Part 12

The explanation came to me in a flash. In so sudden a flash that I turned in the same instant to the conductor and found his sidelong glance meeting mine.

"See that?" he muttered, under the clatter of the bus.

"I should think I did," I said, "he's picked her pocket."

"I've 'ad a eye on the old josser for the last month," he said. "I'll make it a fair cop this time. You're my witness."

"Well," I said, "I'm not awfully keen on being mixed up----"

"Bit of high-spyin' now," he said. "What's the matter with a little bit o' high-spyin', eh?"

The conductor mounted the steps to the roof. The tired girl, awakened suddenly to her position, straightened herself and peered anxiously through the window of the bus as though to make certain that she had not been carried to Wormwood Scrubs in her sleep. Reassured, she gathered up her portfolio in a firmer grasp with one hand, and with the other searched the back of her head for errant pins.

Round the edge of my paper I watched the old gentleman, whose eyes were now fixed obliquely upon the woman on his left. I distinctly saw his eyes travel down from the woman's face to her black cloth jacket, and stop at the outside pocket, from which her omnibus ticket was peeping. The pocket was on a level with, and almost touching his elbow, and his hand, his left hand, which was resting upon his knee, began slowly to travel towards the pocket of the tired-looking woman.

The baby was kicking, grasping at the stuffy air with crinkled fingers, and threatened to give voice, and the tired-looking woman, rocking more anxiously than before, looked timidly from one neighbour to another as though in apology for the wrath to come.

At that moment my glance was attracted to a point above the old gentleman's head, where I met the eyes of the conductor, pressed close against the window-pane. A little higher was the tip of his nose, whitened by the pressure, and above that his stubby red moustache, underneath which a mouth gaped with inquiry. For a moment or two I was fascinated by the inverted face, which seemed to belong to some other-world creature which had tumbled from extra-mundane space and stuck fast upon the window of the Bayswater bus.

The benevolent old gentleman, quite unconscious of the watchful eyes behind his head, was regarding with a bland smile the advertisements on the window behind me. And as my eyes fell again on the spot where I had last seen his hand, I saw that it was not there. There never was a more unskilful performance. For there sat the old gentleman before my eyes, looking calmly over my head, with two fingers inserted into the pocket of the woman who was rocking the baby. As though it knew the wrong that was being done, the baby gave vent to the threatened yell, and the mother, patting it, and rocking it, and speaking to it in unknown tongues, saw nothing and felt nothing else.

Suddenly, as I watched, the benevolent old gentleman dropped his eyes from the advertisements, and mine arrested them as they fell. Never was an old gentleman so vastly perturbed. I almost felt sorry for him; for an aged criminal who has not learned the art of escaping detection and is therefore hopelessly incompetent, is a pathetic sight.

The omnibus stopped with a jerk just as we came within the range of the lamps at the corner, and the old gentleman, so evil were his deeds, seemed to shrink from the light. I was not quite certain of the etiquette with pickpockets. Ought I to leap upon him then and there and to denounce him? That would be melodramatic, I reflected; and I hate a scene; so I only raised myself from my seat, borrowed support from the handrail above my head, and waited upon events.

The tired girl bestirred herself and looked round, the woman with the baby changed her burden again from one arm to the other and peered anxiously at the door.

"Royal Oak," I said, answering her look of inquiry.

She sank back in her seat and closed her eyes, and at the same moment the old gentleman jumped up and shambled towards the door, while the other passengers carefully drew in their toes.

By this time I noticed that the conductor's face had detached itself from the window. Three people had risen to leave; but the old gentleman was first, being clearly in a hurry; and as he found himself unable to pass me, half-standing and half-sitting, with my hand on the overhead rail, he looked pleadingly at me, as though imploring my silence. I hesitated a moment. It was none of my business to arrest criminals. But I did not mind giving a passive support to the cause of justice, so I stayed where I was. And then the conductor appeared, blocking the doorway.

"No, yer don't," he said.

"My good man," began the old gentleman, "I sincerely trust I have given no offence. I only----"

"I see yer," said the conductor, looking over his shoulder towards the public-house, and jerking his head.

"Then kindly oblige me," said the old gentleman, "by not making a fuss. If a sovereign now----"

"Oh, stow it," said the conductor. "You've done it once too often, that's what you 'ave. I see yer right enough this time, and you're going to be give in chawge, that's what you are. Strite."

The old gentleman looked helplessly round him. Impatient passengers began to remonstrate from the step; others from the kerb.

"'Old on," said the conductor, "we're all goin' 'ome to tea."

A policeman crossed from the opposite corner.

"'Igher up there!" he remarked, dispassionately.

"Look 'ere, constable," said the conductor, "'ere's a job in your line." Then his tone became official. "I 'ereby give this man in chawge for picking pockets."

"Oh," said the policeman, scattering the bunch of people gathered round the step.

"I see him--and this gentleman 'ere see him," said the conductor. "'Tain't the first time, neither. Old 'and, he is; that's what _he_ is."

The doorway was now blocked by the policeman's form.

"That ain't good enough for me," he said. "Any of you ladies and gentlemen lost anything?"

"I see 'is 'and in that lydy's pocket," said the conductor, pointing over the constable's shoulder at the woman with the baby. "You feel in your pocket, lydy."

Then ensued a general searching of pockets, while a rival omnibus swept by triumphantly and gathered up such passengers as were too impatient to await the outcome of the situation.

I leaned forward and said in an undertone to the girl with the portfolio, who alone of the passengers shewed no interest in the contents of her pocket, "You had better look in your pocket, I feel convinced it was picked while you were asleep upon his shoulder."

"I wasn't," she said, abruptly. Then, reflecting apparently that she was rude as well as tired, she added, "I've nothing worth stealing, thank you all the same."

In a desultory way she began fumbling in the pocket of her dress. The old gentleman stood by the policeman. His face had grown very red; his eyes, wandering from one passenger to another, became suddenly fixed, and his face was redder than ever. It was sufficiently obvious that he was very uneasy. Following the direction of his eyes, I saw the baby's head hanging at an alarming angle over the woman's arm. The mother was leaning towards the light and looking at the contents of her free hand--a bus ticket, two pennies, a farthing, and a sovereign.

"Now, then! lost anything, mem?" asked the conductor.

"No, _I_ ain't lost nothing," she began, slowly.

The old gentleman nodded to her pleasantly.

"Though," she continued, "I don't rightly understand why----"

"I think this must belong to you, sir," said the girl with the portfolio, suddenly, holding out a sovereign to the old gentleman.

"Not at all, my dear; nothing to do with me, nothing whatever," he said, nodding his head at her. "Old enough to be your grandfather, too!"

"Now then, what's all that?" asked the policeman.

"Only this gentleman must have been putting a sovereign into my pocket, and I insist--oh! I insist----"

"Look here, constable," said the old gentleman, "can't you see that you are embarrassing the young lady? Any little transaction between her and me is none of your business, or anyone else's either."

The old gentleman stamped impotently upon the floor of the omnibus.

"He's been giving money away," said the policeman over his shoulder to the conductor, "looks like."

"And why not, why not?" said the old gentleman. "What's the good of having money if you can't make people happy with it?"

The constable looked reflectively at him.

"I dunno," he said. "I'd better take your name and address."

The old gentleman looked apprehensively round. Then he took a card from his pocket and gave it to the policeman.

"Please don't read it out," he said.

The policeman looked at the card, put it into his pocket-book, and made a note in pencil. Then he swung himself off the omnibus and looked hard at the old gentleman as he descended slowly.

"You go home," he said. "You want to be took care of, you do."

The conductor stood upon the kerb with his hand on the rail, looking after the old gentleman as he trudged off towards Royal Oak Station.

"'Urry up there," said the constable. "Wastin' my time," he added, as he turned his back.

The conductor rang the bell and leaned dolefully against the stairway as the bus started away from the dispersing crowd.

The girl with the portfolio was regarding her sovereign thoughtfully, holding it between her thumb and forefinger; then she returned it with her handkerchief to her pocket, looked doubtfully round and blushed slightly.

The woman with the baby was biting something, which, as she caught my eye, she hurriedly slipped into her jacket pocket. "Not that I'd be be'olden to anybody," she remarked at large, rocking her baby with much energy, "me 'usband earning good money, thanks be. But peliteness is peliteness----"

"You _may_ think yer know yer way abart," said the conductor, looking at me and jerking his head up and down, "but now and then you find you're left--badly left. Now, think o' that! Droppin' sovereigns all over the place. Well, I wish I'd a'knowed!"

LITTLE DARLINGS.

HALF A MILLION PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHILDREN.

_Words by Somers J. Summers. Photographic Illustrations by W. J. Byrne._

Locked away in the breast of Mr. W. J. Byrne, the children's photographer, is a secret which, when she has read this article, every mother of children will want to know. Let it be said at once, however, that her curiosity will have to go unsatisfied; Mr. Byrne has his secret, and wild interviewers cannot drag it from him.

Ability to pose adults gracefully and naturally before the camera is an accomplishment admittedly rare; in the case of children, with the difficulties increased tenfold, it must be a gift. It is one thing to dump a subject into a chair and obtain a likeness, another to make a picture as well. And when a man has taken half a million photographs of little sitters, in as many poses, he may be held to be something of an authority on the subject. That is Mr. Byrne's record; he is to children what Rosa Bonheur is to animals, save that he uses neither pencils nor brush; he is a veritable artist with the camera. Some of the examples of his skill here seen represent, it is not difficult to realise, an infinity of painstaking and experimenting, while others tell of patient waiting, followed by considerable alacrity at the moment of a fleeting expression which he desired to preserve. Mr. Byrne's method is very simple; one half of his secret is soon told.

"Photographing children," he says, "is charming work, but it can never be successful so long as the customary relations between them and the photographer exist. They usually enter a studio with much the same sort of feelings as they do a dentist's. They should be made to feel at home before the business side of their visit is reached. Instead of being at once placed in the 'operating' chair, they should be allowed to wander about, if old enough, at their own sweet wills and in any case become accustomed to their strange surroundings. Wild gesticulations, promises of chocolates, stories of 'the little bird,' and orders to 'keep like that,' only serve to produce expressions of wonder and fear. Personally I let the child amuse itself with new toys, and either pretend to take no notice, or else join in the game. This may go on for half an hour. Meanwhile, an attendant is quietly focussing an almost concealed camera, and when the child begins to prattle, I wait for an unconscious and happy expression, then snap goes the shutter, and the thing is done.

"Every child's face is beautiful to at least one pair of eyes. The features may not be symmetrical, the eyes may be small and dull, but the charm of childhood does not lie entirely in facial beauty. It is the coy smile and the quaint expression that a parent prizes most. And it is these characteristics that a photographer should aim to catch. Mothers often make the mistake of rehearsing the sitting at home. It is even better not to mention the matter in the presence of the little one; it is usually much more satisfactory if the visit is a surprise one as far as the child is concerned. It is also unwise to dress the young sitter in unaccustomed clothes or to warn it to be good. For general work, my rule about posing children is, 'Never pose them at all.'"

Mr. Byrne's studios are veritable toy-shops, containing everything from a jumping frog to a model of an Atlantic liner. Indeed, Mr. Byrne has given a big firm of toy-dealers a standing order to send anything new that comes in the market. Antiquarians will learn with a pang that the dear old Noah's Ark is going the way of all flesh. British children will have none of it. They refuse to look pleasant for less than a little bicycle with rubber tyres, or a miniature motor-car with real boilers--at least when they go to be photographed.

So much, then, for how Mr. Byrne's "happy" results are produced; what about his "unhappy" ones? Both are well represented here. Take the first pictures, Sunshine and Shadow. What caused the inquisitive little fellow in the first to find the world all dark and so little of interest in life a few seconds later?

It must have been something wholly unexpected, for it effected much the same change in his companion's countenance. Was it a pin-point gently insinuated between the shoulder blades, or a cold sponge dexterously applied to the little spine?

That is what mothers would like to know. Mr. Byrne says, with a smile, that it was neither--that the expression was a purely natural development. But will the mothers of England believe him?

There is, too, the case of the little boy gazing so intently into a hand-glass; what did he find hidden in its depths to make him suddenly cast it aside, and turn to where the photographer is presumably standing, with such a look of mingled disappointment and disgust? His discovery was evidently remarkable, for, as will be seen, it had the additional effect of taking his fore-lock out of curl. Again Mr. Byrne is appealed to, and again he smiles and vouchsafes the same reply. And again the mothers of England will have their suspicions.

In photography, as in many another profession, the path of those who would forsake the beaten track does not lie through acacia groves. Many obstacles strew the way. For instance, Mr. Byrne conceived the notion of posing children in a big boot, such as appears in two of the accompanying reproductions. It is a simple-looking boot, yet it took two years to make; that is to say, the day the order was given, and the day it was satisfactorily carried out, were separated by a span of such duration. But much happened in between. First of all Mr. Byrne made a rough design of what he wanted, giving the dimensions, etc., and sent it, through a friend, to a local bootmaker. Perhaps, not anxious to have his idea noised throughout camera-land, Mr. Byrne's instructions were not as explicit as they might be; it was the time of the dynamitard outrages, and the worthy artist in leather grew suspicious. What might his customer want with such a boot? it was most unusual; he had never heard of a man with such a large foot; and why only _one_ boot? He didn't like such peculiar orders, but he would do what he could in the matter; of course it would cost a goodish sum. As to whether the poor man had nightly visions of the strange boot being filled with infernal machines and placed under the House of Commons, and himself charged by the State with aiding and abetting the plot, no reliable information is forthcoming, but certainly, after two months had elapsed, he sent word to say that he found the work more difficult than he had anticipated, and that unless the one-legged individual, for whom the boot was apparently intended, could call and be measured in the ordinary way, he must regretfully throw up the job. A carpenter was next tried, but with little more success. The boot actually did come home, after a time, but it was large enough for six children to lose themselves in, instead of comfortably accommodating one. At this stage it occurred to Mr. Byrne that one of the Drury Lane "property" men, used to tailoring for pantomime giants and other unusual creatures, would be able to make a boot a little bit out of the common without being too inquisitive as to its mission in life. So it finally arrived, a beautiful creation, fit for any Brobdingnagian dandy, and redolent of Day and Martin. But Mr. Byrne wanted a dilapidated boot; to save further trouble, however, he proceeded, with the aid of a pocket knife and an old hatchet, to dilapidate it himself.

It was much the same with the egg appearing herewith. It was tried in canvas, wood, and papier-maché before the more serviceable aluminium produced a "lay" that any pantomime bird might be proud of. Both the boot and the egg have done yeoman service since. They have assisted in producing something approaching a thousand photograph-pictures.

When Mr. Byrne had shown that the novel could be blended with the artistic in child photography, would-be imitators were not slow to appreciate the innovation. Photographers wrote from all parts of the country to inquire where Mr. Byrne obtained his "properties"; they would like to add duplicates to their own studios. Guileless Mr. Byrne replied in each case--"From America."

It would be as difficult for Mr. Byrne to say how he came to make a spécialité of child photography as it would to explain what led him to take to the camera at all. He practically drifted into both.

"My life," he says, "might almost be described as one long drift. Although I was born in Ireland, I entered the Italian army, for some reason no one, not even myself, has ever been able to explain, when I was fifteen years of age. I fought in the Austro-Franco-Italian campaign of 1859, being one of the only two Britishers engaged in the war. The other was the late Colonel Peard. Like him, I was present at the great battles of Magenta and Solferino, and like him I several times came near ending my career on the plains of Lombardy.

"When the war was over, and there seemed no prospect of another, I drifted away from the colours, back to London, and into the more peaceful occupation of portrait making. Photography was in its infancy in those days; and I can only presume that I took kindly to it because I had always been something of an artist, which was of considerable advantage to me in my new profession. After a while I discovered that I secured happier results with children than was usual, probably because, being naturally fond of them, I devoted more care and attention to them than was customary, for child sitters were rare then, and photographers were apt to regard them as rather bad bargains, notwithstanding the higher fees charged."

It is not surprising to learn that Mr. Byrne has "snapped" nearly all the little English royalties; his studios being located at Richmond in Surrey, he has frequently been summoned to the White Lodge and Windsor Castle, not to mention more distant royal seats. Regarding juvenile princes and princesses, Mr. Byrne has something interesting to say.

"Royal children have charming and simple ways, and it is usually an easy matter to establish friendly relations with them. That once accomplished, photographing always becomes a pleasure. They are just as fond of new toys as other children, just as eager for a romp, frequently more so. Indeed, I have more than once had to 'play soldiers' with some of the Queen's grandchildren while waiting for them to reach a sitting-still mood."

Perhaps much of Mr. Byrne's success is due to the fact that photography is not merely his profession; it is his hobby as well. He is constantly devising new and novel poses, both for his private sitters and the child-models he employs. When a mother calls at the studio with her bairn, she is shown numerous bulky volumes, veritable picture galleries of children in almost every conceivable attitude, and invited to choose which she would prefer for her own little one's portrait. Bewildered by such a display, she usually elects to leave the choice to the photographer, and she is invariably wise; for the pose that shows to perfection the characteristic beauty of one child may be quite unsuitable for another. A trained eye notices these things as quickly as a practised artist can tell whether a certain bit of scenery is "paintable" or not. One of Mr. Byrne's child-models must be the most photographed little person in the country, for she has figured in no fewer than two thousand studies. To show the variety of these, a page herewith is devoted to a composite reproduction of the little model in some of her happiest poses. The sweet child, it might be mentioned, is the daughter of Mr. Byrne's laundress.

Mr. Byrne has three "Don'ts" for mothers who would secure speaking likenesses of their little ones. Don't let the little one know beforehand that it is going to a studio. Don't dress it in any costume to which it is unaccustomed. Don't endeavour to arrange its hair; this will look better if allowed to fall naturally.

It must not be supposed, however, that the subject of this article is a photographer of children only. Between them, eighty-nine exhibitions in various parts of the world have awarded him something like a quarter of a hundredweight of medals for exhibits of all kinds, while he has also photographed nearly every adult member of our royal family and innumerable celebrities. In this branch of his work, however, Mr. Byrne has to content himself with the artistic, and leave the novel severely alone. For the Prince of Wales, considerate sitter though he is, would hardly consent to have himself "caught" in an old boot, or Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett, though he does much to amuse his fellow members of Parliament, permit himself to be represented emerging from an aluminium egg. So the "properties" have to be laid aside at times.