CHAPTER XII
THE PROFESSIONAL MAN
It is of some interest to attempt to form a picture of Wren, not as a great artist in building, but as a professional architect dealing with clients who were often awkward and sometimes dishonest, like the St. Paul’s authorities in his later years, carrying out a vast amount of detail work which is now regarded as the task of the surveyor rather than the architect, making arrangements for the settlement of disputes, boundary lines, frontages, and for compliance with Royal Proclamations and Acts of Parliament, negotiating with clients as to fees, and generally dealing with the financial and business side of his profession.
All his biographers have emphasised the undoubted fact that Wren was not a self-seeking man, but I think they have a little overdone the suggestion of altruism. It is said in Parentalia and elsewhere that Wren’s salary of £200 a year for the work of designing and superintending St. Paul’s was a very modest sum. That is true, but it must be remembered that the salary ran from 1675, when he was appointed Surveyor-General and Architect of St. Paul’s, until 1711, when the House of Commons determined that the Cathedral was completed. He, therefore received £7,200 in respect of St. Paul’s. It is also stated in Parentalia that he received £100 a year for work on the City churches. But this seems to be wholly untrue, for Wren was paid on exactly the same basis as an architect of to-day—i.e., by a commission on the value of the work executed. Until 1919, when it was raised to 6 per cent., the customary remuneration of an architect in England was 5 per cent.; and a manuscript account, covering the period from July, 1670, to March, 1673, quoted by Wyatt Papworth, shows that twelve-pence in the pound for all monies received and paid was disbursed “for allowances for rebuilding the Churches to the Officers of Works for the management of the whole.” This is 5 per cent., out of which Wren no doubt paid for his office staff. As the total expenditure on the City churches was £263,786, Wren must have received over £13,000. In addition, the City authorities would now and again give to him (or in one case to Lady Wren) a lump sum by way of expressing their gratitude for his services.
In the capacity of Surveyor-General of His Majesty’s Works, he was receiving, in 1675, 13s. 2d. a day and “availes” of £80 per quarter, which meant another £320 a year, by way of retaining fee; and Papworth presumes, I think with reason, that he also received specific payment in respect of each service performed. By the year 1715, his salary and “riding charges” had dropped to £136 a year, but it is also to be remembered that all this time he had an official residence in Whitehall consisting of sixteen rooms and a cellar, which he occupied for about fifty years without cost to himself.
In respect of Chelsea Hospital he received a fee of £1,000, but there are many examples of his refusing payment altogether. He insisted on doing all the work at Greenwich Hospital without payment, saying, “Let me have some share in an act of charity and mercy.” When he came to design the Library of Trinity at Cambridge, for which the Master had some difficulty in getting enough subscriptions, Wren’s contribution was the value of his own work, for which he made no charge; and, similarly, he received nothing in respect of his work at St. Clement Danes. These are acts of generosity of which we happen to have definite record, and I do not doubt that there were many other examples of the same sort not recorded, for Wren’s generosity was equalled only by his modesty.
He was not above a trifling piece of nepotism; for his son Christopher became Deputy Clerk Engrosser in the Office of Works in 1694 and Clerk of Works in 1702, succeeding Dickenson. This appointment was confirmed by George I. in 1715. But when Sir Christopher fell from favour his son was also dismissed, and from the younger Christopher’s casual proceedings in the compilation of the material of Parentalia, I cannot believe that the State suffered greatly from his disappearance.
During thirty-two years of Wren’s professional career, Nicholas Hawksmoor was his domestic clerk, which we may take to mean that he was in charge of Wren’s office and his right-hand man, both in designing and in the financial supervision of the works. It would appear that he performed a good many of the duties which now fall to the separate profession of quantity surveyor. I suspect that, for example, the payments to the various contractors for the City churches, and possibly also for St. Paul’s, were certified by Wren after the value of the work done had been examined by Hawksmoor. It seems certain that the very elaborate accounts of the City churches, with which I have dealt fully in Archæologia, were actually written out by Hawksmoor himself.
PLATE XV
THE CENTRAL PORTION OF THE CHIAROSCURO ENGRAVING BY ELISHA KIRKALL, AFTER KLOSTERMAN.