Overview

Report theme – 1856

Ramsgate Sands: ‘Life at the Seaside’, 1852-4 by William Powell Frith William Powell Frith’s Ramsgate Sands was first shown in 1854. At the Private View of that year’s Royal Academy Exhibition, Queen Victoria bought the newly completed painting for 1,000 guineas. At this time family holidays were still the preserve of the middle classes but only women and children (plus assorted maids and elderly relatives) normally stayed the full fortnight. The menfolk seen in the picture have probably come down to join them for the weekend on the ‘Daddy Boat’ from London.

Sir Henry Rider Haggard 1856–1925 Sepia-toned platinotype print, 1902, by George Charles Beresford H Rider Haggard – as his title pages proclaimed him–was the doyen of adventure writers. He penned a total of 34 ripping yarns set in such exotic places as Mexico, Iceland and Ancient Egypt. Right through to the last page, his novels were chock full of action, derring-do and breathless heroism. Born at Bradenham Hall in Norfolk, he went to South Africa as a young man and later served on official commissions that took him to all parts of the British Empire. The landscapes and people that he encountered–especially in the Dark Continent – were his inspiration; a knighthood and a KBE were his reward.

Violet Manners, Duchess of Rutland 1856–1937 Albumen cabinet card, c 1892, by Michele Schemboche The absence of formal training was no handicap for an artist of the Duchess’s pedigree, and her prospects were further boosted when her relative, Sir Coutts Lindsay, opened the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. Sensitive portraits in silverpoint were her oeuvre but her private life was considerably more lively and colourful. Having provided the Duke with heirs, she decamped for the bohemian life. Aligning herself (and her generous private income) with a group of avant-garde exquisites known as the ‘Souls’, the Duchess became muse to G FWatts; there is general agreement that his talents exceeded her own.

L. Frank Baum 1856–1919 Bromide print from original negative, 1908. Photographer unknown. From The Library of Congress Baum was a children’s author, a playwright, a journalist and an inveterate believer in better things. For one year only he managed, without conspicuous success, a New York opera house; he wrote an equally forgettable melodrama, The Maid of Arran; he became a theosophist; he embarked on a series of commercial ventures, all of which failed. One day his mother-in-law heard him trying to explain to his children why a mouse would run up a clock or a cow jump over the moon. Being more concerned with the family’s precarious finances than keeping her grandchildren entertained, she nagged him into writing it all down and finding himself a publisher. The outcome was Mother Goose in Prose (1897), which was a surprise best-seller; two years later came the sequel, Father Goose, and Baum was all but swamped under the pile of royalty cheques and the fond kisses of his mother-in-law. In 1900 he penned The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , the first of 14 hugely successful Oz titles which have, with mind-numbing inevitability, now been deemed politically incorrect and banned from schools and libraries.

William Martin Conway, 1st Baron Conway 1856–1937 Silver-plated copper electrotype, 1893, by Edward Onslow Ford The uniquely gifted William Martin Conway combined great eminence as an art historian with an insatiable appetite for mountaineering. If this were not enough, he served as a Unionist MP from 1918 to1931 and also put together a hugely important collection of early photographs. These polymathic interests developed at Cambridge, where he was an academic high flier; it was only fitting, then, that during his 2,000 mile survey of the Himalayas in 1892 he should climb the 6,890 metres of Pioneer Peak and set a new world record for altitude – a feat of which no other expert on early Flemish painting can boast.

Hudson Kearley, 1st Viscount Devonport 1856–1934 Pencil drawing by Frederick Sargent The Victorian distaste for ‘tradesmen’ was no bar to ambitious Mr Kearley. From modest beginnings he rose without trace and suddenly his International Stores were everywhere – 200 branches by 1890 alone. His secret was buying direct from the producers and selling under his ‘own brand’ label, much as the Co-operative Movement had done fifty years earlier. The Grocer King was no socialist, however, and he was long remembered in London’s East End for the ruthlessness with which, as Chairman of the Port of London Authority, he broke the dockers’ strike of 1912. After a decent interval, a grateful nation rewarded him with a Viscountcy in 1917.

George Bernard Shaw 1856–1950 Photogravure, 1904, by Alvin Langdon Coburn Shaw was the leading playwright of his generation; formidably intellectual, he was also a critic of art, music, drama and literature, a committed socialist and an influential member of the Fabian Society. Active as a dramatist even into his 90s, his plays included Arms and the Man (1894), Candida (1897), Man and Superman and Major Barbara (both 1905) and Pygmalion (1913), which last was filmed, improbably, as My Fair Lady. Shaw devoted much of his prodigious energy to the question of spelling reform (though preferring to write his own plays in shorthand) and funded the development of a new phonetic alphabet called Shavian. Surprisingly, it failed to gain widespread adoption.

James Keir Hardie 1856–1915 Silver print, 1903, by John Furley Lewis Keir Hardie was one of the greatest orators Parliament has ever known, and until such things were abolished in the 1990s he was a role model for aspiring socialist politicians. His credentials were impeccable – the illegitimate son of a servant, born in a one-roomed cottage, no formal education, worked in the mines as soon as he was old enough (seven). In 1880 he led a strike of Lanarkshire miners that catapulted him into trade unionism and radical journalism. By 1892, he was the country’s first socialist MP; the following year he became chairman of the Independent Labour Party; from 1906 to 1908 he led the newly formed Parliamentary Labour Party. The road to Westminster and beyond was an awful’ lang hike for the laddie from Legbrannock.

Sigmund Freud 1856–1939 1926, by Ferdinand Schmutzer In giving us concepts such as the ‘id’, the ‘ego’ and the ‘super-ego’, Freud convinced the world that we are all neurotic and seething with repressed sexual energy. He described himself not as a scientist but as an ‘adventurer’, further confusing those struggling to understand the difference between psychiatry and psychology. While many of today’s practitioners disagree with his ideas, his findings – especially regarding the nature of mental illness and the definition of ‘normal’ – have fuelled many a dinner-party conversation and legitimised the practice of self-obsession.