Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria

MR LAYARD

Piccadilly, 8th July 1861.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to state that Lord Elcho this afternoon moved a Resolution that the new Foreign Office should not be built in the Palladian style. Mr Charles Buxton seconded the Motion. Mr Cowper opposed it, stating reasons for preferring the Italian style to the Gothic. Mr Layard was for neither, but seemed to wish that somebody would invent a new style of architecture. Mr Tite, the architect, was strongly for the Italian style; Lord John Manners, swayed by erroneous views in religion and taste, was enthusiastic for Gothic; Mr Dudley Fortescue confided in a low voice to a limited range of hearers some weak arguments in favour of Gothic; Mr Osborne seemed to be against everything that anybody had ever proposed, and wanted to put off the building till some plan better suited to his own taste should have been invented. Viscount Palmerston answered the objections made to the Italian plan, and Lord Elcho's Motion was negatived by 188 to 75. The House then went into Committee of Supply, and the first estimate being that for the Foreign Office, some of the Gothic party who had not been able to deliver their speeches on Lord Elcho's Motion, let them off on this estimate....

Footnote 20: Now Earl of Wemyss.

Footnote 21: Mr William Cowper, at this time First Commissioner of Works.

Footnote 22: Mr (afterwards Sir) William Tite, was now Member for Bath; he had been the architect entrusted with the task of rebuilding the Royal Exchange.

Footnote 23: Mr Gilbert Scott had made his first designs for the new Foreign Office in the Gothic style; his appointment as architect for the building was made by the Derby Government, but the scheme which they favoured, for a Gothic building, was opposed by Lord Palmerston, and Scott adopted the Italian style in deference to his views.