‘Aunt’ Flo, photographed at 45 George Street, Hastings Old Town. Date unknown; but the closer proximity of the photographer to his sitter is likely to place the photo in the Edwardian period.
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It may be argued that 19th
nineteenth century history hardly impacts upon later decades, and that every
trace of that momentous
century must have all but disappeared by the late 1930s. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The social and political ideas formed – and forged – in
the Industrial Revolution, rolled through the twentieth century like a vast
tidal wave, and was not even checked by the cataclysm of the Second World War.
(Technology has far outstripped the evolutionary development of us as human
beings. So it is that we make the same disastrous mistakes – but with different
weapons – and Afghanistan could hardly present a better case in point).
Further, life in the 1940s and 1950s was not so different from that of earlier
decades. Coal was delivered by horse–drawn
lorries, and the sacks emptied through coal holes straight into the cellar just
as they had been in the nineteenth century. The garden privy was far from uncommon,
and ‘basin
washing’ the only alternative to a bath for many. We had a large
galvanised tub bath which had to be filled from a gas geyser: a formidable
apparatus that induced in me a fear that it might blow up (and as it happens
not without good reason). Our basement flat was also damp, and after persistent
periods of rain we had water under the floorboards (and if it’s thought that
this is history, even worse conditions obtain in countless sink estates to this
day).
Moreover, ‘Aunt’ Jess –
who fostered my mother – remained an embodiment of the era she grew up in. She
had moderate means – probably from her father’s business – and for some time
ran a wool shop in Queens Road, Hastings, with a sister who died before I was
born. Yet she remained frugal: if she found a handkerchief that had been
dropped in the street she would take it home and boil it; and for soap ends
there was a device for compressing them into a new cake.
The studio portrait of
Flo – one of Jess’ sisters – is the most perfectly preserved that I have, and it must have been kept well out of the light
for over a century. It was taken at W. A. Thomas, one of several flourishing
photographers in Hastings. There are several striking things about this
portrait: one of which is the rattan chair (from India), which might have
dominated the composition but for the immediate attention drawn to Flo’s face,
the flowers she is wearing, her hands, and the card she is holding. I think
that the photographer had a remarkably good eye, and played the closest
attention to every aspect of his sitter’s pose. I would not be at all
surprised, for example, if he had not deliberately arranged for the three
ornamental chair ‘rings’ to contrast with the right side of Flo’s dress. These
small reflections of the body of the ornamental chair prevent the dress from
being absorbed by the dark floor, and also echo the curve of Flo’s left arm;
while the delightfully sinuous curve(s) of the wing of the chair form a perfect
‘intervening’ contrast to what would otherwise be a distracting continuous line,
from shoulder to near floor level. (Look at the photo upside–down, and you
will see this more clearly.) Another interesting line – hardly immediately
noticeable – is that from the neck to the flowers, which in turn directs our
attention to the hands, and to the ‘bevelled’ rectangle formed by the card
being held in the left hand. This card remains a mystery: is Flo in mourning
dress, and is the small boy pictured on the card a member of Flo’s family who
had died? It seems to me unlikely, given that such cards – held in just such a
position – are a feature of other formal family photographs in which the
sitters are most certainly not in mourning.
The painted backdrop is
a ubiquitous prop of the Victorian and Edwardian studio photographers. And the
painting of such scenes was a very considerable trade, as evidenced by these extracts
from The Photographic
Studios of Europe by H. Baden Pritchard, F.C.S., (Piper
& Carter, London, 1882):
Elliott & Fry, London – more than twenty-six backdrops were
used in one studio. Highly selective in purchasing backdrops, as they rejected
more than two for each one kept. All painted in tempera.
A notable aspect of these backdrops is that they are in no sense
coherent compositions: they are fantasies, which include elements of complete
inconsequentiality. The backdrop
behind Flo’s portrait is a curious hybrid of styles that may well defy
unravelling.
It may seem curious that there is a
certain poverty and bareness of background in these studio portraits, despite
the props. I do not think that this
would have been apparent at the time:
the photograph below illustrates how bare interiors were even in 1939.
The rich excluded, interiors tended to be very bare: the walls distempered, the furniture plain, and the
ornaments few. Even in the 1940s and 1950s, I remember that the choice of
decorating materials was very limited, and decoration not a (post–war)
priority. Further, the idea of buying matching furniture never
occurred to us: things were purchased as and when available and affordable; and
the contemporary desire to own a sofa – as an essential key to happiness in
life – was entirely absent from our minds. We even utilised a wooden egg–box
crate with a cushion placed on top . . .
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