Professor [Benjamin] Jowett

Professor Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) of Oxford University was a close friend of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and often visited him at Freshwater. In 1862 he wrote to Tennyson’s wife, Emily, “I sometimes think that merely being in the neighbourhood of Alfred keeps me up to a higher standard of what ought to be in writing and thinking.” Jowett’s annual visits to Farringford became a tradition in the Tennyson household, and he often took up lodging nearby for prolonged spells of study. It was during these sojourns that he came to know Julia Margaret Cameron, who was a perpetual presence at her neighbor’s home. Jowett’s description of Cameron is as accurate a picture of her as her portrait is of him: “She has a tendency to make the house shake the moment she enters, but in this dull world that is a very excusable fault.”

Jowett made his early reputation by Latin scholarship, but his real love was Greek literature. In 1855 he was appointed Regius Professor of Greek by the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston. He translated many of the great works of ancient Greece into English, including the Dialogues of Plato, and listed writings by Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Thucydides as being among his favorites. He was famous for his public readings of the classics and his erudite college lectures. According to his biographer, Jowett’s public speaking voice was remarkable for the “richness in its tones, as of a silver bell, which charmed the ear.” Although his name is now obscure, Jowett was the most renowned Oxford master of the nineteenth century.

Cameron’s powerful portrait seems to capture the very essence of Jowett’s formidable personality, honed as it was on intellectual and literary pursuits. He is pictured as a beacon of knowledge, shining forth against the dark backdrop, attired in a dress coat of fine broadcloth, his waistcoat disclosing a faultless shirt front and white tie. He is holding in his left hand a bound volume that, foreshortened by the short focal length of Cameron’s lens, assumes a lecturnlike form that fittingly represents both the man and his work.

Julian Cox. Julia Margaret Cameron, In Focus: From the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 32. ©1996 The J. Paul Getty Museum.