the time the civil war commenced, and as the young soldiers were proud
of their new uniforms, and those who had been "in action" were prouder
still of their stains and scars, the photographers did a good business
among them, both in the city and in the camp. I saw a little of this
"camp work" and "camp life" myself, and some of the havoc of war as
well. Photographers are adventurous, and frequently getting into odd
kinds of "positions," as well as their "sitters."
It was my destiny, under the guidance of the Great Source of Light, to
witness the results of the first great conflict between the opposing
armies of the Federals and Confederates; to hear the thunder of their
artillery, and see the clouds of smoke hovering over the battle field,
without being in the battle itself. To see the rout and panic of the
Northern troops, who had so recently marched proudly on to fancied
victory; to witness the disgraceful and disastrous stampede of the
Northern army from the field of Bull Run; to listen to the agonized
groans of the "severely wounded" as they were hurried past to the
temporary hospitals in Washington and Georgetown; to be an eye-witness
to the demoralized condition of men who, naturally brave, were under the
influence of a panic caused by the vague apprehension of a danger that
did not exist; to hear the citizens exclaim, "What shall we do?" and
"For God's sake don't tell your people at home what you have seen!" and
comparing the reverse of their national arms to a "regular Waterloo
defeat," which was anything but a happy simile. To see the
panic-stricken men themselves, when they discovered their error, and
began to realize their shame, weeping like women at the folly they had
committed. But they atoned for all this, afterwards, by deeds of
glorious valour which were never surpassed, and which ended in restoring
their country to peace and reunion.
The 21st of July, 1861, was a Sunday, and as calm and beautiful a day as
could be wished for. From its associations it ought to have been a day
of rest and peace to all; but it was not. There was terrible slaughter
among men that Sunday in Virginia. During the morning, I took advantage
of an opportunity offered me to go down to Alexandria, in Virginia,
about five or six miles below Washington, which was then occupied by a
portion of the Federal Army. Everything in the place had the appearance
of war. There were more soldiers than civilians about. Hotels were
turned into barracks and military storehouses. The hotel where Colonel
Ellsworth, of the New York Fire Zouaves, was shot by the proprietor for
hauling down the Confederate flag--which the latter had hoisted over his
house--had been taken possession of by the military authorities, and
the whole place was under martial law. It was there I first heard
rumours of a battle being fought in the neighbourhood of Manassas
Junction. These rumours were soon confirmed by the roar of cannon in the
distance, and the hurrying of fresh troops from Washington to the field
of battle. But they were not needed. Before they could reach the field
the "stampede" had commenced, and the retreating hosts came like a
rushing tide upon the advancing few, and carried them back, absorbed in
the unshapen mass of confusion.
The night came, and little was known by the inhabitants of Washington of
the rout and rush of terrified men towards the city; but the next
morning revealed the fact.
Wet and wretched was the morning after the battle. The heavens seemed to
weep over the disgrace as the men poured into the city, singly and in
groups, unofficered, and without their firearms, which many had lost, or
thrown away in their flight. The citizens gathered round them, anxious
to learn all about the defeat, and the whereabouts of the Confederate
army, and invited them into their houses to take refreshment and rest.
Several instances of this impromptu hospitality and sympathy I witnessed
myself; and many of the weary and wounded soldiers I talked to. They
that were only slightly wounded in the hands and arms had their wounds
washed and dressed by the wives and daughters of many of the residents.
The hotels were crowded, and the "bars" were besieged by the drenched
and fatigued soldiers, whom the curious and sympathizing citizens
invited to "liquor." The men all told wonderful stories of the fight and
of their own escape, but none could tell satisfactorily what had created
the panic. Some said that a few "teamsters" took the alarm, and, riding
to the rear in hot haste, conveyed the impression that an exterminating
pursuit by the Confederates had commenced.
In a day or two the majority of the men were mustered together again,
and occupied their old camping grounds, where I visited them, and heard
many of their stories, and got some of the relics of the battle field.
Fresh troops were raised, and placed under the command of another
general. But it was long before another "onward march to Richmond" was
attempted. The North had learned something of the strength and prowess
of the South, and began to prepare for a longer and fiercer struggle
with "Secession."
Such are the two pictures of the Potomac which I have endeavoured to
reproduce, and which fell under my observation during my professional
peregrinations in connection with the practice of photography.
RAMBLES AMONG THE STUDIOS OF AMERICA.
Boston.
My impressions of America, from a photographic point of observation,
were taken at two distinct periods--which I might call the two epochs of
photographic history--the dry and the wet; the first being the
Daguerreotype, and the second what may be termed the present era of
photography, which includes the processes now known and practised.
I take Boston as my starting point for several reasons. First, because
it was the first American city I visited; secondly, it was in Boston
that the change first came over photography which wrought such a
revolution in the art all over the United States; thirdly and severally,
in Boston I noticed many things in connection with photography which
differed widely from what I had known and practised in England.
Visiting the gallery of Mr. Whipple, then in Washington Street, the
busiest thoroughfare in Boston, I was struck with the very large
collection of Daguerreotype portraits there exhibited, but particularly
with a large display of Daguerreotypes of the moon in various aspects.
I had heard of Mr. Whipple's success in Daguerreotyping the moon before
I left Europe, but had no idea that so much had been achieved in lunar
photography at that early date until I saw Mr. Whipple's case of
photographs of the moon in many phases. Those Daguerreotypes were
remarkable for their sharpness and delicacy, and the many trying
conditions under which they were taken. They were all obtained at
Cambridge College under the superintendance of Professor Bond, but in
what manner I had better allow Mr. Whipple to speak for himself, by
making an extract from a letter of his, published in _The Photographic
Art Journal_ of America, July, 1853. Mr. Whipple says: "My first attempt
at Daguerreotyping the moon was with a reflecting telescope; the mirror
was five feet focus, and seven inches diameter. By putting the prepared
plate directly in the focus of the reflector, and giving it an exposure
of from three to five seconds, I obtained quite distinct impressions;
but owing to the smallness of the image, which was only about
five-eighths of an inch in diameter, and the want of clockwork to
regulate the motion of the telescope, the results were very far from
satisfactory.
"Having obtained permission of Professor Bond to use the large Cambridge
reflector for that purpose, I renewed my experiments with high hopes of
success, but soon found it no easy matter to obtain a clear,
well-defined, beautiful Daguerreotype of the moon. Nothing could be more
interesting than its appearance through that _magnificent_ instrument:
but to transfer it to the silver plate, to make something tangible of
it, was quite a different thing. The "governor," that regulates the
motion of the telescope, although sufficiently accurate for observing
purposes, was entirely unsuitable for Daguerreotyping; as when the plate
is exposed to the moon's image, if the instrument does not follow
exactly to counteract the earth's motion, even to the nicety of a
hair's breadth, the beauty of the impression is much injured, or
entirely spoiled. The governor had a tendency to move the instrument a
little too fast, then to fall slightly behind. By closely noticing its
motion, and by exposing my plates those few seconds that it exactly
followed between the accelerated and retarded motion, I might obtain one
or two perfect proofs in the trial of a dozen plates, other things being
right. But a more serious obstacle to my success was the usual state of
the atmosphere in the locality--the sea breeze, the hot and cold air
commingling, although its effects were not visible to the eye; but when
the moon was viewed through the telescope it had the same appearance as
objects when seen through the heated air from a chimney, in a constant
tremor, precluding the possibility of successful Daguerreotyping. This
state of the atmosphere often continued week after week in a greater or
less degree, so that an evening of perfect quiet was hailed with the
greatest delight. After oft-repeated failures, I finally obtained the
Daguerreotype from which the crystallotypes I send for your journal were
copies; it was taken in March, 1851. The object glass only of the
telescope was used. It is fifteen inches in diameter, and about
twenty-three feet focal length; the image it gives of the moon varies
but little from three inches, and the prepared plate had an exposure of
thirteen seconds."
Copies of several of these "crystallotypes" of the moon I afterwards
obtained and exhibited at the Photographic Exhibition in connection
with the British Association which met in Glasgow in 1855. The
"crystallotypes" were simply enlarged photographs, about eight or nine
inches in diameter, and conveyed to the mind an excellent idea of the
moon's surface. The orange-like form and the principal craters were
distinctly marked. Indeed, so much were they admired as portraits of the
moon, that one of the _savans_ bought the set at the close of the
exhibition.
Mr. Whipple is still a successful practitioner of our delightful art in
the "Athens of the Western World," and has reaped the reward of his
continuity and devotion to his favourite art. The late decision of the
American law courts on the validity of Mr. Cutting's patent for the use
of bromides in collodion must have laid Mr. Whipple under serious
liabilities, for he used bromo-iodized negative collodion for iron
development as far back as 1853.
There were many other professional photographers in the chief city of
Massachusetts; but I have described the characteristics of the principal
and oldest concerns. Doubtless there are many new ones since I visited
the city where Benjamin Franklin served his apprenticeship as a printer;
where the "colonists" in 1773, rather than pay the obnoxious "tea tax,"
pitched all the tea out of the ships into the waters of Boston Bay, and
commenced that long struggle against oppression and unjust taxation
which eventually ended in severing the North American Colonies from the
mother country. With the knowledge of all this, it is the more
surprising that they should now so quietly submit to what must be an
obnoxious and troublesome system of taxation; for, not only have
photographers to pay an annual licence of about two guineas for carrying
on their trade, but also to affix a government stamp on each picture
sent out, which is a further tax of about one penny on each. Surely the
patience of our brother photographers on the other side of the Atlantic
must be sorely tried, what with the troubles of their business, the
whims and eccentricities of their sitters, Mr. Cutting's unkind cut, and
the prowling visitations of the tax-collector.
New York.
What a wonderful place New York is for photographic galleries! Their
number is legion, and their size is mammoth. Everything is "mammoth."
Their "saloons" are mammoth. Their "skylights" are mammoth. Their
"tubes," or lenses, are mammoth. Their "boxes," or cameras, are mammoth;
and _mammoth_ is the amount of business that is done in some of those
"galleries." The "stores" of the dealers in photographic "stock" are
mammoth; and the most mammoth of all is the "store" of Messrs. E. & H.
T. Anthony, on Broadway. This establishment is one of the many palaces
of commerce on that splendid thoroughfare. The building is of iron, tall
and graceful, of the Corinthian order, with Corinthian pilasters,
pillars, and capitals. It is five storeys high, with a frontage of about
thirty feet, and a depth of two hundred feet, running right through the
"block" from Broadway to the next street on the west side of it. This is
the largest store of the kind in New York; I think I may safely say, in
either of the two continents, east or west, containing a stock of all
sorts of photographic goods, from "sixpenny slides" to "mammoth tubes,"
varying in aggregate value from one hundred and fifty thousand to two
hundred thousand dollars. The heads of the firm are most enterprising,
one taking the direction of the commercial department, and the other the
scientific and experimental. Nearly all novelties in apparatus and
photographic requisites pass through this house into the hands of our
American _confreres_ of the camera, and not unfrequently find their way
to the realms of Queen Victoria on both sides of the Atlantic.
When the carte-de-visite pictures were introduced, the oldest and
largest houses held aloof from them, and only reluctantly, and under
pressure, took hold of them at last. Why, it is difficult to say, unless
their very small size was too violent a contrast to the mammoth pictures
they were accustomed to handle. Messrs. Rockwood and Co., of Broadway,
were the first to make a great feature of the carte-de-visite in New
York. They also introduced the "Funnygraph," but the latter had a very
short life.
In the Daguerreotype days there was a "portrait factory" on Broadway,
where likenesses were turned out as fast as coining, for the small
charge of twenty-five cents a head. The arrangements for such rapid work
were very complete. I had a dollar's worth of these "factory"
portraits. At the desk I paid my money, and received four tickets, which
entitled me to as many sittings when my turn came. I was shown into a
waiting room crowded with people. The customers were seated on forms
placed round the room, sidling their way to the entrance of the
operating room, and answering the cry of "the next" in much the same
manner that people do at our public baths. I being "the next," at last
went into the operating room, where I found the operator stationed at
the camera, which he never left all day long, except occasionally to
adjust a stupid sitter. He told the next to "Sit down" and "Look thar,"
focussed, and, putting his hand into a hole in the wall which
communicated with the "coating room," he found a dark slide ready filled
with a sensitised plate, and putting it into the camera, "exposed," and
saying "That will dew," took the dark slide out of the camera, and
shoved it through another hole in the wall communicating with the
mercury or developing room. This was repeated as many times as I wanted
sittings, which he knew by the number of tickets I had given to a boy in
the room, whose duty it was to look out for "the next," and collect the
tickets. The operator had nothing to do with the preparation of the
plates, developing, fixing, or finishing of the picture. He was
responsible only for the "pose" and "time," the "developer," checking
and correcting the latter occasionally by crying out "Short" or "Long"
as the case might be. Having had my number of "sittings," I was
requested to leave the operating room by another door which opened
into a passage that led me to the "delivery desk," where, in a few
minutes, I got all my four portraits fitted up in "matt, glass, and
preserver,"--the pictures having been passed from the developing room to
the "gilding" room, thence to the "fitting room" and the "delivery
desk," where I received them. Thus they were all finished and carried
away without the camera operator ever having seen them. Three of the
four portraits were as fine Daguerreotypes as could be produced
anywhere. Ambrotypes, or "Daguerreotypes on glass" as some called them,
were afterwards produced in much the same manufacturing manner.
There were many other galleries on Broadway: Canal Street; the Bowery;
the Avenues, 1, 2, and 3; A, B, and C, Water Street; Hudson Street, by
the shipping, &c., the proprietors of which conducted their business in
the style most suited to their "location" and the class of customers
they had to deal with; but in no case was there any attempt at that "old
clothesman"--that "Petticoat Lane"--style of touting and dragging
customers in by the collar. All sorts of legitimate modes of advertising
were resorted to--flags flying out of windows and from the roofs of
houses; handsome show cases at the doors; glowing advertisements in the
newspapers, in prose and verse; circulars freely distributed among the
hotels, &c.; but none of that "have your picture taken," annoying, and
disreputable style adopted by the cheap and common establishments in
London.
Unhappily, "Sunday trading" is practised more extensively in New York
than in London. Nearly all but the most respectable galleries are open
on Sundays, and evidently do a thriving trade. The authorities
endeavoured to stop it frequently, by summoning parties and inflicting
fines, but it was no use. The fines were paid, and Sunday photography
continued.
The "glass houses" of America differ entirely from what we understand by
the name here; indeed, I never saw such a thing there, either by chance,
accident, or design--for chance has no "glass houses" in America, only
an agency; there are no accidental glass houses, and the operating rooms
built by design are not "glass houses" at all.
The majority of the houses in New York and other American cities are
built with nearly flat roofs, and many of them with lessening storeys
from front to back, resembling a flight of two or three steps. In one of
these roofs, according to circumstances, a large "skylight" is fixed,
and pitched usually at an angle of 45 deg., and the rooms, as a rule, are
large enough to allow the sitter to be placed anywhere within the radius
of the light, so that any effect or any view of the face can easily be
obtained.
The light is not any more actinic there than here in good weather, but
they have a very great deal more light of a good quality _all the year
round_ than we have.
The operators work generally with a highly bromized collodion, which, as
a rule, they make themselves, but not throughout. They buy the
gun-cotton of some good maker--Mr. Tomlinson, agent for Mr. Cutting,
generally supplied the best--then dissolve, iodize, and bromize to suit
their working.
Pyrogallic acid as an intensifier is very little used by the American
operators, so little that it is not kept in stock by the dealers.
Requiring some once, I had quite a hunt for it, but found some at last,
stowed away as "Not Wanted," in Messrs. Anthony's store. The general
intensifier is what they laconically call "sulph.," which is sulphuret
of potassium in a very dilute solution, either flowed over the plate, or
the plate is immersed in a dipping bath, after fixing, which is by far
the _pleasantest_ way to employ the "sulph. solution." Throwing it about
as some of them do is anything but agreeable. In such cases, "sulph."
was the first thing that saluted my olfactories on putting my head
inside one of their "dark rooms."
Up to 1860 the American photographic prints were all on plain paper, and
obtained by the ammonia nitrate of silver bath, and toned and fixed with
the hyposulphite of soda and gold. The introduction of the
cartes-de-visite forced the operators to make use of albumenized paper;
but even then they seemed determined to adhere to the ammonia process if
possible, for they commenced all sorts of experiments with that volatile
accelerator, both wet and dry, some by adding ammonia and ether to an
80-grain silver bath, others by fuming, and toning with an acetate and
gold bath, and fixing with hypo afterwards.
With the following "musings" on "wrappers" (not "spirit wrappers," nor
railway wrappers, but "carte-de-visite wrappers"), I shall conclude my
rambles among the galleries of New York. Wrappers generally afford an
excellent opportunity for ornamental display. Many of the wrappers of
our magazines are elegantly and artistically ornamented. Nearly every
pack of playing cards is done up in a beautiful wrapper. The French have
given their attention to the subject of "carte-de-visite wrappers," and
turned out a few unique patterns, which, however, never came much into
use in this country. The Americans, more alive to fanciful and tasteful
objects of ornamentation, and close imitators of the French in these
matters, have made more use of carte-de-visite wrappers than we have.
Many wrappers of an artistic and literary character are used by the
photographers in America--some with ornamental designs; some with the
address of the houses tastefully executed; others with poetical
effusions, in which the cartes-de-visite are neatly wrapped up, and
handed over to the sitter.
Surely a useful suggestion is here given, for wrappers are useful things
in their way, and, if made up tastefully, would attract attention to the
photographic establishments that issue them. Photography is so closely
allied to art that it is desirable to have everything in connection with
it of an elegant and artistic description. The plain paper
envelopes--gummed up at the ends, and difficult to get open again--are
very inartistic, and anything but suitable to envelop such pretty little
pictures as cartes-de-visite. Let photography encourage art and art
manufactures, and art will enter into a treaty of reciprocity for their
mutual advancement.--_Photographic News_, 1865.
TO DUBLIN AND BACK, WITH A GLANCE AT THE EXHIBITION.
The bell rings; a shrill shriek; puff, puff goes the engine, and we dart
away from the station at Euston Square, provided with a return ticket to
Dublin, issued by the London and North Western Railway, available for
one month, for the very reasonable charge of L3, first-class and cabin;
L2 7s. 6d. second class and cabin; or forty shillings third class and
steerage, via Holyhead. These charges include steamboat fare and
steward's fee. The Exhibition Committee have made arrangements with the
railway companies to run excursion trains once a fortnight at still
lower rates; twenty-one shillings from London to Dublin and back, and
from other places in proportion. This ticket will be good for a
fortnight, and will entitle the holder to another ticket, giving him two
admissions to the Exhibition for one shilling. With the ordinary monthly
ticket, which is issued daily, it is quite optional whether you go by
the morning or evening train; but by all means take the morning train,
so that you may pass through North Wales and the Island of Anglesea in
daylight. Passing through England by Rugby, Stafford, Crewe, and
Chester, nothing remarkable occurs during our rapid run through that
part of the country. But an "Irish Gentleman," a fellow traveller,
learning our destination, kindly volunteered to enlighten us how we
could best see Dublin and its lions in the shortest possible time, and
advised us by all "manes" not to "lave" Dublin without seeing "Faynix
Park," and taking a car drive to Howth and other places round the "Bee
of Dublin." Accordingly we agreed to take his advice; but as our primary
object in visiting Dublin is to see the Exhibition, we will first attend
to that on our arrival in the Irish capital; and if, after that, time
will permit, the extraneous lions will receive our attention. First of
all, we must describe how we got there, what we saw on the way, and what
were our impressions on entering Dublin Bay.