HF The History of Photography 600pág

The first conception of photography 41
presume that Davy lacked the imagination to realize the importance of Wedgwood's
experiments, and published them only to oblige his friend. Had he taken some trouble
to solve this problem, their joint efforts might not have remained only an abortive
attempt at photography.
Three years after the publication of his experiments Wedgwood died, at the early
age of thirty-four. It is not known whether he resumed his photographic researches,
or whether he ever asked one of his many other scientific friends about a fixing agent
after Davy had failed to find one. His old friend Dr Priestley, who had emigrated to
America in 1794, was still alive, and both Alexander Chisholm and Dr Beddoes outlived
Wedgwood. So it was left to later experimentalists to complete the invention
of which he had laid the foundation. Wedgwood's early trials with the camera,
which, but for Davy's account, would have been completely lost to posterity, made
an important contribution towards the ultimate success of photography, for it was
he who first had the idea of photography and demonstrated its possibility, and this
was an enormous step forward from Schulze. What happened to Wedgwood's
experimental photographs, which are supposed to have survived until 1885, when
they were seen by Samuel Highley ?7
Eliza Meteyard made extravagant and quite unfounded claims for Wedgwood in
her book A Group of Englishmen (1871),8 and this in spite of the fact that the most
glaring of her false theories had already been completely exposed several years
before. The unwary should be warned that the 'Savoyard Piper', which Miss Meteyard
called 'A facsimile of the earliest known heliotype or sun picture taken by the
inventor of photography, Thomas Wedgwood, in 1791-1793' is a copy of an etching
by Teniers now in the Sheepshanks Collection at the British Museum. As we have
seen from Davy's paper, Wedgwood did not succeed in copying prints, nor indeed
did he ever succeed in fixing a picture of any kind. Miss Meteyard must, therefore,
have read Davy's paper with singular lack of attention and understanding.
She also refers to another picture . which, she says, had been found at Etruria,
Wedgwood's factory. It shows a table laid for breakfast, and Fox Talbot on seeing
it was at once able to prove it to be one of his own early photographs, taken in 1841
or l 842, and this he stated in a letter to The Photographic Journal, l 6 January l 864.
Yet with extraordinary obstinacy Miss Meteyard illustrated this photograph in the
second volume of her Life of Josiah Wedgwood, published two years later, and repeated
her assertion once more in A Group of Englishmen, l 87I. In this book she even speaks
of the 'undoubted authenticity' of the Savoyard piper and the breakfast table as
photographs by Wedgwood-ample proof of her complete unreliability in matters
relating to Wedgwood's photographic experiments.
Not content, however, with claiming Wedgwood as 'the discoverer of modern
photography' (which she insisted ought to be called 'Wedgwood-type' in justice to
his memory) Miss Meteyard tried to construct a link betweep Wedgwood and
Daguerre, on the ground that a certain Dominique Daguerre, who became agent
for a few years for Wedgwood ware in Paris in 1787, was the father of L. ]. M.
Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype. Dominique Daguerre was a dealer in fine
furniture, porcelain, glass, jewellery and 'novelties' at the Couronne d'Or in the
Rue St Honore, Paris, and in Sloane Street, London. He has been called 'the most
fashionable Parisian marchand-mercier of his day', patronized by the French court, the
Prince of Wales (later King George IV), and several Russian Grand Dukes.9 Eliza
Meteyard knew that Dominique Daguerre was accompanied to Etruria in 1791 and
1793 by a son. She rashly assumed that 'if he inherited his father's tastes, we may
reasonably conclude that he was one and the same with the M. Daguerre who in