Chapter 7

J. C. Sowerby, a designer for stained glass, in "Afternoon Tea" (Warne, 1880), set a new fashion for "aesthetic" little quartos costing five or six shillings each. This was followed by "At Home" (1881), and "At Home Again" (1886, Marcus Ward), and later by "Young Maids and Old China." These, despite their popularity, display no particular invention. For the real fancy and "conceit" of the books you have to turn to their decorative borders by Thomas Crane. This artist, collaborating with Ellen Houghton, contributed two other volumes to the same series, "Abroad" (1882), and "London Town" (1883), both prime favourites of their day.

Lizzie Lawson, in many contributions for _Little Folks_ and a volume in colours, "Old Proverbs" (Cassell), displayed much grace in depicting children's themes.

Nor among coloured books of the "eighties" must we overlook "Under the Mistletoe" (Griffith and Farran, 1886), and "When all is Young" (Christmas Roses, 1886); "Punch and Judy," by F. E. Weatherley, illustrated by Patty Townsend (1885); "The Parables of Our Lord," really dignified pictures compared with most of their class, by W. Morgan; "Puss in Boots," illustrated by S. Caldwell; "Pets and Playmates" (1888); "Three Fairy Princesses," illustrated by Paterson (1885); "Picture Books of the Fables of AEsop," another series of quaintly designed picture books, modelled on Struwwlpeter; "The Robbers' Cave," illustrated by A. M. Lockyer, and "Nursery Numbers" (1884), illustrated by an amateur named Bell, all these being published by Messrs. Marcus Ward and Co., who issued later, "Where Lilies Grow," a very popular volume, illustrated in the "over-pretty" style by Mrs. Stanley Berkeley. The attractive series of toy-books in colours, published in the form of a Japanese folding album, were probably designed by Percy Macquoid, and published by the same firm, who issued an oblong folio, "Herrick's Content," very pleasantly decorated by Mrs. Houghton. R. Andre was (and for all I know is still) a very prolific illustrator of children's coloured books. "The Cruise of the Walnut Shell" (Dean, 1881); "A Week Spent in a Glass Pond" (Gardner, Darton and Co.); "Grandmother's Thimble" (Warne, 1882); "Pictures and Stories" (Warne, 1882); "Up Stream" (Low, 1884); "A Lilliputian Opera" (Day, 1885); the Oakleaf Library (six shilling volumes, Warne); and Mrs. Ewing's Verse Books (six vols. S.P.C.K.) are some of the best known. T. Pym, far less well-equipped as a draughtsman, shows a certain childish naivete in his (or was it her?) "Pictures from the Poets" (Gardner, Darton and Co.); "A, B, C" (Gardner, Darton and Co.); "Land of Little People" (Hildesheimer, 1886); "We are Seven" (1880); "Children Busy" (1881); "Snow Queen" (Gardner, Darton and Co.); "Child's Own Story Book" (Gardner, Darton and Co.).

Ida Waugh in "Holly Berries" (Griffith and Farran, 1881); "Wee Babies" (Griffith and Farran, 1882); "Baby Blossoms," "Tangles and Curls," and many other volumes mainly devoted to pictures of babies and their doings, pleased a very large audience both here and in the United States. "Dreams, Dances and Disappointments," and "The Maypole," both by Konstan and Castella, are gracefully decorated books issued by Messrs. De La Rue in 1882, who also published "The Fairies," illustrated by [H?] Allingham in 1881. Major Seccombe in "Comic Sketches from History" (Allen, 1884), and "Cinderella" (Warne, 1882), touched our theme; a large number of more or less comic books of military life and social satire hardly do so. Coloured books of which I have failed to discover copies for reference, are: A. Blanchard's "My Own Dolly" (Griffith and Farran, 1882); "Harlequin Eggs," by Civilly (Sonnenschein, 1884); "The Nodding Mandarin," by L. F. Day (Simpkin, 1883); "Cats-cradle," by C. Kendrick (Strahan, 1886); "The Kitten Pilgrims," by A. Ballantyne (Nisbet, 1887); "Ups and Downs" (1880), and "At his Mother's Knee" (1883), by M. J. Tilsey. "A Winter Nosegay" (Sonnenschein, 1881); "Pretty Peggy," by Emmet (Low, 1881); "Children's Kettledrum," by M. A. C. (Dean, 1881); "Three Wise Old Couples," by Hopkins (Cassell, 1881); "Puss in Boots," by E. K. Johnson (Warne); "Sugar and Spice and all that's Nice" (Strahan, 1881); "Fly away, Fairies," by Clarkson (Griffith and Farran, 1882); "The Tiny Lawn Tennis Club" (Dean, 1882); "Little Ben Bate," by M. Browne (Simpkin, 1882); "Nursery Night," by E. Dewane (Dean, 1882); "New Pinafore Pictures" (Dean, 1882); "Rumpelstiltskin" (De la Rue, 1882); "Baby's Debut," by J. Smith (De la Rue, 1883); "Buckets and Spades" (Dean, 1883); "Childhood" (Warne, 1883); "Dame Trot" (Chapman and Hall, 1883); "In and Out," by Ismay Thorne (Sonnenschein, 1884); "Under Mother's Wing," by Mrs. Clifford (Gardner, Darton, 1883); "Quacks" (Ward and Lock, 1883); "Little Chicks" (Griffith and Farran, 1883); "Talking Toys," "The Talking Clock," H. M. Bennett; "Four Feet by Two," by Helena Maguire; "Merry Hearts," "Cosy Corners," and "A Christmas Fairy," by Gordon Browne (all published by Nisbet).

Among many books elaborately printed by Messrs. Hildesheimer, are two illustrated by M. E. Edwards and J. C. Staples, "Told in the Twilight" (1883); and "Song of the Bells" (1884); and one by M. E. Edwards only, "Two Children"; others by Jane M. Dealy, "Sixes and Sevens" (1882), and "Little Miss Marigold" (1884); "Nursery Land," by H. J. Maguire (1888), and "Sunbeams," by E. K. Johnson and Ewart Wilson (1887).

F. D. Bedford, who illustrated and decorated "The Battle of the Frogs and Mice" (Methuen), has produced this year one of the most satisfactory books with coloured illustrations. In "Nursery Rhymes" (Methuen), the pictures, block-printed in colour by Edmund Evans, are worthy to be placed beside the best books he has produced.

Of all lady illustrators--the phrase is cumbrous, but we have no other--Miss A. B. Woodward stands apart, not only by the vigour of her work, but by its amazing humour, a quality which is certainly infrequent in the work of her sister-artists. The books she has illustrated are not very many, but all show this quality. "Banbury Cross," in Messrs. Dent's Series is among the first. In "To Tell the King the Sky is Falling" (Blackie, 1896) there is a store of delicious examples, and in "The Brownies" (Dent, 1896), the vigour of the handling is very noticeable. In "Eric, Prince of Lorlonia" (Macmillan, 1896), we have further proof that these characteristics are not mere accidents, but the result of carefully studied intention, which is also apparent in the clever designs for the covers of Messrs. Blackie's Catalogue, 1896-97. This year, in "Red Apple and Silver Bells," Miss Woodward shows marked advance. The book, with its delicious rhymes by Hamish Hendry, is one to treasure, as is also her "Adventures in Toy Land," designs marked by the _diablerie_ of which she, alone of lady artists, seems to have the secret. In this the wooden, inane expression of the toys contrasts delightfully with the animate figures.

Mr. Charles Robinson is one of the youngest recruits to the army of illustrators, and yet his few years' record is both lengthy and kept at a singularly high level. In the first of his designs which attracted attention we find the half-grotesque, half-real child that he has made his own--fat, merry little people, that are bubbling over with the joy of mere existence. "Macmillan's Literary Primers" is the rather ponderous title of these booklets which cost but a few pence each, and are worth many a half-dozen high-priced nursery books. Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verse," his first important book, won a new reputation by reason of its pictures. Then came "AEsop's Fables," in Dent's "Banbury Cross" Series. The next year saw Mr. Gabriel Setoun's book of poems, "Child World," Mrs. Meynell's "The Children," Mr. H. D. Lowry's "Make Believe," and two decorated pages in "The Parade" (Henry and Co.). The present Christmas will see several books from his hand.

"Old World Japan" (George Allen) has thirty-four, and "Legends from River and Mountain," forty-two, pictures by T. H. Robinson, which must not be forgotten. "The Giant Crab" (Nutt), and "Andersen" (Bliss, Sands), are among the best things W. Robinson has yet done.

"Nonsense," by A. Nobody, and "Some More Nonsense," by A. Nobody (Gardner, Darton & Co.), are unique instances of an unfettered humour. That their apparently naive grotesques are from the hand of a very practised draughtsman is evident at a first glance; but as their author prefers to remain anonymous his identity must not be revealed. Specimens from the published work (which is, however, mostly in colour), and facsimiles of hitherto unpublished drawings, entitled "The Singing Lesson," kindly lent by Messrs. Gardner, Darton & Co., are here to prove how merry our anonym can be. By the way, it may be well to add that the artist in question is _not_ Sir Edward Burne-Jones, whose caricatures, that are the delight of children of all ages who know them, have been so far strictly kept to members of the family circle, for whom they were produced.

The editor of THE STUDIO, to whose selection of pictures for reproduction these pages owe their chief interest, has spared no effort to show a good working sample of the best of all classes, and in the space available has certainly omitted few of any consequence--except those so very well known, as, for instance, Tenniel's "Alice" series, and the Caldecott toy-books--which it would have been superfluous to illustrate again, especially in black and white after coloured originals.

In Mrs. Field's volume already mentioned, the author says: "It has been well observed that children do not desire, and ought not to be furnished with purely realistic portraits of themselves; the boy's heart craves a hero, and the Johnny or Frank of the realistic story-book, the little boy like himself, is not in this sense a hero." This passage, referring to the stories themselves, might be applied to their illustration with hardly less force. To idealise is the normal impulse of a child. True that it can "make believe" from the most rudimentary hints, but it is much easier to do so if something not too actual is the groundwork. Figures which delight children are never wholly symbolic, mere virtues and vices materialised as personages of the anecdote. Real nonsense such as Lear concocted, real wit such as that which sparkles from Lewis Carroll's pages, find their parallel in the pictures which accompany each text. It is the feeble effort to be funny, the mildly punning humour of the imitators, which makes the text tedious, and one fancies the artist is also infected, for in such books the drawings very rarely rise to a high level.

The "pretty-pretty" school, which has been too popular, especially in anthologies of mildly entertaining rhymes, is sickly at its best, and fails to retain the interest of a child. Possibly, in pleading for imaginative art, one has forgotten that everywhere is Wonderland to a child, who would be no more astonished to find a real elephant dropping in to tea, or a real miniature railway across the lawn, than in finding a toy elephant or a toy engine awaiting him. Children are so accustomed to novelty that they do not realise the abnormal; nor do they always crave for unreality. As coaches and horses were the delight of youngsters a century ago, so are trains and steamboats to-day. Given a pile of books and an empty floor space, their imagination needs no mechanical models of real locomotives; or, to be more correct, they enjoy the make-believe with quite as great a zest. Hence, perhaps, in praising conscious art for children's literature, one is unwittingly pleasing older tastes; indeed, it is not inconceivable that the "prig" which lurks in most of us may be nurtured by too refined diet. Whether a child brought up wholly on the aesthetic toy-book would realise the greatness of Rembrandt's etchings or other masterpieces of realistic art more easily than one who had only known the current pictures of cheap magazines, is not a question to be decided off-hand. To foster an artificial taste is not wholly unattended with danger; but if humour be present, as it is in the works of the best artists for the nursery, then all fear vanishes; good wholesome laughter is the deadliest bane to the prig-microbe, and will leave no infant lisping of the preciousness of Cimabue, or the wonder of Sandro Botticelli, as certain children were reported to do in the brief days when the aesthete walked his faded way among us. That modern children's books will--some of them at least--take an honourable place in an iconography of nineteenth-century art, many of the illustrations here reproduced are in themselves sufficient to prove.

After so many pages devoted to the subject, it might seem as if the mass of material should have revealed very clearly what is the ideal illustration for children. But "children" is a collective term, ranging from the tastes of the baby to the precocious youngsters who dip into Mudie books on the sly, and hold conversations thereon which astonish their elders when by chance they get wind of the fact. Perhaps the belief that children can be educated by the eye is more plausible than well supported. In any case, it is good that the illustration should be well drawn, well coloured; given that, whether it be realistically imitative or wholly fantastic is quite a secondary matter. As we have had pointed out to us, the child is not best pleased by mere portraits of himself; he prefers idealised children, whether naughtier and more adventurous, or absolute heroes of romance. And here a strange fact appears, that as a rule what pleases the boy pleases the girl also; but that boys look down with scorn on "girls' books." Any one who has had to do with children knows how eagerly little sisters pounce upon books owned by their brothers. Now, as a rule, books for girls are confined to stories of good girls, pictures of good girls, and mildly exciting domestic incidents, comic or tragic. The child may be half angel; he is undoubtedly half savage; a Pagan indifference to other people's pain, and grim joy in other people's accidents, bear witness to that fact. Tender-hearted parents fear lest some pictures should terrify the little ones; the few that do are those which the child himself discovers in some extraordinary way to be fetishes. He hates them, yet is fascinated by them. I remember myself being so appalled by a picture that is still keenly remembered. It fascinated me, and yet was a thing of which the mere memory made one shudder in the dark--the said picture representing a benevolent negro with Eva on his lap, from "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a blameless Sunday-school inspired story. The horrors of an early folio of Foxe's "Martyrs," of a grisly "Bunyan," with terrific pictures of Apollyon; even a still more grim series by H. C. Selous, issued by the Art Union, if memory may be trusted, were merely exciting; it was the mild and amiable representation of "Uncle Tom" that I felt to be the very incarnation of all things evil. This personal incident is quoted only to show how impossible it is for the average adult to foretell what will frighten or what will delight a child. For children are singularly reticent concerning the "bogeys" of their own creating, yet, like many fanatics, it is these which they really most fear.

Certainly it is possible that over-conscious art is too popular to-day. The illustrator when he is at work often thinks more of the art critic who may review his book than the readers who are to enjoy it. Purely conventional groups of figures, whether set in a landscape, or against a decorative background, as a rule fail to retain a child's interest. He wants invention and detail, plenty of incident, melodrama rather than suppressed emotion. Something moving, active, and suggestive pleases him most, something about which a story can be woven not so complex that his sense is puzzled to explain why things are as the artist drew them. It is good to educate children unconsciously, but if we are too careful that all pictures should be devoted to raising their standard of taste, it is possible that we may soon come back to the Miss Pinkerton ideal of amusement blended with instruction. Hence one doubts if the "ultra-precious" school really pleases the child; and if he refuse the jam the powder is obviously refused also. One who makes pictures for children, like one who writes them stories, should have the knack of entertaining them without any appearance of condescension in so doing. They will accept any detail that is related to the incident, but are keenly alive to discrepancies of detail or action that clash with the narrative. As they do not demand fine drawing, so the artist must be careful to offer them very much more than academic accomplishment. Indeed, he (or she) must be in sympathy with childhood, and able to project his vision back to its point of view. And this is just a mood in accord with the feeling of our own time, when men distrust each other and themselves, and keep few ideals free from doubt, except the reverence for the sanctity of childhood. Those who have forsaken beliefs hallowed by centuries, and are the most cynical and worldly-minded, yet often keep faith in one lost Atalantis--the domain of their own childhood and those who still dwell in the happy isle. To have given a happy hour to one of the least of these is peculiarly gratifying to many tired people to-day, those surfeited with success no less than those weary of failure. And such labour is of love all compact; for children are grudging in their praise, and seldom trouble to inquire who wrote their stories or painted their pictures. Consequently those who work for them win neither much gold nor great fame; but they have a most enthusiastic audience all the same. Yet when we remember that the veriest daubs and atrocious drawings are often welcomed as heartily, one is driven to believe that after all the bored people who turn to amuse the children, like others who turn to elevate the masses, are really, if unconsciously, amusing if not elevating themselves. If children's books please older people--and that they do so is unquestionable--it would be well to acknowledge it boldly, and to share the pleasure with the nursery; not to take it surreptitiously under the pretence of raising the taste of little people. Why should not grown-up people avow their pleasure in children's books if they feel it?

If a collector in search of a new hobby wishes to start on a quest full of disappointment, yet also full of lucky possibilities, illustrated books for children would give him an exciting theme. The rare volume he hunted for in vain at the British Museum and South Kensington, for which he scanned the shelves of every second-hand bookseller within reach, may meet his eye in a twopenny box, just as he has despaired of ever seeing, much less procuring, a copy. At least twice during the preparation of this number I have enjoyed that particular experience, and have no reason to suppose it was very abnormal. To make a fine library of these things may be difficult, but it is not a predestined failure. Caxtons and Wynkyn de Wordes seem less scarce than some of these early nursery books. Yet, as we know, the former have been the quest of collectors for years, and so are probably nearly all sifted out of the great rubbish-heaps of dealers; the latter have not been in great demand, and may be unearthed in odd corners of country shops and all sorts of likely and unlikely places. Therefore, as a hobby, it offers an exciting quest with almost certain success in the end; in short, it offers the ideal conditions for collecting as a pastime, provided you can muster sufficient interest in the subject to become absorbed in its pursuit. So large is it that, even to limit one's quest to books with coloured pictures would yet require a good many years' hunting to secure a decent "bag." Another tempting point is that prices at present are mostly nominal, not because the quarry is plentiful, but because the demand is not recognised by the general bookseller. Of course, books in good condition, with unannotated pages, are rare; and some series--Felix Summerley's, for example--which owe their chief interest to the "get-up" of the volume considered as a whole, would be scarce worth possessing if "rebound" or deprived of their covers. Still, always provided the game attracts him, the hobby-horseman has fair chances, and is inspired by motives hardly less noble than those which distinguish the pursuit of bookplates (_ex libris_), postage-stamps and other objects which have attracted men to devote not only their leisure and their spare cash, but often their whole energy and nearly all their resources. Societies, with all the pomp of officials, and members proudly arranging detached letters of the alphabet after their names, exist for discussing hobbies not more important. Speaking as an interested but not infatuated collector, it seems as if the mere gathering together of rarities of this sort would soon become as tedious as the amassing of dull armorial _ex libris_, or sorting infinitely subtle varieties of postage-stamps. But seeing the intense passion such things arouse in their devotees, the fact that among children's books there are not a few of real intrinsic interest, ought not to make the hobby less attractive; except that, speaking generally, your true collector seems to despise every quality except rarity (which implies market value ultimately, if for the moment there are not enough rival collectors to have started a "boom" in prices). Yet all these "snappers up of unconsidered trifles" help to gather together material which may prove in time to be not without value to the social historian or the student interested in the progress of printing and the art of illustration; but it would be a pity to confuse ephemeral "curios" with lasting works of fine art, and the ardour of collecting need not blind one to the fact that the former are greatly in excess of the latter.

The special full-page illustrations which appear in this number must not be left without a word of comment. In place of re-issuing facsimiles of actual illustrations from coloured books of the past which would probably have been familiar to many readers, drawings by artists who are mentioned elsewhere in this Christmas Number have been specially designed to carry out the spirit of the theme. For Christmas is pre-eminently the time for children's books. Mr. Robert Halls' painting of a baby, here called "The Heir to Fairyland"--the critic for whom all this vast amount of effort is annually expended--is seen still in the early or destructive stage, a curious foreshadowing of his attitude in a later development should he be led from the paths of Philistia to the bye-ways of art criticism. The portrait miniatures of child-life by Mr. Robert Halls, if not so well known as they deserve, cannot be unfamiliar to readers of THE STUDIO, since many of his best works have been exhibited at the Academy and elsewhere.