S. Clement’s, with its square tower and balustrade, has within a great deal of fine oak carving, and its ceiling adorned with one great circle with an outer line of curious fretwork. Bishop Pearson was rector before the Fire, and the famous treatise on the Nicene Creed is dedicated to his parishioners there.
S. Mary’s, with its quaint little round windows and flat-topped roof, is not externally beautiful, but within it is one of the gems which Wren bestowed on out-of-the-way nooks: its cupola[196] is gracefully supported on eight arches and pendentives, the east end is rich with Gibbons’ carving of festoons of fruit, palm leaves and a pelican in her piety. Much handsome work has also been bestowed on the inside doorcases.
CARVERS IN WOOD.
Wren’s promise to Evelyn to employ Gibbons was certainly redeemed; for, besides the works which have been glanced at, Gibbons was busied on the stalls of S. Paul’s choir, where, darkened but uninjured by time, his work stands out in all the peculiar grace and tenderness which his chisel could give to wood. The angels which cluster beneath the great organ seem themselves to be taking part in the music which flows from it, and are as unlike as possible to the lumps of marble or wood with which other hands too often deform a church, and which the old guide-books term ‘Cupids’!
Still, it is a physical impossibility that all the work which bears Gibbons’ name is by him and him only.
MAKING A FORTUNE.
The fame of the Cathedral, its architect, and its carvings, was widely spread, and brought many from the country to seek for work on the new building. Of one of these a curious account remains.[197] A young man, named Philip Wood, of Sudbury, Suffolk, who had great skill in carving, came up to London to make, if he could, sufficient fortune to enable him to marry the daughter of his patron, a retired London merchant named Haybittle. After long waiting in London, without work, till his money was all but spent, he, remembering the rich wood work which abounded in the churches of his native Suffolk, bethought himself that in the Cathedral, whose progress he daily watched, ‘they would surelie put carvings.’ The foreman to whom he spoke repulsed him, saying ‘We want no carpenters here.’ Undiscouraged, the young man came again day after day for a week, till at length Sir Christopher noticed him, and learning from the foreman that he was ‘a country fellow who troubled them to give him some of the carving to do,’ beckoned to Wood to come and speak to him. As the young man approached full of hope, he said, ‘Friend, you want carving work—what have you been used to carve?’ At this critical, long-desired moment the poor youth lost his presence of mind, and instead of mentioning the ‘sundry figures of lions and elephants’ that he had carved for Mr. Haybittle’s house, stammered out, ‘Please your worship, I have been used to carve troughs.’ ‘Troughs!’ said Sir Christopher; ‘then carve me as a specimen of your skill, a sow and pigs (it will be something in your line), and bring it to me this day week. I shall be here.’ So he went away, with a smile at the presumption which could aspire to step straight from such work to that of adorning S. Paul’s.
Distracted at his own folly and the loud laughter of the workpeople, Wood rushed back to his lodging, and but for the kind advice of his Quaker landlady, would have given up all for lost. She wisely told him to take Wren at his word and carve the best sow and pigs that he could make.
He obeyed her exactly, spent his last guinea on a block of pear-wood, and wrought with all his might to get it ready by the appointed day. Sir Christopher was showing the building to a party of friends, but as soon as he saw Wood with his carving hidden in an apron, he beckoned him forward. Wood produced his carving; Wren looked at it a moment in silence, and then said, ‘I engage you, young man; attend at my office to-morrow forenoon.’ Shortly afterwards he came to Wood again and said, ‘Mr. Addison[198] wishes to keep your carving, and requests me to give you ten guineas for it;’ then with his gentle courtesy, he added, ‘Young man, I fear I did you some injustice, but a great national work is entrusted to me, and it is my solemn duty to mind that no part of the work falls into inefficient hands. Mind and attend me to-morrow.’ Wood was employed for seven years in the Cathedral, and received considerable sums of money; and it is pleasant to know that he did marry Hannah Haybittle.
Thus some of his work is in S. Paul’s, and to him London streets were indeed paved with gold. Yet one cannot but think sadly, for one who thus succeeded, what numbers then and now come full of hope, to the great city, and without help or friends lose their all, and are left without even the means of returning. To the number of these the House of Charity, which occupies one corner of Wren’s once handsome Soho Square, can bear but too true a testimony.