Recreation: Museums
People in the nineteenth century witnessed considerable changes in the way they experienced their leisure time. Not only did they find that they were able to dedicate more time to increasingly diverse leisure activities, they also had the financial means to enjoy them. Although the middle classes, growing more and more prosperous, were at a clear advantage in this respect, members of the working classes too could amuse themselves in more ways than hitherto possible.
For many Victorians, however, there was a difference between amusement and recreation. While the former implied purposeless leisure and superficial pleasures, the latter represented the rational aspect of leisure and was primarily associated with ‘improvement’. (1) An example of one such activity that was deemed ‘improving’ is a trip to the museum. Still today we visit museums with the intention to have learnt something new by the time we leave – or if we haven’t, we believe the institution has failed in its mission to teach us. It has frequently been argued that the main reason for the proliferation of public museums was indeed their educating effect, particularly on the working classes.
Unlike their predecessors, museums in the nineteenth century were truly public in the sense that most of them were free or with low admission charges as well as easily accessible through offering opening hours which were convenient for everyone. These measures should attract a working-class audience, who would be ‘improved’ by visiting these places of culture and knowledge, resulting in a more educated population. While it cannot be denied that there existed an important educational intent with these museums, it would be false to say that working-class improvement was the sole motive for their foundation. Ultimately, it was the middle classes who profited the most from this new development. They usually already possessed a certain familiarity with the objects on display and were able to further their already existing knowledge. (2) It is indeed questionable how successful the endeavour of working-class improvement really was. Particularly the big museums retain an air of authority to the present day, and they can still feel intimidating to some. These ‘cathedrals of knowledge’ could and can be just as awe-inspiring as their religious counterparts.
There is, however, no question, that members of the middle classes enjoyed regular visits to museums, and that they were important tourist attractions. Already in the 1860s, when tourism in the capital really picked up, visitor numbers to the London museums were phenomenal. For 1864, the Bayswater Chronicle reports 35,984 visitors to the South Kensington Museum (today the Victoria & Albert Museum) during Christmas week, bringing visitor numbers up to a total of 5,036,543 since the museum had opened seven years earlier. (3) As the century advanced and tourism to the city increased further, museums continued to be well-frequented. They featured prominently in contemporary guidebooks, many of which even provided detailed information about the collections displayed.
Museums of practical sciences were incredibly popular during this period. They catered for a well-informed public whose interest in natural sciences had grown immensely in the course of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century is predominantly associated with scientific and technological progress, and indeed, it was during this time that a professionalisation of science took place. In fact, the very term ‘scientist’ is a nineteenth-century invention. At the same time, however, a genuine popular interest in science arose. Victorians were able to access and engage with it in many novel ways: publications aimed at laymen were easily available, public lectures and ‘conversaziones’ (social gatherings held by learned societies) were popular leisure activities, and specialised museums and galleries were eagerly visited. The middle decades of the century in particular saw a strong engagement with natural sciences, when numerous influential texts were published and specific ‘natural history crazes’ – such as those for marine aquaria, dinosaurs, and ferns – occurred. People’s fascination with science did not wane over the decades, and it remained a favoured pastime. Museums such as the relatively new Natural History Museum (fully completed in 1883), with its ornate architecture and huge collection, drew in large crowds and enjoyed immense popularity.
The demonstration of rational fitness as motivation for recreation decreased in importance as the century progressed, and by the end of it, “simple, pleasurable enjoyment for its own sake” was the norm. (4) London’s West End had always offered both ‘amusement’ and ‘recreation’, with numerous theatres and music halls as well as museums and galleries.
(1) This was proposed by Peter Baily, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830-1885 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978): 57.
(2) Kate Hill, Class and Culture in English Public Museums (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
(3) Anon., “Visitors to the South Kensington Museum,” Bayswater Chronicle, 7 January 1865.
(4) Joseph De Sapio, Modernity and Meaning in Victorian London: Tourist Views of the Imperial Capital (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014): 7.
