A D V E N T U R E S   in   C Y B E R S O U N D

George Henry Peck was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England, about 1810. In 1833 he emigrated to the British penal colony of Van Diemen's Land, (now known as Tasmania), Australia. Settled in Hobart, where he advertised as a carver and gilder, and, in 1834, opened a Repository of the Arts. Promoted vocal and instrumental concerts, which often featured his own violin solos 'after the manner of Paganini'.

Creator and proprietor of the 'Artium Pecciano', a Mechanical and Picturesque Theatre of the Arts, which he successfully exhibited in Tasmania in 1834 and 1835. In 1837 he organised Australia's first Art Exhibition at the Argyle Rooms in Hobart. The same year he began work on a Panorama and Model of Hobart Town. After his return to England in 1839, George Peck exhibited the Model and Panorama in London and Liverpool.

For the next ten years he lived in his hometown of Hull, where he established a business as an 'Artist in Figure and Ornamental Wood Carving'. During this period his most important commission was to carve the poppyheads and pew elbows for the restoration of the Holy Trinity Church in Hull. Travelled to California where he promoted and participated in 'Promenade Concerts a la Julien'.

Returned to Australia in 1853, and lived in Melbourne, where he taught music and was active in the Formation of the Victorian Society of the Fine Arts. Moved to Sydney in 1858 and opened Peck's Music Repository. Though his original profession was that of carver and gilder, George Peck was also a professional musician, often acting as Leader of the Orchestra for theatrical companies in Hobart and Sydney. He also composed and arranged several pieces of music.

George Peck died in Sydney on 20 September 1863. Throughout his life he used his creative abilities to try and bring about a greater awareness and appreciation of the arts which were concerned with 'the beautiful'.

'The Cleverest Machinist we know of in the Island'

Why a person with his skills chose to travel to this remote and hostile place is not known, but as a result of his endeavours he became known as 'our fellow townsman Peck, who has laboured so hard to promote a taste for the fine arts'. One of his most successful ventures was an entertainment he called 'Artium Pecciano', or Theatre of Arts.

He described what patrons would experience as follows:

'An entertainment of the most novel and amusing description, on the plan of the celebrated Monsieur Thiodon's Theatre of Fine Arts, which consists of a Series of beautiful views, variedfrom time to time, of all the most celebrated places in the world, not on a flat surface, but by absolute scenic models, retiring from the spectator, ships, Boats, Figures, etc., moving by mechanical means, forming a charming coup d'oeil, that will delight and surprise the beholder'.

The Eidophuskon, presenting the scene in Pandemonium

Watercolor by Edward Francis Burney

Altick, Richard D, The Shows of London, p.122.

Monsieur Thiodon assured the public that:

'The Entertainments offered at this Theatre are quite distinct from that of a Theatrical Description, and on this Account, together with its suprising Ingenuity, Character' and harmless Tendancy, is peculiarly calculated to attract the Notice and support of those, whose Religious Tenets forbid their Participation in Amusements of a more marked and decisive character'.

After his arrival in 1833, 23 year old George Peck settled in Hobart, Tasmania's largest town, where he set up business as a carver and gilder, organized several vocal and instrumental concerts, and became involved in the establishment of the Colony's first professional theatre company.

In 1834, he spent some months in Launceston, the colony's only other large town. Though he was there as Leader of the Orchestra for Samson Cameron's Dramatic Company, George Peck also advertised as a carver and gilder and violin teacher. Obtaining sufficient patrons for any of these activities in a town of 6000 people, one third of whom were convicts, was a daunting task.

However, he decided to undertake an even more ambitious project. This was to offer a 'rational and scientific' leisure activity to the town's 'respectable' families. In July 1834, George Peck, in partnership with John Fawkner Jnr, the proprietor of Launceston's Cornwall Hotel, advertised an amusement 'for the lovers of the Fine Arts'. Fawkner was a man of action.

Besides being an inn-keeper, he was also an auctioner, builder, butcher, baker, orchardist, ran a circulating library from a room in the Hotel, a coach service, and had started Launceston's first permanent paper, The Advertiser. Realising that there were even more opportunities on the mainland, he left Tasmania in 1835, and is acknowledged as one of the founders of Melbourne.

'Optical Amusements' - Advertisement

Launceston Independent, August 6, 1831. p.1

Such optical novelties were more often found in the drawing room or nursery in England, rather than forming part of a public amusement. However Launceston did not yet have a museum or art Gallery, so George Peck's entertainment offered a suitable leisure activity for families. Support for his 'Optical Amusements' encouraged him to create his 'Artium Pecciano', or Theatre of the Arts.

Theatre of Arts - Advertisement
[a] "Pavilion of Rational and Scientific Pleasure"

Launceston Independent, October 4, 1834. p.?

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Through a combination of painted scenes, lighting, music, and mechanical figures, patrons visiting a Theatre of Arts, or Theatrum Mundi as they were called in Europe, saw 'live' depictions of historical events, foreign countries and nature's grandeur and power. Unlike marionettes, no wire or thread was used to put the flat cardboard or brass object, such as a soldier, donkey, or ship, in motion.

Each was set with a cogwheel, which ran over a strip of felt, which set the figures into their natural movements when hooked on a revolving belt running in front of the painted scenery. Other devices such as little wheeled trolleys were sometimes used to animate the figures, which were about 10cm in height.

Theatrum Mundi Figure, 'Napoleon and Horse' 19thC
Maser, R., (ed): Theatrum Mundi. 1984, p. 47.

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If a potential emigrant had the opportunity to read a Tasmanian newspaper in 1834 a truer picture would emerge. It was a land of bushrangers, prisoners, business insolvency and government mismanagement, where only the privileged few had time to discuss 'the fine arts'.

Theatre of Arts - Advertisement
"Artium Pecciano - a highly mental amusement"

Launceston Independent, October 11, 1834. p.2

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Theatre of Arts - Advertisement

Colonial Times, February 17, 1835. p.51

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Theatre of Arts - Review and criticism

Colonial Times, February 19, 1835. p.3

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Creating his Theatre of the Arts had been an expensive project. Though the entertainment was proving successful, George Peck knew that he had to introduce new scenes if he was to continue to attract patronage. Technological advances allow today's media to bring us news of an event as it happens, but for an entertainment provider such as George Peck things happened at a very different pace.

In London on October 16 1834 a fire severely damaged the Houses of Lords and Commons. It was not until February 21 1835 that Hobart's True Colonist was able to provide details of the event, reporting:

'Scarcely had we condoled with the sufferers in the interior from the effects of the numerous fires in the bush last week, when the recent arrivals informed us of the destruction of these two great edifices'.

'The Fire Department's great floating engine was towed by steamer from Rotherithe, to help fight the blaze, barricades and fences had to be erected 'to keep off the mob, who notwithstanding carried away a great many articles.' Lords, Earls, and 'many other gentlemen of rank and influence' became involved, Lord Althorp reportedly saying 'Come, never mind the House of Commons, let it blaze away, but save, oh! Save the Hall.'

Theatre of Arts - Advertisement

'News Scene'

Colonial Times, March 31, 1835. p.107

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When His Excellency, Colonel George Arthur, Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land, and his family, honoured the performance with their presence on 1 May 1835, the programme incorporated local views and figures. The scene featured 'A splendid view of Mount Wellington and part of Hobart Town', and 'The Death of the Kangaroo', and was the first introduction of Australian material into this type of entertainment.

Theatre of Arts - Advertisement

'Australian Scene'

Colonial Times, April 28, 1835. p.131

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It had been a great achievement to create, promote and operate such a complex entertainment. In addition to scenery, lighting, and mechanical figures, music played a very important part in the Theatre of Arts. George Peck's skills in this art certainly contributed to the success of his shows. As there was no dialogue, music helped highlight the various moods and actions within a scene. An evening's performance was usually divided into Three Parts, with musical or vocal performances entertaining the audience while scenes were being changed.

In addition to a Band, George Peck had announced 'a YOUNG LADY, Of the most Promising Talent, will make her first Appearance in Public, In a brilliant CONCERTO on the Piano Forte.' The reviews of 12 year old Miss Pettingell's playing of 'two splendid concertos by Panorma' confirmed her talent, in spite of her agitation, caused by 'the confusion which prevailed owning to the pressure of the audience, and the mischievous tricks of some very rude boys'.

Though Miss Pettingell continued her piano solos on other occasions during the Theatre of Arts season, sometimes it was George Peck himself who performed during the Scene changes, playing his 'admired Imitations of the celebrated 'PAGANINI' on the Violin'. At concerts soon after his arrival in Tasmania in 1833 George Peck's violin playing had 'astonished as well as amused the audiences'.

Whatever the occasion, George Peck tried to offer real entertainment to his audiences. His position as Leader of the Orchestra during theatrical seasons entitled him to a Benefit Evening, which included pieces as 'Timour the Tartar' and 'Frankenstein:or The Monster'.

Theatre Royal - Advertisement
'Mr. G. H. Peck's Night' at Hobart's Theatre Royal. August 26, 1836, p.288

The Tasmanian and Australian Advertiser, Austral-asiatic Review, August 26, 1836

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George Peck did later resume his role as Leader of the Orchestra for Cameron's Company. He also undertook new entrepreneurial activities, and in August 1837 held Australia's first Art Exhibition at Hobart's Argyle Rooms.

Nor were the many skills used to create the Theatre of Arts wasted. In 1837 George Peck announced that he had 'undertaken the completion of a PERFECT MODEL of HOBART TOWN, intended for transmission to England, where this Colony is exciting daily increasing interest and curiosity'.

During the next two years he and the talented modeller Francis Low worked to bring this ambitious project to completion. The Model was to be exhibited in combination with a 'Moving Panorama of the Romantic and Picturesque Scenery in the Environs of Hobart Town'. The Model was exhibited in Hobart and Sydney before George Peck took it to England in December 1839.

Model of Hobart Town - Advertisement
Exhibited in Hobart, April 1839

The Austral-asiatic Review, Tasmanian and Australian Advertiser, April 2, 1839

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'We have read many a volume on the colony, and, what is more, we have reviewed them; but we can safely say that we never obtained so satisfactory an idea of it as by an hour's visit to this Exhibition. Were we thinking of emigration, we should examine it very carefully. After all, it does not look so tempting as the Company advertisements, prospectuses, &c. &c., make out. The fields are greenish, no doubt, and the water clear; but there is no richness of hedgerow, exuberance of vegetation, grandeur of forest scenery. The trees are not pleasing, and they look scattering and unsocial. In short, we in dear old England must see that it is another land'.

Model of Hobart Town and Moving Panoramas of the Environs of Hobart Town and Sydney Handbill.
Mercer, Peter, A Small Imitation of a Larger Reality Australiana, November, 1990. p.108, 109
Original: State Library of Tasmania ref:. TL.P 919.4661 PEC.

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Model of Hobart Town and Moving Panoramas of the Environs of Hobart Town and Sydney Handbill, obverse.

Mercer, Peter, A Small Imitation of a Larger Reality Australiana, November, 1990. p.108, 109
Original: State Library of Tasmania ref:. TL.P 919.4661 PEC.

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Theatre of Arts operators often adapted a scene to provide the public with more relevant material. John Harrington, a showman who toured part of the original Thiodon's Theatre of Arts around many American towns in the 1860's, tells of turning the Crimean War 'Siege of Sebastopol' into 'Fort Sumter and Charleston Harbour'.

'Our figures of Russian soldiers did not need much painting to turn them into secessionists, and we had only to paint out the redcoats of the British and color them blue to make the Federal. Sebastopol stood a little too high on the rocks for the City of Charlestown, but we painted the rocks down. We turned Balaclava into Castle Pinckney, and we had room enough in the Black Sea to slip in a very nice Fort Sumter. The same holes through which we used to puff smoke in bombarding the Malakoff serve in firing at Sumter, but Sumter had to have a few additional holes.There was a night scene in the Crimea with a horse moving along, and Lord Raglan going out to look at the dead on the field of battle. Horses are all alike in pictures. Lord Raglan makes a good Major Anderson; but as no one was killed at Fort Sumter all we can do is tell our audiences that the Major is out surveying the ruins from James Island just before going on board the steamer that conveyed him to New York'.

But patrons at Barnum's American Museum in New York were to experience an 'AMUSING-BIZARRE-ORIGINAL' 'ANMATED WORLD' when the original Thiodon's Theatre of Arts opened there in August 1858. Though attendance declined with the introduction of newer forms of entertainment, a visit to the Theatre of Arts still provided an evening during which the 'wonderfully natural movements and droll pose keeps the audience in continuous surprise and merriment'.

After the death of Joseph Thiodon, the creator of Thiodon's Theatre of Arts, his son in law Thomas Henry Aspinall became proprietor of the Show, and adopted the name 'Monsieur Aspinall Thiodon'. The entrepreneur George Coppin brought the Show to Australia in 1870. Aspinall Thiodon and his family remained in Australia, taking Thiodon's Mechanical Wonders to many towns and cities during the next twenty years, almost until the beginning of modern motion picture exhibition in 1896.

For a Theatre of the Arts Scene to become a favourite, as much action as possible needed to be incorporated into the 'story' being portrayed. The 'Splendid New Marine Drop Scene' painted by George Peck in Hobart in 1835 provided a background for his version of a marine scene that was depicted again and again by other exhibitors throughout the eighty years that this type of entertainment survived.

Dr Judd, who went to England in the late 1850's for P.T. Barnum, to bring the original Thiodon's Theatre of Arts to America, described how the scene worked. 'Guns and cannon in the ships and forts were so fixed that the operators behind the scenery could puff smoke through them, and the boom noise would be imitated on a bass drum.'.

Theatre of Arts - Advertisement

'Marine Scene'

The True Colonist, February 28, 1835. p.1

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Patrons visiting Thiodon's Theatre of Arts at the Cosmorama in London in 1833 saw a marine scene set off the Island of Malta, 'a Revenue Cutter chasing a Smuggling Lugger, on which she will fire - the arrival of the ENGLISH FLEET, they cast Anchor, and fire a SALUTE.'

In 1853 at Sydney's Royal Marionette Theatre the action was located at Waterford, Ireland 'arrival of screw steamer City of Dublin - Signal Station indicates her approach'. A visitor to P.T. Barnum's establishment in New York in 1858 would have seen steamers off Constantinople and the Bosphorus, and when Thiodon's opened in Melbourne in 1870 the marine action took place off Gibraltar.

For audiences it was not the scenery, but the antics of the figures that made the entertainment so enjoyable, even if they sometimes appeared in rather unlikely settings. When Thiodon's Mechanical Wonders was staged in Launceston in 1890, The Examiner reported:

'The exhibition opens with a pretty scene, taking in the rock and town of Gibraltar, and on the African shore is made to appear a rather unusual procession, even for that country, consisting of a man wheeling a barrow, a camel with a monkey on its back, the camel being rather eccentric as far as his walk is concerned, a peacock, a cow and calf, some pigs, and various other animals, the procession appropriately winding up with a man with a gun.'

Another scene in the same programme was 'Buonaparte Crossing the Alps with 30,000 men'. The illusion of 'sublime summits of snow clad gigantic cliffs of the Higher Alps' being crossed by 'an army with all its baggage etc.' was a spectacle particularly suited to the Theatre of Arts. Perhaps some of the 'small attendance' at Launceston's Mechanics' Institute in 1890 included descendants of families who saw George Peck's representation of the same event at the Cornwall Hotel in Launceston in 1834.

'Thiodon's Mechanical Wonders'

Launceston Examiner, January 13, 1890 p.2

Hobart's newspapers praised the design and execution of George Peck's Theatre of Arts. They were not always so kind to him. After his appearance as Young Rapid, in A Cure for the Heartache, the writer noted:

'As it was his first attempt on this stage to sing, we hope it will be his last. He may fiddle, but both singing and dancing, two of its great accompaniments, he is most deficient in.' .

'Mr. Peck perseveres in his amusements, which are pleasing, instructive, and gratifying to every lover of the Arts and Sciences. He is certainly the cleverest Machinist we know of in the Island, and deserves encouragement.' Morning Star and Commercial Advertiser, Hobart, April 10, 1835.

The San Francisco Quadrilles
Arranged from the most favourite Negro melodies by George Peck.

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~mkduggan/afro.html

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These carvings depict an amazing array of strange beasts, angels, foliage, human and imaginary figures, forming a permanent 'exhibition' that shows George Peck's talent and creativity.

© Copyright: Robyn Lake 2000lake@vision.net.au

Select Bibliography

Altick, Richard D, The Shows of London, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, (Mass), 1978.

Bradshaw, Richard, The Merlin of the South, Australasian Drama Studies, Volume 7, November 1985.

Judd, Dr., The Old Panorama, The Billboard, 5 December 1903, pp.25,26.

Kerr, Joan, (ed.), The Dictionary of Australian Artists, Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 612-614.

Maser, R, (ed), Theatrum Mundi, 1984. Exhibition book 1984 UNIMA Congress, Dresden.

Oppenheim, Helen L., Colonial Theatre: the Rise of the Legitimate Stage in Australia, 1824-1847, Mitchell Library typescript.

Pesvner N., Neave D., The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, London, 1995.

Simpson, J. A., and Weiner, E. S. C., The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998.

Notes

1. Newspaper References in 'The Cleverest Machinist we know of in the Island' article. For further details please contact Robyn Lake at lake@vision.net.au

2. The Island's Name - Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania 'Transportation of convicts came to an end when the last convict vessel docked at Hobart Town on 26 May 1853, and the colony gave itself up to celebration and marked the end of a chapter by renaming the island Tasmania, to commemorate the discoverer.'

Robson, Lloyd, A Short History of Tasmania, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985. 3. Thiodon's Theatre of Arts Information on the Thiodon family from Richard Bradshaw, who is currently researching the Thiodon story.

The Images

The images of newspaper items above both the 'teasers' and the 'downloadable' full items have been scanned from photocopies of microfilm copies of the actual newspapers. The condition of the images suggests however that they may have indeed come from second or third generation copies made over the past 100 years or so.

The bottom line was that the actual 'text' on the page was in many cases barely legible.

An effort was made to present them with a balance between 'clinical' accuracy and a 'sense of age'. Extensive retouching could have theoretically restored them to 'mint' condition but Robyn Lake and I feel that a 'half way point' is more suited to the 'soul' of this essay.

Saying this there are numerous and hopefully invisible repairs done including the reconstruction of whole sentences, one letter at a time, sourced from elsewhere in the document or another issue of the same paper luckily created using he same set of type - faults and all.

As an example, below are displayed an original 'as sourced' (L) and the 'enhanced version as presented' above and in the downloadable version.(R)

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