by Julia Baird
Albert was appointed the chair of the royal commission overseeing the Exhibition. The design of the structure came from an unexpected candidate: a gardener named Joseph Paxton. He had doodled a large, arching glass palace—based on a conservatory he had built at Chatsworth House in 1837, partly inspired by water lilies—while sitting in a railway board meeting. When he published the sketch in The Illustrated London News on July 6, the reaction was glowing (although art critic John Ruskin called it “a cucumber frame between two chimneys”). It was quickly accepted: only ten months remained before the Exhibition was due to open. Some objected to his ambitious, unusual design: Would trees need to be cut down? Would it smash in storms? Cave in under the weight of the visitors? Be smeared in bird droppings? Hundreds of men were employed to stamp up and down the top level of the structure; it was declared solid and secure. Hawks were brought in to rid the park of sparrows that might soil the glass, at the suggestion of the Duke of Wellington; astonishingly, it worked. The final creation, Albert declared, was “truly a marvelous piece of art.”
The public opposition was intense. Critics railed about crowds, crime, noise, plague, assassinations, riots, and revolution. Politicians said it would attract socialists, who would meet in the park, as well as thieves, pickpockets, vagrants, prostitutes, and foreigners of dubious hygiene who might spark epidemics. An extreme Tory MP called it “the greatest trash, the greatest fraud, and the greatest imposition ever attempted to be palmed upon the people of this country.” Others said food supplies would be endangered, the surrounding park would be defiled, and the silver cutlery of those dwelling nearby stolen. There were fears of Roman Catholics using it as a chance for propagandizing and of women neglecting their housework.* One member of Parliament said he wished “that hail or lightning might descend from Heaven” to prevent the Exhibition from taking place.
Albert worked like a man possessed to secure funding, government support, and public approval of his project, fighting back against what he saw as lack of imagination and fearmongering. He began to lose sleep and to experience rheumatic attacks again. He wrote to his stepmother, two weeks before opening day: “Just at present I am more dead than alive from overwork. The opponents of the Exhibition work with might and main to throw all the women into panic and to drive myself crazy.” But he persisted, obtaining support from guarantors. In less than two years, the structure was built. The vice president of the Royal Commission wrote that without Albert, “the whole thing would fall to pieces.”
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The corridors of the Exhibition rang with the sounds of pistons pumping up and down, steam whistling from pipes, an almighty din of machines. There were machines for wiping shoes, spinning cotton, folding paper, purifying sugar, making envelopes, stirring chocolate, sending electric telegraphs, cutting stone, manufacturing medals and spikes and candles, grinding wheat, extracting oil from linseed, rolling and wrapping cigarettes, weighing gold, carbonating soda water, and even drawing blood (by a mechanical leech). It was a grand and miraculous sight, and a prescient sign of the coming Machine Age. Of the millions of people who filed past these creations, staring at them with wonder, very few comprehended how much these mechanisms would transform their lives in the decades to come.
The queen was one of the most enthusiastic observers, visiting the machine section several times and spending hours with guides who taught her how the devices worked. It was, she wrote, “excessively interesting & instructive, & fills one with admiration for the greatness of man’s mind.” She was particularly captivated by the sight of cotton-cleaning machines.
On July 9, a guide showed her the electric telegraph, which she declared “truly marvelous.” The practical application of the science, which had seemed abstract and uninspiring before she met Albert, was now fascinating. He had stirred a new, real excitement in her about the potential usefulness of knowledge. Albert’s ability confidently to apply theory to the everyday, and to conceive an incredible future, continued to impress her. Behind the hiss of the machines could be heard the gentle staccato beats and intermittent chiming of hundreds of watches—wooden, waterproof, stop—marking the speeding of time that began in the Industrial Revolution a century before. England had entered the second half of the nineteenth century, and the Exhibition defined as nothing else did the booming, steaming industry, creativity, and inventive spirit of the Victorian age. Queen Victoria visited the Exhibition forty times in five and a half months.
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Not all were so rhapsodic. Local tradesmen and thespians complained bitterly about the loss of trade. Charles Dickens thought it a jumbled mess. He had briefly served as a member of the Central Committee of the Working Classes for the Great Exhibition, intended to include and accommodate the needs of the working class, but it was disbanded—at Dickens’s urging—after four months. He believed their task was hopeless. He had grown irritated with the notion of the year being marked as one of untrammeled success and sunshine, when so many people were living in squalor. Early in 1851, Dickens suggested in Household Words that a second exhibition be held, of “England’s sins and negligences.” When he finally went to the Crystal Palace, he described it as “terrible duffery.” He wrote in July 1851:
I find I am “used up” by the Exhibition. I don’t say “there’s nothing in it”—there’s too much. I have only been twice. So many things bewildered me. I have a natural horror of sights, and the fusion of so many sights in one has not decreased it. I am not sure that I have seen anything but the fountain and perhaps the Amazon. It is a dreadful thing to be obliged to be false, but when anyone says, “Have you seen?” I say “Yes,” because if I don’t he’ll explain it—and I can’t bear that.
Thomas Carlyle was similarly glum. The only thing the writer admired was the structure itself, which he alternately called a “Gigantic Birdcage,” a “big Glass Soapbubble,” and “the beautifullest House, I fancy, that ever was built in the world.” The rest he disdained, calling it the “Exhibition of Winddustry.”
Despite his good intentions, Albert’s aloofness, relentless work, and lofty ideas annoyed many in the aristocracy. Lady Lyttelton crisply observed that the Exhibition would only “increase the contempt for the Prince among all fine folk.” Llewellyn Woodward called him “something of a prig.” Albert’s warmth and humor did not translate in public, and he could come across as awkward and tactless. Because of this, he surprised many who personally met him. When Carlyle encountered Albert at Windsor Castle in 1854, he was immediately impressed, describing him as a “handsome young gentleman, very jolly….He was civility itself, and in a fine simple fashion: a sensible man withal.” They had an extensive conversation about art, Martin Luther, and Saxon genealogy. Albert was most comfortable in the company of people like Carlyle: intellectuals, scientists, and artists, whom he regularly visited in their studios—almost too comfortable, muttered some of the aristocrats.
Still in their early thirties, the powerful couple were confident in the advancement of their public image by 1851. In the Exhibition’s opening week, newspapers crowed about the superiority of Britain, evident in the well-behaved crowds, the devotion to the monarch, and the nation’s inventions. Superlatives flowed: the Exhibition was greater than the pyramids, declared the Bristol Mercury. Albert had proved himself to be “no alien” but a true Brit, “native and [to] the manner born.” Victoria was certain the Exhibition had cast a kind of spell over London, and she crowed when Lord Aberdeen told her that even Parliament was going smoothly because of it. She would spend the rest of her life preserving and polishing this moment.
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While the glass behemoth in Hyde Park showcased the wondrous expanse of the globe, a woman named Florence Nightingale was stewing about the narrowness of her world. Unlike Victoria, she was bound by middle-class expectations for women, and despite her crisp intelligence, she was unable to do what she wanted. Nightingale, who dreamed of becoming a nurse, was locked in fierce disputes with her family, who wanted her to stay at home. He
r older sister threw hysterical fits whenever Nightingale traveled to another country to visit convents and hospitals. Her mother dismissed her dreams as folly and mad ambition. Nightingale felt trapped by convention and the dullness of society, and she begged her family to allow her to “follow the dictates of that spirit within.” She became depressed, spending long days in bed, refusing food, and contemplating suicide. Her days were spent yearning for a life in which she could use her brain, and her nights were spent wishing for death: going to bed after a day at home, she wrote, was like going to her grave.
In 1852, Nightingale wrote a remarkably prescient essay, initially intended as a novel, titled Cassandra. It was named after the beautiful red-haired Greek goddess who had the gift of prophecy but who was cursed by Apollo after she spurned his advances. This meant that although she would tell the truth, no one would believe her warnings. As a young woman, Cassandra yearned to be allowed to devote herself to helping others, and to use her brain, as men did. Cassandra was, of course, Florence Nightingale. She wrote:
Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity, and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?…Now, why is it more ridiculous for a man than for a woman to do worsted work and drive out every day in the carriage? Why should we laugh if we were to see a panel of men sitting around a drawing room table in the morning, and think it all right if they were women? Is man’s time more valuable than women’s?…Women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others.
This essay, written during the Exhibition, is a stark reminder that Victoria’s ambitions had vanished behind the far brighter, higher visions of her husband. Nightingale wrote: “Behind his destiny woman must annihilate herself, must be only his complement. A woman dedicates herself to the vocation of her husband….But if she has any destiny, any vocation of her own, she must renounce it, in nine cases out of ten.” “Awake,” she cried, “ye women, all ye that sleep, awake!” She could very well have been addressing Victoria directly. But the nature of the queen’s job meant that she was largely freed from domestic concerns; it was not a public life she yearned for, as Florence Nightingale did, but the private. Her diary shows how tightly politics was entwined with her daily life, how conscientiously she worked, and how carefully she tried to inform herself. She cared desperately about her country. Her own ambitions of rule were slowly being buried under the weight of wifely devotion and maternal exhaustion, but her grand passion was intact. Florence Nightingale’s passion was to stretch her mind and heal the sick. Queen Victoria’s was Albert.
Being married to Albert, though, had made her think that the act of governing was for men; that power was, perhaps, inherently masculine. For Victoria to hold this view, she had to bury her own instincts. But the more she devoted herself to Albert, the more she feared a fundamental incompatibility between being a good wife and being a good ruler. “Good women” of the era did not even work, let alone possess immense power. When she grew bored with her job, or when Albert demonstrated a greater natural ability, she put it down to her gender—what other explanation could there be? Albert, she told Uncle Leopold on February 3, 1852, “grows daily fonder and fonder of politics and business, and is so wonderfully fit for both—such perspicacity and such courage—and I grow daily to dislike them more and more.” It was not just her: “We women are not made for governing—and if we are good women, we must dislike these masculine occupations; but there are times which force one to take an interest in them mal gre bon gre [sic; “whether one likes it or not”], and I do, of course, intensely.” It would take decades for Victoria to stop pretending that being a good woman required eschewing power. She did not readily defer to anyone, but she would be fully comfortable reigning over an empire only when she was without a husband.
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On June 27, 1850, Victoria was physically assaulted by one of her subjects. She was out visiting the Duke of Cambridge when a small, pasty-faced man named Robert Pate emerged from the crowd surrounding her carriage and Victoria felt herself “violently thrown by a blow to the left of the carriage.” He had smashed a brass-plated cane into her face. Her bonnet was crushed, and the metal tip bruised her forehead and left a red welt (the mark remained for many years). Victoria was livid:
Certainly it is very hard & very horrid, that I, a woman—a defenceless young woman & surrounded by my Children, should be exposed to insults of this kind, & be unable to go out quietly for a drive. This is by far the most disgraceful & cowardly thing that has ever been done; for a man to strike any woman is most brutal & I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than an attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible & more courageous. The Children were much shocked, & poor Bertie turned very red at the time. It is the 2nd time that Alice & Affie have witnessed such an event.
It seemed to her “like a horrid dream.” Pate, a former British army officer, whose lawyers argued that he had had a lapse of reason, was transported to Tasmania, but Victoria never forgot this incident. Half a century later, in 1899, when an auction house tried to sell the famous metal cane, a stern letter was sent from Osborne and the cane was withdrawn from sale.
When Victoria next gave birth, in April 1853, to a frail child she named Leopold, she took chloroform during labor for the first time. (She had not been so fortunate when Arthur was born, three years earlier.) Dr. Simpson, an anesthetist, was brought from Edinburgh to administer it. He soaked a handkerchief with a small amount of chloroform and inserted that into a funnel the queen could inhale through. She wrote in her diary: “The effect was soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure.” Victoria’s example encouraged a generation of women to try the first kind of pain relief available in childbirth. In doing so, they were ignoring the objections of doctors who suggested it might sexually arouse women, who would then try to seduce them while in labor, and priests who insisted that it was wicked to try to opt out from the consequences of original sin. It was a small step in the long march women took over the next century to try to gain control over their bodies. Thousands of relieved mothers across England followed the queen’s example. Dr. Simpson’s first patient in 1847 was thrilled: the baby was nicknamed Anesthesia.
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Before the Exhibition closed in October 1851 and was moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham, where it remained until 1936 when it was destroyed by fire, it had returned a surplus of almost £200,000. Albert planned to invest the money in four institutions to house raw materials, machinery, manufactures, and art on a site near the Crystal Palace. From this vision sprang the complex of museums in South Kensington including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Albert Hall, the Museum of Natural History, the Imperial College, and the Royal College of Music. Albert ended 1851 with a rare feeling of completion and unmitigated success, writing to his brother, “I cannot complain of the past year. The Great Exhibition, which caused me so much work and trouble, ended in an astonishingly satisfactory measure.”
The Prince Consort was contented but dangerously exhausted by the strain of running the Exhibition, as well as the jousts with Palmerston. Photos show a man with heavy jowls, a widening girth, and a ponderous look, far from the eager, lean youth he was ten years before, when he married Victoria. He had never stopped working, and his family demanded his time and caused concern. Victoria and Albert constantly worried about their eldest son, Bertie. As they tried to enforce a rigorous education, in line with the expectations for a future king, Bertie would fly into inarticulate rages—“gusts of elemental fury,” as Albert’s librarian put it. Victoria also fretted about their baby, Leopold, who was thin and did not thrive. It was some time before they understood that he had hemophilia (in this case hemophilia B, a condition passed on by affected males or asymptomatic females). Three of Victoria’s daughters went on to transmit the gene, with disastrous consequences for the royal houses of Europe, especially in early-twentie
th-century Russia.
Ten years on, strains were beginning to show in Victoria and Albert’s marriage. The differences in temperament are obvious in the cool letters Albert penned after their disagreements, urging Victoria to be rational. The volatile Victoria was starting to resent the toll childbirth was taking—she had borne eight children by 1853—and the fact that Albert was exempt from this burden. She would storm and rage, demanding to be heard, following him from the room if he left. Albert cautioned her to control herself and talk to God. He began one long memo, written in May 1853—not long after Leopold was born—with “Dear Child” and urged his wife to “consider calmly the facts of the case.” She had erupted over a minor disagreement and he reminded her that he had not caused her misery, but had merely triggered it because she had been “imprudently heaping up a pile of combustibles.” He was unable to help her, because if he analyzed her complaints, she got angry; if he ignored her, she felt insulted; if he left, she would follow him.
Albert, an analytical workaholic, struggled to comprehend the gales of hormones released by childbirth, and was bewildered by what he saw as his wife’s lack of reason. (As he once told her, “a long closely connected train of reasoning is like a beautiful strain of music.”) He couldn’t understand when her upset stemmed from something deeper. Victoria, who wrote in her diary about how grateful she was for Albert’s “untiring love, tenderness & care,” sometimes wept with frustration when she read the stern memoranda from her husband. Her needs were much simpler than he recognized and she resented being lectured to.
A hint of the essential problem in their communication is contained in a letter he wrote in February 1855: “What can I do to you, save, at the most, not listen to you long enough when I have business elsewhere?” Victoria wanted only to be heard and be held. But it was still mostly a happy, supportive marriage. They ate together, walked together, talked for hours, and shared everything. During their sojourns in Scotland, while Albert hunted stags, Victoria would draw with chalks or paint—her diaries are jammed with exuberant descriptions of joyful days, beautiful skies, indescribably lovely Highland landscapes: mountain peaks, woods, sunsets. It was here that they were happiest. The sentimental Victoria mimicked Lot’s wife each time she left, mournfully looking back over her shoulder.