London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
STRAY THOUGHTS ABOUT THE GREAT ORIGINAL.
I have rather an indistinct recollection of the first Exhibition. It was opened when I was a very small boy indeed, and I am under the impression that my father (who was favoured with an invitation to be present, and whose season ticket I still possess) was | |
113 | called upon to appear in Court dress. In those distant days the levee costume consisted of a snuffcoloured coat (with steel buttons, ruffles, and arrangement for a bag wig), an elaborately embroidered white satin waistcoat, white satin breeches and stockings, old-fashioned shoes, and steel-hilted sword, with pendant chain and a cocked hat. Nowadays, a man, if he cannot boast a uniform as a Cabinet (or other) Minister, soldier, sailor, militiaman, yeoman, or volunteer, wears a neat arrangement in black velvet-a distinct improvement upon the old costume. I rather think there was a miniature frigate on the Serpentine, from which was fired a royal salute. And I recollect, as Colonel Sibthorp strongly opposed the erection of the building on the ground in the Park immediately opposite Knightsbridge Barracks on the score that it would injure the trees, the Palace of Crystal was raised to a height sufficiently lofty to include within its walls a cluster of growing oaks. The architect was Mr. (afterwards Sir) Joseph Paxton, the chief of the garden staff of the late Duke of Devonshire. No doubt the coming knight took his idea of the conservatorylike aspect of his design from the glass at Chatsworth. |
Sir Joseph was a great friend of Mark Lemon, the first editor of the London Charivari, and was, I think, the only who was ever entertained at that weekly banquet of wit and other excellent things, the dinner. Then I remember that the streets in | |
114 | the neighbourhood of the World's Show (which was to secure peace for ever, and, as a matter of fact, served as an overture to those stirring military dramas the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny) were impassable. I recollect my mother giving a cabman half-a-crown to drive her from one side of the Knightsbridge Road to the other, which was at the rate of about a penny a foot. Then I call to mind a Chinese junk which came up the Thames, and was ultimately exhibited at a show called the Chinese Exhibition. I am under the impression that the captain of this junk was treated with great honour, and given a place amongst the Ambassadors at the opening ceremony. And I fancy that amongst the exhibits from some outlandish country was a hideous idol. The Government of this outlandish country, upon receiving an official invitation to send specimens of the produce of the land, despatched all they had-a pair of native slippers and their god. |
