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 confrères 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.