Statues in London a lesson in art and history

Statues deployed around a city are generally put up for aesthetic or historical purposes. The former impulse is well represented in Florence, where one is clearly aware of Michaelangelo’s “David” (albeit a copy of the original, now in the Accademia) and Benvenuto Cellini’s “Perseus Holding the Head of Medusa,” both on the Piazza della Signoria. Certainly the latter stance cannot be better exemplified than in Washington, D.C., where, unhappily, most of the figures honoring Civil War and World War I heroes are unknown save to buffs of this country’s military history.

But in London there is a sensible fusion of the two areas with about 300 statues scattered about the city. In the 17th century the first free-standing statue of Charles I, who lost his head in 1649, was put up in Whitehall. By the next century it was common for monuments to be erected with individual private gifts, a procedure that entailed personal taste, some of it execrable. Through public donations many heroes from the Napoleonic wars were honored by having their likenesses adorn squares and niches around town. To enforce a measure of taste and to control the number of statues thus proliferating, the Public Statues Act was passed in 1854 that stipulated that permission to mount a statue had to come from the Office of Works (now the Department of Environment). And the Royal Fine Arts Commission must pass on the artistic worth — its charm, similitude and beauty in particular — of a monument.

Unquestionably the most popular of all the statues in London is that of Eros, whose centenary is celebrated this year, surmounting a circle into which streams the traffic of Regent Street, Picadilly, Coventry Street and the Haymarket. Since Eros, the God of Love, commemorates the charitableness of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, it is a peculiarly appropriate symbol. Recently the statue has demonstrated possibly irreparable fractures, bruises that may result in a replica’s being put up in London’s wildest round-about.

Just down the street in Leicester Square, dominated by a rakish statue of William Shakespeare, there are busts of artists Sir Joshua Reynolds and William Hogarth, scientist Sir John Newton and William Hunter at each corner. Saluting “The Little Tramp” in 1981, the city fathers commissioned for this square so close to the theater district a statue of Charlie Chaplin, a London native, permanently decked out in hat, baggy trousers and oversized shoes.

Just behind the National Portrait Gallery on Charing Cross Road is a statue of the great actor and impresario Sir Henry Irving. And just a few yards away in St. Martin’s Place is Nurse Edith Cavell, shot in 1915 by the Germans as a spy. Underneath the dignified likeness of the nurse, buried at Norwich Cathedral, is this epitaph: “Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone,” this sentiment uttered before her death to the only English priest left in Brussels.

Spread out before the National Gallery is Trafalgar Square, a huge basin dominated by two feathery fountains and a column just over 170 feet tall surmounted by the indomitable one-armed Sir Horatio Nelson, the great seafaring opponent of Napoleon’s forces on the high seas. Just before the statue was ensconced on its lofty spot, fourteen people ate a precarious dinner at the top of the column. At the base are four lions, roughly sculptured by Sir Edward Landseer. They represent power.

Those who crowd into the area before Buckingham Palace to marvel at the precision of the Changing of the Guard try to arrive early enough to clamber up on the monument dedicated to Queen Victoria, one of 150 in the United Kingdom. It is a huge mass of over 2,000 tons of marble, granite and bronze. Surrounding the dour queen, whose steely eyes are riveted on the palace, are figures of Justice, Truth and Motherhood.

Passing through Whitehall with its statues of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Duke of Devonshire, one emerges onto Parliament Square with its concatenation of political figures, these including even President Abraham Lincoln done by St. Gaudens. One of the most recent is the burly shape of Sir Winston Churchill draped in his military cloak, a ponderous figure executed by Sir Robert Jones. Others in this impressive array are Sir Robert Peel, Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) and Lord Palmerston.

In the shadow of the Parliament Buildings is an equestrian statue of Richard I (Coeur-de-Lion), the popular medieval king in a heroic stance with his sword brandished on high. Not far away, ironically, is a statue of the man who scuttled the British monarchy, at least for eleven years: Oliver Cromwell.

A charming change from political and military personages is the blithe statue of Sir Matthew Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, this delightful, insubstantial elf done in 1912 by Sir George Frampton in the art nouveau style. Nina Bouccicault, who played Peter Pan, was the model for the pipe-playing child who refused to grow up.

Probably the statue that is most frequently misidentified is that of a woman at the summit of Ludlow Hill before the facade of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Although most tourists decide quite arbitrarily that it is Queen Victoria, it happens to be Queen Anne, costumed definitely in eighteenth century robes that skillfully mask her excessive weight.

Statue-spotting in London — or elsewhere for that matter — can be lots of fun. Not only that, it opens up historical and artistic vistas that are acutely significant.