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The building is 184 ft high upto
the base of the figure of Victory, which is another 16 ft high.
The groups of figures above the north porch represent Motherhood,
Prudence and Learning. Surrounding the main dome are figures
of Art, Architecture, Justice, Charity etc. The
Memorial is situated on a 64 acres of land with the building
covering 338 ft by 228ft.
The total cost of construction of
this monument amounting to one crore, and five lakhs of rupees
(Rs.1,05,00,000/-) was entirely derived from their voluntary
subscriptions. The Architect entrusted with the design was
W. Emerson. A pupil of William Burges,
Emerson had first visited India almost forty years before. His
early works in the sub- continent included the famous Crawford
Markets in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1865 and the splendid but incomplete
All Saints Cathedral in Allahabad (1869-1893). In these and some
other early projects Emerson experimented with medieval Gothic
styles, in the manner of his teachers. But the design of his
other great work in Allahabad, Muir College in 1873, is more
eclectic. Drawing on Venetian, Egyptian and Deccani sources,
this was one of the first essays in the Indo-Saracenic Movement.
Like the contemporary Senate House in Madras (now Chennai) by
R. F. Chisholm, it is a colourful and extravagant building, combining
forms from the Islamic architecture of various regions with a
European structure. Moving from British India to the princely
state of Bhavnagar in Gujrat, Emerson continued in a similar
way with the Takhtsingji Hospital (1879 - 93) and the Palace
(1894 - 95). Here at the request of his patron, he introduced
forms from Hindu architecture, such as corbelled arches.
Now based in England and approaching
sixty, Emerson was clearly going to need an assistant, to supervise
the construction of the building on site. The man appointed for
this role was Vincent J. Esch. A generation younger than
Emerson, Esch had like him, gone out to India at the start of
his career and in 1899 he was appointed Assistant Engineer in
the Bengal Nagpur Railway, a job which gave him much practical
experience in large-scale construction and costings. In the New
Year of 1902, Emerson engaged him to prepare a sketch of his
original design for theVictoria Memorial and anxious to avoid
any involvement of the Public Works Department, urged the Viceroy
to put him in charge of the plan's implementation. More cautious,
perhaps, Curzon seems to have tested Esch out with a couple of
minor commissions. He employed him to design a Circuit House,
bombarding him with advice to adopt the "simple old Italian
style". At the same time, Esch prepared designs for the
temporary Exhibition Building for the Delhi Durbar of 1903. In
this case, consistent with his general plans for the Durbar,
Curzon required something in the Mughal style, and he was pleased
to find Esch compliant.
Even so, the appointment was not immediate.
Building operations on the Memorial were slow to get started,
and had not properly begun by the time Curzon left India at the
end of 1905. They were then subject to further delays as his
successors had less enthusiasm for this inherited scheme, and
lengthy tests had to be made on the foundations. Meanwhile, the
real break in Esch's career came in 1907 when he won the competition
to design the Bengal Club, a prestigious building on a conspicuous
site on Chowringhee. At the same time, he was concluding his
service with the Bengal-Nagpur Railway by designing their new
head office at Garden Reach. These two projects won him a reputation
for capable design and efficient management, and launched him
in private practice. By the time the construction of the Memorial
began in earnest, in 1910, Esch had established himself as Calcutta's
leading architect. He was then formally appointed the project's
Superintending Architect. Esch's
major clients in Calcutta included the Allahabad Bank, the Royal
Calcutta Turf Club, and Duncan Brothers. From 1914 to 1921, he
was also employed by the Nizam of Hyderabad, in an extensive
reconstruction of the Nizam's capital. Esch designed numerous
large public buildings in Hyderabad, including the Railway Station,
the High Court, the City High School, and the Osmania Hospital.
Like many others, too, he could not
help comparing the Memorial with the Taj Mahal. There is a certain
resemblance with , more than the details mentioned which, lends
the building a pervasive Indian character. It arises, first,
from the material. From the very start, even before he expressed
his views on its style, Curzon insisted that the Memorial should
be built of white marble, and in the event the stone was brought
from the same quarries in Makrana, Rajasthan, that supplied Shah
Jahan. There is also a correspondence in the forms: the great
dome, clustered with four subsidiary, octagonal domed chattris,
the high portals, the terrace, and the domed corner towers. There
is even some correspondence in the function: like Shah Jahan,
Curzon conceived the building as a memorial to an Empress and
as a powerful visual statement. This linking of the Mughal and
British periods is sustained by the collection of exhibits within;
and it is typical of the self-presentation of the late Raj, of
which Curzon's Delhi Durbar and the whole Indo-Saracenic movement
are further examples. In this context, the echo of the Taj Mahal
need not have been an effect deliberately sought by the architect;
but it is evident that Emerson greatly admired the Mughal masterpiece
- a youthful lecture on it which he delivered to the RIBA in
1870 was a sustained panegyric.
A less desired similarity with the Taj
Mahal was the length of time it took to build. Following the
conception and design in 1901, construction of the substructure
began in 1904. The visiting Prince of Wales laid a foundation
stone in 1906, but it was a further four years before work on
the superstructure got under way. On January 4, 1912, the Prince
- now King George V - returned to inspect progress. In the preceding
month in Delhi the royal visitor had been crowned Emperor, and
in his speech on that occasion, he had announced the transfer
of the capital to Delhi. Curzon had not foreseen this move and
he much lamented it; it left his sanctum of the Empire high and
dry in a provincial city even before it was completed. The work
continued, but it was not until December 28, 1921 that another
Prince of Wales came formally to open it. On the same tour, the
Prince visited Hyderabad, where he saw Esch's buildings all but
finished; and he inspected progress on the buildings in New Delhi,
which already promised to surpass the Memorial in grandeur. Curzon's
project had been overtaken by events.
If the Memorial's impact was diminished
by delay, it was still a splendid gesture. Emerson's design was
much enhanced by the sympathetic ornaments added by others. Vincent
Esch's major contribution was the redesign of the foundations
on innovative principles for which he was renowned, but he also
supervised the production of the allegorical sculpture groups
over the entrances and designed the elegant bridge on the north
side, and the gates to the gardens. The gardens themselves were
laid out by Lord Redesdale and Sir David Prain; their spaciousness
and restraint emphasize the building's majesty. In the central
hall, scenes from the life of the Queen were painted by Frank
Salisbury, and the marble statue of the young Queen is by Sir
Thomas Brock. A more elderly Queen in bronze by Sir George Frampton,
sits enthroned on Esch's bridge, between narrative panels by
Sir Goscombe Jhon. In the paved quadrangles and elsewhere around
the building, other statues were added to commemorate Hastings,
Cornwallis, Clive, Wellesley, and Dalhousie.
The Queen may have enjoyed their company,
but whether these statues delivered an impartial history lesson,
as Curzon had intended, successive generations may judge for
themselves. Curzon himself seemed to consider impartiality achieved
by the exhibition within, but equally approved the unambiguous
message of the external ornaments.
"Much might be said about the external
sculptures, one of which on the north side depicts a lion's head
with water flowing out of it and passing into four troughs representing
the four great Indian rivers - the Ganges, the Krishna, the Indus
and the Jumuna - thus symbolising the life-giving work of Britain
in India."
Text Courtesy: G.H.T. Tillotson from
publication by MARG Publications. |