Shot by Julia Margaret Cameron...Henry Taylor and the Trend for Beards.

Dearest Emily,

Back at my drawing board, it's been a busy week. Two more ranges designed, and sampling under way, now I'm on to our in-house Dimbola JMC range for the Gift Shop.

So I started on mugs, and was trawling through my collection of amassed 'abilia'- and look what I found- I love this one;

Henry Taylor photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron

February 1864

It has set me a thinking Em. First of all- Mug-shots. JMC's Mugshots to be precise, and this one shall be the first. Henry Taylor, Poet and Dramatist 1800-1888. As a convicted Pogonophile (evidence Grumpa being persuaded to go ferral and grow his own scarf,) I've looked into his beard...
Henry grew this fine example in 1859, because following bronchitis, asthma and a spasmodic episode or two- he became nervous of holding a razor.
Great friends with the Camerons,  the Taylors were here at the Bay most Spring and Autumn for holidays in the late 1850's and early 1860's when Julia bought the two houses that formed Dimbola.
Henry says 'It was a house, indeed to which everybody resorted at pleasure, and in which no man, woman or child was ever known to be unwelcome.
Conventionalities had no place in it; and though Cameron was more of a philosopher than a country gentleman, the house might easily have been mistaken for that of the old English Squire, who is said to have greeted his friends with the announcement, kind though imperious- "This is Liberty Hall, and if everybody does not do as he likes here, by God I'll make him!'. *

Tennyson, another great friend of Julia of course, reputedly grew his beard in 1857, following dentistry that altered his mouth. Adopting a Wide-awake hat, it seemed a bit of a 'look' was starting.

Alfred Tennyson 'The Dirty Monk'

by Julia Margaret Cameron May 1865

So, we have a trend in beards, and wide brimmed hats, further adopted by Watts,Longfellow, Charles' Cameron and Darwin (though he preferred a hat of more Bowler brimmed proportion.) 

Watts, Darwin and Charles Hay Cameron all though Mrs Cameron's Looking Glass.

My poser for us today though Emily, goes right back to my doubts that Julia was not such a novice when she received her Camera from her daughter Julia Norman in Christmas 1863...

Here is what she famously called 'My First Success'. Anne Philpot aged 10 at Freshwater Bay, given to her Father on January 29th 1864.

So, Julia records her first success on the last day of January in 1864, and less than a month later she's up and running, and has evidenced above, photographed Henry Taylor (who by his own admission in his autobiography, was being much photographed at Freshwater in 1860-63.) No, Em, I think we read her success-story a bit wrong. I've said before that I think she was part of a group of photographers (Reijlander, Winfield, Dodgson, Southey and her Brother-in-Law Somers-Cocks) who all in turn experimented with her, taught her, and were her partners in her own photographic crime.

I think instead, that her first success- was to her- her first Artistic Success... A Woman driven to experiment with her own passion to arrest beauty. To look into the soul, to- in fact- take a 'snap-shot' ( a phrase attributed to her great friend and Mentor Sir John Hershel- prime mover in the invention of photography in 1853. )

So, her first success, was actually the beginning of achieving what became her 'style' for the next 10 years. Not the romantic experimentation with the Idylls, but her ground-breaking use of 'The Close-Up'.

I think Em, she was the first photographer to champion this, and I think that's quite important!

Good old Mrs C, she was said to impose her own spirit on all those she met. And she was quoted as having an innate sense of enjoying herself, and making others around her do the same!

Enough for now, lovely to do facetime with you this morning- even if most of it was to the back of your head! 

Your ever-loving Grandmother, GiGi xxx

*Autobiography of Henry Taylor