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from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

Not like father, nor like son

(Filed: 25/08/2002)

Kenneth Powell reviews An Architect of Promise by Gavin Stamp

Most Victorian architects used dividers for strictly legitimate purposes. George Gilbert Scott junior, by contrast, reportedly used them "to measure the width of ladies' bottoms". He prowled the streets armed with a carving knife and could turn an umbrella into a deadly weapon. He urinated on a fellow practitioner's doorstep. A chronic alcoholic, he was shunned by his family and largely forgotten by his peers. No wonder that he has gone down in history as a tragic figure - "Mad Scott".

The Scotts, a prolific architectural dynasty to rival the Wyatts, tend to generate confusion. "Gilbert Scott" is often cited as the man who built the Albert Memorial and the great hotel at St Pancras station in the 1860s - and somehow lived on to design Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral and what is now Tate Modern (completed early 1960s).

But Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-78) and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) were, of course, grandfather and grandson, both leaders of the architectural profession in their respective eras. George Gilbert Scott junior - Mad Scott - was the link between the two. Scott junior died in - ironically - his father's great red brick Midland Hotel, in 1897, aged 57.

Scott's parentage - Scott senior was the man who made the Gothic Revival both socially respectable and commercially profitable - gave him a head start in the business of architecture, but he was naturally talented and something of an intellectual. Jesus College, Cambridge, elected him to a fellowship at the age of 23.

Architecturally, Scott junior reacted against the glossy display and "go" of the High Victorians and favoured a sensitive Late Gothic manner for churches and a version of "Queen Anne" for secular commissions. Scott's father would have been appalled by his decision (in 1880) to convert to Rome, a move that led to a rupture with his brother John Oldrid (also an architect, though of a more pedestrian mould).

Stamp's portrait of Scott junior is less than endearing. For all his talents, he was pompous, opinionated and often wrong-headed: English working-class women were plain, he decided, because they were not Catholics. Women in general should be kept in their place. Bathrooms in houses encouraged self-indulgent ways. Homosexuality was a threat to the country.

Short of stature and markedly chinless, Scott junior cut an unimpressive figure. As an architect, however, he commanded enormous respect. His exquisite St Agnes, Kennington, in particular, was widely regarded as one of the finest of all late Victorian churches. In 1941 it was gutted by incendiary bombs and in 1953 the shell was pulled down (though the church was described as "the most important 19th century building to have been damaged in the late war"). All Hallows, Southwark, suffered a similar fate. The loss of his two finest works has unfairly diminished Scott's critical standing.

By 1880 Scott had taken to the bottle. In 1883 his wife and brothers succeeded in having him declared insane. He had taken to disappearing from his Hampstead home for days, was convinced that there were plots to murder him and attacked a complete stranger with a knife.

He had taken up with a "French lady" and visited brothels. In 1888, after a brief period of remission, he was arrested as a "wandering lunatic" - he had been seen, sitting in a bank, cutting his toenails.

Confined in an asylum, he tried to set the place alight. He was convinced that Mr Gladstone was dead and that the Americans had invaded Canada. His language was "disgusting" and he exhibited violent tendencies. Eventually Scott was judged to be cured and was set free. But his career was wrecked - he drank himself to death.

"My father was a genius," wrote Giles Scott, "a far better architect than my grandfather." Gavin Stamp's book, dense and scholarly but elegantly written, establishes once and for all the significance of Scott jr's work.

Title: An Architect of Promise: George Gilbert Scott junior (1839- 1897) and the Late Gothic Revival
Author: Gavin Stamp Publisher: Shaun Tyas, £49.50, 427 pp
ISBN: 1900289512
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.
(posted 7885 days ago)

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