Kingdom Swann: The Story of a Photographer

by Gibson, Miles

  We beg to inform our friends, Marsh wrote in the catalogue, of The Beauty of Japan. Lately arrived from Yokohama, this lovely Lilliputian, already an accomplished geisha, is quite full-grown yet stands no taller that a child: the limbs very sweet and well-proportioned, the breasts exquisite, the cherry blossom, which is most piquant, scarce broken from nature’s bud. The subject, unwrapped from her silk kimono, is seen to be so small that she might be said to represent all womankind in miniature. She plays the flute, sings, composes poetry and was trained in the royal pavilions of pleasure.

  Those who purchase this set may consider themselves the privileged and are promised to find delight in the sight of a geisha beauty so absorbed in her ritual toilet that she pays no heed to the camera and is nude in every particular. The views are thoughtfully arranged and will prove of enormous interest to the artist and armchair adventurer. They are guaranteed to stimulate the heart, please the eye and, in every way, afford uncommon satisfaction.

  We are confident in our claims that these views are unique in London and cannot be repeated.

  Available as a set of superior hand-coloured Promenade prints. One dozen. All different. £15. 7s. 6d.

  The Swann Studio. Piccadilly. London.

  12

  Kingdom Swann had found success. He was prized by collectors, loathed by other photographers and celebrated in all the best brothels in London. When Kingdom Swann exposed a girl’s bum she became the very latest fashion, receiving gifts of champagne and pearls, invitations to intimate suppers and worthless proposals of marriage. Swann could transform gutter-snipes into fabulous objects of desire. And for this reason, London’s more progressive madams went to great lengths to introduce him to the houri of their house. The old man did what he could to avoid them but his bad temper, his great age and his growing reluctance to work only helped to enhance his reputation.

  Mrs Beeton, who owned the Villa Arcadia in Randolph Avenue, Maida Vale, persuaded him to picture her girls set out as a choir of dimpled angels. The girls, ten of the biggest in Christendom, rouged their nipples, powdered their curls and wore magnificent curving wings of goose feathers glued to canvas frames. They were angels fat enough for Rubens. They spread their legs and stretched their wings on a linen cloud stuffed with pillows and cushions.

  The finished picture, printed on canvas and highly coloured, was mounted in a carved, gilt frame. It looked so like an Academy painting that many admirers were deceived and refused to believe that this work of art had been made by Swann’s machine. Excited by the deception Swann spent several months making gum-print portraits, mixing colours with the emulsion and working the images with his brush. The results were foggy water-colours that pleased his eye but failed to win favour with regular patrons since the process destroyed so much definition.

  The colour portraits on canvas, however, attracted a new class of customer. There were certain elderly gentlemen, recommended by Mrs Beeton, who wanted their mistresses photographed in scenes of artistic nudity. These reckless old bodgers, their brains curdled with lust, were mad enough to risk anything, even public scandal, for the chance to celebrate their lovers. Kingdom Swann’s cleverly painted photographs were the perfect blend of lechery and romance, faithfully naturalistic yet exquisitely sentimental. And the pictures, sometimes printed so small they might have been pocket-book memorandums, at other times commissioned so large they’d have suited poster hoardings, proved surprisingly popular.

  A steady procession of mistresses, from chamber-maids to delinquent daughters of obscure royal families, made secret visits to the studio. Some were seized with modesty and refused to remove so much as a glove and had to be soothed and showered with gifts from desperate benefactors before they were willing to flaunt their charms. Others, flattered to be taken for works of art, addressed the camera like ten shilling whores.

  Swann treated them all to the same process of low art and high chemistry. The women were powdered until they shone and made to recline in a halo of light. Everything was done to enhance their beauty and that which God had failed to make perfect was neatly repaired in the dark-room. Scars were bleached out, breasts puffed up, creases and wrinkles dissolved in the wash. When the prints had been prepared Swann took his brush and tickled their fancies, coloured grey hair, restored missing teeth and made everything glow with a royal blush. And when all this had been done, with the subjects buried in glazes and paints, his patrons thanked him for such faithful copies of nature.

  Mrs Beeton made a friend of the great photographer and sent her carriage, once a week, to collect him for afternoon tea. She was small of stature but as fat as a partridge. Her complexion was smooth and dark; the long hair thick and naturally curled; the eyes beautiful, black as tar; the nose prominent; the mouth very full and brightly painted. She wore a gown of gauze and lace and was wrapped, at all times, in a mist of Arabian perfume. She had, in her youth, been thought a beauty and posed as a slave-girl in Edwin Long’s famous masterpiece, The Babylonian Slave-Market. In the comfort of her private suite, over many pints of hot, sweet tea, she told Kingdom Swann her story.

  She had been born in Naples and decided at an early age to devote her life to the arts. She had studied in Paris and then, upon reaching England, attended Heatherley’s, the most famous private art school in London where men and women mixed quite freely and both were encouraged to study the nude. She had been a clever and determined student. When she left she had hoped to establish herself as a water-colour artist. But they were difficult times. She sold her work but soon discovered she could not sell enough to pay the rent.

  She was forced to earn a living by working as a model in other painters’ studios. It was a disappointment but she enjoyed the company and the money wasn’t bad. Her dark and romantic complexion attracted the attentions of Burne-Jones, Russell and Boothby, who gave her, at length, to Edwin Long. And it was there, as one of Long’s winsome slave-girls, that she’d gained her first introduction to the wealthy dilettanti.

  The painting, a vast canvas concerning the auction of a dozen young beauties-in-bondage, had been the sensation of the season. When it was shown at the Royal Academy the girls were already the toast of London. Politicians, architects and bankers fought for the pleasure of bedding them. Mrs Beeton regarded these engagements as theatrical performances and herself as a living work of art, an acrobatic automaton. Her energy and her enthusiasm did not go unrewarded.

  The canvas was sold at Christie’s in 1882 for more than six thousand guineas and she claimed she was then worth twice that amount from the proceeds of her marriage. While her face remained her fortune she’d accepted the hand of a wealthy poet with a weakness for spirits and spanking. Within six months she’d killed the old boar with kindness, inherited his money and a villa in Maida Vale.

  Once again she was chased by wealthy admirers but now, in mourning, found it necessary to employ two girls to help entertain her callers. Men, she observed, no matter how lovesick, never refused her locums. Availability and enthusiasm were a woman’s greatest virtues. As she employed more girls she treated them to all the disciplines of a well-trained theatre company. She claimed, and Swann never doubted it, that her girls were accomplished actresses. She was obviously very proud of them.

  Mrs Beeton sipped at her tea and gazed about in satisfaction. The walls of her private rooms were lined with paintings and drawings. Above her head a luminous nude by Burne-Jones; at her elbow several life studies by William Boothby, executed in red chalks; beside the door pages from a Walter Crane sketch-book, lewd cartoons by Gilbert and Tenniel and, in place of honour, above the fire, a fine portrait of Mrs Beeton by the late, lamented, Edwin Long.

  It was hard work, trying to manage a house of pleasure, but she found it rewarding. Her own desire to paint had been largely satisfied by decorating the villa. Each bedroom had been furnished according to the rules of some popular erotic dream. Among the most elaborate fancies were a seaside bathing machine, a Tuppenny Tube railway carriage and a famous funeral parl
our. But her masterpiece was the Royal Victoria Suite. Here she had lavished both time and money to create a chamber fit for a queen. The walls were covered in tapestries, the floors were a showpiece of marquetry and everything, from the bed posts to the tablets of soap, had been embossed with the royal coat of arms. In these extravagant surroundings men would part with fortunes to get their hands on a set of imperial buttocks.

  Her Majesty looked nothing at all like the portly parrot dressed in widows’ weeds who had haunted the Isle of Wight. This was the Queen of an earlier age: the beautiful young woman who had taken the throne more than sixty years before and won the heart of Albert, son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Mrs Beeton had found her working at the tea rooms in Drury Lane.

  The likeness was uncanny and she was the darling of all the Indian maharajahs who took a special delight in forcing their hands up her skirts.

  ‘It seems to drive ’em wild, Mr Swann,’ said Mrs Beeton happily. ‘There’s not one of them I’ve met can resist the idea of shafting the British Empire.’

  ‘It’s a sobering thought,’ said Swann.

  ‘They mean her no harm,’ she assured him. ‘Indeed, they treat her like royalty. I’ve never known a girl to be showered with so many gifts and favours. Since she came to the throne she’s been presented with ivory, jade and any number of tiger skins.’

  ‘Remarkable!’

  ‘She’s a most remarkable invention,’ said Mrs Beeton with more than a touch of pride. ‘But they’re never satisfied, Mr Swann. Oh, but they’re greedy devils! I could have sold her a dozen times, without exaggeration. And when they’re not wanting to buy her from me they’re trying to steal her slippers or pocket a tablet of soap.’

  ‘They steal the soap?’ said Swann. ‘I should have thought they were born of a better class than the sort that pilfers soap.’

  ‘It’s by way of a souvenir. Since I take the trouble to have the soap embossed with the royal crest I conclude they take it home as a keepsake.’

  Swann reflected on the weakness of the maharajahs while Mrs Beeton cut him a slice of almond cake. ‘If you’d allow me the pleasure of taking her photograph,’ he suggested, at last, ‘she might offer each guest a carte-de-visite and you’d save yourself some expense.’

  ‘It’s an inspiration, Mr Swann! If it puts you to no trouble I’ll send her over in my carriage at your earliest convenience.’

  13

  Three days later, at an early hour, Queen Victoria stepped down from the carriage in Piccadilly. She was wrapped in a coat and carried her crown in a hat box.

  Although the old man had warned Cromwell Marsh of her startling physiognomy, when the woman walked into the studio the sight fully chilled his marrow. Beneath her coat she was dressed in coronation robes and a wealth of ribbons and medals. When she asked to see the photographer he grinned and grovelled and wrung his hands and had to be rescued by Swann, who whisked the Queen away and saw she was sitting comfortably, out of harm’s reach, on the stage.

  ‘It’s bleeding cold,’ she puffed, pulling open the hat box and screwing the crown to her head. ‘I hope I don’t have to pose with my tits and bum hanging out.’

  ‘Make up the stove!’ ordered Swann, as Marsh came creeping into view. ‘Her Majesty feels there’s a chill in the air that threatens to do her some mischief.’

  ‘And find us something hot to drink!’ the Queen shouted cordially. ‘Good and strong and plenty of sugar.’

  Marsh tried to speak but choked on his words. He could only stand and stare at the Queen, bobbing his head forlornly. He was so flustered by the event, so intimidated by her perfumed corpulence, that he half-believed they’d been given a royal appointment.

  ‘Blimey, what’s wrong with him?’ asked the Queen in surprise, when he’d gone to fill the kettle.

  Kingdom Swann tapped his skull and sighed. ‘He’s wrong in the head,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why don’t they have him locked away?’ breathed the Queen, excited by this faint whiff of danger.

  ‘Oh, he’s harmless enough,’ said Swann. ‘But you couldn’t describe him as being quick-witted. I’m training him to sweep the floors and fetch and carry for me although, when he gets himself excited, he tends to fall down or wet his drawers.’

  ‘Is he going to get excited?’ she enquired rather cautiously, pressing a hand to her throat and puffing out a generous chin. ‘I hope I don’t encourage him.’

  Swann smiled and shook his head. ‘He’s no understanding of the fully fashioned female form,’ he confided. ‘It’s all the same to him. He may have the body of a man but his brains have never properly grown and he thinks like a ten-year-old girl.’

  ‘Poor sod!’ said the Queen, watching Marsh creeping back with the kettle, walking on tiptoe and bobbing his head.

  ‘Yes,’ said Swann. ‘It’s sad to watch him struggling. But he’s perfectly good-natured and always willing to work.’

  ‘I don’t like the way he keeps looking at me,’ the Queen confessed beneath her breath as she caught Marsh grinning and winking his eye while he waggled the poker in the stove.

  ‘We could lock him away in the darkroom,’ suggested Swann.

  ‘No. I’ve had to entertain worse than him,’ she said, shrugging off her fears. ‘Men can be bleeding queer when they see you dressed as royalty.’

  ‘It can’t be easy,’ said Kingdom Swann, ‘to be born as the ghost of the Queen.’

  ‘You never know how it’s going to take them,’ she sighed. ‘There’s some as fall down on their hands and knees and want to do nothing but suck on your toes. And there’s some treat you worse than nobody, pulling and poking your parts like a freak in a travelling show.’

  When the stove was blazing and they’d quaffed several pints of scalding tea, Swann settled down to work. He planned to photograph the Queen, with considerable pomp and circumstance, beside a papier mâché throne.

  She pulled off her shoes and rummaged under her petticoats to unlace a pair of satin drawers. They were a voluminous article, trimmed in gold with scalloped lace and embroidered with the royal crest. When the drawers had drifted down to her feet she kicked them carelessly over the stage and into the trembling, outstretched hands of a half-demented Cromwell Marsh.

  ‘He’s pinched my drawers!’ shouted the Queen as she watched him struggle to stuff this warm and fragrant treasure into his jacket pocket.

  Marsh looked alarmed and began to shuffle away, colliding with the camera stand and overturning a chair.

  ‘Come back here!’ shouted Swann.

  Marsh shook his head. His jaw was working and his hair was standing in ginger spikes. He looked bewildered, like a man waking up from a dream.

  ‘Stop!’ roared Swann.

  Marsh gave out a strangled cry, wrapped his arms around himself and sprinted for the studio door.

  ‘Oh, let the silly sod have his fun!’ laughed the Queen. ‘I’m always losing my drawers.’

  ‘It’s dreadful!’ cried Swann, running in circles. ‘What shall I say to Mrs Beeton?’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said the Queen, stepping lightly down from the stage. ‘I lose a dozen pairs of drawers a week.’

  ‘What happens to them!’

  The Queen shrugged. ‘They’re generally stolen as souvenirs. Sometimes they wear them. Sometimes they sport them as handkerchiefs. There’s one old boy who likes me to knot them around his head and whip his bum with a swagger stick. He bends over the bed with his bum sticking up in the air and makes me beat him black and blue.’

  ‘Good God!’ gasped Swann.

  ‘He’s always most apologetic,’ said Queen Victoria sweetly. ‘He blames the Indian army.’

  Swann hurried after Marsh but lost him in the street. He watched him running through the bustling crowd like a common pickpocket chased by the police. The poor photographer stood, astonished, until he had disappeared from view.

  ‘Did you catch him?’ asked the Queen as she wandered into the front of the shop.

  Swann s
hook his head. ‘His brains have gone wrong,’ he muttered and this time he said it with greater conviction.

  ‘He looked so wild for a moment I thought he was going to make a spectacle of himself,’ said the Queen and shivered at the prospect.

  Swann pulled down the blind at the window, locked the door and asked the Queen to return to her throne. She needed very little encouragement. She hitched her coronation robes to her waist in order to show off the shape of her legs and the cut of the royal whiskers. In one hand she carried a sceptre, in the other she weighed an imperial breast.

  These photographs of Victoria were among the most highly prized pieces of work to emerge from the Kingdom Swann studio. They were never sold from the catalogue and those lucky enough to receive a print were never inclined to part with them. They proved so scarce that even Lord Hugo Prattle failed to obtain one for his library. The prints were numbered and given away, as souvenirs, to the most distinguished foreign guests to stay at the Villa Arcadia. They were coloured by Swann and mounted in tiny cardboard frames which were signed by Mrs Beeton in a flourish of purple ink.

  Vivat Regina Vaginarum.

  14

  And what of Violet Askey? How did she fill her days? She was not, as Swann supposed, content to guard the groceries in the house near Golden Square. She was not, as Marsh recommended, employed in the search for a suitable husband. Encouraged by her modernist friends she attended meetings of the Women’s Freedom Movement. She heard Mrs Fawcett speak on the Revolutionary Suffragettes and Mrs Pankhurst, whom she thought rather plain, declare it was time to shake men awake with the sound of broken window panes. She began to understand that, until women were granted their proper place in society, there could be no peace in the world. Women must be granted their independence to influence the nation’s affairs. They must be sent to parliament where they could implement their great reforms. And, if men refused to relinquish power, then women must take to the streets and fight.