Holmes, Rachel

PERSONAL:

Education: King's College, London, England; Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, England, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. Agent—Maggie Pearlstine Associates Ltd., 31 Ashley Gardens, Ambrosden Ave., London SW1P 1QE, England.

CAREER:

University of the Western Cape, South Africa, lecturer; University of London, professor of English; University of Sussex, professor of English; Amazon.co.uk, Web site manager, 1998-2002. Judge of 2000 Whitbread Novel Award and 2001 Orange Prize for Fiction; journalist and broadcaster.

WRITINGS:

Scanty Particulars: The Scandalous Life and Astonishing Secret of Dr. James Barry, Queen Victoria's Preeminent Military Doctor, Random House (New York, NY), 2002.

African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus, Random House (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to numerous periodicals and newspapers.

SIDELIGHTS:

An educator, journalist, and Web site manager for Amazon.com in the United Kingdom, Rachel Holmes was raised and later taught in South Africa and England. Her first book was Scanty Particulars: The Scandalous Life and Astonishing Secret of Dr. James Barry, Queen Victoria's Preeminent Military Doctor, a biography of the famous British doctor James Miranda Barry. Barry, born around 1795, was a brilliant but eccentric physician and surgeon who was known for his red hair, tiny stature, and feminine voice; his flamboyant style of dress; his conversationalism; flirtatiousness with the ladies; and the constant companionship of his black servant and a succession of poodles named Psyche. In spite of these odd traits, Barry made strides as a physician that few doctors of his day could claim; he was more than a century ahead of his time in discerning the relationship between social conditions and illness.

Barry was trained at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and became an expert in sexual medical problems and midwifery. He was especially interested in hernia and venereal disease, and he performed one of the first Caesarian sections in which both mother and infant lived. He served as an army regimental surgeon beginning in 1813 and also served as a doctor and hospital administrator in South Africa, the Caribbean, and Canada. A true humanitarian, Barry put much of his energy into improving the health and living conditions of women and children, the poor, slaves, prisoners, prostitutes, and lepers.

He was accused of having a homosexual relationship with South Africa's Cape colony governor and was known to have had a nine-year relationship with the man. A contemporary of such famous persons as Napoleon, Charles Dickens, and Florence Nightingale, Barry eventually rose to the position of Britain's Inspector-General of Hospitals in London. After his death there in 1865 of cholera, a maidservant who took care of the body reported that Barry was a woman, causing a shock that reverberated throughout the British medical and military establishment for years. Research into Barry's childhood showed that his mother claimed to have lost a daughter at the same time that Barry appeared as her nephew. Scholars generally agree that Barry's mother was involved in a plan to ensure that Barry could go to medical school and live a challenging life that was unavailable to women at the time. Holmes offers the theory that Barry might have been a hermaphrodite, thus explaining his lifelong interest in the sexual organs. Nevertheless, Barry was a great physician who brought about hospital and medical reform and advanced the knowledge of his profession.

Brooke Allen, in the New York Times Book Review, found it strange that Holmes does not reveal Barry's secret, mentioned in the book's title, until near the end of the book. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews expressed the same opinion, calling the book "A fascinating depiction of the Victorian era that fails to capitalize on its most salient detail." Allyssa Lee, of Entertainment Weekly, commented that this flaw might cause the book to elicit "a well-worn sigh" at the end instead of shock and surprise. Allen also thought the narrative was "dry," but understandably so, because few of Barry's correspondences have survived. "The problem with the tale," Allen wrote, "is that with primary sources sparse, Holmes has padded out her material with irrelevant information and, worse, speculation." Although Allen agreed that Holmes makes a good case for Barry's having been a hermaphrodite, she described Holmes's story structure as "inept" and her prose as "awkward" and "careless." Chris Patsilelis, reviewing for Houston Chronicle, commented that "in this otherwise remarkable and assiduously researched biography, the author needlessly … makes Barry's dubious sexual orientation the linchpin of the narrative…. Scanty Particulars is most successful when it simply describes the facts of Barry's professional life and vividly conjures up the progressive new era of early Victorian medicine, especially the exquisite and tense art of surgery."

David Shneer, in a review for the Rocky Mountain News, wrote, "Holmes's creative narrative shows a much more nuanced understanding of sex and gender than that of the 19th-century gossips who desperately wanted to know: Was Barry a man or a woman? … Holmes speculates Barry's medical thesis on hernias and his profound interest in the sex organs and reproduction were part of a self-exploration into his own body and identity." Patricia Duncker, in the New Statesman, called Scanty Particulars an "eloquent and original biography." She wrote: "Her description of Barry arriving in the Cape, daring and resplendent in his fantastic costumes, makes the character luminous, charismatic. She gives us the flavour of the man."

Holmes follows up Scanty Particulars with African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus, a biography about Saartjie Baartman, a young woman who was brought to London from South Africa in the early nineteenth century. Her habit of dancing in shock- ingly few clothes for the time, a practice that was designed to highlight her generous hindquarters, led to her nickname: Hottentot Venus. She was objectified, treated as something to be put on display, and when she died in 1815, her body was actually dismembered, with portions of it placed in the collection of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. Holmes's effort looks at the cultural norms of the time in Britain and examines the seeming fascination with the buttocks, as well as with sex, race, and colonialism as related to Baartman's case. Vanessa Bush, in a review for Booklist, commented: "This is a probing look at historical racism and sexual exploitation presented through the life of an extraordinary woman." A contributor for Kirkus Reviews noted that "Holmes is especially adept at explaining the period's fascination with the Hottentot Venus," but found the chapters that attempted to provide Baartman's point of view less successful, and a distraction from the primary story. Caroline Elkins, in a contribution for the New York Times Book Review, agreed, stating: "Holmes's preoccupation with Baartman's relationships to paternalistic figures, for instance, stands in the way of a fuller understanding of the European world in which the young South African maneuvered."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Biography, spring, 2007, Caroline Elkins, review of African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus.

Booklist, November 15, 2002, Brad Hooper, review of Scanty Particulars: The Scandalous Life and Astonishing Secret of Dr. James Barry, Queen Victoria's Preeminent Military Doctor, p. 556; December 1, 2006, Vanessa Bush, review of African Queen, p. 8.

British Medical Journal, June 1, 2002, Irvine Loudon, review of Scanty Particulars, p. 1341.

Entertainment Weekly, January 10, 2003, Allyssa Lee, review of Scanty Particulars, p. 74.

Houston Chronicle, March 13, 2003, Chris Patsilelis, "Victorian-era Physician Led Life of Mystery."

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2002, review of Scanty Particulars, p. 1513; October 15, 2006, review of African Queen, p. 1056.

Lancet, July 13, 2002, Terry Eagleton, "Scandal, Subversion, and Pioneering Surgery," p. 177.

Library Journal, December 1, 2006, Mary C. Allen, review of African Queen, p. 133.

New Statesman, May 13, 2002, Patricia Duncker, "Tomb Raider," p. 51.

New York Times Book Review, February 2, 2003, Brooke Allen, "All of the People Some of the Time," Section 7, p. 21; January 14, 2007, Caroline Elkins, review of African Queen, p. L8.

Publishers Weekly, September 23, 2002, review of Scanty Particulars, p. 57; September 25, 2006, review of African Queen, p. 53.

ONLINE

BBC News,http://news.bbc.co.uk/ (April 18, 2002), "Rachel Holmes."

Bloomsbury.com,http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/ (April 19, 2003), "Literary Agents—UK and Ireland."

Guardian Unlimited Books,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (May 31, 2001), "If the Orange Prize Had Existed a Century Ago … Orange Prize Judge Rachel Holmes Chooses Her Five Favourite Books by Women."

Rocky Mountain News,http://www.rockymountainnews.com/ (January 31, 2003), David Shneer, "Physician Juggled Social Insights, Sexual Secret."