The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-11 00:00:00

Who was the Architect of the ParLa.
ment Houses•
—

Mr. Welby Pugin, in a letter to a contemporary,
says :—In February, 1860, hearing that Mr. B.
Ferrey was preparing, unknown to me, a biography
of my father, I called upon him to protest against
such a step being taken previous to reference to my-
self. He represented that the work was too far ad-
vanced to be suppressed, but promised compliance
with such minor alterations as I might suggest, ask-
ing me in return to procure from Sir Charles Barry
some information regarding my father's connection
with the Houses of Parliament. My application to
Sir Charles was followed by a visit from him—the
first he paid me since my father's death. On my
suggestion that my father's correspondence would
throw some light on the subject, Sir Charles assured
me that every line of it was destroyed, and expressed
an emphatic hope that all his own letters to my
father had shared the same fate. He was, how-
ever, greatly surprised to hear that I had found 76
of his letters referring to the earlier period of the
work. On the ground of his plea that the perusal
of them would be interesting to him, and on the
faith of his promise to return them, I placed them
in his hands ; receiving at the same time au invita-
tion to dinner on the following day, and an intima-
tion that they should then be restored to me.
This promise, however, was evaded by his re-
quest for an extension of time, and a renewed en-
gagement was made to return them by Lady Barry,
who certainly did call to offer some civility to my
stepmother, but did not bring the letters. During
my first interview with Sir Charles Barry it was
distinctly laid before him that he was enjoying the
honours in a great measure earned by another, and
that I was determined that my father's share of
fame, so often guaranteed to him by Sir Charles,
and so justly merited, should be publicly recognized.
Sir Charles promised to do all in his power to meet
my wishes, and on reaching home wrote to my
mother as follows :—" I am much concerned
that you should be under the impression that .1
could be indifferent to you and all concerned
with your late husband, whose memory I shell
ever cherish and respect, both as a warm
friend and a man of genius of the highest order."
These were the only approaches to consideration
and sympathy which Sir Charles Barry evinced for
us since my father's death. He had, however, pre-
viously refused to become my mother's trustee for
the Government pension, and yet in this same letter
he goes on to deny that he had done so. He further
states that " all suspicions to his disadvantage ase
perfectly groundless." Three weeks after Sir Chas.
Barry died. I have detailed these circumstances in
order to show that I did take a step towards obtain-
ing a recognition of my father's merits, but it was
thus unhappily rendered nugatory. Up to the pre-
sent time my statements have been simply met with
counter-statements ; for to say that the contradic-
tory and partial assertions of Messrs. Talbot Bury,
Wolfe, &c., in any way prove themselves or each
other, is mere folly. They are but the shreds and
patches of a story which I and another alone know
in its entirety. I will now to some extent complete
the chapters, very small portions of which have been
communicated rightly, and rectify their mistakes.
The evidence they give of Sir C. Barry's compe-
tition drawings being in pencil is correct. My
father's competition drawings were also in pencil ;
and this givesgreatprobability to Mr. Talbot Bury's
revelation made to me on the 11th of August last,
that many of my father's designs were re-drawn by
Barry, so that the same touch should not be de-
tected in his and in Mr. Gillespie Graham's de-
signs." In spite of this precaution, however, the
style was detected, and thus referred to at the time
by the Morning Post :—
" Gillespie Graham has given a plan in the genuine
spirit of Gothic architecture, defying symmetry and order,
but presenting combinations of convenience and pic-
turesque grouping in perfect keeping with the character
of the style, which it is delightful to contemplate. The
designs evince the author's intimate acquaintance with
the style. The drawings by the same hand which ap-
pears to have assisted No. 61 (Mr. Barry's), are masterly
and entirely peculiar."
It was at this period that my father told his in-
timate friend, Mr. Grieve, that " he was the de-
signer of the Houses."
I have also ascertained that my father had pre-
pared designs for Trentham for Sir Charles Barry
some time before he began those for Westminster,
and it is a fact verified by Mr. —, who mounted
the drawings, that my father intended to be himself
a competitor for the Parliament Houses previous to
his receiving the applications of Mr. Gillespie Graham
and Mr. Barry. These competition drawings of my
father's were lost sight of from the day they were
mounted, but there can be no doubt that they were
the designs for which Sir Charles Barry paid 400
guineas, and which were subsequently, as far as
possible, engrafted on Sir Charles's ground plan. I
affirm this on authority, to be produced if necessary.
This is rather curiously confirmed by a passage in
in a letter from Sir Charles to my father :—

"I am much flattered by your hearty commendations of
the plan, and shall know where to look for a champion if I
should hereafter require one."

Mr. Talbot Bury has been applied to, hitherto
without success, respecting the date of my father's
first visit to Mr. Barry. Is it probable, when my
father had been preparing for Sir Charles Barry
such designs as those for Trentham and other build-
ings, when of ceurse his intercourse with Sir Charles
must have been most frequent, that he would never
have heard of or seen a design of which he is alleged
to have spoken in such raptures to Mr. T. Bury ?
Was the weakness which availed itself of my father's
genius in
.the less important works of Trentham,
&c., suddenly transformed into a giant power of
grappling with the far greater difficulties of the
Palace at Westminster? Impossible. If any one
wants to see what Sir Charles Barry's ideas of Gothic
architecture were at this period, let him look at St.
Peter's Church, Saffron-hill. That building will
satisfy any one that he could then no more design
anything at all resembling the Houses of Parliament
than he could have engraved the plates of the con-
tracts. It is simply the churchwardenish carpenter's
Gothic of the time.
Mr father's designs having proved successful, he
was called in to complete his work. His diary for
1835 shows that he was designing during a con-
siderable portion of that year for Sir Charles Barry;
and circumstances lead me to the. conclusion
that much of his work did not meet either his own
or Sir Charles' views. On the 1st September he was
" all day on compositions," and continued thus en-
gaged up to the 19th. On the 2d of November he
worked at the " river front—five compartments."
This I imagine to mean five different designs
for the same compartment, and conclude therefrom
that Sir Charles Barry was in those days what he
was when I knew him—never satisfied until he had
seen ten different ways of doing one thing. Another
entry shows that my father was engaged on " sec-
tions." Will my opponents inform me whether
" compositions," "compartments," and " sections"
moan only details ? And will Mr. Talbot Bury, who
is so earnest in describing these and other drawings
merely as " drawings for tenders" (as though that
fact made them of no importance) reconcile this ab-
surd depreciation with the fact that "drawings for
tenders" mean working drawings, elevations, sec-
tions, full-sized details, &c. ? On his own confes-
sion, then, my father actually made drawings, as his
diaries testify, for every portion of the houses. In
September, 1836, Sir Charles sent my father a parcel
of tracings taken from my father's drawings. That
this was his practice appears from a subsequent
letter, in which he slys—" I enclose a tracing of
the end as it appears in your drawings." In a former
letter he writes :--

They (the tracings) will furnish you with the necessary
data (dimensions) for the preparation of a large batch of
internal details, incruding the two Houses complete, the
King's robing room, gallery and staircase, entrance and
vestibule."

He then goes on to state that he also wants a col-
lection of doors, archways, and openings to corri-
dors, &c., and a series of designs for wall framings.
lie wishes the designs to be made to a scale of half
an inch to the foot, " except where doors, windows,
turrets, &c., are drawn out separately, when I agree
with you it will be desirable to adopt a scale of one
inch to a foot." Similar references are made to St.
Stephen's-hall, central hall, committee rooms, &c.
These extracts go far to prove that Si Charles on