Design for John Hope's house

In 1987 I published an article in the Burlington Magazine on a suite of architectural plans I had discovered, glued inside the drawers of a great Netherlandish chest at Newhailes House. The plans were in the form of prints, one sheet with two elevations (to the street and to the courtyard), one sheet with the ground floor plan and one, rather strangely, with the plan of the first floor, but only for front half of the house. It was as if the remainder of the design had not been worked out or perhaps a planned publication only allowed half a page. The plans were for a fascinating Parisian style hotel de ville that was intended for a very specific site, possibly in the Cowgate of Edinburgh. The prints, dated 1680 in the plate, are the only identified architectural project by the French scholar and designer, Claude Comiers and were made for John Hope of Hopetoun, the father of Charles, 1st. Earl of Hopetoun. The house was never built, probably because John Hope drowned at sea while accompanying the Duke of York to Scotland in May 1682. The sheets had been cut up to fit the available space and no single drawer contained a full sheet of the main ground floor plan. In order to publish the plan I had to use a mirror to photograph the inner sides of two drawers and then make two prints through the reverse side of the negative and join them together in a collage. Since publishing my article another by Monique Vincent ‘Un Philosophe du XVIIe Siècle, Le Père Comiers “Savant Universel”’ has been published in XVIIe Siècle No. 169, Oct/Dec [1990] pp. 473-80. This fascinating article gave a much more rounded view of Comiers than previously available. I also discovered that John Hope owned a copy of Andrea Palladio’s first book of Architecture in its earliest translation into English by Godfrey Richards (see note at end). Vincent revealed Comiers to be a leading Cartesian philosopher of his day as well as something of a character. He published 'On the New Science of the Nature of Comets', in Lyon in 1665 and contributed articles to the 'Journal des Savants' between 1676 and 1678. Between 1681 and his death in 1693 he wrote and dictated articles for 'Mercure Galant' and was introduced to its readers by the editor Jean Donneau de Vise [1638-1710] as: "Sieur Comiers, priest, Provost of the collegiate church of Ternant and Canon of Embrun cathedral, one of the greatest philosophers and mathematicians of this century, a man of universal learning, Doctor of Theology, Knight of the Holy Office, Protonotary of the Holy See". Perhaps his most important article ‘The Treatise on Compound Lenses’ appeared in 'l’Extraordinaire', the quarterly supplement of the 'Mercure Galant' between July 1682 and July 1685. Dedicated to the Duke of Burgundy it was an adaptation of a section of Comier's book on Comets published in 1665 but rewritten and adapted to a lay audience. He enlarged his study to include an illustrated section on the human eye and went on to describe in detail the telescopes used by Galileo. A further section dealt with concave burning mirrors, used by ‘Monsieur Villette’ of Lyon to melt gold, iron and silver and he linked this to his own experiments with the same. He apparently wrote an account of this work that was taken to 'Tonkin' by a missionary. Throughout, his thinking is rational and modern, referring, for example to ‘Comets, in whose wake come sometimes happiness, sometimes misery, do not predict anything at all’. His 'Lettre astronomique' is addressed to ‘Monsieur le marquis de la Nocle-Sommeldicks’, an emissary of the Dutch Government to America and he observed the eclipse of December 1685 with the Royal astronomer Jean Dominique Cassini [1625-1712]. Comiers also wrote about the physical properties of water in relation to the great Canal des Deux Mers and applied his knowledge to the diversion of the river Eure at Versailles. In April 1688, he published in 'Mercure Galant' a Letter to Monsieur Hardie, Lord of Beaulieu in which he reminded his readers of the benefits of applied science; "I say that mathematical physics is not only the most beautiful subject to study by true scientists, it is also very useful, even necessary, for the welfare of the State". Other articles appeared on cryptography, divination, chemistry and medicine, in particular the 'Three Treatises on the All-purpose Medicine' that was reprinted and distributed by the Brussels bookseller, Leonard, throughout Holland. Claude Comier’s townhouse plan for John Hope is based, as closely as the site and practical demands would allow, on the most influential French plan of the seventeenth century – that of the second house at Versailles built by Philibert Le Roy for Louis XIII between 1631 and 1634. Le Roy’s plan of this modest chateau, constructed in red brick with white stone detailing was well known, versions appearing in print in France from 1647 and the full plan and elevation appearing in Isreal Silvestre’s series 'Maisones Royales' in 1652. Comier's elevations take their cue from the garden front at the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, designed for Louis XIV’s finance minister, Nicholas Fouquet [1615-80] by Louis Le Vaux [1631?-1670] and built between 1657 and 1661. Both this building and Le Roy's at Versailles had a slightly old fashioned high-pitched slate roof and Comiers proposal for John Hope includes the more up to date mansard type introduced by Jules Hardouin-Mansart [1646-1708] over the long gallery (Galerie des Glaces) at Versailles in 1678. Overall, Comier’s imitations are slightly crude and this has probably been exaggerated by the stylisation of the engravings, necessitated by their small scale. Nevertheless, he proposed a town house that had a great deal of swagger, far in advance of any Scottish house of the 1680’s and there is evidence that the engravings somehow had a wider circulation. As part of the widespread enthusiasm for French style that dominated British taste in the 17th century, versions of Philibert Le Roy’s plan for Louis XIII appeared in English pattern books such as Pierre Le Muet’s The Art of Fair Building published by Robert Pricke in London in 1670. Here the ‘Versailles’ plan is clipped of one wing or otherwise compressed to fit town plots with 50-60 ft. frontages. The corner closets, connected only at the corners at Versailles are forced into line with the plan of the house and project into the garden. Unlike the Versailles plan where there was no need for stables in the main block of the Chateau, these plans show stables in the ‘screen’ at the front of the house through which a carriageway passes into the courtyard. Most interestingly of all, Le Muet’s plans are ‘anglicised’ with the Salon and Anterooms converted into a ‘Hall’ (presumably acting as both dining room and drawing room as no rooms with these functions are indicated, either in le Muet's plans or, for that matter in Comiers) and ‘Parlour’ and the bedrooms are all located on the first floor. These modifications highlight the uncompromisingly French style of Claude Comiers’ designs for John Hope. In the house he proposed the principal bedrooms are on the ground floor, John’s lit only by two windows that look out into what would have been a dark and narrow Wynd. Here too the closets at the rear have been brought around into line and project out into the garden and the stables have been incorporated into the house plan, beneath the Gallery. But the Gallery on the first floor imitates in a modest way the one at Versailles and takes Comiers’ design a step beyond the plans proposed by Le Muet. John Hope and his architect aspired to greater things and the only other house in Edinburgh of this date to incorporate a gallery, on an appropriately grand scale was Holyrood Palace. If the engraved designs are to be taken at face value in terms of accuracy then there is one feature that is surprising and indicates a further direction for study. All of the doors on the ground floor leading from the four main entrances open towards Lady Margaret Hope’s apartment and any visitor would have been aware of her status from the moment of their arrival. All of the openings shown in the plan are splayed towards Lady Margaret’s suite, allowing double doors to lie against the walls, but there is no attempt in the limited space to arrange the fireplaces to face the visitor as they would in a formal enfilade of the period. Was this simply flattery on the part of the architect or does it say something of Lady Margaret’s status? Andrea Palladio: The First Book of Architecture…with an appendix touching doors and windows, by Pierre Le Muet, London [1676] 3rd edition, translated from French by Godfrey Richards. Copy in British Library [C.175.h.20] with manuscript notes by John Hope. The first edition was published in 1663 and the second in 1668. See Eileen Harris: British Architectural Books and Writers 1556-1785 Cambridge [1991] pp. 352-55.