The Inventor and the Tycoon

by Edward Ball

  A shareholder in the Bank of Turkey sued the board, alleging a corrupt deal with its partner, the Ottoman Company. The suit pointed at “a secret arrangement made between some of the defendants who were directors of both companies.” So much was plausible. The judge in the shareholder’s suit scolded Muygridge. “Professional gentlemen,” the judge said, “mix themselves up in these schemes for the concoction of companies … many of which [have] turned out to be illusory.”

  The other directors made themselves scarce, leaving Muygridge to clean up the bankruptcy. His cousin who had gotten him into this business, Sir Henry Muggeridge, could not help him. Sir Henry’s Bank of London had also failed, and Muggeridge, out of money, became a defendant in his own lawsuit. In April and May 1866, Muygridge chaired two shareholders meetings that dissolved the Bank of Turkey. At these events, pelted by the derision of men who had invested in a fantasy, in rooms full of cigar smoke and heckling, Muygridge took insult after insult. He took apart the Bank of Turkey, and he threw away the Ottoman Company. What liability he personally assumed is unclear—the law protected investors from individual responsibility. But chances are good he lost his own money, and it is telling that he soon left London again for America.

  It’s interesting that when he faced the scorn of his stockholders, Muygridge (the bookseller, inventor, photographer, and banker) did so with a fresh name. The London Gazette named the chair of these meetings as “E. I. Muybridge.” The middle initial was a typo, an I instead of a J, but the surname was real, the first appearance of a new name, “Muybridge.” On this occasion, the name wouldn’t stick, but it would come back later.

  Things went just as badly with the mining scheme. A year after Austin Silver went on sale, the directors of the company saw they had nothing to pay out from the Nevada dig and shut down the company. It was June 1865, and the Times of London said that shares of Austin Silver would be settled in mid-November. But the company delayed, apparently with no money for even a token few shillings on the pound. The following year, in June 1866, Muygridge placed an advertisement that asked creditors to bring their claims to the board’s final meeting, on July 5. There is no account of that desultory event, but Muygridge again sat in the chair, and angry investors probably did not let things go quietly. A weird concatenation of events in the end produced our photographer. Edward Muygridge was shaped by the humiliation of his failed inventions, his lost contracts, and broken rungs on the ladder that he thought might take him up into the cloud of the business class. Sometime in late summer 1866, he traded the fantasy of the entrepreneur, the one in which greed might solve his problems, for a different fantasy, the one around art. Muygridge, molting again, discarded his chase after money and chose art and independence in its place. He gave up the identity of the banker in spats and went back to California. He became a photographer, with a new name. He was now Helios, like the god of the sun.

  VERDICTS

  The twelve men in the Muybridge jury picked a foreman, a man called Sterling. On the first ballot, five voted to convict (the jurors Pratt, Garfield, Hallet, Greenwood, and Klam), seven to acquit (Sterling, Chapson, Newcomer, Connery, Smith, Forester, and Kruze). One of the jurors for acquittal made a show of taking off his coat and bunching it into a pillow on the floor, then lying down to close his eyes. When those who would hang Muybridge came over to his side, he said, the other jurors should wake him up, because he wasn’t going to change his mind.

  According to a reporter who talked to them, the jurymen at first avoided arguing altogether and talked about money instead. They talked about paper currency (a novelty at the time and controversial in the West) and the exchange rates for gold. They talked about taxes and the paltry amount they were being paid for the trial. Unused to an overnight case, the Napa court did not book hotel rooms, so the jury chambers had to double as a barracks. It was 11:00 p.m … midnight … one by one they fell asleep, until Sheriff Corwin was the only one awake.

  At 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, February 6, the jury went to breakfast, where one of them said, while eating, that if necessary, he would stay in the jury room for three days—the case was important enough. At 10:00 a.m. the men returned to their conference room, unwashed, and took the second ballot, with the same result: five to convict, seven to acquit. Finally they started the argument, and their differences turned on the question of insanity. No one believed Muybridge was insane. Some said the testimony of the midwife, Susan Smith, who had several times called Muybridge “mad,” had no credibility. The jurors ridiculed Smith as a witness—she was a go-between in a sexual arrangement, and she had deceived everyone involved. William Rulofson, Muybridge’s art dealer, had said the photographer was “eccentric” and “disturbed,” but those things were a long throw from madness. George Shurtleff, the insanity expert, had said straight out that he doubted Muybridge was insane—he had been too calculated in the commission of the crime, and too composed after it. The quarrel went on. The problem for acquittal was that Judge Wallace had said Muybridge’s verdict depended on his sanity. The only basis for an “innocent killing”—the only justification for murder—was self-defense, and the shooting of Larkyns, whatever else it was, involved nothing like that. If Muybridge was to be justified, said Judge Wallace, it had to be as an insane person, and nobody believed he was mad.

  The men talked for an hour, 11:00 a.m. came and went. To most of the jurors, the justice of the murder did not require the cover of insanity. Even the five who wanted to convict said they did not care whether Muybridge was insane. All thought Muybridge was “justified” in killing Larkyns for having seduced his wife. The men tossed the question around the room—if you found yourself in similar circumstances, what would you do? Nearly all said they would have done as Muybridge did, or would have tried. A room full of men in bloody California in 1875 would say that to each other—it would be part of their masculine pose. Everyone agreed it was a righteous killing, that the murder was defensible, if not in self-defense.

  Those who wanted to convict now swung around to “not guilty.” What would seem to have been the main fight, Muybridge’s guilt or innocence, moved offstage, replaced by a fresh, narrower quarrel about the form the verdict should take—whether simply “not guilty,” or “not guilty by reason of insanity.” On this the jury had its most bitter dispute, and the argument went on for an hour, during which the majority insisted that Muybridge was not insane. The ones who said he was mad were the same who had wanted to convict—they clung to insanity as a way of explaining and ameliorating the killing. Of these, the juror named Pratt was the first to waver. When Pratt let go of the idea of Muybridge’s madness, a third ballot was taken. A few minutes earlier, the jury had had no expectation of agreeing on the insanity argument, but to everyone’s surprise, all voted for the plainest verdict, “not guilty.” It was 12:00 noon.

  The courtroom had been full for four hours, and Muybridge and his lawyers stood in a sea of spectators, but the photographer kept up an uncanny calm. “As the morning went on,” said a reporter, “Muybridge’s friends lost confidence, but the defendant showed no sign of wavering, doubt or fear.” He appeared to be in good spirits and talked to anyone who approached him.

  The announcement was made that the jury was to be brought in. Judge Wallace entered and sat at the bench. Muybridge sat between two of his lawyers. A reporter said that Wirt Pendegast leaned over to coach his client, saying, “Now, Muybridge, you have acted the man all through this. When the verdict comes, restrain your feelings.” Muybridge gave a telling answer—“I am prepared to meet anything, except that which we most desire.”

  The clerk called the names of the jurymen and asked whether they had reached a verdict. Sterling, the foreman, rose and said, “We have,” handing up a slip of paper. The clerk read it, then passed the paper to Judge Wallace, who read it and returned it to the clerk.

  The judge nodded, “Record the verdict, Mr. Clerk.”

  “Gentlemen of the jury, listen to your verdict as it stands recorded. In the People
vs. Muybridge—we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”

  One writer described the scene at length. When Muybridge heard the verdict, he gasped and sank forward in his chair. He then seemed to lose control of his muscles; Wirt Pendegast caught the photographer in his arms and in this way kept him from falling to the floor. Muybridge’s body appeared limp, but then he began to tremble, and within a minute he went into convulsions. “His jaws set and his face was livid,” said a reporter, and “the veins of his hands and forehead swelled out like shipcord.” A seizure took possession of him, and Muybridge moaned and wept in waves, but he could say nothing. He sat up in his chair and began rocking back and forth, his face a field of contortions, then his convulsions returned.

  Judge Wallace dismissed the jury and, apparently unable to watch Muybridge’s reaction, got up to leave the courtroom. The clerk who had read the verdict covered his face with a handkerchief. Judge Stoney, the prosecutor, left the room next, as did several of the jurors, the sight being too much for them. Some of Muybridge’s friends surrounded him. They tried to console him, and several began to weep themselves.

  Wirt Pendegast, at first gently, then harshly, begged Muybridge to get possession of himself. He asked his client to stand up and give the customary thanks to the jury for their verdict. Muybridge stood and tried to speak, but he could say nothing, and he fell back in his chair in an apparent delirium. He was carried out of the room by Pendegast and another man and laid on a sofa in Pendegast’s office, a couple of doors away. A physician was sent for, who appeared at Muybridge’s side, but he could do nothing but watch. Finally, one of Pendegast’s partners spoke up with a scolding voice. “Muybridge, I sympathize with you, but this exhibition of emotion is extremely painful to me, and for my sake alone I wish you to desist!” At this, the photographer straightened himself. Fifteen minutes had passed. He said, “Yes, I will. I will be calm, now. I am calm now.” The fugue state lifted, and Muybridge walked back to the courtroom, teetering, sitting down again at the defense table.

  Judge Wallace was brought back from his chambers to the bench, Pendegast made a motion to free his client, and Wallace discharged Muybridge from custody. When the photographer reached the street, a large crowd in front of the courtroom erupted in cheers and applause, and he was mobbed, unable to move along the sidewalk.

  “The satisfaction with the verdict was very nearly unanimous,” said a reporter, and those who felt otherwise “were in an insignificant minority.”

  Six weeks before the trial, Flora Muybridge had filed for divorce.1 In the late 1800s, to end a marriage, even on the frontier, where social ties changed as often as flies alighting on food, required disastrous circumstances and heavy court involvement. By killing his wife’s lover, Muybridge had provided drama enough for a case, but a judge was not inclined to look benignly on Flora, who was a “fallen woman.” In her divorce plea, Flora said that in early 1874, when she was pregnant with her son, Muybridge had accused her of adultery and of carrying another man’s child—falsely, she said—and had threatened to kill her. She said Muybridge was “fitful, violent, and jealous,” and she claimed “extreme cruelty” as grounds to break the marriage.

  Flora’s plea went on to say that one night Muybridge had come to their bedroom, watched her while she slept, and when she woke up, gone into the hall to hide from her. When she pretended to sleep again, he had come back in the room, and the scene had been repeated. “These acts of cruelty affected her in such a manner that she has ever since been miserable,” said the brief. It was a meager catalog of abuse, because Flora could not tell it straight: her husband had killed the man she loved.

  Muybridge now despised his wife (although he told the newspapers he loved her), while Flora needed money and had no one to lean on. She said that she alone cared for and supported her baby son (true, since her husband stopped giving her money) and that she had no means to earn a living (less true). She pointed out that Muybridge had money and that the Bradley & Rulofson gallery owed him $5,000 or even $10,000. She asked the court for alimony in addition to a divorce.

  On Tuesday, January 5, a month before the murder trial, while Muybridge sat in jail, a judge ordered that the photographer show cause why he should not pay fifty dollars a month alimony and child support. Three days later, after Muybridge’s lawyer Wirt Pendegast contested the judgment with a flourish of argument that no one wrote down, the same judge dismissed his order and postponed the case.

  After Muybridge was acquitted in Napa, Flora went back to court to try again.2 It was March 1875, and this time she escalated her language. She said she had lived with Muybridge “in fear of her life,” and went on to tell the story of how they had first come together as a couple. Flora said that Muybridge had hired a lawyer to help her get a divorce from her first husband, Lucius Stone, the heir to a saddle-making company in San Francisco. She said that the day after her divorce Muybridge had given her money to buy clothes, but that when she did not spend it the way he expected, he had verbally abused her and demanded the money back. She had returned the money and then broken off their relationship, her complaint said, but Muybridge had “renewed his attentions” and threatened that if she did not marry him, he would take revenge. She worked as a photo retoucher for the Nahl brothers’ gallery, but had also been doing work on Muybridge’s pictures. As a sometime employee, as well as his girlfriend, she said she depended on Muybridge for a living and agreed to marry him.

  The complaint went on. Flora said that Muybridge had slept with another woman in the summer of 1874, when their baby boy, Florado, was just three months old (she did not name the woman). She said she believed Muybridge would have killed her over Harry Larkyns if he could do it and go unpunished, and that it was still his intention to kill her. She mentioned that Muybridge “is capable of earning $500 a month” with his camera, that she wanted a divorce, a division of property, and permanent alimony.

  This filing made a stronger impression than the first, and a Judge Wheeler of the Nineteenth District Court in San Francisco issued an order compelling Muybridge to show cause why he should not pay alimony. On May 1, 1875, Wheeler gave Flora a victory when he ordered Muybridge to pay her fifty dollars in monthly alimony, pending the outcome of her divorce filing. “It was only fair,” the judge said, and “the circumstances that gave rise to the divorce suit cannot be taken into consideration.”3 Flora’s court victory came three months too late, however, because when the decision came, the photographer was out of the country.

  Before he killed Larkyns, Muybridge had cut a deal with a steamship firm, the Pacific Mail Company, to go to Central America and take publicity photographs. He started the job right after his acquittal—he wanted to get out of town and escape his notoriety. Two weeks after the trial, on the night of February 19, 1875, Muybridge hired a rowboat to take him out to a Pacific Mail steamship, which he boarded. He had already sent his cameras and other equipment out to the ship, conniving against Flora, who he knew was in court lobbying for money from him, and to attach his property to her alimony case. He made a stealthy escape from the divorce judgment. Where once he had told a reporter that Flora “would not go without” his money and support, Muybridge now decided not to give her a dollar without a fight.

  Leland Stanford’s railroad had ties to Central America, and it may have been Muybridge’s friend, again, who got him the assignment, a job that let him get out of California after the trial. For twenty-five years there had been a road across the isthmus (and, after 1870, a railroad) to take people and freight to and from the East and California. After Stanford’s transcontinental line linked New York with San Francisco, the train depleted travel across Central America, but it was still cheaper to go through Panama or Nicaragua than it was to take a train through the Midwest.4 Rather than let themselves be undercut by lower fares, Stanford and his associates made a deal with Pacific Mail to subsidize its revenue: the Central Pacific, in effect, bribed the competition to keep its rates up. The steamship line, with the subsidy, go
t cash flow without having to carry freight and charged artificially inflated ticket prices that pushed traffic back to Stanford’s railroad. In the weird economy of transport, Muybridge was hired, for this trip, to make handsome photographs of Central America that might encourage passengers to put down money in the isthmus, to invest there rather than just pass through.

  Muybridge, Weeding and Protecting the Young Coffee Plant from the Sun. Antigua—Guatemala, 1875 (Illustration Credit c17.1)

  A group of Native American alcaldes, or mayors, at Santa María, Guatemala (Illustration Credit c17.2)

  Muybridge, A Roadside Scene, San Isidro. Maya women bathing (Illustration Credit c17.3)

  Muybridge, Reception of the Artist, Panama, 1875. Muybridge was regarded as an important visitor to the isthmus and treated to military receptions. In the central square of Panama City, he stands at left, wearing a straw hat, his back to the camera, facing a rifle company. (Illustration Credit c17.4)

  To start, the photographer brought out an old routine—he changed his name. He printed a brochure in Spanish that announced him as Señor Eduardo Santiago Muybridge, or “Edward the Saint.” Eduardo Santiago stopped at several Mexican ports and arrived in Panama in March 1875. He stayed for two months in Panama City and then sailed for Guatemala, where he stayed another six months. The previous February, he had escaped the gallows. Now, in town after town, he was received as an important visitor.

  Muybridge shot coffee plantations and their workers: the manor houses, plus half-clothed Maya Indians bent over plants in the field. He shot military drills on big town squares: two hundred militia in formation, showing off their rifles. He photographed mountains, Baroque churches in ruins, extinct volcanoes. He framed the moon, and the sunset, and the rivers. As was always the case in Muybridge’s photographs, the people within them looked like appendages to their setting. Muybridge took a greater interest in what was around people, in the frame, than in the people themselves.