FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 1 — VII. MODERN TIMES.
IN the society of the seventeenth
century order and well-balanced grandeur constituted the ideal; every individual had his rank, and was imbued with the spirit of his rank. Architecture aimed at nobility of dispositions, symmetry and ornamental splendor.
The most perfect balance can be only temporarily maintained, since it is established between two opposing forces, and since it is impossible for these to remain strictly equal for any great length of time. In physical bodies, each element is held in an ever-varying equilibrium by two contrary forces; one repulsive, tending to disaggregation; the other attractive, giving the body its cohesion; so, in every social organism, two contrary forces are always at work producing infinitely varied states of equilibrium, whose history presents manifold and complex examples among different peoples and at different stages of their development. One of these forces is private interest, an instinct which inheres in each individual, or in each of the elementary groups comprised in the total organism, and which is hostile to the neighboring individual or group; the other is that sentiment of solidarity, or fellowship, which compels the individual to abandon voluntarily a portion of his existence, his resources and his faculties in favor of the common interest. This it is that knits together disaggregating elements, this that supplies the bond, whether weak or strong, which binds into one the family, the city and the nation.
Thus far we have seen the monarchy struggling to break down the feudal aristocracy, and lending its power to the betterment of the condition of the lower classes. At the period of its highest glory, which marks the second half of the seventeenth century, a state of equilibrium had been attained in the various scattered forces throughout the nation, and a social condition had resulted therefrom which seemed to be girt round with power and might. But, as with everything else endowed with life, it was impossible that the forces set in play should continue to bear the same relation to each other. The discord-breeding aristocracy had been humbled and put upon a half-military, half-courtier footing. But the impetus, once given, nothing could stay it; in the following century the nobleman had become far more courtier than soldier. His useful function had lessened in importance, his primitive vigor no longer found sufficient employment on which to expend itself. During protracted periods of leisure, pleasure necessarily became his sole occupation: when a caste is deprived of the proper functions for the exercise of its powers, it must needs amuse itself to live. Those conflicts in which human activity is alternately exhausted and renewed had ceased. The aristocracy daily lost more and more of that dignity, manliness and self-respect which had been carried to such lofty heights in the preceding century; it also lost faith in everything, and everything became its sport, itself first of all.
At the same time, the intelligence and ambition of the other classes, which had been aroused in the sixteenth century, steadily strengthened, and did not again suffer a check. In the eighteenth century the human mind had shaken off all its shackles; inquisitive, it carried its ardent curiosity into every domain of knowledge, invaded everything, analyzed, dissected, doubted everything, and soon set aside all preconceived notions.
The barriers raised around the different castes had come to he nothing more than artificial obstructions, and, in fact, had no longer any reason for existing. Religious faith and faith in the monarchy, which had in former times constituted the bulwarks of society, were swept away; they disappeared as superannuated conceptions of past ages along with the social state which they had engendered. A change in social conditions was the aim of the nation, or, in other words, a new equilibrium based upon something different from the old beliefs.
In an idle society, with no resources except amusement and pleasure, the part played by woman assumes an exaggerated importance, in which her true qualities are perverted, and
herein lies the greatest danger to society. Men of letters naturally come to the front, because their wit furnishes diversion; being wholly irresponsible, they unhesitatingly approach any subject, and boldly attack wherever fancy dictates, without much regard to consequences; as for the onlookers, the play seems to them merely piquant.
In the eighteenth century the various classes of society were confusedly jumbled together, presenting a veritable carnival scene, where aristocracy, capitalists, magistrates, the wanton personnel of the opera, musicians, dancers, pamphleteers, courtiers and valets all frolicked in company. At the same time, never before was such confidence in the present and the future displayed; never such activity of ideas, lofty and debased; never such wit nor such insipidity; never had thinkers dared to enter upon the gravest studies and the deepest researches by so many different paths, nor laid themselves open to so much trickery; never had there been so many benefactors of humanity, nor so many courtiers, men of the sword, of the long robe or of letters, men of genius, even, prostrate before the meanest offshoots of royalty; never, in a word, had the human mind been more alert, more vigorous or more malevolent, and at no period has such foam been brought to the surface.
Architecture necessarily felt the effects of all this: an exaggerated formality was destined to be superseded by unrestrained caprice. As a result of the universal contempt for symmetry and regularity, lines were broken, divided, turned and twisted in all directions; imposts were inflected; masks, grotesque and grimacing, were set askew; escutcheons were rounded out, and tilted as though tipsy; crossettes were hipped; balconies lost their shapeliness; balustrades swelled and bulged; the foliage and flowers took on jagged and slashed forms. In short, architecture and decoration alike put on a swaggering air, and soon threw off all sense of propriety.
But does this prove that the style had no other beauty than that of freshness, that it possessed no other charm than that of a wild, gypsy grace, which, to depraved tastes, is saved by its very irregularity? By no means; the school from which it sprang was too noble for that; it was impossible that every good principle should have been abandoned; moreover, this exuberance of whim and fancy, this revolt against all reasonable rule, did not go as far as might be imagined: they were always under the restraint of taste, which is never lost sight of in the French school, and of a certain residuum of reason which will always be found underlying the most pronounced eccentricities; and again, their mischievous grace and inexhaustible spirit crave pardon for them.
Indeed, it is in this very respect that the style must be admitted to be preeminently French, for, whatever its defects, it reflects all the qualities of our race; it is in this respect also that it is inimitable. In spite of the reproaches justly heaped upon the France of the eighteenth century, she still possessed such prestige that her architectural style was widely imitated in foreign lands; there, it is often open to condemnation: in hands that lacked that exquisitely delicate touch which can make eccentricity pardonable, the Louis Quinze style exhibited only its defects, and became intolerable.
We weary of everything in time, especially of disorder; the monarchical organization, after having been of incalculable benefit to France, was daily disintegrating, and threatened the ruin of the country along with its own. The old institutions had been so perverted that they were now nothing more than abused and dangerous privileges. “Amid the humiliations of the Seven Years’ War, and even through these humiliations, the drama of the century rapidly approached its climax. Who was vanquished in this war and the preceding? France? No, the nobility; the nobility from whose ranks the officers and generals were drawn. 2 As for the generals, the only ones that bear mention at this period, Saxe and Broglie, were foreigners. He who claims the glory of Fontenoy, the great general of the age in the opinion of ladies and courtiers, the hero of Port Mahon, the old Alcibiades of the old Voltaire, Richelieu, had sufficiently proved, during five campaigns of the previous war, the value of this reputation so cleverly constructed and guarded.
“Toward the close of this ignoble Seven Years’War, during which the aristocracy had fallen so low, the great plebian thought broke forth in speech. It was as though France would have cried out to Europe: ‘ It is not I who am conquered. ’ In
1 From the French of P. Planat, in Planat’s “ Encylopédie de lʼArchitecture et de la Constructionˮ. Continued from page 98, No. 803.
2 Michelet’s remarks here are not quite accurate. Marshals de Belle-Isle, de Maillebois and others were the descendants of Fouquet, Desmarets and other very plebian advisers of Louis XIV. All the world was guilty in the eighteenth century.
IN the society of the seventeenth
century order and well-balanced grandeur constituted the ideal; every individual had his rank, and was imbued with the spirit of his rank. Architecture aimed at nobility of dispositions, symmetry and ornamental splendor.
The most perfect balance can be only temporarily maintained, since it is established between two opposing forces, and since it is impossible for these to remain strictly equal for any great length of time. In physical bodies, each element is held in an ever-varying equilibrium by two contrary forces; one repulsive, tending to disaggregation; the other attractive, giving the body its cohesion; so, in every social organism, two contrary forces are always at work producing infinitely varied states of equilibrium, whose history presents manifold and complex examples among different peoples and at different stages of their development. One of these forces is private interest, an instinct which inheres in each individual, or in each of the elementary groups comprised in the total organism, and which is hostile to the neighboring individual or group; the other is that sentiment of solidarity, or fellowship, which compels the individual to abandon voluntarily a portion of his existence, his resources and his faculties in favor of the common interest. This it is that knits together disaggregating elements, this that supplies the bond, whether weak or strong, which binds into one the family, the city and the nation.
Thus far we have seen the monarchy struggling to break down the feudal aristocracy, and lending its power to the betterment of the condition of the lower classes. At the period of its highest glory, which marks the second half of the seventeenth century, a state of equilibrium had been attained in the various scattered forces throughout the nation, and a social condition had resulted therefrom which seemed to be girt round with power and might. But, as with everything else endowed with life, it was impossible that the forces set in play should continue to bear the same relation to each other. The discord-breeding aristocracy had been humbled and put upon a half-military, half-courtier footing. But the impetus, once given, nothing could stay it; in the following century the nobleman had become far more courtier than soldier. His useful function had lessened in importance, his primitive vigor no longer found sufficient employment on which to expend itself. During protracted periods of leisure, pleasure necessarily became his sole occupation: when a caste is deprived of the proper functions for the exercise of its powers, it must needs amuse itself to live. Those conflicts in which human activity is alternately exhausted and renewed had ceased. The aristocracy daily lost more and more of that dignity, manliness and self-respect which had been carried to such lofty heights in the preceding century; it also lost faith in everything, and everything became its sport, itself first of all.
At the same time, the intelligence and ambition of the other classes, which had been aroused in the sixteenth century, steadily strengthened, and did not again suffer a check. In the eighteenth century the human mind had shaken off all its shackles; inquisitive, it carried its ardent curiosity into every domain of knowledge, invaded everything, analyzed, dissected, doubted everything, and soon set aside all preconceived notions.
The barriers raised around the different castes had come to he nothing more than artificial obstructions, and, in fact, had no longer any reason for existing. Religious faith and faith in the monarchy, which had in former times constituted the bulwarks of society, were swept away; they disappeared as superannuated conceptions of past ages along with the social state which they had engendered. A change in social conditions was the aim of the nation, or, in other words, a new equilibrium based upon something different from the old beliefs.
In an idle society, with no resources except amusement and pleasure, the part played by woman assumes an exaggerated importance, in which her true qualities are perverted, and
herein lies the greatest danger to society. Men of letters naturally come to the front, because their wit furnishes diversion; being wholly irresponsible, they unhesitatingly approach any subject, and boldly attack wherever fancy dictates, without much regard to consequences; as for the onlookers, the play seems to them merely piquant.
In the eighteenth century the various classes of society were confusedly jumbled together, presenting a veritable carnival scene, where aristocracy, capitalists, magistrates, the wanton personnel of the opera, musicians, dancers, pamphleteers, courtiers and valets all frolicked in company. At the same time, never before was such confidence in the present and the future displayed; never such activity of ideas, lofty and debased; never such wit nor such insipidity; never had thinkers dared to enter upon the gravest studies and the deepest researches by so many different paths, nor laid themselves open to so much trickery; never had there been so many benefactors of humanity, nor so many courtiers, men of the sword, of the long robe or of letters, men of genius, even, prostrate before the meanest offshoots of royalty; never, in a word, had the human mind been more alert, more vigorous or more malevolent, and at no period has such foam been brought to the surface.
Architecture necessarily felt the effects of all this: an exaggerated formality was destined to be superseded by unrestrained caprice. As a result of the universal contempt for symmetry and regularity, lines were broken, divided, turned and twisted in all directions; imposts were inflected; masks, grotesque and grimacing, were set askew; escutcheons were rounded out, and tilted as though tipsy; crossettes were hipped; balconies lost their shapeliness; balustrades swelled and bulged; the foliage and flowers took on jagged and slashed forms. In short, architecture and decoration alike put on a swaggering air, and soon threw off all sense of propriety.
But does this prove that the style had no other beauty than that of freshness, that it possessed no other charm than that of a wild, gypsy grace, which, to depraved tastes, is saved by its very irregularity? By no means; the school from which it sprang was too noble for that; it was impossible that every good principle should have been abandoned; moreover, this exuberance of whim and fancy, this revolt against all reasonable rule, did not go as far as might be imagined: they were always under the restraint of taste, which is never lost sight of in the French school, and of a certain residuum of reason which will always be found underlying the most pronounced eccentricities; and again, their mischievous grace and inexhaustible spirit crave pardon for them.
Indeed, it is in this very respect that the style must be admitted to be preeminently French, for, whatever its defects, it reflects all the qualities of our race; it is in this respect also that it is inimitable. In spite of the reproaches justly heaped upon the France of the eighteenth century, she still possessed such prestige that her architectural style was widely imitated in foreign lands; there, it is often open to condemnation: in hands that lacked that exquisitely delicate touch which can make eccentricity pardonable, the Louis Quinze style exhibited only its defects, and became intolerable.
We weary of everything in time, especially of disorder; the monarchical organization, after having been of incalculable benefit to France, was daily disintegrating, and threatened the ruin of the country along with its own. The old institutions had been so perverted that they were now nothing more than abused and dangerous privileges. “Amid the humiliations of the Seven Years’ War, and even through these humiliations, the drama of the century rapidly approached its climax. Who was vanquished in this war and the preceding? France? No, the nobility; the nobility from whose ranks the officers and generals were drawn. 2 As for the generals, the only ones that bear mention at this period, Saxe and Broglie, were foreigners. He who claims the glory of Fontenoy, the great general of the age in the opinion of ladies and courtiers, the hero of Port Mahon, the old Alcibiades of the old Voltaire, Richelieu, had sufficiently proved, during five campaigns of the previous war, the value of this reputation so cleverly constructed and guarded.
“Toward the close of this ignoble Seven Years’War, during which the aristocracy had fallen so low, the great plebian thought broke forth in speech. It was as though France would have cried out to Europe: ‘ It is not I who am conquered. ’ In
1 From the French of P. Planat, in Planat’s “ Encylopédie de lʼArchitecture et de la Constructionˮ. Continued from page 98, No. 803.
2 Michelet’s remarks here are not quite accurate. Marshals de Belle-Isle, de Maillebois and others were the descendants of Fouquet, Desmarets and other very plebian advisers of Louis XIV. All the world was guilty in the eighteenth century.