Portrait of Cardinal Manning in Old Age
Birmingham: H.J. Whitlock, circa 1890. Photograph mounted on card (6 1/2 by 4 1/4 inches), with engraved verso. Signs of mounting on verso, faint toning and slight blemish to lower front margin, Manning's name in ink and bookseller's ink-stamp on the verso. Very good indeed. Item #1815
"THOUGH DEATH CAME SLOWLY, STRUGGLING STEP BY STEP WITH THAT BOLD AND TENACIOUS SPIRIT, WHEN HE DID COME AT LAST THE CARDINAL WAS READY" (LYTTON STRACHEY)
Carte-de-Visite of Henry Edward Manning, a Catholic convert from the Oxford Movement, who later became the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Published by H.J. Whitlock of Birmingham, the card is engraved on the verso: "By Appointment To H.M. The Queen and H.R.H. The Prince of Wales." The verso also bears the contemporary ink-stamp of Austin & Oates of Bristol: Booksellers, Stationers, Printers, and Specialists in Ecclesiastical Furniture and Decorations.
Received into the Catholic Church in April 1851, Manning was known for his Ultramontanism. In 1865, Manning succeeded Cardinal Wiseman as the second Archbishop of Westminster and in 1875 he was created Cardinal. "As the senior prelate in England, Manning's emphasis on social justice and his open-door policy made him a popular figure in London" (ODNB).
Dressed in a hat and a long coat, Cardinal Manning is pictured seated, looking worn from long labor. "In Manning, so it appeared, the Middle Ages lived again. The tall gaunt figure, with the face of smiling asceticism, the robes, and the biretta, as it passed in triumph from High Mass at the Oratory to philanthropic gatherings at Exeter Hall, from Strike Committees at the Docks to Mayfair drawing-rooms where fashionable ladies knelt to the Prince of the Church" (Lytton Strachey). When the Cardinal died in January 1892, "the crowds that thronged the streets for the four miles between the Brompton Oratory and Kensal Green cemetery (where he was buried) had no precedent...since the death of the first Duke of Wellington. In the course of his archiepiscopate, he taught his fellow Catholics that the time had come for them to emerge from the twilight and to show themselves as a powerful pressure group, whose interests and concerns could not be ignored. If they doubted their ability to do so, they had only to witness the example of his own life" (ODNB). Lytton Strachey. Eminent Victorians.
Price: $70.00