Mrs Beatrice Cundy, née Adelin Beatrice Connell, 1875–1949

Abstract

‘Miss Connell was a tall grave woman who wore her hair parted in the rniddle and drawn tightly each side of her face. She wore a severe blue serge dress, and round her neck a large old-fashioned locket hung from a golden chain’. Thus did Yevonde Cumbers describe Lena Connell in 1911, and, sadly, it is a rare description. It appears in the future Madame Yevonde's autobiography. When Yevonde was still very young and wondering about a career, she responded to Miss Connell's advertisement in The Suffragette for a pupil though, she says, ‘Photography meant nothing in my young life’. 1 At the studio in St John's Wood she was instantly fascinated by what she saw and its possibilities. She did not in fact take the job but inspiration had struck and the famous career had begun.