A kind tyrant

Apart from its size, perhaps, there’s nothing much about the house to distinguish it from its neighbours — one of the countless, vaguely Gothic, Victorian seaside villas that fringe the coast of the Isle of Wight. Even its name, Dimbola Lodge, seems like that of a respectable boarding house, which, indeed, was what it became in the 1920s after its days of glory passed. But, like the house itself, the name has an exotic background, for it was the title of the Cameron family’s estate in Ceylon. And in the 1860s and 1870s Dimbola Lodge was home to as brilliant a circle — social, literary, scientific — as any in that immensely confident period.

Julia Margaret Cameron was the youngest of five Pattle sisters, the only one without the blessing of beauty and elegance. She was rather squat, with a swarthy, heavy face; she dressed in strong colours and smelt slightly of the chemicals that brought her fame as a photographer.