ILLUSTRATED BOOKS {123}
[Picture: Highly decorative letter M, first letter of Modern] ODERN
English book-illustration—to which the present chapter is restricted—has
no long or doubtful history, since to find its first beginnings, it is
needless to go farther back than the last quarter of the eighteenth
century. Not that “illustrated” books of a certain class were by any
means unknown before that period. On the contrary, for many years
previously, literature had boasted its “sculptures” of be-wigged and
be-laurelled “worthies,” its “prospects” and “land-skips,” its phenomenal
monsters and its “curious antiques.” But, despite the couplet in the
“Dunciad” respecting books where
“ . . . the pictures for the page atone,
And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own;”—
illustrations, in which the designer attempted the actual delineation of
scenes or occurrences in the text, were certainly not common when Pope
wrote, nor were they for some time afterwards either very numerous or
very noteworthy. There are Hogarth’s engravings to “Hudibras” and “Don
Quixote;” there are the designs of his crony Frank Hayman to Theobald’s
“Shakespeare,” to Milton, to Pope, to Cervantes; there are Pine’s
“Horace” and Sturt’s “Prayer-Book” (in both of which text and ornament
were alike engraved); there are the historical and topographical drawings
of Sandby, Wale, and others; and yet—notwithstanding all these—it is with
Bewick’s cuts to Gay’s “Fables” in 1779, and Stothard’s plates to
Harrison’s “Novelist’s Magazine” in 1780, that book-illustration by
imaginative compositions really begins to flourish in England. Those
little masterpieces of the Newcastle artist brought about a revival of
wood-engraving which continues to this day; but engraving upon metal, as
a means of decorating books, practically came to an end with the
“Annuals” of thirty years ago. It will therefore be well to speak first
of illustrations upon copper and steel.
* * * * *
Stothard, Blake, and Flaxman are the names that come freshest to memory
in this connection. For a period of fifty years Stothard stands
pre-eminent in illustrated literature. Measuring time by poets, he may
be said to have lent something of his fancy and amenity to most of the
writers from Cowper to Rogers. As a draughtsman he is undoubtedly weak:
his figures are often limp and invertebrate, and his type of beauty
insipid. Still, regarded as groups, the majority of his designs are
exquisite, and he possessed one all-pervading and un-English quality—the
quality of grace. This is his dominant note. Nothing can be more
seductive than the suave flow of his line, his feeling for costume, his
gentle and chastened humour. Many of his women and children are models
of purity and innocence. But he works at ease only within the limits of
his special powers; he is happier in the pastoral and domestic than the
heroic and supernatural, and his style is better fitted to the formal
salutations of “Clarissa” and “Sir Charles Grandison,” than the rough
horse-play of “Peregrine Pickle.” Where Rowlandson would have revelled,
Stothard would be awkward and constrained; where Blake would give us a
new sensation, Stothard would be poor and mechanical. Nevertheless the
gifts he possessed were thoroughly recognised in his own day, and brought
him, if not riches, at least competence and honour. It is said that more
than three thousand of his drawings have been engraved, and they are
scattered through a hundred publications. Those to the “Pilgrim’s
Progress” and the poems of Rogers are commonly spoken of as his best,
though he never excelled some of the old-fashioned plates (with their
pretty borders in the style of Gravelot and the Frenchmen) to
Richardson’s novels, and such forgotten “classics” as “Joe Thompson”,
“Jessamy,” “Betsy Thoughtless,” and one or two others in Harrison’s very
miscellaneous collection.
Stothard was fortunate in his engravers. Besides James Heath, his best
interpreter, Schiavonetti, Sharp, Finden, the Cookes, Bartolozzi, most of
the fashionable translators into copper were busily employed upon his
inventions. Among the rest was an artist of powers far greater than his
own, although scarcely so happy in turning them to profitable account.
The genius of William Blake was not a marketable commodity in the same
way as Stothard’s talent. The one caught the trick of the time with his
facile elegance; the other scorned to make any concessions, either in
conception or execution, to the mere popularity of prettiness.
“Give pensions to the learned pig,
Or the hare playing on a tabor;
Anglus can never see perfection
But in the journeyman’s labour,”—
he wrote in one of those rough-hewn and bitter epigrams of his. Yet the
work that was then so lukewarmly received—if, indeed, it can be said to
have been received at all—is at present far more sought after than
Stothard’s, and the prices now given for the “Songs of Innocence and
Experience,” the “Inventions to the Book of Job,” and even “The Grave,”
would have brought affluence to the struggling artist, who (as Cromek
taunted him) was frequently “reduced so low as to be obliged to live on
half a guinea a week.” Not that this was entirely the fault of his
contemporaries. Blake was a visionary, and an untuneable man; and, like
others who work for the select public of all ages, he could not always
escape the consequence that the select public of his own, however
willing, were scarcely numerous enough to support him. His most
individual works are the “Songs of Innocence,” 1789, and the “Songs of
Experience,” 1794. These, afterwards united in one volume, were unique
in their method of production; indeed, they do not perhaps strictly come
within the category of what is generally understood to be copperplate
engraving. The drawings were outlined and the songs written upon the
metal with some liquid that resisted the action of acid, and the
remainder of the surface of the plate was eaten away with _aqua-fortis_,
leaving the design in bold relief, like a rude stereotype. This was then
printed off in the predominant tone—blue, brown, or yellow, as the case
might be—and delicately tinted by the artist in a prismatic and ethereal
fashion peculiarly his own. Stitched and bound in boards by Mrs. Blake,
a certain number of these leaflets—twenty-seven in the case of the first
issue—made up a tiny _octavo_ of a wholly exceptional kind. Words indeed
fail to exactly describe the flower-like beauty—the fascination of these
“fairy missals,” in which, it has been finely said, “the thrilling music
of the verse, and the gentle bedazzlement of the lines and colours so
intermingle, that the mind hangs in a pleasant uncertainty as to whether
it is a picture that is singing, or a song which has newly budded and
blossomed into colour and form.” The accompanying woodcut, after one of
the illustrations to the “Songs of Innocence,” gives some indication of
the general composition, but it can convey no hint of the gorgeous
purple, and crimson, and orange of the original.
[Picture: “Infant Joy.” From Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” 1789.
Engraved by J. F. Jungling]
Of the “Illustrations to the Book of Job,” 1826, there are excellent
reduced facsimiles by the recently-discovered photo-intaglio process, in
the new edition of Gilchrist’s “Life.” The originals were engraved by
Blake himself in his strong decisive fashion, and they are his best work.
A kind of _deisidaimonia_—a sacred awe—falls upon one in turning over
these wonderful productions of the artist’s declining years and failing
hand.
“Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new,”
sings Waller; and it is almost possible to believe for a moment that
their creator was (as he said) “under the direction of messengers from
Heaven.” But his designs for Blair’s “Grave,” 1808, popularised by the
burin of Schiavonetti, attracted greater attention at the time of
publication; and, being less rare, they are even now perhaps better known
than the others. The facsimile here given is from the latter book. The
worn old man, the trustful woman, and the guileless child are sleeping
peacefully; but the king with his sceptre, and the warrior with his hand
on his sword-hilt, lie open-eyed, waiting the summons of the trumpet.
One cannot help fancying that the artist’s long vigils among the Abbey
tombs, during his apprenticeship to James Basire, must have been present
to his mind when he selected this impressive monumental subject.
[Picture: “Counsellor, King, Warrior, Mother and Child, in the Tomb.”
From Blair’s “Grave,” 1808. Designed by William Blake; facsimiled on
wood from the engraving by Louis Schiavonetti]
To one of Blake’s few friends—to the “dear Sculptor of Eternity,” as he
wrote to Flaxman from Felpham—the world is indebted for some notable book
illustrations. Whether the greatest writers—the Homers, the
Shakespeares, the Dantes—can ever be “illustrated” without loss may
fairly be questioned. At all events, the showy dexterities of the Dorés
and Gilberts prove nothing to the contrary. But now and then there comes
to the graphic interpretation of a great author an artist either so
reverential, or so strongly sympathetic at some given point, that, in
default of any relation more narrowly intimate, we at once accept his
conceptions as the best attainable. In this class are Flaxman’s outlines
to Homer and Æschylus. Flaxman was not a Hellenist as men are Hellenists
to-day. Nevertheless, his Roman studies had saturated him with the
spirit of antique beauty, and by his grand knowledge of the nude, his
calm, his restraint, he is such an illustrator of Homer as is not likely
to arise again. For who—with all our added knowledge of classical
antiquity—who, of our modern artists, could hope to rival such thoroughly
Greek compositions as the ball-play of Nausicaa in the “Odyssey,” or that
lovely group from Æschylus of the tender-hearted, womanly Oceanides,
cowering like flowers beaten by the storm under the terrible anger of
Zeus? In our day Flaxman’s drawings would have been reproduced by some
of the modern facsimile processes, and the gain would have been great.
As it is, something is lost by their transference to copper, even though
the translators be Piroli and Blake. Blake, in fact, did more than he is
usually credited with, for (beside the acknowledged and later “Hesiod,”
1817) he really engraved the whole of the “Odyssey,” Piroli’s plates
having been lost on the voyage to England. The name of the Roman artist,
nevertheless, appears on the title-page (1793). But Blake was too
original to be a successful copyist of other men’s work, and to
appreciate the full value of Flaxman’s drawings, they should be studied
in the collections at University College, the Royal Academy, and
elsewhere. {9}
Flaxman and Blake had few imitators. But a host of clever designers,
such as Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann, Westall, Uwins, Smirke, Burney,
Corbould, Dodd, and others, vied with the popular Stothard in
“embellishing” the endless “Poets,” “novelists,” and “essayists” of our
forefathers. Some of these, and most of the recognised artists of the
period, lent their aid to that boldly-planned but unhappily-executed
“Shakespeare” of Boydell,—“black and ghastly gallery of murky Opies, glum
Northcotes, straddling Fuselis,” as Thackeray calls it. They are
certainly not enlivening—those cumbrous “atlas” _folios_ of 1803–5, and
they helped to ruin the worthy alderman. Even courtly Sir Joshua is
clearly ill at ease among the pushing Hamiltons and Mortimers; and, were
it not for the whimsical discovery that Westall’s “Ghost of Cæsar”
strangely resembles Mr. Gladstone, there would be no resting-place for
the modern student of these dismal masterpieces. The truth is, Reynolds
excepted, there were no contemporary painters strong enough for the task,
and the honours of the enterprise belong almost exclusively to Smirke’s
“Seven Ages” and one or two plates from the lighter comedies. The great
“Bible” of Macklin, a rival and even more incongruous publication, upon
which some of the same designers were employed, has fallen into completer
oblivion. A rather better fate attended another book of this class,
which, although belonging to a later period, may be briefly referred to
here. The “Milton” of John Martin has distinct individuality, and some
of the needful qualities of imagination. Nevertheless, posterity has
practically decided that scenic grandeur and sombre effects alone are not
a sufficient pictorial equipment for the varied story of “Paradise Lost.”
It is to Boydell of the Shakespeare gallery that we owe the “Liber
Veritatis” of Claude, engraved by Richard Earlom; and indirectly, since
rivalry of Claude prompted the attempt, the famous “Liber Studiorum” of
Turner. Neither of these, however—which, like the “Rivers of France” and
the “Picturesque Views in England and Wales” of the latter artist, are
collections of engravings rather than illustrated books—belongs to the
present purpose. But Turner’s name may fitly serve to introduce those
once familiar “Annuals” and “Keepsakes,” that, beginning in 1823 with
Ackermann’s “Forget-me-Not,” enjoyed a popularity of more than thirty
years. Their general characteristics have been pleasantly satirised in
Thackeray’s account of the elegant miscellany of Bacon the publisher, to
which Mr. Arthur Pendennis contributed his pretty poem of “The Church
Porch.” His editress, it will be remembered, was the Lady Violet Lebas,
and his colleagues the Honourable Percy Popjoy, Lord Dodo, and the gifted
Bedwin Sands, whose “Eastern Ghazuls” lent so special a distinction to
the volume in watered-silk binding. The talented authors, it is true,
were in most cases under the disadvantage of having to write to the
plates of the talented artists, a practice which even now is not extinct,
though it is scarcely considered favourable to literary merit. And the
real “Annuals” were no exception to the rule. As a matter of fact, their
general literary merit was not obtrusive, although, of course, they
sometimes contained work which afterwards became famous. They are now so
completely forgotten and out of date, that one scarcely expects to find
that Wordsworth, Coleridge, Macaulay, and Southey, were among the
occasional contributors. Lamb’s beautiful “Album verses” appeared in the
“Bijou,” Scott’s “Bonnie Dundee” in the “Christmas Box,” and Tennyson’s
“St. Agnes’ Eve” in the “Keepsake.” But the plates were, after all, the
leading attraction. These, prepared for the most part under the
superintendence of the younger Heath, and executed on the steel which by
this time had supplanted the old “coppers,” were supplied by, or were
“after,” almost every contemporary artist of note. Stothard, now growing
old and past his prime, Turner, Etty, Stanfield, Leslie, Roberts, Danby,
Maclise, Lawrence, Cattermole, and numbers of others, found profitable
labour in this fashionable field until 1856, when the last of the
“Annuals” disappeared, driven from the market by the rapid development of
wood engraving. About a million, it is roughly estimated, was squandered
in producing them.
In connection with the “Annuals” must be mentioned two illustrated books
which were in all probability suggested by them—the “Poems” and “Italy”
of Rogers. The designs to these are chiefly by Turner and Stothard,
although there are a few by Prout and others. Stothard’s have been
already referred to; Turner’s are almost universally held to be the most
successful of his many vignettes. It has been truly said—in a recent
excellent life of this artist {10}—that it would be difficult to find in
the whole of his works two really greater than the “Alps at Daybreak,”
and the “Datur Hora Quieti,” in the former of these volumes. Almost
equally beautiful are the “Valombré Falls” and “Tornaro’s misty brow.”
Of the “Italy” set Mr. Ruskin writes:—“They are entirely exquisite;
poetical in the highest and purest sense, exemplary and delightful beyond
all praise.” To such words it is not possible to add much. But it is
pretty clear that the poetical vitality of Rogers was secured by these
well-timed illustrations, over which he is admitted by his nephew Mr.
Sharpe to have spent about £7000, and far larger sums have been named by
good authorities. The artist received from fifteen to twenty guineas for
each of the drawings; the engravers (Goodall, Miller, Wallis, Smith, and
others), sixty guineas a plate. The “Poems” and the “Italy,” in the
original issues of 1830 and 1834, are still precious to collectors, and
are likely to remain so. Turner also illustrated Scott, Milton,
Campbell, and Byron; but this series of designs has not received equal
commendation from his greatest eulogist, who declares them to be “much
more laboured, and more or less artificial and unequal.” Among the
numerous imitations directly induced by the Rogers books was the “Lyrics
of the Heart,” by Alaric Attila Watts, a forgotten versifier and sometime
editor of “Annuals,” but it did not meet with similar success.
Many illustrated works, originating in the perfection and opportunities
of engraving on metal, are necessarily unnoticed in this rapid summary.
As far, however, as book-illustration is concerned, copper and steel
plate engraving may be held to have gone out of fashion with the
“Annuals.” It is still, indeed, to be found lingering in that mine of
modern art-books—the “Art Journal;” and, not so very long ago, it made a
sumptuous and fugitive reappearance in Doré’s “Idylls of the King,”
Birket Foster’s “Hood,” and one or two other imposing volumes. But it
was badly injured by modern wood-engraving; it has since been crippled
for life by photography; and it is more than probable that the present
rapid rise of modern etching will give it the _coup de grace_. {11}
By the end of the seventeenth century the art of engraving on wood had
fallen into disuse. Writing _circa_ 1770, Horace Walpole goes so far as
to say that it “never was executed in any perfection in England;” and,
speaking afterwards of Papillon’s “Traité de la Gravure,” 1766, he takes
occasion to doubt if that author would ever “persuade the world to return
to wooden cuts.” Nevertheless, with Bewick, a few years later,
wood-engraving took a fresh departure so conspicuous that it amounts to a
revival. In what this consisted it is clearly impossible to show here
with any sufficiency of detail; but between the method of the old
wood-cutters who reproduced the drawings of Dürer, and the method of the
Newcastle artist, there are two marked and well-defined differences. One
of these is a difference in the preparation of the wood and the tool
employed. The old wood-cutters carved their designs with knives and
chisels on strips of wood sawn lengthwise—that is to say, upon the
_plank_; Bewick used a graver, and worked upon slices of box or pear cut
across the grain,—that is to say upon the _end_ of the wood. The other
difference, of which Bewick is said to have been the inventor, is less
easy to describe. It consisted in the employment of what is technically
known as “white line.” In all antecedent wood-cutting the cutter had
simply cleared away those portions of the block left bare by the design,
so that the design remained in relief to be printed from like type.
Using the smooth box block as a uniform surface from which, if covered
with printing ink, a uniformly black impression might be obtained,
Bewick, by cutting white lines across it at greater or lesser intervals,
produced gradations of shade, from the absolute black of the block to the
lightest tints. The general result of this method was to give a greater
depth of colouring and variety to the engraving, but its advantages may
perhaps be best understood by a glance at the background of the
“Woodcock” on the following page.
Bewick’s first work of any importance was the Gay’s “Fables” of 1779. In
1784 he did another series of “Select Fables.” Neither of these books,
however, can be compared with the “General History of Quadrupeds,” 1790,
and the “British Land and Water Birds,” 1797 and 1804. The illustrations
to the “Quadrupeds” are in many instances excellent, and large additions
were made to them in subsequent issues. But in this collection Bewick
laboured to a great extent under the disadvantage of representing animals
with which he was familiar only through the medium of stuffed specimens
or incorrect drawings. In the “British Birds,” on the contrary, his
facilities for study from the life were greater, and his success was
consequently more complete. Indeed, it may be safely affirmed that of
all the engravers of the present century, none have excelled Bewick for
beauty of black and white, for skilful rendering of plumage and foliage,
and for fidelity of detail and accessory. The “Woodcock” (here given),
the “Partridge,” the “Owl,” the “Yellow-Hammer,” the “Yellow-Bunting,”
the “Willow-Wren,” are popular examples of these qualities. But there
are a hundred others nearly as good.
[Picture: “The Woodcock.” From Jackson & Chatto’s “History of
Wood-Engraving,” 1839. Engraved, after T. Bewick, by John Jackson]
Among sundry conventional decorations after the old German fashion in the
first edition of the “Quadrupeds,” there are a fair number of those
famous tail-pieces which, to a good many people, constitute Bewick’s
chief claim to immortality. That it is not easy to imitate them is plain
from the failure of Branston’s attempts, and from the inferior character
of those by John Thompson in Yarrell’s “Fishes.” The genius of Bewick
was, in fact, entirely individual and particular. He had the humour of a
Hogarth in little, as well as some of his special
characteristics,—notably his faculty of telling a story by suggestive
detail. An instance may be taken at random from vol. I. of the “Birds.”
A man, whose wig and hat have fallen off, lies asleep with open mouth
under some bushes. He is manifestly drunk, and the date “4 June,” on a
neighbouring stone, gives us the reason and occasion of his catastrophe.
He has been too loyally celebrating the birthday of his majesty King
George III. Another of Bewick’s gifts is his wonderful skill in
foreshadowing a tragedy. Take as an example, this truly appalling
incident from the “Quadrupeds.” The tottering child, whose nurse is seen
in the background, has strayed into the meadow, and is pulling at the
tail of a vicious-looking colt, with back-turned eye and lifted heel.
Down the garden-steps the mother hurries headlong; but she can hardly be
in time. And of all this—sufficient, one would say, for a fairly-sized
canvas—the artist has managed to give a vivid impression in a block of
three inches by two! Then, again, like Hogarth once more, he rejoices in
multiplications of dilemma. What, for instance, can be more comically
pathetic than the head-piece to the “Contents” in vol. I. of the “Birds”?
The old horse has been seized with an invincible fit of stubbornness.
The day is both windy and rainy. The rider has broken his stick and lost
his hat; but he is too much encumbered with his cackling and excited
stock to dare to dismount. Nothing can help him but a _Deus ex
machinâ_,—of whom there is no sign.
[Picture: Tailpiece. From the same. Engraved, after T. Bewick, by John
Jackson]
Besides his humour, Bewick has a delightfully rustic side, of which
Hogarth gives but little indication. From the starved ewe in the snow
nibbling forlornly at a worn-out broom, to the cow which has broken
through the rail to reach the running water, there are numberless designs
which reveal that faithful lover of the field and hillside, who, as he
said, “would rather be herding sheep on Mickle bank top” than remain in
London to be made premier of England. He loved the country and the
country-life; and he drew them as one who loved them. It is this rural
quality which helps to give such a lasting freshness to his quaint and
picturesque fancies; and it is this which will continue to preserve their
popularity, even if they should cease to be valued for their wealth of
whimsical invention.
In referring to these masterpieces of Bewick’s, it must not be forgotten
that he had the aid of some clever assistants. His younger brother John
was not without talent, as is clear from his work for Somervile’s
“Chace,” 1796, and that highly edifying book, the “Blossoms of Morality.”
Many of the tail-pieces to the “Water Birds” were designed by Robert
Johnson, who also did most of the illustrations to Bewick’s “Fables” of
1818, which were engraved by Temple and Harvey, two other pupils.
Another pupil was Charlton Nesbit, an excellent engraver, who was
employed upon the “Birds,” and did good work in Ackermann’s “Religious
Emblems” of 1808, and the second series of Northcote’s “Fables.” But by
far the largest portion of the tail-pieces in the second volume of the
“Birds” was engraved by Luke Clennell, a very skilful but unfortunate
artist, who ultimately became insane. To him we owe the woodcuts, after
Stothard’s charming sketches, to the Rogers volume of 1810, an edition
preceding those already mentioned as illustrated with steel-plates, and
containing some of the artist’s happiest pictures of children and
_amorini_. Many of these little groups would make admirable designs for
gems, if indeed they are not already derived from them, since one at
least is an obvious copy of a well-known sardonyx—(“The Marriage of Cupid
and Psyche.”) This volume, generally known by the name of the
“Firebrand” edition, is highly prized by collectors; and, as intelligent
renderings of pen and ink, there is little better than these engravings
of Clennell’s. {12} Finally, among others of Bewick’s pupils, must be
mentioned William Harvey, who survived to 1866. It has been already
stated that he engraved part of the illustrations to Bewick’s “Fables,”
but his best known block is the large one of Haydon’s “Death of
Dentatus.” Soon after this he relinquished wood-engraving in favour of
design, and for a long period was one of the most fertile and popular of
book-illustrators. His style, however, is unpleasantly mannered; and it
is sufficient to make mention of his masterpiece, the “Arabian Nights” of
Lane, the illustrations to which, produced under the supervision of the
translator, are said to be so accurate as to give the appropriate turbans
for every hour of the day. They show considerable freedom of invention
and a large fund of Orientalism.
[Picture: Headpiece. From Rogers’s “Pleasures of Memory, with other
Poems,” 1810. Drawn by T. Stothard; engraved, after Luke Clennell, by O.
Lacour]
Harvey came to London in 1817; Clennell had preceded him by some years;
and Nesbit lived there for a considerable time. What distinguishes these
pupils of Bewick especially is, that they were artists as well as
engravers, capable of producing the designs they engraved. The “London
School” of engravers, on the contrary, were mostly engravers, who
depended upon others for their designs. The foremost of these was Robert
Branston, a skilful renderer of human figures and indoor scenes. He
worked in rivalry with Bewick and Nesbit; but he excelled neither, while
he fell far behind the former. John Thompson, one of the very best of
modern English engravers on wood, was Branston’s pupil. His range was of
the widest, and he succeeded as well in engraving fishes and birds for
Yarrell and Walton’s “Angler,” as in illustrations to Molière and
“Hudibras.” He was, besides, a clever draughtsman, though he worked
chiefly from the designs of Thurston and others. One of the most
successful of his illustrated books is the “Vicar of Wakefield,” after
Mulready, whose simplicity and homely feeling were well suited to
Goldsmith’s style. Another excellent engraver of this date is Samuel
Williams. There is an edition of Thomson’s “Seasons,” with cuts both
drawn and engraved by him, which is well worthy of attention, and (like
Thompson and Branston) he was very skilful in reproducing the designs of
Cruikshank. Some of his best work in this way is to be found in Clarke’s
“Three Courses and a Dessert,” published by Vizetelly in 1830.
From this time forth, however, one hears less of the engraver and more of
the artist. The establishment of the “Penny Magazine” in 1832, and the
multifarious publications of Charles Knight, gave an extraordinary
impetus to wood-engraving. Ten years later came “Punch,” and the
“Illustrated London News,” which further increased its popularity.
Artists of eminence began to draw on or for the block, as they had drawn,
and were still drawing, for the “Annuals.” In 1842–6 was issued the
great “Abbotsford” edition of the “Waverley Novels,” which, besides 120
plates, contained nearly 2000 wood-engravings; and with the “Book of
British Ballads,” 1843, edited by Mr. S. C. Hall, arose that long series
of illustrated Christmas books, which gradually supplanted the “Annuals,”
and made familiar the names of Gilbert, Birket Foster, Harrison Weir,
John Absolon, and a crowd of others. The poems of Longfellow,
Montgomery, Burns, “Barry Cornwall,” Poe, Miss Ingelow, were all
successively “illustrated.” Besides these, there were numerous
selections, such as Willmott’s “Poets of the Nineteenth Century,” Wills’s
“Poets’ Wit and Humour,” and so forth. But the field here grows too wide
to be dealt with in detail, and it is impossible to do more than mention
a few of the books most prominent for merit or originality. Amongst
these there is the “Shakespeare” of Sir John Gilbert. Regarded as an
interpretative edition of the great dramatist, this is little more than a
brilliant _tour de force_; but it is nevertheless infinitely superior to
the earlier efforts of Kenny Meadows in 1843, and also to the fancy
designs of Harvey in Knight’s “Pictorial Shakespeare.” The “Illustrated
Tennyson” of 1858 is also a remarkable production. The Laureate, almost
more than any other, requires a variety of illustrators; and here, for
his idylls, he had Mulready and Millais, and for his romances Rossetti
and Holman Hunt. His “Princess” was afterwards illustrated by Maclise,
and his “Enoch Arden” by Arthur Hughes; but neither of these can be said
to be wholly adequate. The “Lalla Rookh” of John Tenniel, 1860, albeit
somewhat stiff and cold, after this artist’s fashion, is a superb
collection of carefully studied oriental designs. With these may be
classed the illustrations to Aytoun’s “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers,”
by Sir Noel Paton, which have the same finished qualities of composition
and the same academic hardness. Several good editions of the “Pilgrim’s
Progress” have appeared,—notably those of C. H. Bennett, J. D. Watson,
and G. H. Thomas. Other books are Millais’s “Parables of our Lord,”
Leighton’s “Romola,” Walker’s “Philip” and “Denis Duval,” the “Don
Quixote,” “Dante,” “La Fontaine” and other works of Doré, Dalziel’s
“Arabian Nights,” Leighton’s “Lyra Germanica” and “Moral Emblems,” and
the “Spiritual Conceits” of W. Harry Rogers. These are some only of the
number, which does not include books like Mrs. Hugh Blackburn’s “British
Birds,” Wolf’s “Wild Animals,” Wise’s “New Forest,” Linton’s “Lake
Country,” Wood’s “Natural History,” and many more. Nor does it take in
the various illustrated periodicals which have multiplied so freely
since, in 1859, “Once a Week” first began to attract and train such
younger draughtsmen as Sandys, Lawless, Pinwell, Houghton, Morten, and
Paul Grey, some of whose best work in this way has been revived in the
edition of Thornbury’s “Ballads and Songs,” recently published by Chatto
and Windus. Ten years later came the “Graphic,” offering still wider
opportunities to wood-cut art, and bringing with it a fresh school of
artists. Herkomer, Fildes, Small, Green, Barnard, Barnes, Crane,
Caldecott, Hopkins, and others,—_quos nunc perscribere longum est_—have
contributed good work to this popular rival of the older, but still
vigorous, “Illustrated.” And now again, another promising serial, the
“Magazine of Art,” affords a supplementary field to modern refinements
and younger energies.
[Picture: “Golden head by golden head.” From Christina Rossetti’s
“Goblin Market and other Poems,” 1862. Drawn by D. G. Rossetti; engraved
by W. J. Linton]
Not a few of the artists named in the preceding paragraph have also
earned distinction in separate branches of the pictorial art, and
specially in that of humorous design,—a department which has always been
so richly recruited in this country that it deserves more than a passing
mention. From the days of Hogarth onwards there has been an almost
unbroken series of humorous draughtsmen, who, both on wood and metal,
play a distinguished part in our illustrated literature. Rowlandson, one
of the earliest, was a caricaturist of inexhaustible facility, and an
artist who scarcely did justice to his own powers. He illustrated
several books, but he is chiefly remembered in this way by his plates to
Combe’s “Three Tours of Dr. Syntax.” Gillray, his contemporary, whose
bias was political rather than social, is said to have illustrated “The
Deserted Village” in his youth; but he is not famous as a
book-illustrator. Another of the early men was Bunbury, whom
“quality”-loving Mr. Walpole calls “the second Hogarth, and first
imitator who ever fully equalled his original (!);” but whose prints to
“Tristram Shandy,” are nevertheless completely forgotten, while, if he be
remembered at all, it is by the plate of “The Long Minuet,” and the
vulgar “Directions to Bad Horsemen.” With the first years of the
century, however, appears the great master of modern humorists, whose
long life ended only a few years since, “the veteran George
Cruikshank”—as his admirers were wont to style him. He indeed may justly
be compared to Hogarth, since, in tragic power and intensity he
occasionally comes nearer to him than any artist of our time. It is
manifestly impossible to mention here all the more important efforts of
this indefatigable worker, from those far-away days when he caricatured
“Boney” and championed Queen Caroline, to that final frontispiece for
“The Rose and the Lily”—“designed and etched (according to the
inscription) by George Cruikshank, age 83;” but the plates to the “Points
of Humour,” to Grimm’s “Goblins,” to “Oliver Twist,” “Jack Sheppard,”
Maxwell’s “Irish Rebellion,” and the “Table Book,” are sufficiently
favourable and varied specimens of his skill with the needle, while the
woodcuts to “Three Courses and a Dessert,” one of which is here given,
are equally good examples of his work on the block. The “Triumph of
Cupid,” which begins the “Table Book,” is an excellent instance of his
lavish wealth of fancy, and it contains beside, one—nay more than one—of
the many portraits of the artist. He is shown _en robe de chambre_,
smoking (this was before his regenerate days!) in front of a blazing
fire, with a pet spaniel on his knee. In the cloud which curls from his
lips is a motley procession of sailors, sweeps, jockeys, Greenwich
pensioners, Jew clothesmen, flunkies, and others more illustrious,
chained to the chariot wheels of Cupid, who, preceded by cherubic
acolytes and banner-bearers, winds round the top of the picture towards
an altar of Hymen on the table. When, by the aid of a pocket-glass, one
has mastered these swarming figures, as well as those in the foreground,
it gradually dawns upon one that all the furniture is strangely
vitalised. Masks laugh round the border of the tablecloth, the markings
of the mantelpiece resolve themselves into rows of madly-racing figures,
the tongs leers in a _degagé_ and cavalier way at the artist, the shovel
and poker grin in sympathy; there are faces in the smoke, in the fire, in
the fireplace,—the very fender itself is a ring of fantastic creatures
who jubilantly hem in the ashes. And it is not only in the grotesque and
fanciful that Cruikshank excels; he is master of the strange, the
supernatural, and the terrible. In range of character (the comparison is
probably a hackneyed one), both by his gifts and his limitations, he
resembles Dickens; and had he illustrated more of that writer’s works the
resemblance would probably have been more evident. In “Oliver Twist,”
for example, where Dickens is strong, Cruikshank is strong; where Dickens
is weak, he is weak too. His Fagin, his Bill Sikes, his Bumble, and
their following, are on a level with Dickens’s conceptions; his Monk and
Rose Maylie are as poor as the originals. But as the defects of Dickens
are overbalanced by his merits, so Cruikshank’s strength is far in excess
of his weakness. It is not to his melodramatic heroes or wasp-waisted
heroines that we must look for his triumphs; it is to his delineations,
from the moralist’s point of view, of vulgarity and vice,—of the “rank
life of towns,” with all its squalid tragedy and comedy. Here he finds
his strongest ground, and possibly, notwithstanding his powers as a comic
artist and caricaturist, his loftiest claim to recollection.
[Picture: “The Deaf Post-Boy.” From Clarke’s “Three Courses and a
Dessert,” 1830. Drawn by G. Cruikshank; engraved by S. Williams [?]]
Cruikshank was employed on two only of Dickens’s books—“Oliver Twist” and
the “Sketches by Boz.” {13} The great majority of them were illustrated
by Hablot K. Browne, an artist who followed the ill-fated Seymour on the
“Pickwick Papers.” To “Phiz,” as he is popularly called, we are indebted
for our pictorial ideas of Sam Weller, Mrs. Gamp, Captain Cuttle, and
most of the author’s characters, down to the “Tale of Two Cities.”
“Phiz” also illustrated a great many of Lever’s novels, for which his
skill in hunting and other Lever-like scenes especially qualified him.
With the name of Richard Doyle we come to the first of a group of artists
whose main work was, or is still, done for the time-honoured miscellany
of Mr. Punch. So familiar an object is “Punch” upon our tables, that one
is sometimes apt to forget how unfailing, and how good on the whole, is
the work we take so complacently as a matter of course. And of this good
work, in the earlier days, a large proportion was done by Mr. Doyle. He
is still living, although he has long ceased to gladden those sprightly
pages. But it was to “Punch” that he contributed his masterpiece, the
“Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe,” a series of outlines illustrating
social life in 1849, and cleverly commented by a shadowy “Mr. Pips,” a
sort of fetch or double of the bustling and garrulous old Caroline
diarist. In these captivating pictures the life of thirty years ago is
indeed, as the title-page has it, “drawn from ye quick.” We see the
Molesworths and Cantilupes of the day parading the Park; we watch
Brougham fretting at a hearing in the Lords, or Peel holding forth to the
Commons (where the Irish members are already obstructive); we squeeze in
at the Haymarket to listen to Jenny Lind, or we run down the river to
Greenwich Fair, and visit “Mr. Richardson, his show.” Many years after,
in the “Bird’s Eye Views of Society,” which appeared in the early numbers
of the “Cornhill Magazine,” Mr. Doyle returned to this attractive theme.
But the later designs were more elaborate, and not equally fortunate.
They bear the same relationship to Mr. Pips’s pictorial chronicle, as the
laboured “Temperance Fairy Tales” of Cruikshank’s old age bear to the
little-worked Grimm’s “Goblins” of his youth. So hazardous is the
attempt to repeat an old success! Nevertheless, many of the initial
letters to the “Bird’s Eye Views” are in the artist’s best and most
frolicsome manner. “The Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones, and Robinson” is
another of his happy thoughts for “Punch;” and some of his most popular
designs are to be found in Thackeray’s “Newcomes,” where his satire and
fancy seem thoroughly suited to his text. He has also illustrated
Locker’s well-known “London Lyrics,” Ruskin’s “King of the Golden River,”
and Hughes’s “Scouring of the White Horse,” from which last the initial
at the beginning of this chapter has been borrowed. His latest important
effort was the series of drawings called “In Fairy Land,” to which Mr.
William Allingham contributed the verses.
In speaking of the “Newcomes,” one is reminded that its illustrious
author was himself a “Punch” artist, and would probably have been a
designer alone, had it not been decreed “that he should paint in colours
which will never crack and never need restoration.” Everyone knows the
story of the rejected illustrator of “Pickwick,” whom that and other
rebuffs drove permanently to letters. To his death, however, he clung
fondly to his pencil. In _technique_ he never attained to certainty or
strength, and his genius was too quick and creative—perhaps also too
desultory—for finished work, while he was always indifferent to costume
and accessory. But many of his sketches for “Vanity Fair,” for
“Pendennis,” for “The Virginians,” for “The Rose and the Ring,” the
Christmas books, and the posthumously published “Orphan of Pimlico,” have
a vigour of impromptu, and a happy suggestiveness which is better than
correct drawing. Often the realisation is almost photographic. Look,
for example, at the portrait in “Pendennis” of the dilapidated Major as
he crawls downstairs in the dawn after the ball at Gaunt House, and then
listen to the inimitable context: “That admirable and devoted Major above
all,—who had been for hours by Lady Clavering’s side ministering to her
and feeding her body with everything that was nice, and her ear with
everything that was sweet and flattering—oh! what an object he was! The
rings round his eyes were of the colour of bistre; those orbs themselves
were like the plovers’ eggs whereof Lady Clavering and Blanche had each
tasted; the wrinkles in his old face were furrowed in deep gashes; and a
silver stubble, _like an elderly morning dew_, was glittering on his
chin, and alongside the dyed whiskers, now limp and out of curl.” A good
deal of this—that fine touch in italics especially—could not possibly be
rendered in black and white, and yet how much is indicated, and how
thoroughly the whole is felt! One turns to the woodcut from the words,
and back again to the words from the woodcut with ever-increasing
gratification. Then again, Thackeray’s little initial letters are
charmingly arch and playful. They seem to throw a shy side-light upon
the text, giving, as it were, an additional and confidential hint of the
working of the author’s mind. To those who, with the present writer,
love every tiny scratch and quirk and flourish of the Master’s hand,
these small but priceless memorials are far beyond the frigid appraising
of academics and schools of art.
After Doyle and Thackeray come a couple of well-known artists—John Leech
and John Tenniel. The latter still lives (may he long live!) to delight
and instruct us. Of the former, whose genial and manly “Pictures of Life
and Character” are in every home where good-humoured raillery is prized
and appreciated, it is scarcely necessary to speak. Who does not
remember the splendid languid swells, the bright-eyed rosy girls (“with
no nonsense about them!”) in pork pie hats and crinolines, the
superlative “Jeames’s,” the hairy “Mossoos,” the music-grinding Italian
desperadoes whom their kind creator hated so? And then the intrepidity
of “Mr. Briggs,” the Roman rule of “Paterfamilias,” the vagaries of the
“Rising Generation!” There are things in this gallery over which the
severest misanthrope must chuckle—they are simply irresistible. Let any
one take, say that smallest sketch of the hapless mortal who has turned
on the hot water in the bath and cannot turn it off again, and see if he
is able to restrain his laughter. In this one gift of producing instant
mirth Leech is almost alone. It would be easy to assail his manner and
his skill, but for sheer fun, for the invention of downright humorous
situation, he is unapproached, except by Cruikshank. He did a few
illustrations to Dickens’s Christmas books; but his best-known
book-illustrations properly so called are to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the
“Comic Histories” of A’Beckett, the “Little Tour in Ireland,” and certain
sporting novels by the late Mr. Surtees. Tenniel now confines himself
almost exclusively to the weekly cartoons with which his name is
popularly associated. But years ago he used to invent the most daintily
fanciful initial letters; and many of his admirers prefer the
serio-grotesque designs of “Punch’s Pocket-Book,” “Alice in Wonderland,”
and “Through the Looking-Glass,” to the always correctly-drawn but
sometimes stiffly-conceived cartoons. What, for example, could be more
delightful than the picture, in “Alice in Wonderland,” of the “Mad Tea
Party?” Observe the hopelessly distraught expression of the March hare,
and the eager incoherence of the hatter! A little further on the pair
are trying to squeeze the dormouse into the teapot; and a few pages back
the blue caterpillar is discovered smoking his hookah on the top of a
mushroom. He was exactly three inches long, says the veracious
chronicle, but what a dignity!—what an oriental flexibility of gesture!
Speaking of animals, it must not be forgotten that Tenniel is a master in
this line. His “British Lion,” in particular, is a most imposing
quadruped, and so often in request that it is not necessary to go back to
the famous cartoons on the Indian mutiny to seek for examples of that
magnificent presence. As a specimen of the artist’s treatment of the
lesser _felidæ_, the reader’s attention is invited to this charming
little kitten from “Through the Looking-Glass.”
[Picture: “The Mad Tea-Party.” From “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,”
1865. Drawn by John Tenniel; engraved by Dalziel Brothers]
[Picture: Black Kitten. From “Through the Looking-Glass,” 1871. Drawn
by John Tenniel; engraved by Dalziel Brothers] Mr. Tenniel is a link
between Leech and the younger school of “Punch” artists, of whom Mr.
George du Maurier, Mr. Linley Sambourne, and Mr. Charles Keene are the
most illustrious. The first is nearly as popular as Leech, and is
certainly a greater favourite with cultivated audiences. He is not so
much a humorist as a satirist of the Thackeray type,—unsparing in his
denunciation of shams, affectations, and flimsy pretences of all kinds.
A master of composition and accomplished draughtsman, he excels in the
delineation of “society”—its bishops, its “professional beauties” and
“æsthetes,” its _nouveaux riches_, its distinguished foreigners,—while
now and then (but not too often) he lets us know that if he chose he
could be equally happy in depicting the lowest classes. There was a
bar-room scene not long ago in “Punch” which gave the clearest evidence
of this. Some of those for whom no good thing is good enough complain,
it is said, that he lacks variety—that he is too constant to one type of
feminine beauty. But any one who will be at the pains to study a group
of conventional “society” faces from any of his “At Homes” or “Musical
Parties” will speedily discover that they are really very subtly
diversified and contrasted. For a case in point, take the decorously
sympathetic group round the sensitive German musician, who is “veeping”
over one of his own compositions. Or follow the titter running round
that amused assembly to whom the tenor warbler is singing “Me-e-e-et me
once again,” with such passionate emphasis that the domestic cat mistakes
it for a well-known area cry. As for his ladies, it may perhaps be
conceded that his type is a little persistent. Still it is a type so
refined, so graceful, so attractive altogether, that in the jarring of
less well-favoured realities it is an advantage to have it always before
our eyes as a standard to which we can appeal. Mr. du Maurier is a
fertile book-illustrator, whose hand is frequently seen in the
“Cornhill,” and elsewhere. Some of his best work of this kind is in
Douglas Jerrold’s “Story of a Feather,” in Thackeray’s “Ballads,” and the
large edition of the “Ingoldsby Legends,” to which Leech, Tenniel, and
Cruikshank also contributed. One of his prettiest compositions is the
group here reproduced from “Punch’s Almanack” for 1877. The talent of
his colleague, Mr. Linley Sambourne, may fairly be styled unique. It is
difficult to compare it with anything in its way, except some of the
happier efforts of the late Mr. Charles Bennett, to which, nevertheless,
it is greatly superior in execution. To this clever artist’s invention
everything seems to present itself with a train of fantastic accessory so
whimsically inexhaustible that it almost overpowers one with its
prodigality. Each fresh examination of his designs discloses something
overlooked or unexpected. Let the reader study for a moment the famous
“Birds of a Feather” of 1875, or that ingenious skit of 1877 upon the
rival Grosvenor Gallery and Academy, in which the late President of the
latter is shown as the proudest of peacocks, the eyes of whose tail are
portraits of Royal Academicians, and whose body-feathers are paint
brushes and shillings of admission. Mr. Sambourne is excellent, too, at
adaptations of popular pictures,—witness the more than happy parodies of
Herrman’s “À Bout d’Arguments,” and “Une Bonne Histoire.” His
book-illustrations have been comparatively few, those to Burnand’s
laughable burlesque of “Sandford and Merton” being among the best.
Rumour asserts that he is at present engaged upon Kingsley’s “Water
Babies,” a subject which might almost be supposed to have been created
for his pencil. There are indications, it may be added, that Mr.
Sambourne’s talents are by no means limited to the domain in which for
the present he chooses to exercise them, and it is not impossible that he
may hereafter take high rank as a cartoonist. Mr. Charles Keene, a
selection from whose sketches has recently been issued under the title of
“Our People,” is unrivalled in certain _bourgeois_, military, and
provincial types. No one can draw a volunteer, a monthly nurse, a
Scotchman, an “ancient mariner” of the watering-place species, with such
absolutely humorous verisimilitude. Personages, too, in whose eyes—to
use Mr. Swiveller’s euphemism—“the sun has shone too strongly,” find in
Mr. Keene a merciless satirist of their “pleasant vices.” Like Leech, he
has also a remarkable power of indicating a landscape background with the
fewest possible touches. His book-illustrations have been mainly
confined to magazines and novels. Those in “Once a Week” to a “Good
Fight,” the tale subsequently elaborated by Charles Reade into the
“Cloister and the Hearth,” present some good specimens of his earlier
work. One of these, in which the dwarf of the story is seen climbing up
a wall with a lantern at his back, will probably be remembered by many.
[Picture: “The Music of the Past.” From “Punch’s Almanack,” 1877. Drawn
by George du Maurier; engraved by Swain]
[Picture: Lion and Tub. From “Punch’s Pocket-Book,” 1879. Drawn by
Linley Sambourne; engraved by Swain]
After the “Punch” school there are other lesser luminaries. Mr. W. S.
Gilbert’s drawings to his own inimitable “Bab Ballads” have a perverse
drollery which is quite in keeping with that erratic text. Mr. F.
Barnard, whose exceptional talents have not been sufficiently recognised,
is a master of certain phases of strongly marked character, and, like Mr.
Charles Green, has contributed some excellent sketches to the “Household
Edition” of Dickens. Mr. Sullivan of “Fun,” whose grotesque studies of
the “British Tradesman” and “Workman” have recently been republished, has
abounding _vis comica_, but he has hitherto done little in the way of
illustrating books. For minute pictorial stocktaking and photographic
retention of detail, Mr. Sullivan’s artistic memory may almost be
compared to the wonderful literary memory of Mr. Sala. Mr. John Proctor,
who some years ago (in “Will o’ the Wisp”) seemed likely to rival Tenniel
as a cartoonist, has not been very active in this way; while Mr. Matthew
Morgan, the clever artist of the “Tomahawk,” has transferred his services
to the United States. Of Mr. Bowcher of “Judy,” and various other
professedly humorous designers, space permits no further mention.
* * * * *
There remains, however, one popular branch of book-illustration, which
has attracted the talents of some of the most skilful and original of
modern draughtsmen, i.e. the embellishment of children’s books. From the
days when Mulready drew the old “Butterfly’s Ball” and “Peacock at Home”
of our youth, to those of the delightfully Blake-like fancies of E. V.
B., whose “Child’s Play” has recently been re-published for the
delectation of a new generation of admirers, this has always been a
popular and profitable employment; but of late years it has been raised
to the level of a fine art. Mr. H. S. Marks, Mr. J. D. Watson, Mr.
Walter Crane, have produced specimens of nursery literature which, for
refinement of colouring and beauty of ornament, cannot easily be
surpassed. The equipments of the last named, especially, are of a very
high order. He began as a landscapist on wood; he now chiefly devotes
himself to the figure; and he seems to have the decorative art at his
fingers’ ends as a natural gift. Such work as “King Luckieboy’s Party”
was a revelation in the way of toy books, while the “Baby’s Opera” and
“Baby’s Bouquet” are _petits chefs d’oeuvre_, of which the sagacious
collector will do well to secure copies, not for his nursery, but his
library. Nor can his “Mrs. Mundi at Home” be neglected by the curious in
quaint and graceful invention. {14} Another book—the “Under the Window”
of Miss Kate Greenaway—comes within the same category. Since Stothard,
no one has given us such a clear-eyed, soft-faced, happy-hearted
childhood; or so poetically “apprehended” the coy reticences, the
simplicities, and the small solemnities of little people. Added to this,
the old-world costume in which she usually elects to clothe her
characters, lends an arch piquancy of contrast to their innocent rites
and ceremonies. Her taste in tinting, too, is very sweet and
spring-like; and there is a fresh, pure fragrance about all her pictures
as of new-gathered nosegays; or, perhaps, looking to the fashions that
she favours, it would be better to say “bow-pots.” But the latest “good
genius” of this branch of book-illustrating is Mr. Randolph Caldecott, a
designer assuredly of the very first order. There is a spontaneity of
fun, an unforced invention about everything he does, that is infinitely
entertaining. Other artists draw to amuse us; Mr. Caldecott seems to
draw to amuse himself,—and this is his charm. One feels that he must
have chuckled inwardly as he puffed the cheeks of his “Jovial Huntsmen;”
or sketched that inimitably complacent dog in the “House that Jack
Built;” or exhibited the exploits of the immortal “train-band captain” of
“famous London town.” This last is his masterpiece. Cowper himself must
have rejoiced at it,—and Lady Austen. There are two sketches in this
book—they occupy the concluding pages—which are especially fascinating.
On one, John Gilpin, in a forlorn and flaccid condition, is helped into
the house by the sympathising (and very attractive) Betty; on the other
he has donned his slippers, refreshed his inner man with a cordial, and
over the heaving shoulder of his “spouse,” who lies dissolved upon his
martial bosom, he is taking the spectators into his confidence with a
wink worthy of the late Mr. Buckstone. Nothing more genuine, more
heartily laughable, than this set of designs has appeared in our day.
And Mr. Caldecott has few limitations. Not only does he draw human
nature admirably, but he draws animals and landscapes equally well, so
one may praise him without reserve. Though not children’s books, mention
should here be made of his “Bracebridge Hall,” and “Old Christmas,” the
illustrations to which are the nearest approach to that _beau-ideal_,
perfect sympathy between the artist and the author, with which the writer
is acquainted. The cut on page 173 is from the former of these works.
[Picture: Boy and Hippocampus. From Miss E. Keary’s “Magic Valley,”
1877. Drawn by “E. V. B.” (Hon. Mrs. Boyle); engraved by T. Quartley]
[Picture: “Love Charms.” From Irving’s “Bracebridge Hall,” 1876. Drawn
by Randolph Caldecott; engraved by J. D. Cooper]
* * * * *
Many of the books above mentioned are printed in colours by various
processes, and they are not always engraved on wood. But—to close the
account of modern wood-engraving—some brief reference must be made to
what is styled the “new American School,” as exhibited for the most part
in “Scribner’s” and other Transatlantic magazines. Authorities, it is
reported, shake their heads over these performances. “_C’est magnifique_,
_mais ce nest pas la gravure_,” they whisper. Into the matter in
dispute, it is perhaps presumptuous for an “atechnic” to adventure
himself. But to the outsider it would certainly seem as if the chief
ground of complaint is that the new comers do not play the game according
to the old rules, and that this (alleged) irregular mode of procedure
tends to lessen the status of the engraver as an artist. False or true,
this, it may fairly be advanced, has nothing whatever to do with the
matter, as far, at least, as the public are concerned. For them the
question is, simply and solely—What is the result obtained? The new
school, availing themselves largely of the assistance of photography, are
able to dispense, in a great measure, with the old tedious method of
drawing on the block, and to leave the artist to choose what medium he
prefers for his design—be it oil, water-colour, or black and
white—concerning themselves only to reproduce its characteristics on the
wood. This is, of course, a deviation from the method of Bewick. But
would Bewick have adhered to his method in these days? Even in his last
hours he was seeking for new processes. What we want is to get nearest
to the artist himself with the least amount of interpretation or
intermediation on the part of the engraver. Is engraving on copper to be
reproduced, we want a facsimile if possible, and not a rendering into
something which is supposed to be the orthodox utterance of
wood-engraving. Take, for example, the copy of Schiavonetti’s engraving
of Blake’s _Death’s Door_ in “Scribner’s Magazine” for June 1880, or the
cut from the same source at page 131 of this book. These are faithful
line for line transcriptions, as far as wood can give them, of the
original copper-plates; and, this being the case, it is not to be
wondered at that the public, who, for a few pence can have practical
facsimiles of Blake, of Cruikshank, or of Whistler, are loud in their
appreciation of the “new American School.” Nor are its successes
confined to reproduction in facsimile. Those who look at the exquisite
illustrations, in the same periodical, to the “Tile Club at Play,” to
Roe’s “Success with Small Fruits,” and Harris’s “Insects Injurious to
Vegetation,”—to say nothing of the selected specimens in the recently
issued “Portfolios”—will see that the latest comers can hold their own on
all fields with any school that has gone before. {15}
Besides copperplate and wood, there are many processes which have been
and are still employed for book-illustrations, although the brief limits
of this chapter make any account of them impossible. Lithography was at
one time very popular, and, in books like Roberts’s “Holy Land,”
exceedingly effective. The “Etching Club” issued a number of books
_circa_ 1841–52; and most of the work of “Phiz” and Cruikshank was done
with the needle. It is probable that, as we have already seen, the
impetus given to modern etching by Messrs. Hamerton, Seymour Haden, and
Whistler, will lead to a specific revival of etching as a means of
book-illustration. Already beautiful etchings have for some time
appeared in “L’Art,” the “Portfolio,” and the “Etcher;” and at least one
book of poems has been entirely illustrated in this way,—the poems of Mr.
W. Bell Scott. For reproducing old engravings, maps, drawings, and the
like, it is not too much to say that we shall never get anything much
closer than the facsimiles of M. Amand-Durand and the Typographic Etching
and Autotype Companies. But further improvements will probably have to
be made before these can compete commercially with wood-engraving as
practised by the “new American School.”
“Of making many books,” ’twais said,
“There is no end;” and who thereon
The ever-running ink doth shed
But probes the words of Solomon:
Wherefore we now, for colophon,
From London’s city drear and dark,
In the year Eighteen Eight-One,
Reprint them at the press of Clark.
A. D.
FOOTNOTES
{1} This is the technical name for people who “illustrate” books with
engravings from other works. The practice became popular when Granger
published his “Biographical History of England.”
{2} Mr. William Blades, in his “Enemies of Books” (Trübner, 1880),
decries glass-doors,—“the absence of ventilation will assist the
formation of mould.” But M. Rouveyre bids us open the doors on sunny
days, that the air may be renewed, and, close them in the evening hours,
lest moths should enter and lay their eggs among the treasures. And,
with all deference to Mr. Blades, glass-doors do seem to be useful in
excluding dust.
{3} “Send him back carefully, for you can if you like, that all unharmed
he may return to his own place.”
{4} No wonder the books are scarce, if they are being hacked to pieces
by Grangerites.
{5} These lines appeared in “Notes and Queries,” Jan. 8, 1881.
{6} In the Golden Ass of Apuleius, which Polia should not have read.
{7} M. Arsène Houssaye seems to think he has found them; marked on the
fly-leaves with an impression, in wax, of a seal engraved with the head
of Epicurus.
{123} This chapter was written by Austin Dobson.—DP
{9} The recent Winter Exhibition of the Old Masters (1881) contained a
fine display of Flaxman’s drawings, a large number of which belonged to
Mr. F. T. Palgrave.
{10} By Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse.
{11} These words were written before the “Art Journal” had published its
programme for 1881. From this it appears that the present editor fully
recognises the necessity for calling in the assistance of the needle.
{12} The example, here copied on the wood by M. Lacour, is a very
successful reproduction of Clennell’s style.
{13} He also illustrated the “Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi.” But this was
simply “edited” by “Boz.”
{14} The reader will observe that this volume is indebted to Mr. Crane
for its beautiful frontispiece.
{15} Since this paragraph was first written an interesting paper on the
illustrations in “Scribner,” from the pen of Mr. J. Comyns Carr, has
appeared in “L’Art.”