LONDON'S STATUES

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 152, 24 December 1926, Page 16

LONDON'S STATUES

There are about 220 "open-air" statues in London, and some persons, mainly Royal, are represented by two or more (says a writer in "John o' London's Weekly"). We have no fe\v6r than eight statues of Queen Victoria, five of Prince Albert, and four of Edward VII. I doubt whether many Londoners know that there is in London a statue of the late Queen Alexandra. Appropriately it is in the grounds of London Hospital, but, less appropriately, it is invisible to the outside public. It was erected by "friends of the hospital" in 1908. London has four statues of Charles 11., and would have five if the one which formerly stood in Soho square had not been spirited a.way. I know where it is, having seen it in its present rural habitat. There are threo statues of Queen Anne and three each of George I. and George III.; also three each of Bacon, Shakespeare, and Milton. The most notable statue of Milton is (hat which my old friend, Sir J. J. Baddeley, afterwards Lord Mayor, placed outside the old church of St! Giles's, Cripplegatc, whore Milton sleeps. A fair number of personages have two statues, one of whom is Gladstone. Remembering easily the one in front of St. Clement Banes Church, in tb i Strand, you may ask: Where is the other? It is in Bow, of all places, and was erected there by an admirer -16 years before his death. .That is understandable, but I have never understood why the chief London statue of Gladstone was set up in the Strand instead of in Parliament square.' In the Strand he looks to me like an exile from [Valhalla.