Chapter 11 - Page 2

there isn't any nonsense of that sort about Crome. That
the hovels of the peasantry should look as though they had grown
out of the earth, to which their inmates are attached, is right,
no doubt, and suitable. But the house of an intelligent,
civilised, and sophisticated man should never seem to have
sprouted from the clods. It should rather be an expression of
his grand unnatural remoteness from the cloddish life. Since the
days of William Morris that's a fact which we in England have
been unable to comprehend. Civilised and sophisticated men have
solemnly played at being peasants. Hence quaintness, arts and
crafts, cottage architecture, and all the rest of it. In the
suburbs of our cities you may see, reduplicated in endless rows,
studiedly quaint imitations and adaptations of the village hovel.
Poverty, ignorance, and a limited range of materials produced the
hovel, which possesses undoubtedly, in suitable surroundings, its
own 'as it were titanic' charm. We now employ our wealth, our
technical knowledge, our rich variety of materials for the
purpose of building millions of imitation hovels in totally
unsuitable surroundings. Could imbecility go further?"

Henry Wimbush took up the thread of his interrupted discourse.
"All that you say, my dear Scogan," he began, "is certainly very
just, very true. But whether Sir Ferdinando shared your views
about architecture or if, indeed, he had any views about
architecture at all, I very much doubt. In building this house,
Sir Ferdinando was, as a matter of fact, preoccupied by only one
thought--the proper placing of his privies. Sanitation was the
one great interest of his life. In 1573 he even published, on
this subject, a little book--now extremely scarce--called,
'Certaine Priuy Counsels' by 'One of Her Maiestie's Most
Honourable Priuy Counsels, F.L. Knight', in which the whole
matter is treated with great learning and elegance. His guiding
principle in arranging the sanitation of a house was to secure
that the greatest possible distance should separate the privy
from the sewage arrangements. Hence it followed inevitably that
the privies were to be placed at the top of the house, being
connected by vertical shafts with pits or channels in the ground.
It must not be thought that Sir Ferdinando was moved only by
material and merely sanitary considerations; for the placing of
his privies in an exalted position he had also certain excellent
spiritual reasons. For, he argues in the third chapter of his
'Priuy Counsels', the necessities of nature are so base and
brutish that in obeying them we are apt to forget that we are the
noblest creatures of the universe. To counteract these degrading
effects he advised that the privy should be in every house