Herbert Ponting

Scott's Antarctic Photographer and Pioneer Filmmaker

Anne Strathie

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780750979016
• eBook ISBN: 9780750997058
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

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.

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 Ho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• 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
• 16 The Great White South and Ponting’s Projects
• 17 The Great White Silence on the Silver Screen
• 18 Romance, Letters to Rochester and a Royal Presentation
• 19 Difficult Times
• 20 90° 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
• Picture Sections