It is not recorded precisely when this memorial was erected in St Pauls'. Queen Victoria, in her journal, described a visit to Marochetti's studio on 7 March 1856, when she saw "a small bas relief to the memory of the 7 officers of the Coldstreams, who fell at Inkerman". The memorial was then seen in situ by the American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, on a visit to St Paul's on 4 August 1856. He wrote "I wandered quite round the Cathedral, and saw, in a remote corner, a monument to the officers of the Coldstream Guards, slain in the Crimea; it was mural tablet with the names of the officers on an escutcheon; and two privates of the guards (in marble, and bas relief, not in reality) were mourning over them. Over the tablet hung two silken banners, new and glossy, with the battles in which the regiment has been engaged, inscribed on them - not merely Crimean, but Peninsular battles. These banners will hang there, till they drop away in tatters" (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Centenary Edition - vol.XXII. The English Notebooks, 1856-1860, Ohio State University Press, 1997, p.97). It commemorates the following officers of the Coldstream Guards killed at the Battle of Inkerman: Vesey Dawson, Granville Elliott, Lionel Mackinnon, Murray Cowell, Henry M. Bouverie, Frederick Rausden, Edward Disbrowe, and C. Hubert Greville. It bears the inscription "Brothers in arms, in glory and in death, they were buried in one grave". This grave, represented in relief on the memorial, is at Cathcart Hill Cemetery in Sebastopol. The critic for the Athenaeum found the combination of foreground figures and distant landscape ridiculous and poorly executed, dedicating a long analysis to what he saw as the memorial's manifold failings. "A distant view may be expressed pictorially in bas-relief, but this, with its little tents upon the slope, fails in its object. It is nothing in reality but an upright mass of rock, upon which the side soldiers, Gog and Magog, lean their elbows, crushing at the same time, very indelicately, the laurels that have sprung up to honour their departed companions". There is much more in the same vein, and the reviewer concludes that this memorial "will not add to the sculptor's renown. In fact it is a disgrace to St. Paul's and to the heroes whom it is meant to honour". (Athenaeum, no.1506, 6 Sept. 1856, p.1122) This was the response of a highbrow critic, but appears not to have been shared by the soldiery, who commissioned further memorials from Marochetti for St Paul's and Exeter Cathedral. Their naïve popular imagery obviously found a welcome in some quarters, and the Coldstream Guards Memorial was even replicated as a memorial to one of the men listed on the St Paul's memorial. A bronze cast of it was erected in memory of James Charles Murray Cowell, in the church of Saint Elli in Llanelli, where it is still to be seen.
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