The Arcades Project - Operi

wrote . .. Prince Albert to his mother on April 15, 1851, . .. 'the opponents of the
Exhibition are hard at work . . . . The foreigners, they cry, will start a radical
revolution here; they will kill Victoria and myself and proclaim a red republic.
Moreover, the plague will surely result from the influx of such multitudes and will
devour those who have not been driven away by the high prices on everything. m
Adolphe Demy, Essai historique sur les expositions universelles (Paris, 1907),
p. 38. [G9,3]
Franois de Neufchfiteau on the exhibition of 1798 (in Demy, Essai historique sur
les expositions universelles). '''The French,' he declared, . . . 'have amazed
Europe by the swiftness of their military successes; they should launch a career in
commerce and the arts with just the same fervor'" (p. 14). "This initial exposition
. . . is really an initial campaign, a campaign disastrous for English industry"
(p. 18).-Martial character of the opening procession: "(1) a contingent of trumpeters;
(2) a detachment of cavalry; (3) the first two squads of mace bearers; (4)
the drums; (5) a military marching band; (6) a squad of infantry; (7) the heralds;
(8) the festival marsbal; (9) the artists registered in tbe exhibition; (10) the jury"
(p. 15).-Neufchateau awards the gold medal to the most heroic assault on English
industry. [Gga,l]
The second exhibition, in Year IX,IL was supposed to bring together, in the eourtyard
of the Louvre, works of industry and of the plastic arts. But the artists
refused to exhibit their work alongside that of manufacturers (Demy, p. 19).
[G9a,2]
Exhibition of 1819. "The king, on the occasion of the exhibition, conferred the
title of baron on Ternaux and Oberkampf . ... The granting of aristocratic titles to
industrialists had provoked some criticisms. In 1823, no new titles were conferred."
Demy, Essai historique, p. 24. [Gga,3]
Exhibition of 1844. Madame de Girardin '8 comments on the event, Vicomte de
Launay, Lettres parisiennes, vol. 4, p. 66 (cited in Demy, Essai historique, p. 27):
'''his a pleasure,' she remarked, 'strangely akin to a nightmare.' And she went on
to enumerate the singularities, of which there was no lack: the Hayed horse, the
colossal beetle, the moving jaw, the chronometric Turk who marked the hours by
the number of his somersaults, and-last but not least-M. and Mme. Pipelet, the
concierges in Les Mystikes de Paris, 12 as angels." [G9a,4]
World exhihition of 1851: 14,837 exhibitors; that of 1855: 80,000. [G9a,S]
In 1867 the Egyptian exhihit was housed in a building whosc design was hased on
an Egyptian temple. [G9a,6]
In his novel The Fortress, Walpole descril)es the precautions that were taken in a
lodging-house specially designed to welcome visitors to the world exhibition of