Sir Christopher Wren
By. H. S. GOODITART-RENDEL.
THIS Wren tercentenary, coming when it' does, will -impale our modern critics of architecture upon a dilemma. Wren is Wren, no Englishman can wish to belittle him, but architecture is now proclaimed to be Something quite different from what Wren thought it something whose canons put him.completeii in the wrong. It will be difficult for -the -man that allows no possibility of beauty in the useless or in the false to-eulogise the great (sham) dome of St. Paul's, as seen from without, or to Applaud the ingenuity that has concealed the single- storeyed interior of the cathedral nave Within its double- storeyed 'external mask. Not the Most skilful special pleading can establish 'for the works of Wren that- their beauty arises from the fulfilinent 'of functional or of co. nStruetional necessities. These necessities are fulfilled, no doubt, but fulfilled, by the way, and as often as not in a very disingenuous manner.
Another stumbling-block to our fashionable theorists will be found in Wren's use of ornament. If Wren's ornament is not mostly " unnecessary " and a unmeaning," those darling epithets of the modern censor can hive no significance iwhatever. Scrolls, clusters of acanthus, 'Masks, urns, loOPS of petrified green-grocery ; who can. find either necessity or meaning in these ? Wren Could do WithoUt thein, on occasion, but he did much more happily with them. In; the Utopia now promised to us, whence all such unrealities will be finally excluded, his genius would soon and certainly have starved.
Logic, fortunately perhaps, is little expected of English- hien, and the same illogicality that characterised • our most famous architect can be predicted of his fellow- countrymen, who love, and probably always will love, his work. Some formula of compromise will he found to save the faceS of thoSe committed to a theory that shoUld end in the-damning of Wren ; the theory will be somehow diverted froin its natural conclusion. On the_festival day incense will smoke upon altars raised not only by academi- cians and traditionalists, but by -" moderniSts," by pro- gressivists, by functionalists, by expressionists as well. It may be a little difficult to reconcile the -worship with the tenets professed by the worshippers, but, no doubt, love will find out 'a way.
When the smoke Skill have- cleared; the reputation Of Wren and that of his question-begging eulogists will be fonnd r not to be visibly tarnished, both having been protected -by. the thick patina of sentiment with which they are encrusted. Supposing, however, that they were subjected to the corrosion of a little -clear thought, a surprising discoVery might be made. • - - It might be found, it very probably would be found: that whereas to modem critics architecture is an advert tine with reality, to Wren-anti others of his mind it was a complicated- and intellectual game. :The pieces of that game were unpacked at. the Renaissance from the dusty Ronian' box in which for many centuries they had lain forgotten ; Vitruvius7 book of the rides was reprinted and carefully stUdied and Eifrope sat down tei-amusi; itself.' Various openings and gambits soon became formalised, but it was not until after Wren's day that the freedom of the players became unduly menaced by conventions.' It was not until long after Wren's day that the game became strangled by players who insisted Upon questioning the necessity to the game of any recognised pieces at all. Wren was no more curious about the justifiability of his pediments and pilasters than a chess= player is about that of his castles and bishops. ' .
Life" nowadays is. real and earnest, and the: arbiters of superior taste would keep our architects at hard work by allowing them nothing to play with. FOr this harsh deprivation the arehitcets* perhaps tai,-6 theniselves to thank, since much of their play has in recent times been rough and disorderly. Yet that it should have been so is perhaps due indireetly to that great architect from Whom, more than from anyone else, the tradition of English post-Renaissance arehitectUre is ultiniately derived. Wren was :no classical master upon whose method a school' Could safely be founded, but rather an enthusiastic genius, wayward and inimitable. Where- Italy had her Vignola, France her Mansart, England had her Wren, for _Whose magical brilliance she has paid dearly between his day and ours. IU his Simpler designs he carried on and enriched the English tradition that John Webb and others had estab- lished, and this to our great gain. In his monumental architecture, on the other hand, he continually jeopardised noble conceptions by a needless ingen- uity typical of the amateur, an ingenuity in extrieat- ing himself from difficulties entirely of his own making.
There 'was no reason why a sham storey should be added above the aisles of St.. Paul's, there was, no reason win, the cupola that appears to stand upon the wooden outer- dome should be heavily built of stone, there was no reason why the bottom of Trinity College Library at Cambridge should appear to have dropped some way down into what otherwise would have been an unnaturally lofty- tloister. Such phenomena might be justified in the wantonness of full Baroque, where their improbability would be mischievously emphasised to astonish the beholder. Wren, however, delighted in a more artful game than this ; his favourite scope for ingenuity lay in demurely concealing the effects of some- wilful inap- propriateness lying at the root of his design. What amused him- to do generally amuses us to look at ; it would be stupid and ungrateful to grudge him his fun. What to his imitators, however, has been the same kind of fun .has not, in the long run, proved to be amusing to anybody : in the game of neo-Classical architecture, as played in England, caprice has been too dominant, and sound play too rare, for the public not to have become tired of the whole thing.
Throughout Europe other publics than British have become equally tired, though with 'less provocation. For the moment, at any rate, Renaissance formulas are widely discredited, and- architectural critics are expound- ing, with one voice, theories that would throw all reliance upon those formulas into the irrevocable past. The moment is inopportune for praising Wren, but the ter- centenary will force these critics to do it. If their candour is greater than their vanity they should not find it difficult. The noble silhouette of his great dome, the quaint elegance of his many steeples, the homely majesty of Hampton Court, the genial simplicity of Chelsea Hospital, all these emotional qualities are obtained by architectural means, by means denied to all save the most sensitive and resourceful architects. And if hie amiable perversity, his fondness for ingenious hoaxing, make him a dangerous example in the eyes of pedagogues, they are an essential ingredient in his engaging idiosyn- crasy as a man. Tercentenary solemnity, no doubt, will set many well-meaning people at work- to prove that he was more heroic and less charming than he was. Yet the wisest pronouncement upon his method of-design must surely be that attributed to a former Primate upon a point of ecclesiastical conduct ;—that, although eminently pleasing in the sight of Heaven, it must on no account -occur again.
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