Reginald Southey and the skeletons

The photograph is listed under 0221 in the catalog of all Lewis Carroll’s photographic works. It was taken in June 1857 at Carroll’s photo studio at the Cathedral of Christ at Oxford ^[1] . Size - 166 by 137 millimeters . The modern place of storage is the collection of the National Media Museum , Bradford (included in the museum's permanent exhibition) ^[2] .

Technique - wet collodion process and albumin printing . Sauti is pictured standing next to the skulls and skeletons of a man and a monkey from the Oxford Anatomical Cabinet. In the album A (I), which is kept at Princeton University , the photographer added to the page where this photograph was located, the first lines from Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Vision of Sin ”: “You are a skeleton, and what of this?” (“You are bones , and what of that? / Every face, however full, / Padded round with flesh or fat / Is but modell'd on a skull ”). The compilers of Carroll's catalog of works suggest that this image was made to celebrate the graduation of Sauti Master's degree with honors in science in June 1857 ^[3] .

The photograph has been repeatedly shown at exhibitions, in particular on “The Other Side of the Lens: Lewis Carroll and the Art of Photography during the 19th Century” in the Upper Library of Christ Cathedral in Oxford and is mentioned in its catalog, as well as analyzed in some articles and monographs ^[4] .

At Oxford, Carroll and Southey are believed to have collaborated on “anatomical” photographs at the Oxford Anatomy Office. They photographed the skeletons of fish and animals, the culmination of these photos was the image of Southey, standing next to the skeletons and skulls of a man and a monkey. The journalist of the Independent newspaper describes his impressions in an article about photography from the exhibition of Victorian photographs that took place in our time at the National Museum of Photography, Cinema and Television in Bradford:

“A young and respectable Victorian gentleman in a tailcoat stands, friendly (and almost even lovingly) hugging a skeleton by the shoulder. If you do not take into account the clothes and flesh of the one who is on the left, it turns out that they are almost the same height and are in the same position, looking to the right. There is a strange impression (either terrible, or funny) that the gentleman demonstrates - literally - his own bones, as if on a diagram in anatomical textbooks. On the table next to this strange pair are several skulls, as well as a full skeleton of a small primate, some monkey or chimpanzee with huge scary eye sockets. Everything is weirder and weirder ... "

- Demurova N.M. Lewis Carroll ^[5]

This photograph of Carroll was declared the best at the exhibition - she was recognized as "practically the only one made with a sense of humor, although very peculiar." The picture was taken in 1857, two years before the publication of Charles Darwin's book “The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Breeds in the Struggle for Life” . However, the news of the book has already leaked to the press and its content was animatedly discussed long before publication ^[6] . In addition, the idea was discussed decades before, the most famous were the opinions of James Burnett ^{[7] [8] [9]} .

Researchers of the writer's work note that Carroll was "closely acquainted" with some skeletons from the Oxford anatomical cabinet. The skeleton of a tuna , for example, appears in two photographs of the writer, including in his photograph of the university professor of medicine Henry Ackling (to whom he formally belonged and who presented him to the exhibition), made by the writer shortly before the photograph “Reginald Southey and Skeletons” ^[6] .

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  Lewis Carroll. Skeleton of bluefin tuna caught near Madeira island, 1857

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  Lewis Carroll. South Qiwi , 1857

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  Lewis Carroll. Skeleton of a sun fish , 1857

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  Lewis Carroll. Head and shoulder girdle of cod and human skull, 1857

Reginald Southey (1835–1899) and Lewis Carroll met in the 1850s at Oxford, where Dodgson taught mathematics since 1855, and Southey studied science with a bachelor ’s degree in 1855 and a master ’s degree in 1857. In 1859-1861, Southey studied in London and Oxford, where he received degrees: Master's degree in June 1860 and Medicinæ Doctor in 1861 ^[10] . Southey was the nephew of the romantic poet Robert Southey and the fifth son of the physician Henry Herbert Southey . After graduation, he traveled a lot, worked at Commissioners in Lunacy (forensic psychiatric expert commission) from 1883 to 1898. He lectured in the prestigious Goulstonian Lectures Royal College of Medicine in London in 1867 ^[11] . Southey married Frances Marianne Thornton in 1864, and four children were born in the marriage ^[12] .

Southey took up photography around 1853, possibly thanks to Hugh Welch Diamond , who was the first secretary of the London Photographic Society ^[10] . Carroll purchased the camera, taking Reginald Southy with him as a satellite, which already had a camera and therefore acted as a consultant. Under the direction of Southey, the writer took the first photographs, he soon became so carried away by a new occupation that he began to devote all his free time to it ^{[13] [14]} .

Communication Carroll and Southey is recorded in detail in the diaries of the first from 1855 to 1857. On March 1, 1855, Carroll went to look at the new photographs taken by Southey, noted one of them in his diary as "the best amateur attempt I saw." Carroll repeatedly photographed Southey, and Southey photographed Carroll, together they shot common acquaintances, worked on the production of positives. Carroll wrote in his diaries that Southy, being familiar with chemistry , helped him work on this process. Sometimes, Southy recommended Carroll his own models. So he advised the writer to get acquainted with Henry Ackland , later - a professor of medicine, who had a “beautiful family” with six children whom he could photograph. In the spring of 1857, Southy visited the Isle of Wight , where he photographed the children of Julia Margaret Cameron and Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson personally wrote a thanks to Southey for his photograph of his children. Sauti's photographs are characterized by close-ups with the exception of detailing the background and secondary objects ^{[13] [10]} . Cameron, as researchers of her work suggest, took from Southey the first photography lessons ^[15] .

In the presence of Southey, Carroll first met his future Muse . On April 25, 1856, he and Southey attempted to photograph the Cathedral of Christ Church from the rector’s garden, where three daughters of Henry Liddell were playing at that time. It was then that Carroll first met Alice Liddell ^[16] . He also collaborated with Southey on photographs of the Liddell daughters, and a month later Dodgson invited Southey to London to express “his opinion on the negatives” of these photographs ^[10] . He invited Dodgson later to join him during an operation at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital , where the surgeon was supposed to amputate the patient’s leg using the then poorly known chloroform . The next day, Dodgson visited Southey’s house to see his new photographs, leaving some of his own, taken recently, for the upcoming annual exhibition of the London Photographic Society. Sauti gained fame among his contemporaries as the inventor of the “Sauti tube” used to drain extremity edema ^[10] .

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  Reginald Southey. Sons of Alfred Tennyson, 1857

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  Reginald Southey. Charles and Harry, sons of Julia Cameron, 1857

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  Reginald Southey. Lewis Carroll, 1856

• Lewis Carroll and Photography
• Victorian headless portrait
• Hidden mother
• Spiritual photography

• Demurova N.M. Lewis Carroll. - M: Young Guard, 2013 .-- 416 p. - (The life of wonderful people). - ISBN 978-5-235-03568-3 .
• Ford, Colin. Julia Margaret Cameron: A Critical Biography . - J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003 .-- S. 38 .-- 212 p. - (Getty Museum Studies on Art. Photographs Series). - ISBN 9-780-8923-6707-8.
• Cox, Julian; Ford, Colin. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs . - Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003 .-- S. 41. - 566 p. - (Getty Publications virtual library. Getty Trust Publications). - ISBN 9-780-8923-6681-1.
• Marsh, Jan Reginald Southey (neopr.) . National Portrait Gallery, London. Date of treatment February 20, 2017.