OTHER ARTS

The Samuel Butler photographic collection (1891-1899)

St John’s College Library holds five of Samuel Butler’s photograph albums which contain over 1700 prints, along with 1600 glass plate negatives. The albums and negatives were donated to the College by Henry Festing Jones, Butler’s close friend and executor, in 1919.

The five albums date from 1891 to 1899 and represent eight years of Butler’s travels. The albums are fascinating records of late nineteenth-century streets, people, fashion, and architecture, both in England and Europe. As such they contribute to the vast collection of nineteenth-century photographs that still exist, the multiplicity of which Francis Frey and Susie Clarke suggest is so important in depicting every aspect of human life and emotion. In addition to the information the photographs in these albums provide about general nineteenth-century society, they also provide information more specific to the life of Samuel Butler. The albums are a fascinating insight into Butler’s photographic interests and the places that he visited during the last decade of his life. The photographs have connections with his literary works, such as Ex Voto, and his work on Homer’s Odyssey, and are, therefore, valuable sources of information for those interested in Samuel Butler as a prominent and diverse Victorian figure.

The albums are particularly significant to St John’s because of Butler’s connection with the College. They offer a unique material representation of Butler’s final years, as well as material evidence for early photographic techniques. Furthermore, the albums retain their contemporary bindings and include captions written by Butler’s servant and friend Alfred Cathie. They are truly irreplaceable.

For further information on the Samuel Butler collection please contact the Special Collections Librarian (tel: 01223 339393).

Samuel Butler and photography

Butler had been interested in photography since his days at Heatherley’s art college, but it was not until 1888 that Jones suggests that he took it up seriously:

In his early days Butler had dabbled in photography; he now bought two cameras, one for snap shots and one for time-exposures, and took a few lessons so that he might photograph the statues in the chapels at Varallo-Sesia (Jones, Memoir II.60)

This intensification of Butler’s interest in photography was perhaps linked to the writing of Ex Voto, ‘an account of the Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at Varallo Sesia’, in which Butler published some of his photographs. Indeed, Elinor Shaffer suggests that most of Butler’s activities as a photographer are related to his painting and his writing, and were taken as either an aide mémoire or simply because the subject appealed to him.

The five albums held at St John’s College Library illustrate Butler’s travels to Europe, particularly Italy. He repeatedly demonstrates his fascination with people and crowds, producing many photographs of individuals absorbed in their work or involved in conversation, as well as more obviously posed photographs of individuals and groups. Shaffer notes how many of his photographs of Italian urban scenes were taken in places he knew well, places where he had won his subject’s confidence. Thus his photographs benefit from this ‘quality of implicit trust’. Indeed in his friend's obituary Jones mentions that Butler was ‘welcome wherever he went, full of fun and ready to play while doing the honours of the country. Many of the peasants were old friends and every day we were sure to meet someone who remembered him.'

Butler’s sincerity and fascination with people has created a collection of memorable and appealing photograph albums. In addition to Butler’s interest in people, his photographs contribute to all the leading genres of Victorian photography, particularly street scenes, portraits and architecture, both at home and abroad.

An insight into Butler’s fascination with photography can be gleaned by looking at one of the many notebooks he compiled throughout his life. Butler filled these notebooks with his own thoughts on topics ranging from the Atom to Handel. In one notebook he gives his reason for compiling them:

One’s thoughts fly so fast that one must shoot them; it is no use trying to put salt on their tails.

This need to preserve thoughts is mirrored in Butler’s desire to preserve moments via photography. One can gain a sense of this in the sheer volume and range of photographs that he took after 1888. In his photography Butler appears to enjoy the challenge that the photographer Weegee revelled in six decades later:

People are so wonderful that a photographer has only to wait for that breathless moment to capture what he wants on film … and when that split second of time is gone, it’s dead and can never be brought back.

For Butler, photography was a pleasure and an irresistible temptation, as he suggests in one of his notebooks with regard to observing a popular preacher suffering from seasickness on a crossing from Dover to Calais: 'can I be expected to resist the temptation of snapping him?' Butler’s excitement and need to capture such moments, to shoot them, and preserve them, fills his albums with a range of enticing, and deeply human subjects which he has captured with obvious pleasure.

Images from Butler's 1893 album

Catalogue of Butler's photograph albums

A preliminary catalogue of Samuel Butler's photograph albums can be found on Janus. This database provides access to a growing number of manuscripts and archives in various Colleges and libraries in the University of Cambridge.

The cataloguing of Butler's albums is an ongoing project, and further details will be added to the Janus catalogue in due course.

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Books by and about Samuel Butler in St John's College Library can be found by searching Newton, the online catalogue for the libraries of the University of Cambridge.

• Clifford, D. (2000) Samuel Butler (1835-1902).
• Clarke, S. & Frey, F. (2003) Care of photographs. Amsterdam: ECPA.
• Jones, H. F. (1903) 'Obituary: Samuel Butler B.A.', The Eagle 24, 83-97.
• Jones, H. F. (1920) Samuel Butler author of Erewhon (1835-1902): a memoir. Vol 2. London: Macmillan.
• Jones, H. F. (ed.) (1926) The notebooks of Samuel Butler. London: Jonathan Cape.
• Raby, P. (1991) Samuel Butler: a biography. London: Hogarth.
• Shaffer, E. (1988) Erewhons of the eye: Samuel Butler as painter, photographer & art critic. London: Reaktion Books.
• Shaffer, E. & Bolton Museum and Art Gallery (1989) Samuel Butler The Way of All Flesh: photographs, paintings, watercolours and drawings by Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902). Bolton Museum and Art Gallery.
• Weegee (2002) Naked City. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press.

Copyright © St John's College, http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/personal_papers/ppapers/Butler/page1.html

-''The Samuel Butler Photographic Collection''. (2008) Available from: St John's College, University of Cambridge <http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/personal_papers/ppapers/Butler/page1.html> (accessed November 2008)

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Carolina Cody Aldaz
cacodyal@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press