Judge’s postcards of London
“I naturally
gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and
idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.”
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in
Scarlet
You sometimes read that postcards belonged to the very
middle classes, a rung or two down the social ladder from the ideal Baedeker’s
readers. This isn’t quite true; there are well known collections in archives
that once belonged to prominent lawyers and surgeons. Also, from a commercial
point of view, Baedeker’s would have failed if it saw itself as only belonging to
the privileged classes. When it came to the listings of prices for restaurants,
a teacher or clerk from Edinburgh who had saved up enough money for a few days
in London could rely on the book as well, noting which places fell within his
or her budget and what buses were best to catch, since a hansom cab from the British
Museum to Charing Cross cost 1 shilling and sixpence whereas a bus cost about a
penny. Irrespective of income, there were also sights every tourist had to
witness. Anybody coming to London for the first time would want to gaze upon
the broad panorama of the Thames with Tower Bridge in the distance. Baedeker
outlined a route, photographers like Judge provided the evidence. For a lot of
visitors, a scene like this would have encapsulated their image of the river
but they could hardly hope to record it so perfectly with their little Kodak.
What’s interesting is when Judge presents a scene at odds
with the Baedeker view. The latter is neat, well organized and makes no effort
to capture the physical life of the city. The publishers no doubt thought that
last bit wasn’t part of their job, and besides, how could they? Theirs was a
guidebook, not a collection of poetry. Baedeker’s ideal tourist visited the
sites in a sensible order, heading to the British Museum in the morning (the
guide book comes with a plan of two floors) then the National Gallery to
contemplate selected masterpieces before, time permitting, making Saint Paul’s
in the late afternoon. In Baedeker’s world, the elements that would slow the
most conscientious tourist - crowds, traffic jams and bad weather - don’t exist.
In the 1930s Judge would describe how when he first came to London he liked to
sit on the top of the open double-decker buses and photograph the streets. In
this scene of Fleet Street we have a view of St Paul’s – as emblematic of
London as Tower Bridge – and something every tourist would have experienced; a
crowded street jammed with buses and pedestrians. If Baedeker never warned
them, the journey nevertheless is the point of reaching a destination. Good tourists
would have found scenes like this endlessly fascinating, even if it meant their
itinerary was thrown out of kilter. The ‘real’ London was discovered on noisy,
vibrant streets, not in quiet meditation on some Italian painting in a gallery.
Speaking of St Paul’s, and quietude, Judge’s scenes of the
cathedral interior are among his very best work. When he took this, (undated
but certainly before 1914) photographing church interiors required skill and a
sophisticated camera. Tourists carrying nothing better than a Box Brownie and
some enthusiasm were guaranteed to be disappointed by their efforts. They
depended upon professionals to record not just the evidence but the experience
of visiting the cathedral. Designed by Christopher Wren, the final resting
place for Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, John Donne, J. M. W. Turner and Wren
himself, it isn’t an exaggeration to call it the spiritual centre of the
empire. Any commercial photograph of the interior had to possess the correct
gravitas and impart a proper sense of majesty. Compare this image to the work
of the best known photographer of church interiors at the time, Frederick
Evans, and its remarkable to think that back in the 1910s, photographs of this
standard were being published as postcards.
Still in St Paul’s, and a view of the tomb of Lord Leighton,
a name that meant nothing to me though it turns out he was one of Britain’s
most respected artists between the 1850s and the 1880s. Most of his work looks
to be typically academic: sentimental scenes drawn from classical literature
and mythology, a lot of naked women with alabaster complexions; eroticism for
people who had never experienced the real thing. But he was also what you might
call an ideal Victorian, being a soldier as well as an artist and a stout
defender of the empire. Judge had studied at Wakefield Art School in the 1880s
so would have known of Leighton and his work. He may have photographed the
memorial out of respect but just as likely he was struck by the atmosphere
created by the light. The effect is sombre without being gloomy, the light
evenly diffused from the ceiling. Unless people were specifically looking for
Leighton’s memorial, the image works just as well as a typical monument found
in the crypt. Judge isn’t telling us that we need to know whose it is.
According to Baedeker’s, the crypt was one of the highlights of a cathedral
tour. This was an era when Thomas Carlyle’s theory of the Great Man in History
still held sway and for visitors Saint Paul’s crypt was the pantheon of British
history.
In 1855 the Comte de Montizon, alias Juan Carlos Maria Isidro de
Borbón alias Charles Monfort, claimant to the thrones of Spain and
France, took one of the most famous English photographs of the 19th
century, of the newly installed hippo at the London Zoo. It has attracted some
overheated analysis, some declaring that the Count’s decision to include
spectators was a dramatic revelation and a moment when the whole idea of
photography took a sudden shift. The Count probably thought it was a logical
place to stand. For
Baedeker and Judge, a visit to the London Zoo was not to be missed. Opened in
1828, it is the world’s oldest public zoo and in the 1910s was home to the
largest collection of exotic animals any city had. Though according to the
guidebook “the unpleasant odour (of the monkey house) is judiciously disguised
by numerous plants and flowers”, it was guaranteed to have a crowd passing
through. Four years after the Count took his photo, Charles Darwin made monkeys
fashionable. Like the other houses at the zoo, the building was as much an
attraction as the animals. It looked like a small version of the Crystal
Palace. The interior of the reptile house could have made a satisfactory lobby
in a French pretender’s chateau. When Baedeker’s published their guide, the polar
bears lived in a basic cage between the camels and the aviary, their water
provided from a narrow drain. In 1913, not long before Judge took this photo,
the Mappin Terraces were built. Featuring an artificial cliff, a ledge and a
pool, they were innovative in attempting to recreate the physical environment
the animals inhabited in their natural state. When the Baedeker’s was
published, visitors were still expected to feed bananas and peanuts to the
monkeys, poke the lions with long sticks to make them roar and generally behave
like, well, animals. When Judge took this photo, the male polar bear was called
Sam, the Female, Barbara. Her death in 1923 made the papers. I’m not sure how
you tell who is who.
According to Baedeker’s, Holborn got its name from Hole
Bourne, a tributary of the River Fleet, which still runs underground. It was
also part of the route that prisoners walked from Newgate Prison to their
execution at Tyburn, near Marble Arch. The most salient detail for tourists
however was that the row of Tudor buildings at the right of this photo, known collectively as Staple Inn,
were among the only buildings in central London to survive the Great Fire in
1666. They had been built in 1585, the year the ill fated colony at Roanoke was
established, or not, and the eighteenth year of Mary Queen of Scots’
imprisonment. If Judge was thinking of either the Stuart queen or a group of
lost colonists, or for that matter some bedraggled prisoners being marched down
the street, he hasn’t shown it. Instead we have what looks like a Rover 6
parked on a nearly deserted street. The number plate beginning with MX
indicates it was registered in South East London. Roneo at the top and on the
facade of the building in the middle ground refers to an early mimeograph machine.
I think Judge was impressed by the nearly empty street, presumably around dawn,
and thought that if it moved him it would similarly affect his customers. Using
Google Maps, you can position yourself pretty much where Judge took this photo
and discover that apart from the Staple Inn and the Holborn Bars at the left,
little else remains. Near where the second light post stands there is now a
monument to the Royal London Fusiliers who fought in World War 1.
The Royal Exchange and the building beside it are still
standing though the one at the rear has been replaced by a glass and concrete
office block that no doubt appals Prince Charles. But enough of him. Much more
interesting are the details in this scene. A few London bobbies here, including
one just by the ‘ch’ in the caption, who looks like he’s just spotted some rum
goings on in the side street. The men wearing boaters might be clerks. The man
in the top hat crossing the street at the left has no doubt just left his
stockbroker well pleased at the morning’s results. Speaking of social history,
the mix of horse drawn omnibuses and automobiles reminds us that the 1910s were
a decade of profound change, more so than the preceding one. The way history is
often presented, Victoria drops dead, her drunken glutton of a son assumes the
kingship and everything changes, like a sunrise. Not quite; technology didn’t
give a toss who was regent and this scene would have existed had she lived a
few years more. For me, the advertisements for Horlick’s malted milk, Nestles
milk and Dewar’s scotch are among the most vivid details in this scene. When
Judge took this he was probably thinking he’d captured the Exchange with some
of the hustle and bustle outside. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that one
hundred years later we’d be drawn to the tiny, peripheral details.
Finally, a view that reminds us why everyone with a
Baedeker’s in their pocket needed postcards, and why a sensitive observer like
Judge would be in demand. Technically speaking, the idea of using the mast of
the barge to frame St Paul’s was hardly new, though we can see how carefully
Judge composed the shot so the tips of the mast and the spire balance each
other. It is a seemingly everyday scene but what Judge has also done is take
the essential elements of the Thames, the river traffic and the skyline, to
present a view that defines the city. What is more, it is a scene that many
tourists would have passed without stopping to contemplate. Only when they got
home would they remember the barges lining the banks and the cathedral in the
background. For us, St Paul’s gives the image substance and interest but it is
the barges, the evidence of a lost way of life on the river, that matter. Today
some old relics are moored to the banks but most river traffic belongs to
ferries and RIBs, the inflatable boats that travel at high speed up and down
the river, giving customers an experience that is as over priced and viscerally
disappointing as a Bulgarian strip club. Ask Mr Judge; the only way to
appreciate London through the Thames is to walk slowly, observing the details
of the skyline, not its organic shape. It must be said that Judge rarely
examined the social energy of London, that most of what he reveals is already
taken for granted, but in its few, sparse elements this is an image of a city
at work.
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| LONDON BELONGS TO ME |
