1.1. The daguerreotype in America
In March 1840 François Gouraud, a disciple of Daguerre's, came to
Boston to sell the new invention. He organized private and public exhibitions
of daguerreotypes, which he and Daguerre had made in Paris, and he gave
a series of lectures in which he explained the technique. He also offered
private courses for instruction and sold daguerreotype-cameras and equipment.
The American public welcomed the new technology enthusiastically. Gouraud's
lectures were attended by such prominent men of letters as Herman Melville,
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes [2],
and thus a lively discourse on the daguerreotype started. |
 |
Shortly after Gouraud had arrived in Boston, ads promised
Bostonians that for $50 one could obtain both the equipment and instruction
needed to go into business as a daguerreotypist. Young men from unestablished
and poor families seized upon this relatively cheap means to start a business.
The market at that time was still uncompetitive, but that soon changed.
The middle class, who could not afford paintings, had a huge demand for
portraits which until that time were an aristocratic privilege. Daguerreotyping
became a profitable business: In Boston, New York and Philadelphia, portrait
studios appeared as if by magic. New inventions and improvements helped
to make the customer more comfortable and to reduce the prices. In 1850,
three small daguerreotypes cost around $2,50, and the prices continued
to drop. By 1853 there were 68 portrait studios in New York alone and by
1856 Americans spent over $15 million annually on daguerreotypes. |
| Hawthorne's description of Holgrave's career in The
House of the Seven Gables is typical for the time. Like the proletarian
artisans and itinerant craftspeople who followed the lure of the daguerreotype,
Holgrave had also only a "few winter-month' attendance at a district school"
[3] and an odd-job background: country-schoolmaster,
salesman, editor, peddler etc. Holgrave can be seen as a member of that
group about which James Ryder, Hawthorne's contemporary, said: "It is no
uncommon thing to find watch repairers, dentists, and other styles of business
folk to carry daguerreotypes on the side." [4]
But as we will see, though Hawthorne's description of Holgrave thus seems
to fit popular photographic lore, other features of this character do not. |
