Tales of English Minsters: St. Paul's

by Elizabeth W. Grierson

And, luckily for Grinling Gibbons, John Evelyn got to know him, and was a very good friend to him. If we read Evelyn’s ‘Diary,’ we learn how it came about.

He tells us how one day he was walking, ‘by mere accident,’ in a field near Sayes Court, when he noticed a ‘poore solitary thatched house.’ He thought he would like to see who lived there, and he went and knocked, but the door was shut, so he looked in at the window.

And he saw the young artist working at his beautiful piece of carving, which was almost finished. Evelyn was so astonished at finding such a skilful craftsman living so humbly that he asked him if he might come in and speak to him.

Gibbons opened the door quite civilly, and Evelyn tells us that when he saw the work close at hand he was quite amazed at its beauty and delicacy. He asked the young carver why he lived in such a lonely spot, and Gibbons told him that he wanted to have time ‘to work hard at his profession without interruption.’

Then Evelyn, who was always ready to do a kind action and to help people, volunteered to introduce him to some ‘great man,’ who might, perhaps, buy the piece of carving, and asked the sum for which Gibbons would sell it.

The craftsman replied modestly that ‘he was but a beginner, but he thought that the carving was worth a hundred pounds.’

Mr. Evelyn thought that it was quite worth a hundred pounds too, and so the very next time that he went to Court he told King Charles about it, and asked him if he might invite the young artist to bring the piece of work to Whitehall when it was finished, in order that the King might see it.

King Charles said ‘Yes,’ and kind-hearted John Evelyn was delighted, for he felt certain that as soon as the King saw it he would buy it. But, alas! his expectations were dashed to the ground by a French ‘peddling woman,’ who sold ‘petticoats and fauns and baubles out of France’ to the Queen and the ladies of her Court. And this was how it happened.

When the piece of carving was brought to the Palace, the King admired it very much, and would have bought it, but he thought that he would ask his wife first how she liked it. So he gave orders that it was to be carried into the Queen’s apartments, so that she could see it. She also admired it, and was anxious that the King should buy it; but an old Frenchwoman chanced to be in the room—the ‘peddling woman,’ as Evelyn calls her—who was in the habit of bringing over gloves, and fans, and things of that sort, from France, and selling them to the Court ladies. When she heard the price that Charles proposed to give for the carving, she was afraid that the Queen would run short of money, and so would not be able to buy so many things from her as she usually did.

So, when the King left the room, she began to criticize the carving, and to find fault with it, and the foolish Queen believed that what she said was true, and when the King came back, she persuaded him not to buy it. So poor Grinling had to carry it back to his little cottage at Deptford, and he afterwards sold it to a nobleman for eighty pounds.