Virtual environments in the nineteenth century: the spectacle of old London

ABSTRACT

This article considers the appeal of immersive recreations of old London for nineteenth-century audiences. When discussed by scholars now, they are most often presented as conduits of official ideology engaged in promoting a triumphalist narrative of bourgeois ascendance. Here, I explore their appeal to popular audiences, arguing that they presented a more ambivalent set of meanings than is generally recognised and highlighting instances in which the beholders’ experience departed from the stated intentions of the makers or organisers. The article draws out the pervasiveness of the riverside motif, which I argue carried a subtext of yearning for a lost harmony between urban and natural environments in the modern metropolis. The immersive illusionism of these reconstructions has been associated with the idea of “passive” spectatorship in which the viewer is enthralled and their critical faculties dulled or immobilised. I argue against this that the immediacy of old London attractions allowed them to become part of the dream geography of modern spectators severed from their own past. As “mind’s eye” images, they functioned as phantasmagoric interstitial spaces that could be called upon to inform and transform the real urban environment, and in which emotions such as loss, trauma and desire could be worked out through the free play of the imagination.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical reconstructions
• spectacle
• nineteenth-century theatre
• popular spectatorship
• visual culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The 350^th anniversary of the Great Fire of London in (2016) was the occasion for several spectacular and immersive recreations of the pre-fire city, ranging from the interactive attraction “Great Fire 1666” by the gaming company Minecraft hosted by the Museum of London to a three-dimensional 120 ft wooden model by the artist David Best, assembled on the river Thames and set ablaze. I have not sought to connect the spectacle of the Great Fire in the nineteenth-century attractions discussed here to these twenty-first century projects as the latter seem to deliberately resist the immersive qualities of their predecessors. Virtual reality reconstructions such as those by the German company TimeRide and a virtual reality experience of the assassination of the Duc de Guise presented at the Chateau of Blois in 2017 are more in the spirit of the entertainments discussed here and demonstrate the ongoing appeal of immersive historical entertainments.

2. Drawings of the moving panorama for the 1855 Princess’s Theatre production designed by W. Gordon and others are in the Prints & Drawings dept. V&A. Hawes Craven also designed a moving panorama for Henry Irving’s production of Henry VIII at the Lyceum Theatre in 1892. Drawings relating to it are held in the Prints and Drawings dept. V&A, box DT35A.

3. For example, William James Lucas' The Traitor’s Gate; or the Tower of London in 1553, performed at the Royal Pavilion theatre in 1834, which included the panoramic view of the sixteenth-century city.

4. Reviews compared the Poecilorama to Daguerre’s invention, which had opened its London branch in Regent’s Park in 1823 (“Poecilorama” 1827).

5. Publicity poster, British Library, Evan. 2722.

6. Publicity poster, British Library, Evan. 2722; time of feeding of the animals given in Morning Advertiser, 20 August 1844.

7. Lithograph published by Webb, 1844. See Warwick Wroth (1907).

8. Crosby’s notes and drawings recording this expedition are in the London Metropolitan Archive, Special Collections, SC/GL/CRO.

9. Henry Holl, Wapping Old Stairs!; or the Child of a Tar, first performance 7 July 1834, R.P. M.; Henry Pettitt, A Sailor’s Knot, first performance, Drury Lane, 5 September (1891).

10. “[R]econstruisez-le dans votre pensée … Et puis, comparez;” “une forêt,” “les alvéoles dans la ruche,” “des vagues d”une mer””cette richesse de lignes, cette opulence de détails, cette diversité d’aspects, ce je ne sais quoi de grandiose dans le simple et d’inattendu dans le beau qui caractérise un damier” (Hugo 1831).

11. This invitation to imaginatively compare the same location is also in evidence in old London plays; for instance, Act I, Scene 2 of Fitzball’s highwayman drama Paul Clifford is set “Outside Covent Garden Theatre, at Night,” so that spectators could see on stage the theatre in which they were seated as it would have been 50 years previously.

12. “The spectator also acts … She observes, selects, compares, interprets. She links what she sees to a host of other things that she has seen on other stages, in other kinds of place. She composes her own poem with the elements of the poem before her. She participates in the performance by refashioning it in her own way … They are thus both distant spectators and active interpreters of the spectacle offered to them” (Rancière 2009, 13).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council AH/R007101/1 [AH/R007101/1].

Notes on contributors

Patricia Smyth

Patricia Smyth is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. Her research interests are in nineteenth-century art, theatre, and spectatorship. Her book Paul Delaroche: Painting and Popular Spectacle was published by Liverpool University Press in 2022. She was the Ampersand Foundation/Association for Art History Art Historian in Residence, 2022-23. She is co-editor of the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film.