29 AUGUST 1925, Page 12

PUBLIC MONUMENTS

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

SIR,—Until I came to London last week I really imagined that the inhabitants of that metropolis had suddenly been endowed with an acute aesthetic sensibility : it seemed the only possible explanation for the recent uproar about the ugliness of the Hudson Memorial.

Imagine my surprise to find the Hudson Memorial—while it certainly is not pretty—at least carefully tucked away, very quiet, and quite small, while all about the centre of the City and the West End stand the same hideous old statues of sooty statesmen and forgotten celebrities, and not one of them tarred and feathered. Alas for my belief that Londoners had suddenly revolted against hideous sculpture ! On the contrary, without a single protest from anyone, they have permitted a new addition to the London gallery of monsters, in the form of a " group " which I could not help noticing on the front of the beautiful new Bush House.

The painter Ingres used always to walk abroad accompanied by his wife, who carried a large black shawl which she carefully held before her sensitive husband's face when they approached any unsightly person, building or scene.

If all the people who wrote to the papers objecting to the Hudson bas-relief had also gone out armed with a shawl to protect themselves from London statuary they would have shown sensibility : if they had gone out secretly with a sheet with which, unobserved by the police, they might have hidden the worst of them, they would have shown sense. But as they do nothing, and seem (by keeping silence) very pleased with the two bastard Graeco-Roman persons, machine made if ever statues were, who are shaking their togas or perhaps bath-towels at the pedestrians in Kingsway from the niche on Bush House, I can only conclude that the protest about the Hudson Memorial was engineered by a misguided person attempting to publicize Mr. Epstein. In all fairness to that much-abused sculptor, I should like to point out that his work at least is the sound work of a craftsman who knows how to handle marble. As for the Bush House effigy, it looks as though it knew the chisel no more intimately than do the _equally pleasing figures of unhappy married men in their winter underwear who decorate a place of business near St. Giles' Circus. The'skilled dairymaids who effected a portrait in the round of the Prince of Wales entirely in butter knew their job better.=–I am, Sir, &c.,