Shakespeare’s Birthplace. Pen and ink by Dennis Eagle, from my photograph, c. 1970.
When I was young and living in Stratford-upon-Avon, around 1970, I was on the bones of my bum. I could take a good photograph, but at that particular moment I was more interested in whether I could sell one.
A friend of mine had a degree in advanced polymer chemistry and couldn’t find a job. So he made candles and sat on the street in Stratford selling them. I could see the sense in that. He’d found something he knew how to make and gone straight to the people who might buy it. I had a camera and, right outside, a steady supply of American tourists looking for something Shakespearean to take home.
From photographs to pen and ink
I went round with my camera to the Garrick Inn, Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and the other places people came to see. Every souvenir shop already had colour postcards of them. If I was going to sit on the pavement trying to sell my own, I needed something people couldn’t pick up in the next shop.
I knew a man called Dennis Eagle, who looked after the house at Charlecote Park. He’d got in touch through Studio Five, my first photographic studio, because he wanted a photographic record of some of the pictures at the house. We got talking and I discovered he was an artist himself. I took him my Stratford photographs and he turned them into pen-and-ink drawings. They had the detail of the photographs and all the character of Dennis’s hand.
A dry patch of pavement
I had the drawings printed as proper postcards, with address lines, a dividing rule and a place for the stamp. I think there were six in the series. I also had larger prints made, roughly two feet by one as I remember it. You could roll one up and take it home without having to find room for a frame in your suitcase.
On days when it didn’t rain, I found a spot on the street and spread them out in front of me, just as my friend did with his candles. It was a cash business and, to my relief, the money was good enough to keep me going. Dennis got a percentage of the sales. I’ve forgotten the figure, but the arrangement suited us both.
Some buyers assumed I’d drawn them and asked me to sign their prints. I signed a few. It was my photograph they’d started with, but if you’ve got one of those prints on a wall in America with my signature on it, the man with the pen was Dennis Eagle.
The picture at Charlecote
When I went to photograph the pictures at Charlecote House, Dennis invited me in for a cup of tea and showed me another one. It depicted the local legend that Shakespeare was caught poaching deer at Charlecote. Dennis told me the picture he was showing me had never been on public view. I asked if I might photograph it for myself, and he let me. I’ve still got that photograph somewhere, if only I could put my hand on it.
For now, I’ve got these two postcards. The paper has yellowed a bit in the intervening years. I can still remember looking up at the sky and trying to decide whether I’d get a day’s selling in before the rain.
