Page 9 - Bulletin 7 2003

6

the architect Louis Mansergh, the collector Major W Jardine and the archivist and
antiquarian Miss M K Jeffreys.

Elliott’s largest exhibition, ‘South Africa through the centuries’, took place in 1930

and went on tour throughout the Union. It contained a well-chosen selection of no

fewer than 1 079 pictures, arranged thematically by the antiquarian W R Morrison.
The section on architecture counted fewer than eighty photographs, but this subject

figured more prominently in Elliott’s last exhibition held in 1938, when it was
covered by about half of the exhibited 400 studies. This show had the appropriate

title ‘The Cape, quaint and beautiful’ and a catalogue edited by the archivist Victor
de Kock. It contained the same article by F K Kendall, The whitewashed wall – only

slightly rewritten – that had been used for the 1913 exhibition.

For years, efforts had been made to acquire Elliott’s collection for the nation, so that

he could be freed from routine work and enabled to concentrate on classifying his

photographs – a thing he never had the time or inclination to do. In spite of a backing
of the Historical Monuments Commission, the Government could not be moved to

provide the five thousand pounds for which he had offered it on the condition that it
was to remain in Cape Town. Public appeals had little success either. Meanwhile,

Elliott’s health was deteriorating, and he lacked the means to have adequate medical
care. He died of stomach cancer on 20 November 1938, a few weeks after his last

exhibition but too soon to see his collection eventually bought for the Cape Archives

for half the original sum.

Though Arthur Elliott was engaged several times, he never married. He was a lonely
but popular figure whose labour of love was amply – if not materially – rewarded by

the friendship and gratitude of many Capetonians, humble and prominent.

Arthur Elliott as a recorder of history

Virtually the only evidence of Elliott’s work as a recorder of history is contained in

the nearly ten thousand negatives of the Elliott Collection and a further thousand or