Annals of My Glass House: Autobiography

Victorian Photographs: Julia Margaret Cameron - Annals of My Glass House

30 November 2001
to 3 February 2002

National Gallery
of Victoria on Russell
285 Russell Street, Melbourne

The artist: Autobiography

Annals of my glass house, an unfinished autobiography written in 1874, is a record of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron's first ten years of work. It was first published posthumously by her youngest son, Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, in a catalogue to the exhibition "Mrs. Cameron's Photographs" at the Camera Gallery, London, in 1889.

This version was researched, compiled and annotated by Violet Hamilton in 1996, for publication in a catalogue of the same name. It is re-published here in full, with the kind permission of Violet Hamilton.

Annals Of My Glass House

An autobiography by Julia Margaret Cameron
Text compiled and annotated by Violet Hamilton

‘MRS. CAMERON’S PHOTOGRAPHY,’ now ten years old, has passed the age of lisping and stammering and may speak for itself, having travelled over Europe, America and Australia, and met with a welcome which has given it confidence and power. Therefore, I think that the ‘Annals of My Glass House’ will be welcome to the public, and, endeavouring to clothe my little history with light, as with a garment, I feel confident that the truthful account of indefatigable work, with the anecdote of human interest attached to that work, will add in some measure to its value.

That details strictly personal and touching the affections should be avoided, is a truth one’s own instinct would suggest, and noble are the teachings of one whose word has become a text to the nations –

[…] Be wise: not easily forgiven
Are those who, setting wide the doors that bar
The secret bridal chamber of the heart,
Let in the day […](1)

Therefore it is with effort that I restrain the overflow of my heart and simply state that my first camera and lens was given to me by my cherished departed daughter and her husband, with the words, ‘It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.’(2)

The gift from those I loved so tenderly added more and more impulse to my deeply seated love of the beautiful, and from the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour, and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour. Many and many a week in the year ’64 I worked fruitlessly, but not hopelessly —

[…] A crowd of hopes
That sought to sow themselves like winged lies
Born out of everything I heard and saw
Fluttered about my senses and my soul.(3)

I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied. Its difficulty enhanced the value of the pursuit. I began with no knowledge of the art. I did not know where to place my dark box, how to focus my sitter, and my first picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my hand over the filmy side of the glass. It was a portrait of a farmer of Freshwater, who, to my fancy, resembled Bolingbroke. The peasantry of our island is very handsome.(4) From the men, the women, the maidens and the children I have had lovely subjects, as all the patrons of my photography know.

This farmer I paid half-a-crown an hour, and, after many half-crowns and many hours spent in experiments, I got my first picture, and this was the one I effaced when holding it triumphantly to dry.

I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl-house I had given to my children became my glass house! The hens were liberated, I hope and believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon new laid eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathized in my new labour, since the society of hens and chickens was soon changed for that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens, who all in turn have immortalized the humble little farm erection.

Having succeeded with one farmer, I next tried two children; my son, Hardinge, being on his Oxford vacation, helped me in the difficulty of focusing. I was half-way through a beautiful picture when a splutter of laughter from one of the children lost me that picture, and less ambitious now, I took one child alone, appealing to her feelings and telling her of the waste of poor Mrs. Cameron’s chemicals and strength if she moved. The appeal had its effect, and I now produced a picture which I called ‘My First Success’.(5)

I was in a transport of delight, I ran all over the house to search for gifts for the child. I felt as if she had entirely made the picture. I printed, toned, fixed and framed it, and presented it to her father that same day: size 11in. by 9in.

Sweet, sunny haired little Annie! No later prize has effaced the memory of this joy, and now that this same Annie is 18, how much I long to meet her and try my master hand upon her.

Having thus made my start, I will not detain my readers with other details of small interest; I only had to work on and to reap rich reward.

I believe that what my youngest boy, Henry Herschel, who is now himself a very remarkable photographer, told me is quite true – that my first successes in my out-of-focus pictures were a fluke. That is to say, that when focusing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon.(6)

I exhibited as early as May ’65.(7) I sent some photographs to Scotland(8) – a head of Henry Taylor, with the light illuminating the countenance in a way that cannot be described; a Raphaelesque Madonna, called ‘La Madonna Aspettante’. These photographs still exist, and I think thay cannot be surpassed. They did not receive the prize. The picture that did receive the prize, called ‘Brenda’,(9) clearly proved to me that detail of table-cover, chair and crinoline skirt were essential to the judges of the art, which was then in its infancy. Since that miserable specimen, the author of ‘Brenda’ has so greatly improved that I am content to compete with him and content that those who value fidelity and manipulation should find me still behind him.(10) Artists, however, immediately crowned me with laurels, and though ‘Fame’ is pronounced ‘The last infirmity of noble minds’, I must confess that when those whose judgement I revered have valued and praised my works, ‘my heart has leapt up like a rainbow in the sky’, and I have renewed my zeal.(11)

The Photographic Society of London in their Journal would have dispirited me very much had I not valued that criticism at its worth. It was unsparing and too manifestly unjust for me to attend to it. The more lenient and discerning judges gave me a large space upon their walls which seemed to invite the irony and spleen of the printed notice.(12)

To Germany I next sent my photographs. Berlin,(13) the very home of photographic art, gave me the first year a bronze medal, the succeeding year a gold medal, and one English institution – the Hartly Institution – awarded me a silver medal, taking, I hope, a home interest in the success of one whose home was so near to Southampton.(14)
Personal sympathy has helped me on very much. My husband from first to last has watched every picture with delight, and it is my daily habit to run to him with every glass upon which a fresh glory is newly stamped, and to listen to his enthusiastic applause. This habit of running into the dining room with my wet pictures has stained such an immense quantity of table linen with nitrate of silver, indelible stains, that I should have been banished from any less indulgent household.

Our chief friend, Sir Henry Taylor,(15) lent himself greatly to my early efforts. Regardless of the possible dread that sitting to my fancy might be making a fool of himself, he, with greatness which belongs to unselfish affection, consented to be in turn Friar Laurence with Juliet, Prospero with Miranda, Ahasuerus with Queen Esther, to hold my poker as his scepter, and do whatever I desired of him. With this great good friend was it true that so utterly

The chord of self with trembling
Passed like music out of sight.(16)

and not only were my pictures secured for me, but entirely out of the Prospero and Miranda picture sprung a marriage which has, I hope, cemented the welfare and well-being of a real King Cophetua who, in the Miranda, saw the prize which has proved a jewel in that monarch’s crown. The sight of the picture caused the resolve to be uttered which, after 18 months of constancy, was matured by personal knowledge, then fulfilled, producing one of the prettiest idylls of real life that can be conceived, and, what is of far more importance, a marriage of bliss with children worthy of being photographed, as their mother had been, for their beauty; but it must also be observed that the father was eminently handsome, with a head of the Greek type and fair ruddy Saxon complexion.(17)

Another little maid of my own from early girlhood has been one of the most beautiful and constant of my models, and in every manner of form has her face been reproduced, yet never has it been felt that the grace of the fashion of it has perished. This last autumn her head illustrating the exquisite Maud(18) –

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion flower at the gate(19)

is as pure and perfect in outline as were my Madonna studies ten years ago, with ten times added pathos in the expression. The very unusual attributes of her character and complexion of her mind, if I may so call it, deserve mention in due time, and are the wonder of those whose life is blended with ours as intimate friends of the house.

I have been cheered by some very precious letters on my photography, and having the permission of the writers, I will reproduce some of those which will have an interest for all.

An exceedingly kind man from Berlin(20) displayed great zeal, for which I have ever felt grateful to him. Writing in a foreign language, he evidently consulted the dictionary which gives two or three meanings for each word, and in the choice between these two or three the result is very comical. I can only wish that I was able to deal with all foreign tongues as felicitously:

‘Mr. – announces to Mrs. Cameron that he received the first half, a Pound Note, and took the Photographies as Mrs. Cameron wishes. He will take the utmost sorrow* to place the pictures were good.
‘Mr. – and the Comitie regret heavily** that it is now impossible to take the Portfolio the rooms are filled till the least winkle***.
‘The English Ambassude takes the greatest interest of the placement the Photographies of Mrs. Cameron and M. – sent his extra ordinarest respects to the celebrated and famous female photographs. – Your most obedient, etc.’

The kindness and delicacy of this letter is self-evident and the mistakes are easily explained: -

* Care – which was the word needed – is expressed by ‘Sorgen’ as well as ‘Sorrow’. We invert the sentence and we read – To have the pictures well placed where the light is good.
** Regret – Heavily, severely, seriously.
*** Winkle – is corner in German.

The exceeding civility with which the letter closes is the courtesy of a German to a lady artist, and from first to last, Germany has done me honour and kindness until, to crown all my happy associations with that country, it has just fallen to my lot to have the privilege of photographing the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia.

This German letter had a refinement which permits one to smile with the writer, not at the writer. Less sympathetic, however, is the laughter which some English letters elicit, of which I give you one example:–

‘Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse Donkins informs Mrs. Cameron that she wishes to sit to her for her photograph. Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse Donkins is a carriage person, and therefore, could assure Mrs. Cameron that she would arrive with her dress uncrumpled.
‘Should Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse Donkins be satisfied with her picture, Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse Donkins has a friend also a carriage person who would also wish to have her likeness taken.’

I answered Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse Donkins that Mrs. Cameron, not being a professional photographer, regretted she was not able to ‘take her likeness’ but that had Mrs. Cameron been able to do so she would have very much preferred having her dress crumpled.(21)

A little art teaching seemed a kindness, but I have more than once regretted that I could not produce the likeness of this individual with her letter affixed thereto.

This was when I was I was at L.H.H.,(22) to which place I had moved my camera for the sake of taking the great Carlyle.(23)

When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man.

The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer. Most devoutly was this feeling present to me when I photographed my illustrious and revered as well as beloved friend, Sir John Hershel.(24) He was to me as a Teacher and High Priest. From my earliest girlhood I had loved and honoured him, and it was after a friendship of 31 years’ duration that the high task of giving his portrait to the nations was allotted to me. He had corresponded with me when the art was in its first infancy in the days of Talbot-type and autotype.(25) I was then residing in Calcutta, and scientific discoveries sent to that then benighted land were water to the parched lips of the starved, to say nothing of the blessing of friendship so faithfully evinced.

When I returned to England the friendship was naturally renewed. I had already been made godmother to one of his daughters, and he consented to become godfather to my youngest son. A memorable day it was when my infant’s three sponsors stood before the font, not acting by proxy, but all moved by real affection to me and to my husband to come in person, and surely Poetry, Philosophy and Beauty were never more fitly represented than when Sir John Hershel, Henry Taylor and my own sister, Virginia Somers, were encircled round the little font at Mortlake Church.

When I began to photograph I sent my first triumphs to this revered friend, and his hurrahs for my success I here give. The date is September 25th, 1866:–

‘My Dear Mrs. Cameron,
‘This last batch of your photographs is indeed wonderful, and wonderful in two distinct lines of perfection. That head of the ‘Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty’ (a little farouche and égarée, by the way, as if first let loose and half afraid that it was too good), is really a most astonishing piece of high relief. She is absolutely alive and thrusting out her head from the paper into the air. This is your own special style. The other of ‘Summer Days’ is in the other manner-quite different, but very beautiful, and the grouping perfect. ‘Prosperine’ is awful. If ever she was "herself the fairest flower" her "cropping" by ‘Gloomy Dis’ has thrown the deep shadows of Hades into not only the colour, but the whole cast and expression of her features. ‘Christabel’ is a little too indistinct to my mind, but a fine head. The large profile is admirable, and altogether you seem resolved to out-do yourself on every fresh effort.’

This was encouragement eno’ for me to feel myself held worthy to take this noble head of my great Master myself, but three years I had to wait to patiently and longingly before the opportunity could offer.

Meanwhile I took another immortal head, that of Alfred Tennyson,(26) and the result was that profile portrait which he himself designates as the ‘Dirty Monk’. It is a fit representation of Isiah or of Jeremiah, and Henry Taylor said the picture was as fine as Alfred Tennyson’s finest poem. The Laureate has since said of it that he likes it better than any other photograph that has been taken of him except one by Mayall,(27) that ‘except’ speaks for itself. The comparison seems too comical. It is rather like comparing one of Madame Tussaud’s wax-work heads to one of Woolner’s(28) ideal heroic busts. At this same time Mr. Watts29 gave me such encouragement that I felt I had wings to fly with.

Footnotes

From Alfred Tennyson’s poem "The Gardener’s Daughter", lines 242-245.

Ten years before beginning the Annals, Cameron describes this gift in a letter, Julia Margaret Cameron (JMC) to Sir John Herschel, February 26, 1864, RS: HS 5 169 [The Royal Society, London, John Herschel Correspondence]. Cameron was given the camera in December 1863.

From Alfred Tennyson’s poem "The Gardener’s Daughter", lines 63-66:
And told me I should love.
A crowd of Hopes,
That sow themselves like winged seeds,
Born out of everything I heard and saw,
Flutter’d about my senses and my soul;

From 1860-1875 the Cameron family lived in Dimbola Lodge, Freshwater Bay, on the Isle of Wight.

This photograph still exists; there are prints in several major British and American collections. It is also titled Annie, My First Success. The model was Annie Philpot, who regularly visited the Isle of Wight with her family.

Cameron’s youngest son, the photographer Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (1865-1911), discusses the issue of his mother’s focus in Marie A. Belloc, "The Art of Photography interview with Mr. H. Hay Herschel [sic] Cameron’, in The Woman at Home (April 1897), pp 581-589.

The date is an error: Cameron first exhibited at the Tenth Annual Exhibition of the Photographic Society in London in May 1864. The exhibition is reviewed in The Photographic Journal, August 15, 1864, pp 86-88.

Reference to the Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Photographic Society of Scotland, Edinburgh, (December 1864-March 1865). Reviewed in The Photographic Journal, Feb 15, 1865, pp195-196.

Brenda was taken by the art photographer, Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901). The photograph was described in the British Journal of Photography, May 10, 1865, p.267. "H.P. Robinson exhibits four pictures. His Brenda – a girl sitting reading – has again received a medal". Cameron’s La Madonna Aspettante still exists; it cannot be determined which of the many extant portraits of Henry Taylor was shown at Edinburgh exhibit.

Henry Peach Robinson criticized Cameron’s "out of focus" technique.

Artists admired her approach and the art critic Coventry Patmore wrote a favourable review.

Cameron’s work was not reviewed favourably by the photographic press of the time.

Berlin International Photographic Exhibition, May-June 1865. Reviewed in The Photographic News, June 23, 1865, pp. 291-292. The exhibition of ‘the succeeding year" (1866) was not reviewed in British photographic journals.

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Loans Exhibition, The Hartley Institute at Southampton, summer 1866. Reviewed in the local press.

Sir Henry Taylor (1800-1866) was a civil servant and a poet. He was the author of Philip Van Artevelde, which was compared to Shakespeare’s dramas in his time.

From Alfred Tennyson’s poem "Locksley Hall", lines 33-34:
Love took up the harp of life, and smote all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.

This refers to the marriage, in August 1867, of Mary Ryan (d. 1914), a poor Irish girl whom Cameron took to her home and raised, and a gentleman, Henry James Stedman Cotton (1845-1915), who pursued a successful career in India and was later knighted.

This is a reference to Mary Hillier (1847-1936), a young Freshwater girl who became the Cameron’s maid and her most frequently photographed model.

From Alfred Tennyson’s poem Maude: A Monodrama, Part I, XXII, X; Cameron quotes lines 908-909, lines 910-911 are added here:
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate,
She is coming, my dove, my dear,
She is coming, my life, my fate.

The man from Berlin was Dr Wilhelm Hermann Vogel, a professor of photography and editor of the journal, Photographische Metteilungen. Dr. Vogel was instrumental in organizing the Berlin International Photographic Exhibition. A letter from him regarding arrangements for the exhibition is published in The Photographic News, June 23, 1865, pp. 291-292.

The letter from Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse Donkins has not been located.

L.L.H. is Little Holland House, London, where Julia Cameron’s sister, Sarah Prinsep, held a famous artists’ salon.

The historian and essayist, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).

Sir John Hershel (1792-1871) was an astronomer and scientist who also experimented with chemistry. His most important photographic contribution was the invention of sodium thiosulphite, or "hypo" fixing agent.

Autotype is an error, Cameron means Daguerreotype, as she wrote in a letter to Hershel: JMC to Hershel, RS: HS 5.159, February 26th, 1864.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), was appointed Poet Laureate in 1850. He was the Camerons’ neighbour on the Isle of Wight.

John Jabez Edwin Mayall (1810-1901) was an American who settled in England and became a renowned portrait photographer.

Thomas Woolner (1825-1892) was a Pre-Raphaelite sculptor. He was renowned for his medallion-shaped relief portraits of famous men.

George Frederick Watts (1817-1904) was the foremost portrait painter of the time. He lived at Little Holland House with Cameron’s sister and brother-in-law, Sarah and Thoby Prinsep.

Introduction

The photographs

The artist

Who was Julia Margaret Cameron?

Autobiography:
Annals of My Glass House

Visiting the exhibition