Mr. Sullivan's drawings to 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' (1896) are
mechanical and mostly without charm of handling, having an appearance
of timidity that is inexplicable when one thinks of the vigorous
news-drawings that preceded them. The wiry line of the drawings appears
in the 'Compleat Angler,' and in other books, including 'The Rivals'
and 'The School for Scandal,' 'Lavengro' and 'Newton Forster,'
illustrated by the artist in '96 and '97; but the decorative purpose of
Mr. Sullivan's later work is, in all these books, effective in
modifying its perversity. Increasing elaboration of manner within the
limits of that purpose marks the transition between the starved reality
of 'Tom Brown' and the illustrations to 'Sartor Resartus' (1898). These
emphatic decorations, and those illustrative of Tennyson's 'Dream of
Fair Women and other Poems,' published two years later, are the
drawings most representative of Mr. Sullivan's intellectual ideals.
They show him, if somewhat indifferent to charm, and capable of
out-facing beauty suggested in the words with statements of the extreme
definiteness of his own fact-conception, yet strongly appreciative of
the substance and purpose of the text. Carlyle gives him brave
opportunities, and the dogmatism of the artist's line and form, his
speculative humour, working down to a definite certainty in things,
make these drawings unusually interesting. Tennyson's 'Dream,' and his
poems to women's names, are not so fit for the exercise of Mr.
Sullivan's talent. He imposes himself with too much force on the forms
that the poet suggests. There is no delicacy about the drawings and no
mystery. They do not accord with the inspiration of Tennyson, an
inspiration that substitutes the exquisite realities of memory and of
dream for the realities of experience. Mr. Sullivan's share of the
illustrations to White's 'Selborne' and to the 'Garden Calendar,' are
technically more akin to the Carlyle and Tennyson drawings than to
other examples by him. In these volumes he makes fortunate use of the
basis of exactitude on which his work is founded, exactitude that
includes portraiture among the functions of the illustrator. No
portrait is extant of Gilbert White, but the presentment of him is
undertaken in a constructive spirit, and, as in 'The Compleat Angler'
and 'The Old Court Suburb,' portraits of those whose names and
personalities are connected with the books are redrawn by Mr. Sullivan.
Except Mr. Abbey, no character-illustrator of the modern school has so
long a record of work, and so visible an influence on English
contemporary illustration, as Mr. Hugh Thomson. In popularity he is
foremost. The slight and apparently playful fashion of his art,
deriving its intention from the irresistible gaieties of Caldecott, is
a fashion to please both those who like pretty things and those who can
appreciate the more serious qualities that are beneath. For Mr. Thomson
is a student of literature. He pauses on his subject, and though his
invention has always responded to the suggestions of the text, the
lightness of his later work is the outcome of a selecting judgment that
has learned what to omit by studying the details and facts of things.
In rendering facial expression Mr. Thomson is perhaps too much the
follower of Caldecott, but he goes much farther than his original
master in realization of the forms and manners of bygone times. Some
fashions of life, as they pass from use, are laid by in lavender. The
fashions of the eighteenth century have been so laid by, and Mr. Abbey
and Mr. Thomson are alike successful in giving a version of fact that
has the farther charm of lavender-scented antiquity.
When 'Days with Sir Roger de Coverley,' illustrated by Hugh Thomson,
was published in 1886, the young artist was already known by his
drawings in the 'English Illustrated,' and recognized as a serious
student of history and literature, and a delightful illustrator of the
times he studied. His powers of realizing character, time, and place,
were shown in this earliest work. Sir Roger is a dignified figure; Mr.
Spectator, in the guise of Steele, has a semblance of observation; and
if Will Wimble lacks his own unique quality, he is represented as
properly engaged about his 'gentleman-like manufactures and obliging
little humours.' Mr. Thomson can draw animals, if not with the
possessive understanding of Caldecott, yet with truth to the kind,
knowledge of movement. The country-side around Sir Roger's house--as,
in a later book, that where the vicarage of Wakefield stands--is often
delightfully drawn, while the leisurely and courteous spirit of the
essays is represented, with an appreciation of its beauty. 'Coaching
Days and Coaching Ways' (1888) is a picturesque book, where types and
bustling action picturesquely treated were the subjects of the artist.
The peopling of high-road and county studies with lively figures is one
of Mr. Thomson's successful achievements, as he has shown in drawings
of the cavalier exploits of west-country history, illustrative of
'Highways and Byways of Devon and Cornwall,' and in episodes of romance
and warfare and humour in similar volumes on Donegal, North Wales, and
Yorkshire. Here the presentment of types and action, rather than of
character, is the aim, but in the drawings to 'Cranford' (1891), to
'Our Village,' and to Jane Austen's novels, behaviour rather than
action, the gentilities and proprieties of life and millinery, have to
be expressed as a part of the artistic sense of the books. That is,
perhaps, why Jane Austen is so difficult to illustrate. The illustrator
must be neither formal nor picturesque. He must understand the
'parlour' as a setting for delicate human comedy. Mr. Thomson is better
in 'Cranford,' where he has the village as the background for the two
old ladies, or in 'Our Village,' where the graceful pleasures of Miss
Mitford's prose have suggested delightful figures to the illustrator's
fancy, than in illustrating Miss Austen, whose disregard of local
colouring robs the artist of background material such as interests him.
Three books of verses by Mr. Austin Dobson, 'The Ballad of Beau
Brocade' (1892), 'The Story of Rosina,' and 'Coridon's Song' of the
following years, together with the illustrations to 'Peg Woffington,'
show, in combination, the picturesque and the intellectual interests
that Mr. Thomson finds in life. The eight pieces that form the first of
these volumes were, indeed, chosen to be reprinted because of their
congruity in time and sentiment with Mr. Thomson's art. And certainly
he works in accord with the measure of Mr. Austin Dobson's verses. Both
author and artist carry their eighteenth-century learning in as easy a
way as though experience of life had given it them without any labour
in libraries.
[Illustration: FROM MR. HUGH THOMSON'S 'BALLAD OF BEAU BROCADE.'