Chapter 12: Notes

Footnote 261:

Many serious and conscientious English students of this period would
precede such a list with the name of George Devey (1820-86). Of Devey,
in whose office C. F. A. Voysey, the most original English architect
of the next generation, chose to work after completing his
apprenticeship with Seddon, Voysey later wrote: ‘Providentially an
invitation came to enter the Office of the most extensive practitioner
in homes for the Nobility and Gentry. No domestic practice has
equalled his in extent before or since his death.’ As in the case of
William Burn, whose aristocratic practice of the forties and fifties
Devey’s more than rivalled in the sixties and seventies, neither he
nor his clients cared for publicity, and so none of his work was
published, even to the slight extent that the work of Nesfield and
Webb was illustrated in the professional journals. Still today his
houses are known to posterity chiefly through a few articles: Godfrey,
Walter ‘The Work of George Devey’, _Architectural Review_, XXI (1907),
23-30, 83-8, 293-306; and ‘George Devey, F.R.I.B.A., a Biographical
Essay’, _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, XIII
(1906), 501-25.

But just as the work of Nesfield and Webb was in actuality familiar
from the first to their professional friends and rivals, as also to
prospective country house clients, so was that of Devey. Many of the
stylistic trends so vigorously exploited by Shaw in the seventies can
be traced back to Devey’s houses of the preceding decade—or so such
experts on the period as H. S. Goodhart-Rendel and John Brandon-Jones,
who know Devey’s work intimately, always insist. Foreign students of
this period, from Muthesius to the Editor of this series and this
author, perhaps merely because of lack of direct or even adequate
indirect knowledge of Devey’s houses, have never been ready to grant
him so important a place in the story. Here particularly, where the
story is told in an international context, the evident strength of the
influence of Shaw’s work abroad even more than at home justifies
giving his primacy and referring only incidentally to that of Devey.

Footnote 262:

Shaw did not immediately succeed Webb, since the latter stayed on in
Street’s office until the middle of 1859. There must have been close
contact between them over a period of up to a year, and they remained
in touch from then on. Blomfield, Shaw’s biographer, being himself
prejudiced against Webb, underestimates the reality and the importance
of this relationship. It is only one of the many errors of fact or
emphasis in his book.

To quote from a private communication from Brandon-Jones concerning
Shaw and Webb: ‘Each must have had a good idea of the work the other
was doing. Their two offices, in Gray’s Inn and Bloomsbury Square,
were within a stone’s-throw of one another, and Lethaby while working
for Shaw was in close touch with Webb and was in his spare time
assisting him with the architectural work of Morris & Co. It is quite
obvious from the dates of various executed works that Lethaby was
carrying over Webb’s ideas and details and trying them out in work he
was doing for Shaw. As for the mutual respect and friendship between
Webb and Shaw, I [Brandon-Jones] have recently come across a letter
written at the time of Shaw’s death in which he [Webb] pays a tribute
to his “old friend”, and I have also seen a letter from Sydney
Barnsley to Sydney Cockerell in which Barnsley says that he had called
on Shaw only a few months before his death and that Shaw had been
talking of Webb and saying that he still treasured some photographs
given him by Webb nearly fifty years earlier.’

Footnote 263:

Devey’s incidental work at Penshurst Place in Kent, where that notable
fourteenth-century manor house was restored by him, having been done
more than a decade earlier, probably prepared the way for this. It is
extremely likely that Nesfield was familiar with what Devey had done
there; but the line forward leads, in the late sixties, from Nesfield
to Shaw, not directly from Devey to Shaw.

Footnote 264:

See Pevsner, N., ‘Art Furniture of the Seventies’, _Architectural
Review_, CXI (1952), 23-50.

Footnote 265:

The most famous instance of _japonisme_ in decoration is Whistler’s
‘Peacock Room’, now in the Freer Gallery in Washington. See Ferriday,
P., ‘Peacock Room’, _Architectural Review_, CXXV (1959), 407-14.

Footnote 266:

Once again Devey had prepared the way, in this case at Betteshanger,
Kent, a house built precisely ten years earlier. This will doubtless
have been known both to friends of Devey’s clients and to various
young architects. But the Kew lodge was located where everyone could
see it, even though it was not published until the nineties.

Footnote 267:

For this also there was precedent at Devey’s Betteshanger; but
Betteshanger initiated no popular mode in the way that the conspicuous
London schools by Robson and Stevenson’s highly touted house did at
this point. For the schools, see Jones, D. G., ‘Towers of Learning’,
_Architectural Review_, CXXIII (1958), 393-8.

Footnote 268:

See Harbron, D., ‘Queen Anne Taste and Aestheticism’, _Architectural
Review_, XCLV (1943), 15-18.

Footnote 269:

See Shaw, R. N., _Sketches for Cottages and Other Buildings ..._,
London, 1878.

Footnote 270:

See ‘The Ballad of Bedford Park’, _St James’s Gazette_, 17 December
1881 (reprinted by Blomfield, _Shaw_, 34-6). This is an amusing but
not entirely accurate contemporary description in verse.

Footnote 271:

The handling of this building in section is particularly ingenious,
the area of the service portions at the rear of the flats being much
increased by the use of lower storey heights than in the reception
rooms at the front. This device has been revived since, but its
earlier invention by Shaw has rarely been noted Brandon-Jones pointed
out to me.

Footnote 272:

At least they are now so painted; it is probable they were originally
of ‘white’ Suffolk brick, actually a very pale yellow when newly laid
and unbegrimed, but more likely to be black after a few decades of
exposure to the air of London!

Footnote 273:

Hyde, H. M., ‘Wilde and his Architect’, _Architectural Review_, CIX
(1951), 175-6.

Footnote 274:

It is characteristic of Shaw’s prestige in America and the rapidity
with which architectural ideas crossed the ocean at this time that
Shaw’s handsome perspective of the Alliance was published in America a
few months earlier than in England.

Footnote 275:

White first approached Webb but, finding him too difficult to deal
with, went to Shaw—a significant episode as regards both architects.

Footnote 276:

See Brandon-Jones, J., ‘Notes on the Building of Smeaton Manor’,
_Architectural History_, I (1958), 31-59.

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