The miserable pageant prophesied by Punch in Leech's amusing drawing was nothing like the reality. Leech afterwards drew a mirth-provoking picture of the effect of the statue's passing down Edgware Road upon a gentleman shaving in the seclusion of an upper window, which we here reproduce.
AWFUL APPARITION TO A GENTLEMAN, WHILST SHAVING, IN THE EDGWARE ROAD—ANOTHER "PUNCH" JOKE ON THE PROCESSION.
Reproduced by permission of the Proprietors of "Punch."
Arrived at the arch, where Royal Princes, dukes, earls, and innumerable peeresses were assembled, it was found too late that day to hoist the mighty bronze to its resting-place. In fact, the ceremony took three days before it was concluded.
While all this was happening, on the first and last days the happy sculptor, Wyatt, was holding high revel at his studio, his friends partaking of a banquet at his expense.
Nobody dreamed of trouble. "Once up—the statue is safe," was the watchword. But the Royal Academy and the Office of Woods and Forests had resolved that the fate of this huge "solecism" was sealed. It had taken six years to set up; it should come down in three weeks! By October 1st, 1846, the sixty tons had been hoisted to the top of the one hundred and fifteen foot scaffold and placed in position by the sculptor himself. A few days later the fatal message arrived: "The Government decides that your statue must come down within three weeks." No wonder the sculptor and his friends were panic-stricken. How were they to be saved? There was only one way—by intercession to the Duke to save his bronze counterfeit.
HOISTING THE STATUE TO THE TOP OF THE ARCH.
From the "Illustrated London News."
We have not space to tell the full story; the Iron Duke spake the word and the Government dared not deny him his request.
For nearly thirty-seven years the great statue remained on the summit of the triumphal arch opposite Apsley House. But never during a moment of that time was it unassailed by hostile criticism. Foreigners were said to point at it with scorn. Albert Smith declared that saturnine men came to laugh at it "who had never laughed before." But it was not so much that it was a badly-modelled statue as that it had given rise to prejudices and antagonisms which long survived both Duke and sculptor. So it happened that in 1883, when alterations were projected in the locality, the Duke at last was made to descend from his eminence. It was a tremendous piece of work—both the Duke and Copenhagen had to be decapitated and otherwise mutilated—but the gradual descent was accomplished, witnessed by vast multitudes. Wyatt's enemies had triumphed.