Wren’s work as an architect seems to have begun in 1661, when, at the instance of John Evelyn, the King sent for him to come from Oxford to serve as assistant to Sir John Denham, Surveyor-General to His Majesty’s Works. Denham was a moderate poet, but no architect, and his appointment was merely an excuse for giving him a salary. John Webb, “Inigo Jones’s man,” had been serving Denham as an assistant and was naturally distressed at the interposition of Wren. This is no place to attempt to estimate Webb’s place in English architecture. He is put very high by some critics, but Evelyn’s description of him as “Inigo Jones’s man” is probably fair. He had attempted unsuccessfully to obtain the succession to Inigo Jones, and, on this second failure, he seems to have retired from practice. The neglect of him in Wren’s favour may have been a personal hardship, but nobody will believe that English architecture was the sufferer. Webb belonged to another generation, and the indolent Charles had a right perception when he summoned the scientist to shape the architecture of the new era of the Restoration.

In relation to Wren’s later and definitive appointment as Surveyor-General, there is a reference in Pepys’ Diary which I never read without a sense of personal relief.

On March 21st, 1668-9, Pepys met Hugh May, very grieved that he had failed to secure the reversion of the Surveyorship of the King’s Works, on the recent death of Sir John Denham, “by the unkindness of the Duke of Buckingham, who hath brought in Dr. Wren, though, he tells me, he hath been his servant for twenty years together,” and so on, “and yet the Duke is so ungrateful as to put him by, which is an ill thing, though Dr. Wren is a worthy man.” It was a lucky escape for English architecture, but it is difficult to believe that Buckingham, or indeed anybody, even in such venal times, would have denied to Wren the post which he filled so perfectly, in favour of so sorry a fellow as Hugh May. It is worth noting that when May died in February, 1683-4, his post as Controller of the Works at Windsor Castle fell to Wren. If May had never been in charge at Windsor that Castle might have been spared the indignity of the Upper Bailey, which he designed of an ugliness so surpassing that Wyattville’s remodelling, dreary as it is, was a vast improvement.

How May saw the duties and opportunities of Surveyor-General of the King’s Works is shown by his consoling thoughts recorded by Pepys. The King was kind to May and promised him a pension of £300 out of the Works (presumably an euphemism for out of Wren’s emoluments), and that would be better than the place, because, owing to the lack of money, he would have had to disoblige most people, being not able to do what they desire to their lodgings.

There are many documents to show that Wren dealt assiduously and successfully with the daily task of “lodgings” and other trivialities belonging to the interminable routine of his post, but it is evident that Hugh May would have done that and no more. It was an escape.

For the first two years of Wren’s new appointment as Denham’s assistant, he received no commissions for public works, and when the King, at the close of the war for Tangier, offered him the task of designing the mole and fortifications he wisely declined on grounds of health. The letter of invitation was, it is worth noting, written by his cousin, Matthew Wren, the bishop’s son, who was secretary to Hyde, the Lord Chancellor. Wren’s decision lost him a good salary and risked the reversion of Sir John Denham’s post of Surveyor-General, which was promised him if he would go to Tangier; but we may be thankful that he resisted even so honourable an exile, and he seems not to have suffered by it. His early labours at old St. Paul’s will be described in the proper chapter, but his first original work in architecture dates from early in 1663, if we except a doorway at Ely Cathedral, of the same year. On April 29 he submitted to the Royal Society his model for a theatre to be built at Oxford for the public acts of the University. The Sheldonian struck a note that was to become typical of Wren’s work, for he was not afraid to adventure on a flat ceiling with a span of no less than 68 feet. It was a cunning piece of construction and covered in a chamber of great interest but of uncertain design. In the same year, 1663, was begun the Chapel of Pembroke College, Cambridge, a thank-offering made by his uncle, Bishop Matthew Wren, for coming safely through his long imprisonment. Pembroke Chapel is a fine achievement of much greater artistic interest than the Sheldonian, and, being completed long before the theatre, was no doubt the model to which people turned, in Wren’s early days of architecture, as the proof of his real capacity in his new profession.

In 1665 he was called in by Trinity College, Oxford, to design a new inner court with the definite instruction that he was to build a quadrangle. Wren protested that this idea was wrong, but showed his skill in dealing with troublesome clients thus early. Writing to Dr. Bathurst, then President of Trinity, he said: “I am convinced with Machiavel, or some unlucky fellow, ’tis no matter whether I quote true, that the world is generally governed by words. I perceive the name of a quadrangle will carry with it those whom you say may possibly be your benefactors, though it be much the worse situation for the chambers, and the beauty of the college, and of the particular pile of building ... but, to be sober, if any body, as you say, will pay for a quadrangle, there is no dispute to be made; let them have a quadrangle, though a lame one, somewhat like a three-legged table.”

Wren had his way: the Trinity court is three-sided. Elmes, in his Life of Wren, says that the additions to Trinity College, Cambridge, were going on at the same time, but this is a characteristic and obvious blunder, for the letter from Wren to the authorities of Trinity, quoted by Elmes, refers to the filling of the library arches with “relieves of stone, of which I have seen the effect abroad in good buildings.” Wren’s journey abroad did not take place until the summer of 1665, and occupied about eight months. He started for Paris in the first week of July, bearing a letter to the Earl of St. Albans, who represented English virtuosity in the French capital. So much we know from the reprint in Parentalia of a letter which returned thanks to a friend for getting him the introduction; but the chief value of it for us is that Wren took the opportunity to record some of his impressions. He was enchanted with the collections of rarities that he saw, and no doubt pleased himself with infinite conversations about science and philosophy with the scores of distinguished men he must have met. But, unhappily, he was too busy to keep a diary or to write home at length, and we have to be content with a few, albeit precious, obiter dicta.

“... 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; ’tis a Comedy to me, and tho’ sometimes expenceful, I am loth yet to leave it.”

Wren had a delightful and fruitful visit.

“I have,” he wrote, “busied myself in surveying the most esteem’d Fabricks of Paris, and the Country round; the Louvre for a while was my daily Object, where no less than a thousand Hands are constantly employ’d in the Works; some in laying mighty Foundations, some in raising the Stories, Columns, Entablements, etc., with vast Stones, by great and useful Engines; others in Carving, Inlaying of Marbles, Plaistering, Painting, Gilding, etc., Which altogether make a School of Architecture, the best probably, at this Day in Europe. The College of The four Nations is usually admir’d, but the Artist hath purposely set it ill-favouredly that he might shew his Wit in struggling with an inconvenient Situation.” This last is a shrewd bit of criticism which did not apply to Wren’s own work, for he always made the best of his opportunities.

It was the Abbé Charles who introduced him to Bernini, “who shew’d me his Designs for the Louvre and of the King’s Statue ... his design of the Louvre I would have given my skin for, but the old reserv’d Italian gave me but a few Minutes view; it was five little Designs in Paper, for which he hath receiv’d as many thousand Pistoles; I had only Time to copy it in my Fancy and Memory; I shall be able by Discourse, and a Crayon, to give you a tolerable account of it.”

He had evidently planned to spend at least six months in studying French architecture, for he wrote: “My Lord Berkley 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 of the present State of Architecture, Arts and Manufactures in France.”

Unhappily, his sight-seeing seems to have absorbed all his time in Paris, and when he got back the torrent of work carried him along and made impossible the fulfilment of the final promise of this letter. Wren had an easy pen, and it is sad to think that what he had “on the Anvil” never got into the muddled mass of manuscript from which his son compiled the Parentalia. What would we not give for more portraits of French architects and artists like his thumb-nail sketch of Bernini, that “old reserv’d Italian” whose plans for the Louvre never went any further? In the result, we have lost the observations which would have been a great addition to the literature of architecture. He did not confine himself to the buildings of Paris. “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 Fashions, and meddle with Politicks and Philosophy, so they sway also in Architecture; Works of Filgrand, and little Knacks are in great Vogue; but Building certainty ought to have the Attribute of eternal, and therefore, the only Thing uncapable of new Fashions. The masculine Furniture of Palais Mazarine pleas’d me much better where is a great and noble Collection of antique Statues and Bustos.”

Probably Wren had little sympathy with the efforts of that typical Frenchman Philibert de l’Orme to invent new Orders a century earlier; and is there a finer epigram of architecture than the phrase in italics?

But his travels took him wider than Versailles.

“After the incomparable Villas of Vaux and Maisons, I shall but name Ruel, Courances, Chilly, Essoane, St. Maur, St. Mande, Issy, Meudon, Rincy, Chantilly, Verneul, Lioncour, all which, and I might add many others, I have survey’d; and that I might not lose the Impressions of them, I shall bring you almost all France in Paper, which I found by some or other ready design’d to my Hand, in which I have spent both Labour and some Money.”

Would that Wren’s collections and drawings had been preserved with something of the faithfulness which makes the Adam collection at Sir John Soane’s Museum such a mine of information on one of Wren’s greatest successors. One reference is helpful as showing the source of much of Wren’s detail, though the work itself is informing without his note:

“I have purchas’d a great deal of Taille-douce, that I might give our Country-men Examples of Ornaments and Grotesks, in which the Italians themselves confess the French to excel.”

It would have been better if Wren had relied more on English decorative motives.

Unfortunately there is silence in the letter on the purpose of the jaunt abroad. Was the stay in Paris the prelude to an intended visit to Italy, or was it an end in itself? It is odd that he should not have followed the example of Inigo Jones and studied the Renaissance at its source, but there is no written evidence that he ever projected an extension of his journey southwards. The effect of the Paris journey was to give a French accent to Wren’s work throughout his life, and to dilute the current of Palladian influence, which was not fully renewed in England until the Earl of Burlington, William Kent, and others returned to Inigo Jones and his Italian master as the fountains of inspiration.

It is useless to speculate as to how Wren would have developed on a fuller Italian basis. His art would have been more informed: he would almost certainly have avoided the technical uncertainties that mar some of his finest achievements: but he could hardly have lost the freedom and inventiveness which make him one of the most individual of English architects.

One of the results of Wren’s French orientation might have been that of becoming a follower of Vignola rather than Palladio. In spite, however, of Mansard’s work at Maisons and Blois, Wren, probably from the influence of his great predecessor, Inigo Jones, remained on the whole faithful to Palladio and the Ancients. As we shall see, the two-order system of the exterior of St. Paul’s was a practical necessity, and not an artistic preference. There is evidence enough from his work that he did not regard architecture as bound up with the application of Orders to building, or as the only means of salvation.