‘I suppose,’ he ends, ‘you have good masons; however, I would willingly take a farther pains to give all the mouldings in great; we are scrupulous in small matters and you must pardon us, the architects are as great pedants as critics and heralds.’
WREN AT PARIS.
It was not until midsummer that Wren was able to start on his journey: he went at once to Paris to the Earl of S. Albans, the English ambassador, to whom he had letters. Lord S. Albans had lived at Paris in great ease and luxury all through the Rebellion, far more so, Evelyn indignantly says, than had the King. He was supposed to be privately married to the Queen Dowager, Henrietta Maria. He was what was then called a great virtuoso, a friend of Cowley and of other wits, and entertained Wren with much courtesy and hospitality. Wren’s name was, in itself, a sufficient introduction to the scientific men and philosophers of the city, in whose society he took great pleasure.
He had long been a Member of the Order of Freemasons, and had distinguished himself by the attention he gave to the lodges under his care: at the time of his journey to France he was Deputy Grand Master under Earl Rivers; no doubt he availed himself to the full of the opportunities which Freemasonry afforded him for observing the details of the work and becoming acquainted with the workmen, the architects, and the sculptors, whom Louis XIV. had brought in great numbers to Paris.
It would have been interesting had Wren left us a record of his impressions of Paris from a political point of view. It was the brief interval of peace between England and France before the war of the Netherlands. Louis XIV., climbing upwards to the zenith of his brilliant reign, keeping the supreme power in his own hands since Mazarin’s death (in 1661), with the wise Colbert for his financier, surrounded by all the great captains, statesmen, wits and artists who made up the ‘Siècle de Louis XIV.,’ must have been a very interesting subject for the observation of a philosopher like Wren, whose youth had been passed among terrible political storms. There is, however, but one slight hint in his journal, but one suggestion that he discerned the true value of much of the glitter and veneer of universal, if temporary, success. Pascal, with whom he had corresponded, and between whose brief career and his own there is a curious resemblance, had died three years before Wren took his one foreign journey.
The ‘Académie Royale des Sciences,’ which had just received the formal sanction of Louis XIV., had begun much like the English Royal Society, by small meetings and conferences at Paris amongst scientific men, and in these conferences, Pascal, while very young, had taken a brilliant place. His father, Etienne Pascal, when he found it a vain attempt to withhold mathematical science from his son, cultivated the boy’s genius to the utmost, beyond, perhaps, what the very feeble physical frame could bear.
One cannot doubt that Wren was introduced to this society, and took an interest in its discussions, though his attention seems most of all to have been given to architecture.
THE LOUVRE.
In a journal written for a Dr. Bateman, the friend who gave him the letters to Lord S. Albans, he says:
‘I have busied myself in surveying the most esteemed Fabrics of Paris, and the country round; the Louvre for a while was my daily object where no less than a thousand hands are constantly employed in the works; some in laying mighty Foundations, some in raising the stories, columns, and entablements &c. with vast stones, by great and useful engines, others in carving, inlaying of marbles, plaistering, painting, gilding &c., which altogether makes a School of Architecture, the best probably at this day in Europe. The college of the Four Nations,[102] is usually admired, but the Artist had purposely set it ill-favouredly that he might shew his wit in struggling with an ill-convenienced situation. An Academy of Painters, Sculptors, Architects and the chief Artificers of the Louvre, meet every first and last Saturday of the month. Mons. Colbert, Surintendant, comes to the works of the Louvre every Wednesday, and if business hinders not, Thursday. The Workmen are paid every Sunday duly. Mons. Abbé Charles introduced me to the acquaintance of Bernini,[103] who showed me his designs of the Louvre, and of the King’s Statue. Abbé Bruno keeps the curious rarities of the Duke of Orleans’ library, well filled with excellent Intaglios, medals, books of Plants and Fowls in miniature. Abbé Burdelo keeps an Academy at his house for Philosophy every Monday afternoon. But I must not think to describe Paris, and the numerous observables there in the compass of a short letter. The King’s Houses I could not miss, Fontainbleau has a stately wildness and vastness suitable to the Desert it stands in.