Dickens was provoked into writing this article by the renewed public enthusiasm for the eighteenth-century concept of 'the noble savage', of a 'purer' moral nature to be found in dark-skinned races who had not been 'corrupted' by civilisation. This enthusiasm was given a focus by the latest show presenting native Africans to be staged in London, a party of 'Zulu Kaffirs' brought over by A. T. Caldecott, a merchant from Natal, which had been annexed to Cape Colony by the British in 1843. The troupe consisting of eleven men, one woman and a child, appeared at the fashionable St George's Gallery, Hyde Park Corner, and performed scenes illustrative of daily life in their native environment enlivened with 'characteristic dances'. The Times announced the event (18 May 1853) as 'a novel and most interesting exhibition with appropriate scenery and moving panorama painted expressly by Mr Charles Marshall'.
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