Pitt-Rivers in Canada (and America): The Filmer Album and Notman Studio Lane Fox Portraits, and the John Wimburn Laurie Diary Entries

Christopher Evans

While recently researching a paper concerned with the impact of Pitt-Rivers’ military career upon his archaeology, the web was widely consulted in an attempt to locate photographs of him in uniform. Unexpectedly, a positive ‘hit’ was found at the Harvard Art Museums’ Department of Photographs. There photographs of 'Captain Lane Fox' appeared in two Filmer Album page-arrangements. This seemed extraordinary, as the frequently watercolor-enhanced photocollage albums of Lady Mary Georgina Caroline Filmer (1838–1903) now receive considerable attention in art history circles (e.g. collected by Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, as well as Harvard, etc.) and her work is seen as anticipating surrealist collages (e.g. Siegal et al. 2009).

In one setting the Captain’s full-length portrait has been stuck in alongside similarly formal-posed images of two gentlemen and two other officers: one, Captain Stewart’s is missing, with the other being of Sir Frederick Bathurst, a Lt-Colonel in the Grenadier Guards (shown in civilian garb, between 1861-65 he was MP for South Wiltshire: Fig. 1). On the other page (Fig. 2), Lane Fox’s is just a bust image, and it occurs with 13 more decoratively arranged pictures of women, men and officers, including both full-portraits and head-shots, and amongst which is Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-1910).

Just how Lady Filmer obtained the Lane Fox photographs–bought as a studio job-lot or a personal gift?–is something that we’ll return to. More importantly is that the individual doesn’t actually look much like the later Augustus Henry Lane Fox/Pitt-Rivers himself (e.g. just mustached and without his hallmark sideburns); in neither does he appear in uniform and in the one he looks rather dandified. Leaving this matter aside, the next point of departure is that one of the Lane Fox photographs has ‘Notman’ imprinted upon it.

The family papers of Pitt-Rivers (currently owned by Anthony Pitt-Rivers) include the following manuscript. This manuscript was transcribed for Anthony Pitt-Rivers and is included here with his permission. The family transcription was headed 'Extract from an incomplete private journal started by Lt. General Lane Fox in 1879 the year before he inherited the Rivers estate under the will of George Pitt 2nd Lord Rivers (d. 1828)'. The original transcription ends 'Note: The autobiography was abandoned at this point and the same volume contains, in the General's handwriting, a history of the Lane Fox Family with a family tree, a family tree purporting to show that the Pitts were descended from Edward III, a family tree of the Stanley Family, a manuscript copy of the entry on East Horsley from Braley's History of Surrey and of the entry on Cobham from the same source. It also contains a pasted in copy of  The London Gazette of Friday June 4th 1880 which includes the grant of arms and authority to take the surname Pitt-Rivers issued by the Queen at Whitehall on 25th May':

Now that I am in my forty nineth [sic][1] year and begin to feel that I am no longer young, it occurs to me to write a brief account of such events of my life as I can remember in the hopes that it may be read with some interest by my children and their children after I am gone. (not that I have much in the way of precept or example to hand down to them nor do I suppose that there is much to be learnt from my comparatively uneventful career, but our growing knowledge of the laws of heredity gives an interest to all that relates to the physical & mental constitution & culture of our ancestors which must increase rather than diminish as years roll on. The family, meaning by that term the kindred and not merely those who inherit the name, are freely of one flesh and blood. Whether the "stirp" theory if Mr Galton [2] or the pangenesis of Darwin proves true. Whether the free will of man represents as supposed by P. Carpenter a power capable of modifying and directing, or is, as believed by Huxley merely a resultant of the natural forces within us, it is certain that each one of us contains within his person the "promise & potency" of those who follow after in blood relationship. We cannot tell when or where constitutional peculiarities may crop out or how many generations may be skipped, but we may be sure that some one or more of our descendants be they few or many, will closely resemble their congenital functions. It is often affirmed that acquired habits are not inherited, and this may be true of habits acquired during one['s] lifetime, but the influence of habits and functions exercised in the same manner by successive generations of the same family is less known, and cannot be ascertained, so long as people know as little as is usually the case of the inner family life of their ancestors. It is not those events which make most mark in the world which have most influence in the transmission of heredity qualities but rather those which are of everyday occurrence and which few persons think worthy of being remembered, still less of being recorded. Hence an autobiography, if truthfully written, may be of some scientific value to a man's offspring even tho it may in no sense be a record of stirring events or contain anything of which the family may have especial reason to be proud.

I have myself found the want of such a record. My mother had a fancy for burning every scrap of paper which had every scrap of paper which had writing on it, even my father's letters to his father written from the Peninsular, where he served with the Grenadier Guards, which I remember reading with much interest. I found after her death that she had burnt with everything else that belonged to her in the way of papers, save such as related to money business which she was always shrewd enough to preserve carefully. I know nothing therefore of the short life of my father who died when I was five years old, except what I may have heard from my mother, or picked up in conversation with those who knew him, but I have always felt great interest in hearing any anecdotes in which he was concerned and the same interest would have extended to records of any earlier members of the family had they existed, more especially when as I have already said the study of heredity comes into the matter.

I wish to pursue a different course in my own case, and that my children should at least have the power of referring back to their family history if they desire it. I do not indeed propose to make a clean bosom of all my innermost thoughts but I desire to write with as little bias as can reasonably be expected of a man when speaking of himself. I have kept no journal, not being a man of methodical habits and must rely on memory for the past years of my life, but my wife since her marriage has kept a small pocket diary to which I can refer for dates.

For the same reason that I write this, I would wish that if it could be done without inconvenience and without jarring on the feelings of those that I leave behind a post mortem examination should be made of my body and the particulars of my physical constitution recorded by a competent anatomist for the information of my descendants, more particularly the form and peculiarities of the cerebral convolutions, and I should even think it reasonable if it were practicable to preserve the skeleton for comparison with those of any of my progeny who might be similarly minded to have it done. [3]

Notes

[1] Those words italicised here were italicised in the original transcription, it is not known what it signifies.

[2] Stirp: OED defines it among other things as the 'descendants of a common ancestor', and gives the following quotation from Galton 'Contemporary Review' 'XXVII.81, I beg permission to use, in a special sense, the short word ‘stirp’,..to express the sum-total of the germs, gemmules, or whatever they may be called, which are to be found..in the newly fertilized ovum—that is, in the earliest pre-embryonic stage—from which time it receives nothing further from its parents, not even from its mother, than mere nutriment... This word ‘stirp’..is equally applicable to the contents of buds.'

[3] It is known that Pitt-Rivers' body was cremated, it is not known if a post mortem was carried out beforehand. There were rumours that Pitt-Rivers' skull had been retained and was held by the Royal College of Surgeons, but they do not have it now, and any records which might have confirmed this rumour have now been lost, see here for detail (towards end).

Copied by AP June 2013

I am grateful for Felicity Wood, Chair of the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum (who was in contact with Michael Pitt-Rivers, the author of the following piece, whilst arranging the original Friends of the PRM visit to the Larmer Tree Gardens) who found a photocopy of the following review. Several sections of it are most interesting as they record at first-hand the Pitt-Rivers' remembrances of the general and also give an insight into one of his great-grandson's attitudes to him and his collection. It is therefore of interest as showing a particular time, place and attitude. I am also most grateful to Peter Saunders who identified where the review was published:

Pitt-Rivers, Michael 1977. ‘Cultural General’ in Books and bookmen, vol. 22, no. 9, issue no. 261 (June 1977) pages 23-5.

Cultural general Michael Pitt-Rivers

M W Thompson / General Pitt-Rivers, Evolution and Archaeology in the Nineteenth-Century 164 pp illus Moonraker Press £4.95 [1]

It may come as a surprise to those interested in archaeology to learn that no biography has yet been written about one of the great pioneers of scientific excavation, a figure who virtually founded modern techniques in field-work, and who changed the face of the antiquarian collector into that of the modern pre-historian. [2] General Pitt-Rivers died in 1900. He was a man with a mission in life: to unveil the laws of cultural evolution. He saw the facts of human remains as a continuous process of growth and decay, and just as Darwin applied these two component elements to his theory of continuity in nature, Pitt-Rivers applied them to the material arts. Only by the study of these arts and by the psychology that produced them, could, he maintained, human culture be traced to its germs and understood. Indeed, human culture followed the same pattern of development as that evident in the lives of animals and plants:

Human ideas, as represented by the various products of human industry, are capable of classification into genera, species, and varieties, in the same manner as the products of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and in their development from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous they obey the same laws.

Pitt-Rivers started collecting common types of objects from the primitive and the pre-historic past in 1852. He decided to arrange them in sequence ... [the author gives an overview of Pitt-Rivers career and collection, including his post as Inspector of Ancient Monuments]

The lack of a biographer has evidently not been due to failure on the General's part to arouse sufficient interest. Quite apart from his scientific achievements, he was a flamboyant character and a unique product of his class and times. To some, he merely appeared eccentric, to some he was a genius and to others, mad. He came from an old family and inherited large estates in Dorset and Wiltshire; he was a Victorian paternalist who believed in education for the masses for whose benefit he founded museums and opened exotic parks. His military career was characterised by rows with his superior officers, but he nonetheless attained the rank of Honorary Lieutenant-General on finally retiring at the age of fifty-four to dedicate himself exclusively to his land, his excavations and his new science. His life is obviously 'biographical material', but no book has appeared till now. [linked in original to title of MW Thompson's book]

It has not been for want of willing publishers nor authors that his life was never written. The late Mortimer Wheeler who named him 'the father of English archaeology' wanted to write his life, as did Jacquetta Hawkes and a number of other distinguished archaeologists, but the General's grandson [3] had determined to undertake the task himself as a work of grand-filial piety. I am referring to my father, who was ten years old at the time of his grandfather's death. As he was totally antipathetic to his parents, the General (as he was always known at Rushmore) became for him the idealised father-figure throughout his life. My father kept all the letters and the museum papers to himself; and of course never wrote a word. The only documentation publicly available remained a series of notebooks compiled for the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments and held by the Public Record Office. Before his death in 1966, my father formed a secret trust which his family imagined was designed to safe-guard the future of the museum at Farnham (Dorset), together with the General's papers. This important but disparate collection alone had remained in private hands. However, it soon transpired that the new trustees had no intention of preserving the museum and they continued to keep a close guard on the papers while they set about dispersing the collection in the interests of a beneficiary concerned mainly with the produce from the sales. The family brought what pressure they could to rescue at least part of the collection, and finally the archaeological section and the papers found their way to the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. Then, in 1975, Dr MW Thompson was invited to catalogue the Pitt-Rivers papers so recently deposited in Salisbury. As a result he expanded this work into his subject's first biography. Dr Thompson tells us in his preface that his official duties in Wales ... precluded him from the possibility of an exhaustive or definitive work, a project towards which he was not attracted and to which in any case the available material did not easily lend itself. He avoided any attempt to cover more than superficially the studies of Pitt-Rivers on material culture or his excavations, which would have required a work of quite a different format and character, and one which he modestly asserts would require a different kind of author. He refers to his present work as 'an essay'.

Some years ago, I was shown a notebook written in the General's hand in which he said he was going to put down everything he could about himself for the sake of his descendants so that they could trace those characteristics of their own which they might have inherited from him. [4] This tantalizing project, doubtless inspired by Galton's work on heredity, abruptly stops after declaring its intention. In the event, the General appears never to have written about himself. But tales still abound in the locality of Rushmore where he lived his final twenty years, and there still lingers the impact of his powerful personality; cold, impersonal and serious, but never very human. He evidently inspired respect rather than affection: loyalty but not love. ... [In Thompson's biography] [m]otivation is described only in the context of his subject's published works and this does not allow a real appraisal of his background, tastes and character. He claims Pitt-Rivers has tended to be regarded either as a figure of fun, so shrouded in seriosity as not to be taken seriously or quite the reverse, as a self-evident genius whom it would be sacrilegious to criticise. He tries to steer a middle course and succeeds only in establishing the importance of Pitt-Rivers's work and the originality of his mind. We are left wondering if as a collector he had 'taste', whether he really liked the objects he exhibited, whether the Italian primitives meant intrinsically more to him than the Neolithic arrowheads or the bronzes from Benin. When one looks at the avenues and clumps of trees he planted, at the park he laid out, at the classical temples he designed, it is hard to reconcile the hand of the author of On the Development and Distribution of Primitive Locks and Keys with the aesthetics of the grand design. I am inclined to think that his sense of beauty was a sense of order, and that scale and purpose overrode all other subjective judgement. I do not believe St George Gray, the General's chief assistant quoted by Dr Thompson, in thinking the Larmer Grounds pleasure park was laid out and opened to the general public as a means of sharing the good fortune of a surprise inheritance. (The General was born the second son of a second son). The author is nearer the mark when he quotes Pitt-Rivers himself.

I hold that the great desideratum of our day is an educational museum in which visitors may instruct themselves ... The knowledge of the facts of evolution and of the process of gradual development, is the one great knowledge that we have to inculcate ... The working classes have but little time.

In other words, they must be coaxed by pleasure grounds. Enquiry, then, was his motive, but education was its end. He directed himself to everyone through various means, to the agricultural worker and to the learned. To this day I have on the Rushmore Estate an old man of ninety-four who started life working for the General on his excavations in winter and on his farm-work during the summer months. 'E'd a bin always lookin vur King John's treasure', says old Tom, the last of the diggers, and he was fond of the association although he failed to benefit from the experience as no doubt did the four hundred and seventy-seven soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Surrey Militia when they had their skulls measured with the General's patent craniometer. Some of his experiments were not passed on. The public were not invited into Rushmore Park, as the author claims, to witness his attempts to acclimatise the reindeer, llamas, zebus, yaks, kangaroos and bower birds there, nor were his efforts to produce sheep and cattle to reflect the size of those used in Romano-British times as conscientiously written up as most of his other records. Perhaps they were not entirely successful. I do not agree with the author's contention that the motive behind the erection of Indian houses in the pleasure park was but a patriotic imitation of the Oriental additions to Osborn at the time of the Diamond Jubilee, although doubtless it made them more acceptable at the time. But it is hardly consistent with the aims of the protagonist of mass education that he has described already. Nor do I subscribe to the idea that reference to a Supreme Power diminishes the probability that the General was agnostic, if not frankly atheist. Certainly many of his friends and correspondents, as Thompson points out, were clerics but this could merely reflect the large number of country parsons who were also antiquarians. he was a conscientious patron of his livings but he was much abused by churchmen and had an acrimonious correspondence with the Bishop. Sunday entertainment in the Larmer Grounds and the weeding of the Cerne Giant's genitals were both considered positively satanic by those already incensed against the apostles of continuity. Within the family, he was always thought to have been atheist and the main target of his new scientific vision was Christian education. The author says he was cremated while his wife and children are buried in the churchyard ... The Bronze Age excavations had led him to look favourably upon this form of committal. He provided a chapel in the park for estate employees but he seldom went to church himself except on such occasions as tenants' funerals. He was a dutiful squire. On one visit his wife was heard to say she wanted to be buried at Tollard. 'Damn it, woman, you shall burn'. The General died first and was burned. Mrs Pitt-Rivers lies buried in Tollard churchyard.

... This is an original and valuable book and will, one would hope, lead to a more comprehensive study. Now that much of the spade-work has been done on the General's scientific papers by so skilled and experienced a practitioner as Dr Thompson, the way is open for a more personal biography setting him firmly in historical perspective among the thinkers of his time. Perhaps it remains to find more documentation from contemporary sources and in private correspondence.

... In his autobiography, [Bertram] Russell says little more of staying at Rushmore in his youth than that 'the Pitt-Rivers's were mad', but at the age of ninety when I last saw my 'twice-remove' cousin, he recalled much of his youthful visits. 'Your family was really quite eccentric', he told me. I could not help thinking there were people who found the great philosopher himself eccentric. Among his memories, was one of his Aunt Alice attempting to hold some function in the house. None of the guests arrived. Her husband, considering purely social activities to be frivolous, had, unknown to her, ordered all the park gates locked that day. Alice fought back and gave as good as she got. However, the stormy marriage was blessed with nine surviving children, at least one of them more eccentric than either of their parents. A few years ago, I was going to London airport with some cousins. A woman was complaining about the impossible behaviour of her teenage daughter. 'But', she said, 'one must remember that double dose of Stanley blood'. We all remembered it. When we got out at the terminal, the taxi driver eyed us suspiciously: 'I don't know what Stanley blood is', he said, 'but I hoep to Gawd I haven't caught it'.

Notes added by transcriber

[1] The Thompson biography was first published in 1977. The transcriber owns a paperback copy, inherited from her father, which is priced at £2.50 (and says 'first published 1977' but was published later one would presume), the price therefore suggests that this is a review of the original hard copy so this review must date from 1977.

[2] This review was therefore published before 1991 when Mark Bowden published his biography

[3] George Pitt-Rivers (1890-1966).

[4] Note that Michael Pitt-Rivers is referring to this document.

Unfortunately Felicity's copy did not say where the review was published and a google search did not identify the article either. However, we are most grateful to Peter Saunders who identified the source for us. 

Transcribed by AP June 2013.

These are the journeys that Pitt-Rivers is known to have carried out. For the most part evidence is taken either from his biographies or from references in the catalogue of the second collection or other artefactual documentation:

He is also known to have travelled to Rome in Italy at some point [objects from there specifically said to have been collected by him are listed in 1896 see Add.9455vol4_p1319 /2. See here to find a list of the detailed journeys he made as Inspector of Ancient Monuments

AP revised May 2013

In the Pitt-Rivers papers in the Pitt Rivers Museum [Pitt-Rivers Pamphlet Collection] is a printed copy of a judgement made in the High Court of Justice (Chancery Division) Scott v. Pitt-Rivers on 20 December 1900, 11 January 1901, 16 January 1901 and 28 January 1901.

This is an edited transcription of this judgement. It has been edited to include only the most interesting aspects of the document from the point of view of Pitt-Rivers' collection and the longevity of Farnham Museum, Pitt-Rivers' private museum on the Dorset/ Wiltshire border. The original is presumably based upon the shorthand writers' account of the case and what was said.

Mr Wilkinson:  My Lord, this is an originating Summons taken out on behalf of the trustees and executors of the late General Pitt-Rivers for the determination of certain questions of construction which arise upon the first codicil to the will. ... under the will the first Defendant, the eldest son of the testator, received all the personal estate, and as to the real estate he is tenant for life, and the second Defendant, his son, is the tenant-in-tail.

The devise under the will of the testator comprised an estate at Rushmore. Part of this estate consisted of a museum and farm of 8 acres of land known as the Larmer Grounds. It is well known during his life that the testator took an interest in the museum, and he collected articles of interest, which were placed on exhibition in it, and he spent also large sums of money in laying out the grounds.

... This is a guide to the Larmer grounds and museum which was prepared by the testator during his lifetime and which has been published since his death. The museum and pleasure grounds were open free to the public, and the testator kept a staff of servants to keep order and to show people over them ...

The first codicil of the will deals with the intention on the part of the testator, and the question shortly for your Lordship is whether the effect of the codicil is to continue the state of affairs which existed at the testator's death after his death. [sic]

[Wilkinson then read out the codicil of the will]

... The questions of construction that arise upon that codicil are shortly as to whether there is a definitive trust of these grounds and the museum bequeathed by that codicil. The trustees named there (Lord Avebury and Mr Charles Hercules Read) are represented by my learned friend Mr Renshaw, and they argue the point on behalf of there being a trust.

[The lawyers then show the judge where the museum and Larmer Grounds were in relation to the Rushmore estate]

Mr Lawrence [who appeared for Alexander Pitt-Rivers] ... Then under Clause 1 there is the museum, which was freehold in the testator, and therefore he was entitled to entail it. Then there are its contents, and the contents, except so far as they are fixtures, would be personal estate, and I should take an estate absolutely in those.

Then as to the "objects of curiosity in my house at Rushmore, which are intended to be placed in the said museum," the facts with regards to these objects are these. The testator before sending anything to the museum use to have the goods that he bought for the museum sent to the house ... and there they were catalogued and set up temporarily in his house in cases and ticketed, and so on; then when he had seen enough of them and had not room for them he sent them down to the museum; but he kept a large catalogue consisting of nine volumes of everything that was intended for the museum. That was kept there and illustrated. He had pictures made of everything that went down.

Now with regard to this bequest I should say that at all events there would pass to me under this gift all those things which he had identified as intended to go to the museum by entering them in the catalogue of the museum up to the date of the codicil. I do not think I could contend that anything after that would come to me ...

We have an affidavit by the testator's private secretary, who used to look after all those kinds of thing for him, and he has, as a matter of fact, listed all those down to the date of his death. He has made an accurate list of all those articles which were entered in that catalogue and those designated by tickets, and so on down to the date of the testator's death, but I think I should be right in asking only for those in the catalogue as being identified down to that date as coming to me. The rest are heirlooms, and he has given all the articles of vertu in Rushmore Hall as heirlooms. ...

Then as regards Clause 3, there is the sum of £300 per annum.

... That is given for the maintenance of the museum and Larmer grounds ...

Then No. 5 is, "I appoint my son in law John Lubbock Baronet of 2 St James' Street in the county of Middlesex and of High Elms Farnborough in the county of Kent and Charles Hercules Read of the British Museum [handwritten insert] in the County of Middlesex [end insert] to be the trustees only for the purposes so far as necessary in connection with the future maintenance of the said Museum Larmar [sic] grounds and the objects of interest therein and thereon." I say there is nothing in this codicil which in any way declares a trust of this museum and Larmer grounds, there is no trust that I am bound to dedicate it to the public or to keep it open for ever, or any trust that could be created. ... I do not know what the trustees would say to that, but they have no duties at all. ...

[Mr Renshaw explains that C.H. Reed had had long dealings with Pitt-Rivers about his museum in his professional capacity as a member of staff at the British Museum]

Mr Renshaw: ... There must have been some object in the testator's mind in appointing trustees. It cannot have been intended that the only son should take his property free and clear away.

... Mr Justice Kekewich: ... I think the Attorney-General is the only person who can deal with that. I suppose it would be a method of instructing the public like the Natural History Museum, and it is clearly a charitable bequest if once we get so far as that.

... Mr Lawrence: It would be a very curious result, because the expense of the upkeep is something enormous. These grounds were very curious

Mr Justice Kekewich: It would be very much more than £300.

Mr Lawrence: Yes. Your Lordship will see from the catalogue alone it ran into thousands.

Mr Justice Kekewich: ... I mean unless there is a public trust declared, which the Attorney-General only can put forward, the trustees have no duties to perform at all.

... I mean no duties to perform that can be legally enforced.

... Mr Lawrence: It is the evidence of Mr Johnson, who is described as being in the employment of the testator. He was employed by him to manage his objects of art in the museum, and so on, and his evidence is that the specimens which came to the museum were sent first to the house and then, after being examined by the testator, they were catalogued. ... "As a general rule the articles and specimens for the said museum were sent to the testator's house at Rushmore, and after being examined by the testator and catalogued sent to the museum at Farnham. 3. At the date of the testator's death the articles ... were in the testator's house in Rushmore. They were specimens which the testator had collected or purchased and were put in cases and in tables in the house at Rushmore and on the walls by way of decoration, but they all were intended to eventually form part of the collection in connection with the testator's museum at Farnham, as they were all drawn in colour in the catalogue of the contents of the museum prepared by and under the superintendence of the testator, and the whole or nearly the whole of the articles in the said schedule were ticketed and were intended to be removed to the museum. The said articles were always shown as part of the collection to any one asking to see them. The said catalogue of the contents of the said museum is contained in nine volumes, and is very elaborate.

... Mr Lawrence: The ticket is very important. If you find an article ticketed with a number corresponding with another number in the museum you have some identification, just as much as if you placed them in a separate room. That would be intended for the museum.

... [11 January 1901 agrees to call witnesses and the Attorney-General]

[16th January]

... [Arthur James Creech is examined by Mr Lawrence, he reports that on 20 November 1899 he was summons to Rushmore and asked to see the General alone ...]

[Creech]: 'He had not made any codicil as to the museum and Larmer grounds, and he wished to do so, and he feared whether there was time to communicate with Messrs Farrer for them to come down and make a codicil. He wished one made at once. ... He wished, as to the museum and Larmer grounds, that Mr Pitt-Rivers should carry them on in the same way as before, but he strictly mentioned that the public would have no rights in it. He feared--he asked the question whether I thought that the public would interfere with it in any way afterwards. ... and assert any right; that was what he was very jealous about, and did not wish, of course that anything of that kind might arise ... I may say that the codicil is in the General's own words. I took that down. [... Did he sign it then, after it had been fair copied, in the presence of yourself and your son?] [Creech]: Yes ... I took it away with me and kept it till after his death ... perhaps I ought to say as to the codicil itself some very short time before the General died, I think only a fortnight, or at any rate three weeks, he asked me if I still had the codicil. He said "Of course you have not parted with it." and I said, "No," and he said "Well, you are to part with it to no one; keep it till after I am dead, and then you will know what to do with it."

... Creech then wrote to Pitt-Rivers' lawyers Messrs Farrer sending the draft of the codicil, a letter comes back from Messrs Farrer read by Mr Lawrence, '... What we propose is to make a new Codicil, leaving the Museum, King John's House and Larmer Grounds to pass under the Will itself, but making the chattels heirlooms to go with the Estates. ... We propose therefore that General Pitt-Rivers shall express a hope in the Codicil that his son will keep up the museum &c., in the same way as he has done, and that in making any arrangements relating to them he will consult Sir John Lubbock and Mr Read.' ... then reports on other correspondence ... after a while Pitt-Rivers concluded that he did not Farrer's new codicil and wanted to retain the original one written by Creech.

As part of his evidence Creech says '... he told me several times that if I saw any interference on the part of the public in any way with his rights as owner I was at once [to] order the caretaker to shut the grounds up, and shut the public out'.

... Creech reports on a newspaper report: 'It is very evident, General, from the large number who assemble here from time to time, that your munificence is highly appreciated," said the editor. "Yes, there is not a shade of doubt on that point, and," smilingly said the General, "the more the people come the better I am pleased, but, of course, I maintain my rights, and if ever the public should endeavour to set up a right, I shall very quickly kick them out. Still I am bound to say that all the years I have allowed the public to come here nothing has occurred to shake my faith in them. ... I am astonished at the care which the public exhibit in regard to places of interest and the museum, which I permit them to visit free of charge." ...

During cross-examination of Alexander Pitt-Rivers he is asked 'Your father wanted you to go up and see Mr Read because Mr Read would satisfy you that these things were of value and were worth keeping up? Answer Yes ... I never doubted they were interesting things.

... Charles Hercules Read is cross-examined ...

Q. You knew the General very well, I think?

A. Yes, very well indeed.

Q. I think in his lifetime he was in the habit of consulting you with reference to the museum and the contents of it?

A. He was

Q. Did he ask you to become a trustee ... about the time he made this codicil, in November 1899?

A. Some time just shortly before that, I think it was--in October.

... Q. Will you tell his Lordship what passed between you and Mr Alexander Pitt-Rivers on the subject?

A. What passed was this: Mr Fox Pitt, as he then was, came to see me with regard to the disposition in the future of this museum and Larmer grounds, and to hear from me, I think, what had passed between his father and myself, and also to hear my individual opinion as being a person conversant with museums and collections of this kind as to the propriety or wisdom of keeping this museum in the place where it now stands ... The idea ... in the General's mind was that I was an outside and independent witness as to the value of these collections, whereas he himself speaking to his son might be considered to be a partisan obviously ... I was quite aware that the General thought that his sons did not, perhaps, take sufficient interest in the museum. Mr Fox Pitt explained that practically they were not allowed to take a very active part, and without taking an active part it was rather difficult to take an interest. ... I explained to Mr Fox Pitt that I, in conjunction with my co-trustee, if I may call him so, Lord Avebury, had suggested to the General several courses which he could take in disposing of this museum. One of them was, as he had already given a museum to Oxford, if he wished to remove it he might very reasonably give one to Cambridge now. That was one of the alternatives I put before him when he asked what I thought should be done. ... The other was that it might be sold--that was one way of disposing of it. Another was that it should be offered to the Trustees of the British Museum ... The fourth was that it should be kept where it was, knowing all the time that the General would only entertain one. ... [Q. That the General determined to keep it where it was?] A. Yes, I told Mr Fox Pitt that. ...

Q. And have you also talked to him [Pitt-Rivers] about the articles and collections he gave to Oxford?

A. I have had some conversations with him about that.

Q. He has told you many times, has he not, that he regretted ever having parted with that collection?

A. I could scarcely say "many times," but he has told me that.

Q. And also expressed a determination not to part with any other collection of his?

A. Well, never in those terms. ... With regard to the museum at Rushmore, he certainly would not entertain parting with it anywhere. ...

Judgment

... The Court therefore finds itself in this embarrassing position. If it accedes to the contention of the Attorney-General that there is a secret trust to be enforced for the benefit of the public, it must ignore or defeat the expressed intention of the testator that the public shall acquire no rights, and on the other hand, if that contention is rejected and the trust be not enforced, the only alternative can be that Mr Fox Pitt-Rivers will be left absolute owner of the property in question and at liberty if he wishes to disregard his father's wishes and to treat the property as equally at his disposal as if no trust had been communicated to and accepted by him.

... After full consideration I have arrived at the conclusion that the secret trust must be enforced at the Suit of the Attorney-General, and for the benefit of the public. This will preserve the legal ownership of the son which the father intended him to have: it will also fulfil his intention as far as it can be fulfilled, that the museum and grounds shall be maintained as heretofore, and will avoid the possibility of the property being diverted from its intended purposes ... I give credit to Mr Fox Pitt-Rivres for honest intention to do his very best to fulfil his father's wishes, but that creates at best only an imperfect obligation, and I must take it on the evidence that this would not have satisfied the father who desired to secure the maintenance of the museum and grounds. ... I propose to declare the construction of the will on the points mentioned and further to declare that it as been established to the satisfaction of the Court that the gifts to the son were made to Mr Fox Pitt-Rivers and were accepted by him for the express purpose that the museum and grounds should be maintained and used as they had been in the lifetime of the testator ... it remains to be determined what are "the objects of curiosity in my house in Rushmore which are intended to be placed in the said museum." ... The other question is what, if any, interest Lord Avebury and Mr Charles Hercules Read take in any of the property disposed of by the codicil. It is obvious that the testator intended them to occupy some position of trust ...

Afterword

Charles Hercules Read commented on this case at his Presidential Address to the Anthropological Institute in 1901

... General Pitt-Rivers is for us in this room a much more familiar figure, and his death makes a gap which will scarcely ever by entirely filled. ... In his museum at Farnham in Dorset is to be seen a large-scale model of every excavation he undertook, showing with the utmost precision the exact position of every object found, while the objects themselves were shown in cases near by. The museum contained many other things, however, besides the local relics, and it was always fascinating to hear the General explain his reasons for gathering together, in the heart of the country, collections of such variety and extent. By a recent judgment of the Court of Chancery it is now clear that the museum is to be kept up in the same way as during the General's lifetime. This, I may say, was his intention, but the Court ruled that some of his provisions were impossible. I have made no mention of the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford, a gift from the General to the University, for this, under the charge of my friend Mr. Balfour, is now so well known as scarcely to need a reference. It differs from other museums not so much in its contents as in the method of arrangement. This certainly adds greatly to the interest of the objects, and is at the same time a fresh testimony to the originality of the General's ideas.

'Presidential Address [by C.H. Read] pp.18-19 delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 4th February, 1901'The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 31, (Jan. - Jun., 1901), pp. 9-19

Transcribed and edited by AP May 2013.

This is a slightly altered version of the thesis I submitted in 2012 for my undergraduate degree in history. It is a piece of work which grew out of my involvement with the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project. It explores a personal interest, nonetheless I hope others may find it of interest. I feel one of the achievements of the RPR project is to discourage the view of Pitt-Rivers as an 'archaeologist', an 'anthropologist' or an 'ethnographer' and take a broader look at the enormously wide range of his interests and activities. In focusing on an aspect of Pitt-Rivers' collections that has never before been isolated and examined I hope to have made a small contribution to 'rethinking' him.

I would like to thank everyone I have worked with in the Pitt Rivers Museum and in connection with the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project, and Alison and Jeremy in particular: to both of them for giving me the opportunity to get involved in the project in the first place, and the other opportunities this has opened up, to Jeremy for supervising me and to Alison for organising a space for me to work in the museum and aid in accessing relevant sources.

I am no longer working on Pitt-Rivers * but have a continuing interest in the international exchange of objects and the role of collections and collectors in shaping scholarly perceptions.

Rachel McGoff
University College, Oxford

November 2012

East Asian Objects of a 19th-Century Collector

*Though in fact Rachel spent the year 2012-2013 completing a catalogue of Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum's Pitt-Rivers letters which she had scanned some time before.

{xtypo_dropcap}T{/xtypo_dropcap}he following document shows extracts from the Sotheby's sale catalogue for 24 July 1861 marked with some items 'acquired by Col. Fox', and the prices he paid for them. The catalogue is held in the British Library, we are very grateful to Cliff Thornton for preparing this list for us.

Ethnological and Miscellaneous Portion of the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution
Whitehall Yard
comprising
Egyptian, Etruscan, Mexican, Greek Roman and other specimens,
Some very curious South American and Mexican vases,
Various objects illustrative of the manners and customs of the New Zealanders,
Important articles of Jade,
Indian and Persian Antiquities,
Many Chinese and Miscellaneous Articles,
And some very rare, important and interesting sepulchral tablets,
Assyrian and Persipolitan Sculpture,
Very large and important Burmese Bronze Image of Buddha.

Egyptian, Etruscan, Mexican, Greek Roman and other specimens, 37 Lots

South American and Mexican vases,10 Lots

Indian and Persian Antiquities, 54 Lots

Col. Fox 1-0-0 Lot 51 An Adighias stick (facsimile of Chobda’s silver stick); A pair of Fly flappers; 5 small Burmese bells on stand [1884.107.1-9]; Three others [as above]; Fragments from Burmese temple

Col. Fox 1-2-0 Lot 87 A small Indian Vase with 2 handles engraved with ornaments and flowers inlaid, on stand with shade.

Col. Fox 0-3-0 Lot 96 Model of a bullock cart, and models of cruelty and torture and manner of putting to death by Thugs.

New Zealand 5 Lots (103 – 107)

Chinese 26 Lots (108-133)

Col. Fox 1-13-0 Lot 125 A Chinese Bronze Laver on wooden stand, and waterbucket.

Miscellaneous 68 Lots (134-201)

Col. Fox 0-10-0 Lot 156 Portrait of Boadicea, Queen of Britain AD 200 curiously carved in ebony in frame.

Col. Fox 0-3-0 Lot 174 A large model of South African “Buck Logie”, or hut,the interior furnished with specimens of the usual appurtenances and a small model of a Swiss Cottage.

Col. Fox 1-16-0 Lot 179 A Chinese Wooden Harmonicon, arranged in the Key of F consisting of a frame and 18 pieces of bamboo.

Col. Fox 1-18-0 Lot 180 A Bellaphon, or Harmonicon used by the Mandingo nation, similar in form to the preceding, but with the addition of calabashes underneath. [1884.110.38]

The ones that are not matched to PRM accession numbers cannot be matched to entries on the PRM collections database; the current whereabouts of these objects is unknown - they may have been retained by the Pitt-Rivers family, they may be in the Pitt Rivers Museum but never catalogued or accessioned.

Cliff also writes:

Given above are the details of the 8 lots purchased by Colonel Fox at the auction of material from the RUSI museum in 1861. Having looked through several years of Sotheby auction catalogues, it is worth putting this auction into context. By far the majority of auctions held by Sothebys were the sale of private libraries, sometimes including a few manuscripts. I would estimate that around 1860, approximately 80% of Sothebys auctions were devoted to the sale of such libraries. The sale of collections of coins and medals made up another 15%. The remaining 5% being sales of fine and decorative arts, principally prints and engravings. So the appearance of a collection of ethnological items was quite unique.

It is possible that the material in this sale may have been from the reorganisation which the RUSI museum had recently undergone.
In 1858, the displays were reorganised into four separate sections; military, naval, ethnological and natural history. Whilst this reorganisation was under way, an opportunity was taken for a spring-clean, and the annual report for 1858 records - "The Museum has been entirely dismantled. The cellars and garrets, which were filled with a mass of heterogeneous articles, principally duplicates, have been cleared out: some of these had been there for upwards of twenty years, and consisted of books, skins of birds, geological specimens and miscellaneous articles from various countries." In 1861 the museum decided that it should cease collecting natural history
specimens and these were disposed of. The auction of this material has yet to be found.

Cliff Thornton 11 November 2012

October 2013

Christraud Geary, Teel Senior Curator of African and Oceanic Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA (by email): 

'I should congratulate you on your fabulous website “Re-thinking Pitt-Rivers.” It is the best I have seen and so full of amazing information' 

October 2012

Tom Wroble: I just had a look at the rethinking website. Its a wonderful and incredible gift you've made available to the world. Thank you all so much for the time and effort that everyone involved put in. Its truly amazing.

AP September 2012

Elin Bornemann

In 1879 General Pitt-Rivers and his friend George Rolleston went on a trip to Germany, Denmark and Sweden. On their way north they stopped in Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein, where Pitt-Rivers visited a photographer’s studio and acquired a small collection of pictures. These are black and white prints in carte de visite format, 60 mm by 91 mm. A few of them are larger cabinet prints. These are portraits which citizens of Kiel, and probably also from the surrounding villages, had taken. They show men and women of a variety of ages, couples posing in their Sunday best, and a number of sailors in the uniform of the German Imperial Navy. A couple of photos show more relaxed domestic scenes: an old woman is pictured with her knitting, and one man appears in his slippers, leaning languidly on a side table, with a dog on his lap, and smoking a long pipe.

In those days Kiel was one of the two major bases for the Imperial Navy (the other was Wilhelmshaven), hence the pictures of sailors. It also had the Navy’s munitions depot and workshops and the Imperial Shipyard. Since the 1860s it had been growing rapidly. Between 1864 and 1880 the population grew from 18,770 to 43,594. It was well-connected by rail and by the Eider Canal, although the Kiel Canal was not opened until 1895.

Since I was born in Kiel and grew up nearby, I was particularly intrigued by this small collection, and during a recent holiday in Germany I took the opportunity to find out more. The cartes de visite have the photographer’s name and address printed onto them: Waldemar Renard, Sophienblatt 18. This street is one of the main streets in the centre of Kiel, close to the railway station. Since Pitt-Rivers bought the photos in 1879, I could take the name, the address and that year as the starting point for some more research.

The city archive in Kiel holds the papers of a number of businesses, but unfortunately none connected with Waldemar Renard. The archive also has a large collection of photographs of the town, arranged by street name. Visitors to the archive can view folders with copies of the photos of the street they are interested in. They can then request to see the originals of those they need to examine in detail. I viewed two folders of photos of Sophienblatt, the street where Waldemar Renard’s shop was located, but again I drew a blank. While there were a number photographs of that street, some from the right period, none of the photos showed house No. 18. In the twentieth century the street underwent a lot of changes. After the Second World War a number of houses were pulled down and replaced with new buildings. No. 18 might have survived that period of building work, but in the 1980s a whole group of houses, including No. 18, were demolished to make way for a shopping centre.

A search on the internet brought up little information about Waldemar Renard. He was born in 1850 and died in 1904. The name is given on the photos as Waldemar Renard junior, but I have not been able to discover a Waldemar Renard senior. From 1885 to 1889 Renard had an assistant, Ferdinand Urbahns, who went on to open his own studio in Kiel. Another photographer with the same family name, Arthur Renard, was active in Kiel at about the same time as Waldemar Renard, but I have not been able to discover if there was any relationship between them. However, there is another intriguing detail to be found in the Kiel city archive. A search on their website for the name Renard brings up a reference to a document from 1861 mentioning a Gregor Renard. The document relates to public building works undertaken near his house and not to Gregor Renard’s own activities, but it does mention his profession: photographer. Was there perhaps a whole family of photographers? They could have been an uncle with two nephews, or perhaps Arthur was Gregor’s son, and Waldemar his cousin. The current phonebook for Kiel does not list anyone by the name of Renard, and I do not know how common that name would have been at any one period. Perhaps in the future further research will reveal more about the Renards and their photography businesses.

Website with information about Waldemar Renard, Arthur Renard and Ferdinand Urbahns, searchable by photographer’s name:

http://www.fotorevers.eu/de/

Homepage of City Archive Kiel:

http://www.kiel.de/kultur/stadtarchiv/

City Archive Kiel online catalogue:

http://www.kiel.de/kultur/stadtarchiv/onlinekatalog/index.php

Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers' overall collection came in two halves: the first was acquired before 1884 and was donated to the University of Oxford to become the Pitt Rivers Museum's 'founding' collection; the second was acquired after 1880, and remained in Pitt-Rivers' possession, some of this collection was exhibited in his private museum in Farnham, Dorset.

The two sets of catalogues which form the inventories of Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers' collection can be accessed from this page. The inventory of the first comprises the Accession Books at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The volumes containing the catalogue of his second collection are held by Cambridge University Library, and are reproduced here with their kind permission.

There is a dedicated searchable database of both collections available here.

Alternatively, should you wish to take a more visually-focussed look through the volumes, you can access browsable web pages of both sets of volumes via the links below:

First Collection Volumes

Second Collection Volumes

Catalogue entries for the first collection were transcribed, enhanced and prepared by Alison Petch during the first Leverhulme Trust funded Pitt Rivers project, and enhanced during the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project. In addition other members of the Pitt Rivers Museum staff have contributed to these entries. If you wish to consult the hard-copy catalogues please contact rpr@prm.ox.ac.uk

Catalogue entries for the second collection were transcribed, enhanced and prepared by Alison Petch during the second Leverhulme Trust funded Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project. They were proof-read by Rachel McGoff, Jasmine Aslan, Corinna Gray, Gabrielle (Kathy-Anne) Hughes, Jozie Kettle, and Venya da Silva. If you want to see the original hard-copy volumes please contact Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives at mss@lib.cam.ac.uk.

All completed August 2012.