25 February: Boreham on Christopher Wren

Rhetoric in Stone
We mark today the anniversary of the death of Sir Christopher Wren. Few men have been so famous as was he; no man has been as famous for so long. We associate him only with the erection of St. Paul's Cathedral; but 30 years before the Great Fire which necessitated the creation of that stately fane, Isaac Barrow said of him: "As a boy, Christopher Wren was a prodigy; as a man, he is a miracle; indeed, he is a superman." Wren was then 30.

"I must affirm," wrote Robert Hooke, the renowned mathematician, "that, since the time of Archimedes, there never met in one man so mechanical a hand and so philosophical a mind." Is there, in the entire realm of universal, another instance of a youth earning such testimonies from men of such a calibre before his real life work had properly begun?

Among all the arts and crafts, the sciences and industries of life, there is scarcely one that his youthful mind did not invade with a view to improving existing conditions. He takes a stroll into the country; sees a farmer laboriously sowing his corn; and straightway invents a contrivance which will do the work in a tenth of the time. He hears a sailor telling of his sufferings at sea for lack of water, and at once brings into being a condensing machine. He gathers about him a cluster of kindred spirits, and thus the Royal Society springs into existence.

Being at once a skilful astronomer and a master mechanic, he treated matters celestial and matters terrestrial with equal facility and familiarity. Devoting himself to the study of medicine, he invented a method of blood transfusion and busied himself with an apparatus for purifying and fumigating sick rooms. There was nothing in the world or out of it that he deemed beyond the range of his investigation. His insatiable curiosity penetrated every crack and crevice in the universe. Nothing eluded him. He is the outstanding example of a man who, Jack of all trades, is master of every one.

A City's Extremity: An Architect's Opportunity
If he anticipated fame, he certainly did not anticipate it as the designer of a great cathedral. He was immersed in his researches in his laboratory and his surgery when, in 1666, his sublime opportunity burst dramatically upon him. London was a sea of flame. The fire was extinguished on September 8, and, four days later, Wren, then 34, sought an audience of the King and laid before him a comprehensive plan for rebuilding the metropolis.

The performance stands as one of the most bewildering triumphs of creative art; and nobody has quite forgiven the short-sighted authorities of that stagnant period for rejecting a scheme so swiftly and brilliantly conceived. Parts of the plan, including the designs for the erection of St. Paul's Cathedral, and of about 50 other churches, were accepted; and the beauty of those completed parts tantalises the imagination by fleeting visions of what might have been.

St. Paul's—Wren's masterpiece—took 35 years in building. With what pathetic pride and tenderness the old architect watched it grow! Amid the decay of his physical and intellectual powers, he insisted on being carried down to the city every now and again that, with his fast-dimming eyes, he might actually see the fulfilment of his splendid dream. Happily, he lived to see it finished. He was nearly 80.

Thirteen years later, the noble fane extended to him the hospitality of sepulchre. Over the doorway, close to his tomb, the visitor ponders the historic inscription: "If thou seekest his monument, look around!" As long as London stands, and as long as English history is read with patriotic pride, his will be one of the names that will always be cherished with reverent gratitude. Neither three centuries nor thirty will obliterate his memory from the hearts of his admiring countrymen.

Ministry And Minstrelsy Of Granite
Thanks to Sir Christopher Wren, the stones of St. Paul's speak with an eloquence peculiarly their own. There are things that can be said in granite and marble that can be said as forcefully in no other way. In his essay on "The Study of Architecture," Mr. H. H. Bishop points out that even the loveliness and majesty of Nature would stand denuded and impoverished if such buildings as St. Paul's Cathedral were allowed to fall, into decay.

He mentions a dozen cities that would instantly descend from grandeur to mediocrity if the architectural triumphs that distinguish them were suddenly removed. And the reason is, Mr. Bishop maintains, that architecture speaks; destroy it, and the silence becomes oppressive. "Egyptian architecture," he insists, "conveyed to all nations the idea of eternity; the Grecian, beauty; the Roman, power; the Gothic, faith; and so on." That being so, what impression does St. Paul's make?

Mr. Bishop maintains that the stones of St. Paul's combine, in exquisite harmony the voices that are heard in the noblest erections of antiquity. He who visits St. Paul's feels himself to be the heir of all the glories of his country's history and of his Redeemer's faith. He is on the holiest of holy grounds. Every stone has a voice, and every voice is an ascription, a litany, a prayer. When, in the form of St. Paul's, Sir Christopher Wren gave visible expression to the vision that, in the silences, he had beheld, he poured from his enraptured soul a cloistral and deathless poem.

So long as the cathedral stands on its stately hill, surmounted by its "cross of gold that shines over city and river," it will remind every man within sight of its commanding dome of things too holy to be adequately said or sung. Wren was determined that all men, in city or suburb, in turning their eyes towards the gleaming cross that he lifted skywards, should salute in it, not only the centre of London, but the centre of everything besides.

F W Boreham

Image: Christopher Wren