Until the death of Martha, the modest woodcarver had always supposed that he was one of the chosen. This was not out of any pride on his part: far from it. But hadn’t he walked with God, in the company of Gideon and Martha, all his life? Didn’t he carve for the Lord? Wasn’t he simply one of a family, therefore, whom God had chosen to do His work? He had been, until he had killed Martha. You let her burn, he had told himself again and again, to save your skin. Where was your trust in God? When God confronted you, you turned away. Your faith is a sham. And for many months he had suffered great agony in his soul.
One day in the spring after the fire he had gone down from Shoreditch to the ruined city. Even after all these months the buildings of London were still quietly smouldering. He could walk through the wider streets, but many of the blackened stones were still too hot to touch. Acre after acre of charred desolation, smoke arising in tiny columns from innumerable ruins, a tart, choking smell wherever he walked: this, he thought, must be like the endless burning marl of the pit of hell itself. And then, with a dull, blank despair, he realized he was not one of the chosen at all; he was one of the damned, and his hell had already begun.
He seemed to lose energy after that. He had to rouse himself to work, but the joy had gone out of it. He prayed only with his family, for form’s sake. He had little occasion to sin, but he made no great attempt to lead a godly life, since there was no longer any point.
He might have drifted still further into depression if there had not been so much to do. For in the years after the fire, houses had been going up by the thousand and as a journeyman carpenter, working for several masters, he had been kept busy. Doors, panelling, wood-carving of every kind – the demand for woodwork was huge.
It was a chance meeting with Meredith that had changed his life. Having known O Be Joyful all his life, Meredith had always kept on friendly terms. He had been delighted to help Carpenter’s friend, the young Huguenot, and he had already secured O Be Joyful several small commissions in his new parish of St Bride’s. Seeing the craftsman’s gloomy face coming down Ludgate Hill one morning he had suddenly had a happy thought, that might cheer him up.
“My friend Wren has recently engaged a wonderful woodcarver who needs assistants. Why not let me take you to him?” he suggested. Thanks to his entreaties, that very afternoon Carpenter had met the remarkable Mr Grinling Gibbons.
Gibbons was a quiet craftsman like himself. Carpenter had heard of him by repute some months before when, emerging from seclusion, he had presented a magnificent carving to the king. Now, for the first time, he saw Gibbons’s work; it was astounding. The human figure, animals, trees, fruit, flowers – there seemed to be nothing he could not carve. More than that, these were not just the usual forms of such things. Even a simple apple in a lavish festoon of fruit to decorate some piece of wooden panelling had such an individuality, a lightness about it that you almost reached out to touch it believing it was real and ready to be eaten. “He is a sculptor, not just a carver,” O Be Joyful whispered to Meredith as they looked round the master’s workshop.
“There’s no one in London who comes near him,” Meredith agreed. “My friend Wren is commissioning him,” he went on, “to work on his new churches. Would you like to join him?”
O Be Joyful gazed around in silence. What could he say? He might be condemned for all eternity himself, but there were things which out of a lifetime of habit he still could not bring himself to do. Martha and Gideon might now be looking down at him with pity or disgust; but to work in one of the king’s churches, with their Prayer Book, their vestments, their bishops – sunk though he was in sin, he could not insult their memory by doing that.
Yet he had never seen anything like this carving. He knew with absolute certainty that he would never find a master in all his life like this. He could hear Martha’s voice chiding him from above: “These are graven images – idolatry. A sin.” He knew it was true. This was a love of worldly beauty utterly at odds with all he knew to be Puritan and holy.
He looked at Meredith. He looked at the workshop. “I should like to work for Grinling Gibbons,” he said.
It was some months before his real woes began. The rebuilding of St Paul’s had been long delayed because the costs were huge. The solution to the problem, however, was simple. The authorities announced a tax on coal. Every time the ships from Newcastle docked at London with the coal for its home fires, the unloaded sacks were taxed. And for every three shillings of tax, fourpence halfpenny went straight to St Paul’s. Wren’s great cathedral would be paid for, therefore, with coal.
By now this fund was beginning to mount up, and a new plan had been called for. Gibbons had shown O Be Joyful the rough wooden mock-up that had been made of Wren’s initial design – a simple structure with galleries which had pleased Carpenter because it reminded him of a Protestant meeting house. But now, it seemed, the king wanted something grander. “They are making a model of the new church,” Gibbons explained. “And I am sending you to help them.”
The next morning, O Be Joyful had turned up at the workshop expecting to find one or two others at work on something the size of a small table. Instead, a team of craftsmen was already busy on a monumental model. At a scale of half an inch for every foot of the building itself, it was twenty feet long and almost eight feet high. More daunting yet, it was being made of oak, which was exceedingly hard to carve. And more impossible still, every detail, every cornice, was to be exactly reproduced inside and out. “Dear God,” he murmured, “it’ll be easier to build the real thing.”
The drawings from which they were to work were coming in piecemeal, but the outline of the building was clear: a splendid classical structure in the form of a Greek cross, with large Roman windows, and porticoes with pediments at the ends. The drawings for the roof had not been supplied yet so he did not know how that would look, but there was no shortage of work meanwhile. The columns and pilasters of the great basilica were all of the Corinthian order and he was set to work on these. He was delighted by their chaste simplicity. “But they’re the devil to carve,” he admitted. For more than a month he laboured, every day, as the walls rose. Wren would come in frequently, say a few words, then dart out. Despite himself, O Be Joyful began to feel quite proud of his task.
One afternoon, just as work was ending for the day, Meredith came by and, beckoning to O Be Joyful, said, “There’s something you should see.” A few minutes later, the two men were at the site of the old St Paul’s, where Meredith showed him a hole in the ground.
To ensure that his greatest work would last, perhaps to eternity, Wren had decreed that the foundations must be deep and firm. Boreholes had been sunk at the site to test the ground. Ten feet, twenty, thirty, down they had gone, past the existing foundations, past those of the church before that, past Saxon remains; but still the great architect had not been satisfied, and urged them: “Deeper still. Go deeper.”
“See –” Meredith opened a box nearby and showed Carpenter some fragments of Roman tiles and pottery, “this is what they found, from the days when the city was Roman.” But they had gone further still, finding sand and then seashells. Meredith smiled. “It seems that once this place lay under the sea. Perhaps in the time of Noah. Who knows?” And O Be Joyful marvelled to think that the foundations of the new church should grow in this manner from the days of the Flood. “Then at last they came to hard gravel, and clay, over forty feet down,” Meredith explained.
But the next morning when O Be Joyful arrived at work, a shock awaited him. They had brought in the drawings for the roof.
“He’s putting that on a church?” he cried. He was not the only workman to gaze at the drawings in horror. For over the central crossing Wren had designed a huge drum, ringed with columns; and over that, rising magnificently into the sky, an august and mighty dome. “He cannot!” the carver protested.
No one there could possibly have missed its significance. No church in England had ever been disgraced with such a thing. From the s
hape of the dome, the Corinthian columns – every detail had suddenly fallen into place – this was clearly, if not a copy, then the very brother of that infamous dome that hung over what every Puritan knew was the great house of iniquity itself. “Dear Lord!” he cried. “It’s just like St Peter’s – at the Vatican. It’s the church of Rome.” And, in terror, he ran out of the workshop.
“The form of the building does not affect the religion,” Meredith assured him an hour later, after the terrified carver had come to his house. “The Catholics themselves,” he pointed out, “worship in churches of every possible shape. Wren himself,” he added encouragingly, “is the son of an Anglican clergyman. He’s no papist.” But still, he could see, O Be Joyful was unconvinced.
“Wren may be all you say,” he cried. “But what about the king?” And that, Meredith thought, was not so easy.
When Charles II had been restored to England, it had all seemed straightforward. The Church would be Anglican – the Church of his father and grandfather, the compromise of good Queen Bess. Puritans might not like it, but popery was at least banned. And that, for better or worse, was that.
Or was it? The Stuart court had always had Catholic overtones, but since being exiled during the Commonwealth, it had become still more so. The king’s wife was Catholic, so was his sister in France, so were many of his friends. Charles II, it was true, had always played his Anglican role staunchly. Yet as the years went by, it seemed to many that he was on rather too friendly terms with his kinsman Louis XIV, the most Catholic king of France. When they had joined together recently to try to crush England’s trading rivals, the Protestant Dutch under William of Orange, the English Parliament had grown restive.
“Weaken the Dutch: yes. They’re our rivals. But don’t destroy them. They are also fellow Protestants. And we don’t want all the seaboard opposite us in the hands of the Catholics, do we?” As Charles’s friendship with Louis continued, Parliament had begun to wonder. And to make sure of their ground they had suddenly sprung a new measure on the king. The Test Act of 1673 demanded that anyone holding public office must not only be Anglican, but must deny the miracle of the Roman Catholic Mass under oath. No conscientious Catholic could do that. They waited to see what would happen. And two months later, the Duke of York, the king’s own brother, resigned as Lord High Admiral. He was a secret Catholic.
James was a decent, conscientious man. Few disliked him; most remembered his role in the Great Fire. All agreed that he had acted honourably now, but the shock was severe. Though Charles II had, as far as was known, some thirteen bastard children, none of his legitimate babies by the queen had so far lived. James might, therefore, be next in line. Charles, fortunately, seemed in rude good health. Perhaps he’d outlive his brother. And James’s own two daughters were declared to be Protestant. It was not a crisis. Royalists like Sir Julius Ducket rallied round to assure everyone that the king was sound, the English Church secure. “But is it?” O Be Joyful now asked Meredith.
“It is. I promise you,” the clergyman said.
Sadly, with doubt in his heart, O Be Joyful had returned to work. More than once he had asked Gibbons to give him other tasks, but his work was too good to be spared. Slowly he carved the columns and capitals round the great dome, sadly he put the finishing touches, from a ladder, to the top; miserably he watched as the junior workmen and apprentices polished the huge oaken model until it shone like bronze. “It’s a work of art,” Meredith told him, when he was shown it. But he was glad, soon afterwards, to return to other work, and he tried to put the model out of his mind.
He had been greatly surprised a few weeks ago when Meredith, chancing to see him in Cheapside, had smilingly approached. “Come,” he said. “I have something that will please you.” Leading the way past the site of St Paul’s, the clergyman took him into a drawing office nearby where he pointed to a large sheet of designs on the wall. “The great model you worked on has been refused,” he explained. “The Church authorities didn’t like the popish dome either. So this is what has been approved.”
O Be Joyful stared. The drawings on the wall were remarkable. One could see parts of the classical building remaining, but it was longer, thinner, more like an ordinary church. No dome now rested over the central crossing. Instead, supported on a similar framework, stood a tall spire – classical in form, but clearly echoing the spire of the previous building. It was, it had to be confessed, a somewhat ungainly-looking design, not at all what one would have expected from Wren, but it satisfied the main requirement.
“As you see,” Meredith confirmed, “no dome. Work is to start at once,” he added.
So here he was with Grinling Gibbons and Wren’s other chief craftsmen to witness an impromptu ceremony – not a formal affair for the great men of the city but, typical of the great architect, a modest gathering, called at short notice, for the ordinary workmen. Nothing special had been prepared. Everyone except O Be Joyful was cheerful. He was so deep in gloom that at first he did not notice that the rest of the company had turned to look at him and that they were laughing.
Christopher Wren had just decided he needed a stone to mark the central spot of the new church and he had asked someone to bring him one from the churchyard outside. A stonemason was just setting off, when the great man’s eye had fallen upon Carpenter and he remembered his unusual name.
“O Be Joyful,” he announced, “what more perfect name for such a mission! Go with this fellow, O Be Joyful, and find me a stone.” The company laughed, with simple good humour.
To O Be Joyful however, as he accompanied the mason outside, the laughter contained a note of mockery. They were laughing not at his name, but at his foolishness. Did they all know the secret then? It was unlikely. But Wren, his master Gibbons and doubtless many of the others were sure to be in the plot, and they were laughing because they supposed he had not guessed. He cursed them all in his heart as he did their bidding.
He and the mason looked about for several minutes in the churchyard and, feeling they should not take too long, they finally chose a flat piece that had obviously broken off a gravestone. On it was written a single word. The mason could not read. O Be Joyful slowly made out the letters, but they meant nothing to him. He shrugged. “It’ll have to do,” he said. They carried it back; and were both rather disconcerted when Wren, seeing their stone, most uncharacteristically clapped his hands in delight.
“O Be Joyful,” he cried, “you are a wonder. Do you know what this says?” And he made them turn the stone so that all could see the single Latin word it bore: RESURGAM.
“I shall rise again – that is the meaning,” Wren explained. “Here,” he beamed, “was the hand of providence indeed.”
They put the stone face up in the centre of the great church’s floor.
But O Be Joyful did not even smile. He felt nothing but humiliation, for he knew very well what was to rise over this cursed stone. It had come to him the very day after Meredith had shown him the new drawings, and looking at Wren’s laughing face now, he was utterly sure. It was inconceivable that the great architect truly planned to build that ugly, clumsy structure he had seen in the drawing office. It could only mean one thing therefore. The designs for St Paul’s were a fake to keep everyone quiet while Wren played for time. He was planning to build a papist cathedral, with a papist dome. He looks like an Anglican, O Be Joyful thought. He says he’s a Freemason, but really he’s a Jesuit, full of lies.
And so, ashamed of himself though he was, and bound for damnation anyway, out of age and pride O Be Joyful made a secret vow. “If he builds a dome, I’ll refuse to work in this church, even if Gibbons dismisses me.” He might know the evil secret of St Paul’s, but at least, for once, he would take a stand.
1679
The event which finally convinced Sir Julius Ducket that Jane Wheeler’s curse upon his family had failed took placed on a July day in 1679.
As his carriage jingled down Pall Mall he felt, despite his seventy-six years, as excited as
a young man. Who would have thought, at his age, that such a call would come? He was so pleased that besides having his tailor make him a new set of clothes he had made one other dramatic change to his appearance: Sir Julius Ducket was wearing a large grey wig.
The fashion, like most fashions, came from the court of the mighty King Louis XIV of France. King Charles had started it at Whitehall just after the fire; and though a man of Sir Julius’s years would have been forgiven if he had come to court without one, he had decided that today he must be fully up to the mark. Nor was his wig a trivial affair. Imitating the long hair-style of the cavaliers, its tightly rolled curls not only covered the head but its heavy flaps fell to the shoulders. It was expensive; and oddly enough would remain in one shape or another the essential accoutrement of the upper classes for over a century, and of the English courtroom for long after that.
It was not only his new finery that made Sir Julius feel younger: the whole scene around him suggested a vigorous new life. In addition to the new city that was arising at London, the developments out by Whitehall were growing every year. To the north, classical Leicester Square was being laid out. To the west, along the northern edge of St James’s Park, the former tree alley of Pall Mall had recently become a long street lined with fine mansions. Gentry, nobility, even Nell Gwynne the actress, currently the king’s favourite mistress, lived there. Above Pall Mall, St James’s Street, Jermyn Street, and stately St James’s Square were all nearing completion. This was the West End, the new home of the aristocracy. Compared to its broad, straight thoroughfares and open piazzas, even the Romanized city seemed cramped. For Sir Julius, this burgeoning of London had also meant a burgeoning of his fortune. He had obtained a grant to build several streets of houses on the old hunting grounds – still known by the ancient huntsman’s cry of “Soho” – above Leicester Square. The profit had been huge.