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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Personal and Professional Recollections, by the late Sir George Gilbert Scott, R.A. was published in 1879, the year after its author's death. It is, perhaps, a measure both of Scott's fame and the status of his profession that it was the first autobiography of a British architect to be published, but the book has often been used to undermine the reputation which Scott enjoyed in his lifetime. The passages of self-justification, the accounts of his successes, the regrets for his failures and the descriptions of his cathedral restorations can make Scott appear a naïvely self-confident careerist. The qualities of character admired by the Victorians have been at a lower premium this century, but from a more sympathetic reading of Scott's Recollections emerges a more complex individual, often subject, indeed, to those feelings of doubt and guilt which arouse such interest today. Nevertheless, he was sustained in his successes and in times of difficulty by a simple but profound Christian faith.
I must record my debt to Mr Richard Gilbert Scott, who, as well as making available manuscript material and drawings, has been of great help to me in my researches into his family.
1 Page numbers in parentheses refer to the published volume.
2 So I am kindly informed by Mr John Brandon-Jones.
3 Information in biography file at RIBA Library, drawn to my attention by Mr Dirk Hansen. This contains an extract from ‘Charles Matthew Strange (1838–1925), by his son, Charles Hilbert Strange’. Strange was an assistant to Moffatt in 1859–60. His diary described Moffatt as ‘an ugly man with hair all over his head' and alludes to his drinking habits, e.g. ‘Mr. M. not been to bed all night, sparring with some fellows at the George and Blue Boar’. When Moffatt was incarcerated in the Queen's Bench prison for debts of about £1000 Strange helped to raise money for legal fees; Scott contributed £20. Moffatt was released on application for habeas corpus after six months.
4 Building News, xxxiv (1818), p. 309.Google Scholar
5 For a detailed account of the complicated sequence of events and designs for the government offices see my note in The Scott Family, RIBA Drawings Collection catalogue, to be published in 1977.
6 In G. E. Street's annotated copy of Recollections, now at the RIBA, there is pencilled in the margin at this point: ‘This is the exact contrary to the facts. I used to sware by 1st Pointed & we used to call Scott's work “ogee” because it was too late in char. My first Ch - Biscovey was of purest ist Pointed (circa 1848) - & was designed at this time. G. E. Street.’
7 Recollections of Sir Thomas Graham Jackson (1950), p. 58.Google Scholar
8 A volume of Albert Henry Scott's photographs survives in the possession of Mr Richard Albert Henry Scott.
9 Scott had five sons: his two architect heirs, George Gilbert (1839–97) and John Oldrid (1841–1913); Albert Henry (1844–65); Alwyne Gilbert (1849–78) and Dukinfield Henry (1854–1934). Alwyne also died young, after taking an Oxford degree; Dukinfield lived on to have a most distinguished career as a botanist. Having read classics at Oxford, he trained as an engineer but went on to do pioneering research in the new science of paleobotany as honorary director of the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew.
10 The original drawing by Richmond is in the possession of Mr Richard Gilbert Scott.
11 Palgrave, F. T., Essays on Art (1866), p. 289.Google Scholar I am greatly indebted to the Rev. A. Symondson for suggesting Palgrave to me as the author of the criticisms mentioned by Scott. Palgrave was by no means hostile to the Gothic Revival as such. In the same article (p.285) he wrote: ‘Modern Gothic was, in its beginning, … essentially an imitative style. In the hands of Woodward, Butterfield, Street, Burges, Waterhouse, and others not yet so well known, it is rapidly passing from this first phase into an architecture as closely adapted to our wants as that of the thirteenth century to mediaeval requirements. But there has hitherto been a tendency, from which few of our architects have been able to free themselves, to treat the details in an imitative manner…’, and, in his journal for 5 June 1875 (in Palgrave, Gwenllian F., Francis Turner Palgrave, His Journals & Memories of his Life (1899), p. 139 Google Scholar), he remarked that ‘in the quad of Keble,… Butterfield's new chapel seems to me decisively the most beautiful church built within my knowledge - proportions, details equally lovely and original; the whole with a shrine like air, yet also with a look of size and power most rarely united …’
12 The Recollections of Sir Thomas Graham Jackson (1950), p.153.Google Scholar Mrs Mosette Broderick kindly pointed out this reference to me, which indicates that, as Scott suspected that Jackson had written the Quarterly Review article, he did not know the identity of the author. Mrs Broderick also observes that the letter to Scott from A. H. Layard, published on p. 269 of Recollections, states that ‘Those who have had anything to do with the Press know from whence these criticisms generally come, and can trace motives for them. In this case they appear to represent the opinons of one prejudiced and unfriendly man …’, whose identity was clearly known, and who may have been Sir Henry Cole, Secretary of the South Kensington Museum. Cole had already clashed with Scott over the Architectural Museum (Recollections, p. 168), was opposed to the Gothic style, ensured that the Albert Hall was to be designed by a Royal Engineer, and, in Fifty Years of Public Service, i, p. 362, mentions that he had written two papers criticizing the design of the Albert memorial. Mrs Broderick further notes that Cole's diary (at the Victoria & Albert Museum) for 28 March 1863 suggests that he had leaked information to The Times about Scott's yet unpublished design, which resulted in a critical article. The fact that the memorial is standing yet, while the identity of its critic is now difficult to establish, suggests that successful architects need not be as sensitive to published criticism as they almost invariably are. ‘The State of English Architecture’ was in the Quarterly Review, cxxxii, No. 264 (1872), p. 295 Google Scholar; the attribution to Emmett, J. T. is given in the Wellesky Index of Periodicals. The Survey of London volume, The Museums Area of South Kensington and Westminster (1975), p. 175 Google Scholar, examines the critical reaction to the memorial in great depth and cites a severe article in The Pall Mall Gazette of 5th July 1872, in fact written by Sidney Colvin. This is quite possibly the article Scott referred to.
13 See Victorian Church Art, Victoria & Albert Museum catalogue (1971), p. 59.Google Scholar
14 Philip, Stevens and Redfern merited obituary notices in the architectural press; the death of the Belgian sculptor Phyffers, who had worked at the Houses of Parliament and at the India Office, seems not to have been noticed.
15 Moore, P., The Restorations of Ely Cathedral(1973).Google Scholar
16 The Sacristy was a High Church ecclesiological quarterly which ran from 1871 to 1873. It was briefly revived in 1881 and given a rather more Tridentine flavour, edited by Edward Walford with G. G. Scott Jnr as assistant editor.
17 Sir Gilbert Scott's remarks are here quoted from the original manuscript and not from the slightly altered version printed in The Sacristy, iii, No.x (1881), p. 131.Google Scholar
18 Obituary of Scott, Sir Gilbert by Godwin, E. W. in British Architect, ix (1878), p. 156.Google Scholar
19 Notebook No. 13 among G. G. Scott Jnr's papers at the RIBA.
20 Reynolds, M., Martyr of Ritualism (1965), p. 202.Google Scholar
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