Hottentot Venus

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  —So here is my Hottentot Venus!

  —So it is, Baron. Here she is. Your missing link . . .

  —There is no missing link, Monsieur, the Creator wouldn’t be so . . . silly.

  Master Cuvier turned on his heel and started walking towards the imposing white palace at the end of the gardens. He spoke over his shoulder.

  —Welcome to our new museum. This is my home. I used to live on rue de Varenne, but when I was named director here, I moved into a part of the museum. It seemed so much more efficient. I rise early, at five, and by seven I am in my laboratory. I moved my own private collection of skeletons and fossils here with me, some eleven thousand. You’ve never been here before? This path to the right leads to our zoological gardens, which you, Monsieur Réaux, as an animal trainer will be very interested in seeing. We have myriad specimens of birds, reptiles, even an elephant. All bounty from the voyages of the Geography and the Naturalist under the command of the explorers Levaillant and Nicolas Baudin.

  I walked several paces behind them, my head down, my heart racing as if I were on my way to the guillotine.

  —Look! I suddenly exclaimed.

  There was a great purple heron standing on one leg, staring at me. Suddenly she opened her wings as if in an embrace, hopping pitifully.

  —We allow peacocks and herons to roam the gardens at liberty. It delights the visitors to come upon them. Their legs are fettered with brass weights so that they cannot fly away, said the baron.

  Master Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire trailed behind me, taking up the rear, his eyes boring into my back. I wore a dress of thin white silk, cut straight and caught by a girdle just under the bosom, held by a green sash. Over it I wore a large cashmere shawl and a wide-brimmed bonnet of green and blue grosgrain decorated with cock feathers. I carried a parasol against the sun like white women did.

  —Your Venus, Monsieur Réaux, doesn’t look like she’s African. I expected her attire to be much more ferocious.

  —It is in deference to the occasion and your excellencies. The Venus didn’t think her circus costume appropriate for such a momentous occasion.

  —Well, remarked Master Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who wore sunglasses against the light, it’s her shape we are interested in, not her taste in clothes . . .

  I walked, my back straight, embarrassed. These men, these great scientists who so honored me, sounded no different from my circus public. I bit my lip, trembling. A hot flash, then a cold chill, drew up my spine, filling in the holes that Master Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s eyes had made.

  We passed the blue and green tent from which the music came. Instinctively I turned towards it.

  —This temporary tent is for the guests who have come to the lecture. We will visit it shortly as my guests are eagerly waiting to see you. But first I would like to show you some of the museum’s specimens, many brought back by our Emperor’s Egyptian expedition.

  —Venus, Master Réaux shouted as my footsteps wandered towards the tent and the music.

  —Stay away from the violins . . .

  I had discovered white music at the Cape in the music room of Mistress Alya, and then again in London, where Caroline had taken me once to Covent Garden to see an opera. I learned that music was more than just pleasure. There was hidden meaning to it, more than simply a marriage or a war, but meaning within the sound of its soul. It was something I had never thought of before, but music expressed sadness and happiness, landscapes and the sea. Music said that there was a right way for things to be ordered so that life had a shape and was not brute noise or brute events. Things didn’t just happen, said the music, they occurred within something called destiny. Music made you glad you had been born.

  Reluctantly I turned away from the beautiful sounds and mounted the steps of the museum. At the top, still another gentleman joined us.

  —May I introduce Count Henri de Blainville, said the baron, my collaborator and illustrious author of Prodrome of a New Distribution of the Animal Kingdom . . .

  From the very first, I didn’t care much for Master de Blainville. He was a man without color: skin color, hair color, eye color, all blended into a dirty, nasty gray fog that hovered over him like the shadow of a flock of migrating birds. He was more bird than man anyway, I thought. There was something owlish about him and he had a way of hovering over people, his elbows slightly cocked, as if he were about to take flight. His feet spread in a Y like a duck’s. He spoke in a chirping high voice, his little tongue moving in and out of his beak in a sparrow’s twitter. He followed me around like a pelican, lining up behind me and goose-stepping to my back. As much as Baron Cuvier affected somber black on black, Master de Blainville dressed like a peacock in yellow, lavender and bright greens as if to attach streamers of color to his colorless person. This only made him look more like a bird than ever—a parrot perhaps, with its endless incessant chattering. For Master de Blainville never shut up. He was round, with a round (and as I said) owl-like face with round eyes behind round spectacles, round shoulders, round hands, round knees, round stomach and a round rear end. Just as Baron Cuvier was all straight lines and angles, Master de Blainville was all crookedness and curves.

  I was surprised when I found myself in the main gallery of the museum, which rose like a church to a glass skylight surrounded by large rectangular windows. I had never visited Master Bullock’s museum in Piccadilly, although I had begged to be taken there many times. I cried out in delight and amazement at being surrounded by all the animals of the savanna; still as statues and dead as wood, yet so lifelike. My heart beat faster: giraffes, elephants, a hippopotamus with all its teeth, buffalo and zebras. But what was more amazing were the skeletons standing amongst them, as if an invisible hand had reached into them and pulled the bones from their forms, throwing them into the air where they had assembled into their original shapes before descending to earth. An orangutan, a forest ape and a dozen other four-legged beasts stood beside their skeletons. In the center was a giant tortoiseshell taken from one of the creatures I had seen on St. Helena. In death, they all stood stiffly, at attention like soldiers, beside their own bodies, nude ghosts, pale, white and luminous; the jaw of a whale, the ribs of a shark, the spine of a crocodile, all warning me to run for my life. Then I spied the trophy heads: severed heads of Chinamen, of Bushmen, of Indians, of Khoekhoe staring back at me from their glass boxes.

  As their eerie voices reached me, I bolted for the door with a cry.

  —Poor creature, said Master Réaux to the others, she thinks they are real and are going to eat her.

  The white men stood in a circle like hyenas, laughing at me. I tried desperately to control myself, repeating to myself that these exhibits were only skinned and stuffed animals, not real souls . . . but what of the human severed heads? In the next gallery, all reason abandoned me. This was the bird room. It was decorated to resemble a forest except that every bird in it was dead. The vaulted stone ceiling and stone walls, the high stained-glass windows gave the space the appearance of a stone cage or a crypt in a mountain. Thousands and thousands of birds sat silent in glass cases, singing no more, taking wing no more, carefully stuffed and mounted as if a whole forest had been emptied. I shrieked with horror and ran from the hall, the silence of the birds still in my ears. Behind me, I heard the laughter of the men. But I didn’t care. Outside the building, I tried to breathe, yet breath would not come.

  Around me the landscape emerged like a dawn and I realized there were other real animals imprisoned here as well. The woods were strewn with small pavilions of stone and imprisoned within them were wild animals. There were an elephant couple with their calf in one pavilion. There were orangutans, monkeys and baboons in another pavilion. A great ape, tall and lonely, gazed back at me from a cage made of iron and wire.

  —There is nothing here except cages and prisons, I said to the men, who had followed me. Suddenly, they all seemed to understand my distress, for they looked at me with a kind of amused pity as if to say, Well, what did you expec
t? These animals are dead. This is a zoo. We are their keepers because we have the power to keep them, silly girl.

  —Tout est mort ici.

  —Perhaps, said Master Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, clearing his throat, we should retire to the reception tent for a glass of champagne before our lecture begins in the pavilion of comparative anatomy . . .

  But I couldn’t face the men in the striped tent. My eyes caught those of Master Cuvier, who had been studying my reactions as if I were one of his stuffed birds.

  —No, I said, shaking my head.

  —Count, would you be so kind as to escort Mademoiselle Baartman directly to the pavilion of comparative anatomy? I want her appearance to be a complete surprise. Perhaps her . . . keeper Sieur Réaux can accompany you. I will be there directly.

  The pavilion, set in the park, was round, two stories high, with a dome which sparkled in the sun. Over the portal, shaped like a temple, was written in gold letters PAVILION OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. Inside, it was an amphitheater with benches climbing up to the high windows and painted ceiling. It was decorated with stuffed animals and birds perched on high pillars. A large reptile was nailed to one wall. Another wall was covered with shelves crowded with jars of liquid containing things for which I had no names. Below the shelves stood a large gray slate rectangle framed in wood—a tableau noir, it was called. A long table of violet granite was placed before it. Near this was a revolving platform similar to the ones we used at the circus. There was a small stepladder nearby, a chair, a speaker’s lectern, and in the corner was a tall blue and white Dutch stove. The theater was empty. A solid ray of light from the windows struck the central enclosure, which was surrounded by a wooden balustrade separating the audience from the lecturer. From that point, the empty benches rose in circles, yawning back at me. The room smelled of blood and some other scent I did not recognize, except it might have been my own fear. I stared up at the empty seats and coughed, choking a bit on my own saliva.

  —Try to pull yourself together, Sarah, I’m going back with the count to the reception. You be a good girl. We’ll be back in an hour. Try to rest—there’s a little dressing room behind that green door there . . . There’s nothing to be afraid of and there’s nothing to be nervous about, after all you’ve done this hundreds of times . . . Meanwhile, get yourself undressed.

  —Undressed! I cried.

  —Madame, said Master de Blainville as they left. I didn’t answer either of them. I was about to throw a wicked tantrum. I was about to scream that I would not pose naked—that I would not show them my apron. That I was not a stupid beast. I would not play their game of . . . of zoo as they had planned.

  Noisily the men filed into the theater. They spoke loudly and jovially, I suppose because of the champagne they had just consumed. Others spoke in serious, hushed tones, all of which blended into an incomprehensible babble that could have been Khoekhoe. Through the opening I could see an audience of about sixty men in afternoon dress and top hats. Within the circle of the balustrade stood the masters de Blainville, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the baron.

  At the back of the room stood four men not dressed as the others, but in loose-fitting indigo smocks and large felt hats. Artists. They were setting up their easels and were preparing, I imagined, to paint my portrait. My image had been reproduced in London so many times that I had no doubt as to what they were doing.

  There was one young man about my age who was not like the rest and who reminded me of the never-forgotten Master Kemble. He stood like a hawk, a mysterious half smile on his face, listening to the other men converse. He had neither pencil nor paper nor easel. His hands were covered in red clay and before him stood a small wire figure on a pedestal to which he was applying small bits from his fingers. He would do this throughout the lecture until he had stolen my shape completely.

  The noise abated when Master de Blainville rose to announce that the session was open. He nodded to Baron Cuvier, who raised his notebook in the air. Master de Blainville cleared his throat and then began.

  —Gentlemen, everyone here has heard of the Hottentot Venus, a Bushwoman who has been exhibited for the past year as a circus attraction at 188 rue St. Honoré in Paris. Today, an unusual set of circumstances allows us to examine this extraordinary subject for three days, here at the museum, in the nude, for sessions of up to six hours a day. Discussions of all the implications of her appearance here, her origins, her physical properties, her race and her scientific position in our classifications of the human race of mammals will be the main topics of discussion of our colloquium. I see that colleagues from as far away as London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Brest, Marseille and Lyon are here at the invitation of our esteemed director, Baron Cuvier, commander of the Legion of Honor.

  —I would like to remind you, gentlemen, that smoking is not allowed in the laboratories for reasons of safety. There will be several breaks for smoking and refreshments. I will ask you to keep silent during my introduction and the baron’s discourse.

  —As I said, the Hottentot we are about to examine this afternoon was born on the river Camboos in the Cape of Good Hope, in austral Africa, and is a female of about twenty-six years old, of the Bushman or Hottentot race . . . her color and formation certainly surpass anything of the kind ever seen in Europe or perhaps even produced in the world . . . She is a pure and priceless specimen of the great Chain of Being, and as such is inestimable in value . . .

  Applause greeted the end of Master de Blainville’s introduction. The baron rose, a long pointed cane in his hand.

  I felt a burning in my head, in my womb, in my soul, as if I danced on hot coals like Adolph. Flames licked at my skin and the amphitheater of men seemed to be taking bites of my flesh. I concentrated on the young man, who was stealing my shape as the baron’s French incantations reached me and although I understood little of what he said, his words ignited a furor in me, leaving me breathless and gasping. His voice seemed to fill the universe with revolutions and more revolutions as time passed.

  He beckoned me towards him with his forefinger. I stepped forward timidly. I was holding my handkerchief in front of me to hide my private parts, but otherwise I was completely naked.

  18

  A true historian must have the power of reshaping the universally known into what has never been heard and to announce what is universal so simply and deeply that people overlook the simplicity in the profundity and the profundity in the simplicity. An eminently learned man and a great numskull, those go together very easily under a single hat.

  —BARON GEORGES LÉOPOLD CUVIER,

  Correspondence

  March 1815. I could feel the Venus’s gaze upon me like a kind of enchantment. She would not take her eyes from me, and as I felt a rush of blood that ended in a blush, I wondered if she was trying to send me some kind of message. I believed in fate. After all, I had not been invited by name as the other artists had. I was here only as a substitute for my illustrious patron, Jacques-Louis David, the most famous painter in France.

  —Nicolas, he had said, I don’t want to insult the baron by ignoring his invitation.

  Ever since Bonaparte’s return, my boss, old political animal that he was, had been lying low until the Emperor consolidated his power. At the moment, the Emperor was still at war.

  I was sure that my employer resented Cuvier’s miraculous ability to survive intact three political regimes not only without a hint of a prison cell, exile or death but, on the contrary, with an avalanche of important positions, honors, decorations and powerful responsibilities. Louis David’s life, on the other hand, had hung in the balance in 1793 when he had been arrested as a supporter of Robespierre and released only as a result of his wife’s intervention. He had been at that time an ardent republican, a member of the National Convention and a signatory of the death warrant of Louis XVI. After the Revolution, he had changed his allegiance to Napoleon and had painted his coronation. He was, I thought cautiously, fence-sitting between the deposed Louis and the restored Napoleon
, waiting to see which way the wind blew. As were many of the celebrities, I thought, whom I had seen milling around the green-and-blue-striped guest tent in the garden. Now, at exactly four o’clock, everyone was jammed into the pavilion of comparative anatomy to behold what the baron doctor called “my” Hottentot Venus, who, he claimed, would prove his theories about the great Chain of Being . . .

  No one in Paris, I thought, refused an invitation from Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier, peer and baron of France, weighed down with so much power spanning the Revolution, the Empire and now the Restoration.

  How did he do it, I wondered. No man in history had elevated the art of organization of time and the cultivation of each moment. With Cuvier, each hour was dedicated to a certain task, each task had its own laboratory or bureau, and each bureau was perfectly equipped for each task. My boss, who had had dealings with Cuvier while he had been painting his portrait, said that the great man moved from bureau to bureau, functioning without a second of distraction, like a machine.

  —You like him, don’t you? I said.

  —I admire him, my patron had said. Why, he even insisted on posing with a book so he could read while he sat for me, so as not to lose any time . . .

  I had studied that famous painting, while it had been in the studio. The masterful portrait had been that of a melancholy, cold and fastidious aristocrat with bright red hair, pale skin and military bearing. The eyes held a compelling and consuming intelligence just as the mouth held an overwhelming arrogance and avariciousness. It was so beautifully painted, I thought, that it wouldn’t have mattered if the subject had been a murderer. And that, the baron certainly was not. After the Emperor, he was simply the most brilliant man in France.