The borderland between the hallowed past and the matter-of-fact present is rarely attractive. It appeals neither to our veneration nor our curiosity. Its heroes are too recent to be deified, its secrets are all told. If you estimate a generation as occupying one-third of a century, you will find that to most people thirty-three years ago, more or less, is the least fascinating of all possible periods. Its fashions in dress yet linger in faded travesties, its once refined tastes no longer appeal to us, its very aspirations, if they do not seem positively ludicrous, are certain to appear pathetically insufficient. Yet there are not wanting signs which denote that the rush of modern life, bent on shortening times of waiting, will lessen the quarantine which a period of this sort has had to suffer hitherto before it could be looked upon as romantically attractive instead of appearing repulsively old-fashioned. For the moment you are able to take a man of a former generation, and can regard him honestly, not as a contemporary with all human weakness, but with the glamour which surrounds a hero; he is released from the commonplace present and has joined the happy past. Therein he may find justice without prejudice. Of course the chances are that, be he artist or philosopher, the increased favour bestowed upon him will not extend to his subjects, or perhaps his method of work; but so sure as you find the artists of any period diligently studied and imitated, it is almost certain that the costumes they painted, the furniture and accessories they admired, and the thought which infused their work, will be less intolerable, and possibly once again restored to full popularity.
Not very long ago anything within the limits of the century was called modern. Perhaps because its early years were passed in yearnings for the classic days of old Greece, and later in orthodox raptures over the bulls of Nineveh and the relics of dead Pharaohs. Then by degrees the Middle Ages also renewed their interest: the great Gothic revival but led the way to a new exploration of the Queen Anne and Georgian days. So in domestic life England turned to its Chippendale and Sheraton, America to its colonial houses, and the word 'antique,' instead of being of necessity limited to objects at least a thousand years old was applied to those of a bare hundred. Now, when the nineteenth century has one foot in the grave, we have but to glance back a few years to discover that what was so lately 'old-fashioned' is fast attaining the glamour of antiquity. Even our immediate progenitors who were familiar with the railway and telegraph, and had heard of photography, seem to be in other respects sufficiently unlike our contemporaries to appear quite respectably ancestral to-day. It is true that we have compensations: the new photography and electric lighting are our own joys; and the new criticism had hardly begun, except perhaps in the Far West, during the time of this previous generation—the time that begins with a memory of the project for the Great Exhibition, and ends with an equally vivid recollection of the collapse of the Third Empire.
In those days people still preserved a sentimental respect for the artist merely because he was 'an artist,' quite apart from his technical accomplishment. It was the period of magenta and crinoline—the period that saw, ere its close, the twin domes of the second International Exhibition arise in its midst to dominate South Kensington before they were moved to Muswell Hill and were burnt down without arousing national sorrow—in short, it was 'the sixties.' Only yesterday 'the sixties' seemed a synonym for all that was absurd. Is it because most of us who make books to-day were at school then, and consequently surveyed the world as a superfluous and purely inconsequent background? For people who were children in the sixties are but now ripening to belief in the commonplace formulæ dear to an orthodox British citizen. To their amazement they find that not a few of the pupils of the 'seventies,' if not of the 'eighties,' have already ripened prematurely to the same extent. Have we not heard a youth of our time, in a mood not wholly burlesque, gravely discussing the Æsthetic movement of the 'eighties' as soberly as men heretofore discussed the movement of a century previous? Were the purpose of this book phrase-making instead of a dull record of facts, we might style this sudden appreciation of comparatively recent times the New Antiquity. To a child the year before last is nearly as remote as the time of the Norman Conquest, or of Julius Cæsar. Possibly this sudden enlightenment respecting the artistic doings of the mid-Victorian period may indicate the return to childhood which is part of a nonagenarian's equipment. At seventy or eighty, our lives are spent in recollections half a century old, but at ninety the privilege may be relaxed, and the unfortunate loiterer on the stage may claim to select a far more recent decade as his Golden Age, even if by weakening memory he confuses his second childhood with his first.
To-day not a few people interested in the Arts find 'the sixties' a time as interesting as in the last century men found the days of Praxiteles, or as, still more recently, the Middle Ages appeared to the early pre-Raphaelites. These few, however, are more or less disciples of the illustrator, as opposed to those who consider 'art' and 'painting' synonymous terms. Not long since the only method deemed worthy of an artist was to paint in oils. To these, perhaps, to be literally exact, you might add a few pedants who recognised the large aims of the worker in fresco, and a still more restricted number who believed in the maker of stained glass, mosaic, or enamel, if only his death were sufficiently remote. Now, however, the humble illustrator, the man who fashions his dreams into designs for commercial reproduction by wood-engraving or 'process,' has found an audience, and is acquiring rapidly a fame of his own.
For those who recognise most sincerely, and with no affectation, the importance of the mere illustrator, this attempt to make a rough catalogue of his earlier achievements may be not without interest. Yet it is not put forward as a novel effort. One of the most hopeful auguries towards the final recognition of the pen-draughtsmen of the sixties quickly comes to light as you begin to search for previous notices of their work. It was not Mr. Joseph Pennell who first appreciated them. It is true that he carried the report of their powers into unfamiliar districts; but, long before his time, Mr. J. M. Gray, Mr. Edmund Gosse, and many another had paid in public due tribute to their excellence. Nor can you find that they were unappreciated by their contemporaries. On the contrary, our popular magazines were filled with their work. Despite Mr. Ruskin's consistent 'aloofness' and inconsistent 'diatribes,' many critics of their own day praised them; their names were fairly well known to educated people, their works sold largely, they obtained good prices, and commissions, as the published results bear witness, were showered upon them.
But, until to-day, the draughtsman for periodicals was deemed a far less important person than the painter of Academy pictures. Now, without attempting to rob the R.A. of its historic glory, we see there are others without the fold who, when the roll-call of nineteenth-century artists is read, will answer 'Adsum.'
There are signs that the collector, always ready for a fresh hobby, will before long turn his attention to the English wood-engravings of this century, as eagerly as he has been attracted heretofore by the early woodcuts of German and Italian origin, or the copper-plates of all countries and periods. It is true that Bewick already enjoys the distinction, and that Cruikshank and Leech have also gained a reputation in the sale-rooms, and that Blake, for reasons only partly concerned with art, has for some time past had a faithful and devout following. But the prices realised, so far, by the finest examples of the later wood-engravings, in the Moxon edition of Tennyson's Poems, in Once a Week, and Messrs. Dalziels' books, are not such as to inspire faith in the collector who esteems his treasures chiefly for their value under the hammer. But in this case, as in others, the moderate prices demanded in 1896 may not be the rule a few months hence. Already, although books rarely fetch as much as the original published cost, they are getting scarce. You may hunt the London shops in vain, and ransack the second-hand stores in the big provincial towns and not light on Jean Ingelow's Poems, 4to, Thornbury's Legendary Ballads, or even Wayside Poesies, or a Round of Days, all fairly common but a short time ago.
There are two great divisions of the objects that attract collectors. In the first come all items of individual handiwork, where no two can be precisely alike (since replicas by the authors are too rare to destroy the argument), and each specimen cannot be duplicated. Into this class fall paintings and drawings of all sorts, gems, sword-guards, lacquer, and ivories, and a thousand other objects of art. In the second, where duplicates have been produced in large numbers, the collector has a new ideal—to complete a collection that contains examples of every variety of the subject, be they artistic:—coins, etchings, or engravings of any sort; natural objects:—butterflies, or crystals, or things which belong neither to nature nor art:—postage-stamps, the majority of book-plates, and other trifles so numerous that even a bare list might extend to pages. The first class demands a long purse, and has, of necessity, a certain failure confronting it, for many of the best specimens are already in national collections, and cannot by any chance come into the market. But in the second class, no matter how rare a specimen may be, there is always a hope, and in many cases not a forlorn one, that some day, in some likely or unlikely place, its fellow may be discovered. And the chance of picking up a treasure for a nominal price adds to the zest of the collector, whose real delight is in the chase, far more than in the capture. Who does not hope to find a twopenny box containing (as once they did) a first edition of Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyám? or a Rembrandt's Three Trees in a first state? Or to discover a Tetradrachm Syracuse, B.C. 317, 'with the superb head of Persephone and the spirited quadriga, on the obverse,' in some tray of old coins in a foreign market-place?
Without more preamble, we may go on to the objects the new collector wishes to acquire; and to provide him with a hand-book that shall set him on the track of desirable specimens. This desultory gossip may also serve to explain indirectly the aims and limits of the present volume, which does not pretend to be a critical summary, not a history of art, and neither a treatise on engravers, nor an anecdotal record of artists, but merely a working book of reference, whatever importance it possesses being due only to the fine examples of the subject, which those concerned have most kindly permitted to be reproduced.
It is quite true that in collecting, the first of the two classes demands more critical knowledge, because as it is not a collection but only a selection that is within the reach of any one owner, it follows that each item must reflect his taste and judgment. In the second division there is danger lest the rush for comprehensiveness may dull the critical faculty, until, by and by, the ugly and foolish rarity is treasured far more than the beautiful and artistic items which are not rare, and so fail to command high prices.
In fact the danger of all collectors is this alluring temptation which besets other people in other ways. Many people prefer the exception to the rule, the imperfect sport to the commonplace type. If so, this discursive chatter is not wholly irrelevant, since it preludes an apology for including certain references to work distinctly below the level of the best, which, by its accidental position in volumes where the best occurs, can hardly be ignored completely.
Another point of conscience arises which each must decide for himself. Supposing that the collection of wood-engravings of the sixties assumes the proportion of a craze, must the collector retain intact a whole set of an illustrated periodical for the sake of a few dozen pictures within it, or if he decides to tear them out, will he not be imitating the execrable John Bagford, who destroyed twenty-five thousand volumes for the sake of their title-pages? Must he mutilate a Tennyson's Poems (Moxon, 1857) or The Music-master, or many of Dalziels' gift-books, for the sake of arranging his specimens in orderly fashion? The dilemma is a very real one. Even if one decides to keep volumes entire, the sets of magazines are so bulky, and in some cases contain such a small proportion of valuable work, that a collector cannot find space for more than a few of them. Possibly a fairly representative collection might be derived entirely from the back-numbers of periodicals, if any huge stores have yet survived the journey to the paper-mill or the flames; the one or the other being the ultimate fate of every magazine or periodical that is not duly bound before it has lost its high estate, as 'a complete set,' and become mere odd numbers or waste-paper.
So far the question of cost has not been raised, nor at present need it frighten the most economic. Taking all the subjects referred to in this book, with perhaps one or two exceptions (Allingham's Music-master, 1855, for instance), I doubt if a penny a piece for all the illustrations in the various volumes (counting the undesirable as well as the worthy specimens) would not be far above the market-price of the whole. But the penny each, like the old story of the horse-shoes, although not in this case governed by geometrical progression, would mount up to a big total. Yet, even if you purchase the books at a fair price, the best contain so many good illustrations, that the cost of each is brought down to a trifle.
Having decided to collect, and bought or obtained in other ways, so that you may entitle your treasures (as South Kensington Museum labels its novelties) 'recent acquisitions,' without scrupulous explanation of the means employed to get them, you are next puzzled how to arrange them. It seems to me that a fine book should be preserved intact. There are but comparatively few of its first edition, and of these few a certain number are doomed to accidental destruction in the ordinary course of events, so that one should hesitate before cutting up a fine book, and be not hasty in mutilating a volume of Once a Week or the Shilling Magazine. But if you have picked up odd numbers, and want to preserve the prints, a useful plan is to prepare a certain number of cardboard or cloth-covered boxes filled with single sheets of thick brown paper. In these an oblique slit is made to hold each corner of the print. By this method subjects can be mounted quickly, and, as the collection grows, new sub-divisions can be arranged and the subjects distributed among a larger number of boxes. This plan allows each print to be examined easily, the brown paper stands wear and tear and shows no finger-marks, and affords a pleasant frame to the engraving. Pasting-down in albums should be viewed with suspicion—either the blank leaves for specimens still to be acquired are constantly in evidence to show how little you possess, compared with your expectations; or else you will find it impossible to place future purchases in their proper order.
There is a process, known as print-splitting, which removes the objectionable printed back that ruins the effect of many good wood-engravings. It is a delicate, but not a very difficult operation, and should the hobby spread, young lady artists might do worse than forsake the poorly-paid production of nasty little head-pieces for fashion-papers and the like, and turn deft fingers to a more worthy pursuit. It needs an artistic temperament to split the print successfully, and a market would be quickly opened up if moderate prices were charged for the new industry.
One could wish that representative collections of the best of these prints were gathered together and framed inexpensively, for gifts or loans to schools, art industrial classes, and other places where the taste of pupils might be raised by their study. The cheap process-block from a photograph is growing to be the staple form of black and white that the average person meets with in his daily routine. The cost of really fine etchings, mezzotints, lithographs, and other masterpieces of black and white prohibits their being scattered broadcast; but while the fine prints by Millais, Sandys, Hughes, Pinwell, Fred Walker, and the rest are still to be bought cheaply, the opportunity should not be lost.
The more you study the position of illustrators during the last forty years, the more you are inclined to believe that they owe their very existence, as a class, to the popularity of magazines and periodicals. From the time Once a Week started, to the present to-day, the bulk of illustrations of any merit have been issued in serial publications. It is easy to find a reason for this. The heavy cost of the drawings, and, until recent times, the almost equally heavy cost of engraving them, would suffice to prohibit their lavish use in ordinary books. For it must not be forgotten that every new book is, to a great extent, a speculation; whereas the circulation of a periodical, once it is assured, varies but slightly. A book may be prepared for twenty thousand buyers, and not attract one thousand; but a periodical that sold twenty thousand of its current number is fairly certain to sell eighteen thousand to nineteen thousand of the next, and more probably will show a slight increase. Again, although one appears to get as many costly illustrations in a magazine to-day as in a volume costing ten times the price, the comparative sales more than readjust the balance. For a quarter of a million, although a record circulation of a periodical, is by no means a unique one; whereas the most popular illustrated book ever issued—and Trilby could be easily proved to merit that title—is probably not far beyond its hundred thousand. This very book was published in Harper's Magazine, and so obtained an enormous advertisement in one of the most widely circulated shilling monthlies. One doubts if the most popular illustrated volumes published at one or two guineas would show an average sale of two thousand copies at the original price. Therefore, to regard the periodical, be it quarterly, monthly, or weekly—and quite soon the daily paper may be added to the list—as the legitimate field for the illustrator, is merely to accept the facts of the case. True, that here and there carefully prepared volumes, with all the added luxury of fine paper and fine printing, stand above the magazine of their time in this mechanical production. But things are rapidly changing. One may pick up some ephemeral paper to-day, to find it has process-blocks of better quality, and is better printed, than 'the art book of the season,' be it what it may. The illustrator is the really popular artist of the period—the natural product of the newer conditions. For one painter who makes a living entirely by pictures, there are dozens who subsist upon illustrating; while, against one picture of any reputable sort—framed and sold—it would be impossible to estimate the number of drawings made specially for publication. Nor even to-day—when either the demand for illustration is ahead of the supply, or else many editors artfully prefer the second best, not forgetting all the feeble stuff of the cheap weeklies—would it be safe to declare that the artistic level is below that of the popular galleries. Certainly, even in the thirties, there were, in proportion, as many masterpieces done for the engraver as those which were carried out in oil or water-colour. Waiving the question of the damage wrought by engraver, or process-reproducer, the artist—if he be a great man—is no less worthy of respect as an illustrator in a cheap weekly, than when he chooses to devote himself solely to easel pictures. It is not by way of depreciating paintings that one would exalt illustration, but merely to recognise the obvious truth that the best work of an artist who understands his medium can never fail to be of surpassing interest, whether he uses fresco, tempera, oil, or water-colour; whether he works with brush or needle, pen or pencil. Nobody doubts that most of these products are entitled, other qualities being present, to be considered works of art; but, until lately, people have not shown the same respect for an illustration. Even when they admired the work, it was a common form of appreciation to declare it was 'as good as an etching,' or 'a composition worthy of being painted.' Many writers have endeavoured to restore black-and-white art to its true dignity, and the labours of Sir F. Seymour Haden, who awakened a new popular recognition of the claims of the etcher, and of Mr. Joseph Pennell, who fought with sustained vigour for the dignity and importance of illustration, have helped to inspire outsiders with a new respect. For it is only outsiders who ever thought of making absurd distinctions between high art and minor arts. If the thing, be it what it may, is good—as good as it could be—at no age did it fail to win the regard of artists; even if it had to wait a few generations to charm the purchaser, or awaken the cupidity of the connoisseur. It is a healthy sign to find that people to-day are interesting themselves in the books of the sixties; it should make them more eager for original contemporary work, and foster a dislike to the inevitable photograph from nature reproduced by half-tone, which one feared would have satisfied their love for black-and-white to the exclusion of all else.
If, after an evening spent in looking over the old magazines which form the subject of the next few chapters, you can turn to the current weeklies and monthlies, and feel absolutely certain that we are better than our fathers, it augurs either a very wisely selected purchase from the crowded bookstall, which, at each railway station as the first of the month approaches, has its hundreds of rival magazines, or else that it would be wiser to spend still more time over the old periodicals until a certain 'divine dissatisfaction' was aroused towards the average illustrated periodical of to-day.
Not that we are unable to show as good work perhaps, man for man, as they offer. We have no Sandys, no Millais, no Boyd Houghton, it is true; they had no E. A. Abbey, no Phil May, no ..., but it would be a delicate matter to continue a list of living masters here. But if you can find an English periodical with as many first-rate pictures as Once a Week, The Cornhill Magazine, Good Words, and others contained in the early sixties, you will be ... well ... lucky is perhaps the most polite word.
That the cheapness and rapidity of 'reproduction by process' should be directly responsible for the birth of many new illustrated periodicals to-day is clear enough. But it is surprising to find that a movement, which relatively speaking was almost as fecund, had begun some years before photography had ousted the engraver. Why it sprang into existence is not quite so obvious; but if we assume, as facts indicate, that the system of producing wood-engravings underwent a radical change about this time, we shall find that again a more ample supply provoked a larger demand. Hitherto, the engraver had only accepted as many blocks as he could engrave himself, with the help of a few assistants; but not very long before the date we are considering factories for the supply of wood-engravings had grown up. The heads of these, practical engravers and in some cases artists of more than average ability, took all the responsibility for the work intrusted to them, and maintained a singularly high standard of excellence; but they did not pretend that they engraved each block themselves. Such a system not merely permitted commissions for a large quantity of blocks being accepted, but greatly increased speed in their production.
There can be little doubt that something of the sort took place; it will suffice to name but two firms, Messrs. Dalziel and Messrs. Swain, who were each responsible often enough, not merely for all the engravings in a book, but often for all the engravings in a popular magazine. Under the old system, the publisher had thrown upon him the trouble of discovering the right engraver to employ, and the burden of reconciling the intention of the artist with the product of the engraver. This, by itself, would have been enough to make him very cautious before committing himself to the establishment of an illustrated magazine. But if we also remember that, under such conditions, almost unlimited time would be required for the production of the engravings, and that, to ensure a sufficient quantity being ready for each issue, a very large number of independent engravers must needs have been employed, it is clear that the old conditions would not have been equal to the task.
When, however, the publisher or editor was able to send all his drawings to a reputable firm who could undertake to deliver the engravings by a given time, one factor of great practical importance had been established. It is not surprising to find that things went even further than this, and that the new firms of engravers not only undertook the whole of the blocks, but in several cases supplied the drawings also.
Without claiming that such a system is the best, it is but fair to own that to it we are indebted for the masterpieces of the sixties. No doubt the ideal art-editor—a perfectly equipped critic, with the blank cheque of a millionaire at his back—might have done better; but to-day there are many who think themselves perfectly equipped critics, and perhaps some here and there who are backed by millionaires, yet on neither side of the Atlantic can we find better work than was produced under the system in vogue in the sixties. But after all, it is not the system, then or now, that is praiseworthy, but the individual efforts of men whose hearts were in their professions.
The more you inquire into the practice of the best engravers then and now, the more you find that ultimately one person is responsible for the good. In the sixties the engraver saw new possibilities, and did his utmost to realise them; full of enthusiasm, and a master of his craft, he inspired those who worked with him to experiment and spare no effort. That he did marvels may be conceded; and to declare that the merely mechanical processes to-day have already distanced his most ambitious efforts in many qualities does not detract from his share. But in this chapter he is regarded less as a craftsman than as a middleman, an art-editor in effect if not in name; one who taught the artists with whom he was brought in contact the limits of the material in which their work was to be translated, and in turn learned from them no little that was of vital importance. Above all, he seems to have kept closely in touch with draughtsmen and engravers alike; one might believe that every drawing passed through his hands, and that every block was submitted to him many times during its progress. When you realise the mass of work signed 'Dalziels' or 'Swain,' it is evident that its high standard of excellence must not be attributed to any system, but to the personal supervision of the acting members of the firms—men who were, every one of them, both draughtsmen and engravers, who knew not only the effect the artist aimed to secure, but the best method of handicraft by which to obtain it.
If, after acknowledging this, one cannot but regret that the photographic transfer of drawings to wood had not come into general use twenty years before it did, so that the masterpieces of the Rossetti designs to Tennyson's Poems and a hundred others had not been cut to pieces by the engraver; yet at the same time we must remember that, but for the enterprise of the engraver, the drawings themselves would in all probability never have been called into existence in many cases. This is especially true of the famous volumes which Messrs. Dalziel issued under the imprint of various publishers, who were really merely agents for their distribution.
The Penny Magazine in 1832, and other of Charles Knight's publications, Sharp's Magazine, The People's Journal, Howitt's Journal of Literature, The Illustrated Family Journal, The Mirror, The Parterre, The Casket, The Olio, The Saturday Magazine, Pinnock's Guide to Knowledge, Punch, The Illustrated London News, had led the way for pictorial weekly papers, even as the old Annuals and the various novels by Ainsworth, Dickens, and Thackeray had prepared the way for magazines; but the artistic movement of the 'sixties,' so far as its periodicals are concerned, need be traced back no further than Once a Week. Perhaps, however, it would be unfair to forget the influence of The Art Journal (at first called The Art Union), which, started in 1851, brought fine art to the homes of the great British public through the medium of wood-engravings in a way not attempted previously; and certainly we must not ignore John Cassell, who, on the demise of Howitt's Journal and The People's Journal in 1850, brought out an illustrated chronicle of the Great Exhibition, which was afterwards merged in a Magazine of Art. As The Strand Magazine—the first monthly periodical to exploit freely the Kodak and the half-tone block—started a whole school of imitators, so Once a Week, depending chiefly on drawings by the best men of the day, engraved by the foremost engravers, was followed quickly by the Cornhill Magazine, Good Words, and the rest. Many of these were short-lived; nor, looking at them impartially to-day, are we quite sure that the survivors were always the fittest. Certainly they were not always the best. But the number of new ventures that saw the light about this time can scarce be named here. Then, as now, a vast army of quite second-rate draughtsmen were available, and a number of periodicals, which it were gross flattery to call second-rate, sprang up to utilise their talents. Besides these, many weekly and monthly publications, ostensibly devoted to catering for the taste of the masses, gained large audiences and employed talented artists, but demand no more serious consideration as art, than do the 'snippet' weeklies of to-day as literature. But some of these popular serials—such as The Band of Hope, The British Workman, The London Journal, The London Reader, Bow Bells, Every Week, and the rest—are not, relatively speaking, worse than more pretentious publications. It is weary work to estimate the place of the second and third bests, and whatever interest the subject possesses would be exhausted quickly if we tried to catalogue or describe the less important items. Yet, to be quite just, several of these, notably the cheap publications of Messrs. Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, Messrs. S. W. Partridge and Co., and many others, employed artists by no means second-rate and gave better artistic value for their money than many of their successors do at present.
It is well to face the plain fact, and own that at no time has the supply of really creative artists equalled the popular demand. Not all the painters of any period are even passable, nor all the illustrators. Much that is produced for the moment fulfils its purpose admirably enough, although it dies as soon as it is born. Nature shows us the prodigal fecundity of generation compared with the few that ripen to maturity. The danger lies rather in appreciating too much, whether of 'the sixties' or 'the nineties'; yet, if one is stoical enough to praise only the best, it demands not merely great critical acumen, but no little hardness of heart. The intention always pleads to be recognised. We know that accidents, quite beyond the artist's power to prevent, may have marred his work. Each man, feeling his own impotence to express his ideas lucidly, must needs be lenient to those who also stammer and fail to interpret their imaginings clearly and with irresistible power. Yet, although the men of the sixties survive in greatly reduced numbers and one might speak plainly of much of its trivial commonplace without hurting anybody's feelings, there is no need to drag the rubbish to light.
Once a Week.—On the second of July 1859 appeared the first number of Once a Week, 'an illustrated miscellany of Literature, Art, Science, and Popular Information.' Despite the choice of an extraordinary time of year, as we should now consider it, to float a new venture, the result proved fortunate. Not merely does the first series of this notable magazine deserve recognition as the pioneer of its class; its superiority is no less provable than its priority. The earliest attempt to provide a magazine with original illustrations by the chief artists of its time was not merely a bold and well-considered experiment but, as the thirteen volumes of its first series show, an instant and admirably sustained triumph. No other thirteen volumes of an English magazine, at any period, contain so much first-class work. The invention and knowledge, the mastery of the methods employed, and the superb achievements of some of its contributors entitle it to be ranked as one of the few artistic enterprises of which England may be justly proud.
When the connection of Dickens with his old publishers was severed, and All the Year Round issued from its own office, Messrs. Bradbury and Evans projected a rival paper that was in no sense an imitation of the former. The reasons for its success lie on the surface. Started by the proprietors of Punch, with the co-operation of an artistic staff that has been singularly fortunate in enlisting always the services of the best men of their day, it is obvious that few periodicals have ever been launched under happier auspices. Its aim was obviously to do for fiction, light literature, and belles-lettres, what Punch had accomplished so admirably for satire and caricature. At that time, with no rivals worth consideration, a fixed intention to obtain for a new magazine the active co-operation of the best men of all schools was within the bounds of possibility. To-day a millionaire with a blank cheque-book could not even hope to succeed in such a project. He would find many first-rate artists, whom no amount of money would attract, and others with connections that would be imperilled if they contributed to a rival enterprise. There are many who prefer the safety of an established periodical to the risk which must needs attend any 'up-to-date' venture. Now Once a Week was not merely 'up-to-date' in its period, but far ahead of the popular taste. As we cannot rival it to-day in its own line, even the most ardent defender of the present at the expense of the past must own that the improvement in process-engraving and the increased truth of facsimile reproductions it offers have not inspired draughtsmen to higher efforts. Why so excellent a magazine is not flourishing to-day is a mystery. It would seem as if the public, faithful as they are to non-illustrated periodicals, are fickle where pictures are concerned. But the memory of the third series of Once a Week relieves the public of the responsibility; changes in the direction and aim of the periodical were made, and all for the worse; so that it lost its high position and no more interested the artist. Punch, its sponsor, seems to have the secret of eternal youth, possibly because its original programme is still consistently maintained.
In another feature it resembled Punch more than any previous periodical. In The London Charivari many of the pictures have always been inserted quite independently of the text. Some have a title, and some a brief scrap of dialogue to explain their story; but the picture is not there to elucidate the anecdote, so much as the title, or fragment of conversation, helps to elucidate the picture. Unless an engraving be from a painting, or a topographical view, the rule in English magazines then, as now, is that it must illustrate the text. This is not the place to record an appreciation of the thorough and consistent way in which the older illustrators set about the work of reiterating the obvious incident, depicting for all eyes to see what the author had suggested in his text already, for it is evident that a design untrammelled by any fixed programme ought to allow the artist more play for his fancy. Nevertheless, the less frequent illustrations to its serial fiction are well up to the level of those practically independent of the text. In Once a Week there are dozens of pictures which are evidently purely the invention of the draughtsman. That a modest little poem, written to order usually, satisfies the conventions of established precedent, need not be taken as evidence that traverses the argument. Once a Week ranked its illustrators as important as its authors, which is clearly an ideal method for an illustrated periodical to observe. To write up to pictures has often been attempted; were not The Pickwick Papers begun in this way? But the author soon reversed the situation, and once more put the artist in a subordinate place. It is curious to observe that readers of light literature had been satisfied previously with a very conventional type of illustration. For, granting all sorts of qualities to those pictures by Cruikshank, 'Phiz,' and Thackeray, which illustrated the Dickens, Ainsworth, Lever, and Thackeray novels, you can hardly refer the source of their inspiration to nature, however remotely. Their purpose seems to have been caricature rather than character-drawing, sentimentality in place of sentiment, melodrama in lieu of mystery, broad farce instead of humour. These aims were accomplished in masterly fashion, perhaps; but is there a single illustration by Cruikshank, 'Phiz,' Thackeray, or even John Leech, which tempts us to linger and return again and again purely for its art? Its 'drawing' is often slipshod, and never infused by the perception of physical beauty that the Greeks embodied as their ideal, that ideal which the illustrators of Once a Week, especially Walker, revived soon after this date. Nor are they inspired by the symbolists' regard for nature, which attracted the 'primitives' of the Middle Ages, and their legitimate followers the pre-Raphaelites. Indeed, as you study the so-called 'immortal' designs which illustrate the early Victorian novels, you feel that if many of the artists were once considered to be as great as the authors whose ideas they interpreted, time has wreaked revenge at last. If a boy happens to read for the first time Thackeray's Vanity Fair with its original illustrations, the humour and pathos of the masterpiece lose half their power when the ridiculously feeble drawings confront him throughout the book. This is not the case with Millais' illustrations to Trollope, or those by Fred Walker to Thackeray. The costume may appear grotesque, but the men and women are vital, and as real in the picture as in the literature.
Lacking the virility of Hogarth, or the coarse animal vigour of Rowlandson, these caricaturists kept one eye on the fashion-book and one on the grotesque. It was 'cumeelfo' to depict the English maiden a colourless vapid nonentity, to make the villain look villainous, and the benevolent middle-aged person imbecile. Accidental deformities and vulgar personal defects were deemed worthy themes for laughter. The fat boy in Pickwick, the fat Joe Sedley in Vanity Fair, the Marchioness and Dick Swiveller, the Quilps' Tea-Party, and the rest, all belong to the order of humour that survives to-day in the 'knockabout artists,' or the 'sketch' performances at second-rate music-halls. Even the much-belauded Fagin in the Condemned Cell appears a trite and ineffective bit of low melodrama to-day. We know the oft-repeated story of the artist's despondency, his failure to realise an attitude to express Fagin's despair, and how as he caught sight of his own face in the glass he saw that he himself, a draughtsman troubled by a subject, was the very model for one about to be hanged. All the personality of anecdote and the sentimental log-rolling which gathered round the pictures, that by chance were associated with a series of masterpieces in fiction, no longer fascinate us. We recognise the power of the writers, but wish in our hearts that they had never been 'illustrated,' or if so, that they had enjoyed the good fortune which belongs to the novelists of the sixties. But to refuse to endorse the verdict of earlier critics does not imply that there was no merit in these designs, but merely that their illustrators must be classed for the most part (Leech least of all) with the exaggerators—those who aimed at the grotesque—with Gilray or Baxter, the creator of Ally Sloper, and not with true satirists like Hogarth or Charles Keene, who worked in ways that are pre-eminently masterly, even if you disregard the humorous element in their designs.
Without forcing the theory too far, it may be admitted that the idea of Once a Week owes more to these serial novels than to any previous enterprise. Be that as it may, the plan of the magazine, as we find in a postscript (to vol. i.), was at once 'ratified by popular acceptance.' Further, its publishers admit that its circulation was adequate and its commercial success established, after only thirty-six numbers had appeared. It is no new thing for the early numbers of magazines and papers to contain glowing accounts of their phenomenal circulation; but, in this case, there can be no doubt that the self-congratulation is both well deserved and genuine. To Once a Week may be accorded the merit of initiating a new type of periodical which has survived with trifling changes until to-day. Its recognition of 'fiction' and 'pictures,' as the chief items in its programme, has been followed by a hundred others; but the editing, which made it readable as well as artistic, is a secret that many of its imitators failed to understand. Although A Good Fight (afterwards rewritten and entitled The Cloister and the Hearth) is the only novel within its pages that has since assumed classic rank, yet the average of its art—good as it was—is not as far above the standard of its literature, as the illustrations of its predecessors fell below the text they professed to adorn.
In sketching the life-history of other illustrated magazines it seemed best to follow a chronological order, because the progress of the art of illustration is reflected more or less faithfully in the advance and retrogression they show. But the thirteen volumes which complete the first series of Once a Week may be considered better in a different way. For to-day it is prized almost entirely for its pictures, and they were contributed for the most part by the same artists year after year. While in other periodicals you find, with every new volume, a fresh relay of artists, Once a Week, during its palmy days, was supported by the same brilliant group of draughtsmen, who admitted very few recruits, and only those whose great early promise was followed almost directly by ample fulfilment.
The very first illustration is a vignette by John Leech to a rhymed programme of the magazine by Shirley Brooks. But Leech, who died in 1864, cannot be regarded as a typical illustrator of 'the sixties'—not so much because his work extended only a few years into that decade, as that he belonged emphatically to the earlier school, and represented all that is not characteristic of the period with which this book is concerned.
It is unnecessary to belittle his art for the sake of glorifying those who succeeded him in popularity. That he obtained a strong hold upon English taste, lettered and unlettered, is undeniable. It has become part and parcel of that English life, especially of the insular middle-class, whose ideal permitted it to regard the exhibition building of 1851 not as a big conservatory, but as a new and better Parthenon, and to believe honestly enough that the millennium of universal peace with art, no less than morals, perfected to the 'nth' degree (on purely British lines), was dawning upon humanity. That the efforts of 1851 made much possible to-day which else had been impossible may be granted.
The grace and truth of John Leech's designs may be recognised despite their technical insufficiency, but at the same time we may own that, in common with Cruikshank and the rest, he has received infinitely more appreciation than his artistic achievement merited, and leave his share unconsidered here, although no doubt it was a big commercial factor in the success. To vol. i. of Once a Week he contributed no less than thirty-two designs, to vol. ii. forty-six, to vol. iii. seven, to vol. iv. one, and to vol. v. four.
John Tenniel, although he began to work much earlier, and is still an active contemporary, may be considered as belonging especially to the sixties, wherein he represents the survival of an academic type in sharply accentuated distinction to the pre-Raphaelism of one group or to the romantic naturalism of a still larger section. On page 4 of vol. i. we find his first drawing, a vignette, and page 5 a design, Audun and the White Bear, no less typically 'a Tenniel' in every particular than is the current cartoon in Punch. Those on pages 21, 30, 60, 90, 101, 103, and 170 are all relatively unimportant. The King of Thule (p. 250) is an illustration to Sir Theodore Martin's familiar translation of Goethe's poems. Others are on pp. 285, 435, 446. To vol. ii. he is a less frequent contributor. The designs, pp. 39, 98, 99, and 103 call for no comment. The one on p. 444 (not p. 404 as the index has it), to Tom Taylor's ballad Noménoë, is reprinted in Songs and Ballads of Brittany (Macmillan, 1865). In vol. iii. there is one (p. 52) of small value. On pp. 533, 561, 589, 617, 645, 673, and 701 are pictures to Shirley Brooks's The Silver Cord, showing the artist in his less familiar aspect as an illustrator of fiction. The one on p. 589 is irresistibly like a 'Wonderland' picture, while that on p. 225 (vol. iv.) suggests a Punch cartoon; but, on the whole, they are curiously free from undue mannerism in the types they depict. In vol. iv. are more illustrations to The Silver Cord (pp. 1, 29, 57, 85, 113, 141, 169, 197, 225, 253, 281, 309, 337, 365, 393, 421, 449, 477, 505, 533, 561, 589, 617, 645, 673, and 701), and illustrations to Owen Meredith's poem, Fair Rosamund (pp. 294, 295). In volume v. The Silver Cord is continued with ten more designs (pp. 1, 29, 57, 85, 113, 141, 169, 197, 225, 253), and there is one to Mark Bozzari (p. 659), translated from Müller by Sir Theodore Martin.
In volume vi. Tenniel appears but four times: At Crutchley Prior (p. 267), The Fairies (p. 379), a very delicate fancy, Prince Lulu (p. 490), and Made to Order (p. 575). From the seventh and eighth volumes he is absent, and reappears in the ninth with only one drawing, Clytè (p. 154), and in the tenth (Dec. 1863-June 1864) with one, Bacchus and the Water Thieves (p. 658). Nor does he appear again in this magazine until 1867, with Lord Aythan, the frontispiece to vol. iii. of the New Series. Sir John Tenniel, however, more than any other of the Punch staff, seems never thoroughly at home outside its pages. The very idea of a Tenniel drawing has become a synonym for a political cartoon; so that now you cannot avoid feeling that all his illustrations to poetry, fiction, and fairy-tale must have some satirical motive underlying their apparent purpose.