Portrait of Two Kings

I’m sure it was done by a professional photographer. I don’t think amateurs would have been able to do much indoor photography in 1867. Electric flashguns had not been invented. If they had, there would be the problem of synchronizing flash with the camera’s shutter. I’m no expert but remember from childhood a book which told how to ignite a heap of magnesium powder in a tin tray. Even then the sitters had to keep very still for several seconds. You can see that the children’s eyes are blurred.

One cannot imagine Queen Victoria’s family going to a studio to pose for portraits. A photographer would have been summoned to the Royal residence, perhaps Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. In this photo, the drapes seem to have been hastily put in place and the carpet is not even flat. The wall at far right seems to have been roughly blanked out. I took a scan of the faded original photo with its various surface marks without any editing.

The authenticity of the print, on stout semi-glossy card, once glued by the corners into an album, is attested by the pencilled inscription on the back  “from Arthur Xtmas 1867”. He was Queen Victoria’s seventh child, 17 at the time.

My sister Mary showed me the photo, almost as an afterthought, after we had been going through photos in my grandmother’s albums. It was loose and not in any album. When she was a little girl, our grandmother had asked her whether there was anything she would like from the room they were sitting in, so she asked for a pretty little table-top cabinet in white lacquer. It contained various photos including this one.How did our Granny acquire the portrait? I’ll let Mary explain:

Prince Arthur’s education was entrusted to Sir Howard Craufurd Elphinstone*, who was second cousin to Granny’s mother. One of  Sir Howard’s sisters was Ellen Victoria. She may have been “Aunt V”.

Sir Howard was great-nephew to (and named after) our forbear† the first Sir Howard Elphinstone, who got his baronetcy on recommendation from the Duke of Wellington for his exploits and bravery in the Peninsular War.

As Royal photographs of the period go, this one is exceptionally informal, and would have been sent only to close friends and relatives of the family. The Prince’s hair is tied up strangely and the Princess seems to have just washed hers. The Prince stretches out his feet casually showing his boot-soles, whilst holding the second eldest child tightly to stop him wriggling. Yes, him: the elder children despite wearing what we’d now call dresses, were boys. Prince Albert Victor, the eldest, died in 1892, leaving the one on the Prince of Wales’s knee to succeed to the the throne—as King George V. He’s two years old in the picture‡.

* Sir Howard Craufurd Elphinstone on Wikipedia
† A family tree makes this relationship clearer. The dashed line leading to my own name indicates that the relationship with my father was “nonbiological”, though I carry his name. Since I never met him, it wasn’t any other kind of relationship either.
‡ By the age of five, he was breeched: no longer in a unisex dress. but quite the dashing young fellow in a sailor suit.