Girl with a Camera

by Carolyn Meyer

  Gil said he was thinking of going out west the following summer. I told him I planned to look for a summer job, but didn’t mention I was worried about having enough money to continue college, because my father hadn’t been “prudent with money.”

  We walked across the campus under a black sky full of glittering stars. Neither of us spoke. I was thinking of what might come next: a kiss, maybe? As we approached the entrance to Brooks Hall, I tried to ignore the couples embracing in shadowy corners of the portico. Gil escorted me into the reception room, where several couples sat quietly, holding hands. Should I ask him to sit down?

  Gil stepped back, clutching his hat brim in both hands. “Please accept my condolences for the death of your father. I’m happy that we could see each other and talk, Peggy,” he said. “May I call you again soon?”

  “Of course, Gil,” I said, a little surprised by his formal tone and trying to match it. “And thank you for the coffee and pastry. I enjoyed the evening.”

  Gil strode briskly down the walkway as the campus clock bonged eight times. I watched him go and climbed slowly to my room on the fourth floor, feeling more alone than I had ever felt in my life.

  7

  A Course in Photography—1922

  I’D NEVER HAD MUCH INTEREST IN TAKING PICTURES. That was something Father did, and I’d been happy to help. But when I heard about a two-hour-a-week class in photography being offered, I thought of Father, borrowed a camera, and signed up.

  The teacher, Clarence H. White, believed that photography was an art form, not just a simple matter of clicking the shutter to capture an image. “Experiment! Develop your capacity to see!” Mr. White urged.

  I wanted to make lovely, soft-focus pictures like his, each one carefully planned. That kind of planning, I realized now, was what my father did. I could almost hear his voice explaining why this angle was better than that one, why the lighting must be adjusted just so.

  One weekend on a visit home, I asked Mother what had happened to Father’s old camera. “I don’t know what’s become of it,” she said. “He stopped taking pictures a year or so ago, and the camera disappeared. He might have given it away, or sold it. But it’s gone.”

  Gone? I could hardly believe it—another link to my father, lost. But a week later Mother telephoned. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. “It will be here the next time you come home.”

  She had bought me a camera. Her budget was tight, she had Roger to feed and clothe, but somehow she’d managed to find twenty dollars for a second-hand Ica Reflex. It was rare for her to buy me something that she would not have considered necessary or practical.

  I was stunned. I tried to thank her, to tell her how much it meant to me, but she brushed me off. “It has a cracked lens,” she said. “That will make it more of a challenge.”

  I proudly carried the German-made camera into class. It was the old-fashioned kind, like Father’s and Mr. White’s, that used glass plates, rather than film. The crack wouldn’t matter, because I wanted to make artistic photographs like those Clarence White was famous for. It became my favorite class. Two hours a week didn’t seem like nearly enough to learn everything I wanted to know.

  I was sure I wanted to be a herpetologist. That had not changed. I still kept pet snakes caged in my dormitory room, still dreamed of going on exciting expeditions. But I suspected that the scientists on those expeditions were always men. How could I ever make a name for myself in a man’s world? I remembered what Miss Fowler, the phrenologist, had told me: “Take photographs of the places you visit and the sights you see.” Those scientific men would surely need a photographer on their exotic trips, and I could be that photographer!

  I now had a goal and a path to reach it.

  Every week or two Gil telephoned. We fell into a predictable routine, going to a movie or a free concert and ending the evening at the Cafe Prague. The waitress brought two cups of coffee and a plate of palačinky, those delicious Czech pancakes, without being asked. We talked about the work Gil was doing and about my photography class, but I didn’t mention that I now saw photography as my way into a life of scientific adventure. I wasn’t sure he’d understand that.

  Sometimes he held my hand, but still he didn’t kiss me—just walked me to my dormitory, said good night, and left. I wondered if there was another girl he was in love with. Or maybe he had once been in love with a girl who broke his heart. I didn’t ask, because we didn’t talk about such things. He reminded me of Father in so many ways. Maybe that’s why I was attracted to him. Even his silences felt familiar.

  The semester was almost over and I was in a panic. I needed a job. Madge suggested I apply to be a counselor at a summer camp in Connecticut. Her parents had sent her to Camp Agaming every year when she was young, and the previous summer she’d worked there as a counselor. Now she was going back, and she promised to ask her lawyer father to write a recommendation for me on his firm’s letterhead.

  After only a few months of Mr. White’s classes, I worked up the courage to apply for the position of photography instructor, and I was hired! I would also be a nature counselor, taking campers on walks to introduce them to snakes and butterflies and teach them to identify plants. It seemed like the perfect combination of my two great interests: photography and natural science. I knew just enough about each to convince myself that I could keep the young campers’ attention.

  I had finished my last final exam—I felt sure I’d done well in all of them—and was packing up when Gil telephoned and suggested that we meet at the Cafe Prague. I slid into our usual booth and launched into an enthusiastic description of my summer job. “While you’re cooped up in your lab,” I told Gil, “I’ll be out in the fresh air and sunshine, teaching the campers to take pictures and showing them the wonders of the outdoors. I’ll bet I learn as much as the little girls do!”

  “Sounds swell,” Gil said, sipping his coffee.

  Sounds swell? That was all he had to say? Not a word about what an ideal opportunity this was for me—that I’d be combining my old love for the natural world with my new love for photography, and being paid for it? I’d hoped for more from him.

  I tried again to spark some enthusiasm. “Camp Agaming isn’t too far from Bound Brook. Maybe you could come up some weekend.”

  But Gil looked away. “I won’t be at Calco after this week. I’ve accepted a position as assistant professor in pharmacy at Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis. That’s where I got my bachelor’s degree.”

  “Oh,” I said. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d mentioned before that he’d been thinking of going out west, but I wasn’t expecting it so soon. “Well, congratulations!” I said as heartily as I could manage.

  Gil walked me back to my residence hall, and we stopped under the portico. “Good-bye, Peg. I’ve enjoyed our friendship.” He held out his hand, and I shook it.

  “Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it, too.”

  I climbed the three flights of stairs to my room and sat hunched on the edge of my bed, trying to sort through my feelings. I didn’t think I was in love with Gil. How would I even know if I was? He was the first boy—man—I’d ever gone out with. But I was awfully disappointed—not only was he not in love with me and hadn’t kissed me, but he hadn’t shown any interest in what so deeply interested me.

  Madge burst in and suddenly stopped. She peered at me. “You all right, Peg? You look kind of down. Something happen with Gil?”

  “No, of course not,” I said, mustering a false smile. “Nothing at all.”

  “Who would like to hear a different story of Sleeping Beauty?” I asked a group of talkative ten-year-olds on their first evening at Camp Agaming. We sat on logs arranged around a crackling campfire somewhere in the hills of western Connecticut.

  I produced a chrysalis—the “sleeping beauty”—that I was carrying in my pocket. In a second, the girls had stopped chattering and were clustered around me.

  “Once upon a time,” I began, “this little chrysalis
became the home of a very ugly caterpillar.” I let them pass it around. They were full of questions. Was it still in there? What was it doing? I explained how the caterpillar was indeed in the chrysalis, silently changing from something ugly into something beautiful. “Soon it will emerge as a butterfly, and if we’re lucky, we might see it happen.”

  “Is it magic, Miss Peggy?” asked a little girl with solemn blue eyes.

  “All of nature has a little bit of magic,” I said.

  Some campers stayed for two weeks, but others had been packed off by their families for a month or longer, and I was constantly challenged to find ways to engage them. When we went out on a photographing expedition early each morning, I tried to teach them how to see, the way Clarence White had taught me. “Slow down!” I instructed them. “Look carefully.”

  Mr. White composed each photograph with infinite care before he finally committed to clicking the shutter. He insisted that a photographer left nothing to chance. “Chance is a poor photographer,” he said. “Think like an artist. Study your subject.” This advice was lost on the girls. They wanted to rush off with their Kodak Brownie box cameras and take pictures of everything in sight.

  After the campers were worn out from riding horses and swimming in the chilly waters of Bantam Lake and were sound asleep, Madge and I rushed to the makeshift darkroom to develop their rolls of film and print their snapshots, ready to show the campers their pictures the next morning.

  On my free days I hiked alone to the highest point I could find. A fence spoiled the view, but I’d been fearlessly balancing on fence rails and crossing streams on narrow logs since I was the age of my campers, and I climbed over. Crawling as close to the cliff edge as possible, I lay flat on the ground, my camera balanced on a rock, the whole valley spread out below me. Sometimes I had to make several attempts to get the perfect shot, because it started to rain, or clouds interfered, or the angle of the sun wasn’t quite right.

  I observed my eighteenth birthday by packing a lunch and hitching a ride to Mohawk Mountain, some twenty miles from the camp. Most girls would have wanted to celebrate with a party, but I was more interested in taking at least one breathtaking picture.

  I was paid a small salary, but tuition would soon come due for my sophomore year—nearly seven hundred dollars—and I wasn’t sure how much Uncle Lazar was willing to contribute. Perhaps I could make some money from the pictures I was taking. Campers were required to send a postcard home each week. If I took pictures of each girl in front of her cabin, lounging on her bunk, practicing archery, or paddling a canoe, and made them into postcards, the girls would have something personal to mail home. Their families surely would clamor for more cards to send to Grandma and aunts and uncles.

  I charged a nickel apiece, and orders poured in by the dozen.

  Encouraged, I expanded my original idea and took a number of photographs of the camp: the carved wooden sign at the end of the road, a row of canoes drawn up on the shore, the archery range framed through a drawn bow. I went into Litchfield and photographed the pretty white church on the green and the old foundry with its bronze cannons. I had a hunch summer visitors would like scenes of this quaint colonial village. I took a few sample postcards to a gift shop on the main street and returned to camp with an order for five hundred postcards. I couldn’t believe my good luck, but now I had to figure out a way to pay for the chemicals to print my photographs before I could collect a cent.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” Madge said airily. “I’ll be glad to help you, and you don’t need to pay me.” Madge never had to worry about money the way I did.

  The cards were a hit, and campers and their families continued to clamor for them. I knew I was on to something. Madge and I worked frantically to keep up with our duties as counselors and stayed up night after night to keep up with the orders that poured in.

  I sold nearly two thousand cards. Even after paying for supplies, I made a small profit. I now saw that it was possible to earn money doing something I loved.

  Even with the postcard money and my salary from Camp Agaming and the help Uncle Lazar had offered, I still didn’t have nearly enough to pay my tuition. Mother and I sat at our dining room table, staring hopelessly at the figures she’d laid out on a sheet of lined paper. Mother had taken a job selling insurance policies, but she had only limited success. She decided to get rid of our car, since she had no desire to learn to drive, but that money went to repair the furnace and pay off bills.

  I felt sick. It seemed as though I would have to drop out after just one year. Give up herpetology, give up photography, give up everything I loved. My father was dead. Gil was gone. I had no money, no future, nothing to look forward to. I’d never felt worse, and there was absolutely nothing I could do except to start looking for a job.

  8

  The Mungers—1922

  MOTHER HELPED ME PREPARE A LIST OF PLACES WHERE I might apply for a position. The insurance company where she worked, though not very successfully, could possibly use help in the office, answering the phone, filing, and so on. A department store in Plainfield had been advertising for help, and there were small shops in Bound Brook that might hire. “Maybe the pet shop,” she said, and for a minute I brightened.

  But nothing came of any of these ideas. Classes at Columbia would start soon, but I couldn’t allow myself to think about that. Instead, I tried to make a list of the things I could do. Photography, I wrote. Working with children.

  “Sewing,” Mother said. “You sew very nicely.”

  Seamstress, I added.

  Roger came home from the Mungers’ where he’d been mowing the grass. “Mr. Henry asked me to tell you to come over. He and Miss Jessie want to talk to you.”

  “Did he say what they want to talk about?”

  Roger shrugged. “No. I told them you were home, and they asked about school, and I said you weren’t going back, and they said to give you the message.”

  I had visited our neighbors before I’d left for Camp Agaming, when I’d taken them a jar of Mother’s strawberry jam. They greeted me warmly now and ushered me into the parlor where I’d spent so many hours reading to Miss Jessie. Mr. Henry brought in a pot of peppermint tea and a plate of cookies.

  “So, Margaret,” Mr. Henry began when we were settled. “You’ve finished your first year of college. I hear that you did very well in your courses.”

  “Yes, I did,” I replied. “But how did you know that?”

  “Roger told us. He comes by to help us out from time to time,” said Miss Jessie. “Also, Henry knows quite a few people on the faculty at Columbia, and he inquired about you. They supported Roger’s view of your accomplishments.”

  I don’t know which surprised me more—that Roger had spoken about me to the Mungers, or that Mr. Henry had spoken about me to my professors. I had no idea he even knew who they were.

  “And are you still intending to continue with your study of herpetology?” asked Mr. Henry.

  “Yes, I am, but not until later. I plan to find a job and work for a year or two and then return to school.” I had no intention of telling them about my financial troubles.

  The Mungers exchanged glances. “Well, my dear Margaret,” began Mr. Henry, “Miss Jessie and I are happy to tell you that we’ve decided to pay your college tuition and expenses for the coming year.”

  “Longer, if things go well,” added Miss Jessie.

  “And we anticipate that they will,” said Mr. Henry.

  Speechless, I stared at them, hardly daring to believe what I’d heard. Could it be true? They were offering to pay for a year of college? This could change my entire life!

  “Thank you for having so much faith in me,” I stammered when I finally managed to find my voice. “I promise you won’t regret loaning me the money, and I promise I’ll repay it, starting the day I graduate.”

  “Oh, no, my dear!” Miss Jessie trilled. “We’ll hear no talk of a loan. What we do ask, though, is that when you have achieved success, you wi
ll seek out another young person in financial need and help her.”

  “Or him,” said Mr. Henry. “We’re investing in you and your future, my dear.”

  “And another deserving student,” added Miss Jessie.

  The Mungers laid out their plans for me. They believed the University of Michigan would be a better place for me to study herpetology with Professor Alexander Ruthven, whose reputation they knew.

  Not return to New York? Go to Ann Arbor instead? My mind was in such a confused state that I had to ask them to repeat what they had just told me.

  “Now about this postcard business of yours,” said Miss Munger. How on earth did she know about that? I wondered. “Roger, again, was our informant—he’s quite proud of both of his sisters, you know. It’s clever and industrious of you, Margaret, but you can find better ways to invest your time and energy, and it’s sure to be hard on your eyes, spending all that time in the darkroom. Also, you should have an enjoyable social life, but you must dress the part. Buy some nice clothes, the proper kind for a young student. We know you won’t be extravagant. It’s not in your nature. That much is clear.”

  “Silk stockings,” I murmured. Could this really be happening? These kind people, making such a generous offer?

  “Yes, my dear, silk stockings! And a few smart dresses and—for goodness sake—a coat that fits you properly.”

  “Of course, Miss Munger.” I hadn’t realized she ever noticed what I wore.

  “You would look terribly attractive in a rose-colored dress,” Miss Jessie mused thoughtfully. “Please leave the brown and gray ones in Bound Brook.”