ANOTII,ER VOICE
Wenieed the memorial to Britain's greatest ever marketing man
CHARLES MOORE
No doubt Gladstone was right about can- dle-end economies being essential to good public finances (indeed, he delayed the construction of the Albert Memorial by haggling over its cost), but it can not be a strict sense of economy alone which accounts for the Government's attitude.
There are other factors. One will be an ineradicable dislike by officials and politi- cians of anything in which people take pride and with which they are familiar. Another will be a straightforward hatred of anything that is old. People who feel this way complain of a 'heritage culture', as if it were possible to imagine a culture without a heritage. Perhaps another is an austere and now rather old-fashioned modernism — the claim that the Albert Memorial should not be restored because it is abso- lutely hideous.
To deal with the last point first, does it matter if the Albert Memorial is ugly? Hav- ing looked at it often, I do not know whether I think it beautiful or not. Some- times, particularly at a distance, it looks exotic, almost Hindu. It can appear majes- tic. At other moments, and in different lights, it is more striking for its dispropor- tion. At times it looks appallingly munici- pal, or even comic. If it did not exist and someone produced its plans today and offered them for construction in Kensing- ton Gardens, one would probably be horri- fied. But so what? It does exist, and the question of letting it fall down or saving it is quite different from the one of whether it should have been built in the first place.
Besides, the Memorial's capacity for arousing reaction is its strength. During the first world war, R.G. Collingwood walked past it every day for a year or two. He con- sidered it 'visibly mis-shapen, corrupt, crawling, verminous', and he averted his eyes; but then . recovering from this
weakness, I forced myself to look, and to face day by day the question: a thing so obviously, so incontrovertibly, so indefensi- bly bad, why had Scott done it? . . . What relation was there, I began to ask myself, between what he had done and what he had tried to do?' From this Collingwood began to develop an understanding of the relation between question and answer on which he based his repudiation of 'realism' in philosophy, his theory of the history of philosophy and his entire philosophy of his- tory. Possibly the Collingwoods de nos jours will be inspired to similar profundities by looking at the scaffolding and the plastic, but it does not seem very likely.
Anyway, it takes intelligence to raise the obvious point, and I am grateful to Stephen Fry for doing so. I was talking to him recently about the Memorial and he said, `Why doesn't anyone consider its name? Why do we commemorate Albert?'
If you were allowed to see the Memorial any more, it would tell you some of the rea- sons why. The seated figure of the Prince Consort holds the catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851. The corners of the base depict continents. The corners of the podi- um celebrate manufactures, commerce, agriculture and engineering. Then there are friezes of poets, architects, musicians, painters and sculptors. There are statues of astronomy, chemistry, geology and geome- try. Faith, Hope, Charity, Humility, Forti- tude, Prudence, Justice and Temperance all put in personified appearances. It is hard to imagine that, in his individual character, Albert was much more capable than any other individual of mastering all these sub- jects, advancing all these causes and dis- playing all these virtues. But that is neither here nor there. He made it his life's work to stand for them in the public mind.
Under the wise and tedious Baron Stock- mar, Albert trained to be a modern Prince Consort in his teens, acquiring every wor- thy accomplishment, such as a knowledge of mathematics, public law, English history. A few months after marrying Queen Victo- ria, he wrote to his stepmother saying life has its thorns in every position, and the consciousness of having used one's powers and endeavours for an object so great as that of promoting the welfare of so many will surely be sufficient for me.' It is hard nowadays to imagine people writing stuff like that and really meaning it, but that is the point about Albert: he really did mean it. He meant it so much, in fact, that he worked himself literally to death, but not before he had performed innumerable good works and avoided doing anything naughty. He caused duelling to be abol- ished and worked against the slave trade and for the Philharmonic Society and, according to Sir Theodore Martin,
paid no visits in general society. All his leisure was given to visits to the studios of artists, to museums of science and art, to institutions for good and benevolent purpos- es, or to rides to parts of London where either improvements were in progress or were chiefly needed, especially such as might ameliorate the condition or minister to the pleasure of the labouring classes.
According to Stephen Bayley, the design guru (that's what he's always called — I repeat the phrase without exactly knowing what it means), 'the purpose of the Albert Memorial has now passed: the Prince's ideas of art and industry have been neglect- ed . . . ' but it strikes me that most of Albert's ideas and qualities are ones which we all keep saying we want today. Yet Albert's Great Exhibition was the most important celebration of commerce and industry in history. Politicians use disgust- ing phrases like 'Great Britain plc' to show their commitment to Britain's business suc- cess, and Mr Heseltine talks of intervening before breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea to make our industry richer, yet none of them seems to learn from what would now be called Britain's greatest ever marketing man. Albert's emphasis on making things, on commerce as honourable and public- spirited, on science and art as brothers rather than enemies — isn't all this just what we are supposed to think today?
Surely the Albert Memorial has more purpose than when it was built? 'I t would be a travesty of his ideals to restore the memorial,' writes Mr Bayley. Why? One of Albert's first tasks as Consort was to head a royal commission `to inquire whether advantage might not be taken of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament to promote and encourage the fine arts in the United Kingdom'. He was good at taking an opportunity. Restoring his Memorial could be one. An imaginative government could unveil its plan for a new Great Exhi- bition from the steps of a restored Albert Memorial. Better than lobbying half-heart- edly to hold the Olympics in Manchester.
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