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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.

THE "MONKEY-BOOK" A FAVOURITE IN THE NURSERY (By permission of James H. Stone, Esq., J.P.)

"ROBINSON CRUSOE." THE WRECK FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK

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."

"CRUSOE AND XURY ESCAPING" FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-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.

"CRUSOE SETS SAIL ON HIS EVENTFUL VOYAGE" FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK

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.

"THE TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD." FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK

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.

"TWO CHILDREN IN THE WOOD." FROM AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHAP-BOOK

"SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON." FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK

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.

"AN AMERICAN MAN AND WOMAN IN THEIR PROPER HABITS." ILLUSTRATION FROM "A MUSEUM FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN AND LADIES" (S. CROWDER. 1790)

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 Dürer, 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 naïveté 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.

"THE WALLS OF BABYLON." ILLUSTRATION FROM "A MUSEUM FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN AND LADIES" (S. CROWDER. 1790)

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:

"MERCURY AND THE WOODMAN." ILLUSTRATION FROM "BEWICK'S SELECT FABLES." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1784)

"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 Hoteï, 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."

"THE BROTHER AND SISTER." ILLUSTRATION FROM "BEWICK'S SELECT FABLES." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1784)

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.

"LITTLE ANTHONY." ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE MIND." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1792)

"LITTLE ADOLPHUS." ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE MIND." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1792)

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.

A search through the famous Roxburghe collection of broadsheets discovered nothing that could be fairly regarded as a child's publication. The chap-books of the eighteenth century have been adequately discussed in Mr. John Ashton's admirable monograph, and from them a few "cuts" are here reproduced. Of course, if one takes the standard of education of these days as the test, many of those curious publications would appear to be addressed to intelligence of the most juvenile sort. Yet the themes as a rule show unmistakably that children of a larger growth were catered for, as, for instance, "Joseph and his Brethren," "The Holy Disciple," "The Wandering Jew," and those earlier pamphlets which are reprints or new versions of books printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, and others of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

ILLUSTRATION FROM "SKETCHES OF JUVENILE CHARACTERS" (E. WALLIS. 1818)

In one, "The Witch of the Woodlands," appears a picture of little people dancing in a fairy ring, which might be supposed at first sight to be an illustration of a nursery tale, but the text describing a Witch's Sabbath, rapidly dispels the idea. Nor does a version of the popular Faust legend—"Dr. John Faustus"—appear to be edifying for young people. This and "Friar Bacon" are of the class which lingered the longest—the magical and oracular literature. Even to-day it is quite possible that dream-books and prophetical pamphlets enjoy a large sale; but a few years ago many were to be found in the catalogues of publishers who catered for the million. It is not very long ago that the Company of Stationers omitted hieroglyphics of coming events from its almanacs. Many fairy stories which to-day are repeated for the amusement of children were regarded as part of this literature—the traditional folk-lore which often enough survives many changes of the religious faith of a nation, and outlasts much civilisation. Others were originally political satires, or social pasquinades; indeed not a few nursery rhymes mask allusions to important historical incidents. The chap-book form of publication is well adapted for the preservation of half-discredited beliefs, of charms and prophecies, incantations and cures.

In "Valentine and Orson," of which a fragment is extant of a version printed by Wynkyn de Worde, we have unquestionably the real fairy story. This class of story, however, was not addressed directly to children until within the last hundred years. That many of the cuts used in these chap-books afterwards found their way into little coarsely printed duodecimos of eight or sixteen pages designed for children is no doubt a fact. Indeed the wanderings of these blocks, and the various uses to which they were applied, is far too vast a theme to touch upon here. For this peripatetic habit of old wood-cuts was not even confined to the land of their production; after doing duty in one country, they were ready for fresh service in another. Often in the chap-books we meet with the same block as an illustration of totally different scenes.

TITLE-PAGE OF "THE PATHS OF LEARNING" (HARRIS AND SON. 1820)

PAGE FROM "THE PATHS OF LEARNING" (HARRIS AND SON. 1820)

The cut for the title-page of Robin Hood is a fair example of its kind. The Norfolk gentleman's "Last Will and Testament" turns out to be a rambling rhymed version of the Two Children in the Wood. In the first of its illustrations we see the dying parents commending their babes to the cruel world. The next is a subject taken from these lines:

"Away then went these prity babes rejoycing at that tide,

Rejoycing with a merry mind they should on cock-horse ride."

And in the last, here reproduced, we see them when

"Their prity lips with blackberries were all besmeared and dyed,

And when they saw the darksome night, they sat them down and cried."

But here it is more probable that it was the tragedy which attracted readers, as the Police News attracts to-day, and that it became a child's favourite by the accident of the robins burying the babes.

The example from the "History of Sir Richard Whittington" needs no comment.

A very condensed version of "Robinson Crusoe" has blocks of distinct, if archaic, interest. The three here given show a certain sense of decorative treatment (probably the result of the artist's inability to be realistic), which is distinctly amusing. One might select hundreds of woodcuts of this type, but those here reproduced will serve as well as a thousand to indicate their general style.

Some few of these books have contributed to later nursery folk-lore, as, for example, the well known "Jack Horner," which is an extract from a coarse account of the adventures of a dwarf.

One quality that is shared by all these earlier pictures is their artlessness and often their absolute ugliness. Quaint is the highest adjective that fits them. In books of the later period not a few blocks of earlier date and of really fine design reappear; but in the chap-books quite 'prentice hands would seem to have been employed, and the result therefore is only interesting for its age and rarity. So far these pictures need no comment, they foreshadow nothing and are derived from nothing, so far as their design is concerned. Such interest as they have is quite unconcerned with art in any way; they are not even sufficiently misdirected to act as warnings, but are merely clumsy.

ILLUSTRATION FROM "GERMAN POPULAR STORIES." BY G. CRUIKSHANK (CHARLES TILT. 1824)

Children's books, as every collector knows, are among the most short-lived of all volumes. This is more especially true of those with illustrations, for their extra attractiveness serves but to degrade a comely book into a dog-eared and untidy thing, with leaves sere and yellow, and with no autumnal grace to mellow their decay. Long before this period, however, the nursery artist has marked them for his own, and with crimson lake and Prussian blue stained their pictures in all too permanent pigments, that in some cases resist every chemical the amateur applies with the vain hope of effacing the superfluous colour.

Of course the disappearance of the vast majority of books for children (dating from 1760 to 1830, and even later) is no loss to art, although among them are some few which are interesting as the 'prentice work of illustrators who became famous. But these are the exceptions. Thanks to the kindness of Mr. James Stone, of Birmingham, who has a large and most interesting collection of the most ephemeral of all sorts—the little penny and twopenny pamphlets—it has been possible to refer at first hand to hundreds, of them. Yet, despite their interest as curiosities, their art need not detain us here. The pictures are mostly trivial or dull, and look like the products of very poorly equipped draughtsmen and cheap engravers. Some, in pamphlet shape, contain nursery rhymes and little stories, others are devoted to the alphabet and arithmetic. Amongst them are many printed on card, shaped like the cover of a bank-book. These were called battledores, but as Mr. Tuer has dealt with this class in "The Horn Book" so thoroughly, it would be mere waste of time to discuss them here.

ILLUSTRATION FROM "GERMAN POPULAR STORIES." BY G. CRUIKSHANK (CHARLES TILT. 1824)

Mr. Elkin Mathews also permitted me to run through his interesting collection, and among them were many noted elsewhere in these pages, but the rest, so far as the pictures are concerned, do not call for detailed notice. They do, indeed, contain pictures of children—but mere "factual" scenes, as a rule—without any real fun or real imagination. Those who wish to look up early examples will find a large and entertaining variety among "The Pearson Collection" in the National Art Library at South Kensington Museum.

Turning to quite another class, we find "A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies" (Collins: Salisbury), a typical volume of its kind. Its preface begins: "I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasure and diversions. … The greater part of our British youth lose their figure and grow out of fashion by the time they are twenty-five. As soon as the natural gaiety and amiableness of the young man wears off they have nothing left to recommend, but lie by the rest of their lives among the lumber and refuse of their species"—a promising start for a moral lecture, which goes on to implore those who are in the flower of their youth to "labour at those accomplishments which may set off their persons when their bloom is gone."

ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE LITTLE PRINCESS." BY J. C. HORSLEY, R.A. (JOSEPH CUNDALL. 1843)

The compensations for old age appear to be, according to this author, a little knowledge of grammar, history, astronomy, geography, weights and measures, the seven wonders of the world, burning mountains, and dying words of great men. But its delightful text must not detain us here. A series of "cuts" of national costumes with which it is embellished deserves to be described in detail. An American Man and Woman in their proper habits, reproduced on page 6, will give a better idea of their style than any words. The blocks evidently date many years earlier than the thirteenth edition here referred to, which is about 1790. Indeed, those of the Seven Wonders are distinctly interesting.

Here and there we meet with one interesting as art. "An Ancestral History of King Arthur" (H. Roberts, Blue Boar, Holborn, 1782), shown in the Pearson collection at South Kensington, has an admirable frontispiece; and one or two others would be worth reproduction did space permit.

ILLUSTRATION FROM "CHILD'S PLAY." BY E. V. B. (NOW PUBLISHED BY SAMPSON LOW)

Although the dates overlap, the next division of the subject may be taken as ranging from the publication of "Goody Two Shoes—otherwise called Mrs. Margaret Two-shoes"—to the "Bewick Books." Of the latter the most interesting is unquestionably "A Pretty Book of Pictures for Little Masters and Misses, or Tommy Trip's History of Beasts and Birds," with a familiar description of each in verse and prose, to which is prefixed "A History of Little Tom Trip himself, of his dog Towler, and of Coryleg the great giant," written for John Newbery, the philanthropic bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard. "The fifteenth edition embellished with charming engravings upon wood, from the original blocks engraved by Thomas Bewick for T. Saint of Newcastle in 1779"—to quote the full title from the edition reprinted by Edwin Pearson in 1867. This edition contains a preface tracing the history of the blocks, which are said to be Bewick's first efforts to depict beasts and birds, undertaken at the request of the New castle printer, to illustrate a new edition of "Tommy Trip." As at this time copyright was unknown, and Newcastle or Glasgow pirated a London success (as New York did but lately), we must not be surprised to find that the text is said to be a reprint of a "Newbery" publication. But as Saint was called the Newbery of the North, possibly the Bewick edition was authorised. One or two of the rhymes which have been attributed to Oliver Goldsmith deserve quotation. Appended to a cut of The Bison we find the following delightful lines: