Tea at Trianon: "Napoleon Gomersal"

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

"Napoleon Gomersal"

From Age of Revolutions:

The announcement of Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte in Napoleon, Sir Ridley Scott’s upcoming epic historical drama, sparked a round of the online discourse that major film casting news inevitably does these days. Whether Phoenix’s performance satisfies critics, professional or anonymous, or even wins him another Oscar, it will be a tall order for him to rival the portrayal of Bonaparte that shaped an entire generation’s image of the first Emperor of the French.

Depending on your preference, age, nationality, and cultural upbringing, you might be nodding, thinking of Albert Dieudonné, Marlon Brando, Vladislav Strzhelchik, Rod Steiger, or, perhaps, Terry Camilleri, but I am not referring to any of those actors. I am referring to a man and a performance last witnessed over 170 years ago. Please allow me to introduce Edward Alexander Gomersal, the man who was, for thirty years in the mid-nineteenth century, the celebrated and unparalleled representation of Bonaparte for theatre-going Britons.

I first encountered Gomersal while researching Who Owned Waterloo? Battle, Memory, & Myth in British History, 1815-1852. I came across an illustration of him as Bonaparte in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Theatre and Performance Collections which brought to my attention the hippodrama that made him famous, J. H. Amherst’s The Battle of Waterloo. Gomersal, the son of a British army officer, had been destined for a career in banking before abandoning it for the stage. He was in his mid-thirties when The Battle of Waterloo debuted at Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre in London on April 19, 1824 and became an instant hit.[i] In fact, to call The Battle of Waterloo a hit is an understatement. Its opening run lasted 144 consecutive performances – the entirety of the 1824 season, which was by no means a given in London’s cutthroat theatrical scene – and drew at least a quarter of a million people to Astley’s. The next 45 years saw regular successful revivals, with its final recorded performance in June of 1869.[ii] In 1864, The Times declared it one of the two most successful pieces “ever brought out at Astley’s.”[iii] (Read more.)