But the attack was not solely based on religious grounds. The Morning Herald scented revolution in the proposal, and Punch was moved to address an ironical warning to the Home Secretary:—
A word in your ear, Mr. Walpole. There is treason, hydra-headed treason hatching. Now, we are not joking. Were we inclined to be droll, we would not cast our jokes before certain Home Secretaries. Hush! This way. In a corner, if you please.
Do you ever see the Morning Herald? We thought so. Somehow, you look as if you did. Still, we have brought a copy. Here it is. A leader on the treasonous atrocities contemplated by the traitorous projectors of the Crystal Palace in Penge Park! We will read you—when we can get a good mouthful of breath—a few of the lines: the dreadful lines. You see, the Palace is to be open on Sundays after one o'clock. In that fact the Herald sees revolution, anarchy, and perhaps—a future republic with John Cromwell Bright in Buckingham Palace! Listen:
"'Go to mass on the Sabbath morning' is the Church of Rome's command; 'then go to the park, the ball, or the theatre.' That is the Sabbath of Paris, of Munich, of Vienna, and, we are sorry to say, of Berlin also. And, as one natural result, a single month, in 1848, saw the Sovereigns of Paris, of Vienna, of Munich, and of Berlin fugitives before their rebellious subjects. The people of England remained untouched by this sudden madness; they were loyal to their Queen, because they feared their God!"
You will perceive, Right Honourable Sir, that had the Palace existed in Penge Park in 1848, the British Throne would have gone to bits like a smashed decanter. The Queen has only continued to reign because there has been no People's Palace!
We see, Sir, you are moved, but let us go on.
"The Crystal Palace will be the main engine for introducing the Continental Sabbath among us. The people may go to church, it will be said, and then they may go down to Sydenham and enjoy a walk in the Crystal Palace, and what harm can that do? Just all the harm in the world. Open and naked profaneness would shock most persons, but this mixture of religion and dissipation will ruin myriads!"
Punch, on the contrary, believed that, in spite of the fulminations of Exeter Hall, the Crystal Palace, with its art treasures, and the setting provided by the wonder-working Paxton, would become the People's Sunday School, and a monster extinguisher of gin palaces. So we find him printing a mock protest from publicans against the desecration of the Sabbath by the proposed opening of the Crystal Palace after morning service.
Punch's views on temperance were eminently moderate. It is true that in one of his early numbers he had depicted, in the cartoons of "The Gin Drop" and "The Water Drop," the horrors of drunkenness in the vein of Cruickshank; true also that he expressed admiration for the crusade of Father Mathew. He condemned excess, but he was no enemy of conviviality. Indeed he was up in arms against those who sought to "rob a poor man of his beer." In his view the best antidotes to intemperance were to be found in recreation and education, and in using Sunday to promote those ends. He severely criticised in the autumn of 1845 the provisions of the new Beer Bill, which prevented excursionists from obtaining needful refreshment at an inn, not only at unreasonable, but at reasonable hours, and protested against the closing of these hospitable portals against them on Sunday, "and perhaps very soon on every other day, if gentlemen, who can go to clubs, as well as to church, being blest with affluence, and, therefore, belonging to the better classes, continue to legislate in their present spirit for himself (the excursionist) and the rest of the worse—that is the worse off."
Punch at the Palace
Meanwhile the Crystal Palace had been opened by the Queen on Saturday, June 10, 1854. Punch describes the imaginary visit which he paid a few days earlier to inspect the building and, by special command of the Queen, to report as to its probable readiness for her reception on the opening day. After being conducted through the building by Sir Joseph Paxton, he explained that it was not his intention to be present at the inaugural ceremony:—
He was the godfather of the edifice, having originally invented and conferred upon it the title of the Crystal Palace; but he should leave to his friend the Archbishop the entire solemnities of the day, including an announcement which Dr. Sumner had most kindly undertaken to make, namely, that at the special instance of the Queen, arrangements would be at once effected for opening the Palace on Sundays.
Fact is tempered with fancy in this account, as well as in his optimistic report of the meeting of Crystal Palace shareholders; it characterizes, too, the series of humorous handbooks to the Crystal Palace, which appeared in the pages of Punch in the following months. But we find in the remarks put into the mouth of Mr. Laing, the chairman, a very good summary of his own views:—
On reflection it had been thought better that men, under the crystal roof, should temperately refresh themselves—all mutually sustaining one another even by their own self-respect of the decencies of life, there and then in their own Crystal Palace—than that, turned away hungering and athirst, they should be absorbed in the holes and corners of surrounding public-houses.
The subsequent history of the Crystal Palace hardly fulfilled Punch's sanguine expectations of its future as a great people's playground and school. Intermittently it fulfilled this function, but as an educational institution it served the needs of the suburban residents rather than those of the great public; its entertainments were in the main supported by the patronage of the middle and well-to-do classes. As years went on the Crystal Palace, owing to its distance from London, suffered seriously from the competition of the series of exhibitions at Earl's Court. Yet one who is old enough, as the present writer is, to remember visits in his school days in the early 'seventies—recurrent Handel festivals from the days when Costa was conductor and Patti was in her golden prime; flower and dog and cat shows; the glory of the rhododendron shrubberies; pantomimes and firework displays; and, above all, the admirable Saturday concerts, which drew musical London for some forty years—such a one, and there must be many like him, will always look back on the Crystal Palace with grateful affection, and hold in reverence the names of Paxton and Ferguson, George Grove and August Manns, and many other good men and true who laboured to realize Punch's ideal.