On Finding My Heathcliff

Okay, two posts in one day - I'm REALLY not in the mood for housework it seems. Despite this, I HAVE actually managed to load the dishwasher now, and ummm, have kind of found the dining room table....but the hoovering...well, I might just leave that until tomorrow!

There is a kind of method to my slothful madness in that my daughter Ellie, is coming back to live with us on Saturday having spent the last three years up at Birmingham University. Big changes and much reorganising of rooms have been afoot at Chez Kaboodle because of this in order to accommodate the three years worth of toot she'll invariably bring back with her. My daughter is something of a hoarder, just like her Mum it appears. It makes living life in a small terrace house challenging if nothing else!

Anyway, before I get back to the grindstone I must just share one more photo with you found over on Shorpy's Historic Photo site.


I think in all honesty I've just found my Heathcliff. I've been looking for him ever since reading Wuthering Heights as a teenager whereupon I instantly fell in love with broody passionate Heathcliff, despite realising he was a fictitious character, and at times, not a very likable one at that! Anyway, back to the photo, the information about the photo provided by Shorpy reads as follows;

Philadelphia, November 1839. "Robert Cornelius, self-portrait facing front, arms crossed. Inscription on backing: The first light-picture ever taken. 1839." One of the first photographs made in the United States, this quarter-plate daguerreotype, taken in the yard of the Cornelius family's lamp-making business in Philadelphia, is said to be the earliest photographic portrait of a person.

Someone else, presumably also struck by the intensity of this photo, has managed to locate more information on the elusive Mr Cornelius, written in 1840;

From Godey's Lady's Book (Philadelphia) Vol. 20 (April 1840) pg. 190.


There is a young gentleman of this city, by the name of Robert Cornelius, one of the firm of the well known house of Cornelius, Son & Co., who has more genius than he yet supposes himself to possess. As a designer in the way of his profession, he has no equal; as a ventriloquist—but here we are getting into private life:—as a Daguerreotypist his specimens are the best that have yet been seen in this country, and we speak this with a full knowledge of the specimens shown here by Mr. Gouraud, purporting to be, and no doubt truly, by Daguerre himself. We have seen many specimens by young Cornelius, and we pronounce them unsurpassable—they must be seen to be appreciated. Catching a shadow is a thing no more to be laughed at. Mr. Cornelius, in one matter, has outstripped the great master of the art, a thing, by the way, peculiar to our countrymen; he has succeeded in etching his designs onto the plate, from which they cannot be removed by any effort. A few more experiments in this way, and we shall do without engravers—those very expensive gentlemen.

Whilst yet another interested party went sleuthing around in the 1870 census and came up with this information;

The 1870 Census shows a Robert Cornelius (60) in Philly married to Harriett (55), with four children living at home: John (30), Fannie (23), Helen (20) and Constance (16). I'm guessing this is our man from his age and listed occupation as "manuf. of gas fixture." The Census also seems to show that he was rather well off and that his son followed in the family business.

The actor Tom Hardy recently played Heathcliff in an ITV adaptation of Wuthering Heights which I confess I wasn't overly struck on. Tom Hardy himself made a wonderfully broody Heathcliff, but the adaptation itself strayed from the book too much for my liking and the wigs they dressed him in were little short of atrocious! Anyway, I digress, what I'm really struck on is how alike Mr Cornelius and the handsome Tom Hardy are to look at;


Or is it just my housework avoiding brain going into overdrive?