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Rylands Reflects: From Matanzas to Manchester

by Elizabeth Gow
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Content warning: This post discusses family connections to slavery and the plantation economy in 19th-century Cuba. These histories reflect the inequalities and exploitation of the period and are not condoned by The University of Manchester.

In my previous post, Returning to the Reunion Deseada, I introduced a remarkable plan and group of photographs of the Cuban sugar estate that belonged to the family of Enriqueta Rylands. This plantation may seem far removed from the library she founded, but their histories are connected through family, friendship and international trade. This post traces these connections through photographs taken in Matanzas, Baltimore, Bremen, Paris and Manchester.

Family matters in Matanzas

Sepia-toned historical photograph showing four people, three women and a man, standing on a path beneath trees. A low rope fence runs along the pathway behind them.
Albumen print of photograph taken at the Reunion Deseada, probably 1860s (VPH.347.temp.2.3).

This is the clearest image of family members among the six photographs taken at the Reunion Deseada. It probably depicts Teodoro or Augustin Dalcour with the de Bullet sisters. The photographs are probably the work of an amateur – these are not images to sell to tourists. It is possible they were taken by one of the Dalcour brothers, who had travelled widely in America and Europe, or their brother-in-law, the self-styled ‘Comte de Bullet‘ (an enthusiast for ‘spirit photography’ living in Paris).

Page from a Victorian photograph album featuring two sepia-toned studio portraits mounted side by side. On the left, a young woman in a full-length dress sits beside an ornate table. On the right, a moustached man wearing a jacket, waistcoat and bow tie sits with one arm resting on a chair.
Page from Dalcour family album (VPH.347.temp.9), photograph of Emilio Buch on the right.
Page from a Victorian photograph album featuring two mounted cards. The left contains a handwritten inscription with a blue stamp. The right features coloured botanical illustration of purple flowers with green stems and leaves.
Back of page from Dalcour family album (VPH.347.temp.9), Emilio Buch’s inscription on the left.

The collection also contains two photograph albums containing carte de visite portraits of friends and family. Because of their fragility, we haven’t removed the photographs from their mounts. But in some cases, the back of the photograph is visible, enabling us to identify the sitter. This dapper gentleman is Emilio Buch (1833-1900), whose portrait was taken at the Matanzas studio of Louisiana-born entrepreneur Julio H. Normand. On 3 June 1865 Emilio inscribed the reverse to Guillermina Bastian de Traub (1839-1900), presumably the woman in the adjacent portrait. The back of her photograph is covered by a painting of flowers.

Page from a Victorian photograph album featuring two sepia-toned studio portraits mounted side by side. On the left, a young woman in a dark dress rests her head on one hand on top of a fringed chair. On the right, a moustached man wearing a jacket, waistcoat and bow tie sits with one arm resting on a chair.
Page from Dalcour family album (VPH.347.temp.10), photograph of Emilio Buch’s on the right.
Digitised page from a Victorian photograph album showing the reverse of two mounted photographs. The left contains a handwritten note with a blue stamp. The right features an ornate photographers stamp.
Back of page from Dalcour family album (VPH.347.temp.10), Emilio Buch’s inscription on the left.

Emilio’s portrait also appears in the second album alongside another young woman, presumably Guillermina’s sister Dolores (1840-1907), who Emilio names in his inscription. The reverse of her portrait shows it was taken in New York by celebrity photographer J. Gurney & Son. Emilio may have given his portrait to the sisters as a mark of affection, but he does not appear to have become part of the family. Within a few years, all three were married: Emilio to Eliza Baldwin, Dolores to John Prince Bayley (another plantation owner in Cuba) and Guillermina to the Comte de Bullet’s younger brother Eugene.

Matanzas to Baltimore

The family were interested in new photographic techniques. As well as albumen prints, the donated collection contains daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes, forms of photography which arrived in Cuba in the 1850s. These two portraits of Augustin Dalcour were taken less than ten years apart. His passport application of 1875 describes him as 6 feet tall, with a high forehead, grey eyes, a full nose and medium mouth, a full face and “greyish” hair. It does not describe his distinctive beard.

19th-century photographic portrait of a seated bearded man wearing a light-coloured suit, with a young child in a pale dress standing between his knees. The photograph is housed in an ornate black and gold frame with decorative floral patterns.
Ambrotype portrait of Augustin Dalcour with his son Gustav, taken in Cuba, circa 1863 (VPH.347.temp.11.2).

The framed ambrotype was taken by a studio photographer, probably in Matanzas or Havana. The cabinet card was made in Baltimore City by N.H. Busey, after Augustin Dalcour left Cuba for the United States in July 1870.

Sepia-toned 19th-century studio portrait of a bearded man wearing a dark suit standing with his hands resting on an ornate rustic wooden chair. The photograph is mounted on a card bearing the photographer's name, N. H. Busey, Baltimore.
N.H. Busey, portrait of Augustin Dalcour, circa 1870 (VPH.347.temp.7).
Sepia-toned 19th-century photograph showing a group of people gathered in a garden outside a house with a veranda. A man sits on a chair in the foreground, three people sit on the grass, and others stand nearer to the house and beneath the trees. One person is seated on horseback.
Informal group photograph, probably taken at Augustin Dalcour’s home ‘Oella’ in Ellicott City, Baltimore, circa 1870 (VPH.347.temp.8.1).

Across the Atlantic: Bremen and Paris

My two favourite photographs in the collection were taken in Europe. This portrait of two young women, in an oval frame, was taken in Bremen by the photographer Emil Tiedemann. There is a faint inscription on the back: “Matilda and Malinke” – possibly the Traub sisters Mathilda (born 1824) and Amelie (born 1820).

19th-century photographic portrait of two women wearing full-length dresses with fitted bodices, white collars and wide sleeves. One woman stands with her arm resting behind the other, who is seated. The faded photograph is displayed in an oval gold and black frame.
Matilda and Malinka, circa 1850s (
VPH.347.temp.11.3)
Sepia-toned 19th-century studio photograph of an elderly bearded man (Victor Hugo) seated on a patterned sofa with two young children, a girl in a ruffled dress and a boy in a suit. The children sit close to the man, who has his arms around them. The photograph is mounted on a dark card bearing the name Melandri, Paris.
Victor Hugo and his grandchildren, by Achille Melandri, circa 1881. Inserted in Dalcour family album (VPH.347.temp.10).

This charming cabinet card, by Melandri of Paris, depicts the novelist Victor Hugo with his grandchildren Georges and Jeanne. I was surprised to find it among these family photographs, although there are a few other celebrity portraits. Melandri would have sold copies in his Paris shop, where the Comte de Bullet might have bought one to send to his sister in Baltimore.

The Manchester connection

Digitised page from a Victorian photograph album featuring two sepia toned mounted portraits. On the left, a man with prominent sideburns wearing a dark suit and tie. On the right, a seated woman in a patterned dress looks down at a baby dressed in white on her lap.
Page from Dalcour family album (VPH.347.temp.10)
Digitised page from a Victorian photograph album showing the reverse of two mounted photographs. The left bears the red lettering of Reston Photographic Studio, Stretford, Manchester. The right features an ornate black photographer’s stamp from Rio de Janeiro.
Reverse of page from Dalcour family album (VPH.347.temp.10)

This page in the album includes a photograph taken at the photographic studio of Reston in Stretford, just around the corner from Enriqueta’s home at Longford Hall. It almost certainly depicts Harriet, the wife of Enriqueta’s twin brother Stephen Joseph Tennant. She is holding a baby, probably Blanca who was born in 1879. (A cabinet card by the same photographer shows her older sister Clarita at age two years and seven months).

It would make sense for the portrait of Harriet to sit alongside that of her husband. He has different facial hair and expression than in the portrait possessed by his descendants, but the eyes are similar. This photograph was taken by José Ferreira Guimarães in Rio de Janeiro, where Stephen Tennant went in 1880 to recover a debt due to Rylands & Sons, the firm led by his brother-in-law John Rylands.

Together, these photographs map a family world that stretched from Cuba and the United States to Europe. The John Rylands Library is a legacy of this transatlantic story.

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