Chapter 31 The Snakesman Turns Nose
One week later, their plans were thrown into still further disarray. On May 17, 1855, a letter was delivered to Pierce. Written in a graceful and educated hand, it read:
My dear Sir:
I should be most greatly obliged if you could contrive to meet with me at the Palace, Sydenham, this afternoon at four o'clock, for the purpose of discussing some matters of mutual interest.
Most respectfully, I am,
William Williams, Esq.
Pierce looked at the letter in consternation. He showed it to Agar; but Agar could not read, so Pierce read the contents aloud. Agar stared at the penmanship.
"Clean Willy's got himself a screever for this one," he said.
"Obviously," Pierce said. "But why?"
"Perhaps he's touching you up."
"If that's all it is, I'd be happy," Pierce said.
"You going to meet him?"
"Absolutely. Will you crow for me?"'
Agar nodded. "You want Barlow? A good cosh could save a mighty trouble."
"No," Pierce said. "That'll set them hounding for sure, a cosh would."
"Right, then," Agar said, "a simple crow. 'Twon't be easy in the Palace."
"I'm sure Willy knows that," Pierce said gloomily.
A word should be said about the Crystal Palace, that magical structure which came to symbolize the Victorian mid-century. An enormous three-story glass building covering nineteen acres, it was erected in 1851 in Hyde Park, to house the Great Exhibition of that year, and it impressed every visitor who saw it. Indeed, even in drawings the Crystal Palace is stunning to the modern eye, and to see more than a million square feet of glass shimmering in the afternoon light must have been a remarkable sight for anyone. It is not surprising that the Palace soon represented the forward-looking, technological aesthetic of the new industrial Victorian society.
But this fabulous structure had a comfortingly haphazard origin. Led by Prince Albert himself, plans for the Great Exhibition began in 1850, and soon ran into arguments about the proposed Exhibition Hall itself, and its location.
Obviously the building would have to be very large. But what kind of building, and where? A competition in 1850 attracted more than two hundred designs, but no winner. Thus the Building Committee drew up a plan of its own for a dreadful brick monstrosity; the structure would be four times as long as Westminster Abbey and boast a dome even larger than that of St. Peter's. It would be located in Hyde Park.
The public balked at the destruction of trees, the inconvenience to riders, the general ruin of the pleasant neighborhood, and so on. Parliament seemed reluctant to permit Hyde Park to be used as the building site.
In the meantime, the Building Committee discovered that their plans required nineteen million bricks. By the summer of 1850, there was insufficient time to make all these bricks and build the Great Hall in time for the exhibition's opening. There was even some dark talk that the exhibition would have to be canceled, or at least postponed.
It was at this point that the Duke of Devonshire's gardener, Joseph Paxton, came forward with the idea of erecting a large greenhouse to serve as the Exhibition Hall. His original plan for the committee, drawn up on a piece of blotting paper, was eventually accepted for its several virtues.
First, it saved the trees of Hyde Park; second, its chief material, glass, could be manufactured quickly; and third, it could be taken down after the exhibition and reinstalled elsewhere. The committee accepted a bid of
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