Most of our artefacts have been donated by very generous people from all around the isles, but some have been acquired by other means like the collection I am going to be talking about today. This collection was purchased from a young lady that had inherited her great uncle’s estate. Her letter arrived one autumn day and as I had nothing else important planned for the following week I took our boat, the Wandering Dove to the Isle of St Martin's to meet up with her. She was a frail looking girl, aged around 20 and struck me as of a carefree and cheerful nature even though she had recently lost a close relative. I hurried to offer my condolences for her loss, but she waved them aside telling me that "she really didn’t know him that well as he traveled a lot" and that "it came as a complete surprise that she was the sole beneficiary to his will. What a stroke of good luck, to be sure!" She explained that she would take me to her uncle’s studio and there I would be free to look through his items and take anything I liked providing the "price was right". His studio was situated near a bridge on the outskirts of the main town and looked like a building that had once served as a cottage to a small family rather than one custom built as a photographer’s studio. On the outside it looked compact but well maintained with whitewashed walls, wooden shuttered windows and a slate plaque above the door announcing in swirly characters the name and occupation of the resident as "Rufus the Rational, Photographer and Inventor". Stepping inside I was almost immediately overcome by a strong not to mention noxious chemical odour and by the sheer volume of furniture, knick knacks, bottles and boxes that covered every square inch of the tiled floor. After a brief inspection I announced to Winifred - the great niece- that I’d need more than just one afternoon to go through all this and asked if there happened to be an inn nearby I could stay the night. "There's a perfectly suitable bedroom upstairs if you don’t mind staying here! I can change the sheets no problem and I am sure uncle must have some food left over in the larder". That seemed like a practical proposal so I acquiesced. I spent the afternoon and most of the night sorting through the larger items in the house, first the furniture, moving on to the books and the boxes, while staying well away from the various suspect looking bottles that were the root of the eye-watering smell. The furniture was simple and practical, the books were mostly about engineering and chemistry with the odd poetry book(!) thrown in but it was the boxes that held the most interesting finds. Box after box contained complicated inventions I assumed were created by Rufus - all of them looked like variants of a camera, all in all there must have been fifteen different cameras, carefully packaged and looking like perfect Museum material. This was exactly what I was looking for! In celebration I poured myself a glass of brandy from the decanter on his desk and with a smugness I cringe looking back at, took myself upstairs to bed. Unfortunately, I did not rest well. I kept thinking on Rufus, the cameras, the science and poetry books, his life as a photographer. While the cameras themselves were really interesting artefacts and would certainly be of interest to people visiting the museum, was that really what his life was about? Were they the items that best portrayed the important moments of his life? I hated to admit it because it meant I would need to go through everything again, but I could not shake the feeling that they were not. So, after a simple breakfast I returned to the work at hand. I began with the cameras because they seemed the most obvious place to start. I inspected every single one carefully looking for a sign of a more personal nature. On the seventh camera, labelled Camera Veritas I believed that I had found what I was looking for: a folded piece of thick colourful paper was tucked in-between the camera and it’s protective padding of rags. I carefully unfolded it and found that I was looking at an old advertisement poster declaring that Rufus the Rational was in town with his invention, the Camera Veritas. I put the poster to one side and continued the hunt. While I was nearing the last box I had an epiphany. Rufus was a professional photographer yet nowhere in his house had I seen a single album or for that matter a single photograph! I left the boxes and went straight to the bookshelf to leaf through all the books and check if there was a picture album I had missed and that was when three peculiar photographs slipped from one of the books and glided into my lap. All three were of young ladies with their torsos resembling bell jars. After my initial bewilderment I looked back to the book they had fallen from - it was a homemade calendar of sorts with his client bookings scribbled in. I searched every inch of it trying to find another photograph but without success. I then focused on reading through the bookings carefully, hoping to put names to the three girls in the pictures. After around an hour of searching I came across a booking for three sisters, Esme, Clara and Thea with a note next to their names I believed to be made by Rufus. The note went as follows: “Sisters, all born mute. Only ones wanting to try the Veritas. So surprised. I honestly thought there’d be more interest.” And an additional note I assume was added after the photographing had took place: "Best sitters, charming girls. This may be my best work to date. Don’t understand a bit of what I am looking at but I know it makes me glad. Keeping a duplicate set". Rufus no doubt was a genius but alas a man of few words. I looked at the photographs again, they made me glad too and I had to admit I didn’t know what I was looking at just like Rufus. I decided there and then that these and the Veritas Camera were what I was going to take back with me to the museum. Later on I tried to get more information out of Winifred about the photographs but she just looked at them, pulled a perplexed face and said that she had no idea what her uncle had been up to. I explained what I was taking and after I payed her a sum that I hoped would satisfy her she helped me carry the items to the harbour. On our way, we chatted companionably.
"I never got to meet him or my aunt" she casually mentioned during our conversation. The statement literally stopped me in my tracks “He was married?” I asked. "Oh yes, but they never had children. From the little I know she traveled with him wherever his work took him. My mother used to pay them visits when they were back home, but he wasn’t one for socialising, neither was his wife. But I guess you couldn’t blame her for that." “Why is that?” I asked. "Well…" she giggled nervously "She was one of those deaf and dumb people wasn’t she, poor thing. Mother used to say that’s probably why he married her!" I didn’t ask anymore questions after that. I also didn’t mention why I believed her mother to be wrong in her assumptions....
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About the CuratorMy name is Juniper And I am the principle Curator of the Memento Vivere Museum. My duties include taking care of the primary displays, seeing that every collection is archived correctly and in general ensuring that everything within the museum’s grounds works like clockwork. However, because of the museum’s dwindling spacial capacity, I have taken it upon my self to compile several volumes presenting some of the more interesting and poignant collections that the visitor will very possibly never get to view. Dear reader, within these pages, I shall be sharing some of these collections with you. I do hope you enjoy what I have to show you. Archives
April 2018
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