by Edna Healey
Peel replied, however, that since he had to propose the renewal of income tax he must postpone any decision on the Palace.
It was probably on this visit to Brighton that the Queen and Prince Albert found a possible solution to the problem of the expense involved. They would sell the Royal Pavilion and use the proceeds for Buckingham Palace. The truth was that Queen Victoria disliked the jostling crowds at Brighton.
Queen Victoria wanted these alterations and improvements not because of personal vanity. As she pointed out to Peel, unlike her predecessors she had never asked for knick-knacks and extravagances. She wanted Buckingham Palace to be recognized at home and abroad as the seat of British Majesty. Her famous costume balls were designed to remind the world of the continuity of the history of the British monarchy.
For one of these balls, on 12 May 1842, the medieval period was chosen as the theme, the Queen and Prince Albert appearing as Queen Philippa and Edward III. Sir Edwin Landseer painted them in all their splendour, Queen Victoria glittering in £60,000 worth of jewels. The Duchess of Cambridge, not to be eclipsed, came as Anne of Brittany with a hundred courtiers. This ball was proclaimed to be for the benefit of the Spitalfield silk weavers, though there was little profit made after expenses had been paid.
The next ball, on 6 June 1845, celebrated the centenary of the defeat of the Stuart rebellion. Did Queen Victoria realize that it was on this day in 1763 that Queen Charlotte had given George III his surprise housewarming party? Certainly, on this occasion she wore a splendid brocaded dress cloaked in old lace that had belonged to Queen Charlotte. Uncle Leopold and Stockmar would have been touched that the old Queen they had known so well had been remembered. This time the ladies were allowed to wear only clothes of British manufacture – an attempt to forestall the inevitable criticisms of extravagance at the Palace.
The crowds in the Mall cheered the show, but, according to Hobhouse, Her Majesty’s ministers were distinctly uncomfortable, perspiring in wigs that refused to sit straight. The Annual Register recorded that the Duke of Wellington, who appeared as ‘Butcher Cumberland’, was recognizable only by his nose. Lord Cardigan, as an officer of the nth Dragoons at Culloden, had ‘the true jackboot stride’.64
There were cheers outside the Palace, but there were hostile faces in the crowds. Ballad mongers wrote with their sharp pens:
Some curious costumes graced the scene,
Of which just one or two I’ll name,
That to the masque of England’s Queen,
To pay their loyal homage came.
Melbourne, in saucy garb arrayed,
Dressed as a Roman parasite;
Who earned the meals his patron paid
By ‘glozing’ jokes and flattery light.
Think, ye aristocrats, whose gold,
Squandered in fashion’s brittle toys,
Is like yourselves, so bright and cold,
Of this dark contrast to your joys.
Think, what a little part bestowed
On those lone huts where misery scowls,
Would turn from Satan’s fearful road
Your Brother Men’s despairing souls.
Think, did I say! no, heartless crew,
Self to your thoughts is all in all,
Let them curse God, and die, while you
Dance at Victoria’s Fancy Ball!65
Six years later at a ‘Restoration Ball’, Prince Albert appeared improbably in over-bright orange satin over crimson velvet breeches and lavender stockings. The United States Minister, who normally refused to dress up for Court, this time wore blue velvet, trimmed with gold lace and a scarlet velvet mantle, which he claimed was the costume of a New England governor of the period.
A particularly splendid banquet was given on the occasion of the christening of Queen Victoria’s son Prince Leopold on 28 June 1853. A watercolour by Louis Haghe shows the Picture Gallery glowing with gold plate displayed on the buffet at the end of the Gallery. On the table, surrounded by gilded candelabra, is a monumental christening cake.
These balls and banquets had a political significance and Queen Victoria wanted a larger palace to accommodate her wide network of foreign friends and relations. Over the years this network would spread to France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the dukedoms and kingdoms of Germany, Romania, Russia and Denmark. In the end, Queen Victoria was to become the grandmother of Europe. Visits were exchanged with Louis-Philippe, King of France. When Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie and Tsar Nicholas I of Russia visited Windsor, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were particularly anxious to impress.
Prince Albert had his own sources of information in Europe and Queen Victoria would establish lasting and useful personal relationships. This was important when Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary, since he had an infuriating habit of conducting foreign policy without informing the Queen – or anyone else. When he congratulated the future Emperor Napoleon III on his coup d’état he did so entirely on his own responsibility. To everyone’s relief he left the Foreign Office but came back later as Prime Minister, when the Queen found him easier to deal with. Foreign Affairs, the Queen considered, were her concern.
Palace Improvements
At last in 1846 Peel agreed to the partial rebuilding of the Palace: since the sale of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, was to provide a large part of the funds, he could no longer resist Queen Victoria’s demands.
In May 1846, Blore produced his plans for the ‘Palace Improvements’. He proposed providing more rooms by building a fourth side on the courtyard, enclosing and, incidentally, darkening the entrance to the Palace and obscuring Nash’s elegant portico.
However, he found himself hedged in by advisers, some of whom were less than helpful. In addition, when he produced his plans, a committee of architects and medical experts insisted that the new quadrangle be enlarged to permit health-giving currents of air. At this time adequate ventilation was a fetish, since diseases were believed to be caused by ‘effluvia’.
Then Blore had to suffer the Prince’s enthusiastic co-operation. Blore had had unhappy memories of royal interference in the reign of William IV, and now was often irritated by Prince Albert’s involvement, especially when he was not told until October 1846 that he had appointed Thomas Cubitt as the contractor. Even worse, however, for poor Blore was the constant interference of the ‘six Commissioners for the enlargement of Buckingham Palace’, appointed by the government in May 1846 to co-ordinate the work of the various ministries involved. The Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chief Commissioner for Woods and Forests were ex-officio members and were joined by the first President of the RIBA, Earl de Grey, who also considered himself the expert on taste, the Earl of Lincoln and Francis Egerton, later 1st Earl of Ellesmere and the owner of a fine art collection.
Then in July 1846 there was a change of government. Peel’s Tory government was replaced by the Whigs, with Lord John Russell as Prime Minister, who wanted an even tighter control on expenditure on the Palace. The House of Commons voted an estimate of £150,000 for the enlargement of the Palace, of which £20,000 was to be spent on preliminary work in 1846. Lord Morpeth, later 7th Earl of Carlisle, and one of the old Whig ‘cousinry’, related to Lord Duncannon, now became an important and active member of the commission.
It was now necessary to convince the public that the expenditure was warranted, so on 13 August 1846 The Times announced:
It is proposed that £20,000 be voted in the present year for enlarging and improving Buckingham Palace. The whole cost of the improvements were estimated to cost £150,000. They include building a new east front, clearing out and re-arranging rooms in the south wing, alterations in the north wing, new kitchens and other offices with a ballroom over, decorations and painting, taking down the arch, alterations to drains etc. Her Majesty has agreed to sell the Pavilion at Brighton and the money will go towards the cost of above alterations.
There then followed extracts from a letter from Blore of 4 August: ‘I have l
ong been aware of the extreme inconvenience to which HM personally, the juvenile members of the royal family and the whole of the royal establishment have been subjected.’ He pointed out that ‘the private apartments in the north wing … [were] not calculated originally for a married sovereign, the head of a family’. The Lord Chamberlain’s department for storerooms, workshops, etc. were in the basement of the same wing and ‘the noise and smell from these … are at times positively offensive’.
There was also the risk of fire and the Palace was so overcrowded that nothing ‘short of an extension of the palace can adequately provide for these services … The rooms for the children are very inadequate and inconvenient, this will become worse as they grow up.’ The servants’ rooms were dark and ill-ventilated, the kitchens not only inconvenient but a downright nuisance and the ‘Sanitary condition of the palace has not always been sufficiently considered, in thus overcrowding a great number of persons into small rooms, not always well ventilated’. He might have added that the Palace smells were notorious. Blore also made the point that the ‘accommodation for the reception of distinguished foreign visitors within the palace was very inadequate and inconvenient’.66
This last point was important: it was not merely that the Queen and the Prince needed more space for their family and for the entertainments, balls and concerts. It was necessary that Buckingham Palace should enhance the dignity and the influence of the British monarchy in the eyes of the world.
Then as now, the correspondence columns of The Times provided a venue for lively discussion of current topics. On 24 August 1846, a letter signed ‘Sphinx’ complained that:
the present structure is so radically, inherently and thoroughly trumpery … that not even the plaintive Mr Blore can make it a fit residence for a Sovereign. The situation is not healthy, the neighbourhood is poor… be sure some future Sovereign, with more horror of malaria, or more regard to taste, will depute some future Mr Blore to condemn and discard it entirely.67
The writer suggested that a new palace should be built in Kensington Gardens.
Plans to enclose the courtyard with a fourth wing to provide more rooms were sharply criticized. If it had to be built it was suggested that Mr Blore might take ‘a few lessons in the grandiose and scenic from Greenwich Hospital’.68 Instead, according to The Builder, the façade of the Palace presented ‘little more than street architecture in stone, instead of stucco’.69 Punch compared it to a line of shops. The Caen stone used was a mistake, as Cubitt had always claimed. It weathered badly, and later had to be painted and finally, in 1913, rebuilt.
Nash’s façade was to suffer one more change. The classical open colonnades along the sides of the courtyard wings were to be filled in, to give sheltered access to the entrance to the Palace.
But however much Blore might be criticized, it had to be admitted that he was quick and cheap. He had been allowed £150,000 for the alterations; he completed the front on time at a cost of £106,000. For this, the builder, Cubitt, was partly responsible. His costings for bricklayers and carpenters were less than expected. Queen Victoria now had rooms for nurseries and for private accommodation and new rooms for visitors.
The front was finished in 1847. The Commissioners now asked Blore to choose handsome articles of furniture or decoration which could be conveniently transferred from the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. So Cubitt was instructed to remove marble fireplaces from the Pavilion and bring them to the Palace by railway and cart, and to take out stains, repolish and refix them in the rooms in the new wing; unfortunately Blore had not measured the size of the grates so some did not fit. Neither had he made provision for ‘warming apparatus’ for the new wing. This Cubitt now undertook, providing two large ‘wrot iron’ boilers with four-inch cast-iron pipes circulating the hot water, which he guaranteed would keep two staircases and two galleries of the first floor at a constant temperature of fifty-five degrees.
Cubitt did not install the steel grate and the ‘pair of massive Ormolu Firedogs representing Dragons and Chimera’ in the Chinese Dining Room. This was executed by a famous London smith, W. M. Feetham – it was the kind of ‘fancy’ work for which Cubitt was not equipped. This room and two other major rooms in the new wing were furnished with chinoiserie from the Pavilion, the Yellow Drawing Room receiving a fantastic marble chimneypiece designed by Robert Jones.
The exotic Pavilion furnishings and fittings were not out of keeping in the old Nash rooms; but they were somewhat incongruous in the pedestrian architecture of the new Blore east wing. Queen Victoria, however, was pleased with the ‘airy new rooms’. On 10 June 1849 she recorded with delight in her journal,
We breakfasted as we already dined last night in the new room … very handsomely fitted up with furniture etc from the Pavilion at Brighton; including the Chinese pictures that were on the wall there, the doors with the serpents etc … A dragon has been painted on the ceiling and harmonises with the rest. The small sitting room is also furnished with things from the Pavilion – all arranged according to my dearest Albert’s taste.70
Surprisingly, Prince Albert could accept the exotic Brighton furnishings.
The Palace improvements were not yet completed. It would be six more years before the ballroom was built. But by the spring of 1850, Blore considered his work was finished and retired. He had suffered much in the last years and he finished his career at Buckingham Palace without much praise and with a disagreeable court case. Blore and Cubitt were sued in the spring of 1851 by a Pimlico builder, William Denley, who claimed that they had infringed his patent for flue lining in the east wing of Buckingham Palace. Apparently he had patented a series of earthenware tubes to line the brickwork of chimneys, which superseded the traditional method of lining them with mortar mixed with fresh cow dung. The case dragged on until Cubitt settled out of court. The government paid their costs, but it was a squalid end to a respectable, if undistinguished career.
Decimus Burton agreed to take over from Blore, but as a successful architect he did not enjoy working under Parliamentary instruction. He did not stay long but did provide designs for the gates to the courtyard.
In 1850 the immediate problem was the Marble Arch, sitting there amongst the builders’ rubble in the forecourt like a great stranded whale. Suddenly the members of the Commission realized that the Great Exhibition was due to be opened in May 1851 and the removal of the Arch became urgent. The Queen and Prince Albert intended to make a ceremonial appearance on the new balcony to the crowds expected to throng the Mall: the Palace must look its best.
By September 1850 Burton’s plans for the Palace forecourt had been approved, with some alterations, by Lord Seymour, who had replaced Lord Carlisle at the Office of Woods and Forests, but he could not proceed until the Marble Arch was moved. Cubitt’s tender for its demolition and removal being accepted, his men began dismantling the Arch behind the great hoarding. Each marble block was numbered and, as The Builder recorded, ‘a drawing was made of each course, with corresponding numbers on the blocks’.71 According to Cubitt’s biographer, ‘all that now remained was the marble itself, the original York landings and stone steps, the iron girders and wooden joists, and copper skylights for the roof’.72 The dismantled Arch was taken into St James’s Park and lay there all autumn behind hoardings while the government made up its mind where to put it. Finally, it was decided to rebuild it at Cumberland Gate at the end of Oxford Street.
The exterior of the Arch was finished before the Great Exhibition in May.
Meanwhile the interior was completed. Inside, the brick-lined Arch steps led up to a ‘suite of rooms’ at the top, which were fitted with fireplaces and ventilators. The Department of Woods and Forests let these out to the police, who doubtless found it a convenient place to keep watch on the crowds thronging to the Exhibition in Hyde Park.
While Buckingham Palace was being improved and enlarged, Europe was in ferment. In 1848 there had been revolutions in almost every capital and it was the relations of Queen Victoria and Pr
ince Albert who sat on the rickety thrones. Uncle Leopold was safe in Belgium, though in his kingdom seeds of discord were planted that would spread across the world. In a smoke-filled room in Brussels in that February of 1848, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and their comrades were producing the Communist Manifesto, urging workers to ‘arise ye starvelings from your slumbers’ and throw off their chains. Prince Albert, who had studied political economy in Germany, was possibly the only one in Her Majesty’s Court who read anything of Karl Marx.
On 24 February Louis-Philippe, King of the French, the father of Uncle Leopold’s wife Louise, abdicated, escaping on 3 March in disguise to Newhaven. Prince Albert’s cousin, Princess Victoire, Duchesse de Nemours, who had danced so gaily in Buckingham Palace with her Coburg brothers, escaped from Paris, leaving her clothes and possessions to be worn by the Paris mob. Three days later excited workers shouted ‘Vive la République’ outside Buckingham Palace, and there was news of a monster demonstration planned by the Chartists for 10 April. The six points of their charter were in fact modest enough and most of the Chartists were serious, respectable working men. But accounts of the wild men among them were horrifying. Queen Victoria, still recovering from her sixth confinement, was evacuated to Osborne and she insisted Prince Albert should accompany her.