Born in 1809: Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs

Patricia Fara*

Clare College, Cambridge, CB2 1TL, UK

Feature Endeavour Vol.33 No.1

Middle-aged Victorians with beards may not soundenticing subjects for a commercial photographer,but Julia Margaret Cameron’s dramatic, individua-lised portraits helped intellectual men to becomenational celebrities.

Who does this describe?

‘‘Born in 1809, he became one of Victorian England’smost famous writers on nature. Although he delayedpublishing his own major work, when RobertChambers’ controversial book on evolution appearedin 1844, he commented that it ‘seems to contain manyspeculations with which I have been familiar foryears, and on which I have written. . .’ [1]. He hadalready begun talking about his evolutionary ideaswhen he was a Cambridge undergraduate, suggestingat a debating society that people had graduallyemerged from lower organisms, starting with worm-like creatures and moving upwards through shellfishand vertebrates. Reacting against William Paley’sNatural Theology, he became convinced that divinedesign could not be inferred from complex structuressuch as insects’ eyes or eagles’ wings. He was a prolificauthor, despite being incapacitated by a mysteriousailment for which he enthusiastically took water curesand was treated by Dr James Gully at Malvern. As hisreputation grew, he hid himself away in his countryretreat, devising with the help of his wife self-protec-tive strategies to avoid meeting his readers. Habitu-ally swathed in a voluminous black cape, he sported aluxuriant beard and posed for the photographer JuliaMargaret Cameron on the Isle of Wight; capturinghim in near-profile, she lit his domed skull from aboveso that its reflected glowwould convey his status as thenation’s great genius. It was Cameron who introducedhim to Charles Darwin.’’

That last sentence was, perhaps, a surprise. This yearCharles Darwin (1809–1882) is being celebrated as thefounding father of evolution, but he had much in commonwith his exact contemporary, Alfred Tennyson (1809–

1892). It was the poet, not the scientist, who coined thatmemorable image of aggressive competition, ‘Nature, redin tooth and claw’. The phrase comes from In Memoriam(1850), the long poem that Tennyson spent nearly 20 yearscomposing as he tried to reconcile the early death of hisclosest friend with the existence of a compassionate God.Appearing 9 years before Darwin’s On the Origin ofSpecies, yet including many references to evolution, InMemoriam became a best-seller, much loved by QueenVictoria and also by Emma Darwin, who was far more

*Tel.: +44 1223 333248; fax: +44 1223 334554.Fara, P. (pf10006@cam.ac.uk)Available online 14 February 2009

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excited than Charles when theymet the literary lion on theIsle of Wight. She had long ago given up hope of interestingher husband in poetry: after an evening spent readingTennyson aloud with her friend Henrietta Huxley, sheagreed regretfully that Darwin had ‘no poet’s corner inhis heart’ [2]. Tennyson, on the other hand, studied Dar-win’s ideas closely, although he never fully accepted theconcept of a directionless universe that is governed bychance rather than being steered towards improvement.

Victorian heroes were thought to reveal themselves notonly through their deeds, but also through their appear-ance. Thomas Carlyle had pronounced that ‘The history ofwhat man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom theHistory of the Great Men who have worked there’, andwhen plans were put forward for London’s National Por-trait Gallery in 1856, the Prime Minister argued that thefeatures of Great Men (a category understood to embrace afew Great Women) provided an ‘incentive to mental exer-tion, to noble actions, to good conduct’ [3]. Later in the

Figure 1. Alfred Tennyson with book by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1865. �Royal

Photographic Society/SSPL’.

d. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2009.01.004

Figure 2. Charles Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1868. �Royal Society,

London.

6 Feature Endeavour Vol.33 No.1

month that he met Darwin, August 1868, Tennysonretreated to his Surrey home, complaining to Cameronthat ‘I can’t be anonymous. . . by reason of your confoundedphotographs’ [4]. As Tennyson was discovering, portraitphotography had become a well-established business thathelped to promote writers, scientists and artists as publiccelebrities. Commercial studios posed their clients againstartificial backgrounds to create profitable pictures thatwere displayed in shop windows, compiled into albums,and distributed in miniature as visiting cards. By publish-ing her striking photographs, Cameron made individualfaces familiar, but also consolidated preconceptions of howan inspired genius should look.

For one of her Tennyson photographs, Cameronreinforced romantic visions of a poet by emphasising hisdishevelled appearance and baggy lower eyelids, placinghis large book at the front where her lens made it loomunnaturally large (Figure 1). Following classical andRenaissance traditions, she shot him in profile, thus exag-gerating the shape of his head and making it matchphrenological opinion that a high forehead and large skullreflect a formidable intellect. Tennyson called it ‘The DirtyMonk’, and chose a more conventional photograph for thefrontispiece of his collected works.When she photographedDarwin, she placed him in a similar position, top-lightinghis balding head and craggy eyebrows (Figure 2). However,he is wearing sober clothes well-suited to a respectablenaturalist, even if excessively heavy for a summer insouthern England. As a young man, Darwin had been soself-conscious about his large nose that he shunned thecamera, but he wrote (ungrammatically) to Cameron ‘I likethis Photograph very much better than any other whichhave been taken of me.’

Like most of Cameron’s male subjects, both Tennysonand Darwin are portrayed with prominent beards. Thisfashion of sporting a ‘toga virilis’ (Roman togas symbolisedmanhood) is often said to have started in the previousdecade when unshaven soldiers returned from the Crim-ean war, and it was initially adopted by artists [5]. Darwinhad first grown his for convenience, but he came to regardit as a sign of masculine maturity valuable for distinguish-ing solid scholarly Victorians from well-groomed Frenchradicals. Friends told him he resembled Moses, and Dar-win was delighted with the idea of resembling a propheticsage: ‘Do I not look reverent?’ he asked [6].

For her early photographs, Cameron picked out localsubjects – as she put it, ‘The peasantry of our island is veryhandsome’ [7]. Deferring to her superior social status, theydreaded being summoned to remain immobile throughoutthe long sessions she imposed upon them. Desperate formoney to support her children and semi-invalid husband,Cameron successfully converted this activity into a career.The charming, unconventional housewife became anexpert saleswoman, relying on her close friend Tennysonto attract wealthy sitters, and badgering him into signingphotographs so that she could market them at a high price.To make her Darwin more profitable, she reproduced his

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flattering comment below his face (Figure 2), and – untilthey became too expensive – he handed out her photo-graphs to admirers.

Four years after sitting for Cameron, Darwin publishedOn the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals(1872), one of the earliest books to include mechanicallyreproduced photographs. In it, he argued that facialexpressions are the outward manifestations of inner feel-ings: perhaps he pondered such ideas while sitting station-ary in the Isle of Wight, transfixed beneath the gaze ofCameron’s lens.

References1 Secord, J.A. (2000) Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary

Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of theNatural History of Creation, Chicago and London: University ofChicago Press, quotation p. 9.

2 Browne, J. (2002) Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, London:Jonathan Cape, p. 152. This splendid biography, the second volumeof two, is the major source of my information on Darwin in this essay.

3 Ford, C. (2003) Julia Margaret Cameron: 19th Century Photographer ofGenius. London: National Portrait Gallery, quotation p. 45.

4 Browne, Darwin, p. 382.5 Ford, Cameron, pp. 47–50.6 Browne, Darwin, p. 302.7 Ford, Cameron, p. 56.