The Brown Lady

Madame Célesta as Cynthia

It's been a question -- and the center of a problem -- for scholars of English literature for many years, and the subject of a key point in Toni Morrison's extended essay Playing in the Dark:Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Now, thanks to the remarkable way in which the resources of the Internet are able to marshal the most ephemeral of documents, I believe that I've identified the figure at the center of a key passage in William James's 1897 novel What Maisie Knew.

It takes place at a moment when Maisie, in the company of her then-companion Mrs. Beale, ventures to an exhibition at Earl's Court in London. Previous editors of James have assumed that this was set in 1887, the year of an "American Exhibition" there that featured examples of American industry, and was headlined by Buffalo Bill Cody's original Wild West show. 

And yet, the passage doesn't mention Buffalo Bill or "Indians" -- only that "the place was full of side-shows," alluding to some "great painted posters," after which young Maisie cast her eyes upon something called "The Flowers of the Forest":

"The companions paused before the Flowers of the Forest, a large presentment of bright brown ladies—they were brown all over—in a medium suggestive of tropical luxuriance, and there Maisie dolorously expressed her belief that he would never come at all. Mrs. Beale hereupon, though discernibly disappointed, reminded her that he had not been promised as a certainty—a remark that caused the child to gaze at the Flowers through a blur in which they became more magnificent, yet oddly more confused, and by which moreover confusion was imparted to the aspect of a gentleman who at that moment, in the company of a lady, came out of the brilliant booth. The lady was so brown that Maisie at first took her for one of the Flowers."

This "brown lady" turns out to be the Countess, a somewhat mysterious woman from America who is the latest consort of Maisie's papa -- but who was or were the "Flowers" from out of which she seemed to step?

The answer lies in the programmes to a later exhibition at Earl's Court -- one which, in fact, had just gotten underway as James was working on his novel (which originally appeared in serial form). In 1897, there was held a "Victorian Era Exhibition," a sort of review of the great moments of Victoria's reign to date, and within that exhibit there was a "Costume Design Room" which included painted scenes from an 1847 play, "The Flowers of the Forest," which had featured one Madame Céleste as Cynthia, the heroine of the play. Madame Céleste, as it happens, often portrayed "brown" women, playing characters of almost any ethnicity other than French (as in Hollywood, the theatre made great use of actors who could readily be cast as one of a variety of racial "others"). Handbills for the play included a key subtitle: The Flowers of the Forest: A Gipsy Story.

I'm currently working to see if I can find any record of these designs, made by the prominent theatrical designer J.B. Buckstone -- so that finally, we might know what it was that Maisie saw.