"I am sorry to hear that you are so lame," he says. "I wish you had been with us in Venice—the going to and fro in gondolas would have suited you well. Easy, smooth, and soul-subduing—especially by moonlight and when the ear is filled with the rich notes of a very uncommon gondolier's voice and the twanging of a sentimental traveller's lute.
"On the 18th of March we were married at a small church in Kent—my best man drove me in a dog-cart. I sold him my mare on the way, and she came to sad grief with him!"
The letters after this date refer to a period in Caldecott's art which must be considered at a future time. Only two remembrances of his later years shall be recorded now; one of him at Kemsing, seated in his old-fashioned garden on a fine summer's afternoon (after hard work from nine till two) surrounded by his friends and four-footed playmates—a garden where the birds, and even the flowers, lived unrestrained.
Its way alone;
And where, in wafts of fragrance, sweetbriar-bushes
Make themselves known.
With banks of violets for southern breezes
To seek and find,
And trellis'd jessamine that trembles in
The summer wind.
Where clove-carnations overgrow the places
Where they were set,
And, mist-like, in the intervening spaces
Creeps mignonette."
The other and a later remembrance of Caldecott is at a gathering of friends in Victoria Street, Westminster, in January, 1885, when—to a good old English tune—the "lasses and lads," out of his Picture Book, danced before him, and the fiddler, in the costume of the time, "played it wrong."
CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.
It will be seen in the preceding pages that it was the privilege of the writer to know Caldecott intimately before he had made a name, when his heart and hands were free, so to speak; when he was untrammelled by much sense of responsibility, or by the necessity of keeping up a reputation, and when every day, almost, recorded some new experiment or achievement in his art. Let it be stated here that not at that time, nor ever afterwards in the writer's hearing, was a word said against Caldecott. With a somewhat wide and exceptional experience of the personality of artists, it can be said with truth that Caldecott was "a man of whom all spoke well." His presence then, as in later years, seemed to dispel all jealousies, if they ever existed, and to scatter evil spirits if they ever approached him. No wonder—for was he not the very embodiment of sweetness, simple-mindedness, generosity, and honour?
From the sketch on page 1 of this book, made in the smoke of Manchester, to the "New Year's Greeting" on p. 203, the same happy, joyous spirit is evident; and so, to those who knew him, he remained to the end.
As this memoir has to do with Caldecott's earlier career, and particularly with his work in black and white, the artistic value of his illustrations in colour, especially in his Picture Books, can only be hinted at here.
Caldecott's Picture Books are known all over the world; they have been widely discussed and criticised, and they form undoubtedly the best monument to his memory. But it may be found that some of the best work he ever did (the work least open to criticism) was in 1874 and 1875, before these books were begun; and that the material here collected will aid in forming a better estimate of Caldecott as an artist.
In March, 1883 there appeared a little oblong Sketch Book with canvas cover, full of original and delightful illustrations, many in colour, engraved and printed by Edmund Evans. This book is not very widely known, but there are drawings in it of great personal interest, now that the artist's hand is still. The Sketch Book suggests many thoughts and calls up many associations to those who knew him.
In 1883 he illustrated Æsop's Fables with "Modern Instances" (referred to on page 94).
The kind of work that Caldecott liked best, and of which he would have been an artistic and delightful exponent had circumstances permitted, is indicated in the design at the head of the preface to this volume; it was drawn on brown paper, probably for a wood carving in relief, for the central panel of a mantelpiece. This sketch is selected from several designs of a similar kind.
In purely journalistic work, for which his powers seemed eminently fitted, he was never at home, his heart was not in it. Neither on Punch nor on the Graphic newspaper, would he have engaged to work regularly. He would do anything on an emergency to aid a friend—or a foe, if he had known one—but neither health nor inclination led him in that direction. And yet Caldecott, of all contemporary artists, owed his wide popularity to the wood engraver, to the maker of colour blocks, and to the printing press. No artist before him had such chances of dispersing facsimiles of daintily coloured illustrations over the world. All this must be considered when his place in the century of artists is written.
Mr. Clough touches a true note in the following (from the Manchester Quarterly):—
"If the art, tender and true as it is, be not of the highest, yet the artist is expressed in his work as perhaps few others have been. Nothing to be regretted—all of the clearest—an open-air, pure life—a clean soul. Wholesome as the England he loved so well. Manly, tolerant, and patient under suffering. None of the friends he made did he let go. No envy, malice, or uncharitableness spoiled him; no social flattery or fashionable success, made him forget those he had known in the early years."
Speaking generally of his friend Caldecott, whom he had known intimately in later years, Mr. Locker-Lampson (to whom we are indebted for the letters and sketches on pages 191, 192, and 199), writes:—
"It seems to me that Caldecott's art was of a quality that appears about once in a century. It had delightful characteristics most happily blended. He had a delicate fancy, and his humour was as racy as it was refined. He had a keen sense of beauty, and, to sum up all, he had charm. His old-world youths and maidens are perfect. The men are so simple and so manly, the maidens are so modest and so trustful: The latter remind one of the country girl in that quaint old ballad,
He told a tender tale,
Then stole a kiss, but what of that?
'Twas Willie of the Dale!'
"Poor Caldecott! His friends were much attached to him. He had feelings, and ideas, and manners, which made him welcome in any society; but alas, all was trammelled, not obscured, by deplorably bad health."
These two criticisms—both coming from friends of the artist, but from different points of view—are worth setting side by side in a memoir.
A correspondent, writing from Manchester, sends the following interesting letter respecting places sketched by Caldecott in Cheshire and Shropshire and afterwards used in the illustrations in his books.
"During occasional rambles in this and the neighbouring county of Chester, more especially in the neighbourhood of Whitchurch, I have been interested in the identification of some few of the original scenes pictured by Mr. Caldecott in his several published drawings. Thus:—
"Malpas Church, which occupies the summit of a gentle hill some six miles from Whitchurch, occurs frequently—as in a full page drawing in the Graphic newspaper for Christmas, 1883; in Babes in the Wood, p. 19; in Baby Bunting, p. 20; and in The Fox Jumps over the Parson's Gate, p. 5.
"The main street of Whitchurch is fairly pictured in the Great Panjandrum, p. 6, whilst the old porch of the Blue Bell portrayed on p. 28 of Old Christmas is identical with that of the Bell Inn at Lushingham, situated some two miles from Whitchurch on the way to Malpas.
"Besides these I recognise in the 'Old Stone-house, Lingborough Hall,' in Lob Lie-by-the-Fire, p. 5, an accurate line-for-line sketch of Barton Hall, an ancient moated mansion which until quite recently stood within the parish of Eccles, four miles from Manchester.
"Lastly, a comparison of the illustration on p. 95 of Old Christmas, with one in last year's volume of the English Illustrated Magazine, p. 466, shows that the picturesque nooks of Sussex, equally with those of Kent and Chester, yielded their quota to the busy pencil we know so well."
About the year 1879 Caldecott became acquainted with Mrs. Ewing, which led to his making many illustrations for her, such as the design for the cover of Aunt Judy's Magazine, and notably the illustrations to that "book of books" for boys, "Jackanapes," and to "Daddy Darwin's Dovecot," and others.
Miss Gatty, in her memoir of Mrs. Ewing, says:—
"My sister was in London in June, 1879, and then made the acquaintance of Mr. Caldecott, for whose illustrations she had unbounded admiration. This introduction led us to ask him (when Jackanapes was still simmering in Julie's brain) if he would supply a coloured illustration for it. But as the tale was only written a very short time before it appeared, and as the illustration was wanted early and colours take long to print, Julie could not send the story to be read, but asked Caldecott to draw her a picture to fit one of the scenes in it. The one she suggested was a fair-haired boy on a red-haired pony, thinking of one of her own nephews, a skilful seven-year-old rider who was accustomed to follow the hounds."
Looking back, but a few months only, at the passing away of two such lives—the author of "Jackanapes" and the illustrator of the "Picture Books" (of whom it was well said lately, "they have gone to Heaven together")—the loss seems incalculable.
In the history of the century, the best and purest books and the brightest pages ever placed before children will be recorded between 1878 and 1885; and no words would seem more in touch with the lives and aims of these lamented artists than a concluding sentence in Jackanapes, that—their works are "a heritage of heroic example and noble obligation."
The grace and beauty, and wealth of imagination in Caldecott's work,—conspicuous to the end,—form a monument which few men in the history of illustrative art have raised for themselves.
Here may end fittingly the memoir of his earlier work. At a future time more may be written, and many delightful reminiscences recorded, of the years from the time of his marriage on the 18th March, 1880, to his lamented death at St. Augustine, in Florida, on the 12th February, 1886; when—in the sympathetic lines which appeared in Punch on the 27th February, 1886:—
That fount of charm found in his fancy,
Are stopped! Yet will he hold us thrall
By his fine art's sweet necromancy,
Children and seniors many a year;
For long 'twill be ere a new-comer,
Fireside or nursery holdeth dear
As him whose life ceased in its summer."
APPENDIX.
The following is a list of Caldecott's Picture Books with the dates of publication. Besides the ordinary shilling books, several collected volumes of his Pictures and Songs, also Pictures collected from the Graphic newspaper, have been issued by the same publishers.
Caldecott's Picture Books.
| THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT JOHN GILPIN | } | 1878 |
| ELEGY ON A MAD DOG THE BABES IN THE WOOD | } | 1879 |
| THREE JOVIAL HUNTSMEN SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE | } | 1880 |
| THE QUEEN OF HEARTS THE FARMER'S BOY | } | 1881 |
| THE MILKMAID HEY-DIDDLE-DIDDLE, THE Cat and the Fiddle; and Baby Bunting | } | 1882 |
| THE FOX JUMPS OVER THE Parson's Gate A FROG HE WOULD A-Wooing Go | } | 1883 |
| COME, LASSES AND LADS RIDE A COCK HORSE TO BANBURY CROSS; and A Farmer went Trotting upon his Grey Mare | } | 1884 |
| MRS. MARY BLAIZE THE GREAT PANJANDRUM HIMSELF | } | 1885 |
PUBLISHED BY
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
LONDON AND NEW YORK
Some of
Æsop's Fables.
With "Modern Instances."
Shown in designs by R. Caldecott.
LONDON:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1883.
Price Seven Shillings and Sixpence.
A Sketch-Book,
by R. Caldecott.
Reproduced by Edmund Evans the Engraver and Printer.
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
LONDON AND NEW YORK.
1883.
Price Three Shillings and Sixpence.
Breton Folk.
With One Hundred and Seventy Illustrations
by R. Caldecott.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1880.
Price Ten Shillings and Sixpence.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The drawing, A Debating Society, was very well engraved on wood by J. D. Cooper, and appeared in London Society in 1871, v. xx. p. 417; it is now reproduced on a larger scale by a mechanical process of photo-engraving. Experts in drawing for book illustration may be interested to compare results.
[2] In a private letter to the writer of this memoir, dated 2nd November, 1876, Caldecott says:—"Pen can never put down how much I owe, in many ways, to T. A."
[3] The Harz Mountains, a Tour in the Toy Country, by Henry Blackburn. London: Sampson Low and Co., 1872.
[4] This, and other similar sketches, caused amusement in some circles and offence in others, at Berlin, where it was stated erroneously that the artist had caricatured some well-known personages who came annually to Goslar to drink the waters, and an arrangement to publish a translation of the Harz Mountains into German fell through in consequence.
[5] Amongst the young artists in the art department of Harper's Magazine in 1873, was E. A. Abbey, the well-known illustrator of old English subjects; in later years a great friend and ally of Caldecott.
[6] The drawings in the Daily Graphic in New York were all reproduced by photo-lithography, and printed at the lithographic press.
[7] It was more than once suggested to Caldecott to paint this scene. It would probably have been attempted had circumstances permitted.
[8] The medallion at the head of this letter was designed by Sir Frederick Burton and afterwards redrawn for the Arts Club by E. J. Poynter, R.A.
[9] North Italian Folk, by Mrs. Comyns Carr. London: Chatto and Windus, 1878.
[10] Breton Folk, by Henry Blackburn, with 170 illustrations by R. Caldecott. London: Sampson Low and Co., 1880.
[11] This letter was printed in the Manchester City News, 20 February, 1886.
[12] The portrait of Caldecott at the beginning of this volume, is from a photograph taken at Cannes in January, 1879.
Transcriber's Notes
Some illustrations were moved from their original positions to avoid
breaking up paragraphs of text. Made minor punctuation corrections and
the following change:
Page 156: Deleted duplicate "in".
(Orig: "'Poor old priest! What a shrew he has got in in his house,')