Inventing the Victorians : what we think we know about them and why we're wrong

292 Pages·2001·23.646 MB·English

by  Matthew Sweet

isbn 0-312-28326-1
S
UPPOSJ5 THAT EVKKYY1 1INO
•• - •
we think we know about the \ ictori-
ans is wrong.” So begins Inventing f
the Victorians by Matthew Sweet, a compact
and mind-bending wbirlwhind tour through :|*c--
the soul of the nineteenth century, and a '3#-
round debunking of our assumptions about ||f '
it. In the words of historian E. P. Thompson, ,f§^~
1
the Victorians have been victims of the
. . . L -
"enormous condescension of posterity/' jf|j_
Locked in the drawing room, theirs was an
age when, supposedly, existence was stulti- ^
fying, dank, and over-furnislied, and when
behavior conformed so rigorously to propri- 'f^'~
eties that the repressed results put Freud
into business. We think we have the Victo-
S'?
rians pegged as self-righteous, imperialist,
. . . . .
racist, materialist, hypocritical, and, worst
of all, earnest.
Oil, how wrong we are, argues Matthew &
Sweet in this highly entertaining, provoca- f#-
tive, and illuminating look at our great- and |^_
great-great-grandparents. In this, the year |-
of the centenary of Queen Victoria’s death, if|^
Sweet forces us to think again about her j'pf-
. y .
century, entombed in our minds by Dickens, ||*b-
J r *
the Elephant Man, Sweeney Todd, and the
images of unfettered capitalism and grind- ||;
ing poverty.
Sweet believes not only that we’re
wrong about the Victorians but profoundly
indebted to them. In ways we have been 'k--
. *
slow to acknowledge, their age and our own »% -
&
remain closely intertwined. The Victorians
invented the theme park, the shopping mall, i||
the movies, the penny arcade, the roller jf|r
coaster, the crime novel, and the sensational
newspaper story. Sweet also argues that
oui' twenty-first-centurv smugness about
how far we have evolved j> misplaced. The
Victorians were less rani-■ tI i(hhaaiiss wwee aarree,, lleessss lt&-
(<o /t!i itt/r,/on /j(te///"/>)
INVENTING THE VICTORIANS

INVENTING
THE VICTORIANS
Matthew Sweet
St. M a rtin ’s Press
New York
n
inventing THE Victorians. Copyright © 2001 by
Matthew Sweet. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever with­
out written permission except in the case of brief quo­
tations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For
information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
ISBN 0-312-28326-1
First published in Great Britain by
Faber and Faber Limited
First U.S. Edition: December 2001
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations, vii
Introduction: Inventing the Victorians ix
1 The Sensation Seekers l
2 The First Picture Show 21
3 The Boer War, Brought to You by Bovril 38
4 The Gutter and the Stars 57
5 I Knew My Doctor Was A Serial Killer Because ... 71
6 Last Exit to Shadwell 86
7 The Archaeology of Good Behaviour 104
8 Check Out Your Chintz 121
9 A Defence of the Freak Show 136
10 Presumed Innocent 155
11 Whatever Happened to Patriarchy? 172
12 Monomaniacs of Love 190
13 Prince Albert’s Prince Albert 207
Conclusion: Liberating the Victorians 222
Notes 233
Acknowledgements 251
Index 253

List of Illustrations
1 Victorians enjoying the nakedness of their piano legs (adver­
tisement for the John Brinsmead piano company, Illustrated
London News, 1889)
2 The death of Madame Genieve (Punch, 1863)
3 Blondin crossing the Niagara rapids (stereoscopic card,
c.1859)
4 A still from George Albert Smith’s Kiss in the Tunnel, 1899
(courtesy the BFI)
5 Beechams blur the line between advertising and news (The
Graphic, 1899)
6 Carte de visite, autographed by W. T. Stead (courtesy the
Salvation Army)
7 William Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner, from The Illustrated
Life and Career of William Palmer, 1856
8 The marriage of Ah Sing and Hannah Johnston, from Joseph
Salter, The Asiatic in England, 1873
9 ‘Opium Smoking - The Lascar’s Room in Edwin Drood’,
from Gustave Dore and Blanchard Jerrold, London: A
Pilgrimage, 1872
10 ‘Seasoning Fricandeau of Veal’: a lecture at the National
Training-School of Cookery at South Kensington (The
Graphic, 1871)
11 Japanese-style wallpaper, from The Practical Decorator and
Omamentist, 1892
12 The marriage of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, photo­
graphed by Matthew Brady, 1863
13 According to the writer Edgar Jepson, ca cult of little girls’
sprang up in Oxford in the 1880s
14 Frederick Baker decapitates sweet Fanny Adams, from The
Alton Murder/, 1867
15 ‘The Libertine’s Death’, from Rose Mortimer; or} The Ballet
GirVs Revenge, 1865
16 Ernest Keen drags up to smash a counterfeiting gang, from
The Boy Detective; or, The Crimes of London (1865-6)
17 Two Sicilian boys pose for German photographer Baron Wil­
helm von Gloeden, c.1890 (courtesy Mark Lee Rotenberg,
www.vintagenudephotos.com)
18 Erotic postcard, c.1890 (courtesy Mark Lee Rotenberg,
www.vintagenudephotos.com)
19 The Telephone Exchange in London (The Graphic, 1883)