Patrick Comerford
When I was still a child, my parents took my elder brother on a holiday to London. I was too young at the time to remember the visit – I think, perhaps, I was still living with foster parents. I say it was a holiday, and that is how Steve remembered it. But it may have been tagged on to one of my father’s business or union visits to London, and was probably a search by my parents for a medical response to Steve’s epilepsy and autism.
He came back from London with a toy red, double-decker London bus, which became his pride and joy, alongside his ‘Bayko’ set, invented by Charles Plimpton, and his toy chemistry set. I remember how he played with his toy red bus as imitated the sounds of a bell ringing and a conductor calling out, ‘Piccadilly Circus.’
Those two words, ‘Piccadilly Circus’, rang out in my ears while I was still a child. But when he went away to school, I was under strict instructions not to even think of touching his red bus. He had probably outgrown his bus at the stage, but – as only a big brother can do – he idly threatened to take my finger prints in case I even dared to touch that Picadilly Circus bus, tucked away in a dark corner of the toy cupboard.
I never found out what happened to that bus. Frankly, I found it all something of a circus, and I never really wanted to play with it anyway, nor with his plastic Bayko bricks or his chemistry set. But the memory of it came back this week as I walked through Piccadilly Circus earlier this week.
The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, officially and popularly known as Eros, is a fountain surmounted by a winged statue of Anteros, at the south-east side of Piccadilly Circus. It was designed by the sculptor Sir Alfred Gilbert (1801-1885) was erected in to commemorate Anthony Ashley Cooper (1801-1885), 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, the Victorian politician and philanthropist, and his work to end child labour. The fountain overlooks the south-west end of Shaftesbury Avenue, to which he also gave his name.
Gilbert also designed the statue of the penal reformer John Howard (1726-1790), erected in Saint Paul’s Square, Bedford, in 1890 to mark the centenary of Howard’s death.
Gilbert took five long years to consider how best to commemorate Shaftesbury’s life and work. His final design was an ornately decorated bronze fountain on a nautical theme, topped by a statue reflecting the earl’s philanthropic life. The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain was originally meant as a public drinking fountain, and the bronze base was supposed to support a dome of water, with a mythical figure of a god appearing to float on the surface of the flowing water.
Although his choice of a nude figure on a public monument was controversial, even at the end of the Victorian era, it was generally well received. The Magazine of Art said it was ‘a striking contrast to the dull ugliness of the generality of our street sculpture’ and contrasted it with ‘the old order of monumental monstrosities’ in London.
The statue has been called ‘London’s most famous work of sculpture’, and it became the symbol of the Evening Standard on its masthead. It was the first sculpture in the world to be cast in aluminium and is set on a bronze fountain that inspired the marine motifs that Gilbert carved on the statue.
Although the statue is generally known as Eros, Gilbert intended it to be an image of that Greek god’s brother Anteros. He had already sculpted a statue of Anteros and, when commissioned for the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, chose to reproduce the same subject, who, as ‘The god of Selfless Love’ was seen as a suitable representation of the philanthropic Shaftesbury.
Gilbert described Anteros as portraying ‘reflective and mature love, as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant.’
The model for the sculpture was Gilbert’s16-year-old studio assistant, Angelo Colarossi who was born in Shepherd’s Bush to Italian parents. Fernando Meacci was involved in the moulding of the fountain and it was cast by George Broad & Son at the Hammersmith Foundry.
The memorial was unveiled by the Duke of Westminster on 29 June 1893. Gilbert’s design for the water fountain was flawed from the start. The base was too narrow, so that instead of water flowing smoothly, it splashed everywhere, creating a mass of mud beside the fountain. Gilbert also designed cups chained to the base so that people could more easily drink, but the cups were stolen almost immediately.
Some critics felt the memorial was sited too close to Soho, then seen as a vulgar part of London with its theatres and brothels; others said it was too sensual a memorial for a sober and evangelical aristocrat.
Some of the objections were tempered by renaming the statue as the Angel of Christian Charity, which was the nearest approximation that could be invented in Christian terms for the mythical role of Anteros. However, the name never became popular ever since the statue has been known as Eros, the god of sensual love.
Gilbert refused to attend both the unveiling of his sculpture in Piccadilly Circus in 1893, and the unveiling of his statue of John Howard in Bedford by the Duke of Bedford nine months later on 28 March 1894.
Gilbert was paid £3,000 for his work in Piccadilly Circus, but it cost him £7,000 to complete. Most of his expenses went towards the richly decorated base of the fountain. He was heavily in debt and was eventually forced to flee abroad and spent 25 years living in Belgium. He never felt his work did enough to commemorate Shaftesbury and even suggested melting down the fountain and selling the material, using the money to build homeless shelters.
The statue and the memorial have been moved from Piccadilly Circus on a number of occasions. It was removed in 1925 to facilitate building work on a new tube station directly beneath. The memorial was put in storage in Embankment Gardens, but was returned in 1931. When World War II broke out in 1939, the statue was moved for safety to Egham, and it returned to Piccadilly Circus in 1947.
The statue was again removed in the 1980s – this time for restoration – and it was re-sited when it returned in 1985. The statue was vandalised in 1990 and after radiography and restoration returned in 1994. A new bow string was fitted to the statue in 2012 after the original had been broken by a tourist.
In the winter of 2013-2014, the statue was covered with a PVC snow globe with internal fans blowing ‘snowflakes’. This was supposed to protect the statue against vandalism, but strong , winds damaged and deflated the globe and it was not never repaired.
Piccadilly Circus was laid out in 1819. In the past, it was described as the heart of the British Empire and it was said that if you stood for long enough in Piccadilly Circus, everyone in the world would pass by. It remains a popular gathering place for tourists and local people alike, but it may be better known today for the theatres, and rthe garish neon signs and video displays rather than Eros or the big red buses.
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