Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus by Clifton Crais Pamela Scully

Author:Clifton Crais, Pamela Scully [Clifton Crais, Pamela Scully]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Biography & Memoir
ISBN: 9780691238357
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 6.2. “English Visitors in the Palais Royal 1814.” From Grego in Gronow’s Reminiscences. Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library, www.maryevans.com. Image no. 10008056.

Sara lived in the Palais-Royal and worked there too: upstairs in a room at 15 rue Neuves-des-Petits-Champs, the street bordering the northern side of the palais. Number 15 was a busy place. The building housed a Monsieur Olivier’s variety show—he charged three francs as an entrance fee. Other showmen exhibited panoramas and mechanical inventions. People also paid three francs (the equivalent of three shillings, one shilling more than at 225 Piccadilly) to see the Hottentot Venus, enough to buy a tea breakfast for two at one of the coffeehouses or half the price of a good seat at the Comic Opera.16

For ten hours a day, from eleven in the morning to nine at night, Sara endured the gaze and the prodding of strangers as she stared out at this new public and the masses of people who turned the palace’s gardens into a muddy mess. Sometimes she moved downstairs and to one of the cafés, including the posh Café de Chartres, still an expensive restaurant. There she mingled with guests who watched her sing, poked her, and marveled at her bottom.

Taylor seems to have arrived in Paris with a two-pronged strategy. He must have expected to make money exhibiting Sara at the palais. Taylor also planned to approach the leading scientists of the day. Biology was then the king of the sciences, and human history his queen. As we have seen, even in Cape Town in 1809 the Frenchman Villet had combined these interests for profit with his shop and menagerie. Both biology and comparative anatomy were firmly ensconced in Paris; indeed, the city was the world center for the study of natural history. With the Hottentot Venus, Taylor had what some thought might be the missing link separating humans from lesser animals.

Shortly after their arrival, Taylor wrote to the head of the Museum of Natural History. In a report dated 10 September, Taylor informed the museum that he had with him “the original” of the picture he now enclosed. The picture he referred to was presumably a copy of the engraving by Lewis that had circulated through England and had been sold at the fairs. Taylor alleged that the Hottentot Venus came from the region of the Gamtoos River and said she was going to be on public display. He invited the illustrious Georges Cuvier, the museum’s head, the Renaissance man of French science, and the founder of the discipline of comparative anatomy, to see the display the following Tuesday afternoon, 13 September, at rue Neuves-des-Petits-Champs. Cuvier did not then take up Taylor’s offer. As we shall see, a few months later Cuvier changed his mind, however, perhaps persuaded by the public curiosity about the Hottentot Venus.17

The first advertisements for the exhibition appeared on 18 September 1814. They copied the earlier broadsheets from London and the English countryside with claims about the Venus’s distinction as an “extraordinary phenomenon.

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