Herbert Ponting E-Book

Anne Strathie

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 543

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Herbert Ponting (1870-1935) was young bank clerk when he bought an early Kodak compact camera. By the early 1900s, he was living in California, working as a professional photographer, known for stereoview and enlarged images of America, Japan and the Russo-Japanese war. In 1909, back in Britain, Ponting was recruited by Captain Robert Scott as photographer and filmmaker for his second Antarctic expedition. In 1913, following the deaths of Scott and his South Pole party companions, Ponting's images of Antarctica were widely published, and he gave innovative 'cinema-lectures' on the expedition. When war broke out, Ponting's offers to serve as a photographer or correspondent were declined, but in 1918 he, Ernest Shackleton and other Antarctic veterans joined a government-backed Arctic expedition. During the economically depressed 1920s and 1930s, Ponting wrote his Antarctic memoir, re-worked his Antarctic films into silent and 'talkie' versions and worked on inventions. Like others, he struggled financially but was sustained by correspondence with photographic equipment magnate George Eastman, a late-life romance with singer Glae Carrodus and knowing that his images of Antarctica had secured his place in photographic and filmmaking history.

Leseprobe

In memory of my cousin Jean Strathie, my grandfather Thomas Strathie and other travellers in our family, and of Siew Kee Tay, my Antarctic cabin-mate and friend.This book is also for others with whom I have travelled to marvellous places in our wonderful world.

First published 2021

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Anne Strathie, 2021

The right of Anne Strathie to be identified as the Authorof this work has been asserted in accordance with theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9705 8

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Praise for Herbert Ponting, then …

‘It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that Mr. Ponting has discovered a new mountain; for no one has ever seen the great quiescent volcano depicted from so many points before, except, indeed, from the pencil of Hokusai. But then, this great painter gave representations that were half true, half fanciful, whereas the pictures before us are pure and unadulterated truth.’

Prof. Basil Hall Chamberlain, Japan Times, 1905 (on Ponting’s book, Fuji San)

‘Ponting’s photographs are superb … he has waited long hours in the cold which … has guarded the end of the world, and now he has ripped away its secrets. … Never before has the work of scientific exploration been made so clear to those who stay at home.’

Pall Mall Gazette, August 1912, on early Terra Nova expedition films and photographs

… and now

‘Ponting at his best was one of the most technically and artistically competent photographers in the history of the medium. More than most he tried to capture the “mood” and “feel” of scenes and the timeless quality of his Antarctic, Mount Fuji and other Japanese images are the real monuments to his life and work.’

Terry Bennett, collector, photo-historian, writer on nineteenth and twentieth century East and South East Asian photography; author of Photography in Japan 1865-1912

‘Herbert Ponting, “camera artist”, is perhaps best remembered as the first professional Antarctic photographer. In their versatile mixture of classicism and modernity, his images forged the public perception of an entire continent.’

Dr Jean de Pomereu, photographer and historian of Antarctica, co-editor of the platinum-palladium printed portfolio ‘Captain Scott’s Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913: The Photographs of Herbert Ponting’

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Prologue

1 From Cathedral City to California

2 New Country, Wider Horizons

3 From San Francisco to Fuji-San

4 Family Man or Nomad Photographer?

5 Asian Adventures and Difficult Decisions

6 New Opportunities in the ‘Old Country’

7 Memories of Japan, Antarctic Plans

8 Into the Great Unknown

9 From Midnight Sun to Darkness

10 Deep Winter and the Return of the Sun

11 Farewells, Final Films and Photographs

12 Return to Reality

13 A National Tragedy and Successful Cinema-lectures

14 The World at War; Ponting’s Home Front

15 Arctic Missions and a Series of Losses

16The Great White South and Ponting’s Projects

17The Great White Silence on the Silver Screen

18 Romance, Letters to Rochester and a Royal Presentation

19 Difficult Times

2090° South and Final Acts

Epilogue

Appendix A: Family, Terra Nova Expedition Personnel and Associates

Appendix B: Herbert Ponting’s photographic time-line and equipment

Appendix C: Maps

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

When I embarked on researching and writing Herbert Ponting: Scott’s Antarctic Photographer and Pioneer Filmmaker in 2016, neither Gareth Swain and his colleagues at The History Press nor I could have predicted the circumstances under which it would be completed in 2020 and published in 2021. That this book is available relatively soon after the 150th anniversary of its subject’s birth and the centenary of the founding of the Scott Polar Research Institute, is thanks to my editor Mark Beynon and colleagues including Simon Wright, Alex Waite, Mark Latham and Caitlin Kirkman. I am most grateful to them and to others who have assisted, including with permissions, during this ‘Covid-19’ period.

I also sincerely thank everyone who helped me, in numerous ways, piece together Herbert Ponting’s story. As H.J.P. Arnold suggested in his 1969 biography of Ponting, our shared subject was a public figure but a very private man, one who concealed from most people (including close-quartered Antarctic shipmates and cabinmates) that he was married. As to sources, Ponting referred in newspaper interviews to his Antarctic journals, but my research revealed no trace of them. By way of compensation, however, I was offered unpublished letters from Ponting to his friend Arthur Newman – which revealed, inter alia, that Ponting had (relatively late in life) fallen head-over-heels in love. Tantalisingly, there remain gaps to be filled in Ponting’s story, but I am extremely grateful to the many organisations and individuals who helped me produce what I believe is a comprehensive biography and pen-portrait of one of the world’s great photographers and filmmakers.

I would first like to thank the organisations who hold correspondence and other material which complement the Ponting–Newman letters: Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge (Naomi Boneham, Lucy Martin); The Royal Archives (thanks to Julie Crocker and colleagues; research with permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II); State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (Jane Johnson and colleagues); George Eastman Museum archives, Rochester, New York (Jesse Peers, Todd Gustavson and colleagues).

I would also like to thank the following British museums, archives and other organisations which have provided archived material, photographs, information or helpful advice: The Cheltenham Trust/The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum (Ann-Rachael Harwood, Benedict Sayers); Cheltenham Libraries; Alpine Club (Glyn Hughes and colleagues); Antarctic Club (Robert Headland); The Atkinson, Southport; BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham (Jeff Walden and colleagues); Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, University of Exeter (Mike Rickard and colleagues); Bonhams (Sarah Lindberg); British Film Institute (Bryony Dixon); British Library (Dr Luke McKernan and colleagues); British Journal of Photography (Marc Hertog); Camera Club, London (Morris Latham); Carlisle Grammar School (Linda Hodgson, Sarah Lee); Chiswick Auctions; Cinema Theatre Association (Clive Polden); Christies; Country Life (Picture Library); Crosby Library Services, Sefton (Alice Ronson, Gillian Morgan and colleagues); Cumbria County Council (David Kirkwood); Cunard Archive (Michael Gallagher); Daily Telegraph (Gavin Fuller); The Darkroom (Alistair Baird); Derby Museum; Discovery Point, Dundee; Dominic Winter Auctions (Chris Albury); Fine Art Society (Gordon Cooke, Patrick Duffy); Fram Museum (Geir Kløver); Getty Archive (Caroline Theakstone); Haynes International Motor Museum (Chris Marsh, Hugh Privetts); Harris Museum & Gallery, Preston; Japan Society (Heidi Potter); Leyland Historical Society (Peter Houghton); Liverpool Library & Archives; Liverpool Museums Maritime Archives & Library (Lorna Hyland and colleagues); National Archives, Kew; National Portrait Gallery (Photographs Collection); NatWest Group Archives (Sophie Volker, Kimberley Harsley and colleagues); P&O Heritage Collection (Susie Cox); RIBA Library/British Architectural Library (Jonathan Makepeace, Lauren Alderton); Royal Automobile Club Archives (Jane Holmes, Trevor Dunmore); Royal Collection Trust (Sophie Gordon, Emma Stuart); Royal Geographical Society with IBG (Eugene Rae and colleagues); Royal Institution (Jane Harrison, Charlotte New and colleagues); Royal Photographic Society (Michael Pritchard); Royal Society (Virginia Mills and colleagues); Science Museum/Science & Media Museum (Lewis Pollard, Justin Hobson and colleagues); Sotheby’s (Richard Fattorini); South Ribble Museum and Exhibition Centre, Leyland; Spink & Son (Marcus Dodgson, Jack West-Sherring and colleagues); Survey of London/Bartlett School of Architecture/University College London (Colin Thom and Philip Temple), University of Westminster (Anna McNally and colleagues); Victoria & Albert Museum (Dan Cox, Gregory Irvine, Ella Ravilious); Windlesham Camera Club; Zoological Society of London (Sarah Broadhurst).

Outside Britain: Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; Arctic University of Norway, UiT, Tromsø (Marianne Kaldager and colleagues); Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley Public Library (Berkeley History); California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside (Leigh Gleason, Matthew Clowse); California State Library, Sacramento (Kathleen Correia); Canterbury Museum, Christchurch (Sarah Murray, Geraldine Lummis, Jill Haley, Nicolas Boigelot); Christchurch Public Libraries; Cinémateque de Toulouse; E.O. Hoppé Collection (Graham Howe); Fujiya Hotel, Miyanoshita-Hakone; Lake Tahoe Tourism; Missouri History Museum; Namikawa Cloisonné Museum of Kyoto; National Geographic Society; National Library of Norway, Oslo; New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust (Lizzie Meek); Norwegian Polar Institute Library, Tromsø; Old First Presbyterian Church, San Francisco; Placer County Historical Society (Karri Samson and colleagues); Placer County Archives and Research Centre, Auburn (Bryanna Ryan); Powerhouse/MAAS Museum, Sydney (Paul Wilson); Sausalito Local History Society (Mike Moyle and colleagues); Sierra Club; Theodore Roosevelt Centre, Dickinson State University (Pamela Pierce); Tromsø Public Library & City Archives; University of Melbourne Archives (Georgina Ward).

Turning to individuals, I would first like to thank Dr David Wilson (great-nephew of Dr Edward Wilson), whose wisdom, guidance and advice over the past decade has been much appreciated and valued. My thanks also to Sophie Wilson, who has been my chief (and eagle-eyed) ‘reader’, and to Bill Alp and Mike Ward who kindly read sections of this book and provided helpful advice.

I am also grateful to the descendants and relatives of members of the Terra Nova and other Antarctic expeditions and of others mentioned in this book, and writers, historians, explorers and others who have provided material, information, guidance and encouragement, including: Sarah Airriess, Bill Alp; Ayumi Ashikari Horikoshi; Helen Barfield; Sarah Baxter (Society of Authors); Helen Benton (Sydenham family); Stephen Blake; Keith Bond (Southport churches); John Bonham; Jamie Bossom; Kirstie Elliott (Brighton Metropole Hotel); Adam Burns (www.american-rails.com); Robin Burton; Cathy Cooper; Cathy Corbishley Michel; Rob Crow; Paul Davies (Kingsbridge Books); Rick Dehmel; Dr Dennis Doordan (University of Notre Dame); Maggie Downing; Wendy Driver; David Elder; James Fenton; Martin Fisher (Darkside Photography); Carol Francis; Rev. Dale Gingrich (Bloxham parish); Hermann Gran; Sarah Greenough (National Gallery of Art, Washington); Roan Hackney (London Medal Company); Penelope Hemingway; Russ Hewick and colleagues (Dragonfly Tours, Japan); Dr Nick Hiley (Kent University); David Hirzel; Dr Katherine Hoffman (St Anselm College); Dr Max Jones (University of Manchester); Richard Kossow; Dr Frigga Kruse; Heather Lane; Stuart Leggatt (Meridian Rare Books); Katherine MacInnes; Shane Murphy; Gael Newton; Alan Noake (Kent Scouts); Rob Oechsle; Denis Pellerin (London Stereoscope Company); Dr Jean de Pomereu; Ian Ponting; Richard Ponting and family; Martin Reed (Photomemorabilia); Dr Marcia Rickard (St Mary’s College); Michael Rosove; Dr Stephen Ross and Dr Pearl Jacks; Prof. Ian Ruxton; Kiyomi Sakamaki (Kanaya Hotel History House); Stephen Scott-Fawcett (James Caird Society); Wendy Searle; Michael Smith; Robert Stephenson (Antarctic Circle Symposia); Caroline Strange (Australian National University, Canberra); Seamus Taaffe (Shackleton Autumn School, Athy); Dr Elizabeth Watkins (University of Leeds/BAFTSS); Louise Watling (Canterbury Christ Church University); John White (Cheltenham Camera Club); Philippa Wordie.

The following websites in particular have been invaluable in researching Ponting’s life and work: Ancestry.co.uk, British Newspaper Archive (British Library); California Digital Newspaper Collection; Gallica (Bibliothèque National de France); Papers Past (National Library of New Zealand); Times Digital Archive (via Gloucestershire Libraries); Trove (National Library of Australia).

My thanks, as ever, also go to family members and friends at home and abroad who have, over almost a decade, provided encouragement and moral support. They include (but are not limited to): the late Jean Strathie; Roberta Deighton, Fiona Eyre, Jill Burrowes and families; my godchildren; Ann Watkin and other St Andrews University friends; Michael Bourne, Ali Rieple and other Cranfield friends; the Cairncrosses; Lin and Robert Coleman; local friends including Helen Brown, Jackie Chelin and Simon Day, Pat Hopkins, Tracey Jaggers, Pauline Lyons, Joanna Scott, Sophie Wilson and the Woods; the late Siew Kee Tay; Roz and John Wilkinson.

The contributions of numerous others not named above is mentioned in endnotes, illustration captions and the bibliography; any oversights or omissions do not indicate a lack of gratitude. As well as thanking The History Press, we should all, in these difficult times, also remember all publishers, agents, booksellers, libraries, printers, distributors and others involved in bringing books to us all. This book, more than its predecessors, has truly been a collaborative effort; any errors in it are of my own making. I hope readers will enjoy the fruits of these combined labours and learning more about Herbert Ponting.

Introduction

Herbert Ponting: Scott’s Antarctic Photographer and Pioneer Filmmaker is the third in a loosely knit biographical trilogy about members of Captain Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. The first, Birdie Bowers: Captain Scott’s Marvel, is about the youngest member of the South Pole party; the second, From Ice Floes to Battlefields, tells the expedition story from the perspective of ship’s navigator Harry Pennell and follows him and other expedition members into the First World War. This third book offers both a third viewpoint on the expedition and new insights into the extraordinary life and times of one of the expedition’s most widely travelled members. Herbert Ponting, whose photographs and films are for many the gateway to the expedition and story of the South Pole journey was, unlike my previous subjects, well-known before he joined the expedition.

Ponting was born in Salisbury in 1870, 30 miles away from where Britain’s ‘father of photography’, William F. Talbot, still lived at Lacock Abbey. As a boy, Ponting loved looking at stereoviews and, while working as a junior bank clerk in Liverpool, bought an early Kodak roll film box camera. By 1901, after eight years living and working in California, he had turned his hobby into a profession and left San Francisco on the first of several photographic and journalistic assignments in Asia. Within two years of Ponting returning to Britain, Scott recruited him as the first professional photographer to travel to Antarctica. The expedition was, despite (or perhaps because of) its sad end, a turning point for Ponting’s career and took his work in many different directions, from exhibitions and cinema-lectures, to radio broadcasts and special effects for a ‘talkie’ film which was released just after his death.

As my early research indicated that young Herbert Ponting was father to the fully formed professional ‘camera-artist’ Scott met in 1909, I have adopted a chronological rather than thematic narrative structure. I benefited from the foundations laid by Ponting’s 1969 biographer, the estimable H.J.P Arnold, but it was not always easy to chart Ponting’s progress. Although Ponting was, for much of his life, a public figure, he compartmentalised his life and could be secretive. His diaries (including his Antarctic journal) and many of his letters are either lost or hidden from public view and those letters which exist are (as is evident from my acknowledgements) scattered throughout the world – as for Ponting’s early photographs, many were only ever published as anonymous stereoviews. But thanks to many helpful and kind people I have been able to draw on hitherto unpublished correspondence in which Ponting writes both about his professional and personal life, and to see – and publish for the first time – stereoviews of himself and his family which he made for personal use, and a photograph of him in his much-cherished open-top sports Buick.

I cannot claim to be as well travelled as my subject, but since embarking on research for this book my 2011 visit to Antarctica has been supplemented by visits to other places where Ponting lived and worked, including several English cities, California, Japan, China and Spitsbergen. I hope that readers might likewise be inspired by reading about Ponting’s life to visit or learn more about a new country, be more creative in their photography or embark on a new project. I have, to provide a sense of period, called ships ‘she’ and used place names and units of measurement current at Ponting’s time; this has caused me to reflect how much (at least until recent events) we take travel for granted and how slow, uncomfortable and sometimes perilous journeys undertaken by Ponting and his fellow travellers and explorers were.

Ponting once said that his camera was ‘one of the things which made life most worth living’ and described his work as an extension of his hobby. My previous subject, Birdie Bowers, was 7 when he wrote to an imaginary ‘pen-pal’ in Antarctica; similarly, Ponting enjoyed seeing stereoviews of foreign countries as a boy and, around the age of 18, began using one of Kodak’s new roll film cameras.

I hope readers will enjoy following in Ponting’s footsteps and will, like Ponting, draw inspiration from the wonders of the world in which we live.

Anne Strathie, Cheltenham, 2021

Prologue

Terra Nova expedition hut, Cape Evans, Antarctica, Monday, 29 May 1911

Captain Robert Scott, drawing from experience from his Discovery expedition, had devised a programme to exercise expedition members’ bodies and minds during the long, dark Antarctic winter. The first football match of the season had already taken place and minds were being stretched and entertained by a series of evening lectures on scientific and other subjects.

Herbert Ponting, the expedition’s ‘camera artist’ (Ponting’s preferred designation), had willingly agreed to give several talks on his extensive travels, using the 500 or so lantern slides he had included with the camera equipment shipped from England.1 Ponting’s first talk, on Burma, had been a great success and encouraged quartermaster ‘Birdie’ Bowers, meteorologist George Simpson and others to contribute their own memories of that beautiful country. This evening Ponting was to talk about Japan, a country he had visited several times and about which he had written a full-length travel memoir, In Lotus Land: Japan.

After dinner Scott and other expedition members settled down while Ponting made final adjustments to his portable acetylene-driven ‘magic lantern’ and prepared to speak. For the next hour everyone in the hut was transported from Antarctica’s winter darkness to the land of cherry blossom where Ponting, acting as their guide, showed them beautiful gardens and ornate temples, high waterfalls and deep river gorges, a giant Buddha and hot-spring communal baths, steaming craters of live volcanoes, and geisha houses where robed women played stringed instruments and served tea in delicate bowls.

Ponting was clearly pleased that everyone seemed to enjoy his lantern-show. Edward Wilson, the expedition’s chief scientist (an accomplished artist who admired Japanese woodblock prints), had long wanted to visit Japan and hoped to do so after the expedition. Scott had also liked what he had seen, and asked to borrow a copy of Ponting’s book, so he could learn more.

The next day Scott returned to his preparatory work for the South Pole journey, Ponting went out the edge of the cape to make flashlight photographs of a huge iceberg known as ‘Castle Berg’, and Edward Wilson began preparing for his lecture on sketching – which Ponting agreed was a very necessary complement to photography, particularly in Antarctic conditions.

1

From Cathedral City to California

Herbert George Ponting was born on 21 March 1870 at 21 Oatmeal Row, one of a network of centuries-old houses and shops clustered round the bustling marketplace of the cathedral city of Salisbury, Wiltshire. The following month, Herbert was baptised in the ancient church of Saint Thomas à Becket, where his parents, Francis and Mary Ponting, had married two years previously. Herbert’s parents had returned to their home county of Wiltshire after a period in Worcestershire, during which Francis Ponting – who had begun his working life as a 16-year-old bank clerk in Salisbury – had gained sufficient experience and promotion to qualify him for the post of manager of Hampshire Banking Company’s new Salisbury branch.1

Herbert had deep Salisbury and West Country roots on both sides of his family. His mother’s father, George Sydenham, owned a well-established Salisbury boot-making business, while his father’s father, Henry Ponting, worked as a land agent on the Savernake estate and lived near the remains of Wolf Hall, where King Henry VIII had wooed his third wife, Lady Jane Seymour.2 Further back, Sydenham ancestors included ‘father of English medicine’ Dr Thomas Sydenham and (by marriage) Sir Francis Drake, while on the Ponting side, family legend suggested Herbert’s great-grandfather had been born following a liaison between Savernake estate governess Susannah Ponting and a visiting Spanish nobleman. As Herbert’s parents were both the eldest of large families, he and his sister had almost twenty uncles and aunts, some only a few years older than themselves. Of Herbert’s ‘grown-up’ Ponting uncles, Uncle Charles, a widower with twin daughters, lived locally and worked as an architect – but Uncle Henry, a more mysterious figure, was a sea-captain on the Australia–China trade route. Several of Herbert’s Sydenham uncles had also left Wiltshire, but were, compared to Uncle Henry, relatively close-at-hand in Birmingham, where they worked in the city’s jewellery quarter.

By 1876, Herbert and his elder sister Edith (who had been born in Worcestershire) had two younger siblings, Francis and Alice. That year there were anxious moments for the family after news reached England that Uncle Henry’s ship had hit rocks and sunk just outside Shanghai. Thankfully, Herbert’s uncle and aunt (who travelled with her husband) and others aboard were safe, but Uncle Henry lost both his ship and his job and had to return to Britain.3 But nothing stopped Herbert from reading adventure storybooks or looking at stereoscopic photographs of China, Australia and other faraway places.4

But after Herbert’s father’s bank merged with another bank, he also lost his job. He was, however, given excellent references and before long had obtained a new post as Inspector of Branches at the Cumberland Union Banking Company. The only drawback for Herbert, Edith, Francis and Alice was that their father’s new job was in Carlisle, 300 miles north of Salisbury, far from relations, neighbours and school friends.

The Pontings’ new home, 2 Portland Square, was a handsome, relatively new stone terrace house fronting onto a pleasant garden square. It was considerably larger than 21 Oatmeal Row, so there was ample space for new additions to the family, Ernest, Ruth and Mildred (who arrived at approximately yearly intervals).5 Winters in Carlisle were generally colder and snowier than those in Salisbury, but that of 1880/81 was so severe that a ‘magic lantern’ show of Arctic photographs and news of the crushing of the Jeannette by Arctic ice seemed in keeping.6 By the time Herbert was 12, he was at pupil at Carlisle’s grammar school.7 But not long after his youngest brother, Sydenham, was born their father announced he was leaving Cumberland Union Banking Company and joining Preston Banking Company as their manager.8 By the end of the year the Pontings also lost a link with Wiltshire, when Herbert’s grandfather wrote to say that he and several of Herbert’s aunts and uncles were moving from the Savernake Forest to a dairy farm in Twickenham, Surrey.

By summer 1884, Francis Ponting was settling into his new job in Preston, Herbert and his brother Francis had said farewell to their classmates at Carlisle Grammar School, and his mother was organising her fourth move since her marriage. Herbert enrolled at Preston Grammar School, which was near his father’s bank and the town’s mainline station, from where trains ran to Liverpool, the Lake District and, more importantly for the Pontings, to Southport, a pleasant seaside town, away from the smog and smoke of Preston and Liverpool. The Pontings’ new home in Southport, Broughton House, 18 Park Road West, was a spacious detached stone villa facing onto Hesketh Park gardens and a short walk from the town’s beach, pier, promenade and railway station. Southport, once a modest seaport, had become ‘fashionable’ in the 1840s as the home-in-exile of France’s late Emperor Napoléon III, who had lived on Lord Street, a tree-canopied boulevard which had, locals claimed, inspired the Emperor’s ‘boulevardisation’ of Paris. Southport, a town of some 20,000 people, could be quiet in winter, but during the summer thousands of visitors and day-trippers would pour in from all over Lancashire, neighbouring counties and further afield.

Preston, by contrast, was very much a ‘cotton’ town, and Preston Banking Company had survived the ‘Cotton Famine’ of the American Civil War, as well as several regional and national ‘runs’ on banks. But shortly after Herbert’s father took up his new post, the bank’s long-serving deputy manager Gerald Tully (who had been passed over in favour of Francis Ponting) disappeared from his desk.9 After an audit revealed a shortfall of £10,000 in the bank’s assets, the police were summoned and a warrant issued for Tully’s arrest. Initial police enquiries drew a blank, but a few months later, a Preston businessman who was in New York on business suddenly spotted Tully. When he challenged the miscreant, Tully initially claimed it was a case of mistaken identity, but he was eventually arrested. But after efforts to extradite Tully failed, all the bank’s directors could do was assure customers and shareholders that their money was now in Francis Ponting’s safe hands.10

Southport life seemed to suit the Pontings and Herbert soon settled in at Preston Grammar School, a well-regarded school from which boys regularly went on to university. Out of school, Herbert’s life was a cycle of church and Sunday school, singing and music practice, school homework and (when that was done) board and other games with his parents and siblings – and, to break the routine, occasional outings to London and summer holidays on the Isle of Man.11 As Francis Ponting steered Preston Banking Company out of choppy waters and the bank began expanding, he was increasingly well rewarded for his efforts – but while his wife and children lacked for nothing, his brother Henry had recently died in London, leaving virtually nothing to his widow and three young daughters.12 While Herbert’s sisters, unlike their London cousins, would have no need to work for a living, it seemed that Herbert, as oldest son, was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. As many of Herbert’s Preston Grammar classmates began preparing for university entrance exams, he moved to Wellington House School, a private establishment for ‘sons of gentlemen’, which offered classes in all subjects and excellent sports facilities.13

By 1888, Herbert completed his somewhat disjointed education and began work at National Provincial Bank of England’s Liverpool branch, a solid-looking building on Fenwick Street, close to both the bustling waterfront and Central station, the terminus for trains from Southport. Liverpool had grown rich on the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but continued to thrive, as the once-famous quayside ‘forest of masts’ had been supplanted by deep wharves which accommodated cargo vessels and increasingly comfortable passenger ships which carried business and leisure passengers, and emigrants (the last including Herbert’s uncle Walter Ponting and family) to America. But Liverpool kept moving with the times and, in view of its increasing trade with Japan, Liverpool Chamber of Commerce official James Bowes had recently been appointed as Japan’s first British-born consul.14

Herbert’s father worked long hours, but seemed to thrive on his job, which included supervising the opening of new branches, including one in Southport, which boasted a classical facade and glass-domed roof.15 While Herbert had a good head for figures, the desk-bound life of a bank clerk did not suit him, but he enjoyed his leisure time outdoors, whether walking and climbing in the Lake District (easily accessed by train) or trying out his new, wonderfully compact Kodak camera. All the amateur photographer had to do (according to advertisements) was point the camera, press the button and send the 100-exposure roll-film to Kodak’s British company which would develop the photographs and return them to the customer, complete with a replacement roll of film.16

Liverpool had a proud photographic tradition. Francis Frith, the famous travel photographer, stereoview-maker and postcard manufacturer, had opened his first studio in the city in 1850 and co-founded one of Britain’s first photographic societies. That society was no more, but its magazine had survived as British Journal of Photography and the society’s successor, Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association, had recently organised the city’s first international photographic exhibition.17 During the exhibition, thousands had flocked to the city’s Walker Art Gallery to see over 2,000 photographs taken by LAPA members and photographers from all over Britain and from overseas, displayed in categories including landscapes and marine studies, portraits and ‘genre’ photographs, and scientific images.18 Favourites amongst the exhibits included photographs of Queen Victoria’s 50th Jubilee celebrations and enlarged photographs of beauty spots including the Lake District, Scottish Highlands, Swiss Alps and, further afield, America’s Yosemite Valley and the ‘exotic east’. Many of the medals had gone to established professionals but work of amateurs including LAPA council member Paul Lange and newcomer George Davison had also been rewarded. Postal delays had resulted in there being few works from America on show, but a young American photographer, Alfred Stieglitz (currently working in Berlin), had won a prize in the ‘genre’ class for his photograph of Italian street children, an image which had greatly impressed Dr Peter Emerson, one of Britain’s leading ‘naturalistic’ photographers.19 By the time the final soirée and conversazione ended, over 25,000 tickets had been sold and a sufficient surplus raised to pay for a new darkroom and other facilities for LAPA members. It was also confirmed that, all being well, a second international exhibition would take place in a few years’ time.

By spring 1890 Herbert had joined the Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association, which gave him access to the new darkrooms and to talks by visiting lecturers.20 He could also discuss his cameras with more experienced members and in September placed an advertisement in Photography magazine: ‘For sale: Fallowfield’s Facile hand camera, rectilinear lens, four stops ... quite new: cost £5 5s, price £4 4s – H. G. Ponting, National Provincial Bank, Liverpool.’21 It had recently been confirmed that LAPA’s second international photographic exhibition would take place in 1891, but in the meantime the appointment of ‘Glasgow Boy’ Arthur Melville and Alfred East as guest curators for the Walker Art Gallery’s annual art exhibition attracted attention. Both artists had worked extensively abroad: Melville had painted in Egypt, Turkey, North Africa, Spain and France, while East had recently returned from a painting tour of Japan, a commission from Marcus Huish, director of London’s Fine Art Society gallery and an expert on Japanese art, whose friends Mr and Mrs Arthur Liberty (who owned an ‘orientalist’ Regent Street emporium) and silk-trader and art-lover Charles Holme had travelled with East.22 The results of East’s commission had already been exhibited at Huish’s New Bond Street gallery, but at the Walker his ‘Fuji-San, the mountain of immortality’ and other works by him and Melville were displayed in a specially decorated ‘Japanese room’, a nod to Liverpool’s increasingly close links with Japan and ‘craze’ for Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado.23 The work of both artists sold well, and Melville also found a new patron in Caleb Margerison, the son of a wealthy Preston soap maker.24

By early 1891 thousands of entries for LAPA’s second international photographic exhibition were arriving from all over Britain and from America, France, Germany, Russia, India and Australia.25 On Thursday, 5 March, Herbert and his LAPA fellow-members joined a crowd of 3,000 for a ‘full-dress conversazione and promenade’ at the Walker, where the walls were crowded with over 4,000 photographs.26 The exhibition catalogue included tributes to William F. Talbot, Louis Daguerre and other photographic pioneers and explained that the selected exhibits were intended to demonstrate photography’s dual roles as a scientific recording medium and a means of personal expression.27 In terms of the former, highlights included moving images of horses (produced by British-born Eadweard Muybridge for Californian railroad tycoon Leland Stanford) and of people in a Leeds park, made by Frenchman Louis Le Prince. Although there were a good number of entries from America this time, 1888 prize-winner Alfred Stieglitz’s name was not in evidence – despite the fact that when his work had appeared in recent Photographic Society of Great Britain exhibitions, he had been praised as ‘one of the best known and most skilful amateur photographers in the world’.28 It had been announced that Mr Arthur Liberty would lecture to lantern slides of his wife’s photographs of Japan (some taken with her Kodak camera during their tour with Alfred East); sadly, Mr Liberty could not attend, but his script was ably read by a LAPA committee member.29 By the time the exhibition closed on Friday, 11 April, 50,000 tickets had been sold and there was already talk of a third exhibition in a few years’ time. In the meantime, for those interested in ‘Things Japanese’ (the title of a new book by Liberty’s friend Basil Chamberlain), a six-day ‘Japan Fancy Fair’ was being held at Streatham Towers, Strawberry Field, the home-cum-museum of Japanese consul James Bowes.

On 5 April Herbert joined other family members for the taking of the decennial census, during which details of all present at Broughton House, 18 Park Road West, were duly recorded: Francis Ponting (48), banker; Mary Ponting (49), no occupation; Edith (22), no occupation; Herbert (21), bank clerk; Francis (18), bank clerk (at Preston Banking Company’s Southport branch); four ‘scholars’ Ernest, Mildred, Ruth and Sydenham (13, 12, 11 and 9); and three servants (two ‘general’, one ‘governess’). Alice (17) was currently in Tulse Hill, near London, where she was studying art, music and other subjects at a private boarding college.30

Shortly after the census-taking it was announced that one of Britain’s most famous (and infamous) artists, James McNeill Whistler, would join Arthur Melville as guest curator for the Walker’s autumn art exhibition. Whistler, well-known for quarrels and lawsuits with his former patron, Liverpool shipping magnate Frederick Leyland, and with artist and critic John Ruskin, had only been rescued from bankruptcy by Marcus Huish of the Fine Art Society, who had offered him commissions and exhibitions. But whatever people thought of Whistler, everyone seemed to enjoy the exhibition of works by the two curators, Melville’s fellow ‘Glasgow Boys’ and members of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This time the showpiece display was a specially decorated ‘Whistler Room’, where the enigmatically titled Arrangement in Black – Fur Jacket turned out to be Whistler’s unnamed portrait of the socialite wife of Sir Henry Meux, a long-standing client of Herbert’s architect uncle Charles Ponting.31

By 1892, it was evident Herbert was not going to flourish in the world of banking, so it was agreed that he could leave National Provincial Bank and, pending a decision on his future career, join his brother Francis at the Preston Banking Company’s Southport branch. During Herbert’s time in Liverpool, many young men of his generation had heeded the call to ‘Go West, Young Man!’, including Hugh Chadwick, the 17-year-old son of Francis Ponting’s friend, Dr Chadwick of Leyland, who was now working for a British-born orchard owner in Auburn, northern California.32 Hugh’s job in California had been arranged through a London-based firm Scott & Jackson, which also sold property in the same area:33

The purchase of an orange grove or fruit plantation ... is the best investment an English Gentleman can make ... It ensures him a steadily-increasing income at a modest outlay of capital, a residence in a locality offering good fishing and shooting and exceptionally good social advantages: also easy communication with all the chief centres of the world. The beauty of the climate cannot be surpassed ...

By December Francis Ponting had purchased a fruit ranch near Auburn, a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. As Herbert prepared for his new life 5,000 miles away, he had little idea what to expect, but suspected he would enjoy growing fruit and climbing in the Sierra Nevada more than he had entering debits and credits in bank ledger books.

On Saturday, 31 December, following family farewells, Herbert walked up the gangway from Liverpool’s Prince’s Dock and boarded Cunard Line’s SS Servia.34 As a saloon-class passenger, he had been able to bring six pieces of luggage and, in addition to his comfortable sleeping quarters, had the run of several public rooms.35 As winter Atlantic crossings were not popular with leisure travellers, most of those not in the ship’s cramped ‘steerage’ quarters were merchants or seasoned business travellers. There were, however, a few other adventurous young men aboard, including professional photographer George Collard (on his second visit to America for George West of Gosport) and Arthur Moore, a skilled textiles worker who was emigrating to Holyoke, Massachusetts, in hopes of finding steadier work and a low-cost home of his own.36

Herbert and his fellow passengers welcomed 1893 on a choppy Irish Sea, so were glad of a short stop in Queenstown, near Cork. But as soon as the Servia left the shelter of land, she began rocking and rolling in what promised to be a full-blown Atlantic storm. Passengers were advised to return to their cabins, get into their bunks and strap themselves in. Over the next few days Herbert and his fellow passengers battled seasickness and tried to sleep while kitchen equipment crashed around the galleys. When Herbert finally emerged from his confinement, he learned that no passengers or crew had died, but that three deckhands had been badly injured in what an American naval officer described as the worst storm he had experienced in a decade.

By 6 January, from the promenade deck, Herbert caught his first glimpse of Newfoundland through dense fog, but as the sun broke through, a shoal of whales passed the ship. By the time the Servia was on her approach to New York, snow was falling, and a harbour pilot came aboard to help the captain navigate through the sea ice into New York harbour – where Herbert at last saw the famous Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge and the city’s ‘sky-scraper’ buildings.37

Herbert disembarked and presented his documents to immigration officials on Ellis Island. New York was in the grip of winter snowstorms, but he saw what he could before boarding the first of several trains which would carry him 3,000 miles across the country to California. Eventually snow-blanketed hills gave way to flat, sparsely populated plains and he arrived in Chicago, a fast-growing lakeside metropolis which boasted more ‘sky-scrapers’ than New York. The temperatures were low and the winds fierce, but Chicagoans were looking forward to May, when the city’s first World’s Fair would get under way. From Chicago, Herbert crossed America’s ‘corn-belt’ and the Rocky Mountains to the mineral-rich cattle country of the ‘Wild West’. At Salt Lake City, Utah, he boarded a Central Pacific Railroad train which, by way of the 7,000ft-high Donner Pass, carried him over the Sierra Nevada range to California, the Sunshine State.

2

New Country, Wider Horizons

Auburn had a population of around 1,500 and was the administrative seat of Placer County, which stretched from north of California’s state capital Sacramento to the shores of Lake Tahoe. Auburn had been a Gold Rush settlement but had, thanks to a gentle climate and good railroad links, found a new role as a fruit-growing centre. Ponting’s 27-acre ranch lay a few miles from the centre of town and had been carved out of a tract of farming land.1 His near neighbours were mainly long-term settlers, mining-engineers or other fruit-growers. Captain William McCann soon introduced him to fellow ‘Britishers’ including Worcestershire-born apple farmer Frederick Varden (young Hugh Chadwick’s employer) and rancher Pete Haggart.2 Pete, an outdoorsman of few words, had climbed extensively in his native Scotland, New Zealand and America, and seemed happy for Ponting to accompany him on mountaineering and hunting expeditions. The more loquacious Captain McCann also introduced Ponting to members of the county’s ‘Citrus Colony’, a planned settlement largely staffed by English ‘remittance’ men, many of whom were second sons of wealthy fathers who happily paid Scott & Jackson to ensure their sons learned something useful and kept out of trouble while seeing the wider world.3

Ponting soon found he had a knack for carpentry, so began making improvements to his ranch house. Learning about fruit-growing took longer, but as the months rolled by, he felt more confident discussing yield figures for peaches and table grapes (his main crops) and understanding the yearly cycle of pruning, insect control and hiring of hands for picking, packing and dispatching. Given Auburn’s Gold Rush history, there were plenty of people on hand to show Ponting how to prospect and pan for gold and to identify local minerals. A friend with excellent culinary skills also taught him to cook for himself and visitors and, after Ponting found he had an aptitude for shooting, he became sufficient of a ‘crack shot’ huntsman to deal with deadly rattlesnakes or kill something for the stew-pot.4 If Ponting ever had spare time, Auburn’s meeting rooms, opera house or masonic hall usually had something on offer, or Captain McCann had a gathering planned.

With the Sierras on his doorstep and Lake Tahoe, San Francisco and 14,000ft Mount Shasta accessible by railroad, Ponting had no shortage of photographic subjects. He was pleased to discover that stereoviews, now regarded as rather old-fashioned in Britain, were experiencing a revival in America, thanks to companies such as Underwood & Underwood, which regularly released new, high-quality boxed sets. Ponting began making his own stereoviews, learning by trial and error how to produce a perfect three-dimensional effect. Auburn had no camera club, but local portrait and survey photographer J.M. Jacobs ran a well-stocked studio. Jacobs had, like many Auburn residents, arrived during the Gold Rush hoping to become a rich man but despite failing to do so had stayed on, working first as a dairy farmer, then as a photographer and spare-time spelunker.5 W.M. Mackay, head of Chico High School, turned out to be an enthusiastic amateur photographer, and he and Ponting enjoyed regular photographic excursions.6 The California Camera Club in San Francisco was too far away for regular visits, but Ponting could see examples of the work of leading club members on postcards, stereoviews or in illustrated magazines.7 Sometimes images were shown as being ‘copyright of’, something many Californian photographers preferred to do after Carleton Watkins had gone bankrupt and, after selling his studio to Isaiah Taber, found he had inadvertently transferred all rights in his world-famous photographs of Yosemite Valley to his younger competitor.8

In June Ponting was contacted by young Hugh Chadwick, who asked if he could stay with Ponting as the Vardens needed his room for visiting members of Mrs Varden’s family.9 Hugh assured Ponting he would receive £15 from funds paid by his father to Scott & Jackson, but when this was not forthcoming Ponting learned that Scott & Jackson had not paid the Vardens all they owed them. Ponting was happy to help the son of his father’s friend but there were bigger financial worries on the horizon as America’s two decades of economic growth ended abruptly. As railroad companies crashed, banks failed and unemployment soared, President Cleveland went cap in hand to British and European banks, seeking standby loans.

Over the summer Ponting’s first fruit crop ripened nicely, but by August an oversupply of produce kept market prices low.10 In an effort to boost northern California’s prospects, San Francisco newspaper publisher Michael de Young suggested his home city host a ‘Midwinter Fair’ along the lines of Chicago’s current World’s Fair.11 Before long, an organising committee was established, dates fixed (January to June 1894), a 40-acre site secured (Golden Gate Park), an official photographer appointed (Isaiah Taber) and stands at the fair had been booked by several Chicago World’s Fair exhibitors.

On 27 January 1894, despite heavy snowfalls which stranded exhibitors and visitors on the wrong side of the Sierras, the Midwinter Fair opened as planned. Visitors arrived from all over the state, other parts of the country and even overseas to see the fair, with its ‘Grand Court’, exhibition halls, an Egyptian-style brick-built Palace of Fine Arts (which Ponting photographed with a lady friend in the foreground) and a 270ft metal tower topped by the world’s most powerful searchlight.12 There was, as promised, ‘something for everyone’, whether a Gold Rush mining camp, ‘villages’ representing Hawaii, South Sea Islands and other faraway places, a belly-dancing show by music-hall star ‘Little Egypt’ or a Japanese tea-garden, with ‘rikishas’ for hire.13 Isaiah Taber’s official (and copyrighted) photographs and postcards sold briskly, thanks partly to rules which restricted visitors’ own photography.

On 4 July a grand Independence Day extravaganza brought the Midwinter Fair to a close. Since January, over 2 million people had passed through the turnstiles, many of whom were first-time visitors to California or potential settlers in the Sunshine State. Auburn’s Board of Supervisors, anxious lest their town be overlooked by potential settlers, authorised Feodor Closs, Placer County’s largest olive-grower, to produce an updated ‘bird’s eye view’ poster of Auburn for distribution nationally and internationally.14 Closs commissioned artist Carl Dahlgren (who had exhibited at the Fair) to produce both the central bird’s eye view and a series of surrounding vignettes, showing local ranches, fruit farms or local amenities. After Ponting agreed to participate in the project, Dahlgren prepared a drawing of Ponting’s ranch showing him and a lady companion in a two-horse carriage in the foreground. When the ‘bird’s eye’ map was published, Ponting’s ranch looked attractive, but fruit prices remained low, and it appeared that it might not provide as much annual income as Ponting’s father had understood from Scott & Jackson.

According to reports from Southport, however, Ponting’s father had few money worries. The directors of Preston Banking Company had, during the bank’s fiftieth anniversary year, presented him with a cheque for 1,000 guineas and an engraved silver-plate tea service by way of thanks for his efforts (which Francis Ponting protested were ‘a labour of love’).15 But as the bank expanded more capital was required and the bank’s directors decided that, rather than undertake an expensive floatation, they would accept London & Midland Bank’s merger offer of £636,000.16 As London & Midland was the larger bank, Francis Ponting’s post would be redundant but he would receive £20,000 for loss of office and be guaranteed further work with the London & Midland Bank group. Much to the delight of Ponting’s siblings, their father’s new role involved regular meetings in London, where the family sometimes all stayed in a rented apartment near Hyde Park.17 Francis Ponting was a generous father but he also wanted his children to make ‘good matches’ – and had, when Ponting was living in Southport, put a damper on his eldest son’s budding relationship with the daughter of a Southport hotelier.18 But he could hardly object when, in early 1895, Ponting announced he was courting Mary Elliott, the youngest daughter of the late General Washington Lafayette Elliott and his widow, Mrs Valeria Blaney Elliott, both descendants of pre-1776 American settlers.19

Mary Elliott’s parents had moved to San Francisco following the General’s appointment as Commander of the city’s Praesidio. In 1888, a few years after the General had retired, he died suddenly but Mary’s mother kept on the family home at 1920 Franklin Street, Pacific Heights, where (as noted in the city’s society ‘Blue Book’ and newspaper columns) the Elliott women were either ‘at home’ to visitors or out attending fundraising events or social engagements.20 Mrs Elliott, like many people living off investments, had found life harder following the 1893 ‘panic’ and, to make ends meet, she and her daughters moved to a smaller house at 1827 Sacramento Street and rented out the family home. But in early 1894 the family suffered another blow, when Mary’s 29-year-old brother George, who worked as a clerk in a city firm, died during a visit to Santa Monica.21 Mary, her mother and two sisters spent most of that year staying with friends and relations, but by November had returned to the city on a permanent basis.

On 2 June 1895 an announcement appeared in the San Francisco Call:

The wedding of H. G. Ponting of Auburn and Miss Mary Biddle Elliott of 1827 Sacramento Street, daughter of the late General Washington L. Elliott, U.S.A., will take place at the First Presbyterian Church next Wednesday evening at 9 o’clock.

On Wednesday, 6 June, Ponting and his brown-haired, blue-eyed bride married at the church, which was only a block away from the Elliotts’ home.22 As Ponting’s relatives were over 5,000 miles away, the wedding was very much an Elliott family affair. Mary, who was attended by her sisters, wore a satin robe and train trimmed with family heritage lace and Ponting’s best man and ushers had been recruited from the Elliotts’ ‘Blue Book’ circle of friends, members of whom had also been invited for a small post-ceremony supper at the Elliott home. Ponting’s father was apparently pleased at the match and placed an announcement in the Preston Herald:23

Ponting – Elliott: … at the First Presbyterian Church, San Francisco, Herbert George, eldest son of F.W. Ponting, of Broughton House, Southport, late general manager of Preston Banking Company, to Mary, daughter of the late General Washington Elliott, U.S.A., and niece of the late Commodore Denman, U.S.N.

As Ponting had his own property, he and Mary returned to Auburn, where Mary adjusted to rural life 100 miles from family and friends and Ponting spent less time on photographic and hunting excursions with Pete Haggart and his other friends. But by the time Ponting and Mary marked their first wedding anniversary in June 1896, it was clear that, with state-wide gluts of fruit now a chronic situation, Ponting was never going to generate a sufficient profit to support himself and his wife, let alone any children.24

Ponting’s parents had by now moved to Watford, conveniently close for Francis Ponting’s work in London, from where Francis Ponting booked ‘For Sale’ advertisements:25

Fruit farm, about 30 acres, at Auburn, California: prime condition, charming scenery, healthy climate, good society, excellent schools: price, with dwelling and appliances, £2,000: exceptional opportunity. Photographs and full particulars: F. W. Ponting, Esq., late General Manager, Preston Banking Co., The Manor House, Watford, near London; or A. Sydenham, Merchant, 26 Frederick Street, Birmingham.

While Ponting waited for news about his ranch, he learned that his 42-year-old uncle, Alfred Ponting, who had worked on Grandfather Henry’s dairy farm for years, had died suddenly in the gold-fields of Matabeleland.26 Alfred, a trained engineer, had wanted to see the wider world but within months of arriving in Africa had succumbed to a combination of malaria and pneumonia.

During the hot California summer, crates full of rotting peaches and other fruit stacked up on San Francisco’s docksides, before being dumped into the bay.27 By October, when Ponting’s table-grapes were ready for market, the surplus was such that growers were selling table-grapes by the crate load to winemakers at rock-bottom prices rather than see them go to waste.28 Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of a buyer for Ponting’s ranch – but by way of compensation a new camera club in Sacramento was organising outings to Yosemite and other beauty spots and a series of winter lectures – a highlight of which a was show of hand-tinted lantern slides of Japan, which included particularly realistic-looking images of Mount Fuji.29

In spring 1897 it was announced that Southern Pacific would be running ‘fruit trains’ with connections to Chicago, from where California’s surplus fruit would be transported to new markets.30 But despite this new initiative there were still no buyers for Ponting’s ranch, so he and Mary decided they should throw a party to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. On a fine late June evening 150 friends, neighbours and local ‘Britishers’ danced the night away on an outdoor dance floor laid by Ponting, around which he had hung strings of electric lights and bunting of alternate British and American flags.31 Captain McCann acted as master of ceremonies for an enjoyable evening which concluded with renditions of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and ‘God Save the Queen’.

By late summer it was increasingly evident that Mary was bearing her and Ponting’s first child and on 13 January 1898 she gave birth to a daughter, whom she and Ponting named Mildred Spencer in honour of (respectively) Ponting’s sister and Mary’s maternal great-grandmother. As the proceeds of the previous year’s fruit harvest dwindled, Ponting used the knowledge of mining and metallurgy he had acquired over the past five years to secure a job as a manager at the Ophir quartz mine, which was just down the valley from Auburn.32 Before long, he got to grips with his new duties (although he continued to find checking over the deserted mine at night quite eerie) but just as he was settling in, a Mr Brown from San Francisco showed interest in his ranch. Sadly, while contracts were being drawn up, Ponting’s good friend and climbing companion Pete Haggart died suddenly at Lake Tahoe. Pete, who was only 48, had been diagnosed with acute diabetes but chose to revisit favourite haunts instead of live as an invalid in his ranch house. On the day of Pete’s funeral, Ponting joined Captain McCann and other local friends and acted as a pallbearer. Following the funeral, Pete’s friends arranged for a fine marble tombstone to be erected over Pete’s grave in Auburn’s hilltop cemetery.33

Mr Brown’s offer of $4,500 for the ranch was, in terms of pounds sterling, less than half of the £2,000 Ponting’s father had stated in his advertisement, but as it put an end to the losses on Ponting’s fruit, Ponting accepted the offer and, after agreeing with Mary that they would move to San Francisco, resigned from his job at Ophir.34 While they were there, a San Francisco Call article suggested that Ponting’s purchaser ‘Mr Brown’ was actually George E. Barron, a millionaire’s son who had been involved in lawsuits relating to his father’s estate and died recently in the city.35 It was all rather strange, but as Mary was now expecting a second child in early 1899, Ponting’s main concern was to find a way of supporting his family once Mr Brown’s money ran out. He had invested in a gold-mining venture near Auburn, but that would require further investment before producing a return, and while there were banking jobs aplenty in San Francisco, Ponting had no desire to turn back the clock.36 While Ponting and Mary mulled over their future, they agreed it was time for Ponting to visit his parents and introduce them to his new family.

In January 1899 Ponting, a visibly pregnant Mary and toddler Mildred travelled by train to New York, where they boarded American Line’s SS St Paul, bound for Southampton. One of their more interesting fellow passengers was author and Harper’s Weekly journalist Richard Harding Davis, who had, during America’s recent war with Spain, reported from Cuba, where he had been attached to the ‘Rough Riders’ cavalry regiment commanded by Theodore Roosevelt, New York’s new Governor.37 The St Paul reached Southampton on 8 February, where the Pontings’ details were recorded by officials: Ponting, ‘foreigner’, ‘engineer’, aged 32; Mary, ‘foreigner’, aged 30 (Mary, like many women, disliked discussing her age).38

As Ponting’s father was now more-or-less retired, he had sold the Watford house and purchased one in Ilkley, Yorkshire, where he and his family would be near his brother James (who worked for Craven Bank in Skipton) and his family. The new Ponting family home, ‘Westwood Lodge’, had ample space for visitors, but as it was close to the moor and risked becoming snow-bound in winter, Ponting and Mary arranged for their baby to be born in London. Whatever Ponting had missed about Britain he had not, as a sufferer from bronchitis and other chest complaints, missed damp, foggy winters, and when he and Mary wrote to friends in California they assured them they would return to the Sunshine State well before the next British winter.39

On 16 March, in a private nursing home in Bayswater, Mary gave birth to a baby boy. The following month, still in London, Ponting registered the baby’s name as Arthur Elliott; when asked for his profession he said that he was ‘of independent means’. Ponting had just missed a major international photographic exhibition at Crystal Palace, but Kodak had recently opened stylish new showrooms in Regent Street, for which Liverpool exhibition medallist George Davison (now working for Eastman Kodak) had commissioned decorative fittings from architect George Walton.40 London, as Ponting knew from his younger siblings, had much to offer, whether plays or ‘movies’ now being shown at several theatres and at the London Polytechnic in Regent Street.41

Ponting had a lot of catching up to do with his siblings. Ponting’s elder sister Edith, recently married to Preston Grammar ‘old boy’ Richard Thistlethwaite, was now living in Cheshire where her husband was teaching; Francis was still working in Southport for London & Midland Bank, apparently happily settled there; Ernest, who had hoped to join Ponting on his ranch in California, was now following in uncle Charles Ponting’s footsteps and studying architecture; Sydenham, the youngest sibling, was due to finish at boarding school at the end of the current school year.42

Following a conference with his father, Ponting agreed to take a banking job for the duration of his stay in England. But although he and Mary planned to leave before the end of autumn, weeks turned to months and it was arranged that baby Arthur would be baptised in Ilkley.43 On 10 November, everyone was invited to St Margaret’s Church and to a family gathering at Westwood Lodge. Ponting’s grandfather Henry, now in his late seventies, had travelled north for the occasion, so Arthur was perched on Ponting’s knee for a special ‘four generations’ photograph.44 Six weeks later, all available Ponting siblings assembled for a traditional family Christmas at Westwood Lodge.45

In March 1900, still in Britain, Ponting celebrated his 30th birthday. The question of his future career was still a matter for discussion, but when Mary learned the following month that her mother had died in San Francisco, they agreed it was time to return to America so she could be with her sisters and help them deal with their mother’s estate.46

On 14 June Ponting, Mary and their children boarded SS Minneapolis, where Ponting recorded himself and his family as ‘American’ and his profession as ‘nil’. During a short stay in New York, Ponting learned there had been a major dock fire across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey. When he went to see if he could get close enough to take any photographs, a friendly official let him board a ship.47 When Ponting left the ship the officials let him take away a few ‘relics’ including two fire-blackened but intact dinner plates and a small bottle of champagne.

In San Francisco, Mary visited her mother’s grave at the Praesidio and helped her sisters Katherine and Frances wind up their mother’s estate. As 1920 Franklin Street was rented out and her sisters were living in 1827 Sacramento Street, Ponting and Mary moved to a house in Sausalito, which was linked to the city by a regular ferry service.48 Sausalito, once a quiet fishing village with an outpost of the Praesidio, was now a popular retreat for ‘Blue Book’ San Franciscans and British expatriates, many of whom had houses on the fog-free upper levels of the hillside overlooking Richardson Bay.49 Ponting soon found that he could, from his back garden, take photographs of the shoreline and Angel Island and, from further up the hill (with a telephoto lens), of Alcatraz Island in one direction and Mount Tamalpais in the other.50 But much as Ponting enjoyed exploring the area, he needed to find a regular source of income to supplement Mary’s income from her mother’s estate.

One day, when Ponting was out and about, he came across a professional photographer working on a photographic survey of the area.51