SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN
[Illustration: COUNTRY LIFE]
[Illustration: THE CHIEF WORKS OF WREN.
A tribute by C. R. Cockerell, R.A.]
SIR
CHRISTOPHER WREN
SCIENTIST, SCHOLAR AND
ARCHITECT
BY SIR
LAWRENCE WEAVER
K.B.E., F.S.A., HON. A.R.I.B.A.
LONDON
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES OF “COUNTRY LIFE,” LTD.,
20, TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 2,
AND BY GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 8-11, SOUTHAMPTON
STREET, STRAND, W.C. 2. NEW YORK: CHARLES
SCRIBNER’S SONS
MCMXXIII
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
This little book pretends to be neither a Life of Wren nor a detailed
record of his achievement. His working years were more than seventy.
At fifteen the inventor of a weather-clock and the author of a Theory
of Trigonometry which delighted Sir Charles Scarborough, he died in
his ninety-first year, not indeed in professional harness, but still
working at the multitudinous problems to which his life had been
devoted.
When the definitive “Life and Works” comes to be written, it will
itself be someone’s life-work, if it is to be adequate.
I attempt no more than to give impressions of the many sides of a great
Englishman, and have taken the liberty to ignore the chronological
order which is fitting in a biography.
My old friend Henry Wheatley pleased himself with the notion that
people who write get a grossly unfair share of the world’s praise, for
the relative greatness of men is judged by what writers say of them,
and writers are obsessed by the importance of their own craft.
It is also true that architecture has been in England an inarticulate
trade, and one regarded in our generation as a technical mystery with
which we are little concerned.
The greatness of Wren has been obscured by the modesty which checked
any inclination he may have had to enshrine his thought in writing,
save in few and disjointed but admirable fragments on science and
architecture: in any case his prodigious output of building left little
time for his pen.
It is because Sir Christopher Wren brought to his superb architectural
accomplishment the equipment of a mathematician, of a master of natural
science, and of a scholar, that it is what it is. He has been called
the English Leonardo. The praise, though great, is not excessive, but
the parallel falls short of completeness. Leonardo was poet and mystic
as well as painter, sculptor, scientist, and philosopher. But if Wren
did not carry his head in the clouds, he was still something more than
our architect of greatest achievement. He was a man of scientific and
intellectual stature worthy to be measured with our best. He was, above
all, a great English gentleman. His contemporaries knew his quality:
it were very shame if we ignored it. The Bicentenary Celebrations have
given us opportunity to pay the homage due.
_February 25, 1923._
(_Two hundredth anniversary of the
death of Wren._)
AUTHORITIES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The _Parentalia or Memoirs of the Wrens_, by Christopher, the son of
Sir Christopher, is the main source of information about the great
architect. It is as ill-constructed a book as one may meet, yet it
possesses a charm of its own. Christopher’s idea of a biography seems
to have been to print notes, letters, and discourses as they came to
his hand, without any thread of text to give coherence to very diverse
material. The result is a rather forbidding publication, which demands
of the reader no little resolution. The _Parentalia_ deals not only
with Sir Christopher, but with his father, Dean Christopher, and his
uncle, Bishop Matthew. The father, as Registrar of the Order of the
Garter and Dean of Windsor, and the uncle, as Bishop of Ely, filled
no small parts in the Church history of their day; but we are little
concerned with them here, except as they came into Sir Christopher’s
life.
This ill-compiled miscellany when completed by the younger Christopher,
who died in 1747, was published by his son Stephen in 1750. It served
as a mine for the _Lives_ by Elmes, Miss Phillimore, and Miss Milman,
and has necessarily been consulted freely by all who have made Wren the
subject of their pens. In 1903 that part of the _Parentalia_ which
referred to Sir Christopher was reprinted by Mr. C. R. Ashbee at the
Essex House Press, and twenty fine drawings of Wren’s churches by E. H.
New were reproduced. It is finely printed, and Mr. Ernest J. Enthoven’s
editing ensured an accurate transcript of the original edition as
published by Stephen Wren. To the kindness of Mr. New and Mr. Enthoven
I owe the permission to reproduce here some of the former’s drawings.
Stephen Wren was unmarried, but contrived to beget a daughter,
Margaret, who took the name of Wren. For her a copy of the _Parentalia_
was bound sumptuously in red leather, tooled and gilt. It bears the
initials “M. W.” and Margaret’s autograph appears on the title-page.
Interleaved in this delightful and unique volume are many manuscripts,
autograph letters, and engravings. Some are in connection with the Dean
and the Bishop, but most have to do with Sir Christopher. About 1908 I
became acquainted with Mrs. Pigott, _née_ Catherine Wren-Hoskyns, the
last surviving direct descendant of Sir Christopher. She was then old
and in ill-health, and contemplated bequeathing the heirloom copy to a
distant collateral. I persuaded her to allow me to collect a suitable
sum of money which she might bequeath instead, and the story of that
piece of mendicancy, with a list of the people who generously backed
me, is deposited with the heirloom copy in the Library of the Royal
Institute of British Architects.
Amongst the manuscripts of the heirloom _Parentalia_ is a chronological
_Series Vitæ et Actorum Domini Christophori Wren_ in four pages.
This is a copy, perhaps even may be the draft, of the list in the
Lansdowne Manuscript at the British Museum, which was initialed by Sir
Christopher himself about a year before he died.
I am bound to say, however, that even a list so apparently authentic
gives me no confidence. Wren was the last man to be interested in
materials for his own biography, and he was ninety when he checked
the list. His son was incurably casual and inaccurate, and the Elmes,
Phillimore, and Milman _Lives_ were based on it blindly, except in the
case of Miss Milman, who used her own judgment somewhat. Elmes was
laborious, and had access to a lot of material such as State Papers,
some of which mysteriously got into his own possession; but he was
almost blind, and he dated his dedication to Sir Humphry Davy exactly
a hundred years before I date this, at a period when biography was no
exact science. The time has come for someone to go back to all the
originals, including many which have come to light since his day. I
hope this work will not linger until February 25, 2023.
For light on Wren as a scientist I make very grateful acknowledgments
to my friend Sir Daniel Hall, K.C.B., F.R.S., an expert in the outlook
of the philosophers of Wren’s day. He will recognise as his own a
shamelessly large number of sentences in Chapter IV. Professor Hinks,
F.R.S., the present Gresham Professor of Astronomy, has helped me
with notes on that aspect of his great predecessor’s activities. Mr.
Wells, the reigning Warden of Wadham, has kindly checked my chapter on
Wren’s Oxford days. There is a common phrase for men of encyclopædic
knowledge, that they have forgotten more than other men ever knew. It
would be true of my old friend, Mr. Arthur Bolton, Curator of Sir John
Soane’s Museum, but--he has not forgotten. He has been so helpful and
full of suggestions that it would be more honest if his name were with
mine on the title-page. But he shares Wren’s gift of modesty as well as
learning, and I need only express an admiring gratitude. I am indebted
to the Duke of Portland, to the Warden of Wadham, and to the Editor of
_Architecture_ for permission to reproduce portraits.
I have attempted no bibliography, in which Longman’s _Three Cathedrals_
would have a prominent place. That task and a schedule of Wren’s
drawings, with reproductions of those that can be definitely attributed
to him, will be amongst the fitting works of the projected Wren
Society.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE v
AUTHORITIES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
I. PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 1
II. OXFORD CAREER AND EARLY INVENTIONS 9
III. FAMILY LIFE 18
IV. ASTRONOMER, MATHEMATICIAN, AND NATURAL SCIENTIST 28
V. BEGINNINGS OF ARCHITECTURE AND VISIT TO PARIS 43
VI. TOWN-PLANNING 53
VII. ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL 59
VIII. THE CITY CHURCHES 78
IX. CHELSEA, HAMPTON COURT, AND GREENWICH 97
X. OTHER BUILDINGS: PUBLIC AND DOMESTIC 104
XI. WREN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES: LAST YEARS 112
XII. THE PROFESSIONAL MAN 123
XIII. STUDENT AND SCHOLAR 132
XIV. “THE ARCHITECT OF ADVENTURE” 144
APPENDIX I.: A NOTE IN AMPLIFICATION OF THE
REFERENCE IN CHAPTER IV. TO PASCAL’S
PROBLEM 158
APPENDIX II.: AN ATTEMPT AT A WREN CHRONOLOGY 160
APPENDIX III.: A NOTE ON SOME PORTRAITS OF WREN 164
INDEX 167
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
PLATE
I. THE CHIEF WORKS OF WREN _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
II. WREN AS A MAN OF FORTY 50
III. WREN’S PLAN OF LONDON 54
IV. THE WELBECK PORTRAIT 60
V. BUST BY EDWARD PEARCE AT THE ASHMOLEAN 70
VI. THE WEST FRONT OF ST. PAUL’S 72
VII. ST. PAUL’S UNDER THE DOME 74
VIII. ST. STEPHEN’S WALBROOK 88
IX. CHELSEA HOSPITAL: THE MAIN PORTICO 98
X. HAMPTON COURT: WREN’S TWO FRONTS 100
XI. GREENWICH HOSPITAL AND ITS TWO DOMES 102
XII. TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY, CAMBRIDGE: RIVER FRONT 108
XIII. THE WADHAM PORTRAIT OF WREN 114
XIV. THE ST. PAUL’S DEANERY PORTRAIT 120
XV. THE CENTRAL PORTION OF THE CHIAROSCURO ENGRAVING 126
XVI. WREN MEDAL AT WADHAM COLLEGE 148
IN THE TEXT
PAGE
ST. PETER’S xv, xvi
ST. AUGUSTIN’S 55
ST. MARTIN’S AND ST. PAUL’S 56
THE SECOND DESIGN FOR ST. PAUL’S 64
PLAN OF THE “REJECTED DESIGN” 66
WEST ELEVATION OF THE “WARRANT DESIGN” 68
PLAN OF ST. PAUL’S AS BUILT 72
ST. VEDAST 79
ST. ALBAN 80
ST. DUNSTAN’S 82
ST. MAGNUS 85
ST. MARGARET’S PATTENS 86
ST. BRIDE’S 87
ST. MILDRED, BREAD STREET 91
ST. BRIDE’S 92
ST. MARY-LE-BOW 146
[Illustration: S^T PETER’S]
[Illustration: S^T PETER’S]
SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN
SCIENTIST, SCHOLAR, AND ARCHITECT
CHAPTER I
PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD
On the 20th October, 1632, Christopher Wren was born in the Rectory at
East Knoyle in Wiltshire. His father, also Dr. Christopher Wren, is
said to have descended from an ancient English family of Danish origin
which settled in the county of Durham; but I can find no authority for
the Danish story except _Parentalia_.
In J. W. Rylands’ _Records of Wroxall Abbey_ there is a pedigree
which shows Sir Christopher’s grandfather, Francis Wren, Citizen and
Mercer of London, who lived from 1552 to 1624. His father was Cuthbert
and his grandfather William Wren, of Sherborn House, Durham, who
died in 1539. This William is described as brother to a Christopher
Wren, of Wythebroke, Warwick, who died in 1542, but the authority is
doubtful. If it is accurate, however, it may be an added reason for Sir
Christopher’s purchase of the Warwickshire estate of Wroxall for his
son, who settled down there as a country gentleman.
Sir Christopher’s mother was Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert
Cox, of Fonthill, Wiltshire. So on both sides Christopher was well
born. He was an only son, with seven sisters, but one of them only is
important in Wren’s story. She married, in 1640, Dr. William Holder, of
Blechington, Oxford.
We know nothing of Christopher’s mother except her name, but his
father cut some figure in Charles I.’s reign. A loyalist of loyalists,
he succeeded his more distinguished brother, Bishop Matthew Wren, in
1635, as Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Order of the Garter.
When St. George’s Chapel was plundered by the Cromwellian troops, the
spoils included the three Registers of the Garter Knights, but by
making a heavy payment the Dean got them back again, and cherished
them until his death in 1658. They then passed into the safe keeping
of Christopher, who soon after the Restoration handed them over to Dr.
Bruno Ryves, then the Registrar of the Garter.
Dean Christopher was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and St.
John’s, Oxford, and his son’s scientific attainments were inherited.
He was a man of delightful character, and evidently there was between
father and son the closest affection, which shines even through the
formal phrases used in those days by children when writing to their
fathers. That he added skill in architecture to his wide literary and
mathematical knowledge is clear from the fact that he was employed in
1634 to design a building at Windsor for Charles I.’s Queen, and a
detailed estimate prepared by the Dean has survived. As the building
was to cost over £13,000, it must have been an ambitious undertaking,
but it never took shape owing to the disturbances of the time.
It was of great importance to Wren that his early training should
have been given to him by so able a father, especially as he was, in
childhood, exceedingly delicate. The Rev. William Shepheard helped
the Dean as domestic tutor, and the boy’s mathematics were looked
after by Dr. William Holder. Aubrey, in his _Lives of Eminent Men_,
says of Holder that “he was very helpful in the education of his
brother-in-law, a youth of prodigious inventive wit, to whom he was as
tender as if he had been his own child. He gave him his instructions
in geometry and arithmetic, and when he was a young scholar at the
University of Oxford was a very necessary and kind friend.”
Amongst the manuscripts in the heirloom _Parentalia_ is a letter in
Latin, dated “E Musæo meo, Calendis Januarii, 1641,” from Wren to his
father, beautifully written, and expressing filial gratitude in a high
degree, and below is a Latin verse with its English translation. At
the foot the delighted father has written, “Scripto hoc, A^o ætatis
suæ Decimo ab octobris 20^o elapso.” It was certainly a remarkable
accomplishment for a boy of nine.
Also amongst the _Parentalia_ MSS. is a versified paraphrase of the
first to the fourteenth verses of the first chapter of St. John’s
Gospel. The penmanship of this is also admirable, and Wren maintained
this merit of legibility until the end of his life.
Wren went in due course to Westminster, and worked under the
redoubtable Dr. Busby. His father’s choice of the school was doubtless
due to the vehemently loyalist attitude of the great headmaster,
but it may also have been influenced by the fact that Busby, though
a notable classic, did not frown upon mathematical and scientific
studies. Christopher was a Town Boy, and never entered the College
proper. Possibly it was at Westminster that Wren first met Robert
Hooke, with whom he was to be so closely associated in after life,
though this guess is a little doubtful, for Hooke was older by three
years; but he was also a Town Boy, and boarded in Busby’s house, going
but little into school. John Sargeaunt thought that Hooke studied
mathematics apart, and that this liberty was probably shared by young
Christopher. It is likely that owing to Christopher’s delicate health
he left Westminster early and pursued his studies under the eye of Sir
Charles Scarborough, a young but famous physician who had developed
a marked genius for mathematics and science. If Wren had remained at
Westminster, he would almost certainly have proceeded in the ordinary
course, like most Westminster boys, either to Christ Church, Oxford, or
Trinity College, Cambridge: the choice of Wadham was no doubt dictated
by his friendship with the Warden. Evidently, however, Wren retained
an affection for his old school, because he took much trouble over the
design of a new dormitory which led to a great deal of wrangling, and
the work of building was postponed again and again. When, ultimately,
the policy of rebuilding was settled in 1721, Wren was ninety, and no
longer in practice. His design, therefore, was put aside, and the Earl
of Burlington produced what purported to be a new one, but was, in
fact, Wren’s, with some slight modifications. The existing building, in
fact, which looks out on the quiet Abbey Garden, may be regarded as a
work of Wren, though technically the amateur Burlington was responsible
for it.
If we are to believe Elmes, it was not until 1647, when Christopher
was in his fifteenth year, that he became acquainted with Sir Charles
Scarborough, but it seems more reasonable to ascribe to the Scarborough
period, following Wren’s retirement from Westminster, a manuscript
letter in Latin verse to his father, dated September 13, 1645,
dedicating to him an instrument called _Suum Panorganum Astronomicum_,
and a tract _De Ortu Fluminum_. On that assumption Christopher left
Westminster before he had completed his thirteenth year.
There is very little to show that Wren was much interested in the
graphic arts, but on the sheet in the heirloom _Parentalia_ which
contains the Latin letter is an ink sketch of a woman holding up a
dial-shaped object, which is possibly the _Panorganum_.
Possibly, however, this may be the sketch for a design on the ceiling
of a room which he did when he was sixteen. It included “two figures,
representing Astronomy and Geometry and their Attributes, artfully
drawn with his pen.” I cannot affirm that the lady in the heirloom copy
is a piece of his “artful” drawing, but it is likely.
What seems to fix the start of Wren’s studies with Scarborough as
roughly contemporary with his _Panorganum_ letter is the fact that the
boy in 1647 was engaged in translating into Latin, at Sir Charles’
request, Oughtred’s _Clavis Mathematicæ_. In the same year he had a
patent granted him for a diplographic instrument for writing with two
pens. Christopher describes his invention at length. An instrument of
the kind must have then seemed very important, because Sir William
Petty patented a similar contrivance in the same year. About three
years later someone stole Wren’s invention. He was exceedingly
annoyed, and wrote a letter in which he refers to the fact that Oliver
Cromwell’s attention had been directed to it. Without claiming anything
great for the invention itself, he wanted to clear himself from the
aspersion of having annexed somebody else’s device. In later years
there were to be many examples of people picking up an idea of Wren’s,
developing it to their own great credit, and failing to acknowledge
the man without whose idea they never would have started on their
enterprise.
Whenever it was that Wren began working under Sir Charles Scarborough,
it was not until his fifteenth year that he informed his father that
he was acting as a demonstrating assistant to the physician who
lectured on anatomy at Surgeons’ Hall. The story of his activities
is set out in a dignified Latin letter, which refers not only to the
Scarborough activities, but to Wren’s invention of a weather-clock, of
an instrument to write with in the dark, and of a treatise on spherical
trigonometry. Very impressive also is a long metrical Latin essay on
the Reformation of the Zodiac, which runs to nearly fifteen quarto
pages, in an appendix to Elmes’ _Life_. He was sixteen when he wrote
(again in Latin) to Mr. Oughtred, whose important essay on geometry he
had translated into Latin. We may agree with Elmes that “these juvenile
essays prove the fecundity, the ripeness, and the highly cultivated
state of his mind, his zeal, and his ardent enthusiasm in the pursuit
of knowledge and literary honours.”
But the weather-clock was destined to develop from the stage of a
“juvenile essay.” When he wrote to his father in 1647 that he was
enjoying Scarborough’s society, he added that he had imparted to
him “one of these inventions of mine, a weather-clock--namely, with
revolving cylinder, by means of which a record can be kept through the
night.”
Of this Scarborough thought well enough to ask the lad to have one
constructed in brass at his expense. I find in Birch’s _History of the
Royal Society_, vol. i., under date December 9, 1663: “Dr. Wren’s
description of his weather-clock consisting of two wings that may be
added to a pendulum clock was read.” The engraving published by Birch
shows a far simpler arrangement than that of the drawing among the
heirloom MSS. The printed _Parentalia_ gives a description of a device
more complicated than Birch’s description of Wren’s communication of
1663, and refers to a circular thermometer designed to correct the
error caused by the weight of liquid. This does not appear in the
drawing; the thermometer is of the ordinary air type. The printed
_Parentalia_ refers to Robert Hooke’s improvements on Wren’s design,
but they only partly appear in the drawing, which would seem to show
an intermediate development between Wren’s original device and Hooke’s
latest achievements.
The thing itself is of no importance now, but is worth remembering, as
showing not only the early blossoming of Wren’s scientific achievement,
but also his patience and persistence in developing an idea over a
period of years.
All this was a good prelude to his life at Oxford, which began when he
was young to be an undergraduate, by our standards, but older than we
have been led to believe.