It was in that year that an Irishman named McGhee came into the
neighbourhood to practise the Daguerreotype process. He was not a
licencee, but no one appeared to interfere with him, nor serve him with
an injunction, for he carried on his little portrait business for a
considerable time without molestation. The patentee was either very
indifferent to his vested interests, or did not consider these intruders
worth going to law with, for there were many raids across the borders by
camera men in those early days. Several circumstances combined to
facilitate the inroads of Scotch operators into the northern counties of
England. Firstly, the patent laws of England did not extend to Scotland
at that time, so there was a far greater number of Daguerreotypists in
Edinburgh and other Scotch towns in the early days of photography than
in any part of England, and many of them made frequent incursions into
the forbidden land without troubling themselves about obtaining a
licence, but somehow they never remained long at a time; they were
either afraid of consequences, or did not meet with patronage
sufficient to induce them to continue their sojourns beyond a few of the
summer weeks. For many years most of the early Daguerreotypists were
birds of passage, frequently on the wing. Among the earliest settlers in
London, were Mr. Beard (patentee), Mr. Claudet, and Mr. J. E.
Mayall--the latter is still alive, 1889--and in Edinburgh, Messrs. Ross
and Thompson, Mr. Howie, Mr. Poppawitz, and Mr. Tunny--the latter was a
Calotypist--with most of whom it was my good fortune to become
personally acquainted in after years.
Secondly, a great deal of ill-feeling and annoyance were caused by the
incomprehensible and somewhat underhanded way in which the English
patent was obtained, and these feelings induced many to poach on
photographic preserves, and even to defy injunctions; and, while
lawsuits were pending, it was not uncommon for non-licencees to practise
the new art with the impunity and feelings common to smugglers. Mr.
Beard, the English patentee, brought many actions at law against
infringers of his patent rights, the most memorable of which was that
where Mr. Egerton, 1, Temple Street, Whitefriars, the first dealer in
photographic materials, and agent for Voightlander's lenses in London,
was the defendant. During that trial it came out in evidence that the
patentee had earned as much as forty thousand pounds in one year by
taking portraits and fees from licencees. Though the judgment of the
Court was adverse to Mr. Egerton, it did not improve the patentee's
moral right to his claim, for the trial only made it all the more public
that the French Government had allowed M. Daguerre six thousand francs
(L240), and M. Isidore Niepce four thousand francs (L160) per annum, on
condition that their discoveries should be published, and _made free to
all the world_. This trial did not in any way improve Mr. Beard's
financial position, for eventually he became a bankrupt, and his
establishments in King William Street, London Bridge, and the
Polytechnic Institute, in Regent Street, were extinguished. Mr. Beard,
who was the first to practise Daguerreotyping commercially in this
country, was originally a coal merchant. I think Mr. Claudet practised
the process in London without becoming a licencee, either through
previous knowledge, or some private arrangement made with Daguerre
before the patent was granted to Mr. Beard. It was while photography was
clouded with this atmosphere of dissatisfaction and litigation, that I
made my first practical acquaintance with it in the following manner:--
Being anxious to obtain possession of one of those marvellous
sun-pictures, and hoping to get an idea of the manner in which they
were produced, I paid a visit, one sunny morning, to Mr. McGhee, the
Daguerreotypist, dressed in my best, with clean shirt, and stiff
stand-up collar, as worn in those days. I was a very young man then, and
rather particular about the set of my shirt collar, so you may readily
judge of my horror when, after making the financial arrangements to the
satisfaction of Mr. McGhee, he requested me to put on a blue cotton
_quasi_ clean "dickey," with a limp collar, that had evidently done
similar duty many times before. You may be sure I protested, and
inquired the reason why I should cover up my white shirt front with such
an objectionable article. I was told if I did not put it on my shirt
front would be _solarized_, and come out _blue_ or dirty, whereas if I
put on the blue "dickey" my shirt front would appear white and clean.
What "solarized" meant, I did not know, nor was it further explained,
but, as I very naturally wished to appear with a clean shirt front, I
submitted to the indignity, and put on the limp and questionably clean
"dickey." While the Daguerreotypist was engaged with some mysterious
manipulations in a cupboard or closet, I brushed my hair, and
contemplated my singular appearance in the mirror somewhat ruefully. O,
ye sitters and operators of to-day! congratulate yourselves on the
changes and advantages that have been wrought in the practice of
photography since then. When Mr. McGhee appeared again with something
like two wooden books in his hand, he requested me to follow him into
the garden; which was only a back yard. At the foot of the garden, and
against a brick wall with a piece of grey cloth nailed over it, I was
requested to sit down on an old chair; then he placed before me an
instrument which looked like a very ugly theodolite on a tripod
stand--that was my first sight of a camera--and, after putting his head
under a black cloth, told me to look at a mark on the other side of the
garden, without winking or moving till he said "done." How long I sat I
don't know, but it seemed an awfully long time, and I have no doubt it
was, for I know that I used to ask people to sit five and ten minutes,
afterwards. The sittings over, I was requested to re-enter the house,
and then I thought I would see something of the process; but no. Again
Mr. McGhee went into the mysterious chamber, and shut the door quickly.
In a little time he returned and told me that the sittings were
satisfactory--he had taken two--and that he would finish and deliver
them next day. Then I left without obtaining the ghost of an idea of the
_modus operandi_ of producing portraits by the sun, beyond the fact that
a camera had been placed before me. Next day the portraits were
delivered according to promise, but I confess I was somewhat
disappointed at getting so little for my money. It was a very small
picture that could not be seen in every light, and not particularly like
myself, but a scowling-looking individual, with a limp collar, and
rather dirty-looking face. Whatever would _mashers_ have said or done,
if they had gone to be photographed in those days of photographic
darkness? I was, however, somewhat consoled by the thought that I, at
last, possessed one of those wonderful sun-pictures, though I was
ignorant of the means of production.
Soon after having my portrait taken, Mr. McGhee disappeared, and there
was no one left in the neighbourhood who knew anything of the
mysterious manipulations of Daguerreotyping. I had, nevertheless,
resolved to possess an apparatus and obtain the necessary information,
but there was no one to tell me what to buy, where to buy it, nor what
to do with it. At last an old friend of mine who had been on a visit to
Edinburgh, had purchased an apparatus and some materials with the view
of taking Daguerreotypes himself, but finding that he could not, was
willing to sell it to me, though he could not tell me how to use it,
beyond showing me an image of the house opposite upon the ground glass
of the camera. I believe my friend let me have the apparatus for what it
cost him, which was about L15, and it consisted of a quarter-plate
portrait lens by Slater, mahogany camera, tripod stand, buff sticks,
coating and mercury boxes of the roughest description, a few chemicals
and silvered plates, and a rather singular but portable dark room. Of
the uses of the chemicals I knew very little, and of their nature
nothing which led to very serious consequences, which I shall relate in
the proper place. Having obtained possession of this marvellous
apparatus, my next ardent aspiration was to make a successful use of it.
I distinctly remember, even at this distant date, with what nervous
curiosity I examined all the articles when I unpacked them in my
father's house, and with what wonder, not unmixed with apprehension, my
father looked upon that display of unknown, and to him apparently
nameless and useless toys. "More like a lot of conjuror's traps than
anything else," he exclaimed, after I had set them all out. And a few
days after he told one of my young friends that he thought I had gone
out of my mind to take up with that "Daggertype" business; the name
itself was a stumbling block in those days, for people called the
process "dagtype, docktype, and daggertype" more frequently than by its
proper name, Daguerreotype. What a contrast now-a-days, when almost
every father is an amateur photographer, and encourages both his sons
and daughters to become the same. My father was a very good parent, in
his way, and encouraged me, to the fullest extent of his means, in the
study of music and painting, and even sent me to the Government School
of Design, where I studied drawing under W. B. Scott; but the
new-fangled method of taking portraits did not harmonise with his
conservative and practical notions. One cause of his disapprobation and
dissatisfaction was, doubtless, my many failures; in fact, I may say,
inability to show him any result. I had acquired an apparatus of the
roughest and most primitive construction, but no knowledge of its use or
the behaviour of the chemicals employed, beyond the bare numerical order
in which they were to be used, and there was no one within a hundred
miles of where I lived, that I knew of, who could give me lessons or the
slightest hint respecting the process. I had worn out the patience of
all my relations and friends in fruitless sittings. I had set fire to my
singular dark room, and nearly set fire to the house, by attempting to
refill the spirit lamp while alight, and I was ill and suffering from
salivation through inhaling the fumes of mercury in my blind, anxious,
and enthusiastic endeavours to obtain a sun-picture. It is not long
since an eminent photographer told me that I was an enthusiast, but if
he had seen me in those days he would, in all probability, have told me
that I was mad. Though ill, I was not mad; I was only determined not to
be beaten. I was resolved to keep pegging away until I obtained a
satisfactory result. My friends laughed at me when I asked them to sit
for a trial, and they either refused, or sat with a very bad grace, as
if it really were a trial to them; but fancy, fair and kindly readers,
what it must have been to me! Finding that my living models fought shy
of me and my trials, I then thought of getting a lay figure, and
borrowed a large doll--quite as big as a baby--of one of my lady
friends. I stuck it up in a garden and pegged away at it for nearly six
months. At the end of that time I was able to produce a portrait of the
doll with tolerable certainty and success. Then I ventured to ask my
friends to sit again, but my process was too slow for life studies, and
my live sitters generally moved so much, their portraits were not
recognisable. There were no head-rests in those days, at least I did not
possess one, or it might have been pleasanter for my sitters and easier
for myself. What surprised me very much--and I thought it a singular
thing at the time--was my success in copying an engraving of Thorburn's
Miniature of the Queen. I made several good and beautiful copies of that
engraving, and sent one to an artist friend, then in Devonshire, who
wrote to say that it was beautiful, and that if he could get a
Daguerreotype portrait with the eyes as clear as that, he would sit at
once; but all the "Dagtypes" he had hitherto seen had only black holes
where the eyes should be. Unfortunately, that was my own experience. I
could copy from the flat well enough, but when I went to the round I
went wrong. Ultimately I discovered the cause of all that, and found a
remedy, but oh! the weary labour and mental worry I underwent before I
mastered the difficulties of the most troublesome and uncertain, yet
most beautiful and permanent of all the photographic processes that ever
was discovered or invented; and now it is a lost art. No one practises
it, and I don't think that there are half-a-dozen men living--myself
included--that could at this day go through all the manipulations
necessary to produce a good Daguerreotype portrait or picture; yet, when
the process was at the height of its popularity, a great number of
people pursued it as a profession in all parts of the civilized world,
and in the United States of America alone it was estimated in 1854 that
there were not less than thirty thousand people making their living as
Daguerreans. Few, if any, of the photographers of to-day--whether
amateur or professional--know anything of the forms or uses of plates,
buffs, lathes, sensitising or developing boxes, gilding stands, or other
Daguerreotype appliances; and I am quite certain that there is not a
dealer in all England that can furnish at this date a complete set of
Daguerreotype apparatus.
It was in 1849 that I gilded my first picture--a portrait of one of my
friends playing a guitar. I possess that picture now, and, after a lapse
of forty years, it is as good and bright as it was on the day that it
was taken. It was not a first-class production, but I hoped to do better
soon, and on the strength of that hope determined to commence business
as a professional Daguerreotypist. While I was considering whether I
should pitch my tent permanently in my native town, or take to a nomadic
kind of life, similar to what other Daguerreotypists were pursuing, I
was helped to a decision by the sudden appearance of a respectable and
experienced Daguerreotypist who came and built a "glass house"--the
first of its kind--in my native town. This somewhat disarranged my
plans, but on the whole it was rather opportune and advantageous than
otherwise, for it afforded me an unexpected opportunity of gaining a
great deal of practical experience on easy terms. The new comer was Mr.
George Brown, who had been an "operator" for Mr. Beard, in London, and
as he exhibited much finer specimens of the Daguerreotype process than
any I had hitherto seen, I engaged myself to assist him for six months
at a small salary. I showed him what I had done, and he showed and told
me all that he knew in connection with photography, and thus commenced a
business relation that ripened into a friendship that endured as long as
he lived.
At the end of the six months' engagement I left Mr. Brown, to commence
business on my own account, but as neither of us considered that there
was room for two Daguerreotypists in a town with a population of _one
hundred and twenty thousand_, I was driven to adopt the nomadic mode of
life peculiar to the itinerant photographer of the period. That was in
1850. Up to that time I had done nothing in Calotype work. Mr. Brown was
strictly a Daguerreotypist, but Mr. Parry, at that time a glass dealer
and amateur photographer, was working at the Calotype process, but not
very successfully, for nearly all his efforts were spoiled by
decomposition, which he could not then account for or overcome, but he
eventually became one of the best Calotypists in the neighbourhood, and
I became the possessor of some of the finest Calotype negatives he ever
produced, many of which are still in my possession. Mr. Parry
relinquished his glass business, and became a professional photographer
soon after the introduction of the collodion process. Another amateur
photographer that I met in those early days was a flute player in the
orchestra of the theatre. He produced very good Calotype negatives with
a single lens, and was very enthusiastic, but extremely reticent on all
photographic matters. About this period I made the acquaintance of Mr.
J. W. Swan: I had known him for some time previously when he was
apprentice and assistant to Mr. Mawson, chemist, in Mosley Street,
Newcastle-on-Tyne. Neither Mr. Mawson nor Mr. Swan were known to the
photographic world at that time. Mr. Mawson was most popular as a dealer
in German yeast, and I think it was not until after Archer published his
process that they began to make collodion and deal in photographic
materials--at any rate, I did not buy any photographic goods of them
until 1852, when I first began to use Mawson's collodion. In October,
1850, I went to Hexham, about twenty miles west of Newcastle-on-Tyne, to
make my first appearance as a professional Daguerreotypist. I rented a
sitting-room with a good window and clear view, so as to take "parlour
portraits." I could only take small pictures--two and a half by two
inches--for which I charged half a guinea, and was favoured with a few
sittings; but it was a slow place, and I left it in a few weeks.
The next move I made was to Seaham Harbour, and there I did a little
better business, but the place was too small and the people too poor for
me to continue long. Half guineas were not plentiful, even among the
tradespeople, and there were very few gentlefolk in the neighbourhood.
Some of the townspeople were very kind to me, and invited me to their
homes, and although my sojourn was not very profitable, it was very
pleasant. I had many pleasant rambles on the sands, and often looked at
Seaham Hall and thought of Byron and his matrimonial disappointment in
his marriage with Miss Milbank.
From Seaham Harbour I went to Middlesborough, hoping to do more business
among a larger population, but it appeared as if I were only going from
bad to worse. At that date the population was about thirty thousand, but
chiefly people of the working classes, employed at Balchow and Vaughn's
and kindred works. I made portraits of some of the members of Mr.
Balchow's family, Mr. Geordison, and some of the resident Quakers, but
altogether I did not do much more than pay expenses. I managed, however,
to stay there till the year 1851, when I caught the World's Fair fever,
so I packed up my apparatus and other things I did not require
immediately, and sent them to my father's house, and with a few changes
in my carpet-bag, and a little money in my pocket, I started off to see
the Great Exhibition in London. I went by way of York and Hull, with the
two-fold object of seeing some friends in both places, and to prospect
on the business chances they might afford. At York I found Mr. Pumphrey
was located, but as he did not appear to be fully occupied with
sitters--for I found him trying to take a couple of boys fighting in a
back yard--I thought there was not room for another Daguerreotypist in
York. In a few days I went to Hull, but even there the ground was
preoccupied, so I took the first steamer for London. We sailed on a
Saturday night, and after a pleasant voyage arrived at the wharf below
London Bridge early on Sunday evening. I put up at the "Yorkshire Grey,"
in Thames Street, where I met several people from the North, also on a
visit to London to see the Great Exhibition. This being my first visit
to London, I was anxious to get a sight of the streets and crowds
therein, so, after obtaining some refreshment, I strolled out with one
of my fellow passengers to receive my first impressions of the great
metropolis. The evening was fine, and, being nearly the longest day,
there was light enough to enable me to see the God-forsaken appearance
of Thames Street, the dismal aspect of Fish Street Hill, and the gloomy
column called "The Monument" that stands there to remind citizens and
strangers of the Great Fire of 1666; but I was both amazed and amused
with the life and bustle I saw on London Bridge and other places in the
immediate neighbourhood, but my eyes and ears soon became fatigued with
the sights and sounds of the lively and noisy thoroughfares. After a
night's rest, which was frequently broken by cries of "Stop thief!" and
the screams of women, I arose and made an early start for the Great
Exhibition of 1851. Of all the wonderful things in that most wonderful
exhibition, I was most interested in the photographic exhibits and the
beautiful specimens of American Daguerreotypes, both portraits and
landscapes, especially the views of Niagara Falls, which made me
determine to visit America as soon as ever I could make the necessary
arrangements.
While examining and admiring those very beautiful Daguerreotypes, I
little thought that I was standing, as it were, between the birth of one
process and the death of another; but so it was, for the newly-born
collodion process very soon annihilated the Daguerreotype, although the
latter process had just reached the zenith of its beauty. In the March
number of the _Chemist_, Archer's Collodion Process was published, and
that was like the announcement of the birth of an infant Hercules, that
was destined to slay a beautiful youth whose charms had only arrived at
maturity. But there was really a singular and melancholy coincidence in
the birth of the Collodion Process and the early death of the
Daguerreotype, for Daguerre himself died on July 10th, 1851, so that
both Daguerre and his process appeared to receive their death blows in
the same year. I don't suppose that Daguerre died from a shock to his
system, caused by the publication of a rival process, for it is not
likely that he knew anything about the invention of a process that was
destined, in a very few years, to abolish his own--living as he was in
the retirement of his native village, and enjoying his well-earned
pension.
As Daguerre was the first of the successful discoverers of photography
to be summoned by death, I will here give a brief sketch of his life and
pursuits prior to his association with Nicephore Niepce and photography.
Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre was born at Cormeilles, near Paris, in
1787, of poor and somewhat careless parents, who appear to have bestowed
upon him more names than attention. Though they did not endow him with a
good education, they had the good sense to observe the bent of his mind
and apprentice him to a theatrical scene painter. In that situation he
soon made his mark, and his artistic and mechanical abilities, combined
with industry, painstaking, and boldness of conception, soon raised him
to the front rank of his profession, in which he gained both honour and
profit. Like all true artists, he was fond of sketching from nature;
and, to save time and secure true proportion, he employed such optical
appliances as were then at his command. Some of his biographers say
that he, like Fox Talbot, employed the camera lucida; others the
camera-obscura; as there is a considerable difference between the two
it would be interesting to know which it really was. At any rate it was
one of these instruments which gave him the notion and created the desire
to secure the views as they were presented by the lens or reflector. Much
of his time was devoted to the painting and construction of a diorama
which was first exhibited in 1822, and created quite a sensation in
Paris. As early as 1824 he commenced his photographic experiments, with
very little knowledge on the subject; but with the hope and
determination of succeeding, by some means or other, in securing the
pictures as Nature painted them on the screen or receiver. Doubtless he
was sanguine enough then to hope to be able to obtain colours as well as
drawings, but he died without seeing that accomplished, and so will many
others. What he did succeed in accomplishing was marvellous, and quite
entitled him to all the honour and emolument he received, but he only
lived about twelve years after his discovery. He was, however, saved the
mortification of seeing his beautiful discovery discarded and cast away
in the hey-day of its beauty and perfection.
After a few weeks sojourn in London, seeing all the sights and
revisiting all the Daguerreotype studios, I turned my back on the great
city and my footsteps homewards again. As soon as I reached home I
unpacked my apparatus and made arrangements for another campaign with
the camera at some of the sea-side resorts, with the hope of making up
for lost time and money through visiting London.