Hottentot Venus (16 page)

Your obedient servant,
AN ENGLISHMAN

A REPLY
Morning Chronicle,
MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1810

Sir, having observed in your paper of this day, a letter signed “An Englishman,” containing a malicious attack on my conduct in exhibiting a
Hottentot woman, accusing me of cruelty and ill treatment exercised towardsher, I feel myself compelled, as a stranger, to refute this aspersion,
for the vindication of my own character, and the satisfaction of the public.
In the first place, he betrays the greatest ignorance in regard to the
Hottentot, who is as free as the English. This woman was my servant at
the Cape, and not my slave, much less can she be so in England, where all
breathe the air of freedom; she is brought here with her own free will and
consent, to be exhibited for the joint benefit of both our families. That
there may be no misapprehension on the part of the public, any person
who can make himself understood to her is at perfect liberty to examine
her, and know from herself whether she has not been always treated, not
only with humanity, but the greatest kindness and tenderness.

. . . Since the English last took possession of the colony, I have been
constantly solicited to bring her to this country, as a subject well worth the
attention of the Virtuoso, and the curious in general. This has been fully
proved by the approbation of some of the first Rank and chief Literati in
the kingdom, who saw her previous to her being publicly exhibited. And
pray, Mr. Editor, has she not as good a right to exhibit herself as an Irish
Giant or a Dwarf etc. etc. However, as my mode of proceeding at the place
of public exhibition seems to have given offence to the public, I have given
the sole direction of it to an Englishman, who now attends.

Hendrick Caesar

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Morning Chronicle,
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1810

Yes, she has a right to exhibit herself, but there is no right in her being
exhibited. The Irish Giant, Mr. Lambert, and the Polish Dwarf, were
all masters and directors of their own movements; and they, moreover,
enjoyed the profits of their own exhibition: the first two were men of
sound understanding, and were able to tell when they were plundered
and defrauded of those profits, and to insist on the appropriation of exhibitionprofits to themselves: the money derived from personal misfortunewas their own: it comforted them in the active moments of their
existence, or supplied them with enjoyment when laid aside. Do the publicbelieve that one shilling, nay a single farthing, of the profits arising
from her exhibition will ever go into the hands of the Female Hottentot,
or of her relatives or friends? Who audits the accounts? Who looks after
the balance between expense and income? The avaricious speculator, or
the unfeeling gaoler who have brought her here, who receive the money,
and—who will keep it. No; after having run the gauntlet through the
three capitals of England, Scotland and Ireland, and traversed their
provincial towns, dragged through them with greater barbarity than
Achilles dragged the body of Hector at the foot of his chariot round Troy’s
walls, this miserable female will be taken back to the Cape; not enriched
by European curiosity, but rendered poorer if possible than when she left
her native soil.

Humanitas

I slammed the file shut without reading any further.

—Damn Boer scoundrel.

—I think these letters are going to incense a mob of abolitionists to take things into their own hands . . . We’d better get over there, said Van Wageninge.

—Oh, the public loves it, cheap thrills, pornography . . . it beats a two-headed gorilla or an albino rhinoceros any day! This kind of exploitation has a sleazy life of its own, borne upwards by the ignorance and intolerance of the English. It will be an uphill fight to wrest her from her keepers, who are making a fortune off her, I replied.

—We must help her, said Macauley.

—Well, the first thing to deal with is the conscience of Dunlop and Caesar, if they possess such an appendage . . .

The next day, Macauley, Van Wageninge and I paid our two shillings and walked into the marketplace of freaks that was at number 225 Piccadilly. It was a Thursday and the stalls and walkways were calm. Thus, we managed to get very close to the stage. We waited for a break and then approached the barker Hendrick Caesar. He acted as if he expected us. We introduced ourselves.

—We’re from the African Association.

—Yes, I know of you, said Caesar.

—This is Mr. Zachary Macauley and Mr. Peter Van Wageninge, I am the Reverend Robert Wedderburn. We would like to ask you how you came to manage the person of . . . Saartjie Baartman.

Caesar eyed me with contempt. It was clear he wasn’t going to answer to any black man no matter how elegant. He turned away from me to the white men.

—She’s my servant.

—Servant or slave, sir?

—I
said
servant.

—In South Africa?

—Well, she’s here now, isn’t she?

—That’s just the point. Our association is a benevolent organization to protect, educate and civilize Africans.

—Well, the Venus is under my protection and she’s pretty civilized.

—May I ask how you got her out of South Africa? Travel by Cape Hottentots is prohibited. Did she procure a passport?

—She has a passport issued by the governor of the colony, Lord Calledon, if it’s any of your damned business . . . interjected the second man, Alexander Dunlop.

—May I see his signature? He is well known to me.

—By God! No, you can’t, said Dunlop. Mind your own business. No reason why I should carry it around with me and no reason why I should show it to you . . .

—I imagine she speaks Dutch.

—Yes.

—Well, this gentleman speaks Dutch, may he speak with her?

—She doesn’t fraternize with male members of the audience . . . police ordinance, you know . . .

I eyed the man who had interjected himself into the argument. He was a fine figure of a man, tall and athletic, who could be thirty as easily as he could be forty or twenty. His eyebrows and his thick wavy hair were jet black. His complexion was pale under the artificial brown of seafaring and his eyes were sea green. His features were classical and most agreeable, straight aquiline nose, fleshy lips, angular chin with a deep cleft, small well-shaped ears and a largish skull sitting on a thick column of neck and shoulders. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled up and he displayed a mouth full of large, even white teeth with upper canines that extended lower than the rest but were square rather than pointed. He could surely swim, I thought, certainly sword-fight and shoot, probably ride excellently, and he was definitely not interested in boys like so many English adventurers. He had Scottish blood, like me, but no accent. He was obviously well educated, but perhaps not a gentleman. He was expensively dressed in crimson and blue, but I wagered he was penniless. There was a sort of man who couldn’t hold on to money, even if his life depended upon it, even if he came into a fortune. And he was of that race. It was obvious it was simply in his nature; a fatal flaw of character or upbringing or simply fate. He would always be relieved of it in some bizarre manner: war, theft, gambling, women, but he would go on, making even more and losing it, because people could not resist him. That’s it, I thought. This man was irresistible. It was more than charm, it was a kind of fatality, a magnetic attraction for both men and women—which was perfectly immoral, and impossible for ordinary people with ordinary brains not to succumb to.

—Miss Baartman, said Van Wageninge in Dutch, are you here under your own free will?

The Venus nodded but said nothing.

—Do you have any family at the Cape?

Silence. Dunlop glared. Of the two men, I thought, Dunlop was the most dangerous. Could I take him? I could feel my Scot’s blood rising along with his. Our respective Scot’s blood rising with our respective Scot’s brogue.

—Brothers, sisters, parents?

—All dead, she said in English.

Dunlop whispered something in her ear. But she waved him away.

—Are you happy here?

We continued on for another ten minutes asking question after question. Finally, in frustration, I asked the Venus directly:

—Would you like to go home? Would you like us to send you home? To pay for your passage? But the Venus remained mute.

The request was repeated in Dutch by Van Wageninge.

—We have organized a defense committee on your behalf and you will be able to explain to a civil court whether you feel you would be better off relieved of the presence of Mr. Dunlop and Mr. Caesar and put under the protection of the African Association, I said.

—Thank you, the Venus suddenly said softly, shaking her head as she contemplated the miracle of a black man denouncing a white one.

We bowed, turned on our heels and left, with the Venus staring helplessly after us. Our three top hats bobbed and weaved in and out of the crowd. I could feel the Venus’s eyes upon us even at a great distance. It was only later that we discovered that Dunlop had been absent for several months and had reappeared only several days ago, walking in the door, out of nowhere. News of the controversy around
his
exhibition of the Venus had reached him and he had returned to London to defend himself.

When we got outside, I turned to Macauley.

—Lord Ellenborough will never take her from the custody of Caesar and Dunlop without proof that this exhibition is against her will. And we cannot free her only to send her back into the world without a home to go to. We must argue that if she is taken from her impresarios, we will assume her safety under our own protection. She will not find herself without friends.

In the weeks that followed our visit, the Venus made headlines in the yellow tabloids and the penny press . . .

—The journalistic world is most enamored of Miss Baartman, commented Peter Van Wageninge. Look at this. It’s called “Prospects of Prosperity, or Good Bottoms Going into Business” and it has just been published by Walter & Company of Cornhill. It shows Lord Grenville and the Hottentot Venus advancing towards each other with outstretched arms. Behind Venus is a well-dressed man, the showman Alexander Dunlop himself. In Grenville’s pocket is a list of the new administration. Behind him are the current ministers looking on unhappily. Grenville is saying,
My dear Saartjie, I come to congratulate you. You are trading in on
your own bottom, I see. I expect soon to be in the same situation myself.
She answers:
Me only got half my bottom belong to me. No do much good wid dat.

—Huh, she’s got dozens of songs and rhymes and cartoons about her circulating in London and all of England and Ireland, complained Peter Van Wageninge, laughing in spite of himself.

—We have to get to Sarah Baartman, I concluded. We have all the evidence we need: witnesses, letters to the editors, newspaper articles and advertisements and our own two eyes. I insist we take Caesar and Dunlop to court for keeping the Hottentot Venus in involuntary servitude.

—Robert always comes up with the most radical and violent solution to any problem, interjected Van Wageninge.

It’s in my blood, I thought, contemplating the pale whiteness of Van Wageninge. I am a mulatto street boy, the bastard of a Scottish nobleman who sold his mother when she was five months pregnant with him. I came to be a Christian late in life. I am both radical and violent. I was brought up by my grandmother, a poor black slave on the island of Jamaica, and witnessed her brutal flogging by orders of her master, my own father, a white man and a Christian, when I was eight years old. My grandmother was accused of witchcraft. The terror visited upon my mother and grandmother marked me, I thought, for the rest of my life, which began in 1761. At seventeen, I joined the Royal Navy during the American Revolution. I took part in the Gordon Riots of 1780, led by the American Negroes Benjamin Bowsey and John Glover. I am a self-taught historian, a self-taught theologian, a self-taught preacher and orator, who has tried to synthesize radical Christianity and the republicanism of Thomas Paine. I continue in spite of persecution and blacklisting and prison to preach proletarian abolitionism. By force of obstruction, persecution and censorship, the Crown hopes to crush me, and prevent me from preaching freely, but it has only turned me into an author, dragging me from obscurity to fame. My writings have turned me into a brilliant and dangerous intellectual. Something I had not been until now. My sermons attract a multitude of listeners in my little church, my
Horrors of
Slavery
has sold thirty thousand copies. My aristocratic father never did anything for me. The closest I ever came to receiving help from my Scottish family was a cracked sixpence and some beer given me by a servant at a time when I and my pregnant wife were close to starvation. That at a time when my father’s estates, Mint, Paradise, Retreat, Endeavor, Inverness, Spring Garden, Moreland and Mount Edgecombe were worth precisely thirty million pounds . . .

—Robert, said Macauley to Van Wageninge, has done time in Cold Bath Fields penitentiary, Dorchester prison and Gillspur jail for everything from theft (guilty) to keeping a bawdy house (not proven). He is at this moment under indictment for using blasphemous, profane, scurrilous, gross and violent discourse against the Church of England. That is why he must stay out of this Venus case and out of the courtroom. If he even opens his mouth in front of a judge, we are done for.

—In other words, a damn good man.

—My half brother James is the solicitor general for Scotland. Needless to say, my activities are very embarrassing to him and the family, I said dryly, amused at Van Wageninge’s shocked face.