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

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СКАЧАТЬ was never daunted. The RSA had highlighted the lack of good industrial and domestic design in the country in general, and from commercial manufacturers in particular. Now Cole became involved with a buoyant and popular campaign to promote new schools of design, to be run under government aegis, founding the Journal of Design to promote his cause. A parliamentary commission was set up, loaded with Cole-ites. By the kind of coincidence that Cole was pre-eminent in engineering, its plan—the reform of design and manufacture, and the role of the state in fostering that reform—was exactly what Cole intended his next, national, exhibition should deal with. In the meantime his 1849 RSA exhibition was even more successful than the previous two: Prince Albert agreed to present the prizes, and Queen Victoria gave sovereign approval by loaning an item for display.

For Cole’s grander plan, however, the government, in the way of governments in all places and at all times, offered merely lukewarm enthusiasm—and even that only if private sponsors could be found to guarantee that the costs would be covered. But Albert, sensing the momentum, was now ready to come on board. A Royal Commission was established, with Albert as honorary president, and Cole—never one for half measures—widened the Exhibition’s scope to include the entire world. Thomas Cubitt, the greatest speculative builder of his age, had given a rough estimate for the cost of realizing Cole’s dream: £50,000 for the building costs and £5,000 for administrative costs, with another £20,000 needed for prize money.* A Mr Fuller put up £10,000 for prizes, and the Messrs Munday committed to underwriting the project in return for a percentage of the gate money.

      While many discussed the elevating aspects 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.СКАЧАТЬ