Late Victorian aristocrats and the racial other: the Devonshire House ball of 1897

One of the most memorable events celebrated in honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee was the Devonshire House ball held on 2 July 1897. Organised by the ‘double duchess’ – the German-born Luise Friedericke Auguste von Alten (1832–1911) who had been the wife of the Duke of Manchester before marrying the Duke of Devonshire – the fancy dress ball was held at the family’s long-since vanished residence on Piccadilly, and it attracted wide media coverage throughout the British empire and beyond. ¹ More than a century later, the sheer opulence of the ball still does not fail to fascinate as the 2012 Kensington Palace exhibition Jubilee – a view from the crowd (featuring the well-preserved costume of the ‘double duchess’) or the travelling exhibition of photographs of the Victorian elite in fancy dress prove. However, instead of focusing on the illustrious guests in their finery, this piece explores the significance of a hitherto disregarded group of men and women who, at the time when British imperialism reached its zenith, attended the ball disguised as black servants or slaves waiting on three aristocratic ladies impersonating Zenobia of Palmyra, Cleopatra and the queen of Sheba.

So far, fancy dress balls have not featured prominently in discussions of Victorian attitudes towards race in the field of entertainment, which have mostly focused on the theatre, on minstrel shows and on the troupes of indigenous people from the colonies in their traditional costumes who performed what was advertised as their traditional dances and rituals. ² Nonetheless, the many contemporary sources relating to the Devonshire House ball afford intriguing insights into the workings of late-Victorian race and class ideologies, for neither were all the men and women dressed as exotic attendants hired staff, nor were they all black, as some had to paint their faces in order to fit their roles.

Writing for The Graphic, Lady Violet Greville recorded that some members of the hostess’s staff were ‘attired as Egyptian footmen, some, negroes themselves, in their own quaint and barbaric Eastern dress’; ³ and, indeed, the Duchess of Devonshire’s choice of exotic costumes for her attendants suggested itself as she appeared in the role of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, at the head of an ‘Oriental court’. ⁴ According to Greville’s account, it seems that the ‘Oriental’ attendants included both black men wearing their native traditional costumes, who may have been hired from one of the above-mentioned troupes from the colonies, ⁵ and white men of supposedly English or British origin, who were attired in exotic fancy dress costumes as Egyptian footmen. In the absence of further documentary evidence, it is impossible to ascertain if the latter had to blacken their faces, or if their roles were suggested by costume alone. What seems obvious, though, is that the duchess played for maximum effect and would therefore perhaps have ordered the white members of staff to wear dark make-up to heighten the exotic aspect of her retinue.

Two other ‘Oriental queens’ vied for attention and sought to eclipse each other by bringing their own retinues. One of them was Princess Henry of Pless, the former Mary Theresa Olivia Cornwallis-West (1873–1943), who as Queen of Sheba was, according to one account, ‘preceded by two tall, pretty girls as Amazonian guards, and behind her were five little Ethiopian boys carrying her train. A number of slaves completed her entourage, including her brother, George Cornwallis West’. ⁶ The Times, on the other hand, wrote:

Princess Henry of Pless as the Queen of Sheba. A costume of gold and purple gauze, the short-waisted bodice encrusted with immense turquoises set round with diamonds and other precious stones; the skirt and draperies of gold gauze embroidered to correspond, and the long gold girdle encrusted and fringed with jewels. Bird of paradise and crown. Four niggers held her train. ⁷

Here, the ‘little Ethiopian boys’ are referred to as ‘niggers’, and there can be little doubt that they were indeed black, rather than white boys with painted faces. The racist term also highlights what many, if not most, of The Times’ readers would then have seen as an insurmountable race and class divide between the hired black boys, who are presented as exotic accessories like the stuffed bird of paradise, and the princess. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing where and how they were hired, but they may also have belonged to an imported performance troupe of indigenous people. It is furthermore conspicuous that while mentioning the black trainbearers The Times tacitly ignored the others who belonged to the princess’s entourage. One of the reasons for this omission might lie in the fact that some of them were actually white men disguised as African slaves, whose walking in file with the ‘niggers’ was perhaps seen as unseemly and therefore better ignored. What is more, at least two of the princess’s attendants were not even hired either; in fact, they were none other than the princess’s as yet unmarried siblings Constance Edwina Cornwallis-West (1876–1970), the future Duchess of Westminster, and George Frederick Myddelton Cornwallis-West (1874–1951), who was to become Winston Churchill’s stepfather when he married the latter’s mother Jennie Jerome in 1900. ⁸ While The Times refused to mention the presence of the Cornwallis-West siblings in the same breath as the ‘niggers’, The Daily News chose the opposite approach in stating that the princess’s sister ‘Miss Cornwallis West … was her Ethiopian attendant’ (i.e. one of the ‘Amazonian guards’) without mentioning any of the other members of her entourage, including her brother George. ⁹ In their own ways, both newspapers succeeded in concealing from their readers the spectacle of the princess’s siblings joining the hired black attendants, which many would have seen as a tasteless violation of prevalent race and class divisions. This sentiment was apparently shared by George Cornwallis-West who remembered the evening as follows:

Not having the wherewithal myself to pay for a fancy dress, I was pressed into her [his sister’s] service, with the bribe of a free costume, as one of the entourage of her Court, whose dresses had been designed by a famous theatrical designer of the day. Why he should have insisted that the Queen of Sheba’s male attendants were full-blooded negroes and dressed in garments like multicoloured bed quilts I have no idea … The fact remains that I hated blackening my face, and my girl friends did not in the least appreciate me in that disguise; consequently I didn’t enjoy myself in the slightest, and left early, with bitterness in my heart towards the theatrical designer. ¹⁰

Cornwallis-West’s misgivings concerning his role were clearly shared by his future wife Jennie Churchill, who, in her memoirs, preferred not to mention explicitly her husband’s involvement in his sister’s act: ‘Princess Pless, lovely as Cleopatra [sic], was surrounded by a retinue in Oriental garb, some of whom so far sacrificed their appearance as to darken their faces.’ ¹¹

Thanks to the London-based photographic firm Lafayette, which had installed a temporary studio in the gardens of Devonshire House to document the guests in their spectacular costumes, it is still possible to get a clear impression of what George Cornwallis-West looked like in the garb of an African slave. The photograph also shows him wearing a black wig and a crown-like headdress, which seems to be somewhat at odds with his role as a slave, and last but not least the blackened face he disliked so much (see Figure 1). ¹² Unfortunately there is no evidence that the Lafayette photographer also took a picture of George’s sister Constance or of the princess of Pless’s entire entourage, which at least the princess, if perhaps no one else, might have wished to document for posterity.

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Figure 1.

George Frederick Myddelton Cornwallis-West as a black slave at the Devonshire House Ball, negative, Lafayette Studio London, 1897. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The other ‘Oriental’ guest who brought an attendant dressed as a slave was Constance Gwladys Herbert (1859–1917), Countess of Lonsdale by her first and Countess de Grey and later Marchioness of Ripon by her second marriage. ¹³ Though Lady de Grey was only one of three Cleopatras at the ball, her close friend and fellow guest at the ball, the diplomat Sir Reginald Lister, wrote enthusiastically:

The person who shone out conspicuously above everybody was Lady de Grey. When she walked up the room at the head of the Orientals – swathed in gold and clinging draperies – blazing with jewels – with bunches of purple orchids on her head and a long glittering train carried by an Arab slave – the effect was renversant; one felt she should always be dressed like that, and never in nineteenth-century clothes. ¹⁴

From Lister’s description of Lady de Grey’s appearance it is not clear whether the man embodying the ‘Arab slave’ was black or white, but various newspapers and magazines unambiguously identified the enigmatic young man as a ‘real Ethiopian attendant’, a ‘Nubian in gorgeous and correct dress’ or ‘a Nubian in real old Egyptian slave’s attire’. ¹⁵ That he was indeed black is evidenced by two Lafayette photographs: in the first one the young man carries Lady de Grey’s train with his head covered (see Figure 2) whereas in the second the now bareheaded man is depicted in a pose that was obviously considered to be appropriate for a ‘slave’ (he kneels at Lady de Grey’s side with her left hand resting proprietarily on his shoulder). ¹⁶ Unlike in the case of the Princess of Pless and her larger entourage, photographing the Lady de Grey and her single attendant together was perhaps seen as less problematic as the race and class barriers dividing the two were stressed rather than blurred by their respective roles. These photographs, then, are of particular importance as they allow us to see at least one of the hired black attendants present at the Devonshire House ball.

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Figure 2.

Lady de Grey as Cleopatra and Mahomed Taha as her ‘Egyptian Slave’ at the Devonshire House Ball, negative, Lafayette Studio London, 1897. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

But the story of Lady de Grey’s attendant does not end here, for he is the only hired black man at the ball whose identity can now be established. In his recent biography of the countess’s husband, Rupert Godfrey notes that the ‘“slave”, called Mahomed, [was] imported from Eg ypt especially for the occasion’. ¹⁷ The name of the young man is confirmed by an intriguing document that has recently come to light in a scrapbook compiled by Lady de Grey in or after 1914 ¹⁸ – a short undated letter in French, written in what seems to be Mahomed’s own hand on Savoy Hotel notepaper, which not only mentions the Lafayette photographs discussed above but also allows an ever so brief glimpse into the life of the ‘abyssinian boy who carried my train at Devonshire House’, as Lady de Grey captioned the letter (see Figure 3):

Madame la Comtesse,

Veuillez m’excuser si je prends la liberté de venir vous importuner, mais sur le reçu des photographies que vous avez eu l’aimable obligeance de bien vouloir m’adresser, j’ai été tout à la fois tellement charmé que je me suis permis cette petite indiscrétion.

Donc, Madame la Comtesse, permettez-moi de venir vous dire mille fois merci, et lorsque vos besoins auront senti ma présence, je serai toujours à votre disposition.

Merci également pour les £5 dont votre bienveillance a su reconnaître mon entier dévouement.

Recevez, Madame la Comtesse, les sentiments dévoués de votre serviteur

         Mahomed Taha

[Madame la Comtesse,

Please excuse me if I take the liberty of importuning you, but on receipt of the photographs which you had the extreme kindness to send me, I was at once so charmed that I have allowed myself this little indiscretion.

Thus, Madame la Comtesse, permit me to say thank you a thousand times, and whenever you shall require my presence, I will always be at your disposal.

Thank you also for the £5, with which you have kindly acknowledged my complete devotion.

Yours devotedly,

         Mahomed Taha]

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Figure 3.

Mahomed Taha’s letter in Lady de Grey’s scrapbook, notepaper pasted into album, undated (1897). Private collection, Germany.

Taha’s neatly written letter indicates that Lady de Grey must have taken a personal interest in him that extended beyond inviting him to accompany her to the ball as a hired attendant, as the gifts of the photos and the sum of five pounds – half a year’s wages for a steward’s boy or page at the time ¹⁹ – seem to suggest. It is possible that she had originally met Taha while travelling and decided to bring the young man to England in order to help him get a better position, perhaps at the Savoy, which both Lord and Lady de Grey patronised in its early years and where Taha seems to have stayed at least at the time of the ball in early July 1897. ²⁰ It is a pity that neither the Savoy’s guest lists nor the staff records from the 1890s have survived as they might have contained further details regarding Taha’s personal and professional background. ²¹ What became of Mahomed Taha after the ball is unknown.

The examples of the Duchess of Devonshire’s ‘Egyptian footmen’ and ‘negro’ servants, the Princess of Pless’s extravagant entourage, and Lady de Grey’s attendant Mahomed Taha, show a broad spectrum of late-Victorian attitudes towards race and class. While the duchess’s black(ened) servants seem to have stayed mostly in the background and perhaps waited on the other guests as well, the absence of a clear division between the princess’s hired black trainbearers and her ‘enslaved’ siblings was seen as degrading for the latter in terms of both race and class. The case of Mahomed Taha is different again; his fluency in French (if not in English) and his well-practised handwriting suggest that his family was of a certain social standing in Egypt (or wherever he may have come from) and that he may therefore have enjoyed Lady de Grey’s special attention as her protégé.