This feature first appeared in May 2024 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.
This is Charles II. The fearfully weathered statue in Soho Square is in a pitiful state. Mossy, eroded, and with a coarsely repaired head that should inspire one of the many local screenwriters to pen a 17th century monarchical remake of Face/Off.
He’s in dire need of a restoration. Which is, at least, historically apt.
Every time I pass through Soho Square, the Merry Simulacrum is up to something silly. He might be wearing a googly eye (top); clutching a branch of holly; or showing off his new manbag (below):
But this daft old statue has also witnessed a poignant tragedy — the death of one of the most celebrated men in the world.
The King moves to Harrow
Charles II, sculpted by Caius Cibber, is one of London’s oldest statues. The meat-and-bone Charles almost certainly admired his stone likeness, for it was installed in the square in 1681, four years before the King’s death. The statue presided over an ornamental fountain with sculpted personifications of four major rivers: Thames, Humber, Severn and Tyne. This is the best view that history affords us:
Here Charles remained for almost two centuries. Then, in 1875, Soho Square underwent major rearrangements. The weathered king — thought by some at the time to represent the Duke of Monmouth — was removed, along with the remains of his fountain.
Step forward Thomas Blackwell, co-owner of the square’s Crosse and Blackwell factory. Blackwell was fond of the statue and didn’t want to see it destroyed. He handed it over to the painter Frederick Goodall, who agreed to re-erect it in his back garden.
Goodall had rather a special back garden. He lived in Grim’s Dyke, his own bespoke mansion house up on Harrow Weald. Its ominous, Scooby Doo name comes from the prehistoric earthwork of Grim’s Ditch, which passes through the grounds. Next to the ditch is a lake, which made the perfect home for the battered monarch. "In the twilight it looks very mysterious and weird with its reflection in the water," wrote Goodall.
The painter decided to move on in 1890, but Charles maintained his vigil over the ducks and algae. Grim’s Dyke’s next owner was one of the most successful dramatists of all time, Sir William S. Gilbert (of “and Sullivan” fame). This is the man who gave us such aquatic adventures as HMS Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance and The Gondoliers, yet cold water was to be his undoing.
On 29 May 1911, a 75-year-old Gilbert was all set to give a swimming lesson in the lake to two young women, Winifred Isabel Emery and Ruby Preece (who, incidentally, would go on to become Patricia Preece, Lady Spencer, a complicated character who passed off her lover’s artwork as her own, became a sometime member of the Bloomsbury Group, and ended up marrying artist Stanley Spencer.)
Ruby entered the water first, but soon got into difficulty. As she later told the coroner:
"I found that I could not stand and called out and Sir William swam to me. I put my hand on his shoulder and I felt him suddenly sink. I thought he would come up again. My feet were on the mud then. Miss Emery called for help and the gardeners came with the boat."
Sullivan could not be revived and it was later determined that he’d died from a heart attack, presumably triggered by the shock of the cold water. He’d met his end while trying to save the life of another. And the only witness on the lake that day, besides Miss Emery and Miss Preece, was the stony faced statue of Charles II…
Return of the King
Even before Gilbert’s death, appeals had been made for the return of the statue to Soho Square (which Gilbert apparently ignored). Yet the Charles statue lingered on at Grim’s Dyke until the passing of Lucy Gilbert (Sir William’s widow) in 1936. She bequeathed the statue back to the square. It was finally re-erected in its original home — albeit a few metres north because that cute wooden hut had been built on the original spot — two years later, and there it has remained ever since.
Next time you’re in Soho Square, by all means laugh at the statue because somebody’s placed a traffic cone or an eye-patch on his head. But remember, too, that this battered old statue stood alone in a lake for 60 years, and witnessed the death of one of the great creative geniuses of the Victorian era.
