idmouth back to London, and money for this, together with the Duke’s funeral expenses, was sent from the Continent by her brother, Prince Leopold.
For Victoria life was lonely. Almost no friends to play with, and no pretty clothes to wear, for her mother was too poor to provide them. Little Victoria wore darned and patched dresses as she wandered alone with her watering can tending the flowers in the gardens of Kensington Palace.
As she worked at her school lessons Victoria had no idea she might one day be Queen. When the death of the Duke of York in 1827 brought her another step nearer the Throne, she noticed that she was becoming a centre of attention. Lords and gentlemen always raised their hats to her, never to anyone she might be with. She asked her governess why.
The governess slipped a table of genealogy into one of Victoria’s history books. Victoria saw it and understood at once. And when George the Fourth died in 1830, what had once seemed a distant possibility had become almost a certainty.
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Posted in Architecture, Arts and Crafts, Famous landmarks, Historical articles, History, Industry, London, Royalty on Tuesday, 4 February 2014
This edited article about the Great Exhibition first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 541 published on 27 May 1972.
'Great Exhibition Polka', a typical sheet music cover from 1851
The Victorians, outwardly at least so prim and proper, did not believe in exhibiting themselves in any shape or form. They had heard vaguely of the curious affairs across the Channel, where in Paris the French had put on no less than a dozen international exhibitions in the first half of the 19th century.
But it was not the way British people went about things . . . and therefore when, in 1849, the idea was put forward that all the nations of the world should be invited to take part in a vast exhibition in London, there were considerable misgivings.
As it happened, the inspiration came from no less a personage than Prince Albert himself. Queen Victoria’s beloved husband envisaged an exhibition that would demonstrate the “development of mankind and the unity of the nations.”
The very thought of London being invaded by thousands of foreigners horrified many of his subjects, and when the Prince further suggested that the exhibition should be sited in Hyde Park, the fears and the indignation knew no bounds.
Doctors feared the plague; manufacturers said the country would be flooded by cheap products; members of Parliament warned that cut-throats and anarchists would cause havoc in the capital of the Empire; and the lives of all would be endangered.
Then Joseph Paxton, formerly head gardener to the Duke of Devonshire, who had already put up a huge glass conservatory at Chatsworth, submitted his design to the Exhibition Commissioners. “The Times” described it scathingly as “a monstrous greenhouse”; but the public, when they saw the sketches published, were enthusiastic, and work began on the construction of the Crystal Palace.
Covering 18 acres, the palace was to be 1851 ft long, to coincide with the year of the exhibition, and 408 ft wide. The amount of glass required consumed one-third of the nation’s output for a year. There were 24 miles of guttering, 25 acres of glass, and over 9,000 tons of iron and steel girders. Construction work began in August 1850, as 2,000 workmen swarmed around the Hyde Park site.
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Posted in America, Animals, Historical articles, History, Industry, Trade on Friday, 31 January 2014
This edited article about America first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 535 published on 15 April 1972.
Cattle were driven up from Texas to Abilene on the Chisholm Trail
From the Rio Grande to Abilene, the Chilsholm Trail, named after a half-breed Indian trader, wound through 1,000 miles of dirt, dust and Indian country to become the premier route for the Texas cowboys driving their vast herds northwards to feed a nation.
“Point ‘em North!” The year is 1866, and all over the great plains of Texas, thousands of long-horned cattle are