Chapter 1

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_Special_ WINTER NUMBER _of_

THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIO

_CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND THEIR ILLUSTRATORS._

_By_ GLEESON WHITE

THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIO =John Lane=, 140 Fifth Avenue, _New York_

Scribner's New Books for the Young

=Mrs. Burnett's famous Juveniles=

=With all the original Illustrations by Reginald B. Birch. 5 vols. Each 12mo $1.25.=

A writer in the _Boston Post_ has said of Mrs. Burnett: "She has a beauty of imagination and a spiritual insight into the meditations of childhood which are within the grasp of no other writer for children,"--and these five volumes would indeed be difficult to match in child literature. The new edition is from new plates, with all the original illustrations by Reginald B. Birch, is bound in a handsome new cover. "Little Lord Fauntleroy," "Two Little Pilgrims' Progress," "Piccino and Other Child Stories," "Giovanni and the Other," "Sara Crewe," and "Little Saint Elizabeth and other Stories" (in one volume).

=Three New Volumes by G. A. Henty=

=Illustrated by Walter Paget and W. A. Margetson. Each 12mo $1.50=.

It would be a bitter year for the boys if Mr. Henty were to fail them with a fresh assortment of his enthralling tales of adventure, for, as the London _Academy_ has said, in this kind of story telling, "he stands in the very first rank." "With Frederick the Great" is a tale of the Seven Years' War, and has twelve full-page illustrations by Wal. Paget; "A March on London" details some stirring scenes of the times when Wat Tyler's motley crew took possession of that city, and the illustrations are drawn by W. A. Margetson, while Wal. Paget has supplied the pictures for "With Moore at Corunna," in which the boy hero serves through the Peninsular War. (Each 12mo, $1.50.)

=Will Shakespeare's Little Lad by Imogen Clarke=

=With 8 full-page Illustrations by Reginald B. Birch. 12mo $1.50.=

"The author has caught the true spirit of Shakespeare's time, and paints his home surroundings with a loving, tender grace," says the Boston _Herald_.

=An Old-Field School Girl by Marion Harland=

(Illustrated, 12mo, $1.25.) "As pretty a story for girls as has been published in a long time," says the _Buffalo Express_, and the _Chicago Tribune_ is even more appreciative: "Compared with the average books of its class 'An Old-Field School Girl,' becomes a classic."

=Lullaby Land=

=Verses by Eugene Field With 200 fanciful Illustrations by Charles Robinson. (Uniform with Stevenson's "A Child's Garden") 12mo $1.50.=

"A collection of those dearly loved 'Songs of Childhood' by Eugene Field, which have touched many hearts, both old and young, and will continue to do so as long as little children remain the joy of our homes. It was a happy thought of the publisher to choose another such child lover and sympathizer as Kenneth Grahame to write the Preface to the new edition, and Charles Robinson to make the many quaint and most amusing illustrations."--_The Evangelist._

=With Crockett and Bowie by Kirk Munroe=

=With 8 full-page Illustrations by Victor S. Perard. 12mo $1.50.=

This "Tale of Texas; or, Fighting for the Lone Star Flag," completes the author's _White Conqueror Series_. The Minneapolis _Tribune_ says: "It is a breezy and invigorating tale. The characters, although drawn from real life, are surrounded by an atmosphere of romance and adventure which gives them the added fascination of being creatures of fiction, and yet there is no straining for effect."

=The Naval Cadet=

=With 6 full-page Illustrations by William Rainey, R. I. Crown 8vo $1.25.=

A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea, by GORDON STABLES. A stirring tale of seafaring and sea-fighting on the coasts of Africa, South America, Australia, New Guinea, etc., closing with a dramatic picture of the combat between the Chinese and Japanese fleets at Yalu.

=The Stevenson Song Book=

=With decorative borders. 4to $2.00.=

In this large and handsome quarto, twenty of the most lyrical poems from Robert Louis Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verse", have been set to music by such composers as Reginald DeKoven, Arthur Foote, C. W. Chadwick, Dr. C. Villers Stanford, etc. The volume is uniform with and a fitting companion to the popular "Field-De-Koven Song Book."

=Twelve Naval Captains by Molly Elliot Seawell=

=With 12 full-page portraits. 12mo $1.25.=

Miss Seawell here tells the notable exploits of twelve heroes of our early navy: John Paul Jones, Richard Dale, William Bainbridge, Richard Somers, Edward Preble, Thomas Truxton, Stephen Decatur, James Lawrance, Isaac Hull, O. H. Perry, Charles Stewart, Thomas Macdonough. The book is illustrated attractively and makes a stirring and thrilling volume.

=The Knights of the Round Table=

=With 25 Illustrations by S. R. Benliegh. 12mo $1.50.=

"King Arthur's Knights and their connection with the mystic Grail is here the subject of Mr. William Henry Frost's translation into child language. Many volumes have been prepared telling these wonderful legendary stories to young people, but few are so admirably written as this work," says the _Boston Advertiser_.

=The Last Cruise of the Mohawk by W. J. Henderson=

=Illustrated by Harry C. Edwards. 12mo $1.25.=

The _Observer_ says: "This is an exciting story that boys of today will appreciate thoroughly and devour greedily," and the _Rochester Democrat_ calls it "an interesting and thrilling story."

=The King of the Broncos by Charles F. Lummis=

=Illustrated by Victor S. Perard. 12mo $1.25.=

The title story and the other Tales of New Mexico, which Mr. Lummis has here supplied for the younger generation, have all his usual fascination. He knows how to tell his thrilling stories in a way that is irresistible? to boy readers.

=The Border Wars of New England=

=With 58 Illustrations and map. 12mo $1.25.=

Mr. Samuel Adams Drake is an expert at making history real and vital to children. The _Boston Advertiser_ says: "This is not a school book, yet it is exceedingly well adapted to use in schools, and at the same time will enrich and adorn the library of every American who is so fortunate or so judicious as to place it on his shelves."

=The Golden Galleon by Robert Leighton=

=With 8 full-page Illustrations by William Rainey, R. I. 12mo $1.50.=

"A narrative of the adventures of Master Gilbert O'Glander, and of how in the year 1591 he fought under the gallant Sir Richard Grenville in the great sea-fight off Flores, on board Her Majesty's ship, _The Revenge_." The New York _Observer_ has said: "Mr. Leighton as a writer for boys needs no praise as his books place him in the front rank."

=Lords of the World=

=With 12 full-page Illustrations by Ralph Peacock. 12mo. $1.00.=

A Story of the Fall of Carthage and Corinth. By ALFRED J. CHURCH. In his own special field the author has few rivals. He has a capacity for making antiquity assume reality which is fascinating in the extreme.

=Adventures in Toyland=

=With 8 colored plates and 72 other Illustrations by Alice B. Woodward. Square 8vo. $2.00.=

By EDITH KING HALL. A clever and fascinating volume which will surely take a high place among this season's "juveniles."

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153-157 Fifth Ave, N.Y.

THE INTERNATIONAL

STUDIO

SPECIAL WINTER-NUMBER 1897-8

CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND THEIR ILLUSTRATORS. BY GLEESON WHITE.

There are some themes that by their very wealth of suggestion appal the most ready writer. The emotions which they arouse, the mass of pleasant anecdote they recall, the ghosts of far-off delights they summon, are either too obvious to be worth the trouble of description or too evanescent to be expressed in dull prose. Swift, we are told (perhaps a little too frequently), could write beautifully of a broomstick; which may strike a common person as a marvel of dexterity. After a while, the journalist is apt to find that it is the perfect theme which proves to be the hardest to treat adequately. Clothe a broomstick with fancies, even of the flimsiest tissue paper, and you get something more or less like a fairy-king's sceptre; but take the Pompadour's fan, or the haunting effect of twilight over the meadows, and all you can do in words seems but to hide its original beauties. We know that Mr. Austin Dobson was able to add graceful wreaths even to the fan of the Pompadour, and that another writer is able to impart to the misty twilight not only the eerie fantasies it shows the careless observer, but also a host of others that only a poet feels, and that only a poet knows how to prison within his cage of printed syllables. Indeed, of the theme of the present discourse has not the wonder-working Robert Louis Stevenson sung of "Picture Books in Winter" and "The Land of Story Books," so truly and clearly that it is dangerous for lesser folk to attempt essays in their praise? All that artists have done to amuse the august monarch "King Baby" (who, pictured by Mr. Robert Halls, is fitly enthroned here by way of frontispiece) during the playtime of his immaturity is too big a subject for our space, and can but be indicated in rough outline here.

Luckily, a serious study of the evolution of the child's book already exists. Since the bulk of this number was in type, I lighted by chance upon "The Child and his Book," by Mrs. E. M. Field, a most admirable volume which traces its subject from times before the Norman conquest to this century. Therein we find full accounts of MSS. designed for teaching purposes, of early printed manuals, and of the mass of literature intended to impress "the Fear of the Lord and of the Broomstick." Did space allow, the present chronicle might be enlivened with many an excerpt which she has culled from out-of-the-way sources. But the temptation to quote must be controlled. It is only fair to add that in that work there is a very excellent chapter to "Some Illustrators of Children's Books," although its main purpose is the text of the books. One branch has found its specialist and its exhaustive monograph, in Mr. Andrew Tuer's sumptuous volumes devoted to "The Horn Book."

Perhaps there is no pleasure the modern "grown-up" person envies the youngsters of the hour as he envies them the shoals of delightful books which publishers prepare for the Christmas tables of lucky children. If he be old enough to remember Mrs. Trimmer's "History of the Robins," "The Fairchild Family," or that Poly-technically inspired romance, the "Swiss Family Robinson," he feels that a certain half-hearted approval of more dreary volumes is possibly due to the glamour which middle age casts upon the past. It is said that even Barbauld's "Evenings at Home" and "Sandford and Merton" (the anecdotes only, I imagine) have been found toothsome dainties by unjaded youthful appetites; but when he compares these with the books of the last twenty years, he wishes he could become a child again to enjoy their sweets to the full.

Now nine-tenths of this improvement is due to artist and publisher; although it is obvious that illustrations imply something to illustrate, and, as a rule (not by any means without exception), the better the text the better the pictures. Years before good picture-books there were good stories, and these, whether they be the classics of the nursery, the laureates of its rhyme, the unknown author of its sagas, the born story-tellers--whether they date from prehistoric cave-dwellers, or are of our own age, like Charles Kingsley or Lewis Carroll--supply the text to spur on the artist to his best achievements.

It is mainly a labour of love to infuse pictures intended for childish eyes with qualities that pertain to art. We like to believe that Walter Crane, Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and the rest receive ample appreciation from the small people. That they do in some cases is certain; but it is also quite as evident that the veriest daub, if its subject be attractive, is enjoyed no less thoroughly. There are prigs of course, the children of the "prignorant," who babble of Botticelli, and profess to disdain any picture not conceived with "high art" mannerism. Yet even these will forget their pretence, and roar over a _Comic Cuts_ found on the seat of a railway carriage, or stand delighted before some unspeakable poster of a melodrama. It is well to face the plain fact that the most popular illustrated books which please the children are not always those which satisfy the critical adult. As a rule it is the "grown-ups" who buy; therefore with no wish to be-little the advance in nursery taste, one must own that at present its improvement is chiefly owing to the active energies of those who give, and is only passively tolerated by those who accept. Children awaking to the marvel that recreates a familiar object by a few lines and blotches on a piece of paper, are not unduly exigent. Their own primitive diagrams, like a badly drawn Euclidean problem, satisfy their idea of studies from the life. Their schemes of colour are limited to harmonies in crimson lake, cobalt and gamboge, their skies are very blue, their grass arsenically green, and their perspective as erratic as that of the Chinese.

In fact, unpopular though it may be to project such a theory, one fancies that the real educational power of the picture-book is upon the elders, and thus, that it undoubtedly helps to raise the standard of domestic taste in art. But, on the other hand, whether his art is adequately appreciated or not, what an unprejudiced and wholly spontaneous acclaim awaits the artist who gives his best to the little ones! They do not place his work in portfolios or locked glass cases; they thumb it to death, surely the happiest of all fates for any printed book. To see his volumes worn out by too eager votaries; what could an author or artist wish for more? The extraordinary devotion to a volume of natural history, which after generations of use has become more like a mop-head than a book, may be seen in the reproduction of a "monkey-book" here illustrated; this curious result being caused by sheer affectionate thumbing of its leaves, until the dog-ears and rumpled pages turned the cube to a globular mass, since flattened by being packed away. So children love picture-books, not as bibliophiles would consider wisely, but too well.

To delight one of the least of these, to add a new joy to the crowded miracles of childhood, were no less worth doing than to leave a Sistine Chapel to astound a somewhat bored procession of tourists, or to have written a classic that sells by thousands and is possessed unread by all save an infinitesimal percentage of its owners.

When Randolph Caldecott died, a minor poet, unconsciously paraphrasing Garrick's epitaph, wrote: "For loss of him the laughter of the children will grow less." I quote the line from memory, perhaps incorrectly; if so, its author will, I feel sure, forgive the unintentional mangling. Did the laughter of the children grow less? Happily one can be quite sure it did not. So long as any inept draughtsman can scrawl a few lines which they accept as a symbol of an engine, an elephant or a pussy cat, so long will the great army of invaders who are our predestined conquerors be content to laugh anew at the request of any one, be he good or mediocre, who caters for them.

It is a pleasant and yet a saddening thought to remember that we were once recruits of this omnipotent army that wins always our lands and our treasures. Now, when grown up, whether we are millionaires or paupers, they have taken fortress by fortress with the treasures therein, our picture-books of one sort are theirs, and one must yield presently to the babies as they grow up, even our criticism, for they will make their own standards of worth and unworthiness despite all our efforts to control their verdict.

If we are conscious of being "up-to-date" in 1900, we may be quite sure that by 1925 we shall be ousted by a newer generation, and by 2000 forgotten. Long before even that, the children we now try to amuse or to educate, to defend at all costs, or to pray for as we never prayed before--they will be the masters. It is, then, not an ignoble thing to do one's very best to give our coming rulers a taste of the kingdom of art, to let them unconsciously discover that there is something outside common facts, intangible and not to be reduced to any rule, which may be a lasting pleasure to those who care to study it.

It is evident, as one glances back over the centuries, that the child occupies a new place in the world to-day. Excepting possibly certain royal infants, we do not find that great artists of the past addressed themselves to children. Are there any children's books illustrated by Duerer, Burgmair, Altdorfer, Jost Amman, or the little masters of Germany? Among the Florentine woodcuts do we find any designed for children? Did Rembrandt etch for them, or Jacob Beham prepare plates for their amusement? So far as I have searched, no single instance has rewarded me. It is true that the _naivete_ of much early work tempts one to believe that it was designed for babies. But the context shows that it was the unlettered adult, not the juvenile, who was addressed. As the designs, obviously prepared for children, begin to appear, they are almost entirely educational and by no means the work of the best artists of the period. Even when they come to be numerous, their object is seldom to amuse; they are didactic, and as a rule convey solemn warnings. The idea of a draughtsman of note setting himself deliberately to please a child would have been inconceivable not so many years ago. To be seen and not heard was the utmost demanded of the little ones even as late as the beginning of this century, when illustrated books designed especially for their instruction were not infrequent.

As Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton pointed out in his charming essay, "The New Hero," which appeared in the _English Illustrated Magazine_ (Dec. 1883), the child was neglected even by the art of literature until Shakespeare furnished portraits at once vivid, engaging, and true in Arthur and in Mamillus. In the same essay he goes on to say of the child--the new hero:

"And in art, painters and designers are vying with the poets and with each other in accommodating their work to his well-known matter-of-fact tastes and love of simple directness. Having discovered that the New Hero's ideal of pictorial representation is of that high dramatic and businesslike kind exemplified in the Bayeux tapestry, Mr. Caldecott, Mr. Walter Crane, Miss Kate Greenaway, Miss Dorothy Tennant, have each tried to surpass the other in appealing to the New Hero's love of real business in art--treating him, indeed, as though he were Hotei, the Japanese god of enjoyment--giving him as much colour, as much dramatic action, and as little perspective as is possible to man's finite capacity in this line. Some generous art critics have even gone so far indeed as to credit an entire artistic movement, that of pre-Raphaelism, with a benevolent desire to accommodate art to the New Hero's peculiar ideas upon perspective. But this is a 'soft impeachment' born of that loving kindness for which art-critics have always been famous."

It would be out of place here to project any theory to account for this more recent homage paid to children, but it is quite certain that a similar number of THE STUDIO could scarce have been compiled a century ago, for there was practically no material for it. In fact the tastes of children as a factor to be considered in life are well-nigh as modern as steam or the electric light, and far less ancient than printing with movable types, which of itself seems the second great event in the history of humanity, the use of fire being the first.

To leave generalities and come to particulars, as we dip into the stores of earlier centuries the broadsheets reveal almost nothing _intended_ for children--the many Robin Hood ballads, for example, are decidedly meant for grown-up people; and so in the eighteenth century we find its chap-books of "Guy, Earl of Warwick," "Sir Bevis, of Southampton," "Valentine and Orson," are still addressed to the adult; while it is more than doubtful whether even the earliest editions in chap-book form of "Tom Thumb," and "Whittington" and the rest, now the property of the nursery, were really published for little ones. That they were the "light reading" of adults, the equivalent of to-day's _Ally Sloper_ or the penny dreadful, is much more probable. No doubt children who came across them had a surreptitious treat, even as urchins of both sexes now pounce with avidity upon stray copies of the ultra-popular and so-called comic papers. But you could not call _Ally Sloper_, that Punchinello of the Victorian era--who has received the honour of an elaborate article in the _Nineteenth Century_--a child's hero, nor is his humour of a sort always that childhood should understand--"Unsweetened Gin," the "Broker's Man," and similar subjects, for example. It is quite possible that respectable people did not care for their babies to read the chap-books of the eighteenth century any more than they like them now to study "halfpenny comics"; and that they were, in short, kitchen literature, and not infantile. Even if the intellectual standard of those days was on a par in both domains, it does not prove that the reading of the kitchen and nursery was interchangeable.

Before noticing any pictures in detail from old sources or new, it is well to explain that as a rule only those showing some attempt to adapt the drawing to a child's taste have been selected. Mere dull transcripts of facts please children no less; but here space forbids their inclusion. Otherwise nearly all modern illustration would come into our scope.