Secretum (British Museum)

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The Secretum was one of those patriarchal and patronising pieces of Victorian nonsense, where they thought the sight of classical erotica would somehow stir up the base instincts of the lower classes and cause moral damage to women and children. While the museum set up the Private Case for naughty literature, the artwork, artefacts and statuary was stashed in backrooms of the museum and much of it locked away in cupboards so even the staff didn't see it. All comments welcome. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 18:35, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From TR

Good grief! More filth from SchroCat! It's a disgrace: I'll most certainly look in tomorrow. Tim riley talk 20:33, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Mr riley, you're a star - thank you! I knew you wouldn't be able to resist! I'm hoping that KJP1 will be able to join in, as he did for the Private Case. I've even added an IB to this one so he doesn't nag me to include one! And hopefully UndercoverClassicist will have time and inclination to join in too. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 13:37, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

I worry about you sometimes. In addition to the other editors you're trying to suborn I suggest you get Cass on the case, or do you think he's too young? Be that as it may, here are my comments on the prose:

• "The separation was likely on the moral grounds" – "probably", please: we don't yet need to surrender to the AmE "likely" in this construction.
• "comprised more than 1,140 drawing" – missing an s.
• "his acquisitions... its value" – lurch from plural to singular
• "deposited with in the collection in the 1840s and 1850s" – unwanted space?
• "Witt, a physician who became mayor of Bedford and then a banker" – does it help the reader to know his peculiar career path?
• "Many of the items in the Witt collection were good luck amulets" – as these are amulets for good luck rather than luck amulets that are good I'd bung a hyphen in.
• "a standing woman holding two phalluses; one whe is about to place" – I really shouldn't have to be doing this sort of thing at my age, but I think "whe" should be "she"
• "The British Museum did not advertise or promote their ownership" – here and elsewhere I am a bit uncomfortable with a plural possessive pronoun for the BM. I don't say it's absolutely wrong, but I'd feel a singular "its" more natural.
• "while some of the acquired items were entered into the Secretum, many did not" – many were not? Or else lose the "were" before "entered"?
• "any new items acquired by the museum with erotic content were stored or displayed with the relevant department" – could use a tweak I think, on the lines of "were stored within or displayed by the relevant department"
• "vases depicting ithyphallics (Latin for "erect penises")" – not quite. The Latin is "ithyphallicus": I'd add "from the" before "Latin".
• "The archaeologist and museum curator Catherine Johns holds a contrary opinion" – two things here. First I'd be careful with "contrary": fine in speech when people can hear which syllable you stress but in print it could equally mean different or else bloody-minded. Secondly, I had to read this bit three times before I worked out quite how Gaimster and Johns differed. I think if you add "individual" before " items should be studied" it would make matters clearer.

That's all from me. I suddenly realise my flat is too near the British Museum for comfort and am shutting all my windows in case of flying phalluses. Tim riley talk 15:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Many thanks Tim. All duly attended to, although I'll do another skim for plural references connected to the BM. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not quite all. What about Witt's dubiously relevant CV? Tim riley talk 20:00, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oops, missed that one. Now trimmed. - SchroCat (talk) 08:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UC

A few peanuts for now:

• ithyphallic is an adjective: you want ithyphalli or ithyphallic objects.
• the classical era Greco-Roman world: WP:SEAOFBLUE and a tautology: the Greco-Roman world, when used as a phrase, has chronological boundaries as well as geographic ones.
• artefacts that depicted sexually graphic acts or images: this isn't quite grammatical (the objects didn't depict sexually graphic images, they were sexually graphic objects). Consider something like "objects and images considered sexually graphic"?
• Priapus is much more a Roman god than a Greek one (at least, he's far more prominent in Roman culture), and Priapus is technically his Latin name: suggest "Greco-Roman god".
• The separation was probably on moral grounds, with a paternalistic stance: more grammatical as motivated by a paternalistic... or similar.
• I think MOS:HONORIFIC would like us to drop the Sirs from Sloane, Cotton, Hamilton etc, but there's a possible defence that the title is part of their name in the public consciousness.

  MOS:SIR is also key guideline here (although slanted toward biographies). I think both HONORIFIC and SIR are okay with inclusion at first use (partly based on their common names). - SchroCat (talk) 09:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Items continued to be moved out of the collection until the last remaining items were redistributed in 2005: could be more concise as simply the last remaining items were moved out of the collection in 2005.
• Not sure I'm wild about citing the BM as a source for its own history, given how reliably awful the BM is at being honest about that history. There are certainly better, more academic and more paper-based sources to draw on.

  OK, I'll re-research this part before FAC - SchroCat (talk) 20:03, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• The library holdings of the British Museum—later the British Library—: as phrased, this sounds as though the BM later became the BL. Could we get a date for "later"?
• whose Gabinetto Segreto, contained: lose the comma. As this is English Wiki, I'd suggest giving the phrase in English in the main text and Italian in brackets, if you like, but wouldn't have a major objection to it being the other way around. We shouldn't, however, assume that all of our readers speak Italian.

  Done down to here - SchroCat (talk) 20:03, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• The quotes from the BM's catalogue on Sloane's acquisitions are slightly funny, but the real value of a quote here would be if the catalogue was contemporary with the acquisition: however, as these are twenty-first-century labels, I think it's better to simply paraphrase and describe the objects as they are. The catalogue can still be cited to back up that description.
• with later gifts of objects also being made: by Hamilton?
• I haven't read it, but I wonder if Carrie Vout's new-ish book (here, or the less new one Sex on Show) or any of her earlier work (here?) would be of any use? She's very much into both ancient eroticism and modern museums: I don't know how far she's written on the intersection of the two, but this article would be right up her street.
• He had collected widely in his studies and when he died in 1824, his acquisitions, which comprised more than 1,140 drawings, 800 bronzes and in excess of 5,200 coins, were bequeathed to the British Museum; their value was estimated at either "at least £30,000" or £50,000.: can we cut this rather beefy sentence down to size?
• a statue of a nymph and satyr that depicts either sexual play or a possible attempted rape: does Donnellan really offer sexual play as a possible interpretation? I've never seen this taken as anything other than an (attempted) rape scene.

  Well she doesn't interpret it that way, but says that others have (we don't say she does either, to be fair - we just say there are different interpretations). Donnellan describes it as being an:

"inherently ambiguous scene and has been variously interpreted. For example, John Pedley writes of the Capitoline version, “Is this serious? Is it a rape, or is it play? Is it deliberately ambiguous?” Bernard Andreae sees the story as having a happy outcome, with the satyr on the verge of a successful seduction. Bert Smith also considers the satyr to be “unthreatening”, writing that “pose and style convert rape into play” and describing this as a “trouble-free, Arcadian world, where attempted rape is Dionysian play”."

(Unsurprisingly, it's all men who describe it as 'play'). It's partly the fault of the head, as the figure is half smiling, although, as Donnellan points out, it's a replacement head, so the original could have shown a different emotion which would have clarified things. - SchroCat (talk) 20:47, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Within the collections of Hamilton, Knight and Townley were erotically charged or sexually graphic images: this reads oddly after we've enumerated, in great detail, all the sexy stuff they donated.
• Such a classification was not on an academic basis, but a moral one, according to the archaeologist and museum executive David Gaimster.: I would suggest spelling out exactly what this means, in concrete terms. It sounds good but I'm not convinced that it yet offers a real distinction between the two.
• Latin for "Secret"): it's more like "hidden away", in classical Latin at least (that is, not necessarily something whose existence is a secret, but rather something made difficult to find or access).
• Terracotta lamp from central Italy: suggest clarifying that this object is Roman.
• with an erotic scene showing in the interior: shown, I think, but could simply cut everything after scene (move to the alt text if you like, for those who can't see it).
• For transliterated languages, use the transl rather than the lang template: it created an odd font on shunga. I've fixed that one.
• Pamphaios (Ancient Greek: Πάνφαιος): I wouldn't give the Greek alphabet here (unless it was visible on the image): we give other people like Socrates, Plato, Xenophon and so on without comment.
• artefacts with sexual graphics: needs another look for English.
• Gaimster notes that the Secretum was formally started soon after the introduction of the Obscene Publications Act 1857 and considers its formation was possibly as a result of the new legislation: this needs a bit of explaining to me: I guess Gaimster's point is something to the effect that the BM wanted to ensure that they wouldn't be prosecuted for displaying ("publishing"?) obscenity?
• I'm not sure Johns' opinion is contrary to Gaimster's: both agree that, as a collection, the artefacts tell us more about the Victorians than about the people who made them. Johns doesn't say that "relat[ing] them to the culture of Victorian England" is a bad thing.
• She considers that classifying artefacts on grounds of obscenity is "academically indefensible" because "'obscenity' is not an scholarly classification": there might be some room to discuss the idea of obscenity and its relation to the idea of "polite society" in C18th England, which seems very much germane to the subject matter here, but equally it's going to be tricky to do much within the Wikipedia rules unless someone else has made the link to the Secretum first.

The usual wall of pedantry: as ever, I hope that some of it is useful. Greatly enjoyed the article. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:56, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for these: all hugely useful and you have, as always tetigisti-ed the rem acu with all of them. I’m off to the BM this morning (to take some back up photos of items in case any of the current ones fail their review), and then off for lunch with a complete reprobate, but will work through these shortly. Cheers. - SchroCat (talk) 09:06, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]