Hawksmoor's London Churches: Architecture and Theology by Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey (review)

HUMANITIES 229 bin practisers there, for such is the heat, sweat, and paine of standing.= His accounts of cases B together with anecdotal characters of the judges: Hale, Saunders, Jeffreys, and his own revered brother Francis B let us see how lawyers actually worked. On circuit, North records different county dialects and observes as he travels further from London, >coming into Dorsetshire; the country grows new and things lookt a litle strang; the people spoke oddly, and the weomen wore white mantles which they call whittells. And the houses were of stone and slatt, and what wee call gentility of every thing began to wear off.= He vividly describes the Temple burning in the freezing January of 1679. The sequel, more enjoyable for the reader than for North, was the Templars= inability to agree about rebuilding B until the intervention of the megalomaniac developer Nicholas Barbon, a perennial type, as North=s portrayal shows. >There was at last a fail (as allwais in Barbon=s affairs) so the hous was fain to take upon them the winding up of the matter.= Meanwhile North busied himself with the interior design of his >litle chamber= there. North despised the corrupt Restoration court, and later, like his admired patron Sancroft, could never accept the Revolution. He took comfort in believing >that it is, in all cases and circumstances, better to dy[e] then to live= and thought suicide allowable if >done in a right mind.= However, Notes of Me repeatedly shows North=s delight in living. Sailing to Harwich in his small yacht on a brisk, clear day, North and a lawyer friend sat before the mast with >prospectives,= books, and provisions (and a boy brewing tea): >wee came nearer to perfection of life there, then I was ever sensible of otherwise.= (A.H. DE QUEHEN) Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey. Hawksmoor=s London Churches: Architecture and Theology University of Chicago Press. xix, 180. US $37.50 Baroque architecture in England is currently enjoying renewed interest and attention from scholars, historians, and the public alike. While the baroque period in that country was relatively short-lived, it saw the creation of numerous masterpieces by such leading architects as Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh, and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey=s new book, Hawksmoor=s London Churches: Architecture and Theology, provides a significant addition to the literature both of this remarkable period and of Nicholas Hawksmoor, one of the most fascinating and erudite of all English architects. Du Prey contends that the interests of architects and theologians in determining the physical appearance of >primitive= Christian churches converged in 1711 when Parliament passed an Act for >building fifty new churches in the cities of London and Westminster and the suburbs thereof,= 230 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 and that Hawksmoor, author of six of the twelve structures ultimately built, succeeded in >[fulfilling] the call for Anglican churches renewed through emulation of early Christian models= while >remaining true to his personal vision of classical architecture.= There is certainly no doubt that Hawksmoor was aware of contemporary theological discourse concerning >the interrelationship between liturgy and architectural form in the early Christian church= and that a number of features with particular liturgical significance appear in these churches. The carefully constructed and highly original forms of the churches themselves, however, suggest that the visual and architectural qualities of the buildings were of particular importance to Hawksmoor, as they were to Wren and Vanbrugh, the two commissioners whose recommendations for the new churches influenced their colleagues on the commission. It is interesting to note that while the author discusses Wren=s and Vanbrugh=s proposals to the commissioners, and while he establishes at length the influence of Hawksmoor=s association with Wren on certain aspects of the former=s intellectual and professional development, he concludes his text by stating that in his six commission churches, Hawksmoor >emerged as an independent artistic genius, unobscured by any hint of collaboration with Wren or Vanbrugh.= Aside from their positions as commissioners and the impact which the adoption of a number of their recommendations would necessarily have had on Hawksmoor=s designs, Vanbrugh and Wren were members of...