The Fair Toxophilite – dance photographs from the school of Madame Espinosa

Posted on April 1, 2014July 2, 2020 by James

Some time ago I came across a little bundle of photographs in a basket at an antique shop, and after rummaging around, found some other pictures depicting the same dancer. Here is a selection.

I know nothing about her except that she was a pupil of Madame Judith Espinosa, one of the children of Leon Espinosa (1825–1903) and his wife Mathilda Oberst. They were a talented family, as Judith’s siblings Edouard, Marius, Leo, Ray and Lea were all dancers and teachers. Her brother Edouard Espinosa (1871–1950) is the best known.

Leon Espinosa settled in England towards the end of the 19th century and his family occupied Woolborough House in SW London from 1913. Madame Judith taught dance here – and at other venues in London – until her death at the age of 72 in February 1949. Her pupils included Margot Fonteyn and actress Anna Neagle.

Madame Judith taught formal ballet, but the classical costumes – along with some of the dancers’ poses – seem to me to evoke the style of Isadora Duncan or Margaret Morris.

The school was in London, although one of the dancers also appears in an old photographic postcard from the studio of John Robert Pearce in Exeter, which suggests a Devon connection. Are there any former students of Madame Espinosa still out there?

The Great Katharine Hepburn Blogathon!

Posted on March 27, 2014January 31, 2018 by James

I’m delighted to be contributing to ‘The Great Katharine Hepburn Blogathon’, which will be taking place between 10th and 12th May this year. My blog post will be about her performance in Mary of Scotland (1936), John Ford’s RKO movie about which I spoke a little at the British Monarchy on Screen conference in 2012.

There will be lots of other fantastic blog posts that weekend, covering a range of Kate’s films from all sorts of unusual angles, including costumes. I can’t wait to read them – but I better not delay in writing my own!

For more information, check out Margaret’s post at http://margaretperry.org/announcing-the-great-katharine-hepburn-blogathon

Caldey Island, 1913 – postcards by Joseph Pike

Posted on March 6, 2014February 5, 2018 by James

Over a decade has passed since I last visited Caldey Island; just over a century has passed since these drawings were made. The scenes depicted are nonetheless much as I remember them, and could well have been drawn in recent years.

Caldey Abbey & Priory Bay

These images are from my set of a dozen postcards, and today’s blog post commemorates the event that took place on Caldey on this day in 1913.

Caldey Abbey Church from the Narthex

Executed with superb skill in pencil, they are the work of Joseph Pike (1883-1956), one of five brothers from an old Catholic family of Bristol. They were all educated at Ampleforth College, where Joseph studied art under William J. Boddy. While two of his younger brothers – Fr. Bertrand Pike 0.P. (1884-1954) and Fr. Alfred Pike, 0.P. (1887-1962) – went on to join the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), Joseph joined the studio of John Hardman & Co., manufacturers of stained glass, altars and other church furnishings.

The Choir, Caldey Abbey

Pike’s interest in church interiors is evident from these pictures, as is his care in rendering precise details of architecture and metalwork. His great break came when he was asked by the Benedictine historian Bede Camm O.S.B. to provide illustrations for Forgotten Shrines (London: Macdonald & Evans, 1910). In his Preface, Father Bede wrote: ‘I feel a very special debt of gratitude to my artist, Mr Joseph Pike, for the very beautiful drawings with which he has illustrated and adorned the text. Mr Pike is still a young man, and there can be no doubt as to his great talent.’

The Refectory, Caldey

The Old Priory Church, Caldey Island

Caldey Island was at this time home to a community of Anglican monks under the leadership of Aelred Carlyle. I have written about this community elsewhere – there are references below under the Monk and His Movies blog post, and it is interesting to compare Peter Anson’s line drawings with Joseph Pike’s more nuanced depictions of textures and shading.

The Abbot’s Chapel, from the lane

Carlyle’s attempt to introduce Benedictine monastic life to the Church of England placed him and his community on a collision course with the Anglican authorities, particularly with regard to liturgical rites and ecclesiastical obedience. Matters eventually came to a head in 1913, resulting in almost the entire community being received into the Catholic Church. This took place 101 years ago today – 5th March 1913, the day before Joseph Pike’s thirtieth birthday.

Bede Camm had followed events on Caldey for some years, defending the community in a letter to the Catholic Times in 1905. He landed on the island on 28 February and said Mass in the monastery chapel – probably the first time this had been done since the Reformation. After the conversion, he became novice master to the monks. It was presumably through his involvement with the Caldey community that Joseph Pike visited the island to carry out these drawings.

The Village Church, Caldey

The Oratory (top), The Guest House (bottom), Caldey

After the outbreak of the First World War, Pike left Hardman’s and joined the 7th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, where he saw active service as a Lieutenant. He was badly injured in 1916 and invalided back to England where he spent some months convalescing at a sanatorium in Dartford.

The Priory Gatehouse, Caldey

After the war Pike worked as a freelance artist, publishing a series of attractive little volumes: Chester: a sketch book (London: A. & C. Black, 1920), Ampleforth College: a sketch book (London: A. & C. Black, 1921), and Bruges: a sketch book (London: A. & C. Black, 1922), while his pencil drawings of London included locations such as St James’ Palace, Westminster, Marble Arch and the Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Southwark, John Butt, commissioned two drawings of St James’ Church, Spanish Place, and Pike also sketched St Edmund’s College, Ware, plus other scenes in Cardiff and Chepstow. He got married in the 1920s and had three children, a son and two daughters. He accompanied his brother Alfred to Lourdes in 1951, recording the pilgrimage with two fine studies of the Marian shrine which were reproduced as popular Christmas cards. He died in July 1956.

At Star Cliff, Caldey Island

St Margaret’s Island,from Star Cliff, Caldey

Caldey Abbey from High Cliff

Anton Walbrook as Saint Sebastian

Posted on January 20, 2014January 30, 2018 by James

Today the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Saint Sebastian, an early Christian martyr who became the patron saint of athletes, soldiers, pin-makers and plague-sufferers. (The Eastern Orthodox Church keeps his feast on 18 December.) Today’s blog post therefore features an image of Anton Walbrook as Saint Sebastian.

This image appeared in a German newspaper in 1936, responding to a scene in the film Der Kurier des Zaren which was released in Germany on 7 February. Adapted from Jules Verne’s 1876 novel Michael Strogoff, the film tells the tale of a Russian courier named Michael Strogoff who has to dash across Russia with a vital message for the tsar’s brother, wrestling with bears and fighting off ferocious Tatar rebels along the way. Captured by the Tatars, he is brought before their leader and blinded with a red hot sword by the executioner. It is this scene, depicting the actor in torn clothes and bared torso, lashed to a wooden pole, that evoked the comparison with ‘Captain Sebastian.’

So who was this saint?

According to legend, he was born in Narbonne in Gaul but brought up in Milan before travelling to Rome where he joined the army of the emperor Carinus. Sebastian was later promoted to captain of the Praetorian Guard under Diocletian, but the emperor condemned him to death because of his success in making Christian converts. He was taken out to a field where, according to the 14th century Golden Legend, ‘archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin.’ Left for dead, he was found to be alive by a pious widow who came to bury him; she nursed him back to health, whereupon he returned to confront Diocletian and was promptly martyred a second time, being clubbed to death before his body was thrown into a sewer. This was around 288 AD. His remains were retrieved and reburied near the catacombs; the Basilica of San Sebastiano on the Appian Way became a site of medieval pilgrimage.

Sebastian’s story may seem to have little connection with the life of Walbrook, but the cartoon’s caption makes more sense if we unravel a little about the development of the saint’s iconography.

Shortly before facing the executioner, Michael Strogoff raises his eyes heavenwards, imitating the traditional pose of Christian martyrs.

Representations of the saint appeared as early as the sixth century, but these portraits followed the formal conventions of Byzantine art and made little effort at natural realism. In the early middle ages, paintings of the saint began to adopt more distinctive features; he was shown as youthful, clean-shaven rather than bearded, and the emphasis moved almost exclusively to his ‘first’ martyrdom – the shooting by arrows. Renaissance artists could not resist the opportunity to paint a beautiful youth, nearly naked, in a contorted pose of alluring vulnerability, and over the next few centuries depictions of Saint Sebastian were undertaken by, among others, Hans Memling, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Piero della Francesca, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna (three times), Pietro Perugino, Giuseppi Cesari, Carlo Saraceni, Giovanni Bazzi (known as ‘Il Sodoma’ for reasons mentioned in my book A Carnal Medium), Tintoretto, Titian, Guido Reni (seven times), El Greco, Gerrit van Honthorst and Peter Paul Rubens. These paintings celebrate the saint’s physical perfection and thus succeeded in recasting the image of Saint Sebastian in popular culture, from a middle-aged martyr to an icon of Apollonian beauty, imbuing him with a particular appeal for 19th century aesthetes who already idolised Hellenic youth.

Examples can be found in John Addington Symonds’ Sketches in Italy (1883), Walter Pater’s short story Sebastian von Storck (1886), Anatole France’s satirical novel The Red Lily (1894), John Gray’s poem Saint Sebastian (1897) and Montague Summers’ Antinous and Other Poems (1907.) Oscar Wilde viewed Reni’s Saint Sebastian in Genoa in 1877 on his way to Rome, where he visited Keats’ grave and made a strong association between the two dead youths: in his poem The Grave of Keats he calls the poet ‘Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.’ The title character of Wilde’s novella The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) wore a cloak studded with ‘medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian’ and after Wilde’s release from prison he moved to France under the pseudonym of Sebastian Melmoth. Another of Reni’s Sebastian paintings inspired Frederick Rolfe to write ‘Two Sonnets for a Picture of Saint Sebastian the Martyr in the Capitoline Gallery, Rome’ which was published in The Artist magazine in June 1891. The same portrait had a profound effect on Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, who – shortly before his death – had himself photographed as Saint Sebastian by Kishin Shinoyama. This was nothing new – Jean Reutlinger did the same in 1913 and models posing as Sebastian had been captured by the cameras of Victorian and Edwardian photographers from Oskar Rejlander (1867) to Frederick Holland Day (1905-7.) Even a cursory perusal of these writings and images reveals the extent to which Sebastian had become a homoerotic icon by the beginning of the century. Audiences – including tuned-in newspaper readers – knew what was being hinted at when an actor or artist was presented as another Saint Sebastian.

Although the examples I’ve cited above are drawn from English and French language sources, there were plenty of ‘Sebastian’ references in German literature, including the works of Walbrook’s favourite authors. In January 1912 Franz Kafka wrote in his diary ‘I am supposed to pose in the nude for the artist [Ernst] Ascher, as a model for a St. Sebastian.’ Alas, no record remains of this painting, if it was ever made. Egon Schiele, who went to the same school as Wohlbrück, Klosterneuberg, painted a self-portrait as Saint Sebastian in 1915. Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Sankt Sebastian was written between 1905 and 1906 when he was working at Meudon as secretary to sculptor Auguste Rodin. It was published in his Neue Gedichte in 1907:

Like one lying down he stands there, all
target-proffered by his mighty will.Far-removed, like mothers when they still,
Self-inwoven like a coronal.And the arrows come, and, as if straight out of his own loins originating, cluster with their feathered ends vibrating.But he darkly smiles, inviolate.Only once his eyes show deep distress, Gazing in a painful nakedness; Then, as though ashamed of noticing, seem to let go with disdainfulness those destroyers of a lovely thing.

[J.D. Leishman’s translation]

‘I have a favourite saint. I will tell you his name. It is Saint Sebastian, that youth at the stake, who, pierced by swords and arrows from all sides, smiles amidst his agony. Grace in suffering: that is the heroism symbolized by St. Sebastian. The image may be bold, but I am tempted to claim this heroism for the German mind and for German art, and to suppose that the international honour fallen to Germany’s literary achievement was given with this sublime heroism in mind. Through her poetry Germany has exhibited grace in suffering.’

These words are from Thomas Mann’s speech in Stockholm on 10 December 1929, given at his acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The prize had been granted in recognition of novels such as Buddenbrooks (1901) and The Magic Mountain (1924) rather than the novella Death in Venice (1912), to which Mann appeared to allude in his acceptance speech. The following passage occurs in the second chapter of Death in Venice:

‘a keen essayist had remarked once: that he was the conception of “an intellectual and ephebe-like masculinity that stands silent in proud shame, clenching its teeth while it is pierced by swords and spears.” That was beautiful, intelligent, and correct, despite its somewhat exaggerated accentuation of passivity. Because grace under pressure is more than just suffering; it is an active achievement, a positive triumph and the figure of St Sebastian is its best symbol…’

The novella recounts the final days of a middle-aged writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, who has become obsessed with a beautiful young boy he has seen while on holiday in Venice. A year before Wohlbrück began filming Der Kurier des Zaren, his name arose in discussions about a film adaptation of Death in Venice. Mann had his doubts, however, feeling that Wohlbrück was zu schön (too handsome) for the lead role of Aschenbach. The character is actually in his early fifties and clearly past his prime; towards the end of the story, he resorts to make up to disguise his age. Wohlbrück at this time was only 37. The film was never made, and audiences had to wait until 1971 when Dirk Bogarde played the part at the more appropriate age of 49. The German newspaper’s suggestion [above] that Wohlbrück should appear in a film about Saint Sebastian, ‘made in the style of Cecil B De Mille,’ was not taken up either. The first, to my knowledge, was Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane (1976.)

Thomas Mann’s family were intimately involved in the theatrical and cinematic circles frequented by Adolf Wohlbrück. The film that made Marlene Dietrich a star, Der Blau Engel (1930), was based on the novel Professor Unrat by his brother Heinrich Mann. Thomas’s son Klaus Mann was engaged to actress Pamela Wedekind, while his daughter Erika was married to Gustaf Grundgens for three years. Klaus portrayed his brother-in-law in his 1936 novel Mephisto, criticising him for compromising with the Nazis. Grundgens’ marriage to Erika Mann was thought to have been a lavender marriage, as was his later marriage to Marianne Hopper. After they separated in 1929, Erika embarked on a series of lesbian affairs, beginning with Pamela Wedekind. She opened a cabaret in Munich, Die Pfeffermühle, where anti-Nazi sketches were performed. Pamela Wedekind later married Charles Regnier; their son Anatole referred to Wohlbrück in his memoirs.

The writings of Thomas and Heinrich Mann had been publicly burned by the Nazis in May 1933, and both authors had left the country before Wohlbrück’s name was suggested for Death in Venice. Although the Manns were joined in exile by a great many other writers, actors, directors and leading figures from the arts, for the time being Wohlbrück, Gründgens, Schünzel and others continued to work in Germany. The choice was not simply one of staying or leaving: remaining in Germany raised questions about how to live with the Nazi regime. One could endure for a while, emulate Saint Sebastian’s ‘grace under pressure’, but it was impossible to sustain the act for long. By the time Der Kurier des Zaren was released, Wohlbrück was looking for ways to leave Nazi Germany.

‘Grace in suffering: that is the heroism symbolized by St. Sebastian.’ – Thomas Mann

The Meaning of the word ‘Kodak’

Posted on January 11, 2014January 31, 2018 by James

Towards the end of 1887 photographic entrepreneur George Eastman was preparing to launch his ‘little roll holder breast camera’, which he believed would prove popular with the growing market of amateur photographers. In order to promote global sales he wanted to give the camera a snappy and distinctive name that would be recognizable in any language. After experimenting with various combinations of vowels and consonants – aided, it was said, by an anagram game set or possibly a bowl of alphabet soup – he hit upon the name ‘Kodak.’

It may have been a made-up word but the prominence of the letter ‘K’ was not purely arbitrary – Eastman confessed to a liking for ‘K’, partly because his mother’s maiden name was Kilbourn but also because it seemed to him ‘a strong, incisive sort of letter.’ His first public use of the Kodak name was in a letter to his patent lawyers on 28 January 1888. Four months later, the first ‘original Kodak’ went on sale and proved a runaway success. The tradename was registered in the United States on 4th September 1888 but when Eastman tried to do the same in England, the Comptroller of the British Patent Office requested a letter explaining the derivation of the word. In response, Eastman confirmed that
‘Kodak is not a foreign name or word; it was constructed by me to serve a definite purpose. It has the following merits as a trade-mark word: First. It is short. Second. It is not capable of mispronunciation.
Third. It does not resemble anything in the art and cannot be associated with anything in the art except the Kodak.‘Some years later he clarified the matter further in a letter to Professor John Manley, of Chicago University: ‘It was a purely arbitrary combination of letters, not derived in whole or part from any existing word, arrived at after considerable search for a word that would answer all requirements for a trade-mark name. The principal of these were that it must be short; incapable of being misspelled so as to destroy its identity; must have a vigorous and distinctive personality; and must meet the requirements of the various foreign trade-mark laws, the English being the one most difficult to satisfy owing to the very narrow interpretation that was being given to their laws at the time.’Now, the English may have been guilty of placing a narrow interpretation upon their patent laws, but this was not the case regarding their views on the etymology of ‘Kodak.’ Despite Eastman’s openness about its mundane origins, alternative theories abounded. The following letters appeared in Amateur Photographer during the latter half of 1896: Odds and Ends (editorial) 7th August 1896, p.112

The Eastman Company can certainly say with truth that they have added a new word to the English language. To many people, “Kodak” is the generic term for any kind of hand-camera, and shopkeepers are often asked for one in this sense. The new papers often use the word as a verb, and speak of people going “to Kodak” places, as readily as the term were to be found in Johnson or Webster.* It was indeed a happy thought to invent outright a new combination of letters; one without any worrying Latin, Greek, or other derivative. That it has been good for its originators goes without saying, and we have no kind of doubt that the actual value of the trademark, “Kodak,” would run into five figures. But the future lexicographer will certainly be puzzled over this word, which has had no forefathers, although he will probably soon find for the orphan a Sanscrit, or possibly a Chinese word which seems to bear sufficient likeness to it to claim relationship.

******************************************************

‘Kodak’ is in fact still found as a verb in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961) and the OED traces the first use as a verb to 1891, but the columnist was correct about the attraction people would feel in finding parallels for the word elsewhere. Over the next couple of months, Amateur Photographer became Amateur Lexicographer, beginning with these two letters on 14 August 1896, p.129:

Sir,
Your remarks in the Amateur Photographer on the origins of the word Kodak made me wonder if it could not be found in Hebrew. Now קָדַח in that language means to burn, whence be bright or brilliant. Kahdak is pretty near Kodak, and Kodaks have had, it seems, a brilliant career. It is quite possible therefore to imagine the Eastman Company, as being true wise men from the East, putting a strange word on the market, and depending on the merits of the camera, turning the word Kodak into a valuable – as you point out – trademark. To others may it not be said “Go thou and do likewise.”

Yours, etc.,
Allan Bayne

Sir,
The writer of Odds and Ends in your journal of 7th Aug., seems puzzled over the origins of the word “Kodak.” This word, common in the Hindostanee language, means a youth or boy. It is derived from the Persian. It is spelt exactly like we do, but the “a” is pronounced like “u” in duck. Thus, here is another instance of there being nothing new under the sun. Other oriental words have been anglicised in the same manner in connection with trade purposes.

Yours, etc.,
W.J.F.

W.J.F. was quite right about ‘kodak’, as shown in this excerpt from the fourth edition of John Shakespear’s Dictionary of Hindustani and English (London, 1849.) It is fairly likely that ‘W.J.F.’, whatever his interest in photography, had spent time in India under the British Raj: the word for ‘boy’ or ‘lad’ would have been familiar to any colonial administrator or military officer.

The background to Mr Bayne’s knowledge of Hebrew can only be guessed at, although his quoting from the Gospel of St Luke indicates he knew his Bible; possibly he had learnt some Hebrew to help his reading of the Old Testament. His argument linking קָדַח to ‘kodak’ is somewhat far-fetched, however. קָדַח would be transliterated as qadach, and pronounced more like ‘kaw-dach’, lacking Eastman’s click-click ‘k’ sound. Not to be outdone, Mr Bayne returned to the discussion on 28th August p.169. It is at this point that both his pen and his train of thought began to run rather too fast:

Sir,
The Hindostanee word “Kodak,” mentioned by W.J.F., is perhaps found in our own language – in English in the word “kiddy,” and in Scotch, “cuddy” (ass). Cuddy ass = once perhaps to boy ass, is prevalent in Scotland. It is quite possible the Hebrew קָדַח to burn = French, chaud i.e. in English, hot. The verb,”kid,” meaning to show, discover, allied to the German kunde (not a bad word for a camera), meaning knowledge, news etc., is just the first part of kodak.
Webster is dissatisfied with the derivation of “God” from “good.” “God” may be derived from the same word as the French chaud, the letters of both being the same etymologically. Both begin with a guttural and end with a dental.
“Goad” would mean the thorn-like flame as well as [the] feeling it produces.
“Guide” would mean light, giving therefore directing power of light.
“Goat” and “Kodak boy” as above, would mean the active, leaping power of fire.
“God” would then mean light in all its powers.
– I am, etc.Allan BaynePerhaps wisely, W.J.F. declined to respond to Mr Bayne’s ever-evolving theories, and further discussion of the matter was absent from columns of the Amateur Photographer for the next fortnight. Then, on 11th September, Mr Bayne returned to make a few final points of a decidedly spiritual nature. (p.209)Sir,

Ere we depart from the word Kodak, as suggested by your editorial note, the chief word has yet to be spoken. If “God, as we found, may mean light in all its powers (Kodak, God act), test the new meaning in one supreme place. Solomon’s conclusion will then be, light (for “God”) will bring every work into judgment, whether it be good or whether it be evil. As the photographer’s work is all brought to judgment and is worthy of gold, silver, copper and writing, when brought to the light of sun and soul, so it is with the works of every man, woman and child – our works, from a photographic exhibition, a one woman or man exhibition, to the spiritual powers that surround us. “There is nothing secret” – see the 139th Psalm. The unseen writing of the seen is not all, there is also the writing of the unseen. In Eccles. X,20 there is the Hadography (unseen writing) of the thoughts also going on.
“The eye cannot be filled with seeing” all the finest photographs, and photography is not an end in itself. Are not all the care, time, knowledge, experience and guidance required to produce a photograph, but a poor thing in their results, unless they be a picture and only a picture of what is necessary to produce a man and woman worthy of their divine original.

Yours, etc.
Allan Bayne

The Scriptural quotations that Bayne cites in support of his ramblings are apt: Psalm 139 begins ‘Do not revile the king even in your thoughts, or curse the rich in your bedroom, because a bird in the sky may carry your words, and a bird on the wing may report what you say,’ while Ecclesiastes Chap. 10, vs. 20 warns ‘You perceive my thoughts from afar…Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely.’ I remain unsure about what he means by ‘Hadography’, although possibly he is referring to Steganography, a form of unseen writing (from the Greek στεγανός, meaning ‘concealed’ and γραφή. meaning ‘writing.’

I can only imagine how bemused George Eastman would have been.

Tomorrow – Freudian interpretations of ‘You push the button and we do the rest.’