Alfred Seaman and the PCUK

The PCUK Convention Dublin 1894

 The 1894 Convention was the first to be held outside of mainland Britain. It was hosted by the Dublin Photographic Society and Sir Howard Grubb FRS presided.

"The ninth Annual Meeting of the Convention, now taking place in Dublin, gives token of being one of the most successful of these gatherings yet held.

Last Saturday and Sunday large numbers were arriving by every train and steamer, and at an informal gathering in one of the large rooms in the Hotel Metropole (the Convention headquarters) on Sunday evening it was found that there were well on for a hundred ladies and gentlemen present who had arrived from various parts of England, Scotland and Wales"   (BJP July 13 1894)

The Convention group photograph shows Sir Howard Grubb at the centre front with his daughter leaning on his knees. Alfred Seaman as a founding member of the Convention and member of the PCUK Council stands just behind the President (see detail from photo). The two members sitting on the portico are , sadly, unamed.

To see some of the stereoviews Alfred Seaman took while at the Dublin convention go to 'Photo Gallery' and click on 'Dublin PCUK 1894'.

DUBLIN CONVENTION NOTES.—I.

The portrait department is also of an an extensive character. The arrangements of studio, reception-rooms, waiting-rooms, are extensive and handsomely fitted up. They have, during last year (1893) taken nearly 4000 sitters. There is also in connexion with the business a bazaar, and they employ about fifty hands altogether. A large collection of lantern slides of Irish scenery is also kept in stock. These are also put up in lecture sets.

DUBLIN CONVENTION NOTES.—II.

There are many very delightful places for outings -with the camera in the vicinity of Dublin. First of all may be mentioned, as being within easy walk of the city, the noble Phcenix Park with its adjoining People's Garden and Zoological Garden. The People's Garden has everything that can delight the eye. Here are to be found a pretty undulating lake with what appeared to mimic islands, the banks shelving and steep in places, although not dangerously so even to children, and richly wooded throughout with many shady walks and seats. This, on a calm, bright day, ought to form a perfect paradise for a photographer, more especially if he had a stereoscopic camera, to which this portion of the garden lends itself most admirably. But, alas ! I had left my hotel that day with only a 5 x 4 monocular. Still, I "bagged" several nice views, and left the place with a determination to return next day with my stereoscopic camera—an intention never carried into effect, rain, wind, and other business intervening to prevent its being done.

The Superintendent of the Zoological Garden is courteous, affable, and well informed, and the Convention badge ensured a ready acquiessence in a request preferred by myself and a companion that we be allowed to photograph within the place. A lake extends from end to end of the gardens, and there are many aquatic birds on it, some of them rare. A shaded walk extends along one side of the lake, along the other being artistically arranged the houses of the various animals, some of which are claimed to surpass in excellence and uniqueness anything of which London can boast the possession. The people of Dublin are quite proud of their Zoological Garden. An exposure of some half-dozen of films upon the scenery of the Garden has, I find, secured me an equal number of good negatives. I used my films in a roll-holder, which is a source of great comfort to a nomadic photographer. To do this with ease and certainty, one has only to adopt the very simple system of rolling on a fresh film immediately that an exposure has been made, and not consider the previous transaction complete until this has been done. The camera is thus always ready for next shot, and no fear of making a double exposure on one sheet need be apprehended.

The Phoenix Park itself does not offer many inducements for the photographer. It is very large, certainly, but one will walk in it a long distance without seeing anything worthy of directing a camera at. It was on the roadside in this Park, opposite the Viceregal Lodge, where Cavendish and Burke were stabbed eleven years ago. The exact spots where they stood when struck are indicated by spade-cut crosses on the footpath, and here are to be found congregated pedlars of bog oak and other national productions, chief among these people being a hard-visaged old dame who boasts of having been photographed oftener than any woman in Ireland. It goes without saying, both she and the others, including the spade-cut crosses on the side-walk and road, were shot at by several photographers who were walking or driving out that way.

No photographer who visits Dublin should omit an eight-mile run by rail to the Hill of Howth. a promontory which forms one side of Dublin Bay. I formed one of a numerous party of Convention excursionists who visited it by a special train. Howth has a magnificent harbour ; commands, from any elevation above sea-level, a fine series of views ; has numerous residences, from the castle of the Earl of Howth down to the fisherman's cottage: contains remains of ancient religious grandeur : portions, especially in the vicinity of the Castle, are richly wooded, and it is nearly surrounded by beetling cliffs, one of which, two days before our visit, nearly proved the scene of a tragedy. A Liverpool gentleman, in endeavouring to reach a rare wild plant, missed his footing and fell over the precipice, but was caught some distance below by some projection. He lay insensible for many hours, but on recovery he managed to attract the attention of some passing

boat, the occupants of which gave the alarm, ultimately leading to his being rescued. In course of their peregrinations the Convention party visited the scene under the guidance of Mr. Kuthven, who took good care that no such accident should happen to those under his charge. Howth Castle is a comparatively modern structure, and is approachable through gardens which are altogether unique, and in which one might readily lose his party if kept out of sight or hearing for two minutes. It was an act of great kindness that these private gardens had been thrown open by Lord Howth to the Convention. His sister, Lady Domville, and Miss Stokes received us all most courteously. It may be here said that this privilege is very rarely accorded to visitors. But it is of a piece with the treatment accorded to the Convention wherever they went.

After lunch, your correspondent fell a victim to the blandishments of one of the members—Mr. John Brier, of Macclesfield, who had come to Ireland in a fine yacht he had had built in Plymouth since last year's Convention in that town. He prevailed on me to return with him in his yacht in preference to going by train, just to see what she (vessels are always of the feminine gender) could do, you know. So away we went from the harbour where she had been built.

DUBLIN CONVENTION NOTES.—III. (By our Special Correspondent.)

Had the absentees no ambition to be portrayed in such company? Were they too busy with their ordinary avocations to spare the time to be present ? Had they been sampling the native liquor of the country thus early in the day, and been by it placed Aors de combat ?—a fate which is recorded of one member on the day of the Lord Mayor's garden party, and whose misfortune, or insult, was generously condoned by his Lordship, who had him put to bed! Be the cause what it may, not one half of the members elected to have themselves placed on record, as it were, in the official group.

There appears to exist among some of the members, who, if they attend the Annual Meeting at all do so with some difficulty, a strong desire that the meeting should take place in August rather than in July. Men engaged in business (not necessarily photographers) allege that they can manage to get away much better in August than at any other time.

 "Besides," say some of them, with an ill-concealed chuckle—that kind of chuckle which is always on tap when elicited by the misfortunes of another—"July is always a wet month, which accounts for the bad weather invariably experienced during Convention week. Make it a month later and it will be sure to be dry." And a rain report of a well-known meteorological society was presented to me in support of this view, which was based upon the observations of, I think, fifty years. I mention this as a possible factor in determining the date of the next meeting by the Council.

Talking of rain, it certainly did rain during Convention week—a good deal more than was necessary to establish the pluvial character of Ireland, some of us thought. But there was consolation for us in the fact, which we ascertained from the morning papers, that, if Jupiter Pluvius was chastising us with whips, he was doing the same for the stay-at-homes with scorpions. The sprinklings we sometimes had were occasionally relieved by lovely bright weather; and, as in a well-painted picture, the shadows are necessary to enhance the value and beauty of the lights, so did we the more enjoy the wondrously lovely Irish scenery during the bright intervals. Some one ventured in my hearing to animadvert upon this phase of insular meteorology to a son of the soil, who promptly explained that it was love for England that caused it. " We catch the storms and rains as they arrive from the Atlantic and prevent them from reaching England."

Are photographers artists ? This vexed question is settled at last, and by an Irish peasant boy. My companion and I one evening walked from the Eccles Hotel at Glengariff up to the little village of that name, to ascertain if it was really correct that the village consisted of only eight houses, and six of them were licensed to sell drink—a true statement—when an intelligent boy, a native, hailed us with " A fine evening, sirs ! " Considering that we were both closely under umbrellas at the moment in consequence of what we looked upon as a drizzling rain, it spoke ominously for the normal state of the weather there. We were comforted with the explanation - that it was very often worse, sometimes better, than at present. We were guided by him to Cromwell's Bridge, a singularly fine, although now broken-down, ruined bridge, built by the army of the Protector. Resolving to return early next morning to capture this unusually fine archaeological remain, my friend casually observed to the boy, " I suppose there are a great number of artists who come here to see this bridge ? " " No," said our small guide, " there are only very few artists that come here, but there are plenty of photographers '. " Well, whether my friend and I are entitled to rank as artists or as photographers, it is consoling to our lacerated feelings to know that our pictorial attack on the bridge and its vicinity the following morning has resulted in our capture of several lovely negatives.

DUBLIN CONVENTION NOTES—IV. (By our Special Correspondent.)

How does it happen that "the Devil" has such deference shown him in Ireland ? Those who formed a contingent of the large party who visited Glendalough and its seven churches on the Saturday of Convention week will not, for many years, forget the wondrously beautiful "Devil's Glen," through which, leaving the cars, they wended their way on foot shortly after leaving—oh, with what reluctance !—the Walpole Gardens, kindly thrown open to the party. These gardens, exclaimed one enthusiast, "exactly fill the bill." And they do so; for here are rare and beautiful plants, trees and flowers in profusion, and seemingly in the wilderness of nature, without the eye being offended by the geometric designs in which so many delight, although some master mind of strongly developed artistic proclivities appears to direct it all; a stream runs through them with richly adorned banks and miniature bridges.

To take a jump from a scene like this to the Devil's Glen is, indeed, to jump from Alpha to Omega at a bound, for the Glen is a veritable glen, "only more so." It is a deep ravine between two mountains, clad with arborescent vegetation from summit to foot, a narrow river dashing its way at the base, along which trees and ferns struggle for the mastery. How many cameras were unlimbered in this glen it were vain to tell.

Here I would interlard a bit of advice suitable, not alone for this, but for innumerable parts of Ireland. If your main object is photographing the scenery, don't go with a party, but go alone or with a congenial friend or two ; and, above all, don't tie yourself by having to be at any special place or hotel at any particular hour, or even day. The Walpole Garden and the Devil's Glen are themselves good for six or eight hours and several dozens of plates.

But, talking of the entity just mentioned, the Devil's Punch Bowl, which is situated many miles away from his glen, being, in fact, above Tore Falls, Killarney, is another grandly wild place, which, to many photographers I know, would be looked upon as a paradise, despite the shady character of the reputed owner. The punch emanating from his bowl supplies Killarney with the fluid with which the natives and tourists dilute their John Jamieson and cognate brands. But Killarney itself must be allowed to remain over a little while longer.

I learn, from what I believe to be an authentic source, that the financial success of the Convention is greater even than was understood to have been the case at the closing meeting. I dare say, however, we shall have full details as to this after the Council shall have met and gone through the accounts. Being now flush of funds, it will, I hope, continue the good work it begun at Plymouth last year, and recoup all the outlay incurred by a certain Society that some years ago, acting with the best intentions in the world, overran the constable to an extent that rather seriously interfered with the pocket comfort of some of the members.

Dublin, according to an authority that must not be assailed, is "the say-bathingest, the tay-drinkingest, the car-drivingest place in the world, and bates the warld for divarsion." But, to utilise his lordship's grammar, the cars are the unsociable-est vehicles in creation. Just think of driving about for a few miles with your best girl, seated back to back, and having to hold on like grim death for fear that a bit of uneven road or a nubbly stone causes one or the other of you to be pitched out on the roadside. Irish jaunting-car riding

requires an education, and the vehicle itself—the sweet low-backed car that one admires so much in song—is a fraud. You bark your shins on the step in getting up, and cramp your arms with having to hold on, while, in the event of getting thrown overboard, your countenance runs the risk of being damaged. But the jarveys are clever if reckless, and the horses sure-footed, while the Irish roads—such, at any rate, as I was privileged to see—are truly excellent. I did not hear a whisper against any of our British institutions all the time I was there; so, as no antagonism exists, why, on earth, don't they make a wholesale importation of English hansoms, or even " growlers," in which one can ride at ease and in peace, and, I may add, under shelter when the rain falls ? A hansom will carry two individuals comfortably, together with all the photographic traps they will require on a lengthened outing; you can smoke to your heart's content, and see the country as you go along', and what more can one desire ? There, I've said enough in revenge for a mark on my shin-bone, which is still discoloured, so will let the subject drop.

' If a photographer has a, penchant for archeological remains, such as old castles and abbeys, Ireland is just the country in which to locate for a couple of months or so. Judging from the enormous number of these, it must have been at one time a veritable hotbed of internecine war on the one hand, and religious worship on the other. But there are other antiquities than those of a military and ecclesiastical character; of these the numerous round towers and cromlechs will immediately suggest themselves. Opinions are divided as to the origin of the Round Towers, and at present it is not necessary for me to say more than give mine, which I have long held—viz., that they are a development of a religion once prevalent some ages since, and which attained another stage of development in the graceful spires that now adorn so many churches of the present era.

Apropos of round towers, fancying I saw one at a distance in the south-west of the island, I asked the jarvey if that was a round tower. " Indade, and it is that same, sir," he replied; " only it is not round, but square, and it is not exactly a tower, but only the chimney of Blank's factory works, that we can't see just from here."

DUBLIN CONVENTION NOTES.—V. (By our Special Correspondent.)

It is not easy to perceive why so many tourists spend their holidays on the Continent when they have in Ireland what is, in a large measure, a terra incognita of an exceedingly picturesque nature. We all know, of course, that many tourists do visit the sister island, but not in the proportion that one would expect from its intrinsic merits. How many, or rather, how few, of the visitors to the Convention knew much of the beauty-spots with which Ireland teems, previous to July last ? And how few of them, if any left that country without having been delighted with it and without having expressed a strong desire and intention to see more of it on the-earliest possible occasion ? Surely it is preferable to spend a week or a fortnight there than among Sicilian brigands, and other questionable characters elsewhere on the Continent!

" One cannot say he has seen Irish scenery who has not visited, inter alia, the south end of the island. I have Cork, and its surroundings for many miles, in my mind just at present. There is an old distich to the effect—

" Limerick was, Dublin is, but Cork will be The proudest city of all the three."

So the others must look to their laurels. But, doggerel apart, Cork is certainly a fair city on which to gaze. To see it aright, one must  ascend the eminences close by. Should there be a shadow of doubt respecting the position Cork occupies among kindred cities, there cannot possibly be any as regards its harbour.

Immediately below the city the river Lee widens out, forming an inland bay with islands, promontories, peninsulas, its course for ships, of which there are many passing up and down, along with yachts, steam and other launches, pleasure boats and fishing boats, its banks for miles studded with lovely residences, from the humble cottage to the imposing villa, till one is involuntarily constrained to cry out with FitzEustace " Where's the coward would not dare to fight for such a land ?" A run of thirty to sixty minutes by rail and boat down the Lee brings us to Queenstown, near to which town the American ships land their mails, and this too, seen as I saw it on a calm, sunny, Sunday early evening, is a charming little town, nearly hemmed in by islands and promontories, Spike Island being just opposite. A photographer, bent on filling his portfolio with rich and varied scenery, might very well spend several days on the lower reaches of the Lee and the tributaries of Cork harbour, which opens out below Queenstown to a moderately wide expanse, without being laid open to the ocean. When surfeited with camera work, he could well fill up all his spare time by hiring a boat and going out to the fishing, for, if I am correctly informed, the fish are very abundant in these waters.

The city of Cork contains numerous fine buildings and many historic places and monuments. One of the first places that I visited was St. Anne, Shandon Church, and it is probable I was sentimentally influenced by Father Prout's national anthem of—

" The Bells of Shandon, 

 That sound so grand on

The pleasant waters of the river Lee,"

the tune of which (the " Last Rose of Summer") is probably the best known of any Irish melody. There is an energetic Camera Club in Cork, and, from what I experienced in Dublin from one of its leading members, I don't think I am saying too much in stating that any visitor from this country, calling at the Club, will experience a warm welcome.

No one visits Cork without driving out to the famous Blarney Castle, distant from the city between four and five miles. It may be reached by rail, but the road along the banks of the Lee is so good, and the scenery so fine, that most tourists prefer going by car. There is not now much left of the Castle except the square tower, but there is still enough to show that it must at one time have been a place of great strength—said, indeed, to have been the strongest castle in Munster. It was the seat of the MacCarthys, the Earls of Clancarty. Having been built in the fifteenth century, before the invention of gunpowder, it was for long impregnable. The groves of Blarney are, indeed, as charming as the poet tells us they are.

There are many fine subjects for the camera in the city, and several plates might be worthily exposed upon such erections as the monument to Father Matthew, the great temperance apostle of whose philanthropic labours the Cork people are so justly proud. Some of the edifices—Shandon Church, for example, of which I have already spoken—can only be taken from a point close to it, necessitating the employment of a lens embracing a very wide angle, and hence giving a picture in which the perspective is violent. There may possibly be better points of sight than that which, on a hurried visit, I had to select. A swing back is indispensable, owing to the camera having so frequently to be pointed upwards.

DUBLIN CONVENTION NOTES.—VI.

(By our Special Correspondent.)

The visitor to Cork, if a tourist, almost invariably proceeds farther west or north-west to see the far-famed Lakes of Killarney. There are so many who go daily, at least in the summer season, that the facilities for making this visit are now very great. You book in the morning for Killarney at the Cork railway station, and proceed by rail to the town of Bantry, passing the town of Bandon on the way.

To explain as neat a bit of Irish wit as one can readily meet with, it is necessary I should say that the town of Bandon was at one time exclusively Protestant, Catholics not being- permitted entrance, and, if I am correctly informed, it was walled around. On one occasion the witty Dean Swift and his servant entered the town, and on the gateway the Dean wrote as follows :—

" May enter here Jew, Protestant, or Atheist, Mahometan, or Greek, but not a Papist."

The servant, equally witty as his master, tarried behind, and wrote immediately .beneath :—

" Whoever wrote this wrote it well, For the same is posted on the gate of hell."

I have come across several versions of this encounter of wits ; the foregoing, with which I have taken a verbal liberty, is just as likely to be true as any of them. Without having the slightest intention of saying a word on the subject of the rival systems of religious belief prevailing in this or any other part of Ireland, I must still say that I saw no unpleasant outcome of the different forms of belief all the time I was in the green island. But, then, I had not visited Ulster, where things may possibly be different.

Bantry, I would imagine, is a typical Irish town. It lies near the head of one of the numerous forks projecting inland from Bantry Bay, which is an inland sea rather than the old-fashioned bay the configuration of which was taught and outlined in our schoolboy days. Here is the terminus of the railway from Cork, where we must descend and wait the preparation of the four, six, or more coaches by which we are to be conveyed to Glengariffe, the next stopping place. The day of our visit happened to be a fair, and under no better circumstances could we have seen a market. Carts were there by the hundreds, every one of them loaded with pigs, and nice, clean-looking animals they were. There were horses innumerable, and, without being competent to discourse learnedly on horseflesh, I could at once see that they were smart young creatures, qualified by their good looks for possibly at some future period assisting our upper ten in airing themselves in Rotten Row, or perhaps as likely, in breaking the neck of some gallant in a steeple-chase.