THE STATUE AFFAIR.
IT must be admitted, that with every disposition on the part of Lord Morpeth to do his best as Commissioner of Woods and Fo- rests for improving the streets and parks, no Administration has made more lamentable failures than the present. Last week saw the withdrawal of the Health of Towns Bill; this week sees the fixity of the Wellington Statue. Lord John Russell has made his promised reference to the Duke of Wellington, and the final absurdity has been added to the lengthened list. There has been no sort of consistency or coherence in the rea- sons by which the promoters or tolerators of the statue have been guided at any one stage. The origin of the job was one that had nothing to do with the proper purpose of a work of art. Mr. Wyatt failed to obtain one job, and certain of his admirers club- bed to procure him another. When rich people conspire to get up an eleemosynary benefit for an individual, they seldom fail. The associated admirers, however, did not succeed so well but that they were glad to accept a grant of gun-metal from Government ; which metal was to be given because the statue was to be one of "the Duke," and without any guarantee that it should be a good statue. Thus favoured, Mr. Wyatt produces a work of the Pall Mall East school. A statue now exists to be disposed of, and the question is where to place it. Officially, the Crown has been in- duced to allot the unoccupied top of the Hyde Park arch ; but an ugly doubt is suggested, that the statue is a very bad one, and peculiarly unsuited from its size to surmount the arch. The patrons demur to that supposition' and they beg for an experimental ele- vation of the statue. It is hoisted, and fully justifies the doubts : it is quite disproportioned to the arch, which it reduces to a strange sort of cleft pedestal somewhat too big for its purpose. And moreover, the statue proves to be very bad. Lord Brougham says that sculptors object to it because it is not like a classic horse but more like a real horse : he is grievously mis- taken—the horse is as unlike a real horse as it is unlike a classic horse. We will not, however, now enter upon the question of art, as we are only showing how the official department in- volved in the affair has been mocked by shifting pretexts. There was no machinery to ascertain the public mind in any dis- tinct and tangible shape ; but Ministers consulted "competent persons "; who decided that the statue was bad, on grounds suffi- cient to make Ministers resolve on sending it away. The Sub- Committee of subscribers begged for one more indulgence—the removal of the scaffold, in order that the statue might be more seen. Ministers were warned, that if they conceded that point, the Sub-Committee would circumvent them : but they treated the warning as a libel on their own firmness. The scaffold was re- moved; but without any change of the official opinion in favour of the statue. The position of the Sub-Committee, however, was now one of strength : they declared that they would neither restore the scaffold which they had been permitted to remove experimentally, nor take down the statue. Ministers, therefore, had to pay out of the national pocket for removing the unsightly encumbrance. But the Sub-Committee-had still another scheme : they declared that the removal of the statue—now that it was on the arch— would hurt the Duke's feelings. It seemed a strange want of delicacy to import into a question of public interest, one turning tea upon a point of art, the private feelings of any man how- ever distinguished ; but Ministers consented to defer to the gentleman whom the Sub-Committee described as being so sen- sitive. The Duke declared, it would appear, that personally his own feelings were not involved ; but as other persons thought that the public would think that the removal implied some kind of slight, it was his opinion that the statue ought to remain up on "public grounds.' Now that was not the question : the question was, what were the personal feelings of the Duke ; because, however irrelevant they might be to a question of art, the public would have been quite willing to make a sacrifice to those feelings. The Duke's "opinion" was not of much value, whether as it concerned the question of art or the public grounds; for he has not displayed any great capacity as a judge of art, and his position necessarily rendered his view of the public grounds very partial. His answer, therefore, was tantamount to a decla- ration that his personal feelings were not involved, and need be no bar to the removal of the statue. Ministers resolve that it shall not be removed I To sum up. The statue was begun because Mr. Wyatt's ad- mirers were sorry to see him fail n obtaining a particular job. Ministers furnished a supply of expensive material because the ;subject was a laudable one ; a pretext that might justify an of- llcial department in supplying half the artists gratuitously. The statue was supplied with a site simply because the statue existed; a precedent to show that any sculptor who can make a very big image of a public man has a claim on Government for a locus in quo. The particular site was chosen not for its fitness in the matter of art, but for its conspicuousness and its proximity to Apsley House. In spite of its now notorious badness, the statue is hoisted on to the arch, experimentally, merely that it may be
seen. The scaffold is removed, that the statue may be seen more. The Sub-Committee then change not only their particular pretexts but their whole course: the statue, hoisted experimentally, they
now decline to remove because it is there. They enforce the ob- jection by asserting the removal will hurt the Duke's feelings. Ministers ask the Duke ; and he replies by an opinion of what other people will think. Ministers resolve not to remove the sta- tue I It will be observed that at every stage the pretext is shifted, and that it is always trivial and irrelevant. The shifting of pretext and purpose throughout is striking; but still more so is the impudence on the one side and the open-eyed gullibility- on the other. No pretence is too transparent to be used by the Sub-Committee or accepted by the Government. It would seem as if both were really destitute of a purpose ; and that, we believe, is the fact, especially on the official side. The easy dis- position which enables the Government to tolerate such a badge of disgrace upon the nation originates in the fact that there is no real perception of art. The faculty is low in this country ; men chosen for office on political grounds do not rise above the average on artistical grounds ; and hence, wanting a real principle to guide them, they are open to be swayed by the pretext of the moment. Now they desire to fall in with the notion of "en- couraging art" by some trading patronage • now to oblige the Sub-Committee, now to oblige the Duke of Wellington, who thinks that the removal of a bad statue to make room for some real work of art will be injurious to his military renown 1 We may venture to presume, that of all the persons engaged either actively or pas- sively in this surprising and deliberate hoax, not one has any de- finite or distinct idea as to what it is that would make a good statue, or what makes this a bad one. For the present it is to stand, the chosen palladium of the Duke's living renown. The process of enlightening the official mind to the enormity theatens to be slow and painful; but some day:, no doubt, the true idea of what the statue is will flash upon it, and then there will be a blushing haste to get rid of the enormous " foolometer."
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