the dreadnought hoax of febraury 7

8/13/2019 The Dreadnought Hoax of Febraury 7

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The Dreadnought Hoax of Febraury 7, 1910: Virginia WoolfPranks the Royal Navy in Drag and a Turban

By: Maria Popova

How a small group of literary twenty- somethings pulled off the most daring hoax in history.

On February 7, 1910, six friends pulled off one of the greatest pranks in history on the Royal Navy, no less. Among them wasVirginia Woolf at the time still Virginia Stephen, anunpublished twenty-eight-year-old aspiring author wearingdrag and a turban. Its a remarkable story about privacy andsecuri ty, about poking fun at societys ideas about bravery andauthority, and perhaps above all about how relative our moralcodes for justice and injustice are. Its also a timeless fable of

how, even a century before the age of clickbait, the popular pressthat claims Truth is its currency is complicit in the success of anyhoax.

To this day, the only first-hand account of the prank is TheDreadnought Hoax ( public library ), written by Adrian Stephen,Virginias brother and a member of the Bloomsbury Group, who co -initiated the operation alongwith the famed British prankster and poet William Horace de Vere Cole. The slim memoir wasoriginally published in 1936 by Hogarth Press, co-founded by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, andreprinted in 1983 with an introduction by Virginias nephew and official biographer QuentinBell, with whom she had collaborated on a charming family newspaper and who went on to

become a cultural critic in his own right. Bell writes of the hoax:It was a nine days wonder; it was noticed and embroidered in the press, it resulted in questions inParliament, it is said to have led to a revision of the security regulations of the Royal Navy. Itwas a source of endless merriment and some i ndignation. The only merit of the plan, in so faras there was a plan, lay in its pure lunatic audacity.
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Virginia Woolf in drag as Ethiopian royalty

But a few things make the story particularly noteworthy, besides the disarmingly entertainingimage of Woolf in turban, beard, and brownface and the fact that it brought the eventually-famous author her very first contact with the national press. It is, above all, a curious parable of

moral psychology and how we rationalize our subjective sense of justice and injustice. It alsosparks a strange dual awareness of, on the one hand, how hoaxes today are so much easier to propagate thanks to the churnalism of the social web and, on the other, how impossible it would be to pull off something like this in our present era of TSA-style mega-security. (Even Bell,decades before 9/11, writes wryly: We have all grown more solemn and serious and securityconscious and a part of the fun went out of life after [World War I].)

The story itself is an absolute hoot. It all began in 1905, when Adrian Stephen and Horace Colewere attending Cambridge and, out of boredom, decided to play a little prank. Their initial ideawas to acquire some uniforms, impersonate German officers, and march a detachment of troopsacross the border into France. It was partly pure fun, partly political statement. Stephen writes:

It had seemed to me ever since I was very young, just as I imagine it had seemed to Cole, thatanyone who took up an attitude of authority over anyone else was necessarily also someone whooffered a leg for everyone else to pull, and of all the institutions in the world that offered a legfor everyones pulling the most ob vious was the German Army.


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'The Sultan of Zanzibar' and his suite. From left to right: Adrian Stephen, Bowen Colthurst, Horace Cole, Leland Buxton, 'Drummer' Howard

But Cole countered with an idea that was easier and cheaper to carry out: Since the Sul tan ofZanzibar happened to be in England at the time, the duo decided to impersonate him and pay astate visit to Cambridge. They reasoned it was a bad idea to hoax the University, fearingexpulsion, so they deemed it safer to hoax the Mayor of Cambridge instead. But because photosof the Sultan had appeared in the newspapers and neither of them looked anything like him, theydecided instead to impersonate his imaginary uncle. They got full makeup and costume at atheatrical shop in London and took the train back to Cambridge, first sending a telegram to the
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Mayor warning him to expect the Sultans uncle. Once in Cambridge, they were formallyreceived by the Mayor and even accompanied him on a visit to a charity bazaar, where Cole, asthe Sultans uncle, proceeded to make enormous purchases at all the stalls proof that pranksare only ever the domain of the privileged.

The hoax was a success so much so that the Daily Mail ran a story about it, whichunfortunately sent an investigator on Stephen and Col es trail. Their identities were eventuallyexposed and they narrowly escaped being expelled from Cambridge.

But their appetites for mischief were now whetted.

It took another five years for their next adventure, but once the perfect opportunity presenteditself, the great Dreadnought Hoax commenced.

The idea was first suggested to Cole by a naval officer, who wanted to make a point about thehonor of the Navy, but also secretly wished to play a practical joke on another officer, who

happened to be a cousin of Stephens and the chief command officer on the battleship HMS Dreadnought , the flagship of the prestigious Channel Fleet under Admiral Sir WilliamWordsworth Fishers command. The idea was this:

Cole, Stephen, and a troupe of hoaxers they recruited which included British soldier andauthor Anthony Buxton, painter and textile designer Duncan Grant, barrister Cecil Guy Ridley,and Virginia Woolf would present themselves as the Emperor of Abyssinia (modern-dayEthiopia) and his posse and pay a royal visit to inspect the battleship. Cole would pose as ayoung gentleman from the Foreign Office, Stephen as the interpreter, Buxton as the Emperor,and the rest as his royal suite. Stephen recounts the accouterments:

Horace Cole had just to wear a top-hat and tail coat, but the Emperor and his suite, includingVirginia, had to have their faces blackened, to wear false beards and mustaches and elaborateEaster robes. I was merely disguised with a false beard, a mustache, and a little sunburn powder.I wore a bowler hat and a great coat and looked, I am afraid, like a seedy commercial traveler.


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'The Emperor of Abyssinia' and his suite. From left to right: Virginia Stephen (Virginia Woolf), Duncan Grant, Horace Cole, Anthony Buxton (seated), Adrian Stephen, Guy Ridley

And so they proceeded just as before: They sent the Admiral a telegram to expect them and setoff. On the train, Cole attempted to teach Stephen a few words of Swahili the only EastAfrican language they could find, never mind that it wasnt spoken in Abyssinia. Stephen couldhardly remember more than two words but for a taste of how deftly newspapers manipulatethe news he recounts that several later reported that the group spoke fluent Abyssinian.

Once they disembarked the train, a naval officer in full uniform greeted them and the hoax thus began. Stephen speaks to a curious tendency of human nature, which shares a foundation withthe psychology of trust and the rationalization of dishonesty :

By the time we reached the Dreadnought , the expedition had become for me at any rate almostan affair of every day. It was hardly a question any longer of a hoax. We were almost acting thetruth. Everyone was expecting us to act as the Emperor and his suite, and it would have beenextremely difficult not to do so and we almost, I think, believed in the hoax ourselves.

Still, the dangers of being exposed began rolling in almost immediately. An unexpected onecame when Stephen realized that the captain of the ship was someone he knew: They both

belonged to a small club that took country walks on Sundays, and they had spent whole daystogether on several occasions. But thanks to the naval officers proverbial tact and theircordiality, Stephen wasnt examined closely enough to be found out, so the inspection of the ship

proceeded.
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'The Emperor of Abyssinia' and his suite. From left to right: Virginia Stephen (Virginia Woolf), Duncan Grant, Adrian Stephen, Anthony Buxton, Guy Ridley, Horace Cole

A second hazard emerged when the Admiral asked Stephen to translate something about thefleets use for the Emperor, at which point Stephens non -grasp of non-Swahili paralyzed himfor a moment. But he recovered swiftly thanks to his education, as he points out with thedelightful self-derision that elite schooling tends to engender:

I dont find it easy to speak fluent gibberish impromptu. . . . I must somehow produce somethingthat would not be too jerky, and too implausible. After a pause I began again as follows: Tahli

bussor ahbat tahl aesque miss. Erraema, flee t use and so on. My language may have soundeda bit odd, but at any rate I could be fluent enough. When I was a boy I spent years on what iscalled a classical education, and now I found a use for it. It was the habit in the middle forms ofmy school to learn by heart the fourth book of Virgils Aeneid as repetition I was able,therefore, to repeat whole stretches of it, and I knew a good deal of Homer in the same way. Iwas provided by my education, then, with a fine repertory of nonsense and did not have to fall

back entirely on my own invention. I had to take care that neither the Latin nor the Greek should be recognized so I broke up the words and so mispronounced them that probably they would

have escaped notice even of the best scholar. The quotation that I started with by the way is fromthe Aeneid, Book IV, Line 437.

Buxton, meanwhile, was also very quick in picking up some of Stephens phrases and usingthem in his replies as they continued to tour the ship, inspecting the equipment and the c utting-edge wireless room, the Navys pride and joy, which Stephen continued to duly describe to theEmperor in a mixture of Homer and Virgil.


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Another difficulty arose when the officers, in their extreme hospitality, insisted that theAbyssinians eat and drink at a lavish lunch. The hoaxers, worried that their already deterioratingmakeup would falter Duncans mustache was beginning to peel off, Stephen notes cleverly abated disaster by saying that the royal family can only touch food prepared in certainways. They were equally cunning when a budding breeze and drizzle threatened their makeup.

Stephen, with diplomatic subtleness, mentioned to the captain the disparity between the heat ofAbyssinian climate and the chill of England. The captain took the hint immediately and escortedthe group downstairs.

H.M.S. Dreadnought, 1906-1920

Still, even knee-deep in this epic prank, the hoaxers had a sense of right and wrong when it cameto how far they would go. When the Admiral insisted a military salute for the Emperor, whichrequired that the ship fire its enormous guns, Stephen thought of how much work the cleaning ofthe guns would require later and thought it too much of a shame to cause such unnecessarytrouble, so he refused the salute, passing it off as a grand gesture of benevolence on behalf ofthe Emperor.

The group spent the rest of the day on the ship the hoax had been a success. On the train back,they devoured their dinner still in costume, thinking that the adventure was over. They hadagreed not to tell the newspapers. (Cue in another reminder of how different things were beforethe age of the social web and ubiquitous smartphone cameras.) But they hadnt anticipated whathappened next. Stephen recounts:

We had a photograph taken of ourselves in our fancy dress as a memento, and one day walkingin the street I saw this reproduced on the poster of (I think) the Mirror . I believe that was how I


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first realized that someone had given the story away, and I have never felt the slightest doubt thatit was Cole who did it, and he would certainly never contradict it.

After this we heard nothing more for some time, till one day walking with Cole near the top ofSloane Street, I saw [the Dreadnought captain] and his wife. He saw us, too, and recognized us

and pretended at first to be horrified and then to call a policeman. After a second or two, though,he began to laugh and, in fact, took the whole affair in the best of good humors.

But not all officers did. One Sunday morning several weeks late r, Stephens cousin whom thenaval officers that originated the idea had sought to prank showed up at Stephens house witha grim expression, saying that questions had been asked in Parliament, demanding that Stephenand his co-conspirators apologize, and asking for the names of the others, which Stephensheepishly provided. It turned out, however, that his cousin was less concerned with theParliament than with the word on the street: The hoax had gone viral in the press and onenewspaper published a n interview with a man who claimed to have witnessed the Abyssiniansvisit and alleged that they had used the expression Bunga Bunga. The phrase quickly became a

meme of the pre -meme era it made its way into song lyrics and, to the cousins extremedistress, into the mouths of little boys in the streets of the town, who would shout BungaBunga as a mockery.


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Cartoon published in the Daily Mirror, February 1910

The Navy set out to conduct its own revenge on the hoaxers. Cole received a visit fromStephens cousin and another naval officer, which turned out at least as comical and absurd as

the hoax itself and illustrates, once again, the strange double standards of our moral sense of justice and injustice. Stephen recounts it with the same light-hearted mockery of authority thathad inspired the hoax in the first place:

Cole received them in his sitting room, and they announced that they had come to avenge thehonor of the Navy. They proposed to achieve this by beating him with a cane. In ordinarycircumstances there would probably have been a free fight, and as Cole was pretty formidable,and as his manservant had scented trouble and was waiting outside the door in case he was


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needed, there is no telling who would have won. There was one thing which complicatedmatters, though. Cole was only just recovering from an illness which would have made violentexercise rather a serious danger. This was pointed out to the officers, and it put them in adilemma. This was the third week-end, they said, that they had journeyed up to London toavenge the Navy, and they could not be foiled again. Eventually Cole made a proposal: he would

agree to be beaten if he was allowed to reply in kind. This was agreed to, and the whole partyadjourned to a quiet back street [w here] six ceremonial taps were administered to Coleshindquarters, and six ceremonial taps were administer by him in return.

After this the Navys honor was at least partly cleared, and the two sides shook hands and parted.

How charmingly British indeed.

The next day, Duncan also received a visit. Per Stephens amused account, the officers asked[him] whether he was ill, fearing [perhaps] a repetition of the night before. They were also

befuddled by the fact that Duncan wasnt resisting at all one offi cer remarked, He does not

put up any fight. You cant cane a chap like that. Stephen writes:

In the end it proved that they could cane a chap like that, but only with some difficulty. Mycousin was unable to do it himself, but he could order his inferior officer to do so and the inferiorofficer could carry out his orders. Duncan, then, received two ceremonial taps, also, and the little

party broke up. It so happened, though, that Duncan had only his bedroom slippers on, and nohat, and this so distressed the officers that they pressed him to accept a lift home.

You cant go home like that, they said, but Duncan felt it less embarrassing to travel home bytube.

Of course, the story of the avenge is so absurd that it sounds like a Lewis Carroll tale perhapswe should consider the estimation of myth vs. reality in the context of who is telling the story: amasterful prankster who went on to become a psychoanalyst. But even so, at the end of the bookStephen makes sure his irreverence isnt misinterpreted and writes rather generously assuming he is being earnest rather than sarcastic:

I should be so sorry, indeed, if anything I wrote were taken as intended to cast doubts on the bravery of naval officers. These men have very particular feelings on this point. Bravery is asmuch a matter of professional pride to them as it is the quality of his potatoes to a green-grocer. Ishould be sorry without the strongest reasons to cast doubts on either.

[] As for revenge, if [the Navy officers] wanted any they had already had plenty before the hoaxwas over. They treated us so delightfully while we were on board that I, for one, felt veryuncomfortable at mocking, even in the friendliest spirit, such charming people.

As for Woolf, she was spared punishment and rarely mentioned the hoax. She only used it oncein her writing, as inspiration for the short story A Society. In Virginia Woolf: A Biography ,
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Bell cites a letter his aunt sent to composer and suffragist Ethel Smyth when the Admiral died inJune of 1937:

Yes, Im sorry about William our last meeting was on the deck of the Dreadnought in 1910, Ithink; but I wore a beard. And Im afraid he took it to heart a good deal. . .

Still, Woolf continued to cherish the fun of it. In 1940, she called it the most daring hoax inhistory as she recounted it in a lecture at the Womens Institu te in Rodmell, the effect of whichE.M. Forster captured perfectly in saying that it left the audience helpless with laughter. Evenso, for Woolf who challenged and subverted gender norms in both her revolutionary fiction and her private life there was more to the hoax. Bell writes of his aunt:

She had entered the Abyssinian adventure for the fun of the thing; but she came out of it with anew sense of the brutality and silliness of men.

Surviving copies of The Dreadnought Hoax can still be found online and at some public

libraries . Stephens entertaining and irreverent first -hand account is well worth the read.
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