I was twenty-six years old and had been David’s assistant since the age of twenty. Before that, I had served as apprentice to Charles-Philibert du Saillant, in whose atelier I had learned not only the art of watercolor and engraving but also lithography. But now, I specialized in the sculpting and portraiture of animals, and as an animalist, I spent a great deal of time at the King’s Botanical Gardens and the Museum of Natural History.
I came from a modest family of grain merchants. I knew I was lucky to be admitted into the company of this elite group of men. I had a healthy respect both for my elders and for my betters and rumor had it that even Bonaparte might show up at his old friend’s museum today.
I knew the three other artists present: Nicolas Huet, Léon de Wailly and Jean-Baptiste Berré. I made a beeline to their side. They were all huddled together in the back of the auditorium, as intimidated by the forces gathering in the amphitheater as I was.
—I’m not going to do anything today, said de Wailly, I’m just going to see what this creature looks like.
—Well, then you’ll be a day behind getting your watercolors printed and published, because La Quotidienne and the Reporter are both here to see what Cuvier has up his sleeve.
—What about you, Nicolas? Sculpting today or just looking?
—I don’t know, I replied honestly, I’m going to play it by ear.
—It seems she’s some kind of hermaphrodite with the genitals of both a man and a woman.
—Supposedly all Hottentots are.
—No, they’re supposed to be the missing link between Negroes and the orangutan.
—You’ve never been to see her show down near the Palais Royal?
—You doing sanguine or watercolor? Surely not gouache.
—I haven’t decided yet. I’ve brought everything. I’m thinking to do some charcoal today.
But that morning, even the most successful painters felt apprehensive before the challenge of illustrating one of the great Baron Cuvier’s scientific specimens.
—She’ll be absolutely in the nude for these drawings.
—You know, this may be all Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s idea, not Cuvier’s; after all, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire is the expert in teratology.
—Freaks, not monsters.
—He experiments on the embryos of chickens to produce abnormal manifestations or deformation.
—Well, that may be Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s obsession, but the baron is interested in the classification of the races . . .
—Everyone smells adventure, joked Berré, confrontation with the unknown, the unexplored, the odor not just of Africa but of the primordial, the monstrous, the real Eve . . . She’s the real Eve . . .
—Shush . . . Here comes de Blainville.
I took the time to arrange my sculpting tools and armature on the pottery wheel which I had already set up while de Blainville was making his introduction. The amphitheater was full as medical students filed in to fill up the spaces left empty by the guests and professors.
There was an excited buzz in the room when the Venus stepped out of the side room, timidly, holding a handkerchief before her, but otherwise in the nude. I caught my breath. I had never seen a female body quite like the Hottentot’s, and I brushed my hair out of my eyes and began to sculpt furiously as Cuvier began his lecture. That was when the Venus had focused her mysterious chestnut gaze on me. The baron approached the lectern and began to speak. I concentrated on sculpting her, raising my eyes only to register the forms, curves, shadows, lines . . . I lost myself in my work, thinking only of somehow reproducing this extraordinary mortal—this African Eve . . .
—There are two things that I would like to demonstrate, began the baron. One, a detailed comparison of this woman with the lowest race of the human species, the Negro race, and the highest race of primates, or the orangutan. Secondly, to explain in the greatest detail possible the abnormalities of her organs of generation. I will commence by presenting to you, also in as much detail as possible, the background of this woman as has been extracted in Dutch and English from the subject herself.
—Sarah Baartman, better known under the name of Saartjie in England or the Vénus Hottentote in France, was born around twenty-six years ago to Bushman parents in the European part of the Cape Colony near Algoa Bay, now known as Zwarts Korps Bay, in the Graaf Reinet district, about five hundred miles from the Cape. Kidnapped at the age of nine, she remained in the hands of the Dutch and the English, whose language she therefore speaks. Everyone in Paris has had a chance to see her during her eighteen-month stay in our capital and verify for themselves the enormous protuberance of her buttocks and the brutality of her face.
—You will notice that her movements also have something brusque and capricious that resembles that of the orangutan. However, her memory is good, exceptional even. As I have said, she speaks Dutch, which she learned at the Cape, and English passably well, and has begun to say a few words in French. She has a good ear and sings and dances while playing her guitarlike instrument. Her height is a bit over one meter thirty-nine, or four feet seven inches, which, in comparison to that of her compatriots, is fairly tall.
—Her trunk seems extremely short, because of the extraordinary swelling of her backside and accompanying parts; nevertheless, the center of the length of her body is still the pubis, and one can say in general that the proportions of these parts resemble closely those that one finds in the Caucasian race. Only the arms are a little bit shorter.
—The head is remarkable for its general form and for certain details of its components. Considered in its ensemble, it is evident that she does not have exactly the aspects of a Negro head and that there is more of a rapprochement to that of an orangutan: an observation already noted by Dr. Barrow. Generally small, the head seems to be composed of two parts, one the cerebral cavity or cranium, and two, the face or snout, which does not join the profile in a manner to form a straight line, where the inclination determines the facial angle, but unites one to the other at the base of the nose almost at a right angle, in the manner one sees most markedly in the orangutan; so that the forehead is straight—almost vertical—and the rest of the profile is concave like that of the primate or the monkey species. The symphysis of the chin is not very elevated, and instead of bending forward in order to make what we call a chin, it flees perceptibly backwards; all these characteristics are found, but in a way, indeed, a lot more marked, in the orangutan.
—The teeth are beautiful, very white, close-set and big, especially the upper incisors, which seem to be proportionally even larger than in the Negro race; the canines are not sharp at all. The oblique layout of the incisors in the two jaws gives the aspect of pincers.
—The lips are quite thick and sharp, though perceptibly less than in the Negro race; they are badly formed, that is to say, the upper one doesn’t have a median point corresponding to the lower one, the corners are lowered; the half canal of the upper lip is hardly marked; both are pale pink.
—The mammaries are very big, hanging quite near to the hemispheric median line towards their lower part. They go down to the line the crook of the arm makes, two or three inches above the navel. The nipple is very thick. Its color is dark brown, the areola, of the same color, is extraordinarily large.
—Concerning the organs of generation, in the ordinary position, that is to say in the vertical position, we can see no trace of a kind of pedicle which would be formed by the large lips, as can be seen in the figures of M. M. Perron and Le Sueur.
The Venus must have heard certain words, I thought, repeated again and again that were similar to the English . . . race, orangutan, monkey, Negro race, Caucasian race, Tatar race . . . Hottentot . . . extraordinaire . . . remarquable . . . surprenante . . . very big, very small. Her name, Sarah . . . She must understand some of this, I thought.
But the Venus seemed determined that not one doctor or scientist would view her apron.
—The upper limbs, continued the baron, are quite thin, short in gene
ral, though well built; the shoulders, quite narrow from their base, the forearm is short and well shaped, the hand is very small, with delicate fingers, very remarkable and charming.
—The pelvis, in general, is very narrow, but it seems even narrower because of the tremendous swelling of the lower and posterior parts of the trunk; it is indeed what, at first sight, is most striking when looking at this Hottentot. Her buttocks are really enormous, they are at least twenty inches high, jutting out six to seven inches from the dorsal line, their width being at least of the same dimensions. Their shape is quite singular; instead of starting from the end of the loins, they spread horizontally, in an upward curve to their summit, to form a kind of flat saddle. It is said that Hottentot children literally ride on this saddle. We easily establish that the majority of this mass is cellulofat, which trembles and quivers when this woman walks, and when she sits down flattens and spreads out.
—Her formation is extraordinary, first because of the enormous width of her hips, which exceeds eighteen inches, and secondly because of the curve of her buttocks, which protrude out more than six inches. For the rest, she is normal in her proportions, both body and limbs. Her shoulders, her back, the height of her bosom have grace. The curve of her stomach is not excessive.
—To conclude, said Cuvier, raising his pointer, among us, the Caucasian forehead is pushed forward, the mouth is pulled back as if we were destined to think rather than eat; the Hottentot has a shortened forehead and a mouth that is pushed forward as if he were destined to eat instead of think.
—What is most striking about the physiognomy of the Hottentots? The face resembles in part the Negro in the curve of the jaw, the obliqueness of the incisors, the thickness of the lips, the shortness and regression of the chin, and in part the Mongol in the enormous height of the cheekbones, the flatness of the base of the nose and the forehead and the eyebrows and especially the horizontal slits of the eyes.
—Her hair is black and woolly like that of Negroes, the eyelid horizontal and not oblique like that of Mongols; her eyes are light brown rather than dark, her complexion is a brownish yellow . . .
—On the contrary, the white race to which the civilized people of Europe belong, with its oval face, straight hair and nose, appears to us the most beautiful of all. It is superior to others also by its genius, courage and activity. There seems to me to be a cruel law which has condemned to an eternal inferiority the races of depressed and compressed skulls . . . as we see in the Hottentot—and experience seems to confirm the theory that there is a relationship between the perfection of the spirit and the beauty of the face.
—Therefore, the Hottentots are the most appallingly barbarous of men, sharing this honor with the polar people. According to Linnaeus, there is a serious question about their human status.
—The Hottentots have no language to speak of, no social organization, they believe in no religion, do not cultivate the land, have no money or manner of official barter, have no government, no fixed residences, no concept of property, no cuisine, no hierarchy of nobles and leaders or even a priestly class. They are the most degraded of human races, whose form approaches that of the beast and whose intelligence is nowhere near great enough to arrive at a regular government. They are at present wards of the English government in the Cape for reason of their imbecility.
—In other words, interrupted a voice from the audience, your purpose is to provide a detailed comparison of this woman with the lowest race of humans, the Negro, and the highest specimen of apes, the orangutan . . .
—Correct. And number two, continued Cuvier, to provide the most complete description of the abnormalities of her genitalia . . . which I will now attempt to do.
—Moreover, said another voice, we can thus use the premise of phrenology to identify individuals or races that stand out at both poles of society: those with a propensity for making important social contributions and those with a greater than normal tendency towards evil. The former are to be encouraged, nurtured and developed in order to maximize their potential for good. The latter need to be curbed and segregated to protect society from their predisposition to crime.
—May I just add here, interjected a second phrenologist, that according to my studies, the African skull is overdeveloped in the organs of philoprogenitiveness and concentrativeness, accounting respectively for the African’s alleged love of children and proclivity for sedentary occupations. Thus he is underdeveloped in conscientiousness, cautiousness, identity and reflection.
—The shape of their heads binds them more than us to the animals, said an anthropologist. The animal world, as you all know, is divided into four branches; the invertebrates, the amphibians, the mollusks and the protozoans. This division depends on the brain and the nervous system— the brain of the Hottentot being by nature the smallest and weakest of the species . . .
—As a physician and a proponent of polygenism, I would say it is obvious from your lecture today and the specimen standing before us that the black race is an entirely different species and does not originate from the common stock with the white race. As for cranium size, which marks the difference between the two, I estimate the brain size of different races by filling the cranial cavity with sifted white mustard seed. I then pour the seed back into a graduated cylinder and read the skull’s volume in cubic inches . . .
—I think it’s fair to say that in competition with the white race, the African that you see before you represents the missing link between ape and Caucasian . . .
—May I quote Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, who wrote, The more I reflect on the color of these peoples, on the gobbling that they use to make themselves understood instead of an articulated language, on their countenance, on the apron of their ladies, the more I am convinced that this race cannot have the same origin as we do . . . I ask you, is this a separate race gentlemen, which we are dealing with here, independent of both the Negro and the Caucasian? Or, a sub-race of the Mongolian race? Or a hybrid? Or is this a mythic creature!
—Race, added a Scottish naturalist, rising from his seat, is everything. Literature, science, art—in a word, civilization.
The baron now made a motion to preclude comments and return to his exposition.
There was some commotion as an English physician rose to contradict Cuvier.
—Whatever Negroes lack in intelligence, they make up for in instinct and feeling. They have excellent heart and above all the possibility of all virtue, he concluded.
—Hear! Hear! repeated a Belgian naturalist. The Negro has the same possibilities as a European child. It remains a matter of education. We, as anthropologists, as men of science, can only record, measure, examine, observe scientifically, not make qualitative judgments . . . That is for politicalscience to make . . .
—Monsieur, added an American anthropologist, I have personally studied more than a thousand skulls in my laboratory in Boston. So many in fact that my students call me Golgotha!
At this, the entire audience laughed in unison.
—I have determined, the American continued, that the scientific hierarchy of intelligence is as follows: the Germans, the English, white Americans, on one end of the scale, the Hottentots and the aborigines of Australia at the other end.
—Speaking of white Americans, added an anatomist from Lyon, Thomas Jefferson, the naturalist and former President, has stated in his Notes on the State of Virginia, so excellently translated by our colleague, the Marquis de Condorcet, that blacks, whether originally a distinct race or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the white in the endowments of both body and mind . . . The first difference that strikes us, he wrote, is that of color. Whether the black of the Negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarfskin or in the scarfskin itself, whether it proceeds from the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed by nature.
—I too, added another naturalist, excitedly, have studied hundreds of sku
lls exhumed from three cemeteries in Paris and have compared them with those of other races. As comparisons I choose skulls where the inequality of intellect is evident: African Negroes, American Indians, Hottentots, oceanic Negroes and Indians.
—What about the comparison of male skulls with female skulls? May I point out that the relative smallness of a woman’s skull depends on both her physical inferiority and her intellectual inferiority . . .
—The Hottentot should not be classified as Homo sapiens but as Homo monstrosis monorchidei.
—It is the notion of the great Chain of Being which has cemented the Hottentots into their place in the world!
—Hottentots are the very reverse of humankind . . . So that if there’s any medium between a rational animal and a beast, the Hottentot lays the fairest claim to that species, according to Ovington’s writings. Who better to be the connecting link between the human species and brute creation?
—Such is the dependence amongst all the orders of creatures; that the apprehension of one of them is a good step towards the understanding of the rest. And this is the highest pitch of humane reason: follow all the links of this chain, till their secrets are open to our minds; this is truly to command the world; to rank all the varieties and degrees of things so orderly upon one another; that standing on top of them, we may perfectly behold all that is below and make them all serviceable to the quiet, peace and plenty of Man’s life.
—I am a monogenist, but if we admit the supposition that humankind consists of distinct families, surely there is none that presents a stronger claim to be regarded as a race of separate origin than the Hottentots, distinguished as they are by many moral and physical peculiarities.
—Hottentots are Negroes even though their hyper-negroidness puts them at the bottom of this category and therefore at the absolute bottom of the Chain of Being, with the exception of idiots, lunatics and mixed bloods . . .
—The Hottentots are the most degraded of human races except for the Bushman, whose form resembles that of a beast and whose intelligence is never great enough to arrive at regular government. They were born slaves.
Hottentot Venus Page 27