by Simon Heffer
The matter of the building was soon resolved, thanks to a decisive intervention by the part-time architect Prince Albert. The Queen and he had visited the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth a few years earlier, not long after his magnificent new greenhouses, built by Joseph Paxton, had been finished. Albert in particular marvelled at them, and was instrumental in Paxton’s being commissioned to design and build the exhibition hall itself. Typically, Paxton had in June signified to Cole his interest in designing the building, and Cole got him in to see Albert. The Commission, under Albert’s influence, liked the idea of an iron and glass structure, and urged it on the buildings committee, even though the deadline for submissions had passed. This put the committee in the invidious position of having to reject its own plans, but it did so in mid-July, and agreed to recommend that Paxton be commissioned.
Paxton had started out as the Duke’s head gardener – the Queen would refer to him as ‘a common gardener’s boy’ – but had soon become something approaching his agent, handling his financial affairs and also dealing with the design and erection of buildings on the estate.45 He built up a small architectural practice that put up buildings elsewhere too. Using 4,500 tons of iron as the framework for 293,655 panes of glass, the building was over a third of a mile long, covered 18 acres of Hyde Park and enclosed a number of mature trees, to avoid further controversies about felling them. It also had 24 miles of guttering. The finished product was designed to be a magnification of the Chatsworth greenhouses: and despite claims by its detractors that it would either fall down or be blown down if there was a gale, the building was one of the great and (until it burnt down in 1936) enduring legacies of the Great Exhibition.
It was not all straightforward with the architect, however. Paxton wrote to The Times on 20 January 1851 criticising Scott Russell, which left Albert ‘a good deal annoyed’. ‘He thinks’, wrote Grey, ‘you would hardly have taken such a step had you given more consideration to the inconvenience which your doing so might occasion.’46 As architect, Paxton was now in the Prince’s view part of the collective responsibility for the exhibition: and any criticisms should be addressed privately to commissioners and not to the press. Granville told Grey that ‘Paxton’s head has been turned by the events of the last six months, and it is not surprising that they should have had that effect upon a self-educated man.’47 Seeing which side his bread was buttered, Paxton wrote back to Grey expressing ‘sincere regret’.48 It was enough to get him a knighthood at the end of the year, along with William Cubitt, who chaired the building committee.
Money remained an issue, despite the public enthusiasm. By the summer of 1850, and despite the efforts of the Prince, there was simply not enough. Reid, still fearful that the lower orders would use the exhibition as a rallying point towards revolution, had put an almost blanket ban on publicity, which did not help. Cole, going freelance, started to call in favours from his friends and contacts. A particularly useful one was Samuel Morton Peto, one of the country’s leading railway contractors. Cole met him at the Reform Club on 12 July and, as a result of their talk, Peto wrote to Albert saying that in place of a guarantee he had already given for £20,000 he would now guarantee, or advance, £50,000.
Albert was delighted. The guarantee, worth perhaps £4.5 million in today’s money, was never called in, thanks to the success of the exhibition: but it was instrumental in its happening at all. Cole’s achievement did not go unnoticed by Albert. He had said in Cole’s presence that all that was missing from the exhibition was a key man to arrange the exhibits and lay out the building; Cole suggested to Grey that he was that man. Grey made Albert see the sense of this. Cole had, at last, found the job for which he had been searching for months. Reid took the appointment badly: and even Granville had reservations because of Cole’s ability to make himself unpopular, though he was in no doubt about Cole’s talents.
News of the guarantee was brought to the commissioners on the day they agreed to ask Paxton to build the hall. The first iron column went up on 26 September 1850. Soon 1,500 men were at work, rising to 2,000 by December and January.49 In December the Commission met in the building, an event marked by Albert’s giving the workforce 250 gallons of beer.50 The final result was a palace of awesome magnificence that captured the public imagination and remained much loved and admired until its destruction. However, when it was moved out of Hyde Park to Sydenham, John Ruskin, a native of those parts, derided it as ‘possessing no more sublimity than a cucumber frame between two chimneys’, and a building that encouraged the suburbanisation of what had once been bucolic Kent. In the second assertion at least, he was right.51
IV
Albert continued to concern himself with every aspect of the exhibition. The archive of the 1851 Commission bulges with letters from Grey, giving royal approval for everything from extra space for the Swiss exhibitors to extra money to provide a dedicated police force for the building. However, the former were told they could not make an exhibition of cheeses, and for the latter there might have to be an allowance for overtime.52 Albert was conscious of the diplomatic importance of the exhibition, and questioned a suggestion by Lyon Playfair that there should be some sort of official report of the exhibits: ‘England,’ wrote Grey, echoing his master ‘as the hosting nation, must be very careful not to make what might appear like a disparaging report of the exhibits of other countries.’53 France, Austria and Prussia were particular causes of concern.
A network of local committees, set up on Cole’s initiative, helped recruit exhibitors from around the British Isles. The Colonial Office did a similar job around the British Empire. The Foreign Office used its network of ambassadors, consuls and other representatives to bring in participants from the rest of the world. Albert’s prestige as the Queen’s husband was vital in this, and the Commission inspired the establishment of national committees in many countries to serve a purpose similar to that of the local committees in Britain, and find potential exhibitors.
The King of Prussia was more concerned about other matters. Rather like Reid, he was convinced the exhibition, which his son the Prince of Prussia and his grandson were planning to attend, would act as a cover for revolutionaries. ‘Countless hordes of desperate proletarians, well organised and under the leadership of blood-red criminals, are on their way to London now,’ he wrote to Albert on 8 April 1851.54 The King feared insurrection at home; but feared attacks on his family abroad too, not least thanks to the ‘liberal laws’ of England. He put the matter in Albert’s and the Queen’s hands, asking them to decide whether it would be safe for the two princes to come, or whether they would meet their doom at the hands of people Friedrich Wilhelm variously described as ‘the offspring of monsters’ and ‘gangs and rabble’.
Albert, who had acquired the national sense of humour in his eleven years in England, would not be deflected. He replied to the King that:
mathematicians have calculated that the Crystal Palace will blow down in the first strong gale, Engineers that the galleries would crash in and destroy the visitors, Political Economists have prophesied a scarcity of food in London owing to the vast concourse of people; Doctors that owing to so many races coming into contact with each other the Black Death of the Middle ages would make its appearance as it did after the Crusades; Moralists that England would be infected by all the scourges of the civilised and uncivilised world; Theologians that this second Tower of Babel would draw upon it the vengeance of an offended God. I can give no guarantee against these perils, nor am I in a position to assume responsibility for the possibly menaced lives of your Royal relatives.55
When the time to open the exhibition neared there was distress and disappointment that the Queen would not perform the opening ceremony. She did not much like crowds, perhaps because of the attempts on her life. Granville tried to talk her in to opening the event. Russell did ‘not think that the Queen would meet with any risk or discomfort in the building’.56 He proposed talking it over with Albert; and Granville suggested the Queen shou
ld perform the ceremony accompanied by selected people: however, Granville wrote to Phipps, who had become Keeper of the Privy Purse, that ‘the list of persons to accompany the Queen should be very carefully considered – I am afraid in the present mood of the public, the wider the line is made of privileged persons, the more dissatisfied persons there will be.’
Also, many who had bought season tickets had done so precisely to see the opening ceremony and the Queen; and if there was to be no ceremony, or one from which they were excluded, anger would mount. Eventually, the Queen, in the words of her Consort, ‘signified her intention to comply with a very generally expressed wish on the part of the public to be present at an opening ceremony on the 1st of May, if the commissioners can make the necessary arrangements for it’ (this was written on 20 April).57 Albert also started hurriedly roping in other dignitaries, notably the Archbishop of Canterbury to give ‘the blessing of Almighty God . . . upon the undertaking.’58
In the four days after the Queen’s announcement the number of season tickets sold went up from 7,000 to nearly 12,000.59 The Times advised that a considerable number of season-ticket holders should be allowed into the main aisle with a decent view of the Sovereign, rather than ‘banish’ them to ‘remote galleries’. The next day it reported that 5,000 seats would be placed in the aisle, which it imagined would be ‘occupied by ladies, and will thus form a graceful and effectual barrier to the crowds of the male sex collected in close column behind them.’60 The paper gave extensive previews of the contents of the exhibition, such as the wide range of minerals from all over the British Isles, and the processes used to turn them into products.
As more reports appeared of items being delivered into the building from docks and railway stations, excitement took off, fed not just by the press, but also by word of mouth. The North Western Railway carried an extra 5,000 passengers into London on 30 April, the day before the opening. The Great Western brought an extra 3,000. Other lines reported similar increases, and cross-channel steamers were packed. The Times estimated that, altogether, 50,000 people arrived in the capital on the 30th.61 Tourism, roughly as we now know it, had begun.
By 1 May most problems had been ironed out – though there were ruffled feathers in the corps diplomatique about whether or not one of their number would present an address to the Queen. Labourers worked through the last night before the opening to finish making the arena fit for a Queen. The ‘State Opening’, as it was called, took on a holy significance: the public were to be admitted, but only in parts of the building that were not ‘railed off in the Nave and Transept’.62 The Times called the Crystal Palace ‘a cathedral, its long avenues stretching from east to west being intersected midway by a transept’. Instead of being handed a bible, the Queen would be handed a catalogue of exhibits; but then, after the Archbishop had delivered God’s blessing, a choir would sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. Those who approached the entrance did so between two long files of policemen reinforced by Life Guards: the streets were choked with traffic for hundreds of yards around. Men and boys shinned up trees to get a view of the pageant. The Queen was hailed ‘again and again with hearty cheers’, a salute she returned by ‘bowing kindly and graciously’.63
She and her retinue processed into the building: and once she had mounted the dais to the throne the National Anthem was struck up on the organ. Albert read an address to his wife on behalf of the commissioners, announcing they had fulfilled the commission given them by her. He also announced that the total of donations to the project was now £65,000, with the name at the head of the list of donors being the Queen’s. He reported that there were about 15,000 exhibitors, half of them British. The rest represented forty foreign countries.
The Queen, who was doing her best not to burst with pride, replied briefly to speak of the ‘sincere gratification’ she felt ‘to witness the successful result of your judicious and unremitting exertions in the splendid spectacle by which I am this day surrounded.’ The mood was of exultation: a Chinese Mandarin in the crowd ‘unable any longer to control his feelings, made his way through foreign diplomatists, Ministers of State, and the distinguished circle with which Court etiquette had surrounded the throne, and, advancing close to Her Majesty, saluted her by a grand salaam, which she most graciously acknowledged.’64 She then went on a short progress around the new cathedral, together with ambassadors, the commissioners (including such notables, therefore, as Gladstone, Cobden and Russell), a brace of field marshals – Wellington and the Marquess of Anglesey – the Archbishop of Canterbury, and much of the already extending Royal Family, including Albert.
The Times’s reporter noted that ‘His Royal Highness appeared less composed than Her Majesty, and his emotion was visible when the ceremony and the procession had been happily conducted to its close. It was natural that he should feel strongly the termination of a spectacle, the grandest perhaps that the world ever saw, and with which his name and reputation are henceforth inseparably associated.’
Russell accounted the whole performance a ‘triumphant success’: though he was writing to the Queen when he did.65 Her Majesty, writing to Lady Lyttelton in response to another letter of congratulation, admitted that the ceremony had happened on ‘the proudest and happiest day of, as you truly call it, my “happy life”.’66 She spoke of her joy ‘to see this great conception of my beloved husband’s great and good mind, which is always labouring for the good of others’. The Times praised Albert for his vision, which it proclaimed had been achieved and fulfilled.67 It was a moment of supreme triumph for him. The Times’s conclusion was that ‘republicans and anarchists may be made monarchical by such influences as the ceremony of yesterday exerts, but there seems little prospect of any political movement in the opposite direction.’
Charles Greville, whose high connections could have secured him a place inside the Crystal Palace for the opening, instead thought ‘it more interesting and curious to see the masses and their behaviour. It was a wonderful spectacle to see the countless multitudes, streaming along in every direction, and congregated upon each bank of the Serpentine down to the water’s edge; no soldiers, hardly any policemen to be seen, yet all so orderly and good-humoured.’ After years in which the appearance of any sort of crowd in London signified trouble, this was progress indeed. Writing ten days after the opening, he noted that ‘since that day all the world has been flocking to the Crystal Palace, and we hear nothing but expressions of wonder and admiration. The frondeurs are all come round, and those who abused it most vehemently now praise it as much.’68
Placards were put all over London about the wickedness of the visiting Hohenzollerns: but no attempts were made on their lives. The police were zealous in keeping trouble away, indeed too zealous. One official had to have a word with the Superintendent of Police, in accordance with Albert’s wishes, ‘to arrange for a more extensive admission of the working classes to the model houses in the park’, so that they could benefit from the exhibition too.69 Albert did, however, resist pressure in the newspapers to lower the price of admission to below a shilling.70 As it was, even at the higher admission price, the crowds poured in from the first day, and season-ticket sales continued to be strong.
The Queen herself went back with Albert and some of their children on 3 May, two days after the opening, to look mainly at gold, silversmiths and jewellery displays. Once they left, the building was opened again to the public, and for the rest of the day it was packed: that remained the case for most of the duration. The Queen went again four days later, this time to look at the Tunisian, Chinese and Indian collections. There were many more visits, sometimes with her bringing foreign royalty to show off Albert’s achievement to them, such as when she took her uncle Leopold, the King of the Belgians, in June. On 5 May the price of entry dropped, not to below 1s, but from £1 to 5s. As a result, money taken at the door rose from around £500 to £1,500 or £1,600. It became clear the event would not just make money, but a lot of money.
When visitors entered
the Crystal Palace they discovered it was split into four sections of exhibits, according to a scheme designed by Lyon Playfair, who had become one of Albert’s chief scientific advisers. The sections were raw materials, machinery, manufactures and fine arts. As Asa Briggs has written:
Machinery was in the ascendant, but handicrafts were not yet in general eclipse. Alongside a sewing machine from the United States and cotton machines from Oldham there was fine black lace from Barcelona and pottery from Sèvres . . . the Machinery Court was the noisiest and most popular spectacle inside the Crystal Palace. Crowds of farmers in smocks could be seen admiring the agricultural implements, which included a pioneer reaping machine from the United States; mechanics from Leeds and Birmingham gathered round the Jacquard loom and De la Rue’s envelope machine; the Queen herself was specially interested in a medal-making machine, which produced fifty million medals a week. She marvelled, too, at the electric telegraph and sent appropriate messages to her loyal subjects in Edinburgh and Manchester.71
In a later book, Briggs pointed out how the exhibition also set the fashion for the Victorian mania of assembling collections: indeed, collections, whether of fossils, stamps, coins or even pictures, were to become one of the measures of respectability for the new Victorian middle class.72
As host nation, Britain occupied half the floor space. While some of the main exhibits were of industrial machinery, others were more domestic, and aimed at enhancing the comfort of the rising Victorian middle class. There were numerous sorts of steam engine, a steam hammer, a massive hydraulic press and a printing press that could produce 5,000 copies an hour of the Illustrated London News, and various designs of carriages. But there were also Axminster carpets, richly ornamented pianos, and stained glass, all of which helped create the idea of high Victorian art that later became so reviled, and which was predominantly utilitarian. Yet what was most revealed about the Victorian mind was its ingenuity: rubber tubes connected pews to a pulpit so that the deaf could hear; there was a ‘defensive umbrella’ with a stiletto at the end of it, for use against footpads; and some velocipedes, the first bicycles.