LONDON STATUES

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 53, 26 November 1926, Page 11

LONDON STATUES

MANY REPRESENTATIONS OF ROYALTIES. -There are about 220 “open-air” statues in Lindon, and some persons, mainly Royal, are represented bv two or more (savs a writer in “John o’ London’s Weekly"). We have no fewer than eight statues of Queen Victoria, five of Prince Albert, and four of Edward VII. I doubt whether many Londoners know that thoro is in London a statue of the late Queen Alexandra. Approximately it is in the grounds of London Hospital, but, less appropriately, it is invisible to the outside public. It .was erected by “friends of the hospital’* in UXIS. London has four statues of Charles 11, and would have five if, the one which formerly stood in Soho Square had not. been spirited away. I know where it is, having seen it in its present rural habitat. There HID three statues of Queen Anne and three each of George I and George 111; also three each of Bacon, Shakespeare, and Stilton. The most notable statue of Milton is that which my old friend. Sir J. J. Baddeloy, afterwards Lord Mayor, placed outside Hie old church of St. Giles’s. Cripplegate, where Milton sleeps. A fair number of personages have two statues, one of whom is Gladstone. Remembering easily the one in front of St. Clement Danes Church, in the Strand, you may ask: Where is the other? It is in Bow, of all places, and was erected there bv an admirer 16 years before his death. That is understandable, bu(: I have never understood why the chief London statue of Gladstone was set up in the Strand instead of in Parliament. Square. In the Strand he looks to me like an exile from Valhalla.