—Caroline F. Putnam, October 21, 185917
Writing Ida May, which takes place primarily near Aiken, South Carolina, had helped Mary Pike process the “atrocities” and scenes that she had witnessed as a well-to-do white visitor there. The title page of the American editions of Ida May quotes John 3:11: “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen.” The conclusion of the verse is implied: “and ye receive not our witness.” In the preface, Pike warned her readers that the descriptive passages in Ida May “will be recognized and accepted as a true picture of that phase of social life which it represents.” She was no parlor abolitionist, no mere invalid sent south for the air; she was an undercover investigative reporter who had traveled deep into slaveholder territory. She wrote scenes that directly confronted the circumstances of slavery in the places where she saw it.
In the novel, five-year-old Ida May is kidnapped from her white, middle-class family in Pennsylvania. In the first forty pages, she is beaten, stained a light brown, and sent south to be sold into slavery. During the journey, she is knocked unconscious by blows and by laudanum.
Ida loses her name and identity in this bloody transformation, when she is too young to remember herself. Traumatic amnesia keeps her from discovering her true heritage until five years later, when her master (and future husband), Walter Varian, reads her name on a treasured piece of monogrammed fabric that the illiterate Ida keeps hidden on her person. This identification had escaped notice, as none of the slaves on that plantation could read, but Ida’s surrogate mother in slavery, Aunt Venus, carefully saved it as a token of who Ida once was.
Pike’s most complex, righteous characters in Ida May are black women—Venus, Chloe, and Abby—whose children were also taken from them by slaveholders. Her title character is white. The Liberator, in its review of Ida May, thought Pike’s reworking of the antislavery novel’s tragic heroine as a white person to be a masterstroke, as she “ingeniously” courted white sympathy with the bait of a truly white child (not a near-white child) “subjected to all the horrors of slavery.”18 Therefore it is through the clouded lens of selective solidarity that we should read this extract of Ida’s darkest ordeal in the kidnapper’s den, which was widely reprinted in newspapers.
In one side of the cavern a few rude stalls had been constructed, and here the three horses of the kidnappers were tied, while, on the other side, huddled together on a heap of straw, were six negro children, who had been stolen within a few months from different parts of the country, and brought here for safekeeping, until a sufficient number were collected to fill the wagon, and make it worthwhile to proceed southward with them. It was pitiable to see the condition to which these children had been reduced by their confinement in this dark place, and the discipline that Chloe had found necessary to make them docile and fit them for the condition of slavery into which they were to be sold. True, they had been fed daily with wholesome food, and taken out separately for exercise, under the care of their jailer, who knew that her masters wished to find them in good saleable condition; but being seldom washed, they were all more or less dirty and ragged, and in their faces the careless gaiety of childhood had given place to the cowering expression of abject terror. They had evidently been well “broken in,” and would make no opposition to whatever fate might await them.
“Well now, my little dears,” said Bill, ironically, as held the candle close to their faces, “a’n’t ye tired of stayin’ in this dark place? Won’t ye like a little ride by way of variety?”
The children shrank together, as if for protection, but made no reply, until one of them ventured to ask, in a timid whisper,
“Will you take us home?”
“No, my little dears,” replied Bill, “couldn’t do that nohow; ’t wouldn’t be convenient jest now. Besides. We’re goin’ to do better than that for ye; we’re goin’ to sell ye to some nice man, that’ll be kind enough to larn ye what yer ought to do, and take care o’ yer; and yer can’t think how much better off ye’ll be than if yer was to be home, where ye’d have no good master, nor be nothin’ but a poor devil of a free n**r when ye got growed up. Yer can’t think how happy yer’ll be. We be your real benefactors; ’t a’n’t many folks ’t would take the pains we does, all for nothin’ hardly but your good. Yer ought to be thankful to us, instead o’ snivellin’ that way. But folks is allers ongrateful in this world, especially n**rs,” he added, rolling up his eyes, and laying his hand on the place where his heart was supposed to be, with a gesture of mock humility and resignation. Chloe laughed aloud, but Kelly, who was not in a mirthful mood, said gruffly, “Come, now, stop your foolin’. We’ve got some work to do tonight, and the sooner we’re at it, the better.”
“Foolin’! me foolin’!” said Bill; “I never was so serious in my life. I’m tryin’ to enlighten these little heathen,—kind of a missionary preacher like, ye know,—to show ’em the blessings o’ slavery, that they’ve been growin’ up in ignorance of. I hearn’ a minister preach about it once, at Baltimore, and he proved it all right out o’ the Bible,—how slavery was what the Lord made the n**rs for, and how them was particular lucky as was slaves in this land o’ light and liberty, where they was treated so much better ’n they would be if they was in Africa, and all that. I can’t remember jest how ’t was done, but I know he give it to the abolitionists powerful, for trying’ to disturb ’em when they was so happy, and he proved out o’ the Bible, too, how they ought to send ’em back, instead o’ helping ’em away.”19
“Out of the Bible!” replied Kelly, who had been putting the harness upon the horses, in which occupation he was now joined by his companion. “Yes, it’s enough to make the devil laugh to see what some folks will try to prove out of the Bible. If there is a God, and if he made that book, as they say he did, I reckon he feels might nigh used up, when he sees some of the preachers get up in the pulpit, and twist and turn his words all sorts of ways, to prove what will be most for their own interest out of ’em. For my part, I don’t believe in any such things hereafter, as they tell for; but if there is, won’t some of these confounded humbugs have to take it?”
“P’rhaps they will,” said Bill, laughing; “and p’rhaps some other folks will stand a smart chance o’ takin it, too.”
“Well,” replied Kelly, with a faint smile, “I believe I have a right to do as I’m a mind to, and I do it; and if I can make more money tradin’ n**rs than any other way, I’ll do it, just the same as the wolf eats the lamb when he’s hungry; it’s a law of nature, and always will be, for the strong to prey upon the weak; but I tell you what, if I did believe those things, and then shut my eyes and served the devil, I wouldn’t try to cheat myself and other folks into thinking the Lord would be fool enough to believe I couldn’t open my eyes if I wanted to, and so let me off because ’t was a mistake.”
Meantime, the horses were harnessed, and the two men proceeded to change their clothes, assuming suits of quakerish gray and broad palm-leaf hats. Then, sending Chloe for a basin of water, they took off the wigs that covered their heads, to which Kelly added the black eyebrows, mustache and whiskers, he had hitherto worn, and washed their faces thoroughly with soap, thus removing from the skin some dark substance that had colored it, and showing them both to be men of light complexion. Kelly especially, whose hair was nearly red, could never have been recognized as the person whom Bessy had seen carry away her beloved charge. He laughed a little as he surveyed the altered person of his comrade, who, in his turn was regarding him. “I’ve worn those things so long,” he said, pointing to his discarded disguise, “that I shall feel strange without ’em. But come on; go out with the horses, and by the time you get ’em harnessed and come back, I shall have the little miss ready. As for the darkies, they don’t need any preparation.”
Bill led out the horses through the hut, first flinging across their backs some sacks containing provisions; and, as it was now so late that he was almost sure of meeting no one, he proceeded fearlessly down the path. Kelly returned
to Ida, who still lay on the bed as they had left her, and, taking off her outer garments, he cut her hair close to her head,—those beautiful ringlets that had been the pride of her fond parents. He stained her skin with a sponge, dipped in some dark liquid, until it was the color of a dark mulatto, and then dressed her in a suit of boy’s clothing which Chloe produced at his request. Then, bringing out the negro children, he tied their hands behind them, fastening their arms together in such a manner that each might support his neighbor’s steps while walking, and, passing a rope between each pair, he gave one end to Chloe and the other to Bill, who had now returned, and in this way, with the children between them, they left the hut, Kelly following with the almost senseless form of Ida in his arms.
—Mary Hayden Green Pike, Ida May: A Story of Things Actual and Possible (1854)20
The six black children in this passage, roped together as they leave a cave of torment, are nameless and faceless. They are utterly unrecoverable. The ratio of black children kidnapped to white is six to one, but the single white story is told in 453 subsequent pages.
Pike reminded readers on the following page that Southern families kept to themselves: “adjoining plantations, and even adjoining houses, are generally ignorant of everything that happens on a neighbor’s premises, except what the white members of the family may choose to tell.” Privacy protected the slaveholder. If these anonymous children were bought into a slaveholding family, no one would ever know that they were stolen. They would be made invisible by sale and transport out of the community that knew them as free.
Kidnapping strikes terror in a parent’s heart, and this emotional response has been encoded on the page. Like a horror movie that deploys swells of sound and darkened hallways to mount our adrenaline response, sentimental fiction like Ida May makes us weep for the vulnerability of our own children. The author, like her predecessor Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote carefully calibrated scenes that intended to move her audiences to tears, and from tears to righteous indignation. Read again the children’s one and only line, set apart as it is on the page, alone:
“Will you take us home?”
The page fills the reader with pathos for these children and hatred for their captor, Bill, who launches into facile racism, pro-slavery arguments, and coarse language. His response makes the blood boil. When Pike conjured this scene from her home in snowy Calais, whom did she think Bill was lecturing to, with only this cave of trembling children and partners in crime to hear him? Her growing audience, at home and abroad. Northern men and women. White Americans, to goad them to political action. Her future readers, who might not remember the tragedies borne.
Us.
9
Julian Vannerson
Washington, February 1855
When she visited the daguerreotypist for the first time, Mary Mildred Williams wore a plaid wrapper with a simple clip at the waist. The bodice had three folds of fabric with lace trim that layered over a skirt that fell past her knees. The skirt had a light lift from the pleats and petticoat. The plain sleeves and neckline of her day dress were augmented with lace inserts. The dress bunched uncomfortably under her arms. She had to tug at it carefully, so as not to undo the buttons up the back. She had a choker-length chain around her neck, without a pendant, and two thin bands of gold on her left hand. Her hair was natural, falling in soft ringlets from a neat part down the center. If she did not set her head just right, the curls that framed the right side of her face might fall into her eyes and ruin the exposure.
Mary was daguerreotyped at the most convenient and likely place in Washington: Vannerson’s Gallery, located on the second floor of Lane and Tucker’s Building, between Four-and-a-half and Sixth streets, at what is now around 424 Pennsylvania Avenue at Seward Square.1 Twenty-nine-year-old Julian Vannerson had just opened his solo venture blocks from the Capitol in a space with skylights made from two hundred feet of glass.2 The skylights offered the perfect lighting for natural-looking portraits, exposing the subject softly from above and from the side—provided the subject arrived between eleven and two o’clock in the afternoon on a sunny day. Like Mary, Julian Vannerson was from Virginia. His older brother Adrian had learned photography when daguerreotypy was new, in their hometown of Richmond. It was the family business.
Vannerson’s studio, situated in the heart of Capitol Hill, did fine portraiture of public men in paint, pastel, photograph, and watercolor. He invested in patents for the newest technologies and entered competitions for the most prestigious awards.
PATENT AMBROTYPES
Can only be obtained at
VANNERSON’S GALLERY
No. 424 Pennsylvania Avenue.
NO AMBROTYPE, possessing any degree of durability, can be procured at any other establishment in this city, as Mr. Vannerson is the only artist in Washington who has secured from Mr. Cutting the right to apply his process in their production.
Mr. Vannerson returns his thanks for the very liberal encouragement he received while conducting the “Whitehurst Gallery” for the last five years and solicits the patronage of his friends and the public at his New Gallery, where he has greater facilities than formerly for producing fine portraits, with all the latest improvements in the art of making Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, Photographs and Portraits in Oil Colors, on Enamelled Mill Board and Canvass, in Water Colors and Pastille.
Mr. Vannerson’s work has received the highest encomiums wherever it has been exhibited, and taken Premiums at the World’s Fair held in London, at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in New York, at the various Fairs of the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, and at the Exhibitions of the Metropolitans’ Mechanics’ Institute, held at the Patent Office of the United States and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Mr. Vannerson devotes his personal attention to all sittings, and his Gallery, Laboratory, and Operating Rooms are all upon the second floor.
Small Daguerreotypes enlarged to any size, and particular care paid to the copying of Paintings, Drawings, Statuary, and articles to be patented.
—Advertisement in the antislavery newspaper, The National Era, March 5, 1857
In early 1855 Brainard & Co., a publishing house based in Boston, began using Vannerson’s studio to produce portraits for Brainard’s Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.3 Powerful men in Washington, including Senators William H. Seward and Stephen A. Douglas, the antislavery representative from Ohio Solomon Foot, and Washington mayor John W. Maury had had their daguerreotypes made for Brainard’s folio by Julian Vannerson that winter. Of the nineteen portraits drawn on stone by Leo Grozlier, the preeminent lithographic artist, seven are based on Vannerson daguerreotypes.
Sumner appears to have called on the folio’s young publisher, Charles Henry Brainard, to arrange the photograph of Mary and her subsequent tour of the East Coast. As a collector of fine engravings, Sumner provisionally extended his regard for Grozlier to the Virginian Vannerson. Not one corner of Sumner’s walls was free of the work of fine engravers—depicting cathedrals, landscapes, men—a passionate collection that took up his leisure hours. He was so pleased with Mary’s portrait that he too sat for Vannerson.
In 1855 daguerreotypy was a technology on the wane, fast becoming a luxury item, as newer, faster, and cheaper forms of photographic reproduction were coming into the market. Among them was the ambrotype, a collodion positive process printed on glass, affixed with balsam, and visible against any black backing. Vannerson advertised the ambrotype as one of his specialties after obtaining the patent in 1854. After twelve years of Daguerrean supremacy in the United States, new photographic patents and technologies arrived within weeks of one another. The medium developed so quickly in the 1850s that a successful photographer’s studio would offer subsequent iterations of a photographic process simultaneously, so that it could offer the newest patents, chemicals, and plates alongside the recognized brands. Vannerson would master at least five different photographic processes during his career: daguerreotype, ambrotype, tintype, stereo
type, and carte de visite.4 To visit this particular studio, known to photograph the Washington elite, and to choose the more costly option, the daguerreotype, was to honor the occasion of Mary’s portrait as worth the expense in artistic talent, silver, gold, brocade, and brass.
Senator Charles Sumner, portrait photograph by Julian Vannerson, for McClees’ Gallery of Photographic Portraits . . . of the Thirty-Fifth Congress (1859).
This daguerreotype remained unknown for eighty years—the Massachusetts Historical Society catalogued it as “Unidentified Girl, 1855”—in part because it was so conventionally bourgeois in style.5 The John A. Andrew papers, which were deposited in the archive by Andrew’s children in 1919, added objects such as this daguerreotype in the early 1920s. A handwritten note, “slave child in which Governor Andrew was interested,” accompanied Mary’s daguerreotype.
Mary’s neutral pose could have been the result of Vannerson’s conventions, or a style of restraint, or perhaps his ignorance of her origins. While I cannot discern Vannerson’s politics from his catalog—he photographed people on both sides of the slavery question—he chose to advertise in the local antislavery newspaper, The National Era.6 He photographed members of the last Congress before the Civil War for McClees’ Gallery of Photographic Portraits of the Senators, Representatives, & Delegates of the Thirty-Fifth Congress (1859). When the Civil War began, he joined his brother Lucien in Richmond. They bought out Jesse Whitehurst’s gallery there and made photographs for their wartime hometown for a dollar a piece.
Girl in Black and White Page 11