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HISTORY AS FORM: ARCHITECTURE AND LIBERAL ANGLICAN THOUGHT IN THE WRITINGS OF E. A. FREEMAN*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2011

G. A. BREMNER  and
JONATHAN CONLIN
G. A. BREMNER
Affiliation:
Department of Architecture, University of Edinburgh Email: [email protected]
JONATHAN CONLIN
Affiliation:
School of Humanities (History), University of Southampton Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Traditionally viewed as one of the leading lights of Whig history in the High Victorian period, Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–1892) is best known for his History of the Norman Conquest (1865–1876). For all his reputation for scholarly pedantry, Freeman had wide-ranging interests, including architecture. His first book, A History of Architecture (1849), was both unique and controversial: unique in being the first history of world architecture in English, and controversial because its “philosophical” method differed so markedly from the two most common understandings of architecture in his own time (antiquarianism and ecclesiology). A closer look at Freeman's intellectual pedigree reveals links through Thomas Arnold to German idealist models of universal history. These links lead Freeman to open up a wider perspective on history by developing an understanding of the past based on an analysis of material culture. Architecture offered a window onto the “hidden law” by which human culture evolved. To study Freeman's historical writing on architecture is to gain a new insight into the development of the Liberal Anglican mind and its concern for a divinely ordained pattern in world history.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 299 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Freeman, Edward A., A History of Architecture (London, 1849), 13Google Scholar.

2 As J. W. Burrow noted in his introduction to the abridged version of the History: “It would be absurd to deny that he can be crude, distasteful, silly, and even sheerly comic . . . Yet it is hard not to enjoy the cheerfully robust way in which Freeman enjoys his own prejudices, the genial unselfconsciousness and vigor and the slightly absurd combativeness.” See editor's introduction to Freeman, E. A., The History of the Norman Conquest, ed. and abridged by Burrow, J. W. (Chicago, 1974), xxvGoogle Scholar.

3 Above all Burrow, J. W., A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Levine, Philippa, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886– (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; and Slee, Peter R. H., Learning and a Liberal Education: The Study of Modern History in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester, 1800–1914 (Manchester, 1986)Google Scholar.

4 Burrow, A Liberal Descent; and, more recently, Mandler, Peter, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven, 2006)Google Scholar. For one exception, see Parker, C. J. W., “The Failure of Liberal Racialism: The Racial Ideas of E. A. Freeman”, Historical Journal 24/4 (1981), 825–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The “Teutomaniac” label was coined by Matthew Arnold.

5 The change in publisher was motivated by James Burns's objections as a Roman Catholic to “a good many expressions here and there” in Freeman's manuscript of the History. Although the precise passages to which Burns objected are not identifiable it is clear that Burns already felt that “the High Ch[urch] Anglicans” had such animus towards him that it would be unwise to publish Freeman's work. James Burns to Freeman, 14 March 1848. John Rylands Library, University of Manchester (hereafter JRL), FA1/1/10. For other correspondence on this issue see FA1/1/9–12 (Burns) and FA1/1/72–3 (Masters).

6 Freeman, History of Architecture, 10.

7 In this his writing and its antagonism towards the archaeological tendency in architecture is reminiscent of Heinrich Hübsch and the “archaeology” versus “history” debate played out among German historians in the 1820s. Indeed, so close does Freeman's thinking on architecture come to Hübsch at times that one is left wondering if he did not know it. For Hübsch and the architectural debate in Germany see Barry Bergdoll, “Archaeology vs. History: Heinrich Hübsch's Critique of Neoclassicism and the Beginnings of Historicism in German Architectural Theory,” Oxford Art Journal 5/2 (1983), 3–12.

8 Freeman, A History of Architecture, xi–xix. The label “philosophical architecturalist” was applied to Freeman by Beresford Hope. See Hope to Freeman, 17 Feb. 1853. JRL, FA1/1/50a.

9 Stephens, W. R. W., Life and Letters of Edward Augustus Freeman, 2 vols. (London, 1895), 1: 66Google Scholar.

10 Forbes, Duncan, The Liberal Anglican Idea of History (Cambridge, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Stephens notes that the tone of Freeman's college (Trinity) was influenced significantly by Newman, Isaac Williams and Samuel Whyte. Freeman became especially intimate with Whyte. See Stephens, Life, 1: 43–4.

12 Forbes is unwilling to make any connection between the Liberal Anglican tradition and Tractarianism; however, Romanticism affected both. See Prickett, Stephen, Romanticism and Religion: The Tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar. See also Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, 2 vols. (London, 1966), 1: 174Google Scholar.

13 Henry Thompson to Freeman, 2 Sept. 1839. JRL, FA1/7/733. A partial transcript is in Stephens, Life, 1: 24.

14 Nockles, Peter Benedict, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994), 129, 130–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For his reaction to the controversies surrounding the appointment of Bishop Hampden of Worcester and H. G. Ward see Henry Thompson to Freeman, 29 Nov. 1847 and 1 May 1848. JRL, FA1/7/752 and 755.

16 Stephens, Life, 1: 72.

17 Freeman to Eleanor Gutch, 1 Feb. 1846. Stephens, Life, 1: 87.

18 In the anthologies he edited: Poems Legendary and Historical and Original Ballads by Living Authors (both 1850).

19 Freeman, “A Rime of Old Things and New”. JRL, FA3/3/2.

20 Freeman, “The Effects of the Conquest of England by the Normans”, f. 1. JRL, FA3/3/4.

21 Freeman, “Effects of Conquest”, f. 46. JRL, FA3/3/4.

22 Arnold, Thomas, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, Delivered in Lent Term, 1842, 2nd edn (London, 1843), 13Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 24.

24 Ibid., 26 (Germanic race), 29 (seed).

25 Ibid., 28.

26 Arnold quoted in Stanley, Arthur, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D. (London, 1844), 43Google Scholar.

27 Reill, Peter H., “Barthold Georg Niebuhr and the Enlightenment Tradition”, German Studies Review 3/1 (Feb. 1990), 9–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 16. Reill translates Saft as “flavour”, when “essence” seems more apposite.

28 Witte, Barthold C., Der preussischer Tacitus: Aufstieg, Ruhm und Ende des Historikers Barthold Georg Niebuhr, 1776–1831 (Düsseldorf, 1979), 192Google Scholar.

29 Freeman, E. A., Thoughts on the Study of History with Reference to the Proposed Changes in the Public Examinations (Oxford, 1849), 35Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., 8.

31 Chadwick, Owen, From Bossuet to Newman: The Idea of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 116, 119Google Scholar.

32 Newman, J. H., Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, between A.D. 1826 and 1843 (London, 1872), 317Google Scholar.

33 David Brownlee mentions the influence of Newman in Freeman's thinking on architecture but does not mention Arnold. See Brownlee, David B., “The First High Victorians: British Architectural Theory in the 1840s,” Architectura 15/1 (1985), 35–7Google Scholar.

34 Henry Thompson to Freeman, St Stephen's Day (26 Dec.) 1845. JRL, FA1/7/749, underlining in original.

35 See Conlin, Jonathan, “Gladstone and the Debate on Evolution”, in Bebbington, David, Swift, Roger and Windscheffel, Ruth, eds., Gladstone: Bicentennial Essays (Aldershot, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

36 Arnold quoted in Forbes, Liberal Anglican Idea, 130.

37 Freeman had always said that Arnold's “true” method “ought to be the centre and life of all our historic studies; the truth of the unity of history”. Stephens, Life, 1: 66. It is possible that Freeman was also influenced in his “philosophical” approach to the understanding of architecture by the Rev. William Sewell, Dean of Exeter College (later president of the OAS). A staunch Tractarian, Sewell was among the first in the OAS to outline a theory concerning the principles and symbolic meaning of Gothic architecture along philosophical lines. See Rules and Proceedings of the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture (June 1840), 44.

38 Freeman came up to Oxford in Michaelmas Term 1841 and joined the society in March 1842. He was twice secretary of the OAS, 1845 and 1846–7; librarian from 1847; and, in later life, president from 1886–91.

39 Stephens, Life, 1: 51.

40 For an in-depth account of Freeman's association with the OAS see Dade-Robertson, Christine, “Edward Augustus Freeman and the University Architectural Societies”, Oxoniensia 71 (2006), 151–73Google Scholar.

41 For the connection between the OSPSGA and the Oxford Movement see Ollard, S. L., “The Oxford Architectural and Historical Society and the Oxford Movement”, Oxoniensia 5 (1940), 146–60Google Scholar.

42 John Ruskin had also played a crucial role in extricating the revival of medieval architecture from the idea of Roman Catholicism by taking it beyond a question of religion and transforming it into one of morality. See Brook, Michael, John Ruskin and Victorian Architecture (London, 1987), 33–60Google Scholar.

43 White, James F., The Cambridge Movement: The Ecclesiologists and the Gothic Revival (Cambridge, 1979), 42–3Google Scholar.

44 As stated in Stephens, Life, 1: 58.

45 Ollard, “The Oxford Architectural and Historical Society”, 149. See also Pantin, W. A., “The Oxford Architectural and Historical Society, 1839–1939”, Oxoniensia 4 (1939), 162–94Google Scholar.

46 The CCS saw its remit as covering “Church Building at home and in the Colonies; Church Restoration in England and abroad; the theory and practice of ecclesiological architecture; the investigation of Church Antiquities; the connection of Architecture with Ritual; the science of Symbolism; the principles of Church Arrangement; Church Musick and all the Decorative Arts”, Ecclesiologist, n.s. 1/1 (1845), 1.

47 For the history and wider influence of the CCS see Webster, Christopher and Elliott, John, eds., “A Church as It Should Be”: The Cambridge Camden Society and Its Influence (Stamford, 2000)Google Scholar. See also White, The Cambridge Movement.

48 See, for example, Ecclesiologist 1/6 and 1/7 (April 1842), 96–7.

49 By the late 1840s the CCS had relaxed its attitude on this point and was willing to look farther afield for inspiration, especially to continental Europe. One of the major turning points in this regard was the publication in 1848 of Benjamin Webb's Sketches of Continental Ecclesiology. For Webb see Crook, J. Mordaunt, “Benjamin Webb (1819–85) and Victorian Ecclesiology”, in Swanson, R. N., ed., The Church Retrospective (Melton, 1997), 423–55Google Scholar.

50 Rules and Proceedings (March 1843), 11–12.

51 E. A. Freeman, “Development of Roman and Gothick Architecture, and Their Moral and Symbolical Teaching,” Rules and Proceedings (Nov. 1845), 24.

52 Neale, John Mason and Webb, Benjamin, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments: A Translation of the First Book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, written by William Durandus . . . (Leeds, 1843)Google Scholar.

53 Freeman, History of Architecture, 8.

54 “Mr. E. A. Freeman's Reply to the Ecclesiologist,” Ecclesiologist 2/11 (May 1846), 181.

55 Ecclesiologist, n.s. 5 (1846), 53–5, 177–86, 217–49.

56 Ecclesiologist, n.s. 5 (1846), 220.

57 Ecclesiologist, n.s. 5 (1846), 220–22.

58 Beresford Hope was one of the earliest and most active members of the CCS. He was the youngest son of the noted antiquary and collector Thomas Hope (1769–1831), and someone who had already amassed a considerable knowledge of architecture by the time he joined the CCS in 1840. See Law, H. W. and Law, I., The Book of the Beresford Hopes (London, 1925)Google Scholar.

59 See JRL, FA1/1/38a–46 and 61a–66.

60 This process was imagined as a sort of cross-fertilization of stylistic pedigrees. The caveat, however, was that Gothic—preferably English Middle-Pointed Gothic—would remain the foundation style, or “main ingredient,” as Beresford Hope described it, onto which the foreign elements would be grafted. J. Mordaunt Crook has described Beresford Hope's idea as “progressive eclecticism”. See “Progressive Eclecticism: The Case of Beresford Hope”, in Crook, J. Mordaunt, The Architect's Secret: Victorian Critics and the Image of Gravity (London, 2003), 85–120Google Scholar.

61 Brownlee, “The First High Victorians,” 42–3; Hall, Michael, “‘Our Own’: Thomas Hope, A. J. B. Beresford Hope and the Creation of the High Victorian Style”, Studies in Victorian Architecture and Design 1 (2008), 68Google Scholar. One can see this “doctrine” beginning to characterize Beresford Hope's writing in two articles that appeared shortly after his first meeting with Freeman. See Hope, A. J. B. Beresford, “Past and Future Developments of Architecture,” Ecclesiologist 5 (Feb. 1846), 52Google Scholar; Anon. (A. J. Beresford Hope), Saturday Review, 29 Jan. 1856, 236.

62 Hall, Michael, “What Do Victorian Churches Mean? Symbolism and Sacramentalism in Anglican Church Architecture, 1850–1870”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59/1 (March 2000), 81–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Hope to Freeman, 31 March 1846. JRL, FA1/1/38a. The real turning point for the Ecclesiological Society on the matter of “development” was George Edmund Street's keynote address in 1852, “The True Principles of Architecture, and the Possibility of Development”, Ecclesiologist 10/55 (Aug. 1852), 247–62.

64 Freeman, History of Architecture, 17–18.

65 Ibid., 164.

66 Forbes, Liberal Anglican Idea, 145.

67 See Yanni, Carla, “On Nature and Nomenclature: William Whewell and the Production of Architectural Knowledge in Early Victorian Britain,” Architectural History 40 (1997), 204–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Freeman, History of Architecture, 47. It was not uncommon for Freeman to use biological metaphors such as this in his writing on architecture. For example, in comparing English Perpendicular with French Flamboyant in his 1845 essay “Development of Roman and Gothick Architecture”, 30, he observed that they did not differ essentially, but “only as species from species”.

69 Freeman, History of Architecture, 52.

70 Ibid., 12.

71 Ibid., 16.

72 Ibid., 163.

73 Ibid., 48.

74 James Burns to Freeman, 7 Dec. 1846. JRL, FA1/1/8.

75 Freeman, History of Architecture, viii.

76 Ibid., 79.

77 “An architecture then, which borrowed its principal forms, and above all, its general effect and character, from the one source, might, in the gradual progress of its development, derive both ornamental and constructive features from the other.” Ibid., 60.

78 For example, see Arnold, Introductory Lectures, 157–67; Reill, “Barthold Georg Niebuhr”, 21. Thomas Hope, whom Freeman praises in his History, also associated the causes of architectural formation with climate and geography. Hope, Thomas, An Historical Essay on Architecture (London, 1835)Google Scholar.

79 Freeman, History of Architecture, 98 (details), 99 (nationality).

80 Ibid., 27.

81 Ibid., 254.

82 Ibid., 18.

83 Ibid., 150.

84 Ibid., 19.

85 Ibid., 150.

86 Freeman describes the Romanesque and Gothic styles as “the architectural language of our own race and religion”. History of Architecture, 8.

87 Ibid., 259–60.

88 Ibid., 261.

89 There are certain limits imposed, therefore, on translation or “transition” between styles. Here Freeman states that the “Saracens” borrow elements from Gothic, only to produce “a sort of dead Gothic”. “We shall see however”, he continues, “that many of these dead forms were grasped by the Teutonic architects, and by them endued with true life and vigour”. Ibid., 27.

90 Ibid., 147.

91 Ibid., 148.

92 Ibid., 16.

93 Ibid., 99.

94 Freeman incorrectly refers to Sketches as “Letters on Christian Art”. See History of Architecture, xviii (Lindsay), 15 (Hope and “third form”). For Lindsay see Conlin, “Gladstone and Christian Art”.

95 Hebrews 11:1.

96 Freeman, History of Architecture, 207–8.

97 Scott to Freeman, 3 and 9 Oct. 1849. JRL, FA1/1/93a (quote), 94a.

98 Freeman, History of Architecture, 254.

99 Scott, George Gilbert, Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture Present and Future, 2nd edn (London, 1858), 262–3Google Scholar.

100 In A Plea for the Faithful Restoration of Our Ancient Churches (1850), 7, Scott describes Freeman's History as a “masterly outline”. In writing to Freeman, he also described the History as “the most masterly outline of the whole subject I have ever met with”. See G. G. Scott to Freeman, 3 Oct. 1849. JRL, FA1/1/93a. Scott's lectures before the Royal Academy in 1855 also displayed the influence of Freeman in the way they presented the genius of Gothic architecture in cultural and nationalist terms. See Scott, George Gilbert, Lectures on the Rise and Development of Mediaeval Architecture, 2 vols. (London, 1878)Google Scholar, 1: 5, 7, 17, 217–19, 275; 2: 292–3, 309, 315.

101 David Brownlee has noted that Scott himself had made extensive comments on the draft version of at least one of these articles (National Review, Jan. 1860) and assisted in having the other one (The Times, 19 Oct. 1859) published. See Brownlee, , “That ‘Regular Mongrel Affair’: G. G. Scott's Design for the Government Offices”, Architectural History 28 (1985), 181 n. 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 The Times, 19 Oct. 1859, 10–11; National Review 10 (1860), 24–53.

103 Frew, J. M., “Gothic Is English: John Carter and the Revival of the Gothic as England's National Style”, Art Bulletin 64 (1982), 315–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradley, S., “The Englishness of Gothic: Theories and Interpretations from William Gilpin to J. H. Parker”, Architectural History 45 (2002), 325–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 National Review 10 (1860), 24–53. Much of the “unity” argument presented in this piece by Freeman can also be found in a similar piece written around the same time titled “The Continuity of English History”, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review for July 1860. See “The Continuity of English History”, in Freeman, E. A., Historical Essays, first series, 5th edn (London, 1896), 40–52Google Scholar.

105 For further discussion of this episode in British architectural history see Bremner, G. A., “Nation and Empire in the Government Architecture of Mid-Victorian London: The Foreign and India Office Reconsidered”, Historical Journal 48/3 (2005), 703–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Toplis, Ian, The Foreign Office: An Architectural History (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Port, M. H., Imperial London: Civil Government Building in London, 1851–1915 (New Haven and London, 1995)Google Scholar.

106 Indeed, in Modern Painters (vol. 3) Ruskin proudly confessed his ignorance of German philosophy. See Baljon, Cornelius J., “Interpreting Ruskin: The Argument of the Seven Lamps of Architecture and the Stones of Venice”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55/4 (1997), 410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.