CHAPTER XIV. 1709-1723. PRIVATE HOUSES BUILT- QUEEN ANNE'S GIFTS-LAST STONE OF Heroick souls a nobler lustre find, E'en from those griefs which break a vulgar mind. Bp. Thos. Sprat, quoted in Parentalia. CHAPTER XIV. THE year 1709 passed in steady work, and has little but finishing touches to the churches to be recorded, unless some of the various private houses built by Wren belong to this period. A house for Lord Oxford, and one for the Duchess of Buckingham, both in S. James's Court; two built near the Thames for Lord Sunderland and Lord Allaston; one for Lord Newcastle in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury; and a house, so large and magnificent that it has been divided in late years into four, in Great Russell Street. This house was afterwards occupied by Wren's eldest son, and in turn by his second son Stephen. Sir Christopher himself, while keeping the house in Whitehall from which his letters are dated, had received from Queen Anne the fifty years' lease of a house at Hampton Green at a nominal rent of 10l. a year; 1 he must have found great refreshment in going there occasionally by the then undefiled Thames, to country rest and quiet. Queen Anne was uniformly gracious and friendly to her Surveyor, and presented him with a buhl cabinet inlaid with red tortoiseshell of remarkably handsome work and design.2 1 This lease was renewed to his eldest son in 1737 for 28 years, running on from 1758. The following year saw the crown put to the labour of thirty-five years. Mr. Christopher Wren, who had been a year old when the first stone was laid, now laid the last stone of the lantern above the Dome of S. Paul's in the presence of his father, Mr. Strong the master-builder, his son, and other free and accepted masons, most of whom had worked at the building. The scene could hardly be better painted than in the words of Dean Milman:1 'All London had poured forth for the spectacle, which had been publicly announced, and were looking up in wonder to the old man who was on that wondrous height setting the seal, as it were, to his august labours. If in that wide circle which his eye might embrace there were various objects for regret and disappointment; if, instead of beholding the various streets of the city, each converging to its centre, London had sprung up and spread in irregular labyrinths of close, dark, intricate lanes; if even his own Cathedral was crowded upon and jostled by mean and unworthy buildings; yet, on the other hand, he might survey, not the Cathedral only, but a number of stately churches which had risen at his command and taken form and dignity from his genius and skill. On one side the picturesque steeple of S. Mary-le-Bow; on the other the exquisite tower of S. Bride's, with all its graceful, gradually diminishing circles, not yet shorn of its full and finely-proportioned height. Beyond, and on 1 Annals of S. Paul's, p. 432. |