Apropos of London towers, one of the most truly graceful and effective is that of St. Clement Dane’s Church in the Strand, though it is encumbered with a clumsy church behind. Often of a winter’s evening, as you come down Holywell Street, or Booksellers’ Row, you hear its merry chimes jangling out, growing more and more noisy and riotous as you approach. It may be some moonlight night, when its graceful outlines are projected against the bluish sky behind, while the tower windows, lit up from within, show where the ringers are at work. Such a revel of pleasant jangling, all in wildest confusion, and having quite a Christmas tone! One is inclined to linger on, and think it some street corner in Ghent: or else recall old Samuel Johnson, who used to repair here many a time and oft. There is here a regular “College” of ringers, who practise their “triple bob majors” with regularity and skill. A tablet recently set up in the porch records how on Jubilee Day a peal was rung of some 50,000 changes, which perforce took some hours.
It were vain, of course, to praise the matchless Bow Steeple, the best view of which is gained from the Royal Exchange. Its originality, solidity, and airiness are extraordinary. If a fault might be hinted at, “the centre core behind the columns, one could have wished,” says Mr. Taylor, “had been slightly thicker.” The tone and colour—everything is charming. Within, however, it hardly seems to correspond. Indeed, many of Wren’s interiors are disappointing—giving the air of some large, gloomy hall or chamber, rather than that of a church, set off with ponderous carvings. He had another favourite system, exhibited in St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, and St. James’s, Piccadilly, and also imitated by his pupils, of rows of slight pillars, dividing the interior into aisles, and which support vaulted roofs. These are also made to do duty in supporting the galleries.
Architects have fallen into raptures over one of Wren’s City churches, this St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, which, externally, seems mean and neglected. Says one: “If the exterior and belfry of this church have uncommon grace and decorum for that age, it is the interior that constitutes its fame. Though a simple cell inclosed by four walls, the tameness of that form wholly disappears behind the unique and varied arrangement of its sixteen columns. They reproduce and unite almost every beauty of plan to be found in all the cathedrals of Europe. Now they form the Latin cross, with its nave, transept, and chancel; anon they divide the whole space into five aisles, regularly diminishing from the centre to the sides; again we perceive, in the midst, a square apartment with recesses on all its sides—a square, nay, an octagon—no, a circle. It changes at every glance, as we view the entablature, or the arches above it, or the all-uniting dome. With the same harmonious variety we have every form of ceiling brought together at once—flat, camerated, groined, pendentive, domical—yet no confusion. The fitness to its destination is perfect; every eye can see the minister, and every ear is within hearing distance of him in every part of the service. It is the most beautiful of preaching-rooms; and though only a sketch, and executed only in counterfeit building, would, if carried out in Wren’s spirit instead of his employers’, form the most perfect of Protestant temples.”
Of this church, Ralph, an art critic of one hundred and fifty years ago, declared that “it was famous all over Europe, and was justly considered Wren’s masterpiece. Perhaps Italy itself can produce no modern building that can vie with this in taste or proportion: there is not a beauty which this place would admit of, that is not found here in its greatest perfection.” Architects relish the ingenuity of the arrangement; for the whole roof and dome is supported by the columns, and are quite independent of the main walls. It should be remembered that it was built before the erection of the present Mansion House; which has intercepted much of the flood of light that Wren reckoned on to set off his airy columns and arches. The barbarous churchwardens at one time even wished to block up the windows on one side, but were checked.
WREN’S STEEPLES—ST. JAMES’S.
It is easy to interpret the impression of beauty left by the interior, which is owing to the elegance of the cupola in the centre, which seems to be supported airily on these grouped columns. But succeeding visits to the church more and more betray the blemishes caused by modern treatment and so-called improvements. The revealing of the long bases of the columns, by clearing away the pews, leaves an impression that the visitor is below the level of the floor. The columns now seem “lanky,” as if the ground had been cleared away and their bases exposed. The introducing of gaudy colouring into this and the adjoining church of St. Mary Woolnoth has much impaired the architectual effect, multiplying details and destroying the simplicity of the whole. It is clear that a uniform tone, a suggestion of stone colour, is what is required. This charming fabric has further attraction in the monumental and florid organ, with its gallery and doorway below forming one structure, all of the darkest and most solid oak, suggesting what is to be seen in some Flemish church.
