Chapter IX: Design and Engraving

It was inevitable that the new movement in Art, with its deeper research of truth in the rendering of human form and the facts of outward nature, should have led to a renewed study of certain forgotten qualities of design. And it is, indeed, impossible to understand the aim and impulse of the leaders of this new movement without reference to the engraved work of the time. It was a necessity of the straitened means which affected nearly all of them that they should at first employ themselves in the work of illustration, and there is no higher tribute to the genius which this new spirit had evoked than is to be found in the engraved work that was produced in England during the ten or fifteen years dating from the middle fifties.

When he was little more than a boy, and before he had gained any accomplishment as a painter, Rossetti had already produced some beautiful work in black and white, and we know from their published illustrations that Millais and Holman Hunt were already striving in the same direction.

The first important display of this renewed energy in design is to be found in the illustrated edition of Tennyson’s _Poems_ published in 1857, for there, side by side with much that belongs to an earlier manner, the drawings of Hunt and Millais and Rossetti stand out with vivid distinctness as a separate achievement. Not that even at that time these three artists ought to be considered as actuated by a single motive; the individuality of each had been already asserted, and it was hardly necessary for Mr. Hunt in his recently published _Reminiscence_ to labour the point that the aims of Rossetti were not in their essence the aims of Millais and himself. Nor, on the other hand, can the supremacy of Rossetti in regard to imaginative impulse and power be rightly challenged by any one who has had the opportunity of studying the work of the time.

It is not easy to perceive the motive of those who seek so hotly to contest Rossetti’s influence upon his fellows. The very fact that Millais’s art, and even, though in a lesser degree, the art of Mr. Holman Hunt, took afterwards a different direction, is rather to be taken as evidence that in some of the essays of these earlier years they were, for a time at least, under the sway of an individuality in its essence widely different from their own. The champions of the genius of Millais need be under no anxiety to claim for him entire independence of spirit. In his later achievements this independence is announced without reserve. They make it clear that the finer poetic feeling, which is evident in some of his earlier paintings, and more especially in some of his earlier drawings, was not destined to be the dominating factor in his artistic life. But it is no less true, as it seems to me, that there was a time of

From _The Parables of our Lord_.

By Sir J. E. MILLAIS, Bart., P.R.A.

Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.

(Reproduced from their _Fifty Years’ Work_.)

_To face page 113._ ]

his youth when he willingly surrendered himself to this spirit, and if, as we come now to perceive, it was not enduringly implanted in his nature, there can be no reason for disputing the suggestion that it sprang at the time from comradeship with a man in whose work, whatever other changes it may have suffered, this quality remained always supreme.

“I believe,” said Mr. Ruskin, speaking of Rossetti shortly after the date of his death, “that his name should be placed first on the list of men within my own knowledge who have raised and changed the spirit of modern Art--raised in absolute attainment, changed in direction of temperament.”

And if we turn with these words in mind to the Tennyson illustrations, it will seem not possible to dispute Mr. Ruskin’s verdict.

Beautiful as are the drawings of Millais and Mr. Hunt, the final impression left by that volume rests in a pre-eminent degree upon Rossetti’s exquisite design of “Sir Galahad” and his beautiful illustrations of the “Palace of Art.”

Within two years of the issue of Tennyson’s volume, the illustrated periodical called _Once a Week_ was established, and its pages for many years afterwards bore admirable witness to the wide influence which these three great leaders were already exercising upon their generation. Indeed, it may be said that it is impossible to understand the real trend of this new movement, and to appreciate at their just worth the many and varying individualities engaged in its support, without a constant reference to these earlier volumes of a now defunct periodical. There we find in rich profusion the earlier, and in many cases the more interesting, experiments of men like Du Maurier, Charles Keene, Frederick Sandys, Frederick Walker, and John Tenniel, side by side with numerous illustrations by Millais himself. Even Mr. Whistler was an occasional contributor, though his work, except in its very earliest essays where he frankly accepts the ruling convention of the time, quickly takes a place apart as a thing of purely individual temperament.

Afterwards, in the days of the Arts Club, I learned to know personally many of those men whose work I had loved when a boy as it appeared in the pages of _Once a Week_. Charles Keene, who had first been made known to me by his illustrations of Meredith’s novel of _Evan Harrington_, was a constant figure there during the time when he was already a valued member of the staff of _Punch_. He was a quaint and amiable character, with a head that suggested Don Quixote, and I recall him now as he used to sit for many an hour of the afternoon and evening with his cup of coffee kept hot upon the bars of the old fire-place in the front room of the Club, filling and refilling one of those tiny clay pipes dating from the period of Charles II., which had been unearthed during some building excavations in the City. Taciturn by habit, and perhaps by preference, he yet always willingly entered into conversation when the occasion arose. Sometimes I would go down and see him in his little house in Chelsea, and turn over his elaborately careful etchings of boats, made by the sea.

It cannot be said, I think, that he was ever deeply stirred in his own work by the movement to

To seek the wanderer, forth himself doth come
And take him in his arms, and bear him home.
So in this life, this grove of Ignorance,
As to my homeward I myself advance,
Sometimes aright, and sometimes wrong I go,
Sometimes my pace is speedy, sometimes slow.
_Life’s Journey._--GEORGE WITHER.

From _English Sacred Poetry_.

By FREDERICK SANDYS.

Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.

(Reproduced from their _Fifty Years’ Work_.)

_By permission of Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Ltd._

_To face page 115._ ]

which I have specially referred, though he was full of generous appreciation of what was being done in that direction. The effects for which he was specially seeking in black and white demanded a style of execution peculiarly his own, and, when his mastery in the use of the material was complete, the result, more especially in the rendering of light and shade, was a thing distinct and incomparable.

The one man of all the group who showed, perhaps, the surest hold of the essential qualities of design was Fred Sandys. Though not of the body, he was closely associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement, and already in _Once a Week_, in such drawings as his illustration to Meredith’s poem of “The Old Chartist,” he had exhibited a complete command of technical resources. Sandys remained to the last a remarkable talker, keenly critical, and on occasion warmly appreciative. There was a period during his later life when he might be found almost any afternoon in the lower room of the Café Royal, and there, over a cigar and a cup of coffee, he would gossip freely of those earlier days during his association with Rossetti, always taking care, as it seemed to me, to let it be understood that when his own association with any one of the men of that time had ceased, they had ceased to be afterwards very interesting or notable.

I remember Whistler used to give some very humorous imitations of incidents that occurred in Sandys’ studio, and he was particularly happy in the reproduction of a scene between the painter and his father--real or fanciful I cannot pretend to say--in which something of the haughty reticence and reserve exhibited on both sides was very entertainingly reproduced.

Du Maurier was one of the constant attendants at the Arts Club during the afternoon, and was always a delightful companion. He loved discussion, loved especially to appraise and value the different ideals of contemporary painting in eager, and sometimes excited, dispute in regard to the merits of men whose work made, perhaps, a stronger appeal to me than to him. But our talk, even when it was most animated, never grew embittered. With Du Maurier, indeed, that would hardly have been possible, for the innate charm of his nature, linked with a constant desire to be just and fair, even to those towards whom his judgment was sometimes unfavourable, sufficed in itself to keep even the most heated controversy agreeable and urbane.

Despite his partly French origin, or perhaps by reason of it, he possessed an enthusiastic appreciation for the purely English type of beauty, whether in men or women. The athletic sanity of our English life appealed to him strongly, and it was, perhaps, the consciousness of something in himself of the Gallic spirit, something that leaned towards greater refinement and delicacy, that kept him obstinately devoted to the more solid ideals of the land in which he dwelt. It was this, I am sure, that so strongly attracted him to Millais, whose robust character, both as expressed in the man and exhibited in his art, he passionately admired. And I think it was the suspicion of a danger lest he might be tempted to surrender himself to something not so healthy in its outlook that left him with a constant sense of reserve in his appreciation of men like Rossetti and Burne-Jones. And yet he was far too gifted an artist not to be sensible to the genius of both.

But it was as a man, and apart from any profession of faith, that he was so wholly delightful. His professed principles, though always sincerely held and admirably expressed, and his constant respect for the steady decorum of English character, gave scarcely a hint of the special charm of his own temperament. In moments of gaiety his high spirits were infectious, and he became on certain occasions, when the mood stirred him, the veriest and most delightful of Bohemians.

I recall him, at one of the annual feasts at Maidenhead held by a little club called “The Lambs,” keeping the whole table in roars of laughter by an impromptu speech wherein he gave free rein to his humour and fancy--a speech which, I think, made us all feel that his constantly expressed reverence for the English ideal must have occasionally suffered some sense of fatigue that needed for its cure a sudden reversion to the land of his blood. We none of us suspected in those days--he himself perhaps least of all--that he was destined to win such world-wide fame as an author, and it was perhaps not until he became an author that it was possible to realise in what affectionate remembrance he held the days of his studentship in Paris.

Du Maurier’s early contributions to _Once a Week_ scarcely gave more than a hint of that humorous quality which he afterwards developed in the pages of _Punch_. It was there that he translated with caricature the extravagances and eccentricities of that æsthetic cult which had indeed little counterpart in real life, excepting in so far as they were summed up in the conscious affectations of poor Oscar Wilde.

But at the time they were accepted by the public as in some sense a satire upon the newer school of painting, and--although that, I know, was no part of Du Maurier’s intention--these drawings served in no small degree to encourage the spirit of ridicule with which some of the more serious work of the time was received.

Humour, as we may here perceive, was always at Du Maurier’s command, and yet it is not specially by this quality that his best contributions to _Punch_ are distinguished. They hold a place apart, as compared, for instance, with the caricatures of John Leech or Charles Keene, by reason of a certain grace and beauty which was their constant attribute. They formed a just and sometimes a flattering picture of the English social life of the time, betraying, in the rendering of form and in charm of bearing, the artist’s devotion to that type of English beauty--fitting models for which Du Maurier could always find without wandering beyond the limits of his own home.

One or two of his most highly finished drawings I was enabled to publish in the _English Illustrated Magazine_, and there is one in particular called “A Nocturne” which shows with what a fine sense of reality he could render on occasion the most delicate effects in landscape.

Du Maurier loved music, and by common consent was an accomplished musician, though his voice boasted no great range or power. But when he chose to sing to his intimate friends--and he never cared to seek a wider audience--it was impossible to resist the taste and charm which belonged to him as surely in music as in the traffic of social life. Even here, however, as in pictorial art, he could never quite determine with himself to what school he owned the strongest allegiance, and I have often heard him declare that he was torn in divided admiration between the perfect vocalisation of a singer like De Soria and the more passionate appeal of some of the later German music as it was interpreted by Henschell.

Richard Doyle--or Dicky Doyle, as he was better known to his countless friends--seemed rather by the quality of his work, which claims a certain kinship with the style of Sir John Gilbert, to belong to an earlier generation, and yet he was well known and well loved by even the youngest of those who were working under a newer impulse.

He was a welcome guest in nearly all of the great country-houses in England, and yet he preserved to the end a strange boyishness and shyness of manner, beneath which, however, there lurked a constant sense of kindly humour.

I met him first as a fellow-guest of Sir Coutts Lindsay at Balcarres, and I remember his telling me that he had such a horror of his modest wardrobe being overhauled by the footman who valeted him that it was his habit, on retiring for the night, to lock his clothes securely in a drawer, and then to watch with half-opened eyes in the morning, and with a chuckle which he could not always conceal beneath the bed-clothes, the wild despair of the footman in his fruitless search for the secreted garments.

When the Grosvenor was established, Doyle became a constant contributor to the exhibitions, sending every year some delightful specimens of his fanciful treatment of fairy subjects.

But it is perhaps mainly by his earlier drawings on the wood that he will be best remembered, drawings which display the fecundity of his inventions exhibited in countless forms and faces, which he could multiply apparently without effort or trouble. One of the best of these drawings is that representing the Custom-House at Cologne, where he shows in a supreme degree his extraordinary power of granting individual character to every diminutive face that is introduced into the design.

A younger artist, who had perhaps something of the personal charm of Du Maurier, was Randolph Caldecott, whom I got to know soon after the publication of his hunting scenes.

He had been ordered to the South for the sake of his health, and at the suggestion of his friend and mine, Mr. Thomas Armstrong, who so greatly aided him in those earlier days in securing public recognition, he undertook to make the illustrations for a book written by my wife called _North Italian Folk_.

In manner Caldecott was as gentle as Du Maurier, and even more reserved, yet this reserve could yield on occasion to the wildest high spirits, when the humour that is never absent from his drawings found delightful utterance. Poor Caldecott always had about him the shadow of failing health, and yet it never, I think, disturbed the deep tenderness of his nature that was revealed even in his most buoyant moods.

Perhaps the quaintest figure among the draughtsmen of that day was the Italian caricaturist Carlo Pellegrini, whose cartoons in _Vanity Fair_ brought him prominently before the public.

Although he was a dweller among us for many years, he never acquired the slightest command of our tongue. Indeed, I rather think that as time went on his English grew persistently worse, but in his brave endeavour to express himself he forged a dialect of his own that was sometimes richly entertaining.

One day at a private view at the Dudley Gallery he went down on his knees to examine and to admire a drawing by Arthur Severn, and then, with sudden enthusiasm, he cried out so that all might hear, “Capital, capital! But why, the blast, he stipple?”

At Pagani’s Italian Restaurant in Great Portland Street he was a constant attendant, and during the later years of his life, when he had fallen upon evil times, I think his kindly compatriots greatly befriended him.

There I constantly met him at lunch at the time when I was at work for the German Reeds, whose room of entertainment in St. George’s Hall stood close by; and afterwards Pellegrini became a regular visitor at our house in Blandford Square, where he would always, at his own request, insist upon bringing some Italian dish to add to the modest feast that had been prepared for him.

Once on Christmas Day, when he was dining with us, I specially warned him that my father-in-law, who was a clergyman, would be of the party, and beseeched him to curb the ordinary exuberance of his phraseology. But despite his solemn promise of circumspection, the ladies had no sooner quitted the dining-room than I found Pellegrini in animated conversation with my father-in-law, conversation liberally enforced on his side by a volley of strange oaths in that dialect that was all his own, oaths which, had they been partially understood by his companion, would, I think, have brought the evening to a sudden termination.

When his indiscretion had been pointed out to him poor Pellegrini was duly repentant, but we had not been in the drawing-room many minutes before he joined in a game of Little Horses which my children were playing upon the floor. At the close of the game he rose with an expression upon his face of deep remorse.

“Joe,” he cried, “you ’ave ruin me! At the Las’ Day the Lord God will say to me, ‘Pellegrini, you ’ave every vice.’ And I could ’ave reply, ‘Lord God, pardon me, I ’ave never gamble.’ Now I cannot say.”

This renewed outburst made it plain to me that I had, on that particular occasion, made a somewhat unwise selection in the guests invited to meet him, and during the remainder of the evening I kept close by his elbow in fear and trembling of some new outrage that might bring our innocent festivities to a sudden close.

Pellegrini was a well-known figure at the Beefsteak Club, where his quaint idiosyncrasies were welcomed by nearly all, but even there he would occasionally bring a shock of surprise and amazement to some newly elected member who was not yet accustomed to his liberal vocabulary.

There was one fellow-member of the club, himself an artist, who was wont to entertain the table with little impromptu sketches and designs which he executed with a certain degree of facility. This innocent display of artistic power gravely offended Pellegrini, who, possibly moved by a measure of jealousy that any one else should encroach upon his special province, insisted with some vehemence that a club was not the place for such exercises.

“I like the boy,” he said to me one evening, “and when he talk, I listen, but ’tis pity he draw.”

It was only a few evenings later that I entered the room and found the young friend who had been the subject of Pellegrini’s rebuke absorbing the entire conversation of a crowded table. Pellegrini was present, and I could see that he was growing restive under the artist’s unceasing flow of conversation. In a momentary pause he turned to me and in an audible whisper delivered this laconic judgment:

“Joe, I ’ave made big mistake. ’Tis better he draw.”

Poor Pellegrini’s misfortunes dated from the time when, abandoning the practice of caricature, he sought to establish himself as a painter in oils. Soon after he had started upon this perilous enterprise he said to me one day at the Arts Club, “Joe, I will make that you have not told the lie.”

“What lie?” I inquired.

“You have say,” he replied, “that I shall be the finest portrait-painter of the day. You will see--I _will_ be.”

As a matter of fact I had never ventured upon any such daring prophecy, neither did I have any faith in the chances of his success. Nor, I am sure, did he ever believe I had said it. It was rather, I suspect, a wily device of the Neapolitan to pledge my support for the new departure which he had taken in his art.

Towards the close of his life he rarely came to any Club, and I think he felt deeply the failure that had overtaken him.

Very quaintly, as we drove home one night, he gave expression to the consciousness that lay upon him that he had not long to live.

“When I die,” he said, “which ’appen short----” and then he turned away with the sentence unfinished.

Of his talent as a caricaturist there can never be any question. He had the rare power of finding an equation for every face, summarising in a few lines its salient points of oddity. And this same power he exhibited in his shrewd judgment of character. At a dinner-table little that was characteristic escaped his humorous regard. Though alien born, and almost jealously retaining to the end of his life amongst us his individuality as a foreigner, he possessed a quick and just appreciation of our national characteristics, more especially as they lent themselves to humorous portrayal.

He once said to me, “A man may caricature the people of a race that is not his own, but it needs a native to judge them seriously.”

He forgot his own maxim, poor fellow, when he launched out as a painter of portraits, for the source of his failure lay not merely in insufficient power, but in the lack of true comprehension of the deeper qualities of character.