Hottentot Venus

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

My precious one, lovingly.

  Alexander Dunlop.

  I listened quietly to the words of Master Alexander. For the first time in my life, I wished that I could read them for myself. But I was decided. I would obey him and I would wait for him. My dream of freedom, fortune, a new way of life was not in vain. I determined not to be a dog-in-the-wind, but to stick to my goal. All this I silently promised myself. I would be somebody one day and the haughty English who despised me and had conquered my country, would pay gold to see the original landlords of the Cape in the flesh. The insignificance of my former life, my former slavery, my poverty would be washed away. I would invent a new existence that mattered, become a real person, able to exhibit my true nature. I would be recognized as a human being with dignity and power over my destiny. I began to believe this growing sensation of strength, of purpose, of having the last laugh—anxiety had disappeared with Master Alexander’s reassuring words and the fact that he would be coming back soon.

  Master Hendrick drew a satisfied breath of relief, as if to say there was so much to do and so little time, he didn’t need a revolt from me just now. There were the two-shilling admission tickets, the letters to the Academy of Science and the Royal College of Physicians . . . He cursed Master Alexander for leaving him in the lurch and with all the risk! He would regret it someday, he swore. He changed his shirt and cravat before leaving to deliver the throwaways and check the text of the advertisements he had placed in every London newspaper. When he left, I nervously braided feathers for my apron. It was Shit moon, I thought, the month the Khoekhoe gorged themselves on fresh goat’s milk—four months since I had left the Cape.

  Morning Post,

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1810

  The Hottentot Venus has just arrived. She can be viewed between one o’clock and five o’clock in the afternoon at number 225 Piccadilly. She comes directly from the banks of the Chamtoo River, at the frontier of the Cape Colony. She is one of the most PERFECT specimens of this race. Thanks to this extraordinary phenomenon of nature, the PUBLIC will have the occasion to judge to what extent she surpasses all the descriptives of historians concerning this tribe. She is dressed in the costume of her country with the ornaments usually worn by her people.

  She has been examined by the outstanding intelligentsia of this city. Every one of them has been astonished by the sight of such a marvelous specimen of the human race. She has been brought to this country by Hendrick Caesar and their appearance will be brief, beginning Monday next, September 24, the tariff being two shillings per person.

  When the curtain drew back for the first time and I walked onto the wooden stage and became the silent, unmoving, unblinking object of the audience’s gaze, the silence was like a cannibal’s mouth. My skin burned as if I were standing in a circle of fire or the glare of the morning sun on Table Mountain. I was more than Africa for them, I was a thing-that-should-never-have-been-born. I was everything they, thank God, were not. I wore a leather mask which hid half my face, as if the entire vision of me was too monstrous to contemplate. It was my idea. I thought to hide my shame. The mask stopped the audience’s gaze cold, leaving them floundering naked like hooked fish on the edge of a great mystery while it cloaked me, who was truly naked, within a veil of even greater mystery. I was a sold-out, sensational success from the start. In a few days, I was famous all over London. Crowds flocked to see me. So many visitors crowded into the small stall that the police had to be called to control the flow. In the first week, Master Hendrick took in five hundred pounds. Songs, poems, penny posters, cartoons and newspaper articles soon abounded. My master couldn’t believe his eyes or his good fortune.

  —Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen and ladies, he would cry, for the thrill of a lifetime. Just arrived from darkest Africa, the true, the only, missing link of evolution, ladies and gentlemen, the Hottentot Venus, never before seen in fair England, a most perfect specimen of that race of humankind. Discovered in the newest English colony of the Cape of Good Hope, at the tip of southern Africa. Nubile, twenty-one years old, female, a true phenomenon of nature, the virgin Eve risen from the Garden of Creation to the first, primitive level of humanity. Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, examine the legendary Hottentot apron, her amazing hinder parts that are truly unique. Absolutely no fakery, only freakery here! (Laughter) Guaranteed authentic by the Royal Academy of Science! This shepherdess has lived amongst the most savage animals of the forests as one of them. She is real. She is unique. Her race is protected by His Majesty King George’s government as a scientific wonder as well as for its imbecility. Step right up, please, and behold the African Eve—the wonder of the Cape of Good Hope. She can be viewed for only two shillings per person. Two shillings only for a look at the female wonder of this century and the Hottentot apron. Limited engagement. Step up now!

  From the first, I was astonished by the viciousness and the voracity of my audience. On the very first night, hundreds of people dressed to the nines pushed and elbowed the crowd, craning their already long necks, winking and chewing tobacco, shouting and waving, stomping and clapping, cheering and hurling epithets. My head swam, understanding nothing of the English cries and shouts the audience hurled at me. I appeared on the stage raised about three feet from the floor at one end. Then, at a cue from Master Hendrick, I walked forward, my body covered in a tight sheath of flesh-colored silk mousseline, and paced the length of the runway, my sighs and anxious glances at Master Hendrick turning into real sullenness if I was ordered to smile, or to play my guitar, or to sing or to jump or run or look this way . . . or that. Master Hendrick would invite the spectators to examine me to assure themselves nothing was fake. Some of them accepted the invitation by touching my backside or searching for evidence of padding. One pinched me, another walked around me, a gentleman poked me with his cane, a lady used her parasol to ascertain that all was “natural.” Master Hendrick sometimes used a long piece of bamboo to prod me around or move me forward or backwards. But worst of all, the laughter—raucous, lewd, predatory, and hate-filled—never stopped. It erupted at the slightest excuse, a stumbling foot, a tear, an epithet from a spectator, the shrill whistles and catcalls of the gallery.

  I spied the same white woman I had seen on my first visit to 53. She was very tall and very narrow and dressed all in black as if she hated the frivolous colors of the current fashions, all those greens, pinks and lavenders . . . Black, at any rate, suited her. It went with her long pale face and beautiful gray eyes that were cool, and I imagined her hand on my brow would have been like the touch of ostrich feathers. Her gaze would have quieted a reckless fever. She was with another woman and I despised her because beholding me, her eyes had filled with tears, reminding me I was still human . . .

  The “Hottentot Venus” soon eclipsed the other exhibits. Master Hendrick took in more than five hundred pounds the month of Speckled Ear, October. That, he exclaimed, was more than six thousand pounds a year. Crowds began to arrive clutching the penny posters that had begun to circulate or the newspaper caricatures asking for autographs, which Master Hendrick would sign “Venus” with the date or on which I would make my mark. I thought of the taunting boys of Cape Town, white farmers running amok with their horses and whips, the English soldiers with their rifles and bayonets. These people gaping at me were the same—the same race that had murdered my mother and beheaded my father with the same mindless cruelty, the same unyielding desire to devour and destroy. Yet they loved me. Sometimes I would whisper the ancient Khoekhoe incantation for the dead, “I am here for the pain. I am here for the desperation my pain brings me . . .”

  Then Master Hendrick added the bamboo cage. It was eight feet by twelve feet and five feet high so that I could hardly stand up in it.

  —It’s only show business, he said.

  I accepted my fate.

  From my cage, the crowds gazing up at me seemed to bay and bray like my father’s herds of longhorn cattle. They milled around, pushing and shoving, barking with laughter a
nd ridicule. The top hats of the men and the pointed plumed turbans of the women bobbed and weaved like points of ivory elephant tusks. Why had I not expected all this laughter and ridicule? I needed no understanding of English to feel the hatred of the crowd, their derision and contempt. My heart pounded, my chest contracted with rage and hot flashes of humiliation flushed my face and stomach. Yet I bore it all, for hadn’t I myself chosen it? How could I have imagined that white people could be any different in their own country than they were in mine? But I had promised Master Alexander to wait. Now that the money was flowing into our coffers, my dowry was assured. The pain, the humiliation was a small price to pay. After all, no Khoekhoe would ever see me or know I had disgraced the ancestors in this revolting way, with this revolting mob.

  Often I would fall into a trance and hear neither the crowd nor my master’s voice. Sometimes I used my dagga pipe to produce the same effect. The French had another word for the dagga I smoked: they called it cannabis . . . On those wild days when I dreamed, I dreamed of Africa, not as I know it to be now, but as it had been in the ancient time of the Khoekhoe, almost as if I had lived another life back then, almost as if I belonged back there then, not here now. I didn’t mind the cage then. It became my home. I had gambled and lost and this was the price I paid: the eternal hyena laugh of the world.

  Master Hendrick was overwhelmed by London’s acceptance of his “Hottentot Venus.” He had been searching his whole life to make a killing, he told me, and now he was famous as the impresario of “Venus.” The other showmen fraternized with him; he received invitations either with or without me to prestigious salons and galleries.

  Famous people began to seek me out. The Duke of York paid a visit. He was addicted to freak shows and attended dozens during the year. The whole of London society and English aristocracy followed in his wake . . . including several royal princes and princesses. One evening, the famous actor John Kemble visited me backstage after witnessing the inhuman baiting I had endured with sullen indifference. I was hardened now to all provocation. My eyes were blank. My lips fixed. My hands clutched. Master Kemble paused at the door of my tiny dressing room, his eyes fixed upon me, advancing slowly towards me without speaking. As he gazed at me, his underlip dropped for a moment, his famously handsome face suddenly underwent a sea change and softened almost to tears, rendering his masculine beauty even more apparent.

  —Poor, poor creature, he uttered at length in his baritone actor’s voice. Very, very extraordinary indeed. He then took my hand in his, keeping his eyes on me. Almost without thinking, I spoke a few lines of Khoekhoe softly.

  —Sats ke !gâi Khoeba îsa Khoeba!

  —What does she say, sir? asked Kemble, turning to my master at the sound of this incantation. Does she call me papa?

  —No, answered Master Caesar. She says you are a fine and beautiful man.

  —Upon my word, replied Master Kemble in surprise, taking a pinch of snuff from his silver snuffbox, suspending it between his finger and thumb. Upon my word, the lady does me infinite honor.

  I whispered something to Master Caesar, who nodded and left the room to return with a small pouch covered with beads.

  —Venus would like to present you with some of her African dagga . . . as a gift and souvenir.

  —Upon my word, Madame, thank you . . . I shall cherish this moment.

  —Sir, if you would care to touch her . . .

  —No, no, poor creature, no! I daresay she is ill used enough, this poor female, without that. She’s not an inanimate thing to touch and paw. No, this is one of the most melancholy sights I have ever beheld, yes, melancholy.

  Master Kemble stalked out of the enclosure; as he turned to his companion, another actor, named Henry Taylor, I heard him say:

  —Good God, how very shocking. What brutes and thieves are the public . . . the same that pay to see me . . . recite Shakespeare . . .

  9

  There are a multitude of intermediary movements of which we have no notion. How many combinations, dissections, have taken place in that interval? How many affinities have been brought to bear? And who would be the physiologist who would dare to venture any conjectures about the innumerable operations that take place in that impenetrable laboratory? Being that human chemistry, despite the happy efforts of our contemporaries is still in its infancy when we compare it to that of nature.

  —BARON GEORGES LÉOPOLD CUVIER,

  Thirty Lessons in Comparative Anatomy

  October 1810. I looked up at the sign hanging over the entrance of 225 Piccadilly. In large elaborate gold letters, it read “Hottentot Venus.” I made my way into the darkened interior, striding almost a head above the milling, agitated crowd, my walking stick opening up a passageway through the spectators at the competing stands. Barkers and animal trainers pleaded for my two or three shillings, proposing every deformity, accident of birth, human degradation, eccentric skill and degenerative disease on earth for the delectation of the English public. I passed by the stands of Caroline, the Sicilian princess, Anna, the albino, and a dwarf named Captain Lambert. Onstage, a giant struck a pose and John Randian, the torso man, lit himself a cigar. Irritated and not a little apprehensive, with my walking stick I struck off a filthy gypsy child who was trying to pick my pocket. The deeper I penetrated into the dense, shadowy labyrinth of stalls and stages, stands and tents, the more wretched the specimens on display became and the more disturbed I became. I was sinking into a cesspool of dwarfs, midgets and bearded fat ladies, spineless contortionists, a foul-smelling rhinoceros and twin babies joined at the head. It was not only the ocean of forms and faces, it was also the babble of the hawkers, the showmen, the trainers that swelled around me like the muck of an inferno.

  A bare-breasted snake charmer wiggled her tongue at me. All around me, the well-dressed middle-class crowds hummed and stirred, seeking thrills, vicarious experiences and exotica. To my amazement, there were many well-dressed women in the mob, which seemed in a festive, congenial mood. I finally reached my destination, a pavilion built like an African hut, over which hung the painted banner proclaiming:

  The Hottentot Venus in London! The first time the world has ever

  seen this extraordinary and perfect specimen of this race of mankind!

  Under this proclamation, in much smaller letters was the notice:

  Parties of twelve and upward may be accommodated with a private

  exhibition of the Venus Hottentot between seven and eight o’clock

  in the evening by giving notice to the showman the previous day.

  (A woman will attend if required.)

  The showman was a certain Hendrick Caesar, who pulled back the curtain as a hush spread through the audience. I saw that there was something in the shadows of the barred bamboo cage huddled over a kind of brick oven heated by a Bunsen burner with which it tried to warm itself. It wore only a thin flesh-colored silk sheath which clung to its body, sculpting every line of it. It was a figure of such loneliness and despair, crouched there, that my eyes filled with tears when I realized it was actually a woman. An African woman, sitting on her haunches like a beast.

  The showman spoke to her as if to a dog, commanding her harshly:

  —Stand up! Sit down! Come forward!

  According to the command, the creature moved lethargically back and forth, up and down, pacing like a wildcat. She even did a little jig and picked up a small guitar, on which she plucked a tune and sang something in a strange, bewildering language at which the audience began to laugh. I saw that the woman was almost in tears. Several times, she lashed out at her tormentors, her face flushed with embarrassment. She shook her head in disbelief as the spectators booed and cheered. She shouted at the presenter. He raised his hand against her. Then, he turned, all smiles, to the crowd,

  —Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and verify that there is no makeup, no fakery, only freakery . . . ha ha ha!

  The audience surged forward as if they were going to devour the woman alive. She c
ringed although she must have gone through the same thing scores of times.

  Yet even I was frightened. My heart accelerated and my breathing became shallow. The crowd was like hounds at bay, snickering and howling insults, chewing tobacco, spitting and coughing. Even without looking around, I knew I would see that particular lurid stare of pure folly with which people contemplated black skin. It was a kind of dumbness, beyond hatred, which at least had to be rationalized. No, this was pure homicide. I had seen such glares in prison guards’ eyes, in policemen’s stares, in judges’ surveillances. In faces looking at me . . . I was inured to being looked at as if I were a criminal. But never, I thought indignantly, had I met with such an inhuman, degrading spectacle as this, or such a perverted presentation of a human being as I saw in this lone pathetic figure before me.

  I was a theologian, the son of an aristocratic Scottish planter and a slave woman. I had dedicated my life to the radical cause of abolition and had founded the African Association, which was famous for defending the rights of slaves and freeing and repatriating as many as it could. The association fought and campaigned against racism in England and the horrors of slavery in the West Indies.

  I was too outraged to remain. I turned on my heel and pushed my way out of the enclosure amid the hoots and jeers and laughter, which rang in my ears and burned my brown-skinned face with indignation.

  —A slave woman is being exhibited and exploited as a freak, caged like a wild animal in a circus right here in London!

  —How do you know she’s a slave? asked Zachary Macauley, the president of the African Institution, looking up from his desk in their opulent offices, not far from Piccadilly.

  —Well, she’s black and she’s African. How could she not be? No free black woman in her right mind would endure such degradation of her own free will! This . . . this show is an affront to female modesty for the amusement of a bunch of voyeurs . . .