Hinterland

Britain’s Albert Streets, Albert Squares, Albert Docks and of course the Albert Hall are enduring testaments to Queen Victoria’s almost deranged grief when her husband, the Prince Consort, died unexpectedly in December 1861. So too, indeed, is that whole part of Kensington in London known as Albertopolis. But nothing commemorating him caused quite so much difficulty as the great Memorial in Kensington Gardens, which following its refurbishment a few years ago is now restored to its full Gothic glory.

In 1862 a Prince Consort Memorial Committee was formed, chaired by the former (and future) prime minister Lord Derby, conscious that the Queen was obsessing about the nature of the memorial. It was soon settled that a great hall would be built – so great that a separate memorial would have to be placed at a distance, so as not to be overwhelmed by it.

Victoria wanted an obelisk, but was soon made aware that none could represent the greatness that had been Albert; also it would have to be built from several pieces of stone, which was not how the ancients did it. While committees discussed building the rest of Albertopolis – partly funded by public subscriptions, and partly by the profits from the Great Exhibition of 1851 – it was agreed a free-standing memorial could be erected swiftly, to assuage the Queen’s impatience.

Architects were invited to offer ideas in July 1862, and in the spring of 1863 the Queen saw various plans and chose that of George Gilbert Scott, who had a claim to be the leading architect of the day. Scott was influenced by the Eleanor Crosses that ran through England from Nottinghamshire to London and marked the resting places of the body of Edward

I’s queen on its journey south in 1290. He designed an open shrine with a fourposter canopy covering a statue of Albert; and around its base would be further statuary and friezes representing the arts and sciences whose furtherance Albert was so keen on.

The choice of Scott annoyed Palmerston, the prime minister, who had had toxic arguments with him over the design of the Foreign Office five years earlier. Henry Cole, who had been instrumental in organising the Great Exhibition and would be Albertopolis’s midwife, also opposed an open shrine. Scott, an even bigger egomaniac than

Cole, fought back and won, thanks to the Queen’s unflinching support.

However, Victoria also pronounced that an Italian, Baron Carlo Marochetti, should sculpt the colossal, seated statue of Albert. His best-known work is the equestrian statue (in which he specialised) of Richard the Lionheart, outside Westminster Hall. However, Albert was not a horse; and when Henry Layard, the MP appointed to supervise the construction, went to see the statue in a studio in early 1866, he noted some departures from the plans. Layard was the sort of man one does not find in politics today. A gifted aesthete and classicist, he had been the archaeologist who in 1847 had discovered Nineveh.

In early 1867 Layard and Scott visited Marochetti’s studio again, and were so concerned by the statue that they felt it unadvisable the Queen should see it. Scott thought it was clumsy and lacked refinement, but the main problem was that the body appeared too short and the legs too “developed”, as though he were astride a horse: Marochetti was hopeless at seated figures.

All the other statuary for the pedestal was taking longer than expected, so there was time for Marochetti to make alterations, and Scott and Layard suggested some. But Marochetti was unwilling to co-operate, hoping to force Victoria to request an equestrian statue instead; but that would not happen. The wrangle continued throughout the autumn of 1867, but then fate intervened. Marochetti, it is believed while discussing some fine artistic points with his mistress, dropped dead in Paris.

Thus the project was saved. Joseph Foley, a then unknown sculptor working on the other statuary, and hugely admired by Scott, was asked to take over the main statue, despite an attempt by Marochetti’s son to inherit the commission: the Queen saw what Marochetti senior had done and pronounced it “not satisfactory”. Foley started from scratch, promising to “cast a statue with proper regard for perspective and drapery”.

At last, in 1873-4, it was cast from the metal of 37 old guns. Scott’s shrine was revealed to the public in August 1872, the Queen finding it “really magnificent”; he was knighted for his pains. Foley’s statue was placed on it three years later, though the sculptor did not live to see it, dying of pleurisy in 1874; Thomas Brock, his assistant, finished the job, and the statue was gilded. It is 176ft high, and has become the incarnation of High Victorian Gothic architecture, and of the era’s taste.

MAN OF ACTION The figure in the Albert Memorial was cast from old gun metal