Presenting a Summer idyll on the River Thames.

With this highlight, I hope to bring renewed attention to Louise Birt Baynes, an important woman photographer of the early 20th century whose work has gone unrecognized until now. With unattributed select examples of her flower studies purchased for the PhotoSeed archive in 2011, it was in April of 2012 they could definitively be identified through proper attribution in a 1904 issue of the journal Photo Era. Baynes, (1876-1958) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and eventually immigrated to America, becoming an art student in the Boston area and later marrying in 1901. After 1904 a lifelong resident of Meriden, New Hampshire, she continued as an amateur photographer, naturalist and author during a fruitful 25-year collaborative marriage with her life partner, the naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes.

— David Spencer         See work by Louise Birt Baynes in the Archive

The former Louise Birt O’Connell, an art student from the Boston area (1.) married the important naturalist and author Ernest Harold Baynes (1868-1925) in 1901, becoming Louise Birt Baynes. Born in Calcutta India, Harold Baynes was 11 when he first came to America from England. Also an  amateur photographer, his father was an inventor “who made substantial contributions to the science of photography.” (2.) Settling in Meriden, New Hampshire around 1904, one of his many accomplishments related to conservation efforts in the United States was his founding of the American Bison Society with the purpose of saving the buffalo from extinction. As for his wife, known as Birt, (3.) Louise Baynes first efforts at amateur photography were believed to be wildlife and or plant studies. Around the time of her marriage, she had “furnished the illustrations” of wildlife subjects for an unknown article written by her husband that was subsequently published. (4.) The flower studies in this online site are early examples of her work, with Golden-Rod published in the pages of the Photo Era in early 1904. Taken in their natural surroundings and not the studio, some of these photographs were done using artificial light sources-so called “flashlight pictures”- most likely photographed using magnesium ribbon as an illumination source. Author and photographer Frank Roy Fraprie, in his article titled Photographing the Wild Flowers for the previously mentioned journal, commented on Golden-Rod as well as a reflection study of skunk cabbage done by Baynes reproduced in the pages of the March issue:

 Mrs. Baynes has conquered all these difficulties, and her picture, “Harbingers of Spring,” is interesting to both the naturalist and the artistic photographer,— to one for its fidelity and to the other for its good composition. …

 Mrs. Baynes brings back to our memory the fragrance of New England fields, the anise odor of the omnipresent yarrow, lover of roadsides and pastures, and the resinous fragrance of the goldenrod, a magnificent specimen, half-emerging in lonesome majesty from the depths of the elder thicket. (5.)

 In 1906, Louise Birt Baynes is listed as being a leading American woman photographer, along with 31 other women, including Jessie Tarbox Beals, Francis Benjamin Johnston, Annie Brigman and others who contributed over 200 photographs for an exhibition hosted by The Camera Club of Hartford. (6.) The same year, she had five photographs, some of animal subjects, shown in the class: Scientific and Technical Photography and its Application to Processes of Reproduction at the Fifty-first Annual Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. (7.)

 The eight flower studies done by Louise Birt Baynes on this site are all loosely mounted or tipped to or within period supports. With the exception of one, they are further identified in ink as (h-(Harold)) L.B. on the support verso in Bayne’s hand. In addition to the title of the work appearing on the upper margin of the support rectos, lines of poetry, some original and from other sources further embellish the recto supports below the images. As to provenance, several of the photographs were previously owned by one Nellie B. Sawyer, believed to be a family member of the photographer. Attribution on one support verso states: Nellie B. Sawyer and another: One of Mrs. Bayne’s photographs-To Mother from Nellie.

 Notes:

1. BIOGRAPHICAL TRANSCRIPT: ERNEST HAROLD BAYNES: ONLINE PDF DOCUMENT GATHERED FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES, (1993?) STARTING WITH CROYDON (N.H.) HISTORIAN DANA S. GROSS, ET AL: ACCESSED: 2012 
2. IBID: PLEASE ALSO SEE ONLINE: NEW ENGLAND NATURALISTS: A BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHY BY FRED BURCHSTED, WHO LISTS IN HIS BIOGRAPHY ON BAYNES THAT HE WAS AN: ASSISTANT TO HIS FATHER, JOHN BAYNES, INVENTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHIC MODELING, 1893-1900. FROM JOHN BAYNES (1842-1903) SEPTEMBER 30TH OBITUARY NOTICE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, IT IS SAID: “HIS FIRST GREAT INVENTION BEING THAT OF THE CELLULOID PHOTOGRAPHIC FILMS” WAS ACCOMPLISHED SHORTLY AFTER HIS ARRIVAL TO AMERICA FROM ENGLAND IN 1875. HE FOLLOWED THIS IN 1885 WITH THE INVENTION OF THE GOLD ETCHING PHOTO PROCESS AND THEN PHOTOGRAPHIC MODELING, AND PHOTOGRAPHICALLY MODELED RECORDS OF SOUND VIBRATIONS AMONG OTHER INVENTIONS.
3. IBID: ERNEST HAROLD BAYNES TRANSCRIPT
4. IBID
5. PHOTO-ERA-THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MARCH, 1904: PP. 37-38. “HARBINGERS OF SPRING”, A STUDY OF SKUNK CABBAGE, APPEARS ALONG WITH SEPARATE HALFTONE PLATES OF “YARROW” AND “GOLDENROD” IN THE ISSUE.
6. WITH THE CAMERA CLUBS: FROM: THE AMERICAN AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER: NEW YORK: MAY, 1906: P. 248
7.  THE PHOTOGRAPHS EXHIBITED WERE: 324. “PRAIRIE WOLF”, 325. “AT CLOSE OF DAY” 326. “PRAIRIE WOLF”
327. “EVENING” 328. “THE PRICE OF LIFE”. INTERESTINGLY, BAYNES IS ALSO LISTED WITH THE LONDON (REGENT’S PARK) ADDRESS OF 12, HILL ROAD, ST. JOHN’S WOOD, N.W. IN THE ONLINE CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITORS.

Spring, that time of rebirth for the temperate regions of the world, is thankfully showing itself off again. With new growth on trees, flowers showing off and the lingering sweet smells of airborne pollen, these are but a few signs of the season.

As children, our very first “photographs” joyously executed in winter climes would have taken the form of angelic impressions left in the newly fallen snow, or tropical: designs left on sandy seashores.

Our very own Pencils of Nature.

An impression of ourselves for sure, but also quickly obliterated-or not, like nature herself. Photography in this form has in a way been part of Earth’s plant and animal fossil record stretching back millions of years, with Mankind’s permanent efforts barely stretching back to the early 19th Century.

Enjoy this gallery of images celebrating the beauty of flora. From original Nature Prints ca. 1775-1825: inked leaves placed between a sheet of paper and pulled through a printing press; to mosaic red flowers adorning the head of a Roman goddess imagined by an artist around 250 A.D. transcribed and copied by the radical Talbotype process and published in 1850; to delicate British seaweeds copied into lead and printed 1859-60 to modern examples still nearly a century old: six silhouetted jewels ca. 1925 from the time photographic hobbyists gazed in wonderment at their first efforts emerging from developer trays in home darkrooms.

In the public consciousness at least, Hawaii has probably not changed too much in the past 100 years. By this I mean an island chain of magnificent tropical beauty, mystery, and earthly delights with a strong emphasis on the natural world being the preferred vision for this place for many of us; with the realities of crime, squalor and all the other maladies undoubtedly present on some scale cast aside for the sake of bliss. You see, in this chaotic world, people need and want to believe utopia by the name Hawaii must exist.

Photographer Alfred Richard Gurrey Jr. believed in that place. A Hawaiian transplant from San Francisco at the turn of the 20th Century, his beautiful photographs of the islands included in the self-published book Idyls of Hawaii  ca. 1910-1920 now on this website is aptly titled, even if idyll is now spelled with two ls in the 21st. A truly renaissance man of the arts, his vision of beauty for a place we may never visit but hope to someday cannot help but give us all the hope we need in this hectic and often indifferent world- one where the idea of Hawaii can always be within reach.     -David Spencer

 Want to see more of this special place from long ago? click here

P.T. Barnum gave me permission. A recent news item that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus would send their remaining ponderous performing pachyderms to a Florida retirement home by 2018 got me to thinking recently. Did I not possess in my archive one very old mysterious photograph of a stuffed elephant? Sure enough, I did.

Looks kinda important.

Bunch of people standing outside a building… with a really big stuffed elephant.

Now to some Google “research”.

It’s Jumbo!

As in: “Jumbo was the greatest circus attraction in American history.” (1.)

So now I’m more interested in that old photo. But then it dawns on me: several years ago, I had purchased a trove of material taken by an amateur photographer named Charles Rollins Tucker. Never heard of him? Tufts College. Class of 1891. Bachelor of Philosophy with specialties in chemistry and physics, then a Master of Arts from the same institution in 1894. From Stoughton, Massachusetts, Tucker first resided in East Hall (room 26) on the Tufts campus after first matriculating in the Fall of 1887. Trust me. I know a great deal more, and eventually, time willing, you will too. Several photographs of his daughter Dorothy, (also a Tufts graduate)  including “Girl with Kodak” and an earlier study of her photographing her doll have been hiding in plain site on this website for several years now, and I eventually hope to show the progression of her growing up in a wonderful series of images taken by her father.

But now back to the main attraction, that old photograph. Like I said, Barnum would approve.

The Particulars

Jumbo, a word synonymous with someone or something very large or huge-especially so in the American lexicon, was an African elephant of immense proportions. According to Wikipedia, he was also the first “international animal superstar” after showman Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891) purchased him from the London Zoo in 1882 for $10,000. However, in September of 1885, after entertaining North American circus audiences for a bit more than 3 years, he came to an inglorious end after being accidentally struck by a freight train after a Canadian performance.

Barnum being Barnum, a little thing like death was certainly not going to get in the way of Jumbo thrilling audiences while continuing to replenish his  masters coffers- albeit in a more restrained and static way. An early trustee and munificent benefactor of the school,  he gave it $55,000 in 1882 for the establishment of the Barnum Museum of Natural History on the campus, which was completed by 1884. Housing a museum of natural history showcasing a multitude of stuffed circus and zoological animal specimens as well as laboratories and classrooms, arrangements for Jumbo’s remains had been planned even while he was still alive. Overseeing the museum was John Marshall, the first professor of natural history at the school, who had presciently written to Henry A. Ward, Barnum’s taxidermist extraordinaire and owner of the “Natural Science Establishment” in Rochester, N.Y. two weeks before Jumbo’s death:

College Hill. Sep 1. 1885.

Dear Prof. Ward.
We fully expect to have the skin of Jumbo when he dies. Jumbo was excepted when the arrangement was made with the Smithsonian. I should not consider the Barnum Museum complete without this noble animal. It would be the greatest ornament that we could place in the Vestibule, near Mr. Barnum’s bust. Our front door to the Museum is [blank] feet high. You can judge whether the stuffed Jumbo would go in. It is wide enough, I think. Probably it would be necessary to stuff the skin in the vestibule. I have not decided upon the skeleton yet but will endeavor to let you know soon. – I think your offer to Mr. Barnum was $75 in exchange or $50 in money. Would you object to letting the $50 go towards the skulls? –

Yours very truly.

John P. Marshall   (2.)

After Jumbo’s demise, Ward was dispatched to Canada in order to secure the animal’s remains, not an easy task. Arriving two days after the accident on Sept. 17, souvenir seekers had to be kept at bay by police:

In addition to the problem of size, Jumbo’s fame caused added complications. Relic seekers had done some damage before Ward arrived, and a policeman had been put on guard to prevent further mutilation. It took Ward, his assistants, and half a dozen butchers from St. Thomas, two days to dissect the elephant and prepare the hide and skeleton for shipment. The hide weighed 1,538 pounds, the bones 2,400 pounds. Coins of many kinds were found in Jumbo’s stomach, and Ward was quoted as having said that “Jumbo was a bank all by himself.” His stomach also contained rivets, a bunch of keys on a ring, a policeman’s whistle, and various ornaments. (3.)

By March of the following year, after his skin had been tanned and “scraped to a uniform thickness and nailed to a huge wooden framework with 74,480 nails“, (4.) Ward’s Natural Science Establishment delivered two finished mounts of Jumbo to Barnum at a reported cost of $1200.00: (5.) one of his skeleton and another for his hide. This stuffed version of Jumbo, after two additional years of touring with The Greatest Show on Earth, eventually made its’ way to Medford and the college via train after Barnum made the decision to (mostly) “retire” him from traveling circus life.

A Rare Survivor

With this mounted cabinet card seemingly the only photographic evidence of his arrival on campus, it must have been quite a sight to see all the steps taken to safely transport Jumbo by train, ferryboat and horse-drawn carriage on his final journey to Tufts. Beginning on Friday, March 29 from his winter home in Bridgeport, CT , Jumbo finally arrived in front of the Barnum museum at the college on Wednesday, April 3, 1889, with the final leg of the journey described as:

…” he was hauled to Tufts by a double team of horses. When that team proved unable to pull him up College Hill, more than 50 Tufts professors and students, aided by some local boys, completed the task.” (6.)

An alternate dispatch from 1888 Tufts graduate Julien C. Edgerly, (1865-1913) a reporter and news editor for the Boston Daily Globe newspaper who witnessed the famed elephants arrival on campus, wrote an article published in the edition for Thursday, April 4, 1889, illustrated by a small woodcut of the mounted cabinet card seen here. Conclusive proof it was taken by Tufts student Charles Rollins Tucker-albeit without being named directly-was included in Edgerly’s article. Some excerpts:

The mounted skin of Jumbo this morning stands in front of the museum on the top of College hill, as shown in the accompanying cuts, one of which shows the animal with a man at his side to give by contrast an idea of his size, and the other shows both Jumbo and the building which, barring the cadence of fortune, is destined to be his last long home. …

After Jumbo made his final journey, pulled by 6 horses up College Hill to the front doors of the Barnum Museum, the carriage he was riding on was “taken apart and drawn away.” … and:

The canvas coverings were removed to allow a student photographer to transfer his image to the plate of the camera. Several views were taken, some with ambitious young men upon the great beast’s back. Then the coverings were replaced and he will stand as lone sentinel till today when he will be placed inside the museum. He will occupy the centre of the large front room, facing the entrance. (7.)

Professor Marshall, writing in the Annual Report of the President of Tufts College for 1889, also gave an interesting account of Jumbo’s arrival that day, commenting Jumbo had increased visitors to the museum among other observations:

Jumbo was brought to the Barnum Museum on Fast Day of the present year, and moved into the vestibule the following day. All the wood-work was removed from the great arch of the portico, leaving barely room for the entrance of the largest mounted elephant of modern times. It will be taken away, September 20, to be exhibited in London during the coming winter. About the first of April of next year, it will become a permanent attraction of the Museum. During the five months of its exhibition here the number of visitors to the Museum was largely increased. Your attention is again respectfully invited to the need of additional cases for the proper exhibition of specimens which have been accumulating during the past two years.

Respectfully submitted,
JOHN P. MARSHALL,

Director. Tufts College,
September 19, 1889.  (8.)

Picking up the Ashes

Jumbo has given back to Tufts, no pun intended, in a Huge way. Period accounts state he was immediately adopted as the school’s new mascot shortly after his arrival in 1889 and continues in that role today at Tufts University. The school website, semantics aside, brags Jumbo is the “only college mascot found in Webster’s Dictionary.” But alas, Jumbo endured a second death, this time by fire in 1975, when faulty wiring lead to a conflagration that gutted the 1884 Barnum museum.  But all was not lost. Fortunately, the school’s archives held a section of Jumbo’s tail removed earlier because of students continual penchant for tugging on it, and a university  staff member, while the rubble was still smoldering, had the smarts to scoop up some of his ashes that now reside in a Skippy peanut butter jar at the school. (nice trivia question- it’s secured with a Peter Pan Crunchy brand lid)  Members of the sports teams on campus are said to rub this jar for good luck before an important game, and students indelible memories of college life at Tufts have been published every year since 1917 in the “Jumbo” yearbook.

With reporter Julien Edgerly’s account of a Tufts student photographer recording Jumbo for posterity in front of the museum on April 3, 1889, my argument and “Conclusive proof” Charles Rollins Tucker was that author working with Edgerly seems credible. For comparison, the Tufts archives holds a photograph dated 1889 showing Jumbo later on exhibit inside the museum credited to noted marine photographer N. L. Stebbins. (Nathaniel Livermore Stebbins-1847-1922)  But given Jumbo’s immense fame, why is there no back-mark or other attribution for Stebbins for this exterior view of Jumbo? Surely, like one of his famous yachting studies, Stebbins would have insisted on it!

On his way to becoming a fine pictorialist photographer in the early 20th Century, Charles Tucker took a series of architectural photographs that survive in this archive which further gives credibility to his being responsible for the 1889 exterior Jumbo photograph. These include several examples seen above showing (ca. 1890-95) one of architect Henry Hobson Richardson’s masterpieces, the Thomas Crane Public Library  (built 1882)  located in Quincy, south of Boston. This is a gelatin silver mounted cabinet card using the same card-stock as the Jumbo photograph as well as a variant mounted cyanotype on a different paper stock. Finally, when he finished with his masters degree in late 1894 at Tufts, Tucker became sub-master until 1896 at Quincy High School– the same town as Richardson’s library. Two of his photographic views of this additionally survive, with a card-mounted, signed cyanotype by him dated 1896 seen here.

Notes:
1.  excerpt: Step Right Up! : Bob Brooke presents the history of the circus in America : from: History Magazine: October/November 2001 issue: online version accessed March, 2015.
2. excerpt: Jumbo: by John R. Russell: in: University of Rochester Library Bulletin: vol. III, no. 1: Fall, 1947: River Campus Libraries online resource accessed March, 2015
3. Ibid
4. excerpt: Jumbo: Here and There at Tufts: Medford: Tufts College: Lewis Doane, Editor-in-chief: 1907: p. 44
5. excerpt: Jumbo: by John R. Russell: in: University of Rochester Library Bulletin: vol. III, no. 1: Fall, 1947: River Campus Libraries online resource accessed March, 2015
6. excerpt: Jumbo Matriculates: from: An Elephant’s Tale: Susan Wilson, J69, G75: Tufts online Magazine: Spring, 2002
7. The Boston Daily Globe: Thursday, April 4, 1889: p. 4
8. excerpt: Annual Report of the President of Tufts College: Boston: 1889: p. 36