Kingdom Swann: The Story of a Photographer Read online

  ‘I can imagine,’ shuddered Violet, standing at the table. She continued to stir the great bowl of punch, banging the bobbing fruit with a spoon as if she were drowning kittens. Her long dark hair, so carefully combed and pinned in a cushion, began to unravel around her ears.

  ‘All the work is very artistic,’ insisted Swann. ‘One of the girls sat for Singer Sargent and he’s a man who is most particular. There’s nothing unwholesome about it.’

  ‘No more than picnics at the Paris morgue,’ conceded Violet. It was a disgrace. She would never feel safe in her bed again. A man his age and poor Mrs Swann so long in her grave. He was a monster. A wicked old fiend feasting on youth and innocence. It gave her the shivers to think what else might be lurking in the tripe of his brain.

  ‘I don’t have to answer to you!’ roared Swann, although it seemed that he couldn’t avoid it.

  ‘No,’ said Violet, banging apples. ‘But one day you’ll answer to God-on-High.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Violet triumphantly. ‘God who made both men and women and made them in His own likeness.’

  ‘I picture ’em the way He makes ’em: big and bountiful. They’re as natural as any other view of nature,’ he argued, bending down to poke at the fire. ‘Is it wrong to take pleasure in God’s own creation?’

  ‘No,’ said Violet.

  ‘Is it wrong that God’s glory is found reflected in the form of a woman?’ said Swann. ‘Is God wrong?’

  ‘No,’ said Violet, stamping her foot.

  ‘And are the paintings of Singer Sargent wrong? Is it wrong for a man to paint what he finds most divine in the world?’

  Violet had never seen the paintings of Singer Sargent although she didn’t care for such a military name. ‘It’s altogether different,’ she said, gulping at a glass of punch. ‘A true artist would never want to portray a woman wearing nothing but stockings and a sailor straw!’

  ‘It’s the fashion.’

  Violet snorted and refilled her glass. ‘It’s a queer fashion when Art parades without her drawers.’

  ‘Photography is the modern art,’ argued Swann. ‘It’s a magic mirror. The only reliable method of turning life into art.’

  ‘Nonsense! How can art be so gross and hairy? It’s not natural.’

  ‘Life is hairy!’ shouted Kingdom Swann, storming about the room and making the holly wreaths tremble.

  ‘We’re talking about art,’ returned Violet, clutching the edge of the tablecloth. ‘Art has never been hairy. The Greeks and Romans were never hairy. I’d be obliged if you can find me a hairy Rubens. It’s not natural.’

  ‘Yes,’ insisted the photographer. ‘Don’t you see? It’s natural to life. That’s the beauty of it.’ He remembered what Cromwell Marsh had said about the Swann crusade for enlightenment. A world in which every man might own a work of art, at a price he could afford, to enjoy in the comfort of his own home.

  ‘If life is beauty, where’s the reason to art?’ said Violet, thoroughly confused.

  ‘Art is a celebration of life!’ cried Swann. ‘Why, with a little patience and a clear eye, you’ll find more beauty in a scullery-maid than all the statues of ancient Rome. Bring me a girl with some fat on her bone and I’ll show you Helen of Troy.’

  ‘Shame on you!’ gasped the blushing Violet.

  ‘Bless my soul,’ declared Swann. ‘But you’re quite enough of a beauty yourself.’ He turned upon the trembling woman, thrust out his beard and surveyed her with a professional eye. ‘I’d like to see you with your hair combed out and a pinch of colour in your cheeks. You’d make a dish fit for kings.’

  ‘Stop or I’ll scream,’ groaned Violet.

  ‘There’s no shame in it,’ said Swann. He stepped forward and stretched out his hand, hoping to tilt her head to the light.

  This was too much for Violet Askey. She raised her fist and threatened him with the ladle. ‘You’re a wicked, wicked man, Kingdom Swann!’ And she fainted into his arms.

  It was a very difficult Christmas.

  7

  The housekeeper wouldn’t talk to him. It was her New Year’s resolution. She managed the house and conducted all her domestic affairs as if he had suddenly ceased to exist. She no longer came to clean his room or sweep the ashes from the grate. He washed in cold water, ate cold food and found his laundry neglected. Kingdom Swann was furious. It was no weather for monkey business. But when he challenged Violet she burst into tears and locked herself in the scullery.

  ‘She’s ignoring me!’ he complained to Marsh. ‘There should be a law against it.’

  ‘You’ll find there’s laws against everything,’ reflected Marsh. ‘But it don’t stop a man being robbed of his teeth.’ He’d had a very difficult week – shown the dentist a rotten molar and had his whole mouth condemned.

  ‘It’s natural to lose your teeth,’ said Swann. ‘I had mine pulled before I was thirty.’

  ‘Times was different,’ scowled Marsh.

  ‘Teeth don’t change,’ said Swann. ‘It’s not hygienic for a man your age to want to preserve his natural teeth. What can I do about Violet?’

  ‘Give her a dose of Gregory’s powder,’ said Cromwell Marsh. ‘I suspect she’s constipated. Have you tried changing her rations? You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.’

  ‘I’ve tried everything,’ said Swann very bitterly. ‘I’ve coaxed her and teased her and threatened her and none of it works. She spends all her time avoiding me.’

  ‘What have you done to upset the girl?’ asked Marsh and then grinned to think of his master chasing the housekeeper up and down stairs. There’s no fool like an old fool and a man never loses his appetite for a nice fat leg when it’s wrapped in a stocking.

  ‘Nothing!’ protested Swann.

  ‘Then turn her out on the street,’ said Marsh. ‘They say the shock helps to clarify their heads. Mrs Marsh – may God preserve that woman’s health – has often had cause to turn out the cook. I’ve known our cook stay out overnight and make up a bed in the garden shed. It’s cruel, I’ll admit, but it’s a lesson that works a miracle on the Saturday beef and dumplings.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had trouble with the cook,’ said Swann.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Marsh proudly, as if it were the talk of London. ‘She’s acquired an uncommon weakness for soldiers. She can’t resist the uniform. One or two might be forgiven but the cook don’t know when enough is sufficient. They’re down in our kitchen, day and night, like flies around a bull’s arse. And she feeds ’em from the family larder! That’s why Mrs Marsh feels obliged to turn her out of the house.’

  ‘I couldn’t turn Violet out of her home,’ said Swann. He was shocked at the suggestion. He sometimes worried about Cromwell Marsh. The man had a cruel sense of humour.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ shrugged Marsh. ‘You’ve the perfect weather for it.’

  ‘The frost at night would slaughter a horse!’

  ‘Correct,’ said Marsh. ‘The effect is very sobering.’

  ‘No,’ said Swann. ‘It’s not decent. I couldn’t bring myself to lock the woman out in the cold.’

  ‘I find that a leather slipper slapped against the posterior has a remarkably warming effect,’ murmured Marsh. ‘Although, I dare say, it’s not to everyone’s taste.’

  ‘She used to be such a good-hearted girl,’ sighed Swann. ‘A trifle sour but always good-hearted.’

  ‘It’s her age,’ said Marsh. ‘It’s time that woman was married. She’s the last of the bestial virgins.’

  ‘I can’t make sense of it,’ said Swann. He was reluctant to confess the reason for her bad behaviour since he didn’t want Marsh to think of him as a man who could be bullied by the likes of a bad-tempered housekeeper. She ought to know her place and, besides, if he’d worked in oils or watercolours he knew she’d have given her blessing to stuff the studio full of nudes and be proud to call him an artist. It was only the thought of the camera that gave the woman the frights.

 
; ‘Women has strange notions,’ said Cromwell Marsh, poking at the holes in his teeth. ‘It’s the moon. The moon slows the flow of blood to their brains. You can’t expect them to think like men when they don’t have regular brains. That’s why God made ’em ornamental.’

  It was a miserable winter. There were days of wicked, slashing winds that knocked down horses, pulled out trees and sucked old women from their shoes. There were nights of penetrating frost that shattered cobbles, turned out graves and petrified the Thames. There were weeks when the city was steeped in fog, the streets filled with ghosts, the studio frozen and too dark for work.

  ‘That’s enough or I’ll catch me death,’ grumbled Gloria Spooner, whenever they tried to remove her vest.

  Cromwell Marsh had fetched her from Soho to be a Babylonian Beauty. They wanted her sitting on leopard skins, surrounded by bowls of bright, wax fruit. It had been one of Swann’s ideas, based on a little-known canvas by Hippolyte Fletcher-Whitby.

  Gloria was a favourite model but suffered badly in the cold. She was a beautiful girl, fat as a firkin, with a strong, Pre-Raphaelite face and a backside dancing with dimples.

  ‘We can’t take your picture wearing a vest,’ said Marsh as he fiddled with her buttons.

  ‘I’m cold,’ she snapped and pushed him away.

  ‘A sailor’s life is not always beer, bum and bacca,’ scolded Marsh as he hurried back to his chair by the stove. You had to suffer sometimes for art.

  ‘Don’t talk so vulgar,’ said Gloria.

  ‘Think of the heat of the Holy Land,’ said Swann as he blew through his mittens.

  ‘It’s hot,’ said Marsh. ‘The sand burns your feet. It hasn’t rained for seven years.’

  ‘You’re a pagan queen,’ shivered Swann. ‘You’re sitting alone in a big silk tent, awaiting the pleasures of a tribal king.’ He had tried to suggest an Arabian tent by suspending great swags of printed cotton from hooks above the stage. The leopard skins had been hired, at great expense, from a high-class furrier and would have to go back at the end of the day.

  ‘I want to wait in my clothes,’ said Gloria stubbornly. She felt so cold that her ears were ringing.

  ‘No,’ insisted Cromwell Marsh. ‘It’s unthinkable! You can’t be a pagan queen while you’re dressed in that ugly vest.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because this is art!’ shouted Marsh. ‘And you want to show the king how you’re made!’ He hooked open the door of the stove and thrashed at the coals with a poker. The stove belched sparks and the fire went out.

  ‘Is he a nice-looking gent?’ said Gloria, pulling a leopard skin snugly over her knees.

  ‘An aristocrat,’ said Swann confidentially.

  ‘Is he tall?’

  ‘A bloody Goliath!’ raged Marsh.

  ‘What colour are his eyes?’ demanded Gloria, who was not in the least impressed with his tantrums.

  ‘I don’t know! What colour would you like in the eye of a tribal king?’ shouted Marsh. He paced up and down in a fury, stamping his feet and beating the air with a poker.

  ‘Blue,’ said Gloria.

  ‘All right! He’s a king with bright blue eyes and you’re waiting for his pleasure. And when he arrives I hope he gives you a damn good whipping!’

  ‘He’ll have to wait,’ growled Gloria, reaching for her hat and coat. ‘It’s cold enough to freeze me vitals.’ She had a nice warm room in Old Compton Street waiting. A nice class of customer. Proper gents some of them. A nice drop of brandy against the chill. It was nice and warm and comfortable. A nice little trade. She didn’t need this rigmarole.

  ‘A woman is such a contrary beast,’ muttered Marsh.

  8

  It was April, with the worst of the weather behind them, when Swann planned his Beauties of the British Empire.

  He’d met a Jamaican maid running errands in Bond Street and persuaded her to sit for a portrait. Her name was Sarah Cornwall and she belonged to a house in Park Lane. The owner of the house, a retired plantation man, had brought her back from the West Indies. She was a friendly woman, very black, with a belly the size of a kettledrum.

  Kingdom Swann took her portrait and paid her three shillings. She looked pleased with the money but begged to go home. She was late and her master would be growing impatient. Swann tried to make her stay, asked her to look through the costume trunk, implored her to dress as the Queen of Sheba.

  This idea made her hoot with laughter. She rocked back and forth and slapped her knees. The costume was only a copper crown and a pair of chiffon pantaloons. But her mood began to change when Swann explained that, should she decide to accept the crown, they would feel obliged to pay her two guineas.

  ‘You just want to take me picture?’ she said cautiously, unable to fathom the proposition.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She snorted. ‘And when you’ve finished you’ll change your tune and want to give me a knobbing!’

  Cromwell Marsh gasped and dropped the lid of the costume trunk. Kingdom Swann looked aghast, staggered and grabbed his beard.

  ‘I’m shocked!’ said Marsh.

  ‘I’m all struck down in a heap!’ said Swann.

  ‘I hope you wasn’t supposing we wanted to make improper proposals,’ said Cromwell Marsh sounding very upset.

  ‘You just want to take me photograph?’

  They nodded.

  ‘And you want to give me two guineas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sarah Cornwall beamed. She was baffled. ‘What’s your game?’ she said.

  Then Marsh made his speech about beauty and art while Kingdom Swann approached her with flattery. She was very impressionable. At last, with the three shillings tucked safe inside a shoe, she promised to return on the second Sunday in the month and hurried from the shop.

  ‘Did you ever see such a big, fine woman?’ sighed Marsh, as they watched her from the window.

  ‘She certainly knows how to fill a corset,’ said Kingdom Swann.

  ‘She’s a marvel,’ said Marsh, squashing his face against the glass as she disappeared from view.

  ‘We’ll do a new series of photographs,’ said Swann. ‘Beauties of the British Empire. All we need are the costumes. We can start at the Gold Coast and work our way through to Zanzibar.’

  ‘Wild women?’ frowned Cromwell Marsh. ‘Wild women in grass skirts and bracelets?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tropical women with the great big bums?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope she don’t forget,’ said Marsh.

  Swann spent several happy days painting a curtain with lavish banks of tropical flowers, exotic palms, butterflies, birds and a view of a distant volcano. He decorated the cloth with all the care and precision expected from a student of Fletcher-Whitby, gilding the feathers of every bird and not feeling satisfied until the palms were full of fruit and pollen glowed in the tongues of the flowers. The painting took him a week and when it was finished he felt tired but triumphant. His Beauties of the British Empire was going to be magnificent.

  Sarah Cornwall kept her appointment. She arrived at the studio dressed in a hat and a Sunday frock. She was timid at first but they quickly made her comfortable. They found her a chair and let her play the phonograph. She watched Kingdom Swann load the camera while Cromwell Marsh brewed a pot of tea which she drank with gin to steady her nerves. Once the gin had taken effect she began to take off her clothes. She was stripped to her stays and ready for action when there was a terrible noise at the front of the shop.

  ‘It’s the police!’ shouted Marsh. He ran across the room, hit the edge of the stage, fell forward and brought down the curtain and sneezed.

  Swann was trying to imitate a pillar and Sarah was hiding under her hat when the intruder found them. He was a big bruiser with a heavy, weather-beaten face and a dab of yellow hair. He was wearing a threadbare suit and carried a hammer in his hand. He paused as he entered the studio, stared suspiciously around him, considered the camera, the costume
trunk and the twitching curtain under the stage. He didn’t know what to make of it. He scowled and weighed the hammer in his fist. And then he saw Sarah Cornwall.

  ‘What have you done to my wife!’ he bellowed.

  ‘This lady is a famous artist’s model,’ blurted Marsh, emerging from his curtain. ‘This lady has posed nude for royalty.’ It was part of a speech he’d prepared for the police should he ever have the misfortune to meet them. He rehearsed it sometimes in his sleep.

  ‘Model my arse! She’s as daft as a brush. You think I don’t know?’ the husband thundered. He was breathing hard and his eyes were rolling. ‘I followed her down from Park Lane. She came along here for a knobbing!’

  He caught hold of Kingdom Swann and tapped the hammer against his nose. Swann’s nose burst and his beard turned red. The husband, pleased with this display, drew back the hammer and hit him again.

  ‘Shut your mouth and wait outside!’ Sarah suddenly shouted. ‘They’re going to take me photograph!’ She turned on her husband and stuck out her chest. She looked as mad as a turkeycock.

  ‘You’re half naked,’ he protested.

  ‘It’s only pretend, I’m supposed to be historical. They’re showing me off as royalty.’

  ‘Oh, my Gawd!’ shrieked the husband. He was horrified. He pushed Swann away and dropped the hammer. ‘It’s dirty pictures, is it?’ His anger melted into grief. He was a broken man. He turned from the sight of his wife’s disgrace, threw back his head and howled. He clutched at his face and fell to the ground. ‘Oh, my Gawd! I hope Gawd strikes you blind, robbing a man of his own poor wife for the purposes of dirty pictures.’

  ‘Robbing? We’re paying her two guineas,’ said Marsh.

  ‘Two guineas?’

  ‘That’s more than a housemaid earns in a month,’ said Marsh, a trifle indignantly.

  ‘I’m not a housemaid, I’m a lady’s maid,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Same difference,’ said Marsh. ‘Two guineas. And that works out about sixpence an inch, her being such a tall woman.’