Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain. Judith Flanders

of art, science and education, Cole was promising the businessmen of the City that ‘some hundred thousand people [would] come flowing into London from all parts of the world by railways and steamboats to see the great exhibition’, and that businesses would feel ‘a direct and obvious benefit’ from it. The secretary to the executive committee produced a list of those who could expect to profit: the arts, agriculture, manufacture and trade, ‘whether as producers, distributors or consumers’. To win over popular opinion, advertising was actively used. The Royal Commission sent out placards reproducing a speech that the Conservative leader Lord Stanley—soon to be prime minister as the Earl of Derby—made in favour of the Exhibition, for public display. Posters were printed to put on railwaystation platforms and in trains, and the commissioners arranged for favourable pieces to appear in the papers.¹⁴ The kind of arguments that are now used routinely for the promotion of tourism as an economybooster were developed for the first time: that visitors would arrive, benefiting everyone from hotelkeepers to omnibus operators to food suppliers; that trade would be advertised both to home consumers and to audiences abroad; that, in effect, Britain would be displayed to the world as ‘the emporium of the commercial, and mistress of the entire world’, as the under-sheriff for London put it, rather more poetically than one might expect.¹⁵

      Cole’s plans for the Exhibition were growing ever larger, and enthusiasm from the public bodies to whom he spoke was increasing too. He soon realized that hundreds of small investors might fund the Exhibition more lavishly, while demanding far less—or no—overall control. He bought Munday’s out for just over £5,000, and began to solicit the support of local communities across the nation. Thousands of donations began to flood in, with more than 400 groups of merchants, businessmen and industrialists gathering funds and organizing the exhibits to be sent from their own regions. Before 1849 was over, 3,000 subscribers had been signed up; another 3,000 followed less than two months later. Altogether, £522,179 was raised in this way.¹⁶

      From the first, however, there was a tension over the aims of the Exhibition. There was no question that Albert saw the Exhibition as ‘a great collection of works of industry and art’, a place to demonstrate how technology had harnessed the natural world to create the Age of the Machine. With this in view, to show how man had become the master of nature, the committee elaborated an initial three-part outline of the subjects to be comprehended by the Exhibition—the raw materials of industry; the products manufactured from them; and the art used to beautify them—into a more formal thirty-section outline:

      Sect. I:—Raw Materials and Produce, illustrative of the natural productions on which human industry is employed:—Classes 1 to 4

      1. Mining and Quarrying, Metallurgy, and Mineral Products

      2. Chemical and Pharmaceutical processes and products generally

      3. Substances used as food

      4. Vegetable and Animal Substances used in manufactures, implements, or for ornament

      Sect. II:—Machinery for Agricultural, Manufacturing, Engineering, and other purposes and Mechanical Inventions,—illustrative of the agents which human ingenuity brings to bear upon the products of nature:—Classes 5 to 10

      5. Machines for direct use, including Carriages, Railway and Naval Mechanisms

      6. Manufacturing Machines and Tools

      7. Mechanical, Civil Engineering, Architectural, and Building Contrivances

      8. Naval Architecture, Military Engineering and Structures, Ordnance, Armour and Accoutrements

      9. Agricultural and Horticultural Machines and Implements (exceptional)

      10. Philosophical Instruments and Miscellaneous Contrivances, including processes depending on their use, Musical, Horological, Acoustical and Surgical Instruments.

      Sect. III:—Classes 11—29.—illustrative of the result produced by the operation of human industry upon natural produce

      11. Cotton

      12 & 15 [sic]. Woollen and Worsted

      13. Silk and Velvet

      14. Flax and Hemp

      16. Leather, Saddlery and Harness, Boots and Shoes, Skins, Fur and Hair

      17. Paper, Printing and Bookbinding

      18. Woven, Felted, and Laid Fabrics, Dyed and Printed (including Designs)

      19. Tapestry, Carpets, Floor-cloths, Lace, and Embroidery

      20. Articles of Clothing for immediate, personal or domestic use

      21. Cutlery, Edge and Hand Tools

      22. General Hardware, including Locks and Grates

      23. Works in Precious Metals, Jewellery, &c.

      24. Glass

      25. China, Porcelain, Earthenware, &c.

      26. Furniture, Upholstery, Paper Hangings, Decorative Ceilings, Papier Maché, and Japanned Goods

      27. Manufactures in Mineral Substances, for Building or Decoration

      28. Manufactures from Animal and Vegetable Substances, not being Woven or Felted

      29. Miscellaneous Manufactures and Small Wares.

      Sect. IV: Fine Arts:—Class 30

      30. Sculpture, Models, and Plastic Art, Mosaics, Enamels, &c. Miscellaneous objects of interest placed in the Main Avenue of the Building, not classified.¹⁷

      Others, however, saw that there was a danger in this kind of display of pure commodity—a danger that the Prince and many organizers had apparently missed. William Felkin, a hosiery and lace manufacturer, and exactly the kind of man who might have been expected to welcome commercial possibilities, was vehement. In his book The Exhibition in 1851, of the Products and Industry of All Nations. Its Probable Influence upon Labour and Commerce he said, ‘This collection of objects from all countries, is not intended to be an Emporium for masses of raw and manufactured goods. These fill the granaries and factories, the warehouses and shops of the world…This is not intended to be a place where goods are to be sold, or orders given; not a bazaar, fair, or mart of business; if so, it would be a perfect Babel. No one could possibly thread his way with comfort, through such a mazy labyrinth.’¹⁸

      This was the crux: was the Great Exhibition to be a museum, an exploration of the technology that had created, and been created by, the Industrial Revolution? Or was it to be a supermarket, a display of all the goods, all the commodities, of the age? During the organizational stages the non-commercial, educational aspect seemed to be winning out.

      The opening-day ceremonies were not promising to those in the audience who were interested in mercantilism rather than the social whirl. As Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, and a staunch republican, noted:

      To have rendered the pageant expressive, congruous, and really a tribute to Industry, the posts of honor next the Queen’s person should have been confided on this occasion to the children of Watt, of Arkwright and their compeers (Napoleon’s real conquerors;) while instead of Grandees and Foreign Embassadors [sic], the heirs of Fitch, of Fulton, of Jacquard, of Whitney, of Daguerre, &c., with the discoverers, inventors, architects and engineers to whom the world is primarily indebted for Canals, Railroads, Steamships, Electric Telegraphs, &c., &c., should have been specially invited to swell the Royal cortege. To pass over all these, and summon instead the descendants of some dozen lucky Norman robbers…any of whom would feel insulted by a report that his father or grandfather invented the Steam Engine or Spinning Jenny, is not the fittest way to honor Industry.¹⁹

Lyon Playfair, one of