The Rich Are with You Always (80 page)

  At her next sitting, she asked Roxby why he was so petulant about having to paint out her mole.

  "It's not petulant, Nora; it's a matter of honesty." Now that he sensed victory in the offing, he shed his jocularity. "I don't know whether you go through Mrs. Jarrett's housekeeping accounts. Do you?"

  "I have been known to."

  "I suppose if you find she's got threepence more in the petty cash box than her book shows she ought to have, you ignore it."

  Nora saw the trap even before the sentence was finished, for Roxby knew her well enough to suppose nothing of the kind. But if she was going to concede the point, she wanted it to be out of greatness of soul, not by a meek submission to logic.

  "It really upsets you so much?" she asked.

  "Dishonesty of any kind upsets me. Beauty is truth—truth to nature, truth to one's material, truth to one's
self.
Your wish is my command, but it does force me to violate all three."

  "Would it be very difficult to paint it back in again, Rocks?"

  He made a complicit little gesture and beckoned her over. She stood and stretched. While she was crossing the room he soaked a rag in white spirit. She loved the smell of his materials—linseed oil, poppy-seed oil, pigments, turpentine, copal varnish…

  When she could see the painting—and it was always a shock to find herself staring so laconically back, with eyes that followed her around the room—he rubbed gently at the flesh tones over the offending mole. They came away almost at once, leaving the original painting showing once again.

  "Warts and all," he said, vastly satisfied.

  "How?" She had by now learned enough about paints and their drying rates to be mystified.

  "I thought you might come to regret it," he answered. "The flesh tones I put on top of it were mixed with olive oil." Still she was puzzled. "Olive oil does not dry," he added.

  She was angry. She did not like to be anticipated in her caprice. "You are selfish," she said, walking back to her position.

  But his smile soon won her over again. "Rocks," she said, "will you take me to the Exhibition in May?"

  "Won't you be going with Stevenson?"

  "Of course. And again with the girls. And again with the boys. And we're making a big party of friends too. But I would like especially to have
your
opinion of the displays."

As one of the guarantors of the Great Exhibition, John had certain privileges— free season tickets for himself and his family; the right to a gallery place on the southeast corner of the junction between apse and nave on opening day, looking immediately down on the royal dais; and, at the end, the right to visit and bring any number of friends on the two days between the closing, on the fifteenth of October, and the dismantling of the exhibits. He also assumed the right to walk around any time he liked in order to watch the progress of the building. Charles Fox, and Paxton when he was there, were always very amenable and sometimes even invited his opinion on this or that problem. Very early on, John realized that building in cast iron was a specialty beyond him; indeed, no one in the world but Fox could have put up the building in time—and he often said as much to both men. In January, when an acre of the glazing blew off in a gale, he lent them two hundred Stevenson men to get back the time lost. All rancour was gone.

  It intrigued him to think that even ten years earlier, the building could not have been attempted in that form. The quality and dimensions of the iron would have been too variable; there was no machine then for turning out glass panes of that size and quantity; the railways to transport these materials had not been built; and the electric telegraph for speeding verbal communication between the many parties had then been a toy on a few miles only of the Great Western Railway. Now there were nearly two thousand route miles in Britain alone, and a third-time-lucky cable being laid across to France.

  It meant that every bit of iron and glass that arrived on the site was used within twenty-four hours; there was no stockpiling of materials anywhere—and thus, as Nora was quick to point out, no capital tied up in stocks.

  From February onward, when the exhibits began to arrive, there was always something new and interesting to see. John actually played a part in reassembling the biggest of the machinery exhibits—the great hydraulic ram, one of the pair from the Britannia Bridge. That day was memorable in another respect, too, for it was the day that the famous tenor Herr Reichardt had been invited to pit his voice against the supposedly fragile crystal of the palace. Someone had vowed that the music to be played at the opening and at set times of day throughout the Exhibition would shatter the glass, which would shower down and "cut the ladies to mincemeat." Joshua's triumph at Jericho gave the prediction a scriptural authority.

  The building resounded with the usual hammering and shouting, whistling and sawing. But as Reichardt began, those nearest him fell silent. He stood at the crossing, between apse and nave, beside Osler's great crystal fountain, which had just been completed; and his rich, powerful tenor rang out in those confines with a most beautiful resonance. As wave after wave of song poured down the aisles and galleries, everyone else fell silent; in the end, two thousand workmen stood spellbound, captivated in that eerie and magical vibrancy. It was the most moving moment John could remember, as they stood bathed in the flood of that perfect voice. When Reichardt finished, not a man breathed. They let the very echoes fade to a whisper before they dared burst into applause, and then it rose to a tumult.

  Then came the orchestra, and finally Willis's grand organ with all the power of its forty-five thousand pipes. Later inspection revealed that not one of the 900,000 superficial feet of glass, on its 202 miles of sash bar, fixed to their 2,224 trellis girders and 358 trusses, supported on 1,060 iron columns, was in any way affected by this
onslaught acousticale.

  As the official opening on May Day drew nearer and all the 100,000 exhibits found their correct places somewhere along the eleven miles of exhibition stand inside the Crystal Palace, John began to grasp the true magnitude of what was happening in England that year. Only men of the calibre of Brunel and Robert Stephenson would have attempted anything on this scale and have carried it off so perfectly. Only they, with their long experience of railways and of catering to the needs of thousands, could have visualized exactly what was involved. Even what might seem the simplest task—to get each exhibit to its right place, both in the Palace and in the catalogue—could have defeated lesser men, especially when those exhibits arrived toward the end at the rate of five thousand a day.

  By the end of April, when the sawdust and putty scrapings were swept out and burned, the floors all scrubbed, the matting laid, the barriers and turnstiles installed, the royal dais erected and the great canopy suspended above it, and the dust sheets taken off the machines and the statues, models and cases, carpets and tapestries, furniture and stuffed beasts, weapons and minerals, fossils and fans, chandeliers and fountains…by then John thought he knew the Exhibition as well as any man living. But, as he was slowly to learn, he knew all about it
except
its one most important feature.

Thursday the first of May was fine and warm—English-warm, which no one could mistake for hot. And to show it was an English summer, a light sprinkling of rain fell, enough to keep down the dust as the queen and Prince Albert left Buckingham Palace in the state coach, accompanied by a troop of the Life Guards and half a dozen other royal carriages. Since early morning, the bells of all the churches in London had been ringing; it sounded like a vast beehive in swarm. Since early morning the enterprising had been out, hammering together the timber shoring on which they would rent staging and benches to those who had failed to get a kerbside vantage point. Since early morning too, East Enders had trudged west with their street barrows piled high with ginger beer, fatty cakes, gingerbread, and tins of brandy balls, the girls and women carrying wicker sieves laden with pyramids of oranges. Others carried trays spread with snow-white linen and laden with pigs' trotters, cow heel, and paper-thin sandwiches of ham. Near the park gates, every other man seemed to bear a tray filled with bright medallions of the Crystal Palace, and Crystal Palace charms and mementoes.

  No one needed to ask the way—simply follow that irresistible tide of carefree lads and gaily dressed lasses, of fathers and wives and jaunty children—skipping and bowling hoops, flouncing shawls, fluttering ribbons, munching apples, cracking nuts, laughing and chattering their ten thousand ways to the park.

  On the calm waters of the Serpentine floated the miniature frigate
Prince of
Wales,
its cannon ready charged to salute the queen's arrival. The intrepid aeronaut Charles Spencer stood by the basket of his balloon, ready to enter and rise up into the air the moment she declared the Exhibition open. At half-past ten, John and Nora had descended from their carriage on the north side of the park and walked under the trees, all in new leaf and bright green in the sparkling sun, over the Serpentine Bridge and Rotten Row and in by one of the back entrances—not, of course, the one the queen was to use. People eyed them curiously. Distinguished visitors did not arrive on foot. But at least they had avoided the thousand state coaches and the three and a half thousand broughams, clarences, post chaises, cabs, and other vehicles that stretched in lines back through Knightsbridge, through the toll gate at Hyde Park Corner, along Piccadilly, down Haymarket, through Trafalgar Square, all the way to the Strand.

  When they were up in their places, on the balcony overlooking the royal dais, and had a chance to look around, even John, who had seen the building grow from its marker pegs up, was awed. Already about thirty thousand people were there and thousands more were still to come. The murmur that arose from so many was like the distant chatter of a vast colony of birds, or rushing waters heard from afar. It seemed to charge the air with a special kind of iridescence in which distance was both magnified and lost. The elms enclosed within the Palace had burst early into leaf and now spread luxuriant high-summer branches to shade the courts below. Along all the galleries that overlooked the nave grew a profusion of tropical flowers and foliage, their colours set off perfectly against the gorgeous hues of the carpets and the richly dyed fabrics—the choice of the finest weavers and producers from the four corners of the Empire. Detail was lost in that infinite variety; in its place came an almost mystical awareness of the tens of thousands of unseen hands—of inventors, labourers, proprietors, and managers—whose collaboration on this unprecedented work had now, at last, on this great day, borne fruit.

  Greatest of all was the building itself. Intended as no more than a cheap and ultimately demountable shell against the weather, it gave a thrill of surprise and delight to everyone who entered it—especially beneath the great curves of the transept soaring up over a hundred feet—and made to seem even loftier by the ease and grace with which they arched over the huge elms, giants of the park. Never before had people stood in a building of that size where the play of light and air was so free. To enter and be still and then to lift one's gaze to the skies induced a sense of wonder and mystery that was as close to a religious experience as a secular occasion could get. On this day, with the massed choirs and organ and the presence of the archbishop of Canterbury, the two were, in any case, merging.

  About half an hour before the royal party arrived, the court began to assemble. It was the most gorgeous scene that London had ever beheld. In the magical light that fell from all around, the gold braid and glittering medals and ornaments were like a coloured fire. The silken sashes and garters, the turbans and fez caps, the embroidered waistcoats of white silk and the rich brown court suits of the ambassadors were all set off against the uniforms of the functionaries—the gentlemen at arms with long white plumes cascading over golden helmets, the trumpeters with their silver trumpets held against cloaks of gold, the beefeaters in their black and scarlet tunics and black velvet caps, the aldermen of the City in crimson and ermine, the heralds in their blue silk crested with golden lions and other devices, Garter King-at-Arms sumptuous in red velvet emblazoned with gold, the archbishop in cope and mitre with full lawn sleeves, and, ringing them all, the red and yellow uniforms of the miners and sappers and the dark blue of the police.

  At a few minutes to noon, the royal carriages and the bright livery of coachmen and postillions flashed through the entrance court and passed on around the building. They were swiftly followed by the troop of Life Guards, their burnished steel helmets and breastplates sparkling in the sun. An awed hush fell upon the entire assembly as every head craned toward the entrance from Rotten Row.

  Moments later, the queen and her entourage entered, glimpsed as yet only fleetingly through the bars of the great bronze gates behind the dais. With that flair for dramatic but unflustered ceremonial that is uniquely English, the beefeaters drew wide the gates at the perfect moment to reveal the young queen, in pink satin shimmering with diamonds and silver, wearing a light tiara of diamonds and feathers, on the arm of Prince Albert, resplendent in the full scarlet dress of a field marshal. Hand-in-hand with them came the Prince of Wales in Highland dress and the princess royal in white lace, with a garland of wild roses in her hair.