Viva Lewes Issue #148 January 2019

ON THIS MONTH: ILLUSTRATED TALK
Magic Lanterns
Trevor Beattie’s slide collection
One of the most famous magic lantern slides
is the one of a man swallowing rats. The
man is asleep in bed; his beard rises and falls;
he snores. Then you turn a handle and a rat
creeps up the counterpane towards his mouth.
When the man breathes out, the rat goes back.
Eventually the man swallows it, with a huge
gobbling noise. That’s why the Victorians knew
it as a ‘magic’ lantern. In an era when your
brightest lighting was oil lamps or candles and
the only coloured images you’d see were stained
glass windows, here were brightly illuminated,
coloured images – and they moved!
I became interested in magic lanterns as a
student. I’ve always liked the photography of
the Victorian era but photographs on paper
were far too expensive for me. Back then you
could buy magic lantern slides – photographs
from the 1880s / 1890s on glass – in boxes
outside junk shops. I picked some up and that
was it.
I’ve been collecting for around 40 years now.
I’ve got all sorts. The vast majority of these
slides were educational or religious. They were
very popular with the temperance movement.
Then there’s life model slides, which are the
Victorian equivalent of soap operas and feature
posed characters, with a printed reading that
goes with the slide, against a painted backdrop.
I’ve got slides of children playing on The
Level and some of the first Brighton scouts
in 1910 – a rather poignant image of an array
of young boys who would become the war
generation. I have quite a few of Brighton pubs.
There’s one I particularly like of The Tavern on
Boundary Road, and coming out is a lady, head
down, with her ceramic jug of beer.
In the first half hour of my show I focus
on the artistry of early hand-painted slides
dating from the 1820s. Then I move into the
comic ‘slipper slides’. A typical one might be
a John Bull-type man holding a pig’s head on
a plate. You pull the slip and swiftly his head
ends up on the plate and the pig’s head on his
shoulders. I always finish with chromotropes set
to electronic music. A chromotrope is a static
glass slide with a painted pattern on it, and two
other slides that rotate against each other. Don’t
let anyone tell you psychedelia was invented in
the 1960s!
I have one slide of people on Brighton
beach, the chain pier in the background – so
it’s around 1823. There’s a baby with a huge
bonnet that you only see from the back and
next to him is his mother. Just at the point the
shutter is pulled, her attention has obviously
been caught by the photographer and she’s
looked over her shoulder at the camera. You
look her straight in the eyes. That’s what I love
about magic lanterns – it’s the closest I’ll ever
come to time travel.
As told to Nione Meakin
Trevor Beattie’s Magic Lantern Show is at The
Keep on 30th Jan, 5.30pm, £5. thekeep.info
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