BOOKS OF THE DAY

Victorian Photography

Julia Margaret Cameron : Pioneer of Photography. By Helmut Gernsheim. (Fountain Press. 21s. WO

IT is fortunate that among the recipients of the lavish gifts of her photographs which Mrs. Carrieron distributed so impulsively, she should have included the waiting-room of the Brockenhurst Railway Station, for seventy years later Mr. Helmut Gernsheim, -then a new- Comer to our country and a distinguished photographer himself, changed trains at Brockenhurst and saw, for the first time, the work of our greatest woman photographer. The present delightful volume is the result. Born of a Victorian upper-class family, Mrs. Cameron was the ugly duckling among seven beautiful sisters, possessing in 'greater proportion their remarkable qualities of exuberant enthusiasm ,and wit. Brought up and married in India, she displayed, unlike :other members of Anglo-Indian society, an outspoken frankness and la dislike for formality that amounted to eccentricity. In the absence of the wife of the Governor-General, she deputised as head of Euro- pean society, acquired an imperious manner and took the opportunity to show her talent for brilliant conversation and her qualities of 'warm-heartedness and originality. Her superfluous energies were taken up in organising relief for victims of the Irish famine and 'translating German poems.

In the 'forties the Camerons came to England, where Julia Margaret ;" lived upon superlatives as upon her daily bread," and rushed about in trailing draperies cultivating the society of men of letters .and 'painters. Finally, in order to be near her beloved Tennyson, Mrs. Cameron brought her husband to settle & Freshwater, in two cottages which she knocked together and named Dimbola.' Life at Dimbola ' 'immectiately became a centre of creative activity. Dinners lasted 'for four hours with recitations at the table of Wordsworth, Milton and Shakespeare. Amateur theatricals and lantern processions were organised. When, through marriage, her own family circle became smaller, Mrs. Cameron was given a camera and photographic Outfit by a newly-wed daughter, who perhaps foresaw that here was an opportunity to keep her Mother well occupied. Such indeed proved to be the case. Mrs. Cameron was dissatisfied with the like- nesses of the men of distinction taken by the successful professional photographers of the day, and was determined to improve upon them. She threw herself into the art of photography with her accustomed impulsive zest, and with this new enthusiasm she realised she was about to find her life's purpose. She turned the coal-house into her dark-room, and the glazed hen-house became her studio, wherein isle posed local fanners and fishermen, and the failure of her results 'only stimulated her to further enthusiasm, for she remarked, "The difficulties only enhance the value.of the pursuit." • Photography in Mrs. Cameron's day was no easy matter. Her exposures lasted as much as seven minutes, during which time it 'was more than likely that a sitter must move. After its exposure Ithe plate must be submitted to many complicated processes, and ;after it had been developed, fixed, washed and dried, a most oomph- cated varnishing ritual, which was fraught with danger, took place in front of a fire. Dimbola ' possessed no running water, and in freezing weather Mrs. Cameron must pour nine cans of well-water over each photograph. "I began with no knowledge of the art," wrote Mrs. Cameron ; "I did not know where to place my dark box, how to focus the sitter and I effaced my first picture by rubbing my hand over the filmy side of the glass negative." But at last, in January, 1864, after much experimenting, Mrs. Cameron was able to scrawl in her generous handwriting underneath a large head of a child: "Annie, my first success."

From this moment nothing could stop Mrs. Cameron's enthusiasm.: She ran about the house collecting her sullenly beautiful parlour- maid, Mary Hillier, the fire-irons, sheets and lilies of the valley en

route to her studio to make a portrait in the manner of Leonardo,

Raphael, Perugino or Michelangelo. She posed other sitters invariably draped in the same piece of velvet cloth, but she experi-

mented with all forms of lighting. While his wife became ever more zealous, the maids acting as models or dark-room assistants and the guests being left to do the household chores, her husband would retire to his bedroom to recite Homer. Here, as soon as her latest masterpiece had been produced from the developer, his wife un- to him with the plate dripping with silver nitrate on to carpets,_ table-cloths and bed-linen, to hear his enthusiastic praises, though , no one spoke or wrote more eulogistically about her photographs than Mrs. Cameron herself. Nor did she minimise the cost to her in - labour and effort.

Mrs. Cameron was now determined -that her photographs should be appreciated widely and sent them to exhibitions abroad and in London galleries where their originality and truthfulness created a sensation among people of discrimination. She was undeterred by, the pompous criticisms given to her work by the Photographic Society of London, which alluded to her "bungling pupil's work."' She treated with scorn the notices in the -technical journals to the effect that her "wilfully imperfect photography" was "altogether . repulsive," that "all that is good in photography has been neglected and the shortcomings of the at prominently exhibited," and that one of, her prints presented the Poet Laureate in a guise sufficient to' convict him as a rogue and a vagabond. But Mrs. Cameron feasted avidly on the praise of Rossetti, Du Maluier, Victor Hugo who said, "No one has ever captured the rays of the sun and used them as you have," and the painter Watts who wrote, in the idiom of sixty years later, "Quite Divine." In spite of the tributes heaped upon her by thc great men of the day, Mrs. Cameron received many refusals to sit from others. In spite of supplications on bended knees, Garibaldi refused to pose for her, and Tennyson received her almost continual onslaughts with half-hearted opposition, retharking that she made bags under his eyes and that one of his 'portraits looked like a "dirty monk.' Carlyle admitted that "a sitting was a kind of inferno." Mrs. Cameron spent large sums of money she could ill afford taking pictures she would give away to all who showed enthusiasm. Charles Darwin was about the only sitter who ever paid for his pictures. ,

When Mrs. Cameron switched the emphasis of her photographs from single portraits to elaborate groups illustrating the Idylls of the King, Shakespeare's plays and Bible stories, the tunnoit in her

household was increased. From her window she could scan the road, and if likely models were espied strangers would find themselves posing as Lancelot or Guinevere in hired armour or creased draperies and theatrical jewellery. Once in Oxford Mrs. Cameron espied a perfect type for one of her mythological heroines who, on investiga- tion, turned out to be Mrs. Donkin's cook and was forthwith taken away to pOse for two months on end. Occasionally the white- bearded Mr. Cameron was brought down to impersonate Merlin or

Prospero with the poker as sceptre, or with a property beret on his head. Unfortunately, he was seldom able to contain his amuse- ment, and half way through the long exposure would start to shake with laughter, spreading amusement among all concerned until- Mrs. Cameron shouted her remonstrances.

Mr. Helmut Gernsheim has shown some of Mrs. Cameron's own thoroughness and devotion to work in his tribute to this eccentric

and serious artist. He has brought to light a great number of

delightfully amusing and hitherto unknown facts about the lady's life. He writes with expert knowledge about her apparatus and

the reasons why her effects were often below standard from a

perfectionist's point of view. He praises her portraits as having the nobility and simplicity of statues, but I find him insufficiently gener- ous in his appraisal of -the Pre-Raphaelite groups and illustrations. He complains of the "Rosebud Garden of Girls" as being comic and w:thout charm, and other elaborate compositions as being affected, amateurish, artificial and ludicrous. In comparison with the nauseous work of H. P. Robinson and other most honoured "camera artists" of the day, aod considering the Victorian fashion for sentiment, Mrs. Cameron's groups seem strangely bold, uncom- promising and direct, and something of her own serious intentness towards her subject has been caught by all the girls coralled to pose somewhat clumsily, yet never in a dainty manner, with their garlands of jasmine and rosemary and their bunches of lilies of the valley.

In his choice of illustrations, Mr. Gersheim has concentrated upon the portraits, and those of Mrs. Herbert Fisher, the Honourable Frank Charteris, Sir John Herschel, and Mrs. Duckworth are particularly beautiful ; but some of the reproductions, as often happens with the rotogravure process, are apt to become too con- trasty so that the in-between tone-values are lost. Especially is this to be seen in the case of Ellen Terry and Mrs. Herbert Fisher. But to make any criticism is to err on the side of ingratitude, for the book, with a delightful introduction by Clive Bell, is a pleasure which we have been too long denied. CECIL BATON.