I have quoted at length from this letter in order to mark the massive common sense which Wren brought to the solution of his problems. Mr. Arthur Bolton gives me the interesting parallel of 1818, when Sir John Soane reported to the Government on the national church building scheme. His recommendations show that he worked on his great predecessor’s report and he even sent to St. James’s and measured it as a typical instance. As, however, the year 1818 preferred numbers to quality, the results fell far below those of the earlier century.
It was Wren’s quality of common sense as much as the genius of the artist that made his City churches what they are, practical solutions of practical difficulties and instinct with the English spirit of compromise, but none the less the greatest group of churches created in any country by the genius and practical wisdom of one man.
CHAPTER IX
CHELSEA, HAMPTON COURT, AND GREENWICH
Mr. Basil Champneys has recorded a notable observation by Thomas Carlyle on Chelsea Hospital: “I had passed it, almost daily, for many years without thinking much about it, and one day I began to reflect that it had always been a pleasure to me to see it, and I looked at it more attentively, and saw that it was quiet and dignified and the work of a gentleman.” This was evidently a favourite theme with Carlyle, for William Allingham’s Diary for June 25, 1874, records a similar phrase with the addition that the Hospital was “admirably adapted for its uses.” Carlyle’s devotion to Wren’s memory had an odd repercussion. When William De Morgan called on the Sage to beg him on behalf of William Morris to join the Anti-Scrape Society, Carlyle was cold at first, but a reference to the dealings of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners with Wren’s churches set him alight. He ended a panegyric on Wren with “he was a very great man, of extraordinary patience with fools,” and glared round at the company reproachfully. Morris rather winced when Carlyle, in a letter accepting membership of the Anti-Scrape, referred to the City churches as “marvellous works, the like of which we shall never see again,” and his hatred of the Renaissance never ceased to blind him to Wren’s genius.
It would have been well if the Society had been more active, in the past, in defence of Wren’s churches. The narrow mediævalism of the latter half of the nineteenth century wrought havoc even where it failed to destroy. Stained glass and other alien trappings have prejudiced far too many of his fine interiors. One church architect of the type responsible for these things was finely reproved with the reminder that Wren was just as good a High Churchman as he was.
PLATE IX
CHELSEA HOSPITAL: THE MAIN PORTICO.
The site of Chelsea Hospital had been given by the King to the Royal Society soon after its foundation, but it was an inconvenient possession, and the Society sold it back to the King for the foundation of a Royal Hospital for disabled soldiers. Sir Stephen Fox, a retired army contractor, supplemented the King’s benefactions, and on May 25, 1682, the inevitable Evelyn went with Fox and Wren to Lambeth to secure the Archbishop of Canterbury’s approval to the plot and design or, as we should say, plan and elevations. Ten weeks later Evelyn was at Chelsea with Fox to see the foundations started. Wren was a good deal more than architect to the Hospital. It was during his Presidency of the Royal Society that the land was re-conveyed to the King: he carried the business through with characteristic despatch, and the statutes governing the charity were of his drafting. The buildings were completed in 1692, and no better praise of them than Carlyle’s can be invented. Wren shows himself in one of his characteristic moods as a sane economist where the purpose of the building makes economy an æsthetic as well as a practical virtue. The Hospital is a liberal education in the handling of London brickwork. When Sir John Soane, in the days of Nash stucco, had to add an Infirmary building, he was careful to design in brick and content to despise the abuse it evoked at that time. At Hampton Court Wren had a very different problem: he was housing not pensioners but a King and Queen. His original scheme had a quality of immensity. Our Dutch monarch who had so successfully countered the statesmanship of Louis XIV. doubtless wanted to follow, at some distance, his building exploits at Versailles and elsewhere. Queen Mary had a great liking for the situation of Hampton Court. Wren was bidden to prepare a scheme for a complete rebuilding and did so. Part of the old fabric was taken down and Wren’s two great suites of apartments for King and Queen rose in its place. The work went forward vigorously from 1689 to 1694, and then the Queen’s death caused the completion of the plan to be abandoned. The execution of the partial scheme drifted on until 1700. There was a chance then of the King proceeding to the finishing of the complete plan, but William’s death finally killed it. To these accidents of mortality we owe it that part of Wolsey’s palace has remained. If Wren had had his way, not a brick of the Tudors would have survived. The architect was happy in only one of his royal clients. Mary was amiable and reasonable, but William’s temper and his habit of interference tried Wren very high. The King, however, was fair enough to say that the insufficient headroom of the cloisters must be ascribed to his express orders which overbore Wren’s wishes.
Despite this, the Fountain Court is one of the successful features of the Palace, which reveals Wren’s sanity and dignity and Englishness in a most convincing way. It is enough to look at Chatsworth, in the light of Hampton Court, to realize the difference between pedantry and genius. Norman Shaw so greatly admired Hampton Court, that he would have followed it in Whitehall, if he had been entrusted with the Government offices. The weakest part of the Palace is the pedimented garden front, where a sense of display, due perhaps to Royal Command, contrasts with the greater simplicity of the return façade towards the Tudor garden.