The Edge of the Crowd

II

Cornelius Touchfarthing, recumbent in the chair that had been warmed by a succession of sitters that afternoon, accepted the cup of tea that had been placed in his hand by John Rankin, without any sign of acknowledgement. ‘What a shabby business, John,’ he sighed. ‘I am defiled.’

Rankin drew up a stool and placed a plate of buttered toast on the box of chemicals that was between them. ‘Well, it ain’t as straight as I could want but it’s taken care of the rent.’

‘But the indignity of it all, John. I felt like a player in a pantomime.’

‘There ain’t no reason we have to do it regular. It won’t work for us if we do. But something like that will get us known. It’s you what said we needed the patronage of the nobs.’

‘Upon my word, we do, John.’

When the cups had been emptied, Rankin refilled them, fussing about a little spilt milk upon the tray and pouring the tea from the leaky pot with all the daintiness of a lady’s maid. ‘That’s all well and good if we gets enough of ’em to make a go of it. But as it is we’ve got a roaring trade in sixpunny portraits. We might get set up in that line alone.’

‘But do you look at our subjects, John. Shopkeepers. School-teachers. A chimney sweep and his family, for goodness’ sake! If we keep on in this way we’ll drive off the better customers. There will be no more well-to-do families, army officers and distinguished businessmen then.’

‘There ain’t any now. Or ’ave you forgot how you bought them pictures in the window?’

‘Only to encourage respectable business of our own, John. I didn’t set up here to produce penny keepsakes. We must establish ourselves in the right circles as quickly as we can. There are not more than a dozen commercial photographers in London today but in only a few months it will all have changed, mark my words. I can see them coming now, swarms of little men with their cheap cameras and poor pictures. And by the time they are here we must be the concern that society connects with the art of photography.’

‘Art?’ Rankin snorted. ‘What’s art to do with it? This here’s a new trade and one what’s alive with opportunities.’

‘Trade? Heaven forbid, Mr Rankin! We might as well be scissors and card men making silhouettes. Do you know what they’ve called photography, John? Painting with light. A skilled photographist is not a tradesman but an artist. And his aims must be the same as other artists – that’s the only way he’ll achieve a similar standing.

‘In its ideal form,’ the older man continued, as John Rankin knelt before him and tugged off a shoe, ‘photography should aim at the grand style. I can see no reason why what has been achieved by Rubens and Titian with paint cannot be made with modern methods. That’s the stuff to put photography on its proper footing.’

‘If that’s all we’re about we might as well sell the camera and buy brushes and paint,’ Rankin said. ‘Ain’t it obvious that cameras should be doing all that brushes can’t? Anything else would be a wasted opportunity.’

‘To occupy the position of a modern Reynolds would hardly be that, John.’

‘Well, I’m blessed if I can see the point of it all,’ Rankin muttered. ‘Here we are using painted backcloths and properties to photograph what’s outside for free. It ain’t natural.’

‘You are a good fellow, John, but ill-equipped to follow an argument such as this. Art isn’t a mere representation of life. It ennobles and elevates. And that is what will distinguish us from the common picture-taker.’

‘Pardon me,’ Rankin said, as he suppressed his irritation, ‘but that’s a waste of time and a waste of a fair chance. You might do things with a camera your artists never dreamed of. Why, what if you was to take a camera to the cuts and courts I grew up in down Seven Dials – not a mile from here, in fact, but where the gents and their ladies never sets a foot? And then how would it be if you was to show such photographs in places they might be seen by them as knows nothing about how the poor has to live in London? It’s my thinking that if the charities and the other do-gooders was to see what was happening on their own doorsteps they’d find better uses for their cash than sending it to the pygmies.’

‘Pie-in-the-sky rubbish!’ pronounced Touchfarthing. ‘Respectable people don’t want that filth thrust in their faces.’

‘Mr Touchfarthing, I believe I am a partner in this here business?’

‘You are an essential cog in the machine, you know that. But there’s more for you to learn, John, before you can have your name written after mine.’

‘I sunk thirty pound in this business,’ Rankin said. ‘And as your partner I say I’ve no objection to you going all out to get the nobs’ business, so long as we keeps our feet on the ground and a roof above our heads with the regular trade. But if you’ve got plans to be doing other things on top of that, then I’ll expect the same consideration.’

‘You might do anything except drag photography into the gutter, John. If it’s only a matter of using our calling in the service of others, you might assist me.’

‘With what?’

‘I have my own plans, John. Plans for a series of moral photographs, instructional images which will provide examples for those in need of guidance. Some simple, Biblical scenes. They can all be executed quite easily here in the studio, with only a few properties and the services of one or two persons of suitable appearance.’

‘Poor folk don’t want moral guidance!’ Rankin exploded. ‘They want houses wivart holes in their roofs and a hot meal now and then, not framed photies of the baby Jesus.’

‘But don’t you think that with the right examples before them they would not fall so low as to require the support of others?’

‘No, I don’t. Pardon me, guv’nor, but if anything sounds like wasting tin, it’s this. Properties cost money – and I suppose there would be costumes, and all?’

‘I thought, John, that as you are so handy at sewing, we might save …’

‘Oh, your needle-woman as well, am I? And then we’re to frame these pictures and give ’em away to folk who will pop ’em to uncle the first chance they has, I suppose?’

‘They will not be pawned, they will be treasured, John. My Accurate Scenes from the Bible – I think I shall call them that – will have threefold advantages. Firstly, they will be morally efficacious. Secondly, the use of property and costume will be excellent preparation for the grander projects I have in mind. And thirdly – and most importantly from your point of view, it seems – they will make us money.’

‘I don’t believe it, guv’nor.’

‘Mr Rutter assures me it will be so.’

‘What’s Holy Harry to do with this? That villain ain’t settled his account yet and after I was half a day getting a picture of hisself as he liked. And ’is good Lord knows how many prints we did for his congregation.’

‘Mr Rutter was admiring the study I did of Mrs Langham, the actress. He remarked how like Jezebel she appeared to him. It was the inspiration for the improving photographs we shall produce. Mr Rutter will provide the themes and the market. If we must continually talk of money, you might see this as a sound investment, John. Safer than reg’lar investments such as the 3d Consols.’

‘And what’s Mr Rutter want ’em for?’

‘He may display them in his meeting house for the edification of his congregation. Or they might be employed as aids to his teaching. There is no saying with a non-conformist. But he has all but promised to buy whatever I can produce. That is the difference. These pictures are already sold. They will not drain our resources which, I regret, would very much be the case if I allowed you to pursue your own plans.’

‘Allowed me? To do what I want in my own time, using only as much paper and chemicals as wouldn’t be missed?’

‘It isn’t the sort of thing that the firm of Touchfarthing, Photographer, should be involved with. Not if it’s to be Touchfarthing and Partner.’

‘And that’s flat, is it?’

‘That is as it must be, John. It will be best if you learn to accept my guidance in these matters.’

‘I may very well have to review the nature of our relationship, Mr Touchfarthing,’ said John Rankin, picking up the tray of tea things. ‘And you can warm the bed as best you can tonight, for I’m going to sleep in the shop. I bid you a very good night.’

Rankin picked up and dusted off the costume worn by Touchfarthing that day. In the back of the house, he wrapped it in a parcel of brown paper which he tied up with string. When Touchfarthing was heard to mount the stairs, he returned to the studio and carried away the tray of tea things, which he washed up at the scullery sink. He lifted a great grey cat from a chair and deposited it beyond the back door, where he stood, allowing the cool evening air to calm his mood. He took his pipe from the deep recess of his coat pocket and stuffed the bowl with a little coarse tobacco. The sun had set but a thin grey light persisted. Nearby, hooves clattered and wheels squeaked as broughams and cabs ran up by the house in order to avoid the congestion of Oxford Street. Hard by the back wall, footsteps and laughter were abruptly stilled by the closing of a door. Further off, from the direction of St Giles, a child or a woman screamed and a man shouted a drunken oath. Rankin smoked his pipe, and listened.

When he had finished, he knocked the bowl against the heel of his shoe, muttered, ‘Blow you, Mr T.,’ and went back inside. He bolted the back door top and bottom and lit the candle that was kept upon the greasy dresser before making his way to the front of the house. From the room above came the creaking of bedsprings as Cornelius Touchfarthing prepared himself for sleep. He checked the lock of the front door and peered over the half-curtain at the arrangement of framed photographs in the shop window. The door, warped in its frame, required a sharp shove to open and it was not unusual for this sudden vibration to topple the lines of matrons and children and clerks and ministers like so many tin soldiers. This evening his regiment was all stood to attention and Rankin was turning towards his makeshift bed behind the counter, a frequent place of resort after a difference with his partner, when his attention was taken by a person beyond the glass, on the far side of the street. The person in question had stopped, retraced his steps and turned to look directly at the shop. He might have been staring directly at Rankin himself had the photographer’s assistant not known that he was as shrouded in shadows as the man’s eyes were hidden by tinted spectacles. For a moment Rankin was perplexed. He thought he might know the man, though from quite where he couldn’t say. Then he snapped his fingers.

‘’Ullo, old chap. I recall you now, I do,’ he murmured. ‘And just what is it that you might be arter, I wonder?’

4 An Imperfect Image

The Times, London. August 10th, 1851. Last evening, the bridge at Vauxhall being made an impassable beargarden by a collision between a brick-maker’s wagon and that of a corn factor, and this mishap causing a knife-board bus to overturn and spill its passengers, revellers were obliged to look about for some other means of traversing the River. Not only was the bridge blocked to wheeled traffic: the overturned bus, a dying horse and returning Exhibition hordes tramping over a carpet of fresh grain had stopped access from the Surrey shore for everyone, not excepting some medical men called to attend to the injured passengers.

Great millstones of cloud had been rolling across the heavens since late afternoon, presaging the rain that now fell in glass shards and making the scene by the Thames more akin to a November’s night than a late summer’s eve. The deep gloom was relieved only by a luminescence emanating from the environs of the Crystal Palace, which reflected faintly upon the river and also on the darkened spectacles of Henry Hilditch.

The day had not been used well. Had he visited Vauxhall Gardens only yesterday instead, he might have arrived at the river in better humour. From a journalist’s point of view the expedition should have been a successful one. It should have been no less so from a scientist’s: the information that Henry turned into spirited prose for the Morning Messenger he prepared in more objective form for his ambitious work-in-progress, an entomological study of the working classes. At Vauxhall there had been sufficient data to satisfy the needs of either case.

Here at noon he had found the army of waiters and workmen who nightly serviced the raffish crowds in their supper boxes or brought watered negus to those who danced. Hard-worked and poorly paid, the views of these men would make compelling fare for a readership whose letters to the editor already betrayed its fear of the volatile mob. But as Henry had sauntered the length of the South Walk beneath unlit lanterns hung from trees, in the wake of a young couple who walked arm in arm, he could not help thinking of the vacancy in his own heart. Once again he had the impression that, for a little while not so long ago, he had been a different man.

He spoke to no one and made no notes. The afternoon had been wasted and, annoyed at his laxity, he wished only to return to his lodgings with all speed. Vexed at the sudden obstruction of his route and ill-prepared for the sudden change in the weather, Hilditch hailed a ferryman whose craft he had spied tethered beneath the iron supports of the bridge.

This broad-shouldered fellow was being addressed by a tall and well-made man, buttoned into a dark uniform. Hilditch explained himself and tendered the ferryman sixpence, more than the fare he might expect and which he offered in the certain knowledge that other frustrated travellers would soon be competing for his custom. The man shook his head and nodded to the gentleman with him. ‘I am already commissioned,’ he said, shielding a match set to his short pipe.

Hilditch looked upwards to the bank and saw the crowds on foot and heard drivers cracking their whips and yelling at teams of horses as they strove to extricate themselves from the tangle of traffic and turn about. Cold, wet and quite fatigued, he was in no humour to be carried along as part of a swollen mob that flowed like a second river towards the bridge at Westminster and decided instead to wait beneath the arches until the confusion above had been cleared or he could secure a place aboard some river craft. The ferryman offered no further conversation but the man in uniform turned to him and said, ‘It ain’t that there’s no room, sir, but I’ve a van full of prisoners bound for the Tench stuck in the traffic half a mile back. I’d as soon get ’en safe across before the alarm is raised, so I’m come ahead to secure a boat. However, if you don’t object to such company I’m sure Charlie will take your tanner.’

‘If it pleases the gentleman,’ grunted the other.

Soaked to the bone by the enfilading volleys of wind-blown rain, they awaited the arrival of the prisoners with their own heads hung like the Calais martyrs. The sky was now shrouded in the most dismal grey, the advance guard of a summer storm which was quickly upon them. Now, instants of dazzling illumination relieved the obscurity, flashing upon the turbulent waters and petrifying all movement. Here was a rearing horse ossified as equestrian art; there, by the Middlesex shore and dramatically delineated, a keeling sailboat stopped dead before a many-towered and brooding fortress. A blinding blue streak fixed the ferryman with his pipe pulled from his mouth, his thin lips open as if he were about to deliver himself of some profound observation regarding the river and its part in the lives of men.

Not knowing how long he might have to wait in this miserable condition, Hilditch again attempted to engage the ferryman in conversation. Among the reports already published in the Morning Messenger he had several accounts of interviews with those who earn their bread on, or beside, canal and river. He had noted the particulars of lightermen, coal-heavers, bargees and lock-keepers and transcribed the prattle of the scavenging mudlarks who waded in filth as they hunted for scraps of coal and rope, iron and ships’ nails or any water-borne refuse with which they might turn a penny.

Recently, the river had invaded his dreams and disturbed his sleep. In a dismal shed by the Limehouse stairs he had seen the ravages it had wreaked on the body of a woman of indeterminate age and appearance. The lighterman who had recovered the cadaver and who was now awaiting its collection and his own small reward had recounted tales of other luckless souls plucked from the depths or discovered caught among tangles of rubbish by the banks. A young boy in gentleman’s clothes; a woman tied to her two children; such a number of young girls, most likely ruined, who had come to the river to find their release. Henry Hilditch would as soon leave behind this river and the disturbing thoughts that it provoked.

His eyes were raised towards the Middlesex shore but his mind was in his lodgings at Somers Town, to which he would now repair. He was thinking that he would certainly allow himself a reviving glass of brandy, when the gaoler spoke.

‘A fellow might take it for a French fortress,’ he observed. ‘For I’ve seen such when I was working the steam packets.’ He extended a braided cuff and pointed across the river at the low and massive shape of the Millbank Penitentiary. The Tench squatted by the shore, faint gleams showing in its conical towers which rose from corners like candles on a cake. ‘You can’t get the compass of it at this vantage,’ said the gaoler, ‘but there’s a thousand cells within those walls. They do say there are three miles of corridors and I believe it. I’m up and down them all day long. Working the Tench goes terrible hard on the feet.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ Hilditch said. ‘It’s not a job I should care to do. Nor one that I suppose any man could?’

‘Never a truer word spoken, sir,’ said the gaoler, with enthusiasm. ‘The management of miscreants isn’t a calling that suits everybody. It’s my opinion that you must be born to it.’

‘I wonder how you came to be doing such a thing,’ Hilditch remarked, innocently, thinking that he could yet salvage something of this night.

‘Ah, sir, now, there lies a story,’ he said.

‘I should be interested to hear it,’ Hilditch said, quickly. The gaoler offered his hand and gave his name as Farrel. Hilditch explained the nature of his own business and Farrel said that he would be happy to oblige him with a full account if Hilditch thought it might be useful. He listened with unfeigned attention as Farrel began to explain the origins of his employment with the National Penitentiary at Millbank.

‘I used to think I arrived there by a curious route but now I wonder if it wasn’t the most direct. My father was a debtor – never out of debt, nor often out of the Fleet or the Marshalsea gaols. He was an imprudent man, my father, a city broker’s clerk who acquired tastes above his station and paid for them every so often in quod.

‘He was in and out of gaol like a thief in a pocket. Somehow we got by, but at last he acquired a debt that we couldn’t pay off if we lived to be old. He had borrowed a large sum and gambled it upon a very uncertain venture. After that, there seemed no end to our struggling. My mother had been a Herefordshire farm girl before she met my father and wasn’t suited for such occupations as might be found here. She took to the drink. She couldn’t cope, not at all.