THE CRYSTAL PALACE

Evening Star, Issue 22514, 5 December 1936, Page 2

THE CRYSTAL PALACE

VARIOUS SITES AND USES A NOBLE END [Written by “ F.C.,” for the ‘ Evening Star.’] So the Crystal Palace is no more. The world’s largest glass house has gone up in flames. It was rather an ungainly structure, towering over the drab monotony of Sydenham. If the epithet “ crystal ” .should lead one to think of bubbling springs, fairy folk, or glittering felspar crystals, one would soon have been disillusioned by the great framework of the palace, wonderful as it was as a piece of engineering. There was nothing fairy-like about its massive masculinity, useful certainly, ideal in some respects for great annual gatherings, choir festivals, and the like, the building which like no other preserved the atmosphere of the Victorian age. It had at any rate a noble end—the greatest blaze in London, one would venture to say, since the old Houses of Parliament were burnt down a hundred years ago, a funeral pyre on which, alas, the sweet-toned organ had also to commit suttee.

The building, had not always stood in Sydenham. It was originally erected in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. Paxton, the architect, had experience in planning tremendous conservatories at Chatsworth for the Duke of Devonshire and on other great estates. His project for a huge glass building met with much ridicule, but it recommended itself to the Prince Consort, the originator and guiding spirit of the Great Exhibition, and for 70 years the Crystal Palace has stood to vindicate its author. After the Exhibition was over the whole edifice was taken down and reerected at the site in Sydenham. The writer was in the Crystal Palace; in 1923. At that time it housed the War Museum. There was, indeed, some irony in the fact that the building which sheltered the exhibition should become a repository for guns and shell cases and all the paraphernalia of war. For the Prince Consort’s chief aim int ogranising that huge concern had been to bring in an era of piping peace. The whole world was to come and gaze on the fruits of industry, the triumphs of engineering, and to go away again to its respective homelands determined to beat swords into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks. Be that as it may in 1923 the interior of the Crystal Palace bristled with as many guns as ever did the workshops of Messrs Vickers and Co. There was much of real interest—huge photographic panels giving at life size scenes in the fighting line, others again with panoramic views, or, more correctly, bird’s eye views, since they had been taken from the air—views of the batlefields. Different bays of the museum were devoted to the minor campaigns—Salonika, Palestine, Mesopotamia, There also hung on the walls the complete series of Orpen’s paintings of the Peace Conference : the Allied statesmen glance rather sardonically, one thinks, from the canvases of that volatile! little artist. As is well known, Orpen conceived a good deal of aversion for the vacillation and lack of vision in the Peace Conference. A picture of his a few years later in which he revealed this dislike caused something of a storm. It is some years now since the War Museum was moved from the Crystal Palace. It has ajways been something of an unwanted orphan, and has been shifted round from place to place. Recently it was announced that it had found a permanent home in the old Royal Hospital in Southwark, opposite the Southwark Cathedral in St. George’s road, not far from the Elephant and Castle. This is hardly good news, either. Some years ago it was announced with a great flourish of trumpets that the site of the hospital had been bought by Lord Rothermere, owner of the ‘ Daily Mail.’ He was going to demolish the buildings and present the place to London as a park in memory of his mother. Certainly there is no part of London that needs it more than these overcrowded districts just south of the river. In passing it may be mentioned that a much-worn carved' stone in the wall of the hospital bears the sign of the Dog and Duck. The Dog and Duck tavern, from which pilgrims started for the shrine of Thomas a’Becket, in Canterbury, once stood hereabouts. The shade of Dan Chaucer will hardly view with favour the coming of a war museum into his domain. As recently as last June the Crystal Palace was the scene of a gardenparty and a festival evening of Too H. It was one of the peak days in the twentyfirst birthday celebrations that Toe H. has been holding during the last English summer.

- At 7.45 on the evening of June 27 the interior must have presented an impressive spectacle. I'light thousand members of Toe H. and of the League of Women Helpers were massed in the centre transcept. The great organ high in the apse led them in a swinging, though solemn, tune as 'the banners, rush lights, and lamps of groups and old branches advanced in procession up the hall. The banners give the main touch of colour with their emblazoned heraldic designs. The hew order of chivalry has much in common with the old. To the sound of the tumultuous singing all the 1,200 ban-ner-bearers and lamp-bearers had filed to their places in the orchestra seats. A hush, then the National Anthem, and the Duke of Kent enters bearing a message from the King. There follows his own inspiring speech ending on a high note: “ The marvels of applied science are at our service. But it is human character that determines whether they are to be used for good or for evil, to build or to destroy. Character is the indispensable basis of leadership, and leadership is the key of achievement. The men in whose memory I am *to light these lamps to-night gave us a splendid example of what character can achieve. To maintain those same qualities of character, to spread them, and to use them for the building of the future is the true task of Toe H.” The Duke then fulfilled the mission on which he had come, the lighting from the silver Prince’s lamp of the 104 new lamps which were to go out to branches all over Great Britain and the Empire. Slowly the lighting goes on until the last two lamps, one from New Zealand and one from India, pause on the platform and pass to their places—a hush, and the simple “ ceremony of light ” closes the first part of the festival.

But all is not done. A full choral masque for 600 voices had been prepared, and for 40 minutes there is unfolded in poetry and song the odyssy of Master Valiant, a squire of Elizabethan England. Finally the Archbishop of Canterbury delivers a parting charge, and the great throng breaks up. It was fitting that one of the last festivals to fbke place in the Crystal Palace should be of such a, kind.