Sir Christopher Wren Part 20

All Hallows the Great, in Thames Street, a plain brick and stone edifice with a strong square tower, was then completed: it, like by far the greater number of the City churches, had been repaired and beautified under the vigorous rule of Laud while Bishop of London. Thomas White, who came into the living a few months only before the Fire, was afterwards as Bishop of Peterborough one of the famous 'Seven Bishops.'

At the time when Wren rebuilt the church the living was held by the learned church historian, Dr. William Cave.[183]

S. Mildred's, Bread Street, is another church belonging to this date.

It is so hidden by the tall warehouses that have sprung up round it that it is but little known; but its red brick tower, tall spire, and, above all, its most light and graceful dome, are all after Wren's best manner.

The destruction of this beautiful little church has actually been threatened, but it has been ably defended, and it is to be hoped it will not add another name to the black list of desecrated City churches.

[Sidenote: _S. JAMES'S, WESTMINSTER._]

A third church belonging to this year is S. James's, Westminster, then called 'in the fields,' from the large parish of S. Martin's, out of which it was taken. It was built princ.i.p.ally at the expense of Henry Jermyn, Earl of S. Albans, Wren's Paris friend, who gave his name to Jermyn Street, where the church stands.

The proportions of S. James's and the technical skill displayed in building it, especially the construction of the roof, have been always admired. Wren, who was allowed but a moderate sum to expend upon it, was proud of having combined beauty with 'the cheapest of any form I could invent.'[184] When the church was newly done, with its bricks red instead of darkly grimed with smoke, with the handsome pillared entrance to the south aisle, a flight of steps leading up to it, which have vanished, leaving only as a mark the closed iron gates in the railings, without the strange excrescence that now does duty as a porch--its exterior must have been far more attractive than it is now; the little pinched steeple[185] is said, as indeed one would imagine, to be no building of Wren's. Within, Evelyn[186] gives us his description of the effect.

'I went to see the new church at S. James's elegantly built; the altar was especially adorned, the white marble inclosure curiously and richly carved, the flowers and garlands about the walls by Mr.

Gibbons in wood; a pelican with her young at her breast, just over the altar in the carved compartment and border, invironing the purple velvet fringed with I.H.S. richly embroidered, and most n.o.ble plate were given by Sir R. Geere to the value (as was said) of 200_l._ There was no altar anywhere in England nor has there been abroad more handsomely adorned.'

The font, now well placed in a baptistery beneath the tower, is one of Gibbons' few works in marble. It represents Adam and Eve, two detached statuettes standing on either side of the Tree of Knowledge, the branches of which support a bowl whereon are finely cut in low relief the Ark of Noah, and the baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch. With all this, and without the high, stiff indevout pews which now disfigure the church--pews that Sir Christopher did not put there, and to the presence of which in any of his churches he always strongly objected, it must have been a decidedly handsome edifice. The organ, built by Renatus Harris, was made for James II.'s timber chapel at the camp on Hounslow Heath; after the King's flight Wren obtained the organ from Queen Mary for S. James's Church.

[Sidenote: _S. BENNET, PAUL'S WHARF._]

Dr. Tenison, who then held S. James's jointly with S. Martin's, obtained the timbers of the chapel and used them in erecting the chapel of the Holy Trinity in Conduit Street,[187] which was also included in the enormous parish of S. Martin. S. Bennet, Paul's Wharf,[188] was finished in this year; picturesque and characteristic in its red brick, stone carving, well suited to its situation, then less cramped and overshadowed than it is now.

Its rector, Mr. Peter Lane, had experienced all the greater perils that had lately befallen the City; presented to the living in 1662, he steadily ministered there through the terrible time of the plague, and was then burnt out by the Great Fire. He lived, however, to return and to minister for five years in the new church built by Sir Christopher.

In this church Inigo Jones was buried, in the darkest days of the Rebellion.

The handsome Church of S. James's, Garlickhithe, with its curious columnated steeple, and its projecting clock surmounted by a figure, is also of this date.

It was well that Sir Christopher had been able to get even this much of his numerous works finished, for the winter of 1683-4 was of exceptional severity. On December 23 the Thames was frozen over; on January 9, Evelyn[189] 'went crosse the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to beare not only streetes of booths in which they roasted meate and had divers shops of wares, quite acrosse in a towne, but coaches, carts, and horses pa.s.sed over.' Evelyn himself drove across it to Lambeth to dine with Archbishop Sancroft, who had succeeded Sheldon in 1677.

'London,'--says Evelyn a few days later in words which, alas, still describe but too vividly a genuine 'London fog,'--

'by reason of the excessive coldnesse hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so filled with the fuliginous steame of the sea-coale that hardly could one see crosse the streetes, and this filling the lungs with its grosse particles exceedingly obstructed the breath so as one could scarcely breathe. Here was no water to be had from the pipes and engines, nor could the brewers and other tradesmen worke, and every moment was full of disastrous accidents.'

In addition to this dismal state of things 'the small pox was very mortal.'

For eight weeks no foreign posts reached the city, for 'the very sea was so locked up with ice that no vessell could stir out or come in.' It was not until April was advanced that there was any sign of spring. It was certainly no building weather, and must have sharply tried the rising Choir of S. Paul's. Sir Christopher made a journey to Chichester on the invitation of the old Bishop, Guy Carleton, to examine the spire of the Cathedral. The whole building had suffered terribly under the wanton sack of Sir William Waller and his men, and required extensive repair.

Sir Christopher

'for about two hours viewed the tower at the north west angle both without and within, and above and below, and observed the great want of repairs especially in the great western tower; made his report; proposing to clear away the ruin of the fallen tower; to pull down the south western tower; to shorten the nave by one arch, and to subst.i.tute a fair built west end of his own.'[190]

[_CHICHESTER SPIRE._]

He next examined the beautiful spire, well known as a landmark to sailors in the channel, sister spire to that most perfect one at Salisbury which he has preserved to this day. He adopted a different plan with the Chichester spire to that which he had formerly pursued, for he took down the top of the spire, and fastened to the finial within an immense pendulum of yellow fir wood, which in great gales preserved exactly the balance of the spire. This lasted till 1813, when the pendulum was repaired by Mr. Elmes, and so remained until, after a great gale in 1861, the spire fell in; it has since been rebuilt, and is now rather higher than it was formerly. The other part of Wren's scheme was not acted upon. At this time he built Fawley Court in Oxfords.h.i.+re: the place had lain in ruins since the civil war, when it suffered, though the property of Sir Bulstrode Whitelock, even more from Cromwell's troops than from those of Prince Rupert. Sir Bulstrode's descendants sold the property to Mr. William Freeman, who pulled the ruins down and got Sir Christopher to build the present Court, with its four fronts, handsome hall, and characteristic festoons of flowers in the ceiling.

In this same year Wren was made Controller of the Works, for which he received a salary of 9_l._ 2_s._ 6_d._ a year; not a very magnificent sum considering that a good deal of petty work and cares went with the office. It was necessary to see that this person had not incroached on the castle stables, or that person on the castle ditch; to measure and plan, and settle little quarrels and disputes in a way infinitely tormenting, one would think, to a man who had already such enormous works to consider. But Wren's genius was a patient one, and had a great grasp of details; he dealt with point after point as it arose, and no one seems ever to have complained of his breaking an engagement or neglecting to settle their difficulties.

While this work was going on all London was startled by the tidings of Charles II.'s sudden illness and death, when all the luxury of the Court was at its height. With all his grave faults, the King's death caused considerable grief throughout England; to both Wren and Evelyn he had been always kind and friendly, and both looked with great anxiety to the reign of his successor.

The Royal Society certainly lost a steady friend in Charles II. and was soon to see its court favour fade away. It was, however, much occupied with a discussion between Newton and Robert Hooke concerning the planetary motions. The question was one which deeply interested Wren, and which hitherto he had not been able to answer. As he and Hooke were walking together--Wren, whom one can never imagine but with all the courtesy and refinement of a finished gentleman, and Hooke half a miser, utterly slovenly, and jealous of any rising fame--they were met by Dr.

Halley, an astronomer of some note even then, who was struggling with this problem and confessed that he had hitherto failed.

Wren promised a book worth forty s.h.i.+llings to whoever should solve the problem, whereupon Hooke declared he understood it from Kepler's 'Law of Periods and Distances,' and would show his solution some day to Wren; this he never did, and very soon Newton published his 'Principia,'[191]

in which he solved this problem, acknowledging freely that Wren and Halley had independently deduced the law of gravity from Kepler's second law. He had a great quarrel with Hooke, the less to be wondered at, as, excepting Sir Christopher, Hooke quarrelled with everybody and was a philosopher of the sourest type. In 1685 Sir Christopher was returned to Parliament for the borough of Plympton S. Maurice, in Devons.h.i.+re, a Parliament in which his cousin Charles also sat. The elections in Devons.h.i.+re are supposed to have been specially influenced by the Court.

The 'Parentalia' gives no hint even of what his politics were, whether he spoke often or how he voted. And yet it was a stormy time. The Parliament had not sat a month before Monmouth's brief rebellion began, to be bloodily quenched; public feeling was in a state of irritation and suspense, no one feeling sure what King James might not do. He did continue Wren unmolested in the S. Paul's commission, and the progress of the building was steady, though probably its architect thought with no light anxiety that it might be used for services other than those for which it was designed.

The same doubt may have clouded his satisfaction in the many churches which were finished in this and the immediately following years. S.

Martin's on Ludgate Hill, closely wedged in by the neighbouring houses, with its little tapering spire, of which that of S. James's, Westminster, appears a caricature, should have had its place among the churches of the previous year. It harmonizes beautifully with the great dome of S. Paul's. Sir Christopher bestowed on the inside much of the ornament, the festoons and the carving, which its situation did not allow him to bestow on the outside; in those days it had daily services and may well have stood open, offering 'a shadow from the heat' to the incessant pa.s.sers-by.

S. Alban's, Wood Street, is in the pointed style of architecture in which Wren's genius generally felt fettered, though, as in the case of S. Michael's, Cornhill, he sometimes dealt very successfully with it.

[Sidenote: '_AN ALTAR-PIECE._']

S. Mary Magdalene's, Fish Street,[192] is more after Wren's usual manner, with its good proportions, its highly ornamented round-headed windows, its stone bal.u.s.trade and solid square stone tower, with the little steeple rising from it on seven steps. Within, carving in 'right oak' was bestowed with no sparing hand, especially in the altar-piece.

And here one may say that, while defects in church arrangement, such as galleries, pews, and the like, are invariably laid on Sir Christopher and said to be the inevitable concomitants of his style, it should be borne in mind that in many and many an instance the churchwardens during the eighteenth century repewed and 'beautified' the churches which Wren had left as completed; in what style, and on what principle one can readily guess. It should be remembered also that an 'altar-piece,' as the old books call it, was an invariable part of his design. If there was rich carving, if there was black and white marble, he placed it there; the altar was the princ.i.p.al part of the church in his eyes, even though he did not often avail himself of the dignity given by a flight of steps. The close altar rails which are now not admired, were, it must be remembered, ordered by Archbishop Laud to protect the Holy Table from profanation, and were always so placed by Wren.

S. Mary Magdalene's included the parish of S. Gregory, the little church which nestled by old S. Paul's, so that Fuller described the Cathedral as 'the mother church, having a babe in her arms.'[194]

S. Bennet's, Gracechurch Street, or Gra.s.schurch Street, as it was really named, from a herb market formerly held hard by, is, or rather was, of the same date. It was well placed at the corner of two streets, and stood boldly out with a tall tower crowned with a cupola and slender spire; the interior was full of carving and ornament. S. Bennet's is, however, a thing of the past; the building is gone, the site desecrated, and the memory of such an edifice alone survives in the names of the streets which formerly led to and now usurp its place.

The little plain Church of S. Matthew, Friday Street, close pressed by neighbouring houses, is the last completed in this year. Obscure as the street where it stands may have been, it was full of a.s.sociations for Wren. In Friday Street was the house where his aunt Anna lived, and where his uncle Matthew 'lay,' when summoned to that memorable conference with Bishop Andrewes. Hard by in the parish of S. Peter's, Eastcheap, now incorporated with that of S. Matthew, Christopher's merchant grandfather had lived and died, and there his own father had been born. S. Peter's churchyard was preserved, and its single plane-tree is carefully protected.

[_COMPLAINTS FROM WINCHESTER._]

S. Matthew's has a less pleasant a.s.sociation: the living was for a time held by the notorious Henry Burton,[195] the friend and ally of Prynne.

Burton was at first designed to accompany the Prince of Wales to Spain, but doubts of his principles arising, he was rejected and dismissed from his attendance as the Prince's chaplain. This formed one strong motive for the bitter spite he bore to the church of his ordination. It is likely also that he stirred Prynne's malice against Bishop Wren, who appears to have been Burton's successor in the vacant chaplaincy.

The lesser details of the Surveyor-General's work must this year have been a burden. There were complaints from Winchester, where the sudden stoppage of the buildings and plans for the palace caused great inconvenience; a complaint from Catherine Barton, the beautiful niece of Sir Isaac Newton, widow of Colonel Barton, who sold her farm to Charles II., and by the trickery of the agent never received her money; and a complaint of the same kind from Sir Richard Tichbourne's son. Sir Christopher examined both these cases carefully, and compelled the agent to submit, and to satisfy the parties. Then there were troubles with the Duke of Buckingham and the 'chaos' he had made in Spring Gardens, that chaos so vividly described in 'Peveril of the Peak.' n.o.body but Wren could give the estimates for the new stables at S. James's Palace, or order the new planting at Hampton Court and in Greenwich Park, or secure the proper t.i.thes for the Rector of S. Thomas's, Winchester.

Again, there was Verrio the painter's account for work done at Whitehall and Windsor to be examined. For the chapel at Whitehall Verrio demanded 1,250_l._, and, says Wren, 'I suppose when the rest of the ceiling and walls are finished, as they ought to be, it may fully deserve it.' The whole bill was 2,050_l._, of which Verrio had received already more than 1,400_l._, so that he may be reckoned as fortunate.

It is not wonderful that in 1686, Wren attended no meeting of the Society. Two churches were finished this year: S. Clement's, East Cheap, and S. Mary's, Abchurch, in Cannon Street.

S. Clement's, with its square tower and bal.u.s.trade, has within a great deal of fine oak carving, and its ceiling adorned with one great circle with an outer line of curious fretwork. Bishop Pearson was rector before the Fire, and the famous treatise on the Nicene Creed is dedicated to his paris.h.i.+oners there.

S. Mary's, with its quaint little round windows and flat-topped roof, is not externally beautiful, but within it is one of the gems which Wren bestowed on out-of-the-way nooks: its cupola[196] is gracefully supported on eight arches and pendentives, the east end is rich with Gibbons' carving of festoons of fruit, palm leaves and a pelican in her piety. Much handsome work has also been bestowed on the inside doorcases.

[_CARVERS IN WOOD._]

Wren's promise to Evelyn to employ Gibbons was certainly redeemed; for, besides the works which have been glanced at, Gibbons was busied on the stalls of S. Paul's choir, where, darkened but uninjured by time, his work stands out in all the peculiar grace and tenderness which his chisel could give to wood. The angels which cl.u.s.ter beneath the great organ seem themselves to be taking part in the music which flows from it, and are as unlike as possible to the lumps of marble or wood with which other hands too often deform a church, and which the old guide-books term 'Cupids'!

Still, it is a physical impossibility that all the work which bears Gibbons' name is by him and him only.

[_MAKING A FORTUNE._]

The fame of the Cathedral, its architect, and its carvings, was widely spread, and brought many from the country to seek for work on the new building. Of one of these a curious account remains.[197] A young man, named Philip Wood, of Sudbury, Suffolk, who had great skill in carving, came up to London to make, if he could, sufficient fortune to enable him to marry the daughter of his patron, a retired London merchant named Haybittle. After long waiting in London, without work, till his money was all but spent, he, remembering the rich wood work which abounded in the churches of his native Suffolk, bethought himself that in the Cathedral, whose progress he daily watched, 'they would surelie put carvings.' The foreman to whom he spoke repulsed him, saying 'We want no carpenters here.' Undiscouraged, the young man came again day after day for a week, till at length Sir Christopher noticed him, and learning from the foreman that he was 'a country fellow who troubled them to give him some of the carving to do,' beckoned to Wood to come and speak to him. As the young man approached full of hope, he said, 'Friend, you want carving work--what have you been used to carve?' At this critical, long-desired moment the poor youth lost his presence of mind, and instead of mentioning the 'sundry figures of lions and elephants' that he had carved for Mr. Haybittle's house, stammered out, 'Please your wors.h.i.+p, I have been used to carve troughs.' 'Troughs!' said Sir Christopher; 'then carve me as a specimen of your skill, a sow and pigs (it will be something in your line), and bring it to me this day week. I shall be here.' So he went away, with a smile at the presumption which could aspire to step straight from such work to that of adorning S.

Paul's.

Distracted at his own folly and the loud laughter of the workpeople, Wood rushed back to his lodging, and but for the kind advice of his Quaker landlady, would have given up all for lost. She wisely told him to take Wren at his word and carve the best sow and pigs that he could make.