Carte-de-visite of the week #2 Frank Meadow Sutcliffe of Whitby

Posted on January 14, 2015January 30, 2018 by James

The Water Rats (1886)

Frank Meadow Sutcliffe Hon. F.R.P.S. (1853-1941) is best known for his photographs of Whitby – views that capture the landscape, including the iconic abbey, as well as the daily life of fisherfolk and other inhabitants of the Yorkshire town. Many of these images – such as The Water Rats (below) – were widely reproduced and imitated, enhancing Sutcliffe’s reputation and attracting droves of amateur photographers to Whitby. As a sign of his high standing amongst pictorialist photographers, he was invited to join the Linked Ring shortly after its foundation in 1892.

Equally interesting to me was the back of the card – not, for once, because of the ornate detail or florid artwork, but because of the minimalist simplicity of the design:

Sutcliffe’s cards bore many designs over the years, and typically they were adorned with details of all the awards he had won, and his claim to call himself ‘Photographer to Mr Ruskin.’ By contrast, there is almost nothing here, not even an address or advertisement – just his name, town, and two little animals…

Sutcliffe’s reputation as an art photographer means that it is easy to forget he also ran a portrait studio in Whitby from 1876 to 1922. There was a tendency among pictorialists to look down upon professional photographers for reasons of both aesthetics and social class. Sutcliffe is unusual in running the two traditions in parallel for such a long time, and there is no questioning the very high quality of his portrait work. Those who sat for him would have been both locals and visitors; judging by the cut of his coat, the customer who sat for this portrait may have been a clergyman.

What sort of creature is this supposed to represent? It reminds me very much of the mythological beasts with which medieval scribes adorned the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts. Most cdv backings were designed by commercial printers, using lithography to reproduce stock images; the photographer could then choose a template onto which business particulars could be added.

In this case, however, it seems certain that the back of the cdv was created by Sutcliffe – for some personal reason that remains as yet unclear.

Carte-de-visite of the Week #1 Irma Szabó by Ludwig Faust, 1880

Posted on January 1, 2015January 30, 2018 by James

Today’s the first day of a new year, so I’m starting a new weekly blog post – Carte-de-visite of the Week – in which I’ll be showcasing some of my favourite cartes-des-visites in my collection.

Cartes-des-visites are small sepia-toned photographs, measuring around 2¼” wide by 3½” high, mounted on card that usually bears the photographer’s name and advertising material on the back. They became popular in the 1850s and were sold in huge numbers throughout the following decade. Most of these were commercial portraits, either of ordinary folk who had paid to have their portrait taken in a studio – where the carte-de-visite offered an inexpensive and handy alternative to the costly 8″ x !0″ print – or of well known public figures, such as royalty, politicians and popular performers. Tens of millions of these cards were sold every year, collected, exchanged, sent to friends or inserted into special albums. There was an extensive trade in pirated cards, copied from other carte-des-visites rather than being printed from the original collodion negative. The sheer number of these cards in circulation means that they remain easy to find today, even in car boot sales and flea markets where they can often be purchased for a few pence. The reverse of the cards is often just as interesting as the portrait on the front, if not more so, as it was used by photographers to print details about their studio, its address, significant awards or commissions, often accompanied by illustrations, fancy fonts and other gimmicks. A great deal of social history can be gleaned from collecting and studying cartes-des-visites, particularly when handwritten notes have been added.

My first photograph was taken in 1880 by Ludwig Faust, a photographer in Pressburg – modern day Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. At this time Pressburg was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, lying in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Monarchy, and had a population of around 48,000. The small size of Pressburg is indicated by the fact that Faust gave his address on the back of the card as nothing more than ‘neben dem Theater.’

The reverse of the card also reveals that the sitter’s name was Irma Szabó, although this is written in style Szabó Irma. She appears to have been an attractive young lady…

Irma Szabó by Ludwig Faust, 1880

wearing an attractive brooch…

Reverse of the card, showing the sort of attractive design typically used by photographers to promote their work

Today’s post is fairly brief – well, it is New Year’s Day after all, and a lot of other things have been happening over the last few hours – but I intend to cover other cartes-des-visites in much more depth for future posts. Let’s hope I can stick to my New Year resolution!

Ghoulies, ghosties and long-leggety beasties..

Posted on December 26, 2014February 1, 2018 by James

At a postcard fair in Broadclyst last summer I picked up three postcards with the title ‘A Cornish Litany.’ All three are the work of Stanley T Chaplin, and belong to a set of twelve postcards, but the background to their production turned out to be murkier than expected. First of all, what is this ‘Cornish Litany’?

Litanies are sets of prayers arranged in the form of a list of petitions, usually sung or chanted by cantors, to which others provide responses. These vary according to the nature of the petition: the name of saint invites the response Ora pro nobis (Pray for us), a general prayer has the reponse Te rogamus, audi nos (We ask you to hear us), while reference to some evil or misfortune – such as ghosts and ghoulies – requires the response Libera nos, Domine (Deliver us, Lord.) In the traditional litany of saints, these calamities include omni malo (all evil), omni peccato (all sin), insídiis diaboli.(the devil’s wiles), fulgure et tempestate (lightning and storm), a flagello terrae motus (earthquake), a peste (plague), fame et bello (famine and war)…etc. There’s nothing here resembling the contents of the Cornish litany. One explanation for this is that it was a local and perhaps unauthorised ritual, one that was used orally and was never recorded in a liturgical book. Some have claimed that it dates back to the 14th or 15th centuries, but such prayers would then have been in Latin, and the absence of any textual record for several hundred years – linking Pre-Reformation usage to a vernacular translation – is hard to comprehend. Tracing the origins of this phrase has proved far harder than one might have imagined. ‘Long-leggety beastie’ sounds like a distinctively Scottish pronunciation, and indeed in the anthology A Beggar’s Wallet (Edinburgh & London, 1905), edited by Archibald Stodart Walker, there is a contribution by Hugh Munro Warrand which is prefaced with a ‘Scots’ version:

Frae ghosties and ghoulies, long-leggetie beasties,
And things that go bump in the night,
Good lord deliver us.
– From a quaint old Litany

However, the fact that only the first word is distinctively Scots suggests to me that this ‘quaint old Litany’ was merely an attempt to ‘Scotticize’ a phrase which had been acquired from some other source. A few years later James Withers Gill, a former colonial administrator who helped catalogue the African collections in Exeter’s RAMM, published a scholarly article on ‘Hausa Speech, Its Wit and Wisdom’ in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1918), p.46, in which he remarks casually of the inhabitants of Hausaland in the Sudan: ‘To a people nourished on mystery who, in spite of their fatalistic creed, believe in genii, ghosts, goblins, and those terrific things that “go bump in the night”, protective charms are eagerly sought for.’ Again, the phrase is cited without any explanation, as if the author regarded it as commonplace.

Then, eight years later, Francis T. Nettleinghame published his Polperro Proverbs & Others (Polperro Press for the Cornish Arts Association, 1926) in which he describes the thriving pokerwork industry in Polperro. Pokerwork, or pyrography (“fire-writing”) involves using heated tools to burn designs into wooden objects and craftworkers in Polperro were doing particularly well selling products that featured ‘the Cornish or West country litany.’ The artwork for these wares was undertaken by Arthur Wragg, rather than Chaplin.

That’s really the limit of my knowledge, but an American collector named Debra Meister has done a great deal of research and self-published a book, A Litany…Cornish and Otherwise, which is now in its third edition. I haven’t seen the book yet, but may try and pick up a copy soon. Other sources of information include:

Donald T. Matter, ‘The Cornish Litany, a Prayer for All Times’, The McLintock Letter: the quarterly newsletter of the South Jersey Postcard Club. Vol. 11, No.5 (October 2011), pp.1-2
Susan Hack-Lane, ‘A New Look at the Old Cornish Litany’ in Postcard World Magazine (November-December 2011), pp.7-9.

Camille Clifford (1885-1971), Gibson Girl – A Trio of Postcards

Posted on December 19, 2014February 1, 2018 by James

Postcard #1

I’m always drawn to postcards showing old cameras or photography, and it was the image above that got me collecting postcards of Belgian-born theatre star Camille Clifford. Her acting career was brief – barely four years (1902-6) – and it was her association with the popular ‘Gibson Girl’ image that made her famous.

In the 1890s, sketches of young women by Charles Dana Gibson began appearing in periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly, Life and Scribner’s, creating an instantly-recognizable image that was replicated in advertising, postcards, modelling illustrations and other merchandise. The ‘Gibson Girl’ look combined bouffant hair, a curvaceous figure, delicate facial features and fashionable clothes, as well as a streak of independence and confidence that resonated well with the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ and the Suffrage movement. The look was said to have been inspired partly by Evelyn Nesbit (below) and Gibson’s wife Irene Langhorne.

Evelyn Nesbit, photographed in 1903 by Gertrude Kasebier

Sketch by Charles Dana Gibson, showing the characteristic ‘bouffant’ hairstyle. As well as being elegant and voluptuous, the ‘Gibson Girls’ suggested intelligence, spirited independence and a degree of emancipation – an idealised (and non-threatening) version of the New Woman

In 1905 Camille won a modelling competition held to find the perfect embodiment of the Gibson Girl, and images of her quickly began to be published in fashion and society magazines. Many of these photographs were taken by Lizzie Caswall Smith (1870-1958.) The pictures below show off her hourglass figure, which boasted an 18″ wasp waist.

Postcard #2

Despite the British-sounding surname, Camille was born in Belgium in 1885 to Reynold Clifford and Matilda Ottersen. After the death of her parents she was raised by relatives in Scandinavia before moving to America where she lived in Boston. She made her stage debut in 1902 and travelled to England two years later with Col. Henry Savage’s theatre company, performing a minor role in their musical comedy The Prince of Pilsen. When the rest of the cast returned to America, she remained behind, obtaining the part of Sylvia Gibson in Seymour Hicks’ play The Catch of the Season.

Postcard #3

This postcard shows Camille with her fiance, Captain the Hon. Henry Lyndhurst Bruce, eldest son of the 2nd Baron Aberdare. Their engagement was announced at the end of August 1906 and they were married at Hanover Square Registry Office in London on 11 October 1906. The above photograph, therefore, was probably taken in September 1906. It was a busy time for Camille, who was now playing the Duchess of Dunmow in the musical comedy The Belle of Mayfair at London’s Vaudeville Theatre. Everyone knew that she was cast for her beauty rather than her musical talent, and her voice – even thinner than her waist – was barely adequate for her number ‘I’m a Duchess’, even after receiving singing lessons from Ivor Novello’s mother, Madame Clara Novello Davies. As one theatre critic put it, ‘The voice of Camille Clifford is not strong, but she wears such beautifully cut clothes and moves so elegantly up and down the stage that her turns is sure to be popular.’ [The Times, 12 April 1906, p.6.] And it was: audiences flocked to see her in the show nonetheless, including many wealthy male admirers such as Lord Aberdare’s son. After their engagement, Camille was going to resign from the show, but the producers enticed her to remain by offering her greater publicity and another musical number – a song entitled ‘Why do they Call Me a Gibson Girl?’

I walked one day
Along Broadway
When I was in New York.
And friend of mine
Said “My, you’re fine!
You have got the Gibson walk!
You have the pose
And Gibson nose
And quite the Gibson leer.
You’ve surely heard of the man called Gibson.”
(He meant the fellow called Dana Gibson.)
What he meant was not quite clear
Until I landed over here.

But why do they call me a Gibson Girl? (Gibson Girl?) Gibson Girl!
What is the matter with Mister Ibsen? (Mister Ibsen?) Why Dana Gibson?
Wear a black expression and a monumental curl,
And walk with a bend in your back,
Then they call you a Gibson Girl.

Just walk round town,
Look up and down:
The girls affect a style
As they pass by,
With dreamy eye,
Or a bored and languid smile.
They look as if
They had a tiff
With Hicks or Beerbohm Tree;
They do their best, for they’ve seen the pictures.
(They’ve missed the point of the Dana pictures.)
They’re intended, don’t you see,
For all a perfect type to be.

The Hon. Henry Lyndhurst Bruce served as a Captain in the Royal Scots Regiment. They had one child, Margaret, who was born in August 1909 but only lived a few days. Captain Bruce was killed in action at Ypres in December 1914. She married her second husband, Captain (later Brigadier) John Meredyth Jones Evans in 1917 and retired from acting after the war. She took up golf and competed in the game at a high level, but by the late 1920s was better known for running a successful stable of racehorses. Their names became familiar at racing events over the next three decades – Alliteration, Claudine, County Guy, Exemplary, Grass Court, Holyrood, Longstone (winner of the Newbury Cup in June 1955), Misty Cloud, Puissant, Rackstraw and Sidi Gaba, to name a few. She devoted considerable sums of money on building up a strong stable: sometimes she was able to pick up a promising horse for a few hundred guineas, but in 1938 she paid 6,500 guineas for Royal Mail, who had won the previous year’s Grand National. Alas, the horse proved unable to repeat his success at Aintree, although he did go on to win a few cups at Cheltenham in the 1940s. Camille caused a further stir in 1949 by paying 17,000 guineas for two year old Hedgerow. Her husband died in 1957, fourteen years before Camille, who passed away on 28 June 1971.

Hungarian Midgets at the Half Moon

Posted on November 28, 2014January 30, 2018 by James

In my last post I posted some details of an old 1908 map of Exeter that I picked up in a secondhand bookshop in Dorset. Many landmarks featured on the map have disappeared since then, destroyed by the ravages of time, German bombers, the City Council or a combination of two or more of these. One such lost building was the Half Moon Hotel, a 17th century coaching inn which stood on the south side of the High Street on the corner of Bedford Street.

The area around Bedford Circus was badly damaged by the 1942 bombing raid and much of it now lies underneath the new Princesshay shopping centre

After posting my last blog entry on the map, I came across a photograph of the Half Moon Hotel (above) but what really caught my eye was the poster on the wall by the corner.

The Half Moon was demolished in 1912 and replaced by a single storey branch of Lloyds Bank, and this photograph must have been taken shortly before this. Ernie Leno was born in 1889, one of the sons of the famous entertainer Dan Leno (1860-1904.) Jack McLallen and May Carson were a married couple who performed a novelty act on roller skates. But the Royal Hungarian Midgets….?

These two postcards show what one might have seen on stage in Exeter one hundred or so years ago. A contemporary playbill from America advertised:

A troupe of Royal Hungarian Midgets, headed by Prince Andru, the world’s smallest man…traveling with five other midgets, Prince Andru stands twenty-seven inches tall, weighs thirty-two pounds and is twenty-two years of age. The midgets perform in a beautiful well- lighted, airy miniature canopy erected on the show’s midway, presenting a high-class program of vaudeville acts with musical numbers.

To modern sensibilities, there is something distasteful about the idea of exploiting physical irregularities, deformities or unusual features for commercial gain. Yet even if these performers were forced to market themselves using demeaning titles such as midgets, dwarves, living dolls, or bearded ladies, there is no denying that they were often able to attain a degree of financial security and social status that would have been denied them otherwise. Celebrity attractions such as Tom Thumb and Anita the Living Doll (interestingly, also said to be a native of Hungary), were introduced to the crowned heads of Europe and received visits and gifts from aristocracy, plus a weekly income far in excess of the average wage earned by their more able-bodied peers. Commenting on what they might have thought about their situation is a delicate matter, and it is difficult now in such an altered cultural and economic world to truly understand the nature of their relationship with both audiences and management. What is available in published writings and interviews typically formed part of a publicity campaign, and doesn’t really offer reliable insights into personal feelings and self-perception. On the other hand, there is concrete evidence that agents were sometimes guilty of – at the very least – financial mistreatment of the acts they represented, as this story from The Times illustrates:

Excerpt from ‘The Times’, 2 December 1913, page 4

The Hippodrome opened in 1908, which dates this poster to the four period between 1908 and 1912. Other acts that appeared there included Marie Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Ethel Bourne, Mona Garrick, Miss Mary Mayfren’s Company in The Yellow Fang (set in a San Francisco opium den), and ‘Consul’ the chimpanzee who performed in 1912 in top hat and roller blades – hence the phrase ‘variety’ entertainment! There is a distinction to be drawn, I think, between performers with musical or other talents, who happened to be of diminutive size – even if this was exploited as a novelty to gain attention – and the display of similar medical conditions in circuses and fairgrounds, where the physical features were the sole attraction of the act, and the performance consisted merely of being paraded in front of staring eyes. Such exhibitions continued in British fairgrounds right up until the 1970s, but would be found unacceptable now.

Public attitudes continue to change, and it is likely that performing animals – once inseparable from the image of a circus – will soon belong to the past. Today saw the second reading of the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill, which is being sponsored by Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick. If passed, this will come into force in December 2015.

So, have we really moved on from a past age of cynical exploitation, when the misfortunes and sufferings of others provided a spectacle for public amusement? As I write this, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here is screening on ITV and audiences gaze at malnourished non-entities immersing themselves in barrels of filth while eating live insects, a spectacle that would fitted in well with the Living Skeletons and rat-eating zulus of Victorian fairgrounds. Society’s treatment of those with disabilities and physical or mental illnesses may have moved on a little, but anyone who has experienced DWP assessments at the hands of ATOS will testify to fact that unseeing, unfeeling inhumanity and injustice remain very much a part of the present.