London - Edward Rutherfurd [521]
Harriet had been twenty-three when she met Penny and though he was two years younger she had been attracted at once by the bespectacled young man with his cautious, quiet, determined manner. His father, the banker, had made handsome provision for all his children in several trusts, but young Penny had ambitions of his own, in insurance. If her elder sisters had been married for their fortunes, Penny had not needed Harriet’s. It was just that it would never have occurred to him to marry a woman without a fortune, and she liked this about him too.
If the Crystal Palace itself was impressive, its contents, they soon discovered, were breathtaking. Every country of note in the entire world had a section. There was a stuffed elephant bearing a magnificent jewelled howdah from India; the fabulous Koh-i-noor diamond was on display, illumined by gaslight, too. From the United States came agricultural machinery including a cotton gin, Colonel Colt’s revolvers and a missionary floating church that went up and down the River Delaware. From Russia’s Tsar, magnificent sable furs; there was a Turkish pavilion, porcelain from China, all manner of useful goods from Canada and Australia, mineral specimens from South Africa. From France came a remarkable envelope-folding machine used by de la Rue and a fountain flowing delightfully with eau-de-Cologne. Berlin sent scientific instruments, lace-making machines. . . . But these were only a tiny handful of the wonders, artistic and manufactured, that continued acre after acre in the huge palace of glass.
Largest of all however, nearly half the space, was the exhibit of Britain herself. Carriages, engines, textile manufactures, the new electroplate system, clocks, furniture of the newly ornate style that would be known as Victorian, Wedgwood pottery; even, for the historically curious, a recreation by Mr Pugin, the brilliant architect and designer, of an entire medieval court – though when this was discovered to contain a popish crucifix amongst the decoration, it was felt to be un-English and rather disapproved of. Despite this one unfortunate lapse, the message of the exhibition could not be missed: Britain was prosperous, led all the world in manufacture, and was head of the greatest empire under the sun.
Apart from the loss of its American colonies seventy years before, the British Empire had never stopped expanding. Canada, the West Indies, great tracts of Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand were all under her sway, so that it was literally true that over the empire the sun never set. But this was no Oriental despotism. True, the British navy dominated the seas. True, also, some local resistance to the spread of her trade and enlightenment had been sharply put down. Yet Britain’s military might on land was actually tiny. The more sophisticated dominions, for all practical purposes, were growing towards a form of self-governing affiliation; the rest of the empire remained what it had always been – a patchwork of colonies run by traders, settlers, some scattered garrisons and a few, usually well-intentioned administrators who believed in a Protestant God and in trade. For commerce was the key. It was not tribute, but raw materials – especially the all-important cotton – that flowed back to Britain where they were manufactured and re-exported world-wide. It was commerce, encouraged by invention, that was raising its people to affluence and bringing civilization to the most distant quarters of the globe.
For two and a half hours Harriet and her husband toured the exhibits arm in arm, and only when they finally emerged back into the sunny open spaces of Hyde Park did they glance up at the sky and then look at each