"But, heavens, man! Look at the shape you've made her. Where on earth
did you get the idea from?"
At the first glimpse of the fifth he staggered.
"Great Scott!" he cried with a shudder, "what a ghastly expression you've
got into it! It isn't human!"
Begglely was growing offended, but the father, who was standing by, came
to his defence.
"It's nothing to do with Begglely," exclaimed the old gentleman suavely.
"It can't be _his_ fault. What is a photographer? Simply an instrument
in the hands of science. He arranges his apparatus, and whatever is in
front of it comes into it."
"No," continued the old gentleman, laying a constrained hand upon
Begglely, who was about to resume the exhibition, "don't--don't show him
the other two."
I was sorry for the poor girl, for I believe she really cared for the
youngster; and as for her looks, they were quite up to the average. But
some evil sprite seemed to have got into Begglely's camera. It seized
upon defects with the unerring instinct of a born critic, and dilated
upon them to the obscuration of all virtues. A man with a pimple became
a pimple with a man as background. People with strongly marked features
became merely adjuncts to their own noses. One man in the neighbourhood
had, undetected, worn a wig for fourteen years. Begglely's camera
discovered the fraud in an instant, and so completely exposed it that the
man's friends wondered afterwards how the fact ever could have escaped
them. The thing seemed to take a pleasure in showing humanity at its
very worst. Babies usually came out with an expression of low cunning.
Most young girls had to take their choice of appearing either as
simpering idiots or embryo vixens. To mild old ladies it generally gave
a look of aggressive cynicism. Our vicar, as excellent an old gentleman
as ever breathed, Begglely presented to us as a beetle-browed savage of a
peculiarly low type of intellect; while upon the leading solicitor of the
town he bestowed an expression of such thinly-veiled hypocrisy that few
who saw the photograph cared ever again to trust him with their affairs.
As regards myself I should, perhaps, make no comment, I am possibly a
prejudiced party. All I will say, therefore, is that if I in any way
resemble Begglely's photograph of me, then the critics are fully
justified in everything they have at any time, anywhere, said of me--and
more. Nor, I maintain--though I make no pretence of possessing the
figure of Apollo--is one of my legs twice the length of the other, and
neither does it curve upwards. This I can prove. Begglely allowed that
an accident had occurred to the negative during the process of
development, but this explanation does not appear on the picture, and I
cannot help feeling that an injustice has been done me.
His perspective seemed to be governed by no law either human or divine. I
have seen a photograph of his uncle and a windmill, judging from which I
defy any unprejudiced person to say which is the bigger, the uncle or the
mill.
On one occasion he created quite a scandal in the parish by exhibiting a
well-known and eminently respectable maiden lady nursing a young man on
her knee. The gentleman's face was indistinct, and he was dressed in a
costume which, upon a man of his size--one would have estimated him as
rising 6 ft. 4 in.--appeared absurdly juvenile. He had one arm round her
neck, and she was holding his other hand and smirking.
I, knowing something of Begglely's machine, willingly accepted the lady's
explanation, which was to the effect that the male in question was her
nephew, aged eleven; but the uncharitable ridiculed this statement, and
appearances were certainly against her.
It was in the early days of the photographic craze, and an inexperienced
world was rather pleased with the idea of being taken on the cheap. The
consequence was that nearly everyone for three miles round sat or stood
or leant or laid to Begglely at one time or another, with the result that
a less conceited parish than ours it would have been difficult to
discover. No one who had once looked upon a photograph of himself taken
by Begglely ever again felt any pride in his personal appearance. The
picture was invariably a revelation to him.
Later, some evil-disposed person invented Kodaks, and Begglely went
everywhere slung on to a thing that looked like an overgrown missionary
box, and that bore a legend to the effect that if Begglely would pull the
button, a shameless Company would do the rest. Life became a misery to
Begglely's friends. Nobody dared to do anything for fear of being taken
in the act. He took an instantaneous photograph of his own father
swearing at the gardener, and snapped his youngest sister and her lover
at the exact moment of farewell at the garden gate. Nothing was sacred
to him. He Kodaked his aunt's funeral from behind, and showed the chief
mourner but one whispering a funny story into the ear of the third cousin
as they stood behind their hats beside the grave.
Public indignation was at its highest when a new comer to the
neighbourhood, a young fellow named Haynoth, suggested the getting
together of a party for a summer's tour in Turkey. Everybody took up the
idea with enthusiasm, and recommended Begglely as the "party." We had
great hopes from that tour. Our idea was that Begglely would pull his
button outside a harem or behind a sultana, and that a Bashi Bazouk or a
Janissary would do the rest for us.
We were, however, partly doomed to disappointment--I say, "partly,"
because, although Begglely returned alive, he came back entirely cured of
his photographic craze. He said that every English-speaking man, woman,
or child whom he met abroad had its camera with it, and that after a time
the sight of a black cloth or the click of a button began to madden him.
He told us that on the summit of Mount Tutra, in the Carpathians, the
English and American amateur photographers waiting to take "the grand
panorama" were formed by the Hungarian police in queue, two abreast, each
with his or her camera under his or her arm, and that a man had to stand
sometimes as long as three and a half hours before his turn came round.
He also told us that the beggars in Constantinople went about with
placards hung round their necks, stating their charges for being
photographed. One of these price lists he brought back with him as a
sample.