Lucy Phillimore

“ The name of Christopher Wren is no doubt familiar to the great majority of English people, and to Londoners especially; but it is to many of them little more than a name with which is connected S. Paul’s Cathedral and a now, alas! diminished number of City churches. Yet the great architect’s ninety-one years of life were passed among some of the most stirring times of our history, in which his family played no inconsiderable part, and he himself was not only the best architect of his day, but was also the foremost in many other sciences. ”

“ So the days went on and the grass waved in Whitehall Court, and to quote Pepys again: ‘Lord! how everybody’s looks and discourse in the streets is of death and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken.’
None but those whom absolute necessity kept in London stayed in the infected air; the works at S. Paul’s were stopped; all meetings and lectures ceased, with good reason, since to gather people together was but to spread the infection.
Christopher Wren profited by the cessation of his London work, to travel abroad. ”

“ 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 classes equally destitute, silent from the very greatness of their calamity and asking no relief. ”

“ In the Cathedral his memory is cherished; but in the city of London, which he rebuilt from its ashes, no statue has been erected to him, no great street has been honoured by taking as its own the name of Christopher Wren, though a name
On fame’s eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled. ”

“ S. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, a fine bold stone church, its nave and aisles divided by well-sculptured columns; and S. Michael’s, Queenhithe, belong also to this busy year. S. Michael’s, standing close to the river, built of stone with plenty of space and room in it; its slender graceful spire ever beckoning to the swarming river and riverside population, might, one would have imagined, have been invaluable in zealous hands, but it has been swept away and the opportunity is lost. ”

“ So began the long years of Bishop Wren’s captivity. Few trials could have been harder for a man of vigorous active nature to bear than this one which rendered him powerless, when all he held dear was at stake, loaded him with calumnies and prevented his uttering a word in his defence. The diary gives no hint of what his feelings were. In silence he resigned himself, resolved to afford no triumph to his enemies. Dean Wren was somewhat better off, though he had his share of misfortunes. ”

“ The crypt of S. Paul’s was of course the part of the building first finished. Long ago Wren had spoken of ‘the quantity of work to be done in the dark,’ and it certainly proved enormous. The crypt of S. Paul’s is one of the largest and most intricate that exists, extending under the entire church, not the choir only, as is the case in S. Peter’s at Rome. The dimness of a London atmosphere renders it hard to get much effect of light and shade, but on a clear day the curious twilight effect is striking. ”

“ Though the architecture of the cathedral was not of the kind which he considered the best, Wren had too fine a taste, too quick an eye for beauty of form, not to admire it heartily, and in his report he pronounced that ‘the whole pile was large and magnificent, justly accounted one of the best patterns of the age wherein it was built.’ He praised the pillars and mouldings, ‘the stately and rich plainness’ to which the architect had trusted. ”

“ Where little villains must submit to fate
That great ones may enjoy the world in state;
There stands a dome majestic to the sight,
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height;
A golden globe, placed high with artful skill
Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill.
Whatever its exterior defects may have been, the theatre within was arranged with masterly skill so as to enable all the students to see and hear during the lectures and demonstration. The difficult science of acoustics was one to which Wren gave much attention, and his churches are, in this respect, very successful. ”

“ When, however, Sir Christopher laid his sister there, all was empty and not fully complete; the cluster of pillars and arches that sustain the great dome with their massive strength must have been but newly finished.
Only one church was completed by Sir Christopher in this troubled year, that of S. Michael, Crooked Lane; a handsome stone church with a stately tower and spire. It contained the tomb of a famous city worthy, Sir William Walworth:
Who with courage stout and manly might
Slew Wat Tyler in King Richard’s sight. ”

“ There then the Cathedral stood, complete externally in its stately beauty, the work of one man, who, it has been truly said, ‘had the conception of a painter as well as an architect.’ View the Cathedral when and where we will, with every disadvantage of smoky atmosphere and lack of space, it yet fascinates the eye by the perfection of its lines and the majesty of the whole effect, so as to leave no power of criticising petty defects. Such was the triumphant success achieved by Wren’s patient genius, but
Envy will merit as its shade pursue ”

“ When we look back to the years of the Rebellion, their darkness is lightened for us by the knowledge that the Restoration came at last, and it is difficult to realise fully how the times appeared to those who actually lived in them, to whom the years brought only fresh losses and sorrows, and the sickness of hope deferred.
Knowing how, on the 29th of May, but four years later, all England was welcoming back the King to ‘enjoy his own again,’ one can hardly forbear wishing that Dean Wren might have been spared to see that day ”

“ 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. ”

“ This design is wholly unlike the present Cathedral, and is inferior to any of Wren’s other buildings. ‘Artificial’ in the modern sense of the word, it undoubtedly is. The west end much resembles old S. Paul’s as Inigo Jones left it, and is poor and flat; there is a low flat dome, then a lantern with ribbed vaulting, surmounted by a spire something like S. Bride’s, but thin and ungraceful. One feels that Wren must have been disgusted with the design when finished, and could only have done such a thing at a time when his genius was rebuked and harassed by vexatious limitations and interference. ”

“ Philip Musard, jeweller to Queen Anne, by whom he had a son, a fourth Christopher Wren.
Wren lost a faithful and valued friend in Mr. Evelyn, who died in the February of 1706, at the age of eighty-five. If Evelyn’s diary, of which such frequent use has been made in these pages, is not the same entire revelation of the man himself as is the diary of his friend Pepys, it yet possesses a singular charm in its refinement of thought, and, when the veil is raised, shows us a gentleman and a Christian to be respected as well as loved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bishop Turner of Ely was on the S. Paul’s Commission; Bishop Lloyd of S. Asaph while rector of S. Martin’s had baptized Wren’s daughter and youngest son; Bishop White he had known in the days when he was rector. Bishop Ken at Winchester, and Archbishop Sancroft had been for years his steady friends. If he failed in dignity at one crisis, there is abundant material in Sancroft’s letters, and in the rest of his life, to show he must have been a charming companion and capable of inspiring sincere affection. ”

“ In his design, S. Paul’s stood complete with a plinth over the entablature, and with statues on the four pediments only. The Commissioners took it into their heads that a balustrade with vases was greatly needed, and that it should be put up, unless Wren could ‘set forth in writing, under his hand, that it is contrary to the principles of architecture and give his opinion in a fortnight’s time.’ This looks very like a device for tormenting the old man of eighty-five, and revenging themselves for their previous defeat. ”

“ Gardening in towns was an art little considered in his days, and contemporary descriptions show us that ‘vacuities’ were speedily filled with heaps of dust and refuse.
The London bank of the Thames was to be lined with a broad quay, along which the halls of the city companies were to be built, with suitable warehouses in between for the merchants, to vary the effect of the edifices.
The little stream whose name survives in Fleet Street was to be brought to light, cleansed, and made serviceable as a canal one hundred and twenty feet wide, running much in the line of the present Holborn Viaduct. ”

“ ANCESTRY OF THE WRENS—MATTHEW WREN—TRAVELS TO SPAIN WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES—INTERVIEW AT WINCHESTER HOUSE—BISHOP ANDREWES’ PROPHECY—WREN MADE MASTER OF PETERHOUSE—BISHOP OF HEREFORD—CONSECRATION OF ABBEY DORE—OFFICE OF RECONCILIATION—FOREIGN CONGREGATIONS AND THE NORWICH WEAVERS—RESULT OF ‘A LECTURER’S’ DEPARTURE.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream
Bears all its sons away. ”

“ It was in good measure by the influence which these gentlemen had over the rest, that the university itself, or at least any part of its discipline and order, was saved from ruin.... Nor indeed could it be otherwise, for such spiritual frenzies, which did then bear rule, can never stand long before a clear and deep skill in nature. It is almost impossible, that they who converse much with the subtilty of things, should be deluded by such thick deceits. ”

“ As the choir rose the time came in which the space for the great Dome was to be marked out. The architect stood watching with some of his friends, and called to one of the workmen to bring him a stone to mark a special spot; when the man obeyed, Wren saw that the stone thus brought had an inscription upon it—the single word ‘Resurgam.’ [167] It was looked upon by Sir Christopher as a singularly happy omen, and he took great pleasure in telling the anecdote. ”

“ For those whose licence to preach had been withdrawn, the greater number ought never to have received it at all; one had been a broken tradesman in Ipswich, one a country apothecary, another a weaver, another ‘no graduate, not long translated from common stage-playing to two cures and a publick lecture.’ Yet still when all were reckoned who had ever been censured or admonished, the Bishop thinks that the fifty will hardly be made up. ”

“ The chapel, which has a peculiar interest as Wren’s first architectural work, is built in the classical style he was to make famous in England, and bears his mark in its beautiful proportions, the richness of its stucco ceiling and the pannelled wood-work. The plain glazing of the windows and a something of bareness about the whole, are probably to be accounted for by the necessity of limiting the expense to a fixed sum. ”