265
were dismembered and distributed throughout France during the construction of the
town of Cluny, just northwest of Mâcon, with a population nearing 5000 today.
From the ruined Teutonic Castle of Schaaken in today’s Nekrasovo Kaliningrad
oblast in Russia, to the sadly roof-bereft Robert Adam mansion in Ayrshire, Scotland,
known as Dalquharran Castle (owners evidently removed the lead in the roof to
thereby obviate the requirement of payment of local rates),
6
to all of those other
romantically neglected sites across the world, countless architectural dreams of the
ultimate recluse have succumbed to teeming jungle hybrids, half-human history and
esthetic memory, the other halves, their own worlds of weeds away.
Somewhere in between the runic symbology of an abstracted form of enormous
beauty and that which remains standing and inhabitable is that famed view of the
Monastery of La Trappe
7
; or the Cisterican Abbey of St. Mary’s, Melrose, in
Roxburghshire along the Scottish Borders area, built in 1146, leading to an inexorable demise. Two photographs from the much crumbled Melrose were used in 1872
to rightly illustrate Cantos II and III—from Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lay of the Last
Minstrel”—“If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight; …And, home returning, smoothly swear, Was never scene [sic] so sad and
fair!”
8
Robert the Bruce’s embalmed heart was exhumed there in 1921. In 1805
Phillip de Loutherbourg sketched and colored the genre for living ruins in his
“Tintern Abbey,” built in 1131 on the celebrated western banks of the River Wye in
Monmouthshire, and the “Ruin at Basingstoke” in Hampshire
9
(Fig. 28.2).
By the late eighteenth century, both had become the celebrated haunts of a brisk
tourist industry bent upon wildness and weekend poetics. William Gilpin, who
described its ruins as “beautiful” but “ill-shaped,” “an elegant Gothic pile,” had
famously rendered a photo-realistic watercolor of the Abbey-Church in 1770 for his
Observations on the River Wye and Several Parts Of South Wales, &c. Relative
Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the Year 1770.
10
And in
William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On
Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798,” the poet wrote “Of
joyless daylight; when the fretful stir/Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have
hung upon the beatings of my heart – How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee.”
This combining of the chateâu genre with the reality of humanity’s history of
harvests, of existentially satisfying esthetics—a new departure for all who were
melancholic—and of looking beyond, also recognized a great demarcation of a
6 See “The Architecture of Robert Adam (1728–1792), The Castle Style”, sites.scran.ac.uk, published by Cadking Design Ltd., Edinburgh, Scotland, http://www.rls.org.uk
7 See A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe, in 1817: With Notes Taken During a Tour Through Le
Perche, Normandy, Bretagne, Poitou, Anjou, Le Bocage, Touraine, Orleanois, and the Environs of
Paris by W. D. Fellowes, Esq., William Stockdale, London, 2nd ed., 1818, p. 9.
8 Provost & Co., London, 1872, pp. 23 and 44; quotations from pp. 24–25.
9 See Scènes Romantiques Et Pittoresques, D’Apres Les Dessins Faits Exprès Pour Cette Enterprise
Par P.J. de Loutherbourg, Robert Bowyer, Galerie Historique, London 1805.
10 William Gilpin, Third Edition, printed for Blamire, London, 1792, p. 47
28.1 A Distinctly Indoor Paradise
were dismembered and distributed throughout France during the construction of the
town of Cluny, just northwest of Mâcon, with a population nearing 5000 today.
From the ruined Teutonic Castle of Schaaken in today’s Nekrasovo Kaliningrad
oblast in Russia, to the sadly roof-bereft Robert Adam mansion in Ayrshire, Scotland,
known as Dalquharran Castle (owners evidently removed the lead in the roof to
thereby obviate the requirement of payment of local rates),
6
to all of those other
romantically neglected sites across the world, countless architectural dreams of the
ultimate recluse have succumbed to teeming jungle hybrids, half-human history and
esthetic memory, the other halves, their own worlds of weeds away.
Somewhere in between the runic symbology of an abstracted form of enormous
beauty and that which remains standing and inhabitable is that famed view of the
Monastery of La Trappe
7
; or the Cisterican Abbey of St. Mary’s, Melrose, in
Roxburghshire along the Scottish Borders area, built in 1146, leading to an inexorable demise. Two photographs from the much crumbled Melrose were used in 1872
to rightly illustrate Cantos II and III—from Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lay of the Last
Minstrel”—“If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight; …And, home returning, smoothly swear, Was never scene [sic] so sad and
fair!”
8
Robert the Bruce’s embalmed heart was exhumed there in 1921. In 1805
Phillip de Loutherbourg sketched and colored the genre for living ruins in his
“Tintern Abbey,” built in 1131 on the celebrated western banks of the River Wye in
Monmouthshire, and the “Ruin at Basingstoke” in Hampshire
9
(Fig. 28.2).
By the late eighteenth century, both had become the celebrated haunts of a brisk
tourist industry bent upon wildness and weekend poetics. William Gilpin, who
described its ruins as “beautiful” but “ill-shaped,” “an elegant Gothic pile,” had
famously rendered a photo-realistic watercolor of the Abbey-Church in 1770 for his
Observations on the River Wye and Several Parts Of South Wales, &c. Relative
Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the Year 1770.
10
And in
William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On
Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798,” the poet wrote “Of
joyless daylight; when the fretful stir/Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have
hung upon the beatings of my heart – How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee.”
This combining of the chateâu genre with the reality of humanity’s history of
harvests, of existentially satisfying esthetics—a new departure for all who were
melancholic—and of looking beyond, also recognized a great demarcation of a
6 See “The Architecture of Robert Adam (1728–1792), The Castle Style”, sites.scran.ac.uk, published by Cadking Design Ltd., Edinburgh, Scotland, http://www.rls.org.uk
7 See A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe, in 1817: With Notes Taken During a Tour Through Le
Perche, Normandy, Bretagne, Poitou, Anjou, Le Bocage, Touraine, Orleanois, and the Environs of
Paris by W. D. Fellowes, Esq., William Stockdale, London, 2nd ed., 1818, p. 9.
8 Provost & Co., London, 1872, pp. 23 and 44; quotations from pp. 24–25.
9 See Scènes Romantiques Et Pittoresques, D’Apres Les Dessins Faits Exprès Pour Cette Enterprise
Par P.J. de Loutherbourg, Robert Bowyer, Galerie Historique, London 1805.
10 William Gilpin, Third Edition, printed for Blamire, London, 1792, p. 47
28.1 A Distinctly Indoor Paradise