Thomas Mawson: Imperial Missionary of British Town-Planning John Crosby Freeman
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Document generated on 09/28/2021 11:13 p.m. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne Canadian Art Review Thomas Mawson: Imperial Missionary of British Town-Planning John Crosby Freeman Volume 2, Number 2, 1975 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1077393ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1077393ar See table of contents Publisher(s) UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | Association d'art des universités du Canada) ISSN 0315-9906 (print) 1918-4778 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Freeman, J. C. (1975). Thomas Mawson: Imperial Missionary of British Town-Planning. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 2(2), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.7202/1077393ar Tous droits réservés © UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit Association d'art des universités du Canada), 1975 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ THOMAS MAWSON : Impérial Missionary of British Town-Planning » Towards the end of the nineteenth century a new Mawson would work together towards self-evident sort of evangelist appeared upon the Impérial goals and concluded his invitations to them with the stage: the British Town-Planner. In those splendid unfortunate statement, “I do not think it necessary years before the First World War the sun never set to give you any instructions...’ Macbeth’s succes- on them ; along the lecture circuits of the Empire sor, J. H. Whitehouse (the first Secreatry of the they could be found spreading the good news of Trust), did little to clarify the situation. Having social progress through civic art. Some of these previously been connected with Cadbury’s famous self-appointed apostles of a new faith are today model city of Bourneville, Whitehouse would hâve regarded as revered ancestors of the town-planning assumed that the ultimate objective of the Trust profession. Patrick Gedded, for example, is re- was a model city for Scotland. Geddes and Maw membered largely because Lewis Mumford will not son therefore, leapt to the conclusion they were to let us forget him, having persuaded more then one be rivais for the redesigning of the whole of génération of philistines that his perplexities are Dunfermline with ail of the Trust’s money. Geddes profundities, his vision prophétie. Thomas Mawson saw it as an opportunity to realize his visionary is not so lucky. ideas about régional planning, apply the principles In 1903 both Geddes and Mawson were called to of biological évolution to human society and pursue Dunfermline by James Currie Macbeth, intérim his theory of “civics as applied sociology.” Maw secretary of the new Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, son, an ego in search of a crown, saw it as an for the purpose of furnishing the Trust “with a opportunity to enter the company of the great Report on the laying out of the [Pittencrieff] Park nineteenth-century planners of Paris, Berlin and and Glen.” Andrew Carnegie had funded this Trust Vienna. with the vague purpose of bringing “sweetness and Alas, one cannot redesign and be redesigned by light” to the citizens of the town he had left as a faith alone, especially in Scotland; for the local young boy.1 Macbeth assumed that Geddes and Scottish Trustées had other ideas. They did not wish to spend ail the money at once. That would be self-destructive; what pleasure and satisfaction was 1. Perhaps the source of his vagueness was the symbolic there in holding an office that is here today and nature of his Dunfermline Trust. He left town the son of an gone tomorrow?1 2 For that reason they would not impoverished weaver and made a legendary fortune in the United States. Before he left Dunfermline, he lived in a want to squander it on either Gedde’s or Mawson’s wretched weaver’s cottage ; when he returned to Scotland, plan. Moreover it was calculated that the land he lived in Skibo Castle. When he left Dunfermline, acquisition required by Mawson’s “improvements” Pittencrieff House, Park, and Glen were private and enclosed by a high fence. When he returned, he bought the property, had the fence taken down, the gates thrown open, 2. The Carnegie Dunfermline Trust is still active under the and the property made public. leadership of the présent Secretary Fred Mann. RACAR, Vol. 2 - N° 2 37 (Fig. 1) outside Pittencrieff alone would cost over burgh Zoo, was to advise on transforming Pitten- half-a-million pounds. And they certainly did not crieff Glen into a nature trail. From Mawson, wish to transform Dunfermline into a model city known for his first book The Art and Craft of after the pattern of some Sassenach chocolate- Garden-Making (lst édition 1900, end ed. 1901) and maker’s company town like Bourneville. Anyone of his “make-work” public parks like that of 1898 at the assumptions upon which Macbeth, Whitehouse, Hanley (Fig. 2) in the Potteries, they wanted a plan Geddes, Mawson or even Carnegie gave encoura for transforming the grounds of Pittencrieff House gement in this enterprise had the potential to cause into a municipal park. What they got was the a riot in Dunfermline. ridiculous and the sublime. Which was which When in 1904 the Trustées received two ambi- dépends upon one’s point of view, but in any case tious and lavishly produced plans from Mawson the Trustées would hâve neither, and in 1905 the and Geddes3 they were stunned. What they had offered Geddes and Mawson only a fraction of their expected from Geddes, an Edinburgh biologist with fees. Geddes grumbled, then graciously accepted; bad eyesight, who had attracted some notice as the Mawson sued and later settled out of court for the designer of simulated animal habitats at the Edin- cost of printing his report. Meanwhile, on 20 January 1905 as the Trustées were disengaging themselves from an ambitious English garden- 3. Thomas H. Mawson, "Pioneers Always Ahead”: The Carnegie Dunfermline Trust Scheme for Pittencrieff Park, designer and a strange Edinburgh intellectual, they Glen, and City Improvements (London; Thomas H. paid a visit to James Whitton, Glasgow’s Superin- Mawson, Hon. A.R.I.B.A., 28 Conduit Street, 1904). tendent of Public Parks. On 10 February they ’ Mawson organized his report under twenty-six headings of which only the last one — “Pittencrieff Park and Glen” asked him for “a scheme for the formation of walks — was devoted to what he had been engaged to do. Patrick and other work on the Park and Glen.” Whitton, Geddes, City Development : A Study of Parks, Gardens, an artist in the traditional sense, was accustomed to and Culture Institutes: A Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust (Edinburgh : Geddes and Company, doing what was asked of him, and what one sees 1904). today is largely his work. xu-uxm Figure 1 38 RACAR, Vol. 2 - N° 2 Both Mawson and Geddes were failures. But appeared to work. Its apogee came in 1912; by sometimes a failure in hand can be worth two 1915 both the civilization and Mawson’s career had successes in the bush. In those days, when a man begun to disintegrate. failed at home it was easy to export himself to a Because Mawson’s réputation was vitally linked more naïve and less resolved part of the Empire. to the above institutions his prestige languished After Dunfermline, Geddes developed a travelling with theirs in the 1920s. Yet though weakened by exhibition of photographs, prints and maps illustra- the First World War, income tax and the Russian ting his ideas and exported himself to the eastern Révolution, these institutions continued to commis parts of the British Empire, especially India, where sion works of art. Before the war they had sponso- he made a number of civic improvement reports.4 red civic monuments to their living faithful; after- Mawson left for the western dominions. “Dunfer wards it was monuments to their faithful departed. mline brought me a rich reward,’’ he said in his Predictably Mawson was involved in preserving the autobiography, “for without my published report it memory of the old civilization. In 1924 he was one is safe to say that I would never hâve been of the nine founding members of the Royal Fine commissioned to replan so many Canadian Arts Commission, an agency responsible for the towns.”5 approval of War Memorials.7 Because Mawson’s As few of Mawson’s and Geddes’s plans at home favorite son had been killed in the war he had more or abroad were actually carried out (many were than a professional interest in this. In the son’s later altered or destroyed), Geddes is remembered memory, he designed a garden city for crippled war for what he said and Mawson forgotten for what he vétérans which (true to form) he published in a did. Mawson’s more important commissions in- book entitled An Impérial Obligation (1917). clude the Peace Palace Gardens at the Hague Mawson spent the last years of his life propaga- (1908); involvement from 1912-13 in planning the ting his own réputation. His autobiography was grounds of four Canadian universities, Dalhousie published in 1927, seven years before his death. The (Halifax), Saskatchewan (Saskatoon), Calgary, motto on its title-page (Fig. 4) fixes the ideological and British Columbia (Vancouver); planning in distance between Mawson’s concept of art and that 1912 at Banff, Calgary, Regina, in 1913 at Athens; of the contemporary avant-garde.