The Devonshire House ball of 1897 was the last and most spectacular fancy dress ball held in the Victorian era. So far, discussions of the ball have almost exclusively focused on the list of illustrious guests and the costumes they wore. This article investigates for the first time the significance of those disguised as black servants or slaves who attended the ball not as guests in their own right but as attendants of three aristocratic ladies. As these attendants were from various ethnic backgrounds and belonged to different classes, their presence at the fancy dress ball sheds new light on late-Victorian notions of race and class in this particular field of entertainment.
For a detailed account of the ball and its afterlife in the media, see MurphyS., The Duchess of Devonshire’s Ball (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984). I owe special thanks to Russell Harris for sharing his vast knowledge of the Devonshire House ball with me and for his generous help in procuring the Lafayette images. I would also like to thank Rupert Godfrey for kindly answering my questions on Lady de Grey and her husband.
2.
See MacKenzieJ. M., ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1986); BrattonJ. S.CaveR. A.., Acts of Supremacy: the British empire and the stage, 1790-1930 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1991); WatersH., Racism on the Victorian Stage: representation of slavery and the black character (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007).
3.
GrevilleV., ‘The Devonshire House ball’, The Graphic (10July1897), p. 78.
4.
The ‘Oriental court’ included those guests dressed as figures from the Bible or from ancient history. For the most comprehensive account of historical characters represented at the ball and for what seems to be the official guest list, see anon., ‘Ball at Devonshire-House’, The Times (3July1897), p. 12.
5.
ShephardB., ‘Showbiz imperialism: the case of Peter Lobengula’, in MacKenzieJ. M., Imperialism and Popular Culture (1986), p. 98. It is also possible that one or more of the black servants were regular members of staff in the Devonshire’s employ; for a brief history of black servants in Britain, see WaterfieldG., ‘Black servants’, in WaterfieldG.FrenchA.CraskeM., ed., Below Stairs: 400 years of servants’ portraits (London, National Portrait Gallery, 2003), pp. 138–51.
6.
Murphy, op. cit., pp. 138–9.
7.
The Times (3July1897).
8.
George Cornwallis-West was not the first member of the British aristocracy to receive negative criticism for blackening his face. A well-known example predating the Devonshire House ball by almost three hundred years is the case of Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness (1605) featuring queen Anne of Denmark and her fellow aristocratic masquers with painted faces and bodies; see, for example, BernadetteA., ‘Black skin, the queen’s masques: Africanist ambivalence and feminine author(ity) in the Masque of Blackness and Beauty’, English Literary Renaissance (Vol. 29, no. 2, 1999), pp. 246–81.
9.
Anon., ‘The Duchess of Devonshire’s fancy ball. A brilliant spectacle. Some of the dresses’, The Daily News (3July1897), p. 5.
10.
Cornwallis-WestG., Edwardian Hey-Days, or, a little about a lot of things (London, Putnam, 1930), p. 46. See also QuelchE., Perfect Darling: the life and times of George Cornwallis-West (London, Cecil and Amelia Woolf, 1972), pp. 47–8.
11.
Cornwallis-WestJ., The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill (New York, The Century, 1908), p. 387.
For further details, see GodfreyR., Olly: the life and times of Frederick Oliver Robinson, 2nd Marquis of Ripon (privately printed, 2012).
14.
Godfrey, op. cit., pp. 161, 163.
15.
See ‘The Devonshire ball’, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (4July1897), p. 6; ‘Grand ducal ball’, Poverty Bay Herald (16August1897), p. 4; Lady’s Pictorial (10July1897), p. 53.
16.
For the second photograph, see Godfrey, op. cit., p. 162.
17.
Godfrey, op. cit., p. 161.
18.
The rather worn and possibly incomplete scrapbook was auctioned on eBay in2012 when it was erroneously attributed to Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick (1861–1938); its earlier provenance is unknown. The scraps, which seem to have been collected over a couple of decades, include postcards, press cuttings, royal ephemera, concert programmes and photographs of works of art. For the latter, see SpiesM., ‘Visiting John Lavery in Tangier: photographs from Lady de Grey’s scrapbook’, The Burlington Magazine (Vol. 157, no. 1347, 2015), pp. 398–401. Lady de Grey also compiled at least two albums of photographs of singers, actors and musicians, which are now owned by the Royal Opera House. See Royal Opera House Collections Online, available at: http://www.rohcollections.org.uk/collectionphotdegrey.aspx.
19.
See BoothC., ed., Life and Labour of the People in London, vol. 8 (London, Macmillan, 1896), p. 227.
20.
For the de Greys’ patronage of the Savoy Hotel, see Godfrey, op. cit., pp. 160–1.
21.
I am grateful to Susan Scott, archivist of the Savoy Hotel, London, for her comments on the Savoy’s guest and staff lists.
