“I wish you could have witnessed May 1st, 1851, the greatest day in our history, the most beautiful, and imposing, and touching spectacle ever seen, and the triumph of my beloved Albert. Truly it was astonishing, a fairy scene. Many cried, and all felt touched and impressed with devotional feeling. It was the happiest, proudest day of my life, and I can think of nothing else. Albert’s dearest name is immortalised with this great conception, his own, and my own dear country showed she was worthy of it. The triumph is immense.... You will be astounded at the great work when you see it.... I feel so proud and happy.”
The Queen’s closed carriage was lined with steel, and drove to the exhibition at a fast trot.
At the outset public opinion had been by no means unanimous in approving the scheme, and for a time the subscriptions hung fire, but the advocacy and enthusiasm of the Prince Consort carried it through. It was the first of the international shows which have since attained such colossal proportions. Although, in the hopes of its authors, the Great Exhibition was to have inaugurated an era of universal peace, it was soon followed by the Crimean War, and then the Indian Mutiny.
As soon as the glass building had been removed, it was proposed to erect a statue of Prince Albert on the spot; but, alas, before this was finished the talented Prince was dead, and the statue then took the form of the Albert Memorial, which was placed to the west of where stood the Great Exhibition. The Memorial took some twenty years to complete. There is much good work in the sculptured detail; but happily the idea of placing a gilded colossal figure in modern dress, under a canopy not only too small for it architecturally, but too small even to keep off the rain, has not been repeated.
In the summer of 1860 an event of great moment was a review of 20,000 volunteers by the Queen. Enthusiasm rose to a boundless height, and the feelings of loyalty shown both by the volunteers and the crowd was so overwhelming that the Queen was overcome.
In these days of ententes cordiales it is difficult to realise that until Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited France in the ’forties, no reigning English sovereign had been the guest of our neighbours across the Channel, since Henry VIII. held his wonderful pageant at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Further, until Louis XVIII., as already noticed, passed through London on his way to take possession of the throne of France in 1814, no King of France had been in England since the days when the Black Prince led King John captive through the City.
From that friendly visit of our young Queen dates the growing cordiality between the two countries. In 1855, amidst the spring beauties of foliage and blossom, Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugénie made a state procession through Hyde Park, driving round the Serpentine and out into Bayswater.