Sir Christopher Wren

Turner said of Wren’s Cathedral that “the dome of St. Paul’s makes London,” but the same shrewd appreciation fell in better phrase from the lips of a friend of mine aged seven. He had been taken by his father to St. Paul’s, and on his return home was observed to be drawing industriously. When questioned as to his task, he held up a rudimentary sketch of the Cathedral, in which the crowning feature of Wren’s achievement loomed unduly large, and replied: “I’ve drawn the Dome of London.” I have met no better phrase of architectural criticism in more than thirty years of reading. The monument of Italian Unity has shifted the architectural command of Rome from the dome of St. Peter’s to the Capitoline Hill, but St. Paul’s still crowns London with Wren’s dome.

Sir Christopher’s connection with the Cathedral dates from 1663, when the derelict state of the old church drove the King to appoint a Commission to consider its restoration. It is not certain, though it is likely, that both Wren and Evelyn served as Commissioners; but little was done save casual repairs until about May, 1666, when Wren laid before the Commission a report descriptive of the state of the fabric with recommendations as to what should be done.

There were two parties on the Commission: one for mere patching and mending, another, with Wren as protagonist, for a substantial reconstruction on classical lines. Inigo Jones, when he added the great western portico, had refaced the outside of the church with big stones, part of a general scheme by which the cathedral would have been re-fronted, as happened to so many of the older churches of France and Italy. Wren’s policy was to do the same to the interior, “and it will be as easy to perform it after a good Roman manner as to follow the Gothick Rudeness of the old Design.” He favoured a new vault and cupola, not of lead-covered timber, but of “brick, if it be plaistered with Stucco, which is a harder plaister.” The essence of his proposals was, to remodel the tower and crossing. He was, in fact, proposing to remove the four great piers of the old crossing, as Alan of Walsingham had done at Ely, where the old central tower had collapsed. As Wren’s uncle was Bishop of Ely, he was familiar with this bold idea. “I cannot propose a better remedy than by cutting off the inner corners of the Cross, to reduce this middle part into a spacious Dome or Rotundo, with a Cupola or hemispherical roof, and upon the Cupola a Lantern with a spring top, to rise proportionably. By this means the Church will be rendered spacious in the middle, which may be a very proper place for a vast auditory.” Here was the germ of the St. Paul’s which we know. On August 27, 1666, there was a lively meeting of the Commission when Evelyn, as we learn from his Diary, backed Wren’s proposals against Chichele and Pratt, who were against any new-fangled notions, and wanted merely to repair the steeple on its old foundation. “But we,” writes Evelyn, “totally rejected it and persisted that it required a new foundation, not only in regard of the necessity, but for that the shape of what stood was very mean and we had a mind to build it with a noble cupola, a form of church building not as yet known in England but of wonderful grace.” It is difficult to guess why Pratt, as a pupil of Inigo Jones, resisted the idea of extending to the interior what the elder master had done outside. Perhaps Pratt resented the intrusion of Wren on some personal grounds. Alternatively it is conceivable that the Jones school were more impressed with the merits of mediæval architecture than is commonly supposed. As it turned out, Chichele and Pratt were right about the solidity of the old central piers. Contrary to experience outside London they proved very difficult to demolish. It may be that some tradition of the old Roman secret remained in London, where old walls are a byword for resistance to removal. If Wren had known as much about mortars as the old builders, much of the trouble with his St. Paul’s would have been avoided.

After much argument it was agreed the innovators should produce a plan and estimate. This design is preserved at All Souls, and shows an inner and outer dome surmounted by a lantern crowned with a huge openwork pineapple 68 feet high, of what Sir Reginald Blomfield justly calls “a monstrous and horrible design.”

But the scheme went no further. On Sunday, September 2nd, within a week of the Commission meeting, the Great Fire broke out. By the 7th Pepys saw the “miserable sight of Paul’s Church, with all the roof fallen and the body of the quire fallen into St. Faith’s.” Evelyn was there the same day and infinitely concerned: “Thus lay in ashes that most venerable Church.” The destruction was complete.

Very soon after the Fire, Wren was appointed principal architect for rebuilding the whole City, and set about fitting part of St. Paul’s ruins for temporary use in Divine Service. On January 15, 1667, the King made order to that effect, and on March 5 a sub-committee was set up to do something. They seem to have been lamentable dullards, for they still harped on the idea of patching up the ruins, and attempted to do so, despite Wren’s protests. He seems to have followed the wise course of leaving them to their tinkerings and to the Nemesis of a tottering fabric, with good and inevitable results. After the shattering experience of the Fire, the new facing of large stones could not be secured properly to the old walls. A year and some money had been wasted before Dean Sancroft wrote to Wren, then at Oxford, on April 25, 1668, to say: “What you whispered in my ear, at your last coming hither, is come to pass. Our work at the west end of St. Paul’s is fallen about our ears.” Sancroft expected worse would follow, confessed that they were helpless without Wren, and begged him to come to London. It would appear that Wren was not satisfied as to their change of heart, and thought it wiser to let them muddle along into worse trouble before he went to their aid.

They still went on patching until things got quite hopeless, when Wren received a peremptory order from the Archbishop and the other Commissioners to attend with all speed. In one thing Sancroft seems to have been wiser than Wren. He was all for the planning of a “design, handsome and noble, and suitable to all the ends of it, and to the reputation of the city and the nation, and to take it for granted that money will be had to accomplish it.” Wren wanted to know what money they would provide before he set about a design, and to delay action until men’s minds were less distracted with all the troubles that followed the Fire. After more argument Wren convinced everyone that the first business was to give up all ideas of patching and to sweep the site clear of the ruins. This task lasted until April, 1674.

The story of Wren’s many designs for the new Cathedral is confusing and need not be followed here in detail. The First Design, made before the Fire, has been mentioned. The Second Design, also known as the “Rejected Design” and the “Model Design,” was an attempt to gratify “the taste of the Conoisseurs and Criticks with something coloss and beautiful, conformable to the best stile of the Greek and Roman architecture.”

This was one of several submitted to the King, and was approved by Royal Warrant of November 12, 1673. A model of it was made, now in the South Kensington Museum, and its plan and perspective are reproduced here. It represented a great break from traditional Cathedral treatment. Planned as a Greek cross, to which a short western arm (a vestibule or narthex) was added later, a central space 120 feet in diameter was formed by eight great piers carrying a dome, and the ambulatory included four shallow domes. The octagonal church of Santa Maria della Salute gives perhaps as good an idea as any of the general scope of the scheme, which Sir Charles Barry thought might supply a hint for English church building. The western vestibule was roofed with a smaller dome and finished with a colonnaded portico. It was a noble idea, but the clergy thought it unsuitable for services, and the absence of chapels annoyed the Duke of York, who, with his supporters, still hoped for a restoration of the old religion. Wren had to abandon the scheme, not, it is said, without actual tears. It is recorded in Parentalia that “the Surveyor, in private Conversation, always seem’d to set a higher value on this Design, than any he had made before or since; as what was laboured with more Study and Success; and (had he not been over-rul’d by those, whom it was his Duty to Obey) what he would have put into Execution with more Chearfulness and Satisfaction to himself than the latter.”

About eighteen months passed before the Third Design was submitted to the King and approved by warrant dated May 14, 1675. It is known as the Warrant Design. So unworthy is it of Wren’s genius that his apologists have been ingenious in explaining it away. Miss Phillimore thought it the result of overwork and worry. Loftie believed that Wren was “in the nearest thing to a bad temper of which his meek and quiet spirit was capable,” and pitched it at Charles as a joke, thinking that the King might as well sign the silliest design he could produce as he had rejected a sound scheme. Be that as it may—and it is not very like Wren to play the fool—Charles passed this preposterous design as “very artificial proper and useful,” giving Wren “liberty in the prosecution of his work, to make some Variations, rather Ornamental than Essential, as from time to time he should see proper, and to leave the Whole to his management.” The design now reproduced carries its own condemnation on its face. The western towers and the portico with its single skinny Order were exceedingly feeble, and the crowning of the dome by a kind of parody of St. Bride’s steeple is a feature that is best passed over in silence.

But if it were not simply a lark, it might have been the result of a demand for a spire that should remind London of the glory of St. Paul’s old spire, which had been the highest in Europe.

Happily Wren interpreted his permission for ornamental variations by drastic changes in essentials in the elevations, but he did not greatly change the “warrant” plan. His frame of mind may well be judged by the note, which follows the recital of the 1675 Warrant, in Parentalia: “From that time, the Surveyor resolved to make no more Models, or publickly expose his Drawings, which (as he had found by Experience) did but lose Time, and subjected his Business, many Times, to incompetent Judges.” Therefore, just as the present Houses of Parliament grew out of the castle design, done by Barry in 1836, by his twenty years of thought and work, so the grandeur of St. Paul’s developed with the mind of Wren incessantly occupied in its creation for nearly double that time. No one could help him in this gradual evolution of his thought, but many could, and did, obstruct its execution.

The taking down of the vast ruins of the old Cathedral made a heavy task, and Wren took to gunpowder for demolishing the piers of the old central tower. This worked well, but on its second employment by a subordinate, when Wren was out of town, too much gunpowder was used and a stone was blown into a neighbouring house. No bones were broken, but Wren was told to find less desperate methods and achieved his end with “that ancient Engine in War, the Battering-ram.” Wren’s troubles with the foundations made a long and too technical story for so slight a sketch as this, but it is fair to his memory to set down that though some early trouble was experienced from settlements which young Edward Strong, the son of Wren’s master-mason, was called in to repair, the present troubles are due more to the draining of the subsoil by recent engineering works, such as great sewers, and to the use of rubble inside a casing of ashlar, than to any defect in the foundation design. One notable change in the design of the West Front must be emphasised because it marks the influence, in this case the overmastering influence, of material over design. Wren devised the front with a single great Order (as Inigo Jones had done in the portico he added), therein following the scheme of St. Peter’s at Rome. Bramante had quarried at Tivoli pieces big enough for the drums of his columns, but had to spoil his cornices for lack of stones of adequate size. Wren was defeated in his hope of securing drums big enough from the Portland, Rock Abbey, and other quarries, and “for these Reasons the Surveyor concluded upon Portland-stone, and was able to use two Orders and by that Means to keep the just Proportions of his Cornices; otherwise he must have fallen short of the Heighth of the Fabrick, which now exerts itself over all the Country, as well as City, as it did of old, when that Structure, tho’ rude, was lofty and majestick.”

The first stone of the new church was laid in 1675, and during thirty-five years, from the forty-third to the seventy-eighth of the architect’s life, St. Paul’s was his constant preoccupation. Troubles were many. The 1675 plan was without the two western chapels (that now used by the Order of St. Michael and St. George and its fellow on the north side). They were introduced into the scheme by the insistence of the Duke of York. But the fundamental novelty of St. Paul’s, the double dome, was present in his pre-Fire design, and whatever else was changed, that remained.

Persons of Revival Gothic mind have been much troubled in conscience by the “falsity” of this treatment, though it has the admitted result of giving an absolutely right effect inside and out, and has been followed in nearly all the subsequent domes of this scale. The provision of an inner and an outer dome is held nowadays to be justified abundantly by the result. The brick cone that triumphantly carries the lantern, which is as high and large as many a church tower, is one of the many evidences of Wren’s engineering skill.

The architect was fortunate in the men who carried out his work. Edward Strong, the master-mason, and Richard Jennings, the master-carpenter, were faithful servants in carrying out the bones of the great structure; and such artists as Grinling Gibbons in the choir stalls, and Tijou in the wonderful iron screens served Wren’s turn to perfection. At St. Paul’s there is none of that carelessness of detail which defaces many of the City churches. There is little doubt that Wren was constantly on the works, watching everything in detail, revising and directing on the spot the great fabric as it grew under his hand.

The cost of rebuilding was borne by the “coal-money,” a duty of 1s. 6d. a chaldron on all coal imported into London, of which four-fifths were allocated to St. Paul’s. Even so the works were often in danger for lack of funds, and money had to be borrowed in advance of the coal-money receipts.

The funds received from all sources, including borrowings, amounted in 1700 to £1,167,474, but part of this went in interest paid out and in repaying loans and part in acquiring neighbouring property. The net cost is given by Longman as £746,661.

The choir was opened for Divine Service on December 2, 1697, on the Thanksgiving Day for the Peace on the Treaty of Ryswick. By 1708 the dome was ready to be covered. The Committee wanted copper to be used. Wren held out for lead, and lead it was and is. In 1710 young Christopher Wren was deputed by his father to lay the top-stone of the lantern which surmounts the dome, and did it in the presence of Sir Christopher and Edward Strong and other workmen who had been engaged on the building. It was a proud day for the old man of seventy-eight who had carried through a unique task despite every difficulty.

He was treated with incredible meanness. From the start of the work he had received the meagre salary of £200 a year, and in 1696-7 an Act “for the completing and adorning the Cathedral Church” was passed which included the miserable provision “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 with the utmost diligence and expedition.”

It was a spiteful business, which Wren bitterly resented, and not until Christmas, 1711, did he secure the payment of the arrears of half-pay on the passing of an Act which certified the Cathedral was finished. But even then much remained to be done, and in the doing of it Wren was hampered and thwarted at every turn by the narrow-minded Commissioners. It is a miserable story and hardly worth telling but that Wren’s reputation needs to be defended as to some features of St. Paul’s which he resisted ineffectually. The squabble about the enclosing railings is no longer interesting because they have disappeared, but the painting of the inner dome by Thornhill with opaque masses of figures instead of the mosaic Wren had intended was a severe trouble to him. Still worse was the insistence of the Commissioners on the balustrade which crowns the upper cornice. Wren’s letter to them in October, 1717, was a vigorous protest for a man of eighty-five. “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 Gothic 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 reasons were good and many, but the Commissioners preferred to be lady-like, and the balustrade was put up. This was in 1717. In 1718 King George the First superseded Wren as Surveyor-General in favour of a rascal called William Benson, so incompetent that he was dismissed ignominiously a year later.

In Wren’s own writing there appears in the MS. chronology of his life and works an entry in Greek which runs, translated:

He retired to his house at Hampton Court observing “Nunc me jubet Fortuna expeditius philosophari” and, in a strain of piety, which was as truly characteristic as the Stoic note, “If I glory, it is in the singular mercy of God, who has enabled me to begin and finish my great work, so conformable to the ancient model.” After more than two hundred years we rejoice to add, in the words of the Bicentenary Service, “We render Thee thanks, O Lord, for the singular gifts which Thou didst bestow upon Thy servant, Christopher Wren.”

The malevolence of his masters at the Cathedral pursued him to the grave, but it gave his son the opportunity of inventing an immortal epitaph. Sir Christopher was buried in the crypt, but the suggestion of a monument was rejected by the authorities.

So the younger Christopher, seeking to explain the absence of a fitting memorial in the place of his father’s greatest triumph, wrote on the plain tablet which marks his resting-place, as the closing words of his epitaph,

“SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS: CIRCUMSPICE.”

But the fatuous proceedings of Commissioners and King alike have faded into their proper perspective, and St. Paul’s remains the supreme monument of the genius of a single architect.

What, in fact, did Wren achieve in the building of St. Paul’s? Much can be written of his handling of the Orders, of his structure of the dome, of the details of the plan, and so forth; but there are broader issues involved. St. Paul’s gave the first opportunity since the Middle Ages for the creation of a Cathedral in England, and Wren’s task was a Protestant Cathedral. Hitherto the Cathedral builder had made two churches under one roof, a choir for Canons, whether secular or regular, or for monks, and a nave for the laity, the two divided by a solid screen which prevented nave worshippers from seeing the high altar. Wren’s plan was a half-way house between the mediæval type and the idea of St. Peter’s with the high altar as the central feature under the dome. It was a classical translation of the plan of his uncle’s Cathedral of Ely, in so far as it retained the aisle vistas by supporting the dome on eight piers instead of four. It was English in that it set the altar in a ritual choir well to the east of the crossing. It was Protestant and characteristic of Wren’s views in its provision of an admirable “auditory.”

St. Paul’s Cathedral may fairly be called the apogee of English Baroque, because it is the finest English expression of what Mr. Geoffrey Scott calls the Architecture of Humanism. It represents with peculiar faithfulness the outlook of the best minds of the last half of the seventeenth century, for Wren was one of them, and had the power to give it expression. St. Peter’s, the only church with which it is not unnaturally compared, was a pasticcio of many minds brought to bear in succession on a far larger but not æsthetically more difficult problem, and it suffers from a consequent confusion, as well as from its abnormal scale. St. Paul’s was the work of one commanding personality, who developed indeed in the course of its building—the difference between the warrant plan and the church itself is proof enough of that—but he did so consistently and with a single aim. Westminster Abbey is the supreme flower of Gothic art in England, if not in the world, and the perfect expression of the Age of Faith. St. Paul’s is a no less perfect emblem of what England could make of humanistic ideals in art joined with robust English Churchmanship expressed through so sincere an Anglican as was Sir Christopher Wren.

St. Paul’s is incomparable—the word is used advisedly—as a piece of architecture, and it is prodigiously English.