19. Rainitsontsoraka. Christian Martyr.

William Ellis rose early, setting up his camera as the first rays of sunlight reached the city. As soon as there was enough light, he began a full-length portrait of his ‘valued friend, a fine noble-looking man in the prime of life’ wearing a beautiful rich brown lamba, the Malagasy toga.^⁠1

Before they had finished, members of the Royal court began to arrive, keen to have their own portraits made before he left the city. Ellis stopped in the middle of the day when the sunlight was too strong for photography, packing up his belongings before returning to his camera later in the afternoon.^⁠2

In a book published over a decade later, in 1867, Ellis declared:

not the least valued treasure among my Malagasy photographs is the likeness of this amiable and beloved man, whose portrait I was able to secure, as early as daylight permitted, on the morning of the last day I spent at the capital, in the year 1856.^⁠3 

In July 1857, less than a year after Ellis left Madagascar, Rainitsontsoraka, would be among a group of thirteen Christians stoned to death at Fiadana (Fiadanana), on the outskirts of Antananarivo.

A faded plate glass negative at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum (WISFM : EL.73) bears a ghostly trace of Rainitsontsoraka’s face. Following the death of William Ellis in June 1872, his son, John Eimeo Ellis, sent it to the town where his father had grown up.

William Ellis had donated items from the Pacific to the museum in 1841, including five pieces of ‘Native Cloth’ from Hawai’i, a ‘Piece of Cloth being part of the Gown worn by the late Queen of the Sandwich Islands’ (Chapter 7), as well as a copy of the Acts of the Apostles, printed at Tahiti (Chapter 4).

The negative, however, was accessioned as part of a series of ‘photographic negatives of views and portraits of eminent personages in Madagascar’.^⁠4 In April 1874, the Museum Committee recorded its thanks to Samuel Smith, a local photographer, for presenting:

A complete set of photographs from the negatives taken by the late Mr W Ellis in Madagascar. Also to the President for a folio volume containing the same^⁠5

Photography was still a new way of making images in 1856. Louis Daguerre developed the daguerreotype process in France during the 1830s, resulting in a unique image on a metal plate that could not be easily reproduced. In the early 1840s, William Henry Fox Talbot created the calotype process in Britain, resulting in waxed paper negatives, but prints made from these tended to be marked by the texture of the paper on which they were made. It was the wet collodion process, popularised in the early 1850s, that made high quality images considerably easier to reproduce.

The process began by covering a glass plate with sticky collodion, a solution of cellulose nitrate in ether and alcohol. The plate would then be immersed in a bath of silver nitrate inside a portable darkroom for several minutes, before being put into a plate holder to protect it from the light. Loaded into a camera, it could be exposed before being developed and fixed, all within a span of 15 minutes before the collodion dried.  By passing light through the clear plate glass, multiple images could then be printed from the resulting negative.

Ellis seems to have learned to make photographs this way from Roger Fenton, employed by The British Museum as a photographer in 1853.^⁠7 In 1854, Fenton made the first photographs of Queen Victoria and the British royal family, but it was his photographs from the Crimean War the following year, used to create images for the Illustrated London News (established in 1842), which made him famous.

Fenton’s own engagement with photography began when he visited the Great Exhibition in 1851, housed in a building made from 60,000 identical panes of plate glass known as the Crystal Palace. Photography brought together knowledge from chemistry and optics, but the wet collodium process, like the Crystal Palace itself, was possible due to fairly recent developments in the mechanical production of standardised plate glass.

Although glass had long served to confine artefacts in museum display cases, where they could be used for illustrations in books and periodicals, wet collodion negatives achieved something significantly different. They captured an unchanging simulacrum on their actual surface, meaning nothing three-dimensional need exist behind it. In the twenty-first century, we live in a bewildering world saturated by similarly opaque flat screens. Can this artefact from the beginning of the age of glass help us to better understand our own times?

William Ellis’ attention was drawn to Madagascar during the early 1830s. Following the success of his book, Polynesian Researches, published in 1829 (Chapter 7), he seems to have increasingly engaged in writing and editing alongside the tours he undertook promoting the London Missionary Society (Chapter 13).

According to the Preface of The History of Madagascar, published in 1838, the Directors asked Ellis to prepare this for publication in early 1833, around the time he was appointed Foreign Secretary, ‘adding such information as could be obtained from publications in this country’.^⁠8 The resulting two-volume work has recently been described in potentially hyperbolic terms as ‘one of the major acts of nineteenth-century historical literary fraud’, largely because its title page omits the name of David Griffiths, an early Welsh missionary to Madagascar.^⁠9

This would suggest a deliberate attempt to deceive, but its title page states that the work was:

Compiled chiefly from Original Documents, BY THE REV. WILLIAM ELLIS, Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society^⁠10

Personally, I read this as a declaration of ‘Editorship’ rather than ‘Authorship’, and the Preface which follows begins by declaring:

The materials for a large portion of the following work, were collected by the Missionaries in the island to which it relates, and forwarded to this country in the year 1830.^⁠11

It is true that none of the names of these missionaries appear on the title page, but the decision to only include the name of the editor may have been a pragmatic one, intended to calm an active rift among the Madagascar Missionaries at the time.

Johannes Van der Kemp, leader of the first mission to South Africa in 1799 (Chapter 2), had planned to travel to Madagascar from the Cape in 1811 (Chapter 3), but his death that year meant that these plans were temporarily abandoned.

In 1814, John Le Brun, an LMS missionary from Jersey in Britain’s (bilingual) Channel Islands, began a mission to Mauritius, which had been a British possession since 1810.^⁠12 Le Brun, however, held back from visiting the much larger neighbouring island, described in the first lines of the History of Madagascar as ‘the Great Britain of Africa’.^⁠13

In August 1818, a pair of young Welsh missionaries, David Jones and Thomas Bevan, sailed to the island from Mauritius. By February 1819, Bevan, his wife and child, as well as the wife and child of Jones had all died, leaving Jones extremely unwell. He returned to Mauritius in July 1819.^⁠14

In September 1820, however, Jones returned to Madagascar with James Hastie, agent for Robert Farquhar, the British Governor of Mauritius, who was keen to establish a treaty with Radama I that would end the island’s export of slaves. Radama evidently recognised the advantages that European technologies, perhaps especially firearms, offered for his growing Kingdom, embracing the opportunity by writing to the London Missionary Society Directors to send teachers ‘provided you send skilful artisans to make my people workmen, as well as good Christians’. He also seems to have been particularly interested in adopting and adapting European forms of dress.^⁠15

In May 1821, David Griffiths arrived at Antananarivo where he established a school. Radama also sent ten members of his extended family to be educated in Mauritius, and ten more to England, accompanied by his own brother-in-law, Prince Rataffe, whose image appeared in the Evangelical Magazine in January 1822.

In the years that followed, literacy was rapidly adopted across the Kingdom, with thousands of Malagasy learning to read and write, as those taught by the missionaries taught others in turn. The New Testament had been translated into Malagasy by August 1825, and in September 1826 a printing press arrived in Antananarivo, along with another Welsh missionary called David Jones. He changed his surname to Johns to distinguish himself from his older namesake.^⁠16

By the time the first catalogue of the Missionary Museum was published in 1826, the museum included a case that displayed fourteen ‘Manufactures of Madagascar’, presented by Robert Farquhar, the Governor of Mauritius, who returned to Britain in 1823 ‘to whom the society is greatly indebted for his friendly exertions in favour of the Madagascar Mission’. As well as tools and samples of cotton clothing, it included a spear presented to Farquhar by the King, Radama I.^⁠17

In October 1826, James Hastie died, increasing French influence at the royal court. September 1827 saw the arrival of the Rev. Joseph John Freeman, an English Congregational Minister appointed by the Directors. His task was to wrest control of the Madagascar Mission from Jones and Griffiths, although Freeman’s efforts were very effectively resisted by his Welsh-speaking brethren.^⁠18

The travelling ‘Deputation’, Daniel Tyerman and George Bennett, arrived at Antananarivo on 21 July 1828. Radama I was extremely ill and passed away soon afterwards, followed three days later by Daniel Tyerman. Court intrigue and a bloody succession struggle followed, with the throne ultimately taken by Ranavalona, one of Radama’s wives, whose supporters seemed keen to reassert more traditional ceremonial practices.^⁠19

Without Tyerman’s guidance, Bennet allowed the four missionaries an equal role in the running of the mission, rather than confirming Freeman’s oversight. This did little to resolve their conflict, especially as the new Queen increasingly treated David Griffiths, with whom she had a longstanding relationship, as the main representative of both the Missionaries and the British state. ^⁠20

In 1829, Hastie’s replacement as British Agent, Robert Lyall, was arrested for sorcery and expelled from the island. Having associated himself closely with Lyall, Freeman left soon afterwards, and began a vituperative letter writing campaign against Griffiths.^⁠21

By 1830, the New Testament translation had been completed, feeding an increasing interest in Christianity that led to a number of baptisms. The LMS Board, however, attempted to recall Griffiths in August 1831, but when Freeman returned to the island to enforce their instructions, he found the Royal court reluctant to part with its favourite missionary.

In April 1833, the LMS Board formally dissolved their connection with Griffiths, refusing to pay his bills, so he began trading, including with donations made by missionary supporters in Britain, leading Freeman to accuse him of ‘absolute fraud’.^⁠22These tensions did little to reassure Ranavalona of the good intentions of Christians, especially when a local prophet promised that slaves would soon be freed and all would be equals. Such radical eschatological egalitarianism would likely unsettle any Queen!

In March 1835, Queen Ranavalona proclaimed an end to practices that challenged the customs of her ancestors, even outlawing Christian books. By the end of June, the complete Bible was printed in Malagasy and secretly distributed, with seventy copies buried on the island (Chapter 28).^⁠23

By September 1836, the majority of missionaries had left the island, eighteen years after Bevan and Jones first arrived. Editing the History of Madagascar as these turbulent events unfolded, Ellis seems to have paused the work, only to be given access to the manuscript journals of James Hastie by Lord Glenelg (Charles Grant), Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1835 to 1839 and an ally of the humanitarian faction.^⁠24

The arrival in Britain of Jones, Griffiths and Baker, the missionary printer from Madagascar, allowed Ellis to check the contents of the History’s for accuracy, and to further expand the work (at least according to its preface). In early 1837, two senior members of the Merina court, both former missionary scholars, came to London as an embassy from the royal court, prompting Freeman’s return from Cape Town.^⁠25

In early 1838, news reached Britain of the martyrdom of Rasalama the previous August, the first Malagasy Christian to be put to death for refusing to recant in the face of persecution (initially identified as Rafaravavy, and referred to as such in the subtitle of the History of Madagascar). Further persecutions followed, with some Christians escaping to Mauritius. Six of these found their way to England, where they addressed missionary meetings during the summer of 1839.^⁠26

In 1838, the year in which The History of Madagascar was published, David Griffiths and his son returned to Madagascar as private traders. A number of Christians attempted to escape the island during this period, but when a group assisted by Griffiths was caught in 1840, they were executed and he was expelled.^⁠27

David Jones, the original missionary to Madagascar died at Mauritius in May 1841, followed by David Johns in August 1843. On his return to Britain in 1842, David Griffiths published his own account of events, Hanes Madagascar, an alternative history of Madagascar in the Welsh language.^⁠28

Missionary work at Madagascar effectively ceased, and though further persecutions followed in 1849, the Malagasy Christian Church persisted underground. A false report of the death of Queen Ranavalona reached London in early 1852, and rumours of other changes prompted William Ellis, approaching the age of sixty, to volunteer to visit the island for the first time.^⁠29

William Ellis left England on 14 April 1853 in the Indiana, a ‘fine iron screw steam-ship’, on which he found the engine room ‘a place of great attraction… where the wonderful adjustment of the vast machinery, and easy working of the whole, notwithstanding the motion of the sea, often excited intense admiration’. He learned from the Scottish engineer that under full force the ship used thirty tons of coal a day, its propeller making 3540 revolutions an hour, each propelling them nineteen feet forwards.^⁠30

Another consequence of the steam engine was the sixty gallons of fresh water it condensed each day, a significant luxury compared to sea voyages Ellis had completed under sail three decades earlier. After refuelling at St. Vincent, the vessel reached Ascension on 6 May, where Ellis attempted to make some photographs. When he developed the negatives, however, he discovered they were significantly overexposed, even though he significantly reduced the exposure time he would have used in England.^⁠31

On 22 May, the Indiana arrived at Cape Town, the Colony having recently been granted a parliament in which the franchise was racially blind (but restricted to males with property worth over £25). Ellis met James Cameron, a missionary artisan at Madagascar between 1826 and 1835, who was to accompany him on his journey. Cameron was the first person at the Cape to use the calotype process, in 1848, and had been making daguerreotypes professionally since 1850.^⁠32 The pair left four days later, on 26 May, and by 7 June had arrived at Mauritius. There they met John Le Brun, still serving as an LMS missionary after nearly forty years, now assisted by his two sons.

Ellis was extremely sea-sick on the weeklong voyage to Madagascar, made on a small schooner, and on arrival was confronted on arrival by the ‘revolting spectacle’ of the skulls of some of the twenty-one sailors who had been killed during an unsuccessful combined French and British attack on the town in June 1845, fixed onto high poles at Tamatave, a port on the East of the island.^⁠33

A canoe approached with the harbour master, asking who they were in ‘imperfect English’. When told they brought a letter for the queen from the traders at Mauritius, they were told she had already demanded compensation for the 1845 attack:

He asked if it was right to go to a country and shoot down the people because we did not like their laws? He soon informed us that he had been a member of the embassy sent to Europe in 1837; that he had visited France and England, and knew that whoever went to reside in either of these countries must be subject to the laws of the county so long as they remained there^⁠34.

They sent letters to Cameron’s old friends in Antananarivo, as well as to the Queen, requesting to visit the capital. During the time they spent waiting at the coast for a reply, Ellis attempted to learn Malagasy, and was struck that many words appeared the same as those he knew form Eastern Polynesia. He also made a collection of plants, some of which he presented to the Crystal Palace on his return.^⁠35

Towards the end of November, Cameron returned on a ship carrying 93 oxen, trade having reopened with Madagascar. Ellis, however, was still struggling to achieve good results from his photographs. Given how different the conditions were to those in England, it proved hard to be sure of the cause so he engaged Dr Powell, superintendent at the Mauritius Asylum, who was ‘familiar with chemistry, and had recently commenced the practice of photography’. Ellis had taken with him ‘a considerable quantity of carefully packed waxed and iodised paper’, presumably intended for Fox Talbot’s calotype process, although he struggled to succeed with this method of image making.^⁠39

During the heat of the southern hemisphere summer, Ellis visited a sugar plantation employing 356 Indian labourers owned by M. Chéron, ‘a person of colour, and a man of great force and character, as well as industry and intelligence’. Chéron was a member of Le Brun’s congregation, and in the evening Ellis entertained his family with ‘my photographs and stereoscope’. A number of photographs of Chéron and his plantation survive today at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.^⁠40

In January 1854, the Governor of Mauritius received an invitation from Madagascar to ‘send for the skulls’ so they could be buried, although the person sent to retrieve them found the French had already taken them.^⁠41 At the end of that month, Ellis visited another plantation where he successfully photographed a jack tree, complete with large fruits, inviting an Indian labourer into the frame as a human scale. An engraving of this image would feature in his account of his travels, published in 1859.^⁠42

In early May 1854, when he felt the risk of summer disease (likely malaria) was receding at Madagascar, Ellis sent another request for permission to visit Antananarivo. There was an outbreak of cholera at Mauritius, but Ellis decided to leave for Madagascar in early June. The customs officers at Tamatave were understandably nervous about the arrival of the ship, asking them to quarantine on board for eight days.^⁠43

When Ellis eventually had his things taken ashore, his various bottles of photographic chemicals were mistaken by the customs officers for medicine. When he asked about his request to visit the capital, he was told he was expected to travel with Cameron, who had returned to the Cape. At the coast, Ellis attempted to learn Malagasy while practising his photography.

An image of the house in which he stayed, featured in his 1859 book, seems to have been a composite, assembled from a number of different images he made at this time – photographs as well as sketches.^⁠44

At a celebration of the Malagasy new year, to which he was invited, Ellis encountered officers and officials wearing gold epaulets and cocked hats with feathers. He even spotted buttons bearing the American eagle and shield. After dinner they entered a room in which the walls were covered with French paper ‘representing scenes in the different campaigns of Napoleon’.^⁠45

When news of the worsening epidemic at Mauritius reached Madagascar, including the deaths of the family with whom Ellis had stayed, he was told that it would be impossible for him to visit the capital. Visitors continued to arrive to see him, and when they inspected his copy of the History of Madagascar, were particularly interested by the Baxter colour print showing Rafaralahy, Governor of Foule Point, who was known to many of the visitors.^⁠46

A shield, not unlike the one he is shown holding was loaned from the Missionary Museum to the British Museum in 1890 (Af, LMS.1), although it does not seem to feature in nineteenth century catalogues of the Missionary museum until the exhibition at Paris in 1867 (Chapter 20). The catalogue that was published around 1860, however, refers to this image in its description of an ornament made of large silver claws and glass beads, which appears on Rafaralahy’s chest.^⁠47

Ellis’s visitors also expressed a great deal of interest in his photographic apparatus. He told them it was used for ‘taking people’s likenesses in a minute of two by means of the sun or the light’, and many asked him for portraits. One man quickly slipped home, returning with a large bundle of clothes, carried by one of his servants. This included ‘a handsome scarlet lamba and other attractive articles of dress’ he intended to wear for his portrait.^⁠48

He was disappointed when told him Ellis needed time to assemble the camera and darkroom, and that the colour of the lamba wouldn’t appear in the monochrome image. Once Ellis prepared the necessary chemicals, he began making images using the wet collodion process. When he made positive prints from these a few days later, people were delighted, fetching friends and relatives who engaged in a long conversation ‘about how it could be done’:

One man said it was zanahary, — a word they sometimes use for God, but by which they probably meant wonderful or supernatural.^⁠49

This spectacle seems to have prompted a stream of inquirers, all after their own photographs. Ellis regarded this as an opportunity to meet people he would not otherwise have come across, enabling long and interesting conversations with men of importance. The process was not without hitches, however, and he suspected that some of his chemicals had deteriorated.^⁠50

People were immediately keen to frame the resulting images, some bringing large pieces of glass to be cut to the right size while others proposed ‘rubbing the quicksilver from the back of looking-glasses’. This substitution of a reflected simulacrum with a permanent ageless photographic one seems to suggest that a permanent and idealised image was valued more highly than a temporary and realistic one.^⁠51

Ellis tells us that people were scrupulous about removing their grey hairs and other marks of age, so perhaps an ageless image was intended to preserve their youthful appearance for posterity. He also made a number of photographs of the scenery on wax paper using the calotype process, but these proved of little interest compared to ‘the intense interest excited by the portraits’ in which:

the aspect, the dress, the ornaments, and all the little accompaniments were subjects of curious examination and animated remark by wives and children, as well as companions and friends. One man had a mole on his cheek, and, as it was on the side next the light, it came to clear and strong; nothing excited more remark than this. I saw the man himself after feeling the mole on his cheek with his finger, go and touch the mole on the picture hanging up to dry, exclaiming, “How very wonderful! I never felt anything here,” putting his finger to his the mole on his cheek, “and yet there it is,” pointing to the picture.^⁠52

This prompted Ellis to suggest ‘evident anxiety about personal appearance’ was common to all humans, noting:

I never suggested the arrangement of the dress of the hair; but rarely found any one come and sit for a likeness without giving some previous attention to one or both. Even the labouring woman, returning from work in the field, with her child at her back, as shown on the adjoining page, when asked if she would have her likeness taken, adjusted her burden before having her tout ensemble rendered permanent.^⁠53

Women came with servants to arrange their hair, while men brought a mirror and comb, sometimes asking for a bowl of water to moisten their hair.

Almost immediately, Ellis’s photographs prompted him to compare both the dress and the physical appearance of the various subjects of his photographs. He commented on differences in hair styles between Hova and Betsimasaraka women, and was ‘struck with the remarkably European cast of many of their countenances’, suggesting that:

Phrenologically they are a fine people, having frequently high foreheads with a considerable amount of those developments which are supposed to indicate intellectual capacity, as well as moral excellence.^⁠54

These comments were followed in his published account with a portrait of ‘a Hova chief’, said to ‘exhibit a type of head that I met with occasionally on the coast and at the capital’. Ellis commented on the slightness of the ‘olive tinge’ in the man’s complexion, suggesting that among the Hovas this was generally less ‘than is frequently seem amongst the inhabitants of the south of Europe’.^⁠55

Ellis went on to suggest that ‘many of the Hovas possessed remarkably well-formed heads’, with well-shaped foreheads, even where the space between the eyebrows and the hair was narrow. Their eyes were never large or projecting, their eyebrows well defined without being heavy, their ‘nose frequently aquiline and firm, never thick and fleshy’, and their lips slightly projecting though ‘seldom round and large’.^⁠56

While this seems to evaluate Hova according to the degree to which they approached a northern European physical ideal, Ellis conceded that this did not apply to skin tone since ‘the colour of some of the Hovas is as dark as that of the most swarthy races in the island’, although he asserted that other features ‘exhibit the peculiar form of the European’.^⁠57

Ellis evidently hoped his photographs would ‘prove acceptable to any who may be interested in that important branch of inquiry which relates to the several varieties of the human family’, discourses of human biological variety becoming increasingly prominent at the time in Europe, partly in relation to the disillusion and backlash following the abolition of slavery (Chapter 18).^⁠58

In speculating on the origins of these differences in physical appearance, Ellis concluded that ‘With regard to the Hovas, no doubt can be entertained that they are descended from the ancient race from which the Malayan Archipelago and Eastern Polynesia derive their inhabitants’. Interestingly, DNA research undertaken during the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century has tended to confirm these nineteenth century speculations.^⁠59

Another photograph at the Royal Ontario Museum appears to be a much better match for the image of the ’Hova Chief’, and a later account of Rainitsontsoraka’s life suggests he was probably being held in chains at the time for his participation in Christian meetings.

On 4 September 1854, Ellis left Tamatave to travel to Mahavelona, known to Europeans as Foule Pointe, forty-five miles to the North. He was carried in a palanquin by four men, two others carrying his camera and photographic equipment with a third taking his camera stand and a small stool, and a fourth a carpet-bag with a tea-kettle and some crockery inside.^⁠62

During their stops to rest, Ellis photographed trees and plants using the calotype process, developing his negatives at night. Arriving at Foule Point, he spent the evening secretly meeting with local Christians who asked questions about religious belief and practice in England. Reflecting on the meeting, he noted ‘the deep and peculiar sympathy which we all seemed to feel’:

We were inhabitants of different hemispheres, and belonged to communities widely separated from each other by their relative civilisation and social position; yet we met and conferred together with a degree of confidence, satisfaction, and even enjoyments, as entire and sincere as if we have been long united in the closest human fellowship; and we felt, that we cherished aspirations as identical as if we were ultimately to be gathered into one common home.^⁠63

Although Ellis was able to consider the racial identities and origins of his Malagasy friends, as well as to entertain fairly dubious phrenological theories concerning the shape of their heads, this did not prevent him from also ‘brothering’ them – asserting the essential similarity of human sympathies on which missionary activity was ultimately predicated.

Indeed, he went on to suggest that ’sympathy so entire and uniform under all the diversities of external condition… can spring from only one source’, divine influence, arguing that in time ‘the estranged and separated members of the human family’ would ultimately be united ‘in one hallowed bond of brotherhood and peace’.^⁠64

Stopping at Salt Pans Drift in the Great Karoo in March 1855, on his way to Cradock (Nxuba), Ellis stayed with the Trollip family, descendants of English settlers to South Africa who arrived in 1820. In their house he found a ‘well-filled bookcase’ including The Women of England, ‘alongside several other equally familiar volumes by the same writer, which I had little expected to meet with in this remote part of Africa’. The writer, Sarah Stickney, was in fact William Ellis’s wife, the two having married in 1837 following the death of Ellis’ first wife, Mary Mercy Moor, in 1835.^⁠66

Sarah had published poetry and short stories under her own name in 1835, but became even more famous as ‘Mrs. Ellis’ when she published The Women of England, their Social duties, and Domestic Habits in 1839. She would play a significant role in shaping emerging notions of middle class respectable femininity, addressing her book not to ‘ladies’ but rather to ‘women’ who ‘enjoy the privilege of liberal education, with exemption from the pecuniary necessities of labour’.^⁠67

Stickney herself supported the Ellis family by establishing a girl’s school in 1845, and while an advocate of women’s education, emphasised ‘the domestic character of England’. She argued this was ‘intimately associated with, and dependent upon, the moral feelings and habits of the women of this favoured country’. Arguing that ‘false notions of refinement’ were rendering the English women ‘less influential, less useful, and less happy than they were’ by leading ‘young ladies (for they are no longer women)’ into ‘a constant pining for excitement, and an eagerness to escape from everything like practical and individual duty’.^⁠68

The exemplary Mrs Ellis remained at home, upholding her own domestic duties during the two years her husband was in Madagascar and South Africa. He seems to have taken photographs of his home and family with him, but encountering books written and published while his wife adjusted to her new marital state undoubtedly reminded him of the home and family he had left behind.

On his return to Cape Town, William Ellis met Kgosi Sechele I, leader of the Bakwena (people of the crocodile) in what is now Botswana. Sechele is remembered today as the only African to be converted by the young David Livingstone, at the time travelling through Central Africa. Ellis also received a letter from Madagascar, inviting him and Cameron to visit the capital. Having been away from home for over two years, he first returned to London in mid-June in the Pacific, a steam ship on its way to Britain from Australia, arriving in England on 18 July 1855.^⁠69

Ellis left Tamatave on 6 August 1856, four men carrying him in a palanquin. On the road they met ‘two chiefs’ who had seen the photographs Ellis had given to people two years earlier, and asked whether he intended to make more at the capital.^⁠74

On 26 August they arrived at Antananarivo where Ellis was provided with accommodation by the Queen. The following day he was visited by the twenty-six year old son of Queen Ranavalona and evident heir to the thrown, Prince Rakoto (later Radama II). He wore ‘a black dress-coat and pantaloons, gold embroidered velvet waistcoat, and white cravat’. Ellis showed him photographs of his house and family, back in England.^⁠75

They spoke about Queen Victoria, international affairs and the war with Russia in Crimea, as well as the British alliance with France. According to Ellis, the prince spoke of ‘the English having often interfered to protect the weak and the injured, and to prevent wrong’, but how much of this was a charitable interpretation, applied by Ellis forthe benefit of his English readers, is unclear.^⁠76

The Prince asked about the meaning of the term ‘protection’, probing rumours of a French plan to invade Madagascar. Ellis, in turn, asked whether rumours that he was a Roman Catholic were true. At this, the prince told him a Catholic priest had given him and his wife medallions to wear, telling them that if they put their confidence in the Virgin Mary they would have a child. Showing Ellis the medallion hanging around his neck, he added ‘it has not proved true: my wife has no child’.^⁠77

For Ellis, the rivalry with French Catholics for the island presumably reminded him of Tahiti where he began his missionary career. Tahiti had been declared a French protectorate in 1842, although Huahine where Ellis also lived, remained independent, at least in 1856.

Ellis received a visit from the family of a (Christian) friend who had died shortly after he left in 1854. Ellis took ‘a small likeness of my friend’ out of his portfolio and handed to his father, who looked at it and wept. His mother kissed the photograph, weeping silently, but profusely for several minutes. He then gave a full-length portrait to the man’s widow who also wept. After they all cried together, Ellis offered to give them one of the photographs, but they asked him to frame to better preserve their relative’s memory.^⁠78

Ellis was soon visited by an officer from the Royal Court to discusse the gifts he had brought. Although of interest to the officers, the electric telegraph had already been dismissed by the Queen. When they talked about photography, he told Ellis that the Queen and some of other people had the idea that ‘if their likenesses were taken they would soon die; that the likeness resembled the spirit of a person, and when that was gone said, “Why what is there left?”.^⁠79

Ellis showed him photographs of people still living, noting that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had not only been photographed, but were the patrons of the photographic society in England. The officer declared ‘that it was only a superstitious idea, and said he should like to have his own likeness taken, and would show it to the queen’.^⁠80

On 5 September 1856, Ellis was summoned to see Queen Ranavalona. When he put on his plain business suit, he was advised to wear the rich satin green and purple plaid dressing-gown with a scarlet lining he had brought as a gift. Presenting her with a gold sovereign as hasina, or tribute, he spoke to the queen about Madagascar’s relationship with England.^⁠81

Ellis had hesitated to use his camera at the capital, but when he received a note telling him Prince Rakoto wished to have his likeness taken, he attempted to set up a dark room, unpacking his camera and preparing the necessary chemicals. Constantly interrupted by visitors seeking medicine, he requested and was sent a table from the palace to use for his photography.^⁠82

He soon found, however, that he had no acetic acid to make a developing solution. Roger Fenton had helped him make a list of necessary items, but somehow Ellis omitted the acetic acid:

My perplexity was great; and I am sure all photographers who have been in similar circumstances of destitution, in a country where there were no chemist’s shops, and no fellow-photographers of whom to borrow, will be able fully to sympathise with me.^⁠83

Ellis woke early on Monday 22 September, however, to set up some matting as a background for the photographs. Prince Rakoto arrived by 7am, and following an exposure time of one minute, Ellis was delighted when his mixture resulted in a ‘tolerably good negative’. ^⁠86

The following morning, the prince returned to be photographed with his wife (whose swollen face the day before led her to avoid the camera), and they both joined Ellis in the dark room to witness the developing process. Ellis then offered to make a full-length portrait using a larger plate of glass, 15 by 12 inches, but had to set up a temporary stand to allow the princess to keep her head still while standing for a minute. This was followed by a joint portrait of the couple, which they watched developing in the dark room together:

The distinctness of tones in the princess’s necklace, and the bouquet in her hand, with the strong relief of the star in the prince’s breast, and the book he held, caused them to marvel quite as much as the features of their countenances. They had moved very slightly, and the photograph was not so good as that of the single figures: but it was passable and afforded them great satisfaction.^⁠87

Next, Ellis tried to photograph an officer, ‘who had come in a richly embroidered uniform’, but the sunlight in the middle of the day resulted in ‘a bad and burnt impression’.^⁠88

Ellis suggests it was the following day that he attempted to make the full-length portrait of his ‘valued friend’, before members of the royal court arrived. Large numbers wanted to be photographed, it seems, just as his time in the capital was running out.

On 26 September 1856, Ellis left Antananarivo for the coast.^⁠89

When the same printing plate was re-used in The Martyr Church, published in 1870, Ellis noted that the two officers shown on the right of the image had been persecuted as Christians. They had sought refuge at Tamatave and Mahavelona (Foule Point), where it seems Ellis met many members of the Christian community during his initial visits in 1853 and 1854.^⁠96

In Madagascar Revisited, published in 1867, Ellis explained that Rainitsontsoraka had ‘been among the little band who gathered in my inner room in the concealment of night’ to worship, and was:

my daily and most pleasant companion during my first visit to Antananarivo, and who was one of the distinguished witnesses for Christ who suffered in this last and severest ordeal.^⁠97

He would be the person Ellis gave his remaining medicine and medical book when he left Antananarivo in 1856.

On 21 May 1857, two months before he died, Rainitsonsoraka wrote an account of his life and that of his brother, Rainimanga, which he sent to David Johns Andrianado, a Malagasy Evangelist, who sent it to Ellis. The brothers had lost their father as children, so ‘had to work at making spades’. In 1834 they became cultivators of the soil, and in 1836 attendants for Rainimaharo, one of Queen Ranavalona’s ministers.^⁠98

Together the brothers made a ‘foreign violin’ which they showed to Rainimaharo, who showed it to the Queen. Since foreign things had been forbidden, the officers were fined, but the brothers were incorporated into the court as skilled makers. In 1839, when the Queen began building her palace, a crane carrying the timbers failed, and Rainitsontsoraka designed a toothed crane to complete the work. He built a model which was shown to the Queen, who ordered a full size version from the royal blacksmiths.^⁠99

In the same year, when Laborde, a French trader demanded a thousand dollars for a fire engine, Rainimaharo asked the two brothers to copy the design. Despite their usefulness to the court, they were reported for attending a Christian meeting and arrested in 1845. Their wives and children were sold, together with all their belongings, but the two brothers were purchased by Prince Rakoto, who determined they should not be sold again.^⁠100

Named as worshipping Christians once more, they were imprisoned for two years and then bound with other Christians in heavy metal fetters.¹⁰¹ While bound in this way, Rainitsontsoraka learnt about European medicine from a book, and began to treat the sick.

In 1855, the fetters were removed from the two brothers, shortly before Ellis visited Antananarivo. At the end of the account of his life, Rainitsontsoraka declared:

This is the state of the work of the Lord with me, which I made known unto you, beloved brother; and all the friends here visit you. May you live, and have happiness, saith RAINITSONTSORAKA and his brother.^⁠102 

It seems clear to me at least that the man in the photograph wearing the striped lamba is the same as the one in the photograph with ‘Native Christian Pastor’ written on the back. It is less clear that this man is the one in the photograph labelled ‘Rainitsontsoraka’. Is it possible that the man in the brown silk lamba was in fact not Rainitsontsoraka but rather Rainimanga, his brother who was also a Christian?

Converting the surviving negative at Wisbech into a positive image, this looks to me like another man altogether. Did Ellis incorrectly label this, failing to recognise his friend’s face in the negative image? Or was the error made in 1874 when an index was compiled for the prints made by Samuel Smith, after Ellis had died?

In some ways, we can regard these photographs from Madagascar as an extension of the many portraits of faithful Christian individuals which had appeared at the front of the Evangelical Magazine for over half a century.  As photographs, however, they encourage us to look deeper into the faces of their subjects, chemically preserved for posterity, treating these images as proxies for their identities as individuals, even after death – possibly even as indexes of their very souls.