British Women Travellers: Empire and Beyond, 1770–1870 9780367343347, 9780429325069

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British Women Travellers

This book studies the exclusive refractive perspectives of British women who took up the twin challenges of travel and writing when Britain was establishing itself as the greatest Empire on earth. Contributors explore the ways in which travel writing has defined women’s engagement with Empire and British identity. With a capacious geographical canvas, this volume examines the multifaceted relations and negotiations of British women travellers in a range of different imperial contexts across continents, in Asia, Africa, America, Europe, and Australia. Sutapa Dutta is a Fellow at IIAS, Shimla, and teaches in the Department of English, Gargi College, University of Delhi.

Routledge Research in Gender and History

Shame and the Anti-Feminist Backlash Britain, Ireland and Australia, 1890–1920 Sharon Crozier-De Rosa Women, Land Rights and Rural Development How Much Land Does a Woman Need? Esther Kingston-Mann Revisiting Gender in European History, 1400–1800 Edited by Elise M. Dermineur, Åsa Karlsson Sjögren and Virginia Langum Women and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Rebecca Adami Informal Marriages in Early Modern Venice Jana Byars The Masculine Modern Woman Pushing Boundaries in the Swedish Popular Media of the 1920s Jenny Ingemarsdotter Gendering Spaces in European Towns, 1500–1914 Edited by Elaine Chalus and Marjo Kaartinen The Anti-Abortion Campaign in England, 1966–1989 Olivia Dee British Women Travellers Empire and Beyond, 1770–1870 Edited by Sutapa Dutta For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Gender-and-History/book-series/SE0422

British Women Travellers Empire and Beyond, 1770–1870 Edited by Sutapa Dutta

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Sutapa Dutta to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-34334-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-32506-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To all intrepid travellers who showed new directions

Contents

List of Figuresix Introduction

1

SUTAPA DUTTA

PART I

On the Continent, Framing ‘Britishness’19   1 Colonising the French: Elizabeth Inchbald’s Cultural Appropriation

21

BEN P. ROBERTSON

  2 Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom: Britishness and Otherness in The Spanish Journal of Elizabeth Holland

36

ANTONIO CALVO MATURANA

  3 Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains: British Women Travellers’ Perception of Historical Heritage in the Early 19th Century

52

BARBARA TETTI

  4 On Terrains of the Other Empire: Mary Holderness’s Account of Her Residence in Early 19th-Century Crimea

70

NATALIIA VOLOSHKOVA

PART II

In the Colonies, Defining ‘Non-British’87   5 The Politics of Feasting: Janet Schaw’s Sensory Experience of the West Indies GEORGINA ELISABETH MUNN

89

viii  Contents   6 Creating a ‘More Popular Work’: The Lasting Influence of Maria Graham’s Journal of a Residence in India (1812)

106

LACY MARSCHALK

  7 The Memsahibs’ Gaze: Representation of the Zenana in India 120 SUTAPA DUTTA

  8 Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men: Isabella Fane’s Vision of Colonial India

137

SHANNON DERBY

  9 ‘Servant of the Cross’: Identity, Travel and Colonial Culture in the Letters of Mary Moffat in South Africa

152

MICHELLE ADLER

10 An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land?: Mary Eliza Rogers, Gender and British Protestant Imperialism

172

SARAH IRVING

PART III

In the Settler Colonies, Furthering the ‘Other’ British187 11 ‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’: Female Constructions of Imperial Belonging in Melbourne, 1850–1870

189

SOPHIE COOPER

12 In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic: British Women Travellers in 19th-Century America

205

JUSTYNA FRUZIŃSKA

13 Carriage and Canoe: The Material Vessels of Anna Brownell Jameson’s Voyage in Upper Canada

220

SOPHIE ANNE EDWARDS

Notes on Contributors239 Index241

Figures

3.1 Hakewill, James. 1820. A Picturesque Tour of Italy. London: John Muray. Plate 20 – The Roman Forum, from the Tower of the Capitol. No. II. 60 3.2 (i) and (ii). Gell, William. 1832. Pompeiana: the topography, edifices and ornaments of Pompeii. London: Jennings and Chaplin. Plates XX and XXI, The Temple of Fortuna Augusta and Restored Perspective. 63 5.1 A Mock Advertisement, 1785. Salisbury: Fowler Printer Salisbury.  98 7.1 ‘An apartment in a Zanannah’, the frontispiece of Kindersley’s Letters (1777). 123 7.2 ‘A Calcutta Zenana’, from Woman in India by Mary Frances Billington (1895). 134 13.1 Wyld, James (1836). ‘A map of the province of Upper Canada, describing all the new settlements, townships, & cc. with the countries adjacent, from Quebec to Lake Huron’. 223 13.2 Jameson, Anna Brownell. 1837c. Detroit, July 16, 1837. 225 13.3 Jameson, Anna Brownell. 1837b. Journey to Niagara along the shores of Lake Huron, January 1837. 228 13.4 Jameson, Anna Brownell. 1837a. Canoe on Lake Huron.234

Introduction Sutapa Dutta

While the British Empire has been and will remain a subject of fascination for cultural and colonial studies in particular, the white women’s writings on the Empire, mostly very private and limited in its scope, have only recently begun to draw attention. This edited volume seeks to study the travel writings of British women and their experiences in Africa, Asia, America, Australia, Europe, Canada and the West Indies in the 18th to 19th centuries. It is hoped that a re-assessment of their travel narratives will help to reshape perceptions of Britain, and enable an understanding of Britain’s relationship with her colonies and the European continent. ‘Travel writing’ is hard to define, a nebulous term which often encompasses and overlaps several genres (Borm 2004; Holland and Huggan 1998; Youngs 2013). Jan Borm defines the travel book as ‘any narrative characterized by a non-fiction dominant that relates (almost always) in the first person a journey or journeys that the reader supposes to have taken place in reality while assuming or presupposing that author, narrator and principal character are but one or identical’ (Borm 2004: 17). Through such narratives, the book aims to highlight the manifold connections of intellectual and cultural exchanges, encouraging readers to revisit older exceptionalist viewpoints, and rethink the fashioning of multiple identities. These were perhaps never more clearly demonstrated than in the travel accounts of British women who travelled abroad between 1770–1870. The time frame, from the contingencies of successive historical events, can be termed the most revolutionary period in European history. Symbolically, 1770 was a year noteworthy in the history of travel, as it marked the beginning of new discoveries. It was in this year that James Cook, the British explorer, began his historic journey to map the largely uncharted areas of the globe across the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, which was to radically change the way the West perceived the world.1 In 1770, Cook reached the southeastern coast of Australia which had never been encountered by Europeans before, and as a mark of colonial claim and imposition named it New South Wales. The hundred years from 1770–1870 was the Age of Enlightenment, a period of significant changes both social and political, of novel

2  Sutapa Dutta changes and many expectations, compelling the Western world to rethink and refigure ‘normative’ approaches to the past and the future. The new enlightened views encapsulated in the explosion of scientific discoveries and increasing levels of literacy held unbounded possibilities. As a new world opened up there was an euphoria for the future, and at the same time a deeply felt tension about past connections, identities, differences, boundaries and interactions. A Eurocentric, and more specifically Anglocentric world order legitimated by new ideas and new discoveries attained its fullest expression from about the 1830s to the 1870s. Thereafter there was a marked disintegration of the Empire, and the ideals of the British Empire, as a collective unifying category, began to quickly crumble. There was hence after a distinct sense of disillusionment and a questioning of the economic benefits of maintaining colonies. James Anthony Froude echoed this sentiment when he wrote, ‘They [the colonies] gave us nothing. They cost us much. They were a mere ornament, a useless responsibility’ (Froude 1886: 6). The travelling propensity among the British was nothing new. Indeed, travel writings from the 16th century onwards increased the marvels and curiosity of readers, and played a major role in ushering the dominance of Britain as a world power. Post-Renaissance, the Jacobean period had seen a perceptible shift in the conception of the Self among the Brits, eager to enlarge the horizons of knowledge. The British Grand Tour was the customary educational trip undertaken by the English young men of rank and wealth. It was a regular feature among the aristocratic class, especially for cultivating a requisite knowledge of continental art and literature, considered so essential for polite society. The ars apodemica, a genre which gained popularity mainly because of the Grand Tours, lay emphasis on the educative function of travel and using the knowledge for the common good of people. The ‘stimulus of the senses and the exercise of the imagination’ were the main aim, and ‘where the British were concerned, continental travel played the crucial role in facilitating both’ (Chaney and Wilks 2014: xv). Essentially, the Grand Tour was indispensable in reinforcing ‘direct and personal contact’ amongst the elites, a way to display power and maintain influential societal contacts (Conway 2011: 210–213). It was also, as Michele Cohen noted, that while the Englishman imitated the language and manners of the Continent to polish his natural roughness, there was simultaneously the anxiety to fashion the masculinity of the English by contrasting France as the effeminate Other (Cohen 1992, 1996). Travelling was not just for a leisurely holiday, it was more for selffashioning, with a conscious balance between observing and recording useful information for the individual and the state. At the same time, petit tours for pleasure and leisure were becoming increasingly popular, distinctly narrower and limited in time and geographical remit of educational trips.

Introduction 3 The popularity of travel writings in late 18th and 19th century Europe was phenomenal, as a new wave of enthusiasm for continental travelling came in vogue. Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo signaled the opening of the Continent to travellers, and by 1817 the Edinburgh Review observed: ‘The restoration of peace has, as might have been foreseen, produced a vast number of Books of Travels’ (Edinburgh Review 28 Aug 1817, 371). The Industrial Revolution in Britain and improvement in transportation technology meant a more empowered middle class with faster access to travelling. While for the working class travelling was still an economic necessity and a part of their occupational duty, for the upper class elites travelling came to be associated with ‘class’ and ‘taste’ (Arnold 1869). Lord Byron’s representation of the Orient in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), Don Juan (1824) and Oriental Tales (1813–1816) based on his ‘experience’, in combination with his Philhellenism, contributed largely to growing interest in the exotic East. Travel advice texts became popular, ranging from offering travel guidance and practical dealing, to civic and moral duties. A  large number of guidebooks, ‘companions’, vade mecums, road manuals, itineraries, regional descriptions and atlases were prolifically printed for the aid of the travellers, as publishers like Murray, Baedeker and Bradshaw took full advantage of the craze for travel. Travel writing and travellers’ aids went hand in glove, complementing the growing need in the travel market. While what constituted ‘travel writing’ was not very clearly defined, there was no doubt about its popularity. Charles L. Batten’s claims that travel writing by the end of the 18th century ‘won a readership second only to novels’ (Batten 1978: 1). Though there are no definite figures to prove his claim, Nigel Leask too has observed, ‘the popularity of travel books during the decades [from 1770 to 1840], although universally acknowledged, is hard to quantify’ (Leask 2002: 11). Benjamin Colbert in ‘Bibliography of British Travel Writing, 1780–1840’, provides statistical data to indicate the increase in travel books production between 1813–1818. In 1813 the total number of travel books produced was 61, which increased to 137 in 1818 (Colbert 2004: 10). The unprecedented popularity of travel writing was also, among other things, because of the Romantic Movement in Britain. The pursuit of the unknown, a celebration of the natural and a rejection of the mechanised industrialised world were some of the characteristics that typify this period. There was a new emphasis on the picturesque, the pleasures of the aesthetics of the natural world and on the individual’s response to emotion and imagination. The painting The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich perhaps best represents the Romantic visionary. The painting of a man atop a craggy hill, with his back towards the world, gazing at the distant fog-shrouded promontories represents the yearning for the unknown and the sublime. And yet it leaves a contradictory impression. It could at once

4  Sutapa Dutta suggest ‘mastery over the landscape and the insignificance of the individual in it’ (Gaddis 2002: 1). Friedrich’s painting resonates what travel writers were depicting in their writings, trying to capture the desire of humans to master nature and at the same time their utter paltriness when compared to the might of nature. Travelling to strange and distant lands was, in a way, a challenge that brought out this contradictory aspect at its best. It helped the traveller to relate to the world, to look beyond selfcentredness, positions of significance and authority. The concern of this volume is to integrate the aesthetic and the historicist positions in travel writings, to rethink the wider ramifications of travel writings in the imperial context from 1770–1870. The volume’s primary aim is to thus demonstrate that the cultural and literary practices of female writers from Britain arose alongside and within the frameworks of history, empire and travel, which went on to significantly alter the image of Britain. This collection hopes to demonstrate that women’s travel narratives, intersecting with concurrent social, political and scientific conditions evident in this period, provide a unique refractive perspective of imperialism and colonial rule. The understanding of British imperial history is quite dependent on how these travellers were involved in the ‘consumption of the places’ they visited, how it defined their social relations, and how they engaged with what John Urry terms the ‘sociology of place’ (Urry 1995: 1). The aim is to explore some of these tensions in the scores of travel writings that emerged in this period. The explosion of topographical writing in 18th century expansionist Europe and its popularity meant that travel writing was a genre second only to romances and novels. And yet, as a genre it has not been much studied or considered in its own right. It is worth asking who wrote them and for whom, what kinds of places were more ‘popular’, and what emerged from such narratives. These ‘objective’ proofs and subjective eyewitness accounts were a continual site of contest and controversy that articulated the emerging state of ‘Britishness’ and nationhood, and it is worth examining what was contained, ruffled, elided or promoted. Such narratives often offered alternative accounts that were far more widely disseminated and popular, much more than the ‘official’ and scholarly historical versions. From the middle of the 18th century, the extensive spread of the British Empire meant the advent of English travellers to all parts of the world. Apart from merchants, sailors, missionaries and officials who journeyed to far away countries in search of lucrative careers, there were women who crossed the seas and the land. Many of these women who accompanied their men— though some were single—provided graphic accounts of their life and travel. These writings, mostly in the form of personal letters, diaries and memoirs, and travel narratives, depict a unique perspective of their representation of the Other and the ambivalent relation of power between the foreign traveller and the native. Dr. Benjamin Colbert, as part of his project on British Travel Writing, provides a definitive

Introduction 5 database of travel writings published in Britain and Ireland between 1780–1840 which contains approximately 5,000 entries, of which 204 can be identified as written by women.2 This indicates that women who travelled and wrote of their experiences were only peripheral, making it all the more imperative to study their writings. Though there has been a great deal of research on individual women travel writers, until now there has not been any single collected volume on British women’s dynamic relation with the British Empire and the rest of the world in this period. In fact, in today’s transnational world of multinational corporations and women labour in particular, it is pertinent to understand present forms of travel, mobility and development in the light of past issues of differences, privileging and power relations. The volume therefore seeks to illuminate the emergence of a Western, Anglocentric imperial knowledge of the world which remains to this day the dominant way, often ignoring differences and alterity. Movements within a geographical space by British women travellers can be seen to be ideologically inscribed to reveal travelling as a trope of such knowledge dissemination. ‘Travel’ as a metaphor of journey, a search for new knowledge, for life itself, literally implies a spatial dislocation, a linear movement from ‘home’ to new places. In the case of the British Empire which stretched across the globe, and where the ‘sun never set’, politically at least the term ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ were vague terms. Yet culturally and emotionally, Home and Empire remained two very disparate topographical areas. Home was where the family was, where the children were educated, and was the place where one eventually returned to die. Home was the centre of what Mary Louise Pratt terms a form of ‘planetary consciousness’, around which the rest of the world revolved (Pratt 1992: 5). Anglo-imperial travel from the centre to the peripheries can therefore never be apolitical, and involves issues of identity, subjectivity and hegemony. Travel writings thus served as the social spaces which Pratt termed ‘contact zones’ between Home and the margin, ‘where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of dominion and subordination’ (Ibid., 4). Recent works such as those of Mary Louise Pratt, Inderpal Grewal, Sara Mills, Indrani Sen, and Indira Ghose have analysed the gendered perspectives of travel writings by women (Pratt 1992; Grewal 1996; Mills 2005; Sen 2008; Ghose 1998). The white women have been variously seen as ‘victims’ of a male-centric imperial enterprise, who were there mostly against their will as mere ‘helpmeets’ to divide the toil and hardships (Brarr 1976; Macmillan 1988). At the same time it has been perceived that the ‘colonial wives were appropriating the power and privilege of their administrator-husbands and displaying the well known rank-snobbery of a hierarchical society’ (Sen 2008: xvi). Again, they have been regarded as moral saviours of the white men and blamed for

6  Sutapa Dutta perpetuating racial segregation. The white women’s presence in the colonies was seen as a deterrent for white men from entering into inter-racial marriages or sexual liaisons with native women (Ibid., xv-xvi). Taking aesthetics as a male-dominated area of discourse in the 18th to 19th century, Elizabeth Bohls considers the writings of women writers like Mary Montagu, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley as those that ‘struggled to appropriate the powerful language of aesthetics, written by men from a perspective textually marked as masculine’ (Bohls 1995: 3). Anne McClintock emphasises the ‘borrowed power’ of colonial women who were ‘ambiguously complicit both as colonisers and colonised, privileged and restricted, acted upon and acting’ (McClintock 1995: 6). Needless to say, the ‘experiences’ and ‘representations’ of white women have not been all the same, for these constituted a variety of forms for a variety of reasons, each reflecting its peculiar cultural and subjective construction. These often muted the complexities and framed it as a more comprehensible picture to the general English public eager to know more about the areas in which Britain had imperial interests. Representation of the exotic, the picturesque and the dangerous Other, which was a common thread that united the early writings, was more to satiate the curiosity of the readers back home. The Othering was more often a ‘textual-Other’ deliberately created in travel writings to circulate a stereotype, whereby such dissemination of knowledge formations have perpetuated constructs of Self and Other. While such writings purportedly provided an accurate picture of foreign lands and people, the Europeans understanding of the Other depended largely on the subjective construction/ interpretation of the narrator. In the context of British travellers to Africa, Tim Youngs wrote, ‘what travellers describe in Africa is mainly Britain’ (Youngs 1994: 6). In their representations, assumptions, oppositions and commentary on the Other, Britain defined themselves. While scholars like Grewal, Ghose and Mills look at the genre of women travel writing from a feminist postcolonial perspective, the aim of the proposed volume is to bring in a panoply of individual women travellers and their writings that address and negotiate gender, identity, subjectivity, race and class. These women and their writings are as much individualistic as they are a part of the larger discourse of gender and hegemonic ideologies. These British women, in locating to other parts of the world posit the contradictory position as both agents and subjects of imperialism; and it is as much fallacious to homogenise them as to stereotype the Other women as ‘oppressed’. This volume does not aim to assert that women’s travel writing was radically different to men. In fact, it is time to relinquish the idea of searching for a ‘feminine essence’ in the writings of women writers, or a ‘feminine’ perspective of the world. The very act of travelling, writing and informing was indicative of agency, a negation of domesticity. It gave them access to modes of control and choices from which they would normally be excluded by

Introduction 7 convention. As Sidonie Smith asserts, ‘travel functions as a defining arena of agency’ (Smith 2001: IX). Being on the move, of un-anchoring from the rootedness of a traditional feminine domain was an act of agency. It allowed them to ‘tell herstory’ from different perspectives and subjectivities, whether it be the larger scope of travel as a form of escape from traditional gender roles, the idea of Empire, issues of identity and power, or the projection of an emerging national consciousness. The purpose of this collection of diverse travel narratives is to show that these women, by virtue of their mobility and ability to ‘narrate’, could choose to align or detach themselves from imperial/patriarchal ideologies. While some of the women travellers contrasted their ‘freedom’ with the confinement of their ‘enslaved sisters’, others assumed the dominant ‘masculine’ role in subjecting the Other. The intention of the essays in this volume is to show precisely this diversity, this variation of subject formation according to British position in the several regions of the world. The essays illustrate the British women’s complex relationship to Empire and colonialism, the layers of subject formation within the larger colonial discourse. Most of these women maintained long correspondences with their families in England in which details of their lives and experiences were noted. As there was a ready market for such travel writings, and not just those written by women, some of these accounts were published. It will be wrong to think that extensive leisure time at the hands of ‘bored’ women, and a general sense of ennui were the only reasons for their copious writings. In their various roles as adventuress, actress, wife, missionary, trader, socialite, scholar, poet, playwright and historian, most of them led varied and interesting lives and made active interventions in public sphere. One can again be quick to assume that the first-person narratives of the women’s domestic concerns in foreign lands, mostly in the form of private correspondences with their family back home, can neatly fit into the postmodern concepts of public/private spheres usually referred to as the ‘separate spheres ideology’. Donna Haraway has argued for the porousness of such boundaries. Her works have been concerned with deflating the uncritical acceptance of such dichotomies. For Haraway, binaries like human/animal, nature/science, mind/body, male/female are sustained by social constructs, ‘where possible worlds are constantly reinvented in the contest for very real, present worlds’ (Haraway 1989: 5). Extending the human/animal dichotomy to the colonial or postcolonial standpoint, she argues that sexual and racial hegemonies are structured aspects of the human social world. The travel narratives in the 18th and 19th century, as this book demonstrates, cannot be bracketed in stringent oppositions of binary frameworks between public and private, domestic and social, inside and outside, masculine and feminine. These range from individual interests, experiences abroad and political awareness, to cultural representation of foreign culture, and the multifaceted negotiations with the ‘Other’. The writings of these women

8  Sutapa Dutta travellers reflect the complexities in grappling with ideologically characterised boundaries, spaces and identities that were often overlapping. This also implies that such ‘stories’ were ‘situated knowledge’ that were modified by the situatedness of the narrator, and the historical and social conditions of its production, often blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. As Haraway says, ‘facts themselves are types of stories’ (Ibid., 4). As a collection of essays on British women travellers, the book no doubt privileges the white women’s perspective. The Other’s viewpoint, though not the main focus of the collection, does nevertheless form the foil against which the white women reflect their Self. The alterity of the ‘I’ is always the base from which the Self is able to apprehend the fulness of its identity, and above all the difference (Bakhtin 1993). But the relationship was not always a simple one of Self and Other, power and suppression. The chapters indicate the recurrent discomfiture of the imperialists when they became the subject of the ‘gaze’ and prescriptive ideals of ‘normative’ femininity, beauty, gender roles, family and domesticity, race and hegemony were time and again critiqued and challenged by the ‘Other’. The 13 essays in this volume explore the ways in which travel writing has defined, constructed and engaged with Empire and British identity. The encounters with the Other enabled various forms of cultural productions, not just class and gender formations, but more importantly the differential relation shared by the Englishwomen in particular and the English nation in general with the imperial culture. All such narratives, by their insistence on objectivity and truth, perpetuated a constructivist knowledge of the Other. Such writings, as Michel de Certeau warned, has a ‘strategic function’ in which information ‘is collected, classified, inserted into a system and thereby transformed’. As Certeau elaborates, such narratives, by their very act of representation, become detached from actual practices; these are ‘always determined by a system . . . and codified by a way of receiving it’ (Certeau 1984: 132, 135). Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) too had decisively demonstrated the Eurocentric assumptions underlying much of the cultural knowledge of the Other. While such perspectives have been seen to be essentially submerged in a romantic orientalist vision, there was simultaneously a strain of epistemological critique of Western imperialism, accumulation and control of territories and capital. The essays demonstrate a wide spectrum of British attitude, ranging from romantic eulogisation of imperialism, to sympathy for the colonised, and a critical opposition to empire building. The book therefore challenges a totalising, single, overarching schema of knowledge that neatly slots all Western perspectives as ‘Eurocentric’. The travel writings indicate multiple tensions of sometimes contradictory perspectives of ‘Englishness’. The discursive canvas of the book is ‘Empire and Beyond’. To see how the demands of the Empire defined the traveller’s definition of the Self is to see just half of the picture. The essence of Englishness in the travel

Introduction 9 writings discussed in this volume is not just to determine the representation of the English, but also to examine the representation of the Other against which it defines itself. To quote Grewal, ‘To focus merely on what happens in the colony is thus to leave out a major factor in the discourse of colonization’ (Grewal 1996: 9). It is imperative to see how the Empire affected the Englishwomen’s negotiation with what was beyond the Empire, and what effects it had on the British imagination. The book is divided into three parts, and examines the multifaceted negotiations of British women travellers in a range of different imperial contexts across continents from Asia, America, Africa and Europe to Australia, in order to understand British relations with different countries. The ‘experience’ in India was, for example, very different from that in America or Australia. Models of colonialism differed vastly in different historical contexts and time period, and the issue of power and hegemony was intricately woven with race, ethnicity, colour and civilisation. Every colonial context was in that way unique in itself and at the same time influenced and redefined by one another. Furthermore, for a proper understanding of Britain’s imperial relations with the rest of the world, it is necessary to realise the ways in which Britishness was framed vis-à-vis its Continental Others.

Part I: On the Continent, Framing ‘Britishness’ The first part of the volume examines Britain’s representation of its importance and agency in comparison to its European counterparts. As Sara Mills articulates, ‘many post-colonial theorists seem unaware of the extent to which Britain’s colonial policies were developed in relation to other Western countries, rather than being formulated as policies relating to the colonized country itself’ (Mills 2005: 2). The chapters in this part survey the travels of British women within the larger part of the European subcontinent, covering France, Spain, Italy and Crimea. Did such associations with the Continent make the travellers more British, or more conscious of their place within Europe? These chapters bring out the insights of the travellers, as they like Gulliver balance their assertions of British pride with their sense of belongingness and differences in the larger frame of the Continent. British fascination for French culture, despite the proverbial BritishFrench rivalry, meant that France remained the most popular destination for the British on the continent.3 Ben P. Robertson’s chapter on Elizabeth Inchbald’s cultural appropriation of French culture draws our attention to the imperialistic attitude of the British to ‘colonise’ and capitalise on cultures that were deemed ‘superior’. Robertson’s scrutiny of Inchbald’s diary, maintained during the writer’s single trip to France in 1776, indicates the trying nature of the trip, the financial strain and yet a panoply of vivid experiences which were to have a deep impact on her later literary works. The borrowing of French sources with the right spicing of

10  Sutapa Dutta exoticism and current topical issues, as Inchbald was savvy enough to gauge, made her plays and novels hugely successful amongst the British public. As Bill Ashcroft has postulated, the European urge for travel can be interpreted as an urge to possess, and not just in physical terms (Ashcroft 2008). The very act of rewriting in one’s ‘own’ language is an implicit act of claiming and ‘owning’ another culture and language. If by appropriating French culture Inchbald was wittingly or unwittingly an agent of British imperialism, another British traveller, Lady Holland, from the vantage point of elite society provided a peek into the Spanish Court politics and the political strategies of war. Antonio Calvo Maturana’s analysis of Elizabeth Holland’s The Spanish Journal throws light on the travel of the English aristocrat, Lady Holland during the Peninsular War (1807–14). The War transformed the way the British imagined Spaniards, and also changed Spanish attitude towards the British. Much of the English public never regarded Spain as an enemy even when the latter sided with the French. Britons saw them as being dragged into a conflict, forced to obey ‘the dictate of a tyrannical and odious authority’.4 The war led to a ‘Spanish fever’ among the British as there was a spurt of interest to relearn Spanish history, and dozens of books, not just history books, but travel books as well, were published in the subsequent years to come. Sir John Carr in his Travels in Spain written at the same time that Lady Holland was writing of her experiences in Spain, paid his tribute of respect to her husband, Lord Holland, for his ‘Lordship’s regard for the heroism of the genuine Spanish character’ (Carr 1811: vi). Carr’s description of Spain and Lady Holland’s diaries indicate the romanticising of Spain as a mysterious and fascinating place for the British in early 19th century. If Spain was viewed as romantic because it lagged in industrialisation and was seen as an opportunity to appreciate the aesthetic wonders that the rest of Western Europe had lost, the attraction for Italy lay in its association with the past, of classical splendor and culture. Barbara Tetti examines the British fascination for art and antiquities in Italy, as she focuses on the writings by British women who travelled through Italy in the 1830s. Italy represented the summation of the two objectives of travel—learning and pleasure. Italy was the culmination of the 18th century grand tourist, and the educational process remained incomplete without an acquisition of the knowledge of fine arts and of Roman antiquities. As Bruce Redford argues, Rome was the ‘principal destination’ of every itinerary (Redford 1996: 15). Tetti highlights the way knowledge was processed, as cultural and archaeological studies gradually transformed into scientific inquiries. The fascination with temporality marked the effort to cull out past knowledge from frozen time, and reflect a new sensitivity towards material evidences of the past. The astonishment and the wonder for what was singular lay in ‘acclaiming the foreign as gratifyingly dissimilar from the similar’ (Chard 1999: 4). Crimea, on the fringes of Europe, was delightfully ‘foreign’ in

Introduction 11 its alterity, ‘a European country with an Asian extension’ (Sunderland 2007: 46). Nataliia Voloshkova’s chapter on Mary Holderness’s travel and residence in Crimea in about 1816 provides a glimpse of British interest in mapping the exotic European periphery marked so distinctly by its Oriental ‘otherness’. Her paper also adds to our understanding of the nature of Britain’s ambiguous reaction to Russia’s imperial designs, which was at once supportive and critical of Russia’s colonial project in Crimea.

Part II: In the Colonies, Defining ‘Non-British’ By the mid-19th century, the British Empire was the alpha Empire, commanding the lion’s share of dominance over vast shares of land and seas. The unparalleled extent of British colonial possessions, its naval dominance and expansion in trade and commerce, made it the indisputable ‘first among equals’ of all the European powers in the 19th century. The chapters in this part examine the British women travellers’ association and assessment of British colonies like India, West Indies and South Africa. This part suggests the problematic nature of identity in the British occupied colonies in the larger discourse of 19th century travel writing. With intra-continental exploration and travel becoming the practice, there was the inevitable contact with alien topographies, cultures and people. As administrators, soldiers, merchants, adventurers and artists travelled in large numbers to distant countries, and relations developed, there was an eagerness to be accepted by the host country. The readiness to adopt the local language and customs was considered both a practical necessity and a courtesy to the host. It became an artistic fashion for French and English aristocrats dressed in ‘Oriental’ clothing, to be painted by professional painters. Most famously amongst them was Lord Byron’s romanticised portrait which contributed widely to his fame. The portrait, endorsed by him, was completed in 1813 by the artist Thomas Phillips. It shows Byron wearing Albanian dress, which Byron though to be ‘the most magnificent in the world’. This he had acquired while on a Grand Tour of the Mediterranean in 1809 (Quoted in MacCarthy 2002: 7). Written sources such as journals and memoirs supplemented the visual records and increasingly became an exciting source of the ‘exotic Orient’ for eager readers back home. After 1800 when many new Crown colonies were established, a more dramatic and symbolic public ritual was enacted to propagate imperial triumph. Lord Wellesley, the Governor General of India was portrayed in royal regalia, made from the plundered jewels of the defeated Tipu Sultan of Mysore (Bayly 2016). Also, a more proactive imagining of an English identity back home meant a similar projection of identity in its colonies.5 The new structures built by the English, in terms of art and architecture conspicuously flaunted ceremonial styles, opulent interiors and was a flamboyant display of power and

12  Sutapa Dutta wealth. As Collingham argues, by the late 19th century the official discourse of the British banned all things Indian, with the ‘Imperial Bodies’ itself becoming a distinct category of pure, upright, decent representative of British virtues (Collingham 2011). The body as a repository of sin and virtue, of greed and moderation, and the literal and symbolic significance of ‘consumption’ is dealt with in Georgina Elisabeth Munn’s study of Janet Schaw’s Journal. Munn highlights the sensory consumption of imperial commodities in the context of the Caribbean colonies, and argues that even such mundane daily activities like eating and drinking can have deeply symbolic significance. As colonies were increasingly seen as sources of economic prosperity, any initial attempt at accommodation with the original inhabitants soon gave way to appropriation, not just of land, but significantly of resources like sugar, tea and tobacco for British consumers. Colonial commodities transformed not just the economy of Britain but also tastes and expectations. Munn’s chapter teases out the subtle connections between ‘luxurious’ items of consumption, and the ‘moral’ implications of such opulent, sensual feasting for the British public. The curiosity and fascination for the non-British, as much as a repulsion for all that was so ‘un-British’ shaped the imagining and representation of the Other. Lacy Marschalk throws light on Maria Graham’s Journal of a Residence in India (1812) and Letters on India (1814), both of which showcased what the general English population were eager to know about India. Graham’s letters, most of them written in response to queries posited by English readers, were an attempt to paint a more comprehensive, ‘faithful’ picture of the manners, customs, condition and ‘real’ state of society in India. Graham’s position as an ‘observant stranger’ who did not have any official affiliation, made her views more ‘authentic’ and hence more credible for British readers. Marschalk shows how Graham as a writer was conscious of positioning her work intelligently in the market, and how her writings were largely instrumental in shaping British popular perceptions of India. The narration of reported experience, which were mostly fleeting, superficial accounts of foreign land intended to dazzle the readers, can be seen in Sutapa Dutta’s essay on the representation of the Indian zenana by the English memsahibs. By tracing the writings of memsahibs who travelled to India within a broad time span of about 100 years, Dutta’s paper accentuates the shift in perception and representation of Indian women. What began as awe and curiosity, and a definite sense of fascination for the unknown, unseen private lives of upper-class Indian women, was soon depicted with much criticism and disdain. The paper argues that this disjuncture between romanticism and revulsion was not just a subjective experiencing of individual travellers. The corpus of travel writings by British women on Indian women largely constituted in establishing an

Introduction 13 authoritative and ‘objective’ epistemological knowledge of India which reinforced belief in British superiority. Another memsahib’s travel writings, and her ‘trials’ in India are brought forth in Shannon Derby’s paper on Isabella Fane. Derby argues that Fane’s frivolous letters full of gossip, complaints about physical tribulations and stories of sensationalised first impressions of the land and people were to satisfy a freight of generic expectations of ‘the Orient’. Derby points out Fane’s frequent juxtaposition of the ‘familiar’ with the ‘exotic’, her negotiations between a modern, progressive West and an archaic, decadent East, thus asserting a position of racial and cultural superiority. The mobility of these women travellers functioned as a sign of the progressive and modern West, in stark contrast to the ‘enslaved’ and ‘backward’ social arrangements in the colonised spaces. The 19th century was also the age of missionary activities, and missions were being established in the colonies for evangelisation of ‘pagan’ societies. As missionaries travelled to distant places for proselytising purposes, they noted valuable accounts of their travels in the forms of diaries, memoirs and letters back home. Missionary writings, as Tim Youngs rightly notes, ‘may be seen as another subgenre of travel writing’ (Youngs 2013: 57). Michelle Adler examines the letters of Mary Moffat, a missionary wife who travelled widely in South Africa and provided a vital frame of reference within which the West was to view the ‘dark continent’. Adler’s chapter considers the ways in which Moffat refashioned her identity and that of women missionaries in general, as she negotiated her rites of passage through a geographical and cultural alien territory. Though Palestine was to be formally colonised by the British only in the first half of the 20th century, the Holy Land remained integral in posing ultimate questions on British faith and identity. In the 19th century, travel books about the Holy Land, then under the Ottoman Empire, were hugely popular amongst the British readers. The idea of a sacred land associated with the Bible was mediated through a complex set of religious and psychological encounters. The search for an imagined exoticised Holy Land often clashed with a mundane reality. Sarah Irving’s chapter on Mary Eliza Roger’s travel accounts of Palestine provides a deeper understanding of the interactions of gender, imperialism and orientalism in 19th-century British interventions in Palestine.

Part III: In the Settler Colonies, Furthering the ‘Other’ British In order to conceive the full extent of British influence, and Western culture in general, one needs to look at the interrelation between Britain’s political and economic growth in the settler colonies that came directly or indirectly under imperial rule. With a large population of emigrants

14  Sutapa Dutta from Britain settling outside the empire in the 19th century, the key to understanding English expansion was how the political action aided economic and commercial supremacy outside the formal empire. As the imperial historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson pointed out, ‘informal empire’ had as much a role to play in shaping the configurations of British global supremacy as much as the empire of formal dominion. To comprehend 19th-century British expansion only in the context of formal empire alone, ‘is rather like judging the size of the icebergs solely from the parts above the water-line’ (Gallagher and Robinson 1953: 1). Its only in the interrelation and inter-dependency of the formal and informal empire in terms of economic and constitutional kinship, as Gallagher and Robinson emphasised, can the total framework of 19th century empire be intelligible (Ibid., 7). The term ‘Informal Empire’ was perhaps popularised further by G. Barton’s book Informal Empire and the Rise of the World Culture (2014).6 Barton catalogues the factors that justify the term ‘informal empire’ as ‘massive investment in a foreign economy; large numbers of settlers or guest workers who produce critical amounts of labour; outside interventions, whether military, diplomatic or economic . . . new identities among elite groups that link them to the imperial power’ (Barton 2014: 16). The volume does not aim to define the precise boundaries of informal empire, nor the groups that composed it in the period of this study. At the same time it cannot be denied that the settler colonies gave new meanings to what it meant to be British. An analysis of the travel accounts of British women to America, Canada and Australia, it is hoped, will draw the big-picture of how these key regions have interacted with Britain and have been instrumental in the construction of the Empire and British identity. Sophie Cooper examines the memoirs of three women travellers who used their experiences in Melbourne to explore their own understandings of what constituted ‘Britishness’. At a time when Australia, particularly Melbourne, was witnessing an economic boom which saw British and Irish population flocking to the antipodean settler colonies in search of better prospects, many travellers were enthusiastic to ‘see their countries, learn their feelings, and correct impressions’ of these regions (Froude 1886: 16). As Cooper’s paper establishes, these travellers not only helped spread British ideas in imperial settlement but were also instrumental in representing the farthest extent of the British Empire. Justyna Fruzińska focuses on British women who visited America in the first half of the 19th century when the bitterness of having lost the colonies was somewhat dimmed, and America as a ‘daughter country’ was inviting much interest. However, as Fruzińska’s analysis establishes, interest in the newly found republic was not the sole focus of these travel writers. What constituted a vital part of their description was the preconceived expectation of American landscape as an alterity of the British aesthetic categories. Their varied reaction to the American physical and

Introduction 15 cultural landscape was in a way intimately linked to the real and imagined engagements and dialogic tensions with other places and people that was so much British and yet not fully so. In trying to compare the ‘New England’ with the England of their imagined construction, these writers explicitly or implicitly define who the ‘other’ British is. Sophie Anne Edwards recounts Anna Brownell Jameson’s voyage in Upper Canada, and her ‘movement’ and modes of travel. Edwards explores the use of vehicles to transport the traveller through unfamiliar terrains, and iterates that modes of motion have charged meanings which both reflect and affect the identity of the traveller. Jameson’s movements by a range of transportations chart out the English woman’s complex relationship with the territory that she explores, and her engagement with the people and culture about whom she writes. In her study of how technologies and modes of travel transform narratives of travel, Sidonie Smith writes, ‘If the mode of moving a body through space affects the traveller who moves through space as that body, then the mode of motion informs the meaning that the traveler sends back home in narration’ (Smith 2001: XII). The range and diversity of these travel writings indicate the fluid and yet highly complex stages between observation, narration and reception. The structure of the volume is intended to combine a geographical, thematic and historical survey of the dialectic relationship between the Empire and the Empire builders. The volume gains its strength from the fact that chapter contributors have disparate interests and expertise, giving a more holistic insight to such cultural formations. The contributors are from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds and include academics, research scholars, historians, writers, artists, and avid travellers. These essays engage with the kinds of issues which are relevant to historians, sociologists and travel enthusiasts. St. Augustine of Hippo is often attributed with the saying, ‘The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page’, and it is hoped that this collection of essays can provide new insights to how the world was perceived by these adventurous travellers who truly wanted to read the entire book.

Notes . For details of his life see Cook 1820. 1 2. The Database of Women’s Travel Writing (DWTW) was launched online in 2014 and provides an extensive bibliographical record for all the known books of travel by women published in Britain and Ireland between 1780 and 1840. www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/resources/databases-a-z/databases/database-ofwomens-travel-writing-dwtw.php 3. Daniel Roche estimated that between 1772 and 1787, approximately 3,800 foreigners visited Paris annually, of which 25  percent were British (Roche 2000: 236–238). 4. Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867) who covered the Peninsular War as a correspondent for the London Times reported in The Times, 9 January 1805, 2.

16  Sutapa Dutta 5. In 1749 ‘God Save the King’ was first sung in Britain and ‘Rule Britannia’ was also published. Source: Metcalf 2013: 4. 6. For a historiographical survey of the idea of ‘Informal Empire’ see Barton 2014.

References Arnold, Matthew. 1869. Culture and Anarchy. London: Smith, Elder and Co. Ashcroft, Bill. 2008. ‘Afterword: Travel and Power’, in Julia Kuehn and Paul Smethurst (eds.), Travel Writing, Form, and Empire: The Poetics and Politics of Mobility. London: Routledge, 229–241. Bakhtin, M.M. 1993. Toward a Philosophy of the Act, trans. Vadim Liapunov and ed. Vadim Liapunov and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Barton, Gregory A. 2014. Informal Empire and the Rise of One World Culture. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Batten, Charles L. 1978. Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bayly, C.A. 2016. Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World 1780– 1830. London and New York: Routledge. Bohls, Elizabeth A. 1995. Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716–1818. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Borm, Jan. 2004. ‘Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology’, in Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs (eds.), Perspectives on Travel Writing. Aldershot: Ashgate, 13–26. Brarr, Pat. 1976. The Memsahibs: The Women of Victorian India. London: Secker and Warburg. Carr, John. 1811. Descriptive Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of Spain  & Balearic Isles, in the Year 1809. London: Sherwood, Neeley, and Jones. Certeau, Michel de. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. I. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chaney, Edward and Timothy Wilks. 2014. The Jacobean Grand Tour: Early Stuart Travellers in Europe. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. Chard, Chloe. 1999. Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography, 1600–1830. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cohen, Michele. 1992. ‘The Grand Tour: Constructing the English Gentleman in Eighteenth-Century France’, History of Education, 21(3): 241–257. ———. 1996. Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Routledge. Colbert, Benjamin. 2004. ‘Bibliography of British Travel Writing, 1780–1840: The European Tour, 1814–1818 (Excluding Britain and Ireland)’, Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, (13), Winter. Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, Cardiff University. Collingham, E.M. 2011. Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj 1800–1947. Cambridge: Polity Press. Conway, Stephen. 2011. Britain, Ireland and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth Century: Similarities, Connections, Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Introduction 17 Cook, James. 1820. The Life of Captain James Cook. Adapted and abridged from the biography of Andrew Kippis. Dublin: Richard Grace. Froude, James Anthony. 1886. Oceana or England and Her Colonies. London: Longmans, Brown, Green, and Co. Gaddis, John Lewis. 2002. The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gallagher, John and Ronald Robinson. 1953. ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, The Economic History Review, Second Series, VI(1): 1–15. Ghose, Indira. 1998. Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Grewal, Inderpal. 1996. Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel. London: Leicester University Press. Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York and London: Routledge. Holland, Patrick and Graham Huggan. 1998. Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing. Ann Abor: University of Michigan Press. Leask, Nigel. 2002. Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing 1770–1840: ‘From an Antique Land’. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacCarthy, Fiona. 2002. Byron: Life and Legend. London: John Murray. Macmillan, Margaret. 1988. Women of the Raj. London: Thames and Hudson. McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York and London: Routledge. Metcalf, Thomas R. 2013. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Mills, Sara. 2005. Gender and Colonial Space. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge. Redford, Bruce. 1996. Venice and the Grand Tour. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Roche, Daniel. 2000. La Ville Promise: mobilité et accueil à Paris (fin XVIIedébut XIXe siècle). Paris: Fayard, in Association with Centre national du livre. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Sen, Indrani. 2008. Memsahib’s Writings: Colonial Narratives on Indian Women. New Delhi: Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd. Smith, Sidonie. 2001. Moving Lives: 20th Century Women’s Travel Writing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sunderland, Willard. 2007. ‘Imperial Space: Territorial Thought and Practice in the Eighteenth Century’, in Jane Burbank et al. (eds.), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 33–66. Urry, John. 1995. Consuming Places. London and New York: Routledge. Youngs, Tim. 1994. Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues, 1850–1900. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 2013. The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part I

On the Continent, Framing ‘Britishness’

1 Colonising the French Elizabeth Inchbald’s Cultural Appropriation Ben P. Robertson

In recent years, British writer Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821) has regained some of the celebrity that she enjoyed during her lifetime. Her two novels, 20-odd plays, and literary criticism have received considerable attention in the 21st century, especially after the publication of Annibel Jenkins’ biography in 2003. Scholars generally cast Inchbald as a revolutionary writer of Jacobin texts whose strong sense of independence led her to a life of celibacy after the sudden death of her husband so that she might retain control of her own financial and social wellbeing (Boaden 1833; Jenkins 2003; Inchbald 2007; Robertson 2013). Few scholars, however, have paid much attention to the single visit that Inchbald made to France in 1776 with her husband. The Inchbalds’ extensive preparation for their voyage, coupled with Elizabeth’s later use of French plays to create her own dramas, hint at the purely exploitative nature of the trip to the Continent. Inchbald sought to capitalise on imperialistic attitudes to ‘colonise’ French culture for British consumption. And although the trip itself was a disaster in the short term, the cultural capital that Inchbald accumulated during the voyage served her well financially in subsequent decades after her husband’s death. The fact that she considered emigrating to India, that her first successful play was partly about the Great Mogul, that she set Such Things Are in Sumatra and that she used Africa as a minor, but important, feature of Nature and Art (1796) all suggest a shrewd awareness of imperial discourse and of the potential for a woman writer’s appropriation of foreign culture. Initially unable to live on her own terms, Inchbald found a means to seize power over her own destiny through the co-opting of primarily French culture—and specifically of French drama.

Inchbald’s Early Sense of Determination To understand Inchbald’s decision to appropriate French drama for her own purposes, readers need to keep in mind some of the obstacles she faced and also need to understand how determined she was to overcome these limitations. Indeed, without her strong sense of self-determination

22  Ben P. Robertson and resolve, she might have stayed at home in Suffolk rather than seeking her fortunes through drama. From her teenage years, Inchbald was intrigued by the idea of becoming an actor (Jenkins 2003: 9–10). Her largely autodidactic education included reading plays by William Shakespeare and contemporary writers, and her family occasionally attended theatre productions in the region surrounding her home village of Stanningfield (sometimes called Standingfield) in Suffolk (8). Additionally, her older brother George became an actor for the Norwich Theatre Company during these early years, and Inchbald may have wanted to follow his example to some extent. In fact, she applied unsuccessfully to George’s employer Richard Griffiths for an acting job in the early 1770s. She reportedly also stole Griffiths’ portrait (whom she found attractive) during a visit to Norwich; perhaps the theft factored into his decision not to hire her (10). Unfortunately, Inchbald had to face serious limitations that barred her path toward thespianism. A fairly innocuous obstacle, the fact that she and her family were Catholic likely gave pause to many people with whom she interacted. After all, Catholics were not held in great esteem during these years in England, and anti-Catholic discrimination was not unusual, particularly given the Popery Act of 1698, which remained largely in effect until 1778. That year, some of its provisions were repealed, but public opinion turned sour as Lord George Gordon publicly warned of the dangers of allowing Catholics too much freedom (Jenkins 2003: 59–60). The fact that the French, who were aiding the rebellious American colonies, also were officially Catholic certainly did not help matters. The anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 were part of the result. And although these events happened a few years after Inchbald finally had become an actor, they do offer meaningful hints at where public opinion was headed during Inchbald’s earliest years. Inchbald’s religion, however, was a minor barrier to her acting career. A more significant impediment was her stutter or stammer. This factor alone might have kept her from the stage, but she practiced stage declamation frequently and gained enough control of the problem to satisfy both theatre managers and a very demanding public. Her diary entries repeatedly mention ‘spouting’, a term she used to indicate that she was practicing her lines for a play in which she had a role, and these experiences certainly helped improve her performances (Inchbald 2007: I, 59–61; Jenkins 2003: 14). In fact, reviews of her performances do not mention the stutter. Finally, as was typical of women artists of the Romantic era, Inchbald had to confront the sobering truth that, as a woman, she would have to face additional scrutiny, both from theatre managers and from audiences. She would have to work harder than her male counterparts to impress anyone, and her limited education as a woman would mean that fewer people would take her seriously on an intellectual level. Even more importantly, women actors—especially attractive ones like

Colonising the French 23 Inchbald—often were unjustly stereotyped as being sexually promiscuous, an attitude that unfortunately was reinforced in a highly public manner when the actor Mary Robinson left her husband to become mistress to the Prince of Wales in 1779 (Jenkins 2003: 396–397). Indeed, Inchbald herself experienced the negative effects of this stereotype when she asked theatre manager James Dodd for an acting job. According to Inchbald’s first biographer James Boaden (and echoed by Annibel Jenkins in 2003), Dodd made sexual advances toward Inchbald, who threw a basin of hot water in his face before fleeing from him (Boaden 1833: I, 29; Jenkins 2003: 2). This anecdote is a favourite among scholars for its illustration of Inchbald’s spirited determination and sense of propriety. Despite these impediments, Inchbald was a determined young woman who took the astonishing—and very dangerous—step of running away from home alone to seek an acting job in London in April 1772 when she was just 18. She was quickly disabused of the notion that she could succeed on her own. If nothing else, the experience with Dodd convinced her that she needed protection of some sort. Consequently, when 37-year-old Joseph Inchbald, whom she had known for some time already, proposed marriage to her, she accepted, and they were married a mere two months after she had left home without her mother’s permission. Biographer Annibel Jenkins believes the marriage was a ‘love match’ (2003: 11), but most other scholars point to Elizabeth’s own statement in an early letter to Joseph (whom she at first declined for marriage), ‘In spite of your eloquent pen, matrimony still appears to me with less charms than terrors’ (Boaden 1833: I, 15). Jane Spencer, writing an introduction to Inchbald’s 1791 novel A Simple Story (Inchbald 1791b), calls the relationship ‘stormy’ and posits that Elizabeth married Joseph as ‘the only way to enter her chosen profession with respectable protection’ (Spencer 1988: viii). Indeed, evidence from Inchbald’s diaries supports Spencer’s statement more firmly than Jenkins’. Although Spencer and Jenkins may disagree on the impetus behind Inchbald’s marriage, one issue on which they do agree is the extent of Inchbald’s determination to succeed. Spencer accurately sums up James Boaden’s overall picture of Inchbald by commenting that in her later life, ‘she lived alone in a succession of lodgings, keeping herself fiercely independent’ (ix). Of Inchbald’s earlier years, Jenkins similarly notes, ‘She was determined to write. She was also determined to live by her own standards’ (12). Again and again, scholars have pointed out how tenacious Inchbald was and how intensely she guarded her own independence—her ability to maintain control of her own life.

The Trip to France It is this determination and sense of independence that Inchbald brought to bear on her and her husband’s trip to France in 1776. At the beginning of the year, the couple were acting in Edinburgh with the travelling

24  Ben P. Robertson company of West Digges, but they would end their tour that summer. Their engagements took them to Glasgow, Greenock, Hamilton and other points in Scotland before returning to Edinburgh. Unfortunately, Joseph had what Elizabeth calls a ‘great dispute’ with an Edinburgh audience on 12 June 1776 (Inchbald 2007: I, 46). The nature of the dispute is not clear. Neither Inchbald’s first biographer James Boaden, nor her more recent biographer Annibel Jenkins, is able to provide further details, and Inchbald’s own diary entry for that day simply takes note of the dispute without providing details (Boaden 1833: I, 60; Jenkins 2003: 26; Inchbald 2007: I, 46). Elizabeth herself was not in the theatre at the time, having left early to do some personal work. Regardless of the cause, however, the theatre audience rioted on Joseph’s account three nights later in response to the dispute (Inchbald 2007: 47). Jenkins rightly points out that theatre patrons of the time would riot for ‘flimsy excuses’, so even the severity of Joseph’s supposed offense is not clear (I, 26). Regardless, the event signaled the end of the Inchbalds’ tour in Scotland, and they were on the road for Shields to catch a ship bound for France two weeks later. While the audience riot may have given the Inchbalds the immediate incentive to leave Edinburgh, the couple apparently had been planning a trip to France for some time. Interestingly enough, Elizabeth had begun studying French two years earlier, according to her biographers, and during the Inchbalds’ stay in Edinburgh, she even hired a ‘French master’ to help her with the language (Boaden 1833: I, 59; Jenkins 2003: 21; Inchbald 2007: I, 11–12, 21, 31). It would have been uncharacteristic of her to have gone to such expense for the mere sake of the pleasure of learning a foreign language. She was not prone to extravagance, partly because she and Joseph simply had so little money, especially during these early years. In fact, she meticulously kept track of her expenses in the ‘Account of CASH’ sections of her earlier pocketbooks—down to the halfpenny (Inchbald 2007: I, 4–7). Given her pragmatic tendencies, Inchbald must have begun studying French with a specific purpose in mind, and as Jenkins correctly reports, these studies became ‘essential to her professional career’ (21). Jenkins later comments that there is ‘no way of knowing just when and why the Inchbalds determined to seek another and better place in France’ (27). The most obvious scenario, as supported by evidence from Inchbald’s diaries, is that Elizabeth planned to study French (and maybe acting as well), while Joseph, who was also a portrait painter, intended to study art. In any case, they certainly hoped to improve their financial situation. Elizabeth may even have thought that she could find acting jobs in France, and Joseph probably hoped to sell the occasional painting. However, while Elizabeth was a reliable and dedicated actor, neither she nor Joseph was a first-rate performer—even in their own native English—and Joseph’s paintings never brought him any notoriety.

Colonising the French 25 Fortunately, the entirety of the Inchbalds’ trip to France took place in 1776, the first year for which any of Elizabeth’s known diaries has survived into the 21st century. This slim volume, barely the size of a modern mobile telephone (in fact, smaller than many), is titled THE LADIES’ Own Memorandum-Book: OR, DAILY POCKET JOURNAL, For the YEAR 1776 (Inchbald 2007: I, 1). Published yearly, these pocketbooks, as the title indicates, were meant exclusively for women to record their weekly activities. With the book held open, each set of facing pages included seven blank spaces, one for each day of the week, on the right two-thirds of the righthand (recto) page with an ‘Account of CASH’ covering the remainder of that page and the lefthand (verso) page (I, 6). Given the size of the space allotted to each day’s entry—about 5 cm. in length by 1.4  cm. in height in this case—it seems clear that women were not expected to have a great many important activities during their weekly schedules (I, 5). Of necessity, Inchbald’s diary is, therefore, quite cryptic in many instances. Nevertheless, because she wrote in a tiny, cramped style for the diaries, Inchbald was able to fit as many as ten lines of text into such a small space in some of her thousands of entries over the years (I, xviii). For mid-1776, the result is an intriguing, if incomplete, picture of the Inchbalds’ entire trip. The sea voyage from Shields to the French port of St. Valery was not especially pleasant. With calms punctuated by occasional rough seas and thunderstorms, the 16-day trip was alternately boring and nauseainducing. Inchbald complains several times in her diary about being sick, though on the better days she played games with the ship’s captain and read in Paradise Lost (I, 51–55). She also mentions being frightened by the turbulent sea, even complaining that one night she was unable to sleep ‘for fear’ (I, 54). Once ashore on 23 July, the Inchbalds made their way to Paris by way of Abbeville and Amiens, pausing long enough to visit the churches of Abbeville and to attend Mass (I, 55–56). The pause to visit the churches of Abbeville helps to demonstrate the dual nature of the voyage as a whole. While visiting new cities, the Inchbalds were keen to experience some of the important sights while carrying out their more practical objectives. Even before leaving Britain, they took the time for a little tourism. Elizabeth’s diary indicates that they visited Tynemouth Castle on 4 July after they had arrived at Shields (I, 51). The previous night, however, they had been to the theatre—an activity that may have been enjoyable but that also provided the chance to observe the skills of other actors and potentially improve their own techniques. A similar evening outing to the theatre took place on 5 July (I, 52). Unfortunately, the visit to Paris was not the rousing success that they had hoped. They did manage to enjoy themselves a little, for example visiting the Tuileries Gardens, Notre Dame Cathedral, a convent, a theatre, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Palais Royal Gardens and a gallery (I, 57–59). However, Paris brought considerable stress. At the end of their

26  Ben P. Robertson first full day there, they went to bed ‘rather off’, partly because they had not had supper (I, 57). They got lost among the sinuous Parisian streets and again ‘went to Bed Cross’ the following evening. Inchbald mentions not eating at least two more meals during the stay (on 10 and 12 August) (I, 60–61). Moreover, the couple quarreled a number of times. They had some sort of dispute on 11 August, and the conflict seems to have carried into the next two days. By the 13th, Joseph was refusing to speak to Elizabeth, although eventually they made up enough that he began drawing a portrait of her on the 15th (I, 62). She was ‘a little off’ with him the following day, and they ‘had words’ about his painting on the 19th and again on the 21st (I, 63). Perhaps Elizabeth felt that the portrait was not flattering enough, or maybe she lost patience with the level of Joseph’s ability. Two of their biggest expenses probably were the painter Joseph hired to help him improve his painting skills and the French teacher he hired for Elizabeth. Although these two expenses were necessary for the couple to attain their objectives in France, they undoubtedly added to the stress the two already were experiencing. Elizabeth’s diary mentions the painter’s first lesson to Joseph on 6 August (I, 59), and she notes at least six more visits by this painter during their time in Paris between 9 and 19 August (I, 60–63). Additionally, the couple bought painting supplies a number of times (as mentioned on 10 and 14 August, for example). Presumably Joseph paid for these lessons and supplies from his own share of their funds because Elizabeth does not mention specific expenses related to them in her ‘Account of CASH’. One expense she does mention is Joseph’s paying a French teacher the considerable sum of 1 livre for Elizabeth to have 12 lessons (I, 59). As the stay in Paris continued, Joseph practiced steadily on his artistic skills. Elizabeth mentions his staying home to draw on 4 August while she goes to church, and she apparently overcomes his reluctance to work on the task the following day (I, 59). Again and again—at least nine more times during the month of August—Elizabeth mentions that Joseph is either drawing or painting, usually working on a miniature portrait (I, 60–64). In the meantime, Elizabeth continued to study French (as mentioned on 19 August) while reading French plays and attending the theatre when she was able. She and Joseph went to their first Parisian performance the evening of their first full day in the city (29 July), and Elizabeth mentions several other theatre visits, for example, on 3, 12, 19 and 21 August (I, 58, 61, 63). She rarely notes the specific plays that she saw performed, but at the end of the 1776 diary, she includes a list of ten of them (I, 96). Also, she records reading ‘Iphigenia in French’ on 29 July before going to see the performance, and she mentions ‘Andromaque’ on 21 August (I, 57, 63). By 24 August, the Inchbalds apparently had realised that they could prolong their stay in France no longer. Their finances simply would not

Colonising the French 27 allow them to do so. They packed their belongings that day and left Paris the following day on the way to the port city of Dieppe through Rouen (I, 64). Even then, they could not book passage on a ship for another two weeks, so while they waited in Dieppe, Joseph painted a portrait or two for money (as mentioned in the diary entries of 9, 10, 12 and 13 September), and Elizabeth read more French plays and attended the local theatre when possible (I, 65–71). She also read Horace during this two-week period. They were able to leave France on 18 September around noon, although both immediately became ‘violently Sick’ aboard the ship. Mercifully, the passage to Brighthelmstone (current-day Brighton) took only 24 hours.

The Aftermath of the Trip In the short term, the Inchbalds’ trip to France was a failure, and they returned to England nearly penniless. They would stay in Brighthelmstone another ten days while they visited the local theatre and wrote letters to friends and colleagues in search of employment. These days were some of the most trying for both of them. They had used most of their money to return to England and occasionally had to skip meals. On the 21st, they ‘drank instead of dining’; they ‘eat tongue [. . .] instead of dining’ on the 23rd and they ‘eat turnips in the fields’ (possibly just idiomatic expressions) on 25 September (I, 71–72; Jenkins 2003: 29). Then, two days in a row (26 and 27 September), they skipped supper (Inchbald 2007: I, 72–73). Elizabeth describes them both as ‘unhappy’, ‘very dull’ and ‘rather dull’ (19, 21, and 24 September) during this week. They finally set out for London on 30 September looking for better opportunities and eventually had better success. Despite the immediate sense of failure it brought, the trip to France resulted in positive consequences in the long term. The trip apparently convinced the Inchbalds of two important facts. First, acting alone would not provide adequate financial support for the pair—especially since Joseph had two sons who occasionally made demands on his finances. Second, Joseph’s painting would not support them, either. They needed a third alternative. That third alternative had been rolling about Elizabeth Inchbald’s mind for some time: Writing. Despite her lack of formal education, she had a strong sense of the importance of the written word. The numeral 7 written on the front cover of the 1776 diary suggests that she had started keeping a diary in 1770 at the age of 16 (I, 1). Moreover, biographer Annibel Jenkins indicates that Inchbald began trying her own hand at literary writing as early as 1774 (21). Perhaps, having begun acting two years earlier alongside Joseph, she was inspired by the books she had read and the plays in which she had acted and simply felt the artist’s need to create. Perhaps she already realised the limited potential of her acting career to support herself and her husband. More importantly,

28  Ben P. Robertson however, the later experiences in France most likely gave additional impetus to her creative tendencies. Reading plays in French and seeing some of them performed certainly must have been inspiring, and the fact that she and Joseph sometimes went to bed hungry undoubtedly was no little incentive. In fact, before the Inchbalds left France, Elizabeth records in her diary one day in Dieppe (31 August), ‘I began a farce’ (I, 66). She may mean that she began reading a farce, but it would seem odd for her not to finish reading a farce—a relatively short literary form—on the same day she began it, especially since she was not working professionally at the time and had plenty of leisure. Perhaps this was one of her earliest attempts at literary writing. She did make several abortive attempts much later (Robertson 2013: 48–49). Indeed, she mentions writing again in the diary on both 2 and 7 September, still before leaving Dieppe (I, 66, 68). She may be referring to writing letters to friends and relatives—which she was doing these days—but the possibility that she is describing an early attempt to write her own drama remains high. The next four years would be especially busy for Inchbald. After a few other engagements, she and Joseph eventually joined Tate Wilkinson’s company on the York circuit. Working with travelling companies like Wilkinson’s was especially tiring since the troupe moved from one city to the next, sometimes in relatively quick succession. Neither Inchbald was a stranger to this kind of work, however, and the pair seem to have done well enough financially for the time being. Unfortunately, Joseph died suddenly in the summer of 1779 (Jenkins 2003: 49). Left to her own devices without Joseph’s income to draw upon when necessary, Elizabeth soon made a decision that would significantly shape the remainder of her life. She would try, once again, to find acting work in London.

London and the Transition to Writing Inchbald’s decision proved fortunate, for Thomas Harris hired her to act at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1780. She made her London debut in October and worked there regularly (except for a brief stint in Ireland) until 1789 (Jenkins 2003: 78, 126, 274). Finally, she had attained her dream of being a London performer. During these years, she saved money for retirement and began writing in earnest. By 1789, she was financially stable enough to retire from acting altogether. Thereafter, she focused all her professional attention on writing. It seems, however, that Inchbald already had completed her first attempt at a novel before moving to London. She reportedly offered it to publisher John Stockdale in September of 1779, but he refused to purchase the book (Jenkins 2003: 52). The fact that Inchbald tried to sell the novel so soon after Joseph’s death suggests that his decease may have prompted the attempted sale as Elizabeth worked to stabilise her

Colonising the French 29 finances. Despite Stockdale’s refusal, Inchbald continued working on the text, which probably turned into A Simple Story, eventually published in 1791 and continuously kept in print by various publishers since that year (52). As Inchbald began to focus more effort on writing, she began revealing her awareness of colonial discourse. The awareness of colonialism and its effects is apparent in her diary of 1783 in which she mentions emigrating to India. On 23 November of that year—the year just prior to the successful first performance of A Mogul Tale—Inchbald comments that she spent an evening with her friend Mrs Whitfield, and they ‘thought and talkd of going to India’ (Inchbald 2007: II, 200). They were almost certainly considering the move to improve their fortunes, and Inchbald may even have followed through had she heard more encouraging news from her friends. In fact, the possibility held enough interest for Inchbald that she was still thinking about it five days later when she chanced upon her friend (and possible love interest) Sir Charles Bunbury (Jenkins 2003: 233; Inchbald 2007: 378). As she notes in the diary, ‘he walkd with me and I  askd him about India’ (II, 202). She does not record Bunbury’s response, but her surviving diaries never again mention the possibility of emigrating. Bunbury must have discouraged Inchbald from such a risky enterprise. Inchbald’s first authorial success was a play. Entitled A Mogul Tale, the drama was first performed in 1784 and subsequently published for the first time two years later (Inchbald 1788b). It went through multiple editions (Robertson 2013: 56). This first play provides a fine example of Inchbald’s willingness to exploit international current events for her writing. She remained well aware of current news throughout her adult life, and her diaries repeatedly record her reading current newspapers and, in some cases, noting significant events within the diaries’ pages. This first successful play begins with a balloon flight. It is no coincidence that the French Montgolfier brothers had carried out their first balloon flight in December  1782, had engaged in public demonstrations of balloons the following year and had even carried people aloft by the time Inchbald’s play was performed (Lynn 2010: 1–8). The French balloon experiments caused a sensation, and Inchbald clearly had read about them in the newspapers. She capitalised upon the publicity generated by the balloon flights for A Mogul Tale, correctly predicting that English audiences would be enthralled by the subject matter. Additionally, one of the primary characters in the play is, as the title suggests, the Great Mogul of India. The British had been involved in colonial Indian affairs for generations by this point in history, and Inchbald undoubtedly hoped that the exotic location also would help to sell theatre tickets. In typical fashion, however, Inchbald surprises the audience by making the Great Mogul humanistically enlightened, while the English balloon occupants who land accidentally in his territory are the ones who exhibit questionable

30  Ben P. Robertson moral judgment (Inchbald 1788b). In a humorous nod to Inchbald’s own religion, one of the characters even masquerades as the Pope. Although A Mogul Tale was not Inchbald’s most successful play, it did well enough to encourage her to write more. Thereafter, she wrote plays continuously for years while also working on revisions for her novel. Her fifth play, Such Things Are, also exploited current events and exotic locales (Inchbald 1788c). First performed in 1787, this play is set in Sumatra and foregrounds the idea of prison reform, a topic that had been in the news for years thanks to the famous reformer John Howard (Jenkins 2003: 195; Robertson 2013: 65). As for the setting of Inchbald’s play, the British had been involved in Sumatran affairs through the East India Company for a century by this point. Again, Inchbald correctly surmised that audience members would find these topical subjects intriguing. In subsequent years, Inchbald continued to write more plays while also publishing two novels—A Simple Story in 1791 and Nature and Art in 1796 (Inchbald 1791b, 1796). The second novel is not as well known, but part of its setting is germane to this discussion of exotic and colonial locales. Inchbald places two of her characters on the island of Zocotora, which she situates off the coast of Sierra Leone. In fact, Zocotora, or Socotra, is located in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Yemen, and was a deliberate choice on Inchbald’s part for its exotic qualities (Robertson 2016). Whether Inchbald knew she was making a geographical blunder is open for debate, but the fact that she mentions Sierra Leone is significant because the British had resettled several hundred former slaves in that country in 1787. Once again, Inchbald was borrowing from recent events in an attempt to create a text that would intrigue her readers. Furthermore, it is worthwhile to note that Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman had been published in 1792, just four years earlier, and in that treatise, Wollstonecraft provocatively compares women’s roles in British society with the roles of slaves (1992: 107, 122, 145). Inchbald, who knew Wollstonecraft personally (though they did not get along very well), would have known about Wollstonecraft’s claims as well as about the slave-resettlement plan. Either one—or both—might have inspired Inchbald to use the African setting.

Appropriating French Culture At this point, it should be clear that Inchbald maintained a strong sense of determination to succeed and to do so on her own terms. Additionally, her near-obsession with knowing about current events around the world kept her informed about Britain’s colonial activities, so she knew that India and other countries abroad could be sources of great wealth. India provided fodder for A Mogul Tale in 1784, but Inchbald was not content to stop using international themes and sources with this first play. France was the only foreign country to which Inchbald had travelled

Colonising the French 31 and the only one whose language she knew fairly well. It should not be a great surprise, then, that Inchbald soon began translating French plays for English audiences. Like Britain, France was a colonial power—one of the great European colonisers. Scholars of postcolonial literature likely would scoff at the idea of France’s being colonised in any way. After all, the French Empire included large portions of North America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia. Indeed, France was a global power. It stands to reason that two powerful countries such as Britain and France would encroach on one another’s territory on occasion—and they certainly did. Inchbald, however, was not so much encroaching on French territory as she was appropriating its culture. In the 1780s, she began to ‘colonise’, not French territory, but French drama. She did so systematically by taking French plays and, not just translating them, but adapting them for British audiences. At some point during Inchbald’s language studies—probably even before she began them—she must have realised the potential that a knowledge of French could offer for the writing career she was attempting to nourish. Indeed, those experiences probably accounted in great part for the professional relationship Inchbald established in the late 1780s with the French performer Anthony Le Texier. The first mention of Le Texier in Inchbald’s extant diaries appears in early 1788, by which point, according to Annibel Jenkins, he was ‘firmly established in London’ (241). Having fallen out of favour after inadvertently insulting King Louis XV, Le Texier had moved to London, where he performed dramatic readings of French plays at his house on Lisle Street. One of Le Texier’s most notable accomplishments was the publication, between 1785 and 1787, of a series of 40 French plays by various authors in eight volumes entitled Recueil des pièces de théâtre (Inchbald 2007: II, 387). Le Texier also seems to have worked for theatre manager Thomas Harris, who managed the Covent Garden Theatre and who was Inchbald’s primary London employer. Apparently, Le Texier’s job was to acquire French plays for Harris, who gave them to English authors like Inchbald to translate for the English stage (Jenkins 2003: 242). Additionally, Le Texier seems to have given plays directly to Inchbald to translate so that he could use them in his own dramatic readings. Hence, Inchbald’s knowledge of French, combined with her willingness to accept the tedious job of translation/adaptation, gave her an advantage that helped her to establish herself as a playwright. By the time Inchbald began translating in earnest, she already had written three plays of her own that had seen the London stage—A Mogul Tale in 1784 (Inchbald 1788b), I’ll Tell You What in 1785 (Inchbald 1786a) and Appearance Is Against Them also in 1785 (Inchbald 1785). Her fourth play accepted for performance was to be an adaptation of a French original, and it inaugurated the long series of French adaptations that dominated the middle of Inchbald’s playwriting career. In fact,

32  Ben P. Robertson between 1786 and 1792, inclusive, Inchbald produced only two plays that were not taken from French sources—Such Things Are and All on a Summer’s Day (both of 1787). The other nine plays from this period, comprising nearly half of Inchbald’s dramatic oeuvre, came from French sources. In total, Inchbald borrowed from ten plays by six French authors to create nine plays of her own. First produced in 1786, The Widow’s Vow was an adaptation of Joseph Patrat’s L’Heureuse erreur (Inchbald 1786b; Robertson 2013: 63). It was one of Inchbald’s less successful plays, although it ran for 12 nights in the 1785–1786 season and seven nights in the following season (Robertson 2013: 64). The Midnight Hour, adapted from Antoine Jean Bourlin Dumaniant’s Guerre ouverte, ou Ruse contre ruse, appeared in the 1786–1787 season on ten nights (70–72). It became one of Inchbald’s most successful plays, with 36 performances the next season and a total of 85 performances by the end of the century (72). Six more plays followed in quick succession, including Animal Magnetism in 1788 (Inchbald 1789a), based on Le Médecin malgré tout le monde by Dumaniant; The Child of Nature in 1788 (Inchbald 1788a), based on Zélie, ou l’Ingénue by Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de Saint Aubin, Comtesse de Genlis; The Married Man of 1789 (Inchbald 1789b), based on Le Philosophe marié by Philippe Néricault Destouches; The Hue and Cry of 1791, based on La Nuit aux aventures by Dumaniant; Next Door Neighbours of 1791 (Inchbald 1791a), based on L’Indigent by Louis Sébastien Mercier and on Le Dissipateur by Destouches; and Young Men and Old Women of 1792, based on Le Méchant by Jean-BaptisteLouis Gresset (78, 84, 89, 91, 92, 94). Inchbald’s ninth adaptation, probably from 1792, was The Massacre, based on Mercier’s Jean Hennuyer, Evêque de Lizieux (95; Inchbald 1833). The plays enjoyed varying degrees of success. Young Men and Old Women, for example, ran only six nights in the 1791–1792 season without being produced again before the end of the century (Robertson 2013: 94), while The Hue and Cry saw the stage only once and was never published (91–92). The Child of Nature, however, ran 27 nights in its first season and was performed at least once every season save two before the end of the century (86). The Massacre, appearing around the time of the Reign of Terror in France, was judged too inflammatory for English audiences for its depiction of the French St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, so it was never produced in Inchbald’s lifetime (95). In spite of the relative failure of some plays like Young Men and Old Women, Inchbald’s ‘French period’, as it might be called, represents the most successful point in her playwriting career, at least in terms of the number of performances of her plays at the patent theatres in London. The number peaked at 64 in the 1788–1789 season, with six plays of hers on stage during the season (55). Four of the six were based on French originals (Animal Magnetism, The Child of Nature, The Married Man and

Colonising the French 33 The Midnight Hour; the other two plays were A Mogul Tale and Such Things Are). In addition to the many productions of these plays, seven of them also were published during Inchbald’s lifetime (The Widow’s Vow, Such Things Are, The Midnight Hour, Animal Magnetism, The Child of Nature, The Married Man and Next Door Neighbours). The sources of the original French plays for these nine adaptations may have been varied, but Le Texier is the most likely, at least for most of them. He figures prominently and frequently in Inchbald’s 1788 diary, the only extant diary that covers Inchbald’s most productive period in terms of French adaptations (the next earliest diary is from 1783). On 14 January of that year, Inchbald writes in the diary, ‘received a note from Mr. Robinson met a Gentleman at his House about a french Piece’ (II, 219). The following day, she mentions reading the piece during the morning and beginning to translate that evening. She continued translating the rest of the week—to the point of being ‘denied to every one’ who called—and finished Sunday (II, 220). Le Texier visits on 25 January, and four days later, Inchbald is looking over her translation before sending it on the 29th to theatre manager Thomas Harris (II, 221–222). The same day, Le Texier calls again ‘on Business’. During the first full week of February, Harris sends back the ‘french Piece’ and suggests corrections, which Inchbald works hard to incorporate into the text before finding out on the 15th that Harris may not be interested in the drama after all (II, 223–225). On 17 February, Le Texier leaves another play with Inchbald, and she expects yet another from him on the 21st (II, 225–226). The first week of March, Inchbald is again translating, this time working on ‘Animal Magnatizim’ [sic], a draft of which she completes the next week (II, 228–230). She mentions translating a speech for Le Texier and leaving it at his house on 15 April, by which point her own adaptation is in rehearsals (II, 236). Le Texier brings her a tragedy on 21 July, an opera that she ‘did not Like’ on 28 July, and other items at various times throughout the year (II, 255–256). Indeed, Inchbald seems at this point to have attained a good reputation for adapting French drama, for she mentions on 1 August that ‘a French Gentleman calld to ask me to adopt a Play’ (II, 257). Throughout the rest of the year, she mentions numerous visits by Le Texier and frequently notes reading French plays. On 1 September, it is Thomas Harris who brings her a French comedy, which she completed in rough draft on the 10th and then revised in October (II, 264–275). Harris visits on 8 November ‘to beg me Let the french Piece be playd’, and Inchbald sees it advertised on the 17th (II, 276, 278). Presumably, the play in question was The Child of Nature, which premiered on 28 November, when Inchbald was ‘in the Slips’ to watch what she considered a successful performance (II, 280). In the end, Le Texier (even if indirectly through Thomas Harris) may have been the source of all ten of the French originals for the nine

34  Ben P. Robertson Inchbald adaptations. Regardless of the source of these plays, Inchbald never would have obtained the rich opportunity that the French drama offered to advance her own career had she not studied French so assiduously in the previous decade.

The Legacy of Inchbald’s French Studies Elizabeth Inchbald’s appropriation of French culture was deliberate and systematic. The fact that she began studying French so early suggests that she and her husband Joseph intended a trip to France all along and perhaps that she already had conceived the idea of adapting French originals for English audiences by the mid-1770s. Although the Inchbalds returned to England nearly penniless, the cultural capital that Elizabeth accumulated before and during the voyage became a boon to her later writing career. Moreover, Inchbald read British newspapers voraciously, so she was well aware of the potential offered by the exotic locales in which the British Empire had entrenched itself. Her personal consideration of a move to India, her use of the Great Mogul in her first performed play, her use of Sumatra as the setting of her fifth play, and her use of Africa in her second novel—all these personal and artistic choices suggest a distinct awareness of the power of colonial discourse and of the potential surrounding the appropriation of foreign culture by a woman writer like her. During the 1780s and 1790s, she ‘colonised’ French culture, adapting its drama in her own terms for public consumption in the British Isles.

References Boaden, James. 1833. Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald, 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley. Inchbald, Elizabeth. 1785. Appearance Is Against Them. London: Robinson. ———. 1786a. I’ll Tell You What. London: Robinson. ———. 1786b. The Widow’s Vow. London: Robinson. ———. 1787. The Midnight Hour. London: Robinson. ———. 1788a. The Child of Nature. London: Robinson. ———. 1788b. Such Things Are. London: Robinson. ———. 1788c. The Mogul Tale. Dublin: P. Byron. ———. 1789a. Animal Magnetism. Dublin: P. Byron. ———. 1789b. The Married Man. London: Robinson. ———. 1791a. A Simple Story, 4 vols. London: Robinson. ———. 1791b. Next Door Neighbours. London: Robinson. ———. 1796. Nature and Art, 2 vols. London: Robinson. ———. 1833. ‘The Massacre’, in James Boaden (ed.), Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald. London: Richard Bentley, vol. II, 355–380. ———. 2007. The Diaries of Elizabeth Inchbald, ed. Ben P. Robertson. London: Pickering & Chatto. Jenkins, Annibel. 2003. I’ll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Colonising the French 35 Lynn, Michael R. 2010. The Sublime Invention: Ballooning in Europe, 1783– 1820. London: Pickering & Chatto. Robertson, Ben P.  2013. Elizabeth Inchbald’s Reputation: A  Publishing and Reception History. London: Pickering & Chatto. ———. 2016. ‘The Monsters of Zocotora: Negotiating a Sustainable Identity Through the Environment in Elizabeth Inchbald’s Nature and Art’, in Ben P. Robertson (ed.), Romantic Sustainability: Endurance and the Natural World, 1780–1830. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 199–216. Spencer, Jane. 1988. ‘Introduction’, in Elizabeth Inchbald (trans.), J.M.S. Tompkins (ed.), A Simple Story. Oxford: Oxford University Press, vii–xxx. Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1992. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Miriam Brody. London: Penguin.

2 Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom Britishness and Otherness in The Spanish Journal of Elizabeth Holland Antonio Calvo Maturana On 7 November 1802, once she had crossed the Pyrenees on her way to Spain, the English traveller Elizabeth Holland wrote her initial impressions of the country she was about to visit for the first time: Fine pillars supporting the arms of Spain mark the entrance [into the country]; since the war [of the Pyrenees, 1793–1795] they have not been elevated but remain overthrown, a pretty just emblem of the kingdom they represent. (Holland 1910: 3) Fine but overthrown pillars as a reminder of a once powerful but now decadent country. Here Lady Holland seemed to adhere to a traditional European image of Spain, a representative initial image depicted in her notes, made during her two visits to the country, first between 1802 and 1805, and the second between 1808 and 1809. These were, as we will see more clearly later, very relevant years. Whereas Spain was probably at the peak of its own particular Enlightenment, a journey full of obstacles where it had never been possible to catch up with the countries on the other side of the Pyrenees (Sánchez Blanco 2007), the country was now on the way to a state of military, economic and political exhaustion (La Parra 2002). If, in 1802, Spain was a close ally (if not a subject) of Napoleon, and, in consequence, an enemy of the English, in 1808, this Kingdom, which had recently risen up against the ‘Emperor of the French’, became England’s biggest hope of defeating him. This essay will undertake an analysis of Lady Holland’s Spanish Journal which may help to understand how its author perceived Spain, its politics, society and culture. Written from a British imperialist standpoint, we have to ask what were the forms of ‘otherness’ its author practiced and perceived in Spain, a country that was clearly not a colony but which she saw as ‘backward’ compared to the greatness of the allegedly civilised side of Europe, England being her evident yardstick.1 As compared to England which she considered to be the most civilised and moderate of its

Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom 37 time, Spain, its government, society and customs was perceived to be half way between civilisation and barbarism. Being both English and a Whig, Lady Holland found in Spain, not just an enemy, but also an absolutist and mercantile country that was an easy target to draw the line when it came to British otherness. As we will see, Elizabeth Holland’s opinions are not generally anecdotal or arbitrary, but indicative of a very qualified traveller, who was well informed about the country and, thanks to a rich network of contacts provided by her husband, the influential politician Lord Holland, was very well connected to truly privileged channels of information. Nevertheless, Lady Holland did not pour scorn on Spain all the time. She proved to be able to perceive some aspects of the country as positive. In fact, we find in her notes, along with the testimonies of otherness, numerous episodes of affinity, in which the traveller feels herself to be among equals. When encountering sophisticated people or beautiful works of art, Lady Holland knows she is back within the borders of civilisation, which only a few lines earlier, she had doubted. Episodes, in short, where otherness fades and the prejudice of decadence and barbarity is clearly nuanced by the traveller.

The Traveller: Lady Elizabeth Holland Amongst the names of women which stood out in the unsettled times of the French Revolution, Elizabeth Holland (1771–1845) has been recognised as one of the most important in Georgian England (Keppel 1974; Dolan 2001; Wright 2008). Although she was excluded from the highest places in society—starting with the Court—due to her high-profile divorce,2 she was able to capitalise on the resources offered by her private life. As an active, learned and informed woman, she established herself in spaces previously reserved for men. Negotiating the issues of her gender, she became the hostess of what can be considered the most influential salon of Europe, none other than Holland House (Mitchell 1980). For decades this was the unofficial seat of the Whig party. Lord Holland was an influential politician himself, the nephew of Charles James Fox, the leader of the party. Their house could also be considered the soul of the Spanish party both during and after the Peninsular War. Moreover, Lady Holland was the queen of an occasionally itinerant court, Holland House being not just a material construction but also a social, intellectual and even spiritual one. Some of the international contacts the couple made were due to trips in Europe, as we will see in the case of Spain. In short many of the most important personalities of the age would grace its walls, including people from abroad of the standing of Talleyrand or Madame de Staël (some of them, mentioned in Lord Holland’s Memoirs) (Holland 1851). The diarist Charles Greville, wrote that Holland House was ‘the house of all Europe’ (quoted by Ilchester’s introduction to Holland 1908: VIII).

38  Antonio Calvo Maturana Without the need for epics or heroism, it is important to state that Lady Holland was able to normalise the abnormal: The presence of a woman seated on an equal, if sometimes not a higher plane, discussing themes previously deemed ‘masculine’. Sources agree in underlining Lady Holland’s controversial role in these gatherings—she sent out the invitations, directed the conversational themes, interrupted her companions and gave her opinions on the most controversial subjects of the day. As we might expect, this attitude was reinforced by the confidence of age and built upon by experience, allowing a young woman with a low standard of education to become one of the major players in Georgian society. A  quote by Thomas Babington Macaulay, ‘The centurion did not keep his soldiers in better order than she keeps her guests’ (quoted by Keppel 1974: 294), illustrates that Lady Holland was the object of suspicion and sarcasm for having personality traits which, whilst sought after and appreciated in a man, are forgiven with difficulty in a woman. It cannot be denied that Lord Holland’s role in encouraging his wife’s concerns and putting her in contact with influential people was critical. The first lines of Elizabeth Holland’s diary after her marriage to Lord Holland in 1797 are very revealing in this respect, as they contain reflections on contemporary English politics which previously she had not commented on (Holland 1908: 148–149). However, Lord Holland was merely the catalyst for the interests of this exceptional woman who had already travelled around Europe and enjoyed art and reading before she met her second husband, whose culture and conversation she particularly valued. One of the greatest merits of Lady Holland was her ability to move beyond an inadequate education. ‘Till lately I did not know the common principles of grammar and still a boy of ten years old would outdo me’ (Holland 1908: 159). Through a process of autodidacticism, she became a person of considerable culture. She writes about this in her diary: ‘My principles were of my own finding, both religious and moral, for I never was instructed in abstract or practical religion and as soon as I  could think at all, chance directed my studies. (. . .) Happily for me, I devoured books and a desire for information became my ruling passion’ (Holland 1908: 158–159). This ‘desire for information’ included not only a deep love for art and culture,3 but also a personal interest in politics. In fact, the first words in 1791 in the diary of a young 20-year-old Elizabeth Webster (her first married name) reveal this interest years before meeting Lord Holland, taking us straight to the French Revolution: In June 1791 I left England and went to Paris. During my stay the King and Royal family escaped to Varennes but were brought back. I attended the debates in the National Assembly. I heard Robespierre and Maury speak. The Jacobin Club was then in embryo. I wanted to hear a speech and the Vicomte de Noailles during dinner promised

Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom 39 that he would gratify me by making one. He accordingly took me to the box, and went into the Tribune and began an oration upon some subject trivial in itself, but made important by the vehemence of his manner. (Holland 1908: 1) We can say therefore that her natural concerns were already in place and that Lord Holland and Holland House were respectively the support and the platform for this potential to be realised.

The Source: The Spanish Journal Fortunately, Lady Holland herself took notes about her daily activity and thoughts in a personal diary which she started in 1791, aged 20, and would continue until 1811. In it she carefully noted the names of the people she met on her travels—a long list of kings, queens, politicians, intellectuals and artists. She committed to memory how they looked, their character and the conversations she had with them. We find in her accounts extensive notes on the history, culture and customs of the countries she visited. The Spanish Journal was a travel diary in the style of its days (Calvo Maturana 2004). The lack of any intention of publishing these personal notes gave the lady a greater freedom of expression and the ability to escape sometimes from the literary canon. More than half a century after the death of Lady Holland, her descendent, the Earl of Ilchester, decided to publish the diary in two parts, reserving the second of these for the Spanish content. Since Ilchester published a shortened version of the diary, we will also rely on the interesting, unedited information in the original manuscripts held in the British Library. Although the protagonist of The Spanish Journal is a woman, its principal secondary actors are men operating in male-dominated forums where themes of interest to Lady Holland were discussed, such as domestic and foreign policy, the progress of the Napoleonic wars, art and literature. As has already been highlighted, Lady Holland awards great importance to her guests and hosts and hence the diary is an extensive list of names, some of whom are women but the overwhelming majority of whom are men. The Hollands’ guests mostly belonged to the nobility, although in the case of the men we also find intellectuals, artists and members of the armed forces. It is easy to discern from her words that Lady Holland felt much more fulfilled and assimilated in these ‘masculine’ circles than in social spaces where women were in equal numbers to men, such as at balls. Not encumbered in Spain by the stigma of her divorce as she was in England, Lady Holland was received at the highest levels of society including the Court. In a sense, this trip was a kind of escape for her from the stigmatised position of a divorced woman.

40  Antonio Calvo Maturana To understand Lady Holland´s otherness, it is of the utmost importance to know her sources of information. On this matter, as we have seen, the circle of acquaintances of the Hollands played a leading role, specifically the Spanish and English politicians, diplomats, courtiers and military personnel with whom they dined. Lord Holland’s wide net of contacts was critical in gaining access to the news and rumours of the time. Therefore, if information is power, then one could say that Lady Holland was a powerful woman and, as such, exceptional for her gender. In brief, the privileged position offered by the contacts of the Holland House retinue provided a superior watchtower from which to observe the country. During their first trip, between 1802 and 1805, the Hollands got in touch with the main opposition to the Court of Charles IV (Calvo Maturana 2004). On their second trip (1808–1809), which took place during the Peninsular War (1808–1814), we know that the Holland’s circle actively participated in Spanish-English information networks. John Allen, companion and confidant of the Hollands, was a correspondent for Spain’s Morning Chronicle. This collaboration went beyond the months of their trip. In fact, Holland House supplied news and translations to this Whig newspaper. Another valuable source on whom the Hollands relied during their second trip to Spain was Lord Paget, a powerful man in the English Peninsular army. The personal letters received by Allen and Holland also furnished the sources of the diary (Durán de Porras 2012). Obviously, the political bias of these circles and of their channels of information had a great influence on Lady Holland´s opinions. Nevertheless, when she arrived in Spain at the beginning of the 19th century, Lady Holland was already a modest connoisseur of the country.4 She had had access to the most recent and important travel literature, signed by Henry Swinburne, Joseph Townsend and Jean-Francois Bourgoing, with whom she agrees or disagrees as appropriate (although, inevitably, these readings had burdened her with prejudices). She had with her natural and geographical works written by Spaniards (for example, she used the scientific writings of Antonio Jose de Cavanilles when travelling through Alicante). Additionally, she had studied the history of the country and admired several of its personalities (like El Cid, the celebrated medieval knight). She also had enjoyed some of the most well-known Spanish literature (being especially fond of Don Quixote) and could also speak the language. The previously mentioned ‘desire for information’ which, as she said, made her ‘more curious than prudent’ can also be applied to an avid interest in Spanish culture and customs (BL. Mss. Additional 51.932: 25). Consequently, The Spanish Journal is perfectly frameable as one of the greatest travel books written about Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is of no surprise that, in recent decades, there has been considerable interest in Spanish historiography, due both to this work and its author.

Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom 41

The Borders of Civilisation: Affinity and the Otherness in Lady Holland’s Spanish Journal Since the final decades of 18th century, although still only occupying a marginal space on the Grand Tour, Spain was no longer the unknown country that Europeans found out about through armchair travellers or inventive ones such as Madame D’Aulnoy (Calvo Maturana 2012). By the end of the century, Spain had moved from being ‘the great unknown’ thanks to travellers like Swinburne, Townsend and Bourgoing, whose diaries gave Spain a modest place in the lucrative travel literature market (Bolufer 2003; Dolan 2000; García Mercadal 1999; Guerrero 1990). Nevertheless, although the mentioned authors viewed Spain as a European country, they considered it to be on the edge of civilisation, with quite a few political, cultural and social elements that kept it anchored to the past (Bolufer 2003). The Inquisition and Absolutism were deemed as the two symbolic burdens of a country which Montesquieu in De l’esprit des lois, had placed in the category of monarchic systems, but showing despotic overtones. Europeans still perceived Spain as an undeveloped small brother ballasted by its despotism and fanaticism. As a reader of these books and a member of the European intellectual community, Lady Holland would share this view. Following the same line traced by her predecessors, Lady Holland offered an image of the country not anchored in the prejudices of half a century earlier. She was aware of the reforms of the government, or at least the most important ones, such as the Free Trade Regulation (1778) with America, the adoption of Jenner’s vaccine,5 or the legislation in favour of building cemeteries outside of cities. Thus, far from being attracted by that image of eternal decadence, she writes almost at the end of her first trip that ‘Spain [was] more powerful and flourishing under Charles III [1759–1788]’ than it had been from the times of Philip II, in the second half of the XVI Century (BL, Mss, Additional, 51.932: 29). Political and Religious Otherness In 1802, when Lady Holland arrived in Spain for the first time, it was under an atmosphere of tense calm. Spain was a close ally of France, and the Treaty of Amiens had provided it some respite in its war against England. But Lord and Lady Holland knew they were in an enemy country. In fact, soon after leaving Spain, in the very same year (1805), Admiral Nelson’s navy would destroy the Spanish at Cape Trafalgar. But Spain was not only a political but also a kind of ideological adversary. Its absolute monarchy and its protectionist economy contrasted with Lady Holland’s England, a country characterised by its parliamentary system, its public opinion and an economic theory that clashed with the monopolistic practices of the Spaniards in America.

42  Antonio Calvo Maturana In the context of a clear antagonism towards the Spanish government, the couple struck up a friendship with a good number of their opponents whom Lady Holland refers to in Spanish as ‘los desterrados’ (‘the banished’). Holland´s invitees and hosts had different ideologies (sympathisers of liberal ideas, enlightened, noble traditionalists, etc.), but many of them had in common their disagreement with the Court. In the case of Lady Holland, who was a believer (even superstitious) and certainly not a radical (Keppel 1974), we can consider her a conservative liberal, definitely to the right of her husband but, without a doubt, convinced of the virtues of English parliamentarism, safe from arbitrary conduct like that attributed to the Spanish government. Rumours and confidences were very relevant sources of information in an absolute state such as Spain where the press and the printed word were strictly controlled and where public opinion did not exist, since the public sphere was monitored, censored and repressed. In several passages of her diary, Lady Holland echoes these rumours, passing them on to the future readers of the Spanish Journal. This is the case with the story about the infant Francisco de Paula, the younger son of the King of Spain, who was said to be a consequence of the relationship between the Queen and the minister Manuel Godoy. When Lady Holland met the infant, she wrote he was ‘a pretty, lively boy, bearing a most indecent likeness to the P[rince] of Peace [Godoy´s title]’ (Holland 1910: 75); a passage that had been repeated by many 20th century historians (Calvo Maturana 2007). A fool king, a libertine queen and a satyr minister, the triangle used to discredit almost every absolutist court of that time was undoubtedly bought by Lady Holland (Hunt 1991, 1992; Calvo Maturana 2007: 103–133). Expecting the worst from the royal couple, encouraged as a cause and an effect of her belief in Spanish backwardness and despotism, she wrote, in 1803, the following lines about Charles IV: The King of Spain is so little au courant of the history of our times that he is as yet not aware of the independence of America and to this day denominates the Minister of the United States El Ministro de las Colonias, being perfectly satisfied that these colonies still belong to the English. (Holland 1910: 86–87) This affirmation is totally false, since there is a letter signed by the Monarch on 27 May of the same year as proof: My friend Manuel (Godoy) you will have already witnessed the slyness of the French in selling Louisiana to the Americans, giving us a greater right to remain neutral as they gave us their word to not dispose of it and they have done so for a trifle. Anyway, we trust you

Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom 43 since you get us out of tight spots, we have no other friend. I am and forever will be your friend. (Archivo General de Palacio, Papeles Reservados de Fernando VII, Tomo 95) The shadow of Spanish political despotism (together with all the adjectives related to it: cruel, ignorant, superstitious, etc.) is present as well, via themes like the unjust and arbitrary imprisonment of Lord Holland’s friend and prestigious Spanish writer and politician Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. Lady Holland refers to the ‘rancour’ of Godoy against him, the ‘cruelty’ of his imprisonment and the brutality of the governor of the prison. The lady is horrified by the conditions in which Jovellanos lives: He is deprived of the use of pen and ink and has no books but those given him by the governor. The only air he enjoys comes through his grated window, and the only exercise he takes is such as the dimensions of his room allows. (Holland 1910: 115–116) Another recurrent perception about Spain is its bigotry, evidenced by another unlikely story about Charles IV which arose during the Holland´s visit to the Royal Academy of the Three Nobel Arts: ‘By favour we were admitted into the forbidden apartment into which the pious Monarch has banished all naked pictures; indeed an order was given for their destruction, but upon a promise being made that the eyes of the public should not be shocked by such sights, they were spared’ (Holland 1910: 81). A Protestant aversion to friars can also be detected throughout the journal, particularly when a monk does not allow her to visit a convent. On this matter, she writes about the Abbot of the Convent of San Miguel in Valencia, calling him an ‘ignorant hypocrite’ (Holland 1910: 13). Lady Holland again shows her Protestant background expressing surprise when she attends popular religious performances, so full of decoration and icons that, for her, they are a visual representation of gloomy Spanish superstition. In this context she criticises the ignorance of the clerks, firstly, because they still considered that an epidemic had something to do with divine punishment and secondly, because they still pursued theatre whilst tolerating bullfighting:  . . . in early times, [Seville] was the seat of extravagant and gloomy superstition. During the epidemical disorder 3  years or less ago, among the various causes assigned for this calamity, the impiety of theatrical representations was suggested as being an offence of such magnitude as to draw down the Divine wrath. Hence all dramatic

44  Antonio Calvo Maturana performances were ceased by order of the Bishop; The innoxious and humane spectacle of a bull feast however remains! (Holland 1910: 71) On this occasion, and on the subject of bigotry, the reader may expect the Spanish Inquisition to appear. Although this institution was not as powerful and influential as it had been in previous centuries, it still existed and intimidated the population (La Parra and Casado 2013). Lady Holland could not be more right about its new role: That awful tribunal is now become a civil court and a mere instrument of state. Persons whom they dare not arrest and fear to bring to trial as political offenders are seized by the Inquisition, and public opinion is still so strong in favor or rather in its fear and respect of that authority, that no enquiries are made. (Holland 1910: 100) Lady Holland shows contempt for it but also a ‘tourist’s curiosity’ for the Inquisition, an emblem of traditional and reactionary Spain projected beyond the Pyrenees. This interest is evident if we consider her desire to see its dungeons in Murcia: ‘I had great hopes of seeing the prisons and the salle in which the torture is inflicted’ (Holland 1910: 39). It is also evident as we know of her interest in reading the forbidden books. (Lady Holland could read and speak the language). Regarding the work Eusebio written by the former Jesuit Pedro Montengón inspired by Rousseau’s Emile, she writes that ‘the sole merit’ of it ‘consists in its being prohibited by the Inquisition’ (BL, Mss, Additional, 51.930: 75). Lady Holland also had the privilege of reading a copy of the extended version of Moratin’s play La Mojigata, premiered in 1804 but in a self-censored version, wishing to avoid problems with the Inquisition since the work was critical of superstitious, fanatical and misguided religiousness. Inside the front cover of the manuscript in Lady Holland’s own words it says: ‘This copy of the Mojigata was given to Lady Holland by the author in the summer of 1804 at Madrid. Many passages were suppressed when they were presented for fear of giving offence to the devotees’ (quoted by Kitts 2006: 2). The annotations of the lady on her and her husband’s second journey to Spain (1808–1809) are a bit less interesting in terms of ‘otherness’ as it took place in the context of the Peninsular War (1808–1814), which overshadowed further particularities on the country.6 The second part of The Spanish Journal is more than anything else, a political/military diary concerned about the strategy of war. It ends precisely with the English couple being forced to leave the country (July 1809) due to the restoration of Napoleonic power after the heavy but ephemeral defeat at Bailen (July 1808), a battle which had given false hope to the Allies.

Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom 45 But nonetheless, this second half of the Spanish Journal deserves some comments. For example, it is important to highlight that Spain, after its uprising against the Napoleonic invasion, was now an English ally. Its opposition to the French gave rise in England to a Spanish fever (Calvo Maturana 2012; Durán de Porras 2012) which led to burgeoning of publications about the country (in this context, the contemporary notebooks of Lady Holland would have been really valued). At least during the first year a heroic image of the country would eclipse the cliché of its laziness and servility. Lord Holland, vice-president of the Spanish Club, was an early defender of the British intervention in the Peninsular as well as a lobbyist for the installation of a political system similar to the English one. In this regard he was in alignment with his old friend Jovellanos but both were to be let down on seeing the Spanish liberals opt for a constitutional system a la francaise. If the first trip of the Hollands had a personal and emotional context (their son Charles’s health, as the Hollands travelled to Spain looking for a gentler weather for him), this second one was made for evident political reasons. During their first trip, when England was Spain’s biggest enemy, the Hollands may have experienced a sense of suspicion, but in this occasion it had changed completely. The traveller recounts various episodes of acclamation by the Spanish people. At the end of 1808, this optimism was vanishing and the English troops were about to retreat. Lady Holland complains about it and shows herself to have become an hispanophile like her husband: ‘The recollection of our late reception at Santiago made me feel a dread of encountering similar and now undeserved expressions of kindness to the English nation. I dreaded entering amidst acclamations of ‘Viva’, ‘Viva’, knowing how soon, and justly, those friendly expressions must be changed to contempt and aversion’ (Holland 1910: 234). In this case, it has to be said, otherness was working in another direction, as we can see a Whig censoring a decision taken by Cavendish’s Tory government. With a distinct Anglican perspective, Lady Holland´s personal notes also refer to the cruelty of the French during the war. The French were now the ‘Other’ for the Spanish and the English. Spain and the Edge of Civilisation This section examines the bases of the differences between Spain and what Lady Holland considered to be a civilised world. First of all, at the beginning of the 19th century, she does not present the orientalist image which will characterise later travellers such as Washington Irving.7 The country would not be romanticised nor orientalised until a few decades later (Howarth 2007; Leask 2002; Saglia 2000) Of course, the Moorish influences in the country interested Lady Holland but she does not consider them as defining the Spanish spirit. Her words about Islamic civilisation show a

46  Antonio Calvo Maturana more erudite rather than romantic perspective. She is aware of the growing re-evaluation of the Moorish inheritance (which is also present in Spain) but she thinks that ‘the modern writers who describe the moors exaggerate their civilisation beyond all probability, intending a sarcasm upon Christianity as Voltaire does when he writes of Chinese and Japanese manners and customs’ (BL, Mss, Additional, 51.930: 64–69). Certainly during her first stay, Lady Holland progressively saw the country as friendlier and more civilised but she did take delight in the symbols of backwardness, and those symbols are rooted in her perception of the country’s society. Several authors have noted (Bolufer 2003; Moran 2003; Rendall 1985, 1987; Müllenbrocke 1984) that the British travellers used the self-created image of the British as the yardstick to perceive and measure other cultures and societies. Great Britain was considered the just mean between French libertarian excesses and ungodliness and Spanish despotism and fanaticism (Dolan 2000). The line of civilisation was drawn through the British Isles, France and the Germanic world, the Mediterranean and Oriental peripheries being considered under-age and in need of influence by and emulation of the Anglo-French-Germanic cultural empire. In this sense Spain can be seen as a ‘cultural frontier demarcating the limit of European civilisation in the south’ (Bolufer 2003: 263). Lady Holland’s writings indicate an ambivalent attitude towards Spain, whether it is ‘Europeanised’ enough to be included, or is it to be perceived as the ‘Other’. She censures the Spanish for letting themselves be excessively ‘colonised’ by French culture to the point of losing their own identity: The plays they urge one to admire, instead of being their own good national productions, are generally indifferent translations or imitations from the German or French theatre. Their national music they lay aside and prefer Italian and German, even their language, instead of encouraging one to speak it, they try their own bad French by way of an exercise and, forgetful of the difference of idiom, translate the words as the dictionary would direct, the sense of which is frequently foreign to their meaning. (Holland 1910: 34) The Spanish Journal is a fine example of the habit of measuring a country’s civilisation through its customs and forms of social interaction (the so-called moeurs). An example of this is the horror with which Lady Holland views bullfights. These spectacles of violence were still held (and still are) despite various enlightened Spaniards of the time speaking out against them. On 30 May 1803, after attending a bullfight in Seville, she is horrified by the ‘brutal indifference’ of the horse riders and the spectators. The suffering of the bull and the horses shocks

Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom 47 Lady Holland to such an extent that she took the side of the animals ­(Holland 1910: 62–66). Within a society the position of women is a key indicator of its civilisation. As Professor Bolufer affirms: The relationship between the sexes, in the public sphere of society and in the ‘private’ space of morality, feelings and emotional and family ties, functioned as an essential indicator of civilisation. (Bolufer 2003: 258) Here again England, with its forms of mixed sociability (so called mixité) within which men and women live alongside one another in a civil manner, is the yardstick. Progress was passing through a feminisation of society (according to the influential Scottish Enlightenment), marked by kindness and friendliness. Equally, the level of civilisation of a country is measured by how it treats women, neither under oriental despotic confinement nor with the kind of reverence of medieval chivalric novels (Bolufer 2003: 274–300). It has to be stated that sorority was not Lady Holland’s strongpoint. She had too great a tendency to criticise other women for their looks or behaviour (albeit in her private notes). She has to be acknowledged, on the other hand, for a certain ability to temper her prejudices, as happened when she met Queen Maria Luisa de Parma, whom she judged in better terms after having met her in person. The same happened with the country itself, being able to look more kindly on it the longer she stayed. In her first few weeks in Spain, Lady Holland reveals the low expectations she has of the country’s high society when she writes that Madame Cabarrus had ‘an air of the world which I did not think could have been acquired or maintained in Spain’ (Holland 1910: 21). This same contempt is demonstrated in Valencia, attending a literary gathering in which men and women far from indulged in the previously mentioned mixité: ‘A dull assembly where the ladies sit around the room and the gentlemen stand at the end, each as much separated as if they were in different provinces’ (Holland 1910: 23). The most extensive judgement about Spanish general society occurs within the very early days of her journey. Her view of late 18th-century Spain, as it appears in her diary, is still the same as portrayed by Cervantes 200 years prior, a prejudice presented as an empirical conclusion: I always thought till now that nothing was more pedantic than to say Don Quixote could not be relished out of the original. Nothing is so true, and to the assertion must be added that it cannot be completely so unless the reader knows Spain, its manners, customs, looks of the inhabitants, their tones of voice, dress, gestures, gravity, modes of sitting upon their asses, driving; their ventas, posadas, utensils, vessels for liquor, skins, etc. In English I thought it a flat, burlesque

48  Antonio Calvo Maturana work; now I think it without exception much the most amusing production of human wit. (Holland 1910: 31) Lady Holland allows herself to be carried away with preconceived ideas and with the temptation to generalise, conferring a character trait to the whole country. Based on her previous experience of travelling in Europe, she made comparisons between already visited countries’ society and culture. Her first impressions on Portugal (as soon as the traveller had crossed the frontier) were as categorical as follows: Very much struck, since we entered Portugal, by the excessive dissimilitude between the Spaniards and Portuguese. The latter are universally clumsy in their persons, and coarse, not to say downright ugly, in their features. Instead of the stately reserve of the Spaniard and sometimes repulsive coldness, whose curiosity is never impertinent nor his civility tinctured with meanness, we were frequently incommoded with the forward curiosity of the populace, who were as intrusive as the French, without however possessing a particle of their gaiety or good-humour. Oftentimes disgusted with the number and servility of their salutations, which were rendered not to us but to our equipage. (Holland 1910: 183) Turning back to Spaniards, Lady Holland writes that they are not as sophisticated as the French, making them less captivating but also less crafty. She is captivated by Spanish women’s famous mantillas, useful to cover their faces but also, according to tradition, to avoid the watchful eyes of their parents or husbands. In fact she considers that the women of the country ‘are ungraceful’ outside of that piece of clothing (Holland 1910: 19–21). While Lady Holland recognises that Spanish husbands ‘no longer confine their wives within their high-walled mansions’ or behind iron bars, nonetheless she does not desist from taking pleasure in the clichés of stories of jealousy and cunning plots that the Europeans imagined happening between the country’s men and women. For this lady Spanish courtship is different from Italian courtship, being much more open and public, that is more obvious and less sophisticated. With these commentaries Lady Holland places the Spanish on a lower developmental level in terms of social relationships between the sexes. In effect, historians have proved that cicisbeo (courtship) was seen everywhere beneath the well-off classes much to the despair of the moral guardians (Martín Gaite 1981). Lady Holland would not leave a written regret of these words but the passing of time and her close relationship with Spanish high society (particularly in Madrid, which is more Europeanised, being the capital,

Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom 49 and where the couple spend more time with friends) made her refine this otherness while finding equals with whom to converse and share interests and concerns. Lord Holland’s greatest friends also professed a deep affection for his wife. His two closest Spanish comrades, the writer Manuel Jose Quintana and the politician Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (whom Lord Holland had met in his first trip in 1791), show a very special appreciation of her both in their letters and in their conversations with her (which we know about thanks to her diary).8 Searching through the Holland House papers reveals that she herself corresponded with members of the Spanish nobility such as the Duke Infantado (‘by far the most pleasing and gentlemanlike man’ Holland 1910: 106; always accompanied by adjectives like ‘friendly’ or ‘obliging’) or the Marquise of Santa Cruz and with liberal politicians like the Count of Toreno or Agustín de Arguelles (Moreno Alonso 1997: 163). Lady Holland also found a circle of ‘civil’ female friends. Along the Spanish Journal, words like ‘obliging’ and ‘civil’ will become more common in her narrative referring to noble women like the Duchess of Osuna, the Marchise of Ariza, the Countess of Montijo or the Duchess of Alba (the latter who died before Lady Holland could meet her but whose fine reputation is echoed in her work). She valued in these women virtues such as intelligence, talent, skill in ‘small talk’, their ‘power of reply’, their artistic sensibilities and their ability to organise social events. She established true friendship with some of them, maintaining correspondence after returning to England, admitting somewhat indirectly that the differences between English and Spanish civilisation were not so great as she had been led to believe. Her travels are truly emblematic of an inner journey, a searching for the self that finally finds an affinity with the Other.

Notes 1. For a detailed discussion on ‘otherness’ see Fernández de Ulloa 2014; Gupta and Chattopadhyya 1998; Hoper and Youngs 2004. 2. Female agency was behind her decision to leave an unhappy marriage of convenience (to Godfrey Webster, between 1786 and 1797) and pledge herself for life to the charming intelligence of Lord Holland, her second and definitive husband (from 1797 until his death in 1840). 3. In the University of Valencia library, Lady Holland is the person who takes the initiative (‘I asked to see the prohibited books’) and she is introduced to the head of the university ‘as a prodigy of human learning’ (Holland 1910: 27–28). 4. The library of Holland House contains an important collection of books about Spain that would only grow over time. Lord Holland was a Hispanist who came to publish, in 1806, a biography of the Spanish Baroque dramatist Lope de Vega. During the trip, long carriage journeys offered Lady Holland time to read. On the road to Cordoba, she used a significant diary entry to comment

50  Antonio Calvo Maturana on how brightly the moon was shining so that she ‘could read the common character of a printed book’ (BL, Mss, Additional, 51.931: 30). 5. ‘I am very much pleased at finding that the vaccine has gained, even in the country’ (Holland 1910: 39). 6. In Spain Lord Holland is an informal Whig envoy permanently in contact with the dispatches from the front and with both governments. All this news interferes with Lady Holland’s narrative as it interrupts their social gatherings and changes the mood of those present. 7. Washington Irving (1783–1859) was an American traveller and writer, author of the Tales of the Alhambra, a romantic collection of stories and legends about Granada and its famous Moorish palace. 8. However, it was not all friendship and good impressions to the eyes of this exigent lady. We definitely find criticism in the descriptions of her guests anti­cipating the harshness that will characterise her years later back in Holland House.

References Bolufer Peruga, Mónica. 2003. ‘Civilización, costumbres y política en la literatura de viajes a España en el siglo XVIII’, Estudis, 29: 255–300. Calvo Maturana, Antonio. 2004. ‘Elizabeth Holland: portavoz de los silenciados y cómplice de un tópico’, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, 29: 65–90. ———. 2007. María Luisa de Parma: reina de España, esclava del mito. Granada: Universidad de Granada. ———. 2012. ‘Patriotismo por comparación: estereotipos sobre España en las Characteristical Views de John Andrews’, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo, 18: 9–37. Dolan, Brian. 2000. Exploring European Frontiers: British Travellers in the Age of Enlightenment. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2001. Ladies of the Grand Tour. London: Harper Collins. Durán de Porras, Elías. 2012. ‘John Allen, la otra mirada de Holland House. Apuntaciones sobre Journal of a tour of Spain and Portugal, 30 de octubre de 1808– 13 de enero de 1809’, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo, 18: 55–106. Earl of Ilchester. 1914. Holland House. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Fernández Ulloa, Teresa. 2014. Otherness in Hispanic Culture. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishers. García Mercadal, José. 1999. Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal. Desde los tiempos más remotos hasta comienzos del s. XX, vol. V. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León. Guerrero, Ana Clara. 1990. Viajeros británicos en la España del siglo XVIII. Madrid: Aguilar. Gupta, Chhanda and D.P. Chattopadhyya. (eds.). 1998. Cultural Otherness and Beyond. Leiden, Boston and Köln: Brill. Holland, Elizabeth. 1908. The Journal of Elisabeth Lady Holland (1791–1811). London: Earl of Ilchester. ———. 1910. The Spanish Journal of Elisabeth Lady Holland. London: Earl of Ilchester. Holland, Henry Edward. 1851. Foreign Reminiscences. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Co.

Views of an ‘Overthrown’ Kingdom 51 Hoper, Glenn and Tim Youngs. (eds.). 2004. Perspectives on Travel Writing. Aldershot: Ashgate. Howarth, David. 2007. The Invention of Spain: Cultural Relations Between Britain and Spain, 1770–1870. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hunt, Linda. (ed.). 1991. Eroticism and the Body Politic. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1992. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keppel, Sonia. 1974. The Sovereign Lady: A  Life of Elizabeth Vassall, Third Lady Holland, with Her Family. London: Hamish Hamilton. Kitts, Sally Ann. 2006. ‘Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s La Mogigata: The Significance of the Holland Manuscript in the Light of Comments from Elizabeth, Lady Holland’s Spanish Journal’ (BL, Add. MS. 51931), The Electronic British Library Journal, article 8. La Parra López, Emilio. 2002. Manuel Godoy. La aventura del poder. Barcelona: Tusquets. La Parra López, Emilio and María Ángeles Casado. 2013. La Inquisición en España: agonía y evolución. Madrid: Los libros de la catarata. Leask, Nigel. 2002. Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martín Gaite, Carmen. 1981. Usos amorosos del dieciocho en España. Barcelona: Lumen. Mitchell, Leslie. 1980. Holland House. London: Duckworth. Moran, Mary Catherine. 2003. ‘The Commerce of the Sexes: Gender and the Social Sphere in Scottish Enlightenment Accounts of Civil Society’, in Frank Trentmann (ed.), Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History. New York: Berghahn Books, 61–84. Moreno Alonso, Manuel. 1997. La forja del liberalismo en España. Los amigos españoles de Lord Holland 1793–1840. Madrid: Congreso de los Diputados. Müllenbrocke, Heinz-Joachim. 1984. ‘The Political Implications of the Grand Tour: Aspects of a Specifically English Contribution to the European Travel Literature of the Age of Enlightement’, Trema, 9: 7–21. Rendall, Jane. 1985. The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780–1860. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 1987. ‘Virtue and Commerce: Women in the Making of Adam Smith’s Political Economy’, in Ellen Kennedy and Susan Mendus (eds.), Women in Western Political Philosophy: Kant to Nietzsche. Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 44–77. Saglia, Diego. 2000. Poetic Castles in Spain: British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi. Sánchez Blanco, Francisco. 2007. La Ilustración Goyesca: la cultura durante el reinado de Carlos II (1788–1808). Madrid: CSIC, CEPyC. Wright, C.J. 2008. ‘Fox, Elizabeth Vassall, Lady Holland [Other Married Name Elizabeth Vassall Webster, Lady Webster] (1771?—1845)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/10028, accessed 12 August 2018.

3 Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains British Women Travellers’ Perception of Historical Heritage in the Early 19th Century Barbara Tetti Introduction The theme of the vision of antiquity is central during the second half of 18th and the first decades of 19th century Europe, when a new conception of the ‘past’ arises. During this period archaeology as a science was founded1 and many expeditions were organised by the British, through Europe to Asia and North Africa, in order to explore distant cultures and their heritage. Many travels reports were published between the 1820s and 1830s which included some accounts by women travelling across Europe, narrating the experience of the journey from the British Isles to the Continent, especially in Italy, leading eastwards to Egypt and even to the Red Sea and India. Considering this, there emerges a vision and consideration of antiquity in the writings of women travelling across so large a territory, both of classical antiquities starting from Rome to those of the Roman Empire in the Orient, and of the autochthonous cultures. In this context the paper reflects upon the narration of the experiences of Anne Katherine Elwood in her Narrative of a Journey Overland from England, by the Continent of Europe, Egypt, and the Red Sea, to India (Elwood 1830), and Judith Montefiore’s Private Journal of a Visit to Egypt and Palestine (Montefiore 1836). While Elwood’s narratives were meant for the general public, Montefiore’s writings were printed essentially for private reading, ‘addressed to a near and very dear relation’ (Montefiore 1836: Preface).

Cultural Climate: Premise and Advancements Regarding Antiquities The interest in antiquities and of the collective heritage, reflected in the accounts by travellers in the first decades of the 19th century, has its roots in the culture of late 18th century. During the 18th century a gradual secularisation took place, together with a rising weight of the middle class and an increase of industrial production. These elements

Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains 53 characterised the wide and complex development of the European culture of that era. Social and economic modification varied by country, depending on the demographics of each place and on the resistance that the old ruling class posed to the renewal in society. The influence of the political conditions was determinant for the lines of thought developed in each area, as French and English examples show. However, European 18th-century thinking was ruled by the so-called ‘Enlightenment’. This was not a properly scientific or philosophical orientation but rather a cultural spirit influencing almost all philosophical and scientific tendencies. Despite deep differences among divergent lines, some dominant and recurring features existed.2 The first element that combined different fields was the emphasis on ‘reason’, intended as a tool apt to clarify human issues, such as philosophical, scientific, religious, political and social. A definitive fracture with previous intellectual structures was evident during the 18th century. If during the 16th century a new course in the history of thought was imprinted, during the 18th century a tangible modernisation of the culture was realised. In the 18th, archaeology applied the experimental method, overcoming traditional chronology of narrated facts and works. Time was de-theologised: history appeared to be much older than the narration by Christian tradition. So history started to be investigated through scientific method—as can be seen in the works dedicated to Early Christian art (Boldetti 1720, Roma)3 and to Etruscan art (Gori 1737, Florence).4 Initially this radical modernisation process took place in scientific circles and then, increasingly, extended its action to wider layers of society. Cultural studies were effectively and gradually transformed into scientific inquiries, receiving a considerable contribution from the field of archaeological studies, because material testimonies investigated in antiquarian surveys, as evidences of history, played a crucial role. Experiments carried out in Rome during the 18th century, such as the excavation on the Palatine Hill (1729), in Villa Adriana (1734), constitute a reference to substantiate theories coming to light from different areas of thought. Scholars’ testimonies in the mid-18th century gave an account of deep awareness about the potential recovery of knowledge. In 1755, Abbot Jean Jaques Barthelemy5 wrote to the Count of Caylus6: ‘I must admit that it’s only here that there are inexhaustible quarries of antiques’7 and, in 1756, Johann Joachim Winckelmann8 wrote: ‘Rome is inexhaustible, and here every day new discoveries occur [. . .] Will be found more valuable things than those that have been already discovered’.9 Beside this, it is worth noting that the fascination in antiquity had never ceased to exercise its charm on scholars and artists in Europe, and it was especially revitalised through the spread of prints and views, and the custom of travel which was becoming increasingly popular. As mentioned, the writers Elwood and Montefiore definitely spent their time

54  Barbara Tetti in Florence, Naples, Syracuse, Malta and above all Rome, where the Capitoline and the Vatican collections were opened to tourists, scholars and artists. The artwork of the classical age became an objective of collective interest, and this was no longer a field of study confined to a restricted circle, but began to reach a wide audience as an accessible subject. Discoveries of Herculaneum and Paestum, as well as excavations at Pompeii and Rome contributed to the formation of a new cultural trend and encouraged a flow of artists and erudite people from different countries to visit, above all, the remains of the classical age; as a result, foreign scholars made a decisive contribution to the development of the new manner of looking at the past, producing surveys, illustrations and recounts of ancient monument and sites.

British Women’s Routes: Narrations of Rome The Roman Milieu The Papal City became a cultural reference, thanks to institutions such as the Arcadian Academy and the Academy of San Luca, where elements of rationality coming from classicism were emerging. In this regard Italy represented the main, almost exclusive, scene in Europe regarding antiquarian interests.10 Sure enough, Rome was a reference centre for the culture where, in spite of the formal ban to many books, treaties and pamphlets, the most up-to-date European ideas were circulating.11 In the 17th century, the Catholic Church was still judging the Copernican Theory as the Ptolemaic cosmology and still considering physics a miracles issue. In the following centuries scientists were no longer influenced by the imposed condemnation of scientific theories, and they slowly freed their ideas and theories about the world, from a system created by and related to God. That radical modernisation process initially took place in the scientific circles and then, extended its action to wider layers of society. Cultural studies gradually transformed into scientific inquiries, receiving a considerable contribution from archaeology (Sette 2007; Casiello 2008; Carbonara 1997). The Roman milieu became the catalyst for the new sensitivity towards material evidences of the past, delineating rules concerning the archival research and palaeography, the study of the human history, the significance of religion in the ancient world and the origin of paganism.12 Moreover, Italy had never encountered a complete detachment from classical tradition and from the study of the ancient architecture. Especially in Rome, sculptors were in direct contact with antique statues—both Roman and copies of Greek statues, and painters were studying Raphael‘s ‘grotesque’, relating them to ancient painting, and architects were looking at classical edifices, taught in schools and academies.13 It was in this spirit that the determining ideas of Johann Joachim Winckelmann matured.14 The ancient object became a testament to be studied, so the

Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains 55 philological examination, and the aim to keep historical art objects as vestiges of past culture, replaced the old way of restoration aimed to give completeness to the image; actions on ancient artworks were subject to critical review, because keeping the artwork consistent is far more important than changing it for a matter of appearance. So, the concept of ‘time’ acquired a precise definition with a univocal ongoing direction, a path feasible only forward without possible retroactions. The innovative approach to art collections and museums changed the view of the classical monuments; those vestiges were becoming the subject of a new conservative care, joining historical and artistic values, giving rise to ‘restoration’ in its modern meaning. The interest in antiquity is also reflected in new regulations to promote the conservation of monuments and of works of art, to restrain illegal excavations and to regulate the trade and export of masterpieces of ancient art.15 The prohibition of removing objects having artistic value was replaced by the protection of antiquities to which the value of the testimony necessary to comprehend ancient history was recognised, including both sacred and profane.16 During the 18th century, protective provisions for works of art were issued with a rate almost double that of the previous century. During the 19th century this viewpoint persisted, and a more critical manner was evident. The value of historical evidence, both for research and teaching, replaced the utilitarian and functionalist values which previously had been considered decisive. It is certainly Rome that suggests the first major reflections on antiquities during the journey, also thanks to a renewed path through central Italy after the French domination. Already during the first months after the Restoration, an intense ferment related to antiquity animated the cultural European world looking to Rome. The Italian sculptor Antonio Canova, one of the most important figures in Europe, was organising his stay in London,17 where he was received with homage at the Royal Academy, and where Thomas Lawrence,18 leading English painter, was beginning his portrait. At the same time, the undersecretary of the Foreign Office in Paris, William Hamilton19 was publishing in London an open letter requesting Louis XVIII to return the removed artworks to the Pope (Berra 1951–1954; Pavan 1987). So, many British intellectuals were reaching the Papal City, excited to be readmitted after a long period. These developments outline the network of close links crossing Europe, focused on the Roman issue regarding antiquity, involving numerous intellectuals from abroad. It is during this period that many literary, artistic and antiquarian works were undertaken, to be published internationally in the following decade. British Women Writers: The Roman Experience In this historical context, women’s vision, some rare female voice among the writers writing reports, compiling guides or maintaining

56  Barbara Tetti correspondences from Rome, appeared. Even if writings by British women travelling the Papal State are less usual, we can mention Marianne Baillie’s First Impressions on a Tour upon the Continent, 1819, Sydney Morgan’s Italy, 1821, Marianne Colston’s Journal of a Tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, 1823, Selina Martin’s Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence in Italy, 1828, Harriet Morton’s Protestant Vigils: Evening Records of a Journey in Italy, 1829, Jane Waldie’s Sketches Descriptive of Italy, 1820, and Charlotte Eaton’s Rome in the Nineteenth Century, 1820, who brings us in the heart of Rome. Among first feminine travellers, Charlotte Eaton20 published a collection of three volumes, Rome in the 19th Century, containing letters written during her travels to Rome between 1817 and 1818. The subtitle explains the contents of the book, that is ‘a complete account of the ruins of the ancient city, the remains of middle ages, and the monuments of modern times’, whose aim is, pointed out in the Preface, to serve as a guide to those who visit Rome, may recall its remembrance to those who have seen it and convey to those who know it not, some faint picture of that wonderful city, which boasts at once the nobles remains of antiquity, and the most faultless masterpiece of art [. . .] which in every age has stood foremost in the world [. . .] the fountain of civilization to the whole western world—and which every nation rences [sic] as their common nurse, preceptor, and parent. (Eaton 1820: XII) Charlotte Eaton’s account gives an emblematic picture of how cultured British travellers saw the Eternal City, recently freed from the French domination, newly under the Papal State, returning an enthusiastic view of Rome, certainly connected to the meaning that the city was assuming, primarily thanks to the archaeological excavations and antiquarian studies: ‘At Rome, it is not the present or the future that occupies us, but the past’ (Eaton 1820: XIII). Eaton, arriving in Rome, tells us about her excitement, her expectation in seeing the city, so much studied as a pupil, so much dreamed of as a young girl fascinated by epical stories. On 10 December  1817, Eaton spent her first night in Rome, between reality and fantasy: ‘Rome! Yes, we are actually in Rome, at least I believe so, for as yet I can scarcely feel sure of the fact, [. . .] if we are indeed in Rome, if we shall really tomorrow see the Coliseum, the Forum, and St Peter’s, or if, after all it is only a dream?’ (Eaton 1820: 92). The next morning the city emerges from the distance: The vetturino [coach driver] exclaimed, ‘Eccola!’ [there it is][.  .  .] Shall I venture to confess to you, that it was with eyes dimmed with

Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains 57 tears that I gazed for the first time on Rome? [. . .] All that we have read, thought, admired, and worshipped from our earliest years [. . .] is concentered on the soil of Italy and amidst the ruins of Rome. (Eaton 1820: 95–97) The recount by Eaton is comparable to that by the architect Joseph Woods21 who reached the Capital just one year before, taking note of his journey in a series of letters, Letters of an Architect from France, Italy and Greece, published in London in 1828. The comparison reveals a less explicitly emotional skill to express feelings, even if Woods’ first sight of Rome tells us about the same thrilling wait: Rome is still a new world to an architect. You may know in detail the appearance of every building here, but you can’t feel nothing, you can’t imagine nothing of the effect produced, on seeing, on finding yourself thus among them. [. . .] They crowd on the eye, as the scenes of history on the memory- The strong emotion and the high tone of feeling excited, leave no power to criticising. There seems to be a magic in the mere names. (Woods 1828: letter XXIIII, 327)

Anne Katherine Elwood and Judith Montefiore in Rome Anne Katherine Elwood and Judith Montefiore reached Rome from Great Britain about ten years later than Woods and Eaton. The flow of foreign artists, scholars and aristocrats crossing France and Italy was interrupted during the Napoleonic wars and, due to the direct hostility between France and Great Britain and the capture of Rome by French, the British Grand Tour route passing through central and south Italy almost disappeared. When, in the year 1815, the restoration of Pius VII took place, a period of enthusiasm was renewed, and British were newly allowed to travel through Italy, to Greece and beyond, toward the Arabian Peninsula, India and the Far East, exploring places and customs. So was for Anne Katherine Elwood,22 the British traveller, who travelled towards Bombay from Great Britain through France, Italy, Malta and Egypt, continuing to the Red Sea and to India. The path followed is precisely described in an interesting Appendix to the second volume, reporting the dates of departure and arrival in each locality, starting on 8 October 1825 with the crossing from East Bourn to Dover.23 Elwood travelled 20 days along France to reach Turin, spending two months in Italy (28 October to 31 December 1825) visiting Turin, Genoa, Massa, Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Siena, Rome, Naples, Messina and Syracuse; passing Malta, within a week, she reached Egypt, where she visited Alexandria, Cairo and Thebe, finally settling in Bombay on 29 July 1826.

58  Barbara Tetti Another British traveller crossing the English Channel in Dover, passing Calais, Lyons, and going through the Alps in Lans Le Bourg, was Judith Montefiore.24 She headed for Turin, proceeding to Novara, Milan, Piacenza, Bologna and, continuing on the same path followed by Elwood, arrived in Florence travelling in central and southern Italy—Siena, Viterbo, Rome, Naples, Messina, Syracuse—on the way to Egypt, diverting to Jaffa and Jerusalem; on the return way Montefiore covered the Tyrrhenian coast to France, coming back to Great Britain. The books composed by Judith Montefiore and Katherine Elwood are written in the first person, proceeding from diaries as was the custom among ladies of the well to do families in Europe and British society. Both narrate the journey accomplished in the late 1820s (1825–1828 K. Elwood, and 1827–1828 J. Montefiore), touching upon significant steps regarding antiquities in Rome, and then Pompeii, Alexandria and Cairo. In her Preface, Elwood refers that the journey was considered ‘impracticable for a Lady’, and underlying that ‘the following account of adventures of the first and only female who has hitherto ventured overland from England to India, wholly unacceptable to the fair part of the reading community’ (Elwood 1830: 2). In the first lines of Letter I, Elwood summarises the contents she was developing, claiming her role as a pioneer traveller, she asks her sister: I am the only Lady who travelled thither overland [. . .] and probably mine was the first Journal ever kept by Englishwoman in the Desert of Thebais and on the shores of the Red Sea. [. . .] You will meet with Agas and Cacheffs, and hear of Pahas and Rajahs; and for the ceremonies of the Holy week, you will have the initiatory rites of the Mahometan Hadje, the Mohurrum, and the Hindo Hoolie. You must ascend the Pyramids, and descend into Joseph’s well, penetrate into the tomb of King Sesostris, and explore the caves of Elephanta. [. . .] Have you the courage to accompany me? (Elwood 1830: 2) Approaching Rome the antique issue became more urgent, recalling the image that cultured persons learned: ‘There is but one Rome in the world, and the peculiarity of the approach strikes the imagination far more forcibly than the ordinary purlieus of a city [. . .] like the awful stillness that precedes a storm, so does the solitariness and desolation around prepare the mind for Rome’ (Elwood 1830: 41). A similar attitude was claimed by Judith Montefiore who on the way to Rome, narrates: The country from Viterbo to Rome is uninteresting [. . .] whatever he [traveller] has read or thought of the wonders of the past, fills his imagination and well supplies the lack of external object to delight

Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains 59 the eye [. . .] the very gloominess and uncultivated aspect of the country, tend to increase the anxious feeling of expectation [. . .] uniformity and solitude seem to afford rest to the mind, that is may seize upon the ideal majesty which is to occupy it with greater power and avidity. (Montefiore1836: 49) During their stay in Rome, as Charlotte Eaton did, both Elwood and Montefiore visited S. Peter, the Capitol, the Forums, the Coliseum, the Vatican and the Pantheon. The recount regarding the Forum by Montefiore is definitely synthetic, though she does show some interest in the conservation state of the ancient buildings, and in the reinforcement made, ‘we walked to the Forum, and thence to the Capitol; after examining which, we proceed the Coliseum, which has received the additional support of several new buttresses. The features of the statue of Titus are now scarcely discernible in the triumphal arch; but the candlestick still remains entire. The arch of Constantine also continues perfect’ (Montefiore 1836: 52) and, during a second visit on the way back home, ‘the magnificent ruins of the Coliseum, where they had made wonderful improvements to support the fabric. Near it were a vast number of men excavating, and they had already discovered the ancient pavement. The arch of Titus [. . .] had been repaired’ (Montefiore 1836: 52). Her visit to the Pantheon is very summarily mentioned in just a few words: ‘we therefore devoted the forenoon to the Pantheon and Vatican’ (Montefiore 1836: 52), rapidly passing ‘to the Cistern Chapel’ [sic], not mentioning architecture or artworks (Montefiore 1836: 53). In any case, Montefiore’s attention was focused more on romantic imagination of the past, experiencing the sensations at the spots visited and by the feelings aroused, rather than the material testimonies. In the narrative by Katherine Elwood, no hints to the present state of monuments appear but the writing is rich in historical references and literary quotation: I should not envy the feelings of that person who could, without a quickened pulse and beating heart, first mount the Capitol, or view the Forum. Though now, as in the days of Ænea and the good king Evander, cattle again low in places which once resounded with the eloquences of Cicero; yet there the genius of Ancient Rome still seem to preside, and every spot in the vicinity abounds with interesting reminiscences. (Elwood 1830: 43) Special attention was dedicated by Elwood to the view from the Capitol Tower, a not to be missed stop in the city. The sight of the Forum from the Tower was fixed by James Hakewill, in his sketches in Rome

60  Barbara Tetti between 1816 and 1817. Even if he was focused in publishing the art collection of Roman public galleries, he dedicated many studies to the view of the landscape and representation of city glimpse,25 such as those that appeared in his book A picturesque tour of Italy, in 1820 (Figure 3.1). Elwood, not explicating its peculiarity, attributed the sight a romantic character, ‘a most interesting panoramic view presents itself from thence of the ancient and modern hills which give Rome so picturesque appearance’ (Elwood 1830: 45). A more stirring consideration of the intimate relation between the city and landscape was reported by Charlotte Eaton, expressing the awareness of the large spread of the area interspersed with classical remains and ancient monuments and modern palaces. She also pointed out the peculiar unity of the surrounding landscape that kept together the complexity and the fascinating peculiarity of the present and former Rome: We ascended to the summit of the lofty Tower of the Capitol. What a prospect burst upon our view! To the north, to the east, and even to the west the Modern City extends; but to the south, Ancient Rome

Figure 3.1 Hakewill, James. 1820. A  Picturesque Tour of Italy. London: John Muray. Plate 20 – The Roman Forum, from the Tower of the Capitol. No. II. Source: London, 1820.

Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains 61 reigns alone. The time-stricken Mistress of the world, sadly seated on her desert hills, amidst the ruined trophies of her fame, and the moldering monuments of her power, seem silently to mourn the fall of the city of her greatness. On her solitude the habitations of man have not dared to intrude, no monuments of his existence appear, except such as connect him with eternity. (Eaton 1820: I, 333) Eaton’s counterpoint to the Coliseum narration is undoubtedly her visit to the Pantheon, as the author herself suggests: The beautiful solitude which surrounds the Coliseum, adds a secret charm to the pleasure we feel in surveying it. Not so the Pantheon. Its situation, on the contrary, tends as much as possible to dissolve the spell that hangs over it. It is sunk in the dirtiest part of modern Rome; and the unfortunate spectator, who comes with a mind filled with enthusiasm to gaze upon this monument of the taste and magnificence of antiquity, [. . .] The beauty of the Pantheon is as honorable to the ancient Romans as its filth is disgraceful to the moderns. [. . .] Beautiful as the Pantheon is, it is not what it was. [. . .] Its beauty is that sort, which, while the fabric stands, time has no power to destroy. (Eaton 1820: I, 328, 333, 334) As a cultured and emancipated middle-class woman, an emblematic figure of her time, in line with one of the most common trends of her time, Eaton was continually trying to evoke the fascination of the ancient history in the ruins and appreciating the isolation of those monuments immersed in the landscape; otherwise she was considering the city as a disturbing element in understanding ancient ruins, sometimes mentioning the degraded conditions of Roman city life. As was usual in the spirit of the 19thcentury, she was a lover of the classical, she wanted to relive ideal reconstructions of the past. The need to imagine the ancient city in its former shape was overwhelming. To delineate ideal reconstructions, Charles Robert Cockerell26 produced some ideal views of the Forums,27 among which the one called ‘Restored View’, an iconic drawing of ancient Rome.28 On the base of the drawings delineated in Rome, Cockerell exhibited a plate at the Royal Academy in 1819, with the title ‘An Idea of a Reconstruction of the Capital and Forum of Rome’.29 This image was widespread: it was engraved in Rome (by P. Parboni and G. Acquaroni, 1820), presented at the Royal Academy in London (by J. Coney, 1824), copied in Paris (by A. C. Dormier, 1842),30 disseminated by the copy entitled ‘Rome in the Augustan Age, A Restoration by C.R Cockerell RA’ (by G. Scharf),31 and finally it was used as a cover frontispiece of the popular volume Lays of Ancient Rome by T. Babington Macaulay.32

62  Barbara Tetti

Some Notes From Pompeii and Giza After Rome, the place that awakens the sensitiveness about ancient heritage is certainly Pompeii, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The peculiarity of being dead in a precise known moment, without any period of transition to other eras, highlights Pompeii’s historical distance with its remote time. The archaeological site does not show any elements of continuity with the present, stimulating specific reflections on the topic. Elwood’s narration expresses the time spent among the vestiges of the ancient city, the feeling of entering as an invisible entity in a live reality. She explicates a dramatic sense in facing the ruins so much associated with heroic deeds, and so intensely imagined in its everyday life: Indeed, every thing looked so completely as if the town had but just been deserted, that we could almost have expected to have met with some ancient Roman lingering his native city; but [.  .  .] solitude and desolation now reign [.  .  .] it really seem so indelicate, penetrating into the haunts and apartments of a private family, that we half expected to have encountered some of them, coming ask us the motives for our intrusion, and to chide us for our impertinent curiosity. The illusion at the moment was so strong that we forgot many centuries that had elapsed since the poor master attempted to flee from destruction. (Elwood 1830: 72–73) In a similar spirit, including archaeological and historical interests with the intention to portray the lost city in its imagined brilliant life, Pompeiana, by Thomas Blore and John Peter Gandy, had been published in 1817, including plates by W. Gell. In the book, two illustrations for the description of a single monument are repeatedly placed side by side: the current condition of ruins and its ideal reconstruction, livened up by everyday-life scenes. This manner of representing antiquity satisfies and increases the desire of materialisation of the ancient world. That is picturesque as well as creative, but at the same time based on scientific techniques and precise surveys of the monuments. The current representation of ruins aims to present vivid scenes of daily activities of those places now isolated and crumbling (Figure 3.2). Elwood leaves Pompeii, heading towards Herculaneum, coming back to Naples, from which she embarked for Sicily, to reach the Maghreb region. Conversely, Judith Montefiore reached Pompeii on her way back to Great Britain, having already visited the regions of North Africa and the Middle East. On her journey back home, after visiting the vestiges of ancient Egypt and beyond, she seems to be more involved in the historical question than on the outward trip. In some lines Montefiore recalls

Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains 63

Figure 3.2 (i) and (ii). Gell, William. 1832. Pompeiana: the topography, edifices and ornaments of Pompeii. London: Jennings and Chaplin. Plates XX and XXI, The Temple of Fortuna Augusta and Restored Perspective. Source: London, 1832.

her feelings regarding the arrival in Pompeii and the advancement of the excavation works: Arrived at the uninhabited city, where the most solemn stillness reigned; and monuments of past ages only remind the spectator of inefficacy of human power [. . .] a few labourers [are] employed in

64  Barbara Tetti excavating; [. . .] you cannot divest yourself of a solemnity of sentiment, which becomes heightened by reflecting on the awful visitation which destroyed those who were most probably their happy proprietors, enjoying in human security the luxury of life. [. . .] Within the last two or three years great discoveries have been added to the former, and a new street, a fountain, bronze and marble statue, &c., have well rewarded the labour expended on the excavations. (Montefiore 1836: 290) After Rome and Pompei, on the way toward east, the Giza Pyramids at Cairo, definitely are a more crucial spot regarding antiquities. ‘Desolation’, ‘stillness’, ‘solemnity’ are recurring words in describing ruins and remains of ancient monument in Egypt, as was for the whole city of Pompeii. In Alexandria, ‘ancient city, presented us with a scene of filth and desolateness’ (Montefiore 1836: 130). Montefiore and Elwood visited the Pompey’s Pillar site (Montefiore 1836: 133; Elwood 1830: 112) and Cleopatra’s Needle (Montefiore 1836: 132; Elwood 1830: 115). In the case of Rome, ancient structures pervade the present city, including classical monuments, medieval buildings and baroque architectures, in a peculiar, still living, complex palimpsest; in the archaeological site of Pompeii, vestiges of the Roman settlement are suspended in a remote past, recounting of everyday life, similar to the current but forever lost; in Egypt the kings’ tombs celebrate immanent values, as secret caskets that contemporary times can disclose, revealing mysterious cultures (Elwood 1830: 156–159; Montefiore 1836: 147–149). Montefiore and Elwood’s paths split in Cairo: The first was visiting Jaffa and Jerusalem, and retracing her route—Malta, Naples, Rome, Pisa, Genoa, passing France, and Arnas to cross the English Channel towards home; the second one proceeded to Monfalout, Sirut, Thebe, Abdabade, Mocha, Sanaa, arriving in Bombay, and then narrating the return to Great Britain in 1828 by sea. The two women represent a minority, as travellers and writers who narrate their experiences. However, they represent the figure of the well-edged woman of the bourgeois class who feel the need to travel, to experience firsthand the most significant events of their time. Certainly a romantic spirit infuses these women’s writings in the passionate tale of events, the desire for exotic adventure. However, in their accounts there is no lack of attention to antiquarian discoveries, to archaeological science, to the updating of historical research. In this frame the antiquity, evoked, dreamed and then portrayed, recreated and represented, spread in Britain like a delicious experience, changing definitely the awareness of the spirit of the time for subsequent travellers.

Notes 1. The modern archaeology has its root in the awareness that the ancient times no longer belong to the modern man, so the scholars started to systematically

Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains 65 investigate the past. This process took place during the 18th century also thanks to the rediscovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the excavation on the Palatine hill and on the Forum in Rome. The investigations, surveys and publications regarding antiquity spread during the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th moved the scholars’ interest from the aesthetic canons to the material reality, seen as testimonies of the past, valuable for their authenticity. (Debenedetti 2014, 2015; Sorbo2014; Liverani 2010; Delizia 2008) 2. For a general profile see Geymonat 1988; Rosa 2009. 3. Osservazioni sopra icimiteri de’ santi martiri edantichi cristiani di Roma; see Parise N. 1969, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 11, ad vocem Marcantonio Boldetti. 4. Museum Etruscum exhibens insignia veterum Etruscorum monumenta. Firenze; see Vannini F. 2002, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 58, ad vocem Anton Francesco Gori. 5. Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1716–1795) was a French writer and numismatist. Barthélemy left a number of essays on Oriental languages and archaeology, originally read before the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres. His letters to the comte de Caylus were published by Antoine Serieys as Un voyage en Italie (1801). 6. Anne Claude de Tubières-Grimoard de Pestels de Lévis, comte de Caylus, marquis d'Esternay, baron de Bransac (1692–1765), French antiquarian, proto-archaeologist and man of letters. 7. ‘faut l’avouer une fois ce n’est qu’ici que se trouvent des carrières inépuisables d’antiquités’, 5 November  1755, Lettres de Barthelemy au Comte de Caylus, Œuvres Complètes de J. J. Barthelemy, vol. III, Paris 1821: 520.) 8. Winckelmann (1717–1768) reached Rome in 1755, invited by the Cardinal Alessandro Albani to reorder his collections of ancient art. The rational spirit of the German scholar guided its organisation, classification and division by ages, artists and artworks. Thanks to this process, Winckelmann attempted a more comprehensive view of the historical research; accompanying it with the artistic evaluation, he started the historicising process of the ancient art that was to be the foundation for a new science of archaeology, focused on the issue of ‘authenticity’. 9. The letter was probably written to Brends on 7 July  1756, W. Rehm, H. Diepolder, 1952. 10. On this issue see Raspi Serra 2012: 271–280; Tetti 2017. 11. Regarding the cultural spirit, concerning archaeology, antiquarianism and restoration, see Bann 1990; Lolla 2002; Marshall 2011; Momigliano 1950; Myrone 1999; Pearce 2007; Sette 2001; Sweet 2004; Tozzi 2014. 12. An exemplar figure is Francesco Bianchini (1662–1729) who studied theology, anatomy, botany, mathematics, physics and astronomy. In 1689 he moved to Rome where he studied languages, among which were Hebrew, Greek and French, together with archaeology and history. Under his presidency at Roman Antiquity (1703), the excavations on the Palatine and on the Appia were started. 13. Exemplifying Pietro da Cortona (1596–1669), among others, studied the temple of Fortuna Palestrina that was the reference for some of his projects (Palazzo Chigi in Piazza Colonna, Boboli in Florence and the Louvre Palace), as evidenced by his drawings.On this issue in general see Ceschi 1970: 26–29. 14. Diepolder and Rehm (1952–1957). 15. ‘le antiche memorie ed ornamenti di quest'alma città di Roma, quali tanto conferiscono a promuovere la stima della sua magnificenza e splendore appresso le nazioni straniere; come pure vagliono mirabilmente e confermare

66  Barbara Tetti ed illustrare le notizie appartenenti all'Istoria’ [the ancient memories of the beautiful city of Rome, [. . .] serve to disclose the estimate of its splendor and to explain the vicissitudes of history], Edict 30 September 1704, by Cardinal G. B. Spinola; Di Penta 2007. 16. In further documents related to the protective provision, the objects to be protected were gradually specified, such as the scopes and the methods. The specification increased simultaneously with the extension of the categories of the objects considered precious. The Edict published on 29 January 1646 had already specified that, in addition to protecting works of art from ‘illicit trade’, the need to preserve the objects in their state, and not to ‘alter and falsify them’ was also emphasised. This was reaffirmed in the Prohibition emitted in 1686 regarding the ‘danger of destruction of these buildings’, Edict Sopra li scalpellini, segatori di marmi cavatori, ed altri, 21 October  1726 (Tetti 2016). 17. Antonio Canova (1757–1822) was publishing, once more at his own expense, Lettres à Miranda by Quatremère de Quincy (first appeared in 1796), denouncing the export of antique artworks from Italy. This was in reaction to artworks which were transported to Paris, laws and provisions on antiquities which had been reinforced and updated, and archaeological excavations which had been started in large areas. For more on the topic refer Jonsson 1986; Sette 2007; De Seta 2005; Debenedetti 2006–2008. 18. Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), painter, president of the Royal Academy; Monkhouse, W.C., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, (from here DNB), vol. 32, ad vocem 19. William Hamilton (1730–1803), diplomat and archaeologist; Wroth W.W., in DNB, vol. 24, ad vocem. 20. Mrs Eaton, neè Charlotte Ann Waldie (1788–1859); more editions in 1822, 1823, 1852 and1860. 21. Joseph Woods (1776–1864), botanist and geologist, member of the Society of Antiquaries, honorary member of the Society of BritishArchitects; in 1806 the first president of the London Architectural Society. In 1816 he visited France, Switzerland and Italy, in 1828 he published Letters of an Architect from France Italy and Greece; Boulger G. S., in DNB, vol. 62, ad vocem. 22. Anne Katherine, neè Curteis, married Major Charles William Elwood, set off for India in 1825 and it was claimed that she was the first female to travel overland to India. The book includes five engravings by her and her husband. She also wrote Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England from the Commencement of the Last Century published in 1841, describing the life of 29 leading women. Deborah Manley, Elwood, Anne Katharine (1796–1873), (DNB) 2004; Manley 2013: 6. 23. Vol. 2, Appendix, p.  371; Appendix also includes Sums paid for passages from Naples to India; Posts and day’s journeys on the route from Calais to Naples, Continental tariffs of French, Italian, Neapolitan posts; Tables of foreign coins and of their relative value; Hints for travelers; Remarks on the overland routes to India; Remarks on the communication with India; Succession of Egyptian Kings. 24. Judith Montefiore, née Barent Cohen (1784–1862), married Sir Moses Montefiore on 10 June 1812. Judith accompanied her husband in all his foreign missions up to 1859, during the expeditions to the Holy Land, Damascus, Saint Petersburg and Rome (Judith Montefiore 1836). 25. Numerous drawings are at the British School at Rome Library, published in Cubberley et al. (1992). 26. Probably commissioned by the Duchess Elisabeth of Devonshire, Charles Robert Cockerell stayed in Rome for the second time from the end of 1816

Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains 67 to the spring of 1817. In May 1810 he travelled to Greece, Asia Minor and Sicily, he published drawings and texts based on his journeys. At the end of 1814 he reached Italy and visited Naples and Pompeii; in 1815–1816 he was in Rome where he met the French painter J.A.D. Ingres (Bordeleau 2014). In the correspondence between the Duchess Elisabeth of Devonshire and the architect is conserved a letter written in 1818, in which the noblewoman, praising the drawings, defines them as ‘valuable explanation’ of ancient Rome. Cockerell had already performed similar works for some ancient architecture of Athens (Salmon 2000). 27. Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities: Cockerell misc. drawings 3, 11, 12, 15 e drawings 13 e 14, British Museum, London. 28. Copies of the engraving are in Rome at Fondazione Marco Besso, Antico Foro Romano/ Tempio dei Castori già Giove Statore/Tempio e recinto di Vesta l’antico Foro Romano di C.R. Cockerell, and Istituto Centrale per la Grafica (FC 36777). 29. Full title An Idea of a Reconstruction of the Capital and Forum of Rome, from an elevated point between the Palatine hill and the Temple of Antoine &Faustina from the existing remains, the authorities of ancient writers, and the description of Piranesi, Nardini, Venuti and others. 30. A copy of the engraving is preserved in Rome, at Fondazione Marco Besso, a collection of photographs and prints, Restaurazione del Foro Romano, 72.H.I, 61. 31. The impact of this publication is deeply investigated in the contribution by Edwards 1999: 70–87. 32. Lays of Ancient Rome collects lyrics by Thomas Babington Macaulay, four of them are about heroic episodes of archaic Roman history, with tragic and dramatic themes; over 18,000 copies sold in the first ten years. Stephen L., in DNB, vol. 34, ad vocem.

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4 On Terrains of the Other Empire Mary Holderness’s Account of Her Residence in Early 19th-Century Crimea Nataliia Voloshkova In January 1816, after a tedious sea voyage from Gravesend to Riga and 1,300-mile journey through the vast territories of the Russian empire, Mary Holderness finally reached Crimea, to stay there for four years. This was the time when the European continent enjoyed peace restoring after Napoleonic wars, and thousands of Britons renewed with enthusiasm their continental travels. Some of them chose Europe’s unbeaten tracks, endeavouring to learn more about its peripheries. Travels to remote corners of the continent—and in particular taking up residence there—were understood to be an activity which offered both a challenge and chance to update available data on European frontiers or fill gaps in the nation’s body of knowledge. Keeping this in mind, British women travellers on par with men travellers eagerly recorded everything they thought worth being recorded. They documented travel itineraries and described interactions with local people in letters and journals, commented upon novel customs and manners, made on-spot notes and sketches, wrote down explanations of unfamiliar social and cultural phenomena and words denoting them; they further expanded the obtained knowledge by purchasing travel books, maps, images, clothes and other material items during their travels. Back in Britain, some of them hurried to share in print the facts collected and experience acquired, thus making them quickly available to the reading public at home and abroad through subsequent translations. Notwithstanding that in many cases 18th- and 19th-century travel accounts remained the only works penned by women travel writers, they managed to convert their publications into certain financial and social benefits and claimed authority in specific areas of knowledge. In doing so, women acted on an equal footing with male authors, and their travelogues operated within the mainstream travel literature of the day. Moreover, female travel writers were favourably received by critics as their texts offered not only ‘the novel perspectives . . . in well-worn itineraries’ but described ‘areas of experience . . . closed to their male counterparts’ (Turner 2001: 129). It is important to note that the reports penned by European scientists and explorers who participated in the groundbreaking land expeditions

On Terrains of the Other Empire 71 and sea voyages in the second half of the 18th century had a significant impact on the corpus of early 19th-century travel literature. Organised and sponsored by the European governments, the research and discovery expeditions, as Jürgen Osterhammel has argued, had set up the ‘nexus between knowledge and power’ (Osterhammel 2018: 11). Aimed at collecting various data on distant lands including flora, fauna, geology and climate, they also accumulated information on the ethnographic and economic character which ‘could make it easier to govern, develop, and exploit’ the natives. In fact, the famous expeditions were ‘Janus-faced, at once scholarly and imperial in outlook’ (Osterhammel 2018: 133). Carl Thompson has rightly pointed out that travel writing ‘has contributed significantly  .  .  . to the emergence of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, British and other European empires’ (Thompson 2011: 86). Notably, 18th-century expeditions were frequently multinational, and it meant that their foreign participants promoted other countries’ imperial projects. In their turn, many early 19th-century travellers who journeyed on their own in other empires also contributed to the advancement of knowledge and facilitated the construction and further promotion of imperial ideology. From this perspective, British travel accounts authored by women who documented travelling and/or sojourn in other empires deserve more scholarly attention. Their close examination can be revealing in a number of ways. Firstly, they can show the extent to which early 19th-century travelogues offered grounds for other countries’ imperial projects. Secondly, they can add to our understanding of the ‘affinities and parallels between male- and female-authored travelogues’ (Thompson 2017: 132). Finally, their analysis can ‘connect individual travel texts with the signifying practices of imperialist discourse’ (Smethurst 2009: 4). This chapter explores two of Mary Holderness’s publications on Crimea that came after her travels in the Russian Empire and residence in the Crimean village of Karagoz (now Pervomaiske, Isliamteretskyi district). Both publications have not received much research attention in Crimean studies and in travel writing studies to date (Voloshkova 2016). This chapter aims at reading Holderness’s texts and making visible the ethnographic focus of her narrative as well as colonial rhetoric employed by the author. It will also attempt to show the contradictory nature of the narrative which was at once supportive and critical of Russia’s colonial project in Crimea. Until now, little has been known about Mary Holderness. The only source of information about the author is sporadic evidence found in her books and in several letters written by her co-traveller and employer, the Reverend Arthur Young. He was the owner of the Karagoz estate and son of the renowned British agriculturalist Arthur Young. The Reverend Arthur Young, who came to Russia in 1805 to make an agricultural survey for the Russian government, purchased a Crimean estate in the

72  Nataliia Voloshkova eastern part of the peninsula in 1810 (Young 1898: 402–409). Having resided for several years in Crimea, the Reverend Young returned for some time to England, and in May 1815 he advertised in The Times in search of an English family ready to accompany him to Crimea (Gazley 1955: 394). The travelling party consisted of the Reverend Young, Mary Holderness, her husband, their four children and two or three servants. It seems most likely that the Holdernesses were an impoverished middle-class family who, in search of financial stability, answered the advertisement and consented to share the hardships of farming far away from home.

British Women’s Travelogues on Crimea In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Russia attracted the attention of the British public for many reasons; its growing imperial ‘appetite’ was among them. It was seen as ‘a European country with an Asian extension . . . [which] consisted of a core of historically Russian territories surrounded by a historically non-Russian periphery’ (Sunderland 2007: 46). Annexed by Empress Catherine II in 1783, Crimea, which was mainly inhabited by the Crimean Tatars, was recognised as the most valuable of the Empire’s acquisition—the precious ‘jewel’ in the tsarist imperial crown. It symbolised Russia’s strength on land and sea and provided an entrance into the world of the Black Sea. The peninsula was viewed as one of the most exotic European peripheries, known for its Oriental ‘otherness’ as well as historical and cultural connections with the Ottoman world. With its predominantly Muslim population, Crimea was a place where Christian and Muslim worlds met. Recent research has shown that the incorporation of the former Crimean Khanate into the Russian empire was a complicated 70-year process started immediately after the first annexation of Crimea in 1783 and finished before the Crimean War in 1853 (O’Neill 2017: 2). Russian and foreign travel texts published in that period contributed to the knowledge collection on the peninsula. At the same time, they directly or indirectly informed on the integration process which the Russian government tried to represent as ‘a transformative, civilizing enterprise’ (O’Neill 2017: 43). Before 1821, the body of European travel literature on Crimea included a number of travelogues written by Britons; the first female travelogue was authored by Elizabeth Craven. Craven’s A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople (1789) resulted from touring the region soon after Russian rule began there. Well received in Europe, this travelogue discussed the Russian military presence on the peninsula. It was also known for descriptions of her visits to rich Tatar women (Craven 1789: 171–173, 182–183). Craven’s descriptions added to the exotic image of Oriental women and were probably read by her contemporaries as the continuation of Mary Wortley Montague’s Turkish Embassy Letters.

On Terrains of the Other Empire 73 Mary Holderness became the author of the second and third British female publications on Crimea. The first book, Notes Relating to the Manners and Customs of the Crim Tatars (1821), alongside a detailed description of the Crimean Tatars, presented the author’s impressions on journeying Southern Crimea on horseback during the summer of 1817. In 1823, the Notes were included in her travel account New Russia. Journey from Riga to the Crimea, by way of Kiev. Her second travelogue consisted of three distinctive parts. The first part, entitled Journey from Riga to the Crimea, related the details of a long and enduring journey from Riga to Karagoz undertaken in the winter months (Holderness 1823: 1–104). The second part, entitled Colonies of New Russia, comprised 18 chapters which described colonisation of a huge steppe territory known as New Russia (present-day eastern and southern regions of Ukraine) and peopled mainly by the Ukrainians (Holderness 1823: 103–207). The chapters informed about the social and economic development of the territory with a focus on the rapidly growing towns of Mykolaiv and Odesa. It is important to mention that in 1802 a considerable part of New Russia and Crimea formed a new administrative unit Tavriiska huberniia. The administrative reform took place 14 years before the author’s arrival in Crimea and it gave Holderness the right to insist on the sameness of many processes in both regions. In the second part of the travelogue, Holderness recorded her observations of other peoples inhabiting the Crimean peninsula at that time—Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Roma, Russians, Nogay Tatars, Germans. Some of them—Bulgarian, Greek and German colonists—as well as peasants from Ukraine and central Russia had been settled in the region by the government to increase its Christian population and replace a significant number of the Crimean Tatars who fled to Anatolia soon after the annexation. The slightly revised Notes comprised the final part of New Russia (Holderness 1823: 213–314). Holderness’s publications were the first attempt of a British woman to document her residence on the peninsula. Contrary to Craven, the author did not choose a conventional epistolary format for her publications, which were written in simple conversational style. Nevertheless, the Notes mentioned that the author’s letters written from Crimea served their basis. The travel accounts demonstrate the unwillingness Holderness showed in sharing personal details. It was perfectly in line with the generic conventions established in 18th-century travel literature and continued well into the 19th century (Batten 1978: 13).

‘My Tatar Neighbours’ Notably, the Notes became the first publication on Crimea marked by a strong ethnographic focus. In it, the author attempted to produce as much a complete report on the Crimean Tatars as possible. She provided lengthy descriptions of their dress, dwelling, diet, childcare, education,

74  Nataliia Voloshkova social stratification, leisure time activities and religion, accompanying them with explanatory comments on agriculture and trade. Declaring herself ‘a competent witness’ (Holderness 1823: 211), the author emphasised the uniqueness of her experience as she interacted with the village people on a daily basis: ‘I had daily opportunities of becoming acquainted with the manners of the Tatar inhabitants of that neighbourhood . . . I am induced to think that as a resident and a female, I possessed advantages for acquiring information superior to those of the passing traveller’ (Holderness 1823: 211). Obviously, the statement aimed at validating the author’s first-hand report and claimed special authority in providing information on the Tatar women. Indeed, Holderness described not only how they dressed and put on make-up, but how they adorned women’s apartments and spent their leisure time. She revealed how they prayed, took care of babies, mourned family members and participated in weddings. The author described how her Karagoz neighbours reacted on her departure from Crimea: My Tatar neighbours were with me throughout the day previous to my departure, either sitting silent in my room, or assisting in the arrangement for the journey; but on the day of my departure few could see me; and when the children went to bid good bye to the women, they found them shut up, and really grieving. (Holderness 1823: 205–206) This farewell scene shows that notwithstanding cultural differences Holderness was not perceived as an outsider in Karagoz, but a member of the village community. The author’s attitude to the Tatar women was frequently critical (which will further be discussed in the chapter); still in the narrative, they were flesh and blood, not ephemeral creatures creeping along the narrow streets and hidden in their houses. In doing this, Holderness contributed to casting off the conventional ‘veil’ of mystery, seduction and inexplicability which had been thrown on women of the East by 18th-century travellers; she showed ordinary women with their joys and sorrows. Throughout the text Holderness underlined the variety of ways in which evidence on the native inhabitants was accumulated. Information for her future publication was collected via direct observation (‘I have often seen’, ‘I have observed’, ‘I have never seen or heard’); listening to people (‘I have been told’, ‘I am told’, ‘I have heard’, ‘I once or twice heard’); making enquiries (‘I once enquired of a Tatar’, ‘I once enquired of a Tatar gentleman’, ‘I received these statements from a Tatar sacerdatal [sic]’); attending important events in the local community (‘the wedding, of which I have been a witness’, ‘I was there’, ‘I was present’); and tasting unusual food (‘I ate once a sort of pudding’). The results of her activities were fixed on paper (‘carefully committing to paper my observations’, ‘occasionally noted’) and compared with

On Terrains of the Other Empire 75 the information recorded in other travelogues. Notably, New Russia—its second part in particular—contained many references to other works on the peninsula authored by Europeans and published in the 18th and early 19th centuries; among them were the travel accounts written by Stanislav Bohush-Sestrentsevich, Jean Baron de Reuilly, Francois Baron de Tott, Elizabeth Craven, Edward Daniel Clark and Peter Simon Pallas. Holderness acknowledged the value of those publications but noted that ‘the interval of time . . . has produced change’ on the peninsula and her task was to notice ‘these alterations’ and ‘fill up the small space which other writers have left’ (Holderness 1823: 106). Undoubtedly, the Reverend Young, who spoke Russian and had lived for many years in metropolitan Russia and Crimea, was Holderness’s main informant on the site. Besides, he acted as interpreter during their land journey from Riga to Crimea and probably in the following period as well. In a preface to New Russia, Holderness discussed his contribution into the publication: ‘the kindness of the friend alluded to, has supplied me with much very important additional information, thus stamping a value on the present production . . .’ (Holderness 1823: III). Notably, Holderness mentioned that her own children also served as her informants. They actively interacted with local children by playing outdoors with them, communicated with other villagers and accompanied their mother to the village events she was invited to. Taking into consideration how quick children are at foreign language acquisition in a natural environment, we can suppose that in some cases the author’s children might also have acted as interpreters for her. Commenting on the Tatar songs, Holderness noted: ‘I have often inquired for national songs, but could never hear of any that were worth, or indeed would bear translating: those which my boys learnt among the Tatar lads, were generally founded on some village anecdote’ (Holderness 1823: 262). Or, for example, discussing the Tatar charms and amulets worn to prevent disease in people and animals, Holderness referred to one of the villagers who ‘lending my son a bridle, begged him to take care of the amulet attached to it, ‘for which’, said he, ‘I paid five rubles’’ (Holderness 1823: 253). Indeed, the inclusion of in situ scenes into the narrative did make her Notes lively and vigorous and added to its authenticity. Giving observations on flora and fauna of the peninsula, Holderness offered a lively account of chasing a jerboa—a small peculiar animal that inhabited the Crimean steppe. The scene might have provoked a smile in readers while they were reading it: During my residence at Karagoss two English gentlemen [more than likely the Reverend Young and Mr. Holderness] observed one of these little creatures running and jumping on the Stepp, near our garden. They followed with a determination to catch it; but after chasing it in

76  Nataliia Voloshkova many directions for about an hour, one of them returned home for a dog to assist them, while the other remained in order to keep the jerboa in sight. Even with this additional force, they renewed the chase without success; for after keeping both men and dog at a distance for half an hour longer, it at last ran into cover, among the stacks and straw on the toke, or thrashing hold. Whenever pressed, it sprang, by the help of its tail, to the distance of five or six yards. My son once brought one home which had been caught by a greyhound, but he believes that the dog had surprised it while sleeping. (Holderness 1823: 306–307) In order to obtain information on the Tatars, Holderness observed the local people both openly and in secret. Making comments on religious ceremonies of the Tatars, she confessed: ‘The old men are generally very strict attendants at mosque, but the young seem to go seldom. I was once a secret witness of their ceremonies in a village mechet, but observed nothing remarkable’ (Holderness 1823: 252). In a society characterised by male-female separation, secret viewing was the only possible way to satisfy natural curiosity and get visual information on natives or foreigners of the opposite sex. By breaking boundaries of the forbidden, observers tried to add an important puzzle piece to get a more complete idea of the ‘Other’ world. Moreover, depicting or mentioning secret viewing scenes in travelogues helped its authors to entertain and warm up the reader’s interest by introducing the overtones of sexuality into the narrative. On the other hand, such scenes indirectly spoke of the authorial zeal in getting data which was normally beyond his/her reach. As it is clearly seen from Holderness’s episode, her efforts of getting supplementary information on the Tatar men did not bring tangible results; still, the author could draw a certain conclusion and emphasise her eagerness. It is worth noting that while quizzing the native people the author did not face many difficulties in getting answers from them. Still, Holderness had the courage to acknowledge that at least in one case she did not manage to procure the information she was interested in as her informants ‘diplomatically’ refused to give it. While Holderness was eye witnessing a burial she noticed that some notes written by the Tatar priest were put into the grave with a dead body and she wanted to learn of their contents: I persuaded the Mulla to give me copies of these papers, but as they were written in Arabic, I found difficulty in getting them translated. Having given them to a Tatar Sacerdatal for that purpose, I  never received them again. I have little doubt that he handed them over to the Effendi, who prevented their being returned to me. (Holderness 1823: 247)

On Terrains of the Other Empire 77 The case demonstrates that notwithstanding their friendly attitude native people could be reluctant in sharing certain information, in particular that related to their religious rites. Thus, the material collected by Holderness on the site served as the basis for her publications, distinguished by the rich factual data and novelty in depicting the Tatar women. The author’s daily face-to-face contacts with local people in naturally occurring settings, the ways she turned to in getting and recording the data, the attempts she made to interpret the obtained information and consistency in presenting it—all this demonstrates that Holderness intuitively undertook ethnographic fieldwork during her Crimean sojourn. In this view, the Notes became a forerunner of ethnographic research, as the academic discipline of ethnography was only in the process of forming. Nevertheless, the author’s interpretations of the information she gathered lacked objectivity and resulted in a bias- and prejudice-tinted narrative.

Mary Holderness’s Imperial Eyes In his monograph Unfabling the East, Jürgen Osterhammel underlined that active accumulation of knowledge on the Other in the long 18th century ‘went hand in hand’ with the ‘appropriation of what belonged to the Others’ (Osterhammel 2018: 15). Since Russia’s metropolitan ‘practices and patterns’ did not differ from other empires’ policies and ‘formed part of a broader international story of migration, state-building, [and] the projection of power over non-metropolitan peoples’ (Breyfogle et al. 2007: 8), this explains why British travellers in Russia, describing its colonised space, consciously or unconsciously turned to the colonial rhetoric they heard in their home country. Moreover, inspired by the travel reports on the state-sponsored expeditions of the era some of them constructed their travelogues in a similar way following the example of the ‘grand’ travel accounts. In this context, Mary Holderness’s narrative vividly illustrates the trend which was on the rise. A close reading of Holderness’s publications shows that the author to whom she referred most frequently was the German scientist and explorer of Siberia Peter Simon Pallas, who lived and worked in Russia for many years. Written in German, his highly popular and influential work on Crimea, Travels through the Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire in the Years 1793 and 1794, was highly valued by the Russian government and within a short period saw editions in English, French and Russian. Alongside its meticulous descriptions of the Crimean animal and plant life, geology and mineralogy, the book offered detailed accounts of the Tatar towns and villages as well as customs and traditions of the people. The travel account penned by the famous naturalist was, using Osterhammel’s shrewd remark, ‘Janus-faced’ (Osterhammel 2018: 133)

78  Nataliia Voloshkova in its nature, as the author characterised the Crimean Tatars as ‘useless, inactive, and, in certain cases, dangerous’ people ‘who understand the art of destroying better than that of rearing’ (Pallas 1812: 262). Thinking of the future of recently annexed Crimea and the people who traditionally lived on the peninsula he stated: On the whole, they [the Crimean Tatars] are at present unprofitable and unworthy inhabitants of those paradisaical vallies [sic], in which they have always shewn themselves the first and most ready to revolt against the Russian Government. (Pallas 1812: 346) Hence Pallas proposed to resettle them in other regions less suited for life:  . . . it would be, indeed, for the general good, to remove them [the Crimean Tatars] entirely from these vallies [sic] into the interior of the country; at the same time peopling the former with industrious settlers, who would contribute to the prosperity of the empire by the cultivation of wine, oil, silk, and cotton; which will never be attempted by the present inactive possessors. (Pallas 1812: 347) In fact, Pallas’s book served ideological purposes and legitimated the scenario which the Russian government had already begun to realise on the peninsula. In its turn, Holderness’s narrative strikingly accorded with the travelogue authored by Pallas not only in the topic selection but in its condescending tone in depicting the Tatar people. Although she did not mention the idea of resettlement, her narrative is distinguished by its strong colonial rhetoric and biased interpretations. Holderness’s colonial discourse reveals itself at the beginning of the book, as the author spoke of the ‘primitive’ state of the Crimean Tatars: In the simple life of the Tatars much may be traced of similarity with those recorded in the earliest ages of Scripture history. Their riches consist now, as was usual then, in flocks and herds, and in the number of their families. Many also of their domestic habits are the same: nor is it so much a matter of wonder, that, in lives so simple, so much accordance should be found, as that any people, having had for some centuries past an intercourse with more civilized nations, should still retain those manners which characterized mankind before learning had enlightened and commerce enriched the world. Here the former is still unknown and the latter scarcely ventures a step beyond the neighbourhood of the seaport whither navigation tempts her. Exchange is still the medium of purchase, and money

On Terrains of the Other Empire 79 is but seldom required or produced in bargains made between one Tatar and another. . . . (Holderness 1823: 217–218) One of the characteristic features of colonial discourse is its preoccupation with exploring the ‘bodies and faces of people with the same freedom that it brings to the survey of a landscape’ (Spurr 1993: 19). Predictably, much attention in Holderness’s text was paid to exploring physical attractiveness/unattractiveness of the Tatar people. The author noted that men’s ‘ears were singularly large’ and instead of covering them men wore their caps in such a way that made them stick out even more. ‘How variable a form has beauty!’ exclaimed Holderness (Holderness 1823: 257). She noted the Tatar men looked rather graceful when they rode horses in their holiday clothes, but wearing a warm cloak called ‘a bourka’ gave ‘a ferocity to their appearance . . . almost alarming to those not accustomed to see them’ (Holderness 1823: 264). In the narrative, Holderness displayed an overt dislike of the Tatar women and children’s appearance. Depicting female efforts to improve their looks with the help of cosmetics she noted that ‘personal beauty is rare amongst them’ (Holderness 1823: 224). Hence everything they did was ineffective: ‘The married women paint their faces both white and red, and pencil their eyebrows and eyelashes; but as this is done with bad material and bad taste (the ground-work, moreover, being seldom pretty), they mar rather than mend, or improve their features’ (Holderness 1823: 222). The Notes offered a lengthy description of Tatar female clothes typical for unmarried girls and married women. Notwithstanding the precise and detailed depiction of female national dress, it ended by concluding that ‘a Tatar woman, in all her brocade, is a most ungraceful and stiff-looking figure’ (Holderness 1823: 223–224). Physical aversion to women manifested in mentioning their skin problems: ‘. . . few, if any of them, escaped the itch, which, as well as all scorbutic disorders, seems to be hereditary, and exists here with a virulence of which I had no idea, the hands, feet, and ancles [sic] being often covered with one entire sore’ (Holderness 1823: 223). No less repulsion was shown to small Tatar children, as Holderness confessed they were ‘the most disgusting and uninteresting’ (Holderness 1823: 225) of all the infants she had ever seen. Obviously, comments of that kind served additional prove to nation’s ‘inferiority’. In the Notes, Holderness made several references to the way the Crimean Tatars spent their leisure time. For example, she described the Tatar women’s predilection for swinging, stressing the childish nature of their habit: Swinging is a favourite amusement with them, and the love of it by no means confined to children. The ladies seemed surprised when

80  Nataliia Voloshkova I told them that I had for some time left off this diversion, though I  liked it much when a child. I  cannot wonder, however, that they continue to be fond of the pastimes of early life, since they continue always to be children in understanding; and there is something reasonable in their love of this exercise, since it is the only one which they are permitted to take, and that only at the seasons of their two great holidays. (Holderness 1823: 227) The only explanation that Holderness could see for the immaturity of the Tatar women was that they were deprived of many of the freedoms that English women enjoyed and were made slaves of their husbands by a despotic Tatar society. The passages on local diet and food in Holderness’s narrative served not only as powerful identifiers of cultural difference (Thompson 2011: 131) but markers of the nation’s ‘inferiority’ as well. Discussing the Tatar diet in the summer months the author stated: ‘When melons and cucumbers are ripe, they live almost entirely upon them devouring them unpeeled, and requiring only the addition of bread to complete their meal’ (Holderness 1823: 260–261). The sentence signified inferiority of the Crimean Tatars by informing readers of what they ate and how they did it. The words ‘devour’ and ‘unpeeled’ provoked savage- or even animal-like associations in readers. In the same way, the author described the Tatar predilection for sour food: ‘From childhood they are so accustomed to the use of sour food, that they eat every sort of acid with extreme avidity. They devour unripe fruit with great greediness, and suck lemons in preference to oranges’ (Holderness 1823: 259). Here again the author pointed at the unnatural taste of the people and emphasised the uncontrolled greediness with which they consumed food. Asserting the deplorable state of native agriculture was another way of demonstrating ‘backwardness’ of local inhabitants. Indeed, colonisation in any corner of the world presupposed the negation of ‘the relationship of the native peoples to their lands’. Depicting them as ineffectual land users ‘devalued or invalidated’ their right to possess the land of their ancestors ‘in order to justify colonial appropriation’ (Kivelson 2007: 21). In this context, Holderness’s narrative proves this argument convincingly. On the one hand, the Notes contained a lot of practical and useful information on vegetables and fruits grown in Crimea, horticultural specialisation of certain parts of the peninsula, the system of sowing, reaping and storing a harvest and specificity of traditional husbandry. Nonetheless, Holderness characterised the Crimean Tatars as ‘the very worst labourers in the world’ (Holderness 1823: 275) and their agriculture as degraded and primitive: ‘The habits and modes of agriculture of the Tatars are rude and simple. They have no industry sufficient to induce them to labour hard. . . . The enjoyment of ease and indolence,

On Terrains of the Other Empire 81 on any terms, is the summit of their happiness’ (Holderness 1823: 270). The agricultural equipment and techniques, in the author’s opinion, were underdeveloped as well: ‘Their agricultural implements are as rude as their methods of using them. They are made almost entirely of wood, and since iron causes the heaviest part of the expence, they employ as little as possible of that material in their construction’ (Holderness 1823: 270). In general, Holderness refused to admit the knowledge of the land which had been accumulated by many generations of the Tatar people, though reluctantly acknowledged their skills in sheep breeding and beekeeping. Holderness always spoke of the Crimean Tatars from the position of superiority: ‘. . . an English master views with an impatient eye the slow, unwilling, uninterested manner in which the generality of them set about their work. The act of digging in a sitting posture is perhaps as good a specimen as can be given of Tatar industry’ (Holderness 1823: 275). Extremely critical of many aspects in the Tatar character and lifestyle, Holderness’s narrative was not devoid of praising them; she, for example, noted: ‘The highest points of excellence in Tatar character are their sobriety and chastity, for both of which they are universally remarkable and praiseworthy’ (Holderness 1823: 243). She assured her readers that the Crimean Tatars were ‘a quiet and harmless race, not given to violence or open plunder’, though complained of ‘the extreme laziness of their character’ (Holderness 1823: 274). In the introduction to Travel Writing, Form, and Empire, Paul Smethurst has assumed that the female voice and tone in travel writing though ‘largely supportive of the imperial order . . . might be more nuanced, less strident, less imperious’ (Smethurst 2009: 8). A close analysis of Holderness’s narrative bespeaks the opposite. On the whole, it presents a vivid example of colonial discourse that articulates the idea of empire and dominance. The colonial rhetoric employed by the author helped to persuade the readership of the inferiority of the people who had inhabited the peninsula for many centuries. The narrative implied the need for the enlightening and governing ‘hand’ which was able to correct nation’s ‘deficiencies’ and transform the region into the territory of ‘civilisation’. Therefore, it justified the policies of the Russian government aimed at ‘improving’ the colonised zone.

Was the Governing ‘Hand’ Enlightening? My analysis of the narrative would be incomplete if I had not addressed another aspect of it. As has been mentioned above, all the travelogues on Crimea to a greater or lesser extent contained information on the colonisation process and state of the colonised people. They documented ‘colonial administrative efforts at suppression and control’ as well as ‘the response of subject populations to colonial rule’. The evidence of their ‘accommodation with and resistance to the empire constitute in many

82  Nataliia Voloshkova respects the real imperial history of Russia’ (Brower and Lazzerini 1997: XIV–XVI). In this view, Holderness’s texts allow insight into the lived reality of colonised Crimea in the 1810s. The passages are not numerous but speak for themselves. Describing Karagoz, the author mentioned that before the annexation the village had been a populated place of 1,700 inhabitants. Since then many Crimean Tatars had abandoned their houses, and at the time of her residence Holderness could only observe ‘their deserted domains’ with traces of ‘the foundations’ which were gradually transforming into ‘a complete wilderness of fruit-trees’, though still possessing ‘numerous wells, some filled up, others overgrown with grass, or thick creeping plants; also the ruins of a Tatar bath, and a Tatar metchet [sic], or mosque, the minaret of which, seen from all parts of the estate, embowered in wood’ (Holderness 1823: 284). The picturesque depiction of the place once full of life evoked a feeling of regret for past prosperity of the neighbourhood. A brief description of the neighbouring town of Staryi Krym was also revealing of nation’s lost splendor: ‘The old town of Starai Krim, once the capital of the peninsula, is now little better than a heap of ruins. These ruins are very extensive, and we know that at the first conquest of the country by the Russians, it was a flourishing town’ (Holderness 1823: 214–215). In her book The Idea of Europe in British Travel Narratives, Katarina Gephardt has pointed out that ‘nineteenth-century writers perceived England as the pinnacle of civilization, not only in relation to its Celtic peripheries and imperial possessions but also in relation to Europe’s perceived peripheries’ (Gephardt 2014: 4). In this sense, the Russian empire situated on the periphery of the continent was perceived as an object of assessment and criticism that could be provided by representatives of a ‘more advanced’ empire. In fact, Holderness demonstrated the ‘unquestioned confidence of a woman who saw herself as a member of a superior culture’ (Bassnett 2002: 227) and in New Russia, she offered a critique of Russia’s colonial administrators in Crimea. She wrote a lengthy passage on empire’s bureaucratic machine infected with ubiquitous corruption: The Russians have a proverb, which runs thus: ‘Sood lubeet Zoloto, ah strapchie sirebro,’ or, ‘The sood [court] love gold, and their clerks silver.’ As I quote from a Russian book published in 1815, I cannot be said to satirize, when I confess my belief of their proverb being a true one; and my knowledge that the government of the Krim is somewhat famous for verifying it. [. . .] The causes which contribute to this depravity are several; but chiefly the very low salaries which, in the civil service especially, is awarded to the servants of the crown. . . . Another cause of this monstrous depravity is eminently owing to the total neglect of every species of education amongst the Russians. . . . In an empire so extensive as that of Russia, whatever

On Terrains of the Other Empire 83 be the efforts, whatever the wishes of him, who governs, it is scarcely to be expected their influence, so powerfully felt at the centre, can extend with equal force to those distant provinces. . . . (Holderness 1823: 118–122) Notably, in order to prove her statement, Holderness not once but twice had recourse to the linguistic evidence of corruption fixed in the form of proverbs. To illustrate corruption more convincingly, the author used another Russian proverb which sounded as ‘Heaven is high, and the Emperor is a long way off’ (Holderness 1823: 120) which signified uncontrollability of local courts and administration as well as absence of punishment for law abuse. In addition, Holderness mentioned administrative confusion in Crimea which produced difficulty and uneasiness: ‘. . . the boundaries of estates in the Crimea are still very indistinctly known, and many, if not most of them, are involved in a perplexity, which appears to be hopeless from its long continuance’ (Holderness 1823: 131). She wrote of a town chief of Feodosiia who abused the law by introducing additional extortions in his estate: Upon his own estate, he had demanded from the Tatars fifty kopeeks per head, per annum, for every ewe sheep and lamb, and two rubles per head for each working ox, or cow and calf; smaller cattle to pay from fifty kopeeks to one ruble, according to their age. I  left the Crimea before the effect of this arrangement could be known; but I have since heard, that the Tatars considered it as novel as it was oppressive, and many families left the property in consequence. (Holderness 1823: 134–135) The narrative contains cursory remarks on the discontent of the native people which manifested in migration, rebels or ‘quiet’ disrespect of colonisers. For travellers journeying in South Crimea, the Tatars offered their best accommodation for a modest remuneration. ‘Their cordiality, however’, Holderness noted, ‘may be much heightened, if they find he [a traveller] is not a Cossack (their term for Russians in general), who for the most part being subaltern officers of the government, visit them on occasions, in themselves not gratifying, and are considered their worst paymasters’ (Holderness 1823: 188). In the author’s opinion, active resistance to colonisers was impossible as the forces were too unequal: Although during my residence there, I once or twice heard of projected insurrections, I could not, from what I saw, or what I heard upon good authority, find that every spirit of the kind existed: much too powerless are these people now, to rise up against the still increasing and giant strength of their master. . . . (Holderness 1823: 193–194)

84  Nataliia Voloshkova Thus, two publications on Crimea authored by Mary Holderness were the result of her proto-ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Karagoz during her four-year residence there. They added to the mapping of the distant European territory marked so distinctly by its Oriental ‘otherness’. At the same time, the publications present a narrative of contradictory nature. On the one hand, by employing colonial rhetoric, the author supported the colonial project pursued by the other nation and contributed to its justification. On the other hand, the narrative served as a medium through which the author undermined Russia’s colonial presence on the Crimean peninsula.

References Bassnett, Susan. 2002. ‘Travel Writing and Gender’, in Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 225–241. Batten, C.H.L. 1978. Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature. Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Breyfogle, N.B. et al. 2007. ‘Russian Colonizations: An Introduction’, in N.B. Breyfogle et al. (eds.), Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History. London and New York: Routledge, 1–19. Brower, D.R. and E.J. Lazzerini. 1997. ‘Introduction’, in D.R. Brower and E.J. Lazzerini (eds.), Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700– 1917. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, XI–XX. Craven, Elizabeth. 1789. A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople: In a Series of Letters. London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson. Gazley, John G. 1955. ‘The Reverend Arthur Young, 1769–1827: Traveller in Russia and Farmer in the Crimea’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 37: 360–405. Gephardt, Katarina. 2014. The Idea of Europe in British Travel Narratives: 1789–1914. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Holderness, Mary. 1821. Notes Relating to the Manners and Customs of the Crim Tatars; Written During a Four Years’ Residence Among That People. London: John Warren. ———. 1823. New Russia. Journey from Riga to the Crimea, by Way of Kiev; with Some Account of the Colonization, and the Manners and Customs of the Colonists of New Russia, to Which Are Added Notes Relating to the Crim Tatars. London: Sherwood, Jones and Co. Kivelson, Valerie. 2007. ‘Claiming Siberia: Colonial Possession and Property Holding in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries’, in N.B. Breyfogle et al. (eds.), Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History. London and New York: Routledge, 21–40. O’Neill, Kelly. 2017. Claiming Crimea: A History of Catherine the Great’s Southern Empire. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2018. Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press.

On Terrains of the Other Empire 85 Pallas, P.S. 1812. Travels Through the Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire in the Years 1793 and 1794, vol. 2. London: John Stockdale. Smethurst, Paul. 2009. ‘Introduction’, in Julia Kuehn and Paul Smethurst (eds.), Travel Writing, Form, and Empire: The Poetics and Politics of Mobility. New York and London: Routledge, 1–20. Spurr, David. 1993. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Sunderland, Willard. 2007. ‘Imperial Space: Territorial Thought and Practice in the Eighteenth Century’, in Jane Burbank et al. (eds.), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 33–66. Thompson, Carl. 2011. Travel Writing. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2017. ‘Journeys to Authority: Reassessing Women’s Early Travel Writing, 1763–1862’, Women’s Writing, 24(2): 131–150. DOI:10.1080/09699082.201 6.1207915, accessed 1 July 2018. Turner, Katherine. 2001. British Travel Writers in Europe 1750–1800: Authorship, Gender and National Identity. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate. Voloshkova, Nataliia. 2016. ‘Mary Holderness and The Reverend Arthur Young: Two Britons Travelling in Ukraine in the Early 19th Century’. Paper presented at Borders and Crossings International and Interdisciplinary Conference, Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce, 12 September. Young, Arthur. 1898. The Autobiography of Arthur Young with Selections from His Correspondence, ed. Matilda Betham-Edwards. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Part II

In the Colonies, Defining ‘Non-British’

5 The Politics of Feasting Janet Schaw’s Sensory Experience of the West Indies Georgina Elisabeth Munn

The Ideological Consumption of Empire In the 18th century the influx of imperial commodities to Britain’s shores provided most of society with the opportunity to experience the empire through their sense of taste—‘eating connected the British to their empire, as food became not only the most abundant products of imperial trade, but also the empire’s most prevalent symbols’ (Bickham 2008: 107). Food is therefore imbued with ideological significance and represents much more than sustenance alone. It was a signifier of class, wealth and political values. This becomes particularly pertinent in the context of imagining the nation as a body (Bowers 1995: 580). There was a strong link between one’s constitution, the ‘reservoir of inner strength and resistance’ that enabled the body and mind to function and thrive, and the British Constitution (Porter 2003: 230–231). The popular patriotic image of the strong and corpulent John Bull demonstrates the extent to which national identity was imbued with dietary discourses: ‘Meat was an enclaved marker of cultural values’ and the Roast Beef of Old England came to represent English virtue and character (Morton 1994: 34). As such, taste must be considered in the ‘full context of its exercise’ including the social, expressive and ideological aspects of the act of eating (Korsmeyer 1999: 6). Products of imperial trading became the vehicle by which society was able to experience the world without the necessity of travel, a kind of ‘virtual tourism’ whereby people enjoyed ‘engaging in sensory investigations of overseas cultures’ (Bickham 2008: 95, 108). It is these sensory encounters that provide the basis of my research and it is perhaps unsurprising that many travel accounts describe cultural encounters through the lens of consumption and therefore through the literal sense of taste. Sensory hierarchies have tended to categorise ‘taste’ as the lowliest of the senses, fuelled by a base desire for sensuous rather than cognitive pleasures. Eighteenth-century philosophers developed theories to recognise and appreciate beauty and aesthetic value in order to alleviate the tension between the sensory pleasures of taste and taste as a

90  Georgina Elisabeth Munn ‘discriminative capacit[y]’ (Korsmeyer 1999: 5–6). Denise Gigante illuminates this tension by stating that ‘mental taste . . . entailed more than physical sensation. It had to involve an element of cognition’ (Gigante 2005: 13). Thus, philosophical theories endeavoured to tame the threatening and animalistic temptations of appetite: Excessive indulgence in corporeal pleasures was considered distasteful. A lack of control over the senses, or in other words desire, was perceived to be effeminate. Thus, the senses were a ‘tool in constructing sexual dimorphism, or insistence on radical differences between the moral and physical constitutions of men and women’ (Vila 2014: 16). Janet Schaw’s Journal of a Lady of Quality (1774) illustrates a complex relationship with the consumption of different imperial commodities and comments more broadly on contemporary social debates on gluttony and excess. Derived from a medieval tradition which criticised the ‘greed or avarice of the clergy’, gluttony was a common target of 18th-century satire (Kendrick 2007: 54). Politicians and holders of public office were critiqued for their excessive indulgences which were perceived to be enjoyed at the expense of the rest of society. These ‘rituals of collective consumption’ were also crucial to the construction of a close-knit community in a colonial setting whereby white planters were outnumbered by the slave population (Petley 2012: 88). By the end of the 18th-century, the planter class’ eventual decline in reputation and power was partly due to this indulgent lifestyle; there was a ‘close association of [their] bodily practices, such as eating and drinking with moral corruption, social failings, and cultural destitution in the Caribbean colonies’ (Petley 2012: 85). Christer Petley contends, therefore, that food and drink held ‘greater significance in white creole culture than in the metropole’ (86). However, food and drink also played a significant and highly symbolic role in Britain’s clubs, societies and politics; arguably they nurtured a similar culture of conviviality to that of colonial societies. Generally speaking, both at home and abroad, these rituals were intended as ‘sites of male bonding’ (Petley 2012: 88).1 Where do women like Schaw fit in this politics of feasting? Writing in the 1770s, a period characterised by a more ambivalent public opinion of Creole society, Schaw’s Journal presents a favourable image of white West Indian practices (Petley 2012: 90). Schaw’s highly sensory account of her experience must be read in a political context. The Journal’s preoccupation with taste is inextricably linked to pleasure and Schaw consciously employs these sensory encounters as a primary way to explore Britain’s Empire. Given the ideological and political connotations surrounding food and the act of consumption, Schaw argues that indulging in foods native to the West Indies is part of the natural course of life. These commodities only gain a ‘luxurious’ status once they are taken out of context and imported to Britain to play a role in the nation’s ritualistic consumption of, and participation in, empire.

The Politics of Feasting 91

Home and Away: Commodities Out of Context Sea voyage narratives are often characterised by an ‘unnaturalness of life’: The unexpected events, the harsh and dangerous conditions, and the lack of provisions (Edwards 1994: 14). Physically and mentally confined by the stagnation of ship life, the travellers looked to food as their only means of diversion and a source of pleasure. Schaw writes: There is nothing that diverts lassitude equal to eating or even looking at meat . . . we gave way to our desire of taking the only exercise in our power, that of moving our jaws, as every thing else was listless and inactive. (Schaw [1774] 2005: 118) As discussed in the introduction, meat was strongly associated with strength and masculinity whilst, by default, vegetables connoted weakness and femininity: ‘To vegetate is to lead a passive existence; just as to be feminine is to lead a passive existence’ (Adams 2010: 60). However, the gender neutral category of the traveller goes some way to erode the binary of male/female, masculine/feminine, and Schaw frequently writes in the neutral plural, referring to the group as a whole.2 Unconstrained by ritual and societal norms, the voyagers fare equally, sharing their boredom and resultant desire to experience pleasure through eating. Eating offered not only a means of distraction but was, of course, crucial to their survival. In the aftermath of a storm during which a number of supplies succumbed to the waves, Schaw exclaims ‘what must now become of us?’ (1774: 52). Luckily they were left with basic provisions and the subsequent good weather brought opportunities for ‘great amusement’ (58). Creating ideal aesthetic conditions for reverie, Schaw describes how she and her fellow seafarers created fictional ‘sea landscapes’ in their imagination, detailing ‘airy scenes’, delightful wanderings and clouds of ‘fancy’ (58). During one of these episodes Schaw experiences her first encounter with a turtle: As I  was pleasing myself this morning, with lying over the side of the ship, and seeing the fishes in pursuit of each other, gliding by, I observed a fine hawk-bill turtle asleep, almost close along side. Oh! How our mouths did water at it, but watered alas in vain; for before any method could be thought of, it waked and dived under the water. I  presently recollected, however, that this pride of luxury was too luxurious himself to be many miles from land. (59) Schaw looks to nature to relieve the monotony of life at sea and is admiring the idyllic scenery when she is surprised by the arrival of a turtle:

92  Georgina Elisabeth Munn A welcome distraction. The ambivalent syntax makes it unclear whether the subject of the present participle ‘gliding by’ is herself or the turtle, creating an image of Schaw and the turtle gracefully floating in a mirror image of the other. Schaw’s idle moment is filled with vision and fancy—the turtle’s sudden appearance provokes an immediate response to sensory stimulation which subsequently excites the appetites of those on board. Furthermore, the sudden flurry of activity ignites the prospect of a challenge to catch the teasing turtle, an opportunity that disappears as quickly as it arose. The salivating travellers embrace this experience as Schaw momentarily imagines succumbing to a rare instance of pleasure. Vila states: The mind’s need for mastery over immediate sensate experience points to a broader strand of Enlightenment thinking: its insistence on moderation and control, for the purposes of health as well as pleasure and clear-headedness. (2014: 9) Situated outside of cultural norms and societal expectations, life at sea offers a liminal experience; neither at home, nor quite arrived at their destination, Schaw’s out of the ordinary experience at sea legitimises a lack of control over the senses. The excitement at the prospect of consuming turtle, the ‘pride of luxury’, is tangible. It is presented as the epitome of luxury, a superior and exquisite specimen and Schaw is willing to submit to her desires. Turtle was symbolic of the luxurious and plentiful nature of the colonies which, as I will soon demonstrate, Schaw fully embraced throughout her travels. The first meal recorded in Schaw’s journal is breakfast, an event which ‘costs no little trouble’ (1774: 32). A relatively new meal and social occasion, by 1760 a breakfast of tea, toast and rolls was largely ‘entrenched in middling circles’ (Berg 2005: 229). Thus, Schaw positions herself within such circles and seeks to create a space for polite sociability in an environment she is otherwise powerless to regulate and control: Miss Rutherford can get nothing she is able to taste. Tea without milk she cannot drink, and Coffee is reprobated by us all for the same want. We tried chocolate but found it much too heavy . . . there is not a bisket on board fit for any thing but the hogs. However, my brother had swallowed an egg, and was just going to drink a cup of burnt Claret with spiceries  .  .  . when the Nasty Captain coming down to take a dram from his gin case, set all our stomachs topsy turvy by the smell. (Schaw 1774: 32) Significantly, the items of primary concern are all products of Britain’s imperial trading. Over the course of the century, commodities including

The Politics of Feasting 93 tea, coffee and chocolate ‘pervaded British society’ at all levels, transformed from luxuries to ‘perceived necessities’ in some cases (Bickham 2008: 71). The sequential listing of these items appears very deliberate; Schaw even includes ‘spiceries’ to complete the array of imperial commodities. Timothy Morton frames spice as ‘a cultural marker rather than as a solid substance’, emphasising that it is intrinsically linked to and formed by figurative language (2000: 18). The term included a broad range of items such as almonds, dried fruits and those that are traditionally considered to be spices, like cinnamon (18). Complicating the status of spice as mere luxury commodity, Morton emphasises the need to treat such commodities as ‘cultural coefficient[s]’, highlighting their representative nature and value as both object and signifier (19). The Empire is a consumable entity and Schaw demonstrates that she is fully aware of this, having blended its fruits seamlessly into her everyday life. This is a breakfast out of context, affected both by a lack of ritual and physiological changes: Social constructs and science. Schaw highlights their lack of ability to taste at sea, indicating a dramatic change in sensory experience in this foreign environment. The impact of environmental factors on the senses has been explored in Flight Catering (2004). It has been observed that travelling at high altitude compromises taste as well as causing heightened reactions to alcohol and caffeine (Lumbert 2004: 65). Consequently, the motion of the boat, the saltiness of the sea air and the lack of exercise may, in a similar fashion, have contributed to an altered experience of taste and stronger reactions to sensory stimulation. More specifically, ‘taste’ in Schaw’s Journal is synonymous with pleasure, or the absence thereof: Familiar favourites such as tea and coffee are rendered unpalatable for the want of necessary accompaniments, and chocolate is ‘too heavy’ in this climate. Some items of food are barely suitable for the animals to eat, whilst the smell of gin turned their stomachs. Notably, it is the absence of homegrown, British accompaniments that affects their enjoyment of these products of empire. At home, Schaw and her social circle adapt tea and coffee to suit their very British tastes. Furthermore, Maxine Berg highlights that taking tea not only involved ‘rituals of making and serving; it was about the tea equipage’ including tea tables, china and specific cutlery (2005: 241). Thus, contrary to the usual setting of polite conversation, the lack of ritual on board the Jamaica Packet makes for a decidedly uncivilised occasion due to the lack of appropriate domestic additions and rituals. This chapter will explore in more detail the alternative commodities of the British Empire; those that did not pervade society in the same way as increasingly everyday items like tea, coffee and chocolate. Turtle, for example, is a prevalent and recurring subject of Schaw’s Journal. Christopher Plumb contends that ‘the taste for turtle flesh was a prominent and controversial ‘mania’ in the latter half of the eighteenth century’ as the dish became synonymous with the gluttonous alderman and political

94  Georgina Elisabeth Munn and societal feasting (2015: 61). Gilly Lehmann suggests that the status of turtle in the 18th century was comparable to that of venison (2003: 259). The key difference, however, was legality; access to venison was restricted to the upper classes by law, whereas turtle was available to all, provided one could afford it (259). Plumb contends that consuming turtle was viewed as a thoroughly ‘English and masculine’ act, holding patriotic connotations much like the aforementioned roast beef (2015: 65–66). Considering the inherently exotic nature of turtle, it seems oxymoronic that it was considered the epitome of Englishness. However, the assimilation of turtle within the very constitution of England, via a literal and metaphorical consumption, represented the power of Britain’s Empire and the consumer’s participation in the colonisation of the West Indies. Thus, turtle is not just a dish: It acts as a ‘cultural coefficient’ (Morton 2000: 19).

Turtle Feasting: An Authentic Taste of Empire With a notable increase in the volume and variety of foreign ingredients arriving in England, mid to late 18th-century cookbooks provided Britons with ‘the opportunity to tour, in a small way, the wider world’ (Bickham 2008: 96). The fifth edition of Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1755) stresses the importance of pairing authentic ingredients with authentic cooking methods, with one such recipe entitled ‘to dress a Turtle, the West-India Way’ (331). Society’s fascination with turtle was such that recipes for ‘mock-turtle’ soon appeared, substituting a more affordable calf’s head as a source of meat, carefully prepared and served in a turtle shell. This gave the illusion of authenticity and status and enabled diners to participate in the ritualistic consumption of ‘turtle’, a very sociable affair, and one frequently enjoyed by the Royal Society’s Dining Club. The high honour of receiving a gift of turtle is exemplified in the Club’s minutes: On 4 October 1750 they resolved that any Gentleman giving a Turtle annually should be considered an Honorary Member. (Royal Society Club Minutes, Royal Society Library, RSC/1/1, October 4 1750) This demonstrates not only the exclusively male setting in which these ritual transactions took place but also highlights the significance of the consumption of turtle in the West Indies whereby it is considered, by Schaw, to be consumed without ritual or politics. Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society 1778–1820, kept a turtle in London which was ‘destined for the Club’ (Letter from Sir Joseph Banks to Charles Blagden, Royal Society Library, CB/1/1/96, Oct 29 1783). Banks’ correspondence with his close friend Sir Charles

The Politics of Feasting 95 Blagden, Secretary of the Royal Society 1784–1797, illuminates the significance of his investment and provides an insight into the process of acquiring turtle in England: I wrote full directions about the Turtle last week . . . be so good as to inspect the Brand mark of Letters or somewhat to distinguish which is generally put in the West Indies upon the Callipee to prevent a dead Turtle of some one’s else being passed upon as the real one still alive. (Letter from Sir Joseph Banks to Charles Blagden, Royal Society Library, CB/1/1/91, Oct 7 1783) Rather humourously, Banks is wary of duplicitous plans to swap his healthy turtle for a carcass. This letter details the practices undertaken as part of the purchase, with individual markings on the underside of the turtle used to catalogue the exchange. Banks’ concern demonstrates the high demand for this exclusive delicacy; one may assume that this kind of deception had happened before. A  switch would be a financial loss for Banks, but perhaps of greater concern, it would deprive the Club of a turtle dinner: The ultimate feasting experience. On 23 October 1783, Banks’ turtle successfully provided three separate dishes for the club, as they ‘simultaneously enjoy[ed] fine dining and participat[ed] in an act of colonialism’ (Kirkby et al. 2007: 1): Dinner— A Turtle Scate Haricot of Mutton a Hare another dish of Turtle Potatoes Cold Ribs of Lamb Breast of Veal Haddock more of the Turtle

(Royal Society Club Minutes, Royal Society Library, RSC/1/1, 23Oct 1783)

This ritual was emblematic of British control in the Caribbean and brought a taste of the exotic back to England ‘in a ritual of prestige and taste’ (Kirkby et al. 2007: 3). As I suggested earlier, it is only out of the context of their natural surroundings that commodities such as turtle become representative of exoticism and luxury. In the Caribbean turtles were naturally abundant, eaten fresh from the sea, providing an exquisite taste sensation. Schaw labours on this point to defend her participation

96  Georgina Elisabeth Munn in the consumption of turtle, and that of the planters. She appropriates the political connotations of consuming turtle in England to emphasise her focus on an exploration of taste and nature, attempting to highlight the comparative lack of politics associated with the consumption of turtle in the Caribbean.

Gourmandism or Gluttony: A Delicate Dish of Empire As Keith Sandiford has observed, Schaw is very much focused on the ‘human social sphere of whites in Antigua and St  Christopher’ as opposed to passing any comment on slavery (2000: 107). She is very detailed in her observations of the daily lives of the plantation owners and creates a strong sense of a notably Scottish community. In Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World 1750–1820 (2005), Douglas J. Hamilton observes the centrality of ‘clannishness’ in Scottish networks enabling ‘a flexible notion of kinship that allowed pragmatic allowances to sit along with more traditional bonds’ (5). The combination of Schaw’s familial relations alongside other social connections welcomed her into the community and explains her readiness to pass comment on their way of life. These relations are exemplified in Schaw’s recollection of dinner at Mr Halliday’s plantation: We had a family dinner, which in England might figure away in a newspaper, had it been given by a Lord Mayor or the first Duke in the Kingdom. Why should we blame these people for their luxury? Since nature holds out her lap, filled with everything that is in her power to bestow, it were sinful in them not to be luxurious. (Schaw 1774: 95) Schaw consciously compares this ‘family dinner’ to the excess associated with political feasting in England. Though she implicitly acknowledges a degree of similarity between the dinner she attends at the plantation and one hosted by a Lord Mayor or Duke in England, the crucial difference is the role of nature and the notable lack of politics. The conception of nature’s lap offers a decidedly maternal rather than sexualised image, painting the planters as grateful recipients of nature’s nourishment and care. Schaw’s cornucopic imagery emphasises the overflow and profusion of resources available in the West Indies; she suggests that it would be ‘sinful’ if they did not take advantage of such plentiful luxuries, alluding to a sense of moral and social obligation to ensure that nothing is wasted.3 Schaw’s stance echoes that of Scottish Enlightenment philosophers Adam Smith and David Hume, both of whom viewed luxury as a ‘progressive social force’ (Berg and Eger 2003: 11). Those in a position to appreciate and participate in luxury, much like Schaw and the planters,

The Politics of Feasting 97 helped to contribute to the improvement of society via a system of ‘commerce, convenience and consumption’: In other words, it was a ‘sociable activity’ (Berg and Eger 2003: 11, 13). In contrast to Petley’s image of a colonial body politic infected by gluttony and excess, Schaw describes the West Indies as an Edenic garden (Petley 2012: 98). In opposition, she infers that those in England who dine in such a manner are ‘unnatural’ and ‘sinful’, importing exotic goods and gorging themselves at the expense of wider society. Feasts were a form of gift-giving and a means of binding the community; therefore they were implicitly accompanied by an obligation of some form of reciprocation— in this case, that of the visitors’ support, which Schaw unfalteringly provides (Petley 2012: 95–96). She proceeds to devote numerous pages to a description of the multitude of dishes on offer including various meats, fish and desserts; a description very much evocative of a feast. Feasts in their very nature were a form of display, designed to entice ‘the imagination as well as the palates of their guests’ (Vila 2014: 7). Highly representative of wealth and status, it is evident as in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798) that ‘eating is always a matter of form as well as substance’, stimulating appetites for both food and conversation (Melville 2004: 204). Political feasting in England was often a Bacchanalian affair, associated with riotous revelry and excessive indulgences. A single sheet mock advertisement (Figure 5.1) published in 1785 gives a sense of the kind of behaviour to which Schaw is referring and discrediting. The satiric figure ‘Guzzle’ is representative of citizens and holders of office in need of extra assistance in the domain of feasting. Those gorging on venison may relax without fear of ‘endangering buttons’ by wearing an ‘elastic venison waistcoat’ and breeches designed to enable a man to consume 6 to 8 pounds of meat. Women are notably absent from this exclusively male political context, as feasting and the consumption of meat are once again synonymous with virility, patriotism and strength. With regards to turtle-feasting, ‘Guzzle’ proposes a specially crafted ‘turtle dress’ designed with vast folds of material in order that a servant, as though navigating a ship, may loosen garments as appropriate depending on the consumer’s level of surfeit. These comical images ridicule the sheer excesses of those who are in a position to over-indulge; notably, though, the garments are advertised as ‘cheap’, which points to the otherwise miserly and selfish characters of those holding office. The image of the ‘feeding’ master foregrounds 18th-century society’s preoccupation with the differentiation between intelligent human appetites and base animal instincts. Enlightenment philosopher Jean Anthѐlme Brillat-Savarin states: ‘Animals feed: man eats: only the man of intellect knows how to eat’ ([1825] 1970: 13). He foregrounds the mental faculties and capabilities that are unique to ‘man’ and his sensory experiences; women, as I suggested earlier, were believed to be physiologically

Figure 5.1  A Mock Advertisement, 1785. Salisbury: Fowler Printer Salisbury. Source: © The British Library Board (General Reference collection 1347.m.52).

The Politics of Feasting 99 and intellectually unable to appreciate taste in the same manner, driven wholly by desire and lust. The mock-advertisement reduces the consumer to an animal and somewhat infantile status, whose primary purpose is to senselessly graze on expensive foods until he is physically unable, as opposed to making a valuable contribution to society. Schaw demonstrates her cultural awareness of these contemporary debates and compares the superlative quality of turtle in the West Indies to those exported to Britain: I have now seen turtle almost every day, and tho’ I never could eat it at home, am vastly fond of it here, where it is indeed a different thing. You get nothing but old ones there, the chickens being unable to withstand the voyage; even these are starved, or at best fed on coarse and improper food. (1774: 95) Schaw praises the quality and quantity of turtle in the West Indies compared to Britain; stating that she ‘never could eat it at home’, she highlights the inferior taste of travelled turtle. It is likely that she is simultaneously alluding to the predominantly male contexts in which turtle was consumed in Britain. Her claim is interesting, as Plumb contends that the expense and exotic allure of turtle may have ‘fuelled a taste’ for the delicacy despite its lack of quality (Schaw 1774: 65). This passage critiques and mocks those who gorge on turtles in Britain, stating that they are inedible as a result of the poor care they receive on the voyage. On the contrary, in the West Indies ‘they are young, tender, fresh from the water, where they feed as delicately, and are as great Epicures as those who feed on them’ (95). Schaw’s comparison pits the turtle and its consumers as equals, hailing both as epicures. She creates a mirror or cyclical image in which the turtle ‘delicately’ feeds in the same fashion as its consumer, alluding to Schaw’s earlier imagery of herself and a turtle simultaneously ‘gliding’ (59). Implicitly, or perhaps explicitly, Schaw places herself in the category of the ‘epicures’, taking great pleasure in the fact that via her consumption of turtle she is cumulatively ingesting the delicacies that the turtle fed on before its death. Schaw’s emphasis on delicacy has many facets: The art of ‘delicately’ feeding demonstrates a mutual enjoyment of sensual pleasures and fine tastes, yet it is also a very gendered term. Brillat-Savarin states: ‘Gourmandism is by no means unbecoming in women; it suits the delicacy of their organs’ (1825: 136). He suggests that the heightened sensitivity of a woman’s body lends itself to gourmandism due to its acute sensory perceptions: ‘There is no more charming sight than a pretty gourmand in action’ (137). Women’s bodies are aesthetically pleasing to the observer, ‘her eyes are bright, her lips glistening’, as Brillat-Savarin suggests that

100  Georgina Elisabeth Munn the sight of a woman delicately eating is seductive and alluring (137). It is for this precise reason that women were excluded from the ‘homosocial atmosphere’ of the meal in Kant’s Anthropology and more broadly in 18th-century society; a woman is ‘a mere dish too tasty to be indiscriminately blended with the healthier cosmopolitan platters of the Kantian feast’ (Melville 2004: 212). This implicitly unhealthy temptation threatens to ignite carnal desires and thereby detract from an appreciation of aesthetic pleasures and intellectual conversation. The metaphor exemplifies the way in which women were objectified and highlights the significance of Schaw’s position at this feast, identifying herself as an epicure, no less, in this section of the Journal. Highly befitting of an intellectual and a gourmand, Schaw describes the turtle: The shell indeed is a noble dish, as it contains all the fine parts of the Turtle baked within its own body; here is the green fat, not the slabbery thing my stomach used to stand at, but firm and more delicate than it is possible to describe. (95) Again, Schaw foregrounds the delicacy of turtle meat in a highly sensual and almost erotic description; she laments the inadequacy of language to appropriately convey the exquisite nature of her experience. Schaw’s prose reads like a fantasy brought to life; there is no compromise on quality, quantity or authenticity. The shell is a dish in both the literal sense as a vessel containing food, and metonymically as it represents the article of food ready for consumption. Furthermore, it is elevated to a ‘noble’ status which is suggestive of its illustrious nature, a dish reserved for the consumption of people (or epicures) of similar prestige. Eating from the shell, as Schaw’s description suggests, was a commensal event and is particularly relevant as a means of nurturing a culture of conviviality (Petley 2012: 87–88). In addition to its exquisite taste, turtle is praised for its beauty and visual allure. In Jewlry from Nature (2010), Ruth A. Pelaston comments that admiring tortoiseshell jewellery provokes an appetite, comparing the varying hues and colours of the shell to the mixing of melted chocolate into cake batter, leading to the ‘sumptuousness’ of its appearance (157). Schaw’s emphasis on the completeness of the dish and its composition demonstrates the authenticity of her experience as she consumes West Indian turtle in the West Indies. The superior taste is ‘firm and delicate’, as opposed to ‘slabbery’, an almost onomatopoeic adjective which makes the reader cringe. On a physiological level, the high fat content and gelatinous texture would invoke a melt in the mouth experience. Schaw’s sensory language resonates with the terms used to describe the process of selecting good-quality meat in contemporary cookbooks. John

The Politics of Feasting 101 Farley’s The London Art of Cookery and the Housekeeper’s Compleat Assistant (1783) states: The fat of the venison must, in a great measure, determine your choice of it. If the fat be thick, bright, and clear, the clefts smooth and close, it is young; but a very wide tough cleft, shows it is old. (1783: 4) There is a similar focus on the youth of the meat and its tender feeling; the passage privileges touch and taste in order to highlight the experience of the ultimate sensory pleasure. Schaw’s final quip satirises the gluttonous alderman’s supposed ‘love’ of turtle: Could the Alderman of true taste conceive the difference between here and the city, he would make the voyage on purpose, and I fancy he would make a voyage into the other world before he left the table. (95) Schaw ridicules the notion that the alderman is a man of ‘true taste’, suggesting that he is unable to comprehend the true epicurean pleasures of fresh turtle in its natural context; instead he senselessly gluts himself on inferior meat. Schaw’s emphasis on voyaging is evocative of 1st-century Roman merchant and epicure Marcus Gavius Apicius, renowned for travelling great distances to experience ultimate sensory pleasures and source quality ingredients (Myhvrold 2015). Rousseau invokes Apicius in Émile, writing: My table would not be covered with a display of magnificent garbage and exotic carrion. . . . If I wanted to taste a dish from the end of the earth, I would, like Apicius, go and seek it out rather than have it brought to me. For the most exquisite dishes always lack a seasoning that does not travel with them, and no cook can give them: the air of climate which produced them. ([1762] 2010: 518) Rousseau condemns luxurious and exotic commodities and overdressed foods; instead, he emphasises the superiority of more natural fare. The necessity to travel to have an authentic experience is paramount and is figured in a particularly masculine and predatory context. His reference to the ‘seasoning’ that is unique to an ingredient’s natural climate relates to my earlier discussion of the way in which sensory experiences are affected by the environment in a physiological and social way. The authenticity of Schaw’s turtle dinner in the West Indies is far superior to any English feast, thereby mocking avid male consumers in the metropole.

102  Georgina Elisabeth Munn

‘A Perfect Epicure’ Schaw finally closes her lengthy description of the feast, writing, ‘one would think that this letter was wrote by a perfect Epicure, yet that you know is not the case’ (1774: 100). Schaw’s epistolary journal has a conscious literary style—it is only for the amusement of her ‘eating friends’ that she devotes such detail to the dinner she attended, wittily passing comment on contemporary debates (97). This further complicates Sandiford’s contention; as Clare Brant’s illuminating work on the epistolary form shows, ‘travel puts identity in motion; letters were a genre that allowed the borders of the self to be negotiated’ (2006: 214). Thus, each of Schaw’s letters portray a slightly different version of that self: This chapter has explored Schaw in the guise of the ‘epicure’. Morton’s analysis of the banquet scene in Lord Byron’s Don Juan III (1818–1820) suggests that ‘the writing gluts the eye and the ear as much as its content’ (2000: 21). In a similar way, Schaw’s literary style illustrates abundance and oral fantasy, adding to the overbearing weight of excess that she attempted to defend. The fetishisation of luxurious feasts correlated with a libidinous orality that was never satiated. Simon Varey aptly states: ‘Perhaps the most enduring pleasure of the table was the paradox that it does not endure. Eating stimulates the appetite for more eating’ (1996: 37). The news section of the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser on 8 May 1770 caricatures radical MP John Wilkes: A friend of Mr Wilkes’s was observing to him that he was grown fat of late. ‘Can you wonder at that,’ said the patriot, when you consider I am an Alderman, and as fond of turtle as the fondest of them. (Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London, England), Tuesday 8 May 1770, Issue 12 860. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers) The fat alderman was synonymous with this insatiable appetite. The exaggeration of Wilkes’ ‘fondness’ for turtle emphasises the prevalence of this aldermanic association in 18th-century society. Their obsession is characterised by an internal competition as to who is ‘fondest’ of turtle; such an affinity was commonly viewed as what bound aldermen together— they were part of an exclusive turtle-lovers club. Thus, Varey stresses the highly temporal nature of pleasure which requires constant sensory stimulation, resulting in a perpetual desire for gratification. Commensality involves not only the sharing of food and drink; it encourages conversation and physical interaction which contributes to the socio-political dimensions of society (Kerner and Chou 2015: 3). Thus, we return once again to the concept that relationships with food affect not only our own bodies, but society as a whole. Petley highlights that in the age of abolition, the planters’ reputation for excessive dining and drinking was ‘just one symptom of a deeper

The Politics of Feasting 103 malaise infecting the colonial body politic’ in addition to their ‘irreligion [and] concubinage’ (2012: 98). Thus, a lack of control over sensual desires became symptomatic of the colony’s immoral behaviour at large. Schaw herself acknowledges ‘how easy it is to become extravagant’ as she recalls her initial disapproval of the wastage of large amounts of pineapple, to being able to ‘feel if the least bit of rind remains; and as to the heart, heavens! Who could eat the nasty heart of a pine apple’ (1774: 98). Sandiford contends that Schaw’s newly inspired love of turtle and her shift from ‘native frugality’ to ‘full-bodied indulgence’ is indicative of the progression of her ‘personal creolisation’ (2000: 111). I would complicate this by suggesting that Schaw does not simply assimilate to Creole culture but playfully mocks the extravagance of the planters and her own experiences; given that they are blessed with such plentiful resources, is it really such a crime to enjoy them? Schaw presents herself as a woman of taste, a gourmand; her flourishing literary style showcases her ability to appreciate the quality and delicacy of turtle in the West Indies, unlike those in England who are mere pretenders. Schaw travelled to experience the ultimate sensory pleasure, and made the voyage into the other world.

Notes 1 Petley notes that many men would have taken ‘a free coloured or enslaved mistress’ though they were not welcome at the table. Furthermore, most meals would have been sourced and prepared by enslaved men and women. 2 See Clare Brant’s Eighteenth Century Letters and British Culture (2006) for further insight into travel and the epistolary form. 3 I am grateful to Professor Clare Brant for suggesting that I consider Schaw’s conception of nature as cornucopic.

References Manuscript Sources Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks and Sir Charles Blagden. 1783. CB/1/1. London: Royal Society Library, Charlton House Terrace. Royal Society Club Minutes. 1750. RSC/1/1. London: Royal Society Library, Charlton House Terrace.

Newspapers Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 8 May  1770, Issue 12, 1860. London. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers.

Primary Sources Farley, John. 1783. The London Art of Cookery, and Housekeeper’s Compleat Assistant etc. Dublin: Price.

104  Georgina Elisabeth Munn Glasse, Hannah. 1755. The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy; Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Ever Yet Published  .  .  .  By a Lady, 5th ed. London: Printed, and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s China-Shop. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1762. Émile, or, On Education. trans. and ed. Christopher Kelly and Allan Bloom, Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, University Press of New England, 2010. Schaw, Janet. 1774. Journal of a Lady of Quality, Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland, to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776, eds. Evangeline Walker Andrews and Charles Maclean Andrews. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Secondary Sources Adams. Carole, J. 2010. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York; London: Continuum. Berg, Maxine. 2005. Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berg, Maxine and Elizabeth Eger. 2003. ‘The Rise and Fall of the Luxury Debates’, in Berg and Eger (eds.), Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 7–27. Bickham, Troy. 2008. ‘Eating the Empire: Intersections of Food, Cookery and Imperialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, Past Present, 198(1): 71–109. DOI:10.1093/pastj/gtm054. Bowers, Terence N. 1995. ‘Tropes of Nationhood: Body, Body Politic, and Nation-State in Fielding’s Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon’, English Literary History, 62(3): 575–602. DOI:10.1353/elh.1995.0022. Brant, Clare. 2006. Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthèlme. 1825. The Philosopher in the Kitchen, trans. Anne Drayton. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. Edwards, Philip. 1994. The Story of the Voyage: Sea-Narratives in EighteenthCentury England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gigante, Denise. 2005. Taste: A Literary History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hamilton, Douglas J. 2005. Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World 1750–1820. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kendrick, Laura. 2007. ‘Medieval Satire’, in Ruben Quintero (ed.), A Companion to Satire. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 52–69. Kerner, Susanne and Cynthia Chou. 2015. ‘Introduction’, in Chou Kerner and Morten Warmind (eds.), Commensality: From Everyday Food to Feast. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1–9. Kirkby, Diane, Tanja Luckins and Barbara Santich. 2007. ‘Of Turtles, Dining and the Importance of History in Food, Food in History’, in Diane Kirkby and Tanja Luckins (eds.), Dining on Turtles: Food Feasts and Drinking in History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–12. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 1999. Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Lehmann, Gilly. 2003. The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Devon: Prospect Books.

The Politics of Feasting 105 Lumbert, Margaret. 2004. ‘Passenger Appetite and Behaviour’, in Peter Jones (ed.), Flight Catering, 2nd ed. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann, pp. 64–74. Melville, Peter. 2004. ‘ “A  Friendship of Taste”: The Aesthetics of Eating Well in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View’, in Timothy Morton (ed.), Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 203–216. Morton, Timothy. 1994. Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morton, Timothy. 2000. The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myhrvold, Nathan. 2015. ‘Marcus Gavius Apicius’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/biography/Marcus-Gavius-Apicius, accessed 25 June 2018. Pelaston, Ruth. 2010. Jewlry from Nature: Amber, Coral, Horn, Ivory, Pearls, Shell, Tortoiseshell, Wood, Exotica. London: Thames & Hudson. Petley, Christer. 2012. ‘Gluttony, Excess, and the Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean’, Atlantic Studies, 9(1): 85–106. DOI:10.1080/14788810.2 012.637000. Plumb, Christopher. 2015. The Georgian Menagerie: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century London. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. Porter, Roy. 2003. Flesh in the Age of Reason. London: Allen Lane. Sandiford, Keith. 2000. The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Varey, Simon. 1996. ‘Pleasures of the Table’, in Roy Porter and Marie Mulvey Roberts (eds.), Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 36–47. Vila, Anne C. 2014. ‘Introduction: Powers, Pleasures, and Perils of the Senses in the Enlightenment Era’, in Anne C. Vila (ed.), A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment. London: Bloomsbury, 1–20.

6 Creating a ‘More Popular Work’ The Lasting Influence of Maria Graham’s Journal of a Residence in India (1812) Lacy Marschalk In 1811, when 25-year-old Maria Graham returned from a two-year sojourn in India, she used her experiences on the subcontinent to launch what would become a long, varied and influential literary career. Over the next twenty years, Graham published travel accounts of South America and Italy as well as histories, art criticism, herbals, and a best-selling children’s history textbook, but it was her early work on India, Journal of a Residence in India (1812) and Letters on India (1814), that first established her name and influence. Graham was far from the first English person to write about the subcontinent, but she was able to capitalise on what she saw as a gap in the literary marketplace. In the preface to Journal of a Residence in India, Graham argues that, despite the growing body of literature on Indian trade and military history, ‘a more popular work’ was still needed to introduce the average British reader to India’s ‘scenery, monuments, and inhabitants’ (Graham 1813: vi). Such a work had so far failed to appear, she argues, because most visitors were unequipped to write about Indian life; the demands of their jobs prevented them from being ‘idle or philosophical observers’, or they failed to record their impressions immediately upon arrival and became too familiar with their subject to render it with any sense of novelty (Graham 1813: vi). What the British needed was an account showcasing ‘what strikes the eye and the mind of an observant stranger’ (Graham 1813: vi)—an account that she, an unemployed woman with ample time and without political or trade agenda, could offer them. Journal of a Residence in India was an immediate and enduring success (Akel 2009: xiii), in part perhaps because critics agreed that Graham’s book filled a crucial gap in the literature and that she was exactly the kind of ‘observant stranger’ needed to write such an account. In a review of Graham’s narrative, a critic for The Quarterly Review stated that, before Journal of a Residence in India’s publication, there had been ‘no popular and comprehensive view of the manners, customs, condition, and real state of society among the great mass of the people, nor indeed of the English and other foreign residents of the country’ (Quarterly Review 1812: 407). The following year, the Eclectic Review agreed that Graham’s account was enlightening because, while everyone returned

Creating a ‘More Popular Work’ 107 from India full of opinions, few returned ‘with any considerable stock of knowledge respecting the region’ (Eclectic Review 1813: 569–570). Even when Graham’s reviewers found certain descriptions ‘scanty’ or ‘imperfect’, they still acknowledged that her book was ‘far superior to any thing that . . . has hitherto appeared on the subject’ (Quarterly Review 1812: 419–420). Two years later, the success of Graham’s first book enabled her to publish Letters on India, a collection of seventeen letters addressed to the same (unnamed) male correspondent. According to the book’s preface, Graham received many letters from readers after the publication of Journal of a Residence in India, and her responses became the basis for her second book about the subcontinent. Graham claims that the letters she received were primarily from India-bound servicemen, but her letters ignore practical topics like what to bring on the journey or what kind of conditions to expect in India and instead focus on obscure Indian literature, ancient writing systems, the role of women in Indian religions and Hindu mythology, among other complex and ambitious topics. Perhaps Graham did encounter an earnest correspondent who initiated a dialogue and then readily agreed to an epistolary education, happily accepting each of Graham’s letters, many of which are several dozen pages long. Perhaps the book initially began as responses to reader questions and then evolved into something more. Equally plausible, however, is the possibility that Graham’s letters were always intended for publication and that she used an artificial epistolary frame in order to write the kind of volume on Indian history and culture she wished to write, knowing that by adopting a more feminine form her ideas and knowledge would be more widely accepted and respected.1 While Letters on India did not draw the same critical interest as its predecessor, the two works together made Graham a respected authority on the subject of India and its inhabitants. Over the next few decades, popular travel writing on India became readily available, but Graham continued to shape British perceptions of ‘their fellow-men and fellow-subjects in India’ (Oriental Herald 1828: 97). As late as 1830, one critic wrote that ‘the subject of English society in India has been uniformly neglected by all who have visited Hindustan, with the exception of perhaps Maria Graham’ (‘English Society in India’ 1830: 42). Graham’s awareness of the literary marketplace, intelligent positioning of her work, ability to establish herself as a credible narrator and careful observations of Anglo-India made a lasting impression on her readers and on British understanding of India, all of which will be examined in this chapter.

Credibility and the Construction of the Anglo-Indian Woman Today a travel book in which the narrator is not essential to the narrative, participating in the action, sharing her thoughts and reflections on all she

108  Lacy Marschalk encounters, would seem unnatural and inauthentic, but emphasis on the narrative self is a fairly recent development in travel writing history. In its nascency, travel writing was intended to introduce readers to areas of the world few of their countrymen or women had ever seen or explored, and its primary purpose was spiritual, political or economic rather than personal. Johannes Fabian, Mary Louise Pratt and Barbara Korte have all noted the important role imperialism played in determining the subject and tone of early British travel writing—namely, that travel writers were expected to collect data on the places, peoples and cultures they encountered rather than personal experiences and adventures (Fabian 1983: 2–6; Pratt 1992: 15; Korte 2008: 28).2 Although some autobiographical details were required to prove the author was honest and trustworthy, ‘too much would make him [sic] seem either an egotist or a writer of fiction’ (Batten 1978: 76).3 Charles Batten notes that, in order to avoid these kinds of accusations, Thomas Pennant often skipped first-person nominative pronouns in Tour in Scotland (1771); Joseph Addison, William Gilpin and Ann Radcliffe resorted to using ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ in some of their travel books; and Samuel Derrick and Samuel Ireland substituted ‘you’ for ‘I’ (40). However, by the 1770s, a major shift in the role of the narrator was underway, and writers began exploring new ways to build and shape their narrative personas. As travel became less about ‘political exploration or mercantile errands’ and more about education, improvement, and ‘travel for its own sake’, the traveller’s presence in the text grew by necessity (Blanton 1997: 3). This single ‘new ingredient’— the incorporation of an active, vocal, individualistic narrative persona— ‘irrevocably changed the genre’ (4).4 The voice and personality of the author’s narrative persona became another tool for differentiating and selling one’s text, and the construction—or characterisation—of the narrative self became just as important as the characterisations of people encountered during the writer’s travels. Graham had the benefit of writing about India when there was still an abundance of new information to share or rumours to dispute, so she was able to incorporate some of the self while simultaneously adhering to a more traditional travel writing formula. While she frequently uses ‘I’, Graham maintains a singular focus on place over person. Her narrative is so stripped of personal details that it is unclear from the text why and with whom she goes to India, and even her marriage to Lieutenant Thomas Graham, whom she met in route to India and married a year after leaving England, is reduced to a footnote.5 Her companions, including her husband, father and siblings, are almost completely absent from the text, so it is often unclear whether Graham is travelling alone or in a group, and she provides no real sense of why she goes certain places other than her own curiosity. Curiosity, as Mary B. Campbell has noted, was a defining characteristic of even the earliest travel writers (Campbell 1988: 25), so it would have been an appropriate personal trait for Graham

Creating a ‘More Popular Work’ 109 to share even if she wanted to depersonalise her narrative as much as possible. By keeping her narrative more factual than personal, Graham demonstrates that she wishes to be viewed as a particular kind of travel writer— specifically, the knowledgeable, observation-driven traveller who wrote primarily to educate others. She frequently adopts the academic tone and occupies the detached-observer role popular among early travel writers, which allows her to focus on her primary agenda: Sharing her knowledge of the subcontinent. Paul Fussell has described the ‘ideal travel writer’ as someone who ‘is consumed not just with a will to know’ but also ‘a powerful will to teach’ (Fussell 1987: 15), and Graham exhibits this pedagogic desire to share the knowledge and insights she has gained. On the very first page of her narrative, she lays out her plan: ‘I shall endeavour faithfully to describe whatever I see, and carefully to report what I  learn  .  .  . warning you that I  mean to paint from life, and to adhere to the sober colouring of nature’ (Graham 1813: 1). She then proceeds to skip past the voyage to India—a staple of travel accounts at the time—and opens with her arrival on the Bombay pier. From this very first paragraph, Graham is highlighting that she will be a different kind of narrator—a keen, honest observer solely focused on India. Because Graham chooses to focus on her identity as a teacher and an observer, she avoids, to some degree, being categorised strictly based on gender. Many of the women who went to India later in the period chose to adopt the persona of ‘dutiful British woman’, emphasising—or contending—that they were travelling merely to support male relatives or for the good of the British Empire, but Graham never makes such a claim, and, as seen in the footnote about her marriage, she instead tries to deemphasise her gender—and her person—so that she might avoid associated stereotypes. Still, astute readers can come to understand Graham’s personality—or that of her created persona—by tracking her reactions, opinions and, perhaps most importantly, preoccupations. Writers typically express—and temper—their reactions and opinions with the knowledge that they are opening themselves up for public scrutiny, so often the indirect presentation of their preoccupations is more likely to reveal their true interests and personalities. An epicurean traveller might focus on finding and eating exotic foods, while a traveller taken with the arts or culture might linger in obscure art galleries. Other travellers show a preference for unusual experiences or spend their days getting lost in back streets and unfamiliar neighbourhoods. In India, Graham’s preoccupation was with cave temples and ruins, all of which she meticulously describes and illustrates in Journal of a Residence in India. Graham does not methodically develop her persona in the way later travel writers did, but because she focuses so much of her text on exploring cave temples, readers are led to deduce that she was an adventurous, resourceful, driven explorer with an archaeologist’s passion for ancient

110  Lacy Marschalk cultural history. In order to see rarely visited cave temples, Graham was willing to brave the hottest parts of the day, ascend dangerous ladders, scramble up rocky hillsides and bribe temple guards. Many Anglo-Indians visited the well-known caverns and carvings at Elephanta and Karle, but Graham records visiting those caverns and dozens more, including the caves at Kanheri, those on Salsette and the excavations near Sungum. In Trincomale (in Sri Lanka), she learns that there are caves nearby but is disappointed to find that she cannot get a guide to take her to them (Graham 1813: 121), and when visiting the so-called ‘Teer of Arjoon’— most likely one of the 7th-century monuments of Mahabalipuram—she is excited to find ‘a number of these small caves in the rocks, all of which I propose to visit, if not prevented by the jungle, which grows over the mouths of many of them’ (161). She laments that the Madras government’s mining will probably destroy ‘some of the best executed caves’ and regrets even more that she has to leave the region, for ‘there are many curious things I have not yet seen, and figures lying in every field’ (168). Graham’s continued emphasis on cave exploration allows the reader to see her as an individual person and not just a stock traveller. Subsequent travellers have built similar personas by emphasising their personal reactions to and experiences with ruins and excavations, but Graham creates this public identity while maintaining her tunneled focus on place over person. She is able to avoid accusations of egotism by ensuring that her textbook-quality descriptions of cave architecture and history remain the focal point of her narrative. Perhaps because Graham projects such a credible, active persona, her critiques of passive Anglo-Indian life—and her claims about how British women visiting the subcontinent ought to behave—are all the more powerful. In one of her strongest rebukes, she accuses Anglo-Indian women of eschewing their responsibilities and failing to help those in need. She writes, ‘I have seen women in India pretend that, on account of the climate, they were too sickly to nurse their own children, too weak to walk in their own gardens, too delicate to approach a native hut, lest they should be shocked by the sight of poverty or sickness’ (Graham 1813: 114–115). Later, while visiting Madras, she condemns the local AngloIndian women’s daily activities—which mostly include eating, napping, reading novels and dancing—as ‘frivolous’ and ‘idle’ (131). The exception to this rule is a woman she calls ‘Mrs A’, her hostess in Salsette. While most Anglo-Indian women fail to engage with their surroundings, to get to know Indian people, and to help where they are needed, Mrs A is an active, charitable friend to all. Graham describes her saint-like qualities in detail, writing: I have followed her in admiration through a village where her appearance made every face to smile. She is blessed alike by the old and the young; she knows all their wants, and listens to all their

Creating a ‘More Popular Work’ 111 complaints. There is no medical man within many miles, and I have seen her lovely hands binding up wounds which would have sickened an ordinary beholder. The work of charity over, she enjoys a walk amidst these beautiful scenes with all the gaiety natural to her age . . . one of her chief pleasures lies in the contemplation of beauties of nature. Her family consists of the daughter of a friend, whom she instructs with the diligence of a mother, a little black boy whom she rescued from famine, and whom she is bringing up as a mechanic, and her own two infants.  .  .  . Would that there were a few more such European women in the East, to redeem the character of our country-women, and to shew the Hindoos what English Christian women are. (115) Because Graham spends more time delineating Mrs  A’s character than describing the individual women with whom she finds fault, Mrs A leaves a more lasting impression on the reader than Graham’s criticism and in some ways even overrides it. We are not introduced to the individual women who fail to live up to Mrs A’s example but are merely told of their collective faults, so their weaknesses are less memorable than Mrs  A’s perfection. Instead, readers are left with a clear and memorable lesson on how British women residing on the subcontinent ought to behave. Graham’s characterisations of Mrs A and the antithetical Anglo-Indian women resemble those of earlier travel writers, who used descriptions of people to instruct rather than to entertain or colour the places they were describing. If we trust Graham’s critics, it was these kinds of depictions of ‘English society in India’ that made the most lasting impression, shaping how Graham’s readers perceived and engaged with India. Over the next few decades, many of the British women writing about India described meaningful friendships with Indian women, an appreciation for the rich history and beauty of the land, adventurous lives lived outdoors and a willingness to help when possible. None of them displayed Graham’s affinity for cave temples, but whether they were directly familiar with her work or not, they attempted to embody the kind of woman Graham recommended they be.

Characterising the ‘Other’ As we have seen, when Journal of a Residence in India was published, popular non-fiction accounts of India were severely lacking. To some degree, India was everywhere in Britain—it was on the stage, in novels and newspapers, in the muslin women wore and the tea that was drunk; yet, most of the British populace knew little about imperial politics and governance, and even less about the complexities of Indian cultures, religions and peoples. Much of what was known related to the most exotic,

112  Lacy Marschalk superstitious or macabre elements of the various Indian cultures. Depictions of sword swallowing, fire eating and snake charming abound in newspaper articles and travel accounts from the time, as do descriptions of zenanas, nautches, sati and Hindu rituals for disposing of the dead. Many ‘types’ of Indian people (e.g. the ayah, the palanquin bearer, the punkahwalla) had been represented ubiquitously, which severely limited British ability to see beyond labels and preconceived notions and grasp an individual’s subjectivity and personhood. As Baruch Hochman asserts, ‘images form before we are fully aware that they have formed, and we often respond to those images well before we distinguish the elements of which they are composed’ (Hochman 1985: 41). In other words, once these images of Indian people were awakened in the imagination, the British failed to question or amend them; instead, their minds defaulted to these depictions whenever they thought of India and its native inhabitants. Characterisations in travel writing are perhaps never more problematic than when they represent races and cultures other than the writer’s own. In particular, characterisations that are underdeveloped or based on stereotype can have lasting, harmful effects on how foreign peoples are perceived. In one psychology study, scholars found that readers who were presented passages randomly labeled either ‘invented’ or ‘real’ retained information differently depending on whether or not they believed what they were reading was fictional. In both cases, the imagination was activated, but when the test subjects read passages labeled ‘real’, they exhibited a more accurate memory of the content. Presumably, the brain recognised the need to integrate the ‘factual’ information ‘into the reader’s world knowledge’ (Altmann et al. 2014: 25). What this study means for literary scholars is that characterisations of people in nonfiction texts, or those that are labeled or understood to be non-fiction, could have more lasting effects on the reader than fictional characterisations. Reinforcement or negation of harmful stereotypes or representations of other cultures in travel writing could have more profound or lasting consequences than similar depictions in novels. Stock characters are as endemic to travel narratives as they are to fairy tales, and in the 18th and 19th centuries, some types were even particular to India: The fawning nawab, the duplicitous or lazy Indian servant, the oppressed Indian wife, the ‘dirty fakir’. Whether or not these stereotypes possessed any element of truth, their proliferation in early travel writing helped solidify British views on Indian peoples and cultures and reinforce belief in British superiority. Because such types were inveterate to a genre founded on the promotion of truth, the depictions were accepted as factual—in essence, they became part of the British populace’s ‘world knowledge’. In some ways, the reduction and acceptance of these types was inevitable. Hochman argues that ‘our perception of people is typological, in life as well as literature, just as all of our perceptions

Creating a ‘More Popular Work’ 113 are essentially typological and categorical. We tend to perceive anyone (as we perceive anything) in terms of some system or classification and only then come to conceive of him or her, if the signs point that way, in terms of his or her uniqueness or individuality’ (Hochman 1985: 46). In this case, most travellers were so caught up in their own experiences or in making connections with the Anglo-Indian and European communities that they never achieved the ability to see the Indians they encountered as individuals. And because they failed to do so, their readers back home failed to question the typological representations they had absorbed for decades. Indira Ghose has argued that, due in part to the work of Foucault, ‘the ‘other’ produced by travel writing is increasingly being seen as a textual construction, an interpretation and not a reflection of reality’ (Ghose 1998: 2), yet such a distinction was not made by British readers and consumers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Travel writing had emphasised truth and accuracy for so long that when its writers were credible and authoritative, their words had a lasting influence on British perceptions of India. In The Location of Culture and elsewhere, Homi K. Bhabha has asserted that nations are narrative constructions borne from cultural interaction and ‘the social articulation of difference’ (Bhabha 2004: 2), and we can certainly apply the same concept to the construction of foreign regions, such as the Indian subcontinent. The India of the British imagination was a narrative construction created in large part by travel books—books that largely focused on difference and what the writer found to be most extreme or alien in other cultures. Showcasing difference is the hallmark of all travel writing. As Debbie Lisle relates, ‘[travel writing] requires the author to discriminate between what is familiar and what is exotic so that readers are satisfied that they are encountering people and places that are sufficiently foreign’ (Lisle 2006: 71). Because early travel writers focused primarily on groups or types of people and what made them different from the British or other Europeans, the early British view of Indians was fairly one dimensional and dependent on stereotype. However, after writers like Graham began to shift their emphasis from types of people to individual Indians, British readers were given a glimpse into the humanity and individuality of Indian people. In the 19th century, a growing interest in ethnography prompted many travel writers to focus on individual people and cultures more than previous travellers had,6 but from the beginning, women writers were ‘more likely to describe their interactions with people’ than men were (Mills 1991: 106). While men could infuse tired geographic descriptions with heroic, adventurous tales of battles and tiger hunts, the socially prescribed boundaries of female propriety restricted how women could adapt their content to meet the evolving needs and desires of readers. As Sara Mills relates, the movement toward describing individuals was in part a result of ‘women writers’ problematic status, caught between the conflicting

114  Lacy Marschalk demands of the discourse of femininity and that of imperialism. The discourses of colonialism demand action and intrepid, fearless behaviour from the narrator, and yet the discourses of femininity demand passivity from the narrator and concern with relationships’ (Mills 1991: 21). However, by focusing on ‘intrepid’ encounters with the colonial Other and their own personal relationships with the people they met, women writers like Graham were not only seeking a balance between imperial and feminine discourses and striving to avoid controversy, but they were also anticipating the movement towards character-driven travel writing that modern readers have come to expect. Although heavily detailed, many of Maria Graham’s characterisations of native Indians are like those she made of the passive Anglo-Indian women with whom she found fault; they are detailed and precise, creating a clear picture in the reader’s mind, but because they are about groups rather than individuals, such details make the people appear even more distant and ‘Other’. Journal of a Residence in India opens with a study of the local people in Bombay, the first Graham saw upon her arrival in India, including palanquin bearers, hired labourers and washer women. Of the palanquin bearers, she writes, ‘they for the most part wear nothing but a turban, and a cloth wrapped round the loins, a degree of nakedness which does not shock one, owing to the dark colour of the skin, which as it is unusual to European eyes, has the effect of dress’ (2). In the next paragraph, she moves from the bunder, or pier, to the esplanade, which presented a gay and interesting scene, being crowded with people in carriages, on horseback, and on foot . . . the koolies employed in washing at their appropriate tanks or wells . . . where groups of men and women are continually employed in beating the linen, while the better sort of native women, in their graceful costume, reminding one of antique sculptures, are employed in drawing, filling, or carrying water from the neighbouring wells. (2) From these passages, it is easy to see that Graham was interested in the people she observed, and her depictions are not overtly negative or prejudiced the way some accounts are; however, her descriptions consistently exoticise and ‘Other’ native Indians. By highlighting that the colour of the bearers’ skin is ‘unusual to European eyes’, she has emphasised not the similarities she shares with these men, but the differences that lie between them. Likening the women’s ‘graceful costume’ to those found in antique sculptures presents the reader with a clear and immediate mental image, but it also makes the culture seem ancient, otherworldly, and distinctly different from Graham’s own, which in many ways is just as problematic as accounts that depicted Indians negatively. While a reader might question whether or not a negative depiction was fair and accurate or instead

Creating a ‘More Popular Work’ 115 a product of prejudice, a positive depiction would most likely raise fewer questions or objections. And because Graham does not share a conversation with any of these people or attempt to describe them as individuals, her reader fails to see them as anything other than background, a colourful part of the local scenery. Her adoption of the traditional detachedobserver role places these men and women firmly in the role of Other. A more memorable characterisation occurs just a few pages later when Graham and her sister visit the ‘Shahab o’dien’s harem’ in Bombay (Graham 1813: 17). Graham was far from the first woman to visit an Indian zenana, but her account is more positive and individualistic than those that had appeared previously, such as Kindersley’s Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies (Kindersley 1777: 220). As is typical of travel writing of the time, the description of the meeting contains no explicit dialogue, but the appearances and actions of several individual women are described and their conversation summarised, which gives the women more life and personality than group descriptions allow. The first woman described is the Shahab o’dien’s mother-in-law, ‘a fine old woman dressed in white, and without any ornament, as becomes a widow’ (17), and then Graham is introduced to his mother and his father’s other widows, his sisters, and his wife, Fatima, who becomes the central focus of the narrative. Graham is excited to see that the women are as curious about her and her style of dress as she is about them, and she is quite taken with the beautiful Fatima. Graham spends more than 150 words describing Fatima’s bejeweled appearance, hennaed hands and feet, and ‘[her] large black eyes, the cheshme ahoo, stag eyes, of the eastern poets, [which] were rendered more striking by the black streaks with which they were adorned and lengthened out at the corners’ (17–18). Again, we find Graham attempting to exoticise Fatima by comparing her eyes to those described by ‘the eastern poets’, but Graham makes a greater attempt to understand and depict these women and their roles as individuals than previous depictions did. Graham’s open-minded tone and individual descriptions bring the women and their situation into focus in a way Kindersley’s account fails to do, but in some ways this makes her account more problematic, at least in how it affected British opinions. While Graham is mostly generous with her descriptions of the women themselves, she spends considerable time highlighting the negative aspects of zenana life and in particular the women’s lack of education, their uncomfortably crowded apartments and the monotony of their secluded days. What is more, because Graham makes her reader see these women as individuals—women who are just as curious and opinionated about her as she is of them—we feel their oppression and confinement more severely. And perhaps because of the specificity of Graham’s zenana account, it was frequently referenced in reviews and was even reprinted in a section on ‘Customs and Manners

116  Lacy Marschalk of Nations’ in the The New Annual Register (1814). In other words, this account made a far more lasting impression on her readers than her less specific depictions of unnamed Indian people did. These zenana scenes also highlight some of the difficulties scholars face when evaluating colonial travel writing and its legacy. British women often wrote such depictions of the zenana for the same reason they described the practice of sati—to affirm the inferiority of cultures that oppressed women. Gayatri Spivak has noted that by underscoring what was problematic in native Indian customs, these writers were setting up a dichotomy between British ‘civilization’ and Indian ‘barbarism’ (Spivak 1994: 97). From Spivak’s point of view, the disparaging comments these white women make about zenana life are problematic because they suggest that there is something fundamentally wrong with this traditional Indian— and, in particular, Muslim—custom. Because difference is always at the heart of these descriptions, by calling attention to what an outdated and discriminatory practice secluding upper-class women in zenanas is, these writers suggest that British culture is superior, at least in its treatment of women. Additionally, both Kindersley and Graham speak for the women; Fatima and the other women do not themselves complain about their lack of education or the responsibility to marry and bear children at such a young age. However, from a feminist point of view, it would be far more problematic if these writers did not comment on the oppression of women in zenanas. Failing to comment on the status of their Eastern sisters would be the equivalent of seeing these women as so different, so Other, that they could not relate to or see them as individuals. Although Fatima and the other women in these accounts are clearly depicted as Other, Graham and Kindersley still identify with them as women and call attention to their plight because they themselves understand what it means to be oppressed. Such encounters also suggest that British and Indian women could find common ground simply based on their shared gender. In India, friendships with women confined to zenanas were nearly impossible due to lack of consistent access, but Graham shows there could be common understanding among even women from such different backgrounds. By mid-century, it was far less common for British women to visit zenanas or to interact with royal families, which makes accounts like Graham’s even more important to understanding how and why the British viewed Indian women and their circumstances as they did. While Graham is far from a household name today and did not achieve that status—at least for her travel writing—even during her own time, her impact on British perceptions of India is noteworthy. In a private note she penned in one of her mid-career travel books, Journal of a Voyage to Brazil (1824), Graham wrote, ‘The truth is I can expect happiness from posterity either way: if I write ill, happy in being forgotten; if well, happy in being remembered with respect’.7 Graham wanted critical respect. She

Creating a ‘More Popular Work’ 117 wanted what she had written to matter. She earned that respect, both in her day and ours, and whether for good or ill, her words did matter.

Notes 1. Using such a frame would also have placed her in the esteemed company of other renowned writers/editors, including Richard Steele, Joseph Addison and Henry Fielding, who fabricated letters to themselves so that they could answer them in their papers and journals. The convention of fabricating letters for this purpose was so well known in the 18th century that Fielding’s periodical the Champion provided this headnote to a letter to the editor in its 26 July 1740 issue: ‘Our Readers may be assur’d the following Letter was not cook’d up by any Person concern’d in writing the Champion; but was really sent, in the very Dress it now appears in, to be submitted to the Consideration of the Public’ (Goldgar 1993: qtd. on 19). 2. Judith Adler has also discussed the ways in which all manner of travel ‘performances’ were normalised or proscribed in handbooks and by formal institutions, including Britain’s national scientific organisation, the Royal Society (Adler 1989: 1378–1379). 3. Batten relates that 18th-century travellers had to walk a delicate line between providing too many personal details and not providing enough to seem authentic: ‘The autobiographical information in eighteenth-century travel accounts . . . serves four main functions: it provides a principle of order, conveys entertainment, proves the author is accurate and truthful, and shows him to be the sort of man [sic] whose descriptions can be trusted’ (Batten 1978: 76). 4. Casey Blanton also attributes this shift in the development of the self conscious travel narrator to the 18th century’s concern with ‘sensibility’ and to the profound influence of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) throughout the century (Blanton 1997: 11). 5. This fascinating footnote was added to the second edition of Journal of a Residence in India (Edinburgh 1813) apparently because readers—and especially critics—had mistaken Graham for being an unmarried husband-hunter due to an early, pre-marriage passage in which she refers to herself as ‘an unmarried woman’. The accompanying footnote reads, ‘This passage having led to some ludicrous mistakes with respect to the writer, she begs leave to inform her readers in general, and the Quarterly Reviewers in particular, that, although she did not go to India in search of a husband, she was married there on 9 December  1809—a fact which, however interesting to herself, she did not think of telling all the world, but which she now publishes, that she may claim the honour of being Mrs, not Miss Graham’ (fn. 27–28). Although the note suggests that Graham merely wishes to claim the appropriate honorific due a married woman, she could have corrected the situation by giving herself the byline ‘Mrs. Maria Graham’, as many women travel writers did. Instead, Graham continued to label herself ‘Maria Graham’ in all of her writing, which suggests that there is more to this footnote than simply correcting her readers’ understanding of her marital status. No doubt she wished to defend herself from the assumptions of the Quarterly Review, which called her ‘a young lady who, probably, went thither, like most young ladies, to procure a husband instead of information’ (406). But most important to this footnote is Graham’s claim that her marriage ‘however interesting to herself, she did not think of telling all the world’. She is suggesting that such personal, private details have no place in travel writing, which should be concentrated on place rather than

118  Lacy Marschalk individual, and that, contrary to the Quarterly Review’s claims, she travelled to procure information, not a husband; therefore, India should be the reader’s focus and not the author’s personal life. 6. Although ethnography as we know it might be thought of as a 20th-century invention, Joan Pau Rubiés, Mary Louise Pratt, Corinne Fowler and others have noted that the ‘proto-ethnographic quality’ of travel writing dates back to as early as the early modern period. According to Rubiés, the difference between ethnographic observations in early travel books and modern ethnographic studies is that the travel writer is ‘given to subjective musings rather than to . . . systematic observation’ (Rubiés 2002: 242). Fowler contends that while ethnography and travel writing share many similar narrative conventions, their major difference is that travel writing ‘tends to subordinate description to narrative while classical ethnographies tend to embrace description and suppress narrative, especially personal narrative’ (Fowler 2007: 83). See also Pratt 1986. 7. Quoted in Akel 2009: xi. This quotation comes from a handwritten note on the back of the title page of Graham’s personal copy of Journal of a Voyage to Brazil and Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 (London 1824), a typescript of which was provided to Akel by the Oliveira Lima Library at the Catholic University of America.

References Adler, Judith. 1989. ‘Travel as Performed Art’, American Journal of Sociology, 94(6): 1366–1391. Akel, Regina. 2009. Maria Graham: A Literary Biography. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. Altmann, Ulrike. et al. 2014. ‘Fact vs Fiction—How Paratextual Information Shapes Our Reading Processes’, Social Cognitive  & Affective Neuroscience, 9(1): 22–29. Batten, Charles L., Jr. 1978. Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bhabha, Homi K. 2004. [1994]. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. Blanton, Casey. 1997. Travel Writing: The Self and the World. New York: Twayne. Campbell, Mary B. 1988. The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ‘Customs and Manners of Nations: Description of Bombay [From Mrs. Graham’s Journal]’. 1814. In The New Annual Register or General Repository of History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1813. London, 145–164. Eclectic Review, 10(July–December 1813): 569–570. ‘English Society in India’, Asiatic Journal  & Monthly Register, 3(September– December, 1830): 42. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fowler, Corinne. 2007. Chasing Tales: Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of British Ideas About Afghanistan. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Fussell, Paul. 1987. ‘Introduction’, in Paul Fussell (ed.), The Norton Book of Travel. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 13–17. Ghose, Indira. 1998. Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Creating a ‘More Popular Work’ 119 Goldgar, Bertrand A. 1993. ‘Fact, Fiction, and Letters to the Editor in Fielding’s Essay-Journals’, Studies in Newspaper and Periodical History, 1(1–2): 19–26. Graham, Maria. 1813. Journal of a Residence in India, 2nd ed. Edinburgh: George Ramsay and Company. ———. 1814. Letters on India. London. Hochman, Baruch. 1985. Character in Literature. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Kindersley, Jemima. 1777. Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies. London. Korte, Barbara. 2008. ‘Chrono-Types: Notes on Forms of Time in the Travelogue’, in John Zilcosky (ed.), Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 25–53. Lisle, Debbie. 2006. The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mills, Sara. 1991. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. New York: Routledge. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1986. ‘Fieldwork in Common Places’, in James Clifford and George E. Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 27–50. ———. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. Quarterly Review, 8(September–December, 1812): 419–420. Rubiés, Joan Pau. 2002. ‘Travel Writing and Ethnography’, in Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 242–260. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1994. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds.), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. London and New York: Columbia University Press, 66–111.

7 The Memsahibs’ Gaze Representation of the Zenana in India Sutapa Dutta

The middle of the 18th century saw the occupation of Bengal by the British East India Company, and with it began the advent of English travellers to India. At first they were the merchants, company officials and the missionaries, but as the East India Company firmly established itself as a political power, the gradual influx gave way to a steady flow of men and women who journeyed to India in search of lucrative careers. Some of the early British women who sailed the seas came to give their men company or came seeking a suitable match. These memsahibs, as they were called, in their autobiographies, diaries, memoirs and letters articulated a very complex discourse which tried to frame a picture of India in order to present a more comprehensible image of the country to the general public in Britain. This chapter looks at the records of some British women travellers to India between 1770 and 1870, and closely analyses their recordings of experiences with Indian women in the zenana. These accounts mostly in the form of journals that the British women maintained during their sojourn in India, and the letters that they regularly wrote back home to their friends and relatives, demonstrate their changing attitude towards the zenana within a span of 100  years. The encounters between memsahibs and Indian women in the zenana provide a historical framework to understand the complex relationship between the binaries of self and other. The native female body, dressing, toilette, ornamentation and sexuality were as much a matter of fascination and curiosity for the memsahibs, as the fair-skinned foreign women were objects of awe for native women. The memsahibs’ ‘gaze’ provides a useful framework for theorising the implications of a stereotypical generic ‘Indian’ femininity, and its impression on ways in which womanhood has been redefined and refashioned in colonial India. Much has been written about the ‘white woman’s burden’ (Burton 1992), and how by writing about their Indian counterparts these memsahibs were identifying themselves as active agents in the grand scheme of male white imperialism based on the ideology of ‘civilizing’ and ‘controlling’ their ‘degraded’ sisters (Chaudhuri and Strobel 1992; Seton 2013). The chapter aims to bring to light the much

The Memsahibs’ Gaze 121 more complex relationship between the subject/object and self/other, as the zenana is seen as a metaphoric space for the land itself that required to be ‘penetrated’, ‘comprehended’ and ‘civilised’. Etymologically ‘zenana’, a Persian word, meant both women and the inner sanctorum of a house where women resided. The zenana was the women’s private apartments in a separate section of the house where men and strangers were not permitted to enter. It was considered an inviolable place, more to maintain the privacy and dignity of women. The zenana was typically an Indo-Islamic cultural product commonly seen among aristocratic Muslim families. Long associations between the Hindus and Muslims resulted in many upper-class Hindu homes, with its general proclivity to imitate elitist cultural tropes, to adopt such demarcated spaces in their households too. The baitak-khana, literally meaning the sitting room, was an area where the men and their guests congregated. The living quarters where the women resided was also called the andarmahal or antohpur, meaning the inner chambers.

The Zenana—An Exotic Curiosity From the 16th century onwards, ever since trade links opened up between Europe and the East, Western imagination was fed on exotic tales of Indian wealth and marvellous promises. Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World (1614) and Edward Terry’s A Voyage to East-India (1655) present India as a rich and spacious place, a magical land of awe and wonder. The avidity with which the West lapped up descriptions of travels and the experiences of traders and sailors was evident from the prolific production of travelogues and information of exotic ‘encounters’ in the East (Nayar 2008: 2).1 India began to be presented in ways that would appeal to the curious informed readers back in England. Thomas Daniell’s A Zenana Scene (1804) was purely a painter’s fantasy of the Oriental zenana. Curiosity regarding the life of the upper-class women in India has been a regular feature of most travel writers, and can be seen as early as 1767 in the works of the first woman English traveller Jemima Kindersley, née Wickstead (1741–1809), noted for her Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies (Kindersley 1777). Having married Colonel Nathaniel Kindersley, of the Bengal Artillery, she arrived in India in 1765 where she stayed till 1769. Since contact with upper-class women was very limited, Kindersley admits, ‘The Hindoo women we can know little of, as none but the lowest are visible’. Similarly, Eliza Fay, whose Original Letters from India (1779) threw light on social life of Calcutta of Warren Hastings, writes, ‘The Hindoo ladies are never seen abroad. When they go out, their carriages are closed covered with curtains, so that one has very little chance of satisfying curiosity’ (Fay 1908: 165).

122  Sutapa Dutta The exoticism of the zenana lay in its foreignness, and the zenana aroused curiosity by being veiled, hidden and guarded. The domestic world of these women was thus impervious to the colonisers’ gaze, and this world remained an uncolonised space. Such sites were then often the creations of fantastic projections of imagination and fear, which only heightened the temptation.2 British readers of travel writings found such encounters with the zenana evocative of the exotic ‘Oriental’. Kindersley recounts that she was introduced to a ‘Mussulman’s Zannanah’ after ‘much ceremony’, a ‘favour which they are not very fond of granting to Europeans’ (Kindersley 1777: Letter 53, 220). Her accounts reveal her amazement upon seeing the ‘Oriental ladies’ seated on carpets, surrounded by their numerous attendants, decked in the finest muslin embroidered with gold and silver, wearing rows of superb jewels and pearls. The pictorial quality of these descriptions was very much akin to the fascination with the ‘picturesque’ that was shortly to be seen in the Company paintings of 19th century. Hartly House, Calcutta on the life and times in Calcutta during Warren Hastings, depicted the wonder and fascination with which European ladies viewed the glamour of the ‘eastern state and etiquette’ of rich Indian ladies.3 The author is dazzled by the ‘genteel air’, ‘elegant form’ of ‘country-born women’ as they lie languidly, sensuously smoking ‘a most superb hookah’ while the servants go about taking care of the whole apparatus (Gibbs 1789: 18–19).4 Anne Katherine Elwood, ‘the first and only female’ who made an overland journey from Europe to India, in her Narrative of a Journey (Elwood 1830: I, 1) again poetically evoked the beauty of a native woman named Zacchina, ornamented with nose and ear rings, gold sequins and bangles on her arms and ankles, ‘whose silvery sound always reminded her of the daughters of Zion’, ‘walking and mincing as they go, and making it tinkling with their feet’. Her ‘graceful Hindoo saree’ reminded her of ‘a Grecian statue’ (Elwood 1830: II, 7). The frontispiece of Kindersley’s Letters, a rare image of ‘an apartment in a Zanannah’, captures the tranquil setting with a small fountain in the middle of the room around which the women are collected (Figure 7.1). The inside of the zenana, with its minutely detailed interior, is juxtaposed with the landscape visible from the open window. The flowing river outside and the clouds in the sky may look like a contrast to the confined life of these women inside the apartment, but there is no sense of ennui or weariness in these women who are seen as engaged in reading, playing music, smoking and drinking. The two frames—the serene domesticity of the inside, and the scenic landscape outside—provide a picturesque quality. Evidently then, the picturesque framing of the zenana fits in perfectly with the imperial design to satisfy the curiosity of Europeans wanting a sample of the exotic East.

Figure 7.1 ‘An apartment in a Zanannah’, the frontispiece of Kindersley’s Letters (1777).

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Desiring the Other Like the intricate specificities of this picture, Kindersley’s gaze captured the minute details of the zenana, taking in the women’s complexion, the ‘long-cut’ eyes and eyebrows, ‘the long black eye lashes’, ‘the wantonness in the rolling of their eyes’, their ‘small persons, delicately made’, ‘their black skins [which] have a most delicate softness’, ‘waist so short’, and the light dress that is ‘scarcely a covering’ (Kindersley 1777: Letter 53, 220–227). In her Letters Kindersley presents the zenana as a social space rather than an eroticised space, but there is a palpable fascination for the desirable ideal of femininity that the Other woman exemplifies. A Lacanian interpretation of the unconscious desire for the Other defines the position of the memsahib’s gaze, of which the objects of fascination, as can be seen in the image, are oblivious. The desire is not to become like the Other, but it is this only through fantasy, made possible by separation, that the memsahib can procure for herself some measure of what Lacan terms as ‘being’ (Lacan 2002). Evidently, only a chosen few had the opportunity to be privy to this sight. Fanny Parkes, who lived and travelled in India between 1822 and 1846 due to her husband’s posting, provided one of the most balanced perspective of the domestic lives of women in North India. In her account, Wanderings of a Pilgrim (1850), she expresses her excitement when she is invited to attend a royal wedding which gives her the chance to visit a royal zenana. Was not this delightful? All my dreams in the Turret of Noor-mahal were to be turned into reality, I was to have an opportunity of viewing life in the zenana, of seeing the native ladies of the East, women of high rank, in the seclusion of their own apartments, in private life . . . I know of no European lady but myself, with the exception of one . . . who has ever had an opportunity of becoming intimate with native ladies of rank. (Parkes 1850: I, 378–379) The fleeting glimpses of their fabled beauty and opulence is as much tantalising as it is titillating by its very nature of being forbidden for outsiders. The zenana can be seen as a symbolic manifestation of the access of a few to ‘enter’ and ‘view’ the ‘private’ life of women in ‘seclusion’. As Parkes indicates, to be ‘intimate’ with these exotic beauties was a rare privilege, and on beholding their attire, ‘a long strip of Benares gauze of thin texture, rather transparent’, she was ‘no longer surprised that no other men than their husbands were permitted to enter the zenana’ (Parkes 1850: I, 58). Parkes cannot but confess the pleasure of gazing at ‘the delicate, and remarkably beautiful’ Mulka, so that even in her dreams she is ‘haunted by the beautiful Begum’ (Parkes 1850: I, 383, 388).

The Memsahibs’ Gaze 125 Emily Eden, whose brother George Eden was the Governor General in India, in her letters back home gave accounts of her life and experiences which, though elitist, were a valuable record of the social life of the times. Her description of the zenana of Raja Runjeet Singh in her letters written to her sister in Up the Country (Eden 1867) voices her desire to ‘see some of these high-caste ladies several times . . . so as to hear their story, and their way of life, and their thoughts (Eden 1867: 237). Their interaction is often tinged with enigmatic phallic symbolism, a lack of what they do not have, where ‘they asked to hear my repeater strike, and I begged to feel the weight of their earrings’ (Eden 1867: 237).

Articulation of Perceived Differences With the political establishment of the British in India, representation, or what Homi Bhabha calls ‘the process of subjectification’, came to be based more on ‘stereotypical discourse’, which is ‘a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always ‘in place,’ already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated’ (Bhabha 1994: 66–67). ‘The construction of the colonial subject in discourse, and the exercise of colonial power through discourse’ as Bhabha pointed out, demanded ‘an articulation of forms of difference’ (ibid.). The white woman’s representation of native women began to increasingly occupy an uneasy and ambiguous position. The well-worn, stereotypical, ‘already known’ colonial perception of the native woman came to be represented as that of a victimised slave of her husband’s passion, submissive and ineffectual in making any decision. In spite of the limited access that foreigners had to the zenana, both Kindersley and Fay express very fixed opinions of the upper-class women in India. Kindersley confidently informs: ‘The women have no education given them, they live retired in the zanannahs, and amuse themselves with each other, smoking the hooker [hookah], bathing, and seeing their servants dance’ (Kindersley 1777: Letter 31, 124). In fact, when the zenana of a Mohameddan man of ranking burned, wherein were his women and children, Kindersley is certain that they did not attempt to escape and chose to perish in the fire, ‘either dreading the jealous rage of their husbands, or the disgrace of being exposed in public’ (Kindersley 1777: Letter 26). Kindersley found the Mohameddan women’s yellow complexion particularly ‘disagreeable’ and felt that a red and white complexion would have looked much better on them. The ‘slowness of the people of Hindostan, deficient in all the arts of life’, she felt made them ‘little superior in knowledge to the brute creation’ (Kindersley 1777: Letter 55, 233). And Eliza Fay too is quick to form her opinion on the ‘artifice’ of the beauty of women in the zenana which she firmly believes is ‘to secure the affections of a husband, or to counteract the plans of a rival’(Fay 1908: 165). Maria Graham, later

126  Sutapa Dutta Lady Callcott, after paying a visit to Shahab o’dien’s harem wrote in her Journal of a Residence in India (1813) that she ‘found our fair companions, like the ladies of all the country towns I know, under-bred and over-dressed  .  .  . and very ignorant and very grossiere’ (Graham 1813: 28). Lady Maria Nugent who accompanied her husband, Sir George Nugent, a commander-in-chief in India from 1811 to 1814, too equates the physical isolation of elite Indian women who practiced purdah with their social marginalisation. She noted her experiences in India in A Journal of a Voyage to and Residence in India which was published privately by her family in 1839. When she meets Munni Begum, the widow of Mir Jafar whose treacherous defection towards the British in The Battle of Plassey secured Lord Clive’s victory, she can only see a decrepit recluse whose ‘chief amusements are smoking the hookah, conversing with her attendants . . . and swimming painted little ducks’. Even when she acknowledges the Begum as ‘a woman of intrigue’ who ‘is said to have great influence’ she refuses to entertain the fact that the Begum was any less politically active or influential in state affairs than her husband or son were (Cohen 2014: 306). Such were the deeply ingrained stereotype notions of subjugated women in the zenana that Lady Nugent is unable to appreciate the authority and power that another powerful woman, Begum Samru, commanded both in the public and private spheres. Begum Samru was a remarkable stateswoman who transcended gender/ cultural roles, had sexual and political alliances with Europeans, and was an exemplary instance of Indian women’s participation in the politics of the time.5 Lady Nugent seems surprised at Begum Samru’s freedom of movement across gendered spaces, and observes that her ‘dress was more like a man’s than a woman’s’, and that she ‘drinks wine, and seems to like it’, and ‘she usually sits with the gentlemen, and lets the ladies retire without her after dinner’ (Cohen 2014: 216–217). Colonial discourses based on a range of perceived differences that informed cultural, racial and sexual hierarchization were simultaneously shaped by a wish to project an ‘English’ identity (Colley 2009). Qualities associated with being a ‘lady’, like wealth and fair skin, being delicate, modest, and gentle, were much appreciated. Anything beyond that was strongly disapproved. The general perceived difference was a class distinction between native ‘women’ who were represented as sensual and ignorant, as compared to the superior English ‘ladies’. Fanny Parkes voices her displeasure when she writes, ‘I was glad to see a zenana, but much disappointed: the women were not ladylike’ (Parkes 1850: I, 58). Emily Eden too in her account drives home the point: The Sikhs were very quiet and well-behaved. Two of them had seen English dancing before, and were aware that the ladies were ladies, and not nautch girls. . . . The poor ignorant creatures are perfectly

The Memsahibs’ Gaze 127 unconscious what a very superior article an Englishwoman is. They think us contemptible, if anything, which is a mistake. (Eden 1867: 132) As the British established themselves more firmly into their role of administrators, there was a conscious exercise in self-fashioning and projection of an image. Like all socio-cultural motifs which represented native life and people, the representation of the zenana too had to highlight its comparative demerits. Fanny Parkes saw the zenana as a place of jealousy, intrigue and scandal (Parkes 1850: I, 450). No longer was the zenana, like other aspects of Indian life, to be described with awe and wonder. Mrs Elwood, upon her visit to the Rani of Cutch, remained most unimpressed in spite of the ‘four posted-bed’ and ‘handsome carpets’ and ‘silver chairs’, and tried to correct the earlier impression: The Zenana, of which so much has been said, and of which Burke, I think, gives so flowery and poetical a description, was a small dark apartment, with unglazed windows closed by wooden shutters. (Elwood 1830: II, 223) From the 1830s the zenana became the focus of most missionary activities. The zenana was seen as the hub of ignorance and superstition, and therefore a fit object of the missionary’s labour to bring in light and knowledge for their ‘imprisoned sisters’ (Weitbrecht 1875: 68). Marianne Lewis wrote a brief pamphlet A Plea for Zenanas which remains one of the early testimonies of zenana visitations by British women missionaries. The Plea was by her admittance, a result of her ‘own anxiety to awaken as widely as possible the concern of English ladies for their less favoured, yet most interesting, Indian sisters’ (Lewis 1866: 1).6 Lewis’ pamphlet is clearly an attempt to provide Western readers a glimpse of the ‘drudge’ and the ‘desolation’ of the ‘imprisoned inmates’ of the zenana, so uniquely ‘Oriental’ in its set up and cultural orientation, that ‘such a position as this is sufficiently revolting to our English idea of social comfort and domestic bliss’ (Lewis 1866: 2). In The Women of India and Christian work in the Zenana, Mrs Weitbrecht, the LMS missionary at Burdwan, wrote that such strongholds of Hinduism could be ‘penetrated’ if ‘the doors of this cruel captivity’ could be opened to bring in ‘unsanctified freedom to those poor suffering sisters’. Weitbrecht candidly asserted the purpose of employing control of ‘we’ over ‘them’: ‘We want Christian women to teach them the glad tidings of great joy, to illumine with gospel light these cheerless homes, and to create . . . a freedom . . .’ (Weitbrecht 1875: 95–96). As Jane Haggis noted, ‘the missionary account of India and its women was, if not the main, then undoubtedly a primary contributor to the public perceptions of India as an appropriate subject of British rule’ (Haggis 1991: 109).

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A Threat to an Ideal Englishness Perhaps the greatest incongruity that the zenana represented, and which the West found so unacceptable, was the alternative patterns of sexuality, marriage and domesticity. Judging from the standards of Protestant ethics, the British in India soundly denounced the zenana as all that stood for ‘heathen’ practices. Implicit to such criticism was the representation of the British models of monogamy, marriage and family as ‘superior’. In the letters and memoirs of the British women travellers the general impression is of flamboyant kings and nawabs whose harems were populated by numerous wives, concubines and slaves. The representation of the zenana was imbued with dubious sexuality, and the numerous children were evidence of the king’s virility. It suggested illicit relations with slave girls and signified sexual perversity. Polygamy was seen as the degradation and oppression of women and the reason for an embittered fragmented domestic space. Kindersley mentions the little or no influence that native women had on any sphere of life, except ‘the influence of a beautiful face over an ignorant and voluptuous prince’. She asserts, ‘If a man has ever so many favourites and women, they live together in the Zanannah; but sometimes not without jealousy and strife between themselves’ (Kindersley 1777: Letter 53). Fanny Parkes mentions Mirza Suliman Sheko, a prince of Lucknow who was ‘blessed with fifty-two children, twelve sons and forty daughters’, and elaborates on the quarrels that go on in the King of Oude’s zenana, and the complaints that the wives have against each other. Plurality of wives, Parkes comments, ‘add to a man’s dignity and to his misery most decidedly’. The wives are jealous if the king shows his attention to one, and they would often say, ‘I wish I was married to a grass-cutter’ because ‘a grass cutter is so poor he can only afford to have one wife’ (Parkes 1850: I, 390). This reiterated the practice of monogamy as the ideal means of happiness, and Colonel Gardner, a white male Christian, is seen as the prototypical illustration. My having been married some thirty or forty years, and never having taken another wife, surprises the Musulmans very much, and the ladies all look upon me as a pattern: they do not admire a system of having three or four rivals, however well pleased the gentlemen may be with the custom. (Parkes 1850: I, 231) The idealised monogamous practice of the Europeans is set as a foil to those ‘Other’ practices, ensuring that the differences represented by the indigenous people appeared at its most ignoble. The refusal to accept alternative patterns and practices of sexuality, household structures,

The Memsahibs’ Gaze 129 marriages and families was a denial of anything that was not familiar. The accounts of the British women travellers can be seen denunciating living arrangements, conjugal responsibilities and roles, wedding ceremonies, age of marriage, polygamy, dressed or undressed bodies, parenting, etc., repetitively scorning everything that did not fit into a carefully crafted ‘ideal’ of Englishness. In fact, such alternate ‘heathen’ ways of life were seen as a potential threat that could corrupt and defile the ‘purity’ of the English families. There is a palpable undercurrent of such an anxiety in Kindersley’s letter where she describes the desirability of native women: But the favourite and most constant amusement of the great, both Mahomedans and Hindoos, and indeed all ranks of people, is called a notch; which is the performance of the dancing girls: every man who can afford it has the least one set of dancing girls, who make part of his Zanannah. . . . The Eastern ladies, however, are not without such charms as are pleasing to their countrymen; and there are many proofs that Europeans do not think them altogether intolerable; time and custom reconciles them to the yellow and the black, which at first appears frightful. . . . When a black man has a mind to compliment an European, he treats him with a notch; but on these occasions his favourite women never appear; for they are equally jealous of their concubines as of their wives. . . . It is difficult to give you any proper idea of this entertainment; which is so very delightful, not only to black men, but to many Europeans. . . . But it is their languishing glances, wanton smiles, and attitudes not quite consistent with decency, which are so much admired; and whoever excels most in these is the finest dancer. (Kindersley 1777: Letter 54) Lady Nugent too voices her disapproval of Company officials adopting ‘native’ ways, of their ‘immense whiskers’, not eating beef or pork and ‘being as much Hindus as Christians’ (Cohen 2014: 197). Interracial marriages especially meets with her strong opposition, prompting her to ‘the abolition of monthly balls’, as these ‘can only lead to entrapping young and inexperienced men into half-caste marriages, and must also be productive of other mischief’ (Cohen 2014: 306). The earlier enthusiasm felt for the Indian way of life was being replaced by contempt and derision for those Europeans who adopted native ways. Emily Eden refers to Colonel Skinner who is a ‘half-caste, but very black’ and has a zenana where he has ‘heaps of black sons like any other native’ (Eden 1867: 96). Fanny Parkes describes the English Begum in the zenana of the King of Oude, whom she clarifies to be ‘half-European’, and says she ‘felt ashamed of my country woman chewing pan with all the gusto of a regular Hindostanee’ (Parkes 1850: I, 87). Such Europeans were

130  Sutapa Dutta evidently considered an embarrassment and their transgression seen as a result of their being ‘half-castes’.

The Empire Gazes Back Very often the distinction between the subject and the object, the self and the Other, the gaze and the gazer becomes fuzzy. In Lacanian terms, the subject of the gaze in this case the women in the zenana, are destined-tobe-seen.7 However, the paradox is that because of the ubiquity of the gaze it is accepted as ‘normal’, and hence gets excluded from the consciousness of the subject. ‘Seeing-the-Other’ often transforms into the uneasiness of ‘being-seen-by-the-Other’ (Satre 1993: 257). The narratives by the British women travellers sufficiently indicate that they were not always the agents of the ‘gaze’. The gaze was often turned on them. Maria Graham recounts how the women in the harem of Cazy Shahab o’dien ‘openly expressed their curiosity’ and ‘crowded around us to examine our dress, and the materials of which it was composed’(Graham 1813: 17). Fanny Parkes describes the inquisitiveness and the curiosity of the zenana women who ‘requested me to point out my husband, and inquired how many children I had, and asked a thousand questions’ (Parkes 1850: I, 58). The cultural chasm made each side regard the other with wonder. The inability to comprehend each other’s culture and way of life is frequently the reason of derision and ridicule, as Parkes narrates the old Begum’s observation: ‘They are curious creatures, these English ladies; I cannot understand them or their ways,—their ways are so odd!’(451). The Begum expresses her disapproval of ‘the English ladies devotion to music and singing’, considering it ‘degrading’ (385) which leads Parkes to comment: ‘And yet the Begum must have seen so many European ladies, I wonder she had not become more reconciled to our odd ways’ (451). Clearly, even after a century of living together the two cultures had not gotten used to each other’s odd ways, as Emily Eden writing to her sister indicates. She found their conversation ‘stupid’, and they in return thought ‘what an odd thing it was to be so white’ (Eden 1867: 229). If they ‘laughed at the English bonnet’, ‘we jeered their nose-rings’ (232). Helen Mackenzie, wife of the Scottish army officer, LieutenantGeneral Colin Mackenzie, travelled with him extensively in India from 1846 onwards. In Life in the Mission, Camp, and the Zenana, or Six years in India (1854) she observed the wondrous zenanas and harems of Hasan Khan. As she ‘watched Hasan Khan very closely to see how Muhammedan husbands behave’ (Mackenzie 1854: I, 204) she is aware that her husband is as much the object of their curiosity: ‘. . . I observe they are much more particular with C. He modestly stands on one side of the door and the female speaker on the other, so that although they make up for it by peeping after him, he cannot see them’ (200). Mrs Weitbrecht, in her brief pamphlet Christian Woman’s Ministry to the Heathen

The Memsahibs’ Gaze 131 Sisters of India, also narrates an interesting episode where unwittingly the voyeur becomes the object of voyeurism. Some years ago an English lady of position was admitted through private influence to a Zenana. On entering she was gazed on with wonder, and asked puerile questions such as would scarcely have been put by one of our young children. ‘Tell us’, said they, ‘how your husband looks?’ She did. ‘Oh that we might see him!’ was the exclamation. ‘You shall’, said the lady. A purdah, or screen, was placed across the room and perforated with eye-holes, and a tall gentleman walked in and showed himself off for the gratification of the poor prisoners, whose delight and wonder was touching. ‘We shall never forget it’, said they. ‘We shall have something to talk of all our lives’. (Weitbrecht 1874: 4–5, emphasis added). The reverse gaze and the realization that the Other has the power to ‘talk’ is distinctly an uncomfortable position. Paradoxically the one who has been used to ‘looking’ and ‘talking’ does not realise in the field of consciousness that he/she is actually at the mercy of the gaze of the Other. The spectator transmutes into the spectacle, but it is evident that subconsciously there is an anxiety in relation to the scrutiny of the identity-less ‘they’. The child-like, ‘puerile’ ‘poor prisoners’ scrutinising, discussing and assessing then become a threat that endangers not only the image of the ‘English lady of position’ and the ‘tall gentleman’, but the very representation of the white imperial masters. The interest that the subject takes in the representation of his/her own image is intricately bound up with that which determines it. Hence it is necessary to ‘show off’ for the delight, wonder and gratification of the Other. It is important to conduct and mould their imperial selves and create for themselves an identity in the light of the gaze of the Other. In the controlled textual discourses of the white women narratives in which the native women remained voiceless, faceless and nameless, these occasional whiffs of the latter’s observations do throw light on how ‘the empire gazed back’.

Masters or Captives? The zenana became a site for contesting ideas of identity and subjectivity. The binary relationships of subject/object, coloniser/colonised, West/ East, male/female, master/captive often became nebulous, and roles and identities shifted, overlapped and frequently became interchangeable. Fanny Parkes recounts the life of the Begum who lives within the four walls and the entrance guarded day and night. The Begum, Parkes says, envies the English ladies’ freedom. At the same time it is obvious that Parkes admires the Begum’s intervention and advice in running the estate. And Colonel Gardner who is an insider to the King’s palace, informs that

132  Sutapa Dutta the ladies of the zenana amuse themselves by riding within the zenana grounds, and archery is a favourite pastime for them. He confirms that his son, James Gardner ‘who is a very fine marksman, was taught by a woman’ (Parkes 1850: I, 230). One cannot say for sure how conscious such narratives were in depicting this ambivalent, fuzzy overlapping of identities. A  close reading of these writings indicates a sense of discomfort, and there is a definite concern that such indeterminate identities need to be more controlled, defined and demarcated. The early travel narratives by Eliza Fay and Kindersley indicate an eagerness to visit the zenana, grateful for the favour granted. In the later accounts of women travellers there is a definite shift in their attitudes. They are still curious, but now as Emily Eden writes, ‘we condescended to walk through the two rooms that led to the zenana . . .’ (Eden 1867: 374, original emphasis). These women are more aware of the power and position they now enjoy as ‘masters’ of the land. The earlier travel accounts depict the amazement of the memsahibs at the profuse display of wealth and the magnificent gifts that were bestowed on the British ladies who visited the zenana. Emily Eden writing back home in 1837 mentions the ‘enormous pearls’, ‘emeralds about the size of a dove’s egg’, and ‘immense diamonds’ (16). Coveting a pair of emerald diamonds, a present, she says coyly ‘this is the first time the presents have excited my cupidity’ (57). By 1840, her letters indicate a sense of boredom; the display of wealth no longer impresses her nor excites her interest. The Ranee, she observes, looks like ‘a little transformed cat in a fairy tale, covered with gold tissue, clanking with diamonds. . . . Her feet and hands were covered with rings fastened with diamond chains to her wrists and ankles . . .’ (374). The Ranee is no longer an object of wonder, she is a pitiable figure, comical even, as she is depicted chained to her ludicrous wealth. The presents bestowed on the memsahibs, a diamond necklace and a collar, a diamond bracelet and tiara, too are symbolic of being confined, bound and smothered in the fabled wealth of the empire. Earlier Emily Eden had voiced her uneasiness at ‘how eastern we had become’ when they enjoyed a party thrown by Runjeet Singh where nautch girls danced and sang (208), and now the embarrassment seems to be complete when they come out of the zenana decked in oriental finery, looking ‘like mad tragedy queens’. But the consolation was that ‘everybody was transmogrified in the same way’ (374, emphasis added).

Transforming the Zenana Was there then the fear that the zenana will ‘transmogrify’ the white women? The zenana was no doubt perceived as a strong moral force, one that could manipulate and mould both native women and the foreign women. Was it therefore imperative that the zenana be transformed

The Memsahibs’ Gaze 133 before it could affect the English life and culture? The realisation that native women as wives and mothers could and did play a pivotal role in influencing the men in the family, redefined the entire approach of evangelism in India. From the 1860s onwards zenana reformation became a central preoccupation of British administrators and missionaries. The zenana became a metonym for all Indian women and families, a key exhibit of the country’s backwardness, and therefore justified the intervention of the coloniser to ‘reform’ and ‘civilise’. Anna Johnston says that ‘like British women, Indian mothers were expected to fulfil their national duty by giving birth to the new generation of Christianised (and concomitantly Anglicised) Indians who would serve and support the British administration’ (Johnston 2003: 68). But as native women proved to be rigidly resistant to any incursion of Christianity, such expectations often resulted in frustration. As the LMS missionary Rev. James Kennedy observed disappointedly, ‘I have been often struck with the powerful influence which I have known Native Women to exert. This influence has been, unhappily hostile to the Gospel’ (Kennedy 1856: vii–viii). The image of strong women who could take a stand in domestic matters and dominate decisions at home was a paradoxical representation that was in stark contrast to the meek, docile, subjugated women in the zenanas that had been portrayed earlier. The representation of the zenanas, as with most spaces, underwent a huge change in the hundred years under consideration. Emily Eden upon her visit to the King of Delhi’s zenana after the 1857 revolt, is struck by the poverty stricken and desolate look of what was once a magnificent edifice. Like Delhi, and the rest of India, the zenana too stood for what now remained the ruins of once a fabled land of riches. Seeing the ‘beautiful inlaid floors all destroyed’, ‘such stupendous remains of power and wealth passed and passing away’, she remarks:  . . . somehow I feel that we horrid English have just ‘gone and done it’, merchandised it, revenued it, and spoiled it all. I am not very fond of Englishmen out of their own country. (Eden 1867: 97) At the same time, the zenana reflected the influences of westernization. With women missionaries being allowed to enter the zenana, a new conception of the position of Indian women began to evolve, albeit one that was still fraught with inconsistencies and ambivalences and multiple facets of interpretation. It was posited that education of the women would bring in the necessary reformation in society. Along with a physical transformation of such a space which saw a more Anglicised interior with chairs, curtains, etc. (see Figure 7.2), the minds of the women were sought to be more ‘refined’ and ‘enlightened’.

134  Sutapa Dutta

Figure 7.2 ‘A Calcutta Zenana’, from Woman in India by Mary Frances Billington (1895).

When Mary Carpenter, the educationist and reformer who visited India in 1866 is introduced to some of the ladies of a rich Hindu gentleman, she remarks: It was a most novel and remarkable sight. Between twenty and thirty ladies in native dress, and richly adorned with jewels, were assembled in the handsome drawing-room, which was fitted up in English style with sofas and couches, the walls being adorned with engravings and coloured prints. . . . After the interchange of friendly greetings with the ladies, I was requested to address them on the subject of female education. . . . They appeared much interested, and on my expressing a desire to hear their views, one of them spoke with much energy and fluency . . . their strong desire for the education of their daughters . . . I was at the time little aware how remarkable such a part is in that country, and how great an advance it indicated over the state of society in the capital of the Empire. (Carpenter 1868: I, 69–70) Mary Carpenter’s account signifies the ‘change’ that has been possible in the lives of the Indian women due to the influence of missionaries, educationists and memsahibs like her. These Indian women are no longer mute, ignorant beauties imprisoned in the inner apartments—they have been ‘civilised’ and have moved out into modern drawing-rooms where they can sit with men and think and talk about the future. And it is

The Memsahibs’ Gaze 135 clearly implied that the credit for this transformation in the position of women, for ‘the advance it indicated’, goes to the British memsahibs. Such colonial discourses obviously negated and ignored the complex and diverse histories of Indian women and their negotiations with imperial politics. The memsahib’s perspective, as the paper indicates, have been hugely instrumental in creating a one-sided, limited image of the zenana that disregarded not just the role of influential elite women ‘behind the scene’, but virtually effaced the agency and even the ‘humanness’ of veiled women, and turned them into sheer objects of their gaze.

Notes 1.  Nayar (2008) lists some of the travel writings which were regularly published in London Journal, The Englishman, English Post and City Mercury roughly between 1682 and 1725. 2.  See Yeazell (2000) who demonstrates the surprising variety of expressions inspired by the Western imagination of Ottoman harems. 3.  Nigel Leask lays down the caveat that the picturesque was far from being a specifically female discourse in British India, ‘although it was deemed particularly appropriate for women’ (Leask 2002: 205). 4.  Hartly House, Calcutta, published anonymously and later credited to Phebe Gibbs. 5.  For a comprehensive understanding of the contributions of the Indian elite women in the politics of the time refer to ‘A Visit to the Mughal Harem: Lives of Royal Women’ by Karuna Sharma in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, August 2009, 155–169; ‘Inside the royal zenanas in colonial India: Avadhi and other begums in the travel accounts of Fanny Parkes’ by Shampa Roy in Studies in Travel Writing, Vol. 16, Issue 1, 2012, 47–63. 6.  The Angus Library at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, has a rare copy of an 1866 bound volume of Baptist Zenana Mission documents which includes Mrs C. B. Lewis of Calcutta, ‘A Plea for Zenana’. 7.  See Jacques Lacan’s (2002) lectures under the title ‘Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a’ and Jean-Paul Satre’s Being and Nothingness (1993) for their concept of the ‘gaze’.

References Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Burton, Antoinette. 1992. ‘The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and “The Indian Woman,” 1865–1915’, in Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (eds.), Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 137–157. Carpenter, Mary. 1868. Six Months in India, 2 vols. London: Longmans, Brown, Green, and Co. Chaudhuri, Nupur and Margaret Strobel (ed.). 1992. Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cohen, Ashley L. (ed. and introduction). 2014. Lady Nugent’s East India Journal. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

136  Sutapa Dutta Colley, Linda. 2009. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837. London and New Haven: Yale University Press. Eden, Emily. 1867. Up the Country, Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India. London: Richard Bentley. Elwood, Mrs. Colonel [Anne Katherine]. 1830. Narrative of a Journey Overland from England by the Continent of Europe, Egypt, and the Red Sea to India, 2 vols. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. Fay, Eliza. 1908. Original Letters from India. Intro. and Notes by Rev. Walter Kelly Firminger. Kolkata: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1779. Gibbs, Phebe. 1789. Hartly House, Calcutta. Dublin: William Jones. Graham, Maria. 1813. Journal of a Residence in India. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable & Co. Haggis, Jane. 1991. ‘Professional Ladies and Working Wives: Female Missionaries in the London Missionary Society & Its South Travancore District, South India in the 19th Century’. Thesis, University of Manchester. Johnston, Anna. 2003. Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, James. 1856. ‘Preface’, in Rev. E. Storrow (ed.), The Eastern Lily Gathered: A Memoir of Bala Shoondoree Tagore. London: John Snow. Kindersley, Mrs. [Jemima]. 1777. Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies. London: J. Nourse, in the Strand, Bookseller to His Majesty. Lacan, Jacques. 2002. Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Co. Leask, Nigel. 2002. Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing 1770–1840: ‘From an Antique Land’. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, C.B. 1866. A Plea for Zenana. Oxford: St. Angus Archive. Mackenzie, Mrs Colin [Helen]. 1854. Life in the Mission, Camp, and the Zenana, or Six years in India, 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley. Nayar, Pramod K. 2008. English Writing and India, 1600–1920: Colonizing Aesthetics. London and New York: Routledge. Parkes, Fanny. 1850. Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, During Four and Twenty Years in the East, with Revelations of Life in the Zenana, 2 vols. London: Pelham Richardson. Satre, Jean Paul. 1993. Being and Nothingness, trans. Hanzel E. Barnes. New York: The Philosophical Library Inc. Seton, Rosemary. 2013. Western Daughters in Eastern Land: British Missionary Women in Asia. Santa Barbara, CA, Denver, CO and Oxford, England: Praeger. Weitbrecht, Mrs. [Mary]. 1874. Christian Woman’s Ministry to the Heathen Sisters of India. London: J. Nisbet & Co. ———. 1875. The Women of India and Christian Work in the Zenana. London: James Nisbet & Co. Yeazell, Ruth Bernard. 2000. Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and Literature. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

8 Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men Isabella Fane’s Vision of Colonial India Shannon Derby Introduction On life in India in the 1830s, Isabella Fane writes, ‘I have the happiness of being completely laid up, with both my legs disabled from the tormenting musquitos’ (Fane 1988: 69), thus providing an acutely intimate insight into the quotidian trials of the ‘memsahib’ in colonial India. For most of the 20th century, Fane had been all but forgotten, receiving relatively little academic attention until John Pemble rescued her from the archives and collected and edited her letters as Miss  Fane in India: The Indian Diary of a Victorian Lady, first published in 1985. A contemporary of much-studied writers like Emily Eden and Fanny Parkes, Fane belongs to a larger tradition of British women travelling to and writing about India throughout the 19th century. Her account of the life of the ‘memsahib’ is replete with sensationalism, humour and, as indicated above, frequent and often unseemly descriptions of the physical side effects of travelling to a new environment. Fane accompanied her father, Sir Henry Fane, to India in 1835 and, like many of her contemporaries, she travelled to India for the express purpose of serving in the role of ‘helpmeet’, or domestic companion, to a male family member. In this chapter, I focus on the letters Fane composed while presiding over her father’s Calcutta (now Kolkata) household from 1836 to 1837. In her letters, Fane offers a refreshingly honest, if not brutal, depiction of domestic and social life in India, cultivates the persona of the suffering traveller with a comedic twist, and perpetuates an orientalist representation of India through an imperial voyeuristic gaze. My interest in Fane’s literary output lies neither in recuperating the ‘memsahib’ as a figure of resistance nor in denigrating her for championing the project of empire through the subjugation of the subaltern. Indeed, many scholars within the fields of postcolonialism and travel writing have already scrutinised the role of white women in empire.1 The British women who travelled to India in the role of ‘helpmeet’ in the 19th century existed in a liminal state between imperial authority and gendered subordination. Although imperial travel afforded them opportunities to

138  Shannon Derby enter purportedly masculine spaces of empire, upon arrival they found that the patriarchal division of gender integral to imperial rule meant their assigned role in the project of empire was the task of reproducing the domestic sphere of England in the colonies. Travelling to India as imperial agents of domesticity, these women inhabited the dual position of insider to white, English dominion over Indian people and space and of outsider to imperial masculinity. Although these women were expected to serve in a domestic role, which was often seen as ancillary to the masculine project of empire and without any political power, my argument in this chapter demonstrates the varying levels of power actually inherent to that role and interrogates the complex positions women travelling to India in the 19th century occupied in which they were powerless in one sense and powerful in another. As opposed to the working-class women who sought employment as governesses or high-level domestic servants in India or the single ‘surplus’ middle-class women who travelled to India with the ‘Fishing Fleets’ in the hopes of securing a husband among the ranks of the East India Company,2 Fane, in her role of ‘helpmeet’ and household manager, was able to enjoy—and, at times, suffer through—moments of stasis that afforded her the time to extensively document her life in India in letters to family in England. She can be read as a figure both central to the general colonial project in India and peripheral to the masculine, British authority of the East India Company; in addition, however, she exerts the power of representational authority over the depiction of ‘India’ through the genre of epistolary travel writing. The various identities associated with travel, femininity and ‘Englishness’ that Fane inhabits in her letters, I argue, contribute to her conflicting representations of life in India in the 1830s. The ‘India’ of her accounts is a space defined by, domesticated and refashioned in the mould of English socio-politics, culture and aesthetic tastes; though, at the same time, it is also an exotic place of heat, difference, danger, and sensuality. The foundation of all of these depictions is, of course, the role that Fane played as ‘helpmeet’ to the men in her family and the importance of this role to helping them achieve necessary political, military, and diplomatic negotiations.3 Most importantly, I want to stress the crucial role of seemingly frivolous letters full of gossip, complaints about the pain of mosquito bites and stories of sensationalised interactions with local dignitaries to the project of constructing ‘the Orient’ and disseminating ideologies of empire through a network of women corresponding with each other between England and India.

Isabella Fane’s East India Company Isabella Fane (1804–1886) was the only daughter of General Sir Henry Fane and Isabella Cooke. Though Sir Fane and Cooke were never legally

Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men 139 married, Cooke was his consort for many years and, after moving with him to England, referred to herself as ‘Lady Fane’.4 According to historian Jane Robinson, the fact that Fane’s parents were never legally married coupled with Fane’s troubled relationship with her mother led Sir Henry Fane to take his daughter with him when he was appointed the Commander-inChief of India (Robinson 2001: 280). Isabella Fane served as her father’s hostess in the role of ‘Burra Lady Sahib’, or ‘Senior First Lady’, from 1835 to 1838, at which time she was sent home to Lincolnshire before the First Anglo-Afghan War. Back in England, Fane led a rather transient life of a spinster with limited financial means, first settling with relatives in England and then moving abroad to France, where she died alone. At Fane’s request, her papers from this later period in her life were destroyed. Written in the format of a near daily journal to her paternal aunt, Mrs  Caroline Chaplin of Lincolnshire, Fane’s letters provide details about housekeeping, the weather, the plagues of mosquito bites that literally immobilise her, and the people with whom she comes in contact in social settings. Often quite comical, Fane’s letters exhibit what Tedra Osell calls the ‘rhetorical femininity’ of gossip (Osell 2005: 283). For example, in one missive describing her introduction to Emily and Fanny Eden, Fane writes, ‘We got on famously. They are both great talkers, both old, both ugly, and both s—k like polecats!’ Sir H Chamberlain informed some of our young gentlemen that on board ship they were so dreadful in this respect that those who were so lucky as to sit next to them at dinner had their appetites much interfered with’ (63). The cattiness of Fane’s depiction of the Eden sisters, who were quite well known in both England and India,5 evokes tropes of gossip writing popularised in the 18th century by periodicals like The New Atalantis, The Tatler and The Female Tatler, the last of which was narrated by the fictional Mrs  Crackenthorpe. Fane writes about the women in her social circle in salacious, and sometimes hyperbolic, detail and her habit of ending packets of letters to her aunt with the phrase, ‘believe me’, casts doubt over the veracity of her accounts.6 Throughout her letters, Fane appears to exhibit a level of self-awareness over her use of sensational and, as she puts it, ‘nasty’ details to depict her social circle in India. In a letter dated 23 February  1836, Fane writes, ‘I am in the act of reading Mrs  Buller’s journal, and I  am thinking of requesting you to save these entertaining sheets I send you, that I may publish them on my return to England!’ (60). Fane’s allusion to the entertainment value of her letters indicates a performative aspect of her narrative representation of India that relies on a multidirectional voyeuristic gaze—a gaze that looks both inward to the British colonisers in Calcutta and, as will be explored later in this chapter, outward to the colonised population of India. By providing her aunt with an intimate glance into the social web of English women in Calcutta, Fane casts the project of empire in the light of feminine discourse.

140  Shannon Derby Perhaps because Fane’s letters were never published during her lifetime, the letters Pemble has arranged in this collection have escaped editorial censorship. He stresses that Fane’s writing style defied gender expectations of the Victorian era, writing that her letters ‘are free from the usual trappings of Victorian travel memoirs—stilted description, sententious moralizing, and hidebound discretion’ (Fane and Pemble 1988: 6). Even though Fane ultimately did not succeed in preparing her letters for publication, she nonetheless contributed to the construction of India amongst her social circles back home in Lincolnshire. Indira Ghose stresses the importance of women’s travel literature to shaping English opinions on and preconceived notions about life in India, writing, ‘at the time these books were well read and circulated among each new shipload of memsahibs or travellers to India’ (Ghose 1998: 11). It is easy to imagine Fane’s witty, cutting observations of social life in Calcutta circulating as gossip in England via face-to-face communication among relatives and friends, particularly given her repeated requests that her aunt ‘distribute my love’ (68). A lack of the self-censorship associated with publication leads to an unadulterated, in-the-moment quality to Fane’s depiction of quotidian life in India and reveals a paradoxical relationship between her public life in India and her personal reflections on it. She faithfully serves in the domestic role of ‘first lady’ to her father, even writing that she is ‘nobody’s property but [her] father’s’ (137), while simultaneously refusing to follow the social mores of Victorian femininity in her letters to her aunt. In one instance of epistolary freedom, Fane comments on an acquaintance’s experiences with motherhood. Instead of conforming to the Victorian cult of domesticity, she boldly proclaims, ‘I am afraid I should make a shocking mama, for I confess, I cannot understand how having a fat maggot by one’s side can compensate for the loss of one’s comfortable rest’ (90). Within the private space of a personal letter with, ostensibly, only one intended reader, Fane’s contradictory statements about the gendered expectations placed on her communicate a performance of feminine decorum while at the same time undercutting that performance. Throughout her correspondence, she appears to be shaping her own identity much in the same way she shapes her reader’s perception of India. By placing the production of identity at the heart of travel and travel writing, Fane’s letters illustrate the malleability of representation and the intrinsic connection between travel and subjectivity. Her letters award her the opportunity to inhabit and expound multiple versions of womanhood, both acceptable and rebellious, which directly parallel the multiple identities she inhabits as a traveller in her letters. Furthermore, the genre of personal writing—that is letters, diaries and journals, what Sara Mills calls ‘discourses of femininity’—was one of the few genres considered not only accessible to women during the 19th century, but also among the only proper literary endeavours to be

Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men 141 undertaken by a woman. Hierarchies of gender and the power imbalance between men and women, Mills argues, relegated women to the domestic sphere in their writing despite the fact that they were traversing the public sphere through the act of travel (Mills 1993: 95).7 Identifying the influence of the ‘confessional mode’ on women’s travel writing, she cautions against drawing direct parallels between the genre of autobiography and the lived realities of women writers. Instead, she argues that analysis of the ‘confessional mode’ should centre on ‘‘various positions of subjectivity” within this confessional field which women writers can occupy and construct for themselves’ (Mills 1993: 104). These ‘various positions of subjectivity’ include the construction of imperial identities steeped in raced subjectivities in which the English writer separates herself from the ‘native’ by superimposing the signifier of ‘foreign’ on both the landscape and people of India. As a literary construct, the development and performance of the imperial self in the personal letter or journal is imperative to the promotion and perpetuation of imperial hierarchies of power in both the public and private spheres.

The Suffering ‘Memsahib’ Applied specifically to Fane’s literary production, Rosemary Raza’s study of women travellers in India in the early 19th century calls attention to the importance of epistolary depictions of life in India. She contends that the letter fulfilled a desire for communication with home as well as provided the ‘memsahib’ with a way of combatting the boredom of being confined to the indoors during periods of intense heat (Raza 2006: 1). Describing her private quarters, Fane writes, ‘I have established in my room to defend my day from [the mosquitoes]. It’s a little room—shade of musquito gauze, which holds my writing table, chair and couch, and the punkah hangs just over it. I look like a bird in a cage’ (66). Fane’s self-identification with a caged bird enshrined in gauze reveals a feeling of confinement and isolation at the centre of the daily life of the ‘memsahib’. The act of composing letters to friends and family back home helped women like Fane to allay homesickness, maintain a connection to their previous lives in England and alleviate the ennui that perhaps only a woman with dozens to hundreds of servants under her charge in the task of running a household could feel. And yet, both the boredom and selfconfinement depicted by Fane is a performative construct of a carefully curated imperial subjectivity. To that point, I’d like to return to the quotation with which I opened this chapter. As I  have indicated, mosquitos—or, specifically, mosquito bites—make numerous appearances in Fane’s letters. In these sections of her epistolary account, Fane appears to embody the Romantic figure of the ‘suffering traveller’. Here I am drawing on Carl Thompson’s definition of the ‘suffering traveller’, a person who ‘courts adversity’ (Thompson

142  Shannon Derby 2007: 2), danger or the excitement of misadventure. In several instances throughout her letters, Fane bemoans the ‘confinement from the musquito wounds’ (40) she experiences and the ‘melancholy condition’ of her legs (66), and the level of detail with which she catalogues her wounds certainly crosses boundaries of propriety. She describes a bite she has ‘over-scratched, nearly a quarter of a yard long’ (64) and emphasises the ‘crippling’ nature of her affliction, writing, ‘my legs and feet are so bad. I have got seven sore places on one, and four on the other, all from musquitoes’ (71). But the ‘suffering’ Fane experiences from her exacerbated mosquito bites also functions as a type of respite for her, as they allow her a much-desired excuse to skip what she considers to be boring social engagements, which are one of the primary responsibilities of a woman serving in the role of ‘helpmeet’ to the men in her family. Fane writes of these duties with equal parts comedy and sincerity, claiming that the process of planning an event amounted to a ‘dreadful morning’ and that she ‘would much rather have been hanged’ than tasked with the obligation of securing performers for a concert at the Government House in one letter (49), and expressing that she ‘shall die of fright in anticipation of its success, before the day [of the first party she was tasked with hosting] arrives’ (54) in another.8 To further explain why she has ‘the happiness of being completely laid up’ with mosquito bites, Fane writes, ‘I quite rejoice my legs are bad, for I find Mrs Thoby Prinsep is [at the Government House in Barrackpore], and I dislike her so much she would have destroyed any comfort I might otherwise have had’ (70). Fane continues, writing to her aunt that she is ‘so amused when [she] reflect[s] on the different accounts you probably hear of this individual’, including what she sees as an excessive amount of admiration Mrs Prinsep garners from the other women in her social circle (70), women she considers to be ‘idiots’. In this sense, the stasis imposed on Fane by the ‘melancholy condition’ of her legs allows her the opportunity to weave an intricate social web of Calcutta and afford her reader(s) the pleasure of reading caustic critiques of women who belong to the upper echelons of English society.9 The ‘suffering’ that Fane experiences from her mosquito bites directly correlates to the ‘suffering’ she experiences while fulfiling the social obligations of a ‘Burra Lady Sahib’. Recounting the details of a party hosted by the Eden sisters, Fane writes, ‘The King’s birthday, kept here by a ball given by the Governor-General. We of course went to it—as duty, nothing else I assure you. We staid until 12 o’clock and I was never more bored in my life’ (87). Fane’s expressed boredom with British society in India yields to a desire for the ‘exotic’ and the adventurous, which she fabricates in her descriptions of her mosquito bites. Her focus on ‘suffering’ functions as a narrative element of her letters that illustrates the stark differences between life in India and England and further reinforces social, cultural and racial divisions between colonising and colonised. To further alleviate the boredom of ‘the usual routine’ (134) of the life of a

Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men 143 ‘memsahib’, Fane continues to court the ‘exotic’ in her depictions of the indigenous population of India and surrounding environs.

Imperial Voyeurism and the ‘Oriental Subject’ Despite her relative obscurity, Fane belongs to a canon of Western travel writing firmly entrenched in imperial ideologies of race and class. In keeping with the imperial formulation of the ‘East’ as an imagined construct of the ‘West’ that Edward Said so forcefully articulated in Orientalism (1978), Fane transforms ‘native’ subjectivities into exoticised constructs of the ‘oriental subject’10 throughout her epistolary account of life in India. In contrast to the richly detailed accounts of the social network of British residents in Calcutta, Fane rarely refers to Indians by name, preferring oftentimes vague descriptions of servants or, in instances when she wishes to write about a particular individual such as a prince or dignitary, general descriptors like ‘Nepaul General’ or ‘Rajah somebody’. A letter composed in August of 1836 highlights such a trend. Responding to her aunt, Fane writes, Today I received your packet of March 29th. I am so disappointed at all the questions you ask me about our establishment, the dress code of the servants, etc., etc. I  thought I  had told you all this at first. . . . The number of servants my father keeps, who wait upon him and me, is sixty-eight, and this is reckoned a small number for the Commander-in-Chief . . . I will dress up a figure to send you of the style of dress worn by the servants in this country, which is so very picturesque and pretty. (101–102) She continues to outline the duties of each of her servants, the difference between the tasks performed by Muslim and Hindu servants, and the role that caste plays in the division of labour amongst her Hindu servants. She does not, however, provide any specific details about the dress worn by her servants other than to remark that some of her Hindu servants wear very little clothing at all. She concludes with a hint of exasperation— ‘of course there remains more to be told, but then if I were to tell all I could, I had better publish a book’ (103)—that implies the format of the personal letter does not allow sufficient space for sharing the breadth of knowledge she has acquired in the colonies and to spend what little space she has on the servant class in India would be a waste. Additionally, she appears to gain little amusement from her servants beyond her classification of them as ‘picturesque’. Thus, she relegates the servant class with whom she comes into contact on a daily basis to the background of her letters, as though part of the scenery of India that serves as the

144  Shannon Derby backdrop to her social engagements and sensationalised experiences with local culture. Throughout her letters, Fane’s depictions of Indian people and culture focus primarily on her own viewing experiences and sense of adventure. To this point, Fane writes an account of the Hindu Festival of Churrak Puja, or ‘wheel ceremony’, stating, ‘I have a very enquiring mind, or else if you please, a large share of curiosity, and have in consequence no idea of coming so far without seeing all there is to be seen . . .’ (72). She calls attention to her ‘unfeminine curiosity’ (73) and desire to witness what she calls the ‘exhibition’ of swinging by hooks, a ceremony performed in honour of the Hindu deity Shiva in which men are suspended by hooks piercing the muscle beneath their shoulder blades. Her account of this ceremony is written in titillating detail and centres on her own adventurous spirit and willingness to view what she considers to be varying degrees of abjection. This particular letter serves as an insight into what her reader might deem an exotic world and affirms the assumed differences between English and Indian cultures already fashioned and reproduced by her readers back home. In her description of bodies in this letter, Fane focuses on the fact that neither she nor her companion saw the men bleed—a lack that reinforces their dehumanisation in her eyes—and muses on what she sees as the barbarity of the custom, writing, ‘Indeed, one man did not appear to suffer at all. The other did, for he caught hold of the rope above him as if to ease himself. Poor benighted creatures, what a pity it is that they cannot understand that such tortures are quite needless’ (74). What is also noteworthy here is that at no point in her description of Churrak Puja does Fane engage with the religious connotations of the ceremony. Not only does Fane transform a Hindu tradition into a ‘foreign’ spectacle for her audience back home in England, but she also indirectly reinforces the idea that India needs and benefits from British occupation and rule by lamenting the ‘poor benighted creatures’ who, in her eyes, cannot comprehend their own lack of ‘civilisation’. In other instances, Fane shifts her language of sensationalism and fascination from a view of the ‘oriental subject’ as barbaric, as evidenced in the descriptions above, to a view of him as admirable and even, at times, eroticised.11 One standout example is her depiction of a man she calls the ‘Nepaul General’. This impersonalised moniker refers to Martabar Singh Thapa, who travelled to Calcutta on a diplomatic visit on behalf of his uncle, Bhimsen Thapa, the prime minister of Nepal. Martabar Singh Thapa was meant to simply stop over in Calcutta as he was en route to London for a diplomatic visit to the British Crown to make the argument for Nepalese sovereignty, but he was denied the documents necessary for international travel by the East India Company under the supervision of then Governor-General, Sir Charles Metcalfe. During the month of the Thapa’s sojourn to Calcutta—he arrived in mid-January and left in midFebruary of 1836—he makes numerous appearances in Fane’s letters,

Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men 145 which treat him as a spectacle to be seen and admired, and make no explicit mention of the political motivations for his travel to Calcutta.12 Rather, Fane’s descriptions of Thapa carry the hints of voyeurism and taboo, violating the rule Mary Louise Pratt has identified as governing women’s behaviour during the Victorian era: ‘A woman is not to see but be seen, or at least she is not to be seen seeing’ (1992: 104). The safety of the private letter affords Fane the opportunity to wilfully break this rule. Fane and her contemporaries treat the arrival of Thapa as a ‘great event’ and her writing stresses their active, even rebellious, seeing: ‘We of course all resolved to see the fun’ (43). Later, she claims that ‘beyond staring at him he afforded little amusement’ (49) because he does not speak English, thereby likening her interactions with Thapa to her interactions with her servants, which were stilted at best because ‘we are too imperfect in the language’ (qtd. in Pemble 1998: 7), and reinforcing imperial social hierarchies that locate her in a position of racial and cultural superiority over him. In her epistolary representation of Thapa, Fane focuses primarily on his appearance, often citing his beauty as his greatest attribute and thus constructing Thapa as an especially feminised aesthetic object. In one instance, Fane writes, Well, we all went to see the opera, and so did he, and sat in the next place to us. The opera boxes here are exactly upon the same construction as the dress circle in our theatres in London so that he sat next to us with only a bar between. You never saw such a beautiful man, or anything so magnificent as his dress. He is tall and extremely well-made; not very dark, no beard, but a pair of long moustaches. (44) Fane conveys a sense of English spatiality in order to juxtapose the familiar with the exotic in relation to Thapa. By noting that he is ‘not very dark’, Fane positions him outside of Englishness but in a category apart from and above the Indians that she refers to by skin colour and class status, particularly through the use of the moniker, ‘Blackee’, in her letters. Her use of the phrase ‘well-made’ is particularly striking here and positions Thapa as a commodity to be consumed by both Fane and her reader back home in England. Additionally, Fane seems to exalt in transgressing the prohibition against female sight while at the same time performing the requisite level of embarrassment over doing so. In another letter during Thapa’s visit, she writes that she is ‘so ashamed at the length of this’ (54) after spending the majority of the letter detailing his clothing, the duration of his stay, and, of course, his beauty. Her epistolary performance of shame serves as a protective shield behind which she can allow herself to transgress the rules of feminine propriety and avoid becoming a source of gossip herself.

146  Shannon Derby Beyond the relationship between titillation, attraction and shame present in Fane’s letters, there exists a number of tensions present in the way she depicts Thapa in Calcutta. On the day of his arrival, Fane describes her determination to witness the spectacle, writing that she and her friend, Mrs Beresford ‘pushed through the crowd, caring little about the chances of knocking down Blackee like ninepins, until we arrived at the house of an acquaintance whose verandah we intended to invade’ in order to get a view (43). Militaristic words like ‘invade’ and the spectre of violence that precipitated Fane’s arrival to a proper viewing-place seem fitting here, especially given the political backdrop of Thapa’s journey to Calcutta and the fact that his visit consists of multiple military displays performed by both the British and Nepalese troops. Both the martial language employed by Fane and the threatened violence that attend it appear to function as a type of foreshadowing for another encounter with Thapa that Fane narrates in her letters. Fane professes an almost schoolgirl-like admiration for him as an aesthetic object; however, her tone shifts from admiration to critique when she perceives him as exerting a sense of subjectivity. Describing an evening in a British Club in Calcutta, Fane comments on Thapa’s reaction to the gowns worn by English women: The Nepaul General was there, much disgusted I am told, with so much female exhibition. It was his own fault, he need not have gone. We were doing nothing contrary to our habits and if he could not reconcile his mind to it he had better have staid at home. He is said to have fixed his eyes most intently on Mrs Beresford—we have not yet ascertained whether in admiration or disgust. She has a beautiful bust which she generally displays more than she need, and on this occasion it was most conspicuous. So we think he might have been turning over in his mind that she would make him a capital nautch girl! (46)13 In this brief description, Fane engages with gossip about a friend, flirts with the notion of the ‘oriental’ man as lascivious and desirous of white women and asserts a position of racial and cultural superiority. Calling attention to this moment in Fane’s letters, Verity McInnis asserts that Fane’s dismissive attitude stems from ‘an arrogant confidence in her ambassadorial status’ (McInnis 2017: 26). But to refer to this moment as simply an expression of arrogance—what McInnis later calls ‘imperial posturing’ (McInnis 2017: 55)—stops a bit short. To begin with, the setting of this scene—a British club in Calcutta— is particularly noteworthy, especially since Fane refers to the club as ‘our Almacks’ after a fashionable club in London. The club functioned,

Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men 147 typically, as an English-only space (with the occasional invitation extended to local dignitaries and officials) that reproduced the social customs and class hierarchies that travelled to India along with the men and women serving the East India Company. Within the walls of the club, English men and women inhabited a familiar space reminiscent of home that, through rules of exclusion, maintained a clear boundary between Englishness and the ‘foreign’ aspects of India that remained outside. Such a setting is integral to my reading of Fane’s sentiment that Thapa ‘should have staid at home’, uncannily echoing in words the actions that Governor-General Sir Metcalfe took to prevent Thapa from reaching London. This is not to say that Fane is directly commenting on the political machinations of the East India Company, nor am I suggesting that she had knowledge of this exchange prior to writing this letter. What I  am suggesting is that the language of exclusion and dominion over space present in Fane’s account of Thapa’s visit to the club is indicative of an ideology of British hegemony which mandates that Thapa—or any other ‘native’ for that matter—neither belongs within the Anglicised space of the club, nor possesses the right to exert control over that space. Furthermore, Fane’s expression of power over the space of ‘our Almacks’ exemplifies a specifically feminine form of agency within the political and social spheres of British India. Unlike in England, where many of the clubs were masculine spaces that prohibited the admission of women, in India women were granted access to the clubs to keep them out of trouble. Mrinalini Sinha observes the level of power such access instilled in English women in India, writing, ‘the alleged protection of the white women from the unprovoked attention of Indian men also made them crucial determinants in the ‘unclubbability’ of Indians’ (2001: 503). Fane’s articulation of the boundaries between English women and Indian men within the social sphere alludes to the integral role of refashioning India in the likeness of England that the ‘memsahib’ played in shaping empire. The subtext behind Fane’s description of Thapa’s evening at the club is that the ‘oriental subject’ no longer belongs in the ‘Orient’, which has been Anglicised by and placed under the political and aesthetic domain of the English occupier. Also at stake in Fane’s narration of the scene at the club is the question of who is permitted to look at whom, and who must submit to being looked upon. Up until this moment in Fane’s letters, her voyeuristic gaze has not been returned, and one of the pleasures of voyeurism lies in the perceived ability to look with impunity. Not only does Fane comment directly on Thapa’s participation in what is now, according to her assessment of the evening at the club, a two-way voyeurism, but she also attempts to ventriloquise his thoughts about Mrs Beresford in her letter. By mimicking what she believes be the lascivious intent of Thapa’s fixed stare—Mrs  Beresford’s bust and her possible future as a ‘nautch

148  Shannon Derby girl’—Fane wrests the power of sight away from him. Within the span of a paragraph, she critiques Thapa for what she sees as an attempt to exert visual mastery over a fellow ‘memsahib’, proposes a type of punishment for this attempt in her claim that he does not belong in the club, and briefly inhabits the masculine gaze of the ‘Nepaul General’ she has developed in her letters in order to take back control and impose a feminine mastery of space within the interior of the club. The implication here is that the only person who has a right to judge an Englishwoman within the Anglicised space of the club is a fellow Englishwoman, and that, according to Fane, Thapa has overstepped the boundaries between what is considered permissible and prohibited behaviour. Her transgressive focus on bodies—the bodies of Englishwomen as well as Indian men—works toward promoting the narrative of India as an exotic and dangerous place in need of the civilising effects of British occupation.

Conclusion Fane’s literary production, I have argued, communicates a mastery over space in which both seeing and narrating India constitute a form of imperial rule. From the comparatively powerless position of an Englishwoman in the otherwise masculine realm of empire, Fane reinforces her ability, through epistolary travel writing, to express a level of agency that belies her role of ‘helpmeet’. Throughout her letters, Fane articulates a sense of ‘Englishness’ through the performance of class, etiquette and domesticity. The performance of cultural Englishness—distinct but also related to the public, political stance of Englishmen—fell upon the shoulders of the women who travelled to India. They were to maintain a sense of ‘civilisation’ through their role of ‘helpmeet’ that was imperative to the formation and continuation of empire in India. Fane’s letters provide us with a complex case study of the ways in which women challenged this role. In closing, I suggest that because Fane’s letters were never published during her lifetime, they offer an invaluable insight into life in colonial India and function as a verbal snapshot that allowed her readers to embody the identity of armchair traveller. The letters composed by women like Fane functioned as an extension between England and India, and the travels of the material object of the letter across the empire was instrumental to the mobility of imperial ideology. The performative authority through which Fane represents both the colonisers and the colonised communicates the power that women writers exerted in their representational accounts of life in India and the instrumental role they played in the construction of an invented ‘India’ both there and in England. The ‘entertaining sheets’ that Fane was ultimately unsuccessful in publishing reinforce the value of the archive to intellectual engagements with women and empire and indicate exciting new discoveries and interventions to be made in the academic field of women’s travel writing.

Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men 149

Notes 1. For example, in Maps of Englishness, Simon Gikandi rigorously engages in debates surrounding the power of colonial white women and argues that ‘reading the feminine in the culture of masculine colonialism, then, is a project riven by paradox’ (Gikandi 1996: 122) in which white women simultaneously promoted masculine ideologies of empire and resisted rigid Victorian gender roles, thus existing within a ‘complicity/resistance dialectic’ (123). Recently, Susmita Roye and Rajeshwar Mittapalli have taken up the language of paradox in their introduction to The Male Empire under the Female Gaze: The British Raj and the Memsahib, writing, ‘She was an insider in the matrix of imperial power that controlled the lives of natives but an outsider relegated to the periphery of authority. She was an insider to the outer world because she lived in India and was supposed to accumulate firsthand knowledge of the country, but she was an outsider to the natives who showed no intention of accepting her’ (Roye and Mittapalli 2013: 9). 2. On the topic of ‘surplus women’, or the growing population of single women in England in the 18th and 19th centuries, see The Single Homemaker and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, first published in 2012 by David Hussey and Margaret Ponsonby. Recent studies on the ‘Fishing Fleets’—groups of unmarried women initially commissioned by the East India Company to sail to India to marry English men and thus promote English values through domestic partnerships and child-bearing—include Anne de Courcy’s The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj (2014) and Joan Mickelson Gaughin’s The ‘Incumberences’: British Women in India, 1615–1856 (2013). 3. The Fane family was a well-established fixture of the East India Company in the 19th century. By the time Isabella Fane and her father arrived in India, her uncle, William Fane, was a Senior Merchant stationed in Allahabad. In Calcutta, her eldest brother, Colonel Henry Fane, and her cousin, Lieutenant Henry Fane, served as aides-de-camp to her father. 4. Obstacles to the dissolution of Cooke’s previous marriage to Edward Cooke, the under-secretary of Dublin Castle, prevented Fane and Cooke from legally marrying. 5. Emily and Fanny Eden were the sisters of George Eden, who was appointed Governor General of India in 1835. Emily’s accounts of life in India are seminal texts among the canon of 19th-century travel writing on India by English women, namely Up the Country: Letters written to her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India (1866) and Letters from India (1872). 6. In Reading Gossip in Eighteenth-Century England, Nicola Parsons alludes to the role that constructed truths play in gossip periodicals. Gossip, she writes, can be categorised as a ‘liminal genre’ that ‘performs a truth function by authenticating the narrative, but is itself fictional’ (Parsons 2009: 51). 7. Historically, the masculine realm of publishing used the label of ‘autobiography’ to deny women’s writing of a sense of authority and ‘should be seen as an attempt to deny women the status of creators of cultural artefacts’ (Mills 1993: 12). This division between masculine and feminine modes of literary production, Mills argues, extends to the merging of the genre of personal writing and travel writing. 8. Fane, however, eventually deemed the party a great success, writing, ‘All parties here are duller than dull, but I should say this appeared less so than the generality’ (56). 9. In his biographical notes, Pemble stresses the popularity of Sarah Prinsep (1816–1887), who, upon her return from India, presided over ‘one of

150  Shannon Derby London’s best known salons. The aspiring and the distinguished from all walks of life used to gather at Mrs Prinsep’s on Sunday afternoons from 1850 until 1875’ (Fane and Pemble 1988: 34). 10. Here and elsewhere throughout this chapter, I am borrowing the term ‘oriental subject’, a subject defined by Western perception, from Said (1978). 11. In this section, I purposefully employ masculine pronouns. Throughout her letters, Fane appears to be wholly uninterested in Indian women, going so far as to call an afternoon with the ‘widow of Sindia  .  .  . a stupid visit’ (134) mainly because she claimed that Fanny Parkes, author of Wanders of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque (1850), was a bad interpreter. Her preference for depicting ‘native’ men and relegating ‘native’ women to the background of life in India (when she mentions them at all), speaks to a tradition of silencing the (female) subaltern articulated, notably, by Gayathri Spivak. 12. In her letter that announces the arrival of Thapa, Fane writes only that he ‘is a man with a very enquiring mind and he has come to Calcutta to see the world, as well as to pay some compliment about unfurling a flag, the rights of which I don’t quite understand’ (43). 13. The term ‘nautch girl’, or dance girl, is taken from a direct translation of the Hindi word, ‘naach’. However, it is often used as a euphemism for courtesan or concubine.

References de Courcy, Anne. 2014. The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj. New York: Harper. Fane, Isabella and John Pemble. (ed.). 1988. Miss  Fane in India: The Indian Diary of a Victorian lady. London: Headline Book Publishing Plc. Gaughan, Joan Mickelson. 2013. The ‘Incumberances’: British Women in India, 1615–1856. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ghose, Indira. 1998. Memsahibs Abroad: Writings by Women Travellers in Nineteenth Century India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gikandi, Simon. 1996 Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism. New York: Columbia University Press. Hussey, David and Margaret Ponsonby. 2016 The Single Homemakeer and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century. New York: Routledge. McInnis, Verity. 2017. Women of Empire: Nineteenth-Century Army Officers’ Wives in India and the U.S. West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Mills, Sara. 1993. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. London: Routledge. Osell, Tedra. 2005. ‘Tatling Women in the Public Sphere: Rhetorical Femininity and the English Essay Periodical’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38(2): 283–300. Parsons, Nicola. 2009. Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. Raza, Rosemary. 2006. In Their Own Words: British Women Writers and India 1740–1857. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, Jane. 2001. Wayward Women: A Guide to Women Travellers. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gossip, Mosquitos, and ‘Well-Made’ Men 151 Roye, Susmita and Rajeshwar Mittapalli. 2013. ‘Introduction: (Re)viewing the Gaze’, in Susmita Roye and Rajeshwar Mittapalli (eds.), The Male Empire Under the Female Gaze. Amherst: Cambria Press, 1–27. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism: 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Vintage Books. Sinha, Mrinalini. 2001. ‘Britishness, Clubbability, and the Colonial Public Sphere: The Genealogy of an Imperial Institution in Colonial India’, The Journal of British Studies, 40(4): 489–521. Thompson, Carl. 2007. The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

9 ‘Servant of the Cross’ Identity, Travel and Colonial Culture in the Letters of Mary Moffat in South Africa Michelle Adler Introduction On 7 September 1819—the year of Queen Victoria’s birth—24-year-old Mary Smith (1795–1871), from Dukinfield, Lancashire, set sail for Cape Town to marry Robert Moffat (1795–1883), a young missionary from the LMS (London Missionary Society). The only daughter of a closeknit, protective and pious family, hitherto she had never travelled much beyond Manchester; however, this first, arduous and dangerous southward voyage aboard the aptly named British Colony was the first of many journeys she undertook in her role as a missionary wife in Southern Africa. From her letters we learn of the difficulty she had in persuading her parents to allow her to travel alone to the Cape: In Britain little was known about the Cape beyond the fact that it was a distant outpost in a savage continent. Even if she survived the voyage and precarious life in the interior, it was doubtful that her parents would ever see her again. ‘It must be trying to parental feelings’, she wrote to Robert Moffat’s parents, ‘to think of a dear child being alone in a strange land among savages’ (Moffat 1889: 36). With specific reference to Mary Moffat’s life and writing, this chapter focuses on an instance of identity formation and travel in the early 19th century northern Cape frontier zone, a fluctuating melting-pot of conflict and cooperation in which new subjectivities, relationships and hierarchies of power were forged. In South Africa, missionary wives of the 18th and early 19th century had in common their experiences of living in remote, isolated and sometimes dangerous settings, much of their time taken up with domestic duties.1 In what was still only a developing mission bureaucracy, their spiritual role was relatively undefined, but the popular image of the pious wife, devoted helpmeet and domestic angel was one that powerfully informed their relationship with the missionary endeavour. In most accounts of the early history of the LMS and Robert Moffat’s life and work, Mary Moffat remains a self-effacing figure, the helpmeet of a ‘great man’ renowned for his work as evangelist, translator of the Bible into Setswana, author of the influential Missionary Labours and Scenes in

‘Servant of the Cross’ 153 South Africa (1842) and a founder of the Kuruman Mission. Mary Moffat’s life has been fairly well documented, precisely because she was the wife of the famous Robert Moffat and mother-in-law to the even more famous David Livingstone (1813–1873). A fragmented archive of her letters provides a rich source of information about her life at Kuruman and the journeys she undertook over the course of half a century in the mission field. Regarded as a model of womanly self-sacrifice and decorum and an exemplary companion to her husband in his evangelical work,2 it is easy to forget that she was also a formidable figure in her own right. In Southern Africa, missionary wives found themselves exported to frontier zones where their identities were often refashioned in unexpected, unsettling and complex ways. Without losing sight of the specificities of her context and experiences, Moffat’s writings are a lens through which the lives and travels of missionary wives may be obliquely illuminated. Her letters were widely circulated amongst family, friends and evangelical circles. Reading them today offers an intimate and ‘askance’ perspective on the activities of mission stations and experiences of a missionary wife. In examining a selection of her letters,3 this chapter considers the ways in which she represented and navigated the geographical landscapes and social topographies of her new environment, and negotiated the ambiguities and contradictions of her identity as missionary wife and colonial subject. Within these parameters the motif of the journey into the interior is figured as a rite of passage, simultaneously liberating and restrictive, which may be read as a form of mise en abîme in relation to the narrative(s) that emerge from the trajectory of Moffat’s life at the Kuruman Mission.

Reading Gender and Colonial Culture The earliest missionary wife to come to South Africa in 1708 did not leave behind ‘what we should so greatly prize—a woman’s account of the heroic days of the Xhosa mission’ (Kruger 1966: 81–82). However, of the women who travelled to distant corners of the globe during the 19th century, and recorded their experiences, missionary wives formed a substantially large group. This was partly due to their ‘strong sense of audience’ (Davis and Joyce 1989: x). They wrote personal as well as more ‘public’ letters intended to remind evangelical circles of the importance of mission work and to elicit donations. The hardships of missionary life were partly mitigated by the general enthusiasm ‘at home’ for spreading the gospel. By the late 19th century the dominant view of Mary Moffat as dutiful helpmeet was firmly established, and further elaborated in the 20th century. This view emanated from a handful of hagiographic sketches and biographical studies4 which categorised her as a ‘heroine of empire’ and emphasised her adherence to conventional femininity on the one hand, and her intrepid courage and resilience on the other. These latter qualities

154  Michelle Adler were gendered, and conflated with notions of self-sacrifice, virtue and piety, attributes that sat comfortably within the confines of 19th century discourses of femininity. Arguably, the prevailing emphasis on her role as wife, mother and mission stalwart resulted in a skewed impression of Moffat’s life as static and home-bound. However, as her letters reveal, her life was also peripatetic. Her accounts of the tribulations and pleasures of travel belie the assumption of a wholly restricted life, suggested by her identity as an Englishwoman, colonial subject and ‘servant of the cross’.5 Revisionist and feminist historiography has done little to dispel the saintly domestic aura surrounding Moffat. The tendency of late 20th century feminist scholarship to focus on ‘extraordinary’, ‘eccentric’ or antinomian colonial Englishwomen or women travellers6 often excluded her, or, more often than not, reinforced existing ideas about her conventionality and apparent lack of agency, her seemingly unwavering piety and commitment to her husband and the evangelical mission.7 It is not uncommon for her identity to be read as ‘fixed, fearful, and constructed entirely within religious discourse, which limited her agency as speaking subject, and rendered the female body marginal’ (Woodward 1998: 84); but such assumptions come at the cost of more nuanced examinations of subjectivity and identity formation in relation to the complex social world of the northern Cape frontier zone. As Gikandi argues, reading the feminine in the culture of colonialism is a project driven by a paradox: We want to read woman as the absolute other in the colonial relation so that we can unpack the universalism of the imperial narrative and its masculine ideologies, but the result (positing white women as figures of colonial alterity, for example) can be achieved only through the repression of their cultural agency and the important role that they play in the institutionalization of the dominant discourse of empire and the authority of colonial culture. (Gikandi 1996: 122) How, then—to follow Gikandi’s train of thought—do we read the colonial experiences of Mary Moffat, who defines her identity in terms of service to husband, God and England, yet is situated in the margins of colonial culture? Moffat did not transcend the ideologies of empire, exemplified by an assumption of racial and caste superiority; nor did she appear to rise above domestic confinement to find new opportunities for self-expression and agency. But a monolithic ‘single story’ about missionary wives should not go unchallenged; by reading Moffat’s life and letters in relation to the specificities of her location in time and space, a more nuanced recognition of the ambiguities and contradictions of identity formation emerges.8 In particular, her many journeys, often without her husband,9 suggest an ambivalent relationship to patriarchal colonial culture and dominant discourses of femininity. John Smith Moffat recalls

‘Servant of the Cross’ 155 his mother as ‘timid’ and ‘anxious’ (Moffat 1889: 304); and yet, Moffat’s gruelling and often perilous travels required courage, independence, self-reliance and an extraordinary fortitude. Sometimes she experienced a sense of adventure, freedom, and wonder: ‘I was perfectly enraptured’, wrote Moffat of one journey, ‘on entering the first valley . . . of the Bakhatla; and it being necessary for me to get out of the waggon on account of the rugged path, I could examine the shrubs to my great delight. It seemed altogether another region of the world’ (Moffat 1889: 173). An examination of such moments in her descriptions of travel suggests that the limitations imposed on women in colonial cultures should be read not as an insurmountable barrier to self-inscription, but as ‘discursively productive, in that these constraints enable a form of writing whose contours both disclose the nature of the dominant discourses and constitute a critique from its margins’ (Mills 1996: 23).

Ambiguities of Dependence: The Northern Cape Frontier Zone To early missionaries, the African interior presented itself as virgin ground to be broken, the landscape waiting to be inscribed and invested with history, its inhabitants to be civilised and Christianised (Ranger 1987: 159–161). The Cape was one of the few places in Africa where northern Europeans had access to the continental interior: Indeed, it became a ‘canonical testing site for the civilising mission in the labours of the London Missionary Society’ (Pratt 1992: 40). In their influential study of early 19th century encounters between missionaries and the southern Tswana in the northern Cape, John and Jean Comaroff argue that in Southern and Central Africa, in particular, colonialism extended far beyond the reaches of British military might for much of the 19th century. And it was borne by soldiers who, armed with sextants and moral certainties, with trade goods and technology, conjured up new maps, new systems of human relationship, new concepts of personhood, time and labour—new orders of domination. It was these soldiers who sowed the state of colonialism upon which the colonial state was to be founded. (Comaroff and Comaroff 1988: 7–8) Along with sextants and moral certainties, most missionaries also brought a wife. Indeed, although it was commonly believed that women were physically delicate, and young women of respectable families were hedged in by protective prohibitions, ‘the LMS in its early years expected its missionaries to have wives and families, and took for granted that women would endure whatever hardships were to be met alongside their men’ (Dickson 1976: 36).10

156  Michelle Adler The missionary enterprise was born in part out of the anti-slavery movement and the late 18th century evangelical revival and was nurtured by the energies of non-conformist Protestant fervour and the ethical convictions of humanitarian philanthropy. In the context of the industrial revolution, evangelical Christianity emerged as a transformation of British Protestant culture. It stressed work, humility, self-sacrifice and duty to God, combining austerity with an emphasis on the ecstatic personal experience of religious conversion (Comaroff 1985: 129–130). However, the role of women in relation to the church was still largely exclusionary: ‘For most Protestant women, the church remained uncompromisingly male in its ordained ministry and hierarchy, and anything women did was supplementary to the central, male work of ministering Word and sacraments’ (Gaitskell 1981: 29). Until the late 19th century women could not be appointed as missionaries, although women attached to mission stations sometimes performed duties traditionally seen as masculine, or subverted the traditional roles they were expected to adhere to.11 The most common path out of the parlour and into the mission field lay in the virtuous role of missionary wife. Most missionary wives lived and worked in the shadows of their husbands, as helpmeets in the ‘great task’ of bringing heathens into the fold of Christianity. Arriving in the Cape in 1819, Mary Moffat began a varied and lively correspondence with friends and family in England, recording her initial journey into the ‘wilderness’ and her unfolding perceptions and experiences of Africa and missionary life. Her letters convey a sense of immediacy as well as a candour and bluntness lacking in most published memoirs or travelogues. Seen as a whole, they allow one to trace the arc of her life as missionary wife against the background of violent social transformation, while providing insights into what Raymond Williams calls the ‘structure of feeling’, in the form of inchoate discursive contestations between adherence to contemporary notions of femininity and Christianity on the one hand, and the harsh demands of mission life, on the other. The letters from Moffat’s first decade at Kuruman are of particular interest, since during these years her impressions were freshest, as she struggled to come to terms with the landscape and social topography of a world wholly alien to a young woman brought up in a close-knit community near Manchester. It has long been the view that during the 18th and early 19th centuries, missionaries played a crucial role in negotiating the cultural, economic and political conflicts that characterised colonial contact zones in South Africa (Comaroff and Comaroff 1988, 1991; De Kok 1996). But the implication of this view, argues Elizabeth Elbourne, is that missionaries are seen as self-conscious colonial agents who wittingly ‘acted as the cultural arm of colonialism’ (Elbourne 2003: 439). Whether one accepts this view of missionaries or not, Moffat’s letters provide an oblique insight into the intersecting interests of missionary endeavour

‘Servant of the Cross’ 157 and colonial expansion, not least as exemplified by the idea of a ‘civilising mission’ which sought to ‘reconfigure Tswana consciousness and the Tswana notion of the self’ (Elbourne 2003: 437). Significantly, Moffat’s letters allow glimpses into the ways in which frontier zones such as the northern Cape forged an ‘ambiguous dependence’ between missionaries and indigenous populations, a powerful riposte to the view that frontier regions were always zones of starkly defined, ineluctable and immutable conflict between coloniser and colonised.12 On 8 December  1819, Mary Smith wrote to her parents effusively that ‘my cup of happiness seems almost full; here I have found [Robert] all that my heart could desire, except his being worn out with anxiety’ (Moffat 1889: 47).13 The couple were married on 27 December, the bride given away by the prominent LMS missionary Dr  John Philip (1775– 1851). From the moment of her arrival at the Cape, Moffat was in almost every sense of the word dependent on her husband, not only physically, emotionally and financially, but also in terms of her spiritual role and identity. Her position was in some respects similar to that of ‘the incorporated wife’: A woman whose status and identity is derived solely from that of her husband (Callan and Ardener 1984). In her correspondence she insistently casts herself in the only indisputably acceptable role open to her: That of dutiful wife and helpmeet to Robert Moffat, the hero and protagonist of her letters. Acutely conscious of the ‘great task’ awaiting her husband in this ‘godforsaken’ region, her letters amplified the heroic image of the missionary in Africa then being popularised in Britain, while simultaneously diminishing her own role.14 In a telling phrase, Moffat wrote that she feared ‘being betrayed into mischief’ by speaking her mind, and consequently she needed to hold her tongue, or in her own words, ‘[bridle] that unruly member of mine’ (Woodward 1998: 84). Her words suggest an acute awareness of the need to silence and control her instincts and emotions, in the interest of her role as missionary wife. The tension of self-censorship is palpable in her letters across the decades. One might assume that such repressive selfcontrol would be exacerbated on the arduous journey towards Kuruman, but as we shall see, her experience of the journey into the interior was not only a rite of passage, but also shot through with the pleasure of freedom and adventure.

Topographies of Difference Early in 1820 the Moffats set off with John Campbell, a fellow LMS missionary, for Lattakoo (Dithakong), a Sotho-Tswana settlement just east of Kuruman, on the edge of the Kalahari, and the original site of the ‘old’ Kuruman mission station. Once past Beaufort-West, 350 miles north of Cape Town, they crossed what was then the colonial boundary into ‘bushman country’. As John Smith Moffat puts it, once his parents left behind

158  Michelle Adler the ‘fertile valleys and lovely mountain scenery of the Breede and Hex Rivers, they had to traverse a comparatively desolate region for some hundreds of miles’ (Moffat 1889: 50). Journeys by wagon were exceedingly slow and required a different relationship to time and space. Writing to her parents on 17 February  1820, Moffat described the terrain as ‘wild and barren country’, yet she appeared thoroughly to enjoy the journey, not least due to a sense of freedom and the temporary abandonment of convention: My health is extraordinary. It is true I feel a little feeble and languid in the very heat of the day, but I am not sickly as I always was at home in warm weather. I never was more vigorous than I am now in the cool of the day; and when I consider the manner in which we live, just eating and sleeping when it is convenient, I am truly astonished . . . I like waggon travelling better than I expected. It is not so fatiguing. I have had none of those hardships that I looked for. (Moffat 1889: 51) Significantly, Moffat’s assertions about her health and easy adaptation to the demands of travel inadvertently unsettle gendered assumptions of women as dependent and fragile.15 At this stage of the journey, infrequently interrupted by encounters with Boer wagons, she was not yet aware of the depth of hostility of many colonial settlers and farmers, who resented missionary intrusion into frontier areas and persistently disrupted their endeavours. As the Comaroffs succinctly put it, ‘the journey to the frontier—on what was to become the missionary road—was a passage across a highly conflicted social map, one not always receptive to the contours of the evangelist’s dream’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1988: 9). Indeed, Elizabeth Elbourne argues that the ‘lands of the southern Tswana were disrupted by colonialism, drought, hunger, and regional conflict well before the formal advent of the mission’ (Elbourne 2003: 444). The journey to the missionary field gave rise to an established European genre in the form of epic accounts of missionary ‘labours and scenes’, which shared features of intention and style with the increasingly popular literature of travel and exploration: This was a literature of the imperial frontier, a colonising discourse that titillated the Western imagination with glimpses of radical otherness which it simultaneously brought under intellectual control. What distinguished the reports of missionaries from more self-effacing travel narratives was their personalised, heroic form, for as soldiers of the spiritual empire, their biographies—their battles with the forces of darkness—linked individual achievement to the conquest of civilisation. (Comaroff and Comaroff 1988: 9–10)16

‘Servant of the Cross’ 159 By contrast, little of this self-aggrandising heroism is found in the writings of missionary wives, who with modest self-effacement also wrote about the rigours of travel and the triumphs and disappointments of missionary life.17 For missionaries and their wives the overland journey was a rite of passage through the African wilderness. The landscape is frequently represented as ‘wild’, ‘desolate’, ‘parched’ and ‘lonely’. Moreover, it was apparently ‘empty of the human marks that Europeans associated with culture’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1988: 12) since Africans left only ‘scratches on the face of the country’ (Pratt 1986) rather than inscribing themselves onto the landscape in the form of roads, buildings, fences and other recognisable markers of ‘civilisation’. According to J. M. Coetzee, one topography of the South African pastoral project which can be traced in early travel descriptions of the interior is that of a vast, empty, silent space, older than man, older than the dinosaurs whose bones lie bedded in its rocks, and destined to be vast, empty and unchanged long after man has passed from its face. Under such a conception of Africa—‘Africa, oldest of the continents’—the task of the human imagination is to conceive not a social order capable of domesticating the landscape, but any kind of relation at all that consciousness can have with it. (Coetzee 1988: 6) This was Moffat’s struggle as she contemplated what appeared to her an immense, colourless and silent emptiness, in which she and her fellow travellers must have appeared exceedingly small, insignificant and vulnerable. The landscape she encountered was to her eye neither picturesque nor sublime, but a space defined by absence; a landscape with which her imagination failed to connect. Her representations of landscape reveal complex undercurrents: Physically as well as metaphorically it appeared to her a barren desert, interminably waiting to be watered by rain as much as by evangelical effort. This arid terrain could not have presented a more striking contrast to the soft, green, and comparatively densely populated English countryside she had left behind. ‘We have been in a perfect desert called the Karroo [sic]’, she wrote to her parents on 17 February 1820, in the last ten days we never saw but one house till last night, about two hours ride from [Beaufort West]. . . . There are few other things except succulent plants, and everything in the desert, except the mimosas, has a blue and yellow sickly hue with the saltpetre. We have scarcely seen any grass for a fortnight. . . . (Moffat 1889: 52)

160  Michelle Adler From her representations of landscape we gain some understanding of Moffat’s struggle to relocate herself in spatial and spiritual terms. Her experiences and perception of Africa were informed by a particularly ‘English’ cultural consciousness and frame of reference.18 In endeavouring to make sense of encounters with the unfamiliar, ‘the traveller must seek to attach unknown entities to known reference points, and to familiar frameworks of meaning and understanding’ (Thompson 2011: 67). Moffat searched everywhere for the soothingly familiar, green and pleasant countryside of home; for signs of cultivation and a recognisable human presence in the landscape: On our entrance to [Griqua Town] I  was pleased. I  thought the landscape resembled that of England, the cornfields and the gardens being very pleasing, and here and there trees scattered; trees are not to be seen in general in Africa, except on the banks of rivers. (Moffat 1889: 52) But the orderly demarcations of the ‘English’ landscape around Griqua Town were soon overwhelmed by the disorderly vastness and, to her eye, featurelessness of the terrain beyond. In a letter dated 8 April 1820 she writes: ‘Upon the whole, as a country I am greatly disappointed. It is my opinion that the new settlers will be deceived if they expect a fat land. Were I choosing a country either for a comfortable livelihood or pleasure, it should be old England still’ (Moffat 1889: 57). Even after many years in South Africa, Moffat continued to cling to an English cultural identity, and viewed the landscapes of her adopted home through ‘English’ eyes. Indeed, colonial spaces also provided the traveller with a mirror for visualising Englishness. Moffat’s letters suggest a willingness to engage with her new environment, yet simultaneously reveal her alienation and her longing for a very different aesthetic and natural world; a world of brooks, dales, daffodils and badgers, hedgerows, villages with church spires. Until a language and grammar could be found to describe, codify and represent the Karoo and Kalahari, the African landscape would remain alien and impenetrable to her. As Coetzee argues, ‘it is no oversimplification to say that landscape art and landscape writing in South Africa from the beginning of the 19th century to the middle of the twentieth revolve around the question of finding a language to fit Africa, a language that will be authentically African’ (Coetzee 1988: 7). This was a language that continued to elude Mary Moffat. Once beyond the frontier, the fragile connections with ‘civilisation’ virtually vanished. The only secure path back was along a tenuous chain of widely spaced mission stations. Henceforth the only means of communication with family and friends would be through the exchange of letters that could take months to reach the Cape and eventually England.19 Small wonder that the writing and reception of letters became a crucial

‘Servant of the Cross’ 161 and important part of missionary women’s lives. As Moffat wrote on 22 August 1822, ‘you can form no idea of the delicious repast which a wellfilled letter affords . . .’ (Moffat 1889: 177).20 If the African interior was to Moffat’s eye featureless, empty and resistant to meaning, she could however harness the evangelical metaphor of a journey towards salvation, to make sense of her movement across its expanses. Arriving at Lattakoo, four days beyond Griqua Town and one day’s journey from the source or ‘eye’ of the Kuruman River, Moffat wrote to her ‘beloved parents’ in April 1820: You can hardly conceive how I feel when I sit in the house of God, surrounded with the natives; though my situation may seem despicable and mean indeed in the eyes of the world, I feel an honour conferred upon me which the highest of the kings of the earth could not have done me; and add to this seeing my dear husband panting for the salvation of the people with an unabated ardour, firmly resolving to direct every talent which God has given him to their good and His glory. I am happy, remarkably happy. . . .’ (Moffat 1889: 57)

Regarding Others The northern Cape was of course not an ‘empty’ landscape: Moffat’s letters were increasingly preoccupied with describing the indigenous population, who appeared to her as alien as the landscape itself. One of the myths that continues to cling to the trope of ‘heroine of empire’ is the notion that women were more compassionate, open-minded and less racist than their male counterparts, thus obfuscating their varied and unsettling assumptions regarding Christianity, class, race and gender. Indeed, missionary women—often dependent, isolated and marginalised, living and working in a colonial context where the differences between Christian and heathen were starkly drawn—usually shared dominant ideologies of race and the missionary enterprise, and Moffat was no exception. In her letters she falls into some of the familiar patterns and tropes characteristic of what Coetzee calls early ‘white writing’: ‘The indolence of the people is a formidable obstacle in the way of civilisation’ (Moffat 1889: 57), she wrote to her parents from Lattakoo on 8 April 1820. Thus the African subject is ‘seen as alienated from labour and the cognitive value of work’ (Gikandi 1996: 129). Missionaries saw themselves ‘surrounded by a people just struggling into light out of darkness, dimly grasping the value of civilisation, but needing much help and guidance’ (Moffat 1889: 170). For Moffat, Africans were benighted heathens in a dark continent, desperately in need of salvation: ‘Horror and devastation reign over the whole land, darkness covers it, and gross darkness the people . . . it is only the gospel of peace which can raise the degenerate son of Adam’ (Moffat 1889: 86). Over

162  Michelle Adler time, her views hardened into a relentless racism. ‘In the natives of South Africa’, she wrote in July 1824, ‘there is nothing naturally engaging; their extreme selfishness, filthiness, obstinate stupidity, and want of sensibility, have a tendency to disgust, and sometimes cause the mind to shrink from the idea of spending the whole life amongst them, far from every tender and endearing circle’ (Moffat 1889: 87).21 As the Comaroffs argue, Caught in the critical English gaze, the disorderly savage shows himself incapable of rational foresight, unable to see time as a scare resource to be put to the cause of improvement. The European observer finds his urgency and self-control foundering in the sloth of Africa, and his narrative establishes at the outset the fundamental tension that his mission must transcend. (Comaroff and Comaroff 1988: 12) However, through conversion and baptism savages and heathens could be redeemed, humanised, civilised and domesticated. Travelling vast distances ‘alone’ to visit her daughters at school in Salem near Grahamstown, Moffat was grateful to be escorted by ‘Bechwanas [sic] who a few years before were mere barbarians, not to say savages’ (Moffat 1889: 122). Initially stationed at Griqua Town, Moffat confronted the problems of housekeeping without the benefits of the basic amenities to which she was accustomed: Sparseness of firewood, washing in the river, drinking thickened, sour milk fermented in a goatskin sack; floors smeared to a smooth polish with layers of fresh green cow dung. Moreover, she complained that the local women employed as servants found her domestic arrangements and instructions inexplicable and ludicrous, helped themselves to stores and tools, and showed no respect for her privacy. Nonetheless, a slow, almost imperceptible adjustment took place: Not only was the fermented milk after a time ‘delicious’, but she wrote that ‘I now look at my floor with as much complacency as I used to do upon our best rooms when scoured’ (Moffat 1889: 64). In time she also created her ‘own special world among the women and girls of the settlement. She knew them all, and watched them with love and care’, her son John Smith Moffat recalls (Moffat 1889: 304). One of the most striking aspects of Moffat’s letters is the relative absence of African voices. Carl Thompson argues that travel writing entails the traveller achieving a symbolic or psychological mastery over the people and places they describe. Moreover, the travel writer’s act of self-fashioning also often proceeds by a logic of differentiation, whereby the Other is constructed in some subtle or unsubtle way principally as foil or counterpoint to the supposedly heroic, civilised and/or cultured protagonist. (Thompson 2011: 119)

‘Servant of the Cross’ 163 Thus the selves and subjectivities on show in any travel account are usually ‘fashioned over and against a series of others who are denied the power of representing themselves’ (Lisle 2006: 69), demonstrating a significant imbalance in the power of self-representation. If Africans were denied a voice in her letters, Moffat was acutely aware of how they returned her gaze. The rarity value of white women in the interior made her an object of scrutiny, an experience Moffat found disconcerting and which enhanced her sense of cultural dislocation. Writing to his parents on 18 September 1820, Robert Moffat described a visit to a Tswana village as follows: The inhabitants here never having been visited by white people before, made our visit the more interesting to them, who of course received us as curiosities, especially Mary, who got plenty to stare at her and her dress. They have often sat nearly the whole of the day gazing upon our movements, and especially our sitting together at table when dining in the tent, or using knives and forks, plates and different dishes, was such a sight they had never seen before or heard of. (Moffat 1889: 59) In the liminal space opened up by first encounters, ‘each party contemplated the corporeal exoticism of the other with frank fascination, even desire’ (Comaroffs 1991: 193). Still, this passage is unusual in its awareness and acknowledgement of the African gaze turned upon the traveller, and the unsettling recognition that the travelling selves are intruders as well as exotic objects of scrutiny and otherness. Robert Moffat’s description of the small missionary party sitting together under canvas to dine, with their knives and forks, plates and dishes, and their unfamiliar whiteness, suggests a profound degree of awareness that in the colonial context seemingly unremarkable, everyday practices must inevitably take on the dimensions and symbolic weight of a performance of missionary ‘manners and customs’. As de Kok notes, ‘[it] was the work of the mission to stress the signs and practices of European culture’ (de Kok 1996: 48), and one locale for this was the domestic space.

God, Domesticity, Travel and Colonial Culture As discussed above, a striking feature of 19th century discourses of femininity is the contradictory representation of missionary wives: On the one hand they were figured as frail and weak, in need of protection, although they must also exemplify the ‘cultivated female’, tasked with giving an air of refinement and respectability to the missionary household; on the other hand, missionary ‘heroines of empire’ were represented as courageous and resilient in the face of danger and difficulty. Missionary wives were thus ‘split between evangelism, which demanded that the missionary

164  Michelle Adler be active in converting others and fearless in braving the wilderness . . . and Christian femininity, which prescribed that the family and home take precedence over the public sphere’ (Woodward 1996: 100). Whatever the reality, missionary wives generally figured themselves as dutiful wives, mothers and ‘servants of the cross’, rather than adventureloving travellers or pioneers. The powerful sense of domestic duty that imbued the lives of missionary women stemmed directly from the 19th century doctrine of ‘separate spheres’ for women and men, a duality that seemed both natural and desirable. Similarly, mission societies saw the role of women in the field as substantially different to that of men, often scrutinising wives for qualities of ‘true refinement’ that were, ironically, ill-suited to survival. The combined ‘womanly’ concerns of domestic duty and philanthropy were institutionalised as women’s primary roles in the missionary endeavour. Marriages that successfully combined ‘separate spheres’ were later known in missionary circles as companionate missionary marriages (Cleall 2013), ‘where husband and wife worked together towards a common goal. This did not necessarily involve doing the same kind of work . . . husband and wife had separate, complementary, and equally important responsibilities’ (Harnes 2014: 173). According to John Smith Moffat, his mother ‘held eminently practical views of life. She used to say that her first duty was to take care of her husband’s health and strength, and in this way to contribute to the success of his work, where she could not serve the cause more directly  .  .  .’ (Moffat 1889: 304). Sometimes Moffat took charge of the Kuruman mission while her husband ‘itinerated’ in the hinterland for two months or longer. ‘I am again become a widow for a time’, she wrote to her parents in July 1824: I feel my Solitude very much. . . . But, trying as it is, I feel a satisfaction in sacrificing my dear husband’s company when I reflect that it is for the cause of Christ’s sake; and I feel persuaded that these journeys into the Interior are of no small importance to the Kingdom of our Lord, as they prepare the way for the spread of the gospel. . . . (Moffat 1889: 157) Contradictory discursive impulses are visible in Moffat’s accounts of her own travels. The conventions of femininity act as a powerful textual constraint in her writing, while simultaneously offering glimpses into a life that required remarkable fortitude, courage and independence, although the expression of these qualities is usually provisional, self-deprecating and muted. At times acutely conscious that her travels might be construed as unwomanly waywardness, Moffat is at pains to reassure her correspondents of the necessity but also the seemliness of travel: Though I wish to convince you that we do not lead such a gypsy life as brother Sandy seems to suspect, I shall by no means attempt to

‘Servant of the Cross’ 165 prove that it is a remarkably pleasant life, for we are always heartily tired by the time the journey is done. It is at the same time a lazy and a busy life—all bustle when we stop, and unfavourable to sewing and reading when we are moving; but custom and necessity reconcile us to it. (Moffat 1889: 72) She is also at pains to reassure her parents that a peripatetic life is not too arduous for someone who in England had been ‘frail’ and constantly ill. ‘I must endeavour to remove some mistakes under which you seen to labour respecting African travelling’, she wrote in August 1822: ‘We are so accustomed to travelling that in general we think that journey [from Griqua Town to Lattakoo] a mere trifle . . . it is a rule of mine that when my husband goes with the waggon for more than two days I go with him, unless circumstances render it improper’ (Moffat 1889: 71).22 Moffat represented the wagon as an extension of the domestic space of home: ‘You can form no idea how comfortable our waggons are. They are very light vehicles, and in them we carry all necessary comforts. If there are children, they play on the bed or lie asleep’ (Moffat 1889: 71). Nonetheless, wagon journeys were attended by various dangers: ‘In many places a sharp look-out must be kept lest the Bushmen seize our oxen while grazing; in other places the lion is on his prowl for the same object . . .’ (Moffat 1889: 72). In 1833 Moffat once again travelled to Port Algoa Bay—a distance of 600 miles—‘alone’ but for a BaTswana escort. On her return she wrote to Mrs Roby of Manchester on 1 October 1833, that My journey was exceedingly prosperous, nothing worthy the name of an accident having taken place, though the waggons had extraordinary weight upon them. My travelling company of servants consisted of five Bechwana men and one Hottentot as drivers, leaders and loose cattle drivers, and a girl to nurse my baby. In one of these men, Paul, one of the first converts, I had great comfort. . . . Ever since his conversion, nearly five years ago, we have esteemed him highly, but now justly more than ever. (Moffat 1889: 123) Moffat believed that ‘divine protection’ and the status of missionaries were safeguards during travel. In 1846, anxious about her daughter Mary Livingstone, ill and isolated at the new LMS station at Chonwane, Moffat made the journey north to visit her, travelling with an African hunting party and three of her young children. Writing to her husband from Maretsane on 3 September 1846, she described what to English ears at home would have sounded harrowing, including confrontations with lions and lack of water: ‘Today we had to dig for it. The country is indeed

166  Michelle Adler very dry. Game is tolerably plentiful. We got beautiful water yesterday in the sandy bed of the Sitlagole River’ (Moffat 1889: 172). By her own account her most painful journeys were those she made to settle her children in Cape boarding schools or to send them to England, against which her ‘heart rebelled for some time’: ‘I tore myself from my darlings’, she wrote on 17 March 1846, ‘to return to my desolate lodgings to contemplate my solitary journey, and to go to my husband and home childless’ (Moffat 1889: 178).23 Moffat’s daughter Elizabeth Lees Price, a prolific writer of letters and journals, recalled the pain of parting from her mother: If I see anything vividly in my past life, I see [Mother] in the boat wh. carried her away fr. our ship after our parting—her hands up-lifted to us, her eyes streaming with tears & I remember thinking to myself ‘Oh mother! what terrible thing is this that is happening to us!’ (Long 1956: 51) Price offers us an oblique insight into Moffat’s role as a mother, one that suggests a greater complexity than her rather austere piety suggests. Recalling the journey into the interior to visit Mary Livingstone at Chonwane, Price wrote: That journey was the most delightful memory of my life—for all children love the wagon and gypsy life—but here too we had our Mother to ourselves devoting herself to us entirely so as she cd. not at home with her many wheels of mission & home work running. (Long 1956: 51) The joyousness and sense of freedom palpable in Price’s recollection is powerfully reminiscent of Moffat’s first journey north along the ‘missionary road’. ‘I shall never forget the delight with which I explored the old wagon’, wrote Price about another journey, this time from the Cape to Kuruman: There seemed a halo of happiness encircling my mother & the old wagon, for all my brightest associations in life were with her & that wagon  & that lovely old Kuruman to wh. we were going  .  .  . the outspanning times under a tree or by a bush were delightful with the Camp fire, the Coffee and the rusks. . . . (Long 1956: 53–55) The journeys Mary Moffat made in later life were not made through a ‘trackless desert’, as she had imagined when she first set off for the northern frontier. The well-worn missionary road, a scattering of villages and mission stations, and Kuruman itself, were signs that missionaries

‘Servant of the Cross’ 167 had over time written themselves into the topography of the northern Cape and extended a familiar world. Indeed, on occasion, Moffat’s travels became for her a source of adventure and wonder: I was perfectly enraptured . . . I had had a long walk up and down the hill, and was greatly excited by everything about me, and felt terribly nervous and weak, and was glad to lie down my head to rest in that beautiful kloof. Had I not been so tired I would have sat til midnight, that the moon might shed additional beauty on the scenery. (Moffat 1889: 173) Mary Moffat, too, loved the ‘gypsy life’.

Conclusion There is no doubt that a life of extreme physical and emotional hardship awaited missionary wives and their families, as well as years or even decades of spiritual disappointment, far removed from the popular picture of rewarding missionary activity accepted in England.24 Nonetheless, in the midst of drought, famine, warfare and strife,25 Mary Moffat created a home and a garden at Kuruman, taught the gospel, bore ten children, suffered illness and bitter heartache, travelled widely, and often managed the mission station during her husband’s frequent and prolonged absences. By the mid-19th century, when the fascination with African exploration swept through Britain and Europe, the Kuruman Mission had become a flourishing centre of missionary activity and the springboard for exploratory journeys further north into ever more remote and ‘unmapped’ terrain. The narrative of Mary Moffat’s life as a missionary wife and ‘servant of the cross’, refracted through fragments of her letters, is inevitably skewed, impressionistic and incomplete. Nonetheless, these letters offer glimpses into the consciousness and lived experiences of a woman simultaneously ordinary and unusual, one of the many women who, armed with moral certainties and a powerful sense of duty to God, travelled into the South African interior as missionary wives. Around her she saw emptiness, and savagery, and the elusive potential of salvation that would make ‘the desert bloom’. She was myopic and selective when it came to understanding diverse cultural practices and belief systems other than her own: Most of her representations of Africans are mediated by a strong sense of otherness and difference, which she misread as indolence and heathen depravity. At times she could be empathetic, insightful or appreciative when it came to individuals such as Paul, an early convert. If there was one constant in her life it was her unshakable belief in the missionary project. Throughout her 50  years as missionary wife, Moffat was sustained by a powerful commitment to the immense task of spreading the

168  Michelle Adler gospel and winning converts for Christianity. Despite her restrictive role, the missionary project also provided her with an unexpected opportunity for a degree of agency and adventure, in the form of a journey to a new world and new life, where her identity could be subtly and almost invisibly refashioned. Because missionary wives’ domestic and philanthropic duties were a necessary though undervalued part of missionary work, they could see themselves as partners in the great task of saving souls, and derived status, authority and self-esteem from this. Indeed, mission work could be a source of empowerment. The 50 years Mary Moffat spent dedicating herself to husband, family and God shaped the ways in which she understood her place in the world as a helpmeet to her husband in his great task. At times she was restrained and hemmed in by expectations and perceptions—not least her own—of the role of Englishwomen in colonial cultures, particularly that of the ‘missionary wife’; at other times she displayed an extraordinary degree of agency, as in her many journeys sans husband, enjoying the ‘gypsy life’.

Notes 1. Several 19th century accounts by missionary wives or daughters provide vivid vignettes of life in missionary households. These include, inter alia, K. Schoeman (ed.), The Recollections of Elizabeth Rolland, 1803–1901 (1987); Missionary Life Among the Zulu-Kaffirs: Memorials of Henrietta Robertson wife of the Reverend R. Robertson (1866); W. Reed (ed.), Colenso Letters from Natal (1958); and A Lady’s Life and Travels in Zululand and the Transvaal during Cetewayo’s reign, being the African letters and journals of the late Mrs Wilkinson (1882). 2. Mary Moffat is the subject of several hagiographic biographical sketches and books, inter alia Emma Raymond Pitman’s Heroines of the Mission Field: Biographical Sketches (1880); John Smith Moffat’s The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat (1888); and Mora Dickson’s Beloved Partner (1976). More recent studies such as those by Wendy Woodward (1996, 1998) attempt to address the relative neglect of Mary Moffat and other missionary women in mainstream historiography. 3. Moffat’s letters and journals were not written for publication, nor were they intended as historical documents. Nonetheless, they provide us with biographical and historical insights that are not easily available elsewhere. For the purposes of this chapter I  focus on Moffat’s letters, particularly those written during her first decade at the Kuruman Mission. These were edited by her son, John Smith Moffat, and included in his biography of his parents, The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat (1889). See also Isaac Schapera (ed.), Apprenticeship at Kuruman, Being the Journals and Letters of Robert and Mary Moffat, 1820–8 (1951). Fifty-four of Mary Moffat’s letters are archived at the Cory Library, Grahamstown, South Africa (Stanley 2018). 4. The most comprehensive of these is Mora Dickson’s Beloved Partner (1974). 5. John Smith Moffat, recalls that his mother was ‘constitutionally timid . . . she was all through her life subject to dark and anxious forebodings, which only Christian principle could overcome; but once let her see the path of duty, and nothing could turn her aside’ (Moffat 1889: 304).

‘Servant of the Cross’ 169 6. Foster and Mills point out that scholarship about women travellers is often skewed towards those who were intrepid, eccentric or heroic; conventional women travellers are often ignored (Foster and Mills 2002). 7. See for example Woodward’s work on missionary women: Moffat is a foil for transgressive figures such as Ann Hamilton (1996, 1998). 8. Foster and Mills warn against making ‘global statements about the nature of women’s travel writing. Gender interacts with other variables, such as race, age, class and financial position, education, political ideals and historical period . . .’ (2002: 1). 9. Moffat’s journeys without her husband include those undertaken to settle various children in boarding schools at the Cape and elsewhere, or to send them to England; collecting supplies, books, printing equipment and materials; visits to consult Cape doctors; two voyages to England; and later, numerous visits to daughters settled at mission stations in the interior or northern hinterland. 10. One reason for the LMS preference for married missionaries was to prevent them from consorting with local women, a source of scandal at the time of Mary Smith’s arrival at the Cape. 11. Missionary societies did not appoint female missionaries until after 1860, but there were nonetheless some missionary women who took on missionary roles in an unofficial capacity (Midgley 2006). At the Kuruman mission Ann Hamilton, the wife of missionary Robert Hamilton, sometimes took on some of her husband’s official duties, such as writing reports for the LMS, but also caused a scandal by refusing to embody the accepted role of helpmeet and denying him his ‘conjugal rights’ (Woodward 1998). 12. The term ‘colonial frontier’ is often inadequate for describing what may be better understood as a zone of interaction (inter alia, Penn 2001; Elbourne 2003; Legassick 2011). 13. Robert Moffat’s anxiety was largely due to the fact that the LMS was at the time in a state of disarray, due to a series of sexual scandals as well as conflicts over whether missionaries should be permitted to intervene in colonial politics, such as instances of maltreatment of slaves. 14. It was not unusual ‘for a wife’s papers or a daughter’s to be pressed into service of a male-orientated concept of history. . . . Papers edited in this way not only do violence to the writings of an individual woman, but to history as well’ (Cline 1989: xxxi–xxxii). 15. It is likely that Moffat also felt impelled to de-emphasise the difficulties and dangers of travel, for the sake of her anxious parents. 16. Robert Moffat’s Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa (1842) was widely influential and an early example of the personalised and heroic missionary narrative. See also David Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857) and John Lambert’s Missionary Heroes in Africa: True Stories of the Intrepid Bravery and Stirring Adventures of Missionaries with Uncivilised Man, Wild Beasts and the Forces of Nature (1909). 17. If there is a ‘difference’ between male and female colonial travel writing of the 19th century, it may well be a difference of genre. Although she made many journeys across South Africa without her husband, in her writing Moffat never ventured beyond the appropriately feminine private realm of letters and journal entries. 18. As Helmers and Mazzeo argue, it is axiomatic that travellers infuse their view of new landscapes with their own background and preoccupations (2007).

170  Michelle Adler 19. When Mary Moffat’s mother died on 22 August  1824, the news reached Kuruman only in April 1825. 20. Letters were necessarily long and detailed, written over several days or weeks, and coloured by the underlying assumption that they would be read by many people in addition to the immediate recipient. 21. Such views were not uncommon, and at Kuruman were reinforced by Moffat’s deep disappointment at the lack of converts during the first decade in the field, and by ongoing violence in the region, part of the massive upheavals popularly if erroneously called the ‘Mantatee invasions’, and later known as the difaqane, a SeSotho term. 22. ‘Improper’ circumstances is a reference to pregnancy. 23. The longest separation was from her daughter Helen, whom she did not see for 27 years. 24. The Kuruman mission won its first convert only in 1829. 25. The mission station was often in the firing line of violent conflict and survived several attacks.

References Callan, H. and S. Ardener. (eds.). 1984. The Incorporated Wife. London: Croom Helm. Cleall, Esme. 2013. ‘Far-Flung Families and Transient Domesticity: Missionary Households in Metropole and Colony’, Victorian Review, 39(2): 163–179. Cline, C. 1989. Women’s Diaries, Journals and Letters an Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, xxxi–xxxii. Coetzee, J.M. 1988. White Writing. New Haven: Yale University Press. Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 1988. ‘Through the Looking-Glass: Colonial Encounters of the First Kind’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 1(1): 6–32. ———. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Davis, Gwenn and Beverly A. Joyce. 1989. Personal Writings by Women to 1900. A Bibliography of American and British Women, vol. 1. London: Mansell. De Kok, Leon. 1996. Civilising Barbarians Missionary Narrative and African Textual Response in Nineteenth-Century South Africa. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press. Dickson, Mora. 1976. Beloved Partner Mary Moffat of Kuruman. London: Denis Dobson. Elbourne, Elizabeth. 2003. ‘Word Made Flesh: Christianity, Modernity, and Cultural Colonialism in the Work of Jean and John Comaroff’, The American Historical Review, 108(2): 435–459. Foster, Shirley and Sara Mills (eds.). 2002. An Anthology of Women’s Travel Writing. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gaitskell, Deborah L. 1981. ‘Female Mission Initiatives: Black and White Women in Three Witwatersrand Churches, 1903–1939’. Unpublished PhD. Dissertation, University of London. Gikandi, Simon. 1996. Maps of Englishness Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism. New York: Columbia University Press.

‘Servant of the Cross’ 171 Harnes, Helga. 2014. ‘Pioneer Workers, Invaluable Helpmeets, Good Mothers a Study of the Role of the Missionary Wife in the Church Missionary Society’, Social Science and Missions, 27: 163–191. Helmers, Marguerite and Tilar Mazzeo (eds.). 2007. The Travelling and Writing Self. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kruger, B. 1966. The Pear Tree Blossoms: A History of Moravian Mission Stations in South Africa, 1737–1869. Genadendal: Genadendal Print Works. Legassick, Martin. 2011. The Politics of a South African Frontier: The Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780–1840. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien. Lisle, Debbie. 2006. The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Long, Una. (ed.). 1956. The Journals of Elizabeth Lees Price. London: Edward Arnold. Midgley, Clare. 2006. ‘Can Women Be Missionaries? Envisioning Female Agency in the Early Nineteenth-Century British Empire’, Journal of British Studies, 45(2): 335–358. Mills, Sarah. 1996. Discourses of Difference an Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. London: Routledge. Moffat, John Smith (ed.). 1889. The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat. London: T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. Penn, N. 2001. ‘The Northern Cape Frontier Zone in South African Frontier Historiography’, in L. Russel (ed.), Colonial Frontiers: Indigenous-European Encounters in Settler Societies. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Pitman, Emma Raymond. 1880. Heroines of the Mission Field: Biographical Sketches. London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin and Co. Pratt, Mary-Louise. 1986. ‘Scratches on the Face of the Country; Or What Mr Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushmen’, in Henry L. Gates (ed.), ‘Race’, Writing and Difference. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ———. 1992. Imperial Eyes Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. Ranger, Terrence. 1987. ‘Taking Hold of the Land: Holy Places and Pilgrimages in Twentieth Century Zimbabwe’, Past and Present, 117: 158–194. Schapera, Isaac. (ed.). 1951. Apprenticeship at Kuruman: Being the Journals of Robert and Mary Moffat 1820–1828. London: Chatto and Windus. Schoeman, Karel (ed.). 1987. The Recollections of Elizabeth Rolland 1803–1901. Cape Town: Human and Rouseau. Stanley, Liz. 2018. ‘Whites Writing Whiteness Letters, Domestic Figurations and Representations of Whiteness in South Africa 1770 – 1970s’. www.whiteswrit ingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/Collections/Collections-Portal/Mary-Moffat-Letters-Collec tion, accessed 17 September 2018. Thompson, Carl. 2011. Travel Writing. London: Routledge. Woodward, Wendy. 1996. ‘The Petticoat and the Kaross: Missionary Bodies and the Feminine in the London Missionary Society, 1816–1828’, Kronos: Journal of Cape History, 23: 91–107. ———. 1998. ‘Dis/Embodying Transcendence in the Early Nineteenth Century: Ann Hamilton, Mary Moffat, the London Missionary Society and God’, Journal of Literary Studies, 14(1–2): 80–101.

10 An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land? Mary Eliza Rogers, Gender and British Protestant Imperialism Sarah Irving It has become common knowledge amongst scholars of the Middle East that the accounts of 19th-century Western, especially British, travellers to Palestine are not to be trusted, and Mary Eliza Rogers’ Domestic Life in Palestine (1862) is no exception. As an eminent historian of the Middle East, James Gelvin, writes: ‘Rogers’ comments are useful for getting a feel of Palestinian village life, [but] it would be wrong to give them too much credence. Like many Western travellers, [. . .] Rogers found in Palestine what she had come to find: the Holy Land, unchanged since the time of Jesus. Little did she realise that her travels coincided with a period of profound change in Palestinian society’ (Gelvin 2005: 22–23). Influenced by Edward Said’s insistence that much orientalist writing ‘has less to do with the Orient than it does with ‘our’ world’ (Said 1978: 20), and an acute awareness of the particular power of Biblical themes in shaping how British travellers experienced and wrote about the ‘Holy Land’, writers such as Rogers are generally seen (at least from the perspective of many scholars of Palestine) first and foremost as part of a complex of knowledge and power which underpinned informal imperialism and then formal colonialism, and created the conditions under which the Palestinian people would eventually be dispossessed by the establishment of the State of Israel. The one area in which Rogers’ travelogue is often discussed as a useful source of serious knowledge is in relation to the numerous women’s quarters she visited during her expeditions. The harem is perhaps the quintessential theme of orientalist writings and the stereotypes of indolent Turks which the former perpetuated. Most orientalist writers, though, were men, and their ideas of the harem very much the product of lurid and racialised imaginings; Rogers’ personal experiences, as a female traveller who could actually enter these forbidden realms, are credited as providing significant detail on the more mundane realities, even if her attitudes were also laden with notions of Christian and European superiority (e.g. Tucker 1990a, 1990b; Haddad 1992), and her usefulness as a source on the private sphere is reflected in the range

An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land? 173 of publications in which she is cited, ranging from Beshara Doumani’s landmark 1995 socio-economic study of the Nablus region (1995: 131), to Nancy Stockdale’s substantial discussion of Rogers’ travels which, however, remains focused on issues of gender and domesticity (2007: 69–76, 91–101, 164–166). For authors wishing to depict domestic life outside of European society in 19th century Palestine, Rogers is the ‘goto’ citation. In this chapter, however, I want to approach Rogers and her writings from a third angle. I do not wholly reject the knowledge-as-power paradigm which Gelvin draws from Said and Foucault, or her book’s value as a source of domestic information. Both are relevant perspectives, but their dominance in how Rogers’ work is construed, perhaps, sees scholars beguiled by Rogers’ own declared interests, in women and in the ‘Orient’. Taking a historically situated approach suggested by Mary Louise Pratt’s approach to travel writers (2008: 8, 44 et passim), I want to return to perhaps the most basic, and yet least-utilised, subject for which Rogers’ writings might be mined: the workings of British imperialism in Palestine, and how the attitudes and mechanics of the imperial project played out on the level of small-scale interventions and interactions. This moves, I  argue, away from the use of travel accounts as pseudoethnographies, and from the tendency not to consider women as active participants in the material, as well as the discursive, aspects of colonialism and imperialism. By considering Rogers through the lens of ideas about the female travel writer as an ‘honorary man’ (Lisle 2006: 95–129), and by focusing on the interplay of the typically gendered public and private spheres in her travelogue, I suggest that her example has lessons for our understanding of the interactions of gender, imperialism and orientalism in 19th-century British interventions in Palestine. Doing so, I argue, de-centres our understanding of the workings of imperialism in mid-19th-century Palestine, shifting it from the usual focus on large-scale military tactics or the opinions of the British public and politicians, to the small-scale but ultimately significant activities of minor officials ‘on the spot’ and their penetration of Palestinian politics, society and culture. Like Anne Lockwood, I argue that women were not just complicit and entangled in British imperialism in the Levant through their role in producing knowledge and cultural depictions, but were much more strongly interwoven with the imperial project (1997: 4 et passim; also Pratt 2008: 26). As such, this chapter is primarily aimed at shifting the usual discourses which surround Rogers, those of orientalism, femaleness and domesticity, and looking instead at the extent to which an understanding of the active role of Victorian women in imperialism points to her as a significant source for our knowledge and interpretations of British imperial interventions in the Ottoman Empire.

174  Sarah Irving

Mary Eliza Rogers Mary Eliza Rogers (1827–1910) was an artist, writer and traveller from a middle-class English family. Her best-known work was Domestic Life in Palestine, published in 1862, an account of four years (1855–1859) spent living and travelling in Palestine alongside her brother, the British vice-consul at Haifa, then a small port city. The title of her book, its re-publication in 1989, and its detailed descriptions of the women’s quarters or harems of some of the homes she visited in mid-19th-century Palestine have ensured that she is often viewed primarily as a source of information on the domestic realm. Judith Tucker, in her review of the re-issued Domestic Life, notes: ‘The attention paid to women and, as the title promises, domestic life. Herein lies the greatest value of Rogers’s account. Not only was she interested in Palestinian women’s lives but, as a woman, she had access to them’ (Tucker 1990a: 137). Beyond this, her writing tends to be viewed as a reflection of orientalist and imperialist attitudes to the Ottoman Empire, and particularly the practice by many European travellers of viewing Palestine as the Holy Land, filtering their visions of the land and its people through a Biblical lens via which ordinary Palestinians about their everyday business become images of ancient religious figures. Rogers’ written output on Palestine, however, was not confined to her personal experiences and tableaux of domestic life. Back in England she was also a successful designer and wood carver, who numbered some of the best-known (male) artists of the period amongst her friends, and specimens of whose work are held in the collection of the Victoria  & Albert Museum (collections.vam.ac.uk). This interest in and knowledge of material culture extended to her writings on the Middle East which, as well as Domestic Life, included a large number of articles for The Art Journal, a significant Victorian cultural magazine published between 1839 and 1912. These covered a variety of non-domestic topics, ranging from several articles on the mosques and tombs of Cairo to a pair on the ‘Causes of Certain Differences in the Styles of Domestic Architecture in Syria and Palestine’, which compared building practices in cities including Hebron, Damascus and Jerusalem, and the environmental factors which played a role in their development (Rogers 1880a, 1880b; Rogers et al. 1880a, 1880b). As her range of writings and artistic practices highlights, Mary Eliza Rogers was not a typical Victorian woman, and her interests were not confined to the domestic. She never married, although in her late 40s and 50s she did take on the care of a total of eight children after her two brothers and their wives died. But, as well as the conventionally ‘feminine’ subjects she wrote about—domestic life, women’s apparel, and the Biblical subtext to her experience of Palestine—Rogers also laid claim to more ‘masculine’ fields of authority, writing on architecture and the

An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land? 175 public sphere, and publishing these works in journals which were dominated by male writers and editors. This overlap of stereotyped Victorian female gender roles, as I hope to demonstrate, offers a view of Rogers’ work that goes beyond the usual focus on the feminine, domestic and orientalist, suggesting other ways in which her writings are useful to historians of the Middle East, whilst also giving a clearer sense of how British imperialism was slowly imposed on the mid-19th-century Levant and the role of British women within this.

The ‘Honorary Man’: Mary Rogers and British Imperialism in the Levant The question of gender in relation to well-known women travellers of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Middle East is a complex one. By definition, most of them were either the wives of colonial officials and officers, accompanying their husbands on service abroad, or they were highly unusual women according to the definitions of their time, of elite backgrounds which allowed them to travel independently, often remaining unmarried or in unconventional relationships (see e.g., Reilly 2016: 83–84). Despite this, the desire of some feminist scholars to dissociate women from the imperial project and to celebrate their achievements as figures who defied patriarchal norms has at times led to a certain essentialising of female travellers and a whitewashing of their links to European colonialism. Indeed, some go so far as to suggest that their positionality as women vis-à-vis British imperialism differed from that of men by virtue of their femaleness, somehow rendering them less complicit in its negative impacts (Mills 1991: 3, 39). However, many women travellers, such as Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark, were closely involved with British military intelligence and propaganda in the First and Second World Wars, respectively (see, e.g., Canton 2011: 109, 115–121), and Bell remained in Iraq as part of the British Mandate administration in Baghdad, intervening in the development of indigenous politics with disastrous long-term consequences. The women’s studies image also comes into question when we consider that many of these women, such as Bell, Stark, Isabelle Eberhardt and Hester Stanhope, actively disliked and avoided the company of other women, exploited their unconventionality to appear as ‘honorary men’ whilst on their travels and were seen or depicted themselves as mannish or ‘masculine’ in character and behaviour (Canton 2011: 115, 122; Haslip 1987: 9, 34; Garcia-Ramon 2003: 655–656). Where, then, does Eliza Mary Rogers fit into this picture? Why, as an educated, single, comparatively independent female who wrote articles on architecture and was a respected artist, did she choose to focus on the domestic aspects of her sojourn in Palestine? One possibility is that of demand from mid-19th-century readers and publishers, who would have expected a domestic perspective from a female writer (Mills 1991: 44,

176  Sarah Irving 82, 95, 116). Another possibility is the opportunity which a focus on the domestic would have offered for Rogers to differentiate her book from those by most other travellers to the Middle East who, being male, would have been denied access to some of the knowledge and experiences which she could convey to her readership. Certainly this angle has brought Rogers’ work a certain longevity, given its continued usefulness as a source on women’s lives and environments, in contrast to the numerous maleauthored accounts of travels in the Holy Land, many of which are now justly forgotten as a result of their repetitious descriptions of landscapes and religious experiences. However, I  also argue that reading Rogers’ travelogue alongside her other writings, imbued as they are with the kind of authority and claims to factual accuracy often perceived as being the sole preserve of the Victorian male (contra Mills 1991: 80), highlights a different aspect of the writings, one noted by Sarah Graham-Brown in her review of the reissued book (1991: 359). Unlike other reviewers, Graham-Brown notes that alongside the ‘inner mysteries of Oriental domestic life’ (Rogers 1989: publisher’s blurb), Rogers describes the active intervention of her brother, other British consular officials and indeed occasionally herself in the local politics of Ottoman Palestine. She does so as a direct witness, and sometimes as a participant, with few of the ‘distancing’ strategies which women writers are said often to use when narrating ‘unfeminine’ events (Mills 1991: 82). In reading Rogers’ travelogue, therefore, we encounter two important aspects not mentioned in analyses such as those of Gelvin and Tucker: Her potential as a direct source of details for the under-studied complexities of Palestinian politics and British interference in them, and a greater understanding than is usually credited of the active and direct place of women in such interventions. Women were not just passive figures in the British imperial project, able to travel under its protection and helping to underpin it by contributing to the discursive realm of orientalism. In figures such as Rogers and later Bell and Stark, often celebrated as extraordinary women and feminist role models,1 they were fully implicated in Britain’s informal and later formal domination in the Middle East. Debbie Lisle’s discussion of the persona of the ‘honorary man’ is, I believe, one which is useful in highlighting the tensions and complexities of Rogers’ position. As Lisle elaborates, the notion provides a way of thinking through the situation of women travellers, whose femaleness is often seen as the most interesting and unusual thing about them when they undertake journeys perceived as dangerous, but who in order to make those journeys must be seen as tough and ‘manly’ enough to survive them (Lisle 2006: 97–99). Lisle’s work focuses on late 20th and 21st century travellers; if we apply the insights generated by her discussion to Mary Eliza Rogers’ Victorian era, they clarify the supposed contradictions of her experiences as a ‘lady’ writer whose unusual exploits and rare

An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land? 177 access to the closed women’s quarters of the East are counterpoised with her supposedly risky travels and her discussions of political and intellectual subjects with Middle Eastern men who were supposed to rarely interact with women outside of their immediate families. Acknowledging both the imperialist implications of Rogers’ activities and the extent to which, thanks to this, her position is one imbued with masculine power, rendering her ‘a being apart’ (Haslip 1987: 137; see also Garcia-Ramon 2003: 653–654), also allows us to understand even her domestic writings as shot through with hierarchy. Despite the superficial similarities which grant her access to the female realm, there is no sisterhood to be found here. Rogers’ attitudes to the women she meets, described variously as uneducated, coarse, materialistic, indolent, and ignorant, discount any extent to which she can be viewed as possessing commonalities with them (Rogers 1989: 106, 200, 205, 217–232 et passim; see also Melman 1992: 99–162 for discussion of Victorian narratives on the harem), and indeed have far more in common with the frequent descriptions of Eastern peoples in similar terms by European men (Bar-Yosef 2005: 79–80). The remainder of this section, therefore, draws on Rogers’ writings to outline the information they convey about her and her brother’s direct involvement in the public sphere and local political workings of Palestine in the early 1850s, extracting and contextualising some of the political details which can be found in Rogers’ narrative. Following this, I subject to close reading a particular incident in which Mary Eliza Rogers herself played a small but notable role in a local political conflict, uniting with her brother to interfere, albeit at a minor level, in disputes between the governor of Nablus and a rival family in the region. Mary Rogers and her brother were primarily based in Haifa, where he was stationed as British vice-consul, reporting to the Jerusalem consulate of James Finn. Her descriptions of life there emphasise the active social and political role her brother played in the port city and their wide networks amongst the local elite, both Christian and Muslim. Occasionally the Rogers siblings travelled to Jerusalem to socialise with other Europeans in Palestine, such as the Anglican bishop Samuel Gobat and his wife, or to Jaffa to meet newly arrived Western visitors. The bulk of their movement around the region, however, which Mary Rogers describes in some detail, was part of her brother’s professional duties, making contact with Ottoman and Arab elites, gathering information and intelligence on them for the British government and sometimes taking an active role in local power dynamics. Although Palestine in the mid-19th century is often depicted as an isolated and technologically primitive place, seen by Europeans as a degraded and depopulated leftover from ancient Biblical grandeur (BarYosef 2005: 78–83), it had in fact been integrated into international trade, cultural and political networks for centuries (or indeed millennia). The port of Akka, just north of Haifa, had been both a point from which

178  Sarah Irving luxury goods from the Silk Road were acquired by ‘Frankish’ merchants and a major outlet for the cotton grown for international sale in northern Palestine. Akka and Jaffa were part of trading networks and rivalries with ports further up the Levantine coast, such as Tyre, and inland cities like Nablus had links further inland to Damascus and Aleppo and beyond. They thus benefited from the eastwards-looking trade and cultural connections which came via the Hajj caravans to the Arabian peninsula. Although nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, less than a century before Mary Eliza Rogers and her brother settled in Haifa the Galilee had effectively been an autonomous region under the entrepreneurial rule of Daher al-Umar al-Zaydani. He had developed cotton agriculture and trade, making Palestine one of the main suppliers to Europe by creating monopolies, challenging the power of European merchants and of the Sublime Porte itself. At the turn of the 19th century, it had been the fortifications of Akka which halted Napoleon’s northward progress from Egypt and north through the Levant, and only a decade before the Rogers’ coming, it had been European interventions and support for the Ottoman Sultan (alongside local uprisings) which drove Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali, out of the region after a tenyear occupation. In the light of a recent history of political and economic ferment, and with the ever-growing presence of British merchants and missionaries, the reasons for Thomas Rogers’ observation of and interference in Palestinian affairs becomes clearer. Mary Eliza Rogers’ accounts of her brother’s activities thus provide us with texture and detail on the everyday conduct of such consular affairs. He operated from a base in Haifa, where he seems to have had friendly relations with members of the local elite, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, facilitated by his fluency in Arabic (Rogers 1989: 85). The role of vice-consul, though, involved regular travel around the region, sometimes in co-operation with the Ottoman authorities: In the summer of 1855, for instance, he ‘was appointed to attend Kamîl Pasha on an expedition to Hebron, to quell a serious insurrection there’ (ibid: 58). The following year, Rogers records, she was accompanied on a journey from Nablus to Jerusalem by James Finn’s dragoman so that her ‘brother might be free to follow Kamiel Pasha, without anxiety, wherever he might go. It was expected that the Pasha would visit all the rebellious villages’ (ibid: 275). At times there were ceremonial duties, such as the welcome for the new Pasha of Akka in October 1855, or the lavish celebration in spring 1856 of the birth of an heir to the French Emperor Napoleon III. These formal encounters between European and Ottoman officials might also be taken as an opportunity to advocate for the Christian communities who, under the Capitulations system, were represented by foreign consuls to the Ottoman authorities (ibid: 143). Mary Rogers’ own activities were also entangled with wider political events, to some extent as a bystander but at times and places

An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land? 179 in which contacts and comments, the passing on of knowledge and impressions, had the potential to influence greater outcomes. Whilst her brother was helping to ‘quell a[n] insurrection’, she ‘had the privilege of accompanying Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore when they explored the Moslem mosques and shrines on Mount Moriah’ (1989: 58). Montefiore, one of the leaders of the British Jewish community and by this time a baronet, was on his fourth visit to Jerusalem and knew the city and its people far better than Rogers. Despite his controversial desire to promote agriculture and industry (instead of Torah study and charity) as sources of income for Palestine’s Jews, his fundraising capacity and clout—demonstrated during the 1840 Damascus Blood Libel affair—meant that he was regarded by them as a saviour, and his authority was invoked by them in clashes with James Finn when the latter attempted to promote Christianity amongst the Jewish population (Green 2010: 218–221). Montefiore’s activities on behalf of Jerusalem’s Jews were also, by definition, interwoven with the ongoing competition between Britain, France and Russia over influence in the Ottoman Empire, exercised via the various Christian and Jewish minorities on whose part they claimed to act. They also presaged later European Jewish migration to Palestine when, on this 1855 visit, Montefiore became the first Western Jew permitted under Ottoman rule to purchase land in Jerusalem, for a new Jewish hospital (ibid: 247). Mary Rogers also talked at length and on serious topics with upperand middle-class men, both Muslim and Christian, especially amongst her neighbours in Haifa. The subjects they discussed included regional politics and the role of women in different societies. On one occasion, for instance, she heard the complaints of Elias Sakhali (Seikaly) about Turkish rule and taxation in the Levant, and how it had prevented the development of Arab society and economy (Rogers 1989: 161–163). This is an early example of a narrative which was to become common amongst Arab nationalist objections to Ottoman rule, although the extent to which this idea was widespread before World War I is disputed (see e.g., Dawn 1991: 11–12; Seikaly 2001: 36, 43 n41 (citing Rogers)). At other times, her interlocutors lamented the lack of educational facilities for local women, comparing their wives and daughters unfavourably with Rogers herself (1989: 100–101, 263, 352). The combination of Rogers’ novelty as a woman who socialised with elite local men and as the sister of the British representative in northern Palestine also at times created the perception of influence and power. On one occasion, a poor woman in Nablus, unable to pay bribes or fines for her son who had been imprisoned for striking the Rogers’ servant, begged Mary Eliza to intercede on his behalf. The son was, at Thomas Rogers’ request, released (1989: 255).

180  Sarah Irving

Conflict in the Palestinian Highlands In February  1856, on an expedition inland from Haifa, into the north of the Galilee and what is now the West Bank, Mary Rogers made a particularly active intervention into local affairs. The setting for the incident unfurled after her brother received letters with ‘directions  .  .  . to proceed immediately to Nablus to report the state of affairs there, and to ascertain the true cause or causes of the disturbances in the town and in the mountain districts around’ (1989: 194). En route, Thomas Rogers described his ‘mission’ to his sister, ‘simply to watch carefully, and report to Mr Finn all that is going on, and to find out, if possible, the real position of affairs, without interfering or taking any part in them’ (216). He also enlisted Mary Eliza in his plans, asking that she help him ‘by quietly observing the state of the towns, for we shall probably be apart from each other in Arrabeh and Senûr’ (the fortified small towns of Arrabah and Sanur), and noting that the presence of a woman alongside him ‘will perhaps induce people to receive us into their strongholds the more readily and unsuspectingly’ (ibid.). This last request most strongly highlights the active role Mary Eliza Rogers was expected and willing to take in her brother’s duties, with her access to the domestic quarters of the homes she visited seen not just as a source of entertaining descriptions for readers, but as a means of entering the fortified Throne Villages of the Palestinian highlands to gather data for the British Empire. On continuing the journey, the Rogers siblings visited Arrabah, the stronghold of the Abd al-Hadi family, one of those embroiled in a conflict over senior roles in the city of Nablus, and Sanur, the base of their rivals, the Jarrars (as Doumani notes, she was the ‘first European woman [the elite women of Arrabah] had ever met’ (1995: 131). In Sanur, Thomas Rogers took advantage of his sister’s dual role as ‘honorary male’ and female visitor: My brother said to me, in English, ‘If you have an opportunity, by all means take the likeness of our host, Abrahîm. He is the most celebrated man in this district, both as regards courage, daring, and energy; and his family for many generations have been renowned for strength, vigour, and manly beauty. But’, he added, ‘do not let him or any of the others see you sketching him, for he is quite as superstitious as he is handsome’. (238) In this interchange, and Mary Eliza’s subsequent drawing of their host’s image, we witness several themes highlighted by the study of both orientalism and imperialism. Firstly, there is Thomas Rogers’ description of Ibrahim Jarrar, a local leader and one of the main competitors for positions such as governor under Ottoman rule; Rogers focuses on stereotypical notions of Arab male appearance and character. In encouraging his

An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land? 181 sister’s drawing, he also dismisses the widespread Sunni Muslim rejection of representations of the human form as mere ‘superstition’. And secondly, the Rogers’ contempt for both religious prohibition and the rules of hospitality in their underhand means of obtaining an image of Jarrar whilst staying in his own home. This act might have been less significant had Jarrar not been one of the protagonists in a conflict in which Thomas Rogers had taken it upon himself to intervene. Not long after Mary Eliza illicitly sketched Ibrahim’s image, troops sent by the Ottoman governor of Nablus, Kamiel Pasha, arrived to search the town and fortress of Sanur for Bedouin fighters engaged to defend it against the Abd al-Hadis. Rogers describes how she and her brother persuaded the senior officer of the force to approach Sanur alone, alongside the British vice-consul, to receive Jarrar’s guarantees of good faith; as a result, the colonel informed the Rogers’ that: ‘Kamiel Pasha had determined to destroy Senûr, and had offered a reward of thirty thousand piastres for the head of Abrahîm Jerrar’ (241). One might excuse Thomas Rogers’ intervention at the juncture, given that it was intended to prevent conflict and bloodshed, but he did also confess to his sister that he ‘had no real authority to interfere as he had done in this case’ but that, with the self-assurance of the imperial Briton amongst people he perceived as inferior, he had ‘acted not officially but individually, feeling that principles of humanity, and our somewhat critical position, justified him’ (ibid.). Rogers and his sister may have sought to disentangle his official and his individual positions in this case, but it is unlikely that either the Ottoman or Palestinian participants in the event could or were likely to do so. Mary Rogers’ visions of the Jarrar family are, in the context of this discussion, worthy of comment: Although her observations grant us insights into elite conflict (and British intervention) in the Palestinian highlands, Doumani’s use of Ottoman court records highlights the shortcomings—or at least possible alternatives to—this approach. Far from the powerful lords, dominating events in the region, his exploration of legal cases shows that even Ibrahim Jarrar might find himself over-ruled and made to pay fines and compensation when sued by members of the local peasantry (1995: 169). On reaching Nablus, Mary Eliza Rogers made her main intervention in this narrative. On being welcomed by an Effendi, or lesser official, of the Ottoman governorate, she describes how she said to him: ‘. . . is it true that his Excellency Kamiel Pasha has offered a reward of thirty thousand piastres for the head of Abrahîm, the chief of Senûr’ and, on receiving an affirmative answer, asked that ‘Your honour salute the Pasha in my name and inform him that I have the head of the chief, Abrahîm Jerrar, in my possession?’ (242). According to Rogers: I was asked if I would inform them where the head was. I said: ‘It is in my portmanteau in the opposite room.’ Then the Effendi said: ‘Will you show it to us, O gracious Lady?’ A glance from my brother

182  Sarah Irving induced me to comply, so I  fetched the drawing, and the men on seeing it, cried out immediately: ‘Abrahîm!’ ‘It is Abrahîm Jerrar!’ ‘It is Abrahîm of Senûr!’ ‘Oh, work of God!’ . . . They went away to explain the mystery to Kamiel Pasha, who afterwards called to see me and the portrait, which he asked me to allow him to keep. I said: ‘With pleasure, your excellency, if you will consent to regard it as the real head and the only head of Abrahîm Jerrar, and act accordingly.’ His excellency laughingly declined to do this. (243, italics in original) As with her brother’s intervention at Sanur, Mary Eliza Rogers’ attempt to persuade the governor of Jerusalem to lift the bounty he had placed on Ibrahim Jarrar’s head might be viewed as excused by its pacific intent. However, a closer reading is again revealing. Whilst Rogers herself seemed to see her action as a joke, the wonder with which she portrays her audience responding to her image of Jarrar is a common trope of imperial writings, in which the ‘native’ is depicted as simple and unworldly in their understanding of the more ‘developed’ culture. Her attempt to persuade Kamiel Pasha to accept a sketch in place of the capture or death of a figure he regarded as a dangerous rebel and instigator of an uprising is also indicative of the hubris embedded within British attitudes towards non-European peoples—and not just individuals of low status, but a senior official of an empire which, only weeks later, joined the Concert of Europe as a result of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Crimean War. The incident involving Ibrahim Jarrar’s portrait in some respects mirrors an earlier event in Rogers’ travels, in which she drew an image of Salihh Agha, leader of a group of armed horsemen employed by the Ottomans to keep order in the Galilee and, with his brother, one of ‘the most powerful and formidable people in the Pashalic of Akka’ (Rogers 1989: 178). Having encountered Salihh Agha whilst on a visit to Shefa ‘Amr, Rogers ‘took the opportunity of putting [him], his little son and his attendant Khalil into my sketch-book’ (185). Khalil’s reaction, though, highlights the extent to which Rogers’ drawing was potentially entangled with issues of power and violence; he ‘seemed rather alarmed when he saw what I  had done, and begged of me not to show his portrait in certain districts, for a price was set upon his head and men sought after him to kill him’ (186). The ladylike practices of an artistic Englishwomen thus took on very different implications in an imperial setting, in which, as a woman associated with British power, she could access male environments and therefore individuals embroiled in local conflicts, but where because of her gender and the protection of imperial Britain her inappropriate and possibly dangerous actions could not be challenged. On another occasion, a Nabulsi man who introduced himself as Sheikh Musa prevailed upon Rogers to sketch him, presumably after hearing the

An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land? 183 story of Ibrahim Jarrar’s image, but specifying that he believed that this would attract the favour of the British vice-consul. What these events show, therefore, is the ambiguous and liminal identity which allowed Mary Eliza Rogers to move in different social spheres during her progress through the Galilee and northern Palestinian highlands. As is well-known of her work, as a woman she could enter the harems and other female spaces of the houses she visited, reporting on the clothes, customs and conversations she had there. But as an ‘honorary man’, an assertive, upper-class foreign female with British imperial power behind her (both in the abstract sense of being a British citizen who would be supported by her government, and the more literal sense of her relationship to a vice-consul), she could mix with local men as well, conversing on political topics and moving in spaces denied to Muslim and Christian Levantine women. Occasionally she blundered, and in doing so highlighted the rarity of her own position and experience, as when she found her invitation to the harem of Nabulsi governor Mahmoud Bek Abd al-Hadi withdrawn. Having shown him images of his cousin’s wife, who she had drawn during her visit to Arrabah, she had transgressed the seclusion of this conservative elite family’s women (1989: 261–264). But the response was to keep her in the male sphere, amongst the men and other Europeans, rather than to confine her to female quarters.

De-centring Imperialism: Mary Rogers and the Workings of British Imperialism As James Gelvin noted in his comments on Rogers, quoted in the opening paragraph of this chapter, ‘her travels coincided with a period of profound change in Palestinian society’. Just over a decade before, European pressure and military aid had played a key role in forcing the withdrawal of Ibrahim Pasha and the armies of his ambitious father, Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt, out of bilad al-sham. In return, the Sultan had to agree not to reverse the penetration of his Syrian provinces by European consuls and missionaries which had gained pace under the Egyptian occupation of the region. Intertwined with these political currents were the Tanzimat reforms instituted from 1839 onwards by the Ottoman government, which shifted the balances of power between the various religions in the Empire, and sought to end tax farming, a widespread practice and source of power and wealth amongst the elite families of rural Palestine, including those with whom Mary Rogers had stayed on her travels. Mary Rogers, like many British travellers of this period, could undertake her explorations against a background of imperial power. In her case, the link was particularly strong, given her quasi-official status as the sister and companion of a British consul. But this was not the same as travelling in one of Britain’s colonies; her nation’s writ did not run directly in Ottoman Palestine, and some of her travels took her into the upland

184  Sarah Irving areas north-east of Jerusalem in which even the Ottoman Empire’s own control was still both recent and insecure. The ‘profound changes’ occurring in Ottoman Palestine were not just at the grand political level, but in local society, culture and politics, and as we have seen, Mary Rogers and her brother were amongst some of the actors in the micro-level shifts occurring. And although there is a tendency to assume that Rogers, as an elite, Christian European woman who referenced the Bible in her descriptions of the landscape and people, was seeing only a fossilised, orientalist version of Palestine, a closer reading of her work and her positionality suggests otherwise. Her attitudes and assumptions are undoubtedly patronising and orientalist, but the Palestinian society she describes is not static and ancient, but seamed with discontent over Ottoman rule and with competition over social rules. As such, I argue that there are three key points to be drawn from the analysis presented here. First is a rejection of the tendency, most present in the ‘women’s studies’ disciplinary literature, that women necessarily enacted their imperial status in a way that was significantly different from men, and were somehow less implicated in the imperial project than European males. As the experiences and actions of Rogers and other women travellers in the Middle East show, although women were less numerous in informal imperial environments such as the Ottoman Levant, they were entirely capable of making active interventions which, as well as helping to create the broad discursive environment for imperialism reflected in postcolonial analyses springing from the work of Said, had more concrete impacts. As ‘honorary men’ moving in the malegendered public sphere, their privilege not only represented protection for themselves, but at times allowed them to intervene in local power relations and politics. They might have operated in ways more inclined toward soft power and personal influence, and sometimes with a veil of disingenuousness about their actions, as in the case of Mary Rogers’ ‘joking’ attempt to parlay her image of Abrahîm’s Jarrar’s head for the real thing, but the impacts were there. Second is the extent to which this suggests the desirability of decentring our notions of imperial power, who exercised it and how it was imposed. The way in which the likes of James Gelvin and Judith Tucker discuss Mary Eliza Rogers confines her impact to conventional understandings of Saidian orientalism—as a contributor to discourses of power and domination, but not an active player in them on the ground. This chimes with other, often essentialised, ideas of women’s place in processes of the nation and colonialism: As operating in spheres of domesticity, reproduction and discourse. As Rogers’ example shows, those women who chose to adopt the role of ‘honorary man’ in imperial settings also renounced any ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card to which their gender might entitle them. They were fully complicit in the imperial project, but

An ‘Honorary Man’ in the Holy Land? 185 beyond retrospective debates on guilt and complicity, this also has implications for how we read their writings. Following on from this is the question of how we read travellers’ accounts such as that of Mary Eliza Rogers. As discussed in this chapter, most scholars who have made use of her writings have either followed Rogers’ own self-presentation, seeking knowledge of the inhabitants of Palestine in the mid-19th century, and especially of this society’s women. Others have seen in her an example of the distorting power of the Biblical, Orientalist lens. But few, if any, have sought to consider Mary Rogers and her own actions: The British woman, tightly entangled in the expansionist tendencies of the Empire, not only protected by its power but acting on its behalf; and, in describing the latter, revealing a certain amount of detail about the daily workings of British imperialism in the late Ottoman Empire. Perhaps as a female writer she has been read and understood as domestic, detached from the workings of imperialism, or somehow inherently more benign than her brother. But the readings here suggest otherwise: Her role may have been informal and oblique, but it is revealing of both the attitudes and the practices of the imperial project. Despite her usefulness for understanding both the female realm in mid-19th-century Palestine and the construction of gendered orientalist knowledge through her depictions, Mary Eliza Rogers’ self-fashioning as an ‘honorary man’ and passage into the public sphere make her, in addition, a valuable source for the microhistory of British imperialism in the Ottoman Empire.

Note 1. For example, see the uncritical biography of Stark in the ‘Forgotten Feminist’ online museum (www.forgottenfeminists.com/freya-stark/), or the misplaced designation of (the avowedly anti-suffrage) Bell as a ‘feminist’ in reviews of recent biographies (Fleishman 2017; Biblicalarchaeology.org 2008).

References Bar-Yosef, Eitan. 2005. The Holy Land in English Culture, 1799–1917. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Biblicalarchaeology.org. 2008. ‘Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations: A  Biography by Georgina Howell’, www.biblicalarchaeology.org/ daily/gertrude-bell-queen-of-the-desert-shaper-of-nations/, accessed 3 July 2018. Canton, James. 2011. From Cairo to Baghdad: British Travellers in Arabia. London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. Dawn, Ernest. 1991. ‘The Origins of Arab Nationalism’, in Rashid Khalidi (ed.), The Origins of Arab Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 3–30. Doumani, Beshara. 1995. Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press.

186  Sarah Irving Fleishman, Jeffrey. 2017. ‘ “Letters from Baghdad” Doc Reveals the Desert Adventures of Gertrude Bell’, LA Times, 8 June  2017, www.latimes.com/ entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-letters-baghdad-review-20170608-story.html, accessed 3 July 2018. Garcia-Ramon, Maria-Dolors. 2003. ‘Gender and the Colonial Encounter in the Arab World: Examining Women’s Experiences and Narratives’, Environment and Planning, 21: 653–672. Gelvin, James. 2005. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graham-Brown, Sarah. 1991. ‘Domestic Life in Palestine [review]’, Middle East Journal, 45(2): 359–360. Green, Abigail. 2010. Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. 1992. ‘Domestic Life in Palestine [review]’, The Muslim World, 82(1–2): 159. Haslip, Joan. 1987 [1934]. Lady Hester Stanhope. London: Cassell Lisle, Debbie. 2006. The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lockwood, Anne. 1997. ‘Voyagers Out of the Harem Within: British Women Travellers in the Middle East’, PhD Thesis, University of North Carolina. Melman, Billie. 1992. Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718–1918. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mills, Sara. 1991. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. London: Routledge. Pratt, Mary Louise. 2008. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 1992. Reilly, Benjamin. 2016. ‘Arabian Travellers, 1800–1950: An Analytical Bibliography’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 43(1): 71–93. Rogers, Edward Thomas, Mary Eliza Rogers and George L. Seymour. 1880a. ‘The Mosques of Cairo’, The Art Journal, New Series 6: 37–40. ———. 1880b. ‘Cemeteries and Mosque Tombs, Cairo’, The Art Journal, New Series 6: 201–204. Rogers, Mary Eliza. 1880a. ‘Causes of Certain Differences in the Styles of Domestic Architecture in Syria and Palestine (1)’, The Art Journal, New Series 6: 86–89. ———. 1880b. ‘Causes of Certain Differences in the Styles of Domestic Architecture in Syria and Palestine (2)’, The Art Journal, New Series 6: 145–148. ———. 1989. Domestic Life in Palestine. London: Kegan Paul. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin. Seikaly, Mai. 2001. Haifa: Transformation of an Arab Society, 1918–1939. London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. Stockdale, Nancy. 2007. Colonial Encounters Among English and Palestinian Women, 1800–1948. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Tucker, Judith. 1990a. ‘Orientalist Travels [review]’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 19(3): 135–137. ———. 1990b. ‘Traveling with the Ladies: Women’s Travel Literature from the Nineteenth Century Middle East’, Journal of Women’s History, 2(1): 245–250. Victoria and Albert Museum. ‘Monogram “Ysabel” Designed for the Queen of Spain’, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O49456/monogram-ysabeldesignedfor-the-queen-design-rogers-mary-eliza/, accessed 7 June 2018.

Part III

In the Settler Colonies, Furthering the ‘Other’ British

11 ‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’ Female Constructions of Imperial Belonging in Melbourne, 1850–18701 Sophie Cooper It was in March 1858 that Clara Isabella Aspinall, a single 33-year-old woman from England, first saw Australia on the horizon. Though sad to be leaving her new community on the seas, she ‘felt joy at the idea of so soon seeing my friends in the Colony’, particularly in Melbourne where her brother, the celebrated lawyer Butler Cole Aspinall, lived (Aspinall 1862: 1; Richardson 1969). Aspinall spent three years in Australia, mainly in Melbourne, before publishing her travel memoirs on her return to England in 1862. These memoirs focus on the intimacy of British and white Australian society, emphasising ideas of imperial belonging through familial and institutional ties. This chapter examines three memoirs written by women based on their time in Melbourne and its surrounds during the 1850s. Published in London, these memoirs provided practical advice to other women and their families while contributing to a wider conversation on imperial citizenship, a discussion which was often dominated by an emphasis on the male roles of soldier or politician (McClintock 1995: 6; Ward 2005: 8). The focus of this chapter is how these women used their experiences travelling in Melbourne to explore their own understandings of what constituted ‘Britishness’ in the Empire, and the position of women from Britain and Ireland in imperial settlement.

Experiences of ‘A Lady’ in Australia Travel is often framed as a personal opportunity to critique and consider the self, highlighting similarities and differences in a person’s national and individual identity when at home and away. There are ‘sacred’ connotations to travel, as opposed to the ‘profanity’ of tourism in which being away from the everyday was simply delighted in, requiring a conscious effort by participants to study their surrounds and endeavour to improve themselves through the experience (Fussell 1980: 39; Dann 1999). Travel memoirs written by white British women complicate the

190  Sophie Cooper dominant narrative of male adventuring and colonised women during the 19th century, presenting women as imperial citizens seeking to find their place within the British Empire’s multiplicity of identities. Anne McClintock emphasises the ‘ambiguous’ place of colonial women within the gendered confines of British society, ‘ambiguously complicit both as colonisers and colonised, privileged and restricted, acted upon and acting’ (McClintock 1995: 6). These women travel writers were partaking in a study of Britishness in one of the Empire’s furthest colonies and the place of white women within it. The Australasian and Canadian experiences of empire for white settlers were fundamentally different to other imperial endeavours due to the decimation and removal of indigenous peoples from urban centres during the mid-19th century. Sara Mills emphasises this need to recognise the distinctive contexts that British travellers confronted across the Empire and the provision of differing opportunities for travellers to explore their national, gendered, and individual identities (Mills 2005: 6). This chapter uses memoirs written in the 1850s and early 1860s to explore how British women travellers projected their visions of British belonging onto urban spaces in the Australian colonies, specifically Melbourne. British and Irish women who travelled to Australian cities were not entering into the ‘white’ spaces often portrayed. Melbourne in the 1850s was home to British, Irish, Aboriginal, American, Chinese and continental European communities. However, this representation of an existing ‘white’ society allowed for the consideration of a colonial society’s progress while removing the violence and trauma of that settlement from the eyes and minds of the writer and reader. Melbourne served as a symbol of white British progress, an urban ideal where labour rights and opportunities to cross class boundaries could be balanced with respectability and ‘British’ tradition. It therefore presents a useful case study for exploring ideas of imperial belonging. As other scholars have noted, the ‘monarch-of-all-I-survey’ constructions of travel writing, to use Mary Louise Pratt’s term, were not as available to women as they were to men in the mid-19th century (Pratt 2008: 201). Instead, women travel writers approached their subject as participants in knowledge acquisition (Pratt 2008: 160). Travel memoirs are focused on in order to examine the ways that Melbourne society was presented to a ‘home’ audience, and how this medium was used by middle-class British women to shape expectations of British social replication in the furthest corners of empire. At a time when Melbourne society was trying to find its place on the world stage, there was a symbiotic process of understanding meanings of imperial British identity occurring in male arenas of debate halls, political chambers and newspapers. These travel memoirs present a varied but markedly female perspective, one that the writers emphasised. The women travellers focused on all came from middle-class backgrounds, but they brought different perspectives to their experiences

‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’ 191 of Melbourne in the 1850s, undermining the idea that there can be ‘a’ female or class-specific perspective. Ellen Clacy, writing in 1853 after her time goldhunting with her brother, emphasised the potential of the Australian colonies as an outpost of Britain in addition to a place of adventure. For Emma Macpherson, a married woman travelling with her young family, Britishness was about Britain itself, only glimpses of it could be found in Australia. Clara Aspinall, possibly because of the prominent role of her beloved brother in Melbourne society, saw progress and modernity in the transfer of British institutions to Australia. These institutions, the public library, the law courts, middle-class associations, represented British imperial identity for her, one that spanned the globe with the movement of British people out from the metropole to Melbourne. Each woman brought these understandings of British identity into her memoirs and therefore back to Britain, where they were sold at the same time as debates about responsible colonial government and British (male) citizenship populated newspapers and public debates in Britain and abroad. While each woman brought her own experience to the memoir, they were all explicitly marketed as providing a ‘female perspective’ that was missing from the existing travel literature available. From the mid-1850s, short-term travel to Australia became more realistic for members of the middle classes. This presented women with new opportunities to publish their perspective of travel and life in Australia to a receptive audience. The first of these was Ellen Clacy’s A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852–53 (1853).2 Clacy began, It may be deemed presumptuous that one of my age and sex should venture to give to the public an account of personal adventures in a land which has so often been descanted upon by other and abler pens; but when I reflect on the many mothers, wives, and sisters in England, whose hearts are ever longing for information respecting the dangers and privations to which their relatives at the antipodes are exposed, I cannot but hope that the presumption of my undertaking may be pardoned. (Clacy 1853: 1)3 A gap in the male-dominated market had been identified. Clacy travelled from Gravesend to Melbourne and then to Victoria’s goldfields with her brother who had been induced ‘to fling aside his Homer and Euclid for the various ‘Guides’ printed for the benefit of the intending gold-seeker, or to ponder over the shipping columns of the daily papers’. Clacy’s motivation for her account of Australia—to provide women with insight into Australian life—was reiterated seven years later when Mrs  Emma Macpherson published her memoir My Experiences in Australia (1860). Macpherson, under the pseudonym of ‘A Lady’, travelled from Scotland to Australia with her husband, young daughter and nursemaid in 1856 to visit family

192  Sophie Cooper and properties mainly in New South Wales (1860).4 Macpherson’s position as a married woman with a husband and a child differs from the experiences of Clacy and Aspinall, though the trials of such travel with young children is largely swept under the carpet, a sign of her class and the assumption of domestic help. Macpherson is clear that there is something distinct and important in her voice, as a woman, noting that while accounts by men ‘contain a large amount of information relative to Australia interesting and valuable to the statesman, the man of science, the merchant, and the emigrant, still, perhaps, they give but little notion of every-day life in the colonies, as it would appear from a lady’s point of view’. In writing this memoir, Macpherson hoped to have the effect ‘of checking the oversanguine expectations of some of my lady readers, and of removing the over-timid apprehensions of others’ (Macpherson 1860: v–vi). Aspinall is the only author focused upon who does not include ‘Lady’ in her title. Nevertheless, she explicitly addresses women readers throughout her memoir and does not shy away from the domestic focus of her life in Melbourne between 1858 and 1861. This was noted by reviewers who focused on the ‘feminine’ outlook that the memoir provided, though one reviewer in the London Evening Standard remarked that the book ‘differs from the productions of a great many literary ladies—especially when they get upon their travels—by being thoroughly feminine in tone, and at the same time more than masculine in its clear conciseness, obvious accuracy, and neatness of general arrangement’.5 These women saw themselves as ‘travellers’ and marketed their work as presenting a ‘female perspective’. They were participating in understanding what it meant to be British in Australia and specifically, they were exploring the transfer of British social ideals and institutions from Britain to Melbourne at a time of population boom and economic change. These travel memoirs portrayed Melbourne at different stages of community building and over the course of one decade they track the growth of Melbourne society from a newly-rich settlement to a city on the cusp of ‘Marvellous Melbourne’. The observations of Clacy, Macpherson and Aspinall, reprinted and quoted in newspapers across the British Isles, therefore presented women’s voices at the same time as helping to shape changing British perspectives of, and pride in, the success of a youthful imperial city.

Constructing ‘Britishness’ in Victoria The Port Phillip District of New South Wales became the colony of Victoria in 1851, separating from the older New South Wales (settled 1788) and Van Diemen’s Land (1830). Established by the British in 1835, the discovery of gold fundamentally altered Melbourne’s fortunes and quadrupled its population between 1840 and 1850, increasing from 4,479 to 23,143 a decade later, before increasing again by 397 percent by 1860. A small settlement on the land of the Kulin nation alliance of indigenous

‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’ 193 peoples became a bustling imperial city of 114,998 by 1861.6 This was aided by a series of government strategies which heavily subsidised emigration from Britain and Ireland to the Australian colonies (Inglis 1974; Haines 1997: 25–30; Richards 2005). Due to the gold rushes, Victoria was portrayed as a frontier where women were in short supply and testosterone-fuelled fights burst through every saloon door. However, this vision of the goldfields was not reflected in the urban centre of Melbourne, where women outnumbered men in the city and its suburbs in every census year from 1857 and 1881 (Cooper 2017: 52). Preferential emigration assistance for single women from Britain and Ireland ensured this: the British and colonial legislatures’ attempt at ‘social engineering’ (Haines 1997: 32–33; Oxley 1996). The prospect of increasing numbers of government-funded female settlers, in addition to the chain migration of friends and family members, meant that there was an immediate audience for travel writing that was written by women and aimed at women. While Australian life was being publicised in Britain, Australians were visiting Britain and writing memoirs of their own (Lane 2015: 10; Richards 2005). Together these different understandings of ‘here’ and ‘there’ considered what it was to be part of the British nation. As ‘spaces of empire were shaped wilfully and coterminously; they became intertwined and mutually interpolated one another’; published travel memoirs were tools in constructing ideas of imperial belonging and connection (Edmonds 2010: 66). A key element in this imperial project was making the unfamiliar familiar. If travel writing was motivated by ‘a desire to make meaning of, and to understand the ‘new world’’, reference needed to be made to the old (Lane 2015: 24). This can be seen throughout w ­ ritings about rural Australia in the mid-century. Alexander Harris began his tale of emigration to New South Wales by noting ‘there is nothing remarkable to the English eye [at first glance]; the newest emigrant might easily suppose himself on the borders of an English country village’ (Harris 1849: 1). Similarly, Aspinall, Clacy and Macpherson approach the new landscapes that they confront through comparison to memories of home. When Aspinall visits the gold-rush town of Castlemaine, she notes that ‘It cannot certainly bear comparison with British scenery; at the same time, I must add that I have seen some very pretty spots, and some very fine views in Australia; but whenever this happened to me, my first exclamation always was, ‘How very lovely! How very English!’’ (Aspinall 1862: 162–163). Settlers in Melbourne could separate their growing city from the ‘bush’ that surrounded it and for the women travel writers focused upon in this chapter, there was a clear line between the ‘Britishness’ of Melbourne which, even in its early years, had signs of British institutional and social tradition, and the ‘otherness’ of everything beyond it. After white settlement began in 1835, a mixture of violence, municipal bylaws, and missionary entreaties meant that by 1860 settler and indigenous life had become so segregated that travel writers were able

194  Sophie Cooper to construct Melbourne as a ‘white’ city: A ‘little England’ (Edmonds 2010: 152). Penelope Edmonds highlights that Aboriginal people did live in and visit Melbourne throughout the 1850s; however, both Aspinall and Macpherson mention leaving Melbourne in order to meet or observe Aboriginal peoples. This created Aboriginal people as a clear ‘other’ in the minds of British visitors, separate from the progress that was continuing in Melbourne under the watchful eye of leading British and Irish settlers. Just as the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1888 included a display of four Aboriginal people, two adults and two unrelated children, these people were not seen to be part of the land and city of their ancestors. Instead, they were an exhibition to be reported upon from trips out of the growing metropolis of Melbourne, with its British ‘lions’ of the library and parliament, and out into the bush where life was different and, in their minds, less civilised. Aspinall’s eleventh chapter is dedicated ‘principally for the benefit of my youthful friends’ and focuses on her observations of Aboriginal life. This chapter, which covers a wide range of subjects from ‘Barbarity of the Black Men’ to ‘Wonderful little Boys and Girls’ in relation to white Australianborn children, does not rely on Aspinall’s personal experiences with indigenous peoples. Instead, it is largely informed by racial stereotypes and tales from children who lived in the bush. It is noticeable that Aspinall combines observations about stereotyped Aboriginal characteristics with considerations of the flora and fauna of ‘Bushland’. In this, Aspinall echoes the hierarchies of natural history museums in the mid-19th century. The indigenous peoples, either the stolen skeletons of indigenous people or life-sized models, of the ‘New World’ were displayed alongside stuffed native animals and flora, emphasising the traditional ways of hunting or racialised ideas of phrenology and physiology (Turnbull 2007; MacKenzie 2010). At the 1854 Crystal Palace museum opening in London, for example, the display for Australia included a platypus, Tasmanian wolf, an emu and models of two indigenous Australian men posed as if they were hunting (Qureshi 2011). This contrasted with ideas of British modernity and the progress of Melbourne where industry was growing and the economy was once again thriving after the slowing of the gold rushes.

The Growth of Melbourne as an Imperial Centre By the late 1850s Melbourne had become a symbol of opportunity and familiarity, suiting the tendency of single 19th-century women travellers to use urban spaces as a base (Pratt 2008: 156). The rapidly growing centre provided a canvas for migrants to attempt to replicate a particular idea of British culture and society, one concerned with tradition, institutions and education. ‘Home’ was not easily reached, so even the most short-term visitors were required to remain in the city for weeks and months. Depending on the vessel and season, it took between 68 and 200

‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’ 195 days to sail from British ports to Williamstown, a short train journey away from Melbourne (Belich 2009: 110). This distance encouraged a desire to recreate a home that could not be reached easily, but it also provided opportunities to move away from certain traditional constraints of British society, particularly surrounding class and religious freedoms. These tensions can be seen in the ‘English, yet essentially un-English, feeling one has here in Australia’ commented upon by Alice Frere in her 1870 travel memoir (19). Fixtures of the British landscape and wealth were beginning to appear in Melbourne and wider Victoria during the 1850s. Aspinall recollects visiting St  Kilda, one of Melbourne’s beach-front suburbs, on the railway and later a trip to Sandhurst, 23 miles from Melbourne, where new rail was being laid (Aspinall 1862: 124, 192). Although Aspinall found ‘nothing to admire in the town and neighbourhood of Sandhurst’, in train travel she recognised a key aspect in Melbourne’s spread and importance. The railway industry was focused in the north and west of Melbourne, working alongside the River Yarra as a conduit for trade, both domestic and international. Emerald Hill, a traditionally Irish area of Melbourne, became ‘an uninterrupted vista of foundries, factories, and stores of all descriptions’, helping to bring failed gold-hunters back into the city (Hogan 1888: 37–39). According to Graeme Davison, this quick movement towards industrialisation in Melbourne, which aided its economic prosperity after the end of the gold boom, was due to who migrated to Melbourne in those early decades. The founders of urban Australia were ‘not from the villa-owning classes, but from those mobile sections of the British working class that had contributed most to the urbanisation of Britain itself’ (Davison 2000: 7). This was noted by Aspinall who repeatedly remarked that it was the working classes who could thrive in Melbourne due to their adaptability to different occupational opportunities. When women, particularly single women, travel abroad there are considerations of personal security, alienation and loneliness. In a distant society portrayed as frontier-esque and male-dominated, travel memoirs were key to assuaging these fears (Atkinson 1857). Women contributed to conversations and assurances of imperial connectivity, familiarity and respectability through an emphasis on how the symbolic imperial ties of the British Empire were supported by actual familial and community connections. This theme emerges throughout these women’s memoirs transforming the imagined networks across the Empire into realities. As Aspinall explores Melbourne she notes that it ‘is strange how, in the remotest corners of the world, thousands of miles from the land of our birth, we sometimes meet accidentally with an old friend’ (Aspinall 1862: 39). A decade later, Alice Frere rejoiced that she and her father had met three old acquaintances within the first 24 hours that they had been in Melbourne: ‘How small the world is, and how few the inhabitants thereof!’ (Frere 1870: 15).

196  Sophie Cooper These networks were aided by faster travel options, and as the 1850s continued, short-term travel became more accessible for those with financial resources. According to emigration reports, Clara Aspinall’s brother travelled between England and Victoria biennially during the late 1850s, and a review of Aspinall’s book noted that wealthy Australian squatters frequently sent their children to be educated in Europe (Aspinall 1862: 68–69).7 For those with resources and connections, ideas of and from home were constantly being transferred. Aspinall, Clacy and Macpherson’s memoirs were all published in London after they returned to Britain, and there are glimpses of this to and fro throughout. Aspinall’s first glimpses of Australia are tinged by the misery of one of her fellow passengers. As one young lady declared ‘‘ Oh dear! . . . how very ugly is Australia!’ [. . .] ‘Do not judge too hastily’, said another, rather satirically; ‘wait until you see the beautiful gum-trees to-morrow.’ This lady was returning to the colony very much against her inclination, as she most cordially disliked it’ (Aspinall 1862: 2). Despite this individual’s reticence, by 1861 Melbourne had become ‘the largest as well as the most glamorous city on the continent’ with thriving cultural and literary establishments (Davison 2001: 52). In its review of Three Years, the Birmingham Daily Gazette refers to Melbourne as ‘the chief city of the Golden Land’ and notes that Aspinall depicts the ‘lions of Melbourne—its streets, shops, public institutions, and inhabitants . . . in a new and brilliant aspect’.8 Macpherson also muses on the competition between the residents of Sydney and Melbourne over ‘any lion that exists in the other’s precincts’ (Macpherson 1860: 321; original emphasis). When the Australian colonies were joined in a federated union in 1901, the kangaroo and emu were added to the lion and unicorn on Australia’s coat of arms. However, in the mid-century, the lion was a clear symbol of the transference of British cultural and political institutions into a new context and one celebrated in the memoirs of Aspinall and Macpherson, in addition to Melbourne’s politicians. These were signs of Melbourne’s growth as an imperial and connected city as well as its position as a recipient of responsible government which had been granted in 1856. While retaining pride in British institutions, the early 1860s saw a new push for self-sufficiency in Melbourne. The city’s leading newspaper, the Argus, commented in 1863 that we may without breach of modesty fairly consider ourselves out in the world. Nursed and dandled by the careful ministering hand of Downing-street, it is now some years since we passed the age of pap and leading strings, and took to strong meat and walking alone. [. . .] Nothing is more significant of our advance to maturity, and more reassuring to our youthful ambition, than the notice which we are attracting to ourselves from those other and elder members of the commonwealth of nations, whose notice is as good a credential of

‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’ 197 respectability and ripeness to a young country as the nod of a duchess’s head used to be to a young debutante.9 It was also in terms of a ball that Aspinall heralded the main difference between English and Victorian society. She declared that the Australian ball ‘lacks one feature, the absence of which stamps it as thoroughly un-English, i.e. there are none of those elderly and dignified chaperones, attired in black velvet and diamonds’ (Aspinall 1862: 64). Though Melbourne was modernising and the traditions of British society were visible, the lack of city elders in the 1850s emphasised its very recent history as a frontier settlement. Elite Melbourne society was thoroughly enveloped within British middle-class society’s values and symbols, however it was still different. The opportunities for freedom and change presented in Melbourne were made possible by the fact that British settlement had only begun 25 years previously. If British society is defined by its age and traditions, Melbourne society was inherently ‘un-English’ purely through the youth of the city and those who lived within it.

Gendered Opportunities for Social Success William Calder left Edinburgh for Victoria in 1858 saying that he ‘put on the resolution of leaving all caste behind, and putting [his] hand to anything’ (Wilkie 2017: 25). For men with drive and luck, there were opportunities to subvert the traditional hierarchies of British society. Adventure books were filled with tales of ex-convicts who became respectable gentlemen in society (Thomas 1867). Even a glance at the rolls of Victoria’s leading men, politicians and merchants highlight success stories as the children of transported men and women rose through the ranks, in John O’Shanassy’s case to the second Premier of Victoria. However, while men could depend on wit, business acumen and the discretion of their peers, opportunities for a new start were more limited for women who desired to reach into the upper-middle and elite classes. Expectations of respectability and ‘feminine’ modesty still bound Melbourne society, even when women were encouraged to attend lectures, partake in archery and read the newspapers, as according to Aspinall, ‘[t]here are often articles upon subjects which ladies can quite master’ (Aspinall 1862: 80). If you were a woman who did not conform to British middle-class expectations, doors were closed to you. Céleste de Chabrillan, the French consul’s wife, found herself ostracised by Melbourne society because of her past life as an ‘actress, a bareback circus rider, and finally a well-known Parisian courtesan’ (De Chabrillan 1998: 1). According to the editors and translators of de Chabrillan’s memoirs, she had not expected that her story would reach Melbourne, to be punished and stripped of the respect usually accorded her position. Shirley Foster argues that in undertaking foreign journeys, women were ‘albeit unconsciously, asserting certain positions with regard to

198  Sophie Cooper their status and abilities—their right to do what men had done for centuries, their capacity to meet challenges while still maintaining their female integrity’ (Foster 1990: 8). This reckoning is visible, particularly in the memoirs of Clacy and Aspinall, two unmarried women. However, their memoirs remain within the strict confines of British and class expectations (Schroeder 1998). Aspinall relates that since my return home, I  have noticed lovely English girls opening their eyes with amazement when they heard that I had been spending three years in Australia, and seeming to wonder how I could possibly be looking in such high spirits and health after going through the terrible ordeal of transportation! (Aspinall 1862: 31, original emphasis) Melbourne was a jewel in the crown of the British Empire by the early 1860s and for many, it represented the ability of British people to recreate British ‘values’ in a short time. Aspinall’s memoir celebrates the modernity and ambition of British migrants to build and establish the tenets of British culture and tradition abroad, while emphasising the opportunities for progressive change for those willing to adapt to the new context of Melbourne, the heart of Australia Felix or ‘fortunate Australia’. This meant that only the strongest and adaptable British and Irish migrants should go out and help to spread the imperial vision in the southern hemisphere. While Melbourne represented success through hard work and toil, there is a sense within the writings of Aspinall and Macpherson that they often saw themselves, and people from the middle class, as the ‘other’ in Australia. Perhaps not in looks or culture, but in how they had been brought up and what it took to survive. Aspinall was an adventurer and stretched what was expected of women of her station and age. However, she was the sister of one of Victoria’s leading lawyers, took part in of activities suitable to that position, and remained largely within the protection of Melbourne’s close-knit community. Unlike de Chabrillan, Aspinall conformed and therefore could admire the opportunities available to women like her from within the comforting arms of an internationally connected and privileged British migrant community. Women travel writers encouraged other women to look outside their own homes and explore the world, however they also took care to present their view of the realities of life in Melbourne. Working-class emigration was not the problem that particularly concerned these women, instead they worried about the emigration of middle-class and educated women, women like them, who risked their position and respectability by leaving their home country and setting out across the seas. Reviews of Aspinall’s memoir seized upon the dangers posed by reckless emigration. The Birmingham Daily Gazette emphasised that the book ‘should be read attentively by all who contemplate emigration, either for themselves

‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’ 199 or their children’ as it provided important and serious messages about the dangers of emigration without preparation.10 Similarly, the Irish Times used the memoir to support a different type of engagement with emigration: To resist it. While acknowledging that Irish domestic servants and farm labourers could thrive in Australia, the Irish Times review, which was reprinted throughout the country, focused on their ‘strong misgivings respecting the success of the ‘lady governesses’’ before turning to the ‘position of ‘decayed’ and disappointed ladies in the colony’. Though the golden land of Australia looked promising, Irish newspapers used Aspinall’s memoir to support their own wish that ‘we want all these active, warm-hearted, genuine Irish girls at home. We have not one too many of them’.11 Rita Kranidis, in her work on female emigration societies, notes that colonialists looked favourably upon ‘the emigration of refined and educated women’ however unmarried middle-class women did not necessarily have the skills, either in housework or in other professions, that suited colonial life (Kranidis 1999: 33, 48). Efforts by reformers like Caroline Chisholm and the Family Colonisation Loan Society encouraged the protection of young female emigrants. However, alongside these charitable endeavours, travel memoirs by women like Clara Aspinall were published, in part, to help combat this separation of expectation and reality for hopeful governesses and housekeepers.

Travel Memoirs as Manuals for Potential Migrants In Melbourne, ‘the extremes of wealth and poverty meet’ (Clacy 1853: 129). The rich could become poor, and the poor rich, though onlookers were clear about who began in which camp. British newspapers frequently carried articles disparaging the newly gold-rich, particularly if they were Irish. The radical working-class London newspaper, the Reynolds Intelligence, took particular relish in attacking working-class Irish girls and women ‘who scarcely knew the luxury of a shoe until they put their bare feet on the soil of Victoria, lavish money on white satin at 10s. or 12s. a yard for their bridal dresses’.12 Despite the denigration of women with a modicum of newly found wealth, Aspinall found that ‘during my residence in Australia, I  heard more instances of woman’s vanity and recklessness, than of her devotion, self-sacrifice, and constancy. But, at all events, I was more inclined to believe the latter’ (Aspinall 1862: 221). The subject of wealth, and how to acquire and keep it, was a central theme in Australian-focused literature of the 19th century. While this was often down to luck, travel memoirs focused on how preparation could aid in retaining it. Aspinall’s memoir is filled with suggestions of what a woman could buy in Australia and what she should bring with her from Britain. It also included price lists in order to emphasise the realities of the market economy in 1850s Melbourne. Macpherson mused that on her trip, ‘[l]ike everything else in Melbourne, ornaments

200  Sophie Cooper are rather expensive . . . but they are really worth getting, as a proof of colonial advancement in the more elegant as well as the simply utilitarian arts and manufactures’ (Macpherson 1860: 324). Fashion was portrayed as a lens through which the progressiveness and respectability of colonial society was viewed, and Macpherson was much less impressed by what Melbourne could offer in taste. While fashion is not the exclusive remit of women, each memoir writer used it to bring attention to the offerings of Melbourne’s burgeoning industries and the interconnectedness of the imperial shipping economy. In addition to tips and discreet stories about failure, travel memoirs written by these women included explicit warnings. In chapter  14 of Three Years in Melbourne, Aspinall addresses the parents of wild, unsteady, reckless, and hot-headed boys, who are devoid of purpose and energy, and easily led for good or for evil—yet generous to a fault, and who glory in being munificent—like a monarch bestowing largesse—do not, if you cannot provide at home for such, trust them in Australia. Send out, rather, the boy who possesses none of these characteristics—the one who is prudent and cautious, who knows the value of a sixpence, who has self-reliance, self-denial, perseverance, and that kind of genius which has been defined as ‘common sense intensified, or, the power of making efforts.’ Seldom is a youth endowed with these qualities! (Aspinall 1862: 213) Horror stories of families from respectable and middle-class backgrounds falling upon hard times appear within all of the memoirs examined in this essay. A child who, when asked if she liked Melbourne, responded ‘No!  .  .  . we starve here. There was plenty of food when we were in England’. On discovering more about the family’s circumstances, Clacy found that the father had travelled to Melbourne with a government appointment and the mother was the daughter of a clergyman. Prices in Melbourne were so high in 1852 that the father went to the diggings to try his luck but none was to be found and ‘step by step, they became poorer, until half a tent in Little Adelaide was the only refuge left’ (Clacy 1853: 130–131). Similarly Aspinall mourned that ‘It would fill volumes to tell all the sad tales I  heard in the colony of gentlemen reduced to penury’ (Aspinall 1862: 218). The Melbourne Punch seized upon this feeling of despair regarding immigrants and poverty in a poem entitled ‘The Lay of the Lunatic’. The repeated chorus asked, ‘Ho! Immigrants from Albion,/ I warn ye from this strand;/ Why quit the lap of luxury?/ Why leave that happy land?’13 Though the end of the gold rushes led to greater economic stability as the 1860s began, women-written travel memoirs were vital in attempting to avoid poverty and loss of social station, particularly for women.

‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’ 201 Ellen Clacy ended her 1853 memoir with a plea to the ‘able and willing to work’ in England to go to Melbourne in order to help with the labour scarcity. While she could make no promises of wealth, for the poor of Britain she reasoned, ‘Send them to the colonies—food and pure air would at least be theirs—and much misery would be turned into positive happiness’ (134). Clacy advised staying in Melbourne where there was guaranteed work, while warning of the dangers posed by hope in the goldfields, turning to the remarks of an old digger who suggested that ‘Every young man before paying his passage money, . . . should take a few days’ spell at well-sinking in England; if he can stand that comfortably, the diggings won’t hurt him’ (Clacy 1853: 132). Both Clacy and Aspinall reflect a concern, often framed as from a woman’s heart to mothers and sisters, that unprepared men, particularly from the middle classes would find desperation and failure in Victoria. The tales of adventure and success written by men did not tell the whole story, they warned, instead, woman-to-woman, reality and preparation could save heartbreak and a family’s standing throughout the Empire.

Conclusion Travel memoirs helped to construct ideas of Melbourne and Australia in the British mind. They emphasised the successful spread of British ideas of civilisation and public institutions around the world, to the furthest corners of the Empire. The Melbourne of Aspinall, Clacy and Macpherson was a connected imperial city where one would find friends, industry and familiarity. However, these women-written memoirs also aimed to be realistic and pragmatic. They are not filled with adventure and exotic visions of kangaroo hunts and gold, though both are mentioned. Instead they contain heart-felt pleas to fellow women, as prospective migrants, and as the mothers, daughters and sisters of male migrants. They emphasise the need for preparation and awareness of high prices, bad drainage, and the possibility of failure. Melbourne is depicted as a bustling, opportunity-laden city, but one which also holds dangers to morality, status and wealth. When middle-class women fail, it is the ambition and risk-taking of men that is blamed. Therefore, these memoirs emphasise and promote female agency in preparing to travel and for their stabilising influence on their male relatives. Travel memoirs by these women present visions of British imperial power, and the importance of travelling within the ties of imperial networks which provide familiarity and security. While they echo the works of men, there is much less attention paid to scientific examinations of imperial splendour or romanticised visions of the homosocial societies. In focusing more on interpersonal relationships and the logistics of travel, at least in the world of middle-class privilege, they seek to connect with their readership as women who have traditional concerns relating to family and

202  Sophie Cooper domesticity, even while expanding expectations of female travel. Aspinall, Clacy and Macpherson utilise examples found in their worlds: Balls and picnics, fashion and shopping, the lecture circuits attended by the wives of important men, and the train carriage. Their experiences of Melbourne are largely based within circles of middle-class women, particularly the writings of Aspinall and Macpherson who arrived later in the decade. As Céleste de Chabrillan found out, the doors to these parlours could be closed to you if you did not adhere to established British ideas of respectability. Accordingly, these travel memoirs were vital in another way. By presenting the expectations of Melbourne society to British and Irish middle-class women before they even left their homes, travel memoirs helped to embed ideas of British society’s replication within Australian urban spaces from afar. They were fundamental in constructing images of Melbourne, and in doing so, they also helped to construct its reality.

Notes 1. Following the example of Clara and Ellen, this essay is dedicated to my brother Ed (1997–2016) who loved adventuring in distant lands. Thanks to Dr Ann-Marie Einhaus and Dr Sarah Laurenson for their comments on this chapter. 2. The same year, Mackenzie’s The Emigrant’s Guide to Australia with a Memoir of Mrs. Chisholm was published, however as this short biography was not a travel memoir written by a woman, it has not been considered in the same genre as the travel memoirs mentioned in this chapter. 3. Page numbers correspond with pdf. 4. Macpherson’s memoir has received the most scholarly attention due to its focus on Macpherson’s interactions with Aboriginal people (Jordan 2005; Heckenberg 2011). 5. London Evening Standard, 12 December 1862, p. 6. 6. ‘Census of Port Phillip’, Geelong Advertiser, 17 July 1841; 1862. ‘Population Tables’, Census of Victoria, 1861. Melbourne: John Ferres Government Printer. 7. For mention of Butler Aspinall’s travel to and from Britain see ‘Shipping News’, The Courier, 22 December 1852, p. 2; ‘The Great Britain’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 September  1854, p.  4; ‘Shipping Intelligence. Arrival’, Empire, 26 April 1856, p. 4; ‘Emigration of Educated Women’, Irish Times, 10 November 1862. 8. Birmingham Daily Gazette, 26 December 1862. Original emphasis. 9. Argus, 26 November 1863, p. 4. 10. ‘Book Review’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 26 December 1862, p. 3. 11. Cork Constitution, 11 November 1862, p. 3. 12. Reynold’s Intelligence, 19 December 1852. 13. ‘The Lay of the Lunatic’, Melbourne Punch, 5 November 1857.

References Aspinall, Clara. 1862. Three Years in Melbourne. London: L. Booth. Atkinson, Caroline. 1857. Gertrude the Emigrant: A Tale of Colonial Life. Sydney: J. R. Clarke.

‘English, Yet Essentially Un-English’ 203 Belich, James. 2009. Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clacy, Ellen. 1853. A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852–53. London: Hurst and Blackett, http://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/data-2/p00057.pdf, accessed 25 July 2018. Cooper, Sophie Elizabeth. 2017. ‘Irish Migrant Identities and Community Life in Melbourne and Chicago, 1840–1890’. Unpublished PhD. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Dann, Graham. 1999. ‘Writing Out the Tourist in Space and Time’, Annals of Tourism Research, 26(1): 159–187. Davison, Graeme. 2000. ‘Colonial Origins of the Australian Home’, in Patrick Troy (ed.), A History of European Housing in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 6–25. ———. 2001. ‘Gold-Rush Melbourne’, in Iain McCalman, Alexander Cook and Andrew Reeves (eds.), Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 52–66. De Chabrillan, Céleste. 1998. The French Consul’s Wife: Memoirs of Celeste de Chabrillan in Gold-Rush Melbourne, trans. Patricia Clancy and Jeanne Allen of Un Deuil au bout du monde (1877). Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Edmonds, Penelope. 2010. Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th Century Pacific Rim Cities. Vancouver: UBC Press. Foster, Shirley. 1990. Across New Worlds: Nineteenth-Century Women Travellers and Their Writings. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Frere, Alice M. 1870. The Antipodes and Round the World; or Australia, NewZealand-Ceylon, China, Japan, and California. London: Strangeways and Walden. Fussell, Paul. 1980. Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haines, Robin F. 1997. Emigration and the Labouring Poor: Australian Recruitment in Britain and Ireland, 1831–60. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Harris, Alexander. 1849. The Emigrant Family: Or the Story of an Australian Settler. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Heckenberg, Kerry. 2011. ‘A Lady’s Point of View: Female Curiosity and Mrs Allan Macpherson’s Experiences in Australia (1860)’, Journal of Australian Colonial History, 13: 125–150. Hogan, James Francis. 1888. The Irish in Australia. Melbourne: George Robinson & Co. Inglis, K.S. 1974. The Australian Colonists: An Exploration of Social History 1788–1870. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Jordan, Caroline. 2005. ‘Emma Macpherson in the “Black’s Camp” and Other Australian Interludes: A  Scottish Lady Artist’s Tour in New South Wales in 1856–57’, in Jordana Pomeroy (ed.), Intrepid Women: Victorian Artists Travel. Aldershot: Ashgate, 89–108. Kranidis, Rita S. 1999. The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration: Contested Subject. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lane, Cindy. 2015. Myths and Memories: (Re)viewing Colonial Western Australia Through Travellers’ Imaginings, 1850–1914. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

204  Sophie Cooper Mackenzie, Eneas. 1860. The Emigrant’s Guide to Australia with a Memoir of Mrs. Chisholm. London: Clarke, Beeton & Co., Foreign Booksellers. Mackenzie, John M. 2010. Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Macpherson, Emma. [A Lady]. 1860. My Experiences in Australia: Being Recollections of a Visit to the Australian Colonies in 1856–7. London: J. F. Hope. McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York and London: Routledge. Mills, Sara. 2005. Gender and Colonial Space. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Oxley, Deborah. 1996. Convict Maids: The Forced Migration of Women to Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pratt, Mary Louise. 2008. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1992. Qureshi, Sadiah. 2011. ‘Robert Gordon Latham, Displayed Peoples, and the Natural History of Race, 1854–1866’, The Historical Journal, 54(1): 143–166. Richards, Eric. 2005. ‘Running Home from Australia: Intercontinental Mobility and Migrant Expectations in the Nineteenth Century’, in Marjory Harper (ed.), Emigrant Homecomings: The Return Movement of Emigrants, 1600– 2000. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 77–104. Richardson, Joanne. 1969. ‘Aspinall, Butler Cole (1830–1975)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Schroeder, Janice. 1998. ‘Strangers in Every Port: Stereotypes of Victorian Women Travellers’, Victorian Review, 24(2): 118–129. Thomas, William H. 1867. A Gold Hunter’s Adventures Between Melbourne and Ballarat. Glasgow. Turnbull, Paul. 2007. ‘Scientific Theft of Remains in Colonial Australia’, Australian Indigenous Law Review, 11(1): 92–102. Ward, Damen. 2005. ‘Colonial Communication: Creating Settler Public Opinion in Crown Colony South Australia and New Zealand’, in Simon J. Potter (ed.), Imperial Communication: Australia, Britain, and the British Empire c. 1830–1850. London: Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, 7–46. Wilkie, Benjamin. 2017. The Scots in Australia, 1788–1938. Edinburgh: Boydell Press.

12 In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic British Women Travellers in 19th-Century America Justyna Fruzińska From Wright to Bird: Five British Women in America The first half of the 19th century was a time when America constituted a popular destination in British travelogues. Some of their authors were settlers, hoping for a better economic situation (especially before the Great Reform Act of 1832) and writing books which would encourage their compatriots to follow in their footsteps. Most, however, travelled for pleasure, or at least wanted to convey such an impression in their writings. Particularly after the end of the Napoleonic wars the British started visiting America in large numbers, often with a view to publishing their travel accounts on returning home. The Anglo-American War of 1812 was over, so it was safe to explore the young republic, which as a ‘daughter country’ constituted an object of constant curiosity among the British reading public, while the bitter experience of losing a colony was no longer fresh in the British memory. Moreover, political reforms and Chartist pressure in Great Britain meant that many travellers were interested in seeing the American democracy in order to learn from it or to warn against introducing similar solutions at home. Interestingly, many of the travellers writing about America were women; though they had to face the mocking tone of British newspaper criticism, many women decided to publish their travel accounts (see Deis and Frye 2013: 147). As Tim Youngs notices, since travel writing was a male-dominated genre, female authors counting on critical acclaim imitated the style of their male counterparts (Youngs 2013: 135). This meant that they often made similar observations, and on similar topics, as male travellers. At the same time, they often had easier access to the domestic sphere, which could result in a slight shift of focus away from the political, on which many female authors, such as Frances Trollope or Frances Kemble (Trollope 1832: 57; Kemble 1835: I.140), declared themselves incompetent to comment (but which was by no means absent from their travelogues). This chapter focuses on five British women who visited America in the first half of the 19th century. All of the accounts discussed here were very

206  Justyna Fruzińska popular at the time of their publication, contributing to the larger British discourse of American travels. What is important is that in terms of opinions they represented the whole political spectrum: From the openly Tory Frances Trollope, through the rather conservative Frances Kemble (particularly at the stage of her first Journal), the more moderate Isabella Bird, to the reformists: Harriet Martineau and Frances Wright. These differences in outlook, as shall be seen, often resulted in different responses to the young republic, not excepting aesthetic issues. The first British woman who described America in her Views of Society and Manners in America (1821) was Frances Wright (Mesick 1922: 12). Wright first came to America for two years in 1818, as she hoped to find there a practical realisation of her progressive views. She was a great enthusiast of everything American—sometimes to the point of being utterly uncritical. The one point where the American system proved for her problematic was the existence of slavery—an evil she could not ignore, and which she hoped would be soon corrected. Wright put her abolitionist views into practice in 1825, establishing a community in Nashoba, Tennessee, designed for buying slaves, educating and ultimately emancipating them. Even though the experiment ended in a failure, Wright remained a dedicated reformer and lecturer. It was in fact she who persuaded her friend Frances Trollope to join her efforts in Nashoba. Trollope arrived in 1827 and was very disappointed with the community, as she was with America in general. Since her motivations for visiting the New World were mostly of economic nature (her family experienced financial difficulties back home), she went on to establish a bazaar in Cincinnati, which did not succeed either, and after four years the writer returned to England. This may have contributed to Trollope’s bitterness about America. The country shocked her conservative taste with greater equality than she could accept. In 1832 she published a book about her American experiences, Domestic Manners of the Americans, which became an instant bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. The British reading public enjoyed her hilarious and often snide portrayal of American supposed primitiveness, while Americans felt, understandably, offended. The 1830s were a decade when two more travellers, Frances Kemble and Harriet Martineau, visited America. The former, known in her time as Fanny Kemble, was a Shakespearean actress from a well-known British thespian family. She came to America with her father, Charles Kemble, on an acting tour during which she met her future husband, the American Pierce Butler. She recorded the experiences from the journey in her 1835 Journal, mostly depicting herself as a true Romantic confronted with the unattractive mundanity of the republic (Mulvey 2009a: 179). After she married Butler, he inherited his grandfather’s plantations in Georgia, which meant that the abolitionist Fanny became unwillingly the mistress of numerous black slaves. Another and very different journal

In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic 207 was the result of this predicament, which she dared to publish only in 1863 under the title Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839. The disastrous marriage with Butler ended in a divorce, and Kemble returned to her acting profession. Martineau was the most scientifically-inclined of the travellers discussed. Her 1837 Society in America was not so much a travel account as a proto-sociological study, a British response to Tocqueville’s famous Democracy in America. The same experiences constituted the material for another book, Retrospect of Western Travel published in 1838, this time delineating Martineau’s travel chronologically rather than addressing different areas of the American social organization. If Society in America was aimed chiefly at the American audience, Retrospect was supposed to answer to the needs of the British reading public (Logan 2013: 213). These were followed by The Martyr Age of the United States published in 1839, a text on American abolitionism. Finally, Isabella Lucy Bird published her Englishwoman in America in 1856. This was the first of her books on America—the others being The Aspects of Religion in the United States of America (1859) and A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879), the latter including her exploits from her second visit to the United States in 1873. Her main motivation for travels in America and in other countries was health: Bird suffered from numerous health complaints, some of them possibly psychosomatic, which tended to disappear when she needed to face the challenges of travel. All these five women travellers came to America for different reasons and held different opinions on the republic’s social structure. American society, however, was not the only issue they focused on; they were equally interested in ‘sights’, be it natural or urban ones. Particularly, in their exploration of their New World, they all seemed to look for different forms of beauty—and found it, to a smaller or larger degree.

America as Wilderness Maria H. Frawley states that women travellers visiting America focused more on society and everyday life than on landscape or architecture, constituting a vital part of descriptions of other parts of the world (Frawley 1994: 168). And yet, descriptions of American landscapes do appear in all travelogues; it seems no portrayal of a foreign country would be complete without them. The more conservative travellers, such as Basil Hall or Frances Trollope, who disliked the American system, were more ready to consent to the existence of beauty in the American landscape than in society. America was thought by many to be a wild and uncivilised country, and while this assumption worked almost always to the detriment of the travellers’ impressions of people, it could at least work to the benefit of their views on nature. Wild, untamed, unspoilt by civilisation—the

208  Justyna Fruzińska American landscape could answer to at least some of 19th-century aesthetic expectations. Even when it came to society, the view of America as a wilderness could play an important role in the argument of those travellers who were progressive and pro-American. Frances Wright sarcastically stated that in England, it was assumed that the ‘American nation is in a sort of middle state between barbarism and refinement’ (Wright 1821: 311). Accordingly, when she arrived in America she expected to see its inhabitants uncivilised, materialistic, cunning, unmannered: What she believed to be an irreconcilable mixture of ‘Dutchmen’ and ‘wild Arabs’ (Wright 1821: 311). The fragment implies that her expectations were incorrect, as Americans turned out to be much more sophisticated than her preconceptions would grant them to be; yet, if one looks at other fragments of her book, it appears that Wright manipulated the dichotomy of ‘civilised’ versus ‘wild’ according to her changing purpose. On the one hand, she could suggest that Americans had nothing to be ashamed of, as they were not less refined than Europeans; on the other hand, in a different passage, she did present them as uncivilised, but this, for her, meant they were superior rather than inferior to Europeans. She criticised the staleness of European civilisation, praising Americans for having nothing to ‘unlearn’—being untainted by the ‘false notions’ one absorbed in Europe, portraying them as a sort of noble savages (Wright 1821: 419). Whichever way she chose to have it—whether Americans were as civilised as Europeans or less so—in Wright’s opinion it testified to the American perfection. As far as nature was concerned, British travellers shared some common, often Romantic, expectations; their descriptions of the landscape were usually kept in the Wordsworthian mode (Mulvey 2009b: 49–50). As Christopher Mulvey points out, even clearly post-Romantic writers such as Dickens were looking in the American landscape for Romantic attributes, ‘varied prospects and meadowed meanderings, rocks and mountains’ (Mulvey 2009a: 220). America failed to meet their expectations as it did not answer to those preconceived standards; rather, it provided views many travellers were unprepared to appreciate. Partly, the problem lay in the fact they were looking for the familiar: They missed English parks and gardens (Mulvey 2009a: 178), European castles, churches and palaces (Mulvey 2009a: 19). Thus, when Trollope appreciated the landscape of the Alleghany mountains, this was because for her it approached the beauty of England, reminding her of an English garden (Trollope 1832: 160). Kemble, in turn, caught herself sighing ‘for a pair of English shears, to make these green carpets as smooth and soft and thick as the close piled Genoa velvet’ (Kemble 1835: I.52). In the words of Patricia Ard, British travellers placed American landscape ‘against a British construction of nature as an ordered and cultivated space . . . an extension of the domestic space and subservient to man’ (Ard 1993). Dunlop points to

In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic 209 the fact that many British travellers of the period compared the American prairie to English parks; such a comparison allowed them to infuse the egalitarian landscape with an illusion of hierarchy, order and social differentiation. However, she also notices the fragility of this comparison, since the English park would require ‘gentlemen to exercise their taste on the landscape’ and ‘peasants to make the taste of the gentlemen possible’—neither of which were available in America (Dunlop 1998: 40). On the other hand, the author discusses also the very opposite process, where the prairie got compared to the sea, which suggested its oppressive lack of differentiation (Dunlop 1998: 65). Thus, the travellers either tried to familiarise this element of the American landscape by comparing it to a more ordered English park, or give up on such attempts, yielding to the egalitarian monotony of the prairie.

Looking for the Picturesque The central aesthetic categories structuring the expectations of British travellers in the first half of the 19th century were the sublime, the beautiful and the picturesque. The main source of the two former concepts was Edmund Burke’s 1757 treatise Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, which distinguished between the sublime, associated with majesty and terror, and the beautiful, connected to delicacy and love. The picturesque was a prevailing aesthetic category in British discourse on landscape chiefly in late 18th century— one which arose with the new, consumerist approach to nature, in which ‘scenery . . . becomes a commodity’ (Andrews 1990: vii). Andrews shows how the meaning of the picturesque changed over time: Initially, William Gilpin as one of the originators of the notion understood it as simply ‘reminding of a picture’, and looked in it for some degree of neoclassical order. However, within less than 30  years the concept shifted towards Uvedale Price’s appreciation of irregularity (Andrews 1990: 239). It was this latter meaning of the picturesque, as embracing disorder and even ruin, which turned out to be still operative for the travellers in the early 19th century. James Buzard stresses that the concept ‘arose in the last third of the eighteenth century as a kind of mediator between these opposed ideas [the sublime and the beautiful], capable of running the gamut from relatively mild English landscape to the breathtaking cataracts and chasms of the Alps in stormy weather’ (Buzard 2002: 45). This, however, did not mean the category of ‘picturesqueness’ was all-encompassing, since, as one can see in numerous travelogues, America apparently lacked in this quality as it did in many others. M. H. Dunlop notices that it was particularly difficult to find the interior picturesque, as ‘the walker on the prairie physically experienced enclosure, insects, dust, pollen, faint smells, and the crackling of low dense vegetation’ (Dunlop 1998: 63).

210  Justyna Fruzińska Travel in the interior was too rough in the physical sense to allow much space for Romantic contemplation. Also, the landscape was far too monotonous to constitute a series of ‘views’ that could be appreciated in the sense the British travellers were prepared for (Dunlop 1998: 30). What they expected was an experience of polite enjoyment of nature: ‘To sit beside this miniature cascade, and read, or dream away a day, was one of our greatest pleasures’ (Trollope 1832: 147)—an experience seldom to be found in the interior. That is why New England landscapes tended to make a much more favourable impression, simply by virtue of their greater resemblance to European sights, and of being more ‘civilised’. The need for the picturesque was so strong that the travellers looked for it even where they could not find it; thus Trollope comments on the river Licking hitting against stones ‘which, in the absence of better rocks, we found very picturesque’ (Trollope 1832: 54). This fragment shows well that, like many others, she came to America with a ready-made blueprint and only then tried to match what she saw to her pre-existent notions. Such notions came from the habit of looking at natural scenery as if it was a man-made painting; for example, Trollope maintained that in general smaller rivers were more beautiful than large ones, since in their case one could see also objects on the opposite shore, which would become ‘a part of the composition’ (Trollope 1832: 167). According to Andrews, in 18th-century Britain the picturesque was on the one hand ‘a reaction against both the transformation of the countryside during the agrarian and industrial revolutions’ and on the other—a celebration of individuality expressing the spirit of laissez-faire (Andrews 1994: 283– 285). While initially the picturesque was a category used chiefly to talk of the British landscape, with time it started being applied to other parts of the world (Copley and Garside 1994: 6). It seems that the travellers who most often expected to find picturesque views in America were the conservative ones. Surely, disappointment with some parts of the American landscape was expressed by writers regardless of their political sympathies, yet the annoyance at a lack of the picturesque seems to predominate among those who disliked America as a whole.

Imagining an English Landscape One particular element which made the American landscape so unpleasant was the absence of ruins—this necessary element of the Romantic picturesque. Trollope, appreciating the scenery of the Ohio, noticed that it would be perfect ‘were there occasionally a ruined abbey, or feudal castle, to mix the romance of real life with that of nature’ (Trollope 1832: 47). Nature alone was not enough—it needed to be embellished, improved. The problem was that America, having no ruins, showed it had no history. In Walter Benjamin’s words, ‘In the ruin history has physically merged into the setting’ (Benjamin 2003: 177–178)—and it was this

In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic 211 setting devoid of history that bothered most travellers. Trollope caught herself imagining that piles of rocks were in fact ruined gothic castles. She called this habit of hers a ‘folly’ (and the folly here has double meaning, since it is as if her imagination was building an artificial construction also called ‘folly’, so typical for English gardens)—yet, the travelling for thousands of miles, without meeting any nobler trace of the ages that are passed, than a mass of rotten leaves, or a fragment of fallen rock, produces a heavy, earthly matter-of-fact effect upon the imagination, which can hardly be described, and for which the greatest beauty of scenery can furnish only an occasional and transitory remedy. (Trollope 1832: 163) Natural beauty, unsupported by history, was tedious, too ‘matter-offact’; it did not remind one of sceneries as encountered in painting or literature, where the landscape was always enriched by traces of the human past. This is why Frances Kemble found herself missing Europe— ‘the old land where fairy tales are told; . . . the old feudal world, where every rock, and valley, and stream, are haunted with imaginings wild and beautiful: the hallowed ground of legend history; the dream-land of fancy and poetry’ (Kemble 1835: I.229). It was a yearning for order, beauty and history—none of which could be offered by America. Little did it matter that British picturesque ruins were often purpose-built garden decorations—thus not testifying to the existence of history either (Andrews 1990: 49). Isabella Bird believed that Americans themselves ‘would give anything if they could appropriate a Kenilworth Castle, or a Melrose or a Tintern Abbey, with its covering of ivy, and make it sustain some episode of their history’; unfortunately, ‘though they can make railways, ivy is beyond them, and the purple heather disdains the soil of the New World’ (Bird 1856: 135). Therefore, ruins acquired not only an aesthetic, but also a political function, testifying to the British superiority over the young and unromantic America. Despite all its industrial possibilities, America would never be able to produce history. This was a view popular not only among British travellers; American writers from Hawthorne to Henry James decades later felt that America’s lack of history made it lack cultural depth. What is more, even if ruins were to be found in America, they did not seem to belong there. Frances Kemble wrote about Frederica in Georgia, destroyed by the English during the war of 1812: I hailed these picturesque groups and masses with the feelings of a European, to whom ruins are like a sort of relations. In my country, ruins are like a minor chord in music; here they are like a discord; they are not the relics of time, but the results of violence; they recall

212  Justyna Fruzińska no valuable memories of a remote past, and are mere encumbrances to the busy present. (Kemble 1864: 285) Because America had no past, its ruins were not a pleasant, nostalgic testimony to its forgone greatness, as they were in Europe; rather, they constituted a simple remnant from a very recent war. How far they were from Kemble’s aesthetic ideal is expressed by her juxtaposition of a minor chord and a discord; even if America had some ruins, they could not help in making it either beautiful, sublime or picturesque.

Confrontation With the American Sublime If any American sight came close to British travellers’ expectations, it was the Niagara—perhaps the single incarnation of the American sublime, and the most well-known natural wonder of America in Europe.1 Trollope mentioned she had heard so much about the falls’ beauty that she expected to be disappointed—yet, they still impressed her (Trollope 1832: 291). Patricia Ard sees in Trollope’s expression of terror induced by the sight of the falls one more instance of her overall disgust with the Americans landscape (Ard 1993); however, as these expressions of terror constitute a part of an overwhelmingly positive description, it seems more correct to read them as moments of awe, typical for a confrontation with the sublime. Like all instances of the Burkian sublime, the falls allowed the traveller to ‘enjoy danger at a safe distance’—a condition usually fulfilled by wild mountainous landscapes (Andrews 1990: 42, 44). Vocal as Trollope was in most of her descriptions (especially the critical ones), when she faced Niagara, her literary powers mysteriously abandoned her; she simply stated: ‘It is not for me to attempt a description of Niagara; I feel I have no powers for it’ (Trollope 1832: 302). Instead of depicting the landscape, she chose to render her feeling of being overwhelmed by it—so much so that she lost her usual capacity to express herself. There may be no better way of conveying one’s absolute surrender to the sublime. However, the fact that Trollope gave up on describing the sights that impressed her—such as Niagara and New York—resulted in the book consisting mostly of very vivid depictions of what the writer disliked about America. In fact, Trollope was not the only one unable to describe Niagara. Harriet Martineau declared that ‘To offer an idea of Niagara by writing of hues and dimensions is much like representing the kingdom of Heaven by images of jasper and topazes’, therefore, she preferred to focus on her party’s activities around the falls (Martineau 1838: I.151). Isabella Bird first conveyed her feelings by stating that she ‘forgot [her] friends, who had called [her] to the hotel to lunch—[she] forgot everything—for [she] was looking at the Falls of Niagara’ (Bird 1856: 218). But then, at least

In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic 213 at the beginning of her visit, she gave up her own voice, quoting instead Hemans’s poem ‘The Traveller at the Source of the Nile’. Just like Trollope believed that it must be someone else’s pen that could do justice to the sight, Bird took recourse to another writer’s language. Yet again, the falls did not disappoint—she called them the perfect combination of beauty and terror (222). What bothered her at Niagara was the disturbance of the perfect Romantic scene by ‘a great fungus growth of museums, curiosityshops, taverns, and pagodas with shining tin cupolas’—even on the British side, where she would hope for more refinement (219). One is reminded of Thomas Cole’s 1830 paining ‘Distant View of Niagara Falls’, where the artist depicted only Native Americans gazing at the natural landscape—a Romantic fantasy that Bird would have wished for, eradicating all the manmade commercial sites surrounding the falls already in the 19th century. It was not only Niagara that could impress British travellers. Frances Kemble found a perfect Burkean sublime during her visit to the Hudson River: ‘The beauty and wild sublimity of what I beheld seemed almost to crush my faculties,—I felt dizzy as though I had been carried into the immediate presence of God’, she said (Kemble 1835: I.210). Her description contained a lot of theatricality so typical for the author: ‘I could have stretched out my arms and shouted aloud—I could have fallen on my knees and worshipped’, and led her to thoughts about God’s might and man’s insignificance (Kemble 1835: I.211). Thus, Kemble painted herself as an ideal Romantic; the passage is not quite a description of the landscape itself, which becomes secondary to what is truly important: The traveller’s response to it. Here the aesthetic allowed Kemble to fashion her Romantic persona and portray herself as sophisticated enough to respond to the landscape with awe and delight.

Landscape as a Metonymy for America When American landscapes did not conform to the aesthetic categories of the travellers, they disappointed. Equally often, a dislike of the landscape could work as a metonymic expression of the dislike of the country as a whole. The most vivid example of this phenomenon may be the descriptions of the river Mississippi, evoking quite strong responses in many authors. Frances Trollope arrived in America, unlike most travellers, not to New York but from the side of the mouth of the Mississippi. Her initial response to the American landscape was, thus, one of disgust and disappointment. The end of the long and tedious sea voyage in her case was not accompanied by the expected relief, because she exchanged the blue ocean for the ‘muddy’ and ‘murky stream’ (Trollope 1832: 25)— although a few paragraphs down she admitted that even this complete lack of beauty brought something of an aesthetic satisfaction to travellers wearied by the monotony of the ocean (27). She compared the sight to Dante’s Inferno and painted a picture of utter desolateness, with

214  Justyna Fruzińska crocodiles ‘luxuriating in slime’ and uprooted trees. She called it ‘a world in ruins’—one of complete chaos, lack of form, a primeval primitiveness (Trollope 1832: 26).2 A very similar impression was recorded by Charles Dickens, who called the river ‘the hateful Mississippi’, ‘a slimy monster hideous to behold’, and added ironically, referring to American terminology: ‘But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him! An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid mud, six miles an hour’ (Dickens 1842: II.109–110). It is difficult to imagine a fuller expression of aesthetic displeasure, relying upon the imagery of sickness and death (Ard 1993). And yet, there seems to be more at play in both these cases than a pure recording of ugliness; as Thomas Ruys Smith observes, the problem with the Mississippi was more than simply the fact that ‘it was neither picturesque like the Ohio, nor sublime like Niagara’ (Smith 2009: 68). As the author notices, Europeans disliked the Mississippi as an incarnation of the American democracy, ‘the social equality of the steamboat cabin; the promise of national growth and expansion; its role as the mythical birthplace of popular Jacksonian cultural heroes’ (68). For both Dickens and Trollope the dislike of the Mississippi mirrored their dislike of (in Dickens’s case disappointment with) American democracy. The American people and landscape were in the eyes of these travellers equally undifferentiated and uncultivated (Ard 1993). What supports this observation is the fact that the river evoked completely different reactions of travellers more enthusiastic about the American system. Thus, Martineau was amazed by the Mississippi and went so far as to call it ‘beautiful’ (Martineau 1838: 172). Interestingly, she paid attention to the same features of the river as Dickens and Trollope did; for her, it was similarly unformed, giving one an impression of moving back in time ‘to the days of creation’. Yet in Martineau’s text this is a positive simile, paralleling her positive feelings about America as a whole. For her, both the Mississippi and Niagara were signs of the future, the world in the making—as all America was (Martineau 1837: I.108). She was not concerned about America’s lack of a past and did not lament its lack of ruins, since it was the future where the republic would realise its full potential. As one can see from these three examples, the aesthetic responses of these authors turn out to be very political, and closely related to their overall experience of the travels. After all, one might imagine the imposing width and even the primitiveness of the Mississippi interpreted as an instance of the sublime—as overwhelming and provoking terror; theoretically, this seems to be as plausible a response as the one of abhorrence.

Cities: Appreciating the Familiar Most travellers clearly preferred the country to cities (Mulvey 2008: 49)—this may have been an expression of their Romantic sensibilities,

In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic 215 or a result of the fact that in nature they did not find as many unpleasant differences from what they were taught to appreciate. And even the countryside disappointed: Frances Kemble and William Cobbett complained about the farms being less pretty than the English ones, and rather disarranged, like the French ones. For Kemble, the reason of this visual chaos was that ‘an American has not time to be a year about anything’, which resulted in the Americans preferring wooden fences to hedges needing time to grow (Kemble 1835: I.136). The aesthetic language remained the same whether the writers were referring to nature or man-made constructions: The dissatisfaction was conveyed by means of comparison with the known, European standards (a feature typical for travel writing on the whole, of course). Just like in nature, in cities too the travellers looked for the familiar and were generally pleased with the most ‘European’ sights. Mulvey points to the relief Trollope visibly felt at entering New York, for it reminded her of home more than other cities she visited (Mulvey 2009a: 149).3 This was a sentiment shared by the majority of travellers, especially the conservative ones; for example, Basil Hall saw in New York an uncanny mixture of the familiar and the foreign, and Frederick Marryat thought the initial ‘Englishness’ of New York to be deceptive (Mulvey 2009a: 152–154). Kemble preferred Philadelphia to New York simply because it looked older—this was the same hope for history that was behind the travellers’ yearning for ruins within the natural landscape (Kemble 1835: I.139). Similarly, this search for the familiar was the reason why many travellers felt comfortable in the Southern states which, with their semiaristocratic culture, responded more to the aesthetic, while not ethical, expectations of the British. A city that particularly disappointed many travellers was Washington. As the capital, it was expected to be the most glorious in America, which turned out to be far from the truth. Frances Kemble called it ‘a rambling, red-brick image of futurity, where nothing is, but all things are to be’ (Kemble 1835: II.101; emphasis in original). Not only did it lack a past, just like other American cities; it also did not possess any present: With large streets and buildings wide apart, it was designed for the empire America was yet to become. Moreover, the presence of slavery in the capital city, the metonymy of the country of freedom, reinforced the aesthetic displeasure by the addition of an ethical one.

Man-made Beauty in American Arts If beauty was rarely to be found in cities, and even not always present in the natural landscape, American art could not provide it either. The most vocal critics of American creativity were, of course, the most conservative writers, and Frances Trollope was certainly one of the most blunt about it. The deplorable state of arts she claimed to observe in America was for her a result of both social equality, not allowing for the emergence of a

216  Justyna Fruzińska leisure class who could enjoy and sponsor literature or painting, and of American materialism, the constant ‘search of that honey of Hybla, vulgarly called money’, which seemed more interesting to Americans than art, science, or other more refined pursuits (Trollope 1832: 54). She ironically wondered whether Americans were not wiser than Europeans, not allowing themselves to be seduced by statues, books, pictures or gems— in short, everything that for Trollope allowed one to forget that man is ‘a thing of clay’, or a mere beast (Trollope 1832: 72). It is hard to imagine a stronger criticism of the republic; Trollope nearly implied that Americans were less human than Europeans—and one must remember that in the 19th century one could be easily seduced by the idea that different types of people occupied different positions on the ladder stretching between animals and God. Trollope believed Americans had not produced any works of literature or art worthy of notice, and that their knowledge of British literature was very unsatisfying—it went without saying that Americans should know British literature, as the only possible source of culture in the absence of their own one. Criticising American art and literature allowed Trollope to present herself as having the required knowledge and taste; in short, she was as much interested in rejoicing in her superiority as an Englishwoman as in creating a fiction of gentility for her own persona. Her self-confidence as a British woman did not take into account that as recently as the mid-18th century her compatriots deplored the poor state of English painting when compared to one created in mainland Europe, ascribing to their own country the same backwardness Trollope saw in America (Andrews 1990: 24). Another traveller who used the perceived inferiority of American arts for self-promotion was Frances Kemble. She admitted that, ‘The heart of a philanthropist may indeed be satisfied’ in America, but those who, like her, ‘received a higher degree of mental cultivation’, could not find there enjoyment, because of a lack of galleries, sculptures or literature (Kemble 1835: I.85). America may well have been the country levelling social differences to the largest degree, but it succeeded only at that: At fulfilling the basic, ‘animal’ needs. In this respect Kemble’s description, although more generous than Trollope’s, is saturated with the same images of Americans concentrating themselves on the needs of the lowest order. This is why Kemble could ask rhetorically—and twice within the same paragraph—‘Where are the poets of this land?’ (Kemble 1835: I.212). Similarly to Trollope, she believed poetry was ‘but a hot-house growth’, and needed a leisure class to support it—which she believed was bound to appear sooner or later even in the New World (Kemble 1835: I.213). Even the more progressive travellers agreed with the feeling that America had yet to equal Britain in the field of arts. Frances Wright, being an enthusiastic supporter of the republic, explained this state of affairs by the fact that in America the best minds were busy working in

In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic 217 politics—thus, she managed to turn an apparent disadvantage into yet another praise of the country (Wright 1821: 317–318). Similarly, Harriet Martineau agreed that American taste was ‘weak, immature, ignorant’, and that ‘If the American nation be judged of by its literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all’ (Martineau 1837: II. 98, 207). But at the same time she believed that imitative though America was at present, with time it would have its great authors.4 One reason for this backwardness she mentioned was the fact that Americans were an amalgamation of many nations, and they did not yet have a ‘national mind’ that could be expressed by a creative genius (Martineau 1837: II. 209). Another factor contributing to the artistic situation was a lack of an international copyright law, which resulted in British authors’ work being pirated in America and taking over the market (1837: II. 213). Contrary to the conservative writers, Martineau did not believe that the existence of a leisure class was necessary for the appearance of good art and literature, since she remarked that people who were talented came very often from the lower classes anyway (to which her opponents would probably say a leisure class was needed for appreciation and patronage of artists) (1837: II. 123).

Conclusion All five women travellers discussed in this chapter, despite having different backgrounds and different reasons for visiting America, seemed to look in the New World for the same thing: Beauty. Romantic aesthetics prompted them to search in their travels for images that would conform to the standards of the beautiful, the sublime, and the picturesque—and to be disappointed if America failed to produce views comparable to the European ones. Be it in cities or in nature, the travellers were most easily pleased by what seemed familiar, and it was nature, untainted by the unavoidable surprises stemming from a different organisation of society, that most easily fulfilled these requirements. The natural attraction which most readily corresponded to the idea of the sublime was, without any doubt, the Niagara Falls. On the other hand, the absence of ruins which would testify to the existence of a past deprived American landscapes of a large dose of picturesqueness. Additionally, as the example of the Mississippi shows, different travellers’ responses were often conditioned not simply by their aesthetic expectations, but also by their political views and overall feelings about America. Those who felt more comfortable in the New World and were enthusiastic about its system tended also to be more enchanted by the beauties it had to offer. What all travellers agreed on, however, was that the state of American art and literature was unsatisfactory. At times this fact seemed to give them a degree of self-righteous pleasure; such was the case of Trollope, who clearly enjoyed presenting herself as knowledgeable and

218  Justyna Fruzińska sophisticated, looking down on the ‘savage’ Americans. Those who were less acrimonious simply claimed that the country needed time, and possibly an international copyright law as well as a leisure class able to finance and enjoy artistic output. Whether the republic was seen as a promise of a great future or an incarnation of an impending danger to the old order, the authors discussed in this chapter found there at least some aspects of beauty corresponding to their aesthetic notions.

Notes 1. Bird mentioned that in England America was known for one city—New York—and one natural sight—Niagara (Bird 1856: 216). 2. To be fair, one must add that some parts of the Mississippi did impress Trollope by their exoticism: she even called pendant vine branches and colourful birds ‘picturesque’, and enjoyed the feeling of being ‘in a new world’—a description sharing the sense of wonder with the language of Columbian discoveries (Trollope 1832: 43). She could be also very enthusiastic about the landscape of the Alleghany mountains (159); therefore, one can hardly say that all Trollope’s impressions of America were unfavourable. She even asked: ‘Who is it that says America is not picturesque? I forget; but surely he never travelled from Utica to Albany’ (Trollope 1832: 315). Therefore, where America resembled Europe and conformed to the idea of the picturesque, it turned out to be perfectly acceptable even for a writer who so strongly disliked it. 3. Interestingly, however, the description of New York Trollope offered is no description at all; she spoke about ‘waves of liquid gold’ and sunbeams, but when it came to the particulars, she stated that naming them would be merely ‘to give a list of words, without conveying the faintest idea of the scene’; therefore, she capitulated completely, and satisfied herself with a vague expression of delight (Trollope 1832: 268). Cf. Trollope’s description of Niagara Falls discussed in this chapter. 4. One American author Martineau unequivocally admired was Emerson, whose ‘American Scholar’ she quoted extensively in her Retrospect of Western Travels. Apart from that, she seemed to expect from Americans genre scenes rather than artistic sophistication, as she appreciated most texts which showed the country’s specificity (Martineau 1837: II.210).

References Andrews, Malcolm. 1990. The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760–1800. Aldershot: Scolar Press. ———. 1994. ‘The Metropolitan Picturesque’, in Stephen Copley and Peter Garside (eds.), The Politics of the Picturesque: Literature, Landscape, and Aesthetics Since 1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 282–298. Ard, Patricia M. 1993. ‘Charles Dickens and Frances Trollope: Victorian Kindred Spirits in the American Wilderness’, American Transcendental Quarterly, 7(4): 293–307. Benjamin, Walter. 2003. The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne. London and New York: Verso. Bird, Isabella. 1856. The Englishwoman in America. London: John Murray.

In Search of the Romantic Aesthetic 219 Buzard, James. 2002. ‘The Grand Tour and After (1660–1840)’, in Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 37–52. Copley, Stephen and Peter Garside. 1994. ‘Introduction’, in Stephen Copley and Peter Garside (eds.), The Politics of the Picturesque: Literature, Landscape, and Aesthetics Since 1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–12. Deis, Elizabeth J., and Lowell T. Frye. 2013. ‘British Travelers and the “Conditionof-America Question”: Defining America in the 1830s’, in Christine Devine (ed.), Nineteenth-Century British Travelers in the New World. Farnham: Ashgate, 121–150. Dickens, Charles. 1842. American Notes for General Circulation, 2nd ed., vol. 1, 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall. Dunlop, M.H. 1998. Sixty Miles from Contentment: Traveling the NineteenthCentury American Interior. Boulder: Westview Press. Frawley, Maria H. 1994. A Wider Range: Travel Writing by Women in Victorian England. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Kemble, Frances Anne. 1835. Journal by Frances Anne Butler, 2 vols. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. ———. 1864. Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839. New York: Harper & Brothers. Logan, Deborah Anna. 2013. ‘ “My Dearly-Beloved Americans”: Harriet Martineau’s Transatlantic Abolitionism’, in Christine Devine (ed.), NineteenthCentury British Travelers in the New World. Farnham: Ashgate, 203–220. Martineau, Harriet. 1837. Society in America, 2 vols. Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors. Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 191–192. ———. 1838. Retrospect of Western Travel, 3 vols. London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit-Street. Mesick, Jane Louise. 1922. The English Traveller in America 1785–1835. New York: Columbia University Press. Mulvey, Christopher. 2008. Transatlantic Manners: Social Patterns in NineteenthCentury Anglo-American Travel Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009a. Anglo-American Landscapes: A  Study of Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Travel Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009b. ‘New York to Niagara by Way of the Hudson and the Erie’, in Alfred Bendixen and Judith Hamera (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 46–61. Smith, Thomas Ruys. 2009. ‘The Mississippi River as Site and Symbol’, in Alfred Bendixen and Judith Hamera (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 62–77. Trollope, Frances. 1832. Domestic Manners of the Americans. London: Whittaker, Treacher and Co. Wright, Frances. 1821. Views of Society and Manners in America. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. Youngs, Tim. 2013. The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13 Carriage and Canoe The Material Vessels of Anna Brownell Jameson’s Voyage in Upper Canada Sophie Anne Edwards The Materiality of Travel Anna Brownell Jameson’s voyage to Upper Canada between December 1837 and September 1838 was bounded and defined by very particular materialities: The physical world through which she travelled, the vessels that moved her to and through these places and her bodily experience of this travel. These materialities also include her socio-economic position and the material relations of colonial practices which were physically, socially, culturally and politically altering the Indigenous territories1 through which she travelled. Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, published by Saunders and Otley in 1839 (considered to be an important and authoritative text on early Canada), and her 79 drawings, etchings and watercolours bound in ‘The Voyage to America’ album2 held at the Toronto Reference Library were created within these material contexts and had a material presence in her time (and ours)—passing hand to hand, while supporting Jameson’s presence as a writer and commentator. Jameson’s writing about her experience of Upper Canada benefit from a consideration of the relationship between travel and travel writing as process, movement and representational practice and the mode of travel (steamer, carriage, sleigh, canoe). How Jameson’s experience and representation changed based on the mode of transportation and what/ to whom these modes of transportation provided access are of interest. Mobilities research, as described by Tim Cresswell, is particularly interested in ‘a variety of things that move including humans, ideas and objects’ (Cresswell 2012: 4). Attention to the mode of transportation brings the geography of travel to the fore, thus responding to the call to ‘register the production of travel writings by corporeal subjects moving through material landscapes . . . the places these travellers encountered or the physical means through which they engaged them’ (Duncan and Gregory 2002: 5). Such a focus provides a vehicle to understand that Jameson’s gendered and classed position—and the act of writing and drawing—was negotiated via and within various types of vessels. By extension, we can therefore consider the role of these vessels in relation

Carriage and Canoe 221 to the colonial processes underway in Jameson’s time, and understand that these vessels were active ‘agents’ within the colonial process, helping to produce social relations and displacements, and the possibility for Jameson to travel, write, interact with and represent place.

Positioning Jameson Anna Brownell Jameson was Irish by birth but spent most of her life in England. Jameson’s 1825 marriage to Robert Jameson was an unhappy one. Anna did not follow Jameson to the Dominican during his judgeship, nor did she join him in Canada until he summoned her in 1836 to support his bid for Attorney General. After spending a generally unhappy winter in Toronto, a ‘strangely mean and melancholy’ place (Jameson 1990: 15), Jameson decided to head north to upper Lake Huron. This trip, she hoped, would provide both the time for a formal settlement between her and Jameson to be arranged, and material for another book by documenting the ‘strange things’ (Erskine 1915: 157) and observing the ‘Indian and his women’ (I use ‘Indian’ throughout this chapter when referencing Jameson’s use of the term, otherwise tribal specificity is used where known). Jameson considered the development of Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (hereafter WSSR) to be a means to build and sustain her financial independence and literary presence (Macpherson 1878: 139–140), as Robert Jameson’s financial support had been irregular throughout their marriage. A reading of Jameson must consider the complexity of Jameson’s context as a woman of the upper-middle-class with limited financial means, connected to powerful and influential circles, as she worked to maintain and create a place for herself financially, artistically and socially. This need to publish to support herself and her family must be considered alongside her literary and social interests. Anna’s reputation had been made and her position secured by hard and unremitting work, by constant study, perhaps by a judicious opportunism in the matter of some of her friendships in the early years, but above all by her journalist’s talent of assessing the market and writing for it. (Thomas 1978 192) WSSR established Jameson as an international literary figure; the book was reviewed in numerous journals and papers. Indeed, her American correspondent, writer Catharine Sedgewick, reported that WSSR was one of the most popular books in America (Thomas 1978: 139), and Jameson wrote to a friend, ‘At this moment I have fame and praise, for my name is in every newspaper’ (Macpherson 1878: 152).3 Reviews appeared in important journals and were generally favourable.4 WSSR was part of a larger travel writing tradition through which the colonies were imagined, British expansion justified, and literary authority

222  Sophie Anne Edwards established. Jameson understood that a book on Canada would be of interest, and a possible bestseller, based on her previous publishing interest and the consumption of travel-related books. She also was keen to observe Upper Canada and provide comment, although she navigated her commentaries, by being ‘not too bold’ (Jameson 1990: 14). By 1836, when she travelled to Toronto, Upper Canada, including the city of Toronto and all the lands claimed by the British in the region, had been established on the territories of numerous Tribes throughout the region. The establishment of southern Upper Canada had already displaced many Tribes to smaller reserves and Territories; communities and Tribal members were moving farther west and north as settlement pressures increased (As shown in Figure 13.1). Upper Lake Huron was affected by two Treaties, but the Anishinaabeg were still occupying the region under these Treaties at this time, and formal European settlement had not begun in the area. Jameson was very interested in the ‘Indians’ and hoped to meet them. Winter Studies and Summer Rambles, Jameson’s record of her Upper Canada journey was popular in her time as a travelogue, her readers curious, wrote Jameson, about ‘regions hitherto undescribed by any traveller . . . and Indian tribes, such as few European women of refined and civilized habits have ever risked, and none have recorded’ (Jameson 9). WSSR was read not only by armchair readers interested in the exotic, but also by men of influence. Political figures and tourists alike were familiar with her work. As biographer Clara Thomas has argued, ‘From the publication of Visits and Sketches in 1834, her works reflected, at the same time as they helped to create, the taste of mid-nineteenth century England and America’ (Thomas 1967: 193). Travel writing and landscape representation are productive practices (Withers and Keighren 2011; Pratt 2008), which help to produce place but also the identities of the writers. Jameson negotiated this process on multiple scales and through multiple forms, writing within, and against dominant narratives about Canada, and within her own social, economic and gendered context.

Vessels Various types of transportation facilitated and framed Jameson’s voyage from England to New York, New York to Toronto, Toronto to upper Lake Huron—ocean ships, lake steamers, carriages, sleighs and different types of canoes; each provided access to particular places and experiences in various geographies, seasons and weather. Different types of men maneuvered these vessels and each vessel represented a varying class status, as well as class and type of passenger. Each vessel existed and travelled within its own constellation of meanings, histories and relations to the 19th century spatial imaginary and function within colonial settlement, trade and exploration. Each played a part in the opening of Canada as a colony, each engaged different local/global economic and

Source: Map reproduction courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library.

Figure 13.1 Wyld, James (1836). ‘A map of the province of Upper Canada, describing all the new settlements, townships, & cc. with the countries adjacent, from Quebec to Lake Huron’.

224  Sophie Anne Edwards social relations and each had a different role in the changing cultural, political and territorial landscapes.

Steamers Jameson arrived in New York from Liverpool in November of 1836, where she waited, hoping for contact from her husband, as well as his promised escort, neither of which materialised. Her New York circle advised she wait until spring, due to the harsh conditions, but she set out by steamer up the Hudson in December 1836. At the very blush of morning, I  escaped from the heated cabin, crowded with listless women and clamorous children, and found my way to the deck. I  was surprised by a spectacle as beautiful as it was new to me . . . our magnificent steamer—the prow armed with a sharp iron sheath for the purpose-was crashing its way through solid ice four inches thick, which seemed to close behind us into an adhesive mass . . . I walked up and down, from the prow to the stern, refreshed by the keen frosty air, and the excitement caused by various picturesque effects, on the ice-bound river and the frozen shores till we reached Hudson. Beyond this town it was not safe for the boat to advance. . . .’ (Jameson 1990: 18) Throughout her description of this voyage to Toronto, Jameson navigates her position as an adventuress while maintaining her class position. As we see in the excerpt quoted above, Jameson compares herself to the other women who remain in the cabin—a gendered space—while she spends time on the deck appreciating the grandeur of the scenery and gathering observations for her writing.5 Here Jameson successfully positions herself as what might be termed a ‘gentle adventuress’—not an explorer, but also neither tourist, nor a colonial wife. Jameson is a traveller distinguished from the other ‘listless’ women ill-equipped constitutionally for the cold, culturally and aesthetically blind to the newness of the landscape and the picturesque views. Jameson is impressed with the ‘magnificent’ steamer and its adaptations that allow it to ‘crash’ its way through the ice—much as European expansion crashed its way through North America. The steamer, like other modes of transportation to which Jameson would avail herself, opened up the west and north to explorers, colonial administrators and travellers like Jameson. Later in her Upper Canada explorations, Jameson travels by steamer; and as with her Hudson description, she uses comparison to establish her position and also that of Upper Canada: On board the Michigan steamer  .  .  . I found all the arrangements magnificent to a degree I could not have anticipated. This is one of

Carriage and Canoe 225 the three great steam-boats navigating the Upper Lakes which are from five to seven hundred tons burthen, and there are nearly forty smaller ones coasting Lake Erie, between Buffalo and Detroit, besides schooners. We have on this lake [referring to Lake Ontario] two illconceived steamers, which go puffing up and down like two little tea-kettles, in proportion to the American boats; and unfortunately, till our side of the lake is better peopled and cultivated, we have no want of them. (June 19, 1837 in Jameson 1990: 220) Contrast between—Europe and the New World, Canada and America, Jameson and other women, Jameson and other travellers—is a constant thread throughout WSSR. Jameson also establishes her class and gender through descriptions of her relative comfort while positioning herself as a confident commentator and observer of the advancements in colonial Canada. Jameson created a series of seventy-nine drawings relating to her travels in Upper Canada (see Figure 13.2 as an example). Some of these were of the shoreline in Toronto, but most were connected to the times of her travels. While she created drawings and watercolours of canoes and sailboats, the steamers were not ‘exotic’ or ‘picturesque’ enough to be captured in a drawing. She considers the steamers as purposeful, directed travel—a means to reach places where carriages cannot go. Unlike the

Figure 13.2  Jameson, Anna Brownell. 1837c. Detroit, July 16, 1837. Source: Courtesy, Toronto Reference Library.

226  Sophie Anne Edwards carriage, sleigh and canoe, the regular steamers do not hold as much interest nor as much material to establish the adventure narrative and social commentary that other vessels do, with their closer proximity to both the water, land and the people she wishes to observe.

Carriages and Sleighs June 27, 1837 In a strange country much is to be learned by travelling in the public carriages: in Germany and elsewhere I have preferred this mode of conveyance, even when the alternative lay within my choice, and I never had reason to regret it. (Jameson 1990: 223) June 27, 1837 No one who has a single atom of imagination, can travel through these forest roads of Canada without being strongly impressed and excited. The seemingly interminable line of trees before you; the boundless wilderness around; the mysterious depths amid the multitudinous foliage, where foot of man hath never penetrated. . . . (Jameson 1990: 237)

Jameson explores Toronto and the southern areas of Upper Canada via sled and carriage. These forays provide a vista onto the colony, a gaze from the spaces of these vehicles within which she is comfortably and safely ensconced. There are long sections of description of Canada and settler life as well as the progress of colonial activity from her vantage point in the sleighs and carriages. She is less protected than on the steamers but is still able to maintain her femininity and class status. Jameson describes a number of types sleighs, such as the mail-coach: ‘A heavy wooden edifice  .  .  . placed on runners  .  .  . long icicles hung from the roof . . . this monstrous machine disgorged from its portal eight man-creatures’, who when undressed reveal gentlemen on their way to the House of Assembly (Jameson 2009: 51). Unlike these masculine and animal-like creatures, Jameson is set up in a ‘very pretty commodious sleigh’ within which she has been covered with bear and buffalo furs and a blanket, so that she would not draw an icy breath (Jameson 2009: 48). She is able, within this sleigh to visit Niagara, to observe the ‘sublime desolation of a northern winter’ (Jameson 2009: 49) and command the driver to stop when she wants to hear the sound of Niagara Falls as they approach. Jameson assesses the state of the roads in Toronto during a carriage ride: ‘It is a pity that while they were about it, they did not follow the example of the Americans . . . and make the principal streets of ample width . . . [it] would have made little difference where the wild unowned

Carriage and Canoe 227 forest extended’ (Jameson: 23). From these forays in Toronto she returns from the ‘bitter cold . . . without being much comforted or edified by my visits’ (Jameson: 23). She is unimpressed by Toronto, the urban planning, the types of homes, the lack of culture, and policies such as the tax on books. Like the state of steamer and water vessels, the state of the roads in Canada is less advanced, less civilised than that of the United States. Although Jameson asserts, even in hindsight, that the carriage is her preferred mode of travel, it is not always ideal, except where colonial advancement has made the roadways more passable. After the ice-steamer up the Hudson is blocked by the thickness of the ice, they must travel in an Extra which she describes as, ‘heavy, weary work; the most painfully fatiguing journey I ever remember . . . slowly dragged by wretched brutes of horses through which seemed to me ‘sloughs of despond’’ (Jameson 2009: 19). For the first time on her trip she observes the more permeable class boundaries in the New World, noting the unexpected request that one of the gentlemen travellers assist with the bags, but concluding with equanimity, and some amusement, that such behaviour ‘is merely the manner of the people’ (Jameson 2009: 19). The carriage can be understood in its materiality, as a symbolic colonial presence in the landscape, and in its relation to the roads that cut through the forests, increasingly opening up the land for settlement; roads often established on top of land routes established by Indigenous tribes over the centuries. Jameson creates a series of sleigh drawings. It is valuable to understand these sleigh images not as single static images, but rather as a series, read alongside the text of WSSR, in order to understand them as a process of place-making, negotiating of place and position within it and to identify changes in Jameson’s relationship to place as she travels over time, and between places. The first image in the series presents the sleigh as object; the carriage is the centre of the image, and contains no passengers. Jameson is an observer within the text. The image establishes place: The cold and the sleigh appealing to the armchair reader back in Europe. While Jameson continues as observer within the text of WSSR, she places herself in the sleigh in subsequent drawings (see Figure 13.3). She becomes a central focus of the image and placed within the colonial landscape. She looks back upon the viewer (and the artist herself). She inserts herself into these images, thereby inserting herself into the colonial landscape and the narrative of Canada. Jameson is bundled safely within its folds, navigating the space between civilised and uncivilised spaces, and within a safe, coddled (and gendered) space. These sleigh drawings depict the stumps along the roadsides, subtly documenting the process of colonial activity. The process of settlement is clear from the log cabin in the third image, and the stumps that border both the road and the as-yet uncleared forest in all three images. Clearing is directly linked to settlement practices, as settlement rights were

228  Sophie Anne Edwards

Figure 13.3  Jameson, Anna Brownell. 1837b. Journey to Niagara along the shores of Lake Huron, January 1837. Source: Courtesy, Toronto Reference Library.

allocated and kept based on prescribed amounts of cleared land. Jameson writes of the interminable wilderness, the expanse of trees she witnesses at the edges of the roads and settlements. The road is not simply a separation between Jameson and her fears, metaphorically represented by the woods, but also a separation between the uncivilised (the Indigenous, unsettled, uncleared areas) and the civilised (the white, settled, cleared areas), visibly represented by the stumps that line these roads in her images. Jameson’s descriptions reveal her fears of the forests and the wilds, an indication of the ambiguous relationship Jameson (and other travellers) had with the sites of their travels. Jameson expresses the need to reduce the forests and expand the roads—a form of containment of the wilderness, but also a process of clearing directly tied to the colonial project. She explains to her reader: ‘A Canadian settler hates a tree, regards it as his natural enemy, as something to be destroyed, eradicated, annihilated by all and any means’ (Jameson 2009: 64). While the language of her earlier description is critical, she later writes: [I]t is for his interest, and for his worldly advantage, that the red man should be removed out of his [European’s] way, and be thrust

Carriage and Canoe 229 back from the extending limits of civilisation—even like these forests, which fall before us, and vanish from the earth, leaving for a while some decaying stumps and roots over which the plough goes in time, and no vestige remains to say that here they have been. True; it is for the advantage of the European agriculturalist or artisan, that the hunter of the woods, who requires range of many hundred square miles of land for the adequate support of a single family, should make way for populous towns, and fields teeming with the means of subsistence for thousands. (Jameson 2009: 310) Jameson uses the Romantic discourse of the ‘dying Indian’ to move, by the second sentence, from lamenting the position of the Indian, to advocating that it is necessary, and good, that the European’s form of land use is superior, right, and that this civilised use of land is inevitable. The carriage and the road thus stand in for the civilising, colonial role/rule of the European settler, a particular form of land use, and a dispossessing movement through space (distinctly different in purpose and process from the hunting and travelling trails and the canoe routes used by Indigenous peoples). The forest is ‘unowned’, writes Jameson, and ‘wild’ (Jameson 2009: 23). Roads and carriages stand as code for, and are the vehicles of, settlement. Read in such a way, the images, and Jameson’s carriage and sleigh travels express the containment of the wilderness via colonisation and document the role of the carriage and sled as vehicles for the incursion and claims to that space by colonists, settlers, and European visitors like Jameson. Jameson’s claims to these spaces, to the vehicles and the landscape, are possible only because of the violent displacement of Indigenous tribes and the clearing of lands.

Canoe My blankets and night-gear being rolled up in a bundle, served for a seat, and I had a pillow at my back; and thus I reclined in the bottom of the canoe, as in a litter, very much at my ease; my companions were almost equally comfortable. (August 1838)

Carl Thompson defines travel as ‘the negotiation between self and other that is brought about by movement in space’ (Thompson 2011: 9). More than any other form of transportation, the canoe presents multiple and complex forms of encounters. Jameson travels within a very small vessel compared to a steamer, and more intimate still compared to the public carriage and the sleigh commanded for her personal use, as she sits closely with other passengers in the canoe, as well as with the guides.

230  Sophie Anne Edwards This is a spatial intimacy that brings classes and cultures into very close proximity. Unlike the carriage, which brings her to other places for rest, food and sleep, the canoe and its occupants sleep and eat on the rocks along the route, or in the canoe itself; an intimacy that Jameson negotiates by describing items that define her femininity, her class and her capacity for adventure. The canoe also takes her into areas that are still not subsumed within formal treaties, and where large number of Chippewa (Ojibwe) and Pottawatomi still maintain traditional territories, although Jameson describe the area as barren and empty. As it was for Champlain and other earlier explorers, the fur traders, the missionaries and colonial administrators, so it was for Jameson: Access to the north, the means to communicate, classify, oversee, and trade in the north was navigated via the canoe, and via the local knowledge of those that paddled them. The bateau from Michillmackinac to Sault Ste. Marie, Jameson describes as, ‘rather clumsy in form’, and the Voyageurs paddling this boat, ‘not favourable specimens of their very amusing and peculiar class’ (Jameson 2009: 440). Within the large boat that can carry up to 15 people, were Jameson and Mrs Schoolcraft and her children, along with the five voyageurs, allowing for a more comfortable voyage that the typical voyageur passage. The voyageurs, women and children slept in the canoe, Jameson and Mrs Schoolcraft lying upon the storage lockers, with Jameson’s ‘writing case for a pillow’ (Jameson 2009: 441). Despite the mosquitoes that come after dark and Jameson’s urging, the exhausted men refuse to paddle that night. Jameson joins the young voyageur singing hymns to keep their only ‘guardian’ awake, and finds herself enjoying the ‘lovely and blessed night’. The next evening, the mosquitoes are fiercer still, and Jameson convinces them to paddle faster by offer a further gratuity, thus maintaining a service relationship with the men. She is able to enjoy and write about the tranquil night singing with the voyageurs, but is able, when the discomfort is too great, to use monetary influence to facilitate a more pleasant experience. Money, however, cannot erase all of the discomforts throughout the voyage, but Jameson writes of these in ways that both emphasise her intrepidity and maintain her femininity and class. Jameson pre-figures the high interest in the canoe as a vehicle for adventure tourism, and a means to claim Indigeneity. At Sault Ste. Marie, she arranges to ‘venture’ into the midst of the ‘glancing, dancing rapids’. She is thus guided along the rapids in a ten-foot-long fishing canoe, ‘light and elegant and buoyant as a little bird on the waters. [She] reclined on a mat at the bottom, Indian fashion’. The ride lasted seven minutes, and she is given an Indian name by her hosts, which Jameson claims has now made her ‘Chippewa born’ (Jameson 2009: 462). That the naming was Jameson’s, and not the Chippewa’s idea, is glossed in WSSR, as evidenced by Jane Schoolcraft, who wrote that Jameson ‘insisted on being

Carriage and Canoe 231 baptized and named in Indian, after her sail down the falls’ (Schoolcraft 1851: 402). As Jameson predicts, she would ‘assuredly not be the last’ to enjoy the rapids (Jameson 2009: 462). With the decline of the fur trade, and the advent of the steamer, the canoe and local Indigenous men emerge as guides within a service-to-tourism relationship within which tourists are able to claim Indigeneity via adventure. By 1900 tourists are visiting Sault Ste Marie to shoot the rapids, as evidenced by series of postcards published between 1900–1910. In its presentation of canoe, canoe travel, guides and European passengers, Jameson’s etching The Canoe on Lake Huron belongs to a class of image that holds strong narrative power in the popular geographical imagination, then and now. The canoe has a complex relationship to the fetishisation of space in terms of access to and territorialisation of the ‘vast tracts of wilderness’ and the ‘Indians’ (see map and its notations, Figure 13.1), the negotiation of colonial/Indigenous relations, and the indigenisation of non-Indigenous people.6 The canoe has represented both a narrative and physical vessel within which colonial relations and been embodied and enacted. In the geneology of canoe travel in Upper Canada and Lake Huron, the canoe first served as a vehicle to explore, map, survey and claim; it then served as a mode of mercantilist expansion and the negotiation of relations between Europeans and various tribes of the region and ferried missionaries to their various posts in the civilising mission. In Jameson’s time, the canoe had become a means for the British colonial government to surveille, claim and govern the land and the Anishinaabeg. The canoe and canoe travel helped to establish the colony and define nationhood; and for Jameson the canoe was a vehicle to establish herself as an adventuress, to document the ‘strange things’ and write WSSR. Jameson’s romantic view of the ‘Indian’ shifts within these more intimate encounters in the wigwams and council spaces that she is able to visit because of her canoe voyage: ‘I left the room long before the proceedings were over. . . . The genuine Indian has a very particular odour . . . it is not so offensive as it is peculiar . . . fifty of them in one room, added to the smell of their tobacco, which is detestable . . . drove me from the spot. The truth is, that a woman of very delicate and fastidious habits must learn to endure some very disagreeable things, or she had best stay home’ (Jameson 2009: 434). Jameson simultaneously establishes her gentility, as well as her capacity to endure particularities, despite admitting that she left the meeting. She positions herself as superior to other nontravelling women and to the disagreeably-smelling Indian. This description draws upon dominant and racist discourses about the ‘Indian’s’ lack of civilisation and their barbarity (which she establishes by relating a stereotypical and unfounded story about the ‘well-known Indian law of retaliation’ in which woman and children are murdered)

232  Sophie Anne Edwards (432). Yet earlier, just as the meeting begins she describes the Chiefs as ‘a set of more perfect gentlemen, in manner, I never met with’ (430), and among the 250 gathered faces as ‘not a trace of insolence or ferocity, or of that vile expression I have seen in a depraved European of the lowest class’ (432). She defends their ‘omens and incantations’ in the previous chapter, asking the reader to conside: ‘how far we civilized christians, with all our schools, our pastors and our masters, are in advance of these (so-called) savages’ (428), and notes that there is something ‘studied and artistical’ in the range of colours, body paint, decorations and animal skins, hides and shells adorning the dancers. However, once the smoke becomes thicker, the drumming more intense, her descriptions change. Jameson’s anxieties, like those she experienced about the interminable forests, return here in upper Lake Huron where she witnesses this ‘Indian’ dance (likely Chippewa (Ojibwe) or Pottawatomi). The Indians become increasingly malodorous, the song without melody. She begins ‘delighted’, but soon the ‘wild’ figures break into the ‘soft and elysian’ landscape of blue water, sunshine and islands. The dance becomes ‘like a masque of fiends breaking into paradise! . . . a grotesque and horrible phantasmagoria’ (434). ‘The dance’, describes Jameson, ‘became every moment more horribly ferocious’. She attempts to find a way to escape the dance and its ‘savage yells’ (436) but cannot leave the circle, so she escapes by turning inward to remember a favourite opera. The local, Indigenous and culturally specific ceremony is discordant with her trained Picturesque gaze, which values a particular kind of ‘harmony’; her Romantic perception disallows apprehension of the Indian song, a song unlike any opera she knows. She wants to escape, the Indian and their ceremonies disturb the romantic idyll she wants to perceive of the Canadian wilderness. This is the colonial imperative, the desire to erase the troubling presence of the ‘Indian’, a presence that disrupts a particular landscape aesthetic, and European expansion. The traditional ceremony is difficult to apprehend, unlike the ‘naming’ ceremony which Jameson contrived for her own purposes. We are reminded of Duncan Campbell Scott’s 1926 poem ‘Powassan’s Drum’ written upon witnessing a sacred ceremony experienced during his 1905 and 1906 tours to northern Ontario, during which time he was charged, as a commissioner, to establish the surrender of Ojibwe and Cree lands to the government (Treaty 9). His poem about the ceremony and the drum, which is described as summoning a ghostly canoe and paddler, reveal a similar anxiety to that of Jameson: The canoe stealthy as death/drifts to the throbbing of Powassan’s Drum/[. . .] Is this the meaning of the magic—/The translation into sight/Of the viewless hate?/Is this what the world waited for/As it listened to the throb—throb—throb—throb—/Throbbing of Powassan’s Drum? (Scott 1926: 59–63)

Carriage and Canoe 233 Like Campbell Scott, Jameson is unable to assimilate the dance into what is ‘real’ and beautiful, the dance becomes other-worldly and threatening: ‘The whole exhibition was of that finished barbarism . . . for a time I looked on with curiosity and interest. But that innate loathing which dwells within me for all that is discordant and deformed, rendered it anything but pleasant to witness’: She thinks about an opera, which presents ‘extremes in contrast’, and resists the urge to leave (Jameson 2009: 435–436). Unlike Campbell Scott, she is able to appreciate the strength and physical beauty of the dancers, and the dance’s ‘artistical’ aspects, and is thus able to inhabit a more complex experience of the event, and by extension allow space for the dance itself, although this cultural specific, traditional ceremony is not as comfortable as the naming ceremony which she constructed. However, they fear what cannot be translated into a European understanding, cannot be made to ‘fit’ or to submit. This Indigenous space is not safe, unlike the Missionary’s house that is ‘sheltered from the tyrannous breathing of the north’ (Jameson 2009: 379). While Jameson turns towards a memory of European culture, Duncan Campbell Scott, in his role as Deputy Superintendent in the Department of Indian Affairs (1913–1932), is able to ‘violently contain’ (McClintock 1995) the ‘Indian’ through his expansion of the devastating residential school system, becoming instrumental in solving the ‘Indian problem’ by forcibly removing children from their homes, separating children from each other and attempting to decimate family and tribal systems and cultural practices by forbidding children to speak their languages and practice their traditions. While Jameson did not have a direct role to play in processes of ‘violent containment’ (McClintock 1995), her writing contributes to discursive and imaginative constructions of the north, which clearly continued into Scott’s time period. Tracings of the links between literary practices and colonisation, attempts to ‘set the art in the global, earthly context’, are important because, ‘Territory and possessions are at stake, geography and power’ (Said 1994: 7). Literary and artistic sensibilities and politics and policymaking shared permeable boundaries in Jameson’s time. Not only the individuals but the political philosophies and aesthetics moved between circles and travelled in the same canoes. Sir Bond Head was pivotal in the establishment of the Bond Head Treaty (1836) which was linked to the annual gift-giving at Manitowaning on Manitoulin Island (Jameson was in attendance at this event in 1837). Bond Head also wrote a number of novels prior to his political career, a pursuit to which he returned after his political career ended. In their article about Bond Head’s Romantic influences on his policy making, Binnema and Hutchings write that, ‘Contemporary evidence suggests that Head’s literary and political successes were inseparable’ (Binnema and Hutchings 2004: 116). It is not clear how Anna and Robert Jameson influenced each other, as no extant

234  Sophie Anne Edwards letters provide insight into their discussions of the colony, nor does Anna Jameson write directly of them, however, one can assume that such discussions did occur, and certainly Jameson’s position as Attorney General would have facilitated Anna’s travels throughout the region. Jameson wrote often of the men of influence with whom she travelled and conversed in Upper Canada. She writes that the Chief Justice ‘sent me a whole sheet of instructions and several letters to settlers along my line of route’ (Macpherson 1878: 129). In August, Jameson travels with Samuel Jarvis, Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Upper Canada, in his canoe away from Manitowaning, the site where the Bond Head Treaty was established and the annual gift-giving occured. Among Jameson’s most known and most reproduced images, is Canoe Down Lake Huron (see Figure 13.4). Just as she inserted herself into the landscape with her sleigh drawings, she inserts herself into the landscape by drawing herself in the canoe. She draws herself and the canoe in the foreground of the image profiled against an empty landscape, despite noting that upon leaving Manitowaning she ‘counted seventy-two canoes before us, already on their homeward voyage’ (Jameson 1990: 523). Her drawing of the canoe does not relate this history, nor give a sense of the important meetings being held at the site; and while her text describes hundreds of Indians and 72 canoes in the water on the day of her departure, only two canoes are portrayed visually: The prominent one, that of Jameson and her entourage. Jameson, via

Figure 13.4  Jameson, Anna Brownell. 1837a. Canoe on Lake Huron. Source: Courtesy, Toronto Reference Library.

Carriage and Canoe 235 her connections, has been provided with passage on this canoe. She has placed herself in the portrait, and therefore in the landscape; in essence she has mapped herself into a landscape that must otherwise have seemed barren to European observers. The image of Jameson in the canoe is similar to her story of shooting of the rapids and being named; we can understand the canoe as a ‘technology of identity’ (Erickson 2013: 15): Canoe travel provides the vehicle that positions Jameson as a woman with a claim to Indigeneity, as an adventuress ‘alone’ and in the wilderness, while also woman of a certain class as evidenced by her umbrella, and as a writer and artist with a certain power to inscribe and produce place via the production of image and text. While Jameson has carefully positioned herself as an adventurer, writer and artist—overall an observer at work—the image demonstrates a different set of relations. Jameson is guided, and pays for these services; the canoe and the guided relationship point to the shift in economic and social categories in which Indigenous peoples become guides and provide service to capital. Jameson describes their departure from Manitowaning, ‘in swift and gallant style, looking grand and official, with the British flag floating at our stern (Jameson 2009: 523). As Bruce Erickson has argued, ‘Having delivered the land to the European settler population through exploration, the canoe was then drafted to re-inscribe the newly born nation’s legitimacy in that land. Thus, the canoe moved from a more specific material-economic role to one that also narrates national identity’ (Erickson 2013: 3). Such an image of waving flag imposes the authority of the British Crown upon the landscape and over the seventy-two other canoes of the Odaawaa, Pottawatami and Chippewa (Ojibwe) making their way home after the annual gift-giving. This imposition in text and image is particularly interesting, given that the Crown had made an official presentation at this 1837 gathering of a new flag that ‘delineated a lion and a beaver; by which is designated that the British people and the Indians, the former being represented by the lion and the latter by the beaver, are and will be alike regarded by their sovereign’ (Jameson 2009: 524). The Indians were given this flag with instructions to exhibit and care for it; yet, upon the departure of Jarvis and his entourage, the Crown flag is flown from the boat rather than the flag that, along with other symbols of alliance (wampum and medals),7 was to symbolise friendship and alliance. This symbolic move demonstrates the disingenuous negotiations made with Indigenous peoples. We can thus interpret the canoe and its flag as a racialised (white) symbol of the nation, self and nationhood enacted in the canoe. The British flag signals the territorial and colonial relationship that would continue. From Manitowaning on Manitoulin Island, Jameson travelled southeast through Georgian Bay, and back to Toronto via carriage. Her trip

236  Sophie Anne Edwards provided her with rich materials for her book, and a range of experiences and intimacies navigated within these colonial and colonised vessels. Her views shifted in perspective and nuance as she travelled north, yet, she summarised: ‘I am thankful to live in a land of literature and steamengines. Chatsworth is better than a wigwam, and a seventy-four is a finer thing than a bark canoe’ (Jameson 2009:196).

Conclusion From a range of moving vantage points—on the deck of a steamer, ensconced in a carriage or sled and seated on pillows on the bottom of a boat − Jameson negotiates complex positions as a literary woman of a particular class, in relation to the landscape and the people with whom she interacts. She creates spaces from which she can observe and comment upon the development of colonial Canada, the ‘Indians’ and the status of their women, thereby constructing her own and her readers’ spatial imagination, and establishing her own place as a writer and commentator.

Notes 1. I capitalise ‘Indigenous’ as is the accepted standard in Canada, and the preference of Indigenous communities. Jameson references numerous Tribes in Winter Studies and Summer Rambles, including the Moravian, Delaware, Chippewa, Huron and Wyandot. Many of these Tribal names were Anglicised, not traditional Tribal names. Within this chapter, I reference Tribes based on current appellation, although there is variance between regions, communities, and language speakers. Jameson, and the second half of WSSR focuses on the area of northern Lake Huron in Upper Canada, within the Territories of the Anishinaabeg, comprised of the Ojibwe (referenced as Chippewa in Jameson’s time), the Pottawotami and the Odaawaa Tribes. 2. The Voyage to America album was purchased by James Bain at an auction in London, England after Jameson’s death; it was housed at the Toronto Library (now the Toronto Reference Library). It is not clear who created the album of images, although it is likely to have been Jameson herself, or her niece Geraldine Macpherson. The album has never been published as a book. 3. WSSR was published in 85 editions between 1838 and 2017, and can be found in 535 WorldCAT member libraries worldwide (WorldCAT Identities). 4. Some of Jameson’s observations were not well-received, particularly those in reference to her commentaries about the status of women. 5. See Morin (2008) on the gendered spaces of travelling women. 6. See Erikson (2013) for a detailed examination of the role of the canoe in Canadian nation-building, and Jessup (2006) for an analysis of the shift from Indigenous sovereignty to the role of guide on appropriated land. 7. Ojibwe scholar Alan Corbiere (member of M’Chigeeng First Nation, and PhD candidate at York University) has done significant work on these symbols of alliance, including the lion/beaver flag, along with a proposed new flag that re-imagines the relations of colonisation implicit in the Red Ensign and the Crown symbol positioned above the lion and the beaver (Corbiere 2011).

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References Binnema, Theodore and Kevin Hutchings. 2004. ‘The Emigrant and the Noble Savage: Sir Francis Bond Head’s Romantic Approach to Aboriginal Policy in Upper Canada, 1836–1838’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 39(1): 115–138. Corbiere, Alan. 2011. ‘Symbols of Alliance’, in Dbaajmo-mzin’igaans, vol. 6. M’Chigeeng: Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, 4–7. Cresswell, Tim. 2012. ‘Mobilities II: Still’, Progress in Human Geography, 36(5): 645–653. Duncan, James and Derek Gregory. (eds.). 2002 [1999]. Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing. London and New York: Routledge. Erickson, Bruce. 2013. Canoe Nation: Nature, Race, and the Making of a Canadian Icon. Vancouver: UBC Press. Erskine, Beatrice, S. 1915. Anna Jameson: Letters and Friendships (1812–1860). London: T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. Jameson, Anna Brownell. 1837a. Canoe on Lake Huron. Toronto Reference Library. ———. 1837b. Journey to Niagara Along the Shores of Lake Huron. Toronto Reference Library, January. ———. 1837c. July, 1837, Detroit. Toronto Reference Library. ———. 1990 [1838]. Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada. Toronto: New Canadian Library. Jessup, Lynda. 2006. ‘Landscapes of Sport, Landscapes of Exclusion: The “Sportsman’s Paradise” in Late-Nineteenth-Century Canadian Painting’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 40(1): 71–124. Macpherson, Geraldine Bate. 1878. Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson. Boston: Roberts Brothers. McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. New York and London: Routledge. Morin, Karen M. 2008. Frontiers of Femininity: A  New Historical Geography of the Nineteenth-Century American West. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Pratt, Mary Louise. 2008 [1992]. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge. Said, Edward W. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. Schoolcraft, Henry R. 1851. Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers: With Brief Notices of Passing Events, Facts, and Opinions, A.D. 1812 to A.D. 1842. Philadelphia: Lippincot, Grambo and Co. Scott, Duncan Campbell. 1926. The Poems of Duncan CampbeIl Scott. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 59–63. Thomas, Clara. 1978 [1967]. Love and Work Enough: The Life of Anna Jameson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ———. 2011. Travel Writing. London and New York: Routledge. Withers, Charles W.J. and Innes M. Keighren. 2011. ‘Travels into Print: Authoring, Editing and Narratives of Travel and Exploration, c. 1815—c. 1857’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36(4): 560–573. ‘WorldCAT Identities’, http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n50-28986, accessed 27 August 2018.

238  Sophie Anne Edwards Wyld, James. 1836. A Map of the Province of Upper Canada, Describing All the New Settlements, Townships, & cc. with the Countries Adjacent, from Quebec to Lake Huron. Map. London: J. Wyld. Digital Commonwealth, https://ark. digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/js956m375, accessed 16 January 2019. Map reproduction courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map  & Education Center at the Boston Public Library.

Contributors

Michelle Adler is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Her current research interests include women’s travel writing in the age of empire, in particular travel accounts from the 1870s and 1880s that engage with the AngloZulu war and its aftermath. Antonio Calvo Maturana is senior lecturer at the University of Malaga. His area of expertise is Western European Cultural History during the Long Eighteenth Century, focusing on topics like nations before nationalism, Queenship, the discourse of power and travel writing. Sophie Cooper is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh specialising in histories of migration. She completed her PhD on Irish migrant communities in 19th-century Melbourne and Chicago in 2017 at the University of Edinburgh. Shannon Derby holds a PhD from Tufts University, where a fellowship from the Center for Humanities at Tufts granted her the space and resources to produce this chapter. Her research spans 19th and 20thcentury travel narratives and her work has appeared in the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. Sutapa Dutta is a fellow at IIAS, Shimla, and teaches in the Department of English, Gargi College, University of Delhi, India. She has a PhD from JNU, Delhi. She has authored British Women Missionaries in Bengal 1793–1861 (Anthem Press, 2017) and co-edited Mapping India: Transitions and Transformations, 18th-19th century (forthcoming, Routledge). Sophie Anne Edwards is an independent writer, artist, curator and geographer who lives on Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. She has a PhD (ABD) from Queen’s University (Canada), an Interdisciplinary Humanities M.A. (Laurentian University) and a Certificate in Creative Writing from the Humber School for Writers.

240  Contributors Justyna Fruzińska holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and an MA in American Literature from the University of Lodz, Poland, where she holds the position of Assistant Professor. Her publications include Emerson Goes to the Movies: Individualism in Walt Disney Company’s Post1989 Animated Films (2014). Sarah Irving is a research fellow at Linnaeus University’s Centre for Concurrences in Colonial & Postcolonial Studies. She specialises in subaltern/non-elite social and intellectual histories of Late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine. She holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and has taught at King’s College London and Edge Hill University. Lacy Marschalk is a lecturer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She holds a PhD in English from Auburn University, where she wrote a dissertation on 18th- and 19th-century British women writers in India. She has published in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and several edited collections. Georgina Elisabeth Munn has explored sensory encounters of the British Empire, focusing on the consumption of imperial commodities as elucidated in travel journals and contemporary food and print culture in her dissertation, under the supervision of Professor Clare Brant from King’s College, London. Ben P. Robertson is professor of English at Troy University. He has published extensively on Elizabeth Inchbald, including a three-volume edition of her existing diaries in 2007 and two subsequent monographs. His most recent book publication is The Sea in the Literary Imagination (Cambridge Scholars, 2019). Barbara Tetti is an architect and specialist in Restoration of Monuments, with a PhD in History and Conservation of Architecture. She is a lecturer at Sapienza-University of Rome, and in charge of courses on ‘Landscape Architecture’ and ‘Structural Reinforcement for Historical Buildings’. Currently she is a part of the dsdra research on ‘The Historical Environment’. Nataliia Voloshkova teaches at Dragomanov National Pedagogical University in Kyiv, Ukraine. She holds a PhD from Donetsk National University, Ukraine. Her research interests include women intellectuals in eighteenth-century Britain and British travellers in Europe, particularly in Ukraine and Crimea. She has published on women’s travel writing and the Bluestocking circle.

Index

aboriginal 190, 194, 202n4, 237; see also indigenous, peoples/population aesthetic 3, 4, 6, 14, 16, 17, 51, 65n1, 89, 91, 99 – 100, 105, 136, 138, 145 – 147, 160, 205 – 219, 224, 232 – 233 Africa see South Africa Allen, John 40 America 9, 14, 31, 41 – 42, 106, 205 – 212, 217 – 218, 218n2, 220, 222, 224 – 225; art 215 – 216; colonies 22; democracy 214; landscape 213 Anglo-India 107, 110, 113; women 107, 110 – 111, 114; see also ‘English Society in India’ antiquity 52 – 56, 61 – 62, 64, 65n1, 68 archaeology 10, 52 – 54, 56, 62, 64, 65n5, 65n8, 65nn11 – 12, 66n17, 109 architecture 11, 54, 59, 64, 67n26, 69, 110, 174, 175, 186, 207 ars apodemica 2 art 10, 21, 30, 38, 55, 60, 66; American art 215 – 217; art galleries 109; art journals 186; drawings 26, 61, 65n13, 67n26, 180 – 181, 182, 220, 225, 227, 234; early Christian art 53; etchings 220, 23; landscape art 160; watercolours 220 Aspinall, Clara 189, 191 – 202; Three Years in Melbourne 196, 198, 200, 202 Atkinson, Caroline 195, 202; Gertrude the Emigrant 202 Australia 1, 189, 191 – 204; Australia Felix 198 Begum 124, 126, 129 – 131, 135n5 Bell, Gertrude 175, 185, 186

Bird, Isabella 205 – 207, 211 – 213, 218n1; The Aspects of Religion in the United States of America 207; Englishwoman in America 207, 218; A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains 207 Black Sea 72 Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthèlme 97, 99, 104 British Empire see Empire Britishness 4, 9, 14, 36, 151, 189 – 193 buildings 57, 64, 66n16, 159; cemeteries 41; community building 192; conservation of 55, 59; in cities 174; ‘folly’ 211 Bunbury, Sir Charles 29 Burke, Edmund 127, 209, 213; Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful 209 Byron, Lord 3, 11, 17 Calcutta 121 – 122, 134, 135n4, 137, 139, 140, 142 – 146, 149n3, 150n12 Canada see Upper Canada ‘canonical testing site’ 155 Carpenter, Mary 134, 135; Six Months in India 135 Catholic 22, 54 caves, caverns 58, 110 Charles IV: opposition to his Court 40; rumours about him 42 – 43 Christian, Christianity 46, 72 – 73, 110, 127 – 130, 136, 156, 161, 168n5, 172, 177 – 179, 232; art 53; converts 168; family 133, 164; women 111, 127, 183 – 184 Clacy, Ellen 191 – 193, 196, 198 – 203; A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia 191, 203

242 Index Cobbett, William 215 Cole, Thomas 213 colonial: body 97, 103; ‘colonial frontier’ 169n12; commodities 12, 236; culture 152 – 156, 163, 168; discourse 7, 29, 34, 77 – 81, 125 – 126, 135, 231; locales 30, 90, 158, 160, 222, 227; Other 114, 161; politics 169n13; power 31; projects 11, 71, 84, 221, 228; rule 4, 229; studies 1; subjects 125, 154 colonialism 7, 9, 95, 114, 154, 172 – 173; masculine colonialism 149 commodity 93, 145, 209 Comtesse de Genlis, Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de Saint Aubin 32; Zélie, ou l’Ingénue 32 convicts 197 corruption 82 – 83, 90 Craven, Elizabeth 72 – 73, 75, 84; A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople 72 Crimea 9 – 11, 70 – 84; annexation 72, 73, 82; Crimean peninsula 72 – 73, 75, 78, 80 – 82, 84; Crimean Tartars 73, 78 – 82; Crimean War 72, 182 delicacy 95, 99, 100, 103, 209 Destouches, Philippe Néricault 32; Le Dissipateur 32; Le Philosophe marié 32 diaries 4, 10, 13, 23 – 25, 29, 31, 34, 41, 58, 120, 140, 170 Dickens, Charles 208, 214, 218, 219 Digges, West 24 Dodd, James 23 domesticity 6, 8, 122, 128, 138, 140, 148, 163, 170, 173, 184, 202 Dumaniant, Antoine Jean Bourlin 32; Guerre ouverte, ou Ruse contre ruse 32; La Nuit aux aventures 32; Le Médecin malgré tout le monde 32 East India Company 30, 120, 138, 144, 147, 149n2 Eaton, Charlotte 56 – 57, 59 – 61, 66n20, 68; Rome in the Nineteenth Century 56, 68 Eden, Emily 125 – 126, 129 – 130, 132 – 133, 136 – 137, 139, 149; Up the Country 125, 136, 149 Egypt 52, 57 – 58, 62, 64, 68, 136, 178, 183

Elwood, Anne Katherine 52 – 53, 57 – 64, 66n22, 68, 122, 127, 136; Narrative of a Journey Overland 52, 68, 136 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 218n4, 239 emigration 193, 196, 198 – 199, 202, 203; see also migrants Empire: British 1 – 2, 4 – 5, 8 – 9, 11, 34, 89 – 90, 93 – 94, 96, 109, 130 – 132, 137 – 139, 147 – 151, 153 – 154, 161, 171, 180, 189 – 190, 195, 198, 201, 204; European 71, 46; French 31; ‘informal empire’ 14, 16n6; Ottoman 13, 173 – 174, 178 – 179, 184 – 185; Roman 52; Russian 70 – 72, 77, 82, 85 ‘English Society in India’ 107 epicure 99 – 102, 109 epistolary 73, 102, 103, 107, 138, 140 – 141, 143, 145, 148 ethnography 77, 113, 118n6, 119 excavation 54 – 56, 64, 65n12, 66n17, 110 exotic: adventure 64; cultures 111, 113, 144; goods 91 – 97, 109, 201, 218n2, 225; locales 29 – 30, 34, 138, 142; Orient 3, 11, 122, 143; Other 6, 72, 114, 148; women 72, 115, 121 – 122, 124 Fane, Isabella 13, 137 – 139, 149n3; Miss Fane in India 139 – 148 fashion 11, 146, 200, 202, 213, 230 Fay, Eliza 121, 125, 132, 136; Original Letters from India 121, 136 feasting 12, 89 – 105; political feasting 96 – 97; societal dining 94; turtlefeasting 94, 97; see also gluttony; gourmand/ism female emigration societies 199 femininity 8, 91, 114, 120, 124, 138, 153 – 154, 156, 163 – 164, 226, 230, 237; ‘rhetorical femininity’ 139, 150; Victorian femininity 140 ‘Fishing Fleet’ 138, 149n2, 150 France 2, 9, 21 – 34, 41, 46, 57 – 58, 64, 139, 179 French plays 21, 26 – 27, 31, 33 Friedrich, Caspar David 3; The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog 3 gaze 8, 17, 57, 61, 118, 120, 122, 124, 130 – 131, 135, 137, 139, 147 – 149, 151, 162 – 163, 226, 232

Index  243 Gibbs, Phebe 122, 135n4, 136; Hartly House 122, 135n4, 136 Gilpin, William 108, 209 gluttony 90, 96 – 97, 105; ‘Guzzle’ 97 Godoy, Manuel 42 – 43, 51 gold rush 193 – 194, 200, 203 Gordon Riots 22 gourmand/ism 96, 99 – 100, 103 Graham, Maria 12, 106 – 119, 125 – 126, 130, 136; Journal of a Residence in India 12, 106 – 107, 109, 111, 114, 117n5, 119, 126, 136; Journal of a Voyage to Brazil 116, 118; Letters on India 12, 106 – 107, 119 Grand Tour 2, 10, 11, 16, 17, 41, 50, 57, 67, 219 Great Mogul 21, 29, 34 Gresset, Jean-Baptiste-Louis 32; Le Méchant 32 Griqua Town 160 – 162, 165 Guidebooks 3, 55 – 56, 150, 191, 202, 204; guides 110, 229, 235, 236n6 Haifa 174, 177 – 180, 186 Hall, Basil 207, 215 helpmeet 51, 137 – 138, 142, 148, 152 – 153, 156 – 157, 168, 169n11, 171 heritage 52, 62 Hindu, Hinduism 107, 112, 121, 127, 129, 134, 143, 144 Holderness, Mary 11, 70 – 85; New Russia. Journey from Riga to the Crimea, by way of Kiev 73, 84; Notes Relating to the Manners and Customs of the Crim Tatars 73, 84 Holland, Elizabeth 10, 36 – 51; on Don Quixote 40, 47; education and interests 38–; on French influence in Spain 45; on Spanish mixite 47; on Spanish Moorish inheritance 45 – 46; personality 36 – 38; readings 40; The Spanish Journal 36, 39 – 42, 44, 46, 49 – 51 Holland, Henry (Lord) 10, 37 – 40, 43, 49, 50n5; Hispanist 49n4; vicepresident of the Spanish Club 45 Holland House 37, 39 – 40, 49, 50n8, 51 Holy Land 13, 66, 172, 174, 176, 185 home 5 – 7, 11, 15, 77, 90 – 93, 99, 113, 121, 127, 133, 141, 147, 160,

165 – 167, 174, 180, 189 – 190, 193 – 196, 198, 205, 231; homemaker 149n2; homesickness 141 ‘honorary man’ 173, 175 – 176, 183 – 185 Howard, John 30 identity 5, 13, 46, 102, 110, 131, 140, 148, 152 – 154, 157, 183, 189 – 191; British/English identity 8, 11, 14, 126, 160, 191; national identity 85, 89, 235; ‘technology of identity’ 235 illustrations 54, 62, 128 imperialism 8, 10, 13, 104, 108, 114, 120, 172 – 173, 175, 180, 183 – 185; informal imperialism 172 imperialist 8, 9, 21, 36, 177; imperialist discourse 71 imperial project 71, 173, 175 – 176, 184 – 185, 193 Inchbald, Elizabeth 9 – 10, 21 – 35; diaries 23 – 25; works (All on a Summer’s Day 32, 34; Animal Magnetism 32, 34; Appearance Is Against Them 31, 34; The Child of Nature 32 – 34; The Hue and Cry 32; I’ll Tell You What 31, 34; The Married Man 32, 34; The Massacre 32, 34; The Midnight Hour 32 – 34; A Mogul Tale 29 – 31, 33; Nature and Art 21, 30, 34 – 35; Next Door Neighbours 32 – 34; A Simple Story 23, 29, 30, 34 – 35; Such Things Are 21, 30, 32 – 34; The Widow’s Vow 32 – 34; Young Men and Old Women 32) Inchbald, George 22 Inchbald, Joseph 34 India/n: culture 111 – 112, 116, 144; life 106, 110, 127; men 147 – 148; people 110, 112 – 113, 116, 138, 144; religion 107; women 12, 110 – 111, 114, 116, 120, 126, 133 – 135, 150 indigenous: ceremony 232; people/ population 128, 143, 157, 161, 171, 190 – 194, 203, 231, 235, 236n1; politics 175; space 233; territories 220 indigenous tribes 227 – 229; Anishinaabeg 222, 231, 236; Ojibwe 230, 232, 235, 236n1, 237

244 Index Inquisition 41, 44 intellectuals 39, 55 Ireland 5, 15n2, 16, 28, 189, 193; Irish women 190 Irving, Washington 45, 50 Islam 45–46, 121; see also Muslim, Mussulman Italy 10, 52, 54 – 58, 60, 66n17, 66n21, 67n26, 106 James, Henry 211 Jameson, Anna 234, 237; Canoe on Lake Huron 231, 234, 237; Detroit 225, 237; Journey to Niagara 228, 237; Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada 220 – 222, 225, 227, 230, 231, 236n1, 237 journey: as a motif 1, 5, 49, 153 – 155, 158 – 159, 161, 164 – 165 Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de 43, 45, 49 Kalahari 157, 160 Karoo 160 Kemble, Frances 205 – 208, 211 – 216; Journal by Frances Anne Butler 206, 219; Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 207, 219 Kindersley, Jemima 115 – 116, 121 – 122, 125, 132; Letters from the Island 9, 115, 119, 121 – 125, 128 – 129, 136 Kuruman 153, 156 – 157, 161, 164, 166 – 167, 168n3, 169n11, 170n19 landscape representation 222 Lattakoo 157, 161, 165 Lees Price, Elizabeth 166, 171 Le Texier, Anthony 31, 33 Livingstone, David 153, 169n16 Livingstone, Mary 165 – 166 London Missionary Society (LMS) 127, 133, 136, 152, 155, 157, 165, 169n10, 171 luxury/ious 64, 91 – 93, 95 – 96, 104, 177–178, 199 – 200; as ‘progressive social force’ 96; see also exotic Mackenzie, Mrs. Colin [Helen] 130, 136; Life in the Mission, Camp, and the Zenana 130, 136 Macpherson, Emma [A Lady] 191 – 202, 202n4, 203, 204; My Experiences in Australia 191, 204

manuals 3, 199 Marie Louise of Parma 47, 50 Martineau, Harriet 206 – 207, 212, 214, 217, 218n4, 219; The Martyr Age of the United States 207; Retrospect of Western Travel 207; Society in America 207 masculine 6 – 7, 38 – 39, 91, 94, 101, 138, 147 – 148, 149n1, 154, 156, 174 – 175, 177, 192 materiality of travel 220 Melbourne: elite society 197; as imperial centre 194 – 196, 198; International Exhibition in 194; as ‘little England’ 190, 194; migrants 200 – 201 memory 57, 112, 205, 233 memsahib 12 – 13, 16 – 17, 120, 124, 132, 134 – 135, 137, 140 – 143, 147 – 148, 149n1 Mercier, Louis Sébastien 32; Evêque de Lizieux 32; Jean Hennuyer 32; L’Indigent 32 Metcalfe, Sir Charles 144, 147 Middle East 62, 172, 174 – 177, 184, 186 migrants 13, 194, 198 – 201 missionary13, 127, 133, 136, 152, 155 – 158, 193, 233; missionary wife 152 – 154, 156 – 157, 159, 161, 163 – 164, 167 – 168, 168n1, 169n11 modes of transportation: canoe 220, 222, 225 – 226, 229 – 230; carriage 49, 114, 121, 220, 222, 225 – 227, 229 – 230, 236; rail/train 195, 202, 211; ship 24 – 27, 91, 97, 139, 166, 191, 200, 202, 222; sleigh 220, 222, 226 – 227, 229, 234; steamer 220, 222, 224 – 229, 231, 236 Moffat, John Smith 154 – 155; The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat 168n2, 171 Moffat, Mary 13, 153, 155, 165, 169n9, 170n19 Moffat, Robert 153, 157, 163, 169n13, 171 Montagu, Mary Wortley 6, 72; Turkish Embassy Letters 72 Montefiore, Judith 52 – 53, 57 – 59, 62 – 64, 66n24, 68; Private Journal of a Visit to Egypt and Palestine 52, 68 Montgolfier brothers 29

Index  245 monument 52, 54 – 56, 59 – 61, 64, 106, 110 museum 55, 65, 174, 194, 213 Muslim, Mussulman 72, 116, 121 – 122, 125, 128 – 130, 143, 177 – 179, 181, 183 Nablus 173, 177 – 181, 185 Napoleon 3, 36, 178; Napoleonic Wars 39, 44, 45, 57, 70 narrations 15, 52 – 54, 61 – 62, 147 Nashoba, Tennessee 206 nature/al 4, 7, 35, 91, 96, 103n3, 109, 111, 207 – 210, 215, 217 nautch 112, 126, 132, 146, 147, 150 Niagara Falls 212 – 214, 217, 218n1, 226, 228, 237 Northern Cape 152, 154 – 155, 157, 161, 167, 171 Nugent, Lady 126, 129, 135: A Journal of a Voyage to and Residence in India 126 Oriental: clothing 11; image 45, 47, 137, 144, 176; languages 65; men 146; Other 11, 72, 84, 184 – 185; subject 143, 147, 150n10; women 72, 121 – 122, 132; writings 172 orientalism 13, 173, 176, 180, 184 Ottoman: elites 177; harems 135n2; politics 176, 178 – 183; see also Empire Palestine 13, 52, 68, 172 – 186 Pallas, Peter Simon 75, 77 – 78, 85 Parkes, Fanny 124, 126 – 132, 135n5, 136, 137, 150n11; Wanderings of a Pilgrim 124, 136 Patrat, Joseph 32; L’Heureuse erreur 32 Peninsular War 10, 15n4, 37, 40, 44 performer, performance 22, 24, 26, 28 – 34, 43 – 44, 117n2, 118, 129, 139 – 146, 148, 149n6, 163 picturesque 3, 6, 60, 62, 82, 122, 136, 143, 159, 209 – 217, 218n2, 224 – 225, 232 place-making 227 pleasure: aesthetic 3, 89, 100, 111; sensory/sensual 99, 101, 147 Pope 30, 55 Popery Act of 1698 22 Portugal 48, 50, 104 Price, Uvedale 209 Protestant 43, 56, 128, 156, 172

public/ private sphere 7, 126, 141, 172, 173 racial: hierarchy 6, 7, 13, 126, 142, 145 – 146, 154, 194; stereotypes 172, 194, 235 reconstruction: of past 61; of ruins 62, 67n29; see also restoration resistance 53, 81, 83, 89, 135, 137, 149n1, 170, 53 respectability 163, 190, 195, 197 – 198, 200, 202 restoration: of art 55, 65n11, 69; political 44, 55, 57, 61 ritual 11, 90 – 95, 112 Rogers, Mary Eliza: Domestic Life in Palestine 172, 174, 186 romantic/ism 3, 12, 22, 45, 105, 141, 201, 205 – 206, 208, 210, 213 – 214, 229, 231 – 233, 237; imagination 8, 59 – 60, 141, 151 Rome, Roman 10, 52, 54 – 64, 65n8, 65n12, 66 – 67n24, 67n28, 67n30, 101; see also Empire Royal Society, The 94 – 95, 103, 117n2 ruins 52, 56 – 57, 59, 61 – 62, 64, 82, 109 – 110, 210 – 217 Russia 11, 70 – 84, 179; Russian government 77 – 78, 81; see also Empire Said, Edward 8, 17, 143, 150, 151, 172 – 173, 184, 186, 233, 237; Orientalism 8, 17, 143, 151, 186 Samru, Begum 126 Schaw, Janet 12, 89 – 104; Journal of a Lady of Quality 90, 93, 100, 104 senses/ory/sensual 2, 7, 12, 89 – 90, 92 – 93, 97 – 103, 122, 126, 138 sensibility 49, 117, 162, 214, 233 Shakespeare, William 22, 206 South Africa 11, 13, 152 – 153, 156, 159 – 160, 162, 167, 169n16, 170 – 171 space: colonised 13, 77, 122, 160, 193; domestic 128, 163, 165, 208; gendered 126, 138, 147, 183, 224, 227, 236n5; geographical 5; marginal 41, 163; metaphoric 121; private 47, 140; social 5, 37, 39, 92, 124, 147, 233; urban 190, 194, 202 Spain 9, 10, 36 – 47, 49n4, 50n6

246 Index spatial imaginary 222 Spivak, Gayatri 116, 119, 150n11 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre 32 Stark, Freya 175, 185 stereotypes, stock characters 109, 112, 172, 194, 204 Stockdale, John 28 – 29 subjectivity 5, 6, 112, 131, 140 – 141, 146, 154 surveys 53 – 54, 62, 65n1

voyage: of Anna Jameson 15, 220, 222, 224, 230 – 231, 234, 236n1; of Edward Terry 121; of Elizabeth Inchbald 21, 25, 34; of Frances Trollope 213; of Janet Schaw 91, 99, 101, 104; of Lady Nugent 126; of Maria Graham 109, 116; of Mary Holderness 70 – 71; of Mary Moffat 152, 169n9 voyeurism 131, 143, 145, 147

taste 3, 12, 61, 80, 89 – 96, 99 – 105, 200, 209, 217, 222 Tatars: Crimean Tatars 72, 73, 78, 81 – 84; Tatar children 75, 79; Tatar customs 74 – 81; Tatar men 76, 79; Tatar women 72, 74, 77 – 80 Thapa, Martabar Singh 144 travel memoirs 140, 189 – 195, 199 – 202, 202n2 Trollope, Frances 205 – 207, 213, 215, 218 Tswana 155, 157 – 158, 163, 165, 171 turtle 91 – 104

Weitbrecht, Mary 127, 130 – 131, 136; Christian Woman’s Ministry to the Heathen Sisters of India 127, 130, 136; Women of India 127, 136 West Indies/ian 1, 11, 89 – 90, 94, 97, 99 – 100, 103 wilderness 82, 156, 164, 226, 228 – 229, 231 – 232, 235; construction of 159, 207 – 208, 218 Wilkinson, Tate 28 Wollstonecraft, Mary 6, 30; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 30 working-class 3, 195; women 136, 138, 161, 198 – 199 Wright, Frances 206, 208, 216; Views of Society and Manners in America 206

Ukraine 73, 85 Upper Canada 15, 220, 222 – 226, 231, 234, 236n1, 237, 238 vessels: as agents in colonization and place-making 220 – 222; vessels as colonial presence 236 vision: of antiquity 52, 68; of British imperial power 92, 137, 174, 181, 190, 193, 201; orientalist vision 8

Zenana 12, 112, 115 – 116, 120 – 135, 135n5, 136; Baptist Zenana Mission 135n6 Zocotora or Socotra 30, 35