STUDENT DAYS AND EARLY SUCCESS: EARLY PROMISE AND ART CLASSES—SOUTH
KENSINGTON PRIZES—LADY BUTLER—DUDLEY GALLERY—REV. W. J. LOFTIE
AND MESSRS. MARCUS WARD—‘AMATEUR THEATRICALS’—TOY-BOOKS AND
FAIRY-TALES—PROGRESS.
In 1857 the whole of Great Britain, as has been said, was stirred to
its depths by the terrible events which were taking place in India.
People talked and thought of little else besides the Mutiny, and the
papers, prominent among them the _Illustrated London News_, properly
played up to the public’s dreadful hunger for literary and pictorial
details. Many of the latter passed through the hands of Mr. Greenaway,
and nothing was more natural than that Kate, with her inborn artistic
capacity, should try her hand at expressing the sensations so aroused,
pictorially. Here is her own memorandum on the subject, written on an
isolated leaf of the autobiographic notes:—
At the time of the Indian Mutiny I was always drawing people escaping.
I wish I had some of the old drawings, but they were nearly always
done on a slate and rubbed off again. We knew all about it from the
_Illustrated London News_, and the incident of the Highland woman who
heard the bagpipes made a great impression on me. I could sit and think
of the sepoys till I could be wild with terror, and I used sometimes to
dream of them. But I was always drawing the ladies, nurses, and children
escaping. Mine always escaped and were never taken.
Fortunately, Kate’s father and mother were not blind to the promise of
these tentative efforts. The root of the matter they felt was in her,
and the first opportunity must be taken of giving it a chance of growth
and development. This opportunity was not long in coming, and by the
time she was twelve years old her artistic education had already begun.
The first art class to which she went was that held at William Street,
Clerkenwell, close to Claremont Square. A girl-cousin (one of the
Thornes) was at that time being educated as a wood-engraver by Mr.
John Greenaway, who sent his pupil to this evening class—a school
in connection with the Science and Art Department (now the Board of
Education). So that she should not go alone, his daughter was sent
to bear her company; and Kate soon showed such undoubted signs of
ability that it was decided her attendance should continue. She was
soon promoted to the day class carried on by Miss Doidge, which was
held at Miss Springet’s school at Canonbury House, also under the
Science and Art Department, and Kate remained a member of it during
its successive removals to St. George’s Hall, Barnsbury Street, and
Myddleton Hall, close to the Greenaways’ dwelling. To Kate, Canonbury
House was an ancient palace. It was an interesting old place, with
beautiful moulded ceilings and a wonderful Jacobean fireplace, which
is figured and described in Nelson’s _History of Islington_. It stood
immediately behind Canonbury Tower, which was said to have been one of
Queen Elizabeth’s innumerable hunting-boxes, and was popularly believed
to have subterranean passages leading to Smithfield.
So satisfactory and encouraging was Kate’s progress—her first prize
was gained when she was twelve years old—that in due time it was
determined that she should make Art her profession, and she forthwith
joined the chief school of the Art Department, then under Mr. R.
Burchett, who soon formed a very high opinion of her talents and
prospects. In 1861 she was awarded the bronze medal (local), Stage 10
A; in 1864 the ‘National,’ Stage 22; and in 1869 the silver (South
Kensington), Stage 17 B.[3] The set of six tiles, here reproduced,
display charming harmonies of colour. One is composed of olive-green
and two different yellows on a slate-blue ground, while the flowers are
outlined with white edges. In another, crimson-purple, russet-yellow,
and blue are on a slate-grey ground; and in a third the grey-blue
flowers are outlined with white, and grey-green, violet, purple, and
yellow tell richly on a brown ground. The other schemes of colour
are equally well combined, and the pattern designs are all good, and
display a sense of grace and ability in line and arrangement.[4] In
addition to the awards mentioned, Kate received many book prizes in
lieu of medals to which she was later entitled. Here she worked for
several years with great diligence and thoroughness, undaunted by
difficulties and hardships such as fall to the lot of few students.
Indeed, so eagerly industrious was she that at the same time she
attended the Life Classes at Heatherley’s, and later on the newly
opened London Slade School, then in charge of Professor Legros and his
assistants.
[Illustration: KATE GREENAWAY’S PRIZE STUDENT-WORK.
_A facsimile reproduction in colour of one of the drawings for tiles
shown in the plate illustrating the set of six._]
It has often been said of Kate Greenaway that she did not
sufficiently draw from the nude, and, as will be seen later on,
Professor Ruskin implored her to undertake this severer form of study,
in order to correct and improve her figure drawing; and it has been too
readily assumed that her training was lacking in this essential element
of an artist’s academic education. As a matter of fact, Kate executed
a vast number of careful studies from the figure, both at Heatherley’s
and at a studio which she occupied with Miss Elizabeth Thompson
(afterwards Lady Butler)—who, like Miss Helen Paterson (Mrs. William
Allingham), was her fellow-student at South Kensington—and at her
death between fifty and a hundred were still in existence. Many of them
were in ‘the old South Kensington manner’—in pencil or chalk, plenty
of stump-work, and heightening of the lights with white chalk: dull,
uninspired things, excellent in proportion and construction, and not
without use for the acquisition of knowledge of the human frame. There
were also short-time sketches, but only a few of the chalk drawings
have been preserved.
Of these student days Lady Butler kindly sends the following note:—
She and I were keen competitors in the Sketching Club competitions at
South Kensington. She was a very quiet student, so that it is difficult
to find anything striking to say of her. I have no letters of hers
and no sketches. We were very good friends, she and I, in spite of
our rivalry in the sketching club; and indeed so quiet and peaceable
a student was necessarily liked, and she never, to my knowledge, gave
trouble or offence to any one in the schools. I wish I could give you
more material, but the character of the girl was such as to supply very
little wherewith to make up a biographical sketch. I only knew her at
the schools, not in her home life.
It may be added that Miss Thompson and Kate Greenaway were both such
enthusiastic workers that they would bribe the custodian to lock
them in when the other students were gone, so that they might put in
overtime.
Such was the regularity and steady application of Kate’s eager student
days. By the time she was twenty-two she was exhibiting at the old
Dudley Gallery a water-colour drawing entitled ‘Kilmeny,’ illustrating
a versified legend, and ‘six little drawings on wood’: the latter, as
we shall see, fortunate enough to attract the attention of an excellent
judge and discriminating editor. This was in the year 1868, and here,
in the old Egyptian Hall, her work made its first public appearance.
Then there came a series of small pictures in water-colour at the same
gallery, in which she already gave evidence of the bent which her brush
was to follow with such remarkable success.[5] Even then her fancy
was leading her back to the quaintly picturesque costume which was in
vogue at the close of the eighteenth century. Not that her enthusiasm
for our grandmothers’ gowns at once tickled the fancy of the public.
That was to come. Indeed, she herself was as yet only feeling her way,
though with remarkable deliberation and thoroughness. No doubt it was
in her first remunerative but anonymous work of designing valentines
and Christmas cards that the possibilities which lay in childhood
archaically, or at least quaintly, attired first presented themselves
to her, but the goal was not to be reached without unstinted labour and
active forethought. Her subsequent success rested upon the thoroughness
with which she laid her foundations.[6] She did not merely pick up an
old book of costumes and copy and adapt them second-hand to her own
uses. She began from the very beginning, fashioning the dresses with
her own hands and dressing up her models and lay-figures in order to
realise the effects anew. She would not allow herself any satisfaction
until her models lived and moved in her presence as their parents or
grandparents had lived and moved in the previous century. Only then was
she sure of her ground and could go forward with confidence.
[Illustration: KATE GREENAWAY’S STUDENT-WORK.
_Set of Tile Drawings in Colours, executed at the age of 17.
Bronze Medal awarded and Drawing purchased by the Science and Art
Department._]
At the risk of slightly anticipating later events, there may be
interpolated here the following facts, dealing mainly with her early
work, kindly provided for our purposes by the Rev. W. J. Loftie,
who has a legitimate source of pride in the fact that he was Kate
Greenaway’s first outside employer: for work had already come to her
through her father’s instrumentality.
[Illustration: Early Pencil Sketch for a Christmas Card.]
At the time of the first Black and White Exhibition (1868) at the
Dudley Gallery, Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, Mr. Loftie was editor of the
_People’s Magazine_. He was much pleased with a frame of six drawings
on wood, which were priced at £2: 2s., and he secured them at once.
The artist’s name, he found, was ‘K. Greenaway,’ and he was given the
address: Miss Kate Greenaway, Upper Street, Islington—a student at
South Kensington. The drawings were equally divided between fairy
scenes in outline and pictures of child life. He used them in the
magazine as occasion allowed, and some of his leading contributors,
Charles Eden, Robert Bateman, John Richard Green, who were charmed
with their beauty, wrote little tales or verses to suit one or other,
until three or four were disposed of. But he was puzzled about the
rest, and eventually wrote to ask Miss Greenaway to tell him the
subjects.[7] She called immediately at the office. She was very small,
very dark, and seemed clever and sensible, with a certain impressive
expression in her dark eyes that struck every one. Her visit led to
further acquaintance, in which Mrs. Loftie shared, and she became a
frequent visitor at 57, Upper Berkeley Street, where they then lived.
The magazine soon came to an end, but Miss Greenaway was an artist who
never disappointed her employers, and before long many opportunities
occurred for recommending her. She had some work to do for Kronheim
& Co. about that time, but—forgetting, apparently, her excellent
achievement at South Kensington—she found a difficulty with colours.
Like many beginners, she imagined that a sufficient number of bright
colours made a bright-coloured picture, and being disappointed with
the result, complained to Mr. Loftie. So he got the little manual of
Colour-Harmony which was prepared by Redgrave for the South Kensington
authorities and gave it to her. In the meanwhile Messrs. Marcus Ward
of Belfast had consulted Mr. Loftie as to extending their business,
and proposed to carry out a scheme he had laid before them some time
before for issuing artistic Christmas cards and valentines in gold and
colours. Miss Greenaway entered into the idea with great zest, but at
first her designs were, as she said herself, gaudy. A little study of
colour-harmony soon showed her where the fault lay, and she used to ask
her friend to set her exercises in it—in primaries, or secondaries, or
tertiaries, as the case might be. She derived extraordinary pleasure
from studying the colour scale of such a picture as Van Eyck’s ‘Jean
Arnolfini and his Wife’ in the National Gallery, or Gainsborough’s
so-called ‘Blue Boy.’ It was only by incessant study of this kind
earnestly pursued that she acquired the delicate and exquisite facility
for figures and flowers in colour by which she soon became known.
Meanwhile she drew constantly in black and white, and illustrated a
child’s book, _Topo_, by Miss Blood, afterwards Lady Colin Campbell,
which was published by Messrs. Ward and speedily went out of print. A
volume of valentines, _The Quiver of Love_, was published about the
same time, and contained specimens of colour-printing by the same firm
after her drawings and those of Mr. Walter Crane[8].
[Illustration: KATE GREENAWAY.
_At the age of 16._ _At the age of 21._
]
Miss Greenaway worked very hard at the production of the designs for
birthday cards and valentines. They constantly improved in harmony of
colour and delicacy of effect. A curious chance revealed to her the
wonders of medieval illumination. Mr. Loftie was engaged at the time on
a volume of topographical studies for the Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge, and wanted a copy from the pages of the book of
Benefactors of St. Albans Abbey—_Nero_, D. 7, in the MS. room at the
British Museum. Mr. Thompson, better known as Sir E. Maunde Thompson,
Principal Librarian, was head of the department, and showed her many
of the treasures in his charge, and he arranged her seat and gave her
every possible assistance. She undertook to make a coloured drawing of
Abbot John of Berkhampstead wringing his hands, for Mr. Loftie’s book.
Being still in want of work, this particular job, with its collateral
advantages in learning, pleased her very much. Another lady who was
copying an illuminated border was her next neighbour at the same table,
and they seem to have made one another’s acquaintance on the occasion.
In after years Miss Greenaway quaintly said ‘this was the first duchess
she had ever met’—the late Duchess of Cleveland, Lord Rosebery’s
mother, who was a notable artist, and who died only a few months before
Miss Greenaway herself. As for the Abbot, the committee of the S.P.C.K.
rejected him, and the picture passed into and remained in Mr. Loftie’s
possession. It figured later in his _London Afternoons_ (p. 110), as
Miss Greenaway only a few days before her death gave him leave to make
what use of it he pleased.
Her first great success was a valentine. It was designed for Messrs.
Marcus Ward, whose London manager hardly recognised, her introducer
thought, what a prize they had found. The rough proof of the drawing,
in gold and colour, is both crude and inharmonious, but it has merits
of delicacy and composition which account for the fact that the firm
is said to have sold upwards of 25,000 copies of it in a few weeks.
Her share of the profits was probably no more than £3. She painted
many more on the same terms that year and the next, and was constantly
improving in every way as she became better acquainted with her own
powers and with the capabilities, at that time very slight, of printing
in colour. ‘I have a beautiful design,’ says Mr. Loftie, ‘in the most
delicate tints, for another valentine, which she brought me herself to
show how much better she now understood harmony. It was unfinished,
and in fact was never used by the firm. I need not go into the
circumstances under which she severed her connection with them, but I
well remember her remarkable good-temper and moderation. In the end it
was for her benefit. Mr. Edmund Evans seized the chance, and eventually
formed the partnership which subsisted for many years, till near the
end of her life.’
About the year 1879 Mr. Loftie met her one day at a private view in
Bond Street. She was always very humble about herself. She was the
very last person to recognise her own eminence, and was always, to the
very end, keen to find out if any one could teach her anything or give
her a hint or a valuable criticism. She was also very shy in general
society, and inclined to be silent and to keep in the background. On
this occasion, however, she received him laughing heartily. ‘The lady
who has just left me,’ she said, ‘has been staying in the country and
has been to see her cousins. I asked if they were growing up as pretty
as they promised. “Yes,” she replied, “but they spoil their good looks,
you know, by dressing in that absurd Kate Greenaway style”—quite
forgetting that she was talking to me!’ Kate would often repeat the
story with much zest.
On two subsequent occasions did she execute work for books in which
Mr. Loftie was concerned. In 1879 he asked her for some suggestions
for illustrations of Mr. and Lady Pollock’s _Amateur Theatricals_ in
his ‘Art at Home’ Series (Macmillan & Co.). She sent him half-a-dozen
lovely sketches, of which only three were accepted by the publishers.
The frontispiece, ‘Comedy,’ a charming drawing, was not well engraved.
A tail-piece on p. 17 shows a slight but most graceful figure of a
young girl in the most characteristic ‘Kate Greenaway’ costume. The
third, less characteristic, is even more charming—‘Going on.’ Among
the sketches was a ‘Tragedy,’ represented by a youthful Hamlet in black
velvet holding a large turnip apparently to represent the skull of
Yorick. This was never completed.
[Illustration: THE ELF RING.
_From a large water-colour drawing in the possession of John Greenaway,
Esq._]
Once again, in 1891, she made a drawing at Mr. Loftie’s instance.
He was editing the fourth edition of the _Orient Guide_ for Mr. J.
G. S. Anderson, the Chairman of the Orient Line, who had lately,
through his wife, Mrs. Garrett Anderson, M.D., made Miss Greenaway’s
acquaintance. It was suggested that she might design a title-page for
the guide, which she did with alacrity, refusing remuneration, and
only stipulating for the return of her drawing. It was a charming
border, consisting of twelve delightful little girls and two little
boys, all ‘Kate Greenaway’ children, very dainty, but extraordinarily
inappropriate for the title-page of a steamship company’s guide-book.
As soon as the introduction to Messrs. Marcus Ward was brought about,
Kate Greenaway made a practice of consulting Mr. William Marcus
Ward on the subject of her artistic and literary ambitions. In the
matter of her drawing and painting she bowed to his expert opinion,
unhesitatingly destroying her work when he told her that it was bad,
and for years profited by his kindly advice; but when in the matter
of her verses he told her that her efforts were ‘rubbish and without
any poetic feeling,’ though she listened meekly enough, she reserved
her opinion—as we shall see in the event, not without some measure of
justification.
After working for the firm for six or seven years, during which time
her designs were trump cards in their annual pack, she was advised
by friends that the drawings ought to be returned to her after
reproduction. This new departure, however, did not meet with her
employers’ approval, and the connection ceased.
Amongst the early and unsigned work done for Messrs. Kronheim, who
had a great colour-printing establishment in Shoe Lane, may be
mentioned _Diamonds and Toads_, in ‘Aunt Louisa’s London Toy Books’
Series (published by Frederick Warne & Co.), containing six full-page
unsigned drawings of no striking promise and crude in colour, the
harshness mainly due, no doubt, to the rude methods of engraving and
colour-printing for children then in vogue. Far better was the work
done in the same style and for the same firm in 1871 for a series of
‘Nursery Toy Books’ (published by Gall & Inglis), amongst which may
be mentioned, for the sake of the collector, _The Fair One with Golden
Locks_, _The Babes in the Wood_, _Blue Beard_, _Tom Thumb_, _Hop o’
my Thumb_, _Red Riding Hood_, _The Blue Bird_, _The White Cat_, and
_Puss in Boots_. In these the illustrations, remarkably well composed
and drawn, rise somewhat above the level of children’s coloured books
of the period. The figures were mainly studied from members of her own
family. The letterpress consisted for the most part of translations
from the _Fairy Tales_ of Madame la Comtesse d’Aulnoy, the well-known
author of the _Memoirs and Voyages in Spain_, who flourished at the end
of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Her
fairy tales had been originally published in Amsterdam in eight little
volumes, with thirty-three plates signed ‘S. F. inv. et sc.’—a set
very different from the fanciful illustrations of Kate Greenaway.
Up to the year 1871 it is not possible to be very precise as to Kate’s
progress towards the overwhelming popularity which she was so soon to
win. But from that time onwards her systematic keeping of accounts
enables us to be definite. Besides the work done for Messrs. Kronheim,
for which she was paid £36, we have the entry, ‘Happy Wretched Family,’
10s.; ‘Tracts’ (apparently for the Religious Tract Society), £2: 5s.;
and commissions for a Mr. Sheers and Mr. Griffith,[9] £24: 10s.; the
year’s takings amounting to something over £70.
The preceding year she had been represented at the Dudley Gallery by
a water-colour drawing entitled ‘Apple-Blossom—A Spring Idyll’; and
in Suffolk Street, for the first time, by another entitled ‘A Peeper,’
representing children at play. In 1871 too, as we have seen from Mr.
Loftie’s note, she was designing Christmas cards for Messrs. Marcus
Ward of Belfast. In these drawings she adopted the style of dress which
she had seen as a child about the farm at Rolleston, where there was a
survival of costumes which had long since disappeared from the towns
and more ‘progressive’ villages and country districts, adapting them
to her purpose and filling her wardrobes with frocks, bonnets, and
jackets and other garments, partly conjured up from memory and partly
invented. She soon began to discover that she was creating a vogue.
She felt their quaintness and charm herself, and was hardly surprised
that others found them equally attractive. And notwithstanding some
doubts thrown by her father, artist though he was, upon her wisdom in
proceeding upon these lines, she determined to persist, and events
proved her instinct to be right. Fortunately, her friend Mr. Stacy
Marks, R.A., at the moment of crisis gave her strong support, and in
the face of universal opposition urged her to continue in the path on
which she had entered.
[Illustration: RAPID ALTERNATIVE PENCIL SKETCHES FOR TRAGEDY AS
TITLE-PAGE TO ‘AMATEUR THEATRICALS,’ BY WALTER HERRIES POLLOCK AND MRS.
POLLOCK.
_In the possession of Rev. W. J. Loftie, F.S.A._]
In 1872 she was designing yellow-back covers for Mr. Edmund Evans,
of whom much will be heard later.[10] At the same time she was doing
more work for Kronheim, she found her way into the _Illustrated London
News_, and she sold her pictures at the Dudley Gallery for something
like £20.
By 1873, doubtless through the influence of her father, who at that
time was doing much work for Messrs. Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, Kate
made her first appearance in _Little Folks_, for which, as well as
for other publications of the firm, she executed innumerable dainty
and characteristic drawings. This, of course, was mostly journeyman’s
work, and she was hampered by having to express other people’s ideas
pictorially. She never excelled as an illustrator, and it was not
till she had a free hand that she did herself full justice. It was,
however, an excellent school wherein to test her powers and to gain the
experience which led her eventually to ‘find herself.’ In many of these
wood-engravings it is interesting to notice the joint signature ‘K.
Greenaway, del.,’ and ‘J. Greenaway, sc.’ She disliked being bound by
another person’s imagination, and her aversion to ‘mere illustration’
remained with her to the end. As late as February 1900, when she was
asked if she would make a drawing to a story by Mrs. M. H. Spielmann,
she wrote: ‘It would rather depend if I saw my way to making a good
illustration. I’m a very tiresome person and do things sometimes very
badly. I should, if I could, like to do it very much, especially as it
is Mrs. Spielmann’s. I’ve not made any drawings for illustration for so
long, and now I’ve just taken a book to do!’[11]
In this same year (1873) her pictures at the Dudley and Suffolk
Street Galleries found a market, and ‘A Fern Gatherer,’ at the Royal
Manchester Institution, was bought by Mr. John Lomax for fifteen
guineas. The following year (1874) her gross earnings were £120, and
she realised that she was progressing steadily in public favour.
Kate was now a person of some importance in the Greenaway
establishment. Not only had she adopted a profession, but she was
making that profession pay, and the time was coming when she felt
that there should be some tangible sign, at least so far as she was
concerned, of the improvement in their fortunes. It was a cause of
profound gratification to her mother, who, by dint of thrift and
self-sacrifice and devotion amounting almost to heroism, had been
enabled to realise her ambition to educate each of her children to the
greatest advantage. Her eldest daughter was sent to the Royal Academy
of Music; her son to the Royal College of Chemistry; and Kate to South
Kensington and Heatherley’s. All of them were on the high-road to
success, and a sense of satisfaction and good-humour permeated the
household.
Good-humour, indeed, was characteristic of Kate, and to this sweetness
of disposition and thoughtfulness for others she owed not a little of
her success. Artists’ grown-up models are often difficult enough to
manage, but child-models are apt to prove exasperating; and it was due
only to her infinite tact and unwearying resourcefulness in inventing
amusements and distractions for her little sitters that she coaxed
them into good temper and into displaying the charm which she was so
successful in reproducing.
During the last year or two spent in Islington, Kate rented near by
a room which she fitted up as a studio, but about 1873 or 1874 she
and her father between them bought the lease of a house in Pemberton
Gardens, where the family lived till 1885.
Her friend Mrs. Miller writes of her at this period: ‘She was
then as ever gentle, patient, industrious, exquisitely sensitive,
extraordinarily humorous, while under and over it all was an
indomitable will. I always remember one little remark she made to me
once when we were walking from her home in Islington to a little room
she had taken as a studio (her first) in a side street. It was wet
and miserable, the streets vulgar and sordid. “Never mind,” she said,
“I shall soon be in the spring.” The first primrose she drew upon the
sheet before her would place her in another world. She loved all sorts
of street music, and once said to me, “The moment I hear a band, I am
in fairyland.”’
[Illustration: JOHN GREENAWAY, ESQ.
_Pencil Sketch by Kate Greenaway of her brother at study (about
1870)._]
In 1874 Kate Greenaway illustrated a little volume of fairy stories,
issued in coloured boards by Griffith & Farran, entitled _Fairy Gifts;
or A Wallet of Wonders_. It was written by Kathleen Knox, the author
of _Father Time’s Story-Book_, and contained four full-page and
seven small woodcuts, engraved by John Greenaway. The more important
illustrations are prettily composed, while revealing a fine taste in
witches and apparitions; and the small sketches are daintily touched
in. It was Kate’s first appearance on any title-page. There was nothing
remarkable in the little volume, yet it met with considerable popular
favour. The first edition consisted of 2,000 copies; in 1880 it was
reprinted to the extent of half as many. In 1882 a cheap edition of
5,000 copies was issued, and later in the year this large number was
repeated. To what extent the artist shared in the success does not
appear.
The year 1875, so far as earnings were concerned, was a lean year, and
introduced the names of no new clients. This does not indicate that
her activity was any the less than the year before. Indeed, we must
remember that in the life of the artist results, so far as monetary
reward is concerned, represent previous rather than contemporaneous
activity, for payment is made certainly after the work is sold, and
in the case of work for the press as often as not after publication.
In the following year (1876) her earnings again ran into £200, her
water-colour drawing at the Dudley being sold for twenty guineas, and
her two black-and-white drawings for ten guineas the pair. But the
crowning event of this year was the publication by Mr. Marcus Ward of
the volume mentioned by Mr. Loftie, entitled ‘_The Quiver of Love,
a Collection of Valentines, Ancient and Modern_, with Illustrations
in Colours from Drawings by Walter Crane and K. Greenaway.’ All the
designs had already been published separately. The verses were mainly
from the pen of Mr. Loftie himself, although he is modest enough not to
claim them in his notes.
None of the illustrations in this volume is signed, but the following
are the productions of Kate Greenaway: (1) The Frontispiece; (2)
the illustration to ‘Do I love you?’ by Julia Goddard; (3) that to
‘The Surprise,’ anonymous; and (4) that to ‘Disdain,’ by F. R. It
would have been difficult to arrive at their authorship without
unexceptionable evidence, had not Mr. Walter Crane identified his part
in the publication. Probably, had not Kate Greenaway’s name appeared
on the title-page, it would scarcely have occurred to any one, even to
those best acquainted with her work, that she had had any hand in the
production at all. The volume is merely interesting as a curiosity. It
is not surprising to learn that the republication in permanent form,
with his name attached, of ephemeral and unsigned work executed for
the butterfly existence of a valentine, did not commend itself to Mr.
Crane; and to neither artist did any profit accrue.
[Illustration: Book-plate designed for Miss Maud Locker-Lampson.]