Portraits

For the last couple of days, after the sun and heat have driven me indoors from sanding and scraping at old paintwork, I've been trying to get to know Sarah a little bit better. I started with photographs. Unfortunately, there are only 3 photos of her in existence, all of them taken later in life.

This one I've dated to 1864, so she would have been around 46 years old. Immediately I see that we have two things in common : (1) neither of us photographs well; and (2) we both have a tendency to portliness. Interestingly, the hair style dates from the early 1840s, so is probably how she wore her hair as a young woman. Back in the nineteenth century, people tended to get all dressed up in their Sunday best to have their "portraits" taken, so the hairstyle may have been Sundays-only. Although her hair looks as though it might be wavy, those corkscrewing ringlets would have meant going to bed with her hair twisted up in rags, and you wouldn't be wanting to do that every night of the week!

I've got no idea what Sarah looked like as a young woman. The best I can come up with are photos of one of her sisters, and one of her daughters, as likely guides to how she may have looked.

This is Caroline Hall, Sarah's youngest sister. The last time Sarah saw her sister in person, Caroline would have been a six-month old baby - Sarah's mother had Caroline six months after Sarah gave birth to her first child. Cal (as her father called her) and Sarah knew each only through letters and the occasional photograph.

And this is Kate Norgrove, the youngest of Sarah's daughters to survive childhood, and the one I think looks most like her. She is probably about 15 here, and obviously went to a lot trouble for her portrait - curling her hair in ringlets and finishing it off with a flower.