Though architecture became an exacting mistress, he always kept in touch with the Royal Society and, after a period as Vice-President when he was often in the Chair, served as President in 1680. He could not give the time to experiment, but he was an effective stimulus in the organisation of scientific thought, and took an exceedingly active part in discussions which ranged from comets to the making of jessamine-scented gloves with daffodils, from Mr. Mercator’s new projection of maps to the conclusion that “all wholesome food should have oils” (which smacks of vitamines), from the structure of peat to the contrivance of an azimuth compass.
The incredible boy of Wadham days had become the tireless President at fifty, immersed in the greatest architectural practice of his century, but still the enthusiastic scientist. I find it all very astonishing.
CHAPTER V
BEGINNINGS OF ARCHITECTURE AND VISIT TO PARIS
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.”