Beschreibung
Manuscript in black ink on three pages of folded letter paper, last page blank, watermark: BUDGEN & WILMOTT 1809, 22,7 x 18,5 cm (8.8 x 7.3 inches), (slightly age-toned and stained, light folds slightly rubbed, a tiny hole in the lower outer corner). Possibly the earliest manuscript, mentioning Saartje or Sarah Baartman, known as the "Hottentot Venus" who was as a victim of contemporary scientific racism exhibited in England and Paris from 1810 to 1815 as a freak, believed to be related closer to apes than to humans. The letter was written in Cape Town in late 1809 by Alexander Dunlop, a military doctor, who some months later exported Sarah to London, where he managed her shows. - Dear Sir. I wrote you a few days since respecting the Wine which will be sent from here, as soon as the Embargo is taken off from this Port, which has been occasioned by some unpleasant news received from India. A British Missionary who has been travelling for eleven years past in the interior of Africa has just returned to his place, and amongst other Curiosities, after great perseverance and infinity of Trouble, he succeeded in killing that most rare and almost unknown animal the Camelopardalis, and being a man of some taste he concluded that the skin would be of inestimable value to the Naturalist, and was at the expence [sic!] of bringing it the distance of Three Thousand Miles beyond the borders of this Colony to the Cape. He married into a Dutch family with whom I am most intimately acquainted, by which means I was so happy as to procure it. It is in the highest state of preservation, and shall spare no pains in keeping it so until I reach England. What renders it still more valuable, the bones of the Head and the hoofs are complete; when stuffed, it will stand upward of Twenty feet high: my motives for thus acquainting you, are, that neither my intention nor profession will enable me to retain it, I should therefore be obliged to you to take any opportunity of making the circumstance known to your numerous acquaintance, as perhaps amongst some of whom you may probably meet with a purchaser for me.P.S. I have had some idea of late of bringing with me if I should not incur the appellation of a Shewman, a complete animal of another Species, to wit, a Female Hottentot, the external conformation of whose body exceeds all human comprehension; indeed I was advised by my late worthy friend Mr. Cassels, Kings Advocate. Sarah Baartman is today known for being showed at freak shows in the early 19th century and racist abuse of her body for almost two centuries after her death, when parts of her corpse and a cast of her naked body were used as museum exhibits. Sarah was born in a Khoekhoe ethnic group of Gonaqua close to the Gamtoos River Valley in South Africa, either in the early 1770s or as late as 1789. Although never a slave, Saartje Bartman (Baartman, Bartmann), as she was known with a Dutch version of her name, served to white colonialists since her young age and eventually moved to Cape Town, where she settled in a slum and worked as a badly paid servant to Hendrik and Anna Cesars, both Free Black, whose ancestors possibly arrived as slaves from East and South Asia. In her youth, Sarah gave birth to two or three children, all of which died. One was a result of a relationship with a military drummer, as the other one or two could be conceived in much rougher consequences, not unusual for the poor neighborhoods of Cape Town. Due to a tough financial situation and unpaid debts Hendrik Cesars, eager to earn extra money, started showing Sarah as a "Hottentot Venus" after the British takeover of the Cape in 1806, at the Military Hospital for a small fee to the patients, thirsty to see the voluptuous curves and non-European features of indigenous women of South Africa, which they could until then only admire through somehow exaggerated images in contemporary populistic natural history books. According to Anna, "Sara showed herself to those "who wished to. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 70514
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