Hottentot Venus

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  The tall Dutchman with wavy blond hair had swallow-colored eyes enlarged by his thick spectacles, which he kept taking off, and chewing the ends of, and putting back on. He spoke very fast and in High Dutch that I hardly understood. Then, all at once, he switched to Low Dutch and smiled beneath his thick blond mustache. I smiled back and told him his linen was so white, so starched and so well ironed I bet he sent his shirts back to Holland to be washed. At this he laughed and admitted that, indeed, he did send his laundry to Amsterdam.

  —We are all members of the African Association and the African Institution, he continued in Low Dutch, this is Mr. Macauley, and this is Mr. Robert Wedderburn. You remember the Reverend Wedderburn and me from Piccadilly?

  So the white black man’s name was English too.

  —As we said then, we are the association to protect and defend Africans and other persons of color. We were in the forefront of the fight to abolish slavery on British soil, and now that this is achieved, we make sure all former slaves and slaves that enter Great Britain, as you have, are assured of their status as free persons. Do you understand?

  —I am not a slave, I insisted, I am a free woman.

  —I understand that, but there seem to be constraints on your movements and your bodily freedom.

  I remained silent. Was I to admit I had been lured by Master Dunlop to England under false premises? My future husband? They would send me back and I didn’t want to go back. I would die if I went back.

  —I understand you have already sworn your affidavit before the Crown, but here, now, with only a translator, said Master Van Wageninge, you have the chance to revindicate your freedom if you are being misused.

  Misused, I thought. My fortune was gone, my bride’s dowry spent by my master without marriage, my only means of earning a living the subject of a trial. And here were a posse of white men ready to make a fool of me, Sarah . . . I shook my head.

  —I don’t have no complaints, I said in Dutch.

  Without showing any dissatisfaction at my response, Master Van Wageninge, calm and collected, insisted.

  —It is not that we wish you to prosecute your employers; we wish only that, after such a long struggle, the law as applied to chattel slavery is upheld and respected in the British Isles and that people of color on British soil have the safety and protection of the law.

  —We are quite prepared, interjected the stout white man, to finance your passage back to Africa with no strings attached, if you so desire. You could rejoin your friends and family . . . We have done this for many colored.

  I listened in silence to his speech, stirred in spite of myself, marveling at the fact that all this could be going on in the world without anybody in the Cape, white folks or black, ever knowing anything about it. I wondered just how much power these white men (including Master Wedderburn) had. Could they really protect me? Was there no other way to remain in England? Would I end up, as my masters had said, in the workhouse, the jailhouse, the crazy house or the whorehouse if I left them? Was there anyplace for me on earth at all? Wasn’t one cage as good as another? I didn’t dare ask. The white black man spoke into my silence, looking me directly in the eye, willing me to understand.

  —Sarah, he began, we all have seen the exhibition at number 225. We were appalled and shocked at the violence of the gestures of Mr. Caesar, his threatening attitude vis-à-vis your person. I understand he is not a member of your family, a father or brother who would have a legal or moral right over your person. Therefore, if you are a free person, you have the right to demand reparations for such treatment and that such treatment in word and deed cease. We are here in the name of decency to make sure no physical harm comes to you as a result of your economic dependence on your . . . employer or guardian. I understand you are not yet twenty-one years old.

  —Master Caesar is not my employer nor my guardian. I have a contract with Master Dunlop, this gentleman. Soon I will have my twenty-second birthday. I am not a slave . . . not a slave. I am free.

  —These men, I believe, mistreat you and misrepresent themselves.

  —And you would do better? A missionary? I remembered the reverend and my ten pounds.

  —We are not missionaries, we have no religious affiliations, we are a civil rights organization.

  —Then why are you called Reverend, I asked the Reverend Wedderburn.

  —Because I have a license to preach, he answered.

  —You are not like the Reverend Freehouseland.

  —Who is the Reverend Freehouseland?

  —I was his slave as a child. He’s buried here in England. In Manchester, I added. I’ve come to visit his grave. I won’t go back until I see it . . .

  —But once you’ve done that, wouldn’t it be best to return to your family and friends?

  —All dead. All murdered, I lied.

  —But not against your will, he answered, shocked at my reply. We can’t leave you to your own devices in a strange country, that would be most inhuman.

  —What is inhuman?

  —Inhuman is what is happening to you, Sarah. You are the unwitting collaborator of your own exploitation, agent of your own dehumanization! You are no more a real, genuine Hottentot than I am. You are a fake, a myth, a joke, a misrepresentation, a victim used to promote a freakish mythology . . . a false blackness . . . a grotesque caricature of so-called savagery. Look at the penny pictures of you! Think, Sarah. Think for yourself. No one else. Neither chains nor dungeons nor the terrors of being burnt alive can prevent us from thinking freely, neither can they prevent us from moving, speaking, writing or reading books freely.

  —Books?

  —Yes, books.

  —Books for white people. Books don’t talk to black people.

  —Oh yes they do. Otherwise teaching slaves to read wouldn’t be a crime . . . would it . . . Can’t you read, Sarah?

  —No.

  —No?

  —I wouldn’t when I was little. I won’t now.

  —There’s one book, the Good Book, that every human being should read.

  —The Bible. That’s what the Reverend Freehouseland said.

  —And did the Reverend Freehouseland care for you?

  —I don’t know.

  —Did you love him?

  —Yes. The only good missionary I ever knew.

  —And where is he now?

  —I already told you. Dead. In Manchester.

  —England?

  —Yes, master. Dead and buried like I said.

  —Don’t call me master!

  The reverend turned away slowly, disgusted, I suppose, by the pigheadedness of a simpleminded herdswoman, a shepherdess, who couldn’t read. For I knew in my bones that he was a parody, a stumbling mouthpiece for truths that couldn’t save me. If I courted destruction, then let it be on my own terms.

  —Remember, he said sadly, the words of Marcus Aurelius: Man loses no other life than the one he’s lived and he lives no other life than the one he loses . . .

  —Just because I consent to this life doesn’t mean I chose it, I repeated in Dutch.

  —You haven’t understood a word I’ve said, have you?

  Yes, I wanted to say, I understand you. I understand that your ideas about me are more important than me myself. You see me as yours, as much yours as Master Dunlop sees me as his. You see me as a means to your goal of revolution, and rebellion, against the English. You are so angry you don’t really see me at all—only as an object in the eye of the storm. I don’t trust you, white black man, I thought. You don’t like me because I’m not your ideal. You want to be like them. I don’t. That is the big difference, I thought, between you and me.

  —I don’t care to understand you, I said.

  But I thought this: Your ideas are the only important thing to you. Not me myself. For example, you do not even speak my language, so who are you to talk of my history, my ideals, my representatives, my duty to allow you to save me. Not only don’t we have a common language between us, we must speak the whi
te man’s language even to understand each other . . .

  —I’m not a slave . . . I’m a free woman.

  —Oh God, Sarah, flee, unhappy Hottentot, flee, as the philosopher Diderot said, as I plead with you to do—hide yourself in your forest! The wild animals that live there are less dangerous than the monsters under the empire of which you will fall. The tiger will perhaps tear you to pieces, but he will not steal your life. The other beast will ravish your innocence and rape your freedom. Have the courage to take up your hatchet, your bow and poisoned arrows, and rain them down on these foreigners so that there survives not one to bring news of their disaster . . . It’s the only way, Sarah. Sarah?

  —Either you succumb to their crazy opinions or you massacre them without pity—because, because, Sarah, they believe that if you don’t think like them, you are unfit to live . . . unfit to inhabit this world . . . that your existence has no justification . . .

  —I am a simple woman who herds sheep, you know?

  —When I was a little girl, I continued, things were different for the Khoekhoe. We had water and grazing land. Now, we have nothing except the rusted iron and tarnished beads we exchanged for our cattle . . .

  —The earth belongs to God, Sarah, who gave it to the children of men, allowing no difference for color or character, just or unjust. Then, the encloser and the engrosser turned the land into private property and created slavery. The weak, then, had to solicit the villain to become the villain’s slave . . .

  The Reverend Wedderburn bit his fingertip, trying to find the words of a sermon that would convince me. He had long bitten his nails down to the quick, until they were sunk into little pads of flesh at their tips. He began again.

  —I have Scottish blood, he said, that goes back to 633, but my African blood goes back to the beginning of time . . . I am free. Being free, I am free to revolt! Slaves and unfortunate men cultivate the earth, adorn it with buildings, fill it with riches. And those riches are stolen by the ruling class, who set the slaves to work in the first place! Pray, was there ever a solitary savage who was rich? Are you rich? I say, don’t acknowledge them. Acknowledge no king, no priest, no father, no master. Only direct action is valid. It is degrading to human nature to petition your oppressors . . .

  —God is no respecter of persons. The revolution moves on without Him. The English working class, the Scottish peasantry, the black Haitian, the African slave, the Irish bond servant, the American Indian are all one and the same. All await the jubilee: Isaiah 1:20, I bring good tidings to the afflicted: to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to open the prison doors of those who are bound, like you, Sarah, you in your cage—you must believe me!

  —Are you married, Master Wedderburn?

  —I no longer have a wife, and don’t call me master. I’m your brother, not your master.

  He sat down and wiped his brow. I just sat there like a dumb animal, not reacting to anything, as if I didn’t understand anything.

  —Don’t, for God’s sake, call me master!

  —To me, you are like the rest, only darker.

  —Oh, Sarah, Sarah, he said, hurt to the quick, how can you say that to me?

  —You, white black man I’m lookin’ at . . .

  —No, Sarah, you are not looking at a “white” black man. You are looking at a free and liberated black man. I’m the first free black man you’ve ever set eyes upon . . . And you don’t even know it! You are still afraid to look white people in the eye—Look up, Sarah! Open your eyes . . . You can be as free as I . . .

  He took my hand in his two great ones.

  —I am a low, vulgar man, incapable of delivering my sentiments in an elegant and polished manner, but when I saw you, naked, the object of ridicule, humiliated as my mother and grandmother were, your soul shrunken and besmirched by those bigoted, ignorant, smug, cruel, lewd, corrupt villains. Because of their own cowardice and prejudice, they give in to the most obscene and low impulses of human nature: to ridicule what they don’t understand. I truly despair of my fellow man. I despair of my own vocation to defend the cause of truth, of religious liberty, of the universal right to freedom of conscience . . .

  —You don’t believe me, do you?

  I couldn’t answer. My mouth seemed filled with the sweet mush they fed me as a girl to fatten my hips.

  —You can’t believe that I am smarter, better, more powerful than your knuckle-headed, hairy ape Afrikaner bosses . . . can you?

  I flinched at the tone of his voice. I was on trial . . .

  —You angry, I said.

  —No, Sarah. I want you to live, that’s all. I need you to live.

  —Live?

  —Only I can save your life. Only the law and I. I consider this a matter of life and death. Why won’t you believe me? What stops you from trusting me? My color?

  Trust no one, especially those who sleep on your bosom.

  The white black man stumbled on, staring into my eyes with a kind of desperation. I willed myself not to understand. Not to understand one word he was saying. It was weakness to try to understand him. I saw what whites saw, a crazy nigger in Englishman’s clothes, hiding . . . waiting to pounce upon them with his poisoned spear.

  —I beg leave . . . Sarah . . . humbly to save you.

  —No.

  —To help you testify against your keepers.

  —No.

  —You must change your affidavit.

  —No.

  I understood only one thing: I had to hold on to Master Alexander, now that he had returned, with all my might. To cross him was destruction. He was my savior, not the Reverend Wedderburn. He was my only chance. I must not let him go.

  11

  MONSIEUR,

  Simple comparative anatomy has practically become a game: it requires just a glance to detect the variations, the successive degradations of each organ; and if the effects each organ produces have not yet been explained, it is because there is, in the living body, something more than those fibers and tissues that we see—that is only the mechanical part of the organism, or, so to speak, the passive instrument of vitality, and between that first disturbance of imperceptible elements and the sensitive movement that is the end result, there occurs a multitude of intermediary evolutions of which we have no idea.

  —BARON GEORGES LÉOPOLD CUVIER,

  Letter to J. C. Mertrud on

  Thirty Lessons in Comparative Anatomy

  Eland’s moon, the English month of November, 1810. When I appeared at the King’s Court with my two Dutch interpreters, I was surrounded by a mob of spectators, reporters and police. Crowds of abolitionists were loudly demonstrating and mounted police had to open a path for me through the screaming, shouting mob to the courthouse door. The courtroom itself was still almost empty.

  I passed the sweepers and there lingered one lone cleaning lady with a duster. I glanced about me. The wide arched windows, two stories high, looked out onto the Thames. They were framed with heavy black and gold velvet drapes embroidered with the arms of King George. The entire chamber was paneled in dark oak trimmed with gilt, ebony and bronze fittings. A huge crystal chandelier hung down from the center of the ceiling, flanked by two smaller ones at each end of the oval room. The leather-upholstered benches yawned into the silence of the hall and vapors of paper, ink, old documents and mortal fear rose and mixed with the faint smell of tobacco, damp wool, soap and brass polish. But there was still another odor that permeated and overpowered the rest, the odor of sanctity: white law, white God and imperfect, fragile white men’s justice.

  At the end of the hall rose the magistrates’ boxes, majestically framed by the King’s colors, the Crown’s colors, the colors of the British Empire, on which, I was told, the sun never set. Behind the magistrates’ chairs were words I didn’t understand, on a gold background, but I could read: IN GOD WE TRUST. I sat down, gloved, hatted and swathed in cashmere shawls which completely hid my shape and my person. I pulled down my veil and watched the players ente
r through its haze.

  Master Wedderburn entered first and sat down in the front row. He nodded but did not greet me. I tried to guess who would walk through the padded doors next. It was Eland’s moon, the mating month. Where was that faint scent of African violets coming from? I wondered. Then I turned my head and followed the ponderous footsteps of Sir Stephen Geelesee, our lawyer, walking up the aisle to take his place at the defense’s table, in his black and scarlet robes, white cravat and curly white wig. Master Wedderburn pretended to study some papers he had taken out of his briefcase. He was so concentrated on this little bit of playacting that he failed to notice the Dutchman Peter Van Wageninge enter until he was at his side, whispering in his ear.

  The courtroom began to fill up. Outside, the large crowd continued to form. Proof of my notoriety. The morning’s newspapers were filled with headlines, articles and cartoons about the trial. A satirical engraving was being sold on the sidewalk, just outside the courthouse. It was entitled “The Hottentot Venus.” It depicted an ugly, gross engraving of me naked except for some beads, standing back to back with Lord Grenville, who was dressed in old-fashioned court dress and who looked at me over his shoulder. Half kneeling between us, using a pair of compasses to measure our pair of broad bottoms was a famous playwright named Richard Sheridan, who was also a member of Parliament. Even though I couldn’t read the caption, I knew what it said because the mob outside were all shouting the words. Well, I never expected broad bottoms from Africa! But such a spanker beats your lordship’s hollow!

  Master Macauley entered the courtroom and, moving quickly, slipped his considerable bulk into the seat beside the Reverend Wedderburn, but Master Wedderburn merely sighed deeply and remained silent. We all rose as the presiding judge, Lord Ellenborough entered the room.