Professor Butter Beard and “Sir John Herschel In A Cap”
“When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.” – Julia Margaret Cameron
“I see his soul,” my student answered. We were in the middle of the third lecture of the fall semester in my “History of Photography” course. The topic was “A Plethora of Portraits.” We had wandered through the works of Jabez Hogg, David Octavious Hill and Robert Adamson, Matthew Brady and Nadar, and I had just filled the wall with a soft-focus portrait taken by Julia Margaret Cameron. I asked: “What do you see?”
“I see his soul.”
For me, Julia Margaret Cameron is amongst the pre-eminent artistic photographers of the nineteenth century. Her smokey photographic portraits and literature tableaux vivants, produced in the 1860s and 1870s within the most important artistic circles in Victorian England, have enjoyed almost continuous popularity for over a century. Joanne Lukitsh, professor of Art History at the Massachusetts College of Art, writes: “Her exploration of the communicative power of the human face in both portraiture and narrative images provides a touchstone for the examination of the broad impact of photography in modern culture.”
Julia Margaret Pattle was born on June 11th, 1815, at Garden Reach, Calcutta, India, to Adeline Marie and James Peter Pattle, a successful official from England who worked for the East India Company. Educated in France, she also spent time in South Africa (where she first met John Herschel and her husband Charles Hay Cameron), and finally retired in England with her husband in 1845 to be near her children.
She developed a keen interest in photography in the late 1850s and there are suggestions that she experimented with making photographs in the early 1860s. In 1863, her daughter and her son-in-law gifted her with her first camera (a sliding-box camera) for Christmas. The gift was meant to provide a diversion while her husband was in Ceylon tending to his coffee plantations. Of the gift, her daughter stated, “It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.”
In an unfinished autobiographical manuscript titled “Annals of my Glasshouse,” Cameron wrote: “I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl house I had given my children became my glass house. The hens were liberated, I hope and believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon new laid eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathized in my new labor, since the society of hens and chickens was soon changed for that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens, who all in turn have immortalized the humble little farm erection. I began with no knowledge of the art... I did not know where to place my dark box, how to focus my sitter, and my first picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my hand over the filmy side of the glass.”
Over a twelve-year period, Cameron quickly produced a large body of work (over 900 photographs) capturing the genius, beauty, and innocence of the men, women, and children who visited her studio at Freshwater. Her portraits of respected men (such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Henry Taylor, Charles Darwin, and Sir John Herschel) have been consistently praised, both in her own life and in reviews of her work since.
Cameron had first met Sir John Herschel in 1835, when he was already a leading scientist of his day, whose accomplishments later included significant contributions to the development of photography. In a letter to Herschel, Cameron wrote, “You were my first teacher and to you I owe all the first experience and insights.” She went on to produce a series of soft-focus portraits of Herschel highlighting his mesmerizingly intelligent eyes and the glowing sweeps of his white tousled hair. In my favorites of her Herschel portraits, he looks directly into her camera lens, drawing you into the exact center of the photograph, hypnotized by his gaze, initiating you into a conversation with the inner man.
“I can see his soul.”
That inner soul inspired me to create an intensely flavored dark chocolate pudding pie wrapped in a graham cookie crust and hidden beneath a cloud of toasted white meringue. It will require a couple fork fills of sweet billows before tapping into the soul of the dessert. But I promise you, it will be worth the journey. It brings to mind another favorite Cameron quote. “The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”
Dark Chocolate Meringue Pie
Crust and filling:
250 grams of cookie crumbs (I like using cinnamon graham crackers)
8 Tbsp unsalted butter (6 Tbsp melted and 2 Tbsp to finish the pudding filling)
8 ounces dark chocolate, chopped or morsels (3/4 of a typical bag)
2 ¼ cup whole milk
6 Tbsp granulated sugar (4 Tbsp in the milk and 2 Tbsp in the egg mix)
1 Tbsp instant espresso powder
4 large egg yolks (save the whites for the meringue)
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp chili powder
¼ tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp vanilla paste
Swiss Meringue:
4 large egg whites
1 cup granulated sugar
½ tsp cream of tartar
1) Grind the cookies into a fine crumb and toss with the melted butter. Press the mixture into the bottom and up the sides of your chosen pie plate and chill for 30 minutes. Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Bake the shell for ten minutes and set on a wire rack to cool.
2) Slowly melt the chocolate using a double boiler or microwave (20 seconds and stir, 20 seconds and stir….). Set aside to cool slightly.
3) In a heavy bottom sauce pan, whisk together the milk, 4 Tbsp sugar and espresso powder. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring often.
4) In a medium bowl, whisk together the yolks, 2 Tbsp sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, chili powder and salt.
5) When the milk mixture comes to a simmer, start whisking the milk mixture into the egg mixture, ¼ cup at a time, to temper the egg mixture. Once all the milk mixture is whisked into the egg mixture, rinse the sauce pan with cold water and return to the medium heat. Pour in the pudding mixture and heat gently, stirring constantly, until the pudding thickens and just shows a bubble or two. Remove immediately from the heat and whisk in the remaining 2 Tbsp butter, vanilla and then the chocolate. Switch to a spatula, fold the pudding to make sure all the ingredients are fully mixed and then pour the pudding into the pie shell. Cover the top of the pudding with plastic wrap and chill the pie for at least three hours.
6) After the three hours, whisk together the egg whites and 1 cup sugar in a medium bowl. Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water and heat, whisking the entire time, until the whites reach 150 degrees. Pour the warm whites into the bowl of a standing mixture, sprinkle with the cream of tartar, and whisk on high speed until you have a stiff glossy meringue.
7) Heat the broiler in your oven. Remove the plastic wrap from the pie and top the pudding with the meringue, using a spoon to create decorative tips. Place the pie under the broiler, watching the entire time, until the meringue toasts. Remove and cool on a wire rack.
