The Prince Albert Memorial - Hidden Symbols & History, Victorian London Walk - Albertopolis

We are here in South Kensington, which in the 1850s began to be known as Albertopolis due to Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the prince consort, the husband of Queen Victoria, and a great patron of the arts and sciences and of industry. Over here he hosted, or he was hugely influential in, the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the famous Crystal Palace in Hyde Park here. And it began to be known as Albertopolis because the great learned societies moved here, there were great centers of industry and learning and arts, and now today we know it with the Royal Albert Hall and Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Before we get to the Victorian things, I wanted to show you this really quite exceptional statue, which I am amazed that I am now seeing because in all the photos it looks so small and it is actually pretty large. This is Ernest Shackleton, who in 1914 embarked on a mission to the South Pole, and it was not successful in its original goal, but the endurance, the fortitude they showed to survive was just incredible. I just read a book at the recommendation of my friend Patrick called Endurance, and it chronicles the story of Shackleton and his companions, and it is incredibly moving. I love the Franklin Expedition, I love a lot of the perils of many of these expeditions, but there is something unique about the Shackleton Expedition, and because it is so late, we even have photographs, and that is incredible, you can see all that. But this is the Royal Geographical Society, and so there is Shackleton, and over on the other side is Livingston, an explorer in Africa, and missionary, and geographer, among other things. Not as much of a terrible person as Stanley, but interesting nonetheless, nonetheless. So here is the Royal Geographical Society, great red brick building, there is so much red brick here, it makes me think of the mid-Victorian era, it feels like in the 21st century, we think everything can be solved by a bit of computer programming, and in the Victorian era, every single one of the world's problems can be solved by the application of red brick and cast iron, I am certain of it, and a lot of them were, Bazalgette, you know, Brunel, much of the, much progress was done with red brick and cast iron. And speaking of red brick, we are about to come upon the iconic late 19th century red brick building over here in South Kensington, an ode to the arts as patronized by Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Albert Hall was built much after what we're going to talk about in the park here today, but when it was begun it was, there's a maze of construction here, so we are going to get through it. This building in itself deserves an entire video because there are so many individual sculptures and motifs and references all over the building that each tell a story, but that is not the purpose of today's video. Today's video is much more mid-Victorian because Prince Albert was such an iconic person, such an influential person in the mid-Victorian era, in the, when he and Victoria were married there was consideration for making him the prince or the king consort, but that was rejected. He wasn't really initially well-received in Britain. He was foreign, he was very serious, he was focused on the fields that weren't particularly focused on by other respectable persons. He was keen on mathematics and the sciences and the new industries. He was different and that probably is one of the great reasons why Queen Victoria loved him so much. He was a very different person and he stood out in Britain and in the 1850s the first great task given to him by Queen Victoria was the Great Exhibition. The Great Exhibition hosted all nations to show off their industries. It was essentially a trade show that all these countries could come in and show off their wares, their technological advancements, all sorts of things. And usually we would see countries host this for themselves. So there would be a British exhibition, there would be a French exhibition, and the Great Exhibition was unique in that it was going to showcase all nations, hosted by Britain, facilitated by Britain, but showing off the great accomplishments of the world, primarily Britain's, but endeavouring to show off as much of the rest of the world as is seemly. And in 1851 that resulted in a hugely successful event. Not only was it hugely popular in Britain, wildly successful financially, it was popular all over the world. People came from every corner of the globe to show off their industries and the material culture to it, the paintings we have from it, that's one place I really, one moment in history I would really like to go back to. I would love to see the American Pavilion in 1851, the Colt Booth, see what they were showing off to Britain. But it was wildly successful and his work resulted in the flourishing of industry and culture. Now in the 1850s, as we move on from the Great Exhibition, Albert took more and more of a role and Queen Victoria's pregnancies probably played a significant role in that. In her early reign, when they were initially married, there was great effort spent to not have Albert take the reins, so to speak, and that was both for Victoria being headstrong and wanting to keep her position, but also for political reasons, not wanting a German to be ruling over Great Britain. And over the course of the ensuing decade, from about 1851 to 1861, Albert began to take over more and more of the matters of state for the Queen, began seeing to, you know, one box and then two boxes and then all the boxes, the royal boxes. And by the end of the 1850s, Albert was mostly calling the shots and Queen Victoria was heavily reliant on him. But in 1861, he developed typhoid fever and in December of 1861, he died. And it shocked Queen Victoria, it sent her into a lifelong state of mourning. She didn't know what to do. I think not only did she lose her husband and her closest companion, she lost her work companion, the person who had been doing most of the matters of state for the last decade. And so she was lost. And we can see that grief throughout history of the late Victorian era, all that grief she had for the loss of Prince Albert, not only through her mourning, but in the things that she supported and in the things that she commissioned. And none is more famous to honor his memory than the Albert Memorial. And this is just an amazing, over-the-top memorial. It is really stunning. It's so neo-Gothic, and yet it incorporates a lot of classical elements. It's very Prince Albert. It's very mid-Victorian. I think it in itself represents mid-Victorian Britain. And we're going to talk about each of the elements of the Albert Memorial. Collections for it. Albert died in December of 1861. Collections began in January of 1862. Work on it began in the mid-1860s, 1862, 1863. And it wasn't actually completed until the 1870s. But there are many artists that worked on this memorial. Each of the four continents are represented on each of the cardinal directions. And we see on the four corners are the greatest industries. And then as we get closer to the top, the virtues, and then angels at the top supporting a cross. And then in the middle here, the frieze, which is actually one of the most important parts of the memorial, showcases life-size figures of the great artists of history. Musicians, sculptors, artists, or painters. All sorts of people from every era. And this is just such an interesting memorial. I think we'll start with Asia here. And Asia is represented by... We also have to think of this as through the lens of Victorian Britain. So it's not just Asia, but Asia as it relates to Britain. So we see an elephant ridden by an Indian woman. This is actually thought to be Set Khan Asfat Satorian, who was an important Armenian-Persian political figure in Qajar Persia. He was a sort of Persian ambassador to London for a time, and he was an important military and political advisor at the court in Tehran. And he was very involved in what we call the Great Game now, the struggle for Central Asia. And he died in the 1840s. So even though he was gone by the time Albert was really involved in political circles, I think in mid-Victorian Britain, a figure like this would have been in the cultural memory of people in the know. We have a Chinese person whose nose has been broken off, unfortunately. And I believe that's a tea... That's supposed to be a tea box. And then we have a Middle Eastern sort of gentleman in the back there. Over on this side, we also have some sort of Arab-Bedouin-dressed person, and he's got jewels in a box and what looks like a camel bladder water bag type thing, and some woven work on a camel saddle, regular saddle. Yes. Anyway, this was carved by John Henry Foley. And Foley, to those of you who listen to me ramble on, carved Sidney Herbert at Waterloo Place, the Crimean War Memorial. And he also carved O'Connell in O'Connell Street in Dublin. And he also, when the original sculptor died, John Henry Foley carved Prince Albert himself. And the thing I love about Prince Albert here, he's in his state robes, but in his right hand is the catalog of the Great Exhibition. And Prince Albert was actually for most from about 1914 to 1990, mid-1990s, he was blackened. And some people were saying that it was blackened because of the war, but it's thought that it was just corrosion and that like the coal smoke perhaps, and just the air had destroyed the gold plating. And so it was restored in the 1990s, and you can see J.M. Foley on the plinth of that. And inside, if we can zoom in there, is the left is the Royal Coat of Arms with England, Scotland and Ireland. And on the right, we see Saxe-Coburg and Gotha representing the prince. And there we have Albert's combined arms. Let's move on to the next one, which is very exciting. This is Africa. And Africa is admittedly very North African because we have a camel surmounted by a Cleopatra type figure. And on this side, we have a young African gentleman and a Sphinx. On the other side, we have an Arab looking gentleman, a scholarly Arab looking gentleman carrying some sort of package. And over on this side, we have some sort of lion pelt on his shoulder. And he's being spoken to by a rather European like woman over on this side. Now, it should be noted, Prince Albert was a huge proponent of the abolition of slavery and spoke at many of the abolition societies. And during this era, 1833, slavery was abolished, but the job of eradicating the slave trade even wasn't over. And so the Royal Navy, in cooperation with the American Navy, began working on eradicating the slave trade, and the diplomatic service basically spent the entire 19th century bullying countries into anti-slavery treaties. So we're here on this side, and now we're going to go to America, and America is a little more confusing. It has a mustachioed gentleman with a musketoon, a short musket of some sort, sitting on some sort of log. So that's supposed to be Mexico or Central America. We got corn, we have a European looking woman walking forward with what looks to be an American representation. I'm thinking Canada and the United States, because what looks to be America has a sash of stars holding laurels and has this baton with a star on it. We have a rampant buffalo presenting the horns forward, which is great. And then some sort of native looking sort of indigenous person, or at least an allegorical indigenous person on top. And we have what looks to be, if I was going to guess, some sort of allegorical South American person seated. I think that looks a little more evocative of Quechua or the Incans rather than anything in Central or North America. But an interesting one nonetheless. I think those are bananas down at the bottom. Very exciting, bananas. And the last one is Europe, and that one has, of course, we're going to pick an animal we already have in allegorical Europe, which is Europa, the bull, and seated around the queen riding the bull, five queens, all crowned, representing Europe. One with a lyre, one with a sword, one with a scepter on the bull, one with British shield, and then one with an open book. Now in the four corners, since we're talking about all of them, we've got agriculture, and agriculture has water pumps and food, harvested grain there represented, quite an interesting one. Manufacturing is interesting. It has thyme, it has a beeskep, and we see a shepherd and all sorts of different manufacturing. Now because I can't remember everything, we're going to have to walk to the other side and see what the other two are. Commerce is the next one. You see commerce, trade represented. There is commerce, the cornucopia being held in the back. And once more around for the, let's hear it, engineering. And engineering has a wheel, shovel, but looks to be some sort of water pump in the back too. But obviously, it's the engineering and the progress made during Albert's life, like the working on the sewers, the public water, all sorts of things like that. And we're back at America. And America is interesting because it was sculpted by John Bell, who sculpted the Crimean War Memorial, something I rarely mention on this channel. And now down as we get to the statues as we go up at the top here. Now the whole design is called a caborium, and it's representative of the canopy placed over the high altar in a church. Now the architect, George Gilbert Scott, might have been influenced by another caborium, which had been constructed about 20 years earlier in Edinburgh, the Scott Monument. So that's actually really close to another Albert Memorial in Edinburgh, which will be a story for a different day. We see the blackened statues at this level. They represent astronomy, geology, chemistry, and geometry. And as we move up the next level, inside the niches are rhetoric, physiology, philosophy, and medicine. Remembered all of those. Now easier to remember, up the top in gold work. So the theological virtues are on the sides and the cardinal directions with faith, hope, and charity, and then humility added, seemingly for the fourth side, usually not together with faith, hope, and charity. And the four cardinal virtues are on the corners. And those are temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice. Now the next tier up, there are two tiers of angels, the top four, with their arms raised up. But as we see, the bottom ones are the sciences of man, and we can see at the top are the more spiritual works and the more divine attributes. So it's part of the great Albert and the great mid-Victorian dichotomy, that there is piety alongside curiosity in the natural world. There is great classicism with great new works and modernism. There is the tasteful, and there is the gauche. There's a little bit of everything, and I think that's why I'm always drawn to the mid-Victorian era, because there is a little bit of everything. Now we even have gargoyles jetting out from the top. And then as we talk about the mosaics, which were designed in England and made in Italy, and then on each face of the mosaics, there's one big allegorical figure, and usually two historical figures on the sides. This side's Poesis, poetry, with King David and Homer the writer. Pictura, painting, with Apelles, the Greek painter, and Raphael from the Italian Renaissance. Architectura, architecture, with King Solomon, with King Solomon's temple. And Ictinus, one of the architects of the Parthenon. And Sculptura, sculpture, with Phidias, who did the Zeus at Olympia, and Michelangelo, also from the Italian Renaissance. Now this is apparently open one Sunday a month, so you can go up a little closer. When it was restored in the early 2000s, apparently a lot of the steps had been completely worn down, and there needed to be a lot of work done to it. So now it's pretty much closed off, except on the rarest of occasions. Queen Victoria and her people on this side, to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort. Then we have on this side, as a tribute of their gratitude, and we see the little V and A combined everywhere, for a life devoted to the public good. And I think that's very true. Prince Albert and his family knew from a very early age that they might be, Albert might be married to Victoria. And he led a life of great virtue and learning, and I think he took his job very, very seriously, both as a prince and as a husband and a father. We can go deeper into some of the other things another day. There is a lot to be talked about. The, each of the people on the frieze is going to be talked about for days. The frieze that runs around was sculpted by two different people, actually, and it was sculpted in situ, meaning they sculpted it right there on the site while the rest of it was being constructed. What do you think of Prince Albert? And what do you think of the Albert Memorial? Is it a bit much? Is it a bit gauche? Or is it representative of that era and all the dichotomies of the mid-Victorian era and the complexity of the Victorians and of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria? It's very melancholy and very happy all the same. So I am Daryl, known in genteel circles and eccentric circles as the Lord Rivers. What should next be on the docket for the ministry? And for now, here is the Albert Memorial, and we are signing off.