CHAPTER II: SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN AND GRINLING GIBBON

The temper of a nation is reflected in its architecture and, in a lesser degree, in its furniture. When we look at the furniture of the last of the Stuarts, Mary II. and her sister Anne, we see written all over it in large letters one great virtue--sobriety.

In the oak furniture of the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts (Elizabeth and James I.) we find the same sober note; but in the main it is more essentially English. In the Augustan era of Elizabeth we certainly see in the more pretentious examples of Court-cupboards and cabinets the influence of the Renaissance; but the furniture made by the people for the people is simply English in form and decoration.

During the troublous times of the two Charles and to the end of the revolution which placed William and Mary on the throne, the country was alternately in the throes of gaiety and Puritanism; and a dispassionate view leads one to suppose that "Merrie England" had the greater leaning towards merriment. The people of England knew well enough that sobriety was good for them, and Cromwell gave it in an unpalatable form. The remedy was less to the country's liking than the disease, and with the Restoration in 1660 the passions of the nation ran riot in the opposite extreme.

The final lesson came with the twenty-nine years of misrule under Charles II. and James II. Having drained the cup of degradation to the dregs, the country set about her real reformation by the aid of Dutch William, himself the grandson of a Stuart, and his cousin-consort Anne, the daughter of the self-deposed James.

James II. had learnt his lesson from the errors of his brother Charles, but was not wise enough to fully profit by it. He realised that misrule had stretched his subjects' patience to the breaking-point, and during his short reign there was a certain amount of surface calm. But beneath was the continual struggle for absolutism on the part of the monarch and emancipation on the part of the people. The subject is familiar to students of history.

With the advent of the Orange _régime_ we find a distinct revolution in English furniture. There is no evidence of a sudden change. We find comparatively severe examples during James II.'s reign and flamboyant patterns dating from the days of William. The transitional period was shorter than usual, and once the tide had gathered strength in its flow there was very little ebb.

The Civil troubles in the country had given a severe check to the arts: the influence of the Renaissance upon furniture was upon the wane, and the ground was lying fallow and hungry for the new styles which may be said to have landed with William of Orange in Torbay in 1688.

The main influence in the furniture was Dutch, and the Dutch had been to a large extent influenced by a wave of Orientalism.

Twenty-five years before this, England's most renowned, if not greatest, architect had designed his first ecclesiastical building--the Chapel of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge--in the classical style which he made famous in England.

Christopher Wren was born in 1631 or 1632. He was son of Dr. Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor, and nephew of Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely, who, to celebrate his release from the Tower, built Pembroke Hall Chapel in 1663, employing his nephew as architect.

In 1664, when Christopher Wren was about thirty-two years of age, he came in contact with John Evelyn, the diarist, who in his journal, under date July 13, writes of him as that "miracle of a youth." The acquaintanceship ripened into a friendship, only broken by Evelyn's death in 1706. From Evelyn's diary we are able to glean many things concerning the then rising young architect. The idea of the Royal Society was the outcome of a meeting in 1660 of several scientists in Wren's room after one of the lectures at Gresham College. On being approached on the desirability of forming the Society, Charles II. gave his assent and encouragement to the project, and we learn that one of the first transactions of the Society was an account of Wren's pendulum experiment. The Society was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1663.

It would appear that Wren had no world-wide reputation as an architect at the time, but, probably through the instrumentality of his friend Evelyn, he was appointed by the King as assistant to Sir John Denham, the Surveyor-General of Works, and in the opinion of one of his biographers, Lucy Phillimore, "the practical experience learned in the details of the assistant-surveyor's work was afterwards very serviceable to him."

We find him occupied in 1664 in plans for repairing old St. Paul's and in building the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, which was finished in 1669. During the plague of 1665 Wren made a tour of the Continent, and there absorbed ideas which fructified in the new style of classical architecture which has made his name famous. During further discussions concerning the much-needed repairs to St. Paul's came the fire of London in 1666. This solved the difficulty, for St. Paul's was left a gaunt skeleton in the City of Desolation. Wren's plans for the rebuilding of the City were accepted by the King, but were never carried out in anything like their entirety. All attempts to patch up the cathedral were abandoned in 1673, and the ground was cleared for the new foundations. The architect and his master mason laid the first stone on June 21, 1675. The cathedral and the story of its building is familiar to us all. The great architect, having drawn the circle for the dome, called to a workman to bring him a piece of stone to mark the centre. The man brought a fragment of an old tombstone on which was the single word "Resurgam." All present took it as a good omen. We all know how the last stone of the lantern was laid thirty-five years afterwards by the architect's own son in the presence of his father. During those thirty-five years the great freemason's hands had been full, and in the City which rose from the ashes of the fire of 1666 no less than fifty-four churches were either built or restored by him. In addition, we find that the rebuilding or restoration of thirty-six halls of the City guilds, as well as upwards of fifty notable buildings--hospitals, colleges, palaces, cathedrals and churches--in London and the provinces, is laid to his credit.

St. Paul's Cathedral, Wren's City churches, and the Monument, would in themselves make London famous amongst the cities of the world. The Monument was erected to commemorate the rebuilding of the City. The inscription thereon absurdly attributes the origin of the fire to the Papists. Pope satirises it in his "Moral Essays":

London's Column pointing to the skies Like a tall bully lifts the head and lies.

Chief, for beauty, amongst the churches is St. Stephen's, Walbrook. Canova, the great sculptor, after paying a visit to England for the purpose of seeing the Elgin marbles, was asked if he would like to return to the country. "Yes," he replied, "that I might again see St. Paul's Cathedral, Somerset House, and St. Stephen's, Walbrook."

A dozen or more of Wren's churches have been swept off the map of London, in many cases with a wantonness amounting to sacrilege; but we can still rejoice in the possession of such gems as St. Stephen's, Walbrook; St. Nicholas, Cole Abbey; and St. Mary Abchurch, with its flat roof and cupola supported on eight arches. St. Dunstan's in the East, near the Custom House, still stands testifying to the fact that Wren could restore a church without spoiling it. St. Dunstan's, built in the latest style of perpendicular Gothic, was left a mere shell after the fire. Wren added the fine tower, and capped it with the curious and graceful spire supported on flying buttresses. It is said that the architect stood on London Bridge with a telescope anxiously watching the removal of the scaffolding from the spire. It is scarcely credible, however, that such a man should doubt his own powers of building. This legend recalls the story of the building of the Town Hall at Windsor in 1686. The spacious chamber on the street level is used as a corn exchange and above is the great hall. The anxious town councillors declared that the great room above would collapse. Wren knew exactly how much his four walls and great beams could bear, but, to appease the burghers, he promised to place four columns at the intersections of the beams. He purposely built them about two inches short, and, to this day, after the lapse of two hundred and twenty-five years, there is still a two-inch space between the top of each column and the ceiling it is supposed to support. On the exterior of the building are two statues given by Wren in 1707: one of Queen Anne and the other of her Danish consort, Prince George. Our good Christopher could flatter on occasion. The inscription to Prince George in his Roman costume reads, _inter alia_:

Heroi omni saeculo venerando.

Underneath the figure of Queen Anne is the legend:

Arte tua sculptor non est imitabilis Anna Annae vis similem sculpere sculpe Deam.

The local rhyming and free translation runs:

Artist, thy skill is vain! Thou can'st not trace The semblance of the matchless Anna's face! Thou might'st as well to high Olympus fly And carve the model of some Deity!

We admit this is a very free and extended translation, but it passes current locally. To say the least, it is high praise; but Wren had a staunch friend in Queen Anne, and every eye makes its own beauty.

The exigencies of the time called for a great architect, and he appeared in the person of Christopher Wren: they called for a great artist to adorn the master's buildings, and he appeared in the guise of Grinling Gibbon.

The discovery of Gibbon in an obscure house at Deptford goes to the credit of gossipy John Evelyn, who on January 18, 1671, writes: "This day, I first acquainted his Majesty (Charles II.) with that incomparable young man Gibbon, whom I had lately met with in an obscure place by mere accident, in a field in our parish, near Sayes Court. I found him shut in; but looking in at the window, I perceived him carving that large cartoon or crucifix of Tintoretto, a copy of which I had brought myself from Venice, where the original painting remains. I asked if I might enter; he opened the door civilly to me, and I saw him about such a work as for the curiosity of handling, drawing and studious exactness, I never had before seen in all my travels. I questioned why he worked in such an obscure and lonesome place; it was that he might apply himself to his profession without interruption, and wondered not a little how I found him out. I asked him if he were unwilling to be known to some great man, for that I believed it might turn to his profit, he answered, he was yet but a beginner, but would not be sorry to sell off that piece; on demanding the price he said £100. In good earnest, the very frame was worth the money, there being nothing in nature so tender and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it, and yet the work was very strong; in the piece was more than one hundred figures of men, &c.... Of this young artist, together with my manner of finding him out, I acquainted the King, and begged that he would give me leave to bring him and his work to Whitehall, for that I would venture my reputation with his Majesty that he had never seen anything approach it, and that he would be exceedingly pleased, and employ him. The King said he would himself go see him. This was the first notice his Majesty ever had of Mr. Gibbon."

The King evidently did not "go see him," for under date March 1 we read: "I caused Mr. Gibbon to bring to Whitehall his excellent piece of carving, where being come, I advertised his Majesty.... No sooner was he entered and cast his eye on the work, but he was astonished at the curiosity of it, and having considered it a long time and discoursed with Mr. Gibbon whom I brought to kiss his hand, he commanded it should be immediately carried to the Queen's side to show her. It was carried up into her bedchamber, where she and the King looked on and admired it again; the King being called away, left us with the Queen, believing she would have bought it, it being a crucifix; but when his Majesty was gone, a French peddling woman, one Madame de Boord, who used to bring petticoats and fans and baubles, out of France to the ladies, began to find fault with several things in the work, which she understood no more than an ass, or a monkey, so as in a kind of indignation, I caused the person who brought it to carry it back to the Chamber, finding the Queen so much governed by an ignorant French woman, and this incomparable artist had his labour only for his pains, which not a little displeased me; he not long after sold it for £80, though well worth £100, without the frame, to Sir George Viner. His Majesty's Surveyor, Mr. Wren, faithfully promised to employ him. I having also bespoke his Majesty for his work at Windsor, which my friend Mr. May, the architect there, was going to alter and repair universally."

Grinling Gibbon was born in 1648, and so the "incomparable young man" would have been about twenty-three years of age when he sailed into Royal favour. We do not know the whereabouts of the carved cartoon after Tintoretto; but we shall find at the Victoria and Albert Museum a carving by Gibbon, measuring 6 ft. in height by 4 ft. 4 in. in width, of the "Stoning of St. Stephen." It is executed in limewood and lance-wood. Walpole, in his "Catalogue of Painters," writes of the "Stoning of St. Stephen," which was purchased and placed by the Duke of Chandos at Canons,[2] as the carving which had "struck so good a judge" as Evelyn. It is palpably not identical with the Tintoret subject which Evelyn describes as "being a crucifix." Fig. 10 in Chapter III. is a remarkable example of Gibbon's carving of fruits, flowers, and foliage.

[2] James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, who as Paymaster of the Forces during the wars in the reign of Queen Anne amassed a large fortune, built Canons, near Edgware, in 1715. The building and furnishing is said to have cost between £200,000 and £250,000. It was in the classical or Palladian style of architecture, and was adorned with costly pillars and statuary. The great _salon_ was painted by the Paolucci and the ceiling of the staircase by Thornhill. Although the building was designed to stand for ages, under the second Duke the estate became so encumbered that it was put up to auction, and as no buyer could be found the house was pulled down in 1747. The materials of "Princely Canons" realised only £11,000. The marble staircase and pillars were bought by Lord Chesterfield for his house in Mayfair. The witty Earl used to speak of the columns as "the Canonical pillars of his house." The Grinling Gibbon carving of the "Stoning of St. Stephen" was transferred to Bush Hill Park, near Enfield, and finally acquired in 1898 by the Victoria and Albert Museum at a cost of £300.

Readers who are familiar with the Belgian churches will remember the wonderful carvings at Brussels and Mecklin by Drevot and Laurens, who were pupils of Gibbon. They out-Gibbon Gibbon in their realism.

In Fig. 4, photographed for this book by the South Kensington authorities, we give an illustration of a carving in pinewood of a pendant of flowers attributed to Gibbon. It originally decorated the Church of St. Mary Somerset, Thames Street, E.C., built 1695--one of Wren's City churches so wantonly destroyed. To see Gibbon's wood carving at its best we must go to St. Paul's Cathedral, Windsor Castle, and Hampton Court Palace. At Windsor we shall also see carved marble panels of trophies, emblems and realistic fruits, flowers and shell-fish on the pedestal of the statue of Charles II. At Charing Cross we have another example of his stone carving on the pedestal of the statue of Charles the Martyr.

We have already referred to the Church of St. Mary Abchurch in Abchurch Lane, between King William Street and Cannon Street, City. It was built in 1686, eleven years after the first stone of St. Paul's was laid. It also serves for the parish of St. Laurence Pountney. It lies in a quiet backwater off the busy stream, and the flagged courtyard is still surrounded by a few contemporary houses. Externally it is not beautiful, but Wren and Gibbon expended loving care on the really beautiful interior. The soft light from the quaint circular and round-headed windows casts a gentle radiance over the carved festoons of fruit, palm-leaves and the "pelican in her piety."

Just across, on the other side of Cannon Street, is another backwater, Laurence Pountney Hill. Two of the old Queen Anne houses remain, No. 1 and No. 2, with beautiful old hooded doorways dated 1703. The circular hoods are supported by carved lion-headed brackets. The jambs are ornamented with delicate interlaced carving. No. 2 has been mutilated as to its windows, and a modern excrescence has been built on to the ground floor; but No. 1 appears to be much as it left the builders' hands in 1703, and still possesses the old wide staircase with twisted "barley-sugar" balusters and carved rose newel pendants. These houses may or may not have been designed by Wren. They seem to bear the impress of his genius, and in any case they give us a glimpse--and such glimpses are all too rare--of the homes of the City fathers, just as the little church across Cannon Street brings us in touch with their religious life in the early days of Queen Anne.

Fig. 5 represents an interesting series of turned balusters taken from old houses of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They are executed in oak, lime, ash and pinewood--mostly the latter; and many of the details will be found repeated in the furniture legs of the Queen Anne period. The photograph was specially taken for this volume by the courtesy of the Director and Secretary of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Fig. 6 represents a contemporary doorway of a room formerly at No. 3 Clifford's Inn. It is of oak, with applied carvings in cedar of acanthus-leaf work, enclosing a cherub's head and a broken pediment terminating in volutes. We shall find members of the same cherub family on the exterior of St. Mary Abchurch. Fig. 7 is the overmantel of the same room with a marble mantelpiece of somewhat later date. This room, now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, was erected in 1686 by John Penhallow, who resided there till 1716.

Fig. 8 is a beautiful doorway carved in yellow pine, with Corinthian columns and pediment. We shall find similar pediments in the tower of Wren's church, St. Andrew's, Holborn. This doorway with the carved mantelpiece (Fig. 9) came from an old house in Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. These belong to the early part of the eighteenth century.

These are but a few isolated examples of beautiful settings to the furniture of the period of the revival of classical architecture in England. Such things are not for the modest collector, who will content himself with the chairs, tables, and bureaux of the period--articles, in the main, of severe outline devoid of carving, and relying for effect much upon the rich tones of the wood employed, but withal eminently beautiful, inasmuch as they were and are eminently useful.