Cathedral Cities of England

by George Gilbert

Very much in the same way, we may be sure, Wren was actuated. His pay was no inducement. He received only £200 a year throughout the whole time of building, and then at one time a certain portion of this miserable pittance was withheld by order of Parliament, because his detractors accused him of delaying the final completion of the work from corrupt motives. Wren's clerk of the works, by name Nicholas Hawksmoor, who afterwards became famous as the builder of several London churches, was paid only twenty pence a day. Tijou, his ironworker, and Grinling Gibbons, the famous carver in wood, were all actuated by the same ideal when they helped to give expression to their master's genius. However, in one or two particulars, which will be mentioned later on, Wren's superior judgment was overruled by his committee. Much to his intense and lasting mortification they carried the day and stamped themselves as incompetent judges. This process of realisation, this seeking after an ideal, sometimes led Wren into strange architectural difficulties, only to be overcome in a masterly way. By discovering these little inconsistencies, the architect's skilfulness in taking advantage of accidents, in turning what appeared an irremediable blunder into a great success, shows what a complete understanding he had in that great branch of art—architecture—and endorses more than ever the great position he will always be accorded.

An example will serve to illustrate his ingenuity.

How many people, when climbing up the stairs that lead to the whispering gallery and elsewhere, have ever noticed any peculiarity about them? Yet there is one. When first they were being built each step was meant to be of the same height, but as they mounted higher, Wren suddenly discovered that the top one would be an ugly tall one to ascend. To avoid this meant one of two things, either to demolish what had already been completed and start afresh, or to turn this accident to good account. The latter alternative was chosen. By gradually reducing the height of the remaining steps, he contrived to overcome the difficulty so successfully that he has tricked the eye and foot, so slight is the difference of each tread. They appear to be equidistant as the ones lower down, and the illusion can only be dispelled by measurement.

If any one is observant on reaching the top of Ludgate Hill, one peculiarity of the great building will strike him. It is that the great west façade does not squarely face Ludgate Hill, but bears considerably to the right. In fact its axis does not run due east and west.

On the advancement of Wren to be principal architect, he was not only commissioned to erect the Cathedral, but was to rebuild the city. His scheme was very thorough. It comprised the widening of the streets; the complete insulation of all important churches; the public buildings were to have good frontages; and the halls of the City Guilds were to form a quadrangle around the Guildhall. To carry these improvements into effect, Government issued orders that none except Wren's rebuilding would be recognised. Unfortunately much valuable time was wasted in an attempt at the restoration of the old cathedral, insisted upon by the committee, against Wren's wishes, and it was only when a portion of the nave fell down that Dean Sancroft was able to obtain the consent of the committee to raze the old walls to the ground and to allow Wren to build from the very foundations. The delay of this decision had in the meanwhile given opportunity to individuals to erect buildings much as they pleased upon their own properties in spite of Government prohibition, with the result that to a great extent streets and boundaries, which existed before the Great Fire, were reproduced. It also caused the loss of a far more spacious frontage than now exists, which we may be sure formed an important item in Wren's design for the Cathedral. The architect, however, by receding the west front from the old site now occupied by the statue of Queen Ann, has cleverly spaced out a noble frontage. Another consideration that determined Wren to alter the axis of the Cathedral was his great aversion to utilising the old foundations. His great ambition was to strike out for himself and to be dependent on no one else's work. In order to realise this he laid the axis of the new work to a point farther north of that of the old cathedral, and the plan by this projection has in a marvellous way covered practically the same ground, whilst at the same time Wren managed to secure fresh ground for his foundations almost throughout the whole church. The plan of St. Paul's is a Latin cross, and is based upon classical lines. The principal front, the west, is composed of a double portico of Corinthian fluted pillars, with two flights of steps leading down to the road-level. In fact the entire body of the ground floor is above the elevation of the street. Overhead is a large pediment, with its panel sculptured in high relief. On either side the west front is flanked by a campanile tower, composed at the summit of grouped circular pillars. Just inside, on the left, is the Morning Chapel, whilst straight on the opposite side lies the Chapel of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. Proceeding eastwards, the nave is flanked by three massive and imposing arches. Then comes the dome or cupola, rising to a height of 365 feet, or 404 feet to the top of the cross. Viewed from the interior the inner dome is 225 feet, and rests at the intersection of the cross. The transepts are carried one arch to the north and one to the south, each of which are bound by semi-circular rows of Corinthian pillars.

Continuing again towards the east, a couple of steps mark the commencement of the choir leading from the dome, and is carried forward by three arches on either side. Behind the altar the colossal building terminates in the apsidal Chapel of Jesus. Throughout the entire length and breadth of the building is the crypt below. There under the choir, the nearest to the south wall in the crypt chapel, is the modest slab that covers the remains of the great architect of the grand edifice. Next to him lies the body of Lord Leighton, the greatest president the Royal Academy has ever had. Just in the one corner are buried some of the most eminent of England's painters, sculptors, and musicians. Those more generally known are Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy; Benjamin West, who succeeded him in office; Sir Thomas Lawrence, who next filled it, and Sir John Millais, who held the dignity only a few months after Leighton's death. The remains of J. M. W. Turner, James Barry, John Foley, Sir Edwin Landseer, and Sir Arthur Sullivan, musician, who are also some of the many great builders of art, have all been accorded a little plot of ground close to their very great brother-artist and predecessor, Sir Christopher Wren. In the centre of the crypt, or rather right underneath the dome, is a noble mausoleum containing the body of England's greatest admiral, Viscount Horatio Nelson, whilst just close to him between the crypt chapel and the dome is the massive sarcophagus of granite, encased in which is the body of the Duke of Wellington. The monument of this hero of Waterloo is the chief feature of the plastic art that attracts the visitor on looking up the nave. It is the great artistic expression of Stevens, the sculptor, and dwarfs all other monuments in its immediate neighbourhood. We would like to enumerate the names of all the great men that lie in the mighty shadow of St. Paul's, and pay some tribute to the many artists who have, through their monuments, endeavoured their best to honour the memories of those who have so worthily upheld the traditions of the great empire; but any such attempt we feel we must relinquish, and devote all the space we can to Wren's work and to that of his predecessors.

The wonderful wood-carving of the choir stall, and especially the remarkable realistic floral designs of the Bishop's throne, were executed by Grinling Gibbons, who lived between 1648 and 1720. He was born at Rotterdam, and as a youth came over to England, and was discovered by Evelyn, the diarist. So astonished was Evelyn by the genius of Gibbons, who had just carved in wood a copy of Tintoretto's "Crucifixion," that he introduced him to Wren, Pepys, and the King. With such powerful friends and his marvellous talent he soon became the most famous carver of his age. In viewing the great edifice one cannot help thinking from whence came the money which enabled Wren to carry on the work. With the exception of the Tillingham farm there were no endowments, and people were, after the fire, far from being generous donors. As funds were absolutely necessary, royal warrants were issued to authorise the building committee to borrow on the security of the coal and wine taxes. As the remuneration of Wren, Grinling Gibbons, and Tijou was nothing to speak of, we may take it that practically the whole of the proceeds was sunk in the materials and the workmen's wages.

Throughout the whole time of building Wren was harassed by petty annoyances on the part of the committee, who interfered in small matters of technical and artistic knowledge which lay quite beyond their province. Against the architect's will they insisted upon the erection of the heavy iron railings which fence in the Cathedral and mar the beautiful gradations of lines from the lowest step of the transept entrances to the summit of the dome's cross. This only serves as one of many such instances. Finally, Wren's persecutors went so far as to suspend his patent in the year 1718, being the forty-ninth of his office and the eighty-sixth of his age, and William Benson was appointed to succeed him.

This abrupt dismissal entirely upset any plan of internal decoration which Wren might have been thinking of, though it is supposed he had proposed to enrich and beautify St. Paul's with a scheme of colour composed of marble and mosaic work with gold and paintings. With the exception of the frescoes in the dome by Sir James Thornhill, nothing of importance was done for fifty years after Wren's death. A proposal to contribute a number of paintings from Sir Joshua Reynolds and the members of the Royal Academy was negatived by Dr. Terrick, who was Bishop of London at that time. In 1891 W. B. Richmond, A.R.A., was commissioned to decorate the choir and the dome with mosaic work, it being considered the most suitable material on account of the brilliancy of its surface, and the easiest to clean without risk of injury to the work. Sir William Richmond, K.C.B. (as he has since been created), decided to depart from modern methods in favour of the ancient way of embedding in cement cubes, so chosen and disposed to suit the various shades of his subjects. They represent various incidents taken from the Bible, treated most skilfully, as one would naturally expect from such a talented artist.

The difficulties of such an undertaking, restricted within certain limits as it must be by the nature of the material, together with the many attendant side-issues of which the outside public have not the faintest idea, can only be known to the artist himself, and perhaps to some of his confrères.