The Pantheon on the Mantelpiece

FROM THE agitation that preceded the Reform Bill of 1832 to the repercussions that followed that of 1885, Great Britain was engaged in an especially intense period of reflection on who constituted the nation and what they shared. Creating a shared identity in the present meant constructing a shared past, which often took the form of a pantheon of great men (and very few women). The founding of the National Gallery (1824), National Portrait Gallery (1856), Scottish National Gallery (1859), and Scottish National Portrait Gallery (1889) created prominent places to display images of notable individuals; from the 1790s on, “plans for national pantheonic structures were rife” (Yarrington 107). Pantheons could be discursive, like Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age (1825), or sculptural, such as those in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Or they could be popular, such as the waxworks in Madame Tussaud’s collection (which the Edinburgh Review ironically described as “that British Valhalla” [“Mr. Disraeli” 421]) and the busts that decorated the “pantheon” assembly rooms in Oxford Street (1772–1814)