A Review of New Book Sir Herbert Baker: Architect to the British Empire by John Stewart

Reviewed by Charles Hind

It has taken a very long time for Sir Herbert Baker to achieve what he has long deserved, a proper biography. But now, this year, we have John Stewart’s book, Sir Herbert Baker: Architect to the British Empire, published by US publisher McFarland.

Baker’s reputation has suffered several blows. Most famously, he was the butt of co-architect Edwin Lutyens’s memorable quip regarding their difficult relationship in New Delhi (more of which later) and his achievements in India and work for the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) have been overshadowed by Lutyens. Baker’s career in South Africa, which grew out of his close friendship with Cecil Rhodes and set him on the path to justify his biographer’s sub-title, was obscured by that country’s pariah status under apartheid. He was tainted in postcolonial eyes by his involvement in the British Empire, so related works in London, such as India House and South Africa House, have been ignored or despised. Finally, architectural historians have never forgiven him for his destruction of Sir John Soane’s Bank of England. Stewart has challenged many prejudices and assumptions expressed by Baker’s critics and makes a strong case for his rehabilitation. He was certainly not the “naïve and arrogant” architect described by Nikolaus Pevsner.

Baker was born in 1862 into minor gentry in Kent. His background and education were aimed at producing a “Christian gentleman” of the type recorded in Mark Girouard’s The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman, dedicated to the support of Queen and Empire, with a simple faith that enabled him to face many difficulties with fortitude. He was not particularly academic, although he loved poetry and could quote Wordsworth at length, but he was good at art and sports. On leaving school, he entered architectural pupillage with a cousin, Arthur Baker, who had worked in Sir George Gilbert Scott’s office for 14 years, then established a practice that specialised in ecclesiastical work. In 1886, Herbert moved to George & Peto, described later by Darcy Braddell as the “Eton of architects’ offices”, where he became leading assistant. There he met Lutyens, who joined the following year, aged 18. Their relationship lasted for 60 years, evolving from warm friendship to rivalry and finally to profound bitterness between them.

Stewart exceeds any other writer on Lutyens and Baker in charting this relationship, using letters previously divided between the Baker family and the RIBA. Michael Baker, Herbert’s grandson, has recently generously augmented his father’s gift of the Baker Archive to the RIBA made over 40 years ago with letters exchanged between Baker and his wife and the remaining professional correspondence that Henry Baker found too painful to put into the public domain. Ironically, this has protected Lutyens’s reputation to some extent, for his later behaviour towards Baker was mean, vicious, vindictive and inexcusable. The much-quoted exchanges between Lutyens and Baker of the earlier years are key to understanding the younger man’s views on architecture, and in particular his understanding of Classical architecture.

While Lutyens’s career took off stratospherically following his meeting with Gertrude Jekyll when he was only 20, for the older Baker finding independent commissions was far harder. His prospects were transformed when his brother, Lionel, who had gone out to South Africa to establish a fruit farm, persuaded Herbert to join him and seek commissions in the country. Meeting Rhodes, then Prime Minister of South Africa, at a dinner party led to a commission to restore and extend Rhodes’s house, Groote Schuur. Although this building has many faults, showing its architect’s lack of experience, it established his reputation and soon he had a flood of commissions, and he rapidly matured. During the period of peace that followed the Boer War, more government buildings were added to his growing list of domestic and commercial projects, culminating in the Union Building in Pretoria, begun in 1909. Dramatically sited, it represented the equality between the Boer and English communities, and demonstrated in architectural form the new Dominion of South Africa as a major addition to the British Empire. His success allowed Baker the luxury of marriage and his correspondence with his wife Florence is quarried by Stewart for the first time. Also recently donated to the RIBA by Michael Baker, these letters are as important as Lutyens’s correspondence with Lady Emily in revealing an architect’s innermost thoughts and frustrations with the challenges of his professional life.

Baker’s huge success in South Africa made him an obvious choice for consideration in participating in the greatest architectural prize in the Empire – the new capital of British India in Delhi. Lutyens was desperate for the commission and was terrified by the possibility of the biggest projects going to competition. He had recently failed to win the new County Hall project in London and knew how much time could be wasted in fruitless projects. He suggested Baker throw his cap into the ring, envisaging him as a junior partner. Baker had other ideas and wrote an article for The Times on the issue of style for the new city, a matter of considerable controversy between the protagonists of the “Indo-Saracenic” – a fussy, confused style that had been used for much recent British architecture in India – and the Western Classical tradition espoused by Lutyens, whose contempt for Indian architecture is legendary.

Baker proposed “the English classic style” but adapted to the climate of “our Southern Dominions” and incorporating minor “Eastern features” and drawing on “all that India has to give… of subtlety and industry in craftsmanship”. Essentially this is what he adopted in his Secretariats. Ironically, in the end, Lutyens went further in adapting Indian precedents for the exterior of the Viceroy’s House, transforming his first proposal for a Pantheon-like dome into something closer to the great Stupa at Sanchi. Lutyens was furious about Baker’s article as he was aware that Baker was superior to him in terms of literary architectural discourse and could undermine his determination to be the lead architect in New Delhi. Lutyens was known as a difficult and expensive architect and, compared with Baker, had no major public building nor colonial experience and it quickly became obvious that he had to have a collaborator. Baker was recognised as probably the only man with whom he could work and he was appointed co-architect. It was not a promising beginning and the seeds of their later falling out were sown from the start. Baker wrote to his wife on his first voyage home from India in 1913: “I feel I have been of some use. Lutyens could not be trusted on his own – in spite of his brilliant ingenuity and designing power… I think I have more influence with him than anyone else would but he is difficult to manage and we fight a great deal.”

More than one-third of Stewart’s biography deals with New Delhi and the problems largely created by Lutyens. While it cannot be denied that Lutyens was a genius and Baker in comparison was simply first class, no single man could possibly have designed every major building in New Delhi and the new capital required architecture of the highest order. Robert Grant Irving covered the ground in considerable detail in his magisterial book, Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi (of 1981) but Stewart’s access to Baker’s private correspondence allows him to show the toll that Lutyens’s behaviour took on him.

I have to admit my admiration for Lutyens has taken a knock. The famous issue of the gradient of the King’s Way and the approach to the Viceroy’s House was apparent to everyone except Lutyens; his blindness to the problem is inexplicable, his subsequent actions inexcusable. As his biographer, Christopher Hussey, pointed out, for Lutyens “ethical virtues were of value only so far as they corresponded with aesthetic virtues; when they diverged, ethics ceased to count”.

When New Delhi was inaugurated in 1931, Lutyens took advantage of his friendship with Edward Hudson and long connection with Country Life to ensure that influential reviews were written entirely from Lutyens’s perspective, while Baker’s enormous contribution of the Secretariats and the Council House (or Legislative Assembly) was vilified. The problem with the circular form of the Council House was created by Lutyens as Baker had proposed a completely different and rational building. Lutyens spitefully intervened with the Viceroy and persuaded him that a circular building would be best and took great pleasure in knowing that Baker was saddled with designing something that he hated, something irrational and unsuitable. He crowed to his wife: “I went for his shape, and for one that filled the site he didn’t like but I won the day I am glad to say” and again “I got the building where I want it and the shape I want it”, while Baker lamented that it was another case of geometry overruling sentiment and expression. Yet Robert Byron in Country Life cruelly commented that it “has been Sir Herbert’s unhappiest venture… It resembles a Spanish bullring, lying like a mill wheel dropped accidentally on its side”. It was widely criticised at the time as impractical, wasteful of space and unnecessarily expensive and it is hardly surprising that the present government in India has decided to abandon it and build anew as part of its attack on Imperial New Delhi – Lutyens’s spite has backfired on his concept. It was due to his opposition that Baker failed to become a member of the Royal Academy of Arts until 1932, aged nearly 70.

Baker’s two other major projects were his work for the IWGC and rebuilding of the Bank of England. Contrary to received opinion, Baker fought hard to preserve Soane’s legacy of top-lit halls but ultimately it was the Bank’s Building Committee that prevailed in wishing to maximise its use of the constricted site and Baker only managed to retain Soane’s exterior walls. His tinkering with details such as the Tivoli Corner certainly justify criticism but there was remarkably little public opposition to the demolition of the Bank and Baker comes over as an early conservationist, not that such a term was known at the time. In the work for the IWGC, Baker was at loggerheads again with Lutyens. The commemoration of the dead in Europe and across the Empire highlighted their different approach to architecture. Lutyens saw it in terms of form, space and materials, while Baker saw it as a vehicle for symbolic meaning. Here one can appreciate Lutyens’s genius – the creation of the War Stone in every cemetery, altar-like but devoid of symbolism, given the variety of faiths represented by the dead, while Baker wanted crosses, Stars of David and Ashoka Pillars that missed the point of equality in death that lies at the heart of the IWGC’s work.

It’s a pity that Stewart’s book was not taken up by a major publisher with better resources. The copy-editing has clearly been done by someone unfamiliar with the British context and there are occasional proofing errors. The index is inadequate. One could also wish for more photographs reproduced to a higher standard. But this biography fills a substantial hole in early 20th-century British architectural history and, one hopes, will prompt a reappraisal of Baker’s extraordinary contributions.

Lutyens Trust members can buy a copy of Sir Herbert Baker: Architect to the British Empire by John Stewart with a 25 per cent discount and free standard shipping if the book is ordered through Eurospan, McFarland’s European distributor, at www.eurospanbookstore.com. Use the code, Baker25; valid until 31 December, 2022.

Some aspects of this review may raise eyebrows among Lutyens Trust members. Other readings of the biography may result in further responses, published in the Newsletter!