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THE IRISH VILLAGESATTHE 1893 WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

CONSTRUTING, CONSUMING AND CONTESTING IRELAND AT CHICAGO

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

CHRISTOPHER QUINN

In partial fulfilment of requirements

for the degree of

Master of Arts

January, 2011

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1*1 Canada ABSTRACT

THE IRISH VILLAGES ATTHE 1893 WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION: CONSTRUCTING, CONSUMING AND CONTESTING IRELAND AT CHICAGO

Christopher Quinn Advisor: Professor Kevin James University of Guelph, 2010

This thesis examines Alice Hart and Lady Aberdeen and their efforts to construct two separate Irish villages on the Midway of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in the midst of the Second Irish Home Rule debate. Using the lens of current tourism scholarship, the thesis examines why Hart and Aberdeen produced romantic countryside villages featuring thatched cottages, Irish peasants and ancient castles as well as why it was a popular and disputed representation. The villages shared characteristics with other exhibits on the Midway, both developed nations' construction of their past and exotic villages produced as contemporary ethnographic displays. The thesis concludes that the construction fulfilled expectations of an experience of Ireland while placing the Irish villages in an ambiguous position on the Midway which reflected

Ireland's contested place in the United Kingdom. Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Kevin James, for not only the opportunity to pursue this thesis under his advisement, but for his continuing support throughout the process. My experience would not have been the same without his great advice and even better company. I'd also wish to thank Dr. Eric Zuelow for his guidance both in our engaging graduate class and during the lengthy thesis writing period. His notes and thorough reviewing of my drafts proved invaluable. I'd like to thank my committee members, Dr. Susan Nance and Dr. Alan Gordon, for their helpful advice in shaping the paper following my examination. Valerie Harris and the staff at the

University of Illinois at Chicago Special Collections department were extremely accommodating, both during my visit and in the follow-up communications. All the staff at the Media Commons at the University of Toronto deserve thanks for their friendly and helpful service during my months of research there. I am grateful for everyone in the History Department at the University of Guelph. My undergraduate and graduate years there were made better by the fantastic professors and staff at the University.

I wish to thank my girlfriend, Erica Rodd, for her unwavering support over the years. She has helped me in an innumerable amount of ways, both with this thesis

and with life. Finally, I'd like to thank my family: my sister, Erin, my mother Susan, and

my father, Paul. I could not have done this without their backing and encouragement,

not only in the past two years but for my whole life. I find it hard to believe some days that I am lucky enough to have you guys. Table of Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgements i

Table of Contents ii

List of Figures iii

Introduction 1

Historical Background Concept and Methods

Other Literature

Primary Sources

Conclusion Chapter One: Contesting Ireland at Chicago 18 Beyond the Villages: Irish Exhibits at the World's Fair Alice Hart and Lady Aberdeen

The Hart-Aberdeen Conflict Contesting Authenticity Chapter Two: Constructing and Consuming the Landscape of the Villages 54 The Embodied Experience of the Irish Villages Sound Touch Taste Performance Landscape: The People

Landscape: The Cottage Landscape: Consuming the Nostalgiascape of the Villages

Conclusion 92

Bibliography 100 List of Figures

Figure 1. Map of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. From the Official Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition. Courtesy the University of Waterloo. (7) Figure 2. Celtic cross inside Aberdeen's village. From The World's Fair in Watercolors. Courtesy the University of Illinois at Chicago Library. (54) Figure 3. Muckross Abbey in Aberdeen's village. From The World's Fair in Watercolors. Courtesy the University of Illinois at Chicago Library. (60) Figure 4. Craftswoman inside a cottage in Aberdeen's village. From The World's Fair in Watercolors. Courtesy the University of Illinois at Chicago Library. (66) Figure 5 Dancer in the Algerian theatre on the Midway. From the Portfolio of Photographs of the World's Fair. Courtesy the University of Illinois at Chicago Library. (75) Figure 6 Entryway to Aberdeen's village in The Dream City. Courtesy the University of Illinois at Chicago Library. (83) Figure 7 Exterior of the German village on the Midway. From The Vanishing White City. Courtesy the University of Illinois at Chicago Library. (93) Figure 8 inside the Vienna town square on the Midway. From the Portfolio of Photographs of the World's Fair. Courtesy the University of Illinois at Chicago Library. (95) Figure 9 Interior of the Java Village. From the Picturesque World's Fair. Courtesy the University of Waterloo. (96)

III Introduction

Next day a little chap of twelve or thirteen, from Tralee, was in the Kilkenny man's place, and an anxious girl ventured timidly to throw doubt on the genuineness of the stone. "Oh, indeed it is genuine," he answered. "You ask the Custom House officer an' he'll tell you" - omitting to mention that the official was in New York.

"Well, now, if it is really genuine, how is it that you have not the whole of it, and how much did you pay for this piece?" "Four thousand dollars," was the prompt reply. "Sure the man that owns it wouldn't let us take it all away an' spile his income." That removed all doubts and the girl invested with a kiss.1

In the square of cottages around [Blarney] Castle there is exhibited everything that delights the Irish heart— poteen and fighting excepted.2

The Irish villages at the World's Columbian Exposition promised visitors authentic experiences of the Irish countryside. Two prominent British women who are examined in this study, Lady Aberdeen and Alice Hart, achieved this by displaying familiar objects associated with Ireland as well as with the performance of the Irish peasants who populated the villages. However, the landscape they represented was not neutral, despite their efforts to avoid conflict. Ireland's contested position in the United Kingdom could not be separated from the romanticized rural villages at the Chicago World's Fair, nor from these women's personal rivalries and wider political sympathies.3

1 "The Irish Village at Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893. 2 "World's Fair at Chicago," Galway Vindicator, 24 May 1893. 3 The World's Columbian Exposition will be refered to as the Chicago World's Fair throughout the thesis. This is not a reference to the 1933 World's Fair at Chicago unless specified,

1 This thesis explores why Hart and Aberdeen constructed romanticized

countryside Irish villages for the Midway of the Chicago World's Fair and how this

reflected Ireland's contested position in the United Kingdom. It argues that Hart and

Aberdeen constructed the Irish villages to fulfill the expectations of rural Ireland and

served as places of contest over work, femininity and authenticity. These developments

are explored in the context of the Midway, where exhibits featured ethnographic

displays of the exotic as well as romanticized representations of the past.

Historical Background

The Irish villages at Chicago were part of several years of work by the Irish

Industries Association (I. I.A.) and the Donegal Industrial Fund (D. I. F.). The villages were part of the two organizations' efforts to promote home industries and cottage crafts

from the Irish countryside. The villages were a construction of the peaceful, friendly

countryside present in popular descriptions of Ireland. As David Brett discusses in

Construction of Heritage, Ireland's position as a peripheral nation to Britain made it subject to representations from the metropolitan center.4 This included a picturesque

vision of the Irish rural which disregarded the urban, modern industrial aspects of the

country. By reinforcing these representations, the villages continued to popularize this

image of Ireland in America.

4 David Brett, Construction of Heritage (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996) p. 39.

2 Aberdeen was initially a client of Hart and the D. I. F., often hosting aristocratic parties where D.I. F. wares were put on display.5 However, there's was not always a harmonious collaboration; indeed, Hart and Aberdeen spent the late

nineteenth century constructing separate home industry organizations in hopes to relieve poverty in the Irish countryside. While initially working cooperatively to build an Irish village to display home industries, their different organizational approaches were

manifested in a dramatic division resulting in Hart filing for a second Irish village on the Midway. These differences laid the foundation for their different views on how to

construct an Irish village at the Chicago World's Fair. The placement of the villages in the

Midway, as well as the locations of the other Irish exhibits throughout the fair, are

important in demonstrating what aspects of lrishness were on display; a discussion of the general makeup and structure of the fair demonstrates the wider, highly contentious positioning perceived place of Ireland in the United Kingdom. Aberdeen and

Hart toured Ireland extensively leading up to the event. They collected features that

exhibited "authentic" lrishness, an important attribute that both women were striving to achieve with their villages. By investigating their approach to creating the villages, the

production of specific images of lrishness for tourist consumption can be dissected and explored.

At the same time, however, the construction of the Irish villages by Hart and

Aberdeen reflected and reinforced existing images of Ireland, but this was not unique to

5 Janice Heiland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries 1880-1914: Marketing Craft, Making Fashion (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), p. 37.

3 the Irish villages as other Midway exhibits were constructed in the same way. The promise of a particular, ambiguous kind of "authenticity" was used to validate the experience of the visitor. Other Irish exhibitors were forced to express their lrishness in more subtle ways as their exhibits were often placed under a British flag. They were also displaying industrial aspects of Ireland, presenting an Ireland far different from the romanticized constructions of Hart and Aberdeen. The villages also reflected the differences in the background and experience of these two women. They both constructed a tourist encounter through collection of authenticity and maintaining the

"cycle of expectation" of rural Ireland (this concept, which underpins this analysis, will be explored shortly), but each to different degrees.

The setting the villages were constructed in the World's Columbian

Exposition, was arguably the most prominent of the world's fairs that took place in

America around the turn of the century. Chicago began competing for the right to host the Columbian Exposition in the summer of 1889, while the Paris Exposition was in the midst of huge success. Financially backed by a new generation of wealthy Chicagoans, such as Charles L. Hutchinson, Martin A. Ryerson and Edward Ayer, it was an effort to raise the cultural reputation of the city.6 Chicago was known as a great commercial hub but east coast urban dwellers viewed it as culturally inferior. The City of Chicago was not

6 Wim de Wit "Building an Illusion: The Design of the World's Columbian Exposition" in Neil Harris, Wim de Wit, James Gilbert, Robert Rydell ed. Grand Illusions: Chicago's World's Fair of 1893 (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1993) p. 44.

4 alone in employing the fair to raise its status, as the United States was eager to demonstrate that it had surpassed European nations in culture and industry.7

In 1890, Chicago beat out St. Louis, New York City, and Washington, D.C. for the rights to host the fair. After years of planning and construction, the fair finally opened to the public in May of 1893. Centered on the four hundredth anniversary of the Columbus landing, the fair was filled with Columbus and American imagery. The fair was meant to demonstrate America's, as well as Western civilization's, progress since the Columbus landing.8 This was achieved through visual examples of America's development such as in the Women's Building, where an exhibit demonstrated how a woman's work at home had evolved over four hundred years through a series of displays.

Daniel H. Burnham and the group of architects he supervised were provided with 630 acres at Jackson Park to construct their massive buildings. In comparison, the

Paris Exposition was a mere seventy-two acres. They utilized this space to construct the biggest World's Fair structures seen to this point. Together, these buildings comprised the White City which Burnham had built as the ideal city, orderly and convenient.9 The most prominent structure within the White City was the thirty acre Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, which housed the great industrial innovations of the time. It was in this structure that nations and companies pushed for recognition for their latest

7 Ibid. 8 Robert Rydell, "A Cultural Frankenstein? The Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893"in Grand Illusions, p. 158. 9 Russell Lewis, "Preface" in Grand Illusions, p. xi.

5 advancement. In sharp contrast to the wonders of technology viewed in the

Manufactures and Liberal Arts building, the fair's Midway hosted an array of exhibits offering amusements and exotic displays.

This was not the first Midway, nor was it the first time an Irish village was constructed at a fair (the Paris Exposition of 1889 featured ethnological displays and attractions10 while Hart had constructed a smaller Irish village at the Irish Exposition at Olympia in 188811). Jutting out from the fair's northwest corner, occupying the space between 59th and 60th streets, the Midway was planned as an ethnographic display, much like the one organized in Paris four years earlier. Frederic Ward Putnam, a Harvard ethnologist, was head of the department that oversaw the amusements of the Midway as well as other anthropological displays at the fair.12 While Putnam had educational intentions in the construction of the Midway, they were secondary to financial interests.

James Gilbert notes that the primary photographer of the fair, Charles Dudley Arnold, grew frustrated trying to capture images of the Midway as he felt the vast number of ads "obscured the picturesque."13 For the interests behind the exhibits, the goal was to bring in the biggest gate. Builders of the displays along the Midway Plaisance intended for visitors to view exotic cultures in their everyday lives.14 It was the most exotic or most grand constructions that attracted visitors and with them, admission. The Streets

10 Rydell, p. 158. "Janice Heiland, "Exhibiting Ireland: The Donegal Industrial Fund in London and Chicago," RACAR, vol. 29, no. 1-2, (2004), p. 28. 12 Rydell, p. 158. 13 James Gilbert, "Fixing the Image" in Grand Illusions, p. 121. 14 Neil Harris, "Selling National Culture: Ireland at the World's Columbian Exposition" in T.J. Edelstein ed. Imagining an Irish Past: The Celtic Revival 1840-1940 (Chicago: The David and Alfred Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, 1992), p. 93.

6 of Cairo and the Ferris Wheel were far and away the highest grossing attractions on the

Midway.

Figure 1: Map of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

John J. Flynn, ed., Official Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago: The Columbian Guide Company, 1893), pp. 194-5.

7 The Midway's haphazard nature clashed with the classical buildings of the

White City. The separation is even seen in official maps of the fair, such as in Figure 1 where the Midway was placed in an individual box apart from the White City. Julie K.

Brown argues that the Midway served as a visual counterpoint to the White City, as it as a heterogeneous, exotic, organic, dynamic space compared to the orderly, pristine, Romanesque buildings of the main grounds.16 However, the chaotic experience of the

Midway helped define the idealized landscape constructed by Burnham. America, and

Western Civilization's, advancement was elaborated further in the stark contrast between the White City and the exotic displays of the Midway.

Though the 1907 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis outdid it in scale, the Columbian Exposition has been viewed as having lasting impact on America for decades following its close. The White City became influential in the City Beautiful movement and the field of urban planning. Architects, landscape planners and sculptors from the fair were prominent in American municipal construction for the next twenty years as Americans were pushing for their municipal structures to be more monumental and attractive.17 The Midway has been discussed for the methods which it

"commodified the exotic" and sowed the seeds for American imperialism in the decade that followed.18 Rydell discusses how the exclusion of African Americans and limited role of women "inscribed [the fair] with prevailing beliefs about race and gender, the

16 Julie K. Brown, Contesting Images: Photography and the World's Columbian Exposition (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994), p. 103. 17 Neil Harris, "Memory and the White City" in Grand Illusions, p. 10. 18 Curtis Hinsley "The World as a Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893," in Ivan Karp, Steve D, Lavine eds. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Human Display Washington, D. C: Smithsonian Institute, 1991) p. 352.

8 exposition posited a common culture for some Americans at the expense of others." This study examines these themes in terms of Ireland's contested position as an industrialized nation being displayed as primitive and rural. This is achieved through the lens of tourism scholarship discussed below.

Concept and Methods There has been extensive work in tourism scholarship exploring the popularity of romantic, rural representations of places. In this thesis, a number of these theories are engaged to explore the representation of Ireland produced by Hart and

Aberdeen. These studies are useful for the examination of the Irish villages while also leaving space for further study into rural representations, especially in a nineteenth century context.

One example of a concept employed in this study of contemporary tourism imagery which is profitably utilized in this study of the past is the "cycle of expectation."

Velvet Nelson discusses it in relation to twentieth century Caribbean tourism.

Descriptions in travel writing and tourism promotional materials for the region grew to characterize the place.20 Romantic, picturesque imagery defined Caribbean nations from the outside but the identity was maintained internally as the destinations sought to fulfill expectations in order to continue to attract tourists.21 In most cases they succeeded, continuing the "cycle of expectation." These expectations of a location are

19 Rydell, p. 169. 20 Velvet Nelson, "Traces of the Past: The Cycle of Expectation in Carribbean Tourism Representations" in the Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change vol. 5, no. 1, (2007) p. 7. 21 Nelson, p. 14.

9 defined by Rob Shields in Places on the Margins as "place-myths," ideas created and influenced by popular media or accounts from friends and family of their own experiences. 22 In the case of the Irish villages, "place-myths" of Ireland existed in visitors' minds, formed from the circulation of popular imagery, such as the late eighteenth century landscape paintings of Thomas Sautell Roberts, which displayed an ideal, quaint Irish countryside.23

In a related analysis grounded in the study of specific domiciles constructed as authentic, invested with specific "national" attributes and linked to natives of the nation, Szilvia Gyimothy's "Nostalgiascapes" addresses the resurgent popularity of kros, rural Danish Inns in the twentieth century. Gyimothy attributes the "renaissance" of the kros to the growing desire of Danes to connect with the past in order to distance themselves from the stresses of modern, urban life.24 Kros and the Danish countryside grew as a romanticized part of their rural past. When tourists arrived at a kro, they viewed it as "home." The kros offered familiarity and when they strayed from the expected path, they were met with backlash. Gyimothy notes that in an attempt to keep up with the internationalization of Danish tourism, inn keepers updated their menus and interiors, offering Mediterranean specialties and refurbishing the dining areas to evoke rustic France. Many of the visitors to the inns were disappointed as they were

22 Rob Shields, Places on the Margins: Alternative Geographies of Modernity, (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 255. 23 Brian P. Kennedy, "The Traditional Irish Thatched House: Image and Reality, 1793-1993," in Adele M. Dalsimer ed. Visualizing Ireland: National Identity and the Pictorial Tradition (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1993) p. 165. 24 Szilvia Gyimothy, "Nostalgiascapes: The Renaissance of Danish Countryside Inns" in Tom O'Dell, Peter Billing eds. Experiencescapes: Tourism, Culture and Economy (Denmark: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2005), p. 112.

10 robbed of their opportunity to "snob-down," to experience the everyday of the rural population.25 Gyimothy concludes that the future of the countryside inn lies in its ability to satisfy the demands of the international tourist without alienating the nation's middle class. In constructing a "nostalgiascape," there may be certain objects linking to a specific time but the features do not need to have a unified representation of a single era. A plurality of representations and sensory cues allowed the visitor to place their own personal history among the "nostalgiascape," making the experience feel even more genuine.26

The concepts of the "cycle of expectation" and "nostalgiascapes" are explored by Nelson and Gyimothy in the context of current tourist practices. However, they offer a lens through which the Irish villages at the Chicago World's Fair can be examined in a historical context. Images and ideas of the Irish countryside circulated throughout the nineteenth century, shaping expectations of Ireland with imagery of thatched cottages, friendly villagers, Celtic artefacts, iconic music and food. These features of the traditional Irish countryside had to be included in the construction of the

Irish villages in order to fulfill visitors' expectations.

This study offers a unique perspective in utilizing these theories. The case of late nineteenth century Ireland offers a complex historical situation in which a representation of the nation was a complicated practice. Ireland was nearly thirty years away from independence from Britain and the villages at the fair were constructed by

25 Gyimothy, p. 120. 26 Gyimothy, p. 126.

11 British women, Aberdeen being an especially prominent aristocrat (though Hart's often locally-based work also attracted comment). Ireland's strong industrial centers clashed with the prominent imagery of Ireland, an idealized countryside dotted with quaint villages. The romanticization of the rural west obscured the realities of Irish peasant poverty. These layers of conflict surrounding the Irish villages at the Chicago World's

Fair provide this study with a unique case in which to explore and expand on

"nostalgiascapes" and the "cycle of expectation."

Historical Contexts

There have been other discussions of Hart and Aberdeen as well as the Irish villages at the Chicago World's Fair. Janice Heiland conducted an extensive study on

Hart, Aberdeen and their home industry organizations in her book British and Irish

Home Arts and Industries 1880-1914 as well as her article "Exhibiting Ireland: The

Donegal Industrial Fund in London and Chicago." Neil Harris examines the Irish villages and their role in the Celtic revival in the chapter "Selling National Culture: Ireland at the

World's Columbian Exposition." While these studies provide context for a discussion of the villages, this thesis provides a deeper analysis of the D.I. F. and I.I.A.'s efforts to construct the exhibits as well as a new avenue for investigation through the theories discussed in the previous section.

Helland's examination of the villages at the Chicago World's Fair focusses on

Hart's efforts, arguing that Hart departed from traditional nineteenth century philanthropy by incorporating more modern methods of financing and preparation.

12 Heiland notes that Hart had researched the background behind the causes of rural poverty as well as incorporated government funding to back the construction of her village and identified this as a twentieth century approach.27 In regards to Aberdeen,

Heiland identifies her as a reflection of the traditional nineteenth century patronage institution, acquiring her funding through her connections in society. While Heiland privileges Hart's approach, this thesis considers the challenges Aberdeen, a traditional aristocratic patroness, faced in constructing an Irish village in Chicago. Scholars have been quick to identify the benefits of an Irish patronage for British elites. Kevin James' analysis of home industry and the ready-made garment trade in rural Ireland,

"Handicraft, Mass Manufacture and Rural Female Labour," notes that it served to reinforce a set of ideals for rural women as well as building a relationship between British patronesses and Irish peasantry.28 These benefits are seen in the cases of Aberdeen as well as Hart. This thesis explores the difficulties that arose from British patronesses operating Irish villages that awoke patriotic feelings amongst Irish-

Americans. It also contributes to Helland's wider study of the home industry movement by demonstrating that despite the differences Heiland identifies between the two women, their construction of Irish village shared similar approaches of constructing a rural representation of Ireland. This study also provides new insight into the conflict between Hart and Aberdeen that surrounded their efforts at the Chicago World's Fair.

"Heiland, p. 42. 28 Kevin James, "Handicraft, Mass Manufacture and Rural Female Labour: Industrial Work in North-West Ireland, 1890-1914," Rural History, vol. 17, no. 1, (2006), p. 51.

13 Another study that examines the Irish villages at the fair is Harris' work on their place within the wider context of the Celtic revival. He examines the villages' role as a merchandising agent for Hart and Aberdeen as they utilized traditional Celtic art in order to procure customers for their handicrafts.29 In conclusion, Harris identifies the Midway as a form of "cultural advertisement," in which the Irish villages participated.

Harris' arguments tie closely with his, and other American scholars, work on the Midway and the fair. However, this thesis offers a new interpretation of the causes behind the construction of the villages by engaging with tourism scholarship which addresses the idealization of rural representations in the marketing of places. This method also provides a new perspective on the construction of nations found on the Midway. In addition to a new theoretical approach, this study also engages with primary materials that have yet to be utilized in the study of the Irish villages at the Chicago World's Fair.

Primary Sources The primary sources utilized in the examination of Hart and Aberdeen's village include: Irish and American newspapers, personal memoirs, guidebooks, souvenir art series and photography portfolios published in the wake of the fair. The Irish newspapers researched covered a broad regional and political spectrum of Ireland.

Urban daily papers such as the nationalist Freeman's Journal based in Dublin and the

Unionist Belfast News-letter followed the fair closely, favouring coverage of Aberdeen. Regional papers such as the Connaught Telegraph and the staunchly nationalist Kerry

Sentinel provided coverage of Hart's activities and an absence of Aberdeen. This did not

29 Harris, "Selling National Culture," p. 92.

14 mean that Aberdeen and her work were ignored by the nationalist press. In an editorial

in the Limerick Reporter and Tipperary Vindicator, Aberdeen is praised for her work helping the Irish poor.30 Certainly support for a British aristocrat's patronage of Irish cultural forms peddled as commodities was not unanimous; the Limerick Reporter had

to reply to a number of letters attacking the paper for its support of the I. I.A.. The long

arms of the I. I.A. and Aberdeen's constant touring of Ireland were evident in the amount

of coverage they received across the nation. Local meetings of the I. I.A. and visits from Aberdeen were reported by the press regardless of political leanings with articles in the

Clare Journal, Cork Constitution, Freeman's Journal, Galway Vindicator and Limerick

Reporter.

Coverage of the fair itself was regular in urban dailies such as the Freeman's

Journal, Cork Constitution and Belfast News-letter. However, the smaller, county papers which were published on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, were inconsistent in their

coverage, often relying on press clippings from American papers. The articles mainly focused on the villages but there was great effort put into tracking all of Ireland's

activities at the fair, especially regarding accolades received. The newspapers provided a broad spectrum of Irish views, allowing for an examination of the villages which

reflected the diverse landscape of Ireland.

The other major resource was the World's Columbian Exposition Collection,

housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The collection consisted of guidebooks, art collections and photography portfolios. Intended mainly as souvenirs for those who

30 Limerick Reporter, 21 July 1893.

15 visited or who had wished to visit the fair, the text in the art collections and photography portfolios was treated as secondary to the images. The descriptions were as romantic as the pictures they were underneath, but this fit with the experience visitors sought out at the fair. The popularity of the Ferris Wheel, German Village and

Streets of Cairo was evident in the amount of attention paid to them in a nearly all the collections. The Irish villages were less enticing visually compared to the Java Village and Algerian theatre and when they were addressed, it was almost exclusively with an image of Blarney Castle and a description of Aberdeen's village. The newspapers and archival materials provided visions of the fair and the Irish villages in the United States, Ireland and Britain. This study utilizes the theoretical framework drawn from tourist scholarship, in combination with these sources to illustrate the romantic, tourist experience of Ireland constructed by Hart and Aberdeen.

Conclusion

Though it did not constitute an actual visit to Ireland for fair visitors, for many the visit to the Irish villages was viewed as a proxy for the real thing. Its popularity among Irish-Americans reflected Aberdeen and Hart's success at producing "nostalgiascapes" on the Midway. Aberdeen in particular, used recognizable Irish features from all over the nation and placed them within the confines of a single village.

Blarney Castle, Celtic crosses, more than a dozen thatched cottages and other assorted features allowed visitors to place their personal history within the narrative presented to them. Within this thesis, the theories presented by Nelson and Gyimothy provide an

16 avenue for understanding why it was romanticized, countryside villages constructed for the Irish exhibits on the Midway of the Chicago World's Fair. This thesis argues that the Irish villages followed prevalent trends of Irish rural representations, feeding the "cycle of expectation," to appeal to industrial and urban centers of the late nineteenth century. In doing so, Hart and Aberdeen built villages that straddled the line between colonial construction of the present and the romantic construction of the past.

17 Chapter One: Contesting Ireland at Chicago "They are expecting to reap glory and honor from the plans and work originally suggested by herself."1 This quotation came from the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune, which interviewed Alice Hart about her work with Lady Aberdeen and the Irish Industries Association. It was an uneasy collaboration from the start, as they were operating rival organizations with differing approaches. Their differences were highlighted when their joint effort to construct a village at the Chicago World's Fair came to an abrupt end.

Hart and Aberdeen constructed separate Irish villages with the goal of providing an authentic experience for visitors to the Chicago World's Fair. Both were nationalist Home Rulers who ran home industry organizations which supported the Irish rural peasantry, but their organizations differed based on each women's views of how home industry was to be implemented in Ireland. Hart focussed on the artistic merits of the work and regional orientation, centering on County Donegal in the north-west of

Ireland. Aberdeen wanted broader appeal for her wares and acted as a broker in establishing as many depots for the I.I.A.'s products as she could.

The villages were a multi-sensory experience that engaged with Irish-

American nostalgia by providing an idealized construction of a picturesque Irish countryside. They reflected "place-myths," the synthesis of images, text and

1 "Irish Village Snarl," Chicago Daily Tribune, 28 Nov. 1892, p. 1.

18 performance constituting the preconceptions of a place.2 For example, the women recruited to occupy the village and interact with visitors as well as the construction of thatched cottages as displays of peasant life. However, the villages were not occupying neutral space in their construction of Ireland. Their representations of Ireland and its place on the Midway were contested.

Hart and Aberdeen attempted to build the village together, hoping to promote both of their organizations and Irish home industry as a whole. However, when

Hart believed Aberdeen was freezing her out of her own project, old tensions emerged and resulted in a public schism. Hart abandoned her concession to the I. I.A. and procured a new one, creating a second Irish village in Chicago. The split was the result of differences in status that existed long before Hart initially accepted Aberdeen's offer of help in 1892. Distinctions between the villages were often elided in press and promotional coverage of the fair. As a result, the villages were often viewed as one: either Hart's village was ignored or its construction was credited to Aberdeen. The differences were subtle and reflected the two women's distinct organizational approach to cottage industries as well as the debate over the appropriate representation of

Ireland at the fair.

Differences in the representation of Ireland went beyond the two women's villages. The other Irish exhibits of the fair provided a different representation of

Ireland. Ireland's smaller status among powerful, industrial countries such as Germany,

2 Rob Shields, Places on the Margins: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 258.

19 the United States and Britain meant their exhibits were marginalized among the larger pavilions of the fair. Ireland was lumped under "Other Foreign Nations" in the

Manufactures Building section of the official guidebook of the fair along with Scotland, Sumatra and the Yucatan.3 However, the Irish exhibits still provided displays of urban, industrial Ireland in the late nineteenth century. Despite the presence of large Irish textile firms, it was the villages operated by Hart and Aberdeen that drew the attention of the press. Their conflict and their construction of touristic encounters with the Irish countryside were the highlights of the story of Ireland at the World's Fair.

Beyond the Villages: Irish Exhibits at the World's Fair.

The villages, especially Lady Aberdeen's, garnered the most attention in the

Irish press but there were several smaller Irish displays throughout the White City. The

Manufactures Building housed a collection of Irish tweeds in the British sections. Neil

Harris notes that the placement of Irish exhibits t under the British flag were a reminder of the continued failure of Home Rule even as the debate over the second bill was ongoing.4 However, these tweeds were still able to be displayed in a nationalist manner, according to the nationalist paper, the Connaught Telegraph:

Here to be seen some very fine specimens of Irish Tweeds of various shades, and Irish Freizer. There are large size figures of Messrs Gladstone, Davitt, Sexton, and other prominent Home Rulers, on

3 John J. Flynn ed. Official Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago: The Columbian Guide Company, 1893), p. 82. 4 Neil Harris, "Selling National Culture: Ireland at the World' Columbian Exposition," in T.J. Edelstein ed., Imagining an Irish Past: The Celtic Revival 1840-1940 (Chicago: The David and Alfred Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, 1992), p.88.

20 these placed well fitting overcoats made in different styles and of different shades.5 Even under the British flag, exhibitors were able to express Irish nationalism. The

Manufacture's Building housed the highly acclaimed metal work of Edmund Johnson, who recreated a number of famous Celtic objects.6 Johnson's displays featured a full account of each piece's origins and their place in Irish history.7 Celtic artefacts were also a feature of the Irish villages. The Agricultural Building featured John Power & Son whiskey distillers who distinguished their display by creating a thirty foot re-creation of the O'Connell monument in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.8 An obscure monument, it served as a subtle nationalist feature. Hart's village featured a subtle nationalist feature as well, a replica of the O'Connell Memorial Church at Caherciveen, County Kerry. The church was under construction at the time of the fair and was followed closely by the

Kerry Sentinel, but it was scarcely mentioned in other Irish papers. The inclusion of these subtle nationalist features was not for the American visitor, but for the Irish nationalist aware of their significance.

Beyond demonstrating further support for the Home Rule movement, these

Irish displays in the White City illustrated contributions beyond cottage industries. These exhibits demonstrated that modern manufacturing was present in Ireland, in contrast to the image of Ireland being presented on the Midway. The Manufactures Building

5 "A Claremorris Man's Impression of the Chicago Exhibition," Connaught Telegraph, 18 Nov. 1893. 6 "The Columbian World's Fair," Belfast News-Letter, 31 May 1893. 7 Connaught Telegraph, 18 Nov. 1893. 8 "The Chicago Exhibition: Irish Exhibits," Northern Whig, 17 May 1893.

21 featured linen exhibits by five Ulster firms.9 The displays were described as having impressive embroidery and artistic linens produced by large, urban based manufacturing firms. Aberdeen and Hart presented their cottage-produced linens and lace at their villages but Ireland housed several larger textile firms which had displays at the fair. Innovations were introduced by Irish exhibitors such as Wm. Barbour & Sons Limited, the inventors of a flax embroidery thread which sped up lace production.10

Ireland's railways had their own small pavilion that equated to a tourist tent considering it was a collection of photographs of Ireland's railways winding through picturesque scenery. The nationalist, Dublin-based Freeman's Journal commended the display for bringing the natural beauty of Ireland to the world's attention.11 The pavilion also contained guidebooks and other materials promoting tourism in Ireland. The technology of Ireland's railways was not on display but rather the landscape it interacted with. On the other hand, the Agricultural Building featured a large display from the Drogheda

Chemical Manure Company which was described as showing impressive modern agricultural materials.12 Irish Portland Cement Company displayed a variety of cements;

Thomas Pettigrue shipped rough cuts and refined pieces of stone from Irish quarries to Chicago, and Trinity College provided anatomy specimens.13 Even more impressive, Irish models of machinery used to construct the Menai tubular bridge and for cutting the

9 Belfast News-Letter, 31 May 1893. 10IbJd. 11 "Ireland at Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 31 Mar. 1893. 12 "The Chicago Exhibition: Irish Exhibits," Northern Whig, 17 May 1893. 13 Freeman's Journal, 1 May 1893.

22 Mont Cenis tunnel were displayed as well. Unfortunately, according to reports from the Freeman's Journal, it was lost en route to the fair.

Cottage industry and home crafts had a presence in the White City as well.

The Women's Building housed displays from Aberdeen. It was located outside of the entrance to the Midway, which Robert Rydell notes represented women's role as mothers of civilization as well as their peripheral status.15 Aberdeen was an important part of bringing Ireland to the Women's Building. The exhibit that she had been preparing for the building grew so expansive that, in addition to her materials held in the Women's Building, she began organizing the village for the Midway.16 She had close ties to Bertha Palmer, the organizer of the women's exhibits. Palmer introduced

Aberdeen to prominent Americans at Chicago to facilitate I.I.A.'s establishment in the United States.17 Hart's Donegal Industrial Fund also had a presence with a small craft display in the building.18 The Women's Building was created to both demonstrate advances in social reform as well as to demonstrate domestic advancement through the centuries.19 Irish cottage industries were put on display for their social reform qualities. The goal of the D. I. F. and the I. I.A. was to reduce rural poverty through craftsmanship found in the home. The Women's Building represented another area with an Irish presence but also a presentation of cottage crafts outside of the setting of the cottage.

15 Rydell, "Cultural Frankenstein," p. 157. 16 Jeanne Madeline Weimann, The Fair Women: The Story of the Woman's Building, World Columbian Exposition: Chicago 1893 (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1981), p. 409. 17 Heiland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries, p. 101. 18Harris,"Selling National Culture," p. 92. 19 Rydell, "Cultural Frankenstein," pp. 155-6.

23 Without the rural setting of the villages, the crafts were presented in a more traditional exhibition sense. Outside of the Midway, a more modern representation of Ireland existed, even with Hart and Aberdeen's own crafts.

Within "America's idealized city" and separate from the Irish villages on the

Midway, Ireland had displays throughout the fair that were able to display their lrishness, often while being presented under a British flag. Whether they did this by heavily featuring Home Ruler mannequins, such as William Gladstone and Michael Davitt,20 or by simply being prominent Irish manufacturing firms, their ties to Ireland were made clear. Linen, lace, and tweed were displayed in White City as part of the industrial exhibits. They were praised for their craftsmanship to the same degree as the crafts of the Aberdeen and Hart displays. Cottage industries tied their products to nostalgia and philanthropy as well. Outside of the villages, Irish displays were similar to other nations' presentations. They offered the best products of their most prominent industries. Ireland had no significant invention or piece of machinery which had an impact to the degree of other nations' innovations. This illustrates why the villages came to be Ireland's most popular presence at the fair.

The Irish villages offered a different experience than the displays of linens produced in an Ulster factory. The quaint cottages invoked a sense of nostalgia that spoke not only to Irish or Irish-Americans but to other national identities that shared a connection to an ideal rural past. The other, less prominent, Irish exhibits were displayed as part of larger British sections. This was not a submission to British

20 Connaught Telegraph, 18 Nov. 1893.

24 authority, as support of Home Rulers and earlier nationalist icons such as Daniel O'Connell were displayed in many of the exhibits. However, it was the villages that provided Ireland with a unique platform of which to present itself. It is because of its place on the Midway, among other spectacular re-creations, that the villages were the most prominent presentation of Ireland.

Alice Hart and Lady Aberdeen

Hart and Aberdeen came from very different backgrounds and were prone to dramatic misunderstandings and mistrust. Aberdeen was by far the more prominent figure in the public consciousness, while Hart's home crafts and D. I. F. were part of what inspired Aberdeen to start the U.A. They were products of the British class system. Hart was a merchant's daughter. Aberdeen was an aristocrat. This social division was at the center of their feud and led to conflict between their organizations even before the

World's Fair.

Lady Aberdeen was born lshbel Maria Marjoribanks in London in 1857. She inherited her habit of asserting a blood connection with the Irish people from her parents. Her father, Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, claimed his family was connected to Robert Bruce, the fourteenth century Scottish separatist leader.21 This claim was flimsy but even when doubt was cast on it by genealogists, Aberdeen noted in her and her husband's memoir that it did not shake her; "Our [family] declined to have our faith shaken by mere genealogists, and to this hour I feel that somehow our veneration for

21 Doris French, lshbel and the Empire: A Biography of Lady Aberdeen, (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1988), p.13.

25 our Scottish hero must have indicated a call of the blood."22 Dudley Marjoribanks was a prominent London businessman who was an elected Liberal MP for Berwick-upon- Tweed, Meaux brewery owner and shareholder in the Hudson's Bay Company.23 His family operated Coutt's bank, the trusted bank of Queen Victoria.24 He was a wealthy and well regarded man who came to marry Ishbel's mother, Isabella Hogg. Isabella's father was Sir James Hogg, senior official of the East India Company and a Conservative member of parliament.25 Like the Marjoribanks, the Hoggs claimed an ancestral line to British royalty; in their case it was to Edward I.26 Aberdeen herself preferred the Scottish heroine, Grizel Cochrane "who, by a venturesome expedient saved her father— Sir John Cochrane—from execution."27

Aberdeen's childhood had two settings: a Hyde Park-facing London manor and her father's shooting lodge in Glen Affaric, Scotland near Inverness.28 She deeply loved her time in the Scottish Highlands, describing her arrival in her memoir,

we passed through the village of Tomich, with old friends standing at the doors and waving welcomes-then the lodge, the long avenue, the farm buildings, the gardener's cottage, and at last we felt the old 'bus rumbling over the white bridge near our home, and in a few minutes there was a rush of released prisoners out of the prison van, sniffing the sweet Highland air, rejoicing in reunion with beloved dog friends who were no less excited than ourselves, and receiving the welcome only Highlanders know how to give.29

22 Lord and Lady Aberdeen, We Twa Vol.1, (Glasgow: W.Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1925), p. 94. 23 French, lshbel and Empire, p. 14. 24IbId. 25 Ibid, p. 15. 26IbId. 27 Aberdeen, We Twa Vol. 1, p. 94. 28 French, lshbel and Empire, p. 17. 29 Aberdeen, We Twa Vol. 1, p. 123.

26 Changes were made to the countryside to accommodate the retreat. Her father was forced to construct homes for the local peasants, "having removed them from their homes in thatched cottages throughout the surrounding hills and valleys."30 The thatched cottages, which Aberdeen would later strive to faithfully re-create in her Irish village, were removed in order to accommodate her parents' estate.

Despite her father's actions in constructing his hunting lodge, Lady Aberdeen expressed her sympathy in the Aberdeens' memoir: "These poor folk loved their homes with passionate devotion, and the story of their dispossession is a black one. Yet doubtless to many of them it was a blessing in disguise, when they found new hopes and ample opportunities in the countries [to] which many of them emigrated."31 Her support of the displacements, while also expressing her compassion for them, demonstrated her ambiguous position as supporter of the rural peasant while still representing British aristocracy. This dilemma challenged her during the fair as well as in her attempts to collaborate with Hart. Despite her ambiguous position, she remained a popular figure among the Scottish and especially the Irish peasantry.

Lady Aberdeen's position as a strong Liberal Party supporter, especially in its pro-Home Rule incarnations under Gladstone, helped create this support amongst the Irish. After meeting and marrying the first Marquess of Aberdeen, John Campbell

Gordon, in 1877, she remained Liberal despite his position in the Conservative Party.

This alliance changed quickly as she persuaded him to join William Gladstone and the

30 French, lshbel and Empire, p. 18. 31 Aberdeen, IVe Twa Vol. 1, p. 128.

27 Liberals in time for their 1880 election victory. Lord Aberdeen obtained several prominent positions under Gladstone including the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1886 until 1893 when Lord Aberdeen became the Governor General of Canada. He gained this position in the midst of Lady Aberdeen's efforts at the World's Fair and it often shared the headlines with reports on her village.33 Aberdeen described it as a devastating blow due to their close association with Ireland for nearly a decade.34

Regardless of disappointment, Lord and Lady Aberdeen continued to be closely linked with Gladstone and his two attempts to gain Home Rule for Ireland. When the First

Home Rule Bill failed in 1886 and the Liberal party split over the issue, Lady Aberdeen became "distraught."35 It was in the period of the Second Home Rule Bill under

Gladstone and the Liberals that Lady Aberdeen was preparing and presenting her Irish village.

Alice Hart, born Alice Rowland, was the daughter of a Sydenham merchant,

Alexander William Rowland. He sold perfumes and soaps, often advertising in the women's magazines in which his daughter would eventually become a prominent feature.36 She distinguished herself as a medical student in Paris and as an artist at the South Kensington School of Art and Design.37 It was her accomplishments that drew the

French, lshbel and Empire, p. 61. 33 Aberdeen, We Twa Vol. 1, p. 318. 34IbId. 35 French, lshbel and Empire, p. 81. 36 Janice Heiland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries 1880-1914: Marketing Craft, Making Fashion (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), p. 24.

28 attention of Ernest Hart, a decorated medical journalist. Together they formed an impressive, educated couple with a strong passion for reform. Unlike Lord and Lady

Aberdeen, the Harts avoided aligning themselves with a political party. The closest Alice

Hart came to political affiliation was with Charles Stewart Parnell and the Land League.

Her 1883 visit to Ireland to investigate the reports of poverty in the countryside coincided with the arraignment of Parnell for the Phoenix Park assassination.39 Some of

Hart's detractors pointed to this as an indication of her radical Irish nationalism, but she dismissed them, claiming the timing was a coincidence. Even without aligning herself to a political party, Hart could not avoid politics, as she took up the cause of relieving Irish rural poverty. Fighting the stereotype of Irish idleness, Hart came out and blamed England for "knowingly destroying the glass and woollen industries of Ireland."40 She had hoped to help Ireland by providing the poor, rural communities with an industry to sustain themselves in the winter.41 The result was the Donegal Industrial Fund.

The D. I. F. and I. I.A., run by Hart and Aberdeen respectively, were responsible for constructing the villages at the Chicago World's Fair. They shared the goal of reducing Irish poverty through emphasis on the work ethic and craftsmanship found in the countryside but differed in regional focus. Concentration on quality and authenticity as well as the philanthropic element made D. I. F. products very popular

38 P. W. J. Bartrip, "Hart, Ernest Abraham (1835-1898)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press (2004) Accessed 27 Nov. 2010 doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12475 39 Heiland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries, p. 27. 40IbId. 41IbId.

29 among Britain's elite, including Lady Aberdeen. Hart brought cottage industries into

the market which allowed her to reach out and expand her efforts to relieve poverty,

with a strong regional focus on County Donegal. While she established outlets to sell her

wares in London, she also created schools and training centers to produce better quality artistic products.43 Janice Heiland notes that Hart's project was a "complex set of

gendered and classed relationships between production and consumption, collaboration and exploitation, and exhibition and display."44 The exploitation arose

from the imperialist tint to Hart and Aberdeen's work, taking products produced by

poor, rural Irish peasants and selling to the wealthy elite of Britain and the United

States.

Aberdeen founded the 1. 1. A. in 1886, partially inspired by Hart's work with the D. I. F.45 She frequently purchased Hart's wares at exhibitions and small shows held

in aristocratic Estates. More importantly, her keen interest in fine hand-made crafts,

Ireland and Irish Home Rule fit well within an Irish home industry organization. Better

connected and better funded than Hart, the I. I.A. and Aberdeen received far more

attention for their work. A rivalry between the organizations inevitably arose over the

competition to market cottage industries, as well as over their ideological differences.

Though Aberdeen did not share the anger Hart had over the British role in Irish history,

she had a famous compassion for the Irish people. Aberdeen's support of Home Rule

42 Ibid., p. 37. 43 Ibid., p. 15. 44IbId. 45 "Irish Industries at Chicago," Belfast News-letter, 9 Feb. 1893.

30 differed from Hart's, as she saw a Home Rule that still included the British crown. Hart blamed the English aristocracy for the misery in Ireland and ensured the D. I. F. avoided falling under the I.I.A.'s umbrella due to their high British aristocratic membership.47

Hart and Aberdeen's rivalry went beyond British aristocratic circles.

Throughout Ireland, the rivalry between the two women was mentioned with the Irish press usually siding with Aberdeen. At a meeting of the I. I.A. the mayor of Cork remarked that Aberdeen created her village first and was then followed by Hart. This was true in the sense that Aberdeen's held the first concession, but the mayor failed to mention that the concession was initially Hart's. He went on to state that "as far as the

South of Ireland was concerned they were entirely in touch with Lady Aberdeen. . . He regretted that this friction should exist."48 As this drama took place at an I. I.A. meeting, some of the broader statements of support were likely a product of the setting. Also of note, County Cork was outside of the D.I.F.'s region of focus so the lack of support for

Hart in southwest Ireland is unsurprising. There was conflict surrounding the naming of the two Irish villages, as well. Aberdeen had selected the "Irish Industries Village" as the title for her village while Hart selected the "Irish Village." The I. I.A. stated that it "had no objection to Ms Harte's [sic] undertaking, but they did object to her calling it the "Irish

Village," when their exhibition was called the Irish Industrial Village three months previously."49 The Cork mayor announced that the mayors of Ireland50 sent a statement

46 Janice Heiland, "Exhibiting Ireland: The Donegal Industrial Fund in London and Chicago," RACAR, vol. 29, no. 1-2, (2004), p. 37. 47IbId. 48 "Irish Industries Association Village in Chicago," Cork Constitution, 2 June 1893.

31 of support for Lady Aberdeen, with the exception of the mayor of Belfast. The mayors' letter stated that Aberdeen's village was more "representative" of all sections of the community.52 Labelling the villages was a public airing of the Hart-Aberdeen conflict prior to the fair, which is explored below. The titles of the villages were resolved in early

June 1893, when Aberdeen's village was given the designation of the "Irish Industrial Village" while Hart's was given the "Donegal Irish Village."53 The Freeman's Journal indicated that it was a victory for Aberdeen, but Hart was referring to her village as a "typical Donegal village," seven months before the fair opened.54 Hart may not have viewed it as a defeat considering the regional approach of her organization fit better with the more specific label.

Both Hart and Aberdeen were Home Rule supporters advocating for improvements in the life of the rural peasantry of Ireland. While Aberdeen was a patron of Hart in the early 1880's, forming the I. I.A. caused permanent tensions between them.

They shared views on many levels but their social separation filtered into their organizations' differences and, eventually, their villages' differences. The rivalry began in Britain and reached new levels at the World's Fair. Their split and the two resulting villages reflected the two women's organizational and personal visions of Ireland.

The mayors referred to were from the following cities: Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, Wexford, Sligo, Drogheda and Clonmel. 51 Cork Constitution, 2 June 1893. 52 Ibid. 53 "The Irish Village at Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 6 June 1893. 54 "Is a Work of Piety: Mrs. Ernest Hart's Good deeds Among the Poor of Ireland," Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 Nov. 1892, p. 26.

32 The Hart-Aberdeen Conflict

The two Irish villages began as a single enterprise, to be constructed by Hart and the Donegal Industrial Fund. Following the founding of the D. I. F., Hart began exhibiting its products with the 1884 International Health Exhibition in South Kensington.55 She exposed D. I. F. goods to aristocratic classes in an effort to gain attention and funding. As she grew to understand the "power of display," she expanded her efforts to bring her goods to the public.56 It was not until 1888 at Olympia that this took the shape of a re-creation of an Irish village. Heiland notes that the twelve cottage village at Olympia was romantic and included elements utilized at Chicago five years later: a Celtic cross, ruins of an old Irish tower, actual Donegal workers and thatched cottages that were praised for their "authenticity."57 Hart's success at Olympia combined with the success of the ethnological villages at the 1889 Paris Exposition, laid the groundwork for an Irish village at Chicago.

The idea of creating an Irish village at the Chicago World's Fair was Hart's and Aberdeen herself acknowledged this:

The idea of an Irish village had first been evolved by Mrs. Ernest Hart, in connection with her Donegal Industrial fund, but we persuaded her that it would be better for all concerned if the Irish

Heiland, "Exhibiting Ireland," p. 33. Ibid. Ibid., p. 34.

33 Industries Association and the Donegal Industrial Fund combined for a joint effort, each taking shares of the expenses and profits.58 In this excerpt, Aberdeen acknowledged Hart's initiation of the effort while at the same time being slightly evasive by stating that it "would be better for all concerned" if Hart accepted the help of the U.A.. The Chicago Daily Tribune, in a November 1892 piece on

Hart's work in Ireland, mentioned the initial stages of the village as well as Aberdeen's inclusion as a co-operator,

The Irish Industrial Village at the World's Fair, which is being arranged by Mrs. Hart, promises to be one of the most interesting of the many industrial exhibits. It will present a typical Donegal village, with the picturesque and beautiful Donegal Castle as one of its features. . . Mrs. Hart is carrying out this project with the cooperation of the Irish Industrial Association, of which Lady Aberdeen is President.59 In a later issue, Hart told the Tribune that the inclusion of the I. I.A. was to provide financial support: "Mrs. Hart claims that it was wholly through her efforts that this concession was granted, and that she was to co-operate with [the] Irish Industries

Association in the carrying out of the plan on the stipulation that this association furnish the necessary cash to back the enterprise."60 Following the division of the two organizations, Hart claimed she was intimidated into accepting the I. I.A. as a partner in the Chicago endeavour:

I expressed myself as extremely unwilling to cooperate with a society which was newly constituted and not corporated. It was intimated that if I did not consent to the cooperation [,] influence would be used in Chicago to get the promised concession taken

Aberdeen, We Twa: Vol. 1, p. 323. Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 Nov. 1892, p. 26. Chicago Daily Tribune, 28 Nov. 1892, p. 1.

34 away from me. Impelled by these influences!,] I agreed to carry out my village scheme with the Irish Industries Association.61 Aberdeen's account and articles written before the split made it seem as an unwilling but mutually beneficial relationship. Aberdeen had given Hart twice the £1000 the British government had given the D. I. F.62 Aberdeen was a supporter of Hart's early work with the D. I. F. as well as the village they were to construct in Chicago but it was an uneasy union of rivals from different social strata.

Not long after the I. I.A. joined Hart's project, Hart abandoned the effort in frustration. Aberdeen spoke of their differences, which resulted in a meeting being adjourned to allow both parties "to consider what could be done to come to an agreement."63 Instead, Aberdeen noted that Hart travelled to Chicago to receive a concession for a second Irish village.64 Aberdeen wrote of being surprised, but proceeded with plans for her village. In an interview with the Chicago Daily Tribune,

Hart claimed she was pushed out after the I. I.A. joined: "Mrs. Hart had labored to obtain the concessions, believing that it would be granted jointly to the two organizations but later found to her surprise that the Irish Industries Association had been forwarded the necessary papers from Chicago and that she had, so she claims, been frozen out of the enterprise."65 Hart attacked the members of the I. I.A. involved in the planning, avoiding the use of names, for doing little to no work and were "expecting to reap glory and

Aberdeen, We Twa Vol. 1, p. 323. Ibid., p. 324. Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 Nov. 1892, p. 1.

35 honor from the plans and work originally suggested by herself." Hart also accused the

I. I.A. of including a "commercial man" from a woollen house seeking profits from the sales.67 Hart outlined the legal battle that surrounded the "co-operation" of the two organizations which escalated to the involvement of Sir Charles Russell, the Solicitor

General of England when the I. I.A. failed to deliver the promised funding of £2000.

Russell sided with Hart, citing the failure of the I. I.A. to provide funds on the agreed upon date in the spring of 1892. He recommended that they either renegotiate or separate and leave Hart in the position that she was in prior to joining the I. I.A.68 The article concluded with the matter unsettled but indicated that the I. I.A. was proceeding with plans to construct a village and Hart was in Chicago with the financial means to fund her own village.

Peter White, the Honorary Secretary of the I. I.A. and the eventual supervisor of Aberdeen's village,69 provided a brief response to Hart the next day in the Chicago

Tribune. White avoided any details and simply praised Hart for her work in County

Donegal and remarked that "the cooperation of Mrs. Hart in the use of any space she may require would not only be promptly honoured but welcomed by the Irish Industries Association."70 White's attitude matched the evasiveness of Aberdeen in her memoirs, as well as in her speeches leading up to the fair. During a February 1893 speech in

Dublin, Aberdeen discussed the split with Hart: "... a plan of co-operation with Mrs.

66ibid. 67 Ibid. 68lbid. 69 Peter White would pass away shortly before the opening of the fair in 1893 and his widow would take his place as Aberdeen's representative at the village throughout the fair. 70 "As to the Irish Village," Chicago Daily Tribune, 29 Nov. 1892, p. 8.

36 Ernest Hart. That plan, owing to circumstances, has not been found workable, and we are now carrying on the Village on behalf of Irish Industries Association alone."71

Aberdeen avoided specifics but the split was well known in Ireland. She addressed it in a cordial manner, during a routine I. I.A. speech on her tour across Ireland preceding her trip to Chicago for the fair's opening.

Though both sides acknowledged the split, the reasons are unclear. Hart's description to the Chicago Tribune made the split appear to be a legal and financial disagreement. Aberdeen and the I. I.A. avoided specific discussions of the division and publicly attributed it to an unworkable relationship. In her memoirs, Aberdeen painted the split as sudden and unexpected when she claimed she found out Hart had disappeared to file a separate concession unbeknownst to Aberdeen. No specific disagreements over how Ireland was represented surfaced as a public reason for the separation of the two women. However, the resulting villages were different enough to indicate their widely diverging views on the appropriate representation of an Irish village.

In Aberdeen's speech, she quickly followed her announcement of a separate village with the following: "We have substituted Blarney Castle for Donegal Castle to the great satisfaction of our friends in America."72Aberdeen's immediate decision to change

Donegal Castle to the more widely known Blarney Castle hints at the different visions the two women had of an Irish rural village. Hart's initial selection of Donegal reflected

71 "The Irish Industries Association," Freeman's Journal, 21 Feb. 1893. 72 Ibid.

37 the regional focus of her organization, as well as village. Aberdeen replaced it with a

more popular tourist attraction, Blarney Castle, which indicated Aberdeen's desire for

greater American appeal rather than regional re-creation. Aberdeen's village grew into a

collection of scenes and objects from all over rural Ireland. In addition to Blarney Castle

from County Cork, Aberdeen's village included representations of the Rock of Cashel

from County South Tipperary, Muckross Abbey from County Kerry and Aberdeen's

cottage from County Mayo. Aberdeen compiled a decoupage of rural Ireland's tourist

destinations within the walls of her village.

The Donegal Industrial Village on the Midway Plaisance appeared to be

analogous to Lady Aberdeen's presentation of an Irish village. They were viewed as so

similar that Heiland notes that even contemporary writers on the 1893 World's Fair often mistake Aberdeen as the creator of both villages.73 However, they had subtle

differences which were in line with their respective organizations. Hart's village was not

only a far more regional construction of a north western Irish village but it also

presented a more overtly political stance. Months before the fair, in the early stages of

Hart's cooperation with the I. I.A., she made it clear to the Chicago Tribune that it was to

be a regional representation "It will present a typical Donegal village, with the picturesque and beautiful Donegal Castle as one of the features."74 The village was more

a typical northern Irish rural village. Hart's selection of girls to occupy her village focussed on skilled Donegal artisans. An article in the Freeman's Journal noted that the

73 Heiland notes in British and Irish Home Arts and Industries that Jeanne Madeline Weimann incorrectly listed both villages as I. I.A. projects in her book The Fair Women. 74 Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 Nov. 1892, p. 26.

38 Hart's girls came from Donegal or Ulster and all had talents in crafts. Another northern

Irish feature Hart included was the "wishing chair" from the Giant's Causeway in County Antrim.76 The article claims that it was authentic; "The "wishing chair" imported from Ireland . . . being composed of two basilica rocks from the Giant's Causeway."77 The regional character of Hart's village was reflected by her selection of Donegal Castle and especially, her selection of local girls.

As she was less concerned with the broad appeal of her village, Hart was more willing than Aberdeen to include features which indicated her nationalism. The use of the O'Connell Memorial Church as a prominent feature of her village reflected this approach. Hart departed from her regional focus in order to include a nationalist element. Heiland describes the significance of including the Church, "A patriot could also read the political into the exhibition: Hart included a model of the Memorial Chapel dedicated to Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), the "greatest leader of Catholic Ireland.""78

While Aberdeen's village attracted far more attention from the press, Hart's village received support from nationalist newspapers who praised her inclusion of the

O'Connell Church, notably the Kerry Sentinel. The Sentinel expressed its joy when it was reported that the Church would be a feature in Hart's village, "the now celebrated

O'Connell Memorial Church that is being erected ... at Caherciveen . . . this great edifice to the glory of God and the memory of the man who unriveted the chains from

75 "Donegal Workers for Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 17 Apr. 1893. 76 "The "Wishing Chair,"" Kerry Sentinel, 19 Aug. 1893. 77 Ibid. 78 Heiland, "Exhibiting Ireland," pp. 40-41.

39 the limbs of the Catholics or Ireland." The article's primary focus was the discussion of the church's construction in Ireland and Hart's village was treated as supplementary information. The Sentinel did acknowledge the re-creation's importance to Irish-

Americans, "All lovers of the old land and admirers of O'Connell who visit the World's

Fair, may also help by going into the Donegal Irish village (Mrs. Hart's) and purchasing photographs of O'Connell, of the church."80 O'Connell was an important individual for the predominantly Catholic Irish west as he was the man who brought Catholic emancipation to Ireland in the early nineteenth century. He also was an important organizer of the independence movement that followed Catholic emancipation and became an important nationalist figure.

Aberdeen was conscious of maintaining a neutral ¡mage for her village; she avoided any discussion of Home Rule in regards to the Irish Industrial Village. Her position as an aristocrat along with her, and her husband's, close ties to the British government were well known to fair visitors. This gave her far more coverage in the press as well as a more prominent place in guide books, which usually disregarded

Hart's village altogether. Part of the broad appeal of Aberdeen's village was the ambiguity of its connection with Irish nationalism.

An incident involving the presence of a British flag served as an example of

Aberdeen's elisions regarding her Home Rule support. On October 21 1893, near the end of the fair, her village came under attack by a group of Irish-Americans. The Cork

79 "The O'Connell Memorial Church," Kerry Sentinel, 12 Apr. 1893. 80 "The O'Connell Memorial Church," Kerry Sentinel, 30 Aug. 1893.

40 Constitution described the attack as "a body of excited Irish men, who, proceeding in a

body to the 'village' in which Irish industries are practically illustrated and

demonstrated, denounced the action of the authorities in having the Union Jack flag hoisted in the centre of the 'village.'"81 The article continued, noting that a crowd formed around the men, loudly shouting their support. "Thus encouraged and incited, the body of Irish patriots applied themselves to frantically endeavouring to pull down the British national flag."82 The group was broken up and leaders were apprehended by fair officials after violence broke out. The Freeman's Journal and the Galway Vindicator featured accounts of the event as well. Aberdeen discussed the affair in her memoirs

but downplayed its seriousness. Aberdeen described it as "wanton mischief" and spent more time describing her leniency in releasing the perpetrators.83 Aberdeen noted that this was not the only time the flag came under attack. Three times it had to be

replaced, eventually leading to the permanent inclusion of a fair guard to protect the Union Jack.84

It was not just nationalists who raised issue with Aberdeen's village and the British flag. Through the first month of the fair, the flag was not present overtop of the village. In a Chicago Tribune article, dated May 29 1893, a cablegram was published describing the situation in London as the Tories attacked the Liberals over "the refusal of the Earl of Aberdeen to hoist the British flag over the Irish Department at the Chicago

"The Union of Hearts," Cork Constitution, 23 Oct. 1893. Ibid. Aberdeen, We Twa Vol. 1, p. 333. Ibid., p. 334.

41 World's Fair." The manager of Aberdeen's village responded to the news in the same article:

The Village of the Irish Industries is not a department of the British exhibit. ... It is not, therefore under British protection, and there is no good reason why the British flag should float over it. . . . The funds to establish the village were contributed not only by men of all political parties but also by American gentlemen of Irish sympathies. ... It will be seen by this that the association is absolutely non-political in character, that it is the work of an incorporated company, that it is in no way connected with the British Government, and has received no support at its hands. The absurdity of an attempt to make political capital out of an incident of this kind is at once apparent, since there is no reason why the village should fly the British or any other flag, its objects being purely industrial.86 Apparently, a reason to include the British flag was found as it soon became a feature of the village. Political pressures in London on Lord Aberdeen forced Lady Aberdeen to make a sacrifice, in terms of having a politically neutral village. It demonstrated that despite Aberdeen's omission of discussing Home Rule in connection with her village and the I. I.A., it still attracted negative attention from both sides of the Home Rule debate.

Hart's regional focus and Aberdeen's decoupage of Irish features was seen in the conflict between the two women for naming rights for the Irish villages. Aberdeen's was given what was viewed by her supporters the more prestigious title of "Irish Industrial Village," while Hart's village was given the title of "Donegal Irish Village."87

Hart's title reflected the regional nature of her village and Aberdeen's suggested the ambiguous and broad definition she wanted for her own. This was indicative of their organizational approaches. Hart's organization distinguished itself from the larger home

"It isn't a Political Affair at All," The Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1893, p. 3. Ibid. Freeman's Journal, 6 June 1893.

42 industry associations for its focus on quality. Hart felt Irish cottage industries were

producing art that needed to be respected as such. Aberdeen acted more as a broker for

the I. I.A., attempting to create luxury items that attracted wealthier buyers. She

focussed on creating depots for the U.A. in wealthy areas of Britain and the United

States. Umbrella organizations like the I. I.A. used mostly amateurs and often promoted the work as recreation.88 Aberdeen's approach was to treat cottage industries as

producers of consumer products. Both women felt their approach offered the best

chance of success for their industry. These approaches were also reflected in the villages' respective success. Financially, Aberdeen's village grossed $138,000, twice that grossed by Hart's efforts.89 However, Hart's crafts won more awards and acclaim.90 Aberdeen succeeded in constructing a village which attracted more visitors while Hart

succeeded in earning artistic praise.

Contesting Authenticity

Hart and Aberdeen's early experiences of Ireland occurred through planned

visits from Britain. David Brett discussed how wealthy members of the British "center"

visiting "peripheral" Ireland resulted in the rural representation of Ireland by the center:

"'Peripheral' countries and communities can come to see themselves as picturesque

and internalise the views of the 'centre/ and how an imagery created 'for-others' can coincide with that created 'for-self.'"91 These views are, and were, created and

88 Heiland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries, pp. 28-9. 89 Harris, "Selling National Culture," p. 95. 90 "Irish Awards at the World's Fair," Freeman's Journal, 28 Oct. 1893. 91 Brett, p. 39

43 reinforced through tourism. As visitors continue to visit rural Ireland and their

expectations are met by locals who comply with them in order to profit, the "cycle of

expectation" is validated. This circuit is common for nations under the influence from a

powerful center. Predominantly discussed in scholarship with relevance to Caribbean nations,92 tourism has a strong implication on the global perception of a nation. The

Irish villages at the Chicago World's Fair offer another example of the "cycle of

expectation."

Hart and Aberdeen sought "authenticity" when they toured Ireland for

objects and people that would re-site Ireland in Chicago. The villages fit within the

discussion in tourism scholarship over "authentic" experiences, especially in terms of

the lengths Hart and Aberdeen went to in order to gather authentic Irish features. The

next chapter discusses the popularity of these features and how fair visitors viewed the

villages as "authentically Irish." Hart and Aberdeen made significant tours of Ireland in

the run-up to the World's Fair. Aberdeen's tour captured more newspaper coverage. It

consisted of collecting materials for display, girls to work the exhibit and speak to or

establish I. I.A. societies or depots. In collecting materials, Aberdeen visited local cottage industries and industrial schools.93 When she left, Aberdeen had a collection of

"specimens of Irish work from almost every corner of Ireland - from Youghal, Kenmare,

Killarney, Wexford, New Ross, Limerick, Kinsale, lnnishmacsaint, Birr, Cappoquin, Dublin,

Annette Pritchard and Nigel Morgan, "Encountering Scopophilia, sensuality and Desire: engendering Tahiti," in Pritchard, N, Morgan, I. Ateljevic and C. Harris, Tourism and Gender: Embodiment, Sensuality and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 159. 93 "Lady Aberdeen in the South," Freeman's Journal, 16 Feb. 1893.

44 Cong, Newry, Clones, Down, Donegal/ according to the Freeman's Journal. The information she gathered also aided her ideas of constructing an "authentic" Irish village. The Galway Vindicator wrote that the village was where "men and women from the Old Country [could] be seen at their usual occupations, at home."95 Both villages strove to re-create the day-to-day lives of the Irish peasant.

Keeping the Irish villages "authentic" meant classifying them as rural, maintaining an absence of modern objects while upholding contemporary values. Hazel

Tucker discusses how removal of modern images was law in the cave-homes of the people of Goreme, Turkey as a method to continue its romantic, primitive appeal, tied to its nearly two thousand year-old origins.96 Visitors to the site viewed pre-modern lives as "real." In going to Goreme, they were seeking authenticity from other times.97

Visitors to the Irish villages at the fair were seeking similar glimpses of authenticity. The static nature of the Irish countryside allowed it to be a representation of the present while still being viewed nostalgically by visitors from urban or developed areas. At

Chicago, the villages recalled an "authentic" rural past for most Americans visiting.

Much like other white villages at exhibitions of the period, the Irish villages were meant to emphasize rural values that were rooted in tradition, language, and customs.98

Visitors were aware that they were not entering an actual rural Irish village, but they still wanted to experience something close to what they imagined, with as many Irish

94 "Ireland at the World's Fair," Freeman's Journal, 19 Apr. 1893. 95 "The World's Fair," Galway Vindicator, 3 May 1893. 96 Hazel Tucker, "Welcome to Flintstones-Land: Contesting Place and Identity in Goreme, Central Turkey" in Simon Coleman and Mike Crang ed. Tourism (Berghahn Books, 2002), p. 148. 97lbid, p. 149. 98 Brett, Construction of Heritage (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996), p. 82.

45 features as they could consume in the brief amount of time their visit lasted. Displaying these values in an "authentic" setting fulfilled the visitor's vision of the rural ¡deal, even in a context outside of Irish countryside.

Beyond the representation of relatable rural ideals, both villages sought to validate their lrishness in order to reassure visitors of its authenticity. The connection made to Irish-Americans was important in this respect. When Irish-Americans viewed the villages and validated them by comparing it to personal memories, the villages became authentic. Irish descendants in America were seen as the main audience for the villages. As noted in the Galway Vindicator, "the Irish Village . . . will be one of the most attractive parts of the exhibition to the millions of the Irish race who have built up homes for themselves and families in the Great Western Republic."99 The villages were constructed to draw on real memories and recollections, adding another dimension to the ideal. The Belfast News-Letter discussed this goal in regards to Hart's village:

As many Irish architectural features as possible will be introduced so as to recall to emigrants to the new country memories of the old, and create interest in America in an Ireland which is the native country in common of men and women of all shades of politics. It was a clearly stated goal of Hart and Aberdeen that the villages were meant to promote interest among Irish-Americans and American businessmen. Appealing to their

Irish roots served to replace a journey to the actual Irish countryside Hart and Aberdeen were working to support.

Galway Vindicator, 3 May 1983. 5 "Metropolitan Gossip," Belfast News-Letter, 27 Feb. 1893.

46 By placing industry in the context of the home, free from the unappealing side effects of industrialization, the Irish villages maintained the rural ideal as well as appealed to American capitalist traits. This was part of constructing a rural past while reinforcing modern values. As Harris discusses, the villages demonstrated the skill of the Irish worker, showing they have economic value.101 Fighting British perceptions of Irish idleness was one of Hart's goals when she founded the D. I. F.102 Home industries' efforts were often to make Ireland useful to the "center," be it Britain or America. This was a further demonstration of Ireland's peripheral status, striving to show use as a producer of goods for the "center" while avoiding the visual and moral "pitfalls" of an urban, industrial center.

The most prominent example of the importance of constructing "authentic" villages pertained to Aberdeen's Blarney Castle and whether the Blarney Stone that

American visitors were flocking to kiss, was "authentic." Considering that the real

Blarney Stone faces its own questions regarding the validity of its alleged past, it presents an interesting point of discussion of authenticity and display. The Blarney

Stone's history dates back to the fifteenth century legend of the castle's builder, Cormac

MacCarthy, kissing a castle's stone before successfully arguing a case in court. It was not until the nineteenth century that tour guides created the custom of escorting the public to the stone for a kiss. By 1870, the famous stone had gone missing and was replaced by a substitute, which was promised to be "as effective as the original." 103 As discussed

101 Harris, "Selling National Culture," p.93. 102 Heiland, "Exhibiting Ireland," p.30. 103 Richard Marsh, The Legends & Lands of Ireland (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2006), pp. 108-9.

47 earlier, replacing Donegal Castle with Blarney Castle was the first change Aberdeen made after the split from Hart and the D. I. F.. The Blarney Stone was the main attraction of Aberdeen's village, which led to its exposure as a fake. The Cork Constitution described how the stone was exposed as inauthentic by the United States Consul in

Queenstown, County Cork: "When the cablegram from America reached here [Ireland] stating that hundreds of politicians were flocking to the Irish village at the World's Fair to kiss the Blarney Stone which it is alleged Lady Aberdeen was instrumental in having sent to Chicago."104 The article described the Consul's visit to Blarney Castle and his discovery that "the stone had never been removed from its position, not even a slice of it had been taken, but remained there as ever, intact."105 Aberdeen inquired as to its availability for the fair but was never granted permission for its export to Chicago.106

The Cork Constitution carried a Bradford Observer article covering how the distress over the stone's questionable authenticity reached a point where litigation was threatened: "There is in the Irish village at Chicago a stone which Lady Aberdeen said was a genuine and historical article from Blarney. In this belief it has been kissed by tens of thousands of visitors, but it now turns out the Countess of Aberdeen was mistaken.

Sir George Colthurst, on whose estate the Blarney Stone lies, threatened Lady Aberdeen with an action for libel."107 The Constitution preceded the article by saying that "A piece of threatened litigation over the Blarney Stone, which, if it had come into court, would

104 "The Blarney Stone," Cork Constitution, 21 June 1893. 105 Ibid..... 106 Freeman's Journal, 11 Sept, 1893. 107 "A Bogus Blarney Stone," Cork Constitution, 26 Aug. 1893.

48 have been highly amusing." The Constitution was clearly not as concerned with the

authenticity of the Irish villages as the visitors to the fair or the owner of Blarney Castle

were. The article noted that Aberdeen apologised for the confusion, claiming that there

was a stone from Blarney in the village. The Constitution stated that "one stone from Blarney is as good as another."109 This was not the view of Sir Colthurst, or the US

Consul and the interests he represented.

Aberdeen issued a letter in response, which was run in the Chicago Tribune on September 21st:

In the Irish Village ... an exact reproduction of Blarney Castle (at two thirds the size) was put up and, in order to complete its attractions, a reproduction of the Blarney Stone was also placed in the same position as the original. But our Executive Committee that the Blarney Stone are not responsible for any statement to the effect that the Blarney Stone, which is visited by so many thousands at Blarney Castle, has ever been removed.110 Aberdeen's letter concluded with a telegram from the village's manager: "Never stated to any one it was the stone. Said always a stone from Blarney. Not responsible for anything stated in newspaper."111 The press did frequently refer to the stone as

authentic, either the actual Blarney Stone or a piece of the actual Blarney Stone. The telegram also indicates that it may have been inferred that it was the actual Blarney

Stone in Aberdeen's village; an inference Aberdeen did not attempt to discourage until the issue was brought to the press. As seen in the introduction, part of the villagers'

performance was convincing the visitors that the stone was in fact, genuine.

108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 "Blarney Stone Not in Midway," Chicago Daily Tribune, 21 Sept. 1893, p. 2. 111 Ibid.

49 Hart was not silent on the issue of the Blarney Stone either. She informed the New York Times near the end of the fair that "the stone on exhibition is not the Blarney Stones, nor even a portion of it."112 She continued: "I wrote to the owner of the stone for drawings of it that I might have a facsimile made and placed on exhibition. I have just received the drawings and an affidavit, which dispels all doubt as to the spurious character of the stone now on exhibition."113 This article presents another manifestation of the conflict between Hart and Aberdeen and their different visions of how to construct an Irish village at the fair.

The Irish press, who were closely following the fair, demonstrated pride in having Irish villages as major attractions. Maintaining "authenticity" increased the gratification felt back home. A description of the village published in the Clare Journal praised the authenticity presented by the milk maids: "it is Irish milk and butter too, remember, for it is the yield of Irish cows imported for the fair, and pastured in the green Irish meadows of the Illinois prairies."114 The Illinois grass was deemed "authentically Irish" due to the landscape's similarity to the Irish countryside. Even the jaunting cars had to be authentic. The jaunting car is a two-wheeled horse carriage that was typical conveyance in Ireland and is used for ushering site-seeing tourists around

Ireland, often accompanied by a jovial local narrating the trip with personal anecdotes and local myths. Regarding the popularity of the jaunting car already present at the fair:

"amid the infinite variety of vehicle exhibited at the Fair this car [jaunting car] attracted

112 "Not the True Blarney Stone," New York Times, 16 Sept. 1893. 113IbId. 114 "The Irish Village at the World's Fair," excerpt from the Boston Pilot published in Clare Journal, 20 July 1893.

50 admiring notice for its gracefulness of design, lightness of material, and stability of structure."115 Pride was taken in the efforts and success of constructing "authentic" villages in Chicago.

The wide presence of Celtic re-creations and artefacts at the many Irish exhibits helped display a deeper, ancient national image of Ireland. These included the

Cross of Cong, a twelfth century relic once carried by the last monarch of Ireland, King

Roderic O'Conor, the 1400 year old bell of St. Patrick, and the supposed oldest instrument in the world, the Brian Boru harp.116 In this group of objects there were connections to ancient Celtic kings and St. Patrick. The Celtic artefacts helped to form the narrative of the Irish nation, constructing a shared history dating back 1500 years.

As Brett notes, "The display of authentic objects was believed to lead to 'vivification' of the national past."117 The national identity of Ireland is both created and reinforced in the villages' effort to create an "authentic" vision of Ireland and its past.

Hart and Aberdeen were both constructing the villages partially based on their own tourist experiences in the Irish countryside. Irena Ateljevic and Stephen Dorne argue that entrepreneurs' and organizational leaders' consumption of places and landscape is reflected in the process of producing tourism representations.118 These are the creators of images, in this case exhibits, of the nation. They react to expectations

115 "Irish Jaunting Cars for Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 31 Aug. 1893. 116 "Ireland's Exhibits at the World's Fair," Connaught Telegraph, 5 Aug. 1893. 117 Brett, p. 84. 118 Irena Ateljevic and Stephen Dorne "Cultural Circuits of Tourism: Commodities, Place and Re- Consumption," in Alan W. Lew, Colin Michael Hall, Allen W. Williams ed. A Companion to Tourism, (Wiley- Blackwell, 2004), p.297.

51 but also direct the construction of representations by use of "place-myths" of Ireland.

C. Micheal Hall's article, "Geography, Marketing and the Selling of Places," examines how marketing efforts package places around real or imagined cultural traditions.119 The villages at the Chicago World's Fair focussed on presenting an Ireland centered on its traditions: ancient castles were at the center of both villages, Celtic art and crosses filled the souvenir stands and art displays, Irish dancing and music were featured daily. Hall notes that place-marketing in the nineties was meant to construct a new ¡mage of a place to replace negative images attributed to it.120 The villages are an example of this in the nineteenth century. Hart and Aberdeen were both attempting to dispel the stereotype of Irish idleness as well as the violence attributed to the nationalist movement. The villages were constructed as an ideal countryside as every cottage featured a worker in a different field toiling away at their craft.

The villages were deeply rooted in a representation of "home." As a product of home industry organizations, the villages' basic foundations were on expanding the arena of the home to included productive industry. The cottages were built to open up the homes of the rural Irish people to the visitor to the fair. It was, as Dean MacCannell states, a "staged intimacy."121 It was important to make the visitors' experience of the home as real as possible. Beyond the literal re-creation of a home, it fit into discussions of the "home" in tourism theory. The Irish countryside connected with other rural

119 C. Michael Hall "Geography, Marketing and the Selling of Places," Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing Vol.6, no.3/4 (1997), p.67. 120 Ibid, p. 64. 121 MacCannell "Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings," American Journal ofSociology, Vol. 79, no. 3, (1973), p. 596.

52 depictions of different nations. It recalls a simpler, ideal past, where "the nation" was born.122 The rural ideal is present in American national identity, especially in the time of industrialization which featured a strong reaction against the harshness of urban life.

The villages connected with this yearning for "home" which was central to producing a tourist experience in Chicago.

Conclusion

Hart and Aberdeen's conflict over the construction of an Irish village was a battle between different women, organizations, visions and strategies for promoting

Ireland. Hart's interviews hint at the strong dislike she had for Aberdeen and the aristocracy. Aberdeen was either condescending or evasive in her references to Hart.

The quick dissolution of their joint effort was inevitable. Along with their villages, the conflict highlighted Hart and Aberdeen's different approaches to home industries and rural poverty in Ireland. Hart's D.I. F. was a focussed, regional and experienced effort focussing on highly skilled and artistic work while Aberdeen's I. I.A. was new, had wide- ranging goals and hoped to incorporate smaller organizations, like the D. I. F., under its umbrella to gain as many outlets as they could to distribute products. The villages were in the complicated position of idealized representations of the Irish countryside constructed by organizations facing the reality of Irish rural poverty.

Brett, p. 22.

53 Chapter Two: Constructing and Consuming the Landscape of the Villages

Entrance to the Village is by a turnstile on the north, through a doorway that is copied from a chapel among the ruins of Cashel . . . Passing beneath it, the cool green court and cloisters of Muckross Abbey are entered, and in this quiet and restfulness it is difficult to believe we are in rushing Modern Chicago.1 The Boston Pilot writer had entered Lady lshbel Aberdeen's Irish Industrial Village. From the cloister, visitors were directed into the first of seventeen thatched cottages present in the village. They observed Irish girls demonstrating lacework, knitting, wool-spinning and milk-churning as they moved room to room. Another room displayed photographs of Irish scenery and, in another, bog oak carvings were available for purchase. Finally, the visitors emerged from the cottage and into the courtyard.

From this point, the visitors could freely negotiate the landscape constructed by Aberdeen and the

Irish Industries Association. This included the replica of Blarney Figure 2: Celtic cross inside Aberdeen's village. Castle, which could be climbed in order to kiss the famous Blarney Stone. The court featured a collection of Celtic artefacts, placed wherever space would allow, as seen in figure 2.2 A platform in the center of the court featured performances by Irish dancers and musicians. Visitors could

1 "The Irish Village at the World's Fair," Clare Journal, 20 July 1893. 2 Image from: C. Graham, The World's Fair in Watercolors (Springfield, Mass: Cromwell & Kirkpatrick, 1893.) From the "World's Columbian Exposition Collection" Box. 1, Folder 4. from the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago Library.

54 pass by this or they could stop to observe the spectacle and even participate by dancing themselves. The visitor could also view one of the other thatched cottages lining the court, including one modelled after Aberdeen's own in Rushbrooke, County Mayo.3 That cottage served as Aberdeen's headquarters in Chicago but the other cottages featured home industry demonstrations which could be observed, models of Celtic relics which could be examined and where visitors could eat Irish food. Once the visitors were satisfied with their time, belly full of Irish stew and hands full of souvenir editions of

Celtic relics, they left the village and re-emerged onto the bustling boulevard of the

Midway Plaisance. The experience of the village began controlled and prescribed, but once the first group of cottages were exited, the visitors explored the exhibits according to their own wishes. Certain aspects were unavoidable: the music from the stage, the dairymaids serving, the thatched cottages and the Celtic artefacts. The experience was controlled and guided, as well as partially unconstrained, allowing a free flowing travel throughout the village square.

Alice Hart and Lady Aberdeen went to great lengths to produce "authentic"

Irish villages on the Midway of the Chicago World's Fair. The villages needed to fit within visitors' expectations of Ireland. Aberdeen, more than Hart, sought to fulfill these in her construction of the villages. The girls, the castle and the other elements of her village served to satisfy the visitors' expectations. The Irish villages were not only placed in juxtaposition to a World's Fair displaying revolutionary industrial progress but also the urban center of Chicago, an icon of modernity and the urban in the late nineteenth

3 Clare Journal, 20 July 1893.

55 century. The villages offered a sharp contrast for the visitor which served to heighten the impact of the rural elements of Ireland. The romantic German village offered similar contrasts. However, Ireland lacked the extensive industrial exhibits that Germany had throughout the major buildings of the fair. As discussed in the previous chapter, Ireland lacked this profile and the two romantic and rural villages remained the dominant display of Ireland at the fair.

The village was an idealized setting that fit within the Irish-American memory who often viewed it as "a perfect reproduction of a scene that must have brought many recollections of old Erin beyond the seas back to the memories of some of the visitors."4 It became a requirement for Irish descendants to visit as the Freeman's

Journal illustrated "it is the dearest spot in Jackson Park, or miles around it, for the Irish exiles. To visit it is to get a glimpse of Ireland."5 Later in the summer, the Freeman's

Journal reported the success of the villages among Irish-Americans: "The whole mass of

Irish citizens are now enthusiastically interested in the success of the Village, and hardly an Irish visitor from any part of the United States leaves without making a call."6 The

Irish-American visitors desired to experience the landscape of their families' past.

Tadhag O'Keefe discusses the role of memory in landscape formation. O'Keefe frames the discussion around landscape culturalism, how communities participate in landscape

4 "The World's Fair," Freeman's Journal, 13 May 1983. 5 "An Irish Day at Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 25 May 1893. 6 "The Irish Village at Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893.

56 formation and how they locate their identities within this landscape.7 Irish-Americans visiting the villages did not connect with their Irish roots through the milkmaids, or the craft demonstrations; it was the broader landscape of Ireland which appealed to their

Irish heritage. Appealing to Irish descendants meant constructing an idealized representation of the Irish countryside, which had become more romanticized the more distant the memory became. This highly idealized and romanticized Ireland was part of the Irish-American expectations of Ireland.

The visitors' consumption of the villages reflected the elements operating within the boundaries of the exhibits' walls. The encounter with women differed with each village and varied according to the space where the encounter occurred. The girls could either be viewed as producers of crafts or as attentive, attractive patrons serving the visitors. Once the visitor entered the village, they viewed the landscape constructed by Hart or Aberdeen. The romantic rural village was shaped through tourist expectations of the Irish countryside, ancient castles and the absence of the modern, an element of the "cycle of expectation." Where Ireland differed from other romantic constructions of the rural past on the Midway was that it was a construction of the present. Germany and Austria constructed villages of the past. Due to the large number of Irish immigrants settled in America, the construction of contemporary Irish villages was still viewed nostalgically. The images of the Irish countryside in popular imagination were static. As such, the villages can be explored as romanticized constructions of the past, while their

7 Tadhag O'Keefe, "Landscape and Memory: Historiography, Theory, Methodology," in Niamh Moore and Yvonne Whelan ed., Heritage, Memory and the Politics of Identity: New Perspectives on the Cultural Landscape (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), p. 9.

57 nature as a contemporary reconstruction was reflective of Ireland's ambiguous position in Europe in the late nineteenth century.

The Embodied Experience of the Irish Villages

The consumption of the Irish village went beyond the visual and constituted an embodied experience for the visitor, as seen in the chapter's opening quotation. When they crossed the threshold into the village, they were not only seeing thatched cottages, Celtic crosses and ancient castles but also hearing Irish music, feeling the Irish turf and smelling Irish buttermilk, experiences beyond the visual. They were engaged in performances with Irish workers, which served to heighten their encounter with Ireland.

The peasants within the village indulged and encouraged this performance, as did the visitors, as the verbal exchanges were an important aspect of the tourist experience of rural Ireland. The Irish villages were not alone in this performance, as the other exhibits on the Midway promised the same escape to an exotic land, whether it was the Street of Cairo or the Viennese Town Square. In these two respects, the visitors' multi-sensory experience and the peasant-visitor performance, the villages reflected an embodied tourist encounter common on the Midway. Sound, touch, taste and performance operated together to form this experience and these elements are explored below.

Sound

The role of music in the villages heightened the feeling of entering Ireland.

Visitors had expectations of the kind of music that would be played in an authentic Irish village and were not disappointed. "The concerts, which take place four times a week,

58 and the ordinary musical exercises, given three or four times a day, are also unmistakably Irish."8 They were iconic Irish tunes played on characteristic Irish instruments: "In a few minutes you hear the 'Bells of Shandon' or 'Kate Kearney,' 'the Meeting of the Waters' or 'The Last Rose of Summer.'"9 Other descriptions of the villages recalled the music in a more romantic, nostalgic manner.

The sight of the harp and the sweep of the young girl's hand bringing out the echoes many of them had heard last under the Irish sky, was too much for them, and they went wild over the music, to the embarrassment of the harpist, but to her evident delight as well. There was Erin's sunshine in the music for them, and they were back in Ireland one May morning, glorying in the bloom of the hawthorn blossoms and daisies.10 The music is described in a romanticized manner by the Freeman's Journal with descriptions such as "Erin's sunshine" and "glorying in the bloom of hawthorn blossoms and daisies." Music played off memory to invoke images of Ireland, images that were nostalgic and idealized. With the villages presented as an idealized, romantic version of

Ireland, the music served to contribute to this construction. The music added another dimension to the experience that fulfilled the visitor's prefigured perception of Ireland.

Audio cues for the Irish villages went beyond music: "The attractions were many and various ... to listen to Irish melodies beautifully played on the harp, mandolin and violin, to hear Irish melodies sweetly sung by Miss O'Sullivan of Cahirciveen, to talk Gaelic with the Irish colleens spinning and lacemaking."11 In this case, the Gaelic language added another level of audible lrishness for the visitor. The author's ability to

8 Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893. 9IbId. 10 Freeman's Journal, 25 May 1893. 11 "The Irish Village at Chicago," Connaught Telegraph, 29 July 1893.

59 speak Gaelic allowed another level of interaction to occur. It placed him in a privileged position of interaction that other visitors did not experience. However, even those without the linguistic ability to participate in the interaction, had their experiences elevated by hearing another element of Ireland: the language. This will be explored further below, when we examine the performance when the peasants engaged the visitors.

Touch

Touch and taste were an important aspect of the villages, though less prominent in descriptions. In Aberdeen's Muckross Abbey, seen in figure 3,12 visitors could feel the bark of an elm tree brought over from Ireland.They could touch the crafts, Bog

Oak or linens and feel the turf under their feet, but it was kissing the Blarney Stone which was the highlight of Aberdeen's village, as seen in this description from the Chicago Herald Figure 3: Muckross Abbey in Aberdeen's village published in the Freeman's Journal:

Irish people are mild in their enthusiasm compared to those who do not hail from the Island of Saints. Americans are the best patrons of the stone. ... It is a comical sight to watch the laughing, jostling throng of old and young trying to conceal their half-seriousness under a mask of fun as after much chaffing and hesitation, some girl finally goes down on her knees, and gives the magic spot, or its representative, a resounding smack, and a

12 Image from: Graham, The World's Fair in Watercolors. Courtesy of the "World's Columbian Exposition Collection" Box 1. Folder 4. from the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago Library.

60 burst of applause goes up. But the coolness and self-control of the Irish attendant never forsake him, and he stands the most severe cross-examination without a blink or a smile.13 The jostling herd of people, having to follow necessary bodily movement to position themselves and the feel of the stone itself as it was kissed, were all part of the tactile experience of kissing the Blarney Stone. As discussed in the previous chapter, it was a signature Irish experience that involved re-enacting the encounter with the genuine Blarney Castle outside of Cork City. They travelled up the winding staircases, huddled amid a group of tourists anticipating the same experience. It was a communal experience with shared enthusiasm and excitement among the visitors. The anticipation of the long climb and wait combined with exhilaration of leaning back, braced by the attendant were signifiers of the experience as much as the kiss itself.

Taste

The Blarney Stone itself would have offered the visitor a taste sensation, though likely unpleasant. Taste was experienced in a more appealing incarnation. In the

Freeman's Journal, a uniquely Irish experience was described through taste: "you sit down at a table, and after disposing of a plate of Irish stew, or sandwich made of

Limerick ham with bread and butter from the Irish dairy, you can wash it down with Dublin porter, sweet buttermilk, or tea made in the world renowned Irish way."14 Every piece of food and drink is identified by its Irish source. In descriptions by the press, as well as Hart and Aberdeen themselves, the Irish region of origin was almost always

13 Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893.

61 mentioned. This helped to heighten the experience and to authenticate the villages'

"lrishness."

An excerpt from the Chicago Herald, carried in the Freeman's Journal, briefly featured taste in its description of the village: "There was butter, as sweet as a kiss from one of the Irish colleen's that made it."15 In this description, the experience of the food was tied to the encounter with dairy maid. Kevin James notes that in encounters with mountain dew girls at the Gap of Dunloe, the interactions with the girls and the perceived authenticity of the experience, took precedence over the drink they penetrated the Gap to taste.16 The innocence of the village girls as opposed to the overt sexuality of the Gap girls is discussed later in this chapter.

Performance

Visitors to the fair were active participants in the encounter with the Irish people occupying the villages, immersing themselves in the experience of Ireland. Hospitality was an important feature, as it was designated as an expected experience

Ireland, as seen in the Galway Vindicator's description of Aberdeen's village: "Irish music . . . and genuine Irish hospitality were among the characteristics that marked the formal opening of the typical Irish village which has been built on the Midway plaisance."17 The importance of hospitality to the countryside ties back to the discussion of "home" in national identity. The inns of the Danish countryside, discussed by Szilvia

15 Freeman's Journal, 25 May 1893. 16 Kevin James, "For Fatal's the Glance of Kate Kearney': Gender, Performance and Tourism in Ireland, 1850-1914" (unpublished manuscript in the author's possession). 17 "World's Fair at Chicago," Galway Vindicator, 24 May 1893.

62 Gyimothy, represented ¡deals that contrasted against urban, modern life. The Irish villages embodied those same ideals for consumption. Janice Heiland notes how in

Hart's own travels across County Donegal, the welcome she received in rural homes was a standout trait of her experience.19 Hospitality was emphasized as a key feature in the experience of the inns and the villages. It allowed the visitor to feel at home; the romanticized rural home of their past.

The Blarney and Donegal Castle turrets rose high above the Irish villages, serving as a visual beacon drawing the visitor inside. Once the threshold of a village was crossed, Irish sights were just one part of the experience of Ireland. All the senses were engaged. The visitor was able to hear Irish music and brogue, taste Irish buttermilk and feel the warmth of the stove inside an Irish peasant's cottage. Descriptions of these experiences emphasized the Irish origins over their other characteristics. The evaluation of the food or music was based on its ability to invoke "lrishness," and for the greater part of the visitors, the villages were successful. The workers in the villages served to reinforce the genuineness of what was expected of an experience of Ireland. Whether it was through reassuring the visitor of an object's "authenticity," or by embodying

"lrishness" through performance, the village worker was as important to the experience as Blarney Castle or the Celtic artefacts; they are explored below.

Szilvia Gyimothy, "Nostalgiascapes: The Renaissance of Danish Countryside Inns" in Tom O'Dell & Peter Billing, ed., Experiencescapes: Tourism, Culture, and Economy (Denmark: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2005), p. 125. 19 Janice Heiland, "Exhibiting Ireland: The Donegal Industrial Fund in London and Chicago," RACAR, Vol. 29, no. 1-2, (2004), p. 30.

63 Landscape: The People

Returning to the experience of kissing the Blarney Stone, tourist

performance was demonstrated in the interaction between the visitor and the stone's

attendant. The embodied experience of the climb and kiss has been addressed, but the

Blarney Castle attendants and other village workers served to further enhance the visit.

"Is the stone really as wonderful in its effects as they say?" asked a rural Yankee girl of a frank-looking Kilkenny man, who was one day in charge and raking in the ten cent pieces by the basketful. "Begor it is, Miss. Sure the whole world knows that," he replied, looking the perfect picture of honest conviction. . .20 As discussed in the previous chapter, the Blarney Stone was a replica with no pieces of

the original Blarney Stone. It was the attendant's role to maintain the authenticity of the

experience for the visitor. He reassured her that she was kissing the genuine Blarney

Stone which had significant meaning for the visitor, as it was an important part of her

encounter with Ireland. Reinforcing the authenticity of the experience even further was

the difference in speech between the visitor and attendant. The writer, the Freeman's

Journal's unnamed "Chicago Correspondent," recorded the Irish speech the same way

Kevin James notes that encounters with natives of the Gap of Dunloe were written in

specific ways which portrayed it as an "inter-cultural" encounter. James explores how it

was a means for the native to charm. "[W] it and strategic flattery" served to balance power in the performance.21 In the quotation from the Freeman's Journal, flattery was

important in the setting of the villages in Chicago, utilized to convince patrons of the

20 Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893. 21 James, "For Fatal's the Glance of Kate Kearney'"

64 genuine nature of the Blarney Stone. There ¡s evident a playfulness in the banter, the visitor being ever doubtful of the "authenticity" of the experience. Whether the visitor was truly convinced, the encounter was enough to warrant ten cents for a kiss of the stone for which they had already climbed several flights. Confronting and conversing with the stone's attendant was part of the experience for some of those venturing to the top of Blarney Castle.

Blarney Castle was not the only location for inquiries into the "authenticity" of the experience, as the milkmaids were also confronted by visitors searching for validation. The Freeman's Journal described such an encounter: "The milkmaids are just as ready with a plausible answer. An old Wexford woman ventured to express the opinion that ten cents-'fippence' was rather a high price to pay for a glass of buttermilk churned by an Irish girl from the product of Chicago cow, but was promptly appeased by the remark— 'You see, ma'am the duty is so high, and it costs so much to get anything over.'"22 The visitor was constantly seeking verification of the "authentic" experience of the villages. As mentioned above, Hart and Aberdeen strove to provide the most genuinely Irish features for their villages to satisfy the visitors' pursuit of the authentic.

The girls of the villages were a highlight for those who visited and an exciting experience for the girls themselves, as they themselves were tourists visiting America with Aberdeen and Hart. How these girls were chosen and presented at the fair, as seen

Freeman's Journal, 22JuIy 1893.

65 ¡? figure 4,23 was another demonstration of each woman's different approach to constructing Ireland as a tourist experience. Aberdeen's focus was on constructing a village that fulfilled visitors' expectations. This resulted in the selection of girls that was

based on their ability to appear

as "authentic" peasant girls,

whether they were or not.

Attractiveness took precedence,

idealizing the peasant girl, even

as Aberdeen feigned opposition

to such a process. Her village

included dairymaids and sales Figure 4: Craftswoman inside a cottage in Aberdeen's village. girls, who played the role of a sanitized version of the "Gap Girl" of Killarney discussed by James.24 The villages' place on the Midway facilitated this approach, as similar eroticized peasantry were present in other Western exhibits. Hart's girls were selected from the region her village was representing, the rural northwest of Ireland. In newspaper descriptions of the departing girls, the trades and skills of the girls were emphasized, as opposed to their attractiveness, which was the case with press reports on Aberdeen's girls. In visitors' encounters with the villages, the girls were widely praised and noted as a highlight of the exhibits. Beyond their popularity, they reflected the two approaches of Hart and Aberdeen to constructing an Irish village.

23 Image from: Graham, The World's Fair in Watercolors. Courtesy of the "World's Columbian Exposition Collection" Box 1. Folder 4. from the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago Library. 24 Kevin James, "For Fatal's the Glance of Kate Kearney'"

66 In Aberdeen's tour of Ireland preceding the commencement of the fair, an important feature of her collection of "authentic" Irish goods and people was her process of interviewing and selecting the girls who were to populate her Irish Industrial

Village. Aberdeen's girls were, throughout the fair, praised primarily by their attractiveness, rather than their success at demonstrating and promoting cottage industries.25 This represented a difference from Hart's village, demonstrating

Aberdeen's focus on creating wider appeal as opposed to Hart's focussed regional approach. During the selection process, there was a strong shift towards finding girls who fit the romantic idea of an attractive peasant girl. Aberdeen blamed the male presence on the selection committee in her memoirs: "Our only difficulty in regard to the selection of the girls was that the gentlemen of the party always wished to choose the prettiest, without reference to their qualifications in connection with their various industries."26 She did not elaborate on the result of the conflict and whether the girls were selected because of their fulfillment of idealized representations of Irish peasants rather than their skills in home industries. The above quotation indicates that she at least wanted to appear to have disapproved of the approach in the writing of her memoir. However as we have seen in her selection of Blarney Castle, she was inclined to take the route that attracted the most attention to her village, at the expense of a region-specific exhibit. Aberdeen viewed this as the most effective way to promote the

I. I.A. She did feature skilled craft women in her village, but the press focussed primarily

Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893. Lord and Lady Aberdeen, We Twa Vol.1, (Glasgow: W.Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1925), p. 326.

67 on the attractive milkmaids and sales girls, who lacked a strong connection to cottage industries.

Aberdeen was aware of the effectiveness of using attractive girls to garner attention for her village. In one instance, she used the girls to facilitate a meeting with

United States President Grover Cleveland. She wrote of the event in her memoirs. Upon hearing that the President was boarding a train, ""Then," said Lady [Aberdeen] instantly,

"we shall take six of our best-looking girls to the train, and I shall offer a Limerick lace handkerchief to Mrs. Cleveland, and you [Lord Aberdeen] can give a blackthorn stick to the President.""27 The encounter was reported in the Freeman's Journal: "Before quitting the grounds, however, the President received the Earl and Countess of

Aberdeen and deputation of Irish lace makers and dairymaids. Lady Aberdeen presented

Mr. Cleveland with a bunch of shamrocks and a blackthorn stick, and also gave him an

Irish lace handkerchief."28 The Freeman's Journal account viewed the girls as an ordinary handful of craftswomen, rather than specifically selected for their appearance. In the excerpt from the Aberdeens' memoirs, Lady Aberdeen herself emphasized the girls' attractiveness, indicating that it was not only the men in the selection committee who favoured attractiveness over ability.

For Aberdeen and the visitors to the fair, having genuine rural dairy workers was not as important as having girls who fulfilled expectations of an idealized Irish dairymaid. The Clare Journal describes the women of Aberdeen's village "as the greater

27 Ibid, p. 332. 28 "The World's Fair: Further Details of the Opening Ceremony," Freeman's Journal, 3 May 1893.

68 number of the young women are personally pretty and attractive, the finest peasantry in the world will be represented at Chicago by worthy examples of Irish comeliness."29

The attractiveness of girls made them the best to represent the "finest peasantry in the world," as opposed to their abilities in the home industries they were there to promote.

This served asan example of the popularity of idealized representations of the peasant over the genuine home industry workers offered by Hart. Aberdeen's selection committee focussed on urban areas Aberdeen had visited. The Belfast News-Letter noted the departure of Belfast girls for Chicago:

several young ladies who are to inhabit the Irish village at the approaching World's Fair at Chicago, and assist in the sale of some of Ireland's exhibits, sailed for New York today . . . also numerous young ladies from Dublin and the South of Ireland who are to represent the Emerald Isle as lace-workers and dairy maids. They number . . . twenty-two, all of whom have been selected by the Countess of Aberdeen.30 Many of the rural country girls displayed at the villages were actually from Dublin and Belfast.31 This quotation stated that the girls would represent Ireland "as lace-workers and dairy maids." Aberdeen's girls were playing the role of the rural workers. The emphasis Aberdeen placed on finding authenticity in constructing the village, in respect to the girls, meant finding that which fulfilled tourist expectations of the "authentic"

Irish dairymaid.

As with Aberdeen's village, costumes were created for the girls to represent a visitor's idea of Ireland. Certain costumes were reflective of the girl's role in the

29 "The Countess of Aberdeen and Irish Industries," Clare Journal, 20 Mar. 1893. 30 "The Irish Village at the World's Fair," Belfast News-Letter, 14 Apr. 1893.

69 village. The most care was taken ¡? creating the dress of the milkmaids, who were to serve as the welcoming committee for all visitors to the village. The Freeman's Journal described the costumes being produced for all the girls of Aberdeen's village: "the dairymaid's dress is as tidy and withal as pretty as one can think of. It is just the dress you would expect to find on a dairymaid. . . . The dress consists of Irish linen, with full sleeves to the elbow, and a deep white linen apron."32 The same article demonstrates similar emphasis on attractiveness in production of the sales girls' dresses, which are described as "extremely pretty."33 All of the dresses are described in favourable terms in the article, but the sales girls and milkmaids are the only ones described as "pretty." As expected from a village promoting Irish home industry, all costumes were made of Irish homespun materials. While Aberdeen emphasized aspects of the village that were meant to fulfill tourist expectations of Ireland, she was still in Chicago to promote Irish home industry.

James' discussion of nineteenth century photographer Henry Peach

Robinson's approach to photographing the mountain dew girl, in a carefully composed manner, relates closely with Aberdeen's approach to selecting girls for her village.

Robinson felt that the photographer should act as the composer, moving beyond capturing the "factual," as his critics felt that was the photographer's duty. He felt models could convey naturalness better than authentic rural Irish women. Aberdeen and Robinson, fulfilling the role of the composer, constructed the rural woman to fulfill

"The Irish Village at Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 14 Apr. 1893.

70 expectations of those consuming their representations. The importance of costume was clear to Robinson and Aberdeen. Both carefully constructed their subject's dress. The costume of the mountain dew girl was fundamental to their "genuine" appearance;34

Aberdeen's careful selection of the girls, and their costumes, were reflective of similar methods of constructing the "authentic."

Aberdeen's dairy maids and sales girls offered a similar encounter with Irish peasants as visitors to the Gap of Dunloe experienced in the nineteenth century. The mountain dew girls had assumed the practices associated with Kate Kearney in an ironic performance of Irish peasant hospitality and culture. Both the tourist and the girls were aware of the performance; the girls cloying for coin, the tourist's resistance and inevitable submission to relinquishing the money, all for a sip of (the rather poorly reviewed) drink offered by the girls. The sensual, flirtatious nature of the mountain dew girl encounter was focussed almost exclusively on males, while the women separated themselves, verbally and bodily. The encounters with the peasants of Killarney often allowed tourists to enter "real Irish cottages" to enjoy their beverage or victuals in what they viewed as an authentic setting. Travellers to the Gap saw the mountain dew girls as an inevitable part of the experience; however, the guidebooks' diverse advice on how to approach the girls indicated that there was no single performance routinely encountered by the visitor.35

James, "For Fatal's the Glance of Kate Kearney'"

71 The traveller's immersion in peasant culture was an important feature in tours of rural Ireland and Aberdeen aimed to recreate this experience in Chicago. The visitors to the village in Chicago were directed into an Irish peasant's "home" near the beginning of their journey through the exhibit. The verbal interactions between the visitors and the peasants were noted highlights of a visit to Aberdeen's village, much as they were for travellers through the Gap of Dunloe. Considering the interests of the

I. I.A. and Aberdeen's passion in aiding the Irish poor, her girls represented a sanitized version of the peasant encountered in the Gap. She avoided the "fleeting transgressions" James described as key to the experience of the mountain dew girl, thereby creating an experience which allowed for more inclusive, non-erotic involvement for the male and female visitor to the village.

The various accounts in the Irish press covering the encounters at the village reflect the wholesome focus on the girls' attractiveness. The Cork Constitution described the girls as "neat-handed, slim-waisted, rosy-cheeked, laughing Irish ladies in the costume of their native country received a well merited praise; the handsome healthy- looking lasses at the dairy coming in for a special tribute of admiration."36 The playfulness exhibited by the girls was viewed without the disgust expressed by certain visitors, primarily women, to the Gap of Dunloe. James outlined the gendered nature of the narratives of the Gap experience, describing how the men were the ones engaged by the girls, while the women of a party removed themselves from the encounter.37

36 "The Irish Village at Chicago/' Cork Constitution, 16 May 1893. 37 James, "For Fatal's the Glance of Kate Kearney'"

72 The popularity of Aberdeen's girls was mentioned in both the Cork Constitution and the

Freeman's Journal, where the Constitution's correspondent noted: "I should have mentioned that the pretty dairy girls . . . were great favourites with the public."38 The

Freeman's Journal remarked that "The Irish girls are by universal consent the best part

of the Village exhibit Their fine, healthy appearance attracts general attention, while

their manners elicit praise. They were at first nervous in face of the crowds, but they have become accustomed to that without any sacrifice of their natural simplicity."39 The physical descriptions of the girls' attractiveness focussed on their "healthy" appearance

and their manners. They were praised for their attractiveness and their pleasant

attitudes, or in the case of the article from the Freeman's Journal, their "natural

simplicity." James notes how the Gap girls were known for their aggressive, deceptive and persistent encounters with the tourist.40 In contrast, Aberdeen's girls offered a drink of milk from Kerry cattle, along with charming verbal interactions but avoided the

eroticized discourse present in visits to the Gap. The Freeman's Journal noted that in Aberdeen's village, "There is no attempt at pestering,"41 which was not a description found in narratives of encounters with the mountain-dew girls.

However, there were some descriptions of Aberdeen's girls that indicated

the similarities in the experience sought from an Irish rural peasant girl, as described in

the Clare Journal, "And now comes the "Teach-boinne," or dairy, where three lusty,

rosy-cheeked, handsome girls are churning milk into butter, so sweet and delicious that

38 "Lady Aberdeen's Irish Village," Cork Constitution, 14 Nov. 1893. 39 Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893. 40 James, "For Fatal's the Glance of Kate Kearney'" 41 Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893.

73 one's mouth fairly waters for it, and selling buttermilk that tastes like nectar.' This quotation departs from the usual description of Aberdeen's milk maids. "Lusty" ¡sfar less common than "healthy" in narratives of visits to the village, but the expectation of eroticized peasantry accompanied the village's presence on the Midway. The presence of the eroticized "Other" at the fair is explored below, but the Journal's description indicated the presence, though uncommonly noted in the press, of certain expectations from the Irish peasant woman. James' analysis offers similar descriptions of tourist experiences with the mountain dew girls. The pestering of the girls was viewed as an expected experience of the Gap. The experience of encountering the mountain dew girls at the gap was extrapolated to general evaluations of the Irish people.43 This was not exclusive to visits to Ireland, as the villages at the fair also invoked feeling of visits to

Ireland.

The mountain dew girl would have fit well in amongst the "carnivalesque" atmosphere of the more exotic nations represented on the Midway. As discussed in the previous chapter, the Midway represented an inverse image of the ideal presented in the White City; it is described by Wim de Wit as the locus of popular culture of the time.44 As the "low" culture center of the Fair, the Midway attracted those looking to subvert the moral upstanding roles they occupied, after perusing the industrial advancements presented in the White City. Hart and Aberdeen's villages were in an

42 Clare Journal, 20 July 1893. 43 James, "For Fatal's the Glance of Kate Kearney'" 44 Wim de Wit "Building an Illusion: The Design of the World's Columbian Exposition" in Neil Harris, Wim de Wit, James Gilbert, Robert Rydell ed. Grand Illusions: Chicago's World's Fair of 1893 (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1993), p. 95.

74 ambiguous position on the Midway, as the Plaisance presented a clear division between

industrial western countries and colonial possessions. Countries such as Germany and

Austria presented displays of their rural past. The Midway was far more dominated by

ethnographic displays of exoticized people such as the Javanese, Laplanders, Hawaiians, Eskimos and others.45 Some of the exotic peoples displayed on the Midway made erotic displays to lure in visitors. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune discussed the Street in

Cairo dance's reputation: "in earlier days of the Fair there was realistic abandon about them that seemed to highly please the sightseer, even of the most refined sort."46 The

article stated that the dances were soon

censored due to their provocative nature. The Algerian dancer, seen in figure 5,47

offered a male visitor an eroticized

experience of the "Other." The dance in

the Algerian theatre was described as a

Figure 5: Dancer in• the??.*!·™.«.Algerian Theatre on the.L. Midway»*·_( "dance of love, but it is the coarse animal passion of the East, not the chastic sentiment of Christian lands."48 While Aberdeen's

Irish peasant girl attracted more attention than other aspects of her village, they were

distant from the eroticized "Other" of colonial nations' Midway exhibits. While the

mountain dew girl fit within eroticized peasantry, Aberdeen's sanitized version of the

45"The Midway," Chicago Daily Tribune, 1 Nov. 1893, p. 16. 46lbid. 47 Image from: Portfolio of Photographs of the World's Fair^no. 4. Courtesy of the "World's Columbian Exposition Collection" Box 2. Folder 12. from the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago Library. 48 Ibid.

75 wholesome milk maids lacked the sexuality associated with the Algerian dancers. This separated the Irish exhibits from the ethnographic displays of imperial possessions.

However, the German and Austrian displays were recognized for their architectural recreations as opposed to an attractive, hospitable female presence within their exhibits. The girls of Aberdeen's village were a sanitized, wholesome, yet alluring presence of "femininity" on the Midway that reflected the ambiguous position Ireland found itself in at the fair.

Alice Hart's choice of Irish people to populate her village reflected her regional focus in constructing her village. Descriptions of workers embarking for Hart's village lacked the focus on physical appearance and addressed their skill sets instead, such as in the Freeman's Journal:

yesterday there passed through here en route to Chicago, the Donegal artificers to be employed in Mrs. Ernest Hart's Donegal village at the World's Fair in Chicago. Their names are. . . Sheelah McBride, dyer and spinner; Hannah Gallagher, lacemaker; and Mary Mulligan, knitter. . . . They were joined at Derry by workers from other parts of Ulster, including Brigid Kildea, sprigger, Ardara; Ross Kildia, veiner and hemstitcher, Ardara; and Mr. Timmens, linen weaver, Portadown. . . . Mr. Tighe last week sent on in advance to Chicago looms, spinning-wheels, liches, heather, and other dye materials. The uses of which were taught the Donegal peasantry for dying home-spun woollen cloths.49 In this article describing the women in Hart's village, a clear connection to home industries was illustrated specifically to Donegal home industries. The D. I. F. differed from the I. I.A. in its regional approach, attempting to make significant gains over a small region, as opposed to Aberdeen's coverage of all of rural Ireland. This quotation

"Donegal Workers for Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 17 Apr. 1893.

76 describes the girls by name, by location and by the trade for which they were selected. In articles printed in the same paper, Aberdeen's girls were nameless and the only attribute discussed was their physical appearance. Hart's stated focus of the D.I.F.'s presence at exhibitions, such as the World's Fair, was to display the direct relationship between the peasants and their products.50 The Freeman's Journal's detailed descriptions of the girls and their crafts demonstrate how the focus was on skill in Hart's selection process. Craftswomen were present in Aberdeen's village, but they lacked the profile in newspapers that the attractive milk maids had.

For the visitor to the Irish villages, the peasant girl represented an important characteristic of an imagined visit to Ireland. Hart and Aberdeen presented the girl in two different ways. Aberdeen's girls were sanitized versions of the tourist experiences of the Gap of Dunloe, as she selected attractive, yet wholesome, milkmaids that served those entering her village. Hart's focus, reflective of her work in the D. I. F., continued to carefully present Irish rural women in the context of their work with cottage industries.

This is not to say that Hart's village lacked aspects that facilitated a tourist experience; as Heiland noted, her village did become exotic in the context of the Midway.51

However, in selecting girls for the fair, Hart utilized women and girls who were skilled in home industries, while Aberdeen's girls were primarily selected for their abilities to fulfill tourist expectations of the Irish countryside peasant. The similarities between Hart

50 Janice Heiland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries 1880-1914: Marketing Craft, Making Fashion (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), p. 34. 51 Ibid, p. 59.

77 and Aberdeen's workers were how they were presented; performing their crafts in the traditional home of the Irish peasant, the thatched cottage.

Landscape: The Cottage

The thatched cottage was home for many living in the rural west of Ireland during the nineteenth century. In 1893, it was a critical aspect of Hart and Aberdeen's Irish villages. Brian Kennedy has explored the place of the thatched cottage in Ireland's romanticized landscape in pre-famine Ireland. The reality of peasant life was a sharp contrast to popular representations of the Irish countryside in the nineteenth century. Highlighting artists such as Thomas Sautell Roberts, John Henry Campbell and Paul

Henry, Kennedy notes how their work "expressed what the polite society, who purchased such pictures, wished to believe about the rural poor."52 The picturesque landscape they presented was one with happy peasantry proudly standing beside their trim cottage and without the presence of modern, aesthetically displeasing features.

This is not to say that any human modifications were to be absent, especially in the case of Ireland. David Brett notes in Construction of Heritage that "traditional" farming was important in forming the "vernacular"' landscape in post-Famine Ireland.53 In contrast with the romantic images of nineteenth century paintings and Irish-American memory, the life of the Irish peasant was far from romantic. Over a third of the rural homes

52 Brian P. Kennedy, "The Traditional Irish Thatched House: Image and Reality, 1793-1993," in Adele M. Dalsimer ed., Visualizing Ireland: National Identity and the Pictorial Tradition (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1993), p. 168. 53 Brett, p. 51.

78 consisted of one room and few had more than four. In many cases, peasants lived in byre-houses sharing shelter with their animals.54

Though Hart and Aberdeen's villages were constructed as contemporary representations of the Irish countryside, they were subject to the same nostalgia as a representation of a nation's past. This reflected the static nature of rural representations of Ireland and how urban-Irish as well as Irish-Americans romanticized their rural past. This allows the villages to be viewed as a "nostalgiascape," defined by

Szilvia Gyimothy as a nostalgic "experiencescape," or a site constructed for nostalgic consumption despite being contemporary representations. 55 As with the Irish thatched cottage, the Danish inn (kro) is portrayed as part of the landscape in the countryside.56

Gyimothy attributes the popularity of the Danish inn with urban tourists to rural nostalgia romanticizing the Danish countryside as a patriotic symbol.57 Kennedy acknowledges the Irish countryside in a similar way: "the late nineteenth century, despite the prevailing preference for modern, single-storey houses, the thatched cottage became a national symbol of an independent, natural, morally upright, and more spiritual way of life than was available in the overcrowded cities."58 After the misery of the famine, the thatched cottage returned as a part of Irish national identity as Kennedy notes: "the Irish independence movement was founded on the belief that

Kennedy, p. 173 Gyimothy, p. 113. Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 125. Kennedy, p. 173.

79 the largest social class was rooted in peasant culture." The Danish inn represented a national symbol as Gyimothy discusses: "Kros, together with selected flora or fauna species, have become a cliché for Danishness, paying homage to pre-modern agricultural society."60 The Irish thatched cottage was utilized in a similar manner as the cottage was idealized in late eighteenth century paintings and the late nineteenth century literary revival writing as the nation's "home." The Irish literary revival helped to re-insert the thatched cottage into images of lrishness. Like the pre-famine paintings of

Ireland, literature written in the time of the Chicago World's Fair constructed a picturesque countryside that highlighted the "superiority" of rural life to urban destitute.61 The rural element of a nation was often idealized as the population grew distant from its rural past, through immigration or internal urban migration. Gyimothy and Kennedy demonstrate how romanticizing the countryside grew with urbanization and created specific imagery with destitution.

Constructing a rural home frequently meant constructing a neutral space.

"Nostalgiascapes'" idealized representation of the past avoided historical tensions.

Kennedy's article addresses how idealized imagery ignored the realities of rural poverty.

Gyimothy makes a similar point when she describes the Danish inn as reshaping the past into a "conflict-free thematic narrative."62 Constructing the rural inn as "home" allowed visitors to be themselves and escape from their urban roles.63 The Irish villages utilized

59 Ibid., p. 173. Gyimothy, p. 125. 61 Kennedy, " p. 173. 62 Gyimothy, p. 113. 63 Ibid., p. 121.

80 the same approach. They were constructed to connect with Irish-Americans as well as other fair visitors. Aberdeen avoided discussion of Irish Home Rule in connection with her village despite being a public Home Rule supporter. Her focus in public speeches leading up to the fair was on the I. I.A. and the growth of cottage industries in Ireland.

The villages were constructed as representations of a contemporary rural

Irish town. As with late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Irish paintings as well as Irish revival literature and plays,64 the villages were highly romanticized in comparison to the poverty experienced in the Irish countryside. Hart and Aberdeen were aware of the state of the Irish peasant as the D. I. F. and I. I.A. were organizations created for poverty relief. The Limerick Reporter praised Aberdeen for her work: "Truly welcome ... are they who, in the name of humanity, came amongst us bringing work to idle but willing hands, and endeavouring in this way to put plenty and moderate comfort in the place where hunger and want need to reign."65 Aberdeen's Irish Industrial Village was constructed to show the benefits of home industries rather than the poverty which necessitated the organization. The purpose of Hart and Aberdeen's villages was to promote home industries rather than provide a reconstruction of actual contemporary

Irish rural life, as demonstrated in this quote from a Clare Journal article preceding the fair: "Lady Aberdeen has most adroitly seized upon the World's Fair, Chicago, as the means of obtaining a commanding and world-wide advertisement for Irish industries."66

64 Led by writers such as W.B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Lady Gregory and Sean O'Casey. 65 "Lady Aberdeen and the Spread of Irish Industries," Limerick Reporter & Tipperary Vindicator, 28 July 1893. 66 "The Countess of Aberdeen and Irish Industries," Clare Journal, 20 Mar. 1893.

81 Certain press reports reflected an awareness of the idealized nature of the

villages. The Freeman's Journal noted the quality of the housing in an article on the

construction of Aberdeen's village: "the exterior of the village is assuming an aspect of trimness only noticeable in a prosperous Irish town."67 The Journal's correspondent was

writing with pride in regards to the success of the Irish workers but also acknowledged

the idealized nature of the villages. Even the peasants in the villages were viewed as

ideal, as seen in this excerpt from the Clare Journal: "The third cottage will represent

the interior of an ¡deal peasant's cabin, in which 'the finest looking old woman in Ireland' will be found at work knitting."68 The nature of the peasant girl and milk maids

of the villages were discussed earlier but this quote demonstrates that even an elderly

knitter was praised for her attractiveness being beyond what one would expect from an

old woman. The villages constructed an ideal peasant home where even the peasants

which populated the cottages were constituted as a prop for an experience of "home"

for the visitor.

The thatched cottage was used throughout nineteenth century imagery of

Ireland. The idealized images were often in contrast with the actual peasant homes of

rural Ireland. Aberdeen and Hart used idealized constructions of Irish cottages following the same approach as early nineteenth century artists. The villages were constructed for

promotion of organizations who aimed to relieve Irish rural poverty; the trim nature of the cottages was meant to either demonstrate the benefits of cottage industries to rural

67 "Ireland at Chicago," Freeman's Journal, 1 May 1893. 68 Clare Journal, 20 Mar. 1893.

82 Ireland or to appeal to a visitor to the World's Fair. Visitors had the ¡mage of a trim Irish cottage in their mind from images they had seen or imagined through the "cycle of expectation." Images, such as the nineteenth century paintings, contributed to the

idealization of the rural Irish home. Visitors expected the same from an Irish village

exhibit.

Landscape: Consuming the Nostalgiascape of the Villages

The Irish villages presented an idealized, romantic version of the Irish

countryside. Aberdeen and Hart had constructed the "typical" Irish villages which appealed to Irish-Americans. The Irish-American's consumption of the villages was one that played heavily on memory, a memory of Ireland that had grown romanticized over

time. The idealized rural representation was one contested by certain individuals in S 1 Ireland who took offence to the

villages' portrayal of Ireland and Irish

industry as rural and primitive.

Constructing an idealized, countryside

village both fulfilled expectations of

the visitor, and also placed the rural «??*?·

landscape produced by Aberdeen and Figure 6: Entryway to Aberdeen's Village Hart in the debate of representations of Ireland.

83 The Irish landscape is an important part of Irish national identity, or as David Brett identifies it as a collective artefact of the nation's past.69 When Hart and Aberdeen

were constructing Ireland at Chicago, the rural landscape of the nation was prominent.

When visitors passed through the carefully selected iconic entryway of Aberdeen's village, the Cashel entryway seen in figure 6,70 they entered Ireland. The villages were

meant to fulfill a visitor's expectations of what a genuine trip to Ireland was like and

perhaps to entice them to make a visit to the country. This quotation from the

Freeman's Journal illustrates this connection to a genuine visit to Ireland:

The courtyard in which the visitor stands looking on at this scene is essentially Irish in appearance. One does not know whether it is the yard of an old-fashioned Irish inn, the barn of one of the Ulster plantation, the stronghold of Géraldine, a Butler, a Clanricards, or some other Anglo-Norman baron and his retainers... but there is no possibility of mistaking it for anything but "kindly Irish of the Irish."71 Descriptions of the villages found in the press rarely expressed disappointment with the

experience of Ireland offered by Hart and Aberdeen. This goal was accomplished by the

villages' ability to provide visitors with what tourists imagined were "authentic"

experiences of the picturesque Irish countryside.

A full view of the villages offered fulfillment for visitors who sought out the

picturesque. Hart's village was described in the Connaught Telegraph as "the pleasant

David Brett, Construction of Heritage (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996), p. 49. 70 Image from: Franklin Abraham Shantz, The Dream City: Art Series no. 4 (St. Louis: N.D.Thompson Publishing Company, 1893) Courtesy of the "World's Columbian Exposition Collection" Box 2. Folder 16. from the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago Library. 71 Freeman's Journal, 22 July 1893.

84 and picturesque Irish Village which nestles at the foot of Donegal Castle." The article noted that "Mrs. Hart's Irish Village is described in the official documents as the 'Typical Irish Village/ and this it is, in that it is typical of all that is best in Ireland."73 This quotation illustrates a romanticized nature of rural Ireland and its place as the moral ideal for the Irish people. While the villages were a construction of contemporary

Ireland, for people of urban centers in America and Ireland, the rural village was a construction of the past, as representations of the Irish countryside were static in the "cycle of expectation." The fixed nature of the countryside is stated clearly in a

Freeman's Journal's description of Aberdeen's village: "the visitor is enabled to get a glimpse of Ireland as she is and as she was."74

Gyimothy notes that nostalgia invokes both positive and negative feelings, as the experience can lessen ones attachment to the present.75 For the Irish-Americans in Chicago of the late nineteenth century, the Irish countryside was an artefact of either their parents' past or their own, as well as the childhood home of the Irish who migrated to the urban centers of Ireland during industrialization. Gyimothy outlines that the 1990's tourism marketing focus turned to consumer's feelings about "objects and situations that have either disappeared or are no longer common."76 Nostalgia played an important role in the idealization of the Irish countryside for not only urban Irish, but

Irish-Americans who were the primary consumer for Hart and Aberdeen at Chicago.

72 Connaught Telegraph, 29 July 1983. 73 Ibid. 74 freeman's Journal, July 22, 1893. 75 Gyimothy, p. 113. 76 Ibid., p. 112.

85 Irish people did not universally accept a romantic, rural representation of the nation. The most vocal opponent to Aberdeen's village was Dr. R. R. Kane, whose editorial exchange with Lady Aberdeen was published throughout Ireland in the

Northern Whig, Freeman's Journal, Cork Constitution and Belfast News-Letter. This demonstrates that the villages' construction of an idealized Irish countryside did not go uncontested as the primary representation of the country at the Chicago World's Fair.

Kane was a strong advocate for Irish industry, as evidenced by his involvement in the

Recess Committee three years later. In 1896, the Committee, formed by the British parliament, worked to formulate recommendations for establishment of an Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.77 The previous chapter addresses

Ireland's modern industrial presence at the fair being downplayed in coverage, in favour of the villages. Both the villages and Aberdeen were widely supported by the press in

Ireland and there was a sense of pride in their popularity at the fair. Kane represents a vocal opposition to this primary representation, a criticism also held by the Lord Mayor

Shanks of Dublin.

In terms of the representation of Ireland as primarily rural, Kane demonstrated strong opposition to Aberdeen's "Irish Industrial Village":

Now your Irish Village in Chicago which is ostensibly a representation of the present condition of industrial life in Ireland, but which is actually a representation of the condition of certain hand industries of a sparse peasant population on the Western seaboard of our country, is calculated to favour the impression which these political partisans [Gladstonian Liberals] wish to make. I feel quite convinced that if your Excellency will but consider the

77 Carla King, "The Recess Committee, 1895-6," in Studia Hibernica, no. 30 (1998-99), p. 29.

86 industries of Leinster, and the colossal industries of Ulster you will not be able to repress a smile at the idea of a small charity organisation undertaking to "develop the industrial life of Ireland."78 This was a direct challenge to Aberdeen's representation of Ireland. Kane took more offence to Aberdeen presenting the rural village as representative of Irish industry. He felt this was more misrepresentative of the nation than the village's idealization of the countryside. Aberdeen presented a structured reply to Kane's challenge:

What you say shows me so plainly that you still labour under a misapprehension so as to the objects of the Irish Industries Association, that I venture to put before you the following facts:- 1. The Irish Industries Association does not aim at being a charitable association. It desires to develop the home industries of Ireland on business lines, and with this in view, has secured the co-operation of business men on its committees. 2. The Irish village does not exhibit Ireland at the World's Fair as an object of pity, but rather as an object of envy, inasmuch as it shows the beauty and merit of the goods produced even by her peasant cottage workers. The peculiar success of the Irish village is likely to lead to large permanent business connections with the United States, which will be of immense service to the industrious workers whom we represent. But pray understand that we never contemplated representing the factory industries of Ireland at the Irish village. These would surely be out of place there.79 The remainder of Aberdeen's correspondence was defending the funding and support for the I. I.A. as politically neutral. She also reinforced her commitment to Ireland and the

Irish people. Her response fit within the I.I.A.'s stated purpose, which was reflected in their actions. Her defence was that the village did not discuss the factory industries of

Ireland because the village's purpose, and the I.I.A.'s, was to promote cottage industries.

"Lady Aberdeen and Dr. R. R. Kane," Cork Constitution, 15 Aug. 1893. 79 Ibid.

87 Aberdeen did include features such as Blarney Castle and Celtic artefacts which did not directly connect with her organization but they were used to reinforce the villages place as Irish since they were ¡conic pieces that visitors would quickly identify as Irish.

Aberdeen was a prominent personality associated with an aspect ofthat representation and so became Kane's target in correspondence. The reaction in the Irish press, as well as their praise of the villages and work of Hart and Aberdeen, indicated that Kane was in the minority, in terms of support for the Irish efforts at the fair. Kane felt that Aberdeen was elevating cottage industries at the price of marginalizing his own narrative of

Ireland.

Mayor Shanks of Dublin was another vocal opponent to the villages' representation of Ireland. In October 1893, Shanks visited Chicago for Irish day at the fair. While giving a speech at a banquet for the executive committee of the World's fair, he announced that though he was proud of the villages' accomplishments and popularity, he voiced his opposition to their prominence in the fair:

We have two Irish villages here and feel that they have done a great deal for Irish industry, but they don't represent Ireland . . . don't deem the Irish Villages as representatives of Ireland. The next time don't have the McKinley tariff. We will erect in the World's Fair the next time a rotunda and we fill it with Irish exhibits that will give you a different impression of Ireland than before you ever had before. We want to stand by our neighbours, England and Scotland. We believe in the British commission but we do not believe that the Irish trade has been properly presented at the Fair.80

"Vacancy Filled by Lord Mayor Shanks," Chicago Tribune, 12 Oct. 1893, p.3.

88 The McKinley tariff was opposed heavily by British companies for preventing the sale of their goods at the fair.81 The Irish press treated Shanks opposition to Irish representation as an inappropriate outburst. The Belfast News-Letter reported on the banquet:

The company was, in many respects, a distinguished one, and the function would have been long remembered as one of the most brilliant from a social point held in connection with the fair, but for a really unfortunate contretemps due primarily, it is freely admitted by all sections of those present, to a distinct error of judgement and questionable taste on the part of Lord Mayor Shanks, of Dublin.82 The News-Letter described that the "outburst," and its aftermath, involved a scolding by the Director-General of the exhibition. The Kerry Sentinel had a similar, though briefer, report of the incident.83 Shanks was a vocal opponent of the overall representation of

Ireland at the fair, not solely the villages.

The majority of those who entered the villages were experiencing time in a

"picturesque" Irish countryside village. Visitors' reactions were positive, describing the villages as typically Irish, fulfilling their expectations. For them, it represented an

"authentic" experience of Ireland. The use of thatched cottages, ancient castles, traditional farming and other expected features of a countryside village, Hart and

Aberdeen created the romantic landscape of the Irish countryside. The rural elements were more pronounced in the urban setting of Chicago and a World's Fair which primarily displayed modern industrial advances. Richard Tressider discusses the effect of placing idealized rural landscapes against an urban setting. They served to define each

81 "The World's Fair," Clare Journal, 15 May 1893. 82 "Life in America," Belfast News-Letter, 13 Oct. 1893. 83 "The World's Fair," Kerry Sentinel, 18 Oct. 1893.

89 other and the nation, both temporally and spatially. Placing the Irish villages in the urban, modern setting served to further elevate the landscape as sacred. For Irish-

Americans, the experience of the villages was nostalgic as it idealized the rural past of their memory.

Conclusion

After passing through the iconic Irish entranceways both villages offered, the experience began with the encounter with the Irish milkmaids offering a sip of Irish buttermilk. Aberdeen's village offered idealized versions of the peasant girl for consumption by often selecting and identifying girls for their attractiveness, while the girls of Hart's village were selected for their abilities of the cottage industries they were in Chicago to promote. The visitor went on to enter a thatched cottage, the "home" of a peasant craft woman. The cottage fit the expectations of an Irish countryside cottage, carefully placed objects, including the peasant workers, allowed the visitor to identify what they were experiencing and reinforce their existing idea of what an Irish peasant home was like. The villages provided a sharp contrast to the urban setting of the fair.

Even beyond the visual of the picturesque countryside village, the visitor experienced

Ireland sensually through the smells, tastes, and sounds of the villages. The workers embodied Irish characteristics through charm and hospitality. They served to reinforce the "authenticity" of the experience, both through their verbal reassurance and in their embodiment of characteristics expected from an encounter with an Irish peasant. For

84 Richard Tressider, "Tourism and Sacred Landscapes," in Stephen Williams ed., Tourism: The Nature and Structure of Tourism (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 341.

90 those visiting, consuming the experience of Ireland offered by the villages served to satisfy expectations of the Irish rural landscape that existed in the "cycle of expectation." Aberdeen in particular, but not exclusively, commodified the Irish countryside for tourist consumption.

91 Conclusion

Despite the difficulties between their organizations, Lady Aberdeen and

Alice Hart were successful in constructing their Irish villages and providing an experience of Ireland for the visitors to the Chicago World's Fair. Visitors fulfilled their expectations for an experience of the Irish countryside and Irish-Americans were able to interact with the romanticized countryside of their past. Ireland was not alone in constructing a

"villagescape" on the Midway Plaisance. The German exhibit included a collection of farmhouses, providing an example of the lifestyle of the rural areas of the country. The

Javanese village was a collection of thatched cottages and local craft demonstrations.

The German village was constructed to demonstrate German immigrants' ability to become productive members of America.1 This was seen in the effort put into the construction of the German Castle. In a souvenir art series published after the fair, the construction is noted as a unique feature of the German village:

The structures, instead of being put up in the slipshod manner of mere show buildings, were erected in a solid and substantial form, as if the idea of permanency prevailed. . . . The village was also built entirely by German artisans and of German material, its features being intended to faithfully represent many of the conditions of life in the Fatherland.2

1 Robert W. Rydell "A Cultural Frankenstein? The Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893," in Neil Harris, Wim de Wit, James Gilbert, Robert Rydell ed., Grand Illusions: Chicago's World's Fair of 1893 (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1993), p. 166. 2 Portfolio of Photographs of the World's Fair, art series, no. 4 (Chicago: The Werner Company, 1894.)

92 The Irish were praised in particular for the "trimness" shown in the construction of the cottages while in this quotation, the Germans' workmanship was praised for its quality and permanency." Figure 7 shows the imposing size of the German village.3

-> ?· ?: R M N K.' T^ ils

Figure 7: Exterior of the German Village on the Midway While the goals of the German and Irish exhibits differed, they possessed similar templates and features. The two Irish villages centered on a castle, Donegal

Castle in Alice Hart's village and Blarney Castle in Lady Aberdeen's. The German village's centerpiece was its castle; though not based on a particular German building, it was constructed as a representation of a feudal era German castle.4 The castles in the Irish villages were surrounded by the cottages. The souvenir art series, Portfolio of Photographs of the World's Fair, described a similar case with the German village.

Around [the castle] is a typical German village with dwellings of various provinces, from far-off Suabia to sunny Alsace. These include furnished farm house rooms, a village concert garden and an old style Rath-haus or townhall. In the building are interesting

3 Image from: The Vanishing White City, art series vol. 4, no. 4, 1894. Courtesy of the "World's Columbian Exposition Collection" Box 4. Folder 43. from the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago Library. 4 Portfolio of Photographs of the World's Fair.

93 exhibits, all indicating conditions of the domestic, social and industrial life of the Fatherland.5 Unlike the Irish villages, which presented only one type of Irish dwelling, the thatched cottage, the German village contained examples of a variety of dwellings from different regions of Germany.

The Irish villages' approach to appeal to recent immigrants' memory was reproduced in the German village. A souvenir art series used familiar narrative when it described the German village. "[The village woke the interest] of Germans as it brought to mind similar scenes which they beheld in the fatherland, and of Americans, as it gave a faithful portrayal of the distant land which all long to visit."6 The art series went on to praise the financial backers for their national pride. "This village owed its primary inception to the patriotism of the largest banks of Berlin."7 The series listed the German architect, German Professors and German ethnologists that contributed to the accuracy of the village. It praised Aberdeen and Hart for their interest in helping the Irish people but was careful to remain neutral in nationalist discussions of Ireland.

As with the German village, the Viennese exhibit primarily focussed on a representation of the past. It offered a reconstruction of the famous public square, "Der Graben" as it stood 150 years before the fair,8 seen in figure 8.9 The square featured a town hall and restaurants much like the German village. A church was present among

5 Ibid. 6 The Vanishing White City, Art Series, vol. 4, no. 4, (1894) 7lbid. 8 Portfolio of Photographs of the World's Fair, no. 4. 9 Image from: Ibid. Courtesy of the "World's Columbian Exposition Collection" Box 2. Folder 12. from the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago Library.

94 the thirty-six structures of Old Vienna. It also included an iconic Viennese object, the

"Stock im Eisen" which fulfilled the same role as the Blarney Stone in Aberdeen's

Village. The similarities are seen in the description of the Stock im Eisen: "It is well

named, for it is an old tree of the ancient forest literally covered in nails. The original

tree in Vienna . . . was for some cause, now unknown, esteemed especially sacred, and

everyone who drove a nail into its

precious wood received a spiritual i , - ; shield against the devil."10 This

description demonstrates the same

% theme as the Blarney Stone, an

experience allowing visitors a

connection with an inanimate

, , . . .„., ancient object grants the person Figure 8: Inside the Vienna town square on the Midway. interacting with it mystical powers. The "Stock im Eisen" shares the unclear origins of the Blarney Stone, though its presence dates back to the sixteenth century. Like the Blarney Stone, it attracted American visitors hoping to obtain its mystical properties.

Depictions of life in the country were not unique to the German and Irish

exhibits; it was the purpose of several of the ethnic villages along the Midway to

demonstrate to visitors their particular country's perceived way of life. As the exhibits were primarily for commercial promotion, this meant selecting the aspect of life that was viewed as most appealing to the visitor. For the "Esqimaux" exhibit, this meant that

'Ibid.

95 the inhabitants wore winter clothing throughout the Chicago summer. For Austria, this was an eighteenth century town square. For Ireland, this meant an ideal rural village populated by attractive peasants and trim thatched cottages.

Where Ireland differed most from the German and Viennese exhibits was the time period it was presenting. The Irish villages represented the contemporary while the German and Viennese primarily were constructions of the past.11 In this respect, the Irish villages built by

Hart and Aberdeen had more in common with the villages built by

Europeans for the presentation of Figure 9: interior of the Java Village. "exotic" people. The Java Village, seen in figure 9,12 had many similarities with the Irish villages and very little with the German and Viennese exhibits. It was constructed as a representation of contemporary life of the Javanese peasant. The Java Village was funded by the Java Planters' Association with the commercial interests going to the Netherlands.13 In figure 9, the thatched cottages and the village life appear similar to the Irish villages in key characteristics such as the cottage and the native inhabitants. In descriptions of the Java Village, the similarities go even further:

11 Neil Harris, "Selling National Culture: Ireland at the World's Columbian Exposition" in T.J. Edelstein ed., Imagining an Irish Past: The Celtic Revival 1840-1940 (Chicago: The David and Alfred Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, 1992), p. 99. 12 Image from: Picturesque World's Fair, art series vol. 1, no. 4 (Chicago: W.B. Conkley Company, 1894), p. 64. 13 "The Javan Settlement," in The Vanishing White City, art series vol. 1, no. 4. (1894)

96 Within the enclosure are some twenty buildings including among them a theatre, a coffee and tea saloon and two bazaars, the rest of the number being dwellings for the natives. ..The buildings of the village are all of bamboo and are on one general plan... They were of course all erected by the natives... The bazaars are the main feature of the village. The commodities exposed for sale are all the handiwork of this interesting and prove the more attractive as many of the articles are fabricated in the presence of the purchaser.14 As with Aberdeen's village, there was a theatre, a saloon which served a famous local beverage, thatched cottages built of local materials by natives of the country being represented and shops selling goods produced at the village by native artisans. Certain details reflected the different nations; bamboo instead of stone as well as coffee and tea instead of Kerry milk. However, the collection of rural thatched homes populated by members of the nation and crafts produced on-site by native artisans were shared characteristics of the two nations' villages.

Despite these similarities, there are clear differences between the Irish and

Javanese villages. The Java Village lacked an impressive, ¡conic structure such as the

Donegal and Blarney Castles. The Irish villages differed due to their status as an industrialized European nation and avoided the patronizing descriptions given to the

Javanese. Their financial backing and the nature of their organizers also indicated their different yet similar statuses. As mentioned above, the Java Village was constructed by Dutch interests where commercial gains went to the Netherlands.15 In the map of the

Midway in the Official Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition, the Java Village was

"The Javan Settlement," Portfolio of Photographs of the World's Fair. 15 Ibid.

97 identified as the "Dutch Settlement.' This was common among the ethnographic exhibits of colonized peoples. The Irish villages were organized and funded through the efforts of two British women, but the funds generated by the villages were for the education and benefit of the Irish. The people populating the ethnographic exhibits were poorly treated and poorly paid. For the girls at the Irish villages, the experience was seen as a romantic journey as indicated by the Cork Constitution covering their departure: "during an interview on the eve of their sailing for the new world the maidens stated they would return again to their native country by next Christmas, provided they did not in the meantime fall in love with some American millionaires."17 While both the Javanese and Irish villages were funded by organizations rooted in a different country, the Irish villages were being run by organizations built to support the

Irish rural population while the Java Village was producing funds for Dutch commercial interests.

The Irish villages were in an interesting position on the Midway of the

World's Fair as they straddled the two sides of the national exhibits. They had similarities with the other industrialized nations' constructions of the past as well as ethnological displays of primitive nations' representations of the present. While the organizers of the Irish villages were British and not Irish, it was nevertheless a different relationship than the Javanese people and the Dutch organizers of their village. It also

16 John J. Flynn ed. Official Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition, (Chicago: The Columbian Guide Company, 1893), pp. 194-5. 17 "The Chicago Exhibition," Cork Constitution, 17 Apr. 1893.

98 reflected Ireland's distance from Germany, which was funded by two Berlin-based banks.

Alice Hart and Lady Aberdeen faced a number of challenges in constructing

Irish villages at the Chicago World's Fair. Initially, they challenged each other as

Aberdeen's position as a British aristocrat and Home Rule supporter was seen by Hart as contradictory. Her distrust of Aberdeen resulted in her departure from the collaborative effort at the first sign of HA resistance. Their different organizational approaches did not help the brief alliance as they had opposing views of the most successful way of promoting home industries. Hart's regional, skill-based approach versus Aberdeen's broad base, high volume approach was reflected in their completed villages. Aberdeen faced further confrontations from patriotic Irish-Americans who were unhappy with a

British organizer of an Irish village, regardless of her strong support of Home Rule back in Ireland. Both women were in the complicated position of running organizations which faced the reality of Irish rural poverty and constructing idealized depictions of the Irish countryside. The villages they built fulfilled the romantic images of Ireland present in the "cycle of expectation." The ambiguous and contested place of the Irish villages was finally manifested in their place on the Midway. They shared characteristics with both industrialized "nostalgiascapes" and romanticized colonial exhibits, while failing fitting exclusively with either category of display. Hart and Aberdeen constructed idealized representation of the present, which were consumed by visitors as romanticized visions of the past. The nature of the villages at the Chicago World's Fair reflected the ambiguous place of Ireland in late nineteenth century Europe and the United Kingdom.

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