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ARTHUR HALLAM’S SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPH AND TENNYSON’S ELEGIAC TRACE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2014

Jesse Hoffman*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University

Extract

Blanche Warre Cornish's 1921–22 tripartite memoir, “Memories of Tennyson,” begins in 1869 when she meets the poet by way of her parents’ friendship with Tennyson's neighbor, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (145) (Figure 1). The photograph that Cornish recalls as “psychophotography” is one instance of a trend in Victorian England of spirit photography that was first practiced around 1872 after it was imported from America, where William Mumler had developed it (Tucker 68; Doyle 2: 128). Reactions to these spirit photographs took various forms: while some viewers regarded them as a credible medium for communication with the dead, their detractors saw them as deliberate acts of deception. Others employed photography's spectral qualities for entertainment, such as the London Stereoscopic Company that had marketed photographs of angels, fairies, and ghosts for their customers’ amusement in the 1860s (Chéroux 45–53). By the time the “shadowy figure of a man” appears beside Arthur Hallam's erstwhile fiancé, Mrs. Jesse, Tennyson's sister, the practice had been subject to public intrigue and scandal as a part of broader and contentious Victorian debates about the status of photography as art or document. The already surreal qualities of Cornish's anecdote are amplified by Tennyson's question, “Is that Arthur?,” which entertains the possibility of Hallam being present in a visible, spectral form while unrecognized by his beloved friend.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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