76 – 80: Sculptural Objects
Marlborough possesses many sculptural works which are worthy of note, and some of these have already been mentioned. This section will focus on five more, but brief mention should be made of a few additional works. The heraldic carvings at the top of the North Block staircase turrets, which reflect the history of the College’s site, were restored carefully in the early years of this century. Outside B House, the monument to Richard Corfield (B2 1896-99) has a fine bronze bust by Allan Wyon, a celebrated coin, medal and royal seal engraver. The Classics Department houses five casts of Classical sculpture purchased from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens in the mid 1990s following a bequest by the Laing family. On the left-hand wall of the entrance to the Languages Centre there is a memorial to George Cannon (CR 1981 – 1992) who was killed by lightning in Colorado. Beneath the cast of a Mourning Athena (original date 450 BC) is an inscription in Greek which declares There is nothing bad in the good man. The College used to have a collection of fine plaster casts in the Bradleian, although probably the only one to survive is the splendid head of the French composer Lully, now in the Art School. It is just possible that the shattered remains of a Parthenon frieze lie concealed in the long box attached to the north wall of the Bradleian: the remains of the plaster cast were in place at this spot when the building was refurbished in 1989. In the Memorial Library there is a relief plaque honouring the poet Louis MacNeice (C3 1921-26). The English Department approached the great Irish poet Derek Mahon (1941-2020) for permission to use lines from his In Carrowdore Churchyard, written in 1964 (the year after MacNeice’s death) when Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, and Mahon made a pilgrimage to the grave of MacNeice at Carrowdore, County Down. Mahon responded to the request with great enthusiasm and sent the College a special revision of the lines.
Further afield there are numerous sculptures which have Marlborough associations. The statues of Betjeman and Nigel Gresley at St Pancras and King’s Cross were mentioned when this collection of objects started, and in the Emirates Stadium there is the bust of the architect Claude Ferrier (LI 1892-95) who designed the former Arsenal football stadium at Highbury, a fine Art Deco building with a grandstand which, when it was built, was the most advanced in England. Works by the sculptor Esmond Burton (C3 1899-1901), who helped with the adornment of the Memorial Hall, grace the cathedrals of Ripon, Salisbury and Sheffield. Burton trained with Laurence Turner, who made the tomb of William Morris at Kelmscott (Object 52).
The College Chapel, of course, is enriched by many fine carvings. The Virgin and Child by Gordon Herickx has already been mentioned (Object 10), as have the fine statues on the exterior of the apse (Object 55). This section will focus on one small work in a side chapel and the great reredos, literally a tour de force of Victorian sculpture. A bust of one of the College’s academic titans will be described here, as will the extraordinary bust of Winston Churchill which once adorned the Garnett Room. After the Mound, perhaps the strangest and most mysterious of all the objects in the College is contained in the glass case in the Language Centre.
76. Altar cross by Alan Durst (1883-1970)
Alan Durst (C1 1896-99) studied at the Central School of Art in London, but it was a trip to Chartres Cathedral in 1914 which was the decisive experience in his development as an artist. The sculpture there inspired him to become one of the early advocates of ‘direct carving’, along with Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. He went on to produce sculpture for the cathedrals of Llandaff, Manchester and Winchester, but he is perhaps best remembered for his figures on the West Front of Peterborough. His work can also be found at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and in the Tate Gallery, and at several schools, including Kingswood, Merchant Taylors, Rossall and Uppingham.
In the north aisle of the Chapel at Marlborough there is a small altar cross by Durst which bears the inscription The Tree of Life ALD 28.
77. The Reredos
The great reredos which Bodley and Garner designed for the Chapel, modelled on late medieval German examples, is an extraordinary feature of the building It was a late and expensive addition to the Chapel and almost certainly the result of teamwork by the persuasive architect George Bodley and Bursar Thomas. The work was carved in Corsham stone by the distinguished firm of Farmer and Brindley, favoured by Bodley and his partner Thomas Garner for their most important works. Farmer ended up dealing with most of the administration, but Brindley became a renowned figure, and he was regarded by the famous architect George Gilbert Scott as the most remarkable sculptor he had known. Farmer and Brindley worked on many important Victorian sculptural projects, notably the Albert Memorial and the Natural History Museum. Such was the success of the firm, based in Westminster Bridge Road, that by the 1880s Brindley was sub-contacting much of his work to other sculptors, mostly from abroad.
Angels can be found throughout the Chapel, and it was thought fitting that they should adorn the reredos. Some of them wear armour and resemble knights, reflecting the importance which was attached to chivalry in Victorian England. The Master, George Bell, wanted them to be depicted as angels of the Powers, Principalities and Virtues, and shown as warriors who were more masculine than Spencer Stanhope’s painted angels which adorned the walls of building.
Carved figures in places of worship caused considerable controversy in the last few decades of the nineteenth century but nevertheless some remarkable work was undertaken, such as the careful restoration by George Gilbert Scott of the reredos of All Souls College, Oxford, which brought the great medieval screen back to something like its original form. In 1885, work commenced on restoring the reredos of Winchester Cathedral with the recreation of the figures destroyed in the Reformation, a task which was undertaken in the face of bitter criticism. The completion of the central crucifixion scene by Bodley and Garner in 1896 was particularly contentious, and having just converted to Roman Catholicism, Garner felt it best to dissolve his partnership with Bodley. The work on the Marlborough reredos ten years earlier would have been seen by some as dangerously ‘High’ for a Broad-Church school.
The reredos and the apse were painted in 1950 by the great church decorator, Sir Ninian Comper. This refurbishment was a memorial to T.E.K and R.K Wright (C1 1935-9 and 1938-42), who had been killed in the Second World War. Bodley would probably have disapproved of the striking gold, blue and red which contrasted with the subtle greens and browns of G.F. Bodley’s great nave, which Betjeman appreciated in Summoned by Bells.
78. The bust of William Edward Mullins in Preshute
In Preshute there is a bust of William Edward Mullins, a Scholar of St John’s Cambridge, who taught at Marlborough between 1860 and 1898. He was appointed by the Master, George Granville Bradley (see object 53) and was one of the teachers who helped to make the College’s academic reputation. He became housemaster of C1 (1865 – 72) and then Preshute (1872 – 98). After he retired from Marlborough, he became a member of the London County Council and an Alderman of the City of London. In 1910, he stood for election in the constituency of Islington North but he was unsuccessful.
Victorian schoolmasters often grew splendid beards, and the one which Mullins grew appears to have been extraordinary. Its magnificence was recorded by a photograph of Mullins in The Illustrated London News in March 1901. It is possible that this bust was the work of the Old Marlburian sculptor Edwin Roscoe Mullins (B2 1863-5), who made the Bell Trophy (Object 1) and the bust of Bursar Thomas (Object 9).
79. The Epstein Bust of Churchill
The sculptor Jacob Epstein was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to produce a bronze bust of Winston Churchill. This was completed in 1947 and cast in an edition often said to number 10 (but more, perhaps 12 or 16, are thought to exist). For many years this valuable sculpture was exhibited in the Garnett Room, having been donated to the College as part of this memorial to Tommy Garnett (Master 1952-61), who had expressed his admiration of Churchill.
The art historian Jonathan Jones has described how the White House’s Epstein Churchill bust has become something of a political football. It was returned to the Oval Office as a symbol of the relationship between Brexit Britain and Trump’s America after a period residing outside the Treaty Room, although Obama passed it every day and declared ‘I love the guy.’ Recently the bust overlooked the fracas in the Oval Office, during which President Zelensky was berated for not wearing a suit. During wartime Churchill took pride in wearing a boilersuit, and he wore one when visiting the White House during the Second World War.
Epstein was one of the most important sculptors to work in Britain in the twentieth century. A champion of primitive art and one of the pioneers of ‘direct carving’, he produced many controversial pieces. Perhaps his best-known work is the depiction of St Michael conquering the devil at Coventry Cathedral.
There are two other Epstein busts with Marlborough associations which should be mentioned. Frank Fletcher, the Master of Marlborough (1903 – 11) who left with some reluctance to ‘save Charterhouse’ after a low point in its history, chose to have a commemorative bust rather than a portrait when his long and remarkable tenure there came to an end. He disapproved of his Marlborough portrait and did not wish to be painted again, so Epstein was chosen to sculpt him. At the end of the thirteenth century passageway leading to the Chapter House of Lichfield Cathedral there is a fine Epstein bust of the much-loved Bishop Edward Sydney Woods (B3 1889-96). He became the diocesan bishop in 1937 and died in office in 1953, but his episcopate was almost cut short by an air raid in the Second World War. He was one of two survivors of a bomb, having hidden under a dining table with Anne Charteris, the future wife of Ian Fleming.
80. The Egyptian Mummy
Beneath the stairs in the Languages Centre is one of the most extraordinary objects to be found in the College. Hidden away for many years, in October 1984 John Psaropoulos (B1 1982-7) discovered that in the Mount House there was an Egyptian Mummy lying in two Victorian cases, one containing the sarcophagus and the other the body. Together with Edward Roskill (LI 1982 – 7), he set about researching and planning conservation work, an activity that was perhaps the most unusual of the College’s varied ‘Wednesday Afternoon Activities’. The Mummy had been donated to the College in 1886 by Mr L P Kekewich (B1 1871 – 4), whose brother R.G. Kekewich had acquired the Mummy when he was Quartermaster General on a Nile expedition in 1884. It is uncertain where it came from. The Natural History Society Report mentions only “Assouan”, but Dr Helen Whitehouse, curator of Ancient Egypt and Sudan Antiquities at the Ashmoleum, suggested that there could be no certainty as to whether the Mummy originally came from Philae, as had been thought, but she felt it probably came from Aswan.
In 1985 Savernake Hospital provided a full X-ray which revealed that the body inside was that of a woman aged between 40 and 60, who probably died of natural causes. The teeth are well preserved, probably due to the high fibre-Egyptian diet. Bristol University Conservation Agency dated the Mummy to between 305 BC and 323 AD, the Graeco-Roman period, which saw a decline in the embalming profession. The dark pink ground and the light leaf green belong to this period. After eight years of conservation work at the Bristol University Conservation Agency, the Mummy returned to Marlborough, and it is now in a special case that was constructed on the advice of the British Museum.
In the nineteenth century, schools like Marlborough received a wide range of objects from throughout the world. The Mummy was once part of a much larger display of antiquities in Museum Block, in what is now The Garnett Room. This once contained a mummified crocodile, an Inca Mummy and Roman ceramics, but the contents were distributed amongst museums, and some were returned to their country of origin.