Joyce Kilmer

So far as I know, in no other library but mine is to be found a book illustrated by Jenny Hand. Therefore, more than much vellum and crushed levant, more than first editions and association copies bearing famous signatures, do I prize a certain fat volume, a foxed and dog-eared and battered volume, which was published by Grigg and Elliot (God rest them!) in Philadelphia at number nine North Fourth Street in 1847. This is a book of poetry, but it is no slender little pamphlet of a thing, the shelter of one bardling’s lyrical ejaculations. Five full-grown poets, two of them men of noble girth, comfortably share this stately tenement. The book’s solid and imposing name is “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery, Lamb and Kirk White.”

A detailed consideration of this volume might, to the profit of the reading public, fill all of one issue of any book-review supplement or literary, so to speak, section printed in America. But for the moment I would write, not of the excellencies of the volume in general, but of the distinguishing feature of my copy—its unique virtue, which gives me the right to pity all other bibliophiles now rejoicing in this illustrious Grigg and Elliot imprint. I refer to the illustrations by Jenny Hand.

Messrs. Grigg and Elliot illustrated, to the best of their ability, every copy of this work. They illustrated it with what they doubtless termed “elegant steel engravings.” These steel engravings are indeed “elegant,” also they are “appropriate,” also they are “chaste.” Take down from its shelf your copy of “The Poetical Works of, etc.,” and you will find, facing page ninety-four, a representation of “Morning among the Alps,” painted, the legend tells you, by T. Doughty, and engraved by George W. Hatch. The sun is rising, much as Mr. Belasco might direct, and upon a pleasant little pond in the foreground are three of those famous Alpine early birds known as swan. This picture is designed to accompany Samuel Rogers’ “The Alps at Daybreak,” lines which I may recall to your memory by saying that they begin, “The sunbeams streak the azure skies.” The picture was not intended by the artists to be Alpine in character, but it is a nice picture, very harmonious with the text.

Furthermore, the generous Messrs. Grigg and Elliot, being greatly moved by those lines of the ingenious Kirke White which begin: “Behold the shepherd boy, who homeward tends, Finish’d his daily labour.—O’er his path, Deep overhung with herbage, does he stroll With pace irregular; by fits he runs, Then sudden stops with vacant countenance, And picks the pungent herb”—being greatly moved, I say, by these lines, they determined to give them a supplementary embellishment. Therefore they caused one O. Pelton to engrave on steel a picture first “Drawn by Cristall” (as who should say “Painted by Raphael”). This shows us a plump youth, with the vacant countenance celebrated by the poet, standing upon the side of Vesuvius, carrying over his shoulder a large spade, and in his left hand a basket of potatoes. In their sensational journalistic way, Messrs. Grigg and Elliot affixed to this picture the caption, “The Shepherd Boy,” and forthwith the poem was illustrated.

But while you will take pleasure, if you are a worthy possessor of this volume, in these altogether admirable engravings, you will look through your copy in vain for expressions of the genius of Jenny Hand. The Jenny Hand illustrations are two in number, and they are to be found only in my copy.

One of the advantages of illustrating a book with steel engravings is that it necessitates the inclusion of blank pages. When a steel engraving occupies one side of a page, there may be nothing whatever printed on the reverse.

There may be nothing printed, I said, on the reverse. But on the reverse anything in the world may be drawn or written. Therein we see the origin of the entertaining practice of extra-illustration. To the eager pencil of Jenny Hand, these virginal white pages, oases among pages of dry verse, offered irresistible opportunities. And my library is therefore the richer.

This book never belonged to Jenny Hand, except so far as anything belongs to one who makes it more beautiful and interesting and useful. The book belonged to Jenny’s sister, Esther. On the fly-leaf is written “Mifs E. C. Hand, with regards of C. F. Q.” Obviously E. C. stands for Esther Conway. Obviously, also, Esther did not herself draw pictures on the beautiful volume of poesy (with gold scroll work all over the cover) which the amorous and tasteful Mr. C. F. Q. presented to her. This delightful work was done by Esther’s younger sister, who in 1847 was aged perhaps thirteen, and should have been and probably was named Jenny. C. F. Q. stands for Charles Francis Quigley. This is not a random guess; it is a wholly logical deduction from the portrait of the gentleman drawn by Jenny, who knew him well.

It was one summer afternoon in 1847 that Jenny first began to improve “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery, Lamb and Kirke White.” At three o’clock Jenny had been out playing—keeping the porch and the front gate well in sight, for she knew that not for nothing had Esther put on her pearl necklace and her blue sash and spent three-quarters of an hour over her hair. Jenny’s suspicions were justified and her vigilance rewarded. At four o’clock the front gate clicked and the gravel walk resounded under a manly tread. Charlie Quigley, in a high stock, a flowered waistcoat, a long black coat, tight blue trousers and a tall silk hat, came to call on Esther. And he brought a gift. Was it a box of candy? If so Jenny would, as a dutiful sister, help to entertain the company. She would wait—Esther was unwrapping the present. No, it was not a box of candy—it was a book. And it was not even a novel, it was a book of poetry, of all things in the world! How could that Charlie Quigley be so silly?

Well, Jenny lost interest in Charlie and his gift for a while. She rolled her hoop and played with the puppy while Esther and Charlie sat on the porch and looked at the foolish book. When Jenny came up on the porch, toward sunset, they had gone into the parlour. They had left the book open face downward on a bench, open to Thomas Campbell’s “Song,” beginning “Oh, how hard it is to find The one just suited to our mind”—certain lines of which Charlie had roguishly underscored.

Jenny turned the pages of the book, but found therein little entertainment. At length, however, she came upon “Morning in the Alps,” with its blank and inviting reverse. Among the jackstones in her pocket was the stub of a pencil, and soon that pencil was at its predestined task of depicting the event of the afternoon—for my edification some threescore years later.

Jenny drew a side view of the broad stone steps, with a little of the railings and Grecian pillars. She drew the locust tree, and since she knew that there was a robin’s nest in it, she outlined two little birds against the skyey background. She drew Esther, grand in her hoopskirts, necklace, curls and blue sash—no, it wasn’t blue, it was green plaid, and the fabric was satin, for, as I live, there is a faded corner of it in this very book, sentimentally cut off and placed there by Esther herself! Why was Esther so particular about saving a fragment of that sash? Was this really a momentous afternoon? Was this the sash that Charlie’s black broadcloth sleeve surrounded when Esther consented to become Mrs. Quigley? And were they married, and did Charlie’s friends all make flat jokes about his claiming the hand of Hand?

And were all these things going on while the artistic Jenny was busy on the porch? Possibly. Probably. But with such conjectures the author of this serious essay in art criticism has no concern. To return to the account of the picture—Jenny drew next the renowned Charles Francis Quigley. But now her pencil was dipped in a mild solution of venom—imparted to it, I fear, when she thoughtfully placed its point between her small lips. For those same lips had desired chocolates—and the chocolates had turned out to be nothing but poesy. Therefore she sacrificed realism to satire, and made Charlie (really a very nice fellow, whom she came to like very much in later years) something of a fop. She made the cut of his coat too extreme, his hair too curly, his mustache too obviously waxed. She deliberately gave his eye a sentimental expression; she smiled derisively as she padded his pictured sleeve.

And then she gave her drawing its crowning charm—she put in the “selbst-portrait.” She drew the little cedar tree that flanked the porch, and she drew herself kneeling beside it—seeing, but not seen by, the rapt Esther and Charlie. Far from being ashamed of this act of sisterly espionage, she gloried in it, and brought all her art to the task of immortalising it.

So in my book the locust tree is forever in leaf and two little birds poise always against the summer sky. And always Charlie, hat in hand, presents to the radiant Esther “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery, Lamb and Kirke White.” And always the little artist, with long curls hanging over her white frock, laughs at the lovers from behind her cedar tree.

The light was fading now, but Jenny had found another blank page—that preceding the section devoted to Kirke White’s verses. Supper wouldn’t be ready for fifteen minutes, so she started on a picture more difficult than the simple incident just drawn. She chose for her scene Riley’s Riding Academy, where she and Esther spent every Wednesday morning. There was Esther, seated with the sedateness appropriate to her eighteen years, upon the tamest of nags. And there was Jenny, in her fetching habit, perilously poised upon her wildly careering steed. With enthusiastic pencil did Jenny depict her own brave unconcern, and Esther’s timorousness. How firmly Esther clutches the reins of her mild beast, how startled is her face as she looks upon her daring and nonchalant younger sister!

Did the Quigleys and the Hands, I wonder, shed tears over Mr. Southey’s “Account of the Life of Henry Kirke White”? Did they know Francis Boott, of Boston, the young American gentleman who placed, Mr. Southey tells us, a tablet to Henry’s memory in All Saints Church, Cambridge? Were they moved by James Montgomery’s “Prison Amusements; Written during nine months confinement in the Castle of York, in the years of 1795 and 1796”? Mr. Montgomery tells us in the prefatory advertisement, “they were the transcripts of melancholy feelings—the warm effusions of a bleeding heart.” Did they read “Gertrude of Wyoming,” “Theodric; a Domestic Tale,” and the “Pleasures of Hope”?

Did they read the memoirs prefaced to the various selections? If so, I hope they found them as delightful as I do. There is the inexhaustibly fascinating “Memoirs of Charles Lamb,” in which the anonymous critic improves the occasion by reproving sternly the Lake Poets, or the “Lakers,” as he calls them. “The thousand Songs,” he tells us, “of our writers in verse of past time dwell on all tongues, with the melodies of Moore. But who learns or repeats the cumbrous verses of Wordsworth, which require an initiation from their writer to comprehend?” Later this gentleman has occasion to refer to “Another School of Poetry,” which “arose in opposition to that of the Lakers.” “Their talents,” he writes, “are before the world. To this new school belonged the late poet Shelley, whose lofty powers are unquestionable; Keats, also now deceased; and Leigh Hunt.” Keats, also now deceased! What porridge fed the writer of this memoir?

Well, my concern is not with the poor hack who edited this book and wrote the memoirs. I hope Messrs. Grigg and Elliot paid him well. And as for Charlie and Esther and Jenny and the robins in the locust tree—well, Charlie Quigley’s dust and his good sword’s rust, and his soul is with the saints, I trust. I hope Esther married him. I’m glad he brought her “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery, Lamb and Kirke White,” even if Jenny was disappointed. For if she’d made her drawings on the cover of a candy box they would not now be in my library.