CHAPTER XVI.

“I yence follow’d Marget, the toast amang aw maks—An Peg hed a red cheek and bonny dark e’e—But suin as she fan I depended on labour,She snurl’d up her neb and nae mair luik’d at me.“This meks my words gud; nobbet brag o’ your uncle,And get a peer hawf-wit to trumpet yer praise,You may catch whee you will, they’ll caress ye and bless ye,It’s money, nit merit, they seek now-a-days.”The Lasses of Carel.

“I yence follow’d Marget, the toast amang aw maks—An Peg hed a red cheek and bonny dark e’e—But suin as she fan I depended on labour,She snurl’d up her neb and nae mair luik’d at me.

“I yence follow’d Marget, the toast amang aw maks—

An Peg hed a red cheek and bonny dark e’e—

But suin as she fan I depended on labour,

She snurl’d up her neb and nae mair luik’d at me.

“This meks my words gud; nobbet brag o’ your uncle,And get a peer hawf-wit to trumpet yer praise,You may catch whee you will, they’ll caress ye and bless ye,It’s money, nit merit, they seek now-a-days.”The Lasses of Carel.

“This meks my words gud; nobbet brag o’ your uncle,

And get a peer hawf-wit to trumpet yer praise,

You may catch whee you will, they’ll caress ye and bless ye,

It’s money, nit merit, they seek now-a-days.”

The Lasses of Carel.

Letus now shift the scene for awhile, and turn our attention once more to the Crystal Palace.

At last, the long looked-for shilling-day had arrived. Barriers had been placed up outside the building, so as to stem the expected crush, and a double force of police had been “laid on” from Scotland-yard, and the whole of the officials had been ordered to be at their posts an hour or two earlier than usual, so that by opening the door before the appointed time, the “rush” might be prevented. Even George Cruikshank himself, confident that a moiety of the metropolis, at least, would be congregated outside the building, had prepared a most vivid delineation of the probable consequences of the rush and crush—the cram and the jam—that every one expected to take place on the eventful occasion. If twenty thousand people attend at five shillings, surely, according to Cocker, said the Executive Committee, five times as many more will come when the charge of admission is five times less.

But alas for the vain hopes of this vain world! as all the speakers at all the “May meetings” invariably exclaim; for, on the eventful day, the hundred thousand visitors “in posse,” dwindled down to twenty thousand “in esse.” The two policemen who had been placed outside the gilt cage of the Mountain of Light, the extra “force” that was stationed beside the Queen of Spain’s jewels, the additional “Peelites” who had been quartered at every point and turn of the interior to direct the crowd which way to move, stared and grinned at one another as they saw the people saunter, one by one, into the building, instead of pouring in by tens of thousands, as had been anticipated. The Executive Committee knit their brows, and bit their thumbs, and then suddenly discovered the cause of the absence of the people. The masses are busy working for their bread, and are waiting for their holiday-time, when they always spend a large amount of their earnings in recreation and enjoyment; and if they come even by twenty thousands now, surely they will come by hundreds of thousands then.

Accordingly, the same farce, of barriers and police, is enacted again, with the same disappointment; for, to the inscrutable wonder of the Executive Committee, the number of visitors during the Whitsun holidays is even less than the week before, and then ensue various speculations as to the cause, and the following reason is, after much cogitation, gravely propounded in explanation of the anomaly:—“The self-denying patience of the people, their habitual tendency to postpone pleasure to business, and their little inclination to rush madly forward in quest of what can be seen as well, or better, a week or a month hence—these seem to be the natural and truest solutions of the result.”

Now, unfortunately for this pretty compliment, a trip to Greenwich Fair or Hampton Court, on this same Whit-Monday, would soon have convinced the Executive Committee that “the shilling folk” were neither remarkable for self-denial nor extreme patience in their enjoyments; while the general observance of “Saint Monday” by the operatives might have assured any one, in the least acquainted with their characters, that, far from being distinguished by any habitual tendency to postpone pleasure to business, they are peculiarly prone to make business give way to pleasure.

But it was necessary, in order to account for the disappointment, to put some sentimental gloss on the occurrence; and, therefore, men whose lives were passed in toil, and to whom pleasure is therefore the highest possible luxury—merely as rest to the body and recreation to the faculties—were made to prefer work to enjoyment; while patience, self-denial, and every virtue under heaven, were ascribed to people, who, as contra-distinguished from the moneyed classes, are ignorant of the advantages of saving, and who, getting their money hardly, are ever ready to taste the delight of spending it. This disposition to cant, and varnish matters over with a sickly sentimentality, angelizing or canonizing the whole body of operatives of this country, instead of speaking of them as possessing the ordinary vices and virtues of human nature,—as being the same patchwork of black and white,—the same chequered chessboard, fitted for the game and moves of life,—this tendency to put high and heroic motives on every-day conduct is the besetting sin of the age.

None admire the simple sturdy honesty of the working men of England more than ourselves; but to say that they like work better than pleasure, would be to chime in with the rhodomontade of the time, and make out that there is an especial delight in industry,—that is to say, in continuous labour; whereas this is precisely what is repulsive to human nature, and what all men are striving, and, indeed, paying large sums of money to avoid. If industry be such a supreme enjoyment, as the idle rich ever rejoice in declaring, then where is the virtue of it? where the merit of doing that which we have a natural bias to do? Let those who think work a pleasure try a week’s mental or manual labour, and then, feeling what a negative bliss there is in mere rest, get to know what it is to yearn, like a schoolboy, for a day’s leisure, ease, and amusement. It is well for fat and phlegmatic citizens to call people “lazy scoundrels,” and bid them “go and work;” but let these gentlemen themselves try their soft hands at labour, even for a day, and then they will feel how much easier, and, as the world goes, how much more profitable, it is to trade on others’ labour than to labour for oneself. No man, says the adage, makes a fortune by the work of his own hands. “Oh, sir!” replied the “valiant” Spanish beggar, when asked by the rich merchant why he did not go and work, “You don’t know how lazy I am.” The rich merchant was, of course, disgusted with the reply, but then he was not aware how lazy he himself naturally was. He was one of those who felt satisfied that industry is a special delight (though but rarely known to be industrious themselves), and who, consequently, believed that the honest poor always prefer labour to enjoyment, having, in the words of the Executive Committee, an habitual tendency to postpone pleasure for business.

But the reason why the shilling folk absented themselves from the Great Exhibition at first was, because none of their own class had seen it, and they had not yet heard of its wonders, one from the other. But once seen, and once talked about in their workshops, their factories, and—it must be said—their taprooms, each gradually became curious to see what had astonished and delighted his fellows.

They soon began to see that the Great Exhibition, rightly considered, is a huge academy for teaching the nobility of labour, and demonstrating the various triumphs of the useful arts over external nature.

It may to the unreflecting appear to require but a small exercise of skill to grow their food, weave their garments, or construct their houses; but set your “independent” gentleman to do either one or the other, and what a poor useless wretch he immediately becomes. We have, indeed, too long been taught to think, that an independent man, like an honest man, is “the noblest work of God;” as if it were not the noblest thing a man could do to labour for the food he eats, and as if what we are led to call an independent gentleman were not the most dependent of all animals in creation. Put such an one on an uninhabited island, and would he not be as helpless as an infant? What could he—thisindependentman—do, when he had really todependon none others but himself for his living?

Far be it from us to assert that manual dexterity or muscular labour is thesummum bonumof human existence; but what we wish to say is, that, owing so much of our comfort and happiness to both, we should honour them more than we do; and that, above all, if society would really have the world progress, it should do away with the cheat, which makes those men the most “respectable” who do the least for the bread they eat. If we wish to make gentlemen of our working men (we use the word “gentleman” in its highest Dekkerian sense, and certainly not in its mere conventional signification), our first step must be to assert the natural dignity of labour. So long as we look upon work or to it as a meanness, so long will our workers and toilers remain mean. Let industry be with us “respectable”—as it is really in the natural arrangement of things—and the industrious poor instead of the idle rich will then be the really respectable men of this country.

Let those who doubt the respectability of labour, consider for one moment what years of thought, and study, and patience, are involved in even the commonest industrial process. “A man would be laughed at,” says Mandeville, in his “Fable of the Bees,” “that should discover luxury in the plain dress of the pauper, in the thick parish coat, and coarse workhouse shirt beneath it. And yet what a number of people, how many different trades, and what a variety of skill and tools must be employed to have the most ordinary Yorkshire cloth! What depth of thought and ingenuity, and what length of time must it have cost, before man could have learned from a seed to raise and prepare so useful a product as linen! Must not that society be vainly curious among whom this admirable commodity, after it is made, shall not be thought fit to be usedeven by the poorest of all, before it is brought to a perfect whiteness, which is not to be done but with the assistance of great chemical knowledge, joined to a world of industry and patience? Can we reflect,” he continues, “not only on the cost laid out in this luxurious invention, but likewise on the little time the whiteness of it endures (in which great part of its beauty consists), so that at every six or seven days, at farthest, it wants cleaning, and is, consequently, while it lasts, a continual charge to the wearer—can we, I say, reflect on all this, and not think it an extravagant piece of nicety, that those who receive alms of the parish should not only have whole garments made of this operose manufacture, but likewise, that as soon as they are soiled, we should make use of, in order to restore them to their original purity, one of the most judicious, as well as difficult compositions that chemistry can boast—a composition with which, when dissolved in water, by the help of fire, the most detersive and yet innocent lixivium is prepared, that human industry or ingenuity has been able to invent?”

But if these arts are sufficient to excite our wonder, especially when made to contribute to the happiness of the most destitute of our race, and to confer on our paupers comforts and luxuries, formerly unknown to our princes, surely the art of working in metal—the manufacture of the buttons on the workhouse coat, the making of the nails on the bottom of the workhouse floor, is a thousand times more wonderful. Who can look at the commonest pocket-knife or padlock, and not feel an intense reverence for the art and artists that could fashion those most useful instruments out of a lump of stone? To become conscious of the skill displayed in the various processes, we should have a knowledge of the difficulties to be overcome; and nothing will give us so profound a sense of these as to endeavour to make one or other similar instruments for ourselves. Or if we wish to have a just appreciation of the intellect required for the discovery and perfection of the metallurgic arts, let us imagine ourselves placed on an uninhabited island—another Juan Fernandez—and then fancy how we, even though we have lived among the very arts all our days, should set to work. Let us think whether we could make a pin or a needle out of a piece of rock to save our lives.

Is there any more skill to put words together than to manufacture a razor out of a lump of iron-stone?Weknow which seems to us by far the easier occupation of the two. Nevertheless, without any wish to indulge in that mock humility which seeks to disparage our own productions, when, if there be an innate propensity, it is to value our own work immeasurably beyond its true worth, we must confess that the one craft appears no more worthy of respect than the other; so, we say again, the Great Exhibition, where all these matters are forced upon the mind, rightly considered, is a huge academy for teaching men the true dignity of even what are thought the inferior grades of labour.

The great fallacy—the most pernicious error of the present day—is the belief that a knowledge of reading and writing constitutes education. “Reading and writing,” it has been well said, “is no more education than a knife and fork is a good dinner.” To teach a man how to read and write is, as it were, to confer upon him a new sense. All our senses differ one from another in having varioustelescopicpowers—that is to say, of perceiving external objects at greater or less distances. For touching and tasting, it is necessary that the object should be in immediate contact with the body; for smelling, the object may be slightly removed from us; for hearing, it may be still more remote; and for seeing, it may be the most distant of all. Nevertheless, it is necessary in all these cases that the object of perception should bepresentwith us: with reading and writing, however, the telescopic power is immeasurably extended, and we are made cognizant of phenomena occurring hundreds of miles distant, and hundreds of years ago. As our senses, therefore, are merely ducts of knowledge, so are reading and writing merely the means of acquiring information. We might as well believe that the addition of a nose, or a pair of eyes or ears—that the faculty of seeing, hearing, or smelling, in short, should make creatures wise or good, as that the arts of orthoëpy and orthography were the great panacea for all social and moral evil.

No! if we would really make people wiser and better, we must make them acquainted with the laws of the material, mental, and moral universe in which they are placed, and upon which their happiness is made to depend. A knowledge of the laws ofmatterenables a man to promote the physical good—of the laws of mind, the intellectual good—of the laws of the heart, the moral good, both of himself and his fellow-creatures. According as we become acquainted with the various substances and circumstances existing and occurring in the material world, and thereby come to understand their relation to each other as well as to ourselves, so are we enabled to give a particular direction to the succession of events without, and so to alleviate the wants and increase the pleasures of ourselves and others. According, too, as we get to know the links which bind thought to thought, as well as the ties which connect our perceptions with certain classes of relations—with our feelings of beauty, sublimity, or ludicrousness—so are we enabled to induce pleasant trains of ideas, and to promote the delight of those around us. And thus it is in the moral universe. According as we study the connexions between our acts and emotions, and become convinced of the felicity which attends the contemplation of any benefit disinterestedly conferred, and the uneasiness which accompanies the remembrance of any wanton injury, so are we the more anxious to encourage the good and restrain the evil impulses of our nature.

Now, the Great Exhibition, looked at in its true light, is, we say once more, a huge academy for teaching men the laws of the material universe, by demonstrating the various triumphs of the useful arts over external nature.

One great good the Exhibition assuredly must do, and that is to decrease the large amount of slop or inferior productions that are flooding the country, and which, in the rage for cheapness, are palmed off as equal to the handiwork of the most dexterous operatives. Were the public judges of workmanship—had they been made acquainted with the best work of the best workmen, and so possessed some standard of excellence by which to test the various kinds of labour, it would be impossible for the productions of the unskilful artisan to be brought into competition with those of the most skilful. Owing to the utter ignorance of the public, however, upon all such matters, the tricky employer is now enabled to undersell the honourable master by engaging inferior workmen, while the honourable master, in order to keep pace with the tricky employer, is obliged to reduce the wages of the more dexterous “hands.” Hence, we see the tendency of affairs at present is, for the worse to drag the better handicraftsmen down to their degradation, instead of the better raising the worse up to their pre-eminence.

The sole remedy for this state of things is greater knowledge on the part of the public. Accustom the people continually to the sight of the best works, and they will no longer submit to have bad workmanship foisted upon them as equal to good.

To those unversed in the “labour question,” this may appear but a small benefit, but to those who know what it is to inculcate a pride of art—to make the labourer find delight in his labour—to change him from a muscular machine into an intellectual artist, it will seem perhaps as great a boon as can be offered to working men. At present, workmen are beginning to feel that skill—the “art of industrial occupations”—is useless, seeing that want of skill is now beating them out of the market. One of the most eminent of the master shoemakers in London assured us that the skilled workmen in his business were fast disappearing before the children-workers in Northampton; and, indeed, we heard the same story from almost every trade in the metropolis. The bad are destroying the good, instead of the good improving the bad.

The antidote for this special evil is a periodical exhibition of the works of industry and art. Make the public critics of industrial art, and they will be sure to call into existence a new race of industrial artists—but as it is, both the public and the workmen are the prey of greedy, tricky tradesman.

It was some time before “the shilling folk” could be got to see these things, and therefore they did not go down in a body, and besiege the doors of the Crystal Palace, clamouring for admission all of them together, immediately the price was brought within their means. Gradually, however, they have come to see the true uses of the Great Show, and they now attend in almost the same vast concourses as the sanguine Executive Committee were led to believe they would on the first day.

The consequence is, that the groups within the building have already assumed a very picturesque appearance. To those who have watched the character of the visitors since the opening—the change in the dresses, manners, and objects of the sight-seers has been most marked and peculiar.

The alteration, too, has been almost as striking outside the building as it has in the interior. For the first week or two, the road within a mile of the “Glass Hive” was blocked with carriages. From the Prince of Wales’ Gate to Apsley House there stretched one long line of cabs, omnibusses, carriages, “broughams,” “flies,” now moving for a few minutes, and now stopping for double the time, while the impatient visitors within let down the blinds and thrust their heads out to see how far the line extended.

At every intersecting thoroughfare stood clusters of busy policemen, seizing horses by the reins, and detaining the vehicles till the cross current had in a measure ceased. And here might be seen persons threading between the blocked carriages, and bobbing beneath the horses’ heads, in order to pass from one side of the road to the other. To seek to pass through the Park gates was about as dangerous an experiment as “shooting” the centre arch of “Old London Bridge.”

Thenthe journey to and from the Great Exhibition consumed some hours of the day, but now there is scarcely a carriage or a Hansom cab to be seen. The great stream of carriage visitors has ceased (except on the more expensive days), and the ebb and flood of pedestrians set. The “southern entrance” is no longer beset with broughams, but gathered round it are groups of gazers, too poor or too “prudent” to pay for admission within. The public-houses along the road are now filled to overflowing, for outside them are ranged long benches, on which sit visitors in their holiday attire, resting on their way. Almost all the pedestrians, too, have baskets on their arms, evidently filled with the day’s store of provisions. The ladies are all “got up” in their brightest-coloured bonnets and polkas, and as they haste along, they “step out” till their faces are seen to glow again with their eagerness to get to the Grand Show; while the gentlemen in green or brown felt “wide-awakes,” or fluffy beaver hats, and with the cuffs of their best coats, and the bottoms of their best trowsers turned up, are marching heavily on—some with babies in their arms, others with baskets, and others carrying corpulent cotton umbrellas.

And inside the Great Exhibition the scene is equally different from that of the first week or two. The nave is no longer filled with elegant and inert loungers—lolling on seats, and evidently come there to be seen rather than to see. Those who are now to be found there, however, have come to look at the Exhibition, and not to make an exhibition of themselves. There is no air of display about them—no social falsity—all is the plain unvarnished truth. The jewels and the tapestry, and the Lyons silks, are not now the sole objects of attraction. The shilling folk may be an “inferior” class of visitors, but at least they know something about the works of industry, and what they do not know, they have come to learn.

Here you see a railway guard, with the silver letters on his collar, and his japan pouch by his side, hurrying, with his family, towards the locomotive department. Next, you come to a carpenter, in his yellow fluffy flannel jacket, descanting on the beauties of a huge top, formed of one section of a mahogany tree. Then may be seen a hatless and yellow-legged Blue-coat boy mounting the steps of one of the huge prismatic lighthouses, to have a glance at the arrangements of the interior. Peeping into the model of the Italian Opera are several short-red-bodied and long-black-legged Life-Guardsmen; while, among the agricultural implements, saunter clusters of countrymen in smockfrocks. On the steps of the crimson-covered pedestals are seated small groups of tired women and children, some munching thick slices of bread and meat, the edges of which are yellow with the oozing mustard. Around the fountains are gathered other families, drinking out of small mugs, inscribed as “presents for Charles or Mary;” while all over the floor—walk where you will—are strewn the greasy papers of devoured sandwiches. The minute and extensive model of Liverpool, with its long strip of looking-glass sea and thousands of card-board vessels, is blocked round with wondering artisans, some, more familiar with the place, pointing out particular streets and houses. And as you pass by the elaborate representation, in plaster, of Underdown Cliff, you may hear a young sailor—the gloss upon whose jacket indicates that he has but recently returned from sea—tell how he went round the Needles last voyage in a gale of wind. Most of the young men have catalogues or small guide-books in their hands, and have evidently, from the earnest manner in which they now gaze at the object, and now refer to the book, come there to study the details of the whole building.

Some of the Drolleries of The Great Exhibition of 1851.

But if the other parts of the Great Exhibition are curious and instructive, the machinery, which has been from the first the grand focus of attraction, is, on the “shilling days,” the most peculiar sight of the whole. Here every other man you rub against is habited in a corduroy jacket, or a blouse, or leathern gaiters; and round every object more wonderful than the rest, the people press, two and three deep, with their heads stretched out, watching intently the operations of the moving mechanism. You see the farmers, their dusty hats telling of the distance they have come, with their mouths wide agape, leaning over the bars to see the self-acting mills at work, and smiling as they behold the frame spontaneously draw itself out, and then spontaneously run back again. Some, with great smockfrocks, were gazing at the girls in their long pinafores engaged at the doubling-machines.

But the chief centres of curiosity are the power-looms, and in front of these are gathered small groups of artisans, and labourers, and young men whose red coarse hands tell you they do something for their living, all eagerly listening to the attendant, as he explains the operations, after stopping the loom. Here, too, as you pass along, you meet, now a member of the National Guard, in his peculiar conical hat, with its little ball on top, and horizontal peak, and his red worsted epaulettes and full-plaited trowsers; then you come to a long, thin, and bilious-looking Quaker, with his tidy and clean-looking Quakeress by his side; and the next minute, may be, you encounter a school of charity-girls, in their large white collars and straw bonnets, with the mistress at their head, instructing the children as she goes. Round the electro-plating and the model diving-bell are crowds jostling one another for a foremost place. At the steam brewery, crowds of men and women are continually ascending and descending the stairs; youths are watching the model carriages moving along the new pneumatic railway; young girls are waiting to see the hemispherical lamp-shades made out of a flat sheet of paper; indeed, whether it be the noisy flax-crushing machine, or the splashing centrifugal pump, or the clatter of the Jacquard lace machine, or the bewildering whirling of the cylindrical steam-press,—round each and all these are anxious, intelligent, and simple-minded artisans, and farmers, and servants, and youths, and children clustered, endeavouring to solve the mystery of its complex operations.

For many days before the “shilling people” were admitted to the building, the great topic of conversation was the probable behaviour of the people. Would they come sober? will they destroy the things? will they want to cut their initials, or scratch their names on the panes of the glass lighthouses? But they have surpassed in decorum the hopes of their well-wishers. The fact is, the Great Exhibition is to them more of a school than a show. The working-man has often little book-learning, but of such knowledge as constitutes the education of life—viz., the understanding of human motives, and the acquisition of power over natural forces, so as to render them subservient to human happiness—of such knowledge as this, we repeat, the working-man has generally a greater share than those who are said to belong to the “superior classes.” Hence it is, that what was a matter of tedium, and became ultimately a mere lounge, for gentlefolks, is used as a place of instruction by the people.

We have been thus prolix on the classes attending the Great Exhibition, because it is the influence that this institution is likely to exercise upon labour which constitutes its most interesting and valuable feature. If we really desire the improvement of our social state, (and surely we are far from perfection yet,) we must address ourselves to the elevation of the people; and it is because the Great Exhibition is fitted to become a special instrument towards this end, that it forms one of the most remarkable and hopeful characteristics of our time.

Odds & Ends, in, out, & about, The Great Exhibition of 1851.Pub. by D. Bogue 86 Fleet Street

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