The Observed of All Observers”:: Lydia Thompson Looks Back, Life-Writing and Celebrity

Looking backward from now, I do not believe anybody saw the little mite bounding across the stage, but I though differently then, and imagined myself to be the centre of attraction, ‘the observed of all observers’. So begins, Lydia Thompson when recalling her lifetime on the popular stage. Women’s relationship to theatre and culture at this time was substantial but their narratives have too often been short sighted and their life writing – especially, that of popular performers – is limited. Similar to the time-trapped/travelling novel of the same name (Edward Bellamy’s, Looking Backward, 1887), Thompson’s text is both a time capsule and an artefact recovered. Its short 139 pages confronts gossip, discusses stalkers and fans, defends claims of impropriety, and details her dress and fashion choices on and off the stage. Lydia Thompson, the nineteenth-century British dancer and comedienne, had an active following in America and achieved immense success there – more so than in her own country, in terms of fandom and remuneration. This paper offers a unique perspective on an artefact of personal testimony that witnesses the human impact of being a transatlantic celebrity on the late 19th century popular stage, and it evidences how fame offered her a certain protection and freedom from her working-class childhood – something Roof (2009) observes as ‘fame’s aura’ acting as a ‘self-corrective’ (122) – by validating Thompson despite her working class beginnings