Sir Christopher Wren Part 12

In a journal written for a Dr. Bateman, the friend who gave him the letters to Lord S. Albans, he says:

'I have busied myself in surveying the most esteemed Fabrics of Paris, and the country round; the Louvre for a while was my daily object where no less than a thousand hands are constantly employed in the works; some in laying mighty Foundations, some in raising the stories, columns, and entablements &c. with vast stones, by great and useful engines, others in carving, inlaying of marbles, plaistering, painting, gilding &c., which altogether makes a School of Architecture, the best probably at this day in Europe. The college of the Four Nations,[102] is usually admired, but the Artist had purposely set it ill-favouredly that he might shew his wit in struggling with an ill-convenienced situation. An Academy of Painters, Sculptors, Architects and the chief Artificers of the Louvre, meet every first and last Sat.u.r.day of the month. Mons.

Colbert, Surintendant, comes to the works of the Louvre every Wednesday, and if business hinders not, Thursday. The Workmen are paid every Sunday duly. Mons. Abbe Charles introduced me to the acquaintance of Bernini,[103] who showed me his designs of the Louvre, and of the King's Statue. Abbe Bruno keeps the curious rarities of the Duke of Orleans' library, well filled with excellent Intaglios, medals, books of Plants and Fowls in miniature. Abbe Burdelo keeps an Academy at his house for Philosophy every Monday afternoon. But I must not think to describe Paris, and the numerous observables there in the compa.s.s of a short letter. The King's Houses I could not miss, Fontainbleau has a stately wildness and vastness suitable to the Desert it stands in.

['_TO PRY INTO TRADES AND ARTS._']

'The antique ma.s.s of the Castle of S. Germains and the hanging gardens are delightfully surprising (I mean to any man of judgement), for the pleasures below vanish away in the breath that is spent in ascending. The Palace, or if you please the Cabinet, of Versailles call'd me twice to view it; the mixtures of brick, stone, blue tile and gold make it look like a rich livery: not an inch within but is crowded with little curiosities of ornaments: the women as they make here the language and fas.h.i.+ons and meddle with Politics and Philosophy, so they sway also in Architecture; works of Filgrand and little Knacks are in great vogue; but Building certainly ought to have the attribute of Eternal and therefore the only thing uncapable of new Fas.h.i.+ons. The masculine furniture of _Palais Mazarine_ pleased me much better, where is a great and n.o.ble collection of antique Statues and Bustoes, (many of porphyry), good Ba.s.so-relievos: excellent pictures of the great masters, fine Arras, true Mosaics, besides _pieces de Raport_[104]

in compartiments and pavements, vases of porcelain painted by Raphael, and infinite other rarities. The best of which now furnish the glorious appartment of the Queen Mother at the Louvre which I saw many times. After the incomparable villas of Vaux and Maisons, I shall name but Ruel, Coutances, Chilly, Essoane, St. Maur, St.

Mande, Issy, Meudon, Rincy, Chantilly, Verneuil, Liancour, all which, and I might add many others, I have surveyed, and that I might not lose the impressions of them, I shall bring you all France on paper. Bernini's design of the Louvre I would have given my skin for; but the old reserved Italian gave me but a few minutes' view; it was five designs on paper, for which he hath received as many thousand pistoles. I had only time to copy it in my fancy and memory, and shall be able, by discourse and a crayon, to give you a tolerable account of it. I have purchased a great deal of taille-douce, that I might give our countrymen examples of ornaments and grotesques, in which the Italians themselves confess the French to excel. I hope I shall give you a very good account of all the best artists of France; my business now is to pry into trades and arts. I put myself into all shapes to humour them; it is a comedy to me, and though sometimes expenseful, I am yet loth to leave it.' There follows a long list of what he calls 'the most noted artisans within my knowledge or acquaintance,' in which is many a famous name, Bernini, Poussin, Mignard, Mansard, &c., and then he says, 'My Lord Berkeley returns to England at Christmas, when I propose to take the opportunity of his company, and by that time to perfect what I have on the anvil--observations on the present state of architecture, arts, and manufactures in France.'

With the great men Latin was probably the common tongue, but with the artizans he must have talked in French, and have either possessed or acquired no small mastery of the language and of the technical terms of their various trades. The 'observations' were either never hammered into the shape Wren wished, or else were subsequently lost or copied by someone else, as frequently happened to one so careless of his own fame as was Wren. In January 1666, the English Amba.s.sador was recalled from Paris, and the war began between England, and the Netherlands with France for their ally.

[_A THANKOFFERING._]

Pembroke Chapel was meanwhile completed, and

'being beautified with splendid and decorous furniture and amply endowed with an annual revenue, was upon the feast of S. Matthew'

(the Bishop's patron saint) '1665, solemnly consecrated and dedicated by Bishop Wren in person and by his Episcopal authority to the honour of Almighty G.o.d. A n.o.ble and lasting monument of the rare piety and munificence of that great and wise Prelate and in every point accorded to his character, which was so well known that the sole nomination of the founder was a sufficient account of the magnificence of the foundation. Before evening service the exterior or outer chapel and the cloister leading to it (a new fabrick of Sir R. Hitcham's foundation) were by his Lords.h.i.+p also consecrated for places of sepulture for the use of the Society, together with a cell or vault at the East end of the chapel under the altar for a dormitory for his Lords.h.i.+p.'[105]

Bishop Wren must have looked with joy on the completion of his thankoffering, and may have guessed, as he surveyed its beautiful proportions, that he had set his nephew, its young architect, on the road to fame. Very little is told us of the latter years of Wren's Episcopate; one or two stories are given in the 'Parentalia' and then contradicted, but it seems he kept his old firmness. In 1662 he held the second Visitation of his Diocese and the articles of inquiry and directions show no change in his opinions and no deference to Puritan notions. It was by a stretch of his power as Visitor that he admitted Dr. Beaumont to be master of Peterhouse, though the college had nominated two other deserving persons, of whom Cosin was one. The choice proved, in the end, a very wise one. He could be lenient also when he thought it right, and admitted several Fellows of Jesus College who came to him, in some fear of a refusal, for inst.i.tution. He 'was very fair and civil towards them, despatched them without the usual height of the fees and persuaded them to studiousness and peace against all animosities.' So says a contemporary letter quoted in the 'Parentalia.'

Wren had come home at Christmas to find London comparatively free from the plague, and people gradually returning. The Royal Society, whose meetings had of course ceased during the infection, busied themselves in investigations as to the plague, and the possible methods of preventing it. It still raged in the country, and especially at Cambridge, driving Isaac Newton from his lectures there to the garden at Woolsthorpe in Lincolns.h.i.+re, where the idea of the law of gravitation first occurred to his mind.

The repair of S. Paul's was again discussed and commissioners appointed in 1666, among whom were Evelyn, Wren, Dean Sancroft, and the then Bishop of London, who was Humphrey Henchman, the early friend of George Herbert.

[_FIRE OF LONDON._]

On August 27th they inspected the cathedral. Two of the commissioners, Mr. Chichley and Mr. Prat, evidently wished to do as little as possible, declaring, when the nave was proved to lean outwards on both sides, 'it was so built for an effect of the perspective,' and proposing to repair the steeple on its old foundations. Wren thought very differently, insisted on new foundations, renewed his former proposal of 'a n.o.ble cupola' which was strongly supported by Evelyn, who had never forgotten the grandeur of S. Peter's just completed when he went to Rome as a young man in 1644. They retired to the Deanery to give their opinions in writing, promising to send estimates of the cost of their several plans.

Six days later a new disaster overwhelmed London and solved the question of repairing the cathedral. On the night of September 2nd the Fire of London began; for three days and four nights it burned unchecked, having gained such strength during the first panic that it could not be beaten back, the sparks constantly kindling new centres of flame.

'All the skie,' says Evelyn,[106] 'was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. G.o.d grant mine eyes may never behold the like who now saw 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses and churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot and inflam'd that at last one was not able to approch it, so that they were forc'd to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for neere two miles in length and one in bredth. The clowds also of smoke were dismall and reached upon computation neere fifty-six miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoone burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or of the last day.

'_Sept. 4._--The burning still rages and it was now gotten as far as the Inner Temple; all Fleet Streete, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paules' Chaine, Watling Streete now flaming and most of it reduced to ashes; the stones of Paules flew like granados, the mealting lead running downe the streetes in a streame and the very pavement glowing with fiery rednesse so as no horse nor man was able to tread them and the demolition had stopped all the pa.s.sages so as no help could be applied. The Eastern wind still more impetuously driving the flames forward. Nothing but the Almighty power of G.o.d was able to stop them, for vaine was the help of man.'

At last the people were roused to take some steps. King Charles, who showed on this occasion great courage and presence of mind, got by water to the Tower and insisted on the houses near being blown up so as to prevent the flames from reaching the powder magazine.

[_ITS LONG CONTINUANCE._]

Pepys gives a vivid account of the dismay and confusion; the goods removed and removed again as the fire reached what had been thought to be places of safety; the rain of fire drops, and the ever-new places in which the fire broke out, and his own difficulties of getting anything to eat but the cold remains of his Sunday's dinner! On September 17 he went by water to Greenwich--'seeing the City all the way, a sad sight much fire being in it still.' S. Paul's suffered terribly; the Portico was split and rent, nothing but the inscription remaining, of which each letter was perfect. The heat had calcined the largest blocks of stone, the Portland stone flew off wherever the flames touched it; the lead roof (no less than six acres by measure[107]), melted and fell in, and carrying everything with it in its fall, broke into S. Faith's, the crypt below the choir, where the books belonging to the Stationers'

Hall had been carried for safety. They caught fire and continued burning for a week. The altar and roof above it, though of lead, remained untouched, and one Bishop's tomb.[108] When at length the fire burnt out, the city was a 'ruinous heap,' the air still so hot as almost to singe the hair of those who sought amongst the ruins for some remains of former wealth. In the fields all round were two hundred thousand people of all cla.s.ses equally dest.i.tute, silent from the very greatness of their calamity and asking no relief. The King did his utmost for them, and a proclamation was made for the country to come in and refresh them.

Most fortunately the weather was warm and fair.

For a few days their stupor lasted, when it was broken into by a general alarm that the Dutch were in the river burning all the s.h.i.+pping. When this was at length appeased, the people flocked back to what had been the city, and either set up little sheds where their houses had been or took refuge with friends whose dwellings were uninjured, so that in four days' time of the hundreds who had thronged the fields not one remained.

To rebuild the city was an urgent necessity, and while the flames were in parts still burning Wren and Evelyn had both made plans for a new city and presented them to the King. Wren's was the first shown to King Charles, and though there is much resemblance between it and that of Evelyn, yet Wren's is evidently the more useful, as well as the finer plan of the two, and was the one which the King accepted. All persons were agreed that to allow the old, narrow, filthy streets, with their magazines of oil and rosin, and their wooden houses touching each other overhead, to be put back was only to insure another plague and another fire, but the manner of rebuilding was in as great dispute as was the origin of the fire. Pepys believed that it was caused by the Dutch, who in the following year did venture into Chatham and burnt several men-of-war as they lay at anchor there; but the popular idea was that it was caused by the French and the Roman Catholics, and there were plenty ready to swear that they had seen foreigners kindling the flames in fresh places by throwing fire-b.a.l.l.s into the houses. Some said it was done by the Puritans, and very few appear to have accepted the theory, probably the true one, that it was caused by the over-heating of a baker's oven.

Christopher Wren began his work by having the ruins cleared away. It was no easy task, especially as every now and then the flames would break out anew when the air reached the cellars where they had been smouldering. But it was a mere matter of necessity, as until this was done it was not possible to pa.s.s to and fro or take the necessary levels and measurements. He also repaired a portion of the west end of S.

Paul's, which best permitted it, for divine service. It was employment enough for one man, but as the evenings grew longer, in the intervals of elaborating his plans for the new city, he returned to the Royal Society and attended all its meetings.

Improvements in building naturally occupied much of the Society's attention. Mr. Hooke produced a scheme for a better method of brick-making;[109] new models for the London granaries were required, and Wren gave an account of those at Dantzic.

[_DEATH OF BISHOP WREN._]

On April 24, 1667, his uncle, the Bishop of Ely, died, at the age of eighty-one, at Ely House, in Holborn, which had probably been his chief abode, though he left it on occasions for the work of his diocese and for the consecration of the chapel at Pembroke Hall. Back to his well-loved University, and to the resting-place he had prepared for himself underneath the altar of the chapel, the Bishop's remains were slowly borne during the first bright days of May, attended by 'his children, his alliance, and his family.' The Heralds' College conducted the funeral with full dignity and solemnity. When they reached Cambridge the Vice-Chancellor and the whole university met the procession, which was headed by Rouge Dragon, Pursuivant-at-arms, carrying the silver-gilt Crozier, and Norroy, King-at-arms, carrying the silver-gilt Mitre, both of which, as well as a pair of ma.s.sive silver altar candlesticks, the Bishop had provided a year before. On May 9, with the same attendance, which included 'twenty-four scholars of S. John's, Peter House, and Pembroke who were his relations,'[110] the coffin was borne to Pembroke Chapel from the Registry, at the end of the Regent's Walk, where it had lain in state for two days, and after Evening Service had been said was laid in a 'coffin of one fair whole stone,' in the vault of the chapel.

Dr. Pearson p.r.o.nounced a Latin oration over it, recalling the chief events of the Bishop's long and troubled life, describing his high-minded character, his resolute self-denial, and contrasting his conduct in never seeking, or by the least word asking, for promotion, but rather being besought to accept it, with those who gaped for church preferment, and rather s.n.a.t.c.hed honours than received them. Dr. Pearson dwelt on his liberality to the University, on his never enriching his family out of the revenues of the sees he had ruled; and paid a warm tribute to the courage and faith with which he had fought for the Church, and either alone, or amongst very few, had understood her discipline and dared to revive it.

[_BISHOP WREN'S SONS._]

Of the four sons who survived the Bishop, Matthew, the eldest, early attracted notice by an answer to Harrington's 'Commonwealth of Oceana'

and by a pamphlet 'Monarchy a.s.serted,' a vindication of a former work written in 1659. He was highly thought of by the Royalists, and was a member of the Parliament which met in 1661. He was Lord Clarendon's secretary, remained loyal to him during his unmerited disgrace, and was then taken by the Duke of York as his secretary. Matthew remained with the Duke until 1672; when he died and was buried in the vault at Pembroke Chapel. He had taken a share in most of the political events of his day, always with honour and credit. Thomas, the next brother, left the profession of medicine, received holy orders, and was given the Rectory of Littlebury in Ess.e.x by his father; a preferment that he held until his death in 1680. Bishop Wren also made him Archdeacon of Ely. He was a great musician and a member of the Royal Society. The two younger sons, Charles and William, were both Oxford scholars, and received degrees at the Restoration. Charles sat for Cambridge in the Parliament of 1685, called by James II. on his accession. All these three younger sons received degrees in 1660, with many others who had been ejected by the Parliamentary Visitors in 1648-9. William Wren, who was made a knight, was a barrister of the Middle Temple, and enjoyed the questionable advantage of Judge Jeffreys' acquaintance. Jeffreys, then Lord Chancellor, writing to Pepys[111] in 1687, says:--

'My most Hon^{ed} Friend,--The bearer, Capt. Wren, came to mee this evening, with a strong fancy that a recommendation of myne might at least ent.i.tle him to your favourable reception; His civillities to my brother and his relation to honest Will Wren, and you know who else, emboldens me to offer my request on his behalfe. I hope he has served our M^r. well, and is capable of being an object of the King's favour in his request; however, I am sure I shall be excused for this impertinency, because I will gladly, in my way, embrace all opportunities wherein I may manifest myselfe to be what I here a.s.sure you I am, Sir,

'Your most entirely affectionate 'Friend and Servant, 'JEFFREYS, C.'

William Wren died in 1689 and was buried in the Temple Church. There is no mention of the marriage of any of the Bishop's children, and respecting the daughters I can find no record whatever, so it seems that that branch of the Wren family died out. Captain Wren was probably one of the Durham Wrens, or of those who lived at Withibrook in Warwicks.h.i.+re and are mentioned by Dugdale.

FOOTNOTES:

[97] For an account of the great rarity of stone roofs see Fergusson's _Ill.u.s.trated Handbook of Architecture_, vol. ii.

p. 879. It is said that Wren used often to look at the beautiful roof of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and say he would build such another if anyone would tell him where to put the first stone.

[98] 'Among the sacred ruins of S. Paul's Church laid down his own (sure that both will rise again).' Sancroft, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeded him.

[99] _Oxford_, vol. i. p. 473. Ayliffe.

[100] _Diary_, vol. ii. p. 273, _et seq._, ed. 1828.

[101] Dr. Ralph Bathurst, born 1620, educated at Coventry and Oxford. Was ordained, but during the rebellion maintained himself by the practice of medicine. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1688 its president. He was president of Trinity from 1644 till his death in 1704. He was Dean of Wells, and was offered the bishopric, but refused it as taking him from his college and hindering the improvements he was making there. Evelyn speaks highly of his preaching and his admirable parts and learning.'

[102] Wren refers to the University of Paris, which was divided into four faculties--arts (letters and science), theology, civil and canon law, and medicine. The faculty of arts was divided into four _nations_. That of France divided again into five provinces or tribes, that of Picardy divided in the same way, that of Normandy, and that of Germany which was divided into two tribes, that of the continents (divided into two provinces), and that of the islanders, which included Great Britain and Ireland.--_Dictionnaire Historique de la France_, par L. Lalanne.

[103] Gio. Bernini was born at Naples 1598 and was a great sculptor as well as architect. He made a bust of Charles I. of England after a picture by Vand.y.k.e. When the bust was carried to the king's house at Chelsea his Majesty with a train of n.o.bles went to view it, and as they were viewing it a hawk flew over their heads with a partridge in his claw which he had wounded to death. Some of the partridge's blood fell on the neck of the bust, where it always remained without being wiped off.

This bust, with the picture from which it was taken, is thought to have perished in the fire at Whitehall, 1697.--_Biographical History_, vol. ii. p. 88. Grainger.

Bernini was splendidly received at Paris and employed in several works of sculpture, among which was a bust of Louis XIV., probably the one to which Wren refers. His design for the Louvre was accepted, and he had just begun to work it out at the time Wren wrote, but Colbert and the two Perraults stirred up so many difficulties that Bernini abandoned the task, and the Louvre was left in the hands of Claude Perrault. Bernini returned to Rome and died there in 1680.

[104] _i.e._ Mosaic.

[105] Wood. _Athenae Oxoniensis_, vol. i. p. 735. He used certain peculiarities in the Act of Consecration which have been repeated at the consecration of the addition to the chapel, March 25, 1881.

[106] _Diary_, September, 1666.

[107] Evelyn's _Diary_, September, 1666.

[108] That of Robert de Braybrook (Bishop of London 1382 and 1405).

The tomb of Donne (Dean of S. Paul's 1621-1631) was not entirely destroyed.

[109] The bricks, which were temporarily used in the building of S.