The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre

by Dominic Smith

  Five

  Louis was going to the Paris Observatory to take twin portraits of the sun and the moon. He dressed before the mirror in a silk waistcoat and woolen coat. He wanted to look serious and hoped the weave and cut of his clothes would lend something formidable to his appearance. Around his neck he hung the Legion of Honor cross on a chain and buttoned his shirt to conceal it. With its five silver points and enameled laurel wreath, it was both ornate and stately. It had been designed for official ceremonies, but Louis had taken to wearing it as a daily talisman, as proof of his own ascent. As he stood in front of the silver-backed mirror, he wondered if man’s reflection was the precedent for photography. Daguerreotypes were, after all, mirrors with a memory. Before his invention, men had stared into stilled ponds, plates of glass, and mirrors with simple fascination at their own aspect. Now they imagined themselves in the stop-time of a photograph, their flaws etched, their lucent eyes alighting on some future viewer, a grandchild in an attic, a bereft widow, and they were taken, if only for a moment, with their own mortality and the residue of a human life. They felt a fondness for their future dead selves, the specter laid down in the mercurous grain.

  Louis had a stable hand bring his carriage around and carried his daguerreotype equipment downstairs. He emerged onto the street and noticed the perfection of the day. The pavestone had been glossed by an overnight rain, and from his stoop the entire boulevard stretched away like an expanse of oiled slate. He could smell the bakery ovens firing and the chalky odor of wet sandstone. As he loaded his equipment into the carriage, old men passed with their dogs, traveling in twos and threes behind leashed spaniels and hounds, complaining about their wives and the price of tobacco. Fraternity is not dead. We will die as brothers. Louis ran a hand over a horse flank and climbed up onto the box seat. He filled with the pleasure of the day ripening, with the wild luck of being alive in the middle of the nineteenth century. An artist, a scientist; he was on his way to chronicle the heavens.

  The Paris Observatory stood on its namesake avenue, a stone rectangle with two wings attached, each facade facing a cardinal point of the compass. Louis admired the building’s symmetry before entering. The building marked zero latitude—it was literally the center of the world.

  Louis knew from François Arago that the foundations and basement of the observatory were as deep as the building was high—about fourteen meters. The subterranean rooms were guarded with some secrecy. On one occasion, a colleague had mentioned that beneath the observatory was an underground portal into the catacombs. These tunnels serviced rock quarries of the Roman era and the mass graves of the revolution, when the cemeteries were abandoned for below-street tombs. In the high and final days of Charles X, before the July Revolution of 1830, the king had thrown wild parties in the catacombs as an affront to revolutionary blood: he held underground orgies, strange feasts of shaved ice and marinated eel. This had always struck Louis as wretched; even though he sometimes favored the monarchy over the revolution, the image of the monarch rav-aging courtesans beside entombed remains saddened him on behalf of the people. But it pleased him to think that above this debauchery, science went on unabated. Astronomers continued their night watch at the height of state corruption; they tracked and measured, gave names to the flash of comets and the pinwheel of stars.

  As Louis entered the building, it occurred to him that the catacombs were the perfect place to store his doomsday portraits. Sealed off, far below the city, they stood a chance of surviving whatever storm of terror came with the final days. He would ask Arago on some other pretext for access to the catacombs. François Arago was not the sort of man to share an apocalyptic prophecy with—he was, among other things, a professor of analytical geometry. He believed in form and coherence, that a set of parallel lines extended to infinity.

  Louis was led up a long spiral staircase and into a waiting area outside Arago’s office. From out in the street he heard the sound of attendants unloading the photographic equipment from his carriage. There came a loud clatter, and he crossed swiftly to the window. A man in overalls was carrying the tripod over one shoulder as if it were a side of beef.

  “Mind the equipment, you oaf!” Louis yelled from the sill.

  He was surprised by the volume of his voice. The man looked up, swore under his breath, and plodded into the observatory. Louis felt oddly proud of having yelled out the window. A stand had been made. Most of his life he’d observed decorum and custom, but now he felt an urge to bellow. He looked around, a little annoyed to be kept waiting. He had no faith in daguerreotypes of the sun and moon. In 1845, Hippolyte Fizeau and Léon Foucault had made an image of the sun. To Louis it appeared as a ball of pale wax giving off smoke. It was not the method of the men that was in question. Both were sound methodologists—Hippolyte had several other images of limited acclaim, and Foucault’s pendulum was already under development, inching nearer to proving the rotation of the earth. No, Louis was not here to remedy the image. He was here to repay a debt to Arago. As the director of the observatory and secretary of the Academie des Sciences, Arago had rallied for Louis Daguerre’s national pension of ten thousand francs. It had been Arago who believed in the importance of Daguerre’s invention when others called it lunacy, an affront to painterly art and tradition.

  A clerk ushered Louis into Arago’s office. It was a bare stone chamber with a single brass telescope poised at the window. Arago sat behind a large desk stacked with dossiers bundled in twine. He rose to greet Louis. “Monsieur, how can it be all these years and only now you’ve come to fetch me the heavens? Very good to see you.”

  They embraced. Arago was an elegant, precise man with a square jaw and a Roman nose. He dressed like a Burgundy vintner, despite being an ardent Republican—an heirloom cravat pin, cuff links, moleskin trousers.

  “You look good, François.”

  “I’m balding and I don’t sleep well, but I appreciate the lie. It’s quite touching. Please make yourself comfortable,” said Arago, sitting back down.

  Louis sat in a high-backed chair.

  Arago said, “Where have you been? You dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “I’ve been very busy with the process—making improvements and such.”

  Arago leaned forward, his hands together. “Are you eating enough? You look ill.”

  “You were always known for your tact. I’m too busy to eat these days.”

  “Have a cigar,” Arago said. “Health is for the idle.” He reached into a top drawer, produced two cigars, and cut off the ends with a bone-handled knife. He handed one to Louis. “I hear,” he said, “that the Americans are quite taken with your invention. There are hundreds of portrait studios in New York. Even Samuel Morse has one.”

  “I hear that also,” said Louis. He lit his cigar, being careful not to ignite his cough.

  Arago leaned back in his chair, lit his cigar, and blew smoke up at the ceiling. “You must be pleased.”

  Louis settled in his own chair. “I owe much of it to you. I’m always indebted for your sponsorship.”

  “So indebted that you don’t answer my letters for five years?”

  Louis felt himself about to stammer, then relaxed his mouth. “I don’t always read my mail.”

  Arago’s mouth puckered with a sarcastic smile. “Ah, the vagaries of fame.”

  A smoky silence filled the room.

  “Some men might be bitter, Louis. I went before the Academie for your invention, recommended a national pension. Meanwhile, I measure the speed of sound and chart the stars and planets, and your average Frenchman doesn’t know who I am. They’re not going to name a street after me when I’m dead.”

  Louis looked down at his feet and spoke quietly. “I wonder if the dead are vainer than the living.”

  “What’s that?” Arago gripped the arms of his chair.

  Louis watched the red eye of Arago’s cigar flash, then recede. “François, I have had trouble with my eyes, and that’s why I didn’t read your letters.
My vision fails me at certain times of the day. The doctors say it’s a reaction to the nitric acid I use in my process.”

  Arago cocked his head to the side, a little unwilling to yield his irritation. “I’m sorry to hear about your eyes.”

  “It won’t matter before long.”

  Arago did not react to this comment. He rose, put his hands in his pockets, and poised an eye behind the telescope. He rested there for several moments, cigar in his mouth, squinting through the eyepiece.

  “How are the stars these days?” Louis asked.

  “Still there. You wouldn’t believe the idiocy we endure. Paris is full of madmen, I tell you. When we announced that Neptune had been proved, a man came to us declaring that the world was still flat and showed us a map of Atlantis. Off the coast of China, it was.”

  “If Atlantis were real, Napoleon would have tried to colonize it.” “The emperor may have been a little hotheaded, but he got things done.”

  “Beheadings, mostly,” Louis said.

  Arago took his eye from the telescope and they looked at each other, leaned into this old disagreement.

  Arago took a notebook and pencil from his desk, looked at his watch, and wrote something down.

  “What are you doing?” Louis asked.

  “Take a look for yourself.”

  Louis crossed to the telescope while Arago held it in place. He positioned his eye and looked out onto a rooftop where a very old Muslim man stood in a tunic on the edge of a prayer rug. The man bowed slowly, his head down, before moving into a kneeling position. There was something otherworldly about this feeble man suspended above Paris, facing Mecca, and moving with a halting reverie. Everywhere people were preparing.

  “He prays five times a day, and I have been writing down the exact time of three of those prayers for years. Midday, late afternoon, and just after sunset. I have no faith of my own, but it gives me a great deal of comfort to watch this man. We keep time for all of Paris, and in some strange way, I keep time from this man’s prayers. I have a precise record of his devoutness.”

  Louis straightened and took the notebook from Arago. It was meticulously ruled, and each prayer time had its own column. He returned to the eyepiece and watched as the man pressed his nose and mouth to the rug.

  Arago said, “One day he’ll die and I’ll be very sad not to see him out on his rooftop.”

  Louis felt he was witnessing something deeply personal. He pictured Arago watching from this spot, measuring time by another man’s prayers, and understood that his friend was full of regret. Arago had waited his whole life for greatness to arrive; he dressed like a man who expected to discover a planet. Louis felt impossibly sad that Arago’s hopes and ambitions would come to naught, that darkness would descend from the very sky he’d spent his life studying. Louis backed away from the telescope, keeping his face down.

  “François, before I take the daguerreotypes of the sun and moon, there is a favor I’d like to ask. There isn’t much time.”

  “Please, sit.”

  Louis returned to his seat. “I am looking for a storage area for my portraits, and I was wondering if I might get access to the catacombs via the observatory basement.”

  Arago returned to his chair and thinned his lips in speculation. He was a man who counted right angles and noticed a wall out of plumb upon entering a room. “But surely it’s too dusty and filthy down there. Our revolutionary brothers are buried below.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. But I need somewhere protected. The daguerreotypes will all be under glass, so the dust won’t damage them.”

  “I see.” Arago tapped his fingers gently on the edge of his desk. “You realize that access to the catacombs is controlled by the crown. They are off limits to citizens.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “Of course, we have a key to the gate because—and this is not widely known—one of our founders is buried down there. Cassini, the man who mapped the moon. The key is in this very drawer. But this is madness. Your images belong in museums, not catacombs full of bones.”

  “The circumstances are special.”

  “The truth is special.”

  Louis looked into Arago’s face. A perfect meridian ran vertically down his forehead; he was a scientist kept awake by the great questions of his time. Louis wanted to confess and warn. François, take your family to an abbey and pray with the monks, leave your scientific post and go to Venice, learn how to paint and rise each morning while the stars are still white-lit against the dawn. Be a boy again. Play cork-penny in the lane and set paper boats afloat on the Seine. The time is upon us.

  Instead, Louis Daguerre said this: “The truth is, I fear they will be stolen from me. As you know, there has been jealousy on all sides, claims that independent inventions were made earlier. I need them in a safe place.”

  “You imagine that someone will rob you?” Arago asked.

  “I am sure of it. In fact, there has been one attempt already.” The lie was effortless, and it filled Louis with a salesman’s confidence; he was sure Arago would acquiesce. For good measure, he added, “I could lose my entire collection, my whole life’s work, if I don’t find a safe place to store them.”

  Arago folded his arms. “Well, these are special circumstances. But we must keep this a secret. You tell me when you want access, and I will arrange it.”

  “Many thanks. I owe you much kindness.”

  “Yes, so you keep saying. Next time I want to reach you, I’ll hire a town crier to come and stand outside your door.” Arago laughed at this, dabbed a scuffed patch on his calfskin boot, and said, “Now, shall we go look at the sun?”

  Louis followed Arago out into the hall. They climbed to a rooftop observation platform above the eastern tower where various telescopes were set up. Louis saw that his equipment had been piled by a railing. He placed the camera obscura on the tripod and prepared a copper plate with carded cotton and powdered pumice. The day was growing hot and Louis loosened his collar.

  “Are you still using quicksilver to fix your images?” Arago asked.

  “The marriage of mercury and silvered copper is a lasting one.”

  “Few marriages last forever,” Arago said absently, peering off at the Paris rooftops. “I thought perhaps you’d found something less abrasive.”

  “It’s destined to stay in the process. It’s a noble metal, neighbor to gold.” There was a high pitch of vitriol in Louis’s voice. “Hardly an accident that it plays a role. And Priestley never would have discovered oxygen without burning mercury oxide. Where would the observatory weather station be without mercury in your thermometers?” He looked back at the plate and rubbed it with carded cotton. The threat of a cough made him regret the cigar.

  “I was merely asking.” Arago leaned against the railing and looked high overhead at the sun. “Did you know the king has granted my eleven o’clock curfew on the new moon? People in this neighborhood are not permitted to burn candles or lamps after that hour.”

  “Excellent news,” said Louis. In truth it sounded trivial, a royal concession to the trifle of stargazing. Louis aimed the camera obscura skyward. His face was flushed and he could feel sweat on his back. “Do you have any specific instructions? I’m using a filter to diminish some of the glare.”

  “For both the sun and moon I require only one thing—some indication of their surfaces.”

  “And do you mind if I make two plates and keep one for myself?”

  “Not at all. I didn’t realize you were interested in the heavenly bodies.”

  “I find of late I am more and more interested in what goes on up there.”

  Louis positioned himself behind the camera. The sun floated almost directly overhead and appeared more white than yellow. He would use a very brief exposure on account of the sheer brightness. He opened the diaphragm and started to count, staring into the sun. The solar flare triggered something. He felt a prickle at the back of his neck, a raked sensation in his fingers. His eyes began to smart, but he c
ouldn’t look away from the tin-hued glare. He thought he could see thermal waves, whorls of hydrogen. Then a burn, a scalding in the back of his throat. He looked down at the ground and closed the diaphragm just as the seizure nabbed him by the neck. He knelt, shuddered, fell to the floor. His head hit the wooden planks. Arago was at his side, calling his name as if through a tunnel. The seizure passed quickly and left Louis staring up at the angry white sun. There were spectral colors in his vision, spirals of red and yellow. He made no sound. A bright and throbbing pain swelled up in his mouth.

  “My God, Daguerre, are you all right?” called Arago, bending down. “Did you faint?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. The sun blinded me for an instant.” There was a slight sputter in his voice. He smoothed his tongue against his teeth to investigate. Arago squatted beside him. Louis tasted the sulfur of blood in his mouth, a warmth pooling behind one cheek. At the same instant the two men looked a few feet away and saw one of Louis Daguerre’s teeth on the observatory platform. It was a front incisor, yellowed by age and diet, and with a delicate recess of blood in its crown. Arago looked at it with a mixture of disgust and disbelief. Louis fought a desire to grab it and put it back in his mouth.

  After a long pause, Arago said, “Is that your tooth?”

  Louis took out his kerchief and wadded a portion of it into his mouth. He saw himself as Arago might: the blood on his waistcoat, the maw of some wild animal crouched on the timber boards of the Paris Observatory. Louis gave in to a series of nods designed to control his own astonishment and repulsion at the sight of his tooth.

  “A serious artist must give of himself for the work,” he said. But neither of them laughed, and Louis had no choice but to acknowledge the moment by picking up his tooth with his kerchief.

  “You must see a doctor. I insist,” said Arago.

  “That tooth has been loose for some time,” Louis found himself saying. “The sun saved me a few francs at the tooth puller’s.”