Teresa Reviews Princess Caraboo (1994)

Teresa reviews Princess Caraboo (1994), Phoebe Cates’ movie in which she plays the maid who hoaxed England.

Fidelity to real life: 4 symbols (&&& WE need to pick one &&&)

Other than the romanticized ending, meeting the Prince Regent, and the bank scandal, it’s pretty close to the hoax perpetuated by Mary Willcocks Baker.

Quality of film: 4 symbols

It’s charming, and you get to know the characters, both real and fictional, as they fall under Mary’s spell.

On 3 April 1817, a strangely dressed young woman wandered into the town of Almondsbury, near Bristol. She spoke an incomprehensible language. The Poor Laws being what they were, she ended up before the Overseer of the Poor, who handed her off to Samuel Worrall, the local magistrate. Neither he nor his wife could understand the young woman but worked out that she called herself “Caraboo.” She was jailed until they could figure out what to do with her.

With the help of an imprisoned Portuguese sailor who claimed he spoke her language, she told an amazing story. Caraboo insisted she had been kidnapped by pirates from her father’s Javasu palace and transported halfway across the world. Seeing England’s green shores, she leapt overboard and swam to shore.

The locals were agog at this mysterious Oriental beauty. The Worralls and the rest of the local gentry were captivated. Professor Wilkinson examined her. The weird marks on her scalp, her consistent behavior, and her written language convinced him she was real. The news spread across the country. Princess Caraboo met everyone important in the area, and a formal portrait, newspaper stories, and a grand ball in Bath followed.

But by late June, the jig was up. The publicity in Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal and other newspapers ensured that someone who knew Mary would eventually show up and reveal all.

So the story behind the film is real. The gullibility and kindness to strangers — especially if they were young, female, and lovely — is equally real. But did Jane Austen know about Princess Caraboo?

Let’s look at the timeline. By mid-April of 1817, when Caraboo was telling her story, Jane was seriously ill and confined to her bed at Chawton Cottage. By the end of April, she was moved to Winchester and on 18 July 1817, she died there. Jane would have never met Princess Caraboo, but it’s possible that someone read the newspaper articles to her to distract her (and everyone else) from her illness. In those short months at Winchester, Princess Caraboo’s star rose and fell, forming a complete narrative arc to avidly read and discuss. The story had everything: gullible locals, exotic rituals conducted by an exotic princess (including swimming naked!), and, eventually, a con-woman’s comeuppance and the public embarrassment meted out to the gullible, often well-placed local gentry.

But we don’t know.

So, how is the film? It’s a sweet and amusing story. It’s also surprisingly close to reality in large ways and small. Phoebe Cates does an outstanding job as Caraboo, unable to communicate with those mysterious English citizens other than through mime and charades. You can see how she’d charm the locals who’d otherwise send her packing as a miserable beggar. And in fact, many of the locals were suspicious. There was plenty of poverty to go around, and beggars with sob stories were not uncommon.

But the lovely beggar girl charmed Mrs. Worrall, the generous wife of the magistrate. She took in the stranger but had her sleep with the housemaids. It’s only as the stranger transforms into Princess Caraboo in front of Mrs. Worrall that her status upgrades. Watch and you’ll see how Caraboo’s clothing and bedroom are upgraded to that of an Oriental princess. Frixos, the Worrall’s Greek butler played by Kevin Kline, is very suspicious. I have no idea if he’s based on a real person. It seems unlikely, but the entire story is unlikely. Eventually, however, Frixos and the Worrall staff come to believe it’s all true.

The moonstruck reporter, John Gutch (Stephen Rea), is enough of a newspaperman to remain skeptical even though he doesn’t want to be. Him running off to America with Caraboo, once she’s unmasked, is pure Hollywood.

What’s also pure Hollywood is Caraboo meeting, charming, and dancing with the Prince Regent and his court of aristocrats. However! That scene in what might be Carlton House wasn’t too far off from the Prince Regent’s notoriously flamboyant, expensive, and salacious parties. He loved all things Oriental, dressing up, and whatever was new and exotic.

He would have adored Princess Caraboo if he’d ever heard of her. The song and dance act appears to be based on The Ephesian Matron by Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) and Isaac Bickerstaffe (1733-1808?). They were very successful playwrights and songwriters of the period. Jane would have heard of them. Whether she would have known that their story was loosely based on Petronius’ (27-66 A.D.) The Widow of Ephesus is a good question.

But would Jane have known about Franz Schubert (1797-1828) whose music proves Caraboo’s delicate sensibilities? Maybe! Schubert was famous from a very young age. By the time he was twenty, he’d been composing for years. His music was very popular.

Another Hollywood scene is where Worrall tries to set up a company with Lord Apthorpe to exploit Caraboo’s supposed connection to the East Indies. The English were rivals with the Dutch for the spice trade. Plenty of Englishmen had made fortunes in the Far East via the East India Company. Any enterprising gentleman would have leaped at the chance to gain wealth, status, and maybe even a title.

As for Worrall’s mismanaged bank and the fraud? I don’t know but banks had little oversight and often collapsed under allegations of mismanagement and fraud.

It is true that Mrs. Worrall took pity on Caraboo when she was unmasked as ordinary Mary Willcocks, cobbler’s daughter. She arranged that Mary get shipped off to America to make a new life, far away from English laws. It’s very likely that if Mrs. Worrall hadn’t intervened, Mary would have been whipped, imprisoned, or jailed for begging. She could have been hung for fraud and any other charges the local magistrate, i.e., Mr. Worrall, could have thought up. But I doubt Mrs. Worrall put her husband’s bank at risk to save Mary and then showed her husband the door because Mary inspired her to change her own life.

You’ll enjoy Princess Caraboo. It’s a glimpse at a real, Regency-era scandal plus you get to watch Prinny prancing about at one of his lavish parties. Jane would have be amused hearing how a nobody passed herself off as a foreign princess and snowed the gentry.