Frederic Hamer Maude · Frederic Hamer Maude: A Photographer and His Collection by Errol Wayne Stevens Hamer Maude was a remittance man- one of those upper-class Frederic Englishmen

Frederic Hamer Maude: A Photographer and

His Collection by Errol Wayne Stevens

Hamer Maude was a remittance man- one of those upper-class

Frederic Englishmen who figured prominently among immigrants to southern California during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sup-

ported by family money or other independent means, these British subjects came to California to enjoy the climate, scenery, and the relaxed way of life that the state offered. In his classic work, Southern California Country, Carey McWilliams portrayed them as if they were a group of aging adolescents who

spent their time fishing, riding in the woods or playing polo. While it is true that they were fortunate enough to be able to experience the blessings of southern California without the inconvenience of having to work very hard for a liv-

ing, one should not conclude that as a group they were lazy or unproductive. Many of them funneled their energies and talents into channels that were more

personally satisfying than the drudgery of daily labor. Maude, the quintessen- tial remittance man, pursued a busy career as a photographer of southern Cal- ifornia and the Southwest. His story offers insights into the life of the remittance man and into the important role that commercial photographers played in recording and preserving the visual record of the region's past.1

'Carey McWilliams, Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (New York, 1946), pp. 141-143. Harry Maude, Frederic's nephew, recalled his Uncle Edmund signing quarterly remittance checks and mailing them to California. Frederic Maude may not have been wealthy, but his income apparently permitted him to live com- fortably. In 1903 he invested almost $7,000 in the Linóleo -Petroleum Refining and Manufacturing Company. H. E. Maude to author, September 15, 1989 and Los Angeles County Incorporation Records, 1854-1922, Gen. Col. 1145, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. See also Stephen G. Maurer, "Frederic Hamer Maude: Photographer of the Southwest," Masterkey, 59 (Spring 1 985): 12-17. The author would like to thank Mr. Maurer for generously sharing his research materials on Maude. These include, among other things, an interview with Joe T. Wright, who cared for Maude during his final years, and extracts from W. W Bass' hotel registry which are in the possession of Mr. Maurer.

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44 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY Born in Little Mollington, Cheshire, England in 1858, Maude entered

the world a member of a prosperous and distinguished family. He was the ninth of the eleven children of Thomas James Maude, a civil engineer, and Louisa Emily Hamer, the daughter of the Reverend John Hamer, the Vicar of Bangor. After their marriage in 1844, the couple retired to a small estate at Little Mollington to raise their children. They later moved to Rugby and then to Highgate so that their sons could attend the prestigious schools in those communities. Frederic enrolled in Highgate School in 1872 and then went on to receive a medical degree from the University of Aberdeen in 1883. The 1887 medical directory shows him as a surgeon at 2 Coppermill Lane, Walthamstow.2

Up to this point, Frederic's life seems to have been as conventional as his brothers who pursued careers in the law, clergy, business and the Indian civil service. But Dr. Maude, who in later years would never use the title, practiced medicine only briefly. Sometime after 1887 he abandoned his profession and left England, reappearing around 1 890 in the small California community of Ventura. The evidence does not tell us why Maude chose to make such a dramatic move. A biographical sketch in the history of the Los Angeles Cham- ber of Commerce simply notes that he came to California in 1 890 and that he had resided in Canada for a brief time after leaving England.3

It is evident from the skills that he demonstrated in Ventura, that Maude was already an experienced photographer when he arrived. The English medical directories indicate that he was a member of the Royal Photographic Soci- ety while living in London. A few photographs stamped "F. H. Maude PHOTOGRAPHER, Ventura, Cai." are in the collections of the Huntington Library. Newspaper notices also show that he frequently used photographs (which he may or may not have taken himself) in lectures illustrated with stereopticon slides. Topics included "A Tour of the World," "A Night with Charles Dickens," "A Trip to Wonderland" and others. The Ventura Free Press sum- marized one evening as follows: "Prof. Maude of Aberdeen University and Prof. Kennard of the Ventura Business College, gave a highly interesting stereopticon exhibition for the benefit of the Y.M.C.A. Thursday night at the Methodist Church. The views shown were those of historical interest in Eng-

2Angus Maude to Nicholas Stacey, March 12, 1985; Colonel William Johnston, Roll of the Graduates of the Uni- versity of Aberdeen, 1860- 1900 (Aberdeen, 1906), p. 360; R. M. Harvey, Principal Librarian, Guildhall Library to author, April 4, 1 989. The Walthamstow directory is the last to list Maude at the Coppermill address. B. A. Mardall, Local Studies Librarian, Vestry House Museum to author, June 7, 1989.

3Charles Dwight Willard, A History of the Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, California from its Foundation, Sep- tember 1888 to the Year 1900 (Los Angeles, 1899), p. 253.

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FREDERIC HOMER MAUDE 45

land, Scotland and Ireland. During the intermission, Miss Hattie McDonell sang

' Fiddle and Г with violin obligato."4 In 1896 Maude took a long wagon trip from Ventura to Yosemite. His

companions were W. J. Kennard and a man named John Waite. A third member of the party, P. W. Kauffman, joined them later. The trip seems to have been a success despite a mixed review from Kennard. "Be glad you live in Ven- tura. We have struck no place to compare it for climate and fertility of the soil. After the barren waste, the grasshopper-infested plain and then burning hot winds and still more sultry, close weather, where, with the thermometer 103° in the shade, you are assured it is not hot, but wait until it climbs to 1 1 5 °. Well, we don't intend to wait but to get back to Ventura before that time. We are all well and enjoying our trip immensely as the heat will allow."5

The Yosemite trip is documented by an album of photographs preserved in the collections of the Ventura County Museum. This expedition is important because it is an early example of Maude's restless explorations of Cali- fornia and the greater Southwest. This expatriate Englishman seems to have fallen in love with the magnificent, wild and rugged scenery of his adopted home. For the rest of his life- until advancing age made it impossible- he reg- ularly trekked into the wilderness, lugging his camera into remote locations and recording what he saw on glass-plate negatives.6

In May 1895, Maude took his leave from Ventura and moved to Los

Angeles after purchasing a photography business from C. B. Waite at 21 1 W. 1 st Street. Waite, whose origins are somewhat unclear (Ohio and Australia are two possible birthplaces), had moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 1 890. After working for a short time for other photographers he established his own business and soon built a solid reputation and a large inventory of

photographic negatives. An article in Land of Sunshine, the illustrated maga- zine where many of his images appeared, observed that Waite "is to Southern California what the famous [William Henry] Jackson has been to Colorado." After selling to Maude, Waite moved to Mexico where he continued his career as a photographer.7

4Photograph file numbers 22624-22630, Henry E. Huntington Library; Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1895; Ven- tura Free Press, December 7, 1894, March 15, 1895.

5Maude lecture notes, Box 54, Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum; Ventura Free Press, July 10, 1896. ftW. J. Kennard photograph album, Ventura to Yosemite, Ventura bounty Museum. 7Francisco Montellano, C. B. Waite, Fotografo: Una Mirada Diversa Sobre el Mexico de Principios del Siglo XX (Mex-

ico, D.F., 1994), pp. 23-24. The national archives of Mexico has a collection of about 5,000 Waite photographs. Some are reproduced in Montellano, C. B. Waite and in Marta Romo, Por el Agua Van las Ninas (Mexico, D. F., 1987). Land of Sunshine, 4 (March 1896): 209.

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46 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY

This photograph, which C. B. Waite took on May 12, 1893 at the rededication of Mission San Luis Rey, may be found in the Maude Collection at the Seaver Center. Courtesy Seaver Center

for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, R-1697.

Maude promptly changed the firm's name to F. H. Maude & Co. and began selling Waiters photographs under his own name. An advertisement in the Mt. Lowe Echo in November 1895 announced that F. H. Maude & Co. had the "Largest and Best Collection of Views in Southern California." The fact that Maude sold another photographer's images under his own name without credit may strike the present-day observer as somewhat dishonest, but it was an almost universal practice at the turn of the century. Commer- cial photographers of that era assumed that when they bought another photographer's inventory, they not only acquired the prints and negatives, but the right to use them without restrictions. William Henry Jackson, the most successful commercial photographer in the West during this period, made it a regular practice to purchase the work of others and use these images as his own. While this may have been an acceptable commercial practice at the time,

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it creates a vexing problem for later scholars. Historians and photographic curators have learned to be very cautious in identifying the creator of images in commercial photographic collections. One cannot assume that the name inscribed on an glass-plate negative is necessarily the "author" of that photograph. Maude purchased several other photographic collections during his career, making it extremely difficult, if not impossible in many cases, to determine today which photographs he actually took and which ones he did not.8

After moving to Los Angeles, Maude soon became a member of the business community and was very active in local photographic circles. He joined the Chamber of Commerce in 1897 and invested in several pieces of prop- erty on Brooklyn Avenue in East Los Angeles as well as in an enterprise called the Linoleo-Petroleum Refining and Manufacturing Company. In addition to

selling photographic prints to individuals and to publications that wanted to use them, Maude specialized in making lantern slides and the selling and rent- ing of projection equipment. A broadside printed around 1906 announced that he had "moved his stock of Stereopticons and Lantern Slides to No. 210 Franklin Street, just west of North Spring Street, and is ready for business. Ministers of churches, Sunday School Superintendents, Lecturers, Scientists, School Teachers and others will find a large and varied stock of Lantern Slides to select from."9

Maude was twice president of the Los Angeles Camera Club and a leader in its affairs for many years. The club offered lectures and assistance to

non-professionals interested in the photographic arts as well as space on the

upper floor of the brand-new Wright & Callendar building on Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles. The facility included an auditorium, a reading room, a gallery as well as developing stalls and dark rooms. Maude frequently presented lectures on photography and offered technical assistance to the mem-

8 Los Angeles Daily Journal, May 9, 1895; Mt. Lowe Echo, November 9, 1895. On the question of attribution in

Jackson's work see Peter B. Hales, William Henry Jackson (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 119 and 313, n. 40. See also Ted Orland, Man and Yosemite: A Photographer's View of the Early Years (Santa Cruz, CA, 1 985) and Robert Bartlett Hass, Muybridge: Man in Motion (Berkeley, CA, 1976), p. 15. Photographers whose work can be found in the Maude collection include E. L Dresser, Ward B. Flower, Frank L Park, С. С Pierce, and others.

billard, A History of the Chamber of Commerce, p. 253; Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorders Office, Real Estate Records Section, Deed Books, Book 1130, Doc. #28, p. 255, Book 1158, Doc. #26, p. 229, Book 1 194, Doc. #36, p. 257, Book 1 189, Doc. #37, p. 289, Book, 2033, Doc. #20, p. 299. The Los Angeles City Directory, 1897 shows Maude's residence at 1716 S. Brooklyn Avenue. Some of the publications that carried photographs by F. H. Maude <Sl Co. included Land of Sunshine; the Sierra Club Bulletin; many of George Wharton James' books and articles including Itinerary of the Hotel Men's Mutuai Benefit Association (1896), In and Around the Grand Canyon (1901) and Arizona: The Wonderland (191 7); Walter Hough's Moki Snake Dance (1900); Charles Dwight Willard's History of Los Angeles (1901); A. S. С Forbes' California Missions and Land- marks and How to Get There (1903); George A. Dorsey's Indians of the Southwest (1903); Charles A. Higgins' To California and Back: A Book of Practical Information for Travelers to the Pacific (1904); and Titan of Chasms: The Grand Canyon of Arizona (1906).

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48 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY bers. In January 1901, he presented an illustrated lecture on "Photography in the Grand Canyon" using his own slides. On this occasion, he offered advice on the use of Orthochromatic plates and a color screen in capturing cloud effects. In March 1903, he presented a talk on the wonders of the Southwest with "exquisitely colored slides" and "dissolving views." (President С. С Valentine jokingly introduced Maude as one of "our struggling amateur mem- bers.") He also wrote an occasional column on technical matters in the Los Angeles Camera Club News in which he freely expressed his opinions about such things as "that abomination, a fixed focus kodak."10

On at least two occasions Maude submitted his photographs to art com- petitions. In 1901 he won first prize in the "genre" category at the San Fran- cisco Photographic Salon for his photograph entitled "Zuni Women." At the 1 902 Los Angeles Salon which Camera Craft described on the opening night as "a gay assemblage of society people, artists and photographers," he entered eight images. Camera Craft judged two of these, both mission studies, as "well handled." One of the two, an interior shot, was "awarded a prize."11

Some time during the 1890s Maude made the acquaintance of the well-known and controversial publicist George Wharton James. James was a prolific writer and public speaker who made his living extolling the virtues of the Southwest. He often needed a photographer on his frequent expeditions and Maude, so it seems, was more than happy to accompany him. James* flow- ing black beard (which he grew because of an obsessive fear of razors) and thin, angular figure gave him an eccentric appearance which was not at all misleading. Even his close friends and relatives considered him a strange per- son. A dynamic public speaker and a writer of many popular works, James had a broad and appreciative audience. On the personal level, he was volatile and often abusive to friends and business associates. Although possessed of a strongly self-righteous nature, he had no difficulty borrowing freely from others (he made frequent use of extended quotations in his books and articles) or in stretching the truth in his writings. On one celebrated occasion, Charles Fletcher Lummis, caught James in a lie about participating in a Navaho ritual which, in fact, he had never witnessed.12

luLos Angeles Camera Club News, (August 1903): 1 ; Helen L Davie, New Home of the Los Angeles Club, Cam- era Craft, 1 (September 1900): 238-239; "News of Clubdom," Camera Craft, 2 (February 1901): 337; Los Angeles Camera Club News (April 1903): 8; F. H. Maude, "On Winter Exposure," Los Angeles Camera Club News (November 1902): 7.

n"Prize Winning Pictures at the Salon," Camera Craft, 4 (February 1901): 321-323; Helen L Davie, "The Los Angeles Exhibition, Its History and Success and Those Responsible for It," Camera Craft, 5 (June 1902): 43-44; First Los Angeles Photographic Salon, 1902 (Los Angeles, 1902), n. p. A copy of the salon catalogue may be found in the Huntington Library collections, 387444.

"Charles Hetcher Lummis, Untruthful James, Land of Sunshine, 14 (March 1901): 215-217.

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Although they shared the same nationality and were about the same age, Maude and James differed dramatically in their family backgrounds. The son of an impoverished Gainsborough basketmaker, James was born to none of the privileges and advantages of his upper-class countryman. He certainly did not have the luxury of regular remittance checks from home. On the lecture circuit he often adopted the title professor and frequently boasted of his mem- bership in learned societies, but, in fact, he was almost completely self-edu- cated. Poverty had forced him to abandon his public school education after only two years.13

James arrived in the United States in 1881 to become a itinerant Methodist preacher in Nevada desert towns. A fictionalized version of his col- orful career as an itinerant preacher is recounted in Alice Ward Bailey's novel The Sagebrush Parson. He eventually settled in Long Beach, California where he became pastor of the First Methodist Church. James soon lost this com- fortable pastorate in the wake of a scandalous and very public divorce. Prob ably suffering from a nervous breakdown, he returned to the desert, where he lived in the open among the Indians and survived by lecturing for small sums in frontier towns. After a time, he re-emerged from this self-imposed exile an apparently renewed man and began a second career as a promoter of southern California and the Southwest.14

Whatever flaws existed in James' character probably were not apparent, or perhaps, did not matter to Maude when the two first met sometime in the early 1890s. To James goes the credit for introducing Maude to the Grand Canyon- a place which he came to find endlessly fascinating. As Maude recalled many years later, his first visit was in 1895. "I was in the commercial

photographic business in Los Angeles when it was but a small town. I had all I could do and had little rest. One hot summer day I was completely worn out with work when someone suggested to me to go out into the wild of Arizona and get away from business frets and city worries."15

Maude had acquired his Los Angeles business only in May of that year, so it seems likely that was restlessness rather than exhaustion that tempted him away from the city. There is little doubt that his friend, whom Maude

nIt is likely that Maude met James while he was still living in Ventura. The Ventura Free Press, March 22, 1895 announced that "Prof G. Wharton James will speak at the Young Men's Christian Association Sunday at 4 p.m. A cordial invitation is extended to all men to hear this able and eloquent speaker." Roger Keith Larson, Controversial James: An Essay on the Life and Work of George Wharton James (San Francisco, 1991), p. 4; Roger J. Bourdon, "George Wharton James, Interpreter of the Southwest" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cali- fornia at Los Angeles, 1 965), p. 2.

14A. B. Ward, The Sage Brush Parson (Boston, 1905). Bailey used the pseudonym A. B. Ward. Biographical information about James may be found in Bourdon, "George Wharton James."

15Maude lecture notes, Box 30, Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum.

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Frederic Hamer Maude (left) with his friend William Wallace Bass. Courtesy Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

identified only as "a well known writer of the west," was, in fact, James. The eccentric Englishman had made arrangements to visit William Wallace Bass' camp that summer, but could not get away and asked Maude to take his place. Bass was a pioneer in the canyon tourist industry and had built a hotel on the south rim opposite Point Sublime. In the 1890s this "hotel," which consisted of a rough frame building and a few tents, could be reached by stage from Williams, a small town on the Santa Fe Railroad a few miles to the north. From the Bass camp, tourists could descend into the canyon on horseback to Mystic Springs, 3,000 feet below. A brochure assured potential visitors that it was "a safe and easy trail, passing by numberless ancient ruins of cliff dwellings, &x., never before seen or described."16

16James began purchasing photographs from Maude as early as 1896. Several that appear in James' The H.M.M.B.A. in California (Pasadena, 1896) are credited to F. H. Maude & Co. Maude lecture notes, Box 30, Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum; W. W. Bass, The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in Arizona (n. d.), n. p.; Bourdon, "George Wharton James," p. 113; James may have decided not to go to the Canyon because he and Bass were involved in a business dispute over a brochure that James had failed to produce.

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According to the Bass camp hotel registry, Maude visited every year between 1895 and 1904 except 1901 . A gap in the records between 1905 and 1913 make it impossible to determine if he went to the canyon during this period, but his name reappears in 1914. These frequent visits are proof enough that Maude fell in love with the Grand Canyon. Despite his fascina- tion, his description of his first sight of the canyon is refreshingly understated. "I did not lose my breath or faint away or even fall on my knees in prayer, as is usual according to writers." This may have been a commentary on James' hyperbolic prose: "To see women burst into tears and in a tremble of ecstatic fear is a common sight. And to men and women alike impressions ofthat first glimpse often follow them into the realms of sleep."17

On these visits, Maude carried his camera down into the canyon and took many pictures. Photographing the Grand Canyon with the equipment available at the end of the nineteenth century was no small technical and physical challenge. The vast distances, the incredible variety of colors and textures in the landscape, the stark contrast between the dark masses of rock and the bright skies all tested the limits of the technology of photography of the time. Lugging a camera and tripod with heavy glass plates into remote locations over terrain that would have been difficult without any equipment, presented difficulties that were not easily overcome.

Maude later recalled the arduous task of photographing a large rock for- mation that he had discovered at the mouth of the Shinumo River deep inside the canyon. "I came to a great tower or monolith of granite rocks which seemed to guard the way like a sentinel and prevent further going," he wrote. The only way around a huge boulder that blocked his approach was to use the stream itself as a pathway. He stripped off his clothing and, carrying his camera and shirt on his head, waded down the stream to a waterfall. Using a rope, he lowered himself to a small rocky shelf where he made his picture. "Having no shoes or socks the top of my feet were sun burnt to an unbearable degree. Luckily there was the cool water of the stream to cool them in."18

James used many of Maude's photographs to illustrate what is probably his best book- In and Around the Grand Canyon. He was quite generous in his praise of Maude and other photographers (A. F. Messinger of Phoenix, H. G. Peabody of Boston, and Oliver Lippincott of Los Angeles) whose work graced the volume. In the case of his English friend he wrote that in "the forefront

17Stephen G. Maurer, "Frederic Hamer Maude Chronology," mss copy. The Bass Hotel registers are in Mr. Mau- rer's possession. Maude lecture notes, Box 30, Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum; James, In and Around the Grand Canyon: The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in Arizona (Boston, 1901), p. 78.

löMaude lecture notes, Box 30, Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum.

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52 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY of those who have studiously worked for a solution of the many problems involved is Mr. Frederic Hamer Maude, of Los Angeles, who for several years has visited the Canyon, making hundreds of negatives, and learning from his failures the secrets of success. The result is an excellent selection of most artis- tic and desirable subjects."19

The Grand Canyon was not the only place that Maude visited while in James' company. A trip to the Hopi pueblos of Oraibi which probably took place around 1 895 was another such excursion, but one that was not particularly pleasant. The party included Maude, W. W. Bass, a guide, an English friend of Maude's who happened to be passing through southern California and "last and not least (in his own opinion that is)," Maude wrote, "was a local writer and lecturer, whom we all called the "Professor/" There is no doubt that this Professor was James because the expedition is not only described in Maude's lecture notes, but is also recounted in detail in James' book The Indi- ans of the Painted Desert Region.20

Maude had not seen his friend for twelve years and had asked him to come along for the experience. In retrospect, Maude probably regretted extending the invitation and his friend certainly must have regretted accepting it. James did not seem to like the English visitor very much, referring to him disparag- ingly as "Mr. Britisher." Almost as soon as they entered the desert, the party suffered through a series of fierce thunder storms which even James admitted scared him "half out of his wits." On more than one occasion, they became so thirsty that they were forced to drink from vile alkali pools they found along the way. The English guest began to complain about various things, including a side trip when James left the group to visit a Mormon bishop. He may have imagined the home of an English bishop, James speculated- "a place of luxury, exquisite restfulness, good foods, and delicious iced wines."21

After a few more adventures which included lost horses and a horrible sandstorm, Mr. Britisher finally cracked. "While there was refinement in his vituperation, there was an edge upon it as keen as fury, passion, and culture could give it," James recounted. According to James, he stoically "stood it all" until the Englishman accused him of being selfish. This remark caused James to explode into a fit of self-righteous indignation. He immediately issued an ultimatum and demanded that both the English guest and Maude- who up to that point had not been mentioned as having committed any wrongdoing-

19James, In and Around the Grand Canyon, p. 334. 20Maude lecture notes, Box 1 , Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum; James, The Indians of the Painted

Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais (Boston 1903), pp. 18-23.

21James, The Indians of the Painted Desert Region, pp. 18-19.

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would henceforth be required to do their share of the work. Furthermore, if they wanted to eat, they would have to cook their own food. "Neither knew whether a frying-pan was for skimming cream from a can of condensed milk or for making charlotte russes," James wrote. "Neither could boil water without scorching it But surreptitiously (with my secret connivance) Bass gave the tyros gentle hints and finally 'licked them' into fourth-rate cooks, so that I reaped the reward of their labors in selfishly and shamelessly taking some of the concoctions they had slaved over."22

Maude survived this expedition- as did his professional relationship with James. Around 1897 the two visited Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico. While they were there, James persuaded two Zuni men to take them to the top of Dowa Yalanne, popularly called Corn Mountain. This was a huge mesa near the pueblo which had special historical and spiritual significance for the tribe. James wanted to visit a shrine that he had seen on an earlier trip and to have Maude take photographs. After a difficult ascent, the party and their guides reached the summit. Once there, James found the shrine that he wanted to see and Maude photographed it. James then mentioned another shrine which he had heard about, but never seen. Their guides claimed no knowledge of such a place, but under pressure and "for a consideration' (James' words and italics) agreed to take them to it.23

The shrine was in a small recess on the face of the cliff which visitors could only reach by being lowered with ropes. Both Maude and James made the descent where they found fourteen Ahayuida, or carved wooden gods. Maude photographed the contents of the shrine and then, as James recounted, "I was filled with a resolute covetousness that would be satisfied with nothing less than one or more of these 'gods.'" At first James attempted to hide this desire from his Zuni guides, but they quickly realized what he wanted to do. At first, they refused to allow James to take the Ahayuida, but again, for a price, they agreed, but only if James hid the carvings and left the pueblo before daylight. The former Methodist minister noted apologetically in his book that this was his "first and only attempt at plundering a sacred shrine." James' crime was much more serious that simply stealing a couple of religious artifacts. Accord- ing to Zuni beliefs, Ahayuida are not wooden idols, but living supernatural beings responsible for the welfare of the tribe. Once priests place them in a shrine, they are never to be removed. To do so might unleash the potentially

»Ibid., pp. 21-23. 23For James' account of the plundering of the Zuni sacred shrine (which was thoroughly documented by Maude's

photography) see James, " With the Zunis in New Mexico," The Theosophical Path, 3 (December 1912):

382-394 and "With the Zunis in New Mexico II," The Theosophical Path, 4 (January 1913): 37-41, and New Mexico: Land of the Delight Makers (Boston, 1920), pp. 64-72.

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The plaza at Zuni pueblo, с 1897. A note on the sleeve in which the negative for this photograph is stored indicates that "the woman carrying a jar on her head is not posed. F. H. M. saw her coming from a distance and waited till she came around the corner." Courtesy Seaver Center for Western His-

tory Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, R-2470.

harmful power of these gods and bring bad consequences to the tribe. Iron- ically, Maude's photographs, along with James text, provided excellent docu- mentation of the theft and were of great use in tracking down the missing Ahayw.da and arranging for their ultimate return. James kept the gods until his death. They found their way to the Southwest Museum and in 1 989 were finally returned to the Zuni tribe.24

24For a discussion of the issues surrounding repatriation of these gods, see William L Merrill, Edmund J. Ladd and T. J. Ferguson, "The Return of the Ahayu-.da. Lessons for Repatriation from Zuni Pueblo and the Smith- sonian Institution," Current Anthropology, 34 (December 1993): 523-567 and Ferguson, "Ahayu-.da: Creation, Disposition, and Repatriation of Zuni War Gods," Preliminary Report to the Zuni Tribal Council, February 7, 1989 (unpublished manuscript).

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There is no record of how Maude felt about James' theft of the Zuni gods. His willing participation in the incident certainly makes him an accomplice rather than a observer. Like many of the photographers of the period, he seems to have had little regard for the customs and religious ceremonies of the Native Americans that he encountered. Along with numerous other tourists, who found these remote habitations fascinating, Maude visited and photographed several of the pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico. This is not to say that tourists and photographers were particularly welcome. Adam Clark Vroman warned the "camerist" that the residents of Zuni might "hide their faces or sometimes even slam the door rudely in one's face." Hamlin Garland who visited Isleta Pueblo in 1895 observed that the residents "tolerated us as prying Americanos- no more."25

The Hopi snake dance, in particular, attracted many spectators. Held each

August- in even years at the pueblos Shipaulovi, Shungopavi, and Oraibi and in odd years at Mishongnovi and Walpi- the dance was not intended as an entertainment, but to bring rain and insure successful crops. The ceremony first came to the attention of Americans through the pages of John Gregory Bourke's highly popularized account, The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Ari- zona published in 1884. His lurid and detailed descriptions appealed to a national audience fascinated with strange and exotic peoples and places. "The

spectacle was an astonishing one," he wrote, "and one felt at once bewildered and horrified at this long column of weird figures, naked in all excepting the

snake-painted cotton kilts and red buckskin moccasins." To Bourke, the most

astonishing part of the ceremony was not their costumes (or lack of them), but what they carried in their mouths. "As the procession pranced closer and closer to where we were seated we saw that the dancers further to the rear of the column were holding the slimy, wriggling serpents between their teeth! (His italics.)"26

In 1897 the ethnologist Jesse Walter Fewkes counted about 200 white

spectators at the Walpi ceremony. Photographers were, by far, the most intru- sive of those who came to witness the events. An image in the Maude collection at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum shows James holding a hand-held camera and standing only a few feet away from the cer-

emony at the Hopi pueblo of Oraibi. On the outside of the sleeve in which the negative for this photograph is kept, Maude wrote: "I could have killed

25Adam Clark Vroman, "Zuni," American West, 3 (Summer 1966): 49. This article first appeared in Photo Era

(August 1901); Underbill, Lonnie E. and Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., "Hamlin Garland at Isleta Pueblo," South- western Historical Quarterly, 78 (July 1974): 59.

26John Gregory Bourke, The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona (New York, 1884), pp. 162-163.

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56 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY him!" Maude, of course, was not upset with James for interfering in a religious ceremony, but for ruining his shot As early as 1901 the Hopi at Walpi desig- nated a special area for photographers and appointed police to enforce the rule. "This was an innovation," James observed. "Hitherto every man had chosen his own field, and moved to and fro wherever he liked- in front of his neighbor or some one else; kicking down another fellow's tripod and sticking his elbow in the next fellow's lens. Half a dozen or more Indian policemen led by the acting agent kept us in line, so we had to go ahead and make the best of it." Despite his displeasure at being corralled, even James admitted that some regulation of the photographers' activities was necessary.27

Until advancing age slowed him down, Maude continued to make extended trips into the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. While he was most interested in New Mexico, Arizona, and southern Utah, his travels ranged over the entire West. At the same time he kept up a commercial photography business in Los Angeles. Over the years, city directories mention his name in association with different partners and firms: Maude & Beckley, Pacific Stereopticon Co., Maude & Bartoo. Several entries simply list him as a photographer. Maude probably retired from active business around 1924. The Los Angeles city directory entry for that year was the last to list his occu- pation. This is not surprising- he was sixty-six years old in that year. Even after retirement, Maude remained active for many years, continuing to travel and photograph as much as possible. Although he never learned to drive, he purchased an automobile, and hired someone to drive it for him.28

Maude's later years is the sad story of a man who had lived beyond his time. Many of his friends passed away during the 1920s and 1930s. (James died in 1923.) He never married and seems to have lost all contact with his family in England. (His nephew Harry Maude recalled that his uncle had never tried to keep up a correspondence with his relations.) Retired from active business and with the value of his remittance gradually eroded by time and the devaluation of the British pound, Maude became increasingly depen- dent on the kindness of others for support. After 1939 he sold his automo-

27Jesse Walter Fewkes, "Tusayan Flute and Snake Ceremonies," Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ameri- can Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1897-98, Part 2 (Washington, D. C, 1900), p. 978. Maude and James were credited as the photographers of the images in this report. The image of James intrud- ing into the religious ceremony may be found in the Maude Collection, R-2650, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum; James, "Snake Dance of the Hopis," Cam- era Craft, 6 (November 1902): 7.

28Information about Maude's later life is from Stephen G. Maurer's interview with Joe Wright, in Culver City and Santa Monica, January 2-3, 1985. Wright cared for Maude in his final years.

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Frederic Hamer Maude ascending Dowa Yalanne (Corn Mountain) near Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico. Courtesy Seaver Center for Western History Research,

Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, R-2461.

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58 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY bile and gave up an independent residence to live with friends who were kind enough to offer him a home.29

During the long penumbra of his life, Maude corresponded with others and, even when he entered his ninetieth decade, continued to lecture, using his large collection of lantern slides. Age eventually curtailed his travels. His last trip to the Grand Canyon probably took place during the 1940s. At the end ofthat decade he moved into the garage of a friend who lived in the Pacific Palisades. He spent his time exploring the nearby hills- the scope of his travels much narrower than what they had been when he had wandered the deserts with his old friend James. "I wish I could get around your way," he wrote Bass' son in 1951, "but at my age (young 93) this is not advisable or even possible." Eventually his mind began to fail and his friends had to place him in a nursing home. He died in Los Angeles County Hospital on Octo- ber 4, 1959-a month short of his 101st birthday.30

The chief regret of anyone doing research on Frederic Hamer Maude is the paucity of source material. Like many other commercial photographers, he left behind a wealth of photographic images, but very little in the way of written information about his life. There are many questions that we will never be able to answer. Where did he first learn photography? Why did he abandon a medical career? Why did he move to California? Even so, using the evidence available to us we can draw some judgments about Maude's career as a businessman, photographer and collector.

Despite his reliance on inherited wealth and a penchant for spending a great deal of time in remote corners of the Southwest, there is little doubt that Maude ran a successful commercial photography business. F. H. Maude & Co. photographs appeared in numerous publications during the late 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century. In addition, he sold many prints and lantern slides to individuals. The large number of images carrying his name or the businesses with which he was associated found in historical collections throughout the Southwest are a reasonable measure of the popularity of his photography. The quality of images produced by Maude and associates met the most unforgiving standard- that of the marketplace.

Although it can easily be shown that a large percentage of the photographs that Maude sold were not taken by him, he was, nevertheless, an accomplished

29Wright interview, January 3, 1985; H. E. Maude to author, September 15, 1989. wAn example of his later correspondence is a short survey which Maude filled out for W. E. Austin of the Grand

Canyon Library giving specifics about his early photographic work in the Canyon. Frederic H. Maude to W. E. Austin, March 25, 1939; Fred H. Maude to W. G. Bass, February 29, 1951; Wright interview, January 3, 1985; Certificate of Death, #18600, State of California, Department of Public Health, October 4, 1959.

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photographer. His specialty seems to have been natural landscapes rather than people, buildings or other objects of human creation. As we have noted, he achieved some fame as a pioneer photographer of the Grand Canyon. We can say with confidence that he mastered to a remarkable degree the technical problems of field photography. No small part of his success rests on his remarkable physical stamina. Carrying heavy equipment into remote locations and making photographs under very difficult situations was not for the weak.

However skilled he may have been with a camera, Maude's greatest contribution was not in the lasting importance of his photography. His images of the Grand Canyon provide us with documentary evidence of how the place looked in the 1890s and the early 1900s, but few critics today would consider his photographs comparable to, say, Carleton Watkins' images of Yosemite. It is as a collector that Maude may best be remembered. By purchasing images produced by others, he preserved the work of photographers that otherwise might have been lost. This is particularly true in the case of C. B. Waite whose images make up a large part of Maude's photographic files. The differing interests of Waite and Maude seem to have complemented each other very nicely. While Maude concentrated on landscapes Waite seemed to prefer people and urban scenes for his subjects. Many of the Maude collection's best images of Los Angeles and its environs in the 1890s are actually Wake's work. Although his motivations may have been strictly commercial, by selecting and

preserving the best images that he acquired, Maude performed the duties of a photographic curator admirably well. The role of the commercial photographer as curators and collectors of their art is a contribution that should not be overlooked.

The two most important collections of Maude images are at the Braun Research Library at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles and in the Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Los Angeles County Natural His-

tory Museum. The Southwest Museum collection consists of Maude's lecture notes and lantern slides which he used to illustrate his lectures. Maude gave these slides and notes to his friend Joe T. Wright who later donated them to the museum. The lecture notes are especially important because other than scattered correspondence and a few articles in the Camera Club News they are Maude's only surviving writings. Because the notes refer to specific images in the slides, they often reveal what Maude thought about some of his own photographs. The 4,000 glass-plate negatives at the Natural History Museum represent the inventory or stock of Maude's photography businesses. As one might expect, many of the images on the negatives at the Seaver Center are duplicated in the slide collection at the Braun Library.

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60 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY The negative collection found its way to the Natural History Museum in

a circuitous way. When Maude retired from active business it is likely that this collection went to his friend George Robinson who was also a photographer. This friend died in the 1940s and his son, Stanley, presumably inherited it and later sold it to the Keystone Photo Company. When this company went out of business, Al Greene, a Los Angeles photographer and collector, (not unlike Maude in this respect) acquired the negatives along with many other images. In 1966 Greene sold the collection to the Natural History Museum.31

The two Maude collections are important sources for the study of southern California and the Southwest from the 1890s to the 1920s. The range of subject matter in them is extremely broad. They document the urban landscapes of Los Angeles and other communities in southern California at a time when the region was experiencing its first dramatic growth. Images of Native Americans, especially the Mission Indians and the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, are important parts of the collection. Photographs of the California missions, before their restoration, are well represented. As one might expect, given Maude's interests, images of the dramatic scenery of the San Gabriels, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and other places appear as they were before the era of automotive tourism. In building his commercial photographic inventory, Maude applied the same principles that a collector might have used. He acquired the best images from whatever sources that were available to him at the time. He preserved these images and weeded out those of inferior quality. In this way, Maude preserved the work of a number of commercial photographers that otherwise would have been completely lost. Because Maude often removed the names of the original photographers from the negatives, the collections present some problems of attribution and dat- ing. Historians should use them carefully, but this warning is true for all sources.

Frederic Hamer Maude, the English remittance man, came to California and escaped the confines of a conventional career. Why he came is unknown, but he seems to have found what he wanted in the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. The photographic collections that he created and preserved will help us better understand his world.

^For Maude's friendship with George Robinson see Wright interview, January 3, 1985; Maude indicated in a let- ter that Stanley Robinson had "all my old negatives." Fred H. Maude to W. B. Bass, February 25, 1951; Al Greene to Herbert Friedmann, November 9, 1966; "Museum Associates Purchase Data for Registrar," Los Angeles County Natural History Museum Registrar's Files, L2100.A. 13.66-620, December 29, 1966.

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Documents

Frederic Hamer Maude · Frederic Hamer Maude: A Photographer and His Collection by Errol Wayne Stevens Hamer Maude was a remittance man- one of those upper-class Frederic Englishmen