The Edge of the Crowd. Ross Gilfillan
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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?’
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