British Women Travellers

Empire and Beyond, 1770-1870

Sutapa Dutta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000507485
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

This book studies the exclusive refractive perspectives of British women who took up the twin challenges of travel and writing when Britain was establishing itself as the greatest empire on earth. Contributors explore the ways in which travel writing has defined women's engagement with Empire and British identity, and was inextricably linked with the issue of identity formation. With a capacious geographical canvas, this volume examines the multifaceted relations and negotiations of British women travellers in a range of different imperial contexts across continents from America, Africa, Europe to Australia.

Part I

On the Continent, Framing ‘Britishness’

1 Colonising the French

Elizabeth Inchbald’s Cultural Appropriation

Ben P. Robertson

In recent years, British writer Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821) has regained some of the celebrity that she enjoyed during her lifetime. Her two novels, 20-odd plays, and literary criticism have received considerable attention in the 21st century, especially after the publication of Annibel Jenkins’ biography in 2003. Scholars generally cast Inchbald as a revolutionary writer of Jacobin texts whose strong sense of independence led her to a life of celibacy after the sudden death of her husband so that she might retain control of her own financial and social well-being (Boaden 1833; Jenkins 2003; Inchbald 2007; Robertson 2013). Few scholars, however, have paid much attention to the single visit that Inchbald made to France in 1776 with her husband.

The Inchbalds’ extensive preparation for their voyage, coupled with Elizabeth’s later use of French plays to create her own dramas, hint at the purely exploitative nature of the trip to the Continent. Inchbald sought to capitalise on imperialistic attitudes to ‘colonise’ French culture for British consumption. And although the trip itself was a disaster in the short term, the cultural capital that Inchbald accumulated during the voyage served her well financially in subsequent decades after her husband’s death. The fact that she considered emigrating to India, that her first successful play was partly about the Great Mogul, that she set Such Things Are in Sumatra and that she used Africa as a minor, but important, feature of Nature and Art (1796) all suggest a shrewd awareness of imperial discourse and of the potential for a woman writer’s appropriation of foreign culture. Initially unable to live on her own terms, Inchbald found a means to seize power over her own destiny through the co-opting of primarily French culture—and specifically of French drama.

Inchbald’s Early Sense of Determination

To understand Inchbald’s decision to appropriate French drama for her own purposes, readers need to keep in mind some of the obstacles she faced and also need to understand how determined she was to overcome these limitations. Indeed, without her strong sense of self-determination and resolve, she might have stayed at home in Suffolk rather than seeking her fortunes through drama.

From her teenage years, Inchbald was intrigued by the idea of becoming an actor (Jenkins 2003: 9–10). Her largely autodidactic education included reading plays by William Shakespeare and contemporary writers, and her family occasionally attended theatre productions in the region surrounding her home village of Stanningfield (sometimes called Standingfield) in Suffolk (8). Additionally, her older brother George became an actor for the Norwich Theatre Company during these early years, and Inchbald may have wanted to follow his example to some extent. In fact, she applied unsuccessfully to George’s employer Richard Griffiths for an acting job in the early 1770s. She reportedly also stole Griffiths’ portrait (whom she found attractive) during a visit to Norwich; perhaps the theft factored into his decision not to hire her (10).

Unfortunately, Inchbald had to face serious limitations that barred her path toward thespianism. A fairly innocuous obstacle, the fact that she and her family were Catholic likely gave pause to many people with whom she interacted. After all, Catholics were not held in great esteem during these years in England, and anti-Catholic discrimination was not unusual, particularly given the Popery Act of 1698, which remained largely in effect until 1778. That year, some of its provisions were repealed, but public opinion turned sour as Lord George Gordon publicly warned of the dangers of allowing Catholics too much freedom (Jenkins 2003: 59–60). The fact that the French, who were aiding the rebellious American colonies, also were officially Catholic certainly did not help matters. The anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 were part of the result. And although these events happened a few years after Inchbald finally had become an actor, they do offer meaningful hints at where public opinion was headed during Inchbald’s earliest years.

Inchbald’s religion, however, was a minor barrier to her acting career. A more significant impediment was her stutter or stammer. This factor alone might have kept her from the stage, but she practiced stage declamation frequently and gained enough control of the problem to satisfy both theatre managers and a very demanding public. Her diary entries repeatedly mention ‘spouting’, a term she used to indicate that she was practicing her lines for a play in which she had a role, and these experiences certainly helped improve her performances (Inchbald 2007: I, 59–61; Jenkins 2003: 14). In fact, reviews of her performances do not mention the stutter.

Finally, as was typical of women artists of the Romantic era, Inchbald had to confront the sobering truth that, as a woman, she would have to face additional scrutiny, both from theatre managers and from audiences. She would have to work harder than her male counterparts to impress anyone, and her limited education as a woman would mean that fewer people would take her seriously on an intellectual level. Even more importantly, women actors—especially attractive ones like Inchbald—often were unjustly stereotyped as being sexually promiscuous, an attitude that unfortunately was reinforced in a highly public manner when the actor Mary Robinson left her husband to become mistress to the Prince of Wales in 1779 (Jenkins 2003: 396–397). Indeed, Inchbald herself experienced the negative effects of this stereotype when she asked theatre manager James Dodd for an acting job. According to Inchbald’s first biographer James Boaden (and echoed by Annibel Jenkins in 2003), Dodd made sexual advances toward Inchbald, who threw a basin of hot water in his face before fleeing from him (Boaden 1833: I, 29; Jenkins 2003: 2). This anecdote is a favourite among scholars for its illustration of Inchbald’s spirited determination and sense of propriety.

Despite these impediments, Inchbald was a determined young woman who took the astonishing—and very dangerous—step of running away from home alone to seek an acting job in London in April 1772 when she was just 18. She was quickly disabused of the notion that she could succeed on her own. If nothing else, the experience with Dodd convinced her that she needed protection of some sort. Consequently, when 37-year-old Joseph Inchbald, whom she had known for some time already, proposed marriage to her, she accepted, and they were married a mere two months after she had left home without her mother’s permission. Biographer Annibel Jenkins believes the marriage was a ‘love match’ (2003: 11), but most other scholars point to Elizabeth’s own statement in an early letter to Joseph (whom she at first declined for marriage), ‘In spite of your eloquent pen, matrimony still appears to me with less charms than terrors’ (Boaden 1833: I, 15). Jane Spencer, writing an introduction to Inchbald’s 1791 novel A Simple Story (Inchbald 1791b), calls the relationship ‘stormy’ and posits that Elizabeth married Joseph as ‘the only way to enter her chosen profession with respectable protection’ (Spencer 1988: viii). Indeed, evidence from Inchbald’s diaries supports Spencer’s statement more firmly than Jenkins’.

Although Spencer and Jenkins may disagree on the impetus behind Inchbald’s marriage, one issue on which they do agree is the extent of Inchbald’s determination to succeed. Spencer accurately sums up James Boaden’s overall picture of Inchbald by commenting that in her later life, ‘she lived alone in a succession of lodgings, keeping herself fiercely independent’ (ix). Of Inchbald’s earlier years, Jenkins similarly notes, ‘She was determined to write. She was also determined to live by her own standards’ (12). Again and again, scholars have pointed out how tenacious Inchbald was and how intensely she guarded her own independence—her ability to maintain control of her own life.

The Trip to France

It is this determination and sense of independence that Inchbald brought to bear on her and her husband’s trip to France in 1776. At the beginning of the year, the couple were acting in Edinburgh with the travelling company of West Digges, but they would end their tour that summer. Their engagements took them to Glasgow, Greenock, Hamilton and other points in Scotland before returning to Edinburgh. Unfortunately, Joseph had what Elizabeth calls a ‘great dispute’ with an Edinburgh audience on 12 June 1776 (Inchbald 2007: I, 46). The nature of the dispute is not clear. Neither Inchbald’s first biographer James Boaden, nor her more recent biographer Annibel Jenkins, is able to provide further details, and Inchbald’s own diary entry for that day simply takes note of the dispute without providing details (Boaden 1833: I, 60; Jenkins 2003: 26; Inchbald 2007: I, 46). Elizabeth herself was not in the theatre at the time, having left early to do some personal work. Regardless of the cause, however, the theatre audience rioted on Joseph’s account three nights later in response to the dispute (Inchbald 2007: 47). Jenkins rightly points out that theatre patrons of the time would riot for ‘flimsy excuses’, so even the severity of Joseph’s supposed offense is not clear (I, 26). Regardless, the event signaled the end of the Inchbalds’ tour in Scotland, and they were on the road for Shields to catch a ship bound for France two weeks later.

While the audience riot may have given the Inchbalds the immediate incentive to leave Edinburgh, the couple apparently had been planning a trip to France for some time. Interestingly enough, Elizabeth had begun studying French two years earlier, according to her biographers, and during the Inchbalds’ stay in Edinburgh, she even hired a ‘French master’ to help her with the language (Boaden 1833: I, 59; Jenkins 2003: 21; Inchbald 2007: I, 11–12, 21, 31). It would have been uncharacteristic of her to have gone to such expense for the mere sake of the pleasure of learning a foreign language. She was not prone to extravagance, partly because she and Joseph simply had so little money, especially during these early years. In fact, she meticulously kept track of her expenses in the ‘Account of CASH’ sections of her earlier pocketbooks—down to the halfpenny (Inchbald 2007: I, 4–7).

Given her pragmatic tendencies, Inchbald must have begun studying French with a specific purpose in mind, and as Jenkins correctly reports, these studies became ‘essential to her professional career’ (21). Jenkins later comments that there is ‘no way of knowing just when and why the Inchbalds determined to seek another and better place in France’ (27). The most obvious scenario, as supported by evidence from Inchbald’s diaries, is that Elizabeth planned to study French (and maybe acting as well), while Joseph, who was also a portrait painter, intended to study art. In any case, they certainly hoped to improve their financial situation. Elizabeth may even have thought that she could find acting jobs in France, and Joseph probably hoped to sell the occasional painting. However, while Elizabeth was a reliable and dedicated actor, neither she nor Joseph was a first-rate performer—even in their own native English—and Joseph’s paintings never brought him any notoriety.

Fortunately, the entirety of the Inchbalds’ trip to France took place in 1776, the first year for which any of Elizabeth’s known diaries has survived into the 21st century. This slim volume, barely the size of a modern mobile telephone (in fact, smaller than many), is titled THE LADIES’ Own Memorandum-Book: OR, DAILY POCKET JOURNAL, For the YEAR 1776 (Inchbald 2007: I, 1). Published yearly, these pocketbooks, as the title indicates, were meant exclusively for women to record their weekly activities. With the book held open, each set of facing pages included seven blank spaces, one for each day of the week, on the right two-thirds of the righthand (recto) page with an ‘Account of CASH’ covering the remainder of that page and the lefthand (verso) page (I, 6). Given the size of the space allotted to each day’s entry—about 5 cm. in length by 1.4 cm. in height in this case—it seems clear that women were not expected to have a great many important activities during their weekly schedules (I, 5). Of necessity, Inchbald’s diary is, therefore, quite cryptic in many instances. Nevertheless, because she wrote in a tiny, cramped style for the diaries, Inchbald was able to fit as many as ten lines of text into such a small space in some of her thousands of entries over the years (I, xviii). For mid-1776, the result is an intriguing, if incomplete, picture of the Inchbalds’ entire trip.

The sea voyage from Shields to the French port of St. Valery was not especially pleasant. With calms punctuated by occasional rough seas and thunderstorms, the 16-day trip was alternately boring and nausea-inducing. Inchbald complains several times in her diary about being sick, though on the better days she played games with the ship’s captain and read in Paradise Lost (I, 51–55). She also mentions being frightened by the turbulent sea, even complaining that one night she was unable to sleep ‘for fear’ (I, 54). Once ashore on 23 July, the Inchbalds made their way to Paris by way of Abbeville and Amiens, pausing long enough to visit the churches of Abbeville and to attend Mass (I, 55–56).

The pause to visit the churches of Abbeville helps to demonstrate the dual nature of the voyage as a whole. While visiting new cities, the Inchbalds were keen to experience some of the important sights while carrying out their more practical objectives. Even before leaving Britain, they took the time for a little tourism. Elizabeth’s diary indicates that they visited Tynemouth Castle on 4 July after they had arrived at Shields (I, 51). The previous night, however, they had been to the theatre—an activity that may have been enjoyable but that also provided the chance to observe the skills of other actors and potentially improve their own techniques. A similar evening outing to the theatre took place on 5 July (I, 52).

Unfortunately, the visit to Paris was not the rousing success that they had hoped. They did manage to enjoy themselves a little, for example visiting the Tuileries Gardens, Notre Dame Cathedral, a convent, a theatre, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Palais Royal Gardens and a gallery (I, 57–59). However, Paris brought considerable stress. At the end of their first full day there, they went to bed ‘rather off’, partly because they had not had supper (I, 57). They got lost among the sinuous Parisian streets and again ‘went to Bed Cross’ the following evening. Inchbald mentions not eating at least two more meals during the stay (on 10 and 12 August) (I, 60–61). Moreover, the couple quarreled a number of times. They had some sort of dispute on ...