HF The History of Photography 600pág

Portrait photography-a new industry 239
Fig 28 Advertisement
of Hickling' s shilling
portraits, c. 1857
BliJKLIM9!>8
SHILLING PORTRAITS,
IN FRAME AND GLASS, COMPLETE,
ARE THE BEST IN THE ISLE OF THANET.
Quality and Truthfulne11 the Te1t of Cheapness.
26, HARBOUR STREET, RAMSGATE,
And 157, filGH STREET, MARGATE.
Lockets and Brooches Beautifully Mounted.
No longer was photography an art for the privileged : it had become the art for
the million.
Photographic portraiture is the best feature of the fine arts for the million that
the ingenuity of man has yet devised. It has in this sense swept away many of the
illiberal distinctions of rank and wealth, so that the poor man who possesses but
a few shillings can command as perfect a lifelike portrait of his wife or child as
Sir Thomas Lawrence painted for the most distinguished sovereigns of Europe.7
'Blessed be the inventor of photography', wrote Mrs Carlyle in r 8 59. 'I set him
above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor
suffering humanity than anything that has "cast up" in my time, or is like to-this
art, by which even the poor can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their Fig 28
absent dear ones.'
A visitor to Ramsgate claimed that, 'it appears to be as much the custom for the
ladies who are staying here to have their portraits taken as to take a bathe ; these
establishments abound, and invitations to have one's portrait taken at 6d, with a
discount of I 8°/0 on taking a dozen are numerous. '8
Henry Mayhew relates the story of such a cheapjack, who had been a travelling
showman. This candid cameraman admitted without embarrassment:
The very next day I had the camera, I had a customer, before I had even tried it,
so I tried it on him, and I gave him a black picture (for I didn't know how to make
a portrait) and told him that it would come out bright as it dried, and he went
away quite delighted. I took the first Sunday after we had opened £r 5. 6., and
everybody was quite pleased with their spotted and black pictures, for we still told
them they would come out as they dried. But the next week they brought them
back to be changed, and I could do them better, and they had middling picturesfor
I picked it up very quick.
Often the picture did not come out at all, but the photographer and his partner were
cunning enough to make the customer take it.
Jim wraps it up in a large piece of paper, so that it will take some time to unroll
it, at the same time crying out, 'Take 6d. from this lady, if you please.' Sometimes
she says, 'Oh, let me see it first', but he always answers, 'Money first, if you please
Ma'am ; pay for it first, and then you can do what you like with it.' When she sees