Chapter XIV · 1709–1723.

PRIVATE HOUSES BUILT—QUEEN ANNE’S GIFTS—LAST STONE OF S. PAUL’S—WREN DEPRIVED OF HIS SALARY—HIS PETITION—‘FRAUDS AND ABUSES’—INTERIOR WORK OF S. PAUL’S—WREN SUPERSEDED—PURCHASE OF WROXHALL ABBEY—WREN’S THOUGHTS ON THE LONGITUDE—HIS DEATH—BURIAL IN S. PAUL’S—THE END.

The year 1709 passed in steady work, and has little but finishing touches to the churches to be recorded, unless some of the various private houses built by Wren belong to this period. A house for Lord Oxford, and one for the Duchess of Buckingham, both in S. James’s Court; two built near the Thames for Lord Sunderland and Lord Allaston; one for Lord Newcastle in Queen’s Square, Bloomsbury; and a house, so large and magnificent that it has been divided in late years into four, in Great Russell Street. This house was afterwards occupied by Wren’s eldest son, and in turn by his second son Stephen.

Sir Christopher himself, while keeping the house in Whitehall from which his letters are dated, had received from Queen Anne the fifty years’ lease of a house at Hampton Green at a nominal rent of 10l. a year;[234] he must have found great refreshment in going there occasionally by the then undefiled Thames, to country rest and quiet. Queen Anne was uniformly gracious and friendly to her Surveyor, and presented him with a buhl cabinet inlaid with red tortoiseshell of remarkably handsome work and design.[235]

The following year saw the crown put to the labour of thirty-five years. Mr. Christopher Wren, who had been a year old when the first stone was laid, now laid the last stone of the lantern above the Dome of S. Paul’s in the presence of his father, Mr. Strong the master-builder, his son, and other free and accepted masons, most of whom had worked at the building. The scene could hardly be better painted than in the words of Dean Milman:[236]

‘All London had poured forth for the spectacle, which had been publicly announced, and were looking up in wonder to the old man ... who was on that wondrous height setting the seal, as it were, to his august labours. If in that wide circle which his eye might embrace there were various objects for regret and disappointment; if, instead of beholding the various streets of the city, each converging to its centre, London had sprung up and spread in irregular labyrinths of close, dark, intricate lanes; if even his own Cathedral was crowded upon and jostled by mean and unworthy buildings; yet, on the other hand, he might survey, not the Cathedral only, but a number of stately churches which had risen at his command and taken form and dignity from his genius and skill. On one side the picturesque steeple of S. Mary-le-Bow; on the other the exquisite tower of S. Bride’s, with all its graceful, gradually diminishing circles, not yet shorn of its full and finely-proportioned height. Beyond, and on all sides, if more dimly seen, yet discernible by his partial eyesight (he might even penetrate to the inimitable interior of S. Stephen’s, Walbrook), church after church, as far as S. Dunstan’s-in-the-East, perhaps Greenwich, may have been vaguely made out in the remote distance; and all this one man had been permitted to conceive and execute;—a man not originally destined or educated for an architect, but compelled as it were by the public necessities to assume the office, and so to fulfil it, as to stand on a level with the most consummate masters of the art in Europe, and to take his stand on an eminence which his English successors almost despair of attaining.’

THE WORK OF ONE MAN.

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;

and a series of troubles fell upon him.

There will always be a number of people who imagine that anything can be procured by money, and that for the sake of money anything and everything will be done. People of this mind considered that Sir Christopher Wren prolonged the process of building S. Paul’s in order to prolong his own enjoyment of the 200l. a year which was the salary he had himself chosen, though it was considered utterly inadequate by the Commissioners when first the work began.

Accordingly in 1696–7, a clause was inserted in the Act ‘for the completing and adorning S. Paul’s’ ‘to suspend a moiety of the Surveyor’s salary until the said Church should be finished; thereby the better to encourage him to finish the same work with the utmost diligence and expedition.’[237]

No doubt they considered that the Cathedral could be finished off regardless of details, and so left like the shell of an ordinary house to be adorned by any chance person; and to this end they offered their grim ‘encouragement’!

It was an insult to a man like Wren, who had again and again—as in the case of Greenwich—given his skill for nothing, and it was doubly unjust because, what delays there were, sprang from the conceit and ignorance of the S. Paul’s Commission. Wren protested, but took no active step until he had seen the Dome of his beloved Cathedral completed.

Then he sent in a petition to Queen Anne as follows:—

‘The most humble petition of Sir Christopher Wren

‘Sheweth,

‘That there being a Clause in an Act of Parliament which suspends a moiety of your Petitioner’s salary at S. Paul’s, till the building be finished, and being obstructed in his measures for completing the same, by the arbitrary proceedings of some of the Commissioners for that fabric,—

‘Your Petitioner most humbly beseeches your Majesty graciously to interpose your Royal Authority so as that he may be suffered to finish the said building in such manner and after such designs as shall be approved by your Majesty or such persons as your Majesty shall think fit to appoint for that purpose; and your Petitioner, etc.,

‘Christopher Wren.’

‘FRAUDS AND ABUSES.’

This petition was sent to the Commissioners, whose reply was, that when Sir Christopher had acted without their approbation his performances had proved very faulty;(!) they then digressed into remarks on their own devotion to the Queen’s service, and into a series of petty charges against some of the workmen employed in the Cathedral, especially the bell-founder, Richard Phelp, and Richard Jennings the master-carpenter, whom they charged with a variety of frauds and abuses, and begged should be at once dismissed; they also venture to assert that ‘Sir Christopher, or some employed by him, may be supposed to have found their advantage in this delay.’ There is little attempt at proof in this reply of the Commissioners, but much supposition and conjecture. A pamphlet, ‘Frauds and Abuses at S. Paul’s,’ published anonymously at this time, sets out all their suspicions in detail. Sir Christopher replied in a pamphlet entitled ‘An Answer to Frauds and Abuses in S. Paul’s,’ and laid a petition before the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, in which he sets out his grievances, how little power had been really given to him and how far he had ‘been limited and restrained.’

‘However,’ he says, ‘it has pleased God so far to bless my sincere endeavours, as that I have brought the building to a conclusion so far as is in my power, and I think nothing can be said now to remain unperfected, but the iron fence round the Church, and painting the Cupola, the directing whereof is taken out of my hands, and therefore I hope I am not answerable for them, nor that the said suspending clause can, or ought, to affect me any further on that account. As for painting the Cupola, your Lordships know that it has been long under consideration; that I have no power left me concerning it; and that it is not yet resolved in what manner to do it, or whether at all. And as for the iron fence, it is so remarkable and so fresh in memory, by whose influence and importunity it was wrested from me, and the doing of it carried in a way which I venture to say will ever be condemned. I have just this to observe further, that your Lordships had no hand in it; and consequently ought not share in the blame that may attend it.’

He then asks them for their warrant for the payment of the arrears, amounting to more than 1,300l., which were due to him, and says he will ever be ready in the future, to give his advice and assistance in anything about the said Cathedral. Archbishop Tenison and Bishop Compton laid Wren’s petition before the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Northey, who pronounced ‘that Sir Christopher Wren’s case was very hard, but that the terms of the Act were so positive that it could not be overridden, but the Commissioners ought in justice to find some remedy.’

Wren then addressed the House of Commons in a petition in which he repeats that his ‘measures for completing the Cathedral are wholly over-ruled and frustrated.’

A REMEDY FOUND.

The House considered the matter, and cut the knot by declaring the Cathedral to be finished, and directing the payment of all the arrears of the architect’s salary.

Their prompt decision gratified Sir Christopher, who contrasts it with the conduct of the Commission, ‘which was such as gave him reason enough to think that they intended him none of the suspended salary if it had been left in their power to defeat him of it.’

The attacks on Jennings, whom Wren firmly defended, fell to the ground: they probably had as little foundation as the ‘Screw Plot,’ by which at a Thanksgiving, by one man’s moving a few of the bolts and screws, the whole dome was to fall in.[238] The bell-founder Phelps, who had removed the faulty bell put up by Wightman under the direction of the Commissioners, also triumphed: he offered to give a bond to the Dean and Chapter to recast the bell at his own expense if, after a year’s trial, they were dissatisfied with it: as this offer was never claimed, Wren justly says that they were either content with the bell or else showed great neglect. Until the last few years it was the only bell possessed by the Cathedral.

To perfect S. Paul’s some things had still to be done, and, rather than these should suffer, Wren was willing still to undergo the slights and annoyances of the other S. Paul’s Commissioners, amongst whose names one wishes that of Sir Isaac Newton did not appear, without clear evidence that he stood by his early patron and friend. One hopes it may have been so, certainly he was not a frequent attendant at the meetings.

DECORATION OF S. PAUL’S.

Within the Cathedral there was some important work to do. Gibbons’ carving had to be completed, and the beautiful iron-work gates on either side of the choir had yet to be set up. For this work Wren employed a M. Tijou, at that time a famous worker in iron, though no account of him is to be obtained at the present day. Possibly he was one of the French refugees. Wren saw both the carving and the gates successfully finished. But for the east end of the Cathedral he had a magnificent design which is unfulfilled to this day. He intended to inlay the columns of the apse with rich marble, to use a considerable amount of colour and gilding, and to place over the Altar a hemispherical canopy supported on four writhed pillars of the richest Greek marbles, with proper decorations of architecture and sculpture: he had prepared his model and the needful drawings, Bishop Compton had even received some specimens of marble from a Levant merchant in Holland, but unluckily the colours and the class of marble were not what Wren desired, and the plan waited for a better opportunity, which, in Wren’s lifetime, never came. Thus, of all this grand design, the only trace is the painting of the apsidal pillars, in imitation of lapis lazuli, which was meant as a temporary experiment, and the model of the canopy in the possession of the Dean and Chapter. Hardly anything could be done which would more enhance the interior beauty of S. Paul’s than the erection of this canopy.

Besides the adornment of the east end of the Cathedral there was also that of the dome to be accomplished. The decoration of S. Paul’s is so vexed a question that one almost fears to touch upon it, but the statement in the ‘Parentalia’ is explicit.

‘The judgement of the Surveyor was originally, instead of painting in the manner it is now performed, to have beautified the inside of the Cupola with the more durable ornament of mosaic work, as it is nobly executed in the Cupola of S. Peter’s in Rome, which strikes the eye of the beholder with a most magnificent and splendid appearance; and which, without the least decay of colour, is as lasting as marble, or the building itself. For this purpose he had projected to have procured from Italy four of the most eminent artists in that profession; but as this art was a great novelty in England, and not generally apprehended, it did not receive the encouragement it deserved; it was imagined also that the expense would prove too great, and the time very long in execution; but though these, and all objections were fully answered, yet this excellent design was no further pursued.’

In weighing the value of this evidence as to Sir Christopher’s views, it is important to remember that the ‘Parentalia’ was, though edited by Stephen the grandson, actually written by Christopher, the son who was constantly with his father and shared in his interests, and had himself seen, and no doubt described to Sir Christopher that very cupola of S. Peter’s, of which he speaks.

The question of the iron fence round the Cathedral, of which Wren made mention in his petition, was much in his thoughts; he wished it to be low, and made of hammered iron, the Commissioners were determined that it should be high, and made of cast iron.

Wren, who doubtless intended to employ Tijou, and have a low, graceful railing which would throw up the height and solid grandeur of the Cathedral, repeatedly expressed his opinion; but the majority overruled him, and the Cathedral was imprisoned by a high, heavy, clumsy fence, the gates of which were sedulously closed, and were but too apt an emblem of the manner in which the Cathedral was soon shut off from its true uses. A century later, and Bishop Blomfield could say, ‘I never pass S. Paul’s without thinking how little it has done for Christianity.’ Now the iron fence has departed,[239] and with it all possibility of such a reproach.

During all this time Wren was engaged on the Abbey repairs and the affairs of Chelsea College. The Duke of Ormonde sends him a summons in November, 1713, the more pressing, as several Commissioners are out of town, to meet him ‘at twelve of the clock at his Grace’s house at the Cockpitt, in order to give directions for the cloathing of the Invalide Companys who are in a perishing condition for want thereof, not having been cloathed for near these three years past.’ The death of Evelyn and that of Sir Stephen Fox had lost to Chelsea Hospital its two best friends, but doubtless the Duke and Sir Christopher were able to provide for this emergency.

We hear of Wren at this time busied as of old for the Royal Society, going, with his son and Sir Isaac Newton, to inspect a house in Crane Court,[240] and finally buying it as a residence for the Society.

Again he appears with Newton, and the son who seems to have been his constant companion, going down to Greenwich as visitors of the Royal Observatory there and making their report upon it. As Flamsteed hated Newton, and greatly resented any formal visitation, the expedition must have taxed even Wren’s peace-making powers, but Flamsteed never seems to have quarrelled with him.

DEATH OF QUEEN ANNE.

In the summer of the following year ‘good Queen Anne’ died, and with her all real chance of the return of the Stuart family, despite the gallant and devoted attempts made for ‘Prince Charlie’ in ‘the ’15’ and ‘the ’45.’ The sixth and last English reign which Wren was destined to see began in 1714 with the accession of George I.

The S. Paul’s Commission was renewed, with, of course, Wren’s name upon it, but the annoyances of his position increased.

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. Exactly within the fortnight Wren sent an answer which certainly shows no trace of failing powers.

‘I take leave, first, to declare that I never designed a balustrade. Persons of little skill in architecture did expect, I believe, to see something they had been used to in Gothick structures; and ladies think nothing well without an edging. I should gladly have complied with the vulgar taste but I suspended for the reasons following.’

The technical reasons are given, and he adds:

‘that as no provision was originally made in my plan for a balustrade, the setting up one in such a confused manner over the plinth must apparently break into the harmony of the whole machine, and, in this particular case, be contrary to the principles of architecture.’

Nothing daunted, either by Wren’s reasons or his sarcasm, and regardless of their implied promise, the wise Commissioners of the Cathedral set to work on their balustrade.

DISMISSED FROM HIS OFFICE.

This transaction belongs to the autumn of 1717. In the April of the ensuing year, George I., who cared nothing about art or architecture, and who only wished to gratify his German favourites, was easily prevailed upon to dismiss Sir Christopher Wren from that post of Surveyor-General which he had held for forty-eight years, and to bestow it upon William Benson, a favourite’s favourite, as ignorant and incapable as he was grasping and unscrupulous. There was probably but little outcry, for, as Steele[241] had truly said,

‘Nestor,’ under which name he described Wren, ‘was not only in his profession the greatest man of that age, but had given more proofs of it than any man ever did; yet for want of that natural freedom and audacity which is necessary in commerce with men, his personal modesty overthrew all his public actions.’

The person least disposed to make a complaint was Wren himself. Finding his patent superseded, he quietly retired to his house at Hampton Court, saying, ‘Nunc me jubet Fortuna expeditius philosophari.[242] One other comment he made, as a note to the date (April 26, 1718) of this dismissal: ‘Ὁτι ἀνέστη Βασιλεύς ἕτεπος ὃς οὐκ ἤδει τὸν Ἰωσήφ: καὶ οὐδὲν τούτων τῷ Γαλλίωνι ἔμελεν.✠’[243]

It is some satisfaction to know that Benson so disgraced himself as in five years’ time to be dismissed, and narrowly escaped a prosecution by the House of Lords. Pope held him up to deserved scorn in the ‘Dunciad,’ where he also says:

While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends,

but this, one is glad to think, tells rather what might have been Sir Christopher’s state of mind than what it really was.

Wren had had the interest of watching his eldest son’s career in Parliament as member for that borough of Windsor which he had himself represented.

This son’s wife had died, and in 1715 he married again. His second wife was Constance, daughter of Sir Thomas Middleton, and widow of Sir Roger Burgoyne; by this marriage he had another son, named Stephen. On this occasion Sir Christopher bought the estate of Wroxhall Abbey[244] in Warwickshire, which had belonged to the Burgoynes and was heavily encumbered. Sir Christopher is said to have stayed at the Abbey occasionally, and to have designed the kitchen garden wall which is built in semicircles. It was probably when he thus became a Warwickshire Squire that he gave the designs for S. Mary’s Church at Warwick, designs entirely different from those adopted in the present building, which is said to have been designed and built by one Francis Smith, a mason in the town.

LONGITUDE AT SEA.

But the greater part of Wren’s declining years was spent at Hampton Court, from which he went up to London to watch the progress of the works at Westminster Abbey, the surveyorship of which he still kept. A report was spread that the ceiling of the Sheldonian Theatre, in which, as a piece of mechanical construction, Sir Christopher took great pride, was giving way. Careful examination proved this to be a perfectly groundless rumour, and no further annoyance arose to disturb the calm evening of the old man’s life. To be ‘beneficus humano generi,’ as he said, had ever been his aim and wish. He now employed his leisure in looking over old papers on astronomy and mathematics and the method of finding out the longitude at sea. It had been long considered by the general world as impossible to find out as was the secret of perpetual motion, and the attempt at either discovery was treated with equal ridicule. The merchants, and captains of merchant ships were, however, from bitter experience of vessels and crews wrecked or lost, aware of the immense importance of the discovery of the longitude, if it could be made. They presented, in 1714, a petition to Parliament, begging that a reward might be offered ‘for such as shall discover the same.’ This, after due consideration, was done by a Bill, passed rapidly through both Houses, offering a reward of 20,000l.. for the discovery.[245]

The subject was one which greatly occupied Wren, who all his life had been interested in sailors and sea matters. He amused himself by throwing his latest thoughts on the longitude into the form of three cryptographs:[246]

1. OZVCVAYINIXDNCVOCWEDCNMALNABECIRTEWNGRAMHHCCAW.

2. ZEIYEINOIEBIVTXESCIOCPSDEDMNANHSEFPRPIWHDRAEHHXCIF.

3. EZKAVEBIMOXRFCSLCEEDHWMGNNIVEOMREWWERRCSHEPCIP.

A copy, signed by Halley as a true one, of this cipher was sent to the Royal Society in 1714 by Wren’s son. Probably Sir Christopher had not perfected his instruments sufficiently to proclaim his discovery, and did not wish either to lose his idea, or, when later on he disclosed it, to appear as a plagiarist in case a similar method had suggested itself to anyone else. Old age had weakened Wren’s limbs, but had had little effect on his clear understanding; his scientific pursuits interested him still, and were among the employments of those few leisure years which closed a life of incessant work. He gave, however, the greater part of his time and care to the diligent study of the Holy Scriptures, which all his life he had loved; and thus, serene and gentle as ever, waited for his summons.

HIS DEATH.

Once a year it was his habit to be driven to London, and to sit for a while under the dome of his own Cathedral. On one of these journeys he caught a cold, and soon afterwards, on February 25, 1723, his servant, thinking Sir Christopher slept longer after dinner than was his wont, came into the room and found his master dead in his chair, with an expression of perfect peace on the calm features.

They buried him near his daughter in the south-east crypt of S. Paul’s, by one of the windows, under a plain marble slab with this inscription: ‘Here lieth Sir Christopher Wren, the builder of this Cathedral Church of S. Paul, &c., who died in the year of our Lord MDCCXXIII., and of his age XCI.’

The spite of those who had hampered his genius in life showed itself again after his death. The famous inscription, written by his son:—‘Subtus conditur hujus Ecclesiae et Urbis Conditor Christophorus Wren, qui vixit annos ultra nonaginta, non sibi, sed bono publico. Lector, si Monumentum requiris circumspice.’[247]—was placed in the crypt, and in the Cathedral itself there was nothing to preserve the memory of its architect.

This has in later years been remedied and the inscription is now in gold letters over the door of the north transept. Some of Sir Christopher’s plans have, as has been shown, been executed; and further, the Cathedral has been set in green turf, and all around it is cared for instead of neglected, the once empty campanile is filled by twelve bells, whose music floats down over the roar of London, as if out of the sky itself, and the Dome is filled by vast congregations in the way which Sir Christopher almost foresaw.

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.