De Libris: Prose and Verse Part 6

After a few hesitating and tentative attempts upon the newspapers, he obtained an introduction to Mr. Comyns Carr, then engaged in establis.h.i.+ng the _English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine_ for Messrs. Macmillan.

His recommendation was a sc.r.a.p-book of minutely elaborated designs for _Vanity Fair_, which he had done (like Reynolds) "out of pure idleness."

Mr. Carr, then, as always, a discriminating critic, with a keen eye to possibilities, was not slow to detect, among much artistic recollection, something more than uncertain promise; and although he had already Randolph Caldecott and Mr. Harry Furniss on his staff, he at once gave Mr. Thomson a commission for the magazine. The earliest picture from his hand which appeared was a fancy representation of the Parade at Bath for a paper in June, 1884, by the late H. D. Traill; and he also ill.u.s.trated (in part) papers on Drawing Room Dances, on Cricket (by Mr. Andrew Lang), and on Covent Garden. But graphic and vividly naturalistic as were his pictures of modern life, his native bias towards imaginary eighteenth century subjects (perhaps prompted by boyish studies of Hogarth in the old Dublin _Penny Magazine_), was already abundantly manifest. He promptly drifted into what was eventually to become his first ill.u.s.trated book, a series of compositions from the _Spectator_.

These were published in 1886 as a little quarto, ent.i.tled _Days with Sir Roger de Coverley_.

It was a "temerarious" task to attempt to revive the types which, from the days of Harrison's _Essayists_, had occupied so many of the earlier ill.u.s.trators. But the attempt was fully justified by its success. One has but to glance at the head-piece to the first paper, where Sir Roger and "Mr. Spectator" have alighted from the jolting, springless, heavy-wheeled old coach as the tired horses toil uphill, to recognise at once that here is an artist _en pays de connaissance_, who may fairly be trusted, in the best sense, to "ill.u.s.trate" his subject. Whatever one's predilections for previous presentments, it is impossible to resist Sir Roger (young, slim, and handsome), carving the perverse widow's name upon a tree-trunk; or Sir Roger at bowls, or riding to hounds, or listening--with grave courtesy--to Will Wimble's long-winded and circ.u.mstantial account of the taking of the historic jack. Nor is the conception less happy of that amorous fine-gentleman ancestor of the Coverleys who first made love by squeezing the hand; or of that other Knight of the s.h.i.+re who so narrowly escaped being killed in the Civil Wars because he was sent out of the field upon a private message, the day before Cromwell's "crowning mercy,"--the battle of Worcester. But the varied embodiments of these, and of Mrs. Betty Arable ("the great fortune"), of Ephraim the Quaker, and the rest, are not all. The figures are set in their fitting environment; they ride their own horses, hallo to their own dogs, and eat and drink in their own dark-panelled rooms that look out on the pleached alleys of their ancient gardens. They live and move in their own pa.s.sed-away atmosphere of a.s.sociation; and a faithful effort has moreover been made to realise each separate scene with strict relation to its text.

All of the "Coverley" series came out in the _English Ill.u.s.trated_. So also did the designs for the next book, the _Coaching Days and Coaching Ways_ of Mr. Outram Tristram, 1888. Here Mr. Thomson had a topographical collaborator, Mr. Herbert Railton, who did the major part of the very effective drawings in this kind. But Mr. Thomson's contributions may fairly be said to have exhausted the "romance" of the road. Inns and inn-yards, hosts and ostlers and chambermaids, stage-coachmen, toll-keepers, mail-coaches struggling in snow-drifts, mail-coaches held up by highwaymen, overturns, elopements, cast shoes, snapped poles, lost linch-pins,--all the episodes and moving accidents of bygone travel on the high road have abundant ill.u.s.tration, till the pages seem almost to reek of the stableyard, or ring with the horn.[30] And here it may be noted, as a peculiarity of Mr. Thomson's conscientious horse-drawing, that he depicts, not the ideal, but the actual animal. His steeds are not "faultless monsters" like the Dauphin's palfrey in _Henry the Fifth_. They are "all sorts and conditions" of horses; and--if truth required it--would disclose as many sand-cracks as Rocinante, or as many equine defects (from wind-gall to the bolts) as those imputed to that unhappy "Blackberry" sold by the Vicar of Wakefield at Welbridge Fair to Mr, Ephraini Jenkinson.

Note:

[30] Sometimes a literary or historical picture creeps into the text.

Such are "Swift and Bolingbroke at Backlebury" (p. 30); "Charles II. recognised by the Ostler" (p. 144), and "Barry Lyndon cracks a Bottle" (p. 116). _Barry Lyndon_ with its picaresque note and Irish background, would seem an excellent contribution to the "Cranford"

series. Why does not Mr. Thomson try his hand at it? He has ill.u.s.trated _Esmond_, and the _Great Haggarty Diamond_.

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 att.i.tude, or some ingenious contrivance in composition. Considering that from Wenham's edition of 1780, nearly every ill.u.s.trator 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 a.s.sume 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 ill.u.s.trations; 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 Ches.h.i.+re 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 s.p.a.ce to the ancient Cinque Port of Seaford in Suss.e.x--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 ill.u.s.trations for each of Miss Austen's admirable, but--from an ill.u.s.trator'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 circ.u.mstances 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 t.i.tle of _Coridon's Song and other Verses_, a fresh ingathering of old-time minstrelsy from the pages of the _English Ill.u.s.trated_. 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; f.a.n.n.y 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 ill.u.s.tration."

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 ill.u.s.trated, wholly or in part, volumes on Ireland, North Wales, Devon, Cornwall and Yorks.h.i.+re. 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 p.r.o.nounced. "I would desire above all things," he told an interviewer, "to pa.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 friends.h.i.+p.

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 surpa.s.sed" Randolph Caldecott.[34] I doubt whether Mr. Thomson himself would concur with his eulogist in this. But he has a.s.suredly 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 pa.s.sed-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 d.i.c.kens, who sent Rogers several of his books; who dedicated _Master Humphrey's Clock_ to him; and who frequently a.s.sisted 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 d.i.c.kens 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 d.i.c.kens 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 d.i.c.kens 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 d.i.c.kens 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.