‘Solemnest of Industries’: Wilkins’ ‘The Southwest Chamber’ and Memorial Culture

Abstract

In Elia W. Peattie’s ‘The Story of an Obstinate Corpse’ (discussed in Chapter 1), the photographer Virgil Hoyt is asked to produce a postmortem portrait of an elderly woman. When he develops the plates, however, there is something wrong with the picture, and he and his thoroughly spooked boss are reluctant to show them to the woman’s bereaved daughter. Despite the fact that both the daughter and Hoyt confirm that there was nothing covering or obscuring the women’s face when the photograph was taken, in the pictures, ‘Over face and flowers and the head of the coffin fell a thick veil, the edges of which touched the floor in some places. It covered the features so well that not a hint of them was visible.’ After recovering from her initial fainting fit, the daughter explains to the puzzled and rather embarrassed photographer that her mother was rather fond of having her own way, and invariably successful in getting it, adding, ‘“she never would have her picture taken. She didn’t admire her own appearance. She said no one should ever see a picture of her”’, to which Hoyt responds ‘meditatively’, ‘“Well, she’s kept her word, hasn’t she?”’¹