The Dreadnought Hoax portrait as an affront to the Edwardian age

Abstract

In February of 1910, an early incarnation of the now notorious Bloomsbury group of London intellectuals hoodwinked the British Admiralty and the crew of the Dreadnought battleship into thinking they were an Abyssinian royal delegation. Their minstrel-esque disguises afforded them an official reception on the ship and caused heated controversy when, days later, the troupe was exposed as imposters. This article examines the prank from the point of view of its photographic record. It argues that the group portrait of the party is key to excavating the audacity of the hoaxers, uncovering the genealogy of their costuming and understanding the problematic nature of racial knowledge in Edwardian England. These conclusions cannot be drawn, nor the photograph’s value measured, by examining the image in isolation. Understanding the photograph’s sensation as a tool for documenting the hoax, identifying the imposters and exposing the female member of the party requires a ‘sight’ that extended beyond the static frame to the complex and evolving visual culture of the time.

Keywords:

• Photography
• masquerade
• Edwardian Britain
• Bloomsbury
• imperialism

Acknowledgement

This article is dedicated to MJD Roberts, a brilliant historian, generous mentor and with whom I first gaped at the National Portrait Gallery’s Dreadnought Hoax portrait. I am sorry I did not finish in time. With special thanks especially to Martyn Jolly as well as Hsu-Ming Teo, Elizabeth Reid, Nic Peterson, and my anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. Stephen’s account of the hoax published in 1936 described the photograph being taken in the evening after the prank when the party was back in London. The transcript of Woolf’s speech about the hoax given at the Rodmell Women’s Institute in 1940 described Cole commissioning a photographer the next morning to capture the ‘princes’ and their chaperons. Irrespective of whose recollection is accurate, it is safe to say that the image was resolved after the hoax was concluded and thus was intended to boastfully celebrate its success. (See Stephen 1936, 34; Woolf 1940, 18).

2. ‘Virginia Woolf: Art, Life, Vision’, National Portrait Gallery, London, 10 July–26 October 2014. A digital archive of this exhibition, including audio room tours, is available at: http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/virginiawoolf/home.php The author of this paper did see the physical show.

4. Green (1998), Autograph ABP (2014), see exhibition information online at http://autograph-abp.co.uk/exhibitions/black-chronicles-ii; Autograph ABP (2016), see exhibition information online at: http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/blackchronicles/display.php.

5. Certainly, during 1909 Duncan Grant designed posters for the Artists’ Suffragette League and in 1910 Woolf volunteered to address and seal envelopes for the People’s Suffrage Federation. However, overall Grant and Woolf had ambivalent relationships with organised feminism, taking issue with suffragettes’ singular concentration on franchise. Moreover, they both joined the hoaxing party in the later stages and thus were peripheral to its design and planning. See: Black (2004), 36, 37. Delap (2011), 97, Stephen (1936), 17.