Chapter 6
The _Vicar of Wakefield_--as it happens--was Mr. Thomson's next enterprise; and it is, in many respects, a most memorable one. It came out in December, 1890, having occupied him for nearly two years. He took exceptional pains to study and realise the several types for himself, and to ensure correctness of costume. From the first introductory procession of the Primrose family at the head of chapter i. to the awkward merriment of the two Miss Flamboroughs at the close, there is scarcely a page which has not some stroke of quiet fun, some graceful attitude, or some ingenious contrivance in composition. Considering that from Wenham's edition of 1780, nearly every illustrator of repute had tried his hand at Goldsmith's masterpiece in fiction,--that he had been attempted without humour by Stothard, without lightness by Mulready,[31]--that he had been made comic by Cruikshank, and vulgarised by Rowiandson,--it was certainly to Mr. Thomson's credit that he had approached his task with so much refinement, reverence and originality. If the book has a blemish, it is to be mentioned only because the artist, by his later practice, seems to have recognised it himself. For the purposes of process reproduction, the drawings were somewhat loaded and overworked.
Note:
[31]: Mulready's illustrations of 1843 are here referred to, net his pictures.
This was not chargeable against the next volumes to be chronicled. Mrs. Gaskell's _Cranford_, 1891, and Miss Mitford's _Our Village_, 1893, are still regarded by many as the artist's happiest efforts. I say "still," because Mr. Thomson is only now in what Victor Hugo called the youth of old age (as opposed to the old age of youth); and it would be premature to assume that a talent so alert to multiply and diversify its efforts, had already attained the summit of its achievement. But in these two books he had certain unquestionable advantages. One obviously would be, that his audience were not already preoccupied by former illustrations; and he was consequently free to invent his own personages and follow his own fertile fancy, without recalling to that implacable and Gorgonising organ, the "Public Eye," any earlier pictorial conceptions. Another thing in his favour was, that in either case, the very definite, and not very complex types surrendered themselves readily to artistic embodiment. "It almost illustrated itself,"--he told an interviewer concerning _Cranford_; "the characters were so exquisitely and distinctly realised." Every one has known some like them; and the delightful Knutsford ladies (for "Cranford" was "Knutsford"), the "Boz"--loving Captain Brown and Mr. Holbrook, Peter and his father, and even Martha the maid, with their _mise en scene_ of card-tables and crackle-china, and pattens and reticules, are part of the memories of our childhood. The same may be said of _Our Village_, except that the breath of Nature blows more freely through it than through the quiet Cheshire market-town; and there is a larger preponderance of those "charming glimpses of rural life" of which Lady Ritchie speaks admiringly in her sympathetic preface. And with regard to the "bits of scenery"--as Mr. Thomson himself calls them--it may be noted that one of the Manchester papers, speaking of _Cranford_, praised the artist's intimate knowledge of the locality,--a locality he had never seen. Most of his backgrounds were from sketches made on Wimbledon Common, near which--until he moved for a space to the ancient Cinque Port of Seaford in Sussex--he lived for the first years of his London life.
In strict order of time, Mr. Thomson's next important effort should have preceded the books of Miss Mitford and Mrs. Gaskell. The novels of Jane Austen--to which we now come--if not the artist's high-water mark, are certainly remarkable as a _tour de force_. To contrive some forty page illustrations for each of Miss Austen's admirable, but--from an illustrator's standpoint--not very palpitating productions,--with a scene usually confined to the dining-room or parlour,--with next to no animals, and with rare opportunities for landscape accessory,--was an "adventure"--in Cervantic phrase--which might well have given pause to a designer of less fertility and resource. But besides the figures there was the furniture; and acute admirers have pointed out that a nice discretion is exhibited in graduating the appointments of Longbourn and Netherfield Park,--of Rosings and Hunsford. But what is perhaps more worthy of remark is the artist's persistent attempt to give individuality, as well as grace, to his dramatis persona;. The unspeakable Mr. Collins, Mr. Bennet, the horsy Mr. John Thorpe, Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Norris, the Eltons--are all carefully discriminated. Nothing can well be better than Mr. Woodhouse, with his "almost immaterial legs" drawn securely out of the range of a too-fierce fire, chatting placidly to Miss Bates upon the merits of water-gruel; nothing more in keeping than the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, "in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind" of her indignation, superciliously pausing to patronise the capabilities of the Longbourn reception rooms. Not less happy is the dumbfounded astonishment of Mrs. Bennet at her toilet, when she hears--to her stupefaction--that her daughter Elizabeth is to be mistress of Pemberley and ten thousand a year. This last is a head-piece; and it may be observed, as an additional difficulty in this group of novels, that, owing to the circumstances of publication, only in one of the books. _Pride and Prejudice_, was Mr, Thomson free to decorate the chapters with those ingenious _entetes_ and _culs-de-lampe_ of which he so eminently possesses the secret.[32]
Note:
[32] That eloquence of subsidiary detail, which has had so many exponents in English art from Hogarth onwards, is one of Mr. Thomson's most striking characteristics. The reader will find it exemplified in the beautiful book-plate at page 111, which, by the courtesy of its owner, Mr. Ernest Brown, I am permitted to reproduce.
By this time his reputation had long been firmly established. To the Jane Austen volumes succeeded other numbers of the so-called "Cranford" series, to which, in 1894, Mr. Thomson had already added, under the title of _Coridon's Song and other Verses_, a fresh ingathering of old-time minstrelsy from the pages of the _English Illustrated_. Many of the drawings for these, though of necessity reduced for publication in book form, are in his most delightful and winning manner,--notably perhaps (if one must choose!) the martial ballad of that "Captain of Militia, Sir Bilberry Diddle," who
--dreamt, Fame reports, that he cut all the throats Of the French as they landed in flat-bottomed boats
--or rather were going to land any time during the Seven Years' War. Excellent, too, are John Gay's ambling _Journey to Exeter_., the _Angler's Song_ from Walton (which gives its name to the collection), and Fielding's rollicking "A-hunting we will go." Other "Cranford" books, which now followed, were James Lane Allen's _Kentucky Cardinal_, 1901; Fanny Burney's _Evelina_, 1903; Thackeray's _Esmond_, 1905; and two of George Eliot's novels--_Scenes of Clerical Life_, 1906, and _Silas Marner_, 1907. In 1899 Mr. Thomson had also undertaken another book for George Allen, an edition of Reade's _Peg Woffington_,--a task in which he took the keenest delight, particularly in the burlesque character of Triplet. These were all in the old pen-work; but some of the designs for _Silas Marner_ were lightly and tastefully coloured. This was a plan the author had adopted, with good effect, not only in a special edition of _Cranford_ (1898), but for some of his original drawings which came into the market after exhibition. Nothing can be more seductive than a Hugh Thomson pen-sketch, when delicately tinted in sky-blue, _rose-Du Barry_, and apple-green (the _vert-pomme_ dear--as Gautier says--to the soft moderns)--a treatment which lends them a subdued but indefinable distinction, as of old china with a pedigree, and fully justifies the amiable enthusiasm of the phrase-maker who described their inventor as the "Charles Lamb of illustration."
From the above enumeration certain omissions have of necessity been made. Besides the books mentioned, Mr. Thomson has contrived to prepare for newspapers and magazines many closely-studied sketches of contemporary manners. Some of the best of his work in this way is to be found in the late Mrs. E.T. Cook's _Highways and Byways of London Life_, 1902. For the _Highways and Byways_ series, he has also illustrated, wholly or in part, volumes on Ireland, North Wales, Devon, Cornwall and Yorkshire. The last volume, Kent, 1907, is entirely decorated by himself. In this instance, his drawings throughout are in pencil, and he is his own topographer. It is a remarkable departure, both in manner and theme, though Mr. Thomson's liking for landscape has always been pronounced. "I would desire above all things," he told an interviewer, "to pass my time in painting landscape. Landscape pictures always attract me, and the grand examples, Gainsboroughs, Claudes, Cromes, and Turners, to be seen any day in our National Gallery, are a source of never-failing yearning and delight." The original drawings for the Kent book are of great beauty; and singularly dexterous in the varied methods by which the effect is produced. The artist is now at work on the county of Surrey. It is earnest of his versatility that, in 1904, he illustrated for Messrs. Wells, Darton and Co., with conspicuous success, a modernised prose version of certain of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, as well as _Tales from Maria Edgeworth_, 1903; and he also executed, in 1892 and 1895,[33] some charming designs to selections from the verses of the present writer, who has long enjoyed the privilege of his friendship.
Personal traits do not come within the province of this paper, or it would be pleasant to dwell upon Mr. Thomson's modesty, his untiring industry, and his devotion to his art. But in regard to that art, it may be observed that to characterise it solely as "packing the memory with pleasant fancies" may suffice for an exordium, but is inadequate as a final appreciation. Let me therefore note down, as they occur to me, some of his more prominent pictorial characteristics. With three of the artists mentioned in this and the preceding paper, he has obvious affinities, while, in a sense, he includes them all. If he does not excel Stothard in the gift of grace, he does in range and variety; and he more than rivals him in composition. He has not, like Miss Greenaway, endowed the art-world with a special type of childhood; but his children are always lifelike and engaging. (Compare, at a venture, the boy soldiers whom Frank Castlewood is drilling in chapter xi. of _Esmond_, or the delightful little fellow who is throwing up his arms in chapter ix. of _Emma_.) As regards dogs and horses and the rest, his colleague, Mr, Joseph Pennell, an expert critic, and a most accomplished artist, holds that he has "long since surpassed" Randolph Caldecott.[34] I doubt whether Mr. Thomson himself would concur with his eulogist in this. But he has assuredly followed Caldecott close; and in opulence of production, which--as Macaulay insisted--should always count, has naturally exceeded that gifted, but shortlived, designer. If, pursuing an ancient practice, one were to attempt to label Mr. Thomson with a special distinction apart from, and in addition to, his other merits, I should be inclined to designate him the "Master of the Vignette,"--taking that word in its primary sense as including head-pieces, tail-pieces and initial letters. In this department, no draughtsman I can call to mind has ever shown greater fertility of invention, so much playful fancy, so much grace, so much kindly humour, and such a sane and wholesome spirit of fun.
Notes:
[33] _The Ballad of Beau Brocade_, and _The Story of Rosina_.
[34] _Pen-Drawing and Pen-Draughtsmen, 2nd ed. 1894, p. 358._
HORATIAN ODE
ON THE TERCENTENARY OF
"DON QUIXOTE"
_(Published at Madrid, by Francisco de Robles, January 1605)_
"Para mi sola nacio don Quixote, y yo para el."--CERVANTES.
Advents we greet of great and small; Much we extol that may not live; Yet to the new-born Type we give No care at all!
This year,[35]--three centuries past,--by age More maimed than by LEPANTO'S fight,-- This year CERVANTES gave to light His matchless page,
Whence first outrode th' immortal Pair,-- The half-crazed Hero and his hind,-- To make sad laughter for mankind; And whence they fare
Throughout all Fiction still, where chance Allies Life's dulness with its dreams-- Allies what is, with what but seems,-- Fact and Romance:--
O Knight of fire and Squire of earth!-- O changing give-and-take between The aim too high, the aim too mean, I hail your birth,--
Three centuries past,--in sunburned SPAIN, And hang, on Time's PANTHEON wall, My votive tablet to recall That lasting gain!
Note:
[35] _I.e._ January 1905.
THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS
One common grave, according to Garrick, covers the actor and his art. The same may be said of the raconteur. Oral tradition, or even his own writings, may preserve his precise words; but his peculiarities of voice or action, his tricks of utterance and intonation,--all the collateral details which serve to lend distinction or piquancy to the performance--perish irrecoverably. The glorified gramophone of the future may perhaps rectify this for a new generation; and give us, without mechanical drawback, the authentic accents of speakers dead and gone; but it can never perpetuate the dramatic accompaniment of gesture and expression. If, as always, there are exceptions to this rule, they are necessarily evanescent. Now and then, it may be, some clever mimic will recall the manner of a passed-away predecessor; and he may even contrive to hand it on, more or less effectually, to a disciple. But the reproduction is of brief duration; and it is speedily effaced or transformed.
In this way it is, however, that we get our most satisfactory idea of the once famous table-talker, Samuel Rogers. Charles Dickens, who sent Rogers several of his books; who dedicated _Master Humphrey's Clock_ to him; and who frequently assisted at the famous breakfasts in St. James's Place, was accustomed--rather cruelly, it may be thought--to take off his host's very characteristic way of telling a story; and it is, moreover, affirmed by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald[36] that, in the famous Readings, "the strangely obtuse and owl-like expression, and the slow, husky croak" of Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the "Trial from _Pickwick_" were carefully copied from the author of the _Pleasures of Memory_, That Dickens used thus to amuse his friends is confirmed by the autobiography of the late Frederick Locker,[37] who perfectly remembered the old man, to see whom he had been carried, as a boy, by his father. He had also heard Dickens repeat one of Rogers's stock anecdotes (it was that of the duel in a dark room, where the more considerate combatant, firing up the chimney, brings down his adversary);[38]--and he speaks of Dickens as mimicking Rogers's "calm, low-pitched, drawling voice and dry biting manner very comically."[39] At the same time, it must be remembered that these reminiscences relate to Rogers in his old age. He was over seventy when Dickens published his first book, _Sketches by Boz_; and, though it is possible that Rogers's voice was always rather sepulchral, and his enunciation unusually deliberate and monotonous, he had nevertheless, as Locker says, "made story-telling a fine art." Continued practice had given him the utmost economy of words; and as far as brevity and point are concerned, his method left nothing to be desired. Many of his best efforts are still to be found in the volume of _Table-Talk_ edited for Moxon in 1856 by the Rev. Alexander Dyce; or preferably, as actually written down by Rogers himself in the delightful _Recollections_ issued three years later by his nephew and executor, William Sharpe.
Notes:
[36] _Recreations of a Literary Man_, 1882, p. 137.
[37] _My Confidences_, by Frederick Locker-Lampson, 1896, pp. 98 and 325.
[38] The duellists were an Englishman and a Frenchman; and Rogers was in the habit of adding as a postscript: "When I tell that in Paris, I always put the Englishman up the chimney!"
[39] It may be added that Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, himself no mean mime, may be sometimes persuaded to imitate Dickens imitating Rogers.
But although the two things are often intimately connected, the "books," and not the "stories" of Rogers, are the subject of the present paper. After this, it sounds paradoxical to have to admit that his reputation as a connoisseur far overshadowed his reputation as a bibliophile. When, in December 1855, he died, his pictures and curios,--his "articles of virtue and bigotry" as a modern Malaprop would have styled them,--attracted far more attention than the not very numerous volumes forming his library.[40] What people flocked to see at the tiny treasure-house overlooking the Green Park,[41] which its nonagenarian owner had occupied for more than fifty years, were the "Puck" and "Strawberry Girl" of Sir Joshua, the Titians, Giorgiones, and Guidos,[42] the Poussins and Claudes, the drawings of Raphael and Duerer and Lucas van Leyden, the cabinet decorated by Stothard, the chimney-piece carved by Flaxman; the miniatures and bronzes and Etruscan vases,--all the "infinite riches in a little room," which crowded No. 22 from garret to basement. These were the rarities that filled the columns of the papers and the voices of the quidnuncs when in 1856 they came to the hammer. But although the Press of that day takes careful count of these things, it makes little reference to the sale of the "books" of the banker-bard who spent some L15,000 on the embellishments of his _Italy_ and his _Poems_; and although Dr. Burney says that Rogers's library included "the best editions of the best authors in most languages," he had clearly no widespread reputation as a book-collector pure and simple. Nevertheless he loved his books,--that is, he loved the books he read. And, as far as can be ascertained, he anticipated the late Master of Balliol, since he read only the books he liked. Nor was he ever diverted from his predilections by mere fashion or novelty. "He followed Bacon's maxim"--says one who knew him--"to read much, not many things: _multum legere, non multa_. He used to say, 'When a new book comes out, I read an old one.'"[43]
Notes:
[40] The prices obtained confirm this. Thetotaisum realised was L45,188:14:3. Of this the books represented no more than L1415:5.
[41] This--with its triple range of bow-windows, from one of which Rogers used to watch his favourite sunsets--is now the residence of Lord Northcliffe.
[42] Three of these--the "_Noli me tangere_" of Titian, Giorgione's "Knight in Armour," and Guide's "_Ecce Homo_"--are now in the National Gallery, to which they were bequeathed by Rogers.
[43] _Edinburgh Review_, vol. civ. p. 105, by Abraham Hayward.
The general Rogers-sale at Christie's took place in the spring of 1856, and twelve days had been absorbed before the books were reached. Their sale took six days more--_i.e._ from May 12 to May 19. As might be expected from Rogers's traditional position in the literary world, the catalogue contains many presentation copies. What, at first sight, would seem the earliest, is the _Works_ of Edward Moore, 1796, 2 vols. But if this be the fabulist and editor of the _World_, it can scarcely have been received from the writer, since, in 1796, Moore had been dead for nearly forty years. With Bloomfield's poems of 1802, l. p., we are on surer ground, for Rogers, like Capel Lofft, had been kind to the author of _The Farmer's Boy_, and had done his best to obtain him a pension. Another early tribute, subsequently followed by the _Tales of the Hall_, was Crabbe's Borough, which he sent to Rogers in 1810, in response to polite overtures made to him by the poet. This was the beginning of a lasting friendship, of no small import to Crabbe, as it at once admitted him to Rogers's circle, an advantage of which there are many traces in Crabbe's journal. Next comes Madame de Stael's much proscribed _De l'Allamagne_ (the Paris edition); and from its date, 1813, it must have been presented to Rogers when its irrepressible author was in England. She often dined or breakfasted at St. James's Place, where (according to Byron), she out-talked Whitbread, confounded Sir Humphry Davy, and was herself well "_ironed_"[44] by Sheridan. Rogers considered _Corinne_ to be her best novel, and _Delphine_ a terrible falling-off. The Germany he found "very fatiguing." "She writes her works four or five times over, correcting them only in that way"--he says. "The end of a chapter [is] always the most obscure, as she ends with an epigram,"[45] Another early presentation copy is the second edition of Bowles's _Missionary_, 1815. According to Rogers, who claims to have suggested the poem, it was to have been inscribed to him. But somehow or other, the book got dedicated to noble lord who--Rogers adds drily--never, either by word or letter, made any acknowledgment of the homage.[46] It is not impossible that there is some confusion of recollection here, or Rogers is misreported by Dyce. The first anonymous edition of the _Missionary_, 1813, had _no_ dedication; and the second was inscribed to the Marquess of Lansdowne because he had been prominent among those who recognised the merit of its predecessor.
Notes:
[44] Perhaps a remembrance of Mrs Slipslop's "_ironing_."
[45] Clayden's _Rogers and his Contemporaries_, 1889, i. 225. As an epigrammatist himself, Rogers might have been more indulgent to a _consoeur_. Here is one of Madame de Stael's "ends of chapters":--"_La monotonie, dans la retraite, tranquillise l'ame; la monotonie, dans le grand monde, fatigue l'esprit_" (ch. viii.). But he evidently found her rather overpowering.
[46] Table-Talk, 1856, p. 258.
Several of Scott's poems, with Rogers's autograph, and Scott's card, appear in the catalogue; and, in 1812, Byron, who a year after inscribed the _Giaour_ to Rogers, sent him the first two cantos of _Childe Harold._ In 1838, Moore presents _Lalla Rookh_, with Heath's plates, a work which, upon its first appearance, twenty years earlier, had been dedicated to Rogers. In 1839 Charles Dickens followed with _Nicholas Nickleby_, succeeded a year later by _Master Humphrey's Clock_ (1840-1), also dedicated to Rogers in recognition, not only of his poetical merit, but of his "active sympathy with the poorest and humblest of his kind." Rogers was fond of "Little Nell"; and in the Preface to _Barnaby Rudge_, Dickens gracefully acknowledged that "for a beautiful thought" in the seventy-second chapter of the _Old Curiosity Shop_, he was indebted to Rogers's Ginevra in the _Italy_:--
And long might'st thou have seen An old man wandering _as in quest of something,_ Something he could not find--he knew not what.