“I know that.”
When Prosper Cain received Frank Mallett’s letter, he was planning one of several visits to the Grande Exposition Universelle de Paris, which had opened, with many of its palaces and pavilions unfinished, in April. There was a political frost between England and France, owing to the Boer War. The Prince of Wales, who was president of the British section and had overseen the construction of the British Palace, had refused to set foot in Paris in 1900. Several loyal British exhibitors had withdrawn, but the Victoria and Albert Museum was in constant communication with the experts in the decorative arts in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium and other countries where the “new” art flourished and was on show. Prosper Cain was interested in the new jewellery, both the French work of Rene Lalique and the exquisite Austrian work of the new Wiener Werkstatte and Koloman Moser. He had travelled to the new Museum of Decorative Arts in Vienna, and was excited by
Cain went to Purchase House and tempted Fludd with the sight of some of his “Paradise” ware, intricately covered with birds, beasts, fruit, angels, and naked humans, which he hadn’t seen for twenty years since they had been bought by a Belgian collector. He said Fludd would like to see Galle’s work, and inspect the Art Nouveau. Fludd glared and grumbled, and said he hadn’t been to Paris for twenty years. It was a pother of a city which would be worse with the stinking crowds of garlic-eaters there would be. But a glint of interest appeared in his eye as he contemplated these horrors, and he agreed to come.
Prosper decided he would also take his son, as he hoped he might follow him into his profession. He told Julian to bring a friend, and Julian said he should like to take Tom, if Tom would come, which he imagined he would not. Charles Wellwood, it turned out, was intending to go. Julian asked Charles if he would ask Tom.
Charles walked over to Todefright to ask Tom in person. The Todefright Wellwoods were sitting in the garden, taking tea in the midsummer sun. Charles said Prosper Cain was getting up a party to go to the Great Exhibition, and Julian would like Tom to come. Tom opened his mouth to say without thinking that he’d rather not.
Phyllis said “He won’t come. He never goes anywhere anymore.”
Hedda said “Tom’s a recluse. Tom is growing odd, you know, Charles. I wish you’d asked me.”
Tom closed his mouth, and his eyes. Then he opened them again, and said he would be delighted to go.
He was becoming odd. He did not want to be odd. He wanted to be invisible.
Charles said that Prosper Cain had persuaded Benedict Fludd to come with them. Tom said he supposed Philip Warren would be coming too—Philip needed to see all the new art.
It turned out that nobody had thought of taking Philip. When they considered the idea, they saw it was good. Philip was exactly the person who would be inspired by the new world of arts, crafts, and social hope embodied in the Exhibition. So Fludd told Philip he was going to Paris, and Cain bought him a new suit to go in.
On the deck of the packet-boat, midway across the Channel, Philip realised, with sudden shock, that he had no idea what France, or Paris, or Europe was. He had seen the French shoreline, on clear days, white cliffs with a difference, or vague solids melting into mist, which fascinated him. He was always fascinated by transparent films and substances that half concealed, and half revealed, other, different objects. He saw the French coastline as an analogy of glazes. He had been out on the Channel waters, fishing for mackerel—mackerel skin, like mackerel skies, was another endlessly fascinating structure. He tried to calm himself, when he realised he needed calming, by looking at the transient, repeated blades and arrows in the water ploughed back by the prow. Bottle-greens, greens chock-full of silver air, what cream and white, what a darkness under. Fludd was standing next to him, his arms on the rail, staring equally intently into the water. Philip knew they were seeing the same thing. Behind them, the three young men chatted and laughed. Julian was telling a story which entailed mimicry of a Frenchman. Charles was laughing. Prosper Cain was reading what appeared to be a catalogue. Philip realised he was both excited and afraid. Another country, other people, other habits, strange food. He was the only member of the party who had never travelled.
Julian had been to Paris several times before. He knew the museums and galleries: he had been in cafes, and ridden in a rowboat on the Seine. Charles had stayed in the best hotels, and ridden in the Bois de Boulogne. Tom had been on a family holiday, some time ago with Violet in charge, and had a vague recollection of Notre-Dame and aching feet. Fludd had spent time in attic lodgings in his misspent youth, drinking, smoking and exploring women.
Only Prosper Cain was at all prepared for the effect of the Grande Exposition Universelle.
The Exhibition could be seen as a series of paradoxes. It was gigantic and exorbitant, covering 1,500 acres and costing 120 million francs. It attracted 48 million paying visitors, took over four years to build, and included the elegant new Alexander III Bridge, arching over the Seine, the glass-roofed Grand Palais, and the pretty pink Petit Palais. But it had the idiosyncratic metaphysical charm of all meticulous human reconstructions of reality, a charm we associate with the miniature, toy theatres, puppet booths, doll’s houses, oilskin battlefields with miniature lead armies deployed around inch-high forests and hillocks. It had the recessive pleasing infinity of the biscuit tin painted on the biscuit tin. It was forward-looking, containing new machines and weapons, and images of craftsmen, clearly enjoying their work. It contained a reconstruction of mediaeval Paris, with troubadours and taverns, picturesque beggars, and ladies in bumrolls. There were new facilities—plentifully scattered different public conveniences, from the basic to the luxurious with running water and towels, telephone kiosks, moving staircases and a moving pavement, travelling at three different speeds. There was a palace of mirrors, and a complete fake Swiss village, complete with waterfall, peasants, mountains and cows. Along the left bank of the Seine were the palaces of the nations, some with mediaeval towers, some baroque or rococo. The USA provided telegrams, iced water and Stock Exchange prices for businessmen away from home. The Kaiser himself had supervised the napery, glassware, silver and china in the restaurant of the German pavilion. He had also sent a collection of the complete range of Prussian military uniforms. The Italians had reconstructed St. Mark’s Cathedral. The British had commissioned Edwin Lutyens to make a perfect replica of a Jacobean country house, which they then filled with paintings by Burne-Jones and Watts, and furniture and hangings by Morris & Co.
There was a Palace of Electricity, with a Tower of Water in front of it, a hall of dynamos and a hall containing hundreds of new automobiles, in every shape and size. The Tyrolean Castle was juxtaposed with the Pavilion of Russian Alcohol, the Palace of Optics and the Palace of Woman, next to the pretty sugar comfit-box Palace of Ecuador, which was to serve later as a municipal library in Guayaquil. In the Place de la Concorde, where you bought your tickets, stood the astounding and unloved Porte Binet—a monumental gateway, like something out of
The two largest exhibits in the whole Exposition were Schneider-Creusot’s long-range cannon and Vickers- Maxim’s collection of rapid-fire machine guns. The Kaiser had not been invited to his, or any other, sumptuous displays. His advisers and the French hosts were both afraid that he would say something disconcerting or incendiary. If British troops were killing Boers, the Germans were engaged in combat, in the outside world, with the Chinese. The Kaiser had reprimanded Krupp for equipping Chinese forts with cannon that fired on German gunboats.
