People From London

"'To be distracted is pardonable. To be incoherent is simply unobliging.'"

"'But never mind, all the best heroines are beautiful orphans, abandoned to their fate, and the one thing that's certain about my situation is that I'm going to be a heroine when I grow up.' 'Can I be a hero?' 'Well, I suppose you can try. But you'll have to try very hard.'"

"'Success on that scale don't make for happiness. Look at Asquith. Why does he drink? I wouldn't want you to end up a drunkard like that.'"

"Man cannot live on charm alone, and an ambitious man cannot live on anything less than wealth, good social connections and substantial political influence."

"Again, be patient. And have courage. Remember, everything passes, even the most unspeakable horrors."

"One must be rational about such matters and being rational need not mean being cold."

"Romance is the opiate of the dissatisfied, it anaesthesises them from the pain of their disordered second-rate lives [...] If romance is the opiate of the dissatisfied then surely nostalgia is the opiate of the disillusioned, for those who see all their dreams come true and find themselves living in a nightmare."

"Recovering from an ill-starred romance is, after all, to anyone of sufficient will-power and self-respect, purely an attitude of mind."

"'Acquiring carnal knowledge is like swimming in the sea ... The sea's so beautiful to look at, so wonderful to swim in, but you must never bathe unless it's safe. People so often drown in the sea and some coasts are so very dangerous, ... like the Coast of Gower.'"

"Sexual desire has to be dead as a doornail before a man and a woman can be genuinely at peace in a platonic relationship."

"A rational disposition must necessarily preclude a romantic outlook in life, and only the failures of this world can afford to dispense with a rational disposition."

"Both with the negative in position and subsequently without it, every part of a large print is, maybe, thus printed in, piece by piece, a large print often occupying me two or three days."

"Boredom on social occasions is an inescapable hazard for the over-educated, and for the over-ambitious it must be endured."

"Ghosts, unshriven souls, psychological hang-ups — they all exist in the mind to put people through hell — they're just different ways [...] of looking at a given situation."

"The texture of the printed image is of such peculiar character that neither brush or liquid paint seem capable of imitating it."

"It is the subjects which might be imitated by pieces of paper of varying depth of color laid one over the other, which are the subjects that will give more readily the greater satisfaction."

"In selecting our subject then we have two things to consider. First, is it as good as the conditions will let it be - that is, have we chosen the point of view which, with the present conditions, shows at its best pictorially, and secondly, if taken from this point now, are the alterations we would like, weather or light, to make for us of such a kind that we can introduce them for ourselves when printing, and, if so, what are those alterations."

"A picture whether or not it is really true to fact must above all things appear true."

"...the purpose of a picture is not veracity to fact so much as truthfulness to idea; that is to say, it is not a question of what eye sees nor even what the brain imagines, but it is a question of what kind of production best awakens in the mind of the beholder the ideas which the maker of the picture desires him to receive."

"Justification must be sought in the fact that "no very great incongruity is observable.""

"The utmost care and forethought, and no little manipulative skill, are necessary to control the defining power of the lens or detail printing power of a sharply focused negative."

"The different degree of light interference between blue and red also affords a power which we may be glad to avail ourselves, in some cases using the red where a very marked degree of lightening is desired, or blue where only a trifling difference is needed."

"… it may suggest whether a negative made by camera and lens is always an essential, or indeed if a negative at all is needed so long as we can produce a light-painted image at our will."

"...but record and recognition are not pictorial qualities."

"… what the photographer has to be urged, persuaded and argued with, to do, are often matters which the artist never needs to think about, because it would be unnatural to him not to act in unconscious obedience thereto."

"...to be able to say of a representation that it is "exactly like Nature " is by no means equivalent to saying that it is a fine picture."

"I have sometimes felt that writers on the artistic aspect of photography have too often, like the reformers of religious creeds, led their followers into a condition of disbelief and unrest, and then left them to find out for themselves how to live up to new and vague beliefs, so many writers on Pictorial Photography have told us what to avoid without saying why, and have then told us what to do without showing how."

"It must ever be borne in mind that the prime object of all fine arts is to please through some or other of the emotions which it stirs."

"If the reader now asks what do I think of this paper or that process, of this brand of plates or of that ? Is intensification or reduction to be resorted to ? Are enlargements as good as direct work ? I have but one answer to all, and that is that only those methods are good which will give you a satisfactory realization of the idea you have in mind. Any paper or process which will do this is good. If an enlargement from a small negative seems to give a fairly satisfactory expression of the idea intended, and the smaller direct print fails, there is your answer; and neither the writer or any one else has any knowledge which can give you a better."

"Size, the mere number of square inches, of a picture, counts for nothing. A small picture may be quite as satisfying as a large; for remember that, as compared with the size of the mountain itself, the difference between a picture of it, thirty inches long, and one of six inches, is less than trifling."

"… especially considering that the whole matter of applying photography to purely artistic ends is in such a state of infancy, and that this idea of deliberate violation of truth to fact, for the sake of securing truth to ideas, has hardly yet been put into practice."

"The practice of Pictorial Photography cannot be taught by a Kindergarten system; the mere comparison with typical examples must be accompanied with a right understanding of underlying principles and theory."

"The sky is as much an essential part of the picture as any other part of it, and indeed, in very many instances, constitutes the key-note and important feature of the whole idea."

"It must not be supposed that it is always necessary to present our landscapes with an attractive and well-defined arrangement of clouds; on the contrary, it will often happen that the effect of a scene is best emphasized by a mere grey tint representing a covered sky or even a blue, cloudless sky; but this is a very different thing to rendering it as a white blank."

"A good negative is one thing, but a negative that will enable us to get a good picture is another."

"...skies and clouds were still regarded as something quite apart from the rest of the picture, and, indeed, are still so regarded by the less advanced."

"Probably every portrait photographer resorts to some such "dodge" for making a face lighter or other similar purpose, and he finds that the application of water-color paint in ever so thin a wash makes so much difference to the printing density that blue is commonly used as being a quick printing color, the effect of which is therefore not so great; an equally dense layer of blue and of red to any portion of a negative would print very differently, the red shutting off the light action much more powerfully than the blue."

"Art seeks ever to conceal the means by which its effects are produced and the method in which the work is wrought."

"… generally speaking, a thin negative, one with a minimum of contrast and density, yet with just sufficient to give the amount of contrast required in the print, should be aimed at; but it must possess very soft gradation throughout."

"The moment the eye perceives that the picture is produced by other than the professed means, the effect, the appeal to the imagination, is disturbed."

"Returning to England, [Capt. [[Richard Ingle|Richard] Ingle]] almost succeeded in revoking Maryland's charter, but Calvert retained it by taking pains to placate Parliament. Calvert, for example, encouraged a group of Dissenters exiled from Virginia to settle in Maryland, a little further up the Chesapeake Bay from St. Marys, in what is now Annapolis. Furthermore, after Leonard Calvert died in 1648, Lord Baltimore appointed the Protestant William Stone as governor. He required the governor to take an oath not to violate the free exercise of religion by any Christians, specifically including Roman Catholics."

"Charles II, still in exile, embittered by what he regarded as acts of treachery by Lord Baltimore, deposed him and appointed instead Sir William Davenant as royal governor, for Baltimore "did visibly adhere to the rebels in England, and admit all kinds of sectaries and schismatics and ill-affected persons into the plantation.""

"Former governor Stone now raised his insurrectionary army loyal to the proprietary, and in 1655 attacked Providence, the principal Puritan settlement in Maryland. The erstwhile governor was crushed by a force of Puritan planters, Stone was imprisoned, and several of his followers executed, even though they had been promised their lives before surrender. Calvert, however, proved extremely agile and managed to convice Cromwell and Parliament that religious toleration and hence his own rule should be reestablished. Calvert was permitted to appoint a new governor in 1656 and this governor, Josiah Fendall, joined with the Puritans in agreeing to establish religious toleration, including toleration for Catholics."

"With the death of Cromwell, Fendall tried to seize the opportunity to liberalize the colony further by casting off proprietary rule and submitting himself to appointment by the Maryland Assembly. The restoration of Charles II, however, ended such hopes for the remainder of the century, and Baltimore moved swiftly to crush this move for independence, appointing Philip Calvert as governor."

"Early relations with the Indians were peaceful, with the land acquired from them by voluntary purchase rather than by force. This peaceful coexistence was assured by Calvert's simple expedient of instructing his men to deal fairly with the Indians.<!--Indeed, the largest wigwam in St. Marys was after purchase consecrated as a church by the two Jesuit priests of the first expedition.*"

"The land system, however, in keeping with the vast feudal powers given to Calvert, was established on the most rigidly feudal lines in America. Calvert early advertised that every settler who would finance the transport of five other settlers to the colony would receive a grant as "Lord of the Manor" of 2,000 acres of land—not outright, however, or in fee simple, but as a feudal tenancy with a quitrent of 400 pounds of good wheat per year to the proprietor. The manor lords, most of them Catholic, in turn rented their land to smaller planters in exchange for rent in produce. This restrictive method of allocating land or landownership decidedly hampered the growth of the entire colony during the seventeenth century. Furthermore, Calvert gave vast estates as manors to his friends and relatives."

"From the first, Cecilius wanted to make Maryland a haven from persecution for Catholics in England. But, eager to encourage settlement (for without settlers there would be no profit from his feudal domain), Calvert made no religious test for settling in the colony. As a result, Protestants outnumbered Catholics among the settlers by nearly ten to one from the beginning—with the Protestant faith predominating among the poorer classes and Catholicism among the gentlemen. Both Protestants and Catholics enjoyed full religious liberty and there was no established church in the colony."

"While the Calverts tried to keep representative government to a minimum, an Assembly soon developed, after persistent pressure from below on the proprietors. The proprietor and the Assembly soon quarreled over the extent of their relative powers, the proprietor claiming the sole right to initiate legislation, which the Assembly could then reject. The Assembly, with the power to hold up the enactment of laws, refused to consent to any imposition of a code by Calvert and thus won the fight to initiate legislation."

"During the last years of his life Cecilius seems to have lived altogether in retirement, and few references to him, other than official, are to be found. … On November 30th, 1675, Cecilius Calvert, the founder of Maryland, died at the age of sixty-nine. His life had been in many ways one of trial and anxiety; he had passed through dangers and difficulties when far more than his own happiness and fortune was at stake, and by his patience, prudence, and moderation he preserved safe his own rights and the franchises of his people."

"The governor and the proprietor, who appointed the governor, had veto power over all legislation and the governor could also dissolve the Assembly at will. However, the Assembly assured its continuing existence by refusing to grant taxes for more than a year at a time."