Monument to Captain Edmund Moubray Lyons (1856) by Matthew Noble

Introduction

Fig. 1: Noble, Lyons.

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(Fig. 1) The 1856 white marble mural monument to Royal naval officer and Crimean veteran Captain Edmund Moubray Lyons (October 27 1819 – June 23 1855) can be found in the west recess of the furthest east bay of the South Aisle, on the Cathedral floor.

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There it was located, at least from 1904, to the right of William Calder Marshall’s Old Testament allegory, Righteousness and Peace have Kissed Each Other, originally located in the Wellington Chapel; and, from 1855, to the far right of Carlo Marochetti’s memorial to Anglo-Burmese War veteran Granville Gower Loch, the first arrival in the bay. (Figs 2 and 3)

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Fig. 2: Calder Marshall, Righteousness and Peace.

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Fig. 3: Marochetti, Loch.

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1860, meanwhile, saw the relocation to the centre of the bay of Thomas Banks’s memorial to naval officer George Blagdon Westcott (c.1802–1804). (Fig. 4)

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Fig. 4: Banks, Westcott.

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The Lyons shares its white marble relief form with both Righteousness and Peace and the Loch, as well as with the allegorical panels on the front of drum of the Westcott. Lyons looks out of his relief to the right of the viewer and the north of the Cathedral, naval ships sailing into the panel from the spectator’s left. As such, it anticipates the form of Calder Marshall’s panel, where a shepherd similarly looks out of the panel to the viewer’s right, even as the panel’s major direction of travel is to the left. The juxtaposition of the two panels suggests both the Righteousness of the British endeavour in the Crimea, and the supposed peace that resulted, although, as we have seen in early 2022, the Crimea remains a major fracture line between Europe and Russia. (Figs 5, 6, and 7)

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Figs 5, 6, and 7: Calder Marshall, Righteousness and Peace; Noble, Lyons.

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Noble’s panel is structured by a central pyramid, whose apex is Lyons, the same organizational device employed by Marochetti for the Loch panel opposite, which might have inspired it. (Figs 8 and 9)

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Figs 8 and 9: Marochetti, Loch; Noble, Lyons.

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There is also a pleasing, if subsequent, formal relationship between the Lyons and the reliefs on the drum of Banks’s Westcott. Both central on a higher relief naval officer, complete with indicative paraphernalia, in Westcott’s case rigging rope, in Lyons an anchor and chain. Both are also flanked by a pair of lower relief naval scenes derived from prints. (Figs 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15)

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Figs 10 and 11: Banks, Westcott; Noble, Lyons.

  

Figs 12 and 13: Noble, Lyons; Banks, Westcott.

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Figs 14 and 15: Banks, Westcott; Noble, Lyons.

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Indeed, the smoke-filled, naval-battle, left side of the Lyons echoes closely the similarly explosive left panel of the Banks, where the L’Orient is going up in smoke; whilst the right naval scene of the Lyons, with a ship seen from the port side coming close to the shore parallels the right panel of the Westcott, which centres on a grounded, listing ship seen from the stern.

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Whilst the British and French were enemies, however, at the time of Banks’s Westcott, in the midst of the Napoleonic as we see from the exploding L’Orient, they were allies at the time of the Crimean War, as we see from Noble’s pile of three battle standards, a lion for Britain, an eagle for France, and a crescent and star for the Ottoman empire. (Fig. 18)

Fig. 16: Noble, Lyons.

Noble at St Paul’s Cathedral

Fig. 17: Noble (Illustrated London News, 8 July 1876. © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans).

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(Fig. 17) Noble’s Lyons was the first of five St Paul’s commissions for the sculptor. They continued with a c.1860–1862 memorial to Lyons’ father, naval officer and diplomat Admiral Edmund Lyons, the first Baron Lyons. He is commemorated close by on the Cathedral floor in a standing portrait statue, with Lyons junior looking to the viewer’s right, Lyons senior to the left, as the family were keen to cover both flanks of the British empire. (Figs 18 and 19)

Figs. 18 and 19: Noble, Lyons; Admiral Lord Lyons.

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Noble’s third Cathedral was unveiled in 1863, a similarly unostentatious, standing white marble portrait statue of Mountstuart Elphinstone, again for the Cathedral floor. The monuments are closely related, the pair sharing their white marble materiality, contrapposto pose, activated right and pendant left arms, and lost left profiles. (Figs 20 and 21)

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Figs 20 and 21: Noble, Admiral Lord Lyons; Elphinstone.

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At around the same moment, 1863, Noble was also at work on a marble bust of Elphinstone for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Bombay, now the Bhau Daji Lad Museum. (Fig. 22)

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Fig. 22: Matthew Noble, Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779–1859), marble, 1860 (courtesy of Ramachandran Venkatesh/Jacqueline Banerjee, Victorian Web).

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There, it was seen close to Noble’s white marble bust of Queen Victoria, the first in the subcontinent, and a standing statue of the Prince Consort, complete with allegories of Art and Science (1869–1872) (Steggles, 202). (Figs 23, 24, 25, and 26)

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Figs 23 and 24: Matthew Noble, Queen Victoria, marble bust, 1870, (Ronakshah1990 via Wikiwand, CC BY-SA 4.0); statue of Albert, Prince Consort (1819–61), flanked by the allegories of Science (left) and Art (right), marble, 1864–1869, London, presented to the Museum by David Sassoon – with the bust of David Sassoon by Thomas Woolner (1865) in front (courtesy of and © Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai).

Figs 25 and 26: Matthew Noble, allegorical figure of Art, with a rear view of the busts of Elphinstone and Queen Victoria in the background; and allegorical figure of Science – details of the statue of Albert, Prince Consort (1819–1861), marble, 1864–1869, installed 1870, from the collection of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; presented to the Museum by David Sassoon (both courtesy of and © Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai).

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Albert’s statue was inscribed in English, Hindi, Maratha, and Gujrati. The overall commission was estimated to be worth between £15k and £18k. The funds required wer raised by local Parsi dignitaries, nearly half a million pounds today, the contract also including two busts and the statue’s vast gothic canopy. Victoria’ statue was vandalized in 1876, and covered in tar, requiring more than twenty years restoration before it was unveiled again in 1898.

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Following the Elphinstone, Noble’s penultimate Cathedral commission, and perhaps his St Paul’s masterpiece, was a white-marble mural monument to the Crimean veterans of the East Middlesex Regiment (1864), for the North transept of the Cathedral floor, a similarly bravura piece of flanking, low-relief carving. (Figs 27 and 28)

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Figs 27 and 28: Noble, East Middlesex; Lyons.

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The sculptor’s final Cathedral commission came in 1875, a freestanding marble and alabaster mural monument to the Reverend Henry Venn, prebendary at St Paul’s Cathedral, found in the south-west bay of the Chapel of St Faith, the site of the original ecclesiastical building. (Figs 29 and 30)

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Figs 29 and 30: Noble, Venn; Lyons.

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The Venn memorial stands out in this company, as the only monument not primarily to a military or imperial sitter or sitters, and as the most colourful and only mixed media memorial fashioned by Noble for the Cathedral. That said, both Venn and Lyons are fashioned from white marble, and centre on a bust portrait of their sitter.

Noble and the Wellington Monument

Figs 31 and 32: Stevens and Tweed, Wellington; Penrose, Wellington.

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(Figs 31 and 32) In addition to his five Cathedral commissions, in the early 1850s, fresh from both his success in winning the competition for the Manchester memorial to the Duke of Wellington (1855) and a much-praised bust of the ‘Iron Duke’, Noble had entered the competition for the Cathedral Wellington memorial. (Figs 33 and 34)

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Figs 33 and 34: Matthew Noble, Wellington Monument, bronze and granite, unveiled 1856, Manchester (Gerald England via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0); Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852), 1st Duke of Wellington, marble bust, 1852 (Bank of England Museum via ArtUK, CC BY-NC 4.0).

 

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Noble was not successful, the experience encouraging him to be one of more than twenty sculptors who signed an open letter criticising the committee’s conduct of the first competition, published in the Daily News on May 31 1856.

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The letter “observed with regret that frequent attempts” had been made “by the most influential organ of the daily press”, presumably the Times, to “disparage the ability of British sculptors, and to defend as an inevitable necessity a recourse to foreign artists”, so that justice would not “be done to the English sculptor”.

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Noble and his co-signatories wished to guard themselves “against the imputation of an illiberal jealousy of the foreigner”, believing that art was a “universal language, and the artist should find himself [sic] a native of every great city of the world”.

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Indeed, Noble and his fellow sculptors claimed that there had “never been a time when the English courts and the English people” had not “received with ready welcome the foreign painter, architect, and sculptor”, and “may it be thus always”.

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Nevertheless, the letter argued, “native talent” ought to be “sought for and appreciated”, and there was no “dearth of genius amongst the sculptors of England”. Instead, there were “works of indisputable excellence”.

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Noble and his fellow sculptors continued that none could “feel more deeply” the “degradation which the sculpture of England” had “suffered during the last 50 years, from the erection in our Metropolitan Cathedral, the Abbey and the Guildhall, of the large puerilities and distressing allegories which deface the walls of those buildings”.

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The signatories also jointly regretted that “while large sums of money were being lavished upon such productions”, Banks and John Flaxman were “alive, needy, and seeking employment”, men who were “neglected year after year by the government and the municipal authorities”, who were now the “boast of every Englishman” and had acknowledged “European reputation[s]”. (Figs 35 and 36)

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Figs 35 and 36: Flaxman, Nelson; Banks, Westcott.

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Noble and his fellow sculptors evidently had not visited the Cathedral floor lately, where there were two monuments by Banks, one soon to be juxtaposed with Noble’s Lyons, as we have seen; and no fewer than four by Flaxman. In addition, many of the letter’s signatories had or would end up with Cathedral commissions or buried in the Crypt. These included Calder Marshall, as we have seen, as well as E.H. Baily, William Behnes, John Henry Foley, and F.W. Woodington.

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The not-so-veiled subject of this ungenerous letter was cosmopolitan Cathedral and Royal favourite, Carlo Marochetti, who has no fewer than five monuments on the Cathedral floor. (Physick, 29–31).

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In the second competition for the monument to Wellington, Noble’s entry, entered under the pseudonym ‘Finis Coronat Opus’ (The End Crowns the Work), ultimately won the seventh premium. (Fig. 37)

Fig. 37: Noble, Wellington Competition (St Paul’s Cathedral).

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The figure of the Duke, right foot forward in an elegant contrapposto, left arm pendant and right hand raised to his chest, anticipates the second Lyons, the parallel recalling that Wellington began his career in adjacent South Asian locales to Admiral Lord Lyons. (Figs 38 and 39)

Figs 38 and 39: Noble, Wellington Competition (St Paul’s Cathedral); Admiral Lord Lyons.

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Noble’s Wellington memorial design was praised, in the press, as a “work of considerable merit”, indeed “probably the best of the simple statuesque monuments”, showing “experience and a certainty of treatment”.

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The monument comprised a colossal standing figure of Wellington, “in the matured vigour of life”, intended to “indicate both his civil and military character”. The Duke was stood “on a plain pedestal”, above allegories of Ireland, India, Europe, and Great Britain.

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Noble indicated the Duke’s civil persona by a “State document in his hand”; and his military life by his sword and the “six volumes of the Wellington dispatches”. There is a monument in the Crypt to man responsible for compiling Wellington’s dispatches, John Gurwood, by an unknown artist or firm. (Fig. 40)

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Fig. 40: Anon, Gurwood.

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In Noble’s monument, Ireland, Wellington’s birthplace, was “personified as rejoicing in having contributed to the annals of the United Kingdom a name so illustrious”. India rested “upon the laws of England”, but held “the Institutes of Menu”, whilst “contemplating the Indian deeds of Wellington, and the good which has resulted from them”. The Laws of Menu, the codified account of Hindu Laws, can also be seen in John Bacon’s c.1796–1804 monument to Jones, a statue just round the corner from the Lyons. (Figs 41 and 42)

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Figs 41 and 42: Bacon, Jones.

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In Noble’s Wellington monument, Europe was depicted with a sheathed sword, acknowledging the “pre-eminent services of Wellington” in bringing about the “calm enjoyment of restored peace”, ironic, perhaps, given the imminence of the Crimean War; whilst Great Britain, “triumphant, yet unelated and dignified”, was similarly “grateful to the wise, upright, and victorious Wellington for all the aid he rendered to increase her power and honour among the nations of the world”. (Fig. 43)

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Fig. 43: Noble, Wellington Competition (St Paul’s Cathedral).

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According to the Illustrated London News, the whole monument united “simplicity with colossal proportions and effective treatment of the figures”, successfully aiming at a “certain grandeur in keeping with the character of Wellington and the magnitude of St Paul’s”.

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The Art Journal, meanwhile, praised the “simplicity” of Noble’s memorial in contrast to the “extravagances” of other competitors, as well as the sculptor’s admirable “mass and firmness”, with figures standing “well and nobly on their pedestals”, “serious and majestic in their sentiments and bearing”.

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Other commentators, however, were less impressed, criticizing the monument’s lack of “breadth or grandeur”, the “singularly little power as a composition”, its “weak” mass, “too plain” architectural components and “general outline” and “disjoint[ed]” overall composition, the modelling “undecided and weak”, the draperies “confused”, the grouping “feeble” (Physick, 141–143).

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Ultimately, the first prize in the memorial competition went not to Marochetti, as Noble and his fellow competitors feared, but was instead awarded to Alfred Stevens in 1857, the memorial finally completed by John Tweed in 1912. (Fig. 44)

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Fig. 44: Stevens and Tweed, Wellington.

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Consolation prizes, in the form of a triptych of Old and New Testament reliefs, emblematizing Wellington’s virtues, were also awarded to Woodington and Calder Marshall, whose Righteousness and Peace was one of his three subjects. (Figs 45 to 52)

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Fig. 45: Calder Marshall, Gospel of Matthew.

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Fig. 46: Calder Marshall, Book of Job.

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Figs 47 and 48: Calder Marshall, Righteousness and Peace.

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Fig. 49: Woodington, Gospel of St Luke.

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Fig. 50: Woodington, Psalm 140.

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Figs 51 and 52: Woodington, Genesis.

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Whilst a Cathedral favourite, Noble was not to everyone’s taste. Having first worked with his stonemason father in Scarborough, Noble then trained in the studio of John Francis, who in turn had trained with Francis Chantrey, sculptor of some seven St Paul’s monuments. Noble’s “coarse and careless style in modeling and execution” was later compared to Chantrey’s, by critic F.T. Palgrave, a writer with strong views. Noble’s work was also criticized by Palgrave’s rivalrous friend, Thomas Woolner, as a “person who never touches the work that goes under his name” (Read, 24). (Figs 53 and 54)

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Figs 53 and 54: Woolner, Landseer: Noble, Lyons.

The Life and Work of Edmund Moubray Lyons

Early Life and Education

Fig. 55: Noble, Lyons.

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(Fig. 55) Royal Navy officer Captain Edmund Moubray Lyons was born on October 27 1819, the second and youngest son, as we have seen, of the better known Baron Edmund Lyons. (Fig. 56)

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Fig. 56: Noble, Admiral Lord Lyons.

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Lyons junior was educated at Hyde Abbey School, a seminary, before entering the Royal Naval College on July 10 1829.

The Opium Wars

Having passed his examinations in 1838, Lyons travelled to the Far East, where he served in the first Opium War (1839–1842) against Qing China, seeing action at the battles of Bocca Tigris, the Bogue, and Canton, earning him a promotion to Lieutenant, and leading to a number of legal, commercial, and territorial concessions from the Chinese. The Opium Wars were, not, however, uncontroversial. Later Archibishop of Canterbury Frederick Temple, commemorated on the Cathedral floor in a 1905 memorial by F.W. Pomeroy, was a vocal opponent. (Figs 57 and 58)

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Figs 57 and 58: Noble, Lyons; Pomeroy, Temple.

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Lyons then moved to HMS Howe, serving in the Mediterranean, a vessel named after Earl Howe who has a c.1802–1811 St Paul’s monument by John Flaxman on the Cathedral floor. (Fig. 59)

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Fig. 59: Flaxman, Howe.

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In 1842, Lyons joined the crew of HMS Rodney, named after Vice Admiral Lord Rodney who has a St Paul’s monument by Charles Rossi (c.1811–1815) originally on the Cathedral floor, but now relocated to the Crypt. (Fig. 60)

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Fig. 60: Rossi, Rodney.

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In 1846, Lyons took command of his first ship, HMS Pilot, serving again in the East Indies.

The Crimean War

Fig. 61: Noble, Lyons.

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In February 1854, Lyons took command of HMS Miranda, sailing first to the White Sea, then the Black Sea theatres of operations during the Crimean War, where he “swept the Sea of Azov” and “bombarded Arabat, Genitchi, and Taganrog” (The Times).

Death and Burial

Fig. 62: J. H. Linch, Edmund Moubray Lyons, lithograph published by Colnaghi, 1855 (Public Domain, courtesy of family descendants via Wikipedia).

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(Fig. 62) On June 17 1855, Lyons was mortally wounded whilst involved in a night attack on the batteries of Sebastopol, dying ten days later on June 27 1855, aged 36, at Therapia Hospital, where Florence Nightingale worked and was depicted in period engravings, herself commemorated in a c.1916 memorial in the crypt by A.G. Walker. (Figs 63 and 64)

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Figs 63 and 64: Walker, Nightingale; Nightingale at Therapia Hospital, coloured lithograph (Public Domain via Wellcome Trust).

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Lyons’ officers and crew arranged for his gravestone in Haydarpasa cemetery in Istanbul, as well as his St Paul’s memorial. (Fig. 65)

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Fig. 65: From E.M. Cummings, The Companion to St Paul’s Cathedral, 35^th edition to which is added an Appendix, 1869 (Public Domain via Archive.org)

The Memorial

Fig. 66: Noble, Lyons

 

(Fig. 66) Noble’s white marble mural monument centres on a roundel portrait of Lyons set against a marine battle scene. A three-masted gunner ship can be seen in the right background, pushing resolutely through the turbulent Black Sea; a modern steamer, complete with smoke billowing out of its turrets, cannons bared on the port (left) side. (Fig. 67)

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Fig. 67: Noble, Lyons.

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The overall marine scene, complete with carefully depicted canons, recall those on Banks’s earlier Napoleonic monuments to Westcott, as we have seen, with its related interest in sculpted smoke, and the sculptor’s Richard Rundle Burges (1802). (Figs 68 to 73)

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Figs 68 to 71: Banks, Westcott; Noble, Lyons.

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Figs 72 and 73: Banks, Burges; Noble, Lyons.

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Noble’s ship pushes powerfully to the viewer’s left and into the scene from the background, its crossed masts suggesting a Christian mission to the middle east, although Britain’s enemy here was not Ottoman Turkey, but Eastern Orthodox, Christian Russia.

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Noble aligns the upper crossbars of the ship’s mast with the masonry lines of Wren’s stonework, suggesting a close relationship between memorial and Cathedral. (Fig. 74)

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Fig. 74: Noble, Lyons.

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Two diminutive sailors can be seen to the funnel’ right. The one on our left stares directly at us, his arms folded across his chest, his face comprised of little more than hollow eyes and the bridge of a nose. The one on our right is in right profile, arms again folded across his chest. (Fig. 75)

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Fig. 75: Noble, Lyons.

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0The diminutive, low relief, just indicated sailors give the memorial a slightly ghostly air, with shades of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner (1797–8) perhaps, although in making direct eye contact with viewers also posing the question of whether they have the hold the gaze of the period’s Crimean heroes.

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Noble could have sourced the precise appearance of the boat from contemporary photographs of Crimean ships by Roger Fenton. (Figs 76 to 79)

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Fig. 76: Noble, Lyons

 

 

Figs 77, 78 and 79: Roger Fenton, ‘Landing Place, Ordnance Wharf, Balaklava’, salted paper print from glass negative, 1855 (Public domain via Metropolitan Museum of Art); ‘Cossack Bay, Balaklava’, salted paper print from glass negative, 1855 (Public domain via Metropolitan Museum of Art); ‘The Ordnance Wharf, Balaklava’, salted paper print, plate 25 from the album Photographs Taken in the Crimea, 1856 (Public Domain via Art Institute of Chicago).

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Lyons’ central, lost-right profile portrait is based on a period lithograph by James Henry Lynch in both the Royal collections (RCIN 658296) and National Maritime Museum collections (PAG 6564), the former signalling Victoria’s close investment in Lyons’ career. (Figs 80 and 81)

Figs 80 and 81: J. H. Linch, Edmund Moubray Lyons, lithograph published by Colnaghi, 1855 (Public Domain, courtesy of family descendants via Wikipedia); Noble, Lyons.

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The Queen also acquired a hand-tinted photographic portrait of Lyons’ father, who, according to her diary, she met in March 1844 and in January 1856.

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But whereas Lynch’s portrait depicts Lyons junior in contemporary, civilian dress, in a high collar and bow tie, which frames his head closely, Noble effectively strips Lyons naked and classicises idealises him, his plunging neck bare right down to the top of the sternum. As in ancient Greek sculpture of divinities, Lyons’ eyes are not incised, a blank stare that reads as again slightly deathly in this context. The sliced neck of the bust format recalls the period’s coins and medals, suggesting that like sterling, Lyons travelled the British imperial world and beyond.

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Lyons’ hair, parted to the right, is swept back away from his large forehead, believed by many to be indicative of intelligence in the period, but curls back, with an energy of its own in front of his right ear. (Fig. 82)

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Fig. 82: Noble, Lyons.

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Lyons’ forehead is again classically smooth, his brow unbeaten, although there are lines below his cheeks and forming around his mouth. Lyons’ prominent nose suggests that at least parts of his physiognomy represent a more realistic portrait.

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Because Lyons’ face has attracted some surface colour and grease, he appears to be flushed with feeling, when compared to his white neck; a contrast between real and ideal also characteristic of Banks’s work in the Cathedral that made contemporaries uncomfortable.

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Lyons is at the centre of a pyramid; an Egyptian memorial form signalling eternity. His roundel portrait is surrounded by a memorial wreath comprised of acorns and oak leaves, evoking Englishness, braided with laurel leaves, indicating victoriousness since classical antiquity, here without berries, suggesting a life cut poignantly short, before being brought to successful fruition. (Fig. 83)

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Fig. 83: Noble, Lyons.

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Both sets of foliage descend towards the bottom, the laurel leaves clockwise, the oak leaves anticlockwise, creating a pleasing classical symmetry, enlivened by the lost profile of Lyons’ face. Noble parallels the wisp of hair to the right side of Lyons’ head and the curl of hair over his left ear with the shape and direction of the laurel leaves above, making tight the relationship between Lyons, Englishness, classical heroism, and Victory. (Fig. 84)

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Fig. 84: Noble, Lyons.

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The pyramid, meanwhile, is formed on the right side by an anchor, complete with serpentine linked chain, lent against, or a sculpted part of, what appears to be his monument on the shores of the Black Sea, although the white marble here suggests more strongly perhaps the earlier White Sea theatres of Lyons’ Crimean actions.

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This monument-within-the-monument perhaps recalls Lyons’ gravestone in Haydarpasa cemetery, and is characteristic of the way in which many of the Cathedral’s Crimea monuments depict graves and monuments within them; a meta-monumental agenda Noble shared with Marochetti’s more or less contemporary Coldstream Guards memorial. (Fig. 85)

Fig. 85: Marochetti, Coldstream Guards.

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Noble’s anchor, also echoing the one slung over the port side of the ship above, chained to the bow, pulls and arrows down to the bottom right, tugging forcefully on the relief’s top left to bottom right diagonal leading to Sebastopol in the distance, as if threatening to undermine its foundations and pull the port into the Black Sea. (Figs 86 and 87)

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Figs 86 and 87: Noble, Lyons.

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Noble’s signature – “M.Noble / Sculpt / London” is capitalised against a matte white ground, amidst what appears to be netting, adjacent to the anchor’s links. (Fig. 88)

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Fig. 88: Noble, Lyons.

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Three standards form the pyramid’s left hand. Predictably most prominent is a Union Jack, unfurled to reveal the majority of the flag. (Figs 89 and 90)

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Figs 89 and 90: Noble, Lyons.

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This is, as we have seen, by the head and body of a lion, seen frontally, its mouth prominently open, looking directly at the viewer, symbol of the British Empire, but also punning, perhaps, homophonically, on Lyons’ surname; lions, like anchors, again prominent across the Cathedral’s Napoleonic naval monuments.

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The eagle of the French imperial standard is to its right, its head in right profile, standards repeatedly seen trodden under foot in Napoleonic-era monuments such as Sir Francis Chantrey’s c.1815 monument to Major General Daniel Houghton, but here representing one of Britain’s key Crimean War allies. (Fig. 91)

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Fig. 91: Chantrey, Hoghton.

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In the Lyons monument, the stripes of the Tricolour are not apparent. The third standard features the crescent and star of Britain’s remaining ally in the war, the Ottoman Empire, and one of few nods in the Cathedral’s overall monumental iconography to Islam. (Figs 92, 93, and 94)

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Fig. 92: Boehm, Gordon.

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Figs 93 and 94: Hart, Son, Peard, and Co., Sinai Desert Massacre.

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Noble’s three standards, as well as the cross bar of the again cruciform anchor, point up directly at the ship in the top right corner, emphasizing its dramatic entrance into the scene. (Fig. 95)

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Fig. 95: Noble, Lyons.

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Opposite the ship, on the left side, is Sebastopol’s sea wall and a number of factory-like forts receding into the background. (Fig. 96)

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Fig. 96: Noble, Lyons.

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Like the British steamer, these forts are lined with canons, some firing, smoke flying to the right, contrasting the powerful waves below them, crashing to the left, giving the scene a forceful dynamism, but implying that British forces, also moving to the left, have a natural, nautical, irresistible, eroding rhythm. (Fig. 97)

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Fig. 97: Noble, Lyons.

The Inscription

Fig. 98: Noble, Lyons.

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(Fig. 98) Centred upon the monument-within-a monument is the panel’s text inscription, in lamp-black against a white ground. It reads:

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sacred to the memory of
captain edmund moubray lyons, Royal Navy
son of rear admiral sir edmund lyons bart. g.c.b. k.c.h.:
commander in chief of her majesty’s fleet in the black sea and mediterranean,
under whose orders he engaged the batteries of sevastopol in the h.m.s. miranda
on the 18^th june 1855 and there was mortally wounded, having just returned from the command
of the sea squadron in the sea of azov where his brilliant successes were warmly acknowledged by his sovereign
who “mourned his loss as one who was so bright an ornament to the navy”.
cut off in the prime of life, the path to the highest eartly honours opening before him
he died as a hero and a christian should die.

this tablet is erected in deepest grief by the officers and ship’s company of h.m.s. miranda
who had served with him in the baltic white sea, black sea, and the sea of azov and who loved and revered him.
he died on the 23^rd of june, aged 36.

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The letter carver makes a sonnet of sorts out of the inscription, with the unlucky thirteen-line poem perhaps making the appropriate fourteen-line form if you count the blank eleventh line between lines ten and twelve. Alternatively, its thirteen-line, lost-sonnet form might represent a life cut off in its prime before it could be more appropriately finished.

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The carver enjambs the lines to emphasise rhyme and lexical repetition. For example, “Navy” is repeated twice at line ends and rhymed with “Die”, emphasizing Lyons’ death in the naval service of his country.

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“Mediterranean” is rhymed with “Sovereign” and “him”, twice. This again suggests the close relation of the three: evoking Victoria’s Mediterranean territories of Cyprus and Malta, for example, as well as her own personal grief for Lyons. She “mourned his loss as one who was so bright an ornament to the navy”, the quotation marks suggesting these are the monarch’s own words, most likely from the “autograph letter” she wrote to Lyons’ father expressing her admiration for the “character of that most gallant officer” (The Times).

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Miranda” is similarly repeated twice at the line end, and there is a loose assonance between “of” and “H” if you say them aloud, rather than read them on the monument. Only the “six” (of “thirty-six”) remains unmatched, indicating further a life cut prematurely short.

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The text emphasises the religious character of the man and monument. It is “sacred to the memory” of a Lyons who “died as a hero and a Christian should do”, which is, presumably, in the service of his country, and as a result of naval and filial duty, given the text’s emphasis on Lyons as the “son of Rear Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons”, complete with various titles, and role as “commander in chief of her majesty’s fleet in the Black Sea and Mediterranean”, and “under whose orders” Lyons engaged in the battle at which he was “mortally wounded”.

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Lyons’ name appears in Bold Type as if a newspaper headline, and the text itself has a novel, present-tense currency, like the visualized scene above, with its billows of smoke in the wind. For example, the inscription specifies the date of the action – June 18 1855 – and Lyons’ “having just returned” from the Sea of Azov where his “brilliant successes were warmly welcomed by his sovereign who ‘mourned his loss as one who was so bright an ornament to the navy’”.

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The inscription emphasizes that, however much criticism there had been of the aristocratic incompetence of the Crimean campaign, and there was plenty, the royal family were tied in their hearts and minds to their military subjects; a mutual devotion designed to inspire further recruitment and heroism. (Fig. 99)

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Fig. 99: Noble, Lyons.

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Lyons’ “brilliant success”, meanwhile, and “bright”, ornamental quality is captured in Noble’s glossy Italian marble, into which Lyons’ portrait is cut, immortalizing him, even if his actual life was “cut off” in its “prime”, although readers might, more darkly, read Lyons’ severed head, especially in comparison to Lynch’s lithograph, as a life “cut off” in another sense.

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Undecorated himself, at least in his lifetime, viewers are reassured that Lyons was on the “path to the highest earthly honours”, in a context in which the St Paul’s Crimean monuments were increasingly democratic, commemorating lower-ranking officers and entire regiments.

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Victoria’s warmth of feeling is also echoed by the “deepest grief” felt by Lyons’ fellow “officers and ship’s company’ on the Miranda, again a democratic act of commemoration stretching beyond the elite down to the ordinary men, who all “loved and revered him”, an affective, pious hierarchy reasserted as it was questioned.

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As a large number of metropolitan and regional newspapers reported, Lyons posthumously received the third class, Companion of the Order of the Bath medal (Bristol Mercury).

Noble and Empire

Whilst Noble’s final Cathedral memorial to Venn might have felt of small comfort to a sculptor also disappointed to have been excluded from the Albert Memorial in South Kensington, which Queen Victoria unveiled in July 1872, the years after the Lyons memorial were successful ones for Noble, who was at work on statues of Oliver Cromwell, Arctic explorer John Franklin, and the Maharajah Kali Krishna for Calcutta. (Figs 100 and 101)

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Figs 100 and 101: Matthew Noble, Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), marble bust, 1860, VAM 448-1884 (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London); Matthew Noble, Robinson & Cottam and MacDonald, Field & Co., Sir John Franklin (1786–1847), bronze and Aberdeen granite, 1866, Waterloo Place, London (Tracy Jenkins / Art UK, CC BY-NC 4.0).

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Indeed, in 1875, Noble was at the end of a prolific period making sculptures for export to South Asia, as we have seen. Immediately following the Lyons, the sculptor’s first ‘Indian’ work had been an 1855 statue of Wellington for the East India Company in London, followed by a c.1859 monument to Brigadier Neill, commander of the Madras Fusiliers, who had died during the Relief of Lucknow, in the midst of the Indian Insurrection.

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The statue was destined for Madras Museum but now only survives in the form of a copy at Ayr, Neill’s birthplace, after the Madras statue was attacked by members of the Indian National Congress in 1927. (The remains were moved into the Madras Museum in 1937)

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In 1860, meanwhile, Noble completed a statue of Parsi benefactor Seth Merwanjee Framjee Panday, again for Bombay (Chopra).

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Around 1864, and so immediately after the Elphinstone, Noble had also been at work on a seated white marble memorial to a second Parsi philanthropist, Jagannath Shankarset for Bombay’s Asiatic Society. (Fig. 102)

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Fig. 102: Matthew Noble, Jagannath Shankar Sheth, Asiatic Society Library, Mumbai (detail, Pratishkhedekar via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0).

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The statue commemorated Shnkarsset as the co-founder of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, a “masterclass in the play of fabrics, even to the extent of cutting an extremely fine pattern all over the robe”, but possessing an “inexpressive face” as a result of Noble working from a photograph, according to Barnes and Steggles.

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Having impressed Sir George Birdwood with his 1867 statue of Prince Albert for Manchester, Noble also received at least three more Bombay commissions through his agent wife.

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In 1865, the year of the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, and following the unveiling of the Middlesex monument, Noble was at work on a now lost bust of Lady Frere for Bombay, the wife of imperial administrator Henry Bartle Frere, himself commemorated in the Crypt in a memorial and ledger by Catherine Frere and Farmer and Brindley. (Fig. 103)

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Fig. 103: Frere and Farmer and Brindley, Frere.

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In 1875, meanwhile, whilst Noble was at work on the Venn, he was also fashioning a white marble memorial to Indian Viceroy, Richard Southwell Bourke, Lord Mayo, for Mayo College, Ajmer, in Rajasthan, as well as a white marble memorial bust of Lord Hobart for Madras. (Fig, 104).

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Fig. 104: Noble, Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, Ajmer, Rajasthan (public domain via Flickr).

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Bourke is commemorated in the Crypt in a c.1872–1886 white marble portrait bust by J.E. Boehm. (Fig. 105)

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Fig. 105: Boehm, Bourke.

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Noble’s St Paul’s commissions were not his sole ecclesiastical works. In 1860, he completed a reclining effigy of Bishop Carr for St Thomas’s Cathedral in Bombay, an effigy tomb also becoming fashionable for clergy, and others, at St Paul’s at around the same moment. (Fig. 106)

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Fig. 106: Noble, Memorial to Bishop Thomas Carr. St Thomas’ Cathedral, Mumbai (Aw1805 via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

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In 1862, meanwhile, during the time he was at work on the Elphinstone, Noble also fashioned a memorial to Bishop Pearson for Chester Cathedral (Fig. 107).

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Fig. 107: Noble, Blomfield, and Earp, Monument to Bishop John Pearson (1612/1613–1686), c. 1862, Chester Cathedral (Colleen Jackson / Art UK, CC BY-NC 4.0).

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The effigy tomb was a collaboration with A.W. Blomfield and Nicholas Earp. The latter was almost certainly related to the Thomas Earp who collaborated with Blomfield on the closely related c.1884–1885 memorial to Bishop Piers Calveley Claughton immediately opposite Noble’s last St Paul’s commission, the Venn in the Chapel of St Faith. (Figs 110 and 111)

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Figs 108 and 109READY: Blomfield and Earp, Claughton; Noble, Venn.

Bibliography

Anon. ‘Parliamentary Proceedings’, Bristol Mercury (July 14 1855), 2.

Anon. ‘The Baltic’, Bury and Norwich Post (July 18 1855), 4.

Anon. ‘Sir Edmund Lyons’, The Times (June 21 1856), 9.

Anon. ‘Obituary of Eminent Persons’, Illustrated London News (December 25 1858), 624.

Anon. ‘Death of Lord Lyons’, The Times (December 6 1887), 10.

Anon. ‘Obituary’, Illustrated London News (December 10 1887), 676.

E.M. Cummings, The Companion to St Paul’s Cathedral, 35th edition to which is added an Appendix, (London: Cummings, 1869).

Benedict Read, Victorian Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 24.

Ingrid Roscoe, Emma Hardy and M.G. Sullivan, Dictionary of British Sculptors, c.1660–1851 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).