This volume has no claim to be a biography of Wren: still less is it a catalogue raisonné of his buildings. Familiar students of his work will be merciful if they find a bare reference, or none, to something they may regard as peculiarly satisfying and notably Wrennish. I can but plead the limitations of a little book. But some of his buildings not included in earlier chapters must be at least mentioned, if shortly and in a disjointed list.

Amongst public works the Monument takes a prominent if rather unsatisfactory place. The design was subjected to a good deal of interference, for Hawksmoor records that the flaming urn was substituted as a crowning feature for the intended statue of Charles contra architecti intentionem.

Amongst the pedestals of equestrian statues in London, there is none to compare with that of Charles I. at Charing Cross, which was probably of Wren’s designing, but it has been attributed also to Grinling Gibbons.

Temple Bar was an interesting archway which now adorns Theobald’s Park and is commemorated on its old site in Fleet Street by a melancholy monument. There seems a good case for the return of Temple Bar to some site in London. The neighbouring entrance to the Middle Temple is one of Wren’s most charming achievements. His use of brickwork here in conjunction with a stone base and pilasters is of an ideal modesty and simplicity, matched within the Temple by the cloister of Hare Court and rubbed brick doorways in King’s Bench Walk. Of these works as of Kensington Palace Coventry Patmore’s words were abundantly true: “Sir Christopher Wren could not build a common brick house without impressing his own character upon it.” He might have added that it needs a considerable artist to give character to a common brick house, for the palette is limited. Wren’s work at Kensington has been a good deal modified by later hands, but the Queen’s staircase and the Gallery remain very typical. The exterior suffers greatly from the clumsy additions of William Kent, which are too often accepted as part of the original house. The lay-out should be restored, and the great alcove be brought back from its present stupid position near the fountain. The Orangery is a masterpiece of simplicity and reserve, and shows Wren exercising the consummate taste which cannot in honesty be regarded as a continuous characteristic. The attribution of various houses to Wren rests either upon vague tradition or upon imaginary internal evidence. The belief that he designed Belton is persistent but unsupported by documents. The notable contributions made to its decoration by Grinling Gibbons may have strengthened the tradition. Certainly Belton is worthy of Wren. The same may be said of two houses in Chichester, Pallant House and another which has long been called Wren’s House. Miss Milman in her Life printed a chronological list of works, and starred those for which there was no documentary authority. But her stars must be increased. The Chichester houses are cases in point.

It is unfortunate that Marlborough House has been so mishandled since Wren’s day: the attic storey is a clumsy addition. As he planned it, the disposition of the rooms showed no advance on the planning of Inigo Jones and Webb. The main rooms were en suite without any corridor behind them, a march of convenience which Vanbrugh developed at Blenheim, not otherwise a mirror of perfection. Sarah, Duchess, must have been a client calling for all Wren’s skill in handling people. When she quarrelled with Vanbrugh about his fees for Blenheim, she quoted Wren as a pattern of moderation “content to be dragged up in a basket, three or four times a week, to the top of St. Paul’s, and at great hazard, for £200 a year.”

Groombridge Place, Kent, is another house of infinite charm which has been attributed to Wren. The All Souls Collection of his drawings includes some sketch elevations of houses. One sheet in particular gives two alternative treatments for the same plan, but neither is up to Wren’s best form, and it seems reasonable to assume that the smaller domestic work for private clients had to be ignored in the main because of his heavy public employments. Amongst his works which have disappeared altogether are the Custom House, the Armoury and Mint in the Tower of London (where his Storehouse has survived), Christ’s Hospital, and the College of Physicians in Warwick Lane.

Not the least interesting of an architect’s designs are those which are never carried to full fruition. The most notable of these was a great Palace at Winchester, begun for Charles II. Not much of it was built, for the King died before it was finished, and his successors did not like Winchester. The uncompleted core was later adapted so drastically for use as barracks that it ceased to have any Wren significance.

The Tomb of Charles I., for which Parliament voted £70,000, was designed by Wren in 1678. The drawings preserved at All Souls show a domed structure, which was to have stood at the east end of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Within was to be a statue of the Martyr King standing on a shield upheld by four allegorical figures. Alternative treatments are shown for this group in marble and bronze. Grinling Gibbons would no doubt have been the sculptor, but, as Wren’s title of the drawings notes, it was eheu conditionem temporum, nondum extructum. The nondum gives a hint that Wren hoped that it might later be done, but the £70,000 found less worthy employment. Wren’s careful detailed estimates for the work are printed in Sir William St. John Hope’s monumental Windsor Castle, with reproductions of the drawings.

Noble as this design was, I confess I take more pleasure from Wren’s design for a monument (also in All Souls Library) which Sir Reginald Blomfield reproduces[C] with the note that it was probably drawn by Grinling Gibbons. It shows a lady reclining on a couch, not unlike Raggi’s Lady Cheyne in Chelsea Old Church, but she points with a lively gesture to cherubs flying above her in a burst of rays and clouds. It shows Wren in his most baroque mood, and is perhaps his reminiscence of old Bernini’s monumental manner.

In Scotland he did nothing; but the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham, near Dublin, is attributed to him with some reason. In 1679 he was ordered to view the site, but no record remains of his visit, and this Irish variant of Chelsea Hospital is not claimed by his son in the list of works. The building is simple and dignified with open cloisters round a big quadrangle. Probably Wren did designs for it and left some assistant or local architect to supervise its building. The best evidence for his authorship is that there was no architect in Ireland who could have produced such a design, with the possible exception of the designer of Beaulieu, near Drogheda.

Another charitable foundation, Morden College, Blackheath, is certainly Wren’s. It is an enchanting piece of brickwork with a pedimented centre-piece and lantern.

As Cambridge was the locus of his first completed work of importance, Pembroke Chapel (the Sheldonian is called in the Parentalia “the first publick Performance of the Surveyor,” but it was finished later than the chapel); it also gave him the opportunity for one of his greatest achievements, the Library of Trinity. His first design was for a circular building with a domed roof, but this soon gave place to the scheme that was carried out. A long memorandum by Wren explains his reasons for the design, which was limited by the need of joining the new Library to the extension of Neville’s Court, a junction which was not very happily achieved. The governing consideration of the elevation to the Court was the maintenance of the Library floor on the same level as the adjoining chambers. Unfortunately Wren would use two Orders despite the fact that the structure of the work was in conflict. Evidently he was forcing a design, naturally of a Palladian type, of a piano nobile on a lower storey which would be the podium of an Order. It is a case where his ingenuity overbore his artistic sense, and he resorted to the doubtful expedient of a range of arches, the tympana of which are filled in solid. The river front has been criticised on the grounds of an undue austerity, but I find it difficult to follow this: it is surely a miracle of dignity. For the interior of the Library there can be nothing but praise. Ideal in dignity and ideal in convenience, Wren’s book presses have the additional merit of showing Gibbons carving of peculiar excellence, and he must not be charged with the overcrowding of the floor by smaller cases needed by modern accessions of books.

Wren was less happy in his chapel and cloister at Emmanuel College. The breaking of the pediment of the central feature by the lantern turret is not in his usual vein, but the lantern itself is a very charming composition. Another related work is the Honywood Library and Cloister at Lincoln Cathedral, but the Library itself is a rather low and not specially distinguished apartment.

I bring this slight catalogue of Wren’s miscellaneous works to a close with a return to Oxford. It is difficult to determine how far he was responsible for the Library at Queen’s College (1693) because Hawksmoor was mixed up with him there, but the whole College must be regarded as a Wren building. There is nothing of Hawksmoor’s more faithful to his old master’s ideas, and less influenced by Sir John Vanbrugh’s, the two poles between which the lesser man was always oscillating. Sir Reginald Blomfield is strongly against attributing the Ashmolean to Wren, but it is difficult to believe that such a building at such a time could have been entrusted to anyone else. Similarly Trinity College Chapel (1694) is somewhat of a mystery. It has been said that Dean Aldrich was the architect and that Wren was only called in to advise. The quality of the design suggests that Wren was the senior partner in the combination. There is no confusion with regard to Tom Tower. Dr. Fell, Dean of Christ Church, commissioned him to build a tower over Wolsey’s gateway. The result is something certainly not Tudor, but quite certainly a picturesque composition of a high order. Wren’s detail is little like that of the sixteenth century below it, but he did the one thing needful: he provided a dignified and picturesque portal for the College, and it is folly to rebuke a late seventeenth-century architect for not entering into the spirit of his predecessors of the early sixteenth. The study of the spirit of Gothic work, alike systematic and sympathetic, is a growth of less than a hundred years. Wren was of his age.