ARTS
Architecture
The real Hawksmoor
Gavin Stamp
In 1709, at the instigation of Sir John Vanbrugh, the Duchess of Marlborough's agent wrote to his tiresome employer about the architect who would eventually complete Blenheim Palace. have often heard you wish for some opportunity to do him good; which he is the more worthy of, because he does not seem very solicitous to do it for himself; but has two qualities that are not often joined, modesty and merit.' The architect in question was Nicholas Hawksmoor, who died 250 years ago on 25 March. Poor modest, long-suffering Hawksmoor did not have those qualities which make architects really successful and famous: ruthless ambition combined with irresistible charm; he lost jobs to that smoothie, James Gibbs, and to much lesser men; he was overshadowed by his master, Wren, and by his collaborator, Vanbrugh, who have taken credit for many of his achievements. Palladian critics — such as the one who dismissed his extraordinary churches as 'mere Gothique heaps of stones, without form or order' — ensured the decline of Hawksmoor's reputation after his death while the general Victorian incomprehension of his sort of individualis- tic, monumental Classicism ensured his continuing obscurity. Hawksmoor did Manage to get into the DNB (though who on earth was the author, Bertha Porter?) but the first serious monograph about the architect was not published until 1924. This Was written by that perennially original rediscoverer of architectural talent, H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, who predicted that Hawksmoor would 'become recognised as one of the greatest masters of modern architecture'. As always, Goodhart- Rendel was right; buttressed by the research of Howard Colvin and Kerry Downes, Hawksmoor now enjoys the sta- tus of one of the very greatest of British architects. But who — outside the intro- verted world of architecture — had heard Of him? The name of Hawksmoor re- mained obscure, recondite, until my friend and colleague Peter Ackroyd published his eponymous novel. I profoundly wish he had not done so: obscurity would now be a Mercy compared with the sensational and Mendacious notoriety this harmless, un- assuming architect now enjoys. It must be said that Ackroyd's 'hero' is not called Hawksmoor but Nicholas Dyer. Dyer's dates are 1654–c.1715 rather than 1661-4736 but, despite Ackroyd's disin- genuous disclaimer that 'any relation to real people, either living or dead, is entire- 1Y coincidental', there is no doubt that byerand Hawksmoor are closely related. Dyer was apparently a pupil of Wren who designed seven churches under Queen Anne's Fifty New Churches Act of 1711. Six of these, which create the structure of the novel, happen to be real buildings which were designed by the real Hawks- moor: St Alfege, Greenwich; St Mary Woolnoth; St George's, Bloomsbury, and the three great Stepney churches; only the seventh church is fictional. In any case, Nicholas Dyer's modern counterpart, or reincarnation, is called — 'Nicholas Hawksmoor'.
None of this would, I suppose, matter if it was not for the character and beliefs of Dyer. The man is a strange. sinister figure who is an adherent of the old, pre- Christian religions: He is a devotee of occult practices who not only regards his `church' designs as symbols of his religion but requires human sacrifice to consecrate them. Dyer is a murderer and, worse, his creations seem to have demonic power for, in modern times, they apparently inspire further revolting murders. This is insidious as Ackroyd invites his readers — who probably had never heard of Hawksmoor or dreamt of visiting Stepney and Lime- house — to think of these wonderful masterpieces of the English Baroque as sinister, forlorn piles of decaying masonry which brood over and infect seedy and run-down areas of urban squalor. This is, in short, libelling the dead or, as Sir John Summerson put it to me, 'defiling the wells of truth'. I should say at once that Hawksmoor is a profoundly clever piece of writing. I en- joyed reading it and I admire both Ack- royd's command of early-18th-century lan- guage and his evocation of the London of Queen Anne. This, of course, merely exacerbates his crime of perverting the character and intentions of the real Nicho- las Hawksmoor; the power of the writing, combined with the inclusion of real people — like Wren and Vanbrugh — as well as real buildings, makes the vile character of Nicholas Dyer all the more convincing. He has created a myth in which, I fear, people will like to believe. Worse still, he exploits aspects of Hawksmoor's life which are open to misinterpretation.
As well as being a profoundly original artist, Hawksmoor was certainly an un- usual man. Self-educated, of humble ori- gins, he was certainly obsessed with the Antique and his buildings command by their associational and emotional force. In the words of Professor Downes, 'They will repel us or fascinate us, but we cannot escape from their strange haunting power.' However, no work of art can be divorced from its context and there is absolutely no evidence that Hawksmoor's churches were intended to be anything other than monumental symbols of a triumphant Anglicanism and tangible gestures against heresy and nonconformity. Hawksmoor's use of the past was undoubtedly strange and idiosyncratic — such as creating the steeple of St George's, Bloomsbury, out of a reconstruction of the ancient tomb of Mausolus at Harlicamassus (topped with the figure of King George I); he also referred to the Gothic, but such references were comprehensible to his educated con- temporaries. We also know that he was interested in Christian symbolism, for he made an ideal church design based on his notion of a 'Basilica after the Primitive Christians. . . as it was in ye fourth century in ye purest times of Christianity'. What is extraordinary is the continuing power of Hawksmoor's architecture; pace the
Bishop of Stepney, the wonderful shell and steeple of St George-in-the-East remains a living symbol of Christianity amongst the problems and poverty of Stepney.
Ackroyd perverts the reality of both past and present. Not only do not all of Hawks- moor's great churches stand today in areas of urban decay, they were not originally built in such places. Particularly absurd is the idea that the siting of the three Stepney churches, together with that of St Mary Woolnoth, forms an occult symbol, for not only is this notion dispelled by a cursory inspection of the A to Z, but it is absurd to suppose that one of the Surveyors to the Commissioners for Building Fifty New Churches (only a dozen were ever built, of course) could have chosen the sites of the buildings irrespective of financial, pastoral and topographical considerations.
Perhaps I am being too literal and pedantic. That Ackroyd intended Hawks- moor to be read as fiction may be shown by the fact that the appearance and setting of `Dyer's' churches are not accurately observed. But if it is meant to be fiction, why did he find it necessary to introduce the name of this innocent and blameless architect, a man who was described in his obituary as 'a tender Husband, a loving Father, a sincere Friend, and a most agreeable Companion' (as opposed to a perverted, misanthropic, mysogenist mur- derer)? Of course there is the honourable tradition of the historical novel. Ackroyd excels at this: his characterisation of 'Sir Chris' Wren in the book as a rather narrow rationalist is delightful and wholly convinc- ing. But why could he not have combined real characters with a wholly fictional architect, like A. N. Wilson's nasty Oswald Fish? 'Dyer' is not fictional when he designed real buildings. No artist and his works can be separated. The combination of fact and fiction in Hawksmoor is intoler- able.
What, I think, this really shows is how the English still do not take architecture seriously, even though, as I firmly believe, we have often excelled in the art — as the career of Hawksmoor shows. Peter Ack- royd, I fear, assumed that nobody would mind if `Hawksmoor' was used for his own purposes. Who cares? We have a tired literary culture in England which tends to assume that the visual arts have little intellectual significance. I do not think anybody would dare write a book which suggested that the authors of, say, The Rape of the Lock or Gulliver's Travels were child murderers or black magicians — odd though their characters were. The lives of artists can, of course, be sensationalised, as the treatment of Mozart and Liszt by playwrights and film-makers shows, but exaggeration is different from total perver- sion of the truth.
Why do I care? It is because Hawksmoor has emerged from obscurity as one of the most sympathetic and interesting charac-
ters in architectural history, a modest, remarkable man who interpreted the lin' ported language of Classicism with a unique originality and power. His buildings are revered; his memory is cherished. Only love as well as respect accounts for the voluntary sacrifices which have been made to restore Christ Church, Spitalfields, that extraordinary masterpiece just east of the City which, only 20 years ago, seemed doomed. By writing about Hawksmoor, think Peter Ackroyd has broken out of the narrow limits of our literary culture and has recognised the creative importance of architecture. I just wish he had not found it necessary to sully the memory of the great architect who was buried in a Hertford- shire churchyard 250 years ago.
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