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Horses on the Wall? A Delightful Dickensian Discovery at the V & A

Last summer my husband and I traveled to the UK for a family wedding and combined it with a brief vacation. Having just binge-watched the mini-series Victoria before we left, the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V & A) was a must-see.

Mosaic on the facade of one of the buildings of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The silhouette behind the figures is the profile of the Crystal Palace. Photo by Teresa Rupp.

We were thrilled to discover a small special exhibit in celebration of the bicentennial of both Victoria’s and Albert’s 1819 births entitled “Building the Museum.”1 The exhibit chronicled the role of the Queen and the Prince Consort in the planning of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (also known as the Crystal Palace) and how the V & A grew out of it. We’d just seen the Victoria episode on the Exhibition, so this was perfect. We must have looked interested, because a docent stationed in the gallery came over to us and gave us an impromptu tour.

One of the things we learned was that Henry Cole, who organized the Great Exhibition, was also the first director of what became the V & A. Cole saw the mission of the new museum as educational, and part of that mission was to elevate the taste of the public. To that end, he put on an exhibit in 1852 called the “Gallery of False Principles” that provided both good and bad examples of design (the press referred to it as the “Chamber of Horrors”). The “False Principles” included decorating a home with representations of objects rather than the objects themselves. For example, one of the items in Cole’s original exhibit also included in the”Building the Museum” exhibit was a sample of wallpaper printed with a pattern of Gothic architectural ornamentation. This is a “false principle” because the papered wall doesn’t really have Gothic ornamentation on it but only a printed representation of it.

”False Principle #31: Imitation of Architecture.” Wallpaper sample exhibited in Henry Cole’s 1852 exhibit, ”Gallery of False Principles.” Photo by Teresa Rupp.

Another example, our docent explained, would be a flowered carpet. At that point I interrupted her, saying, “It’s just like that scene in Dickens’ Hard Times where the government official tells the students that they shouldn’t have flowered carpets or wallpaper with horses on it!” The docent responded excitedly, “Wallpaper with horses was one of the examples!”

I teach Hard Times every fall in my modern European history class. The novel, first published in 1854, is set in Coketown, a fictional northern English industrial city. Hard Times opens with a scene in a school founded by Mr Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy industrialist who believes in teaching only Facts.2 Gradgrind, along with an unnamed visiting government official (referred to only as “the gentleman”), is visiting a class taught by Mr M’Choakumchild.3 The gentleman asks the students,

“Would you paper a room with representations of horses?”

Some say yes, some no, whereupon the gentleman explains,

“Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—in fact? Do you? . . . Why then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.”

In case the children didn’t get the point, he poses another question:

“Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?”

One of the students, Sissy Jupe, daughter of a circus clown, says she would. When the gentleman asks her why, she says,

“If you please, Sir, I am very fond of flowers.”

“And that is why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?”

“It wouldn’t hurt them, Sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, Sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy—”

“Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,” cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. “That’s it! You are never to fancy.”

This opening scene sets up the conflict between Fact (represented by Gradgrind and his school) and Fancy (represented by Sissy and the circus) that drives the rest of the novel. (Spoiler alert: Fancy wins.)

I was very pleased to be able to show my students this fall the photo I took of the objectionable Gothic wallpaper. I couldn’t take a photo of the equestrian wallpaper, as it wasn’t included in the “Building the Museum” exhibit, but I have since found it in their collection.

”False Principles 35.” Wallpaper sample exhibited as part of Henry Cole’s ”Gallery of False Principles” and satirized by Charles Dickens in Hard Times. Photograph © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

I had always assumed that the nameless government inspector who intimidates poor Sissy Jupe was exaggerated to the point of absurdity in order for Dickens to make his point about the weaknesses of an education based solely on Fact. I was stunned, but delighted, to learn that the character was not an exaggeration but was, if you’ll pardon the expression, based on fact—a thinly disguised version of Henry Cole. The inspector’s closing remarks could easily have been spoken by Cole:

“You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,” said the gentleman, “for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colors) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.”

Having served his philosophical and narrative purpose, the gentleman from the government with the limited taste in wallpaper does not appear again in the novel. Maybe Dickens didn’t give a name to the character because he knew that 1850s readers would recognize him as Henry Cole–and now you can, too.

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Music and History, National Anthem Edition: Italy

Almost all the anthems I’ve blogged about so far are quite well known. If I had given a quiz, asking my loyal readers to identify the anthems of Great Britain, France, and Germany, probably most of you could have come up with “God Save the Queen,” the “Marseillaise,” and “Deutschland über alles.” You might even have been able to whistle the tunes. Russia would have presented more of a challenge, but my husband, who is neither a historian nor a musician, hummed it easily—“I know it from the Olympics,” he said. But what about Italy? I had no idea, and I am a historian, a musician, and the granddaughter of Italian immigrants. Unless you’re a big international soccer fan and watch the Azzurri play, you probably don’t know it either. 1

The story of the Italian national anthem has many parallels to the story of the German anthem, because nineteenth-century Italian history has parallels to nineteenth-century German history. Both Italy and Germany consisted of multiple states at the beginning of the nineteenth century; both had unification movements inspired by political nationalism and dominated by liberal republicans; both succeeded in creating unified nation-states by 1871, and both those national states were formed as monarchies rather than republics.

Just as the “Deutschlandlied” grew out of the campaign for German unification, so did the song that became the Italian national anthem. It is variously known as “Il canto degli Italiani” (“The Song of the Italians,” another parallel to “Deutschlandlied,” the “Song of Germany”), the “Inno di Mameli” (“Mameli’s Hymn,” named for its lyricist, Goffredo Mameli), or “Fratelli d’Italia,” named for its opening words (“Brothers of Italy”). Mameli wrote the lyrics in 1847; they were then set to music by Michele Novaro. It was used as a rallying-cry throughout the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian modernization and unification. But when the Italian nation-state was created in 1861, it was not the republic that Mameli and Novaro had dreamed of but a monarchy, under King Vittore Emanuele II of Sardinia, from the royal house of Savoy.2

Vittorio Emanuele II, first king of united Italy.

Just like the “Deutschlandlied,” “Fratelli d’Italia” was thought to be too closely associated with republicanism and was rejected by the new Kingdom of Italy in favor of a royal anthem, the “Marcia Reale,” or “Royal March.” The lyrics of the Marcia Reale are actually surprisingly liberal—lots of references to libertà, for example. But it is nonetheless unmistakably a royal anthem: the opening words are “Viva il re” (“Long live the king”).

Allow me to pause for a genealogical interlude. When my mother was growing up, her maternal grandmother told her she was related to the house of Savoy and that she therefore had “blue blood.” This backfired on my mother when she told the kids at school, and a boy chased her around the playground trying to stick her with a pin so he could see for himself. When she retired, she did some genealogy, hoping to trace her royal lineage, and found instead that her ancestors listed their professione as contadino or contadina (that is, “peasant”).

On her father’s side, there was no claim of blue blood. Her father, Giulio Valentino, was born in 1895, the youngest of 13 children. One of his older sisters was named Italia. I’d love to know exactly when she was born to see if, as I suspect, she was named in honor of Italian unification. This will be one of my retirement projects.

Back to the anthems. Again like Germany, Italy became a republic after defeat in a world war (World War II for Italy instead of World War I). And like the German Weimar Republic in 1922, the new Italian Republic created in 1946 replaced their royal anthem with the older song from the reunification era.3 As I pointed out above, “Fratelli d’Italia” is much less well-known than “Deutschland uber alles.” I think this is due to the relative weakness of Italian nationalism. Italians even today are likely to feel more loyalty to their region or city than to the nation as a whole. They even have a name for it—campanilismo, or attachment to the campanile, or bell tower, of one’s hometown. My grandparents, both Italian Catholics who came to the US as children, were considered by their families to have a mixed marriage because she was from northern Italy while he was from the south. So it’s not surprising that hardly anyone knows “Fratelli d’Italia.” Or maybe it’s just that Haydn was a better composer than Novaro.

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Music and History, National Anthem Edition: Germany

National anthems, as the name implies, are an expression of nationalism. Cultural nationalism is the belief that one’s own nation, or Volk, to use the nineteenth-century terminology, is unique and should be celebrated. Picture children in folk costumes dancing folk dances and singing folk tunes at a folk festival. A political nationalist believes that the most natural form of political organization is the nation-state. If you don’t have one, the true patriot must work to get one, either by breaking up a multi-national state or by unifying many states into one nation. Unification into a single nation-state was the dream of both German and Italian nationalists in the nineteenth century, and this process influenced the developments of both national anthems. Germany today, Italy to follow!

While Russia’s national anthem changed with every change of regime, the anthem of Germany has remained surprisingly constant. The national anthem of Germany is the Deutschlandlied (“Song of Germany”), also known, from its original opening words, as “Deutschland über alles.” First adopted in 1922, it remained as the German national anthem through the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, postwar West Germany, and the post-cold war re-united Germany.

“Deutschland über alles” is a national anthem like the Marseillaise, but it originated as a royal anthem, and not for Germany. The tune was composed by Franz Josef Haydn in 1797 to celebrate the birthday of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. Haydn had visited London in 1794-95 (one of the trips for which the London Symphonies were written) and had been impressed by hearing “God Save the King.” Since in 1797 Austria was at war with revolutionary France, it seemed like a good time to have an Austrian equivalent to Britain’s anthem. Haydn’s composition was given lyrics by Lorenz Leopold Haschka and titled “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser,” or “God Save Emperor Francis”; it is also known as the Kaiserhymne. Haydn used the same melody again in one of my favorite string quartets, Opus 76 no. 3, now nicknamed the Emperor or Kaiser Quartet. The Kaiserhymne served as the anthem of the Austrian Empire until its dissolution in 1918.

Portrait of Franz Josef Haydn, by Thomas Hardy

Meanwhile, a liberal German nationalist poet, August Heinrich von Fallersleben, wrote new words for Haydn’s tune to promote German unification. In this context, “Deutschland über alles” refers to placing a united Germany over its constituent parts, not necessarily over other nations. The new combination of Haydn’s music and Fallersleben’s words was sung by the liberal revolutionaries of 1848. But when Germany was finally unified in 1871 as an empire ruled by the Kaiser, the new government found the song to be too identified with liberal republicanism and instead chose a German version of, you guessed it, “God Save the Queen.”

When, like the Austrian Empire, the German Empire ceased to exist after World War I, its replacement, known as the Weimar Republic, chose the Deutschlandlied to reinforce its break with the recent imperial past and its connection to the earlier 19th-century liberal republicanism (liberal in the 19th-century sense and republican in its constitutional sense of a non-monarchical elected government).

When the Weimar Republic fell in its turn in 1933, the Nazis kept the anthem, but now the words “Deutschland über alles” took on a different meaning. The Nazis also paired the Deutschlandlied with the song of the Nazi party, the “Horst Wessel Song.” After World War II, the new West German government stuck with the Deutschlandlied, but without the problematic first verse, with its Nazi associations, or the second, which sounds like a sexist drinking song. West Germans sang only the third verse, which celebrates unity, justice, and freedom (Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit). Although East Germany had its own anthem from 1949-1990, Auferstanden aus Ruinen (“Risen from the Ruins”), after 1991, the third verse of the Deutschlandlied was adopted by reunited Germany, emblematic of the dominant position of the former West Germany in the post-Cold War era.

Next: do you know the Italian national anthem?