BRITAIN AND PRANCE. l6lH TO l8TH CENTURY
The town house, however, was hardly affected. There are very
few examples of Palladian influence beyond facade motifs. And
where, as in a house designed by Lord Burlington himself, an
attempt was made to interfere with the standardised London plan,
the outcry against this imposition of the rationalist's new rules was
just as pronounced as the rationalist's outcry had been against Van-
brugh's unruliness. Lord Chesterfield suggested to the owner that
he should take a house opposite, so as to be able to admire his own
at leisure without having to live in it.
It is the country house that became wholly Palladian by Lord
Burlington's efforts. In Vanbrugh's work the variety of plans and
exterior compositions had been unlimited. Now the corps de logis
with a centre portico and isolated wings connected to the main body
by low galleries became de rigueur. Prior Park, near Bath (pi. xciv),
is a typical example. It was designed for Ralph Allen in 1735 by
the elder John Wood (c. 1700-54), a local architect, but, by virtue
of his talent and the opportunities which he had in the most fashion-
able spa of England, one of the leading architects of his generation.
Compared with Palladio's villas, these British derivations are larger
and heavier. They also often incorporate motifs freer than Palladio
would have tolerated: more variation in the shapes of rooms, or a
boldly curved outer staircase into the garden (the one at Prior Park
is of the 19th century). The sites, as a rule on a gentle slope, also add
a quality that is absent in Palladio's work for a flat country. But more
important still is the fact that Palladian country houses in Britain
were designed to stand in English parks.
It seems at first contradictory that the same patrons should have
wanted the formal Palladian house and the informal English garden,
and that the same architect should have provided both. Yet it is a
fact that William Kent, Lord Burlington's prot6g6, was celebrated
as one of the creators of the English style in laying out grounds,
and that Lord Burlington's own villa at Chiswick (about 1725),
a free copy of Palkdio's Villa Rotonda, was one of the earliest
examples of what was called "the modern taste" in gardening. How
can this have come about? Was the landscape garden just a whim?
It was not; it was a conscious part of an anti-French policy in the arts,
Le N6tre's parks express absolutism, the king's absolute rulership
over the country, and also Man's rulership over Nature. The active,
expansive Baroque force that shapes the house, flows over into
nature. Progressive English thinkers recognised this and disliked it.
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