Art: St. Paul’s

It wasn’t the Dean’s fault, that much was certain. A tourist told the sexton and the sexton told the Dean and the Dean told the Chapter; somebody even told the King. Everybody shook their heads and said it could not be so, but when they went to look, there was the fact staring them in the face. The London Times got hold of the story, started a restoration fund that netted £33,000 in three days. In Park Lane, in Mile End Road, in Billingsgate, in the counties, what a buzz. “Falling down . . . ,” people said amazed. “Falling down . . .,” they said ominously. “St. Paul’s Cathedral is falling down.”

The brow of Dean Inge, never very jocund at best, was painfully overcast. Still, as has been said, they couldn’t blame him for it. His attitude in the crisis could only be one of prayerful anxiety. He consulted engineers, architects. They told him:

That the dome, weighing from 40,000 to 60,000 tons, rests upon eight piers which, though they appear imposingly massive, are in reality no more than stone pipes bolstered with rubble. The weight of the dome has made every one of them shift or crack. That the Cathedral’s solidity could be amply restored by the simple method of grouting. To grout is to force behind the stone facings liquid cement which, oozing through the broken rubble, would petrify it into a rigid mass capable of sustaining any weight. That grouting would do no more good than grouching, for the piers themselves rested on a weak foundation which delved little below the crypt. The only way to keep St. Paul’s from replacing London Bridge in the famed nursery rhyme was to remove the dome and deepen the foundation. In short, some said one thing, some another. The Dean was rather confused than relieved.

However, since somebody must be blamed, the architects, engineers agreed on a name, a revered name, a name chiseled across the very plinth of the great arch of modern architecture, none other than the name of the builder of St. Paul’s. Everyone, perhaps including the Dean himself, seized eagerly upon this suggestion. Even a diminutive and far from prominent member of the famed St. Paul’s choristers got hold of the idea and made a rhyme about it which he passed around at choir practice behind the cover of a fat hymnbook. It seemed very funny because everyone was supposed to be so solemn.

Christopher Wren he took a gumshoe,

Christopher Wren he took a stick, Put them in St. Paul’s Cathedral

Covered ’em over quick and slick.

Now St. Paul’s is busting open Because of Wren, Rickety Wren.

Gumshoe, stick, crack, crick—

Who’s to build it up again?

Wren (1632-1723). Yet, for all the headshakings, the architects’ debates, the Dean’s cloudy brow, the choir boy’s rhyme, he was a great man, this Wren. He saw the town of London burn in the fire of 1666. St. Paul’s was razed in that fire. The King appointed Sir Christopher to replace it. For 35 years, Wren worked, watched the great double dome, at that time consummate innovation in design, rise on its rubbly piers. When it was finished, he pronounced it his masterpiece. Turner once sketched it, said: “I’ve drawn the Dome of London.” Besides the Cathedral, Wren built 53 English parish churches. Always he was masterly in his handling of towers, spires. Faultless fingers of grey stone, tapering into the skies of England—the spires of St. Swithin’s Cannon Street, St. Margaret’s Patten’s Road Lane, St. Martin’s Ludgate, pray for the soul of Rickety Wren.