CHAPTER XII.

AT MENTONE, ETC.

From the Riviera in 1879 came the following pictures in letters to friends.

"This hotel is indeed a calm spot, but the food is good, and I have a pleasant little room or two, where I can work comfortably. I know the inhabitant of one villa here, an American; and I think there are two people whom I know in an hotel, so when I feel very lonely I shall hunt them up. There is much snow on the rocky hills near the town, and the weather is rather cold, but the aspect of everything around (nearly) is very fine and worth coming to see."

In another letter he sends the following sketch of himself at table in the vast _salle à manger_ of the hotel.[12]

"SPLENDIDE HOTEL, MENTON,

"_11th January, 1879_.

"DEAR ----,--The above view will give you a more correct idea of the _splendour_ of this hotel than a page of writing, I think, could possibly do. It represents our _table d'hôte_ last night. I fled yesterday from Cannes, which--although called a very quiet place by most visitors--I found to be too lively for one who has much work to do and a desire to do it."

* * * * *

Much drawing was accomplished in the spring of this year, both abroad, and on return to London. The success of his first Picture Books (on which he writes, "I get a small, small royalty") was beyond all expectation, and the _Elegy of a Mad Dog_ was now in progress.

Writing on the 20th June, in the wet summer of 1879, from 5, Langham Chambers, Portland Place (a studio that he had taken temporarily from an artist friend, Mr. W. J. Hennessy), he heads the letter with the sketch on page 192, which is interesting as the first idea for the drawing which appeared in _Punch_ on the 2nd August, 1879, reproduced on the preceding page by permission of the proprietors.

The illustration on the opposite page is an example of Caldecott in a style which will be new to most readers. The book plate was drawn for an old and intimate friend in Manchester, and it is curious to note how closely the style of the family crest is followed in its various details. If it were not for certain satirical touches this ingenious design might easily pass for the work of other hands; the touch and treatment have little in common with Caldecott as he is known; but the artistic completeness of the little book plate is another evidence of his power as a designer.

In September Caldecott modelled some birds, forming part of the capitals of pillars for Sir Frederick Leighton's 'Arab Hall' in his house at Kensington. They were done for the architect, Mr. G. Aitchison, A.R.A. Besides these he was at work on other modelling; one subject (the outcome of his Brittany travels) is given on page 194.

In 1879 he took a small house, with an old-fashioned garden, at Kemsing, near Sevenoaks. This was his first country home, "an out-of-the-way place," as he expressed it, "but exactly right for me." Here, surrounded by his four-footed friends, he could indulge his liking and love for the country.

Writing to a young friend on the 13th October, he sends the following:--

"I am just now obliged to decline invitations to go and be merry with friends at a distance, because I am now living in this quiet, out-of-the-way village in order to make some studies of animals--to wit, horses, dogs, and other human beings--which I wish to use for the works that I shall be busy with during the coming winter.

"I have a mare--dark chestnut--who goes very well in harness, and is very pleasant to ride; and a little puppy--a comical young dachshund. My man calls the mare 'Peri,' so I call the puppy Lalla Rookh."

In a letter to his friend Mr. Locker-Lampson, written about this time, in 1880, he expresses surprise at not hearing from America respecting certain drawings by Miss Kate Greenaway and himself, which had been sent across the Atlantic to be engraved on wood. "I wonder why?" he says--[The rest is reproduced opposite].

Caldecott was soon found out in his country home, his wide reputation as an illustrator bringing him ever-increasing work, some "not very profitable."

At this time he was taxing his energies to the utmost, working a long morning always indoors, and afterwards making studies in the garden or in the country; the evening occupied by reading and correspondence.

But he found time always--and until the end--to remember and to write to his old and dear friends. One more extract (the last in this book) from a letter from Venice, to an invalid friend in Manchester in 1880:--

"I am sorry to hear that you are so lame," he says. "I wish you had been with us in Venice--the going to and fro in gondolas would have suited you well. Easy, smooth, and soul-subduing--especially by moonlight and when the ear is filled with the rich notes of a very uncommon gondolier's voice and the twanging of a sentimental traveller's lute.

"On the 18th of March we were married at a small church in Kent--my best man drove me in a dog-cart. I sold him my mare on the way, and she came to sad grief with him!"

The letters after this date refer to a period in Caldecott's art which must be considered at a future time. Only two remembrances of his later years shall be recorded now; one of him at Kemsing, seated in his old-fashioned garden on a fine summer's afternoon (after hard work from nine till two) surrounded by his friends and four-footed playmates--a garden where the birds, and even the flowers, lived unrestrained.

"Where woodbines wander, and the wallflower pushes Its way alone; And where, in wafts of fragrance, sweetbriar-bushes Make themselves known. With banks of violets for southern breezes To seek and find, And trellis'd jessamine that trembles in The summer wind. Where clove-carnations overgrow the places Where they were set, And, mist-like, in the intervening spaces Creeps mignonette."

The other and a later remembrance of Caldecott is at a gathering of friends in Victoria Street, Westminster, in January, 1885, when--to a good old English tune--the "lasses and lads," out of his _Picture Book_, danced before him, and the fiddler, in the costume of the time, "played it wrong."