With Prince Harry’s engagement to
American actress Meghan Markle set to climax in a wedding in St. George’s
chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19th and then Fergie’s daughter Princess Eugenie’s recent engagement to marry
Jack Brooksbank in the same place in the Fall, royal brides seem to be much in
the news lately.
Over my years of collecting antique
photographs—dating from the beginning of photography in 1839 through 1918—I’ve
accumulated close to 200 wedding photographs.
In the 19th century, going to a photographer’s studio in your
wedding clothes for a formal photograph after the wedding day was traditional--
almost a legal statement that “We are married.”
(And until Queen Victoria’s wedding in 1840, the bride was usually not
wearing a white wedding dress, but usually the best dress from her wardrobe.) Often this was the only photograph the bride
and groom had taken of themselves in their lifetimes.
Some of my antique wedding photos are
of royal brides. One of them is this small carte de visite (above) of Queen Victoria when she was a 19-year-old
girl and ruler of Great Britain, marrying her first cousin, 20-year-old Prince
Albert of Saxe Colburg and Gotha in Germany.
The carte-de-visite photograph is a
process that was introduced in 1854 and became vastly popular until after the
turn of the century. Unlike the earlier
kinds of photographs-- daguerreotypes
and ambrotypes, (which were housed in hard book-like cases for their
protection) and then the tintype (sometimes in a case, sometimes not)-- the “CDV”s
as they are called, were simply paper photographs mounted on a small piece of
cardboard about the size of a calling card.
They were produced by the thousands and were very inexpensive and easy
to make in multiples—unlike the previous processes.
By the time of the Civil War in the
U.S., just about everyone was collecting in albums the CDVs of their favorite
actors, politicians, heroes, royals, entertainers, freaks (including Tom Thumb
as well as Barnum’s other stars) and family and friends—both living and dead. If
you called on someone who was not at home, you could leave a CDV of yourself,
and you could fill albums with signed CDVs of your family and friends. Let’s
face it, CDVs were our first selfies!
Queen Victoria and her family were
among the most popular subjects for CDVs.
In 1860 John Maryall, an American working in England, published 60,000
sets of his Royal Family album of CDVs. Victoria herself avidly collected the small
photos and put them in albums.
Today, among photo
collectors, CDVs of ordinary folk are so numerous that they are practically
worthless, unless the subject is something rare. But I once saw a CDV of
Abraham Lincoln’s dog, Fido, sell on E-Bay for several thousand dollars. (And if you come across a CDV of Jesse James
or Billy the Kid, drop me a line at joanpgage@yahoo.com.)
Back to the
CDV of Victoria and Albert as bride and groom.
I originally bought it because I was amused that someone acquired the
CDV in the 1860’s and valued it so much that she cut a bit off the bottom and
placed the photo in the kind of ornate frame and matte that was earlier used
for cased images like daguerreotypes and ambrotypes.
I took the
photo apart from the frame and matte (which is something I always do, because
you can find all sorts of things behind the image if it’s in a case: locks of hair, written identifications, dates,
love letters, poems). I could see that
the image had been carefully labeled as “Victoria and Albert of England” by
someone named Elizabeth “Alleen” or “Allesen”, and that, judging from the
pinholes, she had it pinned up several times before putting it in the fancy
gold frame.
By now you have
realized, as I did when I took the thing apart—this is not a photograph! It’s taken from an engraving of the royal
pair. And the artist, whoever he is, made them look a teensy bit better than
they did in real life. And there’s one
more thing wrong with the image—Victoria did not wear a real crown on her
wedding day, but instead chose a simple crown of orange blossoms. She also had bunches of orange blossoms
attached to her gown.
FYI, because
I know you’re going to ask, Kate Middleton did wear a sort of crown at her
wedding in April of 2011; a diamond halo-style coronet, which someone said
was “as understated as a headband of
diamonds can be.” It was an heirloom
made by Cartier in 1936 and originally bought by King George VI for his wife—the
Queen Mother. It was loaned to Kate by
Queen Elizabeth and includes 739 brilliant diamonds and 149 batons.
Princes Diana,
at her wedding on July 29, 1981, wore a much more visible and dramatic
crown—the Lover’s Knot tiara, which was made in 1914 using diamonds and pearls
from the royal family’s collection. It
was given to Diana by Queen Elizabeth II as a wedding present. Kate has
inherited it and has worn it on several occasions.
Wearing not a
diamond crown but a headpiece of orange blossoms was a revolutionary step for
Victoria to make at her wedding, as was wearing all white. At first I was disappointed that I couldn’t find an actual
photograph of Victoria’s wedding, but then I realized—silly me!--that
photography had only been announced to the world in August of 1839 by Daguerre
in France, and in January of 1840, when Victoria got married, even if the
daguerreotype process was available in England, it required going to a
photographer’s studio on a day when there was ample sunlight and then sitting
there with your head in a brace for a long time without moving or smiling—not
the sort of thing that could be done at a wedding.
But Victoria
herself was quick to embrace the revolutionary new technology of photography. She even specified which photographs of her
loved ones would be buried with her in her casket. In order to preserve her memories of her
wedding day, she had a series of photographs taken by photographer Robert
Fenton on May 1,1854—14 years after the real wedding. They were a re-enactment
of the original ceremony, with both Victoria and Albert wearing their wedding outfits. Above and below are two of the Fenton photos. You can
see that the couple have aged a bit. I think what Albert has in his hand is a plumed
hat.
Victoria was
in love with her wedding dress and wore it on numerous occasions, including for
a portrait that she commissioned on her first anniversary from the artist Franz Xaver
Winterhalter, showing her as she looked on her wedding day.
The most
notable part of the dress was a flounce made from a piece of Honiton lace
worked in an antique style by ladies in Devon, England. Here’s how Victoria
described her wedding dress in her journal: “I
wore a white satin gown, with a very deep flounce of Honiton lace, imitation of
old. I wore my Turkish diamond necklace and earrings, and my Angel’s beautiful
sapphire broach.” The sapphire broach
was a wedding gift from Albert and you can see it in the portrait she
commissioned on her first anniversary, above.
Victoria
also wore her wedding veil on many other occasions in her life, including for
her Diamond Jubilee portrait when she was 78 years old—and when she died in
Jan. 1901, she was buried with her wedding veil over her face.
Coming Next: Royal Brides Part II- After Victoria
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