There’s a famous old story about Prince Albert that says he didn’t want a fuss made after his death. “Don’t build me a statue, for chrissakes,” he said (I’m paraphrasing). “I don’t want anything grand.” So what did Queen Victoria do? She built him the flashiest statue in the capital! All I can say is that he must have been the world’s greatest husband for her to stump up the money for this.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that he has the most memorable memorial in London. I went to Windsor Castle the other day and saw Henry VIII’s marker in St. George’s Chapel – one of England’s greatest-ever kings – and all he got was a stone slab in the floor. Churchill was awarded a solitary flagstone in Westminster Abbey. I suppose you could make a case for Nelson’s Column being the granddaddy of statues, but even his is six feet shorter than Albert’s.
I wonder how me and you are going to be remembered? We’ll just be a dog-eared photo at the back of someone’s school album – one of those little pictures that fall behind the carrier bags under the stairs. We ordinary mortals just have a choice of two memorials when we die: a gravestone covered in weeds, or a photograph covered in dust. When you’re famous you can add a third type: a stone statue covered in bird droppings. But Albert was so beloved he got a 176-feet gothic monument covered in gold.
Statues on the Albert Memorial
This is the kind of monument that they build for saints, kings and conquerors. When you look at the ribbon of marble that runs around the base you’ll be forgiven for thinking that he was an emperor. It’s almost like a Who’s Who of world history: musicians and poets on the south-side (facing the Royal Albert Hall), famous painters on the east, sculptors on the west, and architects on the north. There are 169 people chiselled under his feet, from Christopher Wren and Cheops (the builder of the pyramids) to artists like Raphael, Rubens, Titian and Turner. Then comes a library of writers from Dante to Shakespeare. It’s all a bit strange really. Was Queen Victoria trying to compare her husband to these people?
Above the canopy is a stone set of beauties, and what looks like a choir of golden saints and angels on top (too far away for my poor eyes to see). And right in the middle is the seated figure of Albert himself, all gilded in gold and looking like a god.
When I die this is how I want to be remembered. This is how I deserve to be remembered.
If you enjoy this then try Kensington Gardens (you can walk it in 6 mins); Kensington Palace (you can walk it 10 mins) and Queen Victoria Memorial (take a tube journey from South Kensington to St Jamess Park). You might also like to walk over to the area called the Albertopolis, where he helped to fund some of London’s greatest museums using proceeds from the Great Exhibition: the Natural History Museum, Science Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum
