AT MENTONE, ETC.
From the Riviera in 1879 came the following pictures in letters to
friends.
"This hotel is indeed a calm spot, but the food is good, and
I have a pleasant little room or two, where I can work
comfortably. I know the inhabitant of one villa here, an
American; and I think there are two people whom I know in an
hotel, so when I feel very lonely I shall hunt them up. There
is much snow on the rocky hills near the town, and the
weather is rather cold, but the aspect of everything around
(nearly) is very fine and worth coming to see."
In another letter he sends the following sketch of himself at table in
the vast _salle à manger_ of the hotel.[12]
[Illustration]
"SPLENDIDE HOTEL, MENTON,
"_11th January, 1879_.
"DEAR ----,--The above view will give you a more correct
idea of the _splendour_ of this hotel than a page of
writing, I think, could possibly do. It represents our
_table d'hôte_ last night. I fled yesterday from Cannes,
which--although called a very quiet place by most
visitors--I found to be too lively for one who has much work
to do and a desire to do it."
* * * * *
Much drawing was accomplished in the spring of this year, both abroad,
and on return to London. The success of his first Picture Books (on
which he writes, "I get a small, small royalty") was beyond all
expectation, and the _Elegy of a Mad Dog_ was now in progress.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: "NOT SUCH DISAGREEABLE WEATHER AFTER ALL--SOME PEOPLE
THINK."
From _Punch_, August 2nd, 1879.]
Writing on the 20th June, in the wet summer of 1879, from 5, Langham
Chambers, Portland Place (a studio that he had taken temporarily from
an artist friend, Mr. W. J. Hennessy), he heads the letter with the
sketch on page 192, which is interesting as the first idea for the
drawing which appeared in _Punch_ on the 2nd August, 1879, reproduced
on the preceding page by permission of the proprietors.
[Illustration: A PIG OF BRITTANY (TERRA-COTTA).
The Property of Mr. Armstrong.]
The illustration on the opposite page is an example of Caldecott in a
style which will be new to most readers. The book plate was drawn for
an old and intimate friend in Manchester, and it is curious to note
how closely the style of the family crest is followed in its various
details. If it were not for certain satirical touches this ingenious
design might easily pass for the work of other hands; the touch and
treatment have little in common with Caldecott as he is known; but the
artistic completeness of the little book plate is another evidence of
his power as a designer.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
In September Caldecott modelled some birds, forming part of the
capitals of pillars for Sir Frederick Leighton's 'Arab Hall' in his
house at Kensington. They were done for the architect, Mr. G.
Aitchison, A.R.A. Besides these he was at work on other modelling; one
subject (the outcome of his Brittany travels) is given on page 194.
In 1879 he took a small house, with an old-fashioned garden, at
Kemsing, near Sevenoaks. This was his first country home, "an
out-of-the-way place," as he expressed it, "but exactly right for me."
Here, surrounded by his four-footed friends, he could indulge his
liking and love for the country.
[Illustration]
Writing to a young friend on the 13th October, he sends the
following:--
"I am just now obliged to decline invitations to go and be
merry with friends at a distance, because I am now living in
this quiet, out-of-the-way village in order to make some
studies of animals--to wit, horses, dogs, and other human
beings--which I wish to use for the works that I shall be
busy with during the coming winter.
"I have a mare--dark chestnut--who goes very well in
harness, and is very pleasant to ride; and a little puppy--a
comical young dachshund. My man calls the mare 'Peri,' so I
call the puppy Lalla Rookh."
In a letter to his friend Mr. Locker-Lampson, written about this time,
in 1880, he expresses surprise at not hearing from America respecting
certain drawings by Miss Kate Greenaway and himself, which had been
sent across the Atlantic to be engraved on wood. "I wonder why?" he
says--[The rest is reproduced opposite].
Caldecott was soon found out in his country home, his wide reputation
as an illustrator bringing him ever-increasing work, some "not very
profitable."
[Illustration]
At this time he was taxing his energies to the utmost, working a long
morning always indoors, and afterwards making studies in the garden or
in the country; the evening occupied by reading and correspondence.
[Illustration]
But he found time always--and until the end--to remember and to write
to his old and dear friends. One more extract (the last in this book)
from a letter from Venice, to an invalid friend in Manchester in
1880:--
"I am sorry to hear that you are so lame," he says. "I wish
you had been with us in Venice--the going to and fro in
gondolas would have suited you well. Easy, smooth, and
soul-subduing--especially by moonlight and when the ear is
filled with the rich notes of a very uncommon gondolier's
voice and the twanging of a sentimental traveller's lute.
"On the 18th of March we were married at a small church in
Kent--my best man drove me in a dog-cart. I sold him my mare
on the way, and she came to sad grief with him!"
[Illustration: SKETCH OF "WYBOURNES," KEMSING, NEAR SEVENOAKS.]
The letters after this date refer to a period in Caldecott's art which
must be considered at a future time. Only two remembrances of his later
years shall be recorded now; one of him at Kemsing, seated in his
old-fashioned garden on a fine summer's afternoon (after hard work from
nine till two) surrounded by his friends and four-footed playmates--a
garden where the birds, and even the flowers, lived unrestrained.
"Where woodbines wander, and the wallflower pushes
Its way alone;
And where, in wafts of fragrance, sweetbriar-bushes
Make themselves known.
With banks of violets for southern breezes
To seek and find,
And trellis'd jessamine that trembles in
The summer wind.
Where clove-carnations overgrow the places
Where they were set,
And, mist-like, in the intervening spaces
Creeps mignonette."
The other and a later remembrance of Caldecott is at a gathering of
friends in Victoria Street, Westminster, in January, 1885, when--to a
good old English tune--the "lasses and lads," out of his _Picture
Book_, danced before him, and the fiddler, in the costume of the time,
"played it wrong."
[Illustration: A NEW YEAR'S GREETING TO A FRIEND.]