Travel Writers, Museums and Reflections of Empire 1770–1901
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Travel Writers, Museums and Reflections of Empire 1770–1901 Roslyn Russell A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities and Social Sciences University College The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra 2011 Acknowledgements This thesis has benefitted greatly from the generosity, support and interest of a number of people and institutions. My supervisors during my candidature – Dr David Headon, and Professors Bruce Bennett and Paul Eggert of the English Department, School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), University College, Australian Defence Force Academy – gave importance advice that assisted greatly in conceptualising and shaping the work. I would especially like to thank Professor Paul Eggert for his wisdom and advice over the last few years, and his support prior to the submission of the thesis. Dr Linda Young of Deakin University was also involved in the early stages of the work. Many people have provided useful information, and have also allowed me to discuss my work with them. In Australia, I would like to thank Margaret Birtley, the late Dymphna Clark, Dr Barry Craig, Dr Rosamund Dalziell, Louise Douglas, Dr Stephen Foster, Leah Gardam, Dr Laina Hall, Janelle Hatherly, Dr Susan Marsden, Dr Jenny Newell, Dr Maria Nugent, Robyn Oliver, Dr Mathew Trinca and Jill Waterhouse. In New Zealand, thanks go to Dr Donald Kerr, formerly Special Collections librarian at Auckland Libraries, and Dr Nigel Prickett of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and Kath Prickett. Several people read draft chapters and commented on them: Dr Bruce Harding and Dr Rawiri Taonui of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies in the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, Ingrid Persaud, of Barbados, and Katherine Russell, of the National Gallery of Australia. The School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), University College, Australian Defence Force Academy funded my travel to Harrogate, UK to present a paper at the Tourism and Literature conference organised by Sheffield Hallam University in July 2004. My thanks go to Professor David Lovell, Head of School (HASS), and to Shirley Ramsay for facilitating my participation in this conference, and to Bernadette McDermott and Christa Cordes for their help over my time as a candidate. Thanks also to Professor Dr Lothar Jordan, of Dresden University, Germany, for organising my visit to Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam, in September 2010. I also wish to thank him and his wife Angelika for their hospitality during my stay in Germany. No research project could ever be undertaken without the assistance of librarians and archivists. The librarians in the Petherick Room, National Library of Australia, deserve my special thanks. Thanks also go to Auckland Libraries, the National Archives of Australia, the National Museum of Australia Library (especially Noellen Newton), and the Library of the Natural History Museum, London. I would like to thank my daughter Katie Russell and son-in-law Wally Caruana for their love and support, and especially my husband, Dr Michael Jones, who has shouldered many other tasks so that I could complete the thesis. Roslyn Russell, Canberra, 2011 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: The story of a shield 9 Chapter Two: Early museums in Britain and Australia 25 Chapter Three: Exhibitions display an empire 51 Chapter Four: Writers, empire and colonies 74 Chapter Five: Commenting on the colonies and their museums 122 Chapter Six: ‘Imperial Kew’ 149 Chapter Seven: Experiencing Australasia’s botanic gardens 189 Chapter Eight: James Anthony Froude and Sir George Grey 221 Chapter Nine: Sir George Grey, collector and collection 256 Conclusion 295 Appendices 300 Bibliography 315 List of Illustrations Photographs and images provided by the author unless otherwise stated. Between pages 73 and 74 1. The British Museum. 2. Aboriginal shield collected in 1770, Enlightenment Gallery, British Museum. 3. Aboriginal and Maori artefacts in the Enlightenment Gallery, British Museum. 4. Sir Joseph Banks 1808–09, by Thomas Phillips. The Royal Society 5. Pacific shells collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on the Endeavour voyage, Enlightenment Gallery, British Museum. 6. Marianne North Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. 7. Marianne North’s paintings of Australian flora, landscapes and fauna in the Marianne North Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. 8. William Powell Frith, A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881, oil on canvas, Royal Academy of Arts, John Madejski Fine Rooms. Wikimedia Commons 9. Moa skeleton display, Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand. 10. Exhibition Building, Melbourne. Courtesy of Museum Victoria Between pages 188 and 189 11. Banksia ericifolia, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. 12. King William’s Temple and Mound, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, built in 1837 by Sir Jeffry Wyattville, and originally known as the Temple of Military Fame or Pantheon. 13. Classical statuary adorns Frederick the Great’s Sanssouci Palace at Potsdam, Germany. 14. The Venus Fountain and Lake, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, in the early 1900s. 15. Plants from Australasia in the Palm House at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where exotic plants from all over the world are kept in controlled environments. 16. Sydneysiders depicted enjoying ‘rational amusement’ in the Sydney Botanic Gardens in the late nineteenth century, in a watercolour by A. H. Fullwood (1863– 1930). 17. Social order on display in Sydney Botanic Gardens at the turn of the twentieth century. 18. Bamboo Avenue, Brisbane Botanic Gardens. 19. James Shaw (born Scotland 1815, arrived in SA in 1850, died Adelaide 1881), [Adelaide] Botanic Gardens, 1865, oil. 20. Wedgwood medallion. 21. Cadi Jam Ora, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. 22. Mere pounamu in Enlightenment Gallery, British Museum. 23. The ivy-clad façade of the Northern Club in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2002. 24. Mansion House, Kawau Island, New Zealand, from a sketch by Lord Elphinstone, in J. A. Froude, Oceana, or, England and Her Colonies, 1886. 25. A Maori Banquet Hall, from a sketch by Lord Elphinstone, in J. A. Froude, Oceana, or, England and Her Colonies, 1886. Introduction Understanding the former British Empire is a daunting task. Over the last two centuries a host of commentators have offered their interpretations from a wide variety of perspectives. Journalists, novelists, natural and political scientists, literary critics and cultural theorists, historians and travel writers have all embarked on this enterprise. This thesis focuses on one seemingly small element within the global enterprise that constituted the British Empire – colonial museums and their collections as imperial institutions, and thus as reflections of that empire. Historian of science, Roy MacLeod, has described colonial museums as ‘once a metonym for empire itself’.1 This thesis views these institutions through the eyes of travellers to Britain’s Australasian colonies during the nineteenth century, by examining their written accounts of their visits. The nineteenth-century museum was not subject to the evaluation of visitor intentions and experiences that is now a routine part of museum practice. Kenneth Hudson, in A Social History of Museums: What the Visitors Thought, claims that Consumer research was altogether foreign to the way in which the heads of most nineteenth-century museums thought about their task. They measured their success by the number of people who came through the turnstiles. What the people thought about the museum, or whether they were coming for the first or the last time was of no particular consequence.2 John Mackenzie, a leading commentator on the impact of its empire on the national imaginary of Britain, has written in relation to visitors’ response to colonial museums, ‘Perhaps the great unknowable remains the whole question of 1 Roy MacLeod, review of John M. Mackenzie, Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities, 2009, reCollections: A Journal of Museums and Collections, http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_5_no_1/book_reviews/museums_and_empire, viewed 20 May 2010. MacLeod uses a more expansive description in his introduction to Nation and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001, p. 10, where he states that ‘by the Treaty of Berlin [1885] … science had become a metonym for empire. Museums and learned societies throughout Europe represented the achievement of a rule of knowledge, coincident with the rule of law. In differing measure, the colonies of Europe outré-mer were to embody both.’ 2 Kenneth Hudson, A Social History of Museums: What the Visitors Thought, Macmillan, London, 1975, Macmillan, London, 1975, pp. 6–7. 1 visitor reaction’ in the colonial period.3 In the absence of the structured questionnaires that have since the mid-twentieth century provided the basis for the analysis of visitor expectations of a museum or an exhibition,4 or elicit a response afterwards, there is, as Mackenzie asserts, little chance of discovering, apart from raw visitor numbers, how visitors in both the colonies and the metropole responded to museums and their exhibitions. Mackenzie continues, ‘the users of museums (apart perhaps from the elite that spawned them and theorised about their value) remain essentially shadowy’.5 How successful were museums in achieving their educative, civic and imperial mission during the nineteenth century, and is it possible to gain