THE DESIRE to FILL Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751-1919
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THE DESIRE TO FILL Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751-1919 By Julia Kathryn Skelly A thesis submitted to the Department of Art in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (July 2010) Copyright © Julia Kathryn Skelly, 2010 Abstract In “The Desire to Fill” I examine British visual culture, including paintings, graphic art, photographs, advertisements and architecture, in relation to the lived experience of addiction. My study begins in 1751, the year that William Hogarth produced his engravings Gin Lane and Beer Street, and it ends in 1919, the year that Alfred Priest exhibited his painting Cocaine at the Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition. There are four underlying arguments in this text. First, that addiction to drugs and alcohol is a manifestation of a desire to “fill a void.” Second, that addiction has long been thought to be legible from the body. Third, that addiction cannot be reliably read from the body, whether in life or an image. Fourth, any project that is concerned with addiction and visual culture is therefore a paradoxical one, and must, by necessity, be a speculative one. My methodological approach in this text is influenced by feminist theory and queer theory, and I explore the history of addiction using a continuist framework. In other words, I suggest that, although the identities of the “addict” and “alcoholic” as we know them today were discursively constructed at the end of the nineteenth century, people experienced addiction before these identities came into being. In that vein, I suggest that the woman in Hogarth’s Gin Lane is an alcoholic, and I show how anxieties about alcoholic mothers have remained remarkably consistent over the last three hundred years. I also discuss graphic artist George Cruikshank’s experiences as a temperance advocate after he stopped drinking, gin palaces and women’s desire for alcohol, the social and legal ramifications of addiction, and, finally, cocaine and tobacco addiction after the First World War. Ultimately, I examine the visual culture of addiction in order to destabilize stereotypes and myths about alcoholics and drug addicts that are still circulating today. ii Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful for the funding I have received over the last four years. This included a Max Stern-McCord Museum Fellowship, a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), support from the Art Department at Queen’s University, and a generous Alfred Bader Research Fellowship, which allowed me to do extensive research in Britain during the 2008-2009 academic year. I would like to thank the staff at the National Art Library (Victoria and Albert Museum), the Prints and Drawings Room at the British Museum, the British Library, the British Library’s newspaper reading room at Colindale, Tate Britain’s archives, the Imperial War Museum, Blythe House (Victoria and Albert Museum), the National Archives at Kew, and the McCord Museum. I could go on and on about how much I have received in terms of time, energy and support from Janice Helland, but I won’t. I will only say that I am so very glad that I decided to do my PhD under her supervision, because her kindness and generosity of spirit have made my experience as a doctoral student an absolute pleasure. I would also like to thank other faculty at Queen’s University, including Stephanie Dickey, Lynda Jessup, Robert Morrison, Katherine Romba and Joan Schwartz. My thanks also go to Erin Hurley at McGill University for her continued support. Several scholars have shown me kindness and support in various ways. They include Julie Codell, Sharon Cook, Dan Malleck, John Potvin, Andrew Stephenson, Valerie Traub, Martin Willis and Susan Zieger. My deep gratitude goes to the following friends and colleagues: Christina Smylitopoulos for the phone dates, the laughter, and for teaching me so much about being a woman of grace and dignity; Carla Taunton for being so endlessly kind, and for sharing the ups and downs of iii dissertation writing with me; Raina Gillis for being my guardian angel; Laurence Scott for the latte breaks at the British Library; Anu Gobin for the coffee and conversation, especially that marathon conversation about life, love and travel; David Mitchell for reading and commenting on part of the dissertation; and David Nees for laughing at me when I couldn’t laugh at myself, for giving me the kind of tough love I can handle, and for reminding me of what I have to offer as a scholar. I also wish to express gratitude to the recovering alcoholics and drug addicts who have shared their experiences with me off the record. Their stories have greatly informed my understanding of addiction. Finally, a very special thanks to my mother, Carol Rose. Her support means the world to me: she used to go to every soccer game, and now she reads every word. This dissertation is dedicated to her with love. iv Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vi Chapter 1: Introduction: Addiction and Visual Culture 1 Chapter 2: Theory, Mothers and Hogarth’s Gin Lane 30 Chapter 3: George Cruikshank’s Addiction to Sobriety 65 Chapter 4: Addictive Architecture: The Crystal Palace, Gin Palaces and Women’s Desire 108 Chapter 5: Closeting Addiction: Confinement, Punishment and Concealment 153 Chapter 6: Masking Masculine Vulnerability: Cocaine and Cigarettes after World War I 207 Conclusion: Addiction Theory, Oscar Wilde and the Desire to Not Care 254 Bibliography 284 v List of Figures Figure 2.1. William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1751, etching and engraving, 380 x 320 mm, British Museum, London. 32 Figure 2.2.William Hogarth, Francis Matthew Schutz in His Bed, late 1750s, oil on canvas, 630 x 755 mm, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery. 42 Figure 2.3. After Egbert van Heemskerck, A Satire on Gin Drinking, c. 1730-79, etching and engraving, 26 x 24 mm, British Museum, London. 42 Figure 2.4. Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna Litta (Madonna and Child), c. 1490, tempera on canvas (transferred from panel), 42 x 33 cm, Hermitage, St. Petersburg. 46 Figure 2.5. A Man Loaded with Mischief, or Matrimony, c.1751, hand-coloured etching, 351 x 236 mm, British Museum, London. 55 Figure 3.1. George Cruikshank, The Gin Shop, from Scraps and Sketches, 1829, etching, 278 x 375 mm, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 72 Figure 3.2. George Cruikshank, The Gin-Juggarnath. Or, The Worship of the Great Spirit of the Age!!, from My Sketchbook, vol. 1, 1834, etching, National Art Library, London. 73 Figure 3.3. George Cruikshank, The Pillars of a Gin Shop, from My Sketchbook, vol. 1, 1834, etching, National Art Library, London. 75 Figure 3.4. George Cruikshank, The Bottle is Brought Out: For the First Time the Husband Induces his Wife ‘Just to Take a Drop,’ Plate I from The Bottle, 1847, glyphograph, 21.9 x 33 cm, The Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London. 79 Figure 3.5. George Cruikshank, The Bottle has Done Its Work – It has Destroyed the Infant and the Mother, the Boy and Girl Left Desitute and Thrown on the Streets, and has Left the Father a Hopeless Maniac, Plate VIII from The Bottle, 1847, glyphograph, 12.5 x 17.5 cm, The Witt Library, Courtauld Insitute of Art, London. 79 Figure 3.6. George Cruikshank and Charles Mottram, The Worship of Bacchus, 1864, etching and engraving on chine collé, 685 x 1080 mm, British Museum, London. 87 Figure 3.7. George Cruikshank, Our Gutter Children, letterpress with an illustration etched on glass, 1869, National Art Library, London. 94 Figure 3.8. George Cruikshank, The Scholar in Bedlam, from The Trial of Sir Jasper, vi 1873, Blythe House, London. 99 Figure 4.1. George Cruikshank, The Opening of the Great Hive of the World, from 1851: or, The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and Family, who came up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves,’ and to see the Great Exhibition, 1851, etching, National Art Library, London. 112 Figure 4.2. William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853, oil on canvas, 1060 x 857 x 97 mm, Tate Britain, London. 131 Figure 4.3. Thomas Rowlandson, The Dram Shop, from The English Dance of Death, 1815-16, coloured aquatint, 12.2 x 20.9 cm, Gemmell Collection, University of Glasgow. 140 Figure 4.4. The Ladies and the Police. – The Battle of the Crystal Palace, from Punch, 17 May 1851, National Art Library, London. 144 Figure 5.1. J. Tingle after T. H. Shepherd, New Bethlem Hospital, St. George's Fields, Lambeth, engraving, 1816, 4.9 x 12.8 cm, Wellcome Library, London. 163 Figure 5.2. Pamphlet for Tower House, A Private High-Class Home for the Cure of Ladies, after 1864, Wellcome Library, London. 165 Figure 5.3. W.H. Diamond, photograph of a woman identified as intemperate, c.1856, Royal Society of Medicine, London. 173 Figure 5.4. Engraving after photographs by W.H. Diamond, Insanity Supervening on Habits of Intemperance, 1858, Wellcome Library, London. 173 Figure 5.5. An Asylum for the Sane, from Punch, 6 March 1886, Stauffer Library, Queen’s University, Kingston. 179 Figure 5.6. Richard Bridgens, Bed-Stocks for Intoxication, from West India Scenery, with Illustrations of Negro Character, the process of making sugar, etc. from sketches taken during a voyage to, and residence of seven years in, the Island of Trinidad, 1836, National Art Library, London. 184 Figure 5.7. Richard Bridgens, Negro Heads, with punishment for Intoxication and Dirt-eating (detail), from West India Scenery, with Illustrations of Negro Character, the process of making sugar, etc.