CREATOR OF EROS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 102, 24 January 1933, Page 9

CREATOR OF EROS

Knight’s Long Fight

MANY VICISSITUDES

(Reuter —Special to “Dominion.”) A knight broke down and wept in the Savage Club in-London recently. He was Sir Alfred Gilbert, the famous sculptor and creator of Eros, the statue which presides over Piccadilly Circus. The dub was entertaining him to dinner as the guest of honour. They called hiin the “English Benvenuto Cellini.” Then Sir Alfred rose to reply. He was too deeply moved to speak for a few moments. Then he said: “No one but an artist knows what the life of an artist is. I am so overcome by the wonderful welcome you have given me that I don’t know how to express myself. You must forgive me; lam an old man and I have gone through every kind of vicissitude. You must not mind a few tears. They are not bitter; they are sweet My body is too small for my. heart to-night, and if I go on any longer I shall ...” He could not finish the sentence. The memories of past storms in his life were too much for him.

Sir Alfred was a young man when he was commissioned to’ execute the Piccadilly fountain in memory of Lord Shaftesbury. Disputes arose between him and the Board of Works about the memorial, and suddenly, in 1007, he vanished. He went to live in voluntary exile at Bruges. Then he wrote to 'the Board of Works: “There is more than £3OOO worth of copper in Eros. Take it down, melt it, turn it into pence, and give it to the unfortunate people who nightly demand a resting place on the Thames Embankment . . . and cease troubling an artist.” He stayed-in Bruges until 1926, when the King commanded him to England to complete another memorial he had been working on in St. George’s Chapel, ■Windsor.