 I meant to ask now, but you can hear me, and play for time, I think, whilst the recording is turned on. So is that ready? It is really a pleasure to have the opportunity to address the society of many years membership. I think getting on for 16 or 17 now, I've never actually delivered a paper here, although I've lectured in this venue. And it's an institution I'm very fond of for the reasons that I think were described in the introduction. And what I'd like to talk to you about today is a small part of the larger work time engaged with over a long period of time. And it concerns the 47 letters that exist between Gilbert Scott and Edward Augustus Freeman in the Rylans Library in Manchester, which comprise the single largest collection of Scott's private correspondence, and they span the whole of his active professional life, well most of it, from 1846 to 73. We have sadly only Scott's side of the correspondence, but there's enough there for us to get an impression and an understanding of what it was that drew the two men together, which was a shared interest in medieval archeology. And in itself that's important at this moment in history because history and practical endeavors like architecture were intertwined and one fundamental to the other. Now I'm sure the audience, you tonight, are familiar with both men's reputations, but I think for the narrative to work in the letters to make sense in a biographical context, I have to describe a bit about each of them and how they came together. Scott probably needs less introduction in an audience such as this. He's the third son of a poor clerical family of stroiavergelical beliefs, raised in obscurity, though his family was close and Scott was slightly overlooked. His only documented youthful interest was sketching medieval churches in the neighborhood of his father's parish church in south of Buckingham. The family went, did have the means however to educate his two older brothers at Cambridge and they went into the ministry following their father, his father and uncle's on both sides. The Scots had enough to send the two younger sons into professional articles. The youngest, Nathaniel, into a solicitors in London and Gilbert Scott to a little known architect surveyor advising on speculative residential development of the kind you see here in Hackney in the 1820s and 30s, or 30s rather. The young Scott improved himself by evening study and eventually formed a partnership with a carpenter's son called Moffitt. Moffitt had contacts with the new poor law commission through family and the two of them formed a partnership going on to design more workhouses between them than any other practice in England about 50 and all from 1836 to 40 when the public funding for the process of the commissions began to dry up. As it did so, Scott began to move away from Moffitt in search of new opportunities and he managed to secure a series of commissions for new Anglican churches and working class districts. And alongside this instructions to repair and modernize medieval parish churches for reformed Anglican worship. Both areas of work required a working understanding of the history and architecture of medieval building to apply in effect the historical knowledge he'd built up through private study and turn it to profit. Scott and Moffitt part of company in 1845 and Scott in his own name now as sole partner went on to develop what was the largest architectural practice in Europe, I think probably arguably in the world. And by the time of semi-retirement in 1873 the practice had discharged something like a thousand instructions, which is an incredible number really. The highlights of that esteemed career will be familiar to you, the Midland Grand Memorial, St. Mary's Edinburgh, the restoration of hundreds of medieval churches work on every medieval cathedral in England and personal appointment is severe to Westminster Abbey and appointment he held for about 30 years and he's buried there in the nave. Freeman is today best known for his compendious history of the Norman conquest, for his historical writing and support for liberal politics. He was as well regious professor Oxford and promoted the cause of Balkan nationalism. His most important architectural writing dates to the 1840s. Like Scott Freeman was prolific and has a bibliography stretching to 260 publications. Now Freeman was Scott's junior by 13 years, here he is at about age 20, he had a very different upbringing. He inherited an independent income, was raised in rural Leicestershire, educated at Shrewsbury, then matriculated at Trinity at Oxford in 1841, where he came under the influence of Thomas Arnold's historiographical theories. Freeman was also a strong Tractarian and so it was inevitable really with all these ingredients in place, he should join the local and an important architectural society, Oxford architectural society. The society had been established just a few years earlier and at the same time as its better known sister society at Cambridge, later known as the ecclesiological society. The two groups had much in common. Their main object was to promote the study of medieval church buildings and through this to promote the Gothic revival and high standards of monument care. But there they parted company. Though the membership of each was Tractarian or high church in broad turns, the Oxford group did not use the Gothic revival as an engine of Anglo-Catholic theology which was what happened at Cambridge. Neither did the Oxford society promote the decorated style, the style of the 13th century to the expense and ignorance of all others. Immediately on joining the OAS, Freeman immersed himself in its activities and soon joined its management committee and would be at stalwart for about seven next seven years until 1847-48 when he married and left Oxford entirely for life as an independent scholar living off of an income and he inherited from his grandfather. Society provided Freeman with the infrastructure to study medieval architecture in a systematic way and there was of course no course in medieval archeology available anywhere in Europe at that point. And that played a decisive role in his thinking as a historian. Since at the site, his offices on Holywell Street it maintained a large library of publications, plaster casts and thousands of drawings compiled by the architectural historian Thomas Rickman who coined the terms of medieval architecture we know and use today. Of course, Oxford itself is an excellent teaching lab but apart from the new chapel here at Modlin College done by Cottingham in the late 1820s it did actually lack any really convincing work of Gothic revival. That is one based closely on precedence and that is until 1841 about the year Freeman articulated when one work would have stood out conspicuously and Freeman would have seen it emerge bit by bit from behind hoardings and St. Giles the main northern approach to the ancient city and this example of genuine Gothic revival was Gilbert Scott's Memorial to the Oxford Martyrs. Scott won the competition in 1840. It was completed in 1842-43 to glowing references in the national press. Already by 1841, Scott was beginning to design in the Gothic manner but his early commissions lacked the budget to deliver any really convincing Gothic work. At Oxford that was different. He had a generous budget and you can believe discerning clientele. The committee was made up of fellows and clergymen for whom archeological accuracy was essential. His masters required three things here. First, that the memorial harmonized with the 13th century architecture of St. Mary Mags nearby. Second, the memorial had to provide a fitting northern approach to the ancient city which was then being widened at the time to ease the flow of traffic, modern Victorian traffic engineering. Third, the memorial should be based on the surviving Eleanor crosses and this was not so straightforward as you might think because the surviving crosses have different proportions and different designs. What Scott did was to combine the slenderness of the Gettington Cross with the geometry of the one at Northampton mingling the ornament of all four, the result being an entirely new but authentic Gothic design of great elegance, one which integrates figure sculptor and rich ornament seamlessly into a well-proportioned architectural form. This was a breakthrough commission and Scott remembered it in those terms more than 20 years later when in 1864 he was asked to write his own entry for the forerunner of who's who. There he identified it as a watershed moment along with two other commissions, I'm getting to Freeman in a moment, one some Londoners were low, St. Charles Camberwell, based closely on Kentish sources. The other restoration of St. Mary Stafford, which brought with it the first document counted with Freeman. In 1841, Scott was instructed to undertake a comprehensive program of work, this multi-phase medieval building. The later work of the 15th century in some parts was however not very elegant, at least he said so, and was in poor condition and so Scott had his justification to replace a great deal of it with new work in the 13th century manner, which I'll point out now being the porch, the transect and the whole of the chancel. When the proposals were exhibited later that year, they do fire from local experts. Essentially the bone of contention was that the new transect was not an accurate reconstruction based on correct archeological information. Scott was confident in his rebuttal, in his reasoning, and so in 1842 put the whole matter up for independent adjudication to a joint committee formed by experts from the Oxford and Cambridge societies. Freeman was one of the judges who pronounced eventually in Scott's favor. Early the following year, Scott joined the Oxford society and he attended the May meeting where Freeman read his first major work on architectural history on the progressive development of architecture. This is an early exposition of what architectural historians today call the theory of development, the idea that a modern style can be formed by returning the details to the details and principles of an earlier style at its fullest point of development. The idea appealed to Scott, its combination of innovation and tradition suited his naturally conservative outlook and his churchmanship. At about this time, Freeman considered becoming an architect himself, paying a local practitioner, not Scott, to tutor him. Now, it made sense in a way because on Freeman's telling, architecture was applied history and it was attractive as a profession because of that, but of course, architecture is a real world profession and a business, therefore, like any other. Freeman was not cut out for the cut and thrust of such a life. Scott, however, was, but for his part and unusually, he had a serious interest in the life of the mind and used his architectural practice to explore that. The friendship they built was constructed on the terrain stretching between those two shared passions at a time when the two were bound together through the culture of Gothic revival. The sense of shared or common purpose must have been strong because the pair went on a sketching tour together of medieval churches in 1844 and Listershire, when a very few Scott ever made in the company of another individual. Scott was only able to cultivate his newfound acquaintance on a sketching tour because 1844, 45 was a pretty slow time in the office for Scott, actually, and they were looking around for business. But all that would shortly change after his next great coup, the winning of the great Nicolai Kerkert competition in Hamburg in 1845. Now, from this point, extensive travel to Germany and a steady increase in new commissions completely overwhelmed him, propelling him forward with scarcely any break until illness in 1873 forced him into semi-retirement. At this time, 1843, 44, the Oxford Architectural Society managed to gain control, interestingly, of the restoration of this building, Dorchester Abbey, south of Oxford, to pay for it and, in effect, act as client. And Freeman was client. And this is the closest, really, he ever came to a real building project of any scale or complexity. And frankly, if he'd harbored any lingering doubt about entering a profession, this would have dispelled it, I think, from his mind. Freeman left Oxford in 1847 to get married and then he moved to the West Country. He withdrew from the OAS Society, sorry, but continued to publish architectural works for a few more years, notably the 1849 History of Architecture. The first World History of Architecture in English, as a matter of fact, which I'll come back to. Sadly, it was not well received and it's known today by very few specialists. The first suite of Scott letters that we have, three or four of them, in fact, come from 1846 and they feel like a continuation of conversations that two men were having at society meetings. In the first, the very first, Scott is actually quite deferential, apologizing, even presuming to write to Freeman. Remember, Freeman is his junior at this point. Scott, of course, is a man who comes from just a sort of shabby, lower middle class background and is a professional who made his money doing work houses. It's hardly an elevated activity, but he certainly paid the bills. And he writes so respectfully to challenge an interpretation Freeman has made of certain aspects of Somerset Medieval Church towers. These are the things that occupied Scott Mines when he wasn't designing buildings. And also actually to question Freeman's enthusiasm for the late French Gothic style, the Flamboyant style. But then, Scott artfully respects what after all do I know, he wrote, never having visited France. But he had, he pointed out, traveled extensively in Germany for his Hamburg work and of course, the French architects of the medieval period had influenced those who designed buildings on the Rhine and he knew those very well. On that basis, perhaps he might be qualified to offer a contrary view as to the relative merits of English and French architecture at key stages of development. So at the start of this correspondence, Scott is writing not as an equal in a differential way, sort of talking his cap. But he very artfully, through this early correspondence, works his way into a position of familiarity, critical engagement through reasoned argument. Now Freeman, for his part, clearly valued Scott's opinion and soon after that first letter, he sent Scott a pamphlet, Freeman did, that he wrote on architectural restoration. Now this was part of a long debate on the practice in the 1840s, which included Ruskin's criticism of restoration of the seven lamps and Scott's own pamphlet on the subject. Freeman's view actually lay between the two. Like Ruskin, he was naturally preservationist in his approach, but he allowed there could be changes to enable an ancient building to serve its original purpose. Scott went much further. He said an architect should exercise aesthetic judgment to improve the medieval appearance of old buildings, particularly if the part that was affected was in poor condition or of poor quality. And he felt that the proper demands of making a functional building required a firm hand. And of course, that naturally is what any professional would say in the circumstances. Scott was, however, a little stung and hurt by Freeman's charge in that pamphlet that professionals were intervening too much to further their own interests and basically bump up their fees. Scott simply didn't recognize that such was an unprinted, this kind of unprincipled approach. And in fairness to Scott, he often gave his services for free when he was restoring churches for poor clergymen. So when it came to this area of work, he did actually have a lot of scruples. Now this tension plays out in the immediately following correspondence, notwithstanding any feelings of friendship the two might have had. And this is clear really from the most extensive suite of correspondence from the set, 11 letters from 1849 to 50. The first of them in April was prompted by Freeman's criticism of certain aspects of Scott's ongoing works at Eley Cathedral. Scott was upset and he wrote to justify his scheme as the only reasonable course of action. What annoyed him though, he confessed with the public criticisms lodged by his old nemesis, the Cambridge Camden Society, the Bette Noirs of his life. It must be said Scott had a certain paranoid streak and a surprisingly thin skin for someone who cultivated the public eye. Scott has ever in this and other correspondence, however, seeks a rapprochement with Freeman and in that particularly sharp letter moves swiftly to praising his then Freeman's newly published history of architecture. You have that same thing as a challenge and then praise that Scott is using to develop a platform for a relationship. Now I want to just spend a moment describing Freeman's work on history of architecture because it provides a kind of script for the many of the remaining letters in this set. The first proposition was that Freeman saw the Romanesque as a complete form of architectural expression, not some poor relationship to the High Gothic. Now remember that position is contrary to the one that was sort of architectural orthodoxy. So Freeman had a sort of stylistic liberality which was the outlier and controversially Freeman went further. He said Saxon architecture was part of the larger fully developed Romanesque style. In fact, a pan-European international style of which the Norman and England was merely one expression. At the time, architectural writers were deeply divided on the issue sometimes called Saxonism and the ideas went basically to ideas about Englishness. Was there a complete break with building and other forms of material culture, politics and so forth at the time of the Conquest or was there continuity? Now Freeman fell firmly on the side of seeing the national character as the product of evolution across centuries of Englishness as an underlying racial quality and one which united all Northern European peoples. Now, second Freeman argued the late Gothic was in fact aesthetically superior to the decorated. They were because they were both perfect realizations of that single racial group. He believed the Gothic was the process of realizing in plastic form the will and vigor in his words of the Teutonic people who'd struggled out from Northern European forests to spread across the globe. Their inventiveness and energy reflected in this style and explaining their economic and political success. It may not surprise you to know that it's taken a long time for Freeman's reputation to be revived given the racialist ideas that form an undercurrent throughout historical writing. And our times actually difficult to read it must be said in certain cases. And it was this Freeman's Teutonism which formed the intellectual content for the first and only work of architectural theory that Scott ever wrote. Remarks on secular and domestic architecture of 1854 which sharply distinguishes between Northern European sensibilities and Southern ones. Scott, after Freeman, believed that a meaningful national style for all manner of modern buildings had only be forged by synthesizing architecture of Northern European countries. Not just England, but France, Belgium, and Germany as well. Notwithstanding his admiration for Freeman, Scott was nervous about any theory that undermined the primacy of the 13th century style and in that sense he was orthodox, a true follower of Pugin and the ecclesiologists. And his discomfort with Freeman's stylistic heterodoxy comes through in Scott's extensive correspondence from this period. For example, a letter written on New Year's Eve in 1849 he comments extensively on the Saxon-Norman debate with reference to his own carefully executed archeological studies of Dover Castle and other early Romanesque period buildings. Politely Scott observed that the Saxon work would set it a wing which he was then restoring and at St. Nicholas proved demonstratively that the Normans had introduced a new way of building contrary to what Freeman was asserting. Anxious that he'd overstepped the mark, however, he writes three days later to excuse any remarks that might have caused the fence and so to close by wishing Freeman a happy birthday, which is actually the only evidence we have at this point that they had that kind of relationship at this stage. Freeman's unorthodox taste for the Romanesque continued to prey on Scott's mind. In April 1850, this comes out in one of his longest levers to Freeman, it begins with a confession. He's desperate to reconcile. He said, our differences on which style Norman or Gothic provided the best basis for developing a modern scale. Freeman, Scott, alleged that Freeman risked unwinding the consentences that had been achieved on this important point, which Scott and his generation had fought to achieve. But on the question of the Romanesque and its superiority, Freeman never recanted, but then by this point he was stepping back from the line of architectural debate. Notwithstanding the anxiety, Freeman's enthusiasm for the Romanesque calls Scott, on one occasion, it proved to be a great practical assistance to Scott. In the summer 1849, Scott was appointed to restore St. Peter's Northampton, a building incorporating, in fact, pre-conquest fabric and nearing Anglo-Saxon Palace. He was invited to give a paper on the building, explaining his findings in his proposed works, which included the complete rebuilding of this unusual feature you hear in the nave, a kind of Romanesque proto-Claire story. There was some disquiet locally over this proposal, and in fact, the ecclesiologists, again, weighed in to argue that the whole of it should be replaced with a proper 13th century Clair story. Scott was keen to do something that enhanced, however, the Romanesque character of the building, and he wrote to Freeman asking for his support, which Freeman duly gave, and Scott cited it in the paper he wound up delivering, and his calls prevailed. Shortly after, the two men spent a day sketching, a series of churches, and the results of that are Scott's office assistants working up some of Freeman's drawings and the formal measured studies for which Freeman pays a fee, but just to meet the office costs. It's not actually a professional fee. And then in August 1850, Freeman seeks Scott's approval, sending him a proof copy of his compendious book on medieval tracery, for which Scott's thanks him, at the same time apologizing he's too busy to read it, and indeed, it is an unreadable book for anyone who's ever tried it. Scott notes, though, in passing, he's close to Freeman's house on a visit he's undertaken for business, and was intending to pay a trip to Landaf Cathedral, which Freeman had just published a short study of. In December of that year, Scott regrets he's not able to meet Freeman on a recent trip to London, but reminds him of a standing offer of a personal tour of Westminster Abbey, and again, the offer arises and it's taken up, and Scott takes Freeman out to Smithfield, the Sherm St. Bartholomew, the Great. At about this time, Scott is spending a lot of time promoting the architectural museum as a study collection for craftsmen, and Freeman makes a personal donation to the fund. Now, what feels very much to me, like Scott's correspondence from the 1850s, comes from a desire to ensure that Freeman, an old friend, is not cut off from the lively intellectual life the two men shared in the 1840s. Many of the letters from this decade are written during travel, and Scott traveled a lot, a great deal, in which he simply sets down observations on architectural details he's noticed in passing, clearly in the evening in the hotel, which he's cobbled together from his workbook during the day. Some of them are quite beautiful little marginal sketches, quite detailed, very well considered, but they feel to me like a bit like postcards and have a sort of thinking of you wish you were here quality, thoughts that have come into my mind and I thought I'd share them with you, apropos nothing in particular except our shared interest. For his part, Freeman sought Scott's advice in 1855 in connection with a paper he was writing on Harold's pre-conquest church at Wilhelm Abbey. This analysis, interestingly, was the only one of Freeman's architectural studies that related directly to his researches on the Norman conquest, and it is really remarkable, but his great magnum opus on the conquest has no architectural commentary on it at all, not even to add color or set scenes. Now in this paper, Freeman's object was to test the hypothesis of sex and continuity. If he could demonstrate it here at Harold's church, then surely the argument would move in his favor, and that's the premise. Scott discreetly said he didn't agree with Freeman's interpretation and never said any more about it, and Freeman published the paper virtually unchanged. Now Scott, for his part, was not widely traveled. He lacked the means and he was too busy earning a living to support a large family. He'd gone to North Germany, obviously, and traveled around England, but they were effectively business trips. And so it incented surprising giving his interests, or perhaps not, that his first trip, not for business and for pleasure, was to Italy in 1851. And in November of that year he wrote from Rome to Freeman in an excited state. It has a kind of youthful enthusiasm about it, generated by what he's seeing. Even more surprisingly, Scott did not make a study tour of French medieval architecture until much later, autumn 1856, he'd about 42 at that point. After that he wrote Freeman, Freeman, another excited letter. This one effusive about Saint-Toin, and of course, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Saint-Chapelle. Now with all the buildings Scott saw in France, it was this latter one, Saint-Chapelle, a perfect gem in the High Gothic, that made the most profound impression on him, and it directly wound up inspiring his design for the new chapel of extra college, Oxford. The French details translated into English, as it were, which has, some will know it, a staggering program of carved decoration and glass and applied ornament, with some of the earliest works by Morris Marshall Faulkner and Co, actually. Freeman was quick to respond to the letter on French Gothic, and Scott then to reply quickly in turn, his enthusiasm undimmed, going on and on about other buildings he'd seen. Now, one time at least, Freeman stood up for Scott publicly, and he generated a whole set of letters. The occasion was the architectural competition for the new government offices in 1857. The story's been told and rehearsed many times. The event was an important one in the so-called Battle of the Styles, a cohort of competitors, Scott, et cetera, had promote Gothic designs against classical opponents. Freeman came out strongly in the times where Scott's design and the principle of Gothic for a government office of a northern European country, principally because it reflected the underlying abilities and characteristics of that culture. Scott wrote in January thanking Freeman, and then confided his own concerns about that first design, which he said, and this is about this one, it blended too many southern sources. And so he was confessing to Freeman that he'd sort of erred towards the long path of misogynation of architectural racial types, which are concerned Freeman. The revised scheme was more purely English, all well and good, but the outcome was kind of scandal for Scott because whilst he won the commission, he'd had to yield Palmerston's request to make the building classical. It was either do that, the PM said, or resign the commission. Now, Scott never resigned a commission on any basis, and any professional audience here will understand what I mean when I say that. It was against his nature and some active on professionalism, which is true. Scott's critics disagreed and took his completed Italianate design, now admired as one of his leading works, as proof he lacked the integrity needed to be a true goth. The charge stung Scott badly, and actually he spent pages and pages in his memoirs justifying his actions years after the fact. Now, as the dust was settling that summer, Scott an opportunity to take some time off. He attended Dorchester Abbey, he wrote Freeman how works were progressing. Again, it's a sort of friendly contact, and then there's a hiatus of seven years until July 1865. The occasion now, Scott's appointment to survey and restore St. David's in Wells. By this point Freeman was living nearby, he just published a large multivalium work on a cathedral in association with its dean. Now, here Scott had his work cut out for him because John Nash had overseen the last program of repair, and had given the building a new West Front, not this one, which was quite light-hearted, shall I say, in his treatment of Gothic architecture. And so for reasons of decorum, that kind of retency fribrary couldn't be allowed to exist in being a Welsh medieval cathedral. So that had to go in the new design of Scots. The building arrangement needed updating in the normal way, and the crossing tower was about ready to collapse, and Scott had to rebuild all of the pairs and refound them on a solid block of concrete. Here too there was an opportunity to enhance certain older parts, and in particular the east end. But at that very moment, again the designs were exhibited and debated, an architect antiquarian called John Cheswell Butler took issue with Scots reconstruction. And so the dean and chapter were left with something of a quandary, because they were not able to effectively judge who was right in this debate about the finer points of archeology and architectural history. And so they turned to the most expert person they had near to hand, who was Freeman, who lived as it were just down the road. Now you might think it's surprising Freeman would accept a commission that could involve him performing an opinion against an old friend. And it tells something about his character, I think that he did accept the commission. He was a prickly individual. But I mean, for his part, in fairness, Scott really didn't behave any better, because he showed us a matter of professional principle, not then gone on to lobby his friend to support his position. But he duly did that, because when it came to business and professional differences, Scott really had limited scruples. He wrote Freeman a long letter, putting his quake case forcefully, and so on. But in the end, Freeman decided against Scott and the east end as the appearance it does today for that reason. Now what Scott felt about it isn't recorded, but he seems not to have held it against Freeman or at least for very long, because two years later in 1867, Scott is getting ready to deliver a set of lectures to the Royal Academy on the history of medieval architecture. Now Scott was perfectly comfortable and able to deal with his beloved 13th century style, the run down from it and the run up to it. What he wanted from Freeman was some insight into that debate they'd had way back when in 1849. How should pre-conquest work should be characterised? How did it relate to the Irish traditions from the same period? Did these represent a single monumental school of building? What was the right way to call it? Scott favoured the term Romano-British, interestingly. This is all a debate straight from Freeman's history of architecture which showed I think that it was as it were on Scott's shelf, and he referred to it regularly. In these letters of 1867, the two men went on to debate the interpretation yet again of the pre-conquest remains at Dover Castle and there's another kind of renewed interest in the Saxon debate that includes long discussions about this building some will know the Saxon Church at Bradford and Avon which was restored interestingly in the 1880s by one of Scott's most gifted Clark of the Works, a man called John Thomas Irving who also assisted Pearson at Peterborough Cathedral. And did some of the first excavations actually on Viking remains in the Outer Hebrides in his summer holidays. He was from Lewis, I think. Now in the early 1870s, Scott's health began to fail. His father and uncle had died early of what appears to have been or sounds like anyway, heart disease. And that underlying weakness affected Scott too, who had a punishing professional schedule. His beloved wife and long suffering one, Caroline, had died two years previously in 1871 and Scott took it badly, bitterly regretting he'd pursued professional matters at the expense of her happiness, which was true. The tone of his letters now to Freeman as you might expect are gentler. The first in this final set was initiated in fact by Freeman who asks Scott's advice about the profession his own son, Freeman's son, should he become a consulting engineer? And Scott was firmly of the review he should. Scott gives an account as ever, thinking of business and controversy about the latest controversy surrounding one of his restorations at Exeter where he complained bitterly that the diocese was pressing him to pull all of the medieval screen down against his advice. The side of antiquary, as you'll be pleased to know was on Scott's side, but not his former people's street who wanted it removed in the interest of proper Anglican worship. Another faction was pressing the third course which was to alter the thing significantly. In another letter of that year, 1873, Freeman wrote in praise of a recent work of Scott's son, John Aldred, which he must have had to swallow. Well, he didn't have much architectural judgment is all I can say because John Aldred was not the architect his father was in any event. Freeman then invites Scott to his house near Gloucester and offers Scott accepts. And it's probably one of the first social visits Scott entertains after his wife's death as a matter of fact. He's in mourning for at least 18 months after which was the sort of Victorian norm. Another letter from 1873, Scott sends Freeman a draft of his RIBA presidential address highlighting important parts. Again, on Saxon architecture, there's more correspondence. And the last two letters from the suite, last two penultimate letters really, recall a Scott trip to Italy, Florence and Tuscany to look at actually Romanesque remains. Now, poignantly, the whole of their correspondence and you couldn't write this really from a historian's or a biographer's perspective. So I am actually trying to write a combination of history and biography here. That's why the letter is so important. So poignantly, the correspondence ends with Scott's lamenting the decline of the revival he helped to nurture. He complains that there's been a move away amongst younger architects from devotion to one style to personal expression and individualism. Now he had here in mind the rise of the style we today know by the name of Queen Anne revival. And so blending towards a kind of mixed Georgian revival as well. These late letters, by the way, show Scott is now by only in the office occasionally spending the rest of his time sketching and studying the evil buildings, returning as a word to the activity that he seemingly was interested in the first place as a boy. His own son's George Gilbert, Jr., very talented architect and John Alderwood are now running the large office. So where does this all lead us? What reflections can we draw from it? What meaning? Any extended correspondence I think or any friendship come to that works because each party gets something back from the other. Freeman's side of the exchange doesn't survive but we can speculate I think about his motivations. Remember he sent copies to Scott of his several publications. Remember at 1.2 he wanted to enter Scott's profession. And remember in his writings, Freeman admired the special talents of architects whom he believed had the unique ability to sense and give physical form to the spirit of the age. Freeman was a proponent of what later German art historians called the zeitgeist, although he didn't use the German word and it's actually one of the earliest conceptualizations of that idea in English writing about the past, cultural artifacts in the past. But recall as well, Freeman had an independent income. He was living outside of London. He was researching writing, later traveling across the Mediterranean with a really interesting, really important book in English on Sicily. For him, the friendship maintained through correspondents provide a line into the real world I think and one back to his youth. And via a sympathetic medium, Scott, by now the leading architect of his generation in England and Europe. Now as for Scott, my real subject, I think his motivations are clearer and easier to put our finger on really. For a start, consorting with an Oxbridge trained historian was some form of compensation. The formal education denied him. The lack of a university degree made him, he confessed in his memoirs, uncomfortable in the presence of university educated people for his whole life. And remember almost all of his clients would have been Oxbridge educated. It is a staggering admission when you think of his achievement that it was never enough actually to make him feel comfortable in the society of people who were better than he was. Archaeology and history provided a way through that emotional and social barrier. And let's not forget, Scott lived through the study of historical building. He skillfully managed to build a successful business that enabled him to indulge his passion, which is not an easy thing to do and is challenging if you have those sort of vocational callings as I can attest to. The set of correspondence does beg the question, I suppose, were they friends? And it's a hard question to answer really. First of all, the concept of friendship that we have now is different to the concept of friendship they had. Although many Victorians did have intimate male, I mean they're not homosexual, but close male friendships. I actually, speaking as someone who studied Scott for a long time now, on it often more consistently recently, I don't think he actually had a friend outside of his family circle. He was devoted to religion, immersed in family life, punishing professional schedule, and when he wasn't doing all that, he was using his time to sketch medieval buildings and write articles in learned journals. So I doubt he had any friends. And so I think the relationship for Freeman was actually unique. In fact, I put some money on it as it were. But even that friendship, if the term has any relevance, was constructed in a very particular, perhaps even peculiar way and one that was very narrowly defined. It was limited to that level of field that connected professional practice, the professional practice of Gothic revival architecture and the history of Gothic architecture. It was an interaction founded on the pure life of the mind Scott craved and sought to create a space for within his professional business. That even this relationship, the nearest Scott had to friendship, perhaps, was limited in its emotional compass, tells us a lot about Scott's limitations as a person. What the correspondence fills me with personally at the end of it all, and having studied Scott now for a long time, it's actually a feeling of melancholy for a man who led a lonely existence in his childhood, in his adult life, always seeking the approval of a privileged class, which approval Scott was trying to achieve through his historical research. And if Freeman was one way of dealing with that and achieving that objective. Well, thank you very much. Thank you.