3-017-110 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mrs. Howard Paul's Beehive, at the Royal Dramatic College Festival, in the Crystal Palace, [Sydenham], 1865. 'The annual festival and fancy fair in aid of the funds of the Royal Dramatic College at Maybury took place on Saturday and Monday at the Crystal Palace, and attracted on both days an immense multitude of visitors, who contributed very liberally to the pecuniary object of this amusing exhibition...The central transept formed a grand square of stalls, and the nave was lined with shows of the most whimsical and eccentric kind...Mr. and Mrs. Howard Paul distinguished themselves amongst the stall-keepers by selling nicknacks from a huge beehive constructed of straw-bands, which looks picturesque in the Illustration we have engraved. It was, we believe, invented and designed by Mrs. Howard Paul herself. The motto of this commercial beehive was very neatly adapted from a verse of Dr. Isaac Watts's - "How do the little busy P's Improve their hive and stock it, And gather money all the day From every opening pocket". We are glad to say that the beehive alone produced more than £100 for the benefit of the Dramatic College'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.