THE PROFESSIONAL MAN
It is of some interest to attempt to form a picture of Wren, not as
a great artist in building, but as a professional architect dealing
with clients who were often awkward and sometimes dishonest, like the
St. Paul’s authorities in his later years, carrying out a vast amount
of detail work which is now regarded as the task of the surveyor
rather than the architect, making arrangements for the settlement of
disputes, boundary lines, frontages, and for compliance with Royal
Proclamations and Acts of Parliament, negotiating with clients as to
fees, and generally dealing with the financial and business side of his
profession.
All his biographers have emphasised the undoubted fact that Wren was
not a self-seeking man, but I think they have a little overdone the
suggestion of altruism. It is said in _Parentalia_ and elsewhere
that Wren’s salary of £200 a year for the work of designing and
superintending St. Paul’s was a very modest sum. That is true, but
it must be remembered that the salary ran from 1675, when he was
appointed Surveyor-General and Architect of St. Paul’s, until 1711,
when the House of Commons determined that the Cathedral was completed.
He, therefore received £7,200 in respect of St. Paul’s. It is also
stated in _Parentalia_ that he received £100 a year for work on the
City churches. But this seems to be wholly untrue, for Wren was paid
on exactly the same basis as an architect of to-day--_i.e._, by a
commission on the value of the work executed. Until 1919, when it was
raised to 6 per cent., the customary remuneration of an architect in
England was 5 per cent.; and a manuscript account, covering the period
from July, 1670, to March, 1673, quoted by Wyatt Papworth, shows
that twelve-pence in the pound for all monies received and paid was
disbursed “for allowances for rebuilding the Churches to the Officers
of Works for the management of the whole.” This is 5 per cent., out of
which Wren no doubt paid for his office staff. As the total expenditure
on the City churches was £263,786, Wren must have received over
£13,000. In addition, the City authorities would now and again give to
him (or in one case to Lady Wren) a lump sum by way of expressing their
gratitude for his services.
In the capacity of Surveyor-General of His Majesty’s Works, he was
receiving, in 1675, 13s. 2d. a day and “availes” of £80 per quarter,
which meant another £320 a year, by way of retaining fee; and Papworth
presumes, I think with reason, that he also received specific payment
in respect of each service performed. By the year 1715, his salary and
“riding charges” had dropped to £136 a year, but it is also to be
remembered that all this time he had an official residence in Whitehall
consisting of sixteen rooms and a cellar, which he occupied for about
fifty years without cost to himself.
In respect of Chelsea Hospital he received a fee of £1,000, but there
are many examples of his refusing payment altogether. He insisted on
doing all the work at Greenwich Hospital without payment, saying, “Let
me have some share in an act of charity and mercy.” When he came to
design the Library of Trinity at Cambridge, for which the Master had
some difficulty in getting enough subscriptions, Wren’s contribution
was the value of his own work, for which he made no charge; and,
similarly, he received nothing in respect of his work at St. Clement
Danes. These are acts of generosity of which we happen to have definite
record, and I do not doubt that there were many other examples of the
same sort not recorded, for Wren’s generosity was equalled only by his
modesty.
He was not above a trifling piece of nepotism; for his son Christopher
became Deputy Clerk Engrosser in the Office of Works in 1694 and Clerk
of Works in 1702, succeeding Dickenson. This appointment was confirmed
by George I. in 1715. But when Sir Christopher fell from favour his
son was also dismissed, and from the younger Christopher’s casual
proceedings in the compilation of the material of _Parentalia_, I
cannot believe that the State suffered greatly from his disappearance.
During thirty-two years of Wren’s professional career, Nicholas
Hawksmoor was his domestic clerk, which we may take to mean that he was
in charge of Wren’s office and his right-hand man, both in designing
and in the financial supervision of the works. It would appear that
he performed a good many of the duties which now fall to the separate
profession of quantity surveyor. I suspect that, for example, the
payments to the various contractors for the City churches, and possibly
also for St. Paul’s, were certified by Wren after the value of the work
done had been examined by Hawksmoor. It seems certain that the very
elaborate accounts of the City churches, with which I have dealt fully
in _Archæologia_, were actually written out by Hawksmoor himself.
[Illustration: PLATE XV
THE CENTRAL PORTION OF THE CHIAROSCURO ENGRAVING BY ELISHA KIRKALL,
AFTER KLOSTERMAN.]
By Wren’s time, the practice of architecture had been organised
generally on lines which were developed notably by the brothers Adam,
very competent business men, and have been elaborated in very modern
times. But substantially the methods remain the same except that
contracting has equally been developed so that separate tradesmen are
now merged in a general contractor in England. In Scotland Wren’s
way still prevails to a large extent. There was nothing slapdash
about Wren’s methods: everything was recorded in the most orderly and
detailed manner. If materials delivered to St. Paul’s were for any
reason transferred to one of the City churches, most careful entry was
made in the accounts of the quantities and values, and the necessary
debits and credits were taken into account when the contractors’ bills
were settled. Wren was as efficient in business details as he was in
design.
If my memory does not deceive me (and some thieving friend has made it
impossible for me to verify my reference), it was Mr. G. K. Chesterton,
in _Biography for Beginners_, who made moving comment on an imaginative
picture of Wren in the act of being helped into a fur coat by an
obsequious flunkey, as follows:
_Sir Christopher Wren
Went to dine with some men.
“If any body calls
Say I’m designing St. Paul’s.”_
Perhaps the major part of his long life of work was taken up by far
less attractive tasks, for he was His Majesty’s Office of Works and
His Majesty’s Office of Woods and Forests of his day rolled into
one. The Privy Council called on him for reports on questions of all
kinds. Elmes ploughed through a manuscript book of the Council’s
transactions on almost every page of which Wren’s name appears. One
Mr. Berkehead wanted to build a house and brew-house at Knightsbridge.
Was this in contravention of His Majesty’s proclamation? No, it was
too far out of town, and Mr. Berkehead may proceed. May Mr. Sleymaker
build on an old foundation in Brick Lane? He gets his permission. Sir
Richard Stydolfe had improperly started building at the rear of St.
Giles’s Church leading from thence to Piccadilly. May he go on? The
Surveyor-General goes off to St. Giles’s, examines the whole matter
and reports that he should be so licensed “provided the said Sir
Richard Stydolfe build regularly, according to direction and according
to a design to which his said licence may refer; that he be obliged to
build with brick, with party walls, with sufficient scantlings, good
paving in the streets, and sufficient sewers and conveyances for the
water ...” and so forth and so on. The Colonel Panton who gave his
name to Panton Street was in similar trouble, but Wren found that the
Colonel’s building scheme would “cure the noysomeness of the place”
and “the design of the building shewn to me may be very usefull to the
publique.” Wren was constructive in everything he did, and did not
merely deal with the current business that was referred to him. Some
builders in Soe Hoe “(surely a pleasanter spelling than Soho)” were
building small and mean habitations, “receptacles for the poorer sort
and the offensive trades” and rendering the government of these parts
more unmanageable. His Majesty’s Sergeant Plumber was much upset about
the manifest decay of the waters in the expenseful drains and conduits
of Whitehall Palace which resulted from these nefarious proceedings
in Soe Hoe, and Wren supported him with a petition. Soe Hoe had gone
too far. His Majesty in person, His Majesty’s royal brother and Prince
Rupert, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and others in full council,
looked into the matter, met more than once about it. Wren was ordered
to see that obedience be given to His Majesty’s proclamation: failing
which, he was to imprison the workmen for contempt.
Lord Rochester asks him to examine the bills for repairing the Royal
stables, and Wren goes through them and finds “the particular prices
very reasonable, one thing with another.”
But sometimes Wren must have been bored. Finding lodgings for Mr.
Ronchi at St. James’s was hardly a task for the creator of St. Paul’s,
but he found them. In 1679 he was in professional touch with the
troubles that followed the finding of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey dead in
a ditch. Papists’ plots were in the air. The Spanish Ambassador became
highly unpopular, and the Lords’ Committee appointed to look into “the
late horrid conspiracy” ordered Sir Christopher Wren and Edward Warcup,
Esq., to put padlocks on all such doors as open out of Mr. Weld’s house
into the Ambassador’s house.
So “we repaired to Wild-house and having viewed the dores ... we
affixed padlocks ...” and much more to the same effect, “all which
we humbly submit.” I am glad to add that His Excellency showed
great civility to Wren in the character of locksmith. In all these
proceedings, as Elmes justly remarks, “the honour, integrity and public
spirit of Wren appear transcendent.”
I must add a word about Wren as a draughtsman. The drawings which
can with certainty be attributed to his own hand show him to have
been a competent but not a good performer. A man so immersed in
multifarious work had no time for the niceties of the drawing-board,
and it is probable that his details were drawn roughly in the shops
of his contractors or “on the job,” as the work progressed. The idea
was complete in his own mind, and with workmen used to his words and
wishes verbal instructions on his frequent visits would forward the
work without the elaborated drawings and details of a modern contract.
Differences were adjusted by the simple methods of trade measurement
in use. But that he attached great importance to drawing as an element
in a liberal education is shown by a reference in Christ’s Hospital
Committee Book, and it is delightful to find here once more the
association of Wren and Pepys.
“At a committee of the Schooles in Christ’s Hospitall, the 30th
November, 1692, ... Mr. Treasurer acquainted the committee that he had
two letters one from Sir Christo. Wren and the other from Esq. Pepys
declaring their opinions concerning the introducing the art of drawing
among the Boyes.”
Wren’s letter, which Mr. Nathaniel Hawes read aloud to the Committee,
is as follows:
“Nov. 24th, 1692.
“SIR,
“... It was observed by somebody there present [at his house] that
our English Artists are dull enough at invention but when once a
foreigne patterne is sett they imitate soe well that commonly they
exceed the Originall, I confess the observation is generally true,
but this showes that our natives want not a Genius but education in
that w^{ch} is the foundation of all Mechanick Arts, a practice in
designing or drawing, to w^{ch} everybody in Italy, France and the
Low Countries pretends more or less. I cannot imagine that next to
good writing anything could be more usefully taught your children
especially such as will naturally take to it, and many such you
will find amongst your Numbers who will have a naturall genius to
it, which it is a pity should be stifled.... It is not Painters,
Sculptors, Gravers, only that will find an advantage in such Boyes,
but many other Artificers too long to enumerate. Noe Art but will be
mended and improved; by which not only your Charity of the House will
be enlarged but the Nation advantaged....
“Your affectionate friend and humble servant,
“CHR. WREN.”
This is a strong plea for the teaching of drawing in schools, but there
is, as always, the same practical comment. Draughtsmanship is of value
as the foundation of the “mechanick arts,” but it comes next to “good
writing.”