BY DESIRE OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
By E. L. WOODWARD TWO squared stones ; a monument smaller by how many times than the Great Pyramid, but how many times more distinguished. The pyramids, those hugious heapes of stones," as an Elizabethan traveller described them, may form one of the seven wonders of the world ; their setting exactly fits their shape, and time has coloured them after his fashion. Yet they were built by cruel-minded men who were afraid of death. My two stones were squared for a man who thought much of his honour and more of his duty, but little enough of his life and nothing at all of his popular fame. I mean the two stones on the curb edge in Waterloo Place, a mounting- block" erected by the desire of the Duke of Wellington" in the year 1880. This mounting-block always seems to mc to be one of the most remarkable signs of Wellington's place in English life, more remarkable than all his high- sounding titles.
One may put up, and put up with, statues out of public duty ; these statues may loom large in the public eye because they are on or near the sky-line, Or at the end of a fine avenue, like the mounted figure in Windsor Park which Queen Victoria used to call the " equestrian statue," and everyone else called the "copper horse." Sometimes the statue suits the place. There is an appropriateness about the figure of the Duke of Cambridge outside the War Office ; a perfect symbol of the intellectual level of British military administration. The 'figure of the great Marlborough would have been too cruel a satire. But this mounting block, low, shapeless, artistically null, one of the smallest monuments in London, placed almost under the shadow of the great column in • honour of a stupid Duke of York ; here is fame. I doubt if one Man in a year walks out of The Athenaeum to mount his horse in Waterloo Place. Yet here the monnting block stands, a monument not to the great victories, but merely to a "desire of the Duke of Wellington." A short, sharp message to the City Fathers of Westminster a hundred years ago, and the stones are standing today. I wondered what Curzon, neither a Duke nor Prime Minister, used to think when he passed them on his way between great affairs and Carlton House Terrace.
There are curious ways of getting immortality. Not a few Celtic saints owe their sanctity to blocks of stone, huge slabs of granite on which they made the voyage from Brittany to Cornwall. One may even be venerated by mistake. Marco Polo appears in China among a line Of images of Buddhist holy men ; the islanders of Sicily put the statue of a Greek comic poet into one of their churches. Within a narrower field a kindly act may live on for years and years. An American, dining at New College, Oxford, found that his English hosts did not know that mint julep was a good and powerful drink. He gave a small sum of money, and still, on June 1st, " every one who dines in New College Hall drinks mint julep, while a place is laid for the American guest. Old Lord Bathurst, finding that his gouty hands and arms could not reach the decanters, gave two crooked sticks to his Common Room, the one to pull, the other to push the wine coasters. Every night these sticks are still laid. at the end of the mahogany table.
One can become immortal by attaching one's name to a particular dish or a particular drink. As far as I know this form of attachment is fairly recent. Mediaeval dishes are as anonymous as the architects of most mediaeval cathedrals. One does not hear of Peacock Piers Gaveston or Lampreys King Henry. Even the lighter dishes, the relatively lighter dishes, of the mediaeval table, are unnamed. There is no sweetmeat called after Agnes Sorel. In any case, in 'spite of Peelle Melba and Bismarck herring, this form of immortality is almost monopolized by the French ; though ,here, as everywhere, an English milord of the eighteenth century has made for himself a name for ever in the Sandwich.
It is unsafe to attach oneself to clothes. Fashions change quickly, The Tam O'Shanter has gone, and in any case he was only an alias of Robert Burns. The Mackintosh has lost ground to the Burberry. Alberts are no longer worn. No' one under forty 'knows the Shape of a Dolly Vardon hat. No parent dare put his son into a Lord Fauntleroy velvet suit, or, for that matter, ppear at his son's school carrying a Camp. Can one fake fruits and flowers ? Cox has already 'chosen the best apple, though if the golden. russets of my youth ever came into fashion again, I would like to prefix my name to them. William of the pears lost his chance by leaving out his surname. Vegetables give , great scope.' At present their names are romantic but general:. One Might take to oneself James's Keeping Onion, or The Improved Queen, a pickling variety ; there . are the Tender and True parsnip, the Monstrous Carentan leek, the 'Magnum Bonirm 'cauliflower, the All Heart cabbage (a good Hollywood type), the Cheltenham beet ,(another well-known specimen), the Improved Painted bean (listed as "a marked improvement on the Ordinary Painted Lady "), the Chinese Rose radish, or he Bishop potato, "handsome, kidney-shaped, and an exceptionally heavy cropper." Flowers. Years ago, ninety-eight years, if one would be. exact, Hallam said that Leonard Fuchs had secured "verdant immortality." Fuchs de Lobel, and Karnol, the Moravian Jesuit, who christened, indirectly, La Dame aux Camains, are indeed among the few botanists who have given their names to fairly common plants. The tongue-twisting Eschscholtzia is an instance of mistaken kindness. Chamisso named it as a compliment to Eschscholtz. Chamissia would have sounded more easily in English or Italian ears. William, SweetWilliam, has again lost his chance through humility. Valerius is a figure of the early middle ages. Crown Imperial has no wearer. Above all, more august in form as in name, reigning and immaculate, there are lijia candida, Madonna lilies:
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