Me & You magazine Issue 2

MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY

ISSUE 2, MAY 2010

Published by the Mary Evans Picture Library 59 Tranquil Vale, London SE3 0BS T: 020 8318 0034 www.maryevans.com E: pictures@maryevans.com

1

......

A Tale of Two Georges

4

......

A Sword Cut Through the Mountains

6

......

Secret Obsessions

8

......

Make-Do and Mend

10

......

A Week in the Life

11

......

Take a Hike

12

......

Spot the Difference

Nameplate image ClassicStock/Mary Evans

A Taleof

TWO WO GEORGES

S

hortly before midnight on 6th May 1910, a notice was attached to the railings of Buckingham Palace officially notifying the waiting crowds that the old King, Edward VII, was dead. As the Edwardian era ebbed away, the new King, George V, brought with him a style of monarchy not only different to his father's, but in stark contrast to that of his Georgian predecessor, the Prince Regent, later George IV.

This second Georgian age was spearheaded by a man who was most at Mary Evans Picture Library (image 10071370)

Mary Evans Picture Library (image 10084749)

Nobody can claim that George V was not a hard-working and dedicated King. But he was also conservative, pedestrian and to some observers, rather gruff.

Originally educated at the Royal Naval College at Osborne on the Isle of Wight, he showed an aptitude for a life at sea. But the premature death of his elder brother the Duke of Clarence in 1892 irrevocably changed George's destiny.

home acting the country squire, shooting grouse in Norfolk or perusing his extensive stamp collection. Upon his marriage, George thought it entirely suitable that he and his wife should make their home at the comparatively poky residence of York Cottage on the Sandringham Estate. Queen Mary, who had a lifelong love of beautiful antiques and trinkets, must have been crestfallen to discover her new husband had furnished the house in ugly pieces from Maple & Co department store in London. In this, he could not have been more different to the flamboyant George IV, perhaps best known for creating the exotic and lavishly decorated Royal Pavilion at Brighton, an extraordinary building crammed with the finest furniture and embellished by skilled craftsmen. He may have spent a lifetime in debt, but his legacy of fine buildings and art treasures is an impressive one.

Onslows Auctions Ltd/Mary Evans

Old-fashioned and parsimonious George V may have been, but he had the diplomatic sensibility to steer the British royal family through the stormy waters of World War I. The Germanic family name of SaxeCoburg-Gotha was dropped in favour of Windsor, and the family adopted the same frugality asked of the King's subjects with alcohol no longer served at meals and the gardens of Buckingham Palace given over to growing vegetables.

Mary Evans Picture Library

Programme cover for the Brighton Festival, probably 1951 (image 10272282)

plus fours and Fair Isle sweaters much to the King's displeasure.

Compare the pair's marriages too. George IV had secretly married a Roman Catholic, Maria Fitzherbert, against not only his family's wishes but in complete disregard of the British constitution. Forced to marry officially before the Government would grant him further funds, he famously asked for a glass of brandy, claiming he felt unwell after meeting his cousin and bride-

Celebrity break-ups of the 21st century have nothing on George and Caroline.

Rue des Archives/Mary Evans

George V as a young man (image 10240037)

2

to-be, Caroline of Brunswick for the first time. The marriage was doomed although the pair managed to conceive a daughter, Princess Charlotte, on the one and only night spent together. Celebrity break-ups of the 21st century have nothing on George and Caroline, which the 18th century satirical prints we hold - the tabloids of their day - confirm in no small measure.

George V had quietly wooed his dead elder brother's fiance, marrying Princess May of Teck in 1893.Their marriage was overall a great success but the King's innate conservatism is well expressed by a veto on his wife ever wearing the short skirts of the 1920s (of great sadness to the Queen who was said to have had shapely legs). A notoriously strict father, he clashed too with his eldest and most dapper son, the future Edward VIII who wore bowler hats,

Cartoon satirising the relationship between Caroline of Brunswick and her manservant, Bergami. Through his relationship with Caroline, Bergami has risen from nowhere to the aristocracy. Unattributed cartoon published 1821 (image 10412722)

Images of both Kings are well-known but we seek always to find unusual representations of the famous, royal or not.

The cartoons of Gillray can be found lampooning the Prince Regent, but we also like a tourism poster for Brighton from the 1950s, showing a svelte and beatific George IV showing off his pavilion.

Photographs of George V often reveal a more human side. A favourite is a delightfully informal picture of the King smiling as broadly as the small boy he is speaking to during a royal visit to Sunderland. Perhaps the little boy liked stamps too.

Mary Evans Picture Library

George V chats to a working boy while on a walkabout on a visit to Sunderland during World War One (image 10051718)

The

inaugural

issue

of

the

Illustrated London News of 14th May 1842 carried a report of British

troop

movements

in

'Affghanistan' (sic), a region that from the 19th century to the present day has been the focus of

almost

constant

conflict.

Regimes, political ideologies and foreign armies have all failed in the quest to gain complete control over this complex and hostile land. Here, we take four different views of the Khyber Pass the North West Frontier Province of

the

British

strategic

Empire.

trade

As

a

route,

battleground, home and border, the road through the rocky slopes has provided a microcosm of the strife of the land that surrounds it, brutally described by Rudyard Kipling as 'a sword cut through the mountains'.

Britannia cartoon by 'J. C.' in Fun magazine, September 1879 (image 10095981)

FOLLOWING ATTEMPTS BY RUSSIA TO GAIN A FOOTHOLD IN AFGHANISTAN during 1878, Britain demanded that Afghan emir Sher Ali accept a British mission in Kabul.The mission was turned back as it approached the eastern entrance of the Khyber Pass, which triggered the Second AngloAfghan War. In this cartoon, Britain's aims to settle the Afghan issue once and for all are made clear, a policy further reinforced by an uprising in September 1879 which led to the slaughter of Britain's Resident in Kabul, Sir Pierre Cavagnari and his staff.Visual metaphors abound, with Afghanistan cast as a cobra, ever adept at shifting position and moving between political, territorial and military roles in order to shake off any advances to control its lands.While Britain's victory is clearly the aim, there is thinly veiled acknowledgement that this is an enemy which had already proved hard to finish and would likely be so again.

4

Mary Evans Picture Library

in the region formerly known as

Grenville Collins Postcard Collection/Mary Evans

THE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY LINE SEPARATING MODERNDAY AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN was known in the late 19th century as the Durand Line, named after Sir Mortimer Durand, foreign secretary of the British colonial government, who established the border in 1893. A British Chief Commissioner controlled the region, which became known as the North West Frontier Province or NWFP.The NWFP was raised to a full-fledged governor-ruled province in 1931. It is understandable that the highly mobile Pashtun hill tribes of the region did not feel the need to accept their new border (and a large sign in English!), which had been created more to mark the extent of British colonial success, or lack thereof, than to demarcate territory on social or nationalistic grounds.

Unattributed postcard, c.1920s (image 10290728)

Mary Evans Picture Library

COLONEL GORDON R. HEARN PLANNED THE NOW FAMOUS KHYBER RAILWAY from Jamrud, following the conclusion of the Third Afghan War in 1919.The Afghan government vehemently objected to the British proposal, as a purely strategic move unlikely to ever become part of a commercial link to Afghanistan.With pauses due to wars, landslides and flooding this engineering and scenic marvel is still in operation to this day.The Khyber Pass has always offered a landscape of dramatic beauty, the hills, valleys and high peaks inspiring a romantic vision of Eastern mystery and high adventure, certainly the aspects most publicised in this travel brochure from the 1930s.

Hubertus Kanus/Mary Evans

Fold-out Travel Brochure, c.1930 (image 10029678)

THIS STRIKING PHOTOGRAPH BY OUR CONTRIBUTOR HUBERTUS KANUS from 1984 shows a young Afghan boy selling foreign cigarettes on the roadside close to the Khyber Pass. As a country of extreme cultural diversity, positioned on the Silk Road at a crossroads between the East and the West, Afghanistan has always been a focal point for trade and human migration.The sad truth of a modern Afghan economy borne out of decades of conflict, is the export of opium, which now accounts for 90% of Europe's heroin.The hope and entrepreneurship so ably captured in this frame seems far removed from a bleak present and an uncertain future.

Afghan boy, 1984, (image 10118682)

5

REVEALING THE ARCHIVE

Secret Obsessions ALL

THE

UNUSUAL BOOKS AND OBJECTS WE

HAVE IN THE ARCHIVE, A LOCKABLE ALBUM OF

V

I C T O R I A N

PHOTOGRAPHS IS ONE OF THE MORE INTRIGUING.

Hand and dove, Victorian scrap (image 10028983)

Embossed with the initials S.N.P., the album contains 50 carte-de-visite photographs as well as three larger prints of such ladies as Trotty Stuart, Baby Thornhill, 'The Kid', and Madame Aira. The women are, except one, clad in fashionable and respectable (at least to modern eyes) crinolines, bonnets and riding habits. But add to this list the more notorious names of Cora Pearl and Catherine Walters and the substance of the book, as a Victorian gentleman's private gallery of courtesans, becomes clear.

The courtesan chose her patrons, often receiving exorbitant sums in return

Fanny Peel aka Mrs Charles Goff (image 10158849)

In the Victorian age, the two great social evils of Britain were considered by many to be alcohol and prostitution.The number of prostitutes in London in the mid-19th century is uncertain, though some sources estimated the figure as high as 80,000.

Metropolitan Police figures for 1859 record 471 brothels in Spitalfields, Houndsditch and Whitechapel alone. However, the courtesans in this album, despite their undeniably A gentleman’s book of courtesans (image 10226619)

6

'professional' status, were not simply prostitutes. At a time when women were confined to the domestic sphere, unable to vote, lacking autonomy and with a legal status on a par with criminals and the insane, the courtesan claimed an independence, both social and financial, which respectable women could not hope to emulate. Even the sternest moralists were forced to admit, as did James Greenwood in "The Seven Curses of London" (1869) that the courtesan "has all that she deliberately bargains for --- fine clothes, rich food, plenty of money, a carriage to ride in, the slave-like obedience of her 'inferiors', and the fulsome adulation of those who deal with her for her worth."

The courtesan chose her patrons, often receiving exorbitant sums in return, and as much as physical beauty was valued, other attributes such as style, vivacity, wit, and intelligent, cultured conversation were prized just as much.

Two of the courtesans in the album, Cora Pearl, pictured seated coquettishly on a toy horse, and Catherine Walters, known as ‘Skittles’, were both infamous figures in their day, actively encouraging the mythology that grew around them. Cora Pearl, born Eliza Emma Crouch in Plymouth in 1835, found in Paris the

All images Mary Evans Picture Library

O

F

Catherine Walters, aka Skittles (image 10158161)

sophisticated, flirtatious and wealthy society in which she was to flourish. Her lovers included kings and princes, and her pearls alone were said to be worth more than ÂŁ40,000. Her extravagance was legendary, as were the stables that were the envy of Paris on which she spent 90,000 francs in the 1860s with one horse dealer alone.

Catherine Walters was similarly successful in carving out a place in the highest echelons of society, albeit one which society chose not to openly acknowledge.

By the early 1860s, Catherine's appearances in Hyde Park, skilfully driving a miniature phaeton drawn by highstepping ponies, were causing a sensation.

Chairs were placed along Rotten Row for admirers hoping to catch a glimpse of Skittles in her tightly-fitting riding habit, and a letter to The Times in 1862 complained of congestion she was causing in the park. The Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) became a lifelong friend, sending his personal physicians to attend her when she became ill in her later years.

Cora Pearl (image 10158835)

The courtesans whose photographs were collected in this album occupied an ambiguous position in the Victorian world: objects of fascination and desire yet officially unrecognised by those they enthralled.

A gentleman’s book of courtesans (image 10226618)

7

MAKE-DO & MEND Rationing was introduced in Britain for the first time 70 years ago, and with the Ministry of Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum reminding us of wartime eating habits, Mary Evans staff have trawled the archive to experience the 1940s diet first-hand - but just for one lunchtime.

Ministry of Food ration book issued in July 1942 (image 10148539)

In this day and age the rationing of consumer goods seems almost incomprehensible; supermarket giants, fast-food joints and high street stores abound at every juncture of our lives, all vying to catch our eye and lure us into their establishments. Back in the 1940s however, things were very different: the effects of war had begun to take their toll with the UK's industry and manpower diverted to serve the war effort and enemy submarines sinking UK supplies shipped from overseas.These factors led to a shortage of everyday products which in turn resulted in the introduction of rationing, the 70th anniversary of which we are marking here.

Mary

s Evan

Pictu

re Lib

rary

Rationing books and clothing coupons were issued to everyone, with meat, butter and sugar rationed from early 1940 and other products such as tea added at a later date. Bread, potatoes and coffee were never rationed, neither were fruit, vegetables or fish, although the availability and choice of these were often limited.

Despite the restrictions imposed, it is generally accepted that food rationing improved the nation's health, ensuring a balanced, vitamin-rich diet for one and all.

Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Onslows Auctions Ltd/Mary Evans

Women of Britain World War Two poster, c.1941 (image 10419347)

War-time recipe for a midsummer hotpot, Britannia and Eve, June 1942 (image 10425746)

Oatmeal biscuits and gingerbread

Publications such as Britannia and Eve incorporated the everyday concerns of war-time rationing into their monthly issues. The magazine published numerous knitting patterns and recipes which provided inspiration for thousands of housewives up and down the country, encouraging them to 'make-do and mend'.

We at Mary Evans thought it might be interesting to plunder our archives in search of authentic war-time recipes to test out on our unsuspecting Mary Evans comrades, as well as faithfully recreating a 1940s knitting pattern from an edition of Britannia and Eve.

vegetable hot-pot, followed by oatmeal biscuits and gingerbread; all recipes appeared in Britannia and Eve, 1942.

The hot pot ingredients were simple: principally vegetables, sautéed in bacon fat, then seasoned and cooked in stock, topped off with a little grated cheese. The end result was surprisingly tasty, as well as being nutritious and economical — the recipe fed six hungry Mary Evans workers, and cost less than £5 in total.

The accompanying images show the fruits of our labour…

W

e are giving away this jumper, knitted in-house from a pattern in Britannia and Eve, November 1944, and modelled here by picture researcher, Tess.

Email me&you@maryevans.com by 10th June 2010 to enter the draw. We estimate the jumper to be size 10/12.

The recipes we found included offerings of sheep brains, nettles on toast and lashings of spam which weren't really titillating our taste-buds. We eventually settled on three more palatable dishes: an authentic

Midsummer hotpot

Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Knitting pattern, Britannia and Eve, November 1944 (image 10425745)

9

A WEEK IN THE LIFE OF

...

TOM GILLMOR, our Head of Content, takes us on a tour through a typical working week, from signing up new contributors to seeking out elusive images.

Monday On arrival each day, while the coffee machine is still providing arabica rather than bitumen, I read and respond to email, usually a combination of enquiries from potential new contributors and follow-ups from established partners. The afternoon is spent dealing with DVDs of new content and metadata, which I will prepare for upload to the Mary Evans website. With so much material going online over the past 12 months it is imperative I provide clear guidance to our research team, allowing them to be able to use new content immediately when answering client requests.

Tuesday

10

Wednesday

Most weeks I spend a day captioning new content. For the past year I have primarily been doing this off-site, working to catalogue a vast and unique postcard collection owned by contributor Grenville Collins. Between us, we can caption, research and keyword up to 180 cards per day depending on the amount of research needed. It is tiring but very rewarding work, and the fact that our office systems allow complete freedom in working off-site is a terrific bonus for projects such as this.

Thursday

I try to spend a little time every week in the archive, as my role also includes care for the unique items in our collection. This gives me the opportunity to see which pictures are being used, and make sure there is physical room for new acquisitions. Shelf space is always at a premium! I am also on call to aid researchers in finding archive items. Having worked among the files for a decade, I can often dredge the little grey cells for the precise location of that elusive engraving of Caligula dining with his horse…

Friday

Nearly all of our promotional material over recent years has been designed in-house. I am currently working on three projects, including initial plans for our latest 'Little Book'. There is such potential for creativity with pictures from our collection that coming up with interesting designs is a delight. Correspondence with potential new contributors often reaches a close on Friday with the sending out of a contract. To see a picture from a new collection reproduced in print makes the whole week's efforts rewarding.

Mary Evans Picture Library (image 10003468)

“Having worked among the files for a decade, I can often dredge the little grey cells for the precise location of that elusive engraving of Caligula dining with his horse…”

The material we handle at Mary Evans varies enormously and our scanning team can at any point shift from photographing 300 postcards of a uniform size, to a solitary cigarette card or an A2 poster. Part of my role involves making sure content is handled correctly and scanned in the most productive order.

aG

Luc ind oslin g/M ary E van s

The Hiker & Camper, 1931 (image 10235151)

Take a hike

Ramblers carrying their daughter in a rucksack (image 10163754) Mary Evans Picture Library

Advertisement for Wallis’s hiking kit in Hiker & Camper, March 1932 (image 10235176)

in a Gosl Lucind

g/Mary

Evans

E

Poster published by the Travel Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1930s (image 10279720)

Onslows Auctions Ltd/Mary Evans

ighty years old this year, the Youth Hostel Association was born at a time when the cult of the outdoors was in full flower and the wholesome pastime of hiking at its height. The 1930s saw hoards of city dwellers striding across the British countryside in sensible shoes with walking sticks firmly gripped in hands and knapsacks on backs. Such was the popularity of the pastime, a magazine was launched entitled, “Hiker and Camper” dedicated to giving the best advice to enthusiastic hikers such as “How to form your own rambling club” or “How to use footpaths”. Meanwhile, the railway companies, quick to capitalise on the population's leisure time, suggested that the nation, “Hike for Health”. Particularly popular with students and the well-to-do (realistically, most workers did not qualify for paid holidays until later in the decade), a whole industry grew up around hiking: supplying boots, chocolate and even supportive underwear to the intrepid adventurers of Britain.

11

SPOT

the difference

The image industry's biggest event, the BAPLA Picture Buyers' Fair, will be welcoming visitors through the doors of its new venue, the Barbican on 19th - 20th May this year. Find us at stand no. 126 where, as ever, we hope to engage, educate and inspire you about the treasures to be found at Mary Evans. Trawling

There are 8 differences between these two pictures. Identify all of them and send your answers to me&you@maryevans.com for a chance to win a £100 Amazon voucher. Correct answers received by 10th June 2010 will be entered in a draw. The winner will be the first chosen at random after the closing date, and will be notified by 18th June.

our archives, we found this Cruikshank print from 1820 depicting a Royal Academy exhibition which we felt drew certain parallels with the Picture

Buyers'

Fair

of

today,

although

admittedly, we aren't expecting quite so many silk top hat wearers this year.

of Weird and Wonderful” showcases some of the infinitely wonderful and occasionally weird pictures to be discovered in the Mary Evans collection.

A fascinating read whether you're on the Tube or in the tub. Pick up your copy at the Picture Buyers’ Fair.

We would be happy to receive your comments about ME & You. Please email us at me&you@maryevans.com.

Issue 1 Prize Crossword answers Across: 1. Nightingale; 7. Bee; 8. Doc; 9. Ike; 10. Latin; 12. Accra; 14. Roger; 17. Start; 19. Art; 20. Zoo; 21. She; 22. Samuel Pepys. Down: 1. Nobel Prizes; 2. Great; 3. Twain; 4. Nemea; 5. ASDIC; 6. Enchantress; 11. Ice; 13. Cat; 15. Groom; 16. Range; 17. Stamp; 18. Aesop.

Congratulations to the winner: picture researcher, Kay Rowley.

Our latest ‘Little Book’ will be making its debut at the PBF. “The Little Book