It happened that Wren had to concern himself intimately with other “congestions of heavy dark melancholy and monkish piles, without any just proportion, use or beauty” (the phrase is Evelyn’s), such as Westminster Abbey. For twenty-five years he was Surveyor to the Abbey, and wrote a Report on it in 1713. We may pass over his historical paragraphs, which show shrewdness of observation, for his obiter dicta on Gothic methods. He disliked the “flutter of archbuttresses,” as they “occasion the Ruin of Cathedrals, being so much exposed to the Air and Weather,” but is tolerant of Henry VII.’s Chapel, “a nice embroidered Work.”
We have learnt by dire experience the heavy burden of repairs incident to the mediæval system of external supports by flying arches, pinnacles, and buttresses in our climate. He goes on to specify necessary repairs, some done, and others needed, and to plead for the finishing of the West Front and the completion of the Central Tower with the addition of a spire, which “will give a proper Grace to the whole Fabrick, and the West End of the City, which seems to want it.”
Sir Charles Barry was later to be equally concerned with the idea of completing the outline of the Abbey, as his last designs show.
Wren’s common sense and real respect for Gothic are alike shown by his proposal for the spire: “I have made a Design, which will not be very expensive but light, and still in the Gothic form, and of a Style with the rest of the Structure, which I would strictly adhere to, throughout the whole Intention: to deviate from the old Form would be to run into a disagreeable Mixture: which no Person of a good Taste could relish.”
He went on to talk of the north window, then stopped with plaster to prevent its total ruin, and said his models for the new work were “such as I conceive may agree with the original scheme of the old Architect, without any modern mixtures to shew my own Inventions.” His North Transept Front was swept away by Pearson, not to everyone’s satisfaction, and though the Gothic grammar of it was inevitably at fault, because he was trying to do something against the current of the times, the failure was not due to any lack of appreciation of Gothic. The existing western towers were not built in Wren’s lifetime and he need not be charged with the defects of their execution by the introduction of definitely classical cornices and other details of a type which Wren would not have used. So much for Wren as a student of Gothic. I come now to an example of the use he made of other men’s writings.
In the library of Shirburn Castle there is a copy of Wotton’s Elements of Architecture, first edition, 1624, annotated by the hand of Sir Christopher himself. It is worth while quoting from these notes in some detail, because they show that Wren was a careful reader and that he was quick to mark every kind of practical application of what he read. The page references are to the first edition of the Elements.
Where Wotton says of staircases (on p. 58) that “the breadth of every single step should never be less than one foot, nor more than eighteen inches,” Wren adds “nor so much as eighteen inches at any time, for if a step exceed twelve, those who have but short [legs] must tread twice upon the same step, especially in descent, which, to women especially, is troublesome, and dangerous to the hasty.” James Wyatt, in the circular staircase of Devonshire House, erred in this way, with exactly the effect that Wren describes. One bears in mind in this connection that Wren himself was of short stature. On p. 55 Wotton discourses of the advantage of luminous rooms: “Indeed, I must confess that a frank light can misbecome no edifice whatsoever, temples only excepted, which were anciently dark, as they are likewise at this day in some proportion, devotion more requiring collected than defused spirits,” on which Wren makes the comment that Christ Church in London was practically nothing but window, and was fitter for a stage than for a church, “although for the kind of building it is a thorough piece of work.” On gardens and their treatment with aqueducts, walks, etc., Wren makes the note, “And for disposing the current of a river to a mighty length in a little space I invented the Serpentine, a form admirably convoying the current in circular and yet contrary motions upon one and the same level, with walks and retirements between to the advantage of all purposes, either of gardenings, plantings, or banquetings ... far beyond the bungarly [!] invention at Hatfield so much liked for pleasure.” Up and down the book there are scattered all manner of other interesting notes. There is a practical thought in Wren’s reference to the very small chimneys in use in Spain, where charcoal was sold by weight. He has evidently had difficulty with smoky chimneys, for to Wotton’s observation, “Then there is a repulsion of the fume by some higher hill or fabrique that shall overtop the chimney,” he makes the significant comment, “As in our buildings here.”
In connection with terracing any story (by which Wotton seems to have meant the making of loggias), Wren remarks: “Terracing is most commended in hotter climates, and in our country must serve mostly for summer rooms.” To Wotton’s general reflection that “various colours on the out-walls of buildings have always in them more delight than dignity,” Wren adds the criticism in Latin that in this particular the noble building of Lord Exeter at Wimbledon also offends. He seems, however, to have been friendly to the use of mosaic, for he says: “Herein excels that excellent cave at Bodington wherein stands the brazen hydra with seven springs out of seven heads.” With regard to the art of the plasterer, Wotton had said: “Plastique is not only under sculpture, but indeed very sculpture itself, with this difference that the plasterer doth make his figures by addition, and the carver by subtraction.” Wren makes short work of this with, “This proposition can never hold true to the name of sculpture.”
At the end of the Elements Wotton promises another work, “A Philosophical Survey of Education, which is indeed a Second Building or Repairing of Nature, and, as I may term it, a kind of moral architecture.” Wren must have taken considerable pleasure from the Elements, for in the margin he has written: “Oh that we might see that, so long expected.”
There are bits of detailed criticism in his first Tract which might have been used in recent comments on a great London building: “Fronts ought to be elevated in the Middle, not the Corners; because the Middle is the place of greatest Dignity and first arrests the Eye; and rather projecting forward in the Middle, than hollow. For these Reasons, Pavilions at the Corners are naught; because they make both Faults, a hollow and depressed Front.... No Roof can have Dignity enough to appear above a Cornice, but the Circular: in private Buildings it is excusable.”