150 THE LAST YEARS OF WREN 



happy ingenuity and fertility of design exhibited in Wren's, 

 steeples. 



Wren did not pass his whole time in designing ecclesiastical 

 buildings. He had the chief share in the shaping of Greenwich 

 Hospital which, originally intended for a palace, was begun and 

 continued in a palatial manner, although diverted from its first 

 purpose and made into a home for worn-out sailors (Fig. 98). 

 He also began the rebuilding of Hampton Court, but happily 

 did not proceed, as was at one time contemplated, to sweep 

 away the whole of the older portions of that fascinating place. 

 These are both in a sense domestic work, but they are not 

 domestic in the way that appeals to the ordinary person. 

 People who live in palaces may well afford some sacrifice to 

 grandeur. Wren's was the grand manner. His churches in- 

 volved fairly simple planning. Their requirements lent them- 

 selves to this treatment much more readily than those of an 

 ordinary house with its complicated demands, where an un- 

 comfortable plan is not atoned for by splendour of appearance. 

 If it be asked how Wren would have faced the difficulties of 

 ordinary domestic planning, there is but little material for an 

 answer. The work he did in the Temple does not help us 

 much. Several houses in different parts of the country are 

 attributed to him, but without much reliable evidence. At All 

 Souls, however, there are a few drawings, either of new houses 

 or of alterations to old ones, and these do not go to prove that 

 he had his usual masterful grip of the subject. Doubtless, had 

 the necessity arisen, he would have acquired it, but his energies 

 took another direction, and he has left no solution of how to 

 build a house at once convenient, comfortable, and grand. 



Pie lived to be an old man he was ninety-one when he died 

 in 1723 yet he lived a strenuous life till within a few years of 

 his death. He not only devised his own buildings, but super- 

 intended their erection, and it was largely on the scaffold that 

 he gained his experience. This did much to sober his judgment 

 and make his work reasonable and sensible, more so than that 

 of his immediate successors. Although at first an amateur,, 

 he became practical through being in constant touch with his 

 work : they remained amateurs all the way through. 



A slight but vivid picture of him at work was drawn by 

 the lively Duchess of Marlborough, who, when expostulating 

 with Vanbrugh for demanding .300 a year for looking after 



