ROYAL STATUES
By WARREN POSTBRIDGE
WITH the unveiling this week of Reid Dick's statue of King George V the list of royal statues in London lengthens. They are a variegated lot and erected in an odd variety of places. No one who had not read Lord Edward Gleiohen's book on London Statuary would be likely to be able to place more than half a dozen of them, still less explain how they came to be where they are now. But these bygone monarchs are well worth passing in review, and the case for having in London a complete set of statues of them is strong. Not perhaps that we need go further back than the point at which the present almost unbroken series begins. There is, it is true, one isolated monarch, Marochetti's fine Richard Coeur de Lion, standing with the pride of his blitz-bent sword outside the House of Lords. But the statue itself has no history. It was erected as recently as 186o, and the gap between Richard and Henry VIII might be rather large to fill.
For it is with that uxorious sovereign that the cavalcade begins. Unfortunately he is hard to find, for not many people, unless they have particular business there, frequent West Smithfield. If their business is with St. Bartholomew's Hospital they cannot miss King Henry, for he stands, legs characteristically straddled, over the main gate of Rahere's ancient _foundation. It is, of course, his rightful place, for he re-founded the hospital, but he, like his daughter Eliza- beth, should if he had had his due, and if the citizens of London had their due too be somewhere on a pedestal in the surging stream of traffic. However, he can be seen quite easily by anyone who seeks him, which is more than can be said of his son, the youthful King Edward VI. He, too, is an inmate of a hospital, in this case St. Thomas's. There are, indeed, two effigies of him there. One of them, in brass, was dethroned by the blitz and dragged away with a rope round its neck to a grass-plot in another part of the hospital grounds, where last time I was there it lay disconsolate and unregarded on its back. The stone statue is rather charming. The boy king stands on the terrace above the river, between the middle pillars of a colonnade with the royal arms above his head, looking directly across to the Houses of Parliament—as is most fitting, seeing that it was he who, in 1547, gave the Commons St. Stephen's Chapel for a meeting-place.
Queen Mary—call her Bloody or not as you feel about her—is un- commemorated. This is one of the gaps that ought to be filled some day. Queen Elizabeth exists, but after many vicissitudes she has receded considerably from the public eye. Like other sovereigns we shall meet, she once fronted " streaming London's central roar " high- perched on Lud Gate, halfway down the hill below St. Paul's. She was there from 1586 (seventeen years before her death) till 176o, when planners concerned about impediments to traffic removed the gate altogether. The virgin Queen thereupon migrated to St. Dun- stan's-in-the-West (just beyond the Law Courts going East), but in 1831, deplorable to relate, she was sold for £16 los. and thereupon disappeared. However, in 1839 she was discovered in a cellar, hoisted up into the genial light of day, and erected over the door of St. Dunstan's schools, where anyone who looks for her may find her— but being set back from what Dr. Johnson called the animated thoroughfare of Fleet Street she is very far from obtruding on the public gaze. That the greatest Queen who ever ruled in these islands, one who gave her name to the most memorable age in our history, should, like her father, be given a place in London commensurate with her place in history is a thesis which stands self-commended.
And now another indefensible blank. James I, who gave the world the Authorised Version of the Bible (and as I have some private reasons for mentioning) instituted University representation' in Parliament, has disappeared. His niche was on Temple Bar, and in 1878 that structure, like Lud Gate a century earlier, had to yield to the exigencies of traffic. It was bought by Lady Meux and re- erected, King James and all (or so I believe), in Theobald's Park near Cheshunt. No one, I should imagine, could want to retain King James in that rural retreat. He had his faults, but he ought to be back in London, and I for one should not object if he were given a triumphal entry.
- From now on the Stuart line is complete, thanks almost wholly to Grinling Gibbons. To him are due the fine statues of the two Charleses and James II. Charles I everyone knows. His recent re-erection on his plinth at the top of Whitehall was hardly less welcome than the return of Eros, and since the restoration was made the occasion for the recall of the story of the statue's many adven- tures there is no need to recount it here. It is enough to mention one peculiarity. Grinling Gibbons' equine experience would seem to have been limited. Horses do not have eyes facing forward like human beings ; this horse unaccountably has. Grinling Gibbons' second masterpiece—for his statues deserve to be so styled—is far too little known. Charles II stands in an inner court in Chelsea Hospital, which he had a part, though not a full part, in founding. The Hospital was damaged in the blitz but the statue is uninjured, and a most admirable statue it is. Anyone who wants to see it can do so, for the Hospital grounds are open.
James II is still in his war-time hide-out. Wreathed and togaed —Grinling Gibbons alone knows why—he used to stand behind the Admiralty where a hideous concrete structure now defaces the south side of the Mall. Since it is no longer possible for him to return to the place from whence he came, some new domicile has had to be found for him. He is, it seems, to stand in front of the National Gallery looking down on the memorial, now being con- structed, to Jellicoe and Beatty—not inappropriately since he was once Lord High Admiral himself. There might have been some dramatic fitness in establishing him in St. James' Square, where his successor William III in brass, equestrian, has for a hundred and forty years surveyed the comings and goings at the mansions on all four sides. There is another William III at Kensington Palace, but this one is hardly visible to the public. His consort has no statue.
Finally Queen Anne. Most people could place one of her effigies, for it stands full in front of St. Paul's, and no one mounting Ludgate Hill on a bus or otherwise can fail to notice it. It is not a good statue, and not an original. It was copied in i886 from the monument which had stood there since 1712, but was seriously damaged by a lunatic, who thought the statue a libel on his mother. The mutilated structure (for the statue stood on an elaborately ornate plinth) was re-erected by Augustus Hare at Holmhurst in Sussez, and for all I know can be seen there still.
So end the Stuarts, but one omission has no doubt been noticed. What of Oliver Cromwell ? Well, he was certainly not a Stuart but he was interposed in their line by force of arms and the will of Parliament. This, therefore, is the place for mention of his statue. The commemoration of the Great Protector was long deferred so far as the capital city was concerned. He ruled there, he died there, he was buried, in Westminster Abbey, his remains were exhumed and suffered outrage at Tyburn. But it was not till 1899 that an anonymous donor, subsequently revealed as Lord Rose- bery, commissioned from Sir Hamo Thornycroft the fine statue which stands now in Old Palace Yard, Westminster Hall behind it, the Abbey in front, and almost immediately adjacent on the great captain's left the Chamber (then St. Stephen's Chapel) from which he ordered " that bauble " to be removed—which it was so effectively that it has never been heard of since.
The Georges can be judged by their personalities or their statues. The rating would not be conspicuously high on either count, but the statues make the worse showing of the two. Few people could place all four of them. Several have disappeared. Of those that remain one is in the oddest position of any statue in London. George I is perched on the top of the steeple of St. George's Church in Hart Street, Bloomsbury, the steeple being appropriately serrated as though to provide steps to enable the monarch to ascend to his lonely eminence. George II is to be found in the middle of Golden Square, behind the west side of Regent Street. Whether he is worth finding is matter for debate, for the statue, which once stood in Canon's Park, Edgware, is a paltry affair. There is a better George II at the Naval Hospital at Greenwich, but that involves a rather longer journey. The first two Georges stand on their own feet. The second pair are equestrian. George III, in wig and pigtail, is in Cockspur Street, staring west along Pall Mall, and George IV close by at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square. There are some oddities here, for the monarch is bareheaded and in semi-classical dress, and both saddle and stirrups are absent ; it is as well in the circumstances that the steed is depicted as conspicuously stationary. (There is, it should be added, a less public George III in the courtyard of Somerset House.) King William IV has migrated. He, like some predecessors, was found guilty of obstructing traffic (in the City, close to the Monument station) and has been moved, I believe, to Greenwich.
Queen Victoria is much commemorated, but more by busts and plaques than statues. Of the latter the two best-known are at the east end of the Embankment, by Blackfriars Bridge, and in Kensing- ton Gardens close to the Palace where she was born. Her consort stands—or rather sits his charger—in Holborn Circus. Of Edward VII there are, I think, more statues than of any other sovereign. The most familiar is in Waterloo Place, outside the Athenaeum Club, but there is another in the Euston Road, another at Tooting, and one or two of little note elsewhere. Now the series is rounded off with the George V unveiled on Wednesday. But the gaps remain. Queen Elizabeth in particular ought to be worthily commemorated on some central site, whether her successor, James I, is or not. But who is to commission the sculptor and pay the bill ?
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