Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

“ For the most part we appreciate what is good only through observing what is bad; if, in the absence of the bad, we are able to admit that there is such a thing as the good. An old proficient in architecture, who, when I was about your age, was so kind as to aid me with his advice, used often to say to me: ‘I can tell you, my dear fellow, what you must avoid in the art of building;—as to explaining to you in what the good and the beautiful consist, you must find out that yourself. If you are a born architect, you will know well enough how to discover it ”

“ All these habitations have a dignified aspect; they ennoble life, we may say, and enlarge those narrow ideas to which our age is only too prone.... And then, does it not seem to you that there is a too manifest want of symmetry, at least in one of the façades? Doesn’t this make the house look a little like those edifices which have been built piecemeal, with a view to satisfy successive requirements—in short, is there not a want of that unity which ought to be found in every work of art? ”

“ The ceiling, with its two beams [Pg 250] and joists, painted in light tones, set off by black and white lines, seemed to enlarge the apartment, and gave it a warm and habitable appearance, presenting on hot days lights and shades of an amber tint. The wall between the ceiling and the wainscot was hung with painted canvas. The chimney-piece stood out in bold relief on this back-ground. The entrance end of the drawing-room would have been rather sombre if the wide opening into the billiard-room had not flooded it with light, softened by the verdure of the plants within the little conservatory. ”

“ Now it is desirable in architecture to make use of the necessities of the construction as a means of decoration, and frankly to acknowledge those necessities. There is nothing discreditable in allowing them to be seen; and it is a mark of good taste, good sense and knowledge, to exhibit them by making them contribute to the decoration of the work. In fact, to people of good taste and good sense, this is the only kind of decoration that is satisfactory, because it alone is suggested by the requirements. ”

“ It should not be our object in the world (and the Lyceum is a little world not unlike the great one) , to shut ourselves up in our own knowledge and thus flatter our vanity, but to discover that of others and endeavour to profit by it. It should not be our object to shine by our knowledge, or fancied knowledge, and so occasion envy on the part of the foolish, and a smile on that of people of sense, but to elicit the knowledge possessed by others. This course of conduct secures us a double advantage: we avoid making enemies, and we increase our store of knowledge. ”

“ Learn to reason, to observe before you proceed to act, and you will be a good barrister, [Pg 152] a good physician, a good soldier, a good architect. If nature has endowed you with genius, so much the better; it will supply a noble complement to your faculties; but if you have not gained the habit of reasoning, genius will be of no use to you, or rather, it cannot develop itself. Now, to learn to reason, you must labour much and labour long, and not allow yourself to be led astray by appearances, however attractive. ”

“ HOW PAUL IS LED TO RECOGNIZE CERTAIN DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ETHICS AND ARCHITECTURE. When, in the evening, Paul’s report of the lesson was read in the family circle, M. de Gandelau interrupted the reading at this phrase incorrectly given, “Good is only the absence of evil.”
“Oh, oh!” said his father; “Charity is something more than the absence of evil. If you give nothing to the poor man who asks bread of you; if, being able to swim, you do not try to save a drowning man, you do not do evil, but certainly you do not do good.”
“That is not exactly what I said to Paul,” replied Eugène, smiling. ”

“ The reasoning faculties and good sense have to be called into exercise quite as much in building a house as in constructing the Louvre, in the same way as you may show tact and intellect in a letter as well as in a large volume.
“The ability of an architect is not determined by the quantity of cubic feet of stone he uses. The size of the building makes no difference.” ”

“ He made a remark to that effect, for Paul had seen in the environs of Paris, many country-houses that seemed to him charming, with their four pepper-boxes at the angles, their porch in the very centre of the façade, and their zinc cresting on the roof. He had too high an opinion of his cousin’s ability [Pg 103] to allow himself to criticise the façade of his sister’s house, as designed for the entrance side; but in his heart he would have preferred something more conformable to the laws of symmetry. Those windows of all forms and dimensions shocked his taste a little. ”

“ It was a little too late, yet the example did not benefit others.”
“What can be done?” rejoined Madame de Gandelau. “If things are as you say, you are offering Paul a profession whose duties involve impossibilities; and unless he obtains employment from the government....”
“Oh! that is too uncertain a chance, and a career that depends on the government scarcely deserves the name. A man ought to be able to get on without reckoning on this very precarious support. Besides, the elect are very few.” ”

“ Do not imagine that, Paul; construction, apart from certain branches of scientific and practical knowledge, which you will be able to study at leisure, is nothing but a method,—a habit of reasoning,—a compliance with the rules of common sense. ”

“ Some architects think to create astonishment by thus adopting processes which do not harmonize with the materials they use; who, if they are constructing with brick, strive to give to their building the appearance of a construction in stone; who affect to imitate marble in wood, or wood in plaster; who seem in fact to make it their object to give to each of the materials employed forms that are not appropriate to their nature. Observe these undesirable methods, with a view of always avoiding them, if you would be an architect. ”

“ As a general rule, in giving an order, you should have thought seven times of the objections to which it is liable, otherwise some Master Branchu may start up who, with a single word will demonstrate your thoughtlessness. An architect may, indeed, if he chooses, stop the mouth of objectors when placed under his authority; but to impose silence on people is not to prove that they are wrong, especially if a few days afterwards the director of the works gives contrary orders. Every one has his share of amour-propre, which must not be disregarded. ”

“ Build us then, cousin, a good house, well sheltered from the sun and rain, thoroughly dry within, and in which nothing is sacrificed to that debased luxury which is a thousand times more offensive in our country districts than it is in the city. ”

“ Construction, my dear fellow, is an art requiring foresight. The good builder is he who leaves nothing to chance, who does not put off the solution of any problem, and who knows how to give each function its place and value with respect to the whole, and that at the right moment. ”

“ What they look for (and in this, women often exercise an injurious influence) are complaisant mediocrities, who will lend themselves to all their fancies, of which they will have the satisfaction of repenting soon afterwards.”
“You attack us unjustly,” replied Madame de Gandelau; “women do not presume to be connoisseurs in architecture, and they ask for nothing but a good arrangement of the interior of a house; which is natural enough, since they have the direction of domestic affairs, and they, more than any others, suffer from the inconvenient or faulty arrangements of their dwellings.” ”

“ This is a convenient state of things for many persons, who presume to talk about Art without having ever had a pair of compasses, a pencil, a modelling tool, or a paint-brush in their hands; and professional men have gradually lost the habit of reasoning, finding it easier to take refuge in the conclusions of those amateurs who fill pages while really saying nothing to the purpose, and in so doing flatter the taste of the public while perverting it. ”

“ Every retired bourgeois who has a country-house built, wishes to have his turrets regularly disposed at the corners of a building, symmetrical, indeed, but in which he is very indifferently lodged—satisfied if this inconvenient erection is called the château, internal comfort being sacrificed to the gratification of exhibiting outside bad stucco carvings, zinc ornaments on the roof, and a quantity of nonsensical decorations which have to be renewed every spring. ”

“ When they were mounting the first hill M. Victorien said: “Your cousin has not then been much fatigued by his short campaign. I saw him only for a moment when he passed through with his corps. He is an energetic man, but he does not always take enough care of himself. How clearly he explains a thing, does he not? It is a pleasure to take lessons of him. We were fellow-students formerly, and he hesitated whether he should become an architect or a civil engineer. He had qualifications for both.”
“What is the difference, then, between an architect and an engineer?” Paul ventured to ask. ”

“ We should impart to students the practical elementary methods of the art of building, before setting them to work to copy the Parthenon or the Thermæ of Antoninus Caracalla, which, for want of those first practical notions are to them mere phantoms; we should thus train their young minds to reason and to become aware of all their deficiencies, instead of exciting their youthful vanity by exercises purely theoretical or artistic at an age when they cannot clearly understand the forms that are given to them as models. ”

“ If you go into some old mansion crammed with antiquated furniture, take care not to criticise it; for though the host and hostess may content themselves with smiling, the guardian of those curiosities will take good care that you never set foot in that house again. ”

“ A code of morals is possible, but we cannot establish absolute rules in building; experience, reasoning, and reflection must therefore always be summoned to our aid when we attempt to build. Very often young architects have asked me what treatise on building I should recommend as the best. There is none, I tell them; because a treatise cannot anticipate all contingencies,—all the special circumstances that present themselves in the experience of an architect. ”

“ A woman who has been wisely educated, having a house to look after and the responsibility and independence which responsibility in every form brings with it, is more capable of maintaining her own dignity of character than one who has been kept all her life in a state of tutelage. Marie would be very comfortable here, very happy to be with us, and her husband would be not less satisfied in knowing that she was with us; but she would not have a home of her own. An unmarried daughter is only in her place when with her mother; but a wife is only in her place in her own house. ”

“ It is thus that the Italians preserve the poetry of the brilliant eras of their civilization. They are willing, at need, to sacrifice something of what we call ‘comfort’—the material conveniences of life—to keep up among them the noble traditions of high art. ”

“ Paul had seen neither the shelter at the entrance, nor the conservatory opening into the billiard-room. The lead-work was not quite finished when he left, and the vanes and cresting were not put up. The dormer windows were not surmounted by their finials. The casements were just put in, but not glazed. These last additions are like the bordering round a drawing, or the frame inclosing a picture; to unpractised eyes the last accessory seems to put every part in its proper place, clears the whole, and gives it the unity that seemed to be wanting. ”

“ Why then we must teach; we must endeavour to make knowledge, reason, and the habit of reflection, penetrate everywhere, and especially into the minds of the rising generation. When the influential classes,—those who employ builders, and who, it may be inferred, are favoured by fortune,—know a little more than they do now, they will perceive that they have everything to learn in all branches of practical knowledge, and that the best they can do is to have recourse to professional men in the treatment of strictly professional matters, and to leave them free scope. ”

“ For between ourselves, physicists are not quite agreed respecting the effects of the electric fluid, the relative efficiency of conductors, and the precautions to be used in putting them up. I rely on my own experience, which has proved to me that no building, however exposed, has been struck by lightning when the lightning-rods were numerous, made of good conductors, put in communication with each other, and with their lower extremity dipping in water, or very damp earth. ”

“ But if the first thing you think of is putting this person and his family in a house like those of Pompeii, or in a feudal château, it is a thousand to one that you will build him an uncomfortable habitation—that you will be obliged to sacrifice the convenience of its arrangements in order to assign them a place in a building that belongs to a period and a civilization differing from our own civilization and times. ”

“ A drawing-room or a bedchamber may be square; but a dining-room, if it is to accommodate more than ten persons at table, must be longer than it is broad, because a table increases in length but not in width, according to the number of the guests. You must therefore add ‘leaves’ to the dining-room as you do to the table. Do you understand? Good. At this point then the architect, in preparing the plan, even if it is only a sketch, adopts a scale, i.e., he divides a line drawn upon his paper into equal parts, each representing a foot. ”

“ I have even good reason to suppose that if I had not been aided by certain favourable circumstances which brought me into connection with clients accustomed to deal with affairs of a high and liberal order—with men of minds too elevated and serious to occupy themselves with the details of our profession—I should not have found much to do. From a general point of view you are right; most persons about to build fear to apply to architects who are skilful in their profession, but who are of an independent character. ”