HF The History of Photography 600pág

296 The collodion period
Pl r84
Pl 182
arc represented in the royal collection-and indeed, almost everybody with a claim
to distinction. A firm believer in the new art, Queen Victoria presented photographs
on every possible occasion, and compiled lists as to who should receive them plain,
coloured, framed, or unframed. Gladstone, for whom Queen Victoria had a barely
veiled dislike, gave vent to his resentment on receiving what he called 'a twopennyha'penny
scrap' on his retirement, whereas other Prime Ministers had been presented
with the Queen's portrait in oils or bronze.
'Cartomania' was truly international. LUDWIG ANGERER, who introduced the
carte-de-visite in Vienna in I 8 57, from I 8 59 on sold enormous quantities of cartes and
larger prints of the Imperial family; so did RABENDING & MONCKHOVEN. L HAASE
& co. in Berlin could not print their carte portraits of the royal family and other
Prussian celebrities quickly enough. The same can be said of SERGEJ L. LEWITK ZY in
St Petersburg and GEORG HANSEN in Copenhagen. In the United States during the
Civil War the popularity of cartes was just as great as in Europe.
Human vanity [wrote cl' Audigier] is one of the most certain and profitable
weaknesses of mankind. When the carte-de-visite portrait was invented, a goldmine
was discovered. All those whose minds were empty and whose pockets were full,
all young people and beautiful coquettes, who, after their own appearance, love
nothing better than the image of it, were pleased that they could have their picture
multiplied.
Public figures were constantly pestered for a sitting. In the trade they were termed
'sure cards', for each time a famous man consented to sit, several hundred pounds
went into the photographer's pocket. Marion & Co. paid £400 per rn,ooo copies
sold, and the retail price was Is. or Is. 6d. according to the popularity of the sitter.
Since tens of thousands of copies had to be on the market quickly in order to satisfy
the great demand, and to crush all possible competition, a number of negatives were
often required to print from.9 It is reported that the London Stereoscopic Company,
which added the profitable new line as the interest in stereoscopic photographs began
to peter out, took no fewer than four dozen negatives of Lord Palmerston at one
sitting.10
Some well-known people enjoyed sitting for their portrait; others avoided photographers.
If Lord Brougham, who often sat, passed a shop window in which his
photograph was exhibited he would inquire how it was selling. It was the best
barometer of one's public image. Disraeli, on the other hand, was the most difficult
public man to get for a sitting, and it was only at the express wish of the Queen,
when Disraeli was staying at Balmoral or at Osborne, that he could be persuaded to
have his portrait taken.
The greatest testimony to your fame [wrote Mrs Carlyle to her husband] seems
to me to be the fact that my photograph is stuck up in Macmichael's window. Did
you ever hear anything so preposterous in your life? . .. It proves the interest, or
curiosity, you excite; for being neither a 'distinguished authoress', nor a 'celebrated
murderess', nor an actress, nor a 'Skittles' (the four classes of women promoted to
the shop windows), it can only be as Mrs Carlyle that they offer me for salc.11
Though no callers had the bad taste actually to leave visiting cards bearing their
portrait, which had been advocated by Edouard Delessert,12 it became the custom
to exchange cartes with one's friends, and even to beg strangers for theirs, thus fulfilling
a forecast made by Punch in I 846. Speaking of the nuisance to which celebrities
were subjected by autograph hunters, Punch wrote : 'We should not at all wonder