H. de C. reviewed.

Hubert de Cronin Hastings was one of the most formative figures in the history of the Architectural Review. Son of one of the founders, and later, the chairman of the Architectural Press, he was eminence grise of the magazine for nearly 50 years, during which he employed the most brilliant architectural critics and scholars in the world. Here, Susan Lasdun assesses his importance. Another view of him can be found in our May centenary issue, p. 71.

Few people even within the architectural profession have ever heard of Hubert de Cronin Hastings. Careful readers of the AR's `First 100 Years' issue in May might have spotted that he was appointed editor of The Architectural Review and The Architects' Journal in 1927, but probably would not have realised that he remained editorial director and co-chairman until his resignation in 1973.

Self-effacing, reclusive and mercurial, de Cronin's anonymity was his own choice. Except on rare occasions he did his authorship of articles and books either by writing anonymously or buy using pseudonyms often chosen as private puns for his own enjoyment. De Cronying, Ivor de Wolfe and Ivor de Wolfe were three he is now know to have used. The significance of Wolfe to Wolfe no doubt chosen to pre-empt his critics. Both names stood for `I, the Devil, the World and the Flesh.' As if anticipating his love of subterfuge and games he was actually christened Robert Seymour which his father soon exchanged for Hubert de Cronin -- de Cronin after a Huguenot grandmother. His withdrawal from almost all social intercourse earned him the name Obscurity from John Betjeman. Fortunately there were enough people who knew that it was his original mind and ideas which had turned the Architectural Press into a `seedbed of ideas' as James Richards recalled, and he was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal for his contribution to architecture in 1973.

Testimony to his talents or achievements has been left by many of the galaxy of famous names who worked closely with him. `Genius', (1) `inspirer,' `initiator', `great original', `foundation of ideas', `enormous influence', `great teacher' -- praise from among others, Osbert Lancaster, John Betjeman, John Piper, John Gloag, Hugh Casson, Ian McCallum, Reyner Banham, Nikolaus Pevsner and James Richards. Pevsner also put on record that `... in the history of the firm, the most interesting person on it was Hastings with all his extraordinary quirks.'(2)

Corvo

In this centenary year of the AP an assessment of him seems timely. More importantly an appraisal of his unique mind deserves a broader front, which Myles Wright (AJ assistant editor 1935-1941) called for in 1967: `No man of such influence has ever been invisible and unrecorded over so long a period, someone, sometime ought to write a book about him on the lines of "The Quest for Corvo'".(3)

Hubert de Cronin Hastings was born in 1902, the third of four sons of Percival and Lilian Hastings. His father, with William Regan, was joint owner of the AP. His mother was an accomplished pianist (maiden name Rameau) and a talented illustrator and writer of stories for her children. Under her aegis the four brothers Maurice, Graham, Hubert de Cronin and Alan, wrote and edited their own magazine, largely tales of heroes and spies and their daring exploits. Many of the illustrations and stories were de Cronin's work already under different pseudonyms, which showed humour, a love of puns and an early facility for drawing.(4) Later he was to publish a book of caricatures, many of the subjects being his drinking companions at the Arts Club which he frequented before he withdrew from social life.(5) He also illustrated two early volumes of verse by John Betjeman.(6) His professional drawing life appears to have ended then, but the dozens of drafts of unpublished manuscripts which he left behind have their margins filled with sketches and doodles.(7) Perhaps this early demonstration of his drawing and magazine editing talent, persuaded his father that he was the most likely of his sons to carry on the family business. In any case with the advent of the First World War, the elder two sons Maurice and Graham who respectively went to Oxford and Cambridge, had to join up. It was de Cronin's undying regret that he alone of the four brothers did not go to university.

Conversion

Instead he was `pitched', to use his own word, into the AP straight from school at the age of 16. From there he was sent to the Slade School of Art and the Bartlett School of Architecture under A. E. Richardson, to train his eye and to learn something about architecture. It was at the Slade rather than the Bartlett that his interest in architecture was awakened. The paintings of Cezanne and cubism, together with Clive Bell' s aesthetic hypothesis `Significant Form' led him to reject what he called the `horror of Richardson's world and the overblown monumentality of the Neo-Georgian buildings of the day'.(8)

By 1921 when he returned to the AP he was committed to the Modern Movement which had scarcely erupted in England. No other paper would touch it: with scarcely any practitioners in England it was bad for advertising. However de Cronin persuaded his father and William Regan that he could create a readership interested in it, establish it as a force and thereby secure the future of the AP.(9) He later coined the phrase jazz-modern (1930) meaning sham modern and joined CIAM and the Mars Group which owes its name to him. By supporting the Movement at that early date he became the most influential individual in the establishment of modern architecture in this country. As John Betjeman later told him `You are the GREAT MAN OF THE TIME. You invented modern architecture. We are all your creations'.(10) Poetic licence perhaps, but it was to be a characteristic all his life to be one step ahead of others. To keep his interest in working at the AP and give up ideas of Oxford, he was made editor of the AR, replacing W. G. Newton who was asked by Percy Hastings to resign.(11)

From then on according to V. V. Tatlock, advertising manager at the time, `de Cronin was concerned to make the AR the outstanding paper in the world'.(12) Likewise he wanted the AJ to be the best of its kind. It was soon apparent that he had an outstanding ability to pick the right people to work for him and a quite extraordinary innovative and imaginative eye -- a uniquely `seeing eye ... which has enabled him to see the essentials of things' said Osbert Lancaster.(13) He was, says Eric de Mare `a visual aesthete'.(14) Inevitably the pages of his own magazine were to be a visual experience and his influence on the AR both in content and appearance was soon evident. As John Gloag has said `His idea was that the pages of the magazine should have the same effect on the reader as a modern building would have on the viewer. He was responsible for the transformation of the layouts from 1927. H. de C. (as his colleagues were to call him) injected fire into them. He was the genius in the background working out well-considered editorial policies for both papers though no one saw it at the time. He believed passionately in a new way of thought ... not a new style. He had a great genius, a flair for papers. He was the first really to introduce modern journalism to trade papers..."(15)

Surprise

Betjeman recalled when working with him how `Every page must be a surprise. He always was able to reduce a photograph in sketch form and when I measured it up I found that his freehand reduction was always right to an eighth of an inch'.(16) Philip Scholberg described the unnerving experience of teeing with H. de C. at Smith the printers, he `would tear up page proofs and make them up again on the spot'.(17)

From 1930, Dell and Wainwright's photographs of buildings shown with white walls against black skies were to give modern architecture an unforgettable and seductive image. At the same date H. de C. suggested trimming photographs, using coloured inks, and from 1931 he encouraged Betjeman in his search for Victorian typefaces -- all thought very idiosyncratic at the time. He had the maxims `details large, general views small'.(18) When paper was rationed by weight during the war he used thin coloured papers, yellow and blue, to keep up the numbers - a fashion taken up internationally by other magazines long after the need had gone. Such was the reputation of the AR for excellence and elegance that in 1944 the 24 year old George Weidenfeld sought out H. de C. to be the editor of a new magazine called Contact.(19) The first issue entirely H. de C.'s layout and design, still appears eye-catching, elegant and original. It was however `loathed by the financial backers who warned Weidenfeld that their backing would be very shaky if he continued'.(20) He resigned feeling that he had failed despite reassurance from the still admiring Weidenfeld.(21) The most imaginative period of all was in the '50s when the pages of AR exploded with visual surprises under Ian McCallum, who was, he said, `spurred on to experiment by H. de C.(22)

Diaghilev

John Summerson is said to have called H. de C. the Diaghilev of English architecture. Kenneth Browne who succeeded Gordon Cullen and worked closely with him agrees.(23) Both entrepreneurs worked through others to develop their ideas and push the frontiers forward. `The only genius I have is to get others to do the work'(24) said H. de C. Both could be charming and tyrannical, and both were generous in allowing others to take the credit. However through his preference for anonymity, H. de C. has so far lacked the acclaim that is Diaghilev's. Reyner Banham who spent 12 years as a member of the editorial staff recalled how `H. de C. opened eyes, opened minds, kept us all on our toes. He was the best intuitive journalist I ever worked with and the biggest influence on my London years after Nikolaus Pevsner'.(25)

He was above all a philosopher and a visionary -- an extremely lengthy unpublished manuscript called the Unnatural History of Man worked on since the '50s bears witness to this. The improvement of the human condition was his mission: the AR was the tool through which he tried to disseminate his ideas. As his daughter says `He had a vision of how the world should tick. His lifelong interest was nothing less than to discover where and why it had gone wrong and how to rectify it'.(26) By necessity he started with architecture and the organisation of towns. Most English cities were what he termed `mining camps'; unplanned products of the Industrial Revolution creating urban chaos. He saw Modern architecture as an appropriate idiom for an industrialised society, and a force in the '20s to stem the false monumentality of historical styles as well as a means of `finishing off the legacy of Morris and the art-workers guild stuff'.(27) In 1923 he chastised French modern architecture for taking the English half-timbered Edwardian villa as its model of domestic virtue.(28)

In addition there was the need to stop the Ebenezer Howardites as H. de C. called the Garden City advocates. For him `monstrous Milton Keynes' some 50 years later, was proof of his lack of success in that respect. He believed that `The Town and Country were two contraries which should go in contrary directions. Dialectically opposites -- a thesis and an antithesis which create together a synthesis -- it is a concept which had provided man with some of his basic needs. The city is the cultural forcing house generating variety of experiences and relationships. The country provides the contrary -- man's only contact with the wild now well recognised as a basic need. People flock to both in turn. Instead the British as usual misunderstood everything: they tried to make the best of two good things by joining them together. By spreading out the town they ruined the country and they ruined the cities'.(29) Furthermore he observed that other European countries had preserved their old cities building new ones alongside, while we pulled down our past to make room for the new. An action which most people now regret.

He tried to make architects aware of larger issues than just individual buildings by drawing their attention to the diversity, variety and intricacy of the whole of the built environment and to look at it from the different viewpoints from which cities are seen and moved through. He coined appropriate words, worms-eye view (1932), roofscape, wallscape, floorscape, and so forth, to identify the potential richness of these experiences. The aggregate of all these disparate elements when brought together evolved into his theory which he called Townscape. `One building is architecture, two buildings are Townscape' he explained.(30)

From the late '20s onwards, features demonstrating his way of looking at the diversity of the built environment appeared almost continuously in the AR. The lost roofs of Petersham; Eighteenth Century Doorways of Wiscasset Maine; The Useful Obelisk; Surrealism at the Seaside; The Functional Tradition (H. de C.'s idea since the '30s and later enlarged into a book by James Richards);(31) Pleasing Decay -- another term coined by H. de C. from whom, said John Piper `the ideas came'.(32) Even Manhole Covers -- to illustrate his ideas on floorscape -- made their appearance.

Picturesque

During the war H. de C. asked Nikolaus Pevsner to conduct an enquiry into the Picturesque theory of eighteenth-century landscape design with a view to applying its principles to the urban scene.(33) His interest in the Picturesque was marked in 1925 by an article in the Review on the subject. He was also influenced by Christopher Hussey's seminal book The Picturesque published in 1927. As he later said: `The Le Corbusier inspired "Light and air men" got it wrong when they built their point blocks separated from each other and the rest of the world by tracts of landscaped park -- the only place where the landscape principles were unsuitable'.(34) In 1944 he applied Pevsner's research to an article in the AR called EXTERIOR FURNISHING or Sharawaggi: the art of making urban landscape -- Sharawaggi is a Chinese concept meaning irregular gardening and is the antithesis of axial planning which he opposed. It was a polemic for Townscape. In it he set out to explore the idea of making a visual urban landscape policy. In no way was it meant as an excursion into eighteenth- or nineteenth-century pastiche but a suggestion that if architects looked at the principles of contrast, concealment, surprise and balance which had formed the Picturesque theory these could be re-written in the architectural language of the day. Despite his efforts, it was clearly evident after the war that though modern architecture was providing `magnificent single buildings, no one seemed to be pulling them together into a new form of Townscape'.(35) The combination of his own reputation as an eccentric together with the term Sharawaggi, was too easy to ridicule. His proposition was derided, misunderstood or completely ignored by the architectural profession. `They probably only read the headline captions ... it was a failure of architectural education at the time that architects could not see the connection between architecture and context, not a failure of de Cronin's policy' said Ian McCallum,(36) who also remembered the hostility there was when, teaching at Yale between 1956-1958, he tried to get students to consider their buildings in relation to others and to the spaces between.

Re-education

In 1947 in a special issue celebrating the AR's previous 50 years, H. de C. tried again to rally support for his policies by proclaiming that the AR had a `call ... visual reeducation'. The Festival of Britain was in fact an attempt to realise some of H. de C.'s ideas, as James Richards acknowledged: `It was the physical embodiment of townscape policy'.(37) Hugh Casson recalled that when he took H. de C. over the site, H. de C. said that `...it was something like I had always wanted'. `He was my guru and certainly the guru of the South Bank Exhibition' said Casson.(38) In a letter to H. de C., Casson wrote `I regard myself your creation'.(39)

However, when The Bride of Denmark, the pub in the basement of the offices of the AR in Queen Anne's Gate was created, it was thought of as merely a sortie into Victoriana. In fact it was an exercise in trying to educate the brewers who were pulling down their Victorian pubs, as to just what their significance had been: the sequences of convivial spaces with their variety of objects. Again this was something which H. de C. thought could have been recreated in contemporary terms. Alas it fell on deaf ears. Even the subsequent competition on pub design produced nothing of any worth.

H. de C. continued to identify current problems which needed tackling such as Piccadilly Circus, Dockland, Covent Garden. A series of articles by Kenneth Browne were published which expounded Townscape principles for solving these. One success story is Covent Garden today, whose salvation can be directly traced back to the AR's intervention and solution, although no acknowledgement of this has been recorded.

To try to reach a wider audience, H. de C. briefed Gordon Cullen to collect material for a book on Townscape which he himself intended to write. In the event, Cullen both wrote and illustrated the book, though subsequently he acknowledged that `H. de C. more or less wrote Townscape'.(40) As James Richards corroborated `Cullen's ideas were furnished by de Cronin and stimulated by him; in fact they were initiated by him; de Cronin stretched Cullen'.(41) Cullen's drawings were a brilliant interpretation of H. de C.'s ideas.

In the same period there were the vivid articles by Ian Nairn again a brilliant exponent of H. de C.'s policy. These were intended to draw attention to the appalling sprawl and spoliation of the English countryside. A special number aimed at Local Authorities was called Outrage in which the acres of the disasters of post-war housing were examined under the euphemistic term Subtopia.

Another thought which at the time seemed far too radical and now painfully obvious, was H. de C.s view that the only hope to save the English countryside was to make it one large National Park owned by Parliament on behalf of the people. Meanwhile `private landowners should derive the minimum privileges from their ownership of land'.(42) Access to the country had to be for all -- and this from a man whom many thought was an elitist.

In 1965 after lengthy trips to Italy, H. de C. wrote and published Italian Townscape, a study of Italian cities which in his view exemplified the Picturesque theory when applied to towns. Although he had an impressive fanmail which include Jane Jacobs, it was again mostly misunderstood, particularly by modern architects, as it was thought to be an attempt to recreate the Italian town as at Portmeirion -- a pastiche for which he had a particular contempt. His analysis of the Italian towns was a serious analytical study of the qualities which have made them so universally admired. H. de C. was also an outstanding photographer and frequency used photographs to try to illustrate his Townscape principles.

Civilia

Equally controversial was his book Civilia, an attempt to show how modern architecture when harnessed to Picturesque theories could provide a visually dynamic and exciting place. As might be expected he chose disused quarries on the outskirts of Nuneaton for the site in preference to desecrating virgin green land.

The problem was how to illustrate it. Initially he asked Kenneth Browne to do drawings but later he felt that photographs would have greater impact. A tall order for an imaginary city, so Kenneth Browne thought up the device of making photo montages using bits of buildings of contemporary architects which he and Priscilla Hastings cut up and reassembled. Not surprisingly the architects whose buildings were used in this unceremonious manner were outraged and dismissed the book as a travesty, although a number of planners supported it. Its mannered prose makes it a difficult read. However many of the ideas generated in it seem particularly apposite today; not least the idea of creating a vibrant inner city to stop the flight to the suburbs and save our diminishing countryside -- a two-fold benefit. In retrospect it seems obvious that he should have been addressing his Townscape theories far more to planners than architects.

Paradoxically his severest critics throughout the period were Modernists who could not understand his apparent eclectic vision and indeed wanted to distance themselves from his Townscape theories. They also thought that his emphasis on aesthetic values was at the expense of social needs. Yet when some of them turned against Modernism and Post Modernism became the fashion it was H. de C. in a rarely signed article in the AR (1979) who told architects not to renege on Modern architecture.

Meaningless historicism was where he had come in 50 years before and it had in his view no future. The way forward had to be modern architecture combined with Townscape, to fulfil man's social and aesthetic needs. Was he, yet again, a step ahead?

Notes

(1.) These quotes are taken from interviews on tape made by Brian Hanson referred to in the following notes.

(2.) Interview with Nikolaus Pevsner, 1975.

(3.) Letter to Michael Regan from Myles Wright 1967.

(4.) These and other unpublished manuscripts in the possession of his daughter Priscilla Hastings.

(5.) AJ 7 December 1921. Caricature of Edwin Lutyens, first of a series.

(6.) Mount Zion 1931; Continual Dew 1937.

(7.) Priscilla Hastings, op cit.

(8.) Interview on tape with de Cronin Hastings, 1984.

(9.) Interview on tape John and Priscilla Hastings, 1984.

(10.) Letter to de Cronin Hastings from John Betjeman, 5 June 1959.

(11.) Letter to W. G. Newton from Percival Hastings, 9 July 1927.

(12.) Interview of V. V. Tatlock 1975.

(13.) Interview with Osbert Lancaster 1984.

(14.) Letter Eric de Mare 1996.

(15.) Interview on tape, John Gloag, 28 April 1975.

(16.) John Betjeman, AJ 8 Jan 1971, p120.

(17.) Transcription of interview with Philip Scholberg, 17 April 1975.

(18.) Interview on tape Ian McCallum 1984.

(19.) Letter to Percy Hastings from H. de C., 23 November 1944.

(20.) McCallum tape, op cit.

(21.) George Weidenfeld: Remembering My Good Friends, Harper Collins, London 1995.

(22.) McCallum tape, op cit.

(23.) Letter Kenneth Browne to Susan Lasdun, 1996.

(24.) De Cronin Hastings tape, op cit.

(25.) Conversation with Reyner Banham. See also London Review of Books 20 May 1980.

(26.) Memoir by Priscilla Hastings 1996.

(27.) De Cronin Hastings tape, op cit.

(28.) Architectural Review: Art of French Decoration, 1923 signed H. de C.

(29.) De Cronin Hastings tape, op cit.

(30.) Quoted by H. de C. in The Italian Townscape, Gordon Cullen, The Architectural Press, 1961.

(31.) Both H. de C. and John Piper said H. de C. invented the phrase. He took the young James Richards to look at railway gates in 1930s. James Richards taped interview.

(32.) Bevis Hillier, The Young Betjeman. Interview John Piper 1984.

(33.) Nikolaus Pevsner tape op cit, 1975. Nicholas Pevsner at the instigation of H. de C., engaged on writing a History of Visual Planning which was to start with the Picturesque and end with Townscape. He prepared but never finished this work.

(34.) De Cronin Hastings tape, op cit.

(35.) Priscilla Hastings op cit.

(36.) McCallum tape, op cit. In December 1949 H. de C. wrote an article in the AR (signed Ide Wolfe called `A Plea for an English Philosophy founded on the Fine Rock of Sir Uvedale Price').

(37.) Taped interview James Richards, 1975. In fact the South Bank Festival was an orthodox plan with an axial avenue, cross avenue, rond point and vista in the Beaux Arts Tradition and only partially met H. de C.'s town planning criteria.

(38.) Taped interview, Hugh Casson 1984.

(39.) Letter to H. de C. from Hugh Casson. n.d.

(40.) AJ, Gordon Cullen 1986, p5.

(41.) Interview on tape James Richards 1984.

(42.) De Cronin Hastings tape, op cit.

(43.) Interview on tape, Kenneth Browne, 1996.