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The Cenotaph in Whitehall is the best known of the 133+ cemeteries and war memorials designed by Edwin Lutyens to commemorate the one million plus British and Commonwealth dead of the First World War.2 It stands as a rare example of an architectural work which became a national shrine as a result of spontaneous public acclaim. Homberger describes it as a 'brilliantly successful focus for the most deeply held emotions of the inter-war period' and says that 'it was the people not the Government who made it such an unparalleled object of respect'.3
It may be wondered what aspects of the Cenotaph's form and what projections of meaning elicited the public's extraordinary response such that a temporary wood and plaster sculpture was recreated permanently in Portland stone. Consideration of the events which led to the Cenotaph's creation offer an understanding of their impact on its design, and this episode shows how a great work of architecture can encompass within itself the full range of emotions which are associated with a terrible war.
The Cenotaph was designed and built in a very short space of time to be just one small part of the Peace Day events of 19 July 1919. Lloyd George had been told that the French, who were holding similar events on July 14 in Paris, had arranged for the Allied troops to march past a 'great catafalque, which they would salute in honour of the dead'.4 This catafalque would be erected adjacent to the Arc de Triomphe; Lloyd George, impressed by the idea, decided that Britain should have a similar focus for its public acts of homage. In early July, therefore, Lutyens, who had already been informally consulted by Alfred Mond of the Office of Works, was officially invited by the Prime Minister to design a catafalque for the London Victory parade.5 Lloyd George wanted a non-denominational structure, to be designed and built in two weeks. Lutyens proposed building a cenotaph rather than a catafalque, which would have Catholic overtones, and the Prime Minister agreed. The Cenotaph was unveiled on the morning of 19 July, and within an hour wreaths were piled high around its base.6 Shortly after its unveiling fifteen thousand Allied soldiers, together with the Allied leaders such as Haig, Foch and Pershing, marched past in silence, saluting the dead. In the days that followed the public laid yet more flowers at the base of the Cenotaph, whilst a discussion began in the press and Parliament concerning the retention of the Cenotaph as a permanent memorial.7
King reports that a 'highly poetic account' of the Cenotaph was offered by the Manchester Guardian, which claimed that in the Cenotaph's vicinity 'a light was shining in the daylight like a light on an altar'. At first it appeared 'a tiny object in the distance, but as the procession went on with all its separate associations of great deeds done and of those who had died in doing them, it loomed larger and larger in people's minds.' 8 The report in the Morning Post was, in King's words, 'positively mystical':
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Whilst The Times judged that 'no feature of the Victory March in London made a deeper or worthier impression than the Cenotaph . . .' 10
Two days after the Peace Day parade The Times had remarked that Lutyens' design was 'so grave, severe and beautiful that one might wish it were indeed of stone and permanent'.11 On the same day, a letter dated July 18, from 'RIP', appeared in The Times arguing that the newly unveiled Cenotaph should be kept, whilst Capt. Ormsby-Gore asked a question, proposing 'a permanent, exact replica', in the House of Commons.12 At the same time twenty-three MPs signed a memo sent to the First Commissioner of Works requesting that a permanent memorial be erected on the same site.13
The Times described the Cenotaph thus:
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The Times did, however, suggest that it ought not to remain on its present site, in the middle of six lanes of heavy traffic. Lutyens, however, wanted the Cenotaph to remain in Whitehall where it had been 'qualified by the salute of Foch and the allied armies and by our men and their great leaders'; he felt that 'no other site would give this pertinence'.15 The Cabinet decided finally on July 30 that the Cenotaph should be re-erected as a permanent memorial, and that it should remain in Whitehall, with The Times reporting that 'the final decision was taken against any change of site on the ground that the Cenotaph in its present position had memories which could not be uprooted'.16
The Cabinet was concerned to preserve the consensus with which the Cenotaph's first appearance developed. Consequently few noticeable changes were permitted to be made to the design for its reproduction in stone - even Lutyens was not permitted to replace the real silk flags with stone ones carved and painted for the purpose, which he desperately wished to do, feeling that the real flags would 'tighten the specificity of patriotic and nationalistic sentiment'.17 The stone flags would be a more open symbol than silk ones.18 Lutyens was personally responsible for dissuading the authorities from adding life-size bronze statues of sentries at each corner of the Cenotaph as they would have introduced a literal element into the design that would have been out of key with its abstract character and open symbolism.19
Memorial art, inherently backward-looking and mainly sponsored by the military and the state, always tends to be conservative rather than experimental - even more so when the war to be commemorated has, at an early stage, identified 'tradition' with England and home, and 'modern' with the enemy.20 The iconography of war memorials, generally, is limited since it relies either on conventional treatment of conventional themes, or else it makes a virtue of an almost mute simplicity of form.21 Another factor to determine the essentially conservative nature of memorials is what Young terms 'survivor outrage'.22 As representatives of the dead, survivors tend to be hostile to abstract representation of their past, believing that 'the searing reality of their experiences demands as literal a memorial as possible'.23 Public hostility, notes Dyer, is not always philistine and wrong-headed.24 In view of Young's remarks, it is interesting that the public not only accepted, but actually adopted, the un-literal, very abstract Cenotaph.
Winter observes that in the Cenotaph there is evident a striking minimalism, and that it is elemental in both substance and form.25 Winter believes that as a geometrician, Lutyens saw in mathematical relationships a language with which to express both unconventional architectural ideas and religious beliefs.26 Somehow this abstract form of architecture had managed to transform a victory parade, a 'moment of high politics', into a moment when millions of ordinary people could contemplate 'the timeless, the eternal, the inexorable reality of death in war'.27 Greenberg observes that in some mysterious way the Cenotaph's design embodied the nation's terrible and deep bereavement.28
Cenotaphs constitute one of the commonest forms of twentieth century memorial; as Borg comments, in antiquity they are relatively uncommon.29 The Pharaohs in ancient Egypt usually had at least two tombs prepared, one of which was intended to remain empty, forming a cenotaph.30 The Greeks attached a great deal of importance to the proper burial of their dead, to such an extent that, if no body was available, they held a fictitious burial ceremony and a cenotaph was erected over the empty grave.31 Inevitably, with the non-recovery for burial purposes, of the bodies of soldiers killed in foreign wars, the cenotaph became especially (although not exclusively) associated with military memorials.32 The word 'cenotaph' literally means 'empty tomb' in Greek, and Lutyens' design of it is based on the Greek principle of entasis, in which curved surfaces create the illusion of linearity.33 By providing an empty tomb to be the tomb of Everyman killed in the war, and by placing it in Whitehall - the street adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, Horse Guards Parade and Westminster Abbey and in the very heart of London - the dead of the First World War are brought into history. Barthes holds that social reality is composed of various signifying systems, of which the landscape is one.34 The landscape in the heart of political London was 'appropriated by society' (in Bartheian terms) and the Cenotaph used to bring the dead into prominent view of political London.35 The Cenotaph did this without the slightest indication of Christian or religious symbolism either, as Winter points out.36
To most of its viewers, the mathematical precision of the Cenotaph - whereby all its horizontal surfaces and planes are spherical, parts of parallel spheres 1801 feet 8 inches in diameter; and all its vertical lines converge upwards to a point some 1801 feet 8 inches above the centre of the spheres - is invisible, but this does not detract from the fact that the geometer Lutyens took a Greek commemorative architectural form and stripped it of all that might hint of celebration.37 According to Winter it is largely because of its simplicity that the Cenotaph is a work of genius: since it says so little, it has the capacity to say so much.38 Anyone can inscribe his/her own sadnesses, reveries or thoughts onto its form, and as Winter observes, not only did it become a place of pilgrimage, it also transformed the commemorative landscape such that all of 'official' London was made into an imaginary cemetery.39 Winter describes Lutyens' Cenotaph as leaping 'over the mundane into myth', and in doing so it provides for collective mourning a focus such as Britain has never known before or since.40 As a monument to war, the Cenotaph goes beyond both politics and common architectural forms, to express existential truths which are frequently obscured by the aesthetic and rhetorical fog of war and war's aftermath.
Lloyd observes that the Cenotaph became a sacred place because it was associated with not only the memory, but also the spirits, of the dead.41 The Cenotaph symbolised for many, all those who had died in the war, as a letter to The Times argued when a correspondent stated that the Cenotaph made him think of the lives of the young men killed during the war.42 It could refer to the dead without images of the Allied victory being invoked, thus appealing to people who did not accept the traditions affirmed by that victory. The Cenotaph appealed so widely because it relied upon the meanings which people brought to it, for its interpretation, as Lloyd and Winter suggest.43 This column of Portland stone was inscribed to 'The Glorious Dead' and, aside from commemorating the dead, it did not propound an interpretation of the war in any explicit manner. When the meaning of the war was questioned in the years following it, therefore, the memorial itself was not doubted.44
King remarks that whilst the combined influence of the Cenotaph's original purpose, form and association with war shrines provide strong clues for understanding it, its meaning is not absolutely fixed.45 Although the Cenotaph was invested with its own meaning, it particularly signified mourning and death: when listing arguments for and against making the Cenotaph permanent, Alfred Mond understood it to be associated predominantly with bereavement, saying that it might be 'of too mournful a character as a permanent expression of the triumphant victory of our arms'.46 Mond was not alone in this view: Sir John Burnett saw a cenotaph as connoting mourning.47
What was especially attractive to a great number of people was the Cenotaph's apparent simplicity: the Morning Post described it as being 'of an austere simplicity that is profoundly impressive', whilst Sir F. Hall of the Royal Artillery expressed his liking for it saying 'it is so simple'.48 Simplicity, whilst coinciding with an influential current of contemporary critical thinking, also had a moral meaning - it was understood to represent an admirable and important quality in the dead, which made simple monuments particularly appropriate for them.49
Unfavourable interpretations of the Cenotaph's meaning were also possible: some saw it as a national or imperial symbol - one such was Haig, who described it as the 'symbol of an Empire's unity'.50 Similarly The Times commented: 'Simple, massive, unadorned, it speaks of the qualities of the race . . .', whilst a writer to the Catholic Herald considered it a pagan monument which insulted Christianity.51
The Cenotaph has always had a role in political protests also. In 1921 the London District Council of the Unemployed decided to organise a march to the Cenotaph by unemployed ex-servicemen. Whilst the marchers were refused permission to join the main procession, they were allowed to march past the Cenotaph after the ceremony.52 According to Wal Hannington some twenty-five thousand of the unemployed in the London area marched to the Cenotaph to lay wreaths.53 In this procession there was both parody and irony, but there was also solemnity and a respect for the dead. The bystanders were impressed by the respectful nature of the protest - even the Conservative popular press expressed sympathy rather than hostility.54 Political wreaths were frequently laid at the Cenotaph during the early 1920s.55 By the 1930s, however, its significance was seen to derive from its role in the routine, official ceremonies, and it was felt to be 'an excuse for proud emotion' rather than 'a symbol of old, unhappy, far off things'.56 Perhaps this was a result of the word 'glorious' being used in the inscription, and the fact that the flags are not at half-mast ? 57 Younger viewers in the 1930s scarcely remembered the Peace Day salute which had prompted the public desire for a permanent version of the memorial, nor were they susceptible to the grief-laden and sacred associations it had originally held, suggests King.58
That the Cenotaph continues to be viewed in such a hostile manner by many was demonstrated during the May Day riots which occurred in central London last year. The 80 year old monument was defaced with red paint and the words 'Why glorify war ?' by those whom the Prime Minister termed 'idiots'.59 The riots were a spillover from a peaceful demonstration taking place under the 'Reclaim the Streets' banner. The defacing of the Cenotaph was made more outrageous to many by the fact that at the time of the attack its base was still covered with hundreds of poppy wreaths laid during the Gallipoli remembrance service in the previous week. Such an attack suggests that the Cenotaph is no longer considered a sacred space except by the few remaining veterans of the two world wars and a handful of other people.
However, the impact of the Cenotaph has been such that poems have been written about it. Three such poems are 'The Cenotaph' by Charlotte Mew, 'At the Cenotaph' by Siegfried Sassoon and 'The Cenotaph' by Ursula Roberts.
The Cenotaph
Not yet will those measureless fields be green again
Charlotte Mew.60 )
At the Cenotaph
I saw the Prince of Darkness, with his Staff,
Siegfried Sassoon.61
The Cenotaph
The man in the Trilby hat has furtively shifted it;
Ursula Roberts.62
(This essay has been written by Michèle Fry, 2001 and it is copyright.)
http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/cenotaph.htm
(September 1919)
Where only yesterday the wild sweet blood of wonderful youth was shed;
There is a grave whose earth must hold too long, too deep a stain,
Though for ever over it we may speak as proudly as we may tread.
But here, where the watchers by lonely hearths from the thrust of an
inward sword have more slowly bled,
We shall build the Cenotaph: Victory, winged, with Peace, winged too, at the column's head.
And over the stairway, at the foot -- oh! here, leave desolate, passionate hands to spread
Violets, roses, and laurel, with the small, sweet, tinkling country things
Speaking so wistfully of other Springs,
From the little gardens of little places where son or sweetheart was born and bred.
In splendid sleep, with a thousand brothers
To lovers - to mothers
Here, too, lies he:
Under the purple, the green, the red,
It is all young life: it must break some women's hearts to see
Such a brave, gay coverlet to such a bed !
Only, when all is done and said,
God is not mocked and neither are the dead
For this will stand in our Market-place --
Who'll sell, who'll buy
(Will you or I
Lie each to each with the better grace) ?
While looking into every busy whore's and huckster's face
As they drive their bargains, is the Face
Of God: and some young, piteous, murdered face.
Standing bare-headed by the Cenotaph:
Unostentatious and respectful, there
He stood, and offered up the following prayer.
'Make them forget, O Lord, what this Memorial
Means; their discredited ideas revive;
Breed new belief that War is purgatorial
Proof of the pride and power of being alive;
Men's biologic urge to readjust
The Map of Europe, Lord of Hosts, increase;
Lift up their hearts in large destructive lust;
And crown their heads with blind vindictive Peace.'
The Prince of Darkness to the Cenotaph
Bowed. As he walked away I heard him laugh.
The man with the clay pipe has pushed his fists deeper into his pockets;
Beparcelled women are straining their necks
To stare.
Through the spattered windows of the omnibus
We see,
Dumb beneath the rain,
Marshalled by careful policemen,
Four behind four,
The relatives of dead heroes,
Clutching damp wreaths.
Within the omnibus there is silence
But for a sniff.
Then a plump woman speaks,
Softly, unquerulously:
'I wouldn't', she says,
'I wouldn't stand in a queue to have my feelings harrowed,
No myself, I wouldn't.'
The omnibus swerves to the pavement,
And the plump woman
Prepares for equable departure.
'But there,' she adds unbitterly,
'I often think it wouldn't do
For us all to be alike.
There's some as can't,
But then, again,
There's some, you see,
As can.'
Beautiful,
Plump woman,
(Plump of mind as well as of body)
Beautiful is your tolerance
Of human idiosyncrasy.
When my impatient feet would tap in irritation,
When my breath would break out in abuse,
When my scornful lips would frame themselves
(At the vices,
Or at the virtues,
Of my neighbours)
Into a sneer only half pitiful,
May I remember you
And murmur with serenity,
Without intensity,
Without virulence,
'I wouldn't,
Not myself,
But then, again,
There's some, you see,
As can'.
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