A letter from the exhibition, by Samuel Ashby
An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.
In this letter, written in 1865, a joiner from a small market town writes to his wife after a cheap railway excursion to a great exhibition of industry and art in a northern city.
My dear Hannah, I am writing this in the reading room of the Temperance Hotel, with a pen that splutters and a candle that has seen better days, so you must forgive the blots. We arrived at a quarter past nine after five hours in a third-class carriage with no more comfort than a cattle truck, and I confess my temper was not sweet when we climbed down onto the platform. But I will tell you everything in its order, as you asked.
The building itself took my breath clean away. It is made almost wholly of iron and glass, and when you stand beneath the great central dome the light comes down upon you as though you were at the bottom of a clear pond. Mr Lockyer from the chapel said it put him in mind of the New Jerusalem. I did not go so far as that, but I stood a full minute with my mouth open, like a boy at a fair.
The machinery hall was the wonder of the day. There is a steam hammer that can crack a walnut without bruising the kernel and then, at a word from the man in charge, flatten a bar of iron as thick as my arm. There are looms that weave a pattern of roses faster than you could thread a needle. I watched a machine that cuts and planes and grooves floorboards, a whole morning’s work for me and my lad, in the time it takes to say the Lord’s Prayer. I own that this last sight did not altogether please me. A man looks at such an engine and wonders where his own bread is to come from in ten years’ time.
The picture galleries I could make little of. They are hung so close, frame against frame from the floor to the roof, that the eye grows tired before it has found anything to rest upon, and the crowd was so thick that I saw more of a stout lady’s bonnet than of any painting. A cup of tea in the refreshment room cost fourpence, and a bun twopence more, which is robbery, and I told the girl so.
Yet I must not grumble too long, for I have saved the best till last. In a quiet corner of the furniture court there is a writing cabinet made by a single craftsman in Lancaster, inlaid with seven kinds of wood, every joint so close that I could not have slid a hair into it. I spoke with the man himself. He is no gentleman, only a joiner like me, and he told me it took him three winters by lamplight. Hannah, I have been thinking of that cabinet ever since. The machines may do the floorboards. They will not do that.
Your loving husband, Samuel
“The writer is filled with admiration for everything he sees at the exhibition.”
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120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 2.1.1 Two unseen non-fiction texts, 19th and 21st century. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.