Defending the Victorians

The Stowaway takes place in 1908, well into the Edwardian age. But Vivian Drew and Captain Hook were both born during Victorian times, and my research has wandered into that span of years as well. Through this, I've come to realize that many of the common conceptions we have of Victorian England are unfair.

Yes, the Victorian era--1837-1901, the years of Queen Victoria's actual reign--was a time of inequality and colonialism and classism. But there were also many advances, both technological and social, upon which we still rely: railway tunnels, sewer systems, the combustion engine.

The first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858.

And contrary to current popular opinion, the Victorian era was also marked by humanitarian progress, including trade unions, old age pensions, and social mobility, as well as the growth of a middle class. Service jobs, despite their reputation for drudgery, offered a chance for advancement, and the employees had rights under the 1823 Master and Servant Act. Women's suffrage (as early as the Kensington Society of the 1860s) first gained ground then, as did free universal education and child labor laws. And the telephone, telegraph, typewriter, sewing machine, and cash register led to larger numbers of women finding employment outside the home and thus their greater emancipation.

We have a mental image of the repressed Victorian woman stuffed into a corset and unable to pursue work outside her home. But women first entered male-dominated professions during the Victorian era, won property rights, and found self-sufficiency through jobs in new industries like telegraph offices. A full third of the labor force was women, in jobs from blacksmith to pawnbroker to bookbinder. They also gained new rights in custody acts, property and inheritance laws, and divorce decrees. Women's colleges, starting with Queen's College in 1848, led to greater educational opportunities. (And as regards corsets, Ruth Goodman compares Victorian undergarments to underwire bras and shapewear, and finds that our foundation garments come up wanting.)

Let's not forget, aggressive gendering exists today, from the moment a pink or blue cap is tucked on the head of a baby in the hospital nursery. More women attend college than men, but their representation in the higher echelons of the work force is not equal to their abilities or numbers.  (For example, see The 5 biases pushing women out of STEM.) Books like The Rules should lay rest the notion that "traditional" ideas of female decorum are out of style today. And I can't help but notice the little-girl main characters of literature that is still popular today--Alice, Dorothy--despite the prevailing notion today that boys won't read books about girls.

Illustration by John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

"Characterised as the police force of obsolete, chauvinistic ideologies, Victorian men have been forced to embody many of our negative views of nineteenth-century culture," writes historian Matthew Sweet in Inventing the Victorians. Adventure novels of the day depict feats of daring which no human could hope to emulate, perhaps showing that men of that era, not just our own, were often confused as to their optimal role in society. Regardless, men like Charles Darwin took an active role in domestic life and did not consider it anything out of the norm.

The Labouchere Amendment, of which Oscar Wilde so famously ran afoul, actually changed the sentence for "buggery" from life to two years, Sweet writes. Labouchere seems to have intended to law to protect working-class men from the predation of aristocrats, and also to protect children from pimps, regardless of how it was interpreted in later years. In fact, according to Sweet, "[t]he 1890s were the high noon of erotic ambiguity, the last moment of freedom before the system of personal pathologies through which we have come to view our own sexualities became fixed."

Victorian England had no anti-immigration laws (sorry, UKIP), and saw the election of the first Asian members of Parliament. The first black footballer, Arthur Wharton, kept goal for several teams during the 1880s and 90s. Mary Seale, a Jamaican nurse, was as famous then as Florence Nightingale. In 1868, an Australian cricket team made up entirely of Aboriginal players met an English team in an international match. Small advances, perhaps, but the 20th and 21st centuries are marked by their own share of "firsts."

"The Libertine's Death," from Rose Mortimer,
or, The Ballet Girl's Revenge, 1865

In many ways, we are not so different from the Victorians. Advertising and pornography were thriving industries during the 1800s, as they are now, and both societies share struggles with human rights and housing and pollution. And to claim our own era is a pinnacle of achievement is misguided. This is a time of tremendous medical advances (assuming one can afford them), the democratizing effects of the internet, and the growth of civil rights, absolutely. But we also live with the constant worries of school shootings and climate change and mass extinction. American economic inequality is worse now than at any time since the Great Depression, when it was similar to the inequality of the Gilded Age of the second decade of the 1900s. In many ways, our Victorian forebears would be as appalled at our own society as we so often are at theirs.

Why have we come to regard this particular era as so opposed to the ideals we most cherish today? For one, because every generation defines itself in opposition to the last. We feel better about ourselves in comparison. And the Victorians found enemies in people like Virginia Woolf and the rest of the Bloomsbury Group who spoke vociferously and effectively against its failings.

Also, the Victorians are judged by what is left of their literature, including advertising and editorials--and also tracts written by clergymen and schoolmasters, little-read at the time but looked upon now as representative of the time. Theories of the best way to live abounded, as they do now, which says nothing of how often they were implemented. If future generations look at us through the kind of sparse and arbitrarily-selected ephemera that we think of as representing the Victorians, the 20th century will be remembered primarily for two world wars, mass genocide, and the threat of nuclear destruction. Our own progress in human rights and medicine could go unremarked, just as we overlook the positive aspects of the Victorian era.

Queen Victoria, photograph by

Alexander Bassano, 1882

Progress stumbles and halts. History is a continuum, not a list of unrelated events, and no age is completely a golden epoch or a hell of oppression. And human nature has changed little since the first civilizations, as a look at the writings of Plato or Shakespeare will confirm. An inaccurate understanding of the past, including the Victorian era, makes it easy for a society to fall into an unearned complacency. And this, in turn, makes it more difficult to discern the most constructive actions to take next.


Sources:
Inventing the Victorians, Matthew Sweet
Pocket Guide to Edwardian England, Evangeline Holland
How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life, Ruth Goodman

Searching for the lost boys

No characters in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan have undergone a wider variety of interpretations over the years than the feral children known as the lost boys.

John Hassall, 1907, Duke of York's Theatre lobby posters

Artists who drew the boys immediately after the debut of the play in 1904 showed them as normal Edwardian boys in ordinary clothes. But the longer and more fully-realized version of the story in Barrie's book, published in 1911, takes pains to describe how the boys' garb differs from Peter Pan's suit of skeleton leaves and cobwebs.

They are forbidden by Peter to look in the least like him, and they wear the skins of the bears slain by themselves, in which they are so round and furry that when they fall they roll. They have therefore become very sure-footed.

Even shooting at the Wendy Bird, Flora White's 1914 Tootles looks adorable, even cherubic. This rather describes Tootles, actually, although artists have long seemed fond of thinking of the lost boys in general as sweeter than perhaps Barrie did.

The 1953 Disney animated film took the idea of the bear skins further and dressed the boys in full animal costume. The suits seem to take the place of differentiated personalities for these characters. And I'm sorry, but they're the ugliest lost boys I've seen. Plus there must have been some mighty big rabbits and foxes in Never Neverland.

Later artists such as Trina Shart Hyman (1980)

and  Scott Gustafson (1991) were more faithful to the book's portrayal, with their lost boys looking roly-poly in their bear-skin coats.

The 2003 Universal/Columbia Pictures Peter Pan movie took more liberties with the boys' attire, but it makes sense that boys in a permanent game of make-believe would take creative advantage of whatever props they came across.

With the modern popularity of "dark" versions of children's stories came grimmer versions of the lost boys, portrayals which do not shy from the more murderous nature of these children. A good example is the group in ABC's Once Upon a Time. However, portrayals of the lost boys as teens, according to Barrie, are impossible. As he tells us, "...when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out." (Dark interpretations of Peter Pan often miss the darkness that has been in the story from the beginning.)

Unwind and unfold

Research is so often a tumble down a rabbit hole, an exploration of an intricate network beneath what we take for granted today--so much of it forgotten, but so much of it easily explored if you stumble into the right warren. 

I was reminded again how much history underlies The Stowaway when I researched what Captain Hook and Vivian Drew would find during a trip to London in 1908. To my joy, I found an actual floor plan of the National Gallery from 1907 (both online and for sale from www.old-print.com--this is going to be a lovely, geeky little bit of art framed on my wall.)

From a 1907 Karl Baedecker handbook
for travelers to London.

View of Trafalgar Square from 1908

Old-print.com also had this page from architectural publication The Builder from 1897, which I thought would be an interesting comparison. Which it certainly was--when I took a close look at it, I realized it was from another museum altogether. So why is it labeled "National Gallery"?

Tate Britain, aerial  view

As it turns out, because it's a schematic of the building that is now the Tate Britain. Henry Tate offered his collection of art to England in 1889, and it was housed in a building called "The National Gallery for British Art" when it opened in 1897. (This will become clearer in a minute.) Redubbed "National Gallery, Millbank" in 1920, and officially renamed "Tate Britain" in 1932, the museum has has had seven building extensions since 1897, and now comprises far more than its original eight rooms.

The building we know as the National Gallery today opened in Trafalgar Square in 1834, on the former site of the King's Mews, a site chosen to be central to all of London. It was the third building to hold the art collection, and (aha!) what is now Tate Britain was in fact built to address complaints that it was too small. The current National Gallery has also been expanded several times: in 1869, when its famous dome was added, and in 1907, when barracks at the back of the building (originally the King's Mews) were cleared to create five new galleries (which I assume would have been finished by the time James and Vivian visited). Further expansions took place in 1975 and 1991.

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square as of Sept. 2014

View of the National Gallery from
my own visit in October 2014

I can't help thinking a fantastic book could be written about the National Gallery, and/or the Tate museums. But I'm afraid I have this one to finish first.

Sunset and sorrow

Long have I been intrigued by the near-ethereal quality of the paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner, especially in his later, more abstract and experimental work. And in The Stowaway, when Captain Jas. Hook indulges Vivian Drew's wish to experience theater and art in London, they find their own fascinations with Turner's work at the National Gallery.

The piece that most draws their attention is The "Fighting Temeraire" Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up. Painted by Turner in 1839, it's his depiction of a ship from the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar being taken to be destroyed as the age of sail draws to an end to be replaced by the era of industry.

Vivian is captivated by the colors and evocation of light in the painting, while James responds to the emotion contained within it. I recall an anecdote about an old sea captain in Port Townsend, WA, who lamented the loss of the grand ships and complained about the presence in the harbor of the steamers and "greasy little tugs." This is akin to James's yearning for the Age of Sail, the only milieu in which he feels he still has a place, as a changing economy forces him ever more completely from the shores of his native land to the perilous environs of Never Neverland.

Daniel Craig as James Bond and Ben Wishaw as Q
 discuss the Fighting Tremeraire in Skyfall

The Fighting Temeraire is prominently featured in the 2012 movie Skyfall, making me hesitant to include it in The Stowaway--although I had written the scene before the film was released. (If you think that means I've been working on this book for a long time, you are correct.)

But I've since learned more about the continuing popularity of the Fighting Temeraire. In 2005 (the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar), it was voted "England's favorite painting" in a BBC Radio 4 poll. It's so popular, in fact, as to have inspired the cultivation of a Fighting Temeraire rose.

In 2014, the Tate Britain held a popular exhibition of Turner's paintings from the later years of his life, when this successful painter dared to take his vision in a direction that received ire from critics and the populace.

And now that the Mr. Turner movie continues to meet with critical and popular acclaim, surely I can be excused for including The Fighting Temeraire in the tale of James and Vivian in London.

The Mystery of the Red Coat

A year and a half ago, I thought I had found the first instance of Captain Hook in a red coat--illustrations by American Roy Best from 1931. Before then, Hook was depicted in coats of blue and gray. Of course, since the 1957 Disney film (which went into development in 1935), he's generally depicted wearing red.

But now I've learned that British painter Gwynedd M. Hudson had the same idea as Best at around the same time. As Hudson is one of my favorite Peter Pan illustrators, I'm glad now that I decided Jas. should have not only his original blue and gray coats, but red. (Although in The Stowaway, they are reserved for battle and other important occasions.)

 James, splendid in his red coat.

I'm amused how well my characterizations of the crew align with Hudson's.

My visit to the Marchpane children's bookshop at Charing Cross in London turned out to be edifying in this regard. Not only did I get to hold a 1904 first edition Peter and Wendy (with appropriate whimpers and hopes of "someday"), the seller also had a 1931 Hudson first edition with dust jacket (those don't usually survive) which now lives at my house. That was a fantastic surprise.

I have several versions of Peter Pan that include Hudson's illustrations, reprinted in a single color. I knew from pictures I'd seen online that some of the originals were in two or three colors--but in the first edition Hudson, there are many full-color illustrations as well.

It turns out to be almost impossible to find information about Hudson online. However, Antiques Atlas has a profile that gives me far more information than I've been able to find before:

Gwynedd May Hudson, 1882-1932, was a Sussex artist, who studied at Brighton College of Art. She exhibited a painting at the Royal Academy in 1912, but is best know for her much loved illustrations of Alice in Wonderland in 1922 for Hodder & Stoughton and Peter Pan and Wendy in 1931, also for Hodder and Stoughton.

She also did a series of posters for the London Underground 1926-1929, copies of which are in the London Transport Museum. One of these lithographic posters of 'The Zoo' for the Underground achieved a price of £2,750 at Christie's in 2012.

Most sources give Hudson's date of birth as 1909. She might have been a prodigy who published Alice in Wonderland illustrations when she was thirteen,but it's unlikely she exhibited at the Royal Academy at the age of three. I'm also glad to know she didn't die at the age of 33.

Hudson seems to be best known for her Alice paintings.These are easily found reproduced online and for sale from auction houses, and even on mugs and t-shirts.

A partnership

A bit of back story that doesn't have a place in The Stowaway, but has found one here in Hook's Waltz.

She wasn't afraid of him, though perhaps she should have been. Of course it was her own establishment, and not as if the Scarlet Slipper relied upon the custom of him or his men—although certainly young Dorothy would have protested the loss of Mr. Mullins.

He had certain predilections which were not to her taste, to be sure, and she understood why the girls found him forbidding. But he was cleverer than most of her clientele, and more stylish, and his manner of speaking brought a bit of class to her drawing room. The drawing room where she met him now, where he refused to take a seat beside her, instead standing by the window out of the circle of light cast by the tasseled lamp overhead.

“I suppose this is when you tell me I am no longer welcome in your establishment.” He drew the curtain aside to peer out the window into the rain-swept Dover street and did not turn to meet 'Becca's eyes.

Dover, Inner Harbour, after John Henderson I.
 J.M.W. Turner, c. 1794-7, Tate UK

"You sound as though you are familiar with the request. But no, Captain, that is not why I asked to speak to you. Although I expect you know—”

“That my demeanor unsettles the ladies,” he said, throwing himself down upon the settee with such force that the teacup and saucer on the adjoining table did a merry dance. “They have not made it much of a secret.”

Good, thought 'Becca. She didn't want her girls to feel they couldn't speak up, couldn't defend themselves if they found it necessary. She had made her living and her reputation from a coterie of women who were genuinely willing to ply their trade, not to mention the pride her customers could take in being worthy of their attentions. If the Slipper lost a client from time to time, the loss was scarcely noted. And the loyalty her girls felt towards her, and the camaraderie among them, were qualities she had been told not to expect and which she was now most proud to have cultivated.

“Captain,” she said, interrupting the rapid tapping he made upon the arm of the settee with the point of his hook. “Please, do think of the furniture.”

“James,” he said. “If we are familiar enough to have such a conversation, you can speak to me by name.”

“James it is, then. And I am 'Becca.”

“'Becca,” he said, with the first inclination toward a smile she had seen upon his face. How strange that at times he seemed to have both the manners of a gentleman and the humbleness of a chastened boy.

“So, James, I have another proposition for you, should you care to hear it.”

“If courtesy alone did not do so, curiosity would persuade me to ask.”

Withdrawing a leather-bound notebook from beneath the cushion at her elbow, she handed it to the Captain, and dove into the waters of hope.

“'Tis the trade I had hoped to embark upon originally,” she said as he thumbed through the book, speaking quickly so she would not be distracted by the looks he cast upon the pages. “But making a living as a dressmaker was not as easy as I had hoped, not if I wanted to do more than patch the elbows of shirts and darn the heels of socks.”

He rose and carried the book with him to the window, pulling aside the draperies again to allow light to fall upon the drawings. “These are your designs?”

“Every one.”

“Have you sewn any of them yourself, or are these the drawings from which someone else will work?”

“I have sewn every scrap upon my person, and upon my girls as well.”

His eyes scanned the mauve silk of her gown, from the finely-stitched collar to the pintucked bodice to the rows of lace which adorned the skirt. “Most impressive. I had no idea.”

Later 'Becca would examine the fine gold of his compliment, but now was no time for such indulgence. “Look to the end of the book, if you would.”

The Captain complied, and a true smile grew upon his face as he did so.

“Coats worthy of a pirate captain,” said 'Becca, her confidence swelling. “And swatches of fabric on the back cover, if you would care to examine them as well.”

“This scarlet, it is quite magnificent. And the blue...”

“I thought 'twould bring out your eyes.” Perhaps she should not have said such a thing, that she had noticed that this fierce and notorious man, with his outrageous hair and remarkable height, the terrible steel hook in place of his right hand, had eyes the exact shade of forget-me-nots.

“Do you think so?” said James, pursing his narrow lips. “Perhaps it would do me no harm to dress to my natural inclinations, and Mr. Smee would be happy enough to forgo the responsibility of outfitting the crew.” He returned his attention to the notebook. “Gentleman Starkey, surely, would have need of this trade as well as your other. And Mr. Cecco would welcome the chance to strut his finery upon my deck. Although I should warn you, he is inclined towards removing the sleeves from his shirts. Perhaps waistcoats would better suit our Mr. Cecco.”

'Becca could not keep the grin from her face. “Have we a bargain, then, James Hook?”

“We do indeed, 'Becca Bloom, and I shall make your efforts worthwhile,” said the Captain, holding out his left hand. She took it in her own, a handshake to conclude a business transaction the likes of which she had never dreamed about in her tiny Yorkshire bedroom years before.

“Tea, Captain?”

“Yes, indeed. Let us drink to a partnership that I hope will transcend the years.”

'Becca poured a cup for the Captain and another for herself. “And James? You are content to leave our business as such?”

“'Tis rare enough that I may count someone a friend, 'Becca Bloom. If this means I may reckon you one, I will be well content to follow the rules as you make them.”

“Then a friend you shall have, James Hook. And a friend you shall be."

His face grew gentle, then, and his eyes warmed. She would not have guessed at such a tenderness the day he first appeared at her door, leading a half dozen of his men, all wet to the skin from rain and demanding entry. For not the first time, she was pleased that she had allowed them in.

Peter at the hospital

There is no more fitting place for a Peter Pan purist to visit than London's Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The hospital has had a long association with The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. In 1929, J.M. Barrie declined to sit on a fundraising committee to help it expand into the vacated Foundling Hospital adjacent--and instead donated the royalties from stage performances of Peter Pan to GOSH, funds which they receive to this day. (For more information about the copyright extension in the UK and Europe that allows the hospital the continuing right to royalty, see the GOSH website. There you'll also find additional history--and better pictures than I have here, but that can't be helped.)

"At one time Peter Pan was an invalid at the Hospital for Sick Children," Barrie said in a GOSH fundraising speech in 1930, "and it was he who put me up to the little thing I did for the hospital."

At one time, the hospital maintained a museum of Peter Pan books and memorabilia. While that museum has fallen victim to the hospital and charity's need for additional space, the collection is still available for public viewing by appointment. Of course, I could hardly visit London and not at least attempt to see the collection. 

The hospital was officially named
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in the 1990s,
 as it had become so closely associated with the street.

When I made my appointment, I wasn't certain if I should admit to my involvement with The Stowaway and especially this blog. But I knew I wouldn't be able to keep that to myself and didn't want to spring it upon the staff, so I gathered my courage and confessed via email. And because I did, I was able to have a splendid visit with people who understand my devotion to Mr. Barrie's tale.

The collection being kept in this room was pure
coincidence, I'm sure, but a most fortuitous one.

Christine De Poortere, Peter Pan Director, and Emily Beahan kindly allowed me to babble about my own collection and thoughts about Peter and the Captain, and let me photograph the figurines, plates, magic lantern slides, and other memorabilia that have been given to the hospital over the years. These include the bell that was Tinker Bell's voice in the original 1904 stage production of Peter Pan. And yes, I got to ring it.

The bell in the back right corner was
 used to voice the original Tinker Bell.

GOSH has more Peter Pan books than I do--
two cupboards worth.

Casts of London productions of the play still put on performances at the hospital for patients, as they have done for decades. And Peter's influence is felt throughout the halls.

Art students of the University of Wolverhampton
 created and donated this tiled mural in the late 1980s.

Peter appears where he is not expected, as is his wont.

Since it opened its doors on Valentine's Day of 1852 as the Hospital for Sick Children, GOSH has grown tremendously, expanding into many surrounding buildings in its neighborhood of Bloomsbury, where Barrie lived for a time just around the corner from the original hospital. It's part of the National Health Service, but funds raised from donations help them with redevelopment, research, medical equipment, and support services for families.

The charity staff at GOSH couldn't have been more gracious, and I'm certainly glad I was able to meet them and take the tour. Of course I'm also pleased to know they are still receiving the benefit of Barrie's donation, and putting it to the best of uses.