The Evolution of Photography. Werge John
I did not find business very lively, so after viewing the fine Cathedral of Notre Dame, the mountain, and other places, I left Montreal and proceeded by rail to Boston. The difference between the two cities was immense. Montreal was dull and sleepy, Boston was all bustle and life, and the people were as unlike as the cities. On my arrival in Boston, I put up at the Quincy Adams Hotel, and spent the first few days in looking about the somewhat quaint and interesting old city, hunting up Franklin Associations, and revolutionary landmarks, Bunker Hill, and other places of interest. Having satisfied my appetite for these things, I began to look about me with an eye to business, and called upon the chief Daguerreans and photographers in Boston. Messrs. Southworth and Hawes possessed the largest Daguerreotype establishment, and did an excellent business. In their “Saloon” I saw the largest and finest revolving stereoscope that was ever exhibited. The pictures were all whole-plate Daguerreotypes, and set vertically on the perpendicular drum on which they revolved. The drum was turned by a handle attached to cog wheels, so that a person sitting before it could see the stereoscopic pictures with the utmost ease. It was an expensive instrument, but it was a splendid advertisement, for it drew crowds to their saloon to see it and to sit, and their enterprise met with its reward.
At Mr. Whipple’s gallery, in Washington Street, a dual photography was carried on, for he made both Daguerreotypes and what he called “crystallotypes,” which were simply plain silver prints obtained from collodion negatives. Mr. Whipple was the first American photographer who saw the great commercial advantages of the collodion process over the Daguerreotype, and he grafted it on the elder branch of photography almost as soon as it was introduced. Indeed, Mr. Whipple’s establishment may be considered the very cradle of American photography as far as collodion negatives and silver prints are concerned, for he was the very first to take hold of it with spirit, and as early as 1853 he was doing a large business in photographs, and teaching the art to others. Although I had taken collodion negatives in England with Mawson’s collodion in 1852, I paid Mr. Whipple fifty dollars to be shown how he made his collodion, silver bath, developer, printing, &c., &c., for which purpose he handed me over to his active and intelligent assistant and newly-made partner, Mr. Black. This gave me the run of the establishment, and I was somewhat surprised to find how vast and varied were his mechanical appliances for reducing labour and expediting work. The successful practice of the Daguerreotype art greatly depended on the cleanness and highly polished surface of the silvered plates, and to secure these necessary conditions, Mr. Whipple had, with characteristic and Yankee-like ingenuity, obtained the assistance of a steam engine which not only “drove” all the circular cleaning and buffing wheels, but an immense circular fan which kept the studio and sitters delightfully cool. Machinery and ingenuity did a great many things in Mr. Whipple’s establishment in the early days of photography. Long before the Ambrotype days, pictures were taken on glass and thrown upon canvas by means of the oxyhydrogen light for the use of artists. At that early period of the history of photography, Messrs. Whipple and Black did an immense “printing and publishing” trade, and their facilities were “something considerable.” Their toning, fixing, and washing baths were almost worthy the name of vats.
Messrs. Masury and Silsby were also early producers of photographs in Boston, and in 1854 employed a very clever operator, Mr. Turner, who obtained beautiful and brilliant negatives by iron development. On the whole, I think Boston was ahead of New York for enterprise and the use of mechanical appliances in connection with photography. I sold my colours to most of the Daguerreotypists, and entered into business relations with two of the dealers, Messrs. French and Cramer, to stock them, and then started for New York to make arrangements for my return to England.
When I returned to New York the season was over, and everyone was supposed to be away at Saratoga Springs, Niagara Falls, Rockaway, and other fashionable resorts; but I found the Daguerreotype galleries all open and doing a considerable stroke of business among the cotton planters and slave holders, who had left the sultry south for the cooler atmosphere of the more northern States. The Daguerreotype process was then in the zenith of its perfection and popularity, and largely patronised by gentlemen from the south, especially for large or double whole-plates, about 16 by 12 inches, for which they paid fifty dollars each. It was only the best houses that made a feature of these large pictures, for it was not many of the Daguerreans that possessed a “mammoth tube and box”—i.e., lens and camera—or the necessary machinery to “get up” such large surfaces, but all employed the best mechanical means for cleaning and polishing their plates, and it was this that enabled the Americans to produce more brilliant pictures than we did. Many people used to say it was the climate, but it was nothing of the kind. The superiority of the American Daguerreotype was entirely due to mechanical appliances. Having completed my business arrangements and left my colours on sale with the principal stock dealers, including the Scovill Manufacturing Company, Messrs. Anthony, and Levi Chapman.
I sailed from New York in October 1854, and arrived in England in due time without any mishap, and visiting London again as soon as I could, I called at Mr. Mayall’s gallery in Regent Street to see Dr. Bushnell, whom I knew in Philadelphia, and who was then operating for Mr. Mayall. While there Mr. Mayall came in from the Guildhall, and announced the result of the famous trial, “Talbot versus Laroche,” a verbatim report of which is given in the Journal of the Photographic Society for December 21st, 1854. Mr. Mayall was quite jubilant, and well he might be, for the verdict for the defendant removed the trammels which Mr. Fox Talbot attempted to impose upon the practice of the collodion process, which was Frederick Scott Archer’s gift to photographers. That was the first time that I had met Mr. Mayall, though I had heard of him and followed him both at Philadelphia and New York, and even at Niagara Falls. At that time Mr. Mayall was relinquishing the Daguerreotype process, though one of the earliest practitioners, for he was in business as a Daguerreotypist in Philadelphia from 1842 to 1846, and I know that he made a Daguerreotype portrait of James Anderson, the tragedian, in Philadelphia, on Sunday, May 18th, 1845. During part of the time that he was in Philadelphia he was in partnership with Marcus Root, and the name of the firm was “Highschool and Root,” and about the end of 1846 Mr. Mayall opened a Daguerreotype studio in the Adelaide Gallery, King William Street, Strand, London, under the name of Professor Highschool, and soon after that he opened a Daguerreotype gallery in his own name in the Strand, which establishment he sold to Mr. Jabez Hughes in 1855. The best Daguerreotypists in London in 1854 were Mr. Beard, King William Street, London Bridge; Messrs. Kilburn, T. R. Williams and Claudet, in Regent Street; and W. H. Kent, in Oxford Street. The latter had just returned from America, and brought all the latest improvements with him. Messrs. Henneman and Malone were in Regent Street doing calotype portraits. Henneman had been a servant to Fox Talbot, and worked his process under favourable conditions. Mr. Lock was also in Regent Street, doing coloured photographs. He offered me a situation at once, if I could colour photographs as well as I could colour Daguerreotypes, but I could not, for the processes were totally different. M. Manson, an old Frenchman, was the chief Daguerreotype colourist in London, and worked for all the principal Daguerreotypists. I met the old gentleman first in 1851, and knew him for many years afterwards. He also made colours for sale. Not meeting with anything to suit me in London, I returned to the North, calling at Birmingham on my way, where I met Mr. Whitlock, the chief Daguerreotypist there, and a Mr. Monson, who professed to make Daguerreotypes and all other types. Paying a visit to Mr. Elisha Mander, the well-known photographic case maker, I learnt that Mr. Jabez Hughes, then in business in Glasgow, was in want of an assistant, a colourist especially. Having met Mr. Hughes in Glasgow in 1852, and knowing what kind of man he was, I wrote to him, and was engaged in a few days. I went to Glasgow in January, 1855, and then commenced business relations and friendship with Mr. Hughes that lasted unbroken until his death in 1884. My chief occupation was to colour the Daguerreotypes taken by Mr. Hughes, and occasionally take sitters, when Mr. Hughes was busy, in another studio. I had not, however, been long in Glasgow, when Mr. Hughes determined to return to London. At first he wished me to accompany him, but it was ultimately arranged that I should purchase the business, and remain in Glasgow, which I did, and took possession in June, Mr. Hughes going to Mr. Mayall’s old place in the Strand, London. Mr. Hughes had been in Glasgow for nearly seven years, and had done a very good business, going first as operator to Mr. Bernard, and succeeding to the business just as I was doing. While Mr. Hughes was in Glasgow he was very popular, not only as a Daguerreotypist, but as a lecturer. He delivered a lecture on photography at the Literary and Philosophical