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! University of Southampton Research Repository Copyright!©!and!Moral!Rights!for!this!thesis!and,!where!applicable,!any!accompanying!data!are! retained!by!the!author!and/or!other!copyright!owners.!A!copy!can!be!downloaded!for!personal! non>commercial!research!or!study,!without!prior!permission!or!charge.!This!thesis!and!the! accompanying!data!cannot!be!reproduced!or!quoted!extensively!from!without!first!obtaining! permission!in!writing!from!the!copyright!holder/s.!The!content!of!the!thesis!and!accompanying! research!data!(where!applicable)!must!not!be!changed!in!any!way!or!sold!commercially!in!any! format!or!medium!without!the!formal!permission!of!the!copyright!holder/s.!! When!referring!to!this!thesis!and!any!accompanying!data,!full!bibliographic!details!must!be!given,! e.g.!! Thesis:!Author!(Year!of!Submission)!"Full!thesis!title",!University!of!Southampton,!name!of!the! University!Faculty!or!School!or!Department,!PhD!Thesis,!pagination.!! ! UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Striking an Attitude: Tableaux Vivants in the British Long Nineteenth Century by Elena Stevens Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2017 ! UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Doctor of Philosophy STRIKING AN ATTITUDE: TABLEAUX VIVANTS IN THE BRITISH LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY by Elena Stevens This thesis examines one instance of the long nineteenth-century’s engagement with the Antique: the medium of entertainment known as tableaux vivants. In tableau vivant performances, men, women and children were arranged into motionless (or near- motionless) configurations, and presented to audiences in parlour rooms, pleasure gardens, circuses, public houses, exhibition halls, variety theatres and music halls. Many performances derived inspiration from Antique statues or classicising paintings, although some captured elements of distant cultures. All performances collapsed distances in space and time, permitting spectators to view – with arresting immediacy – both human bodies and the ideals or ideas which these bodies represented. Performances worked to consolidate the notion of a correspondence between ancient Greek and Roman societies and modern British society, as critics and impresarios proclaimed tableaux performers to represent vessels through which an impression (or a ‘sense’) of Antiquity was conveyed. Even those tableaux performances which instantiated ‘foreign’ peoples served to underline this correspondence, representing the inverse of the ‘civilised’ ancient societies to which modern British society aspired. For contemporaries, the same tableaux seemed to contain within them the promise of ‘the ideal’ and the threat of viewers’ and performers’ debasement; indeed, it was the latter threat which underpinned social purists’ anti-tableaux campaign towards the end of the nineteenth century. This thesis argues that tableaux vivants ought to be acknowledged as a fundamentally neoclassical phenomenon. Like visits to the British Museum or the Crystal Palace’s Greek and Roman Courts, tableaux vivants offered spectators the opportunity to engage with the classical past. For many working-class men and women, Antiquity was accessible only by virtue of these ‘popular’ exhibitions. As such, the thesis is situated within the field of Reception Studies, and explores responses to – and the broader impact of – a medium of entertainment which has hitherto been overlooked by historians of Classical receptions. ! ! List of Illustrations 1 Declaration 2 Acknowledgements 3 List of Abbreviations 4 Introduction 5 Chapter One: Iphigenia on the Grand Tour, 1780-1815 29 1.1 Voyeurism: A Pre-History of the Attitudes 32 1.2 Exhibitionism: Shawls, Teeth and Broken Jougs 38 1.3 Antiquarianism: Emma Hamilton and the Restoration of Antiquity 45 1.4 Expressionism: The Signs of Sympathy 55 1.5 Conclusion 66 Chapter Two: Raphael’s Dream at the Circus, 1815-1840 69 2.1 Image versus Narrative: Pictorialism in the Nineteenth Century 72 2.2 Turning the Classics ‘topsy-turvy’: Antiquity on the Popular Stage 79 2.3 Packaging the Past at the British Museum 88 2.4 The British Museum and the Diffusion of ‘Useful’ Knowledge 97 2.5 Conclusion 103 Chapter Three: The Three Graces at the Museum, 1840-1860 105 3.1 Fancy Dress 109 3.2 Ethnology 116 3.3 Anthropology 123 3.4 Anthropology in Application: Slavery, Eroticism and Gérôme’s Moorish Bath 130 3.5 Conclusion 137 Chapter Four: Pygmalion and Galatea at the Music Hall, 1860-1914 139 4.1 ‘After the fashion of the last generation’: Tableaux Vivants, 1860-1914 141 4.2 The Anti-Tableaux Crusade 151 4.3 Demoralising and Disgraceful? Ariadne in Sculpture, Painting and 160 Performance 4.4 ‘The millennium is at hand’: Antiquity and Modernity at the Fin de Siècle 171 4.5 Conclusion 178 Conclusion 181 5.1 Penny Pleasures: Living Pictures in the Cinematic Age 181 5.2 An Antique Appeal, or an Appeal to the Antique? 189 5.3 A Place for the Past in the Long Nineteenth Century 196 Picture Credits 201 Bibliography 202 ! 1 Illustrations After page 1.1: Friedrich Rehberg, Plate VII, from Drawings Faithfully Copied from 30 Nature at Naples (1791). 1.2: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Iphigenia and Orestes (1877). 30 1.3: William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress, plate III (1732-3). 36 1.4: Thomas Rowlandson, untitled (c. 1780). 38 1.5: James Gillray, Dido in Despair! (1801). 38 1.6: William Lock, Emma, Lady Hamilton Dancing the Tarantella (1796). 40 1.7: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Lady Hamilton as the Persian Sibyl (1792). 40 1.8: Anon., Miss Ch_ly (c. 1749). 44 1.9: Friedrich Rehberg, Plate VIII, from Drawings Faithfully Copied from 50 Nature at Naples (1791). 2.1: Playbill for 21 September 1830, VATC, ‘Astley’s Amphitheatre’. 70 3.1: Anon., The Unparalleled Feat of Mons. Ducrow in the Character of 110 the Wild Indian Hunter (c. 1830). 3.2: George Catlin, Meach-o-shín-gaw, Little White Bear, a Konza 112 Warrior (1842). 4.1: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Abduction of Psyche (1895). 150 4.2: Playbill for 4 May 1909, VATC, ‘Palace Theatre of Varieties’. 156 4.3: Anon., The Seldoms: The Sabines at the London Pavilion (c. 1907). 156 4.4: Anon., The Seldoms: The Fountain at the London Pavilion (c. 1907). 156 5.1: Anon., Image from The Birth of the Pearl (1903). 184 5.2: Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (c. 1486). 184 Academic Thesis: Declaration of Authorship I, Elena Stevens, declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own original research. Striking an Attitude: Tableaux Vivants in the British Long Nineteenth Century. ! I confirm that: 1. This work was done wholly or mainly while in candidature for a research degree at this University; 2. Where any part of this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree or any other qualification at this University or any other institution, this has been clearly stated; 3. Where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed; 4. Where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work; 5. I have acknowledged all main sources of help; 6. Where the thesis is based on work done by myself jointly with others, I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself; 7. Either none of this work has been published before submission, or parts of this work have been published as: [please list references below]. Signed: Date:! 3 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I owe thanks to my supervisor Jonathan Conlin – this thesis (and my seven years at the University of Southampton) has benefitted immeasurably from his guidance, patience and encouragement. I am also grateful to Joan Tumblety and Jane McDermid for their advice along the way. Aura Satz and Mary Chapman allowed me to read sections from their unpublished books; Alison Boulton passed on useful pieces of family research relating to the Bissmire-Grimaldi tableaux troupe; and Mike Rendell shared with me his extensive knowledge of eighteenth-century pornography! This thesis would have been almost impossible to complete without the Wolfson Foundation, whose generous funding allowed me to visit a number of archives which would otherwise have been out of reach. A fellowship at Harvard University provided an enormously useful opportunity to view programmes and playbills housed in the Harvard Theatre Collection, and Micah Hoggatt helped me to navigate Houghton Library’s extensive holdings. I am grateful to the archivists and librarians at the British Library, Bishopsgate Institute, Metropolitan Archives, Society of Antiquaries, V & A Theatre and Performance Archives, Minet Library, Museum of London and the LSE Women’s Library for their assistance. I owe particular thanks to Anne Barrett at the Imperial College Archives for allowing me to reproduce an image from the Thomas Henry Huxley Collection in this thesis. I am grateful to my family, and in particular to Sue Stevens, Jarek Wójtowicz, Eleanor Houghton and Jennie Lewis for their help and support over the past four years. Finally, I owe thanks to Nicole and Gary Treharne for lending me their children on those days that I needed a break from the thesis! 4 List of Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used in the footnotes: BI London, Bishopsgate Institute. BL London, British Library. HNP Alfred Morrison, ed., The Hamilton and Nelson Papers, 2 vols. (London: Strangeway & Sons, 1893). HTC Cambridge, Harvard Theatre Collection. ICA London, Imperial College Archives. LMA London, Metropolitan Archives. ML London, Minet Library. SA London, Society of Antiquaries. VATC London, V & A Theatre and Performance Archives. WL London, Women’s Library (London School of Economics). 5 Introduction The history of the tableau vivant as a form of nineteenth-century entertainment has yet to be written. It had a curiously multiple ancestry, part theatrical and part social.

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