Title: Rusticus : Or, the future of the countryside
Author: Briggs, Martin S.
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Rusticus : Or, the future of the countryside" ***


RUSTICUS



TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

_For the Contents of this Series see the end of the Book._



  RUSTICUS

  OR

  THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE

  BY
  MARTIN S. BRIGGS

  _Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis._

                                       Horace, _Epist._ I, i, 42

  LONDON
  KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., LTD.
  NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.



_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_


  _In the Heel of Italy._ 1910.

  _Baroque Architecture._ 1913.

  _Through Egypt in War-time._ 1918.

  _Muhammadan Architecture in Egypt and Palestine._ 1924.

  _A Short History of the Building Crafts._ 1925.

  _The Architect in History._      (_in the Press_)


Made and Printed in Great Britain by

THE BOWERING PRESS, PLYMOUTH.



CONTENTS


  CHAP.      PAGE

    I. “SO THIS IS ENGLAND!”                       7

   II. BEFORE THE DELUGE                          12

  III. KING COAL (_c._ 1810-1910)                 26

   IV. THE AGE OF PETROL (_c._ 1910 _onwards_)      46

    V. THE FUTURE                                 61

       SOME ADDRESSES                             95



I.

“SO THIS IS ENGLAND!”


On every side a wail is rising over the irreparable damage that is
being done to the rural England that we all claim to love. The change
that has occurred is most evident to those who have not witnessed its
steady progress, rapid as it has been. To realise what has happened,
let us put ourselves in the place of an Englishman who is now returning
home after a sojourn of twenty years in some remote Eastern outpost
of our Empire. Imagine him as a sensitive observer like Doughty or
Kinglake, a man who has learned to appreciate the savage beauty of
the Arabian desert, the very antithesis of his own land. But now at
last the sand has eaten into his soul, and he is longing to see the
English countryside that he remembers so well. He thinks of small green
fields, of little grey churches with rooks cawing among the elms, of
running water, even of grey skies, in fact of everything that is most
characteristically English. There is nothing in our poetry that better
describes this England than Kipling’s “Sussex,” and Kipling knew all
about the East.

Our traveller lands at Folkestone eagerly anticipating his journey
through Kent, and, in order to see as much as possible of hedgerows and
villages and fields on the way up to London, he charters a motor-car.
There is something rather daring, to his mind, in this business of
the car; on his last visit to England in 1907 cars were not entirely
unknown, but there was then a touch of novelty about them. His driver
gingerly threads his way up from the harbour through a maze of hooting
charabancs and yelping Fords, with several hairbreadth escapes which
make the traveller wish himself back on his lurching camel. But soon
Folkestone is left behind, and he settles down to a contemplation of
the number-plate of the car in front, while the fumes of its exhaust
mingle with those of his own Corona. He expects to find some changes in
the aspect of England, but then of course there was the Town-Planning
Act in 1909, so that nothing very unpleasant need be feared, and at any
rate one misses the East Kent Coalfield by coming this way. The road
is very wide and very straight; there is no dust. A small lighthouse
with black and white sides, crowned by a red lamp busily blinking in
broad daylight, indicates a cross-roads. Yes, this new route avoids
the streets of Sandgate and Hythe, which must be very crowded in these
days, but the wire fences are a poor substitute for green hedges. And
these terrible petrol-stations every few yards with their glaring red
and yellow pumps are very trying to the eyes. Still there are some old
landmarks left: the hoardings are bigger than ever, and some of them
bear the familiar legends of Edwardian days.

He looks forward to passing through Lenham, Charing, and
Harrietsham--three beautiful villages on the main road--but as each is
approached his car swerves along the new racing-track and thus avoids
the village High Street, rejoining the old main road, widened beyond
recognition, a little farther on. He passes through a great cutting
gashed through the chalk. Felled trees lie by the road, old walls are
pulled down, all bends are straightened out, everything is cleared away
to allow the cars and charabancs to roar through the countryside. But
is it countryside any longer? More than anything else in this nightmare
drive he is impressed by the New Architecture, which appears to consist
mainly of bungalows.

The bungalow as he knew it in the East was a large, low, cool, white
building surrounded by verandahs, as un-English in appearance as
anything could be. But these bungalows are quite different, and seem to
be thrown haphazard all over the place, along the main roads for miles
beyond every town. Shoddy, ugly, vulgar shacks they are, recalling
to his mind some of the worst aspects of life in the Middle West as
depicted on the films. The materials of which they are constructed
are cheap and nasty. Round each bungalow is a collection of smaller
shacks, where the Baby Austin and the chickens live; and in place of
embowering trees he sees a jungle of wireless poles and clothes-props.
Untidiness, vulgarity, Americanism, discord of colouring and form, seem
to have invaded every village through which he passes.

Nor is this change confined to roads and buildings. The whole character
of the villages is altered. Smocks and sunbonnets have gone for ever,
and with them most of the old village crafts. The blacksmith’s day is
done. Artificial-silk leg-wear and gramophone-records fill the windows
of the village store, a blatant cinema has appeared next door, and most
people do their shopping in London.

So this is England!



II.

BEFORE THE DELUGE


In order to understand the changes that have taken place in the English
countryside during the last century or so, and in order to forecast
probable future tendencies, one must first endeavour to analyse the
charm of the unspoiled English village and landscape before coal and
petrol began to dominate our whole life. That charm is universally
admitted but not always rationally appreciated. To begin with, ruin in
itself is not a worthy subject for admiration. An American critic is
said to have observed to an Englishman:

  “What thoughtful people your ancestors were; they not only built
  churches for you to worship in but ruined abbeys for you to
  admire.”[1]

The worship of ruin is a sign of decadence, though it has appeared
from time to time in history for hundreds of years. There is a social,
even a moral, reproach implied by the sight of a tumbledown cottage;
and to the present writer’s mind a ruined church is as much inferior
to a perfect church as a dead dog is to a live one. Nobody who really
loves architecture can really love ruin; his admiration for the
fragments of a great building only makes him wish he could see it in
its original splendour. But there is a mellowness and softness that
comes to a building with age, and that is a genuine æsthetic attribute.
Moreover, the element of historical association is a legitimate cause
for our pride in our old villages and towns, a cause by no means to be
neglected in this survey. But, apart from these two factors, the charm
of the English village, for our purpose, is to be judged strictly on
appearances.

Up to about 1810, when the Industrial Revolution began to affect the
face of England seriously, the village remained almost unaltered from
its medieval state. Though its “lay-out” varied greatly according to
its situation, on a hill-top or in a valley, it was generally grouped
round a “green” and along the road that ran through it. The “green”
was the focus of communal life, at a time when each community was
inevitably far more self-contained than it is to-day. Here took place
such sports as wrestling and bear-baiting, and revels and dances round
the Maypole, of which a rare example survives in Otley, Yorkshire. Here
too were the stocks for malefactors, the pound where stray animals were
temporarily confined, the well where all water for the smaller houses
had to be drawn, and perhaps a stone cross. Usually adjoining the
green stood the village church, which gathered the rustic inhabitants
within its ancient walls. Gray’s _Elegy_ gives us the ideal picture of
a country church and churchyard, but in only too many villages such
an ideal was unrealised. On the village green would also be found the
inn, but the heyday of the roadside inn came with the introduction of
stage-coaches on the main roads in the nineteenth century. There might
be a group of almshouses, but no post-office or bank and probably not
a school. Down by the stream stood the mill with its great water-wheel,
or if there were no stream there would be a wooden windmill such as we
see on the Sussex downs. To an extent that we hardly realise, industry
was self-contained in these little communities. Nearly all the simple
wants of the cottagers were provided for within their own parish.
The blacksmith and the carpenter, the saddler and the basket-maker,
practised their crafts in every hamlet. Weaving and spinning, baking
and preserving were done by the women at home. Shops were few and
small, storing rather than displaying their wares. The comparatively
rare goods that were brought into the place from other parts of England
had to be carried on pack-horses, so that naturally they became
expensive luxuries. There were no newspapers, and hardly anybody in the
village--except perhaps the squire and the parson--possessed any books.
All these factors, though they may not seem germane to this study, had
a bearing on the outward appearance of the village. The squire, as he
came to be called, was the great man of the community, for, though he
himself might be the “lord of the manor,” that celebrity was more often
non-resident. Hence the squire’s house, then “Manor House,” “Hall,”
or whatever it was named, was a substantial building standing in a
good garden, and because of its size and position it has seldom been
affected by the unfortunate tendencies that have so often played havoc
with cottages and barns. Barns usually adjoined the squire’s house and
sometimes were attached to the rectory as “tithe barns,” for there
was collected the tribute of the fields. These barns are invariably
simple in design but often of great beauty, and the two qualities are
not unconnected. Then there were a few other houses of medium size,
and lastly the humble cottages where most of the inhabitants lived,
standing close to the road with a small garden behind them. Such were
the components of the old English village.

Beyond its doors was the common where the cattle grazed, and beyond
that again there were common woods where the pigs picked up their food
and where fuel could be gathered. Then there were fields for pasturage
and for cultivation, divided up into one-acre strips, of which one
man might hold any number. These long strips, separated only by a
foot or so of rough grass, must have resembled our modern allotments
in this country and the great open fields that one sees in France
and elsewhere abroad, where hedges and fences are seldom found. The
system of enclosing fields within hedges did not become common until
about the time of Queen Anne, so that one feature of our landscape
that we rightly regard as characteristically English is comparatively
modern. In many cases it is also immoral, for enclosure of common land
proceeded apace during the eighteenth century.

Yet of all features of the English countryside the one that has changed
most is the road. Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century roads
were simply open tracks through fields or over commons. They were not
fenced in, their boundaries being vaguely assumed; and they were not
metalled. Their condition was so bad in North Herefordshire in 1788
that they had to be levelled “by means of ploughs, drawn by eight
or ten horses; and in this state they remained until the following
autumn,” Each parish was held responsible for the “repairs” of its
roads, but this process seldom involved more than a cartload of faggots
or stones in the worst holes. Hence wheeled traffic was impossible.
Everything and everybody had to travel through the mire, on horseback
or on foot; and at a time when the population of London amounted to
700,000, its fish was coming on horseback from the Solway, and its
mutton was walking up in thousands on its own legs from Scotland and
Wales, disputing the road with vast droves of geese and turkeys. Such
was the state of affairs up to the third quarter of the eighteenth
century, when turnpikes and tollbars began to take effect, but the
good coaching-roads of Telford and Macadam were not constructed till
the nineteenth century. Nor were bridges very common at a time when
there was no wheeled traffic, for any shallow stream could be forded
by a pack-horse. But such bridges as then existed were almost always a
pleasure to behold.

This picture of rural England at the end of the eighteenth century is
no more than a descriptive inventory of the contents of the average
English village at that time. Yet everyone who knows such a village,
unaltered by the march of civilisation since 1810 or so, can be relied
on to say that it has an undoubted charm of its own. There is certainly
no charm in an inventory, so we must now seek for the ingredients that
are lacking in our list.

The first is, without doubt, the perfect harmony of Nature and art. The
colours and texture of the old buildings harmonise admirably with the
colours of the surrounding landscape. In some places that is due to an
actual identity of material. Thus the old stone farm-houses that one
sees in the Yorkshire dales are built of the same sandstone rocks that
jut out from the hillside all round them. But, on the whole, that is
unusual. There is no similarity between the rich red brickwork of East
Anglia and anything in the surrounding earth or vegetation, nor between
the Cotswold stone cottages and the green slopes on which they stand.
After making all allowances for the mellowing that time produces, all
we can say about this matter of colour is that old building materials
seem to harmonise with their natural surroundings, whatever colours
are involved and whatever may be the surroundings. That is not quite
accurate. In Yorkshire, Scotland and Wales, where the prevailing colour
of the landscape is in dull tones, buildings of local stone with roofs
of sturdy thick local slates do undoubtedly merge into the general
colour-scheme more successfully than buildings with red-tiled roofs;
whereas the warmer colouring and more generous sunshine of the southern
half of England allows of a greater range of tone in buildings, even
assimilating the “magpie” half-timber houses of the West Midlands.

But texture, too, has a part to play. The materials used in old
buildings were all “home-made”; therefore they lacked the smooth
mechanical surface that is so antagonistic to Nature, and thus the
very defects of their manufacture prevented any clash between nature
and art. But, above all, most of these old farms and cottages were
simple, spontaneous, unsophisticated, and English. Their design and
their construction were traditional, born of the soil on which they
stood. The snobbery of the Victorian suburban villa was unknown to
the village yokels who produced masterpieces of cottage design. The
very simplicity of their “programme” was their salvation. They had to
provide a dwelling-house of given size from local materials. There was
no question of deciding between Welsh slates and red tiles: only one
form of roofing was available locally. The rooms were shockingly low,
according to our ideas, but as an external result there was a long low
roof, and low eaves, all assisting to produce an unobtrusive effect
attuned to the landscape. On the other hand, the fireplace and the
chimney above it were large, for wood was the only fuel available, and
thus bold chimneys are found externally. The windows were glazed with
small panes because nobody then could make large ones.

The old-fashioned cottage, a truly beautiful thing, was the work of
competent men who, generally speaking, were content to satisfy a
utilitarian demand without trying to create a sensation.

On the other hand there is a question that I have not yet heard asked:
was there never an ambitious tradesman or tradesman’s wife in the past
who wished to create an architectural sensation in the village? Surely
a flamboyant half-timbered inn must have looked rather startling when
first erected? And the village “highbrow” of 1750 or so who procured
from an architect in the nearest town a design for a Palladian façade
in the latest mode, did he not create a discord in the harmony of the
village street? The answer to this compound question must be in the
affirmative, but the results are less obtrusive than they would be
to-day. The black and white inn would have the same proportions, the
same fenestration, the same doors and chimneys, as a brick building in
the same street; and the “genuine antique” façade from Palladio would
become a little less exotic by the time that the village bricklayer
had finished with it. The harmony and repose that characterises the
old English village is mainly due to its isolation: there was no
disturbing influence from outside, no filtration of alien ideas, and
no introduction of discordant materials. But the “silk” stockings and
the gramophone-records that now decorate the shop-window of the village
store have their counterpart in the modern architecture of the village
street.

An endeavour has been made in the preceding paragraphs to picture the
unspoiled English village as it appears to the ordinary intelligent
observer of to-day. No attempt has been made to glorify village life,
past or present. There are some people who see nothing but cause for
regret in the invasion of the villages by what we call “progress,”
but for the most part those people are not sons of the soil: they are
either “week-enders” or people of comfortable incomes who have retired
to a cottage _orné_ amid congenial surroundings. They see and know
little of the monotony that drives the young people into the towns,
or of the hardships of lambing and winter work on the farms. There
are other critics who say that architecture is so much a reflection
of social conditions that a beautiful village could only have been
produced by a happy and contented people.

It is a question whether such a village is, or ever has been, specially
attractive to the eyes of its inhabitants, if indeed they have the
ability to consider such things at all. Admiration for the beauty of
the countryside seems to be a very modern cult, if we are to take
our great writers as typical of their time, though in fact they were
usually ahead of their time. Scott, Wordsworth, and other poets of that
period certainly saw something in it, but prior to their day there
is little evidence that even cultured men noticed anything worthy of
comment in the English landscape or the English village. There are
exceptions of course, and we find evidence of love of the English
countryside even in the work of so classical a writer as Milton, and
later in the poems and letters of Cowper. But probably Dr. Johnson is
typical of eighteenth-century men of letters. He declined a country
living on one occasion, and in several passages of Boswell’s _Life_
we find Johnson making fun of country manners, country conversation,
and country life generally, while of landscape and of the beauty of
the English village he has little to say. William Cobbett, writing a
century ago, is so obsessed with indignation about agricultural poverty
and the iniquities of the governing class, that he seldom comments in
his _Rural Rides_ on the charm of a village. Sandwich is “as villainous
a hole as one could wish to see,” Cirencester “a pretty nice town,”
and so is Tonbridge. But he waxes furious about some of the tumbledown
cottages that modern well-fed tourists would call “picturesque,” and he
regards the barrenness of the New Forest as a blot on our civilisation.
Cobbett provides a very good antidote to an over-sentimental view of
country life.



III

KING COAL (1810-1910)


The “Industrial Revolution” that changed the face of a large part
of England is generally stated to have commenced about 1770, when
machinery began to displace hand-labour and so drove the workers out of
their homes into factories. About the same time came the construction
of canals connecting the chief waterways and centres of population, and
the slow improvement of the roads. But none of these important changes
greatly affected the outward appearance of our villages until about
forty years later, when, as the title of this chapter indicates, the
steam-engine replaced the water-wheel in the factories, and when coal
began to make its influence felt all over the country. Simultaneously
there grew up a system of macadamised roads and stage-coaches, which
gave place in thirty or forty years to railways. For a century coal
was the dominant factor in English life, but since 1910 petrol has
played the main part in altering the aspect of the countryside.

Meanwhile, of course, minor causes have always been in operation.
The progressive enclosure of common land and the gradual grouping
of the old one-acre holdings into large hedged fields continued all
through the early part of the nineteenth century, in spite of violent
agitation by Cobbett. Whatever may have been the arguments in favour
of enclosure, the inevitable effect on village life was to squeeze the
small man out of existence and to perpetuate the big farm employing
workers at starvation wages. Poverty stalked through the little
cottages, many of which were unfit for human habitation. The cruel
game-laws did not prevent the rapid increase of poaching, and the woods
were sprinkled with man-traps and spring-guns, which sometimes claimed
a gamekeeper for victim instead of a poacher.

And, while economic conditions were rapidly abolishing the old
self-supporting village community, changes in the means of transport
brought machine-made goods to its doors, thus destroying at one blow
the independence of the village craftsman and the rustic character
of village architecture. Too scattered, too cowed, and too poor to
organise a successful revolt, many of the villagers found their
consolation in the little barn-like chapels erected by the Primitive
Methodists and other Nonconformist bodies in the early part of the
century. Usually severe and uncompromising, often ugly, these buildings
represented a revolt against the partnership of squire and parson with
its iron grip on village life. The dignified brick meeting-houses of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were of another type, the
flamboyant Gothic chapel of Victorian days had not been conceived,
but the village Bethel of 1810 or so is a standing witness to the
cottager’s grievance against the ruling class of his day. Very little
cottage-building was done, for though the population was increasing
very fast, it was migrating from country to town in order to be near
the new factories.

The network of canals that spread over England between 1760 and 1830
or so did not greatly influence the appearance of the countryside,
though their numerous lockhouses and bridges have the merit of
severe simplicity. But the system of new roads introduced by Telford
and Macadam early in the nineteenth century had an immediate and
far-reaching effect. With them we enter on the brief but glorious
coaching-period, which holds such a grip on the English imagination
that it still dictates the design of our Christmas cards. The
“old-fashioned Christmas” that has been such a godsend to artists
implies unlimited snow, holly, mistletoe, and plum-pudding, with the
steaming horses standing in the inn yard and the red-nosed driver
ogling the barmaid. Dickens made the most of it in literature, Hugh
Thomson and Cecil Aldin in art. For the stage-coach immediately
enlivened every village and town lying on the great highways. The
roadside inn came into its own, but after some forty crowded years of
glorious life declined again until the motor-car provided it with a new
lease of prosperity, or at any rate until the cult of the bicycle gave
it a fillip.

The influence of railways on the appearance of the countryside has
been mainly indirect, in the sense of having destroyed the isolation
of villages and hamlets and with it the local characteristics that
they possessed. For example, the use of purple Welsh slates was almost
unknown outside Wales up to the beginning of the nineteenth century,
when they came into common use, for though their colour and texture
is unpleasing, they are relatively cheap and can be fixed on lightly
constructed roofs. So first canals and then railways combined with
factories to spread machine-made goods all over the country. Otherwise
the railway has not greatly defaced the landscape as a whole, for
there are still large tracts of country where one can be out of sight
and sound of it, and it is not so ubiquitous as the modern motor-car.
Many village railway-stations and cottages are inoffensively designed,
and in the “stone” districts of England are usually built of local
materials, but their appearance suffers as a rule from the dead hand
of central and standardised control. The habit of erecting enormous
hoardings in the fields bordering a railway must go far back into the
nineteenth century. Presumably these eyesores have some object in view
beyond merely annoying the traveller and defacing the landscape, but
certainly they must come up for consideration in the last chapter of
this essay.

Two hundred years ago, even more recently than that, the populous and
prosperous parts of England were East Anglia, Kent, Sussex, Surrey,
Somerset, Gloucestershire, and some neighbouring counties. Agriculture,
sheep-farming, and the wool trade formed the main source of wealth: and
the only notable exception was the iron industry of the Weald, where a
sufficiency of wood fuel was available for smelting. Between 1750 and
1850 the great northward trek took place, and King Coal became supreme.
He ruined an appreciable part of Yorkshire and Lancashire, smeared
his ugly fingers over mountain valleys in South Wales and elsewhere,
created the “Black Country” in his own image, and last of all produced
the terrible blot that we call the “Potteries,” where the whole
landscape looks like a bad dream.

The most hideous nightmare-panorama that comes to my mind is a scene
of utter desolation not far from Etruria (a singularly inappropriate
name), in Staffordshire, where slagheaps, collieries, blast-furnaces,
potbanks and smoke dispute the foreground. Yet an old print that I saw
in Messrs. Wedgwood’s adjoining works proves that less than two hundred
years ago this was unspoiled country. From that time onwards, the
northern half of England became the national workshop, and a large part
of southern England became a private garden. At the present moment half
the total population of England is concentrated in five comparatively
small districts: “Greater” London, South Lancashire, West Yorkshire,
the “Black Country” and Tyneside.

Examples of the early factories built towards the end of the eighteenth
century are to be found in the beautiful valley above Stroud, and in
many wild and lonely dales among the Pennine hills. They stand beside
fast-running streams which at first provided the necessary power, but
before long the steam-engine replaced the earlier method, and a tall
chimney was one immediate result. Smoke, of course, was another. Yet
so many of these old “mills” still survive that we can study their
architecture. There are mills in the Stroud Valley admirably designed
in the Georgian manner, with well-proportioned windows divided into
small panes, stone-slated roofs, and stone walls, innocent of soot
and now golden with time. Built of local materials, they harmonise
well with their surroundings. The same may be said of a few Yorkshire
mills, though for the most part they have been blackened with smoke
and are more austere. Standing by some deserted building of this type,
its great wheel disused and its windows broken, in a lonely valley
with only the noise of the stream audible, one always thinks of the
machine-breakers in Charlotte Bronte’s _Shirley_, a grim incident of
the countryman’s fight against progress.

But even if an occasional example of these old factories has some
vestige of architectural merit, nearly all of them were unsuited to
their purpose. It does not seem to have occurred to their builders
that a “mill” existed for any object beyond the grinding of the last
penny out of the sweated men and women and children whom it housed.
Light, warmth, decent sanitary conditions--all were utterly ignored.
It is hardly to be expected that the slave-drivers of early Victorian
days would produce buildings of any interest, and in fact the great
gaunt prison-like boxes that desecrate so many Yorkshire and Lancashire
hillsides are a very fair expression of that greedy scramble for
money that has caused such a backwash in our own day. For it must not
be forgotten that some of the most beautiful places in England were
violated in this way. Many people have never visited our northern
counties, which they regard as a foreign land, yet which contain
scenery at least comparable with anything south of the Trent.

But if one takes, for purposes of comparison, the two valleys in which
the ruined abbeys of Fountains and Kirkstall now stand, one obtains a
very fair illustration of the effects of industrialism. They are only
some twenty miles apart, they were founded by monks of the same Order
at about the same time, and in their original state they must both
have been attractively situated. The modern visitor to Fountains, as he
rounds the bend that has hitherto concealed the Abbey, invariably gasps
at the beauty that bursts upon him, for here a nobleman’s park protects
the site and no coal or iron lies near. But Kirkstall is blackened and
overcast by the huge ironworks that sprawl over the adjoining hillside,
a sooty mass of tumbledown sheet-iron sheds, bristling with tall
chimneys belching out smoke; and the river that formerly fed the monks
with trout is now covered with an evil-smelling and iridescent film of
factory waste.

Yet, many and various as were the insults heaped upon rural England by
“captains of industry” in the good old days when England was making
money hand-over-fist, they sink into insignificance compared with the
early Victorian achievement in housing. The golden age of self-help,
philanthropy, missionary enterprise, evangelical zeal, individualism,
and all the rest of it, produced the “back-to-back” house. The meanest
streets of the East End, the worst slums of our Northern and Midland
cities, were built while the Romantic Revival was in full swing and
while Ruskin was lecturing on the _Seven Lamps_ that he had discovered
hanging in Venice. The wind sown in those prosperous days is quite
clearly producing a whirlwind for us to reap in more difficult times,
and one recalls another text about the sins of the fathers. This is not
a faddist or an extreme view. Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, in his new _History
of England_ (p. 683), writes of “the ever-advancing bounds of the realm
of ugliness and uniformity, in its constant destruction of the beauty
and variety of the old pre-industrial world. Indeed the more prosperous
and progressive the country was, the more rapidly did that increasing
work go forward.” And he quotes the grave words of another critic: “The
Nineteenth Century did not attack beauty. It simply trampled it under
foot.”

Proceeding with our examination of the various symptoms for which
we shall eventually have to prescribe, let us now consider what are
the shortcomings of the houses built for the people in the early and
mid-nineteenth century, and more particularly how they have affected
the appearance of our countryside. In themselves they were, as a rule,
either entirely sordid, or both sordid and pretentious. The former were
erected by manufacturers and colliery-owners in long rows to provide
shelter for their “hands” at the minimum price, the latter were more
often the work of that public benefactor known as the “jerry-builder,”
and were erected as a speculation. In the former case the tenants had
no option but to accept what was offered, so paid the rent required and
occupied the house without demur. The jerry-builder’s houses, on the
other hand, had to attract tenants, hence the pretentious element was
introduced in order to ensnare the tenant’s wife. In those days, nearly
all small property was held on weekly rentals and architects were
hardly ever employed to design cottages or small houses.

But the houses had to be designed somehow, so the builder had recourse
to sundry manuals or copybooks of designs for “Villas and Terrace
Houses” in the worst style of the day. The idea of using such books
originated in the second half of the eighteenth century, when numerous
little calf-bound volumes appeared, but they contained little more than
details of the Roman “Orders,” and such features as chimneypieces,
doorways, etc. The result was that the speculative builder, who made
his first appearance about that time, continued to build in the
traditional manner, but added a classical porch and interior panelling
and similar trimmings, which, even if they were often rather pedantic
and un-English, were always in excellent taste.

The nineteenth century copybooks sprang from a very different source.
“Gothick” architecture, for two centuries a byword and a reproach among
all cultivated people, had been rediscovered. From Queen Victoria’s
coronation to her jubilee, architects romped over Europe and brought
home sketches of Gothic detail from France and Flanders and Venice.
Ruskin, who was not greatly enamoured of English Gothic, but loved
it in its French and Venetian forms, spread the glad tidings among
the middle-class; and the famous architect, Street, ransacked Italy
and Spain in his quest. All this mass of drawings was broadcast over
the country at its period of greatest industrial prosperity. Once I
worked in a provincial office facing a replica of a Venetian palace,
and witnessed the erection of a factory-chimney copied from Giotto’s
campanile at Florence.

Naturally the smaller fry in the building world aped their betters.
Second-rate architects and hack draughtsmen set to work to adapt and
caricature these fashionable forms for use by the builder on shops
and villas. Terra-cotta manufacturers gladly joined in the game, so
that soon scraps of Venetian carving and ornament came to be turned
out by the mile and capitals copied from French churches were moulded
in artificial stone in tens of thousands. To this movement may be
ascribed a very large share in the deterioration of English towns and
even villages, for the “Gothic” craze naturally spread from the centres
of fashion to the smaller places. A travelled and studious architect,
set down in a street of suburban villas to-day, should be capable of
tracing the ultimate source of the pretentious porches, the tile
cresting on the roofs, all the mechanical ornament reproduced down the
row; and in nearly every case he could derive it from a Gothic church
in France or Italy.

The sad thing is that these revived ornamental forms were only a
travesty of the old. Gothic architecture was, perhaps, the highest
form of natural and legitimate building that the world has ever seen:
as adapted by the speculative builder, it had no structural meaning
whatsoever, and consisted in mere chunks of crudely caricatured
ornament, generally misapplied. Ruskin preached truth and honesty
in architecture; but his pigmy disciples missed the whole spirit of
Gothic. The barns and cottages of old England represent that spirit
as well as the French cathedrals and Venetian palaces on which he
concentrated with such disastrous effect, yet the English village has
suffered terribly from the Gothic revival.

For the movement spread to village shops and banks, and, of course,
all new churches erected after 1830, or even earlier, followed the new
fashion. Because every old village already possessed a parish church,
now becoming too large for its needs, there was little for the Church
of England to do outside the towns, though there are many cases such as
that at M---- in Middlesex, where an amateur effort in church-design
by the saintly William Wilberforce, just a century ago, has ruined
a beautiful old village highway. But the Nonconformist bodies, now
flourishing and sometimes even wealthy, were not to be outdone in the
race: so they abandoned the stark galleried chapels, that had hitherto
followed the Protestant type invented by Wren for his City churches,
for an ambitious and often flamboyant variety of “Gothic” that has
created a discord in many a village street. There seems to have been
a prevalent idea that every place of worship must be decorated with a
spire, with tracery, and with a quantity of ornamental features, quite
regardless as to whether funds permitted of a single one of those
features being worthily executed, whether any of them symbolised the
entirely English and healthy movement that produced Nonconformity,
or whether they harmonised with surrounding buildings. Our final
conclusion must be that the Gothic Revival, which, in the hands of a
man like William Morris, who loved England passionately, might have
done so much to save her countryside, was in fact largely responsible
for its defacement.

Another characteristic of this singular movement was its utter
disregard of what we now call “town-planning.” When Ruskin advised his
audience to treat railway-stations as “the miserable things that they
are,”[2] because he disliked railways, he seems to have been voicing
the spirit of his day, which was quite content to speculate on the
symbolism of a piece of carving in a remote foreign city while men
continued to build the most appalling slums. No town was “planned” in
those days: it “just growed.” Occasionally a manufacturer like Sir
Titus Salt coquetted with the idea of a rational lay-out for a town,
but no scheme got very far until the idealist founders of Bournville
and Port Sunlight inaugurated a new school of thought, proving
effectually that good housing was not necessarily bad business.

At the present time, when authorities on town-planning have long made
it clear that orderly development is both desirable and practicable,
the haphazard growth of suburbs into the country is a deplorable
and even a painful sight to every intelligent person. English
individualism, sometimes an asset, becomes almost a curse when it
interferes, as it still does, with nearly everything that can be
done to save the English countryside from complete uglification.
Consideration of the possibilities of town-planning in this direction
must be deferred to our last chapter; for the moment let us consider
one or two characteristics of nineteenth-century town growth.

Almost without exception, any man could buy a plot of land anywhere,
and build on it anything he wanted. Tripe-dressing, sausage-skin
making, and one or two other “noxious” trades might be prohibited
in a few favoured localities; the obscure and often absurd law of
“Ancient Lights” occasionally restrained his ardour. Otherwise, so long
as his building was strong enough to remain standing, and provided
with adequate means of drainage, he was as free as air. Building was
essentially a commercial business; the rights or needs of the community
did not enter into the question. Each man built for his day and
generation: the future was left to take care of itself. Yet even from
a financial point of view this was a short-sighted policy. When Wren’s
plan for rebuilding London was upset by vested interests, a chance was
lost of making wide streets that are now urgently necessary but cannot
be formed except by payments of incredible sums for compensation. A
more modern instance is to be seen in the Euston Road, which was a
residential thoroughfare looking over fields when my grandfather knew
it a century ago. Then shops came to be built over the front gardens as
the old residents fled from the invading streets: and now these shops
have to be swept away with heavy payments for compensation to allow
the road to be converted into the great artery that any intelligent
person could have foreseen when it was first built. This phenomenon
is not peculiar to towns: it applies with equal force to the country
districts that are continually being absorbed by towns. Half the
squalor of modern suburbs is due to indiscriminate development.
Trees are cut down and houses are run up along a main road. Traffic
increases, and the tenants move away. The houses are clumsily converted
into inefficient shops, extending over the front garden, or into seedy
inefficient tenements. Empty plots are covered with hideous hoardings.
Without undue interference with the liberty of the subject, much of
this feckless muddling could be avoided by the exercise of a little
rational foresight.

For this is a question deeply affecting the whole community, not a
petty professional grievance. The mad race from towns to the fringe
of the country is destroying the country for miles round: and the
pathology of destruction is now clearly understood. A brilliantly
realistic description of the growth of “Bromstead,” a typical London
suburb, is to be found in Mr. H. G. Wells’ _The New Machiavelli_. All
who have witnessed the slow spread of this malignant disease will agree
that he does not overstate the case.



IV

THE AGE OF PETROL (1910 ONWARDS)


It may well be objected that this is a mere journalese title, for the
influence of motoring on the appearance of the countryside is not
always apparent, and many other factors have been at work, among them
the Great War and its considerable legacy of troubles. Moreover, some
readers may point out that motor-cars were to be seen in England long
before 1910. That is true; but they did not appreciably alter our
countryside before that date, and the number of them was relatively
small.

The most obvious influence that motoring has exerted on England has
been in the direction of road “improvements,” especially since the
War. Few of us foresaw that the clumsy and not very speedy vehicles
which made their first appearance on our highways some thirty years
ago, preceded by a man bearing a red flag, would eventually cause so
radical a change in our ideas of the nature of a road. For a long time
nothing happened. As motors increased in number and speed and bulk,
they continued to become more and more of a nuisance to the cyclists
and pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles still forming the majority
of road-users. Clouds of dust whitened the hedges, and choked the
inhabitants of all houses anywhere near a main highway. Accidents
became frequent. All this was unavoidable, because even the best roads
made by Telford and Macadam were unequal to the new conditions, and
the far larger number of narrow winding country lanes were altogether
inadequate for the strain that was now put upon them. An excellent
instance of the resulting state of affairs may still be seen in the
Isle of Wight, where several of the “main” roads are tortuous narrow
lanes sunk between high banks topped with thick hedges. In the summer
months a stream of huge charabancs tears over the whole island every
day. At many places there is no possibility of these Juggernauts
passing each other. Even a hay-cart presents such a complete obstacle
that one or other vehicle has to back till the road widens, and in
places the blockage caused by the charabanc forces a cyclist or a
pedestrian to climb up on to the steep grassy bank while the monster
with its cargo of yelling hooligans pushes past him. Either roads must
be widened almost everywhere or motor vehicles of all types must be
abolished, and, as the latter alternative is out of the question, we
must accept the former as inevitable. How it may be effected with the
minimum of damage to the beauty of our countryside will be discussed in
the next chapter. England has not yet sunk to the level of the Western
States, where it is a simple matter to shift a barbed-wire fence a few
yards back on each side of the furrows that do duty for a road, and
where the iron or wooden shacks that constitute a “home” may readily
be wheeled to a new site on the prairie. England is a crowded little
country full of sacred associations that go back to the beginnings of
our race, and that is why we hate to see crazy new bungalows lining
the Pilgrim’s Way. Their very appearance is an insult to our English
sense of orderliness and decency, such as we should feel if a negro
cheapjack started selling mouth-organs in Canterbury Cathedral.

In some parts of the country there are stretches of road that can be
widened without material defacement of the landscape, but they are
few. Ancient landmarks hamper progress in most places. Old bridges,
for example, are altogether unsuited to heavy and fast motor-traffic.
Often built askew with the line of a main road, they are nearly always
very steep, very narrow, and, though often sturdy in appearance, are
incapable of bearing the weight of a heavy lorry and trailer moving
with the speed of a railway train. Here again is a problem requiring
solution. Some people would attempt to adapt the old bridge to modern
needs, others prefer an entirely new structure placed parallel with the
old one, and, of course, the third alternative is complete demolition.
The first method is generally impossible, and there is much to be said
for a frankly modern design in reinforced concrete, provided that it
does not stand in too close proximity to the ancient monument that it
supersedes.

Another familiar rural feature that must perforce give way to the
insistent needs of the motorist is the ford or “watersplash.” Much as
we may regret its disappearance, it has to go.

But most difficult of all is the question of dealing with the narrow
High Street of a town or village through which a main artery passes.
Occasionally the jerry-builder has anticipated us here, and has
erected some terrible Victorian nightmare of a shop right up to the
old building-line of the historical cottages that he has demolished.
In such a case the children of the Petrol Age may be able to expiate
the sins of their fathers by pulling down that shop. But more often
there is a building of real merit standing at the very bottleneck
through which the procession of traffic has to squeeze its way, such
as the old church at Barnet or the Whitgift Hospital at Croydon; and
then we are in a quandary, impressed on the one hand by the legitimate
needs of our time, deterred on the other hand by an almost religious
sense of the sanctity of the past. Sometimes the obstacle is a mere
cottage, a barn, a pump, a stone cross, or a quaint structure such
as blocks Hampstead Lane near the Spaniard’s Tavern, yet even these
must be treated with respect. The “by-pass” road, as suggested in the
next chapter, is sometimes the best solution, but is not practicable
everywhere. And lastly, there are the trees. As I write these lines I
can hear the crashes of falling elms and yews that I have known since
childhood. A snorting tractor is pulling them down bodily with a steel
hawser, so that the grass-lined lane that runs near my home may be
widened for the growing needs of what was once a pretty village.

But a wide straight road does not exhaust the motorist’s requirements.
He becomes thirsty at times, and the village inn has already risen
to the occasion, usually, it must be admitted, without detriment to
the village street. The architecture of licensed premises is looking
up. His car also becomes thirsty, (hence the petrol-station), and
its occasional liability to gastric trouble involves the provision at
frequent intervals of telephone-cabins and repair-shops or garages.
We may profitably consider the design of these accessories and their
relation to country surroundings in the next chapter. The phenomenal
development in the use of motor charabancs has involved the provision
of extensive “parking-places” in all pleasure resorts, e.g., at
Brighton, where a large part of the sea-view from the Esplanade is
blocked. The provision of a “park” at Glastonbury has led to an outcry
recently, and everywhere the problem is pressing.

Finally comes the very vexed question of housing, municipal and
private, that has grown so acute since the War. In this movement the
motorist has played a prominent part, for he has helped to extend
the “Housing Problem,” from its obvious location on the fringes of
our towns, away to the remoter parts of the country. From Kent to
Hampshire the bungalows line our southern cliffs. Housing needs may
be divided into three groups: those of the townsman, the rustic, and
the week-ender. The first concerns us here only to the extent that
new housing in urban districts must of necessity be provided in the
adjoining rural areas: thus London is now so congested that its County
Council has had to acquire large estates in Essex, Kent, and Middlesex
to provide houses for city workers, who are quite properly dissatisfied
with the tenement-dwellings that are their only alternative. Then,
although in many country districts the population is decreasing, new
standards of decency impel the newly-wed to demand something better
than the leaking and verminous hovels where their parents dwell. All
these new houses, whether in country or town, have been provided in
increasing proportion by municipal enterprise since the War, and
hence their design is subject to a measure of control. Whether that
control is sufficient to ensure a tolerable standard of architectural
expression is a matter for further consideration: at this point it
is important to realise that practically all the post-War “Housing
Schemes” have been scientifically laid out on rational lines, with due
regard for the future. It is that central control, whether exercised
by a public body or by a properly constituted private organisation,
which makes all the difference between the “lay-out” of Becontree or
Port Sunlight on the one hand and an average bungalow settlement on the
other. One is a design, the other an accident,--and the Italian word
for “accident” is _disgrazia_!

Some sixteen years ago I endeavoured to interest the inhabitants of the
district where I live in the possibilities of the then newly-passed
Town-Planning Act. The more enlightened among them readily responded,
but there were some who said that this was a rural area and that they
had no wish to see it turned into a town. Since then it _has_ turned
itself into something resembling a town, but its growth has been
spasmodic and irregular. A few years later came a proposal to acquire
two fields in the centre of the district for a public park. Again
the objectors appeared; what does a semi-village need with a public
park, at a high price too? Fortunately the fields were acquired, and
already they are nearly encircled by building plots. Meanwhile a great
Arterial Road has been driven right across the new park, cutting it in
half and reducing its attractions. Under a proper town-planning scheme
such things would be impossible. Roads and parks would be laid out on
paper years before they were required; and, though modifications of
the first plan would become necessary from time to time, the ultimate
gain would be enormous. Groups of adjoining authorities are already
preparing regional town-planning schemes in concert, so that trunk
roads may be provided in such a way as to pass through each area to its
benefit and not to its detriment. If “Rusticus” stands too long while
the river flows by, as the quotation on my title-page suggests, he will
find the countryside engulfed.

In my last chapter something was said of the possibilities that the new
science of Town-planning has to offer us, as a result of many years’
experience and experiment. We have seen the appearance of innumerable
municipal housing-schemes, of “Satellite Towns” like Letchworth and
the new Welwyn, of model industrial communities like Bournville and
Port Sunlight, of communal efforts like the Hampstead Garden Suburb, of
many admirable achievements in the developments of private enterprise.
Originating at the time (1876 _et seq._) when Bedford Park was laid
out, the idea developed slowly before the War and has made great
strides since. It is one of the brightest spots in the history of
English progress, but it has not been sufficient to stem the rush of
_ersatz_ building that followed the War.

For it is the bungalow craze, with all that it now implies, which has
most seriously damaged the appearance of rural England during the last
eight years. There is nothing inherently unpleasant in the bungalow
type of house. Properly designed and constructed, it may be made a
thing of beauty harmonising perfectly with its surroundings. But, to
my mind, its advantages have been grossly exaggerated. On the count
of cost, the primary consideration nowadays, it shows no superiority
over the two-floor house; reasonable privacy for its bedrooms is
secured with difficulty; and it is apt to sprawl over the ground.
One cannot quite realise why it has been so much favoured in recent
years; possibly it is merely a transient fashion, like face-powder
or crinolines. There was a great and a genuine demand for houses
after the War, which had to be satisfied. Nine people out of ten took
what they could get, and they got bungalows. For the most part their
_ménage_ consisted of husband, wife, and a two-seater. Neither servants
nor children entered into the picture. There was a prejudice against
everything connected with the pre-War period, especially with its
social distinctions, and perhaps the ex-service man sought for the
antithesis of the suburban villa. Accustomed for four years to scenes
of ruin and to leaky Army huts, his mind readily accepted the slap-dash
bungalow with its familiar barbed-wire fence and no-man’s-land of a
garden. The effect of flimsiness and impermanence that characterises
so many of these little buildings may be ascribed to three causes: the
difficulty of paying for a house _and_ a car out of an income that
only provided a house before the War, the prevalent restlessness which
almost rejects the idea of settling down in one place and letting
oneself “take root,” and the insidious hold that the architecture of
dumps and sheds had gained on the average man’s mind in 1914-18. His
two-seater carried him out into what was (at first) the peace of the
country, where land was cheap. Run up at express speed to satisfy an
enormous demand, these bungalows spread out for miles along the roads
adjoining the towns, thus avoiding the road-making charges that have
to be met on an ordinary estate. And next this “ribbon” development
continued far out into the country, so that people who had a slight
surplus after meeting their hire-purchase payments for car and
furniture could enjoy a sight of the sea on Saturday and Sunday from a
bungalow perched on the Sussex cliffs. Thus this singular movement has
had its main effect in rural districts, whose little Councils, with
their often rudimentary by-laws, find the problem almost beyond their
power to solve.

For these bungalows are for the most part designed without knowledge
or taste, without regard to the tradition of English architecture
or the claims of the English landscape. They are generally built of
flimsy machine-made materials, largely imported from abroad. Yet they
have satisfied a perfectly legitimate demand for accommodation, they
have been erected honestly by builders and paid for by their owners,
and they have so far complied with the laws of the land that they have
earned a Government “subsidy” towards their cost. Hence the bungalow,
which many of us regard as the motorist’s least acceptable gift to the
countryside, constitutes a topic which must be criticised with extreme
tact and caution.

There must be many beauty-spots in England that have been spoilt by
motorists and charabancs since the War, but as a fair case one may cite
X---- in Romney Marsh. A few years ago this was an artists’ paradise
and a haven of peace. It has now become a glorified bus-park, where one
is surrounded by petrol-pumps, garages, blatant exorbitant cafés run
by loud-voiced aliens, “souvenir” shops full of Brummagem and German
products, ice-carts, and innumerable direction-posts to “ladies’ cloak
rooms.” All the charm of the place has gone in bribes to the tripper,
and when he tires of it the ugliness will remain. When one sees a
beautiful village or landscape prostituted to such ends, one wishes
that the petrol-engine had never been invented.

But is ugliness an inevitable concomitant of motoring? Last April
it was my good fortune to travel some 200 miles over the main
roads of Tuscany. In that considerable distance I saw not a single
petrol-station, and hardly a poster or a hoarding. The petrol-pumps
must have been there, but at any rate they were not obtrusive enough to
attract notice. Some people may say that the apparent absence of these
accessories of civilisation furnishes an additional proof of Italian
backwardness, others that the iron hand of Mussolini prevents progress;
but to me, as a lover of Italy, it is a satisfaction that she has
contrived to reconcile the legitimate needs of to-day with the beauty
of her countryside.



V

THE FUTURE


The first part of this little book described rural England as it
existed in its unsullied perfection, the second part the regrettable
changes due mainly to the use of coal and petrol, and now we have to
consider what prospect there is of saving the best of the old and
making the best of the new. If “Rusticus” desires to preserve the
remainder of his heritage, he must adopt some bolder policy than that
of gazing at the flowing stream. Nor will the tactics of Canute serve
his purpose: the tide of “civilisation” will not stop for him. There is
every indication that it will flow with undiminished velocity in the
coming years.

Our efforts must therefore be directed to two objects: the preservation
of such relics of the past as are of recognised worth, and the
regulation of all tendencies that are harmful to the beauty of
the countryside. It is heartening to see, in the recent formation
of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, some public
expression of interest in this vital matter. Without presuming to offer
suggestions to so august a body, it is my purpose to set down in order
the chief factors in the situation, present and future.

In a previous passage it has been remarked that ruin as such is a
matter for regret, not for admiration. One might go a step further and
say that old buildings are not necessarily good buildings. Strictly
speaking, that is true, but is also dangerous doctrine. Nearly all
old buildings _are_ good buildings, and when we find one that we are
disposed to reckon as bad, we must not forget that the canons of
architectural taste have always been fickle. In the eighteenth century
Gothic buildings were ridiculed, and were treated accordingly. In
the nineteenth, taste was completely reversed. On the other hand,
certain architects of the Gothic Revival were so enamoured of a
special variety of Gothic that they endeavoured to remould all old
churches of any differing period nearer to their hearts’ desire.
Hence the formation in 1877 of that body which is familiarly and
even affectionately known as the “Anti-Scrape,” more precisely as
the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. It was founded
by architects and others to protest against excessive zeal in
“restoration” by architects and others, and has done a noble work. It
is still maintained partly by architects, whose disinterested efforts
in preserving old buildings are worthy of note because architects
naturally depend for their living mainly on _new_ buildings. As
its headquarters are in London, its work in other centres is most
effectively done through the medium of a local committee. The essential
qualifications for such a committee are taste and disinterestedness.
Suppose that an old cottage or barn on a village street in Blankshire
is threatened with demolition. If the matter is brought to the
notice of the Blankshire local committee by any self-appointed (even
anonymous) “informer,” that committee will offer an opinion, backed
by the expert advice of the S.P.A.B., who may be able to suggest some
alternative to demolition. Their knowledge of the technical details of
restoration is unrivalled, especially as regards building materials
suitable for use in an old structure. If the cottage is older than
A.D. 1714 and of sufficient merit, the aid of the Ancient Monuments
Commission may be invoked. Once such a building is scheduled as an
“ancient monument,” the owner is deprived of his right to demolish or
alter it, and its existence is safeguarded by the Government. Another
means of frustrating base designs on an old building is to appeal to
the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty,
who may be induced to launch an appeal through the Press for funds to
purchase it. At present they maintain over twenty buildings, including
some which are of literary interest (e.g., Coleridge’s cottage)
rather than of great antiquity. A third alternative is to enlist the
sympathies of a local authority or a local philanthropist. In any case
the delay in demolition caused by creating an outcry will serve a
useful purpose, for a thoughtless owner may be led to reconsider his
original intentions, and by so doing may find that the building may
be preserved after all. The restoration of old buildings is much more
practicable than any yet discovered use of monkey-gland is to old
people. But of course there are cases,--and sentimentalists are apt to
overlook this fact,--where an old building has no architectural merit,
and simply must give way before the march of progress. It is difficult,
too, to see how a man can be compelled to maintain a disused windmill.
It may be added that bridges are among the “buildings” scheduled as
“Ancient Monuments.”

As regards natural features, it must be generally known that the
National Trust, already mentioned, has been very active during recent
years in acquiring and preserving all manner of beauty-spots in
England, including such various sites as the mountains of the Lake
District, strategical points on the North and South Downs, river banks,
hill-tops and cliff-tops all over the country. Unfortunately the era
of enclosing commons is not yet over, and another organisation--the
Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society--was founded in 1865 to
further the excellent objects indicated by its title. It saved Epping
Forest, Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon Common and many other familiar
places for us, and continues to watch over the interests of all lovers
of the country. But, like the other societies mentioned here, its
activities are limited by its funds. However, we must remember that
any district which has adopted a town-planning scheme can now invoke
the majesty of the law to save its open spaces and natural features,
for the first Schedule of the Town-Planning Act of 1925 includes a
reference to “the preservation of objects of historical interest or
natural beauty.”

There have been many recent agitations--notably in regard to Ken Wood,
the Seven Sisters, the Devil’s Dyke, and the Darenth Valley--which have
shown that, in the last extremity, the public will sometimes rise to
the occasion when a beauty-spot is threatened.

Considering the narrowness of the average village High Street, and the
concentration of its historical relics in its centre, there is much
to be said for the construction of a “by-pass” road to carry through
traffic round the village. Otherwise the village green, the pond, the
stocks, the inns, and nearly all the old landmarks would have to go.
Traders object in the case of the larger towns, but vested interests
always turn up somewhere, and it seems fairly certain that the
“by-pass” road meets the needs of the greater number besides preserving
the old village intact. Eventually there will have to be a ring-road
round all old cities, like Oxford, which stand at the intersection of
important highways, or the concentration of traffic at the centre will
become unmanageable.

We have hardly grown accustomed yet to the great new arterial roads,
though several are already in use. They seem to me to represent
one of our highest achievements in civil engineering as they
sweep majestically through cuttings and over embankments with an
uninterrupted width of a hundred feet or more. In some ways they
are the biggest thing we have in England, out of scale with our
doll’s-house villages and landscapes, and out of character with our
little winding lanes. It will be years before the trees that line them
turn them into magnificent avenues, but by that time we shall have
learned to accept them and even to admire them. Presumably we shall see
an end of telegraph-poles soon, and that will be all to the good. But
there are other things that engineers might bear in mind. The great
road that runs south-west from Birmingham to the Lickey Hills, a noble
highway in width, is disfigured by tramway poles and wires. Is that
necessary in 1927? Surely the petrol-engine, which has done much to
spoil the country, can atone for some of its crimes here by taking the
place of electrically driven vehicles?

In Birmingham, as in the narrow streets of Ipswich, and--still
worse--in the beautiful Wharfedale valley, is to be seen a more
frightful abortion, the “trackless tram.” There has been a proposal to
extend this hideous system in Wharfedale on a broad highway cutting
across some fine country. Surely motor-buses could serve every purpose
that the lumbering trackless tram fulfils.

The new arterial roads start with a clean sheet: it is to be hoped that
it will remain clean. Recently the Minister of Transport addressed a
circular to local authorities, reminding them that, under the powers
conferred on them by the Advertisement Regulation Act of 1907, they
could take action in respect of unsightly advertisements along the
great new arteries, and urging them to do so. One distinct advantage
of modern road-construction is that the dust nuisance has practically
ceased to exist. Another innovation that has recently appeared is a
small black and white “lighthouse” at every important crossing. The
Ministry of Transport might institute a competition for designs for
these useful but not always beautiful accessories.

The question of road-development is inextricably bound up with the
larger question of town-planning, on which I have touched already in
another connection. Before approaching the vital matter of controlling
the design of individual buildings, we must consider this wider aspect.
The fact is that town-planning enthusiasts are disappointed with the
progress made since the passing of the 1909 Act. We had hoped for more
far-reaching results. The nation as a whole has failed to realise
the importance of this question or the great responsibility that
legislation has put upon all local authorities. Whether from the point
of view of appearance, of health, or of mere business, town-planning is
the only national method of providing for the future.

It is futile to write letters to _The Times_ about lost opportunities:
common-sense would have saved the situation in nearly every case, for
town-planning is idealised common-sense. People who have bought a house
in a half-developed suburb wake up one morning to find a shop rising
on the opposite side of their road. They pack up their furniture and
flit to another half-built district a mile further out; and then it
happens again. So they keep on moving, at considerable expense to
themselves. They lose all interest in local affairs, indeed they never
stay long enough to acquire such an interest, and nobody gains by
their journeys except the removal contractor. But in a town-planned
district an area is set apart for dwelling-houses, another for shops,
another for factories. The position of each area is determined by local
conditions, by the “lie of the land,” by the prevailing wind, and by
the situation of railways and roads. There is a place for everything,
and everything is in its place. This branch of town-planning is called
“zoning.” Sites are reserved for municipal buildings, for schools,
churches, cinemas and all the other requirements of our complex life.
Roads are planned wide where heavy traffic is anticipated, narrow
elsewhere. Thus in a properly planned area there is no need for large
sums to be paid out of the rates for compensation when a road has to be
made or widened, because the land for the road has been earmarked in
advance. A man who erects a shop in a new street runs no risk of having
made an error of judgment in selecting his site: he knows that this
will be the main shopping street and no other. Thus town-planning is
good business, but like many other movements for reform its inception
was due to far-sighted dreamers. However, it has not yet caught hold
of the popular imagination, and, in the recent case of the East Kent
coalfield, where, if ever, there was a crying need for its adoption,
the imaginative enterprise of some leading Men of Kent seems to have
started the movement which made it possible. This last example shows
admirably how town-planning may be utilised to save the countryside.
In one sense East Kent could not be saved: coal had been found there,
and was too valuable to be neglected, for, after all, we cannot afford
to throw away any of our natural resources at the present time. Yet it
was unthinkable that this lovely district, the cradle of our race and
the playground of half London, should be allowed to become a second
Black Country. So everything that can be done will be done to preserve
Canterbury and Sandwich and other priceless relics of antiquity, to
save trees, to prevent the blackening of the fields by smoke and the
disfigurement of the landscape by tall chimneys, above all to avoid any
repetition of those squalid black villages that have driven miners to
desperation in other colliery districts. This is one of the ways in
which town-planning can serve the nation.

The development of a modern town is inevitably centrifugal; it spreads
and sprawls outwards along the main roads into the country unless
that tendency be checked. Every mile that it grows outwards means a
few minutes’ extra time for travelling to and from work, congestion
increases at the centre, and the country--as a place for recreation--is
driven further and further away. A feeling that this system is
essentially wrong has resulted in some well-meant efforts to create
“Satellite Towns,” of which Letchworth and Welwyn are examples. They
are satellites to London in the sense that London is within hail for
emergencies: thus Harley Street is a useful resort in some cases, while
the sanctuary of the British Museum Reading Room satisfies bookworms,
and Oxford Street contents the other sex. But the main object of
the promoters was to remove industries and workers bodily into the
country, so that labour might be carried on in pleasant surroundings,
never more than a few minutes’ walk from green fields. The intention
is to limit the ultimate population of these towns to 30,000-50,000.
When that figure is reached, another centre will be started. So far,
neither town has grown very rapidly, and industry has been slow to
move out, in spite of the heavy cost of carrying on business in
London. But the “Satellite Town,” a praiseworthy attempt to secure the
amenities of the old country town for modern workers, is a factor to
be reckoned with in the future. The new L.C.C. town at Becontree in
Essex is being properly laid out on rational town-planning lines, but
is to be purely residential, for people working in London, so does
not constitute a “Satellite Town.” A remarkably successful scheme for
providing something better than the ordinary haphazard suburb, which
normally deteriorates with the certainty of clockwork, is to be seen in
the Hampstead Garden Suburb. This will never deteriorate appreciably,
because its residents are guaranteed against any interference with
their amenities. It is laid out scientifically, not merely exploited on
short-sighted commercial methods.

But though so much can be done by means of town-planning, that new
power has not yet been utilised to any appreciable extent in regard to
controlling the actual design of buildings. The high level of design
achieved at Hampstead and Welwyn is due to private control exercised
by a Company, but Ruislip, Bath, and--quite recently--Edinburgh, have
adopted the clause in the Town-Planning Act which allows an authority
to prescribe the “character” of buildings, and thus to veto any design
which, in their opinion, is likely to conflict with the amenities of
the place.

There was, as we all know, a great development of municipal housing
after the War. It was encouraged, subsidised, and even controlled
to some extent by the State, which still continues its work in that
direction, though in a greatly modified form. The houses erected under
these auspices have been subjected to a great deal of criticism, much
of it both ignorant and ill-natured. Let us recall the circumstances.
A vast number of dwellings had to be provided in a great hurry for men
who had every claim on the nation’s gratitude. Through no fault of
their own they were homeless. For a variety of reasons these houses
were very expensive, even allowing for the general rise in prices.
There was a wave of idealism in the air, and the authorities had taken
opinions from every reliable source as to the type of house required:
these were to be “homes for heroes,” with a bath h. and c. A book of
designs was prepared in Whitehall for the guidance of local authorities
and their architects. These designs met with general approval among
competent critics, but with some derision from the general public, who
greeted the “homes for heroes” as “rabbit-hutches” or “boxes.” That
was because they were devoid of trimmings and built in small groups
instead of in long rows. There are housing-schemes good and bad, but
most people who understand architecture and who are prepared to wait
a few years, till hedges and trees have given these simple buildings
their proper setting, consider that the new houses generally represent
an advance on anything done hitherto. Simplicity in building is, within
limits, a virtue, especially in the country.

The design of these houses was entrusted to architects to an extent
never approached previously; sometimes they were the work of private
practitioners, sometimes of young architects employed under the
direction of the local surveyor, sometimes by the local surveyor or
engineer himself. The degree of ability in design possessed by these
several functionaries is naturally reflected in their products. In that
queer book _Antic Hay_, Mr. Aldous Huxley makes an eccentric architect,
“Gumbril Senior,” voice his views on the design of artisan houses: “I’m
in luck to have got the job, of course, but really, that a civilised
man should have to do jobs like that. It’s too much. In the old days
these creatures built their own hovels, and very nice and suitable they
were too. The architects busied themselves with architecture--which is
the expression of human dignity and greatness, which is man’s protest,
not his miserable acquiescence.” But Gumbril Senior was a visionary,
and most architects feel that they can do much to save England in her
present plight. The trouble is that they are allowed to do so little.

It is equally possible to expect a reasonably high standard of design
in the other buildings erected under a local authority: its schools,
libraries, and so on. Nor ought one to find unworthy architecture
produced by any Government Department, whether it be a post-office,
a telephone-exchange, a military barracks, or a coastguard station
on a lonely cliff. There was a time when every post-office and
police-station bore the marks of red-tape, but of late there has been
a noteworthy change for the better. Again and again one sees with
pleasure a village post-office or telephone-exchange which harmonises
perfectly with the old village street. No longer are the designs
stereotyped; local tradition and local colouring are considered. As
time passes we may hope to witness the disappearance of the hideous
sheds and huts that survive to remind us of the War, now so long ended.

Apart from national and municipal architecture, the design of which
must be assumed to be in competent hands, there is a great deal of
building carried out by large corporate bodies who have it in their
power to insist on good design, and above all on design which
accords with local surroundings. Among these are railway companies,
banks, “multiple” shops, and brewery companies. Among many of these
various undertakings there seems to be positively an architectural
renaissance at work, and real imagination is being displayed at last.
The Underground Railways in and round London are employing clever
artists to design their stations and notices and posters, some of
the other railways are providing really attractive houses for their
employees, and both public-houses and banks in the country-towns are
slowly beginning to take on the colour of their environment. There are
two other types of commercial undertaking which might well follow this
excellent example: the cinema companies and the garage proprietors.
Between them they continue to furnish us with a plentiful stock of
eyesores all over the country, mainly because they are striving to
attract notice and because they always forget to take their hats off
to the village street. If the Council for the Preservation of Rural
England can do anything to teach them better manners they will
effect a real service to England. Occasionally one sees an attractive
petrol-station: a few pounds spent in prizes would produce a crop of
good designs from architects. One hesitates to offer any advice to the
builders of churches of any kind, but here again one asks no more than
decent respect for the spirit of old England.

The toughest nut to crack in all this matter of design is, however,
the question of the shop and the dwelling-house, under which head I
include, as a matter of courtesy, the bungalow. An Englishman’s house
is his castle, and he resents any interference with the rights of the
subject. Is it reasonable to impose on him any restriction as to the
outward appearance of his home, in regard to its design, its colour, or
the materials of which it is composed? It is true that he has to submit
to local building by-laws which prescribe the thicknesses of walls,
size of timbers, precautions to be taken against fire, and many matters
concerned with health. Often he has to place his house a specified
distance back from the road, behind what is called a “building-line.”
But the local authority is not empowered to interfere in any matter
of æsthetics, unless it adopts the Town-Planning Act and enforces the
clause, already mentioned, relating to the “character” of buildings.

But such “interference” is not unknown in the case of leasehold
property. Many owners of large estates insert clauses in leases
prescribing the materials to be used in building, the size of house
to be erected, perhaps the tints to be used in painting, and almost
always insist that painting is to be done every so many years. They may
also require that no garages, sheds, or other excrescences are to be
added to the building without the permission of their surveyor. It is
quite reasonable to suggest that these restrictions might be increased
to achieve the purpose we have in mind. Thus the frequent instances
that we see of a row of stucco dwellings being distempered different
colours, and thereby destroying the effect of a balanced architectural
scheme, might be avoided. The present ruling autocrat in Italy has
recently introduced a measure to deal with this very point, and
tenants of houses in a street have to distemper their external walls
the same colour at the same time. Much of the “restless” appearance
of modern streets and terraces is due to a neglect of this obvious
procedure. A concerted appeal to large owners of property to safeguard
the amenities of their estates by further action on various lines might
lead to great improvement, and something might even be done in the same
direction by restrictive covenants in conveyances of freehold land.

Much has been said lately about the necessity for the control of the
speculative builder who continues to provide most of the smaller houses
and bungalows and shops in this country, and this is the most difficult
problem of all. Such control must obviously have the sanction of the
law to be effective, and therefore must be ultimately vested in the
local authorities, for it is impossible to imagine that Whitehall is to
be held responsible for the approval of every plan in the country. As I
have already pointed out, the rural districts present the most urgent
case for our attention, and here control is most difficult of all.
In a great city like Manchester or Leeds a local Fine Art Committee
might be formed of people competent enough and disinterested enough to
exercise this very delicate function in a statesmanlike way, without
fear or favour. Edinburgh, Bath and Oxford have already led the way:
towns like Cambridge, Coventry, and Canterbury would be well advised to
follow suit. Birmingham has an Advisory Art Committee without statutory
powers.

But imagine the Rural District Council of Nether Footlesby dealing
with a design by Sir Felix Lutfield, R.A., for a large country-house
in their area, for it must be remembered that control of design would
apply to houses great and small, designed by architects great and small
as well as by people who were not architects. These worthy men might
reject his plans because they disliked the appearance of the chimneys;
or Councillor Trapp, a plumber by calling, might have a grievance
against Sir Felix owing to an unfortunate difference of opinion arising
from a previous association in building. It is evident that such a
position is unthinkable. Nor would the situation be materially improved
if the two auctioneer-architects practising in Nether Footlesby, the
retired art-mistress living in the village, and the Vicar of the
parish, were entrusted with this responsible task. It needs little
imagination to realise that a small advisory committee of this calibre
would be nearly as dangerous and quite as futile as the Rural District
Council itself. Even if control were administered on a county basis,
there are small counties in England where it would be difficult to
enlist a committee of men whose decisions would be readily accepted
by the bigwigs of the architectural profession. It seems to me that a
very carefully drafted scheme of control might be organised for most
of the large cities and perhaps half the counties of England, though
even then the situation would bristle with difficulties, but for the
more scattered districts--where at least an equal number of mistakes
is being made--the problem seems insoluble. The London Society and the
Birmingham Civic Society are the sort of bodies that might be trusted
to frame a scheme, but even they would experience many setbacks before
they obtained statutory powers. Much good work in the direction of
controlling unwise development in France has been done by the local
_Syndicats d’initiative_, bodies which exist to preserve the amenities
of each town or district. A study of the methods used in France, and of
measures adopted recently in Italy, would doubtless be helpful in our
own case.

Failing control of this kind, it has been suggested that the builder
must be “brought to his senses,” in the diplomatic words of a writer in
_The Times_ of January 7th, 1927. But, so long as the builder continues
to sell his houses without any difficulty and at a considerable profit,
he may not see any reason for admitting that he is deficient in sense.
Who, for instance, is to be empowered to stop him decorating his gables
with a ludicrous parody of half-timbering, made of inch boards which
warp in the sun? The small builder obtains many of his designs from
printed books or from weekly journals, and the following authentic
extract from a recent publication shows how it is done:

  “Having a plot of land 80-ft. frontage by 120-ft., I should be
  pleased if some reader would submit a plan and elevation-sketch of a
  detached house, something attractive, dainty, and _very arresting_.”

The words I have italicised explain some of our present troubles. The
desire of the builder and of his client, for the “very arresting” house
causes many of the incongruous additions to our landscape. Something
might be done, as the President of the R.I.B.A. has suggested, to
supply the builder with stock designs of good character, adapted to
the needs of each locality; for, as I have noted before, the use of
copybooks in the eighteenth century produced houses which if sometimes
dull were at least dignified and often charming. But a process of very
slow conversion will be necessary before we can hope to rid the public
of this desire for “very arresting” buildings.

In the control of design would have to be included restrictions
on colour and material _so far as is reasonable_, but it is quite
impracticable nowadays to insist that a man building a house in a
Yorkshire dale must employ the traditional stone walls and stone
slates: it is doubtful if anybody will ever legally prevent him using
the pink asbestos-cement tiles that clash so violently with the dull
tones of the landscape. Similarly, it is idle to expect that a modern
factory building should be erected to harmonise perfectly with rural
surroundings: one can only ask that its designer may bear in mind
the spirit of the place, and treat it as tenderly as circumstances
permit. But we may reasonably press for further action in the abatement
of factory smoke and domestic smoke, for that nuisance spreads
forty or fifty miles away from industrial areas, and cities like
Leicester--where smoke is hardly visible--are few and far between.
The Coal Smoke Abatement Society has long worked towards this end,
and its arguments are familiar to most people. Its supporters are
convinced that smoky chimneys are wasteful as well as unhealthy and
unpleasant. But it seems certain that we can eliminate a large part of
our coal-smoke by utilising electric power far more extensively than
we now do, by harnessing our rivers and by utilising all the waste
water-power that is running from reservoirs to towns in aqueducts and
pipes.

It has been suggested lately that much of the ugliness of colliery
districts might be mitigated by judicious planting of trees on
pit-banks. But smoke is one factor that prevents this, for it blackens
and stunts all vegetation. Then the recent coal-strike showed that
in any such emergency gleaners would soon be at work on the banks,
grubbing for coal among the tree-roots. Lastly, even if trees did grow
in such inhospitable soil, there is some doubt whether they would be
tenderly treated by those for whose benefit they were planted.

It has been pointed out, earlier in this chapter, that Acts of
Parliament have already empowered local authorities to remove unsightly
hoardings and advertisements of all kinds, so that it only remains now
for public opinion to press them to proceed in this admirable work.
The author of _Nuntius_, in this series of essays, prophesies that
advertising will not become more aggressive, adding that a sign which
spoils a beautiful landscape is a very ineffective advertisement and
hence that the “few existing” (_sic_) will soon disappear. Let us hope
so. But one hesitates to accept his earlier statement that, if there
were no hoardings on empty sites, these would become rubbish dumps. At
all events, the recent action of the petrol combines in removing their
hideous advertisements nearly all over the countryside represents a
great victory for public opinion. On the whole, advertising is becoming
more artistic, possibly more restrained. But house-agents continue to
be terrible sinners in this respect. Close to my home is an avenue,
still miraculously preserving its beauty, though surely doomed. But
at the end of it is a group of seven enormous hoardings erected
cheek-by-jowl by rival agents and completely spoiling a fine vista. I
cannot see that any hardships would be inflicted on those Philistine
touts if all agents’ boards were restricted to a maximum size of 2
square feet. Those who wished could still read them, others need
not. There are many little details of design in village streets--the
inn-signs, the lettering of street-names, the lamp-standards--capable
of improvement on simple lines. In this connection one may mention the
work of the Rural Industries Bureau which, among its other activities
in encouraging the rustic craftsman, has endeavoured to find employment
for the village blacksmith on simple wrought-iron accessories in common
use and has prepared a selection of designs for his guidance.

Some day a genius may show us how to make wireless masts less
unsightly, or perhaps we may be able to discard them altogether as
science advances. But this innovation has not greatly spoiled our
villages, nor does it seem probable that air travel will much affect
the appearance of the countryside: a few more aerodromes perhaps, and
on them, it is to be hoped, a more attractive type of building. The air
lighthouse or beacon will spring up here and there; another subject for
the ambitious young architect in competition.

But though it is now evident that a very great deal may be done for the
preservation of rural England by the exercise of legislative powers
which local authorities already possess, and by pressure on corporate
bodies and private landowners of the best type, the ultimate success of
the new crusade will depend on its ability to influence public opinion.
Two kinds of opinion are involved, that of the country dwellers
themselves, and that of the urban invaders of the countryside. Probably
most young people now employed in remote villages and on farms would
give their skin to get away from what they regard as the monotony of
rural life, and one must sympathise with that view. The introduction
of wireless and cinemas will make their existence less irksome,
and the phenomenal increase of motor-bus facilities allows them to
travel cheaply and frequently to the nearest town, with its shops and
bright streets. But none of these things will teach them to prize the
country, rather the reverse, for many of the films they see show them
uglification at its worst--in the ricketty shacks of Western America.
It might be possible to teach them to admire their own heritage by
occasional lectures at the village institutes on town-planning and
architecture; not the architecture of great cathedrals and of foreign
buildings like the Parthenon, but the simple homely architecture of the
village church, the village barn, and the village cottage. A competent
lecturer accustomed to such an audience, avoiding like the plague all
sentimental talk about the glory of country life, might explain the
beauty of old bridges and mills, the simple skill of old craftsmen,
in such a way that his hearers would be less anxious to substitute
suburban vulgarities for everything that their rude forefathers of
the hamlet had made. Recently there was organised, in my own village,
an exhibition of drawings, engravings, maps, old documents, etc.,
illustrating the history and development of the district. It was
visited by a large number of people, including many children, and
undoubtedly it aroused much interest in things that had hitherto passed
unnoticed.

The urban motorist, whether he travels in a Rolls-Royce or a charabanc,
often provides an equally difficult problem. He may be a superior
person of great wealth, who avoids the hackneyed resorts of trippers
because he objects to the sight of beer-bottles and paper bags on the
heather, but, as a humorous artist recently reminded us, he probably
goes to a more secluded common and instructs his chauffeur to leave
the champagne bottles and disembowelled lobsters under a gorse-bush
there, for he has the soul and breeding of the tripper, and litter does
not offend him. The beach X---- in Romney Marsh, already mentioned,
was littered from end to end with newspapers, cigarette packets, and
confectioners’ debris, when last I saw it.

Untidiness, ugliness, lack of respect for history and beauty, an insane
craze for speed in getting from one futile pursuit to another, blatant
advertisement, sordid commercialism--these are some of the things
we have borrowed from American life to vulgarise our own. But when
Americans come over to England, the thing that impresses them most--far
more than anything we can do in our towns--is the harmony and peace of
the English village and the English countryside. They feel in their
bones that there we “have them beat.”

It is simply heart-breaking, to those of us who know how future
uglification may be avoided and how much of the blundering of the
past may be remedied, to see the process of deterioration steadily
continuing. With more of brains and less of greed, more of public
spirit and less of vested interests, rural England may yet be saved.



SOME ADDRESSES


  THE COUNCIL FOR THE PRESERVATION OF RURAL ENGLAND,

    33, Bloomsbury Square, W.C. 1.


  THE GARDEN CITIES AND TOWN PLANNING ASSOCIATION,

    3, Gray’s Inn Place, W.C. 1.


  THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS,

    20, Buckingham Street, W.C. 2.


  THE COMMONS AND FOOTPATHS PRESERVATION SOCIETY,

    7, Buckingham Palace Gardens, S.W. 1.


  THE COAL SMOKE ABATEMENT SOCIETY,

    7, Buckingham Palace Gardens, S.W. 1.


  THE NATIONAL TRUST FOR PLACES OF HISTORIC INTEREST OR NATURAL BEAUTY,

    7, Buckingham Palace Gardens, S.W. 1.


  THE SCAPA SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISFIGUREMENT IN TOWN AND
  COUNTRY,

    7, Buckingham Palace Gardens, S.W. 1.


  THE RURAL INDUSTRIES INTELLIGENCE BUREAU,

    20, Eccleston Street, S.W. 1.



TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

_Each, pott 8vo, boards, 2/6 net_


This series of books, by some of the most distinguished English
thinkers, scientists, philosophers, doctors, critics, and artists, was
at once recognized as a noteworthy event. Written from various points
of view, one book frequently opposing the argument of another, they
provide the reader with a stimulating survey of the most modern thought
in many departments of life. Several volumes are devoted to the future
trend of Civilization, conceived as a whole; while others deal with
particular provinces. It is interesting to see in these neat little
volumes, issued at a low price, the revival of a form of literature,
the Pamphlet, which has been in disuse for many years.

  _Published by_
  KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
  Broadway House: 68-74 Carter Lane, London, E.C. 4.


_FROM THE REVIEWS_

  _Times Literary Supplement_: “An entertaining series.”

  _Spectator_: “Scintillating monographs.”

  _Observer_: “There seems no reason why the brilliant To-day and
  To-morrow Series should come to an end for a century of to-morrows.
  At first it seemed impossible for the publishers to keep up the sport
  through a dozen volumes, but the series already runs to more than two
  score. A remarkable series....”

  _Nation_: “We are able to peer into the future by means of that
  brilliant series [which] will constitute a precious document upon the
  present time.”--T. S. ELIOT.

  _Manchester Dispatch_: “The more one reads of these pamphlets, the
  more avid becomes the appetite. We hope the list is endless.”

  _Irish Statesman_: “Full of lively controversy.”

  _Daily Herald_: “This series has given us many monographs of
  brilliance and discernment.... The stylistic excellences of this
  provocative series.”

  _Field_: “We have long desired to express the deep admiration felt by
  every thinking scholar and worker at the present day for this series.
  We must pay tribute to the high standard of thought and expression
  they maintain. As small gift-books, austerely yet prettily produced,
  they remain unequalled of their kind. We can give but the briefest
  suggestions of their value to the student, the politician, and the
  voter....”

  _Japan Chronicle_: “While cheap prophecy is a futile thing, wisdom
  consists largely in looking forward to consequences. It is this that
  makes these books of considerable interest.”

  _New York World_: “Holds the palm in the speculative and
  interpretative thought of the age.”


_VOLUMES READY_

  =Daedalus=, or Science and the Future. By J. B. S. HALDANE, Reader in
  Biochemistry, University of Cambridge. _Seventh impression._

    “A fascinating and daring little book.”--_Westminster Gazette._
    “The essay is brilliant, sparkling with wit and bristling with
    challenges.”--_British Medical Journal._ “Predicts the most
    startling changes.”--_Morning Post._

  =Callinicus=, a Defence of Chemical Warfare. By J. B. S. HALDANE.
  _Second impression._

    “Mr. Haldane’s brilliant study.”--_Times Leading Article._ “A
    book to be read by every intelligent adult.”--_Spectator._ “This
    brilliant little monograph.”--_Daily News._

  =Icarus=, or the Future of Science. By BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S.
  _Fourth impression._

    “Utter pessimism.”--_Observer._ “Mr. Russell refuses to believe
    that the progress of Science must be a boon to mankind.”--_Morning
    Post._ “A stimulating book, that leaves one not at all
    discouraged.”--_Daily Herald._

  =What I Believe.= By BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. _Third impression._

    “One of the most brilliant and thought-stimulating little books
    I have read--a better book even than Icarus.”--_Nation._ “Simply
    and brilliantly written.”--_Nature._ “In stabbing sentences he
    punctures the bubble of cruelty, envy, narrowness, and ill-will
    which those in authority call their morals.”--_New Leader._

  =Tantalus=, or the Future of Man. By F. C. S. SCHILLER, D.SC., Fellow
  of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. _Second impression._

    “They are all (_Daedalus_, _Icarus_, and _Tantalus_) brilliantly
    clever, and they supplement or correct one another.”--_Dean
    Inge_, in _Morning Post_. “Immensely valuable and infinitely
    readable.”--_Daily News._ “The book of the week.”--S_pectator._

  =Cassandra=, or the Future of the British Empire. By F. C. S.
  SCHILLER, D.SC.

    “We commend it to the complacent of all parties.”--_Saturday
    Review._ “The book is small, but very, very weighty; brilliantly
    written, it ought to be read by all shades of politicians and
    students of politics.”--_Yorkshire Post._ “Yet another addition to
    that bright constellation of pamphlets.”--_Spectator._

  =Quo Vadimus?= Glimpses of the Future. By E. E. FOURNIER D’ALBE,
  D.SC., author of “Selenium, the Moon Element,” etc.

    “A wonderful vision of the future. A book that will be talked
    about.”--_Daily Graphic._ “A remarkable contribution to a
    remarkable series.”--_Manchester Dispatch._ “Interesting and
    singularly plausible.”--_Daily Telegraph._

  =Thrasymachus=, the Future of Morals. By C. E. M. JOAD, author of
  “The Babbitt Warren,” etc. _Second impression._

    “His provocative book.”--_Graphic._ “Written in a style of
    deliberate brilliance.”--_Times Literary Supplement._ “As outspoken
    and unequivocal, a contribution as could well be imagined.
    Even those readers who dissent will be forced to recognize the
    admirable clarity with which he states his case. A book that will
    startle.”--_Daily Chronicle._

  =Lysistrata=, or Woman’s Future and Future Woman. By ANTHONY M.
  LUDOVICI, author of “A Defence of Aristocracy,” etc. _Second
  Impression._

    “A stimulating book. Volumes would be needed to deal, in the
    fullness his work provokes, with all the problems raised.”--_Sunday
    Times._ “Pro-feminine, but anti-feministic.”--_Scotsman._ “Full of
    brilliant common-sense.”--_Observer._

  =Hypatia=, or Woman and Knowledge. By MRS. BERTRAND RUSSELL. With a
  frontispiece. _Third impression._

    An answer to _Lysistrata_. “A passionate vindication of the rights
    of women.”--_Manchester Guardian._ “Says a number of things
    that sensible women have been wanting publicly said for a long
    time.”--_Daily Herald._

  =Hephaestus=, the Soul of the Machine. By E. E. FOURNIER D’ALBE, D.SC.

    “A worthy contribution to this interesting series. A delightful
    and thought-provoking essay.”--_Birmingham Post._ “There is a
    special pleasure in meeting with a book like _Hephaestus_. The
    author has the merit of really understanding what he is talking
    about.”--_Engineering._ “An exceedingly clever defence of
    machinery.”--_Architects’ Journal._

  =The Passing of the Phantoms=: a Study of Evolutionary Psychology and
  Morals. By C. J. PATTEN, Professor of Anatomy, Sheffield University.
  With 4 Plates.

    “Readers of _Daedalus_, _Icarus_ and _Tantalus_, will be
    grateful for an excellent presentation of yet another point
    of view.”--_Yorkshire Post._ “This bright and bracing little
    book.”--_Literary Guide._ “Interesting and original.”--_Medical
    Times._

  =The Mongol in our Midst=: a Study of Man and his Three Faces. By
  F. G. CROOKSHANK, M.D., F.R.C.P. With 28 Plates. _Second Edition,
  revised._

    “A brilliant piece of speculative induction.”--_Saturday Review._
    “An extremely interesting and suggestive book, which will reward
    careful reading.”--_Sunday Times._ “The pictures carry fearful
    conviction.”--_Daily Herald._

  =The Conquest of Cancer.= By H. W. S. WRIGHT, M.S., F.R.C.S.
  Introduction by F. G. CROOKSHANK, M.D.

    “Eminently suitable for general reading. The problem is fairly
    and lucidly presented. One merit of Mr. Wright’s plan is that he
    tells people what, in his judgment, they can best do, _here and
    now_.”--From the _Introduction_.

  =Pygmalion=, or the Doctor of the Future. By R. MCNAIR WILSON, M.B.

    “Dr. Wilson has added a brilliant essay to this series.”--_Times
    Literary Supplement._ “This is a very little book, but there is
    much wisdom in it.”--_Evening Standard._ “No doctor worth his salt
    would venture to say that Dr. Wilson was wrong.”--_Daily Herald._

  =Prometheus=, or Biology and the Advancement of Man. By H. S.
  JENNINGS, Professor of Zoology, Johns Hopkins University.

    “This volume is one of the most remarkable that has yet appeared
    in this series. Certainly the information it contains will be
    new to most educated laymen. It is essentially a discussion
    of ... heredity and environment, and it clearly establishes
    the fact that the current use of these terms has no scientific
    justification.”--_Times Literary Supplement._ “An exceedingly
    brilliant book.”--_New Leader._

  =Narcissus=: an Anatomy of Clothes. By GERALD HEARD. With 19
  illustrations.

    “A most suggestive book.”--_Nation._ “Irresistible. Reading it
    is like a switchback journey. Starting from prehistoric times we
    rocket down the ages.”--_Daily News._ “Interesting, provocative,
    and entertaining.”--_Queen._

  =Thamyris=, or Is There a Future for Poetry? By R. C. TREVELYAN.

    “Learned, sensible, and very well-written.”--_Affable Hawk_, in
    _New Statesman_. “Very suggestive.”--_J. C. Squire_, in _Observer_.
    “A very charming piece of work, I agree with all, or at any rate,
    almost all its conclusions.”--_J. St. Loe Strachey_, in _Spectator_.

  =Proteus=, or the Future of Intelligence. By VERNON LEE, author of
  “Satan the Waster,” etc.

    “We should like to follow the author’s suggestions as to the
    effect of intelligence on the future of Ethics, Aesthetics,
    and Manners. Her book is profoundly stimulating and should be
    read by everyone.”--_Outlook._ “A concise, suggestive piece of
    work.”--_Saturday Review._

  =Timotheus=, the Future of the Theatre. By BONAMY DOBRÉE, author of
  “Restoration Drama,” etc.

    “A witty, mischievous little book, to be read with
    delight.”--_Times Literary Supplement._ “This is a delightfully
    witty book.”--_Scotsman._ “In a subtly satirical vein he visualizes
    various kinds of theatres in 200 years time. His gay little book
    makes delightful reading.”--_Nation._

  =Paris=, or the Future of War. By Captain B. H. LIDDELL HART.

    “A companion volume to _Callinicus_. A gem of close thinking
    and deduction.”--_Observer._ “A noteworthy contribution to a
    problem of concern to every citizen in this country.”--_Daily
    Chronicle._ “There is some lively thinking about the future of war
    in _Paris_, just added to this set of live-wire pamphlets on big
    subjects.”--_Manchester Guardian._

  =Wireless Possibilities.= By Professor A. M. LOW. With 4 diagrams.

    “As might be expected from an inventor who is always so fresh, he
    has many interesting things to say.”--_Evening Standard._ “The
    mantle of Blake has fallen upon the physicists. To them we look for
    visions, and we find them in this book.”--_New Statesman._

  =Perseus=: of Dragons. By H. F. SCOTT STOKES. With 2 illustrations.

    “A diverting little book, chock-full of ideas. Mr. Stokes’
    dragon-lore is both quaint and various.”--_Morning Post._ “Very
    amusingly written, and a mine of curious knowledge for which the
    discerning reader will find many uses.”--_Glasgow Herald._

  =Lycurgus=, or the Future of Law. By E. S. P. HAYNES, author of
  “Concerning Solicitors,” etc.

    “An interesting and concisely written book.”--_Yorkshire Post._ “He
    roundly declares that English criminal law is a blend of barbaric
    violence, medieval prejudices, and modern fallacies.... A humane
    and conscientious investigation.”--_T.P.’s Weekly._ “A thoughtful
    book--deserves careful reading.”--_Law Times._

  =Euterpe=, or the Future of Art. By LIONEL R. MCCOLVIN, author of
  “The Theory of Book-Selection.”

    “Discusses briefly, but very suggestively, the problem of the
    future of art in relation to the public.”--_Saturday Review._
    “Another indictment of machinery as a soul-destroyer ... Mr. Colvin
    has the courage to suggest solutions.”--_Westminster Gazette._
    “This is altogether a much-needed book.”--_New Leader._

  =Pegasus=, or Problems of Transport. By Colonel J. F. C. FULLER,
  author of “The Reformation of War,” etc. With 8 Plates.

    “The foremost military prophet of the day propounds a solution
    for industrial and unemployment problems. It is a bold essay
    ... and calls for the attention of all concerned with imperial
    problems.”--_Daily Telegraph._ “Practical, timely, very interesting
    and very important.”--J. St. Loe Strachey, in _Spectator_.

  =Atlantis=, or America and the Future. By Colonel J. F. C. FULLER.

    “Candid and caustic.”--_Observer._ “Many hard things have been
    said about America, but few quite so bitter and caustic as
    these.”--_Daily Sketch._ “He can conjure up possibilities of a new
    Atlantis.”--_Clarion._

  =Midas=, or the United States and the Future. By C. H. BRETHERTON,
  author of “The Real Ireland”, etc.

    A companion volume to _Atlantis_. “Full of astute observations
    and acute reflections ... this wise and witty pamphlet, a
    provocation to the thought that is creative.”--_Morning Post._
    “A punch in every paragraph. One could hardly ask for more
    ‘meat.’”--_Spectator._

  =Nuntius=, or Advertising and its Future. By GILBERT RUSSELL.

    “Expresses the philosophy of advertising concisely and
    well.”--_Observer._ “It is doubtful if a more straightforward
    exposition of the part advertising plays in our public and private
    life has been written.”--_Manchester Guardian._

  =Birth Control and the State=: a Plea and a Forecast. By C. P.
  BLACKER, _M.C._, M.A., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

    “A very careful summary.”--_Times Literary Supplement._ “A
    temperate and scholarly survey of the arguments for and against
    the encouragement of the practice of birth control.”--_Lancet._
    “He writes lucidly, moderately, and from wide knowledge; his book
    undoubtedly gives a better understanding of the subject than any
    other brief account we know. It also suggests a policy.”--_Saturday
    Review._

  =Ouroboros=, or the Mechanical Extension of Mankind. By GARET GARRETT.

    “This brilliant and provoking little book.”--_Observer._ “A
    significant and thoughtful essay, calculated in parts to make our
    flesh creep.”--_Spectator._ “A brilliant writer, Mr. Garrett is a
    remarkable man. He explains something of the enormous change the
    machine has made in life.”--_Daily Express._

  =Artifex=, or the Future of Craftsmanship. By JOHN GLOAG, author of
  “Time, Taste, and Furniture.”

    “An able and interesting summary of the history of craftsmanship
    in the past, a direct criticism of the present, and at the end
    his hopes for the future. Mr. Gloag’s real contribution to
    the future of craftsmanship is his discussion of the uses of
    machinery.”--_Times Literary Supplement._

  =Plato’s American Republic.= By J. DOUGLAS WOODRUFF. _Third
  impression._

    “Uses the form of the Socratic dialogue with devastating success.
    A gently malicious wit sparkles in every page.”--_Sunday Times._
    “Having deliberately set himself an almost impossible task, has
    succeeded beyond belief.”--_Saturday Review._ “Quite the liveliest
    even of this spirited series.”--_Observer._

  =Orpheus=, or the Music of the Future. By W. J. TURNER, author of
  “Music and Life.”

    “A book on music that we can read not merely once, but twice or
    thrice. Mr. Turner has given us some of the finest thinking upon
    Beethoven that I have ever met with.”--_Ernest Newman_ in _Sunday
    Times_. “A brilliant essay in contemporary philosophy.”--_Outlook._
    “The fruit of real knowledge and understanding.”--_New Statesman._

  =Terpander=, or Music and the Future. By E. J. DENT, author of
  “Mozart’s Operas.”

    “In _Orpheus_ Mr. Turner made a brilliant voyage in search of
    first principles. Mr. Dent’s book is a skilful review of the
    development of music. It is the most succinct and stimulating
    essay on music I have found....”--_Musical News._ “Remarkably able
    and stimulating.”--_Times Literary Supplement._ “There is hardly
    another critic alive who could sum up contemporary tendencies so
    neatly.”--_Spectator._

  =Sibylla=, or the Revival of Prophecy. By C. A. MACE, University of
  St. Andrew’s.

    “An entertaining and instructive pamphlet.”--_Morning Post._
    “Places a nightmare before us very ably and wittily.”--_Spectator._
    “Passages in it are excellent satire, but on the whole Mr. Mace’s
    speculations may be taken as a trustworthy guide ... to modern
    scientific thought.”--_Birmingham Post._

  =Lucullus=, or the Food of the Future. By OLGA HARTLEY and Mrs. C. F.
  LEYEL, authors of ‘The Gentle Art of Cookery.’

    “This is a clever and witty little volume in an entertaining
    series, and it makes enchanting reading.”--_Times Literary
    Supplement._ “Opens with a brilliant picture of modern man, living
    in a vacuum-cleaned, steam-heated, credit-furnished suburban
    mansion ‘with a wolf in the basement’--the wolf of hunger. This
    banquet of epigrams.”--_Spectator._

  =Procrustes=, or the Future of English Education. By M. ALDERTON PINK.

    “Undoubtedly he makes out a very good case.”--_Daily Herald._
    “This interesting addition to the series.”--_Times Educational
    Supplement._ “Intends to be challenging and succeeds in being so.
    All fit readers will find it stimulating.”--_Northern Echo._

  =The Future of Futurism.= By JOHN RODKER.

    “Mr. Rodker is up-to-the-minute, and he has accomplished a
    considerable feat in writing, on such a vague subject, 92 extremely
    interesting pages.”--T. S. Eliot, in _Nation_. “There are a good
    many things in this book which are of interest.”--_Times Literary
    Supplement._

  =Pomona=, or the Future of English. By BASIL DE SÉLINCOURT, author of
  ‘The English Secret’, etc.

    “The future of English is discussed fully and with fascinating
    interest.”--_Morning Post._ “Has a refreshing air of the
    unexpected. Full of wise thoughts and happy words.”--_Times
    Literary Supplement._ “Here is suggestive thought, quite different
    from most speculations on the destiny of our language.”--_Journal
    of Education._

  =Balbus=, or the Future of Architecture. By CHRISTIAN BARMAN,
  editor of ‘The Architect’s Journal’.

    “A really brilliant addition to this already distinguished
    series. The reading of _Balbus_ will give much data for
    intelligent prophecy, and incidentally, an hour or so of excellent
    entertainment.”--_Spectator._ “Most readable and reasonable. We can
    recommend it warmly.”--_New Statesman._ “This intriguing little
    book.”--_Connoisseur._


_JUST PUBLISHED_

  =Apella=, or the Future of the Jews. By A QUARTERLY REVIEWER.

    “Cogent, because of brevity and a magnificent prose style, this
    book wins our quiet praise. It is a fine pamphlet, adding to the
    value of the series, and should not be missed.”--_Spectator._ “A
    notable addition to this excellent series. His arguments are a
    provocation to fruitful thinking.”--_Morning Post._

  =The Dance of Çiva=, or Life’s Unity and Rhythm. By COLLUM.

    “It has substance and thought in it. The author is very much alive
    and responsive to the movements of to-day which seek to unite the
    best thought of East and West, and discusses Mussolini and Jagadis
    Bose with perspicacity.”--_Spectator._

  =Lars Porsena=, or the Future of Swearing and Improper Language. By
  ROBERT GRAVES.

    “An amusing little book.”--_Daily Mirror._ “It is to this subject
    [of swearing] that Mr. Graves brings much erudition and not a
    little irony.”--_John O’London’s Weekly._ “Not for squeamish
    readers.”--_Spectator._ “Too outspoken. The writer sails very near
    the wind, but all the same has some sound constructive things to
    say.”--_Manchester Dispatch._

  =Socrates=, or the Emancipation of Mankind. By H. F. CARLILL.

    Sets out the new view of the nature of man, to which the trend of
    modern psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary theory has led,
    shows the important consequences to human behaviour and efficiency
    which are bound to follow, and maintains that man is at last
    conscious of his power to control his biological inheritance.

  =Delphos=, or the Future of International Language. By E. SYLVIA
  PANKHURST.

    An inquiry into the possibility of a medium of inter-communication,
    auxiliary to the mother tongues. A survey of past attempts from
    the sixteenth century to the present day. A prophecy of the coming
    inter-language, its form, its social and cultural utility, and its
    influence on world peace.

  =Gallio=, or the Tyranny of Science. By J. W. N. SULLIVAN, author
  of “A History of Mathematics.”

    Is the scientific universe the real universe? What is the character
    of the universe revealed by modern science? Are values inherent in
    reality? What is the function of the arts? In addition to answering
    these questions, the author attacks the notion that science is
    materialistic.

  =Apollonius=, or the Future of Psychical Research. By E. N.
  BENNETT, author of “Problems of Village Life,” etc.

    An attempt to summarize the results secured by the scientific
    treatment of psychical phenomena, to forecast the future
    developments of such research, and to answer the familiar question
    “What is the good of it all?”


_NEARLY READY_

  =Janus=, or the Conquest of War. By WILLIAM MCDOUGALL, M.B., F.R.S.,
  Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, author of “The Group
  Mind,” etc.

    A volume of fundamental importance to all those who would avoid
    future wars. Sections are devoted to lessons of the Great War, the
    Causes of War, Preventives of War, League to Enforce Peace, and
    International Air Force as a Prevention of War.

  =Rusticus=, or the Future of the Countryside. By MARTIN S. BRIGGS,
  F.R.I.B.A., author of “A Short History of the Building Crafts,” etc.

    Attributes much of the blame for the desecration of our countryside
    to the petrol-engine, though he recognizes other contributory
    causes. He attempts to analyse the charm of our counties before the
    Industrial Revolution and shows how that movement influenced their
    aspect. Finally he surveys the future, making practical suggestions
    to avoid further ‘uglification.’

  =Aeolus=, or the Future of the Flying Machine. By OLIVER STEWART,
  author of “Strategy and Tactics of Air Fighting.”

    A picture of the air-vehicle and air-battleship of the future,
    painted with colours from the aeronautical research work of to-day.
    The author foresees that the flying machine will resist mass
    production. Aircraft will be exalted as individual creations of the
    Artist-Scientist rather than debased as tools of the Commercialist.

  =Stentor=, or the Future of the Press. By DAVID OCKHAM.

    Shows how since the War the control of the Press has passed into
    the hands of only five men. The law is powerless, even if willing,
    to check this justification. Now that independent organs of opinion
    are almost eliminated, the author discusses the danger to the
    community unless the Public is made aware of the personalities and
    policies behind the Trusts.


_IN PREPARATION_

  =The Future of India.= By T. EARLE WELBY.

    An analysis of the spiritual and political future of 320 million
    persons in the light of present tendencies.

  =Mercurius=, or the World on Wings. By C. THOMPSON WALKER.

    A picture of the air-vehicle and the air-port of to-morrow, and the
    influence aircraft will have on our lives.

  =The Future of Films.= By ERNEST BETTS.

  =Vulcan=, or Labour To-Day and To-Morrow. By CECIL CHISHOLM.



FOOTNOTES:

[1] Quoted in D. H. S. Cranage, _The Home of the Monk_, p. 105.

[2] _Seven Lamps_, IV, 21.



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.




*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Rusticus : Or, the future of the countryside" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.