. I would have liked to whitewash the whole – if only for protection’s sake, but under the modern weak-mindedness circumstances, tis excellent as it is. The west end interior looks well too – and modern, with which I agree. Had not fully estimated how well the internal leaning of the corner posts of the oak cribs would go with the springing & vault of the roof. Cannot make out how a piece of (or reflection) of the west window shd be on the step of Ogam stone chest? Did you photo: it on an old plate turned upside down?1 Am a little in doubt of the lasting action of the double pulley wheeled bellpull.2 The marked roughness of the vault’s plastering is very pleasant. The plain stone copings to gables look well also. Tis the slating though which I was sure wd be the right thing to get done. I am sure S.P.A.B. would think well of the whole, even if they only saw your photographs.3 Sandon Ch’. What do you think the stone gable (ancient?) adjoining the E. end of N. aisle was built for? Was the chimney at apex of chancel arch wall modern, as well as the flue up to it, which you are removing? As to your question regarding the reduction of the roughness caused by the soda water process of removing paint, this has “raised the grain” of the wood.4 I would not advise waxing or oiling, as either wd take the dirt and get brown in time – a good hard clean dry scrubbing brush used would do much, and afterwards, a piece of clean hard, smooth, old oak, worked up and down the grain wd do much to lay it again; a piece of the same with a bent end, like a modeller’s tool would go into the corners. Dry friction is what the wood now wants. 236

1899–1902

Weston Ch’. The photos: are good & pleasing, thank you kindly for them, especially for the western view. I suppose all the church east of the Tower has been bedevilled? I will keep the little book of Lichfield Cathl.5 ’Tis really well done so far as it goes, but one greatly wants a plan, even if it was as small as a page of the booklet. In spite of your thoughtful offer of getting the rest for me, I will say nay to the good offer, as I have still left in my library Britton’s Cathedrals,6 and will not add more to my collection of things in general – but this wd not refer to the photos: you give me which are really helpful. Sandon Ch, again. I think now you propose to do the best thing under the circumstances for the flag staff. The base is brought low down, is attach[ed] to your new diagonal beam, which is also attached to the hip rafter, all of wh’ will lessen the vibration on the walls. I think the 3” at top & 4” ½ bottom diameter for the staff wd be quite large enough, & the more so that the flag will be reduced in size. I return your drawing. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. [pencil] Cannot re-read as I have to catch the post ½ mile away. SPAB W-W 62

1 ‘The reflection of west w[indo]w on front of ogam stone chest is no freak. . . . Being “chestnut wood” it has a glossy surface, wh helped to accentuate it.’ WW to PSW, 12 November 1901, SPAB. 2 ‘The double pulley arrangement for bell is rather temporary. I had intended to do something better, but circumstances did not allow of. It was done in order to ring the bell from Sexton’s place within Screen.’ 3 ‘Shall send copies of the photos to the S.P.A.B. & Mr Treherne. It is unfortunate the Rector cannot rightly appreciate the work – at the same time he is very pleased from his point of view, especially with the effect of the interior – the new seats having consoled him to a great extent.’ 4 ‘We are busy with the interior, limewashing plaster work of roofs & walls. . . . Have also removed a lot of paint & varnish from old oak pews & pulpit, using soda dissolved in boiling water & applied with stiff brushes. . . . Do you think it would be advisable to treat the oak work afterwards – with beeswax & turpentine, in order to give it a slight gloss, which the hot water has removed during process?’ WW to PSW, 29 October 1901, SPAB. 5 ‘Have you seen the series of notes on the different cathedrals of which I enclose “Lichfield” – if you should like to have the others, I will gladly send them to you.’ WW probably means the Bell’s Cathedral Series of booklets, which included A.B. Clifton, The Cathedral church of Lichfield (G. Bell, 1898). 6 The series of books on English cathedrals and abbeys by John Britton (1771–1857) were published by Longman during the first 30 or so years of the nineteenth century.

793 • To Edith Crosby Lethaby, 12 November 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex 12 November 1901. Dear Mrs Richard.1 237

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

You see, I have chosen of your husband’s initials the one most pleasing to me, in its association with old song – so be not you nor let him be disturbed by my peculiarity. Only yesterday – the last of several times, I intended writing to you personally, but I had not the new address. Now that you have let your light shine so pleasantly on me, the postal direction must be borrowed from that Mercury of friendliness, Sydney Cockerell. How difficult it is – when desiring to do a good thing in the way of a gift, to find that which shall be a boon instead of a cumbrance. This book of Douglas Cockerell’s just chimes in with my wish, will give me satisfaction I am sure, and, with a hope, it may enlighten me on the subject of a craft I know next to nothing about.2 Your book therefore fits a need exactly, and I thank you from the shining side of my face. ’Tis a pity that the acknowledgment could not have be[en] done by me with the pregnant brevity of “The Editor’s Preface”3 – but that precious skill is denied to Yours very truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 769, note 3. 2 Douglas Bennett Cockerell (1870–1945), younger brother of SCC, became one of the most influential of English bookbinders, having begun his apprenticeship in 1893 with Thomas Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Bindery in Hammersmith. He established his own bindery in 1897, and in the same year was recruited by WRL to teach bookbinding at the new Central School of Arts and Crafts. His Bookbinding and the Care of Books: A Text-book for Bookbinders and Librarians (London: J. Hogg, 1901), with illustrations by Noel Rooke (son of Thomas Rooke), was one of a series of practical manuals in traditional craft skills under the general editorship of WRL, and is regarded as a classic text. GWJ wrote on woodcarving in the same series. See Vol. IV, Letter 898. 3 In his Editor’s Preface, WRL set out three principles behind this volume and the others to come in the series: to provide trustworthy textbooks by experts, ‘to treat design itself as an essential part of good practice’ (p. vii), and ‘to put artistic craftsmanship before people as furnishing reasonable occupations for those who would gain a livelihood’ (p. ix).

794 • To Arthur Corfe Caffin, 12 November 1901 Draft; pencil, some amendments in ink Caxtons. Worth. 12 November 1901. To/ A. Corfe Caffin Esq Dear Mr Caffin. You will remember in our conversation at once or twice at some time back, it was agreed between us that I might reinstate the Porch here, and build a rough work shed close to the 3 Scotch firs at west end of the front garden – and that the “estate” shd supply the materials free, and that I should pay for the cost of labour? Beyond your agreement our consultation, I thought it nothing but right to explain the re

238

1899–1902

matter to Mr Blunt; so – just before his leaving for Egypt, I wrote him that the ‘shed’ had become an imperative object but the Porch might wait for another year – as I had personally patched up the roof. My explanation to Mr Blunt of what the shed would be like was full, and I made a sketch of what it would be like in my letter. On October 11 I received a letter from Mr Blunt him and among other items was the following – “Yes, By all means make the shed as proposed. If the fir trees are in the way I do not mind your cutting them.” The fir trees are not in my way, and I propose only to cut off the top of the nearly dead one. As William Dench is now free to do see to this small work, I should be glad if you would look in & see what we are doing when you are this way. Yours truly | Ph. W. V&A, AAD

795 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 15 November 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 15 November 1901. To/ Messrs Walker & Cockerell My dear fellows. Two unanswered important letters of yours stare me in the face. Willing or the reverse, I’ve been unable to give my wits time to arrange themselves as critic. Please to take anything here written, on others than myself, as business, private. In a post card it was noted that a trial had been made of one or two ‘paragraph marks’ for Mr Hornby, but they are not up to decent standard, but can be made so, with one or two more – doubtless, given a little quiet time, and quiet hand, they can be made sufficient. “New’s Crabbet” drawing can but be looked on as a comparatively poor thing.1 He does not seem to have used the setting of trees, &c, to make up for the square architectural block of the house. Daresay he was unsympathetic with this, and could not do it – even as strikingly as it might have been done – and the trees are ineffective. One of the things he lacks is (to my poor mind) the observation to note the value of different degrees of depth in the foliage, quite apart from shadow. I think the drawing just passes muster, that is all.2 I wish it were possible to get your uncivilized opinion of the Hornby Printer’s mark from you, but that won’t be, because I am in it. Of course it does not look bad. This preamble will shew that – to my eye, it might have been better, as doubtless it will appear on the rougher & grained paper. The cutter seems to me not to leave margin enough to correct his whites. For example, he has done the Fox better, in a way, than I had expected, but has made his nose longer than on 239

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

my drawing, and I had reduced that in the detail d[itt]o of the enlarged head. The forelegs are fairly good; but the right, or standing leg, has my muscular swelling cut to a point. The seated hindlegs are not at all good. The ‘Hornby’ is cut very well – save the O which is flattish on the sides. The ‘shendene Press’ is cut skinny,3 as is also the ‘St John & Cicely’: then, he made a thin-wire line, below the chevron quartering of the shield, that shd have been as stout as that above the chevrons. From my point of view the engraver has not quite thrown himself into the work, nor caught up what really is visible in the drawing. Hence you see my aforesaid difficulty, he has cut into his whites so that the work will be impossible to amend. Should Hornby hesitate at all, I will do another drawing for him? Perhaps though it would be better to await a proof on the proper paper? Still, the cutter might shorten foxe’s nose by continuing the contour white line of the left side of its face a little lower down, so as to do away with the apparent length of the gimlet part of the nose – by broadening the upper part of head. Engraver has cut the 3 xxx on the shield very well. The foliage is done fairly well, but with little sympathy. At least all this is only as the designer thinks! As to the Bromwichham Mace.4 Though not having made even an initial scratch on paper of this, I think I may find a design possible with the arms of Lion, Mermaid, and Book (might not this be a scroll, instead of a family bible, without violating heraldry? As I do not propose to make a shield proper of the thing: but the queer blazoning suggests a turning to account of the form?) I’m thinking of a disc 3 faceted on the front, and flat sphere shaped at the back, with bees, (according to W.R.L) and inscription on its convexity. Also, the staff, bigger at the top, where the flat faceted & cushioned head comes, & smaller at the bottom; to be hexagonal in section and embossed with patterning on the 6 faces. But as it is only in my head I cannot make more than this scratch to convey some meaning to you. [marginal sketch of mace] I remember dimly the Vice Chancellor’s “bauble” at Oxford, and myself wish to avoid a globe at the top.5 I know there are other things to be noticed to you, but must get off to the post with this. Yours dependably in any work supplied | Philip Webb. Just now, when I wanted leisure for your work, Wm Dench is ready to begin putting up the shed which W.S.B allows me to do. So, I’ve been digging, & breaking up material for concrete with a fellow ‘labourer’ – and drawing water for the parish, & certainly ask pardon for ‘hitching up’ all over the sheet, but hurried writing dazes bad memory. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/56

1 See above, Letter 767, note 2. 2 ‘We are interested in what you say of this, & will not repeat it to New. His gift is to do certain things with modesty & directness – but his art does not stretch very far, and he sometimes exceeds his limitations.’ SCC to PSW, 18 November 1901, BL Add 52760, ff. 125–6.

240

1899–1902 3 Correct, as the ‘A’ in Ashendene is in a different font size in the design. 4 ‘It is rumoured in the neighbourhood of Temple Bar that the two junior members of the firm of Webb Walker & Cockerell, or at any rate one of them, will call on the senior partner tomorrow afternoon to taste his quince marmalade, & to discuss the designing of a silver mace to adorn the City of Birmingham withal. It is proposed that a drawing executed at Caxtons shall be carried out in the said city under the direction of R. Catterson-Smith whose fame in connection with a certain cross on the Clapham side of London is inextricably intertwined with that of its designer.’ SCC to PSW, 1 November 1901, BL Add 52760, ff. 119–20. For Robert Catterson Smith, see Vol. II, Letter 542, note 5. He had recently been appointed headmaster of the Birmingham Central School of Art, and would work from PSW’s design for a mace for the newly-founded University of Birmingham. It seems supremely ironic that one of PSW’s last pieces of work should be for an institution founded by Joseph Chamberlain, who was its first Chancellor. For Catterson Smith and PSW’s silver cross for the Clapham chapel of the Deaconess Institution, see Vol. II, Letter 569, note 4. 5 ‘The mace proposals seem most promising. You do not say it, but the staff seems to be drawn as a spiral, which would be very pretty. Walker says the book must be a book & not a scroll, as heraldically they are two different things. I will tell Lethaby that you do not despise the busy bee.’ SCC to PSW, 18 November 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 126.

796 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 21 November 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex Novr 21st for 22nd mid day post. My dear fellows. Your letters of 18th & 20th were very helpful – as usual. I am exercised by the considerable trouble my work gives you. If I were less of a ‘fellow’, I suspect you both would damn me up stairs & down on the steep incline of No 161 – as most folk do on receiving 21 19 shillings change for a sovereign. In the matter of the Hornby mark, I am loth to suggest any trouble taking alterations, for all except Brer Fox’s nose and hind legs would pass muster; but I’m anxious for Hornby himself, whose printing venture has so much of my sympathy. If he really feels the thing will not be a drawback on his books, I wd rest content as far as my feeling is concerned. However, I hope you will dispose of me in the best way for your business reputation – which, believe me, is much in my mind. Certainly the printing of the ‘mark’ looks greatly better on the right paper, and if W. will look at the shield with closed eyes I’m sure he will acknowledge it looks well, maugre the poor quartering line at the bottom. Therefore send me post card word if I shall touch up one of the last proofs – or not? As to the Joe-town university mace, I’m really pleased the miserable scratch in my letter led you to hope for that ‘thing’. At present (I use the word because the devil only knows what may guide me into doing when I really get time to turn my mind on it) I am thinking that the enrichment on the staff of mace will give a spiral effect, but that the hexagonal staff will have its silver sides continuously straight. All right as to ‘book’ instead of proposed ‘scroll’. I depend on W. for 241

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

these hints. Your reply to Mrs Wyndham was all that my fancy painted of your diplomacy!2 Glory be that W. was off to Hawarden. I suppose the portraits are for J. Morley’s book?3 Hope the portraits won’t be daubs.4 To S.C.C. I’ve read the typewritten poem once, and do not like to send it back till after reading it again. I found many faults at first blush which might be modified by turning the other cheek to it.5 Have not quite finished Maeterlink’s [sic] bee book6 – simply from lack of reading time, for it interests me greatly, being written in the sweetest of literary temper, with some ‘moral reflections’ very curious (as the wine merchants say of a special “particular”) and from the social point of view quite attractive to me. Will return the book after Sunday. Lord’s mercy, C. was quite within bounds when saying I was “full of work of a thousand different kinds” – ’tis true, for ’tis turn & turn about to it from rosy morn to cloudy night,7 when I then can get a short walk. Yours, always thankfully | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/57

1 16 Clifford’s Inn, EW and SCC’s business premises. 2 ‘Mrs Wyndham was eager in her enquiries about her bookplate. I told her that I had seen a sketch, & that she was not likely to be disappointed, but that you were very full of work of a thousand different kinds.’ SCC to PSW, 18 November 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 126. 3 John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (London: Macmillan & Co., 1903). 4 ‘Walker . . . is off to Hawarden today to photograph the G.O.M’s ancestors.’ SCC to PSW, 20 November 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 127. ‘E.W. found Hawarden much as he & you might expect – not a thing in the house, books excepted, that he would have cared to bring away! Such trophies!!’ SCC to PSW, 25 November 1901, BL Add 52760, f. 129. 5 SCC annotation: ‘The poem was by Lady Margaret Sackville.’ 6 Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee, translated by A. Sutro (London: George Allen, 1901). 7 ‘Rosy morn now lifts his eye, . . . / The night’s gloomy shades, cloudy, dark, o’ercast my sky’. Lines from Robert Burns, The Lover’s Morning Salute to his Mistress (1794).

797 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 31 December 1901 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 31 Dec: 1901 My dear Fellows I lump your letters – of the 29th & 30th, together in the way of recognition. ‘Old’ Madox Brown used to talk of a Lowes Dickinson in the working man’s Coll: days – but whether of the father or son I know not, for I never saw either.1 Brown I remember rather took to him. His book is very well done – to my mind, and the anonymous assumption not carried too far. The stable bucket P.W.2 goes far on 242

1899–1902

certain points, but the catholicity of blue-blooded Toryism – old style – is never outraged. He is curious to a degree on other people’s outlooks; ‘firm as a rock sir’ is his backbone, though he likes the freshness of free thought in others – they of no account. I shall look to see Olive here in the spring.3 It is a mistake to expect me in the ‘Wen’ on the 4th Jan: I’m liable to many blunders – so lay this on me.4 The banking account day is after the 5th when dividends are received, so it might be the 6th or the 7th for my disorganising the affairs of London. I must write to Praed too as well as Mackdonald.5 If you two had a particular engagement on any day about that time, please name it. I await the further information to help me make pretty the drawing of the mace. Hunted through Gwyllim last night (1630 copy)6 and found a good example of mermaid on wh’ to found mine. (The pages of that book were helpful to compare with the bible sheet). Your clever photo: of the leaf stops for Hornby made the little designs quite pretty. Don’t think I could do any better than the geranium and the hawthorn* – am glad too they are not like W. Ms: (his are always incomparable for fitness). Why cannot Hornby leave sufficient white round my leaves.7 Confound you chaps: as W.M said of Salisbury Cathedral – ‘it was not good enough for them’! Of course I can do a flower – could manage a Ph. W. flower de luce? But dang my buttons, your little photo is a pretty rendering. How wd a couple (suggestion of 3) of leaves look [sketch] thus? But I must catch the post. Yrs Philip Webb *I like the holly too. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/73

1 [Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson], Letters from John Chinaman (London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1901). ‘[Walker] brought me a little book of “Letters fm John Chinaman”. He told me of the author, but my colander memory has drained it off.’ PSW to SCC, 27 December 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/72. ‘I am glad you like the Chinaman’s letters. They are by a Cambridge don called Lowes Dickinson, whose father of the same name you may have known. He is an artist, & used to teach at the Working Men’s College under Ruskin & Rossetti. I sent a copy to the Clouds P.W. [Percy Wyndham] & he replied that he had held the views in it for 30 years – so I suppose your tuition has not gone for nothing! The great value of the book lies in its moderation, which makes its principles readable if not acceptable to the most rampant Big Englander.’ SCC to PSW, 29 December 1901, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/71. 2 SCC annotation: ‘“The stable-bucket P.W.” was Percy Wyndham. We had a joke that Webb when he designed Clouds had even stuck his initials on the stable-buckets!’ 3 ‘Thank you for enquiries about my sisters. . . . In primrose time I shall bring Olive to your tea table.’ 4 ‘I hear that you are to be in town on the 4th, which as a Saturday I should have thought not the best day for doing your business. I do not forget that it is the anniversary of your triumphal entry into Caxtons. Walker & I look forward to the lunch we three are to have together. It was on Jan 3 of this year that we met together at the Cock, before your journey to East Grinstead.’ 5 On the rare occasions that PSW went to London during his retirement years, it was usually for unavoidable reasons, such as a visit to his bankers (Lloyds Bank, in the Strand), dentist (Macdonald, in Weymouth Street), or tailor – or to see a combination of these. See below, Letter 799. 6 See above, Letter 782, note 11.

243

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 7 ‘I send a photograph reduced from your drawing of Hornby’s leaves to half scale. Pinned to it is a rough note showing what Hornby points out as to the importance of a certain amount of “white” to right & left of the design, so as to keep it distinct from the type. You will have observed that Morris used a little flower as well as two leaves.’ EW to PSW, 30 December 1901, Cheltenham 1991.1016.652.h.

798 • To William Hale White, 5 January 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 5 Jany 1902 My dear Hale White Your rather insecure cover to the packet could not stand the Xmas crush in the bags & handling – however, the precious letter and 3 photos: were all right. I’m glad you write with enthusiasm of Bradford on Avon, for my having been there twice lets me join in with you & Mary. The Abbey barn is both a “marvel” (though not so in the 13th & 14th centuries) and expressively beautiful. How the monasteries determined their tithe barns should reflect the dignity of their sanctuary. I’ve seen a good number, & all impressive. There is an even nobler one – if that be possible – at Great Coxwell nr Faringdon, [to] which the Morris used to take his friends – not so much for them to see it, as for himself to have even another blessed ½ hour in it.1 That at Bradford has been admirably rendered in watercolour, which drawing I helped persuade S. Kensington Museum people to buy, and there it hangs for those to see who cannot go to Bradford.2 The farm people have, with almost incredible stupidity, allowed their threshing engines to blacken the transept gables, as if their engines were much more honourable – ‘sic’ (& here ought to follow an apt quotation in Latin). All the other Grange remains too are memorable for ever to those with eyes. The little Saxon Chapel is quite peculiar in its qualities, and has been tampered with by a former restless & reckless parson; which that [sic] people might have something pretty to look at, he had stuck on the walls some twopenny ecclesiastical commercial brass candle holders.3 My curses were not loud, (because I was in church) but lasting. There was a little pleasant as well as innocent cottage attached to the S.W end – wh’ I for S.P.A.B. begged Freeman (historian) to leave, but he, semi-parsonic as he was, would not.4 The very Byzantine angels must have surmounted a rood, & probably (?) over the chancel arch. They are dignified in their rude simplicity. There were in the porch some other Byzantine like relics. Will send you back the photos: when they have been well rubbed into my shocking memory. I have a ‘carte’ photo of the little church. S.P.A.B. fought hard to save the newly found Roman bath remains from modern vulgarisation, but the city bellies (sic) would have none of our saving doctrine, and their archts are but belly-gods. Your expressions of delight over the barn puts me in mind of the mentally eyeless saying, that a dignified plain old church is like a barn! I’m glad you both have been enjoying Bradford on Avon – and also been reminded of the Bedford 244

1899–1902

swollen river of your young time. We, happily, seldom set ourselves free from such early associations. I am hoping that the miracle working of Bath may have set you both up, and that Mary is not angry with my inaptitude for finding some article on which her nimble fingers might do engage on for my comfort & well-being.5 She may perhaps be disappointed that I’m still in excellent health, in spite of any amount of cold weather and its following wet. The water I’m looking for to deepen the supply in the well here, so as to make easier my regular before breakfast raising of the day’s supply, a quarter bucket-full brought up, makes me say ‘bother,’ in Hebrew. Yours, & together, very truly | Philip Webb. BCL MR 10/21

1 2 3 4

See Vol. II, Letter 349, note 6. For GPB’s watercolour, Tithe Barn, Bradford-on-Avon (1878), see Vol. II, Letter 482, note 3. For the Anglo-Saxon chapel at Bradford-on-Avon, see Vol. I, Letter 123, note 3. For the historian, Edward Augustus Freeman, and the SPAB campaign relating to the chapel, see Vol. I, Letter 287. 5 On a previous occasion, WHW’s daughter had requested that PSW might send her a needlework or tapestry design, but he had nothing suitable. See above, Letter 637.

799 • To Mackworth B. Praed, 9 January 1902 Draft; pencil. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 9 Jany 1902 To/ | Mackworth B. Praed Esqre (Manager) Lloyd’s Bank. Dear Mr Praed Having been much helped by the interview you gave me on Monday, I have carefully gone over the matter in question. At the age of 71 I am liable to severe illness at any time, therefore I consulted with my executor – for whose experience on most matters I have high regard.1 He, as well as myself, think it would be best to deal with the point from year to year – and the simplest way now, for giving your bank the necessary security against the overdrawing of my acct during the current year, would be by my depositing with you an exchequer bond for £200, which I can send you in a few days. I hope that this will be satisfactory to you? Yours truly | Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/73 245

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 PSW visited London on 6 January for a meeting with Mackworth Praed, the manager of the Strand branch of Lloyds Bank, and then had lunch with SCC and EW (his executor), when his money anxieties became a topic of conversation. It appears that his outgoings were overstretching his modest resources, but that Praed had offered an overdraft facility. At lunch, in a characteristically generous gesture, SCC proposed temporarily transferring to PSW his own Exchequer Bond of £200 as security against any borrowing facility. PSW at once wrote a short note to Praed proposing this, and after lunch SCC wrote with a further helpful suggestion. ‘Since you have gone it has occurred to me that you intend to borrow the £200 from the Bank & to pay £5 per cent interest right away. This is not what we should recommend – but merely that you should go on drawing out the money you now have, & then overdraw your account, against the security of the exchequer bond. They will then only be able to charge you interest on the amount you happen to overdraw – whereas if you borrow the £200 & they put it to your credit you will have to start paying 5% on it at once, though you won’t want to touch any of it for several months. If you are intent on borrowing I will sell the Exchequer bond & you can use the money (£200) without interest – or, if you want to be extra businesslike, for the interest I get from the bond at present – which is 3 or 3½ % I forget which.’ SCC to PSW, 6 January 1902, BL Add MS 52761, ff. 1–2.

800 • To Edith Crosby Lethaby, 11 January 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex 11th January. 1902 Dear Mrs Richard. May this acknowledgment of your good letter of the 23rd Decr get to you before sending off the copy of ‘Archl Review’ – for Mr Winmill has sent me one.1 After thrice reading the criticism on Bentley’s work I can justify my admiration for a singularly touching review of an able man’s work on a great scale, which work has evidently sapped his strength, and no wonder, more’s the pity.2 I think friend Richard has taken a fine line of argument, and – with remarkable skill has kept to his text with much nicety. In it, there is what I have not seen in his writing before – namely, the rein given to a large hearted persuasiveness. I’m personally indebted to him, notwithstanding the one mistake in the article: surely you both see with me now, that it risked dropping from the sublime to the “ridiculusmus” . . . me?3 Still, allowing due blame for that, the article lifts the review into an altogether different plane of ‘periodical’ writing. My own particular admiration for Bentley’s great work, rests mainly on the splendid rashness of design in the inter-buttressing of the domes – looking across the nave; this can hardly be spoiled by the future decorative work, as the coupled arcading which steadies these emphatic piers will always give remarkable quality to the broad area of the nave. I do not think Bentley himself would demur to the skilful guardedness of the passage on the outside effect of its multitudinous parts in the general view of the building from the South East. 246

1899–1902

Few modern architects have had – or deserved such discriminative praise applied to their endeavours, and I hope the reading will stimulate a sadly overtaxed strength. O, mon Richard, the essay has been well done. I am with you both in rejoicing at the prospect of living in a cheerfully bright house, wherein to carry on the fight against the terrible odds of a decadent time of the arts. Thank you kindly for including me as a desirable guest should misfortune oblige me to be in London for a night.4 This is not a mere shiver over a past recollection, but at one of recent time, for I was there on Monday last on bank business, and fled as soon as the good fellows of Clifford’s Inn would let me away; I took an earlier train – though a slow one, as a relief from the hard hearted paving of the gruesome streets. I had no business there. If during the latter part of the coming summer you happened on the south side of Russell square, you will would find under the Bedford statue (unless the gardener has uprooted them) many blossoming stems of the Golden Rod of the West; I have gone specially to look at them for many seasons. To both, I am yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 WRL’s article, ‘Westminster Cathedral’, appeared in Architectural Review, XI (1902), pp. 3–19. 2 For John Francis Bentley, see above, Letter 679. 3 WRL made a point of admiring Bentley’s eclecticism. ‘[T]here is a certain universality – or, at least, synthesis – in the style, and every country and every age contributes its quota. Athens, Byzantium, Pisa, Bologna, Milan, Venice, the South of France, England’s Gothic, the Renaissance of Donatello, the modern French of M. Duc (not Viollet), and the modern English of Philip Webb – all these, and many more antecedents colour this complex result.’ ‘Westminster Cathedral’, p. 6. 4 The Lethabys had bought 111 Inverness Terrace, near Kensington Gardens, in October 1901, ‘their home for the rest of their lives’. Godfrey Rubens, William Richard Lethaby. His Life and Work 1857–1931, p. 277.

801 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 15 January 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 15 Jany 1902. My dear Cockerell Thank you for seeing to the matter of the Exchequer Bonds. I have had acknowledgment from Praed, of Lloyds’ Bank, of their receipt from you of the £200 Exchequer Bonds. Yours truly | Philip Webb. [pencil] See over 247

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Caxtons. Worth | Crawley 15th Jany 1902 My dear fellows. Our meeting yesterday was very pleasant to me:1 you cannot realise how much such help of yours is to me, who am a “mere child” in financial matters – with just wits enough to consult friends who know, and are willing to do kind acts. But (of all my ‘buts’) I never asked you what expenses you may have been put to in the exchequer bonds matter; this is serious – even in a “child”. Therefore, when you next have to write let me know, and I will go so far – if necessary, to overdraw my account at the bank instanter, to pay you.2 Please not so much pother as about the 15 shillings of yesterday. If short accts tend to long friendship, the reverse of that, in my taking 12 months to pay dues, places ours in a parlous position! I duly signed & got witnessed the Bank “Lien” paper,3 & sent it, with thanks to Praed, this day. Lord how cold it was in the journey home. I walked as fast as I could up from the station; but and that did not warm me at once; but Mrs D. had a good fire in the keeping room, and then spread for me eggs, bread & butter, & hot cocoa, with bed at 10.45; so here he is again after having done a full fore dinner’s work out o’doors. Mrs D. is still poorly, & the doctor did not come, hope he will today or tomorrow. Yours as afore time, only more so, | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/76

1 PSW visited his London dentist on 14 January, and then called on SCC and EW at Clifford’s Inn. 2 ‘The transfer of the £200 Bonds cost me ten minutes of time & perhaps a twentieth of a pennyworth of shoe leather in going from here to the far distant Lloyds. I cannot think of any other expenditure in connection with it – & as these bonds do not deteriorate in value, being redeemable at par in two or three years, even your fastidiousness will not bring you to imagine that the transaction has put you in my debt for anything more than the bonds themselves, which you will get transferred back to me when your Consols are ripe for selling out – & then the slate will be clean, barring a little interest that you will receive automatically from the bonds, & which you can repay me when the bonds are returned.’ SCC to PSW, 16 January 1902, BL Add 52761, ff. 5–6. 3 Lien: a right to retain possession of property until a debt due to the person detaining it is satisfied (OED).

802 • To Jane Morris, 18 January 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth | by Crawley. Sussex 18 January 1902 My dear Janey. A remarkably good and pleasant letter from Jenny, in which she inclosed your address.1 The address given by this was to Mrs “Jane” Morris – so I take it that is 248

1899–1902

the preferred designation.2 I’ve heard of you from Cockerell, and that at a time when you were not so well. Mrs Flower has just written to me that the Cornish air has quite set her up, so that I’m hoping you are not lying all along? How much I would that you were as free from health disability as myself – who gives rash hostages to fortune in the way of exposure, and yet come out of it with success; for, at present, at all events, I’m very well. Kindly send me a word or two telling if Cornwall’s backbone of granite has stiffened yours? Having been able to keep away from London for 12 months, I had to go there twice; once to the bank to get a new lease of their good nature in keeping my two penny acct there; and the next time to the dentist to get a renewal of Jaw; for you know I’m too talkative, and would wear out an adamantine apparatus – more’s the pity too, I have to go again in a week or two. Walker & Cockerell were my oases in the multitudinously populated desert. How increasedly [sic] poverty stricken in all that goes to make a great city interesting was London to me – fresh from the natural pleasantness of most of this part of Sussex. I pray for a continuance of life to the ‘squire’ – who will not allow building on his land, for he could wallow in prosperity if he granted sites. What do you think of my having been urged to make a design for a Mace for the new Bromagem University, the chancellor of which is, or is to be, the prancing politician of S. Africa’s bloody renown!3 I’ve made said design & sent it to be sat on, and am balanced in mind as to acceptance or contemptuous refusal. The latter seems to be the sweeter kind of revenge, for I cannot make the thing prepensely4 ridiculous with “Joes” all over it – the most I could attain was to make it mighty fine, in that way. The good natured Holliday5 was the moving power to ‘hoist’ the Caxtons Dutch.6 The Christmas poor folks jollification seems to have been a happy outcome of efforts by the Manorhouse body, acting on the Schoolmistress and other worthy energy there; it must have done Jenny’s hearty nature good to take part in it, and succeed. May being there also was a great help. As to reading here, there has been next to nothing done – save that Cockerell lent me a translation of a book on bees, which is singularly bright and beautiful in manner as well as matter, and written by Maeterlink [sic]. Without reiteration no one believes that I have next to no leisure here – which is a fact – and that all I do is just for amusement: one good natured farmer said; ‘Why Sir, you are always at it; to pass the time I suppose’! Indeed I am always ‘at it’ and it passes the time, for the months seem to go as fast as old accustomed weeks. My walk this winter has mostly been in the dark or by help of the monthly moon. It can be dark in this hedgerow tree’d land; to keep the crown of the causeway is often a staggering puzzle. I’ve now begun to cut the dead wood out of the fruit trees, and it takes me a day and a half to clear one tree of that hindering burden. Also, I’ve just begun – between the frosts – to trench the uncovered ground of the orchard – closely followed by a robin who besets me whether I’m wood clearing or earth delving; such a bold little beauty with less calves on his legs than ‘Blazes’ the footman. 249

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

There, my dear friend, I had nothing to say & have written it, but I wanted to have at you – maugre the poverty of my ideas. Return in kind, or better, and please the affectionate old man of Caxtons, Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, f. 11

1 2 3 4 5

JM spent the winter months of 1901–2 in Falmouth, Cornwall. In other words, not ‘Mrs William Morris’, which would have been the standard Victorian form. See above, Letter 795, note 4. Purposely, or in a premeditated way. The Birmingham solicitor, James Richardson Holliday (1840–1927) was an avid collector, particularly of the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, and oversaw the commission of the University of Birmingham mace. As a committee member of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, he organised the fundraising necessary to acquire CFM’s collection of drawings by DGR and EBJ in 1903. His own significant bequest included stained glass designs by WM. 6 See Vol. II, Letter 460, note 7.

803 • To George Washington Jack, 22 January 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 22 January 1902 My dear Jack I was beseeched from the art-active folk in Birmingham to make a design for a Mace to the new University of that place, and not liking to refuse the worthies of that place, I – after strict stipulations, made the said design, which – and rather unexpectedly, has been accepted; and being adjured to at once make the working drawing for its carrying out, I find that done for Mrs Gilmore[‘s] chapel cross would be a considerable help; for, as (one of the ‘stipulations’ being that Catterson Smith should superintend – and possibly do some of the nicer work himself) if I had a reminder of the difficulty in parts of the cross, which he did so well, I should better know what silversmiths’ work could be smithied with success in the Mace.1 I understand from Winmill that you had the working drawing of the cross, for I was not sure which of the 3 brigands (sic) laid hands on it at the dissolution of Gray’s Inn.2 If you have said drawing, will you kindly lend it me for the occasion, and I will faithfully return it – not being desirous of it as a personal possession. Also, write a few words with it and tell me as much about your ways, manners, and goings on as you can persuade yourself to face – all you can say of that old friend will interest me much. With kind remembrance to the good-wife and the 2 little folk. | I am (& still in good health & very busy) | Yours truly | Philip Webb.

250

1899–1902

When the days are longer, and the place here begins to spring again into green life, I shall look for another gossip with G.J. V&A, AAD

1 See Vol. II, Letter 569. 2 See above, Letter 731, note 1.

804 • To Sydney Cockerell, 23 January 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 23 January 1902 What can helpless me to do in your plastic hands? Possibly be more cautious in future, in exposing my nakedness to your ingenious manipulation; but I don’t like caution with close friends. Surely you should have at least kept the cheque, (duly recd) and I shd have been sure for 12 months that you had the necessary dividend interest.1 Now, I may yet marry, or run a mock [sic], or martial law be proclaimed, and the pro Boers’ goods be swept into the ‘dirty-Joe’ till. Who knows? no one knows! When I next tea(se) you here, you must explain the whole financial leger de main,2 and stop my whimpering. Never the less, take my laggard thanks for good, though – to me still – unintelligible offices. Not wanting to weary you with long letter of my queer diction, I inclose Holliday’s last, where you will see that ‘time-time my Christian friend’ is the Bromagem cry. Have answered the letter in the affirmative, but expressed doubt as to said ‘time’. Jack has lent me the working drawing of the Clapham Cross, so that I shall not have to tax the threadbare memory.3 Jack and Weir were here yesterday afternoon & stopped all letter writing. They were well and happy – Jack unusually so. Mrs Dickinson has not yet improved in health, and Mrs Flower with Ph. W. are examining what to do to help it back – health to wit. Can your firm, without too much inconvenience, photograph my small mace drawing for me? as I shall have to send the original to Bee town4 as a general guide, & shd have something to refer to on this side of that grinding mill.* Also, please return Holliday’s letter, at your leisure when you find it. Thank you kindly for the Hornby proof. Yours & Walker’s truly | Philip Webb. * But, the firm must charge me for this: of course I can clap that on the Bromagem bill!5 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/78

251

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 ‘I am sorry that I did not make the position quite clear. The Bank held the £200 Exchequer Bonds because that was the safest place for them. The fact that they now stand in your name instead of in mine on their books does not affect me in the least, since you will hand them back to me safe & sound when your Consols recover. The only thing is this. Attached to the Bonds are Interest Coupons payable on given periodical dates. The Bank collects the money represented by these Coupons, and while the Bonds stand in your name the interest will be paid into your account instead of into mine. . . . These small sums you can pay me back once a year – but not now before you have received them. I send back the cheque, and if I have not made it quite clear, I will do so next time we meet.’ SCC to PSW, 20 January 1902, BL Add 52761, ff. 7–8. 2 Sleight of hand (Fr). 3 See previous letter. 4 Birmingham. 5 ‘Of course we shall be pleased to photograph the mace drawing, and to charge the proper price. Holliday was here yesterday, very pleased with you, & with the way things were going.’ SCC to PSW, 24 January 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 9.

805 • To George Washington Jack, 10 February 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 10th Feby for 11th post 1902 My dear Jack Your most welcome letter represents what I intended writing to you, almost in the words; of how two friends coming on the third stops cross examination of either. I wanted to know about the Arisaig house that “Jack” is about to build.1 It seems that you have not wasted time, by having got in a tender for the work, and that accepted by your clients. I presume you will try to have a Scotch Clerk of the works, as I found a clear dislike in the N. countrymen to having an English one to knuckle under to. Also, he won’t have to say he understands what the workmen say, when he does not. As for honesty, I suspect you are as likely to get the Scotch one as trusty as an English – which does not say much – in these days of frank business dishonesty. ’Tis a pity that Weir is otherwise engaged – as far as you are concerned, but not for the S.P.A.B: for what the Society wd do without him, none can say. I dread his becoming ‘eminent’, and in the confidence of titled ladies! I recognise some of the S[co]t[c]h-building terms: are you going to “stoothe” the walls?2 Also, I hope you will be able to use the Balla[c]hulish slates;3 and if so, they should be laid on roof boarding, and have tenter hooks thus [sketch] to keep the gales from lifting them, and the more so that your roofs are not, so I fancy, as steep in pitch as at the big house.* *Mem: Do not fail to keep notes of all extras and omissions, as the work goes on, for that often save[d] me from grief. You must send me a bit-plan of the room for which my hint as to a fireplace is wanted, and I will make you some kind of a scratch of the principle on which the

252

1899–1902

one here is formed. If the clients are going to burn wood in it, the flue should not be less than 18” x 18”, as the smoke is much lighter than that from coal. Yes, the work shed is in use, and very helpful; too small for my ambition in that way, for it will be chokefull shortly: otherwise, it is just the thing, and the admiration of competent judges. You can understand with what delight I have dished Weir out of his ‘stock lock’! Mind, with your clients, that you may use me as your “Jorkins”, if the name is found to be potent in ‘laying’ the devil in them – but they are both good natured – even as clients. I do not think the contract sum is high – taking account of the terrace wall, carriage drive, water reservoir & pipes, (300 yards!) &c. Heaven help you to get the wall facing in your way: it must be ‘fortiter in re’,4 however pleasantly you may wrap it up. When you are good-natured enough to write to me again, say how you finished up Tangley with the Southampton builder, and if Mr Flower was pleasant with you and satisfied with what you had done for him: you may have told me, and it may have been forgotten.5 I heartily wish you a real success in the Western highlands, and I am sure both your clients are lucky in having got so capable an adviser, as well as designer, for their need. What a relief it must be to you to have no ‘governor’ to “Clyde Gull” it with you over drains, &c.6 I often smile at the thought of you gnashing your teeth when the old gentleman’s back was turned, and wishing him “in Jonahges belly”.7 Never mind, I feel that we jogged on together for so many years in a really kindly way together – not unhelpful to both of us; so honestly says Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 784, note 9. 2 To provide a framework to which lath and plaster is fixed, or the act of covering a wall with lath and plaster (dialect). 3 Ballachulish encompasses two slate quarry villages, East and West Laroch, in Lochaber. Historically, slate from the East Laroch quarry provided roofing for many houses in Edinburgh and Glasgow. From July 1902, a workers’ lockout ceased production for more than a year. 4 ‘Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re’: gently in manner, firmly in action (Lat). The phrase is assigned to the Italian Jesuit priest, Claudio Acquaviva (1543–1615), and appears in Industriae ad Curandos Animae Morbos (1601). 5 GWJ added a music room and bedrooms to Great Tangley Manor in 1901–2. See Gaimster, p. 47. 6 An allusion to GWJ’s fascination with and fondness for seagulls: see above, Letter 723, note 3. 7 ‘ “And I wish it was in Jonadge’s belly, I do,” cried Mrs. Gamp; appearing to confuse the prophet with the whale in this miraculous aspiration.’ Martin Chuzzlewit (ch 40). Later, he borrows Mrs Gamp’s coinage to suggest the chaos of London (see below, Letter 836, note 5).

253

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

806 • To William Hale White, 21 February 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 21 February 1902 My dear Hale White. I do not know how yew timber would serve for making furniture.1 I once had to give in and cut down 2 second or third rate yews on a site for [a] house, and the timber was saved to make furniture – some 15 or 20 years ago; doubtless the wood now must be in a fit state to use, but have never heard if it has been so used. It is exceedingly hard, and would therefore be costly to work: also, I think the difference in colour of the grain would make its appearance harsh in furniture, a thing I particularly dislike in furniture. In any case the designing for its use should be made accordingly – a truism, as all materials should settle the fitting design for their use, & more so in the case of strong, self-asserting colour. I have heard a rumour of a proposed flitting from Crowborough to the neighbourhood of Rugby – is that likely to be your necessity? The cold here, (and this cottage is a cold one in winter) has done me no harm, and I have done without a fire in my bedroom. Last winter I had one, because the house had been uninhabited for a long time, and considerable repairing had been done. True, anything like sufficient rain has not fallen for some 2 or 3 years, and even my deep well has had to serve my neighbours, as well as its own people, for a couple of months or so, and only quite now has a little more water come into it; and the last three mornings the drawing it by windlass has been easier; it was tiresome before to get the buckets filled full, when they hit the bottom. “In Skipton in Craven there is ne’er a haven” – (Walter Scott, of an old saying)2 – and I know it and its neighbouring Bolton Abbey on the Wharfe, but not the 3 other places you name.3 Doubtless the Whitaker book would be of great interest.4 I fancy the anti-monkish time gave rise to much and unjust ridicule on the grossness of the monastic system, (which we know in many cases was true in the way of corruption) but the hospitality of those great houses was enormous, and lords with large retinue availed themselves of it to the pitch of eating up these boons of harbourage in sparsely inhabited countrysides; and “8,000” bottles would not – for the greater part – get into the bellies of the monks.5 A great – well managed house, in the 13th cent: must have been a fine sight, when religious enthusiasm was real, from the mighty church to the long vaulted wine & beer cellar. I daresay you know your “Fair maid of Perth” well; what admirable scene painting is that of the weak king and terrible Scotch Barrons [sic] in the Abbey there! Eckermann tells of Goethe ‘spotting’ that scene, of the arrival of the prince in the court yard.6 Now the ‘Fair Maid’ is not, to my mind, even a second best of W.Ss, but some of the scenes are as good as anything he wrote. These great Abbeys (& little too) must have been wonderful places. Thank you for sending that newspaper cutting; ’tis a good letter, but I doubt its touching the minds of the stupidly obstinate.7 254

1899–1902

’Tis doubtful if you shew more than a year’s greater youthfulness than myself, for I take note of being very really an old man.8 I enclose the little woodcut proof.9 Did I tell you before, that I’m now designing the working drawing of a MACE for the brand new university of Birmingham? my design (asked for) having been accepted, and Brummagem-Joe will walk behind the accomplished thing, as the ‘brand new’ Chancellor: an odd conjunction of ‘designers’, is it not? Kindly love to Mary, and may she live to at least the age of 72. | Yours truly Philip Webb. P.S. I see this is a terrible scribble of a letter, & beg pardon for it. BCL MR 10/22

1 ‘Can you tell me if yew will make good furniture? A man near this house is cutting down a big yew tree, and if the wood is fit for chairs and tables I could get a plank or two from him. It is a scarce sort of timber, and I have never seen any of it made up.’ WHW to PSW, 19 February 1902, LTF, p. 315. For PSW and yew, see also Vol. IV, Letter 1051, note 2. 2 The North Yorkshire market town of Skipton is also known as Skipton-in-Craven. The Scott reference not traced. 3 For Bolton Abbey, see Vol. II, Letter 324, note 2. 4 ‘I bought a little while ago Whitaker’s History of the Craven Hundred, one of those books which used many years ago to be written but are not written now, the work of a man who gave his whole life to the study of the records of that part of the country in which he lived.’ LTF, p. 315. WHW’s reference is to Thomas Dunham Whitaker, The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in the County of York (London, 1805). 5 ‘In the abbey bills there are charges for a year’s supply of wine – 8,000 bottles.’ LTF, p. 316. 6 Goethe’s high estimation of Scott, and of The Fair Maid of Perth (1828) in particular, is recounted by John Peter Eckermann in Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, 2 vols (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1850), translated by John Oxenford, II, pp. 73–5 and 81–3. 7 WHW had sent him HTT’s letter to The Times of 14 February 1902, a SPAB protest against the proposed ‘mutilation’ of the bells at Exeter Cathedral. 8 ‘Three score years and ten was I the month before last! You are really ten years younger. Perhaps I might have been as young as you if I could have designed and built beautiful houses.’ LTF, p. 317. 9 A copy of the printer’s mark for St John Hornby.

807 • To George Washington Jack, 4 March 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 4th for 5th March 1902 My dear Jack Your interesting letter about a place I know so well wd have been acknowledged, and the questionable part answered before; but my time has been wholly occupied, & partly by taking up other delayed writing, and the very taxing piece of ‘Mace’work detailing. As to the stonework; I had infinite trouble at Arisaig at first, and 255

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

afterwards little at all. There is, I see, nothing for it but to try every place where stone has been got before. In my dealings I pointed out on the road & other side wallings, sheep fences &c, the kind of stone to be searched for, and it was found, though not all in one place. Indeed, I had to be persistent, and the people at last found it wd be better to set about it and give me my way: afterwards they were proud of the work, & on Sundays brought their friends to look at it. Your plan of the room for the fireplace is quite clear, but I see you write “stove” on the fire opening. This means – I suppose, they are not going to burn wood, though peat they might, on a hearth f.p. So, they (the clients) must make up their minds that the f.p arrangement cannot be light [sic] the Caxtons one. People cannot be brought to understand, that if you alter the conditions of one or two things you cannot have the same result. I have concluded, that to get any kind of recessed effect in Miss A’s room, it would be easiest done by carrying a beam – say 6’2” fm floor to its underside – right across the room [sketch] from the cant at (a), and ceil1 this recess at level of underside of beam. This will give a low & broad look to the recess, and allow of a 7’0” wide divisional space for the f.p to stand back in, with a segmental (on plan) hood over the actual opening, & by putting posts at p-p, & filling in between s-s, with wood. If you cannot get a lower window on the right of the f.p (which would be best) you could omit the ceiling there, but still carry the beam & its load across the whole room. You could even, if the ladies were adverse to a low window, put a square trellised opening – square, over the beam; the top of this being level with the head of the window. Should you agree with this suggestion, I will make a little scratch of it, but you d w hardly need it, as you would do the thing better than the retired non-‘eminent’! If they should burn peat, the flue here should be 18” square, as the smoke is much lighter than from coal, and wants more room, unless you quicken the draught with a small f.p. If wood is not to be burned, the f.p opening should – I believe – not be more than 3’3” or 3’6”, and not higher from the hearth, than my usual hearth f.ps. Tell me your wishes, old man, and I will do anything I can to forward your work: but I am so pleased with your carrying out the awkward task of designing the house, that my appreciation of your work is – I assure you, at a high level – and, if you will only be as obstinate with your clients as I was with you, you will surely succeed. You have only to think of ‘fish guts & gulls’!2 What are you going to do abt Clerk of works, to whom you may write decided orders? I await further notes on these points from you, and am | Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Kind remembrance to the Missis & the 2 impertinents. V&A, AAD

1 Hide or cover (archaic). 2 GWJ’s Clyde seagulls again. See above, Letter 805, note 6.

256

1899–1902

808 • To George Washington Jack, 10 March 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 10th for 11th March post 1902 My dear Jack Your letter of the 8th, recd here mid-day today, explains clearly your main point; namely, that you are handicapped with Hygiene & Margaret Shaen in excelsis! but you did not answer my details. Is the fireplace to burn wood[,] peat or coal? A coal-fire must be kept within an opening not exceeding my usual ones – of which you probably have the dimensions. If of wood or peat the opening may be wider: but you give me a settled dimension in width, of 4’9”, and that is too wide even for wood! If it is supposed to put some kind of f.p. within this dimension, that is another thing; but whose affair is it of the canted “big stones”? I am heartily glad you have got through the Tangley & Flower business so easily, for I consider it so, knowing something of his ways & his manners – which, in the stammering manner of Charles Lamb, are ‘pe-pe-pe–culiar’. I am also more easy that you did the work to the pleasant old place, than any of their ‘eminencies’. Did Weir tell you of the Devilry played by the son of the late ‘eminent’ Blomfield, to the great dismay of the unlucky parson of some church?1 Your carving school efforts are really cheering to my not particularly optimistic way of reading the signs of the time.2 Awaiting your answer | I am yours truly | Philip Webb. I feel keenly your real distress at being bundled out of your familiar cottage.3 V&A, AAD

1 The architect Sir Arthur Blomfield (see Vol. II, Letter 517, note 3) had two sons from his first marriage – Charles James Blomfield (1862–1932) and Arthur Conran Blomfield (1863–1935) – both of whom became partners in their father’s architectural practice in 1890. 2 GWJ continued to teach carving at the Royal College of Art, in South Kensington. 3 In March, GWJ moved with his family to 24 Station Road, Church End, Finchley.

809 • To Sydney Cockerell, 29 March 1902 Year added by SCC 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 29th March for the post as it goes. My dear Cockerell You have me as closely under your benevolent thumb as any Usurer under his unbenevolent squeeze. Practically I have to stand and be shot at by your repeated discharges of thoughtful kindness. Certainly I could escape from the tyranny by 257

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

cutting my throat 6 times with the knives, but will disappoint you by not doing so – and they just suit Caxtons, Mrs D saying, “they will look nice for visitors.” For the pretty necklace to Alice1 there was this likeness: suppose I had played rather fast and loose at a ball with my lady till she was hurt, and in the morning gave her one of diamonds to make the thing up – she would forget, and look so happy with her satisfied eyes as if nothing had been amiss. That was the look of Alice when she put the thing on her neck, and I told her the shells were cowries: she wanted to know what the threading strings were made of, and I said, ‘some kind of Eastern grass.’ She will be in a pucker when writing her thanks. Mrs D. said that A. always liked Mr C. best – and Mr B. mewed assent.2 In my hurry, (for I’m in all that) I could only send you a p. card for the ‘Lewis’ address, and the Ruskin book – other benevolences.3 I wrote a sympathetic letter to L. and have had an answer none too assuring as to the transformation scene in Bentley’s big Ch’. Of course, with any one less than Lethaby at work on the marble & mosaic decoration, the whole must plump down from really interesting to the injuriously stupid. Proctor – who was here yester-afternoon – said, that the feather bed (not head) Garner was to be director in chief – “Lord, what fools these mortals be”.4 Proctor looked ill, and allowed he was not well. In his double million glass lantern spectacles he was good company at talk, and letting the fire go out by default. He brought me his translation of the small saga of the “Weapon Firthers”, which I suppose you have seen.5 His linguisticages is miraculous. I told him the one thing wh’ was grievous in my life was its ignorance, and quoted Walter Scott, that polite letters sat gracefully on any man;6 and that I’d worn out a dictionary in finding decent alternatives to newspaper Classicised English. To equal this politeness, he countered with, his longing was to be able to draw: and so we mutually improved the time and ourselves till I saw him off in the train, and comed [sic] up here by the green lane back way which brought me round again. Lethaby & his Mrs I expect on Wed: or Thursday. He sent me a letter (“prodigious”) and his “Morris as Workmaster” – which Holliday also had sent,7 so that I have one to wash the other if one be lost in the lending. The first half is – of course – a brief outline of the life, but the last on the “philosophy” of the relation of art, &c, is excellent, in Ls own penetrating way. At present, all has been excellent which has come from that pen. I suppose it comes from the two bumps on the forehead? The Mace sits upon me. There was nothing for it but to continue plodding at it regardless of the grass weed in my garden and neglected other engagements. Hope you and your double will not find Kelmscott two too dull for you to spend a night or two there?8 Yours thankfully, | Philip Webb. I’ve really improved the mace, but it can’t be done by the ticket of leave degree time; i.e. the making. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/83

258

1899–1902 1 Margaret Dickinson’s daughter. 2 ‘The beads are threaded on leather, & not on grass, & the leather, though it looks so strong has a tendency to break or come undone on rather small provocation.’ SCC to PSW, 9 April 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/84. PSW enclosed notes of thanks from Alice and Margaret Dickinson. 3 ‘I have ordered your copy of Unto this Last, & have not forgotten that you want the address of Mr Lewis.’ SCC to PSW, 18 March 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 10. ‘Mr Lewis’ was probably the architect turned organ builder, Thomas Christopher Lewis (1833–1915), for whom his close friend John Francis Bentley had designed more than 40 organ cases. Bentley had died on 2 March. 4 The Gothic revivalist architect, Thomas Garner (1839–1906) studied (with John Micklethwaite) under Scott, before becoming the partner of George Frederick Bodley. It is said that Bentley had hoped Garner might succeed him at Westminster Cathedral, ‘for he is a genius’, but he had hoped this for PSW too. 5 Robert Proctor’s admiration for WM extended to his translations of the great Icelandic sagas, and in 1902 he privately published A Tale of the Weapon Firthers as a wedding gift for a friend. 6 He may have had in mind a passage from Guy Mannering (1815). ‘“You are probably at a loss to guess, Mr. Sampson,” said Mannering, “what a stranger may have to say to you?” “Unless it were to request that I would undertake to train up some youth in polite letters and humane learning; but I cannot – I cannot; I have yet a task to perform”.’ (ch 14). 7 WRL, ‘Morris as Work-Master’. A Lecture (London: John Hogg [1902]). The lecture was originally delivered in 1901 at the Birmingham Municipal School of Art, hence the connection with Holliday. 8 SCC and EW were guests at Kelmscott Manor from 27–30 March.

810 • To Jane Morris, 29 March 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 29 March. ’02 | To be posted when it may. My dear Janey. Your letter of the 26th was kindly, as always, but this last rests softly on my mind, truly pleasant in our ancient friendship. I had a note from Sydney Cockerell this morning telling of his & Walker’s going to Kelmscott, which led me to hope they would not be obliged to quit the pretty place hurriedly, and the more so that here the rain answers to the prayer of the ducks, while we had 2 days of lovely springstirring weather in front of this downpour. My having let you alone so persistently was not out of intention, but from stress of overdoneness, from clamouring calls on my time here: none so busy as the ‘retired’ professional. Folks who did not believe in my ability when some little was at hand, now depend on my experience, and ask questions of it easily, which are not so lightly answered, but give me time and I will tax my age-enfeebled mind with pleasure. Jenny’s last letter was particularly bright – and, as always, lovingly kind: so that your note of well doing at Kelmscott was no surprise, but it gladdened me.1 So that, given the gentler side of spring, after this moon’s racket, I hope to learn of your laying hold of its joyousness. It already stirs me as if I were 20 years younger.

259

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

My artistic vanity has led me to fall into the trap of persuasion, and design a MACE for the brand new University of Birmingham, which gives me infinite trouble in the doing, and my garden is suffering accordingly. Happily the many pretty flowers are thrusting through the grass weeds undismayed by my neglect, on which I make note of comfort, that more flowers in a garden suffer from too much attention to them than too little; but this – like other excuses – shd not be carried too far. This morning came the expected letter from Bowley and Son, copied almost word for word from theirs to you. I must carefully consider my answer, for I believe them to be shifty; knowing as I do that the lowering of prices cannot possibly account for the change in their tune. Perhaps their architect is dead? If so, he will not be missed more than the Georgian “Fred”,2 except perhaps by Bowley. (this is not a “nonsense verse”!) Our friend Jack has a “twister” in the way of building – namely, a house for Miss Astley & Miss Shaen combined, and he has just started it at Arisaig, where I sometime defaced the rocky surface there: that was before I was born, for such wits as I may now have came late. Still, if anything can be made of the Bowleys, I’ve now no doubt he wd take up the matter again helpfully. I will let you know what happens. I’m looking towards seeing you here again, and Mrs Dickinson is putting up prayers that she may not be away when you come. As to my getting away from this counter, to which I’m as much nailed as a bad halfpenny to its counter, remains to be seen, for it cannot even be guessed. I’m already glooming with the thought of having to get someone to step into her shoes when the holiday comes round, in July I think. Last year I was lucky with a body both tidy by nature & Tidy by name,3 but she has now got into a “big How” (as Howell used to say)4 and has 3 if not 4 hot ‘meat’ meals in the day, so I’m told, and – is not as well as she was! Heaven protect her intestines. Where an honest nimble wench may come from I do not yet know. My brother and sister ask for Winchester, but my noddle is shaken at that too: being as bad to hoist as the Dutch. The preternatural hoister, you will have seen, is dead in S. Africa, with his backbone overstrained from the hoisting.5 If Guy Fawkes would spring up again and use some of the Chamberlain “Cordite” to blow up the Houses of Parliament, I – for one, if not more, would not turn ‘King’s Evidence’. To God, my good friend, and thank you for your unfailing kindness to Yours always truly. | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, f. 12

1 However, whilst SCC and EW were at Kelmscott, ‘Jenny had two slight attacks, the first that either of us has seen’. CD, 28 March 1902. 2 Allusion not traced.

260

1899–1902 3 See above, Letter 774. 4 ‘A big house’: presumably the saying was Charles Augustus Howell’s, and perhaps some kind of play on his name. 5 Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902), the British-born former Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and committed supporter of British Imperialism, had died of heart failure on 26 March.

811 • To George Washington Jack, 3 April 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 3 April. 1902 My dear Jack (why don’t you use ‘My dear Webb’?) Inclosed is a scratch made up of such materials of manner as made up from that of Caxtons, with the chief thing things [sic] necessarily omitted! I thought the 2 women clients wd most likely have seen (noted) more of the actual fire place than anything else here, and therefore emphasised that part. If you care to follow the suggestions, doubtless it is make-outable; but in any case you will make yours in your way – mine merely represents facts, and considerations of smoke venting inside & preventions outside. I fancy that 18” x 14” would serve for the flue. Mind you slope back at x – mine (Caxtons) is the reverse there, and is I am sure mischievous: For the draught always draws from front to back of hearth, and then goes up the back – consequently . . . you will understand. I’ve got the arch (given the central height of 2’/11”) to look as wide as possible, and egg-shaped so as to keep the haunches as low as may be, at H. I do not know what materials you will have to use, but have supposed brick and covered with hard stucco. Do not hamper yourself with these suggestions of mine. Beale of Standen wanted me to undertake some alterations to bedrooms &c, to suit reduction of family by 2 marriages. This I could not undertake, as it is a Medes & Persians resolution,1 but I strongly recommended you as the man, & gave him your address; but, I fancy it may be after your removal, so I’m sending him the new today. If he should wish you to do the things he wants I would strongly advise you to do them, as he is influential, and good natured.2 Do not know the Bala[c]hulish granite you mention, but if you know the colour to be decent, and the builders know how to work it, I should use it. Have been and still am overdone with things to do, hence the delay in this. All good luck and cheerfulness attend you is the wish of Yours truly | Philip Webb. LB-2 loose insertion

1 ‘Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed.’ Daniel, 6:15. PSW’s meaning is that his decision to retire is irreversible. 2 GWJ undertook these modifications to Standen in 1902.

261

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

812 • To Joseph Bowley and Son, 7 April 1902 Copy; pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 7 April. 1902 Copy To/ Messrs Joseph Bowley & Son. Sirs. In answer to your letter of 27 March. Mrs William Morris had already written me that I might expect to hear from you in the matter of her proposed cottages for Kelmscott.1 I am fairly puzzled as to an answer to give you, as I had led Mrs Morris to understand that I could in no way advise her to accept the estimate you had given me – even if she had been willing to do so; therefore she reluctantly gave up the thought of building under such circumstances. Even now, I fail to see that the comparatively small drop in prices of labour and materials would allow you to make sufficient difference in a fresh estimate, if it was made in the way of the former, and I am disinclined to put Mr Jack to the inconvenience, and loss of time in again entering on fresh explanations for reasonable estimating. He has done several works since then, and has found no difficulty in obtaining intelligible estimates from builders in various parts of the country, and in getting the works carried out in a business-like and satisfactory way. Therefore, before I could ask him to enter on this cottage matter once more, for he is busy, I think it would be better for you to send me a preliminary memorandum towards further negociation, stating the per-centage you would offer to take off the total of your former impossible amount. This would guard him against waste of time in a doubtful reentering on a more reliable form of procedure. I will write to Mrs Morris to say that I have sent you this suggestion.2 I am, Sirs | Yours truly | Ph. W. BL Add 45343, f. 14

1 See above, Letter 810. 2 ‘I have puzzled out an answer to Bowley’s appeal for supplying a fresh estimate for the cottages, and inclosed is a copy of my letter to them, which you can keep. It seemed to me hopeless to enter on the thing without some guide as to what Bowley meant by the proposed reduction, and if he does not “quote” some amount to real purpose, I shall know what to expect from him, and guard you and Jack from a useless effort to meet his view of reasonableness. I will let you know of the answer I may get from him.’ PSW to JM, 7 April 1902, BL Add 45343, f. 13.

262

1899–1902

813 • To Emery Walker, 14 April 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 14 April 1902 My dear fellows. [sic] I send you today the 2 Mace drawings in separate parcels, registered, and I hope you will be as pleased to see them come, as I do their going. You kindly promised to photograph them for me – & as near their exact size as you conveniently can – and – this is important, charge me with your fee – wh’ is as near to poetry as I can go. The infant partner is, I fancy, not returned from the celestial city of Paris, which is the heaven of all real French people.1 If they lived as long as Methuselah, they would not want to go to the other one – as they do not understand its ways. When photographed, perhaps you had better send the original scale design and the large detailed drawing to Holliday direct – registered (to 20£ value, as I would not care to do it again for that sum.) By the way – I tried to get out of Lethaby when he was here, what I might honestly charge for this Mace design, but he was ‘mum’, perhaps because he did not understand the objective. You probably do, therefore what say you on the point from your experience? Cockerell has larger views of my work than they will can ‘honestly’ claim. Also, will you send your photographs direct to me, as I shall want them to answer Catterson Smith’s catechism. Hope he won’t be shy of the work. I write direct to him about it. I wrote to Holliday saying I would send the drawings to you today. Hope you are all right, my friend, and that the home folk are doing pretty well. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/85

1 SCC spent three days in Rouen and Paris, studying manuscripts, returning on the overnight crossing from Dieppe on 15–16 April.

814 • To Sydney Cockerell, 16 April 1902 Year added by SCC 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 16 for 17 Ap: post. My dear Cockerell.

263

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I had your letter of the 9th, giving warning like the stair-clock,1 and your picture card of the 14th saying you were on the strike.2 Truly a pleasant round for a good digestion: Coniston ‘old man’ uplifting you3 – and, if anything “is to be said for French architecture”, surely you will say it, and I shall not gain-say. Rouen is R. still, though with a difference since I set eyes on it in 1858. The crocket central spire was not then on, but Nap: the little was the extinguisher of France at that time.4 I don’t wonder at your Ruskinian reflections; the man had something godlike in him, and even the Greek gods played tricks with lesser humanity. Rs lesser facets did but prove the rule of the gem.5 Mrs Dickinson and Alice liked your mention. I advised getting some long tailed Arab horse hair to add to the thread strength of the necklace; so – if you see one with a ‘rat tail’ in July you will know your necessary warning has been noted.6 I heard from Walker this morning in acknowledgment of the arrival in C.I of the ‘Mace’. I made it rather more spicy than when you saw the ‘thing’, and burnished my work without rubbing off the gilt. I wrote Holliday reasons for the seeming long delay, and gave no hope of Catn Smith washing his hands of it for long after June. Of course the trying to make it a decent ‘thing’ at all cost of time – either here, or there – was the common sense in art matters of this trembling time – when risky boldness is fatal. I tried Lethaby on my possible charge, but he was silent as the sphinx, and now I’ve tried Walker before finally trying myself. The staff of the mace will not go from here to Holliday till after I get the photo’s from Clifford’s Inn; for I’m simplifying that as much as possible. If one never loses hold of the original design as a whole, and the bettermenting is reasonable, things of such kind get to be really more finished in look, and wear longer to the eye. The Cuckoos have sung as if they were telling the hours in a Swiss clock, and to prove they were not plough boys at it the game, one flitted on the wing across the park on Sunday under eye, and sang at the end of his flight. It has been said the nightingale was heard in his chief haunt here; and as tomorrow – if it be as warm as to-day, a martin may prove the rule of the 17th April for cheering mankind.7 Thanking you kindly for well remembered good offices. | Yours truly | Philip Webb. I’m all alone here at 8.35. p.m, the house folk having gone to a well beloved missioner at 3 bridges, who holds a candle there for a month I think.8 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/86

1 ‘I hope he [EW] has your mace drawings in his hands for photographing. Catterson-Smith wrote the other day in some anxiety about them, & full of zeal & eagerness to be at work. He is determined to make something worthy of Caxtons & its master.’ SCC to PSW, 9 April 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/84. 2 SCC was in France. 3 SCC annotation: ‘I stayed at Brantwood for a few days and wrote to Webb on Ruskin’s study table.’ He was a week (4–11 April) in Coniston as a guest of Joan Severn, and spent the time ‘finding and

264

1899–1902

4 5

6 7 8

identifying’ JR’s manuscripts and other papers. ‘Looked into some of JR’s diaries & found a nice little reference to my being with him at Beauvais in 1888.’ CD, 10 April 1902. For Napoleon III, see Vol. II, Letter 350, note 3. ‘He was a great man was J.R. I made no mistake in my youthful worship of him – & yet what a queer mixture of short & long-sightedness! So far beyond his fellows, & in some things so far short of them – an astonishing compound & what tragedies he had to contend with! I have been looking over a heap of his letters to his mother, aged 80–90, to whom he wrote every day when he was away from her, & from whom he got a daily answer. Such careful, fresh & tender letters – written slowly so that she might read every word without an effort – telling her of everything that he was doing – sending melons from Abbeville, offering to come home from there for her birthday &c &c &c.’ SCC to PSW, 9 April 1902. See above, Letter 809, note 2. For the significance of this date, see also Vol. IV, Letter 867. Margaret Dickinson regularly attended ‘chapel’ in Three Bridges, rather than the Anglican parish church in Worth.

815 • To George Washington Jack, 28 April 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 28 April 1902. My dear Jack. I do not know whether you have been again to Arisaig, or, if so whether you have returned or not. Messrs Joseph Bowley & Son of Lechlade wrote to me in London, & finding I had left, applied to Mrs Morris for my present address, which she gave. They then wrote to me, and as I felt shy of them, I answered their application to see the drawings of the proposed cottages & Spec[ificatio]n in order to make a fresh estimate, as prices of labour & materials had gone down – that I was doubtful – from my former experience of their estimating of its being of any use. They applied to me again, and my second answer was, that they had better tell me what percentage on their former estimate they were willing to offer – as a preliminary. This part of my letter they ignored, but applied as before again. I then wrote them an explanatory letter of the unsatisfactory way the former estimate had been made; of Mrs Morris’s vexation, of the trouble & cost she had been put to, &c; adding, that I had not written to you, being doubtful, under the circumstances, if you would care to risk re-entering on the business after your experience of their former way of estimating. I fancy, from their urgency, they really wish to have the work to do – probably from shortness of work in their district, and that they may have found out that their former extravagant estimating had got abroad, & was doing them an injury. You, I believe, have the drawings, photo: reproductions, &c, and the amount of their estimate? Do you feel inclined to send them what they ask for in the inclosed letter, which I received this morning?

265

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I think Mrs Morris – though doubting them, would really be glad if they could be brought to terms – as she much wants to have the cottages built. If you should agree to enter on this business again, and send them what they ask for, I think you should write a direct but rather dry letter, and inform them, that in making a fresh estimate andy reductions made from the drawings & Specification at the former estimating, must be put on one side, and the new estimate to be made in exact accordance with the drawings & Specn. Will you, when you answer this letter return that of Bow the Bowleys’, keeping a copy of it for yourself. Yours truly | Philip Webb. If you went to Arisaig, I hope you found things going fairly smoothly. Please excuse this hasty letter – have been busy all day, & have to save the post. V&A, AAD

816 • To Jane Morris, 9 May 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 9 May 1902. Dear Mother (sic) Having had a few words from May, anent Aunt Henrietta and her Much Hadham crib,1 in which your second daughter said she was off to “Brum” (what slang the chit uses!) and she wd return by Kelmscote, I write you a word too – so that no affectionate jealousy should uprise. You see! I’ve had more petitioning from Bowley, so at last I wrote to Jack to learn if he would risk another turn with the Jockey. When telling me, that he had sent the plans specification to Bowley, he asked to come and see me, and was here on Saturday last. He doubts if this wriggling builder would come to our terms, but thought it worth the trial – as I did. Jack has had more unhelped experience in Scotland since he departed from the Gray’s Inn rule, and had difficulties about stone, &c, there – which he seems to have overcome – and therefore will be better able to be upsides with Bowley. I have thought of £850, with £900 up my sleeve as an ultimatum; (the lovely word!) what say you? Your answer to this would guide me with Jack when he gets Bowley’s new estimate. And now “Mother Ida – dear Mother Ida” how does your garden grow;2 and how have you managed to pull through these spring winds, N: E: E by N: N. NE and vice versâ? I have good show of blossom on some fruit trees which had little on last year, and some even on those that fruited well then, and am hoping that the present promise being rather backward and only a few blossoms open, – now that the barometer has begun to go down, we may have warm – instead of icedshowers, and the orchard here will be a consoling picture. 266

1899–1902

That blessed University Mace for “Brum” has taken up so much of my time, that both garden-patches and orchard ground have had to await of more leisure for attention. I am ‘trenching’ some ground in the latter, which has not been turned for years, and O, my wonder, as I turn up the iniquitous ‘wire worm’, and O, the doubly diligent Caxtons Robbins, [sic] who exclaim in their trebles – ‘O, jolly, be joyful’ as they accompany the labour of the Old Adam and his spade: so credulous is the male bird, that he hops in and about my legs while at work, and has eyed his victims from the “coign of vantage” of – my shoe tip, to wit.3 Then he flees to the bracken stack in the rickyard to the nest, and back again, 50, & how many more times a day? I peered into the nest today, and saw yellow bordered bills of Robbinettes there. This you see is my bucolic time, and I give you the tone of it – maugre your yawns. With kindly love to dear Jenny. I am your | agedly affected son of friendship | Philip Webb Now I write to May. All this flourish of pen means, that a morning’s work of fire wood cutting has been got through, without rain wetting my saw blades or damping the wood. BL Add 45343, f. 15

1 Henrietta Morris was to die two months later, following a fall. See below, Letter 829, note 2. 2 ‘O mother Ida, many-fountain’d Ida, / Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.’ Alfred Tennyson, Oenone (1829), 7–8. 3 See Vol. II, Letter 398, note 9.

817 • To William Weir, 27 May 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 27 May. 1902 My dear Weir Have been mighty busy, and to which add, that for the last week your coadjutor has had a sharp attack of diarrhoea. Up till now he had been free, since living here, of any ailment, and but this let down is now passing off, so that picking up has begun. Hence these tears as to delay in answering your two last letters. I begin with the last. Your report anent Treherne’s visit to you is satisfactory, for he has faith in your faithfulness. I will hunt for that Eg: Cymmin screen & beam work at West end, and send with this if it turns up quickly. (perhaps it may have been sent to Treherne?) – so much for Eg. C. North Stoke.1 Ah! – saved by “not having the roof stripped” – How often have I preached that to Ch-restorers, as a serious consideration? Mem: Always have 267

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

something in hand to turn on to during a wet day. I find my work shed here answers that purpose. 2 pieces of work are in hand there now awaiting the wet day – or days. Quite agree with your rule to give parson, squire, & people their wishes: but in a way that shall suit – not injure – the old building. I have therefore made out a new contour for the seat ends, and having done away with a part of the upright line of the front edge of seat end, have yet given leaning corner, and added a rest for the hand, which would help the old people to rise.2 You will agree with me, the chancel benches desks – which are really excellent in character – could not rightly – even if that way of doing was right – be suitable for imitating in any way? but they suggested to me a way of making the Nave seats sympathetic in feeling with them.3 I therefore inclose the S.P.A.B. version. Please tell the authorities, it is a very difficult thing indeed to do any new work in an ancient building which shall not be injurious to the effect of the old. Also, that adapting an old form for another office, always insults the dignity of the original. There is a hacknied [sic] quotation which has served before: ’tis like doing the play of Hamlet, and leaving out the chief character! If the authorities will leave the E. window as it is, well & good, otherwise it seems to me the S.P.A.B. suggestion would not insult the old work. You rejoice my soul that your pointing of walls, &c, is going as we would wish it, and I can but thank you for so remembering suggestions, as to ‘wetting’, to keep the mortar from drying too quickly. You never “bother” me with your questions; only, I can’t – from other work, which is always much on hand, quite keep pace with it at times; for you will be aware that other juniors (as well as seniors) ask me questions too. Perhaps you know the difference between putting a question, and giving a considered answer – eh?? Very glad you had a look at my old, and from its remains of sacred beauty, my much loved mother home. That was where our English (real) building got into my blood – so that Oxford, and the old buildings of the county, appeal to me so, but not only so; for doubtless you have noted, that most of the country churches have a singular and gracefully simple quality of pure mediæval kind. I keep your tracing of the Eg: Cymmin seat end inclosed in your letter of 18 April, as it may bring back things to mind if you should ask about those seats again. I note with pleasure in that (the first unanswered letter) letter [sic] your reasons given for trying how best to manage the N. Stoke walls, and on the whole agree with you, that even if the walls had formerly been plastered, it would be better not to attempt this, considering its difficulty, that of avoiding making so great a change in its present appearance. But, this too depends on your being able to keep the walls dryer without plastering? Of course S.P.A.B. must depend on your judgment as to where the old tiles (floor) would best be used to preserve them from much traffic, and yet not do away with their office as flooring. Could you not leave just the space of entry within the Chancel rails free of the old tiles. 268

1899–1902

The ‘tempera’ wall paintings are another thing,4 and I believe you should apply to Turner, of the Socy, as Professor Church – the chemist has advised S.P.A.B. in such matters,5 and I think something of his was tried at the old church in Guildford – when Powell (Alfred) mended the apse of S.E. chapel.6 Before doing more of removal of whitewash, perhaps you had better write to Turner.7 Am glad to learn you are satisfied with the concrete under flooring; flints are the best for such work, as they are non-absorbent, and lime has close affinity with the silica in flints. Brick – broken – is the best for vaulting or doming, on acct of its lightness. Now to try & find the Eg: Cymmin wood wk drawing. Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. Later on. Have found the drawing, and 3 or 4 tracings which may be of use to you. I still have tracing of what I intended for Chancel roof & panelling, but these I keep as yet as Treherne wants me to make more clear announcement of what is proposed for these, and for a kind of reredos at E. end in conjunction with the wood wall lining there. Excuse haste for posting. SPAB W-W 65

1 St Mary the Virgin, North Stoke, Oxfordshire. See above, Letter 778, note 2. 2 ‘I have had a specimen seat made, similar to the Eg Cymmin ones & got the committee to inspect it today. They liked it very much with the exception of the ends, which they thought might be kept the full width above seat, instead of opening cut away, as the old people find the corner comfortable to lean against. . . . I would be glad of your advice as to how best we can comply with their wishes.’ WW to PSW, 23 May 1902, SPAB. 3 ‘I think the amended seats will answer admirably, & am sure the Committee will be delighted by their appearance, as well as comfort, quite equal to an armchair. . . . The Joiner is a local man, & has succeeded in getting some well-seasoned oak, of English growth, & as his work is produced without machinery, I hope to get him to put a certain amount of character into them, such as leaving the tool marks to shew.’ WW to PSW, 29 May 1902, SPAB. 4 ‘The walls of Nave appear to be covered with paintings of contemporary date with building, viz 14th century, in one or two places the limewash has been scraped off very roughly & shews figure subjects in a fair state of preservation – unfortunately they have suffered in being uncovered.’ WW to PSW, 18 April 1902, SPAB. 5 Arthur Herbert Church, author of The Chemistry of Paints and Painting (1890). See Vol. II, Letter 417, note 3. 6 In 1898, Powell’s architectural practice established its office in Quarry Street, Guildford. He had drawn the attention of the SPAB to work being considered at the parish church of St Mary. ‘A young parson, Mr Johnston, called on me the other day at Canon Grant’s suggestion to solicit my help in varnishing the paintings in St John’s Chapel. I threw cold water on the whole idea, distrusting him in spite of 10 years’ experience &c &c which he quoted.’ Powell to HTT, 5 December 1899, SPAB, St Mary’s Church, Guildford file. Consultation followed as to how the mediaeval wall paintings might best be treated. 7 ‘Mr Turner sent me Professor Church’s notes on the treatment of wall paintings, which I find most useful. I am waiting until the plastering to roof is finished, before uncovering them. Have tried small portions here & there & find a great difference in the thickness and condition of limework. . . . The roof is of 16th centy date while the paintings are 14th. Texts in black letters of rather late date, have

269

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III also been painted on the limewash. The surface of old plaster is very hard & good, much finer in its finish than I have observed before.’ WW to PSW, 29 May 1902.

818 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 28 May 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 28 for 29 May. ’02 My dear fellows. Catterson Smith may have seen you on his return from here, and told you I was better.1 The stroke out of the blue into the brown was, luckily, without complication of any kind, though it lowered me many rungs on the ladder of bodily strength – but, am picking that up again nicely – done the first good muscular day’s work today, out o’ doors, and my first solid animal food – sole-fish to wit – today; so I’m picking up the broken string ends of the continuous (otherwise) excellent health given by the gods since setting foot down here. Cn S. was quite good company, and cheerfully anxious to be at the ‘bauble’. It did not occur to me in our busy talk to ask if he had the small design of it; and I’ve been disinclined to bother Holliday about it – but must, unless it does soon get to you to operate on. Am sorry that the able Erewhoner is in such unexpected collapse: and in today’s paper it seems that Tolstoi is in like case of joining an honest ‘majority’.2 Yes, I was glad on getting annual meeting card to see that W.R.L was to loosen a bit of his mind on Westr Abbey.3 If he is in honest malignant feather, he will be sure to give them “what for”. Wardle tells me he has been to see the photos at your conspiracy shop, and was double-diligently kind over what he looked at; and – as he knows what he talks about, (hardly says anything on other subjects) his pleasant word is the less blush compelling.4 Rumour has it that W.S.B & Lady Anne will be here tomorrow, but the weatherlooks at the barometer do not promise sunshine without shower. The colts are getting on, but the cold winds have been against them. Wardle is coming to see me – perhaps midway in next week, but I want softer winds for him. Adieu. Yours truly | Philip Webb. If it had not been for the two of you, the ‘bauble’ would have been a bungle. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/96

1 ‘Catterson-Smith was here on Saturday on his way to Rottingdean, & he may look in upon you today on the return journey – & if he also looks in upon us, we shall get some account of you. I was concerned to hear that the disturbance was not over. Surely the milk must be to blame. I think you

270

1899–1902 should have every drop of it boiled for the present, though probably you already take this precaution.’ SCC to PSW, 26 May 1902, BL Add 52761, f 24. 2 ‘Our good neighbour the Erewhonian Samuel Butler has been invalided home from Sicily & seems desperately ill. He is a young man of five and sixty.’ ff 24–5. Butler’s Utopian novel, Erewhon, or, Over the Range (1872) and Erewhon Revisited (1901) were followed by the posthumous The Way of All Flesh (1903). He lived at 15 Clifford’s Inn, next door to the Walker & Cockerell office, and died in a nursing home in St John’s Wood Road on 18 June. As for Leo Tolstoy, newspapers were reporting that he was ill with typhoid. ‘He is very weak, but is quite conscious.’ (The Times, 26 May). He died in 1910. 3 ‘You will have seen that “the Professor” holds forth on Westr Abbey on the 11th. I suppose that you will listen from Caxtons & not come to town.’ f 25. At the Annual General Meeting of the SPAB on 11 June, WRL spoke on ‘Westminster Abbey and Its Restorations’, which was subsequently published in the Annual Report (pp. 60–74). 4 ‘I am just back from seeing the mace; it is as if the world had grown young again and Astrea returned with her pockets full of cash. Truly you are inexhaustible and a new demand is always a new opportunity for you.’ GW to PSW, 26 May 1902, Courtauld, 304a. In Greek mythology, the virgin goddess Astraea (or Astrea) fled human wickedness and abandoned the world, but legend maintained that her eventual return will herald the return of an utopian golden age. GW urged PSW to consider allowing the photographs of his mace drawings to appear in the new journal, Art Workers’ Quarterly, the first issues of which were published in 1902. In fact, photographs appeared in 1903 in The Studio. See Vol. IV, Letter 878, note 3.

819 • To George Washington Jack, 3 June 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 3 June. 1902. My dear Jack (In answer to yours of 31st ult:) I fancy your hands are fullish – especially with keeping on a level with the busy Gael,1 or you would have tackled Bowley earlier. It hardly matters though – I think – for the pig headed Lechlade boobies, have the obstinate turn as well as the stupid; quite a Tory Government’s aptitude, in fact. Have arranged with Mrs Morris that she will go to £850 – with £50 up the sleeve in the way of bargaining, if so it might be carried through; but no further advance. And this too with no cutting down of the work shewn on plans & specified. You can tell Bowley – if he fiddle-faddles, that this is Mrs Ms ‘ultimatum’. You are right I believe (and also as regards lias lime, from Thacky Turner) in using the lias for Rough Casting over the cement and sand pricking up. But – above all things clean coarse sand for both, and not too much cement or lime. The lime work to be rewetted as often as possible with a syringe. I tried this with ordinary lime filleting & pointing here in hot summer, and it has stood well all through winter, as summer, and the sand far from good. Rice should take great pains with this work,2 letting the cement pricking up dry well first, and then well wetting before plastering with the lime coat.

271

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I thought you might have some trouble with those rainwater cisterns, and surely you will take all possible precautions against leakage and bursting, and seeing there are no water holding dips in the supply pipes, and cocks to empty them in frosty weather of winter. You will have to try the “suaviter in modo, & fortiter in re”,3 with the ladies of Arisaig. I managed old Lowthian Bell in this way, and neither Alfred Powell or the others could. Bell looks on poor me as the one dependable archt he knows.4 Am sorry for the weak judgment. I’m advising him now; but I suspect the Ambrose Poynter was not up to the craft. Ill furnished in the way of study or experience when on real building work. What mess they have made of “Mount Grace,” since Powell had to leave from ill health, I don’t know, but do guess!5 Do not hurry about the Jack Plane. I find Buck’s chizels are really undependable;6 but the big saw I had of them has been true as (good) steel, and the smoothing plane not bad, or it would not have stood my clumsiness, as it has. If you could find a moderately small stiffened back joiner’s saw of stout make (not for fine joinery) I should like you to get it and send with the plane, for mine has got bent in the blade from use on rough forest oak boards. Catterson Smith has been here, and – like the good fellow he is, looks eagerly towards the mace work, and is not frightened at it. To catch the midday post I send this now. With yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 2 3 4 5 6

Highlander (relating to GWJ’s work at Arisaig). Presumably the Arisaig clerk of works, or the builder. See above, Letter 805, note 4. See below, Letter 827. See above, Letter 746, note 3. The London toolmakers and retailers Buck & Hickman had been trading since the 1830s, and in 1902 became a public limited company.

820 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 5 June 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 5 June. 1902 My dear fellows. Thank you for the photo: print of the original scale design of the Mace – which answers all purposes so far as I am concerned. Would it be possible to have a print

272

1899–1902

of it on paper which would take body colour in water work – and not difficult or troublesome for you to do? as, if so, I would colour it and have it mounted for the donor.1 Lucky for my reputation, as an ‘original,’ (sic) that I had not seen the Mace, or its representation, of Lincoln’s Inn, till you we[re] so good as to send it to me. Its date seems to me about Elizabeth or James I time? and is prettily managed, and at the same time keeping the bludgeon-like form – worthy of Gog & Magog.2 Rooke was with me yesterday, and by good thought I met him at the station, thinking it not unlikely he would not bring the Rottingdean garden picture up here. This I made him do, and was repaid by finding he has done, (or well on to completing) surprisingly well, a real historical portrait of a garden in full flower. The patience and pictorial skill of so difficult a subject is beyond praise, for he has really – without sacrifice of truth, got tone into it; but he was in luck by having no harsh coloured flowers to paint into it. The picture is full of colour, and yet has greyness withal. I could but praise it directly and without strain of conscience. He can only be paid for his labour by the satisfaction of faithful work well done.3 He was quite happy here, and I sent him off as merry as a grig.4 Wardle comes tomorrow, and W.S.B on Saturday. We got on very well together when he was here on 28 May, but he was not at all well. Yours truly | Philip Webb. The 2 “truants” must have been shocked to accidentally face each other on the steep of Château Gaillard! Hope they kissed & condoned.5 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/97

1 The cost of the Birmingham mace was met by Alice Beale, wife of the University’s first ViceChancellor, Charles Gabriel Beale, who was a solicitor. He headed the Birmingham office of Beale & Co., his brother, James Samuel Beale (owner of Standen) being the leading partner in London. Alice Beale also played a significant role in establishing University House in 1904, the first hall of residence for women students. 2 PSW probably had in mind the massive statues of Gog and Magog in London’s Guildhall. ‘And when the thousand years are ended, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. / And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore.’ Revelation, 20:7–8. 3 ‘You will have pleased the cawing one with your appreciation of his picture. I saw it when it was half finished & thought it promised well.’ SCC to PSW, 9 June 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 28. 4 The phrase was once common, a ‘grig’ being someone extravagantly lively, or alternatively a grasshopper or cricket. 5 SCC annotation: ‘I told Webb that Walker was off to Château Gaillard for the Feast of Ste Clotilde June 1 – and that I should take care to be there too. Of course we went together and greatly we enjoyed it.’

273

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

821 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 10 June 1902 Year added by SCC 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 10 June – for midday post 11th My dear fellows. Your faint print of the original design would answer the purpose very well, but perhaps a little stronger would save some time in going over it with pencil before colouring – and it should be mounted, as the colouring otherwise would shrink & cockle it – but I’m, as you see, troublesome.1 The original drawing itself should be sent to me, for use when Cn Smith arrives at parcel gilding & enamelling time, and as the colouring on it of the fields of shield was pretty good – it w’d jog my faded memory of with it. I am quite glad your French breakout was a lucky one – and as you say nothing of rain, perhaps you escaped the downpours of this side the water. Have to confess with some shame it would have made me sing and dance to have been with you both – (all 3 together, as law deeds wd say) on the high ground commanding Seine both ways; which was no joke if Richard was out of temper from river-due being unpaid.2 W.S.B wrote of his coming with la Grande femme,3 but ’twas too wet for us to expect them – still they came; & Mrs D. dropped drawbridge, and I kindled fire, for they were considerably wetted. The lady a bit posed at starting, but thawed under my collected impudence, and became a little less statuesque under as the old man was not worth killing. Curiously enough, the grated Derbyshire herb cheese at tea time led me to produce my fragment of cippolino [sic] S. Mark’s marble;4 and tell the story of how S.P.A.B in old time fought for the building, & sent a memorial to Rome; but that the English minister did not present it, but allowed its matter to leak out – which did as well. I said the minister was a Sir Augustus Paget – I thought, but my memy was bad, &c. She said ‘that was my father’ – so, plucking my third foot out of the mud, I was not ashamed.5 Well, the several visitors did take time from other things, but the company on the whole repaid – and I always pick something up from Wardle’s encyclopædic crumbs. He really enjoyed himself. On Mon: I had to go Rectorially to tea – lest worse should come of possitive neglect on my part, when I did not enjoy myself; and am looking forward to doing further neglect: BOOBY! I’m afraid Rooke’s price for his cultivated garden will not pay for his manual labour alone – let on one side his success in it. Yours (always mindful of unfailing help) truly | Philip Webb. Am now going to jog Holliday’s elbow, as to where we are now in the Mace matter; did not want to bother him before.6 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/98

274

1899–1902 1 ‘We have made a faint print of the small drawing for you to colour, but I am not sure that this is what you want & that it is not too faint. Please let me know whether this is the right kind of print, & whether you would like one a little darker, and whether you would prefer it mounted.’ SCC to PSW, 9 June 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 27. 2 The construction of the now ruined Château Gaillard at Les Andelys, overlooking the Seine, began in 1196 under the English king, Richard I, ‘the Lionheart’ (1157–99), who was also Duke of Normandy. ‘I wish you had been with us at Château Gaillard! Couldn’t you manage to come there, or to Chartres, or anywhere else (Beauvais isn’t bad) for the Coronation? Our loyal spirits drive us across the water for the celebration of that great event – in a fortnight’s time. Say yes; but if it must be no, say nothing.’ SCC to PSW, 11 June 1902, BL Add 52761, f 29. At the last moment, the Coronation of Edward VII on 26 June was rescheduled to 9 August as the king had to undergo abdominal surgery. 3 ‘I heard that Lady Windsor was to be taken to tea. She has the most beautiful garden in England, or rather in Wales (Caxtons isn’t in it!) and an old house of Kelmscott date, but larger & less beautiful – besides a new Bodley palace in the midlands.’ SCC to PSW, 9 June 1902, f. 28. This was Alberta Paget (1863–1944) who in 1883 had married Robert Windsor-Clive, the fourteenth Baron Windsor, later first Earl of Plymouth. 4 For Cipollino marble, see Vol. II, Letter 417, note 9. 5 The diplomat, Augustus Berkeley Paget (1823–96), had been appointed British envoy extraordinary and minister to Victor Emmanuel in 1867, becoming ambassador extraordinary in 1876, a post he held until 1883. 6 ‘The drawing went back (registered) to Holliday, who writes that the estimate for the making has been passed, & that all is to be finished in about three months.’ SCC to PSW, 11 June 1902, f. 29.

822 • To George Washington Jack, 11 June 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 11 June 1902. No 21 My dear Jack Bowley is Bowley all round, and we must give him an ‘ultimatum’. I will advise Mrs Morris to accept his estimate of £900, all told, on the following conditions. That the cottages are to be built according to the plans, specification, and regular Architect’s & Builder’s contract, without any deductions whatever, save the following, and the works will have to be done to your and my satisfaction. Omit the pumps, suction pipes &c from well to wash house, and provide & fix instead of them, two best cast iron jack pumps, fixed close to the well in front of cottages, (chosen by us.) The iron casements (“local ones”) at “10s/- less each” to be well made, and approved by sample one, by us. The glazing (local work) also to be approved by us from your design, 16 oz glass, and strong cames tied with copper wire. (Private, I know Wm Smiths are dear).2 Omit the copper flues from wash house, and upwards, (you rearranging the chimney so as not to upset its form above roof) and substitute coppers in yard sheding3 from your arrangement of them, & chimnies [sic]. Omit stops to buttresses, you arranging for finish of walls, &c, as substitute.

275

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Omit weather stone in angle of chimney, you to arrange a proper substitute. Omit iron rain water butts, and substitute large barrels (brewers like mine for wh’ I gave 15/- each ) to stand on rough blocks of stone with 1½" oak boards on these blocks – as mine here. All the other things specified or shewn or indicated on the drawings – including ‘shutters’, ‘labels over door ways’, &c, &c, all as shewn. If he agrees to these changes on my part, and my refusal to have any other changes made – (such as reducing cost of drainage from £25 to £10, and all other items he may think unwisely to spring on us), I will get from Mrs Morris her decision as to accepting or refusing the estimate of £900, as aforesaid. I will have nothing more to do with Bowley, unless he decides at once, and accordingly with the above written. If Mrs Morris should agree to the £900 as aforesaid, you will have to see that the agreement be strictly drawn up, (based on my customary one) and “targe him tightly” when he is doing the work. Having to secure the post, please excuse some hurry now. | Yours truly Philip Webb. Note. When informing B. of this decision, copy out the items, &c, given above, and make them as clear to him as possible. V&A, AAD

1 He sent two letters to GWJ on 11 June, this being the second. 2 See below, Letter 847, note 2. 3 ‘Shedding’: division (archaic).

823 • To Alice Beale, 12 June 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 12 June 1902. To/ Mrs A. Beale.1 Dear Madam. I beg to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of your letter of yesterday, and its accompanying cheque. With greater satisfaction I recognise the kindliness of expression with regard to my part in the matter of providing you – as donor, with a design for a mace to represent the new University of Birmingham. I have full hope and expectation that when Mr Catterson Smith and his allies put the actual work before you, the drawings will fade into due insignificance, and that your satisfaction on presenting the emblem to the University will be sufficient 276

1899–1902

to repay you for your venture, when aiming at providing it with an object “worthy to be handed down to posterity”. My desire – which in these days of struggling art – may be considered a ‘forlorn hope’ – is, that as such have now and then succeeded, this too may prove not to have been wholly a failure.2 Will you kindly give my thanks to Mr Beale and your children for their sympathy in my ‘venture’, and Believe me, Dear Madam | Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. On the other page I give formal receipt. Caxtons. Worth. | Sussex 12 June 1902. rs Received of M Alice Beale a cheque for Twenty two pounds ten shillings, being the amount of my charge for designing and directing with full working drawings, the proposed donative Mace for the University of Birmingham. Received by cheque 22/10/Philip Webb. Birmingham UB/MISC/C/1/32

1 See above, Letter 820, note 1. 2 For Joseph Chamberlain’s appreciation of the mace, see Vol. IV, Letter 878, note 4.

824 • To Sydney Cockerell, 15 June 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. Sun: 15 June. 1902 My dear Cockerell It was of your kind thought for me you sent the “Path to Rome.”1 I waited till today before acknowledging its boon; but the Sunday has allowed me to read in it as far as the source of Moselle, & shall read more before bed comes. It is an agreeable surprise – the form and literary manner in which journeying is set down. Though not really a kin to it, I am put in mind of Borrow’s delightful “Wild Wales”, but the style is altogether sharper cut, and much tinged with wit of an epigrammatic kind: very vivacious – and with keen observation of the workers & humble bees of life: am supposing it is by a real Frenchman who writes in English, and think the name seems familiar to me. At present I am much interested on [sic] the ‘path’. The preface or “Praise of this book” reads somewhat like banter, but probably is real at the bottom; and the rather clever – & expressive drawings of amateur workmanship are of his own too?2 The book – as far as it has yet been read, is really amusing, and very witty also – in a harmless way. Tell me anything you know of the author when next you have time to write.3 277

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

You can see I began in a thankful way? – I’m now in the savage way. My bank pass book, with its trifling entries, puzzled me more than usually. ’twas Ruskin, I think, who objected to sums of money being lumped & credited without name; well, I found cash of 2/2/- but no note of my cheque to you in debit, but before noticing it was not down, I scratched my head to make the book balance, & it would not. You are the criminal for not paying that cheque in. Now please – yes do please to keep such things square with me, or Worth graveyard will hold me too early! but perhaps it was only an accident? well, if so, my tiff would be at an end.4 Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, MSL/1958/689/101

1 Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome (London: George Allen, 1902). 2 ‘Since, I say, it seems necessary to extol one’s own work, I wrote simply on the lintel of my diary, “Praise of this Book,” so as to end the matter at a blow’ (p. x). Belloc was indeed responsible for the illustrations: ‘[N]ow it is so easy for a man to scratch down what he sees and put it in his book that any fool may do it and be none the worse’ (p. xiii). 3 ‘The Belloc book was almost certain to please you. There is a freshness in it, and a humanity, and an absence of the guidebook quality, that make it a really notable production. As to the author he is descended from Priestley on the side of his mother who is a literary lady of some repute. When she was young she married an aged Frenchman, named Belloc, and had two children, a boy and a girl. The girl is now Mrs Lowndes – the boy is a queer fish, married I believe to an American, & with Roman Catholic, pro Boer & other unpopular tendencies. . . . At any rate I am told he is hard up & “unreliable” – in short a genius. . . . Of course you divine truly that it is his French blood that makes the book what it is – so different from Borrow, & yet so like. I think it is the best book that has come to us since Maeterlinck’s Bees. . . . I can imagine Morris chuckling over some of the pages.’ SCC to PSW, 16 June 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/100. 4 ‘I think that cheque must have slipped into some drawer. I will hunt for it.’

825 • To Jane Morris, 18 June 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 18 June. 1902. My dear Janey. I have been waiting till definite terms could be got about your cottages. Have been prompting Mr Jack, and he has negociated, with the usual haggling, with Bowley, and only today have I got the necessary information on which you can come to a decision. Bowley seems to have taken time, and his own head by the forelock, and he gave an estimate that he would do the work for £1024.0.0, or after reducing the work to be done by taking out a number of items to the value of £124.0.0 – for £900.0.0. This, I would not agree to, and instructed Jack to put his foot down; A} and say, that either he (Bowley) would do the work exactly according 278

1899–1902

to drawings & specification, (subject to a few items which I agreed should be simplified) or I would not enter any further on the matter with him. This has brought him to book, and he has accepted my decision, that he should do the work for £900.0.0, and according to my ultimatum (bless the word!) given in the paragraph, A. Under these circumstances, I enclose Jack’s last letter, which is a good one, and explains, without my transcribing, how the thing now stands: for now, I am quite willing to advise you to accept this estimate if you still hold to building the cottages? Jack’s evident desire to carry out the work is also shewn, and his “intention to see that Bowley does not take it” (the £124) “out of the work” comforts my cautious mind. Now, all I ask is, that you should do exactly according to your inclinations. There will certainly be things – (not included by me, as they must be indefinite till the cottages are built) – such as fencing round the plots of ground, &c, which will have to be met before the cottages could be inhabited, and you may wish to add small items when you can grasp the then actual circumstances of the visible buildings. Will you kindly return Jack’s letter when you give me your answer and instructions. Of course Jack will do nothing till I send him your decision as to building or not, and accepting Bowley’s offer. My advice is, that, if you still wish to build, to accept Bowley’s tender – as given above. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. This is simply a business letter, and I will not add anything else. Opened my letter – having omitted to say that Wilfrid Blunt sent me a photograph of the house you lived in at Sheikh Obeyd, to look at and forward to you after I had satisfied my eyes. This I have as nearly done as 13 Arab Mares & foals, in almost every possible position in the foreground, would allow. The photograph is for you, and I send it by this post. BL Add 45343, f. 16

826 • To George Washington Jack, 27 June 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 27 June 1902. My dear Jack. (Kelmscott Cottages) Your saying, in your letter of the 16th, that you were going to Arisaig on the 20th I thought – with the journey too & fro and much work to see to there, you would be away for a week at least. 279

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Mrs Morris answered my letter – (with its request that she would give me in writing her definite decision as to accepting Bowley’s last offer for building the cottages) – and this is her decision. “I agree most heartily with the arrangement for £900 for the two cottages, and I quite understand that there will be a few little extra expenses.+ I shall be pleased to see Mr Jack as soon as ever he can come. I fear the measurement will have to be taken again of the plot of land.* I saw only about two stumps left of the landmarks before the close was put up for hay; I will get the mowing done as soon as possible”. + Those other ‘expenses’, were from my warning, that fencing round the garden plots, &c, could not be put in the contract, as they would only be settled as to kind, position, &c, when the cottages themselves gave the cue. * Mrs Morris means, of course, the setting out on the site of the area of cottages. Under the above decision of Mrs Morris’s, it would be well if you could now give Bowley the order to get his plant, &c, together, and you arrange to meet him on the ground – as I particularly wish you to instruct him as to how much of the land he is to use on which to do his work, and this you would agree with Mrs M. upon. Also, please to see to Bowley’s entrances on to the ground at the two road front corners, and that no other part of present wall is to be disturbed. Again, you would have to agree with B. as to where the necessary retiring place for the workmen would be put. Some sort of temporary fence should be put at the entrances to the ground, or the children would be all over the place when the men left for the night. I believe you will have a photo: print to spare for me of the design, and one for Bowley, you holding the original drawing. It would be well also if you could send me a rough tracing of your full-size details, especially of the stone work. When you are staying at Kelmscott manor, “and smoking a pipe”, I think it would be well if you found a piece of the walling in the old house in its most perfect condition of half-pointing half-plastering of outside face, and let Bowley know that that was to be his pattern; for I know he will be after doing the rubble stone walling like the 2 new Cottages in the road. When I first met him there, we agreed that the facing of rubble stone work should slope from inside the walling to the outside, to let entering moisture drain outwards. Bowley distinctly said that was the right way. You may also remember the decision come to as to the ashlar stone, and that afterwards he produced a block of other stone? This should be seen to, and the reason why? You have a sample of the first stone I believe? About drainage: nothing would yet be decided, but in your visits you would be able to come to a decision as to where the receptacle has [sic] best be put. I arranged the well on the road front, so that no surface drainage from the back should get to it. Also, if I remember rightly, I built specified [sic] the upper part of steining to well in mortar?1 Yours truly | Philip Webb. Hope you had a favourable time at Arisaig? 280

1899–1902

Please forgive this writing. Have been working out o’ doors in the hot sun. Weir sends me photos: of his work at North Stoke Ch’, and he is doing it admirably. He also has a big western tower to a church elsewhere to do, which will tax his powers to the utmost, I can see.2 V&A, AAD

1 The steining is the main bulk of a well, constructed of brick or stone. 2 The church of All Saints, Sutton-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire. The tower underwent significant repairs under WW between September 1902 and June 1903. See Drury, p. 222.

827 • To Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, 28 June 1902 Draft on reverse of letter from Bell (26 June 1902); pencil Caxtons. 28 June 1902 Some verbal changes made when copied. My dear Sir Lowthian. In answer to the questions in your letter of the 26 inst.1 I cannot recollect any occasion in my professional work of mine that when I charged for the time occupied in personally superintendingance of the work as often as I thought it necessary. In my earlier time I feel sure it was not the professional custom to do so. Also, it would be unwise; for Architects are more interested than anyone else in having their work done in such a way as to be creditable to them. If such a charge was made, clients who would not so clearly see the advantage of such supervision, might not be inclined to say that ‘the works were visited unnecessarily often, as there was a clerk of the works,’ &c – but I see no reason why, in very long journeys, such a charge shd not be a matter of agreement. For travelling expenses & postage it was, in my time, always the custom of architects to make that charge in addition to their professional (in early time) professional charge of 5%, and I always added this expenditure to my acct. It was considered generally, I believe, that unless a special charge in reduction or excess of 5% on the outlay was by agreement made between archt & client, that charge would have been the ordinary charge “custom of the trade”! I hope these answers will serve your purpose. Yrs truly | Ph. W. I think it was a mistake in these days to run carry Royal etiquette to an so absurd a pitch as it was in this Coronation matter,2 but the expressed wish by the King was, I think, a wise as well as a kindly one, that the entertainments, &c, should proceed in the country districts as arranged. LB-2, loose insertion 281

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 1 ‘Would you kindly inform me [of] the usual practise among Architects. As an example I will take this house [Rounton Grange]. After the plans were agreed on a clerk of the works was appointed and you visited the scene from time to time. Did you make any charge for this in the way of travelling expenses & time? If so what were the amounts? I ask this in confidence as to my authority.’ Lowthian Bell to PSW, 26 June 1902. 2 ‘What a terrible state of perplexity the nation is going through. What do you think of it.’ The planned Coronation of Edward VII on 26 June had to be cancelled and rescheduled for August, because of his illness.

828 • To William Weir, 2 July 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 2 July for 3rd posting, ’02 (N. Stoke Ch) My dear Weir I write a hasty word tonight in acknowledgment of your remarkably clear letter of yesterday, recd here this aftn – because I am inclined to believe from your sketch, of a possible original projection of the dial stone beyond the face of wall, that the more likely thing would be, that the head and arms of a figure are earlier than the dial slab, and were found and turned to acct, as support and ornament to the slab, which latter might have been set in its present position – say, in the 16th century? If you should be able to make out the inscription round the border of the disc, and could copy the forms of the characters, these might tell something as to the date of the dial – in addition to its divisional lines.1 There is something in the character of the upper stage of tower much in character like Christopher Wren’s work, though possibly he did not design it. Now Wren was a fellow of All Souls Coll: Oxford, and he set up on the wall of the chapel there a magnificent, and large sundial; and so accurately was it contrived, that even in my time the Oxford Watchmakers used it for setting their timepieces by. Wren having been a notable mathematician had great influence, but not enough to save the dial, for it was allowed to be destroyed by Sir Gilbert Scott, the dial not being in the style of the college!2 I see in your photo: of the S. West angle buttress of the tower, there is another sundial, of smaller size, and rudely fixed. I think you know the date of the fire which was supposed to have destroyed the upper part of tower, and this might possibly give a clue to the use of the head and arms of the support to the South sundial?3 In any case the S.P.A.B. would determine to keep the sundial, and its sculptured members exactly in the position they now hold, but of course adding the recently found right arm. From your description of the depression of the Chancel arch, I take it that the north jamb went more N at the springing – and its half arch getting flattened in its curve, and while the south half-arch got compressed and quickened in its curve? 282

1899–1902

The beautiful little church you are so carefully strengthening has great attractions for me – quite apart from my native sympathy with Oxfordshire & Berkshire. Could you find out who is, are, or were the patrons of the living? Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. I am much pleased you have not been put out by my suggestions for the wood fittings, on the part of the S.P.A.B. for I did not quite like scribbling over your good tracings, and was afraid you might resent my impudence! SPAB W-W 66

1 ‘When removing some of the earth from floor of Tower for concrete, we came across charred timber (small portions) & flints scorched by fire – which would give some clue to the reason of top portion being rebuilt in 1725. Probably it was struck by lightning or burned down – but of this I can obtain no facts.’ WW to PSW, 29 May 1902, SPAB. ‘I have tried to make out the inscription on sundial, but without much success – will try a squeezing in the hopes of making something of it. The arms & dial may have been fitted to the head at some later period – but the curious thing is, the dial being so thin, compared to length of arm. . . . Could the date be got at by the visions of the day? there being 8 divisions in place of our present 12 hours.’ WW to PSW, 1 July 1902, SPAB. The sundial at North Stoke is believed to be late Anglo-Saxon in date, and marks the eight liturgical offices of the monastic day, from Matins through to Compline. 2 Wren’s sundial was originally above the south front of the All Souls chapel, but during restorations to the chapel overseen by Scott in 1877 it was moved and placed elsewhere in the quadrangle, and its former accurate timekeeping was lost. As recently as 2006, a bequest from a former fellow, conditional upon the sundial being placed in its former position, was refused by the College authorities. 3 ‘Another photo shews the sun dial over South doorway. In making good a crack in wall on west side of dial, we found the portion of sleeve buried in wall. The dial is carved in one piece – about 4" thick – the head in another & the arms in separate pieces. It was thus impossible to shew the sleeve, without the risk of leaving the whole insecurely fixed. There was nothing to be done, but replace the flint as formerly.’ WW to PSW, 24 June 1902, SPAB.

829 • To Jane Morris, 7 July 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 7. July. 1902. My dear Janey. On receipt of your formal acceptation of Bowley’s tender for building the cottages, I wrote to him,1 on his return from Scotland, telling of the same; and on July 1 he wrote saying he would send me one of the photo: copies of the plans for my use here, and this he has done to-day, so that I shall be prepared to answer his questions, as his and the builder’s work goes on. He said, “I intend making out the agreement as in my name, as acting for you, so that you will not be troubled with signing it. This will make it agree with the plans and specification, and give me a 283

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

working authority with Bowley” – and he adds “I shall make an appointment with him, and go down & reset the pegs – previously, of course, writing to Mrs Morris, as I suppose she will expect me to stay there on my visits.” I think these arrangements of his for Bowley are the best, as he will hold my name over him as the invisible but terrible ‘Jorkins’, in case there is difficulty. Of course Jack will have much to do when he is directing the works at Kelmscott, and will not I believe be in any way ‘in the way’ about your house, for he is a very good fellow, and is, if in anything, rather too ‘retiring’. I have asked him to consult with you, and to explain anything about the cottages you may wish to have made quite clear about the details, &c. I shall hear from him after his visit, and shall always be glad to have ‘informal’ notes from you when you feel inclined to stir me up. Your always truly. | Philip Webb. Last week here was a disturbing one at Caxtons, for the annual sale of Arab horses went on. Give my kindly love to Jenny. Cockerell who was here for a while on the day of sale told me of the death of Aunt Henrietta.2 BL Add 45343, f. 17

1 GWJ, not Bowley. 2 ‘I have just had the sorrow of losing my sister-in-law Henrietta. She had an accident, a fall close to her own door as she was going out for a drive. She was much injured and died a few days afterwards.’ JM to SCC, 1 July 1902, CLJM. For Henrietta Morris, WM’s elder sister, for whom PSW had overseen the conversion of two cottages into one at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, see Vol. II, Letter 504. JM now thought ‘to buy the pretty old one at Hadham, and let it to some very nice person, it seems a pity that so precious a bit of Mr. Webb’s work should go to the ordinary being. What do you think?’

830 • To George Washington Jack, 8 July 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 8 July 1902. My dear Jack. In re’. Kelmscott Having been “up to my knees & ninepence”1 with things undone because of things in the doing, I only half opened the rolled drawing, so that the inclosed memorandum in it did not disclose itself. All your arrangements given in these memoranda are quite to point, and therefore satisfactory.

284

1899–1902

As to whether Bowley’s walling stone is used, or that from Brize Norton,2 would depend (as there is little difference in haulage) on your decision, as to which would make the soundest walling. I have suspicion that Bowley’s is generally thicker in its lamination than wd be well, judging from what Bowley pointed out to me in the adjuncts to Kelmscott school, as his work; which looked just like what we would not have. Perhaps some of Bowley’s and some from Brize Norton might be mixed & used. As to the big central chimney, you will find a detail of this which I worried into shape and disposition of flues. If you can find this, and make out fm it what would have been the decision, if it had been cleared up, and then make your variation for omitting the copper flues, &c, you will do so in a way so as not to alter much the appearance of chimney above roofing? In arranging the flues & chimneys of coppers to be now put under yard sheds, the chimneys might be built of half-brick work round soundly burnt 6” field drain pipes [sketch] thus, with the spaces between pipe & b[ric]k-wk. filled in with concrete, and the chimneys roughcast above roofing, and capped with thin stonecourse of creasing, weathered with chips cement & sand, on top surface, and plain (non art) chimney pots, of 3 feet length, well weathered in the setting. Having just buried my E. Co bucket full3 – following it to its “last home” in the orchard, under a burning sun at 11 a.m. my hand wobbles con-siderably. Yours always | Philip Webb. I should like Weir to have a look at you when at Kelmscott in the thick of the doing there, as he is full of ‘Wrinkles’, now, and is doing excellent work. His modesty with me is quite pretty to behold, and yet rather makes me blush who am not so modest. V&A, AAD

1 Traditional, but archaic, meaning a liberal display of leg and underclothing – with sexual connotations. 2 In 1880, Brize Norton in Oxfordshire had nine working stone quarries. The village was the source for the stone used for local altarpieces as early as the fourteenth century. 3 Earth closet.

831 • To Sydney Cockerell, 14 July 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 14 July 1902. Dear Cockerell It would be a good time for you to be here, as expected for long, on Sat: next for Sunday & Monday morning, as Mrs Dickinson goes for her holiday on the 25th – a 3 Sundays’ fortnight.1 She, today, has taken the children to Town, where the

285

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

grandmother will meet them and take the children on to King’s Langley, Herts, for most of their school holiday. As to Miss Kingsford – herself especially – and her friend, I shall be glad not to sit in the seat of the scornful over her decorative efforts. They would have to go down to Crabbet – I fancy, as the paddocks are, just now, deserted – but I can & will see Holman about it, though I’m sure of his liking to shew your friends some of the Arabs.2 W.S.B was here for a little while on Friday to do some horse business with Holman and then take some friends from the station to a pic-nick in the Forest; he then drove home. Percy Wyndham and Reginald Yorke3 were here in the afternoon of Thursday. The former looking heartyer [sic] in health than I’ve seen him before, and Yorke hard as nails, and talking gallore. [sic] They seemed to like their outing. Heard, by same post as yours, from Mrs Morris, who is greatly set up with the cottages to be set going at last. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Housekeeper & myself will expect you on Sat: if there’s no postcard reversal. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/103

1 SCC and EW were staying at Kelmscott Manor. ‘May I come to you next Saturday & stay till Monday (or Sunday night)? Can it be done without putting you & Mrs Dickinson out too much? If so I should immensely like it, as your promise to show me some of the wonders of the district is now a year old – & the long evenings will soon be drawing in.’ SCC to PSW, 13 July 1902, BL Add 52761, f 32. 2 ‘I want also, if I may to bring Miss Kingsford, who did the animal illuminations that you have praised. She is decorating Hornby’s new Song of Solomon, and would greatly value some advice & criticism. She has now done nine borders . . . and they are certainly most beautiful – but I felt that some more authoritative guidance than I can offer would be helpful. . . . She & Miss Hansard (an artist who lives with her) want to see some of the horses, & I thought that they might come down with me and be turned into the paddocks as soon as you have had your say about the designs.’ ff 32–3. These decorative borders were for The Song of Songs (Chelsea: Ashendene Press, 1902), of which 40 copies were printed on vellum, each ‘most exquisitely’ individually decorated. C.H. St John Hornby, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Books Printed at the Ashendene Press 1895– 1935 (Chelsea: Ashendene Press, 1935), p. 46. SCC would marry the manuscript illuminator, Florence (Kate) Kingsford (1872–1949), in 1907. See Vol. IV, Letter 1035. 3 See Vol. II, Letter 370, note 1.

832 • To Jane Morris, 19 July 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 19 July. 1902. My dear Janey. Your letter of Sun: got here today (Mon:) at 1.30, and was a relief to me in more ways than one. You will understand, that your first disappointment always hung 286

1899–1902

about me, and what best to do settled itself in my mind that the Cottages must wait, or a foolish thing be fathered on poor me; so that now the thing is really begun, relief of mind has settled on me – as I hope it has on you. Your domestic arrangement will please Jack to be up aloft in the delightful old house, for shyness is his ‘black beast’. I have always found him good company though when that impediment was broken down. He also is an able man, so that no doubt is in my mind as to his seeing that part in the work which has been mine, does not suffer under him. Now, you should re-read ‘John Ball’, where a brand new addition to the older Church has been made, and is all white, even the masons dust is on the graveyard.1 Well, there will be a new white house in Kelmscott, and it will be a shock to the sensitive for years to come. I begged Jack to “targe” Bowley “tightly”, knowing as Jack does the shiftiness of his man. Had a letter from S.C.C at the same time as yours, in wh’ he spoke of the joys of the place, with your roses in full & fine shew.2 I’m sure May will have liked Lethaby’s house in the Orkneys’, for he shewed me the design before it was begun, and I stamped it as good.3 Have just read, in ‘Antiscrape’ report, his address at the annual gathering of the society.4 He writes on art matters (and such a matter as the abbey ch’ of Westmr!) better than anyone else, now that the gods have left us to our shivering selves. Mrs Dickinson has gone with the 2 children today to hand them over to their grandmother for the holidays, and she goes for her’s on the 25th, for the large fortnight of 3 Sundays, so that I’m all alone writing this, with heat and open windows and buzzing of insects. Twice interrupted while writing; first, with the estate builder, who depends on my opinion in building matters; & secondly, the farmer’s daughter with butter and the monthly book for payment; we are businesslike in Caxtons. Mrs D. told me this morning that you & May came here about this day last year, when she was also then away with the children. My love you will surely give to Jenny, and kind remembrance to the snail catcher, with yourself to have a lasting belief in the affection of yours always truly | Philip Webb. 5 Tell Miss Staveley, that my Cor-cordial has only yet been tasted in 2 sips, as being her “particular”, and not to be lightly regarded. BL Add 45343, f. 18

1 ‘I came into the village, where I did not see . . . a single modern building, although many of them were nearly new, notably the most obvious part of the church, which was large, & quite ravished my heart with its extreme beauty, elegance, and fitness. The chancel of this was so new that the dust of the stone still lay white on the midsummer grass beneath the carvings of the windows.’ WM, A Dream of John Ball (Kelmscott Press, 1892), p. 6. 2 ‘The roses here are at their very best, and the air is full of their perfume. Jenny is very quiet but she seems well, & so does Mrs Morris.’ SCC to PSW, 13 July 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 32. 3 See Vol. II, Letter 584, note 5.

287

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 4 For WRL’s paper on Westminster Abbey, see above, Letter 818, note 3. 5 Companion to JEM.

833 • To George Washington Jack, 23 July 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 23 July. 1902. My dear Jack. Your letter got this afternoon is quite clear in its explanation of progress with the K. cottages, and – so far – quite satisfactory, but what most cheers me, is, that you are evidently taking an interest in this looked-for work of Mrs Morris’s – for the delay annoyed me considerably. I am supposing they (Bowley’s) will soon begin on the well? This is shown, and should be exactly on the centre line of the party wall between the cottages. In the digging of this, notes should be taken of any land soakage coming into it before water is found at the bottom. I don’t expect any injurious soakage from neighbouring houses, but – if I remember rightly, the well is steined in mortar (?) some distance down. The water will rise & fall according to low or high Thames, but this is well filtered through the shal shaely gravel, (shaley?) and I have not heard any ill of the ‘manor house’ water. Am glad you are particular about the walling stone, and I’ve no objection to thicker beds being occasionally used, but this should not be dotted about, but used more or less as a thicker course. The tilting the facing stones down from the inside of wall to outer face, is important. In a letter from Alfred Powell, he told me of a famous waller of the Cotswolds – “Master Caleb” – who gave it “as a matter of course with any good workman”, and added, “some keeps ’em down though,” (on the inside) “and just do let the wet in”.1 Charles Faulkner – who was Bursar of University College, tried hard when directing repairs at his Coll: to a get a good quarry opened in the Tainton district,2 but the landed proprietor would not have the ‘mess’ about his place, and practically said, ‘go to Bath’! As to Ashlar main (angle) quoins;3 I think I would prefer to use the ordinary facing stone for these if chosen for length, but if the Tainton is used, they (the quoins) should be axe dressed, more or less skew-ways, and beware of drafted angle work – the ugly vanity as well as incompetence of masons Bowley would probably want to charge more for the Tainton?* There is a ‘dry-built’ wall of Barn, near the entrance of the village, which is beautifully laid. But I’ve no doubt of your decision on all points; but the old craft habit is upon me, and I must out with my opinion, which senility you can allow for! *I suspect you are right and that Taynton is spelt with a y. Your care with “elaborate "½ scale sections” gives me much satisfaction. You will understand my feeling, after the earlier play of fast & loose by Bowley, that I do not trust him till you report the cottages, as well built in all ways. My present thought is, that he had found out he was losing credit in the district, and is looking to retrieve his 288

1899–1902

character as the chief local builder, so that he may put his back into the work and do well under your guidance; but I feel sure he will want that pretty constantly. Weir does not like the use of “coke breeze” at all, but you might well ask Turners opinion from his own experience. His boards were oak, I think? I am still rather inclined to the solid "1½ block floors, if laid by Bowley on the “Acme” instructions, with the materials supplied by them. They gave a price, and wd probably do it for their quotation now? I believe in washing these floors with skim milk (fresh) before they are stained, as little scrubbing is needed afterwards. The paved floor here is kept clean with a mere wet house-flannel, and washed again with the milk once a month, or 6 weeks. I should certainly say, use any of Bowley’s old quoins, &c, which are fitting for their purpose. The quoins to windows & doors, &c, would have to be carefully seen to, that they shall not look mechanical. Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. P.S. I’ve not answered that roundabout letter from Turin you forwarded, as I’ve nothing to shew anywhere. Indeed – also, any work I have been able to do is not worth shewing, and has no other merit than that it was done with an honest effort to be as good as might be in these cross-grained times of art.4 V&A, AAD

1 In replying to Powell, PSW reflected on the attitudes of the workmen employed by WSB, ‘decent fellows but rough in their work; and inclined to say “O, that will do” – when it should not. . . . When they look at the work as finished, they say, “that will stand for years” as if endurance was a kind of vice.’ PSW to Powell, 19 July 1902, cited in Greensted, p. 11. 2 Taynton is a village close to Burford, in Oxfordshire. It has long been valued for its limestone, which was used for several Oxford colleges as well as at Windsor Castle, Blenheim Palace and Eton College. 3 Corner stones. 4 Months earlier, GWJ had expressed his hope that PSW might be persuaded to exhibit abroad. ‘Mr [Walter] Crane is going to ask you to allow something of yours to go with the Arts & Crafts things to Turin (This is altogether unofficial & you must not mention it till you hear from him, only I wish you would allow [the Odsey bookplate] to go in a little frame). I only write this to pave the way for this concession in case the first thing you thought of when you hear from him would be to refuse anything. I am sure it would give pleasure to all the members of the Crafts.’ GWJ to PSW, 19 October 1901, V&A, AAD.

834 • To Jane Morris, 25 July 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 25 July. 1902. My dear Janey. Your uplifting over turning the first sod of the cottages, picked me up too. Surely this beginning must have been near to St Kel Kenhelm’s day? that was, I think 289

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Cockerell said, on the 17th.1 May the Saint fend for us, and cast down Bowley & his crew, should he be up to builders’ tricks. I’m glad to hear from Jack that he is providing working drawings that should keep even a “dirty Joe” from evasion.2 We will hope that ’tis not too late for a B. to mend, though it surely is for a D.J. I’ve just returned to Jack some detailed drawings, for the approval of ‘Caxtons’, which he sent me. Js opinion of the walling stones is satisfactory, and such walling as we want done is a clear point with him. We, that is Mrs Dickinson and myself, have had guests a-many lately. There was all the todo at the Arab sale; & later on Cockerell brought down two artist young ladies for me to pose over as critic. The one who risked the adverse is a pleasant girl, both in manner and capability, doing excellent decorative book picturing, and – wonderful to be said, is serious and modest as an artist.3 Also, Indian Rajas are after Arab horses, and Caxtons is the house of tryst. Following those came Treherne & Wardle to try and settle some antiscrape matter in Wales, with me. 4 Now, Mrs Dickinson is off today for a 3 Sundays fortnight’s holiday. ’Tis she also who reminded me of you & May being here when she was away last year. I have for household guidance now a farmer’s sister, who lives in a lone farmhouse in the forest, and will I hope make things comfortable, as looks likely.5 Why did you not say where on “the Welsh border” Jenny & Miss S. are gone to? for I’ve large (ordnance) maps, from which the kind of district can be made out. Olive Cockerell would be – I fancy – a pleasant companion for you; S.C.C brought her to Gray’s Inn, (when I was there more than 1½ years agone) also for criticism, and she seemed to me a singularly pleasant girl.6 Her brother said you would not have apples this year, for which deprivation you have my sympathy – such as the fairly well todo have for those who have less or nothing; here there is a fairly good promise of a half crop, if the bugs & beetles are not too busy; my chance is in the variety of grub-eating birds, which survey branches closely – as “bad” Brown used to say, “with microscopic eye”.7 Even the Crabbet gardener said a good word for birds this year. The wife of Rooke père nursed up for me 2 Myrtle bushes,8 and one – of large leaf – has grown so well, that it seemed as if it might live & thrive out of doors, if protected in the winter; so, I’ve planted him against the West chimney, for that is sheltered, and has a partly screened sun blaze. I too shall be ‘planted’ out before he is big, if he lives, but make may see him three or four times his present size. S.C.C brought me a briskly funny book to read, “The unspeakable Scot”, of which a chapter or two has been read; but if the author – who is daring – thinks of making the unblushing Scot ‘speakable’, he is mistaken.9 I am not! ’Tis strange that Walter S, of that ilk, should have been so simple and modest. Have you read Swinburne on Dickens?10 I have not, nor am I about to do so, so, also, mind you don’t. Consider me as your first class literary monitor – for taster of S on D I won’t be. But will be | Yours always truly | Philip Webb.

290

1899–1902

Am really glad you appreciated Lethaby’s ‘Westminster’. Auld ‘snuffy’ is quite well in health.11 BL Add 45343, f. 19

1 ‘[A] letter fm Mrs Morris, much rejoicing over the started Cottages. “The first sod broken this morning” – the 22nd, but I’ve forgotten the day of Kenhelm; near by, I fancy?’ PSW to SCC, 25 July 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/104. SCC annotation: ‘July 17 is St Kenhelm’s day. Morris used to say that Kelmscott was called after him, but the parish church is under the invocation of St George.’ See also above, Letter 721, note 2. 2 Here PSW extends to Joseph Bowley the slighting insult he normally reserves for Joseph Chamberlain. 3 For Kate Kingsford, see above, Letter 831, note 2. ‘P.W. was persuaded to show some of his drawings before we walked down to the station at 6.47 & saw the ladies off.’ CD, 19 July 1902. ‘In mg went for a longish walk with P.W. to see Heathy Ground pond & other wonders of the neighbourhood. After an excellent lunch being sleepy I sawed a little wood & hauled some water from the well, & then sat out talking with P.W. until teatime. Looked at photographs of Venice &c. In the evg, when Mrs Dickinson came back from Church went for another little stroll with P.W. & so ended a memorable day.’ CD, 20 July 1902. 4 See below, Letter 845, note 5. 5 His temporary help was a Miss Dench, presumably a relative of the carpenter to the WSB estate (see above, Letter 715, note 3). 6 JM invited Olive Cockerell to join her at the start of 1903 in Niton, on the Isle of Wight, ‘which will be cheering – as she is nice and companionable, an excellent walker too’. JM to Cormell Price, 27 December 1902, CLJM. Olive sketched JM at Niton. 7 For a possible origin for this phrase, see Vol. I, Letter 87, note 2. 8 Thomas Rooke’s wife was Leonora Jane Jones, former governess to Margaret Burne-Jones (Margaret Mackail). 9 Thomas William Hodgson Crosland, The Unspeakable Scot (London: Grant Richards, 1902). See also below, Letter 838, note 4. SCC annotation: ‘Crosland’s book “The unspeakable Scot” was a scurrilous production, but amusing up to a point.’ 10 Algernon Swinburne, ‘Charles Dickens’, Quarterly Review (July 1902), pp. 20–39. 11 PSW himself, mocking his snuff habit.

835 • To George Washington Jack, 29 July 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. | Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 29 July. 1902. My dear Jack. I return the details of outside chief doorways, made from what my fancy paints their actual effectiveness, and yet keeping to the original intention. Note ashlar beds, also, that the geometrical intersections will work out all right: having been very much occupied I had not time to set them up accurately, and could not trust myself without such testing. Of course your chief difficulty will be to keep the masons from using the ‘drag’.1 They often did it at Clouds, and put the

291

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

tooling on afterwards! Perhaps the use of the axe is not quite killed at Lechlade by working on the poor Bath stone. Should be ‘skew chizelling’, and not always kept at same angle or running one way.2 The change of way should not be on alternate stones but irregularly. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Winmill was here Sat: afternoon. V&A, AAD

1 Drag: a thin plate of steel indented on the edge, used in working soft stone (OED). 2 A skew chisel is a woodworking tool, bevel-edged with an angled tip, and used for making squareshaped grooves.

836 • To Jane Morris, 6 August 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 6 August. 1902. My dear Janey. When you write to me giving a fair average (O. useful word!) of the state of things with you, it cheers me. I would like to carve a little image of St Kenelm in the space left for significant allusion between the two windows under the big front gable,1 but in these days, when imaginative representatives have left us to our own poorer ways, I do not yet see how this could be got done. If the Saxon (or British?) saint wd but put in a dreamland appearance, say in the tapestry room of yours, and with fiery finger shew us the way, surely we would put up with the scare. You will remember that my Gray’s Inn supernatural appearance, made the calves of my legs to vibrate. Jack told me of his & Bowley’s goings on at present, with the Cottages, which seemed to me satisfactory so far; and I’ve warned J. to take nothing of Bs for granted, as nothing but up to ‘proof’ pudding would satisfy us. J. has already sent me details for the arch director’s approval, and I feel quite Pecksniffian – though not holding forth from the top of bedroom stairs.2 The collected earth should remain untouched, I think, till the cottages are up, after which it is likely some will remain for the manor house. I’m heartily glad Jenny had a new found treasure of countryside in Shropshire, and that she was able to lay hold of the rambling occasion. Have seen some parts of Shropshire, and found them markedly interesting. Was it Gere,3 or the other strolling artist, I met at Kelmscott – the one who was trying a portrait of you in small? Can’t remember the other one’s name.4 Here, we are in a half & half condition, as Mrs Dickinson is on holiday, and will not be back till Monday – even if then she is not torn to pieces in the London mob, in which there is small (if any) distinction between high & low rowdyism. The 292

1899–1902

temporary help here is not well in her inside too, and does not readily partake of the feast of my wisdom for curing the qualmishness. “Jonahge’s belly”5 must be quite full of the coronation swaggering – even before it comes off. Give hearty love to Jenny, and remember me kindly to Georgie,6 and believe for yourself, that I am – as always Yours truly | Philip Webb. th This means, I had your letter of the 4 , yesterday. Sydney Cockerell has sent me picture post cards both from Amiens & Chartres.7 How sustaining is the beauty of each cathedral, in this reminder. I saw them in ’58 or ’59?8 BL Add 45343, f. 20

1 This became instead a memorial carving to WM. See below, Letter 856. 2 He probably has in mind the scene in Martin Chuzzlewit in which Pecksniff shows his new architectural pupil the sleeping quarters (ch 5). 3 Charles March Gere. 4 Not identified. 5 He means London. See also above, Letter 805, note 7. 6 GBJ. 7 SCC spent 2–10 August in France. ‘I have come over to escape the Coronation & to see whether French Cathedrals are really so black as they are painted.’ SCC to PSW, picture postcard from Amiens, 3 August 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/105. 8 He is thinking of his French trip in August 1858, with WM and CF.

837 • To Margaret Dickinson, 7 August 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex 7 August 1902. Dear Mrs Dickinson I write a word to ask you to let me know, when you conveniently can, by which train you return to Three Bridges on Monday, so that I may arrange with Miss Dench accordingly. It would probably be best for you to get to London rather early in the day, as there will surely be a great number of people leaving London on Monday, after the Saturday’s show, and the trains will consequently be very full.1 If it should be wet, mind you take Budgen’s fly to come up here,2 and indeed – as the luggage of the three of you would be too much for you to carry – even if the day should be dry, therefore take a fly; or, leave some of the luggage to be sent up afterwards. Miss Dench has managed very well indeed, considering that she has not been at all well after the first 2 or 3 days of her coming, as she has suffered a good deal from indigestion, and has taken but little food; she is rather better now. I got her 293

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

some Bovril, and some soda water, but she was not inclined to take any milk; but however the last two days she has made mutton broth. By the time you get here I hope she will be sufficiently well to welcome you with a smile. Billy, when he does come home, takes food from her, but is inclined – I fancy – to think that something must be wrong at Caxtons, and goes off again when he has taken what he could get. You may have heard of the death of poor Maude Foster, who was buried here today.3 It has made me really sad to think of the hearty, kindly natured girl being taken from her many friends, at such a time in her life, and the Foster family will feel their great loss for a long time. I sincerely hope that you, with your children, and the older family circle, with your sister Mary, have enjoyed the meeting together again, and possibly with less damp weather than we have had? Please give my kindly remembrance to all your people, for though I only know Mary, I seem to feel the rest equally to be my good friends. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. I have been very well, and had plenty to do to keep me from moping, for Miss Dench is rather a silent body; but I am grateful to her for the careful attention she has given to the housework. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

1 The rescheduled Coronation of Edward VII occurred on 9 August. 2 For Budgen, see above, Letter 776, note 3. 3 Not identified, but clearly a local resident.

838 • To Sydney Cockerell, 10 August 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 10 Aug: 1902. Dear Cockerell. After your escape from Bedlam I had your first card from Amiens, 2nd from Chartres,1 & 3rd from Chateaudun2 – and I need not tell with what refreshment. All my violently arrogant prejudice against anything French – especially of their M.S.S and architecture, came home to me, so that I think no worse of all their works now than I did then.3 That poor Rooke père – who thought to please me by sending a photo of the late statue at Wells, (just now destroyed by its fall) will hardly understand my disgust at all the pettiness of all English works. Still, for once, to put aside the gammon of friendly exchange, I can but enjoy the fish-market side of Amiens’ Cathl – a view, curiously enough, I scarcely seem to remember. The church as thus seen in mass is magnificent, and especially beautiful in its

294

1899–1902

length, with the, for French, unusually long eastern limb. The whole – of course is infinitely enhanced by the advancing foreground of water – boats – market quay – and diminutive houses. Of the Chartres N. Porches, being only Chartres, there is nothing more to be said, even in the “unspeakable” Scotch manner.4 I think Rooke, or you and he together, were quite right in choosing the monstrous angle view (Chateaudun) for him to do; but the view you send is preferable – I have a photo: of Rs picture, as you sent it to me.5 Your English manner is preferable to the Scotch. Here I may as well tell of that book. A good deal of it was most amusing, and in much only too true; but when Crossland [sic] continued in the whole hog manner, I found the 4 fingers of fat along the back rather indigestable. [sic] ’Tis a mistake it seems to me to take for criticism the works of almost universally accepted genius, either with praise or blame. W.Ms better way in that case was illustrated with Shakespeare’s doings, namely – after having just read Henry IV, by saying with much delight, “what names they give each other”. In truth, the works of all real genius are ‘unspeakable’. I suspect the failure of a book, which is really uncomfortably true in much of it, came of the author having had a journalistic training – vide, also Kipling. The school of journalism is, I take it, Houndsditch. How I hope you have had a 3 times 3 jolly big week in your France, and that you are content – if a holiday ever bred content? Thank you. Now, the homekeeper is uneasy in his mind. Do please get Walker to give you the items of cost for the firm’s (FIRM’s) work for the mace, & recollect, I’ve been paid by ‘donor’ 2/10/0 for it, but you must let me know how much more is due.6 Add to other goodness by telling me of real cost of the “Unto this last”,7 and the other things I’ve probably forgotten, and I will make out a cheque by adding the last ‘exchequer bonds’ divd due to you but paid to me, and is a blot on my satisfaction with the pass book. W.R.L. threatened to come here on Wed. Thurs. Fri. & Sat. last week but failed, (stormy weather the cause I fancy) this did not so much matter as Mrs Dn was away, and Miss Dench might have been embarrassed. Yours truly – and Walker’s | Philip Webb. Rooke also wrote me a pretty letter about Wells and its omnipresent Jackdaws. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/108

1 ‘N. porch still untouched but badly in need of attention.’ SCC to PSW, picture postcard captioned ‘CHARTRES. Portrait Nord de la Cathédrale’, 4 August 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/ 689/106. 2 ‘This is the view that Noel Rooke drew last year.’ SCC to PSW, picture postcard captioned ‘Château vu de la Descente du Mail’, 6 August 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/107. 3 Irony, of course. SCC annotation: ‘Webb used to pretend to criticize French Gothic because I praised it so much, & we had much friendly chaff together about it.’

295

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 4 For Thomas Crosland, The Unspeakable Scot, see above, Letter 834, note 9. SCC had travelled to France with the Scottish sculptor, John Tweed (1869–1933). ‘He would approach the sculptures of Amiens & Chartres as though they were so many Academy exhibits, to be summed up or pulled to pieces. I had to quote a well-remembered saying of WM’s, which you reiterate in your good letter: “I don’t want to meet the man who would criticise Chartres Cathedral. The only possible attitude is one of reverence and thankfulness”.’ SCC to PSW, 11 August 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/109. 5 ‘You will have realised that my firing off of those picture postcards meant that I wished that you could have shared my pleasure, and by so doing have doubled it.’ 6 ‘If we are to have one of the mace drawings we couldn’t possibly charge you for the photographs, which in any case cost us little enough. We hope that you will see the impossibility & not refer to the matter again.’ SCC to PSW, 19 August 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 37. 7 See above, Letter 809, note 3. ‘I have just come across the bill for “Unto this Last” – i.e. 2/4 postage included.’ SCC to PSW, 18 August 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 36.

839 • To Emery Walker, 16 August 1902 Postmark CRAWLEY AU 16 02 Address Emery Walker, Esqre | 3 Hammersmith Terrace | London. | W. PSW wrote on envelope Private Caxtons. | Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 16 August 1902 re To/ Emery Walker Esq F.S.A. &c. Dear Sir Will you kindly oblige by looking into your books and putting on paper the amount of my indebtedness to your invaluable firm, for work done by you in forwarding a design made for a Mace, representing – by authority, the new University of Birmingham. I am afraid it may be difficult, at this unusual reason for such a request, to pick out the various items of the necessary acct, but it is probable you will find them annotated with such remarks as these, item, ‘very troublesome’ – d[itt]o ‘unnecessarily fidgetting’, ‘impossible to do – or, if done, not worth the doing’ – &c, &c. As an excuse for my troubling you personally – as the senior partner – I may add, that information of a somewhat disagreeable character has reached me, that the junior partner of the firm has been – (I hardly know how to put it in the least offensive form) say, “on the loose lately”, so that his particular work may be slightly in arrear? If this should be so, will you keep my request as private as would be possible, as I am loth to call attention to any irregularities of business in a ‘house’ having the character of unusual business-like procedure. It may be found, that in the designer’s charge for his work a sum of two pounds ten shillings was added to meet the cost of your invaluable assistance, but as this charge was wholly arbitrary, it is more than probable that the business value of your firm’s work exceeds that amount, and if so I beg you to add the excess to your account; for, I need scarcely say, the design for the mace would have been worse than useless without your esteemed assistance. Incidentally I have gathered that the French vintage promises so well this year, that the price of wines in France would have been unusually low; thus, 296

1899–1902

perhaps, in part accounting for the necessity of this note, which has given me pain to write. With kind regards to your estimable family, believe me, | Yours indebtedly, | Philip Webb. EWT

840 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18 August 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W C, Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 18 August 1902. My dear Cockerell. Don’t be frightened at this monstrous sheet, for it will not be filled – my old stock of the Gray’s Inn smaller is at last run out – but there is a lot of this to be turned to account on occasion. Walker was here yesterday & behaved sweetly, and we tore the characters of Philistines to rags – with gusto. He brought a sheet of his & C[obden]. S[anderson’]s bible for me to gloat over, and now that he is not [here] the while, I am making much of it.1 Still, as it now rains the proverbial cats & dogs, I must write a little gratitude for yours of the 11th. ’Twas a good one, full of our “mutual friend” – la belle France! What that patch of earth’s surface is to me you can’t guess, because ‘chaff’ has too much deflowered the name – but the chaff will be blown away and weighty corn remain. Truly, I should have been a more sympathetic companion than the “unspeakable” one: poor fellow, he could not help it.2 An Englishman by the name of ‘Bug’ can – by paying fees, &c – change it to ‘Norfolk Howard’, but a Scot – unless of the pure bred ‘Walter’ stock, cannot be modest, whatever fees he might offer to royalty; but I see in your letter a joyful tone of the parting at Bonneval3 – after which, what a string of place-names you give. Vendôme – Loches – Tours – Beaugency – Orleans – none of which places have my very English feet paced. The Loire, especially, has been my longing sigh, but fruitless – and must be so. Luckily, I had no view of the unusual little Ch’ of Loches, but which I’ve known from books for many years; and Walter Scott made the place famous for English folk – who care for noses carried horizontally. Ned Jones used to say, W.S “is so fair”. Now – on t’other side of the water, Dumas père ‘was so fair’ – for Gasconading bombast is one thing, & is lovely in D, but sky scraping noses are . . . well, “unspeakable”. I only know Balzac from translations of 2 or 3 of his books, but they have been standards of French authors of that romantic kind.4 If I read French with moderate 297

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

ease, the whole boiling should be read; but my time is too short for many more stories, now. Doubtless that drop of French blood in your sympathetic veins tells – and to me, in every way pleasantly – so, you need not phlebotomise. The newspaper cuttings you sent me are – necessarily interesting.5 That of Sir E. Durning-Lawrence M.P. reads as if it had been written by a knighted contractor. His structure-mending has something in it, approaching the mending-treatment of old walls we have heard something of before! but I doubt his plan’s success, generally. The great Campanile succumbed to volcanic disturbance I believe;6 for we should not have old buildings in Italy all giving way at the same time – as they have lately – from natural decay: and in Italy, just now, there have been many signs of modified upheaval. The S.S. John & Paul I knew to be a fabric which wd need but a slight shock to disturb its over nice balance. Of ‘Stonehenge’, I hope something better may be come at than has yet been broached. ‘the more haste the less-peed’ as the nurse said! we ask for good heads on Salisbury Plain, & well scratched. T.M. Rooke sent me another delightful corvine letter, in which he, with pleasing wickedness, described the architect, (?Edmund Buckle, for he is the diocesan surveyor – worse luck to the buildings)7 or his assistant, mounting two thirds of the way on a fire escape towards the niche at Wells Cathedral; whence ‘Johannes Scottus’ (sic) had fallen, stared about a bit & comed [sic] down again; as if that ‘inspection’ wd keep the rest of the statues from spoiling Rooke’s subject. He has most tenderly sent me three photos: of the statues – one of the said John, and of St Neot & the Earl of Mercia – Good Rooke. I won’t enlarge on them, as you know my prejudice! Still, I cautioned him, that “Rat-hole” doorways in such a design as that of Wells, were not necessarily disproportioned to the building. That is a gentle tap for the noddle of our ‘mutual friend’ – also unspeakable – & yet dead. There, I’ve run myself out of wits & you out of all patience. Let there be pax between us, and remain as heretofore that which is Yours truly | Philip Webb. I had written morning.

(on Saturday)

a nonsense letter to Walker, which I guess he got this

V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/113

1 The English Bible, Containing the Old Testament & the New . . . 5 vols (London: Doves Press, 1903–5). 2 For John Tweed, see above, Letter 838, note 4. 3 ‘We managed to part good friends when he started for Paris from Chateaudun on Wednesday morning, & I went with him to the second station, Bonneval, & enjoyed my own company & that of

298

1899–1902

4 5

6

7

myriads of flowers birds & butterflies along nine miles of country road.’ SCC to PSW, 11 August 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/109. ‘From Chateaudun I went to Vendôme where Balzac was at school, & from Vendôme to Loches, and from Loches to Tours, where Balzac was born & where I saw some noble manuscripts.’ SCC had sent three cuttings from The Times, including a letter from Edwin Durning-Lawrence, about the collapse of the Campanile of San Marco, Venice on 14 July, another about the future of Stonehenge from Lord Edmond FitzMaurice, and an item from ‘Our Correspondent’ about the collapse of a window in Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Rome. The collapse of the Venetian Campanile on 14 July was witnessed by a correspondent of The Times. ‘Shortly after 9.30 I had gone into the Piazza and found a crowd of people in front of the clock tower gazing at the crack which had appeared in the Campanile, and which had become more evident during the night. . . . A few moments before the disaster happened I saw some dust coming from the crack. Then suddenly one of the columns of the bell chamber at the top fell, followed by the golden angel at the summit, and in another moment the whole stone top of the Campanile came crashing to the ground, crushing the Loggia Sansovino. There was a pause, and then the whole edifice sank with a moan almost gently to the ground.’ (15 July 1902). PSW’s one-time assistant, Edmund Buckle, was the diocesan architect for Bath and Wells, and had a London architectural practice at 23 Bedford Row, Bloomsbury.

841 • To Alfred Hoare Powell, 29 August 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 29 Aug. 1902. My dear Alfred Powell You have just saved me from a foolish anxiety – namely, that my late neglect had worked on your sensitive system, and you must have given me up as worthless! The jolly letter of the 27th saves me from further suspicious nonsense of that kind. ’Tis said that causeless fear of it is worse than the real injury. I say “jolly” – for there’s no-one here to help me write this, for as ’tis full of “wise saws” and amusing “modern instances”.1 Your “bosom” friend with “perky” hat is worth a cartload of carriage folk; and your cochon dans l’eau story is better than any told me by the fine folks here. As to the sound mason – husband of the chair breaker, he must have had much ado to “train” Street and Blomfield in masonry2 – of which they knew next to nothing. Whenever I have found a craftsman able to teach me anything in his craft, I felt inclined to pay him a bonus of 5% on his contract, because such schooling was priceless. The description too of the high ground of the Cotswolds – in summer weather, was stimulating. The only disappointment in your vegetable walk home was the ‘basket’, wh’ made me think of a bottle of French wine, under its name of “flask”. The beans & potatoes must – I take it – mean of your own growing, which would be much below my idea of a real landlord – who only does the inferior half of eating them. Myself being merely a tenant, i.e. I grow apples – or rather, they feel it nothing but their ‘duty’ to provide me with what they do not themselves consume – and, happily, there is a fair crop this year, while my neighbours are almost appleless. The trees are too close together, have been neglected for years

299

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

– there is much dead wood in them, and yet they contrive to bear fruit. Of quinces last year we had abundance, but this year I think my hat would hold ’em all, and plums too, nil; or a mere breakfast for the wasps. Tell me next time, how in the name of mystery your Cotswoldian oven consents to bake below stairs – make a section of him, for though very old, I’m not too far gone that way to learn. If he will bake, shall you use him? What do you propose for household help when you take possession of your estate’s hearth?3 and, do you know how to cook wholesomely – should she fail in the inestimable operation? The weather has been strangely volcanic (so I name it) lately,4 & puzzling to farmers; but, as the hay has been got good, the corn’s good, the roots is good, and industry up to the mark – (that’s the rub) there is no wisdom in grumbling in these parts. The Cloud formation here has been heavenly; magnificent – as if just come direct from the gulph of California with samples of those over Martinique. Never saw such inspiring clouds – think-of-one’s sins-clouds: the sun going down with fiery dogs on his haunches, while in the N.W a monstrous range of cumulous dolomites, in stationary forms for half an hour on end! Therefore, as the ‘heavens are telling’ finely here,5 why should I grumble that Tunley is not my native heath, and that neither you, nor even your brother are breechless. Fraternal regards to Malcolm, from whom I once had a letter. May his tables never be less so.6 I gather, that till you get housed, and look at each other at evening over the fire on the hearth, you will have no time for anything – as is my case; though I’ve been roofed over here for 1¾ years. Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, Wise Saws and Modern Instances, 2 vols (London: Jeremiah Row, 1845). 2 For Sir Arthur Blomfield, see Vol. II, Letter 517, note 3. 3 Powell settled in the Cotswolds from 1901, becoming part of the Arts and Crafts community established by the Barnsleys and Ernest Gimson. In 1902 he was converting two small cottages at Sapperton for his use. See Drury, pp. 62–5. 4 No doubt he also had the recent Italian disturbances in mind. See previous letter, notes 5 and 6. 5 ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God’ is a chorus from Joseph Haydn’s oratorio, The Creation (1798), this part of the libretto being derived from Psalms, 19:1 – ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork’. 6 Malcolm, Alfred Powell’s brother, ‘spent a year in Sidney Barnsley’s workshop before setting up as a furniture maker in Reading’. Drury, p. 176, note 9. Barnsley had recently updated PSW on Cotswold affairs. ‘My brother and Gimson have already started workshops at Daneway having 4 or 5 cabinet makers or boys so far, with the hopes of chairmakers and modellers in the near future. I am remaining an outsider from this movement – still going on making furniture by myself and handing over to them any orders I cannot undertake, and orders seem to come in too quickly now as we are getting known.’ Sidney Barnsley to PSW, 6 July 1902, cited in Greensted, p. 30.

300

1899–1902

842 • To Sydney Cockerell, 1 September 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex Sep: 1. 1902 Dear Cockerell Your two letters of 25 & 26 Aug: have stared me in face long. I am really glad of your ‘submission’.1 ’Twas no mere fancy of mine that charge. If it could have been 200£ instead of 20£ it might have been worth the injury to conscience – and my sweating comes fm out o’door work here: have had a “one-er” this morning, for we had a warm mist from the sea and it fetched it out of me. I am not worrying myself about 222 Strand, and shall await their suggestion that I had better bank elsewhere.2 Am going to send my monthly cheque of £10 for them to cash, in a day or two, and if they say nothing I shall be ‘mum’ too. They once told me 5%, when mention of their help was suggested, and I really could not grumble at that thinking of my usual mite kept in their strong box. Thanks for the memo about Holliday’s bookmark.3 I wrote direct to him yesterday on the matter, telling him of a prior claim on my time wh’ must first be done! I would willingly do a lot of ’em, if my wits would come without spur – still, none of you could possibly understand what a lot there is always to do about this place; and as it keeps me so well – in spite of such a demnition demp day as this, for example4 – I must not turn too much attention to indoor work, tho’ that too is good in two ways for me, for it adds to my fund, and keeps my hands & wits in touch, as well as E.W & you also, never forgotten, this last. On hunting for something in a scrapbook I came upon this drawing, done in a hurry, of the back side of Abbeville in 1858, when I did not detest the sight of French work! The scratch has never been touched since W.M & C.J.F lugged me away from doing more to it. I made a pen and ink thing more carefully – some few years after, and it went – I fancy, to Warrington [sic] Taylor as a gift. Perhaps the original may be liked for your portfolio, as you still keep an absurd liking for things French,5 but ’tis a wretched offering from Yours always | Philip Webb. Drawing sent separately. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/116

1 ‘I deliberately charged the mace donor £20 for my work, and 2/10/- for yours, being perfectly well aware of the minimum money’s worth of the latter.’ PSW to SCC and EW, 22 August 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/115. ‘We suppose we must submit, since you are bent upon it, but why should we be paid on such a liberal scale & yourself on such a meagre one? £20 for all that work & thought!! Never was such twenty-jew-power sweating! And you a Socialist and a reader of Unto this Last!’ SCC to PSW, 25 August 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 39.

301

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 2 ‘I shall do nothing in the selling out of consols, till 222 Strand stirs in the matter, having still 18/14/6 standing there.’ PSW to SCC and EW, 22 August 1902. 3 ‘J.R. Holliday writes this morning (& I copy before I forget:) – “I suppose we are getting nearer to the time when P.W. will be at liberty to think about my bookplate. I refer to this only that I may mention that a friend of mine – one John Feeney (the proprietor of the Birmingham Daily Post newspaper) is anxious to have a bookplate well done, and he authorised me to ask if you could get P.W. to do one for him – but it would of course have to come after mine”.’ SCC to PSW, 26 August 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 41. These bookplates were never begun. 4 ‘“She calls me cruel – me – me – who for her sake will become a demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body!” exclaimed Mr. Mantalini.’ Dickens, Great Expectations (ch 34). 5 SCC annotation: ‘The Abbeville drawing, like everything of Webb’s, is excellent. I have framed it with a reproduction of a drawing of Ruskin’s, showing the same houses, long since destroyed.’ ‘Abbeville is doubly dear to me, as I was there with both Ruskin & Morris, and I am greatly pleased to have your beautiful drawing. You perhaps know that it now possesses the additional value of being a record of things that have passed away, the river at that point having been covered in, and most of the old houses destroyed. Ruskin made a drawing from a little further back, taking in the wall of the unfinished transept & the low east end, & I remember his lamenting to me over the changes that had taken place. That was his last visit to Abbeville (1888) & though it is only three weeks since I saw the towers from the railway I am disinclined to stop there again as I found the front of the church disfigured with much new stone when I went there last four years ago. Morris said that he tried to make a drawing when he was there with you. I suppose you sat down together, & that he grew weary of the difficult perspectives, & so lugged you away for a walk among the aspens. I wish I could have got you over to those old places, if only for three days. Now I know that it is not to be done.’ SCC to PSW, 3 September 1902, BL Add 52761, ff. 43–4.

843 • To George Washington Jack, 15 September 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 15 September. 1902. My dear Jack. I believe the handwriting is yours on the picture postcard of Arisaig, & with the postmark, so I suppose you have lately been there? These postcards are really well done, and in this case the view was well chosen, and certainly is less disturbing for me, as the best part of the house there is – as an Irishman might say – the stables & Cow byres, which are in the foreground. I do not know if you’ve ever looked at them – they were my only real satisfaction there, as the house was (as W. Morris said of his early printed books) (not the Kelmscote) “done in the days of ignorance”. Mrs Morris was here on Saturday, and expressed herself as well pleased with the work you are doing for her. We had a talk about the most fitting kind of range for the Cottages, and she took kindly to mine here, adding that the heating in the washhouse should be useable for general purposes. I told her that an iron thing, standing clear of the wall, with a smoke pipe and soot door into the flue would be the best thing, as it could be such as would cook 302

1899–1902

small things, boil a kettle, or pot, and heat irons; also, that clothes horses could surround it, for drying clothes. Winmill got permission of the L.C.C. for me to have this range, and it is made by Charles Heap & Co. 3. 14 & 15 Leicester St Leicester Square:1 as they are very good general iron-mongers, I believe they could put you in the way of a good and sufficient washhouse stove – as aforesaid. Mrs M. was particular on the point of this stove being such that the range fire in the keeping-room need not be lighted generally. You have seen to the flue for the washhouse stove, doubtless, or will do so. If we should use the L.C.C range (by Winmill’s help) I could shew you* exactly how to arrange the iron plating closing the fireplace at lintel height; for mine was bungled here, and I had to put it right afterwards. *You sending me an exact diagram of the f.p opening, and its flue. The range is 2’6” wide, but ’tis better to have the opening somewhat wider – say 3’0” or 3’3”, as this gives more room for standing pots & kettles on. I am taking for granted you have drawn out the course of all flues to a good scale, &c, &c. Hope you had a peaceable time with the ladies at Arisaig, and that things are working out there as well as may be under building circumstances such as we know them. At any time you feel inclined to waste a little time in telling me of your professional woes, I shall be an attentive listener – or rather reader. I forgot to say that Mrs M. shewed me the part of your letter – with diagram – of the quoining to window jambs,2 & was gladdened by your having pulled Bowley’s men up about the external ‘saw edge’ ending of the courses. Masons have got quite out of the way of turning all kinds of accidental stones to due account. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. rs I am fancying that M Jack and the children may be on the West coast of Scotland, & that perhaps you stopped there on the too or fro way to Arisaig? My kindly remembrance to them. V&A, AAD

1 Charles William Heap was an ‘ironmongers and smiths’, with commercial premises in Leicester Square and works factory at Wardour Street. 2 On ‘quoining’ see above, Letter 833, note 3.

844 • To George Washington Jack, 18 September 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 18 Septr 1902. My dear Jack. When you[r] well got out details came, I felt inclined to snort as a startled horse, but as you would want them returned as quickly as might be, I set to do what 303

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

was wanted, when the unaccustomed head got interested in the doing, & worried them into my shapes. Well you know that ‘worrying’ – but, pax; for I’m sure such niceties are the backbone of fitting work – and the unfit I do not like at all. I’m sorry so to have mauled your good drawings, but needs must under my poor circumstances. You will see that I’ve somewhat reduced the cube stone for ashlar, and the only addition is that of a little more moulding round the carved panel, of wh’ you well warned me. The little chimney at angle of entrance gables will surely be improved by my putting the moulding at the top, instead of at the end of the battering.1 The figures you will note give the battering, & you can easily set out the broach base stone2 to the ashlar cap. If you will send me a rough piece of tracing of my full size label to the doorway,3 I will do that for the N gable windows – for, may be, it would be better to cut the shape to suit the greater height from ground. I forgot: it would be better to have rough arches over the label of these 2 windows as I’ve sketched it on your ½" drawing. Please read my notes on the full sizes as well as on the ½ inch drawing. Suppose it was accidental your using the slippery paper of this drawing? Your roundabout of India rubber is perfect as a rubber, as also in rolling, we catch mice easier here. I spoke to Mrs Morris about the pointing, and helped her to understand that the whole building would be more or less white when done, and not as if one had to point the manor house now. She had this in mind when getting some pointing done to the entrance wall of court, and you can see what was done by the men to tone down the white! This should be pulled out before Bowley leaves the job he is now doing, & plain mortar used (good) & toned with raw umber. Am glad you feel satisfied with the way the general walling is being done, and good of the concrete core [sic]. The flushing well & grouting at every two courses, it will be necessary to warn them of every time you go. Do they tilt the stones outwards – a little? I would like to see that walling now – internally – better than I should the cottages generally when built. Was afraid the walling stones wd come thicker than we wished. Bowley, doubtless, prefers them thick. Glad of the elm stairs, and the old slates B has for the cottages. Would these old slates want much redressing? The less the better, I believe, if they are to stand weather as they have. The oak guttering should be out of 1” stuff and not less than out of 4” on the square, [sketch] as the roofing is large & of high pitch. The important thing is, that of getting the stuff out now, and fitting it together at once to dry so, and as soon as the lengths, exactly, can be got, the joins made, and the whole secured, and painted one coat inside with quite hot tar, so as to lay it on thin – then let that thoroughly dry under an open shed, & be painted another coat before fixing. The angle groove should be painted with thick oil colour – like weak putty, when put together.

304

1899–1902

Can quite understand ’twould be hard for you to find time to get to Winchester, but am sure the old people would be pleased with your company.4 Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 2 3 4

Battering: leaning away from the perpendicular, with an inward or receding slope (OED). Broach: traditionally, describes a spire. Label: moulding over a doorway or window (OED). He means his elder brother, Harry, and sister, Sarah, who had retired to Winchester in 1900. GWJ had overseen the alterations to their house. See above, Letter 689, note 1.

845 • To William Weir, 30 September – 1 October 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. Sepr 30 1902. – night My dear Weir. Your letter of the 23rd – which reached me on the 28th, is an interesting one as usual, dealing so practically with really important matters, as it does, cheers me in my old age; for, in spite of excellent health, age tells on me markedly, my memory being exceeding tiresome in its untrustworthiness. Winmill’s letter, in which he told me of his visit to N. Stoke, was quite in the ‘excited’ manner he must have shewn when looking at your work.1 It also is a great gain – which, sadly enough, does not very often happen – that the people should take a real interest in the thing as done, having – which is more unusual, interested themselves in it while in the doing.2 I am now writing in the evening – having been closely engaged all day, but hope to find time tomorrow to give you my opinion on the proposed altar frontal, you never forgetting, that the Society depends on me to pay attention to your work, as its representative. ’Tis to be hoped Turner will give a satisfactory report on what he sees at N. Stoke. Your reiterated assurance of the necessity of exercising both care & patience in dealing with the evidently dangerous state of tower walling at Sutton,3 gives me ease of mind, for the decomposition of the mortar into a running sand is perhaps the most difficult thing to deal with – especially in lofty towers – and I can but hope you may find some parts where it is not perished. To me, the one real remedy is to get in an impervious horizontal course (single, double, or treble according to circumstances), to stop the running down of the dust. If it can be imprisoned as in a box, even this dry stuff is incompressible.

305

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

You do not say what mortar you propose using, whether made of Portland cement and sand, or with blue lias & sand? For the ‘horizontal’ coursing I should say, cement; but for concreting or rubble building, the lias, as I believe that it both expands and shrinks less than cement. In the bonding, (horizontal) there being so much less body of mortar, the expansion & contraction is but trifling. I’m hoping you will be able to get good clean sand – & coarse, if possible: but you will tell me what you find as you go on, and your treatment of the various difficulties, for you will have them in plenty. You see, I’m ‘laying down the law’ very much as an ‘old man’! Are you engaging a builder, or hiring your own men? If the latter, at what rate will their wages be?4 Can you tell me if anything has been done, and if it has, under whose direction has the preservation of the very ancient cross at Parc y Cerig Saintaid been put? for both Wardle & myself are rather anxious about it, fearing that any local workmen, witht efficient supervision might just do the wrong thing.5 Also, if you know what was proposed to be done, and if accepted by Mr Treherne or yourself as the right thing. Maybe you could give me a rough scratch of such proposal. When Mr Wardle saw it, he made an accurate measured drawing of the two halves of the stone, with many figured dimensions, so that I really know what the stone itself is like.6 _____________ The N. Stoke altar cloth. Today, 1. Octr, I have considered the points of the frontal, and concluded it would not do to have the yellow of the cross against the red ground of frontal; therefore I took your pattern & just modified it to suit the colouration, as you will see by the inclosed full size detail – roughly done:7 and, finding the border of the cross wanted strengthening against the red ground. The blue, of course, helps the yellow, and used inside the cross it helps the white & yellow of cross, keeps it from looking as if the cross was pierced & not laid over the ground – though it would be worked on the ground. It was clear to me the cross, as you had it, was too small for the area of the altar, and at a distance it would, in my opinion, have looked insignificant. Note, that the horizontal limbs of the cross (in my drawing) are a little shorter than the upright ones, for if made equal in length they always (the side ones) look longer. The pattern on the cross will easily adjust itself to this difference. I quite agree to your arrangement of the Dorsal and the wing hangings, and as Morris’s will supply all the materials, & work the cross their colours should go rightly with the frontal. Hope you won’t think your arrangements are spoiled by the ‘S.P.A.B.’ suggestions!! Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. Your address at Sutton on Trent is rather brief, but you expect my letter to find you there? SPAB W-W 73 306

1899–1902 1 ‘Winmill spent last weekend with me at North Stoke & was very delighted as well as excited with the building. Mr Turner is coming shortly to inspect the work & report to the Committee. I wish it was near enough for you to see it. I must do the next best thing & send you as many photographs as possible.’ WW to PSW, 23 September 1902, SPAB. WW posted his photographs on 30 September (they survive in the SPAB archive). 2 ‘I am glad to say, without exception everyone who has seen the church is pleased with the work. Some who do not understand the wall paintings, think it a mere fad to preserve them, & would rather see a nice clean surface of whitewash – fortunately the Vicar is not of that mind – so I think there is no fear of any harm being done to them, as long as he is in charge.’ WW to PSW, 3 October 1902, SPAB. ‘The village people have taken considerable interest in the Repairs, & I am glad to say, several of the neighbouring Clergymen. Altogether it has been a most delightful piece of work & wish it was possible to be continually working, under so favourable circumstances.’ WW to PSW, 3 November 1902, SPAB. 3 All Saints, Sutton-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire. See above, Letter 826, note 2. 4 ‘There are no workmen in the village, so have got a couple of bricklayers & their labourers from Newark, & am gradually getting them to understand the nature of the work. The rate of wages is 9d & 6d respectively, out of which the builder gets 1d for the loan.’ 5 The early medieval inscribed stone of Parc y Cerrig Sanctaidd, within a mile of the church of St Sadyrnin, Llansadurnen, in Carmarthenshire, was examined by GW in the company of George Treherne. ‘To say truth I was almost despairing when I saw what had been done there. The place had been ravaged.’ GW to PSW, 29 August 1902, Courtauld, 310b. In reply to PSW’s request for measurements of the stone, GW observed that ‘I do not know what order Treherne has given but he alarmed me by what he said, not very intelligibly, about concrete & the putting of one stone on the other. The upper & lower parts of the cross stone do not fit together. The break was not a clean one & certain parts are certainly missing. I think the joining of them on end is a very risky thing to do but I am perhaps more afraid than need be.’ 15 September 1902, Courtauld, 313e-f. 6 ‘Mr Treherne has been in communicating [sic] with me, as to the work at “Parc-y-cerig-Sanctaid”. I cannot do better than send you some of his letters with reference to same. The wall enclosing the site, is being built by Haylis, (whom you met at Eg. Cymin,) from a sketch which I made – plain “Castle Lloyd” walling with a limestone coping – & a Welsh stile for entrance at one end.’ WW to PSW, 3 October 1902. 7 ‘The drawing for the Cross at North Stoke is lovely, & I have sent it on to Morris’s, who will no doubt do it justice. They gave a price for a simple, “plain cross,” but I am sure a little more money will be well spent on the one in question.’

846 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 5–6 October 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. Sun: 5th for 6th Octr posting My dear fellows S.C.Cs letter of the 3rd implied, in its most pleasant way, a union of spirits on “St Morris day”1 – therefore I answer it in coupled form. E.W, doubtless, wants cheering – of course – after such a holiday.2 I’m much hurt by the ill news of wonderful Ravenna, having hoped against all foreboding that it would have escaped – what becomes now more evident than ever, is the inevitable destruction of every beautiful work of man on the earth – swept as clean away as the Boer shanties in S. Africa.3 I was particularly touched by the Roman bridge at Rimini, wh’ I’d not seen, nor Piacenza, and am thankful for E.Ws thought of the dwarf 307

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

among the “giants”. The Van Eyck portrait – such a portrait too! It seemed as if I must have seen it, but find no note of it in Bruges note book.4 The quality is so like that of the lady in ‘Lady & Gentleman’ in the Nat: Gal:, wh’ must have misled me. Thank you both – kindly. When I see either or both of you, you will not see the M. Wyndham drawing, for there is none, and that is why your opinions & help will not be the day after the fair.5 What you could, if so inclined, do for me, wd be to consider how the thing shd be done for reproduction if the little design could be brought to birth, therefore I cannot go on far till you have cautioned me on the way. You see, there was no help to me in the order (commission) except the motto provided, which is not an easy one to turn into money without “smell” on it. Have borrowed of W.S.B some photographs of Eastern scenes, (very interesting lot) more particularly of Date Palm trees, to serve as stalking sticks for getting heavenward by in the poor thing of a drawing. I can depend on your not minding the trouble of helping me out with it. Have been hunting for a diagram made for me, of the prismatic colours of rainbow, by Ch. Faulkner, but cannot lay hand on it; have either of you such a thing about you – if you have mine will assuredly turn up. Item No 2, Do you use in the workshop use any very transparent tracing paper – not glazy, for pencil, wont mark on it without hydraulic pressure. If you have, kindly send me a small quantity, of no great size, on a paper roller? say as wide as this open sheet of paper, and as long as the paper (tracing) sheet allows. Mrs Dickinson is better, but not at all well yet; she guides badly in sickness, and will be up and doing, when I could help without muddling. Have mapped out tomorrow’s washing for her, but doubt its success. The cough wh’ much troubled her & me is certainly better. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Was not Dorathy o or a? lucky in seeing something of Italy before it was all tossed by earth quake. My obeisance to her. Mon: morning Item. 3. Have you a scrap photo-engraving of an old fashioned skeleton (metal) globe, wh’ you could lend me – The thing which looks somewhat like a Poll Parrot’s cage? no hurry for it. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/118

1 SCC wrote by the date, 3 October, ‘St Morris’. ‘We were talking together at lunch of today’s anniversary – six years already flown. You came much into our thoughts and into the conversation, you who were Morris’s friend when Walker was a small boy & long before I was born. We spoke of you as filling much of the place that Morris left empty, and as in that way representing to us a whole race of giants, of whom there are now so few survivors.’ SCC to PSW, 3 October 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 45.

308

1899–1902 2 EW and his daughter, Dorothy, had returned from Italy, having visited Ravenna, Rimini, Rome, Tivoli, Piacenza and Venice. His picture postcards to PSW survive at 7 Hammersmith Terrace (EWT). 3 ‘Walker was delighted with Ravenna, but he brings tidings of outrageous restorations. Clearly the laws Boni drafted are a dead letter. Walker says Venice is going to pieces rapidly in every sort of way, & that it is not at all the place that it was ten years ago, even apart from the Campanile.’ f 46. 4 SCC annotation: ‘The photograph I sent was of the Antwerp picture called J. van Eyck’s wife which was rescued in 1808 from the fishmarket at Bruges.’ 5 This is the projected bookplate for Madeline Wyndham, which was never completed. See above, Letter 789.

847 • To George Washington Jack, 14 October 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 14 Octr 1902 My dear Jack. I can but plead ‘not possible before’, as cause of delay in answering yours of 7th. My time is full enough occupied, and now apple gathering has been, & is, on me. This will be, an on & off, 3 or 4 weeks stiff work, and days are shorter than they have been; my hands also still being only a pair, while heavy ladder calls for four: & small ladder combined with pair of steps! If you send me such S. African paper, (for badness) I shall have to charge 20% fees, for touching it – for I can’t say marking it. Is it on the score of economy? if not, nothing but malice could excuse its use. Enough. Can you hold on till you are here again for my payment for the good saw: if not I’ll send you a Postal order? 4 or 5 shillings, I think? Hope I’m not too late for my variations on the your [sic] E.C1 arrangement, for I think them some improvement? By putting the outside trench parallel with the wall it could clearly be cleaned by the regular shovel, wd not project out so far, and as I’m sure it should have a rough hood over it to keep off vertical rain, (with g[roun]d sloping away from bk fender) I’ve suggested the arrangements accordingly. The plan is I think a good one, and easily worked – important this last. But it does not seem to want a “grating” on the top of trench. By all manner of means use the ‘plank’ stones. Good. I don’t like the thought of the rolled sections of iron for the casements ‘at all, at all’. They are useful in places, but barbarous. Here we have worn out (nearly) old casements, cobbled, and yet on this exposed site, with plenty of S.W gales, and ill done lead fret work, but little water comes in – none to disturb the gentleman in his house. This place is colder too than those cottages will be, and I only find the draughts (with broken glass in places too) good for certain-sure ventilation – have not had a cold since I’ve been here! Also, I find no discomfort from that cause, i.e. the wet coming in.

309

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

So, you see, I’ve suggested some working smith’s work, not rolled & engine turned things. I’m sure, from seeing the Smith’s work here, that what I’ve suggested (for your improvement of the same) can be worthily & easily done, and at a much cheaper rate than ‘William Smiths’.2 If the iron frame, to set in the groove, is not made wider than necessary, it can be pushed home on one side & partly drawn out again when in the groove, so as to hold on the opposite side – (do you see?) and then well lime puttied. If the casements are made slightly bowed from top to bottom, so that fastening draws it home tightly, on the closing side only, it wd be all the better & stronger. All the iron work should be painted quite 3 times before it is fixed, or the glazing put in. Great care shd be taken to insert the hooks in the jambs (not in mullions) – holes neatly cut, & tail of hooks, only, well jagged – but these hooks should be set with precision, and not cobbled. The hinges, you will see, have to be dovetail “shut” on to the edge of casement frame, they are so here, & have worn, doubtless, for 100 years or more. I’m particular as to the ‘housing’ of the lead fret at edges, as I’ve shewn; ’tis half the battle of holding the glazing securely. I should not make the upper casement to hang pivot but be hinged at the top, the same as done to my work-shed window, which answers perfectly – as also my way of holding it open. This was an old casement which I’ve used long ways horizontal. Cockerell has been to Kelmscott, & is quite ‘flowery’ about the goodness of the walling, windows, & doorways &c.3 All right about the ‘dressing’ of the slates. Should you not be on the look-out for a particularly sound stone for the carving in niche?4 Should it not be from block large enough to saw it down across the grain bed? Think & think again when you are on the ground, about the scheme of drainage. Should like this to be well-devised, & wd consider your proposals – if diagrammed to scale – with such pleasure as is allowed me in my old age to tackle architecture again. When at it, I feel playing truant from honest labours! Also, I want some time to help me earn a little more money by hand-drawing – this year even if possible. Yours always | Philip Webb. Kindest remembrance to Madame your wife, & the two bonnie girls – from the “office boy”. V&A, AAD

1 Earth closet. 2 ‘William Smith’ may here denote the work of generic, pre-made ironmongery, in contrast to the skilled work of a local blacksmith.

310

1899–1902 3 ‘I have just been with Mrs Morris to see the new estate & the mansions that are being built upon it. They have now risen to a good height, and the walls & windows & doors look splendid. I should judge that the builders are doing their work well, & that when they put the finishing touches on the roof a few months hence (it has been whispered that it may be before Christmas) they will be able to share the satisfaction that you and Mrs Morris will feel at having added a new adornment to the old village – a satisfaction that no one else who has raised a building in Kelmscott during the last thirty years could honestly feel.’ SCC to PSW, 5 October 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 47. 4 See below, Letter 855, note 2.

848 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 25 October 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 25 Oct: 1902. My dear fellows. Really ’tis sorrowful shame which attends my neglect of answering 2 letters; one too kindly put fm Richmond, & the other inclosing M.Ao photos: and an Elephant by someone else – (who?). The M.As are mostly from (for) the ‘Bathing alarm’, but the wind-sweep of archery is one of his finest designs, of which I once saw the original in exhibition. wh This I believe to have been beautifully worked up by a school pupil, for the master seldom finished a study.1 The swoop of figures is delightful. Thank you kindly – they shall be duly returned. The Elephant – with the excellent twist of trunk & well hinted creases of bags – is good, but how I wish the wonderful contour line of the back had been precise as of Holbein. Author’s name?2 O dear me, how occupied this occupant of Caxtons has been, for – in addition to the apple, and ordinary calls on time, the Catterson has rightly descended on me for completing my part of the ‘thing’; as he is now on the heraldry, & wanted gilding, & tincturing in detail. The better halves of 3 days on this. W.S.B wrote me today, saying you had, at his call, got Thacky Turner to go, see, and advise about the advancing dislocation at one end of Newbuilding[s] P[lace]. Turner is just the man for the business, & I’m glad of his agreeing to go. His diagnosis – so far, is on the same lines as mine – wh without his having heard of the matter from me. Let us hope T. will find one of the practiced fellows – (if there is more than one or two*) – to be at hand while the necessary work goes on. *[in margin] Could not a pupil be found for Weir? Blunt also told me of the anxiety about the daughter, but hopes that the worst is past, as I hope also – for a termination the wrong way wd be bad indeed.3 The Jason & Chiron is “a’ in the cloods”, for “tapestry” is out of the question, and my being able to work the thing out, doubtful.4 When there is time for any drawing I must set to on the M. Wyndham microscopic business, wh’ is to be “a in the clood”.’ The last visits of both of you were good for the likes of me, but all too brief to tell all the tales in. Yours thankfully – always, | Philip Webb. 311

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Opened before posting, midday Sat:, to acknowledge, with satisfaction, the Lapith & compound horse. If ‘properties’ could make a designing man of me, I’d be the willing man. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/121

1 The cartoon of Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina, for a projected fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, is known only from copies, the original having been destroyed. The copy which PSW saw is probably that at Holkham Hall, Norfolk. 2 ‘The elephant is from a drawing of Rembrandt’s, & I thought it would interest you as being both elephanty & Rembrandty – full of the characteristic qualities of each. It is not to be returned, nor are the Michael Angelos, which are from some negatives in the possession of the firm of which you are an honoured partner, by no means of the sleeping kind.’ SCC to PSW, 27 October 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 52. 3 Judith Blunt Lytton successfully underwent a serious operation (presumably gynaecological) in London on 21 October. 4 SCC annotation: ‘Lethaby had proposed, and I had seconded, that a drawing by Webb of Jason and the Centaur should be turned into tapestry.’ ‘Lethaby writes “3 weeks ago we were down at Webb’s & much enjoyed it. He showed me a drawing of a Centaur jolly good & big in style. Ought to be put into tapestry sharp away bang. It is fine. Ask to see.” I am glad to be able to reply that I have seen it without asking & that I agree with him.’ SCC to PSW, 14 October 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 50.

849 • To Sydney Cockerell, 2 November 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 2 Novr 1902. My dear Cockerell. Thank you for yours of the 30th ult. W.S.B had written at the same time – giving much the same satisfactory (so far) version of Mrs Lytton’s case – (that looks as if it were a dressing case!). Do you know who the surgeon was?1 The grievous misfortune to N. Lytton is inexpressible except in mathematics. Who can tell what the smallest memorandum, alone, might mean to him later on. Even in my poor scratches, & notes, I have had to refer to them repeatedly, and curiously enough – with my memory, have guessed pretty nearly where the searched for wd be found. Wish I’d made 10,000 of them: and here is poor Lytton with nothing left to correct his memory: am really very sorry for him. Have just written a few miserable words to him on your suggestion, but am a villainous bad hand at condolence. Asked him not to answer it as you would tell me further facts. Your brother Douglas came yesterday – wheel riding from Ewell: was glad to have him here, & sat most of the short [time] over the fire talking ceaselessly. I thought he looked in good feather – so busy in that way were we, that tea stopped us before I’d taken him to see upstairs – & he did not go. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/123 312

1899–1902 1 ‘Mrs Lytton has been sorely buffeted, but seems at last to be in smoother water, & nearly free from pain – but a calamity of a quite unexpected kind has now fallen upon them. Neville Lytton’s studio (an old mill) [Rake Mill, Milford, in Godalming] containing nearly all his pictures, sketches, studies &c has been utterly destroyed by fire – two years’ work at any rate completely wiped out!’ SCC to PSW, 30 October 1902, BL Add 52761, f 54. ‘[W]alked with Neville as far as Westr Bridge talking of his plans for the future. He is splendidly cheerful, saying that the relief about his wife was so great that he could not but regard the new blow as a light one, though 4 years works was gone.’ CD, 31 October 1902.

850 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 November 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 11. November. 1902. My dear Cockerell Am a little nervous at superimposing myself on your many other exacting engagements & general industrial side winds of help; but you will see. I had yours of Octr 30 – saying you wd not be likely to see the apple trays for some weeks. Though being very lame in pen at writing condolences, I did to Neville Lytton, whose fate was of the hardest for a workman. He and his friend Mr Marsh1 came here to lunch on Wed: 5th and seemed to enjoy their feeding in a quite satisfactory way to me, for the victuals – flew! Then they set out, in very ‘dirty’ weather, in search of boggy & other unpromising places as sites for building2 – & Holman told me afterwards that he felt for Mr Marsh having to sit in [the] train for London after getting wet above the knee in drenching bracken, &c. Lytton wrode an Arab. Hope they had rugs to wrap their legs up in and not die. Heard from Miss Lawrence3 – written on Sun: evening, that W.S.B had a “very bad feverish cold”, & that they had crossed from Paris the evening before over a rough sea. To continue; a letter fm Lady Anne B. telling of the 3 of them coming over on Monday (yesterday) to go over the site grounds together. I prepared, but had a notification fm Holman, this was deferred till Tues: – today. Hegel, the clerk to the ‘affable brothers’4 looked in here this morning to say the survey of ground, &c, had been postponed sine die. The following you will allow is characteristic. Lady A in her letter, had put quite prettily the pleasure she had had in talking with Thackeray Turner about me, when he was surveyin[g] N.buildings Place; added “I hope that, apart from the interest of the house, (wh’ always seems to me “unique”) he found his visit agreeable, as on leaving he expressed a wish to bring Mrs Turner next time” – Is not that also “unique”?5 To add something to complications here, about 10 days or more ago, I found an internal chill on the membrane system has settled on me, & that though my general health was good as usual, it was sapping my strength; & having discovered a non dangerous, but demnition tiresome,6 ‘rupture’ had happened in my belly; so I went at once to Sydney Matthews at Crawley,7 and he measured me for the necessary “truss” – asked for sample of my water which I sent him, and he sent me a physic; 313

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

and as soon as the truss was ready, came & fixed it – wh’ proved efficient, &c – further change of medicine, & a visit yesterday, when he found me going on rightly, though the muscular strength was still on the ebb. One thing & the other have kept me scheming, but when renewed appetite returns, & bodily exercise taken up again with vigour, the ‘scheming’ will separate into thin air. Curiously enough, I’m not – as it were – down-hearted. The long aforesaids are as shoeinghorn to the following. For years back, time after time, I’ve had letters of advice, as to something to my advantage occurring, if I would help the proposed beneficent to information, &c, &c. Have always refused to in any way fall into under such entiticements [sic], & have kept silent. For, for many years back I’ve lent money to friends (& even to none such) but always under the terms, that if convenient to repay, well, but if not, the loan was to be a quite free gift – wh’ it generally turned out to be. Still, a curious case did happen many years ago, by a fellow to whom I’d lent money, writing to me many years after I’d even forgotten the matter, that his father had died & left him money, so that he repaid, with quite intelligible pleasure to himself. Just lately I’ve had 3 letters – referring I suppose to the same money hunt business, two of wh’ I ignored, but this morning came the inclosed in a note from Mrs Boyce – who is with her mother at Etampes; and as the writer is the biggest bore I ever met with, I feel disinclined to give him any foot hold here. This letter, marked No III, from Henry Wallis8 (he that Middleton & others at S. Ken (& other parts of the universe) always fled from) quoting ‘Daniel’, not of harp-&-lionsden-story, who was an historical student of Shakespeare, & will be at it still – doubtless.9 Now here is the painful part of it to me: as the reference is to stewards’ office, Gray’s Inn, would you put up with the nuisance of looking in there – and saying, the necessity of health at this time of my life, is to be free from all business worries, & that I ask you to see if there is anything in this kite flying worth paying attention to at all; for if so – & you still willing – I depute you to act for me in the matter.10 All I really dread is, that H.W, the biggest of bores, may sit in your office waiting-chair for the rest of his ungodly life. Now, do not meddle in the matter at all, if you think better, from your experience, to drop the thing altogether, as I am inclined. Now, you are not to come flying down here, other than at such time as wd give you pleasure. Had almost forgotten in this interminable catalogue, to add a pleasant item, namely that your brother Douglas came to see me on Sat: Novr 1, and seemed to like his visit – he had wheeled himself over from Ewell, & I walked by side of him for a mile or two on his way back. I hope his Mrs will be able to carry through without too much anxiety to all.11 I thought he looked stronger in health. Am now going to eat some of the fish provided for the deferred visit here as aforesaid. Yours, always honestly thankful, | Philip Webb.

314

1899–1902

Lord, how the glory of Caxtons comes under a cloud, after nearly 2 years of the best health the tenant can remember. Forgot to mention that the drawing, & twist of Leonardo’s horse’s head was very masterly. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/124-5

1 Edward Howard Marsh (1872–1953), civil servant and private art patron, entered the Colonial Office in 1896 as a private secretary to Joseph Chamberlain, and would become Winston Churchill’s private secretary in 1905, a post he retained for 23 years. Marsh encouraged many young artists, including Stanley Spencer and Paul Nash, and occupied chambers in Raymond Buildings, close to PSW’s own former home and office. 2 ‘Neville Lytton & his wife greatly appreciated your letter about the fire. Neville has met the blow with great courage. It came just as he was relieved of a load of anxiety about the operation, & he found it, compared with that, an easy burden. The site that WSB proposes for them is a hilltop beyond the Forest Cottage – but it depends on whether good water is procurable there.’ SCC to PSW, 12 November 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 56. 3 Elizabeth Lawrence joined WSB’s staff as his nurse in 1898, and stayed until his death in 1922. She came to exert considerable influence over him, which was resented by his wife and daughter. 4 See above, Letter 776, note 4. 5 HTT married Mary Elizabeth Powell in 1888. 6 For ‘demnition’, see above, Letter 842, note 4. 7 PSW’s medical practitioner, Sidney Matthews, of ‘The Gables’ in Crawley, was married to a granddaughter of Mark Lemon (1809–70), the founding editor of Punch. 8 For Wallis, see Vol. I, Letter 96, note 12, and also Letters 290–1. 9 Presumably Peter Augustin Daniel, author of Notes and Conjectural Emendations of Certain Doubtful Passages in Shakespeare’s plays (London: R. Hardwicke, 1870). Daniel worked as a clerk for the East India Company. 10 SCC annotation: ‘The money about which Webb was questioned turned out to be a loan by him to a brother of Charles & Kate Faulkner, who had gone bankrupt. It was recovered from the Receiver with J.R. Holliday’s help, the borrower being of Birmingham.’ This may have been Frank Faulkner, a brewer by profession. See letter following, note 4, and Vol. I, Letter 300. 11 Douglas Cockerell had married the craft jeweller, Florence Arundel (c. 1870–1912), in 1898.

851 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 13 November 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 13. Novr 1902. My dear fellows. Your never ending goodwill & active kindness are ever with me. There is no need for you to be “concerned” about me – for, when the poison of the chill has worked itself off, the muscular constitution I have built up here will again assert itself – for, never – that I can recollect, have I been so well as during the

315

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

last 2 years; of course, some of this success came from my resolution not [sic] longer to risk heavy brain strain, for ’tis almost certain some kind of paralysis would have claimed me for its own – and I think you both know what that must have meant. Curiously enough, this climate is not quite a suitable one for me, being relaxing. When I found that out, I was sure that all the possible exposure to all its changes – including that of damp, would be my chance, and to get muscular strength. The present mishap is hardly to be wondered at, for we have had a succession of storms of wind & rain from the S.W. & S.E, laden with heavy warm damp, & the damp charged with the autumn decay of an unusually heavy after growth of vegitation. [sic] For 2 or 3 days, while quietly at my work, the oppression of it was patent to me, and I must have absorbed immense quantities of its poison. In the nightly dreaming, which for half a dozen nights or so came together, the membrane of my nose being very sensitive, the scent of this wet rank greenery, coloured the wildest of dreams. I got a bag of lavender to change the scent, & to some extent it succeeded. Curiously, though the chill began to tell on my muscular system, it was chiefly in the legs, for the body, arms, &c, were but little effected. Item, triumphant, my excellently trained bowel system has not once failed me – but enough of this ‘Jabez - Inwards’.1 In your ‘weekend’ progresses, kindly keep a close tongue – Rottingdean & elsewhere; for as time goes on I shall myself tell all the necessary.2 Have staved off writing to my Winchester brother, for he is 3 years older than myself, and wd be coming here (an awkward journey) to no purpose but gratifying his good heart. I would prefer that both of you shd defer the looked for visits till my feathers begin to lie glossy again. Had a warning from the Arthur Caffin, that the site searching party is, after all, to be here tomorrow (Friday), so that I will pull myself as straight – as may be. Mrs Dickinson’s small boy is really unwell (stomach, no food stopping there) but he, also, I’ve put in Dr Matthews’ hands.3 The mother is kindness itself & full of helpfulness, if that be guided; for the judgment is – practically, nil. Thank you for turning in to Gray’s Inn. Your explanation made me laugh heartily, for ’tis just what I’d expected.4 One of the afore explained money-gifts was to Birmingham, in about ’88 or ’89 – but I wd lay claim to nothing from there. I must end somewhere, so ’tis here. | Your affectionate friend | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/126

1 Jabez Inwards (1817–80), an advocate of temperance. 2 SCC would stay overnight with GBJ in Rottingdean on 15 November. ‘After breakfast Lady B-J read me chapters 7 & 8 of the B-J life, dealing with the years 1855 & 1856, the latter called Annus Mirabilis with good reason. Intensely interesting & moving, & very well done’ (CD, 16 November 1902). The next day he stopped off at Three Bridges to visit PSW, whom he found rather unwell,

316

1899–1902 and anxious about the illness of Margaret Dickinson’s son. On the train back to London, SCC felt increasingly uneasy about him. See following letter, note 1. 3 See previous letter, note 7. 4 ‘I have been round to Grays Inn. The Chief Clerk spoke of you with great regard. He had ascertained that the man who enquired for you was not a solicitor, that his name was Willetts, with an address in Birmingham – the same man, though not the same address as that of letter No. 2. The probability is that the scalliwag of letter No I & that of letter No II got their information from the same source, namely some printed list or other, & as you have authorised me to investigate the matter I shall set enquiries on foot in Birmingham – & we shall see what comes of it.’ f. 56. See previous letter, note 10.

852 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 18 November 1902 !! Clouds. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 18 Novr 1902 My dear Fellows. I had S.C.C’s letter this morning, with the bottle of essence.1 Of course I could not give the latter to Mrs Dn for the boy till the doctor assented, but I’ll speak to him of it. The little fellow – considering his enforced abstinence, is rather better; for which I believe we have to thank this bitterly drying weather – for it is already helping me. About T.M.R, of this I much wish to talk over the matter with you, believing E.Ws executor’s hands will be free to act on that as other points.2 This being so, it seemed better at once for me to re-write the said “memoranda” for you both to read and consider, so that the items might – beyond the freedom of the verbal expression, have the advantage of many lightings up from conversation between now & the time it is acted on – so, I send it to you with this. When you are one or both here, you can also see the copy of the will to which these “memoranda” are to be connected. For Caxton’s sake, come here when either or both of you can come without inconvenience. Mrs Dn can easily do for the “like o’ you” as she has done before; but we were in luck last Sat: as it wd have been a doubly spoiled time if E.W. had come – Don’t you see. I’ve swum the ‘ford’ so often since S.C.C was here, that I’m not likely to call the limner Ducksford. ‘King! my dear Millais, King, crown on his head!!’ so might D.G.R have gibed. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/127

1 On his return to London from Caxtons, SCC arranged to send a bottle of Valentine Essence for Reggie Dickinson, as Judith Lytton had told him that this was the only thing that she was able to retain in her system when ill. SCC to PSW, 17 November 1902, BL Add 52761, f. 59.

317

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 2 ‘On my way home it occurred to me that your talk about TMR’s [Rooke’s] pecuniary future might have some connexion with your “list of instructions” to Walker. If this is the case perhaps you would think it suitable to direct that a certain sum should be spent on his already finished drawings for the benefit of a public gallery. This would have the triple advantage of putting money in his pocket, putting drawings in a gallery and of removing them from his overcrowded studio, besides other sentimental advantages which he would specially appreciate. Seeing that the available sum will decrease with every year of your life, it might be best not to fix the amount, but to name a fraction (a third or what not) of whatever sum (if any) may turn out to be available. This is how I advised May to deal with her property since it is all in stocks & shares and it is impossible for her to know what the value of them will be at her death.’ ff 59–60.

853 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 20 November 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. (Tom’s Hands are cold!)1 20. November. 1902. My dear fellows. Mr Bower, the mail-cart postman, bumped me up at 6.15 this morng to sign receipt for Reg: parcel. This was done under frigid digited difficulties, & a running questioning from good tempered Bower, while I was scrawling, as to ‘what that pair of candlesticks might be worth’? – to wh’, in my ignorance of which pair he meant, I said, O, 3£!! & we gave each other affectionate good morning. But, and before that, you were good – too good enough, to send me the A. Dürer & Rembrandt books; from which, when I have picked out the useful facts from the unutterable rubbish of them, will be helpful towards settling some speculations. This now, at all events. The Dürer, how he raises one up aloft, and makes life something like the spirit of one of the 4 gospels – light hearted, as one may say – and the Rembrandt: God Almighty, how one’s poor human soul goes down into the pit of ‘les miserables’, over the mighty work of this master of human gloom & hellish ugliness. Here, the boy progresses, and I’m much got back into my saddle-seat of former almost preter-natural good health; this bitter cold, but health-giving dry air, helping both of us. I can do again – with fair ease, some ½ day’s out of door muscular work, & appetite follows in train, bowels coming on in the running! S. Butler’s sonnet seems to me very unusually intellectually good, but – of course – lacking poetic force.2 “Thank you”, as J.R was in the way of saying. I was on luck’s high road to have thought of sending you the draft of the “memoranda”, for both of your notes are so pertinent, that at Walker’s talk here on Sat: it can be so helpful to all 3 of us. The whole, ‘Will’ as well as mema, can be redone for greater security and avoidance of bother to the poor ill-used ‘executor’. Possibly, S.C.C’s visit could follow on the next Sat:, but of that, anon? So far as any written memorial of me is concerned, I don’t care two crossed straws, whether it perceives, or has its nose in a horse’s nosebag – and there may 318

1899–1902

be fifty written for all I care, & each signed by the P. of Royal Accademy [sic] & R.I.B.A, helped by old Fletcher. “Lord what fools these mortals be”.3 Of course, any brief thing that W.R.L. might wish to write, no hurt to my feeling could come from such; save that he has a tendency to give to a way-worn modern’s strivings, overdue value – but the man Lethaby is of value, & what more in these days could be said for an endeavourer?4 ’Tis said in the life of Byron that his whole stormy passage was coloured by the accident of a slightly clubbed foot.5 Well, all my professional work is tainted with the feeling of the initial deformities of my intelligentce and I do not wish said club foot to be thrust before careless minds by help of my lame efforts in climbing the ladder of the art of building.6 You see, in the passage of ⅔ds of my life, I’ve had the unutterable boon of gaining the “inmost love”, of some 7 or 8 of the best of known human souls! Have I, at the end of it, any cause whatever of petulant complaint? These have been handshaking friends, to which have to be added the unnumbered works of genius enjoyed of those gone long before, but are yet with us. I’m thinking to use E.Ws & S.C.Cs 2 letters as pegs for flooring difficulties at our (E.W & mine) talk on Sat: There will have to be – after this late slight shaking of the hourglass of such wonderful health, as mine has been for 2 years, to see if some forecasting provision (recasting its nativity) of the Caxtons future cannot be come at; but that will not be needlessly tiresome. I’ve not heard if AI of the Caffables is any better. Got Holman to talk with me as to his trying to find some dependable man to come & help Mrs Dickinson, in case of my being laid by heels in bed – for she, good woman, has not the ghost of an idea of the organisation by which she is able to do her work without undue hindrance. You see, she is not country bred, & the miserable shanty-stops of 3. Bridges are more to her than the getting of wood, water, apples, flowers, &c, and all the forest country to boot – and I doubt if she ever saw the point of a jest in all her life; but she dearly loves a newspaper murder-drama; and is the essence of an industrious woman who does her proper work with mastery and effectiveness. She is a washerwoman, who goes at it with a 3 man power will – but, the children?? wh’ have always loomed, & now 2 years have passed!7 My stars, what postage stamps Fra Angelico could have designed – with a trumpet long enough to give satisfaction to Ed VII! Adieu for a while. | Yours, Philip Webb. I wrote a careful (rather hard to do) letter to my brother of Winchester, which I knew must upset him somewhat, for he is 3 years older than I am. He bore it better than expected, but of course cannot grasp the situation. He does not contradict my exposition of the cause of the chill. He also finds in medico-directories that Matthews the doctor here is a duly ‘qualified’ man. This weather, bitter though it be – seems (as well it might) to suit us, for it is dry; whereas before, the air was laden – saturated, with the blowing over rank wet herbage – say for 20 miles. 319

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

Matthews was here yesterday. He knew the “Valentine” Extract – but said its cost was prohibitory for his practice – as a recommendation: he of course advised the boy should take some once a day. Lately, the food has been keeping on the stomach, little though it be. Please put the bottle to my acct, for I’m glad to have it at hand. Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/128-9 1 ‘Poor Tom’s a-cold.’ King Lear, III,iv,147. 2 SCC may conceivably have sent a copy of the, as then, unpublished final sonnet (1902), ‘An Academic Exercise’ which was found in Samuel Butler’s notebooks and not published until 1912. It is quite possible that the sonnet was made available to SCC by his friend Henry Festing Jones (1851–1928), Butler’s biographer. 3 Puck, in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, III.ii.115. Fletcher may be Banister Flight Fletcher (1866–1953), the architect and architectural historian, joint author with his father, Banister Fletcher (1833–99), of A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method (1896). ‘Old Fletcher’ may not quite seem to describe him – he was only in his forties in 1902 – yet his father was already dead. 4 SCC annotation: ‘The question of a possible biography was afterwards discussed and Webb agreed that, if it had to be, Lethaby would be by far the best man for such a job.’ See note 6. 5 PSW may have had in mind a passage from Thomas Moore’s The Life Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, new edition (London: John Murray, 1866). ‘But the embittering circumstance of his life, – that, which haunted him like a curse, amidst the buoyancy of youth, and the anticipations of fame and pleasure, was, strange to say, the trifling deformity of his foot. By that one slight blemish (as in his moments of melancholy he persuaded himself) all the blessings that nature had showered upon him were counterbalanced.’ (p. 45). 6 ‘As to Lethaby you know that he writes nothing except under compulsion from within, and that if you were Phidias & Michael Angelo in one he would not raise his pen merely to please an editor. This makes it certain that if he were prompted to write – being the man he is, with his clear vision – he would write something true & wise and helpful – something that you would not be shocked to see Morris reading in the Elysian Fields!’ SCC to PSW, 21 November 1902, V&A, MSL/1958/689/130. 7 ‘In aftn went to see P.W. who seemed rather better but still very nervous & shaky. He explained to me his difficulties with Mrs Dickinson, with whom he does not get on so well as he did – the fact being that she is pining for the town.’ CD, 13 December 1902.

854 • To Jane Morris, 24 November 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 24 Novr ’02 My dear Janey. Your fair reading inspiriting letter, which I had by morning post, is a god-send to me; for the cold but bright sunny time we’ve had follow on the harder weather has now given [way] to a S.E wind carrying a hill mist, bathing the landscape in half hazy darkness. However, I habitually lay little account to all weathers here, whereas in London none of them could be fair.

320

1899–1902

You tell me the points of the cottages wh’ strike you most strongly, and their effect on you is just that I wd most like on me – breadth & extreme simplicity. The point you raise as to the traditional ball on the gables had occurred to me, but most of the design of the cottages, which arose out of the many ideas one turns over in design, resolved itself at last as it appeals both to you & me, a double consolation; for I had all along been afraid of a mimicry of the Manor building, which it could not equal, for the necessities of accommodation, situation, & purpose, of the cottages had to declare itself, and these had rather to join in with the variety of cottages in the street, of which your cottages form a part. I believe you will agree with me, that it will give an impression (this new building) of thorough sympathy with the different houses, larger, or smaller, with which it groups, and does not mock with futile imitation the peculiar qualities of the Manor. If, in the summer, you went and looked at the new Buscot buildings, I’m sure you will say they are fantastic, & wholly out of fitness for the peculiar countryside. To meet your wish, with which I sympathise, I propose to put one standard stone ball on the end of the great back gable on which the manor looks. This part of the design I had to take most pains with, & was more content than usual with its most pronounced effectiveness. Of course, not fit for the front on the road side, but in its bold projection from the main roof made it significant. As there is no chimney here to interfere with the birds’ full use of it the ball can be managed very well. Luckily – with your letter – came one from Jack, saying he would [be] here to talk matters over tomorrow (Tuesday) so that I shall have the advantage of his explanations. Anything put on the point of the two smaller abutting gables would only dwarf them. You were lucky the hounds did you little or no mischief. I am wholly with you as to the wisdom of going away to the isle of Wh Wight (?) for the worst of the winter, for I’m sure such a move has lasting value in it to you. Mrs Dickinson got over her attack by help of doctor very well, and is now less distressed by the activities belonging to her here, which an ordinary servant could not master. However, her little boy has been really unwell with some gastric affection, & lay without food for a week, but the doctor has pulled him round too. My hearty love to Jenny, of whom I hear when Walker & Cockerell have been with you. Your sincere old friend Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 22–3

321

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

855 • To George Washington Jack, 27 November 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. Novr 27. 1902. My dear Jack. After our most useful & very pleasant talk on Tuesday, Ive had time to look steadily at your piece of “Sermon on Mount” carving.1 Of course, not knowing Lethaby’s purpose of getting the work done by you, I can only judge of the effect of your excellent composition, and goodness of handling, with effectiveness of the secondary detailing, trees, idle boys, &c. It seems to me, the light for photographing was not taken enough on one side, to give you what I can see as must be excellent relief in the wood. Item. I do not think you have enough sketch notes of good drapery. The drapery in mediæval M.S.S is so skilfully a following of actual falls of stuffs, that in many cases the simplicity of the foldings is a foil to the complexity of the other work. Your weakest point is, I think, the even breaking up of surfaces of the work all over, in relief on the ground. There you have a criticism, which is all I could give without impudence, and I ask pardon even for that. The disposition of the primary, secondary, & tertiary figures, mixt up with capital tree forms, and incidental single figures is excellent. Especially do I like the two figures at the back of the Christ, they giving force to the great point of the design, & by their help you could have somewhat reduced the height of the C[h]ristus, & put a flat cloud or two over his head. Your skill in arranging & giving individuality to the congregation is beyond my power of my pen to say. The balanceing figure at the bottom, the shepherd resting against the rock, just composes the whole picture. The knuckle-bone boys have given me hint of what you could do with a reclining figure at the bottom of a subject – but of that anon.2 Inclosed is the paper of notes on the Kelmscott gable-ball, & the drains, which I think you will find help your memory. _______________ I am sending off today (but may not get it carried to the station ’till tomorrow) a few Caxtons apples. They are picked of the ripest of the yet sound fruit: if kept, they shd be watched, as a dainty unperce[i]vable grub may have got in on the calyx when stored, & may develope. If sign of decay appears, cut him open at once, & you may save ¾ of him. I doubt if any will be wripe (or wholesome) for eating raw till after Xmas, (it they keep fairly well?) but the fruit is in excellent condition to eat stewed with boiled rice, & some butter, or in dumplings. Am ashamed of the smallness of the number, & the largeness of the box. A large mouse had built his nest in it by minutely tearing up some brown paper, so that as

322

1899–1902

I lifted the box down from the shed roof – out he jumped. The box was perfectly clean, for he must have, outside, in the evening time – got his living – when the cat was probably full of young rat. As to the fewness of the apples, there are many poor people about here to whom we like to give a few cheering apples; as, poor folk, they get none other ways. Remembrance to the dame & the children | from Yrs | Ph. Webb. The India rubber is a pair of idols. V&A, AAD

1 This low relief carving of The Sermon on the Mount was designed by GWJ in 1902 for the pulpit of the church of All Saints, Brockhampton, in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, for which WRL was the architect. See the illustration of GWJ’s design, in Gaimster, p. 31. 2 He is evidently planning the WM carving surmounting the Kelmscott cottages (see the following letter).

856 • To Jane Morris, 7 December 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 7. Decr 1902. My dear Janey. Your letter of the 27th Novr set my mind at rest thanks to your ever willingness to fall in with my judgment, founded on long experience. Now, I’m quaking again. Even if you had not said so, I know you look on your work of the cottages as a real memorial to the in connection with the love of our “old man” for so many years with Kenelm’s-cote. Therefore often, & often again it has stirred my mind as to what & how to do this inoffensively, and yet clearly enough for the rudest to guess something of its meaning, & perhaps say ‘Ah, there is the stout back of the good old “Gaffer”.’ Having turned this last of present matters over in my mind ever since taking in hand the designing of the cottages, and mostly during my early solitary night & day walks here, it came into my mind the ring of the beautiful bed-valance poem: a piece of literature of brevity the swiftest, of English the sweetest, of diction the most perfect, and so touching, that it enlightens & softens my heart whenever I think of it. It begins on p. 268, vol: II of J.W.Ms ‘life’, and the line I use is the 10th, down, on p. 269 – thus, as I use it – “THE TOWN of the TREE” – and framed my rough scratch on it and the meanings it has in connection with the place, wh’ briefly means the busy life of various birds in the trees.1

323

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

I have made a rough tracing of my first scrabble, & send you the tracing. Of course it is only as a general guide to Jack, who longs, when spring & its longer light is with us to be carving it under one of the Kcote sheds, in the best stone, and now & again hoisting it to the place to judge of the effect when in position, as seen from below. He has lately carved for Lethaby (in too great haste) for his school, a piece of flat carving in oak, with many figures in it. I do not know the size of the original, but think it must have been 4 or 5 times larger than the reduced photo: – which I send with this for you to see what hard things he can do, and so skilfully (design as well as carving) even when time would not allow of the faults being corrected. To me, ’tis a wonderful piece of modern design & expression – in spite of all the faults. The same kind of difficulties would not occur in your stone carving for the design must be simpler and the handling sharply but rudely done. The size of the stone is 12 times larger than the tracing I send, (as you will see by the figured widths, &c, on it) and will be, when in its place, some 12 or 13 feet above the eye when standing nearly under it. My other wish was to give the meaning of it to the Manor; therefore introduced some remembrances of the ground there, looking south; enough for folk to say “there’s the cart shed, there the ‘pavillion’, and there the ‘inevitable chief cock in a wax’[”], &c.2 The nobly headed broad backed poet has thrown himself down in the foreground, & possibly the birds in the trees there & then told him to tune up. Now, my kindly friend, be quite free to me in giving your real mind as to its effect on you either for or against – without fear, or favour, or bias from friendship and tell me your inmost inwards about it. Till I know your mind, I cannot send it to Jack to shape some design from it in his way: (he is now in Scotland I think,) and send it back as soon as you conveniently can. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Let me know when you have to leave Kelmscote BL Add 45343, f. 26

1 ‘Foremost perhaps in beauty among these lyrics of later summer, and deserving to be reclaimed here from the obscure pages of the Catalogue of the fourth Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society, are the verses which he wrote for an embroidered hanging, designed and worked by his daughter May for his own bed, a fine piece of carved oak of the seventeenth century, in the Manor House at Kelmscott. “. . . Rest then and rest, / And think of the best | ’Twixt summer and spring, | When all birds sing / In the town of the tree, | And ye lie in me | And scarce dare move, | Lest earth and its love | Should fade away | Ere the full of the day. | I am old and have seen | Many things that have been; / Both grief and peace | And wane and increase. | No tale I tell / Of ill or well, / But this I say, / Night treadeth on day, /And for worst and best / Right good is rest.”’ Mackail, II, pp. 268–9. 2 The phrase suggests it was something WM had noticed and enjoyed about the territorial behaviour of the dominant farmyard cockerel. See also below, Letter 859, note 2.

324

1899–1902

857 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 9 December 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. My dear fellows. I shall expect one or other of you (not together) on Saturday, & perhaps the other may come on the following Sat: Mrs D. will be glad to see you.1 What a botheration I am to you. The diaries are apt to be sold out before the new year – that is why I did not reserve it for when I’m in the ‘Wen’ in Jany ’03. The diary is called – but tis a mere memorandum tablet, is entitled – thus – “Charles Letts’s Royal Octavo. Red Tablet. Red Diary. 1902 (this years) Price one shilling London.” (outside front page) – I can find no number. Opens, end on. Size, 6 inches x 9¾ inches. I got mine at Flints – a few doors opposite Fetter Lane – west of it, on S. side Fleet St. But they may have gone fashionable now, & only sell stationery. I am wholly content with the decision of you two & Proctor – and yea (& as even as may be, for Trin: Coll: Camb: – much preferable to Oxford.)2 Would it not be well in writing to ‘master’, warden, president or, or – To send him a note of that letter of W.Ms to me on pp. 306 & 307 to the Coll: head, asking him, (with Mackails consent) to print it in his catalogue, to shew how I came by such a prize? as they might have suspicions from a knownless man – only 37 years in Gray’s Inn!3 But this would be with you & Proctor. Let us pray, that it will be all set, & soon. I’m getting on well in this dry weather. The boy goes to school. I can’t answer for steady voice even now, for all the flesh off my bones has been consumed like the bear’s hump in hard-up time – Stop my chatter when you come. Yrs Philip Webb. Arthur Caffin is better, & back at his mill, &c. (No answer needed.) Holman is helping me to an occasional man for work abt here, now & then, or if I should be put to bed. P. 3 or 4 or 5. I take on the little Mg Leader till the new Year, when I pay up my newspaperman in [gap, sic] Thanks for D. News. I’ve enough of them now to kindle fires till then, unless you find some article in it I shd see. O loveliest of John Hebbs! V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/135

1 SCC visited PSW on 13 December. See above, Letter 853, note 7, and next letter, note 1. 2 ‘Proctor, after careful consideration, can think of no destination so good as Trinity Cambridge for the K.P. books. He says that they are certain to be well cared for there, so Walker or I will write & put your offer before the librarian.’ SCC to PSW, 8 December 1902, BL Add 52761, ff. 62–3.

325

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III 3 Each volume of PSW’s set of Kelmscott Press presentation copies given to Trinity College, Cambridge, included a specially-printed copy of WM’s letter of 27 August 1894, which had been included in Mackail, II, pp. 306–7. See Vol. II, Letter 490, note 3.

858 • To Sydney Cockerell, 16 December 1902 Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex 16 Decr 1902. My dear fellow. Your letter of 14th had to be let lie till I was quiet after rejoicing over its tenderness with a ‘sal’vage old man. ’Twas prettily, & I’m sure heartily written, and bears fruit in me accordingly.1 The one item of our companionable talk on Sat: on which I was assured, was that of judgment on art matters: for ever since being able to hold a pencil and give over scribbling, my whole being (not quite all) has been influenced by art of every kind. When skating over such thin ice, which mostly went to colour the rest of my long-winded gabbling, the speech was tentative, hanging on your forbearance for its venturous tone. None but kind, believe me. In answer to your suggestion as to the labelling of the memorial carving on the road face of the Kelmsk.tt [sic] cottages: of course it could not be decided on now. My present reason for wishing to abide with by the “Town of the Tree”, as the briefest of full meaning enigmas, is, that the lovely poem was at the back of my mind when thinking of what to design for the carving.2 As Jack is a ‘master’ at bird indication with the chizel, he will cram as many in the seemingly overhanging elm as he can have patience to do3 – and you know, the line next above that title, is “When all birds sing.” Well, the ‘old man’ has squatted & is listening to said throats. I have seen him in all his moods at Kelmscott ever since he took the house, so that my design is full in its meaning of all the lovely poem enfolds – but let this point stand where it is at present, but your taking an interest in it quite gladdens me. O dear me! what a bad letter I read to you on Sat: for the Librarian – the next morning it was full of maggots. Therefore I redrafted, & deleted much; inclosed is the last draft, the copy having been sent to Camb:4 Shew it to Walker, & he can put it in his pocket for Sat: To instance myself, a quite well known creature inside Caxtons, I’ve had several red herrings dragged by fate-trailed across my the path. The first, of course being pleasant women: the second (I think) was a trifle of art ambition. The third (twas in those good wine drinking days) was a too great a liking for the stimulant

326

1899–1902

to quiet my nervousness. All these I sat upon. To the good impulses later on, the greatest attraction was the love of all mankind, and a heavenly trust in the still unblasted universe, to wish for rest with its representation of the 999 parts of the inspiring in life over above the gropings of greed, (&c) in the seemingly insignificant items of what I could grasp in this exciting life of despair & hope here:* but enough of I. [in margin] * a very rum sentence! Having no fear of your future, because you have wits, only makes my heart hang on every step you take, as if my minute leverage could keep my friend upright, according to the light wh’ is with me.5 “Thank you”, be dismissed between us, I know when my efforts are seen into without any customary form of word-expression. Adieu, | Yours | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/139

1 ‘I was much touched by what you said yesterday about the value to you of your friends of the younger generation, myself included. Of course we know well enough what relation we bear to your great companions no longer living, whose places no one can fill – but in our smaller hearts we hold you very dear as our guide & captain & it will always be a happiness to us to feel that you prized our devotion & that in little ways we were able to be of service to you.’ SCC to PSW, 14 December 1902, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/136. 2 ‘I have found a copy of WM’s beautiful ‘Under an Elm tree’ and I am enclosing it, as I am not sure whether you remember it. It seemed to me when I looked at your design yesterday that it exactly illustrated & is itself illustrated & illuminated by this piece of writing. The title ‘Under an Elm tree’ has moreover gained a new & pathetic significance from the fact that it is under an elm tree that W.M. now lies. Would you, for these reasons, think it well to substitute this title for the one that you have chosen?’ See above, Letter 856. 3 PSW’s high estimate of GWJ’s skill was shared by other colleagues. Of a low relief plaster panel of seagulls (now at Cheltenham), the architect Charles Canning Winmill, who owned this panel, later wrote ‘These wings are the most perfect pieces of modelling that I possess. Jack during the last war used to spend hours on the embankment sketching the gulls.’ Gaimster, p. 54. 4 The librarian at Trinity College, Cambridge, was Robert Sinker (1838–1913). 5 ‘As to my strayings from the path I will not forget your admonition, but it is not really my tendency to accept hospitalities from swelldom that is the rock ahead, or at any rate the chief rock – but rather my inclination, coupled with the opportunity, for laying up treasures upon earth, such as manuscripts & Rossetti drawings – though I always try to regard myself rather as trustee & curator of such things than as their owner. I perceive however that a camel cannot go through the eye of a needle, & that without possessing much money I am in danger of becoming a rich man. You can tell me what is to be done next time I see you. There are so many pros & cons! As to the Rossetti I believe I have not even said thank you – but you know what the drawing is & will be to me . . .’ For the DGR painting, see above, Letter 729, note 2.

327

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

859 • To George Washington Jack, 23–24 December 1902 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 23 Decr 1902. My dear Jack. Have been sawing wood, & can’t write small. The dreaded thing for the Kelmscott cottages has been faced at last. Of what I could make of it, I send the tracing to you, the same which Mrs M. has seen. There being good time in front of you for consideration – in, and on preparation, and carving. Mrs M. has given her approval – but the sketch, as you see, must necessarily be too vague for her to realise it in the stone, & up in its place, nor how much less assertive it must be there, and done in lowish relief. Now you may think of your translation, for I could only make a pencil picture of it, instead of an indication of the different grades of relief in perspective. You see, the meaning of the thing is this. The old man had come from the road across the Close (where the cottages now are) and had plumped down, after his wont, when in site [sic] of the garden palings, &c; hearing the chatter & song of the many birds he loved so well, and conceived that beautiful poem (given in II vol: of Mackail’s life of him) wh’ May Morris embroidered on the vallance [sic] of her father’s bed. Whenever I considered the subject of the importunate “memorial” – that wonderful lyric poem was in my ears.1 “Town of the Tree,” marks the brief name of the building, and the gist of the picture is the line just above the words in the poem – linking them together. So, as you are a “dab” hand at birds you can put as many on the tree-foliage masses as you may have the patience for – of course, all rudely enough done, fittingly for weathering & your material, [2 or 3 words obliterated] all continuous drip being carried off by the covering mouldings of the panel hood, &c. Now what I ask of you is, to take this design of mine as your guide, make your notes at Kelmscott of the real things indicated,* and transform them into relief on stone in your way, so as to tell rightly from below – all of which you understand better than I do. *Not in any way for imitation beyond my memory, as shewn in the design, but for decorative natural (real) effect. You see, I was obliged to shade the drawing for explanation, but really, only the figure in the foreground, & the overlapping lumpings of tree foliage will cast any shadow, (on the N. too) and the nearest trunk of tree will be against the waggon shed, perspective giving all the effect. You can make play with your good herbage where the old man is resting, with clean cut lines for the distances in the ground, and possibly with the Byzantine-kind of drill-holing to make parts more effective at the distance – say, also, between the spokes of wheels, shafts &c of the waggon, & other places.

328

1899–1902

But I want the carving & the manner of it to be yours. I can lend you some Byzantine capitals in photo[gra]phs: and Italian photos: of pictures in relief, which would make you sit up with their effectiveness. I say, do the cock with vigour, for you see he is in a “wax”, as W.M. wd have said, – at some young cockerell’s [sic] tricks with the Harem!2 Walker has lots of photos: of W.M – and I fancy one with the back towards the looker-on. Let me recommend getting a mortar board, & sticking some nails in it, to raise with clay or stucco the general masses of projection of relief, enough to be set up on the building and guide your work. The roughest hint from that in situ wd be of much help. Let me know what you think of all this, for I’m tired of writing it with unsteady hand. I may see you though before you next go to Kelmscott; Mrs Morris is gone to the Isle of Wight – but Jenny wd be there to welcome you, & perhaps your time may be in holiday time. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I had Lethaby here last night so failed in getting this posted till today – 24 Decr. He spoke very hopefully of your carving,3 and has given a more than usually good word of my design for the ‘memorial’. Please to keep the inclosed tracing, (pasting it for use on some white mill-board) it may be helpful to me in future. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 856, note 1. 2 See above, Letter 856, note 2. 3 See above, Letter 855, note 1.

860 • To Sydney Cockerell, 30–31 December 1902 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 301 Decr ’02. (could not post it) My dear fellow. You would be just the right man here on Sat: – so come – for some really human talk will go well for my condition; for at present I am three parts disabled by lumbago. I suppose it is a follower-on of the chill with recurring damp air. Had to send for the Medico again. He is giving me counteracting medicine to excess of acid, &c. wh’ has also set my bladder going with excess of water. Am myself obeying instructions – am really not in bad spirits.1

329

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME III

O dear me, how you would have laughed if you had been at a scene last Sat: when Winmill & Weir turned up unannounced, & on my opening the door to them my face & voice announced dismay, wh’ so frightened Winmill that he did not recover for the rest of the time. Mrs Dickinson was cloaked & bonneted to take the children to an Xmas feast & show at Crabbet House; then there was a to do with Mrs D, who began stripping, but I shouted NO, you shall go. Put everything there on the table, and go to time. Poor Winmill: It seems post &c wd not let them warn me. I did the best I could in my limping state; but the mishap was a twister – for the food was a ‘scratch lot’, & none the much of it – but the 3 of [us] turned-to & made the best of it, & I got Mrs Dn off, before. She is looking for you on Sat: Ah, my good friend, ’twas prettily kind of you to in so pleasantly taking my impertinent talk with you, where even an Angelico-angel would have trodden gently. There was true love at the bottom of my words, which must have helped you to stand the savaging even of an old man.2 Your energy is worth so much to you that, wherever you find you must go, it will stand you in good stead – though I quite understand your point – true or not so – of having no “original gift” – but you have not that horrid bar to comfort of mind which was mine, a tumbling into the companionship, when I was some 24 or 25 years of age, that in a condition of almost total ignorance, amongst younger fellows charged with the foundations of knowledge. Sometimes my bitterness of soul was bad indeed – but I cannot write more, being uneasy in body, with cramp in my fingers – so more on Sat: – if you like to try it on. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. 3 Have you seen Lethaby’s book of London? ’Tis a master-piece – but more of it anon. What a bible your’s is! Have room enough in your bag to take it back, for I’m “no easy in my mind” whilst it is here.4 You may call for “hash” on Saturday but you shall have Newbuildings pheasant. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/140

1 ‘Went to Three Bridges with Walker & Dolly, & spent the aftn with Philip Webb while the others went to Rushmore [Cottage] which Walker is taking for a few months. P.W. had had a bad attack of lumbago & was looking very old & ill, but he was cheery & most affectionate. I walked alone to the station, an unusual thing, & wondered whether it would be so always in future, & for how long.’ CD, 3 January 1903. For Rushmore Cottage in Worth, see Vol. IV, Letter 868, note 4. 2 See above. Letter 858, note 5. 3 W.R. Lethaby, London before the Conquest (London: Macmillan, 1902). 4 SCC annotation: ‘The bible I lent Webb was a 13th century manuscript.’

330

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB

Webb’s pen and ink sketch, ‘Sniffing Lion’ (date unknown), formerly owned by Sydney Cockerell (see Letter 974)

[Reproduced by kind permission, William Morris Society and Museum]

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB Edited by John Aplin Volume IV 1903–1914

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Editorial material and selection © 2016 John Aplin; individual owners retain copyright in their own material All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Webb, Philip, 1831–1915, author. [Correspondence. Selections] The letters of Philip Webb. volumes cm Contents: volume 1. Letters 1864–87 — volume 2. Letters 1888–98 — volume 3. Letters 1899–1902 — volume 4. Letters 1903–14. ISBN 978-1-84893-498-6 (Set) — ISBN 978-1-315-63964-2 (Set) — ISBN 978-1-138-76144-5 (vol. 1) — ISBN 978-1-138-76145-2 (vol. 2) — ISBN 978-1-315-64257-4 (vol. 2) — ISBN 978-1-138-76146-9 (vol. 3) — ISBN 978-1-315-64256-7 (vol. 3) — ISBN 978-1-138-76147-6 (vol. 4) — ISBN 978-1-315-64255-0 (vol. 4) 1. Webb, Philip, 1831–1915—Correspondence. 2. Architects—Great Britain—Correspondence. I. Aplin, John, editor. II. Title. NA997.W4A3 2016 720.92—dc23 2015035179 ISBN: 978-1-8489-3498-6 (Set) eISBN: 978-1-315-63964-2 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-1387-6147-6 (Volume IV) eISBN: 978-1-315-64255-0 (Volume IV) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

VOLUME IV 1903–1914 Introduction

vii

Letters 1903–1914

1

Index

319

v

This page intentionally left blank

INTRODUCTION

We were talking together at lunch of today’s anniversary [of Morris’s death] – six years already flown. You came much into our thoughts and into the conversation, you who were Morris’s friend when Walker was a small boy & long before I was born. We spoke of you as filling much of the place that Morris left empty, and as in that way representing to us a whole race of giants, of whom there are now so few survivors. (SCC to PSW Letter 846, note 1)

Sydney Cockerell had an acute sense of history. A combination of self-will and good fortune meant that he befriended both Ruskin and Morris, the two heroes of his early life, and also came to know the wider circle of Morris’s acquaintances. But the special affection Cockerell felt for Webb was different in kind. They knew each other long enough for a close friendship to develop, and some years before his death Webb was already being assigned his own honoured place within Cockerell’s Pantheon of great men. If this systematic memorialising may seem mawkish and sentimental, the rigorously secular and rational Cockerell would not have thought it so. For him, Webb was indisputably a man of real stature, and one who did not need to wait for the validation of posterity. For W.R. Lethaby too, the greatness was to be measured not by the body of work alone, but in its relation to the unwavering integrity of the life as lived. In his subtly compelling biography of Webb this is perhaps what he meant in describing it as a study of ‘the architect as hero’, and as being prompted by ‘uncritical admiration and reverence’.1 Lethaby was himself an architect of considerable gifts, a modest and reticent man yet one of wide learning and commanding scholarship, committed to improving the quality of craft education in his roles as joint director of the Central School of Arts and Crafts and as professor of ornament and design at the Royal College of Art. His warm friendship with Webb stretched back to 1893 when he joined the committee of the SPAB and became one of the regulars who went on after the Thursday meetings for supper at Gatti’s on the Strand, and although it is unfortunate that none of his surviving letters from Webb can be dated earlier than May 1903, he figures many times in the correspondence before then. Webb enjoyed Lethaby’s company, and if he stood a little in awe of his erudition vii

INTRODUCTION

he appears not to have felt anything of the intellectual inferiority that could inhibit him occasionally during his own younger years when in the company of Morris and Burne-Jones. He enjoyed Lethaby’s success and admired him without qualification, and upon his being appointed Surveyor to the Fabric at Westminster Abbey in 1906 must have rejoiced that the job had been put in such safe hands, although Webb’s first response was to express concern at the extra responsibilities placed upon Lethaby, and to offer whatever support he could. ‘I believe I can give you a shoulder to lean upon should you need such a prop; so – as soon as you may, do come & have a comfortable talk, while the things belonging to the subject are running in my head . . .’ (Letter 1021) In the first years of his retirement to Sussex, a consultation with Walker as his executor, and with Cockerell as sympathetic adviser, resulted in Webb anointing Lethaby as his future biographer: Of course, any brief thing that W.R.L. might wish to write, no hurt to my feeling could come from such; save that he has a tendency to give to a way-worn modern’s strivings, overdue value – but the man Lethaby is of value, & what more in these days could be said for an endeavourer? (Letter 853) This was praise indeed and even something of a volte-face for a man who had so resolutely avoided public utterances about his own work. One might too easily take at face value Webb’s hint that he saw Lethaby as a safe pair of hands, but he had read enough of Lethaby’s serious scholarly output to know that whatever he might write about his own life and work would be done with measured judgment and an intelligent sympathy. A few weeks after conceding the possibility of his biography being written, he opened up a little more fully to Cockerell: To instance myself, a quite well known creature inside Caxtons, I’ve had several red herrings fate-trailed across the path. The first, of course being pleasant women: the second (I think) was a trifle of art ambition. The third (twas in those good wine drinking days) was a too great a liking for the stimulant to quiet my nervousness. All these I sat upon. To the good impulses later on, the greatest attraction was the love of all mankind, and a heavenly trust in the still unblasted universe, to wish for rest with its representation of the 999 parts of the inspiring in life above the gropings of greed, (&c) in the seemingly insignificant items of what I could grasp in this exciting life of despair & hope here: (a very rum sentence!) but enough of I. (Letter 858) In 1940, Cockerell lent his letters from Webb (including this one) to J.W. Mackail to read, who was left with the impression of ‘a profoundly unhappy man; of one who suffered from youth onwards from what is now called an inferioritycomplex’.2 This is hard to reconcile with what we know about Webb from the body of his correspondence as a whole, but Mackail did have insider knowledge, from his privileged (though not necessarily impartial) position as Burne-Jones’s viii

INTRODUCTION

son-in-law. Cockerell responded – unfortunately that letter is lost – to which Mackail made a further, intriguing observation: Thanks for your very interesting letter. There is much more which could not be said about Webb – things, in the Latin phrase, sacro digna silentio. The blinds were deliberately drawn down over them in Lady BurneJones’ Memorials – and also in my life of Morris. They will remain so. (Letter 958, note 6) The move to Caxtons saw Webb settling quickly into the new routines of rural living, and he seemed to take pleasure in the daily physical tasks of cutting wood and drawing water from the surprisingly deep well. He boasted to friends of uninterrupted good health, and of not having known a day’s illness since leaving London. Lengthy walks around the quiet lanes and in Worth Forest were an essential part of his daily regime. He was able to encounter nature directly once more, in Raymond Buildings this having been limited to admiring the lofty trees of Gray’s Inn gardens and watching the activity of rooks, sparrows and starlings from his windows. During his final years, Webb continued to value his later friendships as strongly as those he had formed in his earlier life, and the letters in this concluding volume convey a serenity which only increased as the years passed. Sadly, the untroubled health of the first years did not last, and through 1903 he was much weakened by a recurrence of the back pain and other severe rheumatic symptoms which had troubled him in the past. It made him consider leaving Caxtons for a more invigorating climate, but he settled for spending the winter months near the sea in Rottingdean in lodgings found for him by Georgiana Burne-Jones, from where he could walk the Sussex Downs. He returned to Caxtons noticeably improved in his physical strength, but in the years that remained to him there are troubling references to failing memory. One final building project belongs to this last period of his life, bringing to a satisfying closure work left incomplete nearly 30 years earlier. When he had designed and overseen the construction of St Martin’s Church, Brampton in the 1870s, insufficient funds available at that time meant that instead of a bell tower, a temporary roof had instead been provided. Towards the end of 1904, the Earl of Carlisle (George Howard) wrote announcing that the church authorities now planned to finish the work, whereupon Webb insisted that George Jack should be put solely in charge so that the original tower design could be carried out or modified as Jack desired. In fact, Jack consulted closely with Webb throughout the project, and their frequent exchanges offer us yet more evidence of the care and consistency of Webb’s professional judgments. By his last few years, the moments of forgetfulness had developed into something more serious, and he began to experience episodes of confusion which modern medicine would probably regard as indicative of vascular dementia. The symptoms were intermittent, but there was a pattern of slowing-down in his responses. In addition, he was quite badly injured at the end of 1913 when he was out walking and knocked down by a cyclist who failed to stop to assist him. ix

INTRODUCTION

On 23 December, Margaret Dickinson wrote to tell Cockerell that ‘he was very much better yesterday & while Mr Walker was here, but after he had gone he was wanting to go home again & said he had never been in this house before, & how long was I keeping him here. He did not sleep but was quiet, so Alice & I will have a sad Christmas.’3 Shortly before this, Cockerell had told Lethaby of visiting Caxtons, and of managing to take a long walk with Webb. ‘He spoke affectionately of you, as he always does. He seemed & looked very well, but Mrs Dickinson told me that he sleeps a good deal in his chair. One of these days he will go out like a spent candle, & we shall have only the memory of him for our support.’4 Exactly a year later, Lethaby recorded the rate of decline. I went down to see P.W. on Saturday at Mrs Dickinson’s suggestion. I hardly think he knew me at first and when I spoke of Jack he asked who he was. Yet it was rather fading of the faculties than estrangement & when we sat at tea & got warmed up he seemed nearly his recent self. He would go a little way on the road with me and was much easier about it & about going back sooner than ever before. Mrs D’s son followed and he got back quite safely. Mrs D is clearly very anxious and has again to keep him from dressing at night & the like. She said “if it had been anything else she could bear it better”. He knew about this terrible war but I passed it by of course.5 Cockerell was summoned to Caxtons when it was evident that Webb was close to death, and later recorded the end on 17 April 1915. ‘At 6.30 P.W. died peacefully – his breathing becoming weaker till it ceased. It was the first time that I had been actually present at a death (when Morris died I was in the next room) & I found it, at any rate in the case of an old man, a natural event attended with no horror.’6 When the RIBA proposed to acknowledge the death by a resolution of ‘regret and condolence’ he wrote to the secretary, urging that they should refrain from giving formal expression to any such feelings. He died very full of years, after a strenuous and noble life, during which he did with his might whatever thing, great or small, his hand and heart found to do – shirking nothing and never swerving from the very highest ideals, whether as an architect, as an artist or as a man. Those who were privileged to know him intimately are quite unable to express their admiration for his great and heroic qualities. . . . For the above reasons regret and condolence, which might have been fitting if he had died in middle life, are wholly out of place. Congratulation, exultation, thankfulness, veneration are the proper notes – and the only appropriate resolution is that we should all strive to follow in his footsteps.7 Some months later, he reflected on this close to an era, recalling Morris’s words of affectionate admiration: I was privileged to be [present] when the end came. But he, like the rest, had lived manfully and finished his work, and I lament for none of them x

INTRODUCTION

but only praise them. It was Morris who said of Webb that he was the best man that he ever knew. On July 10 Emery Walker and I took his ashes to Uffington and scattered them on the windswept turf that covers the White Horse hill, so dear to both these heroes. It seems almost certain that Cockerell had been the principal influence in getting Webb to agree to the possibility of an eventual biography, and in guiding him towards recognising that Lethaby was the man to do it and that this should be put in writing to Walker, as executor. There is evident relief in Cockerell’s diary note once ‘P.W. wrote most reasonable & satisfactory letters about a possible biographical note by Lethaby, &c’.8 Cockerell and Lethaby had coined their own affectionate name for their friend, though one which perhaps they kept for their private use. They often referred to him as ‘Webboni’, which itself may have been an alternative to the name by which Cockerell addressed Webb in his correspondence, for his letters always begin ‘Dear Signor Filippo’, which was probably how Webb was habitually greeted by Branca, their favourite Italian waiter at Gatti’s, whom they all called ‘Ticino’. Whatever the source, it must be more than coincidence that ‘Webboni’ neatly fuses the names Webb and Boni, recognition from two of Webb’s close confidants of the transformative importance of that first meeting in 1885 on the scaffolding of the Ducal Palace in Venice.9 The full extent of our debt to Cockerell regarding the still invaluable first biography has not previously been understood. Without his persistence and encouragement it is doubtful whether Lethaby would ever have seen the work through to completion, for during the war years he appears to have suffered from depression and constantly needed encouragement to continue. Even before Webb died, Lethaby seems to have had doubts as to whether he was the man for the task – ‘I am of the kind that engagements paralyse. You dont necessarily mean more than a short thing do you?’10 – a reluctance which Cockerell endeavoured to counter. I am delighted to have your good account of our adored P.W. Of course you can only do what you feel moved to do – but he himself said that he could not object to your writing something about him as you would do it so very well. This is as near as he could get to saying that he would like it exceedingly! Other people – Jack or myself – could write dull well intentioned correctitudes about him. You alone of our circle have the gift & power & insight to call up some of his wonderfulness for posterity – & for the young students of the present day. Short or long, whatever you do about him will be vivid, arresting & full of deep-seeing comprehension of the man. You simply must do it. I have heaps & heaps of letters & so have other people.11 Just a week after Webb’s death he tackled Lethaby once more, reminding him of the richness of the materials that would be placed at his disposal: And now about the memoir – how do you feel concerning it? The fact that Webb cheerfully agreed to your doing it, in spite of all his self-effacing xi

INTRODUCTION

tenets, was perhaps the greatest of the many great pats on the back that you received from him. I never went to Caxtons without his speaking of you in terms of affectionate admiration. If you are able to make the thing a preoccupation of your leisure hours it will drive away some of the war bogeys & you will do it with far more insight and understanding than anyone else could bring to such a task. . . . Of course there are heaps & heaps of splendid letters – & there is Jack within reach for achitectl details, and there are many other friends at hand. I believe you have already built up some part of the structure from conversations. I spent Friday at Caxtons with Walker overhauling the papers & put a quantity of your letters into an envelope to be returned to you. We found a few letters from Morris & Rossetti which looked interesting. Walker, who inherits everything except the cash (with an injunction to give mementos to friends) carried them off to read at his leisure. We found also, as you might imagine, many very beautiful drawings and studies.12 Lethaby’s reply was cautiously hopeful: I have been churning it over in my inner engines with some doubt, but today begin to think it might be taken up without protestation. What I fancy I see is something not long & with as many illustrations as may be not to destroy the moderateness of the cost. I wd like it to reach architects, & hand on as far as might be his mind on building. Philip Webb. A Modern Architect sort of thing. I find I have notes (few & very scrappy) of the last years at Grays Inn, which might weave together into conversations. . . .What do you think of this?13 He started by planning the section dealing with the founding of the SPAB – ‘I am beginning (out of order of course but I can only begin so) with an account of W. and Antiscrape – if the ideas wh. Morris & he worked out could be put down he wd like that & it stands for more of his gt interests’14 – and also read through letters and shared his thoughts with Cockerell. They discussed the range of Webb’s reading, noting that he appreciated authors ‘outside the fence that Morris put round his reading – just as his musical enthusiasms & his interest in the late renaissance (M. Angelo, Wren &c) were not shared by Morris’.15 But as the war proceeded, Lethaby’s depressive tendencies deepened, and he found himself unable to work, not even on Webb. ‘[I] quite started with a little spurt for a week, but the clouds descended again & everything is blocked off black.’16 Cockerell

xii

INTRODUCTION

could only hope that Lethaby might be able to find some solace by surrounding himself with mementoes of their old friend, and in thoughts of former days. ‘Do keep Webb before you. He is a good nerve-steadier, & you must be his apostle.’17 Lethaby was able to pick things up again after the war, but was disheartened when no publisher was forthcoming for the book, which led to the content first appearing as a series of articles in The Builder in 1925. Its eventual appearance in book form in 1935 came only after his death. Webb was not an overtly religious man in any conventional sense, although he seems to have sympathised with the kind of views expressed by Ernest Renan, who in Vie de Jésus (1863) espoused the notion of the historical reality of Jesus, rather than a belief in his divinity. This perhaps explains his assertion to William Hale White that he was ‘a lover of Jesus of Nazareth’ (Letter 622), even though he probably would not have called himself a Christian. He found deep content instead in an almost pantheistic embracing of the inevitable cycle of birth – growth – blossoming – decay, and felt his place in it. That is the message of his life and work, and it was something he endeavoured to impart to aging or sick friends, that there was joy to be found in accepting one’s lot and understanding one’s place in the larger picture. In encouraging William Hale White, who suffered from bouts of depression and physical pain in his own last years, Webb’s message is always the same – look about for you for consolation. Sad as your note . . . was, I rejoiced, in a way – that you could impart to your old friend a little of the burden which oppressed you . . . and I write now with the remembrance of yesterday’s pride of earth & sky, and today’s glowing repetition of it. . . . Well, if you should not be able [to come next week] let me know & I will come to you and [we] will rejoice over all the colours nature can shew us in May, with the sun to shew even the minutest secrets of beauty. (Letter 1048) And then this, at a time of personal sadness, after he has attended the funeral of his elder brother in Winchester: [T]he good old brother died . . . in his 84th year, and we buried him . . . in Winchester Cemetery. Even while the funeral service was proceeding, my attention wandered to the outlook, from the hill of white stone memorials, to one of the loveliest views over the vale between, & the higher hills beyond – a scene of perfect beauty. . . . So, you will see, or fancy me in this lovely weather (barring heat & drought) pondering over the ways and woes of life, and of the intense beauties this earth has, of making us forget the opposites; and yet, on my field path of walking, I can sing myself into a peace of mind . . . (Letter 1100) Whatever else was lost to him, his capacity to respond to the beauty of natural things remained until the end. In the final brief note he sent to Emery Walker in

xiii

INTRODUCTION

July 1914, as Europe stood on the edge of war, he indicates for one last time the value he placed on the company of a few close friends, and his wanting to share with them the timeless beauties of an English countryside, so soon to be tested by the storms gathering across the English Channel: ‘Please to come on Saturday, by train . . . and cheer me; and see the yellowing cornfields’ (Letter 1119).

Notes 1 Lethaby, p. 1. At one stage, he proposed ‘Philip Webb. The Architect as hero’ as his title. WRL to SCC, ?February 1922, BL Add 52731, f. 222. 2 JWM to SCC, 5 April 1940, BL Add 52734, f. 97. 3 Margaret Dickinson to SCC, 23 December 1913, William Morris Society and Museum, Hammersmith. 4 SCC to WRL, 17 December 1913, BL Add 52731, f. 78. 5 WRL to SCC, 16 December 1914, BL Add 52731, f. 97. 6 CD. 7 SCC to Ian MacAlister, 30 April 1915, BL Add 52731, f. 104. 8 CD, 21 November 1902. 9 See Introduction to Volume II. 10 WRL to SCC, 2 November 1913, V&A NAL MSL/1958/690/227. 11 SCC to WRL, 3 November 1913, BL, Add 52731, f. 76. 12 SCC to WRL, 25 April 1915, BL, Add 52731, ff. 100–1 13 WRL to SCC, 29 April 1915, BL Add 52731, f. 103. 14 WRL to SCC, 5 May 1915, BL Add 52731, f. 105 15 SCC to WRL, 2 August 1915, BL Add 52731, f. 114. 16 WRL to SCC, 20 December 1917, BL Add 52731, f. 171. 17 SCC to WRL, 21 December 1917, BL Add 52731, f. 172.

xiv

LETTERS 1903–1914

861 • To George Washington Jack, 8 January 1903 Caxtons. Worth by Crawley. Sussex. 8. Jany 1903. My dear Jack. I say most unwillingly – please defer your visit till I’m myself (more or less) again. The chill which had me for itself at the end of autumn, & was nearly got through successfully, left a tail with a sting in it. I’m laid low & closed indoors by the painful rheumatic lumbago, wh’ followed on, and is wearyful indeed. The weather, of unutterably relaxing quality, (my only foe here) abides with extraordinary persistence, & I’ve made little or no way as yet, though a good doctor is doing his best for me.1 Fortunately I had just found an outdoor willing & capable help, otherwise Caxtons wd have been in “parlous” condition, with no water to drink & no wood to burn, &c, &c, &c. I can write no more – even this is an effort. Will let you know when the tables are turned. Yours Philip Webb. d All letters are awaiting that event for being ans . V&A, AAD

1 For Dr Sidney Matthews, see Vol. III, Letter 850, note 7.

1

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

862 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 12 January 1903 Pencil Caxtons. 12 Jany 1903 My dear fellows – Cs letter of Jany 7 and the parcel of books – are a comfort to me. Can but hope you guessed they wd reach here safely.1 I seem to make little or no way. My days are mostly spent in dozing, for writing is an abomination to me; for stupidity has my head on its lap – and aches and pains, from dull to acute, have my body, with something like ease in between.2 I read that admirable “Art Wealth & Literature” [sic], with wonder & satisfaction, for ’tis such a clear & penetrating statement. The book is pleasant to handle and is a good addition to W.Ms lot.3 Thank you for the Jeanne of Arc.4 I shall like it, when I really can read, immensely, having only as yet tried the Introduction – can read only by candlelight & then not much. Hope you can find enough excuse for my silence – I cannot. But, illness is not good for me! This sharp frost of last night & today may help: if the weather gets back again, I shall go with it – for that is the source of ill. Yours too poorly | Philip Webb. I think the printed letter for the Trinity Coll: books is excellent in all its ways.5 When writing to W.S.B. please recognise the kindness about the wine. There is more of the old Madeira, but I do not think wine helps me at all. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/141

1 ‘I am sending you the new Morris book, & also the very interesting Joan of Arc book in case you should want a change from Fors Clavigera, or rather a continuation of it, for both these books would, I think, have been largely quoted by J.R. had he now been living to continue Fors.’ SCC to PSW, 7 January 1903, Cheltenham 1991.1016.662. See also notes 3 and 4. 2 In summing-up the year’s events in his diary at the conclusion of 1903, SCC recorded that ‘Early in the year our much loved Philip Webb was stricken with an illness which we feared might prove fatal.’ CD, 1903. What PSW described as symptoms of lumbago first affected him in the last days of 1902. See Vol. III, Letter 860. 3 WM’s lecture, ‘Art, Wealth and Riches’, had been delivered in Manchester on 6 March 1883, and published as an offprint from The Manchester Quarterly, VI (April 1883). SCC and Robert Proctor edited a number of these fugitive papers as Architecture, Industry and Wealth (London: Longmans, 1902). First issued in July 1902, a second edition appeared in November. 4 Having himself read ‘the book on Joan of Arc’s trial – a verbatim account of great interest’ (CD, 7 December 1902), SCC sent it on to PSW. This was Jeanne D’Arc . . . Being the Story of her Life, her Achievements, and her Death as Attested on Oath and Set forth in the Original Documents, edited by T. Douglas Murray (London: William Heinemann, 1902).

2

1903–1914 5 See Vol. III, Letter 857, note 3. ‘I enclose a proof of the W.M. letter, with a provisional heading for your approval. When passed it can be printed on the Kelmscott paper, & I think it will look very well & appropriate.’ SCC to PSW, 7 January 1903.

863 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 January 1903 Pencil 27 Jan: ’03 Will you kindly answer this markedly courteous letter from the librarian1 – in the best way, wh’ only you could do. Of course I shall be most glad when the books are housed in Trinity. You wd say that I – personally – am incapable, from rheumatic lumbago, of seeing to this, but beg you to help me at your early convenience to see the transport carried out as soon as may be. The east bed room here could have its table set in middle of room with the empty bed at the side – for separating books – and I could write my name in those vols: needing it, and Sotheby’s man could then come. It must be at your convenience.2 Yrs Philip Webb. All expenses (not Sotheby’s & carriage) would be mine to pay. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/143

1 Robert Sinker, librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge (see Vol. III, Letter 858, note 4). 2 ‘I have written to the Revd R. Sinker in accordance with your letter & have expressed your thanks & your intention that the books shall reach him in a short time. Walker is going to measure the bulk of them from his copies, and next Sunday he proposes to sort them out at Caxtons. When they are quite ready I will see Sotheby’s about sending down a reliable packer.’ SCC to PSW, 29 January 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 66.

864 • To Jane Morris, 30 January 1903 Pencil Caxtons. 30 Jany 1903. My dear kind friend Janey. I am an unfortunate sick old man. Here is a letter from you on 18 Jany; and what is more hurtful to me, an inclosed one to Emery Walker to be forwarded, and who knows what vexation to you? Being so helpless, my letters to many are left unacknowledged, but I kept here yours to answer with my own hand when possible, for pretty constant pain has me to itself and for a month back. E. Walker & S.C.C write a

3

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

good many letters for me, (kindly folk) but only this moment have I felt able to try a few words to you. Please to look pitifully kind on my double ill luck of being “sick & sorry”. Following a chill, got in the extraordinary relaxing-damp weather in this part, wh’ I had nearly got the better of, came this heavy & lasting attack of rheumaticlumbago, wh’ has shut me in doors for over a month in a helpless condition, my wits dazed, and my body seated close to the fire dozing most of the day.1 I see no end of this misery till March, or later, and find it hard to keep up any heart at all: not only does the pain constantly vex me, but ’tis almost impossible to keep any heart against its wretched fore-castings. The many real friends I still have are my only good cheer.2 Even the good old ‘Crom’ Price wrote me a brief but happily worded note to claim our long standing historical friendship (though I’ve known comparatively little of him personally) as his motive for then writing. This pretty letter S.C.C answered for me. I cannot read, and yet have good books at hand; try one now & again, but soon shut it. You see, even in this poor pencil scratch, I can say nothing fitting to you or worth reading at all. That you are in better case at Niton than usual for your winter resource, is my one pleasant thought at this moment – if I can think at all.3 I have a helpful doctor, but he seems unable to overcome the effect of weather on me. Ask Olive [Cockerell] just to say a word to me of forgiveness from you, & pity, Your always true | Philip Webb. I post the belated to Walker at the same time as this. BL Add 45343, f. 27

1 ‘Mr Webb’s illness is called “rheumatic lumbago” – but I cannot but fear that there is something more serious than that name seems to imply. I thought him weaker on Sunday. I wrote a few letters for him, but he was not able to do much talking or dictating.’ SCC to JM, 27 January 1903, BL Add 52738, f. 120. 2 ‘[T]he last few weeks have been saddened by the condition of my very dear old friend Mr. Webb – he is now better again though still weak – and I fear there is no chance of recovery till warm weather comes. These rheumatic chills are difficult to throw off when one is no longer young. . . . Mr. Webb dislikes condolences so please take no notice of his health.’ JM to WSB, 25 February 1903, CLJM. 3 JM was spending the winter months at Sea View House in Niton, on the Isle of Wight, and Olive Cockerell was staying with her.

865 • To Edith Crosby Lethaby, 6 April 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 6 April. ’03 Dear Mrs Richard. Your ‘good man’ was in excellent social trim last Sat: evening, and he lifted me into another plain of interest than that of my – at present – miserable body. Of course 4

1903–1914

things were forgotten amidst my ceaseless gabble, and among them that of giving R. his numbing “Social England” to take back.1 These I now return with hearty thanks. Such flowers as the continuously cold weather here have not brought to a stand, Mrs Dickinson’s children cumbered R. with, quite ignorant of the trouble they wd give you to put in water. To-day, Sunday – as yet, is beautifully bright – though hard, and has broken clouds promising still more electrical trouble in the air for tomorrow; we will hope patience will be as lasting as the trouble itself. Please tell R. there is a memorandum drawing in one of my note books of the West window of North aisle of Salisbury Cathedral, giving pretty perfectly the grizaille glazing of the 13th century, with its bits of strong coloured glass.2 I hope this may still be there when the good man next goes to refresh his memory in the Cathl – what ‘refreshment’! With kindest good wishes | Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Have you seen Lethaby’s book of London? ’Tis a master-piece.’ PSW to SCC. See Vol. III, Letter 860, note 3. 2 Salisbury Cathedral’s medieval stained glass includes seventeen patterns of grisaille glass (in which the colour grey is used exclusively or predominantly), more examples than are found in any other European sacred building.

866 • To Sydney Cockerell, 8 April 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex 8 April. ’03 Thank you dear Cockerell for your helpful forecasting letter of yesterday. I expected E.W would be here on Thursday evening, fm what Dorothy said. My help could only be on guesses of the facts of your reluctant chimney;1 and if your local pig-driving cowl (no reflection on the tramps of the “stile walk”) does not answer, you would be likely to save time & expense if you got Turner to look at the position of the chimney stack in its relation to roof, &c, & also the setting of the grate in the room. Lady Anne sent an admirably precise acct of the accident to Holman, who sent it to me to read, which made the whole thing clear, (at all events to those who know anything of young high bred horses) & she has courage, & wisely intending to ride “Rakabdar” again. He, probably was too fresh for the then occasion.2 Shall be glad to have a go over the Herbal to pick up something more, even at this late time of my days.3 Have had a big shaking, doubtless; and tho’ the coming more clement weather may bring me round considerably, neither King’s horses nor men can quite set me on my former legs again.4 Consequently, I’m thinking 5

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

of a possible move to Lewes,5 or other less-risky atmosphere; and shall “targe” Arthur Caffin “tightly” – who knows the place so well – to find out all I can of the likelihood of Lewes – or Malling hard by, &c. In my unlimited time for consideration now, it has seemed to me, if Rooke shd have another Birmingham commission, he might do much worse than make a grand picture of S. Leu D[’]esserent, from exactly the same point as his well composed study he gave me; wh’ could be enlarged by photography, & save him much time.6 I wish you could induce him to consult Laing about the eyes at once?7 I think this view of S. Leu would be a good variation from Rs other things in the Bn gallery. Why not you [sic] run across to Creil, and have a look at the beautiful thing from Rooke’s stand point, and see if the church – wh’ must be a furlong or two behind the backs of the village houses, – is not much greyer than his eyes have let him see it?8 My condition – as yet – is immoveable, so my brother has sent me some different medicine to try; but amendment will, I know, depend on this 6 months spell of weather giving in. Thank you for all your mercies to the miserable. | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Do you or Walker know if Wardle is still in London? I want to write to him before he flees to Italy.9 Lethaby was beautiful on the Wednesday. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/147

1 ‘Bright, but wind in S.W. & my chimney smoking.’ CD, 11 April 1903. In March, SCC had moved to new lodgings in Friars’ Stile Road, Richmond. 2 SCC annotation: ‘A young Arab horse reared, I think at a traction engine, and fell back on Lady Anne. She sent for a vet, and her bruised ribs were soon cured.’ 3 SCC offered to lend to PSW a classic herbal by Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes (Basel, 1542). ‘Walker is bravely shouldering the big Fuchsius and its infant relation, and I hope that you will find them amusing to turn over. They are books of which one never tires, and the lines that are obscured by the colour in the big one are pleasant to check in the smaller uncoloured copies.’ SCC to PSW, 9 April 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 68. 4 An allusion to the traditional nursery rhyme, ‘Humpty Dumpty’. 5 Lewes is the county town of Sussex, and from 1843 was served by two railway stations. It has remained much smaller than the seaside Sussex town of Brighton (connecting to Rottingdean), to which the railway brought many day-trippers from London. 6 Saint-Leu-d’Esserent occupies a strategic position overlooking the river Oise in northern France. In 1900, it had been one of the towns which had provided subjects for Rooke: ‘TMR had his summer’s work at Senlis, Noyon & S Leu d’Esserent, including some most glorious drawings which it was a delight & a refreshment to see.’ CD, 25 October 1900. But three years later SCC doubted whether it could provide the right type of architectural topics. ‘The difficulties about S Leu d’Esserent for T.M.R. are 1 that there are not many other subjects in the neighbourhood & we are obliged to send him for the Birmingham drawing to places where he can find other things for his Old Water Colour Exhibns [and] 2 the trees, & the fact that T.M.R. is better at architectural details than at a large piece of picture making. Others can do the latter – & these Birmingham drawings are especially for things that other people could not or would do so well.’ SCC to PSW, 9 April 1903, f. 69.

6

1903–1914 7 Presumably, Laing was an oculist. 8 ‘My recollection of the church (St Leu) is that it is grey-hoary like the rest.’ 9 ‘Wardle is at Worthing, but any letter sent to 503 High Rd Chiswick will find him. I do not think that he moves to Italy before the autumn or winter – but I may be wrong.’ f. 68.

867 • To Jane Morris, 17 April 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 17. April. 1903. My dear Janey. You remember in the Icelandic Edda, tis said ‘those I loved the most I treated worst’ – or to that effect, for my memory is as nought.1 Well, I could not lift myself to return the good will of your last letter, for the whole body of me was against doing anything, & I could not even read. So it went – as so many other letters to me did – by default, and I was always sorry, but without amendment. I think Cockerell did, however, with his constant helpfulness, send you a word on my account? You must have come away from the I. of Wight too early – the spring move should never be made before the 17th of April, the migrating birds’ time of coming back,2 & the start home had better be in May. The handwriting on the parcel, which came this afternoon, told me it was from you, and the Frittilarias [sic] declared it loudly.3 They travelled beautifully, and are quite fresh in their water now. They are hearty flowers, and to my child’s eyes are Maudlin water walks all over.4 This hard weather – following the 5½ months of continuous stormy [sic] from the S-S.W. & W.S.W – without a break, has backed across the S.E line and is from the N.W. particularly dry & cold. How fare you under it? Did the grown cottages wither your eyes up like the wind, or did they tell more kindly on you for my poor sake? Jack spoke hopefully of them, but perhaps that was to cheer up the sick man. He has been a much beaten down & worn out old & useless one for nearly 6 months, & is rather sceptical of ever making up the lost way for the rest of his tether of years, though he has not the exact figure of his limitation in the land of promise & of some – happily – considerable performance of blessedness. I never forget that even in my now poor condition. My explanation of the sudden drop from 2 years of the best health I ever enjoyed, to that of the worst, came of Malarial poisoning from the S.W, bringing the moisture, laden with decayed vegitation [sic] from the primæval forest, which is the watershed of 5 or 6 rivers in Sussex, and in a wet season – after 3 dry summers – was more than usually water-laden, filling up our wells which were at the point of failing us. This poison still lives in my poor belly, and it takes some hopefulness to believe that more genial weather to come will carry it off, & not me. 7

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I cannot stand for more than 2 minutes at a time, so that exercise, which is a crying want, is denyed [sic], and so on. Mrs Dickinson has been past believing helpful in her doubled work, being also a very capable nurse. She too rejoices in the Snakes’ heads.5 May wrote me a quite joyous letter from Florence about Hoy,6 and which was written with quite considerable literary brightness, to which unhappily I could not then respond. As you see, I can do little better now. Kindest love to Jenny, & thanks to Miss Staveley for their thoughtfulness – and believe me your affectionate sick old monkey of a friend. Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 28–9

1 ‘I did the worst to him I loved the most’, the final line from ‘The Lovers of Gudrun’, the November section of WM’s The Earthly Paradise, influenced by the Icelandic Laxdaela Saga. 2 For the significance PSW attached to this date for the arrival of migrating birds, see Vol. III, Letter 814, note 7. 3 Fritillaria meleagris (snake’s head fritillary) is a native British species found in damp grasslands (now scarce), and commonly cultivated. 4 A typical sharing with JM of an Oxford childhood memory of walks in the Magdalen College water meadows. Fritillaries are still a feature there. 5 See note 3. 6 For Hoy, see below, Letter 977, note 1.

868 • To Jane Morris, 22 April 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 22 April. 1903. My dear Janey. Thanking you truly for the delightful (“de”, of or from, you – “light”, for its lucidity – and “full”, because it was not empty!) letter which got here this afternoon, as it sets my mind so much at rest on a serious point with me, namely, the Cottages – that they give you satisfaction, as you do me with your generous appreciation of the points which most satisfy me by their being recognised. Truly, there is much in the choice of words, as well as in right application of them. No other “return” for my help can you make to me; and as the ‘old man’ used to say, “there is no other reward for work well done, than praise” – i.e just praise.1 If you should still wish to ease your righteous soul, anything you could bestow – within reason – on Jack, beyond his professional charges, you will be doing him a service, well earned, for I am forced to believe his means, as yet, are much too small for even his economical habits. You see, he had – in the nature of things – an ungrateful task, that of carrying out another’s design; and yet he has done it so willingly and 8

1903–1914

promptly, and I am quite sure he has done it well, & to my “satisfaction”. I think the builder will think himself a lucky man, that he managed to save his reputation in time. He wd never have heard the last of it, if an interloper had been brought in & carried it the work out.2 I had a cheery letter from Miss Staveley, addressed from the neighbourhood of Hunstanton on the N. side of Norfolk, at the same time sending me a jar of her own “still room” industry – very tasty, & only, by a sick man, tasted sparingly. The helpful lady also gave me a clear account of the ills your flesh has been too much an heir to, so that with your own telling, I am clear as to the state of the patient – and I may say it looks more hopeful than expected – please to carry on as the medico directs, for he cannot have any object in killing you, or “lingering you along”. I’m sure my doctor would be glad if he could fetch me round more quickly, with my doctor-brother looking on! I had not heard that ‘Crom’ was blessed with two children; perhaps it was a boon from Providence in relieving him of one? It is over-late in life to have a “quiver full of them”.3 Jenny’s condition – also according to Miss Ss telling – is cheering, and of the helpfulness of Js young attendant. Now for Summer-like weather for all of us. Yours always in sincerity | Philip Webb. Kindly tell Miss Staveley – who may be with you again by now – that I much appreciated her rompingly light hearted letter under the stiff sand & snow scattering breezes of this season on the north co[a]st of Norfolk. Also, that I was good enough (no, heroic is the word) to divide my pot of “Still-room” laboritorised prawns with Mrs Walker (who is now living adjacent to this place)4 whose husband has a fine appreciation of such handiwork, & will be at it on Saty when he comes down. My tasting could not safely be so generous, but I liked it much. Please also ask her excuse for my not making a separate letter of my ‘appreciation’, for I get tired as teatime – 5. p.m. – approaches. Ph.W. BL Add 45343, ff. 30–1

1 The tenor of this familiar WM maxim is found, for example, in chapter 15, ‘On the Lack of Incentive to Labour in a Communist Society’, in News from Nowhere. 2 ‘When I was at Caxtons on Wednesday I told Mr Webb about the cottages, & how nice I thought them. He said that he purposely made no window in the attics, so that they should not be used as a bedroom – & that the rail at the top of the staircase had evidently been omitted through an oversight of the builder. The lower part of the kitchen walls is cemented – so that chairs & children should not dint it – but it can be coloured as you please.’ SCC to JM, 15 May 1903, BL Add 52738, f. 122. 3 Crom Price’s daughter, Dorothy, was born in 1903. 4 Since early January, possibly for reasons of her health, Mary Jones Walker had been staying at Rushmore Cottage in Worth, which EW took until the beginning of June. When she returned to London, it was to a few doors further down Hammersmith Terrace, from number 3 to number 7 (the former house of Thomas Cobden-Sanderson).

9

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

869 • To Sydney Cockerell, 25 April 1903 Pencil; year corrected by SCC Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 25 April. 1902. [sic] My dear Cockerell. Your daily bulletins of the health of our poor patients in la belle France, suffering under the treatment of Quack-salving “eminents”, have been a constant anticipation and unfailing satisfaction to me in disabled condition – living – as it were, from hand to mouth.1 How great were the French masons – ever spurred on by the inexhaustible supply of admirable building free stone. All your examples are good for my health, except perhaps poor Notre Dame of Paris, which has suffered most from that arch quack-salver V. le Duc, and positively insulted since his miserable reign, by that trumpery bit of inanity in the form of pinnacled niche to the V.M. destroying the distant view of the apse.2 I groaned & grunted over this, as if I were troubled by extra spasms from my unlucky middle region. I particularly cheer myself with the W. fronts of Sens, and Auxerre.3 ’Twas this S.W porch of the latter, (not having seen the actual building) with which I was so struck on turning over the photos: in S.K library before leaving the “Wen”. Inside too of this porch there is a barrel vault, and inner doorway – (unless memory fails me here) which is mightily imposing, & fresh. The sculpture of this W. front is simply that of a worlds wonder, so masterly even in its smaller parts. This work, I take it, is of rather late 13th centy, when the archl parts had become rather reedlike, and thin in quality – such as is shewn in that cast of a Bordeaux doorway at the S.K.M. Just to add a touch of criticism. I blurt out that these reminders of my earlier studies, confirms my the decision that the doubling of aisles to so many French masterpieces was a mistake: very visible to me from the first in N.D of Paris, and strikingly so in that otherwise unique looking Ch’ of – Pontigny. Am not quite sure if the outer aisle has not been a modern addition: in any case it ruins the exceptional interest of the Church; with its startling continuous roof over nave & choir: “as long as a rope walk”: (pithiness of a horse coper4 I once heard apply to a long bodied horse! The appraiser also had the advantage of stammering). The building is as severely simple as some of our Cistercian churches. In Dickens’s pretty story of Mrs Lirriper, he makes her, & her lodger, when looking for her legacy, stay at the pleasant Inn just opposite the N.W porch door.5 The Inn has an open court inside: Mrs Ls little boy is seen from there on the top of the tall tower under care of a guide. So Dickens must have looked up at this enchanted front. The N. or left hand tower is the earlier and nobler in building part. French tracery too is never as perfect as the English. How delightful is view of the E. end, with I suppose its B[isho]ps or A[rch]bps palace. Auxerre I never saw – save in photos Adieu with many hearty thanks from yours | Philip Webb. The patient is no better nor worse, but as helpless as usual.6 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/148 10

1903–1914 1 The ‘patients’ were, of course, French buildings at risk from the restorers. SCC was in France from 19–26 April, and sent PSW at least nine picture postcards of buildings he had seen. 2 Viollet-le-Duc’s involvement in the restoration work at Notre Dame, Paris, started in 1845 and occupied him until his death, nearly 35 years later. 3 SCC sent two images of the Cathedral at Auxerre, one of ‘le Portail, Porche de Droite’ and the second a general view, on which he wrote ‘A splendid Church with sculpture of the utmost delicacy & refinement. I wish you could see it.’ 23 April 1903, BL Add 52762, f. 9. 4 ‘Horse-coper’: a horse dealer. 5 In Dickens’s story ‘Mrs Lirriper’s Legacy’, first published in All The Year Round (December 1864), Mrs Lirriper visits Sens, ‘a pretty little town with a great two-towered cathedral and the rooks flying in and out of the loopholes and another tower atop of one of the towers like a sort of a stone pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming below him if you’ll believe me, I saw a speck while I was resting at the inn before dinner which they made signs to me was Jemmy and which really was. . . . The pleasantest-situated inn my dear! Right under the two towers, with their shadows a changing upon it all day like a kind of sundial’ (p. 8). 6 ‘[Webb] seemed very much the same in health – still not well enough to go out or to move to his brother’s, but able to enjoy a long talk.’ SCC to JM, 15 May 1903, BL Add 52738, f. 122.

870 • To George Washington Jack, 18 May 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. 18 May. 1903. My dear Jack. The inclosed letter came to me this morning, and I thought it well it should reach your eye, as it deals with your work, as told to me. Possibly they tell you other tales, but I hope of no worse complexion? They are evidently a couple of happy babes over their plaything.1 Am glad to see they won’t be able to get into it till the summer weather has warmed it to the pitch of shrinkage, and midnight crackings and burstings. Their praising your having left some stones of the walling clear of pointing, with spreading of joints, makes me hope they are making the best of accomplished fact; and that not too large extent of stone surface is visible to the naked eye. They are good natured bodies in their way, but ’tis to be hoped that ‘way’ was bearable when applied to you. I cautioned them in my letter, of what usage they might expect here – if they shd come – and had not treated you gratefully for your labours. When you send the letter back, (soon) will you tell me what you are at in the way of experiment in clay or plaster, for the memorial stone:2 for if you find the sketch-design too impossible, I must try some other. Also, tell me as much as may be about yourself. Of myself there is no more to be said than that he is no forwarder than when you were here, the hindersome weather may account for delay, and I hope so, but the hope is a little fainter than it might have been. Catterson Smith writes me with much cheeriness, that the “bauble” has been handed to the donor, finished; and received with congratulatory thanks, and Holliday states the same. It is to be in the hands of D-J,3 at once, seemingly; let us hope it will not smell of BLOOD [crossed swords] when out of them. C.S tells 11

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

me you may be going to Birmingham for a day or two; if so, I hope you will stay with him as he wishes, for he is a really, & hearty good specimen of the present race of man. Surely I am thankful enough for his helpfulness in making something of my poor work. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 The letter which he forwarded was from the Misses Astley and Shaen, about the house GWJ had built for them at Arisaig. 2 The memorial tablet for WM, to surmount the Kelmscott cottages. 3 ‘Dirty Joe’ (Joseph Chamberlain), the University of Birmingham’s first Chancellor.

871 • To William Richard Lethaby, 22 May 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 22 May. ’03 (All that of the gay month gone – ) My dear fellow – why will you not be dearer, and “fellow” me. To vulgarly play upon words, felloe is part of the clasping circle of the hub’s rays?1 here I stop, or you will be saying the patient is vulgarly well; you try to make me out so, & ’tis not yet! Rather, let me hope Providence will temper the shorn lamb to prevailing winds. I was so content in the industry of hewing wood & drawing of water, having found my sure footing in the all-various fields of art, at last. Still, your kindest of letters has quite frisked me up – short, as it was, as a guinea-pig’s tail. You must learn, that one of the parts of ill, blown into my bells from the gulph of Mexico, has resulted in a curve of the spine, and unless this straightens, more or less, my aforesaid healthy activities will be taken from me – but we will hope, for as Carlyle was never tired of re-iterating, Hope is pretty well all the humans have to live on. With your’s came a letter from Jack, who also told of his going to Birmingham in search of his ‘ways & means’. In any case he will see Catterson-S, and Holliday, who will put the situation clearly before him, so that he need not leap in the dark.2 I so much wish all well for Jack, your thinking, or feeling for him in that way cheers me, for he should not have to ‘pinch & peel’ himself, when others are so ready to do that for him. Can you see that I get his “book” (news to me) should S.C.C fail ‘extraordinar[y]’;3 [about 3 words deleted] he keeps acct in the purveying way, with me. Now, my friend, I give you inches, and you take ells.4 My likening the English ways of building to those of the 4 legged cabbages, did not allow of malicious extension to French ways of walking on ‘stilts’ in their sky-scrapers. Both Canterbury and Westminster, having a streaky bacon flavour in them, do not 12

1903–1914

warrant your extravagant, & further stilting of “Paris.” S.C.C is “bad to hold”, in the way of frogland, and I do not want another hard mouthed comrade to control. Excuse the stable ammoni[a]cal flavour – understanding my nearness to a drove of Arabs. W.S.B was here yesterday, & Holman came to see me in bed later on – when talk ran much on four legs. Here must be a stoppage of lumbering “wit,” which I know you cannot abide under. See – in yesterday’s news, that heat in New York was 92o in the shade – at this early time of year, and that “Turtle mountain” is at it again, slipping 6" while the scientists were watching the western peak.5 Is not my prophetic soul reasonable,6 in thinking we have volcanic industry going on at this end of the Gulph-stream? St Mark’s Venice, &c, &c? Is not Ruskin right, (see that guinea book of S.C.C’s) when speaking out at Hawarden, how he was bored there! that the earth was the Lord’s and not pocket boroughs of landlords?7 J.R. was good in & out and roundabout. You gave me an inch of a letter, and get in return my double ell. Peace be with us both, and gentle reminder of me to Madame, from Yours – always tiresomely direct – | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Felloe’: the rim of a wheel, supported by the spokes (OED). 2 It seems that GWJ was either contemplating a possible teaching position at the Birmingham School of Art (of which Catterson-Smith was shortly to be appointed head), or something within the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft. See below, Letter 877, note 6, and Letter 880, note 7. 3 GWJ was preparing a practical volume on wood carving for The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks, under WRL’s general editorship, for publication in the autumn. See below, Letter 898. 4 The same meaning as ‘give him an inch and he’ll take a mile’, an ell being an old unit of measurement. 5 Turtle Mountain, in Alberta, Canada, had long been known as ‘the mountain that moves’ by Native American tribes, and on 29 April 1903 a devastating limestone landslip from the mountain’s top buried many residents of the town of Frank. 6 ‘O my prophetic soul! / My uncle?’ Hamlet, I.v.40–1. 7 JR was twice a guest at Hawarden Castle in Flintshire in 1878. ‘This personal encounter caused Ruskin to soften his attacks on Gladstone in Fors Clavigera, but there was no disguising the difference between Ruskin’s ultra-tory views and Gladstone’s Liberalism.’ Robert Hewison, John Ruskin (Oxford: OUP, 2007), p. 97.

872 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 June 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 11. June 1903. Dear Cockerell. Your letter got this morning – (no, yesterday) cheered me, in that you had got the better of the “chill”, and had not dragged yourself – plus the engine, down here, 13

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

when your time and small money shd be otherwise employed. It sometimes puts me out that you and Walker should be so regardless of yourselves in ministering to me; for, as long as I am sure of your continued goodwill, my life is sufficiently backed up by the invaluable friendship. True, the Crabbet day would not do for serious music, though perhaps W.S.B might engage your cousin to play a prelude (brief ) as each Arab was led into the ring.1 The tip wd also include lunch, and show of feminine beauty, as additional garnish? The weather (or something else unknown) does not help me ‘at all at all’ – for my belly and back are the plague of my life. Am only waiting till it seems as if I could stand the journey without being knocked up. Here, rain has taken the place of cold & dry – and neither of them suit me. Possibly, I may be well enough to get to Winchester next week, and be a week there,2 which wd bring us parlous near to the 27th. So, as all is so doubtful, we had better not tie the good natured musico down to date, when he will be likely to have other engagements. I’m none the less indebted to his kindly offer. I had not heard, & am glad to learn from you, that the move from Rushmore to the new housing at Hammersmith was comfortably got through;3 but Mrs Dickinson – who has heard this morning, that the housekeeper wishes to flit: [sic] I thought that lady looked somewhat of “an old soldier” – and I’m really sorry for Mrs Walker – patient lady that she is. Have spent most of my morning in making the Bank pass book of Lloyds agree with my version of the account, & find myself some 7£ richer than my blundering allowed, so now is the time (if you can spare any) to make out our little ‘addition’; not forgetting that I owe you one divd on the Exchr bill bonds – £1/8/2. Or, shall I send the £7 at once as an instalment? Yours always thankfully | Philip Webb. Have heard nothing of any goings on at Birmingham – except fm W.R.L, that Catterson-S. has been chosen to go upstairs.4 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/149

1 SCC annotation: ‘My cousin Walter Cobbett had offered to take his Strad to Caxtons and play to Webb. Wilfrid Blunt had an annual sale of Arab horses in the Park, which seemed likely to clash with his visit.’ Walter Willson Cobbett (1847–1937) was a cousin of SCC’s mother. A skilful businessman and cofounder of a company which manufactured belts for industrial machinery, his real passion was music, and chamber music in particular. He was a capable violinist, and funded an annual competition for a new work of chamber music (thereby assisting the careers of English composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten), but his lasting achievement was a two-volume survey of repertoire, Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (London: OUP, 1929–30). 2 He would stay with his brother and sister (see next letter).

14

1903–1914 3 The Walkers had moved from 3 to 7 Hammersmith Terrace. See above, Letter 868, note 4. 4 See below, Letter 880, note 7.

873 • To Margaret Dickinson, 18 June 1903 Pencil c/o H.S. Webb Esqre | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 18 June. 1903. Dear Mrs Dickinson The sister tells me she had sent you a postcard of our getting here last evening. The journey was not as tiring as might have been expected, the weather being fine, though thunderstorms were about, right & left, of the journey down; [sic] and London looked murky, as if the poor folks there were going to have another downpour. The good brother syringed the ears for me this morning, successfully, so far – but the operation will be done again tomorrow; so that we may hope on my return you will find me somewhat less deaf than heretofore. The sister is abundant in her kindly helpfulness, hardly letting me help myself with arms or legs. The bed being a double one, & lower than mine, I could sit and let her wash my upper works, while I told her stories about your ways of dealing with me, and of how you put up with my sick-man waywardness. Today I’ve studied the garden; a large one, and all tilled with the utmost care, so that it is full of brightness and abundance, to say nothing of its being neater than ninepence. The 2 maids are quite handy and willing – making themselves a pleasant part of the household. What will come about in the way of improvement at the end of the week I cannot say, but am hopeful much that your halfpence may fall into my hat rapidly on my return. You need have no doubt of my feeling on leaving Caxtons, though it was an effort on my part not to be homesick there & then; and I have a great dislike to making a to-do at such times: but I thanked you most heartily for all your patient and helpful kindness to the old man during so many months, as we went down the road to 3 Bridges. Let me beg of you not to overtax yourself about the house while I am away, and that you and the children are not stinted in all that may be best for you in the way of food, &c. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

15

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

874 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 19 June 1903 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 19 June. 1903 My dear fellows The younger partner’s letter was a pleasure to me in this melancholy recess. One from Mrs Dickinson by same post – not so pleasant, for she tells of Lethaby having been to Caxtons when she was out with the children for a walk, leaving the “palace” in the care of Collins – the help;1 her going out in that, or any way she could manage, were my instructions, but the good & kindly L: not even getting tea vexes me right out.2 Your little bill is amusing as coming from a skilled accountant! The 2/10/- the firm’s portion of the iniquitous charge in the ‘bauble’ affairs, was made clear when I sent in the claim; £20 for me, & 2/10/- for you, and I thought you were rather meanly treated. If your portion of the money ‘smells’ disagreeably, you must send it back to the donor of the mace, for I could not touch the “dirty” lucre.3 The various other items of your acct will have to be checked & added to when I get back to solitary peace. The journey here was done with small difficulty, the brother insisting on coming the whole way to & fro for me. Yesterday was fine, though of mixed temperature, and the garden was stumped often between chairs top & bottom, but today is partly cold & wholly wet, but which the Blackbirds & Thrushes use for filling their own and progenies bellies. It will take the week for me to find out any improvement, but the doctor is hopeful. Still, the walking is a little easier. The soul is another matter. I’m much a fish out of water in another’s house. True, it would have been better to be away from Caxtons at the sale time, however, that can easily be put up with, and I must get back when a week is up, & come here again when Mrs Dn has her fortnight’s holiday at end of July. Always to both of you | Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/152

1 PSW described the elderly Thomas Collins as his ‘out-of-doors’ help, and his wife as a semiprofessional nurse or carer. See below, Letter 1055, note 5. 2 ‘I am to blame about Lethaby. I was to have discovered whether you would be gone by then, but Walker never put in an appearance on Monday as he had a country appointment – & on Tuesday the matter had gone out of my head. I will ask forgiveness of Lethaby, who will perhaps be coming to supper at Richd on Monday. I say “perhaps” as these great architects & professors are sometimes called off suddenly to the ends of the earth.’ SCC to PSW, 20 June 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 70. 3 ‘I am sorry that our accountant has cooked the accounts so badly. You shall give us your version when we meet.’ f. 71.

16

1903–1914

875 • To Sydney Cockerell, 22 June 1903 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 22 June. 1903 Dear Cockerell You were not to blame in the matter of the Lethaby misfortune. Of course I wrote at once to him, & he – on recovering from his misadventure, would – with his quick wit, understand how it could have come about. That you had enough resistance to the Sara Anderson temptation does surprise me, knowing your turn for rushing “to the ends of the earth”.1 I answer your question thus: some gain of strength has come to me from the change, with the brother’s helpfulness, but the sister played to me on the “ferocious” (a small cottage Broadwood) piano some of Handel & Correlli [sic] last evening, which moved me too delightfully; so it wd be better, I believe, to wait for other opportunity before listening to your cousin’s more searching violin.2 Still, I much wish to have the delight of listening to him when somewhat stronger, and can give full play to my music loving soul. Kindly tell him so, with my sincere thanks for his promise to play to an ignoramus. The weather on the whole has not been very helpful to me, though today the wind has been softer, and the sun quite bright. The brother & myself here agreed it would be well for me to go with him to consult Hale White junr in Harley Street.3 Have written to him to ask for appointment on Wedy, or Thursday, so that I may be back home not later than Thursday evening. If you can come on Saturday you wd see what the sick man looks like after the week’s airing, & learn what the London medico says of me. “I don’t know, I don’t know”, as Lethaby used to say when he came in o’ nights at Gray’s Inn. The attack was a blow too hard for the aged one to get over quickly, and certainly not without some loss of plumage. Still, patience – with the ever blessed hope, may let me do a little more work; which, next to ‘hope’, and still some loved friends, may bear me up yet a while. Glad W.S.B thinks well of the Arab horse prospect. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/153

1 SCC annotation: ‘Sara Anderson, a close friend of mine, at different times Secretary to Ruskin, Burne-Jones, Kipling, and other worthies, had written from Havre that she was going to Senlis, a very favourite spot with me.’ Sara Anderson was one of the several intimate women friends with whom SCC probably contemplated marriage, their shared personal acquaintance with JR giving them a special understanding. 2 See above, Letter 872, note 1. 3 WHW’s son, the physician William Hale White Jr (1857–1949), had been a medical student at Guy’s Hospital and qualified in 1879. He continued to work and teach at Guy’s, becoming a full physician in 1890, and developed a large and successful private practice. He became KBE in 1909, on his retirement from the hospital.

17

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

876 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 25 June 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 25 June 1903 My dear fellows. I got back here last evening,1 Mrs Dickinson meeting me at Three Bs Station: not quite intolerably tired after moving from place to place in London, which – to me, looked over-populated, and as if most of the Streets had been bombarded. Was glad to flee the place. At Gattis’ – (after doing the Hale White business) I fraternised with “Ticino”, who grinned quite affectionately.2 If either of you can conveniently and willingly look me up on Saturday, in the old way, so much the more to my good – but do not put yourselves out in that way.3 Winchester was exceedingly good natured, and helpful, but far too respectable ‘for the likes of me’. Will tell you more of the odds & ends when looking into each others’ faces. Hope Lethaby has recovered fm ill-treatment?4 Yrs Philip Webb. P.S. If either of you find opportunity of going to Stanford’s – Trafalgar Sqre,5 will you kindly get me, one, two, or even three sheets of the town of Lewes, (according to cut of sheets) to the 6 inch scale of Ordnance survey? I’m in no hurry to have them. I have the one inch survey. Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/154

1 PSW and his brother travelled from Winchester to Waterloo on 24 June and saw William Hale White Jr at 12.00 noon in Harley Street, after which PSW proceeded to Caxtons. 2 ‘We heard of you at Gatti’s last night, & thought it a sign that you were a little stronger. Ticino [SCC annotation: our waiter] was evidently much pleased with the encounter. “He looks very well” he declared.’ SCC to PSW, 26 June 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 72. 3 ‘In aftn went to see Philip Webb, who has been spending a week with his brother at Winchester & seems decidedly better for it. He thinks of trying Lewes for the autumn.’ CD, 27 June 1903. 4 ‘Lethaby was at Richmond on Monday & was very good-natured about my share of the fiasco. He thinks of France for August. TMR brought such a fine Westminster Abbey drawing to Gatti’s last night that I told him that it would do for Birmingham if he would prefer to give up the trip to Auxerre.’ ff. 72–3. 5 Edward Stanford established his specialist bookshop for maps and travel literature in 1853, and from 1877 operated from 55 Charing Cross. This was probably the location which PSW had in mind, although in late 1900 the main business shifted to Long Acre.

18

1903–1914

877 • To George Washington Jack, 29 June 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 29 June. 1903. My dear Jack. Your impressive letter is full as egg is of meat – and I must try an answer to your petitions. The first in time calling for an answer, is that of the Eglwys Cymmin lectern.1 Treherne has got himself into the pickle of ladies meddling, and is not able to see how things are to be made to fit in with what Weir has already done so well for the church – he does not even know what it is that Weir has so done. When Weir was here, I said you ought first to have seen the simple & expressive, but rude little building, before designing any wood work for it – no explanation nor even drawing could make its rudeness clear to you. Your good design – good in itself – is, I think, not likely to look as well in the church as it does in your sketch, and would I’m sure disappoint you if you ever saw the made thing in the building. I am not at all in a fit state to do either designing or drawing rightly, but am answering your request with some kind of hint, which might perhaps help you, by sending the inclosed rough memorandum of a design, more or less answering to my cry for rude simplicity. Also, having heard that 25, or 30£ is offered as payment, it should not cost more than 5 or 6£ for the timber & carpentry, as the design & carving of the Saint should claim the remainder.2 As I can’t sit up to a table to set out anything to scale, you will understand that my scribble is done on my knees – not Saint-like, but while sitting on low chair. It has seemed to me, your carving would be less arduous to do if it was a figure & dragon in relief on a block of oak, and be the one thing to claim attention on looking at the lectern. Treherne would be able to tell you all about the saint, from books he has of saints, and their emblems, wh’ emblems shd be correct as far as may be? If you agree with the rude motive I have in my eye, you could take my sketch, in its crookedness, and design something yourself, which wd look other than the work of a sick man – for I’m still that.* *You see I’ve suggested some scantlings3 of the oak to express the rudeness wh’ seems so necessary to me.4 As to the memorial carving for the Cottages, I am clear with you it should be much simplified, & the W.M. part made larger, but I hardly like turning the figure sideways – though, the head of the figure might be turned so as to give some feature of the face. That being so in my mind, I will try and make a sketch suggestion of the improvement towards effectiveness.5 I certainly think Catterson-S. was unwise to take over the mastership at Birmingham, but I confess to being rather pleased that Holliday & Dixon failed to

19

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

put you in such a tight place.6 If you can but hold your own from the “penny fee” point of view, it would please me more if you stuck to building – if such work came to you, and carving; for you have the gift of designing. Doubtless though, the having sufficient money to carry on with is the first call on you, as that should not be a hindrance to your working in peace. Next Saturday, we shall be having the annual Arab-horse sale, so there will be much coming & going during the week at Caxtons, though I’m unable to help in it; that work falls on Mrs Dickinson. Could you therefore arrange to come here on Saturday the 11th July (or on Thurs: or Friday in that week, if that wd suit you better?) to talk over the Kelmscott carving? I will keep your suggestions to help me make some change in the design on my part. I am really glad you don’t think poorly of the cottages as they stand. Also it pleases me you do not think meanly of Catterson-Ss and my work for the Mace. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. 7 I see poor Tapper was unsuccessful; both labour & cost must have been a heavy pull on him. V&A, AAD

1 Two drawings survive of GWJ’s design for the carved oak lectern at the church of St Margaret, Eglwys Cummin, one of which, dated May 1903, presumably being the version which PSW here comments upon. See Gaimster, pp. 31–2. 2 ‘In May 1904, Jack was paid £33.4.0 for the commission, of which he sent £2.2.6 to Laurence Turner (presumably for executing the carving) and £4.4.0 to Bowley’s of Lechlade.’ Gaimster, p. 33. The payment to Bowley is intriguing, bearing in mind the sometimes difficult relationship which PSW and GWJ had experienced with him during the long saga of the Kelmscott cottages. 3 ‘Scantlings’: timbers which retain some of their original outer surface, and are not square on all sides, and thus not infrequently employed where economy is a factor. 4 ‘Thank you for the design for lectern. I think I see my way to carrying that out, and in the part in which I am most interested i.e. the carving, with more satisfaction than the other one. The fact of its not involving full relief, that is all round – (back & all) – saves me a deal of worry & difficulty.’ GWJ to PSW, 2 July 1903, V&A, AAD. 5 ‘Please dont make any sketches for the Morris panel. I shall only get confused. I want to make something of the one you have already given me. I am now struggling with the problems involved and think I begin to see daylight a bit. The model I have made is not very like the last sketch I sent you but is a great deal more like your own – for one thing I have kept the figure as you suggested, back presented as much as possible. The legs must take their chance – at any rate it does not look sidewise. The tree I have made more round & complete. I found that owing to the peculiar conundrums involved in the relief I could not get the look of a woody place with only a portion of the tree the rest going up into the frame. It all became so confoundedly flat but these are things one cannot explain in writing so I shall leave it until I see you hoping to get a photo done so that we may have something to talk about.’ 6 The architect and silversmith Arthur Stanfield Dixon (1865–1929) was an influential designer within the Birmingham Guild of Handcraft, and head of its metalwork workshop. 7 Not identified.

20

1903–1914

878 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 20 July 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 20 July. 1903. My dear fellows. Knowing the elder partner would be head, & hand-filled with work while the younger would be on the tramp, I have not interposed. Had three picture P.Cs from S.C.C, and a good letter; with the reading of one to W.S.B, these have kept me in touch with Scandinavia and Russia.1 Time here, since I saw either of you, has not been helpful to the sick man; neither belly nor back wd be worth 2d in the open market. Am to start for Winchester at midday on the 24th for a fortnight, where the ship is to be thoroughly overhauled, & its class of stability resettled, when the rate of insurance at Lloyds’ will probably be high. My Chichester parson-brother died on the 15th, being spared a long illness, though his health had been poor for a year or so – he was 69.2 Ly B-Jones, and (next day) Mrs Wyndham have been to see me, while Hale White, Senr comes Tues: or Wed: Also, have had Jack here – good fellow. Holliday kindly sent me a good letter, & at same time photographs of the mace. They are not good, but they shew sufficiently how excellently well Cn Smith’s work has been done. I fancy the negatives were poor, & they had to be touched up with body white, making the prints meazley and woolly. Holliday said, “that pestilent publication, the ‘studio’,” was to have the publication of them; they should certainly make other negatives for Birmingh[a]m’s sake, though they need not for mine, as Cn S. has done his work so well.3 D.J. advised that the real thing shd be on show in the art gallery, though roses are not orchids, & the ‘thing’ itself is not a lie.4 What a seriously pleasant p. card picture that is of the ‘ancient kings’’ mounds, and that of Tolstoi is also a great help towards imagination. I’m sure S.C.C stirred him with red hot poker for not having noticed J.R, & W.M. in his work. Hope the junior partner escaped without a beating.5 The old giant still looks capable of handling a ground ash stick effectively! The Kremlin is much as my ‘fancy painted it’ – bells, big & little, & all. Thank you kindly. S.C.Cs little business bill has had to be re-edited, & is still a doubtful document: on the other side I give an amended catalogue – and inclose cheque for 2/13/4, with hearty thanks for the help in these necessary, though small, matters you have both given me: but such real help is never ‘small’. The Newbuildings party were here on Saturday – all 3 being flourishingly well. W.S.B was much struck with the phyz6 of the Russian Giant. Those penetrating eyes of his went through me. Doubtless he already knows the sound of my voice, & the smell of my breath – such are the ways & manners of genius. The weather here has been thunderous for 3 days, with accompanying warm damp.

21

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Have read with advantage the 2 plays of Euripides, Proctor’s Laxdalers,7 and Yeats’s “Ideas”.8 Have written to Proctor, & told of my movements. Yours, always thankfully | Philip Webb. Lloyds’ bank have sold out £200 for me. £Pencils &c ——— Smelling salts ——— Diary ——— Thermometer ——— Writing ink ——— Mending field glasses ——— Enema apparatus ——— Suppositories (?) ——— Acc[or]dg to bill delivered June 18. 1903 Divd exchqr bonds, Decr ’02 Bottle of Indian ink ——— Cake of yellow colour ——— 5 Photos: Trin: Coll: Camb:

1.

£2.

s2.

d – 10 1 – 3. 6 6 5 – 4 6 10

18

2

8. 1 1 5

2 – – –

13. 4

Please carry over to next acct those things we have forgotten. Cheque inclosed – Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/156

1 In July, at the invitation of the New Yorkers, Robert and Caroline Hunter, SCC made the sudden decision to accompany them to Russia, where they were to meet Leo Tolstoy. On 3 July they left from Tilbury, bound initially for Gothenburg. He was back in London on 22 July. 2 For his younger brother, Perceval Speakman Webb, see Vol. II, Letter 505, note 1. 3 Three photographs of the completed mace for Birmingham appeared in The Studio, XXIX (1903), p. 293, introduced in ‘studio-Talk’ as ‘one of the finest pieces of silversmith’s work ever made in Birmingham . . . now in the possession of the Birmingham University, and recently presented to the faculty by Mrs. C.G. Beale, the wife of the Vice-Chancellor’ (p. 291). In May 1902, GW had wanted PSW to publish his drawing designs in The Art Workers’ Quarterly (see Vol. III, Letter 818, note 4), but nothing came of this. 4 When expressing his admiration of the mace to its sponsor, it is delicately ironic that ‘Dirty Joe’ Chamberlain did so in terms to which, despite his intense dislike for the man, PSW would have found it hard to take objection. ‘It is without doubt a beautiful piece of work, creditable alike to the designer & the craftsman.’ He suggested that members of the Birmingham public should be allowed to inspect ‘so beautiful a piece of art workmanship’ in the Art Gallery. Chamberlain to Alice Beale, 19 May 1903, Birmingham UB/MISC/C/1/39. 5 SCC was full of his encounter with Tolstoy. ‘It is only a week ago & I already find it difficult to believe what I saw. I managed to get in a few words about “What is Art”, & to complain that T. had

22

1903–1914 quoted Grant Allen, Herbert Spencer & Darwin, all scientists, as the chief English authorities on Art. He took the point, and said that he divided men into two classes, the clever (?wise) & the foolish, & that he put all scientists in the latter class. I took him Lethaby’s lecture on Morris & the new book of lectures (Architecture History & Wealth [sic]) and am to send him the other lecture volumes, but he was evidently much more interested in Ruskin, with whom he has more personal affinities than with Morris, especially on the Christian and ethical side.’ SCC to PSW, 18 July 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/155. 6 i.e. physiognomy – Tolstoy’s facial features captured in the postcard which SCC had sent. 7 Robert Proctor, The Story of the Laxdalers done into English (London: privately printed, 1903). 8 W.B. Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil (London: A.H. Bullen, 1903).

879 • To Sydney Cockerell, 22 July 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 22 July for 23 post. My dear Cockerell. Your 2 letters from Russia, and 3 picture cards have helped & interested me delightfully. Also, W.S.Bs – wh’ he let me read – was additionally good. He wants to have your permission to publish it, (as do I) from the lifelike description of your visit to the Tolstoi. If you consent, I shd wish you merely to modify the item on the Countess, which is quite pleasant for private reading, but might cause a sigh – if she saw it – to the lady: all wives of men of marked genius must have a tenderness on that point.1 Those “gimlet eyes” of the great lion go through me as I look at it, the p. card and impudent as is my general hardihood, if I’d been there, under the table go I must to shield me from them, the late pope’s would have been mildly sharp by comparison.2 I hope the good ship Irkutsk is not now rolling much, for, if the weather is fairly easy, you may enjoy so unusual a voyage on northern seas – & have Scandinavian sea legs to enjoy it with. If it had not been from the to & fro crossings, W.M. would not have as keenly felt his Icelandic experiences. I well remember his telling me of his feeling on sighting, & skirting the coast on the way to Reykeyavic, (?spelling) and my stay-at-home heart responded. Have been reading Proctor’s Laxadalers [sic] – all through, carefully, and dipping again into some of W.Ms translations; I’m content once more with continual axe cleavings, & spear thrusts, as matters of natural happening, and mere trifles. Proctor was here for an hour yesterday, and I was glad to speak well of his book. He was, I thought, quite sprack,3 and in other ways well. When back from Winchester (I go on Friday for the fortnight) you will be expected to disburden yourself freely on this strangely exciting journey of yours.4 Am still thinking, the omission of J.R. and W.M. from ‘What is art’, was not a slighting, but merely that he was dealing with other kinds of people.5 You will change my view, perhaps! The weather has not been the best for me, for of late it has been thunderous, with warm-moist air between the rainings; for walking is not a joy to me – as 23

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

belly & back refuse to help carry the load. Am putting out feelers for [a] place to retire in, for 3 months or so, in autumn. Have questioned Arthur Caffin about Lewes, and older Hale White of Groombridge – where he now lives.6 Shall not have answers from either yet. Also, what to do with Caxtons, when away for so long, is an unsolved point. I suspect it will have to be a giving up of Caxtons unless real improvement takes place; for a nine months’ shelving from ability to do anything useful in life, cannot be thought of with smiles on the face. If out of door industry shd be impossible in future, this place wd be unfit for me, and I’m not yet assured of being able to do in-door work again effectively. It wants an American doctor, I fancy, to make me ‘sit up’. Still, we shall see. Poor Mrs Dickinson too, now that she sympathises with my jesting turn, would not prefer in future to live amongst gentlemen and ladies;7 though habit & custom goes long ways in making content. In any case, the problem is a difficult one for me. ‘The firm’s’, and Lethaby’s advice will always be welcomed, but if my obstinacy beats it down, it wd not be from a thankless spirit. To you & Walker adieu. Yrs Philip Webb. Address for the fortnight would be – Ph. W. c/o H.S. Webb Esq: Beechwood Winchester. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/157

1 ‘The letter to W.S.B. has gone out of my mind, & I cannot remember what was said about the Countess. If anything is to be printed I think I should make it rather longer, though possibly it would not have the freshness of a letter written at ease the day after the event. It pleases me that you & WSB felt that some impression had been conveyed – not all quite lost in the telling. Tolstoy, curiously enough, knows nothing of Morris except “News from Nowhere”. He did not even know that he was a craftsman.’ SCC to PSW, 25 July 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/158. 2 ‘I am sorry you saw the picture of Tolstoy that I sent to Proctor. I bought it before I had seen the old fellow & expected to find him in that invalid state. But not a bit of it. He was liker to that one I sent you, a keen eyed man, as you have surmised, with vision of the Rontjen order, seeing through stone walls & stony hearts. I am thankful to have set my own faltering eyes upon him – & to have seen the material that he churned up into “War & Peace”. I shall have to read that book again now – & if it was wonderful before, it will be still more wonderful after.’ 3 Sprack (dialect): in good health and spirits. 4 ‘If you come up alone a fortnight hence you must contrive to let us meet you & convey you from station to station, even if there may not be a pause at Gatti’s on the way.’ 5 See previous letter, note 5. 6 ‘[L]ater on we must go to Lewes or whatever other place you think may suit you, at any rate for an autumn perch. It is easy to understand your worrying over the thought of having to make a change.’ 7 Margaret Dickinson had previously been in service with the Wickham Flowers.

24

1903–1914

880 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 July 1903 Pencil Ph. Webb Esq! | c/o H.S. Webb Esqre | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 27 July. 1903. Dear fellow. Your documentary evidence of all kinds is greatly helpful – keeping the sick man from thinking too much of himself. Yours of the 25th equally stimulating. Doubtless E.W was much annoyed at your returning so soon, even before you had quite mastered the Russian tongue – which might have helped the business in Cl: Inn. You can but be pitied, having to refuse three shirt-front dinners.1 No, I was not much hurt by your going Joss hunting;2 someone must have trundled to see the old man in the flesh, & my runnings about – even before disablement, have always been a nuisance – and now – good lord deliver me from motors of all kinds. Still, I got down here without difficulty – maugre the porter at Waterloo having thrust me into a division of a train, as long as the sea serpent; the compartment being choked with ladies, and a baby; the last objecting to my reading your Belloc book, so his amusement had to be attended to. Still I got through a little reading till the mother took to making love to me for my own sake: but you don’t understand these things! You say Tolstoi was “liker to” the one you sent me; this means – I suppose, the patriarch was better even than that to look at; but, how about the voice of him?3 That photo reproduction of Long Crendon & the letter explanations, tell me clearly enough that, in my truncated weak back & blown out middle condition, it would not suit my changed kind of possible life.4 Too cold, on those Buckinghamshire hills, unless the house-walls were of stone 2 feet or so thick, with fire places. Should think the Crendon a delightful place – & in other circumstances, would have been worth going to see. At present, I fancy the Rottingdean lodging is the most promising – save, perhaps, that my neighbourly gossiping might hinder G. B-J in her important work; she says it need not5 – Still, I will go there, as soon as may be, and look for myself – and probably to Groombridge, and maybe Lewes.6 Another difficult problem will be Caxtons, and a third, Mrs Dickinson? the separating from either cannot be looked at lightly. These things must be talked of when you come next to Worth. Had a long letter (for him) from Lethaby this morning, inclosing one from ‘the missis’, & one to him from Rooke, the good little man being very sprightly. After Auxerre, he talks of going on to Vezelay & having Lethaby at the former to explain the sculptures. Need scarcely say Ls letter to me is a miracle of brevity and clearness; he saw Catterson-S, & stopped him from going to Caxtons on Sat: Ly thinks well of Catterson’s possibilities in Birmm, in spite of his having been kicked upstairs’.7 Here, and under medical orders – with all kinds of kindness poured on me, I’m yet not making way, and the weather has gone wet – why should it not, as

25

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

benevolence allows it to fall on the unjust, & ‘drum bellies’. Of course I can do nothing but pace the garden, which is full of well carried out cultivation, for the eye as well as the belly; but —— the servitude to sickness is abominable, and seems ‘come to stay’ – like the motors.8 When I can write less dully will again tell you of myself. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Forgive the muddled pencil writing, for the writer’s sake. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/160

1 ‘No, they were not “shirt front” dinners, – one was at Lethaby’s, one at Miss Kingsford’s, and one with a very old friend – so you see I really did miss something.’ SCC to PSW, 28 July 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/159. 2 ‘Joss’: image of Chinese idol. The implication is that SCC had been ‘tuft-hunting’, and seeking to mix in influential circles. 3 ‘Tolstoy’s voice is strong when he pleases – but in conversation it is very gentle – no sign of age in it, unless this gentleness is a sign of age. It is what I remember so very well in Ruskin, the caressing tones, making one reply as one would wish to reply – instead of striking one dumb as was sometimes the case with timid people in W.M’s more masculine presence. I have written out notes on my visit and have had several copies typewritten, as everyone is asking for detailed information. Here is your copy, which is not to be returned.’ 4 ‘I enclose Long Crendon, but I think you decided that it would be too cold. It is rather a chance for a decent body who wants a summer place.’ SCC to PSW, 25 July 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/158. 5 GBJ was at work on her biography of EBJ, which would be published the following year as Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1904). 6 ‘The Rottingdean idea is a splendid one. It is a healthy, dry place, and nothing better could be thought of – at least so it seems to me. I am seeing Lady Burne-Jones tonight and she will perhaps tell me more about it.’ SCC to PSW, 28 July 1903. 7 SCC annotation: ‘R. Catterson-Smith had been recently appointed headmaster of the Birmingham School of Art. He had previously been in charge of a school for metalworkers there, and his place was taken by A.J. Gaskin, himself a noted metalworker.’ ‘Catterson-Smith has a look of great contentment & prosperity – & the right sort of self-confidence.’ SCC to PSW, 28 July 1903. 8 ‘You perhaps know that Mr Webb is again with his brother for a fortnight as Mrs Dickinson is taking her holiday. All this rain will be bad for him.’ SCC to JM, 29 July 1903, BL Add 52738, f. 123.

881 • To Margaret Dickinson, 28 July 1903 Pencil c/o H.S. Webb Esqre | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 28 July. 1903. Dear Mrs Dickinson I have your very welcome letter, telling of your getting to King’s Langley as easily as I got here. There being no post by which a letter could easily reach you before you left on Saturday, my sister sent the telegram; for I was afraid you would think an accident had happened to me, & that I might be lying in a London Hospital, suffering from a ‘motor’ accident. 26

1903–1914

The kind folk here are doing all to make me comfortable, and – if possible, to straighten my backbone. The weather has been much mixed, some of it helpfully fine, but the last 2½ days have been more or less wet – with accompanying damp; the rain, good for the garden, but not quite so for me! To make amends, when dry, I walk the garden up & down & round about, on the arm of brother or sister – wondering at the astonishing order in which the place is kept, and at the variety of vegetables put on the table. As yet, no walking to a greater distance, and I refuse to ride into the city on wheels,1 where the great Cathedral, and other interesting old buildings – my old friends, could be seen; but the surveyor, who looks after the cathedral, is coming to lunch here one day, and I may be able to get from him how the old church is being treated. Fortunately my letter to Mr Lethaby stopped him from coming to Caxtons on Friday – as he intended, and he told Mr Catterson Smith, whom he saw, who was coming on Saturday. Mr Lethaby & his wife are going for their holiday (say for a long fortnight!!) to Auxerre – in France, to see Mr Rooke, who is painting there. I have heard pleasantly from Mr Cockerell, who will come and see us after ‘our long fortnight’, when we must ‘kill the fatted calf’. Ah: your poor mother, with that heavy baby: let me hope he does not cry much. The train to Winchester was a very long one, & quite full with people going to the seaside. The porter, after a search, could only find one place in a compartment – the rest occupied by ladies young and old, and one strapping baby, who took all our time up in amusing him: when not amused he bellowed & struggled like a young bull-calf, however I got there in one piece, and hope to be patched up a little before returning – like Reggie’s breeks.2 With kind regard[s] to your Father, Mother, & Sister – and the 2 children. Believe me, your friend, as well as master, & yours disobediently, Philip Webb. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

1 PSW intensely disliked the arrival of the motorcar, and took care never to accept a lift in one. 2 Breeches.

882 • To Sydney Cockerell, 30 July 1903 Pencil Ph. Webb | c/o H.S. Webb. | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 30. July 1903 My dear fellow Your benevolence is only equalled by your trundling here & there, & pacifying your friends with the results – I’m truly glad you amplified the Leo. T. interview – ’tis so greatly interesting, and done to perfection; happily with no ‘journalese’ 27

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

taint: with a good larder it will keep fresh for years. It smelled quite sweet to me. I like my Joss’s to be stroked by my brothers in arms. Am sorry I trod on your toes, but, how could I guess your dinings out wd be with the select?1 Lethaby has written me such another good letter, but he puts me in awkward corners – forgetting the ignorance – by asking for suggestions (or opinion) on some prospective work of his; cannot refuse, but know he must be disabled by anything I can say in writing. You see, in speech one gets something more rightly said, by trimming as one goes on. Still I croon under his absurdly kind treatment of a vagrant mind. Hope Miss Kingsford matures her powers in a hopeful way for the future?2 Lethaby also writes well of Catterson-S: The appointment of his successor to the school seems to me somewhat doubtfully good – but I’m sceptical. What a pleasant letter of T.M.Rs. Had never heard of his former call at Auxerre before. Am afraid he will find the hoard of beauty at Vezelay has been much laid waste – Geo: Boyce deplored it.3 Thank you again for thinking of my reading. The Hudson’s Hampshire is here & I shall turn to it with as little ‘scepticism’ as may be – a good trait shd not be overdone.4 No, I do not ‘despair’, though the drum belly is still too much of a dTambor.5 Yesterday wind & weather was inspiriting – taking me out of these here bounds into a delightful monastic farm steading, (Hyde Abbey)6 the house having been transformed, and added-to from old materials, in temp: Chas. II, I think – such a roof of continuous lichen coated tiles, lies on the pitch down from the high road to the many threads of Itchen – gloried in by the sportsman brother as being stocked with trout: water meadows beyond, and sweeping contours of hills beyond them; all dreadfully injured by an ugly suburb of the City. We looked on the N. flank of distant Cathedral, with its nave of ‘rope-walk’ length; hope shortly to get down to the noble church shortly. It’s surveyor – Colson – comes to lunch here tomorrow, when we must venture on questions.7 He it was with whom T. Turner and myself discussed the repair of nave roof. Hope I shall not put one of my ‘three’ feet down clumsily. It does not seem to me likely that Leo. T. will quarrel much with W.Ms matter or manner when he reads. You see, Morris had no taint of ‘decadency’ in him – no transforming of one thing into an impossible spirituality of another. Also, as you well know, W.Ms writing on subjects was much more refined than that of his instant speech.8 I am made easier in mind by your thinking well of the Rottingdean ‘idea’. It was G.B-Js first thought; my second was of being a possible hindrance to her work; however, we are neither of us tiresome. The broad open sweeps of the downs seem as most likely to be helpful to me, if the sea does not counteract their effect, & I’ve no suspicion that it will. By this time you will have seen G.B-J, and yourself gathered what she thinks of the suggestion since it was made.9 The next point will be an anticipation of much difficulty in concluding to leave Caxtons, if it be judged that I must flit. Have not yet opened out to Mrs Dickinson of the doctors sending me away for the autumn quarter, but must do so on my return; it cannot but put the poor thing out, and that will be sure to make me sorrowful; for, 28

1903–1914

has she not trodden in the ways of gentlemen while so thoughtfully propping me in my weakness?10 I could – perhaps – go on, but this ill done rambling stuff must have nearly choked you as it is. All your devotedly kind thought for me is ever in my mind, & stays there. Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. Hearty good will to Walker – Surely he must be on the eve of his Italian ‘trundling’. He is a courageous fellow, ready to make the best of Italy, even on its downward road. I keep the ‘typewritten’, as you are so good as to say so.11 The home folk here have read it with much interest, & have got the 1st vol: of ‘War & Peace’ from the library: I’ve warned them of its rough road for inexperienced travellers in reading such. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/161

1 See above, Letter 880, notes 1–3. 2 For Kate Kingsford, see Vol. III, Letter 831, note 2. 3 GPB had visited Vézelay in September 1885. Doubtless what was ‘deplored’ was the restoration work of Viollet-le-Duc. See below, Letter 887, note 4. 4 SCC had offered to send a copy of William Henry Hudson, Hampshire Days (London: Longmans & Co., 1903). 5 ‘You must not despair of getting strong again. I believe Tolstoy was in a much worse case two years ago, and he is your senior. The glorious old fellow – worth a journey round the world to see! I am sending him some Morris books, & Mackail’s life.’ SCC to PSW, 28 July 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/159. 6 The tenth-century Benedictine monastery, Hyde Abbey, located on the outside of the Winchester city walls, was dissolved under Henry VIII. In the later eighteenth century, parts of the buildings and grounds were put into use once more. See next letter, note 5. 7 ‘I hope you rubbed some more Antiscrape into Colson, & got some information about the views of the new Dean.’ SCC to PSW, 31 July 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 76. For John Barnes Colson, the architectural surveyor at Winchester Cathedral, see Vol. II, Letter 521, note 2. 8 ‘Tolstoy is of course such a stupendous personage that it is rash to say that there is anything he does not understand, or that he could not understand if he cared to – but one sees in his writings that he is of a realistic & not of a romantic turn of mind. He insists on beauty not having anything to do with a work of art, & to Morris beauty meant so much more than it seems to mean to Tolstoy, who regards the human, emotional & dramatic side of things as the most important. His sympathies would be more with Madox Brown, I should imagine. Still, as you say, there was nothing decadent about Morris, & Tolstoy could not well be other than interested in him. See however W.M’s remarks on “War & Peace” “I am reading it with a good deal of approval, but not much pleasure” or some such words. I can imagine Tolstoy saying something rather like this about Morris.’ ff. 75–6. 9 ‘I discussed Rottingdean with Lady Burne-Jones, & she seemed to think that the two rooms that she has enquired about for you would be comfortable, & that the outlook is moderately pleasant, & altogether this plan sounds very promising.’ f. 75. 10 ‘The problem of Caxtons and of Mrs Dickinson ought to be much less difficult to settle.’ f. 75. 11 See above, Letter 880, note 3. ‘Those notes on Tolstoy contain so many of his words, that my own defective putting of them together has been received with some indulgence by my friends.’ f. 75.

29

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

883 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 6–7 August 1903 Pencil Ph. W. | c/o H.S. Webb Esqr | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. Aug. 6. 1903 My dear fellows. Not having written ‘answered’ on S.C.C’s letter of July 31, I don’t know if it was acknowledged. The brother told, on his return from town yesterday, of his call in Clifford’s Inn; at the last moment I asked him to do so if his time allowed. He was quite set up with seeing you both, though E.W had to bolt quickly for an appointment.1 He would have understood the difficulties in my way when answering Mrs E.Ws exceedingly kind letter; for am I not set in the midst of puzzles with regard to the future?2 Your agreement with the Rottingdean proposal (if it may be so) set me up much; for, not finding even this opener country than Worth dry and invigorating enough, for lasting abiding in – I must find some place more stimulating. I shall be likely to hear from G. B-J before going to Groombridge, or Lewes, possibly telling me if her plan is changed, from the illness of Mrs Percy Wyndham, who seemed so well when at Caxtons: hope nothing serious for the good lady.3 I am not disturbed in my reflections on the qualities of Tolstoi’s mind, from his doubtings of W.M, & the more so from learning the remark of the latter on ‘War & Peace’, so like the clear head of him.4 I confess to surprise at Leo. Ts difficulty over “beauty”, which is patent in ‘what is art’, for, without beauty, art is as nought. Also, beauty, to me, merely represents the fitness & balance of things. If a thing is not in some way beautiful, it lacks in perfectness. One talks of a ‘beautiful woman’; well, she must have the beauty of expression of mind in addition to that of the body, or, in the idea of beauty, otherwise, the face must be expressionless, as in the sculptures of Greece at its point of apogee: also, I take it, the later date Venus of Milos has expression in it, which gives the perfection in the human form divine, and so on ad lib. (unfinished, now the 7th) The recorded facts of Hyde Abbey are almost none.5 Some digging has been done, but records of them seem not to have been kept. Winchester has been careless beyond words as to her story – and this continues to this day, for the holders of historic ground are profoundly ignorant, as well as greedy in making profit of it. Indeed, the whole place is in the hands of spoilers. I managed to get to the Cathedral again, for the library there, and saw (under glass) the bible; if there had been time, and my back could have borne it, the sub-Libn would have let me turn some leaves – both of those 3 vols:, as well as those of many other early M.S.S – such a goodly lot: patience!6 Yesterday I got to S. Cross. That was good luck for S.P.A.B. the keeping the stupid villa (new Warden’s house) out of the hospital precincts.7 As it is, the modern ineptitude is well behind a row of large polled lime trees, at a fair distance N of the St X wall. Lord, how noble is the whole work within the precinct; still, the trail of the serpent is still insistant [sic]. It was long since Butterfield had to do 30

1903–1914

with the admirable old church, but it was a huge mistake to paint the patterning on the internal architecture with 19th cent: imitation of real aptitude & invention.8 The Cathedral stall work is still the masterpiece of wood invention & carving inside the choir, but the blockheads, at the west of it – in the nave, must needs take down the solid, or organ screen west of the old carved backing to return stalls, and put up an imitation carved wood western screen, filled in with glass to keep out the draught; hence these tears – DAMN. Mrs Dickinson returns fm her holiday to Caxtons on Monday the 10th, and myself on Tues: 11th. Then, if either or both of you could, conveniently, come and see me on the following Saturday, it would make a gleam of sunshine there.9 The great goodness here of the kind folk here is very helpful, but what – to me, is the unaccustomed respectability of the life, in addition to my physical inability, it is all a kind of ‘jail bird’ existence: but – again, ‘patience’. I suppose E.W is thinking of his Italian holiday? When he is off, I shall be expecting an occasional picture P-card, as of last year. I’m certainly stronger – in part, but still fettered by obstinate belly and back. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. I gathered f’m Lethaby he was going to Yorkshire first, and to France (Auxerre & other) afterwards. I return the pleasant Rooke letter – such a reasonable one too. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/162

1 ‘It was a great treat, seeing your brother here, & having news of you, & good news too.’ SCC to PSW, 8 August 1903, BL Add 52761, ff. 77–8. 2 ‘The 3 places suggesting themselves to me, are Lewes (doubtful) Groombridge, & Rottingdean, and one or more of them I must visit on returning to Caxtons. I can hardly thank you fittingly for your kind suggestion, for Mrs Dickinson when I am away for the 3 months or so this year, but another consideration would be in arranging for the carrying on during that time of Caxtons, and much must depend on my finding the best place for galvanising me into life again.’ PSW to Mary Jones Walker, 1 August 1903, V&A, AAD. 3 ‘Lady B-J has gone to Kelmscott & was to have gone on to Clouds, but this part of her programme may have to be given up as I hear from W.S.B. that Mrs Wyndham is rather seriously ill; he does not tell me the nature of the illness. You will have heard of her pilgrimage to the Red House a week or two ago.’ SCC to PSW, 31 July 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 75. 4 See previous letter, note 8. ‘About beauty & ugliness: there is the beautiful beautiful & the ugly beautiful, & the ugly ugly & the beautiful ugly. The first & last alone are satisfying – but I think Tolstoy’s point in that although good art may need something of the kind, bad art does not – & bad art is art just the same – i.e. if (according to Tolstoy’s definition) it conveys an emotion from one person to another. . . . I enclose two Tolstoy booklets – the good old fellow, we mustn’t quarrel with him.’ SCC to PSW, 8 August 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 77. 5 ‘Hyde Abbey was a great centre of manuscript writing in the old days.’ SCC to PSW, 31 July 1903, f. 76. 6 ‘[W]hen you go to the Cathl if you are not too tired to go up the not very many stairs with the verger who has the key, that great 3 vol Bible of the 12th c would rejoice your eyes. The three vols lie open under glass. But I fear you might find the little climb too much for you at present.’ f. 76. 7 See Vol. II, Letter 549.

31

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 8 William Butterfield had undertaken restoration work on the St Cross chapel in 1864–5. 9 See next letter, note 2.

884 • To Edith Crosby Lethaby, 16 August 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 16 for 17 Aug: 1903 Dear Mrs Richard. Yours, inclosed with a letter from the good man – of 24 July, gave me much pleasure; that of R. himself putting me into a pretty considerable perplexity, wh’, doubtless, he must have anticipated with a chuckle! However, I send both of you the “blessing” invoked – and much good may it do. And so you whettened your appetites for antiquities by hasty lookings on S. Albans, & Rochester. I wonder at R. risking his reputation for restraint from angry expression by going to see the ‘late lamented’ former work. I do not know Wensleydale – save from its famous cheese, nor Bainbridge; and Yorkshire is too wide a field for me to have seen more of it than here & there interesting parts; of its barring its curse of manufacturing smoke, I’ve always enjoyed its great variety of interest, both in land and antiquities – over which your hunger will have only been staved off till you get to the French Cathedrals, when all your delight in the English works will be quenched in the greater of the French – hateful comparison!1 For a full fortnight I was at Winchester in the brother’s medical asylum, being pushed & driven about to have sick man’s habits driven out of me; doubtless that was well, but I am not yet quite so: still living though, on hope. Poor ancient Winchester is in bad case, [sic] inhabited by barbarians of the deepest dye, and surrounded by suburbs coloured with coal-tar tints, which flout the sober greys & browns of antiquity – driving a reasonable visitor to distraction. Even London – “the dirtiest of the dirty” – which was just touched on when passing from one station to another under rain, was not so disheartening; for it has been passing through the commercial mill for so long, that small are the items of interest in wh’ yet remain for consolation. These doleful reflections will be making you say – ‘poor old man, he is evidently not yet well’. The cheery S.C.C was here last evening, helping me to forget myself and other ruins, by telling of his Russian and other wonders lately looked on.2 Tolstoy – the old man manifest – was a big item in our talk, and France was hardly mentioned between us! perhaps he left that for you and Richard to touch upon – which I am looking forward to, either in writing or proper person. At present my indolent soul is disturbed by having to find some place in which to pass the late autumn in, for the doctors will not allow the risk of my living here this autumn – at all events; & beyond that I can look forward to little. But – patience, & forgiveness on your part is the hope of Yours very truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD 32

1903–1914 1 The Lethabys were planning a trip to the Yorkshire Dales. They would send PSW photographs from Bainbridge, a village close to the confluence of the rivers Ure and Bain. The French visit was in connection with WRL’s research for his forthcoming Mediæval Art. See below, Letter 887, note 5. 2 ‘I found P.W. remarkably better, able to walk again. Talked about his future plans – Rottingdean, Lewes, Groombridge, London, were the possible dwelling places – and about Tolstoy – & came up by the 9.40 train. P.W. walked with me as far as the top of the hill.’ CD, 15 August 1903. This is the only reference to PSW ever contemplating a return to London, and seems hardly credible.

885 • To Sydney Cockerell, 24–25 August 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 24 Aug: 1903 My dear Cockerell. Thank you for sending more of Tolstoy – and a good letter. Walker will have told you of his time here, and that I am “much better”! Whether this be true or not, ’tis “not for the likes of me (the sick man) to say” – for things in belly, back, & memory are not equally assured – but patience is a good monitor in such case. I told E.W. (& he will transmit) of the kind of interview between F.L. Griggs & Ph. W, for his memory is better than mine. In any case, the F.L.G was modest, while I hid mine under a bushel, and talked galore.1 Hoping more though from his commonsense than my persuasion. The gist of it wd be, that between whiles of his publishers’ work in doing, he should mature his power of drawing from continuous dealing study from nature, of all kinds; for this I believe is the only way of keeping clear of the slang of book illustrators’ ‘chic’. What say you? Each new drawing should shew some small advance – at least – over the last; if only by omitting one acknowledged weakness of treatment? These notes of question merely mean that now my modesty is not obscured! W.S.B was here today; I followed him later on to the stables, & we returned together to 1-o.c house din. here – when we were both at ease in the talking. All reasonable folks, it seems, are agreed on not publishing a cheap edition of the “Hollow land” – good.2 I’m a little in doubt of answering with a negative Walter Cobbett’s very kind proposal. I shd much like such music – if it did not rend my soul, but also, hardly like bringing him all the way (with money expenditure) to gratify me, in my ignorance of music. However, suppose we risk it, & I say yes, for next Saturday?3 E.W. will have told you I went to Rndean. Her Leddiship4 was kind as always, but have heard from her since that the lodging keeper finds her rooms have been claimed for October. Most likely I go one day in this week to Groombridge, to wh’ place – at all events, I should have gone before deciding on R’dean. Have heard nothing of Lethaby, so am supposing he has heaved anchor for la France. 33

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I’ll be glad for you to tell me on Saturday how you found Kelmscott & its people.5 Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. This was written last evening under difficulties, and by candlelight. Will you therefore make allowances. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/166

1 Frederick Landseer Griggs (1876–1938), was described as an ‘excellent topographical draughtsman’ by SCC (CD, 26 January 1903), who provided him with an introduction to PSW. ‘Griggs was mightily pleased with all you said to him, both the praise and the criticism – and I am sure your trouble was not thrown away.’ SCC to PSW, 20 August 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 79. He produced illustrations for the Highways and Byways series produced by Macmillan from 1902, and would work with Ernest Gimson and others within the Arts and Crafts circle at Sapperton. 2 SCC and Robert Proctor were the editors of The Hollow Land and Other Contributions to the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine by William Morris (London: Longmans, Green & Co; printed at the Chiswick Press, 1903). Of the 300 copies, 277 were sold and 23 given away. See LeMire, pp. 295–6. A suggestion had been made that a cheap edition should follow, but was not favoured. ‘Crom Price is exactly of your opinion (& Proctor’s & mine) about a cheap edn of the Hollow Land.’ f. 80. 3 During this visit to Caxtons, Walter Cobbett took his violin and played ‘a sonata of Handel’s, a Bach chaconne, some Tartini, Handel’s Largo &c. P.W. enjoyed it very much & did not seem overexcited. Walter played splendidly.’ CD, 29 August 1903. 4 GBJ. 5 ‘I found the three ladies at Kelmscott very well & the cottages finished & most beautiful & I travelled part of the way to Lechlade with Crom Price & all the way back with Jack & his wife & twins. To all these I gave news of you & of your walks abroad. Mrs Morris & Jenny’s companion Miss Pierless (who comes from Tunbridge Wells) both declare Groombridge to be no better than Worth for leafiness – & although Walker brings word of a hitch at Rottingdean, the place is full of lodgings & you could be well enough stowed away in one of them until the chosen rooms are vacant.’ SCC to PSW, 24 August 1903, BL Add 52761, ff. 81–2.

886 • To Sydney Cockerell, 14 September 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 14 Septr 1903 My dear Cockerell. Walker’s call on Saturday was good fellowship, in spite of the brevity. He told me of your proposing to go with me to Lewes on Sat: 19th – which means, I suspect, if you can get away early enough? Trains are scanty from 3 Bridges to Lewes. The first I could get away by is 11.18 a.m. at 3 Bs, getting to Ls at 12–2 noon. The next stopping at 3. Bs is 12.50 – Ls 1.21. This latter wd be the latest from 3. Bs to give the necessary time at Lewes: but I will await your consideration of the times. Of course, if the Sat: turned out unfit, you would not come?1 The wind here has gone round – yesterday to N.W., and today N.E, and the dryer cold air has revived me a bit. If tomorrow, Tuesday, shd promise well, & I’m up 34

1903–1914

to the mark, I might make a shot at seeing Lewes, to get my slow head round to the right bearings before we cast eyes & wits about the place together. I’m not only thinking of the 3 months trial of the Lewes downs district, but also – if it was evidently a place for my ancient fabric to do well in, it might (perhaps) give a home for me. You see, tis not an awkward place to get to, and Lewes would surely contain a doctor, or two, – one of which, with winks from my brother, might pick me up if I tumbled down. There is a good sized village, two miles from the centre of Lewes, which seems – on the map – to promise well, if a roomy lodging, or even a cottage could be got in it for this here family? Am not sure if I mentioned ‘Kingstone’ (the name of village) to you before;2 but it lies nicely sheltered from the S.W. & N.W on a lower slope of downs within an angle of the higher – and having a lengthy view as far E.S.E as Beachyhead – with a great series of tumbled downs in between. Kingstone is 114 feet above sea level; about 4½ miles over the downs to Rottingdean, which is 89 feet above S-Ll. This morning I tried if cutting wood exercise was possible for me, and managed 6 fine billets of oak – and did a bit of walking afterwards – as well as could be expected; tis odd that, as yet, I cannot sit at table without too much pain.3 Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/175

1 ‘Unless the weather looks very unfavourable or you send me word to Richmond on Saturday morning I shall catch the Lewes train that is due at Three Bridges at 11.18, & shall travel 2nd class so that we may have room for talking. I hope we may find the sort of lodgings you want. So far as the countryside is concerned you cannot fail to like the look of it – & from the Lewes downs the blessed country across the Channel can be seen with the eye of faith.’ SCC to PSW, 17 September 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 83. ‘Went to Lewes. Met Philip Webb there, & looked at lodgings with him in St Annes Terrace. Then walked through Southover with him, had tea and saw him off by the 6.13 train to Three Bridges.’ CD, 19 September 1903. 2 The small village of Kingston near Lewes, at the foot of the South Downs, lies two miles south of the town. 3 ‘Please do not overdo the wood chopping.’ f. 83.

887 • To William Richard and Edith Crosby Lethaby, 17 September 1903 Pencil, incomplete? Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 17 Sepr ’03 My dear Lethaby & Mrs Richard. ’Tis 3 days since I got your second boon, & mid August when the first reached me; ever since, I’ve been living on their vital force, while now the flatness of a 35

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

pancake is a trifle compared with my own when trying to get a rise out of this poor head of mine in return for so much goodness.1 The Yorkshire proofs of your journey done by Kodak’s sleight of hand – beyond pleasing me, interested much. I got out Ordnance maps & found Bainbridge on Bain, & its feeding Ure.2 The Roman road, between walls of pasture separation, is ideal, and W.R.L carrying a ‘Rose & Crown’, is one of the pleasantest shots ever made by a Kodak: never did I see a more telling likeness – do not let him be taken again, for that must be a failure after this. Look again at the nimbus-light on the crown! Being a ‘little Englander’, the 2 Lincoln statues consoled me. They are fine work indeed, & telling – in spite of miserable loss of heads. The Byland Abbey front (a perfect little photo) is an old friend of mine & he’s not ashamed of saying so.3 True, the Gothic between 1200 & 1350 was not ‘barbaric’ – or rather, had not the barbaric element left in it: but between 1150 & 1200, the youthful freshness & strength, of what I’ve called barbaric is there; & the very spring in the later (more refined) chevron decoration is to me a visible sign that ‘barbarism’ was outgrown – though its strength-giving quality back-boned the work of the next 2 centuries. Still, how difficult such questions, in their real answering, are! There was heavybrowed “wonder” built into cathedrals before “the wrigglings of the great worm” had straightened art; and ‘wonder’ is, I feel, an ‘essential’ of the Gothic. Indeed, I’m claiming it should be a primary essential, and that only by the Gothic features of multiplication & disposition of parts can ‘wonder’ (& even in comparatively small buildings) be gained, and which would be more subtle than in the larger; which for these wd depend more on actual size, than in the mysteries of skill in genius? Do you know, either from photos: or of Viollet le duc, the great central doorway under the narthex of the Madeline at Vézelay? Rooke père, sent a p. card of it to S.C.C – who left it with me. ’Tis an astounding piece of structural & sculptured work, and, by good luck, not tampered with by the Viollet. I think the sculpture could not be later than end of 12th cent? in any case it is barbarically powerful.4 Your thumbnail essay on the lovely playfulness in gothic, “a sort of fairy story in stone” gives me much pleasure – and it is so true; go on in that way – and in any other, which is all your own.5 You were likely to say to yourselves, when sending me the French samples of some you had seen on your second jaunt, that ‘his prejudice – insular’ must give way. It must of been [sic] S.C.C who labelled me as so inclusive. O dear me how little they know of one’s perplexities in art, and how small reason there is in being cocksure. “Reasonable selection” is allowable in those aware of their own mistakes? You brought this poor ‘house down’ with the ornamented pinnacles of Rheims; the Cavettos filled with very human heads instead of ball flowers:6 serious imagination, some humour, & small of the grotesque – shoulder to shoulder in the wide hollow. Am not going to contradict the superlative expression used over the sweet head of the little “Lady from Laon”.7 I used ‘little’, as there is something of ‘ma petite’ in its soft roundings of mother-like youth – how hard to be sure that of the two one would have preferred the loss of the head to that of the body?* The

36

1903–1914

half closing of eyelids as the beginning of a smile, with admirably designed hair locks kept in order by the beautiful circlet. I thought of that pretty marble head by M. Angelo in the Ken Mus: in which the upper eyelids are there drawn down.8 * See the truncated one from your S. porch photo: at Lincoln, for this doubting as to preference. Sheet missing? V&A, AAD

1 2 3 4

5

6 7 8

The Lethabys had sent photographs of buildings seen during their trips to Yorkshire and France. See above, Letter 884. For Byland Abbey, see Vol. II, Letter 425, note 4. Viollet-le-Duc illustrated two ornate doorways within the Abbey church of Sainte-MarieMadeleine de Vézelay in Dictionnaire Raisonné de L’Architecture Française du XIe au XVIe Siècle, VII, pp. 388 and 437. There are even finer folio engravings in his Monographie de L’Ancienne Église Abbatiale de Vézelay (Paris: Gide, 1873). A recent commentator makes the challenging claim that Viollet-le-Duc’s major restoration works at Vézelay allows it to be regarded as ‘a historic monument . . . compatible with modern spatial sensibilities. A bright and open space framed by lightcolored masonry walls, the church of the Madeleine possesses formal characteristics that appealed to nineteenth- and twentieth-century observers . . . Since Viollet-le-Duc had evicted most of the trappings of religion from the interior, it could be contemplated on a purely aesthetic basis.’ It seems that no irony is intended in this last sentence. Kevin D. Murphy, Memory and Modernity. Viollet-le-Duc at Vézelay (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 5. WRL had evidently shown PSW an early draft of part of what would be published in the following year. ‘Gothic architecture, to which I must particularly refer in these pages, is a sort of fairy story in stone; the folk had fallen in love with building, and loved that their goldsmiths’ work, and ivories, their seals, and even the pierced patterns of their shoes should be like little buildings, little tabernacles, little “Paul’s windows”.’ Mediæval Art: from the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance (London: Duckworth & Co., 1904), p. 41. The volume carried a dedication ‘To P.W.’ ‘Cavetto’: ‘A hollowed moulding . . . principally used in cornices’ (OED). It is not clear to which sculpture he refers, but if he still has Reims in mind it may conceivably be that of the so-called ‘smiling angel’ (male) on the central portal at Reims Cathedral. Again, there is no certainty, but he may mean Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna and Child (1504–6), of which the South Kensington Museum obtained a cast in 1872. Although this description of half-closed eyes seems to match that of the Virgin, the sculpture is not a head only but a complete mother and child group.

888 • To Sydney Cockerell, 26 September 1903 Pencil; year added by SCC Caxtons – Sat: 26 – Sepr: for posting. Written on Friday night. My dear Cockerell. Your fending for me last Saty has been on mind [sic] ever since1 – and yesterday brought your letter, with Miss Anderson’s – inclosed, (which is herewith returned).2

37

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

This last week has been health-trying, to me, its moist warmth increasing my disability. Thackeray Turner looked in on Wednesday, my brother on Thursday, and G-B-J to day Friday; & you saying that Walker or Lethaby may be here tomorrowday. The lodgings-plot thickens, & my wits get thinner. If I don’t hurt the feelings of one or more of my most kindly helpers in trouble before I’m well disposed of, (or ill for that matter) it will be a surprise to me. G. B-J knows those St Anne’s lodging houses well, but thinks ill of my being hung up in one of them for three months. This has spurred her on to look again at for a possibility of a place yet being found at R’dean, and is on a track. She knows the Kingstone, & says it is delightful in look & position, but doubts there being room in it for any other than its own population.3 So, even if you should be in the neighbourhood on Sat: week, do not trouble to look in on its seclusion, for I can learn more of it from a farmer’s wife here. Turner was not here for long, and had some points of Qns Coll: Camb: to talk about,4 so that I forgot the ‘Anne of Cleves’ house at Lewes. If you have not already done so, will you express our feeling that the place should not be destroyed.5 What well done criticisms is that of Tolstoy on Guy de Maupassant!6 Had gathered something before of his genius, which must have been very considerable for L.T. to have almost condoned the root-weakness of French imaginative literature. Please my dear fellow take my most sincere thanks for your persevering help in my poor affairs, and still believe me Yours truly | Philip Webb. m Thanks for sending your mem of Walker’s coming, and T.M.Rs letter, (which is inclosed). What good reasonable thought & expression he (Rooke) has about the L.T. preaching. I’ve also had a good letter from Vezelay since I saw you. Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/178

1 2 3 4

See above, Letter 886, note 1. SCC annotation: ‘Miss [Sara] Anderson’s letter was about possible lodgings at Rottingdean.’ See above, Letter 886, note 2. In 1903, HTT was the architect for alterations to the President’s Lodge at Queen’s College, Cambridge. 5 A fifteenth-century timber-framed Wealden hall-house in Southover High Street, Lewes, formed part of Henry VIII’s settlement when his marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled in 1541. The SPAB took an interest in the house during 1904. 6 Guy de Maupassant, by L. Tolstoy. Translated by V. Tchertkoff (1898). Tolstoy wrote this to serve as a preface to the Russian translation of Guy de Maupassant’s Mont-Oriol.

38

1903–1914

889 • To Sydney Cockerell, 28 September 1903 Postcard; year and month added by Cockerell Caxtons. Mon: 28th I should be glad to have anything you can tell me about the Switzerland case.1 Yrs. Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/180

1 SCC annotation: ‘ “The Switzerland case” was the disappearance of our good friend Robert Proctor when crossing a dangerous glacier in Tirol. He was never again heard of.’ ‘I grieve to say that there is no news of our good Proctor. Streatfeild, who went out to search, has announced his arrival at the place (St Leonhard in the Tyrol) from which the last letter, dated Sept 5th, was written home – & if we hear anything definite from him, I will let you know at once.’ SCC to PSW, 29 September 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 84. See also Vol. III, Letter 709, note 1. The critic and musicologist, Richard Alexander Streatfeild (1866–1919), was Proctor’s colleague at the British Museum.

890 • To George Washington Jack, 30 September– 1 October 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 30 Septr ’03. My dear Jack. Kindly pardon the delay in acknowledging your good letter of the 20th, inclosing the photograph of carved panel for the Kelmscott cottages, and a reproduction of drawing of your house at Arisaig. ’Twas not from want of interest in all three, but from the impediments of illness, my not being able to knock off half a dozen answers to correspondents in a day. I’m preparing for a two months move from here to another climate, with the hope that a real atmospheric change may help me over the stile. Am not sure of the possibility of ever being better, and am doubtful of convincing my friends that I’m not nearly well again! Have had many kind folks to see me, and considerable going about in finding a proper place to go to other than the churchyard. I believe it will end in my going to Rottingdean, as the most likely place for a radical change of air & life: say, in the middle of October, at which time a lodging has been found for me.

39

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

As you truly say, I must use my imagination when looking at the photo: which gives the thing altogether out of place & perspective. No putting an imitation stone frame round it wd help; you really must get Weir to go & photo: it – the panel – in its place from below: nothing else would do justice to your work. All I can yet be sure of is, that it must look altogether different, & better, as seen in its place from below. I daresay you agree with me, that if you had managed the “back view” of the memorial figure as well as you have the “profile” one, the effect in all ways would have been much more striking? It seems to me your desire to get a true & recognizable portrait in a figure, to be so far above the eye, has stood in the way of your making a greater success than you have. From my view, a general rightness in the shape, & poising of the head, & messing of the hair, wd have been all that was needful as a memorial. However, as it must be seen in any position from the ground, I can quite believe it may be very pleasant looking, and effective. In truth I can see that most of it must be so, for most of it is very happily composed & delightfully executed.1 Am not sure of understanding, when you say you altered the “hat, boots and pavillion”, [sic] that these things were done before, or after the photo: was made? However, you can tell me all about the matter here before I leave, as aforesaid. But, my dear fellow, how glad you must now be now that you undertook for me such an ungrateful task as the whole Kelmscott cottage matter must have been to you, considering my very true thankfulness, and Mrs Morris’s great satisfaction – I know that much of her mind towards your work. I wish I could do for you as good a turn as you have done for me – but that is impossible.2 The little picture of the house at Arisaig, rather puzzled me, at first – it seemed so real, as if photod from nature: if it had not been for the standard roses, the gardener would have carried it out as from the life: really, I suppose there are more courses of stone in the house than the sun counted? does this mark stand © for Crawford? 3 I like the house very much indeed, and I shall confront & question you with the picture before you when you come, for I’d like to know something of the windows with regard to the plan, &c. Yours with thankful sincerity | Philip Webb. rs I must hear from or see M Morris about the cottages inscription – am not sure if any is necessary. 2 The above was written last night. This morning I had a letter from Lord Carlisle, telling they were aiming at completing the tower at Brampton church, and asking information as to how it might best be carried out: also, if an architect be engaged, whom wd I recommend, &c.4 He asked if it were possible for the builder who did the masonry of the church – & is still alive – to carry out my design from the small (of the Kelmscott carving)

40

1903–1914

drawings they have of the upper part of tower, &c, which was not then carried out? Of course this wd never do, for an intolerable muddle would be made of it. I have detailed drawings here of two forms for finishing the tower, and I mean to tell Ld Carlisle, that, even with either of them, I should advise a simplification of it being adopted. Perhaps you may remember something of these designs? With your permission, I will answer him, that I would much prefer that you should undertake this work, as architect; for you would more easily than anyone else fall in with the spirit of the design, and that no one else would so well know how to carry it out. Will you, by return of post, tell me candidly whether you could, or would undertake this work if it was so put in your hands, and if so, without disinclination?5 I should tell Ld C. what & how you have done the work at Kelmscott for rs M Morris & myself: my answer to him will be written on receipt of yours. Yrs Ph. W. Mem. If the work were done by you, it would be entirely your job. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I think your criticism of the stone carving very lenient considering the liberties I took with the pose of the figure. I quite agree with you in saying that a broader rendering of the likeness would have been better – but there is no doubt in my mind that the thing was impossible for the reason that I could not do it – that kind of thing is the result of long familiar practice with the figure – and also the outcome of a far better memory than I possess. I nearly despaired over & over again of ever getting even a commonplace resemblance or decently approximate proportions – it was too much for me there is no doubt.’ GWJ to PSW, 1 October 1903, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘As for my work at the cottages – and its being irksome – far from it – I only wish it was beginning again. I never had a pleasanter job to do. I wish there were a dozen cottages going to be built on the same conditions. Mrs Morris was always so very kind and appreciative. The work itself turned out so well done, that I have no hesitation in saying it has been the pleasantest piece of work I have done in that way. I only fear that the last bit of work i.e the stone has secretly hurt Mrs Morris, I only feel this by a kind of mesmerism. She expressed herself satisfied & pleased.’ 3 Crawford appears to have done work for GWJ. See also below, Letter 934, notes 3 and 4. 4 When PSW had built St Martin’s, Brampton (1877–8), a temporary roof had been fixed. Funds at that time had not been sufficient for the erection of a bell tower, although it had always been the hope of the church authorities that its completion might follow at some later stage. GWJ would supervise the completion of PSW’s original plans for the tower and spire in 1905–6, when the additional money was in place. £500 had been offered in 1896 by the widow of the former incumbent, the Reverend Henry Whitehead, and a further £600 was underwritten by GH. See Kirk, pp. 261–3. 5 ‘As for Brampton, yes by all means. I am only too glad to see a prospect of work, as I am nearly at the end of my tether in that respect. I have two bits of carving on hand, the lectern and another thing – when they are done I shall be without work unless this church tower comes my way. Thank you for proposing me for the work. I only hope Lord Carlisle may agree – the work itself would be greatly to my mind.’

41

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

891 • To Giacomo Boni, 1 October 1903 Photostat Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 1. Octr 1903. My dear Giacomo Boni. The bearer of this note is my very good friend – Emery Walker.1 He being in Rome at this time, I asked him to call and tell you of myself – for ’tis long since either of us claimed attention of the other by letter, and I’ve been much disabled of late by ill health – This is not surprising at the age of 73! Mr Walker, who for years was one of William Morris’s most helpful and affectionate of colleagues, would like to see, and speak to my Italian friend – whose fine reputation has travelled overseas. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Courtauld 196

1 ‘I presented your note to Sig. Boni who was much interested in hearing about you. He was most kind and took the whole party over the Forum.’ EW to PSW, picture postcard from Rome, 11 October 1903, EWT.

892 • To Mrs Proctor, 2 October 1903 Draft; pencil but dated in ink; drafted on reverse of letter from SCC of 1 October Could not manage it Ph. W.1 2 Octr 1903 Dear Mrs P2 Our ever thoughtful friend Sydney Cockerell has kindly written me all the consolation there can be in our loss; of his having seen you with full sympathy; and of your bearing under the inexpressible deprivation of the support and delight of your life. And now I hardly like bringing shrink from putting myself before you in your pain save and except that a feeling word now from a friend of your son’s for some years back, and that shewn with affection and esteem always surprising to me, – who am a sadly ignorant man; and whilst he, a renowned & deeply learned scholar, was ever the simple, direct, & loving friend; claiming an interest in things outside his own special work, with simply because they belonged were a part back, cannot even now be out of place. Even now, I hardly understand how that inspiriting friendship could come about, between a renowned & deeply learned man scholar, and a sadly ignorant man such as I am; save that he was always ready to interest himself in any subject, and become delightfully companionable; only asking for honest directness & simplicity 42

1903–1914

from the heart of his friend – and that it was my delight to give him – with my admiration for his transparent honesty and nobility of character. Believe me, Dear Mrs P. | Your personally unknown, but sincerely sympathetic friend | Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/177

1 PSW struck through the whole draft, but as is clear from the following letter he sent a third version. 2 ‘Here is all that is known at present about Proctor. The case is hopeless. I went down yesterday to see the poor bereaved mother, to whom he was everything in the world. She is brave, as Pollard says, but I know what she is feeling. She has some of her son’s grit. I find that she looks to me for help in settling his affairs – which help I am of course willing and anxious to give. I spoke of your having felt the news keenly, and of your having written to be informed – & this was evidently a comfort to her. She has heard so much of you from “Robbie” that although she never saw you, you are more to her (as you were to him) than almost any living person. Perhaps you could write her a few lines (beginning Dear Mrs Proctor not Dear Madam). They would greatly comfort her . . . I had no idea how much I loved Proctor. One was accustomed to dwell rather on his great learning, but now I can only think of his modesty & affection and unswerving honesty of word and deed.’ SCC to PSW, 1 October 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/177. Like R.A. Streatfeild, the bibliographer Alfred W. Pollard (1859–1944) was one of Proctor’s British Museum colleagues.

893 • To Sydney Cockerell, 4 October 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. Crawley. Sun: 4 Octr ’03 My dear Cockerell Your well doing hands have been over filled – and I can but hope the weight of pain at Oxshott has not brought you to your knees.1 I did what you told me to do, because it was so right – still ’twas a hard nut to crack: broke my teeth over it twice, and the third try was but a dull one. To write on such a subject, to a woman in deep pain whom I’d never seen, would generally bring me down to the artificial, or commonplace, or what is worse, to the incredibly sentimental – & contrary to my feeling, which is real. Posted it yesterday, but do not know if Oxshott has a Sunday’s post. Then there is this queer feeling; might he not turn up again, quite contrary to all the chances, but one? I’m so much of your mind – one really did not know how much “Robbie” (the mother’s familiar term, bringing him home) had become one of a tribe, at which the rest of the gypsies did not scowl as he took his seat. I am thinking that Mr Pollard2 – fm the way in which he writes, may have been on quite pleasant terms with R.C.P, and if so, the mother may have been accustomed to Pollard, & that he – at all events for a while – may be able to divide the good Samaritan labours somehow between you; or, if there be no one else who can, you will be overdone before each week is half out? 43

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

You see, I know “your ways & your manners”, and you will be doing more for others (as the Irish might say) than you can: do you see? I had a picture card from E.W, shewing the timber & painted bridge of Lucerne, quite Swiss, baby like, & pretty – so sweet it should have so lasted, even if constant repairs have left no old wood in it.3 E.W. did all the spectacles matter, & they have been duly sent here, with bill receiptd. Lethaby came down this evening in very good feather, and quite in humour to keep me away from old age whining, &c. He talked well & freely of the France, and told me of good French builded things he has been musing over for future use. One interested me much – viz – the north transept of Amiens, & how the great rose window there had been stiffened with security later on.4 L. explained to me that wh’ I could not remember to have seen when there, and which appears in that picture card you sent me in Aug: – by the way, the best photo I have seen of the Cathedral. Yes – (somehow, I could not get it written to you before) G.B-J has told the landlady for me at R’dean, that I go there on the 15th or 16th of this month. She (G.B-J) is wonderfully helpful & kind withal, and I must be keen to avoid hindering her very serious work.5 My brother agrees with me, that the sea air & that of the downs, combined, may be more helpful than if not taken together. He put up very well with my having done without his (really promising) lodging near Winchester. The folk all round have been so good, that the risk was much that I shd offend one if not more. Miss Dowling of 8 St Annes Crescent wrote to ask my “intentions” – as she was sure she would be able to make me comfortable &c, & have my meals in own room. I wrote polite answer, that I was going elsewhere than to Lewes, &c. Hale White comes (if fine) to see me tomorrow,6 & Lethaby spoke of Wardle, on some other day. Jack will most likely come next Saturday, as I think there is another job (professional) for him.7 Yours always thankfully | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/181

1 SCC went to Oxshott in Surrey on 3 October and stayed two nights with Proctor’s mother. ‘She was alone, splendidly brave, but much broken & sleepless. . . . In the evening we talked of her boy & she told me about her husband.’ CD, 3–4 October 1903. 2 Alfred Pollard, of the British Museum (see previous letter, note 2). 3 ‘Arrived here at nine o’clock this morning which is pretty quick. Have spent day in apple orchards five miles up lake. Wonderful crop, they must have ours too.’ EW to PSW, picture postcard, 1 October 1903, EWT. 4 This relates to material which WRL would examine in his discussion of rose and traceried windows at Reims and Amiens. ‘In roses . . . the piercings are made in a slab, or slabs, set in the circle. It is the same in the circles at Reims. Very curiously, when cusps were introduced, at a little later time, into the heads of lancets they were inserted in separate thin pieces, and this treatment was a survival from the cusped slabs of roses. . . . In the similar windows at Amiens the rose obtains additional support by means of two strong crockets which push against it.’ Mediaeval Art, pp. 172–3.

44

1903–1914 5 He means work on her biography of EBJ. 6 WHW, not his medical son. 7 The tower of St Martin’s, Brampton. See above, Letter 890.

894 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9–10 October 1903 Pencil Caxtons. | Worth, by Crawley. | Sussex. 9 for 10 Octr ’03 My dear fellow. Thank you for your encouraging letters of the 6th & 8th. Indeed I was glad to have further knowledge of R.P – of what he was intended for, & what he became. ’Tis not a little astonishing how many good fellows we know were to be made parsons in the course of things, and how much better they have done – including morally, than if they had not resisted the ‘good intentions’ of conventionality: by comparison, the shying at such settled order of social life, before the knot is tied, has proved itself far better for the individuals, as well as for example – than breaking the bonds, in discontent, later on! That R.P. left things in perfect order is what I would have suspected of him. A student by excellence, he was yet all alive to common sense in human management of things. I’ve always been rather shy of the born scholar & nothing else. In our talks here how noted I noted how R.P. saw clearly, & at once the reasonableness of things thought of seriously, & done by others, with which one would have thought he could have had no affinity. I hope soul-less legalism (other than law) will not be allowed to make the most, instead of the least of the an ‘unproven’ death. It pleases me that the Rottingdean result is not contrary to your own feeling – though I could in no way forget the liveliness of your help in our trudging about Lewes. So, you see what I’ve lost in not being piloted about the France, for at least the holidays of 5 years: but I shd have been 15 years younger. Lord how this last 10 months has oldened me! Lethaby was quite in his best of goodness here, and did not resent my hindering the burrowing his nose between the boards of the “Hollow Land”, as if the one on the table here was the only one he could ever see.1 Jack surprised by turning in here unsuspected on Wednesday evening – coming by way of Redhill from some business he had been seeing-to near Cranleigh. He stayed till the 9. oc odd train, and was perfectly “. . . speakable”. Really it was touching in Ticino when saying, ‘it is a pity’, over the loss for all time of a Gatti comrade. True, T.M.R is the best of gossips from frogland. I have a good letter too (return yours) & must answer it at Bedford park, for I suppose he will be there next week.2 Your comforting notes of the large hearted mother at Oxshott is amplified by a penetrating one of her own writing to me yesterday – inclosing a sweet smelling spray of lemon plant, as much as if saying, ‘we liked the flowers also’. I will write 45

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

her a few words again tomorrow, and possibly a little less stumbling-like in the dark.3 I’m supposing she has some kind of woman companion with her – & who perhaps addressed the envelope.4 I did not wish you to come here tomorrow – for your hurryings to & fro are too taxing. Yours Ph W. Sat, for mid-day post. Had the Athenaeum this morn. Much pleased with Pollard’s concise story.5 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/182

1 2 3 4 5

See above, Letter 885, note 2. Rooke lived at Bedford Park, Chiswick. See the following letter, note 7. Proctor’s mother, according to SCC, was ‘nearly blind’. In its issue of 10 October, The Athenæum carried Alfred Pollard’s account of the known facts of Robert Proctor’s disappearance, and recorded his bibliographic and other scholarly achievements. There was also a welcome personal touch. ‘Among his colleagues he was noted no less for his unfailing good nature than for his learning, and those who gained his intimacy found him the most loyal and affectionate of friends.’ (p. 483).

895 • To Sydney Cockerell, 13 October 1903 Pencil Caxtons. | Worth – by Crawley. | Sussex. 13th for 14th Oct. ’03 My dear Cockerell. T.M.R (what in the name of old twopenny are Rooke père’s names?)1 always writes something in his letters, and in that simple pretty way which could not come of ‘culture’, but from clear-hearted love of humanity and justice between the various folks. Of course I don’t understand much of his business allusion – save, perhaps, that he has promise of renewed lease of employment for Bromwickham?2 Since you were here, Wardle has written again, reconsidering his situation, and giving up the thought of coming here while I’m away.3 He is afraid of the cold – even before Xmas, and I could not promise him immunity, if the solar system should turn on the electrical tap, and gives us an early winter. I had, at the earliest, warned him this place could be cold on the bit of hill top, but that my experience here had been that winter cold had not set in before Xmas. I’m glad, in that he feared a risk, he did not run it.4 The downpour – all day yesterday – was a ‘onërr’ – and Kelmscott will be likely to find itself in flood. Mrs Dickinson heard this afternoon that her mother was visibly better – and if no worse before Friday, I take her with me to R’dean – going by something 11 train & she returning by something 5 train from there. This 46

1903–1914

was Dame B-J’s suggestion, & a good one, to set Mrs Dabney going easy on my ‘p.p.p.eculiarities’?, for I’ll let the 2 be together for an hour or so.5 Truth to tell, for once, I hope all the winds from sea, or downs, or both all round, may blow some part of my disability away, and allow me to fancy myself doing a little more work in life – in or out o’ doors. Did ‘antiscrape’ at all know that R.P was putting himself to that cost for printing the ‘repairs’-book?6 I don’t fancy any, outside the bounds of commonsense, wd risk their reputation by buying the book. I rather thought of writing Mrs Proctor another few words, & that from R’dean rather than fm here.7 When trying all my maps to make out where, or near where R.Ps track lay from his start, I got interested in the regions once more; but failed to find any of the place names mentioned. To me mountain land is always the most beautiful when seen, either from some distance, or from the foothills looking up to the immensities. I did talk to him once about alp land, & mentioned Styria, and that the kind of impression from mountains – such as Meredith inferred in the ‘amazing marriage’.8 Yrs Ph. W. The address would be Ph. W. | c/o Mrs Dabney | High Street | Rottingdean | nr Brighton. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/183

1 ‘His first name is Thomas, the second name is a family name & I forget it.’ SCC to PSW, 15 October 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 87. Rooke’s middle name was Matthews. 2 ‘Here is another good letter from T.M.R. from which it appears that he is to enjoy yet another week of Vézelay. Not a syllable from Walker, who is no doubt busy mastering the history of the Forum.’ SCC to PSW, 12 October 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 86. ‘Yes, T.M.R. does always show real keenness & gentleness of vision. . . . Birmingham has shown itself so pleased with the Wells drawing that it has decided to double its £10 subscription – an encouraging sign – his references were to this.’ SCC to PSW, 15 October 1903, ff. 87–8. 3 Having heard through Mary Jones Walker that PSW was intending to leave Caxtons for three months, GW wrote proposing himself as a possible short-term tenant. ‘[T]he quiet and the good housekeeping of Mrs Dickinson would be very congenial. The term would just fill up the time in which I have no fixed plans nor any great reason for preferring one place to another. . . . In respect of the monetary equivalent I should of course do as you prefer – but I suggest that I pay all expenses, just as you would yourself, only, I ought to limit that by saying I find 30/- a week generally enough for my board and lodging. Again, I must ask you to be frank, with no Balfourian reservations – tell me if you consider my feeble means inadequate – and finally, I want you to treat with my proposal simply as a matter of business and regard me as any other possible tenant.’ GW to PSW, 3 October 1903, Courtauld 322 d-f. As he was himself leaving the cottage for health reasons, PSW must have cautioned his friend accordingly, for a week later GW wrote again. ‘Of course you cannot guarantee me against a cold snap before Christmas still less against a longer & harder spell of cold & if such happened I might find the top of your hill too bracing. It is against my habits to be prudent but the advantage of a correspondence is that it gives time for ideas to filter into not very pervious matter and at the end of the week I am more diffident than I was at the beginning. I think I must not risk the cold. I am not at all in a satisfactory state, quite unfit to run a risk & I decide to seek a more sheltered spot for my hybernation [sic].’ GW to PSW, 10 October 1903, Courtauld 323a–b.

47

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 4 ‘My impression is that you have frightened the scrupulous Wardle away by not consenting to a reasonable payment. I can imagine your acting in exactly the same way as he has done. You are always for paying & not letting others pay, which is not fair. As Butler would probably have said “You do to others and let yourself be done by them!” which is not the Christian religion as she is taught.’ SCC to PSW, 15 October 1903. It was however PSW’s fears for GW’s health which had caused the change of mind (see note 3). 5 Mrs Dabney was to be his landlady at Rottingdean. 6 SCC annotation: ‘Proctor spent about £50 which he received from Pierpont Morgan for helping to catalogue his Early Printed Books on the printing of a book on Repairs to old buildings compiled in the office of the Soc. for the Protectn of Anct Buildings.’ ‘Several of the Antiscrapists were aware of his generosity over that book – but he wished it to be a secret. It was his way of getting rid of some money he received for cataloguing some books that were formerly W.M’s & are now Pierpont Morgan’s. The “repairs” book was a creditable compilation by Kent from all sorts of old letters &c – in some of the sentences I recognise my own poor efforts – but it is rather chaotic, with tiresome repetitions, & it needed more stringent & deliberate editing.’ SCC to PSW, 15 October 1903, f. 88. The SPAB volume was Notes on the Repair of Ancient Buildings (London: SPAB, 1903), and has been supposed to have been the work of HTT, with possible input from PSW, but SCC’s remark indicates a more serendipitous enterprise steered by Kent, the SPAB office secretary. Proctor’s financial support was acknowledged at the start of the SPAB Annual Report, 1904. 7 ‘I gave Mrs Proctor your message, that you would perhaps be writing to her again. Hers to you was, she thought, the only letter she had written for two years. She got up before breakfast & did it alone, having made up her mind to it in the wakeful night.’ SCC to PSW, 22 October 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 90. 8 George Meredith, The Amazing Marriage (London: Constable, 1895).

896 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18–19 October 1903 Pencil c/o Mrs Dabney. | High St Rottingdean | near Brighton. 18–19 Octr ’03 Dear Cockerell Yours – (inclosing E.Ws) got to me before starting for this on Friday morning, & set me up in the ways of consolation for the inevitables. [sic] Mrs Dickinson and her charge got away all right, and reached here of the same – the former of us much down-hearted at the coming loss of her burdensome sickman – we can all understand that kind of jealousy, when some other Samaritan steps in to take up our office, and blackens the eye of one’s soul. The lodging here finds me a quite decent sitting room, if the bedroom be but small – compared to the state one of Caxtons; still, Mrs Dn imparted some slumber compelling blankets of Worth, wh’ did their duty these 2 nights passed.1 Dame Burne-Jones has been father, mother, & good bairn to her old friend, doing her best to keep him on the joy side of life’s sorrows; so that when he has a bit of leaning towards discontent, he is more or less straightened again by remembrance of such propping, and the comforting lines & slopings of these everlasting downs, which as yet are mostly undefiled; indeed, I find them very much to my heart, and in a far better ‘unrestored’ condition than was expected. I carried

48

1903–1914

myself for an hour & a half over them yesterday morning, after staggering under the blast from the sea, first; and then tying my Scot’s bonnet to my head with handkerchief while bending my way over the grass covered slopes. This was a real introduction to ‘change of airs’. In the afternoon G.B-J came & fetched me out for another but easier jaunt – on the other, or west side of the dean, which was very sweet under the light of clearing sky after showers, for the play of light & shade on the various tints of green – from quite grey to violent green – with the mingling of the hill slopes, is incomparable in its subtle beauty. You see therefore, so far as invitations to the walk – from the character of the country, can induce me to stir myself with hope of improvement, they are certainly pressed on me. My dear fellow, surely you – (unconsciously) – misjudge me: I always want to pay my share of indebtedness, and with a poorer colleague, the part of his share which is too heavy for him naturally becomes my share – no one knows this better than you & Walker, who act on that reasonable principle and – may I say it – sometimes overdo it in the way of pure good heartedness?2 I believe Wardle really was afraid of the cold being too much for him at Caxtons – even before Xmas. I did not wish to over press him, for should a really cold week or fortnight have done him a mischief it would have vexed me sorely. I did search the maps in the Austrian Tyrol district, but think it likely such places as were mentioned in the accounts might only be given on Alpine climbers’ maps – which I fancy are specially made.3 We never could do anything at antiscrape systematically, and as the ‘repairs’ book was a sudden inspiration, no preparation had been made for collecting the right kind of information for arrangement by editors. I was surprised the book was as good as it turned out to be.4 Walker’s letter is a quite interesting one, and it does not surprise me that Rome was not quite an earthly paradise for a large party. It could not be ‘amusing’ unless the ‘party’ went there purposely to gather very various and interesting information – much of which would call for considerable time in getting at it. Am glad E.W. did like Orvieto, and his enjoyment of it is to me quite easily understood. Yrs Philip Webb. Please to double diligently excuse this scrawl. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/184

1 ‘Your good letter makes us hope that you are growing content with the change from Caxtons to Rottingdean, though as yet you pass no judgment on Mrs Dabney or her cooking.’ SCC to PSW, 22 October 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 89. 2 See previous letter, note 4. 3 ‘Did you look in Switzerland for R.P’s route? I ask because I think you mentioned Switzerland once before – & it was in the Austrian Tyrol.’ SCC to PSW, 15 October 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 88. 4 See previous letter, note 6.

49

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

897 • To Margaret Dickinson, 20 October 1903 Year added by SCC c/o Mrs Dabney. | High Street | Rottingdean | near Brighton 20 for 21st post Oct. Dear Mrs Dickinson Your parcel containing eggs, and letter, duly came to us, and I handed to Lady Burne-Jones her share, and she was pleased by your kind thoughtfulness. Two of the eggs were broken, but Mrs Dabney saved the yokes. I fancy the thinness of the Caxtons’ shells makes the carriage of eggs too risky. You may be sure I did not think you were “stupid” in shewing so much feeling on parting with your poor old patient, after so many months of the kindest attention to his needs – on your part; for all of which I am thankfully feeling. Saturday and Sunday were fine days, on the whole, and the air was strong and fresh, and I tasted it both on the sea and the land sides. The walks over the downs are very pleasant. The last 2 days have been more or less rainy, warmer & damp; so that, when I awoke yesterday morning, my back and belly were full of pains as I lay in bed, and saw the dash of rain on the window glass. I find that Mrs Dabney paid much attention to your instructions, and is most careful in following them, so that I am now living in much less discomfort than could have been expected: she also cooks the food nicely, and has got fish twice for dinner. Still, you know I am a man of habits, and likely to feel the change from the freedom of Caxtons under your rule, to the rather cramped spaces of a lodging – and most of all do I feel the want of my books at hand. However, there is really no excuse for grumbling, and I will do my best to turn the change of air and life to the best account, with the hope of really getting stronger. My other wish too, is that you may be able to carry on with taking care of Caxtons, and the children, without too much thought of the change in the life at the pleasant little farm house by the roadside. Will you be so good as to let me know of anything you may want, so that I may send it you when it is needed. I wrote to my sister & asked her to send the key of the basket, if she has it? I am hoping the news from your good mother continues to shew improvement in her health. Believe me | Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. Alice, & Reggie are – I am sure, doing all they can to help and cheer you: give them my good wishes to that end. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

50

1903–1914

898 • To George Washington Jack, 28 October 1903 c/o Mrs Dabney | High Street. Rottingdean | near Brighton. 28 Oct. ’03 My dear Jack. Lethaby was telling, your book wd soon be out, and how usefully good it was.1 Ly Burne-Jones brought it in here yesterday afternoon, and in the evening, under candles, I dissected it in a preparatory way, reserving the more important items for further analysis, without prejudice or favour; for the first turning of the pages, with reading of passages, was all on the side of the latter – though there was a trifle of the former on finding my poor name blazoned abroad – while the longer I live the less excuse do I find for attention being called (as Brummel’s valet said) “to our failures”.2 At present I am much with you for discarding working from any full size clay or other model, and depending more on a free-shaded drawing in charcoal, or soft pencil; with, on occasion, a small clay or wax model in the rough, to get the relative projection of the relief. The studies you give from nature in figures 68 & 69, seem to me excellent in form & manner: and – and . . . there cannot be too many of them. My lost opportunities in that way stare my memory in its face. Unless you get from the publisher a few copies of the book for presentation to your friends, you must let me pay you for that you have been so good as to send me. Your resources are too small to allow of free gifts. My pleasure in the book will not be reduced by paying its small cost.3 Mrs Morris has been staying 2 or 3 days with Ly Burne-Jones. She seemed to be was highly pleased with the Cottages and your good management of their doing. I cannot make out from her description, what is the meaning of the dark line round the mem[oria]l carving and its frame. I told her my proposal that you should turn the hat into a piece of rough herbage, and added, I wished to see a photo of it, taken from the ground looking up at it, as anyone would – who wished to make out what it meant. I’m better, doubtless (i.e. stronger) in a way, but the long continuing rain is against me. It rained ‘more particularly so’ last night, and today I am aching accordingly. With kind remembrance to the ‘Missis’ and the GOOD4 girls. | I am yours truly Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

51

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 GWJ’s Wood Carving: Design and Workmanship (London: John Hogg, 1903), was the third volume in The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks, edited by WRL. 2 GWJ was generous in acknowledging PSW’s influence. In his chapter on ‘Studies from Nature – Birds and Beasts’, he writes of the importance of making preparatory drawings ‘in which the main masses are given correctly’, and uses a PSW drawing as illustration. ‘The drawing in question was made for myself at the time I was carving a lion for the cover of a book. . . . It was made, in his good-natured way, to “help a lame dog over a stile,” as I had got into difficulties with the form. This drawing is all that a carver’s first diagram should be, and gives what is always the first necessity in such preliminary outlines – that is, the right relationship of the main masses, and the merest hint of what is to come in the way of detail.’ Wood Carving: Design and Workmanship, p. 196; PSW’s drawing appears on p. 286. 3 SCC told GWJ that ‘I am reading your in all ways excellent & inspiring book, & was talking about it yesterday to our dear P.W. who asked me to get him a copy. I feel sure that you intend him to have one “from the author” . . . but if I am wrong you will send me a postcard. Away from his belongings P.W. is all the more grateful for little attentions. He clearly gets doleful at times, owing to his inability to work – but he is on good terms with the sea & the Downs, & Lady Burne-Jones is at hand, the best of companions & friends.’ SCC to GWJ, 26 October 1903, WMG J1156. On the same day, GWJ sent a copy to PSW. ‘I do not know that such things really do much good, but there it is & Lethaby & fate must answer for the consequences.’ GWJ to PSW, 26 October 1903, Cheltenham. 4 The word is surrounded by a corona.

899 • To May Morris, 4 November 1903 Pencil c/o – Mrs Dabney | High Street | Rottingdean | near Brighton. 4 Novr ’03 My dear May. ’Tis kind in you to forget my not having even acknowledged your quite delightful letter to me from Florence1 – when I was even more incapable than now – which is not saying much that is new. Walker frightened me really on Saturday, when he produced your visible sign of continued good will towards this infirm and aged creature. What would happen, in the way of unforgiving, if again I failed to acknowledge? At sight of “A play in one act”,2 you can at once conceive its effect on the receiver; he who has little or no hope for the modern drama, and never reads its plays if he can help it. Well – you see – my dear, I couldn’t help it, and have read this ‘play in one act’ – as my last act in that way, perhaps – and have read it three times, the reading being ‘print to me’! So far as I am capable of judging, and allowing for the incapability, I thought, & still think while writing, that it is a really good little piece of work. Of course I cannot judge of its possibilities for acting, being wholly ignorant of that peculiar machinery, but, given that it could be, it seems to me to want 5 as good actors (male & female) as are now to be had, with the ghost of Charles Matthews3 to drill Frederick T’s – I think F.T. particularly good, and L.T. runs him hard – too hard as F.T. thought.4 52

1903–1914

I wonder if any manager would take the trouble of getting the right kind of children’s voices, and cathedral bell?5 And if any actors would strive not to linger over the scenes, which you have managed to represent so as so swiftly passing through the mind. Thank you dear May from yours always truly | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 32–3

1 See above, Letter 867, note 6. 2 May Morris, White Lies. A Play in One Act (London: privately printed, Chiswick Press, 1903). The play was never produced. 3 The comic actor Charles James Matthews (1803–78) was an architect (he trained under Augustus Charles Pugin) before turning to acting. 4 In White Lies, Frederick Treglown is the husband who has abandoned his wife Lucy Treglown and their daughter, Julia. 5 MM’s stage instructions required ‘a deep bell’ which chimes the half hour, and the off-stage sound of children singing in the garden. As Jan Marsh has observed, ‘the piece is seriously flawed by the fact that most of the action takes place off-stage’. Jane and May Morris, a Biographical Story 1839–1938 (London: Pandora, 1986), p. 254.

900 • To Sydney Cockerell, 7 November 1903 Pencil c/o Mrs Dabney. | High Street Rottingdean | near Brighton. 7 Novr ’03 My dear fellow. Here in front of me, 2 3 of yours – 27 & 29 Oct. and 4 of Novr, & never so much as a word of answer from me. I duly had the vol. 1. of le Duc, and your pretty as well as small photo of the E. end of Chartres N. Porch.1 Also, I have the larger, complete front of the Porch, so that my over slim memory is all alive again with the Frogs’ masterpiece. Miss Roscoe’s is from an excellent point of view, and as sharp as a needle.2 I would like to know the master mason’s name who conceived this most original piece of work – or two pieces, for I suppose he also did the S. one? When I send one of your vols: back, and not before, I’ll ask you to send me another vol; for in an item I puzzled out in one of the 2 vols: I have, mention is made of the Abbey’s, [sic] under article monasteries. Also, from my dim recollection of earlier study in the dictionary, I remember a plan of Westminster Abbey used in comparison with others, and – of course of course, claiming Westr as French – as certainly it is in plan – but more English than English all above ground.3 Do you see the trail of the serpent-tailed coat? I’ve a dim recollection too of the Abbey of Bon Court being represented, but do not trust the ‘recollection’, for the bad memory now is as nought.4 Now, you are not to send another vol: till I send one I have back – for I’m slow – ‘demnition’ slow in getting through the good books I have on hand – some lent by G.B-J. Walker’s visit here was quite good for me. 53

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Mrs Dickinson cut from the local newspaper the matter of the ‘bacilli’ troubled fountain, with W.S.Bs letter, &c, in full, & sent it to me – and a quite remarkably skilful letter it is – with all the needful brimstone in it, but soothingly toned down to a miracle of neatness.5 To me it always seems a grave misfortune he cannot live on the Crabbet estate, & rule it in useful imperial justness. The poor folk there would I feel sure bend with admiration to such helpful guidance. Of course I can only say such as this to such as you. It was thoughtful in you to mention the almost probable possibility of my having to leave the old wooden tabernacle there, & I do not doubt his generosity, which wd surely have to be, in a way, counteracted; for there is the clause in the lease, for a year’s notice, and I must pay Caffin a year’s rent to allow of his putting some one in to take care of the place – or my conscience would burst the already overstrained belly of me.6 It seems to me that this place is singularly fit for testing the value of ‘change of air’, and by Xmas sufficient doses will have been swallowed to prove the effective, or non effectiveness of such medicine. So, patience. When you next write, kindly send me W.S.Bs correct Arab address, as I have not my address book here. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/187

1 ‘I am sending the first vol. of V. le Duc, which contains all he has specially to say about Abbeys & Monasteries, in the great article “Architecture”.’ SCC to PSW, 29 October 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 92. 2 This may be Dora Roscoe, one of SCC’s correspondents. 3 He correctly remembers Viollet-le-Duc’s diagram of a Westminster Abbey vault. ‘Dans le cloître de l’abbaye de Westminster, ces tâtonnements sont visible. Plusiers voûtes sont fermées conformément à la méthode française.’ Dictionnaire Raisonné de L’Architecture Française du XIe au XVIe Siècle. IX, p. 523. 4 ‘I find no reference to the Abbey of Boncourt, nor to that of Bonport (a noble Cœur de Lion work) in the Viollet le Duc Index.’ SCC to PSW, 8 November 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/188. 5 SCC annotation: ‘Wilfrid Blunt had a great quarrel with the local authorities at Three Bridges about a drinking trough and tap on the way up from the station which they closed as not fit for drinking.’ 6 ‘I saw the Squire off yesterday morning. He spends three days in France before going on to Egypt. I talked to him about the possibility of your leaving Caxtons and he said you could leave at any time and that if there is anything in the agreement about long notice, and he cannot remember that there is, you are free to ignore it. He wants you to do exactly what you think would be best for yourself.’ SCC to PSW, 4 November 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 94.

54

1903–1914

901 • To Margaret Dickinson, 13 November 1903 Pencil Care of Mrs Dabney | High Street. Rottingdean | near Brighton. 13 November 1903 Dear Mrs Dickinson I had your note of the 10th, telling of the receipt of the money. Today I sent off the basket with the Jaeger clothes &c, and a note to you of the same, also asking you to send to Three Bridges Station to fetch it.1 You say but little of yourself, but more of my well doing here – I see it will take all my time here to get rid of the continued discomfort of my middle part, which really is as wearisome a burden to me as when I last saw you. The weather even in this place, which seems to be exactly what the doctor would wish for setting me as nearly right again as old age will allow. Patience then is the only thing for me to cultivate. Certainly my lodging is even better than could have been expected, and Mrs Dabney is not only able, but most willing to make things pleasant for me. I believe she remembers every one of your hints as to management of her lodger. She is in all ways thoughtful and kind to me, and cooks the food very nicely indeed – and, what is really important, she is not extravagant. The weather, of which I am very sensitive, affects me as much as usual; so, if on one day there is a lowness of spirit, on another I may be in a more cheerful mood, and I hope not very tiresome to all the kind folks who are so careful to help me in all ways; and Ly Burne-Jones is untiring in her kind attention, finding me in [sic] books, flowers, &c. Mr Rooke – the father, has been here with the beautiful drawings done in his three months’ work in France this year, & was very cheery, and I could in return cheer him over it – for all artists like to be helped in that way; happily, I could speak very highly & honestly about it.2 We walked together on the beach – telling stories on both sides, so that I think his time passed pleasantly. Will you tell me when you next write what William Dench has done at Caxtons. I hope when my back was turned he did not turn his too, and leave what he had to do only half done as usual? I hope all the broken window glass was replaced, and all defective tiling to the roof was made good? Also, that he has remedied the overflow of the eaves gutter over my bed room window as I told him how it should be done; and that he has fixed the iron work under the chimney on the landing. Will you be so good as to see him about these questions, and come to an

55

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

arrangement with him to carefully wash down and scrape where necessary, the whitening to walls & ceilings of kitchen, china closet & larder, as well as making good the patches of broken plaster about the house, stopping all mouse holes, &c. The new whitening to kitchen, &c (as above) should be done in pure white without any colouring in it. You can read to him from this letter what I have said of his work. After you return the basket, I must send you by post the pillow case, and a vest & pair of drawers for you to wash and return by post. Will you send in the basket my small Etymological dictionary from the little book room; it has a much worn back to it; it is a Chambers’s dictionary. Also, if you can spare it (do not rob the children or yourself ) I would like a pot or two more of your jams. Mrs Dabney manages to get me some apples at reasonable price, and bake them & stew others. We get very good fish too. I hope you give yourself and the children fish also. If you have been to see your mother please to tell me about her and your family generally. Now, you will be glad to learn that it is ½ past 4. oc, & I can hardly see to write this by day light. Always remember, I never forget your constant kind helpfulness to me, and believe me, always truly yours, Philip Webb. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

1 For his Jaeger woollens, the washing of which clearly he was not prepared to entrust to Mrs Dabney, see Vol. III, Letter 718. 2 See next letter, notes 2 and 4.

902 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18 November 1903 Pencil c/o Mrs Dabney. | Rottingdean | near Brighton. 18 Novr 1903 My dear Cockerell. Yours of 10 days back, and always pleasant reading, here recognised. My memory is so silly shifty, that when ’tis not proved faulty, obstinacy adheres to its accidental trustworthiness. It still may be right in having a plan of the Westminster church in my head as being in a vol: V le Ds dic: somewhere, supposing the bee in my bonnet is not once more a drone.1 I only stick to this because it really does not matter. I’ve gone through & through again the 2 vols: here, and have interest enough in them till I’m back in winter quarters at Worth.

56

1903–1914

Here, we have N.W. by N. winds & piping cold; yesterday dull grey in the morning and wet aftn & evening; today quite bright with sun, & even colder – so I walked the Newhaven road for 2 miles out and then back, for the grass was too wet. The downs are as delightful as the sea. I want to tell you Rooke père’s drawings seem to me at high watermark, full of flood, this time: there are 3 in the lot more particularly admirable.2 I. The general view of Vezelay – wh’ though not a tone picture is I think particularly successful in giving folks a real idea of such a district in France the lovely. The town, lying spread all over the hill top & down into the hollow was a most difficult one to do, without the perspectives and horizontality all wrong & impossible to get them right again – a delightful drawing to pore over in a room for years. II. The big S. Père is a very fine piece of work, attacked boldly & done successfully. What an admirable western steeple, one of the happiest French designs in balance, ingenuity, and proportion of parts, with a most happy thought of the angels high up on the square angles – Bromwhickam3 is in lucks way by getting it. The porch below it is later, and not quite up to the happy mark of French masons. III. I want to express clearly how the Auxerre panel sculpture struck me. It is so actually like the real thing that it startles one, and yet it is in no way slavishly handled – rather bold work in fact; while the beauty of the design & execution & the effects of time, usage, and weather are all miraculously given: a true bit of historical work which might safely be sworn on in a court of law. ’Tis just a subject when any imaginative or pictorial liberties should not be allowed: a public gallery is its right place.4 Of the other drawings (all good though the one with the S. Père more in distance not as successful as others, and I ventured to tell T.M.R that it wanted more work on it. He bore it like a Saint, & perhaps, it may be justly, thought me an ignoramus.)5 I had not enough light & opportunity to look into them closely & be able to write of their effect on me, though a smaller one, looking through a narrow & darker coloured street to a steep beyond, with a light grey tower top in it pleased me highly – and so you have my jargon on the good man’s work. He was in high good humour in our one good stroll together on the beach here, when his keen interest in things in general, & truthful observation cheered me, as well his storylike talk. I can well understand, what G.B-J told me, of the help he has been to her with his Boswell-like Chronicling of the ‘Master’ as he calls him.6 Sadly my dear fellow I tell it, I’ve not again written to Mrs Proctor – ’tis too much a leap in the dark to write in pure truthfulness, and you may tell the good lady so if you think well. Have nothing fresh to say of the sickman, whose spirits are not at times unfailing – and the continuance of the electrical weather may have much to do with this, as well as the continued presence of a belly and back ever asserting themselves: but we will see anon what may hap, and we will talk of further disposal of him when his time is up here. Yours as always | Philip Webb.

57

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Jack’s craft book is just admirable.7 Have had a good letter from Alfred Powell still at Cambridge. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/189

1 ‘I think the reference to Westminster must be in the first vol. p. 40. There is no article on Monasteries, but only on Architecture Monastique, which is a section of the great article Architecture in that first volume.’ SCC to PSW, 8 November 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/188. But PSW’s memory was not playing tricks: see above, Letter 900, note 3. 2 ‘You will be able to give some honest pats on the back to our friend from Vézelay when you see him on Tuesday. There is some Auxerre sculpture which shows that his hand has not begun to lose its cunning, & that the hands of those old masons also knew how to obey their gentle bright imaginings. You will have much praise for this drawing, or I shall be disappointed. The average far surpasses the last year’s harvest from Wells. It needs the still romantic life of rural France to draw the best work from our friend. He is due to lunch with me in a few minutes & I shall hear more stories of that blessed land.’ SCC to PSW, 8 November 1903. 3 Birmingham. 4 ‘The superb Auxerre relief is sold to Yates Thompson. Birmingham could not pay for the two drawings.’ SCC to PSW, 19 November 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 96. 5 ‘I have nothing to say to your disparagement of the 14th c parvise of the church of S. Père. It struck me instantly as second-rate & provincial work – but the 13th c work that towers above it is all that could be desired – & how beautifully TMR has indicated all its virtues!’ f. 96. 6 In fact, Rooke’s written recollections of EBJ were to prove challenging for GBJ. She found it difficult to return the careful accounts which Rooke had made, and wanted to destroy them. See below, Letter 952. 7 See above, Letter 898.

903 • To William Richard Lethaby, 29 November 1903 Pencil c/o Mrs Dabney. | Rottingdean nr Brighton. Sun. 29 Novr for Monday’s post My dear fellow. (confound your ‘Mistering’ of me) Thank you for your enlightenment of the 23rd, of wh’ the handwriting is an index to my bag of memories of you. True, I too have ma doots of Wardle – not of his capacity or incapacity – but of his being gathered into your textbook system of enlightening the infant mind of art labourers; for really & truly, W. is a mine of knowledge of such matters; but if he once began to smelt the ore, there might be no knowing where he would leave off.1 Still, if you like, I will broach the matter to him, and on your lines? Just now he has written, what to me, & my ignorance, is an admirable treatise on the legends of the S. Grael, which is publishing in the papers of the “Cymmrodorion” Society – the 1st two parts of which article are now out, and I have read them with great interest, & am awaiting the other three.2 This you will rightly say is altogether another thing than for your purpose. Still, W: knows the practical matter of the painting craft you want – no one better. 58

1903–1914

I doubt if he has seen the 3 first vols: of your series. Doubtless, if he read them, he would see their drift, and from his practical side do likewise, & in spite of his being a ‘kittle creature to shoe behind’3 – & in front too, for that matter. I’ve not read Wilson’s book,4 but can answer for the practicality & other excellencies [sic] of the other two (by the way, the other excellencies are, to me, of much value also.) Thanks for your nudging to T. Turner’s elbow about the little Devonshire church.5 The devil’s continued dancing about, & mischievous fingering of our old buildings tries my vexed spirit continually. The mischief & dulness with which Bodley & Kempe (I believe) have done in the beautiful little Ch’ of Ovingdean, hard by here, irritated me much6 – though, it might be said, the meddling had been done with ‘taste’ but real inappreciation [sic] wears that cloak too often – church wardening is golden by comparison with misreading. Now, don’t call me a fool for this thinness of skin! The sea here is a heavenly mystery to me. I watch its “ways & its manners” as a born idiot would, and, who knows what he sees? The action of the wash of it of ages, has bitten off the cliff skirts for hundreds of yards outside the present shores, leaving a level base of solid chalk, shallow, that the incoming of tides breaks over with splendid force and form with beauty combined, which makes the idiot mind of me to skip, while its wonder-waking music soothes me. There, I’ve done! Peace be with you, and my friend your good madame, from | Yours as before, Philip Webb – Esquire. (sick.)7 V&A, AAD

1 WRL seems to have been sounding out PSW’s opinion of GW as the potential author of a volume for his Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks. Nothing came of the idea. 2 GW’s ‘The Holy Grail. A discrimination of the Native and Foreign Elements of the Legend’ was spilt across five numbers of The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, XVI–XVII (1903–4). ‘I have been busy finishing off the last number of the Grail. . . . Done, with exception of some little touching up & proofreading ultimately, and you will have three more parts to read, not two as you fondly hoped. . . . I must also send you the Mabinogion unless you have it, & I think you would have talked about it if you had read it. You will need this to understand what is said about the origin of the “Quest”.’ GW to PSW, 27 November 1903, Courtauld 324a–b. 3 See Vol. I, Letter 251, note 10. 4 Henry Wilson, Silverwork and Jewellery: a Text-book for Students and Workers in Metal (London: 1903). 5 Probably a reference to the parish church of Buckland-in-the-Moor, Devonshire, of which mention is made in the SPAB annual report for 1904. ‘The Squire, who highly appreciates its vale, requested the Society to visit and report to him upon the building.’ (p. 16). The visit had taken place, and repairs were to be carried out in consultation with the Society, funded by the squire, and ‘under the personal direction of someone who has had a sound practical training . . . and can appreciate its artistic as well as its historical qualities’ (p. 18). 6 The twelfth-century parish church of St Wulfran, Ovingdean, underwent major restoration work between 1865–7 under the locally-born Charles Eamer Kempe (1837–1907), known for his stained glass and other church furnishings. He collaborated with Bodley on two other churches but not, it appears, this one.

59

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 7 A knowing pun (sic/sick). PSW hated to be addressed as ‘Esquire’ in letters from friends, and by ending like this he was also reinforcing his disappointment at WRL’s formality in calling him ‘Mr’ Webb (see the letter’s opening).

904 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 December 1903 Pencil c/o Mrs Dabney. | Rottingdean | nr Brighton. 11 Decr 1903 (not posted till 12th) My dear fellow Your last good letter (the others not bad) was answered face to face here: but I was on the say, [sic] that my neglect – from this side of our separation for so long, had two or 3 valid excuses – Item I. If I’d written, assuredly you would have followed suit, so I relented kindly, knowing that though your thought & pen go easily, you have more than enough to do in that way, perforce. II – my belly & back are always pulling against effort, and my wits stew but do not boil over. III I’ve taken advantage of freedom from housekeeping to look this sea & countrysides [sic] very full in the face, to have them by heart for the rest of the pilgrimage; they being – like good books – worthy of charging the soul with them for future solace – if so it might be. Therefore, as I can walk better than heretofore, the getting to the sea, and after to the rolling hills – partly for the infinite delight, & further to give the doctors’ opinions a chance of being right, has occupied me pretty fully. Also, Dame G.B-J lent me books, wh’, with those of yours I have – other imaginations have been added to my own dreamings. ’Till now, having known nothing of J.F. Millet before, my reading of his story – helped by book reproduction of a few of his pictures, has given me a real human lift of comfort, in learning of so sweet a soul.1 Unluckily, I never saw even one of his pictures, to have given me an inkling of his processes and qualities of painting. ’Tis just the old story; he was fulfilled in imagination, and decided judgement, before he could be misled by the guidance of the modern schools of art; and nurtured his own force only with his quick & passionate observation & perception of the great painters of old. He found the schools of Paris, (as Tolstoi, of organised ecclesiasticisms) the fundamental causes of misleading to the natural genius which may be in man. Millet seems never to have lost, his & never was drawn away from his own self contained assurance of the way he should walk in life, and in art: a most pious soul in both. Forgive my preachment. Of myself, I can be fairly content with such improvement in health as may be, and must trust to the home ‘change of air’ to shake the obduracy of back & belly out of them, for I’m to get back to Worth on the 23rd of this month. The mind of ‘Missa Dick’ has been eased by my letting her come here & see her patient; she went back content at on the expectation of the early return of him. I hope, my friend, your double industries of business & helping fellow human beings, have not done you a health injury, for neither I nor others can think cheerfully of your not being at our backs, to give us a lift out of the 60

1903–1914

quag[mire]s of life. I have my mind’s eye on the kindly Walker in this way at the same moment.2 Have just read a cutting from the ‘Manchester Guardian’, in criticism on Jack’s Text Book. It began fairly, and ended miserably; by blundering badly over the vital point of Jack’s teaching – viz – that the carver should be able to design his own work.3 “Lord what fools these (journalistic) mortals be”.4 Yours always thankfully, | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/190

1 The Barbizon school French painter, Jean-François Millet (1814–75), who favoured scenes of simple, rural life. ‘J.F. Millet was one of my earliest heroes, eighteen years ago. I then had his life by Sensier, which is perhaps the one that you have been reading – a truly human and authentic being. Last spring I saw the name over a shop at Fontainebleau, and I went to Barbizon to see where the good man dwelt. His home remains, but all about it has become pathetically degraded by his fame. The little village is now a centre for trippers, with beastly restaurants &c and Parisian cooks & waiters, and sketching clubs and picture exhibitions &c. It is within motor car reach of Paris, and Millet’s fame is now as wide as it was narrow in his lifetime.’ SCC to PSW, 12 December 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 98. 2 ‘I have thought of you more than usual in the last ten days – during which I have been lying at home with a “feverish chill”, which began with rheumatic pains, much as your illness began a year ago. Walker, who has been to see me seven times like the good fellow he is, said something about telling you that I was on the shelf but I forbad it at a time when my temperature did not allow of my answering letters with more than a couple of words.’ f. 97. 3 ‘On the theory of his art he has also much to say that is interesting, but it is more open to dispute, for his sympathies are exclusively Gothic, and his theories the theories of Ruskin and Morris. It seems hardly sound advice to a student to tell him “to resolve upon some ‘opus’ which will spread his efforts over a considerable period,” or to insist upon designing not only his own carving but the piece of furniture or other thing to be carved.’ The Manchester Guardian, 10 December 1903. 4 See Vol. III, Letter 853, note 3.

905 • To Sydney Cockerell, 15 December 1903 Pencil c/o Mrs Dabney. | Rottingdean | near Brighton. 14 for 15 Decr 1903 My dear fellow. Just a few words in the way of thankfulness for yours, got this aftn. After sending my last to you W.R.L wrote me, & in it I learned of your somewhat serious disability – or rather, I gather that from your rather belittling of the ailment – wh’ I’ve fused together for myself. Healers of others should, if things were quite fair all round, shd be free of such ills themselves.1 Now, in no case – even of reliable amendment – must you come here on Sunday; reserve your recovered strength – shd it happily be so, & come & see me in the timber home at Worth, (wh’ is only half the length of wheel-going, & a mile instead 61

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

of five fm the station) – on Sunday week – if things should let you do so – when we’ll have it all to ourselves, with Dame Dickinson as the faeiry god-mother. I have ma doots of a fitting place to be found hereabout – and if there happened to be one Dame B-J would be sure to learn of it, as she knows everyone, & their ‘ways & manners’. If a sick man’s opinion about himself is of any worth, mine is that Worth, at this time of the year, will not be injurious to me, and my brother knows of my return on the 23rd, when Missa Dick will fetch me – not that I need such conveyance, but I cannot painlessly stoop to get the various luggage stuff together, in addition to wh’, the doing it will be a jaunt to the helpful dame. I stay here till the 23rd, as N. End house wishes me to see the family Mackail, who come on the 22d, for Xmas.2 I too wd like to see them, & pere & mere Mackail are very kindly disposed to the disreputable one. He mends in my thought – markedly – as Scots’ caution gets suppled3 by the friction of English jokes, in good humour.4 Am glad you too like the simple fragrance of J.F. Millet – the friends of friends should be theirs.5 No, the book G. B-J lends me is not Sensier’s, but a compilation by Julia Cartwright, with illustrations; and is quite enough to set a light to my enthusiasm for virtue in a painter, the said virtue having a width & range with me.6 When it gets due reward, in time, how the devil – like he is in Job – gets the ear of God, & blasts the home of the lovely; as the devil has at Barbison [sic] and all over the surface of the bedevilled globe – including this small fishing & farming hamlet on the edge of the sacred downs. I smiled sweetly at your wile for making me forego my usual obstinacy in habit, which you know has something Fetish in it! Your pen might glide helpfully in the fist of a less obstinate sickman. How my ill regulated coatsleeve would smear the ink about the paper.7 I thank thee, O Walker, for that loving attention to the sick partner; another Jewel in his crown of Charity – with a big C: if you don’t speak well of me to him, may you have no worse saint at your elbow. Tell him he is not to depart from my instructions, if the popular voice should shout for my burial in Westminster Abbey. Hope H. Spencer’s trustees will be faithful. Curiously enough, I never read anything of that dour & persistent scribe; and therefore have missed the jewel in his eye, if he had one.8 When you next see Mrs Proctor, kindly give her my most sincere good will, and you too. Believe me, as always, your thankful | Philip Webb. Mind you, if not Saturday week, then Sat: fortnight, or other – according to fated decree.9 I find W.R.L is doing all he can to push prosperity in the path of Geo: Jack. I also have had pretty letters fm Alfred Powell. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/191

62

1903–1914 1 ‘Temperature was pronounced normal yesterday, so I am up today for a bit. Feeling rather shaky as was to be expected after ten days in bed.’ SCC to PSW, 14 December 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 99. 2 JWM and Margaret Burne-Jones Mackail had a son and two daughters. Denis Mackail (1892–1971) and Angela Mackail Thirkell (1890–1961) both became writers, and Clare Mackail served as a nurse during the Great War. 3 Made supple (OED). 4 A certain dourness, or at least a seriousness and reserve, was perhaps a feature of JWM’s personality. 5 See previous letter, note 1. 6 Julia Cartwright, Jean François Millet. His Life and Letters . . . with nine Photogravures (London: S. Sonnenschein & Co., 1902). 7 ‘I write all this, on my back in bed with the pen I showed you which contains its own ink and for some reason or other performs equally well with the point elevated. I believe such a pen would be a boon to you if you could be persuaded to try the newfangled thing.’ SCC to PSW, 12 December 1903, BL Add 52761, f. 98. 8 The philosopher and social theorist, Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), died on 8 December. There were calls for a memorial in Westminster Abbey, but his ashes were interred in Highgate cemetery, as he had wanted. 9 SCC first visited PSW at Caxtons following his return from Rottingdean on 2 January 1904. ‘Found him decidedly better, & able once more to chop wood & draw water from the well. We were glad to see each other & sorry to part after a stimulating talk.’ CD.

906 • To Margaret Dickinson, 16 December 1903 Pencil c/o Mrs Dabney | High St Rottingdean | nr Brighton 16 for 17 Decr 1903 Dear Mrs Dickinson The news in your letter of the 15th was sad indeed, and I can only hope that our Billy has escaped either trap or gun once more.1 He has been such a faithful old fellow, which has endeared him to us all. He thought the whole estate belonged to him, & possibly – poor old chap – he was quite surprised that it was not so, and that disagreeable people thought otherwise. Please send me word if he, happily, looked in upon you again. I think I said my leaving here would be on the 23rd, and, on considering how best to get my things together, it seemed impossible for me to pack things myself, stooping being impossible. Even if you came as early in the morning as you could, there would be too little time for the work to be done, to allow us to get way by 2.30 omnibus for the 3.50 train from Brighton. Therefore, as I find Mrs Dabney always keeps a bed aired for a visitor, I decided it would be best for you to come here in the afternoon of the 22nd (Tuesday) by the train leaving 3 Bridges at 12.59, which gets to Brighton at 1.33. The omnibus leaves the Brighton station at 2.15, or at Castlesquare at 2.30, so that you would have a little time to look at the shops, &c in Brighton before coming on here: as I always like to be prepared for accidents; so,

63

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

if you missed the omnibus, (though I believe it starts as above noted) you must take a fly & come on here at once. I only suppose this as a possible necessity. It is also unhappy news of the poor folk in the double cottage opposite the black & white one. We will hope the attack of fever will not be so severe as it has been before at Worth. I am using all my best time here in taking walks, and am surely stronger, but I feel the changes of weather here affect me in the same way as at Caxtons. Mr Cockerell has been ill for a fortnight, & Mr Walker has constantly looked in upon him. Now I’ve heard from Mr Cockerell & hope to see him in a week or two at Caxtons. The weather here has been very cold, with N.E. winds, for some days, but today it has been milder; I felt the change in my bones during the night. Mrs Dabney will be glad to see you. With kindly goodwill to the children, | I am yours truly | Philip Webb. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

1 Billy, the Caxtons cat.

907 • To Emery Walker, 18 December 1903 Pencil c/o Mrs Dabney. | Rottingdean. nr Brighton. 18 Decr 1903 My dear Walker ’Twas good of you to send me word of things out of the scanty earnings of your present time leisure. S.C.C had written me of your mother-like attention to him when laid on his back. I gather that he is now mending, but I sent him strict injunction not to rough-it in getting about rashly at present, for I feared his coming here before my leaving this place, and ’tis so much less of a journey to Worth – both in rail and road, and I hope to be rehoused in Caxtons on the 23rd, and in a Saturday or so later on – when he has hardened a bit, I look forward to seeing him there, and you also when time serves. If the fates are favourable I trust to keep up my walking about there as I have zealously done here, & no doubt much to my good. I still feel all the changes of the weather here as I did there, but my legs carry me better than before, and I must hope that some improvement may come to the belly & back. I suspect the Kelmscott and Dove’s [sic] presses must have stimulated that of Chiswick, in improvement of printing & general get up of books, for W.S. Blunt has sent me a copy of his & Lady Anne’s last translation from the Arabic – printed by them (the Chiswicks), and ’tis quite pleasant reading in the ‘get up’ way, and a very interesting example of early Arab poetry.1 64

1903–1914

As to the American proposal, to set going a school in persuasion, in the art of teaching in the Arts’ way: of course I do not take kindly to the form of their leverage under the title of “The Morris Society”,2 though they might have more judiciously used that master’s name as evidence of the lift he, & others gave to quite serious efforts in reasonable study for more the genuine practice of that enlightener of life (social & other) in all the branches of art. Also, unless the Americans have amongst themselves some men – if only a few – with something more than a touch of genius, I doubt if anything more than a half dilettante uprising could be the result. You see, Ruskin & W.M. were laboureous [sic] practitioners as well as teachers, from whom a day’s work of either of them wd give out more real fruit than a year’s work of others less capable and enduring. Again, I doubt if the historical air of America has enough of Art Ozone in it for the supply of ideas, which I fancy wd have – as yet – to be drawn from Europe. I may be wrong, but every line I have seen of characteristic America, as a breeding ground for instinctive art, there has been nothing traditional in its quality – no base for a future in its general physical constitution: and I fancy, as did old Rome, in tamely carrying on the Greek idea tradition, the Yankees will have to depend for inspiration merely on European leading. Millionairedom can hardly be a promising seed bed for real art? The above chaotic diatribe (fine word that) you will see, came about chiefly from thinking of the Yanks setting going schools of art – design!!! crafts, &c – without some fellows of genius to shew the way, & work their 12 hours out of the 24. Kind remembrance to Mrs Walker & Dorothy, (how I remember their kindness!) | from yours always truly | Philip Webb. I ought to have waited another day and amended this poor expression of opinion. Texas

1 The Seven Golden Odes of Pagan Arabia, known also as the Moallakat. Translated from the original Arabic by Lady Anne Blunt. Done into English verse by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (London: privately published and sold by the Chiswick Press, 1903). ‘The printing, about which you said something in your letter to Walker, was done under the direction of your junior partners in Cliffords Inn.’ SCC to PSW, 25 December 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/193. 2 The first Morris Society in the USA was established in Chicago in 1903, and survived until 1905. A bulletin was published monthly during 1904–5. In August 1904, SCC sent PSW a copy of the July number of the Bulletin of the Morris Society. For a history of the Society, see Florence S. Boos, ‘The First Morris Society: Chicago 1903–1905’, JWMS, XXI (Winter 2014), pp. 35–48.

908 • To Sydney Cockerell, 23 December 1903 Pencil Rottingdean – 22 for 23 Decr ’03 My dear fellow. Your double letter of the 19th was a relief to me, by its telling of your being tentatively able to get about again – I not adding any warning, as that which good 65

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

friends press on me! We will put aside till we meet any discussion as to how I am to dispose of the disabled self in future; a real problem but doubtless will find a solution for itself by the force of necessity behind it? It means now, that I wend to Caxtons tomorrow – “Missa Dick” having come to sleep here the night, and clutch me away by nape of neck tomorrow – for my belly & back are above stooping to ‘pack’, that not being in the contract. Lethaby wrote me sweetly, with warnings, but I gave him soothing reasons, and one is, that the cautious doctor brother has not objected to the move – he, I suspect, not having whole belief of Worth being the sole cause of my trouble; he too comes of an obstinate family! What a helpful portrait yours is of the great Russian, it tells one much of his ways when in the country.1 He is riding a capital mare, (I suppose a she, for the animal is “tucked up” in the after belly) and she must be a tallish one considering the large size of the rider: and how well the animal is taken; she is evidently engaged in making out what the camera business is at, and is placidly curious. Thank you for sendg it for me to see. I too should have read some of the late Spencer, but always shirked it by instinct; one, doubtless, of my few faults. I wd like however to see what he said in that part you read years ago in “Commercial dishonesty”, for to me that is one of the plague spots of 19th & 20th centuries.2 ’Tis a black book in our modern history, at all events. Since ‘Dirty Joe’ has been so plain spoken I shall know what is meant when any introduce themselves seductively as “business men” – par excellence: pah! Poor Mrs Lytton, not to have been told, & been able to have fended for themselves comfortably in one of the bedrooms. It’s almost Dickensian in Mrs Nickold’s frenzy & mastership of the situation, on her side alone.3 Mrs Dickinson had something of thunder clap in her householding one day, when the kitchen chy, &c, was being swept, and a party of the Blunts came in for lunch – however, Missa Dick was not to be beaten, & provided things enough & peaceably for the occasion. I packed your 3 vols: of the Viollet le D carefully and sent them off registered by parcel post today, & I hope you will get them safely & sound. They have been much amusement to me in going over & over again their ‘comparative’ anatomy of old French buildings. ’Tis long since I had a go at them in fumbling out the French text. Have made up my mind as to the best plans of the great 13th cent time, and have concluded that the Cluny monks had exercised a certain influence on English work of the same time. When I can talk to Wardle again, we will have a go at monastic arrangements following on the original form more or less of that of St Gall: G.W. knows much of that kind of history, & we squabble it out between us. All the folks here have been abundantly kind to me. Today the Mackail children came,4 & I gave the 3 a dancing, stone-throwing, & drawing lessons on the sand of the beach – the father & mother come tomorrow after I’ve left.

66

1903–1914

I will write further to you from the timber house of home. With best good hearted will to Walker – I am yours, as always, | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/192

1 A photograph of Tolstoy on a horse is attached to this letter. ‘I did not intend that you should return the little print of Tolstoy. It is yours if you would like it again.’ SCC to PSW, 25 December 1903, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/689/193. 2 ‘But that which we condemn as the chief cause of commercial dishonesty, is the indiscriminate admiration of wealth – an admiration that has little or no reference to the character of the possessor.’ Herbert Spencer, ‘The Morals of Trade’, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, 3 vols (London: Williams and Norgate, 1868–78), II, pp. 145–6. This essay first appeared in The Westminster Review (April 1859). ‘I think Olive has the Herbert Spencer book with the article I spoke of on Commercial Dishonesty, a very outspoken indictment. She is coming here today for her Christmas rice pudding & I will ask her, & if she can find it I will bring or send it to you.’ 3 This may relate to Neville and Judith Lytton’s temporary domestic arrangements after their fire of the previous year (see Vol. III, Letters 849–50), or to their treatment at a house where they had been staying. ‘I thought the dialogue between Neville & Mrs Nickolds, as you say, quite Dickensian & in my reply quoted some inconsequences of Mrs Wilfer’s. Neville’s modest demand for a piece of bread & some cold milk was quite serious. That is about all they have for breakfast, as they eschew tea & coffee & meat. Indeed they lead a most reasonable & modest life.’ In Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend (1864–5), the envy and greed of the permanently dissatisfied Mrs Wilfer serves as a contrast to her husband’s straightforward good nature. 4 See above, Letter 905, note 2.

909 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, late December 1903 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. December 1903 My dear Squire. The Chiswick Press sent me, at Rottingdean, Lady Anne Blunt’s and your “Golden Odes” of the Arab.1 I just tasted them there, and brought them home with me – having since then been doing this excellent work as much jus-[tice] in the reading of it as this too ignorant one is capable. You will understand, that my treatment of the versification can not be based on prosody – of which I have none, so have to depend on my ear – as if the poetic themes were given to fiddles and bassoons; the rhythm from them comes naturally to me, though without knowledge of the science. At all events ’tis easy to see from the poems, that both Lady Anne & yourself must have had a very tough piece of work on hand for some time, a quite serious venture on your parts.

67

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

The poems interest me greatly, but my reading of the various verse is too lame at present to please even my own ear, & it certainly would not please anyone else. I should much like your help in this on your return, and perhaps you may be induced to read me passages, and help me out with the sing-song of the verses, that I may be better able to get ‘the hang’ of their quality. As yet, it seems to me that a piticular [sic] kind of ‘sing-song’ intonation would be most in accord with such early work, much as I’ve been accustomed to in reading our own border ballads.2 Doubtless, the effect on the 13th century songs of the Provençal poets must have come from the east? At present, I have taken most kindly (in the way of reading) to the ode of “Imr-el-Káis”,3 and I like the go of it much, but am much in doubt of being right when reading it – and would be shy of reading it to any one – at all events ’till I’ve been helped by listening to you – if so it might be. Will both Lady Anne & yourself receive my unaffected thanks for the truly welcome gift? Believe me, Yours truly | Philip Webb. I believe my industrious search for strength on the south downs has done me a good turn, & on persistently keeping up the walking here, there is evidently more strength in me. I’m hoping to see Sydney Cockerell here in a week or two. He has been laid up with a severe chill, but seems to be getting the better of it now. Please give kind remembrance of me to Miss Lawrence, whose pleasant photographs of Egyptian scenes – in particular – make imagined characteristics of the desert more realistic. Ph. W. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 See above, Letter 907, note 1. 2 For his fondness for the border ballads and their ‘enchanting power of a people’s poetry’, see Vol. III, Letter 657, note 8. 3 ‘The Ode of Imr El Káis’, The Seven Golden Odes of Pagan Arabia, pp. 4–8.

910 • To Jane Morris, 4 January 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex 4 Jany ’04 My dear Janey. Your too brief letter called for earlier acknowledgment, but movement from one place to another, with many letters to be written, & with my slowness in writing, has delayed this note. 68

1903–1914

The meeting of the three of us at R’dean gave me real pleasure, for the very looking in the faces of long friendship, consoles – in a way!1 Things were made so easy for the transplanting this natural stick-at-home, that I did not feel as heartraw as usual when cut adrift from solitary habit. Here I am again, and the house folk are as kind to me as if I deserved their care. I like to think of you as in Burford,2 for, is it not in Oxfordshire & not far from Kelmscote? and are not poor humans fond of their nursing homes of birth place, and life story? you in Holywell & me in St Giles. When I think of your too constant disability of health, & other weary passing of time, I can but say pooh to my long delayed restrictions from lively activities: but one is selfish, do what one may to fight against it. Also, I believe women have more moral courage than men, though the latter are less scared by Cows, though Bulls sometimes perplex them! I think my 10 weeks on shore and downs did me good, ‘in a way’, for I got to be muscularly stronger, and more able to walk. Since returning here that has been kept up, and woodcutting & water drawing added, with advantage. The frosty weather (hard frost too) very cold here, as it has been, did me no harm, and I hope to hold out against the present damp reaction. The ever wakeful-to help Cockerell was here on Saturday evening, in spite of having only just salved himself from a severe chill. He came with bounties of books and other things in hand, and much readiness to talk sympathetically. You may remember ‘Billy’ the cat here, well he has been gone for more than a month, & too surely on the way of cats in the path of ever-killing keepers. Wilfrid Blunt has kindly sent me his & Lady Anne’s new book on the “Seven Odes” of the Arabs.3 A highly difficult one to read with perfect certainty of grasp, but is evidently a powerful representation of early Arab poetic story. It must be read twice & once, even to get the swing of the verse, which is unusual. I hope you – as the impulse serves – will let me know how you get along, and that “Generals Jany & Feby” are when defeated by March & April will find you hopeful. Good night dear friend, from | Yours always truly | Philip Webb. I’m all alone in this timber tabernacle, while the kindly helpful Mrs Dickinson has gone – as usual on Sundays – to the Mission Hall at 3 Bridges. This will be posted on Monday. (You see, I’m not up to ink at present) My return good will to Miss Staveley & love to Jenny. BL Add 45343, ff. 34–5

1 The three were PSW, GBJ and JM, who had last been together in Rottingdean on 19 October, which was JM’s birthday. ‘If you are to see three such good friends as Lady Burne-Jones, Mr Webb & Mr Blunt in the course of the day, today at any rate should be a happy one.’ SCC to JM, 19 October 1903, BL Add 52738, f. 131. 2 For JM’s fondness for Burford during her later years, see below, Letter 962, note 1. 3 See previous letter.

69

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

911 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 January 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 9 Jany ’04 My dear fellow. Your constant consignments are a considerable item in my reduced life, & very helpful, but I sometimes sigh as to its extra drain on your activity, though that is naturally large. The small & skilfully done photos: of your she friend are always inspiring.1 To shew that I look at them with some eye-lustre, the following tells. The print of S: Ouen re-tells my first consideration of it, as the least interesting of big French Churches that I have seen in the flesh, or in pictures. To me it is skilful beyond dispute, but not “a joy for ever”.2 The timber constructions of S. Maclou & Caudebec are very pleasing oldworld views. The Courtyard of the [Hotel de] Gd Cerf at big Andely I recollect in its flamboyant flesh, for our lunch (the 3 from the Seine) was got there,3 when we had glutted ourselves with Chateau Gaillard & Petit Andely, and I have a small detail in my note book of moulding section, which gave the date without fail.4 What a comfortable hôtel courtyard! Now comes the gem – not “of the sea” but of the Seine, viz, the S.W. picture of Notre Dame Mantes, wh’ we took time to see well on the way down river. To me, this West front compares well with that of Peterborough – having stateliness more than ornament, and imaginative proportion most effective – barring sculpture, I would the N.D of Paris had been as effective. That crown of a gallery (Mantes) is of the highest in expression of builded detail: but the whole church I remember, as well as any seen in France, & as being a great gaunt thing, touching the imagination – wh’, to me, is the test of effectiveness.5 Some alterations in the way of removal have been made in this W. front, since my time: I am especially ‘taken’ with this view. All this to-do will be tedious to you? The 5 mounted views (wh’ you are to call here for) are excellent bits of photo: work. That of the W front of Chartres, even beats – by its simplicity, the N. & S. Porches of the same. The noblest of French sculptured work – including its arrangement, that I know. It has the greatest dignity, with no confusion of detail.6 On passing by rail, I longed to be on Lago di Garda, and to see the little ragged 12 cent: Lombardic churches there. ’Tis one of the places I spoke about to Proctor when he was last here. The S. Zeno, & the Torcello prints stir me – though in other kind, as much as the great French things; partly no doubt on acct of the grave simplicity of Italian early work.

70

1903–1914

Thank you for sending me Cobbett’s “Stradivari” – a very acceptable increase of my knowledge of an unstinting labourer in Craft-life.7 May his shade be picking up special pieces of ‘belly timber’, and other sounding materials to make Angels pinions for to quiver, when he has put them together at the top of Jacob’s ladder. Hearn’s (Yankee I suppose) book is nearly read through, and greatly interests me.8 I don’t know a non scientific book on a scientific basis, more acceptable to non-scientific minds. It seems to me to be right skilfully, as well as pleasantly written. I find in the book many half corroborations of my own spiritual dreaming of the unknowable. Tis written too with a singularly kindly sympathy, and I can in some way account, from it, for my own sympathy with the Japanese: a childlikeness in the Japs, which (at present, O, & alas) which is lovely simplicity itself. The author has written it with no Yankee blague,9 and it does not offend as an offering to ignorance. One is very touchy in this way. I am supposing the book being given to you, means, that Cobbett has leanings towards its philosophy? To me it reads very comfortably with Tolstoi’s supersensual reasoning. Your talk here too lifted even the stumbling me.10 Anything I write to you, which the senior partner would care to hear of, & you to read, I should be glad, if allowable, for I’m never forgetful of his inestimable help in may many ways, to Yours & his heartily, | Philip Webb. Have had another good letter, in his usual incisive brevity, from W.R.L. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/3

1 SCC annotation: ‘The Normandy photographs were snapshots by A.J. Wyatt of Cambridge. The photographs of Chartres, Verona & Torcello were by H.H. Peach of Leicester.’ Several of the photographs survive with the letter. PSW’s reference to SCC’s ‘she friend’ is perhaps an acknowledgement of his love affair with ‘la belle France’. 2 ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’: the opening line of John Keats’s Endymion (1818). 3 For further memories of this French trip of August 1858 in the company of WM and CF, see also below, Letter 970. 4 ‘Webb, on leaving London in 1900, gave me the larger drawings he made while on this tour, and his sketch book has been lent to me by Mr. Emery Walker.’ Lethaby, p. 23. 5 ‘Webb especially remembered Poissy, Pontoise, Mantes (“with its gaunt church. I do love a gaunt church”), and Rouen.’ Lethaby, p. 24. 6 ‘On 24 August they were at Chartres, where Webb drew the noble south-west steeple of the Cathedral and the interior.’ Ibid. 7 SCC annotation: ‘Walter Cobbett’s article on Stradivari was probably for Grove’s Dictionary or from one of his musical papers.’ 8 Lafcadio Hearn, Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life (London: Gay and Bird, 1895). 9 ‘Blague’: pretentious falsehood; ‘humbug’ (OED). 10 SCC had visited PSW at Caxtons on 2 January.

71

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

912 • To Sydney Cockerell, 21 January 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 21 for 22 Jany 1904. My dear fellow. Thank you for yours of 19th, with its note about the origins of Lo Hearn; which name puts me in mind of the “hairy one”, the old gypsy woman who had a sufficient dislike to Lavengro as a Gorgio spy on the ways & manners of the “Egyptians”, & nearly killed him with poison: an admirable dramatic scene that.1 Curiously enough, in the ‘Times’ of 18th Jan: – (wh’ my brother sent me) – there is an “our correspondent’s” letter from Tokio about with Herbert Spencer’s opinion about, & advice to the Japanese. This is admirable in my view, but not so in a ‘Times’ leader, in the same paper, where that war-fanner (the paper) goes in to belittle Spencer’s view.2 You have probably seen it – or can see it? As if everybody did not now know, that it has always been so with England, first the missionaries, then the whisky, followed by fighting ships with soldiers in it, and demands for settlements in the country! As to Miss Kingsford, there is no doubt in my mind as to the art value of her work, a not uncommon thing when seeing things done by a fresh mind, & remarkably capable hand & eye: but what is more satisfactory, is the advance she has made since my first surprise at the characteristic qualities of her work.3 In those 4 books from the Ashendene press, wh’ E.W. took away with him, I noted especially for comment, the squatting (flounced down – as it were) female figure at the bottom of the page, which struck me as very expressively eastern in effect. Again, I was even more touched by the beauty and skill of the tall man figure, (on the outside of right hand page) wh’ is dressed with white undergarment, & covered with purple & green cloak – a quite good scheme of colour: but, beyond this, the figure is strikingly posed & drawn, having much dignity in its composition, while the dark haired head is really beautiful. There seems no doubt to me that Miss Kingsford must go on to even more masterly work – unless she feels tired? If that is the case, I would say – ‘take a rest, & in that resting time look at as much of the best old book decorative work as may be, and make hundreds of quick studies from nature, of any living thing, and especially of their action in moving.[’] Even the slightest sketch – if thoughtfully done – would give her a fund of resource when she is cornered for some special variety. I say “action”, because the museums will give her the details of bird, beast, or man (if that last is not tautological?!). Note, also, not to neglect the growth and branching of trees. – I’ve always found the purely natural forms & ways can readily be treated rightly for decorative purposes.

72

1903–1914

You see, I’m not capable – as Lethaby is, of putting points forcibly in a few words – worse luck. Directly on reading your letter, with the mention of your Knole visit, I got out the Ordnance sheet – and found a datum level of 410 feet above the sea level, at the N.W. entrance to Seven Oaks.4 I don’t know what the subsoil may be, but possibly it may be of round sea pebbles, as was the foundation of WMs ‘Red House’.5 If you happened on Jermyn Street, the curator of Geol Museum wd tell you in 5 minutes. I can do nothing but thank you heartily in thus casting about for a possible resettlement in another tabernackle. In The she book on Millet – read at Rottingdean, I found, when dipping in your Sensier book, contained practically all in it of the latter, & some more stuff found since the Sensier time.6 Yours as always – | Philip Webb. Am expecting Lethaby on Sat: but have written him not to risk coming in such weather as you did not ought to have faced last Sat: V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/10

1 ‘I am told that Lafcadio Hearn began life as a poor journalist in Chicago & that he made a reputation there by a wonderful description of a great fire, written against time. He is now professor of English in a Japanese University.’ SCC to PSW, 19 January 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/8. In George Borrow’s Lavengro, the poisoning scene involving the old gypsy, Mrs Herne, occurs in ch 71. 2 In a piece headed ‘Herbert Spencer and Japan’, the Tokyo correspondent of The Times discussed the friendship between Spencer and the Japanese diplomat, Baron Kentaro Kaneko, who sought improved understanding between Japan and the West. Spencer’s view, however, was that Oriental nations should preserve their independence and integrity by maintaining the greatest possible isolation, and ends a letter to Kaneko (published in the article), ‘keep other races at arm’s length as much as possible’ (18 January 1904). An accompanying leading article endorsed Kaneko, by rejecting Spencer unequivocally. ‘[T]he strongest and most lasting States . . . have been courageous and expansive, and so have escaped the dry rot which sets in wherever the trust is in restrictions such as Mr. Spencer recommended.’ 3 For Kate Kingsford’s decorations to The Song of Songs (Chelsea: Ashendene Press, 1902), see Vol. III, Letter 831, note 2. 4 On 16 January, in the company of Lady Margaret Sackville, SCC visited Knole in Sevenoaks, built in the fifteenth century by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, and since 1566 the ancestral home of the Sackville family. ‘Fifty staircases, Caxtons nowhere in comparison! And such a glorious house, & park & pictures. The air was very good on the top of Sevenoaks hill – & it seemed to me that it would suit you excellently if we could find a decent cottage there, with room for Mrs Dickinson & the children.’ SCC to PSW, 19 January 1904. 5 See below, Letter 916. 6 Alfred Sensier, Jean-François Millet, translated by Helene de Kay (Boston, Mass: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1881). The ‘she book’ on Millet was by Julia Cartwright. See above, Letter 905, note 6.

73

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

913 • To Giacomo Boni, 30 January 1904 Photostat; pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 30 January 1904. Il Cavaliere Giacomo Boni. My dear Giacomo. It is long since your benevolence sent me a delightful letter, accompanied by a pamphlet of inexpressible interest to me – “Dalle Origini”, to wit.1 You will be saying severely, ‘has he wholly forgotten the friend who was so kind to him’? – Not quite, my friend. For, have I not read & re-read your letter of the 6th of October, and pored over the explanation of the ‘origini’. Also, did not Emery Walker tell me of your markedly kind reception of himself, and the English party, who were with him, giving up a large space of your invaluable time when explaining to them the results of your 4 years’ labours in the Forum?2 Of course all these things happened, and happily, one of the ‘party’ snapped some photographs of yourself & them when in the Forum, which was not only an interesting historical event, but they gave me two quite authentic portraits of Giacomo, the hero of the story. And what a story you have been able to disclose, and how many wrong conjectures have you set at rest for those who will come afterwards – and, shall I not say? what a hornet’s nest have you laid bare of rival cognoscenti, who will for all time whet their stings to punish you for your good fortune!! See Walter Scott’s story of “The Antiquary”; which tells, in his most delightful way, of the rivalry of the knowing ones. The illustrations of your “article” have been most helpful in giving me the key to the results of your invaluable labours, for my knowledge of the Italian language is even less now than 18 years ago, when I looked down on the then exposure of the Forum. All this is a mere preamble of excuse for my neglect: for the doctors told me to go away from here in October for change of air, and I went to the South downs, some 5 miles from Brighton, & was walking about their lovely slopes, & on the sea shore, for some 10 weeks. I am now really stronger, though – as yet – not able to sit up properly at the table to write, hence the meaning of this pencilling; so that writing is really a labour to me, and often gets to be put off – sine die! There, the excuse of seeming neglect, is out! Truly, I’ve never forgotten you since the time you allowed me to wander round the Venetian Ducal Palace on the scaffolding, to the present moment, & – as I said before, the excellent photographs I have seen of you just now, have reminded me strongly of the you of 1885, with the change in Giacomo of 1903; and I can see in the picture of your parting with the English visitors on the wooden bridge over some excavations in the Forum – that time has dealt gently with you, and added those improvements in the portrait, which industrious, & seriously spent time so blessedly gives to the human countenance – Amen. Now, let me thank you, straight out, for the great kindness with which you received, & acted on, with regard to my introductory letter with Emery Walker. He was greatly impressed with it.

74

1903–1914

You will readily understand how the fall of the Venetian tower touched me: on receipt of the news, my notes of the fabric of the Campanile were looked up, and – as building has been the business of my life, I could not understand the collapse of it, without feeling nearly sure, that some sort of upheaval – however slight – must have been the cause of the disaster.3 This was strengthened by my seeing photographs (by E. Walker) of drawings by Canaletto, made when some earlier injuries happened to the tower, which seemed to me expressive of the angle of the building having been, as it were, pinched out of it by some irruptive movement, while the condition of Italy from electric disturbance – following, as it did, the terrible volcanic disturbance in the West Indies, gave some reasonableness to my thought.4 But, I must end these too tiresome reflections of an almost worn out old man. Let me add however add, with what pleasure the note of your care for the softening of the results of your labours in the Forum of Rome, is shewn, by your planting beautiful vegitation [sic] on the skirts of the ruins of ages. Let me also thank you for the glimpses given in your letter of the domestic life of yourself, a kind of vineyard existence in the ancient city, attended on by natives, human & feathered. Long may you live my friend – & happily – at the same time believing me, as Yours truly, | Philip Webb. Courtauld 197a–d

1 Dalle Origini (1903) discusses GBO’s discoveries in the Forum at Rome since his appointment as Director of Excavations in 1898. 2 See above, Letter 891. 3 For the collapse of the campanile of San Marco in July 1902, see Vol. III, Letter 840, note 6. 4 A major eruption of Mont Pelée totally engulfed Saint-Pierre in Martinique on 8 May 1902, with huge loss of life.

914 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 February 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 9 February 1904 My dear fellow. Thank you for your reminder about the Rossetti picture.1 I now send – written formal-like – and in as small a space as my present pen & ink disability wd let be done, and it came out like the hand of a schoolboy trying to be respectable.2 If you don’t like it, I will have another shie. You will see, I wished you to have the possibility – (should you at some future time be hard up!) of getting a price for it from one of the several national galleries, & without any compunction, for any of the galleries should be glad to get it? Our

75

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

time together on Sat: was delightful to me.3 I have grinned again & again at my perfect blank in memory of the M.S reproduction. Yrs Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/11

1 See Vol. III, Letter 729, note 2. SCC annotation: ‘P.W. gave me his beautiful Rossetti watercolour of the meeting of Dante and Beatrice in the Purgatorio on Dec 17 1900 & I asked for an inscription to paste on the back below an inscription by G.P. Boyce who had given it to him on Aug 17 1885.’ 2 ‘I, Philip Webb, of Caxtons, Worth, Sussex (formerly of Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn London) did, on the 17th December, 1900, give this picture to my friend Sydney C. Cockerell, assured that, when he had to dispose of it, the picture would finally be placed finally by him in a “National” English gallery of paintings.’ BL Add 52761. 3 ‘I went to see Philip Webb, who was well & cheery. It turned fine in the afternoon & was a beautiful evening.’ CD, 6 February 1904.

915 • To Sydney Cockerell, 12 February 1904 Pencil; year added by SCC Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 12 Feby for tomorrow’s post. My dear fellow. I was just a bit sayd by the “West Port” in the day, & o’ nights, after your letter of the 10th – A kind of mental quake at a possible separation of the brotherhood;1 all nonsense – doubtless; but humans is subject thereto. Possibly, merely a reflection from the horrors of war, and the shame attending on our inept (if not a worse name be given to it?) National government.2 The parliamentary reading now of the goings on in that scandalous hive of minus quantity industry, is enough, one would fancy, to make a lobster go red – without boiling! No, possibly the real change in existence of the journeying to & fro, & there, in Egypt, may settle your self-government into a line of good-openings for your quite considerable capability for honest work, in more ways than one. In any case, I believe your own judgment to be the best guide, & that of nervous friends perhaps the worst – and I distrust my own always – save, perhaps, when applied to myself! Now you can laugh. Am glad you were able to take what I said, about the D.G.R. picture, in the exact way I meant it to be read – & so that is well settled. There is a confessed time in April, when you say the wild spring flowers in the Worth district are well worth the resting of eyes on them, I shall look forward to that time for their blessing, both for your & my own self – “my ain self” – as the little farmer’s girl said in the Guy Mannering.3 I waked up Gimson with a letter, not even expecting an answer; today one came – quite prettily done – accompanied with photographs & working plans of

76

1903–1914

his new tabernacle; ’tis a very pretty exercise in simplicity, and as work seems to be going on at Sapperton & Daneway quite in a satisfactory way, the domesticity will have a better line to run along.4 One of the photos: is of Daneway house, which took my fancy when I saw it in the reality, so much, that nothing but my more serious judgment kept me from making a bid for it – when, then, it was, I believe – to be had. Poor good Mrs Dickinson would not have liked it at all, for ’tis out of all screaming distance of anything with lugs to it: a beautiful house placed on rising ground, with the due ghostly aspect about the whole, rightly belonging to a place long disused. It seems to have been carefully repaired, & ’tis a stout fabric. Gimson will coach the other two of the Cottswold [sic] banditti to send me semblances of their earthly paradises.5 This morning broke here grey, with barometer over-reaching itself in rising, for when I had done a good walk there came a change over the spirit of its dream, & a rapid fall; since when it rained, & the weather, as aforetime; & while tonight, it is “down & up & up & down and dreadful”. I suspect Kelmscote will be ‘up to its knees & ninepence’.6 Good bye my friend | Yours – also ‘as aforetime’, | Philip Webb. You can tell the ‘squire’ I am really sane, though seemingly ‘touched’. The G. B-J air cushion allows me to scrawl this without grunting. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/13

1 WSB had invited SCC to join him in Egypt for two months, offering to pay his outward and return fares. Having been suffering badly from insomnia, SCC was eager for a change. He had already agreed with EW an amicable severing of their business partnership, in order that he might pursue his work with medieval manuscripts. This was due to take effect from the end of June, but in view of his two-month absence, SCC worked on until the end of August, ‘Walker having behaved very handsomely in this as in all other things’. CD, 1904. On 10 February, SCC wrote to tell PSW of his imminent departure for Egypt, and was away from 16 February to 16 April. 2 Rivalry between Russia and Japan over Manchuria and Korea led to the outbreak of the RussoJapanese War, lasting from 8 February 1904 until 5 September 1905. ‘It is awful, this conflict between Japan & Russia – the people of Kokoro & those of Tolstoy’s folk tales! The guilty ones all sitting comfortably at home as usual.’ SCC to PSW, 10 February 1904, BL Add 52761, f. 103. 3 ‘ “Captain, come back,” said a little fat roll-about girl of six, holding her mouth up to be kissed, “and I’ll be your wife my ainsell”.’ Scott, Guy Mannering or The Astrologer (ch 26). 4 See Vol. III, Letter 841, note 6. 5 SCC annotation: ‘ “The other two of the Cotswold banditti” are the architect brothers Ernest and Sidney Barnsley, who built their houses near Gimson’s at Sapperton near Cirencester.’ ‘We still live the same life you knew at Pinbury, cooking and eating in the kitchen with the added luxury of a retiring room now, where we sit in the evenings and the children have their lessons, and in this way we have a sunny room all the day.’ Sidney Barnsley to PSW, 1 May 1904, cited in Greensted, p. 30. 6 Its position in the Thames valley made Kelmscott Manor susceptible to flooding. For this saying, see Vol. III, Letter 830, note 1.

77

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

916 • To Emery Walker, 13 February 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. Sat: 13 Feb: for Monday’s post My dear fellow It was thoughtfully kind of you to send me the excellent photograph of Mrs Gilmore’s altar frontal. Of course, I knew May Morris’s handling of the embroidery would be good, but its grace, & effectiveness, quite surprises.1 Surely any competent judge would speak with unqualified praise of the workwomanship, and the more so if they used a lens, as I have, to find out the unfailing skill exercised in keeping purity of line, and bringing out the excellence in the various ways of enforcing the indicated semblance of modelling, so admirably carried out in the different processes of the needlework. Indeed, I am quite proud of this work, though mine is the smallest part of its preciousness; when you see May, kindly lift up your trunk, and trumpet my admiration in her ear. Just you look at the extreme delicacy (for example) of the leaf bordering running round the 6 labels at the bottom! Mrs Gilmore will now know the work was well worth the waiting for it. No 19th cent: slurring & make believe in an inch of the whole. Whose are the candle-sticks – they look like Persian work, or imitation? I had a letter from Cockerell telling of his about to be going for Egypt; and if the complete change in life straightens him into his usual form of health we shall all be glad, though you will sorely miss him I am sure.2 Let me hope your feminine secretary will turn out to be a help to you.3 I am really anxious that you should not be worried to the death. The strain on S.C.C, following the death of Proctor, must have told on him, for, though he was better when here last Saturday, he was evidently in really weak health. Blunt will be jolly glad to have him at hand, and Miss Lawrence will doctor him up, if so need be.4 Yes, that is rather what I had thought would be the subsoil at Sevenoaks. I suspect the sand & pebble beds are at the top. It was the pebbles I had at Red Hse Upton. Thank you for your note on this matter.5 I’ve had a capital & very friendly letter from Gimson, at the same time sending me very good photos: of his new house, and his original plans of it; quite a hopeful piece of 20th cent: building. I shd like to see the show of joiners work for wh’ he had sent me admission, wh’ was the cause of my writing him, & thus drawing the reclusive badger; but when I do go to Lon: it will be to tailor & dentist, with a look in at Clifford’s Inn, wh’ will take up the brief time there; otherwise my other aim would have been to look in on Lethaby. I hope Mrs Walker will have suffered no ill in her good Samaritan work at Oxshott.6 Please remember me very leniently to her. Yours always truly | Philip Webb.

78

1903–1914

My stars!!! What war, what a Parliamenting, & what weather. BL Add 45343, ff. 38–9

1 For MM’s working of the Clapham altar super-frontal, see Vol. III, Letter 624, especially note 2. 2 ‘Cockerell starts on Tuesday. I have no doubt the change will do him good, he has not slept well since his illness before Christmas.’ EW to PSW, 12 February 1904, Cheltenham 1991.1016.647.a. See previous letter, note 1. 3 ‘A lady thought to be competent, Mrs Esther Wood, has been engaged to take over the correspondence &c so that Walker may not be too much overworked – & I shall come back with WSB in April. I am afraid you will think that I am treading the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire!’ SCC to PSW, 10 February 1904, BL Add 52761, f. 103. 4 For Elizabeth Lawrence, WSB’s nurse and travelling companion, see Vol. III, Letter 850, note 3. 5 ‘The subsoil of Sevenoaks belongs to what is called the sandy series & consists of Sand, Pebble beds & Sandstone (Lower Greensand). This information is derived from a memoir on “soils & subsoils from a sanitary point of view with special reference to London & its neighbourhood” by Horace B. Woodward F.R.S. This is an official publication of the Geological Survey, issued in 1897.’ EW to PSW, 12 February 1904. 6 Mary Jones Walker had been visiting Robert Proctor’s mother in Oxshott, Surrey.

917 • To William Richard Lethaby, 18 February 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 10 Feby 1904 My dear Lethaby. Your personality in handwriting, comfortingly telling of the return home, rejoiced the timber housed timber head of your friend: that’s it! While the lively historical piece about the Holbein stirred my indolent intelligence, & as J.R. used to add after little kind speeches, “Thank you”, with a broadish, a. That H.H. capital too in the Church did not catch my blunt eye when in the Church many years ago, worse luck.1 I quite agree to the “world-artist” definition of the H influence, for many many times, & again quite recently, I have gone through that picture book about him you gave me before I left my town house, and find in it a soul’s companionship.2 ’Tis a sad pity W.M did not ‘sit’ to H. and get painted exactly in the manner of “Bonifacius Amerbach”!3 How proud, & quite so, H. was of this triumphant piece of work. There are many H. capitals in the said book. I would just like to turn in at the Nat: Gall: & have another look at the ‘ambassadors’, for your very probable explanation of its deep meaning, lifts me up. When you come here, tell me more about that rhyming inscription which was (complete) once on the W.A. pavements. You see, this excellent bit of an article of yours interests me greatly.4 Carry on with such – please.

79

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Yea – Our S.C.C has wheeled and waved himself away from us once more. I wish he would come back with a Bedouin Princess, that she might settle him. [sketch of dagger] A little of the desert-sand & bronze tint in the flesh would be better for us to look at than going to a play? The good Walker will miss the cushioning of his handyman and trusty. I am hoping you will not be troubled much with the weary items which “cometh after death”, so that you can get on with your most necessary work.5 With kindest remembrance to Dame Richard, I am, the much troubled with this brutal war, – Yrs | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 In Holbein’s painting of The Ambassadors (see Vol. I, Letter 257, note 6), the elaborate Cosmatesque thirteenth-century pavement on which they stand is supposed to have been based on that in front of the High Altar of Westminster Abbey. See note 4. 2 H. Knackfuss, Holbein, translated by Campbell Dodgson (London: H. Grevel & Co., 1899). See Vol. II, Letter 615, note 8. 3 Holbein’s portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach (1519: Basle Museum) is illustrated in Knackfuss, p. 21. 4 The Westminster Abbey Cosmatesque pavement features three brass Latin inscriptions (damaged), referring to the end of the world, which were copied in the fifteenth century by the Abbey chronicler, John Flete. For Cosmati work, see Vol. II, Letter 447, note 11. 5 WRL’s father, Richard Pyle Lethaby, had recently died.

918 • To Jenny Morris, 5 March 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 5 March. 1904. My dear Jenny. Miss Staveley was so good as to send me a cutting from newspaper of the readingroom venture in one of your mother’s new cottages;1 also a photo-post-card of Kelmscott Church. I write this belated letter direct to you, as news on the card, of your being well, cheered me much. Please to thank Miss Staveley for her energetic kindness, and give her an old man’s blessing, when you have cut off a part of it for yourself. It seems to me that if the big wigs of the village – say Mr R. Hobbs jun r, rs M W.M, and that lady’s gardener, Mr Sutton, can secure order in the room, other than high jinks among the boys while using it, the move will be very helpful to the village generally, & the boys in particular; & part of my blessing must rest on tractable boys, of which incorrigible tribe I once was one, and none of the best. The little photo: print of Kelmscott church is a real pleasure to me, for I have no other likeness of it. You can hardly believe the delight I have in the remarkable originality & beauty of Oxon & Berks village churches: a real style of their 80

1903–1914

own; and never am I forgetful of the incident about the church in the wonderful ending of ‘News from nowhere’. You will have heard from the good mother that I met her, & May, when at Rottingdean, and the mother with Emery Walker came to see me here on the 20th Feby much to my joy. This poor old invalided boy is has a roll of the best of friends who never forget to be the kindest of the kind to him, & helpful beyond any poor words of mine to express; and it cheers me to hope there must be some little good in me in never having lost their love. The 3 doctors having told me (three in “copper plate engravers” is, we know, a large number) I must not stay here during the fall of the leaf of last year,2 and though my disinclination to moving from the “tabernacle” of home was great, Aunt Georgie set herself to work for me, & found a really comfortable lodging & good landlady, so that the two combined soon made me – more or less – at home. and The downs literally smiled on me in my very necessary walks over them. The sea too was gracious, so that the double change of air gave me a lift, and since returning here, improvement has not fallen off; though, as you see from this pencilling, I cannot as yet sit properly at table to write, and any designing & drawing is still out of the question. I am hoping risk of further flooding in the Thames valley is now over, for the wet here too has been heavy, but the streams do not now flow full-force as they did a week ago. Good bye dear Jenny, from your affectionte | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 40–1

1 ‘I have started a little Reading Room in one of my cottages. A great success. The men come instead of going to the public house.’ JM to Katherine Adams, 23 January 1904, CLJM. This would have been in one of the two memorial cottages, which presumably still awaited tenants. Indeed, on 9 May 1904 she told GWJ that ‘I have not begun to furnish my Cottage[s] yet, Bowley has finished all his work except the dresser handles &c – I hope you will pay us a non-official visit and enjoy the look of yr. work.’ CLJM. 2 The three would have been Harry Webb, William Hale White Jr and Sidney Matthews.

919 • To Sydney Cockerell, 7 March 1904 Pencil 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley.| Sussex. 7 March. 1904 My dear fellow. Do not be frightened at this sheet.1 I cannot in my crippled condition write minimus, and if the pen was tried, bungling with it would hinder my thinking, & make the back ache. I duly had your S.S. “Portugal” letter, and [was] very 81

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

considerably set up by it.2 The thoughtfully quiet time went pleasantly withal, for, your right reading of my last letter bore no resentment for the half dreamy blessing it contained, and that was a blessing too. You must know I am seriously sad about all my quite dependable friends, lest they should come to harm on their way through life. But as I then said, my dependence was more on your own judgment than on that of any one else: so, there is peace between us; and our English form of pax always sounds sweetly to me. Ah! you must have had an almost enchanted journey from Brindisi onward – I gathered that from your touching on J.W.M. Turner’s quite visionary tribute to the immortality of spiritual sensation. How that rather clumsy human shape of him held a lantern, however grossly in some ways its light may have been fed, that burned gloriously through all. And so Stromboli is still alive, and I see in the papers other places in Italy have suffered from the Electrical condition of the Earth.3 I too have a sneaking kindness for the Quakers, and I’m glad you had company on board carrying on the blessed simplicity of ‘Joshua Geddes’.4 The benevolent E.W sent on to me your letter to him, so that my mind has followed-on in your journey. Your good though short interview with Alexandria will help you to tell me on your return, what may remain in it of its former great historical significance: my travelled experience – like Sam Weller’s “vision”, has been strictly “limited”.5 What a strange jumble must the Early Christian church have shewn there: a kind of outgoing port for all anchorite elements to set sail from. I am much pleased that necessity bade you mount the admirable horse, and Lady Anne’s tutoring in the noble science of sitting him easily, is so much more hopeful than if you had trusted yourself to a Brighton guide in that way.6 If things should so turn out that horse riding might continue, you will – I am sure, agree with me that the elastic movement of the good beast soothes one, and thought goes (or shd go) on with leaps & bounds; I have found it thus stimulating. Perhaps the Camel’s movement tends towards dreaming? When you come to feel the nicety of a horse’s mouth you feel become a Centaur. It has here, at times, been hard for me to refrain from “getting a lift” from Holman, for a quickening of remembrance of how thought, in years gone past, brightened as I felt the nimble movement under me. What a joyous way of living, by “taking in each others’ washing”, must be that of rival Bedouin tribes – at least I thought so when reading Doughty’s book7 – and I suspect the Scotch & English border “lifters” must have felt the same kind of pleasure in such reckless freedom. Forgive all this, which arose in me out of your too few interesting words. I had Lethaby here last Sat: week, in excellent plumage, so willing to give & take; you may be sure he had the opportunity of taking. He told me of his coming book, of which I expect more than much.8 As it is not quite finished he will have the opportunity of putting in it some notes of the weaknesses of the all glory be it French architecture! [sic] Your magnificent pack of postal cards were so many pegs on which I could hang my ancient saws.9

82

1903–1914

‘My stars’ Mr Cockerell, what wonders these cards of yours did in the way of reclaiming me from the ways of the lost. That E. end of Bourges is transcendental; no quibbling can touch it.10 Even Tolstoy would say (surely?) ‘I have been somewhat hasty about beauty’ –?11 And then the unutterable dignity of expression – far beyond the power of words – did those carvers put into the transept doorway of Reims! Both this & the last pictures were quite new to me.12 You see, I carry an open soul. The third picture most taking, is that of “Les Saintes-Maries-dela-Mer” – strength, severity, & simplicity all of the noblest.13 I did not know that Lumley Cas: had so far escaped mutilation or transformation. You may have heard that E.W brought Mrs Morris here – a pleasant visit. Also, I had Mrs Flower here one day, and Weir another, so that “Missa Dick” had to skip about in that week; but she did it womanfully – without ‘turning a hair’. For my almost worn out self, well, I’ve walked regularly, & if “shanks’s mare” is not so elastic as an Arab one, still the beauty of the country here, even in a N.E windiness of March, lifted me above the poverty of grumbling. Happily – as yet, groth growth of things is backward, and as the water is steadily sinking to earth, & rubbing to streams, there is a late hope for farmers to get on to the land; otherwise Lent would have known no sowing, this year. Kindly tell the ‘squire’ that Arthur Caffin called to speak to me about the goings on of in the local district counsel [sic] matters; he said that Mr Blunt wished him to do so. Of course I told him – from experience – all I could; but he will be writing of it to W.S.B: The ‘Caffableness’ was all as usual!14 Should you, in one of your fallings off when riding, be able to grasp a small handful of genuine desert sand, kindly put it in an envelope and bring it here; I would like to see what kind of mortar it would make; not quite so insulting a use as the poets’ suggestion of Alexander’s dust?15 We shall see what May will bring in the way of bodily easement, but it will – I fancy, take the whole summer before I can say this good old tabernacle must be abandoned. Still I look forward to be well enough to go to Sevenoaks with you, if only to see the place for the first time, & in your brightening company. I must shortly go to that hive of les chevaliers d’Industrie, for both dentist & tailor to examine me in their several ways. Surely I will look in on E.W: In his inclosure of your letter, he did not say how the feminine secretary was carrying on. Please give to W.S.B, and Lady Anne, my sincere good wishes for all good spirits attending on them in Egypt & elsewhere. Neither do I forget Miss Lawrence, who helps so much, with her very veracious photographs, to make the realities of the Nile district correct my poor imaginations. Goodbye for a while, from | Yours always truly | Philip Webb. On re-reading, I see this sheet is full of nothing but an expression of the feebleness of my wits: never mind, forget it, at all events. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/14

83

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 The writing paper was larger than usual. 2 The S.S. Portugal was the boat which took SCC from Marseilles to Alexandria. His letter appears not to have survived. 3 Earthquake tremors on 24–5 February caused some damage at Magliano dei Marsi, Rocca di Papa and Velletri, and in the neighbourhood of Avezzano. 4 For the Quaker, Joshua Geddes, in Scott’s Redgauntlet, see Vol. III, Letter 664, note 5. 5 ‘“Yes, I have a pair of eyes,” replied Sam, “and that’s just it. If they wos a pair o’ patent double million magnifyin’ gas microscopes of hextra power, p’raps I might be able to see through a flight o’ stairs and a deal door; but bein’ only eyes, you see, my wision’s limited”.’ Pickwick Papers (ch 34). 6 During his Egyptian trip, SCC rode horses for the first time, including excursions into the desert. ‘Up at 6 & a pack up of the tents immediately after breakfast. Then a rather long day’s ride, with one or two rests as far as the hill called Hamoom, near which we camped. Bedouins camping not far off. Our party consisted of Mr Blunt, Lady Anne, Mutlak & myself on mares, Miss Lawrence on a donkey & about a dozen camels variously laden with tents, baggage & servants. I felt none the worse at the end of the day though rather stiff.’ CD, 2 March 1904. 7 WM had once loaned PSW Charles Montagu Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta. See Vol. II, Letter 507, note 5. 8 The forthcoming Mediæval Art from the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance, 312–1350. 9 As he awaited the boat which took him from Marseilles to Alexandria, SCC sent PSW at least seven separate picture postcards depicting various French buildings and panoramas, all posted on 18 February. ‘I am glad that those postcards helped your discourse with Lethaby – & that you did not find it in you to point your finger at any part of the E. end of Bourges with “That’s a poor bit!”.’ SCC to PSW, 16 March 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/16. 10 ‘Is this not rather a beautiful East end? Of course dwarfed by the perspective – for it is really very large.’ SCC to PSW, picture postcard of Bourges Cathedral, 18 February 1904, BL Add 52762, f. 13. 11 See above, Letter 882, note 8. 12 ‘This is one of the finest things in France. It still retains its old colour & gildings.’ SCC to PSW, picture postcard of Reims Cathedral, 18 February 1904, BL Add 52762, f. 17. 13 This card appears not to have survived. ‘WSB has seen Les Saintes Maries (I have not) and he says that you have read its character aright.’ SCC to PSW, 16 March 1904. 14 For the Caffin brothers, see Vol. III, Letter 776, note 4. 15 ‘As to the desert sand it may make good mortar, but the mortar the workmen here are making with it is of the very worst. However that may be the men’s fault, as mortar is little used in their mud brick buildings. I will bring home some of the sand.’

920 • To Sydney Cockerell, 12 March 1904 Pencil; year added by SCC Caxtons. Worth, by Crawley. Sussex. Evening of Sat: 12 March for Monday’s post. My dear fellow. The first acknowledgement here is for yours of the 29. Feb: inclosing Miss Lawrence’s prints of photos:1 I gather from the second, of 5. March, got to hand this afternoon, 7 days, in fact since you posted – of the two picture p. cards, all good for me, but of them, more anon. You would hardly have soldered up the bruised and abraded surfaces of your way-worn body, before the 4 legged cause of such offence was at the door again, 84

1903–1914

a “swallowing of the hair”, &c – indeed; plus the multangular twist (as I suppose) of the much more monstrous Camel, when I can fancy your seat to be a-lying all along with the hump in your belly? My sluggish imagination is greatly helped by Miss Ls delightful picture of W.S.B sheltering under the ‘omnibus of the desert’: fortune, & the provident pummel-peg of the saddle, must have smiled on your first adventure: such – possibly – is the clearness of the air, that through a spyglass 10 miles off you might have been seen & acclaimed in a nautical way as, ‘S.C.C. sir, hull down, only the foremast standing’. But enough of jokes at your expense. Yes, you had told of your sister’s child’s sad state, and my pityful [sic] soul is relieved by the better report – may that continue.2 I am supposing you were glad to meet that seriously quiet old friend Carruthers, with the daughter – the latter I have only just seen, as it were.3 C. is one of those, always just the same good natured fellow, never failing to fall in with the fancies of any reasonable companion? With an unfilled space at a table, I always felt he was just the one to fill it; no one could honestly gainsay him. You will be plumping next on ‘dirty Joe’? I would advise the keenest bargainers of the bazaars to look out for a dead loss when dealing with him. In the photo: ‘Yashmak’ has just the look of a horse not wishing to be caught, a kind of suspicious obstinacy, which I well know. Of the very interesting photo: of building[s], I am, naturally enough, keenly alive to their unusual quality. I suppose the bricks are only sun burned? and the white stone is of a sandstone formation? & am wanting to know where the lime comes from? The picture of the eastern wolf-like dog pleases me, & you can tell Miss L. with my very appreciative regard, that if she can catch a fox with a snap-shot, it wd delight me to see him alive when killed. It seems as if it wd be triumphant marksmanship thus to bring down a kite on the wing. I was watching some waterhens, today, scattering over the mere at Crabbet, and they certainly had 4 wings! Would the Kodak be quick enough to reduce them to two? I also noted some wild ducks flying, and the wings appeared thus, [sketch], & not fm overhead, but straight along, at little height. All the photos: please me, & ’tis almost needless to particularise – save, that the bullocks at plough – (& with such a plough) is very attractive. Will you kindly give her my very sincere thanks for her boundless generosity. True, the p. card sphinx is an excellent & dramatic-like picture, and the scalegiving human figures make the scene realistic to a degree extraordinary. How much better that Ramses II shd lie peacefully under the palms awaiting the day of doom – even of granite. Of course it could be moved to the Brit. Mus: but only if millionaires wd try the thing, & they should not be allowed, for there are too many of them.4 The grass being dryer, & the sky full of sunlight, I walked this morning (the usual exercise) to unfrequented parts of Crabbet park & surroundings of the house – & could comfortingly dream away 2 hours of waining waning life; had it all to myself, if not the best, still, the second best of company. All the world my own, & no income tax. The spring touches me up – some, in its as peculiar way, as in autumn; and though I’m really stronger, still, the pains in belly breast & back are admonitory. 85

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Finally, I really rejoice that you are having such a time in Egypt; nothing in the way of a strange-chance could be better for you, and am quite willing to put up with the inexhaustible energy with which you afford to give me pleasure. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. You see, the paralysing want of memory makes my letters a mere mess of blunders. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/27

1 ‘Miss Lawrence asks me to send you the enclosed photographs. . . . You are sure to like the picture of WSB & the mare Yashmak – the dark background is the sandy desert. Yashmak is the mare that I rode last week, & the one I hope to ride again in a day or two. At present I am recovering from certain bruises and abrasions caused by my unskilful bumping in the saddle!’ SCC to PSW, 29 February 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/15. SCC enclosed a number of photographs of people and views in and around Sheykh Obeyd, ten of which have been pasted into the volume. 2 ‘I forget whether I told you of the very serious illness of my younger sister’s child. There is better news, and I gather that the doctors have been able to reassure the anxious parents, although recovery must be very slow.’ 3 ‘I have been once into Cairo, to see a cousin who is married to an official – & I afterwards went to the bazaars with Mr & Miss Carruthers, who are travelling up the Nile – but I have seen no antiquities.’ John Carruthers, the political economist and engineer, had been WM’s companion during his final boat trip to Norway and had sent reports to SCC on WM’s progress. See Vol. II, Letter 532. 4 SCC had sent a picture postcard of Memphis. ‘This is nearly all that remains of Memphis, nearly all the stones of which have been carried away to build Cairo & other places. This statue was presented years ago to the B. Museum, but no one has been found capable of moving it, & yet it must originally have come from a great distance.’ SCC to PSW, 5 March 1904, BL Add 52762, f. 21.

921 • To George Washington Jack, 14 March 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 14 Mar. 1904 My dear Jack. Weir was here on the 26th Feb. and mentioned that you had thought of coming down soon. As there were several welcome guests here in that week, I asked him to suggest coming later on, and in a letter to me, he said you might come in a fortnight or so. I had hoped you might turn up last Saturday, but I hope you will suit your own convenience either in coming or not coming, for I know how busy you must be, & even the railway fare for looking the old man in the face for an hour or two seems to me as an extravagant expenditure on the score of your emaciated purse? Lethaby came on the 27th Feby and we had a good – & to me, a most helpful talk, in which your name mingled pleasantly. I shall expect you to come down here when you can, conveniently – in all ways. 86

1903–1914

When you were last here, I forgot to say that Ld Carlisle had written to me about Brampton Ch: Tower.1 The gist of the letter was – in answer to my letter to him – thus: “It settles the matter as to the Archt” i.e. that you should carry out the work. “As soon as I know whether there are adequate funds promised, I will write to Mr Jack.” “I only write now to say that the matter is not dropped, but I cannot hurry it further”. “I am abroad again to Egypt, as I cannot get sound.” This was written Octr 29. 1903, and I am supposing he will return to England with the swallows? What a good effectual fellow Weir is. Quite a master of arts, in the way – for instance, of saving precious ancient buildings from unnecessary decay, & incapable (in the way of keeping them standing) Architects! and he is such a light hearted fellow. He also sent me some capital photos: of some of his late works; these are most interesting to the old stager, Ph. W. With kindest expression of goodwill to Mrs Jack, & the bonnie girls, I am yours, as always, | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 890.

922 • To Sydney Cockerell, 26 March 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 26 March ’04 My dear fellow. I had your excellent & very interesting letter of the 16th Mar: on the 24th, with its two very effective photos: by Miss Lawrence. I would like E.W to have the negative of the cavalry backed by the desert hill, with the well of water foreground, to enlarge to twice the size. As you would (according to note outside the envelope) be leaving for Damascus on the 17th you will be likely to find my second letter awaiting your return – wh’ was written on the 14th. Am glad the first letter was not so dull for your reading as it seemed to me in the writing! Still, any bit of sincerity reaching one when far away has a gloss on it, beyond any other value – & so be it always – say I. If you had gone Egypt way with no other gain than seeing Cairo as you tell of it, from the “limestone promontory”, ’twould have been fully worth the while, & the wheel & wave work. Ever since reading of Richard 1sts crusade, I’ve had a wish to know something more of the citadel, wh’, if remembering rightly, was built in the 13th cent?1 Does it still hold its own, if nothing else? I well 87

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

remember that all Boyce’s Egyptian sketches were good beyond the ordinary of such representations, as giving the Eastern effect of light & colour. I gather that Cairo must have been more transformed than Moscow, for museums of late years have been supplied with antiquity plundered at a monstrous rate – and we know that ‘restoration’ too has been rampant.2 My dreams of late have been constant – sometimes wearisome, & sometimes interesting, but not in sleep have I been with you, though glad that my ‘double’ was at hand as you looked on the wonders of time & nature from that limestone ‘coign of vantage’.3 You will hardly be able to write me the effect on you of Damascus – but the story will be effective in this timber steading: my recollection of the photo-reproductions of Syria, & particularly of the garden’s beauty of Damascus, clings to me, watered as they are by many threads of stream from the mountain district of Lebanon, “Abana & Pharphar”, &c – of the old Hebrew story.4 The Damascening of the old guns must have been a vigorous trade “dumped” on every foreign shore. I fancy much of the oriental armour was made in Ds of old time? I remember, too, the water willow growing of on the river banks. Ah, yes; a painfully beautiful ending of the life of your sister’s little one.5 I liked the courageous resolve to carry out the laying to earth-rest in that simple way. Lord a mercy, when will simplicity abide with humans again? I see that Mountfield is 3 miles from Robertsbridge. Surely you will be knowingly critical of the ‘stud’ here, on your return, and Holman will stand in awe of the criticism! Also, by that time the coats of the 4 legged things will be in better condition than they are now, in their winter raggedness, with ‘spring cleaning’ shewing between. Arthur Caffin told me of orders from India being likely! I had Geo: Jack here on Tuesday. Lethaby and he are pulling well together while trying to counteract the dull processes of teaching at S. Kenn;6 just about as uphill a piece of work as your route from Beyrout. I’m at fever heat to see what W.R.L makes of his book, but am not troubled with “philosophic doubt” in the matter. ’Twill be either in one way or the other, and certainly not between 2 stools of thought: insight is a first rate prompter. Please tell the ‘squire’ – in recognition of his greeting – that I looked round the garden &c, of Forest lodge the other day, not having been inside the wicket before: will go inside the house next time. I fell foul of an impedimental greenhouse on the West side, but did not heave half a brick at it. There is a preternatural plum tree in the garden, which laid hold of me quite. Really, Miss Lawrence – if I may be forgiven for saying it in slang – is a dab hand at her photography – such pleasant pictures, and so teaching of the country to the ignorant. I have longed to pull off the veil (have forgotten the right term) of the enchanting shepherdess. Am persuaded that half of our European uninteresting appearance comes from the dismal clothing we cling to – still, it fits our decadence to a T.

88

1903–1914

E.W will have told you that his missis has gone to R’dean, & I’ve heard from G.B-J that she hopes to welcome her there. E.W came to see me on his way there last Sat:, but, and unluckily, Treherne came on the same day, and I got less out of both than singleness would have allowed. Treherne’s obstinacy, in having a new lectern for Eglwys Cymin, is against the advice of G. Wardle, & Ph W, has been tempered by Geo: Jack’s excellent piece of oak carving of the S. Margaret who was attached in some mysterious (to me) way to the place; you will see a photo: of it here.7 The selfish self, here is doing pretty fairly. N.E winds are drying the land wonderfully, for there has been nearly 3 weeks without rain & farmers are breathing again. My complaint bears the E winds better than the damp. Goodbye, for a while, fm | Yours, Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/28

1 The English contingent of the Third Crusade (1189–92), a broadly successful campaign by European Christendom to win back the Holy Land from Saladin, was led by Richard I (Richard the Lionheart). 2 ‘Compared with Moscow, Cairo lacks colour in a birds eye view. All is brownish grey, with no glitter of gold blue and green domes & minarets. The ancient ruined aqueduct, which used to bring water into the city from the Nile, is a prominent feature. Boyce drew it & Murray has the drawing.’ SCC to PSW, 16 March 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/16. 3 See Vol. II, Letter 398, note 9. 4 ‘Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean?’ II Kings 5:12. 5 ‘When we returned from our three nights in the desert, a delightful experience, I had the news of my little niece’s death, & this has obliged me to give more of my letter-writing time to my sisters. The little bereaved mother seems to have shown what stuff she is made of, thinking more of others than of herself. She & her husband went alone to the little Sussex churchyard (Mountfield) where my parents are buried – & he carried the body into the church & to the grave, & no hired person intervened.’ 6 In 1904 GWJ started teaching at the School of Art Woodcarving, in South Kensington, founded by the Society of Arts in 1879. ‘Jack’s involvement represented a decided shift towards Arts & Crafts practice. . . . [He] often designed panels and pieces of furniture for his pupils to carve themselves.’ Gaimster, p. 9. 7 For GWJ’s oak lectern at St Margaret’s, Eglwys Cummin, see above, Letter 877. PSW’s puzzling over the precise identity of the St Margaret figure is perhaps not surprising. ‘Confusingly, Jack’s notes refer to the figure being St Margaret of Scotland, but the dragon [in the design] is the emblem of St Margaret the Virgin Martyr, and when the lectern was illustrated in a contemporary publication it was entitled “Margaret Marlos” after a local legendary figure.’ Gaimster, pp. 31–2. Two designs for the lectern are now at the WMG. In George Treherne’s ‘Notes on the Dedication of the Church in Honour of Saint Margaret Marlos’, Eglwys Cymmin Papers, No. 1 (London: Chiswick Press, 1904), a photograph of the lectern accompanies this description: ‘the saint appears . . . in the act of snatching her robe from the dragon’s teeth with her left hand, while with her right he firmly grasps her shepherd’s staff; over her right shoulders are seen the sheep which she was tending, and on her left the dove and her typical daisy, to which she gave her name (Marguerite) as the emblem of innocence and meekness’ (p. 11).

89

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

923 • To William Hale White, 30 March 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 30 March 1904. My dear Hale White. Your excellent letter of 5 Feby has been, seemingly, neglected, for it deserved earlier recognition. I plead ‘guilty’, under extenuating circumstances, of disabilities you wot of.1 Of course I am one with you in not accounting much, beyond its cleverness, in Blunt’s “Idler’s calendar”, as it merely numbers the ways & manners of rich men’s doings when staving off their dulness from time’s passage. The ‘miserable ending’ in “Worth Forest” is, I am assured, a poetic statement of the effect on the mind from a family misfortune.2 In truth all the poem is merely a setting of facts in the three stories. The ‘Arabian Travels’ were all set down by Ly Anne, and carefully edited by her husband.3 In other ways than in set poetry, he is remarkably skilful with his pen. I believe Carlyle fell in love, first, with the Frederick, from the idol being strong, and successfully carrying out his purposes, good bad or indifferent. It never was clear to me (though I’ve enjoyed reading Carlyle’s masterpiece 3 times) that Frederick had just claims on Silesia. Fredk was a real war-god, and could not rest without carrying his genius (for it was all that) to the fest.4 Yes, the power, majesty, and grace of water, in the sea as well as in swollen rivers, is very attractive, and awful, as a volcanic mountain. Niagara, I suspect, suffers from its exaggeration of river force. As to the “smoke of London”: It is a matter I’ve thought of often, & have concluded it is but one of the ungovernable ills applying to the monstrous size of the place. Cut its area up into 20 cities, & get rid of 19 parts, the smoke nuisance would not be unbearable. Take, for example, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn. There are 6 houses in that one block, of only ordinary height; each house has 28 fireplaces, and all going in cold weather. As things are, the open fireplace, in our climate, is the strongest element for health in the house; but the management of even an ordinary coal fire is not understood by one person in a thousand. One has only to leave London from any main station to see the unnumbered small fires going in the areas called ‘slums’. Even if open grates could be invented, to partly consume the smoke product, not one in a thousand people, again, could ever understand how to utilise the invention. The above stale discourse in only on the ‘smoke nuisance’. Well, ask the Lon: C.C. what is the number of other insoluble problems in the management of such a vast accumulation of mostly ignorant human beings, to say nothing of the large proportion of them with evil intentions. To me, the collective problems of this London are insoluble, under such conditions, and I also feel that they are becoming frightful. I have not yet got the title of the Mackail book you mention, (have read it, &, as usual, forgotten) but I send you the other. It is “Trial of Jeanne d’Arc – Published 90

1903–1914

by Heinemann, edited by Douglas Murray”.5 I should have asked Ly Burne-Jones, in my last letter, abt the former, but did not! That is truly a beautiful & pathetic hymn of Praise you were so good as to send me, of the “blessed Francis”;6 I would like to shew it to others, if you can spare the copy for a longer time? if not, I will return it at once, & thank you for letting me see it. I look forward for some promising morning in April, to venture away from my reclusive lodging, but will give you timely notice of my hope, & intention. With hearty love to Mary I am yours & hers always truly, | Philip Webb. Kindly bear with the pencilling & blunders of this effort. BCL MR 10/23

1 ‘Wot’: know (archaic). 2 ‘The Idler’s Calendar’, a cycle of 12 sonnets, and ‘Worth Forest’ (called a pastoral poem by Blunt) appeared in A New Pilgrimage and Other Poems (London: Kegan Paul & Co, 1889). PSW’s copy is now at the Emery Walker Library. See CAGM, p. 133. 3 Anne Blunt, A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race, edited by W.S. Blunt, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1881). 4 For Thomas Carlyle’s Frederick the Great, see Vol. III, Letter 657, note 4. 5 See above, Letter 862, note 4. 6 Probably the so-called ‘Canticle of the Sun’ of Saint Francis of Assisi, said to have been written in 1224. It is a celebration of the created world, of ‘Brother Sun’, ‘Sister Moon’, air, water, wind and fire, and would have appealed to PSW’s pantheistic instincts.

924 • To William Richard Lethaby, 8 April 1904 Pencil. Final page faded and stained, and only partially decipherable Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 8 April 1904 My dear fellow. The characteristic handwriting on the envelope of a letter from you always stirs me, & the instruments of his wits begin to tune up; but when the ‘score’ has been scanned, the spirit drops, for I cannot play a respectable part in the concert. The overture – as usual – is easy enough, but the “contrapuntal profundity” of the themes are too much beyond my ancient of days skill. As to the prelude, the “spring”, well, the brightness of spring is very cheering, the air being balmy, at all events it was so on Wednesday, and the thrushes caught up the melody to perfection. To drop this flourish of trumpet, I don’t really know what to say, with any sense at the back of the words. I can go this far, and answer – ‘by all manner & means’ the proposed “Modern building aims” – &c, &c! What could be more useful if done full well, but how???1 W.M has said that all fresh work must get its motive power from something, or shadow of it, which has been done before. Of course these words were certainly not his. With your letter came a picture P. card fm S.C.C, dated from the Syrian 91

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Heliopolis – Baalbec, to wit;2 a well taken view, and this magnificent monstrosity of the Romans would be a mine for architects of Banks & Insurance offices to draw city palaces from. Well, apart from such archts, and such loads laid on the earth as the Romans, & our Vanburgh [sic] contrived,3 which might be avoided by simple minded folks, it seems impossible to me to keep the cloven hoof of ancestral inspiration from shewing through the material of the thought of us decadent moderns. Now, don’t at once say I am damping your virtuous ardour: may the spring heavens defend me from their watering way. Of course I can agree at once that all kinds of arches ever used might be reused, & cheek by jowl with each other – with due judgment, and if they were strong enough, & never looked weak – an important point. Mouldings could easily be altogether avoided, and yet the demon of “Gothic” would appear through as soot will through whitewash. One may fall back on the half paradox, that all styles – at one time in their life, had the gothic strain in them, & with a kind “sort” of truth; but neither W.M nor you care for paradox, & I don’t like it as much as Bernard Shaw! Still, both of us can agree as to the effectiveness – without the “overlay”, of the strong hearted Bentley’s interior of the Westr church, but can we in these days call for it to be whitewashed & left as it is – which I should rejoice in seeing?4 If we come to columns, & capitals – well, up springs the devil again? The suggestion of going once more to the “East,” again for inspiration, seems to me a parlous thing to set down in a book – now? Even Blunt’s arab horses here, which I fondle with pleasure, are I think fittingly used as a change of strain in – say, the English breed of horses, but the breed in its purity is only fit for the desert. If we could adapt an Eastern strain, as Handel did an English strain of music in his German form, well & good, but he was a genius, & thieved unblushingly!5 I believe we may depend on it as a fact, that the Flemings & other craftsmen imported here – or “dumped” themselves down, at once began to transform their work to a fitting mixture with the English ways & manners – as the Dutch did with their admirable pottery it a Chinese strain [11 lines illegible] with your admirable energy and handwriting, that another letter will – as the shop people say – receive my best attention. Do you not think that Geo Jack has transformed Treherne’s Margaret of Scotland madness into a bit of quite captivating work for 1904?6 This ‘unspeakable Scot’ has real stuff in him, so think I, the unutterable Ph. W, at your (honest) service. I’ve been going & going to write to dame Lethaby, for there is a sneaking hope here that she should think well of me. The Cockerell is shipping from the East on the 10th April.7 V&A, AAD

1 WRL published some thoughts on architectural training as ‘Architectural Education, a Discussion’, The Architectural Review, XVI (July–December 1904), pp. 157–62. PSW would have had no difficulty in endorsing all of the principles espoused, and perhaps especially this one: ‘I have no thought

92

1903–1914

2 3 4 5 6 7

of the architect becoming an expert mason or bricklayer, but I am confident that if, as a building designer, he is ever fully to grasp the qualities of stone and brick, he must have cut the one and laid the other with his own hands’ (p. 160). ‘We were a day at Baalbec and a week at Damascus. . . . I have said nothing about Baalbec – not because there is nothing to say.’ SCC to PSW, 29 March 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/30. Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), architect of Blenheim Palace. See Vol. III, Letter 800. In common with usual Baroque musical practice, both Handel and Bach frequently recycled their own music, as well as occasionally borrowing and reworking passages from other composers. See above, Letter 922, note 7. ‘I shall hope to see you early in May, if not before, & to find you well. We leave Egypt on April 10th.’

925 • To Alfred Hoare Powell, 21 April 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 21 April ’04 My dear Alfred Powell. Your welcomed letter had a breeze in the early part of it, a fitting fellowship with the early spring now with us. I recognise the “roar” in your “Wych Elm”; our music of that kind comes mostly through innumerable oaks; still there is a fine pollard W. Elm 2 fields off, but ’tis not a common tree here, & I never saw any timber of that kind of tree. I believe there are 3 or 4 varieties of the W.E. in England, a source of much difference of opinion when question comes up as to what tree it is. I’m much in love with its general shape & gracefulness of dip in the lower branches. May good luck lie in the future path of brother Malcolm – other than those you are transforming from grass to harder wearing stuff. Yea, too, real whitewash is the lowest common denominator of a comforting background for the setting of any reasonable household eye-comfort in the front of it. You made my feeling for to skip in your possible “Etruria” project.1 First of all, it seems to me, you must find some other ‘breezy’ place to live in, as well as fitting-food to live on, or grief to your friends may come of the venture. I hardly comprehend the painting on glaze, as a perfect surface for drawing either with brush or pencil. The ware I am so fondly inclined to – Dutch Delft (& also, I believe on Nankin) was painted direct on the ‘slip’, and glazed afterwards. That excellentissimus of workwomen, the late Kate Faulkner, to wit, always grieved that she had no opportunity of painting pottery under the glaze. I have a chief plate here of the old Delft, which is of the fattest in design, colour, and manipulation ever seen by me, and ‘I never look upon, but I allus thinks’ (not “of thee”) but of being served on it ambrosially in Paradise. Of course, the gist of all decorative design is in its hand & glove fitness for the material reception. The very invention of the subject & patterning depending on the facility & adeptness in the doing, with pleasant effectiveness in the result. Good coloured plain white pottery for everyday use, & blue, (O, how hard to get good) chiefly, to set before the angels attending unawares? 93

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I am supposing the Wedgwood Etruria is in the British ‘potteries’, & that it sits down black & gloomy in Staffordshire? I can well understand your spice of anxiety as to finding a ‘settling down’ somewhere to the best advantage for pocket, with health & soul saving to boot – the only covetable kind of ‘booty’! Real “bread winning” is the best of sauce to real living. General subterfuge & lying in particular does but go on now where the future of stimulating manure should be stored, & served out for the good of all England, instead of the fusionless stuff like “pea straie” (as Andrew Fairserve called it)2 which is now the staple industry of Parliament. Lord a mercy, what a devilish lot of dragons teeth have been sown there of late. True – the people, poor simple folk, do not like the parson, no, & should not of any of “the churches”. Since Ruskin & W.M. have left us to ourselves there is but little preaching worth even a tub-pulpit, save – I think – the banned Tolstoi, who certainly walks straight on his brain & printed legs. Since the physical Hell has been put on one side, the peoples generally are hardly ever sober. I once had a quite clear dream of a universal providing store for vice, of all kinds, being set up in London. I saw the place, infinitely bigger than Whiteleys,3 with my sleeping eyes, & dashing Broughams & other equipages being driven in there under cover, with palatial flunkies attending to show the myriad guests to the entertainments; a truly prophetic dream! Thank you kindly, I’m bodily doing “as well as can be expected”, but am still, Yours truly, | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 The Etruria works of the Stoke-on-Trent pottery firm of Josiah Wedgwood opened in 1769, adjacent to the Trent and Mersey Canal, and about six miles from the current factory at Barlaston. Alfred Powell designed and painted much work for Wedgwood, as did Louise Lessore (1882–1906), whom he married in 1906. Together, they also trained many of Wedgwood’s pottery painters. 2 He means Andrew Fairservice, in Walter Scott’s Rob Roy, and gets the spirit of the quote, if not quite remembering the doggerel accurately. ‘ “Am trenching up the sparry-grass, and am gaun to saw some Misegun beans; they winna want them to their swine’s flesh, I’se warrant—muckle gude may it do them. And siclike dung as the grieve has gien me!—it should be wheat-strae, or aiten at the warst o’t, and it’s [sic] pease dirt, as fizzenless as chuckie-stanes”.’ (ch 14). 3 London’s first department store, which began as a simple drapery shop in Westbourne Grove, was founded by William Whiteley (1831–1907) in 1863. It expanded very rapidly, and by 1890 had 6,000 employees. In 1911, the store opened in new premises in Queensway.

94

1903–1914

926 • To Mary Jones Walker, 23 April 1904 Postmark POUND HILL 23 AP 04 Address to/ Mrs Emery Walker, | No 7. Hammersmith Terrace, | London. W. Envelope text in ink; letter text in pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 23 April 1904 Dear Mrs Walker. Your kindly thought of me, in the letter of 10 April, deserved earlier recognition on my part, but I fall back on a real excuse, for it is a true one. I have many letters to write, which my bodily ailment makes the more difficult even to my natural inaptitude for writing in any way – so that 5 or 6 more letters, which should receive attention – on account of their sympathetic quality, remain still unacknowledged. You may think it strange, in that you, a confirmed invalid, should be obliged to listen to the excuse of one who, only quite late in life, has been disabled! – But I lack your energetic resistance to or cheerful acceptance of the unavoidable circumstances of life.1 Now, I spare you further apology. It was Mrs Dickinson’s thoughtfulness, which stirred the sluggis[h] pool in me by means whereby the flowers reached you, as also the jam, but I must add also, that Emery’s kindness in being burdened with the latter brought additional shame on this poor head – for forgetfulness. Truly, the countryside here is a paradise of wildflower beauty, but to my thinking, it is a happy consequence of the late dry weather that the spring growths have been kept back – especially in the fruit trees; the buds hardened, and will be less liable to frosts of spring when softer weather comes, as looks likely from the gentle rain which began to fall yesterday; after this, the bluebells will come on quickly, & millions more of primroses & other flowers for company. I saw Lady Florence Bourke on Sunday, when she spoke of coming to live at Rushmore “for good & all”:2 she seems to be keeping on the man & wife attendants, of the late unfortunate tenants, to take care of the house and serve her when she is in residence; that I believe is the respectable word! I have heard from Lady Burne-Jones that she is really better now after her somewhat severe attack of cold, &c. Probably she had rather overstrained her strength in the exacting work she has had so long in hand.3 Then there is the new, but markedly kind young friend of mine – Miss Roberts, who has also suffered, and perhaps from the work of her life having been too great a draw on her strength.4 I hope Emery will give me good news of her when I next

95

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

see him, for the pleasant young lady was very patiently kind to me, who could lay no claim on her patience. Let me hope the after effect of the change, & the fine air of Rottingdean from the downs, will have much helped you under the burden of your disabilities. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Although the nature of her illness is not known, Mary Walker appears to have been a semi-invalid for much of her married life. 2 For WSB’s relative, Lady Florence Bourke, see Vol. III, Letter 774, note 3. Rushmore Cottage was the house in Worth, near to PSW, which the Walkers had rented for some months during the early part of the previous year (see above, Letter 868, note 4). 3 He means GBJ’s work on the EBJ memoir. 4 Grace Roberts was friendly with the Walkers. She was very musical, and on several occasions in his diaries SCC comments on the beauty of her singing.

927 • To Sydney Cockerell, 7 June 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 7 June. 1904 Dear Cockerell. I had your 3 pleasant Louvre pictures this morning, & thank you kindly for thinking so of me – and leading my thoughts of you, & E.W, enjoying the old pictures & M.SS in bright Paris.1 A talk with you here alone, some Sat: afternoon, is also in my mind?2 Bernard Shaw wrote me an amusing letter from Rome, where he was cultivating the fine arts with his missis, and venturing on Boni for archaeological instruction.3 B.S. said “when I come back, which I must be presently, I shall make (sic!) Cockerell take me down to see you”. Now, I am about acknowledging this friendly letter, and with your quite free consent, I would suggest that he came when you next bring Mr Cobbett, for the fiddle wd make a helpful fourth – what say you? Here, we have beautiful weather, but with something cold of wind. The apple trees have been beautiful in their full bloom, but I hope the coldish nights will not damage the setting of the fruit. I catch the post in a hurry, and end, yours always truly. | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/36

1 SCC and EW spent a few days in Paris, from 3–7 June, visiting an exhibition of ‘Primitifs Français at the Pavillon de Marsan in the Rue de Rivoli’ (CD, 4 June) and examining manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale.

96

1903–1914 2 ‘In aftn went to Caxtons & had a splendid talk with Philip Webb, who does not seem inclined to move to Sevenoaks or elsewhere.’ CD, 11 June 1904. 3 The playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), whom PSW would have known from their shared socialist past and meetings at Kelmscott House, was abroad with his wife, Charlotte Payne Townshend (1857–1943) from 1 May until 10 June, during which time they visited Turin, Pisa and Rome, returning to London via Geneva. For PSW’s answer to Shaw, see below, Letter 932.

928 • To George Washington Jack, 8 June 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley Sussex. 8 June ’04 My dear Jack. A letter has been sent me here – which I send on to you; evidently from the seal it is from Treherne, who does not know Weir’s address any more than I do – for Weir, when last here, was speaking of a likely move of his father, &c, and he is more nearly in touch with you than Winmill, probably you will know where to forward it? forgive my putting it on your shoulders. But, there is one thing I am glad to write to you about, namely, the most delightful Royal arms you have done for a Shropshire Ch’ that Weir had in hand. ’Tis magnificent! – quite in keeping with “Great George our King” time, and is most fittingly apt for the lineal descendent in Great Edward VII, the present representative, of that fatly royal race.1 I do like your bit of carved, gilded, & painted awe striking representation in regal style. It must go capitally with Weir’s simple latticed gallery front.2 “What larks”, as the good natured Smith said in “Great Expectations”.3 Also, was I much amused with the photo likenesses of your two girls & their dolls; the fine doll, & the scarramouch one. Ruskin said the latter was the right sort of girl-child’s playmate, for they could imagine anything in its misrepresentation of humanity. Let me hope Mrs Jack and the girls are hearty and hopeful. I’m rather feeling a discomfortable bodily effect from this fine but somewhat cold June weather – electrical too; and I am a bit anxious about my delightful promise of apple fruiting, for fear the cold nights may negative the my hopes in that longed-for way. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Not previously identified as being by GWJ, this wood-carved arms of Edward VII is sited on the west gallery of the fourteenth-century parish church of St Michael, Onibury, where both WW and DJB were involved in repairs and restorations during 1903. ‘The shield is flanked by 2 black and white pinnacled pillars, and leaves. A fine naturalistic lion, and an excellent set in general.’ Rosemary Pardoe, Royal Arms in Shropshire Churches (Liverpool [1977]), p. 6. Beneath the arms is the

97

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV inscription: ‘TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND TO COMMEMORATE THE CORONATION OF KING EDWARD THE VIITH THIS CHURCH WAS RESTORED IN THE YEAR 1903.’ 2 This is further evidence for the arms being by GWJ, for the front of the gallery is indeed latticed. ‘I am so glad you liked that Royal Arms – to tell the truth I felt a bit afraid to shew it to you, it was such a Royal menagerie looking thing. “Walk up” this was for the lion hse. I am now struggling with that altar front.’ GWJ to PSW, 13 June 1904, V&A, AAD. The arms are in the standard arrangement of a lion and unicorn to left and right of the heraldic shield. 3 The warm-hearted blacksmith in Great Expectations is Joe Gargery, married to Pip’s sister. Unable to write himself, he sends Pip a message through a friendly agent: ‘He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He says you will understand.’ (ch 27).

929 • To Sydney Cockerell, 18 June 1904 Pencil June. 18 – 1904 My dear fellow Just a few words of answer by noonday post. Naturally you had to put off the Treherne sailing. Hope the 14 years absent brother has come back to look at the threadbare home next; hope too he has not forgotten the scents of the small island set in the sea, and that there is not overmuch of the Western twang in the speech?1 If G-B-S should offer to include his better – dividend weighted, half, we must not say him nay, and I daresay we (you & I to wit) can carry off the thing easily enough with the help of the untiring ‘Missa Dick’!2 Hopeful news that, of advance in the Kingsford.3 Have been steering my slow mind with interested patience through the intricate windings of the Grael; & have even now not quite finished, for I want now to re-read Wardle’s search lights thrown on it4 – so the “Heifer of the Dawn” has been let alone till I could come at it with a free intelligence – send me P. card word if you want it before then.5 I forgot to send back the inclosed very interesting letter. I must take a lesson from it as to how I may do without punctuation in writing.6 Yrs Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/39

1 Theodore Cockerell was the eldest of the four Cockerell brothers, one year older than SCC. ‘The “absent brother” is a good fellow – one of the early (1885) members of the Socialist body at Hammersmith – known all the world over for his scientific work – driven abroad by consumptive tendencies, which have been more or less successfully kept in check. He is much the same, in essence, as when he left – but he has grown older, like those he left behind him – & the American twang is not wanting from his speech.’ SCC to PSW, 21 June 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/38. 2 ‘I am sure that Cobbett would be proud to have Shaw in the audience if there is a Saturday that will suit the three of us – but what if G.B.S. proposes to bring Mrs G.B.S. from whom the suggestion probably emanates? Would you not find a quartette of the kind rather too much for you? If you say no, I will write to Cobbett & get him to fix a Saturday.’ SCC to PSW, 17 June 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/35.

98

1903–1914 3 ‘I have a stunning new Kingsford illumination to show you next time I come down – in some ways the best she has yet done.’ 4 For GW’s series of articles on the Grail legend, see above, Letter 903, note 2. 5 Francis William Bain, A Heifer of the Dawn, Translated from the Original Manuscript (London: J. Parker & Co., 1904). As with A Digit of the Moon, Bain’s claim to have ‘translated’ the work from the Sanskrit was probably an elaborate deception. See Vol. III, Letter 676. ‘The Heifer can rest in your stall as long as you please. You will be sure to like him.’ SCC to PSW, 21 June 1904. 6 ‘Thank you for returning Firth’s Cyprus letter.’ The Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth (1878–1931) became a SPAB committee member in 1900, the year in which he and SCC became friends.

930 • To Sydney Cockerell, 23 June 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 23 June 1904 My dear fellow. Thank you for yours, in the matter of the Cobbett visit.1 I had told my Winchester brother & sister that my visit to them would be on Friday 29 July; Mrs Dickinson leaving on Sat: 30th, for her Hertfordshire home, she being away from the Sat: to the Monday fortnight – giving her the bits of time thrown in. If Cobbett finds the 23rd July awkward or impossible, we here will try and meet him with another arrangement? I have written an appointment letter to dentist McDonald, but cannot find his address either in my address book, the Lon: Directy, or my memory, so ask you to kindly post it. Have asked McD to let me know which day in next week he could see me – not on a Saturday – I will let you know. I am glad the Anglo-American brother has come to hand the right side up – a good fellow to wit – twang or no twang.2 Of course the beautiful Heifer found her welcome home in my bedroom. That repeated morning’s dawn by the pool becomes the readers hope of each succeeding day: before getting to the end of story, I had guessed the artful one had been her own Chéti.3 There are many essences of sweetness in the meanings attached to the different flowers. The only drawback, in my view, of the translation is, in many cases, where unsuitable words to the story and its Indian home had been used. The skill in using the right word – fitting in all ways – in translation, was W.Ms great gift in that way. Thank you, as ‘first class literary taster’, for not misleading me to read the pretty book.4 I am sure G.B-J found the talk with you equally helpful & satisfying.5 She seems to have had a too troublesome time in the matter of health – and am glad if she will be ready & Phil6 able to carry her some gentle little way to in the beloved France. I’ve begged her not to attempt too much. W.S.B. & Miss L. were here Sat. Sun & Mon. Hope the ending of the law matter may not be vexatious. Yours, as before, | Philip Webb. s Never fail to keep me well in E.W mind. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/40 99

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 ‘Walter Cobbett writes to propose the last Saturday in July – i.e. July 30. Will that suit you, or is that just the time when you will be at Winchester.’ SCC to PSW, 21 June 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/38. 2 See previous letter, note 1. 3 See previous letter, note 5. 4 ‘I cannot be sure how far the Heifer is a translation and how far original. The author has something of the Cheti about him, and this was shown in the exquisite “Digit of the Moon”. Translation or no translation, I agree with you that the words are often not quite the best for the occasion.’ SCC to PSW, 23 June 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/41. 5 ‘I supped with Lady B-J. last night alone, & had much good talk with her wisdom & dearness. How much better than Majesty & Highness!’ SCC to PSW, 21 June 1904. ‘I went to the B Museum at 5 & then to Pembroke Gardens and dined with Lady Burne-Jones with whom I had a long talk about Philip Webb & Mrs Morris.’ CD, 20 June. 6 Philip Burne-Jones, who succeeded to his father’s baronetcy.

931 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 28 June 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 28 June 1904 My dear fellows. McD has appointed Thursday for the operation, perhaps you may be pleased if he more or less stops my jaw! Leave here by 10 a.m. train – Victoria at 11 o.c – Cab thence to Weymouth St. Shall be there probably from half an hour to an hour, according to extent of dilapidation, &c. Am likely from there to get to Gatti’s (old quarter if there is one left?) and be heartily glad if both of you can manage to meet me there & cheer my now quite rustic soul in the Bedlam of London town.1 Still, please do not make a point of being there, business or no business on hand – for after then I’ll get to Clifford’s Inn before you have to leave, when we can settle – if so may be, about the Cobbett & B-Shaw time.2 Lethaby sent me one of his excellent letters this morning. He is evidently in for a penny with his work, and facing without flinching the inevitable in for a pound & more of his life’s industry – surely he is one of the workers, of which we remember some, to our comfort. My mind has a satisfaction from urging him, years back, to write & publish, for he has a more than considerable gift in that way. He has the gift too of influencing the younger fry. Till Thursday then | Yrs Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/43

1 ‘Alas for Thursday that it is the day on which WSB asked me to bring my American brother to lunch – with two other scientific luminaries – at 1 o’clock. It will prevent my meeting you at Gatti’s,

100

1903–1914 but Walker will be there, & perhaps I may be able to get away in time to join you for a little talk in the old way, under Ticino’s protection.’ SCC to PSW, 28 June 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/44. However, SCC did meet PSW at Victoria earlier in the day and accompanied him to the dentist at Weymouth Street; then later in the afternoon he went with him to London Bridge and saw him onto the train for Three Bridges (CD, 30 June). 2 See next letter.

932 • To George Bernard Shaw, 2 July 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 2 July. 1904 My dear Bernard Shaw. Your lively letter from Rome set me a-smiling:1 Rome from your audacity being delightfully fresh – as dogmatic in the art line as J.R, but without his - - - I can’t just find the saving epithet! I was amused too by your brazen-faced use of my name, and agreeably surprised you did not make a false step on the swaying scaffolding in the Sistine, as due reward. Yes, Boni is all that! penetrating as a needle, a really learned fellow – with natural ability for using such a tool to useful purpose. My first introduction to him was in 1884, on the scaffolding then in front of the Ducal Palace in Venice2 – when he gave me leave to use that ‘coign of vantage’ as often as I liked. Ever since, he has been a resource to me on things Italian. Poor fellow, what a time he must have in shewing the ordinary British curiosity over the diggings. I found Rome was not to be judged of at once – even with a ‘double million[’] magnified glance, one must pound at it time after time; my month there was all too short, though the guide was the late J. Henry Middleton, who knew much and gave freely of such help. Apart from chaff, what you write of the spiritual & manual nobility of the Sistine frescoes is true perception. I should have liked you to look hard had at the M. Angelo Pietà in St Peter’s – his most finished marble cutting, and with the remains of mediæval tradition in the feeling & composition, but ’tis put in a dooms-dark corner. Sydney Cockerell is to bring a kinsman down here (some Sat: afternoon, before the summer has slipped away). Cannot you manage to join them? for the mutual friend brings his fiddle, and would ‘play a Spring’ of Tartini’s arrangement from Handel’s largo, which latter is about as spacious as Westminster Abbey; and I know you keep a soft place in your heart for tweedle-dum & dee. My landlord brought Cunninghame Graham here the other day to see an old acquaintance, he found him really old, but C.G. seemed to wear remarkably well.3 With pleasant remembrance to Mrs Shaw – I am | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Kindly excuse pencilling, for the back is still fretful. BL Add 50514, ff. 188–9 101

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 See above, Letter 927, note 3. 2 In fact, it was in March 1885. See VoI. I, Letter 254. 3 An ardent admirer of WM, the radical MP Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936) was amongst those arrested and imprisoned after the ‘bloody Sunday’ demonstration of 13 November 1887, an event which WM fictionalised in News from Nowhere. He was committed to revolutionary politics, and was founding president of the Scottish Labour Party in 1888. His wide range of friendships encompassed politicians, trade unionists, writers and stand-alone mavericks such as PSW’s ‘landlord’, WSB.

933 • To Sydney Cockerell, 6 July 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 6 July. ’04 My dear fellow. From the dates given on your P. card of 27th, I’ve now written to my brother and sister of going to Winchester on the 29th July – Mrs Dickinson leaving for 3 Sunday fortnight on the 30th; we shall be back here on the 15th & 16th of August; so if Mr Cobbett should find it convenient, the 20th of August would do nicely, & I hope so for you? I have written to G. B. Shaw, telling of being pleased to see him here, but giving no date. I was stricken with shame as well as with pleasure on finding you at Vic: Station, and very happy at meeting both E.W. & Lethaby at Gattis’, to say nothing of Ticino’s kindly recognition, with its professional modesty under the eye of his ‘walking’ chief. The man is Italian in acuteness! Wery needles is ’talians, in that way. Don’t believe I shall let either of you know the time of my next dental visit, but take my chance of seeing you & E.W at Clifford’s Inn later on.1 The London hot pavements and the hustling of crowds nearly kill me, and I could only crawl up the hill home, but the night’s rest put me easy again. W.S.B brought Mrs Wyndham all right here on Monday & skilfully let us alone in our gossip; I found the good lady older, but with an improved look in the face – a motherly softness & dignity – She it was who told me of the death of Watts, which I had overlooked in the paper.2 It rather gladdened me that his light went out without lingering – neither blown out nor guttering, but simply dropped into the candle socket. He, to me, was not the least noble amongst the greater contemporaries, and mainly great from his quiet persistence in doing his best in his own way. Did not mention when with you my interest in the criticism on WM in the ‘Times’. The chap (for a wonder) had some insight, though he made a slip on the ‘E. Par:’3 The long, & most helpful Tolstoy letter seemed to me to have been written in unusual haste, but there was the old aptitude in making clear what he had to say – I doubt if the enemy will have authority for touching him; there was a note on that score in yesterday’s paper.4 102

1903–1914

I was much pleased with E.Ws enlargement of the Arab Mare; and the photos: of Jack’s admirable bible boards5 & your brother’s6 good (excellent) binding of the same was almost a surprise at the successful work in both ways. What a capital lettering designer Jack turns out to be. Yours always truly | Ph. Webb. P.S. If E.W & Miss Roberts should fancy coming on the Sat: as is next, it would quite suit here.7 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/46

1 See above, Letter 931, note 1. ‘We shall both be much hurt if you conceal the date of your next visit, & it will only end in our employing a detective at enormous expense to watch Caxtons & telegraph to us when you are seen going towards the station. What we should like best is to have a p-card from you as soon as ever the day is fixed so that we may avoid other engagements. Ticino spoke of you with feeling the other evening: “I was very pleased to see him” he said “& I thought he looked very well”.’ SCC to PSW, 7 July 1904, BL Add 52761, f. 109. 2 George Frederic Watts died on 1 July. 3 ‘The Poetry of William Morris’ (Times Literary Supplement, 10 June 1904), is a lengthy review of a reprint of The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems. Perhaps the reviewer’s ‘slip’ was to state that ‘In “Jason” and “The Earthly Paradise” he is a simple story-teller, and one of the best in our literature.’ 4 ‘Tolstoy has printed a most plucky manifesto against war and Czars & peace-breakers in the Times.’ SCC to PSW, 28 June 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/44. SCC sent PSW the Tolstoy article on 29 June. Beneath the heading ‘Count Tolstoy on the War’, The Times of 27 June carried a substantial article, ‘Bethink Yourselves!’ on the current Russo-Japanese war. ‘I did not notice the signs of haste in Tolstoy’s article – & the signs, if there were any, were more likely to be due to emotion or age – for he is too good an artist to work hastily.’ SCC to PSW, 7 July 1904, ff. 109–10. 5 A pair of lettered oak boards which GWJ carved for the bible at St Margaret’s, Eglwys Cummin. See also next letter. 6 Douglas Cockerell. 7 For Grace Roberts, see above, Letter 926, note 4.

934 • To George Washington Jack, 7 July 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley Sussex. 7 July. ’04 My dear Jack. Your letter of the 13th June pleased me greatly, much so from its cheery tone – as if you were not unhappy in your work, though at times it may be a little wearing. Also, I smiled at the tone of your remarks about Weir’s enigmatic talk of the risky works he has to tackle; but I “targed him tightly” before he set about Sutton on Trent – wh’ was a really dangerous undertaking – and in his preparations for avoiding accidents he certainly did not neglect the enjoined cautions, so that we may take it his airy jesting may be discounted.1 103

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Your report of the ann: S.P.A.B meeting agrees with those of others; no doubt the confident tone expressed was intended to reach the ears of the enemy – the ‘long-eared’.2 I am glad you and Mr Crawford3 set eyes on the very remarkable church of “Cley-by-the-Sea”, which is one of the many examples of mediæval work, where the English showed their undeniable qualities of inventiveness in particular, for the variety of expression in their buildings is a characteristic quite as strong – even stronger to my mind – than in neighbouring countries.4 ‘English’ also includes the “adjacent islands” we have heard tell of – so you need not prick up your north British ears! In that part of England the sea recedes – hence the moist character of the shore. Norfolk is very rich in beautiful work, and has marked characteristics of its own; their 15th cent: work is perhaps the most interesting, of the peculiar style, in Engd. I’m sorry Micklethwaite is turned on to Cley – for he has no aptitude in repairing, or even good qualities of building, and he has no compunction to base imitation.5 I was in Lon: – at the dentists, on Thurs: and saw Cockerell, Walker & Lethaby – to my great satisfaction, Walker & Cockerell gave me (as from Treherne) photographs of your book-boards for the Eglwys Cymmin Bible. I am greatly pleased with your design and carving of the same; it is an excellent example of breadth in design, and the most necessary low relief in such carving. Your quality of lettering too is greatly to my mind, forcible and not too archaic. Very good indeed say I. Douglas Cockerell’s management of the bindg also fitted on nicely with the boards. If your pupils are not stimulated by the freshness, and undoubted aptitude of your work – both of head & hand, the S. Kenn dulness is incorrigible! Here I sit, incapable of further work with head & hand – so it seems, therefore your activity and success rejoices my old heart the more. Believe me, that what I write about it is perfectly sincere. I’ll promise to tell you when I find something of yours which does not quite please me. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. The London pavements burned my feet! Note. I particularly liked the flowers in the leading letters. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I have had a letter from Weir this morning – he is in the thick of the fight, or rather, in bringing up his forces (scaffolding &c). I do hope those old walls may turn out to be less dangerous than I imagine them from the tone of Weir’s often joking reference to their state.’ GWJ to PSW, 13 June 1904, V&A, AAD. WW was then surveying the work necessary to secure the tower at St Andrew’s, Denton, in Lincolnshire. See below, Letter 936. For All Saints, Sutton-on-Trent, see Vol. III, Letter 826, note 2. 2 ‘I went to the “Annual meeting” the other day and heard Holman Hunt deliver a very amiable and feeling address. I did not see him the whole time – his voice came out from behind a prehistoric stone which the antiquaries had hoisted on an intervening table. . . . You were mentioned by the chairman as one of the original founders and your absence regretted. I was glad to see that, all through, a tone of confidence prevailed – as to the present standing of the Society and its increasing

104

1903–1914 importance in the eyes of those who used to consider it an interfering old woman.’ At the SPAB annual general meeting on 10 June, William Holman Hunt read a paper subsequently published in the report as ‘Some reflections upon the Work undertaken by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings’ (pp. 76–86). 3 See above, Letter 890, note 3. 4 The parish church of St Margaret, Cley next the Sea dates from the fourteenth century. ‘I went with Crawford for three days trip to Norfolk (Bank holiday time). We saw some half dozen old Churches just as they came, including a very fine specimen at Clay [sic]. We enjoyed the country as much as the antiquity, walking about in a water colour drawing, changing in style every mile or two sometimes Turner sometimes Cox or De Wint. We came upon a fine old manor farm house, a regular three volume novel kind of association about it – unfortunately the last volume ending in a kind of Mill on the Floss way.’ 5 ‘I believe Micklethwaite is going to do something to the church. I hope not much.’ Between 1901 and 1904, the architectural firm of J.T. Micklethwaite and Somers Clarke undertook repairs to the south and north aisle roofs, and Micklethwaite wrote ‘A note on the Church of Cley’, Norfolk Archaeology, XV (1904).

935 • To Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, 4 August 1904 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 4, July Aug: ’04 My dear fellows. What from pure indolence, and fish out of water passing of time, I’ve let you alone more to my own regret than yours – Still, E.W will have told of the situation, and of the perfect summer weather. The household here were much pleased with his bank holiday raid on it, when he took us out of ourselves for a while. S.C.Cs Bernard Shaw book is amusing the elder brother, & interesting as well as amusing the younger; have not quite finished the first reading, for the time here is not my own, and I’m ‘demnition’ slow in getting at the back of a book while counteracting a naturally sceptic turn of mind; in any case the B-S ‘dog is so funny’ one needs must laugh, but something more & better than that will come of the book – I expect.1 Many true thanks to S.C.C. E.W will have told how he sat down in comfortable chair by open door of the ‘College’ music school – while the Kist-o-Wastles2 and college orchestra practiced, and particularly on the crazy souled Ph W: He could not be lifted from cool seat. I’m seeing odds and ends of antient [sic] fragments of the times of art here, and generally weeping & wailing over continuous destruction. Still, keeping a fairly balanced mind, I came upon something rather surprising in the modern way – viz – the bronze statue of the stout Victoria placed in the middle of the city gardens on the site of the destroyed Abbey.3 The strong sunlight acting on the rough surface of the metal, & the various small details, made it hard to judge of the work closely enough, but I did conclude it was the best piece of monumental modern sculpture yet seen by me. Will speak further of it when we can talk together again. The time passes slowly at present, but will go faster towards the end of the time it here, and I’ve come to no conclusion yet, as to what can be done in future with 105

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

this cumberer of the earth – save, that it would not be well with me to live near a crowded city or busy town – the melancholy inducing suburbs of such places being bad for the temper – & mine is too hot & strong as it is. On the return home we may expect Mrs Dickn to be refreshed by her recess, and willing to bustle about with the promised company at Caxtons on, or about, the 20th? Yours always truly, | Philip Webb. It was not till after E.W had left us, that the print of the Birmingham E. B-J house was found by me. I still think the 3 angle piece of sky should be cut out, & then the little picture will be excellent for the book,4 so thinks Ph – W. Thank you kindly. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/50

1 Perhaps a copy of Shaw’s play, Candida, which SCC had himself read in April, and seen in performance at the Court Theatre a fortnight later. ‘The poet very well played by Granville Barker, & the other characters all well realised – but on the whole very little added to the impression & pleasure that can be derived from reading it.’ CD, 10 May 1904. 2 ‘Kist [chest] o’ whistles’: derogatory name for a church organ (Scots). 3 The widely-acclaimed Winchester statue of Queen Victoria (1888), commissioned for the Golden Jubilee in 1887, was the work of the sculptor Alfred Gilbert (1854–1934), whose best-known piece is probably the figure of Anteros (always known as ‘Eros’) in Piccadilly Circus. ‘I asked Walker on Tuesday whether he had seen the statue of the Queen with you, & he said no. Your letter shows that you have now seen it. I came across it, as you seem to have done, rather unexpectedly – & was much impressed. It struck me as a fine solution of a rather difficult problem, & a better justification of Gilbert’s fame than the fountain in Piccadilly Circus.’ SCC to PSW, 6 August 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/48. 4 ‘We will tell Griggs what you say about his drawing of the Birmingham street & the advantage of clearing the cobwebs from the sky.’ GBJ was shortly to publish Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1904). An engraving from a drawing by F.L. Griggs of 11 Bennett’s Hill, Birmingham, EBJ’s childhood home, faces p. 1 in the first volume, but it is not clear that PSW’s concern was dealt with, as the top right hand corner consists of a ‘3 angle piece of sky’, with some scratches representing birds (pigeons?). For Griggs, see above, Letter 885, note 1.

936 • To William Weir, 5 August 1904 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 5 Aug: 1904 My dear Weir. Your greatly interesting letter, & photographs, of 21 July, have kept me thinking – on & off – ever since, for I am quite as anxious the work now being done, will be as satisfactory as you are expecting. This case, of a more or less dangerously defective tower, is rather peculiar, and I fancy Arthur Blomfield was unable to grasp the vital points, or was careless of giving time to consider them.1 It has 106

1903–1914

[sic] – & still is a rather disgraceful matter, when architects are called in, that a builder’s opinion is the one to be depended on.2 Your photograph of the south side has helped me much, for it is taken as nearly as may be on the north & south axis of the plan, so that a variation from the perpendicular can be clearly seen – and the horizontal lines of string courses evidently confirm the conviction; namely, that the first string course is not horizontal, (the string next above the plinth) shewing that in building some compression of the foundation declared itself by the time the work was at the second string – at the level of stair turret weathering. I am inclined to think that the second string was made to lie horizontally (even to slope a little eastwards?) by then levelling up the walls at that stage, after that, and upwards it seems to the eye that the tower was then built truly vertical and that this part still stands so? You may have already proved the rightness of the above suggestions? Should this be the case, the tower having been built in the late 14th, or early 15th centuries, it is not likely – (unless heavy additional weight was put on it) that the foundation would give way any more. The westernmost S. clerestory window seems to me as if that also is not quite upright, and as there is an unusual piece of masonry just east of it, (clearly shewn in the photo) a rectification may have been made in the walling there? Should the above suppositions be true, I can see no reason to suspect more of the walling fractures in the tower itself, than that they came from the repeated vibrations of bell ringing – when the bell cage was not in sufficiently practical condition. I see those two iron ties, from N. to S, just above the weather tabling on the 2nd string course from the ground – so that these would be above the line of West window, & tower arch? As the tower is tall in comparison with its plan area, it seems to me very necessary to keep the beams supporting the bell cage from racking, by well diagonally trussing to the floor below – starting either from the floor beams there, or (as I did at Knoyle) by new beams (horizontal), just above the floor? Did you – when carrying down the foundation of the turret stair – find out how thick the gravel bed was, on which the tower stands? the gravel being some 5’/0” below the surface, would probably keep the clay below – if it be clay, from effect of long summer dry. I say nothing about your mending the cracked walls, supposing you are a “dab hand” at that difficult work now, and do not run risks! The tower is a beautiful one – even elegant. It is strange what an excellent effect the breaking of the embattled parapet with the stair head has upon the somewhat ‘prim’ design. Do you not think it would be well to leave Thompson’s good shoreing for some months after you have done your work; you see there will have been a good quantity of new material in the walls, and it might be well to let it set, as much as it well can, before removing. Hope you will pardon all the above notes, which are simply the result of the interest I take in your work, & not pedagogic! As there is nothing like leather to the shoe maker, so there is nothing more interesting to me than the well mending of precious old buildings – and I’ve no doubts about your good handling. 107

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I’m writing, as you see, from Winchester, where antiquities are looked upon as impediments to modern improvements. There doubtless are well intentioned people here, but their intentions in building end there so far as ‘well’ is concerned. There is one modern piece though which should not be dismissed in that rude way – to wit, Alfred Gilbert’s bronze sitting figure of our late stout lady Queen Vic: It is worthy of careful examination, and really has a substantial idea in it, and some pretty fanciful treatment in its component parts; the figure too (a hard task) is remarkably dignified.3 I go back home on the 16th, to count my apples, which will then, I hope, will have “swelled wisibly” since I saw them a week ago; there is good promise of fruit this year, there was little indeed in last year, You must not let me keep your excellent photographs if you have any better service for them. I hear well on all sides of Jack’s doings, and he writes cheerily to me – whatever may lie in the background of his mind; I have as high regard for his work as for himself. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. This pencilling tells something of my condition, but I walk better than could be expected. Age you see has told on me. SPAB Webb-Weir 77

1 The parish church of St Andrew’s, Denton, Lincolnshire, dating in part to the early thirteenth century, underwent restoration work in 1887–8 under the direction of Sir Arthur Blomfield. For Blomfield, see Vol. II, Letter 517, note 3. 2 ‘Some years ago the late Sir A. Blomfield reported the tower to be unsafe & beyond repair, & proposed to rebuild it at a cost of over £3.000. The work to be given to Thompson of Peterboro’ (who had backed up his report) otherwise Sir A. would have nothing further to do with it. In case it should fall down before they had the fun of pulling it down he advised that heavy shores should be put on the west face & another on the South. This was done about 2 years ago by Thompson, as you will see by the photographs. Fortunately the matter ended there. The S.P.A.B. was called in . . . & their scheme of repaired [sic] gladly accepted. I hope to do the work for £800.’ WW to PSW, 21 July 1904, SPAB. WW’s letter and its accompanying photographs survive in the original envelope, postmark GRANTHAM JY 22 04. WW had visited the church on 2 March 1904, in order to survey the tower and prepare a report for the SPAB, which is dated 5 March. SPAB, St Andrew’s, Denton file. 3 See previous letter, note 3.

937 • To George Washington Jack, 6 August 1904 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 6. Aug: 1904. My dear Jack. I had to let your refreshing letter of 13 July remain unnoticed till now, because my mind was uneasy at having to lift myself out of Caxtons jogtrot life and settle 108

1903–1914

for Mrs Dn to have her annual holiday and be away myself at the same time; the respectable ‘Winchester’ above is the sign of Dutchman-me being hoisted & dropped down here on the 29th July, to stay till 16th of August, Mrs Dn getting back on the 15th, weeping & wailing she, at the haste with wh’ her 3 Sunday fortnight has flitted. I’m somewhat like the fish out of water, here, though there is your deftly improved respectable Villa residence to look at, and its wonderfully fruit & flowerful garden to enjoy.1 Winchester is simply bedevilled with vulgar & brutal modernisms, embedding worthy works of the ancients, like yokes of eggs in a pie, which have to be searched for. Weir wrote me a good & clear explanation of the state in which he found Denton Ch: tower, accompanied by excellent (his own) photographs of it, from wh’ it was easy for me to judge of his mending tactics.2 The matter of another of these eminent architects’ careless, impudent, & incapable business transactions, happily deferred till after Arthur Blomfield’s death, when the squire of the place called in the S.P.A.Bs and its able coadjutor, W.W. The ‘eminent’-one had said the tower was dangerous, must be pulled down & rebuilt at a cost of 3,000£, & unless Thompson of Peterborough did the work, he A.B, washed his hands of the matter. W.W. hopes to sustain the tower for 800£!!! Alack, alack, this is no joking matter, except to the miserably foolish. Mrs Lethaby wrote me that she & W.R.L. were off for holiday, this year again – to Yorkshire first & Normandy later on. The journeying – doubtless – to provide the latter with further materials for his remarkable literary power in historical & art demonstration. I wish him luck in his useful labours, for – at present – there is none other to take up the running of J.R, & W.M. On being taken a trot into the older parts in & about the old city by the sister, we came on to the site of a priory, (site only) as laid out for pleasure-ground; in the middle of the grass stood, on a very badly conceived granite base, a rather remarkable bronze seated statue, by Alfred Gilbert.3 I rubbed my eyes, went up to look closely at it, and found there was an idea embodied in it! Think of any poor designer having to make something interesting of the late lamented Q. Victoria as an object for folks to admire as long as bronze can last in this civilized climate. Of course the work has not the easy mastery of the ancients, but it is, to my eye, the result of a genuine effort in the way of imagination to make such deification of a weak mortal not laughter provoking. The statue is not actually large in real size, but Gilbert has made it so visually by contrast, in delicate detail of small figures, to the lumpy (& not undignified here) stoutness of the late lady. I shall have to get & see it again, with a field glass, for the dazzling sunlight on the rather rough surfaced bronze made comprehension difficult. Treherne in his curiously wilful madness is abominable, both Wardle & I are quite put out by his continued want of perception into the fitness of things. We must try & stamp out the Eg. Cymmin pulpit-flame. I wd be glad if you could find time (I know your difficulty in that way) to look after the lady’s cottage in Winchester, as a change in the character of one’s work is good for its moral expression – at least it seemed to me so at times, when I wd 109

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

have preferred to follow inclination too continuously.4 The old folk here would be pleased if you looked in on them & Boyce’s beautiful drawings. True – as you note – war in our days is too brutally wholesale: the huge standing armies stewing in enforced idleness for 3 parts of their lives, is greatly more corrupting than in much earlier times, for when the smaller wars were over, the people-soldiers hung up their arms – say – for a year or two, and went at their home occupations – till their hereditary leader called them out again. In much disturbed times, the labouring folk often had their fighting gear hid in the hedges while ploughing: so, as above, that change from working, to downright individual fighting, may have kept people from mere grovelling greed. I shall expect you to come some Sat: afternoon to Caxtons when you can, for I much like some tongue wagging with my old companion. Yours as before | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 GBJ had undertaken the works necessary when Harry Webb had retired and moved from Welwyn to Winchester, the work being carried out within the last months of PSW’s London practice. See Vol. III, Letter 689, note 1. 2 See previous letter. 3 See above, Letter 935, note 3. 4 This possible Winchester project for GWJ not identified.

938 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 August 1904 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. Thurs. 11. Aug: ’04 My dear fellow. Your good letter of the 6th kept me in line with personal affairs, public ones are out of all possible touch – for me, at all events just now. You may rest easy about sending me any trustworth[y] memoranda of Tolstoy.1 If he could reap any satisfaction from his prophecies coming out as fact, (for he must feel in that way, being human,) he stands head & shoulders taller than most prospects, & can easily put up with the clamour that such are mere madmen. You may be sure I am all sufficiently idle here, not having my carpentering work shed for retiring to, but some more interest was excited in me the other day in the Cathedral – having gone there purposely for some further noting. We came across that stone coffin & Purbeck lid in the middle of choir passage, which by many is given to Rufus;2 ’tis a noble piece of English marble cut into significant form; its colour, as well as the dull light making it hard to see anything quite clearly,

110

1903–1914

the fingers were tried over a roughening at the 2 ends – so I stopped, and with a lens discovered a lion’s head at each end of the lid, which is hipped – wolflike – thus: [sketch] There is a ridge-roll at (a) intersected by the hip-rolls at b-b, b-b, and ’tis at c-c, where these heads are carved, and they look like impressed seals – the one at the west – or wider end – being much less worn down than the other. The brother had picked out the senior verger to get us sight of unusual things, he being learned, in vergerian oily way. So, when I demurred to the certainty of that particular tomb, he said, ‘you must not be too sceptical’, so I quieted him by adding, that he also would cautious [sic] in the way of accepting hasty conclusions; but he had not noticed these lions heads, & doubtless he now has added them to his store of cathedral wonders, but apart from deputy ecclesiastical oiliness, he has a considerable catalogue of guides’ information to impart. Even such a time & mischief worn mediæval wonder as Winchester Cathedral is, has much both of beauty and interest to call for close thought as one goes from part to part, but it calls for a months close study to get at the heart of its qualities – & I must try for another quiet look at it. You see, I’m dry of all interesting matter, and really only write to tell of my leaving here on Tuesday morning, & hope to get to Clifford’s Inn about 1-oc; (not this time having to go dentist or tailor ways.) If one or both of you are visible, I may be allowed perhaps to adjourn with you to the lunch. Mrs Dickinson & I will put our heads together to receive the larger than usual Saturday afternoon gathering at Caxtons, on the 20th in an easy going way.3 Have read with much interest as well as amusement Bd Shaw’s backing up of municipal trading; ’tis more seriously written than usual, but at times it breaks into his brilliant feistiness.4 Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/51

1 ‘I send you an interview with Tolstoy, as you seem not to resent the flow of information about him & his ways and thoughts – a fine old fellow he is and one that it is good to read of as standing alone against almost all of the world.’ SCC to PSW, 6 August 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/48. 2 Traditionally held to be the tomb of William II (Rufus, c. 1056–1100), son of William the Conqueror, the twelfth century tomb beneath the tower crossing in Winchester Cathedral is now thought to be that of the Winchester bishop, Henry of Blois (1098/9–1171). 3 As things transpired, Shaw did not visit Caxtons on 20 August, when Walter Cobbett played a wide range of music on his Stradivarius violin (including pieces by Purcell, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Grieg and Coleridge Taylor) to an audience consisting of PSW, SCC and EW. 4 George Bernard Shaw, The Common Sense of Municipal Trading (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1904). ‘I have not yet written to Bernard Shaw, but I will do so. My American brother is reading his Municipal Trading book & pronounces it very well done. I was struck by its seriousness & perspicuity, the cap & bells mostly on the shelf.’

111

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

939 • To William Weir, 7 September 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 7 Sepr ’04 My dear Weir Your letter of the 4th, which reached me by yesterday noon’s post is so interesting & greatly exciting, that I write a few words at once – for, as you take anything said on such matters, by your old companion & friend, in such a kindly & sympathetic way, I am assured against giving any professional offence! You are in a beautiful district of England, which I partly know, that my wish is as yours, that I could be with you and talk over the evidently delicate & somewhat anxious work you have in hand;1 for dealing with a building which – from its construction and condition of decay, must cause you some anxiety – even if you at once see your way towards keeping it steady on its ancient legs – the church of Coln St Denys to wit.2 I do not remember having actually see[n] it, but must have been close by a good many years ago, when I went with George Wardle to look at the valuable Roman remains of Chedworth.3 You may be sure I shall be on the lookout for your photographs, and a bit of a plan – even if it be only a rough sketch, so that I may be the better able to grasp your situation. So I will say no more about this particular piece of work till I hear from you again, save, that what you have now written makes me think you are in for a hard nut to crack. What you say of the Denton tower is very cheering, and the works already accomplished there seem to me to have been done more quickly than could have been expected from the height of the tower with 3 rings of interpinning horizontal bond?4 I cannot remember if in my last letter, I advised leaving the builder Thompson’s shores standing for some few months after your work has been done, so that the new brick and mortar work shall have some time for settling – or rather, ‘setting’. This reminds me to say, that I wd recommend that the diagonal bracing below the bell cage be done before the bells are rung, as they would certainly take some of the strain off your new work. You see, I’m again trespassing on your forbearance under my impudence! From what you say about the inclination of the walls above the second string course, (after again looking closely at your photographs) it seems to me that the tower’s further “settling” is not likely to occur – and I’m more convinced now that the original settlement was found out by the builders and remedied after from the second string upwards? – a rather unusual case in England.5 I suppose the Sexton must have dug graves into the gravel foundation. I’m glad you are able to leave Mr Powys in charge, as this lets you get about other work with less anxiety.6

112

1903–1914

I had another visit from Jack some 10 days or so since, and our “cracks” were of a cheerful kind; he is doing excellent work, and is – I think, happy in it, which cheers me. With hearty good wishes for your next success, I am | Yours truly Philip Webb. I’m getting on pretty well considering bodily disabilities, and was glad to get back to my bachelor freedom of Caxtons simple ways. Have plenty of apples this year, & am hoping the mixed weather of showers & sunshine will swell the fruit before ripening – at present the apples are rather small. SPAB Webb-Weir 78

1 ‘I have quarters in a lovely cottage near the main road from Northleach to Cirencester a little out of Foss Bridge & about a mile from Coln St Denys. . . . I wish you were near enough to come & help me with the tower. I enjoyed a visit to Gimson’s yesty afternoon & saw his charming house.’ WW to PSW, 4 September 1904, SPAB. 2 The parish church of St James the Great, Coln St Dennis, Gloucestershire. 3 See Vol. I, Letter 172, note 4. 4 ‘The work at Denton tower is going on satisfactorily. Powys who has had nearly 2 years experience with me is looking after it – most of the structural repairs are finished. The last horizontal brick tie, is being inserted around the four walls at the level of the beams supporting bells.’ 5 ‘The 2nd string course from ground is very much out of level – & I think confirms your suggestion of a settlement having taken place during building, & partly corrected at that height.’ 6 See note 4.

940 • To George Washington Jack, 21 September 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 21 Sepr ’04 My dear Jack. You were no longer in getting the little rebate plane than expected,1 for I know your homestead (sic) was far away from the tool shop; but not acknowledging receipt can only be excused on acct of indolence and some inconvenience on acct of physical disabilities, but your good nature will overlook that, & you will pray for my amendment in both ways. The plane will suit me well for rebating, & I doubt if grooving will be wanted – at all events at present, for though I was fairly handy in carpentry & joinery on paper, I am but a rough & often bungling hand with the tools. My apple trays are

113

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

done for the present, unless even more shelving would be necessary when apples are gathered. I shall have to be on the look-out that my handy man help does not break his neck in the rather difficult work of ladder-gathering, for if mine only was twisted, the “compensation” act would not be in force!2 My apples do not “swell” quite as “wisibly” as could be wished; if they were half the number & twice the size! but Adam & Eve must have been a little grumbly on that score at times? Ash is a good working wood, but has not been tried here; ’tis a nice looking wood too – especially in the framing of carts; ’tis much used in France, & the filling in often done in poplar. I heard this morning of the death of Wickham Flower – yesterday or Sunday, so he has paid all his scores now in the unanswerable way. That difficulty he found in paying must have been a ‘twist’, for he really was a kindly man, and Mrs Dickinson found him so at all times, and is much touched by his death. I hope the new lords of Tangley will not pull the old place about. I had a pretty picture card from Lethaby, who was then in France & probably on his way home, whence I shall expect interesting notes when he writes. Yours as always | Philip Webb. Kindly – either at once or when you next write – send the little bill of the plane to make my life less of a burden. See, & at last, I thank you kindly for getting the plane. V&A, AAD

1 A rebate (or rabbet) plane is used for long grain cutting, and is designed to remove larger amounts of the wood than would be required of a finer plane. 2 From 1897, The Workmen’s Compensation Act gave some rights for workers suffering personal injury.

941 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 24 September 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 24 Sepr ’04 My dear Squire. I’m glad you found a copy of your review of Mr Bain’s “Hindoo Romances”; also, that you used an opportunity for writing an article on ‘Woman’ in a remarkably beautiful way – quite one of the pleasantest bits of reading I’ve had for some time, your style being as excellent as the theme is difficult to handle without jarring on the nerves; round & compact, & in so small a space: the “promiscuity of our modern thought” is – to my poor mind – singularly good criticism.1 Unless you have no other copy of “The Speaker”, I would like to keep the slips – otherwise they shall be returned after the re-re-reading. 114

1903–1914

What you say on about Tolstoy’s article on “Revolution” does not shock me.2 Tolstoy’s writing on great subjects in so unflinching a way, must have laid himself open to dissent from minds of a different cast, and though my thought is much influenced by his incisive teaching, there are points in his works that I have difficulty in bringing myself into line with him – though these are but few in comparison with the far greater part which has, and still continues to help me. In these “decadent” days one is thankful for small mercies, and his astonish[ing] insight I feel to be a great one. I do not quarrel with his assumption that “humanity has been and is increasingly approaching” – “the highest justice”, for the ‘approaching’ view, to me, is as long as the unknown story of the past. All ‘religions’ will continue to preach – as all governments do, but the practice of them both is to keep the mastery they have over the less fortunate (or more?) of humanity. Also, I hold with Tolstoy that both are the greatest of mis leaders, for they have to set about their labours handcuffed – the usual term being, ‘muzzelled’. [sic] Condone all this latter part, for you will have found that I have got out of my literary depths of explanation. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Thank you for sending me from Newbuildings some fine specimens of Mushrooms – much the beautiful dark colour, I suspect, of Bedouin Arabs! Kindly pardon this pencilling, I cannot as yet sit to table for writing. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 In a short review-article, ‘Mr. Bain’s Hindoo Love Stories’, The Speaker (13 August 1904), pp. 452–4, WSB approached F.W Bain’s A Digit of the Moon (1901), The Descent of the Sun (1903), and The Heifer of the Dawn (1904) by considering the treatment of Eastern women in fiction. He kept an open mind as to whether the works were translations from Sanskrit manuscripts (as Bain claimed) or original fiction; if the latter, he predicted for them ‘a position in English imaginative prose hardly inferior to any which we possess, and which will be permanent’ (p. 454). 2 PSW had passed to WSB an article by Tolstoy on ‘Revolution’ from the Daily News of 7 September. See next letter.

942 • To Sydney Cockerell, 25 September 1904 Pencil; year added by SCC Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. Sun: 25 Sept – for Monday’s post My dear fellow. I’ve nothing of you since you sent me Cecil Firth’s letter & photograph* – (which I return) and Tolstoy’s last contribution to the record of this miserable time – the “Revolution” from ‘Daily News’ of Sep. 7. I lent this last to Blunt, who read it 115

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

with quite as much assent to the principle that could be looked for; he returnd it & I will send it back to you unless you have another copy? Firth’s letter was quite interesting – even to me, and the Kykkos gate-way is good, of the softly rude simplicity-gothic style.1 The ill condition of the library is much that of ‘what’s his name’s?’ Monasteries of the Levant”, of which there is dim remembrance in my poor head – ‘Curzon’ as I now guess, perhaps a branch of the stem now to the front in mischief.2 *Not your last, that was the brief word of Sep. 9 – when you took occasion fm yr landlady’s holiday to dive into obscure recesses for further M.S gems. Hope you fished up something – or at least furnished your head with ‘stock’? – Of course I’m thinking of you considerately at this junction of the ways.3 Blunt was here last Sunday evening, with Miss L[awrence], and we had a fair & somewhat good gossip, and since then he has sent me a copy of his review – an excellent one – of Bains Hindoo story books, my having spoken of the ‘Heifer’ one, which you lent me. G. B-J has written me, that Janey M has gone for health’s sake to Wales again for a while, and I can but hope for her good – poor suffering woman.4 The excellent W.R.L sent me from N. France two delightful Gothic early N steeples, to create an enthusiasm, supposed! – & queerly – to make up a want in my appreciative capability! I’m looking for the unbuckling of his budget on his return – not being too old to learn.5 That book he lent me of ‘Japanese Ideals’ by Okakura, being skilfully & miraculously condensed has had to be read through twice & thirdly dipped into, to stimulate the quickly fading memory of this here poor student.6 The book is almost too remarkably able for my sceptical turn to swallow wholly (much as I’m inclined to) without qualms of doubt. Also, doubt & dread hangs over me as to the outcome of this horrid war on the Japanese, and more especially if they succeed in beating back the Russians, for then will come the time when the simplicity, with intellectual vivacity, will be surely tempted by devils up to date. If you are back at Richmond, send me a word or two, but do not use valuable time in writing a letter. In health I am as when you were with me last. Yours as always | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/54

1 The Monastery of the Virgin of Kykkos in Cyprus probably has its origins in the late eleventh century, but has been reconstructed after fires on several occasions. 2 For both George Nathaniel Curzon and Robert Curzon (Baron Zouche), see Vol. III, Letter 668, notes 12 and 13. 3 The business partnership between SCC and EW had come to an end on 31 August. See above, Letter 915, note 1. 4 ‘I forgot to say that I spent an hour or two at Oxford on my way from Maidenhead to Wolverhampton. Mrs Morris wanted to talk to me about the proposed purchase of Kelmscott, but it seems that Hobbs is not yet in a position to sell, as he wants first to get rid of the adjacent land. . . . Jenny was dear, but slow & rather incoherent in her speech – due to the bromide she has to swallow. On Sunday

116

1903–1914 afternoon however I got out that MS Bible (a lady friend asks me whether “bibliographical pursuits” in the notice of my separation from Walker means that my whole time is to be spent in reading the Bible!) and Jenny sat at the table with me & looked eagerly at every pictured page, making apposite remarks and handling the leaves delicately, “so that it was a pleasure to see”. No one could have supposed that there was anything the matter, & it was just like ten or more years ago, when the horrid drug had not wrought much evil.’ SCC to PSW, 27 September 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/53. 5 ‘[I] supped with Mrs Lethaby, W.R.L. being away in Birmingham as bad luck would have it. I heard about the French tour, & glanced at proofs of the book, which it is hoped will see the light in a couple of months. He writes to me “As to the thing itself as usual it is not so good as it should be. I am not facile at methods of accuracy on one hand and I dont care to vapour merely on the other – so the book is a good deal dry frame work, with here & there only an attempt, and that in a very measured way, of giving the look of the thing. I feel rather as if it were a prospectus of what I could do, ‘a pegging out of a claim’[”].’ 6 Kakuzo Okakura, The Ideals of the East, with special reference to the Art of Japan (London: John Murray, 1903).

943 • To William Richard Lethaby, 27 September 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 27 Sep ’04 My dear fellow. Your parting salute fm Bainbridge, shotted1 with a picture card of Bolton Castle,2 made me pleased you had started the holiday with an easy let down on the Yorks’ hills, good for both of you; this dated 11. Aug: Then on 6 Sepr from Tours came the ticket fm Tours with it[s] indisputable steeple & ruined flank of the defensive (once) Abbey by Loches,3 and on the 15th the more miraculous tower from Angers – with never a ghost of written word on it.4 This being the 27th you surely must be back home with all the burden of brain fodder for future use? How good it is, when on holiday jaunt, to have something of purpose to do then, tempering the sighs of relaxation? Your good loan of the Okakura book has been a godsend to my enforced idleness,5 after rereading twice (for, is it not condensed to the point of bursting one’s head in, or trying to get it into one’s head?). I hope it’s all true and no mistake, and the more so that it contradicts my now prophetic soul, which had concluded from Indian photos: that Greece had tempered the Buddha cave sculptures of Ellora, &c, when, according to the Japanner, it was the other way round, and India has helped Greece to its severe idealism in her sculpturing! I find in a note book of on Ken: Mus: photos: of India, in the last year before leaving the Wen, that I had noticed the Indian quality of Greek-like purity in imagination. Kindly forgive the above awkward description of the effect your book has had on me, for I’ve become a ‘silly season’ ghost of myself, and more incapable – (which will seem impossible to you) – than of past times. I hope you saw the strange pyramidal domed Ch’ at Loches, and that you got to Fontevrault – if only to stare at the tomb-statues of the English there resting in stone after their Norman feverish time in the flesh?6 I’ve long wanted to see them, & have done it now by you, as deputy. 117

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

With all its elegance, the Beaulieu steeple did not make me skip like the ponderous lump of inventive design in the St Aubin tower at Angers.7 My stars Mr Richard – that is a “oneer”!! Surely nowhere else are there such buttress topped pinnacles – making with the squat spire they surround, a quite perfect inspiration? Did you, by accident as it were, make out how much ground this tower covered? That is all I will weary you with at present – that is, till I can do it nose to nose here. Kindest greeting to Madame Richard from yours as before, | Philip Webb. One of these days, surely one or both of you will look in on me. Apples on trees are pretty to look at. Pardon this senile scrawl. V&A, AAD

1 Gun-shot, to suggest a formal military salute? 2 Bolton Castle, a late fourteenth-century building of quadrangular design, was built by Richard le Scrope, first Baron Scrope of Bolton, and remains in the ownership of the family. 3 The early eleventh-century abbey church of Beaulieu-lès-Loches, in central France. 4 Angers, the former capital of the province of Anjou, is situated at the confluence of the rivers Mayenne, Sarthe and Loir. Visible from a distance on the skyline is the Tour Saint-Aubin, the belltower of an abbey suppressed during the French Revolution, and the subject of a sketch by Turner. 5 See previous letter, note 6. 6 The earlier parts of Fontevraud Abbey, near Chinon in Anjou, date from the twelfth century. The Abbey was the site for the graves of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and also their son Richard I (the Lionheart), although any remains were probably destroyed or removed during the French Revolution. 7 Most of the Benedictine abbey of St Peter at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne dates from the first half of the twelfth century, but a separate western steeple was added in the fourteenth.

944 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 9 November 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 9 November. ’04. My dear Squire. In spite of wanting ‘The persons of the drama’ – so much needed, and with the discomfort of a proofread copy, I have been really interested in your Play, and had pleasure in the first study of it, though with the disadvantage of knowing too little of the old Irish characteristic qualities.1 I have supposed you based your scheme on some early Celtic legend? – and if so, I felt the evidently strange forms – both in matter, & metre, were all to the good. Of course I cared most for “Fand” in herself, as in her wizardry, for in such a story, the Ideal, seems to me, as rightly ruling the drama. You will have known I am incapable of criticising a genuine literary effort – like this of yours, but had I said nothing, you might naturally have felt I had not troubled my wits by reading it? To me, the work is good, as it is; but being 118

1903–1914

strong enough to bear polishing, say, with one or even more extra proof-readings, I believe it would become even stronger. I would like a few more really weighty lines, and some with an additional grace of beauty in them – especially in sound. No doubt you guessed I would point a finger at some of the r[h]ymes! Your eyes will see – here & there – impudence exemplified, in a few faint pencil markings, by Ph. W; these were made simply to shew my meaning without more of my indifferent verbiage. When you have sorted the Play to your mind, I would like to read the final revision; – this would not incur other troublesome words from me. At present I merely ask pardon for keeping the now returned copy for so long a time, but the reading of any serious literary work is always an effort for my ill-furnished and aged head. Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 WSB, Fand of the Fair Cheek. A three-act tragedy in rhymed verse. Written for the Irish National Theatre Society (privately printed, 1904).

945 • To George Howard, Earl of Carlisle, 12 November 1904 Pencil; first version of draft also survives Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. Novr 12(?) 04 (Copy of my draft) To/ The Earl of Carlisle (Completion of Brampton Tower) My dear George Howard Your letter of the 4th Novr seems to me to express clearly what would be necessary to secure the finishing of the tower in a satisfactory way – and I hope you will adhere to your judicious conditions.1 Though Mr Jack has kindly undertaken to carry out my revised design, if it has to be done, he will have to see that it is done from his working drawings, and some little caution would have to be exercised in getting a dependable estimate, based on these drawings, from a trustworthy builder. To refresh your memory, I restate the facts. The working drawings for completing the tower were never made, there not being funds in hand for that part of the church at the time when the body of it was built, so that any “local builder’s” estimate must have been made from the eighth scale general plans, and in the form thereon shewn. 119

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I concluded, after the body of the church was finished, that the upper part of tower would have to be considerably simplified, not only for improved effect, (which at that time I could well re-consider) but in a less costly way. Merely for my own satisfaction – and later on, I made two or three studies for its completion, if it should be carried out in my lifetime, and on these and further modifications, I propose to instruct Mr Jack accordingly, when he makes the working drawings, which seem now to be called for? Any builder’s estimate would include the judicious hanging of the bells – a most important matter. I think it would be well to find out from what drawings the “local builder” made his estimate, which the clergyman (Mr Armstrong?) thinks could be carried out for the sum now collected for the purpose of completing the tower. If these preliminaries are satisfactory, Mr Jack would have to go to Brampton, see the clergyman, meet any builder – or builders offering to do the work, and examine the condition, &c, of the existing base of the tower. Should the work be entered on, as thus proposed it would be wholly in Mr Jack’s experienced hands, and he would have to be paid in the usual way, as the architect. In no case would I accept any payment for putting the matter clearly before him on the aforesaid lines. From my experience during the building of the body of the church, I am sure that a dependable “clerk of the works” would have to be engaged, to carry out the instructions of the architect in a satisfactory way. If you agree with my suggestions, and the matter could be arranged as I am proposing, I would get Mr Jack to see me here, and arrange with him to proceed in making the necessary working drawings; after which, the local committee could communicate with him, and enter on the usual business arrangements. Yrs truly, | Ph. W. P.S. I may add that Mr Jack is a busy man, and his skill in practical teaching is much valued as one of the ‘staff’ of the new arrangements at the S. Kensington Museum. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Last year I wrote to you about the completion of the Brampton Church Tower. In consequence of your answer, I made it a condition of my subscription that Mr Jacks [sic] should be employed to complete the work. I have now heard from Mr Armstrong the clergyman, that they have collected a sum which they are advised by a local builder is sufficient to complete the tower according to your design. I answered that this seemed to me unsatisfactory, as the plans had to be completed by Mr Jack, & I was then asked to write to ask Mr Jack what the cost would be. I do not know whether he will be able to give an opinion on this point, but we seem to be in an “impasse”, if he cannot, as I made it a condition that Jack should be employed & that the requisite sum should be raised.’ GH to PSW, 4 November 1904, V&A, AAD.

120

1903–1914

946 • To William Richard Lethaby, 17 November 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 17 Novr 1904 My dear fellow. Yesterday morning I had the book,1 & after breakfast the leaves of it were turned over excitedly, then the inevitable walk with a conning of my acknowledgment; such a pretty letter it was – but, on my return it had fled with the morning’s mist. In the evening I wrote a reasonable expression of thankfulness, Dull as ditch water! so now I send a quiet though half-sad recognition of your kindness to me, with its unfailing thoughtfulness. The boon of the book at this autumn-grey time of my life is unspeakable, and I look on it as a real carrying on of the lifting powers of J.R and W.M. In lighter tone, I rejoice in the prospect of 315 condensed pages of deep interest to lift me out of self-consciousness. With kind remembrance to the able help at your elbow – Mrs Richard, I am | Your sincere abetter | Philip Webb. My stars – Mr Dick, what a lovely lot of pretty pictures!! I will tell what turns up in me as I read & re-read. V&A, AAD

1 Mediæval Art from the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance, 312–1350 (London, Duckworth & Co, 1904). The book includes 56 full-page photographs (a large proportion of which WRL had taken himself), and many drawings and diagrams.

947 • To George Washington Jack, 18 November 1904 Pencil Caxtons Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 18 Novr 1904 My dear Jack. I have been corresponding again with Lord Carlisle about the finishing of Brampton Ch’ tower.1 Ld C. is making conditions with the Tower Completion Committee on which his subscription will depend, for he evidently thinks this Committee may want to

121

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

have the building carried out in their own way, which might not agree with his wishes, and my design requirements. The matter is too lengthy for me to write out again to send to you, for I have stated particularly and at length the facts of the case to Ld Carlisle. Now the Committee ask me for your address, which I must send now to Ld Carlisle, who personally asks for it – but, I think, should the Committee – as is likely – write to you for information, &c, it would be well (if you agree to this opinion of mine) for you to say, you could do nothing without first putting yourself personally in communication with me, as you have agreed, should the completion of the tower be set about, that you would abide by my advice as to what the final design should be before you made the necessary working drawings. It seems that the Ch’ committee have got a kind of estimate for the completion of the tower from a local builder, and if so, he must have based it on the ⅛" scale drawings, for – as you know – the only working drawing designs made by me for the tower finish, are those now in your hands, & no one else has seen them. I write thus, for I feel sure you will have to assert your own position with the Committee from the first, in dealing with them. Also, there is this to be thought of, would you still feel inclined to enter, first on preliminaries, & then on the work itself? I told Ld Carlisle in my letter last sent to him, that it was only on your kindly agreeing to manage the work as the architect, that I could allow myself to deal with the matter at all. If the Committee should write to you, and your answer shd be as suggested above by me, will you come here & be fully primed by me?2 I shall be very glad to see you here, in any case. Yours always truly, | Philip Webb. Lethaby has sent me his new book, and after only briefly looking through it, I see it is a “one-er”.3 V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 945. 2 ‘I have been putting off writing to you, but should really have written last week as I had a note from the Revd J. Armstrong, Brampton asking me if I would undertake the work there. I replied yes, & told him what you said with regard to the working drawings – to wit, that now I should prepare these by making a preliminary drawing for you to work upon after which I would go ahead with the drawings. I shall make this drawing as soon as I can get rid of two pieces of that altar which are tying me to the bench longer than I like[:] that is the worst of carving – there is no calculating the time – often a day is absolutely lost & the work to be done over again. This is aggravating when other work is waiting.’ GWJ to PSW, 7 December 1904, V&A, AAD.

122

1903–1914 3 ‘I have been reading Lethaby’s new book, it is indeed as you say a “Oner” – the plates alone are worth the money.’

948 • To Reverend J. Armstrong, 20 November 1904 Draft; pencil with some ink amendments Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. Nov 30. 1904 Draft To/ The Revd J. Armstrong. | The Vicarage. Brampton. Dear Sir I am much pleased by getting beg to acknowledge with pleasure the receipt of your very courteous acceptance of my suggestions (as given in the my letter to Ld Carlisle) with regard to the completion of Brampton Ch’ Tower.1 I have seen Mr George Jack, and considered with him the probability of his being asked to undertake theis work in consultation with me; and as from my experience of him, he having been my chief assistant for many years, and since my retirement from the profession he has been my excellent esteemed friend, so that I am not only assured of his ability, but of his perfect good will in accepting undertaking a rather somewhat ungrateful office; and I am satisfied he will spare no pains in forwarding & carrying out the work to the satisfaction of all concerned. As Mr Jack is a north countryman, (though from the other side of the English border), he is no stranger to the wild northern country districts: and also, he has been lately engaged as an architect in building a house on the West coast of Scotland.2 Mr Jack will be able to make arrangements with your committee for visiting Brampton when he findsing it necessary during the making of the necessary when making as he makes the drawings. You will probably have anticipated the that actual building could not be safely undertaken safely at this time of the year, so that during the winter season so there will be sufficient time to prepare the for the preparation of the drawings, and entering on the obtaining a builder’s tender, or tenders. It would probably be possible to begin actual building in March. I note your memorandum of the guaranteed sum of £1700. All I can at present say in the matter of actual cost is, that the revised design will be considerably less costly to carry out than that shewn on the original drawings. Believe me, dear sir | Yours truly | Ph. W. [ink] P.S. I thought it well to make the effort to write this letter in ink: my present condition of health making writing the mere act a rather tedious matter. V&A, AAD

123

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 ‘I need scarcely say that we are all deeply grateful for your continued interest in our Church & for the very valuable & helpful suggestions contained in your letter with which we all cordially agree. The Committee are anxious to see your design carried out, with the modifications suggested in your letter; & they would feel deeply obliged if you would kindly ask Mr Jack to see you & convey to him your instructions as expressed in your letter.’ Armstrong to PSW, 24 November 1904, V&A, AAD. 2 For the house GWJ built at Arisaig for Constance Astley and Margaret Shaen, see Vol. III, Letter 784, note 9.

949 • To William Weir, 26 November – 1 December 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth, by Crawley. Sussex. 26 Novr ’04 My dear Weir. Duly received yours of the 22nd and the 3 tracings.1 Your rearrangement of things, according to the circumstances, which develope themselves as you go on with the work, seem to me good; of course your concreting over the stair on the south is a considerable gain of solidity. I also quite agree with the timber framings shewn on section fm N. to S. On section from E. to W. you will see I have suggested (as the corner posts are omitted) the putting 9" x 4" diagonals from (and extending) the sill under the double posts from first floor up to the new cradling, against N. & S. walls to catch the four corners of the new cradle; this would meet any counter-racking from the bells, and support the cradling; and I think one corbel on the N & S. sides – midway between the angle, would keep the cradling from resting on bolts though the north and south walls??2 Altogether, I think your scheme an improvement, and it would, I believe, negative the action of timbers when the bells are rung.3 ’Tis this ringing of bells which – as you well know – has dislocated so many church towers. The weight of these new timbers alone, when properly supported, would of themselves reduce the vibration. You will notice I have suggested extending the sill pieces (see note above) under your N & S upright, to E & W walls. All this work will surely greatly relieve the four old segmental stone arches supported on mask-corbels, & make them really more efficient – & the more so after your solidifying the walls – this solidifying I am have been rather apt to forget. Also, the timber work will give the new walls-strengthening time to set, without being strained when green by the bells. Let me recommend you, whenever you look in on old village churches, to make notes of any simple seating, (the bench seats in particular) as suggestions for future designing of such, so as not to be obliged to repeat what you have before done – too often. There is nothing like the quickening of invention by old work, where such suggestions are not slavishly copied. You will I fancy agree with me as to this? You may be sure of my being glad if any suggestions of mine help

124

1903–1914

you in any way, but I distinctly wish you to follow your own bent when you choose – regar[d]less of mine. Geo: Jack was here on Tuesday last, and shewed no sign of his thinking you reckless, though he considered your present work a ticklish one to deal with, and as I do also.4 It is just one of those cases which, to me, become doubly interesting in counter-acting? the advance of ancient building towards dissolution, instead of shirking the difficulties by destroying the old work by pulling it down? The church you are now engaged on deserves the more honest method, to say nothing of escaping the ridicule attending on difficulties by destroying the tell-tale of incapability. Pearson did this when he allowed Irthlingborough tower to be pulled down – which was an unique example. which I saw it with Dr Middleton, when we agreed it could doubtless be saved by intelligence & effort.5 Jack & I had much to talk about but you, and he told me you had an unusual kind of parson to deal with, who really enjoyed watching your labours? December 1. 1904. I kept the above back to think further over the resistance to vibration from the bells. There is no sign of light diagonals between the head & sill of bell cage. Of course they may be there though not shewn in the sections. If not there, I would advise their being put in addition to the bolting down of cage to it[s] beam supports. Also, I see on section looking W, there is a central beam under bell cage, and I think it wd be well to resist vibration from E to W, by putting 9” x 3” diagonals starting from wall frame of cradling up to this central beam, passing over the intersection of the cross diagonals which run from N to S. Your descriptive letter greatly interested me. When you find time (?) send me a brief note as to your agreeing – or not – with what is suggested on this very ragged sheet. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. I return the 3 tracings with this. SPAB Webb-Weir 82

1 The letter refers to WW’s work at St Andrew’s, Denton, Lincolnshire. See above, Letter 936. 2 ‘Corbel’: a projection jutting out from the face of a wall, to support a superincumbent weight (OED). 3 ‘I have shewn the proposed oak cradling on the enclosed tracings, as you suggested with the exception of the oak posts in angles. In working out the diagonal braces under the bell cage I thought they would be most effective if placed over the new cross beams of cradling & on this account have shewn the oak posts directly under them, & resting on the beams at 1st floor level by means of a sill piece. The weight would thus be distributed over the north & south walls, which are now the strongest portion of the tower.’ WW to PSW, 22 November 1904, SPAB. 4 ‘Jack was here for a few days lately & was delighted with the old building as well as the country. He intends seeing you soon & will be able to tell you all about the work, & especially whether he considers I am reckless or otherwise.’ 5 See Vol. I, Letter 208.

125

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

950 • To Emery Walker, 2 December 1904 Postmark CRAWLEY DE 2 04 Address To/ Emery Walker. | 16 Clifford’s Inn | Fleet Street. | London. | E.C. Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley.| Sussex 2. Decr 1904 My dear Walker. I wrote to Lloyds’ according to on the matter of selling out from my 2½ % annuities to produce 200£, and what we thought best to be done – at all events for the present. In return they wrote me the letter inclosed. It seems to me this gives only their written word, on a sheet of note paper, that they will only sell out in future on my instructions. Kindly tell me if you think it would be a risk, my signing this power of attorney for the whole sum of the annuities, or not? I also inclose the pr of attorney form for you to read in connection with the bank’s letter of 29th Novr. Will you tell me what you think, and re-inclose the pr of attorney & letter. I’m very sorry to bother you, but I distrust my knowledge of money business matters. Yours as always | Philip Webb. Excuse haste as I want to post this tonight. V&A, AAD

951 • To Alfred Hoare Powell, 19 December 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 19 Decr 1904 My dear Alfred Powell. I am glad Thacky Turner is communicative about pots; he has been at work in painting them for some years under unaccommodating conditions, but perseverance has, of course, given him some hold on processes.1 You wrote of being on a round of building ‘jobs’ – what are they? Your difficulties are clear to me, for in De Morgan’s prolonged efforts there was but little effect,2 and on this account I believe. In trying to combine art with the crafts, there seems to me only two ways of making it – in the devil’s slang of these times – ‘pay’; one is to make comparatively few articles of a costly kind, and do them all by skilled designers in a small way. You doubtless know that our one – more or less – successful craftsman, considered that wallpapers were of only the value that because the mechanical carrying on the manufacture, paid, and the money enabled him, WM3, to learn other crafts from the root up – but stained glass was only so far a success in that there was one rapid & skilled designer who

126

1903–1914

could supply him with designs, ad lib, and W.M could keep the colour right – but it could never could be right good craftsmen’s glass, because there were no draughtsmen who could translate the beautiful pictures into effective painting for glass. Also, it was impossible even for W.M. with his huge appetite for doing things, to make the glass and burn it in his own kilns; so that, in a way, the glass was surprisingly good – but more by comparison with such work by others, than because it was good craftsman’s glass, which it never was, nor could be, under the conditions, possible. The other way, is to take, as you are doing, the manufacturer’s pots under the hide-bound conditions of a ‘great industry’, and make certain cheap articles pleasant and pretty, and commercially successful, by doing enormous quantities cheaply, and I am afraid that, unless you can get and guide many “hands” to spring to your certainly very apt turn for designing and painting, you will soon be overdone by the multitudinous calls on your own powers of head & hand. For the manufacturers, to make this kind of their business successful, they would have to flood the market with such work as yours. All this weary long preamble came about from my enjoying the purely delightful pot you so kindly sent me. The mere design, and its arrangement on the vessel, is a serious labour, but its very delicacy and refinement, both in thought and execution takes it out of the category of cheap art. Doubtless, if you had only some half dozen of apt & spirited pupils, for whom you could set examples for them to make (not copies) but variants of the same, and that one or more of the pupils turned out to be naturally capable designers, it would be another matter. but I might go on for ever in this humdrum grandfatherly way, and you would be saying ‘I know all this very well myself, old fellow’! As for your own (and as it stands before me) delightful bit of work, I can but give it hearty praise, for it cheers me to look at it. ‘But how’, you will be saying. Well, the given form of pot & cover gave you the motive of the design, a very necessary item. Then the design is full of graceful arrangement, and the contrasts of colour excellent, while the well-drawn goats and trees are not forced in their disposition over the surface, they drop into their spaces delightfully. Item, (as W.M. used to say), you have made the design a pattern. When I looked at it in my hand, at first, all the value of this quality did not occur to me, but putting it on the mantel shelf, & seeing it accidentally, I found the ‘Chammie’ (sic) goats, & the free pots & trees, turn the white ground in to a mosaic-like pattern, very effectively at a distance. Indeed the goats and look inserted in the pattern-forms of the ground, and inclosed by it, cloissonné-like! [sic] The very dark little beasts look as brisk as those leapers on the alps, all alive-o. The lid too I like almost as much, but think the biggish Persian shaped leaf would have been more telling in broad effect without the 5 foiled flower on it: you will note too, that the dark-storks [sic] also turn their white ground in to a graceful pattern: there, my paper is up, & yours truly Philip Webb, used up.

127

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I wrote the foregoing on Saturday night, but yesterday I looked at the pot in fair sunlight, and found the colour generally very good, and the inexorable laws of contrast really and delightfully effective. Ph. W. Yes, let me know the cost of the pot as it should be paid for, and also as you would get paid for your work? To me the time taken in the doing would not touch me so much as my knowledge of the strain on hand, & brain effort would be in such touch-and-go work. My writing has to be done from the knee, and the old head is getting very weak-witted. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Mr. Thackeray Turner told me that he took up china-painting in 1882, when he started in practice as an architect, as an exercise in designing.’ Fred Miller, ‘Art Workers at Home. Potters and Painters’, Art Journal (1895), p. 314. Robin Stannard kindly informs me that HTT appears to have taken up painting ceramics by various manufacturers as early as 1879, and that until his marriage in 1888 he sold pieces to supplement his income. His later works, many of which he exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, ‘appear to have been made to be given away as presentation pieces, Christmas gifts, and birthday presents’. Robert Prescott-Walker, ‘Hugh Thackeray Turner: Professional Architect, Amateur China Painter’, Journal of the Decorative Arts Society, XXVII (2003), p. 33. 2 William de Morgan often found himself financially stretched, for his meticulous artistic standards were not balanced by commercial acumen. Of his own factory, he admitted ‘It is not well organised, it is very ill De Morganised in fact!’ Quoted in Mark Hamilton, Rare Spirit. A Life of William de Morgan (London: Constable, 1997), p. 48. 3 Encircled.

952 • To Sydney Cockerell, 31 December 1904 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 31 Decr ’04 My dear fellow. Some few words are due to you apart from your interesting letter of the 26th. In our ravenous talk when you were here, and the tea thing of both of us left no hole for my referring to the postal P. cards I had while you were away – They all duly came – The Beatrice d’Este, (da Vinci) The Botticelli ‘spring’ – The Douai Hôtel de Ville, and the 3 of Amiens, all much to my mind – and thank you.1 I too am a little anxious about the destruction of the Rooke père chronicler, but only on his account, for fear he shd have been lastingly hurt; on the part of G. B-J.2 I can quite understand her real fear lest the intimate quality of the matter should (at any time) get into unscrupulous hands.3 When I see her, doubtless she will give a clear version of the matter; but I should bewail a serious wound to our good friend, T.M.R.

128

1903–1914

Walker was here on Tues: & we fell to a good talking, but were interrupted by the entrance of the two Lyttons just as he sat to table.4 Mrs Dick n, who had 7 children in the kitchen at Xmas treating, bustled about, and never failed to come up to time, &c – but E.W will be likely to tell you of it; he hitched himself on to the Lytton car to the station, and I must have him here again for further confab: He spoke very prettily of your help to him when you were his Co, but looked hopefully at the future, for – has he not the courage of 3 grown men?5 He is always the softest of cushions to my bent back. The Lyttons seem to take kindly to his naive ways, & peculiarities non-aristocratic. Your brother’s interesting note (wh’ I return) pleased me much, from the fellow feeling in the truss way – and I seriously hope his evidently active life will not be seriously hampered by the disability. Ruptures are very common in England, and the Arthur Caffable6 told me Miller’s men were particularly liable, from lifting & carrying heavy weights. I met the said Arthur on my walk to-day. He had just heard from W.S.B, and the news was not comforting, but, if the matter comes from Influenza, it may upset his peace for a long time. In spite of your urging, my fear is of expressing something, in my putting a foot in it way, that might be other than amusing if I wrote to him: am a bit afraid my notes on his dramatic essay might have been schoolboy stuff for his putting up with: criticism of any kind – & even of the best, is an edged tool.7 What a base those reliefs in 4 foils are to the solemn statues at Amiens! I’m getting my head clear to tackle W.R.L when he comes here again; his very and particularly excellent book (wh’ I first read through, then dipped & am now reading through again) stirs the architectural marrow in my bones. Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/59

1 SCC was in Belgium and France between 14–20 December in order to examine medieval manuscripts, visiting Brussels, Tournai, Douai, Arras and Amiens. ‘Yours was the last letter of the Old Year, & a very welcome one, but those penny cards were not worth thanking for.’ SCC to PSW, 2 January 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/60. 2 GBJ first requested Thomas Rooke to burn his written notes of EBJ’s conversations, loaned to her during work on the Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, and then seemed unwilling to return them. SCC felt, not unreasonably, that she was acting high-handedly. ‘As to the Rooke papers that have been destroyed I think there is nothing to be said about them, but as to the copy of those which were thought too good for destruction, I understand from him that it is agreed that he may make any use of them he likes five years from now. Meanwhile they remain at Rottingdean. This seems to me both unfair to Rooke and an implication of want of confidence. I have not a word to say against his promising to publish nothing for five years – but putting myself in his place I cannot see the justice of depriving him of his own much prized records for a space of ten years – i.e. including the five or six years that they have already been in G. B-J’s hands. “He used sometimes to get up in the middle of the night” said plaintive Mrs R. “to write down what he suddenly remembered – & the little books were so precious to us & we thought they were our own.”

129

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

3

4 5 6 7

“I thought it best to agree without question to the terms that were proposed” said TMR as I walked with him in the dark to Walker’s. “I would not risk a quarrel in that quarter”. It seemed to me rather tragic & I argue thus: – Rooke is more sensitive than I am. He loved E B-J far more than I loved Morris. His notes were a hundred times more important than the few notes I made (partly at E B-J’s own instigation) of Morris’s talk. Yet I should have been deeply mortified if anyone had confiscated my notes on Morris. I lent them to Mackail for a short time only, till he had copied what he wanted, and was uneasy till he gave them back. I seldom look at them but, like a letter of my father’s that I have kept in my pocket for 17 years, I am conscious of their presence in my little room. Why should not Rooke have the same comfort? And if there is to be any arranging or publishing of the conversations, why should he not have them (they are his own) to arrange, without disturbing the undertaking that five years shall elapse before publication?. . . Of course I feel rather meddlesome, but somehow or other I can’t help it. Until the matter is so put before me as to show me that there is a justification for the retention of the copy or until it is handed over to TMR (the burning I dismiss from my mind) I cannot but feel a little wound in my affection for G B-J. & I value her friendship and kindness exceedingly & cannot bear that anything should lessen the warmth of my feelings towards her. If Rooke were not a monument of loyalty & integrity – and of timorous self-forgetfulness, unable in anything to stand up for himself – I should not care or bother.’ See also below, Letter 960, note 2. GBJ’s copy of Rooke’s notes form the basis for Mary Lago, ed, Burne-Jones Talking (London: John Murray, 1981). Lago was unaware of this tension, and that GBJ destroyed some parts of which she did not approve. ‘Arthur Hughes said of the Bartess’s book that it gave him a higher opinion than he had before not only of Burne-Jones but of everyone else mentioned in it. This I think the greatest possible tribute to the genius with which the book is done.’ SCC to PSW, 26 December 1904, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/56. Neville and Judith Lytton. After the dissolution of their business partnership, EW continued his firm as Emery Walker, Ltd. Arthur Caffin. See above, Letter 944.

953 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 9 January 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley Sussex. January 9th 1905. My dear Squire The never failing S.C. Cockerell had let me know of your unfortunate condition before Miss Lawrence so kindly sent me accurate word of what you had undergone, and of the present hope of real amendment1 – that, doubtless, S.C.C will let me know of, and probably bring me good news on a Saturday. ’Tis said that if sick folk will it strongly, the life system is helped toward recovery. I’m going to hope – a pyramid of hopes, that the sun of Egypt will bring you through triumphantly. The very much aforesaid S.C.C asked me to write to you, but as you know, I am “sae shie”!2 Truth to tell it seemed to me the inveterate foot of me is too often put in, and more disastrously when writing a bit of my mind; have not yet forgotten the faux pas when venturing to say something in the way of recognition when you 130

1903–1914

gave me leave to read a proof of your wild Irish play!3 Hope you have forgotten my mishap. ’Tis a common thing I believe, when one blunders, to improve the occasion by having a revenge on someone else: like a horse with foot in rabbit hole kicks you as you get up? We shall see. Newbuildings Place has been faithful to orders, for twice lately they rabbits have come to the Caxton’s pie pudding or pot. The Mons: & Madame Lytton have looked in here to tea, and were talkatively agreeable, Emery Walker also, making a quartette – while 7 children were in kitchen making Xmas treat, while Mrs Dickinson was very much to the front and in between!4 The Winter, with occasional sharp freezing for 2 or 3 days at a time, has not been bad for us, indeed there have been many days so beautiful that my very necessary morning walks have on several days extendd into the forest, where judicious going footing found dry enough going. I’m a solitary kind of soul as you know, and when alone in the beautiful wilds, can muse comfortably & without ridiculous contradiction of unfettered fancy. So really dry has the ground been, at times, that I’ve walked from one end of Heathy Ground pool to the other on foot-firm enough mud in the bed of it, and at three consecutive visits had I the joy of putting up a heron.5 The last time I was there, the water had come down, & the pool was its own again as a mirror to the beautiful woods. You may be saying – why not have called [sic] on the lady (at all events) of the farm, which was passed on the way to the pool – well, again I was partly shy, which, with natural modesty deterred calling – really though, the chief cause was, that I’d forgotten the style and title of the ‘lady’ – who she was, & how she came to live solitary-like, as I do. Perhaps you said I might perhaps call, & possibly she said to herself, ‘hope he won’t’. There you have the regulation ‘foot’ in it again. Hope sincerely all this gabble will not pall on your tired mind in a sick body? Now, I will try my “revenge” – for your well meaning towards me! My brother sent me a number of last November’s “Country Life” – a publication, it seems to me, where my ridiculus-mus name is out of place – or in a false position.6 It must have come about from Wyndham, times past, haveing asked me to send views of his house to be published in picture papers, and I refused; so, I suppose, both Mr & Mrs Wyndham got at you to father the advertisement in a ‘society’ paper? On seeing your name at the tail of the laudatory prose (almost amounting to poetry!) you may be sure I blushed both red & blue “all over”.7 Never so much as ‘by your leave’ (as the railway porters say) but I must be commented on in excelsis! & in a publication produced for the top & tail of the E’lite. It might have been of pecuniary service to me before deserting all for exclusive Caxtons, for surely orders would have come in to Gray’s Inn for noble mansions for noble or ignoble men; possibly even the great “pan-jum-drum” Joe, might have determined to house himself fittingly: never were blushes more thrown away! Nevertheless, & in spite of the professional dead name being exhumed, (pah!) your kindly dry nursing of the defunct was both prettily, and only too kindly done. I can almost hear the titter going round in the Rl Inste of Brit: Archts hall – where solemnity, otherwise, soberly sits subdued. Never mind, Dear Squire; if anyone other than 131

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

you had done the deed, it would have been done badly; and let us now sing, O be joyful8 Percy and Madeline Wyndham, for they will only see the beauty of it, and he the lovely lady ghost. I had not heard that story before; you brought it in sweetly.9 It must have been the inevitable she who appeared in Gray’s Inn to tell, that the house had to be built again, and, as it were, paid for twice over – blessed ghost! I’ve tried to be serious, and now it will be real. I can but thank you heartily for your intrepidity. I will hope that the pains & penalties of illness may not make you too peevish to relish this too long personal yarn. I shall be sure to learn further from S.C.C, and I hope, of your advance towards complete recovery. With kindest remembrance to Lady Anne, and particular thanks & good wishes to Miss Lawrence, I am your highly favoured henchman, Philip Webb WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 ‘A letter from WSB dated Jan 4, the first since his illness – & on the whole satisfactory.’ CD, 12 January 1905. WSB had not been well since his arrival in Egypt in November. See below, Letter 964, note 9. 2 ‘Miss Lawrence sends me constant bulletins from Sheykh Obeyd and they are not so favourable as I could wish. The last was written on Christmas day. WSB had at last seen a doctor who had ordered things for his comfort – a steam kettle from sunset to sunrise, nothing but liquid food, rubbing with eucalyptus oil, a cotton wool jacket &c – and the said doctor thought he would be a different man in three or four days. It is clear that he will have to be very far different in order to be well, & that it will be an uphill business for many a day. . . . As to writing you will of course be guided by what you think best – but I am sure a word or two would cheer both the patient & the nurse.’ SCC to PSW, 2 January 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/60. 3 For his comments on Fand of the Fair Cheek, see above, Letter 944. 4 See previous letter. 5 This pond lay within the grounds of the nearby Heathy Ground farm, part of WSB’s Crabbet estate. 6 WSB was the author of ‘Clouds, Salisbury. The Residence of the Hon. Mrs. Percy Wyndham’, Country Life, XVI (19 November 1904), pp. 738–48. The article included fifteen black and white photographs of exterior, interior and gardens, a superb visual record of the house after it was rebuilt following the fire of 1889. 7 ‘[Webb’s] name . . . is one reverenced by the craft and worshipped by not a few of the best architects of the rising generation.’ ‘Clouds, Salisbury’, p. 738. 8 ‘O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands’: the opening line of the canticle, Jubilate Deo, set for Anglican Morning Prayer (Matins) in the Book of Common Prayer. It is a variant translation of the start of Psalm 100 in the King James Bible (‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands’). 9 WSB recounted a curious story of the house fire. ‘It was in the month of May, 1885, the fifth year of the building of the house, when the workmen were returning from their dinner, that a woman dressed in black, tall, and with the appearance of being a lady, came to the west door leading into the great hall. . . . [S]he presently began questioning the workmen, and especially one, Neil, as to the work that was being done. Then the name of the building was asked, and the name of the owner and of the architect and the builder, and she requested admittance, which was not refused her. On entering she looked round the hall, and then said suddenly, “This house will be burnt down, and in less than three years.” With these words she went out at the door, and though followed and looked

132

1903–1914 after, could not again be found, nor was anything seen or known of her from that time forth. The house was burnt to the ground on January 6th, 1889. It was rebuilt and reoccupied within three years of its destruction, on the exact lines of the original plan.’ ‘Clouds, Salisbury’ pp. 744–8.

954 • To Sydney Cockerell, 25 January 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 25 Jan: 1905 My dear fellow. The totaling [sic] up of P. postcards at the end of the year will nearly arrive by postmen to 365 – The Ephelents Camelges &c – vigorous enough to carry me round the worrrrld.1 Thanking you kindly, though the inroads on your pocket money increases by “leaps and bounds”, & you will have to give up sugar (and other things too) if the present Government sits tightly to its seat. The note on the touching power of the Holbein one, abt W.S.Bs condition, was pleasant to read: for, if he can get thoroughly back to his usual health before leaving Egypt, it will be a boon to all of us. The S. Nazaire at Carcassonne,2 is one of those gaunt & bald looking buildings that even W.R.L would assert should not have been shewn to me, as it might lower my French archre moral tone! I wrote him dog eared scraps anent his book, which he nobly said were “jolly chatty” – so that no bones were broken; & he promises writing an answer “with much care”, so I may learn something, even at this very late day. Good fellow, W.L.R. [sic] How he will like your being sponsor to his ¾ frog-land girls! Isn’t the Emprs daughter still a delight at the tail of Carpaccio’s thundering horse? About the Jean Goujon Nymphs3 – I think there are casts of them at S: Kenn; they seem to me over-refined in their elegance for the early time of the Renaissance in France. Skilful beyond expression, but rather unattractive to me. The manliness of the Della-Robbia boys is comforting by comparison; what variety given to the 12 faces! and such “Grapery”!! What is the meaning of the photo of ‘Hotel de Vogüe’ door, &c, at Dijon?? it looks like an outer wall door to state room with painted or other patterned ceiling? Both the Botticellis are beautiful, but that of the armoured archangel is much the most attractive. Am glad you sent me the genl view of Dijon4 – what a huge plain it stands in. Your little M.S. book is a beauty: I’m thinking the border decoration, which is very pretty, must be by a different hand to that of the pictures, & the initial capitals, both refined & beautiful to a degree beyond praise. I think you lucky both in book & price.5 I will send the Ghent & Tournay book to W.R.L. ’Tis all stuff your wanting to see an archl drawing of tower composition; it gives me a good deal of effort to make it better than my first 2nd or 3rd designs: am obliged to stand to do it, by small degrees, & only so far as to make the meaning clear to Jack. The structural part amuses me.6

133

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I wish you could find an enlightened mind to buy & take care of the ‘Great Tangley’ house. There are pictures of it in that elegant publication – “Country Life”, of Jany 21. ’05 with another “blazing indiscretion” abt a former archt.7 If I’d only hung on to ‘practice’, that & the Clouds one would have sent me orders for more by the dozen. I suspect Mrs Flower must have given notes to the writer of the text. But hold, I set out only to thank you for the picture cards, & have gabbled on so lengthily. Yours as always | Philip Webb. Button up your cash pocket, in spite of my true thanks for your kind thought of me. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/61

1 Amongst the picture postcards sent by SCC was an animal series. 2 On 22 January, SCC had sent a picture postcard with the printed caption: ‘CITÉ DE CARCASSONNE. – Abside et Transept de l’Église Saint-Nazaire’. BL Add 52762, f. 37. The basilica of St Nazaire and St Celse in Carcassone was completed in the twelfth century, the exterior undergoing significant restoration under Viollet-le-Duc in the nineteenth. 3 The work of French sculptor, Jean Goujon (c. 1510–c. 1568), is well represented at the Louvre in Paris, especially his work for the western extension of the building (1555–62). 4 Posted by SCC on 17 January. BL Add 52762, f. 34. 5 Almost certainly this was SCC’s purchase on 5 November 1904 of an illuminated manuscript, the Book of Hours of Louis d’Anjou. It had been bought at Sotheby’s on 31 October by the dealers, J.J. Leighton, who sold it on to SCC. He sold it ten years later to Henry Yates Thompson. The manuscript was bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1935 by T.H. Riches. See Christopher de Hamel, ‘Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts from the library of Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell’, British Library Journal, XIII (1987), pp. 186–210, especially p. 199. 6 ‘Went down to Three Bridges to see P.W. as it was his 74th birthday. He had been working for two hours in the morning on a new design for Brampton Church tower, standing to his drawing board as of old. I thought this a good sign.’ CD, 12 January 1905. At the end of the previous year, SCC had recorded that PSW ‘cannot bend his back to draw’. CD, 1904. 7 ‘Great Tangley Manor, Surrey. The Residence of the late Mr. Wickham Flower’, Country Life, XVII (21 January 1905), pp. 90–100. The article (with fourteen photographs, mainly of the exterior and grounds) is anonymous. ‘Happily, the architectural work was entrusted to Mr. Philip Webb, whose reverent treatment, as far as the older part of the structure went, was confined to what was strictly necessary. This eminent architect set his face entirely against any renewal that should be in direct imitation of the old work; and when, later, another sitting-room and more bedrooms were required, and he built the library at the eastern end, it was done in such a way that it assumed no effect of competition with the timbered front.’ (p. 96).

955 • To William Hale White, 3 February 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 3 February 1905. My dear Hale White. I have greatly enjoyed the refreshing of my memory by your John Bunyan.1 The two ‘Progresses’, and ‘Holy War’, I read, with deep interest & pleasure, in early 134

1903–1914

years – when his masculine religious sincerity carried me away; but I do not know the “Grace-Abounding”.2 Your book was evidently needed to call readers’ attention to these almost now forgotten these masterpieces, in their way, & that ‘way’ is so greatly at a discount amongst non-conformists of these decadent days. The reading has made me think how strong men in the world’s vile ways have at times been turned into Prophets and praisers of high things. I do not know much of the sincerity of Charles IIs Rochester, but am led to suppose his later verses were honest?3 Then Tolstoy our modern prophet, was, as he has himself told us, was a more than lax in his morals before he could see clearly to point out the blindness of the road which worldlings tread at all times. It would seem, that before one can be effective in awakening the world’s mind, one must have stepped (if not “over shoes-over boots”) into every filthy puddle in the travelling ways of mankind. True it is, that the perceptive powers of natural-born saints, and poets, may have been able to understand the snares of life without themselves having been caught in the traps of bestiality? In St Paul – for all I know, it may have only been proud the pride of his own personality, and aristocratically Greek philosophy, which ranked him as a chief of sinners, before the real light shone into him?4 In any case, I’ve been struck that the mild men of honourably virtuous ways, have not seemed to have the stuff in them to open the eyes of the grovellers. For myself, I can only say that the ugliness of viciousness has been the chief guard against my having been a blackguard of the usual type of so-called honourable people. I did not mean, when starting this, to drop into homiletics! doubtless the force of Bunyan’s downright English restirred in me what I felt in reading him years ago. Your last chapter, on “Reflections” is, I think, altogether excellent in itself, and if people will now read it, much stirring in the minds of honest folk would be the outcome of your being over persuaded to writ[e] it. Beyond this, I think the whole of the book has been got together in a quite simple and direct way – with the use of excellent English, so far as my desperately ignorant self is able to give a reasonable opinion on such a point at all. I sincerely thank you for having written it. I shall be likely to reread parts of it, after which I’ll bring back or send the book to you – for lending out to someone else. I cannot just yet come & see you and Mary, but will do so as soon as I can. Yours as always | Philip Webb. BCL MR 10/25

1 William Hale White, John Bunyan (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1905). WHW, like Bunyan (1628–88), was born in Bedford. 2 The nonconformist Bunyan was imprisoned for twelve years for refusing to refrain from preaching. The autobiographical Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) appeared whilst he was in prison, and his great religious allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, composed during those years, was published some years after his release (1678). A second part would follow, as well as the allegorical The Holy War (1682).

135

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 3 John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester (1647–80), was a satirical poet (frequently scatological) and courtier to Charles II. The rich vein of his obscenities meant that his verse was heavily bowdlerized by the Victorians. 4 Born in Tarsus in Cilicia at about the start of the Common Era, Paul at first endeavoured to destroy Christianity in Jerusalem, but underwent a profound conversion experience whilst travelling to Damascus, and spent his remaining years in missionary work in Asia Minor and Greece, believing himself to be chosen by God to take the word to the gentiles.

956 • To George Washington Jack, 3 February 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 3 Feby 1905 My dear Jack I believe the finish to Brampton Ch’ tower has now been fairly got together for you to work on and correct: disabilities of body & mind have made me very slow in such unaccustomed work in these my present days.1 Indeed, I do not think further progress can be made with the drawings till you have been to Brampton, examined, and taken notes of what is actually in ex[is]tence of the base of the tower, for my memory is almost a blank.2 Of course, I have – after the old manner, worried the new design into shape by trifling alterations from time, which I am sure are so necessary, as one cannot make them on the spot as the work goes on. Your very neat and skilful drawing has been sadly disfigured with my rough handling, but you will be able to make the quarter scale drawings more workmanlike. Could you without inconvenience come and talk the matters over with me one day in next week, (or later on if so be) for there are lots of little things I could explain to you before you attack your part. If Saturday wd suit you in next week, it wd me? I find in 2 of my old notebooks details of two old belfreys [sic] I measured, wh’ have been a help to me in the arrangement of mine. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Lethaby was here the other day, & gave a lightening glance at the drawing, & said he liked it. If you see him, try & get his unvarnished opinion.3 V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 890, note 4. 2 ‘I shall go north as you say & take notes of the base of tower & other things. I look forward to this as a renewal of my ancient craft of bricks & mortar which I began to think was going into the limbo of forgetfulness.’ GWJ to PSW, 7 February 1905, V&A, AAD. GWJ had also been engaged to oversee some modifications at Rounton Grange in the North Riding of Yorkshire: ‘I have persuaded Sir Hugh Bell to treat me as a workman, & not deliver me over to the terrors of a fashionable dining

136

1903–1914 table – he proposes to lodge me in the old mansion where I shall have an old woman and some owls for company – much more in my way.’ For Rounton Grange, see Vol. I, Letter 73, note 5. 3 ‘I went to see P.W. on Saturday. He was splendid. He did so enjoy your visit, & said you had been so kind to his pore ignorance &c. You must run down again when you can. Have you seen the fully illustrated articles on Clouds & Tangley Manor in Country Life? He showed me his new Brampton Tower after a few moments of coyness, & I thought it the best of signs. He was hard at work chopping up a pear tree when I arrived.’ SCC to WRL, 30 January 1905, BL Add 52730, ff. 152–3.

957 • To Sydney Cockerell, 7 February 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 7 Feby ’05 My dear fellow. It never rains now, but it pours p.p cards – including the Zoological peculiars.1 That Penelope one of Pinturicchio’s is excellent, with its Raphaelle qualities in Ps free & unfettered way. I always liked him, & specially in the Borgia rooms in the Vatican.2 I’m thinking – & in spite of not unreasonable doubts, that the Judith must be a Botticelli, for the action of the lady’s maid has exactly the action of one of the figures in the ‘spring’.3 The drapery of the Judith is a miracle of excellence, & worked out with the thoroughness of A. Dürer – a very attractive picture. The print of Kenilworth is the best view I’ve seen of the much loved place; what a keep is that called ‘Cæsar’s’ – facing 4 square to the winds of earth.4 The Indian & African Elephants are helpful to recognition of the difference. The Russian (?) gala dressed folk is peculiar – You must tell me when here, what the Russn alphabet is formed from.5 I send back the Famagusta one. Now, moderate your P.P.C zeal, or I shall have to send you a check (sic)! If you so waste your substance, the Ld Mayoralty (gold chain & all) will go by default of lucre as a background. Tolstoy is always welcomed at Caxtons. I’ve lately read Hale White’s excellent book on John Bunyan, and was distinctly aware of a likeness in the morality, between them;6 in our modern effervescent Non conformitism, [sic] there is but small resemblance between it and that of Chs IInd time, when terrible tyranny could not quell real, whole souled zeal. H. White derived fm the Bedfordian non-cons, and he is well able to write on the subject.7 In his summing up of the Bunyan fire, there is a clear flavour of Tolstoy in it, & is really excellent. The Bunyan temper is nobler & less ferocious than the Cameronian kind – such as Walter Scott has made an unfading picture of (by the way, did you ever Read Scott?). I’ve dragged out of W.S.B. some submission to Scott’s genius, & powerful humanity. I had an excellent letter from the squire this morning, on his return fm the desert ramble, & though tired, he expresses the good effect it had in his spirits: it is that result of illness following Influenza, I am most curious about. He seems to have taken pleasantly my gibes at his ‘Clouds’ escapade.8 I assure you my blushing when it recurs to me, is rose colour – even now. Have never before been so held up to be justly shot at. I want to persuade the Squire to defer returning till after the 137

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1st week in April, the increased light from sun will soften the sea journey, & make England by then really spring-like. Hornby came, & we got on well together, at least I did, and must have nearly talked him off his long legs. He wd only have tea & trimmings, but Mrs Dick n roasted him a “Strad” apple,9 the first treated in that way, & lordly it looked, and was eaten cum-cheerfulness – as also some quince conserve. Geo: Jack comes to me on Sat: to talk, & receive face to face instructions abt the Cumbrian steeple top, as well as my laborious drawing. So, if you had dreamed of coming on that evening, please defer it; for I want solo performances in my companionship. Yours, as always | Philip Webb. You missed taking the Tournay book – I will send it to W.R.L. I’m looking for his crushing reply to my impudence. The Ink I spoke of is De la Rue’s, “Universal Writing Ink” – 6d a bottle with duplex stopper. Everett10 wd get it to Cliffds Inn for you to bring, from Flint’s, Fleet Street. What capital drawings & letter from Mrs Lytton.11 The orange tree looks if not an actual study from a tree itself, it must be an a close remembrance of one. Alfred Powell would like to see it as hint for his pottery. I return this letter. Would send back the Tolstoy on hint interview, on hint. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/63

1 See above, Letter 954, note 1. 2 See Vol. I, Letter 251, note 1. 3 He would have seen Botticelli’s allegorical painting, La Primavera (c. 1477–82) during his visits to the Uffizi in the winter of 1884–5. 4 The twelfth century keep at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire is known as Caesar’s Tower. 5 ‘These are not so very unlike the peasant costumes I saw in Tolstoy’s village.’ SCC to PSW, 31 January 1905, BL Add 52762, f. 41. This colour picture postcard shows peasants in national costume. 6 See above, Letter 955. 7 ‘His father was a pillar of the Old (Bunyan) Meeting-House, Mill Lane, in Bedford, the heartland of classic provincial dissent, while his mother’s family composed the complexly intermarried core of Colchester’s Lion Walk Congregational church.’ DNB. http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy. londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/36864?docPos=1; accessed 13/01/2015. 8 See next letter, and also above, Letter 953, note 6. 9 Allusion not identified, but perhaps ‘Strad’ denotes excellence (as in a Stradivarius violin). For Charles St John Hornby, see Vol. III, Letter 771, note 4. 10 S.S. Everett was EW’s assistant at Emery Walker Ltd, after the dissolution of the partnership with SCC. 11 Judith and Neville Lytton were in Egypt. ‘Good letters from Mrs Lytton & Miss Lawrence saying that WSB & Neville had gone into the desert for three days.’ CD, 3 February 1905.

138

1903–1914

958 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 16 February 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 16 February. 1905. My dear Blunt – no, “Squire”! If you can feel “relieved” – as told in your very pleasant letter of 28 Jany, by my being still in the land of the living, after being having been held up to the scorn of people in position, both you and your coadjutor at Clouds must be case-hardened! To think of my lying so comfortably low for so many years, and at last – by you, to be dragged into advertisement before the élite of society, passes the understanding of modesty.1 Apart from my last gasp – as above, your letter – writ with your own hand, touched me on the forgiving side of my nature. I was & am heartily glad that – so far, you had weathered the stress of Influenza. Now, before forgetting to say it, try and so arrange matters as not to return to this changeable climate before the first or second week in April, otherwise I feel sure you will risk too much. I told S.C.C this week with the hope of his alliance. He, as above, very kindly, & by authority I hope, sent me your “Fand,” printed in readable form for me to re-read, and repent at leisure for my former temerity of suggestion, the origin of which rashness probably arose from my stumbling through the maze of proof corrections, & to catch the itch for meddling.2 I suspect you have caught the jesting ‘itch’ from me, if you seriously propose for the future (or “next year”) to re-create yourself with “mundane frivolity” – after the manner of the other P.W,3 & this too on completing such a serious piece of work as the “Fand”. ’Tis all well enough for once to laugh till you cry over that really funny dog Bernard Shaw; (I don’t want to belittle him, for he can be serious on occasion) for Club land and the Theatre are well enough for the time of learning the world, but when one’s “sick & sorry” of its unhelpfulness, the story of the world, with the beauty and the ill of it, would be better medicine, but you must be chaffing me, & I do off [sic] the robe of Jeremiah! You began meditation in the forest, and I’m like to end it there, for its thought compelling natural graces have – (partly on account of the many lovely days here, & the really dry walking there at this time of the year) I really sweetly dreamed while turning your imagination inviting estate to the its [sic] best account. On one tramping in this wild, I got again to your Eyrie, and wished the key had been taken – it looked sweeter than an anchorite’s cave. A flight of larger birds attracted me, & I saw a flight of half some half a dozen black & grey – “Royston” Crows,4 in a state of amazement, & then a wheeling kestrel, the very image of b[u]oyant grace, accounted for the disturbance or pother. Also many footprints of deer were traceable, but never a sight of one.

139

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Newbuildings has sent many of excellent rabbits, & after the last three I moderated the kindly zeal of the housekeeper: my belly has been extended with such good & wholesome food. I’m really glad that you, with a strong literary turn, should have found G.B-Js “Memorials” to your mind.5 I have known her from just before her marriage, and was aware of her natural intelligence, but the skill of her arrangement surprised me – making of a biography (wh’ kind of book-reading I’m not much inclined to) an enchanted story, which gives me joy in my old age. I’m pleased with your noticing that she had been merciful – more than others! – towards this recluse.6 How good “Ned’s” saying & writings are! I’ve had many a crack with him in that fashion. Not to be forgotten by me is the quiet beauty of letting the curtain drop (or rather opening the window) without more ado at the end of all things for one mortal part of life. Here is a note of mundane matters. Arthur Caffin has called on me with a question anent a chimney at Crabbet house, on the older part, which refused to ‘draw’, being shy of its big neighbour on the newer building. It seems that Sir E. Ridley much inhabits that dressing room, and is an injured party.7 I got William Dench & cornered him, at the same time told him to take the grate out; when I saw the bowels I gave him intermediate instructions, & now await their doings, before trying to square the equation. I rather think you granted a not small mercy by not calling me an “eminent”; so now is the time to make or mar the more useful term of a craftsman.8 That big adjacent chimney may be too much for me, and ’tis a ticklish as well as a troublesome matter to put the lesser stack on stilts. I’ve warned Sir Edwd. Curiously enough, the inside of Crabbet had not before been seen in daylight. In my first year, Hoare, the gardener shewed me over the house lighted by bedroom candle;9 when there the other day I had a look round the chief rooms with Caffin, and was much surprised by the goodness of many of the pictures. I was told that the portrait of you in costume on an Arab was painted by Lady Anne. I thought it an excellent work of art, whether by an amateur or skilled artist.10 Also, there were very interesting portraits of Lady Anne & yourself evidently done some years ago. Indeed there are many interesting pictures in the house calling for quiet examination – which they must have when there is no-one in the house to disturb me. I have heard some hint that Neville Lytton proposed to paint subjects on the walls of the hall, and if that be true, it seems to me he would have a really fair field to work on. How well the place would look painted – say – somewhat after the manner of the Borgia rooms in the Vatican, done by Pinturrichio? [sic] Kindly remember me to Lady Anne, & your family guests – not forgetting Miss Lawrence – & believe me Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Please forgive the rambling dulness of this letter, & condone the poor pencilling. WSRO Blunt Box 59 140

1903–1914 1 See above, Letter 953, note 6. 2 ‘I am sending W.S.B’s Fand by his request.’ SCC to PSW, 29 January 1905, BL Add 52762, f. 40. See above, Letter 944. 3 He means PWY, as distinct from himself. 4 Alternative name for the hooded crow (Corvus cornix). 5 Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones (1904). 6 PSW is scarcely mentioned in GBJ’s Memorials, about which JWM commented somewhat obliquely 35 years later. He seems to have thought that PSW’s character was at times that of ‘a profoundly unhappy man’ (JWM to SCC, 5 April 1940, BL Add 52734 f. 97), but, rather dramatically, he also asserted that ‘There is much more which could not be said about Webb – things, in the Latin phrase, sacro digna silentio. The blinds were deliberately drawn down over that in Lady Burne-Jones’ Memorials – and also in my life of Morris. They will remain so.’ JWM to SCC, 12 April 1940, BL Add 52734 f. 98. 7 At this time, the judge and classical historian, Sir Edward Ridley (1843–1928), was a tenant at Crabbet Park. 8 The author of the Country Life article on Great Tangley Manor had insisted on describing PSW as an ‘eminent architect’, a term which he habitually mocked; at least WSB had avoided that solecism in his piece on Clouds. See above, Letter 954, note 7. 9 See Vol. III, Letter 733, note 4. 10 Anne Blunt’s painting of WSB on a rearing Arab stallion, Pharaoh, was done in the autumn of 1882. See Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 172 and plate 19.

959 • To George Washington Jack, 16 February 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 16 Feby ’05 My dear Jack Your letter is highly encouraging. Agree with you that the area of the tower will not be a difficulty impossible to get over, for, when you have measured the work, you can figure your drawings, for builders will readily take to those, instead of 2 feet ruling them. As to the face-width of the climbing buttress: I’ve forgotten how much more height there is from the top of existing tower work to the weather tabled offset of angle buttress just above the corbel coursing. If there is any considerable height more I would not mind gradually reducing the face width of the climber, from its width as a[t] present – say by ¾rs of inch in that height. The pinnacle too – with the pilaster support of it might also be a little enlarged, without, I think making a difficulty with the engrailed1 turn up of the gable, & on the parapet sides? The English (how different to the French) were always making mistakes, and correcting them by genius into an improvement – let us therefore be geniusses [sic] too! In any case I would like to avoid the little jump on the water falling at foot of octagon cant2 at your 6.6." Glad you don’t quarrel with the roof construction.3 No, I mean the lead of the tower roof to rest only on battens,4 for the condensation of moisture is less, if the air gets underside of the lead. You see 10 lbs lead laid at 141

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

the angle of 45o on the battens, which would have only some "2½ space between them, would not drop in to such a narrow pocket – at all event perceptibly. The Girl, is Alice Dickinson. " Boy, Reginald. They both take rather kindly to drawing.5 Am glad too you so kindly take brightly to this tower work, for it eases my mind as to drawing you into the matter. Yours &c | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Engrailed’: indented; serrated. 2 ‘Cant’: an angled corner to a tower or steeple, whether of six or (as here) eight sides. 3 ‘I find the construction of roof works out capitally, & the gutters are coming well with regard to falls.’ GWJ to PSW, 14 February 1905, V&A, AAD. 4 ‘Did you mean boarding on Main part of roof. I suppose so, battens only on the Spire.’ 5 ‘By the by. What are the names of the little boy and girl. I want to put it on their pencils.’

960 • To Sydney Cockerell, 21 February 1905 Pencil Caxtons, Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 21 Feby 1905. My dear fellow. Your kindly offices – in number, are only equalled by that of P. postcards, which are steadily mounting to 365! Do not send more of the heavenly Robbia babes, for I have some got at Florence when I was there – tho’ P.P.Cs were not then in evidence. I am particularly pleased by the Bellini ‘Loreduno’, [sic] a portrait almost ranking with a Holbein – but how different in style.1 But of your pack of cards, more when we meet on Saty, Mrs Dickn expecting you, if M.S.S permit. Emery Walker was here last Sat: & was still the E.W. His Lieutenant Everett forwarded the ink, thanks to your persuasion. I wish I could write with as efficient brevity as he did, 3 short lines & all telling. I was disturbed by E.Ws news, that W.S.B was not so well again. In the letter I wrote him, (posted midday Thurs:) there was urgent petition that he should not cross to England before the first week in April at earliest, but like so many good fellows – myself amongst them – he may be obstinate! Had Jack here on Sat. 11th – taking away the Brampton new design with which he graciously agreed; now he is attacking the drawings energetically, so he has writ since. My foresworn profession dogs my steps: Caffin begged assistance of me to try & cure a smoky chimney at Crabbet, which bothers Sir E. Ridley, and there are doubts if my genius will lay the evil spirit by tentative efforts. The chimney above roof of old part of house is thwarted by a much loftier & bigger 142

1903–1914

one on the newer block, and increasing the height of the lower one would be a troublesome & expensive affair. I go to try it tomorrow – & if, as this evening, there be a N.E gale on, it will be a trial of the doctoring for failure or success. G.B-J has written me (without my having mentioned it) very sensibly on the matter of T.M.R, anent his chronicles: my answer to her was, that now I will talk the matter over with her, as I must go there soon, to keep her fm coming here in this trying weather for her constitution.2 I’m very well, sailing on even keel, for me, and am certainly stronger in the non sinning parts of me. Of course I forgot to ask E.W to take back the Tournay book; you must do this, as also the blessed little ‘book of hours’. W. Hale White’s ‘Bunyan’ – is excellent, but I ‘have ma doots’ if it would fit in with the great Russian’s temper of mind; also, that top of his system must, at this terrible moment be on the strain. The Tzar could truly say to him, that ‘the infernal (as it is) hubbub of this sad moment is all your doing’, and Tys answer wd rightly be, ‘nay brother the evil time was clearly evident years ago, & my warning was but brotherly.’ Yours as always | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/64

1 The portrait by Giovanni Bellini of Doge Leonardo Loredan (1501; National Gallery, London). 2 See above, Letter 952, note 2. SCC had visited GBJ at Rottingdean during the weekend of 14–15 January. ‘I was able to discuss with her the question of her retention of Rooke’s notes of EB-J’s conversations, in such a way that without hurting any feelings I think they will be handed over to Mr R, that is to say the typewritten copy of as many as were not burnt a few weeks ago at G B-J’s instigation.’ CD, 15 January 1905.

961 • To Mary Jones Walker, 28 February 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 28 Feby 1905 Dear Mrs Walker. Thank you kindly for your really able, & pretty verses, dedicated to your (as I hope & believe) happy home for migration when London’s atmosphere is found to be too injurious to health, & cheerfulness.1 I am delighted with the thought of you & Dorothy being mistress and maid to your household selves, and shall question Emery as to the success of your presentation of wholesome food, when he takes the “weekend” at your table. And so you have my inseparable friends, Geese & a Common. I’m never tired of studying both, though Surrey rather than Sussex is famed for them.2 If Miss Roberts should be one of the entertained in your Earthly Paradise, I am sure she would be helped in her professional practice by a band of musical sound at 143

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

hand;3 for to me, the tunefulness of geese is remarkably that, of what in orchestra’s [sic] is called “woodwind”. When not actually blowing their reed trumpets, the mere conversation of them, (I’m convinced that they do converse) is melodious and inspiring. S.C. Cockerell was with me on Saturday, when he too expressed a delight at your seven stanzas! With kind remembrance to Dorothy. | Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. If I ought to have returned the neatly written copy of verses, will you kindly tell me by postcard. Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 EW had rented a cottage (3 Croswell Cottages, Smarts Heath) in Worplesdon, Surrey as an out-oftown retreat, particularly for his wife and daughter. A number of Mary Walker’s poems survive amongst her papers at 7 Hammersmith Terrace. 2 He was probably remembering the weeks he spent in 1888 recuperating on a farm near Guildford, a visit which he had anticipated keenly. ‘But I do look forward to the geese on the common – or linked commons – of those parts.’ See Vol. II, Letter 326, and the letters to GWJ which followed. 3 When SCC visited the Walkers at Worplesdon on 26 February, Grace Roberts was a fellow guest. ‘Walker met me in heavy rain, but it was very pleasant on his common. Grace Roberts was there & sang all the songs I like best to my great solace.’ CD.

962 • To Sydney Cockerell, 6 March 1905 Pencil; year added by Cockerell Caxtons. Worth, | by Crawley. | Sussex. 6 Mar: for 7th post My dear fellow. Your most helpful kindness is only equalled by the energy with which you carry out your schemes for the help of others, (am not now thinking of myself, for – bad as my memory is, I never am forgetful of my own benefits) and at the present time I’m afraid you have on hand one of the most difficult objects in view – namely, the helping through the doleful Kelmscott trouble.1 G.B-J mentioned the matter, now so pressing, in her last letter. Till you have anchored W.S.B in England again there is little that can be done for Mrs Morris. You cheered me by speaking of Hornby’s fitness as your colleague:2 I am such an incapable fellow – even in fending for myself, that there is little or nothing I can think of which has not occurred to you? At present I am very busy, for me! in dealing with the Brampton work preparing for Jack. I’m writing to ask him to come here on Saturday, to hold conference on particulars of nicety – wh’ would take too much of writing for me to tackle in that way. 144

1903–1914

I have had all your last picture cards – and that curious piece of German 15. c work: but you must stay your beneficence for a while, or I shall be uneasy in mind. The Laurentian acct is a clear one as to W.S.Bs condition, but must confess that the changeableness of an English spring for him now, seems alarming.3 I do rejoice in his liking to have the Lyttons about him – this being so, they will be real buffers! I return Miss Ls letter. Yours as always | Philip Webb. Am expecting G.B-J to send me word to go to R’dean, as soon as she is free in household matters. At that time we are sure to have a talk over the T.M.R matter. Forgive this hasty scrawl.4 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/68

1 JEM had first stayed in Burford in Oxfordshire, about 22 miles southeast of Cheltenham, in 1901, and in her later years her mother was increasingly drawn there. She would contemplate leaving Kelmscott Manor altogether for Burford. In the spring of 1905, she decided to let Kelmscott, and after considering other options would take a house in Burford. ‘I think I have let Kelmscott furnished for Mrs Morris for three or four months from May.’ SCC to PSW, 9 March 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/66. The possible tenant for Kelmscott was Lord Lytton, whom SCC had met at Queen Anne’s Gate on 3 March. When SCC married in 1907, the honeymoon was spent in Burford ‘where we stayed in great comfort at the Old Hospital lent to us by Mrs Morris’. CD, 4 November 1907. 2 In 1903, Charles St John Hornby succeeded Robert Proctor as SCC’s fellow-trustee to the Morris estate. ‘I have found Hornby a most business-like & conscientious colleague. He is a man that I get to like more & more.’ CD, 1904. 3 See below, Letter 964, note 9. 4 ‘From what T.M.R. said in the letter that I read you I judge that the question of the notes has been satisfactorily settled & that they are back in his possession. In anything that you say about them I hope you will not forget that they are his property, made by the labour of his hands and memory, and that he generously placed them at Lady B-J’s disposal for the purposes of her work, & that she kept them for five years whilst she was busy on it – and that the conversations to which objection was taken have been burnt. So that on all grounds T.M.R. may very reasonably claim that the time has come for him to have them back – and I think Lady B-J now sees that clearly.’ SCC to PSW, 1 March 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/65.

963 • To George Washington Jack, 7 March 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 7 March. 1905. My dear Jack. Ah, my kindly old (middle aged?) friend, what a nuisance you will find me in this – as well as other – combinations of our talents! If (??) I were a nuisance to you on the garden side of our G[ray’s]. I[nn]. chambers, what must it be now? Would it be too much to ask you – if engagements allowed – to come & sift the items in that letter of yours on points in the Brampton matter, instead of my laboriously writing 145

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

answers?1 If not altogether, for you, out of the question, could you come on Saty in this week, not later than you did last time? Mem: I really must pay your rail fares, or my conscience will be an uncomfortable companion in my solitary walks. Perhaps you may remember my ‘ways & manners’ of old, in getting my work as nearly right as I could make it? Well, now I blunder knee deep, & your excellent india-rubber not yet rubbed away has a busy life of it. Still I do see improvements undoubted in the laborious efforts made till now. Indeed, for mason’s work, in drawings, you must work all the stones on the drawing board – as one cannot do it on site of the building. You see – or can guess – that I can only manage to work for 1½ or 2 hours at a bout, when the carcase proclaims ill usage – and rest is imperative. I’ve been fighting to give the pinnacle2 greater body, &c, &c, &c – and other things more reasonableness. I’ve told S.C. Cockerell of this letter to you, for then he will know, & tell E. Walker that we have our heads together on Sat: that is, if you can quite conveniently come? Yours always | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 GBJ had written on 22 February. 2 i.e. the spire to the Brampton tower.

964 • To Sydney Cockerell, 15 March 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 15 March 1905 My dear fellow. From an expression of ‘happiness’ in your last, I’m thinking you – at this moment, are living by the next wicket gate to the Garden of Eden – dieted on a mess of M.S.S? of wh’ food to you spare A.P. a generous serving!1 Long be it so with both – happily such stimulant calls for no ‘pledge’ of ‘health,’ nor of renunciation; my kindest benediction to your boon companion. The letters, in both of your last letters, of the S. Obeyd hospital, are none too satisfactory – indeed they appeal to me as really disappointing, I only keep my feeling steady by remembering the acknowledged results of Influenza, & that its acknowledged effects – in serious attacks, are tryingly lasting.2 Will be cautious if the ‘squire’ is ever my guest again. There wd be two dangerous manners for me; a long drawn sympathetic face, or a jesting-unacceptable effort. Your father’s letter is a remarkably pretty one, making one feel defrauded by not having known him.3 From his description of Ben Ridding, it does seem as if it might be a service to Mrs Morris; for, as she wd have to keep much to her room, to be able to drop down on any pleasant companionship – when her sole-own was 146

1903–1914

too much for her, has a promising look. Also, I agree that the possible letting of Kelmscote, rather than deciding to give it up altogether, would be a wise way of tempting better fortune. As for dear Jenny, one must hope that the dulling effect of the medicine may be a blessing at such a time. Ah me, one does not see which way to look for a reasonable peace of mind. T.M.R’s letter is in his usual manner, ie, excellent: very just and thoughtful of F.M.Bs work seen at Liverpool [sic]; the good little man has eyes and a heart.4 I tax my ill memory, whence no answer comes, about the “Hireling Shepherd” – no recollection of it whatever.5 I had a quite quiet & pleasant talk with G.B-J last Friday; amongst other items the T.M.R ‘chronicling’ passed off well; her garden was shewing a pretty coming on of Springtime, and the memorable surfaces & lines of the Downs were still friendly to my wide awake eyes: the day was splendid till I got back to Brighton, when there was a ‘sea change’ since the morning, and rain began; my walk up here was under a sluice of water: parts of garmenting were changed by the fire in this crib of books, & no ill effects came. Since then – recurring storms, with wind which now & again wagged the timbers of the sanctuary, but did not keep me awake long. G. Jack came on Sat: quite ready to enjoy his outing, and very eagerly willing to take the ungrateful burden of Brampton finish off my hands, now that various points had been made clear in my aged efforts in design, &c. Luckily he has a quite competent nephew to fill the place of Clerk of works on the ground,6 & what is hopefuller, he is ready for the fray there. The deluge of P. post-cards still pours; unluckily the gale of Sunday broke the ribs of my umbrella, so there is no defence to my susceptibility! How wonderfully well the Holbein ‘Ambassadors’ comes out in small; if ever there was a wielder of the paint brush, & a chronicler of countenances with meaning in them, he was the man. The Millais ‘vale of rest’ (with the ‘Blind girl’ remembered) were the two things of his best – taking the taste out of one’s month of the Isabella.7 What a landscape behind Botticelli’s Venus! The magnificent Peter’s visage makes amends for otherwise a tame picture of G. Bellini – but the other Virgin, Babe & Landscape, more than makes amends.8 The Ghirlandajo is a beauty, and so on, as Carlyle might have said. Hope you won’t have to go the weary way of wheels & water to help the travellers home, tho’ go you willingly would if need were.9 Adieu for this while | fm Philip Webb. Tell A.P, his little pot wears well. I send all the letters back, with the hope the post won’t fail – at all events with that of your father. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/69

1 On 11 March, SCC went to Cambridge for several days in order to help arrange the display of manuscripts from the collection of Henry Yates Thompson, about which Thompson was to deliver the annual series of Sandars lectures at the Fitzwilliam Museum. SCC stayed with Professor Thomas McKenny Hughes (1832–1917) and his wife Mary Weston at ‘Ravensworth’, their house

147

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

2 3

4

5 6 7 8 9

in Brooklands Avenue, Cambridge; Alfred Hoare Powell, who was overseeing some repair works at Queen’s College, was a fellow guest. ‘Alfred Powell is under the same roof, & we are very happy.’ SCC to PSW, 13 March 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/67. See note 10. ‘I believe a Hydropathic place would be the best thing for Mrs Morris who needs a thorough change of ideas and surroundings. I enclose a letter of my father’s that I sent to Lady B-J to show her what it is like. My mother’s temperament was rather like Mrs Morris’s & nothing did her so much good as a visit to Ben Rhydding.’ SCC to PSW, 9 March 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/66. See also above, Letter 962, note 1. Ben Rhydding, near Ilkley, was known for its hydrotherapy treatment. PSW means Manchester, rather than Liverpool. ‘I also send Rooke on Madox Brown &c, so that you may see that he is lively, in spite of Manchester blackness.’ SCC to PSW, 9 March 1905. Rooke was making a copy of a John Everett Millais’s Autumn Leaves (1855–6; City Art Gallery, Manchester) which was positioned close to Ford Madox Brown’s Work (1852–65) and William Holman Hunt’s The Hireling Shepherd (1851). ‘In the Gallery when I am doing my Millais I go from it to “Work” on the one side & to the “Hireling Shepherd” on the other, (to compare the three), each a protest in its way against the Worlds Wrong, with Millais’ pure piece of contented Evensong between them. The superiority of Millais’ intuitive gift & what Ruskin calls fineness of artistic nature cannot fail to be striking, as the difference between the points of a needle & of a bee’s sting seen under a microscope.’ Rooke to SCC, 23 February 1905, BL Add 52748, f 221. See previous note. James F.S. Jack was the son of GWJ’s brother, James Robertson Jack (b. 1857). For PSW’s views of Millais as a painter, see Vol. III, Letters 621–2. Presumably he means Bellini’s The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr (c. 1507; National Gallery, London) and Madonna of the Meadow (c. 1500; National Gallery, London). ‘I have written to Brindisi to say I will come out if wanted. I hope yesterday’s boisterousness was not repeated in the Mediterranean & that WSB will not be laid up on the journey home.’ SCC to PSW, 13 March 1905. WSB had been unwell in Egypt since November. On the return journey, he was again struck down with influenza, and on 17 March SCC left for Venice to help bring him back. ‘I was with him in Venice for seventeen days, after which, as he showed no sign of improvement, I helped to bring him to England, arriving on April 9.’ CD, 1905.

965 • To George Washington Jack, 3 April 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 3 Ap: ’05 My dear Jack. When thinking over your work for Brampton, and the making of estimate, it occurred to me to hunt up my old Acct book of buildings, and I found there, that the cost of the Ch: according to my certified accounts, that the total for the Messrs Beaty’s work, who took the whole of the contract, was £6,172-0-0. Of course this included the part of tower already built.1 There would be a small easement to the builders estimate in taking down the old materials and using such as were fit for the new work. This wd be small, as the cost of pulling down & cleaning the useable materials would amount to nearly say, 2 thirds of the value to their worth. The old modern church was much out of repair, very slightly built, of the old ‘meeting house’ type, and did not cover anything like the ground the present church does. There are some small remains of the really old church, where the Cemetery is. These facts I think will help you in calculating the 148

1903–1914

cost of finishing the tower, for you might take the cube contents of the church and compare it with the cube of the upper part of tower to be built. The 6,172£ is, I fancy, considerably less than what you heard of the cost of church. Perhaps the cost of windows was added. In any case the amount I send you is the fact as to cost. Yours | Philip Webb V&A, AAD

1 For the original tendering process for St Martin’s, Brampton, and the award of the contract to Beaty Brothers, see Vol. I, Letter 99, note 1.

966 • To George Washington Jack, 3 April 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 3 April ’05 My dear Jack. Yours of yesterdy recd midday today. Glad you are able to get hints fm Weir.1 Did you ask him about weights of lead he has been using? I’m rather inclined to do without quantities, unless the local builders would object to taking off their own. As to importing a builder from Stamford or elsewhere, I know the Cambrians are jealous, also, they really know the ways of working their own materials, and are handy in using them. Also, they have some inducement for moderate estimating, & would wish to keep the local trade. Of course, you might use the argument that you wd prefer local people doing the work, but that you wd not bind yourself not to import a builder if they did not give you fair estimates. I could easily substitute plain capitals for the two carved ones. The price you put down – 7/10/- each would be excessive, unless you did them yourself. A rough model from you in plaster, should be carved – & by an enterprising mason, for 30/or 2£ each, which wd give you 8£ for the models. This is merely a recommendation; 30/- each for top of pinnacles would be enough, for effectiveness of design in all simplicity would be better than able, but ineffective carving: chopped-out, of the right kind wd be all that we should call for. My stupid drawing of the capital to belfrey wws was very misleading (lumps and drill holes are what is fitting). By “terminals”, I’m supposing you mean the ‘mask’ corbels? I think your £80 for the collected items might stand. Weir shd give me his address, tell him laughingly! he always has mine!! Also, tell him this. White, either as whitewash, or distemper, inside a building, shd be pure white, for the light is modified. But for outside work, it should be toned with some raw umbre, or it will look raw & cold. I’ve found this an unfailing fact.2 149

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

You will have by now my letter posted midday today. Yours | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Weir was here the other night and I got a lot of valuable information from him with reference to lime cement bricks &c &c he gave me the name of a lead merchant in Birmingham who does the casting and one in London. He was strongly of opinion that quantities should be got out. I was averse to this at Brampton, but if you also think it should be so I shall press the committee the other way (their own way of thinking originally). Weir says he knows a man at Stamford who would think nothing of the distance.’ GWJ to PSW, 2 April 1905, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘Weir says he is making a good job of West Ham Tower, he is going to whitewash it all over unless they hold him down until the scaffold is struck. What a picture for the West Hammers, these black old tower gleaming white against the fogbank of chemical vapours.’ The SPAB was involved in repairs to the tower of the parish church of All Saints, West Ham, in Essex, WW being the supervising architect. Work was completed at the end of 1905.

967 • To Sydney Cockerell, 7 April 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 7 April ’05 My dear fellow. Will only write a few words to express real thankfulness for the continued flow of P. postcards, giving me on them such news as were possible of the good ‘squires’ condition from day to day.1 The last card, April 4, which reached me yesterday, (Gentile Bellini’s St Mark’s front) with the most cheering note of health-promise yet received. This was amplified in the best way by Mrs Wyndham who came to gossip, and very kindly (tho: without leave so to let do) let me read – an excellent letter in sound handwriting, wh’ was proof possible in the way of relief to us. I’ve not at any time told my neighbours of these bits of information, not even Mrs Dickinson, thinking it better that any information – if given at all – should come from Arthur Caffin. I know the home folk here are very sympathetic. If the Squire would care to listen, I rated Mrs Wyndham soundly for her “blazing indiscretion” of the ‘society’ paper;2 she shielded herself under the wing of the Squire, wh: seems the usual way of culprits: but women at all events should guide themselves better from long experience of ‘scrapes’. T.M.R sent me a fine 2 sheet letter of his experiences & doings at Manchester, all of which was very good reading. He, I think, has a fine turn of perception, and criticism, the latter always fair & humane. You seem to have let him in for a useful piece of work much to his mind; the good fellow is evidently happy over it, and the kindly sympathy & other friendliness from his hosts. From what he writes, and from my own belief (from photos:) these wall paintings, on the whole, are the best representatives of his masterly work: the good old man.3 150

1903–1914

The weather in these parts has been more than fine, – about alternate days of sun, & cloud – wind mostly fm S. to W to N. and mostly keen, just suitable for spring tillage; the grass – at last – has begun to grow & show green; it seems as if it would be rather a late than early season, wh’ to me seems less risky. After the heavy spring-filling rains, wh’ have washed the roads, my walking has been very pleasant – & in spite of the running threads of little & larger streams, the ‘going’ in the forest was possible as well as delightful. I feel lucky in that my belly is not in my legs! My watching of the Arabs at exercise is almost day by day, & their condition not disappointing, considering that green food is not yet theirs, and their winter coats necessarily – like mine – are much out at elbows. There are a pair of greys & a pair of chestnuts now getting quite handy in double harness – and I think Holman and his helps are very energetic. The Squire will be sure of my keen feeling and good hopes, but please tender my thanks to Miss L[awrence] for her unfailing labours. Yrs as before, | Philip Webb. I say nothing here about pack of cards [of] ancient picture[s] but will hold forth when I see you. I thought Mrs Wyndham looked, & evidently was much better than I had expected. We had a rattling good gossip. Surely it is needless for me to attempt any expression of my thankfulness to you – but ask you to condone witless blunders and the evil spelling of these lines. I get worse & worse in both ways as the 20th cent: goes on. On re-reading, I see your special mercy in the lovely long letter of the 3rd inst has not so much as been mentioned, tho: ’twas in my head all the time – rattling about in its half filled space. The letter is full of interesting things for me to think over. There is no fool like an old fool, & no fool like old Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/72

1 SCC was in Venice. ‘I get out for an hour or two in the mornings between the doctor’s visit & lunch – & Miss Lawrence rests a bit in the afternoons if there is nothing to keep her going that I cannot attend to. We thus get through the day well enough.’ SCC to PSW, 3 April 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/70. 2 The article about Clouds in Country Life. See above, Letter 953, note 6. 3 See also above, Letter 964, note 4. By the time that he wrote to PSW from Manchester, Rooke had seen Madox Brown’s series of twelve murals inspired by scenes from Manchester’s past (1879–93). He seems to have continued to value Work more highly than he did those. ‘But though “Work” at first sight is a Kaleidoscope rather than a picture, & tho’ one of its main figures is a pot boy with a cut-open cheek & an arm like a pudding bag, it proves on examination to be one of the most astonishing achievements that we know, of late times. Perhaps it may be more so in the things packed away in it than in those displayed, but it is surprising after having seen it so often how the eye is caught by one point after another as it travels all over the picture & finds nothing put in without intention or that does not bear on the feeling of the whole.’ Rooke to SCC, 23 February 1905, BL Add 52748, f 221.

151

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

968 • To Sydney Cockerell, 17 April 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 17 Ap: ’05 My dear fellow. Your letter of the 14th was very welcome – following the out of all count P.P. cards, which kept me off the fidget. On the whole, things have gone better than could have been counted on. Even your continuous attention – with its hindrance to work, has some real consolation, for the lord knows what, & how much worse things must have been had you not smoothed things (as I know how) for the patient & his lorn-lone nurse? As to early prospect of dependable convalecence, [sic] little can be sure – for I learn, from my medico brother, that “Malta fever” is hard to be got rid of.1 The son of an old patient of his has a son in the Navy, & his last station was at Malta – where he got the fever, was sent to hospital there, thence to the naval hospital at Plymouth, then invalided home to his father on a healthy spot above Welwyn; then to the young fellow’s brother, a parson, on high gd near Romsey. To London for examination at the Admiralty, where he was granted 2 months more leave, and my brother says “six months won’t cure him”. Of course W.S.Bs attack may not have been so severe, and we may hope his recovery will be quicker. In any case, this example is not a matter for the patient to know – & possibly the young Lieutenant may be a reckless dog – as is navy’s want, though he is accounted a lad with wits, & a good fellow. Good nursing stands for so much, that Miss L[awrence’]s labours may have been all to the shortening of the illness. Putting aside the hindrance to you, the roundabout journey must have been not a little additional teaching to you, with an active energy – surprising to the indolent me – I know a good deal of, & which missed no opportunity of booking something more? E.W was with me on Sat: in good feather, & we went at it ting-tongue. Amongst other items, we considered the M & Co transfer – and he will tell you what we thought about it, and what might just possibly be done under the conditions of the change.2 G.B-J has written me fm Kelmscott and I confess the news has touched me dolefully. Still, I think the lodging for a while in town promises easement. If you do go to New Bgs, and can manage to break journey here, do so; but on no acct to hinder yourself in any way in getting home to some work, for yourself!3 For myself, little can be said on the grumble side. The spring has touched me up, certainly, but without mischievous result: the back & belly are, as is their wont, but there is more strength, & I carry them better. You see, spring time is touching, and even my ancientness, when watching larks in the heavens, makes me long to try a flight. Weve had days too, wh: stir the marrow in the bones! and I’ve had another go or two in the forest. W.R.L has been tenderly helpful in his letters to me. I wish I could drug his nervous system, which evidently wears him away; he can’t relax. I have a feeling too, that efforts – doubly diligent, have told on you, 152

1903–1914

and that amends have to be made on the strain undergone. Make them, if you possibly can, & quiet[en] Yours as before, | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/75

1 SCC had returned with PSW to England, and was staying in WSB’s London house in Chapel Street, Belgrave Square. ‘Very satisfactory today. Fever is proved to be “Malta fever” – & patient is going on well.’ SCC to PSW, 13 April 1905, BL Add 52762, f 51. Brucellosis, which has several common names, including Malta fever, is a bacterial disease in livestock that can infect humans, usually those working with animals. 2 ‘Walker tells me that the Smiths have sold the business of Morris & Co to a small Company of which W.A.S. Benson is one of the directors. I hope this may lead to an improvement in some departments.’ SCC to PSW, 3 April 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/70. Since WM’s death, the company had continued trading under Frank and Robert Smith, the brothers who had managed the Oxford Street retail premises, with John Henry Dearle managing the Merton Abbey works. The Smiths retired in 1905, and on the Firm’s fiftieth anniversary its new management, under managing director Henry Currie Marillier (1865–1951), wrote of the changed title to Morris & Company, Decorators, Ltd. ‘This, however, has involved no internal changes, and no deviation whatever from the old traditions and methods of manufacture, which continue as before, under the same direction as in William Morris’s lifetime. If anything it may perhaps be claimed that the supervision of colours and the preservation of standards is stricter than before, and that several beautiful designs and patterns of early date which had fallen into disuse have been revived and are once more obtainable.’ A Brief Sketch of the Morris Movement and of the Firm founded by William Morris . . . (London: 1911), pp. 59–60. 3 ‘At 12.45 left for Clapham Junction & went down to see Philip Webb at Caxtons. His plum tree in blossom, & happily some blue sky as a background at about 4.30. P.W. was very well. We had, as usual, a very good talk & he walked down to the station with me.’ CD, 22 April 1905.

969 • To William Weir, 1 May 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 1. May. ’05 Dear William Weir Yours got this morning. Not “guilty” – is my sentence, for experience alone would tell me you have had plenty to do, other than writing letters not really called for, and I depend on your questioning me on any point in your work for the Society, and only then, if you consider me as representing its committee. I shall be glad to see you either on Friday or Saturday in this week, (say Friday – for someone else might be here on Saturday). Of course the article in the local news was read with interest, but I look for more particular information by word of mouth, and would be glad of any photographs & drawings you may have, to make things clearer than you may have done since your last explanation of items for securing the very ‘touch & go’ Coln St Denys Ch’1 – so, kindly bring any such 153

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

memoranda. I also wish to speak of your talks with Geo: Jack, anent his work – or promise of it, at Brampton, Carlisle – for there are points on which I may be very particular about. G.J. is away – or was to be, in Yorkshire at this time, and doubtless he will have something to say on the same subject when he is next here. Yours truly | Philip Webb. I’ve heard of your goings on at East Ham, (E. or West, I dont remember which?)2 If you can, send me a postcard as to the train you would come by on Friday. SPAB W-W 83

1 See above, Letter 939, note 2. 2 See above, Letter 966, note 2.

970 • To William Richard Lethaby, 16 May 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 16 May. 1905 My dear fellow. I hardly think any building seen by me in France on my visits gave me more pleasure, mingled with interest in its singularly expressive qualities, unhelped by what may well be called ornament, than the big church at Mantes. Our boat was leaking, & had to be tarred, wh’ hung us up for a Sunday.1 Its wide embracing characteristic, & general appearance of gaunt amplitude, making it look a very Noah’s ark of the church, touched one’s imagination. Do but think of that long line of unbroken ridge, & area of diapered tiling, with arcsbuttant so finely direct in their office2 – with their sky-line slopes at the exact angle to satisfy desire in supporting the apse, and the twin towers with their total change from the horizontal in their lines, &c, &c? Some change has been made in these tower lines since I saw them in 1858, for then there were slabs of sloping stone, cut with escallopes on the upper surface, which leant against the nervously slight close girdle of shafting on the top stage but one; you may have noticed in the photo print some excrescence on these shafts about a third of the way up. It was at Mantes that I learned the advantage for stiffening by the saddle vaulting over the triforium, &c. Thankg you truly for sending me the picture, but unless you have another copy, I will return this, for I’m only a poor amateur now. Since getting your letter, I’ve looked again at the careful drawing I have of the Westmr vaulting, which has all the coursing of stone correctly set down, and I can see no reason for thinking the diagonal rib would take less equable pressure on it than the webbing would give in the French way: practically, all would depend on the steadiness of the counterfort direct against the main rib line. In the one buttressing on my drawing there has been some mutilation in counterfort pier,3 and a slight 154

1903–1914

giving-way happened, wh’ has unevened the curves of ribs, but does not seem to have effected [sic] the spandril filling4 – if it had this too wd have been given as with the dotted line of deflection? After all I can say, my experience of vaulting construction has only been from looking closely at the parts standing, & broken in the ruined Abbeys in Engd. Anything not quite worthless from me on such a point, could only come from a craftsman-like feeling for the fitness of observed ways of doing things never done by myself. I see fm the drawing that the pocket of the vault of Westr must have been built solid from the shaft capital to about half the length of the ribs. I wish I could plant a staggerer on your head piece with facts or scientific demonstration,5 but there is nothing of either about this house. The name of the Shropshire church, is ALBERBURY, ’tis 9 miles w. of Shrewsbury, & a mile or so from a wriggle in Severn, & ½ mile from between the marches of Shropsh’ & Montgomer[y]sh’.6 Weale’s dictionary gives the Alien Priory as Benedictine, foundd temp Henry I.7 ’Tis of quite moderate parish Ch’ size, of plain character of 14th cent: but is markedly of French characteristic quality. I noticed this before learning it was of ‘Alien’ foundation, and as it struck me then, I think now it was more certainly built by French masons, than that Westr was. Well, you know what my reputation was & is, so that I will stake it, that Westminster was built by English masons, there now, nothing can be fairer than that? O dear me, what a long winded scrawl, you could have indicated as much in a dozen lines of writ. Yrs Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 2 3 4

See above, Letter 911. ‘Arc-boutant’: flying buttress (Fr). ‘Counterfort’: a buttress or projecting piece of masonry to support or strengthen a wall (OED). Spandril: ‘The triangular space between the outer curve of an arch and the rectangle formed by the mouldings enclosing it, frequently filled in with ornamental work’ (OED). 5 The sense here is to land a knock-out blow. PSW may have been thinking of Dick Swiveller, in The Old Curiosity Shop. ‘ “Quilp offers me this place, which he says he can insure me,” resumed Dick after a thoughtful silence, and telling of the circumstances of his position, one by one, upon his fingers; “ ‘Fred, who, I could have taken my affidavit, would not have heard of such a thing, backs Quilp to my astonishment, and urges me to take it also -- staggerer, number one! My aunt in the country stops the supplies, and writes an affectionate note to say that she has made a new will, and left me out of it – staggerer, number two. No money; no credit; no support from Fred, who seems to turn steady all at once; notice to quit the old lodgings – staggerers, three, four, five, and six!”.’ (ch 34) 6 The twelfth-thirteenth century parish church of St Michael and All Angels, Alberbury with Cardeston, in Shropshire, was restored in 1902-3 by the Shrewsbury architect, Arthur Edward LloydOswell (1850–1930). 7 John Weale’s A Dictionary of Terms used in Architecture (London: Crosby Lockwood and Co., 5th edition, 1876) only provides a generic definition. An Alien priory was a religious establishment whose controlling mother house was situated elsewhere (usually in France). Alberbury Priory, established in 1230, had come under the control of the French Grandmontine order.

155

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

971 • To George Washington Jack, 17 May 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 17 May for 18th post. My dear Jack. Your two parcels came this aftern and I have had time to look into the matter on the various sheets in the way of a beginning of their study – your letter helping toward this. I think the “executive Committee’s” report a business-like one, and doubtless it was a relief to it that the lowest tender was within their amount of actual and promised subscriptions.1 I suppose the newspapers got at some of the people, & published the total collected, which was not good management. Looking at the accepted tender, it seems to me to be quite high enough, and that there shd be no compunction in insisting on the work being done in quite the best possible way; when you write to the committee perhaps you might state this to be my decided opinion. You see, the greater part of the materials are so handy, & Carlisle is only 12 miles off, with a little branch rail to Brampton itself. Carlisle too is a Port, so there is both Rail & sea carriage. I had a good talk with Weir, but I don’t think he quite grasped my point, at first, that the horizontal tie of cement built bond, was not the same as repairing an irregular settlement and counteracting actual fracture, and decomposition of the body of walling. My purpose is twofold: 1st, for horizontal tenacity without breaking the bond of facing and inner walling beyond one course of facing – say 9 inches. 2ndly, that brick}tile laminated bond should stop the flow of liquid mortar from descending, & thus choke every air hole in the rubble work, a 4 feet wall lending itself to that process, being easily carried out if insisted on, and I would like you to impress that on the clerk of the works. There are several other points I would like dwelt on decidedly, if you would care for my notes on some of them? The remarkably quick way in which you have got the preliminary drawings, & other matter ready, has been most satisfactory, & doubtless the committee there wd see that much work had to be done by you in the time, from the amt of drawings, &c, already under their noses. When you next write, perhaps without difficulty you could tell me how much of the total items are included in the contract, beyond the fabric works? but do not bother yourself about it. Your criticism of Rounton Grange house, is just that wh’ pleases me, for ’tis direct & straightforward, but – as yet, you have not got at many of the things & parts in the house which never satisfied me.2 Certainly the way the house was carried out was an injurious one, plans having to be changed, & added to, by fresh requirements as the work went on, so that awkwardnesses were many – inside the house in particular: for the outside form of main block, as the ground on which it stands was not interesting, and as the view Sth & Et was characteristic and – in a North Country way, beautiful, the chief part had to be a tall building. The coarse grit stone too had to be attended to in consequence, in the detailing – & so on. After all, though, I was never satisfied with any one building of my contriving. 156

1903–1914

I see that the angle pier & pinnacle must be looked to at once, & put quite right. The initial size of the angle buttress must be the point to give the size of the pinnacle & angle pier. This & the full size details I will attend to without delay – save what may come from the incompetence of old age. Yours truly, & thankfully for your kind help. | Philip Webb. Brampton.

V&A, AAD

1 ‘The tenders for tower ranged from 2,060 down to 1,644 – the last got it. The committee say that he was the only one who made an exhaustive examination of the tower – this looks as if they had arranged matters.’ GWJ to PSW, 16 May 1905, V&A, AAD. 2 See above, Letter 956, note 2. ‘I am working away at the Rounton alterations, a lot of little bits. . . . I had a very good time there & got acquainted with the house. I like the whole inside of the house very much, but quarrel with the exterior a bit, I don’t know why, I think it is a certain kind of “variety” which you then aimed at, but abandoned in your later work which I feel it hard to like.’

972 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, May 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. May 1905. Dear Mrs Flower Your pleasingly written & very interesting letter was thankfully received. It seemed to me that the worse than indifferent weather through wh’ you had to struggle, must still have been repaid for the labour and discomfort of the journeying. At all events you went father [sic] afield than is usual in brief visits to Italy, and this must be helpful in the after study of the places seen. I never got beyond Rome, & of the places you saw, I only know – slightly, that of Lucca, where one would have willingly stopped for weeks:1 of some of the other items of your journey I know a little by repute, reading, and photography, and I feel sure some views of the church at Terracina – so well given in your description – must have been seen in that helpful way;2 wherever mosaic is part of the art composition in Italy, the places are sure to be interesting. I remember the very wet time passed in Ravenna was more than made up to me, between the waters, by burying myself inside such places there, and how deeply interesting they are. I feel with you about the ‘terraced gardens’, for they seem as if they must be dull, to me, from the pictures I’ve seen of efforts to imitate them in many places in England, but probably one cannot look on them in the same light as Italians do. Still, I never take quite kindly to the set formality of some old English gardens, though quite recognising the value of unpretentious semi-formal arrangement. An area of garden ground divided by hedges or walls along the different aspects of a house, I like much, for it keeps one from seeing the whole place at once: such have made me exclaim, on passing from one to an unknown other, ‘helloa here’s another Eden’. 157

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I suspect my sympathy with the marshes would have made some of your journeying attractive to me, for there is something in the half-dreary look of their antiquity and the wide spaces of earth & air, wh’ sets one’s imagination going. I never could have enough of the Roman Campagna. When Wardle was for months in S. Italy, he sent me long & skilful descriptions of many places, with now & again photographs, wh’ have all gone back to him, & I think given to the South Kensn Museum?3 I am really anxiously hoping that some reasonably intelligent person will buy Tangley, for the published views just seen of the place have set me aflame again with the delight I used to have in its simplicity – & delightful quiet.4 One should write up at the gate of the place ‘no Motors admitted – there is a public house only a mile away’. By the way, Mr Wardle is still at Tours, & promised to let me know when he was about to leave – real summer may make him move, perhaps, but I fancy he has been fairly comfortably lodged there – a most necessary item for him.5 Memorandum, when the N. E winds are gone, I shall be glad to see you here, as also I know that Mrs Dickinson wd be. Unfortunately, the apple blossom this year is scanty in these parts. Last year’s fruit has only just come to an end at Caxtons. We have had 8 months of that inestimable luxury; no, that is not the word, – natural boon to humanity, rather. Mrs Dickinson was much pleased with the reading your letter itself. ‘Mitchell’, I am always glad to see when she is in this part of the country.6 Believe me | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45355, ff. 41–2

1 He refers to his only trip to Italy, in the winter of 1884–5. 2 Terracina is a coastal town in the province of Latina, nearly 50 miles southeast of Rome. It was colonised by Rome in 329 BC. 3 GW’s manuscript notebooks made during travels to France and Italy in 1891–5, V&A, NAL MSL/1904/1099–1102. 4 He means the article on Great Tangley Manor in Country Life. See above, Letter 954, note 7. 5 GW based himself in Tours from about October 1904 until June 1905. 6 Mitchell, was the female servant in Elizabeth Flower’s employment and a long-standing friend of Margaret Dickinson. See Vol. III, Letter 718.

973 • To George Washington Jack, 23 June 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 23 June 1905 My dear Jack Thank you for letting me know the wish of the Brampton Ch’ Committee for more clock-faces, before things were decided without further consideration. 158

1903–1914

Instead of 3 clock faces, I wd have wished even to do away with No 2! My recollection of Brampton is, that its main street runs parallel with the N. side of church, and that people would more generally see the clock face from the East & West? Though, for the appearance of the tower, that face on the west would least disturb the tower design, and if the second face was on the East, people could not see more than one face at a time – as they would if there were two – one on west & the other on the north. As to your point, of putting the face on the east front out of the centre, I am feeling sure it would mislead the eye, and the more likely so if only a little on one side of centre.1 A little old fashioned wafer-like clock face put anywhere on an ancient tower, did not much matter, but a designed face wd be altogether a different matter, & wd have a quite uncomfortable effect, to my belief. Now, I wd advise, the doing away with the North face, while leaving the 2 square windows there: and, putting the east face in the centre between ridge & large window over. Summary. I have a strong disinclination to seeing 2 clock faces at the same time. Would prefer only one clock face, and that the hour only was struck on the heavy bell. If 2 faces are really necessary, I would have them on the West & East sides. Am glad you found things “going well” at Brampton, & very glad if you used your chance of “lecturing them” – i.e. the committee, &c.2 I’ve some more fullsize details corrected to full-size, [sic] and am worrying at a bastard drawing of the belfrey windows capital, that is, any such drawing, save of the actual object in perspective, can neither be effective or truly geometric. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Of course you can quote me to the Committee. V&A, AAD

1 ‘The one on the East it seems to me would look better if it stood out of the centre & more toward the buttress than the others. The reason is that it would come just on the ridge of nave – which seems to me a most uncomfortable place for it. Do you think putting it as I propose (on sketch) would be likely to look lop-sided.’ GWJ to PSW, 21 June 1905, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘I have just got back from Brampton where I found all going well. . . . They had not begun any building when I was there so I had good chance to lecture them.’

974 • To Sydney Cockerell, 30 June 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 30 June for 1. July. ’05 My dear fellow – from your P. P. card & letter of 29th my feeling is confirmed as to the sad seriousness of W.S.Bs condition – I say ‘confirmed’, for that was what 159

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I thought when he was last here.1 He evidently has not the bodily strength for a rally – unless there is some impediment which the doctors can remove: sorry I am indeed – as all who know him here are. My mind has indeed to be nimble, taken as it is from one part of France to the other by your flights of picture cards: all really interesting, & some excitingly so: for example, there is Vitré, the inside of St Martin’s – wh’, even after its violent [Viollet] le ducing, is still an admirable example of the early French manner,2 and the card giving the view of the town is captivating indeed. That’s the Fougère district, which I know from Balzac, & T.M.R. If the latter was hard up for a subject – in plural too, Vitré would give it him. I can see one or two in different parts of the little ‘panorama’. I really would like to go there, for it has a wealth of trees outside its town walls. What surprisingly fine work in small is that ‘Retable’ in Souvigny! I can’t imagine its present arrangement & position was the original one? That is a strange freak, the adding a 14th c front casing to the original coupled Norman towers? No more of this tediousness, for we will speak about them when you come. Still, does T.M.R. know of Vitré? Where is he? Could he not look at the place on his way back? E. Walker is to carry May M. here tomorrow, and I shall be glad to see them both – even together, for they won’t clash – & there’s no business to be done. Of course I could not accept all your kind enthusiasm for the ‘beast’ that is ‘in wood & waste’.3 Indeed Your curious accident in the find throws a glamour over the object – and I’ve no objection to that. The only worth of the small thing – beyond the idea of the animal, wd be in the tone of black white & grey done in pure Indian ink. This of course is lost in the photo. Unless you have paid too much for your whistle, I am indeed glad it has tumbled into such friendly-faithful hands. I saw a notice in the paper about the St Alban’s show – & you’ll tell me more.4 Perhaps you may not have seen the matter of the inclosed cutting? Our ‘mutual friend’ (tho: I’ve never seen him) was in high good humour with himself – as well he might be; for he did say it after all, & what is more, it stuck!5 Yours as before – only more so | Philip Webb. Surely the reading of the great French Revolution may have another meaning to us, if the like kind of tragedy be enacted in our own time – As indeed seems possible, with long pent up sorrowing breaking out in ferocity beyond the dreams of modern journalism. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/83

1 ‘I sent you a card this morning with brief news of W.S.B. He is very bad indeed. How long it can go on I do not know.’ SCC to PSW, 29 June 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/81. 2 On 25 June, SCC was in St Alban’s, Hertfordshire, where he was organising an exhibition of manuscripts illustrating the history of the Church in England. He sent PSW a picture postcard captioned ‘VITRÉ. – La nef de l’Église Saint-Martin’. BL Add BL Add 52762, f. 83. 3 ‘Half an hour ago I discovered a long-lost work of art in a house at Kew, and now it hangs over my mantelpiece under Madox Brown’s Nativity cartoon having displaced a photograph of your beast

160

1903–1914 tapestry which has hitherto held that post of honour. You will wonder what it is! No less than your stupendous & ever to be wondered at drawing of a lion, which I have for years been looking for in every corner & crevice!!!! Though I cannot expect you to admit that it is all that it is, you will still I think be rather glad to hear that it is found – & I hope you will be just a little gratified that it is in appreciative hands. It makes almost everything else in the room look weak & silly.’ SCC to PSW, 29 June 1905. This was PSW’s pen drawing of a lion (now at the William Morris Society, Kelmscott House, and reproduced as the frontispiece to the current volume) ‘sniffing the air at Dawn . . . in tone rather than line – “painting with a pen”, as he called it – and of amazing force and delicacy’ (Lethaby, p. 192), of an earlier date than the designs for the Morris & Co. ‘Forest’ tapestry. See also below, Letter 1024, note 2. PSW’s ‘wood and waste’ reference is to WM’s verse for the ‘Forest’ tapestry. See Vol. III, Letter 717, note 2. 4 See note 2. 5 The item referred to Canon William Greenwell (see Vol. I, Letter 190, note 1), who as a Justice of the Peace on Durham Court Police-court had commented that ‘it would be well if a few scorching motorists were shot’. After his remark was taken seriously by the Home Office, Greenwell expressed regret ‘that a sense of humour appears to be absent from persons possessed, it may be, of qualities which are useful, but which perhaps cannot be placed on an equal footing with that most excellent gift’. PSW’s ‘our mutual friend’ reference is, of course, a nod towards the title of Dickens’s novel.

975 • To George Washington Jack, 26 July 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. 26 July. ’05. My dear Jack. I’m sending you today by parcel-post – registered, all the sheets I now have, save the full-size of capital to E & W. belfrey w[indow]s. I find myself getting less & less able to tackle work requiring concentration of mind & muscle. What you may be inclined to call fidgeting in me, & myself caution, in guarding against mistakes, is perhaps too tiresome to you? However, you will be able I hope to make out from the returned sheet of spirelet, & extra one of full-size detail how the things shd go according to my lights. Of course – & I shd have noted it down before, that in laying on the lead, there shd be an alternate welt right & left of the angle rolls,1 and this indicated in the full size will I hope be clear to you. I find your letter of July 4 was not sufficiently acknowledged, and will now add that I did not know, in the existing walling of the church, the coursed rubble facing was so deep in the courses; had supposed it ran from 6" to 12" or 14" occasionally, now you say it will run fm 9" to 18"? I’m afraid the difference between the rough & ashlar facing will not be very noticeable?2 I am a bit particular too about the pinnacles at the corners, now that you find the size of angle buttress will finish differently to that of my last instructions from you. A mistake in this after all would probably make me dance a bit; but, as I shall never see the work itself, & my neighbours there wd not know a pinnacle from a pump, they wd not be hurt – if pump shaped it they were! You will not forget that I shd have a finger in the dormer pie – wh’, perhaps would be the thing most needed, & if so you would have to send me a rough tracing of the tower roofing – as settled last. 161

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I am leaving here on Friday for my brother’s (H.S. Webb Esqre, Beechwood, Winchester) for a fortnight, while Mrs Dickinson & her children take their holiday at the Grandfather & Gdmother’s at King’s Langley, Herts. I find myself guy3 ill to lift anyhow out of my customary habits, but the old people are very kind, & the erstwhile doctor will knock me about, & stop any mendable cracks of old age.4 As the C. of Works writing on the 18th says they have built up as much as 2’9” high, would it not be well for you to have another day or two there to check the work, & declaim against a dangerous hurry of the work it? The 3 clock faces I can see is the point which will excuse there being a tower at all in their eyes.5 I daresay we can manage to make them not shamefaced, as the skeleton things represent. In any case I’m not unmindful of your patience & good will in undertaking this somewhat tiresome job – and you must believe in the thankfulness of yours always truly Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Welt’: in plumbing, this is the joining together of edges by turning them over each other. 2 ‘The quarryman was getting out the rubble facing too narrow on bed – we hammered it with him. I think that the average must be 12”, some less some more, not 5” to 15” but more like 9” to 18” with some few smaller on bed for the facing of brick bands. The dressing of the ashlar work is being fairly matched to the old work.’ GWJ to PSW, 4 July 1905, V&A, AAD. 3 ‘Guy’: very (Scottish dialect). 4 PSW’s brother, Harry Webb, was an ‘erstwhile’ doctor in the sense that, like PSW himself, he was now retired. 5 ‘I put the matter of the third Clock face to the Committee in the light you mentioned telling them that I quite agreed with your idea of two faces instead of 3. I have had an answer this morning saying they must stick to the three.’

976 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 August 1905 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. Wednesday. 9. Aug. ’05 My dear fellow Your daily remembrance has been & is as interesting & helpful as ever, the brother & sister participating – if not with much discrimination, yet certainly with wonder at the store of antiquity remaining in France!1 The series of the Mont S Michel I am very glad of, there being nothing of it in my Caxtons collection, the prints too being really well done. Perhaps your greatest ‘plum’ is the N. portal of S. Lazare, Avallon.2 This is a triumph of unadulterated preservation from the fates of oblivion. In the art point of view the spiral shafts (only four) remind me of Italian work, but the rest is of the finest of early French, towards which my liking 162

1903–1914

is steadily being hitched up from their pronounced 13th cent. work. In the Avallon doorway, the stilt is in use, but delightingly modified by the horseshoe, &c. Curiously enough, I never saw S. Denis.3 This (of course?) is the great Westr Abbey of Paris. This west front is a very unusual one, & therefore rejoiceable fm France! The composition of great interest & thoughtful contrivance – & perfect to the underline of parapet. What photos I’ve seen of S. Denis were of its inside, wh’ looked (so far as memory now serves) attenuated, &c. The Notre Dame of S. Omer is rather high & dry like some English work.4 Yes, the S. Etienne of Nevers looks more southern, but the focussing is awkward, & I fancy the building must have been much scraped; the quality of the kind of design not up to that of Vezelay.5 The Chs of S Marcel of Argenton, Montréal,6 & Paray le Monial7 – the 2 last being remarkably attractive & peculiar. I will have the whole of later collection at hand to speak of together at our next time. If I’m not mistaken, you sent me some time ago some writing by William Rothenstein, which I liked, & that is all my memory holds.8 G.B-J was wise enough to send me a cutting from the Hampshire chronicle of Mar: 18. ’05, giving acct of Rothenstein’s distributing of art school Prizes at Winchester, with a report of his address after the awarding.9 Well, this address, to my withered mind, is extraordinarily good, & wd stand by side that of a J.R. W.M. & Tolstoy for aptitude of expression, & feeling; do you know it? I think Rothenstein must hold much in agreement with Tolstoy, and I would like to know what he knows & thinks of W.Ms teaching.10 Yesterday, the brother & sister carried me out to Romsey, and as W.R.L wd say, ‘My stars Mister’ – it is good.11 ’Tis many vanished years since I was there, and the great fabric – in spite of much mechanically minded stupidity of tampering – stands almost alone in England for a large quantity of the best 11th 12th & early 13th cent: work remaining. The transitional Norman being especially vigorous and splendid. I was deeply angered by some especial foolery lately done on the outside by Caroe – he should be gagged & manacled, for he has so asserted a bit of folly on the N.E. side, that one could not keep one’s eyes away fm it.12 O dear me, I’m sorry-sad bout W.S.Bs inability to ‘rise up & walk’.13 No, I’ve heard nothing fm W.R.L, save fm your card – but have an unanswered letter fm A. Powell written earlier from Staffdsh[ire] Thank you very much for all your continued thoughtfulness, | of yrs Philip Webb. I shall leave for home, on the 15th, a Tuesday. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/89

1 ‘I have been picking out some of the plums from the postcard pudding for your Winchester visit, but there are still a few left in it.’ SCC to PSW, 9 August 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/86. Many of the series of picture postcards of French ecclesiastical buildings sent by SCC during these weeks survive (BL Add 52762), and include images of Vézelay, Reims, Mont Saint-Michel, Avallon, SaintOmer, Nevers, Saint-Denis, Montréal and Paray-le-Monial.

163

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 2 SCC posted this card on 29 July. The printed caption reads: ‘AVALLON. – Église Saint-Lazare, le Portail nord’, to which SCC added the comment ‘Italy come Norwood’. As an aide memoire, PSW annotated the card, ‘just E of Vézelay’. BL Add 52762, f. 87. 3 Posted on 5 August and captioned ‘Saint-Denis – La Basilique’, f 94. 4 Posted on 30 July and captioned ‘saint-Omer – Basilique Notre-Dame, vue générale extérieure’, f. 88. 5 Posted on 31 July and captioned ‘Nevers. Église Saint-Étienne’. SCC added the comment ‘Nevers is on the Loire about 40 miles E. of Bourges. Doesn’t this building look more Southern?’ f. 89. ‘You must ask W.R.L. about S. Denis. He was there with Powell at Easter, and they were much impressed. It is unfortunately in a rather wretched part of Paris.’ SCC to PSW, 9 August 1905. 6 Posted on 6 August and captioned ‘Montréal – L’Eglise’. PSW annotated the card, ‘Departt Ain – E of Bourg between source of Rhone & Bourg’, f. 95. 7 Posted on 8 August and captioned ‘Paray-le-Monial – La Basilique’. PSW annotated the card, ‘Dept Saone et Loire – on the Railway between Macon & Moulins’, f. 96. 8 ‘The enclosed thoughtful paper on Tolstoy’s “What is Art” was read by an artist friend of ours called Rothenstein as a contribution to a discussion on the book by the Art Workers’ Guild. I wasn’t present, so I borrowed the paper, & as it seems to me well done you may possibly care to look at it.’ SCC to PSW, 6 January 1905, BL Add 52761, f. 115. The artist William Rothenstein (1872–1945) would become Principal of the Royal College of Art in 1920. The discussion at the Art Workers’ Guild took place on 16 December 1904. 9 Rothenstein mistakenly recollected this address to students at the Winchester School of Art as having been given in 1907. ‘I had never spoken in public, but I read them a short address. This was reported in the local paper, which someone, it seems, sent to Lady Burne-Jones; for there came a letter – might she get my address printed by Emery Walker, at her expense? Thus began for me a precious friendship; for Lady Burne-Jones was a woman of great character and charm.’ Men and Memories. Recollections of William Rothenstein 1900–1922 (London: Faber & Faber, 1932), p. 111. 10 ‘I am writing to ask Rothenstein for his Winchester paper. He will be much encouraged by your approval of it. It was a paper of his on Tolstoy’s Resurrection that I sent you. His view on art and life are much like yours – but he admires some works of art with which you would not be sympathetic, e.g. Goya & the modern French impressionists. He is the best of fellows.’ SCC to PSW, 9 August 1905. ‘Rothenstein writes “Of course I was horribly pleased & uncomfortable reading your letter quoting P.W.’s mention of my papers. You know my own profound admiration for his work, and it seemed very wonderful to me that he should care for what I said at Winchester”.’ SCC to PSW, 11 August 1905, BL Add 52762, f. 99. PSW first met Rothenstein two years later, when he visited Caxtons. See below, Letter 1037, note 5. 11 Romsey Abbey in Hampshire is a tenth-century Benedictine foundation. 12 William Douglas Caröe (1857–1938) was appointed architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1895 on the death of John Loughborough Pearson, and in the same year succeeded Ewan Christian as architect to Romsey Abbey. See Jennifer M. Freeman, W.D. Caröe RStO FSA: his Architectural Achievement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 23–4. 13 ‘Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?’ St Luke 5:23. ‘I have slightly better news of him tonight. His temperature was normal this morning (after being up for several days) & he had had more rest.’ SCC to PSW, 9 August 1905.

977 • To May Morris, 6 September 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 6 Sepr ’05 My dear May. You could hardly think I felt much your kind thought of the old friend, for sending him the picture of an enchanted island, with the brightest of steadings, set down in 164

1903–1914

the “hollow of its’ hand”, as it were;1 but I did, & still do thankfully regard your happily figured goodwill toward me – though you may be saying as you read this, ‘he has taken a long time before recognising it,’ for the picture card is dated Aug: 19! From youth up I was always a day after the fair – and maybe you will have flitted before this can enter through the gate of the white builded paradise. ’Tis a panorama, all in one perspective, without so much as turning the head to grasp the whole. Either by coming here to tell me, or by writing, I want to know about all the points of this island-scape, & to begin, what is that seeming long bridge of boats across ‘the golden horn’ on the top left? – almost Van Eyk-like in its definition in distance. What are the vegitable [sic] kingsdoms, shut apart by stone walls, & tinted with all the possible different greens in a colour box? Which corner of the domestic village is the home of the beneficent Padrone?2 Is the garden of its Eden that patch, foursquare to all the winds, with a pagoda at 2 of its angles? Is there not a faery paddock in the centre of the builded area, fitted with posts & line on which may be hung Monday’s spotless clothes to dry? And so on, & forgive me: but I do tell all that I desire to know of this preternatural piece of Earth and Sea beauty, where it wd seem impossible that even the new born babe should cry on first opening its eyes on it. From my delay, as hinted above, you will also hardly believe that I felt hurt at having failed to express my thankfulness, at the moment of our last parting, nor even by letter later on, for the alcoholic benediction you left behind you? nevertheless I was hurt in mind to have been so spiritless.* Forgive, but do not forget your good old friend | Philip Webb. * It must be evident, no joke was meant here. I must make a shot for the envelope address, for my ignorance is only equalled by the rheumatism; – if there be a blunder, no offence is meant. BL Add 45343, ff. 45–6

1 ‘Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,’ Isaiah 40:12. MM was staying at Hoy, Orkney, where in 1899–1900 WRL had remodelled and extended Melsetter House, as well as some estate cottages and other works. See Vol. II, Letter 584, note 5. 2 Melsetter House itself, owned by Thomas Middlemore.

978 • To Giacomo Boni, 12 September 1905 Photostat; pencil 1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London W.C. Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 12 September. 1905 My dear Giacomo Boni. Your two illustrated pamphlets – I “Iene Antiquarie” and II “Hibernica” arrived here safely – while I was away from home, & the packet was not forwarded!1 In 165

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

a letter from John Hebb, in last month, he quoted from a letter of yours to him – the following. “I sent a few illustrated pamphlets to our friend Webb, and I hope that they reached him safely.” Now, my kind and illustrious friend, many most interesting & valued pamphlets has your good nature prompted you to send to me, and the last one (before the two acknowledged above) was entitled, ‘Bimbi Romulei’, and I’m grieved indeed if I failed in acknowledging its receipt, for it is a very interesting one.2 Now I am hoping that for the earlier gifts to me there was not the same laxity of breeding, and that rather through the exhausting labours attaching to your onerous position in the world of archaeological science, you may have forgotten any letters of mine to you – which could but have been of temporary value? In any case I now thank you heartily for thinking my poor self worthy of receiving the various printed records of your steady & most effectual researches into the buried history – not only of Rome in particular, but in various parts of Italy; and, what is more surprising still, even the far away island of Ireland has attracted your attention – and has come within your scheme of evidence.3 If it were not for the excellent illustrations accompanying the texts of your descriptions – which make your studies more or less intelligible to me, I would be in sad case, [sic] for I know less of the Italian language than I did 20 years ago. Hebb was good enough to send to me a translation of a letter of yours to him, or some other English person, tending to allay the fears of many English people with regard – once more, to the condition of the fabric of St Mark’s at Venice. All of my friends, both professional & lay, can but trust that your voice will be listened to in the way of restricting all works undertaken, to be only the absolutely necessary ones, of sustaining the fabrics. Lately I have had lent to me a book by ‘A. Venturi’, of the “Storia dell’ Arte. Italiana” “II. Dall’ Arte Barbarica Alla Romanica”, ‘Milano, 1902’, which has given me infinite delight in my reclusive life here;4 there is so much in the book of which I knew little or nothing, and so much additional interest thrown on what I have known something, that my enthusiasm for Italian art of all kinds has been stimulated afresh. And now comes to us the dreadful news of Earth’s shaking in Calabria, & elsewhere, in Italy;5 and, apart from the terrible human tragedy – which all can feel, there is the probable injury – if not destruction, of so many noble works of hoar antiquity in that particular district, which touch the feelings of artists of all branches more particularly. A friend of mine, and an amusing one, wrote me a letter from Rome in the autumn of last year, telling of how kindly you had explained to him matters of research, &c, and that he had actually been allowed to scan the M. Angelo Sistine frescoes from a staggering scaffolding close under the painted vault of the chapel.6 Now my friend – kindly forgive this poor pencil scrawl, (my resource in the later stage of life, & other impediments) & condone the evident weakness from old age of an intelligence never too powerful, of Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Courtauld 199a-d

166

1903–1914 1 GBO, ‘Iene Antiquarie’ Nuova Antologia (1 June 1905) and ‘Hibernica’, Nuova Antologia (16 February–1 March 1905). These two offprints survive in the Courtauld PSW papers. 2 GBO, ‘Bimbi Romulei’, Nuova Antologia (16 February 1904). Courtauld PSW papers. 3 GBO’s archaeological work on Irish sites was later translated into English, and a copy sent to PSW: ‘Hibernica. Notes on some burial places and customs of Ancient Ireland’ by Commendatore Giacomo Boni (Director of Excavations in the Roman Forum). Translated from the Nuova Antologia (Dublin 1906). Courtauld PSW papers. 4 The extensive series of volumes by Adolofo Venturi, Storia Dell’Arte Italiana, started appearing in 1901. This one was vol. II, Dall’Arte Barbarica Alla Romanica (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1902). 5 On 8 September, an earthquake in the Calabria region damaged many thousands of houses and may have killed as many 5000 people. 6 This was George Bernard Shaw, though it was in May rather than the autumn of 1904 that he had viewed the Sistine Chapel. See above, Letter 932.

979 • To Sydney Cockerell, 14 September 1905 Pencil Caxtons Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 14 Sepr ’05 My dear fellow. Your antiquity cards from Alness & Inverness now, I see, hail from Richmond.1 I’m thinking you may have with you when travelling some thousand or so of pice p cards, wh’ you let fly on your friends like homeing [sic] pigeons – ‘Blue rocks’ to me,2 and Turtle doves to the girls. Very many of your lately winged messages have been beyond the usual in the way of interest, such as the rocks, & wall – and amphitheatre of Arles;3 & much particularly do I like some of the parish churches, & lastly the very striking cathedral one of Autun, with its equally effective town buildings encompassing the church.4 Lethaby burst in on me yesterday (no Tuesday) afternoon, looking worthy of his holiday; never saw him so free of over-strainedness. He pounced as usual on anything at hand to hide his blushes under, & your p. p-cards served well for that, & for hanging pegs of builded story on. He asked for a bit of a walk after tea, and I took him into the park as the sun was westering, to see the half mile long shadows on the astounding green of the grass, & grey on the oak tree trunks. He took back with him the barbaric vol: of the Italian antiquities ‘A. Venturi’s’5 and will lend me another vol: by you (by your leave) if he can know when you may be coming my way. Do not hurry, for I’m sure you must have many people pulling at your coat tails on getting back from the Highlands, where you heart could hardly be?6 By the way, do you remember some of the M.S pages (very eastern like) of Venturi’s book? If you’ve only just glanced at the book in question (i.e. barbarre) you shd ransack it again, for the Italian beauties in it are beyond blessing or banning. I’m just rejoicing in the evidently real bettering of W.S.B.7 Yrs Philip Webb.

167

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I was really interested in Cecil Firth’s letter – now inclosed8 – as also yours of the same time, & wh’ I see was only acknowledged by a common p. card: thank you for the everything of your kindly thought for me Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/91

1 SCC had been engaged to catalogue the illuminated manuscripts of the businessman and collector, Charles Dyson Perrins (1864–1958), who managed the family food manufacturing firm, Lea & Perrins, and was chairman of the Royal Worcester Porcelain Factory. ‘On Monday next I go beyond Inverness for about three weeks to work at manuscripts belonging to a man called Perrins – so it will be a month or so before we shall meet again at Caxtons – and the postcard series will have grown.’ SCC to PSW, 9 August 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/86. He was in Scotland from 14 August until 8 September, and then took the overnight train from Glasgow, arriving in Richmond the following morning. The flow of postcards picture continued from Scotland, but still of French architecture, rather than of Scottish scenes. 2 A blue rock is a type of pigeon. 3 Posted on 7 and 9 September and captioned ‘ARLES. – Courses de Taureaux à l’intèrieur des Arenes’ and ‘ENVIRONS D’ARLES. – Les Baux’. BL Add 52762, ff. 114–5. 4 Posted on 12 September and captioned ‘AUTUN. – La Cathédrale Saint-Lazare, vue d’ensemble’, f. 116. 5 See previous letter, note 4. 6 ‘My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here, / My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer’; start of the chorus to Burns’s poem, ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’ (1789). 7 ‘WSB is at Brighton, where he seems to be getting on rather well, having sea-water baths &c.’ SCC to PSW, 31 August 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/87. 8 ‘I have once or twice shown you letters written from Cyprus by Cecil Firth, so you may like to look at the enclosed. Miss Kingsford and Miss Hansard are summering in Cyprus while the heat of Egypt is too great, & a lucky chance has thrown them against Firth, who knew all about Miss Kingsford’s work before he left England, but had never met her. It is a lucky meeting for all three of them.’

980 • To Sydney Cockerell, 20 September 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 20. Sep ’05 My dear fellow. Yours of 18th is full of personal news of much interest to me as you knew, and the lift in the Kelmscote horizon is a light of some little promise, at all events – for thoughts have ranged dismally there for too long a while.1 Also, W.S.B having risen up a bit is a relief – & hope comes anew.2 In talking over with Mrs Dickinson, I told her of your having spoken of W.S.B, & of his likely want of a housekeeper for Chapel Street – this has be[en] turned over in her mind, & she has written to a woman she knows who asked her last year – if she heard of such a “situation”, to keep “Mrs Fry’s” name in mind. This is husband & wife – of housekeeper & 168

1903–1914

caretaker sort. Mrs Dickinson has written a letter to the Fry, inclosing it to Mrs Flower’s old servant (whom I know well) to send on, as a question to the Fry; wh’ said F is a good cook3, &c. This means the “character” is well known by dependable people. What beautiful Sussex Churches you are sending.4 This last Slaugham is ravishing, but woe is me, has also been ravished “sicklied over with a pale caste” of idiocy!! (sic)5 Surely you would be liking Burford – all these so like limestone Oxon & Gloucester villages are sunlight itself in the way of housing: and “Jenny bright & cheerful again” is a pleasant thought for me – but I must get this to post. Yrs always thankfully | Philip Webb. Ah-ha! The first ½ of that train we got into at Brighton did not stop at 3 Bgs, & I kicked heels at Horley station for an hour – still no mischief came of it.6 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/92

1 From 16–19 September, SCC stayed with JM and JEM in the Old Hospital at Burford, from where he wrote to PSW. ‘I have been so much delighted to find Jenny bright & cheerful again – quite her old self – though very thin. The bromide she was taking was reduced to ⅔ a couple of months ago & the change for the better seems entirely due to this. We went for a walk yesterday morning to Taynton, & rejoiced together in the old buildings on the way, which all proclaim the proximity & cheapness of a first-rate building stone. . . . Mrs Morris talks a little despondently about herself, but seems as well as usual. Jenny’s present “companion” Miss Cousins is an exceedingly nice woman – much the nicest she has had since I came into the story, thirteen years ago.’ SCC to PSW, 18 September 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/88. 2 ‘I went again to Rottingdean the day after I saw you, with WSB, who stood the drive remarkably well, & walked round the little multiform garden, & talked & was happy.’ 3 ‘Cook’ is boxed in. 4 SCC sent postcards of churches at Alciston and Slaugham, on 15 and 18 September. BL Add 52762, ff. 117–8. Of Slaugham he commented, ‘I fear very much restored’. 5 The two exclamation points are inverted. 6 From 13–15 September, SCC had been with WSB at Brighton. ‘I bathed in the sea while WSB went to the baths. I feel much better for the sea air. I helped WSB with the correcting of his proofs, & in the aftn went to see Lady Burne-Jones at Rottingdean & found Philip Webb with her. Drove back with him & saw him off by the 6.20 train.’ CD, 14 September 1905.

981 • To Sydney Cockerell, 4–5 October 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 5 Octr ’05 My dear fellow. Thank you for sending Walker’s letter, – things I hope will improve, and the ‘bores’ subside into speechlessness from that time onward & for ever.1 The idea of suicide 169

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

is never pleasant to me. Still, under E.Ws circumstances – if they were mine, I wd be thinking it preferable; but he is good, patient, & hopeful. He has sent me 2 p. p. cards, one particularly interesting; a granite built, double-tier arched aqueduct of Roman work at Segovia – in sharp perspective, [small sketch] much sharper than this, and the duct in working order! I have all your cards, and have begun to treat you as a matter of course! Happily the Iffley, among others good is itself good. I mention this one as it touches on the tender feelings of youth.2 The interesting lot of small Sussex churches are unluckily badly reproduced, and with the miserable canvas screen process, which won’t stand a lens for mending them. I write this note particularly to tell that W.S.B, Ly A[nne], Miss L[awrence], & Carleton3 were here today (4th), W.S.B & Miss L bringing their lunch and eating it quietly before a good wood fire in the keeping-room. Alas, he is very much pulled down; had not seen him since he was in Crabbet Park in the summer, & certainly he was much more feeble [than] then. At times I was alone with him, & he seemed to like having a talk. Mrs Dn tells me they have engaged the housekeeper she told them of.4 I had a pleasant bit of a letter from May M. fm Orkney; she partly wrote to say, that a Mrs Christie being about to do one of the handbooks of crafts, pubd by J. Hogg, (on embroidery) might May let the lady have permit to use photo: & explanation of the Clapham altar frontal; of course I can’t object, for the embroidery is beautifully well done.5 You being in charge at Clifford’s Inn I send the inclosed card I was asked to post, direct to you, for doubtless you will understand what to do. There, I can’t write more, & am sorry this is so badly done. Yours as always | Philip Webb. Written night of the 4th. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/95

1 EW was one of the group from the Art Workers’ Guild which visited Spain, departing on 20 September. In his absence (until 14 October), SCC oversaw the business at Gray’s Inn. 2 SCC sent a postcard of the parish church of St Mary, Iffley, in Oxfordshire, on 2 October. BL Add 52762, f. 132. 3 Guy Carleton, the Crabbet stud manager. Dorothy Carleton, his sister, was WSB’s companion during his later years. 4 Mrs Fry. See previous letter. 5 Mrs Archibald H. Christie, Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, a Practical Text-book of Design and Workmanship (London: John Hogg, 1906). This was published in the series of manuals on craft skills edited by WRL. A photograph of the Clapham altar super-frontal, designed by PSW and executed by MM, is included (p. 394), together with an explanatory note: ‘The work is carried out with floss silk in bright colours and gold thread, both background and pattern being embroidered. The five crosses, that are placed at regular intervals between the vine leaves, are couched in gold passing upon a silvery silk ground’ (p. 363). See also Vol. III, Letter 624, note 2.

170

1903–1914

982 • To May Morris, 20–30 October 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. This note begun evening of Octr 20. ’05 Your heavenly-Earthly packet dated 10 Oct: got here, I can’t say when,1 for the Crawley post mark is unreadable; whereas Stromness stamp is clearly Octr 12 – i.e the day you set-to and finished your life-like story – with the i-s and t-s dotted & crossed with the help of an excellent plan of Melsetter & its surroundings,2 and a quite remarkable series of photo: pictures to tether my wits and keep them from mere wool-gathering, for the story is wonderful enough for anything. I can but simply thank you for taking the great pains to give me a real pleasure, and it has assuredly done that in while comparing the varied items of picture & story-telling, – realising the green islands set in the grey sea of the north. The only thing not quite clear to me, being your reason for including in the packet my poor letter and the two envelopes!!! (here I was hindered, and a space of time sandwiched between the above and what follows) Well, I found your ground plan so clear that in going over the ground repeatedly with it and the photos: Orkney, or one or more islands of it, was really got into my system; but your 3 sheeted letter of added benevolence gave a knowledge not to be got otherwise, for your very enthusiasm let me into the peculiarities of the place, with its dignity rather enhanced by its physical comparative smallness. Putting it in Irish fashion, my only knowledge of the Orkneys was from Walter Scott’s “Pirate”, in the Shetlands, & Kirkwall.3 The extraordinary sweetness of the moorland slopes, given in several of the views, has a marked foil in the sombre looking mass of ‘Ward Hill’ – whose apparent bulk is greatly increased by the 3 or 4 largish cottages settled at its feet, like white mice! How your mind may be helped by maps of otherwise unknown country, I can’t say, but I’m a bit crazy over them, they being the nearest approach to setting up “Castles in Spain”; one always builds better in that airy way than with stone & mortar. Of your fishing day for Trout in the solitary island loch, I can grasp the effect on the mind from your description, & some of my experiences of such land & water setting on the w. coast of Scotland; but the boat full of yourself, the fishing men, and some “90 fish” full of cod liver oil, slush, and dying gasps, is quite beyond my picturing – save from your writing so well of it as your “special joy”! I dare say, if one fairly well put one’s foot in such a slush on a rocking fishmonger’s shop, its most human discomfort in the highest would raise one’s enthusiasm to a seeming extatic [sic] pitch – but with you it was real, and the getting such a fresh experience was the charm? Octr 30th!! Your picture card, dated 24th duly came, and frightened me in thought of your coming home before this unlucky attempt at a letter was finished, and now it must go, without further strain on my decayed intelligence – but, and

171

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

mind you, there was, & is hearty thankfulness in me for your thoughtful kindness to an old friend. To-day I had one of your mother’s sweetest of letters – doubly cheering because of the confirmed news of the very dear Jenny’s improvement in health; – the faithful S.C.C had told me at times of the blessed change but I dare not be too sure of such a heart relief being more than a flicker of her old vitality. With the letter was an excellent photograph of the three, and the companion,4 all seated in a slight segment of curve dressed in white, or light toned summer stuffs, and backed by the porch and keeping room window of the beloved Kelmscott home. Now I shall ask you to tell me when this view was taken, so that I may judge of what difference in look there may be of Jenny now, from the dear thing at the time the picture was taken? In it J: is markedly thinner in face than when I last saw her: but, you will come & see me, & tell all about what touches me so keenly? Walker will be coming here shortly (I had to put him off last Sat: when the 2 Rooke’s came by appointt) and you might come with him, for if the 3 of us all talked at the same time, it would come naturally, & give no offence to Mrs Dickinson. I am supposing that when E.W is not at Clifford’s Inn or Worplesdon, he roosts at Hamh Terrace?5 If so you can ask him as to some time for the visit. There – this wretched effort must give over – it can’t be mended & shall be ended – & sent to you from your old friend Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 47–9

1 2 3 4 5

It is unusual for PSW to start a letter without salutation. See above, Letter 977. Scott’s novel, The Pirate (1822), is set on the main island of Shetland. JE, JEM, MM and the new companion, Miss Cousins. See above, Letter 980, note 1. EW and MM were neighbours in Hammersmith Terrace.

983 • To Emery Walker, 26 October 1905 Postmark POUND HILL 26 OC 05 Address To/ Emery Walker. | 16 Clifford’s Inn | Fleet Street | London. E.C. Envelope text in ink; letter text in pencil Caxtons Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 26 Octr ’05 My dear fellow. You will have noted that my bit of letter was written the night before your excellent packet came the following morning.1 All is good – the best possible – for giving be a true idea of Carcassone.2 Primus, your rubbing to full size of a stone, is all that could be given, for the surface is weather worn so that no actual tooling remains; but the size of stone & bedding of jointing is just what was needed, amplified so effectively by Miss Adams’s photo: of some walling.3 Item, that photo: of hers is invaluable giving the disposition of 172

1903–1914

bricks in a square vault in Moorish manner. If Miss Adams could spare me her two photos: I would like to have them. ’Tis in such details of work that the camera gives the best of help to students. For the wonderful series of the Carcassone fortifications, these I shall study carefully and let you take them back when you come for them. How well the french process people take these cards, (though I’m not sure as to the word underlined). Every detail can be examined through a lens, and exact knowledge gained. I’m glad in finding that only parts of the different walls, towers, bastions, &c, were done in that irritating way of drafting all round the face-edges of stones, and leaving the inner surface rough – i.e – ‘rusticated’ as it is called – an abomination to my thinking, as well as feeling. I suspect it came from the tradition of old Roman (classic) stile, [sic] of emphasizing the coursings, &c. Much of the more carefully squared & regularly coursed work in some of the towers & bastions is as good (& not unlike) some of our late 12th cent: walling. For example, transepts of Romsey. Yea, Viollet le Duc, couldnt help it – clever he was to the good, but sadly also to the bad. He looked on Carcassone as an object lesson and actually set up, in proper woodwork, the ‘breteche’4 sheltering to the soldiers at battlement level of one of the bastions to the chief entrance front5 – but we will talk over them when you are here. I can but thank you for sparing any of your too brief time on me. Yours as always | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 PSW had sent a brief note to EW on 24 October, acknowledging the arrival of postcards sent during the Art Workers’ Guild trip to Spain. See above, Letter 981, note 1. 2 The medieval fortress of Carcassonne in Languedoc-Roussillon underwent significant restoration and ‘enhancement’ by Viollet-le-Duc in 1853, including the addition of pointed roofs to the original wall towers. 3 The bookbinder Katharine Adams (1862–1952), a close friend of SCC, was a member of the Arts Workers’ Guild party. Over the years, she would bind many items in SCC’s personal collection, including volumes of letters from a number of his correspondents, including those of PSW. 4 A bretèche was a balcony, usually situated above the gate of a medieval fortress, from where defenders could repel attackers at the base of the walls below. 5 See note 2.

984 • To Jane Morris, 31 October 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 1905/ 31 October for tomorrow’s post. My dear Janey – very unfailing in her friendship, which I depend on. Your letter of 28th is doubly welcome, as easing my mind about yourself, and almost making me jump with the pleasure your opinion of dear Jenny gave me. S.C.C has repeatedly 173

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

told me good news, but your more constant watching is the surer evidence, and it gladdened my heart.1 You broadened the pleasure by the gift of one of if not the-best family photographs Ive seen. The setting too is so happy, with the backing of the old house to the crescent shaped chairs of the sitters: also, does not the picture tell its story well? Of course I’m wanting to know how far back it is since the thing was taken, so as to judge a little more surely from it what you, or May, may tell me of any difference there may now be in Jenny’s expression. Is she not considerably thinner in the face than when last I saw her? I’ve had postcard stories from May, and a triply long and interesting letter from the peculiarly graceful slopes of the moors around Melsetter, in Orkney – the many islanded: partly told also by her excellent ground plan of the wide spaced steading,2 wh’, with many good photo: cards, make the details and qualities of the home & Hoy island, clear to me. Indeed she rose to the occasion of my questioning after the introductory photo picture which made me curious. I knew before, a little of the house when Lethaby shewed me some of his diagram drawings when adding to it.3 I’m hoping May will be able to come & see me with Emery W: after she has seen you. I won’t ask of the “past history” of your illness, of wh’ I had heard something from S.C.C & Georgie. I feel sure that the Burford change does you all good – the little bright old-fashioned place, but is there not a more interesting view of it than the local photo: man found out?4 The little town hall is pleasant enough, but its next door neighbour house & shop, of the colour of lead, is abominable: na the less, I thank you for it – stirring my fading memory (O dear me, how much it is faded, as if it had been laid up in lavender in a chest of drawers like a grandmother’s silk brocade). I sometimes liken it to the vanishing of a magic lantern picture before the next object comes on. I’m glad the people there are “nice” too. The folk here are the same to me, that is – the ordinary village folk, and the ‘uppers’ also are not bad, if I would let them expand. Here’s a pretty thing: Mother & daughter outside of Caxtons – on Mrs Dickinson’s oath, – Mother, “Now mind Annie dear, you must go under before you go upper.” My dear love to Jenny, & hope is rising too. | Yours always truly Philip Webb. I’m supposing the 4th figure in the photo: is the companion? Interesting & peculiar face.5 BL Add 45343, ff. 50–1

1 JEM had made good progress during the summer months spent with her mother at Burford. ‘I have one great pleasure in my life, that of seeing Jenny restored to health in a wonderful way, she is actually recovering much of her mental power – and is so sweet and affectionate always to those about

174

1903–1914

2 3

4 5

her, everybody loves her.’ JM to WSB, 30 October 1905, CLJM. Sadly, four years later the epileptic seizures had returned and were so regular and severe that she was again being sedated with bromide, which left her ‘torpid and incapable’ (CLJM, p. 371). See above, Letter 982. These plans for Melsetter House, copied by John Brandon-Jones, are reproduced in Godfrey Rubens, William Richard Lethaby. His Life and Work 1857–1931 (London: The Architectural Press, 1986), between pp. 129–37. SCC had been disappointed with the commercial postcards available. ‘No decent pictures of Burford.’ SCC to PSW, 18 September 1905, BL Add 52762, f 118. See above, Letter 982, note 4.

985 • To George Washington Jack, 6–7 November 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. 6 November. ’05 My dear Jack. Quite honestly I ask pardon for seeming neglect with regard to you, for there have been 3 of your letters (all good ones too) which have remained unanswered till now. The fundamental basis of my intelligence (here you may laugh) is, I am sure, much weakened by increasing age. At the time I did the Birmingham ‘poker’1 my wits did not seem to be overtaxed – then came the letting down of illness, and though I got back some of my bodily strength later on, still the power of setting-to on subject matter has proved really trying to me; the brain gets bothered, & I become irritable from feeling the want of staying power in the head, & of course much the same in the body. I’ve tried at various times to tackle the Brampton tower-roofing on the drawing you brought for the 2 dormer doorways, and necessarily in conjunction with the general framing of the roof, and each time have given in with vexation at the inferior construction of it – possibly this comes in part of the fragmentary parts of drawings wh’ are here, and I would have set-to & redrawn the whole in plan, sections, &c – but the data were not with me, & my courage drooped at writing to you for them. I know there was a quite good original motive in the design, but it seems to have got changed in various ways – as such things will, unless one keeps to one’s point determinedly; in some sort, doubtless, from the want of all the original drawings, I could not get the thing done so as to do either of us credit, and we both of us detest a bungle?2 As for the clock faces – your drawing was quite what was wanted; and I’ve only suggested several small points, and, as you see, have roughly handled your drawing!3 I’m not sure if it has been suggested to bulge (hammer out) the circular part of the face-indication? In any case, now, I think that wd be quite unnecessary, and the labour of doing it would add to the cost. You see I’ve made some sketches of the construction in detail - wh’ I know are important, wh’ you’ll readily understand, & probably agree with? My opinion as to the numerals themselves – in their conjoined form – they shd not radiate; the point being to x-IX-x

175

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

take the enclosing size x - x, and radiate from the axis through the middle of it. I would omit the waved line between the 2 inner lines of gold, but put a diamond ◊ marks only on the radius line. Also, I wd omit the ribbon pattern round the outer edge, keeping it plain gold, as I’ve scrawled on the sheet. You mention bolts to secure the face of clock to the tower. You will note my suggestion for copper plugs with copper nut on the outside, for then the face could readily be taken down if necessary. Of course your satisfaction with the apparent bulk of the tower, and with the effectiveness of the string course below the belfrey windows, pleased me much, for I believe you wd not have said so if it had not so struck you. Certainly, I would like you to do the metal cross on the spirelet of roof;4 ie get the design ready, but I believe you would have to see the spirelet up before you could judge of the necessary height of the cross – (that is, the lower limb) from the finial boss below. As to the bells. If anything should be done to them, I would advise it should be done at this time of dealing with the tower, even though the bells might go on for some years yet without serious depreciation. Also, I think you shd consult a bell founder & hanger – meeting him in the tower, & examining the bells together; you need not give in to him if disinclined. ’Tis quite possible a ‘quarter turn’ of the bells now wd be more effective than if they were more worn before such turning. Would it suit you to come here – say – on Saturday week? I believe Cockerell may be coming next Sat: I would like Weir to go – if possible – & see the church before it is finished. There, I’m tired & will go to bed. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. [ink] Since writing this last (Sunday) night, I’ve heard from Cockerell – so, if you could conveniently come next Saty (11th) it would save time, & quite suit me? I’m sending off the Clock face sheet at same time as this. V&A, AAD

1 His design for the University of Birmingham mace (1901–2). 2 ‘With regard to the roof and the architect (yourself videlicet [that is to say]) you are entirely in the wrong. No doubt whatever there are imperfections in both. What do you expect in this topsy turvy world?? My own opinion of the roof, as the question immediately under our eyes, is that it will be a very sound and well constructed modern roof. . . . No change of any serious nature either in construction or design has been made from the first. The bit you see is only an unfortunate exception and a little bit of obstinacy on my part. The rest is just as you designed it – and you have no grounds to think it will be a discredit to either of us.’ GWJ to PSW, 7 November 1905, V&A, AAD. 3 ‘I send you the clock face – 1½ scale & full size detail of one of the figures. Will you please design the thing properly. . . . I have told the clock maker that the face is to be of copper blackened, with gold letters.’ GWJ to PSW, 1 November 1905, V&A, AAD.

176

1903–1914 4 ‘The cross on top I think I should like to do myself if you will let me. There is nothing much in working it out, but I want to put it in hand soon. I have your sketch of it to work from.’ GWJ to PSW, 24 October 1905, V&A, AAD.

986 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 November 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 9. Novr ’05 My dear fellow. It seems as if a kind of letter must have to be written, or you will wrongly but not unreasonably guess that your daily P. p. cards are welcomed by someone else than the addressee! You will understand that there must be little to be said from this side, and that little only laboriously set down – which, as I hold strongly that a letter should have some interest or amusement in it, other than its blunders, silence has let you off pretty fairly well? The 2 Rookes came,1 were seemingly as content with me as certainly I was with them; their pictures “were all my fancy painted them” save the two by R. père, of Semur sculpture2 – which with its painting still clear & fresh, were a great joy as well as a surprise to me: also part of the sculpture was new – in the way of arrangement of heads between the trefoil archings of triforium, which Id not noticed before, so far as remembrance goes with me. This work especially was a triumph of fact for the faithless as to the important service of coloured sculpture – (I forgot to ask if the painter thought some of the colouring has been renewed). Noel’s tympanum was very effectively done, so as to make the relief and subjects remarkably telling: but more when I see you.3 May Morris came with E.W last Saturday; they both behaved quite prettily – with knife & fork and cheery talk – wh’ is as near a Rhyme as might unluckily be. Your Perugino card, telling that you could not come here for the 2 next Sats, made me write to Geo: Jack, and he comes on the next Sat: as is, to tell me all about his labours in the piling up of Brampton tower, – he consoles me by saying the higher it gets up, the fatter it looks! The card you sent me of “Cordes” is so interesting, that I looked up the Geography.4 ’Tis 13 miles N.W of Albi – and A. is 31 miles N.E of Toulouse. I’m learning something from Geo: Wardle of that S country, by his excellent archaeological letter-descriptions of such Cathedrals, &c, as Poitiers, Perigeux, Cahors, Toulouse, &c, which are mightily interesting to the decaying archl mind at Caxtons, almost putting such kind of new life into the old dog:5 that Hôtel de Ville of Cordes is a winner! from its simplicity & directness. That is quite exciting about the large Largo of Handel, but also, not quite clear to me. To be played by 2 solos, grand organ, and orchestra. Doubtless when the Opera was done in 1738, there must have been the usual operatic accompanyments? [sic]

177

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

What I mean is, that Handel’s incomparable ‘counterpoint’ in the orchestration – or indeed by organ alone – would be enough without any modern “arrangement”; but when we next meet?6 Yours as before | Philip W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/99

1 ‘I should have invaded you today but I hear from Walker that you are expecting Noel Rooke with the summer’s harvest, which you are certain to be pleased with.’ SCC to PSW, 28 October 1905, BL Add 52762, f. 152. 2 Presumably drawings undertaken in the summer at Semur-en-Auxois in the Côte-d’Or. 3 ‘I was sure that Rooke’s new drawings would please you – and so will the enclosed portrait of the great man.’ SCC to PSW, 14 November 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/100. 4 Posted on 1 November and captioned ‘CORDES. – l’Hôtel de Ville’. BL Add 52762, f 153. 5 GW wrote from Toulouse on 25 September 1905, with information on churches at Cahors and Perigueux. Courtauld 355a–b. 6 The aria ‘Ombra mai fu’ from the opera Serse (1738) later became known as ‘Handel’s Largo’ in its many different arrangements as a separate instrumental item. ‘As to Handel’s Largo I imagine that as a song in the opera it has an accompaniment by the orchestra – but that its adaptation as a tune for instruments, without the words, is due to later hands who saw its great possibilities and called it Largo in G, there being other Largos with other melodies.’ SCC to PSW, 14 November 1905.

987 • To Jane Morris, 14 November 1905 Pencil Caxtons, Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 14 Novr ’05 My dear Janey. Thank you kindly for your further letter, (7th) and the additional photo pictures. The great mischief at the Burford Market house was threefold, first, the pulling down the interesting & cheerful looking house just above, & second, the then building the hatefully ugly and dismal one in its place, & lastly the blotting out the light & life of “Tolsey”; – and why the name? Was it at one time wholly detached, an island, and where Market tolls would have been taken??1 Perhaps you know the true derivation. I confess the “Priory” is a puzzle – namely, how the present form of the half ruined house could have come out of the one shewn by Skelton’s engraving?2 I’m thinking Skelton himself must have taken liberties. Why is not the present building made sound and tight for habitation – for it looks as if a comparatively small cost wd be necessary to make it a very pleasant home? I never got within the gate of the grounds. The photo print of the inside of Oxford Cathl is excellent, & I’m glad to have it; cannot recognise the big Norman doorway, for it has the base of a large window over it – otherwise it might have been the chapter door of Oxford. Don’t trouble to answer all these questions; they arose out of my poring over the items of your pleasant gift. 178

1903–1914

Alas, yes – Dick Swiveller was not the only one whose divinity was swept off by the typical market gardener:3 a very interesting & attractive face is that of the “peerless” one – & wonderfully different to an English type. Those half closed eyelids (not tilted mongolian) are strikingly mysterious. It might be like a Portuguese type?4 Altogether the family piece is a real gain. There shd be a photograveur made from the negative. I shewed it to my old friend Hale White and he was much struck with the vivid picture, & coveted it. All this, my dear, is round and about the subject matter which has been on my mind of the blessed change in Jenny – and I hope & hope again for the continuance. You too are looking more vigorous than when I last saw you, perhaps the summer weather helped you? May was comfortingly kind here with Emery Walker, and will doubtless tell you no lies about me – Adieu. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 54–5

1 The Tolsey in Burford’s high street, now the Tolsey Museum, was the centre of the wool trade in the medieval town, and the place where tolls were collected. 2 [John Skelton], Skelton’s Engraved Illustrations of the Principal Antiquities of Oxfordshire, from Original Drawings by F. Mackenzie (Oxford: J. Skelton, 1823). The engraving of Burford Priory is plate 3, and is placed at the start of the volume, immediately before the section on Bampton Hundred. ‘The original drawing from which this view is taken is in the possession of Kyffin John William Lenthall, Esq. of Bessels-Leigh, Berks.’ (p. 6). 3 ‘ “It has always been the same with me,” said Mr Swiveller, “always. ’Twas ever thus – from childhood’s hour I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay, I never loved a tree or flower but ’twas the first to fade away; I never nursed a dear Gazelle, to glad me with its soft black eye, but when it came to know me well, and love me, it was sure to marry a market-gardener”.’ The Old Curiosity Shop (ch 56). 4 These comments appear to be about the new companion, Miss Cousins. See above, Letter 982, note 4.

988 • To Sydney Cockerell, 24 November 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 24 Novr ’05 My dear fellow. Thank you kindly for the Coffee Mill, wh’ Mrs Dickinson takes-to kindly.1 Some of the folk who come here like coffee, & the Matron-domo dislikes any defaulting in her ministration. I’ve no notion of what reserves may be at the bank – but P. p. cards must be a heavy drain on your finances, & 7/6 and postage for the “little mill” – to say nothing of constant week-enders travelling exp: &c do – do – do – would wear the stoutest purse-leather to ribbons. Will you come again on first chance & get paid something on acct? But jesting apart – I’m feeling the 365 P. p. cards in the year at a penny halfpenny each(?) brings a blush to my hardened 179

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

cheek. Let us say for the future, one a month, and grateful for that, be the new custom?2 Or shall I send you now a postal order for 8/2 for the ‘charitable grinder’. I had no notion there was any work so early in England as 674 A.D, the date given on the Hexham Crypt work – do you remember if Canon Greenwell had an opinion as to the character of the masonry?3 Mem: do not purposely answer my questions. What a satisfying miracle of a portrait is Bellini’s Dominic; of course it must be done from some early likeness? Have no notion of when Dominic lived, & no book of that kind to refer to.4 The Auxerre crypt is very interesting.5 Have been puzzling as to the real or artificial Madonna seated in the far distant light of the photo – Fergusson gives 1213 for the Cathedral,6 and this crypt work wd not be earlier than 11th cent? The Chipchase Edwardian four-square tower (the first likeness I’ve seen of it) is in a wonderful state of completeness, & the little modest attachment of additional house work makes a pleasant – or rather fitting, piece of modernism.7 I had much to say to you, & hear from, and the two brief snatches of visits give hardly time to remember what to ask for, & much less get. I forgot in the last chance to speak what I think of this last photo of Tolstoy; though small, I think it the most characteristic of all I’ve seen – pathetically so, indeed. Had I not better return it?8 Do you know if the 3 nos in scarlet folio of “What is Art,” translated by Maude (1898) is a perfect edition?9 I’ve just reread Ms essays on it which, on the whole, I think good.10 He speaks of some edition as inferior. I’m “going to go it” again – reading this work, which takes careful effort in that way. Yrs Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/102

1 ‘Kent’s cheapest machine was 7/6. They told me I could get something cheaper elsewhere, but as you asked for K. & agreed to 7/6 I closed with them, & the machine will be sent along to you.’ SCC to PSW, 19 November 1905, BL Add 52762, f. 162. 2 ‘Postcards to be shot off once a month? Much as I wish to please you I cannot bring myself to consent to such slow progress. It is only by the exercise of prodigious self command that I can restrict myself to one a day. I am like a boy with fireworks & I want to set them off all at once, before it is dark! As long as the stock lasts you will have to submit to one a day. When the stock is exhausted I will give my best consideration to any proposals you may care to make as to their discontinuance.’ SCC to PSW, 26 November 1905, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/101. 3 On 22 November, SCC had sent a picture postcard captioned ‘Saxon Crypt (A.D. 674), Hexham’. BL Add 52762, f. 163. ‘I believe there is no doubt about the date of the Hexham crypt. It is part of the earliest church, I think built by St Wilfrid.’ SCC to PSW, 26 November 1905. 4 ‘St Dominic belonged, like St Francis, to the first half of the 13th c. Do you not think that Bellini’s picture is just a portrait of some good Dominican of Venice, rather than an effort to recover the features of the actual St Dominic from any semi portraiture of the 13th c. that might have survived? i.e. Is it not done on the principles of the P.R.B? It has so much the look of a portrait from life.’ 5 Posted on 24 November and captioned ‘Auxerre – Eglise Saint-Pierre’. BL Add 52762, f. 164. 6 ‘The cathedrals of Sens and Auxerre are pure examples of pointed architecture. The latter (A.D. 1213) internally rivals perhaps even Coutances.’ James Fergusson, A History of Architecture in All Countries, 4 vols (London: John Murray, 2nd edn., 1874), I, p. 549.

180

1903–1914 7 Posted on 19 November and captioned ‘Edwardian Tower, Chipchase Castle’. PSW has annotated the card ‘Northumberland, on the North Tyne. N.W. of Hexham’. BL Add 52762, f. 162. 8 A photograph of Tolstoy annotated by SCC ‘taken in 1904’ is attached to the manuscript page. ‘I dont want the little picture of Tolstoy again. If you would like it large, Walker has a negative & will print one for you. I sat on that seat with him, & I agree with you that this is the most direct & characteristic of all the portraits. It is exactly like him.’ SCC to PSW, 26 November 1905. 9 Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? Translated from the Russian by Aylmer Maude (London: Brotherhood Publishing Co., 1898). SCC did not know whether the numbers were identical with the book publication, which he offered to lend to PSW. 10 Aylmer Maude, Essays on Art: I. An Introduction to ‘What is Art?’ II. Tolstoy’s View of Art. (From the Contemporary Review, August 1900), (London: Grant Richards, 1902).

989 • To George Washington Jack, 26 November 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. Sunday 26 Novr for 27 posting. My dear Jack. It has really rather troubled me, this of keeping you out of the drawing of Dormerdoorways for Brampton, for such a length of time. Indeed I have had it in hand for many days for an hour or more at a time, but old age tells the wrong way for getting work done ‘offhand’ as the saying is; you will understand that the poor ‘hand’ has been much hampered for want of other drawings to refer to at times, – all times I may say. This is a long preamble to my telling that it must go to you without further delay, with the hope you may be able to make out what is meant by my work on the sheet?1 Will you be so good as to add the additional drawings of plan – completed, & plan looking down on to dormer roof, shewing its abutting against main roof – and a side elevation shewing lead side covering, &c note, the lead rolls will run counter to the slopes of main roof . I would like the cusped verge-board2 to be carefully set out to larger scale, shewing how the centres come, for striking the cusp-foils,3 can be truly got, as I intend them to be. Note, all the wood work visible from the outside is to be of English oak, and only the oak angles of dormer & rake of roof, &c, to be covered with lead. Will you also, work out to larger scale the oak doors, with the inside fastening as indicated, but not properly worked out by me. I’m sure, that as these doors will only be used now & then, no iron bolts or latches shd be used, but that such an oak bar as I’ve shewn would answer better than anything else. The iron work to this & hooks & hinges should be of local smith’s work, not bought ironmongery. [sketch] This axis bolt might have a thumbscrew to tighten it up as the wood work shrinks. Of course this work wants drawing out properly, and the clerk of works should see that the carpenter understands the meaning of the whole. You will notice the covering fillet, at closing joint of doors, is thickened out gradually from the top & bottom to the middle, to keep the doors from curling out there above & below . It was for this reason that I made them of two thickness of "¾ oak 181

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

nailed together counteractingly, instead of mere ledged, or framed doors. If there be anything not clear to you in this poor drawing, just let me know, & explanation shall be given. You will see I’ve indicated a small triangular platform on the inside of doorway sill, supported by the middle roof-principal inside. I would suggest that you make a bit of drawing shewing a quite small oak ladder from the top of bell cage to this platform, for having no drawing to help me in the matter I cannot, to any useful purpose, suggest where the ladder should start from.4 A stable-loft ladder would answer, secured in a quite upright way diagonally at back of central piers of N & S belfrey windows, starting from top of bell cage?? See, I’ve made a mark on section plan (the large sheet) returned – note, I return all the bits of drawings I have. You may be sure I am mindful of the trouble fate & myself have put on your shoulders in this Brampton business, and the only consolation I have, is the experience which never was mine of building a steeple above the level of a church roof, will now be yours! Yours truly | Philip Webb. I’m sending the drawings same time as this by parcel post. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Thanks for the drawings of Dormer. . . . I think it ought to look very substantial and effective.’ GWJ to PSW, 2 December 1905, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘Verge’: the shaft of a column, or a small ornamental shaft in Gothic architecture’ (OED). 3 ‘Cusp’: each of the projecting points between the small arcs or ‘foils’ in Gothic tracery, arches, etc (OED). 4 ‘The little platform won’t be wanted as I had already something of the kind, a gangway of two boards laid between trusses from one dormer to the other and a ladder coming up one side, above bell cage. There is practically only one place where a ladder may go comfortably owing to the shape of the cage and the wheels of bells, but this place comes conveniently for the landing on gangway.’

990 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 18 December 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 18 Decr 05 Dear Mrs Flower. With very good reason you deferred your visit to Caxtons, for not only has [there] been the assured discomfort of getting out of ‘Town’, and but also the want of assurance that getting back might not be the worse effort. We have not had the deadly plague of fog here, but the atmosphere has been raw-chilly, and the distances have been veiled in mist; truth to tell we here have been let off easily – though just of late there has been but little sun, still the roads, &c, have 182

1903–1914

dried comfortingly, and my regulation morning walking has be[en] done – and the landscape, with its human accompaniments, always cheers me; but then you must see that I’m without those headaches you note in yourself – & are corroborated by Mrs Dickinson; they would take the light out of any landscape. So we will hope for some bright weather, at all events, in Jany 1906. The oranges – you may be assured – have already proved to be excellent, and the aged – middleaged, and the young look upon their show in the apple room on spare trays thus spread out – with some Xmas-time glee –, am checking Mrs Dickinson’s zeal for slaughtering one a day for me.1 Yes, that essay of St John Hope’s, with its Lethaby accompanyment, [sic] is an excellent piece of work, well worth all the labour of doing.2 Lethaby kindly gave me a copy. Wells was an early study of mine, and always an object to be seen as often as any journey westward gave the opportunity. I do not remember having asked if you had read (or tried to do so) Lethaby’s book on “Mediaeval art.”?3 If you have not, & yet would care to venture on it, I wd gladly lend. Mrs Dickinson & the children send seasonable thanks for your kind remembrance of them, and so does yours truly Philip Webb. BL Add 45355, ff. 43–4

1 ‘I have waited before acknowledging your kindly letter to Mrs Dickinson – with its message to me, till the case of oranges came to hand, which happened this evening. Our “outside” railway porter is as strong as a horse, & deaf as a stone, I shouted the word – “heavy”, and he said “yes”, though only carrying the load from hand-cart to the wicket gate here – a handsome testimony to the generosity of the kindly donor. In the language of schoolboys, there will be plenty “to peg away at” till Xmas and after. Luckily too for me, in as much that I put the fruits of orange & apple side by side for excellence, and the more so that I can eat of both – and will do so as soon as the case is opened, in thankfulness for so fitting a gift.’ PSW to Elizabeth Flower, 8 December 1905, BL Add 45355, ff. 69–70. 2 W.H. St John Hope, ‘The imagery and sculptures on the west front of Wells Cathedral Church, communicated to the Society of Antiquaries . . . with suggestions as to the identification of some of the images by W.R. Lethaby’, Archaeologia, LIX (1904). 3 Mediæval Art from the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance (1904): see above, Letter 946.

991 • To Jane Morris, 22 December 1905 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 22 Decr 05 My dear Janey. I like to hear from you, and would return the boon at once – always, if it were easier to do mechanically, and my wits were not so worn out! I can almost hear 183

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

someone not you saying – in the distance, “they were of small account at any time”! This kind of hearing is easier for me than by my ‘lugs’ – for there is always a singing in them now that they be rather deafer than those of some who won’t hear! do you see? (as Emery Walker says). This minds me of what a good fellow he is – such a cushion to us of longer years.1 (sic) Forgive, I wanted to tell you I would like to do that wh’ is not possible – namely, write you quite interesting as well as amusing yarns. For you are so faithful a friend. It must have only been once, I think, that you were put out with my waywardness – namely, when I made the coal shed at “Red House” too small to your mind – and yet, some people acknowledge that my memory is a bitter bad one! I don’t think you need “resent using a donkey carriage” to heave you up the hills2 – unless the attendant beat the donkey, heedless of strokes falling on the joints of the unlucky bones – it makes me wince in my seat, the thought of the sound of it, alone. Do you remember the story of W.Ms aunt, who used to pay the sand carrying boys in Devon not to beat their donkeys? This puts me in mind of my sisters late cook, who when told how to avoid spoiling that the food, answered ‘yes, that I will do,’ – and, and, did not! She, poor thing, had to go cheerfully elsewhere, seemingly, but wants to come back again, doubtless with the penitential psalm as above! Thank you – about ‘The Priory’. I’m inclined to think the engraving is, what Campfield called, “faked”.3 I am much touched by your words of ending the days in Burford, and felt, on the instant, ‘what sweeter place could be found?’ – but the other thought – of the incommunicable beauty of the Kelmscote home of memories, going pitiously [sic] a begging – struck on another string. With your quite willing permission, I would talk to Sydney Cockerell on the subject – for he is so perpetually good at need? I expect he will look in on me on Saturday, but a later date would do as well for the point in question.4 Of course I see clearly this, that as we all get older, such a responsibility and anxiety of as keeping a place like our loved one, going rightly, is too great a strain on weakened powers. Still, let us not be sad about this that & the other, now that Jenny is really better, & this hope comes to me in spite of the less serious recurrence of attacks you mention. Adieu dear Janey – from | Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 56–7

1 The ‘y’ of years is lightly crossed through. 2 JM was spending the winter with JEM in Lyme Regis, who ‘can no longer winter at Kelmscott, the cold made her worse’. JM to Charles March Gere, 17 January 1906, CLJM. 3 For George Campfield, a glass painter and foreman for MMF & Co in its early years, see Vol. I, Letter 1, note 6. For the Burford Priory engraving, see above, Letter 987, note 2. 4 See below, Letter 996.

184

1903–1914

992 • To George Washington Jack, 10 January 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 10 Jan: ’06 My dear Jack. I ask pardon for neglecting you, leaving your good letter of 13 Decr unacknowledged. The truth is, I’m rather evidently incapable of business energy, and neither am I up to much with my rather continuous but very kindly correspondence with old friends – too precious, tho: an undeserved boon; so that I’m behindhand in most ways at the age of 75 – when but small amendment – if any, can be expected; the restricted act of the mere writing is also an undenyable [sic] drawback. That little “flake” of a chip in the mullion of traceried screen in ring[in]g loft d w not matter, if the stress of weight over has got its full bearing.1 In repairing it at the end of job, I would prefer some crushed sandstone made up with mastic, as near to the colour of stone as might be, to cutting out a and inserting a new and piece of stone; that is, plastering up the vacant spot. I shall never see the tower, but I’m thinking if that did happen, the severe eyebrows to the double belfrey lights N & S wd have been more or less foreseen & therefore not shock me.2 Be assured, I much like your good natured outspoken opinions in any case. If the whole thing shd fairly satisfy you & me, it is all I could look for. Curiously enough (you may think), I rather like the thought of the St Michael for Arisaig3 – but for the life of me I cannot see (at all events just now) what could be done in costuming him, – if in armour it should be scales. A good trident [sketch] with long forks and a round targe for shield, also he must have wings, surely? Nothing can be done of course till Miss Astley returns, when you can talk it over with her, rather than write about it. Yea, I will struggle to make & send you some helpful drawing for the Brampton luffers to have some real idea for keeping the wet out, & yet letting the sound escape.4 Your South scots bonnet is the real thing, just like my old one, wh’ has been in wear just these 5 years, & is not yet an eyesore.5 The new one fits to a T, and will come in sweetly when the women folk think the old too shabby. I don’t think you quite understand my feeling, that the helpfulness of the accommodation of getting me things of the right kind, is the truest of gifts, and I always prefer paying the ‘lawing’6 for fear of wanting courage to ask for further help in future. Still I thank both your good Missis & yourself, heartily, & now say goodnight from Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

185

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 ‘The only sign of the old walls having felt the pressure is a chip on one of the mullions of the big window between the Church & the ringing steps where a flake has come off just over the sill.’ GWJ to PSW, 13 December 1905, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘The E. & W. windows will look very imposing. The N. & S. look just a trifle heavy at top – the outer arch, having no moulding & shewing a big soffit looks very severe – however that may be only my fancy.’ 3 ‘I send you a tracing of the little Niche at “Faire na sguir”. . . . I looked through those books of Miss Astleys & could find no legend the least suggestive. . . . The only thing I could see was St Michael & the love gifts or pious gifts of carrots on St Michaels eve. . . . St M. is the highland Neptune & rules the sea – he has a toasting fork as a weapon[,] should he have a shield or armour – or be more uncivilized. How would it do to do this in cast lead, with a slight shield-like curve in the plan, & not much relief in the figure.’ Several years after completing the house at Arisaig for Constance Astley and Margaret Shaen (see Vol. III, Letter 784, note 9), GWJ was asked to make a decorative plaque for the house. ‘The commission consisted of three panels: a triangular stone bearing the date and the initials of Miss Astley and Miss Shaen; a carving of St Michael; and another panel bearing a poetic inscription in Gaelic, which invokes blessings on the house and its residents. Miss Shaen wrote on 10 October 1907 from Fair-Na-Sguir, after unpacking the saint, to tell Jack “how delighted we are with him, he is grand . . .”.’ Gaimster, p. 46. 4 ‘Luffer’: archaic variant of louver or louvre; ‘either a hole in a roof to release smoke, or a domed turret-like erection with lateral openings for the passage of smoke or to admit light’ (OED); in this case a hole to let out the sound of the bells. ‘Could you let me have the drawing for the louvres in Brampton Tower. They are getting on with the work and the joiners are now on with the roof & will soon want this part to put in hand.’ GWJ to PSW, 7 January 1906, V&A, AAD. 5 ‘I send you a “Tam O’ Shanter”, a real shepherds bonnet from Glasgow. The wife was there lately and got it at Stuart & Macdonalds an old established Glasgow workhouse. I hope it will fit. You must accept it from us (as a Christmas box). I’m sure I have often enough exploited the inside of your head and may be allowed to do this much for its covering.’ See also below, Letters 1001–2. 6 The bill, especially for food or drink (Scottish).

993 • To Jane Morris, 13 January 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 13 Jany 1906. My dear Janey. Your card of 28 Decr has been an insoluble enigma for me. The legend runs thus! “Please accept a little case of ‘scent’ from Leith when it appears at your door”. It has taken all this time for me to fail in getting an answer into this wooden head of mine!1 The words ‘scent’ and ‘Leith’ seemed an impossible conjunction, unless a malodorous meaning was attached to the former? Then it struck me, knowing you to be a woman of fashion, that the notoriously odouriferous [sic] Motor car was the most fitting gift from you to me, and that you would be expecting a hint from me that such an expenditure of your treasury would be acceptable at Caxtons, now that the taking of snuff by the tenant had been abandoned; for if ‘scent’ in one form, or element, than another, what could be more pungent than that omitted from the racing carriages of Emperors & Kings? 186

1903–1914

I will say no more here, but will await your further enlightenment of my dulness – &, meanwhile, Believe me to be – as yet, your non-hooting friend | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 58–9

1 As the following letter clarifies, JM was sending PSW the gift of some bottles of whisky. Situated on the coast of the Firth of Forth, to the north of Edinburgh, Leith has long been a centre for whisky distilling.

994 • To Jane Morris, 15 January 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 15 Jany 1906. My dear Janey Your pleasant “little joke” was not “silly” – only save in the fact that the flavour of it has not yet reached me;1 when it does, I will “give you the laugh, for well I knows how flat you falls without it” – (vide Dickens’ “Dr Marigold”.)2 Thank you very affectionately for your – as always – most kindly thought of your true old friend. Mrs Dickinson went to the station this eveng with a note from me to the energetic booking office clerk there. The case had not then come, but he will let me know when it does. No, I’ve not yet reduced myself to water only: at mid-day dinner I take some of the craytur,3 and for supper some hot cocoa: about twice a week I take a glass of Marsala in the aftern between bouts of wood cutting, but the nicety of my sense of taste, as also that of smell, is gone along with the years of my youth before 73; now, at 75 I’m still youthful in mind to enjoy – more keenly perhaps than ever before – the beauty of the loveliness of the earth in all its glories. O, what good & precious news is that of this last letter, in that the dear Jenny is able & willing to attack her music studies from where she left off: please tell her this, for I know she will be glad of my loving remembrance of her now – as aforetime. Adieu, & thank you – | from your friend Philip Webb. P.S. My memory is as faint as are the senses of taste & smell. BL Add 45343, ff. 60–1

1 See previous letter.

187

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 2 Dr Marigold’s Prescriptions was a collection of Dickens’s Christmas stories, first published in All The Year Round in December 1865. 3 See Vol. III, Letter 790, note 1.

995 • To William Richard Lethaby, 17–18 January 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 17 Jany ’06 My dear fellow. Your condensed letters always inspirit me, for the time, to throw off the increasing indolence of old age, and act with something reasonable in the way of answer to your ticklish questions – but, nothing comes of it – as you will remember was so in my last answer, which was to your colour subject? I know you to have courage, and persistence – & that you could not have carried on without both in the striving with school boards, and county councilling, &c. You know more of the component parts of the “stick-phast” [sic] body, the R.I.B.A. than I do, for being always afraid of ’em, a wide berth was kept between us – much to the peace of mind of this poor party. If you and your colleagues in this matter1 think it possible to whitewash them in some way with your brushes, and not – in return – to be tarred with theirs I quite think it would be well to try if that “body” may not be found not quite as black as my fancy paints them; (that is a singularly plural sentence!). If as you feel that the things “backbone” is “finance”, rather than righteousness, can anything you may hope-for come out of it? Certainly, I have my doubts, but then I’ve had a good many in my life, and some of them proved unsubstantial. I so truly long – with you – for some quite serious & substantially simple public buildings being set up, in place of the usual unintelligent masses of Portland Stone, which have been done lately, & are still doing under government ignorance in direction, that if the L.C.C could conclude to do something not at all like them, & very reasonable, for their proposed workshop, then any efforts you & your neighbours could do to influence the R.I.B.A. to influence the L.C.C to that end, I grant it would be a labour to rejoice over.2 But, I wd much prefer to talk of such a matter face to face with you here, for I’m sure my painful writing must be as painful for you to read. How glad I am your ‘Westminster’ is to burst out of its chrysalis stage shortly; another book to read! a “bit of timber in”,3 and what is more to my present thought, to buy with my own proper coins, & no mistake!4 In the meanwhile, I still have your vol: of the ‘Venturi’ series,5 which has been & is a book of many wonders of delight to me; cannot you come to fetch it? if so, don’t come on the 27th, for Emery W: comes then – so ’tis said. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. S.C.C the invaluable was here on Friday last, thanks to himself. 188

1903–1914

Very kindly remembrance to my good friend Mrs Richard. P.S. I finished last night without so much as thank you for the plan & historical notes of Lincoln Cathl, nor indeed for the helpful photo-shot of the S.E side of E transept.6 This last was helpful, for having looked up a variety of plans views &c, of the ch’, it made more clear a particular part of it, and will be a handmaid to me in asking questions about the fabric when next you give me a chance for worrying you. What a pleasant letter from Madame Rooke, telling of the gentle frisking of the industrious workers in their earthly paradise. Yrs Ph. W. Kindly pass over gently all literary blunderings, & M.S. shortcomings, for the fogey is very old, & useless. V&A, AAD

1 A proposal for a new building to serve as the headquarters for the London County Council. See note 2. 2 The design contract for the London County Council building would be awarded to Ralph Knott (1878–1929), the site being on the south bank of the Thames, across the river from the Palace of Westminster. Building began in 1911, but the Great War delayed its completion until 1922. The sixstorey building, in a grand ‘Edwardian Baroque’ style, was faced (inevitably) in Portland stone. See below, Letters 1043 and 1047. 3 For Sampson Brass’s use of the phrase ‘we get a bit of timber in’, in The Old Curiosity Shop, see Vol. III, Letter 783, note 2. 4 WRL, Westminster Abbey and the Kings’ Craftsmen: a Study of Mediaeval Building (London: Duckworth, 1906). 5 See above, Letter 978, note 4. 6 WRL subsequently published ‘Notes on sculptures in Lincoln Minster: the Judgment Porch and the Angel Choir’, Archaeologia, LX (1907), pp. 379–90.

996 • To Jane Morris, 29 January 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 29 Jan: for 30th post.1 My dear Janey. Your ‘odeur’-de-vie came to me on Saturday, and it gladdened the nose (in prospect) of your ancient friend. When telling that I took but little whisky now, it made me think later on that you might withdraw your odoriferous promise.2 So now we are all square again, and when I’ve tasted the new comer the verdict shall be sent, and with it then – as now, the hearty thanks I always feel for often repeated kindness on your part; and, for what is more, your belief in the lasting steadiness of my long friendship for you and yours. I cannot, in feeble writing, tell what a delight it 189

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

was to read a letter of Jenny’s to S.C.C which he kindly sent on to me – knowing how my feeling would be touched by its sweetness, and evident sign in it of such a hopeful change in the dear girl’s health.3 You failed – either intentionally or by accident to say if you would rather I did not talk to S.C.C of a possible necessity for the giving up of Kelmscote;4 therefore, when he was here on Sat: week, I did not mention the matter; by this, I’m only thinking of what you would like me to say or do, or refrain from, on a decision which would lie so close to the feeling of both. All this is only too lamely put, for I now constantly find that such small power I ever had in the way of literary expression, is quite surely becoming less every year. Good night dear friend | from yours always truly | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 36–7

1 An annotation incorrectly suggesting a date of 1904 has led to this letter being bound out of correct sequence. 2 See above, Letters 993–4. 3 ‘I think you will like to see this good evidence of Jenny’s well-being.’ SCC to PSW, 24 January 1906, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/105. JEM to SCC, written on 23 January from Lyme Regis, is at V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/106. 4 See above, Letter 991, and next letter.

997 • To Jane Morris, 20 February 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 20 Feby 1906 My dear Janey. I have your kind notes of Feby 4 and 21. [sic]1 Since my last note, the Leith Whisky has been tasted, and found excellent, so far as the aged palate of your old friend is now able to judge: for three of my senses – those of smell, taste & hearing have lost their keenness: never mind, for I found out the quality of your beneficial liquor, first by the usual proportion with me, of I of Whisky to III of water. Then to test its fiery quality (for age) I used II of water to one of Whisky & found the spirit strong, but soft, and so, thanking you heartily my faithful friend, I go on rejoicing in that your hand is now “fairly well”. S.C.C was unexpectedly here on Saturday, & we were full of talk during the usual only too brief stay. On our way to the station together in the dark, I told him of your frank permit for me to talk with him about the Kelmscote “possibility”, and he gladly joined us in agreeing to think the matter out together when the time came for making up all three of our minds in any case of necessity.2 Of course – in the meanwhile – if anything occurs to either of us we can suggest it now without hesitation. 190

1903–1914

I’m so appreciably older now than has occurred to me before, that 75 (years) has an altogether different feeling belonging to it! Still, don’t be alarmed. I can still enjoy a laugh, & can thank my ‘star’ that other equally beloved stars shed their light of love on me. In the matter of Oxford’s Radcliffe Infirmary, I don’t think the S.P.A.B could move in it without weakening their strength when moving in cases more serious in the mischief contemplated.3 Strangely enough, I never was in the Infirmary grounds even, & therefore know nothing of the inside of the building. If the directing architect advising the authorities had the feeling for the place that we have (and we know they have not) there would be some chance of mediating against an unnecessary ‘clean sweep’ in dealing with repairs. I have had most kind letters from May, accompanied by Photo: pictures and she has written of her return to town, so I will acknowledge by letter the kindly feeling I have for her, & my joy in her good will towards me. Still, letter writing is a too lame effort for me. My hearty love to Jenny – in her uprising & lying down, and the same to you from yours as always | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 62–3

1 Either his own letter is misdated by a couple of days, or he is mistaken in recording JM’s note as 21 February. 2 ‘In aftn went to see Philip Webb. Found him very well & had a delightful talk. He insisted on walking down to the station with me in the rain.’ CD, 17 February 1907. 3 There are no records in the SPAB archive relating to the Radcliffe Infirmary.

998 • To May Morris, 21 February 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 21 Feby ’06 My dear May. Let me begin & acknowledge now, (late for recognition of ) your letter of 29 Jany, (that is the date on envelope!) and start by asking you when next, or any time, you incline to writing a story to me, that you will not say ‘dear Mr Webb’. You will not, I do not wish you to be flippant, but you might meet my feeling by starting off with say “My dear Philip Webb”. I would not mind ‘Master’ – or even ‘Master Philip’ – as our old servant called me,1 but ‘Mister’ is unpardonable; but You will forgive the above for the sake of the old man – not the name? Well, the letter touched my feeling closely, it was so much to the mind of he you wished to be lovingly kind to. The photos: also served delightfully to enforce your pleasant thoughts of the countryside – the lower Cotswolds, the quality of 191

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

“green and grey” appealing to my earliest recognition of those colours in Oxford walls, & College Gardens – which makes me – even now – baby-like to think of. Oddly enough I know but little of the Cotswolds’, & that only fm my weeks stay at Sapperton under the friendly wings of the Barnsley & Gimson fraternity & maternity;2 but the whole circle of country round Oxford is of kindred character and colour. I never was at Southrop nor NorthEastleach3 – but I’ve looked down on Lechlade town from the parapet round the spire of the church, Chs: Faulkner & myself, from whence we mocked at your loved father down below. You relieved my feeling so much with the photo: of Kelmscote, (a pretty one with its cat & base of cross) for the cottages, as there shewn, is all my eyes have seen of the thing in stone & mortar, and is not so trying as my fearful fancy has pictured the imposition on the blessed village. The extraordinary & happy font of Southrop, even transcends the beautiful & greatly interesting church itself.4 It was rightly good in you to pick out such appealing pictures for me to moon over – with a half sad delight. I am glad that you carried the good Crom with you in the inspiriting jaunt. Since the above, I have your other remembrance of me, in the two pictures of Lyme Regis – wh’ place also, I’ve ne’er set eyes on. I am supposing that the half fortified (?) sea-gate lies nearer the church than the modern harbour. I am also supposing the tide swells the sea close up to the effective pointed arch? Ah! I am glad you like the Venturi “Storia del arti” as I do.5 Lethaby, very nobly, has lent me the 3 vols: one after the other. O, those Lombard churches. There, goodbye for a while. I so heartily thank you for so sweetly remembering your old friend Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 64–5

1 He is thinking back to his Oxford childhood. 2 This was in the early summer of 1900, when he was hoping to find a suitable cottage in the Cotswolds to which he might retire. See Vol. III, Letters 687–91. 3 The Gloucestershire villages of Southrop and Eastleach (actually the conjoined Eastleach Turville and Eastleach Martin), situated in the valley of the River Leach, lie about five miles apart. Between them, there are three churches: St Peter’s, Southrop and St Michael’s and St Martin’s, Eastleach Martin, date from the twelfth century, whereas St Andrew’s, Eastleach Turville, is mainly of the thirteenth century. 4 The early font, located in the church wall at St Peter’s, Southrop, was discovered by the leading Oxford Movement churchman, John Keble (1792–1866), during his time as vicar (1823–5). 5 See above, Letter 978, note 4.

192

1903–1914

999 • To George Washington Jack, 28 February 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 28 Feby for posting tomorrow My dear Jack. I had your very good letter of the 19th, and was much set up by your description of the visit to Brampton. Also, I had the annoying p. card mis-representations in colour of the Church, &c, wh’ were dirty enough to lower any enthusiasm. I had written a page or so to you in acknowledgment when a letter came from Weir amplifying the news about the twin visit, & inclosing 8 excellent photographs of his own doing, as vouchers (more or less) of the kindly feeling you both express, as a consolation to me in old age and under other infirmities. From these photos: and your notes on some items, I feel it impossible for me in writing to enter on the various points noted, with any success towards helping over difficulties more or less still open to amendment &c, &c. Indeed it would better, both for you & me, to talk over them together, and that as soon as may be, ie, before any scaffolding is taken down – but next Saturday (3 March) will be taken up by Alfred Powell, who comes to talk pottery. Would it suit you to come on one day in next week, & not necessarily on a Saturday? Though at present I do not know of anyone coming on 10th March? Of course I was prepared to find the tower coming out bulky, (i.e. not a puny one) having taken, with that intent, the precaution to make the inside area 17’ 6” by 17’ 6”! Also, in making the last design for the finish of tower, I had calculated on the unbroken line of the nave roof ridge, so that the height coincides with that to a T., to say nothing of the lucky form I gave to the stone cross at E. end apex of roof. I had not much doubt as to the effect of the “flèche”*, but it might not have been so effective in reality, as it has turned out1 – and I look to the 2 dormers, for breaking the horizontal of the parapet, as important helps to the look of finish. * – french for arrow, our Fletcher, arrow maker When I see you, I am satisfied a suggestion can be made for improvement of the pinnacle finials with but small alteration – if the scaffolding is there – & perhaps you can bring me some drawings of them as now done, also of the capitals to mullions of E & W. windows – to wh’ something must be done. Weir’s photos, tho: clear, are from the light not being quite right rather dark in tone, though I can see, thro: lens, the hatched string under windows & that it is effective, & what is more, not too much so. What a mean looking little town Brampton is? but what the grocer-like boobies don’t like pleases me most, in the fact that the church is much helped by being crammed into the midst of the small houses.2

193

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I can but thank you, with the utmost sincerity, for your so effectually labouring to spare my feeling in the whole matter of carrying out the completion of the tower, a thankless task on your part, but a boon to Ph. Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘The “spire” looks now, more like what the “Building News” would call a “fleche” (if that is the way to spell it) it makes the tower look bigger still, but you will see all this for yourself in the photos which Weir means to send you. Personally I think it turns out quite right, and as I expected in proportion – a thing one must be thankful for in such a tricky thing as tower building where so many subtle deceptions are waiting for the poor T square architect.’ GWJ to PSW, 19 February 1906, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘The tower has a distinctly Northern character – the “spirelet” is a last affectionate claim to relationship with the southern counties – otherwise it seems to be putting on a somewhat grim aspect as it catches sight of the Cheviots over the neighbouring hills. This grimness is not pleasant to the very respectable townsmen I think, who would much prefer a light fantastic thing which they could walk all around and admire as an apparently expensive article which “only cost” so & so. They say they admire the tower very much, but there is always an “if it was only at the other end of the town”, “the spire looks small”, “the clock might have been higher”, “what are you going to do with that bare space?” &c &c, which gives them away.’

1000 • To William Weir, 1 March 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex 1st March, for 2nd posting Dear William Weir. I took it as generously good natured in you to spend so much energy in going north to see a mere modern church1 – when your work – happily – lies amongst the real, & venerable beauties of religious building, when art was honestly natural & part of the lives of folks of the time. It was with real pleasure that I read in your letter of the kindly feeling towards the work done under Jack’s invaluable care, in carrying out the completion of Brampton tower, a rather ungracious piece of work, and yet done without stint of his own personal labours, & much expenditure of time – on behalf of my poor reputation as an Archt! But to cap your good feeling, by sending me eight excellent photographs of the church, of which I had never seen any representation of the building since I left it to the clumsy carelessness of somewhat unliftable citizens, of a really mean north country town. I assure you when I handed over the work to them some 25 (or so?) years ago, they were by no means anxious to express any pleasure in the result of my work. Also, without so much as asking my consent, they carried out that destructive gas lighting on the capitals of the arches, which arches, &c, are the chief part of expression in the building. I had put them standards with glazed lamps down the gangways to consume as much of the gas fumes as possible, and be as far away from contact with the stone as could be.2 194

1903–1914

Still, I’m bound to say that the then person had no idea of anything due to the chief buildg in the town. I am pleased you looked to the bells – their frames, and beam carriage, &c, below, for your experience would be of much real service to Jack.3 In your interior view, a curious result has occurred (so I think) from the close neighbourhood of the houses at the east end of the church, which took the glare of light away from the lower parts of glass, so that your photograph took the subject extraordinarily clearly – so that I could easily distinguish most of the stained glass subjects.4 Jack told me that the town’s folk magnates would have preferred the church to have stood at another end of the town – that is, not amongst the low houses, which tells of their not seeing the advantage of effect in contrast, and consequently the increase of scale to the church!5 Altogether, your well chosen points of view of the photos: have given me an excellent idea of the effect of the building, so that I need not waste money in going to see it. I can but thank you (poor result) for your thoughtful care to give me the satisfaction of seeing the long delayed finish of the building, and I do it heartily. Kindly let me know – when you have leisure – of what you are doing at or in the neighbourhood of Norwich. Yours truly | Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 64

1 See previous letter. 2 He had made his objections to the use of gas clear at the outset of the original Brampton project. See Vol. I, Letters 105–6. 3 ‘Weir had a good look at the bell cage & its bearers, he thought we had made the bearings for cage rather slim, and advised certain stiffenings which I have been seeing to since I returned. I can see now that we might have improved the design of timbers under the cage, but taken all round there is not much to grumble at in that way.’ GWJ to PSW, 19 February 1906, V&A, AAD. 4 For the Morris & Co. windows at Brampton, see Vol. I, Letters 114 and 136. 5 See previous letter, note 2.

1001 • To Mary Jones Walker, 13 March 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 13 March 1906 Dear Mrs Walker. I am sure you could not have guessed the result of the very kind labour on my behalf when sending, for my own personal improvement – in out of doors appearance, the wonderfully worked and most distinguished looking “Tam o’ Shanter,” to cap my more (or less?) than scanty whitened locks! I am so shy of having any change made in my customary dress, that the old brown felt hat – occasionally used – for town 195

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

or City respectability, makes me slink, as it were – to the station, so as to escape observation from wicked boys or laughing girls – who have got accustomed to my 5 years’ wearing of the hodden-grey1 lowland Scots’ bonnet – and would be startled by any change in my attire, and might sing out as I passed them with a, “there he goes” – which utterance really happened, in a provincial German town, when an Eton schoolboy passed in the regulation Eton dress!2 So naturally shy am I upon this and a few other points, that even if I were a man of genius, the pointing of a finger of admiration at me would be the death of that genius! If you could but find some other friend of yours, and not so vain as myself, who would rejoice in wearing such an admirable piece of your work, the pain I feel in not being able to respond gratefully to your goodness – would be greatly reduced? Surely you will give me credit for a “sort of courage” – for might I not have been so cowardly as to say ‘I will wear it in thankfulness to the kind friend’, and yet fail to keep the word?3 O dear me, kindly forgive, in addition to your other forgiveness, this overlaboured expression of the misfortune attending on Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Emery rejoiced my old heart of Saturday. ______________ Both Mrs Dickinson, who is a knitter, and the schoolmistress, who is a profound knitter, greatly admired the skill of your handiwork. V&A, AAD

1 Coarse woollen cloth, undyed; simple peasant wear. 2 This incident about George Warington Taylor is recorded in some pencil notes which PSW made for SCC. ‘[Warington Taylor] told me of having been sent to Eton as a schoolboy, and afterwards he was sent to a German “academy” school (in one of the Hesse’s I think) and that the town boys, as the file of pupils went down the street called out to their fellows . . . “there he goes”, for he wore the remarkably ridiculous Eton School dress, of short jacket – turn down white over-collars, and chimneypot hat!’ V&A, NAL MSL/1958/691/110. 3 Clearly, he feared cutting too much of a ‘dash’, for this embarrassed refusal of the hand-made Tam o’ Shanter contrasts starkly with his gratitude for that sent by GWJ only weeks earlier which was greeted as ‘the real thing, just like my old one’. See above, Letter 992. For images of PSW in his Tam o’ Shanter, which he clearly favoured for indoor as well as outdoor use, see Kirk, pp. 288 and 295.

1002 • To Mary Jones Walker, 27 March 1906 Pencil Caxtons, Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 27 March 1906. Dear Mrs Walker. I have not taken all the time between the date of your letter of the 14th and of this – above given – to make up my mind. That you so happily put the kindest face 196

1903–1914

on my misfortune, with regard to the excellent ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ of your (to me) wondrous knitting, gave me ease of mind at once, and you see I reclined on that comfort & delayed the grateful acknowledgment.1 Of course, the very rightest of not wrong things will be for me to fill the void you were going to make good by again knitting direct for Emery, and I will ease you of that debt by capping him vicariously with your generosity of forgiveness! I tried the bonnet on my head, and if anything good comes to him from the contact, I’m sure he will be pleased to get the addition to his own wisdom from the head of his old friend. All fools’ day2 comes on a Sunday, so that the ill luck (if any?) to me will be avoided by my posting the bone of friendly contention on Saturday – 31 March. Kindly forgive all the above Rodomontade,3 for I really was childishly delighted by your kind lift out of the difficulty, and have thus been stimulated to an aged kind of playfulness. I am afraid this very severe kind of expression of March’s own well known quality, may not help you to less pain & discomfort of body & the action of it on the mind, but as the weather is true to its season, we will hope that April will be true in its way. With best remembrance to Dorothy. | I am yours sincerely | Philip Webb. P.S. I will send the mutual gift direct to Clifford’s Inn. V&A, AAD

1 See previous letter. 2 1 April. EW’s birthday was on 2 April. See below, Letter 1004. 3 Probably used here to mean ‘overblown’, rather than the more usual boastful or vain; the word comes from Rodomont, the Saracen leader in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (OED).

1003 • To Sydney Cockerell, 30 March 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 30 Mar: ’06 My dear fellow. I am truly touched, & sympathetic with you in your disablement1 – one of those minor ills which flesh is liable to, & both painful & irritating; of that I personally know, having suffered in that way some 45 or 50 years ago, & have the scar on the back of my neck still. Surely the best thing – as soon as the doctor allows – would be for you to go Westward, and I can think of no better exercise ground for recovery from the pull down than Dartmoor – though I’ve never been there. I see the inevitably kind daily postcard has been tuned lately to the Devonshire district, of which also I know little or next to nothing. 197

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I believe you knew that W.S.B. was going to lend me, for the reading, his ‘secret’ story of Arabi &c &c.2 This I have just diligently finished & going to hand on to Arthur Caffin. The squire’s work in it is admirable both in its dexterity, and explanatory clearness: closely argued and surprisingly well backed up by uncontradictable evidence. Let me have a word from you as soon as you have reached your resting place. I am in a queer condition which I’m afraid will be lasting. My memory is like to a washed out printed linen; writing is a most laborious and inefficient performance, therefore the more do I look forward to seeing & telling face to face with you. Yours always thankfully | Philip Webb. It is too dark for me to re-read this. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/107

1 ‘I have been laid up for a fortnight with a carbuncle on my upper lip – but am now getting better, & hope to get away next week to recruit. I am sorry that I shall not be able to get to Caxtons first. The Dr will not let me go out. I am perhaps going to my sister Una who is living on the fringe of Dartmoor.’ SCC to PSW, 29 March 1906, BL Add 52763, f. 56. 2 WSB had shown him the manuscript drawn from his private diaries of what would become Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907). ‘I hope you wrote to WSB about his Egyptian memoirs. He values your opinion. Everything he does in that kind is well done – written & re-written with infinite pains – till it looks as though it were the result of no effort at all. I greatly envy him his power of straightforward narrative. He says that he could scarcely put two sentences together till he was past 35. He is now on the road to 66, having been born, like Mrs Morris, in 1840.’ SCC to PSW, 31 March 1906, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/108.

1004 • To Emery Walker, 31 March 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 31 March ’06 My dear fellow. You may have heard from Croswell Cottages that the kindly & forgiving Mrs Walker has deftly lifted me out of the pit of misgiving & landed me on a flowery bank of content, for that beautifully knitted ‘Tam o Shanter’ (so called) which you wot of, as a cause of dismay, has been transformed into an additional bond of goodwill, in that it is to be transferred from my head to yours – on wh’ it should alight in the morning of April the 2nd (or aftn as the case may be) when you get to Clifford’s Inn, and may your head have many happy returns of it.1 The last time you were here was so full of interesting gossip, & in itself so brief, that I could find no opportunity of speaking about the excellent portrait of 198

1903–1914

Tolstoy – which you had had fittingly framed as a gift to me; truth to tell, your constantly repeated kind thoughtfulness for me is always present to my consciousness, but my wits are not always ready in expressing at the moment my thankfulness for your ever helpful good will. I am keeping those printed books of your’s & Cobden Sanderson’s in the glass cases of my bedroom, where they will be free from damp, and I’ve reassured myself that all the 7 vols: are there.2 * Heard from S.C.C this morning that he has been suffering from that exceedingly painful nuisance of a ‘carbuncle’, which has practically laid him up. I hope he will get into freer air next week. Yours as always truly | Philip Webb. *No, 2 of them are in the glass case of the book-room below. I am sending the “Jam” by post. Texas

1 See above, Letter 1002, note 2. 2 These were books published by the Doves Press.

1005 • To George Washington Jack, 4 April 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 4 April ’06 My dear Jack. Thank you for the brisk and helpful letter of 28 Mar: mainly abt Brampton Ch: I’m glad the most mean & provincial petty townsmen – tho’ hailing from the sunnier side of the border – did not drive us to extremities;1 though ’tis likely I shall have to urge the ‘aristocrats’ to look into the matter if any “decoration” of the Church interior should be set on foot, for we can guess what the outcome wd be if done according to the liking of the Brampton lights, as indeed the Ch’ gas lighting muddled alteration, of my original lighting, has turned out to be.2 As you are proposing to go north on the 7th,3 I will add – in a separate way than in this letter part – some points I would like you to look into. In closely scanning Weir’s good photos: the Tower seems to have come out in execution “all that our fancy painted it” on the paper, which is saying something unusual of a modern building? and I confess to rejoicing that, now this impressive (sic!) finish to the church is completed, nothing can now be done in the way of transplanting the whole to a more respectable part of the town, (if there is one?) for its situation has evidently added much to its dignity, crammed as it is in the midst of unimposing tenements. 199

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

In conversation with the “lights” of the township, you can say that the architects consider this – the less costly finish to the base of the tower, has proved itself to be the better art. I can assure them the original design would have cost some hundreds more to carry out. On the other side of this paper, which can be torn off, I write a few memoranda, which I hope you will look upon gently, forgiving the seeming impudence of my thus lecturing or school-mastering. Truly, this most helpful & beneficent March windiness has touched even me up to some extent, for the sun has been burning on one side of the face, & the tooth of the N. Easter has rasped the other side!4 Still, I could not help rejoicing with the farmers. It has been the 9th consecutive day of dryness. Please to forgive this long yarn, which has been as troublesome to me as it must be tiresome to you, from yours always truly | Philip Webb. Kindest goodwill remembrance to the Missis & two girls. Memoranda I. Will you look carefully inside the chancel to see if the two, N &S, stone low screens between the 2 eastern bays of the church, are as shewn on the original drawing? II. Can you make a bit of a sketch as to how the gas piping is brought down to top of capitals of columns? III. To get into the roof and convince yourself as to the odour of gas being up there, (most dangerous if a fact) as we must draw their attention to the risk of accident. IV. Look if the open tracery panels of East window lighting & ventilating this roof have been closed or not, also make a note of what I must have done to keep the wet from driving in? V. I always concluded that if the opening from tower into the roof were left open (wholly or partly) it would secure through ventilation – also, I believe there are ventilator inlets for fresh air on the inside sills of some of the windows – if so, are these kept closed? or open? VI. Get ladder & look at the lead gutters between the roofs on the N. or street side of aisle, & see if they are in good working condition. VII. Kindly make clear to Clerk of Works & men, how the lightening conductor must be brought down from the flèche-top to the churchyard, &c. I think the copper rope could come down on the W. of S. side spire roll ridge? [sketch] There should be enough rope to go into the Earth as deep as the foundation? VIII. I’m thinking you will see the plumber at work on the roof & spire, &c, when you can insist on a decent ‘welt’5 being left on the one side of rolls? IX. Has the pointing been much disturbed by frost over the new stone work of tower?

200

1903–1914

X. I am much wishing that you shd get the committee to agree to & not depart from the position of ecclesiastical flag to be hung out occasionally as you so well arranged [sketch] – also let there be no spear head to the flag pole. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I have had a letter from the Clerk of works Brampton saying that the committee have decided to pay for the extra on the last design for louvres. All’s well that Ends well, but it looked like trouble . . . I am glad there will be no occasion now to raise a storm.’ GWJ to PSW, 28 March 1906, V&A, AAD. 2 See above, Letter 1000, note 2. The ‘aristocrats’ were the Carlisles, GH being patron of the Brampton church. 3 ‘I think of going there on April the 7th, when I understand I shall see the works pretty well finished.’ 4 ‘What a curious battle this is going on between the sun and the wind. We are getting the full benefit of the icy blast coming straight from polar darkness to Station Road Finchley and carrying with it suggestions of infinite horrors. . . . I know you despise “weather” & rather glory in fogs, cold days, rain, and even if you had the chance earthquakes calling the one “only dirt in the air”, the other bracing &c &c.’ 5 See above, Letter 975, note 1.

1006 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 7 April 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex 5 7 April ’06 My dear ‘squire’. It was on last Saturday that I managed to take the “Memoirs” to Arthur Caffin, & at the same time pay my Lady day rent.1 I told Caffin he should, by rule of security, give me a receipt for the book at the same time as that for the rent, for the book was too precious to be handed about carelessly!2 Indeed – my friend as well as landlord – this quite surprising Egyptian story, after having been read carefully & with the highest interest, deserves some honest expression of the effect it had, & still has on me, but my unlucky illiteracy makes me very shy of attempting any effort in that way. If the then Mallet [sic] & Colvin be still in the uncomfortable flesh, & should have the book put in a friendly way under their noses – may I be there to see the result!3 There is in me a kind of sneaking regard for Gladstone as a politician, and when one considers how he was entangled with such Whigs as Ld Granville, &c, &c, one can but sigh that the grievous blunder came about.4 That the parochial politician of Birmingham had a hand in the mischievous influence is all in character5– &c, &c. Your indeed very serious labour seems to me to have been carried through with quite remarkable skill & success, with that very unusual quality – in a book of the

201

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

kind – a singular freedom from prolixity – and its assertions are well backed up by proofs. I was thankful that you were good enough to have the work so clearly & helpfully printed, for the condensed matter called for such help. Being but an unskilled reader, of course there had to be a constant turning back to make sure of the sense of the arguments, &c. Kindly accept my quite sincere thanks for the kindness in allowing me to read – without hurry, what has interested me so much – and believe me Yours truly | Philip Webb.

the

WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 Lady Day is traditionally the date on which contracts between landowners and their tenant farmers would be renewed, or end, and is one of the four ‘Quarter days’ on which rent is traditionally paid. Its liturgical observance is on 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, but its secular application now falls on 6 April (still the start of the British tax year), and it is probably this date which PSW has in mind. 2 See above, Letter 1003, note 2. 3 The appointments of Sir Edward Baldwin Malet, fourth baronet (1837–1908), as consul-general in Egypt, and of Sir Auckland Colvin (1838–1908), controller-general overseeing Egyptian government debt, coincided with the nationalist struggles of 1880–2. ‘The reports of these men on the spot helped to fan fears (possibly exaggerated) of anarchy and an anti-European military revolt, which prompted the British occupation of Egypt following riots in Alexandria in June 1882.’ http://www. oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/32516?docPos=3 [accessed 22/01/2015] 4 Granville George Leveson-Gower, second Earl Granville (1815–91) was a Liberal politician and a close ally of Gladstone. He served twice as foreign secretary in Gladstone’s administrations, in 1870–4 and 1880–5, the second coinciding with the British occupation of Egypt. 5 Joseph Chamberlain served as President of the Board of Trade in Gladstone’s 1880–5 administration.

1007 • To Sydney Cockerell, 8 April 1906 Pencil; year added by SCC Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 8 April for 9th posting My dear fellow. Your quite full letter of the 31st Mar: relieved my feeling, as to your condition of health, considerably.1 One does not “take one’s punishment” of pain as well as the typical Irisher does his bating – because the feeling is – generally – that ’tis not deserved? Not knowing if your lip-trouble made you feel weak & generally careless of what would follow, but if not so, you would have been strong enough to be painfully resentful of the pain – &c? ’Tis to be hoped your retreat completed itself in the spirit of the notes on the 2 P. cards sent fm Yelverton. The “Tudor House” at Sampford, Dartmoor, may well enough be Tudor in date, or earlier, or even later, for in such places, with quarries & old customs in masonry, the style of building in the later times hardly seemed to change at all.2 The Cotswolds too

202

1903–1914

have much of that lingering date hanging about their art – for it is art! How gentle and attractive are those Cambridgeshire churches. Like “Tops,” they “growed so”, evidently.3 To me that they are pathetically touching. ’Tis strange that I should never have seen St Peter’s at Cambridge4 – but truly, I know but little of that eastern counties’ Oxford. The picture, with no name to the card, must be Corpus Coll. with the top of Merton tower shewing over the roof – at Oxford? J.Rs Hony: fellow college.5 I’ve got so used to the French gothic now, that a return to the English looks almost foreign! Indeed it pleased me too, that Neville Lytton had it borne in on him to give his portrait of Emery W: to the patient invalid wife – the gift would almost make her feel that life was worth her poor living of it – now?6 I met Neville on Arab back in Worth lane on Friday, & told him of the pleasure to me, of the gift. I note the marvel of a Launcelot M.S. of c. 1300 in 2 vols!! if it may be so possible??7 It does not strike me as strange that the ‘Kingsford’ should be a bit cast down at times as to the impossibility of ‘living’ by her dainty & time taking work; she shd have free gratis living in a human nunnery – where pan-cakes and other god-like foods dropped from heaven on the mess room table, & there would be no bad husbands.8 Yes, after much indolent deferring, & travail in effort, I got a miserable kind of (for him happily brief) letter written to W.S.B about the ‘secret’ Egypt book; I said nothing but the truth, but even that was not good! Will put off saying more about the subject till I see you.9 It would be well for me to read something dependable about Sir R. Burton, for at present I have ma doots as to the man having been human.10 Yours, as always, | Philip Webb. G.B-J wrote me of the pleasure she had in meeting you & Crom Price at the Mackail lecture time.11 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/109

1 ‘Today I have been out for the first time – have seen herons & flying wild duck & red deer & have sniffed the delicious spring breezes. On Monday I hope to get away to my little sister at Yelverton near Plymouth, & to come back in a week quite restored. What a pleasure to be in the fresh air after being shut up for sixteen days. My lip heals daily to the doctor’s satisfaction & mine. I am the worst of pain-bearers & was a very impatient sufferer.’ SCC to PSW, 31 March 1906, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/108. 2 ‘I have got comfortably down to my sister – a breezy spot on the edge of lovely moorland country. Isn’t this a jolly kind of house? but I suppose later than Tudor.’ SCC to PSW, 3 April 1906, picture postcard captioned ‘Sampford Dartmoor. A Tudor Manor House’, and posted from Yelverton, BL Add 52763, f 60. He stayed a week with his sister at Yelverton, sending a card to PSW each day. 3 The direct reference is to Topsy, the slave-girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) who knew nothing of her mother – ‘ “I s’pect I growed. Don’t think nobody ever made me” ’ – but this also alludes to WM, and the nickname used by his friends. See Vol. I, Letter 3, note 2. 4 On 30 March SCC had sent a postcard of St Peter’s Church, Cambridge.

203

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 5 JR was made an honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in April 1871. 6 ‘I enclose a letter from Mrs Walker that you may see how happy Neville Lytton has made her. It is really an admirable portrait & a very handsome present.’ SCC to PSW, 31 March 1906. This portrait in oil (1905: Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum) was given by Dorothy Walker to John Brandon-Jones, and was in turn bequeathed by his widow to Cheltenham. 7 ‘I have the most wonderful manuscripts in my hands to describe – including a Lancelot of the Lake c. 1300 in two volumes with as romantic & beautiful pictures as ever you saw – but I haven’t been able to do much to it as yet.’ 8 ‘Miss Kingsford was here yesterday, back this week from Egypt & looking very well. She says her work takes such a tremendous time that it doesn’t pay at all. She is a fortnight thinking a subject out before starting to paint, & she doesn’t know what is to be done.’ 9 ‘Went down to Three Bridges in the aftn & had a very nice time with P.W. but he seemed to me to look older & when he walked to the station with me I noticed that his breath was very short. He said it had been so for three months. He said that I looked ten years older as a result of my illness!’ CD, 14 April 1906. 10 The writer and traveller, Richard Francis Burton (1821–90), began his explorations of Egypt in 1852. His translations of classic Arabic texts, including the Arabian Nights (1885–8) and The Perfumed Garden (1886), retained the erotic content of the originals, which proved challenging to Victorian sensibilities. 11 ‘Have just heard Mackail’s inaugural address as Prof of Poetry at Oxford. Very successful & a crowded audience.’ SCC to PSW, 10 March 1906, BL Add 52763, f 44. JWM was Professor of Poetry for five years from 1906.

1008 • To George Washington Jack, 28 April 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 28 April. My dear Jack. Thank you much [sic] for your letter of the 19th, telling of the late visit to Brampton. Still, it seemed to me, both from the handwriting and the tone of it, that you had been wearied by the unsympathetic and self-satisfied committee, full of their own importance based on ignorance.1 I readily understand they are not a bit more civilised than they were in 1878 – even if they are chips of the old blocks, or blockheads! You may be sure I am sincerely touched by your courage, and great kindness in undertaking so taxing & ungrateful a task on my account;2 your successful work comes to that after all is allowed, for I might have advised Ld Carlisle to get the business put in the hands of a Carlisle archt! But, and it is true, I rather winced at the thought of some irresponsible “Institute”, or “Association” representative undertaking to better the none too good of my work, by an ambitious flourish in the upper part of the tower, and I must needs confess, that with your invaluable assistance, I think the effect of the tower (from Weir’s photos:) is distinctly satisfactory, and proves that my decision (rather against the local idea) that the new church should be built on the site of the old ‘conventicle’, in amongst the small houses, was the right one; for I think you will allow that this arrangement gave a natural motive in the design, &c, &c? Of course I would have been glad 204

1903–1914

if you had been asked to undertake the very much called for decoration of the interior. You will smile – doubtless, at my being annoyed (as I really am) at the mutilation of the effect of the pillars & arches, with the stupidly inefficient, as well as injurious result of the gas lighting, as altered from the standards & lamps against bench ends, designed & carried out by me. I consider it a mere trifle that this result of their meddling is a continuous danger to the building!! I am looking forward to a face to face talk with you, about the lead work – &c, &c, of which you give some hints in your letter, and wh’ cannot be intelligibly explained save by personal question & answer.3 For example, was the cross up on the spirelet? You need not answer this now, but I wd like to know what you think of it. I can’t think of anything about the church, in aid of future “review” or “speech making” – save perhaps, that the notice given above, about the gain to the church (and indeed to the effect of the town) by its position, instead of an isolated one, being allied to the houses and the old graveyard.4 I have heard of you from my brother, & would like to have some explanation, &c. Yours Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I was very mad with the committee, but got cooled down after expressing myself on the subject of paint. They have taken the matter in their own hands and red-washed the church as it was before. I told the secretary they might paint it tartan next time if they liked they would get no more gratuitous advice from me.’ GWJ to PSW, 19 April 1906, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘I can assure you that far from feeling that I have had an irksome task, it has been a “good bit of fun” even if we dont take into account the just as important, “bread and butter” side of the question. On both sides I was glad to do the work – and that you feel it an obligation is only a proof of your own generosity. The “obliging” was all on your side.’ GWJ to PSW 9 May 1906, V&A, AAD. 3 ‘I found the tower “practically finished” as the builder put it, but still some things to do. The spirelet is leaded & the roof and the scaffolding was down from the top stages. . . . The lead work looks very well – the plumber found it a tough job to put the lead on the spire.’ GWJ to PSW, 19 April 1906. 4 ‘They are going to have a great day on the 10th May, a real Bishop is to come & put the “fluence” on the building & declare it holy. . . . They want some “interesting facts” to embody in a review or speech for the occasion & I am trying to put a few together for the Secretary – do you know any about the Church itself, that might be of interest now.’ See next letter, note 2.

1009 • To George Washington Jack, 25 May 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 25 May for 26th post. My dear Jack. The date above written would be enough to condemn me as an unthankful brute in the form of an old friend, when he looks on the date of your long and helpful letter of the 9th inst! 205

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I can but ask you still to put up with me, as you surely had to do with the Brampton Com-mit-tee, and there’s a couplet for you.1 Truth to tell – (if only for once) – I’m overburdened with letters to write in answer to many kind friends – who are not so unable to write as I am to acknowledge. There are some half dozen by me – of a fortnight, 3 weeks, or a month, or more still staring in the face at me as unanswered. I had been weak enough to think it probable, or at least possible, that the chairman of the Church building committee would have expressed to me their satisfaction with your most satisfactory labours – in carrying out the work so promptly and successfully, without a hitch of any kind. Of course I knew these north country English town’s-folk to be an ungracious lot, and pretty well able to match the buildings of their hard featured town in meanness! I could read into Ld Carlisle’s humble apology for my shortcomings, that they had let him know by nods and becks that I was of small account in their opinionatedness!!! & so on. I think your long letter of hints to the committee as to the characteristics & peculiarities of the tower an excellent one – and I especially commend your note on the bulkiness of the work as making it effective – adding too, a good account of the value of the flèche in the way of contrast, &c.2 As for myself – with the help of Weir’s good photographs – I sufficiently like the effect of the tower, as not in any way to object to the towns-folk shaking their heads doubtfully as to its architectural merit, something after the manner of Baird of Exning, being doubtful if a relieving arch (visible) was good architecture?3 However, I’ll write no more on the subject, for expecting you shortly to find a Saturday’s visit & a talk over that, Rounton,4 & other kindred subjects, more easy for me and less dull for you – and certainly pleasanter with all the wonderful greenery of this district in its astonishing freshness as background. Still, as we cannot have all things at one time, you will have missed the wonderful beauty & fullness of the apple trees blossoming; the most perfectly beautiful that I can remember having seen; even the most time & weather worn old tree about here has been as gay as the more youthful – possibly, from the preceding wet season, for apple trees take kindly to water at the root. If you happen to see Lethaby, find out if he be likely to come here, & if so when? as I like my friends to be here singly, when I can get more out of them. Yours, truly thankfully | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I hope I did not lead you to think that I was rampaging mad over the committee’s indifference to my sage advice. I was only effervescing a bit and it has all gone off in froth, made up of a little marital bad language and my incoherent letter to you.’ GWJ to PSW, 9 May 1906, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘I send you . . . the kind of “Review” I sent the secretary who asked me for some notes that he might incorporate into an oration which he is going to deliver tomorrow – the opening day.’ 3 In 1895–6, PSW enlarged the eighteenth century Exning House, near Newmarket in Suffolk, for the army officer and racehorse trainer and breeder, Edward William David Baird (1864–56). See Kirk, pp. 194–8 and 301.

206

1903–1914 4 ‘I was at Rounton lately. . . . Sir Hugh [Bell] was very kind and considerate for my uncivilized manners, and took me in my “go to meeting” garb.’ GWJ made a significant number of amendments and additions to Rounton Grange in these years, including ‘a large common room, designed 1905 to 1906 and built soon afterwards. . . . In the same decade, his small bell-turret was erected on the main roof, and he replaced the glazed south wall of the southern ambulatory with a stone one containing a garden door. He also designed and built the East Lodge (1908), a cottage for the head gardener, a pair of semi-detached cottages, and the Square (village hall with attached dwellings).’ Kirk, ch 7 note 43. See also Gaimster, pp. 47–8.

1010 • To William Weir, 2 July 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. 2. July. ’06 My dear Weir. Your very clear explanatory letter of June 25. has been considered again & again, with real satisfaction that you are occupied on such an interesting work as sustaining so precious an antiquity as West Stow Hall.1 As you seek the well earned bed at night, you must feel a certain satisfaction that one more neglected old fabric, is one day nearer to being made safe for future studious folk to examine, and bless the handiwork which saved it for the future! Since my last notes to you, the larger photo: which I knew was somewhere, has been found, shewing the fabric of the entrance front to have been in much the same condition as your smaller picture, taken some 10 years or so later, makes clear. From my larger view (though Ivy had then been allowed to grow on it) (more than twice the size as yours) allows of more or less making out the charges on the crowned shield of arms in the ornamented frame, just under the sill of the blocked gable window at the top: so far as I can make out, the dexter side of shield has a charge of 3 fleur-delys, and (possibly) a chevron (a) between? [sketch] The sinister side seems as if it might be charged with semée (powdering) of fleur-de-lys? or with the lillies [sic] between two bends (b-b) of sketch? In spite of the good lens, I cannot be sure of more than the crown & fleur-de-lys on the dexter side – that is to the left of the beholder. I wd like to know what the bearings really are – at your convenience. In my old view, a handsome base for 3 or 4 chimney shafts is visible right away back, probably attached to the house proper, the base of this chimney has a handsome panel ornamented with trefoil heads of brick (?) panelled work supported on corbels. The chimney flue-stack above, being modern; the bases seem to be octagonal? I was glad to learn that Thackeray Turner had been to see both you & your work, for he is a good serious and very thoughtful fellow, & very helpful in consultation. I think with you, that a substitution of a sound English oak window frame, with mullions, (perhaps divided into 6 instead of 8 lights) would be an additional stiffening of the fabric, and the glazing might allowably be in leaded lights with panes about 6” x 8” plain square in shape, (not quarry). This would 207

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

allow of an iron casement. This is only a suggestion, as a slight improvement on the otherwise inoffensive present window frame? I quite feel with you & Turner that, if damp can really be kept out, it would be well to keep the brick-nogging2 between the oak studding flush with outer face of timber, & therefore not plastered, but I am rather averse to battening out and lathe plastering on the inside, as furnishing runs for rats, as in places it does here. In some parts of my south bedroom wall, the brick-on-edge lining has been used, and is simply distempered white inside. I don’t think there would be a liability of the building thise 2"¾ (brick on edge) lining against the back of old oak studs would tend to their decay, and the occasional bond, (horizontal) as suggested in my former letter, would surely stiffen the whole wall by its longitudinal effect? Still, I would urge you to use your own judgment after weighing the opinions of others – for you are on the ground my dear fellow, & can consider all the points together. I’ve heard of old oak shrinking when it has been sawn down, but never of its doing so when in contact with lime mortar; but I see no objection to packing the brick filling in with oakum as suggested. I think you are quite right to get the roofs seen-to & stiffened before this walling is attended to. I am also quite of your mind in cradling the turrets as you propose. True, I am glad to learn that you have now a colleague & dependable deputy in Mr Davis Rye3 – and the more satisfied I shall should be if he defers marriage till he has shewn his capability of sustaining antique buildings in the successful way you have proved to be possible; and may good luck attend on the sound judgment of both of you. I think you could hardly have a more interesting, and admirably composed piece of old work on which to expend the utmost resources of the healing craftiness of unobtrusive art. Be sure your letting me know when you can come & see me here will be welcome. I’m likely to be going to my brother’s at Winchester for a fortnight at the end of the month – to allow of Mrs Dickinson taking her holiday. With hearty good wishes for your success in the labours we both have at heart I am, Yours truly, | Philip Webb. SPAB W-W 85

1 A house and gatehouse dating from the early sixteenth century, situated north of the village of West Stow, near Mildenhall, in Suffolk. WW had reported to the SPAB that ‘the walls of the 1st floor are plastered over the timber & brick-nogging. The plaster is loose & must come off & one question I want the S.P.A.B. opinion on, is how to treat the upper walls. . . . At present we are underpinning the turrets & front of gatehouse which has settled badly.’ WW to HTT, 7 June 1906, SPAB, West Stow Hall file. 2 Brick-nogging: ‘Brickwork built up between wooden quarters or framing’ (OED). 3 Little is known of Davis H. Rye, nor how long he worked for WW. He was a member of the SPAB from 1909–12.

208

1903–1914

1011 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 24 July 1906 Pencil; added ‘July 1906?’ Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. July 24, (evening) for tomorrow’s post. Dear Mrs Flower. Mrs Dickinson is very thankful for your helpful kindness in this matter of stimulating the attention of her young boy;1 they say he is quick at school, and if there is a purpose at the end of reading a book he is more likely to think of what he reads, if he can go about and find the living object for comparison with the written & drawn one. The “Wayside & Woodland Tree” book seems to me, on looking it through, to be a rather good one for the purpose intended, as it is not a mere story telling of trees, with more or less doubtful drawings of their forms, & other characteristics, but is reproduced both in small & large from the objects growing; accurately & recognizably.2 Indeed, by giving the ‘boles’ of the trees as well as the general forms both in winter & summer states – is really good; also, the detailed diagrams are sufficiently good for teaching. Again, I think the text is interesting & intelligible for young folk. All round, the book seems to me to be an unusually good one for the purpose. Both you and his mother may depend on my telling him anything I know about the subjects; but not being a good teacher, I can only stimulate his know learning, by my sympathy with all nature. The “Book of old-fashioned Flowers” does not seem to me uninteresting, and though I’ve not tested it as much as the other one, I fancy the boy will be able to follow it to some purpose – but we shall see!3 In any case, please accept my thanks for your energetic kindness in the matter & believe me Yours truly | Philip Webb. P.S. Thank you for the former note of July 16: I’m glad you had such company to St Albans. I gave Mrs Dickinson your note to her, & she will be likely to tell you of her feeling as to health. And so the Leycesters are still alive; have not seen or heard of them for years.4 Ph. W. BL Add 45355, ff. 46–7

1 Reggie Dickinson was now aged ten. 2 Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Trees (London: Frederick Warne & Co., 1905). 3 Harry Roberts, The Book of Old-Fashioned Flowers, and other plants which thrive in the open-air of England (London: John Lane, 1904). 4 For Rafe Oswald Leycester, see Vol. I, Letter 294.

209

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1012 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 August 1906 Pencil c/o H.S. Webb. Esq | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 9 Aug ’06 My dear fellow. Some 13 p. p. cards of mediaeval & semi-med: domestic French art are my companions at this time, and even stir the dormant enthusiasm of the brother & sister – they are so pleasing, as they say, and do not seem to be more or less anxious as to my sanity, when giving vent to my keener appreciation of them. The last card got this morning is one of the most interesting; – of the court inside of the Chateau of la Houblonniere – called on the card, as of the XVI. c, whereas parts of it seem to me to be as early as late XIV. c.1 Perhaps the most surprising as well as enchanting picture is that of the interior quadrangle of Manoir d’Ango, with its oriental-like dove cote; what an echo des temps passèr!2 [sic] Of the other, & very various, beautiful pieces of characteristic French building, I will hope to talk over with you when I am at home (sic!) No, the wall & carved work paintings by T.M.R. were done by him from a triforium, and either of last year’s work or the year before – & not of the Liget round chapel, which I remember as being on the flat (?) and rather rude pictured subjects.3 Hope you found the St Cuthbert M.S all your fancy must have painted it on the vellum of your brain? ’Tis the post mark on this morning’s card wh’ told me of your return to Rd.4 I can but hope that the ‘Chesterton’, written of, is not wholly wedded to paradoxes, for that piece of his – labelled ‘the Rich’ – has clearly distinct evidences of (I hope not temporary) seriousness in it.5 Maybe he finds serious writing not marketable, & falls back on cleverness, &c, &c, as other fellows we know of, have fatally done. I confess the above noted piece of work seemed to me to be his natural vein, tho: I detected a paradox, wh’ had to me a subtle meaning & wh’ partly excused the unloved medium of expression. Everything I gather from you – & also from G.B-J, – of the peace of Mrs M. & Jenny, at this time, leaves my mind more at ease too. I am supposed to be making for Caxtons about the 14th of this month, but am awaiting news from Collins, who is taking care of the place,6 as to where W. Dench, and his not too merry men, have got with the ceiling mendings in the bed rooms. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/121

1 All of the postcards which SCC sent to PSW whilst he was in Winchester appear to have survived, including this one, posted on 8 August 1906 and captioned ‘Le Château de la Houblonniére, vue intèrieure (XVIe Siècle)’. BL Add 52764, f. 40.

210

1903–1914 2 Posted on 1 August 1906 and captioned ‘VARENGEVILLE. – Manoir d’Ango, le Colombier’. f. 32. 3 ‘The English cards have all got themselves addressed to Caxtons so I am obliged to fall back on a little collection of French buildings showing half-timber construction. The interior of Le Mans was painted by Rooke, but it was not the painted interior you are thinking of which was in the round chapel of Liget nr Loches.’ SCC to PSW, 27 July 1906, f. 27. 4 ‘I am at Kelmscott for Sunday. A beautiful rain has fallen in the night & refreshed the parched garden. Mrs M. well & cheery. Jenny & May expected tomorrow. I go to Yates Thompson’s country house near Aylesbury to see a new MS life of St Cuthbert.’ SCC to PSW, 29 July 1906, f. 29. 5 ‘G.B-J says you have asked for information about Chesterton. He is a journalist with good ideas & capacity for thought, but with a tiresome passion for clevernesses & paradoxes which makes his writing wearisome after a bit.’ SCC to PSW, 30 July 1906, f. 30. The writer G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was an extremely prolific journalist, contributing regularly during this period to The Illustrated London News, The Speaker and the Daily News. ‘The Rich’ has not been traced. 6 For Thomas Collins, see above, Letter 874, note 1.

1013 • To Margaret Dickinson, 12 August 1906 Pencil c/o H.S. Webb Esq. | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. Sunday. 12. Aug. ’06 Dear Mrs Dickinson I had your good letter this morning, which made matters quite clear to me. But the news of your father and mother was a little less good than that which I had hoped it would be; therefore, my not being able to give you another day or two with them, rather vexed me. Your father’s deafness appeals to my feeling as my hearing is not likely to improve. You were quite right in recognising my disinclination to writing, now, and having brought half a dozen or more letters with me, the answering of which had been too long delayed, I set myself to clear those away before writing to you – this was the cause of the letter being delayed that you had expected earlier, and I am sorry it so happened. Of course, I did not like Mr Collins’s want of consideration in not letting us know that Mrs Collins would not be with him to take care of the house, and in writing to him tomorrow, I shall ask him to try & find some dependable woman to help clean up the place somewhat before you get back, for the house will be in too disorderly a state for you to set to work upon it single handed.1 Perhaps your Mrs Dench would know of someone who could help, and not hinder you.2 I find my sister here in better condition than I had expected, for in her late attack she was very unwell; happily she has wonderfully recovered and is quite bright and active again. With sincere good wishes for yourself, & the kindly family – old & young, about you. Believe me to be | Yours truly, | Philip Webb. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644 211

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 Thomas Collins also looked after Caxtons when both PSW and Margaret Dickinson were away in 1903 and 1907. 2 Mrs Dench was presumably the wife of William Dench, the carpenter and handyman for WSB’s estates.

1014 • To William Weir, 4 September 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 4 Sepr ’06 My dear Weir, Your clear & explanatory letter of Aug 12, deserved & earlier [sic] acknowledgment, for it interests me greatly in that a building of such value is in your careful hands,1 and your clients are willing to let you use your own judgment in doing only these things which you – from time to time – find necessary, in order to make it lastingly secure, without in any way diminishing its authentic value. I’m afraid it is beyond all possibility that I should see in the flesh any of your successful efforts in the way of sustaining precious historical buildings, for all travelling now takes more out of me than is reasonable to undergo. I was glad to get back to this for its quiet beauty, though even here one is not free from the latter day curse of the brutal motor machine. Indeed I was glad to learn from you that Jack & family were getting a month’s change from London life, for I thought he looked worn when last here. Truly I fancied the ungracious people at Brampton had made his good work there quite unnecessarily irksome to him – and thankless for his honest labour beyond the bounds of ordinary selfish stupidity. The plans you sent I found very helpful towards my understanding what you have already done, and about to do. I can but say I’m glad you have succeeded in carrying your point of not opening out the big closed window on the first floor of the entrance tower. As for the small one above, your explanation & decision in concluding to open this, [several words obliterated] seems to me, as well as to you, allowable with a little additional strengthening; also, it would be well to give in to your clients’ wish where it can be done without risk. I feel with you, that the securing the brick turret cappings is a difficult business, on acct of the dislocated brick-work, but your plan of doing the resetting – bit by bit at a time, so as to be sure of keeping the contours, promises well; for I can imagine, that without lifting the material, the making the cappings secure & waterproof by raking out & filling up gaping joints, would make a quite evident botch at the last. As to the very prettily contrived terracotta crowned shield of arms – of which you were so good as to send me a tracing, I have looked into Boutell’s book on heraldry and found some information that makes the matter pretty certain, of the shield being that of the Duke & Duchess of Suffolk.2 If you have not been to ‘Wingfield’, I’m thinking you would make an effort to get there and see the “tomb with two effigies”?3 I send the notes I made from Boutell’s book. I will keep your tracing 212

1903–1914

of the shield till you send for it, or come & fetch it, for I may want to refer to it should something else come to light. I retain your plans with thanks for the help, and also for your detailed letters. With sincere good wishes for your further success. I am | Yours truly | Philip Webb. Kindly excuse this badly done letter. I increasingly find difficulties in writing, from old age, & ruined memory, &c. SPAB W-W 86

1 West Stow Hall, in Suffolk. See above, Letter 1010. 2 Charles Boutell, Heraldry – Historical and Popular (London: Winsor & Newton, 1863). See Vol. III, Letter 738, note 3. 3 Boutell, p. 347. The fourteenth-century parish church of St Andrew, Wingfield, in Suffolk, contains the tombs of the de la Poles, dukes of Suffolk, including the double tomb of John de la Pole (1442–1491/2) and his wife Elizabeth of York (1444–1503/4), sister of Edward IV and Richard III.

1015 • To Jane Morris, 6–11 October 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 6 October. 1906. My dear Janey: Your delightfully interesting and affectionate letter is a blessing to me. Though pretty much silent myself in the writing way, I none the less rejoice when one or the other of the fast friends of one’s life assert their claim for a sign of remembrance in that, to me, difficult way of expression. When in such personal contact with old companions, I can talk away freely enough – even to the point perhaps, of too much? the sight, & sound of voice stimulate my failing memory, and thoughtful feeling wells up to one’s brain. Those fetchers & carriers of communication between separated friends – E.W. & S.C.C – never fail in such good offices, and keep the remnants of the companionship in good heart. I am cheered too by the “day by day” improvement of dear Jenny’s health, and your noting that Burford is proving good for both of you; the thought of all three of you being there – and you “not uncheerful”, at this autumn time, is a pleasant scene I can well conjure up & be thankful for.1 Think of me smiling over the promise of more of the “creature”!2 – as if it were election time & you bribing for a vote. My sense of taste (as well as smell) is very weak now, though I can recognise the goodness of the Baillie Bros: “still,” by its not having had ill effect on me before, but rather the reverse; as soon as the good ‘spirit’ gets to me I’ll thank you for its safe arrival. I would that a good spirit and capability for letter writing was mine, that I could send this “Bath chair” comrade of all these years, many cheerful, and indeed not unthankful signs of due remembrance 213

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

and unfailing hopefulness. I don’t know how many years younger you are of the two, but when reading what you write, I feel myself older than the fact of 3 score & 15½ years – which is a kind of arithmetical problem for you to solve.3 I beg you not for a moment to fancy me as unable to laugh, and enjoy the still continuous circle of the seasons, and the beauty of them, so as enchanting as intangible visions. Burford, except for those two times (I think?) you took me there, is otherwise unknown ground to me save from map & book studies of that rather outlying part of Oxfordshire. I do not in any way belittle the sweetness of County Sussex – for behold it too is “very good”,4 but Berks & Oxon were the brewing-grounds of my blood; both you and I had but to cross Folly Bridge, to be in a kind of childish other world5 and ’tis the same at Kelmscot[t], where fancy makes out the wonderful Earth to be of different charm-power on either sides of the river. I hope May is still with you, and that she can see magic in the ripples of ‘Windrush’, and laugh & cry at both ends of the bridge!6 And dear Jenny too will tramp about the district, and think of my affectionate remembrance of the varied times of our delightful comradeship – still living too, with those of us gone to the other side of the big river. There my dear, this miserable fragment of thought was begun (as you see) on the 6th & finished on the eleventh – from yours always truly | Philip Webb. You will not think hardly of me for this delay in acknowledging your letter? BL Add 45343, ff. 66–7

1 JM and JEM spent much of July through to October 1906 at Burford, and MM was with them for at least part of this time. 2 Whisky. See above, Letter 993, note 1. 3 PSW was more than eight years the elder – JM was born on 19 October 1839 – and he outlived her by fifteen months. 4 ‘And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.’ Genesis 1:31. 5 Folly Bridge crosses the Thames in Oxford, and was built in 1825–7. 6 The river Windrush passes through Burford.

1016 • To Sydney Cockerell, 19 October 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 19 Octr – ’06 My dear fellow. The constant flow of your p. postcards come here as a matter of course – like the newspaper in the mornings; at times I feel myself to be an involuntary imposition on 214

1903–1914

your good nature, while now and again it comes over me that this happy go easy way of receiving the fruits of your industry will stare me in the conscience some night when a-waking, a-frighted, with the hair of my beard on end with shame! These be occasional reflections on my part, as you will understand; & perhaps see the thing – accidentally, as it were, yourself, and be somewhat staggered that it had not occurred to you before, even from the 100 pence be 8/4, & 100 ½ pence 4/2 side of things? Perhaps you may, to yourself, excuse the waste of your means, as if it were a gain of an equivalent, in learning mediaeval architecture by a pack of cards and teaching it to me at the same time? Excuse the prolixity – but you know a puzzle can’t be explained in brief. Enough on this head for your reflection. How come I by the little story of the Crabbet Stud?1 I’m thinking it fills a gap which must have long been wanted. It seems to me an excellent piece of particular education – this thought crossed my mind on coming through the park in the morning at end of my walk, when two – (one especially) young colts made me halt & wonder at their eastern beauty, and the strange difference to the beauty existing in good English horses. Who did the photo plates? I think they are termed ‘half toned blocks’?2 Well, they are wonderfully good to my eyes, and especially for keeping light in the pictures – some excuse for the holy pocket handkerchief style! But why did Blunt wear the Stewpan hat??? T.M.R. had also written to me, wh’, with your letter from him (re inclosed) gave me a good view of his present ways & manners. He & Noel come here on Thursday with his budget of Froglandia:3 I’m glad in fancying he & his are screwed up a peg in spirits – & so am I, in that Giacomo Boni has not gone before me. Thank you kindly | from yours | Ph: W. Emery W. was here, & good, on Sat: V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/126

1 The Crabbet Arabian Stud is a seven-page anonymous account of the stud since its foundation by the Blunts in 1878. It was printed privately by the Chiswick Press in 1906. 2 Two photographs are included, a frontispiece with WSB on horseback, and an end photograph showing three mares with their foals. ‘The photographs of the horses in that pamphlet were taken 7 or 8 years ago by a professional photographer from London, & there was no thought of publication at the time. The halftone blocks were made by Walker.’ SCC to PSW, 21 October 1906, BL Add 52764, f. 100. 3 ‘You will be having a fine treat today with Rooke’s lifelike picture of Brioude, almost as good as going to France.’ SCC to PSW, 25 October 1906, BL Add 52764, f. 103.

1017 • To George Washington Jack, 20 October 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex 20 Octr ’06 215

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

My dear Jack. Your good letter in spite of its late coming, (like the going of this my acknowledgment) I found very interesting – and most particularly in that Ld Carlisle behaved to you with the simplicity and good nature, with which he always dealt with me. I never failed to find him steadily mindful of his old friends and acquaintances – that is, faithful, to wit. Also, I was pleased that you were comfortably able to see the interesting old border Castle,1 as a wind up to your rather boorish experience of the Bramptonian class of ‘business’ minds – in other ways unenlightened. If you are really – in a general way – satisfied with the effect of the upper half of the tower, and that it did not strike you as imitative of mediæval ways & manners in building, I am more than content, to say little (though I feel much) of your very kindly and self-sacrificing labours in carrying out my effort in the design. I never am forgetful of Morris’s expression, that no real work was done without being based on something which went before it,*see end of letter either consciously or unconsciously. This saying may be applied to all the new and startling efforts at design which are daily cropping up – not only in London – but half the world over; the “nothing new under the sun” – wh’ is true in its way – does not truly mean that there is no difference; ’tis that very difference, which is the essential of art; – at all events I have held that view for a long time. I hope the Brampton boors (not ‘boers’) won’t dish you out of your final payment! I shall make a hullaballoo if they shew sign of forgetting their indebtedness. I shall be very glad to have a gossip with you here, and learn more of your work at Rounton. On Thursday next week, the 25th, the Rookes – father & son – come here to shew me their this summer’s work in mid-France.2 If you can tell me of a convenient day for you to come after that date, I will let you know if there be no obstruction here. Hope Lethaby has come back revivified, and bright looking, after his Yorkshire “cure”. Kind remembrance to your wife & babes, & yourself | believe me truly yours Philip Webb. * This was not truly the way W.M. put it. What he said was, “Something does not come out of nothing”. V&A, AAD

1 Naworth Castle near Brampton, the Cumbrian home of the Howards. See Vol. I, Letter 60, note 2. 2 See previous letter, note 3.

216

1903–1914

1018 • To William Richard Lethaby, 27–29 October 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 27 Octr ’06 – (not completed (sic) till 29th) An ill-informed man at 76, writes just like this below. My dear fellow. It is good in you to bear me in mind, and the kindly note of the 22nd was gladly read as first hand news – brief though it was – and must be, and should be under your necessarily exacting conditions of life. ’Tis this which gladdened me when you and Madame got away to the proved good of the Yorkshire open ground for your outing. As to the Westr book, I pay but small heed to your exclamation of “hating” it, that must be so in a work doggedly carried through, with the other work in hand all these “12 or 14 years,” pulling you in other & little inviting ways.1 After all, one of those ways was the getting written those two impressive utterances at the ‘Conference’, which cheered me soundly.2 Your Westminster was necessary. The great & good church has been too much neglected by the few who would be capable of saying anything significant about its very peculiar significance. Since – for the last 1½ years or so, that S.C.C has been teaching me by postcards all about French mediaeval builders’ work, I’ve really found out how true has been my consistent insistence on Westmr being miraculously English! No doubt it must have been meant to be French, like as Balaam wanted to go one way, and the wiser ass the other!?3 From your note of having been able to get scaffold, close to the S. Porch sculpturing at Lincoln Cl, I have looked at those photo: shots of madame’s – made in Aug: ’03, of the larger figure statues on the jambs, – and as A. Powell sent me a p. card of the said doorway, I can follow your hints on the subject matters in the carved orders of the relieving arch.4 The double doorway head & the tympanum of main arch is very finely arranged, but the picture is too small & too smoky black for me to see anything of the virgins of folly and wisdom. Some of the motives in this doorway have a French touch, but in detail, it also, is truly English. Hope you managed to get a ‘shot’ of the small carvings to bring here for me to see when you can spare the time. Please do not come when Jack does; he mentions coming ‘soon’. I polished off Père et Fils Rookes on Thursday, with their wonders of Southern mid-France delighting works. I have always been rather touched by the churches of that district with their mosaic decorative patterning, done with dark tufa or basalt materials. I take it so, that many of the Abbey Churches of

217

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

France, as in England, had much greater simplicity, & therefore, often d[itt]o dignity, than the Cathl sky-be-flyers? The Abbaye aux Dame[s] at “Saintes” (Dept Charente Inferieure) of Transition round-arch-style, for example – wh’, though partly ruined & seemingly deserted (but with alarming signs of refurbishing in parts) has a central lantern tower finished with obtuse conical spire – wh’ is very attractive to my weak eyes.5 Rooke’s ‘waes mee’s’6 about the ruthless goings on in the way of refinements of cruelty with make-believes, in mid-France, sorrows me, tho’ I shall never see them. Thank you true indeed for the promised Westr volume when it comes out, and if “The Times” be not – like the Devil – as bad as its painted? Kindest salutation to Madame the kindly caretaker, from Ph. W. V&A, AAD

1 Westminster Abbey and the Kings’ Craftsmen: a Study of Mediaeval Building was about to be published. See following letter. 2 One of these ‘utterances’ may have been ‘The Palace of Westminster in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Archaeologia, LX (1906), pp. 131–48. 3 In the Biblical story of Balaam and his ass, Balaam beats the animal for refusing to carry him past the angel of the Lord, who stands barring the way. Numbers 22:21–34. 4 See above, Letter 995, note 6. 5 On 25 October, SCC had sent a picture postcard captioned ‘SAINTES. – L’Abbaye aux Dames XIIe siècle’. BL Add 52764, f. 103. 6 i.e. ‘woe is me’.

1019 • To William Richard Lethaby, 24 November 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 24 Novr ’06 My dear fellow. ’Tis comparatively easy for you to write a delightful and helpfully enlightening book, on the unmatched charm of Westminster, but how am poor I to acknowledge receipt of the precious prize, with evidence in its wording, of sincerity in thankfulness?1 Truly, I’m glad the fates allowed you to complete the task, and give to all honest brothers of the Crafts so great a help to understanding the still tangible story of the great Church, so miraculously preserved to them amongst the wreck & waste of so much in the dismal city which has almost wholly passed away. Of course, I’ve only, as yet, dipped into the book, sufficiently to set the mind at rest as to what will be found to answer the “great expectations”. 218

1903–1914

A tough & enduring cold has seized on my too poor wits, and made them still poorer, so that you will hardly be able to guess what my meaning is, by these wretched lines, in thankfulness for the prized gift. Kindest remembrance to the “Edith” of the Story.2 | Yours always truly Philip Webb. By an earlier Postcard, you will have learned that the helpful S.C.C. sent me the newspaper, in which was the story of the ‘interviewed’?3 V&A, AAD 1 See previous letter, note 1. 2 WRL dedicated Westminster Abbey and the Kings’ Craftsmen ‘to Edith’, his wife. 3 Item not identified, but perhaps a reference to the candidates interviewed for the post of Surveyor of the Fabric at Westminster Abbey (see below, Letter 1021).

1020 • To Jane Morris, 15 December 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 15 Decr 1906 My dear Janey. Your “life-long friend” is always comforted by the thought, in that friendship is always a blessing at one’s back, not only in brighter times, but when things in the passing of time lie heavily on one’s patience of soul. So, when you thought of me so kindly in sending the reproduction of the D.G.R likeness of you, (which I do not remember to have seen before) it brought back to my feeling all the years which have been so blessedly passed under this boon of a loving kindness of personal affection of friends, beyond all price in its sweetness, whether the days of one’s life lie heavily or lightly upon us.1 I am hoping that the weather in Torbay is helpful to you & Jenny, now that winter – in this part of England at least – is undoubtedly very cold. We had snow on Friday early morning, and hard frost last night and now continuing, as this hand writing shows. Kindest feeling to you both from the old friend to the old friend – both born in Oxford! Yours – Philip Webb. Note. But Jenny will be for saying – ‘I was not born there’! BL Add 45343, ff. 72–3 1 Whilst it is not possible to know which image JM sent to PSW, it may well have been one of the DGR drawings which were photographed by EW. ‘In a letter to May Morris dated 19 February 1920

219

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV Emery Walker states that he made negatives of the Rossetti drawings of Janey Morris that hung in the dining room of Kelmscott House at the request of William Morris.’ Helen Wodzicka, ‘The Emery Walker photographs at St Bride’s’, JWMS, II (Summer 1970), p. 14. Wodzicka lists six drawings of which EW made copies (p. 26).

1021 • To William Richard Lethaby, 28 December 1906 Pencil Caxtons Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 28 Decr ’06. My dear fellow. Of course I had heard from S.C.C – & also seen the notice in the newspaper, that you had, naturally, been set over the Westminster for its good,1 and though doubtless I’ve anxieties about the future treatment of what there now remains to us, still, I’m more touched by the necessary strain there will be on you, in the getting together the facts of the present condition of the structure – wh’ must be a personal work of considerable time and a drain upon your bodily strength. Till I have seen you, and learned how this important affair came about, I can say nothing of use – save a few words of sympathy in your position, based on my remembrances of past times when I had to lie low under the sense of responsibilities, & wonder how they all came about without my having called for them. On those points I believe I can give you a shoulder to lean upon should you need it such a prop; so – as soon as you may, do come & have a comfortable talk, while the things belonging to the subject are running in my head, & want being brought to book by facts – of which at present I have none to help even my thinkings. You will easily understand that your book has given me much help – much more than I had expected – and indeed the arranging & cataloguing the works of the different craftsmen has added to my conviction, that mediaeval buildings could only have gained their wide variety of expression in their uncountable parts of structure, & adaptations from the first, of a general scheme having been put before them, and that that only was their motive power outside themselves & their begetters. You see by this impotent babble on paper, that I cannot write; but when you come you will find I can talk away freely enough or more – and from the heart too. I am very sorry that Mrs Richard is laid up at this time, and can but hope your cold is giving-in to treatment. The Alfred Powells2 were here yesterday in the snow, & seemed to be happy. Kindest & heartiest goodwill to Mrs Richard – for I am thinking she will be by you, to cheer on the inevitable way of taking things seriously in life. Yours as always | Philip Webb.

220

1903–1914

The weather is heavenly here, after the winter’s kind – but the fingers be cold. V&A, AAD

1 WRL was appointed Surveyor of the Fabric at Westminster Abbey on 11 December 1906. 2 Alfred Powell and Ada Louise Lessore had married on 1 September 1906, in St James’s, Paddington.

1022 • To May Morris, 31 December 1906 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 31 Decr 1906. My dear May. Your mother & yourself are the best of friends when sending gifts, for they are always useful, beautiful, or interesting – never anything which makes one doubt the honesty of the words when thanking the giver! I was also truly glad to get your words of the letter, and I read truth & kindness in all of them to an old man, none too lovely in his remembrances of a lifes being neither a success or a failure. That feeling must occur to so many people – & so naturally – that there can be no affectation in telling of it in this simple fashion. I was rather put on to this feeling from staring at the wonderfully precious objects of your photographs, and necessarily thinking that, in spite of their essential rudeness, both in expression & craftsmanship, they give a feeling of superiority over the modern efforts in the way of telling their stories of the wonders they saw in imagination, and the hopes that were in them. I never had the good hap to see either of the Quennington [sic] doorways1 – but in 1854 I happened to be with G. E. Street on one of his professional rounds, and came upon Kencott; [sic] somewhere in my note books there is a hasty memm drawing of the Saggitarius [sic] as one of the signs of the Zodiac.2 I’m inclined to believe that this Kencott is the earliest of the three, & might be of the end of the 11th cent: while the Quenningtons would be in the early 12th cent. I had some difficulty in making out the subject of the S: doorway, of Qn but conclude that it represents the Coronation of the Virgin – the 4 Evangst symbols, & the new Jerusalem on the sinister side; but what the crouching figure on the dexter side represents I don’t make out – for the colour stains of the whitewash &c in the photo: make the appearances misleading. The subject of the N. door is evidently the “Harrowing of Hell”. But how rude they all of them are.3 This does not surprise me, for in studying much mediaeval sculpture, it is not uncommon to see contemporary works in the same building both rudely and refinedly carved, shewing that the ordinary mediaeval mason had a chance of trying his prentice hand, as well as the skilled sculptor. Sometimes I’ve noticed really rude carving which only wanted finishing to make it impressive in its handling. The imagination almost always is true of its kind.

221

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I’m glad you are reading Venturi.4 The going over & over again of the photo pictures is a surprise, even to old students, from the extraordinary wealth of imagination, & aptitude in communicating that blessing to others. I shall be most glad to see you here when the weather is a little less winterly, and the days not as brief as good resolutions. Let me know when you think of coming. It is the dismal return I’ve ill fancy for you. Your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb BL Add 45343, ff. 74–5

1 The Norman parish church of St Swithin, Quenington, in Gloucestershire underwent major restoration in 1882. Above the north and south porches there are very fine carvings. See note 3. 2 The twelfth-century parish church of St George, Kencot, in Oxfordshire contains a tympanum over the south door with a carving of Sagittarius shooting an arrow into a monster’s mouth. 3 The tympanum of the south porch at Quenington features what may be the earliest known carved representation of the Coronation of the Virgin, with the Evangelists; the Harrowing of Hell in the north porch may be rather later in date. 4 See above, Letter 978, note 4.

1023 • To Jane Morris, 5 February 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 5 Feby 1907. My dear Janey. Thank you kindly both for sending me the picture card, & for letting me know that you were just now at Sidmouth – where I never was;1 but, once on a time I was fetched in to Devon to advise on amending a poor country gentleman’s house, which came to nothing by my advice – or perhaps on account of the unexpected cost of the report of the visit: on leaving, I went out of my way to look at Ottery St Mary’s celebrated church, which was all my fancy painted it for its uniquity. (sic) I hope you will be able to go and judge for yourself & enjoy its beauty as well as its singular archaeological characteristics. It looks as if it had been reborn into “Perpendicular” arts of early 14th century work. It is as stately in a small way as a Cathedral in a large way. Indeed, it has something of a Cathedral form in, by its N & S Transepts being like two towers, like unto Exeter cathedral, & nowhere else in England that I know of.2 The House of the Coleridge family stands close by the church – and indeed is much under the rule of that family I believe, & not in a bad sense so far as I know, save that Butterfield had to transform the inside of the South Transept tower into a memorial of the late (I think) Ld Coleridge.3 The church is a most interesting one in which to peer into every corner. I wd I were your blind guide with 2 blessed eyes! 222

1903–1914

I had heard either from S.C.C or E. Walker that you were likely to go to Sidmouth; and I do hope you will find help for your poor self. I’m supposing you are alone there – perhaps – with your maid? Here, & only some 30 miles from the S. Coast, it is as frosty, and N. Easty & N. Westy cold winded as ever I experienced; but the days are getting longer & the nights shorter. It had not occurred to me at the time, but your kindly gift of the Baillie Bros excellent “stuff” makes me often think of you at mid-day when the bottle in front of me recalls to my affectionate mind, you the blessed donor, and perpetual friend of yours affectionately Philip Webb. P.S. I’m really well – for the aged one – and have some appetite this hunger tempting weather, which failed me all last summer, the warm one. May kindly sent me 4 interesting – very – photographs of doorways in the Burford district – and only one which I personally knew.4 Adieu. P.S. N 2. The word ‘stuff’, as above, was in no way contemptuous – but, as we talk (or hear) of “food stuffs”, there could be no objection to the expression of “liquor” stuffs? In any case, though, my sense of taste is but feeble now. I believe that that of B. B brothers is excellent – & probably they are “pauky”5 as our Prime Minister evidently is. Kind[ly] forgive this miserably poor letter. o

BL Add 45343, ff. 76–7

1 Sidmouth is a town on Devon’s southern coast, about fifteen miles from Exeter. 2 For the letter which PSW drafted for the SPAB about St Mary’s, Ottery St Mary, see Vol. I, Letter 202. 3 The poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was born and baptised at Ottery St Mary. The judge, John Duke Coleridge, later first Baron Coleridge (1820–94) had his family seat at Heath’s Court, Ottery St Mary, situated to the north-west of the church, part of which William Butterfield converted into a substantial private library. 4 See previous letter. 5 Pawky or pauky: cunning, tricky or sly (northern English dialect).

1024 • To Emery Walker, 14 February 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 14 Feby ’07 My dear fellow. How lucky in me to stamp on the spectacles whilst you were here – at least I think so, for they came to me this morning (I’m writing on Wedy eveng) in good condition again, & I’m looking at this writing through them & find no fault in the two friends – you and them. I hope you’ll be in want of the payment due for them & 223

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

that you will look in here for it when you can. Your news of Mrs Walker being “comfortable” at Mrs Dabney’s is good,1 for I was in some doubt, not having been into the little house – only having looked in it through the windows downstairs, and I suspect Mrs Ws room would be upstairs? whence she would get more Sth sun, & some view of the rolling deep – at least I hope so. As for her landlady, I can answer for her helpful goodness to afflicted humanity in myself, when I lay on her hands & she was good to me. Possibly the weather, as yet, may be too trying for the invalid to get out of doors into a Bathchair, for today, here, is just as bitterly served up on a strong Northeaster as may be endured with resisting smiles; but I have my legs as a refuge, and can stamp about for warmth, and the country is fine even under the keen-edged breeze. I’ve looked carefully at your last effort on the sniffing lion, and feel that you and your helps have done wonders in making a pen & inker look pleasant in a photo from the original.2 Hearty thanks for care for me in this as in so many other matters. S.C.C is attending to my German education in “thieves’ castles” on the Rhine, & other rivers, for I wanted such help in the inevitable p. cards on mediaeval architecture there.3 With kindly remembrance to Dorothy | I am yours as always | Philip Webb. Texas

1 PSW had lodged with Mrs Dabney at Rottingdean during the last few months of 1903. 2 EW had photographed the pen drawing owned by SCC of a standing lion, facing left and apparently sniffing the air (now at the William Morris Society, Kelmscott House). See above, Letter 974, note 3, and frontispiece to the current volume. 3 ‘I must just say that your p. p. cards are unfailing.’ PSW to SCC, 20 February 1907, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/134.

1025 • To Sydney Cockerell, 22 March 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 22 Mar. ’07 My dear fellow. Thank you for sending me word of Thacky Turner’s terribly hard blow;1 the poor man must have been staggered at first, and in spite of his aids towards resisting depression, it must & will be long before he can ride easily under the recurrence of thoughts of what the life to him, with such helpful companionship, was. I return you his letter, which is quite pleasantly simple & honest. He very kindly received the few poor words I could send him, & is thankful even for that fellowship in his pain.

224

1903–1914

Lady B-J sent me Mrs Herringham’s excellently explained story of the position of affairs with regard to India’s immense quantities of relics, which are running the gauntlet of honest – though contradictory attempts to preserve the great masses of things from active destruction, and the slower hand of time. That of the jungle eating them up, as it were, is an astounding thought.2 I would like for the greater effort to be made to save the earlier or Buddhist huge carved figures in the rock-cut and other temples which present less of luxury than the later and Mahomedan decorated palaces: tho: all are marvels of human fancy and ingenuity. I would like to see you on Sat., if only for 10 minutes; for I am not comfortable under the reflection of my daily reception of tribute to interest & amusement, without so much as a sign from me that they are received thankfully & with some intelligence! I return the papers to you by G.B-Js instructions. Yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. 3 I also send back Turner’s letter. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/135

1 HTT’s wife, Mary Elizabeth Powell, had died on 16 February, aged 52. They married in 1888. SCC had received a letter from HTT on 13 March. 2 Christiana Jane Powell Herringham (1852–1929) was a suffragist, painter and expert copyist of early Renaissance tempera paintings. She also campaigned to preserve indigenous Indian wallpaintings in the caves at Ajanta, near Aurengabad in the Deccan, which she first saw in December 1906. See Mary Lago, Christiana Herringham and the Edwardian Art Scene (London: Lund Humphries, 1996), especially chs 6–7. Later in 1907, SCC attended an open meeting of the Women’s Guild of Arts at Clifford’s Inn, where WRL gave a ‘very good paper’ and there was also a ‘long rambling but suggestive paper by Mrs Herringham’. CD, 29 November 1907. 3 See note 1.

1026 • To Giacomo Boni, 26 April 1907 Photostat; pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 26 April 1907 My dear Giacomo Boni. Accompanying a letter, which Miss May Morris sent to me, asking that I would address it and post to you, I add a few words to my excellent friend – yourself, for age has told on me considerably – (in my 77th year) so that writing has almost become an impossibility – my memory so signally failing me. May Morris is the second daughter of William Morris, whom you knew, as you will remember my having had the pleasure of carrying you to Hammersmith, when you saw him, Mrs Morris, and the elder daughter Jane, but May Morris was not there.1

225

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

The letter I am forwarding was left unsealed, evidently so that I might read it – and thus perhaps gain the sanction of the old man to her request, as contained in the letter. You will probably be much & variously occupied when in London, and possibly it may not be in your power to gratify her very natural wish to see you, of whom she has heard so much from others, as well as from myself. I would be glad also, for you to see Thackeray Turner, the most strenuous & patient of Secretaries to the S.P.A.B. who has you in high regard. Please therefore do not think that because I do not write, to cheer you with that kind of companionship, I am dead to the remembrance of what you were to me at the time of my Italian visit – and by letter so happily often since then, and I follow your progressive life, as a story, quite delightful to your still affectionate English friend Philip Webb. P.S. kindly forgive the pencilling. I find pen & ink too awkward in use now. [sic] Courtauld 200a-b

1 For GBO’s visit to England, see Vol. II, Letter 351, and subsequent letters. During this trip in early September 1889, GBO stayed with WM at Kelmscott Manor, as well as visiting Kelmscott House in Hammersmith.

1027 • To May Morris, 26 April 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. This is written night of 26th, for tomorrow’s post. My dear May. In spite of the writing disability, I must say as much, as that I posted your letter to Giacomo Boni this evening.1 Having thought more than thrice & once on the point of your appeal to him, I then concluded to back you up in it, just using the poor plea of your not knowing the address. Practically it comes to this, that I know it no more than you do, but I found my letters always got to him. Sometimes I used one form and later another and now have forgotten those – so I fell back on that in the index of members of anti-scrape in the year’s report2 – which I fancy having used before – and thought it must have proceedd from John Hebb, & if so, cradled in correctness! In my few lines to the great & good Giacomo, I reminded him of having been the means of his seeing your father, mother & Jenny, but not you, & therefore it was not wonderful you were desirous of having thate pleasure of seeing him, if the many engagements he wd surely have on his hands would allow him to fall in with your suggestion. If not in these words, (I hope not!) still they represent much of the sense of those used. In any case my memory is so bad now that, in this writing to you, I could not recall them. I would much like you to see the man, who is indeed intellectually brisk. I do remember that Emery Walker was greatly struck with Boni’s skill & patience with 226

1903–1914

which he instructed the tourist-party in the Roman Forum3 – and, O dear me, he must have had such schoolmastering, times after times. I have said, it is natural on meeting friends or acquaintances for each to say, “how are you”? but it was not absolutely necessary for either to relate the facts! However to you, my dear May, I’ll be honest and say, that I’m more than a year older in the last 12 months – the result being that I am “sans” everything in the way of the senses intellectual & bodily,4 but – and this is a saving clause, that I can laugh at my own blundering & bear no malice against the pitiable object. I’m rather saddened by thinking that you cannot laugh quite so helpfully. Please do not mind what the “young women” say. It must be mostly the more juvenile feminines who, in their ways & manners of vanity, compel Regent Street to fall back on the due5 plate-glass exhibition of stupid ostentation in vanity of clothing. It seems to me more than reasonable that you should foregather in laborious, & often tiresome effort, of in the “Women’s Guild of Art Workers”.6 Forgive this weak effort of mine & believe me yours always in sincerity Philip Webb. d P.S. Lord, how beautiful the Earth has look the 3 days of this week following the Sunday. On re-reading, you see, I’ve tried to correct some of my clumsy ways of expression, with but small effect. BL Add 45343, ff. 80–1

1 See previous letter. 2 GBO had honorary membership of the SPAB. In the membership list published with each annual report he is recorded as ‘Commendatore Giacomo Boni, Architetto, Direzione Generale dell Antichità e Belle Arti, Roma’. 3 This was during the Art Workers’ Guild visit to Rome, in October 1903. See above, Letter 891, note 1. 4 ‘Last scene of all, / That ends this strange eventful history, / Is second childishness and mere oblivion; / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.’ As You Like It, II.vii.163–6. 5 Perhaps he meant to write ‘dull’? 6 As the Art Workers’ Guild only permitted male membership, MM decided to found the Women’s Guild of Arts in 1907, and was its president until 1935.

1028 • To Giacomo Boni, 7 May 1907 Photostat; pencil Caxtons. Worth, | by Crawley. | Sussex. 7 May. 1907 My ever dear Italian friend of old, Giacomo Boni. Your letter, in its English envelope, posted in London – surprised me at first before opening – and then I was truly glad for the time being. I am thinking you have already seen some of my intimates, or will see, through the help of Miss Morris, 227

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

who would help you put you in the way to rightly distribute some of your lecture-tickets.1 I will send one or more to less known people. Probably you have, or surely will see Emery Walker, and Sydney Cockerell? I would so very much like you to get one, or the other, or both to bring you down here on some Saturday afternoon, for, not only should I see you again in the flesh, and in a pure English country-side at its sweetest & most lovely of Spring-time promise, but we could have the joy of a talk without the roar of civilization in one of it[s] biggest of Babylons. I go to London only when obliged, for now that old age has deprived me – more or less – of hearing, smelling, & tasting, my old friends, when they come to see me here, can shout & laugh & talk at such a pitch, that from gesticulation and visible contraction & expansion of countenance, I can make out all that is necessary for the enjoyment of old friends in company, without offending against the rules of full dress civilization – for, I can still see very well indeed, and that is what I would so much like, when you would be in front of me. Try & see what can be done in that way, and give back some younger feeling to your ancient friend, Philip Webb. I am hoping you will make the acquaintance of another true friend of mine, in W.R. Lethaby. Courtauld 201a-d

1 Between 2–30 May, GBO gave a series of six lectures at King’s College, in the Strand, on recent discoveries in the Roman Forum. He also gave lectures at the Royal Academy and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Oxford conferring an honorary D.Litt. on 28 May.

1029 • To Sydney Cockerell, 7 May 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Tues: 7 May ’07 My dear fellow. Giacomo Boni wrote me a pretty letter from 3 Hall Road – N.W.1 – inclosing some tickets for his lectures, of which you are likely to know more about than I am. Of course I would like to see & hear him in London, but I cannot bring myself to the Wen. In writing answer to Boni, I suggested that as he would be certain to see you or Walker – or both, that I’m sure one or other of you – if disengaged – would kindly pilot him down here on some Sat: afternoon before he leaves town. So if he should ask you for that friendly act, you will know how glad I would be to see him here on such conditioning. Your always pleasant P.P. cards, with an occasional remark or so on the back, or front, or edge, lets me know where you are, & wherever that may be you never forget to be kind to Philip Webb.

228

1903–1914

P.S. in no case put yourself (or Walker) out to come down; but if Boni can find an opportunity (?) will you kindly instruct him of the train you have frequently used. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/137

1 ‘I called on Boni, but he was out & I learnt from the maid that he was very full of engagements. He is staying with old friends of mine called Plimmer.’ SCC to PSW, 10 May 1907, BL Add 52765, f. 82.

1030 • To Giacomo Boni, 13 May 1907 Photostat; pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 13 May. ’07 Dear Giacomo Boni. At last, it seems as if we really might come together again, and see what each is like in body & spirit – after the wear and tear of years since we looked in each other’s eyes.1 I even forgive myself for the graceless refusal to go to London, seeing that the beauty of the amazing green of this countryside, which even astonishes the daily familiar “hermit” in his movings over the face of it. You will understand! I never saw Italy in Summer’s dress. In this morning’s newspaper there is a telling of Etna & Stromboli indisputably shewing that the old forces of nature, in fire & fury, still teach the young that traditions and tales of old times were not fictions.2 If Cockerell’s map be true, you cannot miss the goal - ’tis a simple “labyrinth.” The Railway runs due south from London town, you get out of the train on the east side, and after dropping down to the road & turning to the right, you will then have to trudge continuously to the east till you run against an old man with a white beard, and that will be Philip Webb. The small household here dines at 1. o’clock, Sundays & week days, and will serve you for a modest lunch, with the sauce of good companionship, I trust? I was at the station this morning and saw that the trains you give in the letter I had this morning are right. Trains unluckily for travellers in England are few & slow on Sundays. Ph. W. We will hope that Whit Sunday3 will smile on us. Courtauld 202a-c

229

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 ‘Boni came to tea yesterday and made the acquaintance of Lethaby & Miss Kingsford, & saw some of the latter’s work, which he very much admired. He is being tremendously lionised & has scarcely a minute to himself.’ SCC to PSW, 13 May 1907, BL Add 52765, f. 83. 2 There had been reports of volcanic activity on Mount Etna since the beginning of the month. On 13 May, The Times carried a news agency report of two days’ earlier: ‘Now craters have opened on Etna and Stromboli and the discharge of lava is increasing. The people are getting more alarmed, especially the inhabitants of the fertile villages around Etna.’ 3 19 May.

1031 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 23 May 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 23 May. 1907 Dear Mrs Flower. I was glad to have the news that you had got back, as also when Mitchell sent me word that your route would be “from Barcelona to Valencia, & from thence to Granada, and that you would be there on the 28th of April”. I am sure your letter to Mrs Dickinson did her good, for in this break in the old home touches her very deeply & she feels any sign of sympathy with real thankfulness.1 Your proposal to come and see us all in next week will, I believe, be a further help to her in getting interested in things other than the late times of distress. We propose – if the days suit your convenience, that Tuesday or Thursday (28th or 30th) would be – from the household point of view – suitable to us; and I can answer for myself that the looking forward to the traveller’s story is a promised event, with the addition of learning something of George Wardle’s health & fairly good spirits, & what further we may hope for him. Yours very truly | Philip Webb. P.S. It occurs to me you may not have heard of the lectures being given in London by Commendatore Giacomo Boni – therefore I inclose a ticket – the last lecture being on the 30th BL Add 45355, ff. 48–9

1 Margaret Dickinson’s father had died, after some months of illness. ‘Went to Caxtons & saw Philip Webb, who is worried over Mrs Dickinson whose father is dying.’ CD, 21 February 1907.

230

1903–1914

1032 • To William Richard Lethaby, 28 June 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 28 June. ’07 My dear fellow. I rejoiced at your going to Italy, & the more so the second time & on to Rome. Of course a ruined City must always be appalling, and that especially to which ‘all roads lead’. I know too, from Middleton’s 3rd edition,1 that since I was there in the spring of ’85, the quantity of crude modernism has made the wonderful place doubly distressing. However, it laid hold of me in a way peculiar to itself, & against reason in fact. Often the magical effect of it on me comes back, when, really other places in Italy have bigger claims from their beauty and surroundings. Middleton & I got on well together there, in spite of my resisting his strange fanaticism, in labelling the truly structural brickwork as a sham.2 To me it is undoubtedly a very important part of strength in combination with concrete, & your coming to the same conclusion pleases me. You may be sure I will be glad when you can reasonably come & have a talk about Italy, and I’m anxious to know that the more you see of the condition of the Westminster fabric, the less it will act on your nervous system. Please do not think you ought to come down here, regardless of consequences to yourself & the works you have in hand. Mrs Richard, to whom I send kindest salutation, would write me word of anything you wanted to tell me about, and I would answer, though I am rapidly depreciating in fabric, & wits. I hope you were not as unlucky as me? I never – after many intentions, got to see that beautiful domed ruin in Rome mis-named Minerva Medica. If not a delusion, it must be figured in Choisy?3 Wardle had, I believe, a photograph of it. Its umbrella ribs of tiles must have been the cause of its keeping nearly whole to this time. Giacomo Boni good naturedly came down to see me, for I ill naturedly would not go to London to meet him.4 He was affectionate as ever, and tho: he be as hard as nails, he was bright and free when here. This country quality of woodland struck him strongly. He was to have gone to Spain on his way home, to see Wardle at Granada, but a postcard from Liverpool told that he must hurry back to Rome at once. I suspect this was for him to be in at the reported “Romulus” find.5 Yours in all sincerity | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

231

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 John Middleton, The Remains of Ancient Rome, 2 vols (London: A. and C. Black, 1892). This is the twice-revised edition of the book first published as Ancient Rome in 1885, which Middleton was completing when PSW stayed with him in Rome in January-February 1885. See Vol. I, Letter 244, note 9. 2 See also above, Vol. II, Letter 404, note 13. 3 Françoise Auguste Choisy, L’Art de Batir chez les Romains (Paris: 1873) includes a diagram (p. 82) relating to the domed roof of the Temple of Minerva Medica. For this ancient site, see Vol. II, Letter 404, note 14. 4 See above, Letter 1030. 5 Any new Roman archaeological evidence would have come before GBO, who had been overseeing the excavations in the area of the Forum for about ten years.

1033 • To Sydney Cockerell, 17 July 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 17 July ’07 My dear fellow. I have wanted to write to you, & when Walker was here on Sat: he wrote for me your Malvern address; of course I did not write at once! but the infinitely graceful Tintern Abbey on postcard came yesterday, telling that you would be sleeping at Kelmscott as on Tuesday & back at Richmond as today1 – so, without more delay – I tell of your talk with me, about my brother’s kind offer to give me money, and my disinclination, &c; since then your urging me to cave-in, has occurred to me, and later on it came into my head to embrace the brother’s offer, and accept £100 at once, as a loan, and pay him 2½ % on it from interest I receive from the consuls not sold out – making note in my will-memorandum to E.W, that such borrowed money should be repaid as first claim on any assets at my death, &c! This has eased my mind and the brother’s is easier by holding it to be the same thing as a gift, &c &c.2 You have – in the continued flow of p. p cards sent me some very good examples of mediaeval building, in truth, all excellent, but especially those of Tewkesbury Abbey, which touched my susceptibility closely – as also those of Deerhurst church, & chapel, neither of which last had I seen (in the stone) tho: I was at work for more than a year at Forthampton.3 The tower of Tewkesbury Abbey is, I really think, the finest Norman central one I know of – and the West end, with its great arch and beautiful angle-turret, immense! Middleton found evidence that the great arch was originally was open to the church, and that some kind of screen must have been fitted some distance in from the West wall. So your late English series of cards, are not so very much duller than your french ones. Adieu – from | Ph: Webb. Thackeray Turner came to see, & talk with me yesterday. I was heartily glad to see the good honest fellow again, after the staggering blow he has stood up against so manfully.4 232

1903–1914

Had a Postcard from W.R.L. this morning. I may see him and Dame Richard on Friday, here. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/140

1 SCC posted a card on 15 July, captioned ‘The South Transept, Tintern Abbey’. BL Add 52765, f. 134. During 1907 he stayed in Malvern during several lengthy visits to Charles Dyson Perrins ‘to whose manuscripts I have now arranged to give half my time’. CD, 5 April 1907. See also above, Letter 979, note 1. 2 PSW was concerned about his financial resources, but had stubbornly resisted his brother’s offers of help. Almost a year earlier, Harry Webb had written seeking SCC’s assistance. ‘I believe the genus Webb is an obstinate one, what in the eastern counties is called “dickey nater’d”. I want to ask you if you can make any impression on my brother, I consider him Quixotic in the extreme. He likes to pay double fee for all that is done for him, & will only take half its value for work he does for others. He has sometimes spoken of leaving Caxtons and going into lodgings for the sake of economy; I wish to explain that it is quite unnecessary. If I die before him he is provided for by my will, if we both live on, he can take & be welcome to an income from the equivalent to what he has at present; for I have more than enough to supply all my wants.’ Henry Speakman Webb to SCC, 14 August 1906, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/122. 3 Between 30 June and 8 July, SCC had sent a series of postcards of Tewkesbury Abbey, followed immediately by four of the Saxon church at Deerhurst. 4 See above, Letter 1025, note 1.

1034 • To Giacomo Boni, 29 July 1907 Photostat; pencil BEECHWOOD, WINCHESTER. Caxtons. Worth | viâ Crawley. | Sussex. July 29. 1907. Dear Giacomo. Your post card from Liverpool of 11. July, was to me, of yourself, very touchingly kind and affectionate. Indeed, all your behaviour to an old English friend, from the year 1884 in Venice,1 till the present time of 1907 in England, has been sweetly remarkable for its imperishable good will, and sweetness of expression. I would like to carry the memory of it with me into the other climate of the spirit which is steadily approaching. Your letter from Rome, of 15 July, had also the same delightful ringing sound in its communication between us – made still more impressive by the vivid likeness of my friend in the flesh, dated and stamped with the very honourable degree of English appreciation, under the guise of Oxford’s cap & gown, as recognition of undisputed merit.2 But Oxford could not know, as I happily do, the breadth & depth of that worth which the scholastic cap covered. I find it a quite excellent picture of your outward being, with something quite remarkable in the lifelike expression of the spirit, through the eyes! To be a little less solemn in my catalogue of virtues, (& vices?) I tell of what happened when 233

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I was speaking of you to our friend Lethaby – when I said, you were “as hard as nails”,3 and he added “as sharp as pins”. When applying such a rude epithet to you, I was thinking of your attitude towards the man from off the bicycle, at the cross-way of roads, as we were walking to the station on Whit Sunday. It seems to me that your instinctive ‘pose’ would be such as then, to the crowd of the polite, or rude, who might be surrounding you in the rediscovered stories of the Roman Forum – therefore, you need not be hurt by my “rudeness”! I like to be thinking of your patient watching over the ponderous stones – near the Railway – while the terrible hands of modern civilisation are being laid on some of them, by the carelessness of mind of those, to whom such records could have but little meaning. When I was in Rome in Easter time of 1885, Middleton – who was then working at his book on Ancient Rome (1st edition) – took me especially to see these precious remains of such an early date in masonry, and I remember being struck by the two so different facts in visible handicraft – say – of 400 B.C. and 1900 A.D. being in such (seemingly) incongruous relationship. Worth Church, of which I was happy in taking you to look at for a few minutes, was certainly built at some considerable time before the Norman Conquest of England in A.D. 1066, and it – no doubt – was the centre of the civilization of that part of England in the depth of the Forest, which then must have reached from the South Downs of Sussex next the sea, to within some 20 miles, or so, of the then London City. There must have been 12 or 14 monks who sang in the choir of the church, and shepherded the human flock who then did their daily “darg”4 in woodcutting, charcoal burning, and timber cutting of the English oaks, of whose descendants you saw the tier over tier of their tree-tops when we were together, and when I hummed the ‘refrain’ of Oxford’s, Queen College song, of the “Caput Apri”.5 In your postcard message from Liverpool, the note that you “must hurry back to Rome” looked as if the report – (just then in the newspaper) – that the “tomb of Romulus” had been found – might perhaps be true, and you were in chace [sic] of the fact or fiction?6 Mrs Dickinson – my housekeeper & retinue of servants all in her person – has her holiday for a fortnight at this time of the year, and I come to Winchester – where I shall be for a fortnight – at my brother’s house, so that you will recognise that the recluse feels – at such time of disturbance – that he is like a fish out of water – an old fashioned English saying – when habits are broken though, and the decaying human ship is as a derelict on the waters of life. After heartily thanking you for your steadfastness in friendship, I pray you to carry on in that honest way, continuing to believe in the simplicity of affection remaining in the spirit of your friend – Philip Webb. P.S. All the faithful, to whom I have shewn your photograph, think it an excellent representation of you. Courtauld 203a-f

234

1903–1914 1 2 3 4 5

In fact, their first meeting was in 1885. See Vol. I, Letter 254. For GBO’s honorary D. Litt, see above, Letter 1028, note 1. See above, Letter 1032. A day’s work (Scottish dialect). ‘Caput apri defero’ (‘the boar’s head I offer’) is an early fifteenth-century macaronic (English and Latin) carol text with melody, celebrating a Christmas feast with a boar’s head as its centrepiece. The annual feast is still celebrated at Queen’s College, Oxford, when the old carol is sung. 6 See above, Letter 1032, note 5.

1035 • To Sydney Cockerell, 2 August 1907 Pencil; date added by Cockerell c/o H.S. Webb (till Tues: 13. Aug) | Beechwood | Winchester. My dear friend – in the ‘fellowship’ – ’Tis strange but true, I have no difficulty in sending this message of reassurance, that our ties of sincere good will are in no probable way likely to be weakened by the coming change in your life – always a trying one in friendship.1 In ours – it called for such recognition in its intimacy and mutual trust – as the tone of your letter, received this morning, which led me to brood over before acknowledging it. My confidence in thus writing now, is sustained by my having personally seen Miss Kingsford – as well as many examples of her work – two things which seem to me so necessary when judging of possibilities in the after lives of two people, who agree to band themselves in a lasting bond. Now, adieu to this serious or “some sort of blessing”! Please tell Miss Kingsford, that in no way am I in fear of losing your friendly help during the remainder of my life – than if it were not to be partly committed to the two of you, and that I do indeed rejoice in the reasonableness of her hope in “the coming change” for both.2 As the three will surely desire | I am yours affectionately Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/143

1 SCC had written announcing his forthcoming marriage to Kate Kingsford. ‘My very dear friend, | This is to tell you that I am going to marry Miss Kingsford. We understand each other and we like the same things and the same jokes, and we intend to be as happy as ever we can. Do give me some sort of a blessing.’ SCC to PSW, 1 August 1907, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/142. 2 ‘I am very grateful for your letter. Too busy at Bodleian to write more.’ SCC to PSW, 3 August 1907, BL Add 52766, f. 1.

235

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1036 • To Sydney Cockerell, 8 August 1907 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. Thursday. 8. Aug: ’07 My dear fellow. Yes, I have to be “back at Caxtons” on the 13th, (Tuesday) Mrs Dickn returning on the 12th. I would much like to meet Miss Kingsford with you, and as my train from here to Waterloo, will be 11.a.m.56 Winchester, and 1.p.m.31 Waterloo; and as this lands me near to Gatti’s, it seems that this might suit us all for the meeting as at this time, for I would prefer to receive you both at Caxtons in the quiet familiar way, when you found opportunity? I may be able to do something in London, which might keep me till a 6 or 7 o’c train to Three Bridges as I go back. Therefore, if the above suggestion would quite suit you I would leave my impediments at Waterloo cloakroom, & be seated at Gatti’s by 2. oc or a little after? You see, I must have some lunch, & in company befitting it would be much nicer.1 Your P. Post cards have been very interesting to me, & amusing to this household. The “Laitiere” is a triumph of the photo: skill.2 Yrs | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/141

1 ‘Met Philip Webb at Waterloo on his way from Winchester to Caxtons. Brought him over to Gatti’s where Kate met us and we had lunch together and sat chatting for an hour and a half, then we went with him to Victoria and saw him to Three Bridges by the 4 o’clock train.’ CD, 13 August 1907. 2 On 3 August, SCC had sent from Oxford a postcard of a Belgian woman and her milk-cart pulled by dogs. BL Add 52766, f. 1.

1037 • To Sydney Cockerell, 13 September 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 13 Sepr ’07 My dear fellow. Yes, I reproach myself, for here they come to me – the p. p.cards, every ‘lawful’ morning (as brither [sic] Scots say), & one over, for the unlawful, on the Monday; and I’ve nothing to shew for such kindly thought of an old man – which is touching. I am thinking Miss Kingsford will look into the matter – in yet a little while, and stop the outflow which represents so much in a year’s loss in bread & butter, when two mouths in the household crave to be fed.1

236

1903–1914

I’ve looked for your whereabout [sic] in the map, and find you just off the longslip of the Cromarty firth, out of the open sea one of the Moray – and it seems as if some big hills were on the N.W of you: and am thinking you make may take breathers before dinner time, up some of their easier slopes – but I know little of the E. coast.2 I’ve had another pretty letter from T.M.R, in which he begins to sigh, with saying ‘they have only a third more of their time in Venice’. It will be good for us to see what he makes of the N.W part of the S. Mark’s narthex – for, like all generally well known objects, any fresh rendering of them will be discounted by preconceived notions. I went to McDonald’s on 26 Aug: by appointt, and he served me well – at all events for a while.3 Looked in on E.W, & found him immersed in business, but walked with him as far as ‘The Times’ office, on my way back – but he came to see me here last Saturday. He has made good pictures of the front of Caxtons, a thing not easy to do well.4 You must have heard that I missed a reasonable talk with Rothenstein, for W. Weir had come in to dine and tell me of his things; so that the saying of other reasonable things, & listening to ditto, was out of the question, &c &c, in the way of distraction.5 Had Thacky Turner and his 3 girls here to dinner & tea (at another time).6 Happily the two legged fillies made hearty friends with half a dozen or so of fourlegged do, a very pretty sight – for there was no fear on either side. I have been reading Chesterton’s little book on G.F. Watts’ work – a quite difficult subject to deal with critically.7 Apart from – the seemingly necessary – literary paradoxical manner, I found it well worth reading two or three times, for there is a power of insight in the little book, beyond the usual, of efforts to do justice to a real master of his art. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/149

1 ‘Miss K. would kill me on the spot if I were to stop sending these p. cards. She is a very determined woman, so you must needs put up with them.’ SCC to PSW, 16 September 1904, BL Add 52766, f. 27. 2 Between 14 August and 11 October SCC was based in Ardross in the Scottish Highlands, working on more of Dyson Perrin’s manuscript collection. 3 Macdonald was PSW’s London dentist. 4 These would have included the image reproduced in Kirk, p. 285, which formed part of PSW’s own photograph collection. 5 ‘Rothenstein writes that he has seen you and that you invited him to come again alone. You will find him [to] improve on acquaintance.’ SCC to PSW, 23 August 1907, BL Add 52766, f. 8. 6 HTT’s three daughters were Marjorie May (b. 1889), Ruth (b. 1892) and Mildred (b. 1893). He would later recollect that, when they were younger, PSW encouraged him to bring the girls on his visits to Gray’s Inn on a Sunday, after church. 7 G.K. Chesterton, G.F. Watts (London: Duckworth & Co., 1904).

237

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1038 • To Sydney Cockerell, 7 October 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley | Sussex. 7. Octr ’07 My dear fellow. Among a muddle of answered and unanswered letters, I found one of yours with none of the usual signs on it of having even been acknowledged – by the guilty one – and, yet it deserved kinder treatment.* ’Tis true I am now practically ‘on the shelf’ from bodily impediments on one side & brain weakness on the other. Memory is no go, it will not be persuaded to act, & I have almost given up whipping & spurring – poor fellow. * The said letter is dated fm N.B.1 Septr 17 ’07 I was glad to find you were able to take an interest in the unkemped [sic] wilds of N.B. To me, when I first came upon them (truly, that was in the way of business) in winter time, & mostly in the sea way of going to & fro, they had on me an effect of uninviting rudeness – but later on this aspect of savagery softened, which also I found to be the case with (sensible) other people, (sic)! & I gladly accept your view. Of course – in these days – what is understood to be ‘sport’, has an upsetting effect on ones nerves, and if one is unlucky enough to undergo dining, in company, when its season is in force, a want of variety in subject matter is only modified by games at cards. I laugh at your absurd asides in the way of protest as to the doubtful quality of French art in old building, but I see thro: the flimsy veil! But, my stars, Mr, there are many coming to hand here now, which are no joke, in that way, at all at all! It is curious, but also to be explained, that I find that in France (under my enforced re-study of its mediaeval building) the big monastic churches appeal to me – as do the English one’s [sic] – more strongly, & especially from their graces and balanced effectiveness, than the mightier Cathedral churches – allowing – of course – for the want of figure sculpture in the former. I cannot think of any big church as having higher qualities of grace & simplicity than that of the ruined Cistercian Abbey of “Longpont.”2 But I will not go on particularising, for so many of the picture cards you have lately so happily come upon, have fairly conquered my assured disgust, as they surely have your fantastic self approval of delight in them. There, I can bad-badinage no more – & thankful I am that the at present Kingsford is not at hand to be upset by the want of good taste in the worn out author of this scrawl: from the wreck of Yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. Surely the pretty flowers, flattened out in your letter, were primroses when you plucked them? V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/150

238

1903–1914 1 North Britain (i.e. Scotland). 2 Since 5 September, SCC had been posting yet another series of French ecclesiastical picture postcards. That posted on 30 September is captioned ‘LONGPONT. Ruines de l’Ancienne Abbaye de Citeaux’. BL Add 52766, f. 36.

1039 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 October 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 11 Octr ’07 My dear fellow. You could hardly understand the pleasure I get, by thinking of you and – at present – the Kingsford, having alighted – as it were – on such a place of places in significance of quiet, and beauty, and with all the story from the 12th cent: down – as one of my favouring sponsors in Art & loveliness, as Iffley, [sic] and its surroundings of beautiful-setting in Thames valley; where on earth could one be more at home in the strangeness of marriage?1 Should you have any time and opportunity for wandering, before settling down, there, in a ring on the Oxon side of Thames, hard by Ifley, [sic] are Headington, Shotover hill, Horsepath, the 3 Cowleys, Sandford, Littlemore – &c – &c! but possibly you may know them all and the outlookings from them. Did you ever get to see the stone – the sweetness to eyes – in Dorchester Church, and its neighbour Sinodun Hill, near to it?2 I’m thinking smilingly, with the happy finding of the ancient-of-ancient’s looking, & rude and majestic whitewashed church (of this morning’s p. card) at “Lavardin,” on the river Baise, I’m making believe?3 I[’m] hoping this [sic] poor few words may catch you at Richmond and so Adieu at present from yours | Ph: W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/151

1 ‘I leave Scotland on Friday next for Richmond, but shall be off again next week. I am to be married at Iffley & shall have to “reside” there beforehand.’ SCC to PSW, 9 October 1907, BL Add 52766, f. 43. Picture postcard captioned ‘LAVARDIN. – Nef de l’Église (mars 1887).’ The Church of England traditionally requires the prospective bride or groom to have had a basic residential status in the parish where the wedding will take place. 2 The Sinodun Hills or Wittenham Clumps are a pair of hills in Little Wittenham, Oxfordshire, of which one is the site of an Iron Age hill fort. From the top, the Norman parish church of Dorchester on Thames, Dorchester Abbey, can be seen to the north. 3 See note 1.

239

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1040 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 13 October 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 13 Octr ’07 Dear Mrs Flower. Having, from Mrs Dickinson, concluded that by this time you are in London now, or on the way, I write to thank you for thinking of us here, and sending on Wardle’s letter to you, from your haven in Verona, on 22 September. Wardle’s – as always – is an excellent & interesting letter, and curiously eno’w: for telling the terrible floods he must have found, or following him – at Avignon, which must have made his rest there an anxious and rather a trying one to witness; perhaps however, he may have moved on to Paris, if the condition of the railways permitted.1 Your pencilling was rather disappointing,2 for I had been thinking it likely that your sojourn, or travelling in the Italian lake district, would have driven the fiend of ‘neuritis’ out of you. Still, I shall hope that the “mud bathing” was effective if you were able to reach the Baths? Your noting the outlook from the balconied window in Verona, overlooking the Adige, & the hill sides beyond – exactly reminded me of my delight, in the spring of 1885, when having the same (or nearly so) view over the river, & watching the warping of wood loaded barges down the rapid river, after having passed under the arches of the Scaliger bridge. During my – some days – stay at Verona my visits to San Zeno were as frequent as might be, for the noble Church was always, in itself alone, a recompense for the labour of travelling all the way to Italy.3 But Verona altogether deserved all that Ruskin could pile on to itself, and its story.4 From Wardle’s letter, I am supposing he may be thinking of Wintering in Paris? I can report very satisfactorily of the three Dickinson’s [sic] – in that though the school has been closed for 3 weeks & is still shut, the 2 children, as well as the mother, are well; tho’ the cause of the break in schooling has been closed by from scarlet fever in Three Bridges, which is in the parish of Worth. Believe me | Yours very truly | Philip Webb. Wardle’s letter inclosed BL Add 45355, ff. 50–1

1 In September and October, torrential rainfall had resulted in devastating floods in parts of Spain, as well as in south-east and central France, with the Rhone and Loire valleys affected particularly badly. Rail travel became difficult. On 19 October, The Times reported the line from Marseilles to Paris was impassable, and there were similar difficulties in and around Lyons, Toulon, Montpellier, Vichy and elsewhere. 2 Meaning that Elizabeth Flower’s letter had been written in pencil, signifying illness or physical weakness of some kind.

240

1903–1914 3 He had seen the basilica of St Zeno in Verona at the end of his visit to Italy, in April 1885. See also Vol. II, Letter 381, note 5. 4 JR’s lecture, ‘Verona and its Rivers’, was given at the Royal Institution on 4 February 1870, and subsequently published in Verona: and other Lectures (Orpington: George Allen, 1894).

1041 • To William Richard Lethaby, 4–5 November 1907 Pencil Caxtons Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 5 November. ’07 My dear fellow. The spirit tried to move me once or twice lately to write and extract a word from you, but t’was overcome by indolence and ineptitude – but further truth to tell, I did not like to hinder you from doing better with your time. Indolence & virtue combined has been rewarded, for I have the cheering letter of companionship – after all said & nothing done on my part – “thank you,” as J. Rn used to say – much in the pretty gentle way that a Robin drops his bow – out of sheer politeness. Yesterday (I’m writing this on the fourth for tomorrow’s post) as it were, S.C.C was doing his part in Iffley Church,1 & if there could be any excuse for his more or less deserting us, it would be the beautiful simplicity of the little Norman building – which you would know from engravings if not having been permitted to make your bow in it. The two came down here to please themselves in friendly wise, and pretty is it always, & made me happy by shewing their content. And so poor old Bodley’s gone away, hardly a surprise to me on learning of his killing journey overseas at his age – must have been 3 or 4 years older than me.2 He was a man of some taste & discrimination, and for a while I had at one time pleasure in his companionship, it died away out under the ‘Restoration’ separator of friendly familiarity, and his respectability increasing, & mine going-going-gone! ’Tis good that the ‘force’ of the big horse has been made in bronze and set up to please you twice in the day.3 I too have been drawn from my direct road to look on a piece of figure work, as a relief to one’s selfish ruminations. I am beginning now to calculate the months that have passed since the ship’s keel was laid down, and that word will come to me shortly of the new venture having the ‘dogshores’ knocked away, and the wine spilled over the name? Do not grudge a fellow a little news of that sort. Also, anything about your experiences in & round the wonderful Abbey Ch’ would be good for the spirit within. Yours truly | Philip Webb. rs Give my pleasantest regards to M ‘Edith’ & tell her it was summer when you were both here, & now it is close on winter! V&A, AAD

241

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 SCC posted a printed card to many of his friends, and annotated the copy sent to PSW. ‘All went splendidly today! Sydney Carlyle Cockerell and Florence Kate Kingsford were married today at Iffley Church, near Oxford. & are very happy! Nov. 4, 1907.’ BL Add 52761, f. 122. 2 George Frederick Bodley (four years older than PSW) had died on 21 October. Less than a year earlier, in November 1906, he had travelled to America in order to examine the site where he had been commissioned to design Washington Cathedral. 3 The large bronze statue by the sculptor Carlo Marochetti (1805–67) depicting Richard I (‘the Lionheart’) astride his horse was completed in 1856, and is located in Old Palace Yard, outside the Palace of Westminster, opposite Westminster Abbey. WRL would thus have seen it on arrival and departure on the days he spent at the Abbey in his role as Surveyor of the Fabric.

1042 • To William Hale White, 5 December 1907 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 5 December. 1907. My dear Hale White Your most kindly & questioning letter of 16 Novr has, somehow, looked reproachfully at me amongst 2 or 3 others, less attractive, remaining unacknowledged, and I’ve fallen back on the salve to conscience, (which it could not be) that the crossing of our letters would explain each other! I can hardly think of anything which would shock my indolence more, than if you took it for granted that my delight in our good fellowship was becoming dim. Let me assure you that, with me, it has never been brighter than at this year of its blessed regard, for I could ill afford such a misfortune. This is a long preamble to the “half a dozen words” you asked for – namely, how I had been withstanding the treacherous season of the fall of the leaf, in the matter of health; except for the still more certain signs of decay from old age (77 years, come January) I am as well now as when we last met. Still, I can but feel the hindrances, in many ways, of my memory becoming steadily more faulty – & markedly so during the last six months or so. This, by the way, has much to do with my more than even aforetimes dislike (disability rather) to letter-writing – i.e. the putting into form – other than with instant speech – what I have to say, or much desire to express. I fancy that in uttered speech, from the personal excitement, more blood gets circulated in the brain, & the strand of memory is not so abruptly broken. Enough of this, & more than enough! I’m glad you take so kindly to the different kinds of trees – and am not surprised at your eyes, setting a light to your mind, from the wealth & beauty of the foliage of the passed summer. Yea, the sweet Chestnut is much in view – especially in underwood – about this part of Sussex, and to me, who have been bred in the district of the common or field-Elm, namely in Oxon, & Berks, it has been an amusing find to see one big one, & two little ones together here & in all my constant & lengthened walking no more of that kind in this part of Sussex. Neither have I found a ‘Mountain’ or Wych Elm – of which I believe there are 2 or even 3 varieties. 242

1903–1914

I’m beginning to feel, after the way of Betsy Prig, that “there aint no sich a person” as the fabled “Irene Noel”.1 I’m still reading, in brief snatches, in your Johnson’s Rambler, and am more & more struck with its antediluvian-like literary structure, & even more so by the great variety of insight displayed by the ponderous Samuel of the Georgian time.2 Kindly remembrance to Mary, & to yourself, a hungry desire that you will not forget | Yours faithfully | Philip Webb. BCL MR 10/29

1 ‘Your lovely friend, Miss Irene Noel, called again the other day on her way to her cousin, Lady Anne. I tried to make her talk about her home in Euboea, and was partly successful.’ WHW to PSW, 16 November 1907, LTF, pp. 341–2. WHW had first brought up the subject of Irene Noel a few months earlier: ‘If you are not too old to enjoy the sight of a handsome young woman – intelligent withal – you should take an opportunity of looking at her’ (WHW to PSW, 19 August 1907, LTF, p. 339), but as she remained only a name to PSW he decided to follow the example of the sceptical Betsey Prig, who believes ‘Mrs Harris’ to be an imaginary friend of Sarah Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit (see Vol. II, Letter 419, note 1). 2 Published twice-weekly during 1750–2, The Rambler consisted of essays by Samuel Johnson (1709–84), ranging across topics appealing to its middleclass readership – politics, religion, literature and social mores.

1043 • To William Richard Lethaby, 8 February 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 8 Feby ’08 My dear fellow – that is quite true, & in spite of my neglect in not at once acknowledging your thankfully received paper on the mediaeval embroideries,1 and later on your reading of the actual facts of the Ephesus Temple.2 Both papers act on one as a kind of ‘revival of learning’, in me! The Brit: Mus: & S. Ken: retreats of a on Sat: afternoons have faded from my memory like an old & ill fixed photograph, so that my aged eyes get an old gleam in them when turning over your pages – bless you. I remember a natural emphatic phrase of yours wh: I apply to you now ‘Thank you so much’ – and I do. I wish I could have more communion. I like your scratchy representation of the Xifiction3 embroidery, in its simple way it brings back the effect of the needlework to me.4 Also, I much like your chalk sketch representation of the carving on the stilted bases of the Ephesus columns.5 O dear me, is there any hope of real invention in the lucky? (sic) young archts design for the County Hall?6 There was a rough outline sketch to small scale of the river front elevation in my “Tribune”, which might mean anything, for there was no plan7 – the plan, the plan, & all the plan is one’s only help for making out what the effect of such a building would be on the excellent site; of course you 243

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

have thoughtfully looked at the plans of it? It seems to me that this long thing, as in the newspaper, might do if the planning were good, and O dear me again, the detail should not be of the commonplace. Archts in these days are given to that order of detail, aint they? There was a rough perspective sketch of a front in an earlier Tribune, by a Mr Ryley Reilly of Liverpool, wh’ seemed to me dreadfully Victorian?8 So that the less ostentatious sample of Mr Ralph Knott might, with real planning, & skilled detail turn out to be refreshing, after the late efforts in the Renaissance in White Hall? You see, my rather late found friend, that I’m a bit worn threadbare in mind & body at 77, and perhaps the leafage of me is rather sere & yellow? Never mind, I’m not over melancholy. Kindest goodwill to Mrs Lethaby from yours & hers, in sincerity & bad writing Ph: Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Notes on some Medieval Embroideries’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Second Series, XXI (1907), pp. 384–9. 2 ‘Diana’s Temple at Ephesus’ is the first of four papers which together comprise WRL’s Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (London: B.T. Batsford, 1908). That the papers were first published separately is evident from Letter 1072, below. The book appeared in or after October 1908. 3 i.e. crucifixion. 4 WRL’s sketch of the embroidered crucifixion on the cover of the thirteenth-century Felbrigge psalter (BL Sloane MS 2400) appears in ‘Notes on some Medieval Embroideries’, p. 387. The manuscript was on display in a case of select bindings in the British Museum. 5 Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum, pp. 30–1. 6 See above, Letter 995, note 2. 7 The Architect & Contract Reporter included a report on Ralph Knott’s design as ‘Competition for New London County Hall’, 7 February 1908, pp. 90–2, and drawings also appeared in The Builder, 8 February 1908, between pp. 152–3. 8 Charles Herbert Reilly (1874–1948) was head of the Liverpool School of Architecture (1904–33). Although PSW’s comment suggests otherwise, Reilly favoured neo-Classicism rather than Victorian neo-Gothic.

1044 • To William Richard Lethaby, 21 February 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. Feby 21. ’08 My dear fellow. This delay in acknowledging your gift of the R.I.B.A journal, with the Address in it, did not happen from doubts as to the value of every paragraph in the most surprisingly good paper, but from old-aged inability to say anything worth your 244

1903–1914

reading expressive of my perfect satisfaction with it.1 I say ‘surprisingly’, for though by now I reckon on your clear grasp of difficult subjects, your treatment of this one – which for many years has been a constant matter of thought with me – is far beyond my expectation of ever being able to read, & delight in! Take – just as example – two passages out of many – that have struck me in the paper so strongly: those of paragraphs on pp 214–215, beginning with, “if I have justified the claim”, and, “The material was not only inherited”!!! I cannot conceive of any teaching for students, open to receiving helpful impressions from elders, more likely to lead them into the reasonableness of commonsense on, hitherto, (so far as I know) of much misunderstood points, and those points so vitally needful for any worker in arts ways to clearly recognise.2 There, I beg pardon for treating you with the effects of natural inability, plus the ‘old age’ as aforesaid. Best remembrance to Mrs Richard, | fm Yours as before | Philip Webb. Couldn’t you, without violating professional good manners, write me something about the coming “County Hall” affair which might make my dreams of it less dismal?3 V&A, AAD

1 WRL, ‘The Theory of Greek Architecture’, JRIBA, XV (February 1908), pp. 213–9). This was an address to students given at the General Meeting of RIBA on 3 February 1908. 2 ‘If I have justified the claim that the practical worker may – indeed, in an advanced age must – be interested in theory and principles, I come up with another feeling, acknowledged or latent in many minds, a sort of despair of finding one’s way. . . . The material was not only inherited, but inherited from a stage of primitive art not very remote.’ (‘The Theory of Greek Architecture’, p. 214). ‘As Morris said, with marvellous directness, “the Parthenon in a glorified Stonehenge”.’ (p. 215). 3 See previous letter.

1045 • To Sydney Cockerell, 27 February 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley | Sussex. 27 Feb. ’08 My dear fellow. I thank you for writing from Malvern of putting your back into the excellent M.SS work, which becomes you so well to do;1 and I feel that ‘the missis’ will be at her industry as her other companionship in life, so that the comparing of riches on your return will be interesting as pleasant to both.2 One of these days (the indolent man’s promise of amendment) I shall be sorting out the multitudinous P. P. cards bestowed on me with so much thoughtful kindness, and reckon up the unguessed quality & quantity of knowledge I have gained of ancient art, in addition to what 245

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

may have been got in to my poor head & heart by – say – 60 years of personal observation of the blessed buildings themselves, when I was lucky enough to come in front of them from time to time. W.R.L. has kindly sent me one of the best pieces of work that I have read of his doing – The “Address” to the students, at the Royal Architectural Society’s request.3 Such a clear statement of essential principles for students, as not often comes in their way, and will open some of their eyes – may be – in some helpful surprise (and no poetry) let us hope. Neville Lytton has sent me a copy of his pictures photo-reproduced as a list of many, if not of all, he has painted, indeed a very notable mark of industry in – as yet – a short life.4 Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. P.S. My memory is all going to rags & tatters, & is distressingly troublesome to me – in all ways, & more particularly in trying to write anything – letters included. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/157

1 SCC had spent intermittent periods at Malvern since early January, continuing with his work on Dyson Perrins’s manuscripts and describing some to be included in a forthcoming exhibition which opened in May, and for which he wrote the catalogue. ‘They are going to have an exhibition of manuscripts at the Burlington Fine Arts Club and they have put me in charge of it, so I have to go to Oxford on Monday to rake about among the College libraries.’ SCC to PSW, 28 February 1908, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/155. 2 ‘Kate works away in my absence and I shall have one or two things to submit to you when I come again.’ 3 See previous letter. 4 Reproductions of Pictures by the Hon. Neville Lytton [London: 1908]. ‘Neville’s blocks are badly printed and dont do justice to the pictures.’

1046 • To Sydney Cockerell, 8 March 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 8th Mar: for 9th posting. My dear fellow. I thankfully had your good letter of Feby 28. and since then the echo of yourself has sent me the Gorl[e]ston Psalter – at least I guessed so from the handwriting on the wrapper – and this Sunday aftn I gave myself to the solitary quiet of seriously looking at it – reading here & there to satisfy eagerness, but will take it more calmly in future examination.1 Already I think it possible for the ignorant me to follow the suggested semi likeness and half differences in comparing the several Psalters named; however, I have as yet only just ‘dodged about amongst the tender bits’ of your essay – rejoicing in your brotherly way, at the end, of thanking those friends who so well lent their help while you were working out the semblances, & 246

1903–1914

particularly verifying the heraldic shields; ‘my stars Mr’ (as W.R.L. says) there is a fine lot of them & such significant beauties! The labour of getting the whole volume together as you have done it tells of itself what that has been, but a good thing well done (if not on starvation wages) insures against future vexation? The 14th centy work in the M.SS. shews the crest of the wave of a noble art before it reclined on the early 15th centy corroboration of the more perfect period? I set the book in its protecting shell on my inclined drawing board supported on the back of a chair, so that neither the book nor my back is liable to suffer. Will you be so good as to send me word of Mrs Morris’s address. on I had a p.p. card – from May M. – from Dartmouth, but no other hint as to house, &c, and it is so long since I wrote to or have heard from Janey that I’m in the dark and necessarily in disgrace.2 Really & truly I cannot write now, even decently, for my memory evaporates nearly as quickly as hot water, & leaves me tepid & with vexation truly distressing. I believe there are more than a dozen letters that never will get answered, & the good friends must desert me, & the unimportant other – may be – will not? Please tell me where to address any note to you or yours when I don’t know where you may be housing. Yrs Ph. Webb. Perhaps Mrs Sydney will have set me down as a ‘demnition’ defaulter for not to her acknowledging the receipt of such an important parcel? Please to ask her pardon for me. Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/158

1 SCC to PSW, 28 February 1908, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/155. The Gorleston Psalter: a manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth century in the library of C.W.D. Perrins, described in relation to other East Anglian books of the period (London: Chiswick Press, 1907). ‘Thank you for the nice thing you say about my little efforts. Of course it is merely a piece of scientific description – as of a fossil elephant – & that sort of thing is bound to be dull. The manuscript is very splendid, but there is nothing in it that brings tears to the eyes, as in some French work of that period, & earlier English work. The men who did it were of the jolly-farmer stamp.’ SCC to PSW, 10 March 1908, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/156. 2 ‘Mrs Morris is at Rock Hill, South Town, Dartmouth, S. Devon. It is some time since I had news of her.’

1047 • To William Richard Lethaby, 11 March 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 11 Mar. ’08 My dear fellow. Your few and far between words (not complaining) pleased me to the back-bone, in that you were not careless of my feeling about the address to students – felt 247

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

all that was said – and the little in it called for no “discount” whatever.1 I don’t quarrel with your being a little uneasy at having your labours genially accepted, for the constancy of the reverse makes me feel, when the boon is offered, that it may be a trap?? You see, ’twas in this wise: I think it was with G. Jack that I was talking abt S. Kensington matters – & mentioning names, when yours turned up, and he laughingly said (as a professor!) that ‘design’ could not be taught, or something like that, & I joined in with a recognition that a truth was hopping about somewhere near us. When I read your R.I.B.A story, it seemed to me you were alive to the Professorial position, and turned your address into an explanation of why design could not [be] taught, & I laughed outright with pleasure that there was one straight from the elbow for the nose of dullness. Now comes this County Hall matter. I really thank you for sending me the two newspaper pictures. On the whole I’m inclined to think that some reason is shewn in accepting Mr Knott’s design, but now is the time to set about the work of really designing it, and taking the ‘competition’ part out of it – holding like grim death on to those which have the salt of ‘design’ in them.2 Poor young man! and now your troubles begin really, with a ‘Moderate’ Council at your elbow to shew how design may be taught. Spring has not yet put in a claim to her appearance, for the grass is awaiting some relenting of the heavens, and we are having what in a more moderate way what France & Spain have undergone3 – the weather is wild and very cold withal, and the earth too wet for spring sowing. Please find a Sat. aftn when a spring smile is with us, and let us look at its wonders and have a talk. Kindest remembrance to Madame Richard, & this scrawl to you | from yrs Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 1044. 2 See above, Letter 1043, note 7. 3 A reference to the serious flooding in parts of Spain and France in the autumn of 1907. See above, Letter 1040, note 1.

1048 • To William Hale White, 18 May 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. Monday 18th May ’08 My dear Hale White. Sad as your note of the 15th was, I rejoiced, in a way – that you could impart to your old friend a little of the burden which oppressed you; though we, happily, are 248

1903–1914

not each at the other end of a garden, and able to express instantly any grief which touches us closely, still we are not too far off to be dead or dull to the infinite boon of friendship;1 and I write now with the remembrance of yesterday’s pride of earth & sky, and today’s glowing repetition of it. Given a few more such times of dispersion of vapour, & we both – & Mary too – will uplift a stave2 of renewed joyful recognition. You say that you cannot get away “next”, i.e. this week, but the following week, &c. Well, if you should not be able even then to start, let me know & I will come to you and the three of us will rejoice over all the colours nature can shews [sic] us in May, with the sun to shew even the minutist [sic] secrets of beauty.3 I am doubly sorry the Mary [sic] is so disabled, and cannot even skip a measure round the Maypole & flout the puritans! Yours in the worn out flesh, but happily still cheerful at times – even to the “lifting of a stave”! | Philip Webb. BCL MR 10/30

1 A few days after this, Dorothy White noted of WHW in her diary that ‘He is fond of Mr. Philip Webb; his oldest friend, he calls him.’ White, p. 32. 2 To tip (or lift) a stave: to raise a song. 3 ‘If I had my life over again I would perpetually urge and strengthen myself to admire and lose myself in pure beauty. I would teach myself to worship the beauty of the autumn, the skies, the sea. . . . I would give myself up more systematically to beauty than to reason; make the study of beauty a business. How much happier Webb is than if he had been a literary person, a philosopher, or a theologian!’ WHW to Dorothy White, 7 November 1908. White, p. 121.

1049 • To Sydney Cockerell, 26 May 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 26 May. 1908. My dear fellow. I thank you with all sincerity for your particularly kind & thoughtful letter, and am only sorry that I cannot do justice to it; and least of all could I go to London either in this or next week.1 Miss Astley having come back from the Riviera will be going to Arisaig directly, and is kindly determined to come & see me on Wednesday,2 and Mrs Flower comes here on Thursday; also, if Hale White is well enough I expect to go & see him & Mary – (who is more or less a prisoner) one day next week. There is one other fellow not quite in a condition for running about, for my failing memory has become tiresome indeed – not to say worrying. You know my habitual feeling about such wonders as the decorative M.S.S.? that they call for quiet study & patient search into their greatness & beauty, and though the wonderful show you have got together in Savile Row is excellent for 249

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

making visible, & securing the knowledge of the existence of such a collection of inestimable value, a record of it, still – even if I were able to do justice to it (wh’ I am not) the looking with a mere glance at so many would break my poor back, and make my too weak head weaker still. You see, I’m obliged to put all this tedious verbiage of mine together, to let you know that I do not hastily refuse in answer to your most kindly call. Indeed, these last 12 months have markedly told on me, and daily I feel the results in failing strength in body & mind. Do not for a moment think I ever forget your ever thoughtful & helpful care for me, which, instead of oppressing is a constant relief to my mind. Please to give my kindest regard to ‘Kate’, in recognition of her good will towards the very truly | Your & her, | Philip Webb. I think your “introduction” to the wonderful show excellent, & I am sure it would be needful indeed. Please send p. card if I am to return it – the ‘proof’. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/164

1 SCC was hoping that PSW might visit the exhibition of manuscripts at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. ‘I enclose a proof of my introduction to the catalogue, and if you can possibly manage to run up any day this week I will meet you at Victoria and pilot you straight to the Club. It is a case of Rule Britannia! this time, and you will feel quite patriotic after seeing what our forefathers could do in that line.’ SCC to PSW, 24 May 1908, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/163. See above, Letter 1045, note 1. 2 For Constance Astley, and the house which GWJ built for her and Margaret Shaen, see Vol. III, Letter 784, note 9.

1050 • To William Rothenstein, 29 May 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 29 May. 1908. Dear Mr Rothenstein.1 I thank you – in sincerity – for sending to me your Birmingham address, to the students there, of Feby last.2 I could have written this much, honestly, without having read it, but preferred the more reasonable course of delay till I had once read it, and just now reread certain parts more critically. Please believe me when saying, that I am heartily glad that we still have with us so able a representative of the ethics of art, to carry on the essence of its teaching on the lines so powerfully set forth by those gone before us, & to whom we owe so much for any help we can give, to carry on the work so forcibly set going by them. I shall [be] glad if you can arrange to come & spend a Saturday afternoon with me here – in June – when we may be free of interruption – however otherwise pleasing the disturbing criminals might be.

250

1903–1914

Would Saturday June 13 be likely to suit you? There is a train Emery Walker often has come by, leaving Victoria at 2pm3, which gets to 3 Bdgs 3.13. This arrangement gives us time to have some light food with or without tea? Yours truly | Philip Webb. Kindly e[x]cuse the pencilling. Houghton bMS Eng 1148 (1590)

1 For William Rothenstein, see above, Letter 976. 2 ‘In 1908 I was invited to give the annual address at the Birmingham School of Art, following on all sorts of distinguished people, among whom was William Morris. These annual addresses were printed and circulated. I was now often asked to speak in public – a thing I disliked doing. My views were tending towards socialism; the private patron, I foresaw, on whom artists now depended, would slowly disappear, and therefore the State must learn to take his place.’ Men and Memories. Recollections of William Rothenstein 1900–1922 (London: Faber & Faber, 1932), p. 134.

1051 • To William Hale White, 1 June 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 1 June 1908 My dear Hale White. I cast up accounts of your visit to Caxtons, & me, on my way back fm the station, and found the sum total to be good – as truly, no doubt, the “creation” was found, so to be!1 The hurry-scurry was tiresome at the station, but it did not outbalance the quiet of our consideration of “things in general”!2 Yesterday, I found some copies of (William Morris’ work) issued by the S.P.A.B. but, unfortunately with no date on it. Have referred to “The Life”, & find that the paper was done by W.M. for the society on 7 March 1892.3 I have taken the liberty of scoring in pencil some passages which seem to me so applicable to your purpose of defending the Abbey Church from further desecration. I think you would agree with me (though perhaps not own to it?) that it would be a libel on Bunyan, and Hy IIIds jewel, by getting any inferior creature to attempt doing what W.M so resolutely set his face against his hand & brain even attempting it?4 Notice part[icularl]y the underlined passage at top of p. 11.5 I send 2 copies of the paper, the scored one being only for your particular capability of understanding the importance – even now – of the question at issue, between modesty and vanity.6 Yours and dear Mary’s | Ph. Webb. In a hurry – you see – for post. BCL MR 10/31

251

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 After most of the seven days of Creation, God surveyed his work and ‘saw that it was good’. Genesis 1. 2 WHW had visited PSW on 30 May. ‘Of course, as I always do, I liked to be with him. Ruskin introduced him to me, so that associations are strong. [See Vol. I, Letter 4, note 3] They are also ancient, and we are completely at ease with one another. His art is marvellous. He is not a painter of pictures, but for drawing he has never been surpassed. I wish you could have seen some of his drawings of beasts and, above all, of flowers. I turned over on Saturday several of his portfolios I had not opened before. These studies from nature were all made for “service” in architectural and decorative work. I always feel that I depend on him a good deal for not blundering in my admiration. . . . Coming through a wood on Saturday, Webb pointed out to me a peculiar and lovely quality of the yew. I had never noticed it before, but now it is my own. So with false admiration of bad work. I am deluded by vulgarity. My friend enlightens me.’ WHW to Dorothy White, 2 June 1908. See White, pp. 40–1. 3 Written in 1892, Concerning Westminster Abbey was first published in the following year. See Vol. II, Letter 460, note 16. Of this essay, which was prompted by a proposal for substantial restoration of the interior of the Abbey, with the addition of an annex to accommodate new monuments to distinguished national figures, JWM wrote of WM’s fury at the idea that such an example of ‘the noblest style and period of European architecture should be turned, as it long had been, into a “registration office for notorieties”.’ Mackail, II, p. 276. 4 This letter, and the one following sent later the same day, were prompted by WHW’s letter of 31 May 1908. ‘A proposal has been made to place in Westminster Abbey a stained-glass window as a memorial to John Bunyan, and the Dean and Chapter have consented. . . . For my own part I do not care to have Bunyan in the Abbey. I need not give my reasons, but I want you to tell me as soon as you can whether you would put modern stained-glass even of the best kind into the Abbey; whether there is a chance that anybody can be found who can imagine tolerable illustrations of the Pilgrim’s Progress; whether Mr. Lethaby has been consulted, and whether he will have any voice in the choice of artist and design.’ WHW to PSW, LTF, p. 345. 5 ‘As to the monuments . . . the burden of their ugliness must be endured, at any rate until the folly of restoration has died out. For the greater part of them have been built into the fabric, and their removal would leave gaps, not so unsightly indeed as these stupid masses of marble, but tempting to the restorer, who would not be contented with merely patching them decently, but would make them excuses for further introduction of modern work.’ Concerning Westminster Abbey, p. 11. 6 ‘Morris’s weighty sentences are just to the point. I shall try to make use of them, but I have no hope of contributing the force of a blown filament of thistledown to stop the outrage.’ WHW to PSW, 2 June 1908, LTF, p. 346.

1052 • To William Hale White, 1 June 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. 1 June 1908. My dear Hale White. You will – probably – have had my note, & the 2 copies of W.Ms paper on Westr Abbey – published by the S.P.A.B – before you get this, which is an acknowledgment of your appeal to me – ineffectual me, about the proposition for keeping alive the memory of John Bunyan, by advertising in the “Vanity Fair” of Westminster! Believe me, I would quite as willingly have the memory of Laud advertised in the same inconsequential way.1

252

1903–1914

Certainly, I would not have a voice, or hand in any further attempt to use the incomparable building for religious, political, or even art purposes – by introducing (as certainly it must be) incongruous modern work, whether of statues, monuments, stained glass, or useless ecclesiastical trifles; and this much more I can say, that the matter looked at rightly, is an impossibility! Knowing Lethaby as well as I do, & his settled opinion as to the preservation of Westminster Abbey Ch:, as well as Westminster Hall, from the insults & injuries of modern additions; that I am satisfied, when consulted on this, or any other point, with regard to either or both of these precious possessions of the English people, he would oppose to the utmost any such scheme or schemes. Yrs Ph: Webb. BCL MR 10/32

1 William Laud (1573–1643) became archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.

1053 • To Sydney Cockerell, 2 June 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 2. June. 1908. My dear fellow. Your letter of 31 May I looked forward to with some anxiety, and I cannot readily tell you how relieved I am by the result.1 Before that letter you wrote to me last July at Winchester, I could not have been so moved as to your prospect in life, for you were then in a position to take up with any satisfactory occupation which offered itself – either in England or abroad: but now, ’tis a different affair in life altogether for you & yours. I know but little of Cambridge, but much of Oxford, and recognise that the characteristic qualities of them are much the same, and have generally learned that socially – for ordinary educated folks – Cambridge is much more agreeable to live in than Oxford. It is not so donnish, and people there are more free to express themselves according to their natural bent. The feminine Colleges too would, I fancy, lend themselves for female society, much more readily than the more ecclesiasticised ladies of Oxford; of course, the townsfolk of both would be much the same. Also, there are many interesting places outside the boundary of Cambridge itself – and quickly got at by train on half holidays. Knowing too something of your aptitude for finding what would be wanted in the way of a modest roof over your heads, I don’t doubt to learn of success in that way shortly. Of course you touch me on a tender point, in that I too shall not see you & yours so often as by good fate has been my appreciated gain heretofore, but we will do

253

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

the best we can, and the presence of Madame “Kate” make amends for you in so many ways that when you are settled, I shall look for cheery news of the fresh experiences. Now, dear Mrs Kate, the too poor quality of this letter equally applies to you in its meaning of rejoicing at the appointment which Sydney might not have attained. Please both of you to believe, that the learning of your welfare with [sic] add much to the future content | of yours always truly, Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/165

1 SCC had been canvassing support for his candidature as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum since mid-March, which now reached a satisfactory outcome. ‘On getting home found telegrams announcing that I had been elected Director of the Fitzwilliam.’ CD, 30 May 1908. ‘In the aftn & evening wrote heaps of letters about my Cambridge appointment.’ CD, 31 May 1908. It was a remarkable achievement on merit by a ‘non-establishment’ candidate with expert knowledge of early manuscripts and a confident taste in the fine arts; it proved to be a defining moment, for SCC transformed the Fitzwilliam into a world-class gallery and centre for scholarship.

1054 • To Sydney and Kate Cockerell, 23 June 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. June 23. ’08. Dear friends in the fellowship. The letter of the 16th – knowing how much you must have been buryied under loads of life’s impediments – was kind of you; it eased off any small anxieties for the new fledged pair wh’ beset me in thinking of what was in front of both of you at this time. Your next – when you can find the time – after some resting – would be to tell me whereabout in Cambridge stands the hut of first adventure for a new home.1 I gladly laid hold of the Wychelms as being certainly companionable, the soughing in the branches will call a welcome. I got down the Murray’s guide to the Eastern Counties, and found the literature (for a guide book) was rather more full & carefully done than the common, and certainly better than that of Oxford, which, even in the new edition, was inferior to ordinary makeshifts in the way of guiding the stranger on historic ground.2 There is a rather good map of Cambridge, & its outlying roads in the suburbs. There is Huntingdon road, Chesterton d[itt]o, Newmarket, Mill, Hills & Trumpington roads, Wimpole, & St Neot’s d[itt]o all on the skirts of the town proper – but no sign of ‘Cavendish Avenue’ can I find, nor guess how far from the navel – say of St Mary’s Church outwards – your nest may be clinging to living natural trees. I can always travel

254

1903–1914

over maps with more comfort than I can do the same distances on wheels instead of on a chair – therefore, tell me where, and I’ll picture you both pleasantly. I know really so little of Cambridge, though in years long gone by I did some fiddle-de-dee work in small for ‘the Shop’, in the way [of] drawing a sample or two of “Phasianus Gallus” for a symbol of John Alcock, Bp of Ely, which was painted in distemper somewhere on the Chapel roof & perhaps in other places,3 that is many & long years back in thinking of it after sinking into forgetfulness. I once, on earliest visit, got on the top of the skilful vaulting of ‘King’s’ chapel, between it & the timbers roofing, & wondered at the ingenuity of its mosaic-like setting of such an area of peculiarly shaped individual stones. Kings C. is – of course, rather a pleasant wonder of craftsmanship, than a work of imagination in simpler & more attractive forms, & disposition of parts. The base of the old gate house of ‘King’s’ – if it be still standing – is of far more interesting 15th c. work. W. Rothenstein came to see me this last Saty and we got along as novices amongst new noses very well, under such circumstances, and physiognomically – in spite of the inevitable ‘gig lamps’4 – I made more of the object than the hurried first gaze allowed: & for subject matter, we did well enough for future friendly promise. On the 17th I had (of course) an excellent letter from the invariably faithful Rooke père, hailing from “Tamworth tower & Town” – where he has been doing – somehow – some strange things after that equally strange genius F.M. Brown, & for Holliday of Edgbaston5 – Good also; T.M.R is just restless & preening his wings for flight to the “Auvergne aagain”. [sic] Bless the good man & his belongings, as I will in an answer, without Anathema for adjective. Let me learn in a little while hence that the rough & tumble of things are gentling down with both of you, & especially to the ‘Kate,’ of the domestic drama of my friends, do I send kindly greeting, & well wishing to both from yours always truly, Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/167

1 Within three weeks of his appointment at the Fitzwilliam Museum ‘we moved into a new cottage, in Cavendish Avenue on the outskirts of that town, which I named Wayside after my father’s house at Beckenham. The house, though poorly built is well planned & looks straight over cornfields to the Gog Magogs.’ CD, 1908. 2 Handbook for Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, 3rd edn (London: John Murray, 1892). A folded map of Cambridge comes between pp. 338–9. 3 In 1867, PSW designed the paintings for the new nave ceiling of the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge, a commission undertaken by MMF & Co. His skilful heraldic work led him to design all such work for the Firm. See Kirk, p. 44. John Alcock (1430–1500), was appointed bishop of Ely in 1486. In 1496, Alcock founded Jesus College, and PSW’s visual representation of a cock (Phasianus Gallus) was a pleasant conceit. 4 Spectacles (slang). 5 For James Richardson Holliday, see Vol. III, Letter 802, note 5.

255

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1055 • To Sydney and Kate Cockerell, 14 July 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 14 July. ’08. To/ S.C.C & K.C. My dear friends encamped under trees on the outskirts of Cambridge in Flatland, save that – & happily so – the Gogmagogs are almost within speaking distance with “Wayside”.1 Long may it be that the greenery, now such a boon to you, may not be given away for a human ants’ nest. Your comforting letter of the 30th did – I assure you – cheer me thankfully. I have some dim kind of remembrance of the personality of the late (sic!) Mrs Blasdale,2 and my wishes are that she may live long, and enjoy the remembrance of having “sorted” you with human kindness in Richmond on Thames, for so many years, evidently too with due appreciation of the genius she was fostering. Now Mistress Kate, kindly say – “Hear hear”. I am still, in evenings, filling up waste moments with readings from Murray’s guide to the Eastern Counties – and noting here and there a place about Cambridge easily get-at-able, for you to see – and amongst others, Great and Little Shelford (especially Little) seem to me likely to give sport. I think you know or have known the late Madeline Wyndham (daughter) who is now Mrs Adeane, and have their home at Babraham, some few miles out from you?3 What caught my eye in reading was Palavicini, who lived at Babraham fm 1576 to 1600 – & whose widow married Sir Oliver Cromwell, of Hinchin brook; but the “Old House[”] was pulled down in 1765.4 Mr Adeane I know not, but I knew his wife as a quite young girl, before a new house descended on her not from the ‘Clouds’, and so on, with such nonsense. I am rather more occupied than need called for, as my out-o-door help, Thos Collins, has had “a stroke”, and now lies abed – fortunately his old wife is a rather skilled – & semi professional nurse, who can look after her old man.5 I am doubtful if he can mend to any further labouring purpose; so – till I can find (not easy) another dependable chap not to play tricks down the 80 feet well, I now have taken again to my old ways in that form, & a few others – not lightly to be spoken of. I fancy indeed feel assured that my memory must again have played one more of the thousand tricks, its malevolence enjoys, on me. I meant that the whimsical natural history birds were painted up – so far as I remember – in the ante-part of “Jesus Chapel”, for which some repairs were then going on (I think by Bodley) and it may have been that or, another Architect, thought better to have them washed out, for they were only in distemper.6 How glad I am that the “Staff” of the Mus. were on pretty human behaviour towards their new born chief, and what a difference it would make, if the good will be lasting and furthering instead of hindering.7 There, the back cries out,

256

1903–1914

and I give in. With all the kindliest of what friendship means, when thinking of past hours of precious time, with those who have helped me to live with renewed energy in life, I say goodbye for a while to you both, from Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. O dear me – I am truly sorry to send you such a confused piece of writing as I find this to be. Mrs Dickinson goes for her fortnight’s holiday about the 24th July, & I go to Winton on the 25th.8 V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/168

1 See previous letter, note 1. 2 Mrs Blasdale had been SCC’s landlady for the rooms he had rented in Richmond, both when he was single, and then during the first months of marriage. When he and Kate moved to Cambridge, she accompanied them for the first few days to help in sorting things out in the new house. 3 Madeline Pamela Wyndham (1869–1941), the second daughter of PWY and Madeline Wyndham (for whom PSW built Clouds) married Charles Robert Adeane (1863–1943) in July 1888. Adeane’s family estate was Babraham, near Cambridge. 4 ‘[F]rom 1576 to 1600 [Babraham was] the seat of Sir Horatio Palavicini, of Genoa, collector of Papal taxes during Mary’s reign and purloiner of them after her death.’ Handbook for Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, third edn, p. 338. 5 See above, Letter 874, note 1. 6 See previous letter, note 3. 7 SCC officially took up his Fitzwilliam appointment on 22 June. 8 Wintonia was the ecclesiastical Latin name for Winchester; the Bishop of Winchester conventionally signs as ‘Winton’.

1056 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 15 July 1908 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 15 July. 1908. Dear Mrs Flower. Thank you for your kindly “Go between” letter of yesterday. Blessed are the Peace makers, as we all should recognise. Wardle’s constitution is greater than the “British” – it seems to be invincible. I wish I were as elastically tough. I am truly glad that he is so, for I don’t think his tale of useful industries is nearly exhausted. He cannot think me a bad disciple, for I’ve often & often sat at his feet – and risen expanded. I would be most pleased if you could convey him here before the Sun loses its power. I have to go to my brother’s, by the yearly custom, to let Mrs Dickinson have her 3 Sundays homeing at King’s Langley. I leave here on the 24th and Mrs D. on the 25th July. ’Till then – so to say – my hands, as well as hers will be full. My oldish man (some 73 years) who has helped me for out of doors work since my

257

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

illness – has, himself “had a stroke”, and it is doubtful if he will help me again.1 I now have to do, what I used to do, in the way of all sorts of work for the first 3 years of my living here. I am – with caution – still able to do it, till someone, who can be trusted not to do mischief, either wilfully, or from carelessness, will undertake not to drop the bucket down the well, and lose his life in seeking it at the bottom – only 80 feet deep! Yes, it wd be a pity that G.Y.W should not have a good look at the M.S.S. in the Burlington F.A. Club.2 He could not know all about them, no person or persons ever did. Perhaps somewhere, about the middle of August, we might be expecting you – and (as Mr Treherne calls him) the “Oracle”?3 Mrs Dickinson is noticeably better for the doctor’s advice, & medicine. I asked her to write a few words to you, & tell her own tale about the ‘cure’. Believe me | Yours truly | Philip Webb. BL Add 45355, ff. 56–7

1 This was Thomas Collins. See previous letter. 2 The exhibition which SCC had curated, and for which he wrote the catalogue. See above, Letter 1045, note 1. 3 GW and George Treherne were close friends.

1057 • To Sydney Cockerell, 1 August 1908 Pencil c/o H.S. Webb | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 1 August. ’08 My dear fellow. Yesterday I wrote – for me – a rather long letter – but in addressing it in ink – ie the envelope – forgot the letter was inside, so when blundering with the pen, a ‘mess’ – so to say – happened, & I tore it up expletively! This must be shorter & less tedious to read I hope. Of course I am thinking of you, & Madame, in your as yet unproved surroundings, & hoping that the blessed form of a home will soon shape itself by thinking of the ‘Avenue’? Here, the still dignified Cathl gives a character to the place, and its placing amongst the branches of a rapid stream, and the wonderfully huge Limes, Elms, & Oriental Planes, gathered in & around, half to hide more or less the miserably petty suburban vulgarity, combined with the meanness, of the workg folks’ dens – which local politics do not allow of being cared for in the way of improvement. Of course I schemed that, neither you nor Walker, & Lethaby, should rashly put aside your affairs & meet me on my way through London in the outward way – but, should things smile on the return journey – 11th Aug: I would gladly meet the 258

1903–1914

three of you – say – at Gattis’? Walker is reckoning on this, and perhaps Lethaby may neither have gone a-wool gathering abroad, nor be loth to absent himself from duty for an hour or so? We may live to see.1 I see that you look with some doubt as to being able to keep your ‘small holding’ in sufficient order, to allay the suspicion of madness from the respectables. I have earned that reputation, & though a ‘hardy plant’, am not incapable of feeling that half bricks might be heaved at me. Still, the old cottage, & the weeds, & myself, are so picturesque, that the good or ill folks may condone it, as a delightful monstrosity, like that of the china poodle on the mantel shelf? My old man ‘help’ is, I’m afraid, not likely to be strong enough in head & limbs to be trusted with an 80 feet deep well, for the future, before I left, it had nearly rebecome the habit of a modest part of old aged day’s work, and being in hot summer time, I could willingly walk in the eveng, and felt, that after some rain time and autumn like fresh air, some weeding could be tackled effectively. George Boyce’s water colour drawings here are more of a solace to my questioning wits than could have been expected, for I find in them a power of holding their own, as masterly, beyond even former consideration.2 I hope you two kindly people are enjoying that freedom in life which comes from close sympathy in the universal way, which alone gives that ease of bearing so fruitful of peace of mind, while each knows what will be a pleasure for the other? This oracular consideration – if it gives rein to smiles on both your faces, would in thought, with be also catching with Yours always truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/170

1 ‘[M]et Philip Webb at Waterloo at 12.30. Drove with him to Victoria & back to Gatti’s where Walker joined us & where we sat talking for 2½ hours, P.W. looking & seeming extraordinarily bright & well. I walked with him to Victoria for the 5 o’clock train, & looked at the Roman Catholic Cathl on the way. He pronounced it, as I do, the finest building of modern times.’ CD, 11 August 1908. 2 One of these was GPB’s Catterlen Hall (1883), which PSW had bought 25 years previously as a gift for his brother, Harry Webb. See Vol. I, Letter 258, note 1.

1058 • To Emery Walker, 3 August 1908 Postmark WINCHESTER AU 3 08 Address To/ Emery Walker, Esqre | 16 Clifford’s Inn | Fleet Street | London E.C. Envelope text ink; letter text pencil c/o H.S. Webb. | BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. 3 August ’08 My dear fellow. On the whole, your kind letter (of July 31) was good reading – this moderated satisfaction resulted from thinking of Mrs Walker’s submission to the thwarting, 259

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

by fate, of the full enjoyment of the round world – this cheerful submission having my sympathetic regard. Thank you for so readily responding to my begging petition in the matter of writing paper from Flints. I tie a knot in memory to wipe out the debt when accepting your invitation to lunch at Gattis on the 11th, could you find out if Lethaby would be able to join us? S.C.C will do so I think, if matters all round do not impose.1 I hope the S.P.A.B will be attached to the Royal Commn on Actt Monuments.2 I was glad to see in the local paper here – that opponents to a mischievous, & absurd scheme for spending a windfall of money at Romsey, in modernising the N. flank of the Abbey church there, under the fatal guidance of Caröe – were being more or less attended to by the chancellor of the diocese, who seemed to be capable of listening with both ears.3 Perhaps you may not know this very fine & strikingly remarkable specimen of the English variety of Norman work? Winchester is just about as much blinded by the incapability attending on ignorance, as is the present L.C.C!! Not knowing what condition the betting market may be in, I’m afraid the carrying out of the L. County Hall may scheme may be mutilated, beyond recognition by its architect, unless there is sufficient delay till a new L.C.C is elected. It’s uphill work thus labouring as a minority, for one could not pull down such of a bric [sic] when it is once visibly embed[d]ed on its site. The country all about here – being more or less open – is incomparably beautiful under the clothing of variegated ripening & ripened corn crops, divided here & there by full fledged foliage, & under such a sun too. I’m glad to think of Dorothy nourishing her cheerful life in such striking variety of country as that in Normandy, perhaps she may see the impressive ruin of the Abbey of Jumièges – a sample of “Norman” work, & yet so different in its general effect to English work of the same date. Yours always truly | Philip Webb. Kindly give my thankful remembrance – of his good offices – to Mr Everett. P.S. My sorely sick memory leads me an ugly dance when trying to write an intelligible letter. No. 2. I shall try to be at Gattis’ on the lunc[h]ing day in question about the hour of 1.00. V&A, AAD

1 See previous letter, note 1. 2 Significant progress had been made in 1882 and 1900 with the successful passage through Parliament of two Ancient Monuments Protection Acts, but differences remained as to which buildings and monuments should be regarded as falling within its terms of reference. In 1908 the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England was established, its remit being to compile ‘an inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions connected with or illustrative of the contemporary culture, civilization and conditions of life of the people of England, excluding Monmouthshire from the earliest times to the year 1700, and to specify those which seem most worthy of preservation’. 3 See above, Letter 976, notes 11 and 12.

260

1903–1914

1059 • To Emery Walker, 10 September 1908 Postmark CRAWLEY SP 10 08 Address Emery Walker Esqre | 16 Clifford’s Inn | Fleet Street. | London. E.C. Envelope text in ink; letter text in pencil Caxtons. Worth, by Crawley. Sussex. 10 Septr 08 Dear Walker. Unless I write a word to you, devil a syl[l]able will you write to me. Since the too crowded enjoyment of your midday feast to me at Sigr Branca’s,1 there has been but little communion of the faithful, here – indeed, none – for “one’s none” in the best sense of fellowship. I suspect you are in Brittany? or S. France? or mid-Germany? looking at professional work in foreign lands, as touchstones in testing the wanting in or superiority of your own? Ambition, I suspect, has lain hold of you, and a rise on such shoulders is more dangerous than the straight & narrow way of an accidental personality, quite unnameable here. I say this of you, that helpfulness to the average intellectual lame dog is a shining virtue with you, but ’tis a vice, when carried to the extremity, by allowing a poor countryfied [sic] fellow to be awakened in the morning under a load of unknown debt! Do not let me have to appeal to Mr Deputy Everett, or I shall take it you will never be “at home” to me, in the Clifford’s arms? I want to learn that Mrs Walker has been helped by the tremendous splendour of early Summer, and not again cast down (like our “wind fallens”) of with the tremendous gales of early Autumn? Has Dorothy returned from Brity? S.C.C I’m anxious, – more or less – about, in spite of his returning to the play of games with me in still more Pe postcards.2 I suspect the labour of learning the strengths, and also weaknesses of the Fitzwilliam depository are more than a trifle exacting, and I’m not eased by imagining that he likes the ‘long vacation’ in Cambridge as well as I did the sleepy joys of Oxford, when Dons & Boys were away, and the virtuous had Paradise for their own. When next you invite me (or I entertain you) to lunch, do not bring pictures for me to appraise, or pooh-pooh! when communion in talking is the worthier mood! Yours Ph: Webb. V&A, AAD

1 This was the lunchtime meeting at Gatti’s with EW and SCC on 11 August (see above, Letter 1057, note 1). Branca was the favoured waiter whom PSW, SCC, EW and others called ‘Mr Ticino’. See Vol. III, Letter 702, note 1. 2 ‘I have come across a few p cards, but not enough to last long, so do not raise a protest.’ SCC to PSW, 25 August 1908, BL Add 52766 f. 121. This picture postcard was of Gloucester Cathedral, the first he sent in a series of English cathedrals.

261

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1060 • To Sydney Cockerell, 25 September 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex 25 Sepr ’08. My dear fellow. Many times on receipt of the inevitable – as also too kindly P. P. Cards, I have said inwardly, ‘I must write him some kind of words’ (ungrammatical or other?) to shew, that his persistent good will towards the old man is not taken as a matter of course, and thankfully recognised – but, I resolved to wait. I was thus far right, in that your note of good cheer was on the table when I got down this morng. Indeed I was very glad, and called in Missa Dick to rejoice with me, as we did very heartily for both of you; as Madame Kate will read this, I need not add a message.1 Now comes the matter of naming the little blessed one – (a quite serious affair) – for if mine had not been frenchified by father & other,2 what a lot of trouble would I have surely been saved? Now, Webb, being of one syllable only, it was right to use a two syllabled Xtian name – and it might have been Christopher with advantage.3 Also – now attend – if the name chosen would easily lead to a diminutive for loving use – do not let it be christened in the diminutive – form – there! and my kindest remembrances to the mother. Mrs Morris is at Crabbet for 2 or 3 days, & leaves for Burford tomorrow. She came – by thoughtfulness of the Lyttons – to see me alone at tea time yesterday and we had a peaceful talk,4 but I was greatly struck by the change in Janey since I last saw her – that was some years ago – but I thought her more sadly worn down than I could have expected – and was saddened thereby.5 Yours always truly, | Philip Webb. All your P.P. cards are very interesting, but! and considering your added responsibilities – let the last of English Cathedrals be the ‘last trump’ card. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/175

1 ‘A little daughter arrived very early this morning – a bonny little maiden, apparently very healthy & strong. Kate is doing splendidly, & it is a tremendous relief to have the matter happily over.’ SCC to PSW, 24 September 1908, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/172. 2 A reference to the original spelling of his first name, Phillippe, ‘after the French king’. Lethaby, p. 3. 3 ‘Now that is very odd. The name we had chosen for a boy was Christopher, & as a hyphen between the two long names I had resolved on a short one, Webb. Being a girl she is naturally Margaret, which besides sounding nice and meaning both Pearl and Daisy, is associated in my mind with quite a little crowd of charming & good people, as well as with two admirable saints, one of whom, the queen of Scotland, owned a lovely Gospel book now at the Bodleian. For the hyphen in this case I am inclined for her Mother’s name Kate, not because I do not love the full name Katharine, but because my Kate was called after her aunt Kate and it has become a sort of family name – also three trisyllables would be too much.’ SCC to PSW, 26 September 1908, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/173.

262

1903–1914 The Cockerells’ second child, a boy, would be called Christopher Sydney, rather than Webb. See below, Letter 1086. 4 ‘I had a delightful visit with Mr. Webb and he walked back across the park with me.’ JM to SCC, 2 October 1908, CLJM. 5 ‘I am very sorry for the change you saw in Mrs Morris. It has been a sad year for her, I know.’ SCC to PSW, 26 September 1908.

1061 • To Sydney and Kate Cockerell, 18 November 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex 18 Novr ’08. My dear fellow – Madame, et Mademoiselle: I have had your almost daily “good morning” or afternoon, or evening – as the time might be, in the pleasant picture P. Cds – from Cambridge, making a “pile”, historical, from some date in August, to the present time; and hardly a word – for very shame – from me in acknowledgment of your kindly thought of me. There are excuses – any quantity – under my bonnet – but none of them sufficiently valid to pay the debt due to perennial friendship! and that long-legged sentence will do nothing in the way of paying the interest on it. I’m too old for anything other than shirking letter writing – or indeed anything involving the help of memory. Item. How could that “Frigate” sailing man of war, have been photographed from actual sea – wood – and canvass? Surely, it is no wonder that the sense of beauty is dying out in us, as daily I am convinced it is. I’ve taken it rather for granted that, on the health side, yourself & family have been blessed? Last Saty week we had E. Walker & May Morris here – & happily it was, in all ways, a comfortable little gathering. I was greatly cheered by Walker’s enthusiastic enlarging on the remarkable (in these days) social behaviour to you & yours by the Dons of Cambridge: so much so, that I would like to have my faulty memory corrected, by you telling in writing – when you have a spare ¼ hour – how it all came about, that Cambridge was heartily human, and gave themselves the pleasure of letting you know of it. So, please let me know all about it, from first hand, & head. I would like to think very highly of the only rival of my Oxford, and I would gladly remember any such burst of good fellowship on the part of my old mother of remembrance.1 Add also, when you can, the measurement in inches, of Margt Kate, and what success the ‘delight’ has attained in kissing the soles of her feet?2 A very old man’s blessing on Mother & daughter – from yours as always, Philip Webb. P.S. My brother gets on, but indeed very slowly towards a kind of convalescence, which has not yet brought him downstairs for a change; still there seems to have

263

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

been no drawback; he has a decent doctor, & excellent professional nurse, and in the sister the very best of a non professional one.3 Adieu to all of you. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/178

1 ‘You ask how it is that I have had such a hearty welcome here. It is perhaps partly because I already had some very good friends in the place who have spread indulgent reports about me – but mainly because I am an officer of the University & therefore one whose acquaintance it is etiquette that everyone should make. One hears a good deal of the exclusiveness of Society in Oxford & Cambridge. The fact is that there are so many persons connected with the University who are bound to know & meet each other that there is no time to extend the very large circle by admitting others who are merely residents in the neighbourhood. I am bound to say that from the Vice Chancellor downwards I have found everyone most courteous and utterly free from “side”. The undergraduates who come to look at things on Sundays are most charming.’ SCC to PSW, 19 November 1908, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/176. 2 ‘She has not arrived at the sole kissing stage, & I dont know what she measures, but I will get her measured by her mother. It is not so easy, as she kicks a good deal after her tub.’ 3 ‘Thank you very heartily for your kind letter of sympathy over my dear brother’s illness. It has been a very anxious time. He broke down on Oct. 2d his attacks of pain were so very distressing to him. . . . I was sorry to send the tidings to Philip, I knew how anxious he would be. Good “Mrs Dick” kindly sent me comfortable tidings that he was really well, in spite of his extra doings (much that poor old Collins did for him).’ Caroline Speakman Webb to SCC, 28 October 1908, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/177.

1062 • To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 31 December 1908 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. Decr 31. 1908 My dear “Squire”. I had two Rabbits and a Pheasant from “Newbuildings” yesterday, which will fill up the larder vacancies, thanks to your thought – as customary – for Caxtons, the old timber structure being still good, and inviting to a lover of the sensiblyreasonable in Xmas housing. You may be in London at this time, and if so not quite clear in your mind as to whiteness of the sheet, which is covering the winter sown crops with perfection of purity. I am reading – so steadily – the Francis Thompson volume,1 for it does not lend itself to galloping in that way, but much repays the reader who will draw the sweetness, & power, from each word. One (after the “Hound”)2 has taken my close attention more particularly amongst so many pieces of strength – namely “From an Anthem of Earth”.3 In the various dictionaries at hand here, I cannot find a definition of a ‘Corymbus’!4 Like Dr Johnson, I hold it may be on acct of my “ignorance”?? 264

1903–1914

Hope you are well and strong to carry on, in any wholesome way, the stirring of the depths, of political commonplace, so that this present movement in the near East may also give ripples on Nyle! [sic] I think our new light! (retired from Egypt) is less than farthing candle worth – even in the Hse of Lords!5 but that may be prejudice on the part of Yours truly, | Philip Webb. WSRO Blunt Box 59

1 Selected Poems of Francis Thompson (London: Methuen & Co., 1908). A prefatory biographical note by Wilfrid Meynell records Thompson’s final days. ‘About ten weeks before the darkness fell on him, the little flame of his life began visibly to flicker. A change to the country was advised; and he became the carefully tended guest of Mr Wilfrid Blunt’ (p. xv). WSB’s own memorial tribute was first published in November 1907 in The Academy and privately re-issued as Francis Thompson (London: Burns & Oates [1907]). 2 ‘The Hound of Heaven’, Selected Poems of Francis Thompson, p. 51. 3 ‘From “An Anthem of Earth” ’, p. 106. 4 ‘A Corymbus for Autumn’, p. 64. ‘Corymb’: a cluster of fruit or flowers (OED). 5 The reference is probably to Evelyn Baring, first earl of Cromer (1841–1917), consul-general in Egypt from 1883 until his retirement in 1907. His attitudes were irresolutely imperialist, and articulated the policy that Britain’s ‘manifest destiny’ was the ‘government of subject races’ within a code of Christian morality. See http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/ 30583?docPos=1 [accessed 9/02/2015]

1063 • To Sydney Cockerell, 10 March 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 10 March ’09 My dear Cockerell. Here is the postmark of 5 March, on your packet of kind thoughtfulness and pleasant surprise – and not so much as recognition from me, that you and yours had the worn out old man-friend in your minds, in spite of a numbing Winter of snow, frost and ‘nor-easters’!1 True, it happened that I had been more than usually occupied in keeping things as square as might be, single handed, thanks to being so well, when the more precious have been so ill. Happily, both my brother, & Hale White have mended quite remarkably of late and much eased my mind.2 What a blessed little, & fat Imp with ecstatic arms, from out your “Cottage near a wood”, and dog too a’considerin’ if the little picture be quite complete! quite complete I hold – even to the round white hat trimmed in black. Thank you very kindly Mrs Sydney. Note. I am thinking you both mean that I may keep the pretty picture – being – as Dickens might have said – ‘Fatherless myself’?3 Your own particular gift of the English-French co-partnered Garden book I am very pleased to have – though I can hardly say I have, truly, till it has been 265

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

read carefully, for it has only been looked through as yet, for I have 3 books on hand in the same half considered condition, & my wits as well as fingers are cold when I am not actively at work, keeping this place as fit as may be after the earth disturbances of frost and snow. With good honest thanks, both to Madame Kate, and yourself, I am | Yours sincerely Philip Webb. P.S. See separate slip of paper with question asked with humility. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/182 Pencil; enclosed with letter The wits here, not only being negatived by the cold winter, but positively, & arithmetically almost a blank from old age – would be glad if you’d give a hint, on paper, as to how I may pay the interest on the borrowed moneys from my brother – as the times come round for doing so, regularly – i.e. pay the 2½ % on each year as they recur – yearly???4 Moneys borrowed – (a) July 1907 £100} (b) Jany 1908 do } = £300 in all Novr 1908 do } For (a) & (b), I’ve paid one 2/10/0 interest for each V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/183

1 ‘We are near the end of another term, in which good progress has been made at the Museum. I have just bought a splendid panel of ten Damascus tiles. It has been observed & related in the Senate that the undergraduates are taking a greater interest in the Fitzwilliam – a very satisfactory thing. They are nice fellows as Neville Lytton will tell you. I met one today who without knowing that I knew you affi rmed that “Philip Webb was the last architect with a perfect sense of proportion”! It appears that he is so much your admirer that he collects photographs of your houses, & goes, as I used to do in old days, to gaze up at that front in Lincolns Inn Fields! You won’t like this, but it is nevertheless a fact, and you may judge whether I gave him an invitation to tea on the spot. His name is Goodhart-Rendel & he dwells in the neighbourhood of Tangley Manor.’ SCC to PSW, 11 March 1909, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/181. Harry Stuart GoodhartRendel (1887–1959) read music at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later became an architect and Slade Professor at Oxford. 2 For Harry Webb’s illness, see above, Letter 1061. 3 ‘Of course the little photograph, like the gardening book, was for you to keep if you thought it worth the keeping. I wish I could show you the little being who now plays so large a part in our daily lives.’ 4 ‘As to the interest payment I think the least troublesome way would be to make all payments once a year, at the same time, say on Jan 1.’

266

1903–1914

1064 • To Alice Knewstub Rothenstein, 15 April 1909 Caxtons. | Worth. by Crawley. | Sussex. 15 April ’09 Dear Mrs Rothenstein,1 I thank you for so carefully sending to me the type copied representation of Mr Rothenstein’s lecture.2 I have read it carefully once, but that is quite insufficient for reasonable judgment of a serious piece of work. Doubtless, “type writing” is very useful, & especially for avoiding misreading from the manuscript, but its ungainliness is much against getting the due effect of a piece of literary work. I had a very interesting picture-postcard from Lyme Regis, telling of the unlucky imprisonment of your husband, and the possibility (or probability?) of your being in like case at home. With sincere good wishes for the relief of the Father, & Mother, in a satisfactory medical way. | Believe me | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. Houghton bMS Eng 1148 (1590)

1 William Rothenstein married the actress, Alice Mary Knewstub (1867–1957) on 11 June 1899. 2 This would have been the text of the Cambridge lecture which SCC attended. ‘In evg went with Kate to the Botanical Museum & heard the admirable lecture by W. Rothenstein on a basis for the appreciation of art, or some such title.’ CD, 5 March 1909.

1065 • To Alice Knewstub Rothenstein, 24 April 1909 Caxtons. | Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 24 April ’09 Dear Mrs Rothenstein Kindly excuse delay in thanking you for your letter of the 15th, &c, on the matter of your good husband’s lecture. I was much pressed for time yesterday, and only managed to secure the parcel and post it myself yesterday on my way to meet a friend at the station. I hope it arrived safely – if it did so – please do not trouble to acknowledge it. Of course, such serious efforts as Rothensteins, in the way of leading the coming-on generation in following the arts – visible and literary – also in a serious way, that everything he writes calls for like thoughtfulness of attention, and I am rather slow witted, & like to read honest work more than once or twice before

267

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

saying anything about it. Old age has so touched me now, that I am hardly capable of sa[y]ing any[th]ing worth thinking about, for, the backbone of intelligence – human, memory to wit, is now in me so much a minus quantity, that putting my thoughts on paper has become so hopelessly tiresome, that I ‘shirk’ the effort till all spontaneity vanishes. That is why I have not written direct to Rothenstein, preferring to wait till he looks in upon me here, as he has promised. I have failed also to acknowledge either his letter, or P. postcard, from Lyme Regis,1 which must stand, with you & yours, as a sample of my inefficiency from old age. May I hope that Rs “small boy” & your at home children are now recovered? Yours thankfully | Philip Webb. Houghton bMS Eng 1148 (1590)

1 See next letter.

1066 • To William Rothenstein, after 24 April 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. Dear Mr Rothenstein I beg your pardon for deferring, at once, to acknowledge your pleasant letter of 17 April, with the inclosed interesting Lyme Regis tapestry.1 The truth is now positive that I cannot write letters, for memory is so vital for the purpose of making them anything but tedious reading. Even during the last few months I have found the decrease in that faculty strikingly rapid, hence these dry eyed tears. I read your lecture through 3 times with much interest, but that was qualified by my not knowing the audience before which it was delivered.2 I will say nothing more of it here, for it would be more easy for me to make myself intelligible face to face, either when personal contact has influence on the circulation from heart to brain, & where – I suspect – there is now a lack of that stimulant in the head. No, I never attained Lyme, tho: the hope was often stirred within me. There are other things in life, too, which are in the catalogue of hope. Yours truly | Philip Webb. Houghton bMS Eng 1148 (1590)

1 Rothenstein had enclosed a picture postcard of a late fifteenth-century Brussels tapestry, thought to depict the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. It is displayed on the north wall of the parish church of St Michael, Lyme Regis, in Dorset, having been given to the church in 1886. 2 See above, Letter 1064.

268

1903–1914

1067 • To Sydney Cockerell, 26 May 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. May 26. 1909. Dear Cockerell. I am constantly suffering from vexation, by my inability to give you due recognition for untold kindnesses bestowed on me by you – ever since I had the good hap to fall into your hands, mentally & bodily: you must by this time know, that old age, and attendant incapabilities, press hardly on me, & the more so when thinking of my failings towards tried friends – indeed much too much over tried. Before forgetting it I now thank you, freely, for sending to me the Fitzwilliam Report for 1908.1 Naturally, I am loth to reading catalogues – even of joys, or woes, but the Fitzm report was eagerly read from the top of page 3, to the end of p.12 – & that mostly in German! Of course I guessed that, with the stimulant of yourself, the museum would be enlivened, though I could not have anticipated so quick a return for your undoubted activity.2 Many years back, there were now & then visits by me to the Randolph Taylor Galleries at Oxford, which always impressed me with their silence – (save from my own shoes) – which possessed the echoing place.3 There, that is nearer to poetry than I usually “drop into”. The coloured photo: prints of “Frame” houses, covered with lapped boarding, have justified my imagination of what “The States” must have sheltered under from earliest times: and from published pictures of “Sky scrapers”, the earlier housings have a dignity of simplicity, beyond compare with the later – which have the effect of Millionaire savagery. I cannot tell in writing, at all, what I feel about your renewal of sending me Picture P. cards, dozens – & to be continued in your next! and I doubt if I could do it wisely or too well by word of mouth. One of these or those days, M.K.C will be crying out for a Ball dress, and you will be obliged to cry ‘Peccavi’.4 Those French views on the Seine, & of the peasantry are touching indeed.5 Kindest remembrance to Madame K.C: from whom I had the striking distant view, through an arch way, of one part of a Chartres Porch. Yours in very much of old age, but truly | Ph: Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/185

1 ‘Your letter has enlivened & encouraged me, though I did not wish you to be at the trouble of writing. Your perpetual goodwill, on which I know I can rely, is a prop to me of which I am never wholly unconscious. I lean on you often times in the spirit, & perhaps that is why you feel tired.’ SCC to PSW, 27 May 1909, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/184. 2 ‘Margaret Rooke was with us yesterday, and Mrs Angeli who is William Rossetti’s daughter & grandchild of Madox Brown. They saw the works of their respective relations in the Museum, &

269

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV many another thing worth seeing. I wish you were here to pore over the medals I have on loan – by the great Italian fellows, led by Pisanello. They would delight you.’ 3 The present Ashmolean Museum building in Oxford (1841–5), designed by the architect Charles Robert Cockerell (1788–1863: not related to SCC) was funded principally by two bequests from the estates of the Reverend Francis Randolph (to house the Randolph Galleries) and the architect Sir Robert Taylor, after whom the Taylorian Institution in the east wing was named. The site of the building was very close to PSW’s childhood home in St Giles’s. 4 ‘I am guilty’ (Lat). 5 ‘Alas, the postcards have come to an end, and we shall have to go to France again for more. I knew you would like those fine old peasant faces.’

1068 • To May Morris, 16 June 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 16 June 1909 My dear May. It was very kind in you to think I would like to have your portrait to add to others of such assured friends; though you did not write this on the back of the mount, I felt that you would so judge of my feeling for you as one of the family of the faithful? I can answer for the likeness being a true one – and so far as I can judge of the arts & crafts of photography, it does not seem to me as if it had been “faked”! I think the ‘pose’ is in one way effective, but that in another, the want of the lifegiving eye is a drawback; perhaps the professional photographer was autocratic? I am much wanting to learn something comfortable of my friend your own good Mother, for when she was here, for a brief while, my affection was greatly touched by her appearance.1 Memorandum. I hope you go on with your watercolour study, for I am sure such work would be good for you. Very affectionately yours | Philip Webb. P.S. This is not a pun, but I see a good too many puns in it. BL Add 45343, f. 83

1 See above, Letter 1060.

1069 • To Sydney Cockerell, 31 August 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 31 Aug: 1909 My dear Cockerell. Thank you for P. P. Cards, beginning with “We reached Aix les Bains 7 this morng”1 and ending (so far!) with the Custom Hse Ipswich. How you managed it all, 270

1903–1914

(I don’t mean the P. cards, but the wheel work, and the salt water) – &c &c, to say nothing of reaching home, as I am supposing – with hardly a scratch on either of you to vouch for your adventures. I cannot enter here on the archaeological merits of the P. cards, but shall hope some day to turn them over with you, & do justice to your discrimination. Still, I just make note of the last but one received, ‘Wickham Market Ch’, and I give you quite due recognition of your acute judgment of its tower & spire, & that, in spite of the offensive manner of the picture card.2 To me, the design is one of those of natural simplicity in imagination, made perfect without effort from Base to Vane in the 15th centy. I am sad in having to tell you of the illness of our sister at Winchester; by last news, of this morning, from the brother is, that Caroline “is suffering great discomfort – but little pain – & is gradually fading.”3 Please to give Mrs Sydney my very kind & hopeful regards for herself, and the maiden I know from pictures, & rejoice over with the mother. Yours always truly, | Philip Webb. P.S. I was at Winchester for a fortnight, when the sister was taken ill. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/186

1 ‘We reached Aix les Bains at 7 this morning, & are in a huge hotel. The place rather attractive, but too full of rich visitors.’ SCC to PSW, 23 July 1909, BL Add 52767, f 7. ‘My chief holiday [in 1909] was no holiday – a depressing month at Aix-les-Bains with Mr Charles Butler, in his 89th year & suffering from hypochondria. I was heartily glad to return & to go with Kate for a little trip in East Anglia.’ CD, 1909. 2 ‘Sorry to send a nasty coloured card, but I thought the tower looked very interesting.’ SCC to PSW, 29 August 1909, BL Add 52767, f. 16. 3 ‘I am very sorry indeed to have the news of your sister’s illness. I judge from what you tell me that there is no hope of such a wonderful rally as has kept your brother still in the world in spite of the doctor’s bulletins to the contrary. You and he must now be very heavy-hearted.’ SCC to PSW, 1 September 1909, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/187. For the changing fortunes of PSW’s sister and brother, see also above, Letter 1061, note 3.

1070 • To Sydney Cockerell, 10 September 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 10 Septr 1909 My dear Cockerell. Thank you kindly for your letter of Septr 1st. I shall gladly see you & yours here when you are at Crabbet, for we can speak & learn of things interesting to all three, if not the fourth??1 I write more particularly to tell, that our younger sister, Caroline, (whom you know, I think?) was eased of the weariness of a constant uneasiness by her death, at 5.30 a.m. on the 8th Sepr. The brother & one nurse watching by the bed all night; 271

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

happily there was no acute pain. A good woman this sister of ours, and never failing to all of us, at all times.2 She will be buried tomorrow in the Winchester Cemetery. Kind regards to my friends – mother and daughter from yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. The post delivers all the cards faithfully. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/189

1 ‘Three weeks hence, all being well, Kate and I and Margaret are going to stay at Crabbet. We want much to see you, and our little daughter should receive your blessing on her birthday Sept 24th. This will be her first journey from home, and as the Lyttons were so good as to invite us we eagerly seized the opportunity of making her known to you. You will know how to bear with the whimsies of fond parents who would like her to be able to say when she is grown up that you looked kindly upon her in her infancy.’ SCC to PSW, 1 September 1909, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/187. On Margaret Cockerell’s first birthday, her parents took her to tea with PSW ‘who is looking splendidly well. He was very nice to us’. CD, 24 September 1909. They visited several more times before returning to Cambridge on 7 October. 2 Caroline had been the youngest of the eight Webb siblings, five years younger than PSW.

1071 • To George Washington Jack, 15 October 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 15 for 16 Octr ’09 My dear Jack. Father & Son Rooke are coming here on Saturday, 23rd, to shew me some – if not all – of their season’s work. After that date, if you were able & willing to undergo a gossip, on a Saturday, I would gladly find you here, for I’ve heard nothing of you for a longish while. If without much inconvenience, & loss of time, I would be glad if you could find out, if “Moule’s Earth Closet Co” still hangs out at 5A Garrick Street W.C.?1 The last time I was in London, & having no time to spare, I could not get to their place, which is close by Covent Garden. The earth closet here, which I attend to, has a Moule’s Cabinet E.C, and the scuttle, or bucket, has a slight leak in it, therefore I want a new one, so as not to be hung up awkwardly. I have made a rough diagram of the galvanized wrot iron one in use, ever since I have been here, and give the dimensions, &c, so that a new one should fit the wooden cabinet, which is one of Moule’s own make, as is the scuttle. If you can find Moule’s, will you order me a new one to be sent by rail to Three Bridges Station Ln & Brighton line, with my address, to be forwarded by Perkins, outside porter. Should you be able to do this without too much of a hindrance to your own work, I will thank you truly. 272

1903–1914

I don’t know what the cost of it would be, & if they will trust me I will pay by return, with postal order – should they object, will you kindly pay for it – if not inconvenient?2 You may have heard that the 3 remaining of our family, have lost the youngest of it – ie Caroline Webb, who lived with our brother Harry for 50 years, more or less, & we feel the loss much, for her illness was brief, but fatal.3 Kind remembrance to the good-wife & bairns, from | Yours always truly, Ph: Webb. V&A, AAD

1 The Reverend Henry Moule (1801–80), vicar of Fordington, in Dorset, patented the dry earth closet in 1860, in a personal mission to improve domestic sanitary arrangements following the cholera epidemics of 1849 and 1854, and after London’s ‘Great Stink’ during the hot summer of 1858. 2 ‘They have the buckets & will send one price 4/6.’ GWJ to PSW, 24 October 1909, V&A, AAD. 3 ‘I heard of your loss through Mrs Flower, and for the grief you must feel I have sincere sympathy. I know how you admired your sister, and your affection must have received a severe blow. I feel the loss myself, although I so seldom saw her – she was always so kind to me and was always one of whom I felt a great respect and admiration. I hope your brother has some one upon whom he can rely in his present state of distress.’ GWJ to PSW, 17 October 1909, V&A, AAD.

1072 • To William Hale White, 29 October 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. 29 Octr ’09. My dear Hale White. I duly had the returned books, of Lethaby’s helpful perception of the inner, as well as the outer expression of Greek buildings.1 Indeed I was much gratified by your appreciation of his views on the Greek work, which shews that the technicalities need not interfere with the judgment of amateurs, if they are sufficiently alive to the worth of the object, & subject matters of Art.2 The best modern design, & execution of a considerable building, that I have seen after the Greek manner, is that of the Randolph & Taylor Galleries at Oxford.3 When I was as yet a boy there they, – the buildings, were going on,4 and this made me give more attention to this kind of work, when some experience in the study of architecture opened my eyes. Well, I always held that the Greek simplicity & severity could not be brought out under an English sunlight, but with a perfectly pure atmosphere by moonlight, the nicety of the detail, & shadowing of recess could be clearly seen in it[s] sharpness & serenity. The cost in wrappers, of the four numbers of Lethaby’s “Greek Building”, is, for 1st & 2nd Nos 2s/0 each net, 3rd No 3s/6d, 4th No price not given, but it is of the same size as No 3 but with more illustrations, and may be 4s/0 (?).5 The publisher, B.T. 273

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Batsford 94 High Holborn. Lethaby’s “The Theory of Greek Architecture”, could only be got by application to (Secretary?) Royal Institute of British Architects. I am glad you got hold of Treherne again, as you most likely [would] have had more trouble if your need came only into the hands of another member of a large firm.6 Yes, I think you may be sure that what you told me as having happened, nearly two years ago, was really understood by me, and it is no mystery (also to me) “that the confidence was pleasant”. Be assured that no added “explanation” was necessary for me: as my “forms” are very human, and I am not at all anxious that others should commend them.7 As there surely has been some gain in strength – & perhaps in freedom, now & again, from the acuter pains? I hope too that the “black dog” will not [be] so persistent.8 This weather is dead against you, but good days, bad days, all days pass over, and I live by hope for my friends as well as myself. I may add the same for my poor brother alas, for the cushion of his life has been drawn from under him.9 Kindly smile in good humour over this miserable piece of literary effort, for my memory and attendant wits are now past praying for – either by Philip Webb or his friends. Due remembrance to Mary will please me. BCL MR 10/33

1 Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum. 2 ‘He [WHW] had been studying some pamphlets by Mr. Lethaby which Mr. Webb had sent him. He said they astonished him; I did not know what he meant, but I knew some explanation would follow, and then he went on to speak of the strictness of the laws of architecture amongst the Greeks; there was the law for the pillar, and the law for the architrave, and the law for the frieze, &c; and yet with all their laws they found more room for originality than we find with our lawlessness.’ White, pp. 259–60. 3 See above, Letter 1067, note 3. 4 Building continued throughout 1841–5. 5 See above, Letter 1043, note 2. 6 George Treherne was a solicitor by profession. His practice was in London, but his real interest lay in Carmarthenshire where he was the SPAB representative, and his involvement with the repairs to Eglwys Cummin had made him well-known to PSW. See Vol. III, Letter 640, note 7. 7 ‘By the way, I am not sure if you understand that the story I told you is nearly two years old. . . . Have you ever noticed that when people encounter something they do not quite comprehend, they force it into a form which is familiar to them?’ WHW to PSW, 27 October 1909, LTF, pp. 364–5. 8 ‘I have been a little better until yesterday, when the “black dog” laid hold of me again. The beast has poisonous fangs – other dogs do not taint the blood. If I could but get out it would be purified.’ LTF, p. 364. 9 A reference to the death of his sister, Caroline. See above, Letter 1070.

274

1903–1914

1073 • To Emery Walker, 6 November 1909 Postmark CRAWLEY NO 6 09 Address To/ Emery Walker, Esqre | 7 Hammersmith Terrace | London W. Envelope text in ink; letter text in pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. 6 Novr ’09 My dear Walker. Blessing on your head for sending to me that perfect piece of Greek sculpture – (in photograph) – from Athens. Having never seen this example pictured before, it came on me with great surprise & delight. I hope that you rubbed other objects of Greek triumph well in to you, & in spite of the necessarily too brief attention to such delights. Hope the small English swarm of sightseers were amenable to pleasing manners as heretofore? Yours always sincerely | Ph: Webb. Mem. I fi nd my eyes, at this time, need expert attention, so that I remember going to your occulist, [sic] or your recommendation for George Wardle, years ago; now, I have forgotten his name and only remember he held out somewhere in “West end”? Will you kindly give me his address, for I shall have to go up to town soon, for fear of worse coming to me from neglect? Would you also tell me, if the said eye opener is a swell professioner, not only in skill but in fees? for, whether I should drop furtively on his consulting table 1 guinea, or two, d[itt]o?? My recollection of him was, that he seemed quiet & capable. He could not possibly remember me from the many years back of my knocking at his door. My former occulist was “Bowman – of Occulists the fi rst”! of Gabriel Rossetti’s poem.1 I wd gladly fi nd, also from you, as to how M rs Walker is, and something comfortable about Dorothy, of whom I have heard a report of lameness of foot? Philip Webb. m I heard f May, just before she stepped aboard, with some little anxiety on my part, but will hope that good, & not ill may attend on her.2 V&A, AAD

1 For William Bowman, for whom PSW built Joldwynds in 1870–5, see Vol. I, Letter 73, note 4. Bowman died in 1892. DGR had frequently consulted him between 1867–71 about his eye disorders. See CDGR, III, p. 577. 2 See below, Letter 1075, note 4.

275

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1074 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 9 December 1909 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 9 December. ’09. Dear Mrs Flower. I had the golden gift of oranges the day before yesterday, but it was only last evening that I opened the chest. It is the most pleasing of presents at Xmas time, to have for children the bright coloured fruit, at their entertainments of school and other friends. So, we all of us thank you, and though some of us are past the time of thanksgiving, on the incoming of festas, even the oldest can fall into rank, & mimic youthful joyousness, without affectation. Mrs Dickinson is also pleased to have the little motherly exercise in her craft, and this, & that of Christmas fare will join in with remembrance of yours. I know! – o’ yes, yes I know; your good note of Octr 31. recd no visible recognition, – bad luck to the old man for his repeated failures in that way. And so time goes on, and we shall have to think of the possibility, hereabout, for Reggie. I had no thought of it being possible for the good Whiteman to overlook the boy as an apprentice; what I meant, was, that such a dependable guardian would be needed for the lad, when the ‘painter’ has been cut, and he hoists sail.1 I am hoping that your enemy, of painful rheumatic occurance, [sic] did not find you out during the continuous damp weather that the elect[r]ical conditions of the earth bestowed on us of late, and that you determinedly get about? Now that the old-man-help, I used to have, is helplessly bedridden,2 my morning time for walking is gone, and I make my exercise carry me for 2 or 3 miles, after dark, and though it is not so pleasant as daylight – it serves the purpose of making me sleep well after. The family of three, and also me, send you thank-offering in pencil, with great goodwill. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. r P.S I have had M Jack here, and he – on questioning – made me understand what he has been about – in the good Samaritan way – in the Isle of Thanet, for you.3 BL Add 45355, ff. 59–60

1 In his previous (lost) letter to Elizabeth Flower, PSW had clearly been considering the future prospects of Margaret Dickinson’s son, prompting a cautious response: ‘I note what you say about Reggie. . . . But it would not be possible, I know for Whiteman to receive him. Mrs Whiteman is quite an invalid now and could not “do” for a boy. I am afraid it is very difficult for Whiteman, and not at all comfortable.’ Elizabeth Flower to PSW, 31 October 1909, V&A, AAD. Whiteman was perhaps a servant, or former servant, working as a gardener for the Flowers. 2 This was Thomas Collins, who had suffered a stroke in 1908. See above, Letter 1055.

276

1903–1914 3 ‘Mrs Flower told me of her visit to you. I see her often now as I am doing some work for the Cheyne Hospital, building a little addition to a house in Kent for a kind of country branch of the hospital. We had an interesting problem in drainage there, and, although we have now got it into what I hope will be a going condition I feel we have cut the Gordian knot instead of unravelling it, this because I could see that though I tried experiments for ever I should not arrive at a solution.’ GWJ to PSW, 17 October 1909, V&A, AAD.

1075 • To Sydney and Kate Cockerell, 13 January 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 13 Jany 1910. Dear Friends – Three! Thank you kindly for your photo: pictures by land, sea, & Tower, &c, and especially for the dainty reproductions of AD Hare;1 such perfect art of recognition, & drawing; & the other miniature I recollect, but where & how I cannot; nor can I of the saint it enshrines. In the P. postcards, I think the sea pieces are precious help: for remembrance & imagination. Thank you! as J.R. used so politely to say. I am so glad you thought to tell of our dear friend Janey’s improve[d] condition.2 Poor dear woman, a life so broken: & so worthy of any help her faithful friends can show as well as feel for her.3 Poor Jenny – one must suppose – lives in another world almost altogether? Janey will be cheered by anything which tells of May’s success in her venture. I suppose there are some in Yankee land who can have recognised the boon the father’s life has been to us if not to them?4 To me in thinking of him, I almost sing – ‘There is nae trick about his house’, and in these following days tricks have it all their own tricky way. I once saw a plaster cast (I think it was) of the great Handel, by candle light in the Exeter Hall, Strand, of old time, but it was too dark to make much or anything of it.5 Of course there is that French posed attitude of the master in Westmr Abbey, which is good in some theatrical way.6 Is there any chance of getting a photo of the best portrait you have in your gallery?7 Yes, ’tis true, I also could just enjoy a good walk (in dry weather) with you about some of the byepaths of this pleasant part of Sussex. I’ve just had a portrait sent to me of our Liberal (sic) candidate, here, for whom I have (by default of better) to vote for as I did at last election.8 His “address” – is parsimonious!!! To the Three | Yours sincerely | Ph. Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/190

1 Albrecht Dürer’s watercolour Young Hare (1502). PSW here superimposes the initials AD as Dürer’s customary monogram. 2 SCC had sent good wishes for PSW’s 79th birthday. ‘I would I could be at Caxtons to express them in person & to have a walk & talk with you. At any rate I can cheer you with a good piece of news. I was at Kelmscott last Wednesday & I found M rs Morris better than I have seen her for a long

277

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

3

4

5

6 7

8

time. Jenny is away & this has enabled her to rest – & she has an excellent companion who was invaluable when Jenny was so ill two months ago. There is good news of May who is doing very well in America.’ SCC to PSW, 10 January 1910, BL Add 52761, f. 126. The sympathetic concern extended in both directions. ‘Our dear friend P.W. is much in my thoughts. Do you remember his telling us at the time of his moving to Caxtons that he only had enough money to last eight years? Was it only a joke? I should so like to help him in any possible way, and I wonder if you could think of anything. Has he by chance any unsold work you could propose to fi nd a customer for? I feel sure you will help if you can.’ JM to SCC, 19 December 1909, CLJM. In October 1909, MM had left for a tour of America lasting several months, lecturing on WM as well as on art and design topics. Whilst there she met the lawyer John Quinn, and they engaged in a short affair. Built in 1831 and closed in 1907, Exeter Hall in the Strand was an important venue for musicmaking. Oratorios were regularly performed there, and even after the opening of the Albert Hall – when many performances transferred there – it continued to be the venue for rehearsals for the Handel Festival. The Westminster Abbey statue above Handel’s grave, supposedly modelled from a death mask, is by Louis François Roubiliac (1702–62), and was unveiled in 1762. ‘I have just had a fine portrait of Handel bequeathed to the Museum – ascribed to Hogarth, perhaps incorrectly. This is our third authentic portrait of the great man.’ SCC to PSW, 10 January 1910. The Hogarth attribution is spurious. This picture was not included in the ‘Exhibition of Handeliana’ mounted by the Fitzwilliam in 1974: nor was a supposed painting of Handel attributed to James Thornhill (see below, Letter 1077, note 1). See Handel and the Fitzwilliam (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, 1974). The parliamentary election of early 1910 resulted in a hung parliament, returning Asquith as Liberal Prime Minister.

1076 • To William Hale White, 22 January 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 22 January. 1910. My dear Hale White. You would know how pleased I am, when you tell of my poor letters to you being a relief from the continuous monotony of your painful ailment.1 When you say, “It is not of much use to read” on account of the failure of memory in both of us, I would say, that apart from the lasting gain of qualifying one’s own thoughts – instantly – by those of others, the gain is of infinite value hour by hour and day after day, that books secure to us – even if we have to refer to them tomorrow for what we have half forgotten today. Also, if one has comparatively few books at hand – as library – and they be more or less masterpieces of human expression, they are like the landscape in front of our window in the country, never failing though never changed, and I defy a good book – which one is good enough to like – ever to fail in its mission to bless.

278

1903–1914

I smiled, with your tradesman, and bank book blunders, for the very same touches of memory-failure have beset me, that I could even enjoy a laugh at one’s ridiculous position as a grown man! While writing this, seated on the arm of a chair in my little room, looking nearly due south at 12.30, noon the sun (here too!) is shining brightly, & the sharp hoar frost of the night not gone by ever so much off the grass fields. I have been blundering about our evening star of late, shining so brilliantly. I had called it Mars, & you say ’tis Venus.2 It does not much matter, for the lady of many gifts of woes, has killed as many as his majesty of blood. I walked last evening for a couple of miles due Sth, with moon at high angle above, and the blazing beauty hastening with sweeping decline on her westerly track behind the horizon of Tilgate forest; only think, I quite forgot all about the still swaggering election contest!3 This puts me in mind of thoughts of Carlyle, and his mono mania for a dictator, appointing his own subordinate ministry, & ruling by tuck of drum. To me, and in spite of the detested contest in declamation, either by lies or honest speech, I prefer – in the long run – this rule by parliament of tongues, & seeming waste of words, to the rule of blood & thunder. About my brother’s health you so kindly think of; I gladly tell that he is surprisingly stronger than I thought it possible for him ever to regain; and he is begging that I shall go & help for a change of talk with him, as soon as – perhaps? February may provide passable weather, for two old fogies to remember their youth in, i.e. not quite so cold as this January has provided. As for my own bodily condition, you will gather it from my last evening’s walk, & may be I look for Venus again tonight. (Note) the “Daily News” has been giving diagram monthly plans, of the star positions, &c – good for me if I don’t misread them. I exchange with “Mary” the hearty goodwill between the houses – and bless you from the superior age of yours (& hers) always truly Philip Webb. P.S. I’ve just re-read this letter, & find the diction is like a schoolboy’s. BCL MR 10/34

1 WHW suffered from cancer during his last years. ‘The more this monotony is broken by news of those for whom I care, the more tolerable it becomes. Remember I am almost a prisoner in my room and think chiefly about my failings. One amongst them is most painful loss of memory. It is not of much use to read, for what I read yesterday is forgotten to-day.’ WHW to PSW, 17 January 1910, LTF, p. 366. 2 ‘Venus is now brilliant in the south-west. I suppose you have watched her the last few weeks, serene, aloft above this election tumult.’ LTF, p. 366. 3 See previous letter, note 8.

279

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1077 • To Sydney Cockerell, 24 January 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 24 Jany 1910. Dear Cockerell. Yours of the 14th – as you must have thought – would interest me, and does. Certainly Thornhill’s portrait of Handel is an uninteresting one, a kind of ‘R.A’ perfunctory matter.1 Still, by comparing the cuts in Grove’s dictionary,2 I can see that the general quality of likeness may be there, but the particular, not. It is so long since I had a stare at the Westminster Abbey, Gallico-Dramatico, monument, by Roubilliac [sic], that memory (or the loss of it) is no help when called on,3 but I think the likeness must have had a better chance than Thornhill’s, as true representation? If the Hogarth in your Museum is really by him, there must be a likeness in it, but the time was a devil of one for out & out characature [sic] and ‘H’ was a genius. Grove says, the Westr Abbey one, in spite of the affectation of pose, is one of the best portraits of the master, the head having been taken from a mould of his face, after death, by Roubilliac, & said to have been afterwards touched by him, the eyes opened, &c. Grove gives a wood cut of this cast, which has the set of the mouth, & decision of chin wh’ look real. The fas[h]ion of the age being cocked hat & wig, makes the undressed head, which has of course been shaved, so that Thornhill’s picture looks hungry & slippered! thank you for promise of a photo of your supposed Hogarth one. I am afraid that Mr Buckmaster is one of those politicians, who balance a man’s character, to so mathematically – even, that there is no quality to swear by as to which foot the owner is to stand on, and the wrong foot is the foremost!4 A newspaper, when the hullaballoo is over, will be almost worth trying to read in it? That “Appendix” of Worth Ch’ is almost Worthless, the transformation by the resurrectionist restorer being lamentable.5 I always lose my temper when in the church, for the example of this undoubted ‘Saxon’ building, for historical reasons, as well a[s] vigour, was great, & now has been smalled-down with vengeance of stupidity. The untouched font is – however – a great beauty of early 13-c work, & in good condition; the composition of bowl & support the usual one, but the low relief carving of 13. c ornament rather unusual. The Rector here, in his book, calls it 2 fonts, one on top of ’tother! sic, – very sick. Kindest regards to mother, & child, with best wishes for braving this winter’s cold. | Always sincerely yours, | Philip Webb. Thank you kindly for sending the woollen socks home! few would have been so kind when the wool with the knitting so good. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/191

280

1903–1914 1 ‘I enclose a poor photograph (not wanted again) of our Thornhill portt of Handel. The newly acquired portt is better than this – but he hadn’t a very attractive face judging from these pictures & his bust. The latter, of which we have two copies here, is no doubt what you saw at Exeter Hall.’ SCC to PSW, 14 January 1900, BL Add 52761, f. 127. The attribution to the decorative painter James Thornhill (1675/6–1734), father-in-law of William Hogarth, may be incorrect. 2 The ‘Handel’ entry in A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by George Grove, 4 vols (London: Macmillan and Co., 1879–89), includes two engraved images of the composer’s head, taken from Roubiliac and G.A. Wolffgang (I, p. 656). 3 See above, Letter 1075, note 6. 4 ‘I attended an enthusiastic Liberal meeting last night – but though our man Buckmaster is a very good & honest one, I fear his majority of 300 has little chance of standing against the forces of reaction.’ f 127. Stanley Buckmaster, later first Viscount Buckmaster, was a lawyer and lost his Cambridge parliamentary seat to his Conservative rival. He won a by-election at Keighley in 1911, and in 1915 was appointed Lord Chancellor by Asquith. 5 He means Anthony Salvin. For the parish church of St Nicholas, Worth, see Vol. III, Letter 710, note 6.

1078 • To George Washington Jack, 9 February 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. | Sussex. 9 February. 1910. My dear Jack. Yours & postcard of the 7th duly recd. Also, having called Missa Dick1 in Council, I find that Monday, 14th instead of Wednesday, 16th will be all right, for you and your Noah’s Ark to be stranded on the 3 Bridges2 – provided you send me word as to the time of train you come by, and I will meet it, when I will engage an outside porter & truck (or if necessary, &c) a Fly to bring you up here in safety – if the thrice accursed motors do not take a fancy into their petrol[iu]m heads, and run us all down on our way up? ’Tis to be hoped the alternate dry day of this constantly peculiar state of weather will favour us. I am blue mouldy for an honest talk with you on all matters which concern a pair of reasonable beings with no “Tariff Reform” buzzing in their brain pans. Kind remembrance to Mrs G. J. and the two girls from | Yours truly Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Margaret Dickinson. 2 ‘I have been thinking that I would send one of my carved images made for Ld Carlisle, to you to see. The show, where they are now closes on Feb 12 so if I was to send one on the 14th you would get it on the Tuesday and I could come on the Wednesday & see you. . . . I cannot take all three

281

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV as they are so heavy but can manage one.’ GWJ to PSW, 31 January 1910, V&A, AAD. The ninth Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society show opened at the New Gallery on 8 January, and included the GH commission GWJ had undertaken for Naworth Castle, ‘The Warden of the Marches’, described in the exhibition Catalogue as a ‘wood carved panel’ (p. 126). The work is amongst the items illustrated in The Studio, XLIX (15 February 1910), p. 39, and is described there as ‘three striking groups in carved and coloured wood’ (p. 41). A large central group is flanked and balanced by two smaller ones. At the base of the main piece, which depicts an armed knight on horseback, is a motto within a scroll, ‘A Daker: A Daker. A read bull a read bull’, which unlocks the meaning of ‘The Warden of the Marches’, for the knight is the fifteenth-century Warden of the Marches, Sir Thomas Dacre of Naworth, known as ‘The Red Bull’, and an ancestor through marriage of GH. His tomb is at Lanercost Priory, part of the Dacre (and subsequently Howard) estates. The two flanking pieces show Dacre ‘eloping with Elizabeth de Greystoke from Warwick Castle in 1488, and his ancestor Ranulph Dacre, the original builder of Naworth Castle, eloping with Margaret De Multon in around 1330’. Gaimster, p. 28. The Dacres were ‘inseparably connected in history and legend with memories of Flodden, of Border warfare and Border raids, while their wild slogan of “a Daker, a Daker, a read Bull, a read Bull,” was ever a terror to the Scots’. Howard Pease, The Lord Warden of the Marches of England and Scotland (London: Constable, 1912), p. 208.

1079 • To Sydney Cockerell, 19 February 1910 Postcard Feby 19. 1910. Thank you for the very interesting list of baits to the young-folk, eager to furnish their minds with examples of some of the truest art in existence.1 There is no chance of my seeing them in the Cam. stronghold, for moving about now, except on Shanks’ mare, has become a thought not to think about. I have had G. Jack over here to shew me such a piece of modern wood-sculpture, done by him, – just as effective & yet simple as G.J. himself.2 Yrs with remembrances | Ph. W. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/192

1 ‘You may like to know that besides Holbein’s splendid portrait of Sir Thomas More [loaned to the Fitzwilliam by Edward Huth] I have four of the king’s Holbeins on loan from Windsor – namely Sir T. More’s father, his daughter Elizabeth, Bishop Fisher, & William Parr. A mighty fine quintet they are, all in a row on one screen, & I wish you could see them.’ SCC to PSW, 14 February 1910, BL Add 52761, f. 128. 2 See previous letter, note 2.

282

1903–1914

1080 • To Sydney Cockerell, 9 March 1910 Date added by Cockerell BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. My dear Cockerell Yours of the 7th was forwarded to me by Missa Dick, I’m only here for the most of 4 days to cheer the brother. I find him quite as well as could be, but the house feels empty-like. I stumped about London yesterday on my way here and have remembrance of pavements under foot in this soft weather. How glad I am that the Cambridge University folk have, from the first, seen you under the due right light.1 Bless ’em, that the goodwills [sic] of the place have come home to you and Madame at the right time. I would that I could have got me to you, and be piloted about a renowned place with such [an] efficient guide as yourself. I have only been accustomed to this place in the Summer, & its semi-winter expression is necessarily a rather forlorn one, but spring blossoming is to be had just now is good to look at – though it still rains. Would it be contrary to your convenience if a son of a nephew of ours came to you with an introduction from my brother? His father writes – “I must make enquiry from some authority there (Cambridge) on detail work, should circumstances be favourable to Raymond (Christian name) studying at that University for a time.2 Before making any plans I may run down to see the Master of Gonville & Caius.” Don’t hesitate my dear fellow to say ‘no’ to this request, if you should feel it necessary in any way to safeguard yourself, &c!3 Hearty remembrance to the good & kindly mother, and the little one now – surely – so much bigger. Yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. P.S. My brother tells me, that the “Raymond” is a likely enough fellow to do well at the University. Till Friday – 11th V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/194

1 ‘I think you will be pleased to hear that I have been made a Fellow of Jesus College, & that I am therefore entitled to take a proprietary interest in the decoration in which you had a hand. Would that I could entertain you in hall!’ SCC to PSW, 7 March 1910, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/193. See above, Letter 1054, note 3.

283

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 2 Raymond Stowers was the grandson of PSW’s sister, Eliza Webb, who married Nowell Stowers. See Vol. II, Letter 476, note 2. His father, James Herbert Stowers, was a consultant physician in dermatological diseases (see below, Letter 1095, note 3). 3 ‘Of course I shall be delighted to make the acquaintance of the young man Raymond when he comes up here.’ SCC to PSW, 10 March 1910, BL Add 52761, f. 129.

1081 • To Sydney Cockerell, 14 March 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex 14 March. 1910. Dear Cockerell. My quiet home-led life has been duly shaken up by the varied scenes of the whirl of London, when walking it, and the too great quietude of the brother’s household life, now that the kindly care of the good sister has been withdrawn from it. When writing to you from Beechwood, I ought to have said, that the brother & myself were particularly anxious that you should not do more for the young fellow, Raymond Stowers, than just to put him in the way of finding out how to penetrate to the inside of the Academical fold, which when that has been achieved, he will be likely to find out his path as other ingenuous boy-men do. I must beg you to be strict as to this matter; for not having seen the lad, I cannot tell what sort of a being he may shew himself to be, though I daresay ‘as much as usual’, will be his case.1 Kindest remembrance to Mrs Sydney, & the little one, and hearty good wishes that you personally may have the feeling towards Cambridge that I have for Oxford. Yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. The lapses of memory have led me pretty dances you may be sure! V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/195

1 ‘Raymond Stowers looked in yesterday with his father just as the Museum was closing & when I had to hurry to an engagement. There was only time for the exchange of compliments & an undertaking that R.S. should come & see me in October, as they were leaving later in the day. R.S. was up for a scholarship examination and I gathered that in the event of his not succeeding his father might perhaps not send him here. I will very gladly do anything I can for him if he comes.’ SCC to PSW, 16 March 1910, BL Add 52761, f. 130.

284

1903–1914

1082 • To George Washington Jack, 26 April 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 26 April. ’10. My dear Jack. You must have known you would be right in sending me the photographs of other parts of your good work for Lord Carlyle – for, if you had not, you would have been wrong.1 In spite of the glazing quality of the photography, I could rejoice over the spontaneity (however much labour they must have cost you) of the designs and execution; as well as with very remarkable aptitude in choice of setting in the pictures, as well as in varied use of leafage, with vigorous carving, making the whole very lifelike. Mrs Dickinson was delighted with these additions to your work which she saw in the real wood & real paint. I would like to see Ld Carlyle, and give him a bit of my mind about his success in getting you to make the “Gazeebo”, his soul pined for. I too am glad you agreed to do the work, and that you have put so much spirit in it, a vital point. George Howard is a man of sensitive temperament, and quite capable of finding a joy in the work so much to his desire. If he is one of the “Backwoods men” of “The Lords”, he may be the only one of the heap who is sensitive [to] the human delight in Art, other than attending at sales, & gaping with admiration at the prices paid for things not understood. I don’t like the ‘Country life’ business at all, a sort of drawing-room sentimentality, that has no real influence on the Arts of architecture.2 That book of Mr Weaver’s is undoubtedly a very valuable historical document, and should lead to much greater care being taken in future to put the originals under dependable security.3 I quite agree with you, that the Pall Mall Palaces put to shame the want of “scholarly” feeling shewn in most of the modern Portland Stone buildings set up in London during the last 10 or 15 years.4 Yes, I liked Winmill’s Fire extinguisher, much; ’tis simple, straightforward & has character. I found the colour of the glazed bricks at the baseline of the front a rather discordant play on the change of material. I think it should have been grey in tone.5 It is evidently necessary against Boy artistry there being no protecting railing in front.

285

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I was going to add, ‘Yes’, I would like to see the ‘copies of old wall painting’ you mention with approval, but on second thought, ‘No’, for I get weaker in energy daily, and less & much less able to express anything in writing than even 3 or 4 years’ back.6 Thank you heartily, dear Jack, for your comfortable words, whenever you address the old fellow worker always truly yours Philip Webb. Want to post at once & cant re-read. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I have long meant to send these photos to show you – you will be forgetting what the one in the solid was like before you see the others in this shape – anyway it may amuse you.’ GWJ to PSW, 21 April 1910, V&A, AAD. These would have been photographs of the three groups which together form the carving ‘The Warden of the Marches’, undertaken for GH and which GWJ had shown at the ninth Arts and Crafts exhibition. He had arranged for part of the carving to be transported by train to Three Bridges station, following in person the next day, on 14 February. PSW annotated this letter: ‘ansd Ap 26 ’10 & returned the photos for Naworth’. See above, Letter 1078, note 2. 2 ‘I went with Winmill yesterday to see Mr Weaver, the Editor of “Country Life” – they had it seems made some arrangements about publishing Miss Ewart’s House in that paper. He, Mr Weaver, seems a very decent fellow and anxious to get interesting things for his paper (which I daresay you know). I don’t think you need fear any odium in the way of “toady advertisement” in having your work shown in the “Country Life” which deals mostly in Historical subjects of Architecture.’ Although nothing appears to have come of the possibility of a Country Life article on Coneyhurst, the house which PSW designed for Mary Anne Ewart (see Vol. I, Letter 212), see below, Letter 1084, note 2. 3 Lawrence Weaver, English Leadwork: its Art and History (London: B.T. Batsford, 1909). ‘Mr Weaver is going to send you a copy of his book on Leadwork hoping it may amuse you.’ 4 ‘[The Reform Club] is a fine specimen of Barry’s work, & would be finer still if it had a coat of whitewash all over it outside & in to hide the dull “decorations” inside and the soot outside. I must say, it is quite refreshing to see a scholarly building like this, after the “original” attempts which appear at every corner of the main streets of London. At least it has a “gentlemanly” look and is not fadsy – only of course it is not up to Wren’s work, who could be both original and scholarly.’ Sir Charles Barry (1795–1860), architect of the Reform Club (1838–41), was much influenced by Renaissance Italian architecture, especially a work like the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. 5 ‘I went . . . with Winmill to see a Fire Station he had a lot to do with – in the Waterloo Road – it was very interesting to see all the very ingenious contrivances for saving time – slides, springs, trap doors &c &c making it possible for the men to be out of their beds & riding off to a fire in half a minute or less. The elevation is a very decent one, and confesses to many hints from 1 Raymond Buildings Gray’s Inn W.C. which survive in cornice, fireplaces & many little things. You have a sincere apostle in Winmill, who however has to preach his doctrine in a high wind of official contradiction with much ruffling of his personal feelings and temper.’ 6 ‘There is a man at the Royal College who does the most wonderful copies of old wall paintings – may I send you some of his drawings to look at. I know he would like to hear what you think of them.’

286

1903–1914

1083 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 20–21 May 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. May 20. 1910. Dear Mrs Flower. I gladly received your good letter of the 14th, with its admirable reminders of the Great Albert Dürer. These photo: reproductions seem to be excellent, and as if they originals had escaped ‘restoration’ abuse. The other, ‘Ragusa’, cards were well worth more than the accidental money, in addition to the pleasure your thought of the ‘stay at homes’ of Caxtons gave us.1 I am thinking – if the worst of bad memories will allow – that this is not your first visit to Dalmatia? I’m always struck with the part of Europe contained within the lines of the Danube, and the Bosphorus? Your postcards indicate the ragged and characteristic mountainous district between Ragusa & Montenegro? The weather in Sussex has been of a strange – unaccountable – quality, from ending of last summer to the beginning of this – “ever false, ever fair”! Not without an almost enviable beauty by comparisons [sic] - and the vapourus [sic] clouding of the sky has been a constant threat to the human diminutives underneath, and sometimes the threats were realised! Some considerable sickness about here has happened, but here – above the Weald – 110 feet above 3 Bridges, there have been old age troubles quite sufficient to make us realise our humanity. I shall be glad if – when you hear from Geo: Wardle – that he has passed through, to him, the troublesome time of winter fairly well.2 Mrs Dickinson – save for occasional colds, and some dental troubles (which are being amended!) has been well, as also her boy & girl; the younger though bigger, is still a boy, and the elder is rapidly leaving girldom & short frocks behind her, and is quite capable of fitting herself with appropriate dresses accordingly! I tried at our Grand-Dame’s palace, of “Worth Park” – to see if her factotumAgent-Head Gardener – &c, &c had a vacant place in the big gardens for Reggie – but nothing (as yet) has resulted.3 I believe that the boy is not really losing time at the School, as the Master turns him to some useful account as a kind of monitor: finally I must add, that I am still unlearned, and as you see, a painfully incapable writer is Yours very truly, | Philip Webb. P.S. 21 May. No post yesterday. Ph. W. Last evening I had a very pleasant walk in the Forest, and as the evening was quite fine, with a gracious sun-set, there was more than much to be thankful for.

287

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

[ f. 62, the following P.S., on a smaller half-sheet, has been attached to the above letter, but may not belong to it] P.S. In the language of north Britain, that delightful district of Oxon & near neighbour of Berks, is my own peculiar native heath, and I would that I could have paced it with you. Ph.W. BL Add 45355, ff. 61–3

1 ‘I am sending you, with many apologies for my carelessness, the postage of the cards which I sent to Caxtons from Ragusa. How annoyed you must have been to receive them!’ Elizabeth Flower to PSW, 14 May 1910, V&A, AAD. The ancient hillside Sicilian city of Ragusa is situated in the south of the island. 2 ‘I have not heard lately of Mr Wardle but am writing to him today to ask him to send me his news. The cold winds must have been trying for him.’ 3 See above, Letter 1074, note 1.

1084 • To George Washington Jack, 26 May 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex. 26th May. 1910. My dear Jack. In a letter from my brother, he told of a friend of his on the look-out for a house in the country, and that he had advised her to consult you, before she in any [way] engaged to rent or buy a residence, without getting professional advice as to its condition with regard to health, &c, &c. I know the lady, have seen her a many times [sic] at my brother’s and her own house, before she had to leave Winchester for her health.1 She is a very sensible as well as a clever woman, & my brother misses her society as a fellow-gardener, of which profession – as an amateur – she is a skilled example. I am sure you would like her, and find that she is not only a clever lady, but a sensible, [sic] to boot. I have your letter to my brother on this matter, and am glad you will be willing to help the lady if she finds a place likely to suit her. Now for a few words between you and myself. I received a week, or more, back, along with my morning’s newspaper from Smith & Sons stall at the station, a roll addressed to me, with Mr Leah’s compts – i.e S. & Sons representative at the book-stall. I sometimes go to the station to get the time from its clock, and looked in on Mr Leah to pay for the parcel, and said there was nothing [to] pay, [sic] & begged my acceptance of it from him – I smiled & thanked him! You will have guessed that the gift was “No 696 of May 7ths ‘Country Life’ ”!2 Here was a pretty trap for my modesty. The pictures in it with a meaning for me were rather good photographs of Mr Beale’s house – of which building you know as much as I do? – ha! Mr Beale has of course the right to have his house 288

1903–1914

photographed for the benefit of other respectable people, but I think that should not include an appraisement of the Archt, as well as the owner’s house & estate? The initials to the showman’s essay, under the text, are, L.W.!!3 I am sure the author of the literary description of the building intended nothing but kindness in setting forth what he believed to be facts with regard to the arrangement &c of a modern house, but I feel that he was a little less than kind, not to give me the opportunity of seeing his draft of his article before sending it to the publisher – as it stands, I feel somewhat smaller in my own estimation than before reading it, but doubtless my ruffled feathers will preen-smooth again, more or less. We will laugh over this incident more comfortably when you come & see me again? On Saturday afternoon Lethaby and Mrs Lethaby promise to look in on me when returning to London from Alfriston, where they are spending their W[h]itsuntide holiday. He, Lethaby has sent me a copy of his last essay read at the R.I.B.A. & published in the Institute’s journal.4 ‘My stars’, Mr G.J. it is in the language of “the Marchioness – a one-er.” Yours very sincerely, as always, and thankfully, | Philip Webb. I have not re-read this, being anxious to post now. You’ll find blunders enough! V&A, AAD

1 This was a Miss Gompertz, for whom GWJ made some house adjustments. See below, Letter 1093, note 3. 2 ‘Standen, East Grinstead, A Residence of Mr. James S. Beale’, Country Life, XXVII (7 May 1910), pp. 666–72. This laudatory piece consistently places PSW at the centre of the success of the building, but in terms to which even he could not have taken much exception. ‘Mr. Philip Webb . . . happily, still with us, is in retirement, the last of a great company (p. 666). . . . It seems to have been the pleasure of Mr. Webb to make Standen fit the land on which it seems to grow. It takes its place naturally and reasonably, yet, withal, reticently (p. 668). . . . [I]t is precisely and peculiarly true of Standen and, indeed, of Mr. Webb’s work generally, that its art is greatest when it is most hid (p. 671). . . . [He] never faltered from the path of sane design and sound construction.’ (p. 672). There are five photographs of the exterior, and four of the interior. 3 Lawrence Weaver. See above, Letter 1082, notes 2 and 3. 4 ‘The Architecture of Adventure’, JRIBA, XVII (1910), pp. 469–84. WRL read this paper to the RIBA on 18 April 1910.

1085 • To Sydney Cockerell, 30 May 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 30th May. 1910. My dear Cockerell. Your last note is in front of me & is dated, 6. May! “The enclosed papers” you said “may interest you” – They do indeed.1 I read up all of them, save and except that in the Barbaric language of Germany. How 289

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

active you have been in all the four corners of your enacting Office, we the faithful, of whom you knew, now understand and are cheered by the same. Surely ’tis an excellent idea of getting and keeping a good & dependable portraits of the members of the university in your Museum. Even the savage Carlyle had to swallow that offensive medicine of Art. When you next come and see me, I shall want not less than half an hour of your precious time, to settle a question on my mind, and relieve it before the time cometh, &c &c.2 We had Lethaby and the Mrs here on Saturday, & made merry under the light & colour of a beautiful day. I thought he – for him – looking well, and I rejoiced to his face over his literary & professional doings of late – especially for his essay on “The Architecture of Adventure” – a masterpiece of clear perception.3 He was so modest, and they, both of them, laid themselves out to enjoy my jests – good or bad; & took kindly to rubbing the noses of half a dozen beautiful 2 year old fillies a grazing in the park – Arabs from the tips of their noses to the ends of their tail, and so pretty mannered. I am hoping that since the date of your note, both Madame Kate, and Mademoiselle Margaret, are more comely and cheery than when they turned me round their fingers at Caxtons.4 Yours, always sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/198

1 ‘The enclosed papers may interest you, or at least serve to show you that the old Fitzwilliam is awake! I have lately got four new Holbeins from the King & a Gentile Bellini camel that would please you mightily – & we have a loan-exhibition of William Blake’s pictures & books.’ SCC to PSW, 6 May 1910, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/196. 2 SCC next visited Caxtons on 24 June. ‘Went to Three Bridges by the 10.40. Went first to see Philip Webb, then to lunch with the Lyttons, then to Webb again & had a very nice talk.’ CD. 3 See previous letter, note 4. 4 He is recalling the visit on Margaret’s first birthday. See above, Letter 1070, note 1.

1086 • To Sydney Cockerell, 6 June 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth, by Crawley. June 6. 1910. Thank you for so kindly sending word of the arrival of the hoped-for Christopher, with the additional good cheer as to the mother’s health.1 The name will be a pleasing ‘twister’ for Margaret to practice on.

290

1903–1914

Very hearty congratulations to Madame ‘Kate’, for I too had some feeling of anxiety, from the note in your letter of 31st May, & therefore rejoice that the nurse failed not to keep tryst. Yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. Thank you for the newspaper (Japanese) cutting. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/199

1 ‘I think you will be pleased to hear that Margaret’s little brother Christopher came safely into the world yesterday morning – & that his mother is wonderfully well.’ SCC to PSW, 5 June 1910, BL Add 526761, f. 133. Christopher Sydney Cockerell (1910–99) became an engineer, and is bestknown for inventing the hovercraft in the 1950s.

1087 • To Sydney Cockerell, 11 August 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 11 August 1910 My dear Cockerell. I have been away at the brother’s in Winchester – the customary usage at this season. One day there, Walker and his Dorothy came to see my brother, and spent the better part of a day there – very cheerfully. It was then that I learned of your loss, which touched me closely; so more so that the brother’s house seemed only too lonely.1 ’Tis of no use saying more, for either of us, on such a subject as the withdrawal from the beautiful earth of those who have been kind to us awhile in communion – for they have left sweet memories behind them – ‘Adieu’. Kindest good will to your good wife and two children, from your, always sincerely Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/205

1 Olive Cockerell had been suffering with cancer for some months, and on 18 July SCC learnt that it was inoperable. She died six days later. ‘Our general feeling was one of thankfulness that Olive had been spared the tortures that our mother & grandmother had to endure. This coupled with our admiration for her brave & unselfish life prevented our being very sad.’ CD, 24 July 1910. PSW had last seen Olive in the previous year, when she and SCC had called in at Caxtons and he ‘showed us his drawings again’. CD, 3 October 1909.

291

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1088 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 23 September 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 23 Septr 1910. Dear Mrs Flower. Your letter from Berlin – dated the 17th – reached here on the 19th, and I was quite sincerely thankful for your kindly thought, of letting me know of the death of our valued friend George Wardle, for your knowledge of him, and long continued sympathy with his very remarkable and characteristic qualities, and cultivated intelligence, made you the person of all others, now, on whom I could most depend for helpful appreciation of his worth. In earlier times, when I was free to join in his studies, and varied experience, there was no halting in our friendship, and to the last there was always good feeling between us, even after increasing age rendered me incapable of keeping up any continuous communication by letter. I cannot say how gladly I learned that his daughter, to the last, was a salve to his painful experiences in life.1 _______ After my last conversation with you, on the train platform at 3 Bridges, my consideration as to what could best be done for Mrs Dickinson, in the matter of putting her boy to some possible and hopeful employment, I have talked the matter over with her, and we both feel that nothing in the way of Gardening and other hard labour could be taken as likely to succeed with him. After parting with you, I introduced the apprenticeship subject to our Railway Station master here, & explained our position with regard to the lad; I found that the Brighton & South Coast directors would be averse to employment of boys other than those related to their staff, & that the directors had any number of their own applicants at hand for vacant places on their railway lines. After Mrs Dickns return from her own home at King’s Langley, where she had been for the summer holiday, I found that her people there were unanimous, in that the boy should try for appointment on the Lon: & North Westn line! I therefore let her take Reggie to the Euston Station depot – and they received a satisfactory interview, as a preliminary one.2 Last evening I got Mrs Dickinson, & Reggie, to write down what was done at the above interview – I inclose his version which will serve you better, than anything more now, that I could write on the matter. I would like you to give us your opinion on the subject, for I think nothing should be decided on hastily. One of the awkwardnesses would be the travelling backwards and forwards to the Railway office at Euston – by our line (Brighton & S. Coast line) for London Bridge Station is south of the River.

292

1903–1914

I sincerely hope you have gained some real benefit from the German baths? Believe me | Yours very sincerely | Philip Webb. rs P.S. M Dickinson has heard from Mitchell, that she has somewhat improved in health from her change. Kindly excuse the rudeness of this manuscript – hastily written to post this evening. BL Add 45355, ff. 65–6

1 In 1861 GW had married the Glasgow-born Madeleine Hamilton Smith (1835/6–1928), who four years previously had been the focus of one of the century’s most salacious murder trials, having been accused of poisoning her former lover. She was acquitted on a verdict of ‘not proven’. After her marriage, she became a member with GW of the Bloomsbury branch of the Socialist League and was its treasurer from its foundation in 1885. The marriage later failed, and they lived apart. There were two children, a son and a daughter, Mary. After GW’s death, Madeleine emigrated to New York, where she may have remarried. 2 Reggie Dickinson successfully found employment with the London and North Western Railway. See below, Letter 1104.

1089 • To May Morris, 3 October 1910 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 3 Octr 1910. My dear May. Kindly forgive my too long delay in acknowledging your thought of me, with the examples of your present and coming labours on behalf of the memory of your father, and my best of friends who never failed me.1 The type, and size of the volumes, are all to my mind, and I look with hope as your work goes on, and experience is gained, that, what may now be an arduous task will – as you daily get to work on it – become an increasing delight. I am now feeling rather particularly the ill effects on my memory, in the eightyeth [sic] year of my age; so that all writing is a laborious work for your affectionate Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, f. 84

1 The first of the 24 volumes in MM’s The Collected Works of William Morris (London: Longmans, 1910–15) was The Defence of Guenevere, and was followed by The Life and Death of Jason.

293

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1090 • To Sydney Cockerell, 20 January 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley, Sussex. 20. Jany 1911 My dear Cockerell. I thank you very sincerely, for using the date of my birthday for kindly expressions of good will towards me.1 I read them, as it were, through a magnifying glass, and allowed for the generous expansion of qualities, without too closely examining the obverse, or sighing over the reverse of the medal. Never mind – I say – ‘He means it’, and there was no offence in loving kindness. I am glad you & yours went to Canterbury.2 I heard nicely from Janey Morris, my old friend of Oxford’s gilding, that she was liking the beauties of Canterbury’s relics. Happily also, she mentioned, with thanks, the beams of light at present cheering Jenny, the afflicted. I thank Mrs Sydney for her remembrance, and in return, beg that she will impress on the Boy, & the Girl, that I am an excellent fellow & look to be treated as such when I next treat them to a wheelbarrow ride. Adieu for a while | from yours sincerely | Philip Webb. P.S. Yea – I wholly agree with your effort, to draw attention of the careless, to the value of those merciful easements in the Choir stalls. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/206

1 ‘I send you my best wishes for your 80th birthday and congratulate you on being able to look back with satisfaction over so long a life. There are not many of whom their friends can assert that they never swerved from their high ideal as artists and men, or did the least thing or the greatest with less than their whole might. This is what has long been said of you.’ SCC to PSW, 11 January 1911, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/204. 2 On 12 January, the Cockerells had tea and dinner with JM in Canterbury, who had taken rooms at 33 St George’s Place.

1091 • To William Richard Lethaby, 21 February 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. Tuesday. Feby 21 ’11. My dear Lethaby. You would be guessing how it would cheer me to have the affectionate letter of yours of the 13th! I too have been somewhat low down in spirit of late, and wanted the ‘cheerer’ to wind up the clock of me, for old age is apt to reflect on the dates, nevertheless. I keep looking at the green grasses a coming again, once more, if no more. Another thing helped. Your Greek origins fitted in with my call 294

1903–1914

for something beyond my reach, and behold your longer arm gathered the grape for me! Another item helped – you, of your own instinctive accord threw out the hopeprobable of my having you here – when it so might be, on a Saturday afternoon – just to allay the longing, not with Tom, Dick or Harry, but with the other one, as “waterman”.1 I sleep too well o’ nights to be depended on for answering the thirsty cry of “how long” – but he will look into the deep lucky bag when you come, & between us, perhaps, we may find it – but not in the flourish of Regent Street’s tail at its southern end, or the triple arches at the eastern end of the Mall? Of course, I sigh with you, at the impossibility of your doing both things,2 and in any case I think the dice were a good referee, for though, since I got your Greek news, I have not by any means got to the bottom of your close knitted subject matter, so important is it that the great Greek story should be understood, and not read upside downwards, that I will not skip lightly over what is so needful for my belated wits. I surely believe that you had not bodily strength enough to go on striving against – almost impossibilities of succeeding – with the building difficulties; for that excellent builder – Weir, has the building-life in him of half a dozen cats with their tails tied together, &c, &c. But, did you see and read that very perceptive “purple period” of Mazzini’s in Jany 28 No of ‘The Nation’? and how comprehensive it was in his appreciation?3 With kind remembrance to Mrs Lethaby | Yours (yes) sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Although ambiguously expressed, this probably means that PSW was hoping that WRL would visit Caxtons alone. 2 Having been appointed joint director of the Central School of Arts and Crafts of the London County Council in 1896, and Professor of the School of Ornament and Design at the Royal College of Art in 1900, WRL committed himself to the educational work of both of these important institutions, but finally resigned in February from the Central School. He had written to SCC on 19 January 1911 that ‘I am thinking of resigning . . . I am worn out with night work and with all the reactions going on, they won’t have anything from one except [red] tape.’ Cited in Rubens, William Richard Lethaby. His Life and Work 1857–1931, p. 194. 3 An extract from Mazzini’s rather ornate ‘Essay on the Philosophy of Music’ concludes the piece ‘The Purple Period’, in The Nation, VIII (28 January 1911), pp. 714–5.

1092 • To Sydney Cockerell, 21 March 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 21 March 1911. Dear Cockerell. Thank you for your memorandum of the 15th. Yes, I had the “Obituary” cutting from “the Times” sent to me, of the death of the kindly Percy Wyndham, and you 295

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

would know that I regarded him with strong & affectionate feeling, and I believe he liked me truly.1 Have refrained from writing to Mrs Wyndham till I know where and how she 2 is. It always sickens me when I think of the old order perishing, and the new take the place of the proven. I much wish to see you when you can conveniently come, but not next Saturday – 25th when Winmill comes to talk professionally. Sincerely hope Mrs Cockerell, & the two young ones, are happy in good health, and I don’t want you to pine. Yours – truly | Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/210

1 PWY died at Clouds on 13 March 1911. His obituary in The Times on 14 March mentioned PSW. ‘Philip Webb – the architect of Clouds – the third in the trio of whom the other two were William Morris and Burne-Jones. . . . Watts . . . Sargent . . . Burne-Jones and Leighton . . . and Val Prinsep were all intimate friends of his and Mrs. Wyndham’s.’ 2 ‘M rs Wyndham is at Clouds & [Charles] Adeane, who has been down there, tells me that she has borne the strain of the last fortnight wonderfully. That other excellent P.W. was cremated & the ashes were buried at East Knoyle. I am glad that he had the wisdom to direct this. If a few more of the aristocracy would follow his example this cleanly way of disposing of dead bodies would be more widely adopted.’ SCC to PSW, 22 March 1911, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/207.

1093 • To George Washington Jack, 15 April 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. Saty April 15 ’11. My dear Jack. It must have shaken your faith in human nature clad in my coat, for your good letter of 3rd April is only now being acknowledged. Truth to tell (I always like to try for it) there have been many hindrances to virtue here, and I’ve many letters to prove the excusive rule!! The weather up to the last 5 days has always been on the point of doubt as to being fi ne or the reverse. I have had Walker, & Cockerell, here together, once, (on a mission to be helpful to this hand-writer)1 and Cockerell again, alone, further to fi nd out, if things talked over would be possible.2 One of the impediments to asking you to come, was, that Lethaby a little time back, in one of his incisively friendly notes, hoped to catch a fine Saturday & come – and he comes today. You know, I detest a third person, of importance, to upset the quiet of speech of two others and I did not want you to be the unlucky one; now you know it, and can make allowance for the too weak head of an octogenarian with no hair on the top of his head, to break the fall of misfortune? 296

1903–1914

Therefore, when you can see your way & a Saturday, to come please do not say nay to a fair offer. I am truly glad that Miss Gompertz has kept up to the acknowledged pitch of good will, and good behaviour to you, as well as others,3 and I feel touched that the Winchester brother was courageous enough, to put your name in front of her when she was in need of an adviser. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘Went to Cliffords Inn & found Walker just starting for Caxtons, so accompanied him & after a talk with Webb about his thoughts of removing, went on to Crabbet.’ CD, 8 April 1911. It seems that SCC and EW probably discussed financial affairs with PSW, for EW wrote two days after the visit. ‘I find by enquiry that an annuity may be purchased in the Post Office at the rate of £5:2:4 per £1 of annuity therefore £1200 in Consols would at present prices purchase an annuity of about £200 per year for life. It is possible that one might be bought on rather better terms elsewhere: I will enquire & let you know.’ EW to PSW, 10 April 1911, Cheltenham 1991.1016.653. 2 ‘Went on to Victoria & to Three Bridges by the 1.25. Spent a couple of hours with Webb talking about his affairs & then to Crabbet.’ CD, 13 April 1911. It appears that PSW was considering moving into lodgings, although nothing came of this. On 9 April, SCC had searched unsuccessfully for something suitable in Ovingdean, a village outside Brighton which later was absorbed within the borough. 3 See above, Letter 1084. ‘Miss Gompertz’s house is quite finished now & she is living in it & making her garden, & but for this wintry weather would be in a little paradise. It was altogether a pleasant piece of work for me, she was so reasonable & nice over everything.’ GWJ to PSW, 3 April 1911, V&A, AAD.

1094 • To George Washington Jack, 19 April 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. Wednesday April 19. 1911. My dear Geo: Jack. I was reminded of you, again, by learning from the News Paper, of the death of George Howard, Titular Earl of Carlisle,1 and I was saddened by the fact, for many passed memories were awakened in me, and I suspect you will also have to bear the loss of a kindly and interesting human being, who sought your more than capable assistance in doing for him what no-one else could have done so well for him, as you have. Can you, conveniently, come here next Saturday, the 22nd?2 and if so, would you come by the train which gets here in time for my dinner? i.e. your usual train, and please Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD 297

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 GH died following a heart attack on 16 April 1911. 2 ‘I feel very much the need of hearing a voice that belongs to the good old days, and shall look forward to Saturday – “we’re a’ wearin awa” there can be no doubt and I feel this more than usually since I heard of Ld Carlisle’s death. I saw him just a week ago, in bed, but apparently looking cheerful & not at all sickly[;] he was kind as usual and I miss him very much, little as I saw of him. I was doing some things for him – little wooden soldiers – now he won’t see them and I am disappointed. I am sure you must feel this dropping away of your old friends to the “land of the leal”.’ GWJ to PSW, 19 April 1911, V&A, AAD. ‘Land of the leal’: the realm of the blessed departed; heaven (Scottish, OED).

1095 • To George Washington Jack, 12 June 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 12 June 1911. My good friend, dear George Jack. Your kindly inquiring letter of the 10th calls for a little more return of expression than would rest comfortably on a P. card. Your condolence helped my condition & state of mind,1 as also did one from the good Lethaby, from Alfriston, where [he] had gone – as aforetime – for a snatch-holiday in W[h]itsuntide, and I am not sure if he has returned to London as yet, & I have not his address there. I am suspecting things may have called him away earlier than he expected. By the thoughtful help of Miss Gompertz, you know almost as much as I do, of the ‘patient’,2 but am expecting a letter by each post, with later information from the 2 doctors, i.e. the one at Winchester, who attended my brother before, and the other, Doctor James Stowers – a nephew of ours.3 The medicos will not allow of my going to Winchester (at all events at present) as they fear that emotional, or other excitement, might be injurious. His attack was an apoplectic one, & of course he is seriously ill. The medical reports to me are various, according to the effects of sleep –&c, &c, but he is an old man (in 83rd year) and that is not to the good. I had some long experience of that kind of illness when my good friend Charles Faulkner lay so long in his good sister’s care, which perhaps you may still remember? I shall get you to come and cheer me, (according to the condition of the patient) from time to time on report. At present I can but thank you heartily for your unfailing good will towards me at all times. With kind remembrance to your wife & children. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Harry Webb had suffered a stroke. ‘I dont know whether it is ever any good condoling with ones friends when in misfortune but the news of your brothers illness makes me feel as if I must write to you if twere only to find out how you are taking it. I am sure it must be casting a shadow over your

298

1903–1914 days & night. I feel very sorry for him, if as I have heard, he is not wholly incapacitated, but can realize his position of helplessness.’ GWJ to PSW, 10 June 1911, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘Miss Gompertz writes very feelingly about it all and seems to have little hope of his ultimate recovery.’ 3 James Herbert Stowers (1851–1930), the son of PSW’s sister, Eliza (d. 1901) and the physician Nowell Stowers. He trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and became a highly-respected consultant in dermatological diseases at St John’s Hospital for Diseases of the Skin. See also above, Letter 1080, note 2.

1096 • To Margaret Dickinson, 17 June 1911 Pencil BEECHWOOD, | WINCHESTER. Sunday. | 17. June 1911. Dear Mrs Dickinson. You will, I am afraid, have been disappointed by [my] not writing to you at once after my journey here. I would have liked to do it, but have found myself wholly engaged with the poor patient, and the two doctors. The interview I had with my brother was on the next morning, after arrival, and Dr England wished me to see his patient before the nurse took me into his room, the next morning which so happened without mishap of too exciting a time for the patient. The doctor agreed that my brother recognised me, and happily without being overstrained by the meeting. Doctor Stowers came on the Saturday, and the two together confirmed the opinion, that the strength of the patient is slowly wasting away; happily he is not in pain, but necessarily feels all the discomfort of being bedridden. I am to see him again tomorrow morning, with Dr England, after which I shall be seeking for my return journey home, but I cannot say by which train to Waterloo I shall be liable to join. I did get from London Bridge through London by cab to Cornhill, with my watch, and then on to Harley Street & Dr Stowers. I went by ‘tube’ rail from there to Waterloo, got some tea at the station and walked here from Winchester Station without difficulty – and found Beechwood had not been neglected by the gardener, for the wealth of beautiful roses and other garden delights shewed that it had been attended to faithfully. I really hope that your having been disappointed by my silence till now, [sic] but practically I am occupied here by the one object of learning all I can of the sick brother, and the following on of his shortly sinking, and the break up of the household. I hope you have not been put about in any way since I left, and that the children & yourself are well. Believe me, Yours always sincerely, | Philip Webb P.S. It would be worthless to attempt doing anything in London, till after the coronation. Cheltenham 1991.1016.644 299

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1097 • To Margaret Dickinson, 6 July 1911 Beechwood. Winchester. 6th July 1911. Dear Mrs Dickinson Thank you for your very kind and sympathetic letter. Indeed, the change by death in a family is always a trying time. But the dear brother so slowly sank, that, at last, there was no pain and he quite peacefully ceased to exist. Tomorrow, Friday, the buryal [sic] takes place at the large Cemetery on high ground, overlooking a beautiful country; so that the graveyard is not repulsive in appearance at all, and is very carefully kept. I believe I shall be able to get away for home on Saturday the 8th at some time in the evening, and I shall gladly do so, and hope to meet you and yours in good health. Yours sincerely, | Philip Webb Cheltenham 1991.1016.644

1098 • To George Washington Jack, 13 July 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 13 July. 1911. My dear Jack. Your excellent & most kindly letter of the 10th deserved attention at once, and if I had not been very much behind in acknowledging other & imperative letters of late, I would have written earlier. I have four letters from W.R. Lethaby, of skilful brevity, and I’ve answered the last by asking him if he can come here on Saturday afternoon, 15th and give me a spur out of a kind of weariness which has beset me. I told him I would not have you both together, as that would be waste of good material in friendships.1 Inwardly I have thanked you both for the kindest of thoughtful letters at this time when, perforce of death, one has to think backward in the roll of the dead in the life of a family.2 I helped to bury the good brother – whom you knew – on Friday last, in a Cemetery on a knoll, well above the general level round Winchester, and the view from thence was as touchingly beautiful as any I can recall to my memory, in my life of love for the earth. Of course, this brother having had two severe attacks of illness, before the younger sister died, never really got back to his old self; for the brother & sister were as one, in all their natural ways of life, and his prolonged period of existence owed much to their mutual help of each other.3 300

1903–1914

The small house at Winchester, which you had made so simple and pleasant, was to them a real home, and as I looked about it last week, I thought it had a quite unusual grace & harmony of rare simplicity.4 Can you manage to come here on one day in next week? letting me know the day before-hand, for I am longing for the exercise of the friendship there is between us.5 Yours, always sincerely | Philip Webb. Kind remembrance to your wife & daughters. V&A, AAD

1 ‘You were quite right as to having us separately. Lethaby will I hope be able to chase away the shadows, he has plenty of “Earth Love” as you call it.’ GWJ to PSW, 15 July 1911, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘I have heard from Lethaby that your brother has got his release. I am sure, under the circumstances, it is a thing he would most have desired himself, but with you – how is it? to lose an affectionate brother will make an awful gap in your life, and I cannot but think of you all alone in your little parlour looking fate in the face. I know you can do this, and in a right straight way too, but it is a grim business.’ GWJ to PSW, 9 July 1911, V&A, AAD. 3 ‘I always did admire your family courage – you all seemed to have it – your sisters not less than their brothers – it is a quality which makes all their other parts more valuable.’ 4 See Vol. III, Letter 689, note 1, and Letter 937, above. 5 ‘[O]n my own part I feel that I too have lost a very kind and good friend, and I cannot afford to lose such bits out of my life without feeling it. Would it cheer you if I came to see you, just say the word.’

1099 • To Sydney Cockerell, 20 July 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 20 July. 1911. My dear Cockerell – forgive the delay in my answer to your most kindly and in other ways excellent letter of the 17th. Mrs Dickn on acct of the change in our midsummer fortnightly flitting, will leave me in charge of Alice for a week,1 and on the mother’s return she will send her daughter on her week’s change of air, and sightseeing. You know the habitual hold on my persistent habits of life, which seem strange even to friends, and to unfriends – preposterous; also, I know, that you will not be less than always kindly to me in the future!2 The good brother lay for about a fortnight in restlesswise, but without acute pain of any kind, & towards the last it was all peacefulness for him; & we laid him in the pleasant looking cemetery overlooking one of the divinest views in Hampshire – so that we returned to the homestead for a little while, & broke up thankful for all.3 Missa Dick did (& so did I) like the little frog-pictures in the grass, greatly.4 Kind regards to Mrs Cockerell. Bedlam on 4 legs will be breaking loose about Caxtons, on & about 1st Augt with sale of pure blooded Arabs neighing & whinneying as if the fleas & flys [sic] of this midsummer were tickling them. 301

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

W.R.L. gave an hour or two of bracing gossip yesterday afternoon – and George Jack is coming for the same end this aftn. Yours sincerely – but with no memory to speak of whatever, (& more letters to do) Philip Webb. V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/211

1 By which he probably means ‘in Alice’s charge’. She was now aged 20 or 21, and certainly acted as his temporary housekeeper in 1912, when Margaret Dickinson was away (see below, Letter 1109). 2 ‘If on thinking it over you should find it possible to come to Cambridge while Mrs Dickinson is away I can find you a quiet and comfortable lodging if you would not care to take possession of my College rooms – and you could see as much or as little of me as you should choose. Cambridge is half empty now, and very beautiful. There would be abundance of architecture for your pabulum, & Walker would come down, & Lethaby to go a walk with you. Is it out of the question? I beg you not to reject the idea too hurriedly.’ SCC to PSW, 17 July 1911, V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/208. 3 ‘I have heard nothing of your brother’s ending, but I hope it was peaceful. You could not lose the companion of your childhood and of a long lifetime without much sorrow and the retracing of many half forgotten paths of memory – but he lived valiantly, did much good, relieved much pain and died at a ripe age, and no doubt the thought of this is a great comfort. I know how the knowledge of my sister’s goodness helped me to bear her loss a year ago.’ 4 ‘Mrs Dickinson takes such an indulgent view of my little family that I am sending some more snapshots, with an envelope in which they can be posted back when she has seen them.’ On 21 May, Margaret Dickinson had thanked SCC for a previous family photograph: ‘Dear Sir | I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave me to receive the Photo of dear little Margaret & Christopher & I thank you so very much for giving me one. You know how much I shall prize it. . . . Mr. Webb keeps so well & still enjoys his long walks, & I trust he will keep so for many years, for I dont know what I should do if anything happened to him. I think I should break my heart. The roads looks so nice with every kind of green on the Hedgerows.’ V&A, NAL MSL/1958/690/212.

1100 • To William Hale White, 26 July 1911 Pencil; WHW annotation ‘I hope this letter will never be destroyed by anybody who knew the writer or the person to whom it was written. W.H.W.’ Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 26 July. 1911 My dear Hale White. I gladly read your handwriting again, to say nothing of the intelligence it brings – ’tis dated 24 July. ’11. The one preceding it is dated 22nd April ’11, when you & yours were preparing to migrate for a while to Ashdown Forest: since then, the time has not been my own, for my brother had an apoplectic seizure on the 23rd of May. Heard from one of the doctors on the 15th June that I should go to Winchester, and I stayed there for 5 days. On the 30th telegram from the other doctor for me to return to Winchester, which I did, and the good old brother died on the 2nd of July, and happily without 302

1903–1914

acute pain – throughout. He was in his 84th year, and we buried him on the 7th July, in Winchester Cemetery. Even while the funeral service was proceeding, my attention wandered to the outlook, from the hill of white stone memorials, to one of the loveliest views over the vale between, & the higher hills beyond – a scene of perfect beauty. So we came away, and for a few days I did for the trustees what I could to help them in their offices, &c, &c. There are two as yet who remain of the family a sister aged 85, or 86, and this pencil writer in his 81st year. So, you will see, or fancy me in this lovely weather (barring heat & drought) pondering over the ways and woes of life, and of the intense beauties this earth has, of making us forget the opposites; and yet, on my field path of walking, I can sing myself into a peace of mind which makes amends – say – for such a parliamentary show as is proceeding at this time, not that it is not interesting, for I find it highly so in a way!! Kind remembrance to you, and yours, & real rejoicing that music is so well to the front with you. I’ve only read of Porpora in the music dictionary, and in George Sand’s story.1 Yes, I too have always enjoyed Cobbet[t]’s Rural Rides, & especially about the lands around Winchester.2 Yours always sincerely | Philip Webb. P.S. I have not carelessly forgotten your painful rheumatism, but truly hope you soon will.3 BCL MR 10/35

1 ‘I have heard lately some more beautiful old music by Porpora – exquisite! Why these early Italian and French masters should be so little known I cannot conceive. Couperin is another, melodious, simple, delicate, no Wagnerian metaphysics, but just – MUSIC.’ WHW to PSW, 24 July 1911, LTF, p. 382. Niccolò Porpora (1686–1786), born in Naples, composed operas and oratorios, but his principal success was as a singing teacher. 2 ‘My father used to delight in that book. Did you ever read it? It is amazingly good stuff – so juicy.’ LTF, p. 381. 3 ‘I am much worried with rheumatism which comes on about half an hour after I get to bed. If you have ever suffered from this trouble and have discovered a remedy, let me know. The doctor’s stuff is of no use.’

1101 • To William Richard Lethaby, 27 July 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex. 27 July. 1911 My dear Lethaby. I did so like and enjoy your visit – wish for more but must put up without. 303

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Your call on the keeper of the pictures, at S. K. Museum, was just what was needful, and I’m not surprised at his being shy about displacing other pictures for four more of Boyces. I shall tell the Trustees of my brother, that it would be well to have the pictures in Harley Street, where my nephew has his professional chambers – (one of the trustees)1 – and where that [sic] could be seen at any time. I believe the Bradford on Avon picture was bought by the Museum, at the strong recommendation of Fairfax Murray but 3 of the Winchester pictures are of greater strength than the Avon one, but, the inside of the Westmr Abbey one is a real beauty:2 and we shall see, thanks to your seeing the curator, &c &c. Yrs affectionately | Philip Webb. P.S. They are busy at reaping what you saw in the fields here. Pardon this scribble. V&A, AAD

1 See above, Letter 1095, note 3. 2 WRL was negotiating with the V&A about the disposal of Harry Webb’s GPB watercolours. For those already owned by the Museum and touched on here, see Vol. II, Letter 482.

1102 • To George Washington Jack, 4 August 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. Sussex. 4th Aug. ’11. My dear Jack. Your packet of pencils, and letters, duly came and are equally appreciated. I think Hawes Turner’s references to W. Boxall R.A – as well as Eastlake, d[itt]o and Frederick Burton, do make it nearly certain, that the Boxall was either the man I was thinking of – as the friend as well as the portrait painter of my father – or a possible son of the painter? and I am glad at having some evidence which may be corroborated in future.1 As to your rash generosity in the matter of usable pencils, it cannot be swallowed at one gulp, but must be settled in one of the lesser streets of London when we are together. I have been unable to make any appointment with you as to my being steered clear of wheels, & shouts of fright, by your more experienced ways of the traffic in London in these days – when the devil and petrol have it all to themselves.2 Now, I’m afraid you may not be as free to give your time to me, for such holidays as you get from your public labours, when you offered to steer me; and I don’t know when more holidays may come to you? I want – indeed – must journey to London shortly, as watch, spectacles, shoes, &c, have to be looked to there, and one day next week I would like to lay hold of, without in any way deranging your possible freedom. 304

1903–1914

I am rather saddened by reports heard here of possible difficulties in carrying on the incomparable efforts of “Anti-scrape”? Here was Lethaby writing of the Socy as one of the few comforting Art affairs of these years! I think I know the cause of the scare & scarcity of money, arising from 3 quarters of the supporters of the socy having never in their lives actually seen with dependable eyes a genuine ancient building in all the dignity of its quality and teaching.3 Certainly I would like to see St Paul’s inside with you, for when I last was there, the “demnition dust” of London was an impossible veil to seeing thro[u]gh it.4 Let me know of any day or days you could spare in next week, and I’ll try and seize it. Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. P.S. I ask pardon for this “late o’ the day” letter, but I have had a many of other kind to acknowledge. V&A, AAD

1 ‘W[illiam]. Boxall R.A. was made Director of this Gallery on the death of Sir Charles Eastlake in 1865, and resigned in 1873 (20 Feb). He was succeeded by Sir Frederick Burton. He is no doubt the painter Mr Webb means.’ Hawes Turner to GWJ, 4 August 1911, V&A, AAD. GWJ enclosed this letter with his own of the same date. The painter, Hawes Harison Turner (1851–1939), was Keeper of the National Gallery (essentially an administrative role) from 1898–1914. 2 ‘I shall be very glad to see you and show you the railways trams &c between your points of call. As you know these have all been changed and amplified since you knew London traffic and they are getting just amplified up to the point of madness.’ GWJ to PSW, 4 August 1911, V&A, AAD. 3 ‘Yes, it is rather grievous about the “Antiscrape”, but on the whole I am not afraid for its ultimate life and health – it is so well established now as a part of the social machinery and in the most practical way that it will suffer less through its present changes than it would have done earlier in its history. Turner’s resignation is partly the result of his increasing years & its immediate reason is his having to give up his office shortly as he has no work.’ GWJ to PSW, 13 August 1911, V&A, AAD. 4 ‘I want to see the mosaic decorations at St Pauls as closely as possible. They are I think very fine indeed and do Sir W. Richmond credit – if we have time when you come I hope you will look in to St Pauls & tell me what you think of them.’ 4 August 1911.

1103 • To George Washington Jack, 18 August 1911 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 18 Aug: 1911. My dear Jack. Though loth to do anything so trying as writing a letter, I must do it now, for yesterday was a real gala day (Italian) ‘Gal’ (sic, in old English!) for us; and if the tribulation, which is now besetting England, somewhat dashed our rejoicing in “larks”,1 still, did we not altogether find amends in the brightness of the London atmosphere – even ‘Paul’s’ was seen, far away, as bright as a new pin. 305

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

I do not think that you could reasonably call [sic] yourself over the coals, for losing such a day for work? – my labours now are past praying for, and I gave myself over to enjoying what lay so near to me, as a really beautiful London. Hear Hear! Give my hearty good wishes to Mrs G.J and the two merry (I hope) girls, and tell them from me to go & do likewise while this perfect weather lasts. I got home safe, and rightly, after being carefully put into the train by a remarkably polite railway official. Also, at the station of 3 Bridges, a neighbour of mine – Sir John Luscombe2 – begged me to accept a seat in his brilliant ‘motor’, which I was obliged thankfully to refuse! Mrs Dickinson was gladdened by hearing that you fed me up during the day, with right & proper foods for sustenance, and judged rightly as to wisdom of settling our accounts as they occurred. Just now, I am really anxious, for either some healthful agreement must be come to, or dire devilry between human beings be the horrid result.3 Adieu till another day – | from yours thankfully | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘[I]f you will say when and where? London Bridge or Victoria? I am to meet you I shall be there – and as Joe Gargery would say “what larks”.’ GWJ to PSW, 13 August 1911, V&A, AAD. For Joe Gargery in Dickens’s Great Expectations, see also above, Letter 928, note 3. 2 Sir John Luscombe (1848–1937), a Worth resident, had a very successful career as an insurance underwriter, serving as chairman of Lloyds on five occasions. He was also a celebrated rugby player, being a member of the England team in the first international match against Scotland in 1871. 3 The commercial port and city of Liverpool was affected during the summer of 1911 by a general transport strike, involving dockers and seamen as well as railway workers, a sign of the new power of organised trade unions. A public gathering on 13 August was broken up by the police, and two days later soldiers fired on a crowd, killing two. ‘[T]he real stumbling block [is] that this generation has not yet learned the lesson that what is called “industrialism” is the real expression or ruling power of the day – there is nothing else with any real power. The Railways magnates refuse to acknowledge this & will not salute the “Rebel” standard of Unionism, one which is now very tall & striking’. GWJ to PSW, 19 August 1911, V&A, AAD.

1104 • To Elizabeth H. Flower, 29 December 1911 Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. 29 December. 1911. Dear Mrs Flower. I am in hope, that this over late recognition of your kindly recognition of Xmas time with us, has not seemed to you unworthy of a quite eleven years long of friendliness between our two Houses – (sic!)? The self reproach must lie with myself, for it was my duty to open the magnificent case of Jaffa oranges, all in good state and ready to decorate the table,

306

1903–1914

for the children friends we have here to join congratulation, we with our two at the golden feast! Reggie was able to accept the lengthened visit, by kind thought of the L & N. Western Railway.1 Mrs Dickinson has had a good letter from M. Mitchell, and I am glad to tell, that she says “I am keeping on much the same, I don’t go back”. We here, wish you to have some happy change of scene and air, in spite of a seeming everlasting repeat of Mr Mantalini’s Demnition damp!2 We all greet you cheerfully at this time, & with hearty thanks by our Secretary (& a bad old one) Philip Webb. BL Add 45355, f. 73

1 PSW had supported Margaret Dickinson in seeking a suitable opening with the London and North Western Railway for her son, Reggie. See above, Letter 1088. 2 See Vol. III, Letter 842, note 4.

1105 • To William Richard Lethaby, 22 January 1912 Caxtons. | Worth. by Crawley | Sussex. Jany 22nd ’12 My particularly (now) dear Lethaby. Your 3 last letters have been great gain to me, & more particularly the last, of the 14th – for I like our being nearer & nearer, for I much want steadying in my old age: for example, my memory fails and leads me into ugly bogs. Still, my hope of seeing you as soon as may be is present, only that I’m looking at Barometer and, and, the clouds, & stars, for a change in the weather so that you may come and be safe here soon for our short hours. You will have remembered the healthy brown ripened corn in the fields here on your last call? the said fields are preparing to shine again, come summer, but the repeated wettings and pure white mists hold us in suspense just now, and the kind ‘mississ’ would not thank me for a beckoning before the air is less intemperate? Also, I’m a looking for the book to cheer me when the publisher has done admiring it.1 O dear me, my sins of late do follow me, and even my natural modesty stares me in the face. You may know about it? for the House of Lords – I mean the Royal Institute of B. architects has invited my too great genius to be rewarded by a golden medal by help of the King on his return!!2 O dear me, and I wrote such a bastered [sic] of a letter in answer, which ended in a blunder; for I forgot what was intended to be said, and my little fate clapped it[s] hands. But I sent it after all, and now I’m smiling, having nothing to lose, so long as I have you my dear, Says Philip Webb.

307

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

P.S. never you mind the blunders in this ragged letter. What a cheery good natured fellow is that A.H. Powell. Please to tell Mrs Lethaby, that I’ve not forgotten her good natured complaint, that George Jack & shop[p]ing had me for his own the last time I was [in] London town. V&A, AAD

1 WRL, Architecture: an Introduction to the History and Theory of the Art of Building (London: Williams & Norgate, 1911). 2 Consistent with his beliefs (he had always refused invitations to join the RIBA), PSW now refused the offer of its Royal Gold Medal. He was following in honourable footsteps. Both JR and Richard Norman Shaw turned the offer down, as did WRL himself, in 1924.

1106 • To George Washington Jack, 20 or 27 February 1912 Caxtons. Worth | by Crawley. Sussex My dear Jack. I have been thinking of late that you must be wishing to see me and the old House at Home, and so it turns out to be so. The Household finds that the 29th Feby would suit us as to avoid Friday, to fit-in with your affairs – therefore we say the coming Thursday by the train you have mostly come by, somewhere before or after noon? Send a postcard if in doubt, and I will meet the train, and show you “Catkins” on the walking up, for things that are really nature’s are putting themselves forward for observation, and follow John Ruskin’s rule – to stare at the objects of beauty. You had better send p. card to Weir, that he must not come with you, but should suggest another date, for the two together would spoil the business of my getting the most out of both. This Tuesday is premonitory of “the wild March morning” of Tennyson,1 and rs M Dickn is drying her weeks washing with an air that really drys, [sic] and of late there has been no drying, except before the fire. We will talk the rest, for this paper is impossible for more writing & so till then Yours | Philip Webb. You are all quite right about the Lethaby book, which is excelling.2 V&A, AAD

1 The reference is to lines from Alfred Tennyson’s ‘Conclusion’ (1842), the third section added to ‘The May Queen’ (1832). ‘All in the wild March-morning I heard the angels call; / It was when the moon was setting, and the dark was over all’ (25–6). 2 See previous letter, note 1.

308

1903–1914

1107 • To Edith Crosby Lethaby, 9 May 1912 Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. May 9th ’12 Dear Mrs Lethaby I am going tomorrow by 10 a.m. train from 3 Bridges to Victoria, on my way to an old friend, in Upper Phillimore Gardens Kensington. I am not likely to be there for more than an hour, and I then propose to find my way to 111 Inverness Terrace, with the hope that you will not be ‘out of Town’! For I would much like to see you and Richard in your London home, after your expression of my not having called on you last summer, when Mr Jack piloted me about the huge & half forgotten London of my earlier years.1 P.S. Of course I know very well that Richard’s time may be taken up, and he unable to meet me??? Believe me | Yours sincerely | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 For that previous trip to London, see above, Letter 1103.

1108 • To William Richard Lethaby, 22 June 1912 Caxtons. | Worth June 22nd 1912 My dear Lethaby. Your nice & kindly note set me up for a bit, and I gladly think of the proposed visit to a little place in Switzerland. I think you are patient under travelling, and I think so well of your helpful companion in that way. I am ashamed of myself every now & then, that I have never so much as thanked her, particularly, for putting me at my ease in that pleasant London house, fended for me, and kept the miraculous dogs from eating me up.1 I liked them very much. I cannot explain how I have so almost wholly forgotten London, and Kensington Gardens and the House that Jack did not build, for he was not with me then,2 but he was here last Wednesday and helped me out jollily – good fellow, Jack – funny he should have to go to Ireland and complete a Castle – he’ll do it!!3 Do you know anything of Francis Bond? who is photoing English Cathedrals4 – he sent me a sample – too small and over black & harsh. Couldn’t make neither head nor tail of the “Lady chapel” view, of Liverpool Cathl. Do you know anything of Oliver W.F. Lodge? who has boldly stepped in and backed up, the otherwise unknown William Morris, with a not so bad lecture he gave in Birmingham.5 I had almost to hold my breath as I read lines of the Great Fellow whom we knew! I at once got the big book down, of the Gigantic Sigurd.6 Ah. Yes. 309

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

To you, and the kindly Mrs Richard, may you have a most successful little resting holiday in the mountainous place of rugged peace. Yrs Philip Webb. Please to correct the blunders. V&A, AAD

1 See previous letter. 2 1 Palace Green, PSW’s house for the Howards (1868–70). See Vol. I, Letters 6–7. 3 Edward Plunkett, eighteenth Baron Dunsany (1878–1957) had commissioned GWJ to make alterations to Dunsany Castle, County Meath, in Ireland. ‘Jack added a ground floor extension to the west front which included a new billiard room, above which were two bedrooms and a bathroom.’ Gaimster, p. 48. The new plasterwork was a significant ornamental feature, and GWJ’s carved oak fi replace was exhibited in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1912. The works were complete by July 1914. 4 The architectural historian Francis Bond (1852–1918) published a number of works on early English ecclesiastical architecture, including English Cathedrals Illustrated (London: George Newnes, 1899), and Gothic Architecture in England (London: B.T. Batsford, 1905). 5 Oliver William Foster Lodge (1878–1955), son of the physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge (1851–1940). His The End of an Age (Birmingham: Birmingham Printers, 1912) is a lecture on JR and WM given on 8 July 1912 at Woodbrooke, a Quaker college founded in 1903 by George Cadbury (1839–1922) in the building which was formerly Cadbury’s house in Selly Oak, Birmingham. 6 ‘That the author of the only English epic since Paradise Lost (The Sigurd) should be a master in that very different field of song, lyrical poetry, is notable enough, but when we find these songs among the very best of the age, we can only marvel at this Master of all trades and Jack of none.’ Lodge, p. 11.

1109 • To May Morris, 6 August 1912 Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. August 6th 1912. Thank you dear May Morris for your kindly letter of 25 July. This midsummer time is so irregular in calls in various ways, that one forgets when and how things happen, and I am dreffel-bad in remembering not to forget, and my pen does so wigglewaggle, that it is not of writing that comes easily to me in my old age. Hence these inky tears. Mrs Dickinson is away for the usual holiday, and Alice is in charge of me for the week, and she is handy at it. Her mother will be back in a day or two, & after she has shaken herself into the weekly work of keeping the house in order, we shall be glad to see you. What do you say to Wednesday or Thursday, or even Friday in next week? by which time – may be – these wild gales will have sobered down, and peradventure we may keep our hats on our heads. Will you let me know what time in the day you would prefer to journey in, and we will arrange our light hospitality accordingly? 310

1903–1914

There are no 2nd class carriages on our line now, but the 3rd class are reasonably easy to travel in. If you sent me a post card as to the train, I would meet you at 3 Bridges station. I shall be very glad to see and hear tell of yourself, & of the serious labour that has beset you.1 I am sure it was needed, and the result towards the memory of your father’s great individuality, will be a surprised to those who have not entered its wonders. Yours in affectionate remembrance | Philip Webb. BL Add 45343, ff. 85–6

1 He means her editorial work for The Collected Works of William Morris. See above, Letter 1089. ‘I had a letter from May Morris this morning. She is getting on with the editing of the last eight volumes of the collected edition of her father’s works. Don’t you think her introductions are admirably written? She is proposing to put a photograph of the tithe barn at Great Coxwell near Farringdon [sic] as an especial architectural favourite of Morris’s.’ EW to PSW, 28 October 1912, Cheltenham AG&W 1991.1016.654.

1110 • To William Hale White, 19 August 1912 Pencil Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. Sussex. August 19. 1912 My dear Hale White. Your post-card of 13th August, was a quite reasonable reproach, for I am lamentably behind in acknowledging even the kindest of friends remembrances. I did not think well of your making an effort to come here either by train or cab, for the weather – even for a hardy-one – has been quite remarkable for unfitness for harvesting, as well as venturing out o[f] doors without preparation for a sharp downfall of rain, and I caught it yesterday, in spite of the beauty of a promise, in the way of sunshine, & non-threatening of cloud-forms; but the latter let fall on me, & I stayed with Umbrella under trees, & patience, for some twenty-five drenching minutes. I shall be obliged to go to London – either in this week or next, but hope to make peace with you personally in an afternoon, as soon as I am clear of the London appointment, and will write & let you know what happens. I have been almost paralysed by learning from Public News – that at last – William Morris has been recognised as a representative of considerable ability!1 I hope that injured eye of yours will make amends by getting to be quite well.2 With very kind remembrance to Mrs White,3 and Alice. Believe me, still | Yours sincerely, | Philip Webb. BCL MR 10/36 311

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV 1 Probably a further reference to Oliver Lodge, The End of an Age. See above, Letter 1108. 2 ‘Is there any chance of setting eyes on you? Unluckily, though, there is only one eye which I can set. The other was suddenly extinguished four or five weeks ago by rupture of a blood-vessel in the retina. You can hardly believe how awkward reading and writing are with only one eye.’ WHW to PSW, 14 October 1912, LTF, p. 394. 3 The writer Dorothy Vernon Horace Smith (1877–1967), was a keen churchwoman and WHW’s junior by some 45 years. She became his second wife in March 1911, two years before his death. She would edit The Early Life of Mark Rutherford, by himself (1913) and LTF (1924), as well as commemorating him in her own Groombridge Diary (1924).

1111 • To George Washington Jack, 21 August 1912 Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley Sussex. 21 August ’12. My dear Jack. This week until now, or never? has been a wet one – also, Mrs Flower asked if it would suit the household for her to come here on Thursday 22nd – i.e. tomorrow – for the afternoon, to which we have agreed, i.e. Missa Dick. As you said that either week would suit you, I have arranged my affairs so as to get away from here to you on Tuesday 27th by the 10 o.c. a.m. train from Three Bridges, reaching London Bridge at 11. o.c? I have thought it better to begin our journey from the river, and work our way quietly towards the west end,1 for I have to get spectacles mended, and look in on one or two more shops. There will be time enough between now and then for you to let me know if the above propositions would suit you or not? We must insure our lives under Umbrellas if the present persistent weather does not give in. We can hardly expect such a freedom day as our last, but we will try.2 Yours truly | Philip Webb. I see that the venerable and admirable General Booth has won the race, and only gave in when he had no more breath.3 V&A, AAD

1 ‘I have asked the tailor I spoke of, and he can get the Bannockburn cloth & would have some patterns ready if you tell me a few days in advance. I think you like brown or grey.’ GWJ to PSW, 17 August 1912, V&A, AAD. 2 ‘Yes, “we will try”, despite the rain, if it should so happen.’ GWJ to PSW, 22 August 1912, V&A, AAD. For their previous London meeting, see above, Letter 1103. 3 William Booth (1829–1912), the founder-leader of the Salvation Army (and thus its ‘General’), died on 20 August following a cataract operation.

312

1903–1914

1112 • To William Richard and Edith Crosby Lethaby, 14 September 1912 Caxtons Worth. by Crawley | Sussex. Sepr 14. ’12 Dear friends. First, was your cheerful note telling of the proposed refreshment in quiet Switzerland, and that I was to open my Atlas’s, &c. I knew what sort of a search would be in Stieler’s closely knit vol: so that I guessed at your perfect outlook when you got to be there?1 Well, your Reims P. card was enough for me to learn you were nearing home, & its work there. I have never seen Reims, and the specialized N.E end of it has set me up for a while – but I shall never see it in the stone & Mason’s labour form, and happily never in the steel cum concrete way. I don’t, you shall have your own way! You guess I have been reading the little green book with repeated curiosity?2 Well, as you and the good missus have had your Swiss medicine, I don’t mind saying that this little book has almost outstepped your earlier Vols: Also the mentally reclusive G. Jack holds with me on this point, and now I am minded that S[an]ta Sophia is in danger, I hope exag[g]erated – by the Carrion Crows hovering over it. The chief in charge of the reports, we know by his care of Winchester Cathl.3 Doubtless he will be surrounded by the scientists and the engineers and a good job, or a bad, they will have in their hand. We know that wonder-folk love a good tumbling about of a Cathedral &c. And now I hope you are in the comfortable home of 111 [Inverness Terrace], with the faithful hounds answering to the good cheer of your return. I want this belated to get into the post now, from yours sincerely | Ph. Webb. V&A, AAD

1 Many editions of the Hand-Atlas über alle Theile der Erde und über das Weltgebaüde by Adolf Stieler (1775–1836) followed the first of 1817. 2 Architecture: an Introduction to the History and Theory of the Art of Building. 3 He means Thomas Graham Jackson, who undertook restoration work at Winchester Cathedral in 1905–12. Jackson owned a copy of The Church of Sancta Sophia Constantinople (1894) by WRL and Harold Swainson (see Vol. II, Letter 494, note 2), and his investigation of this and other Byzantine buildings was published as Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913). See John Thomas, ‘Sir Thomas Graham Jackson and the church of Hagia Sophia’, Architectural History, XXV (1982), pp. 98–101.

313

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1113 • To William Richard Lethaby, 27 January 1913 Caxtons. Worth. &c Jany 27. 1913 I am more than thankful, my dear Lethaby, for your holding me in your mind, for I am a graceless correspondent, both in manner and mat[t]er, and so Old, and do not deserve the notice, either of yourself, or Madame who sends me papers of the “Nation” – for I was glad to read the downright trouncing of Kipling in a review there, which has been due to him for [a] long while.1 And now I’ve done roughling my feathers, and smoothing them by studying your paper on the wonders of Early Christian objects, in our Museum.2 The hard & fast black & white diagrams in it are captivating – thanks to your care & patience – bless you; – see over, for I’ve not quite done. When the wet & cold winter has passed away, I shall be looking for you here, for the thrushes are just tuning their instruments these one or two early days of promise; you failed to come and talk me over, as you so nicely did the summer before last. You see, I am got to be so old, that I am tedious even to myself, and wish to have your good props & stays for the little while longer. I had thought that the old & trustworthy friend, Norman Shaw, would have held on as long as myself – but No, and he had done good serious work, & could have done more if he had lingered longer.3 Kindly remembrance from me, still alive, to Madame & the short legged Hounds, | from Yours, | Philip Webb’s scrawl. V&A, AAD

1 The anonymous reviewer of Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling in The Nation, XII (4 January 1913), does not spare his subject. ‘The truth is, Mr. Kipling has put the worst of his genius into his poetry. His verses have brazen “go” and lively colour and something of the music of travel; but they are too illiberal, too snappish, too knowing, to afford deep or permanent pleasure to the human spirit.’ (p. 610). 2 ‘Some Early Christian Objects at the British and Victoria and Albert Museums’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, XXIII (1911), pp. 325–33. 3 Richard Norman Shaw, who succeeded PSW as George Edmund Street’s chief assistant, died on 17 November 1912. See Vol. II, Letter 614, notes 4 and 5.

1114 • To William Richard Lethaby, 2 July 1913 Caxtons. | Worth. by Crawley. | Sussex. July. 2 (1913)1 Dear friend Lethaby. Of late you have sent to me little “Tracts,” and more than often inclosed Postcard pictures – always a solace in the Old-age – and I was born Jany 12. 1813.1831

314

1903–1914

George Jack came to see us last Saturday – good, & helpful-over the roughs of time, always! The weather here looks as if it would hold-out to the end of the week, when the Hay-harvest will be ricked in a finish. But, the wheat, oats, and clovers, &c we will be in fit state for you to look at, to say nothing of Oak Trees in Bulk. Could not you and the kind Madame also lend a hand & heart to keep me going – say on Saty next 12th July (not “Jany”)2 in the afternoon? Mrs Dickinson would gladly fend for us in simple moderation, and you could get away again by return train – 6.50 in evening from here. Yours heartily | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 This date may have been added by WRL. 2 12 January was his birthday.

1115 • To George Washington Jack, 19 September 1913 Caxtons. Worth. by Crawley. | Sussex. 19 Septr 1913. My Dear Jack Yes, I much like the photoprints you were so good as to send to me, for refreshment of memory, for I had forgotten them. I was pleased that you carried my good friend, your good wife to see the Bruges. George Wardle carried me there years agone, when I went up all the steps to the top of the famous City Tower – with all of its fine Chimes and Bells.1 I shall be glad to see you here some afternoon. Yours – always | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 When PSW travelled to Italy in December 1884, GW accompanied him as far as Brussels. They visited Ostend, Bruges and Ghent. See Vol. I, Letter 237.

1116 • To William Richard Lethaby, 7 October 1913 Caxtons. | Worth. by Crawley Sussex. Tuesday Octr 7 My dear Lethaby. You cannot know what I mean by that. Here you have sent, cards, with pleasant things on them – &c, which have helped me out of myself. The last being The Great Circle Stones of South Avebury.

315

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

Bless me! And you had not forgotten, that Our Morris had been together with me, which was no small thing. And those Marlborough days, with Kelmscote &c, &c.1 Your kind Mrs W.R.L. sent me Ralf Allen’s House at Bath,2 which made me agree with your ideas that Bath had shewn good Architecture there. I’m somewhat down in the mouth now, from the discomfort of my memory having failed me, to keep company with my 84 or 85 years on this earth – if so be? There, I cannot write a letter – as you see, and so says your affectionate Philip Webb. P.S. The Harvesting was fine this year, and ricked easily & well. V&A, AAD

1 PSW and WM visited Salisbury, Amesbury, Stonehenge, Marlborough, Avebury and Uffington in August 1879. 2 The entrepreneur Ralph Allen (1693–1764) became Mayor of Bath in 1742, the same year in which the Palladian-style house, Prior Park, was built for him overlooking the town. The architect was John Wood (1704–54).

1117 • To William Richard Lethaby, 25 February 1914 Year added by WRL Caxtons. Worth. | by Crawley. | Sussex Wednesday 25 February My dear Friend – Lethaby Your kind note is just what I wanted – but the weather having lately been too savage in its winter’s tail,1 I dared not ask you to come and cheer me a bit, but today has been beautiful, and tomorrow promises equal[l]y. Do come if you can, and meet me by your usual train in the afternoon; and I will be on the look-out on the road. Yours, as always, | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 He was not yet beyond making a pun on the title of Shakespeare’s play.

316

1903–1914

1118 • To Emery Walker, 16 June 1914 Postcard Caxtons. | Worth. by Crawley. | Sussex. June 16. 1914.1 Thank you, for so quickly lending me your good help. I duly received the packet, which will help me to find the way easily.2 I would be glad, if when you have leisure, – to see me again – when I can have the pass-book, which you took away with you.3 Hearty thanks for the help you gave me. | Philip Webb. Texas

1 ‘I saw Philip Webb on Tuesday & Wednesday. He looks well, but the wheels of his mind work more & more slowly.’ SCC to MM, 21 August 1914, BL Add 52740, f. 34. 2 Many thanks for your note acknowledging the silver.’ EW to PSW, 17 June 1914, Cheltenham 1991.1016.656. 3 ‘The pass book was in the same parcel. You can give it to me again when I come if you like. I am sending you to-morrow the little new book on Morris which I hope you will like.’

1119 • To William Richard Lethaby, 24 July 1914 Postmark POUND HILL 24 JY 14 Address To. W.R. Lethaby, Esqre | 111, Inverness Terrace | Paddington | London, W. PSW also wrote his own address on the envelope, and WRL added, in pencil, ‘July 1914. LAST’ Caxtons 24. July 1914. Dear friend. Please to come on Saturday, by train, as you note, &c, and cheer me; and see the yellowing cornfields. Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

317

THE LETTERS OF PHILIP WEBB VOLUME IV

1120 • To George Washington Jack, 19 August 1914 Caxtons. Wednesday. August 19. 1914. My dear George Jack. Your thoughtful suggestion came at a most favourable time, and the visit would be doubly rejoiced-in – if you can manage to make the effort for Thursday or Friday in this week.1 Both Mrs Dickinson and myself will be in our best of humours if you can manage it so? The train leaving London in the morning, from – [sic] the same time that Lethaby comes, and leaves in afternoon; and I will meet it prepared for good talking. Yours of good hope | Philip Webb. V&A, AAD

1 ‘I have been wondering how you are getting on these days of war alarms. We are living in exciting times and I expect neither of us thought to see such dreadful ongoings among the nations. . . . Your peaceful little village and home is worth thinking upon as a sedative. I shall try and make another excursion to see you shortly. My work is at present little hindrance as it is at a low ebb just now.’ GWJ to PSW, 15 August 1914, V&A, AAD.

318

INDEX

Volumes are indicated in bold, followed by the relevant letter number. Thus, IV. 970 denotes volume IV, Letter 970. Ackermann, Rudolph & Co (manufacturer of watercolour paints) III. 762 Acton Burnell, Shropshire I. 50–1 Adams, Katharine IV. 983 Adeane, Charles Robert IV. 1055; family estate, Babraham IV. 1055 Adeane, Madeline Pamela (née Wyndham) IV. 1055 Agasse, Jacques-Laurent I. 257, 260 III. 621 Agrigento II. 366, 570 Alberbury, Shropshire St Michael and All Angels IV. 970 Alessandri, Angelo II. 362; copies Tintoretto’s Flight into Egypt I. 262 Alinari, Leopold (photographer) I. 262 Allen, Annie I. 130, 132 Allingham, Helen I. 258 Agnew, William I. 87 Anderson, Sara IV. 875, 888 Archbutt, J. & W.E. (makers of scientific instruments) I. 243 Architectural Association I. 124 Arezzo Basilica di San Francesco I. 251–2 III. 672; Guido d’Arezzo II. 381 Armstrong, Reverend J. LETTER TO IV. 948; IV. 945, 947 n2 Armstrong, Thomas II. 422 Arnold, Matthew ‘Dover Beach’ I. 288 n6; ‘Marcus Aurelius and the Christian Church’ II. 332 Arts and Crafts Exhibitions II. 468

Art Workers’ Guild group visit to Spain IV. 981; group visit to Venice II. 400–1; meetings II. 420, 454 IV. 976 n8; PSW refuses honorary membership II. 430 Ashby & Sons, Richard (builders) I. 38, 58, 60, 76, 87, 134 Ashendene Press (see also Charles St John Hornby) The Song of Songs III. 831 n2 IV. 912 Assisi I. 251; Basilica di San Francesco I. 251–2; PSW on I. 252 Astley, Beatrice I. 156 Astley, Constance LETTERS TO I. 156–7, 186, 196; I. 179 IV. 1049; memorial to brother, Francis Dukinfield Astley I. 156–7, 186, 196; and GWJ III. 784 n9, 788, 807, 810, 819 IV. 870, 948, 992; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 1049 Astley, Gertrude LETTER TO I. 196; I. 156–7 Astley, Francis I. 42 n1 Auxerre Cathedral IV. 869 Aveling, Edward I. 253 n1; PSW attends his Geology classes I. 271; PSW on I. 254 Baddeley, Welbore St Clair III. 647 Bain, Francis William A Digit of the Moon III. 676; A Heifer of the Dawn IV. 929–30; review by WSB IV. 941–2

319

INDEX

Baird, Edward William David IV. 1009 Baldoria, Natale II. 390, 392; death II. 417–8 Baldwin, Alfred I. 54 II. 590 Baldwin, Louisa (née Macdonald) LETTER TO I. 54 Balfour, Eustace James Anthony LETTER TO I. 158; founding member of SPAB I. 158 Balzac, Honoré de III. 840 IV. 974; PSW on The Chouans III. 653 Bari San Nicola II. 373, 421 Barkentin & Krall (goldmiths) I. 28 Barker, Henry LETTERS TO I. 305, 308, 313–14 Barnsley, Sidney and Ernest at Sapperton III. 632 n10, 634, 687–92, 706, 709, 841 nn3 and 6 IV. 915, 998 Barnum, Phineas II. 570 Barry, Charles IV. 1082 n4 Basset, Mr (assistant to PSW) I. 128, 150, 235, 245, 250 Bastian, Henry Charlton II. 339 Bates and Bishell (brewers) I. 301 Batsford, Bradley Thomas (bookseller) I. 139 Bax, Ernest Belfort I. 313 Baxendale, Salisbury LETTER TO I. 133 Baxter, William British Phaenogamous Botany I. 220 Baylis, Mr (stonemason) III. 760 Beale, Alice LETTER TO III. 823; III. 820 n1; donor of University of Birmingham mace III. 823, 838, 842 n1 Beale, James LETTERS TO II. 531, 572; II. 474, 480 III. 811 Beale, Margaret LETTERS TO II. 474, 486, 531; PSW consults about Standen II. 474, 486 Beaty Brothers (builders) I. 99 n1, 105–6, 119, 127 IV. 965 Becket, Edmund I. 147 Beddington Park, Sutton I. 25 Beethoven, Ludwig van I. 139 II. 362; Symphony 6 (‘Pastoral’) I. 260; Symphony 9; (‘Choral’), I. 12 III. 620

Bell, Isaac Lowthian LETTERS TO I. 302 III. 827; I. 73 n5, 76 III. 746 n3, 819; PSW designs memorial to wife I. 302 Bell, Thomas Hugh LETTER TO I. 175; I. 76, 166, 172, 182 IV. 1009 n4 Bellini, Gentile Procession of the True Cross I. 264 IV. 967 Bellini, Giovanni IV. 964; Triptych II. 508 Belloc, Hilaire PSW on The Path to Rome III. 824 Benson, Christopher (organist and churchwarden) LETTER TO I. 215 Benson, Robert Henry (merchant banker and collector) II. 541 Bentley, John Francis LETTER TO III. 679; death III. 809 n3; PSW on Westminster Cathedral III. 679, 800 IV. 924 Bewick, Thomas II. 483 III. 621, 779 History of British Birds I. 168 III. 618 Biblical references I. 83, 115, 213 II. 324, 333, 342, 362, 367, 376, 392, 397–8, 405, 434, 444, 464, 472, 477, 487, 491, 526–7, 542, 592 III. 666, 725, 734, 785, 811, 820 IV. 922, 953, 976–7, 1015, 1018, 1051; St Paul II. 406 IV. 955: on marriage II. 444, 447 ‘Billy’, the Caxtons cat III. 765, 774, 837; goes missing IV. 906, 910 Birchall, Reverend Oswald III. 619, 699, 703, 753 Bitonto Cattedrale di San Valentino II. 417, 420 Black, A&C (cartographers) I. 177 Black, George LETTER TO I. 99 Blanc, Baron Albert II. 514 n1, 527, 555 Blandford, Dorset PSW visits I. 168 Blasdale, Mrs (SCC’s Richmond landlady) IV. 1055 Blomfield, Arthur III. 841; Salisbury Cathedral II. 517; sons III. 808; St Andrew’s, Denton, Lincolnshire IV. 936–7 Blow, Detmar Jellings [DJB] LETTERS TO II. 425, 428, 439, 608; II. 410 n2, 463; architectural practice II. 608; death of father II. 584; defensive after criticism II. 608 n4; PSW on

320

INDEX

II. 443, 451, 457, 608 III. 631; PSW writes to RIBA II. 435, 439; PSW on SS Peter and Paul, Clare II. 608 III. 662; SPAB activities II. 597; works for PSW on East Knoyle church tower II. 425–6, 428–30, 443, 445–6, 448, 451, 457, 459, 465–6, 469 III. 631 Blow, Johanna Antoinette (née Finke) II. 425, 469, 584 Blunt, Lady Anne LETTER TO III. 695; III. 692, 771, 791, 818, 850 IV. 919, 953, 981, 1042 n1; injured by horse IV. 866; invites PSW to Crabbet horse sale III. 695, 698, 765; A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race (with WSB) IV. 923; her portrait of WSB on horseback IV. 958; The Seven Golden Odes of Pagan Arabia (with WSB) IV. 907, 909–10 Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen [WSB] LETTERS TO II. 565, 588 III. 675, 698, 706, 708, 711, 715, 743, 766, 772, 775, 787, 791 IV. 909, 941, 944, 953, 958, 1006, 1062; II. 603 III. 669, 846, 849 IV. 862, 878–9, 916, 960, 967; affairs II. 446 n3; and Irish politics I. 317; as Caxtons landlord III. 684, 686, 698, 701–2, 705–6, 708–9, 711, 713–5, 721, 723, 743, 759, 766–7, 787, 791, 794–5, 802, 820, 831, 850–1 IV. 871, 885, 900 n6, 930, 932–3, 954, 981, 1006, 1016, 1062; at Chapel Street IV. 980; at Newbuildings Place II. 588, 593 III. 692 IV. 941; The Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare II. 588; employs SCC part-time II. 563; Esther, Love Lyrics, and Natalia’s Resurrection III. 743; expert interest in Arab horses II. 563, 565, 588 III. 825: Crabbet (Arab stud) II. 597 III. 675, 757, 765, 767, 818, 829, 834 IV. 872, 874–5, 877, 922, 924, 967, 1016, 1099; Fand of the Fair Cheek IV. 944, 952–3, 958; The Future of Islam III. 674; in and on Egypt III. 743, 746, 791 IV. 900, 920, 953–4, 957–8, 964, 1062: raid on his Sheykh

Obeyd garden III. 771–3, 791: The Military Fox-Hunting Case in Cairo III. 771 n6; In Vinculis III. 743; The Love-Lyrics and Songs of Proteus II. 563, 565; Malta fever IV. 968, 974, 976–8; ‘Mr Bain’s Hindoo Love Stories’ IV. 941–2; A New Pilgrimage and Other Poems II. 565 IV. 923; owns Red House dining-table designed by PSW II. 584; preface to Selected Poems of Francis Thompson IV. 1062; private diaries IV. 1003, 1006; PSW advises on repairs III. 675–6, 771–2, 775, 848 IV. 919, 922, 958, 960; PSW on III. 669; PSW on his writings III. 646, IV. 941, 944, 1006; Satan Absolved. A Victorian Mystery III. 656; Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt IV. 1003, 1006–7; ‘The Shame of the Nineteenth Century’ III. 765–6; visits ‘Clouds’ III. 775 n1: article, ‘Clouds, Salisbury’ IV. 953, 957–8, 967; WM admires writings II. 565 Boccaccio, Giovanni The Decameron II. 420 Bodley, George Frederick I. 27 IV. 903, 1055; death IV. 1041; All Saints church, Cambridge I. 1 n7; PSW on IV. 1041 Boito, Camillo I. 262 Bologna PSW on I. 253 II. 365 Bolton Priory PSW on II. 324 III. 806 Bond, Francis IV. 1008 Boni, Giacomo [GBO] LETTERS TO I. 286, 319 II. 342, 346, 348, 350–1, 353–5, 357–8, 362, 365–9, 371, 373, 376–7, 380–2, 384, 387, 389–90, 392, 394, 398, 400, 403–4, 406, 409, 411, 416–8, 420–2, 434, 437, 444, 447, 453, 460–1, 464, 472, 477, 481, 485, 487, 491, 494, 508, 514, 527, 555, 570, 574 III. 639, 647, 663, 671, 673, 710 IV. 891, 913, 978, 1026, 1028, 1030, 1034; I. 262 II. 363–4, 458, 479, 489 IV. 1016, 1027; admires John Bright II. 365;

321

INDEX

appointed Cavaliere II. 599; apprenticed to Antonio Cadel II. 355; archaeological work I. 270 II. 470, 485 III. 710 IV. 913, 932; as architect for Baron Albert Blanc II. 514, 527; as Inspector of Monuments for Rome, and his government work II. 328–9, 342–3, 369–70, 382, 403, 409, 411, 419–20, 494, 555, 574 n6; asks PSW to send English books II. 350; awarded Oxford D Litt IV. 1022 n1, 1034; ‘Bimbi Romulei’ IV. 978; ‘The Ca’ d’Oro, Venice, and its External Colour’ I. 286, 319; ‘Il Catasto dei Monumenti in Italia’ II. 409, 416–7, 421; conservation work I. 254, 319 II. 328, 364, 382, 409, 417, 420; Dalle Origini IV. 913; Director of Excavations in the Forum III. 639, 647 IV. 913, 1034; ‘Il Duomo di Parenzo ed I Suoi Mosaici’ II. 485; encouraged by PSW to visit England II. 342, 350, 453, 487, 555; first meeting with PSW I. 254, 286 II. 323, 417, 487 III. 663 IV. 913, 932, 1026, 1034; friendship valued by PSW II. 350, 354; guest at Kelmscott Manor II. 352–3, 364, 400, 403 IV. 1026–7; health: ‘malaria fever’ II. 348; ‘Hibernica’ IV. 978; ‘Iene Antiquarie’ IV. 978; illness and death of mother II. 411 n1, 418–9, 421; interest in WM’s writings I. 254 II. 355, 390, 392, 394, 398, 400, 411, 421: given book by JM II. 574 n5; invited by PSW to address SPAB annual meeting II. 346; linguistic skills I. 254 II. 323, 421, 470; lives on Rome’s Quirinal hill II. 403–4, 437, 453, 472, 487, 491, 494, 555; ‘Monaco Bigio’ anagram of his name and nom de plume II. 366, 377, 392, 400, 464, 481, 485, 514, 555, 570; plans for sanitation in Venice II. 362; plans for study or exhibition on WM II. 548, 550, 555; political views II. 447 nn8 and 9; possible military service II. 355;

praised by WM II. 420; praises GWJ’s carving II. 403; PSW’s admiration of I. 254 II. 323, 342, 364, 381–2, 392, 404, 409, 416, 470, 472, 494, 570 III. 647; PSW advises on portable scaffolding II. 342; PSW discusses conservation techniques with II. 392, 409 III. 639; PSW encourages meeting with GW II. 416–7, 444, 447, 453, 461, 464, 472; PSW on his character II. 407 IV. 932, 1027, 1034; PSW on photographs of GBO II. 390, IV. 913, 1034; PSW on prospect of GBO marrying II. 434, 444; PSW provides photographs of lion statues II. 387, 389–90, 392, 398, 421, 437; publishes photographs of remains in Vicenza I. 319 II. 323–5; reads English authors: Smollett II. 365; ‘Le Recenti Esplorazioni nel Sacrario di Vesta’, III. 710; repair of bronze lion of San Marco, Venice II. 387, 421: ‘Il Leone di San Marco’ II. 437, 444, 447, 464; restores bronze bull at Orvieto II. 358, 367–9, 371, 373, 377, 384, 387, 389 III. 771; requests sample of WM’s printing experiments II. 403–4, 406–7, 409; sends PSW gift of Italian wines II. 382, 384, 387; sends various of his journal and newspaper articles to PSW II. 342, 362, 368, 376–7, 392, 409, 416, 437, 453, 464, 485, 574, 599 III. 639, 710 IV. 913, 978; visits Athens and Constantinople II. 485, 487, 508; visits England (1889) II. 351–4, 357, 373, 416, 453, 461, 570: (1907) IV. 1028–32, 1034; visits Paris II. 354; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 1028–30, 1032 Boobyer, J.H & Sons (ironmongers) III. 716 Booth, William PSW on death of IV. 1111 Borrow, George PSW on II. 575; on biography by William Ireland Knapp III. 632; recommends to GBO II. 350, 365,

322

INDEX

373, 406; Lavengro II. 406, 575, 597 III. 632, 669 IV. 911; The Romany Rye II. 575; Wild Wales II. 567, 615 III. 824 Botticelli, Sandro The Birth of Venus II. 403; Mystic Nativity II. 472, 592; PSW on III. 657 IV. 957 Bourke, Lady Florence III. 774 IV. 926 Boutall, Walter (EW’s business partner) II. 381 n3, 393 III. 668 n3, 672, 702 Boutell, Charles Heraldry – Historical and Popular III. 738, 782 IV. 1014 ‘Bower-Barff’ process I. 219, 284 Bowley, Joseph (builder at Lechlade) LETTERS TO III. 694, 700, 812; and Kelmscott memorial cottages III. 665–6, 670, 680, 682, 686–9, 691–4, 696–7, 699–700, 748–9, 753, 810, 812, 815–6, 819, 822, 825–6, 829–30, 832–4, 836, 843–4 Bowman, William LETTER TO I. 315; I. 73, 152, 236 II. 328, 329 n3, 330 IV. 1073 Boxall, William IV. 1102 Boyce, Augustine Aimée Caroline (née Soubeiran) LETTERS TO I. 209, 269, 274, 288 II. 326, 335, 401; I. 110, 131, 139, 146, 168, 172, 180, 213, 220, 223, 225, 234, 242, 260, 265–7, 316 II. 326, 328, 340, 345, 378, 405, 482, 496, 500, 512 III. 673; parents at Mathurin, Etampes I. 213, 223 II. 356, 401 III. 774; sends PSW fruit and flowers from Etampes I. 213, 225, 251, 269 II. 356, 401; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 774 Boyce, George Price [GPB] LETTERS TO I. 2, 12, 24, 37, 41, 47, 50, 65, 73, 109–10, 123, 125, 131, 139, 146–7, 152, 168, 172, 177, 180, 185, 209, 213, 217, 220, 223, 225, 234, 242, 251, 258–60, 265–7, 269, 274, 288, 316 II. 326, 328, 335, 340, 343, 345, 356, 378, 401, 405, 415, 482, 512; I. 28, 190, 243, 319 II. 332, 516 III.

673, 710; admired by WM III. 673; at 15 Buckingham Street I. 2 n3; at 14 Chatham Place I. 2 n3, 12; at West House, Glebe Place, Chelsea I. 2 n3; early architectural training I. 41; encouraged by PSW I. 146, 217, 223, 225 II. 335; founding member of SPAB I. 109–10, 225, 242; gives DGR painting to PSW I. 42, 267, 274; gives painted apothecary’s pot to Harry Webb I. 168, 172; health I. 12, 125, 147: depression I. 225 II. 405, 512; Old Water-Colour Society I. 12, 209, 251; pictures I. 12, 213: At the Back of Great Tangley House II. 482; Black Poplars at Pangbourne II. 483; Brougham Castle I. 217, 223, 258; Catterlen Hall (bought by PSW as gift for his brother) I. 251, 258, 265–6, 269 IV. 937, 1057, 1101; Edward the Confessor’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey II. 482–3 IV. 1101; Egyptian sketches IV. 922; Halton Castle I. 242 III. 643; In the Puy-de-Dome I. 266; Old Mill and Chalk Quarry near Goring II. 335; Shillingford III. 673; Tithe Barn, Bradfordon-Avon II. 482–3 III. 798 IV. 1101; Tomb of Castelborco, Verona II. 335; Wotton House, Surrey II. 328; Yanworth Hall I. 217, 223, 225, 258; provides PSW with information about Pembridge church tower II. 378; PSW praises pictures III. 673 IV. 922; Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours I. 258; visits Bradford-on-Avon I. 123, 125; visits Coventry I. 180; visits Cumbria I. 209, 213; visits Etampes II. 356, 401; visits Pembridge, Herefordshire II. 378; visits Shropshire II. 340; visits St Donat’s, near Llantwit Major I. 288, 316; visits Tenby II. 512; visits Vézelay I. 139, 269, 274 IV. 882; winding-up of affairs II. 496, 500, 512 Boyle, Courtenay III. 664

323

INDEX

Bradford-on-Avon Tithe barn II. 482 III. 798; ‘Saxon chapel’ I. 123, 125 III. 798 Bradley, Andrew Cecil I. 252–4, 262 Bradley, Basil I. 12 Bradley, George Granville, Dean of Westminster I. 168, 252, 254 Bradley, William (builder) I. 89 Brandon, John Raphael Rodrigues suicide I. 125 Brass, Lot (builder) I. 44 Braun, Adolphe (photographer) I. 270 Bray, Mr (landowner) I. 212–3 Bright, James Franck Master of University College, Oxford II. 347 Bright, John PSW on II. 365 Bristol newspaper editors LETTER TO I. 216 Broadbent, William (physician) attends KF II. 424, 427; consulted by WM II. 516 n1, 517, 520, 525, 529 Brooke, Reverend Stopford I. 124 Brougham Castle, Cumbria I. 209 Brown, Mr (gardener) I. 226 Brown, Ford Madox LETTER TO I. 79; I. 1, 5, 25, 30, 264 III. 797 IV. 967 n3, 1054; death of son, Oliver I. 79; Work IV. 964 Browning, Robert I. 32; death II. 362; PSW on II. 362 Bruges PSW sees sights I. 237 IV. 1115 Brunelleschi, Filippo Duomo, Basilica de Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence I. 237–8 II. 377; Santa Maria del Santo Spirito I. 251 Buck & Hickman (toolmakers) III. 819 Buckle, Edmund (assistant to PSW) I. 231, 235, 239, 243 III. 840 Buckmaster, Stanley IV. 1077 Budgen, Mr (from Three Bridges) III. 776 n3, 837 Buildwas Abbey I. 50–1 Bullock, Samuel II. 349 Bulwer-Lytton (see Lytton) Bunyan, John Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners IV. 955; The Holy War IV. 955; The Pilgrim’s Progress I. 115 IV. 955; proposed Westminster

Abbey memorial window IV. 1051–2; PSW likens to Tolstoy IV. 955, 957 Burbridge, Alice and PSW’s philanthropic intervention I. 71–2 Burden, Elizabeth LETTERS TO I. 20, 64 II. 336, 338, 344; II. 569; PSW provides reference I. 151; seeks book cover design from PSW II. 336, 338, 344; work for MMF & Co I. 20 Burges, William I. 73, 76, 173 Burlington Fine Arts Club I. 147; exhibitions I. 220 Burnett, William patent for preserving wood I. 214 Burne-Jones, Edward [EBJ] I. 1, 3 n1, 5, 25–6, 28, 46, 75, 78, 81–2 II. 489 III. 673, 840; Adoration of the Magi (tapestry design) II. 550; affair with Maria Zambaco I. 57 n3; as ‘Aramis’ II. 525, 589; at ‘The Tower’, Broadway Beacon I. 28, 30; at The Grange, North End, Fulham I. 25–6; death II. 589–90; death of infant son I. 2; elected Associate of Royal Academy I. 262; frontispiece to A Dream of John Ball II. 431; frontispiece to Syr Perecyvelle of Gales II. 507; Kelmscott Chaucer II. 490 n2, 530 III. 681; panels for 1 Palace Green, Kensington I. 87; posthumous New Gallery exhibition III. 618; PSW on II. 589 III. 663 IV. 958; Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail II. 468; writes to PSW after WM’s death II. 547 n3 Burne-Jones, Georgiana (née Macdonald, GBJ) I. 1, 25, 28, 46, 54, 78 III. 836 IV. 897, 900, 904, 910, 915, 922–3, 926, 942, 962, 968, 976, 1007, 1012, 1025; death of EBJ 2, 589–90, 596; her writing of Memorials of Edward BurneJones III. 851 n2 IV. 893, 952: illustration by Griggs IV. 935: PSW on book IV. 958; PSW visits at Rottingdean IV. 964; secures lodging at Rottingdean for PSW IV. 880, 882–3, 885, 888, 895–6, 898, 901, 905, 918; treatment of Thomas Rooke IV. 952, 960, 962,

324

INDEX

964; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 878, 888, 890, 893 Burne-Jones, Philip I. 26, 57, 130 IV. 930 Burns, Robert II. 561; ‘Address to the deil’ I. 261 II. 388; ‘The Lover’s Morning Salute to his Mistress’ III. 796; ‘McPherson’s Farewell’ III. 661; ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’ IV. 979; ‘To a Louse’ II. 333 Burton, Frederic, I. 26, 257–8, 270 IV. 1102 Burton, Richard Francis IV. 1007 Buscot Park, Oxfordshire III. 686–7, 691–2, 699, 748, 753 Butler, Alfred John (Bursar, Brasenose College, Oxford) I. 289 n1, 292 Butler, Samuel III. 853; final illness and death III. 818 n2 Butterfield, William LETTER TO I. 33; I. 15 n3, 39; Keble College (PSW admires) I. 33, 56; St Cross, Winchester IV. 883 Byland Abbey II. 425 n4 III. 646 IV. 887 Byron, George, sixth Baron Byron (Lord Byron) III. 669, 853 Bywater, Ingram I. 252 Cadel, Antonio II. 355, 362, 365, 370, 376 Caffin, Arthur Corfe (agent to WSB) LETTER TO III. 794; III. 701, 705–6, 711, 713, 715, 743, 766, 771, 787, 857 IV. 866, 879, 900, 919, 922, 952, 958, 960, 967, 1006; and brother (‘the Caffable brothers’) III. 776 n4, 850–1, 853 Calore, Pier Luigi ‘L’Abbazio di San Clemente a Casauria’ II. 384 Cambridge PSW on II. 498 IV. 1053–5, 1061, 1080 Campbell, George John Douglas, eighth Duke of Argyll III. 620 Campfield, George I. 1 IV. 991 Canterbury Cathedral choir stalls IV. 1090 Caprarola Villa Farnese II. 350 Cardwell, W.A. LETTER TO I. 95; failure to pay PSW’s fees and resulting lawsuit I. 95, 123 Carey, James death I. 209

Carleton, Guy (Crabbet stud manager) IV. 981 Carlyle, Thomas I. 47 II. 387, 408 II. 434 III. 692, 729, 740, 766 IV. 1076, 1085; The French Revolution II. 330–1, 477; History of Friedrich II of Prussia III. 657 IV. 923; PSW on biography by Froude III. 626; Sartor Resartus II. 438 Caröe, William Douglas Romsey Abbey IV. 976, 1058 Carpaccio, Vittore II. 416; St George and the Dragon I. 253, 262, 264, 269–70, 272–4 III. 697 Carrick, John LETTER TO I. 136; I. 127 n2 Carruthers, John WM’s companion on ship to Norway II. 530 n3, 532–3; in Cairo IV. 920 Case, Thomas St Mary’s Clusters: An Historical Enquiry II. 454, 596 Casella, Louis Marino (scientific instrument maker) I. 146 Casella, Louis Pascal (scientific instrument maker) I. 146 II. 332 Cassavetti, Alexander I. 134 Castagno, Andrea del III. 621 Castlerigg stone circle, Cumbria PSW recalls visit I. 213 Catterson Smith, Robert appointed head of Birmingham School of Art IV. 872, 877, 880, 882; makes Birmingham mace from PSW’s design III. 795 n4, 803, 813–4, 818–9, 821, 823, 848 IV. 870–1, 877–8; makes silver cross from PSW’s design for Deaconess Institution II. 569 III. 803; visits Caxtons III. 818–9; WM’s final illness II. 542 Cecil, Lord Sackville LETTER TO I. 74 Chamberlain, Joseph PSW’s aversion to II. 475 n2, 528, 556 III. 666, 704, 768, 804, 834 IV. 908, 920, 953; Birmingham mace III. 795 n4, 796, 802, 806 IV. 870, 878 n4; President of Board of Trade, IV. 1006 Chamberlain, Robert LETTER TO I. 39 Chance, James Henry (carver and frame-maker) I. 143 Chandler, E.A. (solicitor to WSB) III. 715

325

INDEX

Chapple, Mr (assistant to William Burges) I. 173 Charles, Frederick LETTERS TO II. 337, 341; PSW lends money II. 337 Chaucer, Geoffrey Canterbury Tales, II. 356; Kelmscott Press edition II. 490, 530, 533, 535; PSW on II. 420, 493, 533 III. 681 Chedworth, Gloucestershire Roman Villa I. 172 Chesterton, G.K. IV. 1012; G.F. Watts IV. 1037 Chiswick Press IV. 907, 909 Christian, Ewan LETTER TO I. 268; I. 147, 173 Christie, Mrs Archibald H. Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving IV. 981 Church, Arthur Herbert (academic chemist) II. 417 III. 817 Cistercian Abbeys II. 373, 377 Clark, John Willis II. 326 n1, 328 Clarke, Caspar Purdon II. 528 Cleeve Abbey I. 279 III. 632, 637 Cobbett, Walter (cousin of SCC) on violin-making IV. 911; plays violin to PSW IV. 872 n1, 885, 927, 930–3, 938 n3 Cobbett, William PSW on I. 213; Rural Rides (mention of ‘the Great Wen’) III. 690 n1, 710, 742, 797 IV. 869, 1100 Cobden-Sanderson, Julia Sarah Anne (née Cobden) I. 248 n6 Cobden-Sanderson, Thomas James (see also Doves Press) I. 248 II. 336 III. 840 IV. 1004 Cockerell, Douglas Bennett (younger brother of SCC) III. 793 n2; binding IV. 933–4; Bookbinding and the Care of Books III. 793; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 849–50; wife III. 850 Cockerell, Kate (née Kingsford) LETTERS TO IV. 1054–5, 1061, 1075; IV. 1046, 1053–4, 1057, 1060, 1063, 1067, 1069, 1077, 1081, 1086, 1090, 1092, 1099; as illustrator III. 831 n2 IV. 929, 1007; engagement and marriage IV. 1035–9, 1041, 1057; PSW on her

work III. 834 IV. 911, 1045; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 831 IV. 1041, 1085 Cockerell, Olive Juliet (sister of SCC) III. 724, 758, 797; companion to JM III. 834 IV. 864; death IV. 1087 Cockerell, Sydney Carlyle [SCC] LETTERS TO II. 386, 388, 396, 436, 438, 440–2, 462, 489, 492, 506, 511, 513, 517–8, 522, 532, 535–45, 550, 552–4, 556–7, 560, 563, 566, 568, 575–6, 583–4, 593, 597, 603–4, 615–7 III. 626, 633, 636, 643, 646, 652, 655–6, 668–9, 672, 674, 676, 684–6, 692, 697, 701–2, 705, 709, 713, 722, 724, 729, 732, 736, 738, 740, 744–6, 752, 757, 762, 764–5, 767–9, 771, 776–7, 779–82, 789, 795–7, 801, 804, 809, 814, 818, 820–1, 824, 831, 838, 840, 842, 846, 848–53, 857–8, 860 IV. 862–3, 866, 869, 872, 874–6, 878–80, 882–3, 885–6, 888–9, 893–6, 900, 902, 904–5, 908, 911–2, 914–5, 919–20, 922, 927, 929–31, 933, 935, 938, 942, 952, 954, 957, 960, 962, 964, 967–8, 974, 976, 979–81, 986, 988, 1003, 1007, 1012, 1016, 1025, 1029, 1033, 1035–9, 1045–6, 1049, 1053–5, 1057, 1060–1, 1063, 1067, 1069–70, 1075, 1077, 1079–81, 1085–7, 1090, 1092, 1099; II. 397, 408, 454, 497–8, 555, 570 III. 618, 634, 660, 758, 802 IV. 932, 1021, 1028; acquires PSW’s drawing ‘Sniffing Lion’ IV. 974 n3, 1024; advises PSW on bequest to Rooke III. 852 n2, 853; advises PSW on gift of Kelmscott Press books to Trinity College, Cambridge III. 857–8 IV. 862–3; amanuensis to PSW IV. 864, 1093; and GBJ IV. 930; and GBO II. 550 n1; IV. 1028–30; and JM II. 558 III. 749, 802 IV. 867, 962, 964, 980, 982, 984, 991, 996–7, 1012; and JR III. 656 n1, III. 668, 790, 814 nn3 and 5 IV. 871; and WM’s final months II. 517–8, 520, 523, 528, 532–3, 535–45, 576; applies for

326

INDEX

curatorship of John Soane Museum II. 440–2; arranges sale of books at Sotheby’s for PSW III. 697, 719, 725, 740, 744; arranges sale of ‘Forest’ tapestry cartoons for PSW III. 672, 685, 722, 728–9; as WM executor II. 553, 607, 609, 652, 686, 697 III. 752 IV. 862, 962, 991, 996–7; birth and early years of his children IV. 1060–1, 1063, 1067, 1069, 1077, 1081, 1085–6, 1092, 1099; business partnership with EW III. 668–9, 702, 723, 770, 783, 790–1, 804, 813, 838–9 IV. 878, 911: partnership dissolved IV. 915–7, 942, 952; buys, lends or gives books to PSW II. 556, 563, 565–6, 588, 597, 603, 615–7 III. 626, 655, 676, 709, 743, 796, 802, 809, 824, 834, 838, 853 IV. 862, 866, 900, 904, 911, 929–30, 935, 958; catalogues various private manuscript collections II. 615 III. 626, 655 IV. 979 n1, 1033 n1, 1045 n1, 1046, 1049: other manuscript studies and acquisitions III. 636, 643, 646, 860 IV. 942, 954, 964, 974 n2, 1007, 1012: The Gorleston Psalter IV. 1046; catalogues WM’s books and manuscripts II. 433, 438: sale of WM library II. 557; Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum IV. 1053, 1055, 1059, 1061, 1067, 1075 n7, 1079, 1085; disapproves of GBJ’s treatment of Thomas Rooke’s notes on EBJ IV. 952 n2, 960, 962 n4; early employment in family coal business II. 388; engagement IV. 1035–6, 1039, 1057: marries at Iffley, Oxfordshire IV. 1039, 1041; friendship with Octavia Hill II. 462; health: carbuncle on lip IV. 1003–4, 1007: ear pain III. 764–5: flu IV. 905–9; helps PSW in finding retirement cottage III. 629, 684, 692, 697 n3, 698, 701–2, 705, 709, 711, 713; hopes PSW will produce new animal sketch III. 767; in Cambridge IV. 1053–5, 1057, 1059: Fellow of Jesus College IV. 1080; in Egypt with

327

WSB III. 668–9, 674 IV. 915–7, 919–20, 922, 924; Kelmscott Press II. 511, 566, 568, 576, 583, 585, 617; A Note by William Morris . . . Together with a Short Description of the Press II. 575–6; nearly drowned III. 669; on death of Robert Proctor IV. 889 n1, 892–4, 916; on PSW II. 589 n2, 593 n1, 597 n3 III. 645 n1; possibility of work for George Wyndham MP II. 563; PSW advises on horse-riding II. 563 IV. 919–20; PSW gives Abbeville sketch (1858) III. 842; PSW gives DGR’s The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise III. 729, 858 n6 IV. 914–5; PSW gives loving-cup III. 685 n1; PSW on and affection for III. 635, 669, 685–6, 698, 736, 858 n1, 860 IV. 1035, 1099; PSW thankful for help III. 626, 656, 695, 721–2, 725, 793 IV. 872, 888, 962, 1049, 1067; PSW visits at Richmond II. 506–7, 616–7; PSW warns SCC against ‘society’ III. 858 n5, 860; sends PSW picture postcards and photographs II. 557, 604, 764, 776, 785, 836, 838, 848 IV. 869, 878–9, 900, 908, 911, 919–20, 924, 927, 952, 954, 957, 960, 962, 964, 967–8, 974, 976, 979–81, 984, 986, 988, 1007, 1012, 1016, 1018, 1024, 1033, 1036–7, 1045, 1059–61, 1067, 1069, 1075; SPAB activities II. 386, 388, 396, 436, 441–2, 509, 524, 564 III. 633, 636, 646, 652, 654–6, 692 n5; visits ‘Clouds’ III. 776; visits Forthampton Court III. 777; visits Kelmscott Manor III. 809–10, 831 n1, 832, 847, 854 IV. 885, 1012 n4, 1033; visits Northumbria III. 643, 646; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 737–8, 741, 743, 757, 764, 831, 834, 848, 852, 857–8, 860 n1 IV. 876 n3, 881, 883–4, 905 n9, 911, 914, 938 n3, 952, 961, 968 n3, 984, 995–7, 1007 n9, 1041, 1085 n2, 1093, 1118 n1; visits PSW at Rottingdean IV. 904; visits Russia and meets Tolstoy IV. 878–80, 884–5: his notes on

INDEX

Tolstoy IV. 882; visits Venice with Art Workers’ Guild II. 400 n12, 401; work as assistant and researcher to WSB II. 563, 583, 604 n6 III. 675–6, 829 IV. 916, 953, 962, 967–8 Cockerell, Theodore (elder brother of SCC) IV. 929–30, 952 Cocks, Agneta Henrietta II. 561 III. 642 Collins, Thomas (helps PSW at Caxtons) IV. 861, 874 n5, 1012–3; suffers stroke IV. 1055–7, 1074; wife IV. 874, 1013, 1055 Colson, John Barnes Winchester Cathedral II. 521, 549 IV. 881–2 Colvin, Auckland IV. 1006 Colvin, Sidney I. 53 Comely, Philip (caretaker, Kelmscott Manor) I. 43, 90, 130; illness and death I. 132 Constantinople II. 485, 487, 494 III. 621 Corfield, William Henry I. 176 Coronio, Aglaia Ionides I. 235, 250 II. 502 III. 619 Cosmatesque decoration II. 447, 453 n5, 460 IV. 917 Cooke, J.H. I. 98, 102, 117 Cooper, John Paul II. 438 Court, Mr (joiner) I. 214–5 Cousins, Miss (companion to JEM) IV. 980 n1, 982, 984, 987 n4 Coventry ancient buildings I. 180 Cox, David sale of watercolours I. 87 Crane, Walter II. 600; PSW critical of illustrations for The Story of the Glittering Plain (WM) II. 478 Cranleigh, Surrey PSW on St Nicholas’s church II. 327 Craven (KF’s former housekeeper) II. 592, 594 Crewe, Hungerford, third Baron Crewe LETTER TO I. 210; St Mary’s, Newbold Astbury, Cheshire I. 210 Crawford, Mr (assistant to GWJ?) IV. 890, 934 Croad, George Hector LETTER TO I. 151 Crome, John (the Elder) I. 257 Crosland, Thomas William Hodgson The Unspeakable Scot III. 834, 838

Cross, Mr (stonemason) I. 162, 171 Crotone II. 477, 481 Cunninghame Graham, Robert Bontine visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 932 Curzon, Robert, Baron and later Marquess Curzon of Kedleston III. 668 Dabney, Mrs (PSW’s landlady at Rottingdean) IV. 895–908, 918; Mary Walker stays with her IV. 1024 Dartmouth, St Saviour’s I. 73 Darvall, Henry I. 251, 262; death II. 417; introduces PSW to GBO II. 417 III. 673 Dasent, George Webbe The Story of Burnt Njal I. 125 Day (MMF & Co employee?) I. 27 Dearle, John Henry II. 518 n2, 550 Debney, Lawrence (Morris & Co. employee) I. 304 De Morgan, Mary WM’s final illness II. 542 De Morgan, William Frend II. 496; ceramic work IV. 951 Dench, Miss (temporary domestic help to PSW) III. 837–8 Dench, William (carpenter/handyman to WSB) III. 715, 722–4, 743, 772, 775, 787, 791, 794–5 IV. 901, 958, 1012; wife IV. 1013 Dendy, Arthur II. 347 Dering, George Edward I. 242 Devon, Bertha (housemaid at ‘Clouds’) II. 446 Dickens, Charles David Copperfield II. 597 III. 691, 727, 740, 764, 768, 779, 782, 805, 829; Dombey and Son II. 376; Dr Marigold’s Prescriptions IV. 994; Great Expectations I. 83, 87 II. 329, 439 III. 672, 842 IV. 928, 1104; Martin Chuzzlewit I. 41 II. 333, 367, 419, 458 III. 642, 713–4, 780, 805, 836 IV. 1042; ‘Mrs Lirriper’s Legacy’ IV. 869; Nicholas Nickleby I. 248 III. 712; The Old Curiosity Shop I. 288 II. 447 III. 783 IV. 987, 995; Oliver Twist III. 782; Our Mutual Friend II. 354–5 III. 656, 738, 756 IV. 908; Pickwick Papers I. 228 II. 384 III. 705 IV. 919

328

INDEX

Dickinson, Alice III. 713–4, 718, 720, 733–5, 740, 747, 774, 853; gift of necklace from SCC III. 809, 814, 860 IV. 865, 873, 897, 990, 1040, 1083, 1104; gift from GWJ IV. 959; housekeeper in her mother’s absence IV. 1099, 1109 Dickinson, Margaret LETTERS TO III. 720, 733, 774, 837 IV. 873, 881, 897, 901, 906, 1013, 1096–7; III. 758 IV. 980–1, 1001, 1011, 1040, 1060; abusive marriage III. 718, 720; annual holidays in Kings Langley III. 771, 774, 810, 831–2, 834, 836–8 IV. 874, 881, 883, 930, 933, 935, 937, 940, 975, 1010, 1013, 1034, 1036, 1055–6, 1099, 1109; at Caxtons III. 734–5, 738, 745–6, 759, 767–8, 770, 777, 789–90, 809–10, 814, 860, 872–4, 877, 897, 900–1, 926, 929, 957, 972, 982, 984, 988, 990, 994, 1078, 1088, 1099, 1104, 1106, 1114, 1120; becomes housekeeper to PSW III. 690, 705, 713–4, 718, 720, 725, 733; care for PSW IV. 873, 896–7, 901, 904–6, 908, 910; chapel-goer III. 718, 814 IV. 910; health III. 801, 804, 846, 854 IV. 1056, 1083; parents and grandparents III. 771, 774 IV. 881, 895, 897, 901, 975, 1013, 1031; PSW admires domestic skills III. 736–7, 742, 747, 757, 759, 779 IV. 867, 908, 919, 952–3, 1074, 1003; PSW concern for her future IV. 880, 882, 883 n2; PSW on character III. 851, 853–4 IV. 879, 882, 896–7, 915; sister (Mary) III. 770, 774, 837 IV. 881 Dickinson, Reggie III. 713–4, 718, 720, 733–5, 740, 774, 853, 860 IV. 865, 873, 881, 897, 990 1040; gift from GWJ IV. 959; health III. 851–4, 857; PSW buys toy bricks III. 747, 758; PSW takes interest in schooling and subsequent employment IV. 1011, 1074, 1083, 1088, 1104 Dillon, Frank SPAB committee member I. 220 Dillwyn-Llewellyn, John Talbot III. 640, 644, 649

Disraeli, Benjamin I. 130, 132 II. 475 Dixon, Arthur Stanfield II. 436 IV. 877 Dodgson, Dr attends WM II. 535 n1, 536 n1, 538 n1 Dodman, Mr (foreman for Rogers Field) I. 277, 281, 284 Dolmetsch, Arnold WM’s final illness II. 542 Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi) PSW on I. 86, 94 Doughty, Charles Montagu Travels in Arabia Deserta II. 507, 588 IV. 919 Doves Press IV. 907, 1004; PSW on Cornelii Taciti de vita et moribus lulii Agricolae liber (ed JWM) III. 741; The English Bible III. 840 Dowson, Dr E. I. 128 Driver, Robert C. LETTER TO I. 111 Du Cane, Richard (see also Wing & Du Cane) I. 87, 112 Duffy, Bella LETTER TO I. 188; threats to Italian buildings I. 188 Dumas, Alexandre, père III. 782, 840; Ange Pitou II. 329–31, 401; The Man in the Iron Mask II. 525; The Three Musketeers II. 525, 589; The Vicomte of Bragelonne II. 525 Dunn, Henry Treffry I. 29, 44 Dunn, Samuel and Samuel (builders) I. 48 Dürer, Albrecht PSW on I. 130 III. 621, 853 IV. 1075, 1083 Eagle Brewery, Leicester I. 301 Earle, Archdeacon Alfred LETTER TO I. 275 East Barsham, Norfolk II. 375, 395 Eastern Question I. 130–2 Eastlake, Charles LETTER TO I. 34; I. 33 n2 IV. 1102; A History of the Gothic Revival I. 34; The Times correspondence with SCC III. 592 n5 Editor of The Stratford-on-Avon Herald LETTER TO I. 309 Editor of The Times LETTER TO I. 263 Edward VII as Prince of Wales I. 87, 96, 132; Coronation (and postponement) III. 827, 836–7

329

INDEX

Edwards, Mr (builder’s foreman) LETTER TO I. 311; dispute with clerk of works I. 310–11 II. 331 Elcho, Mary Constance (née Wyndham) II. 446 Eliot, George Romola I. 81 Ellicott, Mr II. 469 Ellis, Frederick Startridge I. 26, 49, 130 II. 336 III. 656, 686; death and PSW on III. 752, 754; Kelmscott Press editions II. 566; WM’s final illness II. 538–9 Elsley, Thomas (cast iron manufacturer) III. 723 Eltham Palace II. 322 Emmett, John Thomas Six Essays II. 428, 439, 442 England, Dr (Winchester medical practitioner) IV. 1096 Estcourt, Albert (builder) LETTERS TO I. 178, 187, 195, 222 II. 429, 450; III. 748; work on ‘Clouds’ I. 173, 181, 203, 221, 235–6, 245, 247, 250, 255, 280, 297; work on church tower, East Knoyle II. 410 n2, 425, 429–30, 443, 446, 448, 450, 465–6, 469 III. 631 Everett, S.S. (assistant to EW) IV. 957, 960, 1059 Ewart, Mary Anne LETTERS TO I. 212, 219, 224; I. 213, 243, 269 II. 335, 561 IV. 1082 n2 Eyck, Jan van III. 846; Adoration of the Lamb I. 237 Eyre, George Edward Briscoe II. 561 III. 641–2 Faringdon, Oxfordshire (see also Great Coxwell tithe barn) I. 3 Faulkner, Charles [CF] LETTERS TO I. 3, 56, 271, 303; I. 1, 3 n1, 92, 168, 237, 304, 319–20 III. 846; Bursar, University College, Oxford III. 682, 833; death II. 412–7, 419, 592–3; foreign travel I. 211, 227, 229; letters from WM II. 610; loyalty to WM I. 248, 254 II. 586; Oxford Examination Schools I. 56; paralysed by stroke II. 339–41, 343, 348, 350, 361, 366, 374, 396, 408, 586–7 IV. 1095; PSW clears his Oxford college rooms II. 347; PSW helps KF as executor II. 476;

PSW recalls II. 586–7, 605 IV. 998; socialism I. 252–3, 256, 271, 313 II. 337, 605 Faulkner, Frank LETTERS TO I. 300–1; III. 681; death of CF II. 414; death of KF II. 591–4; PSW loans money III. 850 n10, 851 Faulkner, Kate [KF] LETTERS TO I. 211, 233, 237, 244, 249, 252–3, 256 II. 347; I. 248, 254, 269, 320 II. 328, 335, 354–5, 399–401, 432, 444, 468, 475, 478, 484, 488, 520, 533, 539, 542–3, 560, 568, 610 III. 681; at 2 Caroline Place, Guilford Street II. 431, 433, 449, 462, 554, 586, 594; at 35 Queen Square I. 237, 249, 256 II. 328, 424, 427; cares for CF after his stroke II. 339–40, 343, 350, 356, 361, 374, 396, 402, 412–7, 419 IV. 1095; death II. 591–5, 600; decorative work: pianos for Morris & Co. I. 237, 249, 253, 256 II. 419, 424, 427, 449, 468, 473: Forthampton coat of arms II. 400–1, III. 777: Whitelands Chapel reredos II. 383; executor for CF II. 476; health I. 237, 303–4 II. 335, 349, 361, 383, 412, 414–5, 419, 424, 431, 437, 449, 462, 471, 473, 475, 516, 545, 552, 576–8, 583, 586–7; PSW endeavours to secure domestic help for II. 462; PSW gives copies of GBO’s photographs and articles II. 350, 437; PSW offers loan of money I. 211; shyness II. 554; socialism II. 337, 397; St Peter-inThanet, Kent I. 211; tile designs I. 250 Faulkner, Mrs H. LETTERS TO I. 233, 237, 244; I. 211, 248–9, 253, 256 Faunthorpe, Revered John Pincher LETTER TO II. 383 Fawcett, Benjamin (woodblock colour printer) I. 257, 273 Ferguson, Charles John LETTER TO I. 104; I. 46 n5, 108 Fergusson, James The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture II. 325 III. 668; History of Indian and Eastern Architecture II. 392

330

INDEX

Field, Rogers (sanitary engineer) I. 134, 135 n2, 176, 203, 277, 280–1, 284; PSW on I. 277 Fifield, Mrs (housekeeper at Raymond Buildings) III. 670, 697 Firth, Cecil Mallaby IV. 929 n6, 942, 977 Fisher, Catherine (née Cobden) I. 248 Fisher, George I. 172 FitzGerald, Edward translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayan II. 556 FitzGerald, Lord Edward III. 789 Fitzhardinge, Lady LETTERS TO I. 66, 88, 98, 117; founding member of SPAB I. 117 n2 Fitzhardinge, Lord (Francis Fitzhardinge Berkeley) LETTERS TO I. 102, 116 Fletcher, Banister Flight III. 853 Fletcher, G. Rutter (lawyer) II. 613 III. 633, 635–6, 687 Flinders Petrie, William Matthew III. 751 Florence Bargello II. 371; Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana I. 251; Campanile I. 237–8; loss of city walls I. 242, 251 II. 333; Palazzo Medici Riccardi I. 96 n2, 242; Santa Croce I. 242; San Lorenzo II. 453; San Marco II. 497; Santa Maria dell Fiore I. 237–8 II. 389, 453; Santa Maria del Santo Spirito I. 251; Santa Maria Novella I. 96 n1, 238; Uffizi Gallery I. 237 IV. 957 n3 Flower, Elizabeth LETTERS TO III. 664, 690, 714, 718, 725, 734–5, 747, 758 IV. 972, 990, 1011, 1031, 1040, 1056, 1074, 1083, 1088, 1104; II. 332 III. 664 n1, 802, 804 IV. 980; arranges for Margaret Dickinson to become PSW’s housekeeper III. 690, 713–4, 718, 720; Great Tangley Manor IV. 954; helps PSW in domestic purchases for Caxtons III. 725, 733–5, 747, 758; sends gift of oranges IV. 990, 1074, 1104; sends school books for Reggie Dickinson IV. 1011; visits Italy IV. 1040; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 758, 764 IV. 919, 1031, 1111 Flower, Wickham LETTER TO I. 282; I. 269 n4 II. 332, 482–3 III. 805; death IV. 940; PSW on III. 808 IV. 940

Fonthill House, Wiltshire I. 162 Fordham, Herbert George III. 738 n2, 744 n7, 765, 768, 782–3 Forlì PSW on I. 253 Forster, Thomas LETTERS TO I. 80, 85, 105, 108, 114, 118–19, 127; I. 121 Foster, Maude (resident of Worth) III. 837 Foulkes, Reverend Edmund 442 Fountains Abbey (see also under SPAB) III. 773 Fowler, Hodgson I. 207 Fra Angelico III. 853; Orvieto frescoes I. 244, 251 II. 369 Franklin & Son (builders) III. 641, 689, 693 Franks, William Temple takes over CF’s Oxford rooms II. 347 Freeman, Edward Augustus LETTER TO I. 287; III. 798 Fry Mrs (housekeeper to WSB) IV. 980–1 Fuller, G.P. I. 172 Fuller Maitland, John Alexander II. 542 Gambetta, Léon I. 168 Gardiner, Samuel Rawson Student’s History of England from the Earliest Times to 1885 II. 381, 384, 408–9; EW prepares illustrations II. 408 Garner, Thomas III. 809 Gatti’s, A. & S (restaurant) II. 361, 397, 407, 433, 437, 441, 468, 473, 484, 488, 490, 498, 509, 523, 528, 547, 556, 615 III. 643, 656, 668, 701–2, 725, 736 IV. 876, 931, 933, 1036, 1057–9 Gay, John The Beggar’s Opera II. 382, 428 George, Ernest III. 699, 748, 753–4 Gerard, John The Herbal or General History of Plants I. 269 Gere, Charles March LETTER TO III. 677; PSW on his drawings III. 677, 836 Gilbert, Alfred PSW on Winchester statue of Queen Victoria IV. 935–7 Gilbert, John II. 489 Gilbey Brothers (wine merchants) I. 147 Giles, William (gardener/handyman at Kelmscott Manor) II. 558, 564, 577–8, 580–1 III. 660 Gillet and Co. (bell founders) LETTERS TO II. 445, 452, 459; clock for

331

INDEX

Royal Courts of Justice II. 445; repairs at St Mary’s, East Knoyle II. 445–6, 448, 450, 452, 457, 459, 465 Gillum, Lieutenant-Colonel William James LETTER TO I. 89; philanthropic building projects overseen by PSW I. 89 n1 Gilmore, Isabella (née Morris) LETTER TO III. 625; II. 516 n2, 533, 559, 569 III. 790; PSW on design of altar super-frontal III. 624–5, 803 IV. 916, 981 Gimson, Ernest II. 328 n4, 608; London show of joinery IV. 916; marriage III. 692; at Sapperton III. 632 n10, 634, 636, 639, 672, 687–92, 706, 841 nn3 and 6 IV. 915–6, 998 Giotto I. 269 II. 362 III. 657; Assisi frescoes I. 251–2; campanile, Florence I. 237–8 Gladstone, William Ewart I. 82, 87 II. 434 IV. 1006; on Papal infallibility I. 82; retirement and death II. 571 Glasse, John (Christian socialist) I. 304 Glyn, George, second Baron Wolverton I. 169, 173 Godman, Arthur LETTERS TO I. 107, 135, 142, 149–50; I. 307 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von III. 806; Elective Affinities I. 43; on Walter Scott III. 806; PSW on I. 43 Gompertz, Miss (client of GWJ) IV. 1084, 1093, 1095 Goodman, T.W. (surveyor) I. 149–50, 161, 219, 235, 239, 255, 293 Goodwin, Albert Ilfracombe I. 258 Goodwin, Right Reverend Harvey, Bishop of Carlisle I. 91 Gore, Hon Charles Alexander LETTER TO I. 6; I. 6 n1, 7, 9 n2, 10 n3, 11 nn1–2, 13–16 Gozzoli, Benozzo I. 96 n2; PSW on I. 242, 262 II. 409 III. 621 Grantham, Mr (civil engineer) I. 103 Great Coxwell tithe barn, Faringdon II. 587 III. 798; and WM’s admiration II. 349, 573 nn2–3 III. 798 Green, A.H. (decorator) I. 193–4 Greenwell, Canon William LETTERS TO I. 190, 207 III. 654; IV. 974;

antiquarian interests I. 190 n1; Durham Cathedral III. 654; Hexham Abbey III. 643 n2, 646 n1, 654–6 IV. 988; on Langley Castle I. 207 Gregory, Thomas (flooring manufacturer) I. 214–5 Griggs, Frederick Landseer IV. 935; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 885 Grosvenor Gallery first summer exhibition I. 130 Grosvenor, Richard Cecil II. 492; SPAB honorary secretary I. 263 Grove, Mrs (friend-companion of JEM) II. 617 n1 III. 618 Gueraut, R. I. 148 Guillim, John A Display of Heraldrie III. 782, 797 Guido d’Arezzo II. 381 Hammersmith Socialist Society II. 433, 449, 498, 586–7; members II. 397 Handel, George Frideric busts and portraits IV. 1075, 1077; Israel in Egypt I. 41; Jephtha II. 592; ‘Ombra mai fu’ from Serse IV. 986; PSW on III. 657 IV. 924 Hanting, Mrs (Tewkesbury landlady) II. 370, 374 Harding, John (surveyor) I. 113 Hardwicke, Heynes LETTER TO I. 45 Hardy, John (Clerk of Works) LETTERS TO I. 307, 312; I. 135, 149–50, 307 II. 331, 333, 378; dispute with builder’s foreman I. 310–11 II. 331 Harris, Augustus II. 442 Harrison, Frederic Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and Other Literary Estimates III. 766 Harrison, Richard (Sapperton wheelwright) PSW stays with III. 656 n8, 669, 688–91 Haussmann, Georges-Eugène II. 350 n3, 367 Haxton, William I. 317 Heap, Charles & Co (ironmongers) III. 843 Hearn, Lafcadio Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life IV. 911–2

332

INDEX

Hebb, John LETTER TO I. 124; I. 286 II. 390, 392 III. 857, 1027; founding member of SPAB I. 124; translates articles by GBO II. 358, 362, 367, 377, 421, 447, 464, 472, 485, 487, 494, 527, 574 III. 639, 710 IV. 978 Henderson, Alexander III. 686 n2, 753 Henry VIII II. 390 Hensley, Charles (barrister) I. 235–6 Herkomer, Hubert von II. 489 Herringham, Christiana Jane Powell IV. 1025 Hibbins, Mr (foreman to Albert Estcourt) I. 181, 187, 191, 194 Hill, Octavia PSW asks SCC to contact II. 462 Hitchens, Mr (of Gillet and Co.) II. 459 Hoare, Mr (gardener at Crabbet) III. 733 n4, 743 IV. 958; wife III. 733–4, 740 Hobbs, R.B. (gentleman-farmer and owner of Kelmscott Manor) I. 90, 132 II. 510, 578, 607, 609 III. 680; son IV. 918 Hodson, Laurence W. LETTER TO III. 728; III. 771; buys PSW’s ‘Forest’ cartoons 672 n8, 685 n3, 722, 728–9 Hogg, Gordon (surgeon) attends WM II. 536 n1, 537 n1, 538 n1, 539, 544 Hohenthal, Frances LETTER TO I. 59 Holbein, Hans, the Younger PSW on II. 384, 615 III. 664, 848; The Ambassadors IV. 917, 964; Bonifacius Amerbach IV. 917 Holliday, James Richardson (solicitor and collector) III. 802, 804, 809, 813–4, 818, 821, 842 IV. 870–1, 877–8, 1054 Holman, Mr (groom at Crabbet) III. 701, 705–6, 718, 743, 759, 765, 767, 831, 850, 853, 857 IV. 866, 871, 919, 922, 967 Homer II. 373; PSW on Alexander Pope’s translation II. 325; PSW on WM’s translation II. 323–4 Honeyman, John (SPAB correspondent in Glasgow) I. 322 Hoppner, John I. 98 Hornby, Charles St John III. 771 n4, 779–81, 783, 795–7, 804;

appointed trustee of WM estate IV. 962; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 957 Hornby, John James III. 672 Hough, Mr (solicitor) I. 118, 120 Howard and Sons (flooring suppliers) I. 148 Howard, Charles, I. 7 n3, 46, 61 Howard, George, ninth Earl of Carlisle LETTERS TO I. 7, 11, 13–15, 22, 31–2, 36, 40, 58, 60–1, 75, 77, 83, 87, 91–2, 106, 121, 129–30, 176, 182 IV. 945; I. 6, 7 n1, 9–10, 53, 119 III. 713; carvings by GWJ IV. 1078 n2, 1079, 1082; church and tower of St Martin’s, Brampton I. 61, 75, 77, 87, 91, 106, 121 IV. 890, 921, 945, 947–8, 1005, 1008–9, 1017; considers building house at San Remo I. 83, 87; death IV. 1094; health I. 78, 80 n2, 82–3 IV. 921; Naworth Castle I. 32, 36 IV. 1017; PSW on IV. 1082; wishes to paint PSW’s portrait I. 40 Howard, Rosalind (née Stanley) LETTERS TO I. 46, 53, 78, 82; I. 7 n1, 31, 61, 77, 121, 129–30, 132; health I. 75: childbirth I. 87, 106; invites PSW to Italy I. 82 Howell, Charles Augustus LETTERS TO I. 18, 48, 189; I. 18 n1, 26, 125, 132 III. 810; involves PSW in dispute with builders I. 49; on PSW’s Delft-style tile designs I. 18 Howell, John (brick maker) LETTER TO I. 189; I. 120, 143, 191, 218, 250, 255 PSW dissatisfied with quality of bricks I. 189, 195 Hughes, Mr (builder at Faringdon) II. 495, 520, 523 Hunt, William Henry III. 663 n9, 671; The Monk III. 671; PSW on III. 671; studies of black boys III. 671 Hunt, William Holman III. 663; The Hireling Shepherd IV. 964; on Campo Santa, Pisa II. 411; ‘Some Reflections Upon the Work Undertaken by the SPAB’ (in SPAB 1904 report) IV. 934 Huth, Henry I. 7 n2, 9 n2, 10 n3 Hyde Abbey IV. 882–3 Hyndman, Henry Mayers I. 237 n6, 254

333

INDEX

India Museum II. 389 Influenza outbreaks II. 411 Ingram, Reverend William Clavell Ingram LETTERS TO II. 501, 503 Ionides, Alexander (Aleco) LETTER TO I. 38; Walton on Thames cottage I. 38 Ionides, Alexander Constantine I. 237 n8 Ireland contemporary political events I. 209, 261, 317 II. 362 n7, 475 Jack, Annie Christian (née Gray) II. 403, 561 III. 642, 742, 756, 803, 807, 843, 847, 855 IV. 871, 898, 921, 928, 992, 1005, 1017, 1071, 1078, 1098, 1103; brother I. 243 n3, 245 Jack, George Washington [GWJ] LETTERS TO I. 231, 235–6, 239–40, 243, 245–7, 250, 255, 279, 317 II. 327, 329–34, 370, 561 III. 641–2, 682, 688–9, 691, 693, 696, 737, 742, 748, 753, 756, 788, 803, 805, 807–8, 811, 815, 819, 822, 826, 830, 833, 835, 843–4, 847, 855, 859 IV. 861, 870, 877, 890, 898, 921, 928, 934, 937, 940, 947, 956, 959, 963, 965–6, 971, 973, 975, 985, 989, 992, 999, 1005, 1008–9, 1017, 1071, 1078, 1082, 1084, 1093–5, 1098, 1102–3, 1106, 1111, 1115, 1120; I. 185, 251–2, 269, 272 II. 321, 342, 375, 378, 401, 425, 440, 463, 480, 562, 599, 616 III. 640, 643–4, 648, 660, 672 IV. 905; amanuensis to PSW I. 318–9; assists with various PSW building projects III. 641–2, 689 n1 IV. 937 n1; at 24 Station Road, Finchley III. 808; carvings (and PSW’s observations) III. 649, 855–6, 859 IV. 877, 898, 922 n7, 924, 927 n1, 933–4, 1078 n2, 1079, 1082, 1094; carvings of designs by PSW II. 397, 399–401, 403 III. 777; daughters II. 561 III. 642, 742, 756, 803, 807, 843, 847, 855 IV. 898, 921, 928, 1005, 1071, 1078, 1098, 1103; encouraged by PSW to join SPAB committee III. 756; erection of tower at St Martin’s, Brampton IV. 890, 893,

921, 945, 947–8, 954, 956–7, 959–60, 962–6, 969, 971, 973, 975, 984, 986, 989, 992, 999–1000, 1005, 1008–9, 1014, 1017; excellent working relationship with PSW II. 333–4 III. 723, 805; explores possible teaching appointment in Birmingham IV. 870–1, 877; gift of book from JM II. 581; gives PSW Tam o’ Shanter IV. 992; helps PSW clear chambers III. 731–2, 803–4; oversees erection of WM memorial stone at Kelmscott II. 578–81; oversees work on ‘Clouds’ and ‘Coneyhurst’ whilst PSW in Italy I. 229, 231, 235–6, 239–40, 242–3, 245–7, 250, 255; PSW advises on Arisaig house III. 788, 805, 807–8, 810–11, 819 IV. 870, 890, 948, 992; PSW on I. 185 II. 580–1 III. 759, 832 IV. 868, 871, 924, 933, 936, 948, 1079, 1095; PSW sends gift of apples III. 855; supervises erection of Kelmscott memorial cottages III. 645, 666, 670, 680, 682, 686–94, 696, 721, 726, 731, 737, 742, 748–9, 753–6, 759, 810, 812, 815–6, 819, 822, 825–6, 829–30, 832–6, 843–4, 847, 855 IV. 867–8, 898: carved plaque of WM III. 855–6, 859 IV. 870, 877, 890, 898; taken on by PSW as assistant I. 185; teaches carving III. 756 n1, 808 IV. 922, 934, 945, 1047; various independent projects III. 662, 670, 681, 689, 693, 742, 784 n9, 805, 808, 811, 815–6 IV. 937, 971, 1074, 1084, 1093, 1108; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 804 IV. 878, 893–4, 922, 939, 949, 957, 960, 963–4, 999, 1074, 1078–9, 1094, 1098–9, 1106, 1114, 1120; visits St Paul’s Cathedral with PSW IV. 1102–3, 1105, 1107, 1111; Wood Carving: Design and Workmanship IV. 898, 902, 904 Jack, James F.S. (nephew of GWJ) as clerk of works IV. 964 Jackson, Thomas Graham I. 169 n1, 173; Byzantine and Romanesque

334

INDEX

Architecture IV. 1112 n2; Oxford Examination Schools I. 169 n1; St Mary the Virgin, Oxford II. 441–2, 596 III. 627; Winchester Cathedral IV. 1112 Jephson, Reverend Henry I. 220 n1, 239, 260 Jessop, Augustus II. 346 Johnson, Robert I. 97 Johnson, Samuel IV. 1062; PSW on I. 68 Johnston, Alexander Keith (cartographer) I. 177 Jones, Mr (landlord, Raymond Buildings) I. 245 Jones, H.S.H. (churchwarden) LETTER TO I. 310 Jowett, Benjamin I. 297 III. 626 Keats, John I. 237 Kelmscott (also Kelmscott Manor and Lechlade) I. 43, 51, 90–2, 123, 125, 130, 140 II. 352–3, 355, 495, 529, 573 n2, 577–81, 599, 610 III. 638. 660, 666, 687, 754, 770, 856 IV. 895, 915, 991, 998; drawing by Charles Gere III. 677 n1; photographed by Frederick Henry Evans II. 542–3 Kelmscott Press (see also under WM) II. 575, 583 IV. 907 editions by authors other than WM: Atalanta in Calydon (Swinburne) II. 488; Ballads and Narrative Poems (DGR) II. 473; Epistola de Contemptu Mundi di Frate (Savonarola) II. 497; The Golden Legend II. 406, 430, 432; The Love-Lyrics and Songs of Proteus (WSB) II. 563; A Note by William Morris . . . II. 575–6; Poems Chosen out of the Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge II. 520; The Poems of John Keats II. 484; The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye II. 438, 449; Sidonia the Sorceress II. 471; Sire Degrevaunt (ed F.S. Ellis) II. 566; Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century II. 568; Sonnets and Lyrical Poems (DGR) II. 484; Syr Ysambrace (ed F.S. Ellis) II. 566; The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer

II. 490, 530, 533, 535 III. 668, 681; Utopia II. 468 Kempe, Charles Eamer St Wulfran, Ovingdean restoration IV. 903 Kennedy, James (surveyor) III. 686 n3, 688, 704, 726, 742, 753; health III. 756 Kent, John (SPAB office secretary) III. 640, 644; compiles Notes on the Repair of Ancient Buildings IV. 895 n6 King, J.S. (builder) LETTER TO III. 726; III. 699, 703, 721, 737, 748–9, 753 King, William and George (builders) I. 219, 223 II. 332–3, 335, 561 III. 642 Kipling, Rudyard III. 838 IV. 1113 Kiralfy, Imre (impresario) II. 472 Kirkstall Abbey II. 324 Kitz, Frank II. 379 Knott, Ralph London County Council building IV. 995, 1043, 1047, 1058 Kropotkin, Pyotr Alexeyevich III. 663, 666 Lamb, Charles III. 780, 808 Landseer, Edwin III. 621 Lane, Joseph I. 313 Lang, Andrew ‘Mr. Morris’s Poems’ II. 544 Laud, William IV. 1052 Lawrence, Elizabeth (nurse/companion to WSB) III. 850 IV. 909, 916, 930, 942, 953, 958, 962, 967–8, 981; sends PSW photographs from Egypt IV. 919–20, 922 Lawrance, William (builder) LETTER TO I. 141; II. 329 Lawson, Wilfrid (temperance campaigner) III. 790 Leighton, Baldwyn LETTER TO I. 84 Lemere, Bedford & Co (architectural photographers) III. 786 Lethaby, Edith (née Crosby) LETTERS TO III. 793, 800 IV. 865, 884, 887, 1107, 1112; III. 769 n3, 780, 809 IV. 880, 903, 917, 924, 937, 943, 995, 1018–9, 1021, 1041, 1043, 1047, 1084, 1105, 1112, 1116;

335

INDEX

PSW visits IV. 1107–8; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 1033, 1085, 1114 Lethaby, William Richard [WRL] LETTERS TO IV. 871, 887, 903, 917, 924, 943, 946, 970, 995, 1018–9, 1021, 1032, 1041, 1043–4, 1047, 1091, 1101, 1105, 1108, 1112–4, 1116–7, 1119; II. 454, 475, 485, 554, 568, 593, 616 III. 636, 641, 643, 668–9, 672, 674, 698, 724, 732, 771, 780, 795, 813–4, 848 IV. 872, 879, 880–1, 883, 905, 908, 911, 916, 933, 940, 954, 957, 976, 990, 998, 1009, 1046, 1057–8, 1095; admiration for GBO II. 464, 472, 481, 570 IV. 1028, 1034; admiration for WM II. 464, 468; architectural projects: All Saints, Brockhampton, Ross-on-Wye, III. 855 n1, 856, 859: Melsetter House, Hoy, Orkney II. 584, 603 III. 633, 832 IV. 977, 982, 984; ‘Architectural Education, a Discussion’ IV. 924; Architecture: an Introduction to the History and Theory of the Art of Building IV. 1105–6, 1112; Architecture Mysticism and Myth II. 464, 487; ‘The Architecture of Adventure’ IV. 1084–5; arranges sale of PSW’s copy of Carpaccio’s St George and the Dragon III. 697; at 2 Gray’s Inn Square III. 627, 655; at 111 Inverness Terrance III. 800 IV. 1107–8, 1112; The Church of Sancta Sophia Constantinople (with Harold Swainson) II. 494, 514, 599 IV. 1112; criticises restoration II. 615; death of father IV. 917; editor of series of craft skills manuals III. 793 nn2–3 IV. 898, 903, 981; ‘Education in Building’ III. 767; educational appointments: art inspector, LCC Technical Education Board II. 492, 513: Central School of Arts and Crafts IV. 1091: Royal College of Art IV. 109; and France IV. 884–5, 887, 893, 937, 942–3; Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum IV. 1043, 1071, 1091; and Italy IV. 1032; London Before the Conquest III. 860 IV. 865; marriage III. 769

n3; Mediæval Art from the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance IV. 919, 922, 946–7, 952; ‘Morris as Work-Master’ III. 809; ‘Notes on sculptures in Lincoln Minster’ IV. 995, 1018; ‘Notes on some Medieval Embroideries’ IV. 1043; PSW on II. 464, 494 III. 633, 767, 832, 853 IV. 882, 912, 931, 937, 946, 968, 1044–5, 1085, 1091; PSW’s approval as his possible biographer III. 853; ‘Some Early Christian Objects’, IV. 1113; SPAB activities II. 584, 596–7, 603, 608 III. 627, 646, 655–6, 667 IV. 1102; ‘The Theory of Greek Architecture’ IV. 1044–5, 1047; visits Yorkshire Dales IV. 884, 887, 937, 942, 1017–8; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 741, 764, 809, 848 n4, 859, 865–6 IV. 874–5, 893–4, 912, 919, 921, 956, 979, 1033, 1085, 1093, 1098– 9, 1101, 1114, 1117, 1119–20; Westminster Abbey II. 508, 574: Surveyor of the Fabric IV. 1021, 1032, 1041, 1052; ‘Westminster Abbey and Its Restorations’ (in 1902 SPAB report) III. 818, 832, 834; Westminster Abbey and the Kings’ Craftsmen IV. 995, 1018–9, 1021; ‘Westminster Cathedral’ III. 800 Leveson-Gower, George, second Earl Granville IV. 1006 Leveson-Gower, George, third Duke of Sutherland II. 333 Leycester, Rafe Oswald I. 294 IV. 1011 Lincoln’s Inn, Benchers of LETTER TO II. 391 Lindsay, Coutts I. 130 n6, 132 Loch Long III. 642 Locker-Lampson, Frederick III. 770 Lodge, Oliver William Foster The End of an Age IV. 1108, 1110 London County Council PSW on competition for new building IV. 995, 1043–4, 1047, 1058 Long, Mrs (housekeeper at Raymond Buildings) I. 225, 235–7, 239, 242, 266, 269 II. 351, 440 Longden and Co., Sheffield (suppliers of cast-iron ware) I. 206, 235, 243, 246, 250, 281, 283, 297

336

INDEX

Longford Castle I. 162 Low, Una (née Cockerell; SCC’s younger sister) illness and death of daughter IV. 920, 922; SCC visits in Devon IV. 1003 n1, 1007 Lowes Dickinson, Goldsworthy Letters from John Chinaman III. 797 Lucca Cathedral of San Martino II. 491, 494; PSW sees sights I. 241 IV. 972 Luini, Bernardino Fresco, Santa Maria degli Angoli, Lugano I. 233–4, 238 Luscombe, John (businessman and rugby international) IV. 1103 Luxmoore, Henry Elford ‘Our Purposes and Prospects’ (SPAB annual report, 1898) Lytton, Judith (née Blunt) III. 767 n4 IV. 957, 962, 1060; undergoes surgery III. 848–9 IV. 908; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 952–3 Lytton, Neville (Bulwer-), later third Earl Lytton III. 767 IV. 962, 1060; as painter IV. 958; portrait of EW IV. 1008; Reproductions of Pictures by the Hon. Neville Lytton IV. 1045; studio destroyed by fire III. 849–50; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 850 IV. 952–3 Macculloch, Mr (carver) I. 243 Macdonald (or McDonald), Mr (PSW’s dentist) III. 797, 802 IV. 930–1, 933, 1037 Macdonald, Frederic I. 28 Machiavelli, Niccolò II. 407 Mackail, John William [JWM] LETTERS TO II. 547, 573, 586–7, 589–90, 596, 605, 610, 614 III. 623, 627–8, 630; II. 599 IV. 905, 923; family IV. 905, 908; Life of William Morris II. 599, 602, 606, 611–3 III. 626, 628, 630, 633, 856–7, 859 IV. 1051; on death of EBJ II. 589 n1, 590; on JM II. 606 n3, 613 n1; on PSW II. 589 n1; Professor of Poetry, Oxford IV. 1007; PSW assists with Life of William Morris II. 547, 573, 586–7, 596, 605, 610, 614, 623; III. 627; PSW on III. 626 IV. 905

Mackail, Margaret (née Burne-Jones) I. 57 II. 547, 589 III. 630 IV. 905 Mackenzie, J.W. & M (builders) I. 149 MacVarish, Mr (builder) III. 788 Maeterlinck, Maurice The Life of the Bee III. 796, 802 Malet, Edward Baldwin IV. 1006 Mallett, William (‘Clouds’ employee) I. 283, 285, 299 II. 446 Malmesbury Abbey II. 616 Managers of Martyrs Memorial Schools LETTER TO I. 72 Manning, Henry I. 82 n5, 87 Mansell, W.A. (photographic publishers) II. 321 Mansfield, Mr I. 143–4 Mantegna, Andrea I. 251, 265 II. 357; house in Mantua II. 400 March, Edward Howard visits PSW at Caxtons III. 850 Marcus Aurelius Meditations II. 332 Marks, T. Newman SPAB secretary I. 154 n3, 168 Marryat, Frederick The Naval Officer III. 633, 758 Marochetti, Carlo statue of Richard I IV. 1041 Marsh, Reverend Theodore Henry LETTER TO I. 155 Marshall, William LETTER TO I. 126; I. 112 n3 Matthews, Charles James (actor) IV. 899 Matthews, Sidney (PSW’s doctor at Caxtons) III. 850–3, 860 IV. 861, 864, 868, 918 Mazzini, Giuseppe I. 147, 227 II. 387 IV. 1091; The Duties of Man I. 132 Meeres, Reverend Horace II. 564, 578–80 Meredith, George The Amazing Marriage IV. 895 Metcalfe, Reverend William Henry LETTER TO I. 202 Merriman, John Jones II. 329 Michelangelo Buonarroti and Pietro Torrigiani II. 508; Battle of Cascina III. 848; Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana I. 251; Holy Family I. 62; Madonna and Child IV. 887; Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri II. 404; PSW on I. 57, 62, 81, 86, 96, 115, 139, 248–9, 251 II. 362, 392, 434 III. 653, 848; PSW

337

INDEX

on John Addington Symonds, The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti II. 434; The Rape of Ganymede I. 94; Sistine Chapel, Rome I. 57, 86, 244, 249 II. 381 III. 653 IV. 932, 978; St Peter’s, Rome I. 251 II. 377 III. 653 IV. 932; Villa Farnese II. 350 Micklethwaite, John Thomas LETTERS TO II. 458, 470; I. 241 II. 558 III. 644; Society of Antiquaries II. 458, 460, 464, 470, 472, 481; St Margaret, Cley next the Sea IV. 934; Westminster Abbey II. 447, 460, 470, 508 III. 639, 647; Winchester Cathedral II. 458, 470 Middleton, Bella (née Stillman) II. 434, 444, 528 Middleton, John Henry LETTER TO I. 199; III. 777, 850; Ancient Rome in 1885 (and subsequent versions) I. 244, 251 II. 404, 434 IV. 1032–3; art director, South Kensington Museum II. 472, 528; death II. 528; death of father I. 251–2; guest at Kelmscott Manor II. 353, 355; health I. 248 II. 508; host to PSW in Rome I. 243–50 II. 353 IV. 932, 1032, 1034; and Italy I. 220, 244, 246, 251 II. 403–4; marriage to Bella Stillman II. 434, 444; possible socialist leanings I. 248, 252, 254; PSW on I. 248; SPAB activities I. 199, 208 IV. 949 Milburn, George LETTER TO I. 97 Miles, Mr (farmer) PSW as paying guest II. 326–35 Milford, Reverend Robert LETTERS TO II. 410, 426, 448, 451, 465–6; II. 425, 428–9, 446, 452, 457, 459, 469 Mill, John Stuart I. 147; Autobiography III. 654 Millais, John Everett III. 852; Autumn Leaves III. 622 IV. 964 n4; The Blind Girl III. 622; illustrations for Trollope’s novels III. 622; PSW on II. 334 III. 621–2 IV. 964; Royal Academy exhibition (1888) II. 334 Millet Jean-François PSW on IV. 904–5, 912

Milnes Gaskell, Charles LETTER TO I. 122; I. 84 Milton, John III. 657; L’Allegro II. 350, 444, 460, 560; Paradise Lost I. 132 Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire III. 721 Mitchell, M. (Elizabeth Flower’s female servant) III. 718, 733 IV. 972, 980, 1031, 1088, 1104 Mitchell Brothers (builders) LETTER TO I. 306; work on Willinghurst I. 306, 311, 330, 333, 335 Mitchell, Reverend I. 289 Moncrieff, Mr (plumber) I. 281, 315 Moore, Thomas ‘The Fire-worshippers’ II. 447 More, Thomas Utopia II. 420 Morland, J. I. 104, 108 Morley, John The Life of William Ewart Gladstone III. 796 Morris, Emma PSW designs gravestone II. 510, 519, 522 Morris, Henrietta LETTER TO II. 519; II. 504 n2, 505, 509, 522 n1 III. 816; death III. 829; gravestone inscription for Emma Morris II. 510 Morris, Jane (née Burden) [JM] LETTERS TO I. 21, 25–30, 43, 51–2, 68, 90, 129–30, 132, 138, 140, 160, 205, 232 II. 364, 414, 495, 558–9, 564, 569, 571, 577–82, 585, 591, 594–5, 599, 606–7, 609, 611–3 III. 618–9, 629, 634–5, 638, 645, 648, 660–1, 665–6, 670, 680, 687, 699, 703–4, 721, 731, 749, 754–5, 759, 770, 773, 790, 802, 810, 816, 825, 829, 832, 834, 836, 854, 856 IV. 864, 867–8, 910, 984, 987, 991, 993–4, 996–7, 1015, 1020, 1023; I. 1, 177, 241, 248, 254 II. 468, 488, 510, 526, 528, 565 597 III. 646, 663, 674, 722 IV. 982, 1012, 1022; at Burford IV. 910, 962, 978 n1, 984, 987, 991, 1015, 1060; at Buxton III. 648; at Crabbet Park IV. 1060; at Dartmouth IV. 1046; at Falmouth III. 802; at Harrogate III. 773, 790; at Isle of Wight III. 854, 859 IV.

338

INDEX

864, 867; at Kensington III. 665, 670, 754; at Lyme Regis I. 205 II. 564, 567, 569, 578 III. 618–9 IV. 991; at Sidmouth IV. 1023; at Torbay IV. 1020; at Worthing III. 737, 749; considers giving up Kelmscott Manor IV. 962 n1, 964, 968, 991, 996; embroidery work I. 21, 43: altar super-frontal of PSW’s design III. 790; gives PSW drawing by DGR IV. 1020; gives PSW whisky III. 789–90 IV. 993–4, 996–7, 1015, 1023; illustrations for The Life of William Morris II. 599, 602, 606, 610–13; indifferent health I. 21, 25 n1, 43, 90, 160, 205, 320 II. 571, 602 III. 619 IV. 910, 942, 964, 968, 984, 1060, 1068, 1075; Kelmscott memorial cottages II. 607, 609, 611 III. 618–9, 634, 638, 645, 660, 665–6, 670, 680, 686–7, 689, 691–4, 696–7, 699–700, 703–4, 731, 737, 748–9, 752–6, 810, 812, 815, 819, 822, 825–6, 829, 831–2, 834, 836, 843–4, 854, 856, 859, 867 IV. 890, 898: public reading room 918; Oxford as childhood link with PSW I. 68 II. 606, 611, 613 III. 660, 704 IV. 867–8, 910, 997, 1015, 1020, 1090; PSW’s support for I. 51–2; reads Goethe I. 43 n5; sells lease of Kelmscott House II. 559; sends PSW Morris & Co. ‘Bird’ textile III. 755, 759, 770, 773; skill in Italian II. 464; visits Bad Ems to take the waters I. 25–30; visits Belgium I. 68; visits GBJ at Rottingdean, and sees PSW IV. 898, 910, 918; visits Italy as guests of the Howards I. 129–30, 132, 138, 160; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 768, 770, 832, 834 IV. 918–9, 1060; WM’s final illness II. 538–42, 544; WM’s memorial stone designed by PSW II. 558–60, 564, 569, 571, 577–83 Morris, Jenny [JEM] LETTERS TO I. 19, 129–30, 320 II. 363, 397, 546, 548, 567, 602 IV. 918; I. 43, 57, 132, 140, 205, 232, 241, 248 II. 362, 468, 488, 510, 558–60, 564–5,

569, 585, 594, 597, 599 III. 635, 666, 670, 672, 704, 721, 754–5, 759, 770, 773, 802, 810, 832, 834, 836, 854, 859 IV. 867, 910, 1020; birthday III. 618; health and epilepsy I. 211, 254 III. 626, 629, 648, 660, 674 IV. 868, 964, 982, 984, 987, 991, 996–7, 1012, 1015, 1075, 1090; on PSW’s design for Kelmscott memorial cottages III. 638 n2; on PSW’s memorial stone to WM II. 582 n1; PSW writes after WM’s death II. 546, 548; resumes music study IV. 994; visits France with WM II. 396–7, 401 Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co [MMF & Co]; subsequently Morris & Co; also ‘the Firm’ I. 1 n2, 3 n1, 35, 66 III. 717; carpet: Forthampton Court II. 379; cross: St Mary the Virgin, North Stoke, Oxfordshire III. 845; decorations: 1 Palace Green, Kensington I. 87, 176: Rushmore Lodge, Tollard Royal, Wiltshire I. 192–4: green dining room, South Kensington Museum I. 30: Whitelands Chapel II. 383; hangings: ‘Bird’ III. 755, 759, 770, 773: ‘Peacock and Dragon’ II. 379: St Brise’s Eglwys Brewis, Glamorgan III. 730; Merton Abbey works I. 248, 254; organisation of business I. 5, 63; Oxford Street shop I. 115 II. 379, 424, 427; piano decorated for Alexander Constantine Ionides I. 237, 249, 256: another decorated piano II. 419, 424, 427, 449, 468, 473; PSW’s designs: altar cloths I. 20: animal cartoons for ‘Forest’ tapestry I. 288, 322 III. 672, 722, 728–9, 786 IV. 974: ceiling, dado and wall patterns, St Philip’s, Bethnal Green I. 1: ceiling paintings, Jesus College chapel, Cambridge IV. 1054–5: Delft-style tiles I. 18: panels for Whitelands Chapel reredos II. 383; sale of firm (1905) IV. 968; stained glass I. 115 n13: All Saints’, Cambridge I. 1 n7: Berkeley Castle I. 66, 88,

339

INDEX

98, 117: Peterhouse, Cambridge I. 30 n4: St Martin’s, Brampton I. 114, 127, 136 IV. 1000; tapestry: Adoration of the Magi for Exeter College, Oxford II. 550: ‘Forest’ tapestry I. 288, 322 III. 717, 786: Pomona II. 550: Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail II. 468: ‘Woodpecker’ tapestry II. 550; tiles: for ‘Clouds’ I. 239; wallpaper I. 142, 196 Morris, May [MM] LETTERS TO I. 19, 129–30, 159 II. 372, 419, 592 III. 624, 658 IV. 899, 977, 982, 998, 1022, 1027, 1068, 1089, 1109; I. 43, 57, 132, 205, 232, 241, 248, 254, 320 II. 559–60, 569, 577, 591, 594, 602, 606–7, 609, 613 III. 618, 648, 704, 802, 816, 832 IV. 867, 918, 997, 1015, 1023, 1026; at 8 Hammersmith Terrace III. 629; attempts to teach PSW Italian I. 229 II. 419; edits WM’s works IV. 1089, 1109; embroidery II. 419: altar super-frontal of PSW’s design III. 624–5 IV. 916, 981: hanging for WM’s bed at Kelmscott Manor III. 856, 859; founds Women’s Guild of Arts IV. 1027; gives her photograph to PSW IV. 1068; gives lecture at New Gallery III. 658, 660; lecture tour of America IV. 1073, 1075; marriage to Henry Halliday Sparling, divorce, and aftermath II. 372, 411, 591 III. 619; PSW sends wedding present II. 372; translates Italian for PSW II. 419; visits Hoy, Orkney IV. 977, 981–2, 984; visits PSW at Raymond Buildings III. 660–1; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 768, 770, 832, 834 IV. 974, 986–7, 1061, 1109; White Lies. A Play in One Act IV. 899 Morris Society of America PSW on IV. 907 Morris, William [WM] LETTERS TO: I. 1, 25–30, 63, 230, 232, 238, 241, 248, 254, 304 II. 349, 361, 379, 397, 402, 407, 412, 424, 427, 431–3, 449, 454, 468, 471, 473, 475, 478, 484, 488, 490, 493,

340

498–9, 504, 507, 509–10, 516, 520–1, 523–6, 528–30, 533–4; I. 22, 48, 62, 78, 90, 110, 115, 123, 129, 140, 160, 165, 168, 170, 205, 211, 243, 269, 297, 319 II. 323–4, 332, 363–5, 368, 373, 384, 387, 411, 414, 417, 437, 444, 472, 485 III. 673, 700, 766, 838 IV. 917, 924; admired by WRL II. 464; as Master of Art Workers’ Guild II. 420; at 26 Queen Square I. 26 n8, 78, 115, 117; at Horrington House, Turnham Green I. 129, 132; at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith I. 140 II. 513, 529, 536; at Kelmscott Manor I. 139, 229, 355, 357, 442, 464, 521–2 III. 692; attends and speaks at Edinburgh Art Congress II. 358; collection of illuminated manuscripts II. 468, 506–7, 513, 520–1, 528, 541 III. 668: Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century II. 568; The Commonweal I. 249, 252, 254, 256; death and aftermath (see also under PSW) II. 545 n1, 546 III. 846; early architectural training II. 614; experiments in dyeing I. 94, 106, 115, 125; experiments in manuscript illumination I. 81; health I. 82–3 II. 382, 384, 407: final tubercular illness 516–20, 523–6, 528–30, 532–45: gout I. 75, 225, 230 II. 507; Kelmscott Press II. 384, 402–4, 406, 409, 430, 432, 438, 449, 460, 468, 471, 473, 484, 488, 490, 493, 497, 499, 507, 520, 524, 530, 533, 535, 565, 617 III. 681, 780–1; lectures, prose, poetry and translations: An Address Delivered by William Morris at the Distribution of Prizes to Students of the Birmingham School of Art on Feb. 21, 1894 II. 583, 585; a Christmas carol II. 553; Architecture, Industry and Wealth IV. 862, 878 n5; Art and Beauty of the Earth II. 617; Art and Its Producers and The Arts and Crafts Today III. 765; ‘Art, Wealth and Riches’, IV. 862; A Dream of John Ball II.

INDEX

355, 430 III. 784, 832; Certain Songs and Translations I. 125; The Collected Works of William Morris (ed. MM) IV. 1089; Concerning Westminster Abbey II. 460 IV. 1051–2; ‘The Decorative Arts, Their Relation to Modern Life and Progress’ I. 129–30, 132; The Earthly Paradise I. 25 n5, 27, 29–30, 269 II. 548, 558, 560 n4 III. 692, 780–1 IV. 867, 933; The Hollow Land IV. 885 n2, 894; ‘How We Live, and How We Might Live’ I. 241 n1; ‘The Lesser Arts’ I. 242; Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond: a Morality II. 576; ‘The March of the Workers’ I. 252; ‘The Message of the March Wind’ I. 252, 254 II. 404; News from Nowhere II. 390, 392, 394, 398, 400, 411, 421, 449, 600 IV. 879 n1, 918; The Odyssey of Homer: done into English Verse II. 323–4; The Pilgrims of Hope I. 252; Poems by the Way II. 402, 404, 406–7; The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation’ I. 159 II. 436; ‘The Revival of Architecture’ II. 326; The Roots of the Mountains II. 361 III. 776; Some Hints on Pattern Designing III. 652; The Stories of the Kings of Norway II. 490; The Story of the Ere-Dwellers (Eyrgbyggja Saga) II. 407; The Story of the Glittering Plain II. 384, 407, 478; The Story of Grettir the Strong II. 444; The Story of Sigurd the Volsung I. 115, 125 IV. 1108; Syr Perecyvelle of Gales II. 507; The Tables Turned: or Nupkins Awakened, A Socialist Interlude I. 317; The Tale of Beowulf II. 499, 507; The Tale of King Florus and the Fair Jehane II. 475; The Water of the Wondrous Isles II. 560 n4; ‘Under an Elm Tree’ III. 858 n2; verses written for embroidered hanging done by MM III. 856, 858–9; Völsunga Saga: the Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs II. 418; ‘Wake, London lads!’ (anti-war

song) I. 131 n2; The Well at the World’s End II. 524–5, 528–9; The Wood Beyond the World II. 493; ‘The Worker’s Share of Art’ I. 254; lends Kelmscott Manor to PSW I. 90–2; letters to PSW III. 628; on buildings: Cartmel Priory, Cumbria I. 213: Salisbury Cathedral III. 797; on GPB as landscape painter III. 673; on WSB as poet II. 565; photographed by Elliott and Fry I. 320; personal motto: ‘si je puis’ III. 623; presentation copies of works to PSW II. 324, 361, 490; PSW designs memorial stone at St George’s, Kelmscott II. 558–60, 564, 569, 571, 577–83; public speaking I. 252–3, 304, 349, 358; reorganisation of MMF & Co. I. 63; socialism II. 605; SPAB matters I. 188 n2, 210, 225, 238, 241, 254, 290, 292, 349, 358 II. 460: St Mary the Virgin, Oxford II. 454, 596 III. 627: Peterborough Cathedral II. 513: Westminster Abbey II. 508 n8; speaks against war I. 131; ‘Topsy’ (nickname) I. 3 n2 IV. 1007 n3; visits Bad Ems with JM I. 25–30; visits Belgium I. 68; visits Berkeley Castle I. 98; visits France with JEM II. 396–7, 401; visits to Iceland I. 45, 57, 62 IV. 879; visits Wiltshire with PSW IV. 1116; Walthamstow childhood home II. 600 Morse, A.T. (paint-maker) II. 609 Moule’s Earth Closet Co. IV. 1071 Moyn(e)s Park, Steeple Bumpstead I. 147 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Don Giovanni II. 382; Symphony 41 (‘Jupiter’) I. 96 Müller, Friedrich Max I. 25 Murcott, Henry (picture framer) II. 374 III. 685 Murray, Angelica (née Colivicchi) I. 49 n1, 115 n14, 242, 262 Murray, Charles Fairfax [CFM] LETTERS TO I. 49, 55, 57, 62, 81, 86, 94, 96, 115, 227, 229 II. 352, 456, 483, 496–7, 500 III. 712, 717; I. 129, 225, 257, 262, 264, 270,

341

INDEX

272–3, 318 II. 369; and Girolamo Savonarola II. 497; as collector and art expert I. 81 n7, 258 II. 482–3, 500 III. 673; assists with winding-up of GPB’s affairs II. 496, 500 IV. 1101; buys some of PSW’s furniture III. 712, 732; Catalogue of the Pictures Belonging to his Grace the Duke of Portland II. 500; complicated domestic life I. 49 n1; host to PSW in Florence I. 231–42, 248–52 II. 350, 417; and Italy I. 49, 57, 62, 81, 86, 115, 146, 227, 234, 251; Italian family I. 227, 262, 264, 270, 272; and JR I. 49 n3, 115, 264; meets Giulio Sartorio II. 456, 460; on GPB II. 482–3; paints copy of Carpaccio’s St George and the Dragon for PSW I. 253, 257, 262, 264, 269–70, 272–4 III. 697; paints portrait of PSW I. 55; supplies parchment to WM for manuscripts I. 81; takes GBO to National Gallery II. 352–3; The Violin Player I. 270 Murray, T. Douglas Jeanne d’Arc IV. 862 n4, 923 Napoleon I, Emperor III. 646 Napoleon III, Emperor I. 36 n2 III. 646; PSW on II. 350 Nardò Abbey II. 444 National Gallery, London I. 270 II. 352 III. 846; Bellini IV. 964 n8; Botticelli Mystic Nativity II. 472; Holbein The Ambassadors IV. 917; Mantegna Virgin and Child I. 270; Raphael Ansidei Madonna I. 257; Uccello The Battle of San Romano III. 621; PSW visits I. 257 Naya, Carlo (photographer) I. 262 Neave, Mr (decorator) I. 177, 182 New, E.H. drawing of Crabbet III. 767, 795 New Gallery inaugural private view (cartoon in Punch) II. 321 Newman, Reverend Francis Browne Newman LETTER TO I. 208 Newman, John Henry (later Cardinal) Letter to the Duke of Norfolk I. 82

New Romney, Kent: St Nicholas’ church LETTER TO UNKNOWN RECIPIENT I. 154; Reverend Richard Marshall South I. 154 n1 Nicholson, Edward I. 28 n1, 29–30 Nicoll, David J. II. 379 Noel, Irene IV. 1042 Norman, Philip II. 399, 563 III. 672; gives dinner in honour of PSW III. 724 Norton, Charles Eliot II. 570, 574 Norton, Richard II. 570, 574 Norwood, Reverend Thomas I. 109–10, 139 II. 340; founder member of SPAB I. 125 Oakham, Rutland II. 562 Ogilvy, David, tenth Earl of Airlie I. 32 n2 Okakura, Kakuzo The Ideals of the East, with special reference to the Art of Japan IV. 942–3 Oldham, Emma (née Morris) LETTERS TO I. 165, 170; II. 533 Oldham, Joseph I. 165 n1, 170; death II. 533 Orcagna (Andrea di Cione) I. 252; PSW on I. 96 Orchardson, William Quiller II. 489 Orlebar, Reverend Augustus III. 640 Orelbar, R.R.B. (SPAB local correspondent) III. 640, 649 Orrinsmith, Lucy (née Faulkner) LETTERS TO I. 93 III. 681; III. 693, 742; death of KF II. 591, 594, 610, 681; PSW advises on house I. 93 Orvieto bronze statue of bull (see under Boni); Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo II. 358; PSW on I. 243–4, 251 II. 358, 369, 377; San Giovenale II. 358 Oxford (see also under PSW) All Souls College III. 828; Examination Schools I. 56, 169; Holywell Street II. 606, 610–11, 613; Keble College I. 33; Magdalen Bridge I. 168; Randolph and Taylor Galleries IV. 1067, 1072; Sheldonian Theatre II. 441; St Giles’s Fair I. 132; St Mary the Virgin (see SPAB); The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine PSW’s copies II. 599

342

INDEX

Padua Municipal Museum I. 262; PSW on I. 254, 256; Sant’Antonio di Padova I. 262 Paget, Augustus Berkeley III. 821 Paget, James, I. 65 Palladio, Andrea PSW on I. 319 Parc y Cerrig Sanctaidd, Carmarthenshire III. 845 Parenzo mosaics II. 485, 487 III. 671 Paris Louvre I. 265; Notre Dame I. 263 IV. 869 Paris, Matthew (chronicler) II. 421 Parker, John Henry Some Account of Domestic Architecture in England I. 180, 207, 213 II. 528–9, 562 III. 643 Parnell, Charles Stewart II. 362 Pavy, Frederick William (physician) consulted by WM II. 525 Peacock, Joseph I. 208 Pearson, John Loughborough III. 654; Peterborough Cathedral I. 199–200 II. 360, 550; St Peter’s, Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire IV. 949; Westminster Abbey II. 508 Pelasgic architecture II. 398, 400 Pembridge, Herefordshire PSW advises on new clock at St Mary the Virgin II. 378, 380 Pennethorne, James LETTERS TO I. 10, 23; I. 6 n3, 176 n8; illness I. 10; objects to PSW’s plans for 1 Palace Green I. 7, 9 n2, 10–11, 13–16, 176 n8 Perkins, H. LETTER TO I. 9 Perowne, Reverend John, Dean of Peterborough Cathedral LETTERS TO I. 200–1 II. 360; I. 199 Perrins, Charles Dyson IV. 979 n.1, 1033 n1, 1045 n1 Perugia PSW on I. 252; San Gregorio in Castle Ritaldi II. 255 Peterborough Cathedral (see also under SPAB) PSW on I. 199–201 Pettenkofer, Josef von process for restoring paintings II. 417 Philip II of Macedonia II. 577 Philpot, John Brampton I. 62

Phipson, Richard Makilwaine I. 155 Piero della Francesca II. 381; Arezzo frescoes I. 251–2 III. 672; Virgin and Child (Brera altarpiece) I. 269–70 II. 362 Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto) I. 244 n3, 248, 251 II. 377 IV. 957–8 Pisa I. 237–8; Campo Santo I. 96 nn1–2 II. 411; San Piero a Grado I. 236 II. 369 Pisanello, Antonio di Puccio PSW on II. 381, 409 n4 III. 621 Pisano, Giovanni I. 146 Pitt-Rivers, Augustus Fox LETTERS TO I. 192–4, 197–8; I. 255, 260; PSW on proposed crest or motto I. 197–8 Plato PSW on I. 271 II. 330 Pollard, Alfred death of Robert Proctor IV. 892 n2, 893–4 Pomposa Abbey II. 380 Pope, Alexander An Essay on Criticism I. 288 III. 633; PSW on II. 325 Porteous, Mr (junior assistant to PSW) I. 279 Powell, Ada Louise (née Lessore) visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 1021 Powell, Alfred Hoare LETTERS TO III. 841 IV. 925, 951; III. 668, 724, 776, 833 IV. 902, 905, 976, 1018, 1105; brother (Malcolm) III. 841 IV. 925; ceramic design and painting IV. 925, 957, 964; engagement to Olive Garnett ends II. 560 n6; marries IV. 1021 n2; Mount Grace Priory III. 746, 819; pleurisy III. 789–90; PSW advises on craft manufacture and design IV. 951; PSW on thistle engraving III. 782; Queen’s College, Cambridge IV. 964; St Mary’s, Guildford III. 817; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 789–90 IV. 999, 1021 Powell, Douglas (physician; uncle of SCC) buys wine from PSW III. 732, 764, 771; consulted by WM II. 538 n1 Powell, James Croft (glassmaker) II. 485, 487 Powys, Mr (assistant to WW) IV. 939 Poynter, Agnes (née Macdonald) I. 54

343

INDEX

Poynter, Ambrose III. 746 Poynter, Edward John I. 28, 54 n1, 290 Praeds & Co (PSW’s bank, later part of Lloyds) LETTER TO III. 799; I. 29, 247 III. 797, 801 Price, Cormell (‘Crom’) I. 26, 28 III. 721 IV. 864, 868, 998, 1007 Prince of Wales: see Edward VII Prinsep, Valentine Cameron I. 26, 111; The Imperial Assemblage at Delhi I. 111 n2, 132 Proctor, Mrs LETTER TO IV. 892; IV. 893–5, 902, 905, 916; PSW on death of Robert Proctor IV. 892 Proctor, Robert III. 709, 780, 857 IV. 842 n3; appointed trustee to WM estate III. 759; death in the Tyrol IV. 889, 892–6, 916; PSW on III. 759, 809, 892; pays for publication of Notes on the Repair of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) IV. 895–6; The Story of the Laxdalers IV. 878–9; A Tale of the Weapon Firthers III. 809; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 757, 809 IV. 879, 911 Quaritch, Bernard I. 81 II. 406, 432, 468 Queen Victoria I. 132; death III. 740, 742 Quenington, Gloucestershire St Swithin church IV. 1022 Ramsay, Nathaniel (surveyor) LETTER TO I. 179; I. 196 Ramsden, John LETTERS TO I. 293, 295, 298; I. 280, 306–7, 311 Ramsden, Mrs John I. 295; PSW’s dislike of II. 326 n2, 328–31, 333–5 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) Ansidei Madonna I. 257–8; La Belle Jardinière I. 257; PSW on I. 86, 94, 248–9, 265 III. 657; Palazzo Pandolfini I. 96 Ravelli (Italian blacksmith) II. 358, 377, 387, 437 Ravenna PSW on I. 253, 325 II. 369, 508 III. 846 IV. 972 Rawlence and Squarey (land agents) I. 101, 113, 235, 243 Reid, William (plumber) LETTER TO I. 42; I. 179 Reilly, Charles Herbert IV. 1043

Rembrandt, Harmenszoon van Rijn engraving of elephant III. 848; PSW on III. 853 Rhodes, Cecil III. 810 Richardson, Benjamin Ward I. 176 Richardson, Samuel Clarissa I. 29 Richard, Thomas LETTER TO I. 153; I. 215 Richmond, William II. 485, 489; decorations at St Paul’s Cathedral II. 454, 487 n10 III. 633 IV. 1102 n4 Richter, Hans I. 152 Ridley, Edward (tenant at Crabbet Park) IV. 958, 960 Ridley, Thomas D. (builder) LETTER TO I. 166 Rigby, J. Scarratt LETTER TO III. 786 Roberts, Grace IV. 926, 933, 961 Roberts, Veronica (companion to JEM) II. 559 n1, 577, 597, 609 Robertson, Charles & Co (retailer of artists’ materials) III. 762 Robinson, George, Marquis of Ripon LETTER TO II. 467 Romanos, Athos II. 502 Rome (and Vatican) antique buildings II. 403–4, 460 IV. 1032: walls II. 570, 574; Campagna I. 248–9, 251 II. 353, 461, 464; Capitoline Museums: antique bronze horse II. 404: antique bronze lion II. 358; Castel San Angelo II. 366–7, 369; explosion near Porta Portese II. 384, 387; Palazzo Barberini II. 403–4; Pantheon I. 249, 251 II. 404; PSW on I. 243–4, 248–9, 251 II. 350, 366–7, 387, 403–4, 460–1, 472, 477, 570 IV. 932, 1032; Santa Cecilia in Trastevere II. 371; Santa Croce in Gerusalemme II. 369; Santa Maria in Cosmedin II. 487, 491; Santi Bonifacio e Alessio II. 371; Santo Stefano al Monte Cielo I. 248 II. 403–4; St Peter’s I. 248, 251, 257 II. 389, 434, 453; Sistine Chapel I. 244, 249, 251 II. 381 IV. 932; Vatican, Borgia Apartments I. 251 IV. 957–8; Villa Borghese I. 249, 251; Villa Farnese II. 350 Romsey Abbey PSW on IV. 976, 983, 1058

344

INDEX

Rooke, Leonora Jane (née Jones) III. 834 IV. 995 Rooke, Noel (son of Thomas Rooke) visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 986, 1016–8, 1071 Rooke, Thomas Matthews III. 646, 653, 752, 764–5 IV. 883, 887–8, 894, 1054; drawings of historic buildings II. 408, 559, 575 III. 668, 672, 674, 722, 838, 840 IV. 866, 880–2, 901–2, 974, 986, 1012, 1016–8, 1037; lends notes on EBJ to GBJ IV. 952, 960, 962, 964; PSW on III. 820–1 IV. 866, 902, 952; makes copy of Millais’ Autumn Leaves IV. 964; PSW makes some provision for III. 852–3; PSW on IV. 967; SCC organises subscription for annual drawing commission II. 556 IV. 894, 902 n4; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 820 IV. 986, 1016–8, 1071; visits PSW at Rottingdean IV. 901–2 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel [DGR] LETTERS TO I. 5, 8, 44; I. 2 n1, 17, 25–6, 29–30, 57 II. 616 III. 673, 852 IV. 1073; as ‘Athos’ II. 525; Ballads and Narrative Poems II. 473; drawing of JM IV. 1020; The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise I. 41 n3, 267, 274 III. 729, 858 n6 IV. 914–5; menagerie I. 27 n4; on bores II. 447; on MMF & Co I. 5; renovations at 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea I. 8, 44, 294; Sonnets and Lyrical Poems II. 484 Rossetti, William Michael I. 43 III. 626 Rosslyn Chapel, Midlothian PSW on II. 333 Rothenstein, Alice (née Knewstub) LETTERS TO IV. 1064–5 Rothenstein, William LETTERS TO IV. 1050, 1066; IV. 1037; address to Birmingham School of Art IV. 1050; address to Winchester School of Art IV. 976; at Lyme Regis IV. 1064–6; lectures at Botanical Museum, Cambridge IV. 1064–6; on Tolstoy IV. 976; PSW on IV. 976, 1065; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 1050, 1054

Rottingdean, Sussex PSW takes lodgings in 1903 IV. 880, 882–3, 885, 888, 890, 893–908, 910, 918 Routledge, Mr (bailiff at Arisaig) I. 179 Routledge, George I. 83, 127 Routledge, Thomas I. 118–19, 121 Rowfant, Sussex III. 770 Rowlandson, Samuel elected MP I. 182 n2 Royal Academy exhibitions I. 251; PSW on I. 290–1 Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England IV. 1058 Royal Institute of British Architects [RIBA] LETTER TO II. 435; I. 286 III. 622, 767 IV. 995; award of Pugin Travelling Scholarship to DJB II. 435, 439; PSW refuses offer of Royal Gold Medal IV. 1105; reports on GBO’s work about Ca’ d’Oro, Venice I. 286 Ruskin, John [JR] LETTER TO I. 4; I. 4 n1 II. 373 II. 387 III. 674, 766, 824, 853 IV. 917, 1007, 1041, 1075, 1108 n5; and Angelo Alessandri I. 262; The Bible of Amiens II. 420; and CFM I. 115, 264; correspondence in The Daily Telegraph (1865) I. 4 nn3–4; death and aftermath III. 663, 668, 676, 709 n6, 713 n2; on Fondaco dei Turchi II. 439; Fors Clavigera III. 692 n5; on Keats and Shelley I. 237; on Michelangelo I. 115; Modern Painters III. 697; On the Old Road III. 709; PSW on III. 814 IV. 925, 928, 932, 1106; Seven Lamps of Architecture III. 692 n5; The Stones of Venice I. 115 II. 439 III. 745; on Tintoretto I. 262; Unto this Last III. 663, 809, 838, 842 n1; ‘Verona and its Rivers’, IV. 1040; and visits Hawarden Castle IV. 871 William Henry Hunt III. 671; Russell, Mr (bailiff to PWY) I. 174, 181 Russell, Mr (carpenter, Winchester) II. 549 Rye, Davis (assistant to WW) IV. 1010 Sackville, Lady Margaret III. 796 Salisbury Cathedral (see also under SPAB) PSW drawing of IV. 865

345

INDEX

Salisbury town clerk, LETTER TO I. 204 Salvin, Anthony and PSW’s plans for 1 Palace Green I. 10 n3, 11 nn1–2, 13, 16; St Nicholas, Worth IV. 1077; Tower of London restorations II. 367 San Gimignano PSW on I. 243–4 Sand, George Consuelo I. 139; The Countess of Rudolstadt I. 139 Sanders, Francis (builder) I. 315 Sanmicheli, Michele II. 392 Sartorio, Giulio Aristide LETTERS TO II. 455, 479; II. 456, 458, 460–1, 464, 472, 487; I marmorari romani nella chiesa di Westminster Abbey III. 639; meets G.F. Watts II. 461; PSW introduces to WM II. 455, 460; PSW on his paintings II. 460, 477, 479, 481 Saunders, Mr (brewer) I. 301 Savage, Reverend E. Sidney, III. 652 n1 Scarlett, William, third Baron Abinger I. 42 Scheu, Andreas I. 237 n6, 248 Schneider, Fräulein (Wyndhams’ governess) II. 469 Scott, George Gilbert I. 73; All Souls College, Oxford III. 828; Gleanings from Westminster Abbey II. 508; Tewkesbury Abbey I. 109 n2, 168 II. 458 Scott, George Gilbert Jr LETTER TO I. 76 Holy Trinity, Washington I. 76; Peterhouse, Cambridge I. 30; St Agnes, Kennington Park, Lambeth I. 76; Tewkesbury Abbey I. 168 Scott, Walter II. 323, 325 III. 653, 806, 809, 834, 840 IV. 957; The Antiquary I. 130 II. 403, 441, 469 III. 642, 657, 771 IV. 913; The Fair Maid of Perth III. 806; Guy Mannering III. 643, 809 IV. 915; The Heart of Mid-Lothian II. 398; The Pirate IV. 982; Redgauntlet I. 317 III. 664 IV. 919; Rob Roy I. 244, 257 III. 642, 660 IV. 925; Waverley II. 329 Sedding, John Dando II. 608 n3 III. 637 n1, 668 n2 Seddon, John Pollard II. 328

Sedger, G. LETTERS TO I. 183–4 Sedger, Thomas employed for trial period by PSW I. 183–4 Selvatico, Riccardo II. 489 Sens Cathedral I. 269 IV. 869 Severn, Joan III. 668 Shaen, Margaret III. 784 n9, 788, 808, 810, 819 IV. 870, 948 Shakespeare, William II. 421 III. 838 A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, I. 53, 132 II. 367, 491 III. 853 IV. 904; As You Like It III. 638, 745 IV. 1027; Hamlet I. 94, 139, 213 II. 333, 365, 369, 390, 434 III. 632, 762, 765, 817 IV. 871: performance by Comédie Française I. 288; 1 Henry IV I. 211 III. 752; 2 Henry IV I. 288 II. 374 n5, 397 III. 717; Henry V II. 407 III. 640, 697; Macbeth II. 398, 404, 437 III. 690 IV. 922; The Merchant of Venice II. 333, 355; Much Ado About Nothing III. 765; Othello II. 342; PSW on III. 653, 657; Richard II II. 328, 557; Romeo and Juliet II. 325 III. 712; Stratfordupon-Avon Birthplace Trust II. 371; The Taming of the Shew II. 333; The Tempest II. 420, 434; The Two Gentlemen of Verona II. 373, 444; The Winter’s Tale IV. 1117 Sharp, Reverend Oswald LETTER TO I. 71 Shaw, George Bernard LETTER TO IV. 932; IV. 924, 978; Candida IV. 935; The Common Sense of Municipal Trading IV. 938; proposes to visit Caxtons IV. 927, 929, 931; PSW on IV. 958; wife IV. 929, 932–3 Shaw, Richard Norman death IV. 1113; PSW on II. 614 IV. 1113 Shaw-Lefevre, George John I. 241 Shearburn, William (builder) LETTER TO I. 128 Shelley, Percy Bysshe I. 43, 237 Shoolbred, James & Co (furniture makers and removals) III. 730–2 Shrewsbury, Shropshire I. 50 Sicily II. 366, 570 Siena Duomo, I. 244 II. 377; PSW on I. 243–4

346

INDEX

Signorelli, Luca Orvieto frescoes I. 251 II. 358, 369, 377 Simmonds, James (Clerk of Works for ‘Clouds’) LETTERS TO I. 174, 181, 191; I. 169, 173, 187, 189, 194, 222, 226, 250, 255, 284; PSW critical of I. 174 n1, 191, 255 Sinclair & Son (auctioneers) I. 143 Sinker, Robert III. 858 n5 IV. 863 Skelton, John Skelton’s Engraved Illustrations of the Principal Antiquities of Oxfordshire IV. 987 Smallfield, Fredrick I. 258 Smith, Angus (chemist) I. 284 Smith, George & Co (builders) LETTERS TO I. 144–5; I. 143–4, 161–3, 167 Smith, Henry G. (builder) LETTERS TO I. 163, 167; I. 171 Smith, John of Clerkenwell (clockmakers) I. 75, 77, 83 Smith, William (joiner) III. 730 Smollett, Tobias Humphry Clinker II. 365 Social Democratic Federation and WM I. 237 n6, 238, 241 n1, 244, 248; KF attends meeting I. 237 Socialist League LETTER TO MEMBERSHIP I. 276; I. 242 n2, 244, 252, 276, 278, 304–5, 308, 313–4 II. 349, 361, 379; and WM I. 237 n6, 241 n1, 244, 248, 313, 317 n7; The Commonweal I. 249, 252, 254, 256, 288, 305, 313–4, 317 n7 II. 379; Hammersmith branch II. 379 Society of Antiquaries II. 458, 460, 464, 470, 472, 481, 563, 616; PSW speaks about Peterborough Cathedral II. 548 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings [SPAB] I. 190, 225, 241 II. 364, 373, 381, 464, 533 III. 730, 756 IV. 997, 1051–2, 1102; Annual Meetings (and published proceedings) II. 346, 348–9, 358, 367–8, 371, 373, 376, 390, 392, 394, 489, 514, 516, 524–5, 601 III. 631, 633, 636, 771, 818, 832 IV. 934, 1027; attacked by established architects II. 368; 10 Buckingham Street office I. 290–1 II. 401, 615;

committee meetings I. 123, 125, 140, 152, 158, 190, 209, 213, 220, 242, 290–2 II. 345, 355, 358, 367, 396, 411, 417, 424, 427, 433, 482, 497–8, 509, 516–7, 523–4, 530, 564, 584, 598, 601, 615–6 III. 633, 637, 644, 649, 652, 654, 656, 659–60, 683, 707, 751; foreign casework I. 152, 188, 242, 286, 290–2 II. 362 n6, 366–8, 411, 417, 487 n11, 491, 502, 570 III. 821; founding and principles I. 109, 113, 115, 117, 122, 124, 133; GBO invited to address Annual Meeting II. 346, 348–9; Notes on the Repair of Ancient Buildings IV. 895 n6, 896 Solferino (restaurant) II. 352, 365 South Africa Boer War III. 657, 660, 663, 672, 802, 804, 846; Jameson raid II. 527 n6, 528: PSW as juror in trial II. 528; relief of Ladysmith III. 668 South Kensington Museum (and Library), later V&A I. 139, 152 II. 326, 382, 389, 461, 528 III. 643; ‘Gloucester candlestick’ II. 422; GPB watercolours (some given by PSW) II. 483 III. 798 IV. 1101; GW’s travel notebooks IV. 972; PSW uses Library III. 655–6, 663–4, 674, 676 IV. 869, 943, 1043; William Henry Hunt III. 671; Winchester College glass II. 441 SPAB casework: All Saints’, church, Sandon, Staffordshire III. 784, 792; All Saints’ church, Wilby, Norfolk III. 761, 763, 778, 784; Bedford Priory II. 598, 601; Bradford-on-Avon: medieval barn I. 287; Saxon chapel I. 287 III. 798; Bristol, Abbey Gatehouse I. 216; Broadway, Worcestershire (footpaths) II. 436; Chichester Cathedral II. 505, 563 III. 709; Christ’s Hospital, Newgate Street II. 597; Coventry cross I. 180; Cow Honeybourne, Worcestershire III. 651; Crane Bridge, Salisbury I. 204; Dunblane Cathedral II. 321–3; Ely Cathedral II. 515;

347

INDEX

Exeter Cathedral bells III. 806 n7; Exeter Guildhall III. 667, 678; Fountains Abbey II. 467; Great Chalfield Manor, Wiltshire I. 172; Guildford Bridge III. 666, 668; Henley-in-Arden, wayside cross I. 309; Hexham Abbey III. 643 n2, 646 n1, 652, 654–6; Hospital of St Cross, Winchester II. 549 IV. 883; Kirkstall Abbey II. 324; Langley Castle, Northumberland I. 207; Lincoln’s Inn gatehouse II. 391; Oxford: Brasenose College I. 289, 292; Peterborough Cathedral I. 199–201 II. 358–60, 501, 503, 513, 521, 548, 550, 552, 601; Salisbury Cathedral II. 513, 517, 551 III. 797; South Milton church, Devon I. 275; Southwell Minster I. 147; St Agnes’s church, Cawston, Norfolk I. 155; St Albans Abbey I. 147 n6; St Andrew’s church, Denton, Lincolnshire IV. 934 n1, 936–7, 939, 949; St Bartholomewthe-Great, Smithfield II. 386, 388; St Benet’s, Paul’s Wharf II. 399; St Brise’s church, Eglwys Brewis, Glamorgan III. 620 n8, 640–1, 644, 649, 659, 683, 707, 716, 730; St George’s church, Arreton, Isle of Wight I. 268; St Illtud church, Llantwit Major I. 288, 316; St John the Baptist church, Inglesham, Wiltshire III. 619; St Margaret’s church, Eglwys Cymmin, Carmarthenshire III. 620 n8, 640–1, 644, 649, 659, 662, 667, 707, 716, 723, 730, 750, 760–1, 763, 778, 784, 792, 817, 834 IV. 877; St Martin’s church, Chipping Ongar, Essex I. 213; St Mary’s church, Guildford III. 817; St Mary’s church, Newbold Astbury, Cheshire I. 210; St Mary’s church, Ottery St Mary, Devon I. 202 IV. 1023; St Mary the Virgin church, North Stoke, Oxfordshire III. 778, 817, 826–7, 845; St Mary the Virgin, Oxford II. 441–2, 454, 596 III. 627; St Mary the Virgin, Podington, Bedfordshire III. 640–1, 649; St Nicholas’s

church, Barfreston. Kent II. 328; St Nicholas’s church, New Romney, Kent I. 154; St Paul’s Cathedral III. 633; St Peter’s church, Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire, I. 208 IV. 949; St Thomas’s church, Winchelsea, East Sussex II. 438; Staples Inn I. 316; Stonehenge III. 739, 751 n1, 757, 840; Tewkesbury Abbey I. 109, 168 II. 458; Westminster Abbey I. 263 II. 367, 390, 411, 441, 508, 570; Westminster Hall I. 238, 241, 254, 263 II. 367, 411; West Stow Hall, Suffolk IV. 1010, 1014; Winchester Cathedral II. 521, 549 IV. 882 Sparling, Henry Halliday LETTER TO I. 278; marriage to May Morris II. 372, 419 Spello II. 392 Spencer, Charlotte (née Seymour), Countess Spencer II. 333 Spencer, Herbert death IV. 905; on Japan IV. 912; ‘The Morals of Trade’ IV. 908 Spoleto II. 365, 461, 464, 472 Sproat Brothers (stonemasons) I. 126 Spurgeon, Charles Haddon (preacher) II. 349 Stanford, Edward (map-seller) I. 100 IV. 876 Stanhope, John Roddam Spencer I. 67 n1, 96, 132, 146, 188, 227 II. 333; Villa Nuti, near Florence I. 229, 237–8 Stanley, Henrietta Maria (née Dillon-Lee), Lady Stanley I. 132 Stapleford Park, Leicestershire III. 644, 649 Staveley, Miss (companion to JEM) III. 704, 832, 834 IV. 867–8, 910, 918 Stead, William Thomas II. 361 Steele, Robert LETTER TO III. 650; ‘William Morris, Poet and Artist’ III. 650 Stent, Frederick Warburton I. 4 Stephens, Frederic George I. 25 II. 384 n11 Stephens, Reverend William Richard Wood LETTER TO II. 549 Stevenson, John James I. 124 Stillman, William

348

INDEX

JM visits in Frimley Green, Surrey III. 672; Rome correspondent for The Times II. 362 n6, 366, 368, 444 St John Hope, W.H. IV. 990 Stott, William II. 489 Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom’s Cabin I. 3 n2 IV. 1007 n3 Stowers, Elizabeth Speakman (née Webb, PSW’s eldest sister) II. 476 n2; final illness and death III. 745–6 Stowers, James Herbert (doctor, and nephew of PSW) IV. 1080, 1081 n1, 1101; attends Harry Webb in final illness IV. 1095–6 Stowers, Nowell (brother-in-law of PSW) III. 745 n3, 746 Stowers, Raymond (great-nephew of PSW) IV. 1080–1 St Pancras Ironworks Company I. 203; St Paul’s Cathedral (see also under SPAB) PSW on III. 653 IV. 1102–3 Street, George Edmund LETTER TO I. 164; I. 73, 290 III. 841; PSW’s early working career II. 614 IV. 1022; PSW seeks advice on builders I. 164, 169 n2; Royal Courts of Justice II. 445 n2; Southwell Minster I. 147 Strong, Miss (companion to JEM) III. 754 n2, 759 Strongitharm, John (engraver) I. 146 Stubbs, Reverend Charles William LETTER TO II. 515; II. 523 Stubbs, George III. 621 Sumner, Heywood Maunoir ‘Protection and Production’ (in 1894 SPAB report) II. 489 Surtees, Robert Smith ‘Jorrocks’ II. 615, 617 III. 628 Sutri II. 384 Swainson, Harold II. 494 Sweetheart Abbey, Dumfries I. 317 II. 333 Swinburne, Algernon ‘Charles Dickens’ III. 834; PSW on II. 488 III. 632 Sykes, Christopher I. 132 Taddy & Co (tobacconists) III. 776 Tate, William Thomas LETTER TO I. 206 Tatham, William LETTER TO I. 70 Taylor, Fanny Warington LETTER TO I. 35; I. 17 nn1–2

Taylor, George Warington LETTER TO I. 17; I. 5 n3, 26–7, 29–30, 35 III. 842; as Eton schoolboy IV. 1001 n2; asks PSW to be trustee I. 17, 35 Taynton, Oxfordshire III. 833 Temple, Henry John, third Viscount Palmerston I. 125 Tennyson, Alfred funeral II. 432; The May Queen IV. 1106; Oenone III. 816; PSW on III. 657 Tennyson, Hallam Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir by his Son II. 569 Terry, Ellen II. 438 Tewkesbury Abbey (see also under SPAB) II. 397 III. 777; PSW visits I. 168 II. 378, 458 IV. 1033 Thackeray, William Makepeace I. 7 n2 III. 620 Thomas, John Havard LETTER TO I. 296 Thompson, Francis Selected Poems IV. 1062 Three Bridges, Sussex III. 705 Thurgood, George (builder at Much Hadham) II. 504, 519, 522 ‘Ticino’, actually Branca (waiter at Gatti’s) III. 626 n9, 702 IV. 876, 894, 933, 1059 Tidy, Miss (temporary domestic help to PSW) III. 771, 774, 810 Tintoretto, Jacopo Flight into Egypt I. 262 Tinworth George PSW attends exhibition of terracotta panels I. 205 Tolstoy, Leo ‘Count Tolstoy on the War’ (The Times) IV. 933; Guy de Maupassant IV. 888; health III. 818 n2; on JR and WM IV. 878 n5, 879, 882–3; PSW on III. 663 IV. 878–80, 883, 904, 908, 911, 919, 925, 938, 941, 955, 957, 960, 988; Resurrection III. 791; ‘Revolution’ (Daily News) IV. 941–2; SCC meets IV. 878–80, 884–5; War and Peace II. 597, 603 IV. 879 n2, 882–3; What is Art IV. 878–9, 883, 988 Tomes, John I. 95 II. 330 Tooth, Reverend Arthur I. 106

349

INDEX

Torrigiani, Pietro (see Westminster Abbey) Treherne, George Gilbert Treherne (local SPAB correspondent) III. 672, 713, 716, 771 IV. 928–9, 1056, 1072; Eglwys Cymmin, The Story of an Old Welsh Church III. 644, n3, 667 n1, 707 n4, 778 n1; St Margaret’s, Eglwys Cymmin, Carmarthenshire III. 640–1, 644, 649, 659, 662, 667, 707, 723, 750, 760–1, 763, 778, 784, 817, 834, 845 nn5–6 IV. 877, 922, 924, 934, 937; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 764, 834 IV. 922 Troia, Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta II. 417 Trollope, Anthony I. 53 III. 622 Tuminello, Ludovico (photographer) II. 358 Turgenev, Ivan III. 709 Turner, Hawes Harison IV. 1102 Turner, Hugh Thackeray [HTT] LETTERS TO I. 289 II. 359, 502, 551 III. 651, 739, 751, 761; II. 559 III. 833; advises WSB on Newbuildings Place III. 848, 850; architectural work IV. 888; ceramic painting IV. 951; daughters IV. 1037; paper on ‘Restoration’ to Society of Architects II. 552; PSW on IV. 1025; SPAB activities, including his work as secretary I. 201, 208, 225 II. 359–60, 391, 467, 521, 549, 551, 596, 598, 608 III. 633, 646, 651, 659, 667, 761, 806 n7, 817, 845 IV. 882, 903, 1010, 1026, 1102 n3; visits PSW at Caxtons IV. 888, 1033; wife III. 850: her death IV. 1025, 1033, 1037 Turner, Laurence Arthur III. 641; carves WM’s memorial stone II. 559, 564, 569, 571, 578, 581, 585 Turner, Sydney I. 89 Turner, William (financial secretary, Socialist League) I. 308 Twain, Mark More Tramps Abroad II. 571 Tweed, John III. 838 n4, 840 Tyerman, John (builder) I. 67, 69 Tyndall, John (physicist) III. 622

Uccello, Paolo PSW on III. 621 Uffington (see White Horse Hill) Vatcher, Reverend James II. 608 n1 Vaux, William Sandys Wright I. 44 n4 Venice Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) I. 253–4, 286 II. 323, 368, 398, 417, 441 III. 663 IV. 932; Palazzo Santa Sofia (Ca’ d’Oro) I. 286, 319; Piazzetta and bronze lion of San Marco I. 286 II. 358, 382, 384, 387, 404, 421, 437, 444, 447, 464; PSW on I. 253, 256 II. 362, 398, 416; San Giovanni e Paolo I. 262 II. 389, 453; San Marco, Campanile and Piazza I. 242, 253, 264, 270, 325 II. 381, 453 III. 821, 840 IV. 913: bronze horses II. 404, 409 III. 621: SPAB concerns for I. 286, 290–2; Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari II. 389, 453, 50; Scuola di San Giorgio del Schiavoni I. 253 n2, 262, 264, 269, 272–3 II. 416; Torcello I. 256, 319, 325 Venosa, Abbazia della Santissima Trinità II. 381 Venturi, Adolfo Storia Dell’Arte Italiana IV. 978–9, 995, 998, 1022 Verona Palazzo Guastaverza II. 392; PSW on I. 253, 257 II. 368, 381 IV. 1040 Vicenza PSW on GBO’s photographs I. 319 II. 323–5 Victor Emmanuel II I. 250 Vignola, Giacomo Barozzi da II. 350 Villari, Pasquale II. 408, 411 n4 Vinall, Charles George I. 239 as employer of GWJ I. 185; assists PSW with projects I. 69, 74, 95, 132 II. 504; PSW on II. 561; SPAB activities I. 213 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène Emmanuel Dictionnaire Raisonné de L’Architecture II. 404 IV. 887, 900, 902, 908; PSW on II. 397 IV. 869, 974, 983; restoration work at Vézelay IV. 887 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) I. 288; Candide I. 291

350

INDEX

Walker, Dorothy (EW’s daughter) III. 846 IV. 866, 907, 961, 1002, 1024, 1058–9, 1073, 1086 Walker, Emery [EW] (see also Doves Press) LETTERS TO II. 339, 374, 385, 393, 399, 408, 413, 476 III. 738, 740–1, 745, 762, 768–9, 771, 779, 781, 783, 785, 795–7, 801, 813, 818, 820–1, 839, 846, 848, 851–3, 857 IV. 862, 874, 876, 878, 883, 907, 916, 931, 935, 950, 983, 1004, 1024, 1058–9, 1073, 1118; II. 361, 407, 437, 441, 489, 516, 529–30, 552, 554, 557, 560, 577, 586, 593, 604, 616 III. 618, 643, 656, 660, 672, 715, 719, 736, 777, 802, 840, 864 IV. 882–3, 904, 922, 926–7, 930, 933, 1002, 1028–9, 1057, 1086; accompanies WM to Lympne Court II. 529; amanuensis to PSW IV. 864, 1093; at 3, then 7 Hammersmith Terrace II. 449 IV. 872; attends SCC when ill IV. 906–7; business partnership with SCC III. 668–9, 701–2, 770, 780, 783, 790–1, 804, 813, 838–9, IV. 878, 911: partnership dissolved IV. 915–7, 942, 952; executor for PSW II. 476 III. 799, 852–3, 857 IV. 872, 905, 950, 1033, 1093 n1, 1118; introduction to GBO from PSW IV. 891, 913, 1027; lecture at Bolt Court Technical School II. 513; ‘Mercury’ nickname II. 433; photography and process engraving II. 369, 371, 384–5, 389, 392, 398–9, 408, 480 III. 768–9, 771, 782–3, 785, 796, 804, 813–4, 818, 820, 838–9 IV. 916, 933, 981, 1016 n2; photographs of WM III. 859; photographs Caxtons IV. 1037; photographs DGR drawings IV. 1020; photographs PSW’s ‘Sniffing Lion’ sketch IV. 1024; prepares illustrations for The Life of William Morris II. 599, 602, 606; PSW on IV. 952, 991; sea-sickness II. 403; secretary of Hammersmith Socialist Society II. 397, 587; socialism II. 369; SPAB activities II. 597; visits Greece IV. 1073; visits Hawarden III. 796;

visits Kelmscott Manor III. 646, 809–10, 854, 858; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 737–8, 744, 840, 848, 853, 857 IV. 866, 885–6, 912, 918–9, 922, 935, 938 n3, 952–3, 960, 968, 974, 986–7, 995, 1001, 1033, 1061, 1093; visits PSW at Rottingdean IV. 899–900; visits Ravenna and Rimini III. 846; visits Spain with Art Workers’ Guild IV. 981 n1, 983; visits Switzerland and Italy IV. 891, 893, 896; visits Venice with Art Workers’ Guild II. 400–1; WM’s final illness II. 535, 538, 541–3 Walker, Mary (née Jones) LETTERS TO IV. 926, 961, 1001–2; IV. 883 n2 907, 916, 922; at Rottingdean IV. 1024; given portrait of EW by Neville Lytton IV. 1008; her poetry IV. 961; knits Tam o’ Shanter for PSW IV. 1001–2, 1004; poor health IV. 926, 1002, 1024, 1058–9, 1073; stays at Rushmore Cottage, Worth IV. 868, 872; stays at cottage in Smarts Heath, Worplesdon IV. 961, 1004 Wallis, Henry LETTERS TO I. 290–1; I. 96, 139, 146, 209, 258; founding member of SPAB I. 110, 114, 152, 290–2, 316; PSW on I. 292, 316 III. 850 Wallis, Whitworth III. 697 Walsingham, Norfolk II. 375 Wardale, Reverend John I. 72 n1, 310 II. 329–30 Wardle, George Young [GW] LETTERS TO I. 292 II. 321–2 III. 631; I. 25 n8, 172, 190, 220, 243, 247, 250, 266, 270–1, 319 II. 377, 422 III. 626, 639, 647, 664, 714, 716, 725, 747, 845 IV. 866, 908, 922, 937, 939, 1031–2, 1056, 1083; accompanies PSW to Bruges and Brussels I. 229, 231–4, 237 IV. 1115; ‘Alexandrinism’ (in 1891 SPAB report) II. 390, 394; at Richmond II. 616–7 III. 624; death IV. 1088; founding member of SPAB I. 155, 242, 321–2; health II. 416, 555; ‘The Holy Grail’ IV. 903, 929; in south of France II. 398, 400

351

INDEX

IV. 986, 1040; in Italy II. 416–7, 421, 437, 444, 447, 453, 461, 464, 472, 477, 496, 508, 527, 555, 560, 570, 574 IV. 972; kindness and good nature II. 419; and MMF & Co I. 20, 30, 63; on Parenzo mosaics III. 671; on PSW’s mace for Birmingham III. 818 IV. 878 n3; PSW on II. 416 IV. 903, 1056, 1088; private life IV. 1088 n1; putative article on Nicola Pisano III. 672; research and writing II. 615; sketches II. 398, 477, 518; ‘Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. A Chapter of its Early History’ (in 1899 SPAB report) III. 631, 633, 636; ‘True and False Renaissance’ (in 1895 SPAB report) II. 514–5; uses South Kensington Museum Library III. 643, 646; visits PSW at Caxtons III. 818, 820, 834 IV. 893: contemplates taking Caxtons in PW’s absence IV. 895–6 Warwick, Thomas I. 75, 87; PSW critical of I. 112 Waterhouse, Alfred I. 169, 173–4 Watson, Edward F. (picture dealer and restorer) I. 272 Watts, George Frederic LETTERS TO I. 67, 69; II. 489 III. 621 IV. 1037; death IV. 933; difficulties with PSW over ‘The Briary’ I. 67, 69; meets Giulio Sartorio II. 461; PSW on IV. 933; refuses baronetcy I. 262 Watts-Dunton, Theodore III. 432 Weaver, Lawrence IV. 1082; ‘Standen, East Grinstead’ IV. 1084 Webb, Aston (architect, unrelated to PSW) II. 388 Webb, Caroline Speakman (PSW’s younger sister) I. 65 n1, 123, 140, 146, 209, 213, 234, 236–7, 242, 252, 259, 265–6, 269, 274, 288, 316 II. 326, 340, 343, 378, 401, 476 n2 III. 713, 724, 810, 844 IV. 873, 875, 881–3, 930, 933, 976, 1061; as gardener I. 220, 260; health IV. 1013; final illness and death IV. 1069–72, 1081

Webb, Charles (PSW’s father) Oxford medical practice II. 606, 611 III. 745 n3 Webb, Eliza Speakman (PSW’s eldest sister), see Stowers, Eliza Webb, Elizabeth (née Speakman; PSW’s mother) infirmity in old age I. 54; influence on PSW I. 32 II. 384 Webb, Frank Speakma