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From: Bill Utterback <>
Subject: [KYJP] A Week With Gordon Wilson - Part 2
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 18:40:59 -0500


My friends -

As we continue our week long visit with Professor Gordon Wilson, today's
post will come from his work, "Passing Institutions". This little essay is
called, "The Family Album". As we work with preserving the facts and
figures of our forebears, no less important should be the preservation of
the visual record of those ancestors through the early photographs - the
daguerreotypes, tintypes, callotypes, cabinet photos and the other forms of
19th century photography. One of the fixtures in many homes in the late
19th and early 20th century was the family album.

Tomorrow, we will again have a selection from one of Professor Wilson's works.

-B
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PASSING INSTITUTIONS
The Family Album
-Gordon
Wilson

On a recent visit to an old-time friend in the country I ran across what I
would have called an anachronism in one of my English classes, an old
family album. Since I was "company," I was shown into the front room, or
parlor, a sort of musty, coldish place, not very well acquainted with
sunlight and fresh air. On the marble-topped table in the corner, right
under the hanging lamp with its array of dazzling glass pendants, lay the
album, looking just as fresh as it did when it came directly from the hands
of Santa Claus. Red plush backs, a metal plate curiously wrought to spell A
L B U M diagonally across the back, and the necessary clamps to fasten the
treasures within all testified to the bona fide nature of my find. If any
of these things had been lacking, I would have been certain that the object
in question was spurious. None of my hosts could guess how dull the
conversation seemed that evening while we discussed all the known varieties
of weather, the present location and family responsibilities of all the
children, and the probable outcome of the tobacco crop. At any other time I
would have regarded these topics as of boundless interest; just then I
wanted to be alone with the old album.

When I was alone, I first reviewed my knowledge of what I should expect.
You see, family albums were an institution; they existed long enough to
become standardized. Even before I opened the magic clasps, which were
broken, as a matter of course, I knew I would score 100. The first picture,
just as I had expected, was a family group, made some years ago, after all
the children had arrived and before any of them had left home. Probably
Daguerre himself posed the first family groups and copyrighted the method,
for they are all alike. The family, if small and consisting merely of the
parents and one child, are arranged as follows: the father is seated with
his young hopeful on his knee, while the mother stands behind with her hand
frozen to her husband's shoulder. The old-time time-exposure camera
(judging by some very vivid and accurate memories, the time was about half
an hour) made it necessary for the victims to assume a pose about as mobile
as one's grandsire carved in alabaster; hence the mother's hand in its
frozen condition while all were waiting for the birdie to fly out. When the
family was larger grown, Father and Mother were both seated, with a child
in each lap, or else the baby between them and the other children ranged at
the back. The laws of the Medea and the Persians would have changed more
rapidly than this arrangement. I have always wondered why the photographer
requested us to look pleasant, especially when he fastened a contraption at
the base of my skull to keep me from flinching at the ordeal and spoiling
the plate. At best the family assumed a sort of resigned air, as if matters
might have been conceivably worse.

The second picture in the album just had to be a separate one of Father,
with one of Mother on the opposite page. Then followed Big Brother as he
appeared, minus most of his baby clothes, seated in the parlor washbowl.
Many a nose now slightly out of plumb belongs to a man who as a boy made
slighting remarks about this same picture. The victim hated the thing as
much as he could, but, after a fellow has been caught and exposed in his
innocence to the camera, there is nothing to do but defend oneself. Then
followed all sorts of miscellaneous pictures of children, of relatives on
both sides of the house, and of neighbors, all of the same impassive pose.
One of the pictures in our album was of my sister's beau, made, I was told,
on a very cold day; but, to save my life, I could not see that he appeared
any more frozen than any of the others.

Over at the end of the album were little spaces, made especially for
tintypes, There some hard-featured ancestor, dead and gone for a
generation, frowned at the camera and, consequently, at the beholder ages
after the frown had softened into a perpetual smile. There was always an
element of fear in my young mind when I got this far over in the book, and
I did not relish being alone in the room when looking at these pictures.
Too often I had been reminded that these were of people now dead, and I had
the strange notion that they had been photographed after death. Besides, I
always thought it queer that anyone did not think it important enough to
live till I got there. It seemed stupid in him to be in such a hurry to
leave, especially when I was enjoying everything so much. I hope that
ancestors in general will be forgiving if I say that I have often wondered
how such hard-looking people could have such handsome descendants.

The album achieved, I sat for some time, lingering over memories,
especially the agonies of being pictured. I could not help wondering why
some one did not make a study to determine whether people who were often
photographed usually turned out better than others, I should think that the
harrowing experiences of having one's picture made by the time-exposure
method would make the reputed punishments of the hereafter too real to be
trifled with.

But the old family album is gone; as a live institution it vanished along
with the front room, and even before buggies started downhill. There is no
place for it today, for the marbletop center table is gone, too, and the
hanging lamp and its pendants are as far away as tallow dips to most of
those who were born an age too late.

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