The Random Thoughts of Henry Holloway
When I was a very young child, a photographer in Belfast took my photograph. He had put out a rather captivating advertisement. Everybody was to ‘Go as you please.’ So my mother took me, just as I was, and have the photograph to this day.
The only adornment about that photograph is the fat, chubby baby himself; rather like the advertisement for a well-known soap -‘He Won’t be happy till he gets it!’ My wife doesn’t think that I was a particularly handsome baby. What she thinks about me now I had better leave out. But there were no frills or fancy garments, no dressing up for that photograph. It was just me, as I was.
There is something to be said for looking your best in a photograph, and most people like to appear nicer than they are. But, tell me this - If you have a photograph of your mother, would you like to have it all touched up, with the wrinkles creased out? Surely part of the appeal of the song, ‘Mother Machree’, is the ‘silver that shines in her hair, and the brow that’s all furrowed and wrinkled with care.’ You want your mother to look just as you know her, with the marks of care and toil that remind you of her love.
Fay Inchfawn tells of an old char lady knocked down in a street accident and brought to the casualty ward of a great hospital. From far away ‘her nearest and dearest’ came, but death had smoothed out all her wrinkles and care-lines beyond recognition. They couldn’t believe it was their old mother till one of them suddenly remembered her hands that were so work-worn. Then they knew.
People used to say that the camera couldn’t lie, but with trick photography, perfected as it has been in the modern film, you can make the camera prove almost anything. There was once a famous attempt made to prove spiritualism by the camera, but it didn’t work. You could get a photograph of yourself, with a little touching-up, that would make your friends green with envy.
Back in the days of Cromwell they did a bit of touching-up too. A court painter painted Cromwell’s picture. Cromwell was disfigured by warts on his face and the painter, thinking to please the great man, had left out the warts in the painting. When Cromwell saw it he said, ‘Take it away, and paint me, warts and all.’
Robbie Burns, who, of all the poets, was the poet of humanity saw a lady in church dressed in all her finery. Crawling over her bonnet was a louse and Robbie Burns wrote:
‘0 wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us.’
I’m not so sure that we should always be prepared to stand by that judgement. How we appear to other people depends a lot on the people. There is a cheap theology and a bitter cynicism that never sees much in us. There is, of course, the danger of taking too optimistic a view of human nature. The Bible says that, ‘Jesus knew what was in man.’ I take it that that means the best as well as the worst. He sees us as we really are. And the wonderful thing is that He takes us just as we are. There is an old hymn we sing very often and there is one verse which says: ‘Just as I am, Thou wilt receive.’
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