Victoria: A Life

by A. N. Wilson

  It was a nerve-wracking experience. Although his English was by now pretty good, it was not perfect, and he rehearsed his speech with the Queen: ‘it seemed to make him quite as nervous to repeat it to me as to anyone else’.23 Albert could surely see, as could the Queen, that the Royal Family were now intimately bound up with the Exhibition in the minds of the public. If this thing failed, it would be a royal failure.

  When the site had been fixed in Hyde Park, there remained the question of the architect who would house the exhibits. Designs came in from all over the world, but the commission asked Isambard Kingdom Brunel to come up with something. It was not the great railway engineer’s most inspired moment, and by May, the Brunel scheme had been ridiculed in the press – a long, low brick structure which would have been an eyesore in the park, dwarfed by a huge iron dome the size of that of St Paul’s.

  It was then that Providence appeared to step in to help them. John Ellis, MP and chairman of Midland Railway, had a conversation with Joseph Paxton, the brilliant gardener who had created the Great Stove at Chatsworth. Ellis was so gripped by Paxton’s ideas about the acoustics, ventilation and appearance of any ideal exhibition space that he immediately whisked the Derbyshire genius off to the Board of Trade to persuade Lord Granville. Granville was out, but Henry Cole was there. They sent Paxton to Hyde Park to ‘step over’ the proposed site. That weekend, and the following Monday, Paxton went to see the opening of the railway bridge over the Menai Straits, and as he did so, he began to doodle designs on a piece of blotting paper. The next week, he put them into more detailed shape and by 20 June he was ready with his plans to show the commission. Peel, in his last days, was a great enthusiast.

  It was in part the shock at Peel’s death, felt in the House, which silenced the objections being raised by Parliament to the use of Hyde Park as an exhibition venue. Colonel Sibthorp brought a motion forbidding the use of the park on 4 July, which was overwhelmingly defeated. The world was now ready for Paxton’s giant greenhouse, or, as the comic magazine Punch called it, ‘the Crystal Palace’.

  It was to be 1,848 feet long, 456 feet wide at its broadest point and 108 feet high at the transept. Like many great architectural ideas, it was extremely simple, and, rather than necessitating the destruction of trees – as Sidthorp had feared – it actually incorporated the trees of the park within itself. The commission still dithered, considering other plans and tenders, but on 26 July, it formally recognized Paxton’s design.

  The entry in the Queen’s journal, 1 May 1851, is one of the most celebrated: ‘This day is one of the greatest & most glorious days of our lives, with which, to my pride & joy the name of my dearly beloved Albert is for ever associated!’

  The Green Park & Hyde Park were one mass of densely crowded human beings, in the highest good & most enthusiastic. I never saw Hyde Park look as it did, being filled with crowds as far as the eye could reach. A little rain fell, just as we started, but before we neared the Crystal Palace, the sun shone & gleamed upon the gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of every nation were flying. We drove up Rotten Roe [sic] & got out of our carriages at the entrance in that side. The glimpse through the iron gates of the Transept, the waving palms & flowers, the myriads of people filling the galleries & seats around, together with the flourish of trumpets, as we entered the building, gave a sensation I shall never forget, & I felt much moved. We went for a moment into a little room where we left our cloaks & found Mama & Mary. Outside all the princes were standing. In a few seconds we proceeded, Albert leading me; having Vicky at his hand, & Bertie holding mine. The sight as we came to the centre where the steps & chair (on which I did not sit) was placed, facing the beautiful crystal fountain was magic & impressive. The tremendous cheering, the joy expressed in every face, the vastness of the building, with all its decorations & exhibits, the sound of the organ (with 200 instruments & 600 voices, which seemed nothing), & my beloved Husband the creator of this great ‘Peace Festival’, inviting the industry & art of all nations of the earth, all this, was indeed moving, & a day to live forever. God bless my dearest Albert, & my dear Country which has shown itself so great today. One felt so grateful to the great God, whose blessing seemed to pervade the whole great undertaking.

  After the National Anthem had been sung, Albert left my side, & at the head of the Commissioners, – a curious assemblage of political & distinguished men, – read the Report to me, which is a long one, & I read a short answer. After this the Archbishop of Canterbury offered up a short & appropriate Prayer, followed by the singing of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, during which time the Chinese Mandarin came forward & made his obeisance. This concluded, the Procession of great length began which was beautifully arranged, the prescribed order, being exactly adhered to. The Nave was full of people, which had not been intended & deafening cheers & waving of handkerchiefs, continued the whole time of our long walk from one end of the building, to the other. Every face, was bright & smiling, & many even, had tears in their eyes. Many Frenchmen called out ‘Vive la Reine’.

  It is tantamount to a manifesto. Though Peel was not alive to see it, it was a prodigious demonstration of the alliance which now existed between the monarchy, and the future, as represented by glass and iron, by manufacturers, by economic liberalism, by British expansionism. If European countries wished to compete, they could not hope to do so by asserting the autocratic structures of the past, as in Austria, Russia or Turkey. The only future was the British future. Victoria and Albert had harnessed the Victorian economic success story to make it a political success story. William IV would certainly have agreed with old Colonel Sibthorp; so, too, in all likelihood, did Victoria’s cousin George Cambridge, for, though German-born and German-bred, the 2nd Duke of Cambridge was the archetypical English Colonel Blimp. For the time being, however, Victoria and Albert were able to feel justifiably smug.

  Charlotte Brontë, whose Jane Eyre (anonymously published as An Autobiography, edited by Currer Bell) was a favourite with the Queen, was one of the thousands of visitors to the Crystal Palace. ‘Its grandeur,’ she wrote, ‘does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there . . . It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth’.24

  The pessimists were all proved wrong. It was said that the mob would march on Hyde Park, that the Exhibition would be used as ‘cover’ for foreign spies or political agitators, that it would be impossible to police without enlisting police officers from Paris . . . It was feared that the visitors would be drunken – but alcohol was forbidden in the Crystal Palace; that they would be thirsty – but the contract, won by Schweppes, the Swiss carbonated drinks company, ensured that there was adequate catering. Where would they all relieve themselves? The practical question led to the (slow) adoption by London boroughs of the idea of public lavatories. Meanwhile, 827,000 people made use of the temporary ‘retiring rooms’ erected in the Exhibition, and countless more males used the urinals.

  The range of exhibits was as magical as Charlotte Brontë observed. From India there were hundreds of exhibits – silks, cottons, furniture, rubber, foodstuffs, leather goods, ceramics. Other parts of the Empire demonstrated their distinctive wares: snow shoes and sleighs from Canada, as well as mats fashioned from porcupine quills by Native Americans. The architectural styles on display included Augustus Welby Pugin’s medieval court, hard by stands displaying the most up-to-date products of Birmingham: gas fittings, brass bedsteads, buttons, needles, while agricultural machinery signalled a new English countryside. The Northern towns displayed their wares: a giant stainless steel knife from Sheffield, Titus Salt’s alpacas and moreens, heavy upholstery fabrics, from Bradford. There was a scale model of Liverpool docks, and a geological model showing 3,000 square miles of Northern England in relief. Photography, ironworks, statues and ceramics (Minton, Copeland, Ridgeway, Wedgwood, Mason, Worcester), steam engines, globes, clo
cks, all were here in profusion, as well as the madder-seeming modern ‘inventions’ – a device for tipping people out of bed at a particular hour. Here were French silks, German toys (400 moving dolls taking part in a garden fête in a model of the Castle Florence in Saxe-Coburg); the ‘comicalities’ of Hermann Plouquet of Stuttgart – a cane-brandishing stoat making baby rabbits learn their lessons, squirrels playing whist; the great silver filigree column from Sardinia; gold ore from the Mariposa mine in California; a model of the Niagara Falls and a mass of zinc from America weighing 16,400 pounds; marble statues (Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave); yet more agricultural implements – McCormick’s American reaping machine; the four decorated rooms from Vienna, including a neo-Gothic bookcase already donated by the Austrian Emperor to the Queen, a dining table in locust wood and a fountain which spurted eau-de-cologne; the Cuban room, heavy with cigar smoke; the Chinese room with silks, bamboo furniture, lacquered furniture, lanterns, fans, paintings on rice paper, samples of tea. The world had never seen anything like it, for the world was being shown itself: itself, that is to say, at peace, itself purged of bellicosity and angry diplomats, a world only of manufacturers and merchants, to whom the future surely belonged.

  The crowds were prodigious. For the first two days, the price of admission was £1, which kept out all but the two or three thousand wealthy; but the admission was lowered to half a crown on Fridays, five shillings on Saturdays and a shilling for the rest of the week. By the time these cheaper rates had been fixed only 200,000 people had attended, but the multitudes soon came – some 6 million visitors before the Exhibition closed.25

  When it did so, the newspapers, which had been so sceptical about the Exhibition before its opening, were almost universal in their praise. The Morning Chronicle saw it as ‘an important chapter in the history of the human race . . . As a people we are not what we were.’ Most of the papers congratulated themselves for being British, saluting their own sang-froid, chauvinisme, élan and other English virtues. But what had happened almost imperceptibly was that all these national characteristics – resourceful, steady in a crisis, financially astute, unflappable and rich – were ones which the press, and perhaps the public at large, were now prepared to assign in more or less equal proportions to themselves and to the royal pair. The monarchy was now firmly harnessed to the Victorian success story.

  NINE

  ‘GODLIKE MEN’

  VICTORIA AND ALBERT believed that 1851, that year of Exhibition-triumph, brought an added bonus in the removal of Lord Palmerston. They mistook a dramatic exit stage left for the final bow of that formidable player on the world stage. Sadly for both of them, Palmerston, a mere sixty-seven, had many years of energy and power left to him, and he would outlive the prince, over thirty-six years his junior, who had become his sworn enemy. Not only would he outlive the prince, but he would, for better or worse, be one of the big figures in the complete shift of European realpolitik. Russia, having been Britain’s uneasy rival and ally, would become her enemy in war. France, the old enemy in the Duke of Wellington’s heyday, having been viewed askance by the British Royal Family since 1815, would now become the great ally. The German-speaking lands, that is to say the great Central European landmass, would, as usual, be misunderstood and ignored by the British political Establishment.

  But that was not how it immediately seemed in the joyous aftermath of the Exhibition. By October 1851, £356,000 had been taken in entrance fees. The profit from the Exhibition had already reached over £200,000. Paxton’s palace was demolished, eventually to be rebuilt at Sydenham. The prince wanted to buy a permanent site for educational, scientific and cultural institutions, the land now occupied by the Royal Albert Hall, Imperial College, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Royal College of Music and the Royal College of Art: the so-called Albertopolis.1 It is not a bad legacy for a foreign prince of whom the British majority were so suspicious when he first arrived on their shores, nor for the Exhibition which he championed, and which pessimists had predicted would be a failure. A Royal Commission was set up to handle the surplus, and it exists to this day, funding fellowships and grants for advanced study.2 The last financial details concerning the purchase of the site, and the transfer of the funds, was part of the brief, in 1852, of a new Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was none other than ‘that dreadful’ Benjamin Disraeli. After a long discussion with the prince, Disraeli wrote to his sister that he thought Albert was ‘the best educated man I have ever met; most completely trained and not over-educated for his intellect, which is energetic and lively’.3 How it came about that Sir Robert Peel’s destroyer was Chancellor in 1852 was a complicated story. This was the most enmeshed and challenging political period of the Queen’s reign, and although, in personal terms, it was marked by the birth of yet another child – Prince Leopold, on 7 April 1853 – and by a very occupé family life, with the other children, it is one which found her involved with political events on an almost weekly basis, even when she was separated from London, in Osborne and Balmoral.

  Palmerston instinctively understood, and shared, the British public attitude to ‘abroad’: that is, he had a sense that Britain should get as much advantage as she could from the foreigner, while attempting, where humanely possible, to check and deplore his more barbarous excesses. In Europe, this made Britain ‘liberal’, since the British tended to side with the ‘underdogs’ – nationalists, dissidents of various kinds – against old-fashioned, often Catholic, autocracies. (In Asia and Africa, things were slightly different. There, British interests, and the desire to curb the ‘barbarism’ of the foreigner, led to administrations which, while trying to be fair-minded, were often racist and intrusive.) So it was that, when General von Haynau, the draconian ‘Butcher of Austria’, who had put down the attempted Revolution of 1848 with such severity, foolishly visited London in September 1851, he was mobbed when he was recognized at Barclay & Perkins Brewery, being unceremoniously dipped in a watering-trough, and narrowly escaping being lynched. Palmerston wrote a masterly letter of ‘apology’ to the Austrian Embassy, itemizing Haynau’s atrocities and explaining why he was hated in England. When the radical Hungarian leader Lajos Kossuth came to the capital in December, the Russians, anticipating Palmerston’s liberal welcome, asked specifically that Kossuth should receive no official recognition. The Queen passed this request on to her Foreign Secretary. Palmerston complied with the letter of his sovereign’s request, but he caused glee in all radical quarters, by receiving an English Radical Delegation congratulating him on his support for Kossuth against his Russian oppressors. The loyal address with which they presented Pam contained withering denunciations of the autocracies of Austria and Russia.

  How should a Whig with radical sympathies view events in France since the expulsion of the monarchy in 1848? Probably, Pam would have agreed with the minister of public works in the provisional government, Alexandre-Thomas Marie, who was a democrat, but a cautious one, believing that, ‘The despotism of a thousand heads is a thousand times more odious than the despotism of a single man.’4 In some ways, some such idea underpinned the limited constitutional monarchy which the British permitted themselves, together with their reformed Parliament. For that reason, the Queen allowed, and positively favoured, a gradual expansion of the franchise. ‘It was better to do it quietly,’ she told King Leopold, who had raised his eyebrows at Russell’s desire to extend the franchise yet further, ‘and not to wait till there was a cry for it.’5 Many French people felt – as Palmerston did – that ‘Bonapartism’ was the check on Bourbon tyranny on the one hand, and communism on the other. You could define ‘Bonapartism’ in any way you liked. Louis Napoleon himself is supposed to have said, after he had styled himself Napoleon III, ‘The empress is a legitimist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny and he is mad.’6

  It was because he feared ‘the despotism of a thousand’ that Palmerston shocked his radical supporters and s
aluted the coup d’état by Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Napoleon. Having been elected overwhelmingly as President of the new republic on 10 December 1848, the new Napoleon staged a coup d’état nearly three years later – 2 December 1851 – dismissing both his monarchist and his republican ministers. There was very limited resistance to the coup, and widespread support. The British Ambassador in Paris, Lord Normanby, deplored it, but even the Duke of Wellington had said, that summer, ‘France needs a Napoleon’.7 Palmerston agreed. When the French Ambassador in London, Count Walewski, sought an audience with the Foreign Secretary, Pam saw no need for flannel or discretion. Walewski, the natural son of the first Emperor Napoleon and the Countess Walewska, ‘l’épouse polonaise de l’Empereur’, had been married to Caroline Montagu, daughter of the Earl of Sandwich. She had died in childbirth and he had remarried, to an Italian, Marianne Ricci. This did not stop him playing the field and he was a familiar figure to Palmerston in the drawing rooms and country houses. Palmerston openly congratulated Walewksi on the Bonapartist coup.

  This time he went too far. Normanby, from Paris, wrote a long letter denouncing Palmerston and his ‘cavalier attitude’ to his position. This time, Lord John Russell had almost no option but to give Prince Albert the happy Christmas present of Palmerston’s dismissal. The prince-president (he had not yet declared himself emperor) was desolated. ‘La chute de Lord Palmerston est le coup le plus grave que j’ai reçu; il est le seul ami que je l’avais.’8