This week offers the last chance to see the British Library’s free exhibition “Victorian Entertainments: There Will Be Fun.” Focusing on light-hearted Victorian diversions, including pantomime, magic, circus and comedy, one of my favourite items on display is a drawing made by an automaton called Zoë, built by John Nevil Maskelye (previously mentioned in connection with public toilets). There certainly will be fun, but there are also be powerful political currents running just beneath the surface.
Both Zoë and another of Maskelyne’s creations, Psycho, were tied to the politics of the British Empire. Psycho, first exhibited in 1875, was a card-playing automaton, a mechanical man capable of engaging in games with a member of the audience and also of demonstrating card tricks. Zoë, who made her debut 1877, was a robotic girl capable of writing as well as drawing simple sketches. For his performances, Psycho rested on a glass support, sitting at a table with a number of playing cards arranged before him, dressed as a “Hindoo.” Zoë, who appeared to be a young girl, sat on a pedestal in front of an easel, dressed as a Greek and poised wth her pen, ready to perform. Maskelyne would join the automata on stage, and then guide the audience through an exhibition of their skills. As Kainoa Harbottle, an academic and coin magician, has commented, Psycho and Zoë represent a layered portrayal of Western control over the exotic:
Together the two devices made up an automaton empire: silent Oriental constructs whose purpose of existence was to serve, entertain, and ultimately perform a Western fantasy of the mysterious Other. The British conjurer is both their inventor and conqueror — the creator of impressive devices and a tamer of their unknown powers.
Zoë’s performances would sometimes take this subjugation one step further. For one of her demonstrations, a member of the audience would choose a well known person from a list of over 200 names. Zoë would then draw a recognisable portrait of the celebrity. As the list included political figures of the time, such as Disraeli and Gladstone (each Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on multiple occasions) Zoë was sometimes compelled to draw the very people who perpetuated the Empire that repressed the very people she and Psycho represented.
In his performances with Zoë and Psycho, Maskelyne gave London audiences an enjoyable experience exploring the mysteries of the exotic. But he also allowed them to savour their encounter safe in the knowledge that the intriguing Other was being kept in its ‘proper’ place, enslaved to the will a respectable English performer, within the ordered confines of the British Empire.
