"Stephens, Fishers, and the Court of the "Sultan of Zanzibar

Sketches from Life Stephens, Fishers, and the Court of the "Sultan of Zanzibar": New Evidence from Virginia Stephen Woolf's Childhood Panthea Reid While a student at the University of Cambridge, beginning in 1902, Adrian Stephen became a friend of Horace de Veré Cole, a wealthy and often outrageous jokester, assumed to be the mastermind behind two famous pranks. The first ruse in 1905 exposed the provincialism of Cambridge's municipal officials, as they were duped into giving a tour of Cambridge to a supposed entourage of the Sultan of Zanzibar. The second prank in 1910 exposed the vulnerability and naivete of the British Navy, as the officers of the H.M.S. Dreadnought were duped into giving a tour of their flag ship to the supposed court of the Emperor of Abyssinia. The Zanzibarian and Abyssinian entourages both included Horace Cole and Adrian Stephen. The second also included Duncan Grant and Virginia Stephen. Both escapades were improbably and outrageously successful. The second has fascinated readers for nearly ninety years, and feminists in particular have read the frequently reproduced photograph of Virginia Stephen—later Woolf—in black face and a beard as a harbinger of later assaults on the patriarchy.1 But Virginia's iconoclasm long antedated the 1910 hoax, as did her brother Adrian's. Unpublished family documents in fact suggest that, emboldened by Virginia's example and Stephen family habits of rivalry and mockery, Adrian, rather than Horace Cole, conceived of the 1905 hoax. The exposition for this drama dates from the childhood of the Stephen siblings: Vanessa (b. 1879), Thoby (b. 1880), Virginia (b. 1882), and Adrian (b. 1883). From the age of nine, Virginia, Biography 21.3 (Summer 1998) © Biographical Research Center Reid, "Sultan of Zanzibar" 329 with the two older Stephens, produced a family newspaper called the Hyde Park Gate News. There passages apparently authored by Virginia made frequent fun of Adrian's babyishness ; for example, "though Master Adrian is nine in years he is five in intellect." Adrian was resentful and also jealous over the acclaim the paper brought Virginia from their father Leslie Stephen, the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, and from other eminent men of letters. In 1892, Adrian threatened to begin his own rival paper, but Virginia so effectively ridiculed his literary pretensions that he gave up in disgrace.2 As Leslie Stephen favored his precocious literary daughter, Julia Prinsep Jackson Stephen held a "special sentiment" for little Adrian. He was her last child; he craved compensation for little Virginia's jokes about him; and he needed protection from Leslie Stephen's disappointment in his intellect and promise (see L. Stephen 2: 448,423). Both Adrian and Virginia craved maternal nurturing because Julia spent an inordinate amount of time away from 22 Hyde Park Gate, London, caring for members of her own family, especially her father in his last illness and then her invalid mother, Maria Jackson, in Brighton. Also residing in Brighton was Julia's older sister Mary.3 With her husband Herbert Fisher, tutor to the Prince of Wales, Mary had eleven children. To the rambunctious young Stephens and their father, the innumerable Fisher cousins embodied stodginess, good manners, and competition for Julia Stephen's time. Little Virginia formed a lifelong prejudice against Brighton because Julia left home to stay there so often, and because, when the Stephen children visited, they were subjected to the company of their priggish Fisher cousins. No doubt to his wife's irritation, Leslie Stephen endorsed his children's antipathy to Brighton and the Fishers. In 1885, Leslie dismissed the "pecuniary worries" Herbert Fisher was experiencing thanks to his large family, and his sedate, but not especially lucrative employment. Leslie remarked that if his brother-in-law "wants to make money why does he not write a Schoolbook?" (2:324). In 1891, Leslie wrote to Julia in Brighton, where she was staying with her mother: "After lunch I walked in the gardens with Ginia [Virginia] & Adrian. We met Hervey & Cordelia [Fisher] & on our way home met Herbert [H. A. L.] Fisher. The little ones carefully avoided their cousins"— apparently with their father's encouragement.4 330 Biography 21.3 (Summer 1998) By

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