It’s somehow become the go-to photo of Ellen Willmott, taking over from the old bunch of ho-hum cliched stalwarts, and don’t get me wrong, I was delighted to find it in August 2021:

What you can’t tell from looking at this image of Ellen Willmott in her prime, though, is its size. It’s tiny – two and a half inches by one and a half at most:

It was probably taken in 1894, by famous French portrait photographer Numa Blanc, at their Aix-les-Bains studio in the French Alps.

The colourised version on the Miss Willmott’s Ghosts paperback is, by the way, mere guesswork on the part of the designer. We have no idea what colour any of Ellen’s outfit was.

Ellen went with her sister Rose…

…and particular friend Miss Gian Tufnell:

…and the pictures are clearly from the same sitting.

Tiny prints like these were designed to be given to friends as keepsakes and came in dear little boxes – we’ve found several of them:

Favourite images were also printed at larger sizes – either as cabinet cards – a bit bigger – or as substantial, 10″x8″ or similar sizes for framing. Sadly most of the ones we have at this larger size have not survived nearly as well. Here’s one of Ellen looking distinctly washed out; we have quite a few of this particular shot of her in ‘peasant’ costume, all equally, well, shot (to pieces, that is…)

Working from the location of the photographer, correspondence, newspaper cuttings and clothing, along with what we know each of the sitters were doing that year, I am dating these images being from May/June 1894. Gian is a new acquaintance, the grieving (for her beloved aunt) guest of Mr and Mrs Henry Grosvenor, who are visiting the also-grieving, (for Rose’s lost baby Rosamund) Mrs Rose Berkeley and Miss Ellen Willmott at their villa at Tresserve, near Aix for the Season.

The ladies have gone into town for the afternoon, and had their pictures taken. And here is where I have a little theory to suggest.

Take another look at that picture of Miss Tufnell. A good look.

Is it just me or is she wearing Ellen’s blouse, jacket and bow tie? 

Before she became Lady Mount Stephen, Gian was notorious for awful, clumpy outfits – her thick boots and horrid, ill-fitting tweed were often thought, shall we say, ‘worthy of comment’?

Did the super-fashionable Willmott sisters ‘take her on’ like some kind of Emma-inspired ‘project’? Have they actually dressed her up for the photo? If so, she’s failed to do up her top button and the jacket’s a bit big, exacerbated by the fact that that’s not done up either, which, frankly, says a lot about both Gian and the sisters.

This is, as always, conjecture. We will never really know what happened at Numa Blanc’s studio that day, though I am pretty confident about the date, if nothing else.

Whatever happened, Gian did not play the dowdy frump for much longer. It would not be long before the apprentice outdid the master.

By that summer, she was dressing for a Princess – the larger-than-life Princess Mary Adelaide, to be precise. Here she is just a couple of months later, posing with the Royal family on holiday in Switzerland (seated, centre).

She has even learned, along with the studied poise, some hat styling, doubtless gleaned from Ellen’s gigantic titfers and, I might suggest, surpassing them in sheer bird-wingery and giant bows:

Oh Ellen, what did you start that day..?