23 Forster Street, Page 2

pages of a favorite book. If needed sturdy yet string-thin iron framing rods could be positioned to assist in holding a desired position, and even could be set so as to portray the subjects standing fully erect.

  Despite having certain obvious commonalties, some deceased patrons were easier to work with than others. Those who died naturally or of subtle illness necessitated little more than the delicate adjustment of a doll’s limbs. Others who met their end in a blunter fashion through violence, became bloated and paled through drowning, or had their bodies ravaged by disease often required considerable application of aids such as mortician’s wax to the affected areas.

  Crushed bones were encountered with some frequency, but were only problematic when their state deformed or contorted the natural shape of the body. There was little McAdams could do in such severe cases but to arrange the best manner of concealment, which mostly consisted of turning the corpse so that the afflicted side was obscured from view as much as possible.

  Preparations for a session were not limited to the realm of visual trickery alone, but would also steer toward senses not captured by the daguerreotype. Death did not have a smell, but rather many smells. None were pleasant, but depending on the state of decay and the nature of the death some odors were more or less tolerable than others.

  As his establishment regularly catered to both the living and the dead, McAdams found cause to concentrate efforts toward neutralizing both present and lingering aromas. Initially he had employed scented candles throughout the studio but soon found that their flickering light created unwelcome glows and shadows on his work.

  Flowers tended to enhance both the olfaction as well as the visual setting and thus became McAdams preferred solution. To that end Jack could be regularly seen passing through the dirt roads of Harrisburg with bouquets of lilies, orchids, and chrysanthemums. Whether procured from a florist or picked wildly, the seasonality and supply availability of flowers varied to the point where Jack was simply instructed in general terms to acquire whatever was on hand or could be scavenged from the banks along the Susquehanna. In months where blooms were hard to come by in reliable quantities McAdams compensated by burning incense twice daily when the studio was closed.

  Given McAdams talents with visual effects and the fact the no smells were captured in the final products, single subject daguerreotype portraits of the dead could often pass for those of the living. Contrasting states of existence become more apparent, however, if a direct comparison is available or even in the same photograph. McAdams faced this challenge on numerous occasions, as it was not uncommon to complete family portraits with the living and dead in frame together.

  McAdams would do his best to make those belonging to the two realms indistinguishable, but his talents were limited to stage theatrics, and summoning life from the dead was well beyond his means. The daguerreotype could capture scenes closer to reality than anything ever before, but sometimes McAdams found it necessary to deceive the story the camera told by instilling a sliver of life into the dead.

  Depending on the state of the deceased, some scenarios required the stretched limits of his creative efforts, but other situations were far less complicated, particularly when families had no aspirations to hide death’s presence.

  One client had recently posed for a family portrait with all eight members of the clan in the picture. The two parents were seated on the velvet sofa along with two of their children. Two other youths stood bookending those seated with a facing hand gently graced along the respective arms of the sofa. The last two children had died months into infancy and were resting in tiny wooden coffins that McAdams had propped up at the parents’ feet, angled in such an elevated fashion as to allow the daguerreotype to capture the faces of the dead children.

  Incorporating the tiny coffins in a family portrait made a statement that McAdams understood. He could have certainly accommodated a request to make the dead children seem alive if the family had so desired. Instead they opted to use this technology that could so marvelously and accurately capture things as they actually were to do just that, without the need to distort the moment with visual trickery or wishful thinking. The camera could be used to reflect or deceive reality, but it could not change it.

  The reality was that dying was intertwined with all life. Death was not a separate, distinct entity but rather wove itself amidst the fields of life so abundantly that its appearance often went blurred and unnoticed through the frail breeze of the living.

  McAdams had no qualms with this natural progression of events or of the desire to honor and remember those who had shed their mortal coils for other endeavors. Those that are born will eventually be those who have died and the only variable in play is the time between the transition points. Life expectancy currently hovered below forty years which regularly made McAdams, now in his fifty second year, the eldest person participating in the sessions. Although eight years remained before the century reached its half-way mark, he often found himself to be alone in remembering sunrises in the previous one.

  Recalling such memories of days past were now left to the purview of his mind, but for daily appointments McAdams relied on the agenda he penned in a ledger kept on the desk in his office. In neatly lettered ink under the heading for Friday September 9th McAdams had three events listed. The first contained a thin and steady line of ink through it, for he had finished the session moments before.

  The recently completed portrait celebrated the bonds of marriage. Newlywed couples were favorites of McAdams. The poses were routine and a bit of the eager expectations of love and life together couldn’t help but spread into the studio’s atmosphere. Containing the giddy excitement was necessary to prevent movements from blurring the images, but this seldom proved problematic.

  With a lull in time before the remaining two appointments McAdams sent Jack out with flyers to garner more business while he remained behind to inspect the polishing work his page had completed over the course of the first four days of the week. The boy’s work was good and met with McAdams’ standards, but all the same he took a polishing brush to the silver-faced copper plates to both ensure the highest reflective quality of his materials and also to pass the time.

  With the polishing complete and an accounting of the store’s inventory thrown in for good measure, McAdams had moved on to compiling a list of supplies for Jack to procure come Monday when his second appointment arrived.

  The state representative was not the first of his kind to enter the establishment’s doors. In fact many government officials had passed through McAdams’ studio between legislative appointments and social happenings. He gave little heed to their particular affiliations, and like the dead, he found toleration in politicians primarily through their ability to provide monetary compensation for his services.

  Andrew Swift was not unlike many of the others of his profession and stature, photogenic and forgettable in the same regard. His voice was full of energy and depth as he greeted McAdams in his office with a two-handed shake and a smile.

  Swift’s ability to maintain a rigid stance at a slightly angled profile was in part due to his lean on an ornately decorative walking cane, but also no doubt influenced by some degree of eastern refinement.

  As McAdams set about taking the photograph he thought of the process and the steps involved and conceded that his profession was not unlike that of a baker. Once the ingredients were known and the recipe practiced to perfection and to the point of becoming second nature, the results of his undertakings were almost uniformly guaranteed.

  The politician’s session did not carry with it the excitement of the young newly-wed couple from the morning, but took place uneventfully and in quick order. On leaving the Forster Street establishment Representative Swift informed McAdams that he would return shortly to pick up his framed and finished keepsake so that he could share it at a dinner gathering that evening. Such a request was not uncommon and the final preparations would take McAdams but a few minutes of time.


  Another line was drawn through the ledger and McAdams set about pinching some unusually moist leaf tobacco in his pipe as he awaited his third and final appointment of the week, one which would bring death to his establishment.

  The Drakes were a family of four from Philadelphia travelling through Harrisburg in route to Columbus, Ohio when the Blue Death struck their seven-year-old daughter Emily. Her labored breathing and a pool of liquid had awakened her brother who in turn alerted their parents. She was tended to through the night, and when the symptoms did not abate by the morning of the 8th, a doctor was summoned.

  The fullest extent of his medical training was proffered toward the care of Emily. Doctors were similar to bakers as well in their formulaic following of recipes, albeit without the same uniformity of results.

  The stages of her cholera diagnosis were met with textbook treatment. She first was given chamomile tea. As the symptoms did not subside but worsened, her bare feet were placed in near boiling water mixed with salt and mustard. A mustard paste was also rubbed into her abdomen. Emily’s mother held her now wrinkled and clammy hand while the doctor drew blood from a vein in her left arm and commenced a letting. As the