As a culture, we don’t erect enough public statues, and considering the recent political climate, we may be tearing down more statues than we are currently erecting. Worse, far too many of the recent public art works are so difficult to interpret and so abstract that it is almost impossible to understand what the artist is trying to convey.
I like art that tells me a story.
If you are kind, you might say this is only natural because I’m a
historian. If you are honest, you would
probably say that I’m just a poor dumb ol’ country boy who lacks the
sophistication needed to appreciate any art that doesn’t hit me upside the head
with its meaning. Like Blanche Dubois, I
have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
If you want fun statues, there is no better place in the world than
London. The Brits know how to enjoy
their monuments—as evidenced by the large number they have appropriated from
all over the world. The city that hides
a solar laboratory under Nelson’s Column, gave a nude statue of Napoleon to the
Duke of Wellington so he could hang umbrellas on it
and built hidden, roomy chambers under everything (including some extensive
rooms below the Albert Memorial)…well, this is a city that knows how to have
fun with its
public statues.
One of the largest statues in London is the Albert Memorial, but today I
want to tell you a story about the smallest statue….One that has no plaque, no
marker, and no signs. You could walk
past it a dozen times and never see it.
During construction, two men, employed by the architect, John Young,
were working on a scaffold high above the street. When the two men paused work for lunch, they
noticed that their cheese sandwiches were missing and each man blamed the other
for the theft of their meal. As the two
men argued, both became increasingly angry and soon harsh words were replaced
with shoves, then blows. Inevitably,
both men fell from the scaffold, losing their lives on the stone street of
Philpot Lane.
Shortly after the two fell to their death, other workmen discovered
neither man had been responsible for the theft of the lunch, the actual
culprits were a pair of mice who had attracted by the smell of the cheese.
No one is sure who commissioned the memorial, it could have been the
spice merchants Hunt and Crombie who had already paid to have the building
decorated with the likenesses of sheep and pigs’ heads. It might have been the architect, since the
two men had worked for him. Personally,
I like to think it was the other workmen, the stone masons and brick layers who
knew the two men, who created the work in memory of their two lost friends.
If you walk down Eastcheap, you can turn up Philpot Lane, a street that
only extends a single block. To your
left is the enormous top-heavy monstrosity of an office building known locally
as the Walkie Talkie for its resemblance to a brick-like cell phone. But if you turn to your right, just above the
first floor towards the back of the building, you can see what is inarguably
London’s smallest sculpture: two mice
fighting over a piece of cheese, known as the Philpot Mice.
If you go there, please do me a favor.
Go into the coffee shop and ask the good folks at Joe the Juice if they
sell cheese sandwiches in honor of the two workmen.
The similarity between mice and hackers is stunning when you think about it. Both tend to work and live in dark dusty places (attics, alleys, dumpsters or Mom's basement). They're stealthy. They steal stuff and they eat bad food (trash from the floor, moldy cheese, Cheetoes, Twinkies, Hot Pockets, Doritoes and Red Bull). Today"s statue removing snowflakes would likely approve of a statue of two computer geeks fighting over a pizza where Robert E. Lee or Teddy Roosevelt used to stand.
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