540 Mr. M. H. Spielmann [May 13 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 13, 1904. 



His Grace The Duke of Northumberland, E.G. D.C.L. F.R.S., 

 President, in the Chair. 



M. H. Spielmann, Esq., F.S.A. 



The Queen Victoria Memorial. 



(abstract.) 



On the morrow of the death of Queen Victoria, it was the universal 

 feeling that some monument, some visible memorial of her greatness 

 and goodness, and of the enduring love and respect of her mourning 

 subjects, should be set up here, in the metropolis of the Empire. It 

 is, of course, true that those who deserve a statue do not need one ; 

 but a memorial is the consolation of the survivors, and, if rightly con- 

 ceived, is as noble a tribute to their own unselfish gratitude and pride 

 as it is to the glory of the man or woman whom they desire to 

 honour. 



A heavy responsibility lay upon the Committee appointed to de- 

 termine the exact form the memorial was to take, but there was a 

 general confidence that the demands and requirements would be fully 

 appreciated. Examples abound — examples that might be followed 

 and examples that must be shunned. For there exist, as were pre- 

 sently to be shown, a few noble monuments to great rulers departed, 

 and many failures, monstrous, effete, vulgar in turn, which seem to 

 have served less to warn the public against the false in sentiment and 

 the bad in art, than to accustom and reconcile them to the sight of 

 what is poor, pompous, and meretricious. The nation therefore 

 expects that the memorial to Queen Victoria shall be the finest ex- 

 pression of national feeling and of national art to which the race can 

 give utterance. 



The Committee consisted of Viscount Esher, Lord Windsor, Lord 

 Eedesdale, Sir Edward Poynter, P.R.A., Sir William Emerson, Sir 

 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, E.A., Mr. Sidney Colvin, and General Sir 

 Arthur Ellis — a committee which commanded the confidence alike of 

 artists and public. 



Seeing the necessity of appointing a sculptor, rather than open- 

 ing a competition from which probably most leading sculptors would 

 on principle hold aloof, the committee placed the commission outright 

 in the hands of Mr. Thomas Brock, R. A. ; and they decided on open- 

 ing a limited competition of selected architects of the greatest emi- 

 nence. On the winner would fall the duty of laying out the whole 

 ground from end to end, and providing: the architectural setting. 



