London Urban Legends (11 page)

In London, starving workers dine
With old Duke Humphrey; as for wine,
’Twas made by Christ, in ‘Auld Lang Syne’
But now he’s turned teetotaler.

Woe in London Brimstone Ballads

Unknown Stone

If we can be certain of one thing in London, it must be our statues. To be set in stone suggests confidence and permanence, and London’s representations of its great and good must be a solid link back to the best of our shared past. ‘Dining with Duke Humphrey’ is a sweet but sad expression from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London which means, in short, to be too poor to be able to afford dinner. The homeless and hungry lost scholars would congregate by a memorial of the hospitable Duke Humphrey of Gloucester (1391–1447) in the grounds of St Paul’s Cathedral.

This event becomes sadder still when one realises that the cenotaph at the centre of this crowd is not for ‘Good Duke Humphrey’ but Sir John Beauchamp. London’s oldest outdoor indigenous statue (not counting anything ancient, lifted and shipped in from Egypt) is of King Alfred the Great, a bearded and caped figure who is believed to have once stood in the Palace of Westminster and who is now slumming it in Trinity Square in Southwark.

However, the 1910 book
Return of Outdoor Memorials in London
by the London County Council could not find any reference to who the statue might be, and lists it as Alfred with a question mark by it. The book notes: ‘The Secretary of Trinity House states that the Corporation have endeavoured to ascertain the facts in connection with the origin of the statue, but without success.’ Understandably, due to the blank drawn about its origins, the statue’s status as London’s oldest is uncertain too. King Alfred is thought to date back to the fourteenth century. The statute of Queen Elizabeth I that stands on the façade of St Dunstan-in-the-West can also claim to be the oldest, as it was erected during the Queen’s reign, either in or around 1586. Nearby are the statues of London’s mythical founder, King Lud and his son Tenvantius, who may have first been erected on the gates at Ludgate in 1586.

Another mystery memorial is the ‘Eagle Pillar’ that stands in Orme Square, just off Bayswater. No one can remember what the double pillar with an eagle on the top is there to represent. The theories are that it was erected by a grateful Mr Orme, who made a fortune selling gravel to Russia; that it is a French eagle in honour of Louis Napoleon’s stay on the square, and/or that it commemorates the French Embassy, which once stood at No. 2 Orme Square. Or the eagle could in fact be a phoenix for a fire insurance company; the Geograph website notes that a ‘nearby house has birds looking like phoenixes in its frontage’. The final guess in
Return of Outdoor Memorials of London
is a bit fed up with all the rest; it merely suggests that ‘the column is not a memorial at all, but simply an ornament picked up in a builder’s yard’.

Suicidal Sculptors

If we are uncertain about London’s oldest stone statue, we’re fairly certain that our oldest bronze statue, cast in 1633, is of King Charles I on horseback, which now stands at one end of the Mall by Trafalgar Square. The statue itself was cast just before the start of the Civil War in 1642, and on the outbreak of the war it was taken from its original spot on King Street, Covent Garden, and hidden in the crypt of the church of St Paul. During the interregnum, it was sold to a brazier named John Rivett, who was given orders to break it up. The canny Rivett broke the statue up by making and selling nutcrackers, thimbles and spoons made from the bronze of the dead king’s statue. When the Restoration arrived, Rivett was able to provide the new Royalists with the fully intact statue that he had in storage.

This could be the urban legend about the statue of King Charles, but there is another attached which has proven to have far greater longevity and pedigree. In a letter dated 6 December 1725, Cesar de Saussure, from Lausanne, encountered the statue and recorded the story of the sculptor who had been ‘almost beside himself with joy and pride’ at his creation. However, on taking a closer look at the equestrian statue he realised the sculptor had forgotten to include the girths of the saddle (the strap or belt that goes around the horse that keeps saddle and rider on). The sculptor was so distraught to see his error set in bronze under the king’s image that he hanged himself. ‘This man was without doubt an Englishman’ spat de Saussure, ‘this trait depicts his energetic character.’

A community constable told Jeremy Harte of the Folklore Society that the reason the fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square is empty is because a huge equestrian sculpture was planned to be placed on it, and the sculptor was confident it would be his masterwork. The day was set for the unveiling, the sculpture waited under a huge sheet, dignitaries gathered and a band played for the ceremony. The sheet was removed and the crowd began to laugh because the sculptor had left the stirrups off his masterwork. The sculptor was so humiliated he ran down Northumberland Avenue and threw himself into the Thames.

This story has legs, six of them. It has also travelled over to the statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the Royal Exchange in the City. In a letter in the June 2002 issue of
FLS News
, John Spencer half-remembers having the statue’s lack of stirrups pointed out to him by his grandfather and being told that the sculptor only realised his mistake when the king arrived to unveil the statue. Overcome with shame and embarrassment, the sculptor skulked off and shot himself. A year later, John was looking at the statue of George III in Windsor Great Park and overheard a middle-aged man explaining to a boy that the sculptor realised too late that the statue was stirrup-less and so committed suicide.

In reality, the sculptor of the Charles I statue was not an energetic Englishman, but a fellow Frenchman to de Saussure named Hubert Le Sueur. As well as the equestrian bronze, Le Sueur cast busts for England’s royalty and aristocracy. Once the English Civil War began, his commissions naturally dried up and he moved back to France to work. He vanished into obscurity afterwards, long after the Charles I statue had been unveiled. The sculptor of the George III statue at Windsor Park portrayed him riding like a Roman, and the Romans did not use stirrups.

The fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is not empty because of a shameful event involving stirrups. The original plan was for an equestrian statue of William IV to be placed there, but the plan was abandoned due to lack of funds. Another rumour about the plinth is that it is now reserved until after the death of Elizabeth II, so a statue of her can be placed there.

I have heard the legend told about the Maiwand Lion that stands in Forbury gardens in Reading, down the road from Windsor. The sculptor, George Blackall Simonds, is said to have killed himself on realising (after it had been completed) that the lion, one of the world’s largest cast-iron statues, was incorrectly represented. Its stance is said to look more like a domestic cat walking than that of a lion.

Farther afield is the story of another enthusiastic English sculptor who threw himself into the Danube when he heard that the lions he had designed for the Chain Bridge in Budapest had been cast without tongues. These Hungarian lions are stone, not metal, and were certainly carved with tongues; it’s just that they can only be seen from above.

Backward Buildings