The Lion visits The Dirty Monk: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visits Alfred, Lord Tennyson: 15-18 July 1868

Home of Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Farringford House

Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, United Kingdom

American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow nicknamed 'The Lion' visited Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson at his home Farringford House on the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom during 15-18 July, 1868. He was accompanied by his two sisters, brother-in-law, 3 daughters, son, and daughter-in-law. The Longfellow clan stayed  at the Plumbly's Hotel and then Henry Ribbands' Bonchurch Hotel. 

On Thursday, July 16, 1868, Longfellow walked through the front entrance doors of Farringford House. Upon entering, the walls were lined with pictures including the length of the stairway. At the foot of the stairway was a bust of Dante on a table. Walking through a narrow passage that led to the breakfast room, you then continued on to The Drawing room filled with furniture; armchairs, sofa, desk in front of one oriel window. A small mask of Shakespeare hung  on the wall over the bookshelves. 

Lady Tennyson

wife of Lord Tennyson

Photograph by Oscar Rejlander

Mrs. Tennyson received Longfellow and family in the dining room. He describes Lady Tennyson:

A very lovely and attractive lady, exceedingly delicate looking in health - dressed in black silk deeply trimmed with crape - with a most simple bit of white lace edged with silk gimp falling from the front of her head back, and down to her shoulders - plain black hair tied behind at the neck with a broad black ribbon the ends trimmed with crape.

The Longfellow family had lunch with Alfred and Emily Tennyson. However, Alfred was the last to enter the room. As he passed each member of the Longfellow family, he shook each hand individually eventually making his way to take his seat at the head of the table next to his wife. They dined on mutton they raised themselves.

The following day, there was afternoon tea on the grounds of Farringford House with Longfellow and Tennyson seated next to Mrs. Tennyson. Around twenty women were invited to approach Longfellow to shake hands with him. Mrs. Tennyson held Longfellow's hand at one point thinking he was nervous but he was very agreeable and reportedly enjoyed the day. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron

July, 1868, Isle of Wight, UK

A funny story was reported by Mrs. Tennyson how neighbor to Tennyson, photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron residing within walking distance at her home, Dimbola Lodge, Isle of Wight, heard that Longfellow was visiting Tennyson that July week and came bounding up the road to Farringford House to talk to Alfred about having the American poet sit for her so she could photograph him. Alfred warned I mean told Longfellow that she was a friend and neighbor and he basically had no choice. Needless to say, they visited Dimbola Lodge with Tennyson departing with these words...

Longfellow, you will have to do whatever she tells you. I'll come back soon and see what is left of you!

Below is one surviving stanza of a poem Longfellow wrote to Tennyson.

Wapentake

To Alfred Tennyson 

1873

By Henry Wadsworth Longellow

Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;

  Not as a knight, who on the listed field

  Of tourney touched his adversary's shield

  In token of defiance, but in sign

Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,

  In English song; nor will I keep concealed,

  And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,

  My admiration for thy verse divine.

Not of the howling dervishes of song,

  Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,

  Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!

Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,

  To thee our love and our allegiance,

  For thy allegiance to the poet's art. 

SOURCE

Anne Longfellow Pierce, 'A visit to Farringford,' Boston University Studies in English, (1955) 96-8.

I Lived in Julia's House by Joan Brading Grayer

In this charming little book Joan Grayer tells us of her childhood memories living at Dimbola, the former home of the pioneer Victorian photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, in Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight. She describes in detail all the rooms, many with the original furniture and Julia's photographs, and the beautiful gardens.

We hear of Joan and her sister, Beryl, watching in horror from a window as a bomb drops yards from Dimbola destroying The Porch, built by Julia and the home for many years of Anne Thackeray Ritchie-immortalised in her last book From the Porch.

• Paperback: 27 pages
• Publisher: Julia Margaret Cameron Trust; 2nd Revised edition edition (March 1, 2010)
• ISBN-10: 0954523342
• ISBN-13: 978-0954523343

DIMBOLA

Memories, like time, fly away and can be forgotten forever, and realising that our family was the last to occupy Dimbola during the twenty years before the military requisitioned it in 1942, I feel somewhat responsible to place on record a description of this much visited residence as it was in its former condition. 

Dear to me are the memories of the house and garden of Julia Margaret Cameron, that colourful and charming lady, who lived and practised the art of enlarged photography at Freshwater Bay, on the Isle of Wight in the mid nineteenth century. Such memories of the fragrance she left behind in her house and in her garden I gladly record, to add to the small store of knowledge of her personality, and her Victorian associates written before my time by those who actually knew her, and were acquainted with her friends and relatives.  (Brading Grayer, pg. 3)
 

The Drawing Room in 1924, showing a Cameron photograph above the oil lamp, gas had just been installed.

The picture of Julia Margaret's drawing room may have been almost as she left it, for I believe the previous owners had changed it but little. Note the archway to an alcove, with a small glass porch leading to the lawn where the studio or glass house once stood. A very fine kneehole desk stood in the alcove, with letter scales, paper weights, and letter openers, plus an enormous pencil, which I still keep on my desk, and sometimes wonder whose hands had written famous lines or messages with it. (Brading Grayer, pg.7)

 The Drawing Room a few years later with electric light installed, showing Julia's original rush matting and persian rugs.

Here in this room it is said the Mr. Cameron, who owned coffee estates in Ceylon, would walk up and down reciting Homer aloud, possibly on the same rush matting, with Persian rugs distributed around. Yes indeed, if only these walls could speak! What did Darwin, Ruskin, Herschel, Holman Hunt, Millais, Robert Browning, Carlyle, Jowett, Lecky, Sir Henry Taylor, Aubrey de Vere, Herr Jochim, the Emperor Frederick of Germany, Edward Lear or Thackeray say to each other, or to Julia and her husband on a still summer night after dinner? None have kept those secrets so well as the Dimbola walls, with their blue and white William Morris wallpaper.  (Brading Grayer, pg.7)

The only lighting when we went there was by candles and oil lamps. A fine example of the latter can be seen in this picture - this my mother lovingly refurbished with a peach silk lamp shade, and trimmed it with peach colour roses. It looked beautiful on its shining copper stand. My father had gas lighting put in, and about two years later, electricity was brought to the village. Some of Mrs. Cameron's photographs can clearly be seen above the oil lamp; an inlaid other-of-pearl table stands in the centre. (Brading Grayer, pg. 7)

 The Drawing Room today is now Dimbola Cafe located inside Dimbola Lodge.
Similarities abound structurally. You can notice the right cupboards today painted red
in 1924 and later painted white but still in the same place!

Julia's garden-a corner of the flower garden

The cabbage patch, which Julia hastily transformed into a nicely turfed lawn when expecting an honoured guest, later became the flower garden. Mrs. Brading restored this as near to Julia's pattern as possible. A long, high, red brick wall was the boundary line between this garden and the lane behind, along which Lord Tennyson would make this entrance through, of what later became known as "The Tennyson Door". (Brading Grayer, pg. 11)

We found traces of Julia's love of perfume. Honeysuckle and roses were trained along this rustic bridge, and every kind of spring flower was present. A tall fir tree which was used by little red squirrels. Beneath the bridge was the pathway leading from the flower garden to the tennis court, flanked by very high poplar trees, again banked up and planted with daffodils and primroses. Thence round the trees to the Tennyson Door, where a large red peony would greet all who entered there. (Brading Grayer, pg. 12) 

The Putting Lawn (what is that white house on the far right)?

The lawns to the west side, now built upon, and where her "Glass House" and studio once stood, provided us with an excellent putting lawn of nine holes, (or 18 round the house). The tall cupressus trees and sycamores cast fantastic shadows on the lawn and are beautifully captured by the camera. (Brading Grayer, pg. 13)

It was here, states Mrs. Cameron, "I turned my coal house into a dark-room, and a glazed fowl house, which I had given to my children, became my Glass House, and the society of hens and chickens was soon changed into that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens". In a little cupboard behind the drawing room, were many little bottles and pans, almost obliterated by cobwebs, containing various dried up chemicals and glass slides. They remained there for many years until we decided to turn that part into staff rooms. If only we hadn't cleared them all away! (Brading Grayer, pg. 13)

These are just some excerpts from this charming booklet, I Lived in Julia's House now out of print. You might find a copy on Abebooks though!  The photographs can be found within the booklet as well except for the one of the drawing room today. 

Julia Margaret Cameron at 200 Conference & Symposium

With the Julia Margaret Cameron photograph exhibit currently underway in London at V&A Museum, I wanted to share the news of an  upcoming 'Cameron' themed conference.

Julia Margaret Cameron at 200 
Conference & Symposium
Fri - 15 January, 2016- 10:00-17:15
The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre
£35, £30 concessions, £15 students

This one-day conference will present new research on the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron's social, religious, colonial and artistic contexts. International speakers will explore themes such as Cameron’s experimental techniques and exchanges with other artists and her lasting impact and relevance for contemporary practitioners. The details of the day are as follows:


 Programme

10.00 -10.30 Coffee and Registration
10.30 Welcome and Introduction, Matilda Pye, Department of Learning

New Research
Marta Weiss, Curator of Photographs, V&A
Erika Lederman, Researcher, V&A

11.15 Chance. Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University
11.45 Little Holland House. Barbara Bryant, Independent Scholar

12.15 Discussion

13.00 Lunch Break

14.00 Religion. Joanne Lukitsh, Professor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
14.30 Class and Colonialism. Juliet Hacking, Programme Director, MA Photography, Sotheby’s Institute
15.00 The Herschel Album. Colin Ford, Founding Director of Bradford in conversation with Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs, V&A

15.45 Refreshments

16.10 Legacies.
Cameron and Sri Lanka. Sunara Begum, Visual-Anthro-Mythologist
Cameron and Dimbola Lodge. Tracy Shields, Screenwriter

17.00 Closing Remarks

17.15 Close

To purchase tickets and for more information, V&A Museum

Also, I wanted to share two photographs one of Julia Margaret Cameron at her piano, with her son, and one of her husband Charles Hay Cameron. You will notice on Charles' photograph taped above and below it is a newspaper article about his death from 1880. I have typed it up verbatim below, so anyone inteterested can read it.

 Julia Margaret Cameron at the piano, with her son, albumen print, 1863, by Oscar Gustave Rejlander

  This photograph was taken at Julia Margaret Cameron's home Dimbola Lodge, Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight

Charles Hay Cameron photographed by his wife Julia Margaret Cameron, 

a head and shoulder portrait against a cloth background, albumen print,

 

 DEATH OF CHARLES HAY CAMERON,

Esq. 1880

Very many of our readers will share our regret on learning of the death at Nuwara Eliya on Saturday last of this veteran Anglo-Indian civilian, whose name has been so closely connected with the administrative history of Ceylon. More than half-a-century has elapsed since Mr. Cameron and Lieut. Colonel Colebrooke arrived from Madras as Commissioners of Enquiry appointed to report upon all matters connected with the administration of the Government of the Island. Their full and able reports constituted the basis of most important reforms, including the establishment of Executive and Legislative Councils, and the promulgation of a new Charter of Justice for the Colony based chiefly on Mr. Cameron’s report and suggestions which dealt specially with the judicial system. Had Mr. Cameron’s work been done in the present day, he would have been decorated and rapidly promoted, but in the “days of old,” prior to the advent of mail-steamers, railways, telegraphs, and a ubiquitous press, “out of sight” was too often “out of mind.” As we have said, however, Mr. Cameron’s name should ever be held in high esteem in this Island both on account of his good works and of his own high personal character. It will be remembered that Mr. and Mrs. Cameron gave up their home in the Isle of Wight to come to Ceylon, the adopted land of several sons, in November 1875, Mr. Cameron being then in his 80^th year. After a couple of years’ residence a visit to the old country was paid, and in November 1878 Mr. and Mrs. Cameron again returned to Ceylon. Very shortly after, Mrs. Cameron was struck down in Jan. 1879, under circumstances which will be fresh in the memory of our readers, and now the aged veteran has been called to follow his life-long companion, “his own end “being as peaceful and calm” as the sorrowing relatives who watched over him could have desired. Mr. Cameron’s remains have been conveyed from Nuwara Eliya to the Bogawantalawa Churchyard and interred bedside those of Mrs. Cameron.

Bogawantalawa Church, (Ceylon) now Sri Lanka

Graves of Charles Hay Cameron and Julia Margaret Cameron buried behind Bogawantalawa Church,

 Sri Lanka

Photographs I found of Dimbola Lodge with The Camerons and Alfred, Lord Tennyson!

 Our dear Freshwater home by Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (British, 1852-1911), Albumen silver print, 1875, Getty Museum,

 Los Angeles, CA, USA 

I couldn't believe I was looking at this photograph when I found it but it was taken by one of Julia Margaret Cameron's son's, Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, so it makes sense. However, another shocker, why has it not been shared online or on any JMC or Tennyson sites?  

Take a closer look at this photograph if you can...there are four people in it...two I can make out clearly enough as the pioneering photographer herself, Mrs.Cameron or Julia Margaret Cameron sitting in the window center upper floor. Can you see a woman's face wearing a shawl?  Well, there she is...Hard to see I know but to me its her!

 Perhaps, another of her son's photographs will help you,

Julia Margaret Cameron by Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (later The Cameron Studio)

albumen print, circa 1873

Also, take a look to the right of the photograph, a long haired silver maned gentleman seated is Julia's husband, Charles Hay Cameron. I cannot make out who the the couple standing behind him are? However, that is Charles! 

It looks to be the back of Dimbola Lodge, is that their garden Charles is sitting next to? I noticed the stairs and balcony behind them or is that a deck? I don't think so. I think its the balcony where Julia used to stand to watch people walk by and where she would find her sitters. It's fun to speculate! 

 Charles Hay Cameron by Julia Margaret Cameron

 Now, I have also come across one photograph of Alfred Lord Tennyson and one painting of him. Sadly, I don't have any information to provide, so if anyone else knows about the painting, please let me know! 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photographed by H.H. Cameron 

Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (British, 1852-1911)

Son of Julia Margaret Cameron 

 This is a painting of Lord Tennyson, no year provided, 

The painter is 'believed' to have been 

W.M. Chase, N.A. 

The whereabouts of this painting is unknown 

The Death of Julia Margaret Cameron (nee Pattle) (11 June 1815-26 January 1879)

Julia Margaret Cameron in 1870, photographed by her son Henry Herschel Hay Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron was one of the most fascinating and strong willed women to live during the nineteenth-century. She turned her daughter's gift of a camera into not only a hobby turned career but she would leave a legacy that few of us would understand or foresee.

Charles Hay Cameron and his wife Julia Margaret were in Kalutara (Ceylon) by the end of 1878 leaving Freshwater on the Isle of Wight far behind. They were staying at their son Henry's bungalow Glencairn, in the mountains. Here, Julia Margaret fell ill with her old bronchial complaint. She was sick for ten days and died on January 26th, 1879.

 A bungalow on Dimbula plantation belonging to The Cameron's in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) @Images of Ceylon

Victoria Olson explains in her biography, 'From Life Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian Photography', "It has been told and retold that on her deathbed Cameron looked out of her window at the evening sky and uttered her last word: "Beautiful." The source for this story could only have been one of her sons, perhaps henry in a letter home, but the original reference hasn't surfaced. It is only too fitting a conclusion to a life spent, by her own claim, in the pursuit of beauty. Indeed, it was a novelist who made the most of this most theatrical of deathbed scenes: Virginia Woolf resuscitated the story in her 1926 essay." 

At Julia Margaret's funeral, two white bullocks pulled the body in a cart along mountain roads as far as they could and then it was carried by natives from the Rathoongodde estate to the burial grounds at St. Mary's Church in Bogawantalawa. This church had been consecrated in 1874 and the Camerons had helped commission and pay for its three stained-glass windows. Now they are buried there beside each other, in fulfillment of Charles Hay's wish to remain on his beloved island for ever.

Lady Emily Tennyson received the news of Julia Margaret's death with great sorrow. She wrote to her sister, "We are not likely to find one to take her place so loving and strong in her woman's way and so child-like in her faith."  Emily even wrote to the Cameron's sons in Ceylon, "Our hearts ache to think of the void in his (Charles Hay's) and yours. God alone can make it bearable."   

Charles Hay Cameron, Esq., in His Garden at Freshwater, Julia Margaret Cameron (British (born India), Calcutta 1815–1879 Kalutara, Ceylon. 1865–67, Albumen silver print from glass negative, @The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. (I've had the joy of casting my eyes upon this glorious photograph myself)! 

 

Julia Margaret's husband, Charles Hay Cameron outlived his wife after all, but not for long. He died on May 8th, 1880, while his sons read to him from Homer. "I am happier than Pram for I have all my sons around me." He supposedly said. Kitty Cameron, wife of their son Hardinge commented on what a happy occassion Charles Hay's funeral was with sun shining and birds singing. Their sons Eugene died in a fire in 1885 on board a ship crossing the Atlantic. Ewen stayed in Ceylon, where he died in 1889. Hardinge rose as far as he could in the ceylonese civil service and retired in 1904 to return to England and complete his long-interrupted Oxford degree. He married twice but had no children. Charlie Hay, his father's namesake, went back to England as soon as his father died but he died while traveling to Germany in 1891. Henry Hay Cameron took up photography as well, even having his own studio on Oxford Street in England. He even took photographs of his parents friends Ellen Terry and G.F. Watts to name a few! Both Hardinge and Henry Hay Cameron died in 1911.

Three Cameron sons: Left to Right: Hardinge Hay Cameron; Ewen Wrottesley Hay Cameron;(Ewen's wife Annie Cameron (nee Chinery) and Eugene Hay Cameron, albumen print on cabinet mount, 1868-1870, @NPG. 

Hardinge Hay Cameron by unknown photographer, Vintage print 1900-1911 @NPG

 

Dimbula Plantation in Ceylon 

Another angle of Dimbula Plantation in Ceylon

Here are some of the obituaries of Julia Margaret Cameron from various sources around the world: 

Obituary for Julia Margaret Cameron. The Victoria magazine. Conducted by Emily Faithfull., vol. XXXII, November - April 1879, p.585-586.
MRS. CAMERON.—Julia Margaret Cameron, as she loved to subscribe herself in fine bold characters, was in many respects a remarkable woman. A few may still remember her as one of the three Miss Patties, whose varied gifts won for them in Calcutta society the names of- "Wit, Beauty, and Fashion." There she met and married Mr. Charles Hay Cameron, then legal member of Council, who still survives as the last of Bentham's personal disciples. But to most she will be better known as the hospitable occupant of a sea-side house at Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, whither visitors were attracted by her own talents no less than by the reputation of her venerable husband. During this period of her life she first won publicity, about fifteen years ago, by her bold innovations in the art of photography. It was not only by the intrinsic merit of her pictures, but also by the interest associated with their subjects, that she succeeded in at once taking both the cultivated and the popular tastes. The heads of her neighbours, the Poet Laureate and Sir Henry Taylor, were among the first of her successes. After these came portraits of Browning, Carlyle, Darwin, Sir W. Herschel, and many other distinguished men whose intellectual features lent themselves readily to her peculiar process of photography. Having established her reputation in portraiture, she followed it up with imaginative representation either of individual personages in history and literature, or of easily recognised scenes. Colnaghi's gallery was the regular place of exhibition for her pictures season after season, though they also became familiar in many a shop window of the London streets. In our opinion, among the most effective of all was a fancifully-draped head of a young lady, a relation of her own, to which she gave the appropriate, title of Beatrice Cenci. It must be admitted that her illustrations to, the cabinet edition of Tennyson, published by Henry S. King. & Co., in 1875, do not rank among her happiest works. She did not claim for herself any original discovery in photographic processed. We believe that her only secret was to place her sitter far out of-focus; and to subject the plate to an unusually long exposure. With characteristic energy she worked at all the disagreeable details of chemical manipulation with her own hands, and gradually perfected herself with infinite assiduity. In looking at a series of her pictures it is instructive to observe how her improvement in artistic design kept pace with advance in technical skill. Her first efforts were on a small scale, scarcely larger than the cabinet size now in vogue; and they aimed at little more than faithful portraiture after the style common to all amateurs. Many of them also have sadly altered in colour at the present day. Her latest photographs, such as that of Beatrice Cenci, were almost as large as life. Expression of feature and arrangement of drapery were studied with as much care as by a professional painter in oils. The process of printing was performed with such thorough knowledge and watchfulness that, though these, too, were taken many years ago, no spots and no indications of fading are visible. When Mrs. Cameron, in company with her husband, resolved to follow her dearly-loved sons to Ceylon, her occupation of photographer was abandoned. But soon she sent for her cameras and chemicals, and again set to work with enthusiasm under a less clouded sky. Her death, we believe, happened suddenly, after but a brief illness. She is regretted by an exceptionally large circle of friends, to whom she was endeared by a rare warmth of heart, expansiveness of sympathy, and old-fashioned directness of expression. Few of them but possess some memorial of her in the products of her art, which she was wont to distribute with lavish generosity.—The Academy.

'…a terrifying elderly woman, short and squat, with none of the Pattle grace and beauty about her, though more than her share of their passionate energy and wilfulness. Dressed in dark clothes, stained with chemicals from her photography (and smelling of them too), with a plump, eager face and piercing eyes and a voice husky, and a little harsh, yet in some way compelling, and even charming…'
Laura Gurney Troubridge, Julia Margaret Cameron’s niece and frequent photographic subject. (Laura Gurney Troubridge was Julia Margaret Cameron’s grandniece.  Obituary quote from Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England,UK)

From India

 Julia Margaret Cameron was born in Calcutta in 1815. Her father, James Pattle, was an official with the East India Company and her mother, Adelaine de l’Etang, was of French aristocratic descent. Julia was the fourth of seven sisters and received much of her education in France and England before returning to Calcutta in 1834. In 1836-7 she travelled to Cape Town where she met the notable scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel. Herschel was to become a life-long friend and supporter of her work. He was probably the first to introduce her to photographic processes and is the subject of some of her best known portraits. In 1837 she met Charles Hay Cameron, whom she married in Calcutta in 1838. He was an important figure in law reform and education in India, and twenty years her senior. For the next ten years the Camerons lived in India and were highly regarded and active in colonial politics and society. Mrs Cameron was kept busy as hostess, manager of the household and as a mother.