“Windsor Castle, 3d November, 1853.
“My dear Lord Granville,—Many thanks for your letter, evincing such kind interest in what concerns me.
“I did not see the letter in the Times, but I read yesterday’s leading article, which led me at once to considerations similar to those which struck you. Moreover, it is evident to me that the Lord Mayor started the plan chiefly as the means of bringing himself into notice, after other Mayors had gone to Paris, taken the lead in education, etc., and that the Times is attacking the plan chiefly to hit the Lord Mayor, as it had hit his predecessors. My unfortunate person will thus probably become their battle-ground; and, although the first article of the Times is civil, its music generally goes on crescendo, and the next may be purposely offensive, and meet with shouts of applause from a portion of the audience.
“Still, I do not see how I can, with any dignity or respect for myself, take notice of the squabble, and cry out for mercy, or to whom I could write such a letter as you suggest. I have never been consulted in any way in the matter, and the people have a perfect right to subscribe for and erect a monument in remembrance of the Great Exhibition; nor could I volunteer to say, ‘You must not connect it in any way with me.’
“I can say, with perfect absence of humbug, that I would much rather not be made the prominent feature of such a monument, as it would both disturb my quiet rides in Rotten Row to see my own face staring at me, and if (as is very likely) it became an artistic monstrosity, like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy.
“The Times argument, however, that it would be premature to place a statue to me, is of no great force in this instance, as I suppose it is not intended to recognize general merits in me, which ought yet to be proved, and might possibly be found wanting on longer acquaintance, but rather to commemorate the fact of the Exhibition of 1851, over which I presided; which fact will remain unaltered were I to turn out a Nero or a Caligula.
“As in all cases of doubt what to do it is generally safest to do nothing, I think it better to remain perfectly quiet at present. If I were officially consulted, I should say, ‘Mark the corners of the building by permanent stones, with inscriptions containing ample records of the event, and give the surplus money to the erection of the museums of art and science.’
Believe me, etc.,
“Albert.”
Foley’s statue would be nobler if the last paragraph of this letter could be read on it, and if he could have contrived some plan to let every observer know that the book held by the Prince is the Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
There is some reason why the English artists should have done their best work upon the monument of Prince Albert. He may be regarded as the first man to teach this country that money might well be largely expended for the encouragement of fine art, and that it had artists capable of the best work, if the means were adequately supplied to them. He was the means of employing scores of fine brains that had otherwise been unable to make their mark on the country, and he extorted from a grumbling, shop-keeping public the splendors which now render the South Kensington Museum and its surroundings institutions an art university for the world. Very different have been the resources and rewards of the artists who have built and adorned the structures I have been mentioning from those which were alone available when the frescoes were placed in the corridors of the Houses of Parliament. Nevertheless, the Prince Consort himself had to be taught by a German artist to look around him for the ability which was needed for English work. When he was appointed the commissioner for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament (1841) he made overtures to Cornelius to come over and do the work. The German artist replied, “Why should you come to me when you have the man by your side—Dyce?” Dyce, who had studied at Rome with Cornelius and Overbeck, was then professor in the School of Design at Somerset House; but he was little known as an artist, and had not competed when designs for the decoration of Westminster Hall had been invited. The Prince Consort at once suggested to him that he should send in a design; and having too little notice to make a new one, he sent in a study he had made for a fresco for the Archbishop’s palace at Lambeth. It was severely criticised, as too German, too papistical, etc.; but it was selected; and the result is the beautiful frescoes of the Baptism of Ethelbert, in the House of Lords, and of the Morte d’Arthur, in the Queen’s robing-room. How slowly the ability of Dyce was recognized in England may be estimated by the fact that one of his most admired works—“Paul Preaching to the Gentiles”—now in the South Kensington Museum, was employed at an art exhibition in Manchester as background to an umbrella-stand!