Women Performance and The Material of Memory-1

The Archival Tourist, 1780–1915
LAURA ENGEL
Women, Performance and the Material
of Memory
Head of a Lady (Oil on Canvas), Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), Private
Collection, Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images
Laura Engel
Women, Performance
and the Material
of Memory
The Archival Tourist, 1780–1915
Laura Engel
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-58931-6 ISBN 978-1-137-58932-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3
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Acknowledgements
This book began in the archives. From peering at Elizabeth Inchbald’s

crumbling pocket diaries at the illustrious Folger Library, to haunting
the dimly lit silhouette rooms at the V&A, to sitting on the floor in an
air-conditioned closet at the Lenox Library, objects and their histories
began to tell a story that stretched out over a period of twelve years. I
have many people to thank for supporting and nurturing this project. I
am grateful to my editor Ben Doyle, along with Camille Davies and the
staff at Palgrave Macmillan for their excellent work guiding the manu-
script through the publishing process. To Jim Swindal, the Dean of the
McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne
University, Julie Dougherty, the Office of Research at Duquesne
University, and the NEH Endowment fund for continuously support-
ing the research and writing of this book. Thanks to my colleagues in
the English Department at Duquesne, our Chair, Greg Barnhisel, and
my wonderful graduate students past and present, particularly Jade Higa,
Sara Tavela, Shawn Watkins, Allie Reznik, Sarah Hancock, and Beth
Csomay. I could not have completed this project without Mike Begnal’s
brilliant copyediting and wise commentary on many parts of the manu-
script. Particular thanks as well to the fabulous Emily Rutter who pro-
vided invaluable feedback on Chapter 5.
I am truly privileged to be a part of a community of brilliant and gen-
erous eighteenth-century scholars. Much gratitude to Marilyn Francus,
Kristina Straub, Joe Roach, Jennie Batchelor, Elaine McGirr, Chloe
Wigston Smith, Manushang Powell, Nora Nachumi, Jennifer Airey,
v
vi Acknowledgements
Karen Gevirtz, Kirsten Saxton, Teri Doerksen, Heidi Strobel, Judith

Hawley, Carolyn Day, Amelia Rauser, Cynthia Roman, Julia Oestreich,
Alicia Kerfoot, Emily Friedman, David Brewer, David Frances Taylor,
Ros Ballaster, Danny O’Quinn, Lisa Freeman, Diana Solomon, Fiona
Ritchie, Gilli Bush-Bailey, Gillian Dow, Tita Chico, Laura Rosenthal,
Heather McPherson, Bethany Wong, Jennifer Germann, Jocelyn Harris,
and Christina Lindemann. Many thanks as well to the organizers and
audiences of various invited lectures and keynotes that I gave on this
material over the years at the Aphra Behn Society Conference in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, the University of Maryland, Oxford University, Royal Central
University, the Rice Forum in Georgetown County, South Carolina,
the Early Modern Center at University of Santa Barbara, the Wallace
Collection, and the Frick Museum, Pittsburgh. Particular thanks as
well to Amy Lafave at the Lenox Library and Anne Fay at the Wallace
Collection for their invaluable support.
I am also grateful to the wonderful people who offered me housing,
nourishment, companionship, and advice during my research trips in the
States and abroad: Paula and Neil Holmes, Sandy Smith, Jared and Elisa
Smith, Max Eilenberg and Caroline Royds, as well as Hemi, Amy, Jamie,
Alexis, and Lillian at the Make Your Mark Café in Pittsburgh. Enormous
thanks as well to Jessie Ramey, Kathy Newman, and the members of the
Pittsburgh Gender Consortium writing group for providing an ideal
space to write and for cheering this project on in its many stages. To the
fantastic KAS community, parents, kids, and teachers, you know who you
are, but particular thanks to Jen Defoe, Paul Silver, Czarina Kulick, Luci
Regrut, Maureen Staley, Lee Dockstader, Sharee Stout, and Maureen
Passmore. Much gratitude as well to my dear friends Kari Jensen and
Mike Seaman, Alison Colbert, Sarah Miller, and my beloved child care
superheroes Erin Donahoe and Trevor Root.
I could not have written and completed this project without the sup-
port of my family: James Engel and Beth Roper, John Engel, Diana
Engel, Maria Engel (Barry, Milo, and Amir), Luisa Engel, Barbara Fried,
Libby, Addy, and Charlotte Cozza, Aidan and Sarah Shepard, Gary
Zebrun, Paul, Carolina, and Wyatt Fried. Incalculable thanks to my
amazing sons Henry and Emmett, who probably can’t remember a time
that I wasn’t working on this book, and my husband, John Fried, my
best friend and great love.
Finally, I dedicate this book to my mother, the brilliant artist Elaine
Reichek, who continuously inspires me to create, dream, and envision.
Acknowledgements vii
Some material in the introduction and chapter two is adapted from

my article “The Secret Life of Archives: Sally Siddons, Sir Thomas
Lawrence, and the Material of Memory,” ABO: Interactive Journal for
Women in the Arts, 1640–1830, vol. 4, iss. 1, 2014.
About This Book
Women, Performance and the Material of Memory: The Archival Tourist,

1780–1915 examines material objects that are specifically tied to mem-
ory and the staging or representation/recreation of corporeal presence.
Each chapter highlights a particular set of tangible objects—the pocket
diaries of the actress, playwright, and novelist Elizabeth Inchbald; the
letters, portraits, and drawings produced from the tumultuous rela-
tionship between Sir Thomas Lawrence and the daughters of the cele-
brated actress Sarah Siddons; the magic lantern as a guiding optic trope
for the Countess of Blessington’s volume The Magic Lantern; or, Sketches
of Scenes in the Metropolis (1822); silhouettes and waxworks by Isabella
Beetham, Jane Read, and Madame Tussaud; and Amelia M. Watson’s
photographs of the remains of the actress Fanny Kemble’s planta-
tion in the early twentieth century. I propose that the performance of
archival research is related to the experience of tourism, where an indi-
vidual immerses herself in a foreign environment, relating to and ana-
lyzing visual and sensory materials through embodiment and enactment.
Ultimately, operating as an archival tourist in my analyses, I offer strat-
egies for thinking about the presence of women artists in the archives
through methodologies that seek to connect materials from the past with
our representations of them in the present.
ix
Contents
1 Introduction: The Archival Tourist 1
2 Elizabeth Inchbald’s Pocket Diaries 27
3 Thomas Lawrence’s Portraits of the Siddons Sisters 53
4 The Countess of Blessington and Magic Lanterns 81
5 Women Artists, Silhouettes, and Waxworks 107
6 Amelia M. Watson’s Photographs 131
Epilogue: The Sisi Experience 155
Index 163
xi
About the Author
Laura Engel is a Professor in the English Department at Duquesne

University, where she specializes in eighteenth-century British litera-
ture and theater. She is the author of Austen, Actresses, and Accessories:
Much Ado About Muffs (Palgrave Pivot, 2015), Fashioning Celebrity:
Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making
(Ohio State University Press, 2011), and co-editor with Elaine McGirr
of Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660–1830 (Bucknell
University Press, 2014).
xiii
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 George Clint, 1770–1854, British, “Harriet Smithson

as Miss Dorillon in Wives as They Were, Maids as They Are,
by Elizabeth Inchbald,” ca. 1822 (Oil on Canvas), © Yale
Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection 36
Fig. 2.2 “I’ll Tell You What! That Such Things Are We Must Allow,
But Such Things Never Were Till Now,” Wigstead, Henry,
Delineator, England, E. Jackson, ca. 1790: Private Collection,
Photo © Liszt Collection/Bridgeman Images 37
Fig. 2.3 Sir Thomas Lawrence, English, 1769–1830, Portrait of Mrs.
Elizabeth Inchbald, 1796 (Oil on Canvas), Memphis Brooks
Museum of Art, Memphis, TN; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morrie
A. Moss 59.45 40
Fig. 2.4 Mrs. Joseph Inchbald (Oil on Canvas) Lawrence, Thomas
(1769–1830), Private Collection, Photo © Agnew’s,
London/Bridgeman Images 41
Fig. 3.1 Portrait of Sally Siddons (Oil on Canvas), Lawrence,
Thomas (1769–1830), Private Collection, Photo © Philip
Mould Ltd., London/Bridgeman Images 55
Fig. 3.2 Mrs. Siddons (print made by Richard James Lane after
a drawing by Sir Thomas Lawrence), Published by John
Dickinson. Printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel 1830.
© The Trustees of the British Museum 56
Fig. 3.3 Eye portrait, c. 1810, English School, (19th century), Private
Collection, Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images 58
Fig. 3.4 Maria Siddons. Print made by George Clint 1770–1854,
British, after Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1769–1830, British,
xv
xvi List of Figures
between 1800–1830 (Mezzotint). © Yale Center

for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection 62
Fig. 4.1 Margaret, Countess of Blessington, Lawrence, Thomas
(1769–1830), Wallace Collection, London, UK/Bridgeman
Images 82
Fig. 4.2 Maria Countess of Waldegrave and her Daughter Lady
Elizabeth Laura, Richard Houston, ca. 1721–1775, British,
after Sir Joshua Reynolds R. A. 1723–1792, British 1761
(Mezzotint). © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection 94
Fig. 4.3 Bedroom of Empress Josephine (1763–1814) (photo) French
School (nineteenth century). Musée National du Château de
Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison, France/Bridgeman Images 99
Fig. 5.1 Silhouette of a lady, painted on convex glass, by Mrs. Isabella
Beetham, English School (18th century), Private
Collection/Bridgeman Images 114
Fig. 5.2 Marie Tussaud, French artist and Wax Sculptor, English
Photographer (20th century), Private Collection © Look
and Learn/Elgar Collection/Bridgeman Images 119
Fig. 5.3 Waxwork of Madame Tussaud at the Age of 90, 1850.
English Photographer (20th century), Private Collection
© Look and Learn/Elgar Collection/Bridgeman Images 122
Fig. 6.1 “The Shores at Hampton Point,” Amelia M. Watson,
Courtesy of The Lenox Library Association 132
Fig. 6.2 “Celia Davis: A Voice from the Past,” Amelia M. Watson,
Courtesy of The Lenox Library Association 139
Fig. 6.3 “A Model Baby,” Amelia M. Watson, Courtesy
of The Lenox Library Association 144
Fig. 6.4 “Helen Hyde’s Model,” Amelia M. Watson, Courtesy
Fig. 6.5 “No Account Sarah and Her Baby Julia,” Amelia
M. Watson, Courtesy of The Lenox Library Association 146
Fig. 6.6 “Our Farewell Dinner,” Amelia M. Watson, Courtesy
Fig. 6.7 “A Cold Morning by the Great Pee Dee,” Amelia
M. Watson, Courtesy of The Lenox Library Association 148
Fig. E.1 Princess Sisi with a Dog. Mondadori Portfolio/Bridgeman
Images 158
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Archival Tourist
People are much of the time “tourists” whether they like it or not.
(Urry 2002, 74)
A figure stands in the middle of a museum gallery dressed in a richly

ornate gown. The details of the dress—ochre, red, and gold fabric, high
baroque neck, pronounced sleeves, glimmering embroidery, and tiny
ropes of pearls—match almost exactly the figure in the portrait behind
it by Rubens of the Princess Marguerite de Condé, almost as if the gown
in the painting had stepped out of the frame and become mysteriously
animated and embodied. The dress on the mannequin is the creation of
contemporary artist Isabelle de Borchgrave, who specializes in designing
exquisite garments inspired by formal portraits.1 De Borchgrave’s gowns
are made of paper that is manipulated, painted, glossed, folded, and dec-
orated to simulate historical artifacts. At face value, the dresses, which
are mostly imagined from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century portraits,
are technically astounding. Their “realness” transports the viewer into a
space of wonder and uncanny displacement. The figures in the portraits
have come to life—as living historical pictures—yet they are ultimately
fake and bodiless, like projections or spirits.
Placed in the context of the museum, de Borchgrave’s dresses rep-
resent the alluring draw of tangibility. Although you cannot actually
touch them, you can walk among them and walk between the paint-
ing on the wall and the projected figure. In this way, de Borchgrave’s
dressed figures conjure the performative and embodied nature of the
© The Author(s) 2019 1

L. Engel, Women, Performance and the Material of Memory,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3_1
2 L. ENGEL
portrait process, reminding museum patrons of the actual body that sat
for the portrait in the past. For the spectator, standing in between de
Borchgrave’s mannequin and the Rubens portrait, the painting trans-
forms from a flat, two-dimensional medium into a conduit to traces of
past performances (of the artist, his assistants, the model, and the origi-
nal spectators). Moving around the dress it is almost as if you have gone
behind the scenes of the painting itself and are now able to go “back-
stage,” perhaps to see what the painter may have witnessed but is now
lost. At the same time, the paper dress is also a multilayered theatri-
cal illusion designed to provoke a sense of presence and history that is
ultimately false. The fragile material of the dress and its status as an art
object is disconnected from the original presence of an embodied female
figure, as well as that figure’s experience as a living person.
Like the encounter between the portrait, the dress, and the spectator,
this book is interested in what Esther Milne has called “technologies of
presence” in various material forms.2 In thinking about objects through
performance as props, costumes, or accessories within scenes, I explore
how particular artifacts serve as the material of memory and connect
the past to the present. De Borchgrave’s work captures three important
threads of this study: One investigates how our encounters with archival
objects work forward to engender performances and backwards to sig-
nal acts that are now lost; the second engages intermedial approaches to
highlighting the presence of women as actresses, artists, and authors in
the archives; the third looks at our own scholarly performances and sug-
gests that as critical observers of the past we are all archival tourists.
Women, Performance and the Material of Memory examines material
objects that are specifically tied to memory and the staging or representa-
tion/recreation of corporeal presence. Each chapter highlights a particular
set of tangible objects—the pocket diaries of the actress, playwright, and
novelist Elizabeth Inchbald; the letters, portraits, and drawings produced
from the tumultuous relationship between Sir Thomas Lawrence and the
celebrated actress Sarah Siddons and her daughters Sally and Maria; the
magic lantern as a guiding optic trope for the Countess of Blessington’s
volume The Magic Lantern; or, Sketches of Scenes in the Metropolis (1822);
silhouettes and waxworks by Isabella Beetham, Jane Read, and Madame
Tussaud; and Amelia M. Watson’s photographs of the remains of the
actress Fanny Kemble’s plantation in the early twentieth century. I explore
the ways in which these archival materials conjure specific scene(s) of
the past, invoking uncanny traces of embodiment best accessed through
1 INTRODUCTION: THE ARCHIVAL TOURIST 3
theatrical motifs. Connecting the archive with performance allows for the
archive to represent more than the materials in the box, and potentially
makes a space for beginning to imagine the intangible performances sur-
rounding historical materials. This is a particularly useful strategy for deal-
ing with archival materials by or about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
professional women (actresses, playwrights, and artists), whose uncon-
ventional lives and experiences often went unrecorded, or when written
down became manipulated and distorted in an effort to reimagine their
unique position within accepted narratives of femininity.3 I propose that
the performance of archival research is related to the experience of tour-
ism, where an individual immerses herself in a foreign environment, relat-
ing to and analyzing visual and sensory materials through embodiment
and enactment. The archival tourist is part of the scene of research and
has agency in the recreation of the past, at the same time that she remains
separated from the materials because they are always unalterably foreign.
Ultimately, operating as an archival tourist in my analyses, I offer strategies
for thinking about the presence of women artists in the archives through
methodologies that seek to connect materials from the past with our rep-
resentations of them in the present.
Tourism as a practice and an organizing topos/schema involves look-
ing, memory, appropriation, consumption, and often scripted forms of
reenactment in a quest to connect to another set of experiences. The
documentation of tourism involves a declaration of presence: “I was
here, this is what I saw, this is what I brought back with me.” Theatrical
metaphors in tourist theory emphasize the dynamic relationship between
observer, place, and objects. The tourist/performer is confronted with
“staged authenticity” in a quest to understand the “backstage” of a
culture, place, or event (MacCannell 1999, 91). These paradigms and
theoretical strategies are particularly significant in thinking about inves-
tigations of the past. Recent projects about history and reenactment
(Schneider 2011), acting on the past (Franko and Richards 2000), and
the search for the invisible or impossible in theater history (Pascoe 2011)
position the researcher as a self-conscious participant in an embodied
process. To consider oneself a tourist deliberately shifts the role of the
academic, calling into question her authority and essential knowledge.
The scholar herself inhabits a shifting range of identities when
she goes to an archive. The archive may be some place that is diffi-
cult to get to, and it may require particular kinds of behaviors. Travel
to archives, museums, or libraries may also represent a vacation or
4 L. ENGEL
leisure time for the scholar who is always at work. It is difficult for
many academics to separate out the time spent in their “ordinary lives”
and time spent thinking about their projects. (I can attest to the fact
that one can think about eighteenth-century actresses while pushing
a stroller.) Many scholars who study the past incorporate tourist-
related events into their research agendas. Often, academics point out
the difference between their investigations, which are learned, rea-
soned, contextualized, and legitimized by a doctoral degree, and the
musings, observations, or obsessions of ordinary tourists.4 While I cer-
tainly do not want to devalue the significance of academic credentials
or imply that we are not “trained” in reading specific aspects of history
and culture, I do want to argue that it is important to try to under-
stand the researcher as a dynamic being who moves through a variety
of identities, while consuming elements from the past that have often
been deliberately edited, staged, and curated. Thinking of ourselves
as tourists allows for a self-conscious mediation between ourselves
and the materials we study, highlighting the ways in which particular
material objects connected to technologies of image-making disrupt
a traditional relationship between who is studying and what is being
studied. Tourism also involves its own replication through souvenirs
and technologies of transmission (photos, drawings, snapshots, post-
cards, silhouettes, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.). The point of
being a tourist is also to try to reproduce and/or record the experience
through material representation—to send out evidence of oneself in a
certain time and place to others. What would it mean to think about
this process in relation to earlier forms of image-making?
Each chapter foregrounds various aspects of tourism in order to think
about the parallel ways in which viewing objects and recording/repre-
senting them reflect a kind of touristic practice both in the past and the
present. The second chapter highlights tourism of the everyday. Looking
at Elizabeth Inchbald’s pocket diary as an embodied archive connects
us to her individual daily rhythm as an actresses and author, as well as
to a collective archive of the experiences of other actresses and profes-
sional women. In Chapter 3, intimacy, both real and imagined, infuses
Thomas Lawrence’s portraits of the Siddons sisters painted during his
tumultuous affairs with both of them. Pairing these paintings and draw-
ings with letters by Sally Siddons, an accomplished singer and composer,
creates a kind of virtual exhibition, staging trajectories of desire around
these objects that highlight their status as what Rebecca Schneider calls
“performance remains.” As archival tourists viewing the images alongside

Sally’s letters, we are invited to consider the ways in which these objects
“look back” at us.
For the Countess of Blessington, in Chapter 4, the magic lantern
serves as an optic trope for viewing the performances of urban culture.
Acting as the central actress/observer, the Countess of Blessington
employs her talents as a fashionable Lady and tasteful intellectual hero-
ine, to visually interpret the dynamics of cultural displays—the auction,
the tomb, the park, and the opera. Juxtaposing Blessington’s fictional
narrative of an auction with an American tourist’s account of witnessing
the auction of her house and possessions in 1849, tourism becomes a
multifaceted way of thinking about absence, presence, and desire. While
Inchbald’s material of memory is personal and specific, the Countess’s
material is also about the collective nature of cultural memory and
embodiment. The Gothic, shimmering, prophetic, and commercial
aspects of the magic lantern inform the ways in which the Countess char-
acterizes the urban world as bifurcated between authentic depths and
artificial surfaces. Positioning her narrator as “elsewhere” both on and
off the stage simultaneously, the Countess transgresses boundaries, creat-
ing a queer dynamic of desire and imagined physical intimacy with peo-
ple and objects in the fictional space of her narrative.
Chapter 5 looks at how craft-related forms of artistic representation
such as silhouettes and waxworks by unknown and well-known women
artists emphasizes the presence and absence of women artists in the
archives across time and media. Silhouettes and waxworks have become
associated with popular forms of tourism and tourist sites because of
their accessibility and performative immediacy. Both forms capture
a very specific moment in time and an extreme likeness of a particular
individual. Silhouettes and works in wax have uncanny properties (par-
ticularly in the case of wax) that stage the liminal space between living
and the dead. Wax works are tied to the phenomenon of “dark tour-
ism.”5 Madame Tussaud made a name for herself by sculpting Marie
Antoinette and Louis XVI’s decapitated heads, and one of the most pop-
ular attractions at Tussaud’s is the Jack the Ripper exhibit.6 The end of
the chapter looks specifically at Madame Tussaud as an individual art-
ist, paying close attention to archival photographs of her self-portraits in
wax. Silhouettes, as the material precursors to the pseudoscience of phre-
nology, are also connected to shadows, invisibility, and racial identity,
which extends to the final chapter of the book. This chapter considers
6 L. ENGEL
Amelia M. Watson’s turn-of-the-century photographs of plantation sites

as a form of “plantation tourism.” Watson’s portraits operate as both
authentic representations and staged realities that reinforce and disrupt
the dynamics of race and gender in early photographs. The artifacts left
behind in Watson’s archive extend visually across media and aesthetic
practices, underscoring the overlaps between the artist’s gaze and the
gaze of the archival tourist.
Acting as a Tourist
The identity of the archival tourist is predicated on the idea of mobility
and travel. Movement and boundary-crossing do not have to be phys-
ical; rather, transportation can be metaphorical or virtual. For scholars
of the past, moving between time periods is a constant. We look at his-
torical traces and make meaning of them in the present, translating ideas
(within our own cultural context) so that the past becomes something
new. Recent scholarship by Rebecca Schneider (2011), Joseph Roach
(2007), Judith Pascoe (2011), and Hanneke Grootenboer (2012) has
emphasized the ways in which the past touches the present and vice
versa. This process occurs particularly through objects and the perfor-
mances/reenactments surrounding them. Tourism, even at its most
basic, involves analyzing and incorporating visual data (signs) that are
often understood through theatrical motifs: front/backstage, costumes,
props, stage sets, and role-play. Entering into an archive, a museum, a
historic house, or tourist site involves adopting an identity or viewpoint
vis-à-vis the materials that one will encounter. As John Urry reminds us,
“There is no single tourist gaze as such. It varies by society, by social
group, and by historical period. Such gazes are constructed through dif-
ference. By this I mean not merely that there is no universal experience
that is true for all tourists at all times. Rather the gaze in any historical
period is constructed in relation to its opposite, to non-tourist forms of
social experience and consciousness” (Urry 2002, 1). Tourism and schol-
arship involve absorbing the memories of others; both require specific
attention to the ethics of looking, possession, and exchange. For tour-
ists, there is often a collapsed boundary between subject and object—to
see something and experience something becomes a form of ownership,
which is often translated into objects or tangible souvenirs. Souvenirs are
markers of authenticity and place; as objects they replay and legitimize
tourist experiences (Stewart 1993, 135), yet how do archival objects
perform as souvenirs in the archive? Or put another way, how do we as

archival tourists think of our encounters with material objects (both large
and small, real and imagined) as souvenirs of the past that we manage to
carry along with us?
In their introduction to Touring Cultures (1997), Chris Rojek and
John Urry pose several important questions about the central concerns
of tourist practices: “What senses are involved in the perception, inter-
pretation, appreciation and denigration of other spaces? How do we
sense what other places are like? How do senses work across space? How
are other times remembered?” (Rojek and Urry 1997, 5). The predom-
inant sense in tourism is sight, which has been privileged in the study of
the history of tourism, which, like the history of celebrity, can be traced
back to the eighteenth century.7 Rojek and Urry also make important
connections between tourism, visual culture, and academia: “Visual cul-
ture has a number of crucial implications for the very distinction between
popular and academic travel. Academic work in many fields increasingly
consists of producing and interpreting visual data. There are interesting
parallels between academics and tourists in the ways in which they pro-
duce and interpret the ‘visual’” (Rojek and Urry 1997, 9). Rojek and
Urry go on to point out the ambiguous line between travel for scholar-
ship and tourism:
It is hard to identify just what makes academic travel a special source of

academic authority. Where does tourism end and so-called fieldwork
begin? This lack of a clear distinction results from the immensely varied
ways in which we now know tourists “sense” the external world. Some of
those senses involve the deployment of skills which parallel those used by
the academic researcher. Semiotic skill is the most significant here, involv-
ing an ability to move forwards and backwards between diverse texts, film,
photographs, landscape, townscape and models so as to “decode” informa-
tion.… And academic work itself increasingly consists of travel to overseas
conferences/other institutions where the conferees engage in academic
tourism; and may use their experiences as part of their supposedly authori-
tative academic data. (Rojek and Urry 1997, 9–10)
In addition to the blurred lines between academics as travelers and

tourists, there are also similarities between the ways in which tour-
ists encounter and “see” the world and the ways in which academ-
ics approach archival research. Dean MacCannell’s concept of “staged
authenticity” is based on performance theorist Erving Goffman’s theory
8 L. ENGEL
of the performance of everyday life, which is organized according to a

theatrical model of front- and backstage realms. For MacCannell, tour-
istic desire is based on the illusion of a proximity to the “backstage”
region of a culture or place. He explains,
Just having a back region generates belief that there is something more
than meets the eye; even when no secrets are actually kept, back regions
are still the places where it is popularly believed the secrets are. … This
division into front and back supports the popular beliefs regarding the
relationship of truth to intimacy. In our society, intimacy and closeness are
accorded much importance: they are seen as the core of social solidarity
and they are also thought by some to be morally superior to rationality and
distance in social relationships and more “real.” Being “one of them” or
at one with “them,” means, in part, being permitted to share back regions
with “them.” This is a sharing which allows one to see behind the others’
mere performances, to perceive and accept others for what they really are.
Touristic experience is circumscribed by the structural tendencies
described here. Sightseers are motivated to see life as it is really lived, even
to get in with the natives, and at the same time, they are deprecated for
always failing to achieve these goals. The term “tourist” is increasingly
used as a derisive label for someone who seems content with his obviously
inauthentic experiences. (MacCannell 1999, 93–94)
Most museums, libraries, and archives are designed to have front- and
backstage realms. The back rooms of these institutions are typically
off-limits to scholars. When one requests objects or documents from
an archive, they theatrically appear from the shelves and then disappear
again after one is finished with them. Although it is not possible to access
the authentic nature of the past, material objects—especially those that
contain traces of the embodiment of particular individuals—engender a
touristic impulse for academics to get “backstage” to access “the real.”8
In her study of tourism and art, Lucy Lippard writes, “All tourists are
afraid they are missing something. This anxiety is a basic condition of
tourism, for there can never be as many minutes in the day as there are
sights to be taken in. The turns not taken may haunt us to the point
of casting a pall over the whole trip” (Lippard 1999, 10). While this
anxiety of missing things and the path not taken may be symptomatic
of contemporary society in general, it seems a particularly apt descrip-
tion of academics, particularly those who engage in archival research.9
Research is after all about lucky accidents, and one never knows exactly
when and how these will occur. Similar to the ephemerality of live
performance, encounters in the archive are based on isolated moments
of discovery which then get interpreted and reenacted in other forms for
larger audiences.
Performance and Archives

According to Jacques Derrida, “nothing is less clear today than the
word ‘archive’” (Derrida 1996, 90). For some scholars and practition-
ers, the archive refers to a physical site—a museum, a library, or a regis-
try office that houses an archive or a collection of materials. For others,
the archive is a less-tangible concept that encompasses everything that
exists in the digital environment; still others use the term “archive”
to describe a theoretical overlapping of discourses that represent and
produce power, knowledge, and various technologies of meaning-
making.10 Postmodern archival theorists see the archive as a center of
interpretation, a non-objective, non-neutral collection of materials to be
read and analyzed. The archive is also a site of collective and individual
memories that often produce a larger cultural narrative with a specific
political and/or national agenda. The archive both records events and
produces them. Although archival theory has become difficult to define,
scholars like Carolyn Steedman remind us of the importance of archives
as real spaces with actual things in them. According to Steedman, the
archive is not a metaphor à la Derrida and Foucault; it is a literal and
concrete space, and old books are “the very stuff of the scholar’s life”
(Steedman 2002, 22).
I am interested in a specific branch of archival studies that connects
archival research with theories and practices of performance and perfor-
mance studies. The work of Rebecca Schneider, Diana Taylor, Joseph
Roach, Greg Dening, Gilli Bush-Bailey, Heather Davis-Fisch, and others
is concerned specifically with how to account for what Leo Braudy has
termed “the extra-textual aspect of performance, all the ‘surround’ of the
performer that sometimes is in vital response to whatever text is pres-
ent but just as often is in tension with it, contradicts it, or ignores it. In
other words, surround is everything else that the audience pays attention
to, in addition to the somewhat circumscribed and formalized perfor-
mance” (Braudy 2011, 1073). In her brilliant book The Archive and the
Repertoire (2003), Diana Taylor distinguishes between the archive as a
set of tangible documents and objects, and the repertoire, which consists
10 L. ENGEL
of ephemeral, intangible information—dance, ritual, behavior, and

gestures that often go unrecorded and are difficult to document in offi-
cial or institutional ways. Joseph Roach has mapped the elusive history
of “it”-ness by tracing the “flesh-and-blood details” of “synthetic expe-
rience” in Samuel Pepys’s diary and funeral effigies of King Charles II.
Roach also examines portraits, accessories, figurines, and other ephem-
era associated with celebrities then and now. Greg Dening’s “ethno-
graphic history” similarly considers the ways in which archival materials
contain traces of the past, which are then reinterpreted by historians in
the present. For Dening, “The relics of the past, the only ways in which
the past survives, are cargo to all the present moments that follow. …
They are marked with the meanings of the occasion of their origins and
they are always translated into something else for the moments they sur-
vive. Historical consciousness is always built out of that double meaning”
(quoted in Davis-Fisch 2012, 14–15). Rebecca Schneider’s ground-
breaking work questions the duality between text and performance, sug-
gesting that even in the material there are traces of the live (Schneider
2011, 88–90). Each of these theorists is dealing in particular ways with
the central dilemma that Heather Davis-Fisch’s recent study Loss and
Cultural Remains in Performance (2012) articulates: “How can one
locate and recuperate the repertoire – the embodied performances of the
past – in and from the archive?” (16).
To complicate matters further, if we are interested in recuperating
the embodied performances of the past from material in the archive,
how do we also take into account the embodied performances of the
present—or, put another way, the performances of the archivist and/
or the scholar performing archival research? Terry Cook and Joan M.
Schwartz propose that “archives are not passive storehouses of old stuff,
but active sites where social power is negotiated, contested, and con-
firmed. By extension, memory is not something found or collected in
archives, but something that is made and continually re-made”; archi-
vists are thus “performers in the drama of memory-making” (Cook
and Schwartz 2002, 172). Invoking Judith Butler, they further argue,
“Postmodernism requires archivists to accept their own historicity,
to recognize their own role in the process of creating archives and to
reveal their own biases” (Cook and Schwartz 2002, 182). For Cook and
Schwartz, once we acknowledge archival practice as a form of perfor-
mance, we will be better able to become what they call “performance-
conscious” (Cook and Schwartz 2002, 185).
One way to begin to become “performance-conscious” is to think

about the archival researcher as a tourist. As John Urry explains, “we can
be tourists in our everyday travels, whether actual or virtual” (quoted in
Edensor 2001, 61). Like archival scholars, tourists are always audience
members and actors at the same time. Tourists’ experiences are charac-
terized by embodied involvement, transaction, or confrontation with a
foreign other, and by witnessing an often staged body of materials to be
interpreted and translated. Thinking about archival research as a form
of tourism reminds us that there is a boundary between the materials of
the past and the desires of the present, at the same time that the idea of
tourism acknowledges a willingness to enter into particular scenarios and
narratives. Many popular tourist sites involve historical reenactment and
simulation. For example, in the eighteenth-century cotton mill Quarry
Bank in Cheshire, “A team of museum interpreters bring the house to
life. Dressed in costume, they engage visitors in conversation … often
in a role as one of the real characters that lived at the house. Visitors are
encouraged to touch all the objects, test the straw-filled beds, stir the
porridge in the kitchen, and pump the water from the well in the yard”
(Edensor 2001, 66).
Theater historian Gilli Bush-Bailey connects the idea of heritage tours
and historical reenactments to the study of theater history. She explains,
“The desire to ‘know’ about one’s own past, the individualised genea-
logical quest for a personal family history, has elided with a public desire
for a shared cultural memory, both coming together to satisfy what cul-
tural historians recognise as a ‘yearning to experience history somatically
and emotionally – to know what it felt like’” (Bush-Bailey 2013, 281).
She adds, “As visitors and audiences in the theatre yard or gallery we are,
in effect, re-enactors…” (Bush-Bailey 2013, 288). An interesting exam-
ple of the crossing between tourist and academic reenactment is our cur-
rent cultural fascination with all things Jane Austen and with the ways
in which Austen’s past resurfaces continuously in our present, thanks in
part to a thriving Austen tourist industry and to the Jane Austen Society
of North America (JASNA).
But I want to make a distinction between tourists dressing in costume
and what I mean by archivists as tourists. I am very struck by Bush-Bailey’s
observation that “Professional historians are also entering into re-enactment,
becoming re-enactors in their own archival projects” (Bush-Bailey 2013,
282). Bailey herself has written a one-act play about the actress Fanny
Kelly, whom she has also written an academic book about. Through this
12 L. ENGEL
reenactment, Bailey is consciously attempting to work out the performa-

tive bridges between the past and the present. In other words, her project is
concerned with acknowledging the embodied traces of the past through her
own embodied activities. She explains, “Theatre historians should acknowl-
edge what we know but often leave to be realised by others: that text may
be embodied and that, without the body, theatre is only a place of the imag-
ination” (Bush-Bailey 2013, 296).
Following Bush-Bailey’s call to bring the theater and the body back
into archival research, I want to propose a methodology that views archi-
val materials through the lens of performance, keeping in mind the lan-
guage of props, staging, embodied presence, and desire—in other words,
I want to imagine the archive in 3-D. Griselda Pollock’s concept of the
“virtual feminist museum,” a virtual exhibition of juxtaposed images,
is helpful in thinking about what I am outlining here. Pollock reminds
us that “The archive is selective not comprehensive. It is pre-selected in
ways that reflect what each culture considered worth storing and remem-
bering. … Vast areas of social life and huge numbers of people hardly
exist, according to the archive. The archive is overdetermined by facts of
class, race, gender, sexuality and above all power” (Pollock 2007, 12).
Pollock proposes the concept of the virtual feminist museum to chal-
lenge these ideologies. She explains that the virtual feminist museum is
not like the modernist museum, which is about “mastery, classification,
[and] definition”; it is instead “about argued responses, grounded spec-
ulations, exploratory relations, that tell us new things about femininity,
modernity and representation” (Pollock 2007, 11). Thus, I would like
to propose that as archival tourists we consider archival materials as if
we were curating a virtual exhibition—that we recognize and attempt to
envision the interdisciplinary relationship amongst archival materials in
order to imagine them in spatial, theatrical, and visual proximity to one
another. In this way, as researchers we are performing a kind of reen-
actment—an animation, if you will—of the archives, which attempts to
account for the “surround” and the embodied traces of the past by pro-
viding an accessible thought-provoking map for audiences.
For all performances require audiences. As Thomas Osborne explains,
“The person who speaks from the archive is the person who mediates
between the secrets or obscurities of the archive and some other kind of
public. To be sure, the existence of an archive always presumes an exist-
ence of a public. The reader of the archives reanimates the discourses he
or she discovers in the archives, giving them an aura of a certain rarity, a
kind of extraordinary ordinariness” (Osborne 1999, 62). Lucy Lippard

echoes the connection between those who “speak from the archives” and
the presence of tourists in her description of tourism and art: “Tourism
(like art) has been touted as a form of transformation, even cannibalism
– the consumption of other places, other cultures, or the digestion of
their powers. Tourists make other places extraordinary by their presence”
(Lippard 1999, 5).
The Material of Memory

Recent work by Andrew Sofer, Robin Bernstein, and Aoife Monks
has emphasized the role of objects or “things” onstage and off, inspir-
ing exciting connections among the disciplines of performance stud-
ies, theater history, art history, and material culture studies. This book
is particularly indebted to Robin Bernstein’s provocative idea of objects
as scriptive things that engender specific kinds of behaviors and actions
according to cultural codes (2011), Andrew Sofer’s study of props
onstage (2003) as the directing force of a play’s action/legacy of mean-
ing, as well as Aoife Monks’s excellent study of costume and embodiment
in relation to theatrical history and the production of identities (2009).11
In her foundational book, Performing Remains (2011), Rebecca
Schneider describes the troubling binaries imposed on the distinction
between text and performance, and by extension visual art and theater.
Scholars’ insistence on the ephemerality of performance privileges the
logic of the archive and the museum as repositories of tangible documents
and artifacts (Schneider 2011, 100). For Schneider, however, perfor-
mance always remains and is often infused within and engendered by the
tangibility of objects. She is also interested in the way performances work
between objects—how the juxtaposition of materials creates specific acts
and actions. Invoking Fred Moten, Schneider borrows the term “inter-
inanimates” to “suggest the ways live art and the media of mechan-
ical and technological reproduction, such as photography, cross-
identify, and, more radically cross-constitute and ‘improvise’ each other”
(Schneider 2011, 7). Can we think of objects from the past as potentially
“cross-identifying” in complicated ways?
In characterizing the objects in this book as art, artifacts, props, set
pieces, performance remains, souvenirs, and materials of memory, I draw
upon these varied theoretical strategies in order to highlight the relation-
ship between the artist, the object, and the viewer across time and place.
14 L. ENGEL
Theorizing these enactments or connections through the paradigms of

tourism (as I have outlined above) restages the possibility of presence
through absence and further complicates the relationship between the
observer and the observed.
Women in the Archives

This book is also deeply indebted to the work of art historians and schol-
ars working in women’s literary history and material culture.12 It is no
surprise that women, particularly women artists, are bound by their con-
texts and “culturally scripted,” as are their histories and legacies. Linda
Nochlin’s famous quote from her 1971 essay “Why Have There Been
No Great Women Artists?” still rings true today: “One thing, however, is
clear: for a woman to opt for a career at all, much less for a career in art,
has required a certain unconventionality, both in the past and at present.
… It is only by adopting, however covertly, the ‘masculine attributes’ of
single mindedness, concentration, tenaciousness, and absorption in ideas
and craftsmanship for their own sake, that women have succeeded, and
continue to succeed, in the world of art” (Nochlin 2018, 169–170).
In attempting to trace the presence of women artists in archives,
it is vital to continue to ask, what or whom have we forgotten or left
out? The embodied experience of individuals who identify as female is
important to access—this does not mean getting at pure “authenticity,”
but rather at some kind of embodied proximity. Allan Sekula’s concept
of a “shadow archive,” (1986) an alternative record of the histo-
ries of marginalized individuals that exists alongside traditional histo-
ries, has been particularly important to the ways in which I am thinking
about the impact and legacy of specific individuals both within and out-
side their communities. Although the main figures in this book may
seem to be unrelated, there are several threads that link them together.
Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821), Sally Siddons (1755–1803), Marguerite
Gardiner, The Countess of Blessington (1789–1849), Isabella Beetham
(1750–1825), Jane Read (1773–1857), Marie Tussaud (1761–1850),
and Amelia M. Watson (1856–1934) were all working artists, and, with
the exception of Sally Siddons, all regularly produced works that were
available in the public sphere. Because of their status as professional
artistic women, all had to be concerned in some way with their own
status and public image. All of them had ties to the theater: Elizabeth
Inchbald was an actress and playwright; Sally Siddons was the daughter
of the most famous actress of the late eighteenth century and her con-
stant touring companion; Isabella Beetham was married to an actor,
Joseph Beetham, who left the theater to become an inventor. She lived
and worked with her husband and daughter, the artist Jane Read, in a
neighborhood adjacent to London’s theatrical district.13 Although the
Countess of Blessington was not a professional actress, she played the
complicated role of salon mistress and writer/journalist/social observer.
Her status as a fashion icon, equally admired and enmeshed in scandal,
made her a constant figure in the public eye. Marie Tussaud built an
empire on the theatricality of wax sculptures featuring replicas of roy-
alty and celebrity. The illustrator, photographer, and painter Amelia M.
Watson was so inspired by the actress Fanny Kemble’s (Sarah Siddons’s
niece) Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation (1864) that she
produced an entire body of work, including a rare series of p hotographs
of the remains of Kemble’s plantation, which she visited in 1915.
Elizabeth Inchbald, Sally Siddons, the Countess of Blessington, and
Fanny Kemble all had their portraits painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
His paintings of Elizabeth Inchbald and the Countess of Blessington
were auctioned off the same day in 1849 as part of the auction of the
contents of the Countess’s home. He is a central ghost and touchstone
figure of this study.
The case studies in the book span the period roughly between
1780–1915, a time of rapid expansion, political change, and indus-
trialization across Britain and America. Beginning with Inchbald’s
pocket diaries and moving through paintings, drawings, magic lan-
terns, silhouettes, waxworks, and photography, Women, Performance
and the Material of Memory follows a history of the development of
image-making apparatuses.14 This book is not, however, a compre-
hensive history of image-making leading up to photography, nor is it
an in-depth study of the history of tourism, traveling, or travelers.15
Rather, I am interested in exploring how in particular instances rep-
resentations of embodied presence in varied formats may have trans-
lated that sense of embodiment to other viewers and how those traces
might still resonate with us today. Thinking of myself as an archival
tourist and the book as a type of exhibition made up of case studies
(which are themselves artifacts and fragments), juxtaposed and in con-
versation with each other, allows me to acknowledge and complicate
my role as a scholar invested in the intersections among theatrical, nar-
rative, and visual culture(s).16
16 L. ENGEL
The Chapters
Chapter 2: Elizabeth Inchbald’s Pocket Diaries considers excerpts from
the actress, playwright, and novelist Inchbald’s pocket diaries from
1781–1820 in order to theorize the significance of the pocket diary as
an embodied archive—that is, as an object and receptacle of information
that is literally and figuratively tied to the body. The pocket diary can
be seen as a prop left over from the scenes of Inchbald’s daily perfor-
mances, and it can also be understood as an ongoing chronicle of the
processes of her embodied actions. The diaries also contain a wealth
of material about the workings of the theater in the 1780s, including
details about the repertoire system, learning of roles or “copying parts,”
competitiveness among actresses, and the experience of going to the
theater while writing for the theater. In particular, I examine Inchbald’s
references to clothing—wearing her “white silk” dress onstage and off
and her use of a “cletin” elastic waistcoat, which she wore to alleviate
the symptoms of her “complaint” (an ailment that plagued her in her
later years). Tracing the larger cultural resonance of these garments
connects Inchbald’s daily performances to a range of representations
of eighteenth-century women. The chapter also looks at Inchbald’s
vexed relationship with the notorious actress Mary Wells. I contend
that material about their association recorded in Inchbald’s pocket
diary represents a “shadow archive” or an alternative record of theat-
rical women that does not appear in official documents, memoirs, or
biographies. Ultimately, I argue that Inchbald’s pocket diary falls some-
place in between the stability of a permanent record and the ephemeral-
ity of performance. It is important to understand the pocket diary as a
dynamic archive, as a documentation of the processes of living, and as a
paradoxically ontological object.
Chapter 3: Sir Thomas Lawrence’s Portraits of the Siddons Sisters
focuses on letters and material objects produced around the tumultuous
and complicated love affairs between the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence and
both of Sarah Siddons’s daughters, Sally and Maria. During the course
of their correspondence (1797–1800), Lawrence completed an extraor-
dinary series of drawings and paintings of Sally and Maria Siddons.
Portraits of Sally, in particular, evoke the dynamic ways in which her
presence shifted throughout their relationship, highlighting Lawrence’s
range of representational strategies for envisioning female identities—as
pastoral, grand, intimate, and fragmentary. The wealth of narrative and
visual material (both tangible and imagined) surrounding the actors in

this ensemble creates a unique opportunity to consider how tangible
materials connect to intangible traces. Using Rebecca Schneider’s con-
cept of performing remains and Hanneke Grootenboer’s theory of “inti-
mate vision” (connected to her excellent study of eye miniatures), I want
to ask how as archival tourists we might consider the ways in which these
artifacts “look back” at us from the past. This chapter is also about redis-
covering Sally Siddons, a talented composer and singer who emerges in
the correspondence and in Lawrence’s images of her as a complex and
intriguing figure whose conflicting passion for Lawrence, her mother,
and her music often left her caught between wanting to be seen and
wishing to remain invisible.
Chapter 4: The Countess of Blessington and Magic Lanterns explores
how the theatrical event or tourist attraction of the “auction” might
help us to theorize the ways in which objects act as souvenirs and as
conduits to embodied experience. Just after Lawrence completed his
famous portrait of her, Lady Blessington composed a fictional account
of an auction in her book The Magic Lantern; or, Sketches of Scenes in
the Metropolis (1822). Juxtaposing Blessington’s narrative with a jour-
nal article by an “American Traveller” chronicling his experience at the
auction of Gore House (the Countess’s home) in 1849 suggests a num-
ber of important things about the connections among auctions, tourism,
souvenirs, archives, and ghosts. The possessions displayed at an auc-
tion represent the artifacts of a lived life now available for purchase by
others. What once meant something particular to one person becomes
consumed and transformed by another. This is particularly true for auc-
tions that take place onsite. Entering into the theatrical set of someone’s
home automatically conjures scenes from the past. Like tourist attrac-
tions, auctions offer the semblance of an “authentic experience” of the
everyday and of the story of a life told through objects. The operation
of magic lanterns, auctions, and tourism share a preoccupation with
fantasy, projection, and types of surveillance. Blessington’s use of the
magic lantern as a guiding trope serves to remind readers of the spectral
and uncanny nature of urban existence as a continuous barrage of the
strange and the familiar.
Chapter 5: Women Artists, Silhouettes, and Waxworks examines sil-
houettes and waxworks by late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century
women artists in order to consider the ways in which these mysterious
artifacts represent traces of the embodied presence of specific individuals.
18 L. ENGEL
Miniature shadow profiles, typically made from cutting paper or paint-

ing on glass, capture an individual’s likeness in a matter of minutes.
Viewing a silhouette, then, connects the observer directly to the moment
of the object’s creation—staging a kind of reenactment scenario across
time. The extraordinary skill and technique of silhouette artists such as
Isabella Beetham and her daughter Jane Read provide insight into modes
of late-eighteenth-century style, gesture, and expression. As keepsakes,
accessories, and souvenirs, silhouettes were connected to desire, memory,
and the politics of exchange in some of the same ways as portrait minia-
tures. Yet, because these images depict the subject’s shadow, the portrait
is by its nature ghostly and incomplete, while at the same time evok-
ing a material sense of the sitter’s presence and embodied reality. In the
second part of the chapter, I turn to waxworks, specifically to Madame
Tussaud’s self-portraits and her individual artistry, to explore the ways
in which these meticulously crafted three-dimensional figures echo the
immediacy of the silhouette while creating the uncanny experience of
capturing something embodied for the viewer. Looking at silhouettes
and waxworks by women artists charts a history of forgotten individuals
and artifacts. I end the chapter with a brief discussion of the contempo-
rary artist Kara Walker, whose provocative and theatrical use of the sil-
houette form poses crucial questions about representations of blackness,
racism, and history.
Chapter 6 explores the illustrator, photographer, and painter Amelia
M. Watson’s fascination with the actress Fanny Kemble’s Journal
of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation (1864), a text which chroni-
cles Kemble’s experience as the uncomfortable mistress of her hus-
band’s American slave plantation. In 1915, Watson traveled with two
female companions to the remains of Kemble’s plantation located on
St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia. Once there, she took a stun-
ning series of photographs of the plantation house, the surrounding
landscape, and the descendants of the original enslaved people who lived
there. Watson used these images to illustrate an edition of Kemble’s
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation (her photographs
are bound into an edition of the book), and she made her own photo
albums with them, detailing her experience as a tourist, voyeur, and
documentarian in captions that accompany the images. In addition to
these artifacts, Watson’s journal contains notes from her interviews with
descendants from the plantation (who remembered Kemble) along with

plans for another volume featuring these excerpts alongside her photo-
graphs. Considering these materials through contemporary tourist the-
ory, I explore what I am calling Amelia Watson’s “plantation tourism,”
investigating the overlapping and contradictory narratives of sympathy,
voyeurism, and aesthetic practice in the interplay between Watson’s
images, the text that accompanies her photographs, and Kemble’s orig-
inal narrative. Watson’s photographs were taken in the midst of an
emerging field of photography that included Jacob Riis and Frances
Benjamin Johnston. What Watson’s images suggest about the rebuilding
of a nation after slavery and the production of a new American national
identity is ironically tied to her recovery and reimagining of Kemble, a
British actress’s experience in America. Ending with Amelia Watson’s
visual reimagining of Fanny Kemble’s past extends the discussion of
archival tourism to consider new forms of technology, the possibilities
for transatlantic identities, and imagining selves within a new framework
of nation, race, and gender.
In a brief epilogue, I discuss three current museum exhibitions that
echo the main concerns of this book: the Sisi Experience, an interactive
exhibit that recreates a day in the life of Empress Sisi (Empress Elisabeth
of Austria) at Madame Tussauds in Vienna; Like Life, a blockbuster
exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that brings together a thou-
sand years of figurative sculpture and features wax as a central medium;
and Black Out, the first major exhibition of American Silhouettes at
the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The appearance,
celebration, and theoretical enquiry surrounding the earlier forms of
image-making featured in this book suggests in part a rethinking of
what it means to translate embodied encounters across time periods, as
well as the many ways in which identities can materialize or alternatively
vanish.
Tourism is celebrating the archives and the archives are filled with
tourists. While there are many ways to distinguish between the two, link-
ing them may allow us to imagine ourselves as dynamic embodied par-
ticipants in the translation between the past and the present. As in de
Borchgrave’s magical dresses, attempting to walk out of and around the
picture produces something new, reframing our encounter with the orig-
inal object, and staging alternative scenes of discovery.
20 L. ENGEL
Notes
1. For more on de Borchgrave and her work, see Dennita Sewell’s lecture
Isabelle de Borchgrave: Fashioning Art from Paper (2017).
2. Milne’s book Letters, Postcards, Email: Technologies of Presence (2010)
focuses on the rhetorical creation of narrative forms of presence, embod-
iment, and disembodiment in letters, postcards, and emails. For Milne,
the creation of “presence” or the sense of an embodied person “depends
on the complex interaction between cultural practices and technological
infrastructure” (Milne 2010, 3).
3. Foundational books on idealized narratives of (British) femininity in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries include Nancy Armstrong’s Desire
and Domestic Fiction (1987), Ruth Yeazell’s Fictions of Modesty (1991),
and Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchóir, and Penny
Warburton, eds., Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830
(2001). These constructs are also at work with the idea that performances
of gender materialize according to cultural norms and contexts. See
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993).
4. At the end of Deborah Lutz’s biography of the Brontës, The Brontë
Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects (2015), she describes the gaze of an
enraptured tourist visiting the Brontës’ village: “One afternoon when I
was staring up the steep incline of main street, I passed a young woman
in black leather pants, her long hair dyed black. She stood still. Her face
showed such fervor that I found myself looking away. The raw strength
of her passion felt too private for a stranger to gaze on. It is easy to ridi-
cule such intense feeling. Easy to feel contempt at such naïve sentimental-
ity. But then again, why not admire it?” (Lutz 2015, 255). Even though
Lutz seems to praise the obsessed Brontë fan, there is still a sense here
that she, as a scholar, is not like this person.
5. For more about dark tourism, see John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, Dark
Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (2000).
6. See Emma McEvoy’s chapter on “Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of
Horrors: Wounded Spectators, Perverse Appetites, and Gothic History”
in her Gothic Tourism (2016, 53–84).
7. Chris Rojek and John Urry explain that studies of visual culture and
tourism have followed a trajectory that emphasizes the loss of an orig-
inal tourist sensibility that centered on “capturing a long-imagined
sight” to the tourists of the interwar period, who were highly “attuned
to the pleasures of variety and oscillation,” to the dislocation of moder-
nity, where “Sights become a staging post on a journey. One no longer
embraces them with one’s soul. Rather, the tourist uses them to give
shape to the passion of travel, which would otherwise be shapeless”
(Rojek and Urry 1997, 6).
8. Lucy Lippard echoes this in her On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and
Place (1999). She writes, “The underlying contradiction of tourism
is the need to see beneath the surface when only a surface is available.
However, peeps behind the stage set or the wizard’s curtain offer just
another layer of artifice” (Lippard 1999, 8).
9. Lippard also makes this point: “Tourism (like art) has been touted as a
form of transformation, even cannibalism – the consumption of other
places, other cultures, or the digestion of their powers. Tourists make
other places extraordinary by their presence” (Lippard 1999, 5).
10. See particularly Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans.
Eric Prenowitz (1996) and Michel Foucault, the Archaeology of Knowledge,
and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (1972).
11. See too Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy’s timely collection
Performing Objects and Theatrical Things (2014), which brings together
fascinating case studies that highlight the presence of things in perfor-
mance in a variety of contexts. The editors provide a comprehensive over-
view of the connections between performance studies and thing theory
(including the work of Arjun Appadurai, Jane Bennett, and Bill Brown)
(Schweitzer and Zerdy 2014, 1–17).
12. There are many excellent scholars working on the connections between
women and material culture. Works that have particularly influenced
this project include Jennie Batchelor’s Dress, Distress and Desire (2005),
Chloe Wigston Smith’s Women, Work and Clothes in the Eighteenth-
Century Novel (2013), Marcia Pointon’s Portrayal (2012) and Brilliant
Effects (2009), Heather McPherson’s Art and Celebrity in the Age of
Reynolds and Siddons (2017), Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace’s Consuming
Subjects (1997), and Aileen Ribeiro’s The Art of Dress (1995) and
Clothing Art (2017). In addition, Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan’s
important collection Women and Material Culture 1660–1830 (2007)
and Chloe Wigston Smith’s recent essay “Gender and the Material Turn”
in Women’s Writing 1660–1830: Feminisms and Futures, Jennie Batchelor
and Gillian Dow, ed. (2016), have inspired my approach to thinking
about the relationship between female identities, artistry, and objects.
13. According to silhouette historian Sue McKechnie, Isabella Beetham may
have begun her career as a silhouette artist on the suggestion of the actor
Samuel Foote: “In the theatrical world, Beetham became acquainted
with the playwright and actor Samuel Foote, who engaged him at the
Haymarket theatre to take part in his ‘Primitive Puppet Show’, so strongly
disapproved of by Dr. Johnson. Piety in Pattens was his best known pup-
pet play. Foote’s success created a fashion for such entertainments, and the
Beethams prepared the busts for two further examples: Stevens’ ‘Comic
Lecture on Heads’ and Dodd’s ‘Satirical Lecture on Hearts’. In 1775 they
produced a ‘Lecture’ of their own, ‘A New Lecture on Heads’, which was
22 L. ENGEL
shown in London, Norwich, Newcastle (where it was printed) and else-

where. If, as has been said, it was Foote who encouraged Isabella Beetham
to use her artistic talent professionally, she may have started to cut profiles
before 1777, when Foote died” (McKechnie 2014).
14. See Jonathan Crary’s foundational text, Techniques of the Observer: On
Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (1990), and Geoffrey
Batchen’s Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (2004) and
Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph (2016).
15. For more on the history of tourism and travel writing, see in particular
Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation
(2008) and Chloe Chard’s Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel
Writing and Imaginative Geography, 1660–1830 (1999).
16. Museum theorist Daniel Preziosi suggests that objects in museums always
represent a simultaneous frisson of absence and presence:
In rendering the visible legible, museum objects are literally both there
and not there, and in two distinct ways. In the first place, the object is
both quite obviously materially part of its position (situation) in the
historiographic theater of the museum … yet at the same time it is
unnaturally borne there from some other milieu, from some “original”
situation: its present situation is in one sense fraudulent (this museum
is not “its” place). In the second place, the object’s signification is both
present and absent … its semiotic status is both referential and differ-
ential; it is both directly and indirectly meaningful. … For the museum
user, then, the object’s material properties, no less than its significance,
are simultaneously present and absent. (Preziosi 2006, 61–62)
Preziosi’s analysis of “museum objects” and their “simultaneous” signifi-
cance as both real and fake, past and present, embodied and empty, echoes
the academic’s inevitable conflict between the desire to be able to interpret
the past and the realization that there is no way to ever access it completely.
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CHAPTER 2
Elizabeth Inchbald’s Pocket Diaries
Much tourism involves memory. In a kind of way tourism is the appropriation

of the memories of others. … It could be claimed that it is the body that knows
and remembers, through a whole variety of senses and actions. (Crawshaw and
Urry 1997, 179)
Pocket Diaries as Embodied Archives

The actress, playwright, novelist, and theatrical critic Elizabeth Inchbald
(1753–1821) destroyed her memoirs on the advice of a priest, but the
pocket diaries she left behind provide significant traces of an embodied
self in relation to its daily practices as a professional female subject in the
world of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Inchbald’s
busy list of teas, play rehearsals, writing, walking, hairdressing, carriage
rides, and visits convey a rich and hectic life, often full of anxiety and low
spirits. Her one-line descriptions of her state of mind (“dull today” or
even “not happy”) juxtaposed with her recording of material needs, her
own labor, and daily rituals represent a brief composite picture of lived
experience. The diaries also contain a wealth of material about the work-
ings of the theater in the 1780s, including details about the repertoire
system, learning of roles or “copying parts,” competitiveness amongst
actresses, and the experience of going to the theater whilst writing for
the theater.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3_2
28 L. ENGEL
In this chapter, I consider excerpts from Elizabeth Inchbald’s pocket

diaries from 1781–1820 in order to theorize the significance of the
pocket diary as an embodied archive—that is, as an object and recepta-
cle of information that is literally and figuratively tied to the body. The
pocket diary can be seen as a prop left over from the scenes of Inchbald’s
daily performances, and it can also be understood as an ongoing chron-
icle of the processes of her embodied actions.1 I use contemporary
theories of tourism, visual culture, and performance to contextualize
Elizabeth Inchbald’s pocket diary as a kind of tourist site, a representa-
tion of everyday traces of embodied experience that creates a sense of
Inchbald’s presence across time. The present-day scholar’s relationship to
this text, a hybrid genre of private and public material, resembles a tour-
istic encounter—the diary itself presents an opportunity for “staged inti-
macy,” a window into the backstage regions of Inchbald’s experience.2
In his excellent essay on “embodied archives,” Joseph Pugliese asks,
“In what ways may our lived bodies be seen as living corporeal archives,
repositories of historical practices and inventories of almost invisible
traces?” (Pugliese 2011, 1). He suggests that “to a large degree our
bodies are marked by an infinity of traces that, in having been so fully
absorbed into our everyday practices are largely invisible, they are prac-
tices without an inventory” (Pugliese 2011, 4). The pocket diary is in
many ways as close as we can get to a recorded corporeal archive. The
diary is organized around the premise of inventory, which makes it simul-
taneously a very readable and elusive document. What Inchbald is archiv-
ing in her diaries is the process of working, acting, writing, consuming,
performing on and off the stage, living in her body, through the daily
entanglements of embodiment, affect, desire, and discomfort. For the
archival tourist, then, the diary represents the tantalizing promise of traces
of everyday performances, a kind of “backstage” access into history.3
As archival tourists reading the diaries, we are in a sense, walking
around the past with Inchbald, making our way through the London
streets in carriages, entertaining visitors at tea, attending rehearsals,
cleaning the house, eating dinner, thinking about projects, reveling in
successful performances, experiencing doubt and anxiety, changing in
and out of costumes. Inchbald’s representation of her body in the diary
through references to wearing her “white dress,” connects her textual
representation of herself to portraits of her in white dresses by Hoppner
and Lawrence along with visual depictions of a legacy of theatrical
2 ELIZABETH INCHBALD’S POCKET DIARIES 29
women and fashionable female aristocrats. In this way, Inchbald’s diaries

are a record of individual and collective memory—memory that extends
across time periods through the tangible artifact of her painted image.
In addition, I propose that Inchbald’s diaries also invoke what Allan
Sekula has termed a “shadow archive” (Sekula 1986, 10). Looking
closely at the documentation of her relationship with the notorious
actress Mary Wells in her diaries establishes an alternative narrative
of their intimacy that is now invisible in the public record. Inchbald’s
chronicle of a mysterious ailment that plagued her at the end of her life
in her final diaries using marks (X’s) to establish a pattern of her pain
and her mention of wearing “elastic waistcoats” connects the contem-
porary reader in significant ways to her own sense of her aging corpo-
real presence. Inchbald’s use of X’s as an alternative language and code
establishes a gap in translation for the reader—a deliberate declaration
of opacity—that prevents a tourist gaze from entering into authentic
knowledge. In this way, Inchbald’s memorandum echoes Susan Sontag’s
formulation of illness as a foreign territory, an otherness juxtaposed to
the experience of “normal” embodied life.4 Ultimately, I argue that
Inchbald’s pocket diary falls some place in between the stability of a
permanent record and the ephemerality of performance. It is important
to understand the pocket diary as a dynamic archive, as a documentation
of the processes of living, and as a paradoxically ontological object.
Thinking about the diaries as embodied archives highlights the mul-
timodal significance of the diaries as tangible conduits to the intangi-
ble, and at the same time links the researcher as archival tourist to the
invocation of Inchbald’s embodied presence as she was situated in her
space and community.
Archive Theory and the Pocket Diary

Pocket diaries challenge traditional ways of thinking about archives
and archival research. If, as Jacques Derrida argues, archives inher-
ently suggest “power, order,” and the act of putting things in order,
often by someone in a position of authority who is sorting, catalogu-
ing, and recording the experiences of others (as discussed in Powell
and Ott Rowlands 2013, 8),5 the pocket diary invites us to reconsider
how individual lived experience is documented, preserved, and fash-
ioned for future interpretation. Inchbald’s diaries trace an important and
30 L. ENGEL
intangible history of the overlap between women’s private and public

lives in and around the theater, providing evidence of their significant
role in the formation of late-eighteenth-century celebrity.
In their introduction to Acting on the Past: Historical Performance
Across the Disciplines, Mark Franko and Annette Richards make an
urgent plea for a reevaluation of the ways in which performance stud-
ies interrogates history, calling for scholars to formulate fresh, theoretical
approaches to memory, texts, and archives. They remind us that
Absent performative events have conceptual, imaginary, and evidential,

as well as actively reproductive bases. They are especially characterized by
movement between present and past, one in which archive and act, frag-
ment and body, text and sounding, subject and practice, work in provoc-
ative interaction; it is the movement between past acts, texts, and their
present-day interpreters that is central to historical performance studies.
(Franko and Richards 2000, 1)
Inchbald’s diaries offer a remarkable glimpse of the “provocative interac-

tions” Franko and Richards refer to: Inchbald’s entries are characterized
by movements between the past and the present, and her daily narratives
highlight fragments of her past performances and translate these actions
into text. Part of the reason why we have so few examples of surviving
pocket diaries is tied to the diary’s function as a daily record of events
in a single year. Like a modern datebook that becomes obsolete at the
last page, there was little reason to save pocket diaries after they were
filled with information. These archival objects, then, are particularly con-
nected to the specifics of time and memory and, by extension, to traces
of a body living through a particular period or series of performances in
a particular time frame. Thus, the generic features of the pocket diary
resemble in some crucial ways the features of live performance—which
is experienced, remembered, sometimes recorded, but largely intangible
after the event occurs.
Inchbald’s memorandum (the written commentary about her day) as
well as her daily expense list are records of her own performances but are
also ghosted by the performances of others who inhabited her world.6
While Inchbald’s pocket diaries can be seen as an individual embodied
archive, I also want to explore how Inchbald’s pocket diaries function
in relation to more traditional, collective or official archival records of
women’s experiences. I suggest that Inchbald’s pocket diaries represent
what Allan Sekula has termed a “shadow archive.” Sekula is writing

about early photography and the ways in which images shape idealized
norms of subjectivity, but his concept is relevant here as well. For Sekula,
there are two archives, “a generalized inclusive archive” and “a shadow
archive. … The general all-inclusive archive necessarily contains both the
traces of the visible bodies of heroes, leaders, exemplars and celebrities,
and those of the poor, the diseased, the insane, the criminal, the non-
white, the female, and all other embodiments of the unworthy” (Sekula
1986, 10). In other words, embedded in the general archive are traces of
the shadow archive—the echoes of “others” whose lives are not deemed
worthy of official documentation, those who haunt the margins of vis-
ibility existing perpetually offstage. I see Inchbald’s pocket diaries, her
embodied archives, as a tangible representation of a “shadow archive.”
Her daily negotiations, movements, expenses, and encounters make
visible what is invisible in official archives, and this material haunts and
reconfigures more traditional accounts of women’s experiences, creating
an alternative legacy of actions and performances. In this way, Inchbald’s
pocket diaries participate in archiving the intangible cultural practices of
professional women working in and around the theater at the turn of the
nineteenth century.
The Pocket Diary as Object

Jennie Batchelor has eloquently described the pocket diary as a generic
hybrid. She explains, “Ladies pocket books (sometimes known as memo-
randum books), are duodecimo, annual publications that uniquely blend
the characteristics of the account book, diary, and eighteenth-century
ladies magazine” (Batchelor 2003, 1–2). Pocket books or diaries are
small volumes that could be carried around in a pocket or perhaps kept
in a drawer, desk, or dressing table. Batchelor argues that there is a ten-
sion inherent in the pull between the domestic function of the pocket
book, which was intended to help women manage the economy of their
households, and the lure of consumer culture represented in the fash-
ion plates and advice on dress and deportment often found in the book’s
opening pages. As a single, professional woman without children living
in a cosmopolitan environment (Inchbald never remarried after the death
of her husband in 1779), Inchbald’s relationship to domestic manage-
ment and to fashion and consumer culture is unique. She did not have
a household to manage and often moved from place to place, doing her
32 L. ENGEL
own housework and domestic chores. As an actress, a playwright, and

later a novelist, her house represented her professional workspace. The
purchases Inchbald recorded in her pocket diary illustrate the inextri-
cable relationship between her professional and personal realms—these
goods (particularly paper and candles) as well as items related to her
appearance—washing, hair-dressing, accessories, and dresses—are essen-
tial to her survival as well as to the management of her career and the
fashioning of her public image. Inchbald’s pocket diaries thus contain
traces of the complex negotiations of a body enacting a surprisingly con-
temporary existence.
Inchbald’s pocket diaries are housed in the Folger Library and also
accessible to contemporary scholars in a Pickering & Chatto edition care-
fully edited by Ben P. Robertson. This edition is a significant feat given
the fact that these tiny, crumbling volumes are nearly impossible to read
in the original. Inchbald’s handwriting is difficult to decipher and often
covers the entire page, spilling over outside of the margins and columns
designed to contain each entry. Yet, the reprinting and synthesizing of
the diary separates the reader from the experience of encountering “the
original”—of looking at the ink itself and the scrawl across the page as
archival evidence of a person writing something, of the act of recording
daily performances.
Inchbald’s early diary entries are organized in two parts. The first is a
series of notes or memoranda chronicling events in the day followed by a
list of daily expenses.7 The first part of each entry is a list of daily activi-
ties, which range from eating to shopping, acting, writing, and sleeping.
For example, Tuesday, 13 February: “rose early – wrote a long letter to
Mr. Harris and sent him my farce, my sister went away, at 11 o’clock
rehearsal – then walked with Miss Satchel to shops, dined and drank cof-
fee at my sisters, then Dr. Brodie with me till supper, began to read in
the history of England. Play Merchant of Venice” (in Robertson 2007,
1.223).8 Then below or next to the memorandum, there is a list of that
day’s expenses, which are particularly varied on the 13th: “a tooth brush,
spectacles mending, pick-tooth case mending, candles” (1.223). Other
expenses that appear frequently are for hairdressing and sugar for hair-
dressers, lodgings, newspapers, paper, wine, mending, food, washing, and
letters. By themselves, these details seem both ordinary and extraordi-
nary—ordinary in that they are details of the routines and experiences of
daily life, extraordinary in that we have this record of daily rhythms and
patterns that form a kind of composite picture of embodied experience.
So what do Inchbald’s patterns of memory tell us, and how do we

develop strategies to read these entries for traces of her embodied per-
formances? For a biographer in particular, a pocket diary is invaluable
information because it provides concrete details as well as fragments and
incomplete clues about the daily habits, movements, meetings, and rela-
tionships of the subject in question. The information is typically seen,
then, as an elaborate puzzle with many missing pieces. It is the biogra-
pher, scholar, and/or archivist’s job to intelligently “fill in the blanks”
using additional historical and contextual information. I suggest that
reading Inchbald’s diary in terms of the fragments themselves, highlight-
ing and emphasizing their incomplete, repetitive, and ephemeral nature
rather than focusing on creating a complete and definitive narrative of
her past, might be more useful in thinking about what Inchbald wanted
to remember, or, put another way, what she considered to be signifi-
cant enough to record about her daily experiences. Reading in this way
emphasizes rhythm and repetition, process rather than product.
Moreover, reading in this way it becomes possible to trace, for exam-
ple, the unusual and complex ways in which Inchbald’s private and
public lives are inextricably linked, as well as the ways in which her
bodily experience is tied to her thought process. During a typical day,
Inchbald moves frequently from professional to more personal spaces—
the tea room, to the theater, to shops, to exhibitions, to other people’s
houses, and then home again—where her “private” space is often
occupied by friends, relatives, and a variety of hairdressers. Her house is a
transformable set of scenes that contain a myriad of activities—dressing,
dining, working, rehearsing, copying, reading, and thinking. For
example, Thursday, 8 February: “A rehearsal of the new comedy, then
nanny calld, dined before my hair dresser came, was in my dining room,
played the Abbess, farce three weeks after marriage, the kings command,
very dull after, began to copy my farce which I had spoke to Mr. Quick
about in the morning” (1.221).
Embedded in this exhausting train of events are records of Inchbald’s
writing process, which must have been informed, in many ways, by the
interconnected realities of simultaneously reading, writing, and acting
for the stage. For example, on Monday, 9 July, Inchbald writes, “all day
at my comedy but in the evening disliked what I wrote” (1.260); then
11 July: “Walked, wrote, but did not please myself”; Thursday, 12 July:
“In the evening at my comedy but did not like it” (1.261). However,
the following week on 21 July, she adds, “After tea wrote in my comedy
34 L. ENGEL
in the little passage – my head very well” (1.262), and on Friday, 27

July: “After tea wrote a scene in my comedy I liked – had a dove for
supper” (1.263). By 30 July, Inchbald is feeling happy with her com-
edy. There are several positive entries, and on Wednesday, 1 August, she
declares, “After tea contrived how to finish my comedy” (1.264). Thus,
in less than a month, Inchbald is able to nearly complete a comedy—and
despite her anxieties about her work, she manages to find something that
she likes about it, which fuels her drive to complete the play. Inchbald
leaves us with an archive of her thought process, as well as a less tangible
archive of the emotional arc around her composition.
Inchbald’s daily record details a life primarily spent onstage or in
working for the stage in some way. Her attention to the careers and suc-
cesses of other actresses, to responses to her own performances and writ-
ings, and to her own appearance and image, suggest the degree to which
she was constantly aware of what kind of an impact she was making and
might make on the public theatrical world. She often records when she
herself has been offered a part or when someone else has. For example,
on Tuesday, 11 September: “A little uneasy at finding Mrs. Yates playd
Lady Allworth” (1.272); later on 20 October: “Mr. Ledger brought
my salary and told me to be ready in Lady Allworth- very happy and
did some sorting of my things” (1.284). On Wednesday, 24 October:
“Heard of a new tragedy and that Miss. Satchell was in it, mr. Dive
vext me about my acting” (1.285); 26 October: “Playd Lady Frances
Touchwood, mrs. Younge did not play … hardly spoke to Mr. Dive.
Thought with pleasure on Bath” (1.285). The determination and per-
fectionism that haunted Inchbald’s writing process is equally present in
what she chooses to record about the vicissitudes, pleasures, and humilia-
tions of working on the stage and being constantly on display.
The White Dress

Although Inchbald is clearly preoccupied with the anxieties of main-
taining her self-image and her employment, she mentions her own
appearance infrequently and only when she is wearing particularly spe-
cial items of clothing—her white silk dress, her white hat, and her blue
and black dress. These must have been her best garments and/or the
dresses that she may have also worn onstage. Many actresses owned
and wore their own costumes.9 On Tuesday, 8 November, Inchbald
writes, “A very fine day, at rehearsal of George Barnwell in the Green

room, after Mr. Barnwell sat a little with me, then I worked, put on my
white silk and in the green room at Merchant of Venice and Love a la
Mode, supped with Mr. Whitfield and both at our parts” (1.289); and
on Friday, 16 November: “In the Green room Duenna & Touchstone,
wore my white silk, not happy at night” (1.291). There are several
interesting things about Inchbald’s record of wearing her “white silk”
and moving from the green room to the stage and from role to role.
The dress functions here as a visual representation of Inchbald’s com-
plex embodied experience, from offstage to on, from performing “her-
self” to acting different parts every night, in plays ranging from farce to
Shakespeare. Following her metamorphosis through one dress produces
an archive of multiple performances and modes of embodiment.
Wearing “white silk” is in fact a potent signifier for a number of dif-
ferent ideologies surrounding femininity and embodiment in the late
eighteenth century. Appearing in white silk, as opposed to the growing
popularity of dressing in practical and relatively inexpensive white cotton
or muslin, reflects not only an acknowledgment of current fashion trends,
but also a level of wealth and luxury that represented a particular level of
status and style. Artists’ depictions of sumptuous white fabrics in portraits
created dazzling effects. Thomas Lawrence’s remarkable portrait of the
actress Eliza Farren is a tour-de-force depiction of the actress in a shim-
mering white silk gown. White silk also played a significant role in the
iconography associated with theatrical dress. George Clint’s portrait of
the actress, “Harriet Smithson as Miss Dorillon in ‘Wives as They Were,
and Maids as They Are’, by Elizabeth Inchbald” (Fig. 2.1), portrays her
in a lovely white dress with a matching glove and fan.10 Fashion historian
Aileen Ribeiro notes, “to the paucity of information on theatre costume
from primary documentary sources, such as inventories and theatrical
account books, must be added the virtual absence of surviving stage gar-
ments of the period” (Ribeiro 2003, 107). Portraiture, then, becomes
the richest source of knowledge we have about the way women appeared
on and offstage. Inchbald’s reference to her white dress in her pocket dia-
ries reinforces visual connections between her intangible embodied expe-
rience and tangible representations of her figure in surviving paintings. As
I will discuss further in the next chapter, the archival tourist plays a cru-
cial role in this connection, serving as a witness to the past while creating
a connection to the portrait that exists palpably in the present.
36 L. ENGEL
Fig. 2.1 George Clint, 1770–1854, British, “Harriet Smithson as Miss

Dorillon in Wives as They Were, Maids as They Are, by Elizabeth Inchbald,” ca.
1822 (Oil on Canvas), © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Theatrical prints of actresses in costume feature figures in white

dresses, and caricatures of actresses highlight them clothed in loose-
fitting pale gowns. For example, in “Sarah Siddons, Old Kemble, and
Henderson, rehearsing in the green room” by Thomas Rowlandson
(1789), Siddons is depicted in the middle of an exaggerated tragic
pose, with one of the male figures imitating her gestures in a mirror
in the background. Rowlandson’s unflattering image of the fashion-
able actress Frances Abington lying on a couch from 1786 is similar
to a satiric print of Inchbald, which represents her as a rotund woman
dressed in white sitting dejected at her writing desk (Fig. 2.2). What is
Fig. 2.2 “I’ll Tell You What! That Such Things Are We Must Allow, But
Such Things Never Were Till Now,” Wigstead, Henry, Delineator, England,
E. Jackson, ca. 1790: Private Collection, Photo © Liszt Collection/Bridgeman
Images
38 L. ENGEL
notable about these prints, aside from the repetition of the actresses’
costume, is the representation of the actress behind the scenes in a
“private” moment. The actress/author appears “unmasked” and ridic-
ulous in these images, a direct attack on her embodied labor and pro-
fessional skill.
The range of depictions of actresses in white dresses, from society
portraits to stage prints to caricatures, represents the variety of ways in
which their costumes and identities were read and understood by audi-
ences.11 Ribeiro explains that the famous portrait painter Sir Joshua
Reynolds “was equally content to paint the actress Frances Abington
as the Comic Muse in the kind of white, flimsy cross-over dress (known
as a bed gown) cobbled together in his studio, as he was to show his
more exalted, aristocratic female sitters in similar guise” (Ribeiro
2003, 107). Inchbald’s references to wearing her white silk in her
pocket diaries reflect her understanding of how dress could mold the
ways in which audiences perceived her onstage and offstage and the
multiple dimensions of her “working body.” She thus provides traces
of her own embodied experience as well as reference to an extended
visual archive of the performances of others. The multifaceted mean-
ings and embodiments of Inchbald’s “white silk” are ghosted by the
representations of other actresses in similar costumes, creating links to
multiple series of performances. In addition, the implied connections
between Inchbald’s costume, her professional labor as an actress, and
her body offstage, create an alternative vision of the working actress’s
body behind the scenes. For the archival tourist, Inchbald’s specific
references to clothing signal the presence of her body within the text.
Connecting the intangible image of Inchbald in the diary to the tangi-
ble object of her portraits stages a cross-temporal reenactment, what
Rebecca Schneider (via Fred Moten and John Donne) has termed an
“inter-(in)animation,” or a moment where the past reaches forward to
touch the present; for Schneider the process of reenactment provides
“a syncopation machine for the touching of time across or beside itself
in the zigzagging lived experience of history’s multi-directional ghost
notes” (Schneider 2011, 31). Although Inchbald’s diary is not a live
reenactment as an embodied archive, the material engages in a specific
way with other objects, creating a sense of past lived experience that
materializes in the present.
Portraits of Inchbald in White

Three paintings of Inchbald in white dresses at different points in her
career provide a tangible visual archive that connects the self-described
costume in her pocket diary to representations of her image circulating in
the world. John Hoppner’s portrait of Inchbald (1789–1795), recently
displayed in the celebrated “First Actresses” exhibition at the National
Portrait Gallery in 2011, depicts the actress wearing a fashionable pale silk
gown with a light blue sash. She appears in profile gazing directly at the
viewer with a serene expression. Unlike Hoppner’s extremely erotic image
of the actress and author Mary Robinson (1782), a contemporary of
Inchbald’s who was best known for her very public affair with the Prince
of Wales, his portrayal of Inchbald emphasizes her quiet beauty. While
Robinson appears dressed to effect in a low-cut gown reminiscent of a
masquerade costume, Inchbald is in everyday dress, looking as though she
had paused for a moment during her hectic schedule to be captured by the
artist. In another little-known portrait of Inchbald by Thomas Lawrence
completed in 1796, Inchbald appears in stylish neoclassical dress, placed
against an idealized pastoral backdrop. The dark-green sash against the
whiteness of her dress echoes the lush color of the landscape, creating a
ghostly effect (Fig. 2.3). Her shimmering figure placed in front of a large
tree emphasizes the ephemerality of her body at the same time as her pose
and expression invoke classical sculpture. The sheen of her face appears
almost waxen and is devoid of color except for the bright-red gleam of
her hair against her shoulders. In yet another portrait of Inchbald by
Lawrence, Inchbald’s face emerges distinctly from the dark background of
the canvas, her white dress and white head providing an outline for the
suggestion of her body (Fig. 2.4). Unlike the very posed and staged image
of Inchbald placed theatrically against a faux-natural landscape, the unfin-
ished image of Inchbald creates a sense of being “backstage/offstage”
where the viewer is allowed a glimpse of the “real” actress. Cassandra
Albinson explains, “Unfinished portraits such as Elizabeth Inchbald,
which was probably displayed in Lawrence’s studio, represented the live-
liness, sense of spontaneity, and even sketchiness that Lawrence hoped to
preserve in his finished portraits” (Albinson 2011b, 193).12
The varying degrees of finish in Lawrence’s portraits of Inchbald in
white dresses echoes the varying degrees of our access as archival tour-
ists to Inchbald’s embodied experience. Lawrence’s unfinished image of
40 L. ENGEL
Fig. 2.3 Sir Thomas Lawrence, English, 1769–1830, Portrait of Mrs. Elizabeth
Inchbald, 1796 (Oil on Canvas), Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis,
TN; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morrie A. Moss 59.45
Inchbald, his depiction of Inchbald in process, exposes the bones of his

artistic production and, like Inchbald’s pocket diary, provides a tangible
conduit to intangible performances. Both the portrait and the pocket
diaries contain what I am calling the material of memory. Lawrence
Fig. 2.4 Mrs. Joseph Inchbald (Oil on Canvas) Lawrence, Thomas (1769–1830),
Private Collection, Photo © Agnew’s, London/Bridgeman Images
42 L. ENGEL
writes about his process, “I should think it always better that the picture,
whatever it is, be first accurately drawn on the canvas, because tho’ it
may be afterwards effaced by the color, yet it serves to impress the object
on the memory, and the hand naturally follows the path it has trod in
before” (quoted in Albinson 2011a, 132). Lawrence’s outline and his
layering of images, provides material evidence for traces of past perfor-
mances embedded in the work itself. The pocket diary similarly records
the processes of everyday living that form a record of the tangibles of
Inchbald’s daily existence.
Mrs. Wells Supped Here: Tracing the Ghosts

The behind-the-scenes performances recorded in Inchbald’s diaries pro-
vide important links to other performers who are now mostly forgotten.
Inchbald’s vexed relationship with the dynamic and eccentric actress Mary
Wells is chronicled in small telling details in her pocket diary. An image of
Elizabeth Inchbald and Mary Wells printed in the New Lady’s Magazine
in 1786 depicts the actresses in similar poses and costumes. Although
they appear under the different symbols of comedy and tragedy in dif-
ferent parts, they are two of a kind in this image—fashion doubles and
theatrical doppelgangers. The dual nature of the picture represents several
significant things about their relationship in 1786: they were both recog-
nizable celebrities at the center of the London theatrical world; they were
both regarded as fashionable commodities (their pictures could attract
readers and perhaps sell more magazines); and they occupied the same
level of public recognition. If anything, Wells was seen as more promi-
nent because in the image she is depicted as Jane Shore, a leading tragic
role, while Inchbald is costumed as Lady Abbess, a supporting role from
Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. What the picture does not tell us is what
eventually would divide them and destroy a professional and personal rela-
tionship that spanned over a decade. While Inchbald would ultimately
leave acting to become a very successful playwright and novelist, Wells’s
flamboyant persona and her increasingly eccentric behavior led to accusa-
tions of madness, a label which badly damaged her theatrical career, fol-
lowed by stints in and out of madhouses and debtor’s prisons. In 1793,
Inchbald wrote in her pocket diary that she refused to see Mrs. Wells, a
cool ending to what was once an intimate friendship.
According to Annibel Jenkins, Wells and Inchbald met in September

1781 when they were both in a production of The Beggar’s Opera, where
the men played the women’s roles and the women played the men’s.
Wells played Macheath. Jenkins writes: “Like Inchbald, Wells knew every-
body, and everybody in the theatre world of London knew her after the
summer of 1781” (Jenkins 2003, 141). By 1783, Wells and her lover, the
officer, playwright, and journalist Edward Topham, were frequent entries
in Inchbald’s pocket diaries. Jenkins comments, “All three of them –
Wells, Inchbald, and Topham – had the will and skill to play an important
part in the theatre in the 1780s and 1790s. They all three were creative;
that is, by their definition they created ‘situations’ both personal and for
the stage; they wrote plays, prologues, epilogues, letters to the newspa-
pers, and each pushed forward his or her own agenda, each in her or his
own way, but each in partnership with the others” (Jenkins 2003, 148).
Part of this agenda-pushing involved the newspaper Topham started with
Wells, The World, which featured a bit of everything—politics, poetry,
fashion, extensive theatrical reviews, and gossip.
Inchbald’s entries about Wells begin to appear in 1782; many of
them simply state, “Mrs. Wells supped here,” but often Inchbald will
comment more extensively on their activities together. On Saturday, 1
June, she writes, “Came home in a coach with Mrs. Wells” (2.53); Sunday,
19 October: “Mrs. Wells Call’d and sat while I drest” (2.192); Monday,
16 June: “Mrs. Wells calld home with me &c& we walked up the city
together” (2.159). In 1788, Wells appears even more frequently, and it
is clear that the two are visiting with each other and working at the same
time rehearsing for Inchbald’s new play Animal Magnetism. For example,
on Friday 4 April 1788: “very Windy and showery – did up my shutters_
read_ and was denied to all but Mrs. Wells who was here for some time
reading her parts” (2.234); Wednesday, 16 April: “Mrs. Wells supped here
and went through her part” (2.236). And finally, there is an interesting
entry on Wednesday, 7 May: “Wells just call’d unhappy” (2.240).
What is significant about these entries is the information they con-
vey about the varied and active schedules both women had. In addi-
tion to daily outings, teas, trips to the theater, dinners, and coach
rides, they were also constantly performing and working on new plays.
The entries provide evidence that the two were working together in
Inchbald’s house. Wells would read her parts for Inchbald, indicating the
44 L. ENGEL
collaborative nature of their professional relationship. The fact that these

rehearsals occurred outside of the theater in a private space also suggests
important things about the overlap between Inchbald’s and Wells’s pri-
vate and public concerns. According to the diary entries, Inchbald con-
sidered Wells to be such a close friend that she “did up my shutters to
all but Mrs. Wells,” and “Mrs. Wells call’d and sat while I drest.” While
many of Inchbald’s entries do not have much explicit emotional content
(occasionally she will write in despair, “my hair drooping” or “my face
poorly for several days”), in her aforementioned entry on Wednesday,
7 May 1788, she writes, “Wells just call’d unhappy.” Inchbald does
not explain why Wells was unhappy, whether it had to do with work or
with her volatile relationship with Topham, but the fact that Inchbald
chose to record Wells’s mood indicates that it had a memorable impact
on her. Wells appears less and less frequently in the diaries after 1788.
In February 1793, Inchbald writes, “The King commended Notoriety”
(2.297), which was a play written by Frederick Reynolds and starring
Wells. In May, she records, “Yesterday heard Mrs. Wells was in a mad-
house” (2.306), and several months later, “Mrs. Wells calld- refused to
see her” (2.316).
In his Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald, James Boaden acknowledges that
Wells and Inchbald were close friends in the 1780s, but he is careful to
distance Inchbald’s character from Wells’s odd persona and questiona-
ble reputation. He writes that, in 1787, Wells was one of Inchbald’s
favorites, yet it “often, we confess, surprised us to hear of the connec-
tion; it could proceed from no impure sympathy or even indifference to
worldly maxims, on the part of Mrs. Inchbald. She was above all suspi-
cion and her friend greatly below it” (Boaden 1833, 1.251). A few pages
later, he adds, “Mrs. Inchbald was the muse herself in Topham’s world
of fashion, and her attachment to Mrs. Wells we may be sure did not
injure her genius or her virtue in the estimation of its writers” (Boaden
1833, 1.253). According to Boaden, there was a significantly damaging
aspect of Inchbald’s connection to Wells that needed to be redeemed by
his assurances that none of Wells’s impropriety or eccentricity had any
effect on Inchbald’s virtue or genius.
Boaden explains that, in 1790, during one of her fights with Topham,
Wells came to lodge in the same boarding house with Inchbald, leaving
Inchbald feeling uncomfortable about their association: “Mrs. Wells, poor
woman, now began to show symptoms of the greatest irregularity and

Mrs. Inchbald thought she should be obliged to quit Mrs. Grist’s house
in consequence” (Boaden 1833, 2.229). Later, Boaden records that Wells
wrote Inchbald from debtor’s prison in 1793 demanding money, and
then that she entered a madhouse. He also includes a mysterious letter
written to Inchbald by Cecilia Mann in October of 1818 pleading for
forgiveness and reconciliation for Mrs. Wells. Mann writes that she met
Mrs. Wells when she was sent to the seaside to recover her health. She
describes Wells as a charming, engaging woman with a “still beautifully
expressive countenance. Often have I observed her, sitting with her head
reclining on her hand, examining my features until her eyes filled with
tears. I was astonished at her emotion; and on further acquaintance, she
told me it originated from the strong resemblance I bore to her dear
friend Mrs. Inchbald.” Wells apparently tells Mann that she has “unfortu-
nately offended” Inchbald and that “she will never forgive me, nor see me
again.” Mann agrees to write Inchbald in order to intercede on Wells’s
behalf. Boaden notes that on the bottom of the letter there is a sentence
that reads, “Mrs. Inchbald sent a constant remittance to Mrs. Sumbel
(Wells’s married name) until her death” (Boaden 1833, 2.229), leading
readers to believe that the letter was at least somewhat successful.
Curiously, Annibel Jenkins does not comment at all on Cecilia Mann’s
letter in her recent biography of Inchbald. In my view, the letter seems
staged and implausible, both in terms of the laudatory description of
Mrs. Wells and in terms of the uncanny idea of Mann’s resemblance to
Inchbald. Perhaps Cecilia Mann was an epistolary theatrical role that
Wells invented. Wells may have written the letter herself, adopting the
character of Cecilia Mann as a last-ditch effort to get Inchbald’s atten-
tion and financial aid. Another possibility is that Wells could have staged
such a convincing theatrical scene, remembering her friendship with
Inchbald and lamenting her current situation, so that Cecilia Mann felt
moved enough to write to Inchbald and plead her case. Whatever the
origins of the letter might have been, Boaden’s use of it in Inchbald’s
memoirs suggests that Inchbald had the letter in her possession and
that it was among the papers that he consulted. Why she kept this let-
ter, even though she herself may have suspected that it was fake—anyone
who knew Wells would have at least imagined this possibility—is another
unknown, but it points to the fact that she did not entirely forget Wells,
46 L. ENGEL
and that even if she did decide not to associate with her publicly, she felt
it necessary to provide for her in a small way financially. We do not have
Inchabld’s pocket diary for the year of 1818. Her last entry about Wells
appears in July 1807, where she notes, “Spoke with Mrs. Wells in the
streets” (3.41), and several months later, “Mrs. Wells calld – would not
send her money” (3.93).
Ironically, Wells provides the most convincing version of what caused
the demise of her friendship with Inchbald in her memoirs. She writes, “I
formerly had the pleasure of being very intimate with her … but when I
returned from Gretford, nothing could persuade her but that I was actu-
ally mad; and on no account would she see me” (Wells 1811, 3.204).
She adds poignantly, “I have been often at a loss to conjecture whether
it was an effort – like all the rest of the world, when an acquaintance
becomes either troublesome or poor – to get rid of me. … I have ever
found her, during our acquaintance, consistent towards me, and ever had
for her the most sincere respect, which remains undiminished” (Wells
1811, 3.204). Wells herself was painfully aware that when she became
too poor and too troublesome, Inchbald, like the rest of the world,
wanted her to simply disappear.
In fairness to Inchbald, other figures described Wells’s behavior
as aggressive, outrageous, and annoying. In 1789, she followed the
King around on a yacht; in 1792, she stalked Fanny Burney in the
Shakespeare gallery; in 1811, she demanded that the actress Dorothy
Jordan subscribe to her memoirs so many times that Jordan finally
wrote her, “I am at times afraid of you” (Wells 1811, 3.63). It is cer-
tainly possible that Inchbald, like almost everyone in Wells’s life, had
just had enough of her and had good reasons for casting her aside.
In the end, the visual image of Wells and Inchbald in the Lady’s
Magazine, a picture which does not depict the specificity of their
features or the realities of their lives, functions almost like an eight-
eenth-century theatrical yearbook photo, a memory of what once was
in a particular moment in time. Inchbald’s assertion that “Mrs. Wells
was here” in her pocket diaries invites us to think about the signifi-
cance of figures on the margins and about how those figures might
occupy a more central place in the retelling of theatrical histories, pro-
viding new ways for us to reassess and reimagine women’s roles on
and offstage.
Epilogue: Elastic Waistcoats

In her last diary of 1820, Inchbald regularly writes of a mysterious
ailment, which she calls “my complaint.” At age 66, Inchbald had
suffered through a variety of health ailments narrated throughout the
diaries (toothaches, headaches, depression), but in this pocket book,
she begins each week with a weekly summary of her embodied expe-
rience. On 17–23 January: “Great Pressure & Binding on my Back &
Ribs all this week: but my health & appetite perfectly good” (3.230);
7–13 February: “Till Thursday my complaint but little; then bad to
the end of the week” (3.235); 6–12 March: “my complaint trouble-
some; but not very bad or very well any day” (3.241); and 10–16
April: “Four days my complaint very Poorly: [see] Wednesday &c”
(3.249). Inchbald’s final diary thus becomes a detailed, embodied
chronicle involving a directed set of reading practices. In addition
to narrating specifics about her “complaint” in entries through-
out the week, Inchbald went back over her daily notes to create a
weekly summary of her symptoms, often noting where they began
in the week. This process suggests that she wished to take control
of her illness by keeping a precise medical diary of the appearance,
disappearance, and reappearance of her symptoms. Having this kind
of narrative may have been helpful to her in thinking through the
ways in which her activities, diet, and clothing may have enhanced or
mitigated the severity of her illness.13
In his introductory remarks to the diary of 1820, Ben Robertson
notes: “Many entries in the 1820 diary have a small x – and sometimes
more than one – penned in the left margin at the edge of the page.
These notations appear to be listed beside days on which Inchbald
felt considerable pain as a result of her chronic ‘complaint’” (3.225).
The mysterious Xs create yet another tangible and intangible record of
Inchbald’s embodied experiences. Along with Inchbald’s summaries,
details, and symbols are specific descriptions of her clothing. Thursday,
9 March: “Very fine & not very cold. … I put on {my cletin} elastic
waist-coat &c …Read” (3.242). Saturday, 24 June: “Rose at six & left
off my Elastic Waistcoat” (3.265). Sharon Ann Burnston’s descrip-
tion of the eighteenth-century woman’s waistcoat is worth quoting at
length:
48 L. ENGEL
The term “waistcoat,” as used in period sources in reference to women’s

clothing, indicates a garment which is usually but not necessarily sleeveless,
has basques below the waist, is worn under a gown but is not a support
garment. These waistcoats, at least the surviving examples, were generally
quilted and sometimes highly decorative, but probably were not seen by
others except in intimate privacy. The woman’s waistcoat then, falls into
a kind of middle ground, neither underwear nor outerwear as we know
them, but something in between … like the hanging pocket, these gar-
ments were intended to be both seen and not seen, embellished but not
displayed, revealed only in glimpses or in informal, intimate moments.
(Burnston 2001)
Inchbald’s inclusion of the wearing or taking off of her “elastic

waistcoat,” a reflection perhaps of the progression or regression of her
“complaint,” provides momentary access to her lived sense of embod-
iment. None of Inchbald’s biographers have been able to decipher the
precise illness connected to her “complaint.” Annibel Jenkins writes,
“These entries about her ‘complaint’ extend over several years and
remain a puzzle, the symptoms suggesting some kind of stomach prob-
lem. Boaden (her original biographer) suggests that her undergarments
were too restricting—too ‘laced up’ he called it, speculating that she had
a habit of drawing too closely the strings of her under apparel” (Jenkins
2003, 494). It seems curious that no one has suggested that the com-
plaint might be gynecological. A contemporary doctor I consulted with
pointed out that her symptoms (pressure, back pain, frequent mention-
ing of “clean sheets,” pain that came and went) might be consistent with
uterine cancer.
In the end, like the elusive definition of the waistcoat, a garment that
had a liminal existence between public and private life, Inchbald’s diaries
provide us with a code related to her illness that is both tangible and
intangible. Hidden in the framework of her descriptions, X’s, and images
of her body through costume, we can piece together a sense of her daily
experiences. What Inchbald’s pocket diaries—her embodied archives—
provide for the archival tourist is an uncanny sense of her presence.
Reading Inchbald’s daily entries through the lens of performance with
attention to traces of material culture, particularly to her costume/cloth-
ing, offers enactments of her lived experience that reverberate through
the past to the present. In doing so, Inchbald’s writings provide a tangi-
ble sense of a significant shadow archive chronicling the often-invisible
experiences of professional women working in and around the theater

in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.14 The pocket dia-
ries also crucially remind us of the significance of memory and history
and the ways in which we continuously attempt to narrate and perform
ourselves.
Notes
1. For more on the theoretical implications of props, see Andrew Sofer, The
Stage Life of Props (2003).
2. I use the term “staged intimacy” as an extension of Dean MacCannell’s
idea of “staged authenticity” discussed in the introduction. Reading
Inchbald’s pocket diary gives the archival tourist privileged access to pri-
vate information about Inchbald’s daily existence establishing a kind of
staged intimacy between the author and her readers.
3. See MacCannell’s use of Erving Goffman’s ideas of front and back-
stage as a way to theorize tourist behavior in his “Staged Authenticity:
Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings” (1973, 590), and
Tim Edensor’s discussion of Goffman in “Performing Tourism, Staging
Tourism” (2001, 60).
4. Sontag begins Illness as Metaphor (1978) with a description of our dual
citizenship in the “kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick.
Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later,
each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of
that other place” (Sontag 1978, 3).
5. See discussion of Derrida and archives in Katrina M. Powell and Sue Ott
Rowlands “Disturbing the Archive of Performance: The Embodiment of
Testimony and Memory” (2013, 7–9).
6. For more about ghosting in the theater, see Marvin Carlson, The Haunted
Stage (2001).
7. According to Annibel Jenkins in I’ll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth
Inchbald (2003), the archival materials by Inchbald used by James
Boaden for his Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald (1833) are those housed in the
British Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library (Jenkins 2003, 5).
The Folger has pocket diaries for the years 1776, 1780, 1781, 1783,
1788, 1793, 1807, 1808, 1814, and 1820. Jenkins is Inchbald’s most
recent and comprehensive biographer.
8. Ben P. Robertson, ed., The Diaries of Elizabeth Inchbald (2007). All
subsequent page references will be to this edition and will be offered in
parentheses in the text.
50 L. ENGEL
9. For more about eighteenth-century actresses and their costumes on and

off the stage, see Robyn Asleson, ed., Notorious Muse: The Actress in
British Art and Culture 1776–1812 (2003).
10. For an excellent discussion of the gender politics in this play, see Daniel
O’Quinn, “Scissors and Needles: Inchbald’s Wives as They Were, Maids as They
Are and the Governance of Sexual Exchange” in Theatre Journal (1999).
11. For more on the significance of white dresses, particularly neoclassical
fashion, see Amelia Rauser’s Living Statues: Neoclassical Culture and
Fashionable Dress in the 1790s: London, Paris, Naples (2019).
12. Albinson compares Lawrence’s unfinished portrait of Inchbald to his por-
trait of Lady Cahir, which he completed while participating in the Bentley
Priory theatricals (Albinson 2011b, 195).
13. Inchbald was also clearly up on the medical literature of the moment. On
Saturday, 11 March, she notes, “Read all evening in the drawing room
Carlisle’s Book on the disorders of Old age” (3.242).
14. As Joseph Roach and Shelby Richardson propose in their provocative
essay juxtaposing Frances Burney’s writings about her mastectomy in
relation to Carol MacVey’s staging of Burney’s letter in her show The
History of Medicine, “The sensations of two women born centuries apart
seem to converge in a ghostly trace, reversing the expected relations of
prosthesis: living organs and limbs stand in for dead ones” (Roach and
Richardson 2000, 54). MacVey’s subsequent recreation of her own expe-
rience with breast cancer for Bill T. Jones’s performance piece Still/Here
(1994) further emphasizes the healing process involved in “rewriting
the scene of her loss,” Roach and Richardson argue, before concluding,
“In the face of ‘irremediable disappearance’ of ‘presence,’ Burney and
MacVey, like Bill T. Jones, use the occasion of embodied performance
to assert before witnesses that they are – to a large extent, though not
entirely – still/here” (Roach and Richardson 2000, 65).
References
Albinson, Cassandra. 2011a. Delineating a life: Lawrence as draughtsman. In
Thomas Lawrence: Regency power & brilliance, ed. Cassandra Albinson, Peter
Funnell, and Lucy Peltz, 129–188. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art.
———. 2011b. New ambition: Experimentation and innovation in portraiture
practice. In Thomas Lawrence: Regency power & brilliance, ed. Cassandra
Albinson, Peter Funnell, and Lucy Peltz, 189–216. New Haven: Yale Center
for British Art.
Asleson, Robyn (ed.). 2003. Notorious muse: The actress in British art and
culture, 1776–1812. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Batchelor, Jennie. 2003. Fashion and frugality: Eighteenth-century pocket books

for women. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 32: 1–18.
Boaden, James (ed.). 1833. Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald: Including her familiar
correspondence with the most distinguished persons of her time, 2 vols. London:
Richard Bentley.
Burnston, Sharon Ann. 2001. An analysis of a eighteenth century woman’s quilted
waistcoat. http://www.sharonburnston.com/quiltedwaistcoat.html. Accessed
22 May 2018.
Carlson, Marvin. 2001. The haunted stage. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
Crawshaw, Carol, and John Urry. 1997. Tourism and the photographic eye. In
Franko, Mark, and Annette Richards (eds.). 2000. Acting on the past: Historical
performance across disciplines. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.
Jenkins, Annibel. 2003. I’ll tell you what: The life of Elizabeth Inchbald.
Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.
MacCannell, Dean. 1973. Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in
tourist settings. American Journal of Sociology 79 (3): 589–603.
O’Quinn, Daniel. 1999. Scissors and needles: Inchbald’s Wives as They Were,
Maids as They Are and the governance of sexual exchange. Theatre Journal 51
(2) (May): 105–125.
Powell, Katrina M., and Sue Ott Rowlands. 2013. Disturbing the archive of
performance: The embodiment of testimony and memory. Liminalities: A
Journal of Performance Studies 9 (4): 1–15.
Pugliese, Joseph. 2011. Embodied archives. Journal of the Association for the
Study of Australian Literature 11 (1) (Special Issue: Archive Madness): 1–6.
Rauser, Amelia. 2019. Living statues: Neoclassical culture and fashionable dress in
the 1790s: London, Paris, Naples. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ribeiro, Aileen. 2003. Costuming the part: A discourse of fashion and fiction
in the image of the actress in England, 1776–1812. In Notorious muse: The
actress in British art and culture, 1776–1812, ed. Robyn Asleson, 104–128.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Roach, Joseph, and Shelby Richardson. 2000. Writing the breast, performing the
trace: Madame D’Arblay’s radical prosthesis. In Acting on the past: Historical
performance across the disciplines, ed. Mark Franko and Annette Richards,
52–66. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.
Robertson, Ben P. (ed.). 2007. The diaries of Elizabeth Inchbald. London:
Pickering & Chatto.
52 L. ENGEL
Press.
Sontag, Susan. 1978. Illness as metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Wells, Mary. 1811. Memoirs of the life of Mrs. Sumbel, late Wells; of the Theatres-Royal,
Drury-Lane, Covent-Garden, and Haymarket, 3 vols. London: C. Chapple.
CHAPTER 3
Thomas Lawrence’s Portraits

of the Siddons Sisters
A portrait is a past made present. (Grootenboer 2012, 120)
A series of letters housed in the Cambridge Library and published

in 1904, in a volume entitled An Artist’s Love Story edited by Oswald
G. Knapp, tells the story of a tragic love triangle between the cele-
brated artist Sir Thomas Lawrence and both of the famous actress Sarah
Siddons’ daughters—Sally and Maria. Lawrence attracted the attention
of Siddons’s daughters, who had been away at school in Calais, when
he visited the family frequently while painting Sarah Siddons’s portrait.
He initially began a secret courtship with Siddons’s daughter Sally. But,
in a strange twist of events, in 1798 he became engaged to Maria, who,
knowing that she was very ill, announced to her mother that she would
not survive if she were not allowed to marry Lawrence. Sarah Siddons
agreed to the engagement, but Lawrence decided that he was not in
love with Maria, but rather with Sally. After Maria’s death, Sally refused
to see Lawrence and he began to stalk her while she was on tour with
her mother. Eventually, Lawrence lost interest in their relationship. Sally
continued to love him until her death in 1803 at the age of 24.
During the course of the correspondence (1797–1800), Lawrence
completed an extraordinary series of drawings and paintings of Sarah,
Sally, and Maria Siddons. The wealth of narrative and visual material (both
tangible and imagined) surrounding the actors in this ensemble creates a
unique opportunity to consider how tangible materials connect to intangi-
ble traces. Using Rebecca Schneider’s concept of performing remains, and

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3_3
54 L. ENGEL
Hanneke Grootenboer’s theory of “intimate vision,” I want to ask how

as archival tourists we might consider the ways in which these artifacts
“look back” at us from the past.
In many ways, this chapter is also about rediscovering Sally Siddons,
a talented composer and singer who emerges in the correspondence and
in Lawrence’s images of her as a complex and intriguing figure whose
conflicting passion for Lawrence, her mother, and her music often left
her caught between wanting to be seen and wishing to remain invisible.
Reading these letters in sequence is very much like the experience of read-
ing an eighteenth-century epistolary novel. All the ingredients of a great
sentimental narrative are here—love, passion, betrayal, heartbreak, and
death. The letters are sprinkled with literary allusions to authors includ-
ing Shakespeare, Rousseau, Richardson, Sheridan, and Lewis. They
introduce an array of material artifacts that help to contextualize, reen-
act, and embody the complex trajectories of desire, betrayal, love, com-
passion, jealousy, and hatred involved in this family drama. Approaching
these imagined objects through the language of theater and performance
reinvests the artifacts with traces of embodiment that are best conveyed in
terms of imagining the effect on the audience of actors and props onstage.
In other words, if we consider the past to be a series of performances and
letters to be narrative reenactments of those performances, then we can also
begin to theorize the ways in which material artifacts like rings, lockets, and
portraits can function as props that connect bodies and reveal specific infor-
mation about the relationships between characters. Portraits and drawings
can be useful in thinking about the ways in which the sitter’s body appears
in various costumes in specifically staged settings, and prints can help us to
imagine how trajectories of desire can be mapped through attention to the
proximity of bodies or the staging of bodies on the page and off. Attention
to material objects like jewelry, drawings, prints and letters reinforces both
the “reality” of the flesh that was once there and the uncanny idea that what
we have left is only a trace of what once was present.
In addition to the letters and the material objects invoked within the
correspondence, Lawrence’s portraits of the Siddons women, particu-
larly of Sally, provide crucial information about the complex circulation
of desires surrounding these relationships. The Wallace Collection owns
a stunning Portrait of a Lady (c. 1800) which has been identified by
Lawrence’s cataloguer, Kenneth Garlick, to be Sally Siddons, but has not
been fully authenticated.1 If this painting is in fact Sally, the portrait repre-
sents a missing period in Sally and Lawrence’s liaison, suggesting perhaps
3 THOMAS LAWRENCE’S PORTRAITS OF THE SIDDONS SISTERS 55
Fig. 3.1 Portrait of Sally Siddons (Oil on Canvas), Lawrence, Thomas (1769–
1830), Private Collection, Photo © Philip Mould Ltd., London/Bridgeman Images
that they may have had a brief rapprochement after the tumultuous after-
math of Maria’s untimely death. Comparing the Wallace Collection’s
painting with Lawrence’s other representations of Sally, a grand formal
portrait of her completed in 1795 (Fig. 3.1) and a more informal drawing
56 L. ENGEL
Fig. 3.2 Mrs. Siddons (print made by Richard James Lane after a drawing by
Sir Thomas Lawrence), Published by John Dickinson. Printed by Charles Joseph
Hullmandel 1830. © The Trustees of the British Museum
of her from 1797 (Fig. 3.2), reveals a number of significant things about
the trajectory of their relationship. In many ways, the dynamics of their
courtship defied eighteenth-century conventions: they were intimately
connected yet never engaged. Lawrence’s cruel treatment of Sally’s sister,
Maria, and her early death created a tense situation that normally would
have resulted in an irrevocable separation between them.2 However, the
professional relationship between Lawrence and Sarah Siddons, Sally’s
mother, made it impossible for Lawrence to be completely absent from
Sally’s life. As much as she tried to forget him, she was unable to resist his
presence. And, although Lawrence’s devotion to Sally was short-lived, his
visual portrayals of her suggest his recognition of her singular beauty and
artistry. Moving from the dramatic stagings/reenactments in Sally’s let-
ters, to objects invoked by the letters, to portraits and drawings composed
during the same period, we have a fascinating virtual/imagined installa-
tion of materials that evoke trajectories of desire formed through specific
modes of looking. Putting these materials together stages a form of reen-
actment for the archival tourist that mimics the experience of an interac-
tive museum exhibition.
Eye Miniatures and Performance Remains:

Portraits that Look Back
It is particularly fascinating to me that the same period in which
Lawrence was busy painting, drawing, and reenvisioning the Siddons
women was also the heyday of the eye miniature. Eye miniatures are
particular kinds of “object portraits” that only depict the subject’s eye
(Fig. 3.3). According to Hanneke Grootenboer in her excellent book
Treasuring the Gaze (2012), “The rise of eye miniatures as a trend is
symptomatic of an upper-class culture preoccupied with a kind of look-
ing that marked but simultaneously transgressed or even violated the
borders separating the private from the public” (Grootenboer 2012,
72). She proposes, “One thing eye portraits offer us is a rather unusual,
and therefore quite interesting perspective that transgresses the separa-
tion between subject and object to fuse the passive and active sides of
the visual” (Grootenboer 2012, 71). Although the images I am looking
at are not eye miniatures, I want to think about the ways in which the
presence of the “eye” (or “I”) in these portraits foregrounds a sense of
the “two sidedness of looking.” What would it mean to think about Sally
Siddons looking back at Lawrence? Or at us?
For Grootenboer, eye miniatures present the opportunity to theorize
the gaze in a very specific way that takes into account the particular rela-
tionship between the artifact and the viewer. Because eye miniatures
were designed as gifts with a specific beholder in mind, these tiny often-
bejeweled objects stage a scene of gazing, where the object itself “turns
the beholder into an image” (Grootenboer 2012, 43). Grootenboer
explains that “eye portraits articulate a specific mode of looking: being
subjected to someone’s gaze, or provoked, or haunted” (Grootenboer
2012, 47). She further suggests that these interactions create a form of
58 L. ENGEL
Fig. 3.3 Eye portrait,

c. 1810, English School,
(19th century), Private
Collection, Photo ©
Christie’s Images/
Bridgeman Images
“intimate vision,” which she describes as “a very private kind of vision,

secret even, not so much from the outside world as to the beholder as
such. Therefore, it falls outside of the all-encompassing, objectifying
power of linear perspective, which presupposes, among other things, the
interchangeability of universalized beholders” (Grootenboer 2012, 5).
Building on Grootenboer’s concept of intimate vision, I argue that the
visual, narrative, and theatrical archival materials produced from the inti-
mate encounters between Lawrence, Sally, and Maria Siddons create an
unusual circumstance where we might be able to trace trajectories of
desire through gazes captured in tangible forms.3
Marcia Pointon writes, “To have one’s portrait painted is, short of
appearing on the stage, the most exhibitionist event in a person’s life,
given that not only do they display themselves to an artist, but the
resulting image is also shown to countless others at an exhibition space

and also to posterity” (Pointon 2013, 127). Portraiture is then by its
very nature about parallel plays of looking. In this chapter, I am high-
lighting Lawrence’s attempts to capture, narrate, and memorialize his
feelings about the Siddons women, as well as the traces of Sally’s and
Maria’s individual character and personality expressed through their
letters and their portraits. But, I am also calling attention to my own
attempt as an archival tourist to resurrect the desires of these ghostly
bodies and their relationship to each other.
To elaborate on this process, I want to borrow a phrase from the per-
formance theorist Rebecca Schneider, and consider these artifacts of mate-
rial culture as evidence of performance remains. While Schneider’s book
is about Civil War reenactment and contemporary performance art, what
she is concerned with are “practices of reminiscence in relationship to dis-
appearance, remains, memory, history, artifactual preserve, and live per-
formance” (Schneider 2011, 26). Schneider is interested in complicating
linear notions of time, and she uses the framework of reenactment to trou-
ble the notion that “live performance disappears” (Schneider 2011, 29).
Instead, she proposes that the “liveness” or “presentness” of performance
can be found in both material and intangible sources. Performance does
not vanish; it lingers across bodies, gestures, voices, and texts in ways that
connect the past to the present.
Portraits, specifically Regency portraits of celebrities and their
relatives, seem to me to be excellent examples of Schneider’s concept of
performing remains. Portraits are an embodied medium as they repre-
sent actual bodies that are recreated and stand in for the body that was
once there. Regency portraits, in particular, are inherently stagy and the-
atrical—typically the figure inhabits a role or persona, which suggests
a theatrical staging process that took place between the artist and the
subject. When the subject is already a known actress or a daughter of
an actress, there is an added layer to this web of theatricality. There is
also an inherent theatrical relationship between portraits themselves.
Elements of each painting are ghosted by other images with similar
iconography. Eighteenth-century portraitists, in particular, relied on
restaging other artist’s motifs, costumes, gestures, and accessories to
convey the complexity and significance of their subjects.
As Joseph Roach has explained, “Sitting for a role-portrait at this time
was a performance in itself” (Roach 2007, 69). Roach proposes that there
is often a dynamic intertextual relationship between eighteenth-century
60 L. ENGEL
paintings. Looking specifically at a glamorous portrait of Samuel Pepys’s

wife modeled after an image of a queen painted to look like an actress,
Roach writes, “Socially emulating the glamorous women of the court
(and the actresses who were their working-class surrogates or stunt-
doubles), privileged individuals of lesser rank could aspire to their own
performances of mimetic identification and desire – the trickle-down
It-Effect” (Roach 2007, 69). Roach’s concept of the “surrogate” or
“stunt-double” here is particularly relevant to the argument I am sketch-
ing out about the significance of looking at Lawrence’s portraits of the
Siddons women as performance remains. Lawrence’s portraits of Sarah,
Sally, and Maria are not just examples of individual likenesses or discrete
staged acts of representation; rather, these material objects are part of an
extended network of images that will always refer back to one another
and mean more than what they represent themselves. In addition, these
portraits are connected by the live “presentness” of their embodied
traces—the Siddons women were intimately related to one another and to
Lawrence, they lived in the same house, shared the same space and mate-
rial objects, and even had similar expressions and features. They are one
another’s stunt-doubles at the same time that they are unique individuals.
Thus, looking at these images together provides more than just a visual
comparison or a flat reading of significant signs or representational tropes.
Instead, using the framework of “performing remains” connects these
artifacts to alternative threads of meaning attached to traces of embodied
experience. Paying close attention to active performances of looking, gaz-
ing, spying, watching, engendering, visualizing, and eroticizing embed-
ded in these materials echoes the immediacy of Grootenboer’s intimate
vision, which “provides an intimate space in which painting serves as the
mise-en-scène for an encounter that allows us to fall back on ourselves”
(Grootenboer 2012, 5). This, I would argue, is similar to the effect of
tourism—of immersion in another space as a way to connect to how we
might want to imagine ourselves.4
Lawrence in Love: Sally Siddons as Artistic Muse

Although a great deal of attention has been paid to Lawrence’s work,
and to some of his famous images of women, particularly portraits that
are displayed in prominent museum collections (e.g., Eliza Farren at
the Met or Lady Peel at the Frick), Lawrence’s images of the Siddons
women have received very little attention as a group. Yet, during the
years between 1795 and 1800, while he was composing such renowned
works as John Kemble as Coriolanus (1798), he was also making a series
of portraits and drawings of Sarah, Sally, and Maria Siddons. Some
of these images are more formal, finished works, such as his portrait of
Sarah Siddons (1796–1798), originally identified as a representation
of her as Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, and a grand painting of Sally
Siddons (c. 1795), which just recently surfaced in a Sotheby’s auction in
2011.5 In addition to these images, there are number of pencil drawings
of Sally and a striking unfinished portrait of Maria Siddons, which seems
someplace in between a completed painting and the more informal inti-
macy of Lawrence’s drawings (Fig. 3.4).
Lawrence’s arresting image of Sally in a luminously white gown, the-
atrically posed against a haunting natural landscape, has evoked com-
parisons to Lawrence’s portrait of the actress, singer, and fashion muse
Emma, Lady Hamilton, as La Penserosa completed in 1792 and Sir Joshua
Reynolds’s iconic image of Sarah Siddons as The Tragic Muse (1783–
1784). Writing about the Hamilton portrait, Peter Funnell explains,
“Although ostensibly a portrait of Emma Hamilton, La Penserosa crosses
the boundary into literary or historical painting, taking its subject from
John Milton’s ‘Il Pensero.’ Part of a vogue for portraits in the ‘pensero
stile’ … the painting is most obviously compared with Reynolds’s far
more ambitious Sarah Siddons as The Tragic Muse. Like Sarah Siddons,
La Penserosa portrays a celebrated woman of the time in a way that delib-
erately goes beyond the portrait genre” (Funnell 2011, 2). Lawrence’s
image of Sally Siddons, which deliberately echoes formal aspects of both
the Siddons portrait and the image of Emma Hamilton (the position of
her head in half profile, the eyes lifted upwards, the position of her body,
and the drapery of her dress), suggests provocative connections between
the three women and their overlapping legacies.
Lawrence’s deliberate ghosting here connects all three paintings and
subjects as stunt-doubles for one another—in 1792, Emma Hamilton
shares the magnetism, sexuality, creative presence and power of Sarah
Siddons; a few years later in his composition of Sally, Lawrence con-
nects the same threads, suggesting the complexity of his regard for
Sally and perhaps his belief in her individual talents as an accomplished
composer. Lawrence’s portrait of Sally can also be related to his paint-
ing of Catherine Rebecca Grey, Lady Manners, Later Lady Huntingtower,
an aristocrat and emerging poet. Described by Lucy Peltz as “One of
Lawrence’s most memorable and strange portraits” (Peltz 2011, 118),
62 L. ENGEL
Fig. 3.4 Maria Siddons. Print made by George Clint 1770–1854, British, after
Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1769–1830, British, between 1800–1830 (Mezzotint).
© Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Lady Manners’s white dress, delicate facial features, and the placement of
her headdress echo Lawrence’s image of Sally. While Lawrence admired
this portrait enough to want it to be hung in the center of the room
at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1794, Anthony Pasquin leveled this
pointed critique: “The face is chalky and sickly, the robe is so white, and
so unencumbered with shadow, that it might pass for an habiliment of
Porcelain texture; while I viewed it, I was betrayed from a recollection of
the surrounding objects, and momentarily imagined, that if I cast a stone
at the vestment I should shiver it to pieces” (quoted in Peltz 2011, 118).
For Pasquin, the subject in the portrait becomes, for a moment, a tangi-
ble statue emerging from the frame as a material object that could poten-
tially shatter. The ghosting mechanisms that connect the image of Lady
Manners to Sally Siddons propose a binary between the idea of the static,
monumental, and lasting impact of artistic talent and the ephemerality of
the living, breathing body.
Lady Manners and Sally Siddons both suffered from consumption.
In their excellent article, “Thomas Lawrence’s Consumptive Chic:
Reinterpreting Lady Manners’s Hectic Flush in 1794” (2016), Carolyn
A. Day and Amelia Rauser make a very persuasive case for the signif-
icance of what they call “consumptive chic,” a mode of representing
fragility, illness, and femininity as powerfully sexualized and fashion-
forward. They argue, “Consumption, then, through its characteristic
symptoms marked by thinness, crookedness, sunken chests, paleness,
and the hectic flush, could also be a visual signifier of passionate, artistic
beauty and sensibility in the 1790s…” (Day and Rauser 2016, 468). In
his paintings of celebrated figures such as Eliza Farren and Lady Manners,
they propose that “Lawrence was trying an audacious new method of
characterizing his sitter, evoking the tubercular as a visual shorthand for
beauty, genius, and sensibility” (Day and Rauser 2016, 467). Thus, ech-
oes of the Lady Manners portrait in Lawrence’s depiction of Sally are not
only about Sally’s artistic presence and beauty, but are also connected to
her fragile, consumptive body. It is important to consider the fact that
both Sally and Maria suffered from consumption; both women died
very young, and spent a great deal of time bedridden and extremely ill.
Day6 and Rauser suggest that Lawrence’s involvement with the Siddons
sisters is evidence that he “was deeply, and personally, attracted by
ephemeral, consumptive female beauty” (Day and Rauser 2016, 467).
64 L. ENGEL
What becomes particularly compelling about Lawrence’s representations

of the sisters are the diverse ways in which the after-effects of their con-
sumptive presences materialize. Lawrence’s images of Sally and Maria are
ghostly, but these are different kinds of apparitions.
For Lawrence, Sally’s ghostliness was connected to her sensuality
as well as to her accomplishments as a composer. As he rendered Lady
Manners’s poetic talent immortal in his depiction of her as a kind of
statue, Lawrence gestures at the same kind of artistic reverence in his
composition of Sally, who would later compare his devotion to his art
to his devotion to her: “I inquire after you whenever I have an oppor-
tunity, and am rejoic’d to hear that you paint diligently, and that the
‘Coriolanus’ is likely to leave all behind it at the exhibition, as ‘Satan’ did
last year. I recall my words. Yes, I will suffer as a rival: I permit you to
be almost as devoted to your divine Art as to Sally. When I hear of your
attention and perseverance in painting I will consider it as the proof of
your attachment to me” (quoted in Goldring 1951, 139). According to
Sally, the act of painting is the performative representation of Lawrence’s
attachment to her.
Lawrence’s 1795 portrait of Sally is perhaps the best evidence we
have of the depths of his initial desire for her. Sally’s position in the
portrait, particularly her exposed inner arm and gracefully angled
elbow, suggest a classical eroticism found in Lawrence’s other portraits
of women whom he was said to have admired. Lawrence’s portrait of
Mrs. Jens Wolff (1803–1815), for example, portrays his subject in a
sumptuous white gown, her elbow bent, with her head resting seduc-
tively in her hand. The pose allows Lawrence to emphasize the open
trajectory of Isabella Wolff’s bust and shoulders and the sensuous tilt of
her neck. Cassandra Albinson notes that Lawrence made several draw-
ings of Wolff as he did of Sally Siddons: “the other women Lawrence
drew with such frequency were his confidante Amelia Angerstein, and
Sally Siddons, whom Lawrence nearly married in 1798” (Albinson
2011b, 164). Albinson suggests that Lawrence’s finished portrait of
Wolff, which he worked on for a period of thirteen years, “is a visual
reflection of his respect for her judgment and his admiration of her
beauty” (Albinson 2011c, 212). Perhaps the trace of the open elbow
found in Lawrence’s image of Sally from 1795 resurfaces again in his
portrait of Wolff, echoing his appreciation and desire for both women as
unique individuals and artistic muses.
The Courtship of Maria: 1797

Between 1795 and 1797 (the date the correspondence begins), some-
thing shifted for Lawrence. Oswald Knapp describes Lawrence’s transfer
of affections from Sally to Maria: “While Sally’s charms were station-
ary, Maria’s had been rapidly developing, and Lawrence began to find
her image occupying his mind more and more to the exclusion of her
sister’s, till at length the conviction was forced upon him that he had
been too precipitate in his choice” (Knapp 1904, 11). Sally’s letters from
this period are more about herself and her sister than about Lawrence.
She writes to her friend Mrs. Bird (the same friend who was facilitat-
ing the delivery of letters between Lawrence and Maria) about going
to the theater and her music. On January 28, 1798, she writes, “Since
Maria has been so much better and has had so agreeable a companion,
I have been out to amuse myself two or three times. I have at last seen
the Castle Spectre and was delighted quite beyond expression when the
Spectre did appear, but what a deal of dullness one has to wade thro’
before she comes!” (Knapp 1904, 20).7 Later in the letter she men-
tions her own musical compositions: “Tell me, dear Mrs. Bird, if you
sing often and if my songs continue to be favourites; I’m sure if you
sing them, you will gain me, as well as yourself, a great deal of credit,
so don’t discard them for my sake” (Knapp 1904, 20). Clearly, Sally was
involved in the theatrical culture of the 1790s, both backstage as her
mother’s companion, and in the audience as a skeptical fan of the trendy
Gothic drama of the moment. It is telling, however, that she also men-
tions her own work at the end of the letter, casually invoking her com-
positions and the possibility that her friend might sing them. Sally’s wish
for recognition—that she might be embodied through someone else’s
performances—suggests her awareness of the dynamics of female celeb-
rity that surrounded her, but also points to the particularity of her voice.
Like a poet, Sally’s voice echoes through her writing and, by extension,
through her musical compositions and performances.
Sally’s biggest fan, her sister Maria, writes about her sister’s supreme
talent several months later to Mrs. Bird on May 6, 1798:
Sally sent you her new songs, I believe; I’m sure you are very fond of
“When Summer’s burning heats arise,” it is so sweet and melancholy.
I should like to hear you sing them; don’t be affected and say you do
not sing them well. I know you must. I think Sally’s own voice has even
66 L. ENGEL
improv’d since you heard her, it may be my partiality, but I never heard
singing that delighted me as hers does: there is something so touching
in her voice that one must be in very good spirits to hear it without its
approaching even a pain. (Knapp 1904, 43)
While Siddons’s biographers have dismissed Maria Siddons as flighty and

superficial in comparison to her sister Sally, close attention to Maria’s let-
ters reveal her complexity and sensitivity.8 Through Maria’s description
we see how Sally’s artistry transfers from her body to her sister’s through
song and performance. Maria’s attention to the emotional impact of
Sally’s singing is particularly moving because it is about the sadness of
memory that is then passed down through tangible documentation
(writing). Sally is memorialized through Maria, who in reality dies first.
In the correspondence, both women are constantly in the act of memori-
alizing their separate relationships with Lawrence.
Staging Desire: 1798

While writing about the gorgeous poignancy and specificity of her sister’s
voice, Maria did not seem to know that Sally composed her passionate
verses as she reconciled with Lawrence in April of 1798. During the height
of their reestablished courtship in the months before Maria’s final decline,
Sally wrote a dramatic letter to Lawrence that was not included in Oswald
Knapp’s book. According to one of Lawrence’s biographers, Douglas
Goldring, although this letter was part of Lawrence’s private papers it was
not publicly known until after 1905, when Lady Priestley included it in an
article which appeared in the periodical The Nineteenth Century and After
(Goldring 1951, 137). Considering the powerful emotional content of the
letter and the scenes of desire it stages and anticipates, it is not surprising
that it was left out of versions of the story. This example of omission and
addition also invites us to think about researchers and archivists as both
actors and audience members. If the letter writer is an actress/director,
staging scenes and scenarios and focusing the dramatic and emotional con-
tent of her prose toward a desired effect from her recipient/audience—
that audience includes both the subject who received the letter in the past
and the researcher who is reading or experiencing the letter in the present.
In addition, the researcher or archivist is implicated in the representation
of their subject through a series of performances which include reading,
writing, reimagining, and reenacting the past.
The letter is dated “Tuesday Morning 12 O’clock,” 24 April 1798,

during the period when Lawrence had reversed his attentions again and
decided that he was not in love with Maria Siddons, but still with Sally,
his original choice. Sally describes her feelings toward Lawrence after
catching a glimpse of him at the theater: “And did I see you? Speak to
you last night? Good heavens! Was it not rather a dream? No, no it was
reality. How short, how cruelly short, did the time appear! It seem’d to
me that I had a thousand things to say to you, and yet, I think I said
nothing. But was it necessary to say? Oh! Could you not read in my eyes
the ecstasy of my heart?” (Goldring 1951, 140). Sounding very much
like an actress in the throes of a dramatic monologue (something that
she had witnessed countless times when her mother, Sarah Siddons,
performed), Sally invites us to imagine a scene of their chance meeting
which was marked not by what was said, but by what was not said, yet
implied through facial expression, gesture, and bodily movement—in
other words, through performance. Sally asks Lawrence to literally read
her body, and she continues to elaborate on this practice throughout
the letter by specifically referring to her body through the use of visual
objects and imaginative staging.
Sally invokes the setting of the theater, a place of acting, gazing, and
desire, which in the late eighteenth century represented the blurred
boundaries between public and private spaces, and the presence of a vari-
ety of bodies from diverse classes in close proximity to one another. She
writes, “I looked for you at the pit last night, and had almost despaired
of seeing you: but I found you out before you saw me. You were on
both sides up one pair of stairs; then in the stage-box, where I believe
Mr. Lysons pointed me out” (Goldring 1951, 140). Sally describes fol-
lowing Lawrence’s body with her gaze until he spots her, and then she
imagines their future meeting together where they will walk in Soho
Square before breakfast. She then replays and restages the scenes she acted
with Lawrence in the past; she imagines Lawrence’s embodied presence
through his absence: “Tell me – do you think of Sally? I sit where you
have sat; I stand where you have stood; I look round on those Shakespeare
prints, I try to recollect your observations on them. And which do I look
on longest, most intently: Orlando – dear Orlando! And then I write.
Would you know what? You shall read” (Goldring 1951, 141).9
At this point in the letter, Sally emphasizes the embodied practices
of writing and reading. She underscores the process (“and then I write”
and “you shall read”), suggesting a powerful connection between the act
68 L. ENGEL
of writing words on paper, their visual impact on the page, and the trans-
fer of that impact bodily onto the recipient of the letter. In the same way,
perhaps, as an actress might mold her performance in order to inspire
a specific embodied response from the audience, Sally Siddons enacts a
similar strategy through visual, narrative, and theatrical representations.
Heightening the suspense of the narrative, Sally tells Lawrence that she
no longer dares to write in her journal, since she is “forbid to express the
feelings of my heart in my own words…”; yet, in the form of the letter
she is able to pointedly describe her desires and actions—“This is what
you shall read,” she repeats (Goldring 1951, 141).
In the climactic section of the letter, Sally describes two pieces of jew-
elry that literally and figuratively tie her body to Lawrence’s. She explains
that she has bought him a ring in the shape of a “true Lover’s knot,”
which she secretly gives to him at their chance meeting at the theater—
“I bought it for you. I have worn it, kissed it and waited anxiously for an
opportunity to give it to you. Last night, beyond my hopes, it presented
itself. You have it, keep it, love it, nor ever part with it till you return
me my letters” (Goldring 1951, 141). In giving Lawrence a ring, Sally
Siddons is in effect promising her body to Lawrence, and handing over
a part of herself. At the same time, the ring also becomes a kind of sub-
stitute for Lawrence’s body, as Sally “wears it and kisses it.” Interestingly,
she goes on in the letter to describe a locket that she wears always that
contains a part of Lawrence: “You like my locket? Your hair and my
mother’s are in it –think if I prize it! I wear it always, but … [torn] …
When you go see Mrs. Bird you will hear my songs and see the fashions.
The first I think you would like if you did not love me; the last, miserable
as they are, you will look at with pleasure because I did them” (Goldring
1951, 141). The locket that Sally refers to is a tangible material object
that she associates with her love for both Lawrence and her mother—she
keeps strands of both of their hair in it—a fetishistic representation of
the power of their presence in her life. In the same letter, which is appar-
ently “torn” at a particularly emotional point, Sally reminds Lawrence of
her musical compositions, another intangible gift for him. Sally imagines
reaching Lawrence through her voice and artistry. She considers him as a
particular kind of spectator, telling him that he will like certain composi-
tions even if he did not “love” her, while the others he will only admire
because she “did” them. Here Sally enacts what Hanneke Grootenboer
describes as “intimate vision.” She stages a particular performance that
has meaning for herself and Lawrence that is private and unique—very
much like the particularity of the gaze of the eye miniature—when

the subject and object look back at one another in a mutually intimate
exchange.
In Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewelry
(2009), Marcia Pointon explains it was not unusual for hair jewelry to
be invested in either erotic and/or memorializing discourses. She writes,
“miniature objects therefore marked the intersection of the private and
intimate with the social and public; they brought together men and
women, children and parents, producing a space where excesses of emo-
tion were permitted and articulated, whether in mourning for a death
or in contemplating absence of a different kind. These artefacts are not
abstract but tangible and were understood to bring into tactile proximity
the loved one” (Pointon 2009, 298–299). Sally’s attention to her locket
in her letter draws upon discourses of looking; she invites Lawrence to
imagine her locket and by extension herself. While Pointon’s comments
here pertain directly to Sally’s locket and her fantasies about her fraught
relationship with Lawrence and her mother, Pointon’s suggestions about
hair in jewelry are also applicable to archival materials like letters. As an
organic substance, hair in jewelry, Pointon proposes, “is characterized by
paradoxical properties; in synecdochic relationship to the body it stages
the death of its subject and simultaneously (as a bodily substance that
outlives the body) instantiates continuity and acts as a material figure for
memory” (Pointon 2009, 310). Sally’s letters in particular, especially the
ones in which she details her feelings of passion, betrayal, longing, and
grief, operate in a “synecdochic relationship” to her body and literally
and figuratively “stage the death” of her subjects. Letters, lockets, and
rings are “material figures” of memory.
When I read Sally’s description of her locket, I was determined to
find an image of her wearing one. And I did. Sally is wearing a locket
in a drawing by Lawrence from 1797, well before this letter was writ-
ten, most likely during their initial courtship before Lawrence had trans-
ferred his affections to Maria. In her excellent essay about Lawrence’s
representations of women, Albinson argues that his drawings, both the
sketches that he did on canvas before painting and his studies on paper,
function as “an invisible or shadow memento of the first encounter
between artist and sitter” (Albinson 2011a, 31–32). Unlike his finished
portraits of women, which represent them as fully costumed and staged
subjects, Lawrence’s drawings then can be seen as more intimate versions
of his sitters. The drawing of Sally wearing a locket, which she indirectly
70 L. ENGEL
refers to in her letter by focusing Lawrence’s attention onto her necklace,

replays the emotionally charged scene of this composition. For me, as a
researcher, considering the image of Sally in costume wearing a locket is
similar to the experience of remembering an actress in a scene on stage.
The drawing itself and the material objects depicted in it help to conjure
the ghostly presence of Sally’s body invoked in her letters. Sally’s letter,
then, can be seen as a kind of unworn costume, in that it is material, tan-
gible evidence of a body that was once there, of Sally Siddons’s embod-
ied performance of writing.
In her provocative book The Actor in Costume (2009), Aoife Monks
describes the presence of unworn costumes in the archives: “The cos-
tume in the archive stands as a testament to a performance that has
gone but is stubbornly mute in its unwillingness to tell us ‘what really
happened’. … The sadness and strangeness of unworn costumes may
also be redolent of the losses in built in the performance event itself,
in our desires as audience members for connection and presence, and
the inevitable disappointment and dislocations that the performance
brings” (Monks 2009, 140–141). As unworn costumes, love letters,
or letters that foreground desire for connection or presence that is
now absence, form a kind of fascinating paradigm for the unconscious
mechanisms of archival research. That is our own longing to make the
intangible tangible, and to bring the invisible centerstage.
Maria’s Ghost
When we consider Lawrence’s portraits of Sally and Maria, there are
obvious differences among the images; however, there is always an eerie
resonance and resemblance between the faces of the two sisters. Looking
at these portraits while reading Sally’s letters to Lawrence about the
effects of his presence on her and her sister creates an uncanny sense of
the past partially reaching into the present:
You cannot be in earnest when you talk of being so soon again in

Marlborough Street; you know it is impossible. Neither you, nor I, nor Maria,
could bear it. Do you think that tho’ she does not love you, she would feel no
unpleasant sensations to see those attentions paid to another which were once
hers? Could you bear to pay them, could I endure receiving them? Oh No!
Banish this idea. Your absence indeed affects Maria but little – so little that I
am convinced she never lov’d – but your presence, you must feel, would place
us all in the most distressing situation imaginable. (Goldring 1951, 138)
Sally’s pleas to Lawrence to stay away because of the uncomfortable

effect his presence would bring into their house, the elaborately crafted
performances that his arrival would engender, and the potentially dev-
astating emotional reactions of everyone involved, brings us closer
to traces of past performances embedded in these portraits. Just as
Lawrence is both absent and present when we consider these portraits
today, his absence/presence in the lives of the Siddons sisters framed
their notions of themselves as well as their relationship to one another.
Lawrence’s unfinished portrait of Maria, which is dated c. 1800 (after
her death) shares many similarities with his portrait of a gypsy girl, a
seductive image of a young woman, barely dressed and shaded by dark
woods, clutching a chicken, while staring bold-faced at the spectator.
In A Gipsy Girl (1794), the figure seems “caught in the act” possibly
of stealing the chicken; she is perhaps poaching, trespassing, and cross-
ing a boundary between safety and danger. Lawrence’s image of Maria
has a similarly confrontational and almost demonic quality. Her face
emerges from the chaos of the background, creating a haunting night-
marish effect. Lawrence was in fact haunted and tortured by his promise
to marry Maria, a promise that led to Sally’s subsequent rejection of him.
Perhaps ironically, while Sarah Siddons remained fully entrenched in her
acting career, throwing herself into her performances, and Sally relied on
her passion for music, poetry, and composition to carry her through the
emotional vicissitudes of her relationship with Lawrence, Maria had no
artistic calling. In writing about her illness, Maria portrays the anxiety
of everyday existence. Unable to walk outside, have visitors, or take part
in parties or trips to the theater, Maria struggles to find ways to comfort
herself. In a letter to her friend Mrs. Bird on Sunday, 8 April 1798, she
writes, “It appears to me that I should be very like myself if I could but
take a walk, and feel the wind blow on me again. I am indeed doubly
unhappy, whenever I cannot keep up my spirits to see I hurt my mother
and Sally. I am angry with myself, though I am conscious of struggling
against it” (Knapp 1904, 32). Maria characterizes herself as a body that
is happiest when in motion—she would be like herself again if she could
feel the wind blow on her. Lawrence’s representation of her may be
simultaneously about his tortured feelings for her and her legacy, while
capturing the effect of her living, kinetic presence.
By July of 1800, the story of Maria Siddons’s death and Lawrence’s
dramatic reaction to it seems to have become semi-public news. Joseph
Farington writes in his diary:
72 L. ENGEL
Mrs. Mary [Maria Siddons] was certainly much hurt in her feelings by the
conduct of [Lawrence]. It is not believed that her heart was much affected
but her pride and delicacy were wounded, & no doubt aggravated the
pleuritic complaint of which she died. A fortnight before that period she
wrote a letter to Mrs. G[reathead] then at Dresden in which she described
the conduct of [Lawrence] with much force & shewed how much she
had been hurt by it. Almost to the last hour she appeared interested that
[Lawrence] shd not be admitted again to the family, from a conviction that
it would lead to difficulty for her sister who L evidently appeared disposed
to solicit after. (Farington 1979, 1417)
Farington also describes Lawrence’s erratic behavior as disingenuous:

“On the news of Mary’s death Lawrence wrote to an acquaintance in
language of the most desperate affliction but that acquaintance after-
wards learnt that [Lawrence] was at the play the evening. Of the day
on which he wrote it, [Lawrence] wrote to an uncle also, on terms most
extravagant but on the evening of the same day called at his Uncle’s
house and requested having his letter returned which was done”
(Farington 1979, 1417).
Lawrence’s Portrait of a Lady

But this was not the end of the story. The same year that Lawrence
painted his dark depiction of Maria, he produced a lovely and equally
haunting portrait of Sally. If this painting is dated correctly and this
is Sally Siddons, which I think is the case, this would mean that Sally
and Lawrence were back in contact again in some way after Maria’s
death. Douglas Goldring reports that, at the end of 1799, Sally and
Maria’s dear friend Mrs. Bird and Lucy Lawrence were planning to
stay with Lawrence at his home on Greek Street. This may have been
a period when Sally and Lawrence spent time together again, and
is perhaps when Lawrence began the Wallace Collection portrait.
Goldring explains that Mrs. Bird “Had already acted as confidante
and go-between in their affairs, and on the present occasion she con-
tinued to convey messages of a harmless nature and probably sug-
gested that the two ‘friends’ might now meet each other as rational
social beings and stop making everyone uncomfortable and ill at ease”
(Goldring 1951, 184).
Goldring includes a letter from Sally to Mrs. Bird written on 15

December 1799, which clearly suggests that Sally was still thinking about
Lawrence and trying to deny her investment in their relationship:
Thank heaven I no longer have such feelings to confess, and is not Mr. L
as perfectly at ease concerning me? I know he is, and that conviction first
help’d to restore me to myself. I hope, however, that my Mother will con-
tinue in her present tranquility respecting this subject. She has frequently
said she never believed Mr. L lov’d me; what could be the interest strong
enough to make him so successful a hypocrite, I cannot find out. I should
be tempted to think, perhaps like her, if I had been mistress of a fortune
considerable enough to tempt any man to such an extraordinary conduct;
but were I to marry I should at least have the pleasing certainty that I was
courted for myself. (Goldring 1951, 183)
In a subsequent letter it seems likely that Sally had discussed being

in contact with Lawrence with Mrs. Bird, who offered a mysterious
“proposal” regarding their relationship. Sally writes, “Generous girl! I
admire you for the sentiments you express’d this morning, but I should
not like to make trial of you at the expense of my own piece of mind.
It should be my constant prayer to be always kept at a distance from
that being, whose fascination I have not the power to escape, should I
be drawn within the circle of his magic,” and then adds, “Do not for-
get to say something kind and friendly for me to Mr. Lawrence; -what
does he say to your proposal?” (Goldring 1951, 185). We have no con-
crete evidence to suggest what this “proposal” might have been or if
it ever happened. Perhaps the suggestion had something to do with
Sally sitting for another portrait. If that was the case, we can imagine
that Lawrence’s serene, elegant portrait of Sally, which is far more sub-
dued and contemplative than the very theatrical portrait of her from
1795, represents an acknowledgement of their feelings for one another
in a quiet and significant way. Sally’s face in profile here is very much
like the drawing with the locket Lawrence had done a few years earlier
(notice the very distinct nose). Yet, another possibility is that Lawrence
decided to complete a portrait of Sally in 1800 after he had seen her
or corresponded with her, and he used this drawing to help complete
the image from memory. It is interesting to note that the painting is
an oval shape, a larger version of a private portrait miniature on a more
74 L. ENGEL
public scale.10 Is the portrait a public representation of Lawrence’s

past feelings for Sally? Sally is not looking at the viewer in the portrait,
but seems to be captured in a moment of content contemplation. She
knows that Lawrence is looking at her. She also knows that audiences
will see her through Lawrence’s eyes. The dynamic gaze contained in
this portrait recreates momentarily for the contemporary viewer/archi-
val tourist a particular example of Grootenboer’s “intimate vision.” We
are witnessing a private interaction, now lost, but still staring back at us
from within the frame.
About a year later, on 23 January 1801, an opportunity presents itself
for Sally to meet Lawrence at a private party without her mother, but
Sarah Siddons gets wind of it and shuts the plan down. Sally writes,
What do you think would have become of us if we had met. I don’t

imagine he would have accepted of the invitation if he had known I was
to be of the party, for my mother would have heard of it of course, and
would have been so much displeased that it would cost him some time
and trouble to bring her back to her present kind dispositions towards
him. I have done nothing but think of this all day, that had it not been
for my mother’s representations I should have found myself in company
with him tonight, and then what should I have done all the evening; -I
was not quite well, and tho’ I tried to sing, succeeded very indifferently.
(Goldring 1951, 189)
Sally did run into Lawrence again at the theater a few weeks later, on 13
February 1801:
I was last night at Drury Lane where I saw Mr. L for the first time these
many, many weeks. Well, as soon as I thought I perceiv’d his eyes turn’d
towards me, I bow’d to him, He did not return my salutation, and I sup-
posed I had been mistaken in thinking he was looking at me. I waited a lit-
tle, and then feeling sure his looks were fixed upon our box, I bow’d three
times, still he took not the least notice. I began to feel a little surpris’d
and almost to fancy he would not see me; to be certain of this I took an
opera glass, caught his eye, and immediately repeated my salutation three
times, he actually stared at me in the face, without even once smiling, or
answering me by the smallest inclination of his head. This behavior aston-
ishes and grieves me; tell me my dear namesake, (for you only can) what
I am to attribute this amazing change? … I have never ceased to express
the interest I take in him, in his fortunes, in his sentiments, and I had flat-
tered myself that tho’ every former hope was by both of us resigned, I
should not in passing from his heart, be mixed with the many who had
gone before and were forgotten. (Goldring 1951, 190)
Poignantly, Sally’s last encounter with Lawrence (she would die two
years later) also occurred at the theater—the very place where several
years before she had given him a ring and written passionately about
her love for him. For many people in the late eighteenth century, the
theater became a microcosm of a larger society obsessed with seeing
and being seen.11 Despite Sally’s desperate attempts to get Lawrence
to notice her and her use of a spyglass to zone in on him, she remains
unseen and unacknowledged. And in a heartbreaking moment, she rec-
ognizes that she has “passed” from his heart and will now be “mixed”
with the many who have gone before and were forgotten. Indeed,
Sally Siddons is not remembered as one of Lawrence’s most famous
subjects—she lives in the shadow of Lady Peel, Eliza Farren, and her
mother. Yet, Sally’s presence, particularly in her portraits and her letters,
conjures a specific and significant voice from the past.
In one of her most passionate letters to Lawrence, Sally Siddons
wrote on 24 April 1798, “You have sometimes praised my singing and
my compositions. I remember, too, you once observ’d I was improv’d
since you first heard me. Well, I might. I never should have sung as I
do had I never seen you; I never should have composed at all. Have
I not told you that the first song I set to music was that complaint of
Thompson’s to the nightingale? … You then liv’d in my heart, in my
head, in every idea; every moment your image was present. You did
not love me then. But now! Oh, mortification, grief, agony, are all
forgot!!!” (Goldring 1951, 141). For Sally, images are intimately con-
nected to memory, emotion, embodied experience, music, and artistic
imagination—to the performance of creating art itself. Sally’s poign-
ant phrase, “in every idea, every moment your image was present,”
combines the ephemerality of performance with the immediacy of the
moment, which is exactly the point of reenactment, to replay the past
in a way that emerges vitally in the present. Reading material culture as
archival tourists necessitates thinking through the significance of texts
and objects as performance remains, connecting us to the potential of
reenactment strategies to trace the material of history, perhaps offering
76 L. ENGEL
new ways to perform the “then” in the “now.” While we can never
truly capture Sally’s embodied voice, putting her text in conversation
with her images invokes the particularity of her presence.12 As in the
eye miniature, Sally Siddons “looks back” at us in a number of impor-
tant ways.
Notes
1. The label for this portrait at the Wallace Collection confirms that the
portrait has been identified as Sally Siddons, but adds that the attribu-
tion has been contested: “The sitter has been identified as Sally Siddons
(1775–1803), elder daughter of the tragic actress Mrs Siddons. In 1797
Lawrence was engaged to Sally but briefly fell in love with her sister
Maria and eventually alienated them both. However, the identification
was rejected by Ingamells, and, though it has recently been revived by
Garlick (see Literature), it remains problematic in the absence of further
evidence.” See also Kenneth Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence: A Complete
Catalogue of the Oil Paintings (1989, 265). Unfortunately, we were not
able to reproduce this image. Please see the Wallace Collection’s webpage
to view this portrait.
2. See my discussion of Sarah Siddons’s role in this correspondence in Laura
Engel and Elaine McGirr, eds., Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the
Theater, 1660–1830 (2014).
3. Gill Perry, in her book Spectacular Flirtations (2007), also asserts that
portraits of actresses in particular have the ability to flirt with or interact
with the spectator, creating a unique trajectory of desire between the sub-
ject of the portrait and the viewer.
4. Tourist theorists such as Dean MacCannell, John Urry, Tim Edensor,
and Chris Rojek assert that one of the basic desires of the tourist is to
use travel to connect with one’s idea or fantasy narrative of a unique self.
New directions in tourist theory are particularly concerned with using
current theories of performance and identity to understand the role of
the tourist in self-fashioning/self-creation. See in particular Edensor,
“Performing Tourism, Staging Tourism” (2001, 74).
5. For more on Lawrence and his work see Cassandra Albinson, Peter
Funell, and Lucy Peltz, eds., Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power &
Brilliance (2011).
6. See also Carolyn A. Day’s discussion of Sally and Maria Siddons and their
illness in Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease
(2017, 63–76).
7. For more on Gothic drama and the popularity of The Castle Spectre, see
Diane Long Hoeveler, “Gothic Drama” (2012) in The Encyclopedia of
Romantic Literature.
8. Siddons’s most recent biographer, Roger Manvell, notes that Maria “was
a very different girl from Sally. She was spoilt, shallow, and selfish; she set
no store by her sister’s moral scruples in her effort to attract men, and it
would seem she gave way only too easily to passion and that she was by
nature jealous” (Manvell 1970, 211).
9. Although I cannot say with certainty that the prints Sally and Lawrence
were looking at were prints from John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery,
there are several images from the As You Like It series that might have
been what they were “looking on longest.” The line that Sally quotes
is possibly from Act V, Scene II, where Rosalind declares, “O my dear
Orlando, how it grieves me to see thee wear thy heart in a scarf.” For
more on Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, see Janine Barchas’s “What
Jane Saw: 1796 Shakespeare Gallery,” a recreation of Boydell’s Gallery
online. For analysis of the Gallery and its relationship to models of female
celebrity, see also Barchas’s “Reporting on What Jane Saw 2.0: Female
Celebrity and Sensationalism in Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery,” in ABO:
Interactive Journal for Women and the Arts 1640–1830 (2015).
10. For an excellent discussion of miniatures, see Marcia Pointon’s
“‘Surrounded with Brilliants’: Miniature Portraits in Eighteenth-Century
England” (2001) in The Art Bulletin, and her Brilliant Effects: Gems and
Jewelry as Agency in History, Literature and Visual Arts (2009).
11. Grootenboer notes, “Though it had previously been considered inde-
cent, the practice of ogling through a spyglass had come to be relatively
accepted as long as it took place in spaces designed for looking, show-
ing, and showing off, such as theaters, lobbies, promenades and exhibi-
tion rooms. In such spaces, networks of gazes mapped out the boundaries
between proper and improper viewing that held in place the balance
between accepted voyeurism, tolerated exhibitionism, and violation of
privacy…” (Grootenboer 2012, 78) .
12. In her important book The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and
the Lost Voice (2011), Judith Pascoe attempts to recover Sarah Siddons’s
voice. Although she does not succeed, she concludes that the Romantics
were particularly attuned to the power of sound and to the “ephemeral-
ity of spoken words” (Pascoe 2011, 111). She argues, “Siddons became
SIDDONS because her particular talent resided in how she sounded
when she spoke her lines, and because she happened to perform at a
moment when listeners were particularly attuned to both the power and
transience of sound” (Pascoe 2011, 111).
78 L. ENGEL
References
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———. 2011b. Delineating a life: Lawrence as draughtsman. In Thomas
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———. 2011c. New ambition: Experimentation and innovation in portraiture
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and the Arts 1640–1830 5 (1): 1–26.
Day, Carolyn A. 2017. Consumptive chic: A history of beauty, fashion, and disease.
New York: Bloomsbury.
Day, Carolyn A., and Amelia Rauser. 2016. Thomas Lawrence’s consumptive
chic: Reinterpreting Lady Manners’s hectic flush in 1794. Eighteenth-Century
Studies 49 (1) (Summer): 455–474.
Engel, Laura, and Elaine McGirr (eds.). 2014. Stage mothers: Women, work, and
the theater, 1660–1830. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
Farington, Joseph. 1979. The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. IV, ed. Kenneth
Garlick and Angus MacIntyre. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Funnell, Peter. 2011. Lawrence among men: Friends, patrons and the male
portrait. In Thomas Lawrence: Regency power & brilliance, ed. Cassandra
Albinson, Peter Funnell, and Lucy Peltz, 1–26. New Haven: Yale Center for
British Art.
Garlick, Kenneth. 1989. Sir Thomas Lawrence: A complete catalogue of the oil
paintings. London: Phaidon.
Goldring, Douglas. 1951. Regency portrait painter: The life of Sir Thomas
Lawrence, P.R.A. London: Macdonald.
Grootenboer, Hanneke. 2012. Treasuring the gaze: Intimate vision in late eight-
eenth-century eye miniatures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hoeveler, Diane Long. 2012. Gothic drama. The encyclopedia of romantic litera-
ture. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118300916.wberlg007.
Knapp, Oswald G. 1904. An artist’s love story: Told in the letters of Sir Thomas
Lawrence, Mrs. Siddons and her daughters. London: George Allen.
Manvell, Roger. 1970. Sarah Siddons: Portrait of an actress. London:
Heinemann.
Monks, Aoife. 2009. The actor in costume. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pascoe, Judith. 2011. The Sarah Siddons audio files: Romanticism and the lost
voice. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Peltz, Lucy. 2011. Arrival on the scene: The 1790s. In Thomas Lawrence:
Regency power & brilliance, ed. Cassandra Albinson, Peter Funnell, and Lucy
Peltz, 87–128. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art.
Perry, Gill. 2007. Spectacular flirtations: Viewing the actress in British art and
theatre, 1768–1820. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Pointon, Marcia. 2001. “Surrounded with brilliants”: Miniature portraits in
eighteenth-century England. The Art Bulletin 83 (1): 48–71.
———. 2009. Brilliant effects: A cultural history of gem stones and jewelry. New
———. 2013. Portrayal and the search for identity. London: Reaktion Books.
CHAPTER 4
The Countess of Blessington

and Magic Lanterns
My Magic Lantern holds to view,

Of fools, a crowd; of wise but few.
(Anon. frontispiece of the Countess of Blessington’s The Magic Lantern;
or, Sketches of Scenes in the Metropolis, 1822)
In 1849, the Count D’Orsay and the Countess of Blessington auctioned

off the eccentric contents of their home, Gore House, in an attempt
to cover their enormous debt. Among the jewels, porcelain, furniture,
and other various objets d’art was a little-known portrait of the actress,
novelist, and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald by Sir Thomas Lawrence
(see Fig. 2.3). In the painting, Inchbald wears a fashionable white dress
that is far more demure than the dazzling white gown worn by the
Countess of Blessington in Lawrence’s famous image of her, now owned
by the Wallace Collection (Fig. 4.1). Blessington’s portrait has become
emblematic of her persona. Recently restored to its original magnificent
effect, at the Wallace Collection it all but obscures every other painting
in the room. The Inchbald painting, on the other hand, has received far
less attention. Housed at the Brooks Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, it
has rarely been reproduced and was not among the portraits of Inchbald
featured in the recent First Actresses exhibit at the National Portrait
Gallery.1 Oddly, while writing this chapter, another painting of Inchbald
by Lawrence (potentially done in the same year) recently surfaced at an
auction at Sotheby’s.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3_4
82 L. ENGEL
Fig. 4.1 Margaret, Countess of Blessington, Lawrence, Thomas (1769–1830),

Wallace Collection, London, UK/Bridgeman Images
4 THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON AND MAGIC LANTERNS 83
What does it mean that portraits of Elizabeth Inchbald and the

Countess of Blessington inhabited the same house and were auctioned
off on the same day? In this chapter, I am interested in exploring how
the theatrical event or tourist attraction of the “auction” might help us
to theorize the ways in which objects act as souvenirs and as conduits
to embodied experience. How do images appear and disappear, and how
are bodies possessed and imagined through the circulation of things?
The possessions displayed at an auction represent the artifacts of a lived
life now available for purchase by others. What once meant something
particular to one person becomes consumed and transformed by another.
This is particularly true for auctions that take place onsite. Entering
into the theatrical set of someone’s home automatically conjures scenes
from the past. Like tourist attractions, auctions offer the semblance of
an “authentic experience” of the everyday and of the story of a life told
through objects. Susan Stewart suggests that the “capacity of objects to
serve as traces of authentic experience is, in fact, exemplified by the sou-
venir. The souvenir distinguishes experiences. We do not need or desire
souvenirs of events that are repeatable” (Stewart 1993, 135).2
The souvenir takes on a particular resonance in relationship to auc-
tions that occur in houses. Home auctions are non-repeatable events
that correlate directly to specific people; auction inventories (documents
that are printed and circulated widely) are itemized narratives of iden-
tity. Possessions auctioned from people’s houses represent a specific
type of souvenir related to reliquary (more on this later) because they
are invested with traces of past performances tied to known individuals.
Thus, auction souvenirs can be seen as spectral souvenirs. Curiously, just
after Lawrence completed his famous portrait of her, Lady Blessington
composed a fictional account of an auction in her book The Magic
Lantern; or, Sketches of Scenes in the Metropolis (1822). Juxtaposing
Blessington’s narrative with a journal article by an “American Traveller”
chronicling his experience at the Gore House auction in 1849 suggests
a number of important things about the connections among auctions,
tourism, souvenirs, archives, and ghosts. I end the chapter with a brief
section on Inchbald’s portraits at auction and how the mysteries around
these pictures extend outward to thinking about portraits and place. I
argue that these images echo one another in an extended network of
individual and collective forms of embodied memory.
Although Lady Blessington came from humble origins (she was born
in Ireland in 1789, the daughter of a Catholic magistrate), by 1818 she
84 L. ENGEL
had married twice and become one of the most fashionable and notori-
ous women of her era, known for hosting salons with notable authors
and aristocrats.3 Lawrence’s alluring portrait of her in a revealing gown
set the standard for idealized beauty in the early 1820s. In the painting,
the Countess leans slightly forward to reveal the creamy white skin of her
neck. Her head is tilted gracefully to the side, her eyes gleaming and her
lips slighted parted. The background is dark and ambiguous, highlight-
ing the luminosity of her figure, as if she is glittering against the can-
vas. The Countess wears a small rose in the middle of her bosom, an
accessory that draws the eye toward her body, emphasizing a paradox-
ically enticing virginal sexuality. Lawrence’s portrait of the Countess of
Blessington, which shares many qualities with his famous image of Lady
Peel now in the Frick Collection, are paintings that have “unfinished”
backgrounds and have been described as shimmering. In other words,
the images have a kind of movement that results from Lawrence’s par-
ticular brush technique, an effect that calls attention to the sensuality and
materiality of the subject and the composition.4
Blessington’s portrait, in particular, became a celebrated signifier for
her luminous presence, something that she capitalized on in the cre-
ation and dissemination of her authorial presence or “brand.”5 Part of
her ability to achieve this came from her understanding of the ways in
which people conflated her actual self with Lawrence’s idealized image of
her, a phenomenon that is connected to the celebrity worship that flour-
ished during this period. Contemporary writings about Blessington often
emphasize the uncanny resemblance between Blessington the living
person and her portrait. Ann R. Hawkins and Susan Matoff have both
argued eloquently that the legacy of this portrait has worked to obscure
Blessington’s literary and intellectual accomplishments.6 Other schol-
ars have dismissed Blessington’s writings as trivial and lowbrow. Until
recently, most of the work done on her life and legacy has been in con-
nection to her relationship with Lord Byron, and very little attention has
been paid to The Magic Lantern.7
In this slim volume, Blessington operates as a fashionable tourist, visit-
ing various urban sites full of significant people and objects. Her readings
of these “scenes” at the auction, in the park, at the tomb (a recreation of
an excavated Egyptian burial monument), and at the opera, recreate sce-
narios of vision that resemble the dynamic panoramic view of the magic
lantern. In these tales, the narrator acts as a moral observer of the chaos
of modern life.8 She embodies the ideal of the sensitive and intelligent
heroine who sees things in correct ways but is often the object of a terror-
izing scrutiny. Blessington understands the world through visual informa-
tion—her observations of objects, relics, clothing, and accessories establish
a lexicon of character types that help the observer to distinguish herself as
a distinct individual. She emphasizes again and again the dynamics of what
gets seen and what remains invisible or is deliberately overlooked. In this
way, Blessington’s role as a fashionable tourist can help us to understand
how visual culture in the Regency was connected to traces of embodiment,
memory, and imagination. The operation of magic lanterns, auctions, and
tourism share a preoccupation with fantasy, projection, and types of sur-
veillance. Blessington’s use of the magic lantern as a guiding trope serves
to remind readers of the spectral and uncanny nature of urban existence as
a continuous barrage of the strange and the familiar.9
Magic lanterns were devices that pre-dated photography and worked
by using a concave mirror to direct light on painted slides, which were
then projected onto a screen for viewers. The devices were often used
in theatrical ways to conjure spooky scenes and creepy images for the
public. Magic-lantern theaters became enormously popular in the late
eighteenth century with the introduction of Étienne-Gaspard Robert’s
(known as “Robertson”) Phantasmagorie show in Paris (1793–1803),
which later toured Europe (Castle 1988, 31–42). The magic lantern
highlighted and exploited the effects of visual storytelling, offering inno-
vative moving scenes and dissolving images. Robertson’s magic-lantern
shows involved elaborate theatrical presentations. Spectators were led
into darkened rooms and shown a variety of spectacles designed to look
like ghosts. In this way, the magic lantern serves as a kind of visual trope
for overlapping states of reality and consciousness—a process that for
nineteenth-century authors expressed a movement away from embodi-
ment and towards the inward gaze of the imagination.10
Prints and caricatures depicting magic lanterns at the turn of the nine-
teenth century offer some useful information about how the device was
used and understood. A periodical illustration to Matthew Green’s poem
“The Spleen” portrays a lovely woman dressed in a fashionable neo-
classical gown watching the projection of horrific goblins and devils on
a magic-lantern screen. These figures are a mélange of sculptural body
parts—almost like Italian Renaissance putti gone awry. A shadowy crea-
ture in the upper corner mans the projector. The viewer is meant to sym-
pathize with the innocent girl who is subjected to these scary scenes but
cannot look away. The setup creates a kind of pre-cinematic fantasy of
86 L. ENGEL
vision—is the person watching something that is real and actually there?
Or is this also a metaphor for the way the mind works? A kind of dream
vision or future-projecting prophecy?
In another image, a satiric print, the well-known actress Eliza Farren,
dressed fashionably and holding a muff, is waiting to have her future
told. She is surrounded by optical objects including a magic lantern
behind her chair. Farren’s body position and the placement of the muff
are parodies of the famous portrait of her by Thomas Lawrence, where
she stands in a field holding a muff, as well as an exact echo of a portrait
of Sarah Siddons by Thomas Gainsborough where she sits in the same
pose also holding a muff.11 While the tone of this illustration is very dif-
ferent from the image that accompanies “The Spleen,” the presence of
the magic lantern suggests something provocative about ways of look-
ing as either original and innovative or as staged and over-determined.
The cartoon proposes that, as an actress and celebrity, Farren is already a
packaged commodity. The Cinderella story of her future (her impending
marriage to Lord Derby) has been mapped out all along.12 The magic
lantern is a leftover artifact in this image, cluttering the frame along with
other debris of optical technology, including a spyglass, telescope, and
compass. Blessington juxtaposes these visual extremes in her use of the
magic lantern as a guiding metaphor for her observations—on the one
hand, she presents her narrator as an enticing heroine interpreting the
often ghastly performances surrounding her as a Gothic reality; on the
other hand, she depicts a world of surfaces where, even though there is
a great deal to see and an enormous amount of scrutiny, nothing is ever
really fully understood, and the depths of people’s histories, emotions,
and desires are largely invisible.
Blessington’s use of the magic lantern emphasizes the idea of surveil-
lance and projection as well as a shimmering materiality. By shimmering,
I mean the unsettling notion that matter can move, or put in another
way, that material objects can enact performances in the present that
are also embedded with traces of past performances.13 Surveillance and
projection are also guiding tropes of tourism. The tourist gaze incorpo-
rates and synthesizes what is seen and projects ideas of cultural norms
and identities onto a specific scene.14 Acting as a tourist of the everyday
in her narrative, Blessington incorporates what Chloe Chard has argued
are conventional Romantic era responses to travel. Chard explains that,
for the traveler, hyperbole or inflammatory rhetoric “serves to map out,
more insistently than plainer and more moderate forms of language, a
plot of traversing limits and boundaries, both geographic and sym-

bolic, that is often envisaged as a crucial part of the experience of travel,
essential to its excitement and to its momentum as a narrative” (Chard
1996, 5). Like many authors before her, Blessington uses “failures of
hyperbole” (Chard 1996, 2) in her Magic Lantern vignettes to distin-
guish between appropriate and vulgar responses to the particular “tour-
ist” attraction that she is describing. In addition, this inflated language
works to establish the difference between the foreign and the familiar.
As an essential eyewitness, Blessington’s narrator is both a part of the
scene and outside of the frame looking in. Using the organizing optic
principal of the magic lantern, Blessington’s “traversing boundaries”
into visual realms of fashionable life creates a shimmering panorama
that highlights the embodied presence of the material objects that she
chooses to gaze upon. The narrator’s movement through scenes—her
embodied action—invites the reader to experience a sense of theatrical
presence and affective connection that mirrors the idea of being part of
a theatrical performance. Chard points out that similar to the phantas-
magoric, tourist narratives often center on “horror, wonder, and shock”
(Chard 1996, 10). These emotions help to register the traveler’s idea of
his or her difference from the culture or scene being presented, while at
the same moment there is a pleasure and excitement in witnessing some-
thing unfamiliar or new.
Blessington’s focus on particular objects as artifacts and relics of
lived experience, as spectral souvenirs, mimics in many ways the move-
ment of an actress onstage deliberately interacting with specific props.
Andrew Sofer has argued eloquently that props onstage direct the action
of a narrative and are crucially invested in the actions and reactions of
particular bodies.15 In this way, he echoes Robin Bernstein’s theory of
objects as “scriptive things”—material culture that engenders the per-
formances that surround it (Bernstein 2011, 71–72).16 Blessington’s
props/objects operate as “scriptive” things in her narrative, enticing the
tourist/viewer to imagine embodied performances of the past, while at
the same moment to experience affective reactions to the materials in the
present. In this way, the scene becomes like a dissolving magic-lantern
slide—at one moment we witness the present, and in the next we are
immersed in the past. Because the narrative is invested with this optical
schema, it is more than a flashback; the material becomes spectrally tied
to the embodied realities of the past and the present through the narra-
tor’s encounter with specific artifacts.17 This process becomes even more
88 L. ENGEL
uncanny when years later an American tourist narrates his experience

of going to the auction at Blessington’s home and picturing her ghost
among the relics of her past life.
The Auction
Blessington begins her chapter with the following description of the nar-
rator’s happening upon an auction in a “fashionable” neighborhood:
Passing, a few days ago, through one of the fashionable squares, I was
attracted by seeing a bustling crowd around the doors of one of the
houses; and, on inquiry, I found that it was occasioned by an Auction.
Curiosity induced me to enter, and my mind soon became deeply
engaged in the scene around me.
There are few occasions that, in a greater degree, furnish food for
reflection, or indeed more powerfully excite it, than an Auction; and, I am
grieved to say, few that can show us our fellow beings in a less favoura-
ble point of view. Each person is eager in the pursuit of some article that
pleases his fancy, and seems to think of self alone. (Blessington 1822, 3–4)
The auction is positioned as a place of curiosity—the narrator is

“attracted” by the crowd and literally drawn into the scene, which pro-
vides powerful material for “reflection.” The possessions displayed in an
auction represent the artifacts of a lived life now available for purchase by
others. What once meant something particular to one person becomes
consumed and transformed by another.18 Entering into the theatrical set
of someone’s home automatically conjures scenes from the past. The nar-
rator describes the elegance of the house with its rich furniture, paintings
by “the best masters,” and “a library of well-chosen books, with globes,
fine maps, and all the apparatus for astronomical and geological studies”
(Blessington 1822, 4). This is a home of a well-bred intellectual fam-
ily with good taste, and the narrator is immediately drawn to imagining
what might have happened to the “female part of the family” (Blessington
1822, 4). She enters the morning room and observes, “here were all
the indications of female elegance and female usefulness – the neat book
shelves, stored with the best authors; the writing table, with all its append-
ages; the drawing table, on which the easel and pens still rested, and a harp
and piano-forte with the music books still open, all spoke the refined taste
and avocations of the owners of this room, and how sudden had been the
ruin that had expelled them from it” (Blessington 1822, 4).
The narrator recreates the scene as if she were looking at a particular

moment in time—very much like the experience of walking into a period
room in a museum as a tourist. Each element in the domestic space tells
a story about the inhabitants and what they might have been doing with
their time. In this case, the objects all connect to the ideal practices for
women’s education—reading (only books by the “best” authors), writ-
ing, drawing, and music. Each object is represented as something tied to
a particular set of performances or cultural script that dictates a certain
range of actions. The writing table has all of “its appendages,” suggest-
ing that the piece has many compartments and attachments filled with
ink, wax, and paper. The easel has pens still resting on it, and the music
books are still open. All of this indicates the suspension of lived experi-
ence and the “sudden” nature of the family’s ruin.
Unlike other tourists, the narrator is not content to stop here with
these observations. She wants to know more about the inhabitants.
Fortunately, she observes that there are some “pictures, with their faces
turned to the wall” in the corner of the room (Blessington 1822, 4).
Her “curiosity” induces her to turn them around: “I found them to
be coloured drawings, admirably executed, and evidently portraits: on
examining them more closely I discovered that some of the accompani-
ments were copies of the furniture now before me” (Blessington 1822,
4–5). The narrator establishes the scene in the drawings as a representa-
tion of the “real” house, an authentic depiction of the past. This degree
of visual legitimation reflects the tourist’s desire to be standing where
others have stood, to experience the “actual” past in the present. One of
the drawings is of two women playing a duet on the piano-forte; another
“represented a most animated, intelligent looking girl, reading to one
who was drawing, and whose countenance, though pale and languid,
was expressive of genius and sensibility” (Blessington 1822, 5). From the
start, the drawings are represented as secrets, things that were intended
not to be seen or to be taken as valuable. They are turned over and only
revealed because of the narrator’s curiosity and desire—her excitement to
know more about the inhabitants of the house—which is represented as
heartfelt and natural, rather than scopic and oppressive.
When she turns the images over, they are “portraits,” which is impor-
tant—the drawings conjure the embodied traces of the occupants of the
house. They are another example of what Rebecca Schneider has called
“performance remains” of a past series of events. As drawings, they are
evidence of the women’s own labor, examples of their renderings of each
90 L. ENGEL
other and their connection to one another. They are also representations
of other kinds of artistic actions—playing the piano, reading, and drawing.
The dramatization of these actions draws the narrator/viewer into the
scene: “Here then, thought I, are the late actors in this domestic scene;
and as I gazed on the sweet faces before me, my interest became excited
to a painful degree” (Blessington 1822, 5). The narrator dramatically
imagines the moments when the sisters were “driven” from their home,
“stripped at once of all the elegancies of life and sent to brave a world, the
hardships of which they would now for the first time learn” (Blessington
1822, 5). She sees their “looks of parting sorrow [and] the efforts they
made to compose their tearful countenances,” and their “hurried” retreat
from the room (Blessington 1822, 5). Material artifacts, then, propel the
observer into an emotional or affective connection to the particular his-
tories of the invisible inhabitants of the room. As an archival tourist, the
narrator effectively curates a world for these characters, scripting a com-
pelling scenario that sympathetically imagines their plight and casts them
as victims of circumstances beyond their control.
As the narrator moves out of the morning room, she is confronted
with the crowd, assaulted by a vulgar throng that do not seem to under-
stand what it is that they are looking at, “noise, bustle, and confusion on
every side” (Blessington 1822, 6). While the onlookers are debating buy-
ing various things, the conversation turns to the women who lived in the
house. The narrator overhears someone say, “‘Yes, and what a fuss peo-
ple made about the beauty and accomplishments of the daughters’ … ‘I
(said a pale sickly looking girl) could never see any beauty in them; and
I am sure they wore rouge and pearl powder’” (Blessington 1822, 9).
The women are misunderstood and mischaracterized in the same way
that their possessions are undervalued and misinterpreted. One buyer
declares that he will “buy his Vandyke picture,” to which another asks,
“What, do you like pictures?”; the first then replies, “O, no; I have not
the least fancy for them; indeed I don’t know a Titian from a Vandyke:
but one must have pictures…” (Blessington 1822, 10). The crowd is
participating in a thriving consumer culture where buying commodities
reflects a certain social and economic status. The reply that “one must
have pictures” suggests that people’s lives were populated with images
that represented aspects of their own attempts at self-fashioning. In this
scenario, it does not matter what the painting is; its value lies in its sig-
nification of taste (Vandyke is a major painter) and wealth (his paintings
are expensive). The drawings done by the young women, however, are
represented as authentic recreations of past performances. They are val-

uable because they are connected somehow to the embodied real. No
one is able to “see” this but the narrator and, of course, the reader
who is invited to take part in this staged tour of refracted memory.
Blessington’s description of the women through their portraits becomes
a narrative souvenir.
In the end, the narrator is thrilled to hear that the family who had
lived in the house is living nearby. She overhears a conversation between
two women that provides her with irrefutable evidence of the true
nature of the sisters—not only are they resolved to accept their hum-
bler living conditions in a “retired country residence,” but they have also
been charitable to people in need (Blessington 1822, 15). One woman
recounts that the sisters rescued her from poverty and despair. In order
to thank them, she comes to the auction to buy something of theirs to
return to them. She is too late but decides instead that if they are in
need of a “domestic” in their new life that she will make herself avail-
able to them (Blessington 1822, 16). Miraculously, the other woman
reveals that she has bought the entire contents of the mansion only to
return it to its original owners. The narrator is so moved by the con-
nection between the two women that she imagines that there is a phys-
ical acknowledgement between them: “The expression of the speaker’s
countenance became radiant with gratitude and benevolence, and the
soul beaming smile of approval with which the other regarded her, as
by a gentle pressure of the hand, she marked her heart-felt sympathy,
made its way to mine. I longed to press both within my own; but this
the usages of society forbade” (Blessington 1822, 16–17). Watching and
listening to this scene, the narrator is compelled to create an embodied
performative element for the viewer. She imagines a smile of approval
like “a gentle pressure of the hand”—something that is not actually
present in the scene itself. She then wishes to join in the scene by clasp-
ing hands with the women (“I longed to press both within my own”),
an action she reminds the reader that the “usages of society” forbids.
Uncovering the hidden nature of the affective presence of the scene,
something that she also does when she flips over the drawings, is her
contribution as an archival tourist, to restage, reinterpret, and reenact
the past in ways that echo into the present. The material of memory
that belongs to others—material that conjures the shimmer of corpo-
real presence, much like a magic lantern—affects the viewer’s body in
an emotional and physical way, so much so that the narrator wishes to
92 L. ENGEL
break “the fourth wall” of the scene and become a part of the action.
Operating as a tangible spectral presence in the scene, the narrator’s
ghostly sympathy reframes the Gothic horror of the auction with a senti-
mental and compassionate ending.
Perhaps it is not surprising that this wish is represented as transgres-
sive—it is a queer moment of desire—not only because it signifies a con-
nection between women, but also because it crosses so many boundaries
at once between what is imagined/real, public/private, past/present,
intimate/formal, authentic/constructed, and narrative/theatrical.19
Blessington’s narrator creates a space of “elsewhere” that connects her
ultimately to her reader through an intense attention to technologies of
presence. In her auction narrative, Blessington dramatizes the touristic
practice of entering into or experiencing something that is unknown.
Acting as an essential part of the scene, her narrator attempts to reframe
the dynamics of tourist interaction by reconfiguring the boundary
between subject and object. In a strange Gothic twist, Blessington’s role
as author/narrator blends into the fictive nature of the tale, because the
author is prophetically, like a magic lantern, projecting her own future.
In an article written for the periodical Littlell’s Living Age, an anony-
mous American traveler recounts his experience as tourist witnessing the
dramatic auction of Blessington’s belongings at Gore House. The nar-
rative is presented in two parts—the first recounts the narrator’s memo-
ries of visiting the Countess while she lived in the house, and the second
takes the reader through the auction on a haunted tour of the uninhab-
ited mansion. The format mirrors Blessington’s Magic Lantern auction
narrative in many ways, mimicking a kind of dissolving slide effect.
An American at Gore House

At the beginning of the piece, the anonymous American author (called
“An American Traveller”) presents a general view of trans-Atlantic tour-
ism. Unlike visits to truly foreign lands, the speaker declares that, being
in England, “We are spectators of the play, not actors in it. We come
here to observe upon men and manners – to examine with an equal
eye both the past and the present, reserving the future for ourselves in
our own land, in the hope of creating that which one day may become
a glorious past” (American Traveller 1849, 145). In this peculiar brand
of tourism, the narrator uses theatrical metaphors to establish that what
is looked upon is like a stage set with actors. The tourist is a curious
spectator with a nationalistic impulse to learn from the scene in order to

imagine and create something which will then have a “past” itself. The
spectator/tourist/author is related to the actors by a vexed sense of a
shared past that has recently ruptured and become something else. The
separation of English culture from American culture is analogous in this
context to the idea of an auction—an event that is a sudden rupture or
displacement of an original context. The objects in an auction in par-
ticular can never represent what they once did, now that they are availa-
ble for consumption by the public—they are hybrid forms that embody
the past and the present simultaneously. This kind of hybrid identity is
what the American traveler seems to be saying about his experience as an
American tourist in England.
The narrator begins by describing Lady Blessington, whom he had
not seen for thirteen years, standing next to a portrait by Sir Joshua
Reynolds of “the lovely Lady Waldegrave” (Fig. 4.2).20 Comparing the
aged countess to Reynolds’s youthful image, he remarks that the differ-
ence between the two is “a test of some severity” (American Traveller
1849, 146). He goes on to add more detail about the ways in which
age had altered the Countess’s body: “More fulness had been added to
her figure, and the oval form of her face was less apparent, but the grace
of one and the sweetness of the other were still conspicuous. There are
some faces in which the light of beauty is never extinguished, and Lady
Blessington’s was of that order. He who has only seen Lawrence’s exqui-
site portrait of her will have carried away this impression; we, who have
known the original, many years after that picture was painted, can con-
firm the truth of this creed by our own experience” (American Traveller
1849, 146). Although Lady Blessington appears changed in certain ways,
she is still beautiful, and more importantly recognizable as the same
person painted by Lawrence many years ago. The traveler’s memory of
her is a blurred mixture of her actual body and her idealized image—
almost as if she herself were a tourist site. In the same way that a central
impulse of tourism is to have seen or visited the original or real space
(which represents a more authentic, legitimate view than just a picture or
a postcard), the traveler capitalizes on the fact that everyone would know
what Lady Blessington looks like from her portrait. Lawrence’s painting
becomes a refrain or touchstone for the narrator throughout the piece,
projecting an uncanny double for the Countess’s actual body.
The narrator refers to the portrait again when recalling the house
itself: “Byron somewhere in his journal speaks of a picture by Titian
94 L. ENGEL
Fig. 4.2 Maria Countess of Waldegrave and her Daughter Lady Elizabeth
Laura, Richard Houston, ca. 1721–1775, British, after Sir Joshua Reynolds
R. A. 1723–1792, British 1761 (Mezzotint). © Yale Center for British Art, Paul
Mellon Collection
or Giorgione, which seemed to light up the place where he beheld it,

filling the eye to the exclusion of everything beside. The same effect
was produced when one looked on the exquisite portrait of Lady
Blessington which hung over the lobby entrance. No painter of his time,
nor scarcely of any other, could so truly as Sir Thomas Lawrence have
interpreted the matchless beauty of the original” (American Traveller
1849, 147). Describing the portrait in terms of where it is placed
inside the rooms of the mansion, the narrator reminds the reader of the
material nature of the portrait as an object in the house. He compares
Lawrence’s skill and artistic reputation to the artistic master, Vandyke,
an odd reminder of Blessington’s fictional auction chapter, where her
characters are discussing the merits of paintings in the fictional house,
and one remarks that he cannot tell a Vandyke from anything else.
The traveler explains, “Lawrence – the modern Vandyke in this branch
of his art – has painted many beautiful women, but he has never had
a subject more worthy of his pencil. This enchanting portrait has now
become the property of the Marquis of Hertford, who acquired it for
320 guineas – but little more than half the sum that Lawrence used to
receive for an ordinary portrait” (American Traveller 1849, 148). Here,
Blessington is transformed into an exchangeable commodity—her image
has literally been acquired by someone else for a bargain. The narrator’s
sense of Lady Blessington as a transferable object, a kind of expensive
accessory, contrasts with his lurid sense of imagining her corporeal pres-
ence and traces of her past performances when he visits Gore House
again to tour its contents.
The narrator recalls his initial impulse to attend the auction. He even
goes so far as to mention that he would like to buy something at the auc-
tion for himself, suggesting that there is a difference between gazing at
the portrait and owning a relic or a souvenir:
It was with altered feelings that I bent my way to Gore House at the
beginning of last month. … I was unwilling, at the first instance, to go
near the spot; but the desire once more and for the last time to visit a
place where I had spent so many happy hours, and something also of the
wish to possess myself of some slight relic, on which I might fix before-
hand, prevailed over my first resolution; and instead of going down to the
flower-show at Chiswick, wither everybody was hurrying, I stopped short
at Kensington. (American Traveller 1849, 153)
96 L. ENGEL
Dramatizing the scene of the auction as a return to the past motivated by

a wish to recall happy moments, and also perhaps to “possess” a “slight
relic” from the house, the author stages a narrative of touristic desire.
The narrator’s deliberate foregrounding of Blessington’s portrait as jux-
taposed with her “real” body in the beginning of the piece creates a con-
structed nostalgic vision for his readers. Owning a “slight relic” can be
psychically aligned with possessing a material part of the Countess her-
self. His use of the word “relic” here is significant. Joseph Roach pro-
poses that the accessories associated with particular celebrities become
substitutes for the famous person’s body in the same way that relics rep-
resented particular aspects of saints and religious figures.21 The narrator’s
ability to determine a “slight relic” is also a self-conscious commentary
on the position of the art expert (someone who can actually determine
artistic value) versus the everyday person/tourist who purchases things
according to emotion, whim, or immediate gratification.
The narrator continues, “It was difficult to believe that I was actually
in the same house again; but the mute tokens of taste and genius, not yet
displaced, which gleamed from the walls and met my gaze at every turn,
only too surely convinced me that there was no delusion” (American
Traveller 1849, 153). Similar to Lady Blessington’s depiction of the
house in her auction narrative as a kind of haunted stage set, the narra-
tor recognizes that he is in the Blessington house by the set pieces and
props that “gleamed from the walls” and gazed back at him. The nar-
rator’s animation of the inanimate objects of the house, particularly the
paintings, connects to the phenomenon of the eye miniature discussed in
the previous chapter and also to the theatricality of the magic lantern and
phantasmagoric exhibitions. The house is alive—with ghosts, memories,
and “gleaming” things, with spectral souvenirs. The narrator establishes
that the brightest of these “gleaming” objects is the shimmering image
of the Countess herself. Using this visual logic, the reader can imagine
that the object that “gazes” back at the narrator might be the luminous
portrait of Lady Blessington.
Yet, just as in Blessington’s auction narrative, the author is not alone
in the house. He is surrounded by other vulgar characters, consumers
who want to possess something but do not comprehend what they are
looking at. The narrator writes, “In one place a number of stooping fig-
ures were bent over a curious cabinet, or a portfolio of rare prints; in
another, a group were eagerly discussing, with loud-voiced criticism,
the merits of a picture, of which they neither knew the subject nor the
artist…” (American Traveller 1849, 153). Here the narrator becomes a

privileged tourist/observer. He moves through the house as if he were
making his way through an intricate museum filled with glass cases, cabi-
nets, dioramas, and secret passageways.
In Lady Blessington’s study, he finds a miniature of Blessington
(Lawrence’s painting reproduced on porcelain), a glass case full of
painted figures “representing the court and household of the King of
Hanover,” along with “statuettes, vases, clocks, flambeaux, and a hun-
dred nameless contrivances for the display of ornament” (American
Traveller 1849, 153). The narrator is particularly delighted by his dis-
covery of a silver cast of Lady Blessington’s hands: “In a small boudoir,
the only drawback to which was that it looked out upon the stables, lay
reclined upon a velvet cushion, and carefully protected by a glass shade
from the blackening air, a pair of hands modelled in silver after those
of Lady Blessington. Small, and round, and dimpled, with long taper
fingers and arching nails, the sculptor never met with a finer study”
(American Traveller 1849, 148). Unlike the two-dimensional nature
of a portrait, sculpture creates a three-dimensional representation of a
body—sculptures of particular body parts, modeled from life, suggest an
uncanny relationship between the living model and the static artwork,
as well as the whole absent body that ghosts the specific part that is rep-
resented. Women’s hands, in particular, are potent signifiers for grace,
sensuality, and artistic/authorial labor and production. The narrator
describes Lady Blessington’s miniature hands with the knowledge of hav-
ing seen and studied the original flesh.22
Later in the narrative, the reader is invited to imagine Blessington’s
hands in action. The author conjures this image through his interaction
with a material object, an ornate album with missing pages: “One port-
folio or album, richly bound in morocco, had nothing now but its bind-
ing and its golden clasps to attract the purchaser. It was locked, and the
key was gone, but the leaves had all been cut out, with a hasty, and, as I
fancied from the broken line of the paper, a trembling hand. It told its
own story and the ruin of the house as completely as the richest amongst
the objects sacrificed to the mercy of a callous creditor” (American
Traveller 1849, 153–154). In this anecdote, which sounds like it was
taken from a Gothic novel, the narrator imagines a dramatic scene
highlighting the ornate portfolio as a central prop. Lady Blessington’s
ghostly figure is visible through the activity of her hands as she anxiously
rips the papers out from the book, leaving the empty shell. The bare
98 L. ENGEL
book becomes analogous to Blessington’s ephemeral body; her pres-

ence as a commodity or accessory is represented by the hand sculpture.
Adding to the viewer’s suspense, the mysterious album tells a story as an
archival relic that evokes evidence of past performances. Yet, we do not
actually get to see or read the real story. In the end, it does not matter;
the actors are present in their absence, like the projection of figures from
a magic-lantern slide.
Moving through the public spaces to the more intimate regions of
the house, the narrator takes readers into the “backstage” of the experi-
ence: “In the adyta penetralia of the mansion – the dressing-room and
bedroom of Lady Blessington – amidst crowds of costly and beautiful
objects, there was one that was interesting from the associations which
surrounded it. At the further extremity of the inner apartment the eye
was attracted to a superb bedstead, which reflected the rich blue satin
hangings and fine muslin curtains with which it was decorated, in a
large pier glass let into the wall behind it” (American Traveller 1849,
154). The theatrical bed belonged to the Empress Josephine (Fig. 4.3),
whom the traveler imagines had “sighed through many a sleepless
night, mourning the loss of him whom love had been unable to bind;
and haply foreseeing with prophetic eye the bitter future reserved to
avenge her for his misplaced ambition” (American Traveller 1849,
154). Just as the narrator returns again and again to Lady Blessington’s
image, he has called attention to the image and presence of the
Empress before this scene: “Josephine, of whom there was one minia-
ture, was chiefly represented by objects in which elegance and utility
were mingled – as, for instance, the china and ornamental furniture that
came from Malmaison” (American Traveller 1849, 148). Josephine’s
exotic aura of sexuality, violence, and power is “represented by objects”
in the house—china, ornamental furniture, visual references to trade,
travel, and otherness. The stage set of the bed is backstage tourism at
its most lurid, a kind of morbid fantasy peep show, or an exchange of
one shimmering body for the corpse of another. The narrator’s confla-
tion of Josephine and Blessington in a phantasmagorical sense creates
a surreal atmosphere of sensual desire. He ends the narrative by glanc-
ing at “a charming toilet-glass in a silver frame, which, in spite of its
mounting … made all the people in the room look like spectres. … And
Gore House now is but a dream!” (American Traveller 1849, 154). The
author presents tourism as a series of signifiers to be read and translated
into theatrical scenes.
Fig. 4.3 Bedroom of Empress Josephine (1763–1814) (photo) French

School (nineteenth century). Musée National du Château de Malmaison, Rueil-
Malmaison, France/Bridgeman Images
100 L. ENGEL
For both Blessington and the American tourist, the story of the
auction highlights the juxtaposition between absence and presence,
a hybrid sense of consciousness represented by material objects.
Although one story is fiction and the other is supposedly true, they
share rhetorical strategies and conventions borrowed from turn-of-
the-century travel narratives. However, Lady Blessington’s gaze, her
presence as a fashionable tourist, is moral and didactic at times, but
also sympathetic. She has tremendous compassion for the inhabitants
of the house, particularly because they are women, and she wants to
literally “touch” their experience. So much so, that at one point in
her story she fantasizes that she is part of the inside story itself. The
American traveler’s gaze, on the other hand, while flattering, is simul-
taneously penetrating and invasive. His foraging into the recesses of
Blessington’s house, highlighting her portrait and a silver sculpture of
her hands, stages Gore House as a kind of eerie wax museum or Gothic
magic-lantern show.
Reading presence through absence brings us back to the portrait
of Elizabeth Inchbald, which is listed in the Gore House auction
catalogue as “Portrait of the Celebrated Mrs. Inchbald” (Catalogue
1849, 46). The catalogue also lists several of Inchbald’s books,
including a set of her theatrical works (Catalogue 1849, 79). Why did
the Countess of Blessington own a portrait of Inchbald? Was she a
fan? In the auction inventory, the painting is listed as part of the col-
lection, but not as part of the inventory for a specific room. Was it
lying in the attic? Behind other portraits in a closet? Inchbald died
in 1821, the year before Lawrence exhibited his famous portrait of
Blessington. She is not mentioned in biographies of Blessington,
and Blessington does not appear in Inchbald’s pocket diaries. Yet,
through their images on canvas, they inhabited the same space and
were both sold on the same day. As archival tourists, we can visit
their portraits in disparate places—in museums and online—but it
seems significant that they had a place together once at a particular
moment in time, and in someone’s memory they had a relationship
to one another. As relics, artifacts, and spectral souvenirs, these por-
traits dramatize how auctions remind us to consider the relationship
between people and objects—across time and space—as collective and
individual forms of embodied memory.
Notes
1. For more about this exhibit, see The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah
Siddons, ed. Gill Perry and Joseph Roach (2011).
2. I will also return to this idea in my discussion of silhouettes, waxworks,
and photography in the next chapters.
3. As Ann R. Hawkins narrates, “Blessington’s scandalous history emerges
from three aspects of her life: she lived out of wedlock with Captain
Jenkins and later with Lord Blessington prior to marriage; her husband
entrusted his fortune to Alfred D’Orsay through an arranged marriage
with one of Lord Blessington’s daughters by his first wife; and after Lord
Blessington’s death and the failure of the D’Orsay marriage, D’Orsay –
not Lady Blessington’s step-daughter Harriet – lived much of his life in
Blessington’s household” (Hawkins 2012, 52).
4. For more about Lawrence’s brush technique and this portrait, see
Peter Funnell’s “Court, Academy and Society: The 1820s” in Thomas
Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance (2011, 281).
5. See Hawkins’s “The Portrait, the Beauty, and the Book: Celebrity and the
Countess of Blessington” in Women Writers and the Artifacts of Celebrity
in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Hawkins and Maura Ives (2012).
Blessington used the Lawrence portrait as the frontispiece for several
of her publications as well as her edition of the annual The Keepsake.
Hawkins argues that “Lawrence’s portrait, then, stands as an example of
English conceptions of beauty popular during Blessington’s lifetime, and
more importantly during her career as an author” (Hawkins 2012, 62).
6. For more on Blessington’s life and the impact of her writings, see Susan
Matoff’s recent comprehensive and engaging biography Marguerite,
Countess of Blessington: The Turbulent Life of a Salonnière and Author
(2016). For more on Blessington and her salons, as well as women and
salon culture in the Regency, see Susanne Schmid’s British Literary Salons
of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (2013, 119–171).
7. Matoff speculates, “Maybe tired of the endless social evenings, and to
fill her leisure time, Lady Blessington again tried her hand at writing,
encouraged by William Jerdan, editor of the Literary Gazette. This was
an influential publication, the first British weekly review of literature
and the arts launched by the publisher Henry Colburn in 1817. … The
result of Jerdan’s encouragement of Lady Blessington was a small book of
short stories, The Magic Lantern. … Extracts of the book appeared in the
Literary Gazette in March 1822” (Matoff 2016, 19).
8. In other parts of the book, Blessington deliberately juxtaposes the for-
eignness of the past with the Englishness of the present. For example, in
102 L. ENGEL
the tomb section the narrator comments, “Little could Psammis, whose
Tomb this is supposed to be, have imagined that, after a lapse of about
two thousand five hundred years, the exact model of his Mausoleum
would be exhibited in a capital, which, when this Tomb was formed, did
not exist” (Blessington 1822, 40), and then observes, “Two or three
fine young women, simply but elegantly attired, with their graceful atti-
tudes, and undulating draperies, formed an agreeable contrast to the stiff
and disproportioned forms of the grotesque Egyptian female figures”
(Blessington 1822, 40–41).
9. See Terry Castle for a comprehensive discussion of the origins and fascina-
tion of early magic-lantern shows in her seminal article “Phantasmagoria:
Spectral Technology and the Metaphorics of Modern Reverie” in Critical
Inquiry (1988).
10. See Sally B. Palmer’s discussion of the developing technology of the
magic lantern as a precursor to photography in “Projecting the Gaze:
The Magic Lantern, Cultural Discipline and Villette” in Victorian
Review (2006). For Palmer, magic-lantern shows, like Gothic literature,
“reflected the fears and horrors of social rupture and power gone ber-
serk. Viewing such slide displays raised these fears, then simultaneously
reassured audiences that disruption and chaos can be eventually confined
with four-inch frames, reduced in magnitude, and then packed away in a
box” (Palmer 2006, 26).
11. Elizabeth Farren (1759–1829) was a popular comedic actress in the late
eighteenth century. After an extended courtship, which was chronicled
by all the London newspapers and ridiculed in satiric prints, she eventu-
ally married Lord Derby and became a Countess. For more about Eliza
Farren in relation to the muff as a stylish and provocative accessory, see
my Austen, Actresses, and Accessories: Much Ado About Muffs (2015,
32–35).
12. For more on satiric images of Farren and the relationship of these prints
to eighteenth-century actresses and material culture, see my essay
“Eighteenth-Century Actresses and Material Culture,” forthcoming
in The Palgrave Handbook of Women on Stage, ed. Clare Smout and Jan
Sewell.
13. See discussion of the relationship between thing theory and performance
in the introduction.
14. Much of contemporary tourist theory is concerned with unpacking the
ways in which tourists impute their own desires and identities onto their
understanding or analysis of other places and communities.
15. See Andrew Sofer, The Stage Life of Props (2003), and “Spectral Readings”
in Theatre Journal (2012).
16. See discussion of Bernstein in the introduction.

17. See Terry Castle’s discussion of the “spectralization of the other” in her
chapter “The Spectralization of the Other in The Mysteries of Udolpho”
in The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the
Invention of the Uncanny (1995, 120–139). As Castle famously argues,
“a crucial feature of the new sensibility of the late eighteenth century
was, quite literally, a growing sense of the ghostliness of other people”
(Castle 1995, 125).
18. See Claudine van Hensbergen’s discussion of eighteenth-century auc-
tions in her chapter “Anne Oldfield’s Domestic Interiors: Auctions,
Material Culture, and Celebrity” in Intimacy and Celebrity in
Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture: Public Interiors, ed. Vicki Joule
and Emrys Jones (2018).
19. This moment in Blessington’s text is connected to Heather Love’s dis-
cussion of history, desire, and memory in her seminal work Feeling
Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (2009). See in par-
ticular Love’s discussion of Anne Carson’s version of Sappho’s lyric
“Someone will remember us/I say/even in another time.” Love
explains, “Sappho’s lyric promises memory across death; once we
and everyone we know and everyone who knows us is dead, someone
is still going to think about us. We will be in history. This fragment
offers a nearly irresistible version of what queer subjects want to hear
from their imagined ancestors. It is what Christopher Nealon refers
to as the ‘message in a bottle’ dispatched from the queer past” (Love
2009, 34).
20. This could be a picture of Reynolds’s portrait of Lady Elizabeth
Waldegrave with her mother Maria Walpole (1761) or his more known
image of The Ladies Waldegrave (1780–1781), now in the National
Gallery of Scotland. The Ladies Waldegrave are pictured in the middle
of performing ladies’ accomplishments very much like the actions that
Blessington describes in her auction piece. Perhaps she was looking at
this portrait or thinking about this image when she was composing the
chapter?
21. See Roach’s discussion of celebrities as relics, commodities, and accesso-
ries in It (2007, 45–81).
22. There is no way to know if the American Traveller read Lady Blessington’s
account of the auction in her Magic Lantern volume, but it is interesting
that Blessington focuses in on the narrator’s hands at the end of the tale,
highlighting the idea that the invocation of hands/touch can create tan-
gible connections across media.
104 L. ENGEL
References
American Traveller [pseud.]. 1849. Gore House. Littell’s Living Age 271 (28
July): 145–154.
Bernstein, Robin. 2011. Racial innocence: Performing American childhood from
slavery to civil rights. New York: New York University Press.
Blessington, Countess [Marguerite Gardiner]. 1822. The magic lantern; or,
sketches of scenes in the metropolis. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and
Brown.
Castle, Terry. 1988. Phantasmagoria: Spectral technology and the metaphorics of
modern reverie. Critical Inquiry 15 (1) (Autumn): 26–61.
———. 1995. The female thermometer: Eighteenth-century culture and the inven-
tion of the uncanny. New York: Oxford University Press.
Catalogue of the costly and elegant effects … the property of the Rt. Honble.
The Countess of Blessington. 1849. 7–26 May. London: Mr. Phillips.
Chard, Chloe. 1996. Introduction. In Transports: Travel, pleasure, and imagina-
tive geography, 1600–1830, ed. Chloe Chard and Helen Langdon, 1–30. New
Engel, Laura. 2015. Austen, actresses, and accessories: Much ado about muffs.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Funnell, Peter. 2011. Court, academy and society: The 1820s. In Thomas
Lawrence: Regency power & brilliance, ed. Cassandra Albinson, Peter Funnell,
and Lucy Peltz, 259–301. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art.
Hawkins, Ann R. 2012. The portrait, the beauty, and the book: Celebrity and
the Countess of Blessington. In Nineteenth-century women writers and arti-
facts of celebrity in the long nineteenth century, ed. Ann R. Hawkins and Maura
Ives, 49–78. Farnham: Ashgate.
Love, Heather. 2009. Feeling backward: Loss and the politics of queer history.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Matoff, Susan. 2016. Marguerite, Countess of Blessington: The turbulent life of a
salonnière and author. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press.
Palmer, Sally B. 2006. Projecting the gaze: The magic lantern, cultural discipline,
and Villette. Victorian Review 32 (1): 18–40.
Perry, Gill, and Joseph Roach (eds.). 2011. The first actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah
Siddons. London: National Portrait Gallery.
Schmid, Susanne. 2013. British literary salons of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Press.
———. 2012. Spectral readings. Theatre Journal 64 (3) (October): 323–336.

van Hensbergen, Claudine. 2018. Anne Oldfield’s domestic interiors: Auctions,
material culture, and celebrity. In Intimacy and celebrity in eighteenth-
century literary culture: Public interiors, ed. Vicki Joule and Emrys Jones.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
CHAPTER 5
Women Artists, Silhouettes,

and Waxworks
Materia in Latin denotes the stuff out of which things are made, not only
the timber for houses and ships but whatever serves as nourishment for
infants: nutrients that act as extensions of the mother’s body…. To speak
within these classical contexts of bodies that matter is not an idle pun, for to
be material means to materialize, where the principle of that materialization
is precisely what “matters” about that body…. (Butler 1993, 32)
This chapter examines silhouettes and waxworks by late eighteenth- and

nineteenth-century women artists in order to consider the ways in which
these mysterious artifacts represent traces of the embodied presence of
specific individuals. Miniature shadow profiles, typically made from
cutting paper or painting on glass, capture an individual’s likeness in a
matter of minutes.1 Viewing a silhouette, then, connects the observer
directly to the moment of the object’s creation—staging a kind of reen-
actment scenario across time. The extraordinary skill and technique of
silhouette artists such as Isabella Beetham (1750–1825) and her daugh-
ter Jane Read (c. 1773–1800) provide insight into modes of late eight-
eenth-century style, gesture, and expression. As keepsakes, accessories,
and souvenirs, silhouettes were connected to desire, memory, and the
politics of exchange in some of the same ways as portrait miniatures.
Yet, because these images depict the subject’s shadow, the portrait is
by its nature ghostly and incomplete, while at the same time evoking a
material sense of the sitter’s presence and embodied reality. In the sec-
ond part of the chapter, I turn to waxworks, specifically to Madame

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3_5
108 L. ENGEL
Tussaud’s self-portraits, to explore the ways in which these meticulously

crafted three-dimensional figures echo the immediacy of the silhouette
while creating the uncanny experience of capturing something embod-
ied for the viewer (Kornmeier 2008, 68).2 Looking closely at silhou-
ettes and waxworks reveals a network of mostly unknown women artists
and subjects. Like Inchbald’s pocket diaries, which contain what Allan
Sekula has famously termed “a shadow archive” documenting the lives
of unknown late eighteenth-century actresses, looking at silhouettes and
waxworks by women artists charts a history of forgotten individuals and
artifacts.
Silhouettes and waxworks are both quintessential tourist objects
because they are things that are specifically connected to technologies
of presence. The silhouette is a popular souvenir, and wax museums are
central tourist destinations; both forms are connected to celebrity culture
and to capturing the likenesses of famous people. Silhouettes and wax-
works are historically associated with craft, reliquary, rituals, and, in con-
temporary life, kitsch art or collectible/mass-produced souvenirs (Pollen
2013, 5). Ironically, however, looking closely at examples of both media
reveals the extensive technique and labor involved in each form. In the
case of waxworks, these techniques have become even more technolog-
ically sophisticated. Figures take months to complete and the process is
based on hundreds of measurements often calculated from photographs
(Bradley 2014; Verrill 2016). Interestingly, the more lifelike and embod-
ied the representation, the less connected the object is to the materiality
of its production or to the artists who constructed it. This invisibility of
labor is related to ideas about theater and theatricality in the late eight-
eenth century, when both the silhouette and the wax figure emerged as
very successful commodities—often made by women. Just as the most
acclaimed actresses were celebrated for their mastery of “authenticity”
in performance—by appearing seamlessly to be the characters offstage
that they portrayed onstage (Engel 2011, 5; Nussbaum 2010, 152)—
silhouettes and wax figures offer a similar kind of frisson of the embodied
real, masking the skill involved in producing the work itself. The history
of silhouettes and waxworks is also a history of tourism, capitalism, and
the difference between mass-marketed commodities and individual art-
works.3 The specificity of the silhouettes and waxworks I examine repre-
sent distinct mediations on the possibility of transmitting an experience
of embodied presence—an experience of tactility and tangibility that
existed before photography.
5 WOMEN ARTISTS, SILHOUETTES, AND WAXWORKS 109
Silhouettes, Wax, and Archives

Although the origins of the silhouette date back to Paleolithic times
and to ancient Greece, they became popular in the eighteenth century
as personal souvenirs, collector’s items, domestic crafts, commemora-
tive objects, and works of art (Pollen 2013, 4–5; Rutherford 2009, 7).
According to Emma Rutherford, “Silhouettes were originally referred
to as ‘shades’ or ‘profile miniatures.’ Lesser-known terms included ‘min-
iature cuttings,’ ‘black profiles,’ ‘scissor types,’ ‘shadowgraphs,’ ‘skia-
grams,’ ‘shadow portraits,’ or ‘shadow pictures’” (Rutherford 2009, 21).
The term “silhouette” comes from the name of Étienne de Silhouette,
the French minister of finance under Louis XV (Rutherford 2009, 21).
The immense popularity of silhouettes in the late eighteenth century also
coincided with the origins of the science of physiognomy and the publica-
tion of John Caspar Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy, which was illustrated
with silhouettes or “black profiles” and translated into English in 1789 by
Thomas Holcroft (Rutherford 2009, 36). Physiognomy, or “the idea that
the study and judgment of a person’s outer appearance, particularly the
face, would give insight into a person’s character” (Rutherford 2009, 36),
would develop into the more sinister pseudoscience of phrenology.4 As
objects, silhouettes could be transferrable like portrait miniatures—worn,
traded, stored, displayed, or hidden. Works made from wax could also be
small, decorative, displayed, transferred, or worn, but could in addition
be life-sized and displayed as a theatrical piece—like a very large prop or
manikin. The theatricality of wax figures and the lure of wax museums are
connected to touristic desire, and to the ethical dimensions of looking,
owning, invading, surveying, interpreting, and interacting with bodies on
display (Kornmeier 2008, 67). Wax, in particular, mimics the reality of a
live body, because wax resembles skin (Panzanelli 2008, 2). Historically,
wax sculptures have been made using an imprint of a live subject. Just as
silhouettes capture the profile of a specific person in a particular moment,
wax molds and death masks preserve the embodied presence of the living
(Kornmeier 2008, 72). Silhouettes and wax figures thus foreground how
the archive is a body or is already embodied.
The history of silhouettes represents the archive as a series of shadows
while simultaneously highlighting the presence of shadows embedded
in the archive. To borrow a phrase from Judith Butler, the intangibility
of shadows points us to questions about the visibility of bodies and the
politics of archiving “bodies that matter” (Butler 1993, 27). Silhouettes
110 L. ENGEL
remind us that pieces of an archive can tell or stage a story through both
present and missing remains. By contrast, waxworks have historically
highlighted the visibility of particular figures. As three-dimensional life-
like sculptures, they are an archive of the history of celebrity. The tan-
gibility of waxworks reminds the spectator of the uncanny relationship
between the living and the dead. Interacting with waxworks creates
or stages a moment of authentic affective proximity that is an illusion
(Wallace 2013, 293).5 Both art forms are inextricably connected to tour-
ism and touristic performances because of the objects’ relationships to
place. In this way, silhouettes and waxworks are related to the theatrical
and theoretical properties of photography, which stages reality through
mimicking the real.6 Encountering waxworks involves a sense of touch
and presence that enacts the relationships I have been outlining between
spectators and objects—these figures appear to be living and provide an
uncanny sense of connection between irreconcilable states of being live
or dead, real or fake, an original or a replica.
It seems particularly significant that the most famous wax-maker was
a single working mother who lived at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Madame Tussaud began her career as a teenage apprentice to Philippe
Curtius who taught her how to model wax portraits. She worked with
Curtius throughout the tumultuous period of the revolution, and is per-
haps best known for making death masks of the decapitated royal family
moments after their untimely demise (Pilbeam 2003, 8). After Curtius’s
death in 1794, Marie Tussaud traveled with suitcases of wax figures to
London where she established a traveling waxworks show that became
enormously popular and still survives today as a leading tourist attrac-
tion and multimillion-dollar enterprise (Berridge 2006, 1). Wax museums
exist at the intersection of many competing discourses. Unlike traditional
museums that prevent spectators from touching the objects, which are
often protected by ropes or glass cases, the wax museum environment
is completely interactive. Spectators can walk amongst the figures and
touch them, pose for pictures with them, and experience immersive the-
atrical environments designed to create an emotional response from view-
ers. From the outset, the concept of the wax museum worked as a place
where people could interact with “living portraits”; Madame Tussaud
dressed her figures in real clothes and hunted down historically accurate
props to evoke the idea of authenticity (Kornmeier 2008, 74). Like an
embodied magic-lantern show, waxworks offered audiences a chance to
witness ghosts. Oddly, despite tremendous advances in contemporary
image-making technology, spectators’ reactions to wax museums have not

changed.7 The virtual age cannot account for the desire to touch and be
in the presence of famous people, particularly current celebrities.8
Yet, while the artists in museums are still privileged as specific authors
and creators, in modern wax museums teams of experts assemble wax
figures using both updated digital image technology and older methods
of portrait painting, where the subject comes and “sits” for his or her
portrait. Celebrities are apparently not “paid” to do sittings for the wax
museum, but do so willingly because they see it as a certain marker of
their status as a celebrity icon, a testament to the longevity of their after-
math (Heller 2001). In the wax-sculpting process, the artist’s role as an
individual creator thus disappears and is overshadowed by the celebrity
figure that seems to emerge from the ether as an almost living being.
The specific properties of silhouettes and waxworks as media are anal-
ogous to how women have appeared and disappeared in the archives, as
well as the ways in which women’s embodied experiences are mediated
through material representations that both preserve and obscure their
presence. Roberta Panzanelli explains, “The history of wax is a history of
disappearance—transformed, softened, liquefied, and sometimes lost for-
ever. The vast majority of wax objects have disappeared from view, either
because they have perished or fallen out of fashion, or because they have
undergone semiotic changes that make them no longer meaningful.
Wax in scholarship too, is a story of disappearance. After its mention by
Giorgio Vasari, it is not until the turn of the twentieth century that wax
becomes an object of real scholarly interest, and then only briefly, soon
to disappear again” (Panzanelli 2008, 1).
Waxwork has long been associated with female artists and artisans. As
Marjan Sterckx reminds us, “Women’s close association with modelling,
especially wax modelling, dates back at least to the Middle Ages, when
nuns made candles, wax flowers and small statues of saints and the Virgin
Mary for convents and private chapels. This tradition continued through
the seventeenth century” (Sterckx 2007, 93). Wax lends itself to theo-
retical inquiries about the nature of embodiment, desire, and longevity.
Spectators are immediately drawn to wax figures in particular, because the
medium’s “ambiguities create a sense of instability as viewers try to rec-
oncile its many binary oppositions: warm and cold, supple and solid, life
and death, ephemeral and permanent, amorphous and polymorphous”
(Panzanelli 2008, 1). Wax looks just like skin, so it is an ideal mate-
rial for representations of human faces and bodies. Panzanelli explains,
112 L. ENGEL
“The ability of wax to imitate human tissue has been employed for artis-
tic, religious and scientific purposes: wax welcomes refined modeling
techniques, meticulous sculpting, and naturalistic coloring in the service
of potent visual illusionism…. Wax is indeed the ultimate simulacrum of
flesh, indexical to skin, negative of its negative…. Twice removed from
the template and yet still conceptually linked to the surface of the skin,
wax effigies blur the boundaries between interior and exterior, between
human being and inanimate form” (Panzanelli 2008, 1–2).
The mythos of wax, then, is that it operates as a kind of silhouette
of skin, as a negative imprint of real flesh. While some wax models are
made from life, others are sculpted from molds, and all are carefully
enhanced and manipulated after the initial impression into something
that resembles a realistic image (Panzanelli 2008, 2). This artistic process
is largely undocumented in favor of the idea that wax figures are authen-
tic copies of original beings. In this way, “Wax retains ‘the memory’ of
the impressed form time and again” (Panzanelli 2008, 3). The idea of
wax remembering—of material literally holding onto traces of embod-
iment (also applicable to silhouettes, pictures that supposedly capture
the exact shadow or likeness of the subject in moments)—responds to
Rebecca Schneider’s important question: “How can we account not only
for the way differing media cite and incite each other but for the ways
that the meaning of one form takes place in the response of another?”
(Schneider 2011, 168). Both silhouettes and waxworks seem to enact
what Schneider describes as “temporal inter-(in)animation by which
times touch, conversations take place inter-temporally, and the live lags
or drags or stills” (Schneider 2011, 168). Waxworks and silhouettes
disturb distinctions between “live arts and still arts” that rely on what
Schneider sees as “an (historically faulty) absolutist distinction between
performance and remains” (Schneider 2011, 168). What is crucial to this
equation, though, is the position of the spectator, indeed of the archival
tourist in creating a link between the present moment and the evocation
of past presence embedded in the object. The enduring fascination with
wax figures suggests our everyday relationship with inhabiting the role
of a tourist—that is, our practice of searching for moments of affective
presence and for appropriating the memories of others. Looking at sil-
houettes and waxworks is once again about experiencing the dynamics of
“reappearance” through material objects. But, as I have also been sug-
gesting throughout these chapters, our notion of presence and the idea
of what seems real may have also been operating with the same kinds of
effects in earlier technologies of image-making to a degree that we have
not fully accounted for. If two-dimensional portraits seemed to be alive,
and then lived on for many people, we can only imagine the impression a
3-D representation of a figure might have created.
Shadow Portraits
I became fascinated with silhouettes while visiting the Victoria and
Albert Museum as a tourist in London. In the dimly lit miniatures
room, a female figure in profile wearing an elaborately decorated hat
and dress appeared to jump out of its oval frame. The artist, Isabella
Beetham, was a successful silhouette maker, and the mother of six chil-
dren. Her husband was an actor who was also known for inventing the
first washing machine (McKechnie 2014a). Her exquisite technique of
painting on glass allowed her to represent minute details of fashion, the
layering of fabrics, muslins, silks, ruffles, bows, pearls, and feathers, cre-
ating a distinct presence for her subjects through the illusion of cloth-
ing. Emma Rutherford explains, “Painting a silhouette on glass is a
very difficult technique, as an artist must work ‘blind’; unless a mirror
is used, the silhouettist cannot see what is taking shape, and it takes a
particular skill to work in such a way” (Rutherford 2009, 70). Art and
dress historian Annebella Pollen emphasizes the connection between sil-
houettes, artistry, and fashion history: “Silhouettes may have aimed for
accuracy or ‘truth’ as a direct and immediate trace of a person’s shadow,
yet they also aimed at expressiveness, with images featuring stylish
embellishment and outright exaggeration, displaying the stylistic signa-
ture of the maker and his or her technical accomplishment as much as
they endeavored to capture of the sitter’s ‘essence’” (Pollen 2013, 5).
Isabella Beetham’s silhouettes are masterpieces of sartorial detail, offer-
ing viewers an almost tactile experience. In Fig. 5.1, the sitter’s hair is
fashionably curled with stray ringlets framing her head; she wears a styl-
ish headband lined with pearls (Fig. 5.1). Like a skilled portrait-painter,
Beetham has managed to distinguish between the flat surface of the
band and the fluffy organic feel of actual hair.9 The subject’s costume is
equally elaborate and layered. A lighter hue around the woman’s neck
creates a fichu that contrasts with the slightly darker collar and dress.
The look is designed to mimic the gauzy folds of muslin. The dress is
114 L. ENGEL
Fig. 5.1 Silhouette of a lady, painted on convex glass, by Mrs. Isabella

Beetham, English School (18th century), Private Collection/Bridgeman Images
also adorned with ribbons at the bust line, perhaps indicating the neo-
classically inspired dishabille fashions of the time period. The effect of
the sitter’s dark face, visible only in outlined profile, is also striking.
There is a very discernable nose, chin, and mouth that seem specific to
a particular person. The absence of eyes, however, redirects the viewer’s

attention to the sitter’s costume—the reverse effect of a painted portrait
or miniature. Beetham’s minute attention to the subject’s costume can
be read as a declaration of her individual and unique artistry. This is not
just a silhouette as outline; it is a document of presence (both of the
sitter and the artist) as well as a compelling artifact of fashion history.10
Isabella Beetham’s daughter Jane Beetham Read was also an
extremely talented artist. She studied painting with the well-known
painter John Opie, and she may have been his lover at one point.
After Opie’s wife ran off with someone else, he proposed to Jane but
she rejected him and married Mr. Read, a lawyer. Read’s portraits were
exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1794 to 1797. She painted sil-
houettes on glass for her mother, and then went on to develop her own
business with her own trade label. After the death of her husband, she
lived with her daughter Cordelia in a house in that was rumored to be
haunted. They were referred to as “the old sisters” (McKechnie 2014b).
Read’s skill as a miniaturist and silhouette artist is astounding.
According to the silhouette historian Sue McKechnie,
she adapted the miniaturist’s technique of moulding features to her pro-

files on glass. She now placed her sitters against landscape backgrounds…
showing the outlines of her subject’s face by setting it against a dark patch
of foliage…. the artist used two sizes of brush and also a needle (again,
in two sizes) for highlighting. Hair is painted in thick, dark strokes over
smaller, thinner strokes. Sitters’ faces are painted on a fingerprinted base,
but, in order to show bone structure, the artist has wiped out the finger-
printing in places. The features are finely moulded by hatching and added
stippling. Clothing, on these later profiles, is shown by hatching over a fin-
gerprinted base. To indicate the light colour of frill on a shirt-frill, the art-
ist would wipe away this fingerprinting. (McKechnie 2014b)
Read’s later silhouette miniatures contained wax in the background

materials with “papier mâché frames, with ovals of elaborately engraved
ormolu or (more rarely) plain brass. One illustrated example is set in a
locket” (McKechnie 2014b). Like the eye miniatures discussed in chap-
ter two, these more elaborate silhouettes were probably commissioned as
gifts and special mementos. The intended viewer for the portrait would
likely be a family member or loved one. A portrait of “Miss Dixon”
(1815) portrays a young girl in profile dressed in a lovely gown posed
in front of foliage and a vase of roses. She stares calmly into the distance,
116 L. ENGEL
a hint of a smile on her face. The composition is very staged and still,
except for Miss Dixon’s arm, which reaches out to touch a rose. The
light and shadow create almost a halo of light on Miss Dixon’s face and
upper body. Read’s picture of Sir David Wilkie (c. 1812), painted on
glass and contained in a locket (measuring 3 ¼ × 2 ¾ inches), is equally
ornate. Sir Wilkie appears in profile, stylishly dressed against a roman-
tic landscape of trees and turbulent sky. While Miss Dixon is depicted
in action, holding onto a flower, Sir Wilkie’s profile is immovable and
permanent, like a statue against the apparent movement of the wind and
trees pictured behind him. The light and shadow in this image suggest
the potential turbulence of Sir Wilkie’s handsome presence—as if he
were a Byronic hero in miniature.
The verisimilitude of Read’s work resembles early photography, cre-
ating a haunting and memorable effect. Several of her miniatures look
like staged portraits, with sitters placed in profile against imagined nat-
ural landscapes. Images of Read’s silhouettes are easily accessible online,
but because they are not owned by many museums or library collec-
tions they are difficult to reproduce in print. What is so compelling
about Read’s work is the combination of her technical skill—the specific
embodied practice of making her work (a point I will return to again in
my discussion of Madame Tussaud)—as well as the ways in which her
work anticipates and prefigures the iconography of early photographs.
Annebella Pollen reminds us that silhouettes and photographs are sim-
ilarly shaped by “social and cultural requirements” (Pollen 2013, 7).
While basic silhouettes are often thought of as realistic snapshots, more
elaborate and technically advanced silhouettes can be seen as deliber-
ately constructed compositions with idealized, romanticized sitters.
Pollen explains, “Studio photographs, for all of their beguiling real-
ism, were constructed as silhouettes. Sitters dressed for the photogra-
pher, avoided certain fabrics and colours, borrowed clothes and adopted
recommended attitudes. Both formats therefore reveal performances
of the self for posterity, rather than providing simple windows into the
past” (Pollen 2013, 7). Read’s silhouettes fall someplace in between the
immediacy of a traditional silhouette and the evocative theatricality of
a constructed portrait. It seems important to note that in painting her
figures on glass with minute brushes and needles, Read also used vari-
ous strategies to refine the specifics of her contours, creating a nuanced
effect of light and shadow, manipulating patterns with her fingers and
fingertips. Unlike a photograph, the labor involved in producing the

details of Read’s silhouettes remain tangibly within the work itself; its
very materials are evidence of the embodied labor and past performances
of the individual artist.
Read and Beetham, like Sarah and Sally Siddons, represent a pow-
erful example of the artistry and distinct creative presence of mothers
and their daughters. While there is a large archive of materials associ-
ated with Sarah Siddons, Sally, as we have seen, only appears tangen-
tially and mostly in relation to her mother. Isabella Beetham’s images
are far more accessible than her daughter’s, which is surprising, since
McKechnie notes that Read lists more works sent to the Royal Academy
“than any other artist recorded in this book” (McKechnie 2014b).
Read’s silhouettes anticipate the enormously popular nineteenth-cen-
tury carte de visite, a mass-marketed photographed postcard that
Rachel Teukolsky suggests “offered a unique experience of tactility and
proximity, an immediacy whose tantalizing combination of presence
and absence has become a familiar component of modern celebrity”
(Teukolsky 2015, 473). As we will see in the next section, photographs
of Madame Tussaud’s wax self-portraits offer an uncanny look back at
the desire to capture the immediacy of the human body for posterity.
Body Double(s): Portraits of Madame Tussaud

The relationship of Madame Tussauds to the archive is particularly
vexed. Curiously, the Madame Tussauds warehouse is off-limits to the
media. There is almost no public information about how wax figures are
stored or catalogued. Thanks to digital access to photobank archives,
however, we are all just a Google-search away from eerie images that
document the remains of wax sculptures from the past now long gone.
These pictures represent many archival histories simultaneously—the
legacy of wax sculptures, the history of photography, the history of the
practice of museum display, and in the case of Madame Tussaud herself, a
record of her own artistic creations.
In this section, I use archival photographs to examine varied rep-
resentations of Madame Tussaud from her own self-portraits to render-
ings of her in the chamber of horrors to archival photographs of her figure
in Tussauds museums. I am interested in how multiple versions of her
body produce ideas about women as creators, curators, and commodities.
118 L. ENGEL
Wax representations of Madame Tussaud herself appear in different forms

throughout the museums, suggesting a complex connection between
Tussaud as an artist/genius in her own right and Tussaud as a brand
or little-old-lady historical relic. The juxtaposition between Tussaud’s
embodied legacy, her extensive shadow archive, and the idealized narra-
tives of her life and career are connected to several larger questions about
artistic female performances and the presence of women artists in the
archives.11
While much of the allure of wax figures centers on their status as sin-
gular or unique representations of an actual person, a few figures are dis-
played more than once in different poses throughout different Madame
Tussauds museums. There are several versions of Madame Tussaud
herself, and in some instances she appears more than once in the same
location. Marie Antoinette is another figure that also appears more than
once—sometimes as a “live” sculpture placed a family setting, and also
as a decapitated head in the chamber of horrors. I want to propose some
connections between the doubling of these figures. Marie Antoinette
was, in many ways, Madame Tussaud’s greatest creation. Whether or not
Tussaud actually made the Queen’s death mask from her actual decap-
itated head, the legend surrounding her work in the aftermath of the
guillotine is an important part of her artistic legacy and the creation of
her celebrity.12
Figure 5.2 is an archival photograph (perhaps once a souvenir postcard)
of a youthful representation of Madame Tussaud (no longer on display)
that resembles wax portrayals of Marie Antoinette (Fig. 5.2). Part of this
may have to do with the similarities between dress, hairstyle, and expres-
sion of both figures as representations of fashionable late eighteenth-cen-
tury French women. However, strange echoes between the faces of
Tussaud and Marie Antoinette, along with the repetition of their presence
in the museum space, suggests some eerie connections between afterlives
of the creator and the created and the blurred boundaries between these
two subject positions. The image of a wax figure of a young Madame
Tussaud is phenomenally spooky, both because it takes a second to realize
that the figure is made of wax (something that happens with all photo-
graphs of wax figures) and also because it represents several impossibili-
ties at once—photography did not exist as a medium in 1784, Madame
Tussaud could not have been photographed in her youth, and the image
could not have been produced when the figure was originally made. The
photograph was taken later on (late nineteenth century or early twentieth
Fig. 5.2 Marie Tussaud, French artist and Wax Sculptor, English Photographer
(20th century), Private Collection © Look and Learn/Elgar Collection/Bridgeman
Images
120 L. ENGEL
century), possibly when the figure was on display. It appears to be seated

on a velvet chair, placed against a wall of rich brocaded fabric. The ico-
nography of the image resembles formal aristocratic portraits as well as
the compositions of early photographs and carte de visite postcards.13 The
portrait contains a clash of modalities (it is a photograph which captures
a present real moment) of something not real, made from wax, but looks
real because of the medium of photography. The image is an archive of
an archive—the figure itself is an archival object that may no longer exist
but appears again and again in the digital realm since it is a stock photo
of Marie Tussaud owned by large commercial image banks.14 The portrait
may also be a glimpse at an earlier display space and exhibition practices—
it is difficult to tell if she is standing or sitting, but she seems posed as if
she had just emerged from a painting. Like Isabella Beetham’s carefully
rendered silhouette figure, we have wonderful specific sartorial details—
her dress of multilayered fabrics with a variety of textures (lace, muslin,
quilting), along with her choker necklace, matching bracelet, and fash-
ionable hair with hanging ringlets embody a specific moment in time. She
also wears a flower in the center of her bosom, a symbol of fertility and
sexuality, and a contrast of the live with the dead. Although her figure
appears lifelike, Madame Tussaud’s expression is vacant and empty. She
stares directly at the viewer without any particular emotion, almost as if
she were caught in a specific moment unaware that someone was creating
her image. She appears to be holding a tool for sculpting in her hand—the
only clue in the portrait that this is an image of the artist herself.
Images of Tussaud’s “live” Marie Antoinette wax figure are simi-
larly devoid of nuanced expression. She stares out at the viewer placidly,
a very small hint of a smile across her lips. Figures of Marie Antoinette
share Madame Tussaud’s oval face and elongated nose. An archival image
of Marie Antoinette’s decapitated head also looks very much like the
youthful wax figure of Marie Tussaud herself. Marie Antoinette’s head
was sculpted by Tussaud, supposedly from a mask taken from her actual
body. Did Madame Tussaud create a self-portrait that mirrors her rep-
resentation of Marie Antoinette? Or, could the photograph of a young
Marie Tussaud figure have been mislabeled? Was it, in fact, a representa-
tion of Marie Antoinette?15 The best evidence we have of the existence
of Tussaud’s early self-portrait is a description from her exhibition cata-
logue from 1823. Item number 51 is listed as “The Artist: Taken by her-
self” (Biographical and descriptive 1823, 31). If Tussaud modeled herself
in some ways after the doomed Queen, perhaps she wished to imagine
her own image in terms of Mary Antoinette’s rank, beauty, and fame? We
may never know the answer to these questions. However, what makes
the elision or erasure of this information about authorship and identifi-
cation so significant is how it charts the disappearance of female agency
and artistry from the archive. Looking at both figures suggests alternate
ways of thinking about presence in the archives—by considering the
objects themselves as containing traces of past performances, we become
more attuned to who and what is looking back at us.
Tussaud sculpted an image of herself shortly before her death in 1850
that appears in several Madame Tussaud museums. Figure 5.3 evokes
an ordinary Victorian grandmother—a kind old lady with small round
glasses, a dark unadorned dress, and a white cap (Fig. 5.3). Very much
in keeping with the domesticated moral view of women and profes-
sional artistry at the time, Tussaud’s self-portrait is designed to empha-
size her presence as a non-threatening older woman. Nothing about the
figure suggests that Tussaud is an artist or that she established her own
empire. A strange archival photograph depicts Madame Tussaud’s wax
older self-portrait figure surrounded by women working at the museum
gift shop in London in 1968. The photograph plays on the dynamics
of black and white, presence and absence. To the contemporary viewer,
the “real” women in the photo appear dated in their vintage 1960s
shop uniform—a short black sleeveless button-up jumper over a floral-
patterned shirt. It takes a moment to realize that the women in the
photo are wearing the same outfit, although they all have very different
faces. Two of the women are young and very pretty. The other two are
decades older—versions of what the youthful women might look like
in 30 years. The wax figure of Madame Tussaud stands centerstage sur-
rounded by the employees, but because she is dressed in black, her fig-
ure recedes into the background, and it takes a moment to realize that
the figure is fake and that she is out of place and time with the other
women in the photograph. Her elderly wax face in front of a mid-
dle-aged woman and next to a younger woman creates a strange trian-
gular visual narrative of aging. The image thus comically and ironically
juxtaposes the historical with the commercial, age/youth, black/white,
foreground/background, and real/fake. Taking the art into the gift shop
suggests the idea of marketing and commodification. Hanging above
Madame Tussaud’s head are dangling soccer balls, contemporary echoes
of the heads in her chamber of horrors as modern sports equipment, and
a reminder that the sculptures are just material after all.
122 L. ENGEL
Fig. 5.3 Waxwork of Madame Tussaud at the Age of 90, 1850. English
Photographer (20th century), Private Collection © Look and Learn/Elgar
Collection/Bridgeman Images
Newer figures of Madame Tussaud in her wax museum depict

Tussaud in the act of sculpting or admiring her creations. In one image,
she appears as an older woman (but still anachronistically dressed in the
1795-inspired costume resembling her younger image and the figure of
Marie Antoinette) holding the unfinished male head of one of her figures.
She beams at this head maternally. In another image she is portrayed in
the graveyard right after the beheading of the French monarchs, appar-
ently poised to take her wax death masks. In yet another, she is sculpting
Marie Antoinette’s head. These figures all depict Tussaud’s face in a simi-
lar way (that differs importantly from Tussaud’s representation[s] of her-
self). In these sculptures, Tussaud’s face is narrow and angular. Her nose
is particularly distinct. When her expression transforms from benevolent
joyful creator to semi-demonic participant in a crime scene, the nose
resembles archetypal faces of witches and bad stepmothers from Disney
movies.16 Depicting Madame Tussaud as a motherly creator and at the
same time as an active participant in a macabre scene may seem at odds
in the same exhibition space. Yet these versions of Madame Tussaud seem
to enact and solidify important opposing cultural myths operating around
the legend of Tussaud and of women artists in general—that creation is
non-threatening and authentic (as in birthing a child) or that for women
the process of creation is transgressive, monstrous, and therefore witch-
like or supernatural.
In her wonderful book Monstrous Imagination, Marie-Hélène Huet
explains, “The wax figure is also perceived as monstrous because of its
literal translation of nature’s inner monstrosity, its way of seeming to
reveal nature’s hidden designs” (Huet 1993, 188). In many ways, the
process of engendering a wax figure echoes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
(1818), where a live being is created by stitching together body parts
from the dead. Perhaps conjuring Mary Shelley, Huet narrates an
imagined scene of Tussaud’s artistic education: “She was absorbed and
happy as she learned how to oil a sitter’s face and flatten any facial hair
with pomade, before a mask of fine plaster of Paris was applied. The sit-
ter breathed through quills or straws inserted in the nostrils” (192). Wax
modeling is an extreme and embodied form of artistic creativity—the
sitter is actively involved in the “molding” of his or her form, covered
in the materials, potentially unable to breathe without help from out-
side implements. He or she must trust the wax sculptor as they extract
an imprint from a live form and then translate it into a static medium.
The difference between the wax figure and the live person is move-
ment, and breathing in particular. Ironically, the oldest surviving wax
124 L. ENGEL
figure “sleeping beauty,” apparently modeled after Madame du Barry,

has a breathing mechanism attached to her sculpture, which gives the
appearance of her chest rising and falling. For Huet, “The Wax Museum
provides a concrete illustration of the very workings of imagination”
(199), which for women artists is cast as simultaneously generative and
transgressive.
Tussaud’s recent biographer Kate Berridge suggests that her complex
history as a single working woman who capitalized on the market for
images of famous people also charts a developing narrative of celebrity cul-
ture: “As a prism through which to see the present afresh, the story of
Madame Tussaud provides an unparalleled perspective on the emergence
of the cult of celebrity…. The waxworks were and are a brutal index of our
voyeuristic fascination with the fall as well as the rise of celebrities, and of
the waning of our loyalties that make us fickle fans” (Berridge 2006, 4–5).
It is perhaps this focus on Tussaud’s relationship to the history of celebrity
that has partially obscured what we may have left of an important creative
legacy and the refracted embodied history of Madame Tussaud herself—a
legacy that echoes that of other notable women artists and the record of
their intangible presence and enduring imagination. Tussaud’s interlock-
ing roles of curator, creator, and commodity remain central to the success
of her enterprise, but at the same time perpetuate the masking of her indi-
vidual contributions and technical skills. Considering her presence in wax
puts Madame Tussaud’s body back in the picture.
The Afterlife of Silhouettes

The contemporary artist Kara Walker has transformed the medium of
the silhouette into a theater of shadows, reconfigured to confront the
cruelties of the past. Walker uses large silhouette figures staged in var-
ious scenes that invoke the obscenities and horrors of the treatment of
enslaved individuals. These figures are nearly life-size, creating an unset-
tling and provocative effect for spectators who are immediately impli-
cated in the scene. A description of her work from her retrospective show
at the Whitney (2007–2008) highlights Walker’s use of the silhouette
form to complicate entrenched historical narratives: “Drawing her inspi-
ration from sources as varied as the antebellum South, testimonial slave
narratives, historical novels, and minstrel shows, Walker has invented a
repertoire of powerful narratives in which she conflates fact and fiction to
uncover the living roots of racial and gender bias” (Kara Walker 2007).
In a recent interview, Walker was asked how she became interested in

silhouettes. She explains, “I had a catharsis looking at early American vari-
eties of silhouette cuttings…. What I recognized, besides narrative and
historicity and racism, was this very physical displacement: the paradox of
removing a form from a blank surface that in turn creates a black hole.
I was struck by the irony of so many of my concerns being addressed:
blank/black, hole/whole, shadow/substance, etc.” (quoted in Als 2007).
Walker’s list of paradoxes—blank/black, hole/whole, shadow/sub-
stance—also relates to our investigations of eighteenth-century archival
objects, material culture, and the reconstruction of histories. Silhouettes
and waxworks in particular conjure a performative sense of embodiment
that disrupts the binary distinctions between tangible/intangible, real/
imagined, and authentic/constructed. These objects present a set of
surfaces that connect viewers to questions of production, artistry, and
illusion. For archival tourists in the present, Walker’s work invites us to
consider the resonance of past technologies and the ethical and political
implications of doing so. The blank/blackness, hole/whole of the silhou-
ette form contrasts with the heightened whiteness of waxworks, highlight-
ing the ways in which technologies of presence are connected to “bodies
that matter”—ones that we can see and those that remain in the shadows.
Notes
1. For background on the history and artistic practice of silhouettes, see
Emma Rutherford, Silhouette: The Art of the Shadow (2009). Additionally,
Profiles of the Past: 250 Years of British Portrait Silhouette History (http://
profilesofthepast.org.uk) is an excellent website with great information
about silhouette artists, techniques, images, and current research. The
artist biographies on the site are copied from Sue McKechnie’s Silhouette
Artists and Their Work: 1750–1860 (1978), which is the most compre-
hensive catalogue of British silhouette portraits available. For theory on
silhouettes, see Roberta Panzanelli, ed., Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture
and the Human Figure (2008). I quote from Panzanelli’s introduc-
tion “The Body in Wax, the Body of Wax” and Uta Kornmeier’s chap-
ter “Almost Alive: The Spectacle of Verisimilitude in Madame Tussaud’s
Waxworks” in the latter volume.
2. Kornmeier connects Tussaud’s waxworks to Freud’s definition of the
uncanny as an example of the feeling one gets when confronting some-
thing that may or may not be alive. Kornmeier suggest that spectators at
Tussauds “would consider it a pleasure and a successful entertainment to
be challenged by their perceptions…” (68).
126 L. ENGEL
3. For more on invisibility of labor, tourism, and capitalism, see Dean

MacCannell’s The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1999,
17–34). MacCannell writes, “The value of such things as programs, trips,
courses, reports, articles, shows, conferences, parades, opinions, events,
sights, spectacles, scenes and situations of modernity is not determined by
the amount of labor required for their production. Their value is a func-
tion of the quality and quantity of experience they promise” (MacCannell
1999, 23).
4. For more on the relationship between phrenology, silhouettes, and con-
temporary silhouette artist Kara Walker, see Glenda Carpio, Laughing Fit
to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery (2008).
5. Uta Kornmeier describes this process as a “‘waxworks moment’—
the battle between curiosity and embarrassment—[which] is, and has
always been, the attraction of Madame Tussaud’s waxwork exhibition”
(Kornmeier 2008, 68).
6. For more on the relationship between tourism and photography, see
Carol Crawshaw and John Urry’s “Tourism and the Photographic Eye”
in Chris Rojek and John Urry, ed., Touring Cultures: Transformations of
Travel and Theory (1997).
7. A recent TripAdvisor reviewer of Madame Tussauds in London writes,
“Omg I just loved it. Heard so much about it. Finally went there. It is
so close to being real. U get confused if it’s real or not. Will defi recom-
mend everyone. Plz go it’s wow” (joestokes69, 14 August 2017, com-
ment on TripAdvisor 2017).
8. In fact, traditional museums are now looking for ways to tap into the
wax-museum tourist population to boost revenues by updating their
exhibitions to reflect current topics that stress the spectators’ connection
to embodiment through highlighting fashion and media. The extremely
popular exhibit Undressed: A History of Fashion in Underwear, for exam-
ple, which began at the Victoria and Albert Museum and is now traveling
internationally, focuses on underwear throughout the ages, with a par-
ticular focus on how mostly “invisible” garments have shaped ideologies
of female embodiment.
9. See Bridget Millmore’s discussion of fashionable hairstyles in late eight-
eenth-century silhouettes in her “‘To Turn Sideways’: An Examination
of the Depiction of Hair and Head Dresses in Late Eighteenth Century
Women’s Silhouettes” (2013). Also see Margaret K. Powell and Joseph
Roach’s “Big Hair” in Eighteenth-Century Studies (2004).
10. Pollen also suggests that silhouettes “provided a means to perform cultur-
ally appropriate expectations of composure, deportment and dress, and as
such, provide a valuable means for investigating the history of fashion and
appearance” (Pollen 2013, 5).
11. The most current biographies of Tussaud are Kate Berridge, Madame

Tussaud: A Life in Wax (2006) and Pamela M. Pilbeam’s Madame
Tussaud and the History of Waxworks (2003). Although both authors
make a point of discussing Tussaud’s artistic talent, neither mentions
Tussaud’s early self-portraits.
12. Berridge and Pilbeam seem to disagree about this in a recent BBC doc-
umentary, Marie Tussaud: A Legend in Wax, which aired on Thursday,
23 February 2017. According to a transcript of the film on the blog
Rodama, Pilbeam argues for the veracity of the story, adding that “some-
body had to make them. And who was going to make them if Marie
didn’t?” while Berridge quips, “This was all part of a very elaborate
self-propaganda of suffering and hardship” (Madame Tussaud 2017).
13. I am not sure if these photographs were intended to be souvenirs of the
exhibition and/or if they circulated in the same way as cartes de visite. If
they did, the images of Madame Tussaud replicas provide a compelling
contrast to the allure of popular cartes de visite of live actresses, female
aristocrats, and courtesans.
14. Getty, Corbis, and Bridgeman all own this image.
15. If the Tussaud figure was indeed made in 1784, as the postcard label sug-
gests (this may also be an error), then Marie Antoinette was still very
much alive.
16. For more on exaggerated noses as representations of foreign otherness
in caricatures of nineteenth-century actresses, see Jonathan M. Hess’s
Deborah and Her Sisters: How One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a
Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage (2017, 100).
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Morrow.
Biographical and descriptive sketches of the whole length composition fig-
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Tussaud. 1823. Bristol: J. Bennett.
Bradley, Georgie. 2014. How do I become… a wax sculptor? The Guardian,
January 21.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex”. New
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Carpio, Glenda. 2008. Laughing fit to kill: Black humor in the fictions of slavery.
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Kara Walker: My complement, my enemy, my oppressor, my love. 2007. Whitney
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———. 2014b. Read, Jane (McKechnie Section 6). Profiles of the Past. http://
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Millmore, Bridget. 2013. “To turn sideways”: An examination of the depiction
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of_the_Past_SFI_1760-1960_lo_res.pdf. Accessed 2 June 2018.
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of_the_Past_SFI_1760-1960_lo_res.pdf. Accessed 1 June 2018.
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283–309. Surrey: Ashgate.
CHAPTER 6
Amelia M. Watson’s Photographs
A Wish
Let me not die forever when I’m laid
In the cold earth! But let my memory
Live still among ye, like the evening shade
That o’er the sinking day steals placidly
Let me not be forgotten! Though the knell
Has tolled for me its solemn lullaby;
Let me not be forgotten! Though I dwell
Forever now in death’s obscurity.
Yet oh! Upon the emblazoned leaf of fame
Trace not the record, not a line from me,
But let the lips I loved oft breathe my name,
And in your hearts enshrine my memory.
Frances Anne Kemble (1883, 17)
Memories of Fanny Kemble

Gathered by
Amelia M. Watson
“Let your hearts enshrine my memory” F. A. K.
These memories have been enshrined for many long years in the hearts of
the humble colored folk of St. Simon’s Island and Darien Georgia. Where
in 1838 Fanny Kemble wrote her ‘Journal of a Residence on a Georgian
Plantation,’ and they supplement well the incidents and facts recorded
there. (Extract from Amelia Watson’s Journal, Lenox Library Archive)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3_6
132 L. ENGEL
In 1915, the illustrator, photographer, and painter Amelia M. Watson,

inspired by her fascination with the transatlantic actress, writer, and social
historian Fanny Kemble’s memoir Journal of a Residence on a Georgian
Plantation (1864), traveled with two female companions to the remains
of Kemble’s plantation located on St. Simons Island off the coast of
Georgia. Once there she took a stunning series of photographs of the
plantation house, the surrounding landscape, and the descendants of the
original enslaved people who lived there. Watson used these images to
illustrate an edition of Kemble’s Journal of a Residence on a Georgian
Plantation (her photographs are bound into an edition of the book),
and she made her own photo albums with them, detailing her experi-
ence as a tourist, voyeur, and documentarian in captions that accom-
pany the images. According to notes copied from her journal, Watson
also planned to create another text with a “frontispiece” that featured
the inscription above followed by an image of Fanny Kemble by Thomas
Lawrence. Facing Lawrence’s famous portrait, Watson imagined “my
photo opposite this – on beach” (Fig. 6.1); a scribbled note on the
side of the page reads, “68 pages outside of flyleaves” (Watson 1916).
This 68-page book is missing from the archives. Perhaps it was never
Fig. 6.1 “The Shores at Hampton Point,” Amelia M. Watson, Courtesy of The
Lenox Library Association
6 AMELIA M. WATSON’S PHOTOGRAPHS 133
completed, or it exists someplace in a private collection. Other notes

from Watson’s journal contain excerpts of interviews and correspondence
with individuals who remembered Fanny Kemble, along with notes for
the layout of the book itself, including Watson’s ideas for the placement
of images alongside pieces of text.
Kemble’s journal illustrated with Watson’s photographs, the albums
that document Watson’s travel to the plantation, and the notes for
Watson’s missing volume had been in boxes on the shelves of the
Lenox Library Archive for many years until I stumbled across them
several years ago. In addition to Watson’s photo albums of her visit to
the Butler plantation, the Lenox Library also has an album of Watson’s
photographs of the Chicora Wood plantation in South Carolina com-
pleted a year after her journey to St. Simons Island. These photographs
were done to accompany an edition of the autobiographical narrative A
Woman Rice Planter, by Elizabeth Allston Pringle with illustrations by
Alice Hunger Smith (c. 1913–1914). While I am mostly going to focus
on Watson and Kemble, I will end the chapter with some thoughts about
the images from the Chicora Wood album in order to expand on what I
am calling Amelia Watson’s “plantation tourism.”
In other words, I am interested in investigating the overlapping and
contradictory narratives of sympathy, voyeurism, and aesthetic practice
present in the interplay between Watson’s images, the text that accompa-
nies her photographs, and the original narratives the images were meant to
illustrate. Using tourism theory, specifically Perry L. Carter, David Butler,
and Owen Dwyer’s study of plantation tourist sites as “fetish commod-
ities,” as well as Tim Edensor’s work on the connections between tour-
ism and performance, I want to look at the ways in which the plantations
form a kind of theatrical set or backdrop for Watson and her companions
to observe and interact with the “actors/performers”—i.e., the African
American subjects who live and work there—but also to imagine and rein-
vent their own subject positions as unmarried women artists traveling and
documenting their personal and professional experiences. Clearly, con-
sidering a plantation as a performance space divests the structure and its
surrounding landscape from the devastating legacy of slavery.1 Watson’s
projects participate in facilitating this erasure by consciously and uncon-
sciously reinforcing the ideology of white supremacy, while at the same
time specific photographs, particularly of female subjects, recreate and
reimagine the haunting realities of the past, potentially providing a more
progressive narrative of survival and renewal through their presence.
134 L. ENGEL
Yet, as Jasmine Nichole Cobb reminds us, the presence of black

women in early photographs is always mediated by the relationship
between “visuality and domestic belonging near the end of the transat-
lantic slave trade” (Cobb 2015, 6). Cobb explains, “Black women were
essential to the maintenance of slave societies in Atlantic world because
they replenished a stolen labor force through giving birth. Laws about
the matrilineal nature of slavery determined the slave status of children
based on the status of their mothers” (Cobb 2015, 6).2 Given the impor-
tance of black women as crucial figures in the perpetuation and mainte-
nance of enslaved labor, as well as the primary victims of ocular cruelty
and oppression, what do Watson’s depictions of black women as “free”
domestic servants and field workers suggest about their lives several dec-
ades after emancipation? Do these subjects exert their own agency despite
the framework that Watson imagines for them? As an archival tourist,
Watson set out to translate Fanny Kemble’s vexed experiences as the
uncomfortable mistress of her husband’s plantation in new ways using
new media for new audiences.3 She wished to “curate” her own images
and text in order to bring Kemble’s experience closer to readers, and she
was ahead of her time in her decision to track down and obtain firsthand
interviews with former slaves and their families.4 Throughout her work,
however, Watson’s assumptions about “humble colored folk” frame her
visual record, providing insight into complex and oppressive systems of
discrimination and erasure operating in plain sight.
Amelia M. Watson and Her World

Amelia M. Watson (1856–1934) was an accomplished artist and educa-
tor. She was born in East Windsor Hill, Connecticut, and spent most of
her life there. Her most known work is an illustrated edition of Henry
David Thoreau’s Cape Cod, which was published by Houghton Mifflin
in 1896.5 Watson also taught painting and drawing at the Martha’s
Vineyard Summer Institute from 1878 to 1902 and served as the head
of their art department.6 She was part of an extraordinary group of turn-
of-the-century professional female illustrators, painters, photographers,
and travel writers who managed various media and techniques in their
work in order to document and reimagine subjects from various cul-
tures.7 Edith Watson, Amelia’s sister, traveled to Canada where she pho-
tographed people working in domestic spaces and against the dramatic
landscape of Newfoundland.8 Martha Morley, one of Watson’s closest
friends and traveling companions, is best known for her travel writ-
ing and documentary photographs of the rural countryside and inhab-
itants of North Carolina.9 Finally, Watson’s dear friend and traveling
companion at Chicora Wood, Helen Hyde, was an accomplished etcher
who spent many years living in Japan, where she learned the technique
of Japanese woodcutting. She was known particularly for her images of
women and children drawn from her travels in Mexico, Japan, and the
Carolinas.10
Watson’s photographs were taken in the midst of an emerging field
of early photography that included Jacob Riis and Frances Benjamin
Johnston. In their collection Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and
the Making of African American Identity (2012), Maurice O. Wallace
and Shawn Michelle Smith explain the profound connections between
the invention of the photograph and the aftermath of the Civil War:
“Evolving contemporaneously with this near-seismic shift in the demog-
raphy and meaning of free persons, photography helped to adjudicate
the meaning of freedom, picturing its African American subjects from the
day of the daguerreotype to that of the silver print” (Wallace and Smith
2012, 2–3).11 In the same collection, Ray Sapirstein proposes that “If
Reconstruction brought African Americans out of slavery into civiliza-
tion and citizenship in the public sphere, the post-Reconstruction years
relegated them to liminal status, neither slaves nor citizens” (Sapirstein
2012, 186). Given these underlying contexts, how did Amelia Watson’s
depictions of African American subjects highlight the possibilities of new
identities, freedoms, and subject positions and/or reinforce traditional
images of subservient workers, and anonymous voiceless subjects?
Unlike Frances Benjamin Johnston, whose images of African
American students, according to Sapirstein, “depicted individuals as
representatives of the student body and their race as a whole, specify-
ing little individuality, personality, or self-determination whatsoever”
(Sapirstein 2012, 170), Watson’s images are portraits of specific indi-
viduals, a few of whom she interviewed, possibly for the purpose of
creating another album or book with narratives “in their own words”
printed alongside their own images. While Johnston remained outside
the frame of her photographs, Watson herself appears in images through-
out her documentary albums in portraits possibly taken by one of her
traveling companions. Images of her companions also appear alongside
images of her subjects. In this way, Watson’s albums suggest the possi-
bilities photography provided for potentially imagining new kinds of
136 L. ENGEL
self-representations. However, seen through the paradigm of plantation

tourism, these representations invite questions about what readers and
audiences might have wanted to see or understand about the past. How
does Watson participate in what Carter, Butler, and Dwyer see as the
“symbolic annihilation” (Carter et al. 2011, 130) of the existence of slav-
ery in plantation tours in her albums and proposed book? How much
are her subjects performing as actors and tourist attractions rather than
as particular individuals? How do Watson’s images stage the frontstage/
backstage realms of tourism? Does it matter that Watson and her com-
panions were engaged in making art themselves? What kind of echoes of
presence are created by translating images of embodied presence across
media? How do these rare images look back at us?
Tim Edensor characterizes “the ambivalent nature of tourism” as
a clash between “the desire to escape and the pleasures of conformity”
(Edensor 2001, 78). He emphasizes the idea that tourists are themselves
performers who carry their existing habits, behaviors, and rituals with
them wherever they go (Edensor 2001, 60). Tourists’ reactions to par-
ticular landscapes, sites, and people are thus informed by their embodied
experience with the world and the context in which they live themselves.
Connecting tourism with performance, however, does not have to situate
performance as “reinforcing cultural givens” or as “potentially subversive”
(Edensor 2001, 78). Rather, Edensor suggests, “Performance can be con-
ceived in more ambivalent and contradictory terms, can be understood as
intentional and unintentional, concerned with both being and becoming,
strategically and unreflexively embodied. … Thus, tourism as performance
can both renew existing conventions and provide opportunities to change
them” (Edensor 2001, 78). Considering Watson’s plantation tourism
through the lens of performance allows for a dynamic ambivalence that
echoes in many ways the position that Fanny Kemble inhabited when she
arrived in Georgia in 1838 and later transcribed/remembered in her nar-
rative about her experiences published in 1863.
Fanny Kemble
Fanny Kemble (1809–1893), actress, author, and social historian, lived
a varied and complex life that spanned almost the entire nineteenth cen-
tury.12 Kemble was born into a family of actors (she was the grandniece
of Sarah Siddons, who was the most successful actress of the eighteenth
century and one of the first modern celebrities). She was well educated
and spent her early years dreaming of becoming a writer. She had
already drafted an historical novel and two plays when she made her first
entrance on the stage. After her triumph as Juliet, her theatrical career
became essential to supporting her family. Writing, however, remained in
many ways her first love. Over the course of her long life she published
six memoirs (totaling eleven volumes).
Three pictures of Kemble provide glimpses of her at very different
points of her life—one is a painting by the American artist Thomas Sully
of Kemble at the height of her early career, a glamorous image used as
a model for a portrait of the young Queen Victoria. The second is a
photograph of a middle-aged Kemble poised to begin one of her famous
readings of Shakespeare. The third is an anonymous photograph of her
taken near the end of her life, where she appears as a fragile old woman.
What is remarkable about these images is not only the story they tell
about Kemble’s life and career, but also about the history of what I have
called fashioning celebrity—or, put in another way, strategies for creat-
ing, framing, and marketing one’s public image.13 After her early success
as an actress in London, Kemble traveled to America where she mar-
ried Pierce Butler, whom she later divorced. She lived with Butler for a
short while on his plantation located on St. Simons Island off the coast
of Georgia and wrote a narrative about her experiences there, which
was subsequently published as Journal of a Residence on a Georgian
Plantation (1864). The text became a celebrated abolitionist vehicle
and one of the most detailed accounts of slave life (particularly of the
experiences of enslaved women) that we have from the mid-nineteenth
century.14
It is not surprising that Watson would have been struck by the
detailed descriptions and passionate observations that Kemble made in
her Georgia journal about the daily lives of the slaves that she found
herself the uncomfortable mistress of. Kemble writes, “I do wonder, as
I walk among them, well fed, well clothed, young, strong, idle, doing
nothing but ride and drive about all day, a woman, a creature like them-
selves, who have borne children too, what sort of feeling they have
toward me. I wonder it is not one of murderous hatred – that they
should lie here almost dying with unrepaid labor for me” (Kemble 1864,
233). Much of Kemble’s journal focuses on her efforts to improve the
conditions for pregnant slaves and their children.15 In a passage from the
journal, Kemble describes the deplorable conditions of the slaves’ infir-
mary, which was also the maternity ward:
138 L. ENGEL
The Infirmary is a large two-story building, terminating the broad orange-

planted space between the two rows of houses which form the first set-
tlement; it is built of whitewashed wood, and contains four large-sized
rooms. But how shall I describe to you the spectacle which was presented
to me on entering the first of these? But half the casements, of which there
were six, were glazed, and these were obscured with dirt, almost as much
as the other windowless ones were darkened by the dingy shutters, which
the shivering inmates had fastened to in order to protect themselves from
the cold. In the enormous chimney glimmered the powerless embers of a
few sticks of wood, round which, however, as many of the sick women as
could approach were cowering … most of them on the ground, excluding
those who were too ill to rise; and these last poor wretches lay prostrate
on the floor, without bed, mattress, or pillow, buried in tattered and filthy
blankets. … Here lay women expecting every hour the terror and agonies
of childbirth, others who had just brought their doomed offspring into the
world, others who were groaning over the anguish and bitter disappoint-
ment of miscarriages – here lay some burning with fever, others chilled
with cold. … (Kemble 1864, 32–33)
Viewed alongside Kemble’s devastating text, Watson’s attention to

the female descendants of the plantation seems significant and deliberate.
Watson’s portraits of female subjects as well as the structures that defined
the community of St. Simons Island in the post-Reconstruction era (the
school house, the church, and additional surviving houses), when paired
with Kemble’s narrative, have the effect of partially revising a painful his-
tory of enslavement and cruelty into something potentially more positive
and hopeful. Yet, just as Kemble’s own position as the white plantation
mistress, reformer, and theatrical heroine was vexed and multifaceted (as
scholars such as Alison Booth, Mollie Barnes, and Deirdre David have
shown), Watson’s various roles as a white female observer, documentarian,
artist, and tourist present another complex web of relationships that have
to be unpacked. Kemble and Watson were both embedded and implicated
in their own eras and contexts; yet, both attempted to translate and medi-
ate other women’s stories using different technologies of representation.16
Watson’s photographs can be seen as a type of visual intervention. Despite
the often oppressive and unreflexive ideological framework of Watson’s
gaze, the presence of black women as central subjects in her albums estab-
lishes an alternative thread of echoes, reproduction, and existence that
potentially subverts narratives of erasure and disappearance associated with
the lives and experiences of enslaved individuals.
Celia Davis: A Voice from the Past

I am particularly interested in the ways in which Kemble’s detailed
descriptions of the lives and hardship of female slaves, particularly moth-
ers, are partially recovered and revised by Amelia Watson’s photographic
portraits of women (specifically her image of a woman named Celia
Davis who lived on Kemble’s plantation as a child and remembered in
an interview with Watson). There are three images of Celia Davis—one
is titled “A Voice from the Past,” in which she is sitting on the ground
next to a basin; the other two are portraits of her carrying a basket in
one and flowers in the other. Watson’s title for the first image, “A Voice
from the Past,” is telling—Celia Davis functions in this image almost as
a relic (Fig. 6.2). The portrait represents the impossibility of her age and
of her survival.17 She makes direct eye contact with the viewer, indicating
that she had some kind of relationship with the photographer. Watson’s
use of the word “voice” here is significant as well. Although Davis could
be seen as a part of the plantation set/scenery, she also has a voice within
that play, a story to tell.
Watson’s narrative of meeting Celia Davis and her transcription
of Davis’s memories are framed as a touristic encounter, a moment of
Fig. 6.2 “Celia Davis: A Voice from the Past,” Amelia M. Watson, Courtesy of
The Lenox Library Association
140 L. ENGEL
discovery that provides Watson, the traveler, with valuable information

about the past. I quote the passage at length:
Driving up with Isaac Strong from the river, after my day at Butler’s
Island, I saw an old colored woman … and Isaac said she was Celia Davis,
a Butler Is. Negro. I called her to my carriage and questioned her a little
and to my astonishment she began talking about Fanny Kemble herself,
and of her coming to the island, and of the children, little “Miss Sarah”
and “Miss Fanny.” Afterward I went to see her at her cabin in Darien.
Celia was born on St. Simon’s Island, and it was there, as a child, that
she saw Fanny Kemble.
She said, “The Chillins rode in a red Jersey carriage. White lady nurse
the baby, while lady just like you, and a white man pushed the carriage for
she. Baby carriage so rich. We glad to see the babies! Clo’es so white, all
kind of fine work on ’em, and edgin.
(we) Shake massa, the jacket, we kiss de chillin, Miss Sarah and Miss
Fanny.
Old folk don’t want me to play wid ’em and kiss ’em, but Massa Pierce
say ’must leave the little [N-word] ’lone, for we lub him, and he lub we
too.” (Extract from Amelia Watson’s Journal, May 1916, Lenox Library
Archive)18
Watson leads us to Celia Davis as a visual icon of an original landscape.

From the outset, it is Watson who is the seer (the holder of the gaze)
and Davis who is the object to be looked at and questioned. Watson calls
Davis over to her carriage, establishing a further separation and hierarchy
between the two subjects. Watson is literally above Davis in her vehicle,
while Davis is summoned to her side. Davis’s first memory is of Kemble’s
husband and daughters traveling in an entourage with their servants. She
describes the babies being pushed in a “red Jersey carriage” by a white
man and nursed by “a white lady just like you.” She recalls how glad
she was to see the babies and the delicacy of their clothing (“clo’es so
white, all kind of fine work on ’em, and edgin”). She remembers kiss-
ing the children (Kemble’s daughters Sarah and Fanny, who would later
inherit the plantation) and being scolded by “old folk.” Master Pierce
then intervenes to say, “leave the little leave the little [N-word] ’lone, for
we lub him, and he lub we too.”
There are many remarkable things about this transcribed testimony,
which, as an oral history twice removed, may or may not be accurate. Carter,
Butler, and Dwyer emphasize the uniqueness of oral history as a genre:
Oral histories are the reminiscences of individuals who have a firsthand

knowledge of a time period, an event, or a place. They are similar to writ-
ten autobiographic materials in that they tend to be personal in nature;
however, they differ from written recollections in that they are usually
recorded at some distance in time from what is being recalled. The fact
that they are spoken rather than written recollections is significant in two
ways. First, a writer’s immediate audience is the writer. Oral histories begin
as interviews between an interviewer and a narrator. Having an audience
can affect what is said, how it is said, and what is not said. Second, writing
is a skill of the privileged. It requires not only literacy but also time, space,
and writing materials. Because of these necessities, oral histories tend to be
the stories of non-elites and the marginalized in society. This is particularly
true with slave narratives. (Carter et al. 2011, 132)
Watson’s role as a privileged white interviewer/tourist who is using

Davis’s testimony to echo and support her project is crucial to thinking
about how Davis’s story is conveyed. Carter, Butler, and Dwyer sug-
gest that there are several “master narratives” that are emphasized in
tours of plantation museums that participate in “symbolic annihilation”
or “the rhetorical and visual act of eliding slavery” (Carter et al. 2011,
130). These “regimes of representation” include emphasizing the wealth
of the “planter families” and not mentioning slavery at all, reinforcing
the idea that enslaved individuals “were not slaves, they were members
of the family,” and segregating tours to highlight the “big house tour”
with a choice to go on the “slave quarters tour” (Carter et al. 2011,
130–131). Carter, Butler and Dwyer propose that these different tour
options reinforce the illusion of a “separate but equal” balance between
the two places as well as the mistaken idea that slaves always lived in a
separate space from their masters.19 Although their essay is from 2011,
there are strong connections between the ways in which contemporary
tourists encounter plantation museums and Watson’s view of Kemble’s
plantation in 1915.
Watson’s translation of Davis’s testimony seems to reinforce compo-
nents of the master narratives that Carter, Butler, and Dwyer articulate.
She appears to be nostalgic and warm in her memories of the Kemble
children and remembers in minute detail what they were wearing—the
delicate “white” baby clothes that signified their status and power. She
also notices the work on their clothing, an acknowledgement of the
invisible labor that went into their garments performed by an anony-
mous woman. She compares the “nurse” to Watson—“a white lady like
142 L. ENGEL
you”—linking the servant’s whiteness to Watson’s whiteness. Did it seem

strange to Davis as a child to encounter white servants? Is this Watson
attempting to link herself to Davis’s memories and become part of the
inside of the narrative? The final section of the first part of Davis’s rec-
ollections reinforces the idealized palliative narrative that enslaved indi-
viduals were “not slaves” but were “members of the family.” Davis
apparently remembers Master Pierce’s words, his use of a racial slur, and
his command to leave her alone. His use of mistaken gender pronouns
in the last sentence (“for we lub him and he lub we too”) to express
mutual affection seems very odd. Perhaps Davis was performing a role
for Watson, providing her with a character from the past with a mono-
logue that she might want to hear. Watson does not question the veracity
of Davis’s testimony. Interestingly, Davis only describes Fanny Kemble
specifically once. She recalls, “Miss Fanny Kemblin, nice white lady, very
rosy, clo’es always got on so rich” (Watson 1916).
Watson notes on the bottom of this page of her journal that the image
of Davis with the caption “A Voice from the Past” should go on the fol-
lowing page. Davis’s recollections about Fanny Kemble’s “rich” clothes
would then be juxtaposed with Watson’s portrait of her sitting on the
ground dressed in a pale skirt and black cloak. Davis is seated in front
of a pile of wood planks with a basin and drying rack in front of her.
She is framed as if she had come directly from the earth itself. There is
no dwelling behind her, no signification of a domestic space, other than
the objects in front of her, which represent perhaps the work she was
engaged in when the photographer took her picture. This is an exam-
ple of backstage tourism; Watson provides audiences with the chance to
see Davis in her “natural” surroundings. The caption “A Voice from the
Past” is less about Davis’s voice than about capturing a misplaced nostal-
gia for an imagined history.
Watson’s portrait of Davis functions as a “souvenir”—both in terms of
the photograph itself as a reproduction of a specific moment in time and
in terms of the body of Davis herself, who is pictured as a kind of exotic
elderly specimen. Susan Stewart proposes, “The nostalgia of the souvenir
plays in the distance between the present and the imagined, prelapsar-
ian experience, experience as it might be ‘directly lived.’ The location of
authenticity becomes whatever is distant to the present time and space;
hence we can see the souvenir as attached to the antique and the exotic”
(Stewart 1993, 139–140). Watson’s encounter with Davis creates a con-
nection between them that echoes the tourist’s quest for obtaining and
appropriating foreign goods and information. As Stewart explains, “The

exotic object represents distance appropriated; it is symptomatic of the
more general imperialism that is tourism’s stock in trade. To have a sou-
venir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen and a trophy; on the one
hand, the object must be marked as exterior and foreign, on the other
it must be marked as arising directly out of an immediate experience of
its possessor” (Stewart 1993, 147). Watson’s caption “A Voice from the
Past” marks Davis as a foreign other, at the same time that the act of
taking the photograph and writing its label comes out of her direct expe-
rience with Davis.
The image of Davis as souvenir is thus both exotic and familiar; it
exists as an artifact of a performance, as “performing remains,” now
displayed in Watson’s artist book. Her plan to pair Davis’s interview
with her portrait never materialized. What remains instead are the pho-
tographs of Davis in Amelia Watson’s artist book, which also doubles
as a tourist scrapbook. Part personal, part documentary, part aesthetic,
Watson’s book performs multiple roles as an archival artifact. Without
Davis’s testimony, however, the “voice from the past” remains detached
from the image, contained in sheets of paper on the bottom of a stor-
age box.
Chicora Wood: A Model Baby

In the Chicora Wood album completed the year after the Kemble album
in 1916, Watson plays several distinct parts. She is the photographer
again of the plantation scene and actors, she is the artist at work, and
she is the traveler on vacation with her companions. This album con-
tains a striking image of an African American woman with her baby titled
“A Model Baby” (Fig. 6.3). On the following page is a photograph of
Watson’s traveling companion, the artist Helen Hyde, holding the baby
from the previous portrait. This picture is titled “Helen Hyde’s Model”
(Fig. 6.4). There are several interesting threads here—in the first image
the African American mother and her baby play the role of the descend-
ants of the original inhabitants of Chicora Wood; the image suggests both
the cruel knowledge of the past and the potential hope for new gener-
ations of African American children in the future. In the second image,
the “model baby” functions like a prop, transferred into the hand of the
actress/artist/travel companion Helen Hyde, whose best-known subject
matter was the depictions of mothers and babies.20 The African American
144 L. ENGEL
Fig. 6.3 “A Model Baby,” Amelia M. Watson, Courtesy of The Lenox Library
Association
baby in the hands of the “white mother” is simultaneously a disturbing

and potentially provocative image. In performing as the child’s mother/
guardian, Helen Hyde suggests that maternity can be acted rather than
naturally or essentially generated, that maternal fondness, guidance,
and privilege can be invested in the baby who is a worthy subject. On
the other hand, the baby’s position as a “model” reinforces its status as
a prop or plaything, divested of its authentic heritage, individuality, and
Fig. 6.4 “Helen Hyde’s Model,” Amelia M. Watson, Courtesy of The Lenox
Library Association
real mother. Given the history and significance of black mothers in chart-
ing the legacy of slavery, this substitution is layered with meaning. The
depiction of the black mother with her baby posed outside of the big
plantation house creates a nostalgic fantasy about an uncomplicated past.
The woman in the photograph is still working for the family. As Carter,
Butler, and Dwyer explain, the “slaves are members of the family” narra-
tive is “bolstered” by the fact that many slaves did choose not to leave.
However, they continue: “While it is true that many slaves chose to stay
on the plantation, this is only a half-truth. … where would people lacking
146 L. ENGEL
education and skills other than what was learned on the plantation go –
to another plantation?” (Carter et al. 2011, 130).21
At its most literal, Watson’s caption “A Model Baby” suggests that
the baby acted as a model for Watson and for Hyde. Another photo-
graph entitled “No Account Sarah and Her Baby Julia” depicts Sarah
sitting on a chair with her baby in her lap posing for Hyde, who is
in front of an easel in the act of drawing or painting their picture
(Fig. 6.5). This image captures multiple gazes and performances all at
once: Hyde looks at Sarah and her baby in order to recreate their bodies
Fig. 6.5 “No Account Sarah and Her Baby Julia,” Amelia M. Watson,
Courtesy of The Lenox Library Association
on canvas, Sarah watches Hyde in the process of making her portrait,

Watson looks through the camera and photographs the scene, trans-
lating the image to our gaze over 100 years later. Framed against the
brightness of the sun through the trees, Sarah and her baby appear
almost as silhouettes. Hyde’s face is also shrouded by a large hat and
umbrella. In this particular image of artistic practice, where Sarah and
her baby are the central subjects, the ambivalent nature of touristic
desire and the fluidity of performance collide to create another para-
digm. Watson’s record of the presence of Sarah and her baby, as well as
Hyde’s translation of that presence into other media, presents another
form of archival history, one where aesthetic practice foregrounds possi-
bility rather than invisibility.
The last photograph in the Chicora Wood album, “Our Farewell
Dinner,” depicts Helen Hyde and another traveling companion at a
dining-room table; they smile at the camera while a grainy image of an
African American servant appears in the background corner, framed on
one side by the door and on the other by curtains that perhaps hide win-
dows (Fig. 6.6). The unacknowledged figure of the African American
servant represents what Allan Sekula has famously called the “shadow
archive,” a record of “invisible bodies” which include “those of the poor,
Fig. 6.6 “Our Farewell Dinner,” Amelia M. Watson, Courtesy of The Lenox
Library Association
148 L. ENGEL
the diseased, the insane, the criminal, the nonwhite, the female, and all
other embodiments of the unworthy” (Sekula 1986, 10). The servant’s
position in the liminal space of the corner bound by realms of entrance
and escape (windows and doors), which can also be read as thresholds
of belonging and exile, reflects the simultaneously deliberate and uncon-
scious hierarchies that pervade Watson’s images. The servant is only part
of the set in this portrait, an actor who facilitates the scene but has no
speaking part.
Fig. 6.7 “A Cold Morning by the Great Pee Dee,” Amelia M. Watson,
Courtesy of The Lenox Library Association
In her brilliant book American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in

Visual Culture (1999), Shawn Michelle Smith argues, “visual culture
is not a mere reflection of a national community but one of the sites
through which narratives of national belonging are imagined. In other
words, I suggest that photographic images not only represent but also
produce the nation” (Smith 1999, 158). What Watson’s images sug-
gest about the rebuilding of a nation after slavery and the production
of a new American national identity is ironically tied to her recovery and
reimagining of Kemble, a British woman’s experience in America, and of
Elizabeth Allston Pringle’s narrative of running her father’s plantation in
the years following the Civil War. In many ways, the images that emerge
from Watson’s “plantation tourism” are about imagining the future
while simultaneously carrying along the shadows and contexts of the past
(Fig. 6.7). Her photographs represent all at once the space of a lost pres-
ent, a record of the traces of history, and the liminality of subject posi-
tions bound by paradigms of race and gender in a contested and newly
created field of vision.
Notes
1. Apparently, plantations are still a popular wedding venue. See Koa Beck,
“Disturbing Wedding Trend: Getting Married at a Plantation” in Salon,
5 January 2014.
2. For more on archival absences and methodologies for recovering black
voices, particularly of enslaved women, see Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of
Subjection (1997), her memoir Lose Your Mother (2008a), and her article
“Venus in Two Acts,” in Small Axe (2008b), as well as Marisa J. Fuentes’s
Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (2016).
3. The section of Watson’s journal in the Lenox Library is a 28-page doc-
ument that contains a transcription of her interviews with Celia Davis,
as well as Mary Mann and Dora Jeanette Alexander, descendants of
Daphne and Aleck Mann who worked for Kemble. Dora founded the
Mann School with money she received from Fanny Kemble’s daughter,
Fanny Leigh. The notes also contain a short biography of Kemble written
by Daphne Alexander (Dora’s mother) for “A. M. W.,” as well as letters
from Daphne. Watson includes studio photographs of Daphne and Aleck
in her artist book.
4. Amelia Watson’s interviews occur several years before the oral histo-
ries archived on the Library of Congress website Born in Slavery: Slave
Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938. These interviews
150 L. ENGEL
were conducted as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works

Progress Administration (WPA) (Carter et al. 2011, 132).
5. There is no biography of Amelia M. Watson. Useful informa-
tion about her life and work can be found in Watson’s entry by
Michael J. McCue in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture,
Volume 21: Art and Architecture (2013, 461–463). A web article by
Nancy Finlay provides helpful information about Watson’s illustra-
tions (“An Artist and Her Books: Amelia M. Watson, 1856–1934,”
on the ConnecticutHistory.org site, https://connecticuthistory.org/
an-artist-and-her-books-amelia-watson-1856-1934/).
6. Linda M. Wilson provides a detailed breakdown of the holdings of the
Martha’s Vineyard Amelia Watson Collection, 1896–1987, in a PDF
available online at http://www.mvmuseum.org/collections/fa_pdfs/
RU%20314–Amelia%20Watson.pdf. Wilson’s summary of the collection
reads, “The Amelia Watson Collection is a compilation of correspond-
ence relating to Amelia and her sister Edith (1889–1942), newspaper
clippings arranged chronologically (1896–1986), publications from the
MVM (1968), loose leaves from Cape Cod illustrated with her water-
color paintings (1896), biographical notes including a copy of the bill
of sale for the Museum’s purchase of her watercolors (1942)” (Wilson,
n.d.). The collection also includes an unpublished short study of
Watson by Linda Smith Cohen, “Amelia M. Watson: Painter, Illustrator,
Teacher” (1987).
7. Watson’s entry in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture describes
her thusly: “Modest and pleasant, with a droll sense of humor, Watson
was adept at cultivating contacts and profitably marketing her art. She
exhibited widely in major cities. Broadway actor and playwright William
Gillette, her most enthusiastic patron, declared he would purchase any-
thing she would paint for him, at any price she asked” (McCue 2013,
462). Gillette invited her to spend the winter at his “rustic mountain-
top retreat in Tryon, which she accepted along with companion Margaret
Warner Morley, writer, illustrator, and photographer” (McCue 2013,
462). Tryon became a well-known art colony, and both Watson and
Morley had houses there.
8. For more on Edith Watson, including her photographs, see Frances
Rooney’s Working Light: The Wandering Life of Photographer Edith S.
Watson (1996).
9. According to The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Watson’s water-
colors for Martha Morley’s The Carolina Mountains (1913) are “her
most famous images” (McCue 2013, 463). Morley’s work is also a travel
narrative/tourist guide to the regional landscape and inhabitants of the
Carolina Mountains.
10. For more on Helen Hyde, see Joan M. Jensen, “Helen Hyde: American
Printmaker” (1998) at the Women Artists of the American West website
(https://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/Jensen/Hyde.html), and Tim
Mason and Lynn Mason’s American Printmakers Catalogue, Helen Hyde
(1991).
11. Important works on early photography, African American subjects, and
black photographers also include Jackie Napolean Wilson’s Hidden
Witness: African-American Images from the Dawn of Photography to
the Civil War (2000), Deborah Willis’s Reflections in Black: A History
of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present (2002), and Thomas Allen
Harris’s documentary film Through a Lens Darkly (2014).
12. Recent biographies of Kemble include Deirdre David’s Fanny Kemble: A
Performed Life (2007), Rebecca Jenkins’s Fanny Kemble: A Reluctant
Celebrity (2005), and Catherine Clinton’s Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars
(2001).
13. I originally went to the Lenox Library to follow up on research I had
done on Fanny Kemble’s theatrical career for the epilogue of my book
Fashioning Celebrity (2011). The discovery of the Amelia Watson archive
was a complete surprise.
14. For more on the significance of Kemble’s Journal, see Alison Booth,
“From Miranda to Prospero: The Works of Fanny Kemble” (1995) in
Victorian Studies; Deirdre David, Fanny Kemble: A Performed Life, 153–
171; Catherine Clinton, “Fanny Kemble’s Journal: A Woman Confronts
Slavery on a Georgia Plantation” (1987) in Frontiers: A Journal of
Women’s Studies; and an excellent recent piece by Mollie Barnes, “‘My
Mere Narration’: Fanny Kemble’s Intercessions in Journal of a Residence
on a Georgian Plantation” (2017) in Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies.
15. See Barnes’s discussion of Kemble’s encounters with Teresa and Psyche
and the different outcomes of her interventions. Barnes suggests
that Kemble’s main desire in her narrative is “abolitionism in the clas-
sic mid-nineteenth-century tradition: sympathy. She urges us to feel”
(Barnes 2017, paragraph 20).
16. Deirdre David sees Kemble’s journal as inherently theatrical, particularly
because the text is written in letters for a specific audience—Kemble’s
close friend Elizabeth Sedgwick, who lived in Lenox, Massachusetts,
where Kemble also spent a period of her later life. David writes, “In the
vivid description she fashioned for Elizabeth of the slave owner mistress
at her writing table, Kemble creates a tableau in which the placement of
the furniture, the lighting, and the movement of the actors are carefully
arranged” (David 2007, 158).
17. This photograph and two images of Celia Davis are reproduced in
Malcolm Bell Jr., Major Butler’s Legacy: Five Generations of a Slaveholding
152 L. ENGEL
Family (1987, 273, 453). Amelia M. Watson is credited with the pho-
tograph, but there is no discussion of her work or the holdings in the
Lenox Library Archives.
18. Watson’s translation of Davis’s dialect is problematic and further charac-
terizes her as a disenfranchised other. Carter, Butler, and Dwyer ques-
tion the ethics of “reproducing speech patterns when they diminish their
speakers” (133). I am choosing to include Watson’s version of Davis’s
testimony to provide more information about Watson’s ideological frame
of reference.
19. Watson mentions that she would later visit Davis at her cabin in Darien.
Two images of Davis appear to be in front of a cabin, a rustic dwelling
that contrasts with images of the surviving main house.
20. Examples of Hyde’s work can be found at the Metropolitan Museum, the
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and on Artnet.
21. See also Shawn Michelle Smith’s discussion of baby pictures, eugen-
ics, and the reproduction of whiteness in the family album in American
Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture (1999, 113–135).
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the dawn of photography to the civil war. New York: St. Martin’s.
Wilson, Linda M. n.d. Finding aid to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, record
unit 314, Amelia Watson Collection, 1896–1987. http://www.mvmuseum.
org/collections/fa_pdfs/RU%20314–Amelia%20Watson.pdf. Accessed 9 June
2018.
Epilogue: The Sisi Experience
There is a fragile and beautiful moment when you either hold on to an

image or you lose it. … All of us artists, from way back, perhaps from
when we put our first handprints on a cave wall, were trying to capture
this thing called the human spirit. … I am constantly trying to catch it,
using materials to do so, like an alchemist. (Bharti Kher, “The Sensuality
of Impermanence” 2018, 68–69)
I am always interested in copies, as they take on their own histories as they
proceed through time. They change. Many things that I produce seem histor-
ical but have in fact assumed other meanings as they move along throughout
history. I am not reproducing historical objects specific to what they were.
Rather, it’s about how they are seen in our time and all the meanings they
have accumulated along the way. (Fred Wilson, “Object Histories” 2018, 71)
Tourism stages the world as a museum of itself. (Barbara Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett 1998, xxv)
In February of 2017, Madame Tussauds, Vienna, premiered an inter-

active wax exhibit featuring “state of the art vision technology, actors
and sophisticated research” to dramatize the life and world of Empress
Elisabeth of Austria, known by her nickname Sisi (Madame Tussauds
2017). The Empress became a royal celebrity in the latter half of the
nineteenth century, famous for her dazzling beauty and extreme obses-
sion with exercise, along with the tragic death of her son and her own
untimely demise. The archive of images of Sisi is extensive. In addition to
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 155

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3
156 Epilogue: The Sisi Experience
the many photographs of her (now collected on Pinterest pages) and the
formal paintings of her by Franz Winterhalter, showcasing her elaborate
floor-length hair (which took a whole day to wash), three films about her
life (The Sissi [sic] Trilogy, made in the 1950s and starring the French
actress Romy Schneider) repackaged her legacy for a generation of fans.
While today only a handful of people might know of Sisi at Madame
Tussauds flagship sites in New York and London, in Vienna “Sisi” sites
are big business. Vienna tourist websites and vacation packages often
include visits to the Sisi Museum, housed in the Imperial Apartments at
the Hofburg Palace, which showcases more than 300 items from Sisi’s
archive, including a mourning dress similar to the one that she wore
when she was stabbed and killed in 1898 by an Italian anarchist.1 She
would have bled to death immediately if she had not been saved by the
structure and rigidity of her tiny corset.
Unlike the Sisi Museum, a more traditional venue with glass cases and
austere mannequins (some with very long fake hair), Madame Tussauds,
Vienna, is attached to an amusement park. For one price, you can ride
the rides and visit the wax museum. The British firm Theme 3 designed
the exhibit to create an experience where “smells, music, sounds, spo-
ken words, tastes and haptic impressions are put together” (Tom 2017;
translation from German). What is fascinating about the results are not
only the eerie wax recreations of Sisi, copied meticulously from her por-
traits, but also the dramatization of archival materials relating to Sisi and
her world that make up the various set pieces.
At the entrance to the exhibit, museum visitors are greeted by wax
figures of Sisi and her husband, the Emperor Franz Joseph, surrounded
by precarious chairs and cages coming out of the walls at odd angles.
The creative team designed this frame to echo the Empress’s feelings of
constraint, frustration and loneliness throughout her life.2 The spectator
then moves through several different highly curated “scenes” that high-
light the tension between Sisi’s onstage and offstage personas—from an
initial encounter with her stunning figure in an exact replica of the dress,
hair, and pose from the Winterhalter portrait, to a “backstage” view of
her wardrobe closet complete with dresses, undergarments, stockings,
and a mannequin with a corset (resembling a cage) made to mimic her
impossibly small waist. As an added thrill, a ghostly talking figure of Sisi
appears in the dressing-room mirror in the corner. Moving around the
bend, viewers find a large banquet room with a table decorated with
Viennese pies and pastries. On one side of the room, a wax figure of
Sisi’s husband, Franz Joseph, stands surrounded by replicas of Sisi mem-

orabilia—books, photographs, portraits, diaries, and manuscript pages.
In another space, a spooky older wax version of Sisi looks in a mirror,
framed on each side by a pair of silhouettes.
As in a fun house (there are 44 mirrors in the show [Tom 2017]),
the visitor is constantly confronted with multiple versions of herself in
relation to the simulacra of Sisi. Sounds, historic smells of Vienna, and an
“interactive pie station” also involve the viewer in a highly orchestrated
embodied journey specifically designed to leave a somatic impression.
Tourists thus become a part of a new version of an archive come to life,
an immersion that highlights the intangibility and ephemeral nature of
the actual archive, while also implicating the spectator as an integral part
of the show.3
A Snapshot of Sisi in the Archive

Much of the allure of the Sisi experience has to do with the wax figures
themselves, representing, as they always do, an uncanny conduit to the
three-dimensional presence of an individual person. Yet, despite the tech-
nological feats included in the exhibit there is still a sense that Sisi herself
is somehow lost in the theater of her replicas. A photograph of Sisi (that
I accessed from an archival photobank) depicts the Empress posed on a
settee, dressed in a dramatic black velvet gown. A silver belt defines her
miniscule waist, a white lace collar frames her face, and her skin glows
against the gray background of the photographer’s studio (Fig. E.1). A
majestic and docile hound lies sprawled at her feet, his head resting on
his paws. She holds his leash tentatively in her hands and looks directly
at the viewer. Her expression is ambiguous; she is attentive and aware,
but not smiling—somewhere in between bemused, impatient, and invit-
ing. The austere yet tactile gleam of the fabric of her dress renders her
simultaneously accessible and impenetrable. The presence of the dog,
however, a “live” animal, locates the image even more precisely in a spe-
cific moment in time. The effect is similar to what happens when there
is an animal onstage in a play—the viewer is reminded that the actors
are enacting an illusion, yet the animal, who is not “performing,” breaks
through the fourth wall and remains in the realm of the real.4 This image
of Sisi remains, but somehow the viewer knows that the dog, like the
actuality of Sisi’s embodied flesh, is gone. I refer to this photograph not
to set up a stark juxtaposition between the simulated archive of the wax
Fig. E.1 Princess Sisi with a Dog. Mondadori Portfolio/Bridgeman Images
exhibit against the “authentic” presence of Sisi in the picture of her with
her dog, but rather to emphasize the various ways in which the archive
appears, vanishes, reappears, and is recreated in the public realm. The
archival tourist is confronted with a wide range of materials, manipulated
in diverse media, which signal the presence of embodiment felt and lost.
Like Life and Black Out

Two major exhibits currently on view at the writing of this epilogue,
Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (curated by Luke Syson, Sheena
Wagner, Emerson Bowyer, and Brinda Kumar) at the Metropolitan
Museum in New York City, and Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now
(curated by Asma Naeem) atthe National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Institute, in Washington D.C., concern the idea of translating presence
across time and space through specific objects. Both exhibits concentrate
on the ideological resonances of color; Like Life interrogates the pre-
dominance of whiteness in analyzing sculpture (much of which was orig-
inally painted in color), and Black Out emphasizes how the form of the
silhouette is inextricably connected to depictions of black identities and

legacies of racism in America. The exhibits also feature a wide variety of
pieces from different time periods; these installations put work by con-
temporary artists in conversation with older works and challenge critical
divides between forms of “high” and “low” art. In doing so, the curators
of both shows emphasize how the material in each exhibition connects
contemporary spectators to the past and the many ways in which history
lives in the present.
In her introduction to the spectacular catalogue that accompanies the
Like Life exhibit, Sheena Wagstaff describes the conceptual framework
for the show: “The way that we view the past is necessarily colored by
present-day realities. By focusing on a specific trajectory of chromatic
and figurative sculptures that closely resemble human beings, Like Life
undertakes a consciously anachronistic, thematic approach to the mate-
rial, juxtaposing objects from contrasting periods, even as those objects
carry with them divergent histories. … Time is not flattened but instead
made dynamic” (Wagstaff 2018, 13). Asma Naeem explains that the sil-
houettes and silhouette-inspired contemporary artwork in Black Out
deepen “our understanding of how Americans—women, men, black,
white, statesman, laborers—wanted to see themselves in the years of the
Early Republic, but it also opens new interpretive pathways between our
past and present in terms of how period notions of individualism, race,
and power, and even our digital selves, can be critiqued through the
medium of portraiture” (Naeem 2018, ix). For Naeem, seen together,
“the works in the exhibition suggest that shadows are always around us.
Beyond manifestations of light and presence, beyond indicating the posi-
tion of the sun, they encompass all our unique places in the material and
immaterial worlds” (Naeem 2018, 43). Significantly, both shows attempt
to involve the viewer in rethinking paradigms of self and image-making
through historical objects (particularly portraits) that invoke embod-
ied presence. This process links the past and the present in unusual
and unexpected ways, a paradigm that I echo and attempt to illustrate
throughout the case studies in this book. Locating the presence of
women authors, composers, artists, actresses, sculptresses, and photogra-
phers in the archives requires creative strategies that take into account
the fact that their presence (and absence) may be mediated through
diverse forms and translated through alternative formats.
Writing about museums and their history, Barbara Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett proposes, “As a space of abstraction, exhibitions do for the
life world what the life world cannot do for itself. They bring together
specimens and artifacts never found in the same place at the same time
and show relationships that cannot otherwise be seen” (Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett 1998, 3). As archival tourists curating our own exhibitions (vir-
tual or tangible), we participate in the ongoing activity of reimagining
and reenacting traces of the past through our encounters with materials
(real and imagined). In doing so, we reembody versions of ourselves.
Notes
1. According to a Vienna sightseeing website, the museum includes the fol-
lowing items: “Sisi’s 6-piece mourning jewelry in onyx and jet, which
she used to wear with her mourning dress following the death of her son
Crown Prince Rudolph, is also on display here in its entirety. The black
coat with egret feathers, which covered Sisi after her assassination on Lake
Geneva and in which she was taken to the Hotel Beau Rivage, reminds
one of the tragic incident as much as the death mask of the murdered
Empress” (Wien Tourismus, n.d.).
2. According to an Austrian tourism article, “The installation at the entrance
– chairs, mirrors and empty bird cages – symbolizes the dilemma of the
Empress between status as a public favorite and loneliness, court ceremony
and freedom” (Tom 2017, translated from German).
3. See Beth Meullner’s excellent work on Sisi’s eclectic collection of cartes
de visite in her essay “The Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Her ‘Untidy’
Collection” in Women’s Studies (2010). See also Olivia Gruber Florek’s
wonderful piece “‘I Am a Slave to My Hair’: Empress Elisabeth of Austria,
Fetishism, and Nineteenth-Century Austrian Sexuality” in Modern
Austrian Literature (2009).
4. See Bert O. States, “The Dog on Stage: Theater as Phenomenon” in New
Literary History (1983).
References
Florek, Olivia Gruber. 2009. “I am a slave to my hair”: Empress Elisabeth of
Austria, fetishism, and nineteenth-century Austrian sexuality. Modern
Austrian Literature 42 (2): 1–15.
Kehr, Bharti. 2018. The sensuality of impermanence. In Like life: Sculpture, color,
and the body, ed. Luke Syson, Sheena Wagstaff, Emerson Bowyer, and Brinda
Kumar, 67–69. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Destination culture: Tourism, museums,
and heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Madame Tussauds Wien. 2017. Sisi uncovered experience. https://www.

madametussauds.com/wien/themenbereiche/sisi-uncovered-experience/.
Meullner, Beth. 2010. The Empress Elisabeth of Austria and her “untidy” collec-
tion. Women’s Studies 39 (6) (September): 536–561.
Naeem, Asma. 2018. Black out: Silhouettes then and now. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
States, Bert O. 1983. The dog on stage: Theater as phenomenon. New Literary
History 14 (2) (Winter): 373–388.
Tom. 2017. Madame Tussauds Wien eröffnet Sisi Uncovered Experience.
Generation55Plus, 6 February. https://www.generation55plus.net/mad-
ame-tussauds-wien-sisi-uncovered-experience/. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Wagstaff, Sheena. 2018. Embodied histories. In Like life: Sculpture, color, and the
body, ed. Luke Syson, Sheena Wagstaff, Emerson Bowyer, and Brinda Kumar,
2–13. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Wien Tourismus. n.d. Sisi Museum. Vienna. https://www.wien.info/en/sight-
seeing/sights/imperial/sisi-museum. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Wilson, Fred. 2018. Object histories. In Like life: Sculpture, color, and the body,
ed. Luke Syson, Sheena Wagstaff, Emerson Bowyer, and Brinda Kumar,
71–72. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Index
A Batchen, Geoffrey, 22
Abington, Frances, 37, 38 Beetham, Isabella, 2, 14, 15, 18, 21,
abolitionism, 151 22, 107, 113–115, 117, 120
Albinson, Cassandra, 39, 42, 50, 64, Beggar’s Opera, The (John Gay), 43
69 Bell, Malcolm, Jr., 151
Alexander, Dora Jeanette, 149 Bennett, Jane, 21
Antoinette, Marie, 5, 118, 120, 121, Bernstein, Robin, 13, 87
123, 127 Berridge, Kate, 110, 124, 127
Appadurai, Arjun, 21 Bird, Mrs., 65, 68, 71–73
archives Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner
archival tourism, 19 (Countess), 2, 5, 14, 15, 17,
embodied archives, 27–29, 31, 48 81–93, 95–98, 100, 101
visual archives, 38, 39 Boaden, James, 44, 45, 48, 49
Armstrong, Nancy, 20 Booth, Alison, 138
Asleson, Robyn, 50 Borchgrave, Countess Isabelle de, 1,
auctions, 5, 15, 17, 81, 83–85, 88, 2, 19
91–93, 95, 96, 100, 103 Boydell, John, 77. See also Shakespeare
Austen, Jane, 11 Gallery
Braudy, Leo, 9
Brontë sisters, 20
B Brooks Museum, 40, 81
Barchas, Janine, 77 Brown, Bill, 21
Barnes, Mollie, 138, 151 Burney, Fanny, 46
Batchelor, Jennie, 21, 31 Burney, Frances, 50
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 163

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58932-3
164 Index
Burnston, Sharon Ann, 47, 48 D

Bush-Bailey, Gilli, 9, 11, 12 dark tourism (John Lennon and
Butler, David, 133, 136, 140, 141, Malcolm Foley), 5, 20. See also
145, 146, 150, 152 tourism
Butler, Judith, 10, 107, 109 David, Deirdre, 138, 151
Butler, Pierce, 137 Davis, Celia, 139–143, 149, 151, 152
Byron, Lord, 84, 93 Davis-Fisch, Heather, 9, 10
Day, Carolyn A., 63, 76
death masks, 109, 110, 118, 123, 160
C Dening, Greg, 9, 10
Cahir, Lady, 50 Derrida, Jacques, 9, 21, 29, 49
Carlson, Marvin, 49 Donne, John, 38
Carpio, Glenda, 126 D’Orsay, Alfred (Count), 81, 101
carte de visite, 117, 120 dresses
Carter, Perry L., 133, 136, 140, 141, white dress, 28, 34, 35, 37–39, 50,
145, 146, 150, 152 63, 81
Castle Spectre, The (Matthew Gregory white gown, 61, 64, 81
Lewis), 77 du Barry, Madame, 124
Castle, Terry, 102, 103 Dwyer, Owen, 133, 136, 140, 141,
celebrity, 7, 15, 65, 77, 84, 86, 108, 145, 146, 150, 152
110, 111, 117, 118, 124, 137,
155
Chard, Chloe, 22, 86, 87 E
Charles II, 10 Edensor, Tim, 11, 49, 76, 133, 136
Civil War (American), 59, 135, 149 Eger, Elizabeth, 20
Clint, George, 35, 36, 62 Engel, Laura, 76, 108
Clinton, Catherine, 151 eye miniatures, 17, 57, 69, 76, 96,
Cobb, Jasmine Nichole, 134 115
commodity. See consumer culture
consumer culture, 31, 90
consumption, 3, 13, 21, 63, 93. See F
also illness Farington, Joseph, 71, 72
Cook, Terry, 10 Farren, Eliza, 35, 60, 63, 75, 86, 102
costume(s), 2, 6, 11, 13, 28, 34, 35, fashion, 21, 29, 31, 35, 37, 39,
37–39, 42, 48, 50, 54, 59, 70, 42–44, 50, 61, 68, 84, 85, 88,
113, 115, 123 100, 111, 113–115, 118, 120,
Crary, Jonathan, 22 126, 151
Crawshaw, Carol, 27, 126 Finlay, Nancy, 150
Florek, Olivia Gruber, 160
Foley, Malcolm, 20
Folger Library, 32
Foote, Samuel, 21, 22
Index 165
Foucault, Michel, 9, 21 I
Franko, Mark, 3, 30 illness, 29, 47–49, 63, 71, 76. See also
Franz Joseph I, 156, 157 Sontag, Susan; consumption
Freud, Sigmund, 125 Inchbald, Elizabeth, 2, 4, 5, 14–16,
Fuentes, Marisa J., 149 27–35, 37–40, 42–50, 81, 83,
Funnell, Peter, 61, 101 100
intimate vision, 17, 54, 57, 58, 60,
68, 74. See also Grootenboer,
G Hanneke
Gainsborough, Thomas, 86
Garlick, Kenneth, 54, 76
gender, 6, 12, 19, 50, 124, 142, 149 J
as performance, 20 Jack the Ripper, 5
ghosting, 49, 61, 63 Jenkins, Annibel, 43, 45, 48, 49
ghostliness, 64, 103 Jenkins, Rebecca, 151
Gillette, William, 150 Jensen, Joan M., 151
Goffman, Erving, 7, 49 Jerdan, William, 101
Goldring, Douglas, 66–68, 70, 72–75 Johnston, Frances Benjamin, 19, 135
Gore House, 17, 81, 83, 92, 95, 98, Jones, Bill T., 50
100 Jordan, Dorothy, 46
Gothic literature, 102 Josephine, Empress, 98
Grant, Charlotte, 20
Green, Matthew, 85
Grootenboer, Hanneke, 6, 17, 53, 54, K
57, 58, 60, 68, 74, 77. See also Kaplan, Cora, 21
intimate vision Kelly, Fanny, 11
Kemble, Frances Anne (Fanny), 2, 15, 18,
19, 131–134, 136–143, 149, 151
H Kher, Bharti, 155
hair, 20, 39, 44, 68, 69, 113, 115, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 160
120, 123, 126, 156 Knapp, Oswald G., 53, 65, 66
Hamilton, Emma, 61 Kornmeier, Uta, 125, 126
Harris, Thomas Allen Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth, 21
Through a Lens Darkly: Black
Photographers and the
Emergence of a People, 32, 151 L
Hartman, Saidiya V., 149 Lavater, John Caspar, 109
Hawkins, Ann R., 84, 101 Lawrence, Thomas, paintings
Hess, Jonathan M., 127 Catherine Rebecca Grey, Lady
Hoppner, John, 28, 39 Manners, Later Lady
Huet, Marie-Hélène, 123, 124 Huntingtower, 61
Hyde, Helen, 135, 143, 144, 146, of Countess Blessington, 2, 15, 81,
147, 151, 152 84
166 Index
of Elizabeth Inchbald, 15, 81 Millmore, Bridget, 126

A Gipsy Girl, 71 Milne, Esther, 2, 20
of Isabella Wolff, 64 Milton, John, 61
John Kemble as Coriolanus, 61 Monks, Aoife, 13, 70
of Lady Peel, 60, 75, 84 Morley, Martha, 134, 150
La Penserosa, 61 Moten, Fred, 13, 38
of Maria Siddons, 16, 67, 71
Portrait of a Lady, 54
of Sally Siddons, 4, 15, 17, 54, 60, N
61, 63, 64, 68, 75 Naeem, Asma, 158, 159
Lennon, John, 20 National Gallery of Scotland, 103
Lenox Library, 133, 149, 151, 152 National Portrait Gallery (London),
letters, 2, 4, 16, 20, 32, 43, 53, 54, 39
57, 59, 65, 66, 68–70, 75, 149, National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian
151 Institute, Washington, D.C.), 19,
Lippard, Lucy R., 8, 13, 21 158
lockets, 54, 68, 69, 73, 115, 116 Nochlin, Linda, 14
Louis XVI, 5 Nussbaum, Felicity, 108
Love, Heather, 103
Lutz, Deborah, 20
O
Ó Gallchóir, Clíona, 20
M Opie, John, 115
MacCannell, Dean, 7, 49, 76, 126 O’Quinn, Daniel, 50
MacVey, Carol, 50 Osborne, Thomas, 12
magic lanterns, 15, 17, 85 Ott Rowlands, Sue, 49
Mann, Cecilia, 45
Manners, Lady (Catherine Rebecca
Grey), 61, 63, 64 P
Mann, Mary, 149 Palmer, Sally B., 102
Marguerite, Princess de Condé, 1 Panzanelli, Roberta, 111, 125
Mason, Lynn, 151 Pascoe, Judith, 6, 77
Mason, Tim, 151 Pasquin, Anthony, 63
material of memory, 2, 5, 13, 15, 40, Peltz, Lucy, 61, 76
91 Pepys, Samuel, 10, 60
Matoff, Susan, 84, 101 performance studies, 9, 13, 21, 30
McEvoy, Emma, 20 performing remains, 13, 17, 53,
McGirr, Elaine, 76 59, 60, 143. See also Schneider,
McKechnie, Sue, 21, 115, 117, 125 Rebecca
McPherson, Heather, 21 Perry, Gill, 76, 101
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 19 phantasmagoria. See magic lanterns
Meullner, Beth, 160
Index 167
photography, 13, 15, 19, 22, 31, 85, of Lady Waldegrave, 93

101, 102, 108, 110, 116–118, of Maria Walpole, 103
120, 126, 135, 151 The Tragic Muse, 61
phrenology, 5, 109, 126 Ribeiro, Aileen, 21, 35, 38
physiognomy, 109. See also phrenology Richards, Annette, 3, 30
Pilbeam, Pamela, 127 Richardson, Shelby, 50, 54
plantations, 133, 149 Riis, Jacob, 19, 135
plantation tourism, 6, 19, 133, 136, rings, 14, 54, 69
149. See also tourism Roach, Joseph, 6, 9, 10, 50, 59,
pocket diaries, 2, 15, 16, 27–32, 35, 96, 101, 126. See also celebrity;
38, 40, 43, 46, 48, 49, 100, 108 stunt-double
Pointon, Marcia, 21, 58, 69, 77 Robert, Étienne-Gaspard
Pollen, Annebella, 113, 116, 126 (“Robertson”), 85
Pollock, Griselda, 12 Robinson, Mary, 39
portraits/portraiture, 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, Rojek, Chris, 7, 20, 76, 126
15–18, 28, 35, 38–40, 50, 53, 54, Romanticism/Romantics, 77
57–61, 63, 64, 70–73, 76, 77, 81, Rooney, Frances, 150
83, 84, 86, 89, 91, 93, 95, 96, Rowlandson, Thomas, 37
100, 101, 103, 107, 109–111, Royal Academy, 63, 115, 117
113, 115–117, 120, 121, 125, Rubens, Peter Paul, 1, 2
127, 132, 135, 137–139, 142, Rutherford, Emma, 109, 113, 125
143, 148, 156, 157, 159
Powell, Katrina M., 49
Powell, Margaret K., 126 S
Pratt, Mary Louise, 22 Sapirstein, Ray, 135
Preziosi, Donald, 22 Schmid, Susanne, 101
Priestley, Lady, 66 Schneider, Rebecca, 4, 6, 9, 10, 13,
Pringle, Elizabeth Allston, 133, 149 17, 38, 53, 59, 89, 112. See also
Pugliese, Joseph, 28 performing remains
Schneider, Romy, 156
Schwartz, Joan M., 10
R Schweitzer, Marlis, 21
race, 6, 12, 18, 19, 39, 121, 125, 134, sculpture, 15, 19, 39, 97, 98, 100,
135, 142, 149, 152, 158, 159 109, 110, 117, 118, 121, 123,
Rauser, Amelia, 50, 63 124, 158, 159
Read, Jane, 2, 14, 15, 18, 107, Sedgwick, Elizabeth, 151
115–117 Sekula, Allan, 14, 29, 31, 108, 147.
relics/reliquary, 10, 83, 85, 87, 88, See also shadow archive
96, 100, 103, 108 Sewell, Dennita, 20
Reynolds, Frederick, 44 shadow archive, 14, 16, 29, 31, 48,
Reynolds, Joshua, paintings 108, 118, 147. See also Sekula,
The Ladies Waldegrave, 103 Allan
168 Index
Shakespeare Gallery, 46, 77. See also T

Boydell, John Taylor, Diana, 9
Shakespeare, William, 35, 42, 54, 67, Teukolsky, Rachel, 117
137 Thoreau, Henry David, 134
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 123 Topham, Edward, 43, 44
Siddons, Maria, 16, 53, 58, 61, 66, tourism/tourist theory, 3–8, 11,
67, 71, 76 13–15, 17, 19–22, 27, 28, 49,
Siddons, Sally, 4, 14, 17, 53–55, 57, 60, 76, 83, 85, 86, 92, 93, 98,
58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 68, 70, 72, 102, 108, 110, 126, 133, 136,
75, 76, 117 142, 143, 149, 155, 160. See
Siddons, Sarah, 2, 15, 16, 37, 53, also archives, archival tourism;
56, 61, 71, 74, 76, 77, 86, 101, dark tourism; Edensor, Tim;
117 Foley, Malcolm; Lennon, John;
silhouettes, 2, 4, 5, 15, 17–19, 101, MacCannell, Dean; plantation
107–113, 115–117, 124–126, tourism; Rojek, Chris; Urry, John
147, 157–159 travel. See tourism
Sisi (Empress Elisabeth of Austria), 19, Tryon arts colony, 150
155–158, 160 Tussaud, Marie (Madame), 2, 5, 14,
slavery, 19, 126, 133–136, 141, 145, 15, 18–20, 107, 110, 116–127,
149, 151. See also race 155, 156
Smith, Alice Hunger, 133
Smith, Chloe Wigston, 21
Smith, Shawn Michelle, 135, 149, U
152 Urry, John, 6, 7, 11, 20, 27, 76, 126
Sofer, Andrew, 13, 49, 87, 102
Sontag, Susan, 29, 49
souvenirs, 4, 6, 13, 17, 18, 83, 87, 96, V
100, 107–109, 127 van Hensbergen, Claudine, 103
spectator, 2, 20, 68, 71, 76, 85, 92, Victoria and Albert Museum, 113,
93, 110–112, 124–126, 156, 126
157, 159 visual culture, 7, 15, 20, 28, 85, 149,
staged intimacy, 28, 49 152
States, Bert O., 160
Steedman, Carolyn, 9
Sterckx, Marjan, 111 W
Stewart, Susan, 83, 142 Wagstaff, Sheena, 159
stunt-double, 60, 61. See also Roach, Walker, Kara, 18, 124–126
Joseph Wallace, Beth Kowaleski, 110
Sully, Thomas, 137 Wallace Collection, 54, 55, 72, 76, 81
Wallace, Maurice O., 135
Index 169
Warburton, Penny, 20 Wilkie, Sir David, 116

Watson, Amelia M., 2, 6, 14, 15, 18, Willis, Deborah, 151
19, 131–135, 139, 140, 142, Wilson, Fred, 155
143, 149–152 Wilson, Jackie Napolean, 151
Watson, Edith, 134, 150 Winterhalter, Franz, 156
waxworks/wax museum, 2, 5, 15, 17,
18, 100, 101, 107–112, 124–
127, 156 Y
Wells, Mary, 16, 29, 42–46 Yeazell, Ruth Bernard, 20
white dress/white gown, 28, 34, 35,
37–39, 50, 61, 63, 64, 81. See
also dresses Z
Whitney Museum, 124 Zerdy, Joanne, 21

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The Archival Tourist, 1780–1915

ISBN 978-1-137-58931-6 ISBN 978-1-137-58932-3 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960250

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

Cover credit: ilbusca/Getty Images

This book began in the archives. From peering at Elizabeth Inchbald’s

Karen Gevirtz, Kirsten Saxton, Teri Doerksen, Heidi Strobel, Judith

Some material in the introduction and chapter two is adapted from

Women, Performance and the Material of Memory: The Archival Tourist,

1 Introduction: The Archival Tourist 1

2 Elizabeth Inchbald’s Pocket Diaries 27

3 Thomas Lawrence’s Portraits of the Siddons Sisters 53

4 The Countess of Blessington and Magic Lanterns 81

5 Women Artists, Silhouettes, and Waxworks 107

6 Amelia M. Watson’s Photographs 131

Epilogue: The Sisi Experience 155

Laura Engel is a Professor in the English Department at Duquesne

Fig. 2.1 George Clint, 1770–1854, British, “Harriet Smithson

between 1800–1830 (Mezzotint). © Yale Center

Introduction: The Archival Tourist

A figure stands in the middle of a museum gallery dressed in a richly

© The Author(s) 2019 1

“performance remains.” As archival tourists viewing the images alongside

Amelia M. Watson’s turn-of-the-century photographs of plantation sites

perform as souvenirs in the archive? Or put another way, how do we as

It is hard to identify just what makes academic travel a special source of

In addition to the blurred lines between academics as travelers and

of the performance of everyday life, which is organized according to a

Performance and Archives

of ephemeral, intangible information—dance, ritual, behavior, and

One way to begin to become “performance-conscious” is to think

reenactment, Bailey is consciously attempting to work out the performa-

kind of extraordinary ordinariness” (Osborne 1999, 62). Lucy Lippard

The Material of Memory

Theorizing these enactments or connections through the paradigms of

Women in the Archives

visual material (both tangible and imagined) surrounding the actors in

Miniature shadow profiles, typically made from cutting paper or paint-

descendants from the plantation (who remembered Kemble) along with

shown in London, Norwich, Newcastle (where it was printed) and else-

Bernstein, Robin. 2011. Racial innocence: Performing American childhood from

Gardens, YouTube. Posted on 19 October 2017. https://www.youtube.

Elizabeth Inchbald’s Pocket Diaries

Much tourism involves memory. In a kind of way tourism is the appropriation

Pocket Diaries as Embodied Archives

© The Author(s) 2019 27

In this chapter, I consider excerpts from Elizabeth Inchbald’s pocket

women and fashionable female aristocrats. In this way, Inchbald’s diaries

Archive Theory and the Pocket Diary

intangible history of the overlap between women’s private and public

Absent performative events have conceptual, imaginary, and evidential,

Inchbald’s diaries offer a remarkable glimpse of the “provocative interac-

what Allan Sekula has termed a “shadow archive.” Sekula is writing

The Pocket Diary as Object

own housework and domestic chores. As an actress, a playwright, and

So what do Inchbald’s patterns of memory tell us, and how do we

in the little passage – my head very well” (1.262), and on Friday, 27

The White Dress

The Material of Memory

Pocket Diaries as Embodied Archives

The Pocket Diary as Object

Portraits of Inchbald in White

9. For more about eighteenth-century actresses and their costumes on and

Lawrence in Love: Sally Siddons as Artistic Muse

The Courtship of Maria: 1797

An American at Gore House

16. See discussion of Bernstein in the introduction.