Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century (118 page)

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Authors: Laurence Lerner

Tags: #History, #Modern, #19th Century, #Social Science, #Death & Dying, #test

BOOK: Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century
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Wordsworth, Mary, 71-72, 219
Wordsworth, Thomas, 71-73
Wordsworth, William, 27, 33, 67-81, 197, 227
Wrigley, E. A., 232
Y
Yellin, Jean Fagin, 191
Yonge, Charlotte M., 148-54, 198
Young People's Treasury,
57
 
Illustrations
"The Child," by Otto Runge.
Life and Death
Otto Runge's drawing of a child (1809) suggests vitality, energy, and entrance into life; its hands are open to receive the world.
Charles Wilson Peale's portrait of his dead daughter (1785) contrasts in every way: the child is clothed, no doubt in the clothes she will be buried in, she not only lies stiff, with her arms rigid at her sides, she even has the arms bound, and she is accompanied by the very conventionalized figure of the grieving mother. When the picture hung in Peale's studio it was concealed by a curtain, on which was written: "Before you draw this curtain, consider whether you will affect a Mother or Father who has lost a child."
In contrast to the self-sufficiency of the lively infant, bereavement is seen as a family event.
 
"Rachel Weeping," by Charles Wilson Peale. Courtesy of
The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
 
"An Anxious Hour," by Alexander Farmer. Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum.
At The Bedside
Almost all we know about sick or dying children comes, of course, from those who watched and waited. Alexander Farmer's "An Anxious Hour" (1865) shows us the grieving, helpless mother: it could be Catherine Tait or Margaret Oliphant.
Luke Fildes' picture of "The Doctor" (1891) was one of the most popular of all Victorian paintings. Grief and fear are here replaced by the suggestion of expertise: the doctor has sat by many such bedsides and knows what to look forbut, as chapter 1 makes clear, there is little he can do.
 
"The Doctor," by Luke Fildes. Courtesy of The Tate Gallery, London.
 
"Angel faces smile," by Elizabeth Hawkins
Angels and Absences
The two themes of this book are juxtaposed in these two images. "Angel faces smile" is a sculpture by Elizabeth Hawkins in Highgate Cemetery, London: the group of angel faces seems to have been a standard pattern for children's graves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
A sentimentalized dog grieves over "The Empty Cradle" in the picture by W. Archer (18391935) of the dead child as an absence.

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