Moving Pictures
Winslow Secombe's sons thought their father was resistant to change. A portrait painter, he derided the new fad referred to as "photography" as being vastly inferior to true art. Although he admitted photos provided accurate likenesses of their subjects, they lacked the color and texture of a painting.
"But photographs capture true-to-life images," Branford, the older boy, argued.
"And my portraits better exhibit the subject's personality," Winslow stubbornly insisted. "The faces I paint show emotion. You can see the kindness in Mrs. Whistler's smile and the wisdom in Reverend Tweed's eyes. Surely, no photograph of Miss Paisley could ever do justice to her exquisite red hair."
"Someday, it may be possible to take pictures in color," Tobias, the youngest of the family declared optimistically.
"Colored photographs, indeed!" the artist jeered. "I predict that in less than a decade, you won't find a single photographic studio in America!"
The two boys knew any further argument was pointless. Their father was set in his ways. His pigheadedness, however, would not deter them from learning more about this new art form.
"I'm sure Father will come around eventually," Branford said once he and his brother went out into the garden where their parent could not overhear them. "Did you know Matthew Brady was a painter before he became a photographer? So was Louis Daguerre, the French photographer who invented daguerreotypes."
"So, you don't think that in ten years, cameras will be nonexistent?" his younger brother asked.
"Good God, no! I think they'll be more popular than ever. What about you? Do you share Father's narrow outlook or do you agree with me?"
"I'm old enough to have opinions of my own," the little boy said proudly.
"Oh? And what are those, pray tell?"
"Not only do I think pictures will be in color someday, like I said earlier, but I also believe at one point in the future, they'll move."
"What do you mean move?"
"Remember that book our former governess showed us? She called it a flip book."
"It was a flicker book," his brother corrected him.
"There were pages of drawings of a horse, all similar but with small differences. When she quickly thumbed through the pages, it appeared as though the horse was running. I believe that the same effect could be created with photographs."
"Don't let Father hear you talk like that," Branford laughed. "He'll think you've gone mad."
"My schoolmaster once told me there is a thin line between madness and genius."
"You can't put too much stock in what they tell you at school. They don't know everything."
"Then why does Father send us there, if not to listen and learn?"
"Don't get me wrong. Going to school is not a complete waste of time. The schoolmasters do teach us reading, writing and mathematics."
"And history and science," Tobias quickly added since he was gifted in both these subjects.
"Yes, but science changes all the time. There are always new inventions and discoveries. And as for history, it's rather arbitrary. Different people have different viewpoints on the events of the past. Take, for instance, slavery. People in the South have a different point of view than we here in the North."
"I know. My schoolmaster thinks those differences will eventually lead to war."
"He's probably right. And if it ever comes to that, you and I, and possibly even Father, will probably be called on to fight."
Three years later, in February of 1861, seven slave-owning states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America; six other Southern states would eventually join them. In April of that year, Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter, an action that kickstarted the Civil War.
* * *
As Branford had predicted, all three Secombe men heeded Lincoln's call to arms. While Winslow and his sixteen-year-old son became combat soldiers and fought against the Rebels, because of his young age, eleven-year-old Tobias was assigned less dangerous duties. It was while he was assisting the doctors in a field hospital that he met Alexander Gardner, the official photographer for General George McClellan, who once worked at Matthew Brady's photographic studio in New York. A father of two, Gardner befriended the boy who had a keen interest in photography. Shortly after their meeting, Alexander arranged for Tobias to be reassigned as his assistant.
The war left its mark on the Secombe men. Branford was wounded in the leg at Gettysburg, and Winslow died of dysentery. The youngest of the family thrived, however. During the four years of war between the North and South, he grew taller and stronger. Furthermore, he received from his mentor an education that no amount of money could have bought him. After peace was restored, Gardner offered the young man employment, but Tobias wanted to be more than a mere assistant. He had dreams of his own he hoped to pursue.
Upon their father's death, he and his brother inherited the family home in Tarrytown, New York. Along with the house, there was a considerable amount of money.
"I think we should go into business together," Branford suggested. "Why don't we open a photography studio? You could teach me everything you learned during the war."
"All right, but only on the condition that I can also work on inventing a way to make moving pictures," his brother replied.
"It's a deal!"
Since the Secombe home had been a large one, the young men converted the first-floor rooms into a studio, dark room and office space, maintaining the upper floor as their living quarters. What had once been the carriage house became Tobias's work area. It was there he first experimented with a zoetrope, a pre-film animation device.
In the years following Appomattox, the brothers' business prospered. In 1867, Branford photographed an attractive young woman from White Plains whom he later married. The newlyweds moved out of the family home and into a house not far from Washington Irving's Sunnyside. Three children followed. Tobias, on the other hand, had no time for a social life. He was too busy following his dreams.
In October of 1878, he viewed a series of stills depicting a horse in a full gallop through the zoetrope. While English photographer Eadweard Muybridge's twelve photographs are considered one of the earliest examples of moving pictures, few people knew that a young photographer in Tarrytown had achieved greater success than a short, simple clip of a galloping horse.
"Your moving picture is much better than this," Branford said. "You ought to write Scientific American and tell them what you've been able to accomplish."
"That was only an experiment. My work is far from finished."
"I don't get it. You wanted to make pictures that moved. You did it. What more do you want?"
"What I managed to create was little better than our governess' flip book. I want to assemble a series of photographs that have fluid, not a jerky, movement. I want color and even sound."
"Color and sound?" his brother laughed. "I think perhaps your years in the war affected your head."
"The only difference between my head and yours is that mine is full of ideas. I believe that someday people will create art with moving pictures. They'll tell stories with them, and people will pay money to see them."
"Keep on dreaming, little brother. I'm done for the day. I'm going to close up the studio and go home to my family."
"Give my love to Letty and the children."
Branford felt sorry for his brother. He never doubted that his young sibling was a genius, but what he himself lacked in intellect, he more than made up for in personality. The older Secombe was a warm, friendly, jovial sort of fellow, one who made friends easily and kept them for years. He was an extrovert while his brother was a devout introvert.
I suppose the world needs men like Tobias, Branford mused as he locked the door of the studio before heading home. Men with vision and the necessary drive to make their dreams a reality.
But what was the point of all those inventions if he did not share them with the world?
* * *
Over the next two decades, Tobias Secombe managed to make several breakthroughs in the field of cinematography. Other men followed, but they were always a few steps behind him. Unbeknownst to anyone other than his brother, he developed a projector before Muybridge delighted a San Francisco audience with his zoogyroscope presentation. He also devised a method of rapidly taking photos of moving objects before Etienne-Jules Marey invented the technique called chronophotography, which could capture twelve photographs per second.
As the dedicated inventor kept himself locked away in his family's former carriage house, Branford continued to run the photographic business. One day, a beautiful fair-haired woman walked into the studio. Although he loved his wife dearly and would never be unfaithful to her, he could not help feeling an attraction to the delicate-looking blonde.
"Can I help you, miss?" he asked, assuming she was single since there was no wedding ring on her finger.
"You don't remember me, do you?" she asked.
"I'm sorry, but I don't. Have we met before?"
"I used to live down the street. My father was your family doctor."
Recognition lit up Branford's face.
"You're Dr. Gibb's daughter? You're ... I'm sorry. I forgot your name."
"Cordelia."
"That's right. You were just a child the last time I saw you. That was before the war. Afterward, your father was gone. He left town. I heard he moved to Washington."
"Yes. He passed away about a year ago, and I just moved back here to care for my aunt."
"I'm sorry to hear about your father. Dr. Gibb was a good man."
"Thank you. I noticed the sign outside said SECOMBE BROTHERS STUDIO. Is Tobias your partner?"
"Yes, but he rarely steps foot in the studio. He prefers to work out back in his workshop where he experiments with moving pictures."
"How fascinating!"
"Would you like to say hello to him?"
A smile came to her face, and a light appeared in her blue eyes.
"If it's a convenient time."
"Sure. Follow me."
Branford knocked on the door of the converted carriage house and announced, "There's someone here to see you."
Moments later, the door opened. Unlike his brother, Tobias recognized the doctor's daughter at once.
"Cordelia!"
Branford glimpsed the look that passed between the two people and politely excused himself.
"I've got to get back. I left the door to the studio open."
After getting over the initial shock of seeing Cordelia again, Tobias took out his pocket watch and checked the time.
"It's after twelve already. Would you like to have lunch with me?"
"I'd love to," she replied, despite having no appetite.
There was a teashop in town that sold soups and sandwiches. Sitting at a table for two, the former childhood friends spoke not of how things had changed since the war but of happy memories they shared as youngsters.
"I have to confess," he admitted as he sipped his third cup of tea, "I used to have quite a crush on you when I was eight."
"I had one on you, too," she said, blushing a deep shade of pink. "I used to imagine you would become an artist like your father, and you and I would get married someday."
Before the year was out, Cordelia's childhood dream came true—partially, anyway. Although Tobias did not give up photography in favor of painting portraits, the two married and made a home on the second floor of the Secombe house.
* * *
Despite having to drastically cut back on the number of hours he spent in his workshop to devote his evenings to Cordelia, Tobias still made great strides in the pursuit of perfecting moving pictures. By the 1890s, when Thomas Edison and his assistants unveiled their kinetograph (an early motion-picture camera), the kinetoscope (a machine that allowed for the viewing of moving pictures through a peephole) and the vitascope (a device that could project moving images onto a screen), he had already gone way beyond the reach of these inventions.
One morning, shortly after the couple returned from their honeymoon to Atlantic City, Tobias sat at the breakfast table reading the morning newspaper.
"Anything new and exciting going on in the world?" his wife asked as she placed a plate of freshly baked muffins on the table.
"As a matter of fact, there is. It says here Auguste and Louis Lumière introduced what they call a cinématographe, a projector that can show sixteen frames per second."
"How does that compare with the projector you just invented?"
"Mine can show twenty-four frames per second. The more frames you can show per second, the less jumpy the moving picture appears. At higher speeds, the individual images blur together and create a more fluid movement."
"And when do I get to see a demonstration of my husband's genius?"
"If you'd like, we can take my camera out to the park this afternoon. It promises to be a nice, sunny day. I can take some footage of you walking through the garden that runs along the Hudson. I can't think of a more perfect milieu for capturing my wife's beauty on film."
"Are you sure you're not Irish?" Cordelia teased. "You've got the gift of blarney to be sure!"
Since it was Sunday and the photographic studio was closed, the newlyweds decided to make a day of their little excursion. After filming his bride with a camera he designed himself—one much smaller than his fellow cinematographers were using—Tobias took her to the ice cream parlor.
"When exactly did you decide to make moving pictures rather than paint portraits like your father?" his wife asked as she enjoyed her strawberry sundae.
"I thought about it before the war, actually. Back then, I was inspired by a flip book my governess owned. However, it wasn't until I learned that a Belgian physicist named Plateau created the illusion of movement by exhibiting a series of drawn images on rotating disks in a device he called a phenakistoscope that I decided to devote my life to this new art."
"Plateau, Edison, the Lumière brothers. It seems to me you have a lot of competition in your field."
"There are indeed lots of us: Eadweard Muybridge, William Friese-Greene, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, William Dickson, George Eastman, Louis Le Prince. We're all working toward the same goal. As a result, there has been a good deal of progress."
"Moving pictures are fascinating," Cordelia declared with a sigh, "but it's still nice to have a family portrait hanging over the fireplace mantel. I take great comfort in seeing my father's face looking down at me. I wish I had a portrait of my mother. People say I resemble her, but I never saw her. She died three days after I was born."
"I'm not denying that it's good to have a portrait of a loved one. Although moving pictures are the way of the future, I don't think they'll completely replace paintings or still photographs. Just the same, I predict there will come a day when people will have cameras—small enough to fit in their pockets—capable of taking moving pictures in color and with sound. These cameras will have the ability not only to capture images but to play them back as well. And while painted portraits are often beyond the financial means of less fortunate people, moving pictures will be affordable to all since these pictures can be projected on a screen and shown to an entire room full of people."
The smile Cordelia bestowed on her husband was one a parent would exhibit when listening to the outlandish stories of a child. A moving-picture camera that can fit in someone's pocket and rooms full of people watching moving pictures. His ideas bordered on lunacy!
When she saw the footage Tobias had shot of her in the riverside garden, however, she had to admit her husband was a genius. While the couple was staying in Atlantic City, they attended a viewing of one of Mr. Edison's motion pictures. The difference in quality between Edison's and her husband's moving pictures was evident even to her. The sharpness of the images and the smooth fluidity of movement in Tobias Secombe's work were far superior to Edison's.
"It's so lifelike!" she cried in appreciation. "It's not like viewing pictures at all. It's more like looking out a window and seeing real life pass before your eyes."
"Except that it's a black-and-white world you see, peppered with shades of gray. Right now, I'm experimenting with color. During the war, a man in Scotland, James Clerk Maxwell, found a way to combine three images taken using different filters (red, yellow and blue) into a composite colored photo. If I can fine-tune the process ...."
Tobias stopped speaking when he saw a look of distress distort his wife's facial features.
"What is it?" he asked. "What's wrong?"
"I ... I can't seem ... to catch ... my breath."
Cordelia's normally pale complexion became even paler. Her eyes then appeared to roll to the back of her head, and she fell forward. Had Tobias not reached out for her, she would have collapsed to the ground. Rather than waste precious time calling for a doctor, he carried her outside, placed her in his carriage and drove her to the hospital.
Three hours later, the forty-five-year-old inventor was a widower.
"But she was fine one moment, and the next ...," he told the physician who had attended to his wife.
"It appears as though she had a heart defect, probably from birth."
When Tobias returned from the hospital, rather than go upstairs to his apartment above the studio, he went out to his workroom in the former carriage house. There, he played and replayed the moving picture he had made of Cordelia. He sat and watched her walking through the garden over and over again, marveling at her beauty, the fair complexion, the blue eyes and the sweet smile.
"It's not fair!" he cried out, his voice echoing back at him. "To be married such a short time and have her taken away from me."
At least he had his precious piece of film to comfort him. Those three minutes and eighteen seconds of footage would have to last him the remainder of his life.
Once the funeral was over and Cordelia was laid in her grave, not far from that of Winslow Secombe, the grieving widower intensified his efforts to create a colored moving picture. Branford, concerned for his brother's mental state, suggested the widower take some time off from work.
"I can't. I have so much to do."
Despite his ability to eventually add color to his moving pictures, Tobias lived in a world that, for all intents and purposes, was black and white. Cordelia took all the colors of his life with her when she died. He rarely left his workshop, often sleeping on a cot he kept there. Worse, he sometimes went days without eating until he was too weak to work and forced to refuel his body.
"Have you looked in a mirror lately?" Branford asked when he checked on his brother one evening after locking up the studio. "You look like a skeleton. Why don't you come home with me? Letty is making a stew tonight. And the kids always enjoy seeing their uncle."
"Some other time. I'm right on the verge of a breakthrough, and I can't stop."
"Look, I know you've had a hard time since Cordelia died, but—damn it!—you're killing yourself!"
"My work is almost done. Another few days, and I'll have achieved my dream."
"Really? Does that mean you'll slow down then?"
Tobias gave his older brother an affectionate pat on the back, a gesture meant to reassure him.
"Yes. Once I've accomplished what I set out to do, I'll be able to stop working and enjoy my life."
* * *
Branford Secombe had just taken a photograph of the mayor's wife and children when his brother entered the studio. Tobias was dressed in his finest suit, the same one he wore when he married Cordelia.
"Where are you going all dressed up?" the older sibling asked.
"To the train station. I have an important meeting today."
"Oh? With whom?"
"Fate," his brother replied with an enigmatic smile.
"Does that mean you're finally going to share your inventions with the world? That ought to put a damper on Thomas Edison's day!"
"I dare say it will."
"Do you need a lift to the station?"
"No. I'll walk. I can use the fresh air and exercise."
"How long will you be gone?" Branford asked, but his brother was already out the door.
As he made his way toward the train station, Tobias passed people who stopped to offer him their condolences. He took the time to thank them but quickly excused himself, claiming he had a train to catch. He purchased a one-way ticket to New York City and waited for the locomotive to arrive. At least two dozen people—station employees and fellow travelers alike—saw him board one of the train's passenger cars. Yet when the conductor walked through the car, announcing that the train was about to arrive at Grand Central Terminal, there was no sign of the younger Secombe, except for the valise he had carried when he boarded.
"He must have gotten off at an earlier stop," Branford suggested when he questioned the man about his missing brother.
"No. As we neared our final destination, I walked down the aisle and saw him sitting in his seat."
Police officers and volunteers scoured the area surrounding the tracks, fearful that the missing man had either fallen or jumped off the train. When the extensive search yielded no results, investigators questioned doctors, hospital personnel, business owners and residents in the communities through which the train traveled. No one had seen Tobias Secombe.
"He couldn't have vanished into thin air!" his brother insisted.
"But he seems to have done just that," the chief of police said. "I've had people out there all week, and no one's seen neither hide nor hair of him. I don't know where to look next."
"So, you're just going to give up?"
"We're running his picture in several newspapers, and I've put posters up at all the stations along the route. Maybe one of the regular commuters has seen him or knows something about his disappearance."
Branford waited in the city another week, and then returned to Tarrytown. It was only then that he took the single strip of film he had found in his brother's otherwise empty valise and ran it through the projector. He was not surprised to discover it was the footage Tobias had shot of Cordelia at the park beside the Hudson. He recognized it at once since he had walked into the workshop and seen his brother viewing the film shortly after his wife died.
Yet, to his profound astonishment, the moving picture no longer consisted of black and white images; the film was in full color, from the green grass and trees to the red, yellow, pink and purple blossoms of the flowers in the garden, to the blue dress his former sister-in-law was wearing.
"How did he manage ...?"
The question died on Branford's lips when another person suddenly appeared on the screen. Dressed in his good suit, just as his brother had last seen him the day he left Tarrytown, Tobias Secombe joined his wife in the garden and took her by the hand. Then the smiling couple turned in the direction of the camera and waved farewell. The footage came to an end, and all that remained was a white screen.
"Goodbye, brother," the photographer uttered, as tears fell freely down his face.
Branford knew with complete certainty that the missing genius moviemaker would never be found. His disappearance would remain an unsolvable mystery for decades to follow. But he took comfort in knowing that Tobias had discovered true, everlasting happiness that went beyond the succession of frames presented in his three-minute, eighteen-second motion picture.
This story was inspired partly by the disappearance of motion picture pioneer Louis Le Prince who, in September 1890, boarded a train for Paris and vanished. Despite thorough searches by both the French police and Scotland Yard, he was never found.
Salem doesn't understand Tobias's quest for colored moving pictures. He thinks black and white go perfect together!
