The Photographic World and Humour of Cuthbert Bede
By Bridget A. Henisch and Heinz Henisch
Photographic Pleasures
Railway travellers departing from Paddington 150 years ago, pausing to
buy a shilling novel from the W H Smith bookstall, might have picked up
a new bestseller: The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, An Oxford
Freshman. Few Victorian readers knew that the popular author, Cuthbert
Bede, was in fact a little-known clergyman who for twelve years served
as Rector of the sleepy Rutland parish of Stretton. By the time he arrived
in Rutland, in 1871, the Reverend Edward Bradley had published, under
the pseudonym of Cuthbert Bede, a wide range of books and articles,.
including a light-hearted look at the new Victorian craze for photography,
Photographic Pleasures, Popularly Portrayed with Pen and Pencil
(London 1855).
Today Cuthbert Bede can boast several internet web pages and
academic admirers from Pennsylvania to Clerkenwell, but little
biographical coverage outside The Dictionary of National Biography and
Who Was Who in Rutland (Rutland Record 8 (1988) 261). In this new
study, Professor Heinz and Bridget Henisch of Penn State University,
USA, approach the career of Cuthbert Bede from the viewpoint of photo-
historians and authors of, among other works, The Photographic
Experience 1839-1945 (Pennsylvania 1994). They celebrate the humour,
enthusiasm and comic art of a very English eccentric.
Illustrated largely by Bede's own sketches and cartoons, The
Photographic World and Humour of Cuthbert Bede is a modest volume
with a hefty price tag. As such. its sales may well be limited to libraries,
where Bede's irreverent sense of humour may strike an incongruous
note. In their time, all his books were intended for the wider public, who
might be intimidated by a scientific analysis of the photographic process
but would roar with pleasure at the sketch of a self-important
photographer threatened by a charging bull. Ironically Bede's
introduction to the new art was illustrated not by photographs but by
comic drawings, many of which had previously appeared in Punch.
Bridget and Heinz Henisch vividly convey their own delight in Bede's wit
and wordplay, his insight and imagination. His love of puns and puzzles
finds expression in his own illustrations, so that a glass rod for stirring
photographic chemicals' is honoured with a portrait captioned "Glass
Rod at the Court of King Camera".' In another of Bede's cartoons a
schoolboy is threatened with a birch rod labelled as a 'developing agent'.
Fully aware of serious Victorian debate over what constituted 'High Art',
Bede could not resist playing games with the concept, finding high art in
a rooftop photographic studio. The Henischs' book makes clear the
limitations of Bede's technical and aesthetic understanding of
photography, but pays warm-hearted tribute to his achievement in
making it appealing and accessible to the middle classes of the mid 19th
century.
In concentrating on Cuthbert Bede's photographic world, the authors
deal more briefly with his very English background, influences and wider
interests. At times their transatlantic perspective limits the picture, such
as a rather laboured explanation of Bede's reference to Daniel Lambert,
who two centuries later remains a gargantuan legend to many
compatriots, especially around Stamford. Rutland is misnamed as
Rutlandshire and the proprietor who famously named the Ram Jam Inn
becomes Charles Black rather than Charles Blake (buried at Stretton).
The first half of the book, exploring the 'Multiple Missions' of the
Reverend Edward Bradley, is likely to be of greater interest to Rutland
readers. It aims to promote wider appreciation of this far from retiring
clergyman, with the voracious, inquiring energy of his published writings,
his humorous warmth and engaging, if at times conservative humanity.
Ceaselessly contributing to journals such as Notes and Queries and
Boys' Own Paper, he pontificated on such topical issues as the
proliferation of junk mail and the unsuitability of women to practise
medicine. Exploiting the new opportunities of railway travel across the
Midlands, he undertook an exhausting programme of popular public
lectures, with titles such as 'Wit and Humour', in order to raise funds for
the restoration of Stretton Church, where he now lies buried.
The second section of the book concentrates on the 'Positive Pleasures'
which Cuthbert Bede found in photography. To those who share Bede's
interest in the developing world of photography and his schoolboy sense of
humour these chapters will entertain and inform. They offer an informed
commentary on Bede's Photographic Pleasures, providing helpful,
thumbnail sketches of the individuals with whom Bede was involved, and
the processes which concerned him but which he did not always
understand. Whether finally Bede's light-hearted study of photography
justifies the devoted attention of the present authors remains in the
balance. It is only one aspect of the wide-ranging rather than deeply
explored interests of a man very much of his time. The authors offer an
honest assessment of Bede's contribution to the popularisation of
photography, recognising his limitations as well as his appeal. The public
which made its own judgement remembers him above all for The
Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, which sold 130,000 copies and was
followed by two popular sequels. It is this novel which earned Bede a place
in the 1990 Oxford Book of Humorous Prose. It remains his greatest claim
to fame.
The Rev Edward Bradley, alias Cuthbert Bede, repays study by social
historians, lovers of comic prose and popular literature, local historians
and students of photography. As a clergyman, his contribution to
religious thought is less apparent than his engaging influence on
parishioners. A generation entertained by Punch will find continuing
amusement in his sketches. This book provides an invaluable insight into
the experience of a lost generation, those to whom the magic lantern
and the miracle of photography offered new visions of a rapidly
changing world. Cuthbert Bede led eager Victorian readers, as he can
still entice readers of the 21st century, to share wonder and pleasure on
the threshold of a new world of technological communication.
Sue Howlett
Researching Rutland
© Rutland Local History and Record Society
Registered Charity No 700273