During this month of February, in the year 1870, the following account
was given in "The Philadelphia Photographer" Vol. 7, No. 74 (Feburary
1870) pp. 46-48. I give this mostly for the brief comments about the
daguerreotype but especially for his remarks about Southworth & Hawes.
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OLD TIMES.
AT the November meeting of the Boston Photographic Association, our
friend, Mr. E. L. Allen, read a little sketch of his past experiences,
which tells a story so interesting to all that we must multiply it.
There are very few arts or professions which have been carried to such
perfection as ours has, whose pioneers are still living in numbers.
Photography is young but great. Every day nearly, we meet some one
who, with unmistakable pride, will swell up his breast, hit it a thump,
and say: "I mode Daguerreotypes twenty years ago." We appreciate the
feeling, and it is not wrong to indulge it. You who can say so have
much to be proud of. You have been identified with the greatest and
most useful of the arts since its birth. You have seen the infant's
struggles for life; fought with it during its childhood, but oh! who
can expect to live to see it in its manhood? None of us, we expect.
Think of a first-class operator working for $4 per week now?
But Mr. Allen must be heard:
MR. PRESIDENT: My only excuse for coming before you in this way
to-night, is an earnest desire to see these meetings flourish, and not
because I think I can tell you anything very interesting.
But unless we make some individual effort, as we were told last
month, we may expect to see our meetings dwindle away, and the Society
itself become of none effect. And if this ever happens, it will be our
own fault, for I know we have here good material, we are well
officered, our meetings are dignified and well conducted. We have
among us some good photographers, men of experience, who, if they will
put a shoulder to the wheel, will make those meetings so interesting,
that to miss one will be "worse than having a tooth pulled," as the
young ladies say to us when they come to be photographed.
I told you last month I had read a report of the previous meeting in
the English journals, then at hand. That was a mistake. It was the
June meeting. However the fact stands. We were reported, and to the
extent of a column, which I thought gave us a prominence that we must
work to maintain. It will never do to fail, with our English cousins
looking at us.
We were not all born orators nor yet good photographers, but we can
all learn something, and I am sure these meetings will be the best aid
we ever had, if we only use them. I know that to-day we are making
better pictures in Boston than we were a year ago. And I attribute,
the fact to the influence of this and the National Association. I feel
it, and I doubt not others of you do. At the same time you must
remember we are hardly yet started.
And here I wish to qualify a remark made at last meeting, when I
called the photographic part of the late Mechanics' Exhibition
abominable. That was rather harsh and unfair, as one of the principal
contributors was not here.
But I am not going to take back what I then said, only qualify it.
It is not too much to say that some of the productions (I can't call
them pictures), there exhibited were abominable. And at the same time
there were some good things there, among which I must mention a 7 x 9
of Edward Everett Hale and his little boy, made in imitation of the
engraving where a father is teaching his son to plough, and which
pleased me more than anything else I saw, from its close resemblance to
the engraving. Of course I except the foreign products.
But taken altogether, the Exhibition was far short of what it ought
to have been for Boston. I will venture the assertion the next one will
see a very different display; especially if business remains as it has
been the last few weeks, as there will then be nothing to prevent us
devoting our whole energies to that object.
Something has been said of biographical sketches being introduced.
They would no doubt be very interesting, but should be used as a sort
of dessert after the substantials have been disposed of, else those who
are watching us from over the water, may think we are not so deep in
chemistry as we ought to be, or not so well posted in photography.
I am proud to say I have been in the ranks of picture makers in the
most palmy days of the business, when our friends Messrs. Southworth &
Hawes were making the most beautiful daguerreotypes ever produced in
the world. When the firm of Ormsbee & Sllsbee were on the corner of
Bromfield and Washington Streets, and with whom I commenced my career,
at a salary of $4 per week, after paying $60 to learn the business,
which occupied four weeks.
At the end of a year my wages were doubled. This was considered a
pretty good thing, and immediately led to a matrimonial engagement,
which still continues, but not on $8 per week.
At this time nothing was known of photographs on this side the
ocean. We got our living altogether by the peerless daguerreotype.
Soon the crystalotype began to be talked of, and Messrs. Whipple &
Black were its pioneers in the New World. Our friend Ormsbee, who at
that early day possessed some of the spirit of later times, and was
bound not to be left behind, sent the late A. A. Turner to Messrs.
Whipple & Black to learn the new process. This occupied but a short
time, when one of Ormsbee's handsome rooms was dismantled and fitted
for a work-room.
Mr. Turner, at the commencement, was obliged to make daily visits to
Messrs. Whipple & Black's to procure his chemicals, as the formula were
not to be passed till Mr. T. had signed a contract to work a certain
time at a certain rate of wages to pay his tuition. But the hero of a
hundred swindles proved too smart for poor Ormsbee. Somehow he
discovered the secret, and had him completely in his power. The
contract papers were all made out, and were to be signed by Mr. T.'s
father as bondsman, who lived at Bath, Me., and were carried there for
that purpose by his hopeful son, but they never came back.
Ormsbee had been at the expense of fitting up, and was obliged to
make the best of a bad bargain. Turner soon produced some of the best
pictures that had been made, but would be on a strike every few weeks
till his salary reached $86 per week. This was too much for those
times, and soon burst the establishment.
Turner went to New York, and in the course of a year or two the
collodion process came up. This he soon became master of, and aspired
to a trip to Paris. In order to raise funds for this, he offered to
teach a few pupils at the low charge of $30 each. I was one of the
number, and for this purpose went to New York and came back within a
week fully posted. It displeased Ormsbee very much that I went to New
York instead of going to Messrs. Whipple & Black's (who had of course
kept pace with the times, and could teach as much as anybody knew), and
learn on his account, but I knew what that meant, and preferred to be
on my own hook. On my return from New York, he took me back at a
salary of $18 per week. I had worked for him up to the time of going
at $10. The burst establishment had been repaired as well as possible
after Turner left.
This was a big jump, from $10 to $18, and I have a faint
recollection of conscientious scruples at the time. In fact, when I
look back, I wonder how I had the impudence to impose so much upon
anybody. I really knew nothing.
To commence I made a silver bath. My kind friend to whom I had
given the $50, had generously furnished me with a bottle of collodion
to bring back, so I was saved the trouble of making this, and it was a
trouble in those days, as we had to make our own cotton, which
generally came out good once in about ten trials.
In my bath I put, as near as I can recollect, about one ounce of
nitric acid, having forgotten to note down the exact quantity required.
This, I need hardly tell you, did not work to my entire satisfaction,
and as I supposed it lacked acid, added a couple of ounces more. This
I found did not improve matters, and I was in a terrible fix, expecting
to lose my situation, when my good friend Turner came along on a
farewell visit to Boston before he crossed the ocean. When I heard he
was in town I made haste to see him, and find out what the trouble was.
He soon set me right, and I have not been so badly stuck since.
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Posted for your enjoyment. Gary W. Ewer
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02-20-99 |
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