African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus - Hardcover

Rachel Holmes is a writer, critic, and broadcaster. She is the author of Scanty Particulars, the biography of Dr. James Barry. A former professor of English at the University of London and the University of Sussex, Holmes divides her time between London and Cape Town.

Chapter 1

Saartjie Baartman, stage name the Hottentot Venus, emerged from behind a crimson velvet curtain, stepped out onto the three-foot-high stage in pointed green ribboned slippers, and surveyed her audience with a bold stare. Her high cheekbones and dramatic greasepaint and soot makeup gave her a prophetic, enigmatic look. Smoke coiled upwards from the pipe firmly gripped in the corner of her perfect Cupid’s-bow mouth, drawing attention to her dimpled cheeks and heart- shaped face. It was a damp autumnal afternoon in London, 1810, and Saartjie was a long, long way from home.

Less than four feet, seven inches in height, she was a diminutive goddess. The springy pelt of her voluminous fur cloak draped from her shoulders to her feet, an African version of the corn gold tresses of Sandro Botticelli’s Venus, and every inch of its luxuriant, labial, curled hair was equally suggestive.

Light and dark faces peered back up at her. Saartjie saw their eyes dilate with wonder, then narrow again speculatively, as if uncertain of how to evaluate the vision of an African Venus arising before them, out of the gleaming candlelight and fug of eye-watering smoke from the oil lamps that illuminated the auditorium. Framing Saartjie, the audience could see a small grass hut and painted boards depicting pastoral African scenery and verdant, exotic plants. According to the posters that advertised the recent arrival of the Hottentot Venus in blazing colors and huge printed letters all over central London, these settings depicted the mysterious interior of Africa—although where exactly that might be, many in the crowd were not sure.

To the audience that gazed up curiously at Saartjie, Venus was simply a synonym for sex; to behold the figure of Venus, or to hear her name, was to be prompted to think about lust, or love. At the same time, the word Hottentot signified all that was strange, disturbing, alien, and possibly, sexually deviant. Some, especially the elite viewers, had heard travelers’ tales of mysterious Hottentot women, reputed to have enormous buttocks and strangely elongated labia, and to smoke a great deal. And here she was, a fantasy made flesh, tinted gold by the stage light, elevated above them, uniting the full imaginary force of these two powerful words: Hottentot and Venus. Her skin-tight, skin-colored body stocking clung to her so snugly that it was plain for all to see that she wore no corset, stockings, or drawers beneath. Most shockingly, the luminous ropes of ivory-colored ostrich eggshell beads that cascaded from her neck to her waist failed entirely to conceal her nipples, visible through the thin silken fabric.

The illuminated auditorium enabled Saartjie to see her audience almost as well as they could see her. She observed with great interest two men of distinctive appearance who entered the theater together and gazed up at her in rapt fascination. One was statuesque, hawk nosed, and haughty looking. The other was stocky, with curly hair and twisted features. Though Saartjie did not as yet know who they were, most of England did, and a murmur of recognition rippled through the crowd. The tall, grave-countenanced man was John Kemble, the nation’s most famous actor, and the short man was comedian Charles Mathews, celebrated as the best stand-up comic and impersonator in the land.

Kemble stared fixedly at Saartjie, in a manner described in the folk stories of her childhood as being like a lion looking at the moon. He was just on the point of approaching the stage to address her, when suddenly a white woman elbowed forward, reached up, and coolly pinched her, very hard. Shocked, Saartjie stooped down to push her assailant away, but as she did so, another fashionable female in a high-waisted Empire topcoat (so beloved of Jane Austen heroines) clambered up onto the stage and poked her sharply in the buttocks with her furled parasol, drawling that “she wished to ascertain that all was . . . ‘nattral.’ ” Before Saartjie had the opportunity to defend herself, a smartly dressed gentleman joined forces with her ungentle genteel aggressors, and prodded her with his walking cane.

The manager of the African Venus, Hendrik Cesars, jumped up onto the stage and declared the show over for the afternoon. As the crowd dispersed, Kemble, muttering “Poor, poor creature!” stalked up to Cesars and protested at the assaults on Saartjie, firing questions at him about her state of mind, comfort, and well-being. The actor vehemently declined the manager’s wheedling, pacifying encouragements to touch her, objecting, “No, no, poor creature, no!”

Charles Mathews, who wrote up these events later in his diary, observed that Saartjie watched the exchange between Kemble and Cesars attentively. “She was,” he said, “obviously very pleased; and, patting her hands together, and holding them up in evident admiration, uttered the unintelligible words, ‘O ma Babba! O ma Babba!,’ gazing at the tragedian with unequivocal delight.” For a well-built woman, she had an unexpected daintiness and lightness in her gestures.

“What does she say, sir?” Kemble asked Cesars. “Does she call me her papa?”

“No, sir,” the manager answered, “she says, you are a very fine man.”

Saartjie’s dignified response to Kemble was a classic expression of ubuntu, the African philosophy of humanity, fellow feeling, social decorum, and kindness. Her words signified respect and thanks, and clapping her hands was a courteous gesture of humility. Saartjie was offering appreciation to Kemble for his admiration and concern, and showing esteem for a man who, in her eyes, was a fatherly, and rather handsome, figure.

“Upon my word,” Kemble retorted, emphatically inhaling a pinch of snuff, “the lady does me an infinite honour!”

The two entertainers left together. “Now Mathews, my good fellow, do you know this is a sight which makes me melancholy. I dare say, now, they ill-use that poor creature! Good God—how very shocking!” Kemble and Mathews sauntered off down Piccadilly in search of afternoon tea, speculating about Saartjie and her circumstances. However, just like all the rest of the audience who had paid two shillings to gape at the Hottentot Venus that afternoon, they knew almost nothing about her.

Saartjie was twenty-two years old. Six months previously, she had arrived in England on a ship from the Cape Colony, with a British military doctor named Alexander Dunlop, his South African manservant, Hendrik Cesars, and a former black slave now apprenticed as Dunlop’s servant. Saartjie lived with them in York Street, a short thoroughfare to the south of Piccadilly connecting Jermyn Street with St. James’s Square, and named in compliment to King James II. Saartjie’s new home was at the heart of London’s most fashionable district, and a world away from her previous life.

A month prior to the visit that Mathews and Kemble paid to Saartjie’s show, on Wednesday September 12, Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, received an invitation to attend an exclusive preview of the Hottentot Venus on the following Monday. This private viewing was to be held nearby in “the house of exhibition” at 225 Piccadilly, and the invitation was from a man named Hendrik Cesars. Banks discovered that similar invitations had been sent to scientists, naturalists, and fashionable members of high society, as well as a variety of impresarios, including Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the now- elderly playwright and politician, and William Bullock, famed manager of the Liverpool Museum, London’s bestselling attraction. On Thursday September 20, three days after the preview, an advertisement using the same wording as the invitation appeared in the Morning Herald and the Morning Post, announcing the opening of London’s latest curiosity to the public:

The Hottentot Venus.—Just arrived, and may be seen between the hours of one and five o’clock in the afternoon, at No 225, Piccadilly, from the banks of the river Gamtoos, on the borders of Kaffraria, in the interior of South Africa, a most correct and perfect specimen of that race of people. From this extraordinary phenomenon of nature, the Public will have an opportunity of judging how far she exceeds any description given by historians of that tribe of the human race. She is habited in the dress of her country, with all the rude ornaments usually worn by those people. She has been seen by the principal Literati in this Metropolis, who were all greatly astonished, as well as highly gratified, with the sight of so wonderful a specimen of the human race. She has been brought to this country at a considerable expense by Hendrik Cesars, a native of the Cape, and their stay will be but short. To commence on Monday, the 24th instant.—Admittance 2s each.

This hyperbolical advertisement, promising so much, in fact told very little. Yet it heralded the opening of London’s most famous and controversial theatrical phenomenon of the winter of 1810. Almost overnight, the Hottentot Venus became the sensation of the metropolis, both onstage and off. Who was she, and where did she come from? And how did this young black woman who sang, danced, and played the guitar come to be upon the London stage, got up like a fetish and performing like a showgirl?
S
aartjie Baartman was born in 1789 in the Gamtoos River Valley, a lushly forested, semitropical estuary on the bitterly contested eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. Although Africa and Europe were worlds apart, the repercussions of that revolutionary year in Europe had a definitive impact on Saartjie’s childhood.

She did not remember her mother, who died before Saartjie had reached her first birthday. Lastborn, she had four brothers and two sisters, who probably became responsible for her care. If she had substitute moth...