The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax
by Danell Jones Hurst, 376 pages, £19.99
ALAMY
This book will surprise even those familiar with the Dreadnought Hoax. The nub of the matter, Danell Jones reminds us, is that “in 1910 Virginia Woolf put on a blackface and pranked the British navy”. But Virginia, yet unmarried, was still ‘Miss Stephen’, the navy had for some years been the Royal Navy, and Virginia was far from the only prankster.
In fact, the hoax was the brainchild of Horace de Vere Cole. Cole realised he could fool the Royal Navy and gain access to its flagship, HMS Dreadnought, simply by sending a short telegram announcing the arrival that same day of a party of Abyssinian princes. By signing the telegram ‘Hardinge’ – after Charles Hardinge, head of the Foreign Office and a stickler for propriety – Cole sent the staff on board the navy’s most prized possession on a frenzied search for the Abyssinian flag and its national anthem as it was berthed in Weymouth Bay.