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thought, when the “sacred area” near the St. Paul’s was invaded, “sapping [Wren’s] foundation by underground railways and sewers and … basements of offices and warehouses now descending, as they did in the City, as much as 60 ft. or 70 ft. below the surface.”53 It was an appeal that the Canon needed to make time and again — and did, in a multitude of talks, presentations, and books about the Cathedral and Wren. Alexander’s concern for the physical state of the Cathedral was necessarily tied to its fiscal state, and he undertook to raise funds. Arthur Burns sketches Alexander’s successive efforts and campaigns (contemporaneously detailed in The Times) as the needs of care and restoration grew ever pressing. Burns notes that the results were “a remarkable achievement,” as in one appeal in 1920 for £10,000, raised within days. Burns concludes that over the decades, the “fundraising was … widely and rightly recognized as Alexander’s achievement”—and “not least by Alexander himself.” Alexander directed his money-raising efforts especially powerfully to those made wealthy in the City, whose connections to the Cathedral he was pleased to trace; and he slyly suggested that to seek aid from the government rather than from capitalists not only raised complex questions of Church and State but would amount “to that worst type of Socialism which killed the spirit of voluntary service.” Just in case capitalists did have hearts he was willing to invoke “the dying wish expressed by a little girl in Australia that her father should send five shillings for her to St. Paul’s Cathedral”.54 No wonder that in the twelve years after 1913, Alexander was able to raise almost £228,000, a staggering sum, and though he reported in a sermon in 1925 that structural problems remained, he assured the public that no danger attended those visiting St. Paul’s, and “all that human skill and science can suggest has been done and will be done to keep the Golden Cross uplifted over the city.”55 As the Cathedral
were being taken (“The Danger to St. Paul’s,” The Times, January 2, 1913, p. 6c). For Alexander’s moves against the tunnel, see “The Danger to St. Paul’s,” The Times, January 10, 1913, p. 8f ; “The Safety of St. Paul’s,” The Times, January 23 1913, p. 9e;. Some idea of the technical complexity Alexander mastered can be gleaned from his remarks in an interview in The Times, “The Safety of St. Paul’s,” February 29, 1924, p. 9a. 53
“Preserving St. Paul’s,” The Times, October 15, 1932, p. 13b.
54 “St. Paul’s and the City,” The Times, February 10, 1923, p. 5a. Alexander preached this in the presence of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs at the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth. 55 “Condition of St. Paul’s,” The Times, February 9, 1925, p. 12f; by 1929, Alexander in sketching the history of repairs was able to report that £400,000 had been raised (Preservation of St. Paul’s,” The Times, October 25, 1929, p. 9e).